sex = the unknown quantity the spiritual function of sex a new and startling interpretation of the meaning, scope and function of sex as seen and interpreted from the inner or cosmic standpoint. a work that should revolutionize the thought of today in its relation to the vital mystery of sex in all its aspects. it presents a practical solution to the sex problems of everyday life. _by_ ali nomad [dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall] _author of_ "cosmic consciousness, or the man-god whom we await", "the dead speak" "revelations of the hand", "ghosts", "how thought can kill" "personal magnetism", "proofs of immortality", etc. chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company copyright, , by sterling publishing company. copyrighted and registered in stationers' hall, london, england. (all rights reserved) copyright in all countries signatories to the berne convention. the sterling press. dedicated to the child of tomorrow the man-god whom we await publisher's foreword to our readers: we feel justified in claiming this work marks an epoch in the advanced thought of human evolution. nothing has ever been written dealing with the problem of sex which is at once so illuminating, convincing and satisfying. to our knowledge this particular view of the sex-subject has never before been presented, and, perhaps it could not have been, owing to the fact that it is only _now_ in these days of higher thought, that such a view could be understood. the author, ali nomad, is already well known to progressive readers as the writer of "cosmic consciousness," or, "the man-god whom we await;" a work that has made its author famous by the reprint of its many editions. there are signs of a new order in the relation of the sexes already indicated upon the horizon of the world's consciousness as the result of the present world-conflict. _today people are as ignorant of the subject of sex as they are of god._ both of these must be understood if the race is to progress beyond its present stage. otherwise we shall pass into the long sleep of oblivion like all civilizations in the past leaving future generations to grapple with the same world problems. true or _perfect_ marriage is the most important attainment in the life of the individual. the author demonstrates that perfect marriage is a scientific possibility and that legal marriage and divorce simply conform to civil laws. he very clearly outlines the reason why civilization makes little or no progress in dealing with the social evil and other sex problems. the publishers place this book before an intelligent public, believing, that more _real_ knowledge can be gained by its study, than by any other known method, because _first._ the reader is brought face to face with himself, and nature. _second._ the reader can demonstrate the truth of the propositions set forth. _third._ the methods, rules, and laws have been verified by intelligent men and women who have lived the life. _fourth._ "sex," the divine principle which all human beings should understand, has been presented in plain simple terms, and elucidated, so that the reader _cannot_ fail to understand the true path of moral progress. this volume is not a romance, a fairy tale nor a dream intended to entertain or amuse, but a scientific instruction which will elevate the individual and the race, develop self respect, self control, morality and love. if the propositions presented by the author are correct--let the standards be changed; _if_ the propositions are _incorrect_, they will not disturb the standards of today. the publishers. sex--the unknown quantity the spiritual function of sex contents introduction chapter i sex universal and eternal sex the fundamental basis of the universe; sex in organic life; the law of attraction and repulsion in animal and plant life; sex attraction and repulsion in human life; how differentiated and why; some secrets of modern chemistry; the cosmic law of involution and evolution; the symbol of the serpent in a new light; what is "the power of the gods" referred to in ancient mythology; some erroneous ideas in regard to the sex function; the philosophy of restraint; the inner sex-function and its outward expression compared; the senses as avenues of inspiration; the creation of form and sense-objects; what constitutes a "perfect and complete being?" the theory of "counterparts" and its spiritual significance; is procreation the highest function of sex; what constitutes the fundamental law of love? the various expressions of the love-nature from inorganic to organic life. chapter ii from sex worship to sex degradation sex the origin of all religious ceremonies; from nature-worship to sex-worship; the history of ancient forms and ceremonies of worship; how sex-worship has survived the ages; how it thrives today in modern religion; early stages of civilization in relation to sex; the antiquity of the symbol of the virgin and child; its occult significance in symbolism; the reality of the "bi-une god;" some secrets of the ancient egyptians in regard to the function of sex; the esoteric cause of the egyptian talismanic and symbolical revival today; the secret or esoteric meaning of the swastika-cross; why aum is always typified by a circle; ancient forms of oath-taking and why; the source of sex-energy spiritual; how and where the idea of "blood-atonement" and vicarious sacrifice originated; the beginning of sex-degradation. chapter iii present-day conditions: the cosmic cause the consecutive order from ancient sex-worship to modern civilization; the real causes of race-advancement in the cosmic tidal-wave, and what it portends; why conditions are as they are today in regard to sex-life; the psychic forces in their relation to sex-life; some fallacies in regard to eugenics; why greek and roman civilization failed; why and how modern civilization need not fail; why women seek to avoid motherhood; women of two types; the awake and the asleep; the cosmic office of the female principle; its relation to creation; how the superman and woman will differ from the undeveloped type; what is meant by "half-gods;" are women of today lacking in the love-nature; will the race die out? if so, why, and if not why not? how did the "holy family" differ from other families? chapter iv the history of marriage and mating the relation of ancient marriage customs to religion; why human evolution must necessarily be slow; ancient marriage customs and their spiritual interpretation; why marriage ceremonies have always prevailed; customs of all races compared; why the institution has a permanent place in social evolution; the symbolism of the visible world; why science and mysticism agree spiritually; the origin of "variation" the fundamental cause of woman's subjugation; when men defend "outraged honor," is it a primitive or a primordial instinct? the history of monogamy; the monogamic idea and the ideal monogamy; the history and cause of polygamy; the evolution of the "old-maid" idea and the psychic cause of this evolution; the path of the virtuous woman in ancient days; the elevating power in the dowry system; the two great purposes which this custom has served. chapter v the symbolism of marriage and of sex-union why the monogamic ideal of marriage is right; how, when and where, will marriage be lasting; the basic principle of sex-union; when the bonds of matrimony are truly "holy;" attraction and cohesion two distinct phases of chemical laws; ideas of a modern writer; how all morality has come from the ideal of marriage; some erroneous ideas of spirituality in relation to the sex-function; when and why man becomes immortal; the custom and the hidden meaning in the wedding ring; the symbolism of ancient marriage customs; the esoteric meaning of "orange-blossoms;" the veil; the ring; the crown; why these have endured throughout the ages; the interior and hidden meaning of rosicrusian symbols in respect to the sex-function; women admitted to the order and why; the mystery and marvel of the symbolic "dove;" why it plays so important a part in marriage customs and lover's phrases; the symbolism of the ark; the egg; the drinking-cup and other persisting accompaniments to marriage customs. chapter vi continence; chastity; asceticism: their spiritual significance the ancient greek and roman idea of the sex-relation; why the asceticism of the dark ages arose; why the church instituted celibacy; why the church retained the pagan idea of "the virgin;" the effect this has had upon the growth and power of christianity; lives of celebrated saints in the light of occult wisdom; why and in what way the essentials of christianity are like other religious ideals; who is "the one true and only god?" the interior meaning of the word "chastity;" the difference between chastity and asceticism; the unbroken line connecting ancient ideas of sex, with modern; the attitude of religious systems toward women; why women are supporters of the churches in modern days; the "mystic bride" and the mystical meaning; william james comments on the spiritual ecstacy of st. teresa; swedenborg on "conjugal love;" trances; ecstacies; and visions of saints; the term "virgin," and its origin; the evolution of sex-love to spiritual love. chapter vii soul-union: where will it lead? why we hear of "affinities" and "soul-mates" today more than formerly; the great distinction between these two words; the psychic forces behind woman's invasion of business fields; the basis of "the unwritten law;" why affinity marriages fail; the hidden reason girls look for a "rich husband;" the final outcome; when and how women are "ruined;" the mystery of the hermaphrodite; what is the true significance of the term "androgynous?" mistaken ideas of morality in dress and manners; what sort of beings constitute "the kingdom of god?" the "secret of secrets" of the hermetics; the wisdom of the "initiates;" the spiritual quality in folk-lore; the time when "temptation" will be no more; when "naked and unashamed" the race will re-enter the lost paradise. chapter viii the hidden wisdom revealed science and mysticism the same at root; christian mysticism versus scientific postulates; the interior meaning in fairy stories; personalities and principles in mystic revelation; the esoteric meaning in mythology; are there gods and mortals? the ark in religious symbology; its interior meaning; what were the "tablets of stone?" the reality of the "cherubim" and the "seraphim;" the inner meaning of the symbolical "ark of the covenant;" is spiritual love devoid of sex?; what is the symbolical "flaming sword?"; why the jews claimed to be god's "chosen people;" what makes for "immortal godhood?"; the symbolism of the "life-token" stories; the symbolism of the sleeping princess; a theory that solves all the problems of life; the symbolical rites and ceremonies of secret orders; the secrets of the ancient alchemists; the rosicrucians; the free masons; the hermetics; their initiation rites and ceremonies explained; what is meant by the "holy of holies?" by the "secret chamber;" and the degree of "mastership;" the sexual significance of the symbolism of the "templars;" the red rose on the cross; the star and the crescent; what is the inner meaning of "the radiant center;" why the catholic church opposed the order of free-masons; did the alchemists discover the secret of metallic transmutation? what is meant by "the philosopher's stone;" why it was of such a rare purity; why the early church opposed all reference to sex; the distinction between "discovering" and "finding;" their spiritual meaning; what was the stone that was raised at babylon: was it a phallic symbol? why the average "knight templar" fails to attain the powers and privileges of esoteric free-masonry; what is the "gate of life?" the arcana of the hermetics and its sexual significance; the symbolism of the double-headed eagle; why the eagle was an ancient religious symbol; the antithesis of "the eagle and the dove" explained; the "lamb and the goat" symbolism; the god-ideas of the ancients and their effects on modern life; why "riding the goat" is the usual initiatory rite and ceremony in secret orders; some secret plates of hermetic orders explained; what is the "magic solvent" of the alchemists? the relation of christian symbolism to the alchemical secrets; the inner meaning of "the sun and the moon" in ancient literature; transmutation: exterior or interior? what constitutes "the abiding glory." chapter ix what constitutes sexual immorality? can there be standards of morality in the sex-relation; if so what are they? is monogamy the ideal sex relationship? is polygamy a future possibility? why matriarchal polygamy is less degrading than patriarchal; why polygamy is not the ideal sex relationship; the fallacy of legal marriage as a test of sexual morality; why we "cannot wrong the universe;" the one commandment of "the most high god;" what is it? our modern standards the result of phallic worship; why the roman church has survived the centuries; the interior meaning in the "holy virgin" idea of the church; the vital point in the roman marriage restrictions; men inherently more faithful to marriage vows than women, and why this is so; the bi-sexual individual the most developed; the counterpartal union and its relation to marriage customs; why "affinities" are so numerous; sexual infidelity an impossible premise; what is to become of present-day ethical standards of sexual morality?; historic ideas of sexual immorality and their influence upon modern civilization; modern effects of ancient hebraic customs; why suppression of prostitution must fail; why prostitution is moral degeneracy; the oriental versus the occidental view of prostitution; why modern ideas of sexual morality are fallacious and untenable; can there be a universal standard of sexual morality? why present-day ideas of marriage are degrading; compulsion in marriage and prostitution compared; how, why, and when, the sex-relation may be exalted, reverenced and deified; mistakes of some "civic leaguers;" why, when, and how, unfaithfulness in marriage is wrong; the single versus the double standard in sex. chapter x the pathway of love love the great reality; love the alpha and omega of life; sex-love the basis of all other loves; sex-love the true spiritual love; what is love of an abstract god? love the perfect mathematician; the moral code and nature; why we cannot break the laws of god; why love is depicted with bandaged eyes; eros and cupid explained; why the egyptians depicted horus with finger on lips; some symbolic caricatures in modern civilization; how it is true that "love makes gods of men;" why religion has remained materialistic; love, the only vitalizing power in the universe; the arch-enemy of love; why love never leads to disaster; why love is always pure; erroneous ideas of success and failure; what is real degradation? the pathway of love from chemical attraction to spiritual union; why spiritual mates must be the answer to life's puzzle; what constitutes actual infidelity? what is to be done with sex relations that are not spiritual unions? are they immoral? too much made of the marriage ceremony and too little of fitness; is it better to be "respectably bonded" or spiritually mated? what will happen when we rid society of a belief in "impure" love; why marriage vows are inadequate; puerile; and futile; when we find the "pearl of great price;" why spiritual mates cannot be parted; why bonds and vows must give place to mutual agreement; does spiritual union come with love of god? what is the "bliss of nirvana?" why the libertine is a pauper in the realm of love; when we imbibe the "nectar of gods;" why the "holy of holies" cannot be defiled; when the divine office of sex is prostituted; why all sex relations may not be eternal yet moral; the mistaken teaching of the church regarding sex, and the result; inane ideas of paradise; an appalling prospect of heaven; perfect sex-union the incentive to aspiration; humanity progresses in spite of fear; prophecy literally true; the true business of business; the final test; the love that is merging, melting; satisfying and how to attain it. chapter xi the law of transmutation the spiritual cause of all physical activity; two words that are of vital import today; did jesus lie? is the kingdom within an actual truth? the interior qualities and their relationship to present day affairs; the fundamental difference between mysticism and christianity; the key to the kingdom; the interior symbolism of "wireless telegraphy;" the breeder of discord; the interior meaning of certain important words; the survival of the fittest in its interior meaning; the finer and ever finer forces at work; when the gods arrive the half gods go; sex-force at the center of being; when abnormalities and perversions of sex will be impossible; the radiant center of the bi-une sex-life; the primary function of sex-force vitalization, not procreation; the art of transmutation and the key to the gate of life; the esoteric meaning of our "second childhood;" the present necessity for physical old-age; the spiritual message in the doctrine of sacrifice; the mystical formula for transmutation; the mystery of the "holy grail" elucidated; the only method of attaining godhood. chapter xii "selling the thrones of angels" the barriers between men and the "bliss of heaven;" the difference between mortals and gods; the character of a bi-une being; erroneous ideas of masculinity and femininity; the change of the present day toward these ideas; god not a hermaphroditic personality, but a pair; some "laws of god;" the ideal of union versus the idea of possession; the highest manifestation of sex-love; the solar-man and the mental man in sex; qualities of sex-force; is the divine man less sexual than the physical? the divine fulcrum of sex; how eternal youth and life are possible; why you can not lose in the "game of love;" we cannot sin against the eternal god; why and when the "eternal equasion" is perfect; no mistakes or flaws in the cosmic scheme; how spiritual mates may find each other; the true way of transmutation simple; why we have "painted dolls of women;" the hearts of men; the highest wisdom; some fallacies regarding the law of transmutation; why the "inner vision" does not require a trip to the himalayas; why "brotherhoods" cannot insure you the way; all beauty and joy the result of the divinity of sex; life mathematically just; when we shall "enter the kingdom." introduction no phase of civilization can rise to the highest possibilities as long as the average mental attitude toward the most vital, the most important and the most sacred function of our being, is one of shame, sinfulness, lust and uncleanness. even among those who are conscientiously trying to establish better social conditions, there is a deplorable lack of anything like the proper attitude toward the problems of sex, albeit there are evidences that our social consciousness is alive to the seriousness of the sex problem. many of our advanced thinkers and scientists are giving their attention to the subject, but it is a theme which has been so long neglected, so hedged about by false standards of morality; so fettered by the system of tabu, that a rational discussion of sex apart from materia medica, or religion, is difficult. moreover, the physiological side of the sex question robs it of all the delicacy, and the intimacy and the beauty and romance which should by right, surround the function of sex-mating and which does surround a union that is pure and perfect. in this innate desire to share with the one and only possible mate, the intimate secrets of love, there is nothing of shame or apology--sentiments which alas, actuate the so-called "modest" man or woman of today. sex matters should, indeed, be held too sacred, too intimate for public discussion, whereas the present-day attitude holds that sex is too indecent to be spoken of. when the subject is forced upon public attention as it so frequently is through tragic occurrences, the opinions expressed are both petty and puerile. they evade the truth and so avoid the issue. they deal with effects only, are satisfied with offering suggestions as to ways and means of suppressing these effects, instead of going to the root of the matter and realizing that all the tragedies that spring out of sex are due to wrong teaching and thinking in regard to the sex-function. that which we reverence, and hold sacred, we do not profane. until sex is established in its rightful place, as the holy and divine creative power of this universe, we will be shocked and horrified with sex-tragedies. it is a pity that the physiological and hygienic aspect of sex has to be discussed at all, but it is necessary that all sides of the subject must be presented to meet the great variety of minds, but it is our contention that if the spiritual quality of sex were recognized and understood, there would be no need for any other view, because if sex were recognized as the sacred, and holy and spiritual function _that it is_, disease and sinfulness would disappear as the mist before the sun. in the meantime the subject must be discussed from all points of view. it must be permitted to thrive in the light and thus it will flower into the perfection of the spiritual seed that generated it. in the meantime, the debasement of all things connected with sex must be aired, discussed, and weeded out, until a sane and normal and reverential recognition of the universality and the eternality of sex, is engendered in the minds of men and women and growing youths and transmitted to the children yet unborn. "sex contains all," says walt whitman. "bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; all hopes, benefactions, bestowals; all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of earth; all the governments, judges, gods, followed persons of the earth; these are contained in sex as parts of itself and justification of itself. "without shame the man i like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex; without shame the woman i like knows and avows hers." many well-meaning persons see in the words of the "good grey poet," only an immodest and brazen shamelessness. but these are mental perverts and are to be pitied; they see "through a glass darkly" and everything looks black with decay; they are trying to build an eternal future upon a foundation of tissue paper; they are seeking to encompass immortal life by denying the very beginning and source of all life--sex; they are attempting the impossible feat of foisting upon the world an ideal of heaven from which they have extracted the very essence of heaven itself, although nothing on earth or from divine sources justifies such an idea. possibly our civilization has proceeded on the plan of leaving until the last the most important thing in an ideal community and it may be that we shall do the necessary reform work in this department all the more thoroughly for having so long neglected it. in the following chapters the physiological and hygienic side of the subject has been avoided as there is much sound advice already issued pertaining to this phase of the sex question, and it is our contention that the world must be brought to recognize the spiritual, and sacred function of sex, as the basis of reformation or regeneration, before the kingdom of love shall be established upon the earth as it is in celestial spaces. the author. chapter i sex universal and eternal the fundamental basis of the universe is sex. sex is the fulcrum upon which our life-activities turn. it is the life of man and of planets, and ignorance of the laws of sex is the cause of death of both. it is the conjunction of the forces of attraction and repulsion; the positive and negative; the centripetal and centrifugal forces which hold stars and planets in their orbits--or rather, it is the two expressions of the one power, which is both male and female, the eternal bi-une sex principle which is _life_. the law of attraction everywhere, from that of the sun and the earth, to that of the iron and the magnet, the "affinity" of the various gases and liquids, is founded upon sex. cohesion is but another name for copulation, and repulsion is absence of the power of contact. the law of attraction and cohesion everywhere is the law of sex-activity. "the law of conjugality is the basis of every force in nature," says a scientist. sex constitutes the eternal energy from which issue all the forms and differentiations which we see manifested in the visible universe, and it is equally the foundation of the realms invisible. sex is the algebracial x--the unknown quantity which defies analysis. plato is said to have observed that "the son of man is written all over the visible world in the form of an x;" and also that "the second coming of christ is rightly symbolized by a cross." the cross is but another form of the x--the eternal bi-une sex-principle in action. the female principle attracts to a central union; draws toward and within itself. the home is established and maintained by the female element; the nest is the special property of the female bird. thus the female principle best expresses the highest love because the object of love is _union_. hate scatters, disintegrates, destroys. wherever the struggle between love and hate is seen, there we will find a lack of union. there may be marriage, but there will not be mating. true union must come from the center of life--from the spiritual reality, which the physical only imperfectly shadows forth. involution is best described as feminine, and wherever we note the upward trend of the feminine element in society, we may know that the earth is on its involutionary path; the end of a cycle is at hand, and social unrest and marital upheaval are inevitable, because love is in the ascendant and love demands _union_--not merely matrimony. the ancients sought to express the never-beginning and never-ending law of sex by the symbol of the serpent with its tail in its mouth, forming a circle. the resemblance of the male sperm to the spiral convolutions of the serpent in motion, doubtless gave rise to the adoption of the serpent as a symbol of sex-worship. the retention and transmutation of the sex-force is typified by the serpent forming a circle. the circle represents the attainment of godhood--victory over death through _regeneration_. it has been said that the most primal instinct is that of hunger, but without sex there would not be even the urge toward physical sustenance. sex is therefore both the urge and the answer to all instincts. there is a very general idea that sex is a physical function only. it is almost universally taught that when the life of the body ceases, sex-life ceases with it. even among metaphysicians, who believe in the continuity of life after death, the absurd doctrine is taught that sex has no place or part in spiritual life, that "there is no marriage nor giving in marriage" after death. this idea has been a powerful deterrent in keeping the race from seeking the higher areas of spiritual consciousness. lack of mere physical vitality has erroneously been estimated as evidence of spirituality. chastity has unfortunately been counterfeited by mere physical restraint, resulting in a type of human being whom the healthy, normal person instinctively refuses to emulate, deferring as long as possible the attainment of that which has been presented to the mind as "spirituality." let it be understood at the outset of this presentation of the problem of sex that we state emphatically, that sex is an eternal verity. its spiritual function is not _less_ but infinitely _more_ than that which we glimpse on the physical plane of life-expression. far from outgrowing what we know as human love, we add thereunto a million fold, refining, purifying and _intensifying_ the sex instinct until it bears a relationship to the average instance of sex-expression, analogous to that which the single-celled organism bears to intellectual man. if we will keep in mind the fact that life in all its degrees of manifestation is like the ascending notes of the musical scale, we will be able to get a more comprehensive idea of the spiritual function of the sex-urge. we will realize that we can not mark a too distinctive separation between the various phases of life-manifestation. we imagine that the physical life is widely at variance with the mental, the psychical, or the spiritual, when as a matter of fact each blends into the other, when we rightly understand their place and purpose, as harmoniously as the notes of the musical scale blend into the grand compositions of the masters. "as above so below, and as below so above," is a truism which we may safely take as our first maxim. whatever we note as a fundamental principle of this external life which we cognize with our five senses (senses which merge so into the psychical that we know not always where the line demarks) has a permanent place in the cosmos. therefore we must conclude that a fact so universal as that of sex, and sex-attraction, must be grounded in something more stable, more permanent and enduring than the mere creation of physical forms. protoplasm, the only living substance, is found everywhere in the visible world and its universality is symbolical of the invisible worlds as well. transparent, colorless, it contains within itself the mystery of reproduction. it forms the basis of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. it is seen in bone and muscle and fibrous tissue, and protoplasm may be said to contain within its cells the principles of both sexes. it is not sexless, but bi-sexual; not neuter but masculine-feminine. every form of life has sex, and in some rare instances both sexes are present in one form. this does not mean that there is another phase of sex unclassified, but rather it proves the union in one _whole entity_ of the two distinct principles, and by this fact of the "twain made one" we may know that sex is the very crux of the cosmic law; that not only does it survive the mere physical expression of the law, but that the object of the sex-function is the spiritual union of the two principles, a male and a female entity, forming one complete and perfect being--the true representative of the bi-une being whom we know as god. absolute and perfect union is possible only at the center, the crux, of being. this truth is represented by the algebraical x, the symbol of spiritual sex-union. therefore sex relationships which do not have for their crux spiritual as well as temperamental affinity, are not final, or eternal, however beautiful they may be; and there are many sex-relationships which are pure and sacred even though they do not fulfil this highest of all relationships, that of spiritual counterparts. let us consider for a moment the universality of sex as we see it expressed in all the variety of forms and throughout all the species, and in so doing we may trace the ever upward trend of the law of sex-attraction, and discover, if we have the eyes to see, the evident plan and purpose of the cosmic law as it tends toward completement and perfection in the type of the man-god whom the world has long looked for and who we believe is here. if we look at the expression of sex from the viewpoint of the physical only, instead of basing our observations from the interior, the spiritual, outward to the physical, we might conclude that the function of sex was designed for no other purpose than that of procreation, since care of the young increases with the upward trend of life-manifestation. beginning at the lower forms of life, such for example as the fish, we find as a general thing an indifference to the fate of the eggs deposited by the female, which is in keeping with the prolific and almost unconscious generation of these tiny evidences of the law of sex. a fish laying more than a million eggs in a season is naturally rather careless about what becomes of them. apparently no higher sentiment actuates this form of life than an unconscious and merely instinctive urge to perpetuate the species--the lowest expression of love--and yet the germ of love, the creator and preserver is there, and a well-defined law of attraction and repulsion is evident from the fact that as an almost general thing the male will not fertilize eggs other than those of his own species. but even in these low forms, we see the evidence of that higher expression of love which presages the god-like quality of self-sacrifice. some species of fish, notably the stickle-back and the bass, make nests and mother their young. in those forms of life which are supposed to be insensate, we find the universal law of sex-attraction and repulsion. the pollen from an oak tree, for example, may be blown about by the wind and may light upon a plant which is far removed in species from its own; but if such be the case, no fertilization takes place. the fundamental law of love is to attract to itself _its own_; that which belongs to it by right of cosmic law and order and justice. all the inharmony of our social life comes from the attempt to appropriate and _possess_ that which, in the final analysis, in the absolute, is not ours. when the majority of mankind shall have mastered this lesson, the human race will enter upon its true spiritual life. the psychic mind with which man alone of all earth's creatures is supposed to be endowed will have conquered the instinctive mind, and the higher expression of love which would protect and preserve, and _leave free_, will have gained supremacy over selfishness and the desire for possession. in bird-life we find this higher type of love almost universal. parental love, that exquisite and refined flower from the seed of sex-attraction, characterizes the bird and we may readily agree that paradise would be incomplete without birds and flowers as well as babies. considering the birds as an infinitely finer type of sex-expression than that offered by any other of the forms of life below man, we note with satisfaction the all-important point, namely, that the sex-urge is more diffused and lasting, and of a finer quality than that of the mammals. the bird woos its mate with the beauty of its plumage and the harmonious notes of its love-call. its desire finds so many esthetic ways of expressing itself; in tender pleadings; in cooing promises; in continuous evidences of care and protection. nor does its intense love, vital as it is, exhaust itself in concentrated expression, but it softens and ripens into something that so closely resembles our ideals of spiritual love, that we are not surprised to find the emblem of the dove employed throughout the history of the world, as the spiritual symbol of pure and holy love. well, indeed, may human beings learn from the birds the lesson of the higher type of sex-mating, which finds fruition in their mutual love for and care of their progeny. nor does the love-life of birds cease with sex-expression. it permeates all their intercourse. the trait which distinguishes the spiritual man from the animal man is analogous to that of the birds; namely, that of finding a deep and lasting joy in the presence of the loved one; in sympathizing with each other's ideals; listening with devoted attention to each other's words; contacting, as it were, each other's _inner nature_, rather than obeying the merely animal urge of procreation. and above all, in the common aim of altruistic thoughtfulness for the little lives which their love has brought forth. thus nature serves the cosmic law, which aims to raise the sex-instinct from the incomplete and unsatisfying plane of physical contact, to that of spiritual union--a wide gulf seemingly; but who would not strive to bridge it, did he but realize what spiritual union with the beloved one means? chapter ii sex worship and sex degradation every form of religious worship, from pre-historic time down to and inclusive of the present century, and among all races, savage and civilized, has been founded upon sex--the inevitable, the inviolable, the unescapable, and the unfathomable mystery of creation. nor should this fact be distasteful to the most refined. an intelligent review of the many evidences that prove this truth will not shock the sensibilities of the most devout worshipper of an unknown and unseen god. what can be more beautiful and more holy, more worthy of our highest reverence and adoration, than the mystery of birth, whether that birth be the growth of a flower from a tiny seed planted in the womb of mother earth, or the birth of a tiny human life from the seed love sows in the womb of the human mother? the only shocking thing about the matter is that there are persons who can be "shocked" at contemplation of this wonderful and beautiful mystery. it is shocking and deplorable that so many are still so far away from spiritual consciousness, that the beauty and the purity of the miracle of sex is unrecognized by them. with all due respect to the highest types of religious creeds which survive today, we are bound to concede that the very first form of worship which prevailed upon this earth was the purest as it was the simplest. truth is simple. deception introduces us into a maze of complexities. nature worship prevailed we know not how many centuries previous to the dawn of historic records. all allegorical literature makes constant allusion to "the golden age," evidently referring to a time before that which has come down to us in sacred literature, as "the fall of man." the first conception of a supreme power, something higher and more perfect than man himself, originated in the mystery of sex; not only in the sex-function as exercised by man, but also in the evidences of sex seen in plants and animals. it became evident to the earliest races that the human being was after all only a progenitor. somewhere there must be a first cause. the vital spark which gave to the seed its power to bring forth was seen to be beyond and above the control of physical man, and the natural and inevitable inference was drawn that there was some power greater than that of human beings--a power manifesting itself in the act of procreation. at this early stage in man's efforts to know god, the female principle was deified, because out of the womb of the woman issued the little life. thus the symbol of the "virgin with the child" became the symbol of worship; the word "virgin" then having a somewhat different meaning from that which we give it today, although we may trace the analogy in our use of the term "virgin soil," signifying fecundity. the virgin and child then, popularly supposed by those whose prejudices prevail over their desire for truth, to have originated with the birth of jesus of nazareth, antedates history, as an object of worship. let us here again emphasize the fact that the very persistence of this symbol as a pronounced part of our twentieth century traditions, and reverence, offers proof of the fact that whatever is true is also enduring. truth is eternal and defies extinction. love, although defiled and scorned, will lift mankind out of hell. the symbol of the mother with the child the very earliest of all symbolic worship is also the truest and most consistent with the ideals of spiritualized man when we realize its higher significance. at first, for the obvious reason that woman was the recipient and the nurse of the seed, woman was regarded as a higher type than man; she alone was supposed to possess the creative energy. this was ultimately reversed and man was thought to be the sole custodian of the reproductive power. thus the age-long warfare between the sexes began--a warfare which, if it had any foundation in reality, must have resulted long since in race-extinction. but despite this degrading warfare men and women have continued to attract each other in varying degrees of love, until now the future offers a golden promise of _union_. as long as primitive man kept to nature worship, deifying earth as the mother who brought forth the grains and fruits for her childrens' sustenance, religious practices were devoid of sacrifice and strife. the advent of springtime when the earth awakened from her long sleep and the period of gestation began when the seeds were planted, or when from nature's own laws they were reproduced without the aid of man, was the occasion of thanksgiving and rejoicing with general merry-making and general good-will. again, in harvest time there was feasting and rejoicing and music and dancing; and we have no reason to believe that this very natural method of showing their gratitude and their happiness was accompanied by any suggestion of sacrifice or propitiation. there is the best of evidence to support the claim that all the early deities were female and in all mythology the earth is adored as the "divine mother." the earliest venus, worshipped as the goddess of universal womanhood, was represented with a beard signifying her androgynous character. venus worshipped as "the soul of the world" was said to be the "parent of all things, the primary progeny of time, the most exalted of all the deities." neith, minerva, athena, ceres, cybele, all worshipped as the first of all the deities, were represented as female, and to this day we refer to the qualities of wisdom, light, truth, and virtue as feminine. even the sun is said to have been at one time worshipped as feminine, as were all deities; but later, when it was shown that the sun apparently fertilized the fecund earth, the gender was changed, and in succeeding ages, when the male principle had become dominant as a deific symbol, the earth was said to be but the nurse which cradled and cared for the generic power resident in the male. thus woman from her lofty height of the one and only deity gradually sank to the level of the nurse maid, permitted to care for man's offspring. while the female principle of sex was worshipped as the "giver of life," the heads of families were female and descent was traced from the mother only. the male parent was scarcely more than an intruder and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law is to be both feared and dreaded, if not propitiated. when we contemplate the persistence of those traits of human nature that have prevailed among all races and throughout all ages, we are easily persuaded that time is a delusion, and that eternity is now. as it was yesterday it is today and will be tomorrow in all that is really fundamental. from the refined simplicity of nature worship there gradually evolved a phase of worship, which in the beginning had for its basic principle an exalted ideal of the purpose and the powers of the female sex-function; but this ideal sunk to the level of debauchery and sex-degradation, in which the symbol of the female sex-organ of generation was worshipped, literally, although not reverently; and yet from the fact that it is only upon the temples and in the groves dedicated to worship that are found the carvings of the generative organs of either and sometimes of both sexes, it is evident that the most exalted motives first actuated the worshippers. the sex organs, representing the mystery of creative life, or the deity, would naturally be held in reverence by nature-children, and it must be conceded that this attitude of mind toward the wonderful miracle of creative energy is worthy of our emulation. as we look back over the pages of history, we note the tendency of human nature to fall far short of ideals; we mistake the letter for the spirit; we get lost in the trap of the senses, and we miss the higher and more exalted planes of our ideals. from yoni worship (worship of the female organ of generation), with all the privileges and perquisites which such honor bestowed upon woman, there came the inevitable revolt, which comes in course of time, from all tyranny and special privilege, whether it be individual, national, racial, sexual, or supernatural. thus there was established a "new religion," and this time it was the male organ which was deified as the symbol of eternal life, of creative energy. in many instances both symbols were represented, but for the most part the same subtle struggle for supremacy, the remnants of which we note today among the different religious creeds and sects, waged, and waxed stronger, with time and opposition. which was the more worthy of deification--the yoni, or the phallus? woman, or man? the ionians, seeking religious freedom from the persecutions of the phallic worshippers in india persisted in their adherence to yoni worship, and from them dates the eleusirian mysteries, which were celebrated in athens down to a comparatively late date. the eleusirian festivals represented the survival of the purest ideals of nature worship, before the warfare between the yoni and the phallic worshippers had brought both ideals into degradation. there is a point in this festival, which the greeks called thesmophoria and which is derived from the more ancient festival of ceres (the goddess of life and law), which we are anxious to have noted here, because it marks a golden thread which runs throughout the entire fabric of the sex-problem. this point is the fact, that the rites and ceremonies of this festival were performed by "virgins distinguished for their purity of life." very rarely were men admitted to the inner secrets of the eleusirians. another important point is that this ceremony was performed in honor of the androgynous character of the goddess, as it was declared that the power to bring forth a child without the co-operation of the male belonged exclusively to the exalted or perfected woman, which is to say the goddess. another translation and interpretation of this ceremony claims that it was prophecied in these festivals, that a time would come in the history of the world when a woman would so conceive and bring forth a child and that when that time should come the question as to which sex was supreme would be forever settled and that purity and peace would reign upon earth. this part of the record may easily have been either an interpolation to sustain the claim of the miraculous birth of jesus, or it may have been simply the defiant fling of the vanquished to the victor, because phallic worship was in the ascendant. it is, however, recorded, that not an instance can be cited in which the honor of initiation into the eleusirian mysteries was conferred upon a bad man; nor of any man violating the secrets of the inner temples of the eleusirians. this gives rise to the hope that the ideal of this spiritually exalted sect, in the midst of almost universal degeneracy, was not so much that of female supremacy, as of purity; that their ideal included the pure and perfect union of male and female--the only ideal that will, or can, redeem the world to a life of peace and love. the festivals of carthage were said to be similar to those of eleusis. for a period of several days during the time set apart for the festivities, public feasts were prepared in honor of the deific nature of man, which, it was pointed out, was his prerogative only by virtue of inward purity and strict adherence to high ideals of truth and honor. crowning all the religious observances of the ancients, whether expressed in the legends of the sun-myths or of star and serpent worship, we find the universally recognized fact that only those qualities of mind and soul can be expected to endure, or reach immortal godhood, which are of an exalted character. which is to say what the present day orthodox creed says, that immortality belongs only to those who are pure in heart. from the eleusirian festivals is derived our custom of taking holy communion, the symbol of the lord's supper; albeit the substitution of the male principle in the christian ceremony attests the fact that the phallic symbol ultimately supplanted the yoni, as a deific symbol. phallic worship reached its height during hebrew and assyrian supremacy, and was perpetuated by greek and roman materialism. superstition is nothing more than truth degenerated by men from a spiritual to a material application. that which is held in awe and reverence by any race; that which is embodied in the traditions of every tribe on the globe; that which persists throughout all times will be found to have a fundamental basis of truth, no matter how obscured it may be by the ignorance with which it is so frequently associated. the sacredness of sex, as exemplifying the supreme creative energy, underlies all the traditional ideals of man, from the fetishes of the central african savage to the cathedral spires which rise above the din of our modern commercial civilization. the prejudiced and the superficial observer of so-called "heathen" rites and ceremonies records only the superstitions, and sees only the evidences of depravity and savagery. he overlooks the fact that the spirit of the idea conveyed may have been the highest ideal of an early race which has sunk, as have all races during certain periods of the world's evolution into the depths of a materialism, from which all races are today emerging. all mystic truths are expressed in symbolism. it has been said that these truths are "veiled;" this is true only because the observer has not yet learned to speak the language. the universal language is symbolism. in the early egyptian, the indian, and the hebrew religions, the fundamental idea was the two generating principles (or we might say the two aspects of the one principle) of generation. the two in spiritual _union_ represented the infinite--the deity. the hebrew word "elohim" is plural, and means male and female united, forming the one perfect and complete being. this union is the "holy of holies" of the ancient mystics and alchemists. we see its reflection and its persistence today in the catholic service of the mass, where the priest raises the eucharist as the "holy of holies" in which is generated the christ-man, and before whom all human devotees bow the head that they may not look upon the perfection and beauty of its pure radiance. neither is the priest supposed to touch the chalice with uncovered hands. he prepares himself by fasting and prayer before he mounts the altar upon which this "holy of holies" is hidden from view. the pattern of the eucharist with its golden circle and radiations is easily recognizable by any one who is familiar with the symbols of yoni worship. nor should this fact be distasteful to any one, although it is either concealed, or flatly denied by the church, since it is only through the elevation of the sex-function that the christ-man can be born into the physical realms. the reason that this truth is either concealed or denied by the church is due to the influence of greek and roman civilization, which subjugated woman to the control of man. this debasement of woman reached its culmination under roman rule and is unquestionably the psychic cause of the fall of the greek and roman empires. if we will but take home to ourselves the important lesson that neither sex is fundamentally, or even relatively, superior, but only different; that no race is permanently in advance of another, but that each little group and class of humans has its particular contribution to the sum of knowledge, we will have done much toward freeing the mind from the shackles of ignorance--that darkness which obscures our inner vision. let this truth penetrate the egotism of so-called civilized races. let it sink into the minds of the men and women of this century: we are of service to the world in proportion as we are different and not identical. in the direct ratio of our individuality is our contribution to the work of the cosmic law, which is seeking to lift the planet earth out of its undeveloped state into celestial light. the symbol of the eucharist, occupying as it does an important place in a religious system which is otherwise essentially masculine, is one of the many evidences of the persistence of truth. for approximately four thousand years, phallic worship has predominated over the earlier ideal, which was embodied in the "virgin of the spheres," the emblem of the female principle as eternal motherhood; and in the sacred character of androgynous plants and flowers, which were characterized as feminine, such, for example, as the lily, the lotus, and the fleur de lis. these flowers are still regarded as more or less sacred, and they are called feminine, although really androgynous. the lotus, long held sacred because of its androgynous character, has been regarded as typical of the one perfect one, because it is supposed that the lotus reproduces itself without the male pollen. but close examination of the flower will show that the little seed-vessel in the center of the flower is shaped like a pine cone, in which are tiny cells too small to let out the seeds as occurs in most plant and seed life; these tiny seeds having no outlet, shoot when ripe into new plants, the bulb of the plant being the matrix or womb of the new life. thus it is evident, that although the two sexes are not as pronounced in the lotus as in the lily, yet the bulb and the cone are both present in the lotus, making the plant bi-sexual, and not feminine alone. our modern easter festival, in which the lily is recognized as the representative par excellence of the renewal of abundant life and energy, the "sacred" flower, is a tribute to the feminine principle in the deity, as the lily like the lotus is called feminine, although in reality bi-sexual. the lily and the eucharist have survived the centuries in which the male principle has dominated, as the one true and only god--the giver of life, the energizing power of creation--and the lily and the eucharist are both representative of the female principle. historians mark the beginning of the worship of the _one true god_, defined philosophically as the "monistic" god-idea, from the building of the tower of babel, and we may here note in passing that in the earliest references to this tower, there is no allusion to anything suggestive of "confusion of tongues." the name unquestionably came from "babil" meaning "the gate of god." thus only is its meaning obvious, and consistent with the worship of the lingam and phallus which obtained at that time. it is also evident that the phallic worshippers borrowed the simile of "the gate of god" from the worshippers of the yoni, who based their claim to truth upon the indisputable fact, that out of the womb comes the life of plant, and animal, and man. the architecture of, and the inscriptions on, the tower of babel show conclusively that it was a monument to the victory of the phallic worshippers over the yoni, proving that the "one true and only god" was male. from that time also god has been alluded to as "he," although in the oriental countries, and particularly among the hindus, we find repeated allusions to the deity as "the divine mother," and all the higher qualities are spoken of as feminine. it is because of this fact also, that we note the spread of oriental religions and philosophies in this day of woman's uprising. the orientals retained the divinity of the female principle in theory, but not in fact. sex-worship is contemptuously alluded to in modern literature as "strange and erotic ideas," or words equally condemnatory. but this is an absurd stand, since nothing could be more natural than that the mystery of creative life should arouse our interest and our wonder; and it certainly ought to enlist our highest reverence. it becomes erotic only when men fail to worship in "spirit and in truth," and when the letter of the ideal survives, and the spirit is ignored. it becomes not only erotic but destructive when it involves a fight for supremacy between the male and the female. when the spirit of union shall prevail, which it must in a perfected world, no higher form of religious aspiration can be imagined than that in which the miracle of birth is reverenced and idealized. then, and not until then, will the family be what it should be, and love, the one and only true god, be worshipped. the trinity in unity has been a widespread and persistent part of all religions, from which fact we may logically infer that this ideal has a permanent place in the sum of human knowledge. truth is often obscured, but it can never be hidden from the eyes that are seeking the light. the rightful interpretation of those ancient and obscured truths, erroneously classified as "myths" and "superstitions," will reveal a universal truth, and will also show their relation to modern concepts. but while we note a vague recognition of the female element in all our modern religious systems, the general acceptance of the god-idea as monistic and the gender of this monistic god as masculine betrays the domination of phallicism over yoni worship and also over that of the two principles in conjunction--the bi-une deity. the tree is universally accepted as an emblem of life-energy. the upright shape of the tree; the sap which rises at certain periods from invisible sources; and the fact that the germinal power of the seeds of the fruits and trees is not destroyed by eating; all combined to make the tree symbolical of eternal life. the tree is either male or female, except in certain instances where it is, like the lotus, androgynous, such for example as the ash, which is the "sacred" tree of scandinavia. wherever a plant or a tree is found to be bi-sexual, it has been regarded as "sacred." the same idea is found throughout all myths, and all religious symbolism, namely: _the attainment of god-hood is reached when both sexes are united in one being._ the fuller meaning of this symbolical idea will be considered in a subsequent chapter; but for the present we are concerned with the history of sex-degradation from the pure ideal of nature worship to that of a monistic god whose gender is masculine. the pine tree, held sacred in many countries as a symbol of generation, and from which our own christmas-tree is descended, is distinctively a male emblem, and its perennial green typifies the hope of man that he too may manifest, in some form of life, the never-failing virility of the pine. the latin name for the pine is pinus. thus from nature worship to phallic worship was but a step, but that step led to others. the pine, from the fact of its erect form; its spiral convolutions; its sap; its fruit; its renewal of activity; its root and veins; became a universally accepted emblem of the life-energy in man and in animals, and the gradual substitution of the male principle alone, for the androgynous idea as a symbol of deity contributed to the idea of the inferiority of woman, until she finally became the slave and the plaything of man. the "virgin of the spheres," from her exalted mission as the eternal mother of the race, became at best but a secondary personality, and finally was refused any part in the symbol of the holy trinity. instead of father, mother and child, the holy trinity became "father, son and--holy ghost." the early romans must have been devoid of a sense of humor. but what of our modern christian creeds, and their idea of the holy trinity composed of three male beings? it is in christian science alone of all the modern creeds that the female principle is given a place co-equal with the male. christian science addresses the deity as "father-mother-god," and their reverence for the woman who established the creed, as well as the ionian type of architecture employed in their church edifices, are evidences of the re-establishment of the female principle in the god-idea. christian science is one of the most important instruments of the cosmic law in the present-day dethronement of the male principle as the only true god. so permeated with this male god-idea is every branch of our modern thought; so enwrapped with the glamour of worship, that we hardly notice the one-sidedness of the ideal. tradition is a powerful hypnotist. many members of the masonic fraternity fail utterly to understand the symbolical language of their mosques and the phallic and yoni emblems which constitute their decorations. notable among these emblems are the pomegranate; the lotus; the circle; the crescent; the swastika. the cone-shaped towers, that rise above the mosques, with their protruding heads, vein-tipped; the central symbol identical with the mound of venus; denote the preservation of the egyptian ideal, which venerated both sexes as co-equal. it is easy to realize why the jews were driven out of egypt when we remember that they refused to worship the egyptian ideal of god as bi-sexual, but persisted in rearing the phallic symbol alone, denying the female principle a place in the god-head. it is also significant that side by side with the present-day feminist movement we find the revival of egyptian fashions; egyptian architecture; egyptian philosophies and religions. even cubist art, which in itself could make no possible appeal to recognition on its artistic merits, has been received with much publicity, if not with acclaim. cubist art is a lineal descendant of egyptian art, and so closely resembles its far-off ancestry as to seem to have bridged the centuries and connected us as if by telephone with the days of ancient civilization. our drama and our popular songs have responded to the egyptian thought-wave. talismanic jewelry, so essentially egyptian, is in vogue, and on every sign board advertising breakfast foods, tobacco and what not (so essentially an american custom) we find the modernized use of egyptian symbols, notably the swastika. the swastika, the earliest form of the cross, found in every country and in every out-of-the-way corner of the globe, is fundamentally, originally and pre-eminently a bi-une sex symbol, and although volumes have in recent years been written on its history and meaning, the whole story may be summed up by examining its form and by realizing its antiquity and its universality. the two sex principles, joined in the center of the four arms or legs, of the cross, accomplish that which is said (and truthfully if taken on the physical plane only) to be impossible of accomplishment--they square the circle. a circle is emblematical of completeness. aum, the absolute, the omniscient, is always typified by a circle. to "square the circle" means esoterically to have reached godhood, and this can be accomplished only by the male and female _united_ in spirit. the swastika is essentially a bi-une sex symbol although it has been sometimes called male and sometimes female, according to its shape, which varies with the various meanings ascribed to it. primitive man was not prolific in language, and one symbol expressed many ideas according to its varied form and position. the original form of oath was to swear by the sacred power of the generative organs, and we may readily conclude that this power was conceded to be vested in the male only, from the fact that we still "testify" when under oath and although the bible has been substituted for the generative organs, as an outward expression of our recognition of the creative principle, we note that the bible is made up of "testaments," which stand for its "sacredness." evidently it was only after the advent of the male god that oaths and vows and pledges were necessary. previous to that time, a man's word was reliable. it was inevitable that an ideal of the supreme creative power of the universe so one-sided, and so lacking in the essential of union, must degenerate into mere licentiousness and animalism; and it is estimated that about six hundred years b.c. the level of debauchery and vileness reigned. so-called religious rites and ceremonies were nothing more than orgies of sex-degradation. the ideal of godhood as nothing higher than masculine virility and power evidenced by the number of his progeny, naturally reduced woman to the lowest depths of slavery, since she was nothing more than a receptacle for man's seed. of course one wife was insufficient and a man's claim to divinity was best expressed by profligacy--an ideal which is rife even today among those, whose consciousness is bounded by nothing higher than the conception of the animal nature of man. whence came this wonderful thing manifested as generative power? what did it feed upon? these were natural queries. in seeking the answer the idea originated that in the blood was to be found the secret of the generative fluid. this idea arose from the evidence that as old age conquered man's physical strength, his blood became weakened and the supply insufficient. this was accompanied by a loss of generative activity, and thus, they argued, the power that made man god-like (the creative energy) left him. this was indeed a calamity greater than we in this generation realize, although we know that old age with consequent cessation of physical vigor is the dread enemy of the undeveloped man. even our supposedly advanced thinkers have the absurd idea that sexual-energy dies with the physical body. the few who have risen to the place where they realize the truths made plain by soul-consciousness, know that old age is but physical; that it is the vacation time between the functions of physical activity and that of the soul-life. old age is the wise provision of the cosmic law which compels those who will not do so of their own volition and wisdom, to transmute the life-energy into higher channels. if the race knew enough to consciously transmute the creative sex-energy into an interior function, there would come to pass the time prophecied by st. paul when man shall consciously "lay down his body and take it up again." there are spiritually advanced men and women today who can consciously leave the physical body as they do the house in which they live, while they visit distant places, annihilating space. to these the body is no more than a garment. thus death is overcome and the knowledge attained that we are souls using a physical body; that death does not in itself confer upon any one either immortality or youth or love, but that these may be acquired by acts of virtue and unselfish service--not as payment or reward for unwilling work, but as the result of unfailing law, which gives what we demand. what we demand we naturally work for. if we serve love, we get the coin in which love pays as naturally as we get the checks signed by jones when we work for jones, and by smith when we work for smith. death merely discloses our interior nature. if we have failed to transmute the life-energy into a love that is deeper than mere animal instinct; if we have missed the beautiful and the pure and the lofty idealism of love, we will find ourselves as age-worn after death as before the change. but again we may note a wise provision of the cosmic law, for it is almost impossible for a human being to live through many years of life without having loved some person or some thing with at least a spark of unselfish love. fortunately almost every one is better interiorly than he appears to our limited vision. the most depraved of mortals has his moments of the higher vision. from this deduction of inquiring primitive man, namely that the blood was the source of procreative virility, it is easy to trace the logical result in the terrible practise of blood-sacrifice which reigned so long and which, carried from one nation to another, and engrafted into the god-idea, has come down to us in the story of the "sacrificial lamb," at length personified in jesus, the son of god, as a final act of propitiation. the blood-atonement idea is naturally repulsive to civilized beings, and were it not that nearly every one who adheres to the old form of orthodox christianity swallows theologic interpretation of the bible as he would swallow a dose of castor-oil, by closing his eyes and holding his nose, the teaching as thus interpreted would be stopped by police authority. and yet we may readily trace the gradual descent of the god-idea of the ancients until it reached the culmination in the idea of sacrifice of a son of god himself. in their blind but eager groping for some means of escape from death, even as we of this day and generation are groping, the early races observed that birth was accompanied by blood; that as age came on and the blood became thin, and in the case of the female ceased to flow at certain reproductive periods, the power of generation ceased. what more natural to primitive man than that he should conceive the idea of sending back to this unknown and invisible power behind the veil of the sky the blood, which he must need to supply his creative energies? and when the sacrifice of animals was not sufficient for this god, they concluded that it must be because he required the blood of man. and so at first the old and the sick and the deformed were sacrificed; but as it was seen that this did not answer the need, they began to sacrifice the young, and naturally the slaves were substituted for the aged, as affording more blood; and when this failed the idea came, that the sacrifice must be that of one who was innocent of the world, and so they selected a girl or a young man, who had been secluded and trained to the thought of sacrifice, and in whom the sex-function had been rigorously suppressed. and still the old grew bloodless and death claimed his toll, and so they conceived the idea of voluntary blood-sacrifice, and we read of repeated occasions in which fanatical ones offered themselves freely on the sacrificial altars as atonement for the sins of their people. at length this contagion of sacrifice consummated in the idea that the only son of god himself became a voluntary offering to pay the final debt of transgression and set men free from death, that they might have eternal life, which to them meant life in the physical body. it is not at all possible that jesus had any such idea of his mission. he was far too illumined for that, even judging from the meager accounts which we have of his life and message. but when the story of his mission on earth came to be told and retold the idea of blood-sacrifice as _payment_ for the privilege of physical virility, so implanted in the race-thought from centuries of such belief, could not die immediately, and thus it reaches us today adown the centuries and is re-told (though we trust not believed) in most of the christian churches in this civilized century. and yet there is an esoteric truth underlying this universal idea of sacrifice, and when we come to this in a subsequent chapter, we will better understand how and why it has persisted throughout the centuries. chapter iii present-day conditions: the cosmic cause from the study of ancient sex-worship to our twentieth century systems of religion; our scientific discoveries; our intellectual standards of philosophy and social ethics; and above all, perhaps, our marvelous commercial order, connecting, as it does, the entire globe, seems a far cry; but it is only another link in a chain and fits into the past as accurately and as inevitably as the morning follows the night. there is an erroneous idea current that public institutions, such as law-courts, religious creeds, educational systems, reform movements, et cetera, are causes of race-advancement. as a matter of fact they are not causes but results. they do not determine progress; they reflect it. causes start from the center and radiate outward. we may realize this more readily if we will remember that if we throw a pebble into a pool of water, it starts innumerable little waves which traveling outward, reach a point some distance from the central source, and if we were to see the outermost wavelet only, we might imagine that the disturbance begins and ends far from the place where the pebble was thrown. this illustration explains the difference between the materialistic and the metaphysical points of view. the former notes the result, and the latter the cause of existing conditions. the mystical viewpoint takes into account the fact that there is a cosmic law which acts like a tidal-wave. materialists call the action of this law "evolution," assuming that its impetus comes from our physical activities. it is, in fact, from the center or spiritual source of life that all power, all evolution, emanates. the spiritual is the intensity of power; the physical is the attenuated. the term, "spiritual realms" suggests to the average mind a vaporous space where nothing happens; yet it requires only a little intelligent reflection to establish the fact that, as paracelsus said long ago, "the mind is the workshop in which all visible life is formed." our mental operations are silently, invisibly, carried on, and yet we see the effect of these silent plans and ideas in our noisy methods of locomotion; our architecture; our commerce--in all the avenues of our active civilization. we wish to emphasize the point that every so-called advancement; every discovery; every improvement in moral ideals as well as in mechanics, and in those things that add to our physical comfort, comes from the center of life. the external but _reflects_ the action of the cosmic law which uncovers the vast areas of consciousness and frees the human soul from the hypnotisms, and the limitations of the animal-mind. animal force is still strong in the world to-day, but it is not as strong as it appears to be, because much of the seeming indifference and cold-heartedness of the people, taken en masse, is due to the hurried, feverish and insistent demands of our external life. underneath the surface, in the realm of the sub-conscious activities, there is developing the spirit of unity; of sympathy; and a consciousness of our innate relationship. this realization comes to the surface in times of great stress and peril. the whole trend of modern life symbolizes or reflects the _ideal_ of unity, albeit the tooth and claw and growl of the animal in man may be seen and felt and heard in the vain effort to postpone the inevitable dethronement of the animal force, which would dominate the weaker and appropriate for the personal self, the creation of brain and hand, much as the house-dog, satiated with over-feeding, buries the bone he cannot eat lest some hungry brother-dog shall get it. nevertheless, despite the animal greed that still shows in our modern life, there is plenty of evidence that we are on the upward spiral that leads to unity--the effect of love. the superficial observer, dominated by that instinct of fear which seems to be so ingrained in our animal nature that we are all slaves to it in some form or degree, sees in the present-day conditions a menace to what he believes to be the moral life of the race, and particularly as these conditions apply to the modern woman. he sees women coming out of the seclusion of their "rightful sphere" and meeting men on terms of equality. he sees what he terms "immodest dress;" defiance of traditional ideas of etiquette and conduct; he notes what appears to be a disregard for the faith of our fathers; and, above all, a distaste for that special function of woman--child-bearing. the superficial observer, both male and female, feels great alarm. but let us not be dismayed. present day conditions, particularly as they relate to the female principle of creation, but reflect the inevitable reaction from a one-sided course. the pendulum swings back again and ultimately we will strike a balance; from domination to unity; from struggle to harmony. even american commercial life admits the value of a vacation time. present day conditions, then, are not chaotic or lacking in a well-defined purpose, even though they are unsettled. anything that disturbs the seeming placidity of the surface always strikes alarm to the undeveloped mind. particularly in those phases of our modern life which directly affect women, or in which we may say, the female principle is especially concerned, we note a determined and united demand for freedom. woman's demand for political equality is but a shadowgraph as it were of the real demand which is the demand of the divine feminine throughout all manifested life, for recognition of equality, in the plan of creation. it is a symbol of the ideal of unity which finds expression in the commercial world in trusts and labor unions; in the "let us get together" plea of the various advocates of reform; of all those enterprises which are seen to most directly affect the entire human family. that there are women who are blind to this fundamental idea of their demand for political equality is true; and it is also true that there are perhaps as many men as there are women who recognize the need of woman's political and social equality, but this only proves the fact which we have already emphasized, namely that it is not women as personalities, but the female principle throughout the universe that is at the root of the modern feminist movement. the male principle is not confined to the form of man, neither is the female principle always expressed in the form of woman. many men exemplify more of the maternal instinct than do certain women; neither must it be assumed that this type of man is effeminate; or that the woman of amazonian physique is more masculine in thought and habit than is the little frou-frou specimen of womankind who looks appealingly into the eyes of her male escort, beseeching protection from the rude stares which she has premeditatedly invited. qualities are sexless and universal. it is only in their specific combinations that they adequately represent the masculine or the feminine gender. blessed are they who have learned the art of discrimination. broadly speaking, women are behaving in a manner which upsets all precedent and promises ultimate emancipation from restraint. but is it not possible that women no longer need restraint if they ever needed it? is it not possible that the world has grown up, and that both men and women may safely be allowed the freedom of self-government, with all possible mutual aid in the work of establishing an upright, free, and trustworthy science of right living? that which is always in the future is never ours and if we are ever going to be free and happy and well-conditioned there is no reason why we should not make it soon. woman's demand for political equality is sometimes used as an excuse to lessen her dignity and her place in society. people who do this are of the same type as those before whom sex cannot be discussed intelligently because they do not realize the sacredness of sex. they are a remnant of the ages which have passed and which have left their mark, in the idea of a half-sexed god, the "he," the spouseless father who brought forth the visible universe apparently without co-operation with the female principle. this type of person prates much about the dangers of race-suicide, meaning thereby the increasing tendency to childlessness and not as should be taken into account the death rate among children who are born of diseased and unfit parents and brought into existence without the necessary conditions of sanitation, food and care. our national eugenic societies are hampered by false ideas of what constitutes morality, being bound to uphold the tradition that the child that is born of married parents, no matter how diseased in body and deficient in mind, is better-born than is the offspring of unmarried parents, even though the latter may be a model of physical health and mental efficiency. eugenics will remain limited in scope until such time as the entire world adopts "in spirit and in truth" the recent action of the european governments, and recognizes the legitimacy of all children however born. and although the action of the european governments was born of nothing more humane than a war expediency in order that more soldiers might be bred, yet the effect of such a course will benefit the human race. it has at least set a precedent, and will in time be extended to all children born out of wedlock and will wipe out forever the cruel and unjust stigma that has attached to the child of unmarried parents. thus it will be seen that even war has its good results, and although it seems a terrible price to pay for even so badly a needed reform as this, humanity has always paid dearly for its willful blindness. it certainly should be evident to any sane mind that every child that is born into this world has a moral and a legal right to be here. whatever may be said for or against parents, it is wicked stupidity to brand an innocent child with the epithet "illegitimate." the lowest animal has a right to be born. many a beautiful and innocent child is denied that right. if it has taken one of the most bloody wars in history to establish the right of birth, even so the struggle will not have been in vain, because this right, once established in the hearts of all humanity, will forever do away with warfare. no doubt this assertion will sound far-fetched to many, but the future will see the vindication of this belief. birth is actually the most important function in life. if it is immoral to be born, no matter what the conditions of such birth, what possible chance have we to live morally? we cannot discriminate in dealing with the great fundamentals of life. this truism, applies to all cosmic action. nature's laws are inviolable. nature says that the child of the king and the child of the beggar shall be born in the self-same way. the child of the unmarried mother and the child of the married mother come into the world in accordance with the self-same law of reproduction. nature may not be always polite, but she is always truthful. as long as there is any question of the "legitimacy" of any birth, humanity as a whole cannot be otherwise than inferior, because humanity cannot rise higher than the ideal of the average. moreover we are so interdependent that the whole must be affected by the conditions of a part. birth is right, or it is wrong. it cannot be right under some circumstances and wrong under others. the primal laws do not take into account our ideas of respectability. the question then arises: "are we to consider it moral and legitimate for women to have children before they have been married?" the obvious answer to this question is, that the mother must be permitted to decide this for herself, since no one has a right to do it for her. our right of interference in so intimate a matter must begin only at the point where her conduct injures us. if an unmarried woman chooses to give birth to a child, neither you nor i, nor society is injured, not even if the child becomes a charge of the state, because the cost of maintaining a child is far less than that of maintaining insane asylums and penitentiaries--both of which result from our mistaken attitude toward the sex-relation. if we are permitted to answer the question of morality and legitimacy by generalities, we will say that any child that comes into the world _desired by the mother_ is born in accordance with the highest possible concept of the moral law. whenever society, church and governments shall unite to wipe out the stain upon mother and child because of failure to comply with our marriage laws, a better race of men and women will people the earth, because the race-thought will be one of welcome with all that word implies; whereas at the present time, under our undeveloped ideas of morality, doubt, suspicion, and condemnation prevail, with all that these words imply. when all mothers are honored all women will be willing to be mothers. as long as dishonor attaches to any instance of motherhood, it is inevitable that motherhood will be avoided, even to the point of child-murder. not that this practice is confined to the women who would be dishonored by becoming mothers. it obtains rather more perhaps among those women whose wealth and ease would seem to make motherhood desirable. judging from surface conditions only, one might not see the connection. but that is the trouble with our modern life. we do not look deeply enough to deal intelligently with causes. we are always seeking to check effects. the average human being is little more than a phonographic record of the dominant race-thought, and race-thought ideas are contagious. let us honor and provide for all mothers and all children and we will find that the birthrate will increase among the "rich and respectable," where now we note a determined desire to shirk the responsibilities of parenthood. we need not fear that the number of unmarried mothers will be alarming. the first aid to true morality is honesty. monogamy is the ideal relationship between men and women. but enforced relationships are neither ideal nor true. ideal conditions can be established only between free human beings. compulsion is death. selection and choice mean life and health. the man or the woman who is free, and particularly free from self-condemnation, is instinctively monogamous. life in all its phases tends upward toward conscious and specific selection. conscious selection must include love, and we may safely trust love. love is inseparable from truth and fidelity. without love, all the efforts of all the eugenic societies on earth will accomplish little, however well-meant their efforts. eugenists confine their work to the physical aspect of the subject and as a matter of expediency deal with the effects of marriage and race-propagation in their relation to disease and degeneracy, ignoring the esoteric phase of the subject. thus no real good can come of the eugenic movement per se. its contribution to progress consists in its value as an "announcer" of a higher _ideal_, rather than a higher _order_. the higher order can come only by getting back to primal laws. the fact should not be overlooked that the ancient greeks were competent eugenists. they effected wonderful results, too, in two important points of the well-balanced individual. they worked for beauty and intellect, both desirable adjuncts to a perfect race, but both also as cold as the marble statues which greece gave to the world. greek and roman civilization toppled and fell because it was a civilization without foundation; it was built from the outside; it was like an old ruined house encased in a thin wall of beautiful marble, and set upon a high hill. it deceives the eye from a distance, but freezes the blood and congeals the soul when intimately known. greek and roman civilization, based upon physical eugenics, was unbalanced and could not endure, because it was a civilization of force; of dominance rather than of unity. there was no ideal of sex-equality, and therefore love was regarded as the least important requisite in eugenic marriage. it should be obvious that without the element of love, as the basis of selection, human reproduction must take on the same status as stock-breeding, which may for a time give the finest physical specimens of animal life, but which, if persisted in, finally results in decadence. we have an example of the tendency to decadence from in-breeding of those types of humans which have the best advantages at least of education and refinement, whether or not those advantages are embraced. we refer to royalty. we need only mention the illustrious example of cleopatra to prove this. cleopatra was the offspring of a marriage between a brother and sister--a custom which prevailed among ancient rulers to insure none but royal blood. cleopatra we may well believe was both beautiful and intellectual, but it is also certain that she was abnormally lacking in conscience, in tenderness, in love. her passions were those of the animal, and not of the soul. in modern life, spain and austria both furnish discouraging data to exponents of "select" breeding. in fact it is thoroughly established that degeneracy is not the result of imperfect physical conditions only. the greatest villians are not infrequently both handsome and intellectual. bulwer lytton well illustrates this fact in his character of "margrave" in "a strange story." margrave was a perfect and beautiful physical specimen. he possessed rare intelligence, but he had no soul and was utterly incapable of the finer sensibilities, which we instinctively classify as spiritual attributes. returning to a consideration of what has been termed the "unusual behavior" of the feminine half of mankind, we find that the chief end and aim of many women centers upon the problem of how to avoid maternity, quite upsetting traditional ideas regarding woman's rightful sphere, which began and ended in rearing a large family. women in all walks of life, rich and poor, wise and frivolous, selfish and unselfish--are refusing to bear children. the superficial observer rails against this, because he sees only the effect. he sees women living in fashionable hotels, if they are rich enough to afford it; if they are poor they establish a cheap imitation of this phase of semi-communal life in what is paradoxically known as "light" housekeeping, usually represented by one small dark room where the nearest delicatessen serves as a convenience, the public laundry minimizes domestic labor, and the department store supplies ready made, the family clothing, from undergarments to top coats. under these conditions, whether of fashionable hotel suites or dark "light housekeeping," it is plain that children are not welcome. even those of the class found between these extremes are discouraged from rearing children, since city life tends more and more to apartments as a substitute for the home; and no well regulated apartment house is open to children. the average observer, as we say, notes these conditions, but fails to realize that there must be a cosmic cause for a condition so wide-spread. there must be "something back of it," as we say of many things which we note in our every day life. looked at from the surface only, these conditions seem deplorable and ultimately race-suicidal. but the cosmic law is always upward in tendency. we may safely trust it, if we will. this does not mean that the conscious motive which actuates the average woman, who is able physically and financially to bear children and yet will not, is a high and noble one. the law deals with the planet, not directly with the individual; it acts upon the developed and the undeveloped with equal impartiality, even as the rain falls upon the just and the unjust alike. spiritually conscious persons realize the necessity for a change in human ethics. the world is in need of a more exalted ideal; an ideal in which equality shall be more nearly represented and they give themselves consciously to the task of assisting in this regenerating work. the difference is not in the law itself, but in our comprehension of it. the curriculum of the school of life is unchanged. we graduate from it or we return for another term, according as we have mastered the studies. applying this truth to the conditions just stated, and we see that this rebellion on the part of woman against child birth has two aspects. one is from apparent selfishness and lack of the temperamental quality, which has erroneously been attributed to women as an exclusive possession, namely, the maternal instinct. the other aspect of woman's disinclination to maternity is due to a restless, vague but nevertheless determined desire on the part of the feminine principle, to wait until conditions are more equal. sometimes we find women, who are perfectly awake and consciously aware of the cause of their "brazen sterility," as a virile writer has caustically termed it; but more often the conscious mental attitude is lacking and they merely obey blindly the dominant race-mind. women know much more in the depths of their souls than they can put into words. a part of this knowledge is the fact that child-bearing is not a function limited to the physical, the mortal plane of life. every woman who is anywhere near balanced in the struggle for completeness knows intuitively, that even though she may never beget mortal children, there are innumerable opportunities for the exercise of her maternal functions, awaiting her just behind the veil, which seemingly separates us from invisible areas. moreover motherhood is qualitative. it is not synonymous with maternity. it is not made nor unmade by the birthrate. two important considerations present themselves to the world today: one is that woman--considered as the fecund receptive sex-principle--is refusing the sex relationship on the old basis, however "respectable" and well-intentioned that basis was. generally speaking, it is evident that the old basis of intercourse between the sexes has been, is being, and will continue to be, disrupted, denied, refused, as the approved and fixed plan and purpose of destiny. the other important observation is this: there is a cosmic cause for this. it is only those who are blinded by prejudice or by sense-conscious limitations who refuse to look below the surface for the cause of a condition so general as that of unhappy marriages; of innumerable divorces; of the refusal to bear children. what is the cause? why are women refusing to marry, or when they do marry refusing to live with their husbands? why do they shrink from child-birth? are they less courageous than their progenitors? or are women less capable of love--either love of children or love of the father who begets the children? it will be agreed that we are establishing a higher standard of love than ever before in history. we are beginning to realize for the first time in the history of many generations, what we owe to the future. formerly men built entirely for self, and for the immediate present. we can look back and trace the development of a race consciousness from the clan to the nation. in this century we see the barriers between races and nations and sects and societies, as also between the sexes, slowly dissolving. only a few years ago we could not imagine an oriental, occupying a political, or educational or religions platform with an occidental. now it is a common thing. we know the hostility which has existed between the jew and the gentile--now they exchange pulpits, and all sects and all nations unite in matters of world interest. women are elected to political and educational offices. no matter that these evidences of unity are as yet incomplete. they are _promises_ of the birth of a larger concept of love than that which prevailed when a man's highest idea of honor and of love was to protect his immediate family only; to care for his own legal wife and children even at the expense of and certainly with heartless indifference to the fate of any other women and children. to be sure, this protection has often been vouchsafed because of the self interest which is inseparable from the idea of possession and is not, per se, a grander or nobler impulse than that which actuated our hair-clothed antecedents, who found that their own lives were best conserved by respecting those nearest to them. but thus it is that love has been implanted in human hearts through no higher or more altruistic method than that of self-interest; but the nature of love is to expand; to grow; to _give_ of itself until unselfishness must come with the final aim of love, which is _unity_ and not possession. we of this era are unquestionably manifesting a larger and more inclusive ideal of love, and since the female principle conserves the higher aspects of love, we are bound to concede that a higher ideal of love is possible to the woman of today than ever before. we must take into consideration the average of the sex, at the same time not forgetting that in the highest type of individual, the qualities of both sexes are balanced, uniting the spiritual, self-sacrificing and unselfish love-element of the female principle, with the wider scope, the inclusive element of the male. let us remember that we are dealing with principles and not merely with individuals. admitting that it is not because of lack of love, either maternal or conjugal, that women are shirking marriage and maternity, we may then ask: "what is the cause?" the answer may be found in the conclusion that women are done with mere instinctive procreation. they demand conditions consistent with the birth of a higher type of human-kind. they desire to "make right the way" for the coming of the perfect race--a race that will not snarl and bite and growl and tear and claw and choke and starve and freeze and otherwise kill each other over the possession of bones. ever and ever we have been promised the coming of the perfect man--the "man-god," as emerson said. this means the god in man consciously active, and awake. this god-nature of man's has been asleep, submerged under the domination of the animal nature which subdues and appropriates. a race of supermen can be born only of full and complete union. animals reproduce their kind, but man's perogative is to invite the gods to come to earth. we may consciously beget souls, not merely reproduce bodies. women are demanding a union in which there shall be something more than mere physical contact resulting in reproduction. this demand is working itself out more or less blindly according to the development of individual women, but the ideal of soul union is coming to be more and more recognized not only as a desirable type of union, but also as the initiative of the promised time when the kingdom of god should come on earth as it is in the heavens. all races have uttered this prayer, apparently with a firm belief in its efficacy. if they have not faith in its appeal, it were surely vain and foolish to voice it but we are assured that "god always keeps his promises," which is simply one way of saying that the law of the cosmos is reliable. "one calls it evolution and another calls it god," but both must agree that whether god or evolution be the name, love is the result. there can be no higher or more spiritual phase of life than that in which love is an ever-present reality. neither can we with any degree of logic assume that a function so universal, so all-pervading, and also so inspiring, as that of sex, has its beginning and its termination on the physical plane--a manifestation of life which even physicists are bound to concede is an infinitesimal part of cosmic activities. we need not worry therefore lest the race shall die, because of a decreasing birthrate as we see it on the physical plane. there are many other places and planes of consciousness. the stars and the planets are peopled. the cosmos is very much alive, because sex is the axis (x-is) upon which it rotates in perfect harmony. the fact which we here wish to emphasize is that the female principle is refusing maternity, and above all the _bondage_ of matrimony for the important reason that the time has come for the rearing of the man-god; for the establishment of the spiritual function of sex, superceding the mere instinctive animal urge of procreation and sense gratification. evolution is apparent in all other phases of our life-activities. why should it not manifest in this most important of all our systems of intercourse? the mere act of bringing forth children is not in itself either sacred or holy. far more often it has been a perfunctory duty or a punishment for indulgence in an act of which men and women have been more than half ashamed, even while seeking it with the instinctive urge of a cosmic law which cannot be escaped, although it may be co-operated with to advantage. nor does the act of giving birth to children confer true motherhood. maternity is not necessarily motherhood any more than matrimony is always marriage. there are many mothers who have never borne children. and there are many women with children who know not the first faint dawn of that wonderful, beautiful and intense (because spiritual) love which comes most often in the guise of motherhood, but which is always present when two souls who are truly mated contact each other's inner nature. if the women of today will insist upon the sacredness and the rightfulness of birth the women of tomorrow will not seek to evade motherhood. if the women of today will establish the sacredness of all life; if they will not rest until every child that is born into this world is recognized as legitimate and more, is welcomed; is given every advantage of education, of healthful body, of right moral training, rest assured that the women of the future will seek only to rival each other in the quality and the perfection of their motherhood. the efforts of many radicals to enact legislation regulating the birthrate, the struggle to disseminate knowledge of how to prevent conception, may be well meant as these things are consistent with prevailing conditions. but they are not the final answer to the problem. love is the only answer. where love is permitted to rule, children are not only welcome but ecstatically desired and provided for. motherhood is a hope and a joy to the normal woman. comparatively every woman would be normal under proper social and economic conditions. when women seek to evade maternity it is either because of lack of sufficient means to care for children, or it is because of lack of sufficient love. or it is because of fear of that modern mo-loch, public opinion. when a woman truly loves a man, she longs to be the mother of his children. a balanced world will make it possible for every woman to be free from the bondage of fear and poverty, and ill-health, leaving her free to be guided in the most vital and important function of her life, by the call of the highest love of which she is capable. love will establish motherhood as a divine privilege. certainly no other power on earth or in the realms above can do so. neither preachments nor platitudes, nor punishments, nor legislative blunderings. love is the only saviour of mankind. there is no other true god. some day the symbol of deity which now depicts man crucified will be superseded upon all altars by the image of a winged babe, and when this comes to pass, humanity will rise to that ideal. chapter iv the history of marriage and mating any attempt to discuss subjects pertaining to the sex-relation with intelligence and an optimistic outlook is handicapped by the fact that sex-problems are so intimately associated with religious prejudices, reasons for which we have already mentioned in the chapter devoted to sex-worship and sex-degradation. it is possible, therefore, that in seeking to define freedom and to make a plea for the freeing of women and men from the "bonds" of matrimony, we may be accused of seeking to demolish with one blow, so to speak, the social institution of marriage. such is not the intention of the present writer, for reasons which are based upon something far more noteworthy than a concession to the prejudices and "beliefs" of the average. luther burbank has said: "in pursuing any of the everlasting and fundamental laws of nature, all previous bias and inherited prejudices must be laid aside, if the student hopes to be taken into nature's confidence and be the sharer of her secrets." the average person, entrenched behind the bulwark of theological bias, saturated with a belief in the finality of all previous discovery and knowledge, teems with a fanatical desire to "defend his god"--as if the supreme power, whatever name we give it--were not capable of self-defense. it is due to this mistaken zeal on the part of the short-sighted ones, that human evolution is slow, albeit it is likewise inevitable. they are like those who, viewing the wrecking of a ruined habitation, condemned by the board of public safety, try to stop the process of the workers; they do not know that when the ground shall have been cleared, a finer, more sightly, and above all, more habitable building will be put up on the same ground; and anything from the old architecture that was worthy of preservation will be used in the new building. the dug-outs of our antedeluvian ancestors were designed to protect them from the destructive forces of storm and wave and also from their brothers, the enemy; and although our ideas of what constitutes a desirable dwelling-place have evolved to our modern ideal of a home, rather than a shelter, yet the fundamental concept remains. a study of history should be encouraging if only to prove that no radical changes in human ethics have ever been forced upon us. verily, the "gods wait upon men" and until there is something like a concerted demand for improved conditions, they stand just outside the door waiting to be bidden, "enter, friend." as with mental ideas, so it is with ethical ideals. until there is a more general demand for a higher concept of marriage, it is quite certain that the world will worry along with the one which now does duty for the majority, although it must be admitted that the poor thing gives evidence of much decrepitude and suffers from as many complaints as a hypochondriac. but, the fact that marriage in some form has prevailed as one of the fundamental necessities of human ethics, ever since the beginning of recorded history, and doubtless before that, is, we believe, very satisfactory evidence that marriage has a permanent place in social and individual evolution. what that place is, can be deduced from a study of the history of marriage. there are two different viewpoints from which we may discuss all phases of life, namely, the mystical and the ethical. the mystic sees all life from the inside, as it were; and the physicist studies the exterior, the appearance. to the mystic, the visible, or external, world is a succession of symbols, which he must interpret. to him, the everlasting and fundamental truths of the cosmos are told in a succession of moving pictures. in fact, the mystic has long anticipated the art which we now see manifested in our film-theatres and has realized that the scenes, which appear to the eye as actual events, are but the reflection of scenes enacted in a place far distant and long before the moment of projection upon the screen which meets his eye. science examines, dissects, and classifies these symbols according to their relation to other symbols which the mind has previously noted and classified. the same conclusion awaits both science and mysticism. humanity is ever seeking the reality--the noumenon, which we intuitively postulate as behind the phenomena of nature. the institution of marriage, coming down to us through all the ages, side by side with the mystery of sex, and incorporated with the sex-mystery into every form and system of religious rites and ceremonials among all peoples, would seem to have a place in human ethics, as substantial and as permanent as the germ of life itself. indeed, the institution of marriage, in its first stages of evolution, obtains in the animal kingdom, where selection in a great variety of forms is common. and it must be confessed that here we find the same tendency to change and variation, both in regard to the individual and the family species, as we have in the human family. polyandry, polygamy, and monogamy, have been general among some animals while among others only one form of mating has been the rule. strange to say, sex promiscuity is not at all general among the animals, though polygamy is common. the adoption of polygamy is obviously due to one of two things, or possibly, to be more specific, to both. first, because the percentage of deaths among the males is greater than among the females; this applies to animal life, both wild and domestic. in wild life, because of frequent combats; in domestic life, because the females are kept for breeding while the males are slaughtered for food. the second reason is because the female is seldom as virile as the male, and to this is also added the debilitating effect of bearing and rearing the young, the necessity for which must have manifested itself very early among the various families, from motives of self-protection, if from nothing higher, since victory evidently favored the numerically strong. in bird-life, especially, where love is so vital a part of their life, and so beautifully expressed, monogamy is the rule, and in some species, like that of the robin, a certain aristocracy seems to exist, preventing intercourse with any other family. the robin will mate only with a robin, and not infrequently mates for life; which is to say that should one die, the other refuses to mate again. it is claimed that the bald-headed eagle never varies from monogamy. a mate once chosen, the union lasts until the death of either partner. it does not follow from this, however, that the bald-headed eagle is a creature of a superior moral conscience. it may be that he is guided in his selection of a conjugal mate by an intuitional power undeveloped by other types of life, or, which is far more probable, it may be that his sexual nature is easily satisfied and that he has no temperamental affinities or repulsions, in which event force of habit would be the strongest actuating power. this explanation is in keeping with the eagle character. the point is that marriage, or what constitutes marriage, exists among birds and animals, and that it antedates history as a social institution among men. another fact which we must concede, if we are just, is that marriage apparently knows no systematic and upward trend. there is, in fact, no determined evolution toward a definite and conclusive practice of monogamy, although the monogamic custom is recognized as the evolutionary type among the civilized races of today. nevertheless, it would be folly to imply that a strict monogamy obtains in the letter of the word, or that social exigencies might not reinstate polygamy as a legalized custom. passing over those forms of mating, which may be classed as sex-promiscuity, such, for example, as exist among the esquimaux, and also among the dyaks, of borneo, where a "contract" is made for a night by the simple expediency of the man and the woman exchanging head-gear, we come to one of the earliest and most general forms of marriage among primitive peoples, where the parents arranged a marriage between their children for reasons of personal profit. in these instances, neither the youth nor the girl was consulted and generally did not meet until they met to consummate the marriage. in fact, they seemed not to have any preferences. these marriages were easily broken, unless children resulted therefrom, when there seems to have developed a sense of obligation to the offspring to continue the family. marriage by capture grew out of the matriarchal system and came as the very natural revolt of the male from the female rule, in which he had no rights and no home with his spouse. since the gens of the family was the first consideration and this was maintained by the female heads of a clan, there was nothing left for the male to do, if he would be a factor in the community, but to steal his wife from her family, and establish a family life of his own. thus the female became the possession of the male, by his right of capture and defense. inspired by the thirst for further invasions, the male gradually acquired not only one, but many wives, which constituted his "possessions," from the fact that he had earned them by right of conquest, conquest being not only the savage but also the civilized idea of "earning." indeed, our modern marriages reveal a degree of savagery in this respect, which is not suspected by the casual observer. the almost general observance of what has come to be known in legal jurisprudence as "the unwritten law," which permits a man to go unpunished when he kills another man whom he believes to have been on terms of intimacy with his wife, is a tacit admission of a man's vested rights in his wife's person. in innumerable instances, which have been given world-wide publicity within very recent times, the man who has been guilty of homicide under these circumstances has been exalted to the plane of a martyr-hero, and one woman writer, whose hysterical effusions are given considerable space in the public print, defended a man who had taken advantage of this "unwritten law" to shoot his rival, in the following words: "you, mister, would shoot a man whom you found prowling through your house with the intention of stealing your silver; your jewelry; your property of whatever kind or value. how much more, then, should you guard the honor of your wife, from these pestilential marauders?" of course we question the right of human beings to kill each other in defense of mere property; but that is not the point here. the inference here is obvious that this woman, who represents at least the average degree of intelligence, placed her sex in the category of man's possessions, utterly ignoring the woman's right, or power of free-will. mention is here made of this incident to show how deeply rooted is the possessive idea of marriage, which had its origin in nothing more ideal than the animal instinct of the dog with the bone. nor would we give the impression that this one-sided idea of what constitutes a monogamous marriage is confined to the male. the same idea of possession as of a piece of property, representing so much investment of time and money, and service of one kind or another, actuates the female also although the rights of the woman in the male are not so generally defended and she seldom resorts to such violent methods of defense or of revenge for loss of her property. perhaps she has a keener sense of values. necessity has substituted "support" for "outraged honor," and modern woman avenges the loss of her possessions through the safer channels of the law-courts. the feeling of possession, so ingrained in human nature, and so much a part of our modern marriage relation, is not grounded upon a moral code, which has for its basic principle fidelity to one's partner. this is proven by the fact that men have for some time abrogated to themselves the right of promiscuity, the main clause of their defense being that their conduct does not deprive their wife and family of satisfactory maintenance. many a woman today, irreproachably respectable and church-going, will admit to herself if not to her neighbors, that she closes her eyes to her husband's laxity in sexual matters, "as long as he provides well for me." when we come, as we will later, to a consideration of what constitutes morality, we will see that, like all our evolving ideals, it is governed by immediate conditions, both individual and social. it is easy to see why polygamy has been practiced, as a necessary expedient, and why women have been held so cheaply, when we realize the centuries of devastating wars, both of conquest and of defense, which besmirch the path of evolution. thus the tendency to æsthetic selection, always more pronounced in the female than in the male, has been swallowed up in the false valuation put upon the male, because of his relative scarcity. in america, in the early sixties, fear of the epithet "old maid" drove many a woman to marriage with a man whom, personally, she did not like, but as he represented a more or less "rara avis" and as her claim to attractiveness rested upon her success in trapping this rare bird, she permitted herself to become a victim of conditions; and we may safely conclude that no higher motive actuated the average woman of the last century than that of submission to conditions, for the "virtues of fidelity and devotion to the home and fireside" which critics of present-day morals are fond of reminding us characterized our grandmothers. briefly, then, we may review the history of marriage and of mating, everywhere, and at all times, as variable, controlled by expediency; and always based on the egoistic idea of possession, expressed by the right of the parents to dispose of their children; the right by capture; the right by purchase; and the right by consent. one or all of these customs have been tried in various parts of the world and at various times, and seldom has the condition of woman approached even so enviable a place as that of the female animal, except in the comparatively short periods when women have been the gens of the family. these periods have become more and more infrequent, until the legal status of women has been, as it is now, no more than what the evolving consciousness of the male permitted to her. it is a question whether, under our pretended monogamy, which is, per se, a more ideal condition than polygamy, all women have been either better conditioned or more moral. the answer depends largely upon our idea of what constitutes morality. certainly, the condition of women in christian countries has been, and is now, far from ideal; which would, judging from surface appearances, indicate that monogamy, as it has been practiced in the past, served only as an ideal, and at best has been of first aid to the male, primarily because of a question of personal health and cleanliness; secondly, as a means of developing in him the latent qualities of altruism, manifested selfishly enough at first in protecting his possessions; among which he egotistically conceded _his children at least_ first place; although the wife was hardly more than a convenience and an incubator. of the conditions that have prevailed under the monogamous custom and among the so-called superior races, letourneau, in his _evolution of the family_, says: "the hebrews seem to have been alone, among the semites, in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. doubtless the subjection of the jewish woman was not extreme as it is in kabyle; it was, however, very great. her consent to marriage, it is true, was necessary when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold to her husband. we find hardly more than the portrait of a laborious servant, busy and grasping. we shall see that the wife, though she might gain much money, which seems to have been the ideal of the hebrew, according to the proverbs, was repudiable at will, with no other reason than the caprice of the master who had bought her. finally, and this is much more severe, she was always obliged to be able to prove, _cloths in hand_, that she was a virgin at the moment of her marriage, and this under pain of being stoned." the same state of affairs or worse existed in india and in persia, although in persia there seems to have been an attempt to enjoin the same fidelity upon the husband as upon the wife, according to the zend-avesta; the only severe restriction to marriage being that neither should marry an infidel. in india, where there has been for centuries an alleged monogamy (except among the privileged classes, where concubinage held sway), the ethical condition of the women has been, and still is, deplorable. in ancient greece and rome the position of the woman was most inferior. she was generally purchased, or given for service. her husband's word was law, and mothers were compelled to obey their male children as uncomplainingly as though they were slaves. the wife and mother was not permitted to attend festivities and neither was she allowed the selection of her friends, her husband deciding this choice for her. this, of course, applied to the respectable, or so-called virtuous woman, which constituted the average. then, as now, two classes of women were to some extent exempt from this rigid custom. one class was formed by those women whose wealth conferred upon them a degree of power, because the possessors of great wealth have always been a law unto themselves. the other class was formed by the women who practiced prostitution, and who, by reason of their mode of life, met men on terms of at least temporary social equality. thus it is evident that the path of the virtuous woman without the independence that accompanies the possession of her own money, was in ancient days much more thorny than that of the concubine or the prostitute; and it is because of this fact that parental love, the most powerful of all levers employed by the cosmic law to lift love out of degradation, instituted the custom of the "dowry," and although this, too, has at various times become a source of degradation, inspiring impoverished aristocrats to loveless marriages with so-called inferiors, yet it has after all been a factor in the evolution of women and the preservation of the races. it has served two purposes. it has made women, in theory at least, more independent; and it has resulted in an admixture of blood which has saved the aristocratic class from extinction through decadence. as might well be expected in those instances where women did enjoy a degree of liberty that was due to financial and social advantages, they took a mean delight in ruling it over their male relatives, and, as we may note in our own time, men who yielded to the seduction of wealth, and married women to whom they were forced to accord the freedom and the deference which wealth confers, complained bitterly of their lot; as witness the following complaint of a roman husband: "i have married a witch with a dowry; i took her to have her fields and houses, and that, o apollo, is the worst of evils." one dominant idea controlled the status of marriage in early greece and rome--an idea in full accord with the materialistic phase of their civilization; this was the idea of procreation; an idea that logically was inevitable, since continuous warfare resulted in a population in which women predominated, and we are told that in the interest of procreation both childlessness and celibacy were severely punished. thus the situation of women was that best described by the phrase "between the devil and the deep sea." regarding the "ideal of marital fidelity," plutarch is authority for the story that cato loaned his wife to his friend hortensius and took her back on the death of the latter, plus a rich inheritance from the transaction. however, should martha have yielded herself voluntarily to hortensius, from motives of affection, the chances are that she would have met death at the hands of her "justly outraged" spouse. in europe, similar conditions prevailed, and although monogamy was the rule, concubinage and prostitution in all its forms existed. the wife was subject to the husband in every wish and whim, and after him to the eldest son. this is true today in germany and among the saxons in a degree whose modifications do not accord with other advances in our social ethics. it is a mistake to claim that religious systems have had any direct influence in the emancipation of women during the nineteen hundred years of christian civilization among the white races. religious systems have only reflected the race-thought; they have not molded it. this is true, despite the fact that true religion, when esoterically understood, has always aimed at union, and union means equality along all lines, sex-equality; social equality; race equality. we must here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas! confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced by the professional man. the same silly idea prevails with regard to race-equality. it is judged by a similarity to our own in matters of dress; or choice of foods; by inconsequential differences, rather than by an estimate of what a given race may contribute to the variety of human knowledge; and yet it is evident that nature aims at variety; at a multiplicity of ideas and customs and creations. differentiation is the primal attempt. woman's claim to equality should be based upon the fact that first of all she is different from, rather than identical with, men. the woman who dons male attire and eschews all so-called "feminine frivolity" in her efforts to prove herself man's equal, is confessing that in her natural environment she does not consider herself his equal, and is masquerading as man, in the vain hope that she may deceive herself and others into thinking she is. an individual is important to society in proportion to his originality; in proportion as he contributes some new idea; some hitherto unfamiliar view. returning to the point of what constitutes true religion, namely, a consciousness of our unity with all life, we find that although religious ethics have included this ideal, it has not been emphasized in the ratio of its importance. the result is that where unity should have been established, segregation has been the rule, and it is without any desire to reflect discredit upon the ideal of the church that we point to the fact that woman's emancipation, and her co-operation in all departments of life, as a hope, if not a consummated reality, has but now made its initial bow to the world. that this initial bow comes side by side with, if not actually in the wake of, disruption of the old theologic dogmas; dissatisfaction with religious systems; and a determined disregard for what has been presented as religion; cannot be denied. the fact is that religious creeds never save anyone; never really elevate nations. at best they have been but a "consolation prize" or a narcotic. love of freedom is the great liberator. the influence of rationalism, as inaugurated by ingersoll in america and bradlaugh in england, was the opening wedge. christian science, mothered by a woman, incorporated the phrase "father-mother-god" into its literature, and unity has been the avowed ideal of all the variety of new cults and philosophies presented under so great a variety of names that we cannot here enumerate them. nevertheless, we are still many leagues short of realizing this ideal, despite the preachments in its favor. politically, the ideal of unity is presented, more or less imperfectly, of course, as socialism, and suffrage. commercially, still more imperfectly in the merchants' "let us get together on this," and in efforts at legislation that shall control corporation dividends and labor schedules, and regulate hours of work. in fact, all along the line we see the shadow cast by the rising sun of unity. we have thus briefly traced the history of marriage and of mating, in order that we may discuss with sane impartiality the questions: what does marriage symbolize? what is its function in the life of the social body; in the existence of the sphere itself; of the entire cosmos? has it any real place and purpose beyond that of procreation, or any more spiritual function than the perpetuation of the human species? chapter v the symbolism of marriage and of sex-union notwithstanding the patent fact that the institution of monogamous marriage has not resulted in an ideal condition, it is also plain that any other ideal of sex-union is impossible to a highly developed race. monogamy, despite its present unsatisfactory condition, is a promise of the highest ideal to which mortals can aspire; it is the imperfect image of that ideal state which human nature has always striven for. that we have striven for the most part blindly; that we have fallen far short of the ideal aimed at, should not deter us from realizing that the ideal is right. monogamy, as a type of the perfect marriage, symbolizes the meeting and the consequent union of a man and a woman who are perfect complementaries. in order to be a perfect and lasting union, they must be spiritual counterparts. without this counterpartal affinity as the base of union, no power on earth can force them to unite, although all the laws of men be employed to keep them tied to each other in the body. if two persons belong to each other by the inviolable law of spiritual counterpart, no multitudinous set of man-made laws can keep their souls apart, although these codes may temporarily separate them in the flesh. the bonds of true matrimony are "holy"--the word meaning whole; entire; complete; but these bonds are of an interior nature; they may be judged only from the interior nature of two persons; and any attempt to decide this all-important question from the standpoint of exterior judgment must fail. the perfect union of the one man and the one woman is the highest ideal of marriage of which we can conceive; but shall we for that reason insist that marriage as a social institution is always complete and holy? when two immature persons come together under the stimulus of no more complementary impulse than the blind force of chemical attraction and cohesion--an instinct, which we share in common with every form of life, from the lowest insect to man--shall they be compelled to abide by that act "as long as they both shall live" in the physical body? we would say, "heaven forbid!" only that the appeal is unnecessary. heaven does forbid, and that is why we see so many attempts to disrupt these immature relationships. "the striving of sexual elements through affinities, or passional attractions, after congenial marriage unions, is the cause of all the motions, growths, and activities in the physical and moral world," says a writer, and he adds: "the failure to attain the desired end, and the warfare between uncongenial and repulsive elements is the cause of all the broken equilibriums, discords, and collisions in both spheres. if the atomic marriage in nature were perfect, there would be no storms or droughts, or poisons or monstrosities, or disease. if the marriage between the individual will and understanding, between the interior and exterior life, were perfect, we should have regenerated men upon earth, worthy to be called sons of god. if the marriage between the sexes were perfect, we should have a social paradise." marriage, then, in the sense of the conjugal union of two persons of opposite sex, is the most important function of our lives; every other activity is subsidiary to it. commerce is carried on, only because of this union; all the laws of man are the outgrowth of marriage; all morality comes from the ideal marriage--the union of wisdom and love. to imagine that a function, so vitally important to our exterior life, should have no place in the phases of life which we know as "higher," is a manifest absurdity, and comes from those attenuated concepts of what constitutes spirituality, which theology has postulated; concepts which, entrenched behind the walls of "thus saith the lord," have temporarily defied modern progress. there is no wide gulf between the spiritual and the material worlds, although the material is but an imperfect reflection of the basic principle of life. marriage, then, is eternally going on, "nature is a system of nuptials," says a writer, and nature is only the language of spirit or divine life. how it came about that theology made the mistake of degrading sex-union and of limiting it to the ephemeral life of the body only, we shall come to later. for the present, a brief resume of the types of marriage ceremony, which have been universal, will convince us that nature has always sought to convey to the human mind this great secret of eternal and never-ceasing union of complementaries. take, for example, the symbol of the wedding-ring. this custom, varying only in unimportant details, consistent with the prevailing social custom of the times, has come down to us from prehistoric days. the golden circle, sometimes worn only by the bride, but frequently by both bride and groom, is emblematical of the completion of the circle of wisdom and the final attainment, in "the twain made one," of the finding by each of "the other half." the circle is always used to express the absolute; aum; the supreme power that is "without beginning and without end." according to the old jewish law, the wedding ring must be made of pure gold and must be earned and paid for by the bridegroom; he might not acquire it by credit or gift. there is in this custom something more than mere thrift; or the assurance of the bridegroom's ability to sustain the needs and comforts of his wife and prospective family. it symbolizes the truth that no one may hope to acquire this priceless blessing of perfect conjugal union, other than by his own efforts. immortality must be earned, and perfect union, counterpartal union--which means actually "twain made one," comes only by dint of strife and demand and proof of our fitness for the perfect life. another custom, which has been in almost universal vogue, is that of drinking wine, emblematical of the "wine of life," at the completion of a marriage ceremony. sometimes this has been the prerogative of the bride and groom only; and sometimes of the officiating priest; but more generally the entire company has shared in this custom. wine drinking thus symbolizes eternal youth and virility, which can be enjoyed only by those who have attained to the complete life--the divine or spiritual sex-union. this symbolism is obvious when we take into our consciousness the truth that only complementaries have the power to act and react, without change, or loss. equilibrium is maintained by a perfect balance of two forces; if one force be ever so small a fraction less than the other, perfect balance is lacking. another marriage custom in general use among the ancients was the donning of a crown on the wedding day. this custom formerly included the bridegroom as well as the bride, but later was confined to the bride alone, as was also the custom of wearing a veil. at early greek marriages crowns made of gold or silver were placed upon the heads of both bride and groom; tapers were lighted; and rings exchanged. we have a similar custom today in all fashionable church weddings. we have the lighted tapers, signifying the quenchless fires of love; and the circlet which symbolizes eternity. the crown symbolizes the truth that a truly spiritual union bestows the crown of immortality; the power of godhood in the kingdom of love; which supersedes all earthly kingdoms in splendor. this is a literal truth, although it cannot be understood in its full significance until we are _fit for the kingdom_. the veil which the bride lifts at the completion of the ceremony symbolizes the truth that when we shall have attained to the spiritual marriage, the veil that separates the interior from the exterior life, shall be lifted; it is so thin that the illusion, of which the wedding veil is made, rightly symbolizes this apparent separation of the physical life from the spiritual. when the veil is lifted, we shall know our completement in the bliss of perfect union; and when we have found that other half of our being, which is the underlying urge of our every thought and act, we shall find the veil lifted. the entire panorama of the universe becomes an open book. there is no "visible" and "invisible;" it is all one, with our own bi-une sex nature for the pivotal center. so simple and so obvious are all these symbols of the natural man that we are astounded, when we have found the key, that we did not sooner penetrate their meaning. "she will have a crown in heaven," we say of some self-sacrificing and loving soul, and the phrase suggests to most of us the power of earthly kings and queens with all their splendor of jewels and retainers; but there is an inner meaning which the splendor and the crowns of earth's kings and queens symbolizes. spiritual union with the perfect complement of our interior nature is in itself the crown of regal power, of which earthly rulers are symbolical. the spiritual body through this union becomes radiant; luminous; and shines with such splendor that it dazzles the eyes of the beholder. what constitutes the beauty and the value of gems--diamonds; rubies; sapphires; emeralds; topaz; pearls? it is the radiations of light which they throw off; it is their luminosity--their transparency. it is, indeed, true, that the power which we see exemplified in the rulers of the earth has a corresponding meaning in a spiritual sense; as, in fact, have all things which we cognize with our physical eyes. the hindus tell us that all things are either the "nita" or the "ita" message. either they tell us "this is the way to the heights;" or "this is not the way." the crown of orange blossoms which has supplanted the ancient crown of gold and silver and tinsel, worn with such unconsciousness of its esoteric message, symbolizes one of the most beautiful truths relating to the spiritual marriage--counterpartal union. even as this union confers a beautiful radiance upon the spiritual body, the body also becomes sweet-scented like a flower. weeds, we remember, have no scent or they may be obnoxious in their odor. weeds are unregenerate flowers. certain chemical combinations produce nauseous gases. the human body is a laboratory in which chemical changes are constantly going on. the changes produced by sex-functioning are greater than anything which the experimental chemist has ever discovered in nature. it is a fact well known to the pathologist that an unwilling wife, however faithful she may be, if forced into the sexual act, may present her husband with a well-defined case of genital disease; nor is this at all strange when we consider the now well-recognized fact that anger, fear, revenge, avarice, and all the destructive thought-forces produce poisons in the secretions of the body. in rosicrucian literature, we have the story of "the chymical marriage of christian rosy cross," which is, when read with the key to its esoteric meaning, a story of the chemistry of marriage between the sexes. indeed, the whole story of the secret doctrines of the rosicrucians, is the story of the sexes, and the "secret of secrets," which was so zealously guarded by the hermetics and the rosicrucians and other secret societies, is the secret of the spiritual union of the male and the female principles throughout nature and culminating in man and woman, conferring upon them immortal life through the perfect balance of sex. it has been said that women were not admitted to the brotherhood of the rosicrucians, but this is not true, as there is plenty of evidence to prove. owing to the enmity of the established church toward any exaltation of the sex-relation, and particularly toward the veneration of woman, it became necessary for those who sought to keep alive the fires of esoteric wisdom to surround themselves with the most rigid secrecy; in consequence of this, the story of the sexes, constituting the very heart and center of hermetic philosophy, has been told in allegory, unintelligible unless one has the inner sight or has been initiated into the secret code. in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the church had so far succeeded in undermining the work of the hermetics, that women were excluded from the brotherhood, and the apparent sole purpose of the secret order was the search for metallic transmutation. side by side with this convincing evidence that the esoteric meaning of the symbols has been perverted, we find their allegorical phraseology intermixed with frequent allusions to passages from the scripture and to the virgin mary, proving conclusively that the church, then in the zenith of its power, had confiscated the archives of the secret order, and, either through fear of the influence of their work, or possibly through lack of any adequate comprehension of their wisdom, had employed their symbolism to the further glory of the temporal power of the church. this subject will again be dealt with in a chapter devoted to "the hidden wisdom," and so we will leave it for the present. one other great spiritual truth relating to marriage is found in the intimate and constantly recurring association of the turtle-dove with the ceremony of marriage. the dove is, par excellence, an example of conjugal love. the turtle-dove, more than any other of the dove family, is noted for the fervor of its sexual desires; fidelity to its mate; and for the devotion and diffusion of its love nature. it is well known that if either of a pair of turtle-doves dies, the mate will grieve itself to death. "like a pair of turtle-doves" is said of a couple who are happily married, and the domestic life of the dove has made the dove a symbol of peace. doves have been held sacred in many parts of the world, and figure prominently in religious symbolic architecture and utensils, from ancient times down to the present day. the symbol of the doves flying over the ark of the covenant typifies the spiritual origin of birth, the ark being the primordial egg, from which issued all the forms of life. let us also remember that they issued _in pairs_. chapter vi continence; chastity and asceticism; their spiritual significance from the earliest forms of sex-worship, in which the creative function was doubtless given its rightful place, down through successive stages of sex-degeneracy, we come to the sex-perversions and the almost general licentiousness of ancient greece and rome, with whom the sex function became nothing more exalted than a method of procreation, in common with the animals; and a means of sense-gratification, on a par with gluttony. even among the intellectual greeks, the highest type of a civilization that, although epicurean and esthetic, was yet essentially materialistic, sexual intercourse had no more spiritual place than it occupies today in fine stock-breeding. between ancient roman licentiousness and our own modern attitude toward the sex-relation, there intervenes that terrible time in the history of human evolution, known as the dark ages, in which was evolved the unnatural view of the function of sex, exemplified rather erotically, in many instances, by asceticism and celibacy. although it sounds paradoxical, yet there is a celibacy that is distinctly erotic. in reading of some of the experiences in the lives of the saints, the normal, healthy person feels an aversion similar to that which he experiences in viewing the effects of physical disease; and yet we must note in this abnormal attitude of the church toward the sex-relation, the effect of nature's attempt at equilibrium; a revulsion from the effect of the centuries preceding. some of the contributing causes of this revulsion were: celibacy, except within the church, forbidden by the roman senate; the fact that women had no choice in marriage; the devastating wars which took the best of physical manhood; and the cheapness of women, every man of wealth having as many slave women as he could house and feed; the orgies where women, both bound and free, were openly debauched; all these evidences of the utter degradation to which the pure and beautiful function of sex had sunk, called for a revulsion; and it came in the idea of asceticism--an instance where the remedy was worse than the disease. the mental attitude that resulted in asceticism was not one in which the sex function was lifted from the mire of licentiousness in which it lay; rather it was abandoned altogether as something vile and unclean; and that too, unhappily, by those who should have known better. the roman church, in full accord with the type of roman mind which fostered it, still harbored the perverted idea that women were inferior. and it is from the roman church of today rather more than from any other of the phases of christian orthodoxy, that we note a militant opposition to woman suffrage, and all the other avenues of woman's claim to free expression. while retaining all the old roman's disrespect for woman, the church instituted and fostered celibacy, as a way out of the old profiligacy, but as though by a sort of spiritual irony, the church has retained, from its "pagan" ancestors, the sex-worshippers, the idol of the holy virgin. and despite the bombardments of criticism from without and the inculcation of superstitious ignorance from within, the pure-hearted children of the church have always gone to the "holy mother" for their comfort; and thus the eternal fires of truth have smouldered beneath the ashes of perverted mysticism throughout the dark ages that are gone and the scarcely lighter dawn that is here. those who have eyes to see, realize that the one worth-while thing which the old, nearly-blind church has been unwittingly doing all the time, has been to hold to this central truth of all life--religious, social, national, and domestic--the truth that it is only by exalting the maternal function of human life, that we can hope to reach the saviour of mankind. and, lest there be still some misconception of what we consider to be the true "saviour" of mankind, we will again state, even as the church itself states it, "the babe of bethlehem"--the pure love between one man and one woman; the "twain made one," which is the only saviour that ever was or ever will be--the pure christ-child that is born of conterpartal union. let those who would cling to the idea of an individual man, born in a city called "bethlehem" as the saviour of the world, remember that even so, the city derived its name from the word, "bethel," meaning a pure white stone, rounded at the top, in exact imitation of the omphalos of apollo, in the temple of delphi. and when the shock of his discovery has somewhat subsided, and his prejudices have been swallowed up in a desire for the whole truth, let him remember also that this central idea has been the foundation of all religious rites since time began; and instead of feeling that the whole fabric of christianity has been rent by the light of scientific discovery, he will see that it has merely been _revealed_, and the revelation will prove to him that truth is the most beautiful, the most spiritual and the most satisfying thing in life, because the truth is that perfect love is the only passport to immortal bliss. no one can withhold heaven from us, if we have this perfect love. thus the essentials of christianity are the essentials of every other religious system; and the essentials are: love is the one true and only god; and sex is the form in which this bi-une god appears; according to our individual and collective reverence for this bi-une god, will be our spiritual development. we do not reverence sex when we cheapen it by dissipation; or when we abandon it as unclean and unworthy and unholy; both attitudes are abnormal, and unbalanced. spiritual consciousness aims at equilibrium. the perfectly balanced person is equally developed on all planes; the perfectly balanced individual, in sufficient numbers, will produce a balanced and therefore a healthy social organization; and a balanced and healthy-minded race of beings will result in a balanced sphere; this fact is foreshadowed by the postulate which science is now considering, to wit: the earth's axis may be straightened, and, if so, a uniform temperature will prevail on this globe. returning to a consideration of the subjects which head this chapter, we find it necessary to clear the ground a little, in regard to a definition of words. the word continence should apply to the act of self-restraint in the matter of the emotions, desires, and passions, whether of the sex-passion or the passion of anger, avarice, or gluttony. the word has come to mean, in many cases, the total abstinence from the sex-relation, because of the general idea which has prevailed, that any indulgence of sex-love was a confession of weakness. in fact, our modern ideas regarding this subject are so chaotic and so manifestly paradoxical that they are absurd. on the one hand we have a tradition that motherhood is a beautiful and holy thing; on the other, we regard the sex-relation, per se, as an indecent thing, or at best as a weakness of the flesh. we have the obvious demonstration that creation is possible only because of the conjunction of the two sexes, and yet we are taught that sex-love is something which is permitted to us in this lower state of our being, and denied in heaven, and at the same time we are told that god creates everything, and god dwells in heaven, where there is no such "polluting sin" as sex-love. we certainly do need balance. the word chastity conveys to the mind (and this is not confined to the undeveloped person, but is general) the idea of a woman who is devoid of the sex-impulse. chastity, like the word virtue, suggests to our minds no relationship to the character, or inner nature of a person; it has come to be applied to the physical anatomy, and we are not surprised when we realize that the word is seldom used in connection with the male. it is strictly a female attribute--nay, we may almost say, "organ." if a woman, for any reason whatsoever, whether through lack of opportunity; through hereditary causes; or through repression, or--which occurs more frequently--as a commercial expediency, believing that her person will thus bring more in the matrimonial market--if, as we say, for any reason, however sordid, a woman escapes bodily sex-contact, she is called "chaste" and her "virtue" is extolled. this is, of course, not a far cry from the ancient days when a bridegroom had the right to turn the bride away from his door, should the evidence of her virginity be lacking; whereupon the poor creature was stoned to death, a sacrifice on the altar of egoism, the arch-enemy of both sexes. and although it seems a long, long time from that day to this, we may look back over the ages, and see the thread unbroken, connecting the past with the present; uniting the women of those days with their sisters of today; and we find the answer to this far-off outrage upon the spiritual function of sex, in the horrors of our white slavery, among which horrors, the greatest is not alone the barter and sale of that which should be recognized as sacred, but the perversions, the deceptions and the subterfuges which it entails. one instance, related by a trained nurse who had been in attendance upon a girl sixteen years of age, will suffice to illustrate this. the girl, encouraged by her mother, related with amusement and satisfaction, how the child had "sold her virtue" on seven different occasions, procuring for the same, proven by the requisite evidences, sums which were considered quite exorbitant in view of the fact that the market was always over-crowded with similar sales. thus, the law of supply and demand is ever preserved; and human beings keep right on selling their royal birthright for a mess of pottage; inviting disease, decay and death when they might have glorious, blissful life. mankind has failed to look for virtue in the interior nature; failed to look for beauty of soul, being ever ready to pay the highest price for the counterfeit, and the result is that a practice of mutual deception has been the rule. some years ago, thomas hardy wrote a story about a girl in the wretched environment of middle-class england. he called it the story of a "pure woman," and his appraisal of the heroine as a pure woman brought out a storm of reproach and horrified criticism, particularly from the clergy, because it chanced that this poor girl had given birth to a child out of wedlock; and notwithstanding that the author made it quite clear that she had been the victim of circumstances and coercion, the act itself condemned her to unchastity in the eyes of the clerical critics. when we contemplate the attitude which religious systems have ever held toward women, we are amazed that the church has been upheld almost wholly by the female sex. the fact is accountable on one hypothesis only: that of the spiritual insight, which recognized in the story of the holy mother and the child the _one primordial, and indestructible key to salvation_--the birth of the god-man through the recognition of the purity and joy of the perfect sex-union. but, notwithstanding the medieval trend of religious mysticism (there is a religious mysticism and a scientific mysticism) which seemed to regard all human love as a weakness, when not actually sinful as in sex-love, it is evident that sexual love, in its emotional, or psychic aspect, was at the root of the "ecstacies" which are so ardently described in ecclesiastical history as "evidences of saintliness." if, instead of indignantly denying this fact, as though it were profane criticism of the saints, defenders of the theological view of mysticism would calmly consider and accept the evidence, they would be able to infuse into the creeds, the vitality which they so lack. the lives of the saints, in so far as they relate to trance and ecstatic visions, must, sooner or later meet one of two fates. either they will be analyzed and presented, with the reverence that is due the subject, as proofs of the spiritual function of sex-love; or they must be relegated to the position to which the church assigns all sexual desire--that of eroticism and innate and ineradicable depravity. viewed in the light in which theology has held the sex relation, the paroxysms which are ascribed to st. catherine of sienna, and to the holy mechthild and other saints, have in them something decidedly obnoxious; while, if we take the premise that these saints, by virtue of prayer, aspiration, and intended sacrifice of the mortal self to an ideal, transmuted their sex-nature from the physical to the spiritual, then indeed, we have an approach to a mighty truth, which is at once both explanatory and satisfying. st. catherine is referred to as "the mystic bride;" and jesus christ, to whom she was "espoused" (using the terminology which the church prefers, as suggesting a less physical union than the word "married") was the "bride-groom;" more than that; she declared that she was married with a ring, set with precious stones; just like any other betrothal or wedding ring. always in these recitals we find the phraseology which lovers employ when exalting the loved one above the world. the term "my beloved" is singularly universal, and seems to spring involuntarily to the lips of the lover when his love is of the quality that reverences; adores; and exalts its object. and it is equally foreign to the lips of the dilettante lover. to their credit be it said, the love which the saints developed within themselves, by dint of their attempts to exalt celibacy in an age of sexual profligacy, is none the less human love; it is human love spiritualized, exalted, and transmuted from the plane of the animal to that of the soul. this transmutation is in fact responsible for the intensity, the absorbing power of the love which thrilled them into such an ecstacy that in most instances they became lost in the bliss of the emotions excited by the inward flow of their sex nature, and were totally unfitted to take part in the outer, or so-called practical life. such, for example, was saint teresa, of whom william james, in his "varieties of religious experience," says: "her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation--if one may say so without irreverence--between the devotee and the deity." although this estimate of st. theresa's saintliness will doubtless be shocking to the people who think they are pious, we take an optimistic view of it, and suggest that the saint's idea of religion is far more satisfying than that usually presented as saintliness. st. theresa, like most of the female saints, became "the bride of christ"--the _man_ jesus, the christ, let it be remembered. st. gertrude, a benedictine nun of the thirteenth century, gave herself up so wholly to this inward contemplation; to fasting, prayer, and withdrawal from the outer to the inner life, that she lived as the "bride of god," in such daily contact with him as would fitly describe any love-mated honeymoon of today. according to her testimony "god" indulged in such language and caresses, and intimacies, kisses and compliments as would satisfy any woman married to her ideal lover. in the case of st. louis of gonzaga, it is significant that he selected the virgin mary as the object of his adoration and "consecrated to her, his own virginity;" and we read how "burning with love, he made his vow of perpetual chastity." in consequence of this vow, he was never tempted as was st. anthony, by visions of beautiful women. here again we have the love of the male for the female. if it were not so, st. louis may well have chosen jesus, or joseph, or john, as the object of his devotional contemplation; and st. catherine, and theresa, and mechthild might have paid their homage to the virgin mary. "jeanne of the cross" held constant converse with her guardian angel, who by the way was a beautiful youth, "more brilliant than the sun and with a crown of glory on his head." st. frances was inseparable from her angel, whom she loved with extravagant and blissful devotion, and whom she also described as "a young man of such radiant beauty and purity that he melted her soul." the truth is that, in seeking to escape from the "sin" of human love, as seen in the world, in the union of the sexes, they touched the very main-spring of their sex-nature, intensifying to a degree unknown to the merely sense-conscious person, the ecstatic bliss of spiritual sex-union. naturally the question will arise as to whether these saints really came into contact with their spiritual mates in these paroxysms of holy fervor, and if so, why did the vision of the christ so frequently appear to them and not alone the vision of some other being? the answer is found in the fact that spiritual experiences must be interpreted through the channel of the outer mind, which in these instances was obsessed by the thought implanted by medieval theology, that human love is sinful. it may be questioned whether, even though the visions did relate to some person other than the members of the holy family, the fact would have been admitted since it would have been attributed to unworthiness on the part of the saint. they were practically compelled to include god and christ in their ecstacies to prove their respectability. one phrase, commonly employed to describe the kind of love which "flooded the soul" in these saintly ecstacies, is particularly applicable to the effects of spiritual sex-union, as described by those who have experienced counterpartal union, and which swedenborg so constantly emphasizes in his recital of "conjugal delights." this phrase is "melting love." it is a feeling of melting or merging into the other's being, until there seems to be but one person, formed by the two souls. in fact, it is _union_; whereas the lesser, or we may say the lower, phase, of the sex-relation is at best but _contact_. if this view of the trances and ecstacies described in the lives of the saints, be repulsive to our readers, we can only say that we are sorry for our readers. they have imbibed the spirit of the dark ages, which regarded human love as sinful, overlooking the fact that all we may know of the "love of god," is by analogous comparison to what we know of human love. if human love be sinful, by logical deduction we would inevitably arrive at the conclusion that the universe is all sinful. in which event, the very word itself would have lost its significance. the objectionable part of the orthodox view of the effects of saintliness lies in the realization that neither the saints themselves, nor the church which perpetuates their recitals, had any conception of the real situation, so evident to the enlightened and unprejudiced reader. and if this view of saintly ecstacies, postulating the transmutation of sex-force into spiritual channels, be objectionable, what can be said of the only other view which is possible in the light of the evidence submitted? our ideas of what constitutes chastity need revising, else we must needs decide that chastity is more a vice than a virtue. for example, consider the character of a mother of the self-sacrificing, noble type, devoting her life to the welfare of the human family; interesting herself in all the problems that affect the generations to come; patient; sweet and wise. compare her with an unmarried girl whose body is immune from contact with one of the opposite sex, but whose mind is bent upon self, and self-adornment; upon the necessity of capturing a wealthy husband, as a means of this self-gratification, without regard to any sentiment or even common affection. who is the more chaste? coventry patmore says: "virgins are they before the lord, whose souls are pure. the vestal fire is not, as some mis-read the word, by marriage quenched, but burns the higher." if purity of soul were synonymous with celibacy, the entire constantly-copulating cosmos would have long since been demolished; but despite the mistaken attitude of religious systems toward the divine function of sex, humanity is reaching a higher and purer conception of love. as we approach a higher type of civilization, the broader, deeper, and more intense becomes our capacity to love. the more spiritual we become, the more vital is our love-nature, and our love-nature is grounded in sex. let us not imagine that spiritual love is less sexual than is physical love. spiritual love is physical love, _plus_ all the other phases of love. the real objection to sex love on the physical plane is not based upon its strength, but upon its weakness. if it be nothing deeper than an attraction of chemical affinities generated by physical activities, it has no reservoir from which to draw its supply. it is like the electrical wire that is "short circuited," it expends itself in one spasmodic combustion. true spirituality is attained by a process of addition. the common and erroneous idea of spiritual attainment involves a process of subtraction. we need go no further than to review the processes in the external world of today to understand this fact of the inclusiveness of the spiritual life, in contradistinction to the generally accepted idea of exclusiveness which is attached to a contemplation of the so-called "spiritual." all our activities are now carried on upon a gigantic scale. where formerly a little stream supplied the water to the mill, we now harness the invisible and apparently inexhaustible forces of electricity; where formerly commerce was a system of bartering between two single individuals, it is now a huge network involving millions of persons. everything teaches us the lesson of inclusiveness, as we approach a more spiritualized ideal of life. we are uniting; merging; drawing within. the centripetal force of the planet itself, corresponding to the female pole of the magnet, is today the active principle in external life. the machinist knows this when he is compelled to avoid the suction currents of electrical power. cosmic reaction has set in, and union between complementaries is the result. applying this truth to individual human life, and we have what? _counterpartal sex-union._ chapter vii soul-union: where will it lead? we have heard much in recent years of "affinities," and "soul-mates," and we are likely to hear much more in the future. so much that is unsavory and sensational is associated with these two words, that we almost hesitate to employ them; but that is always the way with fear. it builds a high wall between us and truth, and dares us to scale it. we accept the challenge. to begin with, the words are not synonymous, although frequently used as such. affinities are based upon mutual interests; mutual tastes and appetites; mutual stages of development; but these stages of development may be sense-conscious only; or they may be of a highly intellectual order. whatever their basis of mutuality, they tend to attract upon that plane. whenever this affinity, established by virtue of mutual tastes, is on the sense-plane only--that is, when it is because two persons both like their roast-beef rare; or their whiskey diluted; or their wine iced--we are apt to find the result in a mistaken idea of sexual affinity, which wears itself out for the reasons already stated, because there is no reservoir from which to draw. the chemistry of the body changes with time and emotional experiences. affinity of bodily contact only, resulting from a congeniality of sense-appetites, is therefore necessarily short lived. affinity of intellect is much more lasting, because it approaches a state higher in the ascent to the spiritual center of the cosmos. thought is the parent of speech, or of any external appeal to the senses. back of all objectivity is the thought that molded it; but back of thought is desire; and back of desire is design--cosmic design we may say--expressing itself discretively; in individuals. affinities that are based upon intellectual similarities are of a finer nature and generally more lasting than those of sense-conscious attraction only; and it is no uncommon thing to find two persons of the opposite sex enjoying a protracted friendship or preference for each others' society which deceives the average on-looker into thinking that there is also sexual affinity, when as a matter of fact there may never have been any thought of such relationship. a few brilliant women in former times, notably madame de stael, or margaret fuller, have enjoyed the attentions and apparent devotion of men for many years without having entered into any more intimate relationship with them. but these examples have been few in the past, and have been much commented upon. in the present, such desirable companionship is becoming much more common and a woman may now be seen twice with the same man without having the neighbors speculating as to a suitable name for the baby. more and more, as women become freed from the necessity to "settle themselves" in marriage, we find evidences of this intellectual affinity between the sexes; and more and more, as we get away from the old thought that a man has but one desire, that of sexual intercourse, and a woman but one motive, that of enslaving man through his sexual appetite, we will find that men and women will meet on the plane of intellectual affinity and not be driven by gossip of outsiders, or by the force of the race-thought in their own minds, into seeking to spoil such companionship by a matrimonial alliance, when nature did not intend it to be so. a number of years ago, when even the little freedom which human beings now accord each other in this matter was denied the struggling sexes, a certain man and woman, who were intellectual companions, married. he was a writer; she was a physician; which is evidence in itself of a degree of intellectual power not so common at that time as now; she was moreover an unusual woman in many ways. they parted after a month of married life and to the horror and scandal of the entire community, remained friends. the scandal reached the climax of disapproval and shocked morality when the man, married again, continued his friendship with his former wife and later, when a baby came to the couple, the ex-wife and mutual friend was the attending physician. the old idea of matrimony held that the husband and wife must be "yoked" together, so that neither one could exercise any individual predilection or choice of friends, or recreation, or taste or desire. and this is still the average idea of a successful marriage. it is an idea that is not confined to the ignorant, and the narrow-minded. it is the attitude of society at large, though upon what argument such an idea is based, must be left to the perverted imagination. presumably it is because of that colossal egotism which insists upon personal ownership. one would expect this tendency to own each other to have died with the death of the institution of slavery, but it still exists, and as we have already observed, among those who sit in the seats of the mighty as well as among the ignorant. a couple who had married on the ground of intellectual affinity lived together most congenially for a period of twelve years, although they agreed that sexual affinity was lacking in their relationship. they agreed that there was another phase of mating, and that should either come to the point where freedom was desirable, it would be given without resentment or anger. they both decided, that perfect candor and honesty with each other on this score was a higher type of civilization than that which prevails where mutual deceit is the rule. true to their compact, when the wife met the one whom she believed to be the one man who answered the call of her soul, the husband gave her up, retaining her friendship, and the memory of an intellectual companionship unmarred by the horrors of dispute and deceit and disruption. but he incurred the severest criticism from society, which is as yet composed of the animal-man, rather than the man-god, and the animal-man (meaning woman as well) knows no higher code of morality than that which he vaingloriously terms "defense of his honor." by exactly what process of reasoning a man can imagine his honor defended or appeased by shooting his rival, is, we admit, beyond our power to fathom. but such is the basis of the unwritten law, in which civilized man vents his remaining savagery. affinity-marriages, then, are not synonymous with soul-mating. and while we contend that affinity marriages, based upon at least some degree of mutuality, are a step higher in social development than were the alliances of the old regime, where a man's social or domestic exigencies required a wife or a housekeeper, or both-in-one; where woman must marry whomsoever asked her, or be pitied and scorned as an "old maid," still affinity-marriages are not the final union, and must go through an evolutionary phase. affinity-marriages are eligible to disruption. happily, we trust, these disruptions will in the course of time be devoid of hatred and mutual recriminations and abuse. certainly they will be, as they evolve from the plane of sense-consciousness to that of intellectual affinities. moreover, they stand a much better chance of permanency than has maintained during the past, before the word affinity was heard so frequently as it is now. the general impression is abroad in the land, that it is only since women became economically independent that disruption of the marriage bonds has become so general. it is true that divorces are much more frequent since women have become, to a great extent, economically independent; but that only means that the parties to the marriage have been set free. the disruptions are not more, it is only the evidences. and it is at the _evidence_ of marital unhappiness that all the criticism is directed. if the criticism were directed against the condition that divorce tells us of, instead of against the divorce itself, the first aid to the injured would be to establish a social order wherein an equal moral standard for both sexes should be the rule, and where a mother is recognized, and respected and honored in the name of motherhood, whether she is a wife or not. this suggestion will of course be met with a shocked gasp from many. the cry that "society will be disorganized" and our "moral code become chaotic" will go up from the self-constituted keepers of public morality. but is our morality so tender that it needs protection? are our social conditions so ideal that they cannot be improved? if they are, then nothing can besmirch them. if they are not, they must first be demolished, before they are rebuilt. the limited mortal mind is always terribly afraid of a change. not one single improvement has ever been suggested, from mechanics to morals, that has not been met with that ever-ready fear-thought, that the whole universe is going to the eternal bow-wows, if the slightest change in established institutions is made. and despite it all, we go on year after year, improving. "self-improvement" is the watch-word of the century. if "self-improvement," then social improvement. mankind is still in the making, as far as external conditions are concerned. the complaint goes up from every side, that women refuse motherhood. girls who have been carefully reared, brought up in the most orthodox movement, are heard to openly, unashamed, announce their intention of finding a rich husband and not, emphatically, _not_ having any children. may this not be nature's revenge upon our inhuman treatment of girls who become mothers without first becoming wives? we are wont to refer to unmarried mothers as "unfortunates" and "ruined." but in what does the misfortune consist, and wherein are they ruined? is a woman ever unfortunate if she gives birth to a child because she has loved, and because she loves the child? is she ruined in any way except that she becomes the target for our inhumanity; our well-nigh unforgivable stupidity? the world, and especially women, owe a debt of gratitude to a certain famous woman who, by her force of character; her defiant self-respect in the face of social criticism, because she had a child and no husband, has wrung from the unwilling public the highest place accorded any actress in this or any previous age. this artist's well-known reply to an openly expressed criticism of her is worthy of perpetuation. "ah, so!" she said, "true i have a son and no husband, but you women have husbands and lovers, and no children!" we would not have it understood that we commend this woman's example, and criticise that of the woman to whom she referred. we do not regard child-bearing as the end and aim of woman's mission. it has been said that the first duty of man is to perpetuate the species, but observation should convince us that in all too many instances the first duty of the individual would be to refrain from such a crime against posterity. we neither criticise nor advise the adoption of the position of a husbandless mother; nor that of the women who are childless wives. we endorse any woman's insistence upon her right to self-respect; and we insist that a better civilization cannot come without permitting the greatest degree of personal liberty in matters pertaining to the sex-relation, and, above and beyond all, without conceding to the unmarried mother the same respect that we accord to the married one, when she is otherwise worthy of our respect. it certainly takes courage for a defenseless woman to bear a fatherless child, in a hypocritical world. the normal woman does not live who would not rather be safely and happily married to the man whom her soul tells her exists somewhere in the universe, than to be battling with the problem of existence, alone. when she is so married, we need not fear that the marriage will be disrupted. until she is so married, no power on earth can, and no power in heaven will, prevent the disruptions, although man's laws may temporarily obstruct the evidence of such disruption. what we have already said will make it clear, that our contention is that affinities are not necessarily soul-mates; that, in fact, we may have many and various kinds of affinities, but no one can possibly have more than one soul-mate. mates are two entities composing a pair. they are the two halves that make a whole. unlike what we know of affinities, they are not merely similar; nor yet opposite, so that they attract each other because of curiosity or dissimiliarity. they belong to each other because together they complete a perfect balance. each supplies in the exact proportion required for balance the qualities lacking in the other. in the event of such union, instinctive procreation will cease, and re-generation will begin. they will consciously beget souls, instead of merely providing bodies for souls to manifest upon this external plane of consciousness. bodily contact is not essential to this phase of sex-union, because the real conjunction is between the interior natures; and the interior nature exists independently of the physical organism. already the race-thought is beginning to realize interiorly. this is manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the avenues of the senses. that intangible, elusive but potential thing called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. everywhere we note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom the depths of psychological analysis. for the first time in centuries the race-thought seeks the underlying cause for specific effects, instead of, as heretofore, being satisfied to deal with effects only, suppressing those that are unpleasant and extolling those that seem agreeable. the scientist expresses it thus: "nature is giving up her secrets to man." the metaphysician puts it this way: "the soul of man is unveiling, and soon we shall know each other in truth." the religionist has long looked for a time when, as prophesied by st. paul, who was above all things a spiritually-conscious person, "we shall see each other face to face; not as now through a glass, darkly." this tendency to "get behind the scenes" as it were, to penetrate the crust of mere outward semblance, and to reveal the interior nature, may be seen even in the fashions of our clothes. despite thunders of denunciation from the self-constituted keepers of our morals, who are not yet free from the bondage of traditional ideas of virtue and "respectability," women have insisted upon freedom of the body in dress until at last the uncorseted, short-skirted, thinly-clad woman excites little adverse comment. the fact has at last established itself that the female form has legs. this fact was only half suspected before; men have always wanted to see exactly what was beneath those long flowing skirts; and woman has always known that she possessed at least one trump card, in the game of enslaving man to become what modern slang has so aptly labeled her "meal-ticket." she could always keep him guessing as to whether or not she had legs; and the average man, be it known, possesses a fund of curiosity far in excess of that which is proverbially ascribed to woman. men have been known to pay the highest price, even to donning the matrimonial yoke, to satisfy their curiosity. women have always known this, and the worldly wise mother has besought her marriageable daughter to "keep her skirts well over her ankles" if she hoped to secure a man as a permanent banker! it does sound crude expressed thus, but this is the basis upon which at least nine-tenths of the respectable marriages of society are consummated. and this is the standard which the short-sighted keepers of public morals would have us retain. they would force women to act as though their bodies are vile. they would keep the mind encumbered with the corpse of an idea of modesty, from which the spirit has long since fled. the spirit has fled from it because it was a false idea of modesty; because it was founded upon the idea that woman was an instrument of the devil himself, and that to look upon her naked form was in itself wicked, and only permitted to poor man as a concession to his own innate defilement. the good church at one time, not so far distant, refused to admit women to the communion table in the "holy sacrament." a fine chance has any sacrament of being holy, with one half of it missing! the old idea of womanly modesty consisted of blushing with shame and embarrassment if by chance her ankles became exposed to the interested and curious gaze of a male. notwithstanding this ideal of modesty, the designing and beguiling female managed to arrange just such a contretemps every time there was an eligible male within sight; if discovered, she either assumed a look of infantile innocence, or she took the opportunity to coax a becoming blush. to be sure, this does not accurately describe all women of "the good old days." there was the other type. nature manifests in extremes. there was the type, fitting ancestors to those women of to-day who are outraged and shocked at the present-day fashions, which actually disclose the fact that women are anatomatically endowed with legs and hips, quite in defiance of man's inherited predilection for making this discovery under conditions that would pamper to his satiating sex-appetite. they, poor creatures, were dreadfully ashamed of being women, and they did all that was possible to conceal the fact. they, doubtless, would gladly have amputated their legs, if the ministers had so decreed, and they apologized to the world every time an unforseen circumstance uncovered a portion of these offensive legs. in fact, they denied the existence of "said members," and alluded to them tentatively and with modest hesitation, as "limbs." "but," some will exclaim, "we cannot see any possible connection between a regenerated race, and a fashion which permits the display of the female figure upon the public streets, where men who are as yet un-regenerated, and licentious, may leer and pass vile remarks, and suggest lustful thoughts." few can see any connection between our so-called practical, everyday life, and the spiritual life. they look upon the spiritual life as something remote; something in the dim and ever and ever distant future. the spiritual life is supposed to be so negative that we postpone living it, as long as we possibly can; and whereas the human family has prayed and prayed, for lo! these many ages: "thy kingdom come upon earth," they apparently have not had the slightest idea that god would take them at their word. they are like the old darky who called upon "de lawd to strike him dead if he was not telling the truth," when as a matter of fact he was lying roundly. at that moment a bricklayer on the building above where rastus was standing, dropped a brick, which struck the old darkey on the head, and he exclaimed "what's de matter, good lawd, caint you'all take a joke?" the kingdom of god, from all records, whether orthodox or heterodox, has been described as the abode of angels; and angels have been pictured as nearly nude as our silly "morality" would permit. no one has as yet suggested that we compel the angels to wear hoopskirts, although "september morn" has been compelled, by police regulation, to don a sweater. the spiritual life awaits our cognizance, just behind the transparent veil of our limited mortal consciousness. this is the message of the "unveiling" of the female form. this is the time of woman's revealment of true modesty; true ideals. the female principle, representing the spiritual element in nature, hitherto shut in; covered up; hidden--is coming out. men must learn to be able to look upon the female form without spasms of either lustful desires; or contemptuous indifference. there was a time when the presence of a female office-force in the business section of a city was the signal for unwarranted familiarity on the part of some of the male members of a corporation. there was a time, when women first invaded the ranks of the "down-town" business centers, that a woman's appointment to a responsible position rested upon her claims to feminine attractiveness. now, the only question asked is, "is she efficient?" _that which she is, in her interior nature, is the final test of her power._ when men have become inured to the knowledge, so long concealed, that women have legs and that there is no more seductiveness in them than in their faces, the love of man for woman will undergo the same evolution that his estimate of her business efficiency has undergone. he will judge her by what she is in her interior nature; and his sexual desires, now manifested distractedly in mere love of the female, will become concentrated in love of the one woman to whom his soul turns in irresistible sex-attraction, as unerringly as the needle turns to the pole to which it is magnetized. is this fact so unmanifest? does not everything point to it? a few years ago, a man and a woman could not pass a day together in mutual conversation, and interest, without encroachment upon the one emotion which they were supposed to hold in common--sexual attraction. that was indeed the whole sum and substance of communication between the two sexes, if we may except the rare instances which history has made much of, because of their rarity--women of the french salons, who have become famous for their wit and beauty, in neither of which attributes did they outstrip the average self-supporting woman of today. but custom has slowly, but perceptibly, established the possibility of a frank and non-sentimental companionship between the male and the female, and the result is that both are much more clear as to the true character of their sentiments toward each other. neither is blinded by the force of undifferentiated sex-attraction. there must be some specific basis of mutual love; hence we have the vogue of the "affinity," and by the term is instantly recognized a special force of attraction, independent of undifferentiated sex alone. it is known that there is at least an assumption of an interior attraction, and we insist that affinity marriages, however incomplete as yet, are still superior in motive to that of mere marriage, where it is a case of _a_ male and _a_ female, united by propinquity; family considerations; commercial interests; class association; or what not. affinities at least have the grace to presuppose a special sex-attraction. they argue for the ultimate goal of special and permanent selection, even if they fail to reach it. that there will be many failures during the journey from the sense-conscious life, to the soul-conscious life, is a foregone conclusion. the pathway of love has always been a thorny one, but those who are on the high ground may look across into the rose-strewn garden, and know that the little god is aiming his arrows at the interior nature of those whom he would unite. he is not blind. his sight is illumined and he sees that the soul can unite only with its mate. true it is that "the course of true love never did run smooth," but let us hope that the time is coming when it will be less thorny. _there are no mismates in soul-union._ this truth is the "secret of secrets" of the hermetics. it is the hidden wisdom of the initiates; the alchemical mysteries of the ancients. it is told to us in the fairy story of the sleeping princess--a story which is found in the folk-lore of every country of the globe. it is the philosopher's stone, which when found, opens the door to all wisdoms. _there can be no mismates in soul-union._ neither can there be any sexual "temptation," or desire outside of this union, when once found. "but never shall he faint or fall who lists to hear, o'er every fate, the sweeter and the higher call of his true mate. i hear it wheresoe'er i rove; she holds me safe from shame or sin; the holy temple of her love i worship in." a time when "the twain shall be" virtually, "one flesh" and the "outside as the inside" is not a chimerical dream. when the physical body is as much reverenced as is the spiritual; when in fact, the soul is revealed (unveiled) to our mortal consciousness; when the mind has been freed from its load of prejudices and fears and doubts and belief in sin; then we shall, indeed, truly see each other. we do not see each other now, unless perhaps we have developed that spiritual insight which is not blinded by appearances, but which contacts the interior nature. but the revealing, the uncovering process has begun. we have come to the time so long anticipated; so earnestly promised, when "naked and unashamed" we should "re-enter the lost paradise." well, the women, god bless them, are as naked as the tender morality of our police officials will permit and as unashamed as it is possible to be with the handicap of a puritanical ancestry, which was so evil-minded as to suspect god himself of sin when he formed the "wicked" body. prudists may howl; and legislators may legislate; but the course of the cosmic law which would free us and bestow upon us peace and love and happiness without stint, has never been stopped, although it has been obstructed. let us examine some points of the hidden wisdom, in the light of this postulate, and see if the conclusion is not warranted. chapter viii the hidden wisdom revealed as we have previously observed, there is what may be termed a religious mysticism and a scientific mysticism. when viewed from the standpoint of the unprejudiced seeker, who finds the truth that is in everything, these two phases of mysticism are but photographs of the same subject taken from different points of view. so, too, mysticism itself is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a long-distance view of science. like the proverbial pot and kettle, which we are told made much noise over calling each other black, we find the scientist frequently disdains the mystic, and the mystic may retaliate with equal disapproval of the scientist's position. both are right, each from his point of view. each is looking at life from an opposite end of the same pole. the scientist looks at the effect and the mystic at the cause. in their final calculations they arrive at the same conclusion, although they call it by different names. the scientist says that everything proceeds from the one eternal energy. the mystic perceives the spiritual co-existent with the external. religious mysticism calls it "god's word made manifest." in reference to this definition of religious mysticism, perhaps the phraseology used by william ralph inge, in his "christian mysticism," is the best possible exposition of the position of the religious mystic, if we may separate the two phases. inge says: "religious mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realize the presence of the living god in the soul and in nature, or more generally as the attempt to realize in thought and in feeling the imminence of the temporal in the eternal, and the eternal in the temporal." which is to say exactly what the scientific mystic says, using other terminology; and likewise what the physicist says or will ultimately say, as his researches lead him into the finer and finer realms of discovery. the scientific mystic, like archimedes, believes that in order to measure the purpose of external creation, he must "base his fulcrum somewhere beyond." the scientific mystic, therefore, starts from the center of the circle; from the crux of creation; and he finds the x, which is the hypothetical base of algebraical science--the unknown quantity of which sex is the symbol. reasoning from effect back to cause and from cause forward to effect the mystic finds the equation complete, perfect, and likewise simple; but it is simple only after we have deciphered it. like the prize puzzles which are designed to exercise the inductive faculties, mysticism, when we have not the key, is a most tantalizing enigma. most "practical" persons dismiss it with the same superficial idea that they entertain in regard to puzzles, saying "it is only a puzzle"--utterly ignoring the value of exercising the inductive reasoning faculties. fairy stories are popularly supposed to be for the entertainment and amusement of children. in reality they are the universal language of symbolism. there is not a single fairy story which has not been handed down from generation to generation, and, what is more suggestive, each story is told with astonishing lack of variation, in every tongue and throughout every nation on this earth. the stories involving the turning of men into animals and their final restoration to human form, as a reward for some service, some sacrifice, typifies the two-fold nature of man. he may live in his animal, or exterior nature; or he may develop his spiritual, or interior nature; through service; through unselfish love. our limited mortal consciousness is responsible for the tendency to personify everything, instead of to realize the principles underlying all expression. god and the devil have been the personification of the two phases of the principles of evolution, from animal man to spiritual man. romulus and remus have been presented as an actual and specific instance of twins; likewise castor and pollux. almost every child instinctively alludes to himself or herself, as either "the good little me" or the "bad little me." "o, i didn't do that; it was the bad little dorothy," or "harold," as the case may be, is the child-like way of expressing the innate consciousness that there is an interior and an exterior nature to all of us. the union of gods with mortals, which forms the gist of mythological tales, symbolizes the god-like and the mortal qualities inherent in human nature. mortals raised to the abode of the gods; and the gods descended into mortal life; symbolize the interchangeability of what we term matter and spirit--the power of transmutation of the lower into the higher life. volumes could be written upon the subject, and we will therefore try to confine our reviews to the symbolical traditions which deal most directly with the relations of the sexes. in religious symbology, the story of the ark stands as the supreme type of creation, through the conjunction of the sexes. the cherubim are, when all is said and done, nothing more, nor yet less, than spiritual children--the result of spiritual sex-union. and in this later synoptic mysticism of the ark of the covenant, we are informed that "every gift within the tabernacle is willingly offered." if we will but contemplate the volumes of wisdom contained within that sentence, we cannot fail to conclude that every infinitesimal particle of coercion in whatsoever shape and form, individual, economic, ethical, or religious, must be excluded from the regenerated, perfect, ideal sex-relation; otherwise we do not attain it. if the ancients seemed to take some of these folk-lore stories too literally, we of this "practical" age, do not take them literally enough. we have imagined that sex, and the sex function, began and ended in the physical. this view is excusable in the case of the materialist, if there really be such a person but it is obviously a stupid view for the theologian, who regards this life as the door to spiritual life. since sex is the cause and the result of what we know of creation; since it is the foundation of all the qualities that we know as spiritual laws; friendship; unselfishness; fidelity; paternal solicitude--it is absolutely certain that the most beautiful things we know here must have a correspondence in the life hereafter. of these beautiful things in life, babies come first; with birds and flowers and music as fitting accessories. but to return to the ark of the covenant. the perpetual flame on the altar (the center) is the undying flame of spiritual love--and by that we mean sex-love, let it be understood. if we seem to repeat this too frequently it is because of the almost general habit of the race to apologize for sex-love. the erroneous idea obtains, that spiritual love is sexless. all too frequently we come across the phrase, "with a love that has in it nothing of human love," the writer evidently anxious to convey the impression of tremendous spirituality and the consequent elimination of the sex function. and so we emphasize once more, and we may do so again, the assurance that the symbol of the never-dying flame upon the altar is typical of the never-dying spirit of sex-love. spirit is ever symbolized by flame, as in the "flaming sword" of the archangel. the deity upon the seat of the altar symbolizes the bi-une sex-principle of creation. the reason that the jewish people have claimed that they were "god's chosen people" is because, in their symbolism of the ark of the covenant, all israel was grouped under the tabernacle. the formation of the tabernacle proves that it typifies the mother's womb. the tabernacle was guarded by the priests who _were sworn to purity_; thus they symbolized the esoteric truth that the pure spiritual sex-union bestows immortal god-hood. let us take another story, that of the life-token. this is best told in the story of the holy grail, although it is found in all the fairy-books of all nations, in the language and form befitting the race to which it belongs. in the original, that is in the earliest recitals of this life-token story, we find that the thing left behind, as a _center_ (which is always guarded and protected in various ways), was a tree. here, we have the phallic symbol as the life-token. but in the story of the holy grail, the cup is the life token to be guarded; it is the sacred symbol of the quest and it is of a design resembling the red rose of the templars. this time it is the yoni--literally the _chalice_ of the _holy communion_; the centre of the radiant circle, which is the answer to all the problems within the radius. it is the search for, and the finding of, the balance in counterpartal union. it is the x of being, and only the purest and the noblest of the knights of the "round table" essay the difficult quest. the "mound of venus" is another name for the "round table." again is emphasized the necessity for purity, and this purity, although including all the spiritual qualities: fidelity; bravery; self-sacrifice; humanity; love of truth; culminates in sexual purity. "blessed are the pure in heart (the pulse of the soul) for they shall see god." we revise this latter part, and we say "for they shall be _gods_." let us consider the story of the "sleeping princess." she is depicted as a princess, first of all, because she is the daughter of a king; a king is an earthly ruler, or exalted person. esoterically, she is the daughter of the exalted god, and she is the soul. sometimes this story is told in the male gender, but everywhere the essential points are the same. wagner, who is known as a mystic, has illustrated the story in brunhilde and siegfried. brunhilde is an immortal--a goddess, who renounces her immortality to become a woman. she sleeps on the top of a high mountain and she is surrounded by a circle of flame; and here she sleeps, despite all efforts to arouse her, until awakened by the touch of siegfried--the one human being in all the universe who could awaken the sleeping princess. the high mountain symbolizes the highest love of which we are capable. to reach the soul of the exalted woman, typified in the fairy-story by the word princess, and later, by wagner, as the goddess, man must be her mate. _no other can enter the womb of her soul_, though many may effect an entrance to the outer court. this truth, as absolute as life itself, solves all the problems of the mystery of love and its joys and sorrows. no soul can wholly, unreservedly love the "wrong" one. though we may love and die of the pain of unrequited loving, yet love is its own self-justification, and its own reward. the pathway of love leads up the mountain top, but no one who reaches the summit shall fail to find that for which he seeks. the soul of man, and of woman, has been playing a game of blind-man's bluff--a fitting name for the game it is, too. unable to see anything but the exterior nature, and longing for success in the search, we have frantically grabbed here and there, and appropriated that which we grabbed, with a self-complacency and an egotism of which little jack horner would be ashamed. in the symbolical rites and ceremonies of secret orders, such as the ancient alchemists; the hermetics; the rosicrusians; and in modern times, the free masons, we have this story of the search for the ultimate balance of soul union, told in language veiled unless we are fit to know; but openly enough if we are fit. and in all these orders (alleged guardians of the hidden wisdom) we have varying degrees of initiation; and in each degree the initiate must undergo certain trials to prove his fearlessness; his fidelity; his fitness, in other words, for the final revealment of all, which is the initiation into the "holy of holies;" the "secret chamber" and the degree of "mastership." in the order of masonry, the highest degree is that of the templar. the symbol of the templars is the red rose on the cross, together with the star and the crescent. the star preserves the esotericism of its nomenclature, in whatever sphere it is used, namely, the power of radiating light. it stands for the radiant center. the knights templar sought the radiant center to complete their half circle, and when they should have found, they were to become radiant with the light of spiritual power. that they originally at least, understood the way of this initiation, is evident by the symbol of the rose and the cross--the combined phallus and yoni. this fact is the underlying cause of the open and hereditary enmity of the church of rome for the modern order of freemasons. the church sought to specialize in the persons of the virgin mary and her son the eternal principles of the "way of the cross." the temporal power of the church could be built up only by offering a complete system of salvation within the church itself. at the same time, the utter degradation of sex, which had reached its depths under roman civilization, called for as complete a reversion of the ideas of the ancient sex-worshippers, as was consistent with the truth. hence we find the extreme attitude of the church opposing all reference to sex as other than a part of the temptations of the evil one, although they did retain the central truth typified by the holy virgin mother, and the pure and perfect child. the alchemists are supposed to have been imbued with the desire and, to some extent, at least, were regarded as having the knowledge of how to make gold. this gold-making was always accomplished by transmutation of the baser (lower) metals; also, the knowledge of how to accomplish this transmutation was possible only to one possessing "the philosopher's stone." if we will but remember that this "philosopher's stone" was of such a purity that it was almost impossible to find it; that, although several initiates claimed to possess the stone, yet no visible proof of its existence, or of gold resulting from lead or copper, was ever offered; and again if we will realize the fine distinction between the words "found" and "discovered," and take note that the word "found" is used almost invariably in connection with those who claimed to possess the stone, we will arrive at the obvious conclusion that the secret of the alchemists was of an interior nature. we "discover" outside of ourselves; we "find" within. above all, the "stone of great purity" is the same that was raised at babylon, supplanting the yoni, which is to say, the phallic symbol. a philosopher is one who is wise in his interior nature; his wisdom is of the esoteric quality; we do not apply the term "philosopher" to either great educators, or great financiers; but to those whose activities are turned within. the force which is manifested in the lower desires and passions, when transmuted into spiritual channels, opens the door to the golden light of illumination. to become in reality a prince of the rosy cross bestows the exaltation and the power, typified by that of an earthly prince--one who is exalted above the common man. it is doubtful, indeed, if many of the ancient alchemists attained to this exalted degree in its true significance; and we may readily believe that in an age in which wealth was so eagerly sought; temporal power so much desired; where deception was almost general; that few lived the requisite purity of life to have accomplished the transmutation; so today there is not one in a thousand of the many who have taken the degree of "knight templar," who recognizes its esoteric meaning. but words have a trick of trapping us, and we note that the word "taken" is invariably used in referring to modern masonic initiation. verily they have "taken" the degree in its outward semblance. they have not attained to its powers and privileges. nor can they do so, when they exclude the very "gate of life" from the order. they may become masons (builders of the temple), but how can they become architects, when they have not entered the tabernacle? in a search for hidden meanings, and for a secret tradition which is believed to be discoverable in kabalistic and hermetic literature, we find, if we possess true insight, the one indubitable truth, subordinating all the other symbols, namely that of the supremacy, the finality, of the sublimated sex-union, resulting in immortal mastership. most modern interpreters of the archives of these ancient philosophers ignore the sexual significance of the arcana, but a glimpse at the symbols will readily convince the initiated of their identity with sexual symbology. for example in "the history of transcendental magic," by eliphas levi (abbe constant), translated by arthur edward waite, there is a plate used to illustrate the author's theory of alchemy, which he concludes "had two aspects, one a physical and the other a moral one." the sexual, as well as the spiritual, significance is ignored, but this may be due to a disinclination to reveal the secret meaning of the alchemical symbols, or it may be due to a materialistic tendency on the part of the compiler. the plates, however, speak for themselves, and in one, ascribed to basil-valentine, an alchemist of the fifteenth century, called "the great hermetic arcanum," the supreme and significant point of the illustration, shows, within the circle of experience, through which the initiate travels in his search for the supreme god-head, two doves, holding in their beaks a crown. the doves are perfectly matched. the crown is balanced between them, and the figure tops the circle, under the heading "regeneration." in another plate, which the author presents as "the philosophic cross, or plan of the third temple as prophesied by ezekiel," we note again, that the crown of the symbolical temple represents the red rose upon a cross, within a radiant circle; beneath this is a mother-eagle with outstretched wings, shielding her little brood, and on either side a tree and a flowering rosebush. here is the symbol par excellence of generation. the creative function of the male and the female in procreative conjunctivity. the employment of the eagle as a religious symbol may be traced back to the civilization of the hittites. only a few years ago, two english archæologists discovered a double-headed eagle in asia. this was identical with those seen perpetuating religious rites and ceremonies of the sex-worshipers. an eagle holding in its talons a serpent is an emblem well known today. the origin of the adoption of the eagle as a religious, though not necessarily a "sacred," symbol by prehistoric races, may easily be imagined, if we consider that the eagle is a bird of tremendous power; and that it soars to unreachable heights; and that it unquestionably was at some time seen to swoop down and carry off the serpent, possibly even during their ceremonies of serpent-worship. this idea becomes quite convincing when we also remember that the ceremonies of the serpent worshipers were carried on, as far as feasible, upon the mountain. we allude to this stage of religious history as "serpent worship," but when we realize the points of analogy between the serpent and the phallus it is apparent that the serpent was only the nature-emblem of generation, as manifested by the male principle. "the eagle and the dove" is a phrase employed today to illustrate the law of antithesis, and it is more than probable that the eagle represented the lower nature of the sex-relation, in juxtaposition to the higher, as the dove is emblematical of the spiritualized aspect of sex-love. we have an analogy to that of the eagle and the dove in the biblical allusion to "the last day; when god will separate the 'sheep from the goats,'" here again is a pertinent reference to the sex nature. the goat is a symbol of sensuality and lust, principally because he has perverted sexual proclivities, notably that of coercion. for this reason, classical mythology employs the satyr, a creature half man and half goat, to typify the lowest form of the sex call in man. on the other hand, the lamb is the type of gentleness and affection, and although in outward appearance the lamb and the goat are not dissimilar, their natures are antithetical. in estimating the god-idea of the ancients, many mistakes have arisen by confounding religious symbols with the "sacred" symbols. the race-mind was in its kindergarten stage, and all ideals were instilled by means of pictures--a method which even the present hour finds most effective. in modern theological symbolism we have god and the devil; heaven and hell; angels and demons, to illustrate by antithesis. they all belong to religious symbology, but only those which teach spiritual ideals are denominated "sacred." "riding the goat," alleged to be the almost invariable initiatory prelude to fitness for membership in all secret orders, means, first of all, that the would-be initiate must have control over his lower sexual desires. if he cannot control the goat instincts within his nature, he stands small chance of taking the higher degrees of spiritual regeneration, through transmutation. in another symbolic chart presenting the secrets of alchemical transmutation, we find depicted "the gate of eternal wisdom," and we are further informed that this "gate" also brings "knowledge of god." the design of this cave-like aperture should betray its esoteric meaning. it is situated under a mound, upon which trees are planted. the inscriptions on the corrugated walls of the cave, are evidently designed to resemble seven lotus petals, and are set forth as the seven mysteries. inscriptions warning against profanation of this sacred gate, and also promising eternal life and glory to the true initiate, inspire the intrepid and deter the doubtful. of these latter, several are outside the entrance. two are on the steps leading to the mouth of the cave but their attitude bespeaks doubt of their worthiness. only one has penetrated to the radiant center of the aperture, and there is room for but the one to enter the radiance of the solar gate, which truly bestows a knowledge that is "of god." sex symbology is a subject that calls for a large volume devoted to this special side of it, and we cannot hope to do more here than to touch a few of the almost universal proofs of the contention which is the purpose of this book, namely, that the supreme goal of life, typified in every religion, every philosophy, and in the intuitional knowledge of the human mind, is spiritual sex-union; and that this can be accomplished only by counterparts; the two halves of the bi-une god seed uniting in one immortal and complete pair--a man and a woman. not, we must again emphasize, not in a hermaphroditic personality, but in two perfect complementaries--mates; not _one_ but _a pair_. in another exposition of hermetic secrets we discover the amazing statement that "the alchemist is found working throughout, in conjunction with a woman of the art; _they begin and they attain together_." this should be plain enough. small chance, indeed, either would have of attaining alone. but if this suggestion is not sufficient (and either from design or from failure to comprehend the significance of it, the translator seems to have missed the point), we are introduced to a symbolical figure-study, which shows a chalice in which the sun and the moon are personified (the solar-man and the solar-woman), with the god vulcan (fire) seated between them. underneath this "twain-one" symbol a mortal man and a mortal woman are kneeling on either side of a cone-shaped and dome-tipped furnace, which is lighted by a feeble candle. but their attitude of prayer bespeaks the hope that this earthly flame will be transmuted by their prayers and aspirations; by their reverential attitude toward the divine character of the function of mating, into the immortal and unquenchable flame typified by the god of fire himself. in another series of symbolical plates, purporting to be the story of metallic transmutation, but representing, above all, the story of manifestation from the divine to the human and again to the spiritualized and perfected adam and eve--(the solar man and the solar woman), we again see that from generation to regeneration the work is accomplished by man and woman in conjunction. these plates bear the hall-marks of christian appropriation of hermetic symbolism, as peculiarly applicable to the church, but the central doctrine of salvation through sex-regeneration, is retained. whether consciously or not, is a question. modern commentators and translators of alchemical literature insist that such documents are palpably related to the secret, or secrets, of metallic transmutation. that they prove the search for, if not the existence of, a "magic solvent" that resolves the baser metals into gold; but, as far as known, such a compound has not yet been discovered or, if it ever was, it has since been lost and evades all attempts at rediscovery. but if we read these alchemical treatises as they relate to transmutation of sex-love from the pro-creative function to regeneration through spiritual or counterpartal union (solar mates), we have the key to every statement. a writer tells of an instance which is recorded among alchemical archives, where "an unknown master testified to his possession of the mystery" (supposedly of metallic transmutation), but it is added that "he had not proceeded to the work because he had failed to meet an _elect woman_, who was necessary thereto." in other words, applying this statement in its obviously logical sense, the unknown master knew the esoteric meaning of the alchemical postulate, but not having met his female complement, he could not testify to the results of this transmutation. an "elect woman" would hardly be necessary in the work of metallic transmutation. small wonder that the "alchemist" abandoned the work of turning lead and copper into gold. if he had found the key of keys, he cared little whether lead were lead, or whether gold remained gold, or melted into thin air. the golden light of illumination showed him all things in their purpose, and gold as a metal meant no more to him than did the so-called "baser" metals. commenting upon this statement, the translator observes: "those hermetic texts which bear a spiritual interpretation and are as if a record of spiritual experience, present, like the literature of physical alchemy, the following aspects of symbolism: the marriage of sun and moon; of a mystical king and queen; a union between natures which are _one_ at the _root_, but diverse in manifestation; a transmutation which follows this union and an abiding glory therein." if we will remember that the solar-man was personified by the ancients as the sun; and the solar-woman by the moon, we have the first and salient points of the original hermetic secrets, however much they may have degenerated from their spiritual to their physical application. the probabilities are that owing to the disapproval of the christian hierarchy, only the most veiled terminology was permissible. this view is more logical than is the one that the esoteric meaning was lost sight of. the marriage of an hypothetical or "mystical king and queen" bespeaks exaltation of the two conjoining persons, male and female, but this exaltation is in consciousness, and not in mere personality. the terms "king" and "queen" are nothing more or less than symbols of an exalted (spiritualized) state. and, in passing, we may here mention the fact that the language of lovers testifies to this intuitional realization. "my queen!" exclaims the enraptured lover, although in social station his beloved one may be only a scullery maid; and certainly, neither the beauty nor the goodness nor the wisdom of earthly kings and queens would be sufficient to inspire the comparison. it is ever the soul calling for the mate who, when found, will exalt the "twain-one" into the immortal powers and immortal wealth imperfectly symbolized by earthly rulers, making "right royal queens and kings of common clay." the third aspect of the symbolism tells of "an union between two natures which are one at the root, but diverse in manifestation." and the alchemist who sought the physical interpretation of this, promised that, as earth, air, and fire and water were the elements "out of which all manifestation is composed," it only remained for someone to discover the exact proportion of each of these elementary substances in a specific compound; this accomplished, copper for example, could be dissolved into its constituent parts and re-solved again in the proportions which formed gold, a thing which we are not prepared to say could not be accomplished, but a thing which we do say, would not even be attempted by one who had found the secret of the interior transmutation, because having attained to the radiant center, he would realize the "glory of the worlds," and gold, as metal, would be to him of far less value than the emerald of the grass; the pearls of dew upon the rose; the scent of the lotus; the song of birds; the laughter of children. how vain and foolish to imagine that a philosopher would think it worth while to search for gold, as a metal. he would not even consider the ambition worthy the parchment used to preserve the record of his labors. but to find the golden light from the radiant center of pure and unquenchable love--that were indeed worthy of ages of research. for are we not promised, the "glory of the world" if we will seek and find? and he who truly seeks will absolutely find. what is the glory of the world? is it fame, or wealth, or lands, or gems or kingdoms? love is the only glory worthy of the name. "for life with all its yield of joy and woe and hope and fear--believe the aged friend-- is just our chance at the prize o' learning love." when we realize the esoteric meaning of this aspect of the ancient alchemical symbol, namely, that the two halves of the one whole, manifesting diversely as male and female, are reunited, we come to the fourth aspect of the symbol mentioned, and the "transmutation which follows this union and the abiding glory therein," is the inevitable and logical sequential answer. an _abiding_ glory must be founded upon spiritual substantiability. transmutation is not synonymous with, extinction, or elimination, or abandonment. we _transmute_ the lower into the higher, the exterior into the interior, the physical into the spiritual. this is the sum and substance of the "ancient wisdom." there is no eccentric change or transition from one phase or plane of life, into another. it is neither logical nor justifiable to assume that sex is limited to the physical, or the astral or the psychic, or any other specific planes of consciousness. these planes are not distinctively separable anyway. they are merely _names_ which we use to distinguish degrees, or limitations of consciousness. the statement that the "two halves are reunited" is almost invariably misinterpreted to imply an annihilation, or absorption of individuality, into some sort of vaporous, formless, sexless thing; but why this should be so misconstrued is a puzzle, any more than that bringing together the two halves of an orange which had been divided, would result in the destruction of that edible; or any more than bringing together a glove fitting the right hand and its mate fitting the left hand, would destroy the shape and usefulness of this article. the comparison may be a homely one, but it is understandable. it takes two to make a pair. mistake it not, and further, there is no _abiding glory_ in this world or in the next or in any other sphere, that is not founded upon the deep, intense and eternal love of man and woman. chapter ix what constitutes sex immorality? the average mind, nurtured in apprehensive awe of that race fetish called public opinion, is inordinately afraid of words. "atheist," "infidel," "ungodly" are epithets which have been used as mental clubs, with temporary effect, to beat back the wave of religious and scientific rationalism, which punctuated the last century. these words have now lost much of their terror, even to the undeveloped consciousness of the average, because it has been shown that the god-idea which rational thought fain would substitute for the old revengeful deity, has not annihilated the world, but quite to the contrary has resulted in a happier and higher ideal of godhood than that which the early church postulated. epithets are the mental bulwarks of the powers of resistance against evolution. ignorance is fearful of the unknown, and the knights of enlightenment have ever had to fight their way through the ranks of abuse and criticism and misrepresentation. free-love is a phrase with which even the most intrepid advocate of rational thought hesitates to claim affiliation; and yet the goal of our highest endeavors must be a state of society where love, the god, is free from the mire of corruption, and the bonds of slavery. let us not be afraid of so harmless a thing as a word, remembering the case of the little girl who ran to her mother crying with indignation because someone had alluded to her as an "aristocrat." she did not know what the word meant, and so resented it as something undeserved. when we examine into what the phrase free-love really means, we will not be so fearful of its sound. to whom is this epithet most frequently applied? is it to the average man who is known to be a lothario in matters of sex? not at all. he is referred to as a "gay bachelor" or as one who is "sowing his wild oats" or some other phrase, which in no way affects his social standing. is it applied to women of the half-world, to recognized, and legalized prostitution? never! it is significant of the real meaning of free-love that the term is never used in connection with what modern reform has aptly designated the "white slave" traffic, for the obvious reason that nowhere is love so un-free; so enslaved and bound and murdered as in this phase of woman's degradation. nor is the term applied to unfaithful wives, because in this type of defiance of traditional sex-ethics there is always the spirit of self-accusation; a tacit, if not open, admission of wrong-doing. we never hear the awful accusation of "free-lover" hurled at the young woman who has, what the world calls, "sinned," because, forsooth, she pays the price of her deviation from social standards (when discovered) by ostracism, and not infrequently by a broken heart, or by sinking further into the depths of bondage; and so here again it is evident that there is no freedom for whatever spirit of love actuates her conduct. it must be admitted that the term "free-love" is applied only to those who openly claim the right to bestow their affections and indulge in the sex-relationship, independent of the marriage ceremony. it matters not whether this claim includes but one mate, or several. it is the demand that they shall not forfeit their right to respect and morality, which is resented by the many who still conform to traditional customs, and which general conformity results in investing the term "free-love" with an unpleasant odor. public opinion puts a premium upon deceit. such intimate matters as marriage and divorce are really no concern of any person other than the contracting or the "distracted" parties. the public is too concerned with trivialities and too little with truth. nothing short of national insanity permits the existence of divorce-courts, and the necessity for married persons desiring to live apart, to slander and abuse each other like pickpockets before they may act upon such a decision. some time ago the public press was filled with the minutest details of the love story of a woman, who had lived for fifteen years hidden from the world because she loved a man well enough to pay that price. she might have insisted that the man obtain a divorce from his wife, to whom he had been married seventeen or more years, and thus win the approval of society. but this woman placed love above all material things, and she preferred to take nothing from the wife. the love of her husband the wife did not possess and, it would seem, did not care for particularly. when through the accident of the man's death the story came to light, the press was flooded with letters from prominent club-women and from clergymen and others, stating upon what terms, if any, this love-recluse should be forgiven. most of them decided that she should not be forgiven; a few seemed to think that if she "repented" and lived thereafter a "pure" life, she might in time be worthy of their forgiveness. such a spectacle! america will yet share the reputation with england of being a nation without a sense of humor. eagerly the representative members of society "rush in where angels fear to tread" upon any and all occasions to air their opinions upon other people's conduct and thus prove their own virtue. the fact that this woman was not in any position to be forgiven or unforgiven; that she was sublimely unconscious of and wholly indifferent to their opinions; that she was unaware of any necessity for either shame or repentance; seems not to have entered the silly brains of these keepers of the public morals. she had loved one man with a fidelity, a whole-heartedness, and a loftiness of self-sacrifice which are as rare as they are great in these days of pretense and hypocritical virtue, and she had paid the full price for her idealism. she did not repine or regret. she only suffered, not alone because of her unenviable notoriety, but because death had taken her loved one from her. surely this was indeed an evidence of real love in an unreal civilization, which should have brought out the fearless sympathy and approval of every good woman in the land. it should have been food for sermons in every pulpit in christendom, that a modern woman preferred solitary confinement with the man she loved to the usual method of procedure, which insists upon the respectable position of wife, no matter at what cost to another. but this is society's estimate of love and truth and virtue, and it is small wonder if real people become indifferent to society's feelings. if the term free-love were really synonymous with sex-promiscuity, we would hear it used in connection with those whose frequent divorces are the subject of press comment, but we do not, because by their outward concession to established ethics they subscribe to the demands of convention. the term, in its opprobrious sense, is almost always applied to women, because for many centuries the men have claimed their right to personal liberty in matters connected with the sex-relation, and until women of the self-respecting and educated class began to openly emulate the example of the male, there was no occasion to use the phrase. men come under its lash only when they, too, concede to women the right to respectability notwithstanding defiance of tradition. all of which goes to prove that the public mind is in reality sufficiently clear on the matter of distinction between sex promiscuity and free-love. it is likewise obvious that the opprobrium that attaches to the phrase is not aimed at promiscuity but at the claim to personal liberty in matters of the sex-relation and defiance of public opinion which demands either ostensible concurrence in its standards, or punishment for openly transgressing them. the result of this unjust (and unfit, in the light of our other advanced ideas) attitude toward the most important function of life, has resulted in one of two lines of conduct as woman's only free choice. either she must resort to deception, hypocrisy and pretense, shielding her secret excursions into forbidden paths, by feigning a scorn and abhorrence for the doctrine of free-love, the while she secretly indulges her sex-nature, more or less promiscuously, or else she is forced to repress all her natural instincts, and not infrequently these instincts are abnormally strong because of pre-natal and inherited influences. both of these courses, the only two which are open to the average woman, are disastrous to the sex, and through them to the race, because women are the mothers of men, and any course which binds and fetters the free spirit of woman hampers race-improvement. repression of the natural functions of her being results in physical disease, and ultimately in mental weakness. unnatural expression of the sex-function, under the ban of compulsion, whether through the compulsion of marriage or through the more flagrant type of commercial prostitution, is death to the best development of the race. women, through the urge of economic necessity, or through the religious ideal of wifely submission and fidelity to their "lord and master" have been compelled to develop a craftiness and an artificial "modesty" which, in most cases, passes for femininity, and deceives, as it is intended to do, the average man. for centuries, a woman's only profession was matrimony. her education for this profession consisted first of all of complete ignorance of all that relates to the most intimate and most vital part of her nature--the function of sex. in the occasional instances where she had inherited a degree of mentality which could not be dwarfed, she must at least feign ignorance; and so, while secretly aware of every emotion of the male, and covertly playing upon his sex-nature in her task of "catching a husband," it is small wonder that women have developed the traits of the cat animal, and are frequently both treacherous and cruel. indeed, it is only because the female principle is the attracting and conserving power of the bi-une sex-love, that she has broken through these mental fetters, and in a few rare instances has hurled defiance at the devils of convention and tradition and claims justification of her own sex-nature, and her right to her own person, despite the epithet of "free-love." woman's partial emancipation in some instances has, no doubt, "gone to her head," as it were, and we see many women confounding license with liberty; mistaking passion for love; and exchanging restraint for debauchery. the average woman is either almost entirely lacking in sex desire or she is abnormally active in that function. in truth, the same state of affairs prevails here, as in so many other phases of our modern life, namely, there is no balance. we are a civilization of extremes; we are one-sided, abnormal; distorted. we are seeking the pivotal point of our destiny, which is the soul, but few have reached that point. those who have not, are groping through the jungles of the mental plane of consciousness, upheld on the one hand by the upward trend of their being, which seeks the level of the soul-conscious state; and held back on the other hand by the trammels of the sense-conscious type from which the race has developed to its present condition. those instances where women indulge in excesses are comparatively rare in proportion to numbers, and they loom large in perspective because of their very incongruity with our ideals of womanly conduct. the vast majority of women may be safely trusted to use their sex-freedom, when it shall have truly arrived, for the purpose of finding that one and only mate which their souls instinctively know to be our rightful heritage--the proverbial "pearl of great price" which insures immortality in the bliss of union with our beloved. love, when freed from the illusions of sense; from the shackles of commercialism; from the bonds of error regarding the meaning and purpose of marriage; freed from selfishness and licentiousness; will solve the question of sex-promiscuity. this for the obvious reason that love seeks its own. if left free to seek, it will find. but, if sex promiscuity is far from being free-love, if the doctrine of sex freedom is fraught with many dangers under our present social system, it must be conceded that no one method of social evolution, thus far devised, can be recommended as ideally perfect. the best that we can hope to do is to emphasize the importance and the sacredness and the innate purity of the sex-relation, while conceding to both sexes all the personal liberty possible. and above all, we should avoid condemnation of those who claim the right to freedom, lest we cover up a condition which can but be the better for being open to the light. particularly should we shield women from the charge of immorality, and licentiousness, when we see them straying down the by-paths of the senses, in their quest for freedom, remembering that the centuries of repression and submission and consequent deception have left their mark upon woman's temperament. man has for ages boasted of his sex virility; of his conquests in what he has termed "love." not infrequently a man's choice of a wife is the result of much seeking in the garden of life; and much sipping of the honey from the various flowers that grow therein. often, indeed, a man frankly tells the woman he would marry that he knows he loves her above all other women for the convincing reason that he has tried so many and none have held him. should a woman make the same confession and draw the same conclusion, he would be horrified. it must be admitted, then, that the term "free-lovers" is applied only to those who defy public opinion and claim their right to respect and morality despite their defiance of society's false standards of morality. these standards are false because they are based upon criticism and censure of results instead of upon motives. society ignores, if it does not actually encourage, frivolous flirtations, and frowns most harshly upon instances of real love. it sets the seal of disapproval and ostracism upon those who, because of circumstances or possibly because of indifference to man-made laws, take their affairs into their own hands and refuse to exhibit either penitence or shame when the world discovers that they neglected the marriage ceremony. if two persons truly love each other and there is nothing to interfere with their undergoing the publicity of a marriage ceremony, well and good, unless, indeed, it is a matter of principle with them that our social customs are a fetich. but there are innumerable instances where there are obstacles to unions which to overcome would involve hardships and suffering to others, or where absurd laws prevent marriage, and where two persons loving each other, prefer to pay the price of social ostracism to separation. such as these lose nothing by society's disapproval, but society does lose something by persecuting those who are independent enough and honest enough to act from motive, rather than from custom, and who insist upon maintaining their self-respect, in the face of criticism. self-respect is not related to braggadocio. it must be admitted that as yet there are few persons who have the courage to endure martyrdom for their convictions, which is, perhaps, just as well, because the majority are unable to distinguish between brazen shamelessness and unashamedness. the average woman will stick to the safe habit of dissembling. women have learned the lesson of the cat too thoroughly to jump immediately from the back-yard of deception to the front porch of truth. in this one respect at least, however much she may indulge her desire for frankness in other directions, a woman will lie valiantly, self-protectingly, and continually, even though she follow in secret the example of the cat, which (seeing its master come home from the hunt with a string of birds, and displaying, with much pride and satisfaction, the results of his prowess), conceived the idea that it would also be a fine thing for her to go forth and kill the canary. but to tabby's surprise, her ability was rewarded with chastisement; whereupon she pondered the question over and over: "how can it be, that what is virtue in man is vice in a cat?" we are not told in the story what conclusion she arrived at, but we can imagine that her conclusion was that which women have arrived at, in a similar situation, to wit: man is unjust and unreasonable, but he is also stronger than i am, and therefore, while i shall follow his example, i shall take good care to hide the feathers. in the meantime, we are crossing the bridge that leads from the jungles of our animal nature, where prowl the beasts of deceit; greed; selfishness; sensuality; vanity; avarice; and domination; to the heights, illumined by love set free. let us not jostle and crowd each other too harshly, while we are en route. but, of course, we are confronted with the pertinent query as to what, if any, absolute standard of morality there can be in matters of the sex relation. freedom is so easily misconstrued into implying sex-promiscuity; and monogamy, the final survival of the various systems of marriage, has in its modern as well as in its ancient aspect so much of coercion; and coercion is cited as the insuperable obstacle to attainment of the supreme state of spiritual sex-union, that the would-be initiate becomes confused, and is lost in a maze of paradoxes. moral distinctions are too fine for the undeveloped man-animal, and that is the reason why man-made laws have been necessary. the objection to them is not in their original intention, but in their failure to die after they have become senile. moral standards are as unstable as the shifting sands of the sea. "our moral sentiments," say letourneau, "are simply habits incarnate in our brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act reputed culpable at paris, or at london, may be, and frequently is, held innocent at calcutta or at pekin." and emerson, the intellectual seer, says: "there is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe." it is a colossal piece of impudent presumption, when we come to think about it, for man to ask the supreme, absolute, infinite power to forgive him. but, if we cannot wrong the universe, we can and we do wrong ourselves and each other as mortals. that is the whole gist of the story. we are constantly wronging ourselves and each other and calling upon god to support us in our strife when god cannot know aught save the call of love. the growing, evolving race, has found it necessary to establish certain loosely defined codes of morals and of social ethics, in the same way that man has bridled the horse that he may control him; incidentally, we may observe that where this bridle formerly included "blinders," it now permits the horse to see whither he is going. perhaps a brief survey of the standards of sexual morality which have upheld (or down-held, just as we look at it) the human race until now, may be illuminating. it has been disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy, the moral condition of the people was higher than under the patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be better than that in which she is the object of coercion. this is evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any circumstances, be as great with the male as with the female. therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic morality is comparative. but from the standpoint of modern idealism matriarchal polygamy seems to be a very low estimate of moral conduct; and from the standpoint of sexual idealism it is a low standard; a standard only a degree higher than that of patriarchal polygamy--a standard which is the lineal descendant of the ethics of the marriage-by-capture period of human evolution, and from which we are today by no means free, owing to economic, religious, and ethical conditions. there is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the unorganized brotherhood of the enlightened, that laws are made for the guidance of the masses. unbridled ignorance is a dangerous force; as dangerous as an unbridled horse, unless it be that the horse exhibits intelligence enough to know where it is headed for and how to avoid obstacles en route. and even as the laws of a community are made for the intellectually undeveloped, so the commandments were compiled for the spiritual guidance of the uninitiated. we trust that it will not shock the sensibilities of the "pious" when we affirm and maintain and insist that the ten commandments are not "from god" in the letter of the statements, as postulated by theology. they bear all the earmarks of the ancient hebrew race-mind, which placed a man's "neighbor's wife" in the same category with "his ox and his ass and his house" and his other property and possessions. there is but one commandment of the most high god, alias eros, and that is so interwoven into the fabric of creation that we cannot break it if we would, although we may and do break ourselves in trying to live in defiance of its immutability. "we cannot wrong the universe!" our moral standards, in so far as they relate to the sexes, are at present the logical descent of hebrew adherence to phallic worship, engrafted into the roman outgrowth of the god-idea. both the hebrew and the roman customs maintained the inferiority and the consequent subjugation of woman, despite the fact that the roman church exalted the virgin as a personality; but the postulate of the church that mary was so exalted by a miracle, which never could be repeated, killed any forlorn hope which might have lurked within the female breast regarding a possible emulation of her example. no other woman might do more than cringe and crawl and beg and whine; or cajole and wheedle and buy the holy mother's intercession, which intercession, even if successful, could at best but secure her an eternal job in the heavenly hierarchy, where, sexless, companionless, mateless, anæmic, she could look all day at a male god whom she could never presume to reach. rather a lonesome outlook for eternity, and it is small wonder that woman got discouraged at the prospect. the miracle is rather that she endured it so long. but the roman system had at least one virtue. it instilled into the mortal mind of its people a sub-conscious realization of the ideal of monogamy; not an ideal monogamy by a long way, but a monogamic ideal. they are quite different; but inasmuch as it is an outward semblance of a more spiritual conception of marriage than that of polygamy, it is the highest ideal yet realized for the many, and does duty in our present day and age, as consistent with our superior civilization. monogamy at least pretends to be a marriage by mutual consent; and even in the pretense there is the germ of a hope; but it would be folly to deny that underneath this appearance of marriage by mutual consent we see the remnants of the traditional idea of the right by purchase, and therefore we have the jealousy that arises by virtue of our property rights. the right by purchase assuredly underlies our present-day marriage system, although it is disguised as economic necessity; as a religious sacrament; and as a suitable or a brilliant "catch"--a type of marriage by capture which forms the ideal of our own upper-class women and which the housemaid copies in her limited way. viewed from the surface evidence, the average woman of today is, as kipling says, far "more deadly than the male." she is more unscrupulous in her methods; more unreasonable in her demands; more devoid of sentiment or sympathy; more fickle in her desires and more nagging in her complaints. but, when all is said and done, we must admit that woman is only expressing her inheritance. when she becomes balanced, the sexes will meet on common ground. woman's demand for better physical environment; for more comfort, and more justice; presages, after all, a higher and a more satisfactory idea of the marriage relationship. underneath this materialistic demand, there is the silent voice of the soul calling for a more ideal marriage relation. it is the materialistic expression of a spiritual urge and will in time rise to higher ground. it is a demand for a better state than that which our grandmothers enjoyed, or endured. we have seen in the history of marriage, that the estimate of sexual immorality has been based, all too frequently, upon woman's disregard for the rights of her husband in her person. for centuries the burden of sustaining a sexual moral standard has rested almost wholly upon the shoulders of the women; and it is therefore natural that the present-day defiant attitude of many women toward the traditional standard should be viewed with alarm; and there is more in this thought of alarm than the mere anxiety on the part of man to hold woman to her appointed task of guardian of marital morality. although men may wander from the home and fireside, it is a peculiar fact that they generally hold to a mental string by which they may find their way back again, very frequently the more contented to be there for their wanderings. but with a woman it is different. once a woman has broken loose from the ties that have bound her to her inherited post of morality-preserver, she seldom goes back again, but keeps on her way until she finds that for which she seeks, or gives up the search of her own volition. is this, then, evidence that it is a woman's first duty to "stay put" when matrimonial exigencies have placed her in a specific "pocket" of the matrimonial billiard-table? we believe not; and this belief is founded upon the fact that the female principle, which is, we admit, the centralizing, centripetal force in the cosmos, is not always manifested in the form of woman. the balanced individual is bi-sexual, even as the balanced "twain-one" is bi-sexual. if man was all male principle, and woman all female principle they would not be complementary, but antithetical. each must be balanced within himself and herself before they can merge into each other. affinities are numerous, but mates are found but once; otherwise, the problems that are being discussed here would never have arisen. if, then, as has been shown in the fact that only counterpartal unions are real, eternal and spiritually indissoluble; and that only true mates can thus unite, and when thus united have no desire to wander, what becomes of our ideas of sexual infidelity? since the very law of the cosmos has seen to it that we cannot be untrue to the only one who seemingly has a right to our fidelity in the sex relation and since this union can become general only by freeing love from bondage, what becomes of the laboriously built up ethics of our social intercourse? are they to be abandoned as of no value? we can almost hear the storm of protest which the righteous reader may feel in duty bound to let loose at such a suggestion, if for no other reason than that protest is the accepted way of proving one's own virtuous tendencies. in the early seventies, a woman named virginia woodhull brought down upon her defenseless head the un-christian-like abuse of the christian public by announcing a doctrine which seems to have been nothing more dreadful than that of an equal standard of morality for men and women. the poor woman died broken-hearted, it is said; and yet nothing that we can unearth regarding her personal life and habits would seem to have warranted the cruel gibes that were hurled at her. the dear old lady lived a most continent, even ascetic life. but the world has made rapid strides since that time, and we trust that the urgent need of something reasonable and feasible upon the sex question will inspire the reader to an unprejudiced review of this chapter. we would that it were possible to supply a modicum of understanding with each copy of this volume; but since it is not, we must take our chance with the average. let us reason together: expediency is the mother of morality in social organizations, which have, of necessity, unstable, ever-changing standards. these standards represent, for some, ideals yet to be attained; while for others they become mere mileposts on the path of evolution. the individual reaches, and then passes, an accepted ideal; gradually when a sufficient number, constituting a majority, have reached this ideal, it ceases to be a standard for the social organization, and another ideal is substituted. the laws of the cave-man called for self-restraint exercised toward his own immediate clan, and this necessity for self-restraint was based upon nothing higher than the law of self-preservation; but gradually the sphere widened; from clan to nation. so do our ethical and moral standards enlarge. traditional concepts are not necessarily wrong, but they are almost sure to be inadequate to evolving mankind. formerly, sexual morality consisted of the reservation of the person of a sister to the use of her brothers. any infringement upon this moral code was punished by death to the woman and to her out-clannish lover. and we have today an analogous example, although we are glad to say, it is not the highest standard; still, if one's husband or wife violates the marriage vows, it is more condonable, if the co-respondent be of the wealthy class; and in monarchies it is accounted an honor to have been selected as the king's favorite. the institution of prostitution which exists everywhere today has its standards in the different countries; and the white races seem to think that their morality is superior to that of the orientals because the social standing of prostitutes in the orient is not irretrievably lost; they are permitted, in the event of marriage, to resume social equality with other women. among white people, prostitutes have no other recourse than to sink lower and lower, until utter degradation is reached. we believe that the oriental view of the situation is a far higher standard of morality than is our occidental attitude. if there can lawfully be such an organization as is now being proposed as desirable in large cities, namely, a "morals police," it certainly should be instigated by a more sane purpose than that which is at the root of our present police guardianship. attempts at suppression of prostitution have hitherto been conducted on the principle that the women of that class are objectionable to the sight of our mothers and sisters and wives, and the sinfulness of the hopelessly "fallen" ones has been the theme of press and pulpit. and all the time the women of the half-world have resented this attitude as being unjust, and unfair, and hypocritical, and untenable. they have known that if the act of selling their bodies to men is a crime against the community, then more than half the feminine world is criminal. and they have contended that since the "respectable" women were neither contacted nor exploited by them, they cannot see wherein they offend society, provided the laws of sanitation and segregation are complied with. in other words, they have said that it is none of society's business whether they sell themselves to one man or to a number, since they must pay the penalty. and their attitude is relatively right. it is none of society's business whether a woman is a prostitute or not, considered as an offense against society. that is the wrong attitude toward this condition of our social disorder. no prostitute offends you or me. she, poor creature, offends herself, and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that make for such degradation. we are conniving with her to barter her birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than that of true love, and when we regard virtue as a matter of physical contact. if we judge from the many plays which we see on the boards; if we are influenced by the press and the pulpit; we must acknowledge that the general idea of sexual morality is an absurd one. the inference is that one special organ of a woman's physical body is the sole custodian of all virtue and all morality. the accepted idea seems to be that if a woman is married her body is then the property of her husband. her emotions, her mind, her heart, her happiness, her preferences do not count for anything. the one act is made all-important. on the husband's side, if he provides for his wife and family, he is justified in exacting the sole right to the wife's body, and although his own heart and caresses may be given to another, he justifies himself, and the wife not infrequently feels satisfied, as long as he provides well for her. what is this but prostitution? the principle is the same as in the case of the recognized prostitute, although the conditions are easier for the woman, and less cheapening of her womanhood, but the difference is only in degree. now, a singular idea of fidelity, a direct antithesis to the one just mentioned, prevails among prostitutes, when married either by law or by selection. they may surrender their physical body to another, for money, and according to their idea they may yet remain true to the husband or lover, because the matter is a business transaction. the other man has only what he has purchased, namely, the physical body. but should the woman permit another man to arouse in her a sexual response; should another invade her mind, absorb her thoughts, or engage her heart, the husband is outraged and the woman realizes her unfaithfulness. all of which goes to show that up to the present time sexual morality has in itself no absolute uniform standard by which it can be measured and satisfactorily and convincingly presented to all persons, as have other phases of morality, such as honesty, justice, mercy, generosity, friendship, fidelity to country, and self-sacrifice to the good of humanity. and although all these moral qualities have their bearing upon sexual morality, they do not establish a uniform ideal of sexual morality. honesty is honesty whether in paris, london, calcutta, or pekin, but as has been previously observed, sexual morality is determined by local conditions. can there, then, be established a universal standard of sexual morality? there can, but its universal acceptance is a remote probability, albeit it will arrive some day. first of all, the sex relation must be absolutely free from sale; coercion; or barter; whether within the respectable "sale" of matrimony or of recognized prostitution. it must be free from any erroneous idea of marital duty; it must be exalted, reverenced, deified, in all its aspects, from the impregnation of a plant, to the sexual embrace of human lovers. an utopian dream it appears, if we note but one side of the picture. if we consider the lightness with which so many men look upon the physical form of women; and if we realize the attitude of so many women toward men, in their conflict with life, using the age-old dowry from mother eve, of sex, as a weapon of defense and of offense; if we listen to the ribald songs that offend our ears and nauseate our souls, not only in music-halls and on the streets, but in supposedly cultured homes; and above all if we contemplate the uncleanness of mind displayed by those who are really in earnest in their endeavor to uplift the moral tone of the world. these latter are, by far, the worst enemies to the regeneration of sex. a wise man once said, "save me from my friends; i can protect myself against my enemies"--and so it is in this instance. most "civic-leaguers" and members of "vice-commissions" (why that name, anyway?) are infected with the bacteria of sex-degradation. they really require a lengthy process of mental disinfection, before attempting to handle so delicate a problem as this one of sexual uplift. a woman member of a young people's civic league of the second largest city in the united states recently declared in public print, of the beautiful and chaste painting "september morn," that it was "lewd, filthy, and suggestive of unclean things." this type of woman is intrusted with the task of teaching youthful minds; polluting them with the blasphemous affirmation that the creation of the father-mother god of the universe is "lewd and filthy!" let us get this truth implanted in our mentality, as it is inrooted in our souls, namely: sex is always the purest, the holiest, and the most sacred thing in the universe--because god is him-her-self, bi-sexual. the righteousness of it cannot be determined by so fickle a thing as man's customs; cannot be dependent upon mortal laws. this statement, indisputable as it is, will nevertheless start a chain of thought which may lead to confusion; and it is because of this tendency to confusion that the real issue is so frequently avoided. but let us see if we may not dispel the confusion by a system of logical deduction. one thing is certain. the present condition of the sex-problem is sadly chaotic. if we cannot hope to clarify it to the comprehension of the average, we may at least do so for some. one of the first objections to the acceptance of the statement that the sex relation is, per se, always right, will be found in the conclusion to which the average mind immediately jumps: "ah, then it is right for men and women who are depraved and licentious to live as they do; it is right for husbands and wives to deceive each other, and while pretending to be faithful to their marriage vows, to secretly carry on flirtations and intrigues with other men and other women!" ask one hundred men or one hundred women this question: "is the sex-relation right or wrong?" the men will declare that it is "right sometimes and wrong sometimes." the women, almost as a unit, will do the same. occasionally a woman will be found sufficiently illumined to give a sane answer. following up the thoughtless answer with the request to illustrate, and the reply will be something like this: "well, if people are married it is right, but if they are not married it is wrong;" and even as this silly answer is given, the person answering knows that it is puerile; but since the public mind prefers hypocrisy to truth, few have the temerity, and fewer yet have the capability, to utter truth. it would be as sensible to say that it is right for the sun to shine sometimes and wrong for it to shine some other times. it is right for the sun to shine. this is all the answer that there is, and all that is needed. whether the sunshine bestows life and health, or decay and death, is entirely "up to us." the sun does its part. it is fulfilling the inexorable law of nature, and is therefore right. but of even greater importance in the universe is this law of sex. the law is forever and always right. our concept of it may be right or it may be diseased. as a matter of fact it is, in all too many cases, diseased. if it were not, there would be no disease in the world. how is it possible to have a perfect flower--a healthy, normal and wholesome sprout from a diseased root? the root of all life is sex. we have thought disease into it, and the only remedy is to change our thought toward the function. this may be done by realizing that the sex-relation is always pure, holy, sacred--the bi-une god of the universe. this statement is quite different from saying that people are always right or sacred in their sex-relations. to say that the sex-relation is always right under the institution of marriage and always wrong outside of it, is a lie. a lie cannot bring back health to either a person or a principle. truth is the only thing that can make us whole--and the first office of truth, as everyone knows, is to make us free. we cannot be whole until we are free, and the essential thought to be free from, is an attempt to keep alive the lie that the righteousness of sex, per se, depends upon marriage. does the libertine believe in the sacredness of sex? never. does the prostitute claim for herself spotless purity? if she did, she would not sell herself for money. do men and women who are living in secret unfaithfulness hold exalted ideals of sex? if they did, they would not maintain a life of deceit. these people live as they do, because they have divorced sex from love. they agree absolutely with the blind "moralists" who regard sex as a human plaything--something which may be called bad one day and good the next, according to whether it is viewed from afar or near. does anyone imagine that when society shall have established the "one standard of morality" replacing the double standard which now persecutes the woman only, for infringement upon society's one demand, that of concealment, that the answer to sex-degradation will have been found? a single standard is an improvement upon the old habit of stoning the woman only and letting the man go free. but why stone anybody? history fails to record a single instance where society has succeeded in improving either itself or its victims by the procedure. the best that can be said of the stoning habit is that it distracts attention from ourselves. persons who hold exalted ideas of the function of sex, realizing that a force so eternal and universal must be disassociated from man-made regulations, are not in danger. such as these will not foster deceit nor profligacy, any more than they will cringe and crawl under the lash of society's disapproval, should they encounter it. they know that if they would find the highest good, they must serve truth first of all, no matter how high the price of such devotion. chapter x the pathway of love love is the great reality. everything else in this world of experience is either tributary to love or it is an unsatisfying substitute for love; or a counterfeit of love. love is the one cohesive, unifying, constructive force, and it is at the same time the only liberating force. hatred, as exemplified in warfare, may sometimes appear to free a people from the rule of a tyrant, but unless love be at the root of the "casus belli," other and more direful disasters will follow in the wake of seeming victory. there is an erroneous idea, quite general among christian people, that death frees the spirit from the bonds that hold it to the mortal and the incomplete. death only drops off the garment of the flesh; there are innumeral sheathings yet to be shed, before the soul grows the wings with which to soar to the celestial realms, where love reigns supreme. love is the only power on earth or in the spheres, that can liberate us either from our own prejudices and hatreds and fears; or from the limitations and attractions of the animal-man. love is, indeed, the alpha and omega of life. "there is no other god but thee," has been the cry of every race on this globe, apostrophizing the unrecognized little baby-god, personified and presented to the race-mind as horus; or as krishna, or as christ; but always it is love, the invisible, the beautiful one, who is adored. ingersoll with his wonderful gift of word-painting, and inspired by that great love of humanity which characterized him, has said: "love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. it is the morning and evening star. it shines on the babe and sheds its radiance on the tomb. it is the mother of art; inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. it is the air and light of every heart; builder of every home; kindler of every fire on the hearth; it was the first dress of immortality. it fills the world with melody, for music is the voice of love. love is the magician, the enchanter that changes worthless things to joy and makes right royal queens and kings of common clay. it is the perfume of that wonderful flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion that divine swoon, we are less than beasts, but with it--earth is heaven and we are gods." it would be superfluous to state here, that love has ever been recognized as the supreme prize, lacking which all other gifts of life are worthless. it is admitted that love is almost the only thing in this age of commercial supremacy which can not be bought. though it may be bartered for. although it be unreservedly admitted that love is the all-powerful and magic solvent which transmutes all baser emotions into the higher, the general inference will be drawn that this type of love is not sexual. it will be termed parental; humanitarian, self-sacrificing, or altruistic love, and the point may be taken that if humanity had developed nothing higher than the love which is manifested in the sex instinct, the world would be a sorry one indeed, since sexual love, as we have witnessed its ascent from protoplasm to man, has been, in most instances, a blind urge toward personal gratification, not more lofty than the need of supplying the craving for food. this is quite true of animals, and of the lower types of animal-man; not necessarily the earliest types of men, but the lowest types, which we still have with us but happily in decreasing numbers. but even among animals we find evidences of something vague, indefinite, but insistent which leads the animal to exhibit what we term a tendency toward _selection_; and in the animal also, through the exigencies of sexual love, we find parental love, and here again we note a peculiarity which ascends also into the family life of humans, namely, that in some instances what we have called the maternal love, the gentle, care-taking, guarding and protecting love, is demonstrated by the male. this is less common with the animals than with man, but it is sometimes found and proves the existence of the evolutionary trend toward balance in the individual, as well as in the family. if maternal love were confined strictly to the female parent, and the procreative instinct were the legitimate inheritance of the male only, we could never hope for a perfect sexual union, for the very cogent reason that the love of the male would never equal that of the female, since our capacity grows by becoming diffused. as the world stands today, parental love takes a higher place in the life of the family, and of the nation and of the race (the family on a larger scale), than does love of husband or wife; and over and above even parental love we have been accustomed to place the love of god. now we know that there are many who claim that their love of this abstract god supercedes that of love for their family, but we may tacitly agree to take this statement as either an admission of fear of the unknown or the realization that there are heights and depths of the love-principle which they have not yet penetrated, something to which the spirit soars. they intuitively recognize that there is some perfected state to which we aspire, else human love would never flower into its full possibilities. and so when we declare that we love god above all other loves; more than wife or husband; children or parents; we are but admitting that we realize in our interior nature that we have not yet loved any _human being_ with as great a love as we are capable of. if any one holds the mistaken idea--and it is one that is very generally held--that the perfect sex union can be attained by no finer phase of emotion than that expressed in procreation; and that in order to develop the highest quality of sex-love, he must eschew all other phases of manifestation, and concentrate the forces of his being in the direction of sexual expression, he will meet with dire defeat. the laws of the cosmos cannot be broken. we are constantly confronted with the admonition, the child of fear, to "be careful not to break the laws of god." we need not worry at all about the laws of god, whether we call these cosmic law, or nature, or divine providence or something else. our concern is with ourselves. neither need we worry whether our neighbor obeys the moral code as we see it. so long as he does not refuse to us our right to follow our own ideals, we may permit him the same liberty. god, as manifested in the cosmic law of transmutation, will take care of him-her-self. morality can not be extinguished. love cannot be killed by men. we can only hurt ourselves in trying. love is neither fickle, capricious nor sly, notwithstanding tomes of seeming evidence to the contrary. love is the most perfect mathematician in the universe. with whatsoever measure a man or a woman metes out love, with that same measure it is returned. neither is love blind. love is depicted thus, because he is not concerned with appearances, but with realities. he is not gazing without, but within. he is doing his best, the poor little neglected love-god, with the material at hand since he must fulfill the law of his being. he seeks to unite lovers in their interior nature, but as each of the would-be happy pair is bent on gazing without, instead of within, he is handicapped. and when unhappiness follows, they blame the blindness of love, instead of realizing that he is depicted with a bandage over his eyes, to indicate that love is an interior quality. so too, the egyptian god horus, the god of love, was depicted with his finger on his lips, to typify the truth that true love is not noisy, blustering, jealous, burning, ranting, protesting. he is silent; soft; melting; blissful; magnetic; _uniting_. our noisy civilization, seeking happiness in things, mistakes protestations and appearances for realities, and so modern marriages are consummated on this basis, and the caricaturists have depicted cupid as having exchanged his love-darts for dollars, but this is a slander on the little god who wouldn't know a dollar if he could see one. "it is not true that one knows what one sees; one sees what one knows," declared a clever frenchman, and as the average modern bride and bridegroom are forced, or think they are, by modern standards of living, to know dollars better than they know love, their perverted vision sees cupid's arrows tipped with the dollar mark. but even the dollar mark spells us, united, and if they are indeed truly united in love, wealth untold is theirs, and if they are not thus united then indeed are they poor in happiness, which is the only real poverty. but even in the very failure to attain happiness in things, married couples have learned or they are learning, that there is an interior nature which must be considered if marital happiness is expected. in all too many instances it may take many experiences and the road to the heights may for a time be lost but let us remember that "love never faileth." it has been said that "love makes gods of men," and we have taken this phrase as a charming bit of hyperbole, whereas it is a literal truth, because when two individual souls have rounded and balanced their natures by means of love, they come together in an eternal union, and are immortal; "in their flesh they have seen god," and the pilgrimage is ended. there is a phrase current at the present day, belonging to slang, that universal language of the masses, "the volapuk of the melting-pot." it comes to us simultaneously with the affinity-wave and the soul-mate quest; and it is both pertinent and timely, although by no means always wisely applied. it is the expression "i have found my seek-no-farther; he (or she) is the real thing." life is a succession of experiences in the quest of immortality. immortality would be a curse instead of a blessing if attained alone. even the attainment of so unworthy an ambition as riches is a mockery if unshared by others. fame is like a ruined and deserted castle to the one who has achieved it, unless there be the one other to share it. even the philosopher, the philanthropist, the humanitarian, he whose love nature is supposed to find satisfaction in making others happy--can not realize the completeness and fullness of joy, unless there is the one mate with whom he may share his altruistic work; or lacking this, he looks to the life beyond for the completeness which he does not find here. renan says: "one reason why religion remains on such a material plane for many is because they have never known a great and vitalizing love; a love where intellect, spirit and sex finds its perfect mate." verily, love is the only vitalizing power in the universe; and when denied the interior union which should exist between a conjoining pair, love does the best he can, and infuses into the relationship as much of the divine nectar as they will accept. _there is no impure love._ i repeat: there is no impure love. the impurity is in the mortal mind of man, obstructing his vision until he fails to see the purity of that which fain would lift him from the slough of despond to the heights of bliss. if love be always pure, if it be always the uplifting, unifying, constructive power of the universe, what becomes of the apparent fact that men have sinned for love of woman; that for love of man, women have lost their self-respect, their hope of heaven; and have sunk to depths below that of the brute creation? what becomes of the all too many instances where human nature appears to love vice; to be under the spell, as it were of a passionate love for all that is ignoble and defiling? how, then, can we say that love is always pure when it leads to such disaster? love never leads to disaster, though love may follow wheresoever the erring mind of man leads, and thus love is all too frequently dragged from his true place of exaltation, and brought into the arena of human conflict. love is no fighter; he never opposes; he only concurs; he unites if there is anything with which he can establish an affinity of union. egoism is the arch-enemy of love, selfishness is the manifestation of egoism. selfishness seeks to possess; it is selfishness that causes a man to commit crime, in order that he may bedeck the woman he loves with jewels and fine raiment. he is buying her bodily presence with the baubles which he vainly believes will bind her to him; and he must be taught the lesson of the yoga sutras "not this way; not this way;" and the more worthy he is of redemption, the more certainly will he be caught in the trap of his own making, lest he really perish; whereas by seeming defeat, outward defeat, he may learn the true path of inwardness. certainly love is the only guide to whom he may safely trust his redemption. if a woman really sinks into the depths of degradation through what appears to be love, it is because selfishness and vanity have temporarily supplanted love. but there is another side to the question. society has very erroneous ideas of success and failure; and in looking at these opposite ends of the same pole, society may be standing on it's head. a story illustrative of this inverted view of success is worth repeating. a young englishman of aristocratic family, tired of the inanities of social life, and denied the privilege of entering the commercial world, emigrated to the south seas. it was reported at home that he had married a native samoan woman and was living the simple life of the islanders. english society, when his name was mentioned at all, spoke of him with hushed voices and with a "what a pity y' know" manner as of one who had sunk below the depths of ordinary failure. subsequently a friend visited samoa and found the young man enjoying life and evidently supremely content. in the course of conversation the visitor chanced to speak of a mutual friend who had been rather wild in the days when they both knew him, and thinking to impart agreeable news to the exile, the visitor eagerly assured him that "sir arthur is respectably married and settled down now" whereupon the self-constituted exile commiseratingly responded with: "what a pity; and he was such a decent sort, too." so we may see that there is much in the point of view. happiness is the final test of success or failure; and we may trust this test, because no one can be happy in any other than the progressive, upward-trending life. dissipation has never been a satisfactory substitute for happiness. wealth is valueless to the possessor if it shuts out love; and if love be present, wealth holds but an inconsequential place. however it be, the pathway of love is long; and between the force of attraction which unites two atoms in chemical affinity, and the union of two perfected human beings, in whom love and wisdom are balanced, there are many degrees of the manifestation of love, and the question inevitably arises "what shall we do with those marriages that are not yet perfect?" if, as here premised, there is in the entire universe but one mate for each man and each woman; and if the union of perfect mates is the only truly spiritual union; if this union precludes the possibility of "temptation" in any other direction, what is to be done with all the marriages which we know to be imperfect; wherein it is evident that soul-union is not present? are they immoral, and are they to be abandoned? and is marital infidelity in such instances immoral? it is. infidelity is always immoral, because all deceit and deception and dishonesty are immoral. let us see what constitutes infidelity, irrespective of marriage. infidelity is to be unfaithful to a trust imposed; to betray a confidence; to break a promise. this is the abstract definition and it is the only definition that will withstand analysis, whether applied to the marriage vows or to other promises and pledges. obviously the answer to this question, then, is to either not impose upon oneself or upon another "vows"; or, if we do so impose, not to break them; but if vows are not to be broken, they may, thank heaven, be dissolved. and surely the marriage ceremony of the future will not impose vows or promises, because intelligent men and women must rise superior to the necessity for bonds and promises. a marriage ceremony is, even at its very highest, when the contracting persons are spiritually mated, nothing more than announcement to the society of which they are members, of the fact of their mutual agreement to live outwardly, as well as inwardly, in sexual union. we make too much of the marriage ceremony and too little of the fitness for marriage. the business of the clergyman is altogether too much confined to seeing whether a couple is "respectably" bonded, and altogether too little as to whether they are spiritually united. possession! that is the word that spells unhappiness, in married life; each wants to possess the other; neither one tries for the spirit of union. possession cannot be divorced from deceit. vows and promises challenge us to keep them, and because our pathway leads upward to freedom, we constantly find these vows and promises staring us in the face and daring us to advance. we must substitute mutual confidence for vows. vows are childish and puerile. if we cannot keep faith without vows then are we sadly lacking in faith and should cultivate it by offering to others the freedom of action we would have ourselves. when the time comes, as it will, that a husband and wife can "talk it over" in a friendly, mutually helpful frame of mind, when either one is attracted by another, there will be no further opportunity for infidelity; and the sooner we rid the world of a belief in sin and immorality, the sooner will love reign. it is said of the sages of india that they can live in the jungles and the ferocious tigers will not harm them; how do they accomplish this? they have disassociated themselves from ferocity. they do not desire to crush or kill the tiger. their minds are so filled with love and compassion that there is no point of connection between them and the destructive instinct in the beast. when we get away from the fear of "impure" love; when we get away from the tremendous load of belief in evil which keeps the back bent and the eyes lowered to the dust, we will be ready to meet the pure and perfect love when it comes; and when we are fit for it we will meet it and when we have found this pearl of great price, all doubt and fear, all jealousy; all dissatisfaction will vanish. there will be no fear of "losing" each other. the union is an interior one, and even though "seas divide and mountains vast, rear their proud crests 'tween thee and me," the call of soul to soul will be felt and answered. byron says: "there are two souls of equal flow, whose gentle streams so calmly run, that when they part--they part? oh no, they cannot part, those souls are one." with a sentiment such as this between two beings, what need for vows and promises, and bonds? it is customary for writers on the sex question to emphatically, even feverishly, emphasize the fact that they have no intention of implying that they would do away with the bonds of matrimony; and although this conclusion is inevitable where one's intellect is active and the faculty of deduction brought into play, yet the false modesty that prevails and the prejudices that blind the eyes of the multitude, and above all, the tendency of the undeveloped race-mind to impute personal motives to such as would, if permitted, lead them to a freer, and consequently a purer life, impel the writer to deny that which is, finally, the very point at issue. in the interest of truth, we are compelled to state that we would do away with "bonds." we would substitute therefor mutual agreements, subject to renewal or repudiation within certain defined and mutually helpful conditions. vows and bonds and oaths are the crutches of the crippled human race. we need not always walk lame. it may be argued that man is still largely animal; yes, but the surest way to keep him so is to treat him like an animal. if we remind him that he is also a man and that he may be a god; and if we point out to him the way in which he may accomplish this transmutation, no man has so little intelligence that he will not attempt to follow, when assured that god-hood means a bliss so great that he can hardly imagine it; that it means cessation of the "endless round of births and deaths" from which gautama, the buddha, sought to free himself. mankind has always been promised immortality through spiritual union--with what? an abstract principle called god, or aum or any other impersonal formless all-inclusive being? no, but with his mate. on this point we trust that there will not remain any obscurity. there is no higher god than love. there is no higher love than sexual-love in its highest manifestation. the more we truly love, the more love flows into and through our consciousness, until from a tiny little pearly drop of the "wine of life" we ascend to the olympian heights and imbibe floods of the "nectar of the gods." even the libertine, that pauper in the realm of love, wants the perfect life. his soul is forever hungry for that which he gropingly tries to catch and chain and possess; and which by virtue of these same desires will evade him until he ceases thus to seek, and instead of demanding possession of the object of his desires, he asks for union. union is interior; possession is always and ever limited to exterior contact. they who would enter the sanctuary and defile the "holy of holies" are saved from such a load of self-inflicted sin; they cannot if they would. there is but one key which will open the golden gate to heaven. the way chosen by the libertine is in exactly the opposite direction. are all marriages that are not soul-mate unions immoral? most certainly not. are all unions that are not married immoral. most certainly not. we have made an attempt to define sexual immorality and we have concluded that as yet there is no absolute standard in civilized or uncivilized ethics, since, as letourneau points out, what is immoral in pekin or calcutta may be moral in paris or london. truth is adherence to facts in whatever section of the world. tolerance; sympathy; charity; may be clearly defined wherever we roam. sexual immorality has no stable standards. we here suggest one and submit that it is the only one possible of universal concurrence. it is based upon personal freedom. wherever the sexual relation is made a convenience; or where either one marries in the face of his or her own realization that there is no love bestowed, that relationship is immoral. thus, it will be seen that sexual immorality is independent of marriage, and cannot be estimated by law. marriage for money; for position; for convenience; for anything other than a desire for mutual helpfulness, is immoral. indulgence in the sexual act for selfish gratification without regard to the welfare of each other; for money; or pastime; or for any motive other than a reverential expression of an unselfish love, is immoral and is a prostitution of the divine office of sex. but, though not all sex relationships can be perfect and eternal, yet all may, if we desire, be moral. and all moral and sexual relationships must, and will, lead to perfect sex-union, whenever the time comes that either one is ready for the completement. this truth need not, and will not, disrupt any happy marriages. if the church had not made the mistake of teaching the fallacy that sex-love is a strictly earthly or mortal function, divorcing sex from pure love; and if the theology had not tried to substitute the love of, and union with, an abstract creator for love of mates in soul-union, perhaps there would be exhibited less impatience of the restraints of marriage. but with a cat-and-dog married life on the one hand and the prospect of an inane, blank, and sexless union with an abstract god-idea on the other, it is small wonder that mortal consciousness has rebelled, and has decided to take its chances with hell, rather than to forego the happiness which is intuitively sensed as being the direct prerogative of perfect mating. if this god-idea had not been presented as an eternal, unescapable finality, there might have been hope; but to fly about a throne endlessly, night and day, singing, "i want to be nothing; nothing; only to lie at his feet"--the prospect appalls! small wonder that the conclusion has been deduced that "life is too short" for anything like domestic misery, when domestic happiness is the only happiness we know, and that is to cease at death! but, if we take the truthful view of marriage and of heaven; if we realize that mortal life is experience; that as we learn by experience, we acquire knowledge; as we accumulate knowledge, we begin to glimpse wisdom; and that when we have sufficient wisdom and sufficient love, we graduate into the classification of god-hood, immortality; and that immortality means union with our mate; sex-union, in all that constitutes its highest and most satisfying aspect as we know it, with infinitely more of beauty and love and bliss, there is an incentive to aspire. love is the only way that immortality can be attained. it cannot be "taken," like degrees of secret societies. it cannot be purloined, or feigned. fear has never made people good. the doctrine of punishment has never deterred the sinner. even in his apparent acceptance of the doctrine of sin and of consequent punishment, the poor sinner has known better. humanity has progressed in spite of the fear that has dwarfed our stature. in the new day, with hope ahead and fear transmuted into a wise patience, this earth may yet be a "fit dwelling-place for the gods." leigh hunt says: "love is a personal proof that something good and earnest and eternal is meant us; such a bribe and foretaste of bliss being given us to keep us in the lists of time and progression; and when the world has realized what love urges it to obtain, perhaps death will cease and all the souls which love has created crowd back at its summons to inhabit their perfected world." we are prone to consider such statements as only so many beautiful words--elusive, ethereal, and descriptive of something that is always in the future; but if it be always in the future it will never be ours; we cannot catch up with it; and thus it becomes a mockery. these prophetic utterances are literal truths. let us confide to you a little secret: we are as much spirit now as we will be when death has unloosed the bindings of our disguise--the body. the real of each of us is what we are now, in our interior nature. while we are building the business which sustains our physical body; while we are studying law or medicine or philosophy or religion or whatsoever, we are at the same time developing the interior nature which we are now, and which we will be when the life of the body ceases. not all business men are alike, and yet, if business were their only reality, they must needs be all the same for employing the same methods. not all doctors are alike although they graduate from the same school of medicine. the inner entity that we are, stands or falls in the final test, by the motives; the desires; the sentiments; the sympathies; the generosities; the forgiveness; the kind impulses; the pities; the charities; the tolerances; we feel while we are apparently engrossed in the outer life. together, these little impulses, perhaps forgotten in the rush of the day's seemingly important business affairs, come finally to be the ladder by which we climb to the spiritual heights where the bliss of true and perfect, melting, merging, liquid-love, of the one and only mate awaits us. one thing more. this also is a secret. perhaps you will not even believe it, but it is true: poets are the practical members of our crazy civilization. business men are practical only when they are also, and above all, idealists. chapter xi the law of transmutation external life is a succession of picture blocks with which we have builded our thoughts into shapes and forms manifest to the mortal senses. but back of every act there is the invisible ideal which prompted it, so that to the one who has the interior vision; one who looks at life from the citadel of his own interior nature instead of merely sensing it by external contact, every material thing tells its interior story; everything has an esoteric or occult meaning. it is said that mystic truths have been veiled in symbolical language; but to those who know the language of symbolism, there is no veil; what seems so is due to the refractory character of the mind which is limited to sense consciousness. there are two words much used in this day of the dawn which give the key to the trend of the cosmic cycle upon which the earth has entered. the word "union," or its equivalent, enters into almost every phase of our busy life as well as into ethical and philosophical thought. this word, with much that it stands for, has superseded the word "agreement," or "combination" or "partnership," formerly used. union means something more interior, than do these other words, even when applied to commercial issues. the business man says to his partners "let us unite on this question." they are already partners, but unless there is a unity of thought and ideals, their partnership is an unsatisfactory and unfruitful one. we have labor unions which are intended to suggest a solidarity of effort; a merging of interests; a welding together into one thought-force, of those who enter the organization. the fullness of meaning of this word "union" is not adequately expressed in the words lodge, or club, or any of the terms used to designate an organization of men in social or commercial combination. in union there is strength; but in partnership, or in clubs, there may be no quality of union, although there is the outward bond of fellowship. "i shall look into this" we say when we want to know more of a subject than appears on the surface. we want to know the within. we want to fathom the interior meaning; to get below the surface, or the appearance of it. this is the other word of vital import--the word _within_. we see it everywhere like a signpost directing our footsteps toward home. the master jesus said that the immortal kingdom was within, but the christian world evidently has not believed him. he also told those who would listen to him, that there was but one commandment that was truly spiritual, but as he did not come to destroy anything that existed, but only to transmute it, he paid no attention to the commandments already in vogue, but contented himself with a repetition of the one and only commandment of the father-mother god principle which begat him: "that ye love one another." now we are being told from the housetops and from the streets and through all the channels of the physical senses to look within. that which you are--not what you appear to be to the eyes of the sense-conscious--but that which you are in your interior nature, is what counts to you. the writer who writes because he is paid to write salable stuff, harps upon the necessity for "efficiency" in the commercial game; but when the word is impartially considered efficiency consists in the long run in reliability, and reliability is measured by one's honesty; integrity; square-dealing; wise judgment--interior qualities all. it matters not whether the skin be white or black or brown or yellow or green; whether you are of imposing stature or but four feet tall; it is what you are within that constitutes true efficiency. so the kingdom whatever it may be whether of heaven or hell; of love; or of power; or of ambition; the kingdom is within. the source of your power is in the interior of your nature. if we go to slang, which offers the line of least resistance to the cosmic law, we find that the cue has been given over and over again to those who are interiorly awake to receive it. "you are not in on this," has been said to one who was left out of some supposedly desirable thing; or "you are not _in_ it," meaning that you are not up to the required standard. even as the walls of a building only imperfectly indicate the nature of that which is within, that which the building stands for; that which it symbolizes, so physical appearances are symbolical hieroglyphs of the inner nature. "learn to look into the hearts of men" admonishes the spiritual teacher. "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he." the character of the heart is the test, and though a man's lips utter words that are at variance with his inner nature, yet if we have learned to look within, we are not deceived. this then is the key to the kingdom--interior vision. words are like buildings; like personalities; they have their exterior and their interior message. knowledge may be accumulated; piled up like a mountain of possessions. but knowledge may not bestow one grain of true wisdom. it is only as we extract the interior message from knowledge that we attain wisdom. we possess knowledge and we _find_ wisdom, when we have transmuted that knowledge into its interior meaning. the fundamental difference between mysticism and theology is a difference founded upon this axiom. the true mystic penetrates to the interior nature of manifestation and gets the message of experience. mysticism excludes nothing. it includes the manifest with the interior; it penetrates the outer and seeks the interior; but never does the true mystic confound the spirit with the letter; never does he mistake the external for the reality; the symbol for the message. suppose that what is generally called the practical side of life were the only reality. what would be the inevitable conclusion of the thinker if he were to consider only the outer, the manifest, the visible results of a given achievement? he would conclude that civilization is insane. if we did not know with an intuitional grasp of truth that all this which we call "marvels of achievement" is symbolical of what man is in his interior nature, it would be the veriest folly. what, for example, is there in a modern sky-scraper indicative of man's advanced civilization? with millions of acres of unused land, it would be inconceivable folly to project into the inoffensive atmosphere twenty-eight stories of wood and iron merely to buy and sell the products of man's brain and hands. but while our twentieth century feverish activities are ostensibly engaged in the external world, they are symbolizing, embodying, teaching if we will but learn, the fact of the evolution of man's interior nature. sky-scrapers are indicative of the heights to which we are aspiring; to which we are climbing; air-ships only tell us that man in his interior nature--in his reality--is not a creeping, crawling thing, chained to the earth. he may, if he will, soar into ethereal realms. he has wings, and if he so desires, he may use them. wireless telegraphy would be a much less consequential discovery, did it not foreshadow the coming time when mind will speak to mind regardless of desert wastes and imponderable mountains that seemingly intervene. wireless messages are the result of vibrations set in motion by means of a dynamo and received by an instrument attuned to a corresponding rate of motion. but no dynamo ever invented has the power that is centered in the dynamic will of a human being. brute strength is paralyzed into inactivity by the comparatively puny strength of a man. the fierceness of the lion, the tremendous force of the elephant, give way before the potent power of man's desire--an interior quality. do skyscrapers, or air ships, or wireless telegraph systems make us happier? if they do, is it not because of their ethical rather than their so-called practical value? is it not because they prove to man his power to use the plastic material of the planet and control it to do his bidding? rapid transit adds to convenience; but above and beyond all the so-called practical valuation which can be put upon modern inventions and accomplishment is the message which these mechanical marvels present to the mind. the message that man is not a machine; that he is not a creature but a creator; that he is not a miserable worm of the dust, but a winged god. greater than all the other benefits bestowed by modern mechanical marvels is the knowledge of each other which has resulted from intercommunication between nation and nation. the great breeder of discord and the waste of hatred is the idea of segregation. the man of the cave and the club feared his next door neighbor, because he did not know him, and the animal-man fears that which he does not know; his imagination pictures the unknown one as something monstrous and dangerous. intimacy will teach us that people of a distant country are like ourselves, even though they may dress differently; even though they may wear their hair an inch longer or shorter; may eat a diet of nuts instead of meat; may pray standing up rather than kneeling down. upon such trifling and absurd differences as these are based our ideas of "alien" races and "foreign" nations. annihilation of space and time accomplished by modern mechanical inventions has made us familiar with the interior life of other human beings and has compelled us to the knowledge that they have feelings, emotions, desires, hopes, aspirations, and faults, exactly like our own, and thus will be established a bond of unity, which will reach the heart of our neighbor. if this bond of unity has not as yet been established, it is because the majority of mankind are still only sense-conscious. they have not yet assimilated the knowledge which the past few years has precipitated in such an avalanche that the slow-moving mind cannot keep pace with it. but out of all this knowledge must come in due time the quality of wisdom. wisdom seeks love as the only eternal reality. not because god has commanded that we shall do so; not because of a sentimental ideal, but because any other course is futile, foolish, silly and does not "get us anywhere" as the slangologists rightly express it. thus everything in the busy commercial world, seemingly bent upon perpetuating external forms and systems, is in reality a symbolic language of which "unity" and "within" are the pivotal centers. these two words are really complementary, because it is only with the interior nature that unity can be established. we may conjoin; combine; contact; cohere. we may form partnerships, corporations, combinations from the outside. these are external expressions of the interior desire for unity, but union is of the interior nature only. with the more intimate knowledge of each other which intercommunication between nations makes general, each little segregated mass of human beings must sooner or later arrive at the conclusion that we are very much alike and that to "get together" on any proposition involving the welfare of all humanity is a much less costly and a far more satisfactory way of settling matters than by going to war over it. not that this idea is yet fixed in the brains of the majority, but there is creeping into man's cranium a faint thought that perhaps the survival of the fittest will be best maintained by peaceful methods; an idea that honor can neither be maintained nor appeased by shedding blood. this knowledge will bring us to the wise observation that fundamentally, cosmically there is no place for enmity between nations and races and classes and the sexes; that the whole conglomerated mass of hatreds and inherited enmities and segregated interests; the absurd idea that one part of the world can permanently prosper by the enslavement of any part; the undeveloped and savage ideas that underlie our civilization; all these thought-concepts have no more reality in the cosmic scheme of things, than have the picture-blocks of the child in the adult life. the world has been living through a nightmare. the warfare which belongs to the animal plane of man's evolving consciousness has been carried into the mental world as well. not only do men fight like tigers in the jungles, but they fight with tongue and pen as well, using food products, textile fabrics, inventions, mechanical devices and the creations of brains of men, for their weapons. but this type of warfare will not much longer survive. mankind must choose between transmutation or annihilation. hatred is self-destructive. blind indeed must be those who can expect to escape this law. "they who use the sword shall perish by the sword." how else can it be? there is but one force. if we use it to construct, we are constructed. if we use it to destroy we are destroyed, since it is by the very nature of law that we become involved in that which we employ. it is a simple sum in arithmetic. we may either add or subtract. if we add, there is no limit. if we subtract we ultimately wipe off the slate. the fact is dawning upon an increasing number of thinkers, that even as brain is superseding brawn in the marts of the world, so there is still a finer and higher and better force, so potential in its power that nothing can withstand its melting, merging, unifying motive. that power is love, without which though we have all else we are but as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." even as the ferocious man-eating animals have disappeared from the earth; even as the giant gladiators, the mailed knights, the erotic pomp and regalia of imperialism, with their captives chained to their chariot-wheels; the cruel despots, the tyrannical masters and scourged slaves; the bloody sacrifices, the horrible games of the amphitheatres, even as these one-time evidences of alleged "civilization" have passed away, so too will time see the dissolution of our own "false gods." transmuted into pure and perfect love and peace and equality, the power now misapplied in the work of hate and destruction, will increase a thousand fold and be directed toward the maintenance of a balanced world--a world in which love and wisdom are united. we are always fearful of changes. the bat-like eyes of the multitude are blinded by the light of the sun. why cannot we trust the cosmic law which has always given us a better ideal in the place of the decadent one? if we prefer to use the word god, then let us say why cannot we trust god? in the external world, then, the idea that a part of this sphere is inherently antagonistic to another; that men are born enemies; that the female and the male must forever struggle for supremacy--all these ideas are disappearing. "unity" is the password to the coming civilization. if then we will accept this conclusion and apply it to our individual selves, we will conclude that no function of the human organism should merit disapproval; or be regarded as an enemy. before we can arrive at a balanced and sane world without, we must come to a balanced and sane state within our own organism. we must know that the sex function, the most vital of all the various expressions of life in the individual body as well as in the social body and the racial body, is not an enemy with whom we must maintain unceasing warfare, but a wise and trustworthy friend with whom we may safely co-operate, neither repressing this vital force until we have conquered it and dragged it like a bleeding captive behind our chariot-wheels, nor should we like the drug-slave become lost in the clutches of an abnormal appetite. indeed, as the forces of life become transmuted from the physical appetites to the finer, and interior desires of the soul, abnormalities and perversions of sex-force will be impossible. sex-force is, at the center of being, unpolluted. it is pure, perfect and harmonious. it is divine. why? because it is bi-une; it is balanced. in our present-day lopsided civilization, we find that nearly every one is lop-sided, and unbalanced. alienists declare that almost every man and woman has some hobby or mania. doubtless this is true. an age of specialization would incline the race toward "lopsidedness." but the source of life is balanced; if we come to the place where we consciously unite with that interior source we will no longer be unbalanced, because the central source of life is sex, and sex is, at the center of the radius, bi-une, which is to say balanced. there is no chance for sex supremacy, for domination, or dispute, or jealousy. there is equilibrium. it is probable that to those who cannot compass the consciousness that equality does not mean identicalness this sort of balanced life will appear tame and tasteless. few women perhaps and certainly fewer men can imagine a sex-union in which love is so great, so over-powering and at the same time so perfect, that there is no room for jealousy. the average person believes that jealousy is inseparable from sex-love. but even as our antediluvian ancestors could not imagine the mechanical miracles of the telephone and the telegraph, so we fail to comprehend the infinite depth and intensity of our interior being until we come to the place where we awake from the sleep of the mortal and glimpse the heights of the immortal life. no one can give to another this interior wisdom--this philosopher's stone, by means of which all baser instincts are transmuted into the pure golden-tinted light of illumination. he can but point the way and promise that the results are mathematically proportionate to effort, and effort will be backed by individual desire. we do not hold, as do many writers dealing with the physiological side of the subject of sex, that the sex function is primarily designed for purposes of procreation and that any other expression of sex is contrary to nature. the essential function of sex is to vitalize. procreation is one of the uses of sex-love, but it is not its primary function. until men and women have absolute control over their sex impulses they are still on the plane of sense-consciousness; and as long as they remain only sense-conscious they miss the very thing that they seek. all that is pleasureable in sex-contact that reaches any man or woman who is only sense-conscious is no more than a faint echo of the ecstacy of divine and perfect love which is known to the spiritual alchemist, who has discovered the art of transmutation and thus found the key to the gate of eternal life. as long as we remain limited to the plane of sense-consciousness, old age is a blessing. it compels transmutation of the love-nature into interior channels. by the failure of the physical organism to express the sex-desires, this force is given an opportunity to become transmuted into higher, finer and more intense and beautiful thoughts. it takes on whatever quality of soul we have acquired and it fosters that quality--be it much or little--so that we may not go into the interior realms a spiritual pauper. even as our physical childhood is a prelude to mental adultship, so old age, our "second childhood," is a prelude to our soul adultship, and the character of our old age period is prophetic of our state in the soul life. there are some extremely aged persons whom we cannot, if we have any degree of interior vision, classify as old; the youth and beauty and love-radiance of their interior nature is so potent that it shines through the worn and wrinkled garment that covers it; and we know that when that garment shall have been removed by the hands of death, that the soul will be clothed in radiant youth and beauty, and light. this is indeed the esoteric cause of the widespread repudiation of a mental recognition of age. "i am seventy years young" says the man who hopes for eternal youth and life; and if he says it from the standpoint of wisdom--the wisdom that knows himself an immortal soul fired by pure and holy spiritual love, then indeed his words are truly symbolical. but if he utters them merely in desperate defiance of organic decay, they are empty and he will enter the after-life, even as he leaves this one, without having attained that which he craves. this truth is an integral part of the cosmos, from which there is no appeal; no reprieve; no immunity, no "respecter of persons." the law is absolute and it is also just. pure and perfect love is the price of immortal life. there is no other "coin of the realm." "but," questions the initiate, "why cannot those who know, if there be such in the world today, give us this mystical formula? why do they not tell us how we may reach this desirable state of spiritual sex-love, which affords such divine happiness to those who find it?" the query is pertinent and the desire is natural; the doubt of its reality is consistent, yet we are constrained to say that in the very nature of such inquiry the disciple of the hidden wisdom voices his unreadiness for _illumination_. the desire for self-gratification, though right and natural to the sense-conscious plane, is yet inimical to attainment of spiritual consciousness. there is a spiritual message in the persistently inculcated doctrine of sacrifice. it is not that a supreme being desires sacrifice, or gifts, or adulation, or homage, or worship, or that any power glories in our unhappiness. it is not that we may purchase any spiritual thing by giving up something which we prize, but it is because our spirit becomes attuned to the central source of life by means of our willingness to perform what to the sense-conscious plane of existence seems a sacrifice. "he sought for others the good he desired for himself; let him pass on" is the egyptian phrasing of the golden rule, and this states it as clearly as it can be stated. yet should any one take this truism as an unfailing formula and expect to enter the golden gate of eternal life because of obedience to the letter of the pass-word, he would fail. altruism _is_; it is not mere recognition of a word. we may presuppose another natural and instinctive query: "if then only by union with one's true mate one can enter the bliss of eternal life and love, should not we drop every other responsibility, sever all ties of relationship, give up wife or husband or family or work, and search for the one perfect complementary, finding which, is found the answer to all life's problems?" again we can only say that the seeker would be disappointed. we should remember the story of sir launfall. returning from the unfruitful quest of long years for the holy grail (the golden chalice), he learned the lesson of truth from the beggar at his own door to whom he gave the cup of cold water _without any consciousness of doing a good deed_; without hope of thereby finding the grail. he who seeks with the selfish thought of securing for self any good will not find it though he should give away every farthing to the poor; though he should never permit one unkind word to pass his lips; though he should fast and scourge and deny the flesh; kneel all day and all night in prayer. as long as he holds to the thought of self and of _obtaining_ something so long will he miss the _attainment_. spiritual insight establishes two facts beyond cavil or dispute or reversion. one is that god's laws cannot be broken. we are not trying to say that they should not be broken; or that they cannot be broken with impunity; or that if broken we shall be punished. they simply cannot be broken--they are unbreakable. we cannot buy or sell or beg or steal or borrow or take as a gift, or in any wise acquire immortal godhood, except by attaining it any more than we can come to physical manhood or womanhood except by growing to it; and by the same law no one can keep it from us; neither priest nor scribe; neither prophet nor inventor. we are a law unto ourselves. no one can break the law of your being any more than you can break that of another. no power on earth or in the celestial spheres or in the intervening spaces can keep that which is our own from us. wherefore then, should we tear ourselves and each other with strife and jealousy and wounded honor and outraged marriage vows, when either partner to a marriage contract sees fit to sever that relationship? if you lose out in what you believed to be love, be sure that the object of your desires was not yours to lose; in all the spheres there is only one who is yours by divine right and no one can by any possibility usurp your place in the final issue; and that place once found no one can oust you from it. but remember what we have said in previous chapters of the word "found;" it is from within. how vain and how foolish it is to think that a power so stupendous, so magnificent and so beneficent as to project this immense panorama of life; to establish such marvelous diversity within such simple unity; to bestow the bliss of love, could make a mistake. how puerile has been the teaching that we can sin against the eternal god. we need not worry about the supreme and eternal power. "the dice of god are loaded." our concern is with ourselves, lest we imagine that we may cheat in the game of life. we are self-centered, free-willed; immune from any possibility of offending the universe. the whole problem of life and death, in so far as it relates to our individual selves, is "up to us." we can delay arrival at the goal of our desires; we can dally by the wayside if we will. only our own loss, our own suffering, our own unsatisfied longing shall punish us. but who is so stupid that he would remain wandering in the bleak and barren desert, when he might by a turn of his hand enter fields elysian and merge his soul into the boundless areas of infinite bliss and wisdom? we should not imagine that death will do this for us. death is nothing more phenomenal than withdrawing from one room to another. the soul may strive on for ages through many incarnations. only one thing can free it; and that is love; love for others than the personal self. the broader and deeper the love nature, the wider it reaches out to enfold in its tender protection all living things, the more nearly divine we become, and the sooner will we touch the area of the spiritual and attract our own. it is evident that self-seeking even for so worthy a possession as one's own counterpart defeats the very effort. we are not to seek; we are only to prepare ourselves to be ready and worthy; when we shall have done this, nothing can withhold our own from us; not though the two halves of the one being are separated by all the barriers which the sense-conscious race of men have erected between themselves and the bliss of heaven. says emerson: "what is thine, will gravitate to thee." we need not therefore go about apprehensively fearful lest we lose that which belongs to us; in so doing we are apt to keep our eyes glued to the earth, thus forgetting that it is from the higher realms of vibration "whence cometh our light." says emerson: "o, believe as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world which thou oughtest to hear will vibrate on thine ear. every proverb, every book, every by-word that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. and this because the great and tender heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circulation through all men as the water of the globe is all one sea, and truly seen its tide is one." here then are specific and trustworthy statements for the further enlightenment of the student of the problems of sex. like algebraical propositions they prove themselves when correctly solved. immortal godhood is attained by counterpartal union, because the central source of life is bi-une. immortality is our spiritual birthright, but we must claim it if we would consciously realize this truth. god is the bi-une creative principle, and we are literally and in truth the "image and likeness" of this bi-une being. not one hermaphroditic personality but a pair. a pair is one whole, even though each of the pair is distinct in form and diverse in temperament and qualities. we are especially emphatic upon this point because there has been so much vague and speculative theorizing upon this definition of a bi-une being. your perfect mate is distinctively masculine or distinctively feminine in sex as the case may be; and he or she is your mate because of this perfection of distinctiveness. our former ideas of femininity and of masculinity were faulty. woman is not less but much more womanly, if she has exchanged fear for courage; deceit for truthfulness; ill-health for vitality; helplessness for helpfulness. even as a man is more manly when he spares the nesting birds where formerly he ruthlessly destroyed; when he unites protection with bravery; when he knows sympathy from weakness; when he combines sentiment with principle; and gentleness with vigor. no mortal can by any possibility break the laws of god. therefore you are not to try to enforce your ideas of morality upon others. who has constituted you book-keeper for the universe? you are to concern yourself with establishing happiness upon this earth. you are to see to it that your love is big and broad enough; all-inclusive enough to wish to see every one happy from your immediate family to your far-off neighbor in central africa. you need not worry about whether they break the moral code as you see it. you are to render love and service to this world with all your heart and all your power; if you do this, you will reach the goal of your desires. no mortal can by any other method than love and the service that is rendered through love seek and find the "holy grail," which is to say the bliss of spiritual union with his beloved. therefore to fly from the responsibilities and the environment in which you are, without regard to the welfare of others, is to defeat your own quest; neither do we claim that you should under all circumstances remain chained to a post like an unwilling captive, poisoning your mind with resentment and hatred. there is no one formula which fits all cases--other than that given in love and service. the golden rule which tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, has another side to its shield, and it may read "do not permit others to do unto you what you would not do to them." if you seek freedom from a specific environment from no other motive than personal selfishness, you may be doing yourself an injury; but if you are also doing an injury to others by remaining, then you are doubly mistaken in your course. the way of attainment is not easy, although the formula is simple; it may be briefly but concisely summed up in the vital and important word "unselfishness." "not mine but thine also," is the watchword of the wise in love. not possession of the beloved one, but union with him or her. there is just one big world of difference between these two points of view. more than that, there is the difference of heaven and hell. chapter xii "selling the thrones of angels" great as may seem to the sense-conscious person the pleasure and satisfaction of owning some one, or some thing; of possessing and feeling a proprietorship in the one desired; greater by a million-fold is the pleasure of union which is possible only to those who are themselves free, and who in consequence desire freedom for all others. this is a truth which the unwise cannot comprehend or concur in, and which they will not believe or trust. emerson says: "every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. we sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure." and finally, as regards the sex-function, we would like to impress upon every one, though only those who are fit for the kingdom will understand the truth, namely that the highest manifestation of sex-love is not localized in the organs of procreation. the love that is of the soul fills the breast first of all, and is only felt in the region popularly, but erroneously, supposed to circumscribe the sex-function, as a secondary and by no means compulsory consideration. when the sex force has become diffused throughout the entire being, radiating from the solar man, and permeating the mind and thus entering into the mortal body which is only a covering of the mind physical copulation becomes a well-trained servant of the will, and is found to be a natural, but yet secondary complement. sex is not confined to the specialized sex-organs. it permeates the entire being. the person who has no conception of his reality other than as a physical entity has not so much as touched the area of spiritual ecstacy which has been alluded to as "the nectar of the gods;" and so infinitely fine and perfect is the plan of creation that he can not do so until he is fit; and never can he be fit as long as he remains upon the sense-conscious plane and seeks by sexual perversity and debauchery and sexual insanities to touch that exquisite perfection of joy which he intuitively knows evades him. thus the sensual man is caught is a beneficent trap; a wise and just and merciful power has so placed the "holy of holies," that it cannot be defiled; it cannot be reached; it cannot be desecrated. it is forever removed from the touch of the unworthy. no man can hope to express the creative power, the sexual realization of a god, through the functions which are not higher in consciousness than those of the animal. would you attain to the status of the divine man? if so, do not imagine for a moment that the divine man is less vital than your puny physical powers would suggest. neither should you imagine that the sex-function, even in its lowest state (lowest because most lacking in love-consciousness), is anything but pure and clean and right and normal in itself; the attitude of the average man and woman invests it with all its uncleanness. but with all the vile thought which the undeveloped mind has indulged in respecting the sex-relation; with all the man-made laws arrayed against it as though it were criminal, and the teachings of the church denying its spiritual origin and perpetuation; with women selling it in the public markets for their physical maintenance, nothing less than the fact of the eternality and universality of sex, as the divine fulcrum of manifestation, can account for the fact that the poor little bi-une love-god is after all coming to be recognized as the hope and savior of mankind. if you would have eternal youth and eternal life and love and wisdom, accept this truth, because nothing else can, or will, save you from the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." another vague query presents itself to the would-be initiate, and we would like to leave this chapter with no misunderstandings; no misconceptions; no misleading statements, because that which we are here stating is not theory. it is the one eternal, undying, simple and unescapable truth which has withstood the onslaughts of time and ignorance. the query comes and although it has been answered in previous chapters we will again state it, so that there may be no mistake: if the balance is found in counterpartal sex-union--the one man and the one woman uniting on the solar plane--would not this balance be maintained if only one of the two reached the higher planes of consciousness; in other words, would not the balance be struck by extreme purity on the one hand and extreme impurity on the other? again we are reminded that the law of the cosmos is wise; that there are no mistakes nor flaws in the cosmic scheme. the answer is that the union is one of complementaries, and not of antitheses. each one must be balanced, the nature rounded, the soul awake before union is possible. thus we are saved from ourselves. we cannot, if we would, really gain at the expense of another, although in temporary things we may appear to do so, because the rich grow richer at the expense of the poor; the tyrant ruler maintains his power at the expense of serfs; but doubt not that _eternal equation_ is perfect. there is still another query: if true sex-union is of the soul, what is to prevent soul-mates from finding each other at the moment of death, regardless of their fitness for godhood, and thus circumventing, as it were, the plan of creation, which would compel each one to earn the prize of eternal life? the same law governs the interior planes as the exterior. the realization of consciousness is not a capricious matter any more than is the law of physical growth. a man might be in the presence of untold wealth, but if he had not the consciousness to know and realize values, he would remain poor, even though by a wave of his hand he might command millions. one might give a blind man a check for a million dollars, and if he had no others means of knowing what it was, he might easily imagine it to be worthless. death does not bestow wisdom. wisdom is acquired. love is a self-generator. if you would follow the law of transmutation and acquire the throne of angelhood, get busy within the laboratory of your own mind. take the crucible of thought and begin to work interiorly upon the common, everyday things that present themselves in your environment. this is the only way of transmutation. love grows by feeding upon itself, and the sacrifices and the kindnesses that are bestowed in love without thought of personal benefit grow into the flood of golden light and love of the spiritual realms. the chief virtue in any one's pursuit of philosophy, or of esoteric wisdom, and in methods of attainment, is found in the fact that such effort is proof of earnest desire to attain. emerson says that the principal benefit of a college education is to teach the student that he does not need a college education. this estimate of the value of years of study seems at first glance a sarcastic one, but it is not. if this wisdom can be acquired in no other way, then even so it were well worth the price. if the student can learn that much love is the price of transmutation only after exhausting every other method, what does it matter, so that he finally learns it? _learn to look into the hearts of men._ at first sight, everything on the busy city street is a part of a moving panorama; but an intimate view, when you get in touch with segregated parts of the panorama, discloses the interior nature; the hopes and the fears; the aspirations and the longings and the heartaches and the joys of the entities composing the whole moving picture. you notice a little female figure; her cheeks are pinked to a hue rivalling the american beauty rose; her lips are carmined like a clowns and her eyebrows penciled too obviously. her cheap little dress is amateurishly cut in imitation of "the latest." your first impulse, perhaps, is to scorn her as a "brazen" creature of the streets; but if you will suspend judgment and look a little closer, you may see that her eyes are, in their depths, those of a child, for all her seeming experience. her brazenness is perhaps only the armor which she has donned to hide a turbulent heart--the dowry of centuries of grandmothers who longed for one glimpse of freedom; of the right to comb their hair as they liked; to powder their faces if they wanted to; to run and jump and laugh and dance and be innocently free and happy without the fear of shocking that bugbear respectability, and the tyrant decorum, which insisted that a woman's legs must be carefully concealed on penalty of being adjudged "immodest." those poor reviled, execrated and vigilantly-concealed legs of our fore-mothers! they are crying aloud for vindication, and they will be heard wherever the line of least resistance affords a channel for their freedom. and so, instead of blaming the poor little painted doll of a woman, look into her heart. you will discover that she is bent on having two things long denied womankind--freedom and happiness. if she is foredoomed to failure on the route she has chosen, that is all the more reason why you should withhold censure and give freely of your help and sympathy. "_learn to look into the hearts of men._" learn to see beneath the appearance. the old italian organ-grinder doing his best to please you with his wheezy hurdy-gurdy is not just an old organ-grinder. he is also a man with emotions and feelings and longings and hopes identical in substance with your own; no matter if the organ is out of tune. learn to hear the _spirit_ of the aria or the intermezzo. and behold! there is a bunch of noisy, dirty, slangy and bold street-arabs--at least that is what they look like from the outside. but learn to look within. there you will find the cause of their appearance, and when you have found the cause you will sympathize with them. if you can get back to the underlying cause of the manifestations of life, you will never fail to sympathize with the condition you may find, even though you find the cause rooted in crime. you do not have to agree with the criminal in order to sympathize with his misery. if you have the inner vision, which you must have if you would transmute the baser metals into pure gold and find the key to immortal life and love, you will never fail to understand and to sympathize with every point of view. "whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral." don't imagine for one moment that you have to go to the himalayas to find the inner vision; or that you will obtain the key to the hidden mysteries by shutting yourself in a monastery. wherever you are, you must lose sight of yourself. not the higher self of reality, but the lesser self of the carnal, or sense-conscious plane--the personality that conceals _you_. and above all, you are not to regard this personality as an enemy to be scourged and beaten and reviled. it is, or it should be, a willing, and helpful servant of your soul even as we say "the hand is the servant of the brain." if your hand becomes unruly and does not obey your brain, train it to do so, don't cut it off, even though the bible does appear to tell you to--why should the men who wrote in that far-off time know more of truth than we of a later century? you may imagine that you need to belong to some "brotherhood," in order to learn the secrets of alchemical transmutation. there is nothing of the great wisdom which can be taught you, which you cannot learn of yourself if you will look within and unite with the heart of the world. there is no wisdom higher than love; and there is no power greater than love; and there is no heaven happier than love and there is no god holier than love. if you will take this for your creed you will readily see that it is for you to think love into those things that appear to lack it; think purity into those things that appear impure; think unity into those things that appear separated; and taking the lesson home to your own intimate conduct of life, invest the expression of your sex with the pure and lofty and holy power god gave to it, or refrain from the thought of sex until you can learn to do so. says a modern writer: "if you are still so out of tune with the infinite as to harbor any thought of evil or shame in connection with the specialized organs and functions of sex, let this illumination from on high cast that devil out of your cosmos forever. and if you turn away with soul offended from even 'the slimy gendering of the toad,' you dishonor god who once knew no higher creative formula and still blesses it with his fruitful presence." and finally do not make the too common mistake of confounding brazenness with freedom from shame and self-condemnation. whatever of beauty and purity and joy has come to you in this life has come because of the divinity of sex. if you have been wise enough to know this, and have reverenced it and purified your mind in respect to that function of your being, you will not cheapen it by parading the subject before those who have no idealism, any more than you would "cast pearls before swine;" you will not countenance jokes and ribald songs; you will not indulge in promiscuousness; but instead you will fold it within the sacred intimacy of your heart's divine altar, as something too beautiful, too holy for the garish light of the un-tender day. if you have taken into your consciousness the divinity of sex, you will desire unity and disdain possession, knowing that whatever of heaven is vouchsafed mankind here is but a shadow of the reality of spiritual realization of the function of sex. you will respect the physical body as the handiwork of the creative principle of the universe, respecting the sacredness of human life and liberty. you will teach the truth that the law of life is mathematically just; that nothing will unlock the gates of eternal life and love, except inward honesty; fidelity; unselfishness; spiritual desire. if we possess these qualities, we are fit for the kingdom of love and we shall surely enter therein. verily love transforms mere men into immortal gods. finis the swastika series have you read _how thought can kill_ the scientific use of mental electricity. by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall the enlargement of consciousness. the doctrine of free-will. thought is the building material. the creative power of conscious thought. experiments proving that thought can kill. confessions of a trained nurse. people who think god hangs out the sun. action essential to creative principle. the "science of god's anger." thought is of the universal supply. why the number thirteen is unlucky. how poison may be generated in the system. thought and the cell-structure of the brain. why we fail in our efforts. the spectrums of love and hate. the power of imagination. fear is the king of thoughts that kill. parents make cringing weaklings of children. how whole cities may be poisoned by thought. case of a well-known man killed by thought. there is neither reward nor punishment. the survival of that which is creative. price cents send your order today chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company the swastika series have you read _personal magnetism_ the power of persuasion by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall contents the philosophy of "the survival of the fittest." the power of persuasion. effects of force law. magnetism in professional life. opinion of a noted actor. what is personal magnetism? different kinds of magnetism. the human body an electrical machine. will power the dynamo. magnetism not necessarily good. the law governing invisible force. love the generator of soul magnetism. necessity for understanding use of powers. the body the medium of the soul's expression. what constitutes success? rules for acquiring personal magnetism. spirit manifests only through matter. fasting not wise. psychic science teaches the study of all things. the yogi of india. individuality the one essential. character indestructible. price cents send your order today chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company if you cannot read character then--read revelations of the hand how to know human nature a scientific study of the shape and markings of the hand, as an index to character, disease and tendencies with explanatory illustrations. by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall the most practical science of palmistry ever published! partial contents part i--cheirognomy. chapter. --the seven types of hands --the primitive or elementary hand. --the square type of hand. --the spatulate type of hand. --the conic type of hand. --the philosophic type of hand. --the psychic type of hand. --the mixed type of hand. --the fingers. --the thumb. --the nails. --large and small, hard and soft hands. --the colour of the palms. --the mounts. --right and left hands. --resume of cheirognomy. part --cheiromancy. chapter. --the lines of the hand. --the line of life. --the line of mentality or head. --the line of heart. --the line of fate. --the line of apollo, or sun. --the line of health or liver. --the girdle of venus. --the via lascivia, the line of mars and the line of intuition. --the line of marriage; children. --the rascette and minor lines. --lines of influence and travel lines. --character of the lines. --signs found on the palm. --the great triangle and the quadrangle. --how to reckon time. systems of seven and ten. --abnormal tendencies. send your order today second edition _crown vo, pages, profusely illustrated with full-page plates and numerous engravings, silk cloth bound, gold stamped, $ . postpaid._ chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company "the dead speak!" little journeys to the land of the living dead by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall author of "sex--the unknown quantity," "the dead speak!" "the swastika series," etc. we are living in an age of earnest inquiry and enhanced knowledge in respect to ourselves as spiritual beings, and that great and wonderful universe of spirit to which we are inseparably allied. the author is devoting his life to establishing better conditions on earth, by bringing the two worlds into closer association. no one can read this book with an unprejudiced mind, without absorbing some of its grand and inspiring truth and be uplifted and made better by it. chapter . the advent of psychic research. chapter . the dangers in psychic research and how to avoid them. chapter . physical manifestations: table-rapping, levitation, etc. chapter . automatism. chapter . haunted houses. chapter . spirit interlopers. chapter . vampirism and astral hypnosis. chapter . prevision. chapter . the mystery of trance. chapter . the mystery of dreams. chapter . phantasms of the living. chapter . the last enemy--death overcome! if you desire to acquire a knowledge of the great spiritual awakening that has dawned upon mankind with the birth of the twentieth century--with a mind and heart open to those scientific and spiritual truths that are daily being proven by scientists and thinkers of world-repute--we take the liberty of reminding you there is no book more enlightening, no work more appreciated, no effort more powerful, than this book. there is a difference between this book and others upon the subject--it is not an ordinary chronicle of unconnected notations but a romantic story of extraordinary interest and value for the spiritual and scientific truths which set forth the most advanced knowledge of the deeper things of the soul so simply that any reader of ordinary intelligence can grasp, comprehend and apply those laws whose values extend the usefulness of every truth seeker who is seeking light upon the mysteries of life, both here and here-after. send your order today _ mo., pages, silk cloth-bound, gold stamped, with frontispiece, $ . (net) postpaid._ chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company _just published_ cosmic consciousness or the man-god whom we await! by ali nomad [alexander j. mcivor-tyndall] author of "sex--the unknown quantity," "the dead speak," "the swastika series," etc. _read_ an exposition of the peculiar phenomenon which is puzzling science: its analogy to the mystical phenomena of the brahm, zen and other oriental sects; its meaning and its future. with simple, concise and thoroughly practical methods of inducing the phenomenon. presenting a new and startling theory of the meaning and scope of the prophecy current among the ancients and revived at the present time, of the coming of a new christ; the prophecy elucidated and explained in the light of to-day; what it means and what it will lead to. second edition _ mo., pages, cloth, gold stamped, $ . postpaid_ send your order today chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company the swastika series have you read _proofs of immortality_ the scientific revelation of natural laws prove the continuity of life by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall contents proofs of immortality if man die shall he live again? the invisible something that survives death. a case that will bear quoting. seeing through opaque substances. faith is not fact--evidence not proof. proof must rest upon individual experience. the psychic body basis of organism. all life is manifested in form. science stands for axioms that may be proved. price cents send your order today chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company the swastika series have you read _ghosts_ the message of the illuminati. by dr. alexander j. mcivor-tyndall founded upon henrik ibsen's psychological masterpiece "the ghosts we meet every day" the ghosts we meet on the street; in commercial and social life. ghosts of dead ideas; ghosts of fear; ghosts of false standards of morality; false ideals of living. price cents send your order today chicago, u. s. a. sterling publishing company transcriber's notes . passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. . the following misprints have been corrected: "attaing" corrected to "attaining" (page ) "morever" corrected to "moreover" (page ) "doubless" corrected to "doubtless" (page ) "esctacies" corrected to "ecstacies" (page ) "aproach" corrected to "approach" (page ) "mutality" corrected to "mutuality" (page ) incomplete sentence "we have already" removed on page . "iadequate" corrected to "inadequate" (page ) "magnectic" corrected to "magnetic" (page ) "instintctive" corrected to "instinctive" (page ) "phenonenal" corrected to "phenomenal" (page ) "anoher" corrected to "another" (page ) "estoeric" corrected to "esoteric" (page ) "and and" corrected to "and" (page ) "advaced" corrected to "advanced" (in ad for the "the dead speak!") . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. transcriber's note minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. the kama sutra of vatsyayana. translated from the sanscrit. in seven parts, with preface, introduction, and concluding remarks. reprint: _cosmopoli: mdccclxxxiii: for the kama shastra society of london and benares, and for private circulation only._ dedicated to that small portion of the british public which takes enlightened interest in studying the manners and customs of the olden east. preface. in the literature of all countries there will be found a certain number of works treating especially of love. everywhere the subject is dealt with differently, and from various points of view. in the present publication it is proposed to give a complete translation of what is considered the standard work on love in sanscrit literature, and which is called the 'vatsyayana kama sutra,' or aphorisms on love, by vatsyayana. while the introduction will bear with the evidence concerning the date of the writing, and the commentaries written upon it, the chapters following the introduction will give a translation of the work itself. it is, however, advisable to furnish here a brief analysis of works of the same nature, prepared by authors who lived and wrote years after vatsya had passed away, but who still considered him as a great authority, and always quoted him as the chief guide to hindoo erotic literature. besides the treatise of vatsyayana the following works on the same subject are procurable in india:-- . the ratirahasya, or secrets of love. . the panchasakya, or the five arrows. . the smara pradipa, or the light of love. . the ratimanjari, or the garland of love. . the rasmanjari, or the sprout of love. . the anunga runga, or the stage of love; also called kamaledhiplava, or a boat in the ocean of love. the author of the 'secrets of love' (no. ) was a poet named kukkoka. he composed his work to please one venudutta, who was perhaps a king. when writing his own name at the end of each chapter he calls himself "siddha patiya pandita," _i.e._, an ingenious man among learned men. the work was translated into hindi years ago, and in this the author's name was written as koka. and as the same name crept into all the translations into other languages in india, the book became generally known, and the subject was popularly called koka shastra, or doctrines of koka, which is identical with the kama shastra, or doctrines of love, and the words koka shastra and kama shastra are used indiscriminately. the work contains nearly eight hundred verses, and is divided into ten chapters, which are called pachivedas. some of the things treated of in this work are not to be found in the vatsyayana, such as the four classes of women, viz., the padmini, chitrini, shankini and hastini, as also the enumeration of the days and hours on which the women of the different classes become subject to love. the author adds that he wrote these things from the opinions of gonikaputra and nandikeshwara, both of whom are mentioned by vatsyayana, but their works are not now extant. it is difficult to give any approximate idea as to the year in which the work was composed. it is only to be presumed that it was written after that of vatsyayana, and previous to the other works on this subject that are still extant. vatsyayana gives the names of ten authors on the subject, all of whose works he had consulted, but none of which are extant, and does not mention this one. this would tend to show that kukkoka wrote after vatsya, otherwise vatsya would assuredly have mentioned him as an author in this branch of literature along with the others. the author of the 'five arrows' (no. in the list) was one jyotirisha. he is called the chief ornament of poets, the treasure of the sixty-four arts, and the best teacher of the rules of music. he says that he composed the work after reflecting on the aphorisms of love as revealed by the gods, and studying the opinions of gonikaputra, muladeva, babhravya, ramtideva, nundikeshwara and kshemandra. it is impossible to say whether he had perused all the works of these authors, or had only heard about them; anyhow, none of them appear to be in existence now. this work contains nearly six hundred verses, and is divided into five chapters, called sayakas or arrows. the author of the 'light of love' (no. ) was the poet gunakara, the son of vechapati. the work contains four hundred verses, and gives only a short account of the doctrines of love, dealing more with other matters. 'the garland of love' (no. ) is the work of the famous poet jayadeva, who said about himself that he is a writer on all subjects. this treatise is, however, very short, containing only one hundred and twenty-five verses. the author of the 'sprout of love' (no. ) was a poet called bhanudatta. it appears from the last verse of the manuscript that he was a resident of the province of tirhoot, the son of a brahman named ganeshwar, who was also a poet. the work, written in sanscrit, gives the descriptions of different classes of men and women, their classes being made out from their age, description, conduct, etc. it contains three chapters, and its date is not known, and cannot be ascertained. 'the stage of love' (no. ) was composed by the poet kullianmull, for the amusement of ladkhan, the son of ahmed lodi, the same ladkhan being in some places spoken of as ladana mull, and in others as ladanaballa. he is supposed to have been a relation or connection of the house of lodi, which reigned in hindostan from a.d. - . the work would, therefore, have been written in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. it contains ten chapters, and has been translated into english, but only six copies were printed for private circulation. this is supposed to be the latest of the sanscrit works on the subject, and the ideas in it were evidently taken from previous writings of the same nature. the contents of these works are in themselves a literary curiosity. there are to be found both in sanscrit poetry and in the sanscrit drama a certain amount of poetical sentiment and romance, which have, in every country and in every language, thrown an immortal halo round the subject. but here it is treated in a plain, simple, matter of fact sort of way. men and women are divided into classes and divisions in the same way that buffon and other writers on natural history have classified and divided the animal world. as venus was represented by the greeks to stand forth as the type of the beauty of woman, so the hindoos describe the padmini or lotus woman as the type of most perfect feminine excellence, as follows: she in whom the following signs and symptoms appear is called a padmini. her face is pleasing as the full moon; her body, well clothed with flesh, is soft as the shiras or mustard flower, her skin is fine, tender and fair as the yellow lotus, never dark coloured. her eyes are bright and beautiful as the orbs of the fawn, well cut, and with reddish corners. her bosom is hard, full and high; she has a good neck; her nose is straight and lovely, and three folds or wrinkles cross her middle--about the umbilical region. her yoni resembles the opening lotus bud, and her love seed (kama salila) is perfumed like the lily that has newly burst. she walks with swan-like gait, and her voice is low and musical as the note of the kokila bird, she delights in white raiments, in fine jewels, and in rich dresses. she eats little, sleeps lightly, and being as respectful and religious as she is clever and courteous, she is ever anxious to worship the gods, and to enjoy the conversation of brahmans. such, then, is the padmini or lotus woman. detailed descriptions then follow of the chitrini or art woman; the shankhini or conch woman, and the hastini or elephant woman, their days of enjoyment, their various seats of passion, the manner in which they should be manipulated and treated in sexual intercourse, along with the characteristics of the men and women of the various countries in hindostan. the details are so numerous, and the subjects so seriously dealt with, and at such length, that neither time nor space will permit of their being given here. one work in the english language is somewhat similar to these works of the hindoos. it is called 'kalogynomia: or the laws of female beauty,' being the elementary principles of that science, by t. bell, m.d., with twenty-four plates, and printed in london in . it treats of beauty, of love, of sexual intercourse, of the laws regulating that intercourse, of monogamy and polygamy, of prostitution, of infidelity, ending with a _catalogue raisonnée_ of the defects of female beauty. other works in english also enter into great details of private and domestic life. 'the elements of social science, or physical, sexual and natural religion,' by a doctor of medicine, london, , and 'every woman's book,' by dr. waters, . to persons interested in the above subjects these works will be found to contain such details as have been seldom before published, and which ought to be thoroughly understood by all philanthropists and benefactors of society. after a perusal of the hindoo work, and of the english books above mentioned, the reader will understand the subject, at all events from a materialistic, realistic and practical point of view. if all science is founded more or less on a stratum of facts, there can be no harm in making known to mankind generally certain matters intimately connected with their private, domestic, and social life. alas! complete ignorance of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have enabled numbers of people to have understood many things which they believed to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought worthy of their consideration. introduction. it may be interesting to some persons to learn how it came about that vatsyayana was first brought to light and translated into the english language. it happened thus. while translating with the pundits the 'anunga runga, or the stage of love,' reference was frequently found to be made to one vatsya. the sage vatsya was of this opinion, or of that opinion. the sage vatsya said this, and so on. naturally questions were asked who the sage was, and the pundits replied that vatsya was the author of the standard work on love in sanscrit literature, that no sanscrit library was complete without his work, and that it was most difficult now to obtain in its entire state. the copy of the manuscript obtained in bombay was defective, and so the pundits wrote to benares, calcutta and jeypoor for copies of the manuscript from sanscrit libraries in those places. copies having been obtained, they were then compared with each other, and with the aid of a commentary called 'jayamangla' a revised copy of the entire manuscript was prepared, and from this copy the english translation was made. the following is the certificate of the chief pundit:-- "the accompanying manuscript is corrected by me after comparing four different copies of the work. i had the assistance of a commentary called 'jayamangla' for correcting the portion in the first five parts, but found great difficulty in correcting the remaining portion, because, with the exception of one copy thereof which was tolerably correct, all the other copies i had were far too incorrect. however, i took that portion as correct in which the majority of the copies agreed with each other." the 'aphorisms on love,' by vatsyayana, contains about one thousand two hundred and fifty slokas or verses, and are divided into parts, parts into chapters, and chapters into paragraphs. the whole consists of seven parts, thirty-six chapters, and sixty-four paragraphs. hardly anything is known about the author. his real name is supposed to be mallinaga or mrillana, vatsyayana being his family name. at the close of the work this is what he writes about himself: "after reading and considering the works of babhravya and other ancient authors, and thinking over the meaning of the rules given by them, this treatise was composed, according to the precepts of the holy writ, for the benefit of the world, by vatsyayana, while leading the life of a religious student at benares, and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the deity. this work is not to be used merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires. a person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his dharma (virtue or religious merit), his artha (worldly wealth) and his kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. in short, an intelligent and knowing person, attending to dharma and artha and also to kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do." it is impossible to fix the exact date either of the life of vatsyayana or of his work. it is supposed that he must have lived between the first and the sixth centuries of the christian era, on the following grounds:--he mentions that satkarni srtvahan, a king of kuntal, killed malayevati his wife with an instrument called kartari by striking her in the passion of love, and vatsya quotes this case to warn people of the danger arising from some old customs of striking women when under the influence of this passion. now this king of kuntal is believed to have lived and reigned during the first century a.c., and consequently vatsya must have lived after him. on the other hand, virahamihira, in the eighteenth chapter of his 'brihatsanhita,' treats of the science of love, and appears to have borrowed largely from vatsyayana on the subject. now virahamihira is said to have lived during the sixth century a.d., and as vatsya must have written his works previously, therefore not earlier than the first century, a.c., and not later than the sixth century a.d., must be considered as the approximate date of his existence. on the text of the 'aphorisms on love,' by vatsyayana, only two commentaries have been found. one called 'jayamangla' or 'sutrabashya,' and the other 'sutra vritti.' the date of the 'jayamangla' is fixed between the tenth and thirteenth centuries a.d., because while treating of the sixty-four arts an example is taken from the 'kávyaprakásha,' which was written about the tenth century a.d. again, the copy of the commentary procured was evidently a transcript of a manuscript which once had a place in the library of a chaulukyan king named vishaladeva, a fact elicited from the following sentence at the end of it:-- "here ends the part relating to the art of love in the commentary on the 'vatsyayana kama sutra,' a copy from the library of the king of kings, vishaladeva, who was a powerful hero, as it were a second arjuna, and head jewel of the chaulukya family." now it is well known that this king ruled in guzerat from to a.d., and founded a city called visalnagur. the date, therefore, of the commentary is taken to be not earlier than the tenth and not later than the thirteenth century. the author of it is supposed to be one yashodhara, the name given him by his preceptor being indrapada. he seems to have written it during the time of affliction caused by his separation from a clever and shrewd woman, at least that is what he himself says at the end of each chapter. it is presumed that he called his work after the name of his absent mistress, or the word may have some connection with the meaning of her name. this commentary was most useful in explaining the true meaning of vatsyayana, for the commentator appears to have had a considerable knowledge of the times of the older author, and gives in some places very minute information. this cannot be said of the other commentary, called "sutra vritti," which was written about a.d., by narsing shastri, a pupil of a sarveshwar shastri; the latter was a descendant of bhaskur, and so also was our author, for at the conclusion of every part he calls himself bhaskur narsing shastra. he was induced to write the work by order of the learned raja vrijalala, while he was residing in benares, but as to the merits of this commentary it does not deserve much commendation. in many cases the writer does not appear to have understood the meaning of the original author, and has changed the text in many places to fit in with his own explanations. a complete translation of the original work now follows. it has been prepared in complete accordance with the text of the manuscript, and is given, without further comments, as made from it. part i. the vatsyayana sutra. introductory preface. salutation to dharma, artha and kama. in the beginning, the lord of beings created men and women, and in the form of commandments in one hundred thousand chapters laid down rules for regulating their existence with regard to dharma,[ ] artha,[ ] and kama.[ ] some of these commandments, namely those which treated of dharma, were separately written by swayambhu manu; those that related to artha were compiled by brihaspati; and those that referred to kama were expounded by nandi, the follower of mahadeva, in one thousand chapters. now these 'kama sutra' (aphorisms on love), written by nandi in one thousand chapters, were reproduced by shvetaketu, the son of uddvalaka, in an abbreviated form in five hundred chapters, and this work was again similarly reproduced in an abridged form, in one hundred and fifty chapters, by babhravya, an inhabitant of the punchala (south of delhi) country. these one hundred and fifty chapters were then put together under seven heads or parts named severally-- st. sadharana (general topics). nd. samprayogika (embraces, etc.). rd. kanya samprayuktaka (union of males and females). th. bharyadhikarika (on one's own wife). th. paradika (on the wives of other people). th. vaisika (on courtesans). th. aupamishadika (on the arts of seduction, tonic medicines, etc.). the sixth part of this last work was separately expounded by dattaka at the request of the public women of pataliputra (patna), and in the same way charayana explained the first part of it. the remaining parts, viz., the second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh were each separately expounded by-- suvarnanabha (second part). ghotakamukha (third part). gonardiya (fourth part). gonikaputra (fifth part). kuchumara (seventh part), respectively. thus the work being written in parts by different authors was almost unobtainable, and as the parts which were expounded by dattaka and the others treated only of the particular branches of the subject to which each part related, and moreover as the original work of babhravya was difficult to be mastered on account of its length, vatsyayana, therefore, composed his work in a small volume as an abstract of the whole of the works of the above-named authors. footnotes: [footnote : dharma is acquisition of religious merit, and is fully described in chapter , volume iii., of talboys wheeler's 'history of india,' and in the edicts of asoka.] [footnote : artha is acquisition of wealth and property, etc.] [footnote : kama is love, pleasure and sensual gratification. these three words are retained throughout in their original, as technical terms. they may also be defined as virtue, wealth and pleasure, the three things repeatedly spoken of in the laws of manu.] part i. chapter i. being the index to or contents of the work. chapter ii. observations on the three worldly attainments of virtue, wealth and love. " iii. on the study of the sixty-four arts. " iv. on the arrangements of a house, and household furniture; and about the daily life of a citizen, his companions, amusements, &c. " v. about classes of women fit and unfit for congress with the citizen, and of friends, and messengers. part ii. on sexual union. chapter i. kinds of union according to dimensions, force of desire, and time; and on the different kinds of love. " ii. of the embrace. " iii. on kissing. " iv. on pressing or marking with the nails. " v. on biting, and the ways of love to be employed with regard to women of different countries. " vi. on the various ways of lying down, and the different kinds of congress. " vii. on the various ways of striking, and of the sounds appropriate to them. " viii. about females acting the part of males. " ix. on holding the lingam in the mouth. " x. how to begin and how to end the congress. different kinds of congress, and love quarrels. part iii. about the acquisition of a wife. chapter i. observations on betrothal and marriage. " ii. about creating confidence in the girl. " iii. courtship, and the manifestations of the feelings by outward signs and deeds. " iv. on things to be done only by the man, and the acquisition of the girl thereby. also what to be done by a girl to gain over a man and subject him to her. " v. on the different forms of marriage. part iv. about a wife. chapter i. on the manner of living of a virtuous woman, and of her behaviour during the absence of her husband. " ii. on the conduct of the eldest wife towards the other wives of her husband, and of the younger wife towards the elder ones. also on the conduct of a virgin widow re-married; of a wife disliked by her husband; of the women in the king's harem; and of a husband who has more than one wife. part v. about the wives of other people. chapter i. on the characteristics of men and women, and the reason why women reject the addresses of men. about men who have success with women, and about women who are easily gained over. " ii. about making acquaintance with the woman, and of the efforts to gain her over. " iii. examination of the state of a woman's mind. " iv. the business of a go-between. " v. on the love of persons in authority with the wives of other people. " vi. about the women of the royal harem, and of the keeping of one's own wife. part vi. about courtesans. chapter i. of the causes of a courtesan resorting to men; of the means of attaching to herself the man desired, and the kind of man that it is desirable to be acquainted with. " ii. of a courtesan living with a man as his wife. " iii. of the means of getting money; of the signs of a lover who is beginning to be weary, and of the way to get rid of him. " iv. about a re-union with a former lover. " v. of different kinds of gain. " vi. of gains and losses, attendant gains and losses, and doubts; and lastly, the different kinds of courtesans. part vii. on the means of attracting others to one's self. chapter i. on personal adornment, subjugating the hearts of others, and of tonic medicines. " ii. of the means of exciting desire, and of the ways of enlarging the lingam. miscellaneous experiments and receipts. part i. chapter ii. on the acquisition of dharma, artha and kama. man, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practise dharma, artha, and kama at different times and in such a manner that they may harmonize together and not clash in any way. he should acquire learning in his childhood, in his youth and middle age he should attend to artha and kama, and in his old age he should perform dharma, and thus seek to gain moksha, _i.e._, release from further transmigration. or, on account of the uncertainty of life, he may practise them at times when they are enjoined to be practised. but one thing is to be noted, he should lead the life of a religious student until he finishes his education. _dharma_ is obedience to the command of the shastra or holy writ of the hindoos to do certain things, such as the performance of sacrifices, which are not generally done because they do not belong to this world, and produce no visible effect; and not to do other things, such as eating meat, which is often done because it belongs to this world, and has visible effects. dharma should be learnt from the shruti (holy writ), and from those conversant with it. _artha_ is the acquisition of arts, land, gold, cattle, wealth, equipages and friends. it is, further, the protection of what is acquired, and the increase of what is protected. artha should be learnt from the king's officers, and from merchants who may be versed in the ways of commerce. _kama_ is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. the ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact is called kama. kama is to be learnt from the kama sutra (aphorisms on love) and from the practice of citizens. when all the three, viz., dharma, artha, and kama come together, the former is better than the one which follows it, _i.e._, dharma is better than artha, and artha is better than kama. but artha should be always first practised by the king, for the livelihood of men is to be obtained from it only. again, kama being the occupation of public women, they should prefer it to the other two, and these are exceptions to the general rule. _objection ._ some learned men say that as dharma is connected with things not belonging to this world, it is appropriately treated of in a book; and so also is artha, because it is practised only by the application of proper means, and a knowledge of those means can only be obtained by study and from books. but kama being a thing which is practised even by the brute creation, and which is to be found everywhere, does not want any work on the subject. _answer._ this is not so. sexual intercourse being a thing dependent on man and woman requires the application of proper means by them, and those means are to be learnt from the kama shastra. the non-application of proper means, which we see in the brute creation, is caused by their being unrestrained, and by the females among them only being fit for sexual intercourse at certain seasons and no more, and by their intercourse not being preceded by thought of any kind. _objection ._ the lokayatikas[ ] say:--religious ordinances should not be observed, for they bear a future fruit, and at the same time it is also doubtful whether they will bear any fruit at all. what foolish person will give away that which is in his own hands into the hands of another? moreover, it is better to have a pigeon to-day than a peacock to-morrow; and a copper coin which we have the certainty of obtaining, is better than a gold coin, the possession of which is doubtful. _answer._ it is not so. st. holy writ, which ordains the practice of dharma, does not admit of a doubt. nd. sacrifices such as those made for the destruction of enemies, or for the fall of rain, are seen to bear fruit. rd. the sun, moon, stars, planets and other heavenly bodies appear to work intentionally for the good of the world. th. the existence of this world is effected by the observance of the rules respecting the four classes[ ] of men and their four stages of life. th. we see that seed is thrown into the ground with the hope of future crops. vatsyayana is therefore of opinion that the ordinances of religion must be obeyed. _objection ._ those who believe that destiny is the prime mover of all things say:--we should not exert ourselves to acquire wealth, for sometimes it is not acquired although we strive to get it, while at other times it comes to us of itself without any exertion on our part. everything is therefore in the power of destiny, who is the lord of gain and loss, of success and defeat, of pleasure and pain. thus we see the bali[ ] was raised to the throne of indra by destiny, and was also put down by the same power, and it is destiny only that can re-instate him. _answer._ it is not right to say so. as the acquisition of every object pre-supposes at all events some exertion on the part of man, the application of proper means may be said to be the cause of gaining all our ends, and this application of proper means being thus necessary (even where a thing is destined to happen), it follows that a person who does nothing will enjoy no happiness. _objection ._ those who are inclined to think that artha is the chief object to be obtained argue thus. pleasures should not be sought for, because they are obstacles to the practice of dharma and artha, which are both superior to them, and are also disliked by meritorious persons. pleasures also bring a man into distress, and into contact with low persons; they cause him to commit unrighteous deeds, and produce impurity in him; they make him regardless of the future, and encourage carelessness and levity. and lastly, they cause him to be disbelieved by all, received by none, and despised by everybody, including himself. it is notorious, moreover, that many men who have given themselves up to pleasure alone, have been ruined along with their families and relations. thus, king dandakya,[ ] of the bhoja dynasty, carried off a brahman's daughter with evil intent, and was eventually ruined and lost his kingdom. indra, too, having violated the chastity of ahalya,[ ] was made to suffer for it. in a like manner the mighty kichaka,[ ] who tried to seduce draupadi, and ravana,[ ] who attempted to gain over sita, were punished for their crimes. these and many others fell by reason of their pleasures. _answer._ this objection cannot be sustained, for pleasures, being as necessary for the existence and well being of the body as food, are consequently equally required. they are, moreover, the results of dharma and artha. pleasures are, therefore, to be followed with moderation and caution. no one refrains from cooking food because there are beggars to ask for it, or from sowing seed because there are deer to destroy the corn when it is grown up. thus a man practising dharma, artha and kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come. the good perform those actions in which there is no fear as to what is to result from them in the next world, and in which there is no danger to their welfare. any action which conduces to the practice of dharma, artha and kama together, or of any two, or even one of them, should be performed, but an action which conduces to the practice of one of them at the expense of the remaining two should not be performed. footnotes: [footnote : these were certainly materialists who seemed to think that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush.] [footnote : among the hindoos the four classes of men are the brahmans or priestly class, the kshutrya or warlike class, the vaishya or agricultural and mercantile class, and the shoodra or menial class. the four stages of life are, the life of a religious student, the life of a householder, the life of a hermit, and the life of a sunyasi or devotee.] [footnote : bali was a demon who had conquered indra and gained his throne, but was afterwards overcome by vishnu at the time of his fifth incarnation.] [footnote : dandakya is said to have abducted from the forest the daughter of a brahman, named bhargava, and being cursed by the brahman, was buried with his kingdom under a shower of dust. the place was called after his name the dandaka forest, celebrated in the ramayana, but now unknown.] [footnote : ahalya was the wife of the sage gautama. indra caused her to believe that he was gautama, and thus enjoyed her. he was cursed by gautama and subsequently afflicted with a thousand ulcers on his body.] [footnote : kichaka was the brother-in-law of king virata, with whom the pandavas had taken refuge for one year. kichaka was killed by bhima, who assumed the disguise of draupadi. for this story the mahabarata should be referred to.] [footnote : the story of ravana is told in the ramayana, which with the mahabarata form the two great epic poems of the hindoos; the latter was written by vyasa, and the former by valmiki.] chapter iii. on the arts and sciences to be studied. man should study the kama sutra and the arts and sciences subordinate thereto, in addition to the study of the arts and sciences contained in dharma and artha. even young maids should study this kama sutra along with its arts and sciences before marriage, and after it they should continue to do so with the consent of their husbands. here some learned men object, and say that females, not being allowed to study any science, should not study the kama sutra. but vatsyayana is of opinion that this objection does not hold good, for women already know the practice of kama sutra, and that practice is derived from the kama shastra, or the science of kama itself. moreover, it is not only in this but in many other cases that though the practice of a science is known to all, only a few persons are acquainted with the rules and laws on which the science is based. thus the yadnikas or sacrificers, though ignorant of grammar, make use of appropriate words when addressing the different deities, and do not know how these words are framed. again, persons do the duties required of them on auspicious days, which are fixed by astrology, though they are not acquainted with the science of astrology. in a like manner riders of horses and elephants train these animals without knowing the science of training animals, but from practice only. and similarly the people of the most distant provinces obey the laws of the kingdom from practice, and because there is a king over them, and without further reason.[ ] and from experience we find that some women, such as daughters of princes and their ministers, and public women, are actually versed in the kama shastra. a female, therefore, should learn the kama shastra, or at least a part of it, by studying its practice from some confidential friend. she should study alone in private the sixty-four practices that form a part of the kama shastra. her teacher should be one of the following persons, viz., the daughter of a nurse brought up with her and already married,[ ] or a female friend who can be trusted in everything, or the sister of her mother (_i.e._, her aunt), or an old female servant, or a female beggar who may have formerly lived in the family, or her own sister, who can always be trusted. the following are the arts to be studied, together with the kama sutra:-- . singing. . playing on musical instruments. . dancing. . union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music. . writing and drawing. . tattooing. . arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers. . spreading and arraying beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground. . colouring the teeth, garments, hair, nails, and bodies, _i.e._, staining, dyeing, colouring and painting the same. . fixing stained glass into a floor. . the art of making beds, and spreading out carpets and cushions for reclining. . playing on musical glasses filled with water. . storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs. . picture making, trimming and decorating. . stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths. . binding of turbans and chaplets, and making crests and top-knots of flowers. . scenic representations. stage playing. . art of making ear ornaments. . art of preparing perfumes and odours. . proper disposition of jewels and decorations, and adornment in dress. . magic or sorcery. . quickness of hand or manual skill. . culinary art, _i.e._, cooking and cookery. . making lemonades, sherbets, acidulated drinks, and spirituous extracts with proper flavour and colour. . tailor's work and sewing. . making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, &c., out of yarn or thread. . solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions. . a game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker's verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost, and to be subject to pay a forfeit or stake of some kind. . the art of mimicry or imitation. . reading, including chanting and intoning. . study of sentences difficult to pronounce. it is played as a game chiefly by women and children, and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced. . practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff, and bow and arrow. . drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring. . carpentry, or the work of a carpenter. . architecture, or the art of building. . knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems. . chemistry and mineralogy. . colouring jewels, gems and beads. . knowledge of mines and quarries. . gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages. . art of cock fighting, quail fighting and ram fighting. . art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak. . art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it. . the art of understanding writing in cypher, and the writing of words in a peculiar way. . the art of speaking by changing the forms of words. it is of various kinds. some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on. . knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects. . art of making flower carriages. . art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets. . mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. there are many other such exercises. . composing poems. . knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies. . knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons. . knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good. . various ways of gambling. . art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of muntras or incantations. . skill in youthful sports. . knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respects and compliments to others. . knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, &c. . knowledge of gymnastics. . art of knowing the character of a man from his features. . knowledge of scanning or constructing verses. . arithmetical recreations. . making artificial flowers. . making figures and images in clay. a public woman, endowed with a good disposition, beauty and other winning qualities, and also versed in the above arts, obtains the name of a ganika, or public woman of high quality, and receives a seat of honour in an assemblage of men. she is, moreover, always respected by the king, and praised by learned men, and her favour being sought for by all, she becomes an object of universal regard. the daughter of a king too, as well as the daughter of a minister, being learned in the above arts, can make their husbands favourable to them, even though these may have thousands of other wives besides themselves. and in the same manner, if a wife becomes separated from her husband, and falls into distress, she can support herself easily, even in a foreign country, by means of her knowledge of these arts. even the bare knowledge of them gives attractiveness to a woman, though the practice of them may be only possible or otherwise according to the circumstances of each case. a man who is versed in these arts, who is loquacious and acquainted with the arts of gallantry, gains very soon the hearts of women, even though he is only acquainted with them for a short time. footnotes: [footnote : the author wishes to prove that a great many things are done by people from practice and custom, without their being acquainted with the reason of things, or the laws on which they are based, and this is perfectly true.] [footnote : the proviso of being married applies to all the teachers.] chapter iv. the life of a citizen.[ ] having thus acquired learning, a man, with the wealth that he may have gained by gift, conquest, purchase, deposit,[ ] or inheritance from his ancestors, should become a householder, and pass the life of a citizen. he should take a house in a city, or large village, or in the vicinity of good men, or in a place which is the resort of many persons. this abode should be situated near some water, and divided into different compartments for different purposes. it should be surrounded by a garden, and also contain two rooms, an outer and an inner one. the inner room should be occupied by the females, while the outer room, balmy with rich perfumes, should contain a bed, soft, agreeable to the sight covered with a clean white cloth, low in the middle part, having garlands and bunches of flowers[ ] upon it, and a canopy above it, and two pillows, one at the top, another at the bottom. there should be also a sort of couch besides, and at the head of this a sort of stool, on which should be placed the fragrant ointments for the night, as well as flowers, pots containing collyrium and other fragrant substances, things used for perfuming the mouth, and the bark of the common citron tree. near the couch, on the ground, there should be a pot for spitting, a box containing ornaments, and also a lute hanging from a peg made of the tooth of an elephant, a board for drawing, a pot containing perfume, some books, and some garlands of the yellow amaranth flowers. not far from the couch, and on the ground, there should be a round seat, a toy cart, and a board for playing with dice; outside the outer room there should be cages of birds,[ ] and a separate place for spinning, carving, and such like diversions. in the garden there should be a whirling swing and a common swing, as also a bower of creepers covered with flowers, in which a raised parterre should be made for sitting. now the householder having got up in the morning and performed his necessary duties,[ ] should wash his teeth, apply a limited quantity of ointments and perfumes to his body, put some ornaments on his person and collyrium on his eyelids and below his eyes, colour his lips with alacktaka,[ ] and look at himself in the glass. having then eaten betel leaves, with other things that give fragrance to the mouth, he should perform his usual business. he should bathe daily, anoint his body with oil every other day, apply a lathering[ ] substance to his body every three days, get his head (including face) shaved every four days, and the other parts of his body every five or ten days.[ ] all these things should be done without fail, and the sweat of the armpits should also be removed. meals should be taken in the forenoon, in the afternoon, and again at night, according to charayana. after breakfast, parrots and other birds should be taught to speak, and the fighting of cocks, quails, and rams should follow. a limited time should be devoted to diversions with pithamardas, vitas, and vidushakas,[ ] and then should be taken the midday sleep.[ ] after this the householder, having put on his clothes and ornaments, should, during the afternoon, converse with his friends. in the evening there should be singing, and after that the householder, along with his friend, should await in his room, previously decorated and perfumed, the arrival of the woman that may be attached to him, or he may send a female messenger for her, or go for her himself. after her arrival at his house, he and his friend should welcome her, and entertain her with a loving and agreeable conversation. thus end the duties of the day. the following are the things to be done occasionally as diversions or amusements. . holding festivals[ ] in honour of different deities. . social gatherings of both sexes. . drinking parties. . picnics. . other social diversions. _festivals._ on some particular auspicious day, an assembly of citizens should be convened in the temple of saraswati.[ ] there the skill of singers, and of others who may have come recently to the town, should be tested, and on the following day they should always be given some rewards. after that they may either be retained or dismissed, according as their performances are liked or not by the assembly. the members of the assembly should act in concert, both in times of distress as well as in times of prosperity, and it is also the duty of these citizens to show hospitality to strangers who may have come to the assembly. what is said above should be understood to apply to all the other festivals which may be held in honour of the different deities, according to the present rules. _social gatherings._ when men of the same age, disposition and talents, fond of the same diversions and with the same degree of education, sit together in company with public women,[ ] or in an assembly of citizens, or at the abode of one among themselves, and engage in agreeable discourse with each other, such is called a sitting in company or a social gathering. the subjects of discourse are to be the completion of verses half composed by others, and the testing the knowledge of one another in the various arts. the women who may be the most beautiful, who may like the same things that the men like, and who may have power to attract the minds of others, are here done homage to. _drinking parties._ men and women should drink in one another's houses. and here the men should cause the public women to drink, and should then drink themselves, liquors such as the madhu, aireya, sara, and asawa, which are of bitter and sour taste; also drinks concocted from the barks of various trees, wild fruits and leaves. _going to gardens or picnics._ in the forenoon, men, having dressed themselves should go to gardens on horseback, accompanied by public women and followed by servants. and having done there all the duties of the day, and passed the time in various agreeable diversions, such as the fighting of quails, cocks and rams, and other spectacles, they should return home in the afternoon in the same manner, bringing with them bunches of flowers, &c. the same also applies to bathing in summer in water from which wicked or dangerous animals have previously been taken out, and which has been built in on all sides. _other social diversions._ spending nights playing with dice. going out on moonlight nights. keeping the festive day in honour of spring. plucking the sprouts and fruits of the mangoe trees. eating the fibres of lotuses. eating the tender ears of corn. picnicing in the forests when the trees get their new foliage. the udakakashvedika or sporting in the water. decorating each other with the flowers of some trees. pelting each other with the flowers of the kadamba tree, and many other sports which may either be known to the whole country, or may be peculiar to particular parts of it. these and similar other amusements should always be carried on by citizens. the above amusements should be followed by a person who diverts himself alone in company with a courtesan, as well as by a courtesan who can do the same in company with her maid servants or with citizens. a pithamarda[ ] is a man without wealth, alone in the world, whose only property consists of his mallika,[ ] some lathering, substance and a red cloth, who comes from a good country, and who is skilled in all the arts; and by teaching these arts is received in the company of citizens, and in the abode of public women. a vita[ ] is a man who has enjoyed the pleasures of fortune, who is a compatriot of the citizens with whom he associates, who is possessed of the qualities of a householder, who has his wife with him, and who is honoured in the assembly of citizens, and in the abodes of public women, and lives on their means and on them. a vidushaka[ ] (also called a vaihasaka, _i.e._, one who provokes laughter) is a person only acquainted with some of the arts who is a jester, and who is trusted by all. these persons are employed in matters of quarrels and reconciliations between citizens and public women. this remark applies also to female beggars, to women with their heads shaved, to adulterous women, and to old public women skilled in all the various arts. thus a citizen living in his town or village, respected by all, should call on the persons of his own caste who may be worth knowing. he should converse in company and gratify his friends by his society, and obliging others by his assistance in various matters, he should cause them to assist one another in the same way. there are some verses on this subject as follows:-- a citizen discoursing, not entirely in the sanscrit language,[ ] nor wholly in the dialects of the country, on various topics in society, obtains great respect. the wise should not resort to a society disliked by the public, governed by no rules, and intent on the destruction of others. but a learned man living in a society which acts according to the wishes of the people, and which has pleasure for its only object is highly respected in this world. footnotes: [footnote : this term would appear to apply generally to an inhabitant of hindoostan. it is not meant only for a dweller in a city, like the latin urbanus as opposed to rusticus.] [footnote : gift is peculiar to a brahman, conquest to a kshatrya, while purchase, deposit, and other means of acquiring wealth belongs to the vaishya.] [footnote : natural garden flowers.] [footnote : such as quails, partridges, parrots, starlings, &c.] [footnote : the calls of nature always performed by the hindoos the first thing in the morning.] [footnote : a colour made from lac.] [footnote : this would act instead of soap, which was not introduced until the rule of the mahomedans.] [footnote : ten days are allowed when the hair is taken out with a pair of pincers.] [footnote : these are characters generally introduced in the hindoo drama; their characteristics will be explained further on.] [footnote : noonday sleep is only allowed in summer, when the nights are short.] [footnote : these are very common in all parts of india.] [footnote : in the 'asiatic miscellany,' and in sir w. jones's works, will be found a spirited hymn addressed to this goddess, who is adored as the patroness of the fine arts, especially of music and rhetoric, as the inventress of the sanscrit language, &c., &c. she is the goddess of harmony, eloquence, and language, and is somewhat analogous to minerva. for further information about her, see edward moor's 'hindoo pantheon.'] [footnote : the public women, or courtesans (vesya), of the early hindoos have often been compared with the hetera of the greeks. the subject is dealt with at some length in h. h. wilson's 'select specimens of the theatre of the hindoos,' in two volumes, trubner & co., . it may be fairly considered that the courtesan was one of the elements, and an important element too, of early hindoo society, and that her education and intellect were both superior to that of the women of the household. wilson says, "by the vesya or courtesan, however, we are not to understand a female who has disregarded the obligation of law or the precepts of virtue, but a character reared by a state of manners unfriendly to the admission of wedded females into society, and opening it only at the expense of reputation to women who were trained for association with men by personal and mental acquirements to which the matron was a stranger."] [footnote : according to this description a pithamarda would be a sort of professor of all the arts, and as such received as the friend and confidant of the citizens.] [footnote : a seat in the form of the letter t.] [footnote : the vita is supposed to represent somewhat the character of the parasite of the greek comedy. it is possible that he was retained about the person of the wealthy and dissipated as a kind of private instructor, as well as an entertaining companion.] [footnote : vidushaka is evidently the buffoon and jester. wilson says of him that he is the humble companion, not the servant, of a prince or man of rank, and it is a curious peculiarity that he is always a brahman. he bears more affinity to sancho panza, perhaps, than any other character in western fiction, imitating him in his combination of shrewdness and simplicity, his fondness of good living and his love of ease. in the dramas of intrigue he exhibits some of the talents of mercury, but with less activity and ingenuity, and occasionally suffers by his interference. according to the technical definition of his attributes he is to excite mirth by being ridiculous in person, age, and attire.] [footnote : this means, it is presumed, that the citizen should be acquainted with several languages. the middle part of this paragraph might apply to the nihilists and fenians of the day, or to secret societies. it was perhaps a reference to the thugs.] chapter v. about the kinds of women resorted to by the citizens, and of friends and messengers. when kama is practised by men of the four castes according to the rules of the holy writ (_i.e._, by lawful marriage) with virgins of their own caste, it then becomes a means of acquiring lawful progeny and good fame, and it is not also opposed to the customs of the world. on the contrary the practice of kama with women of the higher castes, and with those previously enjoyed by others, even though they be of the same caste, is prohibited. but the practice of kama with women of the lower castes, with women excommunicated from their own caste, with public women, and with women twice married,[ ] is neither enjoined nor prohibited. the object of practising kama with such women is pleasure only. nayikas,[ ] therefore, are of three kinds, viz., maids, women twice married, and public women. gonikaputra has expressed an opinion that there is a fourth kind of nayika, viz., a woman who is resorted to on some special occasion even though she be previously married to another. these special occasions are when a man thinks thus:-- (_a_). this woman is self-willed, and has been previously enjoyed by many others besides myself. i may, therefore, safely resort to her as to a public woman though she belongs to a higher caste than mine, and in so doing i shall not be violating the ordinances of dharma. or thus:-- (_b_). this is a twice-married woman and has been enjoyed by others before me, there is, therefore, no objection to my resorting to her. or thus:-- (_c_). this woman has gained the heart of her great and powerful husband, and exercises a mastery over him, who is a friend of my enemy; if, therefore, she becomes united with me, she will cause her husband to abandon my enemy. or thus:-- (_d_). this woman will turn the mind of her husband, who is very powerful, in my favour, he being at present disaffected towards me, and intent on doing me some harm. or thus:-- (_e_). by making this woman my friend i shall gain the object of some friend of mine, or shall be able to effect the ruin of some enemy, or shall accomplish some other difficult purpose. or thus:-- (_f_). by being united with this woman, i shall kill her husband, and so obtain his vast riches which i covet. or thus:-- (_g_). the union of this woman with me is not attended with any danger, and will bring me wealth, of which, on account of my poverty and inability to support myself, i am very much in need. i shall, therefore, obtain her vast riches in this way without any difficulty. or thus:-- (_h_). this woman loves me ardently, and knows all my weak points, if therefore, i am unwilling to be united with her, she will make my faults public, and thus tarnish my character and reputation. or she will bring some gross accusation against me, of which it may be hard to clear myself, and i shall be ruined. or perhaps she will detach from me her husband, who is powerful, and yet under her control, and will unite him to my enemy, or will herself join the latter. or thus:-- (_i_). the husband of this woman has violated the chastity of my wives, i shall therefore return that injury by seducing his wives. or thus:-- (_j_). by the help of this woman i shall kill an enemy of the king, who has taken shelter with her, and whom i am ordered by the king to destroy. or thus: (_k_). the woman whom i love is under the control of this woman. i shall, through the influence of the latter, be able to get at the former. or thus:-- (_l_). this woman will bring to me a maid, who possesses wealth and beauty, but who is hard to get at, and under the control of another. or, lastly, thus:-- (_m_). my enemy is a friend of this woman's husband, i shall therefore cause her to join him, and will thus create an enmity between her husband and him. for these and similar other reasons the wives of other men may be resorted to, but it must be distinctly understood that is only allowed for special reasons, and not for mere carnal desire. charayana thinks that under these circumstances there is also a fifth kind of nayika, viz., a woman who is kept by a minister, and who repairs to him occasionally; or a widow who accomplishes the purpose of a man with the person to whom she resorts. suvarnanabha adds that a woman who passes the life of an ascetic and in the condition of a widow may be considered as a sixth kind of nayika. ghotakamukha says that the daughter of a public woman, and a female servant, who are still virgins, form a seventh kind of nayika. gonardiya puts forth his doctrine that any woman born of good family, after she has come of age, is an eighth kind of nayika. but these four latter kinds of nayikas do not differ much from the first four kinds of them, as there is no separate object in resorting to them. therefore vatsyayana is of opinion that there are only four kinds of nayikas, _i.e._, the maid, the twice married woman, the public woman, and the woman resorted to for a special purpose. the following women are not to be enjoyed:-- a leper. a lunatic. a woman turned out of caste. a woman who reveals secrets. a woman who publicly expresses desire for sexual intercourse. a woman who is extremely white. a woman who is extremely black. a bad-smelling woman. a woman who is a near relation. a woman who is a female friend. a woman who leads the life of an ascetic. and, lastly, the wife of a relation, of a friend, of a learned brahman, and of the king. the followers of babhravya say that any woman who has been enjoyed by five men is a fit and proper person to be enjoyed. but gonikaputra is of opinion that even when this is the case, the wives of a relation, of a learned brahman and of a king should be excepted. the following are the kind of friends:-- one who has played with you in the dust, _i.e._, in childhood. one who is bound by an obligation. one who is of the same disposition and fond of the same things. one who is a fellow student. one who is acquainted with your secrets and faults, and whose faults and secrets are also known to you. one who is a child of your nurse. one who is brought up with you. one who is an hereditary friend. these friends should possess the following qualities:-- they should tell the truth. they should not be changed by time. they should be favourable to your designs. they should be firm. they should be free from covetousness. they should not be capable of being gained over by others. they should not reveal your secrets. charayana says that citizens form friendship with washermen, barbers, cowherds, florists, druggists, betel-leaf sellers, tavern keepers, beggars, pithamardas, vitas and vidushekas, as also with the wives of all these people. a messenger should possess the following qualities:-- skilfulness. boldness. knowledge of the intention of men by their outward signs. absence of confusion, _i.e._, no shyness. knowledge of the exact meaning of what others do or say. good manners. knowledge of appropriate times and places for doing different things. ingenuity in business. quick comprehension. quick application of remedies, _i.e._, quick and ready resources. and this part ends with a verse:-- the man who is ingenious and wise, who is accompanied by a friend, and who knows the intentions of others, as also the proper time and place for doing everything, can gain over, very easily, even a woman who is very hard to be obtained. footnotes: [footnote : this term does not apply to a widow, but to a woman who had probably left her husband, and is living with some other person as a married woman, maritalement, as they say in france.] [footnote : any woman fit to be enjoyed without sin. the object of the enjoyment of women is twofold, viz., pleasure and progeny. any woman who can be enjoyed without sin for the purpose of accomplishing either the one or the other of these two objects is a nayika. the fourth kind of nayika which vatsya admits further on is neither enjoyed for pleasure or for progeny, but merely for accomplishing some special purpose in hand. the word nayika is retained as a technical term throughout.] =end of part i.= part ii. of sexual union. chapter i. kinds of sexual union according to (_a_) dimensions. (_b_) force of desire or passion. (_c_) time. _kinds of union._ man is divided into three classes, viz., the hare man, the bull man, and the horse man, according to the size of his lingam. woman also, according to the depth of her yoni, is either a female deer, a mare, or a female elephant. there are thus three equal unions between persons of corresponding dimensions, and there are six unequal unions, when the dimensions do not correspond, or nine in all, as the following table shows: +--------------------+--------------------+ | equal. | unequal. | +--------------------+--------------------+ | men. | women. | men. | women. | +--------+-----------+--------|-----------+ | | | | | | hare. | deer. | hare. | mare. | | bull. | mare. | hare. | elephant. | | horse. | elephant. | bull. | deer. | | | | bull. | elephant. | | | | horse. | deer. | | | | horse. | mare. | +--------+-----------+--------+-----------+ in these unequal unions, when the male exceeds the female in point of size, his union with a woman who is immediately next to him in size is called high union, and is of two kinds; while his union with the woman most remote from him in size is called the highest union, and is of one kind only. on the other hand when the female exceeds the male in point of size, her union with a man immediately next to her in size is called low union, and is of two kinds; while her union with a man most remote from her in size is called the lowest union, and is of one kind only. in other words, the horse and mare, the bull and deer, form the high union, while the horse and deer form the highest union. on the female side, the elephant and bull, the mare and hare, form low unions, while the elephant and the hare make the lowest unions. there are then, nine kinds of union according to dimensions. amongst all these, equal unions are the best, those of a superlative degree, _i.e._, the highest and the lowest, are the worst, and the rest are middling, and with them the high[ ] are better than the low. there are also nine kinds of union according to the force of passion or carnal desire, as follows: +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | men. | women. | men. | women. | +-----------+-----------+-----------|-----------+ | | | | | | small. | small. | small. | middling. | | middling. | middling. | small. | intense. | | intense. | intense. | middling. | small. | | | | middling. | intense. | | | | intense. | small. | | | | intense. | middling. | +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ a man is called a man of small passion whose desire at the time of sexual union is not great, whose semen is scanty, and who cannot bear the warm embraces of the female. those who differ from this temperament are called men of middling passion, while those of intense passion are full of desire. in the same way, women are supposed to have the three degrees of feeling as specified above. lastly, according to time there are three kinds of men and women, viz., the short-timed, the moderate-timed, and the long-timed, and of these as in the previous statements, there are nine kinds of union. but on this last head there is a difference of opinion about the female, which should be stated. auddalika says, "females do not emit as males do. the males simply remove their desire, while the females, from their consciousness of desire, feel a certain kind of pleasure, which gives them satisfaction, but it is impossible for them to tell you what kind of pleasure they feel. the fact from which this becomes evident is, that males, when engaged in coition, cease of themselves after emission, and are satisfied, but it is not so with females." this opinion is, however, objected to on the grounds that if a male be a long-timed, the female loves him the more, but if he be short-timed, she is dissatisfied with him. and this circumstance, some say, would prove that the female emits also. but this opinion does not hold good, for if it takes a long time to allay a woman's desire, and during this time she is enjoying great pleasure, it is quite natural then that she should wish for its continuation. and on this subject there is a verse as follows: "by union with men the lust, desire, or passion of women is satisfied, and the pleasure derived from the consciousness of it is called their satisfaction." the followers of babhravya, however, say that the semen of women continues to fall from the beginning of the sexual union to its end, and it is right that it should be so, for if they had no semen there would be no embryo. to this there is an objection. in the beginning of coition the passion of the woman is middling, and she cannot bear the vigorous thrusts of her lover, but by degrees her passion increases until she ceases to think about her body, and then finally she wishes to stop from further coition. this objection, however, does not hold good, for even in ordinary things that revolve with great force, such as a potter's wheel, or a top, we find that the motion at first is slow, but by degrees it becomes very rapid. in the same way the passion of the woman having gradually increased, she has a desire to discontinue coition, when all the semen has fallen away. and there is a verse with regard to this as follows: "the fall of the semen of the man takes place only at the end of coition, while the semen of the woman falls continually, and after the semen of both has all fallen away then they wish for the discontinuance of coition."[ ] lastly, vatsyayana is of opinion that the semen of the female falls in the same way as that of the male. now some may ask here: if men and women are beings of the same kind, and are engaged in bringing about the same result, why should they have different works to do. vatsya says that this is so, because the ways of working as well as the consciousness of pleasure in men and women are different. the difference in the ways of working, by which men are the actors, and women are the persons acted upon, is owing to the nature of the male and the female, otherwise the actor would be sometimes the person acted upon, and vice versâ. and from this difference in the ways of working follows the difference in the consciousness of pleasure, for a man thinks, "this woman is united with me," and a woman thinks, "i am united with this man." it may be said that if the ways of working in men and women are different, why should not there be a difference, even in the pleasure they feel, and which is the result of those ways. but this objection is groundless, for the person acting and the person acted upon being of different kinds, there is a reason for the difference in their ways of working; but there is no reason for any difference in the pleasure they feel, because they both naturally derive pleasure from the act they perform.[ ] on this again some may say that when different persons are engaged in doing the same work, we find that they accomplish the same end or purpose: while, on the contrary, in the case of men and women we find that each of them accomplishes his or her own end separately, and this is inconsistent. but this is a mistake, for we find that sometimes two things are done at the same time, as for instance in the fighting of rams, both the rams receive the shock at the same time on their heads. again, in throwing one wood apple against another, and also in a fight or struggle of wrestlers. if it be said that in these cases the things employed are of the same kind, it is answered that even in the case of men and women, the nature of the two persons is the same. and as the difference in their ways of working arises from the difference of their conformation only, it follows that men experience the same kind of pleasure as women do. there is also a verse on this subject as follows: "men and women being of the same nature, feel the same kind of pleasure, and therefore a man should marry such a woman as will love him ever afterwards." the pleasure of men and women being thus proved to be of the same kind, it follows that in regard to time, there are nine kinds of sexual intercourse, in the same way as there are nine kinds, according to the force of passion. there being thus nine kinds of union with regard to dimensions, force of passion, and time, respectively, by making combinations of them, innumerable kinds of union would be produced. therefore in each particular kind of sexual union, men should use such means as they may think suitable for the occasion.[ ] at the first time of sexual union the passion of the male is intense, and his time is short, but in subsequent unions on the same day the reverse of this is the case. with the female, however, it is the contrary, for at the first time her passion is weak, and then her time long, but on subsequent occasions on the same day, her passion is intense and her time short, until her passion is satisfied. _on the different kinds of love._ men learned in the humanities are of opinion that love is of four kinds, viz.: . love acquired by continual habit. . love resulting from the imagination. . love resulting from belief. . love resulting from the perception of external objects. ( ). love resulting from the constant and continual performance and habit, as for instance the love of sexual intercourse, the love of hunting, the love of drinking, the love of gambling, etc., etc. ( ). love which is felt for things to which we are not habituated, and which proceeds entirely from ideas, is called love resulting from imagination, as for instance, that love which some men and women and eunuchs feel for the auparishtaka or mouth congress, and that which is felt by all for such things as embracing, kissing, etc., etc. ( ). the love which is mutual on both sides, and proved to be true, when each looks upon the other as his or her very own, such is called love resulting from belief by the learned. ( ). the love resulting from the perception of eternal objects is quite evident and well-known to the world, because the pleasure which it affords is superior to the pleasure of the other kinds of love, which exists only for its sake. what has been said in this chapter upon the subject of sexual union is sufficient for the learned; but for the edification of the ignorant, the same will now be treated of at length and in detail. footnotes: [footnote : high unions are said to be better than low ones, for in the former it is possible for the male to satisfy his own passion without injuring the female, while in the latter it is difficult for the female to be satisfied by any means.] [footnote : the strength of passion with women varies a great deal, some being easily satisfied, and others eager and willing to go on for a long time. to satisfy these last thoroughly a man must have recourse to art. it is certain that a fluid flows from the woman in larger or smaller quantities, but her satisfaction is not complete until she has experienced the "spasme génêsique," as described in a french work recently published and called "breviare de l'amour experimental par le dr. jules guyot."] [footnote : this is a long dissertation very common among sanscrit authors, both when writing and talking socially. they start certain propositions, and then argue for and against them. what it is presumed the author means, is, that though both men and women derive pleasure from the act of coition, the way it is produced is brought about by different means, each individual performing his own work in the matter, irrespective of the other, and each deriving individually their own consciousness of pleasure from the act they perform. there is a difference in the work that each does, and a difference in the consciousness of pleasure that each has, but no difference in the pleasure they feel, for each feels that pleasure to a greater or lesser degree.] [footnote : this paragraph should be particularly noted, for it specially applies to married men and their wives. so many men utterly ignore the feelings of the women, and never pay the slightest attention to the passion of the latter. to understand the subject thoroughly, it is absolutely necessary to study it, and then a person will know that, as dough is prepared for baking, so must a woman be prepared for sexual intercourse, if she is to derive satisfaction from it.] chapter ii. of the embrace. this part of the kama shastra, which treats of sexual union, is also called "sixty-four" (chatushshashti). some old authors say that it is called so, because it contains sixty-four chapters. others are of opinion that the author of this part being a person named panchala, and the person who recited the part of the rig veda called dashatapa, which contains sixty-four verses, being also called panchala, the name "sixty-four" has been given to the part of the work in honour of the rig vedas. the followers of babhravya say on the other hand that this part contains eight subjects, viz., the embrace, kissing, scratching with the nails or fingers, biting, lying down, making various sounds, playing the part of a man, and the auparishtaka, or mouth congress. each of these subjects being of eight kinds, and eight multiplied by eight being sixty-four, this part is therefore named "sixty-four." but vatsyayana affirms that as this part contains also the following subjects, viz., striking, crying, the acts of a man during congress, the various kinds of congress, and other subjects, the name "sixty-four" is given to it only accidentally. as, for instance, we say this tree is "saptaparna," or seven-leaved, this offering of rice is "panchavarna," or five-coloured, but the tree has not seven leaves, neither has the rice five colours. however the part sixty-four is now treated of, and the embrace, being the first subject, will now be considered. now the embrace which indicates the mutual love of a man and woman who have come together is of four kinds, viz.: touching. piercing. rubbing. pressing. the action in each case is denoted by the meaning of the word which stands for it. ( ). when a man under some pretext or other goes in front or alongside of a woman and touches her body with his own, it is called the "touching embrace." ( ). when a woman in a lonely place bends down, as if to pick up something, and pierces, as it were, a man sitting or standing, with her breasts, and the man in return takes hold of them, it is called a "piercing embrace." the above two kinds of embrace takes place only between persons who do not, as yet, speak freely with each other. ( ). when two lovers are walking slowly together, either in the dark, or in a place of public resort, or in a lonely place, and rub their bodies against each other, it is called a "rubbing embrace." ( ). when on the above occasion one of them presses the other's body forcibly against a wall or pillar, it is called a "pressing embrace." these two last embraces are peculiar to those who know the intentions of each other. at the time of the meeting the four following kinds of embrace are used, viz.: _jataveshtitaka_, or the twining of a creeper. _vrikshadhirudhaka_, or climbing a tree. _tila-tandulaka_, or the mixture of sesamum seed with rice. _kshiraniraka_, or milk and water embrace. ( ). when a woman, clinging to a man as a creeper twines round a tree, bends his head down to hers with the desire of kissing him and slightly makes the sound of sut sut, embraces him, and looks lovingly towards him, it is called an embrace like the "twining of a creeper." ( ). when a woman, having placed one of her feet on the foot of her lover, and the other on one of his thighs, passes one of her arms round his back, and the other on his shoulders, makes slightly the sounds of singing and cooing, and wishes, as it were, to climb up him in order to have a kiss, it is called an embrace like the "climbing of a tree." these two kinds of embrace take place when the lover is standing. ( ). when lovers lie on a bed, and embrace each other so closely that the arms and thighs of the one are encircled by the arms and thighs of the other, and are, as it were, rubbing up against them, this is called an embrace like "the mixture of sesamum seed with rice." ( ). when a man and a woman are very much in love with each other, and not thinking of any pain or hurt, embrace each other as if they were entering into each other's bodies, either while the woman is sitting on the lap of the man or in front of him, or on a bed, then it is called an embrace like a "mixture of milk and water." these two kinds of embrace take place at the time of sexual union. babhravya has thus related to us the above eight kinds of embraces. suvarnanabha, moreover, gives us four ways of embracing simple members of the body, which are: the embrace of the thighs. the embrace of the jaghana, _i.e._, the part of the body from the navel downwards to the thighs. the embrace of the breasts. the embrace of the forehead. ( ). when one of two lovers presses forcibly one or both of the thighs of the other between his or her own, it is called the "embrace of thighs." ( ). when a man presses the jaghana or middle part of the woman's body against his own, and mounts upon her to practise, either scratching with the nail or finger, or biting, or striking, or kissing, the hair of the woman being loose and flowing, it is called the "embrace of the jaghana." ( ). when a man places his breast between the breasts of a woman, and presses her with it, it is called the "embrace of the breasts." ( ). when either of the lovers touches the mouth, the eyes and the forehead of the other with his or her own, it is called the "embrace of the forehead." some say that even shampooing is a kind of embrace, because there is a touching of bodies in it. but vatsyayana thinks that shampooing is performed at a different time, and for a different purpose, and it is also of a different character, it cannot be said to be included in the embrace. there are also some verses on the subject as follows: "the whole subject of embracing is of such a nature that men who ask questions about it, or who hear about it, or who talk about it, acquire thereby a desire for enjoyment. even those embraces that are not mentioned in the kama shastra should be practised at the time of sexual enjoyment, if they are in any way conducive to the increase of love or passion. the rules of the shastra apply so long as the passion of man is middling, but when the wheel of love is once set in motion, there is then no shastra and no order." chapter iii. on kissing. it is said by some that there is no fixed time or order between the embrace, the kiss, and the pressing or scratching with the nails or fingers, but that all these things should be done generally before sexual union takes place, while striking and making the various sounds generally takes place at the time of the union. vatsyayana, however, thinks that anything may take place at any time, for love does not care for time or order. on the occasion of the first congress, kissing and the other things mentioned above should be done moderately, they should not be continued for a long time, and should be done alternately. on subsequent occasions, however, the reverse of all this may take place, and moderation will not be necessary, they may continue for a long time, and for the purpose of kindling love, they may be all done at the same time. the following are the places for kissing, viz., the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, the throat, the bosom, the breasts, the lips, and the interior of the mouth. moreover, the people of the lat country kiss also on the following places, viz., the joints of the thighs, the arms, and the navel. but vatsyayana thinks that though kissing is practised by these people in the above places on account of the intensity of their love, and the customs of their country, it is not fit to be practised by all. now in a case of a young girl there are three sort of kisses, viz.: the nominal kiss. the throbbing kiss. the touching kiss. ( ). when a girl only touches the mouth of her lover with her own, but does not herself do anything, it is called the "nominal kiss." ( ). when a girl, setting aside her bashfulness a little, wishes to touch the lip that is pressed into her mouth, and with that object moves her lower lip, but not the upper one, it is called the "throbbing kiss." ( ). when a girl touches her lover's lip with her tongue, and having shut her eyes, places her hands on those of her lover, it is called the "touching kiss." other authors describe four other kinds of kisses, viz.: the straight kiss. the bent kiss. the turned kiss. the pressed kiss. ( ). when the lips of two lovers are brought into direct contact with each other, it is called a "straight kiss." ( ). when the heads of two lovers are bent towards each other, and when so bent kissing takes place, it is called a "bent kiss." ( ). when one of them turns up the face of the other by holding the head and chin, and then kissing, it is called a "turned kiss." ( ). lastly, when the lower lip is pressed with much force, it is called a "pressed kiss." there is also a fifth kind of kiss called the "greatly pressed kiss," which is effected by taking hold of the lower lip between two fingers, and then after touching it with the tongue, pressing it with great force with the lip. as regards kissing, a wager may be laid as to which will get hold of the lips of the other first. if the woman loses, she should pretend to cry, should keep her lover off by shaking her hands, and turn away from him and dispute with him, saying "let another wager be laid." if she loses this a second time, she should appear doubly distressed, and when her lover is off his guard or asleep, she should get hold of his lower lip, and hold it in her teeth, so that it should not slip away, and then she should laugh, make a loud noise, deride him, dance about, and say whatever she likes in a joking way, moving her eyebrows, and rolling her eyes. such are the wagers and quarrels as far as kissing is concerned, but the same may be applied with regard to the pressing or scratching with the nails and fingers, biting and striking. all these, however, are only peculiar to men and women of intense passion. when a man kisses the upper lip of a woman, while she in return kisses his lower lip, it is called the "kiss of the upper lip." when one of them takes both the lips of the other between his or her own, it is called "a clasping kiss." a woman, however, only takes this kind of kiss from a man who has no moustache. and on the occasion of this kiss, if one of them touches the teeth, the tongue, and the palate of the other, with his or her tongue, it is called the "fighting of the tongue." in the same way, the pressing of the teeth of the one against the mouth of the other is to be practised. kissing is of four kinds, viz., moderate, contracted, pressed, and soft, according to the different parts of the body which are kissed, for different kinds of kisses are appropriate for different parts of the body. when a woman looks at the face of her lover while he is asleep, and kisses it to show her intention or desire, it is called a "kiss that kindles love." when a woman kisses her lover while he is engaged in business, or while he is quarrelling with her, or while he is looking at something else, so that his mind may be turned away, it is called a "kiss that turns away." when a lover coming home late at night kisses his beloved, who is asleep or in bed, in order to show her his desire, it is called a "kiss that awakens." on such an occasion the woman may pretend to be asleep at the time of her lover's arrival, so that she may know his intention and obtain respect from him. when a person kisses the reflection of the person he loves in a mirror, in water, or on a wall, it is called a "kiss showing the intention." when a person kisses a child sitting on his lap, or a picture, or an image, or figure, in the presence of the person beloved by him, it is called a "transferred kiss." when at night at a theatre, or in an assembly of caste men, a man coming up to a woman kisses a finger of her hand if she be standing, or a toe of her foot if she be sitting, or when a woman is shampooing her lover's body, places her face on his thigh (as if she was sleepy) so as to inflame his passion, and kisses his thigh or great toe, it is called a "demonstrative kiss." there is also a verse on the subject as follows:-- "whatever things may be done by one of the lovers to the other, the same should be returned by the other, _i.e._, if the woman kisses him he should kiss her in return, if she strikes him he should also strike her in return." chapter iv. on pressing, or marking, or scratching with the nails. when love becomes intense, pressing with the nails or scratching the body with them is practised, and it is done on the following occasions: on the first visit; at the time of setting out on a journey; on the return from a journey; at the time when an angry lover is reconciled; and lastly when the woman is intoxicated. but pressing with the nails is not an usual thing except with those who are intensely passionate, _i.e._, full of passion. it is employed together with biting, by those to whom the practice is agreeable. pressing with the nails is of the eight following kinds, according to the forms of the marks which are produced, viz.: . sounding. . half moon. . a circle. . a line. . a tiger's nail or claw. . a peacock's foot. . the jump of a hare. . the leaf of a blue lotus. the places that are to be pressed with the nails are as follows: the arm pit, the throat, the breasts, the lips, the jaghana, or middle parts of the body, and the thighs. but suvarnanabha is of opinion that when the impetuosity of passion is excessive, then the places need not be considered. the qualities of good nails are that they should be bright, well set, clean, entire, convex, soft, and glossy in appearance. nails are of three kinds according to their size, viz.: small. middling. large. large nails, which give grace to the hands, and attract the hearts of women from their appearance, are possessed by the bengalees. small nails, which can be used in various ways, and are to be applied only with the object of giving pleasure, are possessed by the people of the southern districts. middling nails, which contain the properties of both the above kinds, belong to the people of the maharashtra. ( ). when a person presses the chin, the breasts, the lower lip, or the jaghana of another so softly that no scratch or mark is left, but only the hair on the body becomes erect from the touch of the nails, and the nails themselves make a sound, it is called a "sounding or pressing with the nails." this pressing is used in the case of a young girl when her lover shampoos her, scratches her head, and wants to trouble or frighten her. ( ). the curved mark with the nails, which is impressed on the neck and the breasts, is called the "half moon." ( ). when the half moons are impressed opposite to each other, it is called a "circle." this mark with the nails is generally made on the navel, the small cavities about the buttocks, and on the joints of the thigh. ( ). a mark in the form of a small line, and which can be made on any part of the body, is called a "line." ( ). this same line, when it is curved, and made on the breast, is called a "tiger's nail." ( ). when a curved mark is made on the breast by means of the five nails, it is called a "peacock's foot." this mark is made with the object of being praised, for it requires a great deal of skill to make it properly. ( ). when five marks with the nails are made close to one another near the nipple of the breast, it is called "the jump of a hare." ( ). a mark made on the breast or on the hips in the form of a leaf of the blue lotus, is called the "leaf of a blue lotus." when a person is going on a journey, and makes a mark on the thighs, or on the breast, it is called a "token of remembrance." on such an occasion three or four lines are impressed close to one another with the nails. here ends the marking with the nails. marks of other kinds than the above may also be made with the nails, for the ancient authors say, that as there are innumerable degrees of skill among men (the practice of this art being known to all), so there are innumerable ways of making these marks. and as pressing or marking with the nails is independent of love, no one can say with certainty how many different kinds of marks with the nails do actually exist. the reason of this is, vatsyayana says, that as variety is necessary in love, so love is to be produced by means of variety. it is on this account that courtezans, who are well acquainted with various ways and means, become so desirable, for if variety is sought in all the arts and amusements, such as archery and others, how much more should it be sought after in the present case. the marks of the nails should not be made on married women, but particular kinds of marks may be made on their private parts for the remembrance and increase of love. there are also some verses on the subject, as follows: "the love of a woman who sees the marks of nails on the private parts of her body, even though they are old and almost worn out, becomes again fresh and new. if there be no marks of nails to remind a person of the passages of love, then love is lessened in the same way as when no union takes place for a long time." even when a stranger sees at a distance a young woman with the marks of nails on her breast,[ ] he is filled with love and respect for her. a man, also, who carries the marks of nails and teeth on some parts of his body, influences the mind of a woman, even though it be ever so firm. in short, nothing tends to increase love so much as the effects of marking with the nails, and biting. footnote: [footnote : from this it would appear that in ancient times the breasts of women were not covered, and this is seen in the painting of the ajunta and other caves, where we find that the breasts of even royal ladies and others are exposed.] chapter v. on biting, and the means to be employed with regard to women of different countries. all the places that can be kissed, are also the places that can be bitten, except the upper lip, the interior of the mouth, and the eyes. the qualities of good teeth are as follows: they should be equal, possessed of a pleasing brightness, capable of being coloured, of proper proportions, unbroken, and with sharp ends. the defects of teeth on the other hand are, that they are blunt, protruding from the gums, rough, soft, large, and loosely set. the following are the different kinds of biting, viz.: the hidden bite. the swollen bite. the point. the line of points. the coral and the jewel. the line of jewels. the broken cloud. the biting of the boar. ( ). the biting which is shown only by the excessive redness of the skin that is bitten, is called the "hidden bite." ( ). when the skin is pressed down on both sides, it is called the "swollen bite." ( ). when a small portion of the skin is bitten with two teeth only, it is called the "point." ( ). when such small portions of the skin are bitten with all the teeth, it is called the "line of points." ( ). the biting which is done by bringing together the teeth and the lips, is called the "coral and the jewel." the lip is the coral, and the teeth the jewel. ( ). when biting is done with all the teeth, it is called the "line of jewels." ( ). the biting which consists of unequal risings in a circle, and which comes from the space between the teeth, is called the "broken cloud." this is impressed on the breasts. ( ). the biting which consists of many broad rows of marks near to one another, and with red intervals, is called the "biting of a boar." this is impressed on the breasts and the shoulders; and these two last modes of biting are peculiar to persons of intense passion. the lower lip is the place on which the "hidden bite," the "swollen bite," and the "point" are made; again the "swollen bite," and the "coral and the jewel" bite are done on the cheek. kissing, pressing with the nails, and biting are the ornaments of the left cheek, and when the word cheek is used it is to be understood as the left cheek. both the "line of points" and the "line of jewels" are to be impressed on the throat, the arm pit, and the joints of the thighs; but the "line of points" alone is to be impressed on the forehead and the thighs. the marking with the nails, and the biting of the following things, viz., an ornament of the forehead, an ear ornament, a bunch of flowers, a betel leaf, or a tamala leaf, which are worn by, or belong to the woman that is beloved, are signs of the desire of enjoyment. here end the different kinds of biting. * * * * * in the affairs of love a man should do such things as are agreeable to the women of different countries. the women of the central countries (_i.e._, between the ganges and the jumna) are noble in their character, not accustomed to disgraceful practices, and dislike pressing the nails and biting. the women of the balhika country are gained over by striking. the women of avantika are fond of foul pleasures, and have not good manners. the women of the maharashtra are fond of practising the sixty-four arts, they utter low and harsh words, and like to be spoken to in the same way, and have an impetuous desire of enjoyment. the women of pataliputra (_i.e._, the modern patna) are of the same nature as the women of the maharashtra, but show their likings only in secret. the women of the dravida country, though they are rubbed and pressed about at the time of sexual enjoyment, have a slow fall of semen, that is they are very slow in the act of coition. the women of vanavasi are moderately passionate, they go through every kind of enjoyment, cover their bodies, and abuse those who utter low, mean and harsh words. the women of avanti hate kissing, marking with the nails, and biting, but they have a fondness for various kinds of sexual union. the women of malwa like embracing and kissing, but not wounding, and they are gained over by striking. the women of abhira, and those of the country about the indus and five rivers (_i.e._, the punjab), are gained over by the auparishtaka or mouth congress. the women of aparatika are full of passion, and make slowly the sound "sit." the women of the lat country have even more impetuous desire, and also make the sound "sit." the women of the stri rajya, and of koshola (oude), are full of impetuous desire, their semen falls in large quantities, and they are fond of taking medicine to make it do so. the women of the audhra country have tender bodies, they are fond of enjoyment, and have a liking for voluptuous pleasures. the women of ganda have tender bodies, and speak sweetly. now suvarnanabha is of opinion that that which is agreeable to the nature of a particular person, is of more consequence than that which is agreeable to a whole nation, and that therefore the peculiarities of the country should not be observed in such cases. the various pleasures, the dress, and the sports of one country are in time borrowed by another, and in such a case these things must be considered as belonging originally to that country. among the things mentioned above, viz., embracing, kissing, etc., those which increase passion should be done first, and those which are only for amusement or variety should be done afterwards. there are also some verses on this subject as follows: "when a man bites a woman forcibly, she should angrily do the same to him with double force. thus a 'point' should be returned with a 'line of points,' and a 'line of points' with a 'broken cloud,' and if she be excessively chafed, she should at once begin a love quarrel with him. at such a time she should take hold of her lover by the hair, and bend his head down, and kiss his lower lip, and then, being intoxicated with love, she should shut her eyes and bite him in various places. even by day, and in a place of public resort, when her lover shows her any mark that she may have inflicted on his body, she should smile at the sight of it, and turning her face as if she were going to chide him, she should show him with an angry look the marks on her own body that have been made by him. thus if men and women act according to each other's liking, their love for each other will not be lessened even in one hundred years." chapter vi. of the different ways of lying down, and various kinds of congress. on the occasion of a "high congress" the mrigi (deer) woman should lie down in such a way as to widen her yoni, while in a "low congress" the hastini (elephant) woman should lie down so as to contract hers. but in an "equal congress" they should lie down in the natural position. what is said above concerning the mrigi and the hastini applies also to the vadawa (mare) woman. in a "low congress" the women should particularly make use of medicine, to cause her desires to be satisfied quickly. the deer-woman has the following three ways of lying down. the widely opened position. the yawning position. the position of the wife of indra. ( ). when she lowers her head and raises her middle parts, it is called the "widely opened position." at such a time the man should apply some unguent, so as to make the entrance easy. ( ). when she raises her thighs and keeps them wide apart and engages in congress, it is called the "yawning position." ( ). when she places her thighs with her legs doubled on them upon her sides, and thus engages in congress, it is called the position of indrani, and this is learnt only by practice. the position is also useful in the case of the "highest congress." the "clasping position" is used in "low congress," and in the "lowest congress," together with the "pressing position," the "twining position", and the "mare's position." when the legs of both the male and the female are stretched straight out over each other, it is called the "clasping position." it is of two kinds, the side position and the supine position, according to the way in which they lie down. in the side position the male should invariably lie on his left side, and cause the woman to lie on her right side, and this rule is to be observed in lying down with all kinds of women. when, after congress has begun in the clasping position, the woman presses her lover with her thighs, it is called the "pressing position." when the woman places one of her thighs across the thigh of her lover, it is called the "twining position." when a woman forcibly holds in her yoni the lingam after it is in, it is called the "mare's position." this is learnt by practice only, and is chiefly found among the women of the andra country. the above are the different ways of lying down, mentioned by babhravya; suvarnanabha, however, gives the following in addition. when the female raises both of her thighs straight up, it is called the "rising position." when she raises both of her legs, and places them on her lover's shoulders, it is called the "yawning position." when the legs are contracted, and thus held by the lover before his bosom, it is called the "pressed position." when only one of her legs is stretched out, it is called the "half pressed position." when the woman places one of her legs on her lover's shoulder, and stretches the other out, and then places the latter on his shoulder, and stretches out the other, and continues to do so alternately, it is called the "splitting of a bamboo." when one of her legs is placed on the head, and the other is stretched out, it is called the "fixing of a nail." this is learnt by practice only. when both the legs of the woman are contracted, and placed on her stomach, it is called the "crab's position." when the thighs are raised and placed one upon the other, it is called the "packed position." when the shanks are placed one upon the other, it is called the "lotus-like position." when a man, during congress, turns round, and enjoys the woman without leaving her, while she embraces him round the back all the time, it is called the "turning position," and is learnt only by practice. thus says suvarnanabha, these different ways of lying down, sitting, and standing should be practised in water, because it is easy to do so therein. but vatsyayana is of opinion that congress in water is improper, because it is prohibited by the religious law. when a man and a woman support themselves on each other's bodies, or on a wall, or pillar, and thus while standing engage in congress, it is called the "supported congress." when a man supports himself against a wall, and the woman, sitting on his hands joined together and held underneath her, throws her arms round his neck, and putting her thighs alongside his waist, moves herself by her feet, which are touching the wall against which the man is leaning, it is called the "suspended congress." when a woman stands on her hands and feet like a quadruped, and her lover mounts her like a bull, it is called the "congress of a cow." at this time everything that is ordinarily done on the bosom should be done on the back. in the same way can be carried on the congress of a dog, the congress of a goat, the congress of a deer, the forcible mounting of an ass, the congress of a cat, the jump of a tiger, the pressing of an elephant, the rubbing of a boar, and the mounting of a horse. and in all these cases the characteristics of these different animals should be manifested by acting like them. when a man enjoys two women at the same time, both of whom love him equally, it is called the "united congress." when a man enjoys many women altogether, it is called the "congress of a herd of cows." the following kinds of congress, viz., sporting in water, or the congress of an elephant with many female elephants, which is said to take place only in the water, the congress of a collection of goats, the congress of a collection of deer, take place in imitation of these animals. in gramaneri many young men enjoy a woman that may be married to one of them, either one after the other, or at the same time. thus one of them holds her, another enjoys her, a third uses her mouth, a fourth holds her middle part, and in this way they go on enjoying her several parts alternately. the same things can be done when several men are sitting in company with one courtesan, or when one courtesan is alone with many men. in the same way this can be done by the women of the king's harem when they accidentally get hold of a man. the people in the southern countries have also a congress in the anus, that is called the "lower congress." thus ends the various kinds of congress. there are also two verses on the subject as follows. "an ingenious person should multiply the kinds of congress after the fashion of the different kinds of beasts and of birds. for these different kinds of congress, performed according to the usage of each country, and the liking of each individual, generate love, friendship, and respect in the hearts of women." chapter vii. of the various modes of striking, and of the sounds appropriate to them. sexual intercourse can be compared to a quarrel, on account of the contrarieties of love and its tendency to dispute. the place of striking with passion is the body, and on the body the special places are: the shoulders. the head. the space between the breasts. the back. the jaghana, or middle part of the body. the sides. striking is of four kinds, viz.: striking with the back of the hand. striking with the fingers a little contracted. striking with the fist. striking with the open palm of the hand. on account of its causing pain, striking gives rise to the hissing sound, which is of various kinds, and to the eight kinds of crying, viz.: the sound hin. the thundering sound. the cooing sound. the weeping sound. the sound phut. the sound phât. the sound sût. the sound plât. besides these, there are also words having a meaning, such as "mother," and those that are expressive of prohibition, sufficiency, desire of liberation, pain or praise, and to which may be added sounds like those of the dove, the cuckoo, the green pigeon, the parrot, the bee, the sparrow, the flamingo, the duck, and the quail, which are all occasionally made use of. blows with the fist should be given on the back of the woman, while she is sitting on the lap of the man, and she should give blows in return, abusing the man as if she were angry, and making the cooing and the weeping sounds. while the woman is engaged in congress the space between the breasts should be struck with the back of the hand, slowly at first, and then proportionately to the increasing excitement, until the end. at this time the sounds hin and others may be made, alternately or optionally, according to habit. when the man, making the sound phât, strikes the woman on the head, with the fingers of his hand a little contracted, it is called prasritaka, which means striking with the fingers of the hand a little contracted. in this case the appropriate sounds are the cooing sound, the sound phât, and the sound phut in the interior of the mouth, and at the end of congress the sighing and weeping sounds. the sound phât is an imitation of the sound of a bamboo being split, while the sound phut is like the sound made by something falling into water. at all times when kissing and such like things are begun, the woman should give a reply with a hissing sound. during the excitement when the woman is not accustomed to striking, she continually utters words expressive of prohibition, sufficiently, or desire of liberation, as well as the words "father," "mother," intermingled with the sighing, weeping and thundering sounds.[ ] towards the conclusion of the congress, the breasts, the jaghana, and the sides of the woman should be pressed with the open palms of the hand, with some force, until the end of it, and then sounds like those of the quail, or the goose should be made. there are also two verses on the subject as follows: "the characteristics of manhood are said to consist of roughness and impetuosity, while weakness, tenderness, sensibility, and an inclination to turn away from unpleasant things are the distinguishing marks of womanhood. the excitement of passion, and peculiarities of habit may sometimes cause contrary results to appear, but these do not last long, and in the end the natural state is resumed." the wedge on the bosom, the scissors on the head, the piercing instrument on the cheeks, and the pinchers on the breasts and sides, may also be taken into consideration with the other four modes of striking, and thus give eight ways altogether. but these four ways of striking with instruments are peculiar to the people of the southern countries, and the marks caused by them are seen on the breasts of their women. they are local peculiarities, but vatsyayana is of opinion that the practice of them is painful, barbarous, and base, and quite unworthy of imitation. in the same way anything that is a local peculiarity should not always be adopted elsewhere, and even in the place where the practice is prevalent, excess of it should always be avoided. instances of the dangerous use of them may be given as follows. the king of the panchalas killed the courtezan madhavasena by means of the wedge during congress. king shatakarni shatavahana of the kuntalas deprived his great queen malayavati of her life by a pair of scissors, and naradeva, whose hand was deformed, blinded a dancing girl by directing a piercing instrument in a wrong way. there are also two verses on the subject as follows: "about these things there cannot be either enumeration or any definite rule. congress having once commenced, passion alone gives birth to all the acts of the parties." such passionate actions and amorous gesticulations or movements, which arise on the spur of the moment, and during sexual intercourse, cannot be defined, and are as irregular as dreams. a horse having once attained the fifth degree of motion goes on with blind speed, regardless of pits, ditches, and posts in his way; and in the same manner a loving pair become blind with passion in the heat of congress, and go on with great impetuosity, paying not the least regard to excess. for this reason one who is well acquainted with the science of love, and knowing his own strength, as also the tenderness, impetuosity, and strength of the young woman, should act accordingly. the various modes of enjoyment are not for all times or for all persons, but they should only be used at the proper time, and in the proper countries and places. footnote: [footnote : men who are well acquainted with the art of love are well aware how often one woman differs from another in her sighs and sounds during the time of congress. some women like to be talked to in the most loving way, others in the most abusive way, and so on. some women enjoy themselves with closed eyes in silence, others make a great noise over it, and some almost faint away. the great art is to ascertain what gives them the greatest pleasure, and what specialities they like best.] chapter viii. about women acting the part of a man; and of the work of a man. when a woman sees that her lover is fatigued by constant congress, without having his desire satisfied, she should, with his permission, lay him down upon his back, and give him assistance by acting his part. she may also do this to satisfy the curiosity of her lover, or her own desire of novelty. there are two ways of doing this, the first is when during congress she turns round, and gets on the top of her lover, in such a manner as to continue the congress, without obstructing the pleasure of it; and the other is when she acts the man's part from the beginning. at such a time, with flowers in her hair hanging loose, and her smiles broken by hard breathings, she should press upon her lover's bosom with her own breasts, and lowering her head frequently, should do in return the same actions which he used to do before, returning his blows and chaffing him, should say, "i was laid down by you, and fatigued with hard congress, i shall now therefore lay you down in return." she should then again manifest her own bashfulness, her fatigue, and her desire of stopping the congress. in this way she should do the work of a man, which we shall presently relate. whatever is done by a man for giving pleasure to a woman is called the work of a man, and is as follows:-- while the woman is lying on his bed, and is as it were abstracted by his conversation, he should loosen the knot of her under garments, and when she begins to dispute with him, he should overwhelm her with kisses. then when his lingam is erect he should touch her with his hands in various places, and gently manipulate various parts of the body. if the woman is bashful, and if it is the first time that they have come together, the man should place his hands between her thighs, which she would probably keep close together, and if she is a very young girl, he should first get his hands upon her breasts, which she would probably cover with her own hands, and under her armpits and on her neck. if however she is a seasoned woman, he should do whatever is agreeable either to him or to her, and whatever is fitting for the occasion. after this he should take hold of her hair, and hold her chin in his fingers for the purpose of kissing her. on this, if she is a young girl, she will become bashful and close her eyes. any how he should gather from the action of the woman what things would be pleasing to her during congress. here suvarnanabha says that while a man is doing to the woman what he likes best during congress, he should always make a point of pressing those parts of her body on which she turns her eyes. the signs of the enjoyment and satisfaction of the women are as follows: her body relaxes, she closes her eyes, she puts aside all bashfulness, and shows increased willingness to unite the two organs as closely together as possible. on the other hand, the signs of her want of enjoyment and of failing to be satisfied are as follows: she shakes her hands, she does not let the man get up, feels dejected, bites the man, kicks him, and continues to go on moving after the man has finished. in such cases the man should rub the yoni of the woman with his hand and fingers (as the elephant rubs anything with his trunk) before engaging in congress, until it is softened, and after that is done he should proceed to put his lingam into her. the acts to be done by the man are: moving forward. friction or churning. piercing. rubbing. pressing. giving a blow. the blow of a boar. the blow of a bull. the sporting of a sparrow. ( ). when the organs are brought together properly and directly it is called "moving the organ forward." ( ). when the lingam is held with the hand, and turned all round in the yoni, it is called "churning." ( ). when the yoni is lowered, and the upper part of it is struck with the lingam, it is called "piercing." ( ). when the same thing is done on the lower part of the yoni, it is called "rubbing." ( ). when the yoni is pressed by the lingam for a long time, it is called "pressing." ( ). when the lingam is removed to some distance from the yoni, and then forcibly strikes it, it is called "giving a blow." ( ). when only one part of the yoni is rubbed with the lingam, it is called the "blow of a boar." ( ). when both sides of the yoni are rubbed in this way, it is called the "blow of a bull." ( ). when the lingam is in the yoni, and moved up and down frequently, and without being taken out, it is called the "sporting of a sparrow." this takes place at the end of congress. when a woman acts the part of a man, she has the following things to do in addition to the nine given above, viz. the pair of tongs. the top. the swing. ( ). when the woman holds the lingam in her yoni, draws it in, presses it, and keeps it thus in her for a long time, it is called the "pair of tongs." ( ). when, while engaged in congress, she turns round like a wheel, it is called the "top." this is learnt by practice only. ( ). when, on such an occasion, the man lifts up the middle part of his body, and the woman turns round her middle part, it is called the "swing." when the woman is tired, she should place her forehead on that of her lover, and should thus take rest without disturbing the union of the organs, and when the woman has rested herself the man should turn round and begin the congress again. there are also some verses on the subject as follows: "though a woman is reserved, and keeps her feelings concealed, yet when she gets on the top of a man, she then shows all her love and desire. a man should gather from the actions of the woman of what disposition she is, and in what way she likes to be enjoyed. a woman during her monthly courses, a woman who has been lately confined, and a fat woman should not be made to act the part of a man." chapter xi. of the auparishtaka[ ] or mouth congress. there are two kinds of eunuchs, those that are disguised as males, and those that are disguised as females. eunuchs disguised as females imitate their dress, speech, gestures, tenderness, timidity, simplicity, softness and bashfulness. the acts that are done on the jaghana or middle parts of women, are done in the mouths of these eunuchs, and this is called auparishtaka. these eunuchs derive their imaginable pleasure, and their livelihood from this kind of congress, and they lead the life of courtezans. so much concerning eunuchs disguised as females. eunuchs disguised as males keep their desires secret, and when they wish to do anything they lead the life of shampooers. under the pretence of shampooing, an eunuch of this kind embraces and draws towards himself the thighs of the man whom he is shampooing, and after this he touches the joints of his thighs and his jaghana, or central portions of his body. then, if he finds the lingam of the man erect, he presses it with his hands, and chaffs him for getting into that state. if after this, and after knowing his intention, the man does not tell the eunuch to proceed, then the latter does it of his own accord and begins the congress. if however he is ordered by the man to do it, then he disputes with him, and only consents at last with difficulty. the following eight things are then done by the eunuch one after the other, viz. the nominal congress. biting the sides. pressing outside. pressing inside. kissing. rubbing. sucking a mangoe fruit. swallowing up. at the end of each of these the eunuch expresses his wish to stop, but when one of them is finished, the man desires him to do another, and after that is done, then the one that follows it, and so on. ( ). when, holding the man's lingam with his hand, and placing it between his lips, the eunuch moves about his mouth, it is called the "nominal congress." ( ). when, covering the end of the lingam with his fingers collected together like the bud of a plant or flower, the eunuch presses the sides of it with his lips, using his teeth also, it is called "biting the sides." ( ). when, being desired to proceed, the eunuch presses the end of the lingam with his lips closed together, and kisses it as if he were drawing it out, it is called the "outside pressing." ( ). when, being asked to go on, he put the lingam further into his mouth, and presses it with his lips and then takes it out, it is called the "inside pressing." ( ). when, holding the lingam in his hand, the eunuch kisses it as if he were kissing the lower lip, it is called "kissing." ( ). when, after kissing it, he touches it with his tongue everywhere, and passes the tongue over the end of it, it is called "rubbing." ( ). when, in the same way, he puts the half of it into his mouth, and forcibly kisses and sucks it, this is called "sucking a mangoe fruit." ( ). and lastly, when, with the consent of the man, the eunuch puts the whole lingam into his mouth, and presses it to the very end, as if he were going to swallow it up, it is called "swallowing up." striking, scratching, and other things may also be done during this kind of congress. the auparishtaka is practised only by unchaste and wanton women, female attendants and serving maids, _i.e._, those who are not married to anybody, but who live by shampooing. the acharyas (_i.e._, ancient and venerable authors) are of opinion that this auparishtaka is the work of a dog and not of a man, because it is a low practice, and opposed to the orders of the holy writ, and because the man himself suffers by bringing his lingam into contact with the mouths of eunuchs and women. but vatsyayana says that the orders of the holy writ do not affect those who resort to courtezans, and the law prohibits the practice of the auparishtaka with married women only. as regards the injury to the male, that can be easily remedied. the people of eastern india do not resort to women who practise the auparishtaka. the people of ahichhatra resort to such women, but do nothing with them, so far as the mouth is concerned. the people of saketa do with these women every kind of mouth congress, while the people of nagara do not practise this, but do every other thing. the people of the shurasena country, on the southern bank of the jumna, do everything without any hesitation, for they say that women being naturally unclean, no one can be certain about their character, their purity, their conduct, their practices, their confidences, or their speech. they are not however on this account to be abandoned, because religious law, on the authority of which they are reckoned pure, lays down that the udder of a cow is clean at the time of milking, though the mouth of a cow, and also the mouth of her calf, are considered unclean by the hindoos. again a dog is clean when he seizes a deer in hunting, though food touched by a dog is otherwise considered very unclean. a bird is clean when it causes a fruit to fall from a tree by pecking at it, though things eaten by crows and other birds are considered unclean. and the mouth of a woman is clean for kissing and such like things at the time of sexual intercourse. vatsyayana moreover thinks that in all these things connected with love, everybody should act according to the custom of his country, and his own inclination. there are also the following verses on the subject. "the male servants of some men carry on the mouth congress with their masters. it is also practised by some citizens, who know each other well, among themselves. some women of the harem, when they are amorous, do the acts of the mouth on the yonis of one another, and some men do the same thing with women. the way of doing this (_i.e._, of kissing the yoni) should be known from kissing the mouth. when a man and woman lie down in an inverted order, _i.e._, with the head of the one towards the feet of the other and carry on this congress, it is called the "congress of a crow." for the sake of such things courtezans abandon men possessed of good qualities, liberal and clever, and become attached to low persons, such as slaves and elephant drivers. the auparishtaka, or mouth congress, should never be done by a learned brahman, by a minister that carries on the business of a state, or by a man of good reputation, because though the practice is allowed by the shastras, there is no reason why it should be carried on, and need only be practised in particular cases. as for instance, the taste, and the strength, and the digestive qualities of the flesh of dogs are mentioned in works on medicine, but it does not therefore follow that it should be eaten by the wise. in the same way there are some men, some places and some times, with respect to which these practices can be made use of. a man should therefore pay regard to the place, to the time, and to the practice which is to be carried out, as also as to whether it is agreeable to his nature and to himself, and then he may or may not practise these things according to circumstances. but after all, these things being done secretly, and the mind of the man being fickle, how can it be known what any person will do at any particular time and for any particular purpose. footnote: [footnote : this practice appears to have been prevalent in some parts of india from a very ancient time. the "shushruta," a work on medicine some two thousand years old, describes the wounding of the lingam with the teeth as one of the causes of a disease treated upon in that work. traces of the practice are found as far back as the eighth century, for various kinds of the auparishtaka are represented in the sculptures of many shaiva temples at bhuvaneshwara, near cuttack, in orissa, and which were built about that period. from these sculptures being found in such places, it would seem that this practice was popular in that part of the country at that time. it does not seem to be so prevalent now in hindustan, its place perhaps is filled up by the practice of sodomy, introduced since the mahomedan period.] chapter x. of the way how to begin and how to end the congress. different kinds of congress and love quarrels. in the pleasure-room, decorated with flowers, and fragrant with perfumes, attended by his friends and servants, the citizen should receive the woman, who will come bathed and dressed, and will invite her to take refreshment and to drink freely. he should then seat her on his left side, and holding her hair, and touching also the end and knot of her garment, he should gently embrace her with his right arm. they should then carry on an amusing conversation on various subjects, and may also talk suggestively of things which would be considered as coarse, or not to be mentioned generally in society. they may then sing, either with or without gesticulations, and play on musical instruments, talk about the arts, and persuade each other to drink. at last when the woman is overcome with love and desire, the citizen should dismiss the people that may be with him, giving them flowers, ointment, and betel leaves, and then when the two are left alone, they should proceed as has been already described in the previous chapters. such is the beginning of sexual union. at the end of the congress, the lovers with modesty, and not looking at each other, should go separately to the washing-room. after this, sitting in their own places, they should eat some betel leaves, and the citizen should apply with his own hand to the body of the woman some pure sandal wood ointment, or ointment of some other kind. he should then embrace her with his left arm, and with agreeable words should cause her to drink from a cup held in his own hand, or he may give her water to drink. they can then eat sweetmeats, or anything else, according to their likings, and may drink fresh juice,[ ] soup, gruel, extracts of meat, sherbet, the juice of mangoe fruits, the extract of the juice of the citron tree mixed with sugar, or anything that may be liked in different countries, and known to be sweet, soft, and pure. the lovers may also sit on the terrace of the palace or house, and enjoy the moonlight, and carry on an agreeable conversation. at this time, too, while the woman lies in his lap, with her face towards the moon, the citizen should show her the different planets, the morning star, the polar star, and the seven rishis, or great bear. this is the end of sexual union. congress is of the following kinds, viz.: loving congress. congress of subsequent love. congress of artificial love. congress of transferred love. congress like that of eunuchs. deceitful congress. congress of spontaneous love. ( ). when a man and a woman, who have been in love with each other for some time, come together with great difficulty, or when one of the two returns from a journey, or is reconciled after having been separated on account of a quarrel, then congress is called the "loving congress." it is carried on according to the liking of the lovers, and as long as they choose. ( ). when two persons come together, while their love for each other is still in its infancy, their congress is called the "congress of subsequent love." ( ). when a man carries on the congress by exciting himself by means of the sixty-four ways, such as kissing, etc., etc., or when a man and a woman come together, though in reality they are both attached to different persons, their congress is then called "congress of artificial love." at this time all the ways and means mentioned in the kama shastra should be used. ( ). when a man, from the beginning to the end of the congress, though having connection with the women, thinks all the time that he is enjoying another one whom he loves, it is called the "congress of transferred love." ( ). congress between a man and a female water carrier, or a female servant of a caste lower than his own, lasting only until the desire is satisfied, is called "congress like that of eunuchs." here external touches, kisses, and manipulations are not to be employed. ( ). the congress between a courtezan and a rustic, and that between citizens and the women of villages, and bordering countries, is called, "deceitful congress." ( ). the congress that takes place between two persons who are attached to one another, and which is done according to their own liking is called "spontaneous congress." thus ends the kinds of congress. we shall now speak of love quarrels. a woman who is very much in love with a man cannot bear to hear the name of her rival mentioned, or to have any conversation regarding her, or to be addressed by her name through mistake. if such takes place, a great quarrel arises, and the woman cries, becomes angry, tosses her hair about, strikes her lover, falls from her bed or seat, and, casting aside her garlands and ornaments, throws herself down on the ground. at this time, the lover should attempt to reconcile her with conciliatory words, and should take her up carefully and place her on her bed. but she, not replying to his questions, and with increased anger, should bend down his head by pulling his hair, and having kicked him once, twice, or thrice on his arms, head, bosom or back, should then proceed to the door of the room. dattaka says that she should then sit angrily near the door and shed tears, but should not go out, because she would be found fault with for going away. after a time, when she thinks that the conciliatory words and actions of her lover have reached their utmost, she should then embrace him, talking to him with harsh and reproachful words, but at the same time showing a loving desire for congress. when the woman is in her own house, and has quarrelled with her lover, she should go to him and show how angry she is, and leave him. afterwards the citizen having sent the vita,[ ] the vidushaka[ ] or the pithamurda[ ] to pacify her, she should accompany them back to the house, and spend the night with her lover. thus end the love quarrels. in conclusion. a man, employing the sixty-four means mentioned by babhravya, obtains his object, and enjoys the woman of the first quality. though he may speak well on other subjects, if he does not know the sixty-four divisions, no great respect is paid to him in the assembly of the learned. a man, devoid of other knowledge, but well acquainted with the sixty-four divisions, becomes a leader in any society of men and women. what man will not respect the sixty-four parts,[ ] considering they are respected by the learned, by the cunning, and by the courtezans. as the sixty-four parts are respected, are charming, and add to the talent of women, they are called by the acharyas dear to women. a man skilled in the sixty-four parts is looked upon with love by his own wife, by the wives of others, and by courtezans. footnotes: [footnote : the fresh juice of the cocoa nut tree, the date tree, and other kinds of palm trees are drunk in india. it will not keep fresh very long, but ferments rapidly, and is then distilled into liquor.] [footnote : the characteristics of these three individuals have been given in part i. page .] [footnote : a definition of the sixty-four parts, or divisions, is given in chapter ii., page .] =end of part ii.= part iii. about the acquisition of a wife. chapter i. on marriage. when a girl of the same caste, and a virgin, is married in accordance with the precepts of holy writ, the results of such an union are: the acquisition of dharma and artha, offspring, affinity, increase of friends, and untarnished love. for this reason a man should fix his affections upon a girl who is of good family, whose parents are alive, and who is three years or more younger than himself. she should be born of a highly respectable family, possessed of wealth, well connected, and with many relations and friends. she should also be beautiful, of a good disposition, with lucky marks on her body, and with good hair, nails, teeth, ears, eyes, and breasts, neither more nor less than they ought to be, and no one of them entirely wanting, and not troubled with a sickly body. the man should, of course, also possess these qualities himself. but at all events, says ghotakamukha, a girl who has been already joined with others (_i.e._, no longer a maiden) should never be loved, for it would be reproachable to do such a thing. now in order to bring about a marriage with such a girl as described above, the parents and relations of the man should exert themselves, as also such friends on both sides as may be desired to assist in the matter. these friends should bring to the notice of the girl's parents, the faults, both present and future, of all the other men that may wish to marry her, and should at the same time extol even to exaggeration all the excellencies, ancestral, and paternal, of their friend, so as to endear him to them, and particularly to those that may be liked by the girl's mother. one of the friends should also disguise himself as an astrologer and declare the future good fortune and wealth of his friend by showing the existence of all the lucky omens[ ] and signs,[ ] the good influence of planets, the auspicious entrance of the sun into a sign of the zodiac, propitious stars and fortunate marks on his body. others again should rouse the jealousy of the girl's mother by telling her that their friend has a chance of getting from some other quarter even a better girl than hers. a girl should be taken as a wife, as also given in marriage, when fortune, signs, omens, and the words[ ] of others are favourable, for, says ghotakamukha, a man should not marry at any time he likes. a girl who is asleep, crying, or gone out of the house when sought in marriage, or who is betrothed to another, should not be married. the following also should be avoided: one who is kept concealed. one who has an ill-sounding name. one who has her nose depressed. one who has her nostril turned up. one who is formed like a male. one who is bent down. one who has crooked thighs. one who has a projecting forehead. one who has a bald head. one who does not like purity. one who has been polluted by another. one who is afflicted with the gulma.[ ] one who is disfigured in any way. one who has fully arrived at puberty. one who is a friend. one who is a younger sister. one who is a varshakari.[ ] in the same way a girl who is called by the name of one of the twenty-seven stars, or by the name of a tree, or of a river, is considered worthless, as also a girl whose name ends in "r" or "l." but some authors say that prosperity is gained only by marrying that girl to whom one becomes attached, and that therefore no other girl but the one who is loved should be married by anyone. when a girl becomes marriageable her parents should dress her smartly, and should place her where she can be easily seen by all. every afternoon, having dressed her and decorated her in a becoming manner, they should send her with her female companions to sports, sacrifices, and marriage ceremonies, and thus show her to advantage in society, because she is a kind of merchandise. they should also receive with kind words and signs of friendliness those of an auspicious appearance who may come accompanied by their friends and relations for the purpose of marrying their daughter, and under some pretext or other having first dressed her becomingly, should then present her to them. after this they should await the pleasure of fortune, and with this object should appoint a future day on which a determination could be come to with regard to their daughter's marriage. on this occasion when the persons have come, the parents of the girl should ask them to bathe and dine, and should say, "everything will take place at the proper time," and should not then comply with the request, but should settle the matter later. when a girl is thus acquired, either according to the custom of the country, or according to his own desire, the man should marry her in accordance with the precepts of the holy writ, according to one of the four kinds of marriage. thus ends marriage. there are also some verses on the subject as follows:-- amusement in society, such as completing verses begun by others, marriages, and auspicious ceremonies should be carried on neither with superiors, nor inferiors, but with our equals. that should be known as a high connection when a man, after marrying a girl, has to serve her and her relations afterwards like a servant, and such a connection is censured by the good. on the other hand, that reproachable connection, where a man, together with his relations, lords it over his wife, is called a low connection by the wise. but when both the man and the woman afford mutual pleasure to each other, and when the relatives on both sides pay respect to one another, such is called a connection in the proper sense of the word. therefore a man should contract neither a high connection by which he is obliged to bow down afterwards to his kinsmen, nor a low connection, which is universally reprehended by all. footnotes: [footnote : the flight of a blue jay on a person's left side is considered a lucky omen when one starts on any business; the appearance of a cat before anyone at such a time is looked on as a bad omen. there are many omens of the same kind.] [footnote : such as the throbbing of the right eye of men and the left eye of women, etc.] [footnote : before anything is begun it is a custom to go early in the morning to a neighbour's house, and overhear the first words that may be spoken in his family, and according as the words heard are of good or bad import, so draw an inference as to the success or failure of the undertaking.] [footnote : a disease consisting of any glandular enlargement in any part of the body.] [footnote : a woman, the palms of whose hands and the soles of whose feet are always perspiring.] chapter ii. of creating confidence in the girl. for the first three days after marriage, the girl and her husband should sleep on the floor, abstain from sexual pleasures, and eat their food without seasoning it either with alkali or salt. for the next seven days they should bathe amidst the sounds of auspicious musical instruments, should decorate themselves, dine together, and pay attention to their relations as well as to those who may have come to witness their marriage. this is applicable to persons of all castes. on the night of the tenth day the man should begin in a lonely place with soft words, and thus create confidence in the girl. some authors say that for the purpose of winning her over he should not speak to her for three days, but the followers of babhravya are of opinion that if the man does not speak with her for three days, the girl may be discouraged by seeing him spiritless like a pillar, and, becoming dejected, she may begin to despise him as an eunuch. vatsyayana says that the man should begin to win her over, and to create confidence in her, but should abstain at first from sexual pleasures. women being of a tender nature, want tender beginnings, and when they are forcibly approached by men with whom they are but slightly acquainted, they sometimes suddenly become haters of sexual connection, and sometimes even haters of the male sex. the man should therefore approach the girl according to her liking, and should make use of those devices by which he may be able to establish himself more and more into her confidence. these devices are as follows:-- he should embrace her first of all in a way she likes most, because it does not last for a long time. he should embrace her with the upper part of his body because that is easier and simpler. if the girl is grown up, or if the man has known her for some time, he may embrace her by the light of a lamp, but if he is not well acquainted with her, or if she is a young girl, he should then embrace her in darkness. when the girl accepts the embrace, the man should put a "tambula" or screw of betel nut and betel leaves in her mouth, and if she will not take it, he should induce her to do so by conciliatory words, entreaties, oaths, and kneeling at her feet, for it is an universal rule that however bashful or angry a woman may be, she never disregards a man kneeling at her feet. at the time of giving this "tambula" he should kiss her mouth softly and gracefully without making any sound. when she is gained over in this respect he should then make her talk, and so that she may be induced to talk he should ask her questions about things of which he knows or pretends to know nothing, and which can be answered in a few words. if she does not speak to him, he should not frighten her, but should ask her the same thing again and again in a conciliatory manner. if she does not then speak he should urge her to give a reply, because as ghotakamukha says, "all girls hear everything said to them by men, but do not themselves sometimes say a single word." when she is thus importuned, the girl should give replies by shakes of the head, but if she quarrelled with the man she should not even do that. when she is asked by the man whether she wishes for him, and whether she likes him, she should remain silent for a long time, and when at last importuned to reply, should give him a favourable answer by a nod of the head. if the man is previously acquainted with the girl he should converse with her by means of a female friend, who may be favourable to him, and in the confidence of both, and carry on the conversation on both sides. on such an occasion the girl should smile with her head bent down, and if the female friend say more on her part than she was desired to do, she should chide her and dispute with her. the female friend should say in jest even what she is not desired to say by the girl, and add, "she says so," on which the girl should say indistinctly and prettily, "o no! i did not say so," and she should then smile and throw an occasional glance towards the man. if the girl is familiar with the man, she should place near him, without saying anything, the tambula, the ointment, or the garland that he may have asked for, or she may tie them up in his upper garment. while she is engaged in this, the man should touch her young breasts in the sounding way of pressing with the nails, and if she prevents him doing this he should say to her, "i will not do it again if you will embrace me," and should in this way cause her to embrace him. while he is being embraced by her he should pass his hand repeatedly over and about her body. by and bye he should place her in his lap, and try more and more to gain her consent, and if she will not yield to him he should frighten her by saying, "i shall impress marks of my teeth and nails on your lips and breasts, and then make similar marks on my own body, and shall tell my friends that you did them. what will you say then?" in this and other ways, as fear and confidence are created in the minds of children, so should the man gain her over to his wishes. on the second and third nights, after her confidence has increased still more, he should feel the whole of her body with his hands, and kiss her all over; he should also place his hands upon her thighs and shampoo them, and if he succeed in this he should then shampoo the joints of her thighs. if she tries to prevent him doing this he should say to her, "what harm is there in doing it?" and should persuade her to let him do it. after gaining this point he should touch her private parts, should loosen her girdle and the knot of her dress, and turning up her lower garment should shampoo the joints of her naked thighs. under various pretences he should do all these things, but he should not at that time begin actual congress. after this he should teach her the sixty-four arts, should tell her how much he loves her, and describe to her the hopes which he formerly entertained regarding her. he should also promise to be faithful to her in future, and should dispel all her fears with respect to rival women, and, at last, after having overcome her bashfulness, he should begin to enjoy her in a way so as not to frighten her. so much about creating confidence in the girl; and there are, moreover, some verses on the subject as follows:-- a man acting according to the inclinations of a girl should try and gain her over so that she may love him and place her confidence in him. a man does not succeed either by implicitly following the inclination of a girl, or by wholly opposing her, and he should therefore adopt a middle course. he who knows how to make himself beloved by women, as well as to increase their honour and create confidence in them, this man becomes an object of their love. but he, who neglects a girl thinking she is too bashful, is despised by her as a beast ignorant of the working of the female mind. moreover, a girl forcibly enjoyed by one who does not understand the hearts of girls becomes nervous, uneasy, and dejected, and suddenly begins to hate the man who has taken advantage of her; and then, when her love is not understood or returned, she sinks into despondency, and becomes either a hater of mankind altogether, or, hating her own man, she has recourse to other men.[ ] footnote: [footnote : these last few lines have been exemplified in many ways in many novels of this century.] chapter iii. on courtship, and the manifestation of the feelings by outward signs and deeds. a poor man possessed of good qualities, a man born of a low family possessed of mediocre qualities, a neighbour possessed of wealth, and one under the control of his father, mother or brothers, should not marry without endeavouring to gain over the girl from her childhood to love and esteem them. thus a boy separated from his parents, and living in the house of his uncle, should try to gain over the daughter of his uncle, or some other girl, even though she be previously betrothed to another. and this way of gaining over a girl, says ghotakamukha, is unexceptional, because dharma can be accomplished by means of it, as well as by any other way of marriage. when a boy has thus begun to woo the girl he loves, he should spend his time with her and amuse her with various games and diversions fitted for their age and acquaintanceship, such as picking and collecting flowers, making garlands of flowers, playing the parts of members of a fictitious family, cooking food, playing with dice, playing with cards, the game of odd and even, the game of finding out the middle finger, the game of six pebbles, and such other games as may be prevalent in the country, and agreeable to the disposition of the girl. in addition to this, he should carry on various amusing games played by several persons together, such as hide and seek, playing with seeds, hiding things in several small heaps of wheat and looking for them, blind-man's buff, gymnastic exercises, and other games of the same sort, in company with the girl, her friends and female attendants. the man should also show great kindness to any woman whom the girl thinks fit to be trusted, and should also make new acquaintances, but above all he should attach to himself by kindness and little services the daughter of the girl's nurse, for if she be gained over, even though she comes to know of his design, she does not cause any obstruction, but is sometimes even able to effect an union between him and the girl. and though she knows the true character of the man, she always talks of his many excellent qualities to the parents and relations of the girl, even though she may not be desired to do so by him. in this way the man should do whatever the girl takes most delight in, and he should get for her whatever she may have a desire to possess. thus he should procure for her such playthings as may be hardly known to other girls. he may also show her a ball dyed with various colours, and other curiosities of the same sort; and should give her dolls made of cloth, wood, buffalo-horn, ivory, wax, flour, or earth; also utensils for cooking food, and figures in wood, such as a man and woman standing, a pair of rams, or goats, or sheep; also temples made of earth, bamboo, or wood, dedicated to various goddesses; and cages for parrots, cuckoos, starlings, quails, cocks, and partridges; water-vessels of different sorts and of elegant forms, machines for throwing water about, guitars, stands for putting images upon, stools, lac, red arsenic, yellow ointment, vermilion and collyrium, as well as sandal-wood, saffron, betel nut and betel leaves. such things should be given at different times whenever he gets a good opportunity of meeting her, and some of them should be given in private, and some in public, according to circumstances. in short, he should try in every way to make her look upon him as one who would do for her everything that she wanted to be done. in the next place he should get her to meet him in some place privately, and should then tell her that the reason of his giving presents to her in secret was the fear that the parents of both of them might be displeased, and then he may add that the things which he had given her had been much desired by other people. when her love begins to show signs of increasing he should relate to her agreeable stories if she expresses a wish to hear such narratives. or if she takes delight in legerdemain, he should amaze her by performing various tricks of jugglery; or if she feels a great curiosity to see a performance of the various arts, he should show his own skill in them. when she is delighted with singing he should entertain her with music, and on certain days, and at the time of going together to moonlight fairs and festivals, and at the time of her return after being absent from home, he should present her with bouquets of flowers, and with chaplets for the head, and with ear ornaments and rings, for these are the proper occasions on which such things should be presented. he should also teach the daughter of the girl's nurse all the sixty-four means of pleasure practised by men, and under this pretext should also inform her of his great skill in the art of sexual enjoyment. all this time he should wear a fine dress, and make as good an appearance as possible, for young women love men who live with them, and who are handsome, good looking and well dressed. as for the saying that though women may fall in love, they still make no effort themselves to gain over the object of their affections, that is only a matter of idle talk. now a girl always shows her love by outward signs and actions, such as the following:--she never looks the man in the face, and becomes abashed when she is looked at by him; under some pretext or other she shows her limbs to him; she looks secretly at him though he has gone away from her side; hangs down her head when she is asked some question by him, and answers in indistinct words and unfinished sentences, delights to be in his company for a long time, speaks to her attendants in a peculiar tone with the hope of attracting his attention towards her when she is at a distance from him, does not wish to go from the place where he is, under some pretext or other she makes him look at different things, narrates to him tales and stories very slowly so that she may continue conversing with him for a long time, kisses and embraces before him a child sitting in her lap, draws ornamental marks on the foreheads of her female servants, performs sportive and graceful movements when her attendants speak jestingly to her in the presence of her lover, confides in her lover's friends, and respects and obeys them, shows kindness to his servants, converses with them, and engages them to do her work as if she were their mistress, and listens attentively to them when they tell stories about her lover to somebody else, enters his house when induced to do so by the daughter of her nurse, and by her assistance manages to converse and play with him, avoids being seen by her lover when she is not dressed and decorated, gives him by the hand of her female friend her ear ornament, ring, or garland of flowers that he may have asked to see, always wears anything that he may have presented to her, become dejected when any other bridegroom is mentioned by her parents, and does not mix with those who may be of her party, or who may support his claims. there are also some verses on the subject as follows:-- a man, who has seen and perceived the feelings of the girl towards him, and who has noticed the outward signs and movements by which those feelings are expressed, should do everything in his power to effect an union with her. he should gain over a young girl by childlike sports, a damsel come of age by his skill in the arts, and a girl that loves him by having recourse to persons in whom she confides. chapter iv. about things to be done only by the man, and the acquisition of the girl thereby. also what is to be done by a girl to gain over a man, and subject him to her. now when the girl begins to show her love by outward signs and motions, as described in the last chapter, the lover should try to gain her over entirely by various ways and means, such as the following:-- when engaged with her in any game or sport he should intentionally hold her hand. he should practise upon her the various kinds of embraces, such as the touching embrace, and others already described in a preceeding chapter (part ii. chapter ). he should show her a pair of human beings cut out of the leaf of a tree, and such like things, at intervals. when engaged in water sports, he should dive at a distance from her, and come up close to her. he should show an increased liking for the new foliage of trees and such like things. he should describe to her the pangs he suffers on her account. he should relate to her the beautiful dream that he has had with reference to other women. at parties and assemblies of his caste he should sit near her, and touch her under some pretence or other, and having placed his foot upon her's, he should slowly touch each of her toes, and press the ends of the nails; if successful in this, he should get hold of her foot with his hand and repeat the same thing. he should also press a finger of her hand between his toes when she happens to be washing his feet; and whenever he gives anything to her or takes anything from her, he should show her by his manner and look how much he loves her. he should sprinkle upon her the water brought for rinsing his mouth; and when alone with her in a lonely place, or in darkness, he should make love to her, and tell her the true state of his mind without distressing her in any way. whenever he sits with her on the same seat or bed he should say to her, "i have something to tell you in private," and then, when she comes to hear it in a quiet place, he should express his love to her more by manner and signs than by words. when he comes to know the state of her feelings towards him he should pretend to be ill, and should make her come to his house to speak to him. there he should intentionally hold her hand and place it on his eyes and forehead, and under the pretence of preparing some medicine for him he should ask her to do work for his sake in the following words: "this work must be done by you, and by nobody else." when she wants to go away he should let her go, with an earnest request to come and see him again. this device of illness should be continued for three days and three nights. after this, when she begins coming to see him frequently, he should carry on long conversations with her, for, says ghotakamukha, "though a man loves a girl ever so much, he never succeeds in winning her without a great deal of talking." at last, when the man finds the girl completely gained over, he may then begin to enjoy her. as for the saying that women grow less timid than usual during the evening, and in darkness, and are desirous of congress at those times, and do not oppose men then and should only be enjoyed at these hours, it is a matter of talk only. when it is impossible for the man to carry on his endeavours alone, he should, by means of the daughter of her nurse, or of a female friend in whom she confides, cause the girl to be brought to him without making known to her his design, and he should then proceed with her in the manner above described. or he should in the beginning send his own female servant to live with the girl as her friend, and should then gain her over by her means. at last, when he knows the state of her feelings by her outward manner and conduct towards him at religious ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, fairs, festivals, theatres, public assemblies, and such like occasions, he should begin to enjoy her when she is alone, for vatsyayana lays it down, that women, when resorted to at proper times and in proper places, do not turn away from their lovers. when a girl, possessed of good qualities and well-bred, though born in a humble family, or destitute of wealth, and not therefore desired by her equals, or an orphan girl, or one deprived of her parents, but observing the rules of her family and caste, should wish to bring about her own marriage when she comes of age, such a girl should endeavour to gain over a strong and good looking young man, or a person whom she thinks would marry her on account of the weakness of his mind, and even without the consent of his parents. she should do this by such means as would endear her to the said person, as well as by frequently seeing and meeting him. her mother also should constantly cause them to meet by means of her female friends, and the daughter of her nurse. the girl herself should try to get alone with her beloved in some quiet place, and at odd times should give him flowers, betel nut, betel leaves and perfumes. she should also show her skill in the practice of the arts, in shampooing, in scratching and in pressing with the nails. she should also talk to him on the subjects he likes best, and discuss with him the ways and means of gaining over and winning the affections of a girl. but old authors say that although the girl loves the man ever so much, she should not offer herself, or make the first overtures, for a girl who does this loses her dignity, and is liable to be scorned and rejected. but when the man shows his wish to enjoy her, she should be favourable to him and should show no change in her demeanour when he embraces her, and should receive all the manifestations of his love as if she were ignorant of the state of his mind. but when he tries to kiss her she should oppose him; when he begs to be allowed to have sexual intercourse with her she should let him touch her private parts only and with considerable difficulty; and though importuned by him, she should not yield herself up to him as if of her own accord, but should resists his attempts to have her. it is only, moreover, when she is certain that she is truly loved, and that her lover is indeed devoted to her, and will not change his mind, that she should then give herself up to him, and persuade him to marry her quickly. after losing her virginity she should tell her confidential friends about it. here ends the efforts of a girl to gain over a man. there are also some verses on the subject as follows: a girl who is much sought after should marry the man that she likes, and whom she thinks would be obedient to her, and capable of giving her pleasure. but when from the desire of wealth a girl is married by her parents to a rich man without taking into consideration the character or looks of the bridegroom, or when given to a man who has several wives, she never becomes attached to the man, even though he be endowed with good qualities, obedient to her will, active, strong, and healthy, and anxious to please her in every way.[ ] a husband who is obedient but yet master of himself, though he be poor and not good looking, is better than one who is common to many women, even though he be handsome and attractive. the wives of rich men, where there are many wives, are not generally attached to their husbands, and are not confidential with them, and even though they possess all the external enjoyments of life, still have recourse to other men. a man who is of a low mind, who has fallen from his social position, and who is much given to travelling, does not deserve to be married; neither does one who has many wives and children, or one who is devoted to sport and gambling, and who comes to his wife only when he likes. of all the lovers of a girl he only is her true husband who possesses the qualities that are liked by her, and such a husband only enjoys real superiority over her, because he is the husband of love. footnote: [footnote : there is a good deal of truth in the last few observations. woman is a monogamous animal, and loves but one, and likes to feel herself alone in the affections of one man, and cannot bear rivals. it may also be taken as a general rule that women either married to, or kept by, rich men love them for their wealth, but not for themselves.] chapter v. on certain forms of marriage[ ] when a girl cannot meet her lover frequently in private, she should send the daughter of her nurse to him, it being understood that she has confidence in her, and had previously gained her over to her interests. on seeing the man, the daughter of the nurse should, in the course of conversation, describe to him the noble birth, the good disposition, the beauty, talent, skill, knowledge of human nature and affection of the girl in such a way as not to let him suppose that she has been sent by the girl, and should thus create affection for the girl in the heart of the man. to the girl also she should speak about the excellent qualities of the man, especially of those qualities which she knows are pleasing to the girl. she should, moreover, speak with disparagement of the other lovers of the girl, and talk about the avarice and indiscretion of their parents, and the fickleness of their relations. she should also quote samples of many girls of ancient times, such as sakuntala and others, who, having united themselves with lovers of their own caste and their own choice, were ever happy afterwards in their society. and she should also tell of other girls who married into great families, and being troubled by rival wives, became wretched and miserable, and were finally abandoned. she should further speak of the good fortune, the continual happiness, the chastity, obedience, and affection of the man, and if the girl gets amorous about him, she should endeavour to allay her shame[ ] and her fear as well as her suspicions about any disaster that might result from the marriage. in a word, she should act the whole part of a female messenger by telling the girl all about the man's affection for her, the places he frequented, and the endeavours he made to meet her, and by frequently repeating, "it will be all right if the man will take you away forcibly and unexpectedly." _the forms of marriage._ when the girl is gained over, and acts openly with the man as his wife, he should cause fire to be brought from the house of a brahman, and having spread the kusha grass upon the ground, and offered an oblation to the fire he should marry her according to the precepts of the religious law. after this he should inform his parents of the fact, because it is the opinion of ancient authors that a marriage solemnly contracted in the presence of fire cannot afterwards be set aside. after the consummation of the marriage, the relations of the man should gradually be made acquainted with the affair, and the relations of the girl should also be apprised of it in such a way that they may consent to the marriage, and overlook the manner in which it was brought about, and when this is done they should afterwards be reconciled by affectionate presents and favourable conduct. in this manner the man should marry the girl according to the gandharva form of marriage. when the girl cannot make up her mind, or will not express her readiness to marry, the man should obtain her in any one of the following ways:-- ( ). on a fitting occasion, and under some excuse, he should by means of a female friend with whom he is well acquainted, and whom he can trust, and who also is well known to the girl's family, get the girl brought unexpectedly to his house, and he should then bring fire from the house of a brahman, and proceed as before described. ( .) when the marriage of the girl with some other person draws near, the man should disparage the future husband to the utmost in the mind of the mother of the girl, and then having got the girl to come with her mother's consent to a neighbouring house, he should bring fire from the house of a brahman, and proceed as above. ( .) the man should become a great friend of the brother of the girl, the said brother being of the same age as himself, and addicted to courtesans, and to intrigues with the wives of other people, and should give him assistance in such matters, and also give him occasional presents. he should then tell him about his great love for his sister, as young men will sacrifice even their lives for the sake of those who may be of the same age, habits, and dispositions as themselves. after this the man should get the girl brought by means of her brother to some secure place, and having brought fire from the house of a brahman, should proceed as before. ( .) the man should on the occasion of festivals get the daughter of the nurse to give the girl some intoxicating substance, and then cause her to be brought to some secure place under the pretence of some business, and there having enjoyed her before she recovers from her intoxication, should bring fire from the house of a brahman, and proceed as before. ( .) the man should, with the connivance of the daughter of the nurse, carry off the girl from her house while she is asleep, and then, having enjoyed her before she recovers from her sleep, should bring fire from the house of a brahman, and proceed as before. ( .) when the girl goes to a garden, or to some village in the neighbourhood, the man should, with his friends, fall on her guards, and having killed them, or frightened them away, forcibly carry her off, and proceed as before. there are verses on the subject as follows:--in all the forms of marriage given in this chapter of this work, the one that precedes is better than the one that follows it, on account of its being more in accordance with the commands of religion, and therefore it is only when it is impossible to carry the former into practice that the latter should be resorted to. as the fruit of all good marriages is love, the gandharva[ ] form of marriage is respected, even though it is formed under unfavourable circumstances, because it fulfils the object sought for. another cause of the respect accorded to the gandharva form of marriage is, that it brings forth happiness, causes less trouble in its performance than any other forms of marriage, and is above all the result of previous love. footnote: [footnote : these forms of marriage differ from the four kinds of marriage mentioned in chapter i., and are only to be made use of when the girl is gained over in the way mentioned in chapters iii. and iv.] [footnote : about this, see a story on the fatal effects of love at page of "early ideas; a group of hindoo stories," collected and collated by anaryan. w. h. allen and co., london, .] [footnote : about the gandharvavivaha form of marriage, see note to page of captain r. f. burton's "vickram and the vampire; or tales of hindu devilry." longman, green & co., london, . this form of matrimony was recognised by the ancient hindus, and is frequent in books. it is a kind of scotch wedding--ultra-caledonian--taking place by mutual consent without any form or ceremony. the gandharvas are heavenly minstrels of indra's court, who are supposed to be witnesses.] =end of part iii.= part iv. about a wife. chapter i. on the manner of living of a virtuous woman, and of her behaviour during the absence of her husband. a virtuous woman, who has affection for her husband, should act in conformity with his wishes as if he were a divine being, and with his consent should take upon herself the whole care of his family. she should keep the whole house well cleaned, and arrange flowers of various kinds in different parts of it, and make the floor smooth and polished so as to give the whole a neat and becoming appearance. she should surround the house with a garden, and place ready in it all the materials required for the morning, noon and even sacrifices. moreover she should herself revere the sanctuary of the household gods, for says gonardiya, "nothing so much attracts the heart of a householder to his wife as a careful observance of the things mentioned above." towards the parents, relations, friends, sisters, and servants of her husband she should behave as they deserve. in the garden she should plant beds of green vegetables, bunches of the sugar cane, and clumps of the fig tree, the mustard plant, the parsley plant, the fennel plant, and the xanthochymus pictorius. clusters of various flowers, such as the trapa bispinosa, the jasmine, the gasminum grandiflorum, the yellow amaranth, the wild jasmine, the tabernamontana coronaria, the nadyaworta, the china rose and others, should likewise be planted, together with the fragrant grass andropogon schænanthus, and the fragrant root of the plant andropogon miricatus. she should also have seats and arbours made in the garden, in the middle of which a well, tank, or pool should be dug. the wife should always avoid the company of female beggars, female buddish mendicants, unchaste and roguish women, female fortune tellers and witches. as regards meals she should always consider what her husband likes and dislikes, and what things are good for him, and what are injurious to him. when she hears the sounds of his footsteps coming home she should at once get up, and be ready to do whatever he may command her, and either order her female servant to wash his feet, or wash them herself. when going anywhere with her husband, she should put on her ornaments, and without his consent she should not either give or accept invitations, or attend marriages and sacrifices, or sit in the company of female friends, or visit the temples of the gods. and if she wants to engage in any kind of games or sports, she should not do it against his will. in the same way she should always sit down after him, and get up before him, and should never awaken him when he is asleep. the kitchen should be situated in a quiet and retired place, so as not to be accessible to strangers, and should always look clean. in the event of any misconduct on the part of her husband, she should not blame him excessively though she be a little displeased. she should not use abusive language towards him, but rebuke him with conciliatory words, whether he be in the company of friends or alone. moreover, she should not be a scold, for says gonardiya, "there is no cause of dislike on the part of a husband so great as this characteristic in a wife." lastly she should avoid bad expressions, sulky looks, speaking aside, standing in the doorway, and looking at passers-by, conversing in the pleasure groves, and remaining in a lonely place for a long time; and finally she should always keep her body, her teeth, her hair, and everything belonging to her tidy, sweet, and clean. when the wife wants to approach her husband in private her dress should consist of many ornaments, various kinds of flowers, and a cloth decorated with different colours, and some sweet-smelling ointments or unguents. but her every-day dress should be composed of a thin, close-textured cloth, a few ornaments and flowers, and a little scent, not too much. she should also observe the fasts and vows of her husband, and when he tries to prevent her doing this, she should persuade him to let her do it. at appropriate times of the year, and when they happen to be cheap, she should buy earth, bamboos, firewood, skins, and iron pots, as also salt and oil. fragrant substances, vessels made of the fruit of the plant wrightea antidysenterica, or oval leaved wrightea, medicines, and other things which are always wanted, should be obtained when required and kept in a secret place of the house. the seeds of the radish, the potato, the common beet, the indian wormwood, the mangoe, the cucumber, the egg plant, the kushmanda, the pumpkin gourd, the surana, the bignonia indica, the sandal wood, the premna spinosa, the garlic plant, the onion, and other vegetables, should be bought and sown at the proper seasons. the wife, moreover, should not tell to strangers the amount of her wealth, nor the secrets which her husband has confided to her. she should surpass all the women of her own rank in life in her cleverness, her appearance, her knowledge of cookery, her pride, and her manner of serving her husband. the expenditure of the year should be regulated by the profits. the milk that remains after the meals should be turned into ghee or clarified butter. oil and sugar should be prepared at home; spinning and weaving should also be done there; and a store of ropes and cords, and barks of trees for twisting into ropes should be kept. she should also attend to the pounding and cleaning of rice, using its small grain and chaff in some way or other. she should pay the salaries of the servants, look after the tilling of the fields, and keeping of the flocks and herds, superintend the making of vehicles, and take care of the rams, cocks, quails, parrots, starlings, cuckoos, peacocks, monkeys, and deer; and finally adjust the income and expenditure of the day. the worn-out clothes should be given to those servants who have done good work, in order to show them that their services have been appreciated, or they may be applied to some other use. the vessels in which wine is prepared, as well as those in which it is kept, should be carefully looked after, and put away at the proper time. all sales and purchases should also be well attended to. the friends of her husband she should welcome by presenting them with flowers, ointment, incense, betel leaves, and betel nut. her father-in-law and mother-in law she should treat as they deserve, always remaining dependant on their will, never contradicting them, speaking to them in few and not harsh words, not laughing loudly in their presence, and acting with their friends and enemies as with her own. in addition to the above she should not be vain, or too much taken up with her enjoyments. she should be liberal towards her servants, and reward them on holidays and festivals; and not give away anything without first making it known to her husband. thus ends the manner of living of a virtuous woman. during the absence of her husband on a journey the virtuous woman should wear only her auspicious ornaments, and observe the fasts in honour of the gods. while anxious to hear the news of her husband, she should still look after her household affairs. she should sleep near the elder women of the house, and make herself agreeable to them. she should look after and keep in repair the things that are liked by her husband, and continue the works that have been begun by him. to the abode of her relations she should not go except on occasions of joy and sorrow, and then she should go in her usual travelling dress, accompanied by her husband's servants, and not remain there for a long time. the fasts and feasts should be observed with the consent of the elders of the house. the resources should be increased by making purchases and sales according to the practice of the merchants, and by means of honest servants, superintended by herself. the income should be increased, and the expenditure diminished as much as possible. and when her husband returns from his journey, she should receive him at first in her ordinary clothes, so that he may know in what way she has lived during his absence, and should bring to him some presents, as also materials for the worship of the deity. thus ends the part relating to the behaviour of a wife during the absence of her husband on a journey. there are also some verses on the subject as follows. "the wife, whether she be a woman of noble family, or a virgin widow[ ] re-married, or a concubine, should lead a chaste life, devoted to her husband, and doing every thing for his welfare. women acting thus, acquire dharma, artha, and kama, obtain a high position, and generally keep their husbands devoted to them." footnote: [footnote : this probably refers to a girl married in her infancy, or when very young, and whose husband had died before she arrived at the age of puberty. infant marriages are still the common custom of the hindoos.] chapter ii. on the conduct of the elder wife towards the other wives of her husband, and on that of a younger wife towards the elder ones. also on the conduct of a virgin widow re-married; of a wife disliked by her husband; of the women in the king's harem; and lastly on the conduct of a husband towards many wives. the causes of re-marrying during the lifetime of the wife are as follows: ( ). the folly or ill temper of the wife. ( ). her husband's dislike to her. ( ). the want of offspring. ( ). the continual birth of daughters. ( ). the incontinence of the husband. from the very beginning the wife should endeavour to attract the heart of her husband, by showing to him continually her devotion, her good temper, and her wisdom. if however she bears him no children, she should herself tell her husband to marry another woman. and when the second wife is married, and brought to the house, the first wife should give her a position superior to her own, and look upon her as a sister. in the morning the elder wife should forcibly make the younger one decorate herself in the presence of their husband, and should not mind all the husband's favour being given to her. if the younger wife does anything to displease her husband the elder one should not neglect her, but should always be ready to give her most careful advice, and should teach her to do various things in the presence of her husband. her children she should treat as her own, her attendants she should look upon with more regard, even than on her own servants, her friends she should cherish with love and kindness, and her relations with great honour. when there are many other wives besides herself, the elder wife should associate with the one who is immediately next to her in rank and age, and should instigate the wife who has recently enjoyed her husband's favour to quarrel with the present favourite. after this she should sympathize with the former, and having collected all the other wives together, should get them to denounce the favourite as a scheming and wicked woman, without however committing herself in any way. if the favourite wife happens to quarrel with the husband, then the elder wife should take her part and give her false encouragement, and thus cause the quarrel to be increased. if there be only a little quarrel between the two, the elder wife should do all she can to work it up into a large quarrel. but if after all this she finds the husband still continues to love his favourite wife she should then change her tactics, and endeavour to bring about a conciliation between them, so as to avoid her husband's displeasure. thus ends the conduct of the elder wife. the younger wife should regard the elder wife of her husband as her mother, and should not give anything away, even to her own relations, without her knowledge. she should tell her everything about herself, and not approach her husband without her permission. whatever is told to her by the elder wife she should not reveal to others, and she should take care of the children of the senior even more than of her own. when alone with her husband she should serve him well, but should not tell him of the pain she suffers from the existence of a rival wife. she may also obtain secretly from her husband some marks of his particular regard for her, and may tell him that she lives only for him, and for the regard that he has for her. she should never reveal her love for her husband, nor her husband's love for her to any person, either in pride or in anger, for a wife that reveals the secrets of her husband is despised by him. as for seeking to obtain the regard of her husband, gonardiya says, that it should always be done in private, for fear of the elder wife. if the elder wife be disliked by her husband, or be childless, she should sympathize with her, and should ask her husband to do the same, but should surpass her in leading the life of a chaste woman. thus ends the conduct of the younger wife towards the elder. a widow in poor circumstances, or of a weak nature, and who allies herself again to a man, is called a widow re-married. the followers of babhravya say that a virgin widow should not marry a person whom she may be obliged to leave on account of his bad character, or of his being destitute of the excellent qualities of a man, she thus being obliged to have recourse to another person. gonardya is of opinion that as the cause of a widow's marrying again is her desire for happiness, and as happiness is secured by the possession of excellent qualities in her husband, joined to love of enjoyment, it is better therefore to secure a person endowed with such qualities in the first instance. vatsyayana however thinks that a widow may marry any person that she likes, and that she thinks will suit her. at the time of her marriage the widow should obtain from her husband the money to pay the cost of drinking parties, and picnics with her relations, and of giving them and her friends kindly gifts and presents; or she may do these things at her own cost if she likes. in the same way she may wear either her husband's ornaments or her own. as to the presents of affection mutually exchanged between the husband and herself there is no fixed rule about them. if she leaves her husband after marriage of her own accord, she should restore to him whatever he may have given her, with the exception of the mutual presents. if however she is driven out of the house by her husband she should not return anything to him. after her marriage she should live in the house of her husband like one of the chief members of the family, but should treat the other ladies of the family with kindness, the servants with generosity, and all the friends of the house with familiarity and good temper. she should show that she is better acquainted with the sixty-four arts than the other ladies of the house, and in any quarrels with her husband she should not rebuke him severely, but in private do everything that he wishes, and make use of the sixty-four ways of enjoyment. she should be obliging to the other wives of her husband, and to their children she should give presents, behave as their mistress, and make ornaments and play things for their use. in the friends and servants of her husband she should confide more than in his other wives, and finally she should have a liking for drinking parties, going to picnics, attending fairs and festivals, and for carrying out all kinds of games and amusements. thus ends the conduct of a virgin widow re-married. a woman who is disliked by her husband, and annoyed and distressed by his other wives, should associate with the wife who is liked most by her husband, and who serves him more than the others, and should teach her all the arts with which she is acquainted. she should act as the nurse of her husband's children, and having gained over his friends to her side, should through them make him acquainted of her devotion to him. in religious ceremonies she should be a leader, as also in vows and fasts, and should not hold too good an opinion of herself. when her husband is lying on his bed she should only go near him when it is agreeable to him, and should never rebuke him, or show obstinacy in any way. if her husband happens to quarrel with any of his other wives, she should reconcile them to each other, and if he desires to see any woman secretly, she should manage to bring about the meeting between them. she should moreover make herself acquainted with the weak points of her husband's character, but always keep them secret, and on the whole behave herself in such an way as may lead him to look upon her as a good and devoted wife. here ends the conduct of a wife disliked by her husband. the above sections will show how all the women of the king's seraglio are to behave, and therefore we shall now speak separately only about the king. the female attendants in the harem (called severally kanchukiyas,[ ] mahallarikas,[ ] and mahallikas,[ ]) should bring flowers, ointments and clothes from the king's wives to the king, and he having received these things should give them as presents to the servants, along with the things worn by him the previous day. in the afternoon the king, having dressed and put on his ornaments, should interview the women of the harem, who should also be dressed and decorated with jewels. then having given to each of them such a place and such respect as may suit the occasion and as they may deserve, he should carry on with them a cheerful conversation. after that he should see such of his wives as may be virgin widows re-married, and after them the concubines and dancing girls. all of these should be visited in their own private rooms. when the king rises from his noonday sleep, the woman whose duty it is to inform the king regarding the wife who is to spend the night with him should come to him accompanied by the female attendants of that wife whose turn may have arrived in the regular course, and of her who may have been accidentally passed over as her turn arrived, and of her who may have been unwell at the time of her turn. these attendants should place before the king the ointments and unguents sent by each of these wives, marked with the seal of her ring, and their names and their reasons for sending the ointments should be told to the king. after this the king accepts the ointment of one of them, who then is informed that her ointment has been accepted, and that her day has been settled.[ ] at festivals, singing parties and exhibitions, all the wives of the king should be treated with respect and served with drinks. but the women of the harem should not be allowed to go out alone, neither should any women outside the harem be allowed to enter it except those whose character is well known. and lastly the work which the king's wives have to do should not be too fatiguing. thus ends the conduct of the king towards the women of the harem, and of their own conduct. a man marrying many wives should act fairly towards them all. he should neither disregard nor pass over their faults, and should not reveal to one wife the love, passion, bodily blemishes, and confidential reproaches of the other. no opportunity should be given to any one of them of speaking to him about their rivals, and if one of them should begin to speak ill of another, he should chide her and tell her that she has exactly the same blemishes in her character. one of them he should please by secret confidence, another by secret respect, and another by secret flattery, and he should please them all by going to gardens, by amusements, by presents, by honouring their relations, by telling them secrets, and lastly by loving unions. a young woman who is of a good temper, and who conducts herself according to the precepts of the holy writ, wins her husband's attachment, and obtains a superiority over her rivals. thus ends the conduct of a husband towards many wives. footnotes: [footnote : a name given to the maid servants of the zenana of the kings in ancient times, on account of their always keeping their breasts covered with a cloth called kanchuki. it was customary in the olden time for the maid servants to cover their breasts with a cloth, while the queens kept their breasts uncovered. this custom is distinctly to be seen in the ajunta cave paintings.] [footnote : the meaning of this word is a superior woman, so it would seem that a mahallarika must be a person in authority over the maid servants of the house.] [footnote : this was also appertaining to the rank of women employed in the harem. in latter times this place was given to eunuchs.] [footnote : as kings generally had many wives, it was usual for them to enjoy their wives by turns. but as it happened sometimes that some of them lost their turns owing to the king's absence, or to their being unwell, then in such cases the women whose turns had been passed over, and those whose turns had come, used to have a sort of lottery, and the ointment of all the claimants were sent to the king, who accepted the ointment of one of them, and thus settled the question.] =end of part iv.= part v. about the wives of other men. chapter i. of the characteristics of men and women.--the reasons why women reject the addresses of men.--about men who have success with women, and about women who are easily gained over. the wives of other people may be resorted to on the occasions already described in part i., chapter , of this work, but the possibility of their acquisition, their fitness for cohabitation, the danger to oneself in uniting with them, and the future effect of these unions, should first of all be examined. a man may resort to the wife of another, for the purpose of saving his own life, when he perceives that his love for her proceeds from one degree of intensity to another. these degrees are ten in number, and are distinguished by the following marks: . love of the eye. . attachment of the mind. . constant reflection. . destruction of sleep. . emaciation of the body. . turning away from objects of enjoyment. . removal of shame. . madness. . fainting. . death. ancient authors say that a man should know the disposition, truthfulness, purity, and will of a young woman, as also the intensity, or weakness of her passions, from the form of her body, and from her characteristic marks and signs. but vatsyayana is of opinion that the forms of bodies, and the characteristic marks or signs are but erring tests of character, and that women should be judged by their conduct, by the outward expression of their thoughts, and by the movements of their bodies. now as a general rule gonikaputra says that a woman falls in love with every handsome man she sees, and so does every man at the sight of a beautiful woman, but frequently they do not take any further steps, owing to various considerations. in love the following circumstances are peculiar to the woman. she loves without regard to right or wrong,[ ] and does not try to gain over a man simply for the attainment of some particular purpose. moreover, when a man first makes up to her she naturally shrinks from him, even though she may be willing to unite herself with him. but when the attempts to gain her are repeated and renewed, she at last consents. but with a man, even though he may have begun to love, he conquers his feelings from a regard for morality and wisdom, and although his thoughts are often on the woman, he does not yield, even though an attempt be made to gain him over. he sometimes makes an attempt or effort to win the object of his affections, and having failed, he leaves her alone for the future. in the same way, when a woman is once gained, he often becomes indifferent about her. as for the saying that a man does not care for what is easily gained, and only desires a thing which cannot be obtained without difficulty, it is only a matter of talk. the causes of a woman rejecting the addresses of a man are as follows: . affection for her husband. . desire of lawful progeny. . want of opportunity. . anger at being addressed by the man too familiarly. . difference in rank of life. . want of certainty on account of the man being devoted to travelling. . thinking that the man may be attached to some other person. . fear of the man's not keeping his intentions secret. . thinking that the man is too devoted to his friends, and has too great a regard for them. . the apprehension that he is not in earnest. . bashfulness on account of his being an illustrious man. . fear on account of his being powerful, or possessed of too impetuous passion, in the case of the deer woman. . bashfulness on account of his being too clever. . the thought of having once lived with him on friendly terms only. . contempt of his want of knowledge of the world. . distrust of his low character. . disgust at his want of perception of her love for him. . in the case of an elephant woman, the thought that he is a hare man, or a man of weak passion. . compassion lest any thing should befall him on account of his passion. . despair at her own imperfections. . fear of discovery. . disillusion at seeing his grey hair or shabby appearance. . fear that he may be employed by her husband to test her chastity. . the thought that he has too much regard for morality. whichever of the above causes a man may detect, he should endeavour to remove it from the very beginning. thus, the bashfulness that may arise from his greatness or his ability, he should remove by showing his great love and affection for her. the difficulty of the want of opportunity, or if his inaccessibility, he should remove by showing her some easy way of access. the excessive respect entertained by the woman for him should be removed by making himself very familiar. the difficulties that arise from his being thought a low character he should remove by showing his valour and his wisdom; those that come from neglect by extra attention; and those that arise from fear by giving her proper encouragement. the following are the men who generally obtain success with women. . men well versed in the science of love. . men skilled in telling stories. . men acquainted with women from their childhood. . men who have secured their confidence. . men who send presents to them. . men who talk well. . men who do things that they like. . men who have not loved other women previously. . men who act as messengers. . men who knew their weak points. . men who are desired by good women. . men who are united with their female friends. . men who are good looking. . men who have been brought up with them. . men who are their neighbours. . men who are devoted to sexual pleasures, even though these be their own servants. . the lovers of the daughters of their nurse. . men who have been lately married. . men who like picnics and pleasure parties. . men who are liberal. . men who are celebrated for being very strong (bull men). . enterprising and brave men. . men who surpass their husbands in learning and good looks, in good quality, and in liberality. . men whose dress and manner of living are magnificent. the following are the women who are easily gained over. . women who stand at the doors of their houses. . women who are always looking out on the street. . women who sit conversing in their neighbour's house. . a woman who is always staring at you. . a female messenger. . a woman who looks sideways at you. . a woman whose husband has taken another wife without any just cause. . a woman who hates her husband or who is hated by him. . a woman who has nobody to look after her, or keep her in check. . a woman who has not had any children. . a woman whose family or caste is not well known. . a woman whose children are dead. . a woman who is very fond of society. . a woman who is apparently very affectionate with her husband. . the wife of an actor. . a widow. . a poor woman. . a woman fond of enjoyments. . the wife of a man with many younger brothers. . a vain woman. . a woman whose husband is inferior to her in rank or abilities. . a woman who is proud of her skill in the arts. . a woman disturbed in mind by the folly of her husband. . a woman who has been married in her infancy to a rich man, and not liking him when she grows up, desires a man possessing a disposition, talents, and wisdom suitable to her own tastes. . a woman who is slighted by her husband without any cause. . a woman who is not respected by other women of the same rank or beauty as herself. . a woman whose husband is devoted to travelling. . the wife of a jeweller. . a jealous woman. . a covetous woman. . an immoral woman. . a barren woman. . a lazy woman. . a cowardly woman. . a humpbacked woman. . a dwarfish woman. . a deformed woman. . a vulgar woman. . an ill-smelling woman. . a sick woman. . an old woman. there was also two verses on the subject as follows: "desire, which springs from nature, and which is increased by art, and from which all danger is taken away by wisdom, becomes firm and secure. a clever man, depending on his own ability, and observing carefully the ideas and thoughts of women, and removing the causes of their turning away from men, is generally successful with them." footnote: [footnote : on peut tout attendre et tout supposer d'une femme amoureuse.--balzac.] chapter ii. about making acquaintance with the woman, and of the efforts to gain her over. ancient authors are of opinion that girls are not so easily seduced by employing female messengers as by the efforts of the man himself, but that the wives of others are more easily got at by the aid of female messengers than by the personal efforts of a man. but vatsyayana lays it down that whenever it is possible a man should always act himself in these matters, and it is only when such is impracticable, or impossible, that female messengers should be employed. as for the saying that women who act and talk boldly and freely are to be won by the personal efforts of the man, and that women who do not possess those qualities are to be got at by female messengers, it is only a matter of talk. now when a man acts himself in the matter he should first of all make the acquaintance of the woman he loves in the following manner. st. he should arrange to be seen by the woman either on a natural or special opportunity. a natural opportunity is when one of them goes to the house of the other, and a special opportunity is when they meet either at the house of a friend, or a caste-fellow, or a minister, or a physician, as also on the occasion of marriage ceremonies, sacrifices, festivals, funerals, and garden parties. nd. when they do meet, the man should be careful to look at her in such a way as to cause the state of his mind to be made known to her; he should pull about his moustache, make a sound with his nails, cause his own ornaments to tinkle, bite his lower lip, and make various other signs of that description. when she is looking at him he should speak to his friends about her and other women, and should show to her his liberality and his appreciation of enjoyments. when sitting by the side of a female friend he should yawn and twist his body, contract his eyebrows, speak very slowly as if he were weary, and listen to her indifferently. a conversation having two meanings should also be carried on with a child or some other person, apparently having regard to a third person, but really having reference to the woman he loves, and in this way his love should be made manifest under the pretext of referring to others rather than to herself. he should make marks that have reference to her, on the earth with his nails, or with a stick, and should embrace and kiss a child in her presence, and give it the mixture of betel nut and betel leaves with his tongue, and press its chin with his fingers in a caressing way. all these things should be done at the proper time and in proper places. rd. the man should fondle a child that may be sitting on her lap, and give it something to play with, and also take the same back again. conversation with respect to the child may also be held with her, and in this manner he should gradually become well acquainted with her, and he should also make himself agreeable to her relations. afterwards, this acquaintance should be made a pretext for visiting her house frequently, and on such occasions he should converse on the subject of love in her absence, but within her hearing. as his intimacy with her increases he should place in her charge some kind of deposit or trust, and take away from it a small portion at a time; or he may give her some fragrant substances, or betel nuts to be kept for him by her. after this he should endeavour to make her well acquainted with his own wife, and get them to carry on confidential conversations, and to sit together in lonely places. in order to see her frequently he should arrange that the same goldsmith, the same jeweller, the same basket maker, the same dyer, and the same washerman should be employed by the two families. and he should also pay her long visits openly under the pretence of being engaged with her on business, and one business should lead to another, so as to keep up the intercourse between them. whenever she wants anything, or is in need of money, or wishes to acquire skill in one of the arts, he should cause her to understand that he is willing and able to do anything that she wants, to give her money, or teach her one of the arts, all these things being quite within his ability and power. in the same way he should hold discussions with her in company with other people, and they should talk of the doings and sayings of other persons, and examine different things, like jewellery, precious stones, etc. on such occasions he should show her certain things with the values of which she may be unacquainted, and if she begins to dispute with him about the things or their value, he should not contradict her, but point out that he agrees with her in every way. thus ends the ways of making the acquaintance of the woman desired. now after a girl has become acquainted with the man as above described, and has manifested her love to him by the various outward signs; and by the motions of her body, the man should make every effort to gain her over. but as girls are not acquainted with sexual union, they should be treated with the greatest delicacy, and the man should proceed with considerable caution, though in the case of other women, accustomed to sexual intercourse, this is not necessary. when the intentions of the girl are known, and her bashfulness put aside, the man should begin to make use of her money, and an interchange of clothes, rings, and flowers should be made. in this the man should take particular care that the things given by him are handsome and valuable. he should moreover receive from her a mixture of betel nut and betel leaves, and when he is going to a party he should ask for the flower in her hair, or for the flower in her hand. if he himself gives her a flower it should be a sweet smelling one, and marked with marks made by his nails or teeth. with increasing assiduity he should dispel her fears, and by degrees get her to go with him to some lonely place, and there he should embrace and kiss her. and finally at the time of giving her some betel nut, or of receiving the same from her, or at the time of making an exchange of flowers, he should touch and press her private parts, thus bringing his efforts to a satisfactory conclusion. when a man is endeavouring to seduce one woman, he should not attempt to seduce any other at the same time. but after he had succeeded with the first, and enjoyed her for a considerable time, he can keep her affections by giving her presents that she likes, and then commence making up to another woman. when a man sees the husband of a woman going to some place near his house, he should not enjoy the woman then, even though she may be easily gained over at that time. a wise man having a regard for his reputation should not think of seducing a woman who is apprehensive, timid, not to be trusted, well guarded, or possessed of a father-in-law, or mother-in-law. chapter iii. examination of the state of a woman's mind. when a man is trying to gain over a woman he should examine the state of her mind, and acts as follows. if she listens to him, but does not manifest to him in any way her own intentions, he should then try to gain her over by means of a go-between. if she meets him once, and again comes to meet him better dressed than before, or comes to him in some lonely place, he should be certain that she is capable of being enjoyed by the use of a little force. a woman who lets a man make up to her, but does not give herself up, even after a long time, should be considered as a trifler in love, but owing to the fickleness of the human mind, even such a woman can be conquered by always keeping up a close acquaintance with her. when a woman avoids the attentions of a man, and on account of respect for him, and pride in herself, will not meet him or approach him, she can be gained over with difficulty, either by endeavouring to keep on familiar terms with her, or else by an exceedingly clever go-between. when a man makes up to a woman, and she reproaches him with harsh words, she should be abandoned at once. when a woman reproaches a man, but at the same time acts affectionately towards him, she should be made love to in every way. a woman who meets a man in lonely places, and puts up with the touch of his foot, but pretends, on account of the indecision of her mind, not to be aware of it, should be conquered by patience, and by continued efforts as follows: if she happens to go to sleep in his vicinity he should put his left arm round her, and see when she awakes whether she repulses him in reality, or only repulses him in such a way as if she were desirous of the same thing being done to her again. and what is done by the arm can also be done by the foot. if the man succeeds in this point he should embrace her more closely, and if she will not stand the embrace and gets up, but behaves with him as usual the next day, he should consider then that she is not unwilling to be enjoyed by him. if however she does not appear again, the man should try to get over her by means of a go-between; and if, after having disappeared for some time she again appears, and behaves with him as usual, the man should then consider that she would not object to be united with him. when a woman gives a man an opportunity, and makes her own love manifest to him, he should proceed to enjoy her. and the signs of a woman manifesting her love are these: . she calls out to a man without being addressed by him in the first instance. . she shows herself to him in secret places. . she speaks to him tremblingly and inarticulately. . she has the fingers of her hand, and the toes of her feet moistened with perspiration, and her face blooming with delight. . she occupies herself with shampooing his body and pressing his head. . when shampooing him she works with one hand only, and with the other she touches and embraces parts of his body. . she remains with both hands placed on his body motionless as if she had been surprised by something, or was overcome by fatigue. . she sometimes bends down her face upon his thighs, and when asked to shampoo them does not manifest any unwillingness to do so. . she places one of her hands quite motionless on his body, and even though the man should press it between two members of his body, she does not remove it for a long time. . lastly, when she has resisted all the efforts of the man to gain her over, she returns to him next day to shampoo his body as before. when a woman neither gives encouragement to a man, nor avoids him, but hides herself and remains in some lonely place, she must be got at by means of the female servant who may be near her. if when called by the man she acts in the same way, then she should be gained over by means of a skilful go-between. but if she will have nothing to say to the man, he should consider well about her before he begins any further attempts to gain her over. thus ends the examination of the state of a woman's mind. a man should first get himself introduced to a woman, and then carry on a conversation with her. he should give her hints of his love for her, and if he finds from her replies that she receives these hints favourably, he should then set to work to gain her over without any fear. a woman who shows her love by outward signs to the man at his first interview should be gained over very easily. in the same way a lascivious woman, who when addressed in loving words replies openly in words expressive of her love, should be considered to have been gained over at that very moment. with regard to all women, whether they be wise, simple, or confiding, this rule is laid down that those who make an open manifestation of their love are easily gained over. chapter iv. about the business of a go-between. if a woman has manifested her love or desire, either by signs or by motions of her body, and is afterwards rarely or never seen any where, or if a woman is met for the first time, the man should get a go-between to approach her. now the go-between, having wheedled herself into the confidence of the woman by acting according to her disposition, should try to make her hate or despise her husband by holding artful conversations with her, by telling her about medicines for getting children, by talking to her about other people, by tales of various kinds, by stories about the wives of other men, and by praising her beauty, wisdom, generosity, and good nature, and then saying to her: "it is indeed a pity that you, who are so excellent a woman in every way, should be possessed of a husband of this kind. beautiful lady, he is not fit even to serve you." the go-between should further talk to the woman about the weakness of the passion of her husband, his jealousy, his roguery, his ingratitude, his aversion to enjoyments, his dullness, his meanness, and all the other faults that he may have, and with which she may be acquainted. she should particularly harp upon that fault or that failing by which the wife may appear to be the most affected. if the wife be a deer woman, and the husband a hare man, then there would be no fault in that direction, but in the event of his being a hare man, and she a mare woman or elephant woman, then this fault should be pointed out to her. gonikaputra is of opinion that when it is the first affair of the woman, or when her love has only been very secretly shown, the man should then secure and send to her a go-between, with whom she may be already acquainted, and in whom she confides. but to return to our subject. the go-between should tell the woman about the obedience and love of the man, and as her confidence and affection increase, she should then explain to her the thing to be accomplished in the following way. "hear this, oh beautiful lady, that this man, born of a good family, having seen you, has gone mad on your account. the poor young man, who is tender by nature, has never been distressed in such a way before, and it is highly probable that he will succumb under his present affliction, and experience the pains of death." if the woman listens with a favourable ear, then on the following day the go-between, having observed marks of good spirits in her face, in her eyes, and in her manner of conversation, should again converse with her on the subject of the man, and should tell her the stories of ahalya[ ] and indra, of sakoontala[ ] and dushyanti, and such others as may be fitted for the occasion. she should also describe to her the strength of the man, his talents, his skill in the sixty-four sorts of enjoyments mentioned by babhravya, his good looks, and his liaison with some praiseworthy woman, no matter whether this last ever took place or not. in addition to this, the go-between should carefully note the behaviour of the woman, which if favourable would be as follows: she would address her with a smiling look, would seat herself close beside her, and ask her, "where have you been? what have you been doing? where did you dine? where did you sleep? where have you been sitting?" moreover the woman would meet the go-between in lonely places and tell her stories there, would yawn contemplatively, draw long sighs, give her presents, remember her on occasions of festivals, dismiss her with a wish to see her again, and say to her jestingly, "oh, well-speaking woman, why do you speak these bad words to me?" would discourse on the sin of her union with the man, would not tell her about any previous visits or conversations that she may have had with him, but wish to be asked about these, and lastly would laugh at the man's desire, but would not reproach him in any way. thus ends the behaviour of the woman with the go-between. when the woman manifests her love in the manner above described, the go-between should increase it by bringing to her love tokens from the man. but if the woman be not acquainted with the man personally, the go-between should win her over by extolling and praising his good qualities, and by telling stories about his love for her. here auddalaka says that when a man or woman are not personally acquainted with each other, and have not shown each other any signs of affection, the employment of a go-between is useless. the followers of babhravya on the other hand affirm that even though they be personally unacquainted, but have shown each other signs of affection there is an occasion for the employment of a go-between. gonikaputra asserts that a go-between should be employed, provided they are acquainted with each other, even though no signs of affection may have passed between them. vatsyayana however lays it down that even though they may not be personally acquainted with each other, and may not have shown each other any signs of affection, still they are both capable of placing confidence in a go-between. now the go-between should show the woman the presents, such as the betel nut and betel leaves, the perfumes, the flowers, and the rings which the man may have given to her for the sake of the woman, and on these presents should be impressed the marks of the man's teeth, and nails, and other signs. on the cloth that he may send he should draw with saffron both his hands joined together as if in earnest entreaty. the go-between should also show to the woman ornamental figures of various kinds cut in leaves, together with ear ornaments, and chaplets made of flowers containing love letters expressive of the desire of the man,[ ] and she should cause her to send affectionate presents to the man in return. after they have mutually accepted each other's presents, then a meeting should be arranged between them on the faith of the go-between. the followers of babhravya say that this meeting should take place at the time of going to the temple of a deity, or on occasions of fairs, garden parties, theatrical performances, marriages, sacrifices, festivals and funerals, as also at the time of going to the river to bathe, or at times of natural calamities,[ ] fear of robbers or hostile invasions of the country. gonikaputra is of opinion however that these meetings had better be brought about in the abodes of female friends, mendicants, astrologers, and ascetics. but vatsyayana decides that that place is only well suited for the purpose which has proper means of ingress and egress, and where arrangements have been made to prevent any accidental occurrence, and when a man who has once entered the house, can also leave it at the proper time without any disagreeable encounter. now go-betweens or female messengers are of the following different kinds, viz.: ( ). a go-between who takes upon herself the whole burden of the business. ( ). a go-between who does only a limited part of the business. ( ). a go-between who is the bearer of a letter only. ( ). a go-between acting on her own account. ( ). the go-between of an innocent young woman. ( ). a wife serving as a go-between. ( ). a mute go-between. ( ). a go-between who acts the part of the wind. ( ). a woman who, having observed the mutual passion of a man and woman, brings them together and arranges it by the power of her own intellect, such an one is called a go-between who takes upon herself the whole burden of the business. this kind of go-between is chiefly employed when the man and the woman are already acquainted with each other, and have conversed together, and in such cases she is sent not only by the man (as is always done in all other cases) but by the woman also.--the above name is also given to a go-between who, perceiving that the man and the woman are suited to each other, tries to bring about a union between them, even though they be not acquainted with each other. ( ). a go-between who, perceiving that some part of the affair is already done, or that the advances on the part of the man are already made, completes the rest of the business, is called a go-between who performs only a limited part of the business. ( ). a go-between, who simply carries messages between a man and a woman, who love each other, but who cannot frequently meet, is called the bearer of a letter or message. this name is also given to one who is sent by either of the lovers to acquaint either the one or the other with the time and place of their meeting. ( ). a woman who goes herself to a man, and tells him of her having enjoyed sexual union with him in a dream, and expresses her anger at his wife having rebuked him for calling her by the name of her rival instead of by her own name, and gives him something bearing the marks of her teeth and nails, and informs him that she knew she was formerly desired by him, and asks him privately whether she or his wife is the best looking, such a person is called a woman who is a go-between for herself. now such a woman should be met and interviewed by the man in private and secretly. the above name is also given to a woman who having made an agreement with some other woman to act as her go-between, gains over the man to herself, by the means of making him personally acquainted with herself, and thus causes the other woman to fail. the same applies to a man who, acting as a go-between for another, and having no previous connection with the woman, gains her over for himself, and thus causes the failure of the other man. ( ). a woman, who has gained the confidence of the innocent young wife of any man, and who has learned her secrets without exercising any pressure on her mind, and found out from her how her husband behaves to her, if this woman then teaches her the art of securing his favour, and decorates her so as to show her love, and instructs her how and when to be angry, or to pretend to be so, and then, having herself made marks of the nails and teeth on the body of the wife, gets the latter to send for her husband to show these marks to him, and thus excite him for enjoyment, such is called the go-between of an innocent young woman. in such cases the man should send replies to his wife through the same woman. ( ). when a man gets his wife to gain the confidence of a woman whom he wants to enjoy, and to call on her and talk to her about the wisdom and ability of her husband, that wife is called a wife serving as a go-between. in this case the feelings of the woman with regard to the man should also be made known through the wife. ( ). when any man sends a girl or a female servant to any woman under some pretext or other, and places a letter in her bouquet of flowers, or in her ear ornaments, or marks something about her with his teeth or nails, that girl or female servant is called a mute go-between. in this case the man should expect an answer from the woman through the same person. ( ). a person, who carries a message to a woman, which has a double meaning, or which relates to some past transactions, or which is unintelligible to other people, is called a go-between who acts the part of the wind. in this case the reply should be asked for through the same woman. thus end the different kinds of go-betweens. a female astrologer, a female servant, a female beggar, or a female artist are well acquainted with the business of a go-between, and very soon gain the confidence of other women. any one of them can raise enmity between any two persons if she wishes to do so, or extol the loveliness of any woman that she wishes to praise, or describe the arts practised by other women in sexual union. they can also speak highly of the love of a man, of his skill in sexual enjoyment, and of the desire of other women, more beautiful even than the woman they are addressing, for him, and explain the restraint under which he may be at home. lastly a go-between can, by the artfulness of her conversation unite a woman with a man, even though he may not have been thought of by her, or may have been considered beyond his aspirations. she can also bring back a man to a woman, who, owing to some cause or other, has separated himself from her. footnote: [footnote : the wife of the sage gautama, she was seduced by indra the king of the gods.] [footnote : the heroine of one of the best, if not the best, of hindoo plays, and the best known in sanscrit dramatic literature. it was first brought to notice by sir william jones, and has been well and poetically translated by dr. monier williams under the title of sakoontala, or the lost ring, an indian drama, translated into english prose and verse from the sanscrit of kalidasa.] [footnote : it is presumed that something like the following french verses are intended. quand on a juré le plus profond hommage voulez-vous qu'infidè le on change de langage vous seule captive mon esprit ou mon coeur que je puisse dans vos bras seuls goûter le bonheur; je voudrais, mais en vain, que mon coeur en délire couche où ce papier n'oserait vous dire. avec soin, de ces vers lisez leur premiers mots, vous verrez quel remède il faut à tous mes maux. or these: quand on vous voit, on vous aime; quand on vous aime, où vous voit-on.] [footnote : it is supposed that storms, earthquakes, famines and pestilent diseases are here alluded to.] chapter v. about the love of persons in authority for the wives of other men. kings and their ministers have no access to the abodes of others, and moreover their mode of living is constantly watched and observed and imitated by the people at large, just as the animal world, seeing the sun rise, get up after him, and when he sits in the evening, lie down again in the same way. persons in authority should not therefore do any improper act in public, as such are impossible from their position, and would be deserving of censure. but if they find that such an act is necessary to be done, they should make use of the proper means as described in the following paragraphs. the head man of the village, the king's officer employed there, and the man[ ] whose business it is to glean corn, can gain over female villagers simply by asking them. it is on this account that this class of woman are called unchaste women by voluptuaries. the union of the above mentioned men with this class of woman takes place on the occasions of unpaid labour, of filling the granaries in their houses, of taking things in and out of the house, of cleaning the houses, of working in the fields, and of purchasing cotton, wool, flax, hemp, and thread, and at the season of the purchase, sale, and exchange of various other articles, as well as at the time of doing various other works. in the same way the superintendents of cow pens enjoy the women in the cow pens; and the officers, who have the superintendence of widows, of the women who are without supporters, and of women who have left their husbands, have sexual intercourse with these women. the intelligent accomplish their object by wandering at night in the village, and while villagers also unite with the wives of their sons, being much alone with them. lastly the superintendents of markets have a great deal to do with the female villagers at the time of their making purchases in the market. during the festival of the eighth moon, _i.e._, during the bright half of the month of nargashirsha, as also during the moonlight festival of the month of kartika, and the spring festival of chaitra, the women of cities and towns generally visit the women of the king's harem in the royal palace. these visitors go to the several apartments of the women of the harem, as they are acquainted with them, and pass the night in conversation, and in proper sports, and amusement, and go away in the morning. on such occasions a female attendant of the king (previously acquainted with the woman whom the king desires), should loiter about, and accost this woman when she sets out to go home, and induce her to come and see the amusing things in the palace. previous to these festivals even, she should have caused it to be intimated to this woman that on the occasion of this festival she would show her all the interesting things in the royal palace. accordingly she should show her the bower of the coral creeper, the garden house with its floor inlaid with precious stones, the bower of grapes, the building on the water, the secret passages in the walls of the palace, the pictures, the sporting animals, the machines, the birds, and the cages of the lions and the tigers. after this, when alone with her, she should tell her about the love of the king for her, and should describe to her the good fortune which would attend upon her union with the king, giving her at the time a strict promise of secrecy. if the woman does not accept the offer, she should conciliate and please her with handsome presents befitting the position of the king, and having accompanied her for some distance should dismiss her with great affection. ( ). or, having made the acquaintance of the husband of the woman whom the king desires, the wives of the king should get the wife to pay them a visit in the harem, and on this occasion a female attendant of the king, having been sent thither, should act as above described. ( ). or, one of the king's wives should get acquainted with the woman that the king desires, by sending one of the female attendants to her, who should, on their becoming more intimate, induce her to come and see the royal abode. afterwards, when she has visited the harem, and acquired confidence, a female confidante of the king, sent thither, should act as before described. ( ). or, the king's wife should invite the woman, whom the king desires, to come to the royal palace, so that she might see the practice of the art in which the king's wife may be skilled, and after she has come to the harem, a female attendant of the king, sent thither, should act as before described. ( ). or, a female beggar, in league with the king's wife, should say to the woman desired by the king, and whose husband may have lost his wealth, or may have some cause of fear from the king: "this wife of the king has influence over him, and she is, moreover, naturally kind-hearted, we must therefore go to her in this matter. i shall arrange for your entrance into the harem, and she will do away with all cause of danger and fear from the king." if the woman accepts this offer, the female beggar should take her two or three times to the harem, and the king's wife there should give her a promise of protection. after this, when the woman, delighted with her reception and promise of protection, again goes to the harem, then a female attendant of the king, sent thither, should act as directed. ( ). what has been said above regarding the wife of one who has some cause of fear from the king applies also to the wives of those who seek service under the king, or who are oppressed by the king's ministers, or who are poor, or who are not satisfied with their position, or who are desirous of gaining the king's favour, or who wish to become famous among the people, or who are oppressed by the members of their own caste, or who want to injure their caste fellows, or who are spies of the king, or who have any other object to attain. ( ). lastly, if the woman desired by the king be living with some person who is not her husband, then the king should cause her to be arrested, and having made her a slave, on account of her crime, should place her in the harem. or the king should cause his ambassador to quarrel with the husband of the woman desired by him, and should then imprison her as the wife of an enemy of the king, and by this means should place her in the harem. thus end the means of gaining over the wives of others secretly. the above mentioned ways of gaining over the wives of other men are chiefly practised in the palaces of kings. but a king should never enter the abode of another person, for abhira,[ ] the king of the kottas was killed by a washerman while in the house of another, and in the same way jayasana the king of the kashis was slain by the commandment of his cavalry. but according to the customs of some countries there are facilities for kings to make love to the wives of other men. thus in the country of the andras[ ] the newly married daughters of the people thereof enter the king's harem with some presents on the tenth day of their marriage, and having been enjoyed by the king are then dismissed. in the country of the vatsagulmas[ ] the wives of the chief ministers approach the king at night to serve him. in the country of the vaidarbhas[ ] the beautiful wives of the inhabitants pass a month in the king's harem under the pretence of affection for the king. in the country of the aparatakas[ ] the people gave their beautiful wives as presents to the ministers and the kings. and lastly in the country of the saurashtras[ ] the women of the city and the country enter the royal harem for the king's pleasure either together or separately. there are also two verses on the subject as follows: "the above and other ways are the means employed in different countries by kings with regard to the wives of other persons. but a king, who has the welfare of his people at heart, should not on any account put them into practice." "a king who has conquered the six[ ] enemies of mankind, becomes the master of the whole earth." footnotes: [footnote : this is a phrase used for a man who does the work of everybody, and who is fed by the whole village.] [footnote : the exact date of the reign of these kings is not known. it is supposed to have been about the beginning of the christian era.] [footnote : the modern country of tailangam, which is to the south of rajamundry.] [footnote : supposed to be a tract of the country to the south of malwa.] [footnote : now known by the name of berar. its capital was kundinpura, which has been identified with the modern oomravati.] [footnote : also called aparantakas, being the northern and southern concan.] [footnote : the modern provinces of katteeawar. its capital was called girinaguda, or the modern junagurh.] [footnote : these are lust, anger, avarice, spiritual ignorance, pride, and envy.] chapter vi. about the women of the royal harem; and of the keeping of one's own wife. the women of the royal harem cannot see or meet any men on account of their being strictly guarded, neither do they have their desires satisfied, because their only husband is common to many wives. for this reason among themselves they give pleasure to each other in various ways as now described. having dressed the daughters of their nurses, or their female friends, or their female attendants, like men, they accomplish their object by means of bulbs, roots, and fruits having the form of the lingam, or they lie down upon the statue of a male figure, in which the lingam is visible and erect. some kings, who are compassionate, take or apply certain medicines to enable them to enjoy many wives in one night, simply for the purpose of satisfying the desire of their women, though they perhaps have no desire of their own. others enjoy with great affection only those wives that they particularly like, while others only take them according as the turn of each wife arrives in due course. such are the ways of enjoyment prevalent in eastern countries, and what is said about the means of enjoyment of the female is also applicable to the male. by means of their female attendants the ladies of the royal harem generally get men into their apartments in the disguise or dress of women. their female attendants, and the daughters of their nurses, who are acquainted with their secrets, should exert themselves to get men to come to the harem in this way by telling them of the good fortune attending it, and by describing the facilities of entering and leaving the palace, the large size of the premises, the carelessness of the sentinels, and the irregularities of the attendants about the persons of the royal wives. but these women should never induce a man to enter the harem by telling him falsehoods, for that would probably lead to his destruction. as for the man himself, he had better not enter a royal harem, even though it may be easily accessible, on account of the numerous disasters to which he may be exposed there. if however he wants to enter it, he should first ascertain whether there is an easy way to get out, whether it is closely surrounded by the pleasure garden, whether it has separate enclosures belonging to it, whether the sentinels are careless, whether the king has gone abroad, and then, when he is called by the women of the harem, he should carefully observe the localities, and enter by the way pointed out by them. if he is able to manage it, he should hang about the harem every day, and, under some pretext or other, make friends with the sentinels, and show himself attached to the female attendants of the harem, who may have become acquainted with his design, and to whom he should express his regret at not being able to obtain the object of his desire. lastly he should cause the whole business of a go-between to be done by the woman who may have access to the harem, and he should be careful to be able to recognize the emissaries of the king. when a go-between has no access to the harem, then the man should stand in some place where the lady, whom he loves, and whom he is anxious to enjoy, can be seen. if that place is occupied by the king's sentinels, he should then disguise himself as a female attendant of the lady who comes to the place, or passes by it. when she looks at him he should let her know his feelings by outward signs and gestures, and should show her pictures, things with double meanings, chaplets of flowers, and rings. he should carefully mark the answer she gives, whether by word or by sign, or by gesture, and should then try and get into the harem. if he is certain of her coming to some particular place he should conceal himself there, and at the appointed time should enter along with her as one of the guards. he may also go in and out, concealed in a folded bed, or bed covering, or with his body made invisible,[ ] by means of external applications, a receipt for one of which is as follows: the heart of an ichneumon, the fruit of the long gourd (tumbi), and the eyes of the serpent, should all be burnt without letting out the smoke, the ashes should then be ground and mixed in equal quantities with water. by putting this mixture upon the eyes a man can go about unseen. other means of invisibility are prescribed by duyana brahmans and jogashiras. again the man may enter the harem during the festival of the eight moon in the month of nargashirsha, and during the moonlight festivals when the female attendants of the harem are all busily occupied, or in confusion. the following principles are laid down on this subject. the entrance of young men into harems, and their exit from them, generally take place when things are being brought into the palace, or when things are being taken out of it, or when drinking festivals are going on, or when the female attendants are in a hurry, or when the residence of some of the royal ladies is being changed, or when the king's wives go to gardens, or to fairs, or when they enter the palace on their return from them; or, lastly, when the king is absent on a long pilgrimage. the women of the royal harem know each other's secrets, and having but one object to attain, they give assistance to each other. a young man, who enjoys all of them, and who is common to them all, can continue enjoying his union with them so long as it is kept quiet, and is not known abroad. now in the country of the aparatakas the royal ladies are not well protected, and consequently many young men are passed into the harem by the women who have access to the royal palaces. the wives of the king of the ahira country accomplish their objects with those sentinels in the harem who bear the name of kashtriyas. the royal ladies in the country of the vatsagulmas cause such men as are suitable to enter into the harem along with their female messengers. in the country of the vaidarbhas the sons of the royal ladies enter the royal harem when they please, and enjoy the women, with the exception of their own mothers. in the stri-rajya the wives of the king are enjoyed by his caste fellows and relations. in the ganda country the royal wives are enjoyed by brahmans, friends, servants, and slaves. in the samdhava country, servants, foster children, and other persons like them enjoy the women of the harem. in the country of the haimavatas adventurous citizens bribe the sentinels and enter the harem. in the country of the vanyas and the kalmyas, brahmans, with the knowledge of the king, enter the harem under the pretence of giving flowers to the ladies, and speak with them from behind a curtain, and from such conversation union afterwards takes place. lastly, the women in the harem of the king of the prachyas conceal one young man in the harem for every batch of nine or ten of the women. thus act the wives of others. for these reasons a man should guard his own wife. old authors say that a king should select for sentinels in his harem such men as have their freedom from carnal desires well tested. but such men, though free themselves from carnal desire, by reason of their fear or avarice, may cause other persons to enter the harem, and therefore gonikaputra says, that kings should place such men in the harem as may have had their freedom from carnal desires, their fears, and their avarice well tested. lastly, vatsyayana says that under the influence of dharma[ ] people might be admitted, and therefore men should be selected who are free from carnal desires, fear, avarice, and dharma.[ ] the followers of babhravya say that a man should cause his wife to associate with a young woman who would tell him the secrets of other people, and thus find out from her about his wife's chastity. but vatsyayana says, that as wicked persons are always successful with women, a man should not cause his innocent wife to be corrupted by bringing her into the company of a deceitful woman. the following are the causes of the destruction of a woman's chastity: always going into society, and sitting in company. absence of restraint. the loose habits of her husband. want of caution in her relations with other men. continued and long absence of her husband. living in a foreign country. destruction of her love and feelings by her husband. the company of loose women. the jealousy of her husband. there are also the following verses on the subject. "a clever man, learning from the shastras the ways of winning over the wives of other people, is never deceived in the case of his own wives. no one, however, should make use of these ways for seducing the wives of others, because they do not always succeed, and, moreover, often cause disasters, and the destruction of dharma and artha. this book, which is intended for the good of the people, and to teach them the ways of guarding their own wives, should not be made use of merely for gaining over the wives of others." footnotes: [footnote : the way to make oneself invisible; the knowledge of the art of transmigration, or changing ourselves or others into any shape or form by the use of charms and spells; the power of being in two places at once, and other occult sciences are frequently referred to in all oriental literature.] [footnote : this may be considered as meaning religious influence, and alludes to persons who may be gained over by that means.] [footnote : it may be noted from the above remarks that eunuchs do not appear to have been employed in the king's harem in those days, though they seem to have been employed for other purposes. see part ii., page .] =end of part v.= part vi. about courtesans. introductory remarks. this part vi., about courtesans, was prepared by vatsyayana, from a treatise on the subject, that was written by dattaka, for the women of pataliputra (the modern patna), some two thousand years ago. dattaka's work does not appear to be extant now, but this abridgement of it is very clever, and quite equal to any of the productions of emile zola, and other writers of the realistic school of to-day. although a great deal has been written on the subject of the courtesan, nowhere will be found a better description of her, of her belongings, of her ideas, and of the working of her mind, than is contained in the following pages. the details of the domestic and social life of the early hindoos would not be complete without mention of the courtesan, and part vi. is entirely devoted to this subject. the hindoos have ever had the good sense to recognise courtesans as a part and portion of human society, and so long as they behaved themselves with decency and propriety, they were regarded with a certain respect. anyhow, they have never been treated in the east with that brutality and contempt so common in the west, while their education has always been of a superior kind to that bestowed upon the rest of womankind in oriental countries. in the earlier days the well-educated hindoo dancing girl and courtesan doubtless resembled the hetera of the greeks, and being educated and amusing, were far more acceptable as companions than the generality of the married or unmarried women of that period. at all times and in all countries, there has ever been a little rivalry between the chaste and the unchaste. but while some women are born courtesans, and follow the instincts of their nature in every class of society, it has been truly said by some authors that every woman has got an inkling of the profession in her nature, and does her best, as a general rule, to make herself agreeable to the male sex. the subtlety of women, their wonderful perceptive powers, their knowledge, and their intuitive appreciation of men and things, are all shown in the following pages, which may be looked upon as a concentrated essence that has been since worked up into detail by many writers in every quarter of the globe. chapter i. of the causes of a courtesan resorting to men; of the means of attaching to herself the man desired; and of the kind of man that it is desirable to be acquainted with. by having intercourse with men courtesans obtain sexual pleasure, as well as their own maintenance. now when a courtesan takes up with a man from love, the action is natural; but when she resorts to him for the purpose of getting money, her action is artificial or forced. even in the latter case, however, she should conduct herself as if her love were indeed natural, because men repose their confidence on those women who apparently love them. in making known her love to the man she should show an entire freedom from avarice, and for the sake of her future credit she should abstain from acquiring money from him by unlawful means. a courtesan, well dressed and wearing her ornaments, should sit or stand at the door of her house, and without exposing herself too much, should look on the public road so as to be seen by the passers by, she being like an object on view for sale.[ ] she should form friendships with such persons as would enable her to separate men from other women, and attach them to herself, and repair her own misfortunes, to acquire wealth, and to protect her from being bullied, or set upon by persons with whom she may have dealings of some kind or another. these persons are: the guards of the town, or the police. the officers of the courts of justice. astrologers. powerful men, or men with interest. learned men. teachers of the sixty-four arts. pithamardas or confidants. vitas or parasites. vidushakas or jesters. flower sellers. perfumers. vendors of spirits. washermen. barbers. beggars. and such other persons as may be found necessary for the particular object to be acquired. the following kinds of men may be taken up with simply for the purpose of getting their money. men of independent income. young men. men who are free from any ties. men who hold places of authority under the king. men who have secured their means of livelihood without difficulty. men possessed of unfailing sources of income. men who consider themselves handsome. men who are always praising themselves. one who is an eunuch, but wishes to be thought a man. one who hates his equals. one who is naturally liberal. one who has influence with the king or his ministers. one who is always fortunate. one who is proud of his wealth. one who disobeys the orders of his elders. one upon whom the members of his caste keep an eye. the only son whose father is wealthy. an ascetic who is internally troubled with desire. a brave man. a physician of the king. previous acquaintance. on the other hand, those who are possessed of excellent qualities are to be resorted to for the sake of love, and fame. such men are as follows: men of high birth, learned, with a good knowledge of the world, and doing the proper things at the proper times, poets, good story tellers, eloquent men, energetic men, skilled in various arts, far-seeing into the future, possessed of great minds, full of perseverance, of a firm devotion, free from anger, liberal, affectionate to their parents, and with a liking for all social gatherings, skilled in completing verses begun by others and in various other sports, free from all disease, possessed of a perfect body, strong, and not addicted to drinking, powerful in sexual enjoyment, sociable, showing love towards women and attracting their hearts to himself, but not entirely devoted to them, possessed of independent means of livelihood, free from envy, and last of all free from suspicion. such are the good qualities of a man. the woman also should have the following characteristics, viz.: she should be possessed of beauty, and amiability, with auspicious body marks. she should have a liking for good qualities in other people, as also a liking for wealth. she should take delight in sexual unions resulting from love, and should be of a firm mind, and of the same class as the man with regard to sexual enjoyment. she should always be anxious to acquire and obtain experience and knowledge, be free from avarice, and always have a liking for social gatherings, and for the arts. the following are the ordinary qualities of all women, viz.: to be possessed of intelligence, good disposition, and good manners; to be straightforward in behaviour, and to be grateful; to consider well the future before doing anything; to possess activity, to be of consistent behaviour, and to have a knowledge of the proper times and places for doing things; to speak always without meanness, loud laughter, malignity, anger, avarice, dullness, or stupidity, to have a knowledge of the kama sutra, and to be skilled in all the arts connected with it. the faults of the women are to be known by the absence of any of the above mentioned good qualities. the following kinds of men are not fit to be resorted to by courtesans, viz.: one who is consumptive; one who is sickly; one whose mouth contains worms; one whose breath smells like human excrement; one whose wife is dear to him; one who speaks harshly; one who is always suspicious; one who is avaricious; one who is pitiless; one who is a thief; one who is self-conceited; one who has a liking for sorcery; one who does not care for respect or disrespect; one who can be gained over even by his enemies by means of money; and lastly, one who is extremely bashful. ancient authors are of opinion that the causes of a courtesan resorting to men are love, fear, money, pleasure, returning some act of enmity, curiosity, sorrow, constant intercourse, dharma, celebrity, compassion, the desire of having a friend, shame, the likeness of the man to some beloved person, the search after good fortune, the getting rid of the love of somebody else, the being of the same class as the man with respect to sexual union, living in the same place, constancy, and poverty. but vatsyayana decides that desire of wealth, freedom from misfortune, and love, are the only causes that affect the union of courtesans with men. now a courtesan should not sacrifice money to her love, because money is the chief thing to be attended to. but in cases of fear, etc., she should pay regard to strength and other qualities. moreover, even though she be invited by any man to join him, she should not at once consent to an union, because men are apt to despise things which are easily acquired. on such occasions she should first send the shampooers, and the singers, and the jesters, who may be in her service, or, in their absence the pithamardas, or confidants, and others, to find out the state of his feelings, and the condition of his mind. by means of these persons she should ascertain whether the man is pure or impure, affected, or the reverse, capable of attachment, or indifferent, liberal or niggardly; and if she finds him to her liking, she should then employ the vita and others to attach his mind to her. accordingly, the pithamarda should bring the man to her house, under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks, and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk, or of seeing some other spectacle, or the practice of some art; or he may take the woman to the abode of the man. after this, when the man comes to her house the woman should give him something capable of producing curiosity, and love in his heart, such as an affectionate present, telling him that it was specially designed for his use. she should also amuse him for a long time by telling him such stories, and doing such things as he may take most delight in. when he goes away she should frequently send to him a female attendant, skilled in carrying on a jesting conversation, and also a small present at the same time. she should also sometimes go to him herself under the pretence of some business, and accompanied by the pithamarda. thus end the means of attaching to herself the man desired. there are also some verses on the subject as follows: "when a lover comes to her abode, a courtesan should give him a mixture of betel leaves and betel nut, garlands of flowers, and perfumed ointments, and, showing her skill in arts, should entertain him with a long conversation. she should also give him some loving presents, and make an exchange of her own things with his, and at the same time should show him her skill in sexual enjoyment. when a courtesan is thus united with her lover she should always delight him by affectionate gifts, by conversation, and by the application of tender means of enjoyment." footnote: [footnote : in england the lower classes of courtesans walk the streets; in india and other places in the east they sit at the windows, or at the doors of their houses.] chapter ii. of living like a wife. when a courtesan is living as a wife with her lover, she should behave like a chaste woman, and do everything to his satisfaction. her duty in this respect, in short, is, that she should give him pleasure, but should not become attached to him, though behaving as if she were really attached. now the following is the manner in which she is to conduct herself, so as to accomplish the above mentioned purpose. she should have a mother dependent on her, one who should be represented as very harsh, and who looked upon money as her chief object in life. in the event of there being no mother, then an old and confidential nurse should play the same role. the mother or nurse, on their part, should appear to be displeased with the lover, and forcibly take her away from him. the woman herself should always show pretended anger, dejection, fear, and shame on this account, but should not disobey the mother or nurse at any time. she should make out to the mother or nurse that the man is suffering from bad health, and making this a pretext for going to see him, she should go on that account. she is, moreover, to do the following things for the purpose of gaining the man's favour, viz.: sending her female attendant to bring the flowers used by him on the previous day, in order that she may use them herself as a mark of affection, also asking for the mixture of betel nut and leaves that have remained uneaten by him; expressing wonder at his knowledge of sexual intercourse, and the several means of enjoyment used by him; learning from him the sixty-four kinds of pleasure mentioned by babhravya; continually practising the ways of enjoyment as taught by him, and according to his liking; keeping his secrets; telling him her own desires and secrets; concealing her anger; never neglecting him on the bed when he turns his face towards her; touching any parts of his body according to his wish; kissing and embracing him when he is asleep; looking at him with apparent anxiety when he is wrapt in thought, or thinking of some other subject than herself; showing neither complete shamelessness, nor excessive bashfulness when he meets her, or sees her standing on the terrace of her house from the public road; hating his enemies; loving those who are dear to him; showing a liking for that which he likes; being in high or low spirits according to the state that he is in himself; expressing a curiosity to see his wives; not continuing her anger for a long time; suspecting even the marks and wounds made by herself with her nails and teeth on his body to have been made by some other woman; keeping her love for him unexpressed by words, but showing it by deeds, and signs, and hints; remaining silent when he is asleep, intoxicated, or sick; being very attentive when he describes his good actions, and reciting them afterwards to his praise and benefit; giving witty replies to him if he be sufficiently attached to her; listening to all his stories, except those that relate to her rivals; expressing feelings of dejection and sorrow if he sighs, yawns, or falls down; pronouncing the words "live long" when he sneezes; pretending to be ill, or to have the desire of pregnancy, when she feels dejected; abstaining from praising the good qualities of any body else, and from censuring those who possess the same faults as her own man: wearing anything that may have been given to her by him; abstaining from putting on her ornaments, and from taking food when he is in pain, sick, low-spirited, or suffering from misfortune, and condoling and lamenting with him over the same; wishing to accompany him if he happens to leave the country himself or if he be banished from it by the king; expressing a desire not to live after him; telling him that the whole object and desire of her life was to be united with him; offering previously promised sacrifices to the deity when he acquires wealth, or has some desire fulfilled, or when he has recovered from some illness or disease; putting on ornaments every day; not acting too freely with him; reciting his name and the name of his family in her songs; placing his hand on her loins, bosom and forehead, and falling asleep after feeling the pleasure of his touch; sitting on his lap and falling asleep there; wishing to have a child by him; desiring not to live longer than he does; abstaining from revealing his secrets to others; dissuading him from vows and fasts by saying "let the sin fall upon me;" keeping vows and fasts along with him when it is impossible to change his mind on the subject; telling him that vows and fasts are difficult to be observed, even by herself, when she has any dispute with him about them; looking on her own wealth and his without any distinction; abstaining from going to public assemblies without him, and accompanying him when he desires her to do so; taking delight in using things previously used by him, and in eating food that he has left uneaten; venerating his family, his disposition, his skill in the arts, his learning, his caste, his complexion, his native country, his friends, his good qualities, his age, and his sweet temper; asking him to sing, and to do other such like things, if able to do them; going to him without paying any regard to fear, to cold, to heat, or to rain; saying with regard to the next world that he should be her lover even there; adapting her tastes, disposition and actions to his liking; abstaining from sorcery; disputing continually with her mother on the subject of going to him, and, when forcibly taken by her mother to some other place, expressing her desire to die by taking poison, by starving herself to death, by stabbing herself with some weapon, or by hanging herself; and lastly assuring the man of her constancy and love by means of her agents, and receiving money herself, but abstaining from any dispute with her mother with regard to pecuniary matters. when the man sets out on a journey, she should make him swear that he will return quickly, and in his absence should put aside her vows of worshipping the deity, and should wear no ornaments except those that are lucky. if the time fixed for his return has passed, she should endeavour to ascertain the real time of his return from omens, from the reports of the people, and from the positions of the planets, the moon and the stars. on occasions of amusement, and of auspicious dreams, she should say "let me be soon united to him." if, moreover, she feels melancholy, or sees any inauspicious omen, she should perform some rite to appease the deity. when the man does return home she should worship the god kama (_i.e._, the indian cupid), and offer oblations to other deities, and having caused a pot filled with water to be brought by her friends, she should perform the worship in honour of the crow who eats the offerings which we make to the manes of deceased relations. after the first visit is over she should ask her lover also to perform certain rites, and this he will do if he is sufficiently attached to her. now a man is said to be sufficiently attached to a woman when his love is disinterested; when he has the same object in view as his beloved one; when he is quite free from any suspicions on her account; and when he is indifferent to money with regard to her. such is the manner of a courtesan living with a man like a wife, and set forth here for the sake of guidance from the rules of dattaka. what is not laid down here should be practised according to the custom of the people, and the nature of each individual man. there are also two verses on the subject as follows: "the extent of the love of women is not known, even to those who are the objects of their affection, on account of its subtlety, and on account of the avarice, and natural intelligence of womankind." "women are hardly ever known in their true light, though they may love men, or become indifferent towards them; may give them delight, or abandon them; or may extract from them all the wealth that they may possess." chapter iii. of the means of getting money. of the signs of the change of a lover's feelings, and of the way to get rid of him. money is got out of a lover in two ways, viz.: by natural or lawful means, and by artifices. old authors are of opinion that when a courtesan can get as much money as she wants from her lover, she should not make use of artifice. but vatsyayana lays down that though she may get some money from him by natural means, yet when she makes use of artifice he gives her doubly more, and therefore artifice should be resorted to for the purpose of extorting money from him at all events. now the artifices to be used for getting money from her lover are as follows: st. taking money from him on different occasions, for the purpose of purchasing various articles, such as ornaments, food, drink, flowers, perfumes and cloths, and either not buying them, or getting from him more than their cost. nd. praising his intelligence to his face. rd. pretending to be obliged to make gifts on occasion of festivals connected with vows, trees, gardens, temples, or tanks.[ ] th. pretending that at the time of going to his house, her jewels have been stolen either by the king's guards, or by robbers. th. alleging that her property has been destroyed by fire, by the falling of her house, or by the carelessness of her servants. th. pretending to have lost the ornaments of her lover along with her own. th. causing him to hear through other people of the expenses incurred by her in coming to see him. th. contracting debts for the sake of her lover. th. disputing with her mother on account of some expense incurred by her for her lover, and which was not approved of by her mother. th. not going to parties and festivities in the houses of her friends for the want of presents to make to them, she having previously informed her lover of the valuable presents given to her by these very friends. th. not performing certain festive rites under the pretence that she has no money to perform them with. th. engaging artists to do something for her lover. th. entertaining physicians and ministers for the purpose of attaining some object. th. assisting friends and benefactors both on festive occasions, and in misfortune. th. performing household rites. th. having to pay the expenses of the ceremony of marriage of the son of a female friend. th. having to satisfy curious wishes during her state of pregnancy. th. pretending to be ill, and charging her cost of treatment. th. having to remove the troubles of a friend. th. selling some of her ornaments, so as to give her lover a present. st. pretending to sell some of her ornaments, furniture, or cooking utensils to a trader, who has been already tutored how to behave in the matter. nd. having to buy cooking utensils of greater value than those of other people, so that they might be more easily distinguished, and not changed for others of an inferior description. rd. remembering the former favours of her lover, and causing them always to be spoken of by her friends and followers. th. informing her lover of the great gains of other courtezans. th. describing before them, and in the presence of her lover, her own great gains, and making them out to be greater even than theirs, though such may not have been really the case. th. openly opposing her mother when she endeavours to persuade her to take up with men with whom she has been formerly acquainted, on account of the great gains to be got from them. th. lastly, pointing out to her lover the liberality of his rivals. thus end the ways and means of getting money. * * * * * a woman should always know the state of the mind, of the feelings, and of the disposition of her lover towards her, from the changes of his temper, his manner, and the colour of his face. the behaviour of a waning lover is as follows: st. he gives the woman either less than is wanted, or something else than that which is asked for. nd. he keeps her in hopes by promises. rd. he pretends to do one thing, and does something else. th. he does not fulfil her desires. th. he forgets his promises, or does something else than that which he has promised. th. he speaks with his own servants in a mysterious way. th. he sleeps in some other house under the pretence of having to do something for a friend. th. lastly, he speaks in private with the attendants of a woman with whom he was formerly acquainted. now when a courtesan finds that her lover's disposition towards her is changing, she should get possession of all his best things before he becomes aware of her intentions, and allow a supposed creditor to take them away forcibly from her in satisfaction of some pretended debt. after this, if the lover is rich, and has always behaved well towards her, she should ever treat him with respect; but if he is poor and destitute, she should get rid of him as if she had never been acquainted with him in any way before. the means of getting rid of a lover are as follows: st. describing the habits and vices of the lover as disagreeable and censurable, with the sneer of the lip, and the stamp of the foot. nd. speaking on a subject with which he is not acquainted. rd. showing no admiration for his learning, and passing a censure upon it. th. putting down his pride. th. seeking the company of men who are superior to him in learning and wisdom. th. showing a disregard for him on all occasions. th. censuring men possessed of the same faults as her lover. th. expressing dissatisfaction at the ways and means of enjoyment used by him. th. not giving him her mouth to kiss. th. refusing access to her jaghana, _i.e._, the part of the body between the navel and the thighs. th. showing a dislike for the wounds made by his nails and teeth. th. not pressing close up against him at the time when he embraces her. th. keeping her limbs without movement at the time of congress. th. desiring him to employ her when he is fatigued. th. laughing at his attachment to her. th. not responding to his embraces. th. turning away from him when he begins to embrace her. th. pretending to be sleepy. th. going out visiting, or into company, when she perceives his desire to enjoy her during the day time. th. mis-constructing his words. st. laughing without any joke, or at the time of any joke made by him, laughing under some pretence. nd. looking with side glances at her own attendants, and clapping her hands when he says anything. rd. interrupting him in the middle of his stories, and beginning to tell other stories herself. th. reciting his faults and his vices, and declaring them to be incurable. th. saying words to her female attendants calculated to cut the heart of her lover to the quick. th. taking care not to look at him when he comes to her. th. asking him what cannot be granted. th. and, after all, finally dismissing him. there are also two verses on this subject as follows: "the duty of a courtesan consists in forming connections with suitable men after due and full consideration, and attaching the person with whom she is united to herself; in obtaining wealth from the person who is attached to her, and then dismissing him after she has taken away all his possessions." "a courtesan leading in this manner the life of a wife is not troubled with too many lovers, and yet obtains abundance of wealth." footnote: [footnote : on the completion of a vow a festival takes place. some trees such as the peepul and banyan trees, are invested with sacred threads like the brahman's, and on the occasion of this ceremony a festival is given. in the same way when gardens are made, and tanks or temples built, then also festivals are observed.] chapter iv. about re-union with a former lover. when a courtesan abandons her present lover after all his wealth is exhausted, she may then consider about her re-union with a former lover. but she should return to him only if he has acquired fresh wealth, or is still wealthy, and if he is still attached to her. and if this man be living at the time with some other women she should consider well before she acts. now such a man can only be in one of the six following conditions, viz.: st. he may have left the first woman of his own accord, and may even have left another woman since then. nd. he may have been driven away from both women. rd. he may have left the one woman of his own accord, and be living with another woman. th. he may have been driven away from the one woman, and left the other of his own accord. th. he may have been driven away by the one woman, and may be living with another. ( ). now if the man has left both women of his own accord, he should not be resorted to, on account of the fickleness of his mind, and his indifference to the excellencies of both of them. ( ). as regards the man who may have been driven away from both women, if he has been driven away from the last one because the woman could get more money from some other man, then he should be resorted to, for if attached to the first woman he would give her more money, through vanity and emulation to spite the other woman. but if he has been driven away by the woman on account of his poverty, or stinginess, he should not then be resorted to. ( ). in the case of the man who may have left the one woman of his own accord, and been driven away by the other, if he agrees to return to the former and give her plenty of money beforehand, then he should be resorted to. ( ). in the case of the man who may have left the one woman of his own accord, and be living with another woman, the former (wishing to take up with him again) should first ascertain if he left her in the first instance in the hope of finding some particular excellence in the other woman, and that not having found any such excellence, he was willing to come back to her, and to give her much money on account of his conduct, and on account of his affection still existing for her. or, whether, having discovered many faults in the other woman, he would now see even more excellences in herself than actually exist, and would be prepared to give her much money for these qualities. or, lastly, to consider whether he was a weak man, or a man fond of enjoying many women, or one who liked a poor woman, or one who never did anything for the woman that he was with. after maturely considering all these things, she should resort to him or not, according to circumstances. ( ). as regards the man who may have been driven away from the one woman, and left the other of his own accord, the former woman (wishing to re-unite with him) should first ascertain whether he still has any affection for her, and would consequently spend much money upon her; or whether, being attached to her excellent qualities, he did not take delight in any other women; or whether, being driven away from her formerly before completely satisfying his sexual desires, he wished to get back to her, so as to be revenged for the injury done to him; or whether he wished to create confidence in her mind, and then take back from her the wealth which she formerly took from him, and finally destroy her; or, lastly, whether he wished first to separate her from her present lover, and then to break away from her himself. if, after considering all these things, she is of opinion that his intentions are really pure and honest, she can re-unite herself with him. but if his mind be at all tainted with evil intentions, he should be avoided. ( ). in the case of the man who may have been driven away by one woman, and be living with another, if the man makes overtures in return to the first one, the courtesan should consider well before she acts, and while the other woman is engaged in attracting him to herself, she should try in her turn (through keeping herself behind the scenes) to gain him over, on the grounds of any of the following considerations, viz.: st. that he was driven away unjustly and for no proper reason, and now that he has gone to another woman, every effort must be used to bring him back to myself. nd. that if he were once to converse with me again, he would break away from the other woman. rd. that the pride of my present lover would be put down by means of the former one. th. that he has become wealthy, has secured a higher position, and holds a place of authority under the king. th. that he is separate from his wife. th. that he is now independent. th. that he lives apart from his father, or brother. th. that by making peace with him i shall be able to get hold of a very rich man, who is now prevented from coming to me by my present lover. th. that as he is not respected by his wife, i shall now be able to separate him from her. th. that the friend of this man loves my rival, who hates me cordially; i shall, therefore, by this means separate the friend from his mistress. th. and lastly, i shall bring discredit upon him by bringing him back to me, thus showing the fickleness of his mind. when a courtesan is resolved to take up again with a former lover, her pithamurda and other servants should tell him that his former expulsion from the woman's house was caused by the wickedness of her mother; that the woman loved him just as much as ever at that time, but could not help the occurrence on account of her deference to her mother's will; that she hated the union of her present lover, and disliked him excessively. in addition to this, they should create confidence in his mind by speaking to him of her former love for him, and should allude to the mark of that love that she has ever remembered. this mark of her love should be connected with some kind of pleasure that may have been practised by him, such as his way of kissing her, or manner of having connection with her. thus end the ways of bringing about a re-union with a former lover. when a woman has to choose between two lovers, one of whom was formerly united with her, while the other is a stranger, the acharyas (sages) are of opinion that the first one is preferable, because his disposition and character being already known by previous careful observation, he can be easily pleased and satisfied; but vatsyayana thinks that a former lover, having already spent a great deal of his wealth, is not able or willing to give much money again, and is not, therefore, to be relied upon so much as a stranger. particular cases may, however, arise differing from this general rule on account of the different natures of men. there are also verses on the subject as follows: "re-union with a former lover may be desirable so as to separate some particular woman from some particular man, or some particular man from some particular woman, or to have a certain effect upon the present lover." "when a man is excessively attached to a woman, he is afraid of her coming into contact with other men; he does not then regard or notice her faults; and he gives her much wealth through fear of her leaving him." "a courtesan should be agreeable to the man who is attached to her, and despise the man who does not care for her. if while she is living with one man a messenger comes to her from some other man, she may either refuse to listen to any negotiations on his part, or appoint a fixed time for him to visit her, but she should not leave the man who may be living with her and who may be attached to her." "a wise woman should only renew her connection with a former lover if she is satisfied that good fortune, gain, love, and friendship, are likely to be the result of such a re-union." chapter v. of different kinds of gain. when a courtesan is able to realize much money every day, by reason of many customers, she should not confine herself to a single lover; under such circumstances, she should fix her rate for one night, after considering the place, the season, and the condition of the people, and having regard to her own good qualities and good looks, and after comparing her rates with those of other courtesans. she can inform her lovers, and friends, and acquaintances about these charges. if, however, she can obtain a great gain from a single lover, she may resort to him alone, and live with him like a wife. now, the sages are of opinion that when a courtesan has the chance of an equal gain from two lovers at the same time, a preference should be given to the one who would give her the kind of thing which she wants. but vatsyayana says that the preference should be given to the one who gives her gold, because it cannot be taken back like some other things, it can be easily received, and is also the means of procuring anything that may be wished for. of such things as gold, silver, copper, bell metal, iron, pots, furniture, beds, upper garments, under vestments, fragrant substances, vessels made of gourds, ghee, oil, corn, cattle, and other things of a like nature, the first, viz., gold, is superior to all the others. when the same labour is required to gain any two lovers, or when the same kind of thing is to be got from each of them, the choice should be made by the advice of a friend, or it may be made from their personal qualities, or from the signs of good or bad fortune that may be connected with them. when there are two lovers, one of whom is attached to the courtesan, and the other is simply very generous, the sages say that the preference should be given to the generous lover, but vatsyayana is of opinion that the one who is really attached to the courtesan should be preferred, because he can be made to be generous, even as a miser gives money if he becomes fond of a woman, but a man who is simply generous cannot be made to love with real attachment. but among those who are attached to her, if there is one who is poor, and one who is rich, the preference is of course to be given to the latter. when there are two lovers, one of whom is generous, and the other ready to do any service for the courtesan, some sages say that the one who is ready to do the service should be preferred, but vatsyayana is of opinion that a man who does a service thinks that he has gained his object when he has done something once, but a generous man does not care for what he has given before. even here the choice should be guided by the likelihood of the future good to be derived from her union with either of them. when one of the two lovers is grateful, and the other liberal, some sages say that the liberal one should be preferred, but vatsyayana is of opinion that the former should be chosen, because liberal men are generally haughty, plain spoken, and wanting in consideration towards others. even though these liberal men have been on friendly terms for a long time, yet if they see any fault in the courtesan, or are told lies about her by some other women, they do not care for past services, but leave abruptly. on the other hand the grateful man does not at once break off from her, on account of a regard for the pains she may have taken to please him. in this case also the choice is to be guided with respect to what may happen in future. when an occasion for complying with the request of a friend, and a chance of getting money come together, the sages say that the chance of getting money should be preferred. but vatsyayana thinks that the money can be obtained to-morrow as well as to-day, but if the request of a friend be not at once complied with, he may become disaffected. even here, in making the choice, regard must be paid to future good fortune. on such an occasion, however, the courtesan might pacify her friend by pretending to have some work to do, and telling him that his request will be complied with next day, and in this way secure the chance of getting the money that has been offered her. when the chance of getting money, and the chance of avoiding some disaster come at the same time, the sages are of opinion that the chance of getting money should be preferred, but vatsyayana says that money has only a limited importance, while a disaster that is once averted may never occur again. here, however, the choice should be guided by the greatness or smallness of the disaster. the gains of the wealthiest and best kind of courtesans are to be spent as follows: building temples, tanks, and gardens; giving a thousand cows to different brahmans; carrying on the worship of the gods, and celebrating festivals in their honour; and, lastly, performing such vows as may be within their means. the gains of other courtesans are to be spent as follows: having a white dress to wear every day; getting sufficient food and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst; eating daily a perfumed tambula, _i.e._, a mixture of betel nut and betel leaves; and wearing ornaments gilt with gold. the sages say that these represent the gains of all the middle and lower classes of courtesans, but vatsyayana is of opinion that their gains cannot be calculated, or fixed in any way, as these depend on the influence of the place, the customs of the people, their own appearance, and many other things. when a courtesan wants to keep some particular man from some other woman; or wants to get him away from some woman to whom he may be attached; or to deprive some woman of the gains realized by her from him; or if she thinks that she would raise her position; or enjoy some great good fortune; or become desirable to all men by uniting herself with this man; or if she wishes to get his assistance in averting some misfortune; or is really attached to him and loves him; or wishes to injure somebody through his means; or has regard to some former favour conferred upon her by him; or wishes to be united with him merely from desire; or any of the above reasons, she should agree to take from him only a small sum of money in a friendly way. when a courtesan intends to abandon a particular lover, and take up with another one; or when she has reason to believe that her lover will shortly leave her, and return to his wives; or that having squandered all his money, and became penniless, his guardian, or master, or father would come and take him away; or that her lover is about to lose his position, or lastly, that he is of a very fickle mind, she should, under any of these circumstances, endeavour to get as much money as she can from him as soon as possible. on the other hand, when the courtesan thinks that her lover is about to receive valuable presents; or get a place of authority from the king; or be near the time of inheriting a fortune; or that his ship would soon arrive laden with merchandise; or that he has large stocks of corn and other commodities; or that if anything was done for him it would not be done in vain; or that he is always true to his word; then should she have regard to her future welfare, and live with the man like a wife. there are also verses on the subject as follows: "in considering her present gains, and her future welfare, a courtesan should avoid such persons as have gained their means of subsistence with very great difficulty, as also those who have become selfish and hard-hearted by becoming the favourites of kings." "she should make every endeavour to unite herself with prosperous and well-to-do people, and with those whom it is dangerous to avoid, or to slight in any way. even at some cost to herself she should become acquainted with energetic and liberal-minded men, who when pleased would give her a large sum of money, even for very little service, or for some small thing." chapter vi. of gains and losses; attendant gains and losses; and doubts; as also of the different kinds of courtesans. it sometimes happens that while gains are being sought for, or expected to be realised, that losses only are the result of our efforts, the causes of these losses are: weakness of intellect. excessive love. excessive pride. excessive self conceit. excessive simplicity. excessive confidence. excessive anger. carelessness. recklessness. influence of evil genius. accidental circumstances. the results of these losses are: expense incurred without any result. destruction of future good fortune. stoppage of gains about to be realized. loss of what is already obtained. acquisition of a sour temper. becoming unaimiable to every body. injury to health. loss of hair and other accidents. now gain is of three kinds, viz.: gain of wealth, gain of religious merit, and gain of pleasure; and similarly, loss is of three kinds, viz.: loss of wealth, loss of religious merit, and loss of pleasure. at the time when gains are sought for, if other gains come along with them, these are called attendant gains. when gain is uncertain, the doubt of its being a gain is called a simple doubt. when there is a doubt whether either of two things will happen or not, it is called a mixed doubt. if while one thing is being done two results take place, it is called a combination of two results, and if several results follow from the same action, it is called a combination of results on every side. we shall now give examples of the above. as already stated, gain is of three kinds, and loss, which is opposed to gain, is also of three kinds. (a). when by living with a great man a courtesan acquires present wealth, and in addition to this becomes acquainted with other people, and thus obtains a chance of future fortune, and an accession of wealth, and becomes desirable to all, this is called a gain of wealth attended by other gain. (b). when by living with a man a courtesan simply gets money, this is called a gain of wealth not attended by any other gain. (c). when a courtesan receives money from other people besides her lover, the results are: the chance of the loss of future good from her present lover; the chance of disaffection of a man securely attached to her; the hatred of all; and the chance of a union with some low person, tending to destroy her future good. this gain is called a gain of wealth attended by losses. (d). when a courtesan, at her own expense, and without any results in the shape of gain, has connected with a great man, or an avaricious minister, for the sake of diverting some misfortune, or removing some cause that may be threatening the destruction of a great gain, this loss is said to be a loss of wealth attended by gains of the future good which it may bring about. (e). when a courtesan is kind, even at her own expense, to a man who is very stingy, or to a man proud of his looks, or to an ungrateful man skilled in gaining the heart of others, without any good resulting from these connections to her in the end, this loss is called a loss of wealth not attended by any gain. (f). when a courtesan is kind to any such man as described above, but who in addition are favourites of the king, and moreover cruel and powerful, without any good result in the end, and with a chance of her being turned away at any moment, this loss is called a loss of wealth attended by other losses. in this way gains and losses, and attendant gains and losses in religious merit and pleasures may become known to the reader, and combinations of all of them may also be made. thus end the remarks on gains and losses, and attendant gains and losses. in the next place we come to doubts, which are again of three kinds, viz.: doubts about wealth, doubts about religious merit, and doubts about pleasures. the following are examples. (a). when a courtesan is not certain how much a man may give her, or spend upon her, this is called a doubt about wealth. (b). when a courtesan feels doubtful whether she is right in entirely abandoning a lover from whom she is unable to get money, she having taken all his wealth from him in the first instance, this doubt is called a doubt about religious merit. (c). when a courtesan is unable to get hold of a lover to her liking, and is uncertain whether she will derive any pleasure from a person surrounded by his family, or from a low person, this is called a doubt about pleasure. (d). when a courtesan is uncertain whether some powerful but low principled fellow would cause loss to her on account of her not being civil to him, this is called a doubt about the loss of wealth. (e). when a courtesan feels doubtful whether she would lose religious merit by abandoning a man who is attached to her without giving him the slightest favour, and thereby causing him unhappiness in this world and the next,[ ] this doubt is called a doubt about the loss of a religious merit. (f). when a courtesan is uncertain as to whether she might create disaffection by speaking out, and revealing her love and thus not get her desire satisfied, this is called a doubt about the loss of pleasure. thus end the remarks on doubts. _mixed doubts_. (a). the intercourse or connection with a stranger, whose disposition is unknown, and who may have been introduced by a lover, or by one who possessed authority, may be productive either of gain or loss, and therefore this is called a mixed doubt about the gain and loss of wealth. (b). when a courtesan is requested by a friend, or is impelled by pity to have intercourse with a learned brahman, a religious student, a sacrificer, a devotee, or an ascetic who may have all fallen in love with her, and who may be consequently at the point of death, by doing this she might either gain or lose religious merit, and therefore this is called a mixed doubt about the gain and loss of religious merit. (c). if a courtesan relies solely upon the report of other people (_i.e._, hearsay) about a man, and goes to him without ascertaining herself whether he possesses good qualities or not, she may either gain or lose pleasure in proportion as he may be good or bad, and therefore this is called a mixed doubt about the gain and loss of pleasure. uddalika has described the gains and losses on both sides as follows. (a). if, when living with a lover, a courtesan gets both wealth and pleasure from him, it is called a gain on both sides. (b). when a courtesan lives with a lover at her own expense without getting any profit out of it, and the lover even takes back from her what he may have formerly given her, it is called a loss on both sides. (c). when a courtesan is uncertain whether a new acquaintance would become attached to her, and, moreover, if he became attached to her, whether he would give her any thing, it is then called a doubt on both sides about gains. (d). when a courtesan is uncertain whether a former enemy, if made up by her at her own expense, would do her some injury on account of his grudge against her; or, if becoming attached to her, would take away angrily from her any thing that he may have given to her, this is called a doubt on both sides about loss. babhravya has described the gains and losses on both sides as follows. (a). when a courtesan can get money from a man whom she may go to see, and also money from a man whom she may not go to see, this is called a gain on both sides. (b). when a courtesan has to incur further expense if she goes to see a man, and yet runs the risk of incurring an irremediable loss if she does not go to see him, this is called a loss on both sides. (c). when a courtesan is uncertain, whether a particular man would give her anything on her going to see him, without incurring expense on her part, or whether on her neglecting him another man would give her something, this is called a doubt on both sides about gain. (d.) when a courtesan is uncertain, whether, on going at her own expense to see an old enemy, he would take back from her what he may have given her, or whether by her not going to see him he would cause some disaster to fall upon her, this is called a doubt on both sides about loss. by combining the above, the following six kinds of mixed results are produced, viz.: (a). gain on one side, and loss on the other. (b). gain on one side, and doubt of gain on the other. (c). gain on one side, and doubt of loss on the other. (d). loss on one side, and doubt of gain on the other. (e). doubt of gain on one side, and doubt of loss on the other. (f). doubt of loss on one side, and loss on the other. a courtesan, having considered all the above things, and taken council with her friends, should act so as to acquire gain, the chances of great gain, and the warding off of any great disaster. religious merit and pleasure should also be formed into separate combinations like those of wealth, and then all should be combined with each other, so as to form new combinations. when a courtesan consorts with men she should cause each of them to give her money as well as pleasure. at particular times, such as the spring festivals, etc., she should make her mother announce to the various men, that on a certain day her daughter would remain with the man who would gratify such and such a desire of hers. when young men approach her with delight, she should think of what she may accomplish through them. the combination of gains and losses on all sides are: gain on one side, and loss on all others; loss on one side and gain on all others; gain on all sides, loss on all sides. a courtesan should also consider doubts about gain and doubts about loss with reference both to wealth, religious merit, and pleasure. thus ends the consideration of gain, loss, attendant gains, attendant losses, and doubts. the different kinds of courtesans are: a bawd. a female attendant. an unchaste woman. a dancing girl. a female artisan. a woman who has left her family. a woman living on her beauty. and, finally, a regular courtesan. all the above kinds of courtesans are acquainted with various kinds of men, and should consider the ways of getting money from them, of pleasing them, of separating themselves from them, and of re-uniting with them. they should also take into consideration particular gains and losses, attendant gains and losses, and doubts in accordance with their several conditions. thus end the considerations of courtesans. there are also two verses on the subject as follows: "men want pleasure, while women want money, and therefore this part, which treats of the means of gaining wealth, should be studied." "there are some women who seek for love, and there are others who seek for money; for the former the ways of love are told in previous portions of this work, while the ways of getting money, as practised by courtesans, are described in this part." footnote: [footnote : the souls of men who die with their desires unfulfilled are said to go to the world of the manes, and not direct to the supreme spirit.] =end of part vi.= part vii. about the means of attracting others to yourself. chapter i. on personal adornment; on subjugating the hearts of others; and on tonic medicines. when a person fails to obtain the object of his desires by any of the ways previously related, he should then have recourse to other ways of attracting others to himself. now, good looks, good qualities, youth, and liberality are the chief and most natural means of making a person agreeable in the eyes of others. but in the absence of these a man or a woman must have resort to artificial means, or to art, and the following are some recipes that may be found useful. (a). an ointment made of the tabernamontana coronaria, the costus speciosus or arabicus, and the flacourtia cataphracta, can be used as an unguent of adornment. (b). if a fine powder is made of the above plants, and applied to the wick of a lamp, which is made to burn with the oil of blue vitrol, the black pigment or lamp black produced therefrom, when applied to the eye-lashes, has the effect of making a person look lovely. (c). the oil of the hog weed, the echites putescens, the sarina plant, the yellow amaranth, and the leaf of the nymphæ, if applied to the body, has the same effect. (d). a black pigment from the same plants produce a similar effect. (e). by eating the powder of the nelumbrium speciosum, the blue lotus, and the mesna roxburghii, with ghee and honey, a man becomes lovely in the eyes of others. (f). the above things, together with the tabernamontana coronaria, and the xanthochymus pictorius, if used as an ointment, produce the same results. (g). if the bone of a peacock or of an hyena be covered with gold, and tied on the right hand, it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people. (h). in the same way, if a bead, made of the seed of the jujube, or of the conch shell, be enchanted by the incantations mentioned in the atharvana veda, or by the incantations of those well skilled in the science of magic, and tied on the hand, it produces the same result as described above. (i). when a female attendant arrives at the age of puberty, her master should keep her secluded, and when men ardently desire her on account of her seclusion, and on account of the difficulty of approaching her, he should then bestow her hand on such a person as may endow her with wealth and happiness. this is a means of increasing the loveliness of a person in the eyes of others. in the same way, when the daughter of a courtesan arrives at the age of puberty, the mother should get together a lot of young men of the same age, disposition, and knowledge as her daughter, and tell them that she would give her in marriage to the person who would give her presents of a particular kind. after this the daughter should be kept in seclusion as far as possible, and the mother should give her in marriage to the man who may be ready to give her the presents agreed upon. if the mother is unable to get so much out of the man, she should show some of her own things as having been given to the daughter by the bridegroom. or, the mother may allow her daughter to be married to the man privately, as if she was ignorant of the whole affair, and then pretending that it has come to her knowledge, she may give her consent to the union. the daughter, too, should make herself attractive to the sons of wealthy citizens, unknown to her mother, and make them attached to her, and for this purpose should meet them at the time of learning to sing, and in places where music is played, and at the houses of other people, and then request her mother, through a female friend, or servant, to be allowed to unite herself to the man who is most agreeable to her.[ ] when the daughter of a courtesan is thus given to a man, the ties of marriage should be observed for one year, and after that she may do what she likes. but even after the end of the year, when otherwise engaged, if she should be now and then invited by her first husband to come and see him, she should put aside her present gain, and go to him for the night. such is the mode of temporary marriage among courtesans, and of increasing their loveliness, and their value in the eyes of others. what has been said about them should also be understood to apply to the daughters of dancing women, whose mothers should give them only to such persons as are likely to become useful to them in various ways. thus end the ways of making oneself lovely in the eyes of others. (a). if a man, after anointing his lingam with a mixture of the powders of the white thorn apple, the long pepper, and the black pepper, and honey, engages in sexual union with a woman, he makes her subject to his will. (b). the application of a mixture of the leaf of the plant vatodbhranta, of the flowers thrown on a human corpse when carried out to be burnt, and the powder of the bones of the peacock, and of the jiwanjiva bird, produces the same effect. (c). the remains of a kite who has died a natural death, ground into powder, and mixed with cowach and honey, has also the same effect. (d). anointing oneself with an ointment made of the plant emblica myrabolans has the power of subjecting women to one's will. (e). if a man cuts into small pieces the sprouts of the vajnasunhi plant, and dips them into a mixture of red arsenic and sulphur, and then dries them seven times, and applies this powder mixed with honey to his lingam, he can subjugate a woman to his will directly that he has had sexual union with her, or, if, by burning these very sprouts at night and looking at the smoke, he sees a golden moon behind, he will then be successful with any woman; or if he throws some of the powder of these same sprouts mixed with the excrement of a monkey upon a maiden, she will not be given in marriage to any body else. (f). if pieces of the arris root are dressed with the oil of the mango, and placed for six months in a hole made in the trunk of the sisu tree, and are then taken out and made up into an ointment, and applied to the lingam, this is said to serve as the means of subjugating women. (g). if the bone of a camel is dipped into the juice of the plant eclipta prostata, and then burnt, and the black pigment produced from its ashes is placed in a box also made of the bone of a camel, and applied together with antimony to the eye lashes with a pencil also made of the bone of a camel, then that pigment is said to be very pure, and wholesome for the eyes, and serves as a means of subjugating others to the person who uses it. the same effect can be produced by black pigment made of the bones of hawks, vultures, and peacocks. thus end the ways of subjugating others to one's own will. now the means of increasing sexual vigour are as follows: (a). a man obtains sexual vigour by drinking milk mixed with sugar, the root of the uchchata plant, the piper chaba, and liquorice. (b). drinking milk mixed with sugar, and having the testicle of a ram or a goat boiled in it, is also productive of vigour. (c). the drinking of the juice of the hedysarum gangeticum, the kuili, and the kshirika plant mixed with milk, produces the same effect. (d). the seed of the long pepper along with the seeds of the sanseviera roxburghiana, and the hedysarum gangeticum plant, all pounded together, and mixed with milk, is productive of a similar result. (e). according to ancient authors, if a man pounds the seeds or roots of the trapa bispinosa, the kasurika, the tuscan jasmine, and liquorice, together with the kshirakapoli (a kind of onion), and puts the powder into milk mixed with sugar and ghee, and having boiled the whole mixture on a moderate fire, drinks the paste so formed, he will be able to enjoy innumerable women. (f). in the same way, if a man mixes rice with the eggs of the sparrow, and having boiled this in milk, adds to it ghee and honey, and drinks as much of it as necessary, this will produce the same effect. (g). if a man takes the outer covering of sesamum seeds, and soaks them with the eggs of sparrows, and then, having boiled them in milk, mixed with sugar and ghee, along with the fruits of the trapa bispinosa and the kasurika plant, and adding to it the flour of wheat and beans, and then drinks this composition, he is said to be able to enjoy many women. (h). if ghee, honey, sugar, and liquorice in equal quantities, the juice of the fennel plant, and milk are mixed together, this nectar-like composition is said to be holy, and provocative of sexual vigour, a preservative of life, and sweet to the taste. (i). the drinking of a paste composed of the asparagus racemosus, the shvadaushtra plant, the guduchi plant, the long pepper, and liquorice, boiled in milk, honey, and ghee, in the spring, is said to have the same effect as the above. (j). boiling the asparagus racemosus, and the shvadaushtra plant, along with the pounded fruits of the premna spinosa in water, and drinking the same, is said to act in the same way. (k). drinking boiled ghee, or clarified butter in the morning during the spring season, is said to be beneficial to health and strength, and agreeable to the taste. (l). if the powder of the seed of the shvadaushtra plant and the flower of barley are mixed together in equal parts, and a portion of it, _i.e._, two palas in weight, is eaten every morning on getting up, it has the same effect as the preceding recipe. there are also verses on the subject as follows: "the means[ ] of producing love and sexual vigour should be learnt from the science of medicine, from the vedas, from those who are learned in the arts of magic, and from confidential relatives. no means should be tried which are doubtful in their effects, which are likely to cause injury to the body, which involve the death of animals, and which bring us in contact with impure things. such means should only be used as are holy, acknowledged to be good, and approved of by brahmans, and friends." footnote: [footnote : it is a custom of the courtesans of oriental countries to give their daughters temporarily in marriage when they come of age, and after they have received an education in the kama sutra and other arts. full details are given of this at page of "early ideas, a group of hindoo stories, collected and collated by anaryan. w. h. allen and co., london, ."] [footnote : from the earliest times oriental authors have occupied themselves about aphrodisiacs. the following note on the subject is taken from page of a translation of the hindoo art of love, otherwise the anunga runga, alluded to in the preface of this work, part i., pages and :--"most eastern treatises divide aphrodisiacs into two different kinds: ., the mechanical or natural, such as scarification, flagellation, etc.; and ., the medicinal or artificial. to the former belong the application of insects, as is practised by some savage races; and all orientalists will remember the tale of the old brahman, whose young wife insisted upon his being again stung by a wasp."] chapter ii. of the ways of exciting desire, and miscellaneous experiments, and recipes. if a man is unable to satisfy a hastini, or elephant woman, he should have recourse to various means to excite her passion. at the commencement he should rub her yoni with his hand or fingers, and not begin to have intercourse with her until she becomes excited, or experiences pleasure. this is one way of exciting a woman. or, he may make use of certain apadravyas, or things which are put on or around the lingam to supplement its length or its thickness, so as to fit it to the yoni. in the opinion of babhravya, these apadravyas should be made of gold, silver, copper, iron, ivory, buffalo's horn, various kinds of wood, tin or lead, and should be soft, cool, provocative of sexual vigour, and well fitted to serve the intended purpose. vatsyayana, however, says that they may be made according to the natural liking of each individual. the following are the different kinds of apadravyas. ( ). "the armlet" (valaya) should be of the same size as the lingam, and should have its outer surface made rough with globules. ( ). "the couple" (sanghati) is formed of two armlets. ( ). "the bracelet" (chudaka) is made by joining three or more armlets, until they come up to the required length of the lingam. ( ). "the single bracelet" is formed by wrapping a single wire around the lingam, according to its dimensions. ( ). the kantuka or jalaka is a tube open at both ends, with a hole through it, outwardly rough and studded with soft globules, and made to fit the side of the yoni, and tied to the waist. when such a thing cannot be obtained, then a tube made of the wood apple, or tubular stalk of the bottle gourd, or a reed made soft with oil and extracts of plants, and tied to the waist with strings, may be made use of, as also a row of soft pieces of wood tied together. the above are the things that can be used in connection with or in the place of the lingam. the people of the southern countries think that true sexual pleasure cannot be obtained without perforating the lingam, and they therefore cause it to be pierced like the lobes of the ears of an infant pierced for earrings. now, when a young man perforates his lingam he should pierce it with a sharp instrument, and then stand in water so long as the blood continues to flow. at night he should engage in sexual intercourse, even with vigour, so as to clean the hole. after this he should continue to wash the hole with decoctions, and increase the size by putting into it small pieces of cane, and the wrightia antidysenterica, and thus gradually enlarging the orifice. it may also be washed with liquorice mixed with honey, and the size of the hole increased by the fruit stalks of the sima-patra plant. the hole should be annointed with a small quantity of oil. in the hole made in the lingam a man may put apadravyas of various forms, such as the "round," the "round on one side," the "wooden mortar," the "flower," the "armlet," the "bone of the heron," the "goad of the elephant," the "collection of eight balls," the "lock of hair," the "place where four roads meet," and other things named according to their forms and means of using them. all these apadravyas should be rough on the outside according to their requirements. the ways of enlarging the lingam must be now related. when a man wishes to enlarge his lingam, he should rub it with the bristles of certain insects that live in trees, and then, after rubbing it for ten nights with oils, he should again rub it with the bristles as before. by continuing to do this a swelling will be gradually produced in the lingam, and he should then lie on a cot, and cause his lingam to hang down through a hole in the cot. after this he should take away all the pain from the swelling by using cool concoctions. the swelling, which is called "suka," and is often brought about among the people of the dravida country, lasts for life. if the lingam is rubbed with the following things, viz., the plant physalis flexuosa, the shavara-kandaka plant, the jalasuka plant, the fruit of the egg plant, the butter of a she buffalo, the hastri-charma plant, and the juice of the vajra-rasa plant, a swelling lasting for one month will be produced. by rubbing it with oil boiled in the concoctions of the above things, the same effect will be produced, but lasting for six months. the enlargement of the lingam is also effected by rubbing it or moistening it with oil boiled on a moderate fire along with the seeds of the pomegranate, and the cucumber, the juices of the valuka plant, the hasti-charma plant, and the egg-plant. in addition to the above, other means may be learnt from experienced and confidential persons. the miscellaneous experiments and recipes are as follows: (a). if a man mixes the powder of the milk hedge plant, and the kantaka plant with the excrement of a monkey, and the powdered root of the lanjalalika plant, and throws this mixture on a woman, she will not love any body else afterwards. (b). if a man thickens the juice of the fruits of the cassia fistula, and the eugenia jambolana by mixing them with the powder of the soma plant, the vernonia anthelmintica, the eclipta prostata, and the lohopa-jihirka, and applies this composition to the yoni of a woman, and then has sexual intercourse with her, his love for her will be destroyed. (c). the same effect is produced if a man has connection with a woman who has bathed in the butter-milk of a she-buffalo mixed with the powders of the gopalika plant, the banu-padika plant, and the yellow amaranth. (d). an ointment made of the flowers of the nauclea cadamba, the hog plum, and the eugenia jambolana, and used by a woman, causes her to be disliked by her husband. (e). garlands made of the above flowers, when worn by the woman, produce the same effect. (f). an ointment made of the fruit of the asteracantha longifolia (kokilaksha) will contract the yoni of a hastini or elephant woman, and this contraction lasts for one night. (g). an ointment made by pounding the roots of the nelumbrium speciosum, and of the blue lotus, and the powder of the plant physalis flexuosa mixed with ghee and honey, will enlarge the yoni of the mrigi or deer woman. (h). an ointment made of the fruit of the emblica myrabolans soaked in the milky juice of the milk hedge plant, of the soma plant, the calotropis gigantea, and the juice of the fruit of the vernonia anthelmintica, will make the hair white. (i). the juice of the roots of the madayantaka plant, the yellow amaranth, the anjanika plant, the clitoria ternateea, and the shlakshnaparni plant, used as a lotion, will make the hair grow. (j). an ointment made by boiling the above roots in oil, and rubbed in, will make the hair black, and will also gradually restore hair that has fallen off. (k) if lac is saturated seven times in the sweat of the testicle of a white horse, and applied to a red lip, the lip will become white. (l). the colour of the lips can be regained by means of the madayantika and other plants mentioned above under (i). (m). a woman who hears a man playing on a reed pipe which has been dressed with the juices of the bahupadika plant, the tabernamontana coronaria, the costus speciosus or arabicus, the pinus deodora, the euphorbia antiquorum, the vajra and the kantaka plant, becomes his slave. (n). if food be mixed with the fruit of the thorn apple (dathura) it causes intoxication. (o). if water be mixed with oil and the ashes of any kind of grass except the kusha grass, it becomes the colour of milk. (p). if yellow myrabolans, the hog plum, the shrawana plant, and the priyangu plant be all pounded together, and applied to iron pots, these pots become red. (q). if a lamp, trimmed with oil extracted from the shrawana and priyangn plants, its wick being made of cloth and the slough of the skins of snakes, is lighted, and long pieces of wood placed near it, those pieces of wood will resemble so many snakes. (r). drinking the milk of a white cow who has a white calf at her feet is auspicious, produces fame, and preserves life. (s). the blessings of venerable brahmans, well propitiated, have the same effect. there are also some verses in conclusion: "thus have i written in a few words the 'science of love,' after reading the texts of ancient authors, and following the ways of enjoyment mentioned in them." "he who is acquainted with the true principles of this science pays regard to dharma, artha, kama, and to his own experiences, as well as to the teachings of others, and does not act simply on the dictates of his own desire. as for the errors in the science of love which i have mentioned in this work, on my own authority as an author, i have, immediately after mentioning them, carefully censured and prohibited them." "an act is never looked upon with indulgence for the simple reason that it is authorised by the science, because it ought to be remembered that it is the intention of the science, that the rules which it contains should only be acted upon in particular cases. after reading and considering the works of babhravya and other ancient authors, and thinking over the meaning of the rules given by them, the kama sutra was composed, according to the precepts of holy writ, for the benefit of the world, by vatsyayana, while leading the life of a religious student, and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the deity." "this work is not intended to be used merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires. a person, acquainted with the true principles of this science, and who preserves his dharma, artha, and kama, and has regard for the practices of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses." "in short, an intelligent and prudent person, attending to dharma and artha, and attending to kama also, without becoming the slave of his passions, obtains success in everything that he may undertake." =end of part vii.= concluding remarks. thus ends, in seven parts, the kama sutra of vatsyayana, which might otherwise be called a treatise on men and women, their mutual relationship, and connection with each other. it is a work that should be studied by all, both old and young; the former will find in it real truths, gathered by experience, and already tested by themselves, while the latter will derive the great advantage of learning things, which some perhaps may otherwise never learn at all, or which they may only learn when it is too late ("too late" those immortal words of mirabeau) to profit by the learning. it can also be fairly commended to the student of social science and of humanity, and above all to the student of those early ideas, which have gradually filtered down through the sands of time, and which seem to prove that the human nature of to-day is much the same as the human nature of the long ago. it has been said of balzac [the great, if not the greatest of french novelists] that he seemed to have inherited a natural and intuitive perception of the feelings of men and women, and has described them with an analysis worthy of a man of science. the author of the present work must also have had a considerable knowledge of the humanities. many of his remarks are so full of simplicity and truth, that they have stood the test of time, and stand out still as clear and true as when they were first written, some eighteen hundred years ago. as a collection of facts, told in plain and simple language, it must be remembered that in those early days there was apparently no idea of embellishing the work, either with a literary style, a flow of language, or a quantity of superfluous padding. the author tells the world what he knows in very concise language, without any attempt to produce an interesting story. from his facts how many novels could be written! indeed much of the matter contained in parts iii. iv. v. and vi., has formed the basis of many of the stories and the tales of past centuries. there will be found in part vii., some curious recipes. many of them appear to be as primitive as the book itself, but in later works of the same nature these recipes and prescriptions appear to have increased, both as regards quality and quantity. in the anunga runga or "the stage of love," mentioned at page of the preface in part i., there are found no less than thirty-three different subjects for which one hundred and thirty recipes and prescriptions are given. as the details may be interesting, these subjects are described as follows: . for hastening the paroxysm of the woman. . for delaying the organs of the man. . aphrodisiacs. . for thickening and enlarging the lingam, rendering it sound and strong, hard and lusty. . for narrowing and contracting the yoni. . for perfuming the yoni. . for removing and destroying the hair of the body. . for removing the sudden stopping of the monthly ailment. . for abating the immoderate appearance of the monthly ailment. . for purifying the womb. . for causing pregnancy. . for preventing miscarriage and other accidents. . for ensuring easy labour and ready deliverance. . for limiting the number of children. . for thickening and beautifying the hair. . for obtaining a good black colour to it. . for whitening and bleaching it. . for renewing it. . for clearing the skin of the face from eruptions that break out and leave black spots upon it. . for removing the black colour of the epidermis. . for enlarging the breasts of women. . for raising and hardening pendulous breasts. . for giving a fragrance to the skin. . for removing the evil savour of perspiration. . for anointing the body after bathing. . for causing a pleasant smell to the breath. . drugs and charms for the purposes of fascinating, overcoming, and subduing either men or women. . recipes for enabling a woman to attract and preserve her husband's love. . magical collyriums for winning love and friendship. . prescriptions for reducing other persons to submission. . philter pills, and other charms. . fascinating incense, or fumigation. . magical verses which have the power of fascination. of the one hundred and thirty recipes given, many of them are absurd, but not more perhaps than many of the recipes and prescriptions in use in europe not so very long ago. love-philters, charms, and herbal remedies have been, in early days, as freely used in europe as in asia, and doubtless some people believe in them still in many places. and now, one word about the author of the work, the good old sage vatsyayana. it is much to be regretted that nothing can be discovered about his life, his belongings, and his surroundings. at the end of part vii. he states that he wrote the work while leading the life of a religious student [probably at benares] and while wholly engaged in the contemplation of the deity. he must have arrived at a certain age at that time, for throughout he gives us the benefit of his experience, and of his opinions, and these bear the stamp of age rather than of youth; indeed the work could hardly have been written by a young man. in a beautiful verse of the vedas of the christians it has been said of the peaceful dead, that they rest from their labours, and that their works do follow them. yes indeed, the works of men of genius do follow them, and remain as a lasting treasure. and though there may be disputes and discussions about the immortality of the body or the soul, nobody can deny the immortality of genius, which ever remains as a bright and guiding star to the struggling humanities of succeeding ages. this work, then, which has stood the test of centuries, has placed vatsyayana among the immortals, and on this, and on him no better elegy or eulogy can be written than the following lines: "so long as lips shall kiss, and eyes shall see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee." * * * * * _works issued by the council of the_ kama shastra society. _detailed prospectuses can be had._ ii. ananga-ranga, (_stage of the bodiless one_) or the hindoo art of love, (_ars amoris indica_,) translated from the sanskrit and annotated by a. f. f. and b. f. r. [_ready._ this work may fairly be pronounced unique from the days of sotades and ovid to our time. western authors have treated the subject either jocularly, or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality. the indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly delicate theme. iii. the perfumed garden, of the sheik nefzaoui, or the _arab art of love_, xvith century. translated from the french version of the arabian ms. [_ready._ *** this, the authorized version, is printed in purple and red ink, and ornamented with arabesque initial ornaments. * * * * * transcriber's note all occurrences of "i.e." have been italicized for consistency. on page there is a paragraph listed as "( )". however, there is no preceding paragraph listed as "( )". this is unchanged. the following changes have been made to the text: page : "sancrit literature" changed to "sanscrit literature". page : "calied pachivedas" changed to "called pachivedas". page : "sensual grat fication" changed to "sensual gratification". page : "written by nundi in one" changed to "written by nandi in one". page : "babhravya, an inheritant" changed to "babhravya, an inhabitant". page (in this version), footnote # : "now nnknown" changed to "now unknown". page : "at the botttom" changed to "at the bottom". page : "should be understand" changed to "should be understood". page : "heir heads shaved" changed to "their heads shaved". page (in this version), footnote # : "fiction, imitiating him" changed to "fiction, imitating him". page (in this version), footnote # : "technical term throughont" changed to "technical term throughout". page : "highesf union" changed to "highest union". page : "if ihe ways" changed to "if the ways". page : "neither has the rice seven colours" changed to "neither has the rice five colours". page : "is is called a" changed to "it is called a". page : "passion is e ces ve" changed to "passion is excessive". page : "middllng" changed to "middling". page : "breasts, it is called the" changed to "breasts, is called the". page : "the ennuch moves about" changed to "the eunuch moves about". page : "passes the tongue ever the end" changed to "passes the tongue over the end". page : "sonthern bank of the jumna" changed to "southern bank of the jumna". page : "be made nse of" changed to "be made use of". page : "can then eat sweatmeats" changed to "can then eat sweetmeats". page : "end of part ii" added. page : "he should them embrace" changed to "he should then embrace". page (in this version), footnote # : "woman is a monaganous animal" to "woman is a monogamous animal". page : "remarried, or a concubine" changed to "re-married, or a concubine". page : "tho followers of babhravya says" changed to "the followers of babhravya say". page : "the ttme of her turn" changed to "the time of her turn". page : "if his inaccesibility" changed to "if his inaccessibility". page : "a covetuous woman" changed to "a covetous woman". page : "better dressed that before" changed to "better dressed than before". page (in this version), footnote # : "jurè" changed to "juré". "profound" changed to "profond". "voulez vous qu'infidele" changed to "voulez-vous qu'infidèle". "language" changed "langage". "seul" changed to "seule". "et" changed to "ou". "gouter" changed to "goûter". "delire" changed to "délire". "ou" changed to "où". "remede" changed to "remède". "a" changed to "à". "ou vous voit on" changed to "où vous voit-on". page : "moon-light" changed to "moonlight". page (in this version), footnote # : "apar ntakas" changed to "aparantakas". page : "t lling them" changed to "telling them". page : "easily accesible" changed to "easily accessible". page : "whem he is anxious" changed to "whom he is anxious". page : "fear of avarice" changed to "fear or avarice". page : "ways for seduciug" changed to "ways of seducing". page : "own maintainance" changed to "own maintenance". page : "beauty, and aimiability" changed to "beauty, and amiability". page : "to ssess activity" changed to "to possess activity". page (in this version), footnote # : "in india" changed to "in india". page : "him." f," changed to "him." if,". page : "account of its subtletly" changed to "account of its subtlety". page : "aud well-to-do" changed to "and well-to-do". page : "incanations mentioned" changed to "incantations mentioned". page : "trapa bisqinosa" changed to "trapa bispinosa". page : "he of the same size" changed to "be of the same size". page : "seeds of the pomegranite" changed to "seeds of the pomegranate". page : "ready deliverence" changed to "ready deliverance". nervous and mental disease monograph series no. three contributions to the theory of sex _second edition_ _second reprinting_ by prof. sigmund freud, ll.d. vienna authorized translation by a.a. brill, ph.b., m.d. clinical assistant, department of psychiatry and neurology, columbia university; assistant in mental diseases, bellevue hospital; assistant visiting physician, hospital for nervous diseases with introduction by james j. putnam, m.d. nervous and mental disease publishing co. new york and washington nervous and mental disease monograph series edited by drs. smith ely jelliffe and wm. a. white numbers issued . outlines of psychiatry. 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dreams, even though apparently absurd, were found to be interpreters of a varied class of thoughts, active, although repressed as out of harmony with the selected life of consciousness; layer after layer, new sets of motives underlying motives were laid bare, and each patient's interest was strongly enlisted in the task of learning to know himself in order more truly and wisely to "sublimate" himself. gradually other workers joined patiently in this laborious undertaking, which now stands, for those who have taken pains to comprehend it, as by far the most important movement in psychopathology. it must, however, be recognized that these essays, of which dr. brill has given a translation that cannot but be timely, concern a subject which is not only important but unpopular. few physicians read the works of v. krafft-ebing, magnus hirschfeld, moll, and others of like sort. the remarkable volumes of havelock ellis were refused publication in his native england. the sentiments which inspired this hostile attitude towards the study of the sexual life are still active, though growing steadily less common. one may easily believe that if the facts which freud's truth-seeking researches forced him to recognize and to publish had not been of an unpopular sort, his rich and abundant contributions to observational psychology, to the significance of dreams, to the etiology and therapeutics of the psychoneuroses, to the interpretation of mythology, would have won for him, by universal acclaim, the same recognition among all physicians that he has received from a rapidly increasing band of followers and colleagues. may dr. brill's translation help toward this end. there are two further points on which some comments should be made. the first is this, that those who conscientiously desire to learn all that they can from freud's remarkable contributions should not be content to read any one of them alone. his various publications, such as "the selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses,"[ ] "the interpretation of dreams,"[ ] "the psychopathology of everyday life,"[ ] "wit and its relation to the unconscious,"[ ] the analysis of the case of the little boy called hans, the study of leonardo da vinci,[ a] and the various short essays in the four sammlungen kleiner schriften, not only all hang together, but supplement each other to a remarkable extent. unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many critics may think various statements and inferences in this volume to be far fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension. the other point is the following: one frequently hears the psychoanalytic method referred to as if it was customary for those practicing it to exploit the sexual experiences of their patients and nothing more, and the insistence on the details of the sexual life, presented in this book, is likely to emphasize that notion. but the fact is, as every thoughtful inquirer is aware, that the whole progress of civilization, whether in the individual or the race, consists largely in a "sublimation" of infantile instincts, and especially certain portions of the sexual instinct, to other ends than those which they seemed designed to serve. art and poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution of character and mental force is largely of the same origin. all the forms which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation, may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a thorough psychoanalysis. it is not the sexual life alone, but every interest and every motive, that must be inquired into by the physician who is seeking to obtain all the data about the patient, necessary for his reeducation and his cure. but all the thoughts and emotions and desires and motives which appear in the man or woman of adult years were once crudely represented in the obscure instincts of the infant, and among these instincts those which were concerned directly or indirectly with the sexual emotions, in a wide sense, are certain to be found in every case to have been the most important for the end-result. james j. putnam. boston, august , . [ ] translated by a.a. brill, nervous and mental disease monograph series, no. . [ ] translated by a.a. brill, the macmillan co., new york, and allen & unwin, london. [ ] translated by a.a. brill, the macmillan co., new york. [ ] translated by a.a. brill, moffatt, yard & co., new york. [ a] translated by a.a. brill, moffatt, yard & co., new york. author's preface to the second edition although the author is fully aware of the gaps and obscurities contained in this small volume, he has, nevertheless, resisted a temptation to add to it the results obtained from the investigations of the last five years, fearing that thus its unified and documentary character would be destroyed. he accordingly reproduces the original text with but slight modifications, contenting himself with the addition of a few footnotes. for the rest, it is his ardent wish that this book may speedily become antiquated--to the end that the new material brought forward in it may be universally accepted, while the shortcomings it displays may give place to juster views. vienna, december, . author's preface to the third edition after watching for ten years the reception accorded to this book and the effect it has produced, i wish to provide the third edition of it with some prefatory remarks dealing with the misunderstandings of the book and the demands, insusceptible of fulfillment, made against it. let me emphasize in the first place that whatever is here presented is derived entirely from every-day medical experience which is to be made more profound and scientifically important through the results of psychoanalytic investigation. the "three contributions to the theory of sex" can contain nothing except what psychoanalysis obliges them to accept or what it succeeds in corroborating. it is therefore excluded that they should ever be developed into a "theory of sex," and it is also quite intelligible that they will assume no attitude at all towards some important problems of the sexual life. this should not however give the impression that these omitted chapters of the great theme were unfamiliar to the author, or that they were neglected by him as something of secondary importance. the dependence of this work on the psychoanalytic experiences which have determined the writing of it, shows itself not only in the selection but also in the arrangement of the material. a certain succession of stages was observed, the occasional factors are rendered prominent, the constitutional ones are left in the background, and the ontogenetic development receives greater consideration than the phylogenetic. for the occasional factors play the principal rôle in analysis, and are almost completely worked up in it, while the constitutional factors only become evident from behind as elements which have been made functional through experience, and a discussion of these would lead far beyond the working sphere of psychoanalysis. a similar connection determines the relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis. ontogenesis may be considered as a repetition of phylogenesis insofar as the latter has not been varied by a more recent experience. the phylogenetic disposition makes itself visible behind the ontogenetic process. but fundamentally the constitution is really the precipitate of a former experience of the species to which the newer experience of the individual being is added as the sum of the occasional factors. beside its thoroughgoing dependence on psychoanalytic investigation i must emphasize as a character of this work of mine its intentional independence of biological investigation. i have carefully avoided the inclusion of the results of scientific investigation in general sex biology or of particular species of animals in this study of human sexual functions which is made possible by the technique of psychoanalysis. my aim was indeed to find out how much of the biology of the sexual life of man can be discovered by means of psychological investigation; i was able to point to additions and agreements which resulted from this examination, but i did not have to become confused if the psychoanalytic methods led in some points to views and results which deviated considerably from those merely based on biology. i have added many passages in this edition, but i have abstained from calling attention to them, as in former editions, by special marks. the scientific work in our sphere has at present been retarded in its progress, nevertheless some supplements to this work were indispensable if it was to remain in touch with our newer psychoanalytic literature. vienna, october, . i the sexual aberrations[ ] the fact of sexual need in man and animal is expressed in biology by the assumption of a "sexual impulse." this impulse is made analogous to the impulse of taking nourishment, and to hunger. the sexual expression corresponding to hunger not being found colloquilly, science uses the expression "libido."[ ] popular conception makes definite assumptions concerning the nature and qualities of this sexual impulse. it is supposed to be absent during childhood and to commence about the time of and in connection with the maturing process of puberty; it is supposed that it manifests itself in irresistible attractions exerted by one sex upon the other, and that its aim is sexual union or at least such actions as would lead to union. but we have every reason to see in these assumptions a very untrustworthy picture of reality. on closer examination they are found to abound in errors, inaccuracies and hasty conclusions. if we introduce two terms and call the person from whom the sexual attraction emanates the _sexual object_, and the action towards which the impulse strives the _sexual aim_, then the scientifically examined experience shows us many deviations in reference to both sexual object and sexual aim, the relations of which to the accepted standard require thorough investigation. . deviation in reference to the sexual object the popular theory of the sexual impulse corresponds closely to the poetic fable of dividing the person into two halves--man and woman--who strive to become reunited through love. it is therefore very surprising to hear that there are men for whom the sexual object is not woman but man, and that there are women for whom it is not man but woman. such _persons_ are called contrary sexuals, or better, inverts; the _condition_, that of inversion. the number of such individuals is considerable though difficult of accurate determination.[ ] a. _inversion_ *the behavior of inverts.*--the above-mentioned persons behave in many ways quite differently. (_a_) they are absolutely inverted; _i.e._, their sexual object must be always of the same sex, while the opposite sex can never be to them an object of sexual longing, but leaves them indifferent or may even evoke sexual repugnance. as men they are unable, on account of this repugnance, to perform the normal sexual act or miss all pleasure in its performance. (_b_) they are amphigenously inverted (psychosexually hermaphroditic); _i.e._, their sexual object may belong indifferently to either the same or to the other sex. the inversion lacks the character of exclusiveness. (_c_) they are occasionally inverted; _i.e._, under certain external conditions, chief among which are the inaccessibility of the normal sexual object and initiation, they are able to take as the sexual object a person of the same sex and thus find sexual gratification. the inverted also manifest a manifold behavior in their judgment about the peculiarities of their sexual impulse. some take the inversion as a matter of course, just as the normal person does regarding his libido, firmly demanding the same rights as the normal. others, however, strive against the fact of their inversion and perceive in it a morbid compulsion.[ ] other variations concern the relations of time. the characteristics of the inversion in any individual may date back as far as his memory goes, or they may become manifest to him at a definite period before or after puberty.[ ] the character is either retained throughout life, or it occasionally recedes or represents an episode on the road to normal development. a periodical fluctuation between the normal and the inverted sexual object has also been observed. of special interest are those cases in which the libido changes, taking on the character of inversion after a painful experience with the normal sexual object. these different categories of variation generally exist independently of one another. in the most extreme cases it can regularly be assumed that the inversion has existed at all times and that the person feels contented with his peculiar state. many authors will hesitate to gather into a unit all the cases enumerated here and will prefer to emphasize the differences rather than the common characters of these groups, a view which corresponds with their preferred judgment of inversions. but no matter what divisions may be set up, it cannot be overlooked that all transitions are abundantly met with, so that the formation of a series would seem to impose itself. *conception of inversion.*--the first attention bestowed upon inversion gave rise to the conception that it was a congenital sign of nervous degeneration. this harmonized with the fact that doctors first met it among the nervous, or among persons giving such an impression. there are two elements which should be considered independently in this conception: the congenitality, and the degeneration. *degeneration.*--this term _degeneration_ is open to the objections which may be urged against the promiscuous use of this word in general. it has in fact become customary to designate all morbid manifestations not of traumatic or infectious origin as degenerative. indeed, magnan's classification of degenerates makes it possible that the highest general configuration of nervous accomplishment need not exclude the application of the concept of degeneration. under the circumstances, it is a question what use and what new content the judgment of "degeneration" still possesses. it would seem more appropriate not to speak of degeneration: ( ) where there are not many marked deviations from the normal; ( ) where the capacity for working and living do not in general appear markedly impaired.[ ] that the inverted are not degenerates in this qualified sense can be seen from the following facts: . the inversion is found among persons who otherwise show no marked deviation from the normal. . it is found also among persons whose capabilities are not disturbed, who on the contrary are distinguished by especially high intellectual development and ethical culture.[ ] . if one disregards the patients of one's own practice and strives to comprehend a wider field of experience, he will in two directions encounter facts which will prevent him from assuming inversions as a degenerative sign. (_a_) it must be considered that inversion was a frequent manifestation among the ancient nations at the height of their culture. it was an institution endowed with important functions. (_b_) it is found to be unusually prevalent among savages and primitive races, whereas the term degeneration is generally limited to higher civilization (i. bloch). even among the most civilized nations of europe, climate and race have a most powerful influence on the distribution of, and attitude toward, inversion.[ ] *innateness.*--only for the first and most extreme class of inverts, as can be imagined, has innateness been claimed, and this from their own assurance that at no time in their life has their sexual impulse followed a different course. the fact of the existence of two other classes, especially of the third, is difficult to reconcile with the assumption of its being congenital. hence, the propensity of those holding this view to separate the group of absolute inverts from the others results in the abandonment of the general conception of inversion. accordingly in a number of cases the inversion would be of a congenital character, while in others it might originate from other causes. in contradistinction to this conception is that which assumes inversion to be an _acquired_ character of the sexual impulse. it is based on the following facts. ( ) in many inverts (even absolute ones) an early affective sexual impression can be demonstrated, as a result of which the homosexual inclination developed. ( ) in many others outer influences of a promoting and inhibiting nature can be demonstrated, which in earlier or later life led to a fixation of the inversion--among which are exclusive relations with the same sex, companionship in war, detention in prison, dangers of hetero-sexual intercourse, celibacy, sexual weakness, etc. ( ) hypnotic suggestion may remove the inversion, which would be surprising in that of a congenital character. in view of all this, the existence of congenital inversion can certainly be questioned. the objection may be made to it that a more accurate examination of those claimed to be congenitally inverted will probably show that the direction of the libido was determined by a definite experience of early childhood, which has not been retained in the conscious memory of the person, but which can be brought back to memory by proper influences (havelock ellis). according to that author inversion can be designated only as a frequent variation of the sexual impulse which may be determined by a number of external circumstances of life. the apparent certainty thus reached is, however, overthrown by the retort that manifestly there are many persons who have experienced even in their early youth those very sexual influences, such as seduction, mutual onanism, without becoming inverts, or without constantly remaining so. hence, one is forced to assume that the alternatives congenital and acquired are either incomplete or do not cover the circumstances present in inversions. *explanation of inversion.*--the nature of inversion is explained neither by the assumption that it is congenital nor that it is acquired. in the first case, we need to be told what there is in it of the congenital, unless we are satisfied with the roughest explanation, namely, that a person brings along a congenital sexual impulse connected with a definite sexual object. in the second case it is a question whether the manifold accidental influences suffice to explain the acquisition unless there is something in the individual to meet them half way. the negation of this last factor is inadmissible according to our former conclusions. *the relation of bisexuality.*--since the time of frank lydston, kiernan, and chevalier, a new series of ideas has been introduced for the explanation of the possibility of sexual inversion. this contains a new contradiction to the popular belief which assumes that a human being is either a man or a woman. science shows cases in which the sexual characteristics appear blurred and thus the sexual distinction is made difficult, especially on an anatomical basis. the genitals of such persons unite the male and female characteristics (hermaphroditism). in rare cases both parts of the sexual apparatus are well developed (true hermaphroditism), but usually both are stunted.[ ] the importance of these abnormalities lies in the fact that they unexpectedly facilitate the understanding of the normal formation. a certain degree of anatomical hermaphroditism really belongs to the normal. in no normally formed male or female are traces of the apparatus of the other sex lacking; these either continue functionless as rudimentary organs, or they are transformed for the purpose of assuming other functions. the conception which we gather from this long known anatomical fact is the original predisposition to bisexuality, which in the course of development has changed to monosexuality, leaving slight remnants of the stunted sex. it was natural to transfer this conception to the psychic sphere and to conceive the inversion in its aberrations as an expression of psychic hermaphroditism. in order to bring the question to a decision, it was only necessary to have one other circumstance, viz., a regular concurrence of the inversion with the psychic and somatic signs of hermaphroditism. but this second expectation was not realized. the relations between the assumed psychical and the demonstrable anatomical androgyny should never be conceived as being so close. there is frequently found in the inverted a diminution of the sexual impulse (h. ellis) and a slight anatomical stunting of the organs. this, however, is found frequently but by no means regularly or preponderately. thus we must recognize that inversion and somatic hermaphroditism are totally independent of each other. great importance has also been attached to the so-called secondary and tertiary sex characters and their aggregate occurrence in the inverted has been emphasized (h. ellis). there is much truth in this but it should not be forgotten that the secondary and tertiary sex characteristics very frequently manifest themselves in the other sex, thus indicating androgyny without, however, involving changes in the sexual object in the sense of an inversion. psychic hermaphroditism would gain in substantiality if parallel with the inversion of the sexual object there should be at least a change in the other psychic qualities, such as in the impulses and distinguishing traits characteristic of the other sex. but such inversion of character can be expected with some regularity only in inverted women; in men the most perfect psychic manliness may be united with the inversion. if one firmly adheres to the hypothesis of a psychic hermaphroditism, one must add that in certain spheres its manifestations allow the recognition of only a very slight contrary determination. the same also holds true in the somatic androgyny. according to halban, the appearance of individual stunted organs and secondary sex characters are quite independent of each other.[ ] a spokesman of the masculine inverts stated the bisexual theory in its crudest form in the following words: "it is a female brain in a male body." but we do not know the characteristics of a "female brain." the substitution of the anatomical for the psychological is as frivolous as it is unjustified. the tentative explanation by v. krafft-ebing seems to be more precisely formulated than that of ulrich but does not essentially differ from it. v. krafft-ebing thinks that the bisexual predisposition gives to the individual male and female brain centers as well as somatic sexual organs. these centers develop first towards puberty mostly under the influence of the independent sex glands. we can, however, say the same of the male and female "centers" as of the male and female brains; and, moreover, we do not even know whether we can assume for the sexual functions separate brain locations ("centers") such as we may assume for language. after this discussion, two notions, at all events, persist; first, that a bisexual predisposition is to be presumed for the inversion also, only we do not know of what it consists beyond the anatomical formations; and, second, that we are dealing with disturbances which are experienced by the sexual impulse during its development.[ ] *the sexual object of inverts.*--the theory of psychic hermaphroditism presupposed that the sexual object of the inverted is the reverse of the normal. the inverted man, like the woman, succumbs to the charms emanating from manly qualities of body and mind; he feels himself like a woman and seeks a man. but however true this may be for a great number of inverts, it by no means indicates the general character of inversion. there is no doubt that a great part of the male inverted have retained the psychic character of virility, that proportionately they show but little of the secondary characters of the other sex, and that they really look for real feminine psychic features in their sexual object. if that were not so it would be incomprehensible why masculine prostitution, in offering itself to inverts, copies in all its exterior, to-day as in antiquity, the dress and attitudes of woman. this imitation would otherwise be an insult to the ideal of the inverts. among the greeks, where the most manly men were found among inverts, it is quite obvious that it was not the masculine character of the boy which kindled the love of man, but it was his physical resemblance to woman as well as his feminine psychic qualities, such as shyness, demureness, and the need of instruction and help. as soon as the boy himself became a man he ceased to be a sexual object for men and in turn became a lover of boys. the sexual object in this case as in many others is therefore not of the like sex, but it unites both sex characters, a compromise between the impulses striving for the man and for the woman, but firmly conditioned by the masculinity of body (the genitals).[ ] the conditions in the woman are more definite; here the active inverts, with special frequency, show the somatic and psychic characters of man and desire femininity in their sexual object; though even here greater variation will be found on more intimate investigation. *the sexual aim of inverts.*--the important fact to bear in mind is that no uniformity of the sexual aim can be attributed to inversion. intercourse per anum in men by no means goes with inversion; masturbation is just as frequently the exclusive aim; and the limitation of the sexual aim to mere effusion of feelings is here even more frequent than in hetero-sexual love. in women, too, the sexual aims of the inverted are manifold, among which contact with the mucous membrane of the mouth seems to be preferred. *conclusion.*--though from the material on hand we are by no means in a position satisfactorily to explain the origin of inversion, we can say that through this investigation we have obtained an insight which can become of greater significance to us than the solution of the above problem. our attention is called to the fact that we have assumed a too close connection between the sexual impulse and the sexual object. the experience gained from the so called abnormal cases teaches us that a connection exists between the sexual impulse and the sexual object which we are in danger of overlooking in the uniformity of normal states where the impulse seems to bring with it the object. we are thus instructed to separate this connection between the impulse and the object. the sexual impulse is probably entirely independent of its object and is not originated by the stimuli proceeding from the object. b. _the sexually immature and animals as sexual objects_ whereas those sexual inverts whose sexual object does not belong to the normally adapted sex, appear to the observer as a collective number of perhaps otherwise normal individuals, the persons who choose for their sexual object the sexually immature (children) are apparently from the first sporadic aberrations. only exceptionally are children the exclusive sexual objects. they are mostly drawn into this rôle by a faint-hearted and impotent individual who makes use of such substitutes, or when an impulsive urgent desire cannot at the time secure the proper object. still it throws some light on the nature of the sexual impulse, that it should suffer such great variation and depreciation of its object, a thing which hunger, adhering more energetically to its object, would allow only in the most extreme cases. the same may be said of sexual relations with animals--a thing not at all rare among farmers--where the sexual attraction goes beyond the limits of the species. for esthetic reasons one would fain attribute this and other excessive aberrations of the sexual impulse to the insane, but this cannot be done. experience teaches that among the latter no disturbances of the sexual impulse can be found other than those observed among the sane, or among whole races and classes. thus we find with gruesome frequency sexual abuse of children by teachers and servants merely because they have the best opportunities for it. the insane present the aforesaid aberration only in a somewhat intensified form; or what is of special significance is the fact that the aberration becomes exclusive and takes the place of the normal sexual gratification. this very remarkable relation of sexual variations ranging from the normal to the insane gives material for reflection. it seems to me that the fact to be explained would show that the impulses of the sexual life belong to those which even normally are most poorly controlled by the higher psychic activities. he who is in any way psychically abnormal, be it in social or ethical conditions, is, according to my experience, regularly so in his sexual life. but many are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect correspond to the average; they have followed the human cultural development, but sexuality remained as their weak point. as a general result of these discussions we come to see that, under numerous conditions and among a surprising number of individuals, the nature and value of the sexual object steps into the background. there is something else in the sexual impulse which is the essential and constant.[ ] . deviation in reference to the sexual aim the union of the genitals in the characteristic act of copulation is taken as the normal sexual aim. it serves to loosen the sexual tension and temporarily to quench the sexual desire (gratification analogous to satisfaction of hunger). yet even in the most normal sexual process those additions are distinguishable, the development of which leads to the aberrations described as _perversions_. thus certain intermediary relations to the sexual object connected with copulation, such as touching and looking, are recognized as preliminary to the sexual aim. these activities are on the one hand themselves connected with pleasure and on the other hand they enhance the excitement which persists until the definite sexual aim is reached. one definite kind of contiguity, consisting of mutual approximation of the mucous membranes of the lips in the form of a kiss, has received among the most civilized nations a sexual value, though the parts of the body concerned do not belong to the sexual apparatus but form the entrance to the digestive tract. this therefore supplies the factors which allow us to bring the perversions into relation with the normal sexual life, and which are available also for their classification. the perversions are either (_a_) anatomical _transgressions_ of the bodily regions destined for sexual union, or (_b_) a _lingering_ at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed on the way to the definite sexual aim. (_a_) _anatomical transgression_ *overestimation of the sexual object.*--the psychic estimation in which the sexual object as a goal of the sexual impulse shares is only in the rarest cases limited to the genitals; generally it embraces the whole body and tends to include all sensations emanating from the sexual object. the same overestimation spreads over the psychic sphere and manifests itself as a logical blinding (diminished judgment) in the face of the psychic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, as well as a blind obedience to the judgments issuing from the latter. the full faith of love thus becomes an important, if not the primordial source of authority.[ ] it is this sexual overvaluation, which so ill agrees with the restriction of the sexual aim to the union of the genitals only, that assists other parts of the body to participate as sexual aims.[ ] in the development of this most manifold anatomical overestimation there is an unmistakable desire towards variation, a thing denominated by hoche as "excitement-hunger" (reiz-hunger).[ ] *sexual utilization of the mucous membrane of the lips and mouth.*--the significance of the factor of sexual overestimation can be best studied in the man, in whom alone the sexual life is accessible to investigation, whereas in the woman it is veiled in impenetrable darkness, partly in consequence of cultural stunting and partly on account of the conventional reticence and dishonesty of women. the employment of the mouth as a sexual organ is considered as a perversion if the lips (tongue) of the one are brought into contact with the genitals of the other, but not when the mucous membrane of the lips of both touch each other. in the latter exception we find the connection with the normal. he who abhors the former as perversions, though these since antiquity have been common practices among mankind, yields to a distinct _feeling of loathing_ which protects him from adopting such sexual aims. the limit of such loathing is frequently purely conventional; he who kisses fervently the lips of a pretty girl will perhaps be able to use her tooth brush only with a sense of loathing, though there is no reason to assume that his own oral cavity for which he entertains no loathing is cleaner than that of the girl. our attention is here called to the factor of loathing which stands in the way of the libidinous overestimation of the sexual aim, but which may in turn be vanquished by the libido. in the loathing we may observe one of the forces which have brought about the restrictions of the sexual aim. as a rule these forces halt at the genitals; there is, however, no doubt that even the genitals of the other sex themselves may be an object of loathing. such behavior is characteristic of all hysterics, especially women. the force of the sexual impulse prefers to occupy itself with the overcoming of this loathing (see below). *sexual utilization of the anal opening.*--it is even more obvious than in the former case that it is the loathing which stamps as a perversion the use of the anus as a sexual aim. but it should not be interpreted as espousing a cause when i observe that the basis of this loathing--namely, that this part of the body serves for the excretion and comes in contact with the loathsome excrement--is not more plausible than the basis which hysterical girls have for the disgust which they entertain for the male genital because it serves for urination. the sexual rôle of the mucous membrane of the anus is by no means limited to intercourse between men; its preference has nothing characteristic of the inverted feeling. on the contrary, it seems that the _pedicatio_ of the man owes its rôle to the analogy with the act in the woman, whereas among inverts it is mutual masturbation which is the most common sexual aim. *the significance of other parts of the body.*--sexual infringement on the other parts of the body, in all its variations, offers nothing new; it adds nothing to our knowledge of the sexual impulse which herein only announces its intention to dominate the sexual object in every way. besides the sexual overvaluation, a second and generally unknown factor may be mentioned among the anatomical transgressions. certain parts of the body, like the mucous membrane of the mouth and anus, which repeatedly appear in such practices, lay claim as it were to be considered and treated as genitals. we shall hear how this claim is justified by the development of the sexual impulse, and how it is fulfilled in the symptomatology of certain morbid conditions. *unfit substitutes for the sexual object. fetichism.*--we are especially impressed by those cases in which for the normal sexual object another is substituted which is related to it but which is totally unfit for the normal sexual aim. according to the scheme of the introduction we should have done better to mention this most interesting group of aberrations of the sexual impulse among the deviations in reference to the sexual object, but we have deferred mention of these until we became acquainted with the factor of sexual overestimation, upon which these manifestations, connected with the relinquishing of the sexual aim, depend. the substitute for the sexual object is generally a part of the body but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot, or hair, or an inanimate object which is in demonstrable relation with the sexual person, and preferably with the sexuality of the same (fragments of clothing, white underwear). this substitution is not unjustly compared with the fetich in which the savage sees the embodiment of his god. the transition to the cases of fetichism, with a renunciation of a normal or of a perverted sexual aim, is formed by cases in which a fetichistic determination is demanded in the sexual object if the sexual aim is to be attained (definite color of hair, clothing, even physical blemishes). no other variation of the sexual impulse verging on the pathological claims our interest as much as this one, owing to the peculiarity occasioned by its manifestations. a certain diminution in the striving for the normal sexual aim may be presupposed in all these cases (executive weakness of the sexual apparatus).[ ] the connection with the normal is occasioned by the psychologically necessary overestimation of the sexual object, which inevitably encroaches upon everything associatively related to it (sexual object). a certain degree of such fetichism therefore regularly belong to the normal, especially during those stages of wooing when the normal sexual aim seems inaccessible or its realization deferred. "get me a handkerchief from her bosom--a garter of my love." --faust. the case becomes pathological only when the striving for the fetich fixes itself beyond such determinations and takes the place of the normal sexual aim; or again, when the fetich disengages itself from the person concerned and itself becomes a sexual object. these are the general determinations for the transition of mere variations of the sexual impulse into pathological aberrations. the persistent influence of a sexual impress mostly received in early childhood often shows itself in the selection of a fetich, as binet first asserted, and as was later proven by many illustrations,--a thing which may be placed parallel to the proverbial attachment to a first love in the normal ("on revient toujours à ses premiers amours"). such a connection is especially seen in cases with only fetichistic determinations of the sexual object. the significance of early sexual impressions will be met again in other places. in other cases it was mostly a symbolic thought association, unconscious to the person concerned, which led to the replacing of the object by means of a fetich. the paths of these connections can not always be definitely demonstrated. the foot is a very primitive sexual symbol already found in myths.[ ] fur is used as a fetich probably on account of its association with the hairiness of the mons veneris. such symbolism seems often to depend on sexual experiences in childhood.[ ] (_b_) _fixation of precursory sexual aims_ *the appearance of new intentions.*--all the outer and inner determinations which impede or hold at a distance the attainment of the normal sexual aim, such as impotence, costliness of the sexual object, and dangers of the sexual act, will conceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory acts and to form them into new sexual aims which may take the place of the normal. on closer investigation it is always seen that the ostensibly most peculiar of these new intentions have already been indicated in the normal sexual act. *touching and looking.*--at least a certain amount of touching is indispensable for a person in order to attain the normal sexual aim. it is also generally known that the touching of the skin of the sexual object causes much pleasure and produces a supply of new excitement. hence, the lingering at the touching can hardly be considered a perversion if the sexual act is proceeded with. the same holds true in the end with looking which is analogous to touching. the manner in which the libidinous excitement is frequently awakened is by the optical impression, and selection takes account of this circumstance--if this teleological mode of thinking be permitted--by making the sexual object a thing of beauty. the covering of the body, which keeps abreast with civilization, serves to arouse sexual inquisitiveness, which always strives to restore for itself the sexual object by uncovering the hidden parts. this can be turned into the artistic ("sublimation") if the interest is turned from the genitals to the form of the body.[ ] the tendency to linger at this intermediary sexual aim of the sexually accentuated looking is found to a certain degree in most normals; indeed it gives them the possibility of directing a certain amount of their libido to a higher artistic aim. on the other hand, the fondness for looking becomes a perversion (_a_) when it limits itself entirely to the genitals; (_b_) when it becomes connected with the overcoming of loathing (voyeurs and onlookers at the functions of excretion); and (_c_) when instead of preparing for the normal sexual aim it suppresses it. the latter, if i may draw conclusions from a single analysis, is in a most pronounced way true of exhibitionists, who expose their genitals so as in turn to bring to view the genitals of others. in the perversion which consists in striving to look and be looked at we are confronted with a very remarkable character which will occupy us even more intensively in the following aberration. the sexual aim is here present in twofold formation, in an _active_ and a _passive_ form. the force which is opposed to the peeping mania and through which it is eventually abolished is _shame_ (like the former loathing). *sadism and masochism.*--the desire to cause pain to the sexual object and its opposite, the most frequent and most significant of all perversions, was designated in its two forms by v. krafft-ebing as sadism or the active form, and masochism or the passive form. other authors prefer the narrower term algolagnia which emphasizes the pleasure in pain and cruelty, whereas the terms selected by v. krafft-ebing place the pleasure secured in all kinds of humility and submission in the foreground. the roots of active algolagnia, sadism, can be readily demonstrable in the normal. the sexuality of most men shows a taint of _aggression_, it is a propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which lies in the necessity of overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by actions other than mere _courting_. sadism would then correspond to an aggressive component of the sexual impulse which has become independent and exaggerated and has been brought to the foreground by displacement. the conception of sadism fluctuates in the usage of language from a mere active or impetuous attitude towards the sexual object to the exclusive attachment of the gratification to the subjection and maltreatment of the object. strictly speaking only the last extreme case has a claim to the name of perversion. similarly, the designation of masochism comprises all passive attitude to the sexual life and to the sexual object; in its most extreme form the gratification is connected with suffering of physical or mental pain at the hands of the sexual object. masochism as a perversion seems to be still more remote from the normal sexual life by forming a contrast to it; it may be doubted whether it ever appears as a primary form or whether it does not more regularly originate through transformation from sadism. it can often be recognized that the masochism is nothing but a continuation of the sadism turning against one's own person in which the latter at first takes the place of the sexual object. analysis of extreme cases of masochistic perversions show that there is a coöperation of a large series of factors which exaggerate and fix the original passive sexual attitude (castration complex, conscience). the pain which is here overcome ranks with the loathing and shame which were the resistances opposed to the libido. sadism and masochism occupy a special place among the perversions, for the contrast of activity and passivity lying at their bases belong to the common traits of the sexual life. that cruelty and sexual impulse are most intimately connected is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of this connection no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. the aggression which is mixed with the sexual impulse is according to some authors a remnant of cannibalistic lust, a participation on the part of the domination apparatus (bemächtigungsapparatus), which served also for the gratification of the great wants of the other, ontogenetically the older impulse.[ ] it has also been claimed that every pain contains in itself the possibility of a pleasurable sensation. let us be satisfied with the impression that the explanation of this perversion is by no means satisfactory and that it is possible that many psychic efforts unite themselves into one effect. the most striking peculiarity of this perversion lies in the fact that its active and passive forms are regularly encountered together in the same person. he who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in sexual relations is also able to experience the pain emanating from sexual relations as pleasure. a sadist is simultaneously a masochist, though either the active or the passive side of the perversion may be more strongly developed and thus represent his preponderate sexual activity.[ ] we thus see that certain perverted propensities regularly appear in _contrasting pairs_, a thing which, in view of the material to be produced later, must claim great theoretical value. it is furthermore clear that the existence of the contrast, sadism and masochism, can not readily be attributed to the mixture of aggression. on the other hand one may be tempted to connect such simultaneously existing contrasts with the united contrast of male and female in bisexuality, the significance of which is reduced in psychoanalysis to the contrast of activity and passivity. . general statements applicable to all perversions *variation and disease.*--the physicians who at first studied the _perversions_ in pronounced cases and under peculiar conditions were naturally inclined to attribute to them the character of a morbid or degenerative sign similar to the _inversions_. this view, however, is easier to refute in this than in the former case. everyday experience has shown that most of these transgressions, at least the milder ones, are seldom wanting as components in the sexual life of normals who look upon them as upon other intimacies. wherever the conditions are favorable such a perversion may for a long time be substituted by a normal person for the normal sexual aim or it may be placed near it. in no normal person does the normal sexual aim lack some designable perverse element, and this universality suffices in itself to prove the inexpediency of an opprobrious application of the name perversion. in the realm of the sexual life one is sure to meet with exceptional difficulties which are at present really unsolvable, if one wishes to draw a sharp line between the mere variations within physiological limits and morbid symptoms. nevertheless, the quality of the new sexual aim in some of these perversions is such as to require special notice. some of the perversions are in content so distant from the normal that we cannot help calling them "morbid," especially those in which the sexual impulse, in overcoming the resistances (shame, loathing, fear, and pain) has brought about surprising results (licking of feces and violation of cadavers). yet even in these cases one ought not to feel certain of regularly finding among the perpetrators persons of pronounced abnormalities or insane minds. we can not lose sight of the fact that persons who otherwise behave normally are recorded as sick in the realm of the sexual life where they are dominated by the most unbridled of all impulses. on the other hand, a manifest abnormality in any other relation in life generally shows an undercurrent of abnormal sexual behavior. in the majority of cases we are able to find the morbid character of the perversion not in the content of the new sexual aim but in its relation to the normal. it is morbid if the perversion does not appear beside the normal (sexual aim and sexual object), where favorable circumstances promote it and unfavorable impede the normal, or if it has under all circumstances repressed and supplanted the normal; _the exclusiveness_ and _fixation_ of the perversion justifies us in considering it a morbid symptom. *the psychic participation in the perversions.*--perhaps it is precisely in the most abominable perversions that we must recognize the most prolific psychic participation for the transformation of the sexual impulse. in these cases a piece of psychic work has been accomplished in which, in spite of its gruesome success, the value of an idealization of the impulse can not be disputed. the omnipotence of love nowhere perhaps shows itself stronger than in this one of her aberrations. the highest and the lowest everywhere in sexuality hang most intimately together. ("from heaven through the world to hell.") *two results.*--in the study of perversions we have gained an insight into the fact that the sexual impulse has to struggle against certain psychic forces, resistances, among which shame and loathing are most prominent. we may presume that these forces are employed to confine the impulse within the accepted normal limits, and if they have become developed in the individual before the sexual impulse has attained its full strength, it is really they which have directed it in the course of development.[ ] we have furthermore remarked that some of the examined perversions can be comprehended only by assuming the union of many motives. if they are amenable to analysis--disintegration--they must be of a composite nature. this may give us a hint that the sexual impulse itself may not be something simple, that it may on the contrary be composed of many components which detach themselves to form perversions. our clinical observation thus calls our attention to _fusions_ which have lost their expression in the uniform normal behavior. . the sexual impulse in neurotics *psychoanalysis.*--a proper contribution to the knowledge of the sexual impulse in persons who are at least related to the normal can be gained only from one source, and is accessible only by one definite path. there is only one way to obtain a thorough and unerring solution of problems in the sexual life of so-called psychoneurotics (hysteria, obsessions, the wrongly-named neurasthenia, and surely also dementia præcox, and paranoia), and that is by subjecting them to the psychoanalytic investigations propounded by j. breuer and myself in , which we called the "cathartic" treatment. i must repeat what i have said in my published work, that these psychoneuroses, as far as my experience goes, are based on sexual motive powers. i do not mean that the energy of the sexual impulse merely contributes to the forces supporting the morbid manifestations (symptoms), but i wish distinctly to maintain that this supplies the only constant and the most important source of energy in the neurosis, so that the sexual life of such persons manifests itself either exclusively, preponderately, or partially in these symptoms. as i have already stated in different places, the symptoms are the sexual activities of the patient. the proof for this assertion i have obtained from the psychoanalysis of hysterics and other neurotics during a period of twenty years, the results of which i hope to give later in a detailed account. psychoanalysis removes the symptoms of hysteria on the supposition that they are the substitutes--the transcriptions as it were--for a series of emotionally accentuated psychic processes, wishes, and desires, to which a passage for their discharge through the conscious psychic activities has been cut off by a special process (repression). these thought formations which are restrained in the state of the unconscious strive for expression, that is, for _discharge_, in conformity to their affective value, and find such in hysteria through a process of _conversion_ into somatic phenomena--the hysterical symptoms. if, _lege artis_, and with the aid of a special technique, retrogressive transformations of the symptoms into the affectful and conscious thoughts can be effected, it then becomes possible to get the most accurate information about the nature and origin of these previously unconscious psychic formations. *results of psychoanalysis.*--in this manner it has been discovered that the symptoms represent the equivalent for the strivings which received their strength from the source of the sexual impulse. this fully concurs with what we know of the character of hysterics, which we have taken as models for all psycho-neurotics, before they have become diseased, and with what we know concerning the causes of the disease. the hysterical character evinces a part of sexual repression which reaches beyond the normal limits, an exaggeration of the resistances against the sexual impulse which we know as shame and loathing. it is an instinctive flight from intellectual occupation with the sexual problem, the consequence of which in pronounced cases is a complete sexual ignorance, which is preserved till the age of sexual maturity is attained.[ ] this feature, so characteristic of hysteria, is not seldom concealed in crude observation by the existence of the second constitutional factor of hysteria, namely, the enormous development of the sexual craving. but the psychological analysis will always reveal it and solves the very contradictory enigma of hysteria by proving the existence of the contrasting pair, an immense sexual desire and a very exaggerated sexual rejection. the provocation of the disease in hysterically predisposed persons is brought about if in consequence of their progressive maturity or external conditions of life they are earnestly confronted with the real sexual demand. between the pressure of the craving and the opposition of the sexual rejection an outlet for the disease results, which does not remove the conflict but seeks to elude it by transforming the libidinous strivings into symptoms. it is an exception only in appearance if a hysterical person, say a man, becomes subject to some banal emotional disturbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual interest. psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the sexual components of the conflict which make the disease possible by withdrawing the psychic processes from normal adjustment. *neurosis and perversion.*--a great part of the opposition to my assertion is explained by the fact that the sexuality from which i deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is thought of as coincident with the normal sexual impulse. but psychoanalysis teaches us better than this. it shows that the symptoms do not by any means result at the expense only of the so called normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or preponderately), but they represent the converted expression of impulses which in a broader sense might be designated as _perverse_ if they could manifest themselves directly in phantasies and acts without deviating from consciousness. the symptoms are therefore partially formed at the cost of abnormal sexuality. _the neurosis is, so to say, the negative of the perversion._[ ] the sexual impulse of the psychoneurotic shows all the aberrations which we have studied as variations of the normal and as manifestations of morbid sexual life. (_a_) in all the neurotics without exception we find feelings of inversion in the unconscious psychic life, fixation of libido on persons of the same sex. it is impossible, without a deep and searching discussion, adequately to appreciate the significance of this factor for the formation of the picture of the disease; i can only assert that the unconscious propensity to inversion is never wanting and is particularly of immense service in explaining male hysteria.[ ] (_b_) all the inclinations to anatomical transgression can be demonstrated in psychoneurotics in the unconscious and as symptom-creators. of special frequency and intensity are those which impart to the mouth and the mucous membrane of the anus the rôle of genitals. (_c_) the partial desires which usually appear in contrasting pairs play a very prominent rôle among the symptom-creators in the psychoneuroses. we have learned to know them as carriers of new sexual aims, such as peeping mania, exhibitionism, and the actively and passively formed impulses of cruelty. the contribution of the last is indispensable for the understanding of the morbid nature of the symptoms; it almost regularly controls some portion of the social behavior of the patient. the transformation of love into hatred, of tenderness into hostility, which is characteristic of a large number of neurotic cases and apparently of all cases of paranoia, takes place by means of the union of cruelty with the libido. the interest in these deductions will be more heightened by certain peculiarities of the diagnosis of facts. alpha. there is nothing in the unconscious streams of thought of the neuroses which would correspond to an inclination towards fetichism; a circumstance which throws light on the psychological peculiarity of this well understood perversion. beta. wherever any such impulse is found in the unconscious which can be paired with a contrasting one, it can regularly be demonstrated that the latter, too, is effective. every active perversion is here accompanied by its passive counterpart. he who in the unconscious is an exhibitionist is at the same time a voyeur, he who suffers from sadistic feelings as a result of repression will also show another reinforcement of the symptoms from the source of masochistic tendencies. the perfect concurrence with the behavior of the corresponding positive perversions is certainly very noteworthy. in the picture of the disease, however, the preponderant rôle is played by either one or the other of the opposing tendencies. gamma. in a pronounced case of psychoneurosis we seldom find the development of one single perverted impulse; usually there are many and regularly there are traces of all perversions. the individual impulse, however, on account of its intensity, is independent of the development of the others, but the study of the positive perversions gives us the accurate counterpart to it. partial impulses and erogenous zones keeping in mind what we have learned from the examination of the positive and negative perversions, it becomes quite obvious that they can be referred to a number of "partial impulses," which are not, however, primary but are subject to further analysis. by an "impulse" we can understand in the first place nothing but the psychic representative of a continually flowing internal somatic source of excitement, in contradistinction to the "stimulus" which is produced by isolated excitements coming from without. the impulse is thus one of the concepts marking the limits between the psychic and the physical. the simplest and most obvious assumption concerning the nature of the impulses would be that in themselves they possess no quality but are only taken into account as a measure of the demand for effort in the psychic life. what distinguishes the impulses from one another and furnishes them with specific attributes is their relation to their somatic _sources_ and to their _aims_. the source of the impulse is an exciting process in an organ, and the immediate aim of the impulse lies in the elimination of this organic stimulus. another preliminary assumption in the theory of the impulse which we cannot relinquish, states that the bodily organs furnish two kinds of excitements which are determined by differences of a chemical nature. one of these forms of excitement we designate as the specifically sexual and the concerned organ as the _erogenous zone_, while the sexual element emanating from it is the partial impulse.[ ] in the perversions which claim sexual significance for the oral cavity and the anal opening the part played by the erogenous zone is quite obvious. it behaves in every way like a part of the sexual apparatus. in hysteria these parts of the body, as well as the tracts of mucous membrane proceeding from them, become the seat of new sensations and innervating changes in a manner similar to the real genitals when under the excitement of normal sexual processes. the significance of the erogenous zones in the psychoneuroses, as additional apparatus and substitutes for the genitals, appears to be most prominent in hysteria though that does not signify that it is of lesser validity in the other morbid forms. it is not so recognizable in compulsion neurosis and paranoia because here the symptom formation takes place in regions of the psychic apparatus which lie at a great distance from the central locations for bodily control. the more remarkable thing in the compulsion neurosis is the significance of the impulses which create new sexual aims and appear independently of the erogenous zones. nevertheless, the eye corresponds to an erogenous zone in the looking and exhibition mania, while the skin takes on the same part in the pain and cruelty components of the sexual impulse. the skin, which in special parts of the body becomes differentiated as sensory organs and modified by the mucous membrane, is the erogenous zone, [greek: kat] ex ogen.[ ] explanation of the manifest preponderance of sexual perversions in the psychoneuroses the sexuality of psychoneurotics has perhaps been placed in a false light by the above discussions. it appears that the sexual behavior of the psychoneurotic approaches in predisposition to the pervert and deviates by just so much from the normal. nevertheless, it is very possible that the constitutional disposition of these patients besides containing an immense amount of sexual repression and a predominant force of sexual impulse also possesses an unusual tendency to perversions in the broadest sense. however, an examination of milder cases shows that the last assumption is not an absolute requisite, or at least that in pronouncing judgment on the morbid effects one ought to discount the effect of one of the factors. in most psychoneurotics the disease first appears after puberty following the demands of the normal sexual life. against these the repression above all directs itself. or the disease comes on later, owing to the fact that the libido is unable to attain normal sexual gratification. in both cases the libido behaves like a stream the principal bed of which is dammed; it fills the collateral roads which until now perhaps have been empty. thus the manifestly great (though to be sure negative) tendency to perversion in psychoneurotics may be collaterally conditioned; at any rate, it is certainly collaterally increased. the fact of the matter is that the sexual repression has to be added as an inner factor to such external ones as restriction of freedom, inaccessibility to the normal sexual object, dangers of the normal sexual act, etc., which cause the origin of perversions in individuals who might have otherwise remained normal. in individual cases of neurosis the behavior may be different; now the congenital force of the tendency to perversion may be more decisive and at other times more influence may be exerted by the collateral increase of the same through the deviation of the libido from the normal sexual aim and object. it would be unjust to construe a contrast where a cooperation exists. the greatest results will always be brought about by a neurosis if constitution and experience cooperate in the same direction. a pronounced constitution may perhaps be able to dispense with the assistance of daily impressions, while a profound disturbance in life may perhaps bring on a neurosis even in an average constitution. these views similarly hold true in the etiological significance of the congenital and the accidental experiences in other spheres. if, however, preference is given to the assumption that an especially formed tendency to perversions is characteristic of the psychoneurotic constitution, there is a prospect of being able to distinguish a multiformity of such constitutions in accordance with the congenital preponderance of this or that erogenous zone, or of this or that partial impulse. whether there is a special relationship between the predisposition to perversions and the selection of the morbid picture has not, like many other things in this realm, been investigated. reference to the infantilism of sexuality by demonstrating the perverted feelings as symptomatic formations in psychoneurotics, we have enormously increased the number of persons who can be added to the perverts. this is not only because neurotics represent a very large proportion of humanity, but we must consider also that the neuroses in all their gradations run in an uninterrupted series to the normal state. moebius was quite justified in saying that we are all somewhat hysterical. hence, the very wide dissemination of perversions urged us to assume that the predisposition to perversions is no rare peculiarity but must form a part of the normally accepted constitution. we have heard that it is a question whether perversions should be referred to congenital determinations or whether they originate from accidental experiences, just as binet showed in fetichisms. now we are forced to the conclusion that there is indeed something congenital at the basis of perversions, but it is something _which is congenital in all persons_, which as a predisposition may fluctuate in intensity and is brought into prominence by influences of life. we deal here with congenital roots in the constitution of the sexual impulse which in one series of cases develop into real carriers of sexual activity (perverts); while in other cases they undergo an insufficient suppression (repression), so that as morbid symptoms they are enabled to attract to themselves in a round-about way a considerable part of the sexual energy; while again in favorable cases between the two extremes they originate the normal sexual life through effective restrictions and other elaborations. but we must also remember that the assumed constitution which shows the roots of all perversions will be demonstrable only in the child, though all impulses can be manifested in it only in moderate intensity. if we are led to suppose that neurotics conserve the infantile state of their sexuality or return to it, our interest must then turn to the sexual life of the child, and we will then follow the play of influences which control the processes of development of the infantile sexuality up to its termination in a perversion, a neurosis or a normal sexual life. [ ] the facts contained in the first "contribution" have been gathered from the familiar publications of krafft-ebing, moll, moebius, havelock ellis, schrenk-notzing, löwenfeld, eulenberg, j. bloch, and m. hirschfeld, and from the later works published in the "jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen." as these publications also mention the other literature bearing on this subject i may forbear giving detailed references. the conclusions reached through the investigation of sexual inverts are all based on the reports of j. sadger and on my own experience. [ ] for general use the word "libido" is best translated by "craving." (prof. james j. putnam, journal of abnormal psychology, vol. iv, .) [ ] for the difficulties entailed in the attempt to ascertain the proportional number of inverts compare the work of m. hirschfeld in the jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen, . cf. also brill, the conception of homosexuality, journal of the a.m.a., august , . [ ] such a striving against the compulsion to inversion favors cures by suggestion of psychoanalysis. [ ] many have justly emphasized the fact that the autobiographic statements of inverts, as to the time of the appearance of their tendency to inversion, are untrustworthy as they may have repressed from memory any evidences of heterosexual feelings. psychoanalysis has confirmed this suspicion in all cases of inversion accessible, and has decidedly changed their anamnesis by filling up the infantile amnesias. [ ] with what reserve the diagnosis of degeneration should be made and what slight practical significance can be attributed to it can be gathered from the discussions of moebius (ueber entartung; grenzfragen des nerven- und seelenlebens, no. iii, ). he says: "if we review the wide sphere of degeneration upon which we have here turned some light we can conclude without further ado that it is really of little value to diagnose degeneration." [ ] we must agree with the spokesman of "uranism" that some of the most prominent men known have been inverts and perhaps absolute inverts. [ ] in the conception of inversion the pathological features have been separated from the anthropological. for this credit is due to i. bloch (beiträge zur Ätiologie der psychopathia sexualis, teile, - ), who has also brought into prominence the existence of inversion in the old civilized nations. [ ] compare the last detailed discussion of somatic hermaphroditism (taruffi, hermaphroditismus und zeugungsunfähigkeit, german edit. by r. teuscher, ), and the works of neugebauer in many volumes of the jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen. [ ] j. halban, "die entstehung der geschlechtscharaktere," arch. für gynäkologie, bd. , . see also there the literature on the subject. [ ] according to a report in vol. of the jahrbuch f. sexuelle zwischenstufen, e. gley is supposed to have been the first to mention bisexuality as an explanation of inversion. he published a paper (les abérrations de l'instinct sexuel) in the revue philosophique as early as january, . it is moreover noteworthy that the majority of authors who trace the inversion to bisexuality assume this factor not only for the inverts but also for those who have developed normally, and justly interpret the inversion as a result of a disturbance in development. among these authors are chevalier (inversion sexuelle, ), and v. krafft-ebing ("zur erklärung der konträren sexualempfindung," jahrbücher f. psychiatrie u. nervenheilkunde, xiii), who states that there are a number of observations "from which at least the virtual and continued existence of this second center (of the underlying sex) results." a dr. arduin (die frauenfrage und die sexuellen zwischenstufen, d vol. of the jahrbuch f. sexuelle zwischenstufen, ) states that "in every man there exist male and female elements." see also the same jahrbuch, bd. i, ("die objektive diagnose der homosexualitat," by m. hirschfeld, pp. - ). in the determination of sex, as far as heterosexual persons are concerned, some are disproportionately more strongly developed than others. g. herman is firm in his belief "that in every woman there are male, and in every man there are female germs and qualities" (genesis, das gesetz der zeugung, bd., libido und manie, ). as recently as w. fliess (der ablauf des lebens) has claimed ownership of the idea of bisexuality (in the sense of double sex). psychoanalytic investigation very strongly opposes the attempt to separate homosexuals from other persons as a group of a special nature. by also studying sexual excitations other than the manifestly open ones it discovers that all men are capable of homosexual object selection and actually accomplish this in the unconscious. indeed the attachments of libidinous feelings to persons of the same sex play no small rôle as factors in normal psychic life, and as causative factors of disease they play a greater rôle than those belonging to the opposite sex. according to psychoanalysis, it rather seems that it is the independence of the object, selection of the sex of the object, the same free disposal over male and female objects, as observed in childhood, in primitive states and in prehistoric times, which forms the origin from which the normal as well as the inversion types developed, following restrictions in this or that direction. in the psychoanalytic sense the exclusive sexual interest of the man for the woman is also a problem requiring an explanation, and is not something that is self-evident and explainable on the basis of chemical attraction. the determination as to the definite sexual behavior does not occur until after puberty and is the result of a series of as yet not observable factors, some of which are of a constitutional, while some are of an accidental nature. certainly some of these factors can turn out to be so enormous that by their character they influence the result. in general, however, the multiplicity of the determining factors is reflected by the manifoldness of the outcomes in the manifest sexual behavior of the person. in the inversion types it can be ascertained that they are altogether controlled by an archaic constitution and by primitive psychic mechanisms. the importance of the _narcissistic object selection_ and the _clinging_ to the erotic significance of the _anal_ zone seem to be their most essential characteristics. but one gains nothing by separating the most extreme inversion types from the others on the basis of such constitutional peculiarities. what is found in the latter as seemingly an adequate determinant can also be demonstrated only in lesser force in the constitution of transitional types and in manifestly normal persons. the differences in the results may be of a qualitative nature, but analysis shows that the differences in the determinants are only quantitative. as a remarkable factor among the accidental influences of the object selection, we found the sexual rejection or the early sexual intimidation, and our attention was also called to the fact that the existence of both parents plays an important rôle in the child's life. the disappearance of a strong father in childhood not infrequently favors the inversion. finally, one might demand that the inversion of the sexual object should notionally be strictly separated from the mixing of the sex characteristics in the subject. a certain amount of independence is unmistakable also in this relation. [ ] although psychoanalysis has not yet given us a full explanation for the origin of inversion, it has revealed the psychic mechanism of its genesis and has essentially enriched the problems in question. in all the cases examined we have ascertained that the later inverts go through in their childhood a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation on the woman (usually on the mother) and after overcoming it they identify themselves with the woman and take themselves as the sexual object; that is, proceeding on a narcissistic basis, they look for young men resembling themselves in persons whom they wish to love as their mother has loved them. we have, moreover, frequently found that alleged inverts are by no means indifferent to the charms of women, but the excitation evoked by the woman is always transferred to a male object. they thus repeat through life the mechanism which gave origin to their inversion. their obsessive striving for the man proves to be determined by their restless flight from the woman. [ ] the most pronounced difference between the sexual life (liebesleben) of antiquity and ours lies in the fact that the ancients placed the emphasis on the impulse itself, while we put it on its object. the ancients extolled the impulse and were ready to ennoble through it even an inferior object, while we disparage the activity of the impulse as such and only countenance it on account of the merits of the object. [ ] i must mention here that the blind obedience evinced by the hypnotized subject to the hypnotist causes me to think that the nature of hypnosis is to be found in the unconscious fixation of the libido on the person of the hypnotizer (by means of the masochistic component of the sexual impulse). ferenczi connects this character of suggestibility with the "parent complex" (jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische forschungen, i, ). [ ] moreover, it is to be noted that sexual overvaluation does not become pronounced in all mechanisms of object selection, and that we shall later learn to know another and more direct explanation for the sexual rôle of the other parts of the body. [ ] further investigations lead to the conclusion that i. bloch has overestimated the factor of excitement-hunger (reizhunger). the various roads upon which the libido moves behave to each other from the very beginning like communicating pipes; the factor of collateral streaming must also be considered. [ ] this weakness corresponds to the constitutional predisposition. the early sexual intimidation which pushes the person away from the normal sexual aim and urges him to seek a substitute, has been demonstrated by psychoanalysis, as an accidental determinant. [ ] the shoe or slipper is accordingly a symbol for the female genitals. [ ] psychoanalysis has filled up the gap in the understanding of fetichisms by showing that the selection of the fetich depends on a coprophilic smell-desire which has been lost by repression. feet and hair are strong smelling objects which are raised to fetiches after the renouncing of the now unpleasant sensation of smell. accordingly, only the filthy and ill-smelling foot is the sexual object in the perversion which corresponds to the foot fetichism. another contribution to the explanation of the fetichistic preference of the foot is found in the infantile sexual theories (see later). the foot replaces the penis which is so much missed in the woman. in some cases of foot fetichism it could be shown that the desire for looking originally directed to the genitals, which wished to reach its object from below, was stopped on the way by prohibition and repression, and therefore adhered to the foot or shoe as a fetich. in conformity with infantile expectation, the female genital was hereby imagined as a male genital. [ ] i have no doubt that the conception of the "beautiful" is rooted in the soil of sexual excitement and originally signified the sexual excitant. the more remarkable, therefore, is the fact that the genitals, the sight of which provokes the greatest sexual excitement, can really never be considered "beautiful." [ ] cf. here the later communication on the pregenital phases of the sexual development, in which this view is confirmed. see below, "ambivalence." [ ] instead of substantiating this statement by many examples i will merely cite havelock ellis (the sexual impulse, ): "all known cases of sadism and masochism, even those cited by v. krafft-ebing, always show (as has already been shown by colin, scott, and féré) traces of both groups of manifestations in the same individual." [ ] on the other hand the restricting forces of the sexual evolution--disgust, shame, morality--must also be looked upon as historic precipitates of the outer inhibitions which the sexual impulse experienced in the psychogenesis of humanity. one can observe that they appear in their time during the development of the individual almost spontaneously at the call of education and influence. [ ] studien über hysterie, , j. breuer tells of the patient on whom he first practiced the cathartic method: "the sexual factor was surprisingly undeveloped." [ ] the well-known fancies of perverts which under favorable conditions are changed into contrivances, the delusional fears of paranoiacs which are in a hostile manner projected on others, and the unconscious fancies of hysterics which are discovered in their symptoms by psychoanalysis, agree as to content in the minutest details. [ ] a psychoneurosis very often associates itself with a manifest inversion in which the heterosexual feeling becomes subjected to complete repression.--it is but just to state that the necessity of a general recognition of the tendency to inversion in psychoneurotics was first imparted to me personally by wilh. fliess, of berlin, after i had myself discovered it in some cases. [ ] it is not easy to justify here this assumption which was taken from a definite class of neurotic diseases. on the other hand, it would be impossible to assert anything definite concerning the impulses if one did not take the trouble of mentioning these presuppositions. [ ] one should here think of moll's assertion, who divides the sexual impulse into the impulses of contrectation and detumescence. contrectation signifies a desire to touch the skin. ii the infantile sexuality it is a part of popular belief about the sexual impulse that it is absent in childhood and that it first appears in the period of life known as puberty. this, though a common error, is serious in its consequences and is chiefly due to our present ignorance of the fundamental principles of the sexual life. a comprehensive study of the sexual manifestations of childhood would probably reveal to us the existence of the essential features of the sexual impulse, and would make us acquainted with its development and its composition from various sources. *the neglect of the infantile.*--it is remarkable that those writers who endeavor to explain the qualities and reactions of the adult individual have given so much more attention to the ancestral period than to the period of the individual's own existence--that is, they have attributed more influence to heredity than to childhood. as a matter of fact, it might well be supposed that the influence of the latter period would be easier to understand, and that it would be entitled to more consideration than heredity.[ ] to be sure, one occasionally finds in medical literature notes on the premature sexual activities of small children, about erections and masturbation and even actions resembling coitus, but these are referred to merely as exceptional occurrences, as curiosities, or as deterring examples of premature perversity. no author has to my knowledge recognized the normality of the sexual impulse in childhood, and in the numerous writings on the development of the child the chapter on "sexual development" is usually passed over.[ ] *infantile amnesia.*--this remarkable negligence is due partly to conventional considerations, which influence the writers on account of their own bringing up, and partly to a psychic phenomenon which has thus far remained unexplained. i refer to the peculiar amnesia which veils from most people (not from all!) the first years of their childhood, usually the first six or eight years. so far it has not occurred to us that this amnesia ought to surprise us, though we have good reasons for surprise. for we are informed that in those years from which we later obtain nothing except a few incomprehensible memory fragments, we have vividly reacted to impressions, that we have manifested pain and pleasure like any human being, that we have evinced love, jealousy, and other passions as they then affected us; indeed we are told that we have uttered remarks which proved to grown-ups that we possessed understanding and a budding power of judgment. still we know nothing of all this when we become older. why does our memory lag behind all our other psychic activities? we really have reason to believe that at no time of life are we more capable of impressions and reproductions than during the years of childhood.[ ] on the other hand we must assume, or we may convince ourselves through psychological observations on others, that the very impressions which we have forgotten have nevertheless left the deepest traces in our psychic life, and acted as determinants for our whole future development. we conclude therefore that we do not deal with a real forgetting of infantile impressions but rather with an amnesia similar to that observed in neurotics for later experiences, the nature of which consists in their being detained from consciousness (repression). but what forces bring about this repression of the infantile impressions? he who can solve this riddle will also explain hysterical amnesia. we shall not, however, hesitate to assert that the existence of the infantile amnesia gives us a new point of comparison between the psychic states of the child and those of the psychoneurotic. we have already encountered another point of comparison when confronted by the fact that the sexuality of the psychoneurotic preserves the infantile character or has returned to it. may there not be an ultimate connection between the infantile and the hysterical amnesias? the connection between the infantile and the hysterical amnesias is really more than a mere play of wit. the hysterical amnesia which serves the repression can only be explained by the fact that the individual already possesses a sum of recollections which have been withdrawn from conscious disposal and which by associative connection now seize that which is acted upon by the repelling forces of the repression emanating from consciousness.[ ] we may say that without infantile amnesia there would be no hysterical amnesia. i believe that the infantile amnesia which causes the individual to look upon his childhood as if it were a _prehistoric_ time and conceals from him the beginning of his own sexual life--that this amnesia is responsible for the fact that one does not usually attribute any value to the infantile period in the development of the sexual life. one single observer cannot fill the gap which has been thus produced in our knowledge. as early as i had already emphasized the significance of childhood for the origin of certain important phenomena connected with the sexual life, and since then i have not ceased to put into the foreground the importance of the infantile factor for sexuality. the sexual latency period of childhood and its interruptions the extraordinary frequent discoveries of apparently abnormal and exceptional sexual manifestations in childhood, as well as the discovery of infantile reminiscences in neurotics, which were hitherto unconscious, allow us to sketch the following picture of the sexual behavior of childhood.[ ] it seems certain that the newborn child brings with it the germs of sexual feelings which continue to develop for some time and then succumb to a progressive suppression, which is in turn broken through by the proper advances of the sexual development and which can be checked by individual idiosyncrasies. nothing is known concerning the laws and periodicity of this oscillating course of development. it seems, however, that the sexual life of the child mostly manifests itself in the third or fourth year in some form accessible to observation.[ ] *the sexual inhibition.*--it is during this period of total or at least partial latency that the psychic forces develop which later act as inhibitions on the sexual life, and narrow its direction like dams. these psychic forces are loathing, shame, and moral and esthetic ideal demands. we may gain the impression that the erection of these dams in the civilized child is the work of education; and surely education contributes much to it. in reality, however, this development is organically determined and can occasionally be produced without the help of education. indeed education remains properly within its assigned realm only if it strictly follows the path of the organic determinant and impresses it somewhat cleaner and deeper. *reaction formation and sublimation.*--what are the means that accomplish these very important constructions so significant for the later personal culture and normality? they are probably brought about at the cost of the infantile sexuality itself, the influx of which has not stopped even in this latency period--the energy of which indeed has been turned away either wholly or partially from sexual utilization and conducted to other aims. the historians of civilization seem to be unanimous in the opinion that such deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims to new aims, a process which merits the name of _sublimation_, has furnished powerful components for all cultural accomplishments. we will therefore add that the same process acts in the development of every individual, and that it begins to act in the sexual latency period.[ ] we can also venture an opinion about the mechanisms of such sublimation. the sexual feelings of these infantile years on the one hand could not be utilizable, since the procreating functions are postponed,--this is the chief character of the latency period; on the other hand, they would in themselves be perverse, as they would emanate from erogenous zones and would be born of impulses which in the individual's course of development could only evoke a feeling of displeasure. they therefore awaken contrary forces (feelings of reaction), which in order to suppress such displeasure, build up the above mentioned psychic dams: loathing, shame, and morality.[ ] *the interruptions of the latency period.*--without deluding ourselves as to the hypothetical nature and deficient clearness of our understanding regarding the infantile period of latency and delay, we will return to reality and state that such a utilization of the infantile sexuality represents an ideal bringing up from which the development of the individual usually deviates in some measure and often very considerably. a portion of the sexual manifestation which has withdrawn from sublimation occasionally breaks through, or a sexual activity remains throughout the whole duration of the latency period until the reinforced breaking through of the sexual impulse in puberty. in so far as they have paid any attention to infantile sexuality the educators behave as if they shared our views concerning the formation of the moral forces of defence at the cost of sexuality, and as if they knew that sexual activity makes the child uneducable; for the educators consider all sexual manifestations of the child as an "evil" in the face of which little can be accomplished. we have, however, every reason for directing our attention to those phenomena so much feared by the educators, for we expect to find in them the solution of the primitive formation of the sexual impulse. the manifestations of the infantile sexuality for reasons which we shall discuss later we will take as a model of the infantile sexual manifestations thumbsucking (pleasure-sucking), to which the hungarian pediatrist, lindner, has devoted an excellent essay.[ ] *thumbsucking.*--thumbsucking, which manifests itself in the nursing baby and which may be continued till maturity or throughout life, consists in a rhythmic repetition of sucking contact with the mouth (the lips), wherein the purpose of taking nourishment is excluded. a part of the lip itself, the tongue, which is another preferable skin region within reach, and even the big toe--may be taken as objects for sucking. simultaneously, there is also a desire to grasp things, which manifests itself in a rhythmical pulling of the ear lobe and which may cause the child to grasp a part of another person (generally the ear) for the same purpose. the pleasure-sucking is connected with an entire exhaustion of attention and leads to sleep or even to a motor reaction in the form of an orgasm.[ ] pleasure-sucking is often combined with a rubbing contact with certain sensitive parts of the body, such as the breast and external genitals. it is by this road that many children go from thumb-sucking to masturbation. lindner himself has recognized the sexual nature of this action and openly emphasized it. in the nursery thumbsucking is often treated in the same way as any other sexual "naughtiness" of the child. a very strong objection was raised against this view by many pediatrists and neurologists which in part is certainly due to the confusion of the terms "sexual" and "genital." this contradiction raises the difficult question, which cannot be rejected, namely, in what general traits do we wish to recognize the sexual manifestations of the child. i believe that the association of the manifestations into which we gained an insight through psychoanalytic investigation justify us in claiming thumbsucking as a sexual activity and in studying through it the essential features of the infantile sexual activity. *autoerotism.*--it is our duty here to arrange this state of affairs differently. let us insist that the most striking character of this sexual activity is that the impulse is not directed against other persons but that it gratifies itself on its own body; to use the happy term invented by havelock ellis, we will say that it is autoerotic.[ ] it is, moreover, clear that the action of the thumbsucking child is determined by the fact that it seeks a pleasure which has already been experienced and is now remembered. through the rhythmic sucking on a portion of the skin or mucous membrane it finds the gratification in the simplest way. it is also easy to conjecture on what occasions the child first experienced this pleasure which it now strives to renew. the first and most important activity in the child's life, the sucking from the mother's breast (or its substitute), must have acquainted it with this pleasure. we would say that the child's lips behaved like an _erogenous zone_, and that the excitement through the warm stream of milk was really the cause of the pleasurable sensation. to be sure, the gratification of the erogenous zone was at first united with the gratification of taking nourishment. he who sees a satiated child sink back from the mother's breast, and fall asleep with reddened cheeks and blissful smile, will have to admit that this picture remains as typical of the expression of sexual gratification in later life. but the desire for repetition of the sexual gratification is separated from the desire for taking nourishment; a separation which becomes unavoidable with the appearance of the teeth when the nourishment is no longer sucked in but chewed. the child does not make use of a strange object for sucking but prefers its own skin because it is more convenient, because it thus makes itself independent of the outer world which it cannot yet control, and because in this way it creates for itself, as it were, a second, even if an inferior, erogenous zone. the inferiority of this second region urges it later to seek the same parts, the lips of another person. ("it is a pity that i cannot kiss myself," might be attributed to it.) not all children suck their thumbs. it may be assumed that it is found only in children in whom the erogenous significance of the lip-zone is constitutionally reënforced. children in whom this is retained are habitual kissers as adults and show a tendency to perverse kissing, or as men they have a marked desire for drinking and smoking. but if repression comes into play they experience disgust for eating and evince hysterical vomiting. by virtue of the community of the lip-zone the repression encroaches upon the impulse of nourishment. many of my female patients showing disturbances in eating, such as hysterical globus, choking sensations, and vomiting, have been energetic thumbsuckers during infancy. in the thumbsucking or pleasure-sucking we have already been able to observe the three essential characters of an infantile sexual manifestation. the latter has its origin in conjunction with a bodily function which is very important for life, it does not yet know any sexual object, it is _autoerotic_ and its sexual aim is under the control of an _erogenous zone_. let us assume for the present that these characters also hold true for most of the other activities of the infantile sexual impulse. the sexual aim of the infantile sexuality *the characters of the erogenous zones.*--from the example of thumbsucking we may gather a great many points useful for the distinguishing of an erogenous zone. it is a portion of skin or mucous membrane in which the stimuli produce a feeling of pleasure of definite quality. there is no doubt that the pleasure-producing stimuli are governed by special determinants which we do not know. the rhythmic characters must play some part in them and this strongly suggests an analogy to tickling. it does not, however, appear so certain whether the character of the pleasurable feeling evoked by the stimulus can be designated as "peculiar," and in what part of this peculiarity the sexual factor exists. psychology is still groping in the dark when it concerns matters of pleasure and pain, and the most cautious assumption is therefore the most advisable. we may perhaps later come upon reasons which seem to support the peculiar quality of the sensation of pleasure. the erogenous quality may adhere most notably to definite regions of the body. as is shown by the example of thumbsucking, there are predestined erogenous zones. but the same example also shows that any other region of skin or mucous membrane may assume the function of an erogenous zone; it must therefore carry along a certain adaptability. the production of the sensation of pleasure therefore depends more on the quality of the stimulus than on the nature of the bodily region. the thumbsucking child looks around on his body and selects any portion of it for pleasure-sucking, and becoming accustomed to it, he then prefers it. if he accidentally strikes upon a predestined region, such as breast, nipple or genitals, it naturally has the preference. a quite analogous tendency to displacement is again found in the symptomatology of hysteria. in this neurosis the repression mostly concerns the genital zones proper; these in turn transmit their excitation to the other erogenous zones, usually dormant in mature life, which then behave exactly like genitals. but besides this, just as in thumbsucking, any other region of the body may become endowed with the excitation of the genitals and raised to an erogenous zone. erogenous and hysterogenous zones show the same characters.[ ] *the infantile sexual aim.*--the sexual aim of the infantile impulse consists in the production of gratification through the proper excitation of this or that selected erogenous zone. in order to leave a desire for its repetition this gratification must have been previously experienced, and we may be sure that nature has devised definite means so as not to leave this occurrence to mere chance. the arrangement which has fulfilled this purpose for the lip-zone we have already discussed; it is the simultaneous connection of this part of the body with the taking of nourishment. we shall also meet other similar mechanisms as sources of sexuality. the state of desire for repetition of gratification can be recognized through a peculiar feeling of tension which in itself is rather of a painful character, and through a centrally-determined feeling of itching or sensitiveness which is projected into the peripheral erogenous zone. the sexual aim may therefore be formulated as follows: the chief object is to substitute for the projected feeling of sensitiveness in the erogenous zone that outer stimulus which removes the feeling of sensitiveness by evoking the feeling of gratification. this external stimulus consists usually in a manipulation which is analogous to sucking. it is in full accord with our physiological knowledge if the desire happens to be awakened also peripherally through an actual change in the erogenous zone. the action is puzzling only to some extent as one stimulus for its suppression seems to want another applied to the same place. the masturbatic sexual manifestations[ ] it is a matter of great satisfaction to know that there is nothing further of greater importance to learn about the sexual activity of the child after the impulse of one erogenous zone has become comprehensible to us. the most pronounced differences are found in the action necessary for the gratification, which consists in sucking for the lip zone and which must be replaced by other muscular actions according to the situation and nature of the other zones. *the activity of the anal zone.*--like the lip zone the anal zone is, through its position, adapted to conduct the sexuality to the other functions of the body. it should be assumed that the erogenous significance of this region of the body was originally very large. through psychoanalysis one finds, not without surprise, the many transformations that are normally undertaken with the usual excitations emanating from here, and that this zone often retains for life a considerable fragment of genital irritability.[ ] the intestinal catarrhs so frequent during infancy produce intensive irritations in this zone, and we often hear it said that intestinal catarrh at this delicate age causes "nervousness." in later neurotic diseases they exert a definite influence on the symptomatic expression of the neurosis, placing at its disposal the whole sum of intestinal disturbances. considering the erogenous significance of the anal zone which has been retained at least in transformation, one should not laugh at the hemorrhoidal influences to which the old medical literature attached so much weight in the explanation of neurotic states. children utilizing the erogenous sensitiveness of the anal zone can be recognized by their holding back of fecal masses until through accumulation there result violent muscular contractions; the passage of these masses through the anus is apt to produce a marked irritation of the mucus membrane. besides the pain this must produce also a sensation of pleasure. one of the surest premonitions of later eccentricity or nervousness is when an infant obstinately refuses to empty his bowel when placed on the chamber by the nurse and reserves this function at its own pleasure. it does not concern him that he will soil his bed; all he cares for is not to lose the subsidiary pleasure while defecating. the educators have again the right inkling when they designate children who withhold these functions as bad. the content of the bowel which is an exciting object to the sexually sensitive surface of mucous membrane behaves like the precursor of another organ which does not become active until after the phase of childhood. in addition it has other important meanings to the nursling. it is evidently treated as an additional part of the body, it represents the first "donation," the disposal of which expresses the pliability while the retention of it can express the spite of the little being towards its environment. from the idea of "donation" he later gains the meaning of the "babe" which according to one of the infantile sexual theories is acquired through eating and is born through the bowel. the retention of fecal masses, which is at first intentional in order to utilize them, as it were, for masturbatic excitation of the anal zone, is at least one of the roots of constipation so frequent in neuropaths. the whole significance of the anal zone is mirrored in the fact that there are but few neurotics who have not their special scatologic customs, ceremonies, etc., which they retain with cautious secrecy. real masturbatic irritation of the anal zone by means of the fingers, evoked through either centrally or peripherally supported itching, is not at all rare in older children. *the activity of the genital zone.*--among the erogenous zones of the child's body there is one which certainly does not play the main rôle, and which cannot be the carrier of earliest sexual feeling--which, however, is destined for great things in later life. in both male and female it is connected with the voiding of urine (penis, clitoris), and in the former it is enclosed in a sack of mucous membrane, probably in order not to miss the irritations caused by the secretions which may arouse the sexual excitement at an early age. the sexual activities of this erogenous zone, which belongs to the real genitals, are the beginning of the later normal sexual life. owing to the anatomical position, the overflowing of secretions, the washing and rubbing of the body, and to certain accidental excitements (the wandering of intestinal worms in the girl), it happens that the pleasurable feeling which these parts of the body are capable of producing makes itself noticeable to the child even during the sucking age, and thus awakens desire for its repetition. when we review all the actual arrangements, and bear in mind that the measures for cleanliness have the same effect as the uncleanliness itself, we can then scarcely mistake nature's intention, which is to establish the future primacy of these erogenous zones for the sexual activity through the infantile onanism from which hardly an individual escapes. the action of removing the stimulus and setting free the gratification consists in a rubbing contiguity with the hand or in a certain previously-formed pressure reflex effected by the closure of the thighs. the latter procedure seems to be the more primitive and is by far the more common in girls. the preference for the hand in boys already indicates what an important part of the male sexual activity will be accomplished in the future by the impulse to mastery (bemächtigungstrieb).[ ] it can only help towards clearness if i state that the infantile masturbation should be divided into three phases. the first phase belongs to the nursing period, the second to the short flourishing period of sexual activity at about the fourth year, only the third corresponds to the one which is often considered exclusively as onanism of puberty. the infantile onanism seems to disappear after a brief time, but it may continue uninterruptedly till puberty and thus represent the first marked deviation from the development desirable for civilized man. at some time during childhood after the nursing period, the sexual impulse of the genitals reawakens and continues active for some time until it is again suppressed, or it may continue without interruption. the possible relations are very diverse and can only be elucidated through a more precise analysis of individual cases. the details, however, of this _second_ infantile sexual activity leave behind the profoundest (unconscious) impressions in the persons's memory; if the individual remains healthy they determine his character and if he becomes sick after puberty they determine the symptomatology of his neurosis.[ ] in the latter case it is found that this sexual period is forgotten and the conscious reminiscences pointing to them are displaced; i have already mentioned that i would like to connect the normal infantile amnesia with this infantile sexual activity. by psychoanalytic investigation it is possible to bring to consciousness the forgotten material, and thereby to remove a compulsion which emanates from the unconscious psychic material. *the return of the infantile masturbation.*--the sexual excitation of the nursing period returns during the designated years of childhood as a centrally determined tickling sensation demanding onanistic gratification, or as a pollution-like process which, analogous to the pollution of maturity, may attain gratification without the aid of any action. the latter case is more frequent in girls and in the second half of childhood; its determinants are not well understood, but it often, though not regularly, seems to have as a basis a period of early active onanism. the symptomatology of this sexual manifestation is poor; the genital apparatus is still undeveloped and all signs are therefore displayed by the urinary apparatus which is, so to say, the guardian of the genital apparatus. most of the so-called bladder disturbances of this period are of a sexual nature; whenever the enuresis nocturna does not represent an epileptic attack it corresponds to a pollution. the return of the sexual activity is determined by inner and outer causes which can be conjectured from the formation of the symptoms of neurotic diseases and definitely revealed by psychoanalytic investigations. the internal causes will be discussed later, the accidental outer causes attain at this time a great and permanent significance. as the first outer cause we have the influence of seduction which prematurely treats the child as a sexual object; under conditions favoring impressions this teaches the child the gratification of the genital zones, and thus usually forces it to repeat this gratification in onanism. such influences can come from adults or other children. i cannot admit that i overestimated its frequency or its significance in my contributions to the etiology of hysteria,[ ] though i did not know then that normal individuals may have the same experiences in their childhood, and hence placed a higher value on seductions than on the factors found in the sexual constitution and development.[ ] it is quite obvious that no seduction is necessary to awaken the sexual life of the child, that such an awakening may come on spontaneously from inner sources. *polymorphous-perverse disposition.*--it is instructive to know that under the influence of seduction the child may become polymorphous-perverse and may be misled into all sorts of transgressions. this goes to show that it carries along the adaptation for them in its disposition. the formation of such perversions meets but slight resistance because the psychic dams against sexual transgressions, such as shame, loathing and morality--which depend on the age of the child--are not yet erected or are only in the process of formation. in this respect the child perhaps does not behave differently from the average uncultured woman in whom the same polymorphous-perverse disposition exists. such a woman may remain sexually normal under usual conditions, but under the guidance of a clever seducer she will find pleasure in every perversion and will retain the same as her sexual activity. the same polymorphous or infantile disposition fits the prostitute for her professional activity, and in the enormous number of prostitutes and of women to whom we must attribute an adaptation for prostitution, even if they do not follow this calling, it is absolutely impossible not to recognize in their uniform disposition for all perversions the universal and primitive human. *partial impulses.*--for the rest, the influence of seduction does not aid us in unravelling the original relations of the sexual impulse, but rather confuses our understanding of the same, inasmuch as it prematurely supplies the child with the sexual object at a time when the infantile sexual impulse does not yet evince any desire for it. we must admit, however, that the infantile sexual life, though mainly under the control of erogenous zones, also shows components in which from the very beginning other persons are regarded as sexual objects. among these we have the impulses for looking and showing off, and for cruelty, which manifest themselves somewhat independently of the erogenous zones and which only later enter into intimate relationship with the sexual life; but along with the erogenous sexual activity they are noticeable even in the infantile years as separate and independent strivings. the little child is above all shameless, and during its early years it evinces definite pleasure in displaying its body and especially its sexual organs. a counterpart to this desire which is to be considered as perverse, the curiosity to see other persons' genitals, probably appears first in the later years of childhood when the hindrance of the feeling of shame has already reached a certain development. under the influence of seduction the looking perversion may attain great importance for the sexual life of the child. still, from my investigations of the childhood years of normal and neurotic patients, i must conclude that the impulse for looking can appear in the child as a spontaneous sexual manifestation. small children, whose attention has once been directed to their own genitals--usually by masturbation--are wont to progress in this direction without outside interference, and to develop a vivid interest in the genitals of their playmates. as the occasion for the gratification of such curiosity is generally afforded during the gratification of both excrementitious needs, such children become _voyeurs_ and are zealous spectators at the voiding of urine and feces of others, after this tendency has been repressed, the curiosity to see the genitals of others (one's own or those of the other sex) remains as a tormenting desire which in some neurotic cases furnishes the strongest motive power for the formation of symptoms. the cruelty component of the sexual impulse develops in the child with still greater independence of those sexual activities which are connected with erogenous zones. cruelty is especially near the childish character, since the inhibition which restrains the impulse to mastery before it causes pain to others--that is, the capacity for sympathy--develops comparatively late. as we know, a thorough psychological analysis of this impulse has not as yet been successfully accomplished; we may assume that the cruel feelings emanate from the impulse to mastery and appear at a period in the sexual life before the genitals have taken on their later rôle. it then dominates a phase of the sexual life, which we shall later describe as the pregenital organization. children who are distinguished for evincing especial cruelty to animals and playmates may be justly suspected of intensive and premature sexual activity in the erogenous zones; and in a simultaneous prematurity of all sexual impulses, the erogenous sexual activity surely seems to be primary. the absence of the barrier of sympathy carries with it the danger that the connections between cruelty and the erogenous impulses formed in childhood cannot be broken in later life. an erogenous source of the passive impulse for cruelty (masochism) is found in the painful irritation of the gluteal region which is familiar to all educators since the confessions of j.j. rousseau. this has justly caused them to demand that physical punishment, which usually concerns this part of the body, should be withheld from all children in whom the libido might be forced into collateral roads by the later demands of cultural education.[ ] the infantile sexual investigation *inquisitiveness.*--at the same time when the sexual life of the child reaches its first bloom, from the age of three to the age of five, it also evinces the beginning of that activity which is ascribed to the impulse for knowledge and investigation. the desire for knowledge can neither be added to the elementary components of the impulses nor can it be altogether subordinated under sexuality. its activity corresponds on the one hand to a sublimating mode of acquisition and on the other hand it labors with the energy of the desire for looking. its relations to the sexual life, however, are of particular importance, for we have learned from psychoanalysis that the inquisitiveness of children is attracted to the sexual problems unusually early and in an unexpectedly intensive manner, indeed it perhaps may first be awakened by the sexual problems. *the riddle of the sphinx.*--it is not theoretical but practical interests which start the work of the investigation activity in the child. the threat to the conditions of his existence through the actual or expected arrival of a new child, the fear of the loss in care and love which is connected with this event, cause the child to become thoughtful and sagacious. corresponding with the history of this awakening, the first problem with which it occupies itself is not the question as to the difference between the sexes, but the riddle: from where do children come? in a distorted form, which can easily be unraveled, this is the same riddle which was given by the theban sphinx. the fact of the two sexes is usually first accepted by the child without struggle and hesitation. it is quite natural for the male child to presuppose in all persons it knows a genital like his own, and to find it impossible to harmonize the lack of it with his conception of others. *the castration complex.*--this conviction is energetically adhered to by the boy and tenaciously defended against the contradictions which soon result, and are only given up after severe internal struggles (castration complex). the substitutive formations of this lost penis of the woman play a great part in the formation of many perversions. the assumption of the same (male) genital in all persons is the first of the remarkable and consequential infantile sexual theories. it is of little help to the child when biological science agrees with his preconceptions and recognizes the feminine clitoris as the real substitute for the penis. the little girl does not react with similar refusals when she sees the differently formed genital of the boy. she is immediately prepared to recognize it, and soon becomes envious of the penis; this envy reaches its highest point in the consequentially important wish that she also should be a boy. *birth theories.*--many people can remember distinctly how intensely they interested themselves, in the prepubescent period, in the question where children came from. the anatomical solutions at that time read very differently; the children come out of the breast or are cut out of the body, or the navel opens itself to let them out. outside of analysis one only seldom remembers the investigation corresponding to the early childhood years; it had long merged into repression but its results were thoroughly uniform. one gets children by eating something special (as in the fairy tale) and they are born through the bowel like a passage. these infantile theories recall the structures in the animal kingdom, especially do they recall the cloaca of the types which stand lower than the mammals. *sadistic conception of the sexual act.*--if children of so delicate an age become spectators of the sexual act between grown-ups, for which an occasion is furnished by the conviction of the grown-ups that little children cannot understand anything sexual, they cannot help conceiving the sexual act as a kind of maltreating or overpowering, that is, it impresses them in a sadistic sense. psychoanalysis also teaches us that such an early childhood impression contributes much to the disposition for a later sadistic displacement of the sexual aim. besides this children also occupy themselves with the problem of what the sexual act consists in or, as they grasp it, of what marriage consists, and seek the solution of the mystery mostly in an association to which the functions of urination and defecation give occasion. *the typical failure of the infantile sexual investigation.*--it can be stated in general about the infantile sexual theories that they are reproductions of the child's own sexual constitution, and that despite their grotesque mistakes they evince more understanding of the sexual processes than is credited to their creators. children also perceive the pregnancy of the mother and know how to interpret it correctly; the stork fable is very often related before auditors who confront it with a deep, but mostly mute suspicion. but as two elements remain unknown to the infantile sexual investigation, namely, the rôle of the propagating semen and the female genital opening--precisely the same points in which the infantile organization is still backward--the effort of the infantile investigator regularly remains fruitless, and ends in a renunciation which not infrequently leaves a lasting injury to the desire for knowledge. the sexual investigation of these early childhood years is always conducted alone, it signifies the first step towards independent orientation in the world, and causes a marked estrangement between the child and the persons of his environment who formerly enjoyed its full confidence. *the phases of development of the sexual organization.*--as characteristics of the infantile sexuality we have hitherto emphasized the fact that it is essentially autoerotic (it finds its object in its own body), and that its individual partial impulses, which on the whole are unconnected and independent of one another, are striving for the acquisition of pleasure. the end of this development forms the so-called normal sexual life of the adult in which the acquisition of pleasure has been put into the service of the function of propagation, and the partial impulses, under the primacy of one single erogenous zone, have formed a firm organization for the attainment of the sexual aim in a strange sexual object. *pregenital organizations.*--the study, with the help of psychoanalysis, of the inhibitions and disturbances in this course of development now permits us to recognize additions and primary stages of such organization of the partial impulses which likewise furnish a sort of sexual regime. these phases of the sexual organization normally will pass over smoothly and will only be recognizable by slight indications. only in pathological cases do they become active and discernible to coarse observation. organizations of the sexual life in which the genital zones have not yet assumed the dominating rôle we would call the _pregenital_ phase. so far we have become acquainted with two of them which recall reversions to early animal states. one of the first of such pregenital sexual organizations is the _oral_, or if we wish, the cannibalistic. here the sexual activity is not yet separated from the taking of nourishment, and the contrasts within the same not yet differentiated. the object of the one activity is also that of the other, the sexual aim consists in the _incorporating_ into one's own body of the object, it is the prototype of that which later plays such an important psychic rôle as _identification_. as a remnant of this fictitious phase of organization forced on us by pathology we can consider thumbsucking. here the sexual activity became separated from the nourishment activity and the strange object was given up in favor of one from his own body. a second pregenital phase is the sadistic-anal organization. here the contrasts which run through the whole sexual life are already developed, but cannot yet be designated as _masculine_ and _feminine_, but must be called _active_ and _passive_. the activity is supplied by the musculature of the body through the mastery impulse; the erogenous mucous membrane of the bowel manifests itself above all as an organ with a passive sexual aim, for both strivings there are objects present, which however do not merge together. besides them there are other partial impulses which are active in an autoerotic manner. the sexual polarity and the strange object can thus already be demonstrated in this phase. the organization and subordination under the function of propagation are still lacking. *ambivalence.*--this form of the sexual organization could be retained throughout life and continue to draw to itself a large part of the sexual activity. the prevalence of sadism and the rôle of the cloaca of the anal zone stamps it with an exquisitely archaic impression. as another characteristic belonging to it we can mention the fact that the contrasting pair of impulses are developed in almost the same manner, a behavior which was designated by bleuler with the happy name of _ambivalence_. the assumption of the pregenital organizations of the sexual life is based on the analysis of the neuroses and hardly deserves any consideration without a knowledge of the same. we may expect that continued analytic efforts will furnish us with still more disclosures concerning the structure and development of the normal sexual function. to complete the picture of the infantile sexual life one must add that frequently or regularly an object selection takes place even in childhood which is as characteristic as the one we have represented for the phase of development of puberty. this object selection proceeds in such a manner that all the sexual strivings proceed in the direction of one person in whom they wish to attain their aim. this is then the nearest approach to the definitive formation of the sexual life after puberty, that is possible in childhood. it differs from the latter only in the fact that the collection of the partial impulses and their subordination to the primacy of the genitals is very imperfectly or not at all accomplished in childhood. the establishment of this primacy in the service of propagation is therefore the last phase through which the sexual organization passes. *the two periods of object selection.*--that the object selection takes place in two periods, or in two shifts, can be spoken of as a typical occurrence. the first shift has its origin between the age of three and five years, and is brought to a stop or to retrogression by the latency period; it is characterized by the infantile nature of its sexual aims. the second shift starts with puberty and determines the definitive formation of the sexual life. the fact of the double object selection which is essentially due to the effect of the latency period, becomes most significant for the disturbance of this terminal state. the results of the infantile object selection reach into the later period; they are either preserved as such or are even refreshed at the time of puberty. but due to the development of the repression which takes place between the two phases they turn out as unutilizable. the sexual aims have become softened and now represent what we can designate as the _tender_ streams of the sexual life. only psychoanalytic investigation can demonstrate that behind this tenderness, such as honoring and esteeming, there is concealed the old sexual strivings of the infantile partial impulses which have now become useless. the object selection of the pubescent period must renounce the infantile objects and begin anew as a sensuous stream. the fact that the two streams do not meet often enough has as a result that one of the ideals of the sexual life, namely, the union of all desires in one object, can not be attained. the sources of the infantile sexuality in our effort to follow up the origins of the sexual impulse, we have thus far found that the sexual excitement originates (_a_) as an imitation of a gratification which has been experienced in conjunction with other organic processes; (_b_) through the appropriate peripheral stimulation of erogenous zones; (_c_) and as an expression of some "impulse," like the looking and cruelty impulses, the origin of which we do not yet fully understand. the psychoanalytic investigation of later life which leads back to childhood and the contemporary observation of the child itself coöperate to reveal to us still other regularly-flowing sources of the sexual excitement. the observation of childhood has the disadvantage of treating easily misunderstood material, while psychoanalysis is made difficult by the fact that it can reach its objects and conclusions only by great detours; still the united efforts of both methods achieve a sufficient degree of positive understanding. in investigating the erogenous zones we have already found that these skin regions merely show the special exaggeration of a form of sensitiveness which is to a certain degree found over the whole surface of the skin. it will therefore not surprise us to learn that certain forms of general sensitiveness in the skin can be ascribed to very distinct erogenous action. among these we will above all mention the temperature sensitiveness; this will perhaps prepare us for the understanding of the therapeutic effects of warm baths. *mechanical excitation.*--we must, moreover, describe here the production of sexual excitation by means of rhythmic mechanical shaking of the body. there are three kinds of exciting influences: those acting on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular nerves, those acting on the skin, and those acting on the deep parts, such as the muscles and joints. the sexual excitation produced by these influences seems to be of a pleasurable nature--it is worth emphasizing that for some time we shall continue to use indiscriminately the terms "sexual excitement" and "gratification" leaving the search for an explanation of the terms to a later time--and that the pleasure is produced by mechanical stimulation is proved by the fact that children are so fond of play involving passive motion, like swinging or flying in the air, and repeatedly demand its repetition.[ ] as we know, rocking is regularly used in putting restless children to sleep. the shaking sensation experienced in wagons and railroad trains exerts such a fascinating influence on older children, that all boys, at least at one time in their lives, want to become conductors and drivers. they are wont to ascribe to railroad activities an extraordinary and mysterious interest, and during the age of phantastic activity (shortly before puberty) they utilize these as a nucleus for exquisite sexual symbolisms. the desire to connect railroad travelling with sexuality apparently originates from the pleasurable character of the sensation of motion. when the repression later sets in and changes so many of the childish likes into their opposites, these same persons as adolescents and adults then react to the rocking and rolling with nausea and become terribly exhausted by a railroad journey, or they show a tendency to attacks of anxiety during the journey, and by becoming obsessed with railroad phobia they protect themselves against a repetition of the painful experiences. this also fits in with the not as yet understood fact that the concurrence of fear with mechanical shaking produces the severest hysterical forms of traumatic neurosis. it may at least be assumed that inasmuch as even a slight intensity of these influences becomes a source of sexual excitement, the action of an excessive amount of the same will produce a profound disorder in the sexual mechanism. *muscular activity.*--it is well known that the child has need for strong muscular activity, from the gratification of which it draws extraordinary pleasure. whether this pleasure has anything to do with sexuality, whether it includes in itself sexual satisfaction? or can be the occasion of sexual excitement; all this may be refuted by critical consideration, which will probably be directed also to the position taken above that the pleasure in the sensations of passive movement are of sexual character or that they are sexually exciting. the fact remains, however, that a number of persons report that they experienced the first signs of excitement in their genitals during fighting or wrestling with playmates, in which situation, besides the general muscular exertion, there is an intensive contact with the opponent's skin which also becomes effective. the desire for muscular contest with a definite person, like the desire for word contest in later years, is a good sign that the object selection has been directed toward this person. "was sich liebt, das neckt sich."[ ] in the promotion of sexual excitement through muscular activity we might recognize one of the sources of the sadistic impulse. the infantile connection between fighting and sexual excitement acts in many persons as a determinant for the future preferred course of their sexual impulse.[ ] *affective processes.*--the other sources of sexual excitement in the child are open to less doubt. through contemporary observations, as well as through later investigations, it is easy to ascertain that all more intensive affective processes, even excitements of a terrifying nature, encroach upon sexuality; this can at all events furnish us with a contribution to the understanding of the pathogenic action of such emotions. in the school child, fear of a coming examination or exertion expended in the solution of a difficult task can become significant for the breaking through of sexual manifestations as well as for his relations to the school, inasmuch as under such excitements a sensation often occurs urging him to touch the genitals, or leading to a pollution-like process with all its disagreeable consequences. the behavior of children at school, which is so often mysterious to the teacher, ought surely to be considered in relation with their germinating sexuality. the sexually-exciting influence of some painful affects, such as fear, shuddering, and horror, is felt by a great many people throughout life and readily explains why so many seek opportunities to experience such sensations, provided that certain accessory circumstances (as under imaginary circumstances in reading, or in the theater) suppress the earnestness of the painful feeling. if we might assume that the same erogenous action also reaches the intensive painful feelings, especially if the pain be toned down or held at a distance by a subsidiary determination, this relation would then contain the main roots of the masochistic-sadistic impulse, into the manifold composition of which we are gaining a gradual insight. *intellectual work.*--finally, is is evident that mental application or the concentration of attention on an intellectual accomplishment will result, especially often in youthful persons, but in older persons as well, in a simultaneous sexual excitement, which may be looked upon as the only justified basis for the otherwise so doubtful etiology of nervous disturbances from mental "overwork." if we now, in conclusion, review the evidences and indications of the sources of the infantile sexual excitement, which have been reported neither completely nor exhaustively, we may lay down the following general laws as suggested or established. it seems to be provided in the most generous manner that the process of sexual excitement--the nature of which certainly remains quite mysterious to us--should be set in motion. the factor making this provision in a more or less direct way is the excitation of the sensible surfaces of the skin and sensory organs, while the most immediate exciting influences are exerted on certain parts which are designated as erogenous zones. the criterion in all these sources of sexual excitement is really the quality of the stimuli, though the factor of intensity (in pain) is not entirely unimportant. but in addition to this there are arrangements in the organism which induce sexual excitement as a subsidiary action in a large number of inner processes as soon as the intensity of these processes has risen above certain quantitative limits. what we have designated as the partial impulses of sexuality are either directly derived from these inner sources of sexual excitation or composed of contributions from such sources and from erogenous zones. it is possible that nothing of any considerable significance occurs in the organism that does not contribute its components to the excitement of the sexual impulse. it seems to me at present impossible to shed more light and certainty on these general propositions, and for this i hold two factors responsible; first, the novelty of this manner of investigation, and secondly, the fact that the nature of the sexual excitement is entirely unfamiliar to us. nevertheless, i will not forbear speaking about two points which promise to open wide prospects in the future. *diverse sexual constitutions.*--(_a_) we have considered above the possibility of establishing the manifold character of congenital sexual constitutions through the diverse formation of the erogenous zones; we may now attempt to do the same in dealing with the indirect sources of sexual excitement. we may assume that, although these different sources furnish contributions in all individuals, they are not all equally strong in all persons; and that a further contribution to the differentiation of the diverse sexual constitution will be found in the preferred developments of the individual sources of sexual excitement. *the paths of opposite influences.*--(_b_) since we are now dropping the figurative manner of expression hitherto employed, by which we spoke of _sources_ of sexual excitement, we may now assume that all the connecting ways leading from other functions to sexuality must also be passable in the reverse direction. for example, if the lip zone, the common possession of both functions, is responsible for the fact that the sexual gratification originates during the taking of nourishment, the same factor offers also an explanation for the disturbances in the taking of nourishment if the erogenous functions of the common zone are disturbed. as soon as we know that concentration of attention may produce sexual excitement, it is quite natural to assume that acting on the same path, but in a contrary direction, the state of sexual excitement will be able to influence the availability of the voluntary attention. a good part of the symptomatology of the neuroses which i trace to disturbance of sexual processes manifests itself in disturbances of the other non-sexual bodily functions, and this hitherto incomprehensible action becomes less mysterious if it only represents the counterpart of the influences controlling the production of the sexual excitement. however the same paths through which sexual disturbances encroach upon the other functions of the body must in health be supposed to serve another important function. it must be through these paths that the attraction of the sexual motive-powers to other than sexual aims, the sublimation of sexuality, is accomplished. we must conclude with the admission that very little is definitely known concerning the paths beyond the fact that they exist, and that they are probably passable in both directions. [ ] for it is really impossible to have a correct knowledge of the part belonging to heredity without first understanding the part belonging to the infantile. [ ] this assertion on revision seemed even to myself so bold that i decided to test its correctness by again reviewing the literature. the result of this second review did not warrant any change in my original statement. the scientific elaboration of the physical as well as the psychic phenomena of the infantile sexuality is still in its initial stages. one author (s. bell, "a preliminary study of the emotions of love between the sexes," american journal of psychology, xiii, ) says: "i know of no scientist who has given a careful analysis of the emotion as it is seen in the adolescent." the only attention given to somatic sexual manifestations occurring before the age of puberty was in connection with degenerative manifestations, and these were referred to as a sign of degeneration. a chapter on the sexual life of children is not to be found in all the representative psychologies of this age which i have read. among these works i can mention the following: preyer; baldwin (the development of the mind in the child and in the race, ); pérez (l'enfant de - ans, ); strümpel (die pädagogische pathologie, ); karl groos (das seelenleben des kindes, ); th. heller (grundriss der heilpädagogic, ); sully (observations concerning childhood, ). the best impression of the present situation of this sphere can be obtained from the journal die kinderfehler (issued since ). on the other hand one gains the impression that the existence of love in childhood is in no need of demonstration. pérez (l.c.) speaks for it; k. groos (die spiele der menschen, ) states that some children are very early subject to sexual emotions, and show a desire to touch the other sex (p. ); s. bell observed the earliest appearance of sex-love in a child during the middle part of its third year. see also havelock ellis, the sexual impulse, appendix ii. the above-mentioned judgment concerning the literature of infantile sexuality no longer holds true since the appearance of the great and important work of g. stanley hall (adolescence, its psychology and its relation to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education, vols., new york, ). the recent book of a. moll, das sexualleben des kindes, berlin, , offers no occasion for such a modification. see, on the other hand, bleuler, sexuelle abnormitäten der kinder (jahrbuch der schweizerischen gesellschaft für schulgesundheitspflege, ix, ). a book by mrs. dr. h.v. hug-hellmuth, aus dem seelenleben des kindes ( ), has taken full account of the neglected sexual factors. [translated in monograph series.] [ ] i have attempted to solve the problems presented by the earliest infantile recollections in a paper, "Über deckerinnerungen" (monatsschrift für psychiatrie und neurologie, vi, ). cf. also the psychopathology of everyday life, the macmillan co., new york, and unwin, london. [ ] one cannot understand the mechanism of repression when one takes into consideration only one of the two cooperating processes. as a comparison one may think of the way the tourist is despatched to the top of the great pyramid of gizeh; he is pushed from one side and pulled from the other. [ ] the use of the latter material is justified by the fact that the years of childhood of those who are later neurotics need not necessarily differ from those who are later normal except in intensity and distinctness. [ ] an anatomic analogy to the behavior of the infantile sexual function formulated by me is perhaps given by bayer (deutsches archiv für klinische medizin, bd. ) who claims that the internal genitals (uterus) are regularly larger in newborn than in older children. however, halban's conception, that after birth there is also an involution of the other parts of the sexual apparatus, has not been verified. according to halban (zeitschrift für geburtshilfe u. gynäkologie, liii, ) this process of involution ends after a few weeks of extra-uterine life. [ ] the expression "sexual latency period" (sexuelle latenz-periode) i have borrowed from w. fliess. [ ] in the case here discussed the sublimation of the sexual motive powers proceed on the road of reaction formations. but in general it is necessary to separate from each other sublimation and reaction formation as two diverse processes. sublimation may also result through other and simpler mechanisms. [ ] jahrbuch für kinderheilkunde, n.f., xiv, . [ ] this already shows what holds true for the whole life, namely, that sexual gratification is the best hypnotic. most nervous insomnias are traced to lack of sexual gratification. it is also known that unscrupulous nurses calm crying children to sleep by stroking their genitals. [ ] ellis spoils, however, the sense of his invented term by comprising under the phenomena of autoerotism the whole of hysteria and masturbation in its full extent. [ ] further reflection and observation lead me to attribute the quality of erogenity to all parts of the body and inner organs. see later on narcism. [ ] compare here the very comprehensive but confusing literature on onanism, _e.g._, rohleder, die masturbation, . cf. also the pamphlet, "die onanie," which contains the discussion of the vienna psychoanalytic society, wiesbaden, . [ ] compare here the essay on "charakter und analerotic" in the sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre, zweite folge, . cf. also brill, psychanalysis, chap. xiii, anal eroticism and character, w.b. saunders, philadelphia. [ ] unusual techniques in the performance of onanism seem to point to the influence of a prohibition against onanism which has been overcome. [ ] why neurotics, when conscience stricken, regularly connect it with their onanistic activity, as was only recently recognized by bleuler, is a problem which still awaits an exhaustive analysis. [ ] freud, selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses, d edition, translated by a.a. brill, n.y. nerv. and ment. dis. pub. co. nervous and mental disease monograph, series no. . [ ] havelock ellis, in an appendix to his study on the sexual impulse, , gives a number of autobiographic reports of normal persons treating their first sexual feelings in childhood and the causes of the same. these reports naturally show the deficiency due to infantile amnesia; they do not cover the prehistoric time in the sexual life and therefore must be supplemented by psychoanalysis of individuals who became neurotic. notwithstanding this these reports are valuable in more than one respect, and information of a similar nature has urged me to modify my etiological assumption as mentioned in the text. [ ] the above-mentioned assertions concerning the infantile sexuality were justified in , in the main through the results of psychoanalytic investigations in adults. direct observation of the child could not at the time be utilized to its full extent and resulted only in individual indications and valuable confirmations. since then it has become possible through the analysis of some cases of nervous disease in the delicate age of childhood to gain a direct understanding of the infantile psychosexuality (jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische forschungen, bd. , , ). i can point with satisfaction to the fact that direct observation has fully confirmed the conclusion drawn from psychoanalysis, and thus furnishes good evidence for the reliability of the latter method of investigation. moreover, the "analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy" (jahrbuch, bd. ) has taught us something new for which psychoanalysis had not prepared us, to wit, that sexual symbolism, the representation of the sexual by non-sexual objects and relations--reaches back into the years when the child is first learning to master the language. my attention has also been directed to a deficiency in the above-cited statement which for the sake of clearness described any conceivable separation between the two phases of autoerotism and object love as a temporal separation. from the cited analysis (as well as from the above-mentioned work of bell) we learn that children from three to five are capable of evincing a very strong object-selection which is accompanied by strong affects. [ ] some persons can recall that the contact of the moving air in swinging caused them direct sexual pleasure in the genitals. [ ] "those who love each other tease each other." [ ] the analyses of neurotic disturbances of walking and of agoraphobia remove all doubt as to the sexual nature of the pleasure of motion. as everybody knows modern cultural education utilizes sports to a great extent in order to turn away the youth from sexual activity; it would be more proper to say that it replaces the sexual pleasure by motion pleasure, and forces the sexual activity back upon one of its autoerotic components. iii the transformation of puberty with the beginning of puberty the changes set in which transform the infantile sexual life into its definite normal form. hitherto the sexual impulse has been preponderantly autoerotic; it now finds the sexual object. thus far it has manifested itself in single impulses and in erogenous zones seeking a certain pleasure as a single sexual aim. a new sexual aim now appears for the production of which all partial impulses coöperate, while the erogenous zones subordinate themselves to the primacy of the genital zone.[ ] as the new sexual aim assigns very different functions to the two sexes their sexual developments now part company. the sexual development of the man is more consistent and easier to understand, while in the woman there even appears a form of regression. the normality of the sexual life is guaranteed only by the exact concurrence of the two streams directed to the sexual object and sexual aim. it is like the piercing of a tunnel from opposite sides. the new sexual aim in the man consists in the discharging of the sexual products; it is not contradictory to the former sexual aim, that of obtaining pleasure; on the contrary, the highest amount of pleasure is connected with this final act in the sexual process. the sexual impulse now enters into the service of the function of propagation; it becomes, so to say, altruistic. if this transformation is to succeed its process must be adjusted to the original dispositions and all the peculiarities of the impulses. just as on every other occasion where new connections and compositions are to be formed in complicated mechanisms, here, too, there is a possibility for morbid disturbance if the new order of things does not get itself established. all morbid disturbances of the sexual life may justly be considered as inhibitions of development. the primacy of the genital zones and the fore-pleasure from the course of development as described we can clearly see the issue and the end aim. the intermediary transitions are still quite obscure and many a riddle will have to be solved in them. the most striking process of puberty has been selected as its most characteristic; it is the manifest growth of the external genitals which have shown a relative inhibition of growth during the latency period of childhood. simultaneously the inner genitals develop to such an extent as to be able to furnish sexual products or to receive them for the purpose of forming a new living being. a most complicated apparatus is thus formed which waits to be claimed. this apparatus can be set in motion by stimuli, and observation teaches that the stimuli can affect it in three ways: from the outer world through the familiar erogenous zones; from the inner organic world by ways still to be investigated; and from the psychic life, which merely represents a depository of external impressions and a receptacle of inner excitations. the same result follows in all three cases, namely, a state which can be designated as "sexual excitation" and which manifests itself in psychic and somatic signs. the psychic sign consists in a peculiar feeling of tension of a most urgent character, and among the manifold somatic signs the many changes in the genitals stand first. they have a definite meaning, that of readiness; they constitute a preparation for the sexual act (the erection of the penis and the glandular activity of the vagina). *the sexual tension*--the character of the tension of sexual excitation is connected with a problem the solution of which is as difficult as it would be important for the conception of the sexual process. despite all divergence of opinion regarding it in psychology, i must firmly maintain that a feeling of tension must carry with it the character of displeasure. for me it is conclusive that such a feeling carries with it the impulse to alter the psychic situation, and acts incitingly, which is quite contrary to the nature of perceived pleasure. but if we ascribe the tension of the sexual excitation to the feelings of displeasure we encounter the fact that it is undoubtedly pleasurably perceived. the tension produced by sexual excitation is everywhere accompanied by pleasure; even in the preparatory changes of the genitals there is a distinct feeling of satisfaction. what relation is there between this unpleasant tension and this feeling of pleasure? everything relating to the problem of pleasure and pain touches one of the weakest spots of present-day psychology. we shall try if possible to learn something from the determinations of the case in question and to avoid encroaching on the problem as a whole. let us first glance at the manner in which the erogenous zones adjust themselves to the new order of things. an important rôle devolves upon them in the preparation of the sexual excitation. the eye which is very remote from the sexual object is most often in position, during the relations of object wooing, to become attracted by that particular quality of excitation, the motive of which we designate as beauty in the sexual object. the excellencies of the sexual object are therefore also called "attractions." this attraction is on the one hand already connected with pleasure, and on the other hand it either results in an increase of the sexual excitation or in an evocation of the same where it is still wanting. the effect is the same if the excitation of another erogenous zone, _e.g._, the touching hand, is added to it. there is on the one hand the feeling of pleasure which soon becomes enhanced by the pleasure from the preparatory changes, and on the other hand there is a further increase of the sexual tension which soon changes into a most distinct feeling of displeasure if it cannot proceed to more pleasure. another case will perhaps be clearer; let us, for example, take the case where an erogenous zone, like a woman's breast, is excited by touching in a person who is not sexually excited at the time. this touching in itself evokes a feeling of pleasure, but it is also best adapted to awaken sexual excitement which demands still more pleasure. how it happens that the perceived pleasure evokes the desire for greater pleasure, that is the real problem. *fore-pleasure mechanism.*--but the rôle which devolves upon the erogenous zones is clear. what applies to one applies to all. they are all utilized to furnish a certain amount of pleasure through their own proper excitation, which increases the tension, and which is in turn destined to produce the necessary motor energy in order to bring to a conclusion the sexual act. the last part but one of this act is again a suitable excitation of an erogenous zone; _i.e._, the genital zone proper of the glans penis is excited by the object most fit for it, the mucous membrane of the vagina, and through the pleasure furnished by this excitation it now produces reflexly the motor energy which conveys to the surface the sexual substance. this last pleasure is highest in its intensity, and differs from the earliest ones in its mechanism. it is altogether produced through discharge, it is altogether gratification pleasure and the tension of the libido temporarily dies away with it. it does not seem to me unjustified to fix by name the distinction in the nature of these pleasures, the one through the excitation of the erogenous zones, and the other through the discharge of the sexual substance. in contradistinction to the end-pleasure, or pleasure of gratification of sexual activity, we can properly designate the first as _fore-pleasure_. the fore-pleasure is then the same as that furnished by the infantile sexual impulse, though on a reduced scale; while the _end-pleasure_ is new and is probably connected with determinations which first appear at puberty. the formula for the new function of the erogenous zones reads as follows: they are utilized for the purpose of making possible the production of the greater pleasure of gratification by means of the fore-pleasure which is gained from them as in infantile life. i have recently been able to elucidate another example from a quite different realm of the psychic life, in which likewise a greater feeling of pleasure is achieved by means of a lesser feeling of pleasure which thereby acts as an alluring premium. we had there also the opportunity of entering more deeply into the nature of pleasure.[ ] *dangers of the fore-pleasure.*--however the connection of fore-pleasure with the infantile life is strengthened by the pathogenic rôle which may devolve upon it. in the mechanism through which the fore-pleasure is expressed there exists an obvious danger to the attainment of the normal sexual aim. this occurs if it happens that there is too much fore-pleasure and too little tension in any part of the preparatory sexual process. the motive power for the further continuation of the sexual process then escapes, the whole road becomes shortened, and the preparatory action in question takes the place of the normal sexual aim. experience shows that such a hurtful condition is determined by the fact that the erogenous zone concerned or the corresponding partial impulse has already contributed an unusual amount of pleasure in infantile life. if other factors favoring fixation are added a compulsion readily results for the later life which prevents the fore-pleasure from arranging itself into a new combination. indeed, the mechanism of many perversions is of such a nature; they merely represent a lingering at a preparatory act of the sexual process. the failure of the function of the sexual mechanism through the fault of the fore-pleasure is generally avoided if the primacy of the genital zones has also already been sketched out in infantile life. the preparations of the second half of childhood (from the eighth year to puberty) really seem to favor this. during these years the genital zones behave almost as at the age of maturity; they are the seat of exciting sensations and of preparatory changes if any kind of pleasure is experienced through the gratification of other erogenous zones; although this effect remains aimless, _i.e._, it contributes nothing towards the continuation of the sexual process. besides the pleasure of gratification a certain amount of sexual tension appears even in infancy, though it is less constant and less abundant. we can now understand also why in the discussion of the sources of sexuality we had a perfectly good reason for saying that the process in question acts as sexual gratification as well as sexual excitement. we note that on our way towards the truth we have at first enormously exaggerated the distinctions between the infantile and the mature sexual life, and we therefore supplement what has been said with a correction. the infantile manifestations of sexuality determine not only the deviations from the normal sexual life but also the normal formations of the same. the problem of sexual excitement it remains entirely unexplained whence the sexual tension comes which originates simultaneously with the gratification of erogenous zones and what is its nature. the obvious supposition that this tension originates in some way from the pleasure itself is not only improbable in itself but untenable, inasmuch as during the greatest pleasure which is connected with the voiding of sexual substance there is no production of tension but rather a removal of all tension. hence, pleasure and sexual tension can be only indirectly connected. *the rôle of the sexual substance.*--aside from the fact that only the discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an end to the sexual excitement, there are other essential facts which bring the sexual tension into relation with the sexual products. in a life of continence the sexual activity is wont to discharge the sexual substance at night during pleasurable dream hallucinations of a sexual act, this discharge coming at changing but not at entirely capricious intervals; and the following interpretation of this process--the nocturnal pollution--can hardly be rejected, viz., that the sexual tension which brings about a substitute for the sexual act by the short hallucinatory road is a function of the accumulated semen in the reservoirs for the sexual products. experiences with the exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism speak for the same thing. where there is no stock of semen it is not only impossible to accomplish the sexual act, but there is also a lack of excitability in the erogenous zones, the suitable excitation of which can evoke no pleasure. we thus discover incidentally that a certain amount of sexual tension is itself necessary for the excitability of the erogenous zones. one would thus be forced to the assumption, which if i am not mistaken is quite generally adopted, that the accumulation of sexual substance produces and maintains the sexual tension. the pressure of these products on the walls of their receptacles acts as an excitant on the spinal center, the state of which is then perceived by the higher centers which then produce in consciousness the familiar feeling of tension. if the excitation of erogenous zones increases the sexual tension, it can only be due to the fact that the erogenous zones are connected with these centers by previously formed anatomical connections. they increase there the tone of the excitation, and with sufficient sexual tension they set in motion the sexual act, and with insufficient tension they merely stimulate a production of the sexual substance. the weakness of the theory which one finds adopted, _e.g._, in v. krafft-ebing's description of the sexual process, lies in the fact that it has been formed for the sexual activity of the mature man and pays too little heed to three kinds of relations which should also have been elucidated. we refer to the relations as found in the child, in the woman, and in the castrated male. in none of the three cases can we speak of an accumulation of sexual products in the same sense as in the man, which naturally renders difficult the general application of this scheme; still it may be admitted without any further ado that ways can be found to justify the subordination of even these cases. nevertheless one should be cautious about burdening the factor of accumulation of sexual products with actions which it seems incapable of supporting. *overestimation of the internal genitals.*--that sexual excitement can be independent to a considerable extent of the production of sexual substance seems to be shown by observations on castrated males, in whom the libido sometimes escapes the injury caused by the operation, although the opposite behavior, which is really the motive for the operation, is usually the rule. it is therefore not at all surprising, as c. rieger puts it, that the loss of the male germ glands in maturer age should exert no new influence on the psychic life of the individual. the germ glands are really not the sexuality, and the experience with castrated males only verifies what we had long before learned from the removal of the ovaries, namely that it is impossible to do away with the sexual character by removing the germ glands. to be sure, castration performed at a tender age, before puberty, comes nearer to this aim, but it would seem in this case that besides the loss of the sexual glands we must also consider the inhibition of development and other factors which are connected with that loss. *chemical theories.*--the truth remains, however, that we are unable to give any information about the nature of the sexual excitement for the reason that we do not know with what organ or organs sexuality is connected, since we have seen that the sexual glands have been overestimated in this significance. since surprising discoveries have taught us the important rôle of the thyroid gland in sexuality, we may assume that the knowledge of the essential factors of sexuality are still withheld from us. one who feels the need of filling up the large gap in our knowledge with a preliminary assumption may formulate for himself the following theory based on the active substances found in the thyroid. through the appropriate excitement of erogenous zones, as well as through other conditions under which sexual excitement originates, a material which is universally distributed in the organism becomes disintegrated, the decomposing products of which supply a specific stimulus to the organs of reproduction or to the spinal center connected with them. such a transformation of a toxic stimulus in a particular organic stimulus we are already familiar with from other toxic products introduced into the body from without. to treat, if only hypothetically, the complexities of the pure toxic and the physiologic stimulations which result in the sexual processes is not now our appropriate task. to be sure, i attach no value to this special assumption and i shall be quite ready to give it up in favor of another, provided its original character, the emphasis on the sexual chemism, were preserved. for this apparently arbitrary statement is supported by a fact which, though little heeded, is most noteworthy. the neuroses which can be traced only to disturbances of the sexual life show the greatest clinical resemblance to the phenomena of intoxication and abstinence which result from the habitual introduction of pleasure-producing poisonous substances (alkaloids.) the theory of the libido these assumptions concerning the chemical basis of the sexual excitement are in full accord with the auxiliary conception which we formed for the purpose of mastering the psychic manifestations of the sexual life. we have determined the concept of _libido_ as that of a force of variable quantity which has the capacity of measuring processes and transformations in the spheres of sexual excitement. this libido we distinguished from the energy which is to be generally adjudged to the psychic processes with reference to its special origin and thus we attribute to it also a qualitative character. in separating libidinous from other psychic energy we give expression to the assumption that the sexual processes of the organism are differentiated from the nutritional processes through a special chemism. the analyses of perversions and psychoneuroses have taught us that this sexual excitement is furnished not only from the so-called sexual parts alone but from all organs of the body. we thus formulate for ourselves the concept of a libido-quantum whose psychic representative we designate as the ego-libido; the production, increase, distribution and displacement of this ego-libido will offer the possible explanation for the observed psycho-sexual phenomena. but this ego-libido becomes conveniently accessible to psychoanalytic study only when the psychic energy is employed on sexual objects, that is when it becomes object libido. then we see it as it concentrates and fixes itself on objects, or as it leaves those objects and passes over to others from which positions it directs the individual's sexual activity, that is, it leads to partial and temporary extinction of the libido. psychoanalysis of the so-called transference neuroses (hysteria and compulsion neurosis) offers us here a reliable insight. concerning the fates of the object libido we also state that it is withdrawn from the object, that it is preserved floating in special states of tension and is finally taken back into the ego, so that it again becomes ego-libido. in contradistinction to the object-libido we also call the ego-libido narcissistic libido. from psychoanalysis we look over the boundary which we are not permitted to pass into the activity of the narcissistic libido and thus form an idea of the relations between the two. the narcissistic or ego-libido appears to us as the great reservoir from which the energy for the investment of the object is sent out and into which it is drawn back again, while the narcissistic libido investment of the ego appears to us as the realized primitive state in the first childhood, which only becomes hidden by the later emissions of the libido, and is retained at the bottom behind them. the task of a theory of libido of neurotic and psychotic disturbances would have for its object to express in terms of the libido-economy all observed phenomena and disclosed processes. it is easy to divine that the greater significance would attach thereby to the destinies of the ego-libido, especially where it would be the question of explaining the deeper psychotic disturbances. the difficulty then lies in the fact that the means of our investigation, psychoanalysis, at present gives us definite information only concerning the transformation of the object-libido, but cannot distinguish without further study the ego-libido from the other effective energies in the ego.[ ] differentiation between man and woman it is known that the sharp differentiation of the male and female character originates at puberty, and it is the resulting difference which, more than any other factor, decisively influences the later development of personality. to be sure, the male and female dispositions are easily recognizable even in infantile life; thus the development of sexual inhibitions (shame, loathing, sympathy, etc.) ensues earlier and with less resistance in the little girl than in the little boy. the tendency to sexual repression certainly seems much greater, and where partial impulses of sexuality are noticed they show a preference for the passive form. but, the autoerotic activity of the erogenous zones is the same in both sexes, and it is this agreement that removes the possibility of a sex differentiation in childhood as it appears after puberty. in respect to the autoerotic and masturbatic sexual manifestations, it may be asserted that the sexuality of the little girl has entirely a male character. indeed, if one could give a more definite content to the terms "masculine and feminine," one might advance the opinion that _the libido is regularly and lawfully of a masculine nature, whether in the man or in the woman; and if we consider its object, this may be either the man or the woman_.[ ] since becoming acquainted with the aspect of bisexuality i hold this factor as here decisive, and i believe that without taking into account the factor of bisexuality it will hardly be possible to understand the actually observed sexual manifestations in man and woman. *the leading zones in man and woman.*--further than this i can only add the following. the chief erogenous zone in the female child is the clitoris, which is homologous to the male penis. all i have been able to discover concerning masturbation in little girls concerned the clitoris and not those other external genitals which are so important for the later sexual functions. with few exceptions i myself doubt whether the female child can be seduced to anything but clitoris masturbation. the frequent spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement in little girls manifest themselves in a twitching of the clitoris, and its frequent erections enable the girl to understand correctly even without any instruction the sexual manifestations of the other sex; they simply transfer to the boys the sensations of their own sexual processes. if one wishes to understand how the little girl becomes a woman, he must follow up the further destinies of this clitoris excitation. puberty, which brings to the boy a great advance of libido, distinguishes itself in the girl by a new wave of repression which especially concerns the clitoris sexuality. it is a part of the male sexual life that sinks into repression. the reënforcement of the sexual inhibitions produced in the woman by the repression of puberty causes a stimulus in the libido of the man and forces it to increase its capacity; with the height of the libido there is a rise in the overestimation of the sexual, which can be present in its full force only when the woman refuses and denies her sexuality. if the sexual act is finally submitted to and the clitoris becomes excited its rôle is then to conduct the excitement to the adjacent female parts, and in this it acts like a chip of pine wood which is utilized to set fire to the harder wood. it often takes some time for this transference to be accomplished; during which the young wife remains anesthetic. this anesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris zone refuses to give up its excitability; a condition brought on by abundant activities in infantile life. it is known that anesthesia in women is often only apparent and local. they are anesthetic at the vaginal entrance but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or even through other zones. besides these erogenous causes of anesthesia there are also psychic causes likewise determined by the repression. if the transference of the erogenous excitability from the clitoris to the vagina has succeeded, the woman has thus changed her leading zone for the future sexual activity; the man on the other hand retains his from childhood. the main determinants for the woman's preference for the neuroses, especially for hysteria, lie in this change of the leading zone as well as in the repression of puberty. these determinants are therefore most intimately connected with the nature of femininity. the object-finding while the primacy of the genital zones is being established through the processes of puberty, and the erected penis in the man imperiously points towards the new sexual aim, _i.e._, towards the penetration of a cavity which excites the genital zone, the object-finding, for which also preparations have been made since early childhood, becomes consummated on the psychic side. while the very incipient sexual gratifications are still connected with the taking of nourishment, the sexual impulse has a sexual object outside its own body in his mother's breast. this object it loses later, perhaps at the very time when it becomes possible for the child to form a general picture of the person to whom the organ granting him the gratification belongs. the sexual impulse later regularly becomes autoerotic, and only after overcoming the latency period is there a resumption of the original relation. it is not without good reason that the suckling of the child at its mother's breast has become a model for every amour. the object-finding is really a re-finding.[ ] *the sexual object of the nursing period.*--however, even after the separation of the sexual activity from the taking of nourishment, there still remains from this first and most important of all sexual relations an important share, which prepares the object selection and assists in reestablishing the lost happiness. throughout the latency period the child learns to love other persons who assist it in its helplessness and gratify its wants; all this follows the model and is a continuation of the child's infantile relations to his wet nurse. one may perhaps hesitate to identify the tender feelings and esteem of the child for his foster-parents with sexual love; i believe, however, that a more thorough psychological investigation will establish this identity beyond any doubt. the intercourse between the child and its foster-parents is for the former an inexhaustible source of sexual excitation and gratification of erogenous zones, especially since the parents--or as a rule the mother--supplies the child with feelings which originate from her own sexual life; she pats it, kisses it, and rocks it, plainly taking it as a substitute for a full-valued sexual object.[ ] the mother would probably be terrified if it were explained to her that all her tenderness awakens the sexual impulse of her child and prepares its future intensity. she considers her actions as asexually "pure" love, for she carefully avoids causing more irritation to the genitals of the child than is indispensable in caring for the body. but as we know the sexual impulse is not awakened by the excitation of genital zones alone. what we call tenderness will some day surely manifest its influence on the genital zones also. if the mother better understood the high significance of the sexual impulse for the whole psychic life and for all ethical and psychic activities, the enlightenment would spare her all reproaches. by teaching the child to love she only fulfills her function; for the child should become a fit man with energetic sexual needs, and accomplish in life all that the impulse urges the man to do. of course, too much parental tenderness becomes harmful because it accelerates the sexual maturity, and also because it "spoils" the child and makes it unfit to temporarily renounce love or be satisfied with a smaller amount of love in later life. one of the surest premonitions of later nervousness is the fact that the child shows itself insatiable in its demands for parental tenderness; on the other hand, neuropathic parents, who usually display a boundless tenderness, often with their caressing awaken in the child a disposition for neurotic diseases. this example at least shows that neuropathic parents have nearer ways than inheritance by which they can transfer their disturbances to their children. *infantile fear.*--the children themselves behave from their early childhood as if their attachment to their foster-parents were of the nature of sexual love. the fear of children is originally nothing but an expression for the fact that they miss the beloved person. they therefore meet every stranger with fear, they are afraid of the dark because they cannot see the beloved person, and are calmed if they can grasp that person's hand. the effect of childish fears and of the terrifying stories told by nurses is overestimated if one blames the latter for producing the fear in children. children who are predisposed to fear absorb these stories, which make no impression whatever upon others; and only such children are predisposed to fear whose sexual impulse is excessive or prematurely developed, or has become exigent through pampering. the child behaves here like the adult, that is, it changes its libido into fear when it cannot bring it to gratification, and the grown-up who becomes neurotic on account of ungratified libido behaves in his anxiety like a child; he fears when he is alone, _i.e._, without a person of whose love he believes himself sure, and who can calm his fears by means of the most childish measures.[ ] *incest barriers.*--if the tenderness of the parents for the child has luckily failed to awaken the sexual impulse of the child prematurely, _i.e._, before the physical determinations for puberty appear, and if that awakening has not gone so far as to cause an unmistakable breaking through of the psychic excitement into the genital system, it can then fulfill its task and direct the child at the age of maturity in the selection of the sexual object. it would, of course, be most natural for the child to select as the sexual object that person whom it has loved since childhood with, so to speak, a suppressed libido.[ ] but owing to the delay of sexual maturity time has been gained for the erection beside the sexual inhibitions of the incest barrier, that moral prescription which explicitly excludes from the object selection the beloved person of infancy or blood relation. the observance of this barrier is above all a demand of cultural society which must guard against the absorption by the family of those interests which it needs for the production of higher social units. society, therefore, uses every means to loosen those family ties in every individual, especially in the boy, which are authoritative in childhood only.[ ] the object selection, however, is first accomplished in the imagination, and the sexual life of the maturing youth has hardly any escape except indulgence in phantasies or ideas which are not destined to be brought to execution. in the phantasies of all persons the infantile inclinations, now reënforced by somatic emphasis, reappear, and among them one finds in regular frequency and in the first place the sexual feeling of the child for the parents. this has usually already been differentiated by the sexual attraction, the attraction of the son for the mother and of the daughter for the father.[ ] simultaneously with the overcoming and rejection of these distinctly incestuous phantasies there occurs one of the most important as well as one of the most painful psychic accomplishments of puberty; it is the breaking away from the parental authority, through which alone is formed that opposition between the new and old generations which is so important for cultural progress. many persons are detained at each of the stations in the course of development through which the individual must pass; and accordingly there are persons who never overcome the parental authority and never, or very imperfectly, withdraw their affection from their parents. they are mostly girls, who, to the delight of their parents, retain their full infantile love far beyond puberty, and it is instructive to find that in their married life these girls are incapable of fulfilling their duties to their husbands. they make cold wives and remain sexually anesthetic. this shows that the apparently non-sexual love for the parents and the sexual love are nourished from the same source, _i.e._, that the first merely corresponds to an infantile fixation of the libido. the nearer we come to the deeper disturbances of the psychosexual development the more easily we can recognize the evident significance of the incestuous object-selection. as a result of sexual rejection there remains in the unconscious of the psychoneurotic a great part or the whole of the psychosexual activity for object finding. girls with an excessive need for affection and an equal horror for the real demands of the sexual life experience an uncontrollable temptation on the one hand to realize in life the ideal of the asexual love and on the other hand to conceal their libido under an affection which they may manifest without self reproach; this they do by clinging for life to the infantile attraction for their parents or brothers or sisters which has been repressed in puberty. with the help of the symptoms and other morbid manifestations, psychoanalysis can trace their unconscious thoughts and translate them into the conscious, and thus easily show to such persons that they are in love with their consanguinous relations in the popular meaning of the term. likewise when a once healthy person falls sick after an unhappy love affair, the mechanism of the disease can distinctly be explained as a return of his libido to the persons preferred in his infancy. *the after effects of the infantile object selection.*--even those who have happily eluded the incestuous fixation of their libido have not completely escaped its influence. it is a distinct echo of this phase of development that the first serious love of the young man is often for a mature woman and that of the girl for an older man equipped with authority--_i.e._, for persons who can revive in them the picture of the mother and father. generally speaking object selection unquestionably takes place by following more freely these prototypes. the man seeks above all the memory picture of his mother as it has dominated him since the beginning of childhood; this is quite consistent with the fact that the mother, if still living, strives against this, her renewal, and meets it with hostility. in view of this significance of the infantile relation to the parents for the later selection of the sexual object, it is easy to understand that every disturbance of this infantile relation brings to a head the most serious results for the sexual life after puberty. jealousy of the lover, too, never lacks the infantile sources or at least the infantile reinforcement. quarrels between parents and unhappy marital relations between the same determine the severest predispositions for disturbed sexual development or neurotic diseases in the children. the infantile desire for the parents is, to be sure, the most important, but not the only trace revived in puberty which points the way to the object selection. other dispositions of the same origin permit the man, still supported by his infancy, to develop more than one single sexual series and to form different determinations for the object selection.[ ] *prevention of inversion.*--one of the tasks imposed in the object selection consists in not missing the opposite sex. this, as we know, is not solved without some difficulty. the first feelings after puberty often enough go astray, though not with any permanent injury. dessoir has called attention to the normality of the enthusiastic friendships formed by boys and girls with their own sex. the greatest force which guards against a permanent inversion of the sexual object is surely the attraction exerted by the opposite sex characters on each other. for this we can give no explanation in connection with this discussion. this factor, however, does not in itself suffice to exclude the inversion; besides this there are surely many other supporting factors. above all, there is the authoritative inhibition of society; experience shows that where the inversion is not considered a crime it fully corresponds to the sexual inclinations of many persons. moreover, it may be assumed that in the man the infantile memories of the mother's tenderness, as well as that of other females who cared for him as a child, energetically assist in directing his selection to the woman, while the early sexual intimidation experienced through the father and the attitude of rivalry existing between them deflects the boy from the same sex. both factors also hold true in the case of the girl whose sexual activity is under the special care of the mother. this results in a hostile relation to the same sex which decisively influences the object selection in the normal sense. the bringing up of boys by male persons (slaves in the ancient times) seems to favor homosexuality; the frequency of inversion in the present day nobility is probably explained by their employment of male servants, and by the scant care that mothers of that class give to their children. it happens in some hysterics that one of the parents has disappeared (through death, divorce, or estrangement), thus permitting the remaining parent to absorb all the love of the child, and in this way establishing the determinations for the sex of the person to be selected later as the sexual object; thus a permanent inversion is made possible. summary it is now time to attempt a summing-up. we have started from the aberrations of the sexual impulse in reference to its object and aim and have encountered the question whether these originate from a congenital predisposition, or whether they are acquired in consequence of influences from life. the answer to this question was reached through an examination of the relations of the sexual life of psychoneurotics, a numerous group not very remote from the normal. this examination has been made through psychoanalytic investigations. we have thus found that a tendency to all perversions might be demonstrated in these persons in the form of unconscious forces revealing themselves as symptom creators and we could say that the neurosis is, as it were, the negative of the perversion. in view of the now recognized great diffusion of tendencies to perversion the idea forced itself upon us that the disposition to perversions is the primitive and universal disposition of the human sexual impulse, from which the normal sexual behavior develops in consequence of organic changes and psychic inhibitions in the course of maturity. we hoped to be able to demonstrate the original disposition in the infantile life; among the forces restraining the direction of the sexual impulse we have mentioned shame, loathing and sympathy, and the social constructions of morality and authority. we have thus been forced to perceive in every fixed aberration from the normal sexual life a fragment of inhibited development and infantilism. the significance of the variations of the original dispositions had to be put into the foreground, but between them and the influences of life we had to assume a relation of coöperation and not of opposition. on the other hand, as the original disposition must have been a complex one, the sexual impulse itself appeared to us as something composed of many factors, which in the perversions becomes separated, as it were, into its components. the perversions, thus prove themselves to be on the one hand inhibitions, and on the other dissociations from the normal development. both conceptions became united in the assumption that the sexual impulse of the adult due to the composition of the diverse feelings of the infantile life became formed into one unit, one striving, with one single aim. we also added an explanation for the preponderance of perversive tendencies in the psychoneurotics by recognizing in these tendencies collateral fillings of side branches caused by the shifting of the main river bed through repression, and we then turned our examination to the sexual life of the infantile period.[ ] we found it regrettable that the existence of a sexual life in infancy has been disputed, and that the sexual manifestations which have been often observed in children have been described as abnormal occurrences. it rather seemed to us that the child brings along into the world germs of sexual activity and that even while taking nourishment it at the same time also enjoys a sexual gratification which it then seeks again to procure for itself through the familiar activity of "thumbsucking." the sexual activity of the child, however, does not develop in the same measure as its other functions, but merges first into the so-called latency period from the age of three to the age of five years. the production of sexual excitation by no means ceases at this period but continues and furnishes a stock of energy, the greater part of which is utilized for aims other than sexual; namely, on the one hand for the delivery of sexual components for social feelings, and on the other hand (by means of repression and reaction formation) for the erection of the future sexual barriers. accordingly, the forces which are destined to hold the sexual impulse in certain tracks are built up in infancy at the expense of the greater part of the perverse sexual feelings and with the assistance of education. another part of the infantile sexual manifestations escapes this utilization and may manifest itself as sexual activity. it can then be discovered that the sexual excitation of the child flows from diverse sources. above all gratifications originate through the adapted sensible excitation of so-called erogenous zones. for these probably any skin region or sensory organ may serve; but there are certain distinguished erogenous zones the excitation of which by certain organic mechanisms is assured from the beginning. moreover, sexual excitation originates in the organism, as it were, as a by-product in a great number of processes, as soon as they attain a certain intensity; this especially takes place in all strong emotional excitements even if they be of a painful nature. the excitations from all these sources do not yet unite, but they pursue their aim individually--this aim consisting merely in the gaining of a certain pleasure. the sexual impulse of childhood is therefore objectless or _autoerotic_. still during infancy the erogenous zone of the genitals begins to make itself noticeable, either by the fact that like any other erogenous zone it furnishes gratification through a suitable sensible stimulus, or because in some incomprehensible way the gratification from other sources causes at the same time the sexual excitement which has a special connection with the genital zone. we found cause to regret that a sufficient explanation of the relations between sexual gratification and sexual excitement, as well as between the activity of the genital zone and the remaining sources of sexuality, was not to be attained. we were unable to state what amount of sexual activity in childhood might be designated as normal to the extent of being incapable of further development. the character of the sexual manifestation showed itself to be preponderantly masturbatic. we, moreover, verified from experience the belief that the external influences of seduction, might produce premature breaches in the latency period leading as far as the suppression of the same, and that the sexual impulse of the child really shows itself to be polymorphous-perverse; furthermore, that every such premature sexual activity impairs the educability of the child. despite the incompleteness of our examinations of the infantile sexual life we were subsequently forced to attempt to study the serious changes produced by the appearance of puberty. we selected two of the same as criteria, namely, the subordination of all other sources of the sexual feeling to the primacy of the genital zones, and the process of object finding. both of them are already developed in childhood. the first is accomplished through the mechanism of utilizing the fore-pleasure, whereby all other independent sexual acts which are connected with pleasure and excitement become preparatory acts for the new sexual aim, the voiding of the sexual products, the attainment of which under enormous pleasure puts an end to the sexual feeling. at the same time we had to consider the differentiation of the sexual nature of man and woman, and we found that in order to become a woman a new repression is required which abolishes a piece of infantile masculinity, and prepares the woman for the change of the leading genital zones. lastly, we found the object selection, tracing it through infancy to its revival in puberty; we also found indications of sexual inclinations on the part of the child for the parents and foster-parents, which, however, were turned away from these persons to others resembling them by the incest barriers which had been erected in the meantime. let us finally add that during the transition period of puberty the somatic and psychic processes of development proceed side by side, but separately, until with the breaking through of an intense psychic love-stimulus for the innervation of the genitals, the normally demanded unification of the erotic function is established. *the factors disturbing the development.*--as we have already shown by different examples, every step on this long road of development may become a point of fixation and every joint in this complicated structure may afford opportunity for a dissociation of the sexual impulse. it still remains for us to review the various inner and outer factors which disturb the development, and to mention the part of the mechanism affected by the disturbance emanating from them. the factors which we mention here in a series cannot, of course, all be in themselves of equal validity and we must expect to meet with difficulties in the assigning to the individual factors their due importance. *constitution and heredity.*--in the first place, we must mention here the congenital _variation of the sexual constitution_, upon which the greatest weight probably falls, but the existence of which, as may be easily understood, can be established only through its later manifestations and even then not always with great certainty. we understand by it a preponderance of one or another of the manifold sources of the sexual excitement, and we believe that such a difference of disposition must always come to expression in the final result, even if it should remain within normal limits. of course, we can also imagine certain variations of the original disposition that even without further aid must necessarily lead to the formation of an abnormal sexual life. one can call these "degenerative" and consider them as an expression of hereditary deterioration. in this connection i have to report a remarkable fact. in more than half of the severe cases of hysteria, compulsion neuroses, etc., which i have treated by psychotherapy, i have succeeded in positively demonstrating that their fathers have gone through an attack of syphilis before marriage; they have either suffered from tabes or general paresis, or there was a definite history of lues. i expressly add that the children who were later neurotic showed absolutely no signs of hereditary lues, so that the abnormal sexual constitution was to be considered as the last off-shoot of the luetic heredity. as far as it is now from my thoughts to put down a descent from syphilitic parents as a regular and indispensable etiological determination of the neuropathic constitution, i nevertheless maintain that the coincidence observed by me is not accidental and not without significance. the hereditary relations of the positive perverts are not so well known because they know how to avoid inquiry. still there is reason to believe that the same holds true in the perversions as in the neuroses. we often find perversions and psychoneuroses in the different sexes of the same family, so distributed that the male members, or one of them, is a positive pervert, while the females, following the repressive tendencies of their sex, are negative perverts or hysterics. this is a good example of the substantial relations between the two disturbances which i have discovered. *further elaboration.*--it cannot, however, be maintained that the structure of the sexual life is rendered finally complete by the addition of the diverse components of the sexual constitution. on the contrary, qualifications continue to appear and new possibilities result, depending upon the fate experienced by the sexual streams originating from the individual sources. this _further elaboration_ is evidently the final and decisive one while the constitution described as uniform may lead to three final issues. if all the dispositions assumed to be abnormal retain their relative proportion, and are strengthened with maturity, the ultimate result can only be a perverse sexual life. the analysis of such abnormally constituted dispositions has not yet been thoroughly undertaken, but we already know cases that can be readily explained in the light of these theories. authors believe, for example, that a whole series of fixation perversions must necessarily have had as their basis a congenital weakness of the sexual impulse. the statement seems to me untenable in this form, but it becomes ingenious if it refers to a constitutional weakness of one factor in the sexual impulse, namely, the genital zone, which later in the interests of propagation accepts as a function the sum of the individual sexual activities. in this case the summation which is demanded in puberty must fail and the strongest of the other sexual components continues its activity as a perversion.[ ] *repression.*--another issue results if in the course of development certain powerful components experience a _repression_--which we must carefully note is not a suspension. the excitations in question are produced as usual but are prevented from attaining their aim by psychic hindrances, and are driven off into many other paths until they express themselves in a symptom. the result can be an almost normal sexual life--usually a limited one--but supplemented by psychoneurotic disease. it is these cases that become so familiar to us through the psychoanalytic investigation of neurotics. the sexual life of such persons begins like that of perverts, a considerable part of their childhood is filled up with perverse sexual activity which occasionally extends far beyond the period of maturity, but owing to inner reasons a repressive change then results--usually before puberty, but now and then even much later--and from this point on without any extinction of the old feelings there appears a neurosis instead of a perversion. one may recall here the saying, "junge hure, alte betschwester,"--only here youth has turned out to be much too short. the relieving of the perversion by the neurosis in the life of the same person, as well as the above mentioned distribution of perversion and hysteria in different persons of the same family, must be placed side by side with the fact that the neurosis is the negative of the perversion. *sublimation.*--the third issue in abnormal constitutional dispositions is made possible by the process of "sublimation," through which the powerful excitations from individual sources of sexuality are discharged and utilized in other spheres, so that a considerable increase of psychic capacity results from an, in itself dangerous, predisposition. this forms one the sources of artistic activity, and, according as such sublimation is complete or incomplete, the analysis of the character of highly gifted, especially of artistically disposed persons, will show any proportionate, blending between productive ability, perversion, and neurosis. a sub-species of sublimation is the suppression through _reaction-formation_, which, as we have found, begins even in the latency period of infancy, only to continue throughout life in favorable cases. what we call the _character_ of a person is built up to a great extent from the material of sexual excitations; it is composed of impulses fixed since infancy and won through sublimation, and of such constructions as are destined to suppress effectually those perverse feelings which are recognized as useless. the general perverse sexual disposition of childhood can therefore be esteemed as a source of a number of our virtues, insofar as it incites their creation through the formation of reactions.[ ] *accidental experiences.*--all other influences lose in significance when compared with the sexual discharges, shifts of repressions, and sublimations; the inner determinations for the last two processes are totally unknown to us. he who includes repressions and sublimations among constitutional predispositions, and considers them as the living manifestations of the same, has surely the right to maintain that the final structure of the sexual life is above all the result of the congenital constitution. no intelligent person, however, will dispute that in such a coöperation of factors there is also room for the modifying influences of occasional factors derived from experience in childhood and later on. it is not easy to estimate the effectiveness of the constitutional and of the occasional factors in their relation to each other. theory is always inclined to overestimate the first while therapeutic practice renders prominent the significance of the latter. by no means should it be forgotten that between the two there exists a relation of coöperation and not of exclusion. the constitutional factor must wait for experiences which bring it to the surface, while the occasional needs the support of the constitutional factor in order to become effective. for the majority of cases one can imagine a so-called "etiological group" in which the declining intensities of one factor become balanced by the rise in the others, but there is no reason to deny the existence of extremes at the ends of the group. it would be still more in harmony with psychoanalytic investigation if the experiences of early childhood would get a place of preference among the occasional factors. the one etiological group then becomes split up into two which may be designated as the dispositional and the definitive groups. constitution and occasional infantile experiences are just as coöperative in the first as disposition and later traumatic experiences in the second group. all the factors which injure the sexual development show their effect in that they produce a _regression_, or a return to a former phase of development. we may now continue with our task of enumerating the factors which have become known to us as influential for the sexual development, whether they be active forces or merely manifestations of the same. *prematurity.*--such a factor is the spontaneous sexual _prematurity_ which can be definitely demonstrated at least in the etiology of the neuroses, though in itself it is as little adequate for causation as the other factors. it manifests itself in a breaking through, shortening, or suspending of the infantile latency period and becomes a cause of disturbances inasmuch as it provokes sexual manifestations which, either on account of the unready state of the sexual inhibitions or because of the undeveloped state of the genital system, can only carry along the character of perversions. these tendencies to perversion may either remain as such, or after the repression sets in they may become motive powers for neurotic symptoms; at all events, the sexual prematurity renders difficult the desirable later control of the sexual impulse by the higher psychic influences, and enhances the compulsive-like character which even without this prematurity would be claimed by the psychic representatives of the impulse. sexual prematurity often runs parallel with premature intellectual development; it is found as such in the infantile history of the most distinguished and most productive individuals, and in such connection it does not seem to act as pathogenically as when appearing isolated. *temporal factors.*--just like prematurity, other factors, which under the designation of _temporal_ can be added to prematurity, also demand consideration. it seems to be phylogenetically established in what sequence the individual impulsive feelings become active, and how long they can manifest themselves before they succumb to the influence of a newly appearing active impulse or to a typical repression. but both in this temporal succession as well as in the duration of the same, variations seem to occur, which must exercise a definite influence on the experience. it cannot be a matter of indifference whether a certain stream appears earlier or later than its counterstream, for the effect of a repression cannot be made retrogressive; a temporal deviation in the composition of the components regularly produces a change in the result. on the other hand impulsive feelings which appear with special intensity often come to a surprisingly rapid end, as in the case of the heterosexual attachment of the later manifest homosexuals. the strivings of childhood which manifest themselves most impetuously do not justify the fear that they will lastingly dominate the character of the grown-up; one has as much right to expect that they will disappear in order to make room for their counterparts. (harsh masters do not rule long.) to what one may attribute such temporal confusions of the processes of development we are hardly able to suggest. a view is opened here to a deeper phalanx of biological, and perhaps also historical problems, which we have not yet approached within fighting distance. *adhesion.*--the significance of all premature sexual manifestations is enhanced by a psychic factor of unknown origin which at present can be put down only as a psychological preliminary. i believe that it is the _heightened adhesion_ or _fixedness_ of these impressions of the sexual life which in later neurotics, as well as in perverts, must be added for the completion of the other facts; for the same premature sexual manifestations in other persons cannot impress themselves deeply enough to repeat themselves compulsively and to succeed in prescribing the way for the sexual impulse throughout later life. perhaps a part of the explanation for this adhesion lies in another psychic factor which we cannot miss in the causation of the neuroses, namely, in the preponderance which in the psychic life falls to the share of memory traces as compared with recent impressions. this factor is apparently dependent on the intellectual development and grows with the growth of personal culture. in contrast to this the savage has been characterized as "the unfortunate child of the moment."[ ] owing to the oppositional relation existing between culture and the free development of sexuality, the results of which may be traced far into the formation of our life, the problem how the sexual life of the child evolves is of very little importance for the later life in the lower stages of culture and civilization, and of very great importance in the higher. *fixation.*--the influence of the psychic factors just mentioned favored the development of the accidentally experienced impulses of the infantile sexuality. the latter (especially in the form of seductions through other children or through adults) produce the material which, with the help of the former, may become fixed as a permanent disturbance. a considerable number of the deviations from the normal sexual life observed later have been thus established in neurotics and perverts from the beginning through the impressions received during the alleged sexually free period of childhood. the causation is produced by the responsiveness of the constitution, the prematurity, the quality of heightened adhesion, and the accidental excitement of the sexual impulse through outside influence. the unsatisfactory conclusions which have resulted from this investigation of the disturbances of the sexual life is due to the fact that we as yet know too little concerning the biological processes in which the nature of sexuality consists to form from our isolated examinations a satisfactory theory for the explanation of either the normal or the pathological. [ ] the differences will be emphasized in the schematic representation given in the text. to what extent the infantile sexuality approaches the definitive sexual organization through its object selection has been discussed before (p. ). [ ] see my work, wit and its relation to the unconscious, translated by a.a. brill, moffat yard pub. co., new york: "the fore-pleasure gained by the technique of wit is utilized for the purpose of setting free a greater pleasure by the removal of inner inhibitions." [ ] cf. zur einführung des narzismus, jahrbuch der psychoanalyse, vi, . [ ] it is necessary to make clear that the conceptions "masculine" and "feminine," whose content seems so unequivocal to the ordinary meaning, belong to the most confused terms in science and can be cut up into at least three paths. one uses masculine and feminine at times in the sense of activity and passivity, again, in the biological sense, and then also in the sociological sense. the first of these three meanings is the essential one and the only one utilizable in psychoanalysis. it agrees with the masculine designation of the libido in the text above, for the libido is always active even when it is directed to a passive aim. the second, the biological significance of masculine and feminine, is the one which permits the clearest determination. masculine and feminine are here characterized by the presence of semen or ovum and through the functions emanating from them. the activity and its secondary manifestations, like stronger developed muscles, aggression, a greater intensity of libido, are as a rule soldered to the biological masculinity but not necessarily connected with it, for there are species of animals in whom these qualities are attributed to the female. the third, the sociological meaning, receives its content through the observation of the actual existing male and female individuals. the result of this in man is that there is no pure masculinity or feminity either in the biological or psychological sense. on the contrary every individual person shows a mixture of his own biological sex characteristics with the biological traits of the other sex and a union of activity and passivity; this is the case whether these psychological characteristic features depend on the biological or whether they are independent of it. [ ] psychoanalysis teaches that there are two paths of object-finding; the first is the one discussed in the text which is guided by the early infantile prototypes. the second is the narcissistic which seeks its own ego and finds it in the other. the latter is of particularly great significance for the pathological outcomes, but does not fit into the connection treated here. [ ] those to whom this conception appears "wicked" may read havelock ellis's treatise on the relations between mother and child which expresses almost the same ideas (the sexual impulse, p. ). [ ] for the explanation of the origin of the infantile fear i am indebted to a three-year-old boy whom i once heard calling from a dark room: "aunt, talk to me, i am afraid because it is dark." "how will that help you," answered the aunt; "you cannot see anyhow." "that's nothing," answered the child; "if some one talks then it becomes light."--he was, as we see, not afraid of the darkness but he was afraid because he missed the person he loved, and he could promise to calm down as soon as he was assured of her presence. [ ] cf. here what was said on page concerning the object selection of the child; the "tender stream." [ ] the incest barrier probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (cf. my work, totem and taboo, .) psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into phantasies and even into reality. [ ] compare the description concerning the inevitable relation in the oedipus legend (the interpretation of dreams, p. , translated by a.a. brill, the macmillan co., new york, and allen & unwin, london). [ ] innumerable peculiarities of the human love-life as well as the compulsiveness of being in love itself can surely only be understood through a reference to childhood or as an effective remnant of the same. [ ] this was true not only of the "negative" tendencies to perversion appearing in the neurosis, but also of the so-called positive perversions. the latter are not only to be attributed to the fixation of the infantile tendencies, but also to regression to these tendencies owing to the misplacement of other paths of the sexual stream. hence the positive perversions are also accessible to psychoanalytic therapy. (cf. the works of sadger, ferenczi, and brill.) [ ] here one often sees that at first a normal sexual stream begins at the age of puberty, but owing to its inner weakness it breaks down at the first outer hindrance and then changes from regression, to perverse fixation. [ ] that keen observer of human nature, e. zola, describes a girl in his book, la joie de vivre, who in cheerful self renunciation offers all she has in possession or expectation, her fortune and her life's hopes to those she loves without thought of return. the childhood of this girl was dominated by an insatiable desire for love which whenever she was depreciated caused her to merge into a fit of cruelty. [ ] it is possible that the heightened adhesion is only the result of a special intensive somatic sexual manifestation of former years. index aberrations (see perversions) a fragment of inhibited development, sexual, , , shown by the psychoneurotic, with animals, absolute inversion (sexual object of the same sex), activity and passivity in sexual aim in exhibitionism, of sadism and masochism, precursors and masculine and feminine, activity, muscular, adhesion, heightened, or fixedness of impressions of sexual life, may be only result of a special intensive somatic sexual manifestation of former years, affective processes, pathogenic action of, value of unconscious thought formation, aggression, sadism and masochism not attributable to mixture of, taint of, shown by sexuality of most men, agoraphobia and neurotic disturbances of walking, , note aims of impulses distinguish them from one another, algolagnia, alkaloids, introduction of, analogous in neuroses and phenomena of intoxication and abstinence, ambivalence, amnesia, infantile, connected with infantile sexual activity, and hysterical compared, amphigenous inversion, anal erotic, , note zone, activity of, erogenous significance of, masturbatic irritation of, androgyny, anesthesia, causes of, are partly psychic, continuance of, caused by retention of clitoris excitability, of newly married women, of wives due to parent complex, of women often only apparent and local, of women only at vaginal entrance, animals as sexual objects, anus (see also anal) as aim of inverts, ; especially frequent example of transgression, part played by erogenous zone in, anxiety on railroads, archaic constitution, , note arduin, dr., , note attractions connected with pleasure, autoerotism, the gratification of sexual impulse on own body, separation of, from object love, not temporal, , note essential, of infantile sexuality, of erogenous zones, same in boy and girl, regular, of sexual impulse, baths, warm, therapeutic effects of, bayer, , note beautiful, concept of, a quality of excitation, bell, s., , note ; , note binet; ; birth theories, bisexuality, relation of, as explanation of inversion, , note sadism and masochism, necessary to understanding of sexual in man and woman, bladder, disturbances of childhood sexual in nature, bleuler, , note ; bloch, i., , note ; ; breast, rubbing of, woman's, as erogenous zone, cadavers, cannibalistic pregenital phase, castration complex, ; of males does not always injure sexual libido, catarrh, intestinal, produces irritations in anal zone, cathartic treatment, character built up from the material of sexual excitations, composed of impulses fixed since infancy and won through sublimation, of individual determined by infantile sexual activity, chemical theories of sexual excitement, chevalier, ; , note childish, see infantile children and neurotics compared, as sexual objects, cruelty especially characteristic of, educability of, impaired by premature sexual activity, impressionability of, in school, behavior of and germinating sexuality, sexual life of, clitoris, chief erogenous zone in female child, erection of, in little girls, excitability retained causes continuance of anesthesia, excitation, destinies of, conducts excitement to adjacent female parts, transfer of, to other parts, takes time, sexuality is a part of male sexual life, sexuality repressed in girl at puberty, coitus, colin, complex, castration, ; oedipus, parent, , note strongest in girls, compulsion emanating from unconscious psychic material, inversion is perceived as a morbid, neurosis, psychoanalysis enlightens ego libido, from fixation on erogenous zones in infancy, congeniality in inversions, of perversions in all persons, conscience, constitutional factor, relation of, to occasional contrary sexuals, conversion, coprophilic smell desire, , note copulation, courting, craving, best english word for libido, , note cruelty and sexual impulse most intimately connected, as component of infantile sexual life regarding others as sexual objects, especially near the childish character, partial desires as carriers of impulses of, culture and sex, dangers of fore-pleasure, degeneration, nervous, high ethical culture in, dementia præcox, desire, coprophilic smell, , note for knowledge, immense sexual, in hysteria, partial, dessoir, donation, idea of, ; drinking, desire for, in former thumbsuckers, ear lobe pulling, eating, sexuality of, ego-libido (see libido) ellis, h., , note ; ; ; ; ; , note end pleasure (see gratification, orgasm, pleasure) new to age after puberty, enuresis nocturna corresponds to a pollution, erection of clitoris in little girls, of penis, a somatic sign of sexual excitation, erogenous action of pain, functions, disturbance of, in lip zone, significance of anal zone, zones, partial impulses and, significance of in psychoneuroses, preponderance of special, in psychoneuroses, source of sexual feelings of infantile years, lips as, characters of, predestined, show same characters as hysterogenous, any part of body may become, , note significance of anal zone, premature activity in, indicated by cruelty, parts of skin called, one of three ways of stimulation of sexual apparatus, their manner of adjustment to new order, rôle of, in preparing sexual excitation, increase tension, make possible the gratification pleasure, contribute unusual pleasure in infantile life, connected anatomically with centers producing tension, autoerotism of, same in boy and girl, chief, in female child is the clitoris, changed from clitoris to vagina, mark of womanhood, change of leading, determines woman's preference for neuroses, gratified by intercourse between child and foster parents, etiological group, composed of dispositional and definitive groups, eulenberg, , note excitement enhanced by preliminary activities, hunger, influences, three kinds of, sexual, nature of, entirely unfamiliar, prepared by erogenous zones, result of any of three kinds of stimuli, exhibitionism (see looking, peeping, voyeur) as a perversion, partial desires as carriers of, the eye as erogenous zone in, as component of infantile sexual life, eye as erogenous zone, ; faith, father, sexual intimidation experienced through, averts inversion, fear, infantile, only expresses child's missing beloved person, influence of, sexually exciting, of being alone alike in child and neurotic, of dark, infantile, of grown up neurotic like that of children, only children with excessive sexual impulse disposed to, sought as sexual excitement, feces, licking of, retention of, a source of pleasure, a cause of constipation, feelings, perverted, female (see masculine and feminine) female child, entirely made character of in autoerotism and masturbation, féré, ferenczi, , note fetichism, binet's findings in, nothing in unconscious streams of thought inclining to, of foot, , note fixation, of impulses accidentally experienced, fliess, w., , note ; , note ; , note foot, as unfit substitute for sexual object, fetichism of, , note fore-pleasure, connection of, with infantile life strengthened by pathogenic rôle, dangers of, is that of excitation of erogenous zones, mechanism contains danger to attainment of normal sexual aim, primacy of genital zones and the, same as that furnished by infantile sexual impulse, too much endangers attainment of normal sexual aim, fur, fusions, activity of, genital zone, primacy of, external, in woman, so important for later sexual functions, overestimation of internal, gratification of, genitals, erogenous zones behave like real, in hysteria, looking only at, becomes a perversion, male, in all persons, the infantile sexual theory, mouth and anus playing rôle of, opening of female, unknown to children, primacy of, intended by nature, rubbed by children while pleasure sucking, sexual impulse of reawakens, touching of, caused by strong excitements in children, gley, e., , note globus, hysterical, in former thumbsuckers, gratification pleasure of orgasm, sexual, ; picture of, in suckling, relation of, to sexual excitement not explained, the best hypnotic, groos, k., , note hair, halban, hall, g.s., , note hemorrhoids and neurotic states, heredity, herman, g., , note hermaphrodites, psychosexual, ; anatomical, hetero-sexual feelings, , note ; , note intercourse, dangers of, fix inversions, hirschfeld, m., , note ; , note hoche, homosexual, among greeks, favored by bringing up of boys by men, inclination resulting in inversion, in men, in women, object selection accomplished by all men in the unconscious, , note hug-hellmuth, mrs. dr. h., , note hunger and sex compared, excitement, hypnosis (suggestion), , note obedience in, shows nature of, to be fixation on hypnotizer, , note removes inversion, hysteria, immense sexual desire in, male, explained by propensity to inversion, many cases of have syphilitic fathers, preference for, in women determined by change of leading erogenous zone, determined by repression of puberty, psychoanalysis in, of, enlightens the ego-libido, removes symptoms of, seduction as frequent cause of, some cases of, conditioned by disappearance of one parent, symptomatology of, tendency to displacement in, hysterical globus, vomiting, ; hysterogenous zones show same characteristics as erogenous, ideal of sexual life, the union of all desires in one object, identification as development out of oral pregenital sexual organization, immature as sexual objects, impotence, impulse development, partial, independent of each other, strive for pleasure, sexual, acquired, to mastery, foreshadowed in boys' masturbation, incest barriers, object selection significant in psychosexual disturbances, phantasies rejected, temptations, struggle of the individual with, , note infantile amnesia, and infantile sexual activity, attraction for parents, etc., repressed in puberty, desire for parents, factor for sexuality, fear, ; , note fixation of libido, in sexuality, conserved by neurotics, masturbation, neglect of the, object selection, after effects of, onanism almost universal, relations to parents, produces serious results to sexual life, cause of jealousy of lover, wet nurse, reminiscences in neurotics, sexual activity, aim, ; excitement generously provided for, impulse same as adult fore-pleasure, investigation, failure of, sexuality, manifestations of, determines normal, source of, sexual life, influences, opposite, paths of, inhibitions (see shame, loathing, sympathy) , note sexual, develop earlier in girl, study of, innateness, inner organic world, one of three stimulants of sexual apparatus, inquisitiveness, of children attracted to sexual problems, intentions, appearance of new, intellectual work, intensity of stimulus, a factor in sexual excitement, intestinal catarrh in neurosis, inversion, amphigenous, influence of climate and race on, conception of, congeniality of, corresponds to sexual inclinations of many persons, effect of father on, , note explanation of, ; , note extreme cases of, feelings of, in all neurotics, frequent in ancient times, permanent, made possible by a disappearance of one parent, prevention of, time of, inverts, behavior of, ; psychic manliness in, sexual object of, aim of, investigation, infantile sexual, conducted alone, is first step at independent orientation, causes estrangement from persons, itching, feeling of, projected into peripheral erogenous zone, kiernan, kinderfehler, die (periodical), , note kissing (see mouth, oral) as perversion, habitual, in former thumbsuckers, in female inverts, knowledge, desire for, coöperates with energy of desire for looking, not wholly sexual, relations to sexual life of particular importance to, krafft-ebing, , note ; , and note ; ; weakness of his description of sexual process, latency period, sexual in childhood, ; interruptions of, leading zone in man and woman, in female child is the clitoris, libido as term for sexual feeling corresponding to hunger, of inverts, direction of, determined by experience in early childhood, attachment of, to persons of same sex, , note fixation of, on hypnotizer, , note amount of directed to artistic aim, aggressive factor of, in sadism, strivings of, transformed into symptoms, fixation of, on persons of same sex, union of cruelty with, in neurotics and paranoiacs, of psychoneurotics unable to obtain normal sexual gratification, of children in corporal punishment, tension of, dies away at orgasm, sometimes escapes injury in castration, theory of, a force of variable quantity capable of measuring sexual processes, a concept auxiliary to chemical theory, energy has a qualitative character, has special chemism different from nutritional processes, quantum psychically represented by ego-libido, production, increase, distribution and displacement of the ego-, explains psychosexual phenomena, accessibility of the ego- to psychoanalysis, the ego- becomes object-libido, fate of the object- is to be withdrawn from the object, is to be preserved floating in special states of tension, is to be finally taken back into the ego, the ego- is called the narcissistic libido, greater significance of, in psychotic disturbances, is regularly of a masculine character in man and woman, the object of may be either man or woman, of child, when ungratified is changed into fear, suppressed, of love of child to parents, infantile fixation of, causes sexual love for parents, girls conceal, under affection for family, return of, to persons preferred in infancy, incestuous fixation of, not completely escaped, lindner, ; lingering at intermediary relations, ; at preparatory act of sexual process is mechanism of many perversions, lip as erogenous zone, sexual utilization of mucous membrane of, sucking of, zone is responsible for sexual gratification during eating, loathing, feeling of, protects individual from improper sexual aims, ; overcoming of, at sight of excretion, produces voyeurs, and shame in masochism, in inversions, as psychic force inhibiting sexual life, looking (see peeping, voyeurs) as addition to normal sexual process, lingering at touching and, as a perversion, and exhibition mania, the eye an erogenous zone in, as component of infantile sexual life with others as object, love, omnipotence of, and hate, temporary renouncement of, in child, smaller amount of, than mother love to satisfy individual in later life, non-sexual and sexual, for parents, nourished from same source, sexual, corresponds to an infantile fixation of the libido, -life, peculiarities of, understood only through childhood, , note löwenfeld, , note lydston, f., magnan's classification, man (see bisexuality, masculine and feminine) sexual development of, more consistent and easier to understand, differentiation between, and woman, masculine and feminine, as activity and passivity, , note biological significance of, permits clearest determination, note in sociological sense, , note no pure, in either biological or sociological sense, , note masochism, in relation between hypnotized and hypnotist, , note and sadism, originates through transformation from sadism, and sadism occupy special place among perversions, reinforced by sadism in exhibitionism, source of, in painful irritation of gluteal region, -sadism impulse rooted in erogenous action of pain, mastery, impulse to, foreshadowed in boys' masturbation, source of cruelty in children, supplies activity, masturbatic sexual manifestations, excitation of anal zone, irritation of anal zone, sexual manifestations have same male character in boy and girl, masturbation frequently the exclusive aim in inversion, in small children, thumb-sucking and, infantile, has three phases, return of, in little girls concerns clitoris only, mechanical excitation, memory traces preponderate over recent impressions in causation of neuroses, moebius, , note ; , note ; moll, , note ; ; , note morality as a psychic dam, mother, fixation on, in inverts, , note image helps males avert inversions, image helps females avert inversions, motion, pleasure of, sexual in nature, , note mouth (see lip, oral) sexual utilization of mucous membrane of lips and, as a frequent example of transgression, as an erogenous zone, muscular activity, pleasure from, narcissism in object selection, , note as identification with mother, , note narcissistic libido a name for ego-libido, a reservoir of energy for investment of object, investment of ego a realized primitive state, nausea on railroads, neurosis and perversion, the negative of a perversion, ; intestinal catarrh in, symptomatology of, traced to disturbance of sexual processes, a factor in the causation of, is preponderance of memory traces, neurotics and children compared, infantile reminiscences in, scatologic customs of, diseases, disposition for, awakened by over tender parents, have nearer ways than tenderness to transfer their disturbances to their children, fixedness of impressions of sexual life in, nursing period, sexual object of, object finding, is consummated on psychic side at anatomical puberty, is really a re-finding (of the mother), two paths of, shown by psychoanalysis, , note selection must avoid beloved person of infancy, first accomplished in imagination, incestuous, significant in psychosexual disturbances, after effects of infantile, follows prototypes of parents, obsessions explained only through psychoanalysis, occasional inversion, oedipus complex, onanism (see masturbation) mutual, not producing inversion, infantile, almost universal, unusual techniques in, show prohibition overcome, , note infantile, disappears soon, connected by conscience-stricken neurotics with their neurosis, , note gratification in infantile masturbation, early active, as determinant of pollution-like process, opposite influences, paths of, oral (see lip, mouth) pregenital sexual organization, organizations, pregenital, ; orgasm, thumb-sucking leading to, overestimation of the sexual object, overwork, nervous disturbances of mental, caused by simultaneous sexual excitement, pain ranks with loathing and shame, pain sought by many persons, toned down has erogenous action, a factor in sexual excitement, paranoia, knowledge of sexual impulse in, gained only through psychoanalysis, delusional fears in, based on perversions, , note union of cruelty with libido in, significance of erogenous zones in, parent complex, , note strongest in girls, result of boundless tenderness of parents, partial desires, impulses and erogenous zones, ; ; ; show passive form in girls, passivity (see activity) sexual aim present in exhibitionism in active and passive form, active and passive forms of sadism-masochism, pedicatio, peeping (see exhibitionism, looking, voyeurs) as perversion, force opposed to, is shame, mania, partial desires as carriers of, as strongest motive power for formation of neurotic symptoms, penis, envy of in girls, erection of, the somatic sign of sexual excitation, pérez, , note perversions, as additions to normal sexual processes, brought into relation with normal sexual life, mouth as sexual organ in, sadism-masochism the most significant of, general statements applicable to, exclusiveness and fixation of, psychic participation in, and neurosis, ; fetichisms as, positive, preponderance of sexual, in psychoneuroses, sexual impulse of psychoneurotics possesses unusual tendency to, relation of predisposition to, and morbid picture, formation of, of prostitutes, part played in, by castration complex, mechanism of many, represents a lingering at a preparatory act, the neuroses the negative of the, disposition to, universal, as inhibitions and dissociations from normal development, negative appearing in neurosis, , note positive and negative in the same family, resulting from the strongest of other sexual components, of childhood as source of some virtues, phantasies the only escape of the maturing youth, of the individual in struggle with incest temptation, , note of all persons contain infantile inclinations, distinctly incestuous, rejected, pleasure sucking, ; relation of feeling of, to unpleasant tension, relations of, the weakest spot in present day psychology, the last, of sexual acts differs earlier pleasures, produced through discharge, is altogether gratification pleasure, nature of, more deeply entered into in the study of wit, pollution, process similar to, in infancy, caused by strong excitements in children, nocturnal, due to accumulation of semen, polymorphous-perverse disposition, precursory sexual aims, predisposition, bisexual, pregenital organization as phase of sexual life, ; phase of organization of sexual life, sadistic-anal, organizations, assumption of, based on analysis of neuroses, prematurity, spontaneous sexual, a factor influential for sexual development, shown in breaking through, shortening or suspending of infantile latency period, becomes cause of disturbances in provoking sexual manifestations having character of perversions, sexual, runs parallel with intellectual prematurity, prevention of inversion, primacy of the genitals, ; attained at puberty, already sketched out in infantile life, for propagation, the last phase of sexual organization, primitive psychic mechanisms, , note prostitute fitted for her activity by polymorphous-perverse disposition, psychic participation in perversions, life one of three stimuli of sexual apparatus, sign of sexual excitation a feeling of tension, accomplishment of puberty is breaking away from parental authority, psychoanalysis, cures by, of homosexuals, , note reveals psychic mechanism of genesis of inversion, , note psychoanalysis, shows early intimidation from normal sexual aims, , note explains fetichism, , note reduces bisexuality to activity and passivity, reduces symptoms of hysteria, unconscious phantasies revealed by, , note of thumb-sucking, of anal zone, brings forgotten material to consciousness, of infantile sexuality, , note and inquisitiveness of children, and pregenital organizations, and tenderness of sexual life, novelty of, of transference psychoses, gives at present definite information only about transformations of object-libido, cannot distinguish ego-libido from other effective energies, shows two paths of object finding, , note shows individual struggle with incest temptations, , note positive perversions accessible to therapy of, , note psychoneuroses based on sexual motive powers, associated with manifest inversions, , note traces of all perversions in, significance of erogenous zones in, preponderance of special erogenous zones in, psychoneurotics, sexual life of, explained only through psychoanalysis, sexual activities of, disease of, appears after puberty, constitution of, tendency to inversions in, sexuality of preserves infantile character, psychosexual hermaphrodites show indifference to which sex their object belongs, not paralleled by other psychic qualities, phenomena explained by nature of ego-libido, development, disturbances of, show incestuous object selection, puberty not the time of the beginning of the sexual impulse, ; relation of, to inversion, definite sexual behavior not determined till after, , note transformations of, most striking process of, the growth of the genitals, railroad activities, sexual element in, reaction formation, and sublimation two diverse processes, feelings of, formation begins in latency period, reading as source of sexual excitement through fear, regression appears in sex development of woman, produced by factors injuring sexual development, repression of certain powerful components, not a suspension, result of, an almost normal sexual life, repression, inner determinations of, unknown, effect of, cannot be made retrogressive, a special process cutting off conscious discharge of wishes, repression of heterosexual feeling in psychoneurosis, , note sadism resulting from shows masochistic tendencies, immense amount, in inverts, congenital roots of sexual impulse undergo insufficient, of impressions of childhood, sexual, greater in girl, new wave of, distinguishes puberty of girl, determines psychic causes of anesthesia, of puberty determines woman's preference for neuroses, a new, required, abolishing a piece of infantile masculinity, resistances, shame, loathing, fear and pain as, rhythm in sucking analogous to tickling, of mechanical shaking of the body produces sexual excitation, riddle of the sphinx, rieger, c., rohleder, , note rousseau, j.j., sadger, j., sadism (see masochism) and masochism, occupy special place among perversions, conception of, fluctuates, attributable to bisexuality, resulting from repression paralleled by masochism, attributed by children to sexual act, prevalence of, -masochism impulse, rooted in erogenous action of pain, sadistic-anal pregenital sexual organization, sadistic impulse from muscular activity, scatologic customs of neurotics, schrenk-notzing, , note scott, secondary sex characteristics, seduction does not necessarily produce inverts, treating child as a sexual object, as outer cause of return of sexual activity in childhood, not necessary to awaken sexual life of child, does not explain original relations of sexual impulse, semen, rôle of, unknown to children, sex characteristics, secondary and tertiary, culture and, sexual aberrations, a transition of variations of sexual impulse to the pathological, act, theories of children as to, activities, of psychoneurotics, premature, of children, impair educability, activities, infantile leave profoundest impressions, aim abandoned in childhood, at puberty different in the two sexes, deviation in reference to, distinction between, and sexual object, fixation of precursory, in man the discharge of the sexual products, of infantile impulse, of infantile sexuality, of inverts, perversion may be substituted for, by normal person, should be restricted to union of genitals, apparatus, weakness of, constitutions, diverse, variation of, contrary, development of man easier to understand, than woman's, disturbances, paths of, a means of sublimation, serviceable in health, excitation of nursing period, is one result of three ways of stimulation of the sexual apparatus, excitement originates (_a_) as imitation of a previous gratification, (_b_) as a stimulation of erogenous zones, (_c_) as the expression of some impulse, sources of, tested by quality of stimulus, inner sources of, nature of, unfamiliar to us, indirect source of, not equally strong in all persons, influences availability of voluntary attention, problem of, normally ended only by discharge of semen, independent of an accumulation of sexual substance, furnished not only from so-called sexual parts, intercourse between parents and child an inexhaustible source of, gratification found by inverts in object of same sex, impression, impulse, acquired, too close connection of, with object assumed, entirely independent of its object, most poorly controlled of all by higher psychic activities, alone was extolled by the ancients, , note masochism in, causes unconscious fixation of libido on the hypnotist, , note closely connected with cruelty, the source of symptoms of neuroses, perverse, converted expression of, in psychoneuroses, ignorance of essential features of, becomes altruistic, regularly becomes autoerotic, not awakened, of genitals reawakens, primitive formation of, inhibition, inversion, presupposes that sexual object is reverse of normal, inverts, , note investigation, infantile, latency period, in childhood, life of children, shows components regarding others as sexual objects, tender streams of, normality of guaranteed by concurrence of two streams, all disturbances of, as inhibitions of development, development of, of children unimportant in lower stages of culture and important in higher, love shown by children towards parents at an early date, manifestations in childhood, exceptional, the masturbatic, object is the person from whom the sexual attraction emanates, deviation in reference to the, inaccessibility of, leads to occasional inversion, of inverts, male inverts look for real feminine psychic features in, female active inverts look for femininity in, the sexually immature and animals as, emphasis placed by moderns on the, , note lingering at intermediary relations to, one of the perversions, object, overestimation of the, unfit substitutes for, selection in very young children, , note found at puberty, and aim concurrent in normal sexual life, in mother's breast, lost when infant forms general picture of person, of nursing period, organization, pregenital oral, overestimation of, rises only when woman refuses, process, motive power for, escapes in fore-pleasure, rejection leaves in unconscious of neurotic the psychosexual activity for object finding, satisfaction from muscular activity, substance, rôle of, symbolism of forms of motion, tension loosened by copulation, implies feeling of displeasure, carries impulse to alter psychic situation, appears even in infancy, does not originate in pleasure, and pleasure only indirectly connected, a certain amount of, necessary for the excitability of the erogenous zones, theories, infantile, are reproductions of child's sexual constitution, sexuality as the weak point of the otherwise normal, infantilism of, infantile factor in, infantile, manifestations of, sexual aim of infantile, germinating, affecting children's behavior in school, encroached upon by all intensive affective processes, partial impulses of, of eating, ways between, and other functions traversible in both directions, does not consist entirely in male germ glands, of clitoris repressed in girl at puberty, sexuals, contrary, shame is a force opposed to the peeping mania, as a resistance opposed to the libido, , as force acting as an inhibition on sexual life, shoe as a symbol of female genital, , note skin as erogenous zone, as factor of sexual excitement, sleep caused by pleasure-sucking, smell desire, coprophilic, , note smoking, desire for in former thumb-suckers, sphinx, riddle of, sports turn youth away from sexual activity, stimulus produced by isolated excitements coming from without, outer, removing sensitiveness with gratification, quality of, as criterion of sources of sexual excitement, can set in motion complicated sexual apparatus, affects the sexual apparatus in three ways, sublimation, artistic, reaction formation and, a deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims, and reaction formation two diverse processes, , note desire for knowledge corresponds to, effected on paths by which sexual disturbances encroach upon other functions of the body, makes possible a third issue in abnormal constitutional dispositions, inner processes of, totally unknown, sucking, see thumb-sucking,-- symbolism of fetichism, , sexual, of early childhood, , note symptomatology of neurotic determined by infantile sexual activity, of pollution-like process, of neuroses traced to disturbance of the sexual processes, manifested in disturbances of other non-sexual bodily functions, symptoms, creators of, are unconscious forces, of psychoneuroses are the sexual activities of the patient, syphilis in fathers of more than half the cases of hysteria, compulsion-neurosis, etc., treated by freud, temperature sensitiveness, as result of distinct erogenous action, temporal factors, tension, sexual, loosened by copulation, , feeling of, the psychic sign of sexual excitation, unpleasant, relation of, to feeling of pleasure, increase in changing to displeasure, increased by functions of erogenous zones, of libido dies away at orgasm, too little, endangers attainment of sexual aim, tertiary sex characteristics, theatre as source of sexual excitement through fear, thumb-sucking as model of infantile sexual manifestations, a sexual activity, as remnant of oral phase of pregenital sexual organization, thyroid gland, rôle of, in sexuality, tickling analogous to rhythmic sucking, demanding onanistic gratification, toe, sucking of, tongue, sucking of, touching as preliminary to sexual aim, and looking, hand as addition to attraction of sexual object, transference neuroses, of erogenous excitability from clitoris to vagina, transformation of puberty, success of, dependent on adjustment to dispositions and impulses, transgressions, anatomical, especially frequent, are those to mouth and anus, ulrich, unconscious, all neurotics have feelings of inversion in, nothing in, corresponds to fetichism, psychic material is the source of compulsions, forces revealing themselves as symptom creators, uranism, , note urinary apparatus, the guardian of the genital, vagina, glandular activity of, the somatic sign of sexual excitation, vomiting, hysterical, evinced after repression of thumb-sucking, voyeurs (see looking, peeping, exhibitionism) as examples of overcoming of loathing, exhibitionists are at the same time, children become, wishes, symptoms of hysteria are substitutes for, wit as source of greater knowledge of pleasure, woman (see masculine and feminine) regression in sex development of, differentiation between man and, work, intellectual, as sexual excitement, zola, zone, chief erogenous, in female child is the clitoris, zones, erogenous, characters of, predestined, lips as erogenous, all parts of body may become erogenous, genital, gratification of, taught by seduction, erogenous, premature activity of, indicated by cruelty, parts of skin called, lip, responsible for sexual gratification during eating, primacy of genital, erogenous, prepare sexual excitement, leading, in man and woman, volume vii july, number the psychoanalytic review a journal devoted to an understanding of human conduct edited and published by william a. white, m.d., and smith ely jelliffe, m.d. * * * * * contents original articles *freud's concept of the "censorship".* w.h.r. rivers. *psychology of war and schizophrenia.* e.w. lazell. *the paraphrenic's inaccessibility.* m.k. isham. translation *psychological psychiatry.* h.f. delgado. abstracts. *book reviews* * * * * * issued quarterly: $ . per volume, single numbers, $ . foreign, $ . * * * * * nervous and mental disease publishing company north queen street, lancaster, pa., and th st., n.w., washington, d. c. serial no. * * * * * entered as second-class matter october , , at the post office at lancaster, pennsylvania under the act of march , . publishers of the psychoanalytic review a journal devoted to the understanding of human conduct edited by william a. white, m.d., and smith ely jelliffe, m.d. leading articles which have appeared in previous volumes vol. i. (beginning november, .) the theory of psychoanalysis. c.g. jung. psychoanalysis of self-mutilation. l.e. emerson. blindness as a wish. t.h. ames. the technique of psychoanalysis. s.e. jelliffe. wishfulfillment and symbolism in fairy tales. riklin. character and the neuroses. trigant burrow. the wildisbush crucified saint. theodore schroeder. the pragmatic advantage of freudo-analysis. knight dunlap. moon myth in medicine. william a. white. the sadism of oscar wilde's "salome." isador h. coriat. psychoanalysis and hospitals. l.e. emerson. the dream as a simple wishfulfillment in the negro. john e. lind. vol. ii. (beginning january, .) the principles of pain-pleasure and reality. paul federn. the unconscious. william a. white. a plea for a broader standpoint in psychoanalysis. meyer solomon. contributions to the pathology of everyday life; their relation to abnormal mental phenomena. robert stewart miller. the integrative functions of the nervous system applied to some reactions in human behavior and their attending psychic functions. edward j. kempf. a manic-depressive upset presenting frank wish-realization construction. ralph reed. psychoanalytic parallels. william a. white. rôle of sexual complex in dementia præcox. james c. hassall. psycho-genetics of androcratic evolution. theodore schroeder. significance of psychoanalysis for the mental sciences. otto rank and hans sachs. some studies in the psychopathology of acute dissociation of the personality. edward j. kempf. psychoanalysis. arthur h. ring. a philosophy for psychoanalysis. l.e. emerson. vol. iii. (beginning january, .) symbolism. william a. white. the work of alfred adler, considered with especial reference to that of freud. james j. putnam. art in the insane. l. grimberg. retaliation dreams. hansell crenshaw. history of the psychoanalytic movement. sigmund freud. clinical cases exhibiting unconscious defence reactions. francis h. shockley. processes of recovery in schizophrenics. h. bertschinger. freud and sociology. ernest r. groves. the ontogenetic against the phylogenetic elements in the psychoses of the colored race. arrah b. evarts. discomfiture and evil spirits. elsie clews parsons. two very definite wish-fulfillment dreams. c.b. burr. vol. iv. (beginning january, .) individuality and introversion. william a. white. a study of a severe case of compulsion neurosis. h.w. frink. a summary of material on the topical community of primitive and pathological symbols ("archeopathic" symbols), f.l. wells. a literary forerunner of freud. helen williston brown. the technique of dream interpretation. wilhelm steckel. the social and sexual behavior of infrahuman primates with some comparable facts in human behavior. edw. j. kempf. pain as a reaction of defence. h.b. moyle. some statistical results of the psychoanalytic treatment of psychoneuroses. isador h. coriat. the rôle of animals in the unconscious. s.e. jelliffe and l. brink. the genesis and meaning of homosexuality. trigant burrow. phylogenetic elements in the psychoses of the negro. john e. lind. freudian elements in the animism of the niger delta. e.r. groves. the mechanism of transference. william a. white. the future of psychoanalysis. isador h. coriat. hermaphroditic dreams. isador h. coriat. the psychology of "the yellow jacket." e.j. kempf. heredity and self-conceit. mabel stevens. the long handicap. helen r. hull. vol. v. (beginning january, .) analysis of a case of manic-depressive psychosis showing well-marked regressive stages. lucile dooley. reactions to personal names. c.p. oberndorf. a study of the mental life of the child. h. von hug-hellmuth. an interpretation of certain symbolisms. j.j. putnam. charles darwin--the affective source of his inspiration and anxiety neurosis. edw. j. kempf. the origin of the incest-awe. trigant burrow. compulsion and freedom: the fantasy of the willow tree. s.e. jelliffe and l. brink. a case of childhood conflicts with prominent reference to the urinary system: with some general considerations on urinary symptoms in the psychoneuroses and psychoses. c. macfie campbell. the hound of heaven. thomas vernon moore. a lace creation revealing an incest fantasy. arrah b. evarts. nephew and maternal uncle: a motive of early literature in the light of freudian psychology. albert k. weinberg. all the leading foreign psychoanalytic journals are regularly abstracted, and all books dealing with psychoanalysis are reviewed. issued quarterly: $ . per volume. single copies: $ . foreign, $ . . nervous and mental disease publishing company tenth street, n.w. washington, d.c. little essays of love and virtue by havelock ellis by the same author studies in the psychology of sex six volumes philadelphia: _f.a. davis company_ man and woman london: _walter scott_ new york: _charles scribners' sons_ the task of social hygiene london: _constable and company_ boston: _houghton mifflin company_ impressions and comments first and second series london: _constable and company_ boston: _houghton mifflin company_ by mrs. havelock ellis the new horizon in love and life with a preface by edward carpenter and an introduction by marguerite tracy london: _a. and c. black, ltd._ little essays of love and virtue by havelock ellis a. & c. black, ltd. , & soho square, london, w. copyright _in great britain by a. and g. black, ltd., london_ _in america by george h. doran co., new york_ preface in these essays--little, indeed, as i know them to be, compared to the magnitude of their subjects--i have tried to set forth, as clearly as i can, certain fundamental principles, together with their practical application to the life of our time. some of these principles were stated, more briefly and technically, in my larger _studies_ of sex; others were therein implied but only to be read between the lines. here i have expressed them in simple language and with some detail. it is my hope that in this way they may more surely come into the hands of young people, youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to my thoughts in all the studies i have written of sex because i was myself of that age when i first vaguely planned them. i would prefer to leave to their judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable to be placed in the hands of older people. it might only give them pain. it is in youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if they ever are to be settled, and unless we begin to think about adult problems when we are young all our thinking is likely to be in vain. there are but few people who are able when youth is over either on the one hand to re-mould themselves nearer to those facts of nature and of society they failed to perceive, or had not the courage to accept, when they were young, or, on the other hand, to mould the facts of the exterior world nearer to those of their own true interior world. one hesitates to bring home to them too keenly what they have missed in life. yet, let us remember, even for those who have missed most, there always remains the fortifying and consoling thought that they may at least help to make the world better for those who come after them, and the possibilities of human adjustment easier for others than it has been for themselves. they must still remain true to their own traditions. we could not wish it to be otherwise. the art of making love and the art of being virtuous;--two aspects of the great art of living that are, rightly regarded, harmonious and not at variance--remain, indeed, when we cease to misunderstand them, essentially the same in all ages and among all peoples. yet, always and everywhere, little modifications become necessary, little, yet, like so many little things, immense in their significance and results. in this way, if we are really alive, we flexibly adjust ourselves to the world in which we find ourselves, and in so doing simultaneously adjust to ourselves that ever-changing world, ever-changing, though its changes are within such narrow limits that it yet remains substantially the same. it is with such modification that we are concerned in these little essays. h.e. _london, _ contents chapter page i children and parents ii the meaning of purity iii the objects of marriage iv husbands and wives v the love-rights of women vi the play-function of sex vii the individual and the race index little essays of love and virtue chapter i children and parents the twentieth century, as we know, has frequently been called "the century of the child." when, however, we turn to the books of ellen key, who has most largely and sympathetically taken this point of view, one asks oneself whether, after all, the child's century has brought much to the child. ellen key points out, with truth, that, even in our century, parents may for the most part be divided into two classes: those who act as if their children existed only for their benefit, and those who act as if they existed only for their children's benefit, the results, she adds being alike deplorable. for the first group of parents tyrannise over the child, seek to destroy its individuality, exercise an arbitrary discipline too spasmodic to have any of the good effects of discipline and would model him into a copy of themselves, though really, she adds, it ought to pain them very much to see themselves exactly copied. the second group of parents may wish to model their children not after themselves but after their ideals, yet they differ chiefly from the first class by their over-indulgence, by their anxiety to pamper the child by yielding to all his caprices and artificially protecting him from the natural results of those caprices, so that instead of learning freedom, he has merely acquired self-will. these parents do not indeed tyrannise over their children but they do worse; they train their children to be tyrants. against these two tendencies of our century ellen key declares her own alpha and omega of the art of education. try to leave the child in peace; live your own life beautifully, nobly, temperately, and in so living you will sufficiently teach your children to live. it is not my purpose here to consider how far this conception of the duty of parents towards children is justified, and whether or not peace is the best preparation for a world in which struggle dominates. all these questions about education are rather idle. there are endless theories of education but no agreement concerning the value of any of them, and the whole question of education remains open. i am here concerned less with the duty of parents in relation to their children than with the duty of children in relation to their parents, and that means that i am not concerned with young children, to whom, that duty still presents no serious problems, since they have not yet developed a personality with self-conscious individual needs. certainly the one attitude must condition the other attitude. the reaction of children against their parents is the necessary result of the parents' action. so that we have to pay some attention to the character of parental action. we cannot expect to find any coherent or uniform action on the part of parents. but there have been at different historical periods different general tendencies in the attitude of parents towards their children. thus if we go back four or five centuries in english social history we seem to find a general attitude which scarcely corresponds exactly to either of ellen key's two groups. it seems usually to have been compounded of severity and independence; children were first strictly compelled to go their parents' way and then thrust off to their own way. there seems a certain hardness in this method, yet it is doubtful whether it can fairly be regarded as more unreasonable than either of the two modern methods deplored by ellen key. on the contrary it had points for admiration. it was primarily a discipline, but it was regarded, as any fortifying discipline should be regarded, as a preparation for freedom, and it is precisely there that the more timid and clinging modern way seems to fail. we clearly see the old method at work in the chief source of knowledge concerning old english domestic life, the _paston letters_. here we find that at an early age the sons of knights and gentlemen were sent to serve in the houses of other gentlemen: it was here that their education really took place, an education not in book knowledge, but in knowledge of life. such education was considered so necessary for a youth that a father who kept his sons at home was regarded as negligent of his duty to his family. a knowledge of the world was a necessary part, indeed the chief part, of a youth's training for life. the remarkable thing is that this applied also to a large extent to the daughters. they realised in those days, what is only beginning to be realised in ours,[ ] that, after all, women live in the world just as much, though differently, as men live in the world, and that it is quite as necessary for the girl as for the boy to be trained to the meaning of life. margaret paston, towards the end of the fifteenth century, sent her daughter ann to live in the house of a gentleman who, a little later, found that he could not keep her as he was purposing to decrease the size of his household. the mother writes to her son: "i shall be fain to send for her and with me she shall but lose her time, and without she be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move me and put me to great unquietness. remember what labour i had with your sister, therefore do your best to help her forth"; as a result it was planned to send her to a relative's house in london. [ ] this was illustrated in england when women first began to serve on juries. the pretext was frequently brought forward that there are certain kinds of cases and of evidence that do not concern women or that women ought not to hear. the pretext would have been more plausible if it had also been argued that there are certain kinds of cases and of evidence that men ought not to hear. as a matter of fact, whatever frontier there may be in these matters is not of a sexual kind. everything that concerns men ultimately concerns women, and everything that concerns women ultimately concerns men. neither women nor men are entitled to claim dispensation. it is evident that in the fifteenth century in england there was a wide prevalence of this method of education, which in france, a century later, was still regarded as desirable by montaigne. his reason for it is worth noting; children should be educated away from home, he remarks, in order to acquire hardness, for the parents will be too tender to them. "it is an opinion accepted by all that it is not right to bring up children in their parents' laps, for natural love softens and relaxes even the wisest."[ ] [ ] montaigne, _essais_, bk. i., ch. . in old france indeed the conditions seem similar to those in england. the great serio-comic novel of antoine de la salle, _petit jean de saintré_, shows us in detail the education and the adventures, which certainly involved a very early introduction to life, of a page in a great house in the fifteenth century. we must not take everything in this fine comedy too solemnly, but in the fourteenth century _book of the knight of the tour-landry_ we may be sure that we have at its best the then prevailing view of the relation of a father to his tenderly loved daughters. of harshness and rigour in the relationship it is not easy to find traces in this lengthy and elaborate book of paternal counsels. but it is clear that the father takes seriously the right of a daughter to govern herself and to decide for herself between right and wrong. it is his object, he tells his girls, "to enable them to govern themselves." in this task he assumes that they are entitled to full knowledge, and we feel that he is not instructing them in the mysteries of that knowledge; he is taking for granted, in the advice he gives and the stories he tells them, that his "young and small daughters, not, poor things, overburdened with experience," already possess the most precise knowledge of the intimate facts of life, and that he may tell them, without turning a hair, the most outrageous incidents of debauchery. life already lies naked before them: that he assumes; he is not imparting knowledge, he is giving good counsel.[ ] [ ] if the knight went to an extreme in his assumption of his daughters' knowledge, modern fathers often go to the opposite and more foolish extreme of assuming in their daughters an ignorance that would be dangerous even if it really existed. in _a young girl's diary_ (translated from the german by eden and cedar paul), a work that is highly instructive for parents, and ought to be painful for many, we find the diarist noting at the age of thirteen that she and a girl friend of about the same age overheard the father of one of them--both well brought up and carefully protected, one catholic and the other protestant--referring to "those innocent children." "we did laugh so, we and _innocent children_!!! what our fathers really think of us; we innocent!!! at dinner we did not dare look at one another or we should have exploded." it need scarcely be added that, at the same time, they were more innocent than they knew. it is clear that this kind of education and this attitude towards children must be regarded as the outcome of the whole mediæval method of life. in a state of society where roughness and violence, though not, as we sometimes assume, chronic, were yet always liable to be manifested, it was necessary for every man and woman to be able to face the crudest facts of the world and to be able to maintain his or her own rights against them. the education that best secured that strength and independence was the best education and it necessarily involved an element of hardness. we must go back earlier than montaigne's day, when the conditions were becoming mitigated, to see the system working in all its vigour. the lady of the day of the early thirteenth century has been well described by luchaire in his scholarly study of french society in the time of philip augustus. she was, he tells us, as indeed she had been in the preceding feudal centuries, often what we should nowadays call a virago, of violent temperament, with vivid passions, broken in from childhood to all physical exercises, sharing the pleasures and dangers of the knights around her. feudal life, fertile in surprises and in risks, demanded even in women a vigorous temper of soul and body, a masculine air, and habits also that were almost virile. she accompanied her father or her husband to the chase, while in war-time, if she became a widow or if her husband was away at the crusades, she was ready, if necessary, to direct the defences of the lordship, and in peace time she was not afraid of the longest and most dangerous pilgrimages. she might even go to the crusades on her own account, and, if circumstances required, conduct a war to come out victoriously. we may imagine the robust kind of education required to produce people of this quality. but as regards the precise way in which parents conducted that education, we have, as luchaire admits, little precise knowledge. it is for the most part only indirectly, by reading between the lines, that we glean something as to what it was considered befitting to inculcate in a good household, and as what we thus learn is mostly from the writings of churchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. thus adam de perseigne, an ecclesiastic, writes to the countess du perche to advise her how to live in a christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. then, as ever, preachers expressed their horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. they also reprobated their love of flirtation. it was, however, in those days a young girl's recognised duty, when a knight arrived in the household, to exercise the rites of hospitality, to disarm him, give him his bath, and if necessary massage him to help him to go to sleep. it is not surprising that the young girl sometimes made love to the knight under these circumstances, nor is it surprising that he, engaged in an arduous life and trained to disdain feminine attractions, often failed to respond. it is easy to understand how this state of things gradually became transformed into the considerably different position of parents and child we have known, which doubtless attained its climax nearly a century ago. feudal conditions, with the large households so well adapted to act as seminaries for youth, began to decay, and as education in such seminaries must have led to frequent mischances both for youths and maidens who enjoyed the opportunities of education there, the regret for their disappearance may often have been tempered for parents. schools, colleges, and universities began to spring up and develop for one sex, while for the other home life grew more intimate, and domestic ties closer. montaigne's warning against the undue tenderness of a narrow family life no longer seemed reasonable, and the family became more self-centred and more enclosed. beneath this, and more profoundly influential, there was a general softening in social respects, and a greater expansiveness of affectional relationships, in reality or in seeming, within the home, compensating, it may be, the more diffused social feeling within a group which characterised the previous period. so was cultivated that undue tenderness, deplored by montaigne, which we now regard as almost normal in family life, and solemnly label, if we happen to be psycho-analysts, the oedipus-complex or the electra-complex. sexual love is closely related to parental love; the tender emotion, which is an intimate part of parental love, is also an intimate part of sexual love, and two emotions which are each closely related to a third emotion cannot fail to become often closely associated to each other. with a little thought we might guess beforehand, even while still in complete ignorance of the matter, that there could not fail to be frequently a sexual tinge in the affection of a father for his daughter, of a mother for her son, of a son for his mother, or a daughter for her father. needless to say, that does not mean that there is present any physical desire of sex in the narrow sense; that would be a perversity, and a rare perversity. we are here on another plane than that of crude physical desire, and are moving within the sphere of the emotions. but such emotions are often strong, and all the stronger because conscious of their own absolute rectitude and often masked under the shape of duty. yet when prolonged beyond the age of childhood they tend to become a clog on development, and a hindrance to a wholesome life. the child who cherishes such emotion is likely to suffer infantile arrest of development, and the parent who is so selfish as to continue to expend such tenderness on a child who has passed the age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of a serious offence against that child. that the intimate family life which sometimes resulted--especially when, as frequently happened, the seeming mutual devotion was also real--might often be regarded as beautiful and almost ideal, it has been customary to repeat with an emphasis that in the end has even become nauseous. for it was usually overlooked that the self-centred and enclosed family, even when the mutual affection of its members was real enough to bear all examination, could scarcely be more than partially beautiful, and could never be ideal. for the family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. he cannot, she cannot, be divorced from the life of the social group, and a life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship. when the family claims to prevent the free association of an adult member of it with the larger social organisation, it is claiming that the part is greater than the whole, and such a claim cannot fail to be morbid and mischievous. the old-world method of treating children, we know, has long ago been displaced as containing an element of harsh tyranny. but it was not perceived, and it seems indeed not even yet to be generally recognised, that the system which replaced it, and is only now beginning to pass away, involved another and more subtle tyranny, the more potent because not seemingly harsh. parents no longer whipped their children even when grown up, or put them in seclusion, or exercised physical force upon them after they had passed childhood. they felt that that would not be in harmony with the social customs of a world in which ancient feudal notions were dead. but they merely replaced the external compulsion by an internal compulsion which was much more effective. it was based on the moral assumption of claims and duties which were rarely formulated because parents found it quite easy and pleasant to avoid formulating them, and children, on the rare occasions when they formulated them, usually felt a sense of guilt in challenging their validity. it was in the nineteenth century that this state of things reached its full development. the sons of the family were usually able, as they grew up, to escape and elude it, although they thereby often created an undesirable divorce from the home, and often suffered, as well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselves loose from the spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters of religion--woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. it was on the daughters that the chief stress fell. for the working class, indeed, there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that of marriage. but such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for a large number. during the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that took place. in exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. when they possessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and will, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in giving expression to themselves. this is seen in the stories of nearly all the women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century, from the days of mary wollstonecraft onwards. the brontës, almost, yet not quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern and narrow-minded father, and enabled to attain the full stature of their genius only by that brief sojourn in brussels, are representative. elizabeth barrett, chained to a couch of invalidism under the eyes of an imperiously affectionate father until with robert browning's aid she secretly eloped into the open air of freedom and health, and so attained complete literary expression, is a typical figure. it is only because we recognise that she is a typical figure among the women who attained distinction that we are able to guess at the vast number of mute inglorious elizabeth barretts who were never able to escape by their own efforts and never found a browning to aid them to escape. it is sometimes said that those days are long past and that young women, in all the countries which we are pleased to called civilised, are now emancipated, indeed, rather too much emancipated. critics come forward to complain of their undue freedom, of their irreverent familiarity to their parents, of their language, of their habits. but there were critics who said the very same things, in almost the same words, of the grandmothers of these girls! these incompetent critics are as ignorant of the social history of the past as they are of the social significance of the history of the present. we read in _once a week_ of sixty years ago ( th august, ), the very period when the domestic conditions of girls were the most oppressive in the sense here understood, that these same critics were about at that time, and as shocked as they are now at "the young ladies who talk of 'awful swells' and 'deuced bores,' who smoke and venture upon free discourse, and try to be like men." the writer of this anonymous article, who was really (i judge from internal evidence) so distinguished and so serious a woman as harriet martineau, duly snubs these critics, pointing out that such accusations are at least as old as addison and horace walpole; she remarks that there have no doubt been so-called "fast young ladies" in every age, "varying their doings and sayings according to the fopperies of the time." the question, as she pertinently concludes is, as indeed it still remains to-day: "have we more than the average proportion? i do not know." nor to-day do we know. but while to-day, as ever before, we have a certain proportion of these emancipated girls, and while to-day, as perhaps never before, we are able to understand that they have an element of reason on their side, it would be a mistake to suppose that they are more than exceptions. the majority are unable, and not even anxious, to attain this light-hearted social emancipation. for the majority, even though they are workers, the anciently subtle ties of the home are still, as they should be, an element of natural piety, and, also, as they should not be, clinging fetters which impede individuality and destroy personal initiative. we all know so many happy homes beneath whose calm surface this process is working out. the parents are deeply attached to their children, who still remain children to them even when they are grown up. they wish to guide them and mould them and cherish them, to protect them from the world, to enjoy their society and their aid, and they expect that their children shall continue indefinitely to remain children. the children, on their side, remain and always will remain, tenderly attached to their parents, and it would really pain them to feel that they are harbouring any unwillingness to stay in the home even after they have grown up, so long as their parents need their attention. it is, of course, the daughters who are thus expected to remain in the home and who feel this compunction about leaving it. it seems to us--although, as we have seen, so unlike the attitude of former days--a natural, beautiful, and rightful feeling on both sides. yet, in the result, all sorts of evils tend to ensue. the parents often take as their moral right the services which should only be accepted, if accepted at all, as the offering of love and gratitude, and even reach a degree of domineering selfishness in which they refuse to believe that their children have any adult rights of their own, absorbing and drying up that physical and spiritual life-blood of their offspring which it is the parents' part in nature to feed. if the children are willing there is nothing to mitigate this process; if they are unwilling the result is often a disastrous conflict. their time and energy are not their own; their tastes are criticised and so far as possible crushed; their political ideas, if they have any, are treated as pernicious; and--which is often on both sides the most painful of all--differences in religious belief lead to bitter controversy and humiliating recrimination. such differences in outlook between youth and age are natural and inevitable and right. the parents themselves, though they may have forgotten it, often in youth similarly revolted against the cherished doctrines of their own parents; it has ever been so, the only difference being that to-day, probably, the opportunities for variation are greater. so it comes about that what james hinton said half a century ago is often true to-day: "our happy christian homes are the real dark places of the earth." it is evident that the problem of the relation of the child to the parent is still incompletely solved even in what we consider our highest civilisation. there is here needed an art in which those who have to exercise it can scarcely possess all the necessary skill and experience. among trees and birds and beasts the art is surer because it is exercised unconsciously, on the foundation of a large tradition in which failure meant death. in the common procreative profusion of those forms of life the frequent death of the young was a matter of little concern, but biologically there was never any sacrifice of the offspring to the well-being of the parents. whenever sacrifice is called for it is the parents who are sacrificed to their offspring. in our superior human civilisation, in which quantity ever tends to give place to quality, the higher value of the individual involves an effort to avoid sacrifice which sometimes proves worse than abortive. an avian philosopher would be unlikely to feel called upon to denounce nests as the dark places of the earth, and in laying down our human moral laws we have always to be aware of forgetting the fundamental biological relationship of parent and child to which all such moral laws must conform. to some would-be parents that necessity may seem hard. in such a case it is well for them to remember that there is no need to become parents and that we live in an age when it is not difficult to avoid becoming a parent. the world is not dying for lack of parents. on the contrary we have far too many of them--ignorant parents, silly parents, unwilling parents, undesirable parents--and those who aspire to the high dignity of creating the future race, let them be as few as they will--and perhaps at the present time the fewer the better--must not refuse the responsibilities of that position, its pains as well as its joys. in our human world, as we know, the moral duties laid upon us--the duties in which, if we fail, we become outcasts in our own eyes or in those of others or in both--are of three kinds: the duties to oneself, the duties to the small circle of those we love, and the duties to the larger circle of mankind to which ultimately we belong, since out of it we proceed, and to it we owe all that we are. there are no maxims, there is only an art and a difficult art, to harmonise duties which must often conflict. we have to be true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. to that extent george eliot's maggie tulliver was undoubtedly right. but the renunciation of the self is not the routine solution of every conflict, any more than is the absolute failure to renounce. in a certain sense the duty towards the self comes before all others, because it is the condition on which duties towards others possess any significance and worth. in that sense, it is true according to the familiar saying of shakespeare,--though it was only polonius, the man of maxims, who voiced it,--that one cannot be true to others unless one is first true to oneself, and that one can know nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how to take. we see that the problem of the place of parents in life, after their function of parenthood has been adequately fulfilled, a problem which offers no difficulties among most forms of life, has been found hard to solve by man. at some places and periods it has been considered most merciful to put them, to death; at others they have been almost or quite deified and allowed to regulate the whole lives of their descendants. thus in new caledonia aged parents, it is said by mrs. hadfield, were formerly taken up to a high mountain and left with enough food to last a few days; there was at the same time great regard for the aged, as also among the hottentots who asked: "can you see a parent or a relative shaking and freezing under a cold, dreary, heavy, useless old age, and not think, in pity of them, of putting an end to their misery?" it was generally the opinion of the parents themselves, but in some countries the parents have dominated and overawed their children to the time of their natural death and even beyond, up to the point of ancestor worship, as in china, where no man of any age can act for himself in the chief matters of life during his parents' life-time, and to some extent in ancient rome, whence an influence in this direction which still exists in the laws and customs of france.[ ] both extremes have proved compatible with a beautifully human life. to steer midway between them seems to-day, however, the wisest course. there ought to be no reason, and under happy conditions there is no reason, why the relationship between parent and child, as one of mutual affection and care, should ever cease to exist. but that the relationship should continue to exist as a tie is unnatural and tends to be harmful. at a certain stage in the development of the child the physical tie with the parent is severed, and the umbilical cord cut. at a later stage in development, when puberty is attained and adolescence is feeling its way towards a complete adult maturity, the spiritual tie must be severed. it is absolutely essential that the young spirit should begin to essay its own wings. if its energy is not equal to this adventure, then it is the part of a truly loving parent to push it over the edge of the nest. of course there are dangers and risks. but the worst dangers and risks come of the failure to adventure, of the refusal to face the tasks of the world and to assume the full function of life. all that freud has told of the paralysing and maiming influence of infantile arrest or regression is here profitable to consider. in order, moreover, that the relationship between parents and children may retain its early beauty and love, it is essential that it shall adapt itself to adult conditions and the absence of ties so rendered necessary. otherwise there is little likelihood of anything but friction and pain on one side or the other, and perhaps on both sides. [ ] the varying customs of different peoples in this matter are set forth by westermarck, _the origin and development of the moral ideas_, ch. xxv. the parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves. it is desirable that children, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, and consciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with a new world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are often blind and deaf. for every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. yet at no time--especially in women, who present all the various stages of the sexual life in so emphatic a form--would education be more valuable. the great burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing responsibilities, has suddenly been lifted; at the same time the perpetually recurring rhythm of physical sex manifestations, so often disturbing in its effect, finally ceases; with that cessation, very often, after a brief period of perturbation, there is an increase both in physical and mental energy. yet, too often, all that one can see is that a vacuum has been created, and that there is nothing to fill it. the result is that the mother--for it is most often of the mother that complaint is made--devotes her own new found energies to the never-ending task of hampering and crushing her children's developing energies. how many mothers there are who bring to our minds that ancient and almost inspired statement concerning those for whom "satan finds some mischief still"! they are wasting, worse than wasting, energies that might be profitably applied to all sorts of social service in the world. there is nothing that is so much needed as the "maternal in politics," or in all sorts of non-political channels of social service, and none can be better fitted for such service than those who have had an actual experience of motherhood and acquired the varied knowledge that such experience should give. there are numberless other ways, besides social service, in which mothers who have passed the age of forty, providing they possess the necessary aptitudes, can more profitably apply themselves than in hampering, or pampering, their adult children. it is by wisely cultivating their activities in a larger sphere that women whose chief duties in the narrower domestic sphere are over may better ensure their own happiness and the welfare of others than either by fretting and obstructing, or by worrying over, their own children who are no longer children. it is quite true that the children may go astray even when they have ceased to be children. but the time to implant the seeds of virtue, the time to convey a knowledge of life, was when they were small. if it was done well, it only remains to exercise faith and trust. if it was done ill, nothing done later will compensate, for it is merely foolish for a mother who could not educate her children when they were small to imagine that she is able to educate them when they are big. so it is that the problem of the attitude of the child to its parents circles round again to that of the parents to the child. the wise parent realises that childhood is simply a preparation for the free activities of later life, that the parents exist in order to equip children for life and not to shelter and protect them from the world into which they must be cast. education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life. beyond that, and no doubt in the largest part, it is a natural growth and takes place of itself. chapter ii the meaning of purity i we live in a world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find two antagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question of sexual purity, both flowing from the far past. the people who embody one of these streams of tradition, basing themselves on old-fashioned physiology, assume, though they may not always assert, that the sexual products are excretions, to be dealt with summarily like other excretions. that is an ancient view and it was accepted by such wise philosophers of old times as montaigne and sir thomas more. it had, moreover, the hearty support of so eminent a theological authority as luther, who on this ground preached early marriage to men and women alike. it is still a popular view, sometimes expressed in the crudest terms, and often by people who, not following luther's example, use it to defend prostitution, though they generally exclude women from its operation, as a sex to whom it fails to apply and by whom it is not required. but on the other hand we have another stream of platitude. on this side there is usually little attempt either to deny or to affirm the theory of the opposing party, though they would contradict its conclusions. their theory, if they have one, would usually seem to be that sexual activity is a response to stimulation from without or from within, so that if there is no stimulation there will be no sexual manifestation. they would preach, they tell us, a strenuous ideal; they would set up a wholesome dictate of hygiene. the formula put forward on this basis usually runs: continence is not only harmless but beneficial. it is a formula which, in one form or another, has received apparently enthusiastic approval in many quarters, even from distinguished physicians. we need not be surprised. a proposition so large and general is not easy to deny, and is still more difficult to reverse; therefore it proves welcome to the people--especially the people occupying public and professional positions--who wish to find the path of least resistance, under pressure of a vigorous section of public opinion. yet in its vagueness the proposition is a little disingenuous; it condescends to no definitions and no qualifications; it fails even to make clear how it is to be reconciled with any enthusiastic approval of marriage, for if continence is beautiful how can marriage make it cease to be so? both these streams of feeling, it may be noted, sprang from a common source far back in the primitive human world. all the emanations of the human body, all the spontaneous manifestations of its activities, were mysterious and ominous to early man, pregnant with terror unless met with immense precautions and surrounded by careful ritual. the manifestations of sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. therefore the things of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horror and awe, of impurity and of purity. they seemed so highly charged with magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet none to which they were impelled to give more thought. the manifold echoes of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that were thus evolved and eventually bound up with the original impulse, compose the streams of tradition that feed our modern world in this matter and determine the ideas of purity that surround us. at the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified. we begin to find the grounds for a sounder theory. not indeed that the problems of sex, which go so deeply into the whole personal and social life, can ever be settled exclusively upon physiological grounds. but we have done much to prepare even the loftiest building of love when we have attained a clear view of its biological basis. the progress of chemico-physiological research during recent years has now brought us to new ground for our building. indeed the image might well be changed altogether, and it might be said that science has entirely transferred the drama of reproduction to a new stage with new actors. therewith the immense emphasis placed on excretion, and the inevitable reaction that emphasis aroused, both alike disappear. the sexual protagonists are no longer at the surface but within the most secret recesses of the organism, and they appear to science under the name of hormones or internal secretions, always at work within and never themselves condescending to appear at all. those products of the sexual glands which in both sexes are cast out of the body, and at an immature stage of knowledge appeared to be excretions, are of primary reproductive importance, but, as regards the sexual constitution of the individual, they are of far less importance than the internal secretions of these very same glands. it is, however, by no means only the specifically sexual glands which thus exert a sexual influence within the organism. other glands in the brain, the throat, and the abdomen,--such as the thyroid and the adrenals,--are also elaborating fermentative secretions to throw into the system. their mutual play is so elaborate that it is only beginning to be understood. some internal secretions stimulate, others inhibit, and the same secretions may under different conditions do either. this fact is the source of many degrees and varieties of energy and formative power in the organism. taken altogether, the internal secretions are the forces which build up the man's and woman's distinctively sexual constitution: the special disposition and growth of hair, the relative development of breasts and pelvis, the characteristic differences in motor activity, the varying emotional desires and needs. it is in the complex play of these secretions that we now seek the explanation of all the peculiarities of sexual constitution, imperfect or one-sided physical and psychic development, the various approximations of the male to female bodily and emotional disposition, of the female to the male, all the numerous gradations that occur, naturally as we now see, between the complete man and the complete woman. when we turn the light of this new conception on to our old ideas of purity,--to the virtue or the vice, accordingly as we may have been pleased to consider it, of sexual abstinence,--we begin to see that those ideas need radical revision. they appear in a new light, their whole meaning is changed. no doubt it may be said they never had the validity they appeared to possess, even when we judge them by the crudest criterion, that of practice. thus, while it is the rule for physicians to proclaim the advantages of sexual continence, there is no good reason to believe that they have themselves practised it in any eminent degree. a few years ago an inquiry among thirty-five distinguished physicians, chiefly german and russian, showed that they were nearly all of opinion that continence is harmless, if not beneficial. but meirowsky found by inquiry of eighty-six physicians, of much the same nationalities, that only one had himself been sexually abstinent before marriage. there seem to be no similar statistics for the english-speaking countries, where there exists a greater modesty--though not perhaps notably less need for it--in the making of such confessions. but if we turn to the allied profession which is strongly on the side of sexual abstinence, we find that among theological students, as has been shown in the united states, while prostitution may be infrequent, no temptation is so frequent or so potent, and in most cases so irresistible, as that to solitary sexual indulgence. such is the actual attitude towards the two least ideal forms of sexual practice--as distinguished from mere theory--on the part of the two professions which most definitely pronounce in favour of continence. it is necessary, however, as will now be clearer, to set our net more widely. we must take into consideration every form and degree of sexual manifestation, normal and abnormal, gross and ethereal. when we do this, even cautiously and without going far afield, sexual abstinence is found to be singularly elusive. rohleder, a careful and conscientious investigator, has asserted that such abstinence, in the true and complete sense, is absolutely non-existent, the genuine cases in which sexual phenomena of some kind or other fail to manifest themselves being simply cases of inborn lack of sexual sensibility. he met, indeed, a few people who seemed exceptions to the general rule, but, on better knowledge, he found that he was mistaken, and that so far from being absent in these people the sexual instinct was present even in its crudest shapes. the activity of sex is an activity that on the physical side is generated by the complex mechanism of the ductless glands and displayed in the whole organism, physical and psychic, of the individual, who cannot abolish that activity, although to some extent able to regulate the forms in which it is manifested, so that purity cannot be the abolition or even the indefinite suspension of sexual manifestations; it must be the wise and beautiful control of them. it is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge. ii we have seen that various popular beliefs and conventional assumptions concerning the sexual impulse can no longer be maintained. the sexual activities of the organism are not mere responses to stimulation, absent if we choose to apply no stimulus, never troubling us if we run away from them, harmless if we enclose them within a high wall. nor do they constitute a mere excretion, or a mere appetite, which we can control by a crude system of hygiene and dietetics. we better understand the psycho-sexual constitution if we regard the motive power behind it as a dynamic energy, produced and maintained by a complex mechanism at certain inner foci of the body, and realise that whatever periodic explosive manifestations may take place at the surface, the primary motive source lies in the intimate recesses of the organism, while the outcome is the whole physical and spiritual energy of our being under those aspects which are most forcible and most aspiring and even most ethereal. this conception, we find, is now receiving an admirable and beautifully adequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologists in various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of the body, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into the system stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on the man's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire but at the same time impart the special tone and fibre and polarity of masculinity or femininity to the psychic disposition. yet, even before brown-séquard's first epoch-making suggestion had set physiologists to search for internal secretions, the insight of certain physicians on the medico-psychological side was independently leading towards the same dynamic conception. in the middle of the last century anstie, an acute london physician, more or less vaguely realised the transformations of sexual energy into nervous disease and into artistic energy. james hinton, whose genius rendered him the precursor of many modern ideas, had definitely grasped the dynamic nature of sexual activity, and daringly proposed to utilise it, not only as a solution of the difficulties of the personal life but for the revolutionary transformation of morality.[ ] it was the wish to group together all the far-flung manifestations of the inner irresistible process of sexual activity that underlay my own conception of _auto-erotism_, or the spontaneous erotic impulse which arises from the organism apart from all definite external stimulation, to be manifested, or it may be transformed, in mere solitary physical sex activity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literature and art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. since then, a more elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexual activity has been made by freud; and the psycho-analysts who have followed him, or sometimes diverged, have with endless subtlety, and courageous thoroughness, traced the long and sinuous paths of sexual energy in personality and in life, indeed in all the main manifestations of human activity. [ ] "the man who separated the thought of chastity from service and made it revolve round self," wrote hinton half a century ago in his unpublished mss., "betrayed the human race." "the rule of self," he wrote again, "has two forms: self-indulgence and self-virtue; and nature has two weapons against it: pain and pleasure.... a restraint must always be put away when another's need can be served by putting it away; for so is restored to us the force by which life is made.... how curious it seems! the true evil things are our _good_ things. our thoughts of duty and goodness and chastity, those are the things that need to be altered and put aside; these are the barriers to true goodness.... i foresee the positive denial of _all_ positive morals, the removal of _all_ restrictions. i feel i do not know what 'license,' as we should term it, may not truly belong to the perfect state of man. when there is no self surely there is no restriction; as we see there is none in nature.... may we not say of marriage as st. augustine said of god: 'rather would i, not finding, find thee, than finding, not find thee'?... 'because we like' is the sole legitimate and perfect motive of human action.... if this is what nature affirms then it will be what i believe." this dynamic conception of the sexual impulse, as a force that, under natural conditions, may be trusted to build up a new morality, obviously belongs to an indefinitely remote future. it is a force whose blade is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness it also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a time when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it as a time when there is much humbug. yet for the individual this conception of the constructive power of love retains much enlightenment and inspiration. it is important for us to note about this dynamic sexual energy in the constitution that while it is very firmly and organically rooted, and quite indestructible, it assumes very various shapes. on the physical side all the characters of sexual distinction and all the beauties of sexual adornment are wrought by the power furnished by the co-operating furnaces of the glands, and so also, on the psychic side, are emotions and impulses which range from the simplest longings for sensual contact to the most exalted rapture of union with the infinite. moreover, there is a certain degree of correlation between the physical and the psychic manifestation of sexual energy, and, to some extent, transformation is possible in the embodiment of that energy. a vague belief in the transformation of sexual energy has long been widespread. it is apparently shown in the idea that continence, as an economy in the expenditure of sexual force, may be practised to aid the physical and mental development, while folklore reveals various sayings in regard to the supposed influence of sexual abstinence in the causation of insanity. there is a certain underlying basis of reason in such beliefs, though in an unqualified form they cannot be accepted, for they take no account of the complexity of the factors involved, of the difficulty and often impossibility of effecting any complete transformation, either in a desirable or undesirable direction, and of the serious conflict which the process often involves. the psycho-analysts have helped us here. whether or not we accept their elaborate and often shifting conceptions, they have emphasised and developed a psychological conception of sexual energy and its transformations, before only vaguely apprehended, which is now seen to harmonise with the modern physiological view. the old notion that sexual activity is merely a matter of the voluntary exercise, or abstinence from exercise, of the reproductive functions of adult persons has too long obstructed any clear vision of the fact that sexuality, in the wide and deep sense, is independent of the developments of puberty. this has long been accepted as an occasional and therefore abnormal fact, but we have to recognise that it is true, almost or quite normally, even of early childhood. no doubt we must here extend the word "sexuality"[ ]--in what may well be considered an illegitimate way--to cover manifestations which in the usual sense are not sexual or are at most called "sexual perversions." but this extension has a certain justification in view of the fact that these manifestations can be seen to be definitely related to the ordinary adult forms of sexuality. however we define it, we have to recognise that the child takes the same kind of pleasure in those functions which are natural to his age as the adult is capable of taking in localised sexual functions, that he may weave ideas around such functions, sometimes cultivate their exercise from love of luxury, make them the basis of day-dreams which at puberty, when the ideals of adult life are ready to capture his sexual energy, he begins to grow ashamed of. [ ] perhaps, as applied to the period below puberty, it would be more exact to say "pseudo-sexuality." matsumato has lately pointed out the significance of the fact that the interstitial testicular tissue, essential to the hormonic function of the testes, only becomes active at puberty. at this stage, indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little twisted. for it is here that the transformation of energy and the resulting possibilities of conflict are wont to enter. in the harmoniously developing organism, one may say, there is at this period a gradual and easy transmutation of the childish pleasurable activities into adult activities, accompanied perhaps by a feeling of shame for the earlier feelings, though this quickly passes into a forgetfulness which often leads the adult far astray when he attempts to understand the psychic life of the child. the childish manifestations, it must be remarked, are not necessarily unwholesome; they probably perform a valuable function and develop budding sexual emotions, just as the petals of flowers are developed in pale and contorted shapes beneath the enveloping sheaths. but in our human life the transmutation is often not so easy as in flowers. normally, indeed, the adolescent transformations of sex are so urgent and so manifold--now definite sensual desire, now muscular impulses of adventure, now emotional aspirations in the sphere of art or religion--that they easily overwhelm and absorb all its vaguer and more twisted manifestations in childhood. yet it may happen that by some aberration of internal development or of external influence this conversion of energy may at one point or another fail to be completely effected. then some fragment of infantile sexuality survives, in rare cases to turn all the adult faculties to its service and become reckless and triumphant, in minor and more frequent cases to be subordinated and more or less repressed into the subconscious sphere by voluntary or even involuntary and unconscious effort. then we may have conflict, which, when it works happily, exerts a fortifying and ennobling influence on character, when more unhappily a disturbing influence which may even lead to conditions of definite nervous disorder. the process by which this fundamental sexual energy is elevated from elementary and primitive forms into complex and developed forms is termed sublimation, a term, originally used for the process of raising by heat a solid substance to the state of vapour, which was applied even by such early writers as drayton and davies in a metaphorical and spiritual sense.[ ] in the sexual sphere sublimation is of vital importance because it comes into question throughout the whole of life, and our relation to it must intimately affect our conception of morality. the element of athletic asceticism which is a part of all virility, and is found even--indeed often in a high degree--among savages, has its main moral justification as one aid to sublimation. throughout life sublimation acts by transforming some part at all events of the creative sexual energy from its elementary animal manifestations into more highly individual and social manifestations, or at all events into finer forms of sexual activity, forms that seem to us more beautiful and satisfy us more widely. purity, we thus come to see is, in one aspect, the action of sublimation, not abolishing sexual activity, but lifting it into forms of which our best judgment may approve. [ ] we may gather the history of the term from the _oxford dictionary_. bodies, said davies, are transformed to spirit "by sublimation strange," and ben jonson in _cynthia's revels_ spoke of a being "sublimated and refined"; purchas and jackson, early in the same seventeenth century, referred to religion as "sublimating" human nature, and jeremy taylor, a little later, to "subliming" marriage into a sacrament; shaftesbury, early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimated by a sort of spiritual chemists" and welton, a little later, of "a love sublimate and refined," while, finally, and altogether in our modern sense, peacock in in his _headlong hall_ referred to "that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy." we must not suppose--as is too often assumed--that sublimation can be carried out easily, completely, or even with unmixed advantage. if it were so, certainly the old-fashioned moralist would be confronted by few difficulties, but we have ample reason to believe that it is not so. it is with sexual energy, well observes freud, who yet attaches great importance to sublimation, as it is with heat in our machines: only a certain proportion can be transformed into work. or, as it is put by löwenfeld, who is not a constructive philosopher but a careful and cautious medical investigator, the advantages of sublimation are not received in specially high degree by those who permanently deny to their sexual impulse every natural direct relief. the celibate catholic clergy, notwithstanding their heroic achievements in individual cases, can scarcely be said to display a conspicuous excess of intellectual energy, on the whole, over the non-celibate protestant clergy; or, if we compare the english clergy before and after the protestant reformation, though the earlier period may reveal more daring and brilliant personages, the whole intellectual output of the later church may claim comparison with that of the earlier church. there are clearly other factors at work besides sublimation, and even sublimation may act most potently, not when the sexual activities sink or are driven into a tame and monotonous subordination, but rather when they assume a splendid energy which surges into many channels. yet sublimation is a very real influence, not only in its more unconscious and profound operations, but in its more immediate and temporary applications, as part of an athletic discipline, acting best perhaps when it acts most automatically, to utilise the motor energy of the organism in the attainment of any high physical or psychic achievement. we have to realise, however, that these transmutations do not only take place by way of a sublimation of sexual energy, but also by way of a degradation of that energy. the new form of energy produced, that is to say, may not be of a beneficial kind; it may be of a mischievous kind, a form of perversion or disease. sexual self-denial, instead of leading to sublimation, may lead to nervous disorder when the erotic tension, failing to find a natural outlet and not sublimated to higher erotic or non-erotic ends in the real world, is transmuted into an unreal dreamland, thus undergoing what jung terms introversion; while there are also the people already referred to, in whom immature childish sexuality persists into an adult stage of development it is no longer altogether in accord with, so that conflict, with various possible trains of nervous symptoms, may result. disturbances and conflicts in the emotional sexual field may, we know, in these and similar ways become transformed into physical symptoms of disorder which can be seen to have a precise symbolic relationship to definite events in the patient's emotional history, while fits of nervous terror, or anxiety-neurosis, may frequently be regarded as a degradation of thwarted or disturbed sexual energy, manifesting its origin by presenting a picture of sexual excitation transposed into a non-sexual shape of an entirely useless or mischievous character. thus, to sum up, we may say that the sexual energy of the organism is a mighty force, automatically generated throughout life. under healthy conditions that force is transmuted in more or less degree, but never entirely, into forms that further the development of the individual and the general ends of life. these transformations are to some extent automatic, to some extent within the control of personal guidance. but there are limits to such guidance, for the primitive human personality can never be altogether rendered an artificial creature of civilisation. when these limits are reached the transmutation of sexual energy may become useless or even dangerous, and we fail to attain the exquisite flower of purity. iii it may seem that in setting forth the nature of the sexual impulse in the light of modern biology and psychology, i have said but little of purity and less of morality. yet that is as it should be. we must first be content to see how the machine works and watch the wheels go round. we must understand before we can pretend to control; in the natural world, as bacon long ago said, we can only command by obeying. moreover, in this field nature's order is far older and more firmly established than our civilised human morality. in our arrogance we often assume that morality is the master of nature. yet except when it is so elementary or fundamental as to be part of nature, it is but a guide, and a guide that is only a child, so young, so capricious, that in every age its wayward hand has sought to pull nature in a different direction. even only in order to guide we must first see and know. we realise that never more than when we observe the distinction which conventional sex-morals so often makes between men and women. failing to find in women exactly the same kind of sexual emotions, as they find in themselves, men have concluded that there are none there at all. so man has regarded himself as the sexual animal, and woman as either the passive object of his adoring love or the helpless victim of his degrading lust, in either case as a being who, unlike man, possessed an innocent "purity" by nature, without any need for the trouble of acquiring it. of woman as a real human being, with sexual needs and sexual responsibilities, morality has often known nothing. it has been content to preach restraint to man, an abstract and meaningless restraint even if it were possible. but when we have regard to the actual facts of life, we can no longer place virtue in a vacuum. women are just as apt as men to be afflicted by the petty jealousies and narrownesses of the crude sexual impulse; women just as much as men need the perpetual sublimation of erotic desire into forms of more sincere purity, of larger harmony, in gaining which ends all the essential ends of morality are alone gained. the delicate adjustment of the needs of each sex to the needs of the other sex to the end of what chaucer called fine loving, the adjustment of the needs of both sexes to the larger ends of fine living, may well furnish a perpetual moral discipline which extends its fortifying influence to men and women alike. it is this universality of sexual emotion, blending in its own mighty stream, as is now realised, many other currents of emotion, even the parental and the filial, and traceable even in childhood,--the wide efflorescence of an energy constantly generated by a vital internal mechanism,--which renders vain all attempts either to suppress or to ignore the problem of sex, however immensely urgent we might foolishly imagine such attempts to be. even the history of the early christian ascetics in egypt, as recorded in the contemporary _paradise_ of palladius, illustrates the futility of seeking to quench the unquenchable, the flame of fire which is life itself. these "athletes of the lord" were under the best possible conditions for the conquest of lust; they had been driven into the solitude of the desert by a genuine deeply-felt impulse, they could regulate their lives as they would, and they possessed an almost inconceivable energy of resolution. they were prepared to live on herbs, even to eat grass, and to undertake any labour of self-denial. they were so scrupulous that we hear of a holy man who would even efface a woman's footprints in the sand lest a brother might thereby be led into thoughts of evil. yet they were perpetually tempted to seductive visions and desires, even after a monastic life of forty years, and the women seem to have been not less liable to yield to temptation than the men. it may be noted that in the most perfect saints there has not always been a complete suppression of the sexual impulse even on the normal plane, nor even, in some cases, the attempt at such complete suppression. in the early days of christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the sexes which shocked austere moralists. even in the eleventh century we find that the charming and saintly robert of arbrissel, founder of the order of fontevrault, would often sleep with his nuns, notwithstanding the remonstrances of pious friends who thought he was displaying too heroic a manifestation of continence, failing to understand that he was effecting a sweet compromise with continence. if, moreover, we consider the rarest and finest of the saints we usually find that in their early lives there was a period of full expansion of the organic activities in which all the natural impulses had full play. this was the case with the two greatest and most influential saints of the christian church, st. augustine and st. francis of assisi, absolutely unlike as they were in most other respects. sublimation, we see again and again, is limited, and the best developments of the spiritual life are not likely to come about by the rigid attempt to obtain a complete transmutation of sexual energy. the old notion that any strict attempt to adhere to sexual abstinence is beset by terrible risks, insanity and so forth, has no foundation, at all events where we are concerned with reasonably sound and healthy people. but it is a very serious error to suppose that the effort to achieve complete and prolonged sexual abstinence is without any bad results at all, physical or psychic, either in men or women who are normal and healthy. this is now generally recognised everywhere, except in the english-speaking countries, where the supposed interests of a prudish morality often lead to a refusal to look facts in the face. as professor näcke, a careful and cautious physician, stated shortly before his death, a few years ago, the opinion that sexual abstinence has no bad effects is not to-day held by a single authority on questions of sex; the fight is only concerned with the nature and degree of the bad effects which, in näcke's belief--and he was doubtless right--are never of a gravely serious character. yet we have also to remember that not only, as we have seen, is the effort to achieve complete abstinence--which we ignorantly term "purity"--futile, since we are concerned with a force which is being constantly generated within the organism, but in the effort to achieve it we are abusing a great source of beneficent energy. we lose more than half of what we might gain when we cover it up, and try to push it back, to produce, it may be, not harmonious activity in the world, but merely internal confusion and distortion, and perhaps the paralysis of half the soul's energy. the sexual activities of the organism, we cannot too often repeat, constitute a mighty source of energy which we can never altogether repress though by wise guidance we may render it an aid not only to personal development and well-being but to the moral betterment of the world. the attraction of sex, according to a superstition which reaches far back into antiquity, is a baleful comet pointing to destruction, rather than a mighty star to which we may harness our chariot. it may certainly be either, and which it is likely to become depends largely on our knowledge and our power of self-guidance. in old days when, as we have seen, tradition, aided by the most fantastic superstitions, insisted on the baleful aspects of sex, the whole emphasis was placed against passion. since knowledge and self-guidance, without which passion is likely to be in fact pernicious, were then usually absent, the emphasis was needed, and when böhme, the old mystic, declared that the art of living is to "harness our fiery energies to the service of the light," it has recently been even maintained that he was the solitary pioneer of our modern doctrines. but the ages in which ill-regulated passion exceeded--ages at least full of vitality and energy--gave place to a more anæmic society. to-day the conditions are changed, even reversed. moral maxims that were wholesome in feudal days are deadly now. we are in no danger of suffering from too much vitality, from too much energy in the explosive splendour of our social life. we possess, moreover, knowledge in plenty and self-restraint in plenty, even in excess, however wrongly they may sometimes be applied. it is passion, more passion and fuller, that we need. the moralist who bans passion is not of our time; his place these many years is with the dead. for we know what happens in a world when those who ban passion have triumphed. when love is suppressed hate takes its place. the least regulated orgies of love grow innocent beside the orgies of hate. when nations that might well worship one another cut one another's throats, when cruelty and self-righteousness and lying and injustice and all the powers of destruction rule the human heart, the world is devastated, the fibre of the whole organism, of society grows flaccid, and all the ideals of civilisation are debased. if the world is not now sick of hate we may be sure it never will be; so whatever may happen to the world let us remember that the individual is still left, to carry on the tasks of love, to do good even in an evil world. it is more passion and ever more that we need if we are to undo the work of hate, if we are to add to the gaiety and splendour of life, to the sum of human achievement, to the aspiration of human ecstasy. the things that fill men and women with beauty and exhilaration, and spur them to actions beyond themselves, are the things that are now needed. the entire intrinsic purification of the soul, it was held by the great spanish jesuit theologian, suarez, takes place at the moment when, provided the soul is of good disposition, it sees god; he meant after death, but for us the saying is symbolic of the living truth. it is only in the passion of facing the naked beauty of the world and its naked truth that we can win intrinsic purity. not all, indeed, who look upon the face of god can live. it is not well that they should live. it is only the metals that can be welded in the fire of passion to finer services that the world needs. it would be well that the rest should be lost in those flames. that indeed were a world fit to perish, wherein the moralist had set up the ignoble maxim: safety first. chapter iii the objects of marriage what are the legitimate objects of marriage? we know that many people seek to marry for ends that can scarcely be called legitimate, that men may marry to obtain a cheap domestic drudge or nurse, and that women may marry to be kept when they are tired of keeping themselves. these objects in marriage may or may not be moral, but in any case they are scarcely its legitimate ends. we are here concerned to ascertain those ends of marriage which are legitimate when we take the highest ground as moral and civilised men and women living in an advanced state of society and seeking, if we can, to advance that state of society still further. the primary end of marriage is to beget and bear offspring, and to rear them until they are able to take care of themselves. on that basis man is at one with all the mammals and most of the birds. if, indeed, we disregard the originally less essential part of this end--that is to say, the care and tending of the young--this end of marriage is not only the primary but usually the sole end of sexual intercourse in the whole mammal world. as a natural instinct, its achievement involves gratification and well-being, but this bait of gratification is merely a device of nature's and not in itself an end having any useful function at the periods when conception is not possible. this is clearly indicated by the fact that among animals the female only experiences sexual desire at the season of impregnation, and that desire ceases as soon as impregnation takes place, though this is only in a few species true of the male, obviously because, if his sexual desire and aptitude were confined to so brief a period, the chances of the female meeting the right male at the right moment would be too seriously diminished; so that the attentive and inquisitive attitude towards the female by the male animal--which we may often think we see still traceable in the human species--is not the outcome of lustfulness for personal gratification ("wantonly to satisfy carnal lusts and appetites like brute beasts," as the anglican prayer book incorrectly puts it) but implanted by nature for the benefit of the female and the attainment of the primary object of procreation. this primary object we may term the animal end of marriage. this object remains not only the primary but even the sole end of marriage among the lower races of mankind generally. the erotic idea, in its deeper sense, that is to say the element of love, arose very slowly in mankind. it is found, it is true, among some lower races, and it appears that some tribes possess a word for the joy of love in a purely psychic sense. but even among european races the evolution was late. the greek poets, except the latest, showed little recognition of love as an element of marriage. theognis compared marriage with cattle-breeding. the romans of the republic took much the same view. greeks and romans alike regarded breeding as the one recognisable object of marriage; any other object was mere wantonness and had better, they thought, be carried on outside marriage. religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitive conceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, and christianity--though, as i will point out later, it has tended to enlarge the conception--at the outset only offered the choice between celibacy on the one hand and on the other marriage for the production of offspring. yet, from, an early period in human history, a secondary function of sexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the great objects of marriage. among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes in man, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swift circuit through the brain to reach its consummation. but as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches--and sometimes it never reaches--its ultimate object. this means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. the primitive animal instinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to that end the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which in civilisation we count most precious. this function is thus, we see, a by-product. but, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. that is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. the hand was produced out of the animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary function. it is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed sexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without ever attaining the normal physical outlet. for the most part the by-product accompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yet peculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primary animal object. this may be termed the spiritual object of marriage. by the term "spiritual" we are not to understand any mysterious and supernatural qualities. it is simply a convenient name, in distinction from animal, to cover all those higher mental and emotional processes which in human evolution are ever gaining greater power. it is needless to enumerate the constituents of this spiritual end of sexual intercourse, for everyone is entitled to enumerate them differently and in different order. they include not only all that makes love a gracious and beautiful erotic art, but the whole element of pleasure in so far as pleasure is more than a mere animal gratification. our ancient ascetic traditions often make us blind to the meaning of pleasure. we see only its possibilities of evil and not its mightiness for good. we forget that, as romain rolland says, "joy is as holy as pain." no one has insisted so much on the supreme importance of the element of pleasure in the spiritual ends of sex as james hinton. rightly used, he declares, pleasure is "the child of god," to be recognised as a "mighty storehouse of force," and he pointed out the significant fact that in the course of human progress its importance increases rather than diminishes.[ ] while it is perfectly true that sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed into intellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. it is largely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive in settling the argument of those who claim that continence is the only alternative to the animal end of marriage. that argument ignores the liberating and harmonising influences, giving wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome of the psychic as well as physical needs. there is, further, in the attainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit of each individual separately. there is, that is to say, the effect on the union itself. for through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out of marriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in the service of the world. apart from any sexual craving, the complete spiritual contact of two persons who love each other can only be attained through some act of rare intimacy. no act can be quite so intimate as the sexual embrace. in its accomplishment, for all who have reached a reasonably human degree of development, the communion of bodies becomes the communion of souls. the outward and visible sign has been the consummation of an inward and spiritual grace. "i would base all my sex teaching to children and young people on the beauty and sacredness of sex," wrote a distinguished woman; "sex intercourse is the great sacrament of life, he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh his own damnation; but it may be the most beautiful sacrament between two souls who have no thought of children."[ ] to many the idea of a sacrament seems merely ecclesiastical, but that is a misunderstanding. the word "sacrament" is the ancient roman name of a soldier's oath of military allegiance, and the idea, in the deeper sense, existed long before christianity, and has ever been regarded as the physical sign of the closest possible union with some great spiritual reality. from our modern standpoint we may say, with james hinton, that the sexual embrace, worthily understood, can only be compared with music and with prayer. "every true lover," it has been well said by a woman, "knows this, and the worth of any and every relationship can be judged by its success in reaching, or failing to reach, this standpoint."[ ] [ ] mrs. havelock ellis, _james hinton: a sketch_, ch. iv. [ ] olive schreiner in a personal letter. [ ] mrs. havelock ellis, _james hinton_, p. . i have mentioned how the church--in part influenced by that clinging to primitive conceptions which always marks religions and in part by its ancient traditions of asceticism--tended to insist mainly, if not exclusively, on the animal object of marriage. it sought to reduce sex to a minimum because the pagans magnified sex; it banned pleasure because the christian's path on earth was the way of the cross; and even if theologians accepted the idea of a "sacrament of nature" they could only allow it to operate when the active interference of the priest was impossible, though it must in justice be said that, before the council of trent, the western church recognised that the sacrament of marriage was effected entirely by the act of the two celebrants themselves and not by the priest. gradually, however, a more reasonable and humane opinion crept into the church. intercourse outside the animal end of marriage was indeed a sin, but it became merely a venial sin. the great influence of st. augustine was on the side of allowing much freedom to intercourse outside the aim of procreation. at the reformation, john à lasco, a catholic bishop who became a protestant and settled in england, laid it down, following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage, besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to the united couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders of the protestant churches. it is the generally accepted protestant view to-day.[ ] the importance of the spiritual end of intercourse in marriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the couple and for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still more emphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day. [ ] it is well set forth by the rev. h. northcote in his excellent book, _christianity and sex problems_. there is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are entirely different--as worthy of our imitation. it has taken god--or nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to evolve man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to reproduction which marks the lower animals. but on these people it has all been wasted. they are at the animal stage still. they have yet to learn the a.b.c. of love. a representative of these people in the person of an anglican bishop, the bishop of southwark, appeared as a witness before the national birth-rate commission which, a few years ago, met in london to investigate the decline of the birth-rate. he declared that procreation is the sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any other end was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification." this declaration had the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of the commission, formed of representative men and women with various stand-points--protestant, catholic, and other--and it is notable that while not one identified himself with the bishop's opinion, several decisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of both ancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moral standpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity of an individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts of intercourse in a lifetime. such a notion obviously cannot be carried into general practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would be desirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result of shutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, for whatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from having children at all. it is the attitude of a handful of pharisees seeking to thrust the bulk of mankind into hell. all this confusion and evil comes of the blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end of propagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritual end. it is needless to insist how intimately that secondary end of marriage is bound up with the practice of birth-control. without birth-control, indeed, it could frequently have no existence at all, and even at the best seldom be free from disconcerting possibilities fatal to its very essence. against these disconcerting possibilities is often placed, on the other side, the un-æsthetic nature of the contraceptives associated with birth-control. yet, it must be remembered, they are of a part with the whole of our civilised human life. we at no point enter the spiritual save through the material. forel has in this connection compared the use of contraceptives to the use of eye-glasses. eye-glasses are equally un-æsthetic, yet they are devices, based on nature, wherewith to supplement the deficiencies of nature. however in themselves un-æsthetic, for those who need them they make the æsthetic possible. eye-glasses and contraceptives alike are a portal to the spiritual world for many who, without them, would find that world largely a closed book. birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life. by furnishing the means to limit the size of families, which would otherwise be excessive, it confers the greatest benefit on the family and especially on the mother. by rendering easily possible a selection in parentage and the choice of the right time and circumstances for conception it is, again, the chief key to the eugenic improvement of the race. there are many other benefits, as is now generally becoming clear, which will be derived from the rightly applied practice of birth-control. to many of us it is not the least of these that birth-control effects finally the complete liberation of the spiritual object of marriage. chapter iv husbands and wives it has always been common to discuss the psychology of women. the psychology of men has usually been passed over, whether because it is too simple or too complicated. but the marriage question to-day is much less the wife-problem than the husband-problem. women in their personal and social activities have been slowly expanding along lines which are now generally accepted. but there has been no marked change of responsive character in the activities of men. hence a defective adjustment of men and women, felt in all sorts of subtle as well as grosser ways, most felt when they are husband and wife, and sometimes becoming acute. it is necessary to make clear that, as is here assumed at the outset, "man" and "husband" are not quite the same thing, even when they refer to the same person. no doubt that is also true of "woman" and "wife." a woman in her quality as woman may be a different kind of person from what she is in her function as wife. but in the case of a man the distinction is more marked. one may know a man well in the world as a man and not know him at all in his home as a husband; not necessarily that he is unfavourably revealed in the latter capacity. it is simply that he is different. the explanation is not really far to seek. a man in the world is in vital response to the influences around him. but a husband in the home is playing a part which was created for him long centuries before he was born. he is falling into a convention, which, indeed, was moulded to fit many masculine human needs but has become rigidly traditionalised. thus the part no longer corresponds accurately to the player's nature nor to the circumstances under which it has to be played. in the marriage system which has prevailed in our world for several thousand years, a certain hierarchy, or sacred order in authority, has throughout been recognised. the family has been regarded as a small state of which the husband and father is head. classic paganism and christianity differed on many points, but they were completely at one on this. the roman system was on a patriarchal basis and continued to be so theoretically even when in practise it came to allow great independence to the wife. christianity, although it allowed complete spiritual freedom to the individual, introduced no fundamentally new theory of the family, and, indeed, re-inforced the old theory by regarding the family as a little church of which the husband was the head. just as christ is the head of the church, st. paul repeatedly asserted, so the husband is the head of the wife; therefore, as it was constantly argued during the middle ages, a man is bound to rule his wife. st. augustine, the most influential of christian fathers, even said that a wife should be proud to consider herself as the servant of her husband, his _ancilla_, a word that had in it the suggestion of slave. that was the underlying assumption throughout the middle ages, for the northern germanic peoples, having always been accustomed to wife-purchase before their conversion, had found it quite easy to assimilate the christian view. protestantism, even puritanism with its associations of spiritual revolt, so far from modifying the accepted attitude, strengthened it, for they found authority for all social organisation in the bible, and the bible revealed an emphatic predominance of the jewish husband, who possessed essential rights to which the wife had no claim. milton, who had the poet's sensitiveness to the loveliness of woman, and the lonely man's feeling for the solace of her society, was yet firmly assured of the husband's superiority over his wife. he has indeed furnished the classical picture of it in adam and eve, "he for god only, she for god in him," and to that god she owed "subjection," even though she might qualify it by "sweet reluctant amorous delay." this was completely in harmony with the legal position of the wife. as a subject she was naturally in subjection; she owed her husband the same loyalty as a subject owes the sovereign; her disloyalty to him was termed a minor form of treason; if she murdered him the crime was legally worse than murder and she rendered herself liable to be burnt. we see that all the influences on our civilisation, religious and secular, southern and northern, have combined to mould the underlying bony structure of our family system in such a way that, however it may appear softened and disguised on the surface, the husband is the head and the wife subject to him. we must not be supposed hereby to deny that the wife has had much authority, many privileges, considerable freedom, and in individual cases much opportunity to domineer, whatever superiority custom or brute strength may have given the husband. there are henpecked husbands, it has been remarked, even in aboriginal australia. it is necessary to avoid the error of those enthusiasts for the emancipation of women who, out of their eager faith in the future of women, used to describe her past as one of scarcely mitigated servitude and hardship. if women had not constantly succeeded in overcoming or eluding the difficulties that beset them in the past, it would be foolish to cherish any faith in their future. it must, moreover, be remembered that the very constitution of that ecclesiastico-feudal hierarchy which made the husband supreme over the wife, also made the wife jointly with her husband supreme over their children and over their servants. the middle ages, alike in england and in france, as doubtless in christendom generally, accepted the rule laid down in gratian's _decretum_, the great mediæval text-book of canon law, that "the husband may chastise his wife temperately, for she is of his household," but the wife might chastise her daughters and her servants, and she sometimes exercised that right in ways that we should nowadays think scarcely temperate. if we seek to observe how the system worked some five hundred years ago when it had not yet become, as it is to-day, both weakened and disguised, we cannot do better than turn to the _paston letters_, the most instructive documents we possess concerning the domestic life of excellent yet fairly average people of the upper middle class in england in the fifteenth century. marriage was still frankly and fundamentally (as it was in the following century and less frankly later) a commercial transaction. the wooer, when he had a wife in view, stated as a matter of course that he proposed to "deal" in the matter; it was quite recognised on both sides that love and courtship must depend on whether the "deal" came off satisfactorily. john paston approached sir thomas brews, through a third person, with a view to negotiate a marriage with his daughter margery. she was willing, even eager, and while the matter was still uncertain she wrote him a letter on valentine's day, addressing him as "right reverent and worshipful and my right well-beloved valentine," to tell him that it was impossible for her father to offer a larger dowry than he had already promised. "if that you could be content with that good, and my poor person, i would be the merriest maiden on ground." in his first letter--boldly written, he says, without her knowledge or license--he addresses her simply as "mistress," and assures her that "i am and will be yours and at your commandment in every wise during my life." a few weeks later, addressing him as "right worshipful master," she calls him "mine own sweetheart," and ends up, as she frequently does, "your servant and bedeswoman." some months later, a few weeks after marriage, she addresses her husband in the correct manner of the time as "right reverent and worshipful husband," asking him to buy her a gown as she is weary of wearing her present one, it is so cumbrous. five years later she refers to "all" the babies, and writes in haste: "right reverent and worshipful sir, in my most humble wise i recommend me unto you as lowly as i can," etc., though she adds in a postscript: "please you to send for me for i think long since i lay in your arms." if we turn to another wife of the paston family, a little earlier in the century, margaret paston, whose husband's name also was john, we find the same attitude even more distinctly expressed. she always addressed him in her most familiar letters, showing affectionate concern for his welfare, as "right reverent and worshipful husband" or "right worshipful master." it is seldom that he writes to her at all, but when he writes the superscription is simply "to my mistress paston," or "my cousin," with little greeting at either beginning or end. once only, with unexampled effusion, he writes to her as "my own dear sovereign lady" and signs himself "your true and trusting husband."[ ] [ ] we see just the same formulas in the fifteenth century letters of the stonor family (_stonor letters and papers_, camden society), though in these letters we seem often to find a lighter and more playful touch than was common among the pastons. i may refer here to dr. powell's learned and well written book (with which i was not acquainted when i wrote this chapter), _english domestic relations - _ (columbia university press). if we turn to france the relation of the wife to her husband was the same, or even more definitely dependent, for he occupied the place of father to her as well as of husband and sovereign, in this respect carrying on a tradition of roman law. she was her husband's "wife and subject"; she signed herself "vostre humble obéissante fille et amye." if also we turn to the _book of the chevalier de la tour-landry_ in anjou, written at the end of the fourteenth century, we find a picture of the relations of women to men in marriage comparable to that presented in the _paston letters_, though of a different order. this book was, as we know, written for the instruction of his daughters by a knight who seems to have been a fairly average man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has been described, probably above it, "a man of the world, a christian, a parent, and a gentleman." his book is full of interesting light on the customs and manners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writer thought ought to be rather than what always was. herein the knight is sagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound for every age. he is less concerned with affirming the authority of husbands than with assuring the happiness and well-being of his dearly loved daughters. but he clearly finds this bound up with the recognition of the authority of the husband, and the demands he makes are fairly concordant with the relationships we see established among the pastons. the knight abounds in illustrations, from lot's daughters down to his own time, for the example or the warning of his daughters. the ideal he holds up to them is strictly domestic and in a sense conventional. he puts the matter on practical rather than religious or legal grounds, and his fundamental assumption is "that no woman ought ever to thwart or refuse to obey the ordinance of her lord; that is, if she is either desirous to be mistress of his affections or to have peace and understanding in the house. for very evident reasons submission should begin on her part." one would like to know what duties the knight inculcated on husbands, but the corresponding book he wrote for the guidance of his sons appears no longer to be extant. on the whole, the fundamental traditions of our western world concerning the duties of husbands and wives are well summed up in what pollock and maitland term "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual of the english church." here we find that the husband promises to love and cherish the wife, but she promises not only to love and cherish but also to obey him, though, it may be noted, this point was not introduced into english marriage rites until the fourteenth century, when the wife promised to be "buxom" (which then meant submissive) and "bonair" (courteous and kind), while in some french and spanish rites it has never been introduced at all. but we may take it to be generally implied. in the final address to the married couple the priest admonishes the bride that the husband is the head of the wife, and that her part is submission. in some more ancient and local rituals this point was further driven home, and on the delivery of the ring the bride knelt and kissed the bridegroom's right foot. in course of time this was modified, at all events in france, and she simply dropped the ring, so that her motion of stooping was regarded as for the purpose of picking it up. i note that change for it is significant of the ways in which we modify the traditions of the past, not quite abandoning them but pretending that they have other than the fundamental original motives. we see just the same thing in the use of the ring, which was in the first place a part of the bride-price, frequently accompanied by money, proof that the wife had been duly purchased. it was thus made easy to regard the ring as really a golden fetter. that idea soon became offensive, and the new idea was originated that the ring was a pledge of affection; thus, quite early in some countries, the husband, also wore a wedding ring. the marriage order illustrated by the _paston letters_ and the _book of the chevalier de la tour-landry_ before the reformation, and the anglican book of common prayer afterwards, has never been definitely broken; it is a part of our living tradition to-day. but during recent centuries it has been overlaid by the growth of new fashions and sentiments which have softened its hard outlines to the view. it has been disguised, notably during the eighteenth century, by the development of a new feeling of social equality, chiefly initiated in france, which, in an atmosphere of public intercourse largely regulated by women, made the ostentatious assertion of the husband's headship over his wife displeasing and even ridiculous. then, especially in the nineteenth century, there began another movement, chiefly initiated in england and carried further in america, which affected the foundations of the husband's position from beneath. this movement consisted in a great number of legislative measures and judicial pronouncements and administrative orders--each small in itself and never co-ordinated--which taken altogether have had a cumulative effect in immensely increasing the rights of the wife independently of her husband or even in opposition to him. thus at the present time the husband's authority has been overlaid by new social conventions from above and undermined by new legal regulations from below. yet, it is important to realise, although the husband's domestic throne has been in appearance elegantly re-covered and in substance has become worm-eaten, it still stands and still retains its ancient shape and structure. there has never been a french revolution in the home, and that revolution itself, which modified society so extensively, scarcely modified the legal supremacy of the husband at all, even in france under the code napoléon and still less anywhere else. interwoven with all the new developments, and however less obtrusive it may have become, the old tradition still continues among us. since, also, the husband is, conventionally and in large measure really, the economic support of the home,--the work of the wife and even actual financial contributions brought by her not being supposed to affect that convention,--this state of things is held to be justified. thus when a man enters the home as a husband, to seat himself on the antique domestic throne and to play the part assigned to him of old, he is involuntarily, even unconsciously, following an ancient tradition and taking his place in a procession of husbands which began long ages before he was born. it thus comes about that a man, even after he is married, and a husband are two different persons, so that his wife who mainly knows him as a husband may be unable to form any just idea of what he is like as a man. as a husband he has stepped out of the path that belongs to him in the world, and taken on another part which has called out altogether different reactions, so he is sometimes a much more admirable person in one of these spheres--whichever it may be--than in the other. we must not be surprised if the husband's position has sometimes developed those qualities which from the modern point of view are the less admirable. in this respect the sovereign husband resembles the sovereign state. the sovereign state, as it has survived from renaissance days in our modern world, may be made up of admirable people, yet as a state they are forced into an attitude of helpless egoism which nowadays fails to commend itself to the outside world, and the tendency of scientific jurists to-day is to deal very critically with the old conception of the sovereign state. it is so with the husband in the home. he was thrust by ancient tradition into a position of sovereignty which impelled him to play a part of helpless egoism. he was a celestial body in the home around which all the other inmates were revolving satellites. the hours of rising and retiring, the times of meals and their nature and substance, all the activities of the household--in which he himself takes little or no part--are still arranged primarily to suit his work, his play, and his tastes. this is an accepted matter of course, and not the result of any violent self-assertion on his part. it is equally an accepted matter of course that the wife should be constantly occupied in keeping this little solar system in easy harmonious movement, evolving from it, if she has the skill, the music of the spheres. she has no recognised independent personality of her own, nor even any right to go away by herself for a little change and recreation. any work of her own, play of her own, tastes of her own, must be strictly subordinated, if not suppressed altogether. in the old days, from which our domestic traditions proceed, little hardship was thus inflicted on the wife. her rights and privileges were, indeed, far less than those of the modern woman, but for that very reason the home offered her a larger field; beneath the shelter of her husband the irresponsible wife might exert a maximum of influential activity with a minimum of rights and privileges of her own. to many men, even to-day, that state of things seems the realisation of an ideal. yet to women it seems increasingly less so, and of necessity since the cleavage between the position of woman in society and law, and the position of the wife in the sacramental bonds of wedlock, is daily becoming greater. to-day a woman, who possibly for ten years has been leading her own life of independent work, earning her own living, choosing her own conditions in accordance with her own needs, and selecting her own periods of recreation in accordance with her own tastes, whether or not this may have included the society of a man-friend--such a woman suddenly finds on marriage, and without any assertion of authority on her husband's part, that all the outward circumstances of her life are reversed and all her inner spontaneous movements arrested. there may be no signs of this on the surface of her conduct. she loves her husband too much to wish to hurt his feelings by explaining the situation, and she values domestic peace too much to risk friction by making unexpected claims. but beneath the surface there is often a profound discontent, and even in women who thought they had gained an insight into life, a sense of disillusion. everyone knows this who is privileged to catch a glimpse into the hearts of women--often women of most distinguished intelligence as well as women of quite ordinary nature--who leave a life of spontaneous activity in the world to enter the home.[ ] [ ] while this condition of things is sometimes to be found in the more distinguished minority and in well-to-do families, it is, of course, among the great labouring majority that it is most conspicuous. mrs. will crooks, of poplar, speaking to a newspaper reporter (_daily chronicle_, feb., ), truly remarked: "at present the average married woman's working day is a flagrant contradiction of all trade-union ideals. the poor thing is slaving all the time! what she needs--what she longs for--is just a little break or change now and again, an opportunity to get her mind off her work and its worries. if her husband's hours are reduced to eight, well that gives her a chance, doesn't it? the home and the children are, after all, as much his as hers. with his enlarged leisure he will now be able to take a fair share in home duties. i suggest that they take it turn and turn about--one night he goes out and she looks after the house and the children; the next night she goes out and he takes charge of things at home. she can sometimes go to the cinema, sometimes call on friends. then, say once a week, they can both go out together, taking the children with them. that will be a little change and treat for everybody." it is not to be supposed that in this presentation of the situation in the home, as it is to-day visible to those who are privileged to see beneath the surface, any accusation is brought against the husband. he is no more guilty of an unreasonable conservatism than the wife is guilty of an unreasonable radicalism. each of them is the outcome of a tradition. the point is that the events of the past hundred years have produced a discrepancy in the two lines of tradition, with a resultant lack of harmony, independent of the goodwill of either husband or wife. olive schreiner, in her _woman and labour_, has eloquently set forth the tendency to parasitism which civilisation produces in women; they no longer exercise the arts and industries which were theirs in former ages, and so they become economically dependent on men, losing their energies and aptitudes, and becoming like those dull parasitic animals which live as blood-suckers of their host. that picture, which was of course never true of all women, is now ceasing to be true of any but a negligible minority; it presents, moreover, a parasitism limited to the economic side of life. for if the wife has often been a lazy gold-sucking parasite on her husband in the world, the husband has yet oftener been a helpless service-absorbing parasite on his wife in the home. there is, that is to say, not only an economic parasitism, with no adequate return for financial support, but a still more prevalent domestic parasitism, with an absorption of services for which no return would be adequate. there are many helpful husbands in the home, but there are a larger number who are helpless and have never been trained to be anything else but helpless, even by their wives, who would often detest a rival in household work and management. the average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but is usually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisation that make it enjoyable. he cannot keep it in order and cleanliness and regulated movement, he seldom knows how to buy the things that are needed for its upkeep, nor how to prepare and cook and present a decent meal; he cannot even attend to his own domestic needs. it is the wife's consolation that most husbands are not always at home. "in ministering to the wants of the family, the woman has reduced man to a state of considerable dependency on her in all domestic affairs, just as she is dependent on him for bodily protection. in the course of ages this has gone so far as to foster a peculiar helplessness on the part of the man, which manifests itself in a somewhat childlike reliance of the husband on the wife. in fact it may be said that the husband is, to all intents and purposes, incapable of maintaining himself without the aid of a woman." this passage will probably seem to many readers to apply quite fairly well to men as they exist to-day in most of those lands which we consider at the summit of our civilisation. yet it was not written of civilisation, or of white men, but of the bantu tribes of east africa,[ ] complete negroes who, while far from being among the lowest savages, belong to a culture which is only just emerging from cannibalism, witchcraft, and customary bloodshed. so close a resemblance between the european husband and the negro husband significantly suggests how remarkable has been the arrest of development in the husband's customary status during a vast period of the world's history. [ ] hon. c. dundas, _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. , , p. . it is in the considerable group of couples where the husband's work separates him but little from the home that the pressure on the wife is most severe, and without the relief and variety secured by his frequent absence. she has perhaps led a life of her own before marriage, she knows how to be economically independent; now they occupy a small dwelling, they have, maybe, one or two small children, they can only afford one helper in the work or none at all, and in this busy little hive the husband and wife are constantly tumbling over each other. it is small wonder if the wife feels a deep discontent beneath her willing ministrations and misses the devotion of the lover in the perpetual claims of the husband. but the difficulty is not settled if she persuades him to take a room outside. he is devoted to his wife and his home, with good reason, for the wife makes the home and he is incapable of making a home. his new domestic arrangements sink into careless and sordid disorder, and he is conscious of profound discomfort. his wife soon realises that it is a choice between his return to the home and complete separation. most wives never get even as far as this attempt at solution of the difficulty and hide their secret discontent. this is the situation which to-day is becoming intensified and extended on a vast scale. the habit and the taste for freedom, adventure, and economic independence is becoming generated among millions of women who once meekly trod the ancient beaten paths, and we must not be so foolish as to suppose that they can suddenly renounce those habits and tastes at the threshold of marriage. moreover, it is becoming clear to men and to women alike, and for the first time, that the world can be remoulded, and that the claims for better conditions of work, for a higher standard of life, and for the attainment of leisure, which previously had only feebly been put forward, may now be asserted drastically. we see therefore to-day a great revolutionary movement, mainly on the part of men in the world of labour, and we see a corresponding movement, however less ostentatious, mainly on the part of women, in the world of the home. it may seem to some that this new movement of upheaval in the sphere of the home is merely destructive. timid souls have felt the like in every period of transition, and with as little reason. just as we realise that the movement now in progress in the world of labour for a higher standard of life and for, as it has been termed, a larger "leisure-ration," represents a wholesome revolt against the crushing conditions of prolonged monotonous work--the most deadening of all work--and a real advance towards those ideals of democracy which are still so remote, so it is with the movement in the home. that also is the claim for a new and fairer allotment of responsibility, of larger opportunities for freedom and leisure. if in the home the husband is still to be regarded as the capitalist and the wife as the labourer, then at all events it has to be recognised that he owes her not only the satisfaction of her physical needs of food and shelter and clothing, but the opportunity to satisfy the personal spontaneous claims of her own individual nature. just as the readjustment of labour is really only an approach to the long recognised ideals of democracy, so the readjustment of the home, far from being subversive or revolutionary, is merely an approximation to the long recognised ideals of marriage. how in practice, one may finally ask, is this readjustment of the home likely to be carried out? in the first place we are justified in believing that in the future home men will no longer be so helpless, so domestically parasitic, as in the past. this change is indeed already coming about. it is an inestimable benefit throughout life for a man to have been forcibly lifted out of the routine comforts and feminine services of the old-fashioned home and to be thrown into an alien and solitary environment, face to face with nature and the essential domestic human needs (in my own case i owe an inestimable debt to the chance that thus flung me into the australian bush in early life), and one may note that the great war has had, directly and indirectly, a remarkable influence in this direction, for it not only compelled women to exercise many enlarging and fortifying functions commonly counted as pertaining to men, it also compelled men, deprived of accustomed feminine services, to develop a new independent ability for organising domesticity, and that ability, even though it is not permanently exercised in rendering domestic services, must yet always make clear the nature of domestic problems and tend to prevent the demand for unnecessary domestic services. but there is another quite different and more general line along which we may expect this problem to be largely solved. that is by the simplification and organisation of domestic life. if that process were carried to the full extent that is now becoming possible a large part of the problem before us would be at once solved. a great promise for the future of domestic life is held out by the growing adoption of birth-control, by which the wife and mother is relieved from that burden of unduly frequent and unwanted maternity which in the past so often crushed her vitality and destroyed her freshness. but many minor agencies are helpful. to supply heat, light, and motive power even to small households, to replace the wasteful, extravagant, and often inefficient home-cookery by meals cooked outside, as well as to facilitate the growing social habit of taking meals in spacious public restaurants, under more attractive, economical, and wholesome conditions than can usually be secured within the narrow confines of the home, to contract with specially trained workers from outside for all those routines of domestic drudgery which are often so inefficiently and laboriously carried on by the household-worker, whether mistress or servant, and to seek perpetually by new devices to simplify, which often means to beautify, all the everyday processes of life--to effect this in any comprehensive degree is to transform the home from the intolerable burden it is sometimes felt to be into a possible haven of peace and joy.[ ] the trouble in the past, and even to-day, has been, not in any difficulty in providing the facilities but in prevailing people to adopt them. thus in england, even under the stress of the great war, there was among the working population a considerable disinclination--founded on stupid conservatism and a meaningless pride--to take advantage of national kitchens and national restaurants, notwithstanding the superiority of the meals in quality, cheapness, and convenience, to the workers' home meals, so that many of these establishments, even while still fostered by the government, had speedily to close their doors. ancient traditions, that have now become not only empty but mischievous, in these matters still fetter the wife even more than the husband. we cannot regulate even the material side of life without cultivating that intelligence in the development of which civilisation so largely consists. [ ] this aspect of the future of domesticity was often set forth by mrs. havelock ellis, _the new horizon in love and life_, . intelligence, and even something more than intelligence, is needed along the third line of progress towards the modernised home. simplification and organisation can effect nothing in the desired transformation if they merely end in themselves. they are only helpful in so far as they economise energy, offer a more ample leisure, and extend the opportunities for that play of the intellect, that liberation of the emotions with accompanying discipline of the primitive instincts, which are needed not only for the development of civilisation in general, but in particular of the home. domineering egotism, the assertion of greedy possessive rights, are out of place in the modern home. they are just as mischievous when exhibited by the wife as by the husband. we have seen, as we look back, the futility in the end of the ancient structure of the home, however reasonable it was at the beginning, under our different modern social conditions, and for women to attempt nowadays to reintroduce the same structure, merely reversed would be not only mischievous but silly. that spirit of narrow exclusiveness and self centred egoism--even if it were sometimes an _égoisme à deux_--evoked, half a century ago, the scathing sarcasm of james hinton, who never wearied of denouncing the "virtuous and happy homes" which he saw as "floating blotches of verdure on a sea of filth." such outbursts seem extravagant, but they were the extravagance of an idealist at the vision which, as a physician in touch with realities, he had, seen beneath the surface of the home. it is well to insist on the organisation of the mechanical and material side of life. some leaders of women movements feel this so strongly that they insist on nothing else. in old days it was conventionally supposed that women's sphere was that of the feelings; the result has been that women now often take ostentatious pleasure in washing their hands of feelings and accusing men of "sentiment." but that wrongly debased word stands for the whole superstructure of life on the basis of material organisation, for all the finer and higher parts of our nature, for the greater part of civilisation.[ ] the elaboration of the mechanical side of life by itself may merely serve to speed up the pace of life instead of expanding leisure, to pile up the weary burden of luxury, and still further to dissipate the energy of life in petty or frivolous channels.[ ] to bring order into the region of soulless machinery running at random, to raise the super-structure of a genuinely human civilisation, is not a task which either men or women can afford to fling contemptuously to the opposite sex. it concerns them both equally and can only be carried out by both equally, working side by side in the most intimate spirit of mutual comprehension, confiding trust, and the goodwill to conquer the demon of jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. [ ] "the growth of the sentiments," remarks an influential psychologist of our own time (w. mcdougall, _social psychology_, p. ), "is of the utmost importance for the character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the organisation of the affective and conative life. in the absence of sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order, consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations and conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses would be correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and unstable.... again, our judgments of value and of merit are rooted in our sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source, for they are formed by our judgments of moral value." [ ] the destructive effects of the mechanisation of modern life have lately been admirably set forth, and with much precise illustration, by dr. austin freeman, _social decay and regeneration_. this task, it may finally be added, is always an adventure. however well organised the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks. we may smile, therefore, when it is remarked that the future developments of the home are risky. birds in the air and fishes in the sea, quite as much as our own ancestors on the earth, have always found life full of risks. it was the greatest risk of all when they insisted on continuing on the old outworn ways and so became extinct. if the home is an experiment and a risky experiment, one can only say that life is always like that. we have to see to it that in this central experiment, on which our happiness so largely depends, all our finest qualities are mobilised. even the smallest homes under the new conditions cannot be built to last with small minds and small hearts. indeed the discipline of the home demands not only the best intellectual qualities that are available, but often involves--and in men as well as in women--a spiritual training fit to make sweeter and more generous saints than any cloister. the greater the freedom, the more complete the equality of husband and wife, the greater the possibilities of discipline and development. in view of the rigidities and injustices of the law, many couples nowadays dispense with legal marriage, and form their own private contract; that method has sometimes proved more favourable to the fidelity and permanence of love than external compulsion; it assists the husband to remain the lover, and it is often the lover more than the husband that the modern woman needs; but it has always to be remembered that in the present condition of law and social opinion a slur is cast on the children of such unions. no doubt, however, marriage and the home will undergo modifications, which will tend to make these ancient institutions a little more flexible and to permit a greater degree of variation to meet special circumstances. we can occupy ourselves with no more essential task, whether as regards ourselves or the race, than to make more beautiful the house of life for the dwelling of love. chapter v the love-rights of women what is the part of woman, one is sometimes asked, in the sex act? must it be the wife's concern in the marital embrace to sacrifice her own wishes from a sense of love and duty towards her husband? or is the wife entitled to an equal mutual interest and joy in this act with her husband? it seems a simple problem. in so fundamental a relationship, which goes back to the beginning of sex in the dawn of life, it might appear that we could leave nature to decide. yet it is not so. throughout the history of civilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which have prevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem has existed, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. the problem still exists to-day and with as important results as in the past. in nature, before the arrival of man, it can scarcely be said indeed that any difficulty existed. it was taken for granted at that time that the female had both the right to her own body, and the right to a certain amount of enjoyment in the use of it. it often cost the male a serious amount of trouble--though he never failed to find it worth while--to explain to her the point where he may be allowed to come in, and to persuade her that he can contribute to her enjoyment. so it generally is throughout nature, before we reach man, and, though it is not invariably obvious, we often find it even among the unlikeliest animals. as is well known, it is most pronounced among the birds, who have in some species carried the erotic art,--and the faithful devotion which properly accompanied the erotic art as being an essential part of it,--to the highest point. we have here the great natural fact of courtship. throughout nature, wherever we meet with animals of a high type, often indeed when they are of a lowly type--provided they have not been rendered unnatural by domestication--every act of sexual union is preceded by a process of courtship. there is a sound physiological reason for this courtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitement gradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulant to arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union and aids ultimate impregnation. such courtship is thus a fundamental natural fact. it is as a natural fact that we still find it in full development among a large number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed to regard as more primitive than ourselves. new conditions, it is true, soon enter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. the economic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes in at an early stage. and among peoples leading a violent life, and constantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, that courtship also has been violent. this is not so frequent as was once supposed. with better knowledge it was found that the seeming brutality once thought to take the place of courtship among various peoples in a low state of culture was really itself courtship, a rough kind of play agreeable to both parties and not depriving the feminine partner of her own freedom of choice. this was notably the case as regards so-called "marriage by capture." while this is sometimes a real capture, it is more often a mock capture; the lover perhaps pursues the beloved on horseback, but she is as fleet and as skilful as he is, cannot be captured unless she wishes to be captured, and in addition, as among the kirghiz, she may be armed with a formidable whip; so that "marriage by capture," far from being a hardship imposed on women is largely a concession to their modesty and a gratification of their erotic impulses. even when the chief part of the decision rests with masculine force courtship is still not necessarily or usually excluded, for the exhibition of force by a lover,--and this is true for civilised as well as for savage women,--is itself a source of pleasurable stimulation, and when that is so the essence of courtship may be attained even more successfully by the forceful than by the humble lover. the evolution of society, however, tended to overlay and sometimes even to suppress those fundamental natural tendencies. the position of the man as the sole and uncontested head of the family, the insistence on paternity and male descent, the accompanying economic developments, and the tendency to view a woman less as a self-disposing individual than as an object of barter belonging to her father, the consequent rigidity of the marriage bond and the stern insistence on wifely fidelity--all these conditions of developing civilisation, while still leaving courtship possible, diminished its significance and even abolished its necessity. moreover, on the basis of the social, economic, and legal developments thus established, new moral, spiritual, and religious forces were slowly generated, which worked on these rules of merely exterior order, and interiorised them, thus giving them power over the souls as well as over the bodies of women. the result was that, directly and indirectly, the legal, economic, and erotic rights of women were all diminished. it is with the erotic rights only that we are here concerned. no doubt in its erotic aspects, as well as in its legal and economic aspects, the social order thus established was described, and in good faith, as beneficial to women, and even as maintained in their interests. monogamy and the home, it was claimed, alike existed for the benefit and protection of women. it was not so often explained that they greatly benefited and protected men, with, moreover, this additional advantage that while women were absolutely confined to the home, men were free to exercise their activities outside the home, even, with tacit general consent, on the erotic side. whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certain important respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on the erotic aspect of woman's sexual life. it fostered the reproductive side of woman's sexual life, but it rendered difficult for her the satisfaction of the instinct for that courtship which is the natural preliminary of reproductive activity, an instinct even more highly developed in the female than in the male, and the more insistent because in the order of nature the burden of maternity is preceded by the reward of pleasure. but the marriage order which had become established led to the indirect result of banning pleasure in women, or at all events in wives. it was regarded as too dangerous, and even as degrading. the women who wanted pleasure were not considered fit for the home, but more suited to be devoted to an exclusive "life of pleasure," which soon turned out to be not their own pleasure but men's. a "life of pleasure," in that sense or in any other sense, was not what more than a small minority of women ever desired. the desire of women for courtship is not a thing by itself, and was not implanted for gratification by itself. it is naturally intertwined--and to a much greater degree than the corresponding desire in men--with her deepest personal, family, and social instincts, so that if these are desecrated and lost its charm soon fades. the practices and the ideals of this established morality were both due to men, and both were so thoroughly fashioned that they subjugated alike the actions and the feelings of women. there is no sphere which we regard as so peculiarly women's sphere as that of love. yet there is no sphere which in civilisation women have so far had so small a part in regulating. their deepest impulses--their modesty, their maternity, their devotion, their emotional receptivity--were used, with no conscious and deliberate machiavellism, against themselves, to mould a moral world for their habitation which they would not themselves have moulded. it is not of modern creation, nor by any means due, as some have supposed, to the asceticism of christianity, however much christianity may have reinforced it. indeed one may say that in course of time christianity had an influence in weakening it, for christianity discovered a new reservoir of tender emotion, and such emotion may be transferred, and, as a matter of fact, was transferred, from its first religious channel into erotic channels which were thereby deepened and extended, and without reference to any design of christianity. for the ends we achieve are often by no means those which we set out to accomplish. in ancient classic days this moral order was even more severely established than in the middle ages. montaigne, in the sixteenth century, declared that "marriage is a devout and religious relationship, the pleasures derived from it should be restrained and serious, mixed with some severity." but in this matter he was not merely expressing the christian standpoint but even more that of paganism, and he thoroughly agreed with the old greek moralist that a man should approach his wife "prudently and severely" for fear of inciting her to lasciviousness; he thought that marriage was best arranged by a third party, and was inclined to think, with the ancients, that women are not fitted to make friends of. montaigne has elsewhere spoken with insight of women's instinctive knowledge of the art and discipline of love and has pointed out how men have imposed their own ideals and rules of action on women from whom they have demanded opposite and contradictory virtues; yet, we see, he approves of this state of things and never suggests that women have any right to opinions of their own or feelings of their own when the sacred institution of marriage is in question. montaigne represents the more exalted aspects of the pagan-christian conception of morality in marriage which still largely prevails. but that conception lent itself to deductions, frankly accepted even by montaigne himself, which were by no means exalted. "i find," said montaigne, "that venus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging our vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other parts." sir thomas more among catholics, and luther among protestants, said exactly the same thing in other and even clearer words, while untold millions of husbands in christendom down to to-day, whether or not they have had the wit to put their theory into a phrase, have regularly put it into practice, at all events within the consecrated pale of marriage, and treated their wives, "severely and prudently," as convenient utensils for the reception of a natural excretion. obviously, in this view of marriage, sexual activity was regarded as an exclusively masculine function, in the exercise of which women had merely a passive part to play. any active participation on her side thus seemed unnecessary, and even unbefitting, finally, though only in comparatively modern times, disgusting and actually degrading. thus acton, who was regarded half a century ago as the chief english authority on sexual matters, declared that, "happily for society," the supposition that women possess sexual feelings could be put aside as "a vile aspersion," while another medical authority of the same period stated in regard to the most simple physical sign of healthy sexual emotion that it "only happens in lascivious women." this final triumph of the masculine ideals and rule of life was, however, only achieved slowly. it was the culmination of an elaborate process of training. at the outset men had found it impossible to speak too strongly of the "wantonness" of women. this attitude was pronounced among the ancient greeks and prominent in their dramatists. christianity again, which ended by making women into the chief pillars of the church, began by regarding them as the "gate of hell." again, later, when in the middle ages this masculine moral order approached the task of subjugating the barbarians of northern europe, men were horrified at the licentiousness of those northern women at whose coldness they are now shocked. that, indeed, was, as montaigne had seen, the central core of conflict in the rule of life imposed by men on woman. men were perpetually striving, by ways the most methodical, the most subtle, the most far-reaching, to achieve a result in women, which, when achieved, men themselves viewed with dismay. they may be said to be moved in this sphere by two passions, the passion for virtue and the passion for vice. but it so happens that both these streams of passion have to be directed at the same fascinating object: woman. no doubt nothing is more admirable than the skill with which women have acquired the duplicity necessary to play the two contradictory parts thus imposed upon them. but in that requirement the play of their natural reactions tended to become paralysed, and the delicate mechanism of their instincts often disturbed. they were forbidden, except in a few carefully etiquetted forms, the free play of courtship, without which they could not perform their part in the erotic life with full satisfaction either to themselves or their partners. they were reduced to an artificial simulation of coldness or of warmth, according to the particular stage of the dominating masculine ideal of woman which their partner chanced to have reached. but that is an attitude equally unsatisfactory to themselves and to their lovers, even when the latter have not sufficient insight to see through its unreality. it is an attitude so unnatural and artificial that it inevitably tends to produce a real coldness which nothing can disguise. it is true that women whose instincts are not perverted at the roots do not desire to be cold. far from it. but to dispel that coldness the right atmosphere is needed, and the insight and skill of the right man. in the erotic sphere a woman asks nothing better of a man than to be lifted above her coldness, to the higher plane where there is reciprocal interest and mutual joy in the act of love. therein her silent demand is one with nature's. for the biological order of the world involves those claims which, in the human range, are the erotic rights of women. the social claims of women, their economic claims, their political claims, have long been before the world. women themselves have actively asserted them, and they are all in process of realisation. the erotic claims of women, which are at least as fundamental, are not publicly voiced, and women themselves would be the last to assert them. it is easy to understand why that should be so. the natural and acquired qualities of women, even the qualities developed in the art of courtship, have all been utilised in building up the masculine ideal of sexual morality; it is on feminine characteristics that this masculine ideal has been based, so that women have been helpless to protest against it. moreover, even if that were not so, to formulate such rights is to raise the question whether there so much as exists anything that can be called "erotic rights." the right to joy cannot be claimed in the same way as one claims the right to put a voting paper in a ballot box. a human being's erotic aptitudes can only be developed where the right atmosphere for them exists, and where the attitudes of both persons concerned are in harmonious sympathy. that is why the erotic rights of women have been the last of all to be attained. yet to-day we see a change here. the change required is, it has been said, a change of attitude and a resultant change in the atmosphere in which the sexual impulses are manifested. it involves no necessary change in the external order of our marriage system, for, as has already been pointed out, it was a coincident and not designed part of that order. various recent lines of tendency have converged to produce this change of attitude and of atmosphere. in part the men of to-day are far more ready than the men of former days to look upon women as their comrades in the every day work of the world, instead of as beings who were ideally on a level above themselves and practically on a level considerably below themselves. in part there is the growing recognition that women have conquered many elementary human rights of which before they were deprived, and are more and more taking the position of citizens, with the same kinds of duties, privileges, and responsibilities as men. in part, also, it may be added, there is a growing diffusion among educated people of a knowledge of the primary facts of life in the two sexes, slowly dissipating and dissolving many foolish and often mischievous superstitions. the result is that, as many competent observers have noted, the young men of to-day show a new attitude towards women and towards marriage, an attitude of simplicity and frankness, a desire for mutual confidence, a readiness to discuss difficulties, an appeal to understand and to be understood. such an attitude, which had hitherto been hard to attain, at once creates the atmosphere in which alone the free spontaneous erotic activities of women can breathe and live. this consummation, we have seen, may be regarded as the attainment of certain rights, the corollary of other rights in the social field which women are slowly achieving as human beings on the same human level as men. it opens to women, on whom is always laid the chief burden of sex, the right to the joy and exaltation of sex, to the uplifting of the soul which, when the right conditions are fulfilled, is the outcome of the intimate approach and union of two human beings. yet while we may find convenient so to formulate it, we need to remember that that is only a fashion of speech, for there are no rights in nature. if we take a broader sweep, what we may choose to call an erotic right is simply the perfect poise of the conflicting forces of life, the rhythmic harmony in which generation is achieved with the highest degree of perfection compatible with the make of the world. it is our part to transform nature's large conception into our own smaller organic mould, not otherwise than the plants, to whom we are far back akin, who dig their flexible roots deep into the moist and fruitful earth, and so are able to lift up glorious heads toward the sky. chapter vi the play-function of sex when we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. when we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. such a conception is quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. it enables us to deal with all our established human institutions in the sphere of sex, as the arbitrary assumptions of euclid enable us to traverse the field of elementary geometry. but beyond these useful purposes it is inadequate and even inexact. the functions of sex on the psychic and erotic side are of far greater extension than any act of procreation, they may even exclude it altogether, and when we are concerned with the welfare of the individual human being we must enlarge our outlook and deepen our insight. there are, we know, two main functions in the sexual relationship, or what in the biological sense we term "marriage," among civilised human beings, the primary physiological function of begetting and bearing offspring and the secondary spiritual function of furthering the higher mental and emotional processes. these are the main functions of the sexual impulse, and in order to understand any further object of the sexual relationship--or even in order to understand all that is involved in the secondary object of marriage--we must go beyond conscious motives and consider the nature of the sexual impulse, physical and psychic, as rooted in the human organism. the human organism, as we know, is a machine on which excitations from without, streaming through the nerves and brain, effect internal work, and, notably, stimulate the glandular system. in recent years the glandular system, and especially that of the ductless glands, has taken on an altogether new significance. these ductless glands, as we know, liberate into the blood what are termed "hormones," or chemical messengers, which have a complex but precise action in exciting and developing all those physical and psychic activities which make up a full life alike on the general side and the reproductive side, so that their balanced functions are essential to wholesome and complete existence. in a rudimentary form these functions may be traced back to our earliest ancestors who possessed brains. in those times the predominant sense for arousing the internal mental and emotional faculties was that of smell, the other senses being gradually evolved subsequently, and it is significant that the pituitary, one of the chief ductless glands active in ourselves to-day, was developed out of the nervous centre for smell in conjunction with the membrane of the mouth. the energies of the whole organism were set in action through stimuli arising from the outside world by way of the sense of smell. in process of time the mechanism has become immensely elaborated, yet its healthy activity is ultimately dependent on a rich and varied action and reaction with the external world. it is becoming recognised that the tendency to pluri-glandular insufficiency, with its resulting lack of organic harmony and equilibrium, can be counteracted by the physical and psychic stimuli of intimate contacts with the external world. in this action and reaction, moreover, we cannot distinguish between sexual ends and general ends. the activities of the ductless glands and their hormones equally serve both ends in ways that cannot be distinguished. "the individual metabolism," as a distinguished authority in this field has expressed it, "is the reproductive metabolism."[ ] thus the establishment of our complete activities as human beings in the world is aided by, if not indeed ultimately dependent upon, a perpetual and many-sided play with our environment. [ ] w. blair bell, _the sex-complex,_ , p. . this book is a cautious and precise statement of the present state of knowledge on this subject, although some of the author's psychological deductions must be treated with circumspection. it is thus that we arrive at the importance of the play-function, and thus, also, we realise that while it extends beyond the sexual sphere it yet definitely includes that sphere. there are at least three different ways of understanding the biological function of play. there is the conception of play, on which groos has elaborately insisted, as education: the cat "plays" with the mouse and is thereby educating itself in the skill necessary to catch mice; all our human games are a training in qualities that are required in life, and that is why in england we continue to attribute to the duke of wellington the saying that "the battle of waterloo was won on the playing fields of eton." then there is the conception of play as the utilisation in art of the superfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; this enlarging and harmonising function of play, while in the lower ranges it may be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production of the most magnificent human achievements. but there is yet a third conception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internal influence--health-giving, developmental, and balancing--on the whole organism of the player himself. this conception is related to the other two, and yet distinct, for it is not primarily a definite education in specific kinds of life-conserving skill, although it may involve the acquisition of such skill, and it is not concerned with the construction of objective works of art, although--by means of contact in human relationship--it attains the wholesome organic effects which may be indirectly achieved by artistic activities. it is in this sense that we are here concerned with what we may perhaps best call the play-function of sex.[ ] [ ] the term seems to have been devised by professor maurice parmelee, _personality and conduct_, , pp. , , . but it is understood by parmelee in a much vaguer and more extended sense than i have used it. as thus understood, the play-function of sex is at once in an inseparable way both physical and psychic. it stimulates to wholesome activity all the complex and inter-related systems of the organism. at the same time it satisfies the most profound emotional impulses, controlling in harmonious poise the various mental instincts. along these lines it necessarily tends in the end to go beyond its own sphere and to embrace and introduce into the sphere of sex the other two more objective fields of play, that of play as education, and that of play as artistic creation. it may not be true, as was said of old time, "most of our arts and sciences were invented for love's sake." but it is certainly true that, in proportion as we truly and wisely exercise the play-function of sex, we are at the same time training our personality on the erotic side and acquiring a mastery of the art of love. the longer i live the more i realise the immense importance for the individual of the development through the play-function of erotic personality, and for human society of the acquirement of the art of love. at the same time i am ever more astonished at the rarity of erotic personality and the ignorance of the art of love even among those men and women, experienced in the exercise of procreation, in whom we might most confidently expect to find such development and such art. at times one feels hopeless at the thought that civilisation in this supremely intimate field of life has yet achieved so little. for until it is generally possible to acquire erotic personality and to master the art of loving, the development of the individual man or woman is marred, the acquirement of human happiness and harmony remains impossible. in entering this field, indeed, we not only have to gain true knowledge but to cast off false knowledge, and, above all, to purify our hearts from superstitions which have no connection with any kind of existing knowledge. we have to cease to regard as admirable the man who regards the accomplishment of the procreative act, with the pleasurable relief it affords to himself, as the whole code of love. we have to treat with contempt the woman who abjectly accepts the act, and her own passivity therein, as the whole duty of love. we have to understand that the art of love has nothing to do with vice, and the acquirement of erotic personality nothing to do with sensuality. but we have also to realise that the art of love is far from being the attainment of a refined and luxurious self-indulgence, and the acquirement of erotic personality of little worth unless it fortifies and enlarges the whole personality in all its aspects. now all this is difficult, and for some people even painful; to root up is a more serious matter than to sow; it cannot all be done in a day. it is not easy to form a clear picture of the erotic life of the average man in our society. to the best informed among us knowledge in this field only comes slowly. even when we have decided what may or may not be termed "average" the sources of approach to this intimate sphere remain few and misleading; at the best the women a man loves remain far more illuminating sources of information than the man himself. the more one knows about him, however, the more one is convinced that, quite independently of the place we may feel inclined to afford to him in the scale of virtue, his conception of erotic personality, his ideas on the art of love, if they have any existence at all, are of a humble character. as to the notion of play in the sphere of sex, even if he makes blundering attempts to practice it, that is for him something quite low down, something to be ashamed of, and he would not dream of associating it with anything he has been taught to regard as belonging to the spiritual sphere. the conception of "divine play" is meaningless to him. his fundamental ideas, his cherished ideals, in the erotic sphere, seem to be reducible to two: ( ) he wishes to prove that he is "a man," and he experiences what seems to him the pride of virility in the successful attainment of that proof; ( ) he finds in the same act the most satisfactory method of removing sexual tension and in the ensuing relief one of the chief pleasures of life. it cannot be said that either of these ideals is absolutely unsound; each is part of the truth; it is only as a complete statement of the truth that they become pathetically inadequate. it is to be noted that both of them are based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that they are both exclusively self-regarding. so that they are, after all, although the nearest approach to the erotic sphere he may be able to find, yet still not really erotic. for love is not primarily self-regarding. it is the intimate, harmonious, combined play--the play in the wide as well as in the more narrow sense we are here concerned with--of two personalities. it would not be love if it were primarily self-regarding, and the act of intercourse, however essential to secure the propagation of the race, is only an incident, and not an essential in love. let us turn to the average woman. here the picture must usually be still more unsatisfactory. the man at least, crude as we may find his two fundamental notions to be, has at all events attained mental pride and physical satisfaction. the woman often attains neither, and since the man, by instinct or tradition, has maintained a self-regarding attitude, that is not surprising. the husband--by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition--regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity. his wife consequently falls into the complementary position, and regards herself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible, if not indeed as a thing to be rather ashamed of, should she by chance experience it. so that, while the husband is content with a mere simulacrum and pretence of the erotic life, the wife has often had none at all. few people realise--few indeed have the knowledge or the opportunity to realise--how much women thus lose, alike in the means to fulfill their own lives and in the power to help others. a woman has a husband, she has marital relationships, she has children, she has all the usual domestic troubles--it seems to the casual observer that she has everything that constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the home and in the world. yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional side--and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains--quite virginal, as immature as a school-girl. she has not acquired an erotic personality, she has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature remains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is incapable of bringing her personality--having indeed no achieved personality to bring--to bear effectively on the problems of society and the world around her. that alone is a great misfortune, all the more tragic since under favourable conditions, which it should have been natural to attain, it might so easily be avoided. but there is this further result, full of the possibilities of domestic tragedy, that the wife so situated, however innocent, however virtuous, may at any time find her virginally sensitive emotional nature fertilised by the touch of some other man than her husband. it happens so often. a girl who has been carefully guarded in the home, preserved from evil companions, preserved also from what her friends regarded as the contamination of sexual knowledge, a girl of high ideals, yet healthy and robust, is married to a man of whom she probably has little more than a conventional knowledge. yet he may by good chance be the masculine counterpart of herself, well brought up, without sexual experience and ignorant of all but the elementary facts of sex, loyal and honourable, prepared to be, fitted to be, a devoted husband. the union seems to be of the happiest kind; no one detects that anything is lacking to this perfect marriage; in course of time one or more children are born. but during all this time the husband has never really made love to his wife; he has not even understood what courtship in the intimate sense means; love as an art has no existence for him; he has loved his wife according to his imperfect knowledge, but he has never so much as realised that his knowledge was imperfect. she on her side loves her husband; she comes in time indeed to have a sort of tender maternal feeling for him. possibly she feels a little pleasure in intercourse with him. but she has never once been profoundly aroused, and she has never once been utterly satisfied. the deep fountains of her nature have never been unsealed; she has never been fertilised throughout her whole nature by their liberating influence; her erotic personality has never been developed. then something happens. perhaps the husband is called away, it may have been to take part in the great war. the wife, whatever her tender solicitude for her absent partner, feels her solitude and is drawn nearer to friends, perhaps her husband's friends. some man among them becomes congenial to her. there need be no conscious or overt love-making on either side, and if there were the wife's loyalty might be aroused and the friendship brought to an end. love-making is not indeed necessary. the wife's latent erotic needs, while still remaining unconscious, have come nearer to the surface; now that she has grown mature and that they have been stimulated yet unsatisfied for so long, they have, unknown to herself, become insistent and sensitive to a sympathetic touch. the friends may indeed grow into lovers, and then some sort of solution, by divorce or intrigue--scarcely however a desirable kind of solution--becomes possible. but we are here taking the highest ground and assuming that honourable feeling, domestic affection, or a stern sense of moral duty, renders such solution unacceptable. in due course the husband returns, and then, to her utter dismay, the wife discovers, if she has not discovered it before, that during his absence, and for the first time in her life, she has fallen in love. she loyally confesses the situation to her husband, for whom her affection and attachment remain the same as before, for what has happened to her is the coming of a totally new kind of love and not any change in her old love. the situation which arises is one of torturing anxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned are animated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses. the husband in his devotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should be gratified. she, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires which seem both unfair to her husband and opposed to all her moral traditions. we are not here concerned to consider the most likely, or the most desirable, exit from this unfortunate situation. the points to note are that it is a situation which to-day actually occurs; that it causes acute unhappiness to at least two people who may be of the finest physical and intellectual type and the noblest character, and that it might be avoided if there were at the outset a proper understanding of the married state and of the part which the art of love plays in married happiness and the development of personality. a woman may have been married once, she may have been married twice, she may have had children by both husbands, and yet it may not be until she is past the age of thirty and is united to a third man that she attains the development of erotic personality and all that it involves in the full flowering of her whole nature. up to then she had to all appearance had all the essential experiences of life. yet she had remained spiritually virginal, with conventionally prim ideas of life, narrow in her sympathies, with the finest and noblest functions of her soul helpless and bound, at heart unhappy even if not clearly realising that she was unhappy. now she has become another person. the new liberated forces from within have not only enabled her to become sensitive to the rich complexities of intimate personal relationship, they have enlarged and harmonised her realisation of all relationships. her new erotic experience has not only stimulated all her energies, but her new knowledge has quickened all her sympathies. she feels, at the same time, more mentally alert, and she finds that she is more alive than before to the influences of nature and of art. moreover, as others observe, however they may explain it, a new beauty has come into her face, a new radiancy into her expression, a new force into all her activities. such is the exquisite flowering of love which some of us who may penetrate beneath the surface of life are now and then privileged to see. the sad part of it is that we see it so seldom and then often so late. it must not be supposed that there is any direct or speedy way of introducing into life a wider and deeper conception of the erotic play-function, and all that it means for the development of the individual, the enrichment of the marriage relationship, and the moral harmony of society. such a supposition would merely be to vulgarise and to stultify the divine and elusive mystery. it is only slowly and indirectly that we can bring about the revolution which in this direction would renew life. we may prepare the way for it by undermining and destroying those degrading traditional conceptions which have persisted so long that they are instilled into us almost from birth, to work like a virus in the heart, and to become almost a disease of the soul. to make way for the true and beautiful revelation, we can at least seek to cast out those ancient growths, which may once have been true and beautiful, but now are false and poisonous. by casting out from us the conception of love as vile and unclean we shall purify the chambers of our hearts for the reception of love as something unspeakably holy. in this matter we may learn a lesson from the psycho-analysts of to-day without any implication that psycho-analysis is necessarily a desirable or even possible way of attaining the revelation of love. the wiser psycho-analysts insist that the process of liberating the individual from outer and inner influences that repress or deform his energies and impulses is effected by removing the inhibitions on the free-play of his nature. it is a process of education in the true sense, not of the suppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of sound rules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of the leading out of the individual's special tendencies.[ ] it removes inhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, or that he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the best moral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and more natively spontaneous morality to come into play. it has this influence above all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been most powerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies have been most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificial stains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquated traditions. thus the therapeutical experience of the psycho-analysts reinforces the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and the intimate experiences of life. [ ] see, for instance, h.w. frink, _morbid fears and compulsions_, , ch. x. sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. it is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. it is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. nothing, it has been said, is so serious as lust--to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure--and we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. play is primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. in the play-function of sex two forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely and variously and harmoniously blended. we here understand best how it is that the brain organs and the sexual organs are, from the physiological standpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. thus the adrenal glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are specially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sex organs. as we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands march side by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, sexual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond. lovers in their play--when they have been liberated from the traditions which bound them to the trivial or the gross conception of play in love--are thus moving amongst the highest human activities, alike of the body and of the soul. they are passing to each other the sacramental chalice of that wine which imparts the deepest joy that men and women can know. they are subtly weaving the invisible cords that bind husband and wife together more truly and more firmly than the priest of any church. and if in the end--as may or may not be--they attain the climax of free and complete union, then their human play has become one with that divine play of creation in which old poets fabled that, out of the dust of the ground and in his own image, some god of chaos once created man. chapter vii the individual and the race i the relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations. it is a relation which almost amounts to identity. yet it somehow seems so vague, so abstract, as scarcely to concern us at all. it is only lately indeed that there has been formulated even so much as a science to discuss this relationship, and the duties which, when properly understood, it throws upon the individual. even yet the word "eugenics," the name of this science, and this art, sometimes arouses a smile. it seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the other side with his nose raised towards the sky. modern the science and art of eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the greeks of classic days, as well as their successors to-day, used the word eugeneia for nobility or good birth. it was chosen by francis galton, less than fifty years ago, to express "the effort of man to improve his own breed." but the thing the term stands for is, in reality, also far from modern. it is indeed ancient and may even be nearly as old as man himself. consciously or unconsciously, sometimes under pretexts that have disguised his motives even from himself, man has always been attempting to improve his own quality or at least to maintain it. when he slackens that effort, when he allows his attention to be too exclusively drawn to other ends, he suffers, he becomes decadent, he even tends to die out. primitive eugenics had seldom anything to do with what we call "birth-control." one must not say that it never had. even the mysterious mika operation of so primitive a race as the australians has been supposed to be a method of controlling conception. but the usual method, even of people highly advanced in culture, has been simpler. they preferred to see the new-born infant before deciding whether it was likely to prove a credit to its parents or to the human race generally, and if it seemed not up to the standard they dealt with it accordingly. at one time that was regarded as a cruel and even inhuman method. to-day, when the most civilised nations of the world have devoted all their best energies to competitive slaughter, we may have learnt to view the matter differently. if we can tolerate the wholesale murder and mutilation of the finest specimens of our race in the adult possession of all their aptitudes we cannot easily find anything to disapprove in the merciful disposal of the poorest specimens before they have even attained conscious possession of their senses. but in any case, and whatever we may ourselves be pleased to think or not to think, it is certain that some of the most highly developed peoples of the world have practised infanticide. it is equally certain that the practise has not proved destructive to the emotions of humanity and affection. even some of the lowest human races,--as we commonly estimate them,--while finding it necessary to put aside a certain proportion of their new-born infants, expend a degree of love and even indulgence on the children they bring up which is rarely found among so-called civilised nations. there is no need, however, to consider whether or not infanticide is humane. we are all agreed that it is altogether unnecessary, and that it is seldom that even that incipient form of infanticide called abortion, still so popular among us, need be resorted to. our aim now--so far at all events as mere ideals go--is not to destroy life but to preserve it; we seek to improve the conditions of life and to render unnecessary the premature death of any human creature that has once drawn breath. it is indeed just here that we find a certain clash between the modern view of life and the view of earlier civilisations. the ancients were less careful than we claim to be of the individual, but they were more careful of the race. they cultivated eugenics after their manner, though it was a manner which we reprobate.[ ] we pride ourselves, rightly or wrongly, on our care for the individual; during all the past century we claim to have been strenuously working for an amelioration of the environment which will make life healthier and pleasanter for the individual. but in the concentration of our attention on this altogether desirable end, which we are still far from having adequately attained, we have lost sight of that larger end, the well-being of the race and the amelioration of life itself, not merely of the conditions of life. the most we hope is that somehow the improvement of the conditions of the individual will incidentally improve the stock. these our practical ideals, which have flourished for a century past, arose out of the great french revolution and were inspired by the maxim of that revolution, as formulated by rousseau, that "all men are born equal." that maxim, was overthrown half a century ago; the great biological movement of science, initiated by darwin, showed that it was untenable. all men are not born equal. everyone agrees about that now, but nevertheless the momentum of the earlier movement was so powerful that we still go on acting as though all men are, and always will be, born equal, and that we need not trouble ourselves about heredity but only about the environment. [ ] but this statement must not be left without important qualification. thus the ancient greeks (as moïssidès has shown in _janus_, ), not only their philosophers and statesmen, but also their women, often took the most enlightened interest in eugenics, and, moreover, showed it in practice. they were in many respects far in advance of us. they clearly realised, for instance, the need of a proper interval between conceptions, not only to ensure the health of women, but also the vigour of the offspring. it is natural that among every fine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease to be a fine race. it is equally natural that among our modern degenerates eugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-analysts would put it, they rationalise that horror. the way out of this clash of ideals--which has compelled us to hope impossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed the only alternative--is, as we know, furnished by birth-control. an unqualified reliance on the environment, making it ever easier and easier for the feeblest and most defective to be born and survive, could only, in the long run, lead to the degeneration of the whole race. the knowledge of the practice of birth-control gives us the mastery of all that the ancients gained by infanticide, while yet enabling us to cherish that ideal of the sacredness of human life which we profess to honour so highly. the main difficulty is that it demands a degree of scientific precision which the ancients could not possess and might dispense with, so long as they were able to decide the eugenic claims of the infant by actual inspection. we have to be content to determine not what the infant is but when it be likely to be, and that involves a knowledge of the laws of heredity which we are only learning slowly to acquire. we may all in our humble ways help to increase that knowledge by giving it greater extension and more precision through the observations we are able to make on our own families. to such observations galton attached great importance and strove in various ways to further them. detailed records, physical and mental, beginning from birth, are still far from being as common as is desirable, although it is obvious that they possess a permanent personal and family private interest in addition to their more public scientific value. we do not need, and it would indeed be undesirable, to emulate in human breeding the achievements of a luther burbank. we have no right to attempt to impose on any human creature an exaggerated and one-sided development. but it is not only our right, it is our duty, or rather one may say, the natural impulse of every rational and humane person, to seek that only such children may be born as will be able to go through life with a reasonable prospect that they will not be heavily handicapped by inborn defect or special liability to some incapacitating disease. what is called "positive" eugenics--the attempt, that is, to breed special qualities--may well be viewed with hesitation. but so-called "negative" eugenics--the effort to clear all inborn obstacles out of the path of the coming generation--demands our heartiest sympathy and our best co-operation, for as galton, the founder of modern eugenics, wrote towards the end of his life of this new science: "its first object is to check the birth-rate of the unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely." we can seldom be absolutely sure what stocks should not propagate, and what two stocks should on no account be blended, but we can attain reasonable probability, and it is on such probabilities in every department of life that we are always called upon to act. it is often said--i have said it myself--that birth-control when practised merely as a limitation of the family, scarcely suffices to further the eugenic progress of the race. if it is not deliberately directed towards the elimination of the worst stocks or the worst possibilities in the blending of stocks, it may even tend to diminish the better stocks since it is the better stocks that are least likely to propagate at random. this is true if other conditions remain equal. it is evident, however, that the other conditions will not remain equal, for no evidence has yet been brought forward to show that birth-control, even when practised without regard to eugenic considerations--doubtless the usual rule up to the present--has produced any degeneration of the race. on the contrary, the evidence seems to show that it has improved the race. the example of holland is often brought forward as evidence in favour of such a tendency of birth-control, since in that country the wide-spread practise of birth-control has been accompanied by an increase in the health and stature of the people, as well as an increase in their numbers to a remarkable degree, for the fall in the birth-rate has been far more than compensated by the fall in the death-rate, while it is said that the average height of the population has increased by four inches. it is, indeed, quite possible to see why, although theoretically a random application of birth-control cannot affect the germinal possibilities of a community, in practise it may improve the somatic conditions under which the germinal elements develop. there will probably be a longer interval between the births of the children, which has been demonstrated by ewart and others to be an important factor not only in preserving the health of the mother but in increasing the health and size of the child. the diminution in the number of the children renders it possible to bestow a greater amount of care on each child. moreover, the better economic position of the father, due to the smaller number of individuals he has to support, makes it possible for the family to live under improved conditions as regards nourishment, hygiene, and comfort. the observance of birth-control is thus a far more effective lever for raising the state of the social environment and improving the conditions of breeding, than is direct action on the part of the community in its collective capacity to attain the same end. for however energetic such collective action may be in striving to improve general social conditions by municipalising or state-supporting public utilities, it can never adequately counter-balance the excessive burden and wasteful expenditure of force placed on a family by undue child-production. it can only palliate them. when, however, we have found reason to believe that, even if practised without regard to eugenic considerations, birth-control may yet act beneficially to promote good breeding, we begin to realise how great a power it may possess when consciously and deliberately directed towards that end. in eugenics, as already pointed out, there are two objects that may be aimed at: one called positive eugenics, that seeks to promote the increase of the best stocks amongst us; the other, called negative eugenics, which seeks to promote the decrease of the worst stocks. our knowledge is still too imperfect to enable us to pursue either of these objects with complete certainty. this is especially so as regards positive eugenics, and since it seems highly undesirable to attempt to breed human beings, as we do animals, for points, when we are in the presence of what seem to us our finest human stocks, physically, morally, and intellectually, it is our wisest course just to leave them alone as much as we can. the best stocks will probably be also those best able to help themselves and in so doing to help others. but that is obviously not so as regards the worst stocks. it is, therefore, fortunate that the aim here seems a little clearer. there are still many abnormal conditions of which we cannot say positively that they are injurious to the race and that we should therefore seek to breed them out. but there are other conditions so obviously of evil import alike to the subjects themselves and to their descendants that we cannot have any reasonable doubt about them. there is, for instance, epilepsy, which is known to be transformed by heredity into various abnormalities dangerous alike to their possessors and to society. there are also the pronounced degrees of feeble-mindedness, which are definitely heritable and not only condemn those who reveal them to a permanent inaptitude for full life, but constitute a subtle poison working through the social atmosphere in all directions and lowering the level of civilisation in the community. nowhere has this been so thoroughly studied and so clearly proved as in the united states. it is only necessary to mention dr. c.b. davenport of the department of experimental evolution at cold spring harbor (new york) who has carried on so much research in regard to the heredity of epilepsy and other inheritable abnormal conditions, and dr. goddard of vineland (new jersey) whose work has illustrated so fully the hereditary relationships of feeble-mindedness. the united states, moreover, has seen the development of the system of social field-work which has rendered possible a more complete knowledge of family heredity than has ever before been possible on a large scale. it is along such lines as these that our knowledge of the eugenic conditions of life will grow adequate and precise enough to form an effective guide to social conduct. nature, and a due attention to laws of heredity in life, will then rank in equal honour to our eyes with nurture or that attention to the environmental conditions of life which we already regard as so important. a regard to nurture has led us to spend the greatest care on the preservation not only of the fit but the unfit, while meantime it has wisely suggested to us the desirability of segregating or even of sterilising the unfit. but the study of nature leads us further and, as galton said, "eugenics rests on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and these only of the best stocks." that is to say that the only instrument by which eugenics can be made practically effective in the modern world is birth-control. it is not scientific research alone, nor even the wide popular diffusion of knowledge, that will suffice to bring eugenics and birth-control, singly or in their due combination, into the course of our daily lives. they need to be embodied in our instinctive impulses. galton considered that eugenics must become a factor of religion and be regarded as a sacred and virile creed, while ellen key holds that the religions of the past must be superseded by a new religion which will be the awakening of the whole of humanity to a consciousness of the "holiness of generation." for my own part, i scarcely consider that either eugenics or birth-control can be regarded as properly a part of religion. being of virtue and not of grace they belong more naturally to the sphere of morals. but here they certainly need to go far deeper than the mere intelligence of the mind can take them. they cannot become guides to conduct until their injunctions have been printed on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. the demands of the race must speak from within us, in the voice of conscience which we disobey at our peril. when that happens with regard to ascertained laws of racial well-being we may know that we are truly following, even though not in the letter, those great spirits, like galton with his intellectual vision and ellen key with her inspired enthusiasm, who have pointed out new roads for the ennoblement of the race. ii it may be well, before we go further, to look a little more closely into the suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthy old-fashioned people. to some extent that attitude is excused, not only by the mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be made even by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagant proposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrant to speak in the name of eugenics. two thousand years ago the wild excesses of some early christians furnished an excuse for the ancient world to view christianity with contempt, although the extreme absence of such excesses has furnished still better ground for the modern world to maintain the same view. to-day such a work as _le haras humain_ ("the human stud-farm") of dr. binet-sanglé, putting forward proposals which, whether beneficial or not, will certainly find no one to carry them out, similarly furnishes an excuse to those who would reject eugenics altogether. utopian schemes have their value; we should be able to find inspiration in the most modern of them, just as we still do in plato's immortal _republic_. but in this, as in other matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. we must not confuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober possibilities of actual life in our own time. people who are incapable of exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid touching the delicate problems connected with practical eugenics. there is one prejudice already mentioned, due to lack of clear thinking, which deserves more special consideration because it is widespread among the socialistic democracy of several countries as well as among social reformers, and is directed alike against eugenics and birth-control. this prejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and an unwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that a better distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is the one thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being added unto us, without any further trouble on our part. it is certainly impossible to over-rate the importance of the economic factor in society, or of a good environment. and it is true that eugenics alone, like birth-control alone, can effect little if the economic basis of society is unsound. but it is equally certain that the economic factor can never in itself suffice for fine living or even as a cure-all of social and racial diseases. its value is not that it can effect these things but that it furnishes the favourable conditions for effecting them. he would be foolish indeed who went to the rich to find the example of good breeding and, as is well known, it is not with the rich that the future of the race lies. the fact is that under any economic system the responsible personal direction of the individual and the family remain equally necessary, and no progress is possible so long as the individual casts all responsibility away from himself on to the social group he forms part of. the social group, after all, is merely himself and the likes of himself. he is merely shifting the burden from his individual self to his collective self, and in so doing he loses more than he gains. thus there is always a sound core in that individualism which has been preached so long and practised so energetically, especially in english-speaking lands, however great the abuse involved in its excesses. it is still in the name of individualism that the most brilliant antagonists of eugenics and of birth-control are wont to direct their attacks. the counsel of self-control and foresight in procreation, the restriction necessary to purify and raise the standard of the race, seem to the narrow and short-sighted advocates of a great principle an unwarrantable violation of the sacred rights of their individual liberty. they have not yet grasped the elementary fact that the rights of the individual are the rights of all individuals, and that individualism itself calls for a limitation of the freedom of the individual. that is why even the most uncompromising individualist must recognise an element of altruism, call it whatever name you will, collectivism, socialism, communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, democracy. one cannot assume individualism for oneself unless one assumes it for the many. that is a great truth which goes to the heart of the whole complex problem of eugenics and birth-control. as perrycoste has well argued,[ ] biology is altogether against the narrow individualism which seeks to oppose collective individualism. for if, in accordance with the most careful modern investigations, we recognise that heredity is supreme, that the qualities we have inherited from our ancestors count for more in our lives than anything we have acquired by our own personal efforts, then we have to admit that the capable man's wealth is more the community's property than his own, and, similarly, the incapable man's poverty is more the community's concern than his own. so that neither the capable nor the incapable are entitled to an unqualified power of freedom, and neither, likewise, are justly liable to be burdened by an unqualified responsibility. it is the duty of the community to draw on the powers of the fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit. in this way, perrycoste, whose attitude is that of the rationalist, is led by science to a conclusion which is that of the christian. we are all members each of the other, and still more are we members of those who went before us. the generations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, and we, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will come after us. the problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all. in the face of these problems it is the voice of man that speaks: "inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me." however firmly we base ourselves on the principles of individualism we are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, if we fail to recognise, our individualism becomes of no effect. [ ] f.h. perrycoste, "politics and science," _science progress_, jan., . but it is the same with socialism, or by whatever name we chose to call the collectivist activities of the community in social reform. socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments. it is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the socialist and democratic side, much more frequently than on the individualist side, that we find an indifferent or positively hostile attitude towards eugenic considerations. put social conditions on a sound basis, the people on this side often say, let all receive an adequate economic return for their work and be recognised as having a claim for an adequate share in the products of society, and there is no need to worry about the race or about the need for birth-control, all will go well of itself. there is not the slightest ground for any such comfortable belief. this has been well shown by dr. eden paul, himself a socialist and even in sympathy with the extreme left.[ ] after setting forth the present conditions, with our excessive elimination of higher types, and undue multiplication of lower types, the racial degeneration caused by the faulty and anti-selective working of the marriage system in modern capitalist society, so that in our existing civilisation unconscious natural selection has largely ceased to work towards the improvement of the human breed, he proceeds to consider the possible remedies. the frequent impatience of the socialist, and social reformers generally, with eugenic proposals has a certain degree of justification in the fact that many evils thoughtlessly attributed to inferiority of stock are really due to bad environment. but when the environment has been so far improved that all defects due to its badness are removed, we shall be face to face, without possibility of doubt, with bad inheritance as the sole remaining factor in the production of inefficient and anti-social members of the community. a socialist community must recognise the right to work and to maintenance of all its members, eden paul points out, but, he adds, a community which allowed this right to all defectives without imposing any restrictions in their perpetuation of themselves would deserve all the evils that would fall upon it. it is quite clear how intolerable the burden of these evils would be. a state that provided an adequate subsistence for all alike, the inefficient as well as the efficient, would encourage a racial degeneration, from excessive multiplication of the unfit, far more dangerous even than that of to-day.[ ] ability to earn the minimum wage, eden paul argues in agreement with h.g. wells, must be the condition of the right to become a parent. "unless the socialist is a eugenist as well, the socialist state will speedily perish from racial degradation." [ ] in an essay on "eugenics, birth control, and socialism" in _population and birth-control: a symposium_, edited by eden and cedar paul. [ ] this is here and there beginning to be recognised. thus, not long ago, the hereford war pensions committee resolved not to issue a maternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatment allowance. such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for it is obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. but it shows a glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such a recognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting the situation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent their conception. mothers' clinics for instruction in such prevention are now being established in england, through the advocacy of mrs. margaret sanger and the actual initiative of dr. marie stopes. thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditary factor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with the environmental factor, should supplement each other's work. neither can attain his end without the other's help, for the eugenist alone cannot overcome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is an individualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcome the bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more than a socialist. the more socialist our state becomes the more essential becomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a working part of the state. "socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand." perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the same conclusions. he is not, indeed, concerned with any "socialist" community of the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably follow the already established methods of social reform in our modern civilised states unless they are speedily checked by effective action based on eugenic knowledge. "if," he observes, "the community is to shoulder half or three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintain themselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage of these unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary nightmare, if it is to assume paternal charge of all the tens or hundreds of thousands of children whose parents cannot or will not provide adequately for them and is to guarantee to all such children as much education as they are capable of receiving, and a really fair start in life: then in sheer self-preservation the community must insist on, and rigidly enforce, its absolute claim to secure that no degeneracy or inheritable congenital defects shall persist beyond the present generation of degenerates, and that the community of fifty or seventy years hence shall have no incubus of mentally, or morally, or even physically, degenerate members--none but a few occasional sporadic morbid 'sports' from the normal, which it, in turn, may effectively prevent from handing on their like." unless the problem is squarely faced, perrycoste concludes, national deterioration must increase and a permanently successful collectivist society is inherently impossible. we are not now concerned with the details of any policy of eugenics and of birth-control, which i couple together because although a random birth-control by no means involves much, if any, eugenic progress, it is not easy under modern conditions to conceive any practical or effective policy of eugenics except through the instrumentation of birth-control. we here take it for granted that in this field the slow progress of scientific knowledge must be our guide. premature legislation, rash and uninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely to delay it. yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the first importance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to do all that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and woman to his or her personal responsibility in this matter. that is here all taken for granted. it seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man's attitude towards this question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that individualism or socialism demands. we see that when the question is driven home our political attitude makes no difference. it is only a shallow individualism, it is only a still more shallow socialism, which imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial questions can be left to answer themselves. iii many years before the great war, in all the most civilised countries of the world, there were those who raised the cry of "race-suicide!" in america this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of theodore roosevelt, but in european countries there were similar voices raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. since the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to keep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardly compatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production. now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of "race-suicide!" it is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming military inferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction. it is useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is danger of the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its own voluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period of time--for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion for any acute anxiety--the last man will perish from the world. this is what "race-suicide" means, and we must face the fact squarely. it can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of "race-suicide" has actually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raised that cry. translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean: "we want more births." that is what it definitely means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems also to imply nothing more. yet it implies a great number of other things. it implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. what, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most unquestionably imply is more deaths. it is nowadays so well known that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate--the exceptions are too few to need attention--that it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence. it is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "race-suicide" cry who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. the model which they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse "more births!" but on the reverse it bears "more deaths!" it would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts' own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and crying out for "more deaths!" "it is a hard thing," said johnny dunn, "for a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of almighty god." if, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of civilisation or the happiness of humanity. it is obvious that we must consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish to ascertain the net result. we may roughly get a notion of what that result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the remainder the survival-rate. if we are really concerned with the question of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means nothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. then we may soon convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. quite the contrary! every one of them, even france, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposed to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers. it is interesting to note, moreover, that the french have been increasing faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. and if we take a wider sweep and consider the growth of the french population towards the end of the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high figure of . but the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration of life was only half what it is now. so that the survival-rate in france at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much unlike it is now. the recent french birth-rate of and less, which automatically causes the "race-suicide" marionette to dance with rage, is producing not far from the same result in growth of the population--we are not here concerned with the enormous difference in well being and happiness--as the extremely high rate of which sends our marionettes leaping to the sky with joy. in war-time england, in , the birth-rate sank to . , yet the death-rate was at and the increase of the population continued. the more the human race commits this kind of suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows! it is, however, in the new world--as in canada, australia, and new zealand--that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria of the growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks. canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in their variation. here we see not only unusual curves of rise and fall, but also pronounced differences, due to the special peculiarities of the french population, most clearly in the province of quebec but also in some parts of the province of ontario. in quebec the birth-rate some years ago was , and the death-rate , both rates high, and the survival-rate high at ; recently the birth-rate has risen to and the death-rate fallen to , with the result that the survival-rate of is the highest in the world, though it must be noted that the high birth-rate is not likely to last long, since in quebec, as elsewhere in the world, increasing urbanisation causes a decreasing birth-rate. in mainly english-speaking ontario the birth-rate is much lower, about , but the death-rate is also lower, about , so that the fairly considerable survival-rate of is obtained. but we note the highly significant fact that some thirty years or more ago the birth-rate was much lower, about , and yet the survival-rate was almost , nearly as high as to-day! the death-rate was then at , and nothing could be more instructive as to the real relationship that holds in this matter. there has been a great rise in the birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a great increase in the population of the grave-yards. equally instructive is it to compare various cities in this same province, living under the same laws, and fairly similar social conditions. in the report of the registrar-general of ontario for i find that highest in birth-rate of cities in the province stands ottawa with a very considerable french population. but first also stands the same city for infant mortality, which is three times greater than in some other cities in the province with a low birth-rate. sault ste. marie, again with an enormous birth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. canada shows us that, even if we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population as reasonable--and that is a considerable assumption--a high birth-rate is an uncertain prop to rest on. canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing that the difference between the english-speaking and french-speaking populations--the greater care of the former in procreation and the more recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same ends--are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods of birth-control. what the result of a general use of such methods is we know from the example already mentioned of holland, where they are taught, officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich but among the poor. the result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowly and steadily for forty years. but the death-rate has also been falling and at a greater rate. so that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higher has been the rate of increase among the population. it is perhaps in australia and new zealand that we find the most satisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to "race-suicide." the evidence may well appeal to us the more since it is precisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for his wrath. he looks gleefully at china with its prolific women, at russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the war of nearly , at roumania with its birth-rate of , at chile and jamaica with nearly . no nonsense about birth-control there! no shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! no immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. and then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to australia, to new zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "race-suicide" nearly in sight and the spectre of the last man rising before him. for there is no doubt about it, australia and new zealand contain a population which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been falling with terrific speed. sixty-years ago in the australian commonwealth it was nearly , only forty years ago in new zealand it was . now it is only about in both lands. yet the survival-rate, the actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. for the death-rate has also fallen in both lands to about (in new zealand to ) which is lower than any other country in the world. the result is that australia and new zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked from door to door, instead of being awful examples of "race-suicide," actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only excepting canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), nearly twice that of great britain and able at the present rate to double itself every years. so much for "race-suicide." the outcry about "race-suicide" is so far away from the real facts of life that it is not easy to take it seriously, however solemn one's natural temperament may be. we are concerned with people who arrogantly claim to direct the moral affairs of the world, even in the most intimately private matters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of the world, unable to think, not even able to count! we can only greet them with a smile. but this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely serious aspect, and i should be sorry even to touch on the question of birth-control in relation to "race-suicide" without making that serious aspect clear. "race-suicide," we know, has no existence. not only is the race as a whole increasing in number, especially its white branches, but even among the separate national groups there is not even one civilised people anywhere in the world that is decreasing in number. on the contrary they are all, even france, increasing at a more or less rapid rate. in england and wales, for example, where the birth-rate has steadily fallen during the last forty years from to (i disregard the abnormal rates of war-time) the population is still increasing, and even if the present falls in birth-rate and death-rate continue, it will for years still go on increasing by an excess of over , births a day. when we realise that this is merely what goes on in one corner of the world and must be multiplied enormously to represent the whole, we shall find it impossible even to conceive the prodigious flow of excess babies which is being constantly poured over the earth. if we are capable of realising all the problems which thereby arise we must be forced to ask ourselves: _is this state of things desirable_? "be ye fruitful and multiply." that command was, according to the old story, delivered to a world inhabited by eight people. it has been handed down to a world in which it has long been ridiculously out of place, and has become merely the excuse for criminal recklessness among a race which has chosen to forget that the command was qualified by a solemn admonition: "at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will i require the life of man." the high birth-rate has meant a vast slaughter of infants, it has meant, moreover, a perpetual oppression of the workers, disease, starvation, and death among the adult population; it has meant, further, a blood-thirsty economic competition, militarism, warfare. it has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul of things even deeper than the voice of jehovah: "at the hand of man will i require the life of man." men have recklessly followed the will o' the wisp which represented mere multiplication of their inefficient selves as the ideal of progress, quantity before quality, the notion that in an orgy of universal procreation could consist the highest good of humanity. the great war, that is scarcely yet merged into an only less war-like peace, has brought at least the small compensation that it has led men to look in the face this insane ideal of human progress. we see to-day what has come of it, and the further evils yet to come of it are being embodied beneath our eyes. so that at last the voice of jehovah has here and there been faintly heard, even where nowadays we had grown least accustomed to hear it, in the churches. it is dr. inge, the dean of london's cathedral of st. paul's, a distinguished churchman and at the same time a foremost champion of eugenics, who lately expressed the hope that the world, especially the european world, would one day realise the advantages of a stationary population.[ ] such a recognition, such an aspiration, indicates that a new hope is dawning on the world's horizon, and a higher ideal growing within the human soul. the mad competition of the industrial world during the past century, with the sordid gloom and wretchedness of it for all who were able to see beneath the surface, has shown for ever what comes of the effort to produce a growing population by high birth-rates in peace-time. the great war of a later day has shown, let us hope in an equally decisive manner, what comes to a world where men have been for long generations produced so copiously and so cheaply that it is natural to regard them as only fit to sweep off the earth with machine guns. and the whole world of to-day--with its starving millions struggling in vain to feed themselves, with most of its natural beauty swept away by the ravages of man, and many of its most exquisite animals finally exterminated--is likely to become merely the monument to an ideal that failed. it was time, however late in the day, for a return to common-sense. it was time to realise that the ideal of mere propagation could lead us nowhere but to destruction. on that level we cannot compete even with the lowest of organised things, not even with the bacteria, which in number and in rapidity of multiplication are inconceivable to us. "all hope abandon, ye that enter here" is written over the portal of this path of "progress." [ ] this has long been recognised by men of science. even anyone with the slightest knowledge of biology, professor bateson remarked in a british association presidential address in , is aware that a population need not be declining because it is not increasing; "in normal stable conditions population is stationary." major leonard darwin, the thoughtful and cautious president of the eugenics education society, has lately stated his considered belief ("population and civilisation," _economic journal_, june, ) that increase in numbers means, ultimately, relative reduction of wealth per head, with consequent lowering of the standard of civilisation; that it also, under existing conditions, involves the production of a smaller proportion of men of ability; and, further, a depreciation of our traditions; he concludes that, whatever element in civilisation we regard--wealth, or stock, or traditions--"any increase in the population _such as that now taking place_ will be accompanied by a lowering in the standard of our civilisation." there are definite reasons why real progress in the supreme tasks of civilisation can best be made by a more or less stationary population, whether the population is large or small, and it need scarcely be added that, so far as the history of mankind is yet legible, the great advances in civilisation have been made by small, even very small populations. where the population is rapidly growing, even if it is growing under the favourable conditions that hardly ever accompany such growth, all its energy is absorbed in adjusting its perpetually shifting equilibrium. it cannot succeed in securing the right conditions of growth, because its growth is never ceasing to demand new conditions. the structure of its civilisation never rises above the foundations because these foundations have perpetually to be laid afresh, and there is never time to get further. it is a process, moreover, accompanied by unending friction and disorder, by strains and stresses of all kinds, which are fatal to any full, harmonious, and democratic civilisation. the "population question," with the endlessly mischievous readjustment it demands, must be eliminated before the great house of life can be built up on a strong solid human foundation, to lift its soaring pinnacles towards the skies. that is what many bitter experiences are beginning to teach us. in the future we are likely to be much less concerned about "race-suicide," though we can never be too concerned about race-murder. when we think, however, of the desirability of a more or less stationary population, in order to insure real social progress, as distinct from that vain struggle of meaningless movement to and fro which the history of the past reveals, we have to be clear in our minds that it may be far from desirable that the present overgrown population of the world should be stationary. that might indeed be better than further increase in numbers, it would arrest the growth of our present evils; it might open the way to methods by which they would be diminished or eliminated. but the process would be infinitely difficult, and almost infinitely slow, as we may easily realise when we consider that, with a population even smaller than at present, the human race has not only ravished the world's beauty almost out of existence, but so ravaged its own vital spirit that, as was found with some consternation during the great war, a large proportion of the male population of every country is unfit for military service. so often we hear it assumed, or even asserted, that greatness means quantity, so that to look forward to the replacement of the present teeming insignificant human myriads by a rarer and more truly greater race is to be a pessimist! oh, these "optimists"! to revel in a world which more and more closely resembles all that the poets ever imagined of hell, is to be an "optimist"! one wonders how it is that in no brief moment of lucidity it occurs to these people that the lower we descend in the scale of life the greater the quantity in a species and the poorer the quality, so that to reach what such people should really regard as the world's period of supreme greatness in life we must go back to the days, before animal life appeared, when the earth was merely a teeming mass of bacteria.[ ] [ ] see, for instance, h.f. osborn, _the origin and evolution of life_, , chapter iii. to-day, we are often told, the majority of human beings belong either to the undesired class or the undesirable class. to realise that this is so, we are bidden to read the newspapers or to walk along the streets of the cities--whichever they may be--wherein dwell the highest products of our civilisation. in the better class quarters it is indeed the undesirable class that seems to predominate, and in the poor quarters, the undesired. yet, viewing our species as a whole, the two classes may be seen to walk hand in hand along the same road, and in proportion as our nobler instincts germinate and develop, we must doubtless admit that it ought to be our active aim to make that road for both of them--socially though not individually--the road to destruction. to stem the devastating tide of human procreativeness, however, easy as it may seem in theory, is by no means so easy as some think, especially as those think who believe that the human race stands on the brink of suicide. for there is this about it that we must never forget: the majority of those born to-day die before their time, so that by diminishing the production of the unfit, as well as by the progressive improvement of the environment that automatically accompanies such diminution, we may make an imposing difference in the appearance of the birth-rate, whilst yet the population goes on increasing rapidly, probably even more rapidly than before. it needs a most radical and thorough attack on the birth-rate before we can make any real impression on the rate of increase of the population, to say nothing of its real reduction. there is still an arduous road before us. true it is that we have two opposing schools of thought which both say that we need not, or that we cannot, make any difference by our efforts to regulate the earth's human population. according to one view the development of population, together with the necessity for war which is inextricably mixed up with a developing population, cannot be effected without, as one champion of the doctrine is pleased to put it, "shattering both the structure of euclidean space and the psychological laws upon which the existence of self-consciousness and human society are conditional."[ ] in simpler words, populations tend to become too large for their territories, so that war ensues, and birth-control can do nothing because "it is doubtful whether a group in the plenitude of vigour and self-consciousness can deliberately stop its own growth." the other school proclaims human impotence on exactly opposite grounds. there is not the slightest reason, it declares, to believe that birth-control has had any but a completely negligible influence on population. this is a natural process and fertility is automatically adjusted to the death-rate. whenever a population reaches a certain stage of civilisation and nervous development its procreativeness, quite apart from any effort of the will, tends to diminish. the seeming effect of birth-control is illusory. it is nature, not human effort, which is at work.[ ] [ ] b.a.g. fuller, "the mechanical basis of war," _hibbert journal_, . [ ] sir shirley murphy some years ago (_lancet_, aug. ) argued that the fall of the birth-rate, as also that of the death-rate, has been largely effected by natural causes, independent of man's action. mr. g. udney yule (_the fall in the birth-rate_, ) also believes that birth-control counts for little, the chief factor being natural fluctuations, probably of economic nature. recently mr. c.e. pell, in his book, _the law of births and deaths_ ( ), has made a more elaborate and systematic attempt to show that the rise and fall of the birth-rate has hitherto been independent of human effort. these two opposing councils of despair, each proclaiming, though in a contrary sense, the vanity of human wishes in the matter of procreation, might well, some may think, be left to neutralise each other and evaporate in air. but it seems worth while to point out that, with proper limitations and qualifications, there is an element of truth in each of them, while, without such limitations and qualifications, both are alike obviously absurd and wrong-headed. undoubtedly, as the one school holds, in certain stages of civilisation, even at a fairly advanced stage, nations tend to break out over their frontiers with resulting war; but the period when they reach "the plenitude of vigour and self-consciousness" is exactly the period when the birth-rate begins to decline, and the population, deliberately or instinctively, controls its own increase. that has, for instance, been the history of france since the great expansion of population, roughly associated with the napoleonic epopee,--which doubtless covered a web of causes, sanitary, political, industrial, favourable to a real numerical increase of the nation--had died down slowly to the level we witness to-day.[ ] similarly, with regard to the opposing school, we must undoubtedly accept a natural fall in the birth-rate with a rising civilisation; that has always been visible in highly civilised individual couples, and it is an easily ascertainable zoological fact that throughout the evolution of life procreativeness has decreased with the increased development of species. we may agree that a natural factor comes into the recent fall in the human birth-rate. but to argue that because a natural decline in birth-rate is the essential factor in the slowing down of procreative activity with all higher evolution, therefore deliberate birth-control counts for nothing, since exactly the same result follows when voluntary prevention is adopted and when it is not, seems highly absurd. we must at least admit that voluntary birth-control is an important contributory cause, in some sense indeed, of supreme importance, because it is within man's own power and because man is thus enabled to guide and mould processes of nature which might otherwise work disastrously. how disastrously is shown by the history of europe, and in a notable degree france, during the four or five centuries preceding the end of the eighteenth century when various new influences began to operate. during all these centuries there was undoubtedly a very high birth-rate, yet infant mortality, war, famine, insanitation, contagious diseases of many and virulent kinds, tended, as far as we can see, to keep the population almost or quite stationary,[ ] and so ruinous a method of maintaining a stationary population necessarily used up most of the energy which might otherwise have been available for social progress, although the stationary population, even thus maintained, still placed france at the head of european civilisation. the more firmly we believe that the diminution of the population is a natural process, the more strenuously, surely, we ought to guide it, so that it shall work without friction, and, so far as possible, tend to eliminate the undesirable stocks of man and preserve the desirable. clearly, the theory itself calls for much effort, since it is obvious that along natural lines the decline, if it is the result of high evolution, will affect the fit more easily than the unfit. [ ] the reader may point to the renewal of militarism and imperialism in france since the great war. that, however, has been an artificial product (in so far as it exists among the people themselves) directly fostered from outside by the policy of england and the united states, just as the same spirit in germany before the war, in the face of a falling birth-rate, was artificially fostered from above by a military and imperialistic caste. [ ] see especially mathorez, _histoire de la formation de la population française_, vol. i, , _les Étrangers en france_. the fecundity of french families, even among the aristocracy, till towards the end of the eighteenth century, was fabulous; in the third quarter of the seventeenth century the average number of children was five in paris. but the mortality was extremely high; under the age of sixteen, mathorez estimates, it was per cent., and infant mortality was terrible in all classes, small-pox being specially fatal. then there were the various diseases termed plagues, with famine sometimes added, while war, emigration, and religious celibacy all counteracted the excessive fecundity, so that from the thirteenth century to the third quarter of the eighteenth the population seems to have been stationary, about twenty-two millions. then the size of the family fell in paris to . and in france generally to . , while also there were fewer marriages. therewith there was an increase of prosperity. thus there seems, on a wide survey of the matter, no reason whatever to quarrel with that conviction, which is gradually over-spreading all classes of human society in all parts of the world, and ever more widely leading to practical action, that the welfare of the individual, the family, the community, and the race is bound up with the purposive and deliberate practice of birth-control, whether we advocate that policy on the ground that we are thereby furthering nature, or on the opposite, and no doubt equally excellent, ground that we are thereby correcting nature. along this road, as along any other road, we shall not reach utopia; and since the utopia of every person who possesses one is unique that perhaps need not be regretted. we shall not even, within any measurable period of time, reach a sanely free and human life fit to satisfy quite moderate aspirations. the wise birth-controller will not (like the deliciously absurd suffragette of old-time) imagine that birth-control for all means a new heaven and a new earth, but will, rather, appreciate the delightful irony of the biblical legend which represented a world with only four people in it, yet one of them a murderer. still, it may be pointed out, that was a state of things much better than we can show now. the world would count itself happier if, during the great war, only twenty-five per cent of the population of belligerent lands had been murderers, virtually or in fact. there is something to be gained, and that something is well worth while. still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.[ ] to many of our undesirables it may seem, mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing of the world's beauty or the ravaging of the world's humanity. but certain hard facts, even to-day, have to be faced. the process of mechanical invention continues every day on an ever increasing scale of magnitude. now that process, however necessary, however beneficial, involves some of the chief evils of our present phase of what we call civilisation, partly because it has deteriorated the quality of all human products and partly because it has enslaved mankind, and in so doing deteriorated also his quality.[ ] now we cannot abolish machinery, because machinery lies in the very essence of life and we ourselves are machines. but, as the largest part of history shows, there is no need whatever for man to become the slave of machinery, or even for machinery to injure the quality of his own work; rightly used it may improve it. the greatest task before civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at the task, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a common destruction. it is a task inextricably bound up with the task of moulding the human race for which birth-control is the elected instrument. indeed they are but two aspects of the same task. we have to accept the rugged fact that every step to render more nearly perfect the mechanical side of life correspondingly abolishes the need for men. thus it is calculated to-day that whenever, in accordance with a growing tendency, coal is superseded by oil in industry two men are enabled to do the work of twelve. that is merely typical of what is taking place generally in our modern system of civilisation. everywhere a small number of men are being enabled to replace a large number of men. not to avoid looking ahead, we may say that of every twelve millions of our population, ten millions will be unwanted. let them do something else! we cheerfully exclaim. but what? no doubt there are always art and science, infinite in their possibilities for joy and enlightenment, infinite also, as we know, in their possibilities of mischief and shallowness and boredom. let it only be true science and great art, and one man is better than ten millions. to say that is only to echo unconsciously the ancient saying of heraclitus, "one is ten thousand if he be the best." [ ] professor e.m. east, a distinguished biologist and lately president of the american society of naturalists (_nature_, sept., ), has estimated that, for all the fall in the birth-rate, the present rate of increase in the population of the world, chiefly of whites, who are increasing most rapidly, will, in the lives of our grandchildren, lead to a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive. [ ] this has been set forth with admirable lucidity and wealth of illustration by dr. austin freeman in his _social decay and regeneration_ ( ), already mentioned. the vistas that are opened up when we realise the direction in which the human race is travelling may seem to be endless; and so in a sense they are. man has replaced the gods he once dreamed of; he has found that he is himself a god, who, however realistic he seeks to make his philosophy, himself created the world as he sees it and now has even acquired the power of creating himself, or, rather, of re-creating himself. for he recognises that, at present, he is rather a poor sort of god, so much an inferior god that he is hardly, if at all, to be distinguished from the lords of hell. the divine creative task of man extends into the future far beyond the present, and we cannot too often meditate on the words of the wisest and noblest forerunner of that future: "the whole world still lies before us like a quarry before the master-builder, who is only then worthy of the name when out of this casual mass of natural material he has embodied with all his best economy, adaptability to the end, and firmness, the image which has arisen in his mind. everything outside us is only the means for this constructing process, yes, i would even dare to say, also everything inside us; deep within lies the creative force which is able to form what it will, and gives us no rest until, without us or within us, in one or the other way, we have finally given it representation." the future, with all its possibilities, is still a future infinitely far away, however well it may be to fix our eyes on the constellation towards which our solar system may seem to be moving across the sky. meanwhile, every well-directed step, while it brings us but ever so little nearer to the far goal around which our dreams may play, is at once a beautiful process and an invigorating effort, and thereby becomes in itself a desirable end. it is the little things of life which give us most satisfaction and the smallest things in our path that may seem most worth while. index abstinence, sexual, . acton, . adrenal glands, . anstie, . art of love, . asceticism and sexuality, . augustine, st., , . australian birth-rate, . auto-erotism, . bantu, marriage among the, . bateson, . bell, w. blair, . binet-sanglé, . birth-control, , _et seq._ birth-rate, in france, , . in australia, . in canada, . in england, , . book of the knight of the tour-landry, , . brontës, the, . browning, mrs., . brown-séquard, . burbank, luther, . canada, birth-rate in, . chastity, . chaucer, . children, to parents, relation of, _et seq._ in modern life, _et seq._ sex in, . china, parents in, . christianity, , , , , , . continence, the value of, , . courtship in nature, . crooks, mrs. will, . davenport, c.b., . darwin, major leonard, . davies, . drayton, . dundas, c, . east, e.m., . education, . in old england, . in old france, , . electra-complex, . eliot, george, . ellis, mrs. havelock, , , . english social history, , , , , . erotic claims of women, . erotic personality, . eugenics, _et seq._ ewart, . family, sex in life of, _et seq._, . feeblemindedness, . feudal education, . francis of assisi, st., . freeman, austin, , . french social history, , , , , . freud, , , . frink, h.w., . fuller, b.a.g., . galton, sir francis, , , , , . girls, emancipated, . goddard, . goethe, . gratian, . greeks, eugenics amongst ancient, . groos, . hadfield, mrs., . heraclitus, . hinton, james, , , , , , . home, revolution in the, . hormones, , . husbands, _et seq._ individualism and eugenics, . infanticide, ancient, . infantile arrest, . inge, dr., . internal secretions, , . jonson, ben, . juries, women on, . key, ellen, , , , . lasco, john à, . löwenfeld, . luchaire, . luther, . machinery and civilisation, . magic and sex, . marriage, _et seq._, _et seq._, _et seq._, _et seq._ martineau, harriet, . mathorez, . matsumato, . mcdougall, w., . meirowsky, . milton, . moïssidès, . monogamy, . montaigne, , , , , . morality, and nature, . in marriage, . more, sir thomas, , . murphy, sir shirley, . näcke, . nature and morality, . new caledonia, treatment of parents in, . northcote, h., . oedipus-complex, . osborn, h.f., . palladius, . parasitism in the home, . parents, merciful destruction of, . relation of children to, _et seq._, . training of, . veneration of, . parmelee, . paston letters, , . paul, eden & cedar, , . paul, st., . peacock, . pell, c.e., . perrycoste, f.h., , . perseigne, adam de, . pituitary gland, . play-function of sex, _et seq._ pleasure, the function of, . polonius, . powell, dr., . protestantism and marriage, . psycho-analysis, , . purity, _et seq._ race-suicide, _et seq._ ring in marriage, . rite, the marriage, . robert of arbrissel, . rohleder, . rolland, romain, . sacrament, sex as a, . salle, antoine de la, . sanger, margaret, . schreiner, olive, , . and asceticism, . sex, and magic, . as a sacrament, . evolution in, . nature of impulse of, . play-function of, _et seq._ spiritual element in, . sublimation of, , . shaftesbury, . socialism and eugenics, . _stonor letters_, . stopes, marie, . suarez, . sublimation, , . theognis, . wells, h.g., . westermarck, . wives, _et seq._ love rights of, _et seq._ wollstonecraft, mary, . women, erotic claims of, . erotic ideas of average, , in crusades, . in marriage, , . in old france, _et seq._ in subjection to men, . love rights of, _et seq._ on juries, . yule, g. udney, . printed in great britain by billing and sons, ltd., guildford and esher. * * * * * transcriber's notes: in the index, wollstonecroft was changed to wollstonecraft also in the index, á was changed to à in: lasco, john à some punctuation normalized everything else was left as found in the original * * * * * [advertisements] particulars of other works on sex, sex psychology, heredity & evolution will be found on the three following pages [illustration] mrs. havelock ellis: the new horizon in love and life. with a preface by edward carpenter. s. herbert, m.d., m.r.c.s.: an introduction to the physiology and psychology of sex. the first principles of heredity. (second edition.) the first principles of evolution. (second edition.) fundamentals in sexual ethics. mrs. s. herbert: sex lore: a primer, on courtship, marriage and parenthood. dr. & mrs. herbert: sexual life of primitive people. authorized translation of hans fehlinger's volume. published by a. & c. black, ltd., , & soho square, london, w. the new horizon in love and life by mrs. havelock ellis with a preface by edward carpenter and an introduction by marguerite tracy _demy vo_ price / net (_by post, s._) questions of marriage and divorce, of sex variation, of love in the past and in the future all come up for subtle consideration. the items of our common knowledge are regrouped. here we see clearly revealed the personal conception of life that lay behind mrs. havelock ellis's brilliant novels. we are arrested and spell-bound by the same understanding, the same directness of touch, the same beauty. contents: preface, by edward carpenter. introduction, by marguerite tracy. note, by havelock ellis. part i.--love and marriage. the love of to-morrow. a noviciate for marriage. semi-detached marriage. marriage and divorce. eugenics and the mystical outlook. eugenics and spiritual parenthood. blossoming time. love as a fine art. part ii.--the new civilization. democracy in the kitchen. the masses and the classes. the maternal in domestic and political life. political militancy: its cause and cure. war. the new civilization. the philosophy of happiness. bibliography. index. opinions: "bold in pursuit of honesty."--_observer._ "the charm of style, the frankness and courage, the delicacy and idealism which marked her life's work are here in full measure."--_challenge._ "a wholly sincere, clear-headed woman, mrs. ellis was often misunderstood because she was sane."--_w.l. george._ "stimulates thought, arouses controversy, may shock the timidly conventional."--_sunday times._ published by a. & c. black, ltd., , & soho square, london, w. the herbert books by s. herbert, m.d., m.r.c.s., l.r.c.p. * * * * * the first principles of heredity diagrams and illustrations. large crown vo. cloth. s. d. net (by post, s. d.). _revised edition._ "dr. herbert's hook can be recommended as a trustworthy 'first aid' in the study of a difficult subject. his style is lucid and concise, and he has provided a glossary which will be of service to many."--_athenæum._ "we have only praise for the result."--_eugenics review._ "dr. herbert will be found a safe guide. he writes as clearly and as simply as may be upon a subject in which it is practically impossible to avoid technical language.... the book may be cordially recommended as admirably adapted for the class for whom it is intended." _westminster gazette._ * * * * * the first principles of evolution illustrations. large crown vo. cloth, s. d. net (by post, s. d.). _revised edition._ "the author attempts to examine and test the principles of the theory of evolution as applied to the known phenomena of the cosmos. to do this at all satisfactorily in little more than pages, and at the same time bring under review all that is most valuable in recent scientific research, is no easy task. we may say at once that, in our opinion dr. herbert has succeeded wonderfully well."--_athenæum._ "contains not a single dry page--far and away the most compact and complete account of evolution in all its aspects."--_globe._ "we congratulate dr. herbert on his masterly arrangement.... it will serve as an admirable introduction to a difficult subject."--_dundee advertiser._ * * * * * an introduction to the physiology and psychology of sex illustrations. large crown vo. cloth. s. d. net (by post, s. d.). this fills a gap in the literature of sex. it gathers together for the general reader a vast array of facts about sex, mating and reproduction which have never before been so clearly and directly stated. "for a simple statement, expressed in language as far as possible free from technicalities, of the principal phenomena of generation, dr. herbert's book is the best that we have seen."--_cambridge review._ "it is therefore a real satisfaction to find a sex manual which may be placed with confidence in the hands of any educated person.... he has certainly produced the best little manual which we yet possess in this field."--havelock ellis in _eugenics review._ * * * * * by mrs. herbert. sex lore. a primer on courtship, marriage and parenthood. illustrations. crown vo. cloth, s. d. net (by post, s. d.). "the author in simple, non-technical language expounds the main facts of sex, especially with regard to biology and physiology, and she treats this delicate subject in a tactful manner. a special feature of the book is the large number of illustrations. the volume is intended for the 'younger generation,' but parents and teachers would be well advised to peruse the book, which should prove invaluable for educative purposes. '--_medical times._ "... may be left with confidence in the hands of any educated person who is attaining to manhood or womanhood."--_aberdeen daily journal._ * * * * * published by a. & c. black, ltd., , & soho square, london, w. the herbert books sexual life of primitive people by hans fehlinger translated by dr. s. herbert and mrs. herbert large crown vo. cloth, s. net (by post, s. d.). "a concise survey of the beliefs and customs of primitive peoples in such matters as modesty, conjugal fidelity, courtship, marriage, birth and feticide."--_the times._ "if anyone doubts that the world is progressing, we commend to his attention this book of mr. fehlinger."--_dublin evening mail._ "in this translation dr. and mrs. herbert present clearly and fairly all the more important facts which recent research has brought to light."--_times of india._ * * * * * fundamentals in sexual ethics an enquiry into modern tendencies by s. herbert, m.d., m.r.c.s., l.r.c.p. large crown vo. cloth. price s. d. net (by post, s. d.). contents: part i.--the basic characteristics of sex. part ii.--sex relationships: sex morality. sex vice and disease. sex aberration and abnormality. auto eroticism. sexual inversion. part iii.--marital relationship: factors; moral, biotic, eugenic, economic, social. part iv.--sex and education: sex education. co-education. opinions: "he treats with knowledge all the urgent sexual questions and sexual phenomena, normal and abnormal."--_the times._ "a very valuable book dealing with a vastly important subject."--_justice._ "what we want is the best that is known and thought in the world on a matter that vitally concerns us. we need also intelligent, sympathetic common-sense guidance amid the opposing extremes of a narrow materialism and a narrow spiritualism. dr. herbert supplies both these needs ... and we could not well ask more of him."--havelock ellis in _daily herald_. "we may congratulate him on the success of his undertaking."--_manchester guardian._ "wide knowledge, conscientious thoroughness, sincere conviction, sympathetic understanding and, even more, spiritual aspirations.... a splendid feminist." edith bethune baker in _woman's leader_. * * * * * published by a. & c. black, ltd., , & soho square, london, w. the sex worship and symbolism of primitive races an interpretation by sanger brown ii., m. d. _assistant physician, bloomingdale hospital_ _with an introduction by james h. leuba_ boston: richard g. badger toronto: the copp clark co., limited _copyright , by richard g. badger_ _all rights reserved_ _the gorham press, boston, u. s. a._ dedicated to my wife helen williston brown preface the greater part of the first three chapters of this book appeared in the _journal of abnormal psychology_ in the december-january number of - and the february-march number of . this material is reprinted here by the kind permission of the editor of that journal. this part of the subject is chiefly historical and the data here given is accessible as indicated by the references throughout the text, although many of these books are difficult to secure or are out of print. for this historical material i am particularly indebted to the writings of hargrave jennings, richard payne knight and doctor thomas inman. most of the reference matter coming under the general heading of nature worship was obtained from comparatively recent sources, such as the publications of the bureau of american ethnology, of the smithsonian institute, and certain publications of the american museum of natural history. frazer's _golden bough_ and other writings of j. g. frazer on anthropology furnished much valuable information. the writings of special investigators, among others those of spencer, and a. w. howitt, on primitive australian tribes, and w. h. r. rivers on the todas have been freely drawn upon. a number of other books and references have been made use of, as indicated throughout the text. i have found two books by miss j. harrison, _i. e._, _themis_ and _ancient art and ritual_, of great value in interpreting primitive ceremonies and primitive customs in general. my main object has been to give the life history of a primitive motive in the development of the race, and to emphasize the dynamic significance of this motive. later other motives may be dealt with in more detail if it is proved that both in normal and abnormal psychology we may best understand the mental development of the individual through our knowledge of the development of the race. i wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation of the assistance rendered me by my wife. contents chapter page i simple sex worship ii symbolism iii sun myths, mysteries and decadent sex worship iv interpretations references and bibliography index introduction our knowledge of religion receives contributions from every quarter; even the student of mental diseases finds information that is of service to the student of religion. the reverse is equally true: a knowledge of religion sheds light upon even the science of mental disorders. in this short book, a psychiatrist seeks in the study of one aspect of religious practice--the worship of the procreating power--to gain a clearer understanding of the forms taken by certain kinds of mental diseases. his theory is that we may expect diseased minds to reproduce, or return to expressions of desire customary and official in societies of lower culture. this is, as a matter of fact, less a theory than a statement of observed facts; of this, the reader of these pages, if familiar with certain mental disorders, may readily convince himself. but doctor brown's intention is not merely, perhaps not primarily, to draw the attention of the psychiatrist to a neglected source of information, he aims at something of wider import and addresses a wider public. his purpose is no less than the tracing of the history of that great motive of action, the sex passion, as it appears in religion and the interpretation of its significance. those who come to this book without the preparation of the specialist will find it not only replete with novel and surprising facts, but will find these facts placed in such a relation to each other and to life in general, as to illuminate both religion and human nature. this important result is made possible by the point of view from which the author writes, the point of view of racial development which has proved its fertility in so many directions. james h. leuba. the sex worship and symbolism of primitive races: an interpretation chapter i simple sex worship psychiatry, during recent years, has found it to its advantage to turn to related sciences and allied branches of study for the explanation of a number of the peculiar symptoms of abnormal mental states. of these related studies, none have been of greater value than those which throw light on the mental development of either the individual or the race. in primitive races we discover a number of inherent motives which are of interest from the standpoint of mental evolution. these motives are expressed in a very interesting symbolism. it is the duty of the psychiatrist to see to what extent these primitive motives operate unconsciously in abnormal mental conditions, and also to learn whether an insight into the symbolism of mental diseases may be gained, through comparison, by a study of the symbolism of primitive races. in the following discussion one particular motive with its accompanying symbolism is dealt with. a great many of the institutions and usages of our present day civilization originated at a very early period in the history of the race. many of these usages are carried on in modified form century after century, after they have lost the meaning which they originally possessed; it must be remembered, however, that in primitive races they were of importance, and they arose because they served a useful end. from the study of these remnants of former days, we are able to learn the trends of thought which activated and inspired the minds of primitive people. when we clearly understand these motives, we may then judge the extent of their influence on our present day thought and tendencies. it has only been during comparatively recent times that the importance of primitive beliefs and practices, from the standpoint of mental evolution, has been appreciated. formerly, primitive man was regarded merely as a curiosity, and not as an individual from whom anything of any value whatever was to be learned. but more recent studies have changed all this. in order to illustrate this matter of the evolution and development of the human mind we can very profitably quote from sir j. g. frazer:[ ] "for by comparison with civilized man the savage represents an arrested or rather a retarded state of social development, and an examination of his customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an examination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. to put it otherwise, a savage is to a civilized man as a child is to an adult; and just as a gradual growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the species, so a study of savage society at various stages of evolution enables us to follow approximately, though of course not exactly, the road by which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled in their progress upward through barbarism to civilization. in short, savagery is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand what primitive man was we must know what the savage now is." to properly interpret these beliefs and conduct, certain facts must be kept in mind. one is that with primitive races the group stands for the unit, and the individual has little if any personality distinct from the group. this social state gives rise to what is spoken of as collective thought, collective feeling, group action, etc. miss j. harrison[ ] considers this conception a very important one in primitive religious development. all that the race expresses, all that it believes, is an expression of collective feeling. as a result of this group thought, feelings and beliefs are developed which are entertained by every individual of the community. these racial feelings become a part of the race itself; they are inseparable from it, and they find expression in the loftiest of sentiments and the most earnest of religious beliefs. our study is not primarily concerned with religious development, but since early man's deepest feelings found expression in what later became a religion, it is necessary to search for racial motives in primitive religions. these feelings are in no way comparable to the conscious religious beliefs of later times, which were worked out in many instances by an ingenious priesthood. the period when group feeling predominated far antedated such civilizations as those of egypt and later greece, for example, in which very elaborate religious systems existed. with primitive people these deeper feelings appear to arise unconsciously rather than consciously. moreover, probably as a result of collective thought and feeling, motives and beliefs are developed and elaborated in a way quite beyond the mental capacity of any one individual of the community. beliefs are formulated which have a grandeur of conception and a beauty of expression well worthy of admiration. the beauty and native vigor of some of the earlier myths are examples of this. they live in the tribe as traditions. no one person seems to have written them; in fact, they are added to, changed and improved until they represent the highest expression of national feelings. gilbert murray has indicated this in the _rise of the greek epic_. he emphasizes that there is found an expression of racial feelings, built up from many sources. such sagas are not the property of any one individual. the feelings they express are associated with the unconscious of the race, if such a term is permissible. gilbert murray,[ ] in interpreting this element in primitive literature states: "we have also, i suspect, a strange unanalyzed vibration below the surface, an undercurrent of desires and fears, and passions, long slumbering yet eternally familiar, which have for thousands of years lain near the root of our most intimate emotions and been wrought into the fabric of our most magical dreams. how far in the past ages this stream may reach back i dare not even surmise; but it sometimes seems as if the power of stirring it or moving with it were one of the last secrets of genius." the importance of the collective or group feeling has been emphasized as thereby one sees how a fundamental racial motive becomes an integral part of the mental life of each and every member of the group. in primitive life every individual contributes something to this motive and in turn receives something from it. it enters into the developing mind and becomes inseparably associated with it. in studying the evolution of these motives one is studying the evolution of the human mind. the motive which we have undertaken to explain has to do with one of the most important of instincts, _i. e._, that of reproduction. the feelings associated with this instinct were raised to the dignity of religion, and in this we have the worship of sex. this worship is to be regarded as an unconscious racial expression, the result of group or collective feeling, the dynamic significance of which, from a biological standpoint, will appear later. before proceeding, it is desirable to make reference to some of our sources of information. there are plenty of books on the history of egypt, the antiquities of india or on the interpretation of oriental customs, which make scarcely any reference to the deification of sex. we have always been told, for example, that bacchus was the god of the harvest and that the greek pan was the god of nature. we have not been told that these same gods were representations of the male generative attribute, and that they were worshipped as such; yet, anyone who has access to the statuettes or engravings of these various deities of antiquity, whether they be of egypt, of india or of china, cannot fail to see that they were intended to represent generative attributes. on account of the incompleteness of many books which describe primitive races, a number of references are given throughout these pages, and some bibliographical references are added. * * * * * as will be presently indicated, we have evidence from a number of sources to show sex was at one time frankly and openly worshipped by the primitive races of mankind. this worship has been shown to be so general and so wide-spread, that it is to be regarded as part of the general evolution of the human mind; it seems to be indigenous with the race, rather than an isolated or exceptional circumstance. the american cyclopedia, under phallic worship, reads as follows: "in early ages the sexual emblems were adored as most sacred objects, and in the several polytheistic systems the act or principle of which the phallus was the type was represented by a deity to whom it was consecrated: in egypt by khem, in india by siva, in assyria by vul, in primitive greece by pan, and later by priapus, in italy by mutinus or priapus, among the teutonic and scandinavian nations by fricco, and in spain by hortanes. phallic monuments and sculptured emblems are found in all parts of the world." rawlinson, in his history of ancient egypt, gives us the following description of khem: "a full egyptian idea of khem can scarcely be presented to the modern reader, on account of the grossness of the forms under which it was exhibited. some modern egyptologists endeavor to excuse or palliate this grossness; but it seems scarcely possible that it should not have been accompanied by indelicacy of thought or that it should have failed to exercise a corrupting influence on life and morals. khem, no doubt, represented to the initiated merely the generative power in nature, or that strange law by which living organisms, animal and vegetable, are enabled to reproduce their like. but who shall say in what exact light he presented himself to the vulgar, who had continually before their eyes the indecent figures under which the painters and sculptors portrayed him? as impure ideas and revolting practices clustered around the worship of pan in greece and later rome, so it is more than probable that in the worship of khem in egypt were connected similar excesses. besides his priapic or 'ithyphallic' form, khem's character was marked by the assignment to him of the goat as his symbol, and by his ordinary title _ka-mutf_, 'the bull of his mother,' _i. e._, of nature." this paragraph clearly indicates that the sexual organs were worshipped under the form of khem by the egyptians. the writer, however, has fallen into a very common error in giving us to understand that this was a degraded form of worship; from numerous other sources it is readily shown that such is not the case. the following lines, from _ancient sex worship_, substantiate the above remarks, and at the same time, they show the incompleteness of the writings of many antiquarians. in this book we read: "phallic emblems abounded at heliopolis and syria and many other places, even into modern times. the following unfolds marvelous proof to our point. a brother physician, writing to dr. inman, says: 'i was in egypt last winter ( - ), and there certainly are numerous figures of gods and kings on the walls of the temple at thebes, depicted with the male genital erect. the great temple at karnac is, in particular, full of such figures and the temple of danclesa, likewise, although that is of much later date, and built merely in imitation of old egyptian art.'" the writer further states that this shows how completely english egyptologists have suppressed a portion of the facts in the histories which they have given to the world. with all our descriptions of the wonderful temple of karnac, it is remarkable that all mention of its association with sex worship should be omitted by many writers. a number of travellers in africa, even in comparatively modern times, have observed evidences of sex worship among the primitive races of that continent. captain burton[ ] speaks of this custom with the dahome tribe. small gods of clay are made in priapic attitudes before which the natives worship. the god is often made as if contemplating its sexual organs. another traveler, a clergyman,[ ] has described the same worship in this tribe. he has observed idols in priapic attitudes, rudely carved in wood, and others made of clay. on the lower congo the same worship is described, where both male and female figures with disproportionate genital organs are used for purposes of worship. phallic symbols and other offerings are made to these simple deities. definite examples of the sexual act having religious significance may be cited. richard payne knight[ ] quotes a passage from captain cook's voyages to one of the southern pacific islands. the missionaries of the expedition on this occasion assembled the members of the party for religious ceremonies in which the natives joined. the primitive natives observed the ceremony with great respect and then with due solemnity enacted their form of sacred worship. quite to the astonishment of the white people, this ceremony consisted of the open performance of the sexual act by a young indian man and woman. this was entirely a religious ceremony, and was fittingly respected by all the natives present. hargrave jennings[ ] describes the same custom in india. an indian woman of designated caste and vocation is selected. many incantations and strange rites are gone through. a circle, or "vacant enchanted place" is rendered pure by certain rites and sprinkled with wine. then secret charms are whispered three times in the woman's ear. the sexual act is then consummated, and the whole procedure before the altar is distinctly a form of sacrifice and worship. hodder m. westropp in _primitive symbolism_ has indicated the countries in which sex worship has existed. he gives numerous instances in ancient egypt, assyria, greece and rome. in india, as well as in china and japan, it forms the basis of early religions. this worship is described among the early races of greece, italy, spain, scandinavia, and among the mexicans and peruvians of america as well. in borneo, tasmania, and australia phallic emblems have been found. many other localities have been mentioned by this writer and one seems fairly justified in concluding that sex worship is regularly found at one time in the development of primitive races. we shall now pass to another form of this same worship, namely, sacred prostitution. there is abundant evidence to show that there was a time in the centuries before christ when prostitution was held as a most sacred vocation. we learn of this practice from many sources. it appears that temples in a number of ancient cities of the east, in babylonia, nineveh, corinth and throughout india, were erected for the worship of certain deities. this worship consisted of the prostitution of women. the women were consecrated to the support of the temple. they were chosen in much the same way as the modern woman enters a sacred church order. the returns from their vocation went to the support of the deity and the temple. the children born of such a union were in no way held in disgrace, but on the contrary, they appeared to have formed a separate and rather superior class. we are told that this practice did not interfere with a woman's opportunities for subsequent marriage. in india the practice was very general at one time. the women were called the "women of the idol." richard payne knight speaks of a thousand sacred prostitutes living in each of the temples at eryx and corinth. a custom which shows even more clearly that prostitution was held as a sacred duty to women was that in babylonia every woman, of high rank or low, must at one time in her life prostitute herself to any stranger who offered money. in _ancient sex worship_ we read: "there was a temple in babylonia where every female had to perform once in her life a (to us) strange act of religion, namely, prostitution with a stranger. the name of it was bit-shagatha, or 'the temple,' the 'place of union.'" moreover we learn that once a woman entered the temple for such a sacred act she could not leave until it was performed. the above accounts deal exclusively in the sacrifice made by women to the deity of sex. men did not escape this sacrifice and it appears that some inflicted upon themselves an even worse one. frazer[ ] tells us of this worship which was introduced from assyria into rome about two hundred years before christ. it was the worship of cybele and attis. these deities were attended by emasculated priests and the priests in oriental costume paraded rome in religious ceremony. on one occasion, namely, "the day of blood" in the spring, the chief ceremony was held. this, among other things, consisted in fastening an effigy of the god to a pine tree, which was brought to the temple of the goddess cybele. a most spectacular dance about the effigy then occurred in which the priests slashed themselves with knives, the blood being offered as sacrifice. as the excitement increased the sexual nature of the ceremony became evident. to quote from frazer: "for man after man, his veins throbbing with the music, his eyes fascinated by the sight of streaming blood, flung his garments from him, leaped forth with a shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready for the service, castrated himself on the spot. then he ran through the city holding the bloody parts in his hands and threw them into one of the houses which he passed in his mad career." we see that this act directly corresponds with the part played by the female. the female prostituted herself, and the male presented his generative powers to the deity. both the sacred prostitutes and emasculated priests were held in religious veneration. the above references are sufficient to show that a simple form of sex worship has been quite generally found. it becomes apparent as we proceed that the worship of sex not only plays a part, but a very prominent part, in the developing mind of man. in the frank and open form of this worship it is quite clear that we are dealing with a very simple type of mind. these primitive people exhibit many of the qualities of the child. they are quite without sex consciousness. their motives are at once both simple and direct, and they are doubtless sincere. much misunderstanding has arisen by judging such primitive people by the standards of our present day civilization. sex worship, while it held sway was probably quite as seriously entertained as many other beliefs; it only became degraded during a decadent age, when civilization had advanced beyond such simple conceptions of a deity, but had not evolved a satisfactory substitute. chapter ii symbolism as civilization advanced, the deification of sex was no longer frank and open. it came to be carried on by means of symbolism. this symbolism was an effort on the part of its originators to express the worship of the generative attributes under disguise, often understood only by the priests or by those initiated into the religious mysteries. the mysteries so frequently referred to in the religions of antiquity are often some expression of sex worship. sexual symbolism was very general at one time and remains of it are found in most of the countries where any form of sex worship has existed. such remains have been found in egypt, greece, italy, india, china, japan, and indeed in most countries the early history of which is known to man. one important kind of symbolism had to do with the _form_ of the object deified. thus, it appears that certain objects,--particularly upright objects,--stones, mounds, poles, trees, etc., were erected, or used as found in nature, as typifying the male generative organ. likewise certain round or oval objects, discs, certain fruits and certain natural caves, were worshipped as representing the female generative organ. (the yoni of india.) we also find that certain _qualities of animal or vegetable_ nature were equally venerated, not because of their form, but because they stood for some quality desirable in the generation of mankind. thus we find that some animals--the bull because of its strength and aggressive nature, the snake, perhaps because of its form or of its tenacity of life,--were male representatives of phallic significance. likewise the fish, the dolphin, and a number of other aquatic creatures came to be female representatives. this may be shown over and over again by reference to the antique emblems, coins, and engravings of many nations. another later symbolism, which was adopted by certain philosophies, was more obscure but was none the less of distinct sexual significance. _fire_ is made to represent the male principle, and _water_, and much connected with it, the female. thus we have venus, born of the sea, and accompanied by numerous fish representations. fire worship was secondary to the universally found sun worship. the sun is everywhere the male principle, standing for the generative power in nature. at one time the symbolism is broad, and refers to generative nature in general. at another time it refers solely to the human generative organs. thus, the greek god hermes, the god of fecundity in nature, is at times represented in unmistakable priapic attitudes. still another symbolism was often used in india. this was the addition of a number of members to the deity, possibly a number of arms or heads. this was in order to express a number of qualities. thus the deity was both generator and destroyer, one face showing benevolence and kindness, the other violence and rage. in many of the deities both male and female principles were represented in one,--an androgyne deity--which was an ideal frequently attempted. the idea that these grotesque deities were merely the expression of eccentricity or caprice on the part of their originator is not to be entertained. richard payne knight has pointed out that they occur almost entirely on national coins and emblems, and so were the expression of an established belief. we shall refer first to the simpler symbols, those in which an object was deified because of its form. it is perhaps not remarkable that _upright objects_ should be selected because of their form as the simplest expression of phallic ideas. the simple upright for purposes of sex worship is universally found. an upright conical stone is frequently mentioned. many of the stone idols or pillars, the worship of which was forbidden by the bible, come under this group. likewise, the obelisk, found not only in egypt, but in modified forms in many other countries as well, embodies the same phallic principle. the usual explanation of the obelisk is that it represented the rays of the sun striking the earth; when we speak of sun worship later, we shall see that this substantiates rather than refutes the phallic interpretation. the mounds of religious significance, found in many countries, were associated with sex worship. the chinese pagodas are probably of phallic origin. indeed, there is evidence to show that the spires of our churches owe their existence to the uprights or obelisks outside the temples of former ages. a large volume has been written by o'brien to show that the round towers of ireland (upright towers of prehistoric times) were erected as phallic emblems. higgins, in the anacalipsis, has amassed a great wealth of material with similar purport, and he shows that such "temples" as that of stonehenge and others were also phallic. the stone idols of mexico and peru, the ancient pillar stones of brittany, and in fact all similar upright objects, erected for religious purposes the world over, are placed in this same category. we shall presently give a number of references to show that the may-pole was associated with phallic worship and that it originated at a very remote period. we shall now quote from some of the authors who have contributed to our knowledge of this form of symbolism, as thereby a clear idea of their meaning may be set forth. these interpretations are not generally advanced, and therefore we have added considerable corroborative evidence which we have been able to obtain from independent sources. in an essay on the assyrian "grove" and other emblems, mr. john newton sums up the basis of this symbolism as follows: "as civilization advanced, the gross symbols of creative power were cast aside, and priestly ingenuity was taxed to the utmost in inventing a crowd of less obvious emblems, which should represent the ancient ideas in a decorous manner. the old belief was retained, but in a mysterious or sublimated form. as symbols of the male, or active element in creation, the sun, light, fire, a torch, the phallus or lingam, an erect serpent, a tall straight tree, especially the palm or fir or pine, were adopted. equally useful for symbolism were a tall upright stone (menhir), a cone, a pyramid, a thumb or finger pointed straight, a mask, a rod, a trident, a narrow bottle or amphora, a bow, an arrow, a lance, a horse, a bull, a lion, and many other animals conspicuous for masculine power. as symbols of the female, the passive though fruitful element in creation, the crescent moon, the earth, darkness, water, and its emblem, a triangle with the apex downward, "the yoni"--the shallow vessel or cup for pouring fluid into (cratera), a ring or oval, a lozenge, any narrow cleft, either natural or artificial, an arch or doorway, were employed. in the same category of symbols came a boat or ship, a female date palm bearing fruit, a cow with her calf by her side, a fish, fruits having many seeds, such as the pomegranate, a shell, (concha), a cavern, a garden, a fountain, a bower, a rose, a fig, and other things of suggestive form, etc. "these two great classes of conventional symbols were often represented _in conjunction_ with each other, and thus symbolized in the highest degree the great source of life, ever originating, ever renewed.... a similar emblem is the lingam standing in the centre of the yoni, the adoration of which is to this day characteristic of the leading dogma of hindu religion. there is scarcely a temple in india which has not its lingam, and in numerous instances this symbol is the only form under which the god siva is worshipped." in _ancient sex worship_ we read, "as the male genital organs were held in early times to exemplify the actual male creative power, various natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic idea and at the same time point to those points of the human form. hence, a similitude is recognized in a pillar, a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied around with two ribbons with the end pendant, a thumb and two fingers. the caduceus again the conspicuous part of the sacred triad ashur is symbolized by a single stone placed upright,--the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, a spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar or pine tree." hargrave jennings, the author of several books on some aspects of religions of antiquity, among them one on phallicism, deals freely with the phallic principles embodied in these religions. as do many other writers, he identifies fire worship with sex worship, and the following short paragraph shows his conception of their interrelationship, as well as the significance of the upright of antiquity. in the rosicrucians he says: "obelisks, spires, minarets, tall towers, upright stones, (menhirs), and architectural perpendiculars of every description, and, generally speaking, all erections conspicuous for height and slimness, were representations of the sworded or of the pyramidal fire. they bespoke, wherever found and in whatever age, the idea of the first principle or the male generative emblem." we might readily cite passages from the writings of a number of other authors but the above paragraphs suffice to set forth the general principle of this symbolism. as stated above, such interpretations have not been generally advanced to explain such objects as sacred pillar stones, obelisks, minarets, etc. it is readily seen how fully these views are substantiated by observations from a number of independent sources. in a book of travel[ ] in india we are able from an independent source to learn of the symbolism of that country. the traveller gives a description of the caves of elephanta, near bombay. these are enormous caves cut in the side of a mountain, for religious purposes to which pilgrimages are made and where the usual festivities are held. the worship of generative attributes is quite apparent. the numerous sculptured female figures, as remarked by the traveller, are all represented with greatly exaggerated breasts, a symbolism which is frequent throughout oriental countries for expressing reproductive attributes. in an inner chamber is placed the symbol which is held in particular veneration. here is found an upright conical stone standing within a circular one. the stone is sprinkled with water during the festival season. the writer states that this stone, to the worshippers, represents the male generative organ, and the worship of it is not considered an impropriety. in this instance we feel that the symbolism is very definite, and doubtless the stone pillars in the other temples of india and elsewhere are of the same significance. a clergyman in the chinese review of , under the title _phallic worship in china_, gives an account of the phallicism as he observed it at that time. he states that the male sexual organ is symbolized by a simple mound of earth and is so worshipped. similarly, the female organ is represented by a mound of different form and is worshipped as the former. the writer states that at times these mounds are built in conjunction. he states this worship is similar to that of baal of chaldea, etc., and that probably all have a common origin. it appears to be a fundamental part of the chinese religion and the symbolism of the chinese pagoda expresses the same idea. he says that kheen or shang-te, the chinese deities of sex, are also worshipped in the form of serpents, of which the dragon of the chinese is a modification. this furnishes a concrete instance in which the mound of earth is of phallic significance, and substantiates an interpretation of serpent worship to which we shall presently refer. hodder m. westropp has given us an excellent account of phallic worship and includes in his description the observations of a traveller in japan at as late periods as and . a temple near the ancient capital of japan was visited by a traveller. in this temple the main object of worship was a large upright, standing alone, and the resemblance to the male generative organ was so striking as to leave no doubt as to what it represented. this upright was worshipped especially by women, who left votive offerings, among them small phalli, elaborately wrought out of wood or other material. the traveller remarked that the worship was most earnest and sincere. the same traveller observed that in some of the public roads of japan are small hedged recesses where similar stone pillars are found. these large pillars unquestionably represent the male organ. the writer has observed priests in procession carrying similar huge phalli, painted in color as well. this procession called forth no particular comment and so was probably not unusual. it is stated that this is a part of the ancient "shinto" religion of japan and china. there are frequent references to certain of the gods of the ancients being represented in priapic attitudes, the phallus being the prominent and most important attribute. thus hermes, in greece, was placed at cross-roads, with phallus prominent. this was comparable to the phallus on japanese highways. in the festivals of bacchus high phalli were carried, the male organ being represented about the size of the rest of the body. the egyptians carried a gilt phallus, cubits high, at the festivals of osiris. in syria, at the entrance of the temple at hieropolis, was placed a human figure with a phallus cubits high. a man mounted this upright twice a year and remained seven days, offering prayers, etc. in peru in the temple of the sun an upright pillar has been described covered with gold leaf, very similar to those existing elsewhere and to which has been ascribed similar significance. a number of writers have expressed the belief that the may-pole is an emblem of ancient phallic worship. we know that may-day festivals are of the most remote antiquity. we are indebted to r. p. knight for a description of what may-day was like about four centuries ago in england. the festival started the evening before. men and women went out into the woods in search of a tree and brought it back to the village in the early morning. the night was spent in sexual excesses comparable to those of the roman bacchanalia. a procession was formed, garlands were added to the may-pole, which was set up in the village square. the puritans referred to it as an idol, and they did not approve of the festivities. until comparatively recent years there was a may-pole in one of the squares of london, and samuel pepys,[ ] writing of his time, speaks of seeing may-poles in the front yards of the prominent citizens of holland. a festival much the same as this was held in ancient rome and also in india. the may-pole properly pierces a disc and thus conforms with the lingam-yoni of india. we also know that the first of may was a favorite time for all nature worship with the ancients. for a number of interesting suggestions the reader is referred to r. p. knight, _worship of priapus_ and hargrave jennings, _indian religions_ (page ). tree worship is frequently mentioned in the religions of antiquity. we are told that the mystic power of the mistletoe comes from the fact that it grows on the oak, a once sacred tree. the pine of the north, the palm and the fig tree of the south, were sacred trees at one time. john newton made a study of tree worship, especially the ancient grove worship of assyria. he shows that the object of veneration was a male date palm, which represented the assyrian god baal. sex was worshipped under this deity, and it is shown that the tree of the assyrian grove was a phallic symbol. palm sunday appears to be a relic of this worship. in france, until comparatively recent times, there was a festival, "la fête des pinnes," in which palms were carried in procession, and with the palms were carried phalli of bread which had been blessed by the priests. richard payne knight tells us that pan was worshipped by the shepherds under the form of the tall fir, and bacchus "by sticking up the rude trunk of a tree." it is shown throughout these pages that sexual attributes were worshipped under both these deities. in reference to other symbols, the writer continues;[ ] "the spires and pinnacles with which our churches are decorated come from these ancient symbols; and the weather cocks, with which they are surmounted, though now only employed to show the direction of the wind, were originally emblems of the sun; for the cock is the natural herald of the day, and therefore sacred to the fountain of light. in the symbolical writings of the chinese the sun is still represented by a cock in the circle; and a modern parsee would suffer death rather than be guilty of the crime of killing one. it appears on many ancient coins, with some symbol of the passive productive power on the reverse; and in other instances it is united with priapic and other emblems and devices, signifying other attributes combined." dr. thomas inman has made a study to show how this phallic symbolism found its way into ancient art, and even into some designs of modern times. thus, many formal designs are studied in which the upright plays a part; likewise, the oval and the circle receive a similar explanation. the architectural ornaments spoken of as eggs and anchors, eggs and spear heads, the so-called honeysuckle ornament of antiquity, and the origin of some church windows and ornaments, are all studied by this writer, and his text is accompanied by illustrations. hargrave jennings has also traced the origin of the symbols of heraldry, the emblems of royalty and of some church orders with similar explanations. we may add that the crux ansata of the egyptians, the oval standing upon the upright, or letter tau, may be shown to be a sex symbol, the union of the oval with the upright being of symbolic significance. the crux ansata is found in the hand of most of the egyptian deities. it is found in the assyrian temples and throughout the temples of india as well. prehistoric monuments of ireland have the same design. priests are portrayed in adoration of the crux ansata before phallic monuments. this symbol, from which our modern cross is doubtless derived, originated with the religions of antiquity. much additional evidence could readily be given to illustrate this prehistoric origin. the present christian symbol affords another example of the adoption by a new religion of the symbols of the old. some reflection will show that the origin of many church customs and symbols, and indeed of a great number of obscure customs and usages, may quite properly be traced to the religions and practices of primitive races. lafcadio hearn has insisted upon this in the interpretation of the art and customs of the japanese. he says,[ ] "art in japan is so intimately associated with religion that any attempt to study it without extensive knowledge of the beliefs which it reflects were mere waste of time. by art i do not mean painting and sculpture but every kind of decoration, and most kinds of pictorial representation--the image of a boy's kite or a girl's battledore not less than the design upon a lacquered casquet or enameled vase,--the figure upon a work-man's trowel not less than the pattern of the girdle of a princess,--the shape of the paper doll or wooden rattle bought for a baby, not less than the forms of those colossal ni-o, who guard the gateways of the buddha's temples," etc. in the above pages, we have given an account of the views of a number of writers upon certain forms and symbols, and at the same time we have offered considerable evidence in substantiation from independent sources. these origins, found associated especially in art and religious usages, have not been generally understood. yet when we reflect upon the fact that many religious customs are of great antiquity; that when once a certain form or custom becomes established, it is well nigh ineffaceable, although subject to great change or disguise throughout the centuries; when we reflect upon these conditions, and realize the fact that sex worship with its accompanying symbolism is found throughout primitive religions, we may then more readily appreciate the entire significance of the above interpretations. it must, of course, be borne in mind that no one now gives these interpretations to spires, minarets, and to the various monumental symbols of which we have been speaking. we are here dealing exclusively with pre-historic origins, not with present day meanings. the antiquity of certain symbols is truly remarkable. the star and crescent, for example, a well known conventionalized symbol, is found on assyrian cylinders, doubtless devised many centuries before christ. the full force and meaning of these various symbols may be very readily grasped by reference to a number of designs, ancient coins, bas-reliefs, monuments, etc., which have been reproduced in plates and drawings by c. w. king, thomas inman, r. p. knight and others. to these we refer the reader. * * * * * a number of _plant and flower symbols_ have a different significance from that which is generally given to them. we are all quite familiar with the grape vine of bacchus and the association of that deity with grapes. according to r. p. knight, this too, symbolizes a sexual attribute. speaking of bacchus, he writes, "the vine was a favorite symbol of the deity, which seems to have been generally employed to signify the generative or preserving attribute; intoxicating liquors were stimulative, and therefore held to be aphrodisiac. the vase is often employed in its stead to express the same idea and is often accompanied by the same accessory symbol." we have often seen in sculptures and paintings, heads of barley associated with the god of the harvest. this symbol would appear to be self explanatory; yet we are told by more than one writer that it contains another symbolic meaning as well. h. m. westropp, speaking of this says, "the kites or female organ, as the symbol of the passive or productive power of nature, generally occurs on ancient roman monuments as the concha veneris, a fig, barley corn, and the letter delta." we are told that the grain of barley, because of its form, was a symbol of the vulva. a great many other female symbols might be mentioned. the pomegranate is constantly seen in the hands of proserpine. the fir-cone is carried by the assyrian baal, and the fig in numerous processions has a similar significance. when we add to these the various forms of tree worship described above, we see to what an extent the products of nature were used as symbols in the worship of sex. among flower symbols there is one which recurs constantly throughout the art and mythology of india, egypt, china, and many other eastern countries. this is the lotus, of which the easter lily is the modern representative. the lotus appears in a number of forms in the records of antiquity. we have symbolic pictures of the lion carrying the lotus in its mouth, doubtless a male and female symbol. the deities of india are depicted standing on the lotus, or are spoken of as being "born of the lotus." "the chinese,"[ ] says the author of rites and ceremonies, "worship a goddess whom they call puzza, and of whom their priests give the following account;--they say that 'three nymphs came down from heaven to wash themselves in the river, but scarce had they gotten in the water before the herb lotus appeared on one of their garments, with its coral fruit upon it. they were surprised to think whence it could proceed; and the nymph upon whose garment it was could not resist the temptation of indulging herself in tasting it. but by thus eating some of it she became pregnant, and was delivered of a boy, whom she brought up, and then returned to heaven. he afterwards became a great man, a conqueror and legislator, and the nymph was afterwards worshipped under the name of puzza.'" puzza corresponds to the indian buddha. in egyptian architecture the lotus is a fundamental form, and indeed it is said to be the main motive of the architecture of that civilization. the capitals of the column are modelled after one form or other of this plant. that of the doric column is the seed vessel pressed flat. earlier capitals are simple copies of the bell or seed vessel. the columns consisted of stalks of the plant grouped together. in other cases the leaves are used as ornaments. these orders were copied by the greeks, and subsequently by western countries. we may ask ourselves, what is the meaning of this mystic lotus which was held in sufficient veneration to be incorporated in all the temples of religion, as well as in myths of the deity. this, too, refers to the deification of sex. o'brien, in the _round towers of ireland_ states: "the lotus was the most sacred plant of the ancients, and typified the two principles of the earth fecundation,--the germ standing for the lingam; the filaments and petals for the yoni." r. p. knight states, "we find it (the lotus) employed in every part of the northern hemisphere where symbolical worship does or ever did prevail. the sacred images of the tartars, japanese or indians, are all placed upon it and it is still sacred in tibet and china. the upper part of the base of the lingam also consists of the flower of it blended with the most distinctive characteristics of the female sex; in which that of the male is placed, in order to complete this mystic symbol of the ancient religion of the brahmans; who, in their sacred writings, speak of brahma sitting upon his lotus throne." alexander wilder,[ ] states that the term "nymphe" and its derivations were used to designate young women, brides, the marriage chamber, the lotus flower, oracular temples and the labiae minores of the human female. the lotus then, which is found throughout antiquity, in art as well as in religion, was a sexual symbol, representing to the ancients the combination of male and female sexual organs. it is another expression of the sex worship of that period. our present conventional symbols of art are very easily traced to ancient symbols of religion. we may expect these to be phallic in their meaning, to just the extent that phallicism was fundamental in the religions where these symbols originated. from the designs of some of the ornamental friezes of nineveh, we find these principles illustrated. on those bas-reliefs is found the earliest form of art, really the dawn of art upon early civilization. here is the beginning of certain designs which were destined to be carried to the later civilizations of greece, rome and probably of egypt. these friezes show the pine cone alternating with a modified form of the lotus; the significance of which symbols we have explained. there are also shown animal representations before the sacred tree or grove, a phallic symbol. from these forms and others were designed a number of conventional symbols which were used throughout a much later civilization. (see _nineveh and its remains_. a. layard.) * * * * * one sees in the religions of antiquity, especially those of india, assyria, greece and egypt, a great number of _sacred animal representations_. the bull was sacred to osiris in egypt, and one special animal was attended with all the pomp of a god. at one time in assyria the god was always associated with a sacred animal, often the goat, which was supposed to possess the qualities for which the god was worshipped. out of this developed the ideal animal creations, of which the animal body and the human head and the winged bulls of nineveh are examples. the mystic centaurs and satyrs originated from this source. at a later time the whole was humanized, merely the horns, ears or hoofs remaining as relics of the animal form. we learn that in these religions the animal was not merely worshipped as such. it was a certain quality which was deified. the assyrian goat attendant upon the deity, was in some bas-reliefs, not only represented in priapic attitudes, but a female sexual symbol was so placed as to signify sexual union. we shall show later that certain male and female symbolic animals were so placed on coins as to symbolically indicate sexual union. an animal symbol which has probably been of universal use is that of the snake or serpent. serpent worship has been described in almost every country of which we have records or legends. in egypt, we find the serpent on the headdress of many of the gods. in africa the snake is still sacred with many tribes. the worship of the hooded snake was probably carried from india to egypt. the dragon on the flag and porcelain of china is also a serpent symbol. in central america were found enormous stone serpents carved in various forms. in scandinavia divine honors were paid to serpents, and the druids of britain carried on a similar worship. serpent worship has been shown by many writers to be a form of sex worship. it is often phallic, and we are told by hargrave jennings that the serpent possibly was added to the male and female symbols to represent desire. thus, the hindu women carried the lingam in procession between two serpents; and in the procession of bacchus the greeks carried in a casket the phallus, the egg, and a serpent. the greeks also had a composite or ideal figure. rays were added to the head of a serpent thereby bringing it into relation with the sun god apollo; or the crest or comb of a cock was added with similar meaning. many reasons have been offered to explain why the serpent has been used to represent the male generative attribute. some have called attention to its tenacity of life; others have spoken of its supposed mystic power of regeneration by casting its skin. again, it seems probable that the form is of symbolic significance. however this may be, we find that this universal serpent worship of primitive man was a form of phallicism so prevalent in former times. many other animals may be mentioned. the sacred bull, so frequently met with in egypt, assyria and greece, was a form under which bacchus was worshipped. r. p. knight speaks as follows: "the mystic bacchus, or generative power, was represented under this form, not only upon coins but upon the temples of the greeks; sometimes simply as a bull; at other times as a human face; and at others entirely human except the horns and ears." we would probably be in error to interpret all these animal symbols as exclusively phallic although many were definitely so. thus, while hermes was a priapic deity, he was also a deity of the fields and the harvests; so the bull may have been chosen for its strength as well as its sexual attributes. there are many animals which were symbolic of the female generative power. the cow is frequently so employed. the hindus have the image of a cow in nearly every temple, the deity corresponding to the grecian venus. in the temple of philae in egypt, isis is represented with the horns and ears of a cow joined to a beautiful woman. the cow is still sacred in many parts of africa. the fish symbol was a very frequent representative of woman, the goddess of the phoenicians being represented by the head and body of a woman terminating below in a fish. the head of proserpine is frequently surrounded by dolphins. indeed, the female principle is regularly shown by some representative of water; fire and water respectively being regarded as male and female principles. male and female attributes are often combined on coins for purposes of sexual symbolism. r. p. knight explains these symbols as follows: "it appears therefore that the asterisk, bull, or minotaur, in the centre of a square or labyrinth equally mean the same as the indian lingam,--that is the male personification of the productive attribute placed in the female, or heat acting upon humidity. sometimes the bull is placed between two dolphins, and sometimes upon a dolphin or another fish; and in other instances the goat or the ram occupy the same situation. which are all different modes of expressing different modifications of the same meaning in symbolical or mystical writings. the female personifications frequently occupy the same place; in which case the male personification is always upon the reverse of the coin, of which numerous instances occur in those of syracuse, naples, tarentum, and other cities." by the asterisk above mentioned the writer refers to a circle surrounded by rays, a sun symbol of male significance. the square or labyrinth is the lozenge shaped symbol or yoni of india. the above interpretations throw much light on the obscurity of the animal worship of antiquity. this explains the partly humanized types, and the final appearance of a human deity with only animal horns remaining, as representing the form under which the deity was once worshipped. the satyrs, centaurs, and other animal forms are all part of these same representations and are similarly explained. * * * * * our main object in giving the above account of these various symbols has been to illustrate the wide prevalence of sex worship among primitive races. another end as well has been served; our study gives us a certain insight into the type of mind which evolves symbolism, and so a few remarks on the use of symbolism as here illustrated are not inappropriate. we feel that while this symbolism may indicate a high degree of mechanical skill in execution, it does not follow that it expresses either deep or complicated intellectual processes. in fact, we are inclined to regard such symbolism as the indication of a comparatively simple intellect. it appears obscure and involved to us, because we do not understand the symbols. from those which we do understand, the meaning is graphically but simply expressed. on coins, bas-reliefs and monuments, we find the majority of these simple emblems. if the desire is to express the union of male and female principles, a male symbolic animal is simply placed upon the corresponding female symbol. thus, a goat or bull may be placed upon the back of a dolphin or other fish. this is a graphic presentation but certainly one of a most simple nature. sometimes the male symbol is on one side of the coin and then the female is always on the reverse. unions are made which do not occur in nature, and the representation is not a subtle one. in india, if there was a desire to express a number of attributes of the deity, another head or face is added or additional arms are added to hold up additional symbols. in greece, when the desire was to express the androgyne qualities of the deity, a beard was added to the female face, or one-half of the statuette represented the male form, the other the female. such representations do not indicate great ingenuity, however skillfully they may be executed. chapter iii sun myths, mysteries and decadent sex worship as is generally known, traces of sun worship are found in almost every country of which we have a record. in egypt ra was the supreme sun god where there was very elaborate worship conducted in his honor. in greece, apollo was attended with similar festivities. in the norse mythology, many of the myths deal with the worship of the sun in one form or another. in england, stonehenge and the entire system of the druids had to do with solar worship. in central america and peru, temples to the sun were of amazing splendor, furnished as they were with wonderful displays of gold and silver. the north american indians have many legends relating to sun worship and sacrifices to the sun, and china and japan give numerous instances of the same religion. sun worship is so readily shown to be fundamental with primitive races that we will not discuss it in detail at this time, but rather will give the conclusions of certain writers who have explained its meaning. at the present day, the sun is regularly regarded as a male being, the earth a female. we speak of mother earth, etc.; in former times, the ancients depicted the maternal characteristics of the earth in a much more material way. likewise the sun was a male deity, being often the war god, vigorous and all powerful. we readily see to what an extent the male sun god was portrayed in mythology as a human being. in many myths, the god dies during the winter, reappears in the spring, is lamented in the fall, etc., all in keeping with the changes in the activity of the sun during the different seasons. the moon was associated with the female deity of the ancients. isis is accompanied by the moon on most coins and emblems. venus has the same symbols. indeed, the star and crescent of our modern times, of the turkish flag and elsewhere, are in reality the sun and crescent of antiquity, male and female symbols in conjunction. lunar ornaments of prehistoric times have been found throughout england and ireland, and doubtless explain the superstitions about the moon in those countries. the same prehistoric ornaments are found in italy. in the legends of the north american indians, moon is sun's wife. the full extent of these beliefs is pointed out by mr. john newton in _assyrian grove worship_. here we see that the ancient hindus gave a much more literal relationship between the sun and earth than we are accustomed to express in modern times. he states, "this representative of the union of the sexes typifies the divine sakti, or productive energy, in union with the pro-creative or generative power as seen throughout nature. the earth was the primitive pudendum or yoni which is fecundated by the solar heat, the sun, the primitive linga, to whose vivifying rays man and animals, plants and the fruits of the earth, owe their being and continued existence." it is not possible to discuss sun worship at any length without at the same time discussing phallicism and serpent worship. hargrave jennings, who has made careful study of these worships, points out their general identity in the following paragraph. he states: "the three most celebrated emblems carried in the greek mysteries were the phallus, the egg, and the serpent; or otherwise the phallus, the yoni or umbilicus, and the serpent. the first in each case is the emblem of the sun or of fire, as the male or active generative power. the second denotes the passive nature or female principle or the emblem of water. the third symbol indicates the destroyer, the reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or perpetuator eternally renewing itself. the universality of serpentine worship (or phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or architecture all the world over." the author of the _round towers of ireland_ in discussing the symbols of sun worship, serpent worship and phallicism, found on the same tablet, practically reiterates these statements. he says: "i have before me the sameness of design which belonged indifferently to solar worship and to phallic. i shall, ere long, prove that the same characteristic extends equally to ophiolatreia; and if they all three be identical, as it thus necessarily follows, where is the occasion for surprise at our meeting the sun, phallus and serpent, the constituent symbols of each, embossed upon the same table and grouped under the same architrave?" by a number of references, we could readily show the identity of all these worships. the preceding paragraphs give, in summary form, the conclusions of those writers who have made such religions their special study. we shall not exemplify this further, but will now point out the general relationship of sun worship to the religious festivals and mythology of the ancients. this relationship becomes important when it is appreciated that the sun worship expressed in the mysteries is also a part of phallicism. on some of these festive occasions the phallus was carried in the front of the procession and at other times the egg, the phallus and the serpent were carried in the secret casket. * * * * * the ancients expressed their religious beliefs in a dramatic way on a number of occasions throughout the year. the festivities were held in the spring, autumn, or winter. these were to commemorate the activities of the sun, his renewed activity in the spring calling forth rejoicing and his decline in the fall being the cause of sorrow and lamentation. as well as the festivities, there were the various mysteries, such as the eleusinia, the dionysia and the bacchanalia. these were conducted by the priests who moulded religious beliefs and guarded their secrets. the mysteries were of the utmost importance and the most sacred of religious conceptions were here dramatized. mythology also gave expression to the religious ideas of the time and we find that the most important myths, dramatically produced at the religious festivals, were sun myths. the annual festivities and mysteries will be discussed together because both were intended to dramatize the same beliefs. both were under priestly control and so were national institutions. the festivals were for the common people but the mysteries were fully understood only to the initiated. while no very clear account of the mysteries has been given, a certain theme seems to run through them all, and this is found in the myths as well. a drama is enacted, in which the god is lost, is lamented, and is found or returns amid great rejoicing.[ ] this was enacted in egypt where the mourning was for osiris; and in greece for adonis, and later for bacchus. all these are, of course, sun gods, and the whole dramatization or myth is in keeping with the activities of the sun. on these occasions, the main object seems to have been to restore the lost god, or to insure his reappearance. the women took the leading part and mourned for osiris, adonis or bacchus. they wandered about the country at night in the most frenzied fashion, avoided all men and sought the god. at times, during the winter festival, the quest would be fruitless. in the spring, when they indulged themselves in all sorts of orgies and extravagances, adonis was found. an underlying motive appears to have been to enact a drama in which the deity was supposed to exercise his procreative function by sexual union with the women. this was an ideal which they wished to express dramatically. in order to realize this ideal obstacles were introduced that they might be overcome; in the old myth, adonis was emasculated under a pine tree, and in egypt osiris was similarly mutilated, his sex organs being lost. but at the festivals it was portrayed that adonis was found, and in the myth, osiris was restored to isis in the form of horus (the morning sun). in a number of myths, the god is said to have visited the earth to cohabitate with the women, an occurrence which was doubtless desired, in order that the deistic attributes might be continued in the race. thus, judging from what we have been able to learn of this subject, the worship expressed in the mysteries revolved about sexual union, the desire being to dramatize the continued activity of deistic qualities. this character of many of the festivals and mysteries is very evident. in the eleusinian mysteries the rape of persephone by pluto, the winter god, is portrayed. the mother, demeter, mourns for her daughter. her mourning is dramatically carried out by a large procession, and this enactment requires several days. finally persephone is restored. the earlier part of the festival was for dramatic interest, and the real object was the union of persephone with bacchus. "the union of persephone with bacchus, _i. e._, with the sun god, whose work is to promote fruitfulness, is an idea special to the mysteries and means the union of humanity with the godhead, the consummation aimed at in the mystic rites. hence, in all probability the central teaching of the mysteries was personal immortality, analogue of the return of the bloom to plants in spring."[ ] the mysteries of samothrace were probably simpler. here the phallus was carried in procession as the emblem of hermes. in the dionysian mysteries which were held in mid-winter, the quest of the women was unsuccessful and the festival was repeated in the spring. the roman mysteries of bacchus were of much later development, and consequently became very debased. men as well as women eventually came to take part in the ceremony, and the whole affair degenerated into the grossest of sexual excesses and perversions. we have stated what appears to us to have been the underlying motives of the religious festivals and mysteries; namely, the enactment of a drama in which the reproductive qualities of the deity were portrayed. the phallus was carried in procession for this purpose and the women dramatized the motive as searching for the god. our account can be regarded as little more than an outline, but it is sufficient for our present purposes. it indicates that the mysteries give an expression of phallic worship, just as do the various monuments of art and religion to which we have referred. it may also be said that this same worship is represented in what may be termed early literature, for much of the early mythology deals with the same subject. the study of origins in mythology, however, cannot be dealt with adequately at present. * * * * * in order to deal fully with this subject it is necessary to discuss another important phase in the worship of sex. we refer to the _decadence_ or _degeneracy of this worship_, which occurred after people had outgrown these simple religious conceptions. the decadence of sex worship is observed during the early centuries of christianity and traces of it are seen throughout the middle ages. in the decadence of sex worship we are able to observe how an important motive in the race finds expression in the thoughts and conduct of people after the underlying promptings which originated it have long since ceased to be dynamic. this decadent stage of a motive is therefore of considerable importance; we shall return to its interpretation in the discussion of analogies of development between motives in the individual and motives in the race. in india,[ ] with the hindus, there still exists an elaborate form of sex worship. the phallus is carried on festive occasions, it still occupies the most sacred spot in the sanctuary, dancing girls are devoted to the service of the temple, and many other customs associated with phallic rites are carried on much as they were centuries ago in the ancient world. it is said that there are thirty million phalli in india and that a phallus is found in nearly every hindu household. whether phallic worship as now practiced by the hindus has the same meaning or value that it had when at its height in ancient civilization is difficult to say; there are evidences to show that this worship in india is now carried out somewhat as a matter of form and custom only, and that its significance is not thoroughly appreciated except possibly by the few. if this observation is correct, the decadent state of sex worship which was so prevalent in western europe during the early centuries of christianity and throughout the middle ages, may be developing in india as well. whatever may be the present condition in india regarding this worship, we are left in no uncertainty as to the condition of sex worship during its decadent period in europe. it is not necessary here to dwell upon the licentiousness and extravagances of conduct which were manifest at this time, as a general outline will suffice for present purposes. we have observed that the mysteries in which phallic principles were taught eventually became degraded in both greece and rome. when these mysteries originated, they embodied serious religious conceptions, respected by all; they were the expression of racial feelings, and however out of accord with present day sentiments they may have been, they can in no way be considered immoral. this cannot be said of the mysteries of a subsequent period. every sort of perversion and practice was indulged in. they were finally forbidden by the state, but were carried on secretly for some time longer. with the coming of christianity they were very bitterly opposed, and finally as national institutions, they ceased to exist. later we shall indicate in more detail why the worship of sex was discarded. it may be stated here that as the development of the race continued these simple conceptions of a deity failed to express all religious desires; primitive phallic principles lost their dynamic value, and longings and desires, the result of higher mental development, found expression in new religious usages. it has just been stated that the mysteries ceased to exist as national institutions. this is true, but while they were discarded by the great mass of the people, certain elements of the race clung to these primitive beliefs and practices for years. when the mysteries were officially forbidden they were carried on secretly in a somewhat altered form. secret societies were formed, or some of the eastern mystic cults were made use of in order to carry out their teachings. these secret societies took over many of the principles of phallicism such as were taught in the mysteries, and so, side by side with the christian religion, the earlier beliefs continued. the gnostics[ ] are an example of one of these societies. they existed in early christian times and the society was probably formed long before the advent of christianity. it is difficult to learn a great deal about the gnostics, but some of their beliefs are known. gnostic symbols consisted for a great part of phallic emblems, it having been shown that their gems and secret talismans were of phallic significance. the gnostics also gave evidences of reverting to a more primitive civilization in other than religious spheres. in their social organization they advocated communal marriage, wives being held in common. this type of social organization is quite general in primitive tribes. with the gnostics we see a reversion to a more primitive form of religious and social life. * * * * * the rosicrucians[ ] of the middle ages are rather better known, although this order also is very obscure. the rosicrucians as well as the gnostics had phallic emblems. they worshipped in a form very similar to that under which priapus was worshipped. moreover, as was the case with a number of these secret societies, they introduced perverse sexual practices. they are said not only to have countenanced homosexuality, but to have made it one of the principles of their belief. at the same time, they scorned all association with women. out of this belief they built up a philosophy in which the fire worship of antiquity played a part, and with which alchemy was associated. in the practice of homosexuality[ ] and in the development of a philosophy in which women played no part, are seen sentiments quite similar to those which existed in the later days of greece. at this time in greece, patriarchy had driven out the last vestiges of matriarchy, female deities had lost their followers to a great extent, and the devotion was paid to male gods and heroes. this change seems to have produced a certain contempt for women. a number of writers have pointed out this reaction, and so probably in the philosophy of the rosicrucians and in their practices, are seen an expression of these same sentiments. similar sentiments were expressed by other secret organizations and in some philosophies of a latter period. in this respect, therefore, the rosicrucians were probably reverting to beliefs and feelings of an earlier date. the knights templar were another secret society of the middle ages of a somewhat later time. the same can be said of them as of the former societies. they carried on the old phallic and mystic rites in modified form, and set up their beliefs in opposition to christianity. when the knights templar were initiated they were made to deny christ and the virgin mary, to spit on the cross, etc. they also were charged with homosexuality, and with them as with the rosicrucians and the gnostics, homosexuality was a part of their teachings. they likewise advocated communal marriage. at their secret meetings and initiations many vices existed; idols were worshipped, phallic features were introduced, and the entire ceremony was similar to the mysteries of antiquity. should there be any doubt regarding the association of these secret societies of the middle ages with the mysteries of the ancients, this doubt is at once dispelled when we read of the practices of a remarkable secret organization described as the "witches' sabbath." any one who has read a description of the ancient mysteries and of the initiation ceremonies of primitive tribes cannot but see in the witches' sabbath a remarkable similarity to the earlier mysteries. r. p. knight[ ] has given us a description of the witches' sabbath and he quotes freely from a french writer[ ] who has given full details. we shall use such parts of these descriptions as are necessary to illustrate these practices during the middle ages. the witches' sabbath is described by these writers as it existed during the latter part of the fourteenth century. it was held on four occasions during the year, being a festival corresponding to the priapiea and bacchanalia of former days. women played the leading part just as in the bacchanalia. there were minor and major festivals corresponding to the lesser and greater eleusinia. pilgrimages were made at this time, which "resembled a fair of merchants mingled together, furious in transports, arriving from all parts--a meeting and a mingling of a hundred thousand subjects, sudden and transitory, novel, it is true, but of a frightful novelty which offends the eye and sickens you." a symbolic representation of satan presided at the festivals, and he assumed a number of disguises, in all of which we recognize priapus in degenerated form. he very often appeared in the disguise of a goat; in fact the meeting place is called "goat's heath." the association of the goat with priapic ceremonies has already been mentioned. at times the meeting was at cross roads, a favorite location for hermes, as stated elsewhere. satan assumed a number of forms on these occasions other than that of the bearded goat. he was at times a serpent, or again an ox of brass. he was also represented as the trunk of a tree, sometimes as the oak. priapus is readily recognized in all these various disguises. on these festive occasions we see remnants of the fire worship of primitive tribes. satan often carried fire in some form or other and the rite of purification by fire, a residual of the earlier need-fire rites, was enacted. particular significance was attached to the generative organs, and it is needless to say that all kinds of sexual excesses ensued. satan was held to be the father and protector of all. some of the women referred to the witches' sabbath as an earthly paradise and they said that the festival had all the features of a wedding celebration. a number of absurd dances and other burlesques were introduced. in these one sees the burlesques and dances of the earlier mysteries and of the still more primitive initiation ceremonies of tribes in various countries. the dance was often held around a stone,--the significance of which has already been explained. if in the above account of these mystic ceremonies in the middle ages a detailed enumeration of all forms of sexual depravities has not been given, it is not because they did not exist. our main object has been to show that sex worship as practiced during the middle ages, was an expression of the decadence of a racial motive. no odium was formerly connected with this motive, but when an attempt was made to associate these primitive feelings and beliefs with a civilization which had outgrown such conceptions, many undesirable features were in evidence. should further proof of the association of the gnostics, the rosicrucians, the templars, etc., with the ancient priapic rites be necessary, this proof is found in numerous talismans, amulets, sculpture on earthen and glassware, which were associated with these societies. these amulets are all plainly phallic in design; r. p. knight shows a number of vases, lamps, etc., on which phallic symbols are found. these articles were probably used at the secret rites. moreover, we find that many of these small phalli were worn for personal decoration; and here we come to a still lower decadence in sex worship,--the period of superstition. a phallus was worn as a charm, somewhat as a fetish to ward off disease. such charms were supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to the owner and they were used particularly as a charm against barrenness in women. a sign which could be made by the hand, the phallic hand, was used as a protection against the evil eye. ancient representations of priapus have been found with the hand in this attitude. as further evidence to show the total degeneracy of these beliefs, it may be said that the phallic hand was adopted as a symbol of prostitution. in this we see the worship of sex degenerated to its lowest form, _i. e._, a superstition to be followed by the lower classes and the ignorant. the phallus which once had been attended with all ceremony had become a mere charm. the conclusions which r. p. knight reaches in relation to these decadent beliefs are worthy of remark. he states:[ ] "we have thus seen in how many various forms the old phallic, or priapic worship presented itself in the middle ages, and how pertinaciously it held its ground through all the changes and development of society, until at length we find all the circumstances of the ancient priapic orgies, as well as the mediaeval additions combined in that great and extensive superstition,--witchcraft. at all times the initiated were believed to have obtained thereby powers which were not possessed by the uninitiated, and they only were supposed to know about the form of invocation of the deities who were the objects of this worship, which deities the christian teachers invariably transformed into devils. the vows which people of antiquity addressed to priapus, those of the middle ages addressed to satan. the witches' sabbath was simply the last form which the priapeia and libernalia assumed in western europe, and in its various decadences all the incidents of those great and licentious orgies of the romans were reproduced." it is little wonder that the persecution of witches by the christians long survived the middle ages. hargrave jennings[ ] has referred to phallic principles in a number of the early chivalric societies of england. he states that the knights of the round table of king arthur had phallic emblems and other features similar to those of the rosicrucians. the same author submits considerable evidence to indicate that the order of the garter is of much greater antiquity than is generally believed and that phallic principles were associated with it. a similar contention was made regarding the symbolism associated with the holy grail, a sacred vessel apparently connected with primitive rites at a time far antedating christianity. associated with the old churches in ireland similar phallic emblems have been found, as well as in europe. these emblems were used as charms by the primitive people. we stated above that the early deities of primitive tribes were regarded as demons during the christian period. in teutonic beliefs phallic deities were developed quite comparable to those of greece and rome. these teutonic deities came to be regarded as hobgoblins during the middle ages. they were supposed to be found in lonely places and in forests, and to emerge at times in order to indulge in all sorts of sexual excesses, much as the fauns and satyrs of antiquity. the english had a similar hobgoblin in robin goodfellow. this fictitious character is represented in priapic attitudes in a number of illustrations of old english ballads. he was doubtless priapus of antiquity transformed into a goblin. why should superstitions of this kind live century after century? frazer[ ] has given us the answer: "superstitions survive because while they shock the views of the enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony with the thoughts and feelings of others, who, though they are drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians or savages at heart ... i have been led into making these remarks by the wish to explain why it is that superstitions of all sorts, political, moral and religious, survive among people who have the opportunity of knowing better. the reason is that the better ideas, which are constantly forming in the upper stratum have not filtered through from the highest to the lowest minds. such a filtration is generally slow, and by the time the new emotions have penetrated to the bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often obsolete and superseded by others at the top." chapter iv interpretations having followed the worship of sex through its various phases, it is now desirable to offer such interpretations of its meaning as the facts appear to warrant. what was the significance of this elaborate ritual; why did it develop, and how is it to be interpreted from a biological standpoint in mental evolution. the history of the development of this ritual may be of considerable interest in itself but we wish now to consider the subject from the biological rather than the historical standpoint. it remains to be shown what ends these beliefs serve in the evolution of the primitive mind, or at least what they represent, and what vestiges of them remain in our thoughts and feelings of today. only from this standpoint can the study of primitive motives be of value to the psychologist and the psychiatrist. in order to answer the above questions, it is desirable to refer to a still more primitive form of religious belief, since our understanding of this earlier religion offers a key to the understanding of sex worship. we refer to the various forms of nature worship found in primitive tribes. these nature rites consist of rain making ceremonies, sun dances, and numerous other procedures which are carried out by primitive people because of their supposed service in increasing the products of the earth. fortunately these rites are quite clearly understood. it has been shown by many investigators that they are enacted to increase the food supply. they are actuated by the desire on the part of primitive people to meet nutritive demands. now this knowledge enables us to understand phallic ceremonies. a very distinct parallelism is seen between the nature worship rites and phallic rites. we feel that it is not difficult to show that while the earlier rites were in accord with nutritive demands, phallic ceremonies were an expression of the desire for human reproduction. we shall now digress somewhat in order to discuss nature rites in some detail, as thereby the phallic rites are very readily explained. among many of the indian tribes of north america, the tribes of central africa, the primitive races of australia, the lower hill tribes of india, and others, we find religious ceremonies all of which are carried out in much the same way and with the same object in view. we are all familiar with the rain making ceremonies of the north american indians; we find frequent reference in literature to the various spring festivals of the egyptians at which grain is grown, etc., and in which vegetative nature is deified. a great many of the nations of antiquity had similar rites to increase the produce of the earth. when the meaning of this general type of ceremony is understood, it is found that it has the same significance throughout. as stated above, these ceremonies are enacted to increase the food supply, either directly or indirectly. if it is a dry and arid locality, as is the case with our western indians, a rain making rite is performed. this is a religious procedure in which various processes of magic are utilized. this explains the importance of the thunder god as a deity, so clearly illustrated by miss j. harrison. the thunder rites are to increase the rain fall, and the magic in such procedures is imitative; that is, a sound similar to thunder is produced, as primitive man believes thunder to cause the rainfall since it often precedes it. miss harrison[ ] has given a picture of an early thunder god of the chinese,--a deity surrounded by many objects, which he strikes to cause thunder. rattles made of gourds are used for the same purpose with some tribes; or down, etc., may be used in imitation of clouds, and water spurted about to represent rain. in many instances a secret ceremonial object is used,--a bull roarer in the rain making ceremonies. this is an object which, when whirled about, makes a sound in imitation of thunder. it represents a sort of thunder deity and so is associated with rainfall. it is held very sacred, being carefully guarded from view and kept under custody by the head men of the tribe. in a primitive civilization engaged in pastoral pursuits where the herd is the important source of food supply the ceremony centers about the dairy and the herd. in southern india, among the toda tribes,[ ] where the buffalo herd is sacred, this is quite apparent. certain buffaloes are attended by the priests only, special dairies are sacred, and the entire religious development has to do with the sanctity of milk. the dairy utensils are sacred, and one special vessel, the one which contains the fermenting material, is held in particular veneration. this vessel is kept in a special part of the dairy, its location corresponding to the sanctuary of a temple. if by chance the ferment does not act properly, it is manufactured again by an elaborate rite. here we see that the religious rites have to do with the food supply and fitting sacred ceremonials are performed. when the food supply depends upon animal food a direct analogy in the ceremonies is seen. some siberian tribes[ ] perform a rite to increase the supply of bear meat. a young bear is captured, suckled by a woman, and assumes the aspects of a sacred animal. it is finally slain in a ritual way, and the entire performance is for the purpose of increasing the supply of bear meat. a few references may be given to indicate the views of those who have made special studies of these ceremonies. g. a. dorsey[ ] speaking of the hopi tribe of the southwest, states: "when the hopi are not at work they are worshipping in the kivas. the underlying element of this worship is to be found in the environment. mother nature does not deal kindly with man in the desert. look where you will, across the drifting sands of the plains, and the cry of man and beast is 'water!' and so, to the gods of the rain clouds does the hopi address his prayer. his instruments of worship are so fashioned that his magic may surpass the magic of these gods, and compel them to loosen their stores, full to overflowing. take any one of the great hopi ceremonies, analyze the paraphernalia worn by the men, dissect the various components of the altar or sand paintings, examine the offerings made to the spring and those placed upon the shrines, and in everything and everywhere we see prayers for rain." dr. clark wissler,[ ] in speaking of primitive ceremonies, states: "one striking feature of primitive ceremonies is the elaboration of ritualistic procedure relating to the food supply. particularly in aboriginal america we have many curious and often highly complex rituals associated with the cultivation of maize and tobacco. these often impress the student of social phenomena as extremely unusual but still highly suggestive facts, chiefly because the association seems to be between things which are wholly unrelated. thus, among the pawnee we find an elaborate ritual in which a few ears of maize are raised almost to the status of gods. at a certain fixed time of the autumn the official priest of this ritual proceeds with great ceremony to the fields and selects a few ears, according to definite standards. these are further consecrated and carefully guarded throughout the winter. at planting time the women present themselves ceremonially to receive the seed, the necessary planting instructions, etc. thus, it appears that during the whole year recital, there is a definite ritual in functions associated with maize culture." the primitive tribes of australia afford an excellent example of this type of ceremony, and fortunately these tribes have been very carefully studied. at the puberty initiations of the young men, one of the main ceremonies is a yam ceremony,[ ] _i. e._, a procedure to ensure a bountiful supply of the yams. a special type of yam is secured, and cooked with much ceremony under fixed rules, much care and secrecy being observed throughout. after the cooking ceremony is finished, the yams are cut up and divided among the various members of the tribe. the ceremony is supposed to increase the supply of yams. miss j. harrison[ ] in interpreting australian ceremonies states: "the primitive australian takes care that magic shall not be wanting, a magic of the most instructive kind. as soon as the season of fertility approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermillion drawn from his own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him in stupid fashion, like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the chrysalis of a witchetty grub--his favorite food, and drags his body through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain in meaning as many of the details must always probably remain, the main emotional gist is clear. it is not that the australian wonders at and admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the singing of the birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to all-father who is the giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to the push of life within him his impulse is towards food. he must eat that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. it is this, his will to live, that he _utters and represents_." in a monograph[ ] of the shinto religion of the japanese, r. hitchcock states that the leading function of the female deity is to increase the food supply. she is given the name of the goddess of food, or the producer of trees and the parent of grasses. she is spoken of as abundant-food-lady, and seems to be a personification of the earth. a further description of these rites is unnecessary, as wherever found they are all of the same general type. they have been described in north america, in central africa, in japan, in siberia, in india and they probably exist in many other localities. the above references indicate that they were primitive man's expression of his desire for food, this fundamental motive finding expression in an elaborate ritual. now since in the above rites, where the increase of the food supply is the main motive, the entire development and symbolism centers about articles of food, and since in the phallic rites an entirely analagous development and symbolism centers about the generative organs, it is only reasonable to infer that the phallic rites have to do with the desire for children. in this we have the meaning of sex worship. it is primitive man's expression of his desire for the perpetuation of the race and so it represents a biological necessity, the earlier motive being for the preservation of the individual. fortunately the conclusions which the above arguments would appear to warrant are borne out by the statements of those who have studied these matters in great detail. miss j. harrison,[ ] who also quotes dr. frazer, states: "the two great interests of primitive man are food and children. as dr. frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have food; if his race is to persist he must have children, 'to live and to cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as the world lasts.' other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. these two things, therefore, food and children, were what man chiefly sought to secure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. they are the very foundation stones of that ritual from which art, if we are right, took its rise." there is a very striking parallelism between these two rites. it would be interesting to trace out these analogies step by step, but we shall refer to them only in a general way. the outward form of the two rites is very similar. in both a religious ceremony is enacted. in the development of this ceremony a system, in which a priesthood forms a prominent part, is developed in both instances. the element of mystery runs through both procedures and, as steven d. peet[ ] has stated, the nature worship ceremony of the north american indians bears a remarkable resemblance to the mysteries of the eleusis and of the bacchanalia. in both the nature rites and the phallic rites, a sacred ceremonial object develops, and about this object a very elaborate symbolism evolves. just as in the most primitive form of sex worship we saw that the deity consisted of a rude representation of the generative organs, so in nature worship we find that the ceremonial object is at first a rude representative of the deified animal or plant. this sacred symbol is eventually conventionalized. we have observed this in sex worship, as explained by inman, payne knight and others. in the same way in nature worship, ceremonial objects are conventionalized. spencer has shown this in the case of the australians, the ceremonial objects eventually coming to bear a remote resemblance only to the original animal or plant representation. a. l. kroeber[ ] has observed the same development in the arapaho indians. the buffalo symbol for example, (a very important one in this tribe since the buffalo is the chief food) has become highly conventionalized, and is finally represented by a formal rectangular design. this design now means the earth, and it is also used as a life symbol. again, just as we saw how in sex worship the religious symbol came to be expressed throughout decorative art, and in fact eventually became a leading motive, so it has been shown that in the nature worship of the indians this same evolution takes place. a. l. kroeber and clark wissler, among others, have shown that the decorative art on the moccasins, leggings, tents, food bags, etc., of the indians, all representing a highly conventionalized symbol, expresses religious motives throughout. this symbolism can be interpreted only by an understanding of religious motives. the analogy of this symbolic development to that associated with sex worship is at once apparent. finally, just as in sex worship the motive came to dominate most of the practices and usages of civil life, so it can be shown that in tribes practicing nature worship, the religious motive has a very powerful influence. the performance of rites to increase the food supply are among the most important of primitive man's duties. any man who enters into these rites listlessly is not respected, and the leaders of the rite are the head men of the tribe. in australia, one of the main functions of each totem group is to increase the supply of its own totem animal or plant by magic ceremony. in summing up, therefore, the analogies between sex worship and nature worship, the following features may be reviewed: the outward form is the same, _i. e._, that of a religious ceremonial rite in which a sacred object is the representation of the deity. the symbolism associated with this object develops in the same way in both instances. in the course of time this symbolism becomes conventionalized, and eventually it finds its way into primitive art. it then becomes the leading motive in primitive art and finally the religious motive is forgotten and the aesthetic motive alone remains. were further proof necessary, these analogies alone would be sufficient to enable us to understand the meaning of sex worship. the ritual associated with the worship of sex then, arose in response to emotions which are grouped around the instinct of reproduction. these feelings are so primitive and at the same time so fundamental, that it is difficult for us to realize that early man should dignify them by religious ritual. they stand out as expressions of a biological demand. as stated above, sex worship was not a conscious expression on the part of certain individuals, but it was the unconscious expression of longings and desires on the part of the race. it represents a phase in man's mental evolution, a process of mental development. its dynamic value, from a biological standpoint, is at once apparent. in order to survive man must reproduce his kind, and the emotions associated with reproductive instincts must be of adequate dynamic value. * * * * * it has been stated that sex worship, as practiced during the primitive state of civilization, was a healthy phase in racial evolution. in a higher degree of civilization, however, the reversion to this motive was a regression, and decadent sex worship as it existed during the middle ages was an attempt by certain unhealthy elements in the race to revert to the primitive. in decadent sex worship we are dealing with an instance of faulty mental adaptation in a way in which we had not been accustomed to consider it. it is a case of faulty adaptation in the race, or at least in certain elements of it, rather than in the individual. these general analogies are noteworthy from the standpoints of mental evolution and abnormal psychology. in order to show how sex worship as practiced by a later civilization was the expression of an unhealthy tendency, we must digress sufficiently to show the setting in which decadent sex worship existed. it is necessary to give a chronological outline indicating how primitive beliefs succeeded each other as a result of man's progressive development. the earlier beliefs were an expression of nature worship. this as we have shown, was mostly associated with the question of food supply. it has been shown that during this period of primitive man's existence group thinking predominated, and man thought of himself as part of the group rather than as an individual. at this time, therefore, the idea of the deity which was evolved was not that of an individual god. generally speaking, it was the "vegetation spirit" existing throughout nature which was deified. this was the general period of earth worship,--the forces of nature associated with the earth being man's main interest. the earth at this time was highest in primitive man's regard. during the time of earth worship, the social organization of the tribe was such that the mother was the dominating influence in social structure. descent was matrilinear, and a society known as matriarchy existed, as contrasted to the later patriarchy. the mother was the leading figure in social as well as in family life. at this period a certain degree of sexual promiscuity existed; the mother of the child was known but the father was not and so the descent was in the female line. with earth worship, then, there was mother worship, and the term "mother earth" had a very real significance. with the social state of matriarchy, the mother cults developed. these mother cults evolved the numerous female deities of antiquity, themis, demeter, cybele, and many others being the expression of mother worship. these deities were generally associated with the wild elements of nature,--with the wind, and the hills and the forests. associated with the mother religion in a way which at first does not appear to be very clear arose the phallic cults. it should be here stated that the mother religion was not the religion of the mother alone, but also that of the mother and child. the child was the adolescent,--a youth about to be initiated at the public ceremony, at which he was often circumcised and after which he was able to take up the reproductive functions of the male. miss j. harrison has shown that dionysus was the embodiment of this conception. here the youth was necessary only to the extent that he could become a father. it was his generative attribute which was sanctified, rather than that he was a male being existing as an individual. for this reason, the deification of the phallic principle, _i. e._, the generative attribute, preceded the deification of the male as an individual. at least this is the impression one gains of this development. in any case, we note that the phallic ceremonies were associated with the mother religion. the period in which both existed was mostly prehistoric. we see the beginning of the evolution of the male god in the phallic cults. this was eventually followed by the patriarchal system and here we are on more familiar ground. patriarchy succeeded matriarchy, but whether as a gradual evolution or otherwise is not clear. some writers speak of bitter conflicts in persia, india, greece and elsewhere. in any case the religion of the father replaced that of the mother; the social system changed and the father took his place at the head of the family. during this period we are told[ ] that man shifted his belief from the earth to the sky, the sun was found to be the source of energy and worship was transferred to the heavens. just as formerly the female deity was identified with the earth, so the male deity was identified with the sun, zeus and apollo being two examples of the latter type from a great many. we are now approaching a well known historic period. the religion of the father and the son had replaced that of the mother and child. the age of hero worship had commenced and this hero was often identified with the sun. for this reason, the fact that a myth is in the form of a sun myth does not argue against its being the expression of a very deep religious motive. as has been stated, earlier motives are carried forward, and so while sun worship is a somewhat later development than the phallic beliefs, it is quite natural that many phallic ideas should find expression at this subsequent period. we have now reached a time when sex worship became decadent, for christianity followed sun worship and hero worship; and this brings us to the present day. the religion of father and son remains, and much of the form of the earlier worship has been retained in the modern. the above outline of the changes and evolution of early religions is most schematic. it enables us, however, to see that sex worship was entirely out of place during the middle ages, in a civilization which had long before discarded matriarchy. the questions of the food supply, and of children, were no longer so immediately pressing, and the faith in magical performances had been shaken. man had emerged from the group as a definite personality, and the development of a new religion which expressed other feelings and desires had taken place. what we wish to emphasize at present is, then, that sex worship as it was carried on during the middle ages was a distinctly unnatural tendency in the race. at this time opportunity may be taken to reconcile different interpretations which some writers have given regarding early religious motives. considerable variation and some contradiction may be observed in the writings of different authors in describing a religious development of much the same period. one writer may describe the features of nature worship and quite ignore the presence of sex worship. others may describe only phallic rites. these discrepancies may be understood when the order in which the various beliefs developed is recognized. nature worship developed first, but much of its symbolism was carried into the phallic ceremonies. thus we see the phallus associated with the pine cone and other elements of vegetative life. some of these elements, the pine cone for example, finally came to have a phallic significance, but at an earlier period they probably represented the vegetation spirit. in fact, reproductive attributes of both nature and man were often worshipped at the same ceremony. while we should not as a rule expect to find phallic rites associated with the earlier forms of nature worship, since sex worship developed at a somewhat later period, still in this connection we cannot be too dogmatic; the primitive australians appear to be at the stage of mental development when simple nature worship predominated, yet, from _mutter erde_[ ] we learn that with the australians a ceremony consisting of the throwing of a spear into the earth was of phallic significance. this co-existence of these two related motives is not unnatural since they both equally represent fundamental biological demands on the part of the race. we may now return to the interpretation of decadent sex worship. when we understand the setting in which sex worship was practiced in the middle ages we are better able to appreciate its significance. as stated above, it was the attempt by certain elements of the race to return to more primitive motives, and to derive satisfaction from beliefs which had long been outgrown by advancing civilization. this clinging to an early type of reaction, or the return to more primitive feelings, must be regarded as an unhealthy tendency. moreover, at this time, the motive itself was no longer expressed in the natural and healthy way of primitive times. sex worship during the middle ages became depraved; excesses and perversions appeared and the entire development, as it existed at that time, was biologically undesirable. it also appeared that at certain times in the mental evolution of the race a degree of development is reached from which no further progress is made. at least, we are aware of such an instance in the case of a very primitive community in southern italy. a writer, norman douglas,[ ] in found the existence of a phallic cult in calabria. the women sanctified a crack of one of the walls of the temple, their attitude toward it corresponding to the yoni worship of india. near by was an ancient stone pillar held in great veneration, which was the representative of the phallus. it is observed that in this small community some remnants of phallic belief of a very primitive type have been retained for centuries. the religious development, an index of mental development, has become "set" as it were and no further progress is possible. it is not entirely for want of opportunity that this locality has not taken up higher religious beliefs. the catholic church has introduced its teachings, but the people have represented the images of the saints, of the virgin mary, and of christ somewhat after the fashion of toy dolls. these are used as fetishes to ward off disease and no higher conceptions are grasped. ideas regarding after life and immortality are disregarded in favor of the immediate need of protection against supposed evil influences. with these people, therefore, motives are utilized which satisfy only the most fundamental and immediate desires. * * * * * we have now followed a definite motive in mental development through its rise, its elaboration and its decadence. we therefore have its life history in the race before us; we have been enabled by analogies of other motives and by utilizing the conclusions of various writers, to understand its meaning and to give its interpretation. it remains to be seen what general conclusions regarding either racial or individual development in this sphere may be drawn. it appears that when an important motive of this sort develops in the race, it embodies the expression of fundamental desires. since it carries with it a strong and ever present desire in this way, it is strikingly _dynamic_ in nature. it dominates all social organization, and with primitive people it dominates much of the conduct of the individual. when such a motive is seriously entertained it is pragmatic, _i. e._, it serves a useful end, or at least the conceptions which it embodies are entertained because they are thought to be of the highest value to the race. as mental development continues, these more fundamental and primitive motives cease to be all absorbing. eventually, the subject of the food supply becomes less pressing. races continue to increase and multiply with or without the performance of sacred rites and man begins to question the utility of his imitative magic. higher desires force themselves into consciousness, and earlier motives are no longer outwardly expressed; the form of the early motives is retained however: usages, symbols and practices which have long ceased to be dynamic and whose meaning is entirely forgotten are still observed; so we see evidences of primitive racial motives cropping up in all sorts of ways in later civilization. but to say that the earlier motives are no longer outwardly expressed is not to infer that they do not exist. fundamental as they are in our mental development, they enter into our general personality and become a part of our makeup. how is the motive expressed in sex worship a part of our motives and feelings of today? superficially it does not appear to be present, but a little reflexion shows that it is there. it has become so much a part of us that we scarcely recognize its presence, the instinct to reproduce being common to everyone. every woman feels this to be her duty,--her religious duty if the dictum of the church is to be followed: "lo, children are an heritage of the lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward. as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. happy is the man that has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." _psalm ._ during earlier times barrenness was regarded as a curse, and many charms were in use to counteract this calamity. a sentence from a letter of julia ward howe to her young sister about to be married, affords an apt reference to this sense of duty: "marriage, like death, is a debt we owe to nature, and though it costs us something to pay it, yet we are more content and better established in peace when we have paid it." the feeling associated with the command "to increase and multiply" is so much a part of our innermost thoughts and feelings that further references to it are unnecessary. to what extent may we utilize the evolution of this motive in the race, in understanding certain phases of mental development associated with reproductive instincts in the individual? in interpreting the racial history of this motive we have seen that it is dynamic; it develops in response to biological demands. it is a very elementary and primitive desire to be raised to the dignity of a religion, but none the less it is a very essential one. we have seen that when this motive is replaced by higher ones, a return to it bespoke faulty mental adaptations on the part of those who did so. analogies between the individual and the race in this sphere exist in a general way, and their presence is significant. analogies in the sphere in the normal mental development of the individual may be considered first. in dealing with the developing thoughts of childhood, we shall refer to one particular tendency, _i. e._, that of _day dreaming_. we know that a certain amount of the day dreaming of the child has to do with the feelings and emotions associated with the questions of reproduction, considered in its broadest sense; _i. e._, including fictitious lovers, marriages, children, etc. now probably with the child, the day dreaming associated with these feelings is of biological significance, just as the rituals associated with similar feelings are of value to the race. the little girl who is the mother of her doll, who plays at housekeeping, who fictitiously assumes the responsibilities of married life and what not,--the child by developing this feature of her existence in fancy is probably preparing herself for reality. the little boy who becomes a hero in his own fancy, marries a princess, and who overcomes all sorts of difficulties; or the small boy who in his play enters into all the activities of adult life,--probably this child, by entertaining the thoughts of his future life, prepares himself to some extent for future life. these fundamental motives, therefore, which arise in response to biological demands, are the expression of desires, both in the case of the individual and of the race, and they act not only harmlessly but probably beneficially at a certain stage of mental evolution. again, we have shown how in the race remnants of early and primitive motives continue to appear in various ways long after their outward dynamic value has been lost and when their meaning is no longer understood. is this not true of the individual? do we not all recognize in the moods and mental attitudes and even in some of the actions of the adult, remnants of feelings and forces which were dynamic in childhood? these feelings exist although they are not consciously appreciated. the actual experiences are forgotten but the moods and emotions remain. this is analagous to the influence which primitive racial thoughts, beliefs and usages have on present day civilization. the meaning of these usages and symbols is forgotten in many cases but the outward form still exists. in the individual, a motive of this kind does not become a religion or a ritual as in the case with the race, but it nevertheless is forcefully expressed in that it excites an absorbing interest and forces itself strongly into consciousness, during the phase of its dynamic development. as stated above, just as in the early mental evolution of the race, we find that the question of reproduction comes prominently to the fore, so with the individual we find that at the adolescent period of life the sexual instinct is very fully elaborated. just as with the race reproduction is necessary for the continuation of the race, so with the individual, elaboration of sexual instinct is necessary in order that adult sexual responsibilities may be assumed. this consists of much more than mere physical development. in a complex state of civilization many adjustments in the sphere of sexual indulgence and continence and marriage have to be made. this phase of the individual's life is a very important one. it is the rule for proper reactions to occur at this time, in which case the reproductive instincts assume their proper place in mental life. but if satisfactory adjustments do not occur the consequences may be serious. in the healthy mental evolution of the individual, therefore, just as in the normal mental evolution of the race, we see that motives arise, assume a dynamic character, play their part in the developing mind, and leave lasting impressions. they serve a useful purpose during one phase of mental evolution. we have seen that they may be harmful in the race if utilized at a later period. let us see to what extent this is true of the individual. * * * * * psychiatrists during recent years have come to believe that in certain mental states we see a reversion to a more primitive type of reaction,--a tendency to utilize earlier adaptations, the reactions of infancy and childhood in meeting situations which arise in adult life. if this assumption is correct it is seen that a reversion to something more primitive is an undesirable reaction in the individual as well as in the race. here too we find that the emotions and feelings associated with the reproductive instinct may be inadequately developed. it has been shown above that the day dreams of the child are probably beneficial rather than harmful. is this day dreaming beneficial to the adult? we know from our experience that it is not, and in its relation to the reproductive sphere this is particularly true. the adult who substitutes the realities of life by elaborate day dreams is approaching dangerous ground. the young woman who in adult life is constantly dreaming of an ideal but fictitious lover is deriving satisfaction from unhealthy sources; and the young man who ecstatically becomes a hero or a racial benefactor is equally at fault. in instances where such thoughts are believed in and acted upon as we observe again and again in mental disorders, a serious condition of the mind has arisen. when an attempt is made to gain satisfaction in these immature ways at a later stage of development, or when there is a failure to develop at a certain point, the reaction is harmful in both the individual and in the race. it is during the adolescent period that these failures of adaptation generally occur. at this time, the whole development in the reproductive sphere, particularly in the mental characteristics associated with the sexual instinct, considered in its broadest sense, does not take place. there may be much rumination about this topic, but the responsibilities of adult sexual life, of marriage, of child bearing with the female, are not adequately met. fancies are substituted for reality, and while, as stated above, young women may dream of ideal lovers, they at the same time are shy and unnatural in their attitude toward the opposite sex. young men, instead of taking their place in the life of the adult community, realize adult ambitions only by elaborate day dreams. in abnormal mental states, we see young men in their fancies become important personages, religious benefactors and national heroes. they may shun all association with women but at the same time maintain that they have a cultural mission to populate the earth. we see here how the feelings associated with reproductive instincts have been faulty or inadequate. this return to something more primitive is an unhealthy atavistic tendency and makes for both racial and individual inferiority. a word may be said regarding symbolism of the race as applied to the individual. we have stated that symbolism is a primitive and rudimentary way of expressing thought. it would seem logical therefore that if in some abnormal mental states there is a return to more primitive reactions, we may find a tendency to symbolize. this tendency is frequently observed and the symbolism is often very elaborate. a knowledge of the interpretation of racial symbolism is doubtless of value in the case of the individual. when men's thoughts deal with the same subject and when they tend to symbolize, they are likely to express themselves in much the same way symbolically. if in abnormal mental states thoughts are entertained which have to do with the motives we have been discussing, it is reasonable to suppose that the racial and individual symbolism will show certain analogies. again, in the pages of recent psychiatry, we learn that in abnormal mental states there is a reversion not only to the primitive motives of childhood, but also to the primitive motives of the race. just to what extent this tendency exists remains for studies of the future to show. certainly, striking instances may be cited; for example, let us quote from a recent study in psychiatry:[ ] "one such patient with a very complicated delusional system states that he is the father of adam, that he has lived in his present human body thirty-five years, but in other bodies thirty million years, and that during this time he has occupied six million different bodies. he has been the great men in the history in the development of the human race; he himself created the human race. it took him three hundred million years to perfect the first fully developed human being; he is both male and female and identifies all the different parts of the universe with his own body; heaven, hell and purgatory are located in his limbs, the stars are pieces of his body which had been torn apart by torture and persecution in various ages of past history; he is the father and creator of the various races and elements of the human organization, etc." any one who has done even a cursory reading in mythology cannot but be struck by the similarity in form as well as in thought between this production and what we find in myths. * * * * * the general analogies which we have indicated are such as one would have reason to expect. the history of both the healthy and unhealthy mental evolution of the race is in many respects the history of the individual; in order to understand these analogies it is necessary to understand the mental development of primitive man. recent studies have given us much valuable information in this direction. in primitive usages we find the expression of early man's deepest longings and desires, and so a dynamic interpretation of such motives is possible. it remains for the psychiatrist to learn to what extent the findings of special investigators of primitive races may be utilized in explaining mental 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howitt, a. w.: the native tribes of south east australia. jennings, hargrave: the rosicrucians; the indian religions. jevons, f. b.: the idea of god in early religions. judson: myths and legends of the mississippi valley and the great lakes. karpas, morris j.: socrates in the light of modern psychopathology. (journal of abnormal psychology. .) king, c. w.: the gnostics and their remains; hand-book of engraved gems. knight, r. p.: the symbolical language of ancient art and mythology; two essays on the worship of priapus. kroeber, alfred l.: symbolism of the arapaho indians. the arapaho, (bulletin of the american museum of natural history.) langdon, s.: tammuz and ishtar. layard, a.: babylon and nineveh; nineveh and its remains. leuba, james h.: a psychological study of religion. monsen, frederick: festivals of the hopi. (the craftsman, june, .) murray, gilbert: hamlet and orestes: the rise of the greek epic. newton, john: assyrian grove worship. o'brien, henry: the round towers of ireland. peet, stephen d.: secret societies and sacred mysteries. perrot, and chipiez: history of art in phrygia, lidia, caria and lycia; history of art in persia. prescott: conquest of peru. pratt, j. b.: india and its faiths. rawlinson, g.: history of ancient egypt; ancient monarchies. reclus, elie: primitive folk. rivers, w. h. r.: the todas. rhyn, dr. otto: mysteria. roscoe, john: the northern bantu. rocco, sha: ancient sex worship. rousselet, louis: india and its native princes. spencer, b.: native tribes of the northern territory of australia. solas, w. j.: ancient hunters. starcke, c. v.: the primitive family. stevens, j.: central america, chiapez and yucatan. symonds, j. a.: a problem in greek ethics. wissler, clark: symbolism in the decorative art of the sioux. westropp, hodder m.: primitive symbolism. wood, rev. j. g.: the uncivilized races. wood-martin: pagan ireland. index adaptations, faulty, - . adjustment, of individual, . adonis, sun god, . american cyclopedia, . american museum of natural history, . anacalipsis, . analogies between the individual and the race, . ancient grove worship of assyria, , . ancient sex worship, , , . androgyne deity, , . arapaho indians, . bacchus, representative of male generative attribute, . bacchanalia, , , , . bear, sacred animal, . bull, phallic significance of, . bull roarer, nature of, . bureau of amer. eth., . caves of elephanta, . ceremonial objects, conventionalization of, . _chinese review_, . collective or group feeling, importance of, . collective thought of the race, relation to religious development, . crux ansata, . dairy, sacredness of, . dances, at witches' sabbath, . decadent sex worship, , , , ; interpretation of, . deity, female, function of in japan, . deities, teutonic, . dietrich, a., . dionysia, , . dionysus, . dorsey, g. a., . douglas, n., . dragon, relation to serpent, . earth, worship, . egg, , , . eleusinia, , , , . emasculation, a form of worship, . essay on the assyrian "grove," . female deities, . festivals to increase food supply, . fire, male principle, . fire worship, , ; identified with sex worship, . fish, phallic significance, . frazer, , , , , , . gnostics, early secret society, ; phallic amulets of, ; reversions of, . goat, priapic animal, ; symbol of khem, . golden bough, . (see frazer.) group thought, . harrison, j., , , , , , , , . hearn, l., . heraldry, origin of symbols, . hermes, phallic nature of, . higgins, . hitchcock, r., . holy grail, symbolism of, . homosexuality, in greek life, ; practice of rosicrucians, . hopi indians, , . howe, j. w., . howitt, a. w., . initiative magic, . _india and its native princes_, . _india and its faiths_, . _indian religions_, . _indians of the southwest_, . infantile reactions, . initiation ceremony, . inman, t., , , . interpretations of sex worship, . _japan, an attempt at interpretation_, . jennings, h., , , , , , , , . karnac, . karpas, m. j., . khem, description of, . king, c. w., . knight, r. p., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . knights of the round table, . knights templar, phallic amulets of, ; practices of, . kroeber, a. l., , . layard, a., . lingam with yoni, . lost god, the, . lotus, significance of, - . male date palm, significance of, . matriarchy, . may-pole, associated with phallic worship, , . moon, associated with female deity, . mother earth, , . mother religion, , . _mutter erde_, . murray, g., . mysteries, teaching of, - . nature worship, , , , . newton, j., , , . _nineveh and its remains_, . north american indians and sun worship, ; nature worship, , , . obelisk, phallic interpretation, . o'brien, , , . obscure sex symbolism, . order of the garter, . osiris, . pan, significance of, . patriarchy, , . pepys, s., . peet, o. s., . persephone, . phallic hand, symbol of prostitution, . phallic rites, motive for, . phallic symbols, ; in art, . phallic worship in china, . phallic worship, nature of, , . phallus, as a charm, , ; as a decoration, . plant and flower symbols, . pomegranate, female symbol, . pratt, j. b., . priapiea, . priapus, disguises of, . primitive motives, continuance of, ; reversion to, . _primitive symbolism_, . _problem in greek ethics_, . _psyche's task_, . puberty initiations, , . qualities of animal and vegetable nature venerated, . racial feelings, expression of, in religion, . racial motives, in primitive religions, ; dynamic value of, . rain making rite, . rawlinson, . reproduction, motive of, . rhyn, o., . _rise of the greek epic_, . ritual, motive for, ; related to food supply, , . rivers, w. h. r., , . robin goodfellow, . _rosicrucians_, , . rosicrucians, phallic amulets of, ; practices of, , , . _round towers of ireland_, , . rousselet, . sacred animals, - . sacred prostitution, evidences of, . satan, at witches sabbath, . secret societies for decadent sex worship, . serpent worship, , , , . sex worship: an unconscious racial expression, ; biological significance of, ; as basis of early religions, ; in africa in modern times, ; decadence of in middle ages, ; primitive form, ; influence in present thought, ; part of evolution of the human mind, ; in symbolism, ; where it existed as basis of early religions, . sex worship and nature worship, analogies of, ; relation of, . sexual act, as part of worship, - . _shinto, or the mythology of the japanese_, . smithsonian inst., . snake, phallic significance of, . _socrates in the light of modern psychopathology_, . spencer, . star and crescent, . stonehenge, significance of, , . sun myth, . sun worship, , , , . _symbolic language of ancient art and mythology_, , . symbolism, racial, in the individual, . symonds, j. a., . _themis_, , , . thunder god, . thunder rites, . _todas, the_, , . totem, . tree worship, . upright objects as phalli, . vegetation spirit, . water, female principle, . weathercock, emblem of the sun, . westropp, h. m., , , . wilder, a., . witchcraft, . witches' sabbath, nature of, , . wissler, c., , . _worship of priapus_, , , , . yam ceremony, - . footnotes: [ ] the scope of social anthropology; psyche's task. [ ] themis, introduction page xi. [ ] hamlet and orestes. [ ] quoted by h. m. westropp, primitive symbolism. [ ] j. w. wood. the uncivilized races. [ ] the symbolical language of ancient art and mythology. [ ] the rosicrucians. [ ] adonis, attis and osiris. [ ] rousselet, india and its native princes. [ ] pepys diary. [ ] symbolic language of ancient art and mythology. [ ] japan, an attempt at interpretation. [ ] o'brien: the round towers of ireland. [ ] the symbolical language of ancient art and mythology. [ ] the enactment of a rebirth. [ ] dr. otto rhyn, mysteria. [ ] j. b. pratt, india and its faiths. [ ] r. p. knight, the worship of priapus. [ ] hargrave jennings: the rosicrucians. [ ] j. a. symonds, a problem in greek ethics. morris j. karpas, socrates in the light of modern psychopathology. journal of abnormal psychology. . [ ] worship of priapus. [ ] pierre de lancre, tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons. [ ] worship of priapus. [ ] the rosicrucians. [ ] the scope of social anthropology; psyche's task. [ ] themis. [ ] w. h. r. rivers, the todas. [ ] miss j. harrison: ancient art and ritual. [ ] indians of the southwest. [ ] the functions of primitive ritualistic ceremonies. popular science monthly, august , . [ ] spencer, native tribes of the northern territory of australia. [ ] ancient art and ritual, p. . [ ] shinto, or the mythology of the japanese. [ ] ancient art and ritual. [ ] secret societies and ancient mysteries: international congress of anthropology, . [ ] symbolism of the arapaho indians: american museum of natural history. [ ] miss j. harrison, themis, introduction. [ ] a. dieterich: _mutter erde_. [ ] norman douglas: old calabria. [ ] jelliffe and white, diseases of the nervous system, page . transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. the following misprints have been corrected: "barreness" corrected to "barrenness" (page ) "superstitition" corrected to "superstition" (page ) "eleusenia" corrected to "eleusinia" (index) "kroebler" corrected to "kroeber" (index) "rawlison" corrected to "rawlinson" (index) "priapus, disguises of, ." corrected to "priapus, disguises of, ." other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling and capitalization have been retained. studies in spermatogenesis with especial reference to the "accessory chromosome" by n. m. stevens. [illustration] washington, d. c.: published by the carnegie institution of washington september, . carnegie institution of washington publication no. from the press of the henry e. wilkens printing co. washington, d. c. studies in spermatogenesis with especial reference to the "accessory chromosome." by n. m. stevens. in connection with the problem of sex determination it has seemed necessary to investigate further the so-called "accessory chromosome," which, according to mcclung (' ), may be a sex determinant. this view has been supported by sutton (' ) in his work on _brachystola magna_, but rejected by miss wallace (' ) for the spider. the forms selected for study have been taken from several groups of insects, and are all species whose spermatogenesis has not been previously worked out. they are ( ) a california termite, _termopsis angusticollis_; ( ) a california sand-cricket, _stenopelmatus_; ( ) the croton-bug, _blattella germanica_; ( ) the common meal-worm, _tenebrio molitor_; and ( ) one of the aphids, _aphis oenotheræ_. a brief account of a chromatin element resembling the accessory chromosome in _sagitta_ has been added for comparison. the spermatogenesis of each form will be described in detail, and a general discussion of the results and their relation to the accessory chromosome and sex determination will follow. the spermatogenesis of the aphid has been included in another paper, but a summary of results and a few figures will be given here for reference in the general discussion. methods. the testes were fixed in various fluids--flemming's strong solution, hermann's platino-aceto-osmic, gilson's mercuro-nitric, lenhossek's alcoholic sublimate acetic, and corrosive acetic. flemming's and hermann's fluids followed by safranin gave good results in most cases. the mercuro-nitric solution and lenhossek's fluid gave excellent fixation and were preferable to the osmic mixtures when it was desirable to stain the same material with iron-hæmatoxylin, and also with various anilin stains. heidenhain's iron-hæmatoxylin, either alone or with orange g or erythrosin, was used more than any other one stain. with osmic fixation safranin gave better results in some cases, because of the abundance of spindle fibers and sphere substance which were stained by hæmatoxylin. the safranin-gentian combination used by miss wallace and others in the study of the accessory chromosome did not prove to be especially helpful with these forms. thionin was found to be a very useful stain for distinguishing between the accessory chromosome and an ordinary nucleolus. licht-grün was often used in combination with safranin. results of investigations. termopsis angusticollis. in the termite it was not found to be practicable to dissect out the testes. the tip of the abdomen was therefore fixed and sectioned, young males whose wings were just apparent being used. the cells are all small, and could not be studied to advantage with less than magnification (zeiss oil immersion mm., oc. ). in the spermatogonium there is a very large nucleolus (plate i, fig. ), which in the iron-hæmatoxylin preparations is very conspicuous, but does not stain like chromatin with thionin or other anilin stains, nor does it behave like an accessory chromosome during the maturation mitoses. before each spermatogonial division it divides as in figures and , and the same is true for each maturation mitosis. figure shows the chromosomes of a spermatogonial division in metaphase. figures and are young spermatocytes, showing the division of the nucleolus. figures , , and show a stage immediately following that shown in figure and evidently persisting for some time. the spireme thread is very fine, stains deeply, and is wound into a dense ball, often concealing one (fig. ) or both nucleoli (fig. ). figure shows the next stage; the bivalent chromosomes are so disposed as to give the familiar "bouquet stage," with the loops directed away from the centrosome and sphere (_c_). figures , , and show the later development of the same stage, the chromatin loops becoming thicker by the concentration of the smaller granules to form the larger ones seen in figure . the loops now straighten out and extend in various directions across the nuclear space (figs. , , ). in fig. _a_ a longitudinal split is seen in several chromosomes. figures _b_, , , and show various stages in the contraction of these split bivalent chromosomes to form diamond-shaped tetrads, each side of which is a univalent daughter chromosome. the tetrads come into the spindle in this form (figs. , ), and change to the form shown in figure during the metaphase (figs. , , ). figures and show the bivalent chromosomes, or tetrads, in early and late metaphase, respectively, and figures , , and in anaphase. this is certainly a reduction division, for the tetrads are always somewhat elongated and come into the spindle with their longer axes parallel with the axis of the spindle. the aberrant bodies in these figures are probably remains of the nucleoli; they are found only in iron-hæmatoxylin preparations. figures and show exceptional cases where the cell has divided. usually the two daughter nuclei are formed in an undivided cell. the resting-stage between the two divisions is only partial. the nucleolus appears and divides into two (figs. - ), and the chromosomes change into the dyad form (fig. ), in which they come into the second maturation spindle (figs. , ). the equatorial plate again shows chromosomes (fig. ). the formation of the spermatozoa is peculiar in that the original spermatocyte cell-body, as a rule, does not divide; but the four nuclei resulting from the two maturation divisions develop into sperm-heads in one cell. all have a nucleolus (fig. ), and in a slightly later stage (fig. ) the elongated nuclei have a distinct centrosome and sphere at the posterior end. later stages are shown in figures , , and . the points of greatest interest in the spermatogenesis of _termopsis angusticollis_ are, ( ) the fact that no accessory chromosome is present; ( ) that the method of tetrad formation and reduction are clear, despite the fact that the cells and the chromatin elements are quite small; and ( ) the failure of the cell-bodies to divide and the consequent development of four spermatozoa in one cell. stenopelmatus. the spermatogonium of _stenopelmatus_ contains from one to three large nucleoli, which stain much less with thionin than does the spireme (plate ii, figs. , , ). as the distinct chromosomes come into view in the prophase of mitosis, two are seen to be nearly twice as long as the others, but of equal length (figs. , , .) there are chromosomes in the equatorial plate of a spermatogonial spindle (fig. ). besides the nucleolus (_n_), there appears in the young spermatocyte a conspicuous element (_x_) which stains deeply with all chromatin stains (fig. ). it is closely applied to the nuclear membrane and is connected with an end of the spireme (figs. - ). at first it is quite small, and it gradually increases in size during the spireme stage. there is no "bouquet stage" in this form. figure shows the spireme segmented and split longitudinally. the segments have begun to open out at the center to give the cross which is the typical tetrad form in _stenopelmatus_. figures , , , and show various stages in the contraction of the split segments to form crosses and diamond-shaped rings. the tetrads usually remain connected by delicate linin threads, as shown in figures and , also in figures and , the latter taken from the metaphase of the first maturation spindle. if these linin connections persist, as they appear to do, from the segmentation of the spireme to metakinesis, the first division of the contracted tetrads must be longitudinal, corresponding to the split in the segments of figures , , , etc. the chromosomes in the metaphase usually appear as dumbbells (fig. ) or elongated crosses (fig. ), but occasionally one can be found which still shows its tetrad nature (fig. ), so clearly indicated in the quadrivalent crosses of figure . in the anaphase the chromosomes are often split as in figure , and occasionally the two components can be seen as plainly as in figure . figure shows the various shapes assumed by the element _x_ during the tetrad-stage of the chromosomes. this element _x_ almost invariably appears in a vesicle near one pole of the spindle (figs. , ); in exceptional cases it is found nearer the equatorial plate, as in figure , or even in the same plane with the ordinary chromosomes, but always somewhat isolated from them. in position and form this element resembles the accessory chromosomes described by baumgartner (' ) for _gryllus domesticus_; in its mode of origin it seems to differ from the other accessory chromosomes yet described. figures and show the bivalent chromosomes in metaphase; in figure the element _x_ is shown partly behind the large chromosome and at a different level. in figures and the one exceptionally large chromosome doubtless represents the two larger ones of the spermatogonia. in the anaphase the element _x_ is sometimes as conspicuous as in figure ; in other cases it is concealed either behind or within the polar mass of chromatin. in this form there is a distinct resting stage between the two maturation mitoses (figs. - ). the element _x_ is conspicuous in one-half of the cells (figs. , ); it may be included in the nucleus as in figure , or it may be partly or wholly outside, as in figures , , and . in the latter case, but not in the former, it is surrounded by its own membrane. as the chromatin begins to condense for the second mitosis, disintegration of the element _x_ becomes apparent. this is most easily made out in cases where the element is isolated, as in figures and ; but there seems to be little doubt that it disappears before the metaphase of the second maturation mitosis. it is not possible to count the chromosomes in this stage, they are so crowded together, but it is not probable that such a conspicuous chromatin element as that seen in the first division could escape detection, even if it were in the equatorial plate among the chromosomes. no aberrant element is ever seen in these spindles; and, moreover, all of the spindles and all of the spermatids appear to be exactly alike at the same stage. the chromosomes are double in the prophase (fig. ) and always appear double in the equatorial plate (fig. ), the paired elements corresponding to those of figure . in figure , plate iii, a pair of spermatids is shown with nuclear membrane formed and the spindle fibers twisted in a characteristic manner. figure is a slightly later stage with the spindle-remains massed against the nuclear membrane. curiously enough there appears in the nucleus of every spermatid a body similar to the element _x_ of the spermatocytes of the first order (figs. - ). this body is often applied to the nuclear membrane and connected with the spireme (figs. - ). it decreases in size and finally disappears (figs. - ). the spindle-remains divides (fig. ), and a small part of it (_a_) goes to form the acrosome at the apex of the head (figs. - ). the larger part is probably utilized in the formation of the tail, for it gradually disappears as the tail develops. the centrosome which, although small, is conspicuous in each mitosis, is seen in figure between the two parts of the spindle-remains, applied to the outside of the nuclear membrane. in figures , , and the relation of the tail (or its axial fiber) to the centrosome is shown. in figures and , instead of the small spherical centrosome of figures to , we have a much elongated body, at first (fig. ) applied for its whole length to the nuclear membrane, but later lying along one side of a middle piece (_m_), as shown in figure , and in a later stage in figures to . the mature spermatozoön with its forked anterior end appears in figure . the points of especial interest in the spermatogenesis of _stenopelmatus_ are the development of the aberrant chromatin element _x_ during the growth stage of the spermatocyte of the first order, its distribution to one-half of the spermatocytes of the first order, its disappearance during the rest stage between the two maturation divisions, and the development of a similar, though smaller, element in all of the spermatocytes. blattella germanica. unlike the spermatogonia of _stenopelmatus_, those of _blattella_ have both a faintly-staining nucleolus and a deeply-staining chromatin element (_x_), and moreover the two are always closely associated (figs. , ). the number of chromatin elements in the equatorial plate of late spermatogonial mitoses is (fig. ). later events indicate that one of the is the element _x_, but it is impossible to distinguish it here. figure is a very early stage of the spermatocyte of the first order, showing the element _x_ as a u-shaped body. the centrosome was also conspicuous in all of the cells of this group. the spireme here, as also in figure , is fine and closely interwound. in figure and again in figure the element _x_ is joined to the spireme as it is throughout the spireme stage. in the "bouquet" or "polarized" stage the combined nucleolus and element _x_ are always at one side of the group of loops and down very close to the base of the figure (figs. , ). in figure most of the loops are cut across. the stage shown in figures and is a later one than that just described. here we have again a continuous spireme connected with the element _x_, making it seem improbable that the bivalent chromosomes are really separated in the bouquet stage. figure gives some of the variations in form of the combined nucleolus and element _x_. the last of the five figures was taken from a giant cell containing at least twice the usual amount of chromatin. in one giant cell four unusually large combinations of this kind were found, and a corresponding amount of chromatin in the spireme. in figure one sees the spireme divided into segments still joined by linin bridges. in figure similar segments may be seen, one of them showing a longitudinal split. the element _x_ is present, but the nucleolus has disappeared. in many cases the split, if it appears at all, closes quickly and the chromosome bends in u-shape, as in figure , plate iv. this figure also shows two centrosomes (_c_). in other cases the split persists as in figure and leads to the formation of crosses of a tetrad character (figs. , , ), as in _stenopelmatus_ and many other insects. figures to show later stages of the u-shaped chromosomes. perfect rings are rare. all sorts of variations are seen, broad and narrow u-shapes, rings split at one point or the opposite points, a u split at the bottom (fig. ), pairs of parallel rods (fig. ), and occasionally rods constricted in the middle and showing a longitudinal split in each half, as in figure . figure shows different views of the split rings. apparently all of these forms straighten out so that the two components of the bivalent chromosome stand end to end as dumbbells or compressed crosses in the metaphase of the first maturation spindle (figs. - ). the element _x_ remains concentrated and more or less spherical in form. figures - are equatorial plates, with _x_ absent in figure , in the same plane as the other chromosomes in figure , far to one side in figure , and near one pole of the forming spindle in figure . it is also shown in various positions with regard to the spindle in figures to and to . in figure it is apparently double, and again in figure . in figure one lagging chromosome shows the dyad nature of the products of the division of the tetrad. in this form there can be no doubt that reduction occurs in the first spermatocyte division. the element _x_ is very often concealed by the polar aggregation of chromatin, but it is sometimes as conspicuous as in figures and . the spermatocytes of the second order go into a complete resting stage before they are completely separated, and one of a pair shows the element _x_, while it is lacking in the other (fig. ). at the close of the resting stage the chromosomes appear as pairs of rods of considerable length, which gradually shorten and thicken and usually bend at the center, forming u's or v's (figs. - ). in one stage these double u's look much like tetrads (fig. ). the rods straighten again as they shorten still more (fig. ), become more closely approximated, and finally form dumbbells, as in figure . the element _x_ is, of course, present in only one-half of these nuclei. in the equatorial plate, figure , it is absent; in figure it is present, but can not be distinguished from the other chromosomes, while in figure it is rendered conspicuous by its spherical form and isolated position. in only a few cases has it been possible to distinguish _x_ in the spindle. figures and show two of these cases where this element is clearly double and of different form from the other chromosomes. it is probable that it divides and so goes into one-half of all of the spermatids, as in mcclung's typical cases of the accessory chromosome. figure shows the usual appearance of the other chromosomes in metaphase. the two spermatids of a pair are always alike so far as any evidence of the presence of the element _x_ is concerned (fig. ). figure is an exceptional case, where one chromatin element (possibly _x_) has evidently divided late and been left out in the cytoplasm; a smaller chromatin granule is also present in the cytoplasm of each spermatid. all of the spermatids, as in _stenopelmatus_, develop a deeply-staining body, which, however, in this case is usually centrally located and often appears double (figs. - ). the spindle-remains (_spindelreste_) forms a very conspicuous body at one side of the nucleus in the spermatids, and occasionally a mass of chromatin, probably due to imperfect mitosis, is found near the spindle-substance (fig. ). the mass of spindle-substance at first appears structureless, but soon assumes the condition shown in figures to . in one individual many of the spermatids had two balls of spindle-material (fig. ), and the resulting later stages were double-tailed (fig. ). figure shows how the spindle-substance goes into the tail and gradually disappears as the tail lengthens. the centrosome is evidently applied to the nuclear membrane, as in _stenopelmatus_, and the middle-piece is developed in connection with it, as in figures - , - , - . the element _x_ of the spermatids gradually disappears (figs. , ). an acrosome develops at the anterior end, the head condenses and lengthens, and we have the ripe spermatozoön (fig. ). the tail is very long and is shown only in part. of the forms studied, _blattella_ alone has many degenerate spermatozoa. some follicles have none, others a number varying perhaps from one-fourth to three-fourths of the whole number. no evidence of degeneracy was detected among the young spermatids up to the stage shown in figures - , where a few like figure were found. most of the degenerate forms occur among the nearly ripe spermatozoa or in the sperm-ducts. such are shown in figures to . the chromatin is strangely broken up into irregular clumps, and probably no two of these degenerate sperm-heads can be found which are alike. the tails are always imperfect. the distribution and varying numbers of these degenerate spermatozoa make it impossible to interpret their condition as due to the absence of the accessory chromosome, as miss wallace does in the spider. the only probable explanation, it seems to me, is imperfect mitosis. cases where more or less chromatin is left behind in the cytoplasm, especially in the first spermatocyte mitosis, are very common, and such cases as those shown in figures and are not rare. the giant cells, so far as i have been able to trace them, do not develop into spermatozoa. the most important points are: ( ) the presence of the element _x_ in the spermatogonia, closely associated with the nucleolus. ( ) the uneven number of chromatin elements in the metaphase of spermatogonial divisions. ( ) the connection of the element _x_ with the spireme up to the stage where the spireme segments to form the bivalent chromosomes. ( ) the varied character of the tetrads, showing the first spermatocyte division to be a reducing division in the sense that it separates whole chromosomes. ( ) the fact that the element _x_ fails to divide in the first maturation division, does divide in the second, but can not be traced beyond the equatorial plate of the latter mitosis. ( ) the similarity of all the normal spermatids, though one-half of them must contain the element _x_, the other half not. ( ) the varying and often large number of degenerate spermatozoa. an attempt was made to determine the somatic number of chromosomes. the dividing cells of the follicles of young eggs seemed to afford the most favorable material, but even here there was so much overlapping of the ends of the chromosomes that it was impossible to be absolutely certain of the number. in the two most favorable cases were counted (fig. ). this differs from mcclung's count for similar cases among the orthoptera, and sutton's for _brachystola magna_. the eggs have so far resisted all efforts to learn what part the odd chromosome may play in fertilization. tenebrio molitor. in the metaphase of all spermatogonial mitoses where it was possible to count accurately, chromosomes were found, large ones of approximately equal size, and small spherical one (figs. , ). there is nothing in the resting nucleus of the spermatogonia which would suggest either a nucleolus or an accessory chromosome. the chromatin stains well during the whole growth period of the spermatocytes, but it is impossible to separate the period into so definite stages as in most other forms. in the youngest spermatocytes one finds occasionally a cyst containing cells with nuclei like those of figures and , indicating that a brief "synapsis" or condensation stage occurs at the close of the last spermatogonial mitosis. during the greater part of the period the chromatin forms a heavy, irregular, and often segmented spireme (figs. , ). shortly before the first maturation division, such split segments as appear in figure are sometimes found; some of these simulate tetrads with slender connecting bands between the paired elements. again, one finds a few cases like figure , where the spireme is segmented into bivalent chromosomes, each component showing a longitudinal split. this figure also shows the small chromosome. usually, however, the irregular and much tangled spireme (figs. , ) condenses into a heavy segmented band variously disposed in the nucleus (fig. ). this band soon separates into the bivalent chromosomes shown in figures and , giving symmetrical pairs and unsymmetrical one (fig. _s_) composed of the small chromosome and a much larger mate. in the prophase of the spindle, in rare cases, some of the chromosomes are longitudinally split and transversely constricted, forming tetrads (fig. ), but more often they appear as in figure . the unequal pair appears in each figure at _s_. in the metaphase (fig. ) it is the last to come into the equatorial plate, possibly because of its lack of symmetry. the smaller component of this pair is always directed toward the equator of the spindle. figure shows a small tangential section of a spindle in metaphase, containing the unequal pair and one equal pair. in figure a polar view of a metaphase is shown, the unequal pair, which was somewhat below the others, being indicated by stippling. figures _a_ and show that the unequal components of the unsymmetrical pair, as well as the equal components of the symmetrical pairs, are separated in metakinesis, making this clearly a reduction division. two polar plates are shown in figures and , one containing equal elements, the other equal ones and small one. the telophase is shown in figure . there is no resting stage, but the new spindle is formed from the remains of the old one, and the spindle-shaped mass of chromatin seen in figure either passes into the center of the new spindle or becomes enveloped by it. the double chromosomes separate as in figures and . figure shows the small dyad, and figure an aberrant one which may be its mate. the spindle in both divisions is peculiar in having outside of the spindle proper a dense mass of fibers which, in osmic material, stain deeply with iron hæmatoxylin. these fibers are shown in all the figures from to . figures and are equatorial plates of the two kinds of spermatocytes of the second order, figure showing the small chromosome. an early anaphase appears in figures and , which show both the small and larger chromosomes in metakinesis. figure is a later anaphase containing the divided small chromosome. in figure are shown the two polar plates of a spindle corresponding to that of figure , and in figure the polar plates of a spindle in which equal chromosomes have been divided. in _tenebrio molitor_ the spermatids are therefore certainly of two distinct kinds, so far as the chromatin content is concerned. in most of the young spermatids, after the nuclear membrane has formed, there appears an isolated chromatin element, which corresponds fairly well to the large or to the small component of the unsymmetrical pair, separated in the first mitosis and divided in the second. the clear portion of the nucleus containing this isolated element is at first turned toward the spindle-remains (fig. ), but before the tail appears either the whole nucleus or its contents have rotated ° (fig. ). various stages in the development of the spermatid are seen in figures to . the clear region and the isolated element finally disappear (fig. _b_), and the chromatin breaks up into coarser and then into finer granules within the sperm-head. in the later stages the centrosome is clearly seen at the base of the head (fig. ). in order to determine, if possible, the value of the unsymmetrical pair of chromatin elements, very young ovaries and ovaries with egg-tubes were sectioned and the chromosomes counted in the dividing cells of the egg-follicle (female somatic cells), and in dividing oögonia. in both cases large chromosomes were found. figure is the equatorial plate from a female somatic cell of a young egg-follicle. figure _a_ and _b_ shows two sections of an oögonium in the prophase of mitosis. in order to determine the number and character of the chromosomes in the male somatic cells, several male pupæ were sectioned. as in the spermatogonia, large chromosomes and small one were found. figure shows the equatorial plate of a dividing male somatic cell, and figures to are daughter plates from a similar cell. (three large chromosomes of the plate shown in figure are in another section.) from these facts it appears that the egg-pronucleus must in all cases contain large chromosomes, while the spermatozoön in fertilization brings into the egg either large ones or large ones and small one. since the somatic cells of the female contain large chromosomes, while those of the male contain large ones and small one, this seems to be a clear case of sex-determination, not by an accessory chromosome, but by a definite difference in the character of the elements of one pair of chromosomes of the spermatocytes of the first order, the spermatozoa which contain the small chromosome determining the male sex, while those that contain chromosomes of equal size determine the female sex. this result suggests that there may be in many cases some intrinsic difference affecting sex, in the character of the chromatin of one-half of the spermatozoa, though it may not usually be indicated by such an external difference in form or size of the chromosomes as in _tenebrio_. it is important that related forms should be studied in order to ascertain whether the same chromatic conditions prevail in other species of this genus or possibly in the coleoptera in general.[a] [footnote a: prof. e. b. wilson has recently found a similar dimorphism in the spermatozoa of _lygæus_ and other of the _hemiptera heteroptera_.] aphis oenotherae. the spermatogenesis of _aphis_ has been fully described in another paper and will merely be briefly summarized here for the purpose of comparison with other forms. the spermatogonia contain a large nucleolus, which gradually disappears in the prophases of mitosis (plate vii, figs. - ). the youngest spermatocytes closely resemble the spermatogonia (fig. ). there is no bouquet stage and no such marked spireme stage as in many other insects. the true synapsis occurs, as shown in figure , by pairing of like chromosomes side by side. this conjugation of like chromosomes is followed by a stage in which they are massed together at one side of the nucleus (fig. ). in these latter stages the nucleolus has entirely faded out and nothing suggesting an accessory chromosome is present. figures and are equatorial plates of the first spermatocyte mitosis. there are chromosomes of different sizes and shapes, and figure shows each one double. the first division of the chromosomes, though apparently longitudinal, is evidently a separation of the elements paired in a preceding stage, and is therefore a reducing division. the anaphase of the same mitosis is shown in figures and ; it is peculiar in that one chromosome always divides more slowly than the others, the two elements hanging together at one end. in figure are sister spermatocytes of the second order, the "lagging" chromosomes still connected. the second maturation division is seen in metaphase in figure and in anaphase in figure . figure shows a young spermatid, the five chromosomes still preserving their characteristic form. figure is the equatorial plate of the first maturation division of the winter egg, showing the same form and size relations of the chromosomes as in the spermatocyte divisions. figures and are equatorial plates of a polar spindle (fig. ) and of a segmentation spindle (fig. ) of the parthenogenetic egg, where chromosomes are present, of each of the sizes found in the sexual germ cells. so far as an accessory chromosome or any other visible evidence of a sex determinant are concerned, the results are entirely negative. the conditions shown do, however, support mendel's conception of the "purity of the germ-cells," and also afford evidence in favor of boveri's theory of the individuality of the chromosomes. sagitta bipunctata. in connection with these insect forms it is of interest to find in the spermatogenesis of _sagitta_ a body which stains like chromatin and behaves somewhat like the accessory chromosome. it is found in all resting stages of the spermatogonia, closely applied to the nuclear membrane (fig. ). it divides before each spermatogonial mitosis (fig. ) and, though not often discernible in the spindle, appears in the next generation. figure is the last spermatogonial mitosis, and figure shows the element _x_, and the chromosomes paired at one pole of the spindle. during the various phases of the growth stage (figs. - ) the element _x_ is again applied to the nuclear membrane. in the prophase of the first maturation division this element divides (figs. - ), and in metakinesis the two elements are found in various positions with regard to the spindle (figs. - ), often as conspicuous as in these figures, but sometimes concealed among the chromosomes. before the spindle for the second division forms, this element divides again and one of the products goes into each spermatid (figs. - ). as _sagitta_ is hermaphrodite, there would appear to be no question of sex determination by any special chromatic element. the size of the element _x_, its evident chromatic nature, its division before each mitosis, and its presence in mitosis and in the spermatids, with the same staining qualities as in the previous rest stages, certainly indicate some important function, either in the whole process of spermatogenesis or in the formation of the sperm-head, of which it finally becomes a part. in _sagitta_ this element certainly can not be regarded as a specialized spermatogonial chromosome, or as chromatin rejected from the spireme. no such element is present in the ovogenesis of _sagitta_ (stevens, ' ), nor has any been detected in connection with fertilization. it is certain that none is present in the first segmentation spindle of the egg. general discussion. the "accessory chromosome." the literature bearing on the "accessory chromosome" of mcclung, the "small chromosomes" of paulmier, and the "chromatin nucleoli" of montgomery has been fully discussed by mcclung in the paper entitled, "the accessory chromosome--sex determinant?" (' ), and will therefore be considered here only in its relation to the several forms studied. the present status of the question has been well summarized more recently by montgomery under the heading "heterochromosomes" in the paper, "some observations and considerations upon the maturation phenomena of the germ cells." three theories as to the function of the "heterochromosomes" have been advanced: ( ) that of mcclung that they are sex-determinants, since in the forms which he has examined these chromatin bodies occur in only one-half of the spermatozoa, and the sex-character is the only character which divides the individuals of a species into two approximately equal groups. ( ) that of paulmier and montgomery that they are degenerating chromatin. montgomery regards them as "chromosomes that are in the process of disappearance in the evolution of a higher to a lower chromosome number." ( ) that of miss wallace, who suggests that in the spider only the one out of each four spermatids which contains the accessory chromosome is capable of developing into a functional spermatozoön, while the other three degenerate, as do the polar bodies given off by the egg. mcclung is inclined to believe that the accessory chromosome is an element common to all of the male reproductive cells of arthropods, and probably to vertebrate spermatocytes as well (' ). of the insects considered in this paper _aphis_ and _termopsis_ have no "accessory chromosome" or "heterochromosome" of any kind. the fact that no males develop from the fertilized eggs of _aphis_ might be offered as a reason for its absence, but such an argument would not apply to _termopsis_. the sex-character may indeed be represented in the chromatin of some one of the pairs of paternal and maternal chromosomes of the spermatocytes, but there is no evident peculiarity by which one-half of the spermatozoa can be said to be different from the other half. as to mcclung's statement (' ) "that if there is a cross-division of the chromosomes in the maturation mitosis, there must be two kinds of spermatozoa, regardless of the presence of the accessory chromosome," it appears to me that in a case like the aphid, where the paired elements of the five bivalent chromosomes are separated in the first maturation mitosis, there may be as many as seventeen kinds of spermatozoa instead of two. if, however, we suppose that the sex characters are segregated in the first maturation mitosis, there would, of course, be two equal classes of spermatozoa with reference to that character. in _stenopelmatus_ the element _x_ in certain stages closely resembles the "accessory chromosome" of mcclung, and especially that described by baumgartner for _gryllus domesticus_, but its origin and fate are different. it first appears attached to an end of the spireme in the growth stage of the young spermatocytes, where it is much smaller than in later growth stages. it gradually increases in size, is a conspicuous element in the first maturation spindle, goes into one of each pair of spermatocytes of the second order, and there degenerates during the rest stage between the two maturation mitoses. the whole history of this element suggests that it may be rejected chromatin analogous to that observed in the ovogenesis of many forms. in _sagitta_, for example, a considerable quantity of chromatin granules is given off by the chromosomes and cast out into the cytoplasm near the close of ovogenesis (stevens, ' ). rückert (' ) has described a similar casting out of chromatin material by the chromosomes of the oöcytes of _pristiurus_. the spermatogenesis of _stenopelmatus_, therefore, differs from that of the other orthoptera which have been described in having ( ) a larger number of chromosomes ( ), ( ) an even number in the spermatogonia, ( ) an accessory chromatin structure in the spermatocytes of the first order, which disappears before the second maturation division. in _blattella_ we have a typical "accessory chromosome," according to mcclung. it appears ( ) in all resting spermatogonia closely associated with a nucleolus, ( ) in the spermatogonial mitoses as an odd chromatin element, making in all, ( ) in the growth stage of the spermatocytes connected with an end of the spireme and also with the nucleolus. it becomes separated from the other chromatin in the tetrad-stage, remains nucleolus-like in form, and later appears in the first maturation division either among the chromosomes or in a more or less aberrant position. it passes into one of each pair of spermatocytes of the second order, persists during the rest stage, appears in the second mitosis as a dyad and then divides, going into one-half of the spermatids. the spermatids, however, as in _stenopelmatus_, all have the same appearance: each has in the center--not against the nuclear membrane--a small element that stains like chromatin. occasionally a mass of chromatin is found outside the nucleus, but this is not constant enough to support the contention of moore and robinson (' ) that the "nucleolus" of the related form, _periplaneta americana_, is fragmented and cast out into the cytoplasm. the spermatids all appear to develop equally well for some time, but as they approach maturity a varying proportion of them become degenerate. this can not, however, be due to absence of the accessory chromosome, as miss wallace supposes, in the spider; for in some follicles no degenerate spermatozoa are found, and in others more than half may be degenerate. all attempts to study fertilization stages of the egg have so far failed, and the chromosomes in the female somatic cells have not proved favorable for counting. twenty-three have been counted in several cases, but there was always some chance of error. if is the somatic number in both sexes, it must be maintained by union of sex-cells containing and chromosomes, respectively, the same unequal number occurring in the maturated eggs as in the sperm. under such conditions it is difficult to see how the odd chromatin element of the spermatozoa can determine sex. the brief description of the chromatin element _x_ in _sagitta_, introduced here because it behaves like the accessory chromosome in many particulars, serves as an example of the occurrence of such an element in the spermatogenesis of a hermaphrodite form, where it can not possibly be conceived of as a sex determinant. in _sagitta_ it is known to be confined to the male germ-cells. no such element occurs in the ovogenesis, in the sperm nucleus in the egg, or in the first segmentation spindle. its function must, therefore, be confined to the process of spermatogenesis. from the standpoint of sex determination, we have in _tenebrio molitor_ the most interesting of the forms considered in this paper. in both somatic and germ cells of the two sexes there is a difference not in the number of chromatin elements, but in the size of one, which is very small in the male and of the same size as the other in the female. the egg nuclei of the female must be alike so far as number and size of chromosomes are concerned, while it is absolutely certain that the spermatids are of two equal classes as to chromatin content of the nucleus--one-half of them have large chromosomes and small one, while the other half have large ones. since the male somatic cells have large and small chromosome, while the female somatic cells have large ones, it seems certain that an egg fertilized by a spermatozoön which contains the small chromosome must produce a male, while one fertilized by a spermatozoön containing chromosomes of equal size must produce a female. the small chromosome itself may not be a sex determinant, but the conditions in _tenebrio_ indicate that sex may in some cases be determined by a difference in the amount or quality of the chromatin in different spermatozoa. this is much the most suggestive part of the work, and it will be followed up by the study of related forms. there appears to be so little uniformity as to the presence of the heterochromosomes, even in insects, and in their behavior when present, that further discussion of their probable function must be deferred until the spermatogenesis of many more forms has been carefully worked out. bryn mawr college, _may , _. bibliography. baumgartner, w. j. ' . some new evidences for the individuality of the chromosomes. biol. bull., vol. , no. . mcclung, c. e. ' . a peculiar nuclear element in the male reproductive cells of insects. zool. bull., vol. . ' . the spermatocyte divisions of the acrididæ. kans. univ. quart., vol. , no. . ' . notes on the accessory chromosomes. anat. anz., bd. , nos. and . ' . the accessory chromosome--sex determinant? biol. bull., vol. , nos. and . ' _a_. the spermatocyte divisions of the locustidæ. kans. univ. quart., vol. , no. . montgomery, thos. h., jr. ' . a study of the chromosomes of the germ-cells of metazoa. trans. amer. phil. soc., vol. . ' _a_. further studies on the chromosomes of the _hemiptera heteroptera_. proc. acad. nat. sci. phila. . ' . some observations and considerations upon the maturation phenomena of the germ-cells. biol. bull., vol. , no. . moore, j. e. s., and robinson, l. e. ' . on the behavior of the nucleolus in the spermatogenesis of _periplaneta americana_. quart. jour. of mikr. sci., n. s., no. (vol. , part ). paulmier, f. c. ' . chromatin reduction in the hemiptera. anat. anz., vol. . ' . the spermatogenesis of _anasa tristis_. journ. of morph., vol. . rÜckert, j. ' . zur entwickelungsgeschichte des ovarialeies bei selachiern. anat. anz., vol. , no. and . de sinÉty, r. ' . recherches sur la biologie et l'anatomie des phasms. la cellule, vol. . stevens, n. m. ' . on the ovogenesis and spermatogenesis of _sagitta bipunctata_. zool. jahrb., vol. . sutton, w. s. ' . on the morphology of the chromosome group in _brachystola magna_. biol. bull., vol. , no. . ' . the chromosomes in heredity. biol. bull., vol. , no. . wallace, l. b. ' . the accessory chromosome in the spider. anat. anz., vol. . ' . the spermatogenesis of the spider. biol. bull., vol. , no. . wilcox, e. v. ' . spermatogenesis of _caloptenus femur-rubrum_ and _cicada tibicen_. bull. mus. comp. zool. harvard univ., vol. . ' . further studies on the spermatogenesis of _caloptenus femur-rubrum_. bull. mus. comp. zool. harvard univ., vol. . ' . chromatic tetrads. anat. anz., vol. . ' . longitudinal and transverse division of chromosomes. anat. anz., vol. , no. . description of plates. [the figures of plates i-vi were all drawn with zeiss oil-immersion mm., oc. , and have been reduced one-third; those of plate vii with oc. , not reduced.] plate i. _termopsis angusticollis._ figs. - . resting nuclei of spermatogonia, showing division of nucleolus. . equatorial plate of spermatogonial mitosis, chromosomes. - . young spermatocytes, showing division of nucleolus. . first maturation spindle, and two nuclei ( and ) in same cyst. - . skein-stage--so-called synapsis-stage. - . bouquet-stage, showing two nucleoli, centrosome (_c_) in fig. , and loops made up of fine, then coarser granules. - . stage following preceding; loops straightened out and extending in various directions through nucleus. . _a_, chromosomes much shortened and longitudinally split; _b_, chromosomes contracted to form diamond-shaped figures. . stage between _a_ and _b_. . stage between and _b_. . stage similar to _a_, one chromosome in double diamond form. . first maturation spindle in metaphase, chromosomes in single and double diamond shapes. . chromosome in single diamond or tetrad form, as they usually come into the spindle. . double diamond-form assumed before metakinesis. . the chromosomes of an early metaphase. . first maturation spindle in metakinesis. . equatorial plate of first maturation spindle in metakinesis. . another spindle, showing three granules which are probably remains of nucleoli. . anaphase of first maturation mitosis, one centrosome divided. . late anaphase. - . telophase, exceptional cases of division of the cell. - . partial rest stage between first and second maturation divisions, two nucleoli present. chromosomes in fig. in form of double diamonds ready for metakinesis. - . second maturation spindle in metaphase. . equatorial plate of second maturation spindle, chromosomes. . same in anaphase. . four spermatid nuclei in one cell, each nucleus containing one nucleolus. . a later stage, showing elongation of nuclei, centrosome and sphere at posterior end. - . later stages in the development of the spermatozoa, nucleolus grows gradually smaller. [illustration: stevens. plate i. n. m. s. del. termopsis angusticollis.] plate ii. _stenopelmatus._ figs. - . nuclei of spermatogonia, showing and nucleoli (_n_). - . prophase of spermatogonial mitosis, showing two exceptionally large chromosomes of equal length. . equatorial plate of spermatogonial mitosis, chromosomes. - . spermatocytes in spireme stage, nucleus containing a nucleolus (_n_), and a chromatin element (_x_), which is attached to one end of spireme and gradually increases in size during growth stage of spermatocytes. . spireme longitudinally split and showing the beginning of cross formation. . spireme segmented, tetrads forming. . one split segment and a part of another connected by bands of linin. . more open cross and diamond forms; element _x_ conspicuous. - . more contracted cross and diamond-shaped tetrads; linin bands shown in , where element _x_ is also present. . different forms assumed by element _x_ during tetrad stage (figs. - ). - . diamond-shaped and contracted cross-shaped tetrads from metaphase of first maturation mitosis, showing linin connections. . diamond-shaped tetrad with spindle-fibers attached; _a-a_, probably halves of one univalent chromosome; _b-b_, halves of the other. . dyad from anaphase of first maturation mitosis. - . metaphase of first maturation spindle, showing element _x_ in different positions. . late anaphase of same. - . equatorial plate of first maturation spindle, chromosomes and element _x_ below, in fig. . . chromatin massed at poles of spindle; element _x_ isolated at one pole. - . two resting spermatocytes of the second order, one containing element _x_, the other not. - . successive stages of breaking down of element _x_. . prophase of second division; dyads evident, but no sign of _x_ in this or following stages. . second spermatocyte division--metakinesis. . same; late anaphase. [illustration: stevens. plate ii. n. m. s. del. stenopelmatus.] plate iii. _stenopelmatus._ fig. . telophase of second maturation mitosis. . young spermatid, showing spindle-remains at _s_. . spermatid showing a conspicuous chromatin element in nucleus, and spindle-remains (_s_) elongated. . spermatid, showing centrosome (_c_) and divided spindle-remains (_s_ and _a_). . older spermatid, showing centrosome (_c_), axial fiber of tail, and spindle-remains (_s_). . spermatid, showing acrosome material (_a_) migrating to side of nucleus opposite centrosome. . slightly older spermatid. . later stage of spermatid, showing condensed chromatin, elongated centrosome (_c_), acrosome material (_a_), and spindle-remains (_s_). - . older spermatids, showing formation of acrosome (_a_) and middle piece (_m_). - . more advanced stages. . mature spermatozoön. _blattella germanica._ fig. . somatic cell from egg follicle, chromosomes. . spermatogonium, showing chromatin element (_x_) associated with a nucleolus (_n_). . same, prophase of mitosis. . equatorial plate of spermatogonial mitosis, chromatin elements. . young spermatocyte, showing centrosome (_c_) and u-shaped element (_x_). . young spermatocyte, element _x_ attached to one end of a long, fine spireme. . coarser spireme stage. - . bouquet stage. - . later spireme stage. . various forms assumed by the combined nucleolus and element _x_; last figure from a giant cell. . segmenting spireme. . similar stage to fig. , one chromosome longitudinally split; element _x_ present. [illustration: stevens. plate iii. n. m. s. del.] plate iv. _blattella germanica._ fig. . similar stage to figs. and ; chromosomes u-shaped and not longitudinally split; two centrosomes present (_c_). . longitudinally split chromosomes. - . various stages in formation of cross-shaped tetrads. - . bent rods, u-shapes, split rings, pairs of rods, and rod-shaped tetrads ( ), which are equivalent to the crosses of figs. - . - . metaphase of first maturation division, showing the element _x_ in various positions. - . first maturation spindle in metaphase. . same in anaphase. - . late anaphase, showing element _x_ double in , and a lagging tetrad in . . telophase, with the element _x_ in one daughter cell. - . prophase of second maturation mitosis, showing dyads and element _x_. [illustration: stevens. plate iv. n. m. s. del. blattella germanica.] plate v. _blattella germanica._ figs. - . dyads contracting for second maturation mitosis. . equatorial plate of second maturation spindle, containing chromosomes. - . same, with chromosomes and the element _x_. - . sections of second maturation spindles; element _x_ dividing in and . . telophase of second mitosis. . telophase of second mitosis, showing masses of chromatin left behind in cytoplasm. . spermatid with extranuclear chromatin (_a_). . similar stage; different view of spindle-remains (_s_) and of chromatin element (_x_{ }_). - . spermatid with divided spindle-substance and the corresponding double-tailed form. - . stages between and . - . older spermatids than , showing spindle-remains (_s_) and centrosome (_c_). - . later stages in development of sperm-head. . ripe spermatozoön. - . degenerate spermatids and spermatozoa. [illustration: stevens. plate v. n. m. s. del. blattella germanica.] plate vi. _tenebrio molitor._ figs. - . equatorial plates of spermatogonial mitosis, showing large and small chromosome. - . condensation stage, bouquet stage, spireme stage, and rather rare tetrad stage of young spermatocyte. . bivalent chromosomes, with longitudinal split; small chromosome shown at _s_. . bivalent chromosomes condensed into a close spireme. - . bivalent chromosomes separating for mitosis. the unsymmetrical pair shown in fig. . . prophase of first maturation mitosis, showing the unsymmetrical pair and the tetrad nature of the symmetrical pairs. . prophase of same mitosis, showing symmetrical and unsymmetrical pairs, as in figs. and . . metaphase, unsymmetrical pair out of the equatorial plane. . tangential section of a spindle in metaphase, showing the unsymmetrical pair and one symmetrical pair. . equatorial plate of same mitosis, chromosomes. _a_. early anaphase, showing separation of the elements of the unsymmetrical pair. . later anaphase. . polar plate, showing large and small chromosome. . polar plate, showing large chromosomes. . condensation stage between the two maturation divisions. - . prophase of second maturation division, fig. showing equal dyads, and fig. , showing equal and small dyad. . equatorial plate, showing small chromosome and large ones. . equatorial plate, showing large chromosomes. - . tangential sections of spindle in metakinesis. . anaphase of same mitosis. . polar plates of a spindle, showing in each small chromosome and large ones. . polar plates of another spindle, large chromosomes in each. . young spermatid, showing isolated small chromosome. . young spermatid, showing isolated large chromosome and rotation of nuclear contents. - _a_, _b._ older spermatids. . sperm-heads, showing centrosome and granular chromatin. . equatorial plate from dividing somatic cell of male pupa, showing large and small chromosome. - . daughter plates of a similar spindle, showing small chromosome in each; three of the large chromosomes missing in . . equatorial plate of a dividing cell of follicle of a young egg, showing large chromosomes. . prophase of mitosis in a young oögonium, showing large chromosomes in two sections, _a_ and _b_. [illustration: stevens. plate vi. n. m. s. del. tenebrio molitor.] plate vii. _aphis oenotherae._ fig. . spermatogonium. - . spermatogonia in prophase of mitosis. . young spermatocyte of first order. . spermatocytes of first order; conjugation of the chromosomes. . condensation of chromatin--spermatocytes of first order immediately before mitosis. . equatorial plate of first maturation division. . same, side view, showing chromosomes double. - . anaphase of same mitosis. . daughter spermatocytes of second order. . equatorial plate of second maturation mitosis. . anaphase of same. . young spermatid. . equatorial plate of first polar spindle of winter egg. . equatorial plate of polar spindle of parthenogenetic egg. . equatorial plate of segmentation spindle of parthenogenetic egg. _sagitta bipunctata._ fig. . resting spermatogonia. . prophase of spermatogonial mitosis. . last spermatogonial mitosis, metakinesis. . anaphase of same, showing synapsis of chromosomes at pole of spindle, and element _x_. . resting spermatocyte of first order. . bouquet stage. . later growth stage. . prophase of first maturation mitosis, some of the chromosomes split longitudinally. . later stage, chromosomes condensing and element _x_ dividing. - . first maturation mitosis. . division of element _x_ between the two maturation divisions. . second maturation mitosis. . anaphase of same, showing the element _x_ more deeply stained than the chromosomes. . young spermatids; element _x_ still conspicuous. [illustration: stevens. plate vii. n. m. s. del aphis oenothera--sagitta bipunctata.] the evolution of love by emil lucka translated by ellie schleussner [illustration: publisher's logo] london: george allen & unwin ltd. ruskin house, museum street, w.c. _first published in great britain _ (_all rights reserved_) _printed in great britain by_ unwin brothers, limited, the gresham press, london and woking preface the object of this book, which is addressed to all cultured men and women, is to set forth the primitive manifestations of love and to throw light on those strange emotional climaxes which i have called "metaphysical eroticism." i have taken no account of historical detail, except where it served the purpose of proving, explaining and illustrating my subject. nor have i hesitated to intermingle psychological motives and motives arising from the growth and spread of civilisation. the inevitable result of a one-sided glimpse at historical facts would have been a history of love, an undertaking for which i lack both ability and inclination. on the other hand, had i written a merely psychological treatise, disregarding the succession of periods, i should have laid myself open to the just reproach of giving rein to my imagination instead of dealing with reality. i have availed myself of historical facts to demonstrate that what psychology has shown to be the necessary phases of the evolution of love, have actually existed in historical time and characterised a whole period of civilisation. the history of civilisation is an end in itself only in the chapter entitled "the birth of europe." my work is intended to be first and foremost a monograph on the emotional life of the human race. i am prepared to meet rather with rejection than with approval. neither the historian nor the psychologist will be pleased. moreover, i am well aware that my standpoint is hopelessly "old-fashioned." to-day nearly all the world is content to look upon the sexual impulse as the source of all erotic emotion and to regard love as nothing more nor less than its most exquisite radiation. my book, on the contrary, endeavours to establish its complete independence of sexuality. my contention that so powerful an emotion as love should have come into existence in historical, not very remote times, will seem very strange; for, all outward profession of faith in evolution notwithstanding, men are still inclined to take the unchangeableness of human nature for granted. the facts on which i have based my arguments are well known, but my deductions are new; it is not for me to decide whether they are right or wrong. in the first (introductory) part i have made use of works already in existence, in addition to plato and the poets, but the second and third parts are founded almost entirely on original research. e.l. contents page preface translator's introduction first stage: the sexual instinct second stage: love chapter i. the birth of europe ii. the deification of woman (first form of metaphysical eroticism):--(_a_) the love of the troubadours; (_b_) the queen of heaven; (_c_) dante and goethe; (_d_) michel angelo iii. perversions of metaphysical eroticism:-- (_a_) the brides of christ; (_b_) sexual mystics third stage: the blending of sexuality and love i. the longing for the synthesis ii. the love-death (second form of metaphysical eroticism) iii. the conflict between sexuality and love.--the seeker of love and the slave of love iv. the revenge of sexuality.--the demoniacal and the obscene conclusion: the psychogenetic law.--the individual as an epitome of the human race translator's introduction since the triumphant days of the mechanists some twenty-five years ago, the wedge of pragmatism--a useful tool to be used and discarded--has been driven between materialism and idealism, and it appears that the whole tendency of philosophy is now in the latter direction. even in england the influence of bergson has led modern thought away from the pure materialism of the monists, and it seems probable that benedetto croce's _philosophy of the spirit_ will carry the movement a step nearer towards the idealistic concept of reality. and among the latest signs of the new tendency must be counted the brilliant work of emil lucka, the young austrian "poet-philosopher," whose conception of the development of love must rank with the most daring speculations in recent psychology. in the great reaction of the last century, love, that most cogent motive of human thought and action, fell from its high estate and came to be regarded as an instinct not differing in any essential from hunger and thirst, and existing, like them, from the beginning, eternal and immutable, manifesting itself with equal force in the heart of man and woman, and impelling them towards each other. but emil lucka, in his remarkable new book, _the three stages of love_ (which was recently published in berlin, and has already created a sensation in literary circles abroad), leads us on to speculative heights from which we may look back upon the whole theory of evolution not as a bar but as a bridge. "my book is intended as a monograph of the emotional life of the human race," he says in the preface, and "i am prepared to meet with rejection rather than with approval." there has been abundance of criticism and controversy, but lucka has stated his case and drawn his conclusions with such admirable precision and logic, that his work has aroused admiration and appreciation even in the ranks of his opponents. love is a theme which at all times and in all countries has been of primary interest to men and women, and therefore this book, which throws an illuminating ray of light in many a dark place still wrapped in mystery and silence, not only impresses the psychologist, but also fascinates the general reader with its wealth of interesting detail and charm of expression. the three vitally important points which the author develops are as follows:-- love is not a primary instinct, but has been gradually evolved in historical time. ernst haeckel's biogenetic law is expanded in a psychogenetic law. only man's emotions have undergone evolution, and therefore have a history, while those of woman have experienced no change. lucka's book will probably not please the advanced feminists, but the delicate, although perhaps involuntary homage to her sex which is implied in his theories ought to rouse a feeling of gratification in the heart of every right-feeling woman. the very limitations and restrictions which he lays upon her raise and glorify her. for while man has been the "odysseus wandering through heaven and hell, passing from the bestial to the divine to return again and become human, woman has always been the same, unchangeable and without problems. that which he has set up to-day as his highest erotic ideal, the blending of sexual and spiritual love, has been her natural endowment from the beginning. never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she cannot err, for her instinct is nature herself, and she knows not the meaning of sin." schopenhauer's "instinct of philoprogenitiveness" has to-day become an article of faith with the learned and the unlearned. this _sub-conscious instinct for the service of the species_ which, in love, is supposed to rise to consciousness, and whose purpose is the will to produce the best possible offspring, is conceded by scientists who reject not only schopenhauer's metaphysic, but metaphysic in general. even nietzsche, that arch-individualist, has proved by many of his pronouncements, and most strikingly by his well-known definition of marriage, that he has not escaped its fascinations. "schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which are not in support of his myth," says lucka, who denies this instinct of philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." "the experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught us that children _may_, not necessarily _must_, be the result of the union of the sexes. into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in metaphysical love, the idea of propagation did not enter. moreover, the desire for children is frequently unaccompanied by any sexual desire, and therefore to manufacture an instinct of philoprogenitiveness is fantastic metaphysic, and is entirely opposed to intellectual reality. this was well understood in the long period of antiquity which strictly separated the sexual impulse and the desire for children." lucka distinguishes three great stages in the evolution of love. in vivid and fascinating pictures he unfolds the erotic life of our primitive ancestors, basing his statements on accepted authorities. the sexual impulse in those remote days, unconscious of its nature and far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other powerful instinct. every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who happened to desire her. as is still the case with the aborigines of central and northern australia, the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.[ ] the concept of _father_ had not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of government. in early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was systematised by religion in india and the countries round the mediterranean and survived in the temple prostitution and the mysteries. man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more than a life in harmony with her laws. the worship of fertility and the endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of adonis and astarte in the east, and dionysus and aphrodite in greece; unbridled licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses their sacrament. with the growth of civilisation and the development of personality there slowly crept into the minds of men a distaste for this irregular sexuality and a desire for a less chaotic state of things. this longing and the wish for legitimate heirs gradually overcame promiscuity and, in greece, led to the establishment of the monogamous system. it must not be assumed, however, that the greek ideal of marriage bore any resemblance to our modern conception. true, the wife occupied an honoured position as the guardian of hearth and children and was treated by her husband with affection and respect, but she was not free. nor was her husband expected to be faithful to her. marriage in no way restricted his liberty, but left him free to seek intellectual stimulation in the society of the hetaerae, and gratification of the senses in the company of his slaves. love in our sense was unknown to the ancients, and although there is a modern note in the legends of the faithful penelope, and the love which united orpheus and eurydice, yet, so lucka tells us, these instances should be regarded rather as poetic divinations of a future stage of feeling than actual facts then within the scope of probability. even plato, in whom all wisdom and ante-christian culture culminated, was still, in this respect, a citizen of the old world, for he, too, knew as yet nothing of the spiritual love of a man for a woman. to him the love of an individual was but a beginning, the road to the love of perfect beauty and the eternal ideas. on the threshold of the second stage of the erotic life stands christianity, which, in sharp contrast to antiquity and to the classical period, sought the centre and climax of life in the soul. the founder of the "religion of love" _discovered_ the individual, and by so doing laid the foundation for that metaphysical love which found its most striking expression in the deification of woman and the cult of the virgin mary. how this change of mental attitude was brought about is worked out in a brilliant chapter, entitled "the birth of europe." the revivifying influence of christ's preaching and personality was stifled after the first centuries by the rigid dogma and formalism which had altered his doctrine almost past recognition. the church was building up its political structure and tolerated no rival. art, literature, music, all the enthusiasm and profound thought of which the human mind is capable, were pressed into her service. independent thought was heresy, and the death of every heretic became a new fetter which bound the intellect of man. but about the year , when the mighty edifice was complete, and the pope and his bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the population of europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. it found expression in the ideal of chivalry, the holy sepulchre and the holy grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between the sexes, and transfigured it. woman, the despised, to whom at the council of macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, a goddess. the drudge, the patiently suffering wife, were things of the past. a new ideal had been set up and men worshipped it with bended knees. "she shines on us as god shines on his angels," sang guinicelli. it was in a small country in the south of france, in provence, that the new spirit was born. the troubadours, wandering from castle to castle, sang the praise of love, genuine love, the earlier ones without admixture either of speculation or metaphysic. the dogma that pure love was its own reward inasmuch as it made men perfect, was framed later on. "i cannot sin when i am in her mind," wrote guirot riquier, and dante, in the "vita nuova," calls his beloved mistress "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues." the monk matfre ermengau, who wrote a text-book on love, says: love makes good men better, and the worst man good. the later troubadours drew a much sharper distinction between spiritual and sensual love. the latter was regarded as degrading and base (at least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, another opinion. his reward was the contempt of every man and woman of culture. "i ask no more of my mistress than that she should suffer me to serve her," protested bernart de ventadour. it goes without saying that, in spite of this high ideal, sensuality flourished undiminished, and a troubadour who loudly sang the praise of chastity and blatantly professed his entire disinterestedness in the service of his mistress, did not see the least inconsequence in carrying on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. sordello, one of the best known poets of this period, was charged by a contemporary with having changed his mistress over a hundred times, and he himself, impudently bragging, proclaims that none can resist me; all the frowning husbands shall not prevent me to embrace their wives, if i so wish.... another poet, count rambaut iii., of orange, recommended to his fellow-men as the surest way of winning a woman's favour, "to break her nose with a blow of the fist." "i myself," he continued, "treat all women with tenderness and courtesy, but then--i am considered a fool." as may be expected, sublimated, metaphysical love was not without its caricatures and eccentricities. one of the most grotesque figures of the period of the troubadours was ulrich von lichtenstein, a german knight. as a page, we are told, he drank the water in which his mistress had washed her hands. later on he had his upper lip amputated because it displeased his lady-love, and on another occasion he cut off one of his fingers, had it set in gold and used as a clasp on a volume of his poems which he sent as a present to his inamorata. at the famous courts of love, the most extraordinary questions were seriously discussed and decided. a favourite subject for debate was the relationship between love and marriage, and some of the decisions which have been preserved for us prove without a doubt that those two great factors in the emotional life were considered irreconcilable. at the court of the viscountess ermengarde of narbonne, the question whether the love between lovers was greater than the love between husband and wife was settled as follows: "nature and custom have erected an insuperable barrier between conjugal affection and the love which unites two lovers. it would be absurd to draw comparisons between two things which have neither resemblance nor connection." the contrast between the new, spiritualised love and the older, sexual, instinct created that dualism so characteristic of the whole mediaeval period. sexuality and love were felt as two inimical forces, the fusion of which was beyond the range of possibility. while on the one hand woman was worshipped as a divine being, before whom all desire must be silenced, she was on the other hand stigmatised as the devil's tool, a power which turned men away from his higher mission and jeopardised the salvation of his soul. wagner portrayed this dualism perfectly in _tannhauser_. "a man of the middle ages," says lucka, "would have recognised in this magnificent work the tragedy of his soul." it was but a small step from the worship of a beloved mistress to the cult of the virgin mary. the church, hostile at first, finally acquiesced, and "through her official acknowledgment of a female deity, open enmity between the religion of the church and the religion of woman was avoided." a woman, that is to say, the virgin mary, had stepped between god and humanity as mediator, intercessor and saviour. both dante, the inspired woman-worshipper of the middle ages, and the more modern goethe, saw in metaphysical love the triumph over all things earthly. and far above either of these intellectual heroes looms the awe-inspiring figure of michelangelo, the scoffer, to whom love came late in life; in his ecstatic adoration of vittoria colonna, the enthusiasm of plato and the passion of dante are blended in a more transcendent flame. sexual mystics and the brides of christ present the darker aspect of metaphysical love. all the latter, including even catherine of siena (a clever politician who kept up a correspondence with the leading statesmen of her time), marie of oignies, and st. teresa, are stigmatised as victims of hysteria and consigned to the domain of pathology. while the first stage was characterised by the reign of unbridled sexual instinct, the second by the conflict between spiritual and sensual love, the third stage represents our modern conception, the blending of spiritual and sensual love, which is "not the differentiated sexual instinct, but a force embracing the psycho-physical entity of the beloved being without any consciousness of sexual desire." it shares with the purely metaphysical love the lover's longing to raise his mistress above him and glorify her without any ulterior object and desire. "in this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman, as in the sexual stage; no subjection of man to woman, as in the woman-worship of the middle ages; but complete equality of the sexes, a mutual give and take. if sexuality is infinite as matter, spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, then the synthesis is human and personal." the apotheosis of this perfect love lucka finds in the _liebestod_ (the death of the lovers in the ecstasy of love), in wagner's _tristan und isolde_. an interesting chapter on erotic aberrations, the demoniacal and the obscene, completes the third part of the book. there may be much in lucka's theories which will rouse the scepticism of the monists; some of his deductions may appear to his readers a little strained, but no thinking man or woman can read his brilliant _conclusion_ without denying him the tribute of sincere admiration. in this last chapter he applies haeckel's biogenetic law to the domain of the spirit. as the human embryo passes through the principal stages of the development of the individual from lower forms of life, so the growing male must pass through the stages of psychical development through which the race has passed. the gynecocratic government of prehistoric time is revived in the nursery, where the mother rules supreme and the sisters dominate. the normal, healthy school-boy, preferring the company of his school-fellows to all others, shunning his mother and sisters, ashamed of his female relatives, is the modern individual representative of those early leagues and unions of young men who opposed matriarchy and finally brought about its overthrow and the establishment of male government. the promiscuous sexuality characteristic of adolescence reproduces the first, merely sexual, stage of the erotic life of the race in the life of the individual. as a rule this phase is followed by a period of woman-worship; love has conquered the sexual instinct and the latter is felt as base and degrading. atavism is not so much the persistence of the earlier, as the absence of the later stages of psychical development. i need not emphasise the fact that the three stages are often intermingled and not traceable with equal clearness in the life of every individual. many men never advance beyond the first stage and others are fragmentary and undeveloped; but certain phases are more or less distinguishable in every well-endowed male individual. lucka finds a perfect illustration of his theory in the life and works of richard wagner, whose operas _the fairies_ (based on shakespeare's _measure for measure_), _tannhauser_, and _tristan und isolde_, successively illustrate the three stages through which the great poet-composer and impassioned lover passed, and reflect the principal halting-places in the erotic evolution of the race. in _parsifal_, wagner's last and maturest work, he conjectures a potential fourth stage, divined by the genius of the great musician and thinker, a sublimation of our modern ideal, a stage when love will be freed from all sexual feeling (a conception not unlike otto weininger's), but to which we have not yet attained and which we are even unable fully to grasp. i have not been able to do more than touch upon the principal features of this book, the fame of whose brilliant author has long spread beyond the boundaries of his own native country. emil lucka was born in vienna in , and has already achieved a number of remarkably fine books, most of which have been translated into russian, french, and other foreign languages. he is as yet unknown in england, this being the first of his works to appear in english. ellie schleussner. footnote: [ ] _cf._ hartland's "primitive paternity" and frazer's "golden bough." the evolution of love the first stage: the sexual instinct to the generations slowly rising from the dark abyss of time to the twilight of the middle ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or desire. with every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more difficult to obtain. primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment. when there was plenty of food he gorged to repletion, heedless of the starvation which might be his fate to-morrow or the day after. his thought had neither breadth nor continuity. it never occurred to him that there might be a connection between an abrupt and quickly forgotten embrace and the birth of a child by a woman of the tribe after what appeared to be an immeasurable lapse of time. he suspected witchcraft in the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth (to this day the aborigines of central and northern australia do not realise the connection between generation and birth). as a rule it was remembered that a certain woman had given birth to a certain child by the fact of her having carried it about and fed it at her breast. occasionally it was forgotten to which mother a child belonged; perhaps the mother had died; perhaps the child had strayed beyond the boundaries of the community and the mother had failed to recognise it on its return. but it was clear beyond all doubt that every child had a "mother." the conception of "father" had not yet been formed. experience had taught our primitive ancestors two undeniable facts, namely "that women gave birth to children" and "that every child had a mother." we must assume that sexual intercourse was irregular and haphazard up to the dawn of history. every woman--within the limits of her own tribe, probably--belonged to every man. whether this assumption is universally applicable or not, must remain doubtful; later ethnologists, more particularly _von westermarck_, deny it because it does not apply to every savage tribe of the present day. herodotus tells us that promiscuity existed in historical times in countries as far removed from each other as ethiopia and the borders of the caspian sea. there can be no reasonable doubt that sexual intercourse took the form of group-marriage, the exchange or lending of wives, and other similar arrangements. the relationship between mother and child having been established by nature herself, the first human family congregated round the mother, acknowledging her as its natural chief. this continued even after the causal connection between generation and birth had ceased to be a mystery. in all countries on the mediterranean, more especially in lycia, crete and egypt, the predominance of the female element in state and family is well attested; it is reflected in the natural religions of the eastern races--both semitic and aryan--and we find innumerable traces of it in greek mythology. the merit of discovering this important stage in the relationship of the sexes is due to _bachofen_. "based on life-giving motherhood," he says, "gynecocracy was completely dominated by the natural principles and phenomena which rule its inner and outer life; it vividly realised the unity of nature, the harmony of the universe which it had not yet outgrown.... in every respect obedient to the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." the children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring from the soil, raised altars to gaea, demeter and isis, the deities of inexhaustible fertility and abundance. these early races of men realised themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle with its blind laws. incapable of realising their individuality, they bowed in passive submission to nature's undisputed sway. they were members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the clan. the family--centred round the mother--and the tribe were the real individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the individual bee, makes the whole. they lived in complete harmony with nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history depend on the rise of a community above primitive conditions. differentiation had hardly begun to exert its modifying influence; all men (not unlike the eastern asiatics of our day) resembled each other in looks, character and habits. in the countries on the mediterranean (as well as in india and babylonia) the first stage of sexual intercourse, irresponsible and promiscuous, was systematised by religion. the annual spring-festivals in honour of adonis, dionysus, mylitta, astarte and aphrodite, celebrated unbridled licentiousness. the whole community greeted the re-awakening vitality of the earth by an unrestrained abandonment to passion. man aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its seed to the winds. the incomprehensible lords of cupidity and rank vegetation did not suffer the individualisation of desire. the complete union of the male and female qualities, as manifested both in nature and man, was solemnised in the orgies, and not by any means the relationship of an individual man to an individual woman, or sexuality connected with individuals and dominated by them. nor was this unfettering of instinct a symbolical act; for it to be so, man must have stood over against nature as an intellectual being, mirroring and transforming her acts by his own deeds. he was as yet far from this. his ambition did not reach beyond the desire to fulfil nature in himself. before the majesty of sex--worshipped in the vague, shadowy mothers of mankind, rhea, demeter, cybele, and their human offspring, the phallic dionysus and the hundred-breasted goddess of ephesus--the individual with his piteous limitations shrank into insignificance. sex was immortal, sex and primary matter, the [greek: ulê] contrasted by aristotle with the [greek: eisos], the form. "the female principle is the mother of the body, but the mother of the spirit is the male." the substance of those ancient cults was birth and death, meaningless, purposeless, apparently without rhyme or reason; their sacrament the perpetual union of the sexes. between the succeeding generations there was but one bond, the natural bond of motherhood. it was the first tie realised by mankind, a tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as a general, maternal, natural force. the presiding divinities were the "mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind. before their silent greatness the desire of man to know his whence and whither, to win shape and individuality, became blasphemy. they had given immortality to sex, but upon the individual they had laid the curse of death. thus we have first a stage of fatherless, natural conception, corresponding with the philosophical theories which maintained that all created things had sprung from the elements. later ages discovered a spiritual principle, a becoming, or an eternal being, and finally a conflict between spirit and matter. but the general attitude towards sexual intercourse underwent a change as soon as here and there individuals appeared who were conscious of their individuality. natural selection could not come into play in a community the members of which resembled one another so closely that all personal characteristics were obliterated in a general monotony. one woman was as good as another, although in all probability a healthy, youthful and strong individual would be preferred to a sickly, puny specimen. but apart from this, the wish to choose a partner instead of being content with the first comer, must have coincided historically with the outward, and later on with the inward differentiation of the race. i cannot prove my theory by quoting chapter and verse from ancient writers, but obviously a feeling of preference could not have arisen until individuals had begun to show very noticeable traces of difference. therefore with growing differentiation a new factor--modest at first and operating within narrow limits--the factor of choice, had come into the sexual life. the slow development of personality gave birth to the feeling which rebelled against universal sexual intercourse and gynecocracy in general. the men desired to shape their own world; they had no share in the immortality of maternal life. as (relatively speaking) single individuals they stood over against the material bond of the generations living in the chain of the mothers. demigods, the sons of the gods of light and mortal mothers, were credited with the salvation of men from a confused, chaotic existence, and the introduction of new conditions of life, no longer based on the dictates of nature but on the moulding genius of man. "hercules, theseus and perseus overthrew the ancient powers of darkness. they laid the foundations of man's great achievement, civilisation, and were the first to worship the gods of light. they delivered humanity from the gross materialism in which it had hitherto been steeped; they were the awakeners of spiritual life, which is a higher life than the life of the senses; they were as incorruptible as the sun from whence they came, the heroes of a new civilisation distinguished by gentleness, a higher endeavour and a new dispensation." (bachofen.) heinrich schurtz has proved (though not in connection with matriarchy) that side by side with the family, unions of unmarried men existed in many countries at a very early time. the object of these unions, which had nothing of the rigidity of blood-relationship, was fellowship. as soon as the boys had outgrown the care of their mother they were compelled to combine for the purpose of playing games and later on for war and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the necessary conditions of life. it is obvious that innovations and inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. these confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship, but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have been an attack upon the natural ties of the family, an expression of a feeling of hostility to and contempt for women, and probably stood in close relationship to a striking characteristic of the past: a widely spread homosexuality. whether schurtz gives us a correct picture of these men's unions or not, there can be no doubt that the struggle against matriarchy originated in them. this struggle led eventually to the victory of the male principle, the acknowledgment of the authority of the father, the institution of male government which deprived women of all legal rights, and the dominion of the spiritual; the victory of the gods of light over the dark lords of fertility. this revolution of principles was perhaps the completest revolution humanity has ever known. a long road, marked by numerous compromises and limitations, led from casual intercourse to the final establishment of the monogamous system. free intercourse had been sanctioned by the gods, who suffered no restrictions and modifications, and sacrifices in the shape of a temporary universal unfettering of instinct were required to pacify their anger and reconcile them to the new system. the first and most important of these compromises was the temple-prostitution practised by many nations in asia minor, the greek archipelago, india and babylonia. many a girl gained in this way the marriage portion which enabled her later on to find a husband, to whom she invariably remained strictly loyal. thus all religious requirements were satisfied. at first this was an annually recurring rite, but gradually it became an isolated ceremony in the life of every female individual. "in the place of the annual surrender," says priester, "we now have a single act; the hetaerism of the matrons is succeeded by the hetaerism of the maids; instead of being practised during marriage, it is practised in spinsterhood; the blind surrender has given way to a yielding to certain individuals."... with the growth of civilisation a few girls, the hierodules, were set apart for the purpose of pacifying the offended deities and their act ransomed the rest of the female citizens. it was not on erotic grounds, but for political and social reasons that the greek introduced monogamy. the reason which weighed in the scales more heavily than all others was the necessity for legitimate offspring. it was natural that a man of property should desire a legitimate heir who would inherit it on his death. the right of succession from father to son, incorporated later on in the roman right, originated during this period. but this was not the only advantage connected with the possession of a son: religion taught that after death the body required sacrificial food which could only be provided by the legitimate male descendants of the deceased. (the same belief was held by the indians and eastern asiatics.) in several greek states marriage was compulsory and bachelors were fined. at the same time the contraction of a marriage did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his slaves for the pleasures of the senses. his wife, although she was not free, was respected by him as the guardian of his hearth and children. there was but one legal reason for divorce: sterility, which frustrated the object of matrimony. conjugal love as we understand it did not exist; it is a feeling which was entirely unknown to the ancients. with the exception of the gradually weakening hold of religion on the imagination of the people towards the decline of the roman empire, no perceptible change occurred in the social life of the old world until the dawn of the middle ages. to quote otto seeck: "a wife had no other task than to produce legitimate offspring; and yet she gave herself airs and graces, embittered her husband's life with her jealousy and bad temper or, worse even, set all tongues wagging with her evil conduct. is it to be wondered at that marriage was merely regarded as a duty to the state, and that a great number of men were not sufficiently patriotic to take such a burden upon their shoulders?" thus the victory of the male spiritual principle over universal sexual intercourse ushered in the second stage which checked the sexual impulse and directed it upon certain individuals, a distinction however, which bears no relation to love. monogamy had conquered, in principle at least and as an ideal. the profoundly mystical core of the most powerful greek tragedy which has come down to our time, the _orestes_ of aeschylus, represents the victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. orestes has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's death, he has slain his mother. the sun-god apollo and the sinister erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over the justifiableness of the deed. to the erinnys, matricide is the foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than to the father. but apollo had commanded the deed, so that the father's murder should not remain unavenged. not to the mother is the child indebted for life; she tends and guards the kindling spark the father lighted; she but holds his pledge.---- he explains. and the answer is the lament of the erinnys: thus thou destroy'st the gods of ancient times! athene, the virgin goddess, the motherless daughter of zeus, appearing as mediator between the opponents, decides in favour of the new dispensation which places the father's claim above the mother's. orestes is free of guilt; his deed was justifiable according to the canons of the new law. the tragedy is the symbolical commemoration of the victory of the male principle in greece. but athene is the embodiment of the new hermaphroditic ideal of the greek which stood in close connexion to their homosexuality, and with which i propose to deal later on. there is a psychical law ordaining that nothing which has ever quickened the soul of man shall be entirely lost. were it not so, the storehouses of the soul would stand empty. new values are created, but the old verities endure; as a rule they are relegated to a lower sphere, to inferior social layers, but they persist and frequently merge into the new. this law applies without exception to the relationship between the sexes; we shall come upon it again and again. during the second stage, characterised by the spiritual love foreign to the ancients, the purely sexual impulse continued as an unimpaired force, but it had lost its prestige and was not only regarded as ignoble and base, but also stigmatised as sinful and demoniacal. the hearts of men were stirred by new ideals. a similar attitude, perhaps not quite so uncompromising because the contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical greece. the more highly developed, self-conscious hellenic genius, shrinking from promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new ideal in platonic love. but below the surface raged the unbridled natural force, and in perfect harmony with the greek spirit--it was not hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. wrapped in the obscurity of the mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the new gods of light, it attempted to assuage its inextinguishable thirst. the mysteries were the annual tribute paid as a ransom by apollo-worshipping hellas to chaotic asia, so that she might be free to pursue her higher psycho-spiritual aims. the brilliant civilisation of athens was based on the dark cult of the mysteries. on the festivals of the hermaphroditic dionysus and demeter, which are identical with the cults of adonis and mylitta, the impersonal, generative elements were worshipped. thus, below the surface of the greek state, founded on masculine values and attempting to restrict intercourse for the benefit of a more systematised progeniture, flourished the orgiastic cult of the ancient eastern deities, who had vouchsafed to mortals a glimpse of the great secret of life in the ardour of procreation and conception. the women upheld the religion of passion as an end in itself; bacchantes, men in female attire, emasculated priests, sacrificed to the blindly bountiful gods. we are told that dionysus conquered even the amazons and converted them to his worship. euripides described in the _bacchantes_--the subject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and the new order of things--how dionysus traversed all asia and finally arrived in hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. but his religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and beast--impassable by the spirit of civilisation--and lovingly including every living creature. we read in the _bacchantes_ that the women who had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, dionysus, dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. dionysus implores pentheus, the representative of the hellenic masculine system, not to venture undisguised among the maenads: "they'll murder you if they divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper: . . . . . . . . . first let his mind be clouded by a slight disorder for, conscious of his manhood he will never wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it. pentheus, recognising in dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception of the law, the _effeminate stranger_ who had driven the women to madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him, led by agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the _bull-god_ dionysus. at the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, agave recovers her senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ... women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. we realise now why hera, the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born. the subject treated in the beautiful myth of orpheus is the relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its individualisation on a single personality. for seven months orpheus bewails the death of eurydice and regards all other living creatures with indifference. this loyalty offends and infuriates the women of thracia, who divine in it a spirit inimical to a life in harmony with nature. one night, during the celebration of the dionysian rites, they attack the poet--the representative of the higher hellenic poetical ideals--and rend him limb from limb. but as the head of the murdered singer floats down the river, the pale lips still frame the beloved name: eurydice! it is certain that in those remote legendary days such love did not exist. but the prophetic greek spirit contrasted promiscuous intercourse with love for a single woman. so far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency towards individualisation. but even so it was merely a question of instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we understand it to-day. _love_ did not exist in the old world. i admit that in the legend of orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which is not unlike modern love, but, as far as i am aware, this is an isolated case in greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of something new, just as we find unmistakable anticipations of christianity in plato's writings. such phenomena--the occasional occurrence of which i do not altogether deny, although i regard them as on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is concerned--are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities. in spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love of a man for a woman was unknown, we find plato contrasting "a base and degraded eros with a divine eros." pausanias says in the "symposium": "the man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally well. he loves the body more than the soul.... his only striving is to obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy or unworthy. the eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in whom male and female attributes are blended. but the other eros is the companion of aphrodite, urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father, unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the elder one, unstained by passion.... the sensualist who loves the body more than the soul is base. his love passes away like the object of his passion. but the companion of the olympic goddess is the eros who fills the hearts of the lovers with the longing for virtue. the other eros is the confederate of the debased aphrodite." and aristophanes, another of the participators in the feast, says: "the yearning does not seem to be a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only divine and conjecture." and the mysterious diotima revealed to socrates an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides man beyond the pleasures of the senses and--through love--leads him to the divine. "the slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it completely." but in the opinion of the classical ages, a beautiful soul was only to be found in the body of a man; woman belonged to the lower, animal spheres; she was destined for the pleasure of the senses and the propagation of the race. plato's theory of ideas is the philosophical victory of the male-spiritual principle over nature, matter and their warden: woman. (perhaps it is even the revenge of the greek genius for man's original enslavement.) "love between men," continues the seer, "forms a stronger tie, a closer friendship, than love between parents and children; it has a mutual share in children which are immortal and far more beautiful than the children of men." she teaches socrates that this noble love is at the root of all the magnificent creations of the spirit, as carnal love is the origin of human life. "until he becomes aware that the beauty of all bodies is closely related, a man must love an individual with all his heart. if a man will follow after beauty, he is foolish not to conceive the beauty of all bodies as one and the same. as soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the individual and hold it cheap." with the hellenic homosexuality an element foreign and even hostile to the original and natural bi-sexual sensuality crept into the erotic life of the human race; it found its classical representation in the platonic dialogues "symposium" and "phaedros." in conscious opposition to all sexuality platonic love (what is usually called platonic love is based on an obstinate misunderstanding) turns to the purely spiritual, that is to say, the conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness; it is a yearning for the supernatural, and it knows itself as the path to it. in the mutual love of all noble souls lies the germ of all higher things; it is the way to the gods of light which, in this connection, are conceived philosophically as ideas, though in the true hellenic spirit as objective ideas, the prototypes and culminations of everything human. to grasp the meaning of platonic love it is essential to realise that--unlike the spiritual woman-worship peculiar to the middle ages--it is not a personal feeling of one individual for another; platonically speaking, the love for an individual is only a first stage; the path which leads to the love of beauty and the eternal ideas. the characteristic of this metaphysical love which plato was the first to conceive, was therefore love for the universal, and not love for an individual. the latter, as we shall find later on, is the characteristic of the true or, more modestly speaking, specifically european conception of love. platonic love, finally, was the perception of perfection, the socratic knowledge; its alpha and omega was not, as the mystic and true erotic would have it, its ardour and passion, the fulness of its own being. it had an alien purpose: the knowledge of things divine, by a later period christianised and understood as the divine mysteries. to plato, the essence and climax of antique, ante-christian culture, every individual, even the beloved mistress, was but a preliminary, a finger-post, pointing the way to the perception of perfect beauty. true virtue is the outcome of profound knowledge; it transforms men into gods. the purely spiritual woman-worship of the middle ages was only another aspect of this yearning to attain to virtue and perfection through the love of an individual. we must not lose sight of the fact that it was already strongly emphasised and upheld in the platonic ideal of love. in the dark excesses of the mysteries the beauty of the human form counted for nothing; voluptuousness and intoxication ruled. in the asiatic cult of the sexes there was no room for beauty, no time for selection. the greeks were the discoverers of the beauty of the human form. beauty kindled the flame of love in their souls, beauty was the gauge which determined their erotic values. their ideal was a _kalokagathos_, a youth beautiful in body and soul. in "phaedros" plato contrasts with far greater force than in the "symposium" him "who craves for sensual pleasure like the beasts in the fields" with him "who strives after beauty and perfection." to the latter "the face of the beloved is the reflection of the sublimely beautiful." he would like to sacrifice to her, as to the immortal gods. all beautiful bodies represent to him in an increasing measure the idea of the beauty of form, which again is subordinate to the beauty of the soul. it points the way to metaphysical beauty, the eternal and imperishable idea of mankind. socrates could scorn the beauty of the individual because he saw in it merely an imperfect reflection of perfect beauty. in its truest sense platonic love is, therefore, impersonal; it is not spiritual love for a human being, but a peculiar characteristic of the greek cult of beauty. we shall again meet this principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of woman; thanks to plato, it has for all time become the inalienable property of the human mind. the striving to rise above all individualism was another ideal which a later period revived. but the pivot round which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the modern, european, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique platonic cult of ideas. thus plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at whose threshold stood universal sexual intercourse, tolerating nothing personal, knowing of no individuals, acknowledging only unchecked, uncontrollable instinct, and whose decline was again characterised by the extreme impersonality of ideas. it had traversed the path of human existence in a huge cycle. starting from an unconscious existence in complete harmony with nature, it had passed through individualised man to the loftiest spiritual conceptions in the impersonal world of ideas. the hellenic ideal of beauty was almost invariably realised in the male form. the greeks of the classical period disdained woman; she was for them inseparably connected with base sensuality, but their contempt had its source partly in a feeling of horror. the days when matriarchy was the form of government were not very remote; it survived in a great number of myths and also, subconsciously perhaps, in the soul of man. to the greek mind woman was the embodiment of the dark side of love, and it was merely the logical conclusion of this conception when, at a later period, she was regarded as the devil's tool. it is certain that the origin of the idea must be sought in plato's time. in intercourse with women man dimly felt the vague elementary condition from which he had struggled hard to emerge, and fled to the more familiar companions of his own sex. would not love between man and man deliver him from the basely sensual, strengthen his spirituality and lead him to the gods? in this connection zeus is called in "phaedros" [greek: philios], the maker of friendships. plato, in propounding this doctrine, drew thereby the most radical conclusion of the new, apparently male, but at heart hermaphroditic ideal of civilisation, conceived in the heroic epoch and elaborated and brought to perfection by the greek of classical times. this ideal was the victory of the spiritual principle over promiscuous sexuality and irresponsible propagation and, quite in the true hellenic spirit, it was again interpreted materially. because individualised love was an unknown quantity to the ancients, they ornamented their sarcophagi with symbols of ecstatic life, with dancing and embracing fauns and maenads. generations passed away, but new ones arose, embracing and begetting life--for life was eternal. death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species. the death of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the soul had become the centre and climax of life. an individual had passed away for ever--nothing could recall him. death had become the final issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things: self-conscious man. but love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the earth. a new pang had come into the world, but also a new reconciliation. the second stage: love chapter i the birth of europe the memory of the figure and preaching of christ had so powerfully influenced the centuries that it had gradually permeated and transformed not only the platonic doctrine of ideas--that maturest fruit of greek wisdom--but also the semitic mediaeval monotheism. something new had sprung into being, something which expressed a hitherto unknown feeling for life and for humanity, vague and uncertain in the beginning, but growing in clearness and uniformity. on the throne of the roman emperors sat a bishop, whose power was increasing with the development of the new civilisation, and whom the final victory of the new transcendental world-principle had made master of the world. the building up of this new civilisation had absorbed the intellectual force of a thousand years; it had monopolised thought and every form of energy. the reward was great. for the first time in the annals of the world the questionings of brooding intelligence were fully answered, the anguish of the tortured soul was stilled. the purpose of the universe, the destiny of man, were comprehended and interpreted, good and evil being finally known. at the close of the first christian millenary, all moral and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the church; together with the imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical inheritance of the dead civilisations. without her uncouth barbarism reigned, and it was her task, while elaborating the system of the universe for which she stood, to teach and convert the new nations, to spread a uniform christian civilisation. on the mere face of it it must seem strange that a religion which had grown on foreign soil, out of foreign spiritual assumptions, should have been accepted so readily and quickly by nations to whom it must have been alien and unintelligible. the love of war and valour of the teutonic tribes and christian asceticism were diametrically opposed ideals, and very often their relationship was one of direct hostility. i need only remind the reader of the contempt expressed for the chaplain by hagen (in the "song of the niebelungen"). on the other hand, the ancient celtic and teutonic races shared one profound characteristic with the christian world, the consequences of which were sufficiently far-reaching to raise the religion of christ to the religion of europe. the characteristic common to the still uncultivated european spirit and christianity, and meaningless alike to the asiatic barbarians, the jews of the old testament and the greeks, was the importance which both attached to the individual soul. through the christian religion this new intuition which saw in the soul of man the highest of values, became the centre and pivot of life and faith--a position to which even plato, to whom the objective, metaphysical idea was the essential, never attained. it had been the most personal experience of christ, and centuries after his death the nations rediscovered it as their highest value. it entitled christianity to become the natural religion of europe, and the soul of its new system of civilisation. it formed the most complete contrast to all asiatic cults, brahminism and buddhism, a fact which, since schopenhauer, one is inclined to overlook. to the indian, the soul of man is not an entity; his consciousness is a republic, as it were, composed of diverse spiritual principles and metaphysical forces which are not centralised into an "i-centre," but exist impersonally, side by side. this may be a great conception, but it is foreign to the feeling of the citizen of europe. to the latter the i, the soul, the personality, is the pivot round which life turns. the evolution of the european world-feeling is in the direction of the independent development of all psychical forces and their fusion into a unity of ever-increasing intimacy. new values will be created, but the fusing power of the soul will strive with growing intensity to co-ordinate and unify the internal and external life; personality will recreate the world in conformity with its own purposes, that is to say, it will found the system of objective civilisation. the incapacity of the indian to produce a civilisation perfect in every direction is explained by his one-sided, morally-speculative thought. the world is to him nothing but a moral phenomenon, he admits no other explanation; he seeks its true meaning and the possibility of its salvation in the realisation of the vanity of life, not in the liberating deed, and not in the inward change. the kernel of matured and spiritualised christianity, which reached its apex in the german mystics, lies in the soul of man, eager to shed everything which is subjective and accidental, and become spirit, profound, divine reality. eckhart, the great perfecter of this european religion, deliberately and in direct contradiction to the dogma of his time, placed man above the "highest angels," whom he considered subject to limitations; "man," he argues, "thanks to his freedom, is able to reach a goal to which no angel could aspire. for he is always new, infinitely exalted above the limitations of the angels and all finite reason." of the relationship between the soul and god he says; "the soul of the righteous man shall be with god, his equal and compeer, no more and no less." the upanishads, on the other hand, maintain that the core of the world is not to be found in the soul of the individual but in brahma, the universal soul, outside whom there is no reality. "the individual soul is but a phantasm of the universal soul, as the reflection of the sun in the water is but a phantasm of the sun." the sole purpose of the world is the extinction of individual consciousness, its absorption in brahma, the end of all suffering: "when feeling has ceased, pain must cease, too, and the world be delivered." the indian lacks the central conception of love, for which he substitutes knowledge. primitive christianity conceived the connection between body and soul, the encumbering of the soul by the body, as it were, as a temptation or a punishment; according to the vedas, it is merely a delusion to which the sage is not subject. before his keen vision, the deception falls to the ground, and by this very fact he is delivered. to the feeling of europe and christianity, however, life and the universe are genuine, deep realities, the touchstone of the soul. love is the soul's greatest treasure and the only true path to god; knowledge can never take its place. "the divine stream of love flowing through the soul," says eckhart, "carries the soul along with it to its origin, to the bourne of all knowledge, to god." the very general identification of the christian and indian mystics--a fact which is accounted for by their common metaphysical tendency--is based on an error; indian mysticism and christian mysticism originated in different concepts; here the centre of all being is laid in love and in the soul of man, there it is contained in knowledge and in brahma. but ultimately, at the termination of the world-process, they will meet, although coming from different directions. "while the soul worships a god, realises a god and knows of a god," says eckhart, "it is separated from god. this is god's purpose, to annihilate himself in the soul, so that the soul, too, shall lose itself. for god has been called god by the creatures." the words "the soul creates god from within, is connected with the divine and becomes divine itself," are highly significant. to the vedantist the soul of man is an emanation from the world-soul: "although god differs from the individual soul, the individual soul does not differ from god." at this point it is no longer an easy matter to distinguish the feeling of the christian mystic from the feeling of the brahmin; though their valuations of man, life and the world differ, nay, are even opposed to each other, they finally meet in god. we read in the vedanta: "the force which created and maintains the universe, the eternal principle of all being, dwells entirely and undividedly in every one of us. our self is identical with the supreme deity and only apparently differentiated from it. whosoever has mastered this truth has become at one with all creation; whosoever has not mastered it, is a stranger and a foe to all creatures." i do not intend to depreciate indian wisdom; i merely desire to point out its inherent dissimilarity to western thought; my task of laying hold of the spirit of europe in its crises and watching its growth is bound to be advanced by this division. the religious experience of christ, based on the realisation of the divine nature of the soul, and the road of the soul to god, has established the fundamental western principle. a world-system was built up which emanated from the innermost depth of the individual soul and, very consistently, related all existing things, heaven and earth, the creation and the destruction of the world, salvation and perdition, to the soul of man. this was achieved with the aid of a naïve metaphysic, created by the greek genius and externalised by the crude intellect of barbarians; this metaphysic drew its whole content from a unique revelation, and the essential was frequently hidden by dialectic and speculation. one may safely say that the first millenary strove, if not exactly to set aside the original principle of christianity, yet to bind it by dogma in such a way that it often became completely obscured. a long training was necessary before the immature nations of barbarians were fit to become citizens of the spiritual world, before they could fully assimilate the new traditions and grasp their innermost meaning, which by this very fact became altered and modified. this process of education came to a temporary conclusion about the year . at last the european nations had outgrown the guardianship of the church with its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the civilisation of europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. spontaneous feeling for the race, for nature and for the divine verities had again become possible. i shall have to exceed the limits of my subject in this chapter, for i propose showing the seeds from which, in the time of the crusades, the new soul of the european, throwing off the lethargy of the first christian millenary, began to grow with extraordinary vigour and rapidity; that new soul which experienced a wider, if not deeper, unfolding in the period of the renascence, and to this day pervades and fertilises our spiritual life. i might have been less digressive, but i hope that two reasons will justify my prolixity; the first is the great importance of the subject from the point of view of a history of civilisation, and the second and more particular one is its close inner relationship to my principal theme. for, in complete contrast with the sexuality on which heretofore the relationship between husband and wife had been based, a new feeling, that of spiritual love, had come into existence and quickly reached its climax. projected not only on the other sex, but also on god and on nature, it permeated the age and explains its great and unprecedented manifestations: the spiritual love between man and woman (which deteriorated later on into the deification of woman), the new religion of the german mystics, the awakening appreciation of the beauty of nature, the sudden outburst of german poetry--no sooner born than it reached perfection--the specifically european gothic architecture, so completely independent of the old art. all these new creations had their origin in the strange craving of the period for something novel and romantic, something hitherto unknown. this longing begot the ideal of chivalry and a wealth of half human, half preter-human conceptions, such as the holy sepulchre and the holy grail. and all at once, something unprecedented, something of which the race had as yet no experience, had come to pass: love, which had nothing in common with sensuality, which was even deliberately hostile to it, love which welled up in one soul and flowed into the other--presupposing personality--love was there! if, therefore, i have gone into detail, i hope that it has served to elucidate the principal theme of this part of my book, namely, the spiritual part of man for woman aspiring to the metaphysical, which is so alien to our modern feeling. it is necessary to begin by sketching a background which shall set off the new phenomenon. the spiritual achievement of the first millenary was the construction of the christian system of the universe the church had complete knowledge of all things in heaven and earth--symbols merely of the eternal verities; her wisdom almost equalled divine wisdom, for the secrets of life and death had been revealed and surrendered to her; st. chrysostom's words uttered in the fourth century, "the church is god," had become a fact. the profoundest wisdom, the greatest power, were hers; the loftiest ideal had been realised as it has never been realised before or since. as the wisdom of the church had been a direct gift of god, so her power, too, had divine origin and reached beyond this earthly life. the church alone held the key to eternal bliss, her curse meant everlasting damnation. to be excommunicated was to be bereaved of temporal and eternal happiness. a man who had been excommunicated was worse off than a wild beast; he was surrendered to the devils in hell, and he knew it. there was but one road to salvation: to do penance and humbly submit to the church. this has been symbolised for all times by the memorable submission of the roman-german emperor, who stood for three days, barefooted and fasting, in the snow in the courtyard of canossa, before he was received back into the kingdom of god. the kingdom of god was synonymous with the church; jews and pagans were the natural children of the devil, but the dissenter, the heretic who dared to question a single proposition of the divine system, or was bold enough to think on original lines--in other words in contradiction to tradition--voluntarily turned his back on god, and with seeing eyes went into the kingdom of the devil. he was wholly evil, and no earthly punishment fitted his crime. the emperor theodosius, as far back as a.d. , had called such heretics "insane and demented," and the burning of their bodies at the stake which prevented their souls from falling into the hands of the devil, was looked upon as a great and undeserved mercy. but not only during their lifetime, but after their death, too, the hand of the church fell heavily on all those who had strayed beyond her pale; their bodies were dragged from their graves and thrown into the carrion-pit. a man whom the church had excommunicated was buried in the cemetery of a german convent. the archbishop of mayence ordered the exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the convent if his command were disobeyed. but the abbess, hildegarde of bingen ( - ), a woman of great mental power and an inspired seer, opposed him. having received a direct message from god, she wrote to the bishop as follows: "conforming to my custom, i looked up to the true light, and god commanded me to withhold my consent to the exhumation of the body, because he himself took the dead man from the pale of the church, so that he might lead him to the beatitude of the blessed.... it were better for me to fall into the hands of man than to disobey the command of my lord." the saint had interpreted the will of god, and the archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. but the bishop's yielding by no means countenanced the belief that god might, for once, tolerate the body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it--the vision of the abbess hildegarde had merely served to correct an error. all those who dared to oppose the clergy by word or deed were doomed to everlasting perdition--this was a fact which it were futile to doubt; at the most, a man shrugged his shoulders at certain damnation for the sake of mundane pleasures--a rich legacy in the hour of death might save him. not infrequently the fear of the devil was transformed into indifference, and sometimes even into demonolatry. a single ungodly thought might involve eternal death, and as many a man, more particularly many a priest, realised his inability to live continuously in the presence of god, he surrendered his soul to the anti-god, not from a longing for the pleasures of the senses, but from despair. the worship of the devil, far from being an invention of fanatical monks, actually existed, and was often the last consolation of those who held themselves forsaken by god. the hierarchy did not hesitate a moment to make the utmost use or the power conferred upon them by the mental attitude of the people. the government of kings and princes, in addition to the ecclesiastical government, could only be a transient, sinful condition; the time was bound to come when the pope would be king of the earth, and the great lords of the world his vassals, appointed by him to keep the wicked world in check, and deposed by him if he found them incapable, worshippers of the devil, or disobedient to the church. the whole world was a hierarchy whose apex reached heaven and bore, as the representative of its invisible summit, the pope. he stood, to quote innocent iii., "in the middle, between god and humanity." the same great pope has left us a document entitled _on the contempt of the world_, which treats of the absolute futility of all things mundane. there is no reason to look upon the union of this unquenchable thirst for power and complete "other-worldiness" as a contradiction. the kingdom of god, augustine's _civitas dei_, must of necessity be established that the destiny of the world may be fulfilled. every pope must account to god for his share in the advancement of the only work which mattered, and the greater the power the ruler of this world had acquired over the souls of men, the more he trembled before god, weighed down by the burden of his enormous responsibility. "the renunciation of the world in the service of the world-ruling church, the mastery of the world in the service of renunciation, this was the problem and ideal of the middle ages" (harnack). but not only the pope, every priest, as a direct member of the kingdom of god, was superior to the secular rulers. this was taught emphatically by the great st. bernard of clairvaux, for instance, and gregory vii., the wildest fanatic of the kingdom of god, said, in writing to a german bishop: "who then who possesses even small knowledge and reasoning power, could hesitate to place the priests above the kings?" even the emperor constantine, though he was still largely under the sway of the imperial idea, distinctly acknowledged the bishops as his masters; according to the legend he handed to the bishop of rome the insignia of his power, sceptre, crown and cloak, and humbly held the bridle of the prelate's horse. the theoretic backbone of this mental attitude was the doctrine of the fathers of the church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world and the destiny of man. science had but one task: to bring logical proof of the revealed religious verities. the greatest champion of this view was anselm of canterbury ( - ), who in his treatise, _cur deus homo_ proved that god was compelled to become man in order to complete the work of salvation. abélard preached a similar doctrine, but carried away by the fervour of thought, arrived at conclusions which he was forced to recant ignominiously; for at the end of his chain of evidence he did not always find the foregone conclusion which should have been there. this system of a final and infallible knowledge of the world is the very foundation of ecclesiastical government. the priest alone has all knowledge, for he has the doctrine of salvation. had it occurred to any man to defend his own opinions in contradiction to the system of the church, that man would speedily have come to the conclusion that the devil had tempted him to false observations, or false deductions, and his submission to the church would have been the outward sign of his victory over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. a man had to choose between the worship of god and the worship of the devil, there was no alternative. nobody knew the limits of human knowledge; everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man, believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and unlimited power. one thing only was needful: to possess one's self of the philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the fear of certain men supposed to be endowed with supernatural power--the priests--were but the obvious results of a world-system, founded on a revealed and exact religion. the latin poets, whose study would probably have counteracted the universal barbarism, were regarded as dangerous, the gods of antiquity being identified with the demons of the scriptures. this view was responsible for the loss of many a valuable manuscript. the favourite haunts of the demons were the convents, originally designed as battlefields on which the struggles with the demons were to be fought out, but frequently perishing in superstition and ignorance. every monk had visions of devils; miracles occurred continually; the torturing problem was as to whether they were worked by god or the devil. nature was merely a collection of mystic symbols, divine--or perhaps diabolical--allegories, whose meaning could be discovered by a correct interpretation of the bible. everything which could possibly happen was recorded in the scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all things. it was only a matter of selecting the right word and interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. every natural occurrence--an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a fire--stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event concealed behind a phenomenon. the allegorical interpretation of the bible was carried to the point of abstruseness because every word was considered of necessity to have an unfathomably profound meaning. the following amazing interpretation is by the highly-gifted german poet and mystic, suso: "among the great number of solomon's wives was a black woman whom the king loved above all others. now what does the holy ghost mean by this? the charming black woman in whom god delights more than in any other, is a man patiently bearing the trials which god sends him." abélard's interpretation of the black woman is even worse; he maintained that though she was black outside, her bones, that is her character, were white. a really remarkable deed of bad taste was committed by the monk, matfre ermengau, the author of the _breviari d'amor_, at a time when civilisation had already made considerable strides. he sent his sister a christmas present, consisting of a honey-cake, mead, and a roast capon, accompanied by the following letter: "the mead is the blood of christ, the honey-cake and the capon are his body, which for our salvation was baked and pierced at the cross. the holy ghost baked the cake in the virgin's womb, in which the sugar of his divinity amalgamated with the dough of our humanity. in the virgin's womb the holy ghost also spiced the mead and prepared it from wine; the spice is divine virtue, the wine is human blood. in addition he caused the holy capon to issue from the egg; the yolk of the egg is the deity, the white is humanity, the shell is the womb of the virgin mary ...," etc. the religion of christ was lost, man had become a stranger to his own soul--celestial warnings, signs of the judgment day, daemonic temptations, surrounded him, as far as he paid heed to anything super-sensuous on all sides. the french chronicler, radulf glaber (about a.d. ), might have been writing a satire on antiquity when he warned his contemporaries of the demons lurking everywhere, but more especially dwelling in trees and fountains. of a learned man who was studying the classic poets, he said: "this man, confused by the magic of evil spirits, had the impudence to propound doctrines contradictory to our holy faith. in his opinion everything the ancient poets had maintained was true. peter, the bishop of the town, condemned him as a heretic. at that time there were many men in italy believing this false doctrine; they perished by the sword or at the stake." we have a letter, written at the same time by gerbert, who later on became pope sylvester ii., to a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts of the latin philosophers and poets. he wrote textbooks of astronomy, geometry and medicine, and introduced the arabic numbers and the decimal system into europe. in consequence he, too, was accused of magic and intercourse with arabian pagans. a chronicler relates that he sold his soul to the devil and became pope through the devil's agency; and that, when he was on the point of death, he ordered his body to be cut to pieces so that the devil should not carry it away. to-day we find it difficult to realise such a state of mind. every man of our period who takes the smallest interest in things spiritual--be he the most orthodox ecclesiastic--at least knows that there are capable people in the world whose opinions differ from his, who seek fresh knowledge; he knows it, even though he may pretend that they are people who have gone astray and have been abandoned by god. no one can be entirely blind to the new values created by human intellect. but the men of the middle ages were swayed by a monstrous dualism, and despite their belief in the illimitable power of human cognition, they unquestioningly accepted the sacred tradition and rejected the naïve evidence of the senses and intellect whenever it seemed to contradict the dogma. thus mediaeval science did not represent what it represented in antiquity, and what it represents now, the study of the true relationship of things, but rather the application of truths revealed once and for all. there was nothing more to be discovered, and therefore scientists took a delight in logical and dialectical speculations which to a man of our day seem senseless and childish. far into the renascence, natural history was a medley of ancient traditions, oriental fables and superficial observations. the strangest qualities were attributed to animals with which we come almost daily into contact. the following quotations are culled from a provençal book on zoology: "the cricket is so pleased with its song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." "when a snake catches sight of a nude man, it is so filled with fear that it does not dare to look at him; but if the man is dressed, the snake looks upon him as a weakling and springs upon him." "the adder guards the balsam; if a man desires to steal the balsam, he must first send the adder to sleep by playing on a musical instrument. but if the adder discovers that it is being duped, it closes one of its ears with its tail and rubs the other one against the ground until it is filled with earth; then it cannot hear the music and remains awake." "of all animals there is none so dangerous as the unicorn; it attacks everybody with the horn which grows on the top of its head. but it takes such delight in virgins that the hunters place a maiden on its trail. as soon as the unicorn sees the maiden, it lays its head into her lap and falls asleep, when it may easily be caught." of the magnet we learn among other things that it restores peace between husband and wife, softens the heart of all men and cures dropsy. "if a magnet is made into a powder and burnt on charcoal in the four corners of the house, the inhabitants imagine that they cannot keep on their legs and run away, sorely affrighted; thieves frequently profit by this fact. if a magnet is placed under the pillow of a sleeping woman, she is compelled, if she is virtuous, to embrace her husband in her sleep; if she has betrayed him, she will fall out of her bed with fear." all this information was the common property of the period; richard of berbezilh, for instance, an "aesthetic" troubadour, tells us that--like a still-born lion's cub which was only brought to life by the roaring of its dam--he was awakened to life by his mistress. (he does not say whether it was by her roaring.) conrad of würzburg compares the holy virgin to a lioness who brings her dead cubs, _i.e._, mankind, to life with loud roaring. bartolomé zorgi, another troubadour of the same period, likens his lady to a snake, for--he explains--"she flees from the nude poet and her courage only returns with his clothes." during the whole mediaeval period the unicorn was a well-known symbol of virginity, more especially of the virginity of mary. the _golden smithy_ of the german minnesinger, afterwards monk conrad of würzburg, contains a rather abstruse poem which begins: the hunt began; the heavenly unicorn was chased into the thicket of this alien world, and sought, imperial maid, within thine arms a sanctuary.... etc. natural history was in a parlous state, and geographical knowledge was equally spurious. the church was averse to natural research, for the only problem in the world was the salvation of man from everlasting damnation. not only tertullian, but several fathers of the church, regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as godless. "what happiness shall be mine if i know where the nile has its source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked lactantius. and, "should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge of matters of which we can know nothing? how much more, then, are they to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets of nature, which will never be revealed to human inquisitiveness?" here one is reminded of a remark made in "phædros" by _the wisest of all greeks_, who refused to leave town because "what could socrates learn from trees and grass?" and julius cæsar wrote an account of his wars to while away the time when he was crossing the alps. very likely the system of the church would have been less rigid had it not largely been occupied in dealing with ignorant barbarians. in the case of celts and teutons, a complete and unassailable form of dogmatics with its corollary of hieratical intolerance was the only possible system. the traditions of these peoples were far too foreign to christianity to allow christian germs to flourish in their soil. and the new nations, accepting what rome offered to them, were completely unproductive in their adolescence. the achievement of this fatal first millenary might be formulated as follows: "the civilised world of western europe was united under the government of the church of rome; on all nations it had been impressed in the same combination of words and similes that they were living in a sinful world; they knew when this world had been created and when its saviour had appeared; they knew that its end would come together with the bodily resurrection of the dead and the terrible day of the last judgment; they knew that demons were lurking everywhere, seeking to destroy man's soul, and that the church alone could save him. all these facts were as unalterable as the return of the seasons." the fundamental sources of antiquity had been sensuality and asceticism, the elements of the middle ages abstract thought and historical faith; now emotion was to become the principal factor. it welled up in the soul and soon dominated all life. the fountain which had been dried up since the dawn of the christian era, began to flow again in a small country in the south of france. the civilising centre had again shifted westwards, as in the past it had shifted from asia to greece, and from greece to rome. in the course of the first thousand years greece and asia minor had separated themselves from europe, and founded a distinct culture, the byzantine, which exerted no influence on the development of europe. but not even italy, the scene of the older civilisation, was destined to give birth to the new; maybe the memory of the antique, ante-christian, period was too powerful here. its cradle stood on virgin ground, in provence, a country wrested from celts and teutons by the roman eagles, ploughed by the roman spirit, preserving in some of its coast towns, notably in marsilia, the rich remains of greek settlements, something of moorish influence in race and language, and fusing all these heterogeneous elements into a splendid whole. but why this important spiritual centre should have been formed just here it is difficult to say. for the first time the system of ecclesiastical values was confronted by something novel, which was not--like the old teutonic ideal of the perfect warrior--tainted by barbarism, but may be described as the system of mundane court values. this new ideal was not founded on an authority which had to be accepted in good faith; it had its direct origin in the passionate yearning of the human soul. man had re-discovered himself and become conscious of his personal creative force. a very great thing had been accomplished; the seed which, slowly gathering strength, had lain in the soil for a thousand years, had at last burst its husk, and was rapidly growing into the magnificent tree of the european civilisation. in silent opposition to the system of the accepted ecclesiastical values, the new ideal of _pretz e valor e beutatz_ (worth and value and beauty), of _cavalaria_ and _cortezia_ (chivalry and courtesy), was upheld in provence. four worldly virtues, wisdom, courtly manners, honesty and self-restraint, were contrasted with the ecclesiastical cardinal virtues. the courts of the princes became centres of new life and art. the new spiritual-aesthetic concept of feasting and enjoyment transformed the former orgies of eating and drinking. woman, who had heretofore been excluded from male society, was all at once transferred to the very centre of being; for her sake men controlled their brutal tempers and exerted themselves to please by good manners, taste and art. she, whom the church had done everything to depreciate, who had been denied a soul at the council of macon (in the sixth century), had become the very vessel of the soul; man looked up to her and bent his knee before the newly-created goddess. the cultivation of the new courtly manner coincided with the nascent art of the troubadours. there was no gradual growth and development in the latter; at the very outset it had reached perfection. the first troubadour whose name has come down to us was guillem of poitiers, duke of aquitania (about ); great lords and barons gloried in the exercise of this new art. every court boasted its poets, hospitably received and loaded with presents; the great ones of the earth were beginning to exercise that patronage of art and letters which in the renascence reached such extravagant proportions. every distinguished poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. others again, the comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them a rapt throng of lords and ladies. courtly manners and lofty principles quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was "vilania"; in the "yvain" of the french epic poet chrestien de troyes, this universal feeling is thus expressed: a courtier counts though he be dead, more than a rustic stout and red. dante and his circle, as well as the best of the troubadours, substituted for the "cortois" of the superficial chrestien the "cor gentil," the noble heart, which they accounted more precious than rank and wealth and power. "wherever there is virtue there is nobility," says dante, "but where there is nobility there need not necessarily be virtue." a time had come when personal distinction was in every man's grasp, no matter whether he was learned or unlearned, a nobleman or a commoner. certainly the commoner was never on an equality with the aristocrat, partly because he was dependent on the largess of the great. even dante was compelled to seek princely patronage, and not until the renascence do we hear of writers whose sarcastic tongues were so dreaded that they became independent of charity. in opposition to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour. beauty, which at the dawn of the christian era had fallen into ill repute and had become associated with unholy, and even diabolical, practices, had again come into its kingdom. above everything it was the beauty of woman which was re-discovered--or rather, in its new, spiritual sense, newly discovered--and claimed the enthusiasm and love of the best men of the period. after a thousand years of gloom and brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. the ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old teutonic ideal of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture, leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with civilisation, a very long way behind. "mezura," "masze" (the [greek: mphstoês] of the platonic greeks) was the new criterion, as compared with the barbarian's want of restraint. i do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of provence. the news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire to imitate it. the need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all hearts. men yearned for beauty and spontaneity, for passionate life, unprecedented and romantic. this was especially the case in the north, in france and in germany, and above all in wales, the country of the imaginative and highly-gifted celts. here life was harder, poorer, more barbaric; the cultured mind suffered more from its brutal surroundings than it did in the favoured south. it was here that the great legends of the middle ages, so clearly expressive of the yearning of the period, were first collected. the early middle ages had produced epic poems, treating scriptural subjects (such as the harmony of the gospels of the monk otfrit, written in the ninth century), and celebrating the exploits of popular heroes, as, for instance, the german song of hildebrand, and the french "chansons de geste," which contain episodes from the lives of charlemagne and his nephew roland. the true epic, arising from the rich and poetical celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh century in the north of france and immediately burst into extraordinary luxuriance. the legends of the heroes of the dreamy celtic race--king arthur and his knights, merlin the magician, the knights of the holy grail--travelling across france, became the common property of the civilised european nations, and filled all hearts with longing and fantastic dreams. chrestien de troyes, in his romances, extolled knightly exploits and the service of woman, thus producing by the combination of the older and the newer ideals the novel of adventure which has fascinated the world for centuries. it is a mistake to believe that don quixote has struck at the root of it; to this day the masses wax enthusiastic in reading of the doughty deeds of knights, the beauty of ladies and their unswerving, undying love. in addition to the great and heroic subjects, there were lesser, more intimate, and frequently sentimental, romances, especially enjoyed and widely circulated by the ladies. the baron, riding forth, left his young wife at home, shut up in her bower and surrounded by spies; sometimes even physically branded as his property. a prisoner behind bars, her imagination went out--not to the unloved husband who had married her for the sake of her broad acres, and could send her back to her parents as soon as he found a wealthier bride (he had but to maintain that she was related to him in the fifth degree and the church was ready to annul the marriage), not to him, her lord and master, but to the unknown knight, the passionate lover, who would gladly give his life to win her. a jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the arms of his mistress. but the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. the jongleur would tell of the knight who had fallen passionately in love with a beautiful damsel of whom he had but caught a passing glimpse; month after month he worked at digging an underground passage; every night brought him a little nearer to her bower--she could distinctly hear the dull sounds of his burrowing--until at last he rose through the ground and took her into his arms. these and similar tales, doubtless all of them of celtic origin--preserved for us in the charming "lais" of marie de france--brought tears to the eyes of many a lonely wife and gave shape to her vague longing. there was no reason why a man, and a lover to boot, should not transform himself nightly into a blue bird. those simple stories in verse fulfilled every desire of the heart; imagination supplied in the north what the south offered in abundant reality. but marie de france, the first woman novelist of europe (about the end of the twelfth century), deserves to be remembered for another reason; she was the first poet voicing woman's longing for love and romance--woman's adventure. the charming _lai du chevrefoile_ ("the story of the honeysuckle") relates an episode from the loves of tristan and isolde, the famous lovers, legendary even at that time. tristan and isolde, lancelot and guinevere, fleur and blanchefleur--these were the admired and mythical lovers of whom the poets sang and dreamed. all the world knew their adventures; all the world repeated them again and again, reverently preserving the identical words and yet unconsciously remoulding them. at the recital of their loves, hand clasped hand; "on that day we read no more," confessed dante's ill-fated lovers. the longing, so characteristic of the north of europe, to see the world and meet with adventures, was in provence and italy less pronounced. these favoured climes possessed so many of the things dreamed of and desired by other countries. events, strange as fiction, actually occurred. count raimond of roussillon, for instance, imprisoned his wife in a tower because the troubadour, guillem of cabestann, was in love with and beloved by her. he waylaid the lover, killed him, cut his heart out of his breast and sent it, roasted, to his countess. when she had partaken of it, he showed her guillem's head and asked her how she had enjoyed the dish. "so much that no other food shall ever pass my lips," she replied, casting herself out of the window. when the story spread abroad, the great nobles rose up in arms against raimond, and even the king of aragon made war on him. he was caught and imprisoned for life, and his estates were confiscated. guillem and the countess were buried in the church, and for a long time after men and women travelled long distances to kneel at their grave. the charming poems of melusine and the beautiful magelone, which to this day delight the reader, were composed during the same period. before the eleventh century poetry in the true sense of the word did not exist. there were only latin church hymns and legends, perverted reminiscences of antiquity, and, in the vulgar tongue, legends of the saints and simple dancing-songs for the amusement of the lower classes. thanks to the relentless war which the clergy waged against them, a few only have been preserved. there can be no doubt that provence was the birthplace of european poetry. the "sweet language" of provence was the first to reach perfection and perfect maturity. it drove the language of the german conquerors eastwards and prepared the ground for the french tongue. the beginning of the twelfth century saw the birth of the poetry of the troubadours, which possessed from the first in great perfection everything that distinguishes modern lyric poetry from the antique. instead of the syllable-measuring quantity, we now have the emphasising accent; the rhyme, one of the most important lyrical contrivances--and in its near approach to music the most striking characteristic of modern lyrical poetry as compared with the antique--reaches perfection together with the complete, evenly-recurring verse which is still to-day peculiar to lyrical art. the poems of many of the troubadours pulsate with passionate life, and bear no trace of the traditional or the conventional. the martial songs of bertrand de born stride along with a rhythm reminiscent of the clanking of iron. i quote the first verse of one of these: le coms m'a mandat e mogut per n'arramon luc d'esparro, qu'eu fassa per lui tal chanso, on sian trenchat mil escut, elm e ausberc e alcoto e perponh faussat e romput. the count he sent to me one day sir arramon luc d'esparro; a song i was to make him--so that thousand shields with ring and stay and mail and armour of the foe to fragments shivered in dismay. the poetry of the provençal troubadours had already passed its prime when, in the other european countries, lyric art was still in its infancy. the crusade against the albigenses ( ), undertaken by gregory vii. with the object of killing the new spirit and the new secular civilisation, drove many troubadours to italy, among others the famous sordello, who is mentioned in dante's _divine comedy_. others went to sicily, to the court of the art-loving emperor, frederick ii., where a distinct, but not very original, poetic art arose. in italy the perfection of mediaeval poetry was reached in the "sweet, new style" immortalised by dante. but not only the great italians, the trouveres from the north of france also, and--to some extent--the german minnesingers, were influenced by the art, and above all, the ideals which had originated in provence. the poetry of the earliest rhenish and austrian minnesingers closely follows german folklore, and the songs of dietmar of aist and others are still quite innocent of any trace of neo-latin characteristics. but very soon the technical perfection of the provençal poetry and the provençal ideal of courtesy and love, famous all over europe, strongly influenced the german mind. the new poetry and the ideal of chivalry and the service of woman were the first independent developments able to hold their own by the side of ecclesiastical culture. the rigid latin was superseded; the soul of man sang in its own language of the return of spring, the beauty of woman, knighthood and adventure. poetry became the most important source of secular education, and as each nation sang in its own tongue, national characteristics shone out through the individuality of the singer. provençals, frenchmen, germans and italians realised that they belonged to different races. this was particularly the case during the crusades when, under the auspices of the church, the nations of europe had apparently undertaken a common task. in provence, in france and germany, every poem was set to music, and thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. j.b. beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,--the music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,--says, "the poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naïveté and melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to this day." all these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which beck lays such stress. in any case, the music is inferior to the frequently perfect text. this same period saw the inception of our present system of musical notation. the new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. every prince kept a salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts to-day preserved and studied in our museums. studios where this work was carried on existed at various art centres, especially--as far as we are able to tell to-day--at the papal courts at avignon--that meeting-ground of french and italian artists--in paris and at rheims. these workshops were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in the famous burgundian "livres d'heures." to-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence which emanated from the french and even from the earlier english workshops, and spread over the whole continent. it is very probable that the french art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth century was mother of the later north-european art of painting. it was in northern europe that, independently of hellenic and byzantine influence, a new art originated, of which max dvorak says: "it would hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete disappearance of the elements of the neo-latin art. the past was simply done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. thus the new art was almost without any tradition." dvorak calls this complete change the most important in the history of painting since antiquity. george, count vitzthum, has proved that the famous cologne school of painting modelled itself on northern-french, belgian, and a quite independent english school of illuminators. it is even suggested that the english style of miniature painting influenced europe as far as the upper rhine. it is also very significant that the dutch art of the brothers van eyck, whose sudden appearance seemed so inexplicable, is now proved to have had its source in the north of france. on the other hand, we have drawings of three ecstatic nuns showing decided originality; hildegarde of bingen, already mentioned on a previous occasion, has herself ornamented her book, _scivias_, with miniatures which, according to haseloff, in spite of their primitive style, reveal a bizarre plastic talent, and are therefore closely related to her intuitions. alfred peltzer speaks of "fantastic figures surrounded by flames." the two other nuns were elizabeth of schönau, and herrad of landsberg; these two were entirely under the influence of the dawning mysticism. i will here quote a few more passages from dvorak, who, in dealing with the individual arts, does not lose sight of the whole. "simultaneously with a new literature," he says, "we have a new art of illustration, new miniatures, no longer drawing inspiration from antiquity.... we meet the new style in its full perfection wherever it is a matter of a new technique (in the art of staining glass, for instance, or of illustrating profane literature)...." he speaks of a new decoration of manuscripts invented in paris in the first half of the thirteenth century. thus the close and causal connection between the new poetry and the illumination of books is clearly apparent, and it may be said without exaggeration that the provençal lyric poetry and the north-french and celtic cycles of romance led up to the new european style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries later. (nothing positive can be said about the influence of france on italian art; the monumental character and the art of cimabue, giotto and the sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew inspiration from antique frescoes.) i must add a few words on the subject of those miniatures which are not easily accessible to the layman, but reproductions of which are frequently met with in books on the history of art. in addition to religious subjects, the whole courtly company which lives and breathes in the legends of the round table, kings and knights, poets, minstrels, and fair damsels, hawking, jousting, banqueting and playing chess, everything which stirred the poet's imagination, is depicted. the spirit of the romances which in modern times enchanted the english pre-raphaelites, six centuries ago provided food and stimulus to the industrious illuminators whose names have long been forgotten. if the art of miniature painting never rose--excepting in its wider consequences--to universal significance, mediaeval architecture stands before our eyes magnificent as on the first day. until the middle of the twelfth century the monumental structures of europe were directly influenced by the later hellenic civilisation. the byzantine basilica was slowly transformed into the neo-latin house, and thus, in this important domain also, europe drew her inspirations from antiquity. but only the ground-plan of the gothic cathedral, that is to say, the idea of a nave with side-aisles, was traditional and borrowed from neo-latin models. from this invisible ground-plan rose something absolutely original and autochthonic. this new, specifically central-european style of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "i am perfection!" in every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, until at last the renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an excellent fertiliser for the new art. the essence of the gothic style is the dissolution of all that is heavy and material--the victory of spirit over matter. walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available inch was moulded into a living semblance. the result may be studied in the incomparable façades of many of the cathedrals in the north of france; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such as that of st. stephen's in vienna. the conflict between matter and pure form is settled--for the first and only time--in gothic architecture. the greek temple with its correct proportions possessed no more than perfection of form without spiritual admixture; it was perfect as marble statues, which are an end in themselves, and do not point the way to spiritual truths. gothic architecture is probably unique in its blending of æsthetic perfection of form and infinite spiritual wealth; in the fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. it is the balance of the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving for harmonious expression. it marked the first powerful working of the teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism which no longer re-echoed aristotle and his commentators, but drew inspiration from its own intuition. for this reason gothic architecture never became acclimatised in italy. the soaring tower, more especially, never appealed to the italian architect. ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration from nature. the forest trees of central europe became pillars; grouped together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing with mysterious life. spreading and ramifying, growing together in an impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits. every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in the gable-boards. but the assimilation of natural objects did not cease there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards, birds, even the gnomes of german mythology, find their way into the gothic cathedral. not the traditional greek acanthus leaf, but the foliage of the north-european oak grows under the hands of the sculptor. even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so that it may have a place. the gothic cathedral with its soaring arches free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling that inspired eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in dante. but the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the soul of eckhart, who was also a schoolman. the confused and complex scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from paris, is closely akin to gothic architecture. for the gothic style and scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and ornamental--perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as compared with the simplicity of the south. as if from fertile soil, a world of sculptured men and beasts sprang from the façades of the new cathedrals. the figures on the cathedrals of naumburg, strassburg, rheims, amiens and chartres are far superior to the artistic achievements of the dawning renascence in italy. they are real men, full of life and passion, no longer symbols of the transcendental glory of the world beyond the grave. "all rigidity had melted, everything which had been stiff and hard had become supple; the emotion of the soul flows through every curve and line; the set faces of the statues are illuminated by a smile which seems to come from within, the afterglow of inward bliss" (worringer). a longing went through the world, stimulating faith in miracles and a desire for adventure, a longing which no soul could resist. nothing certain was known of countries fifty miles distant; the traveller must be prepared for the most amazing events. no one knew what fate awaited him behind yonder blue mountains. the existence of natural laws was undreamt of; there was no improbability in dragons or lions possessing power of speech. a period incapable of distinguishing between the natural and supernatural will always indulge in those fancies which are best suited to its temper. be the native country never so poor, the long darkness and cold of the winter never so hard to bear, far away in the east, or in camelot, the kingdom of king arthur, life was full of beauty and sunshine. the legends of king arthur powerfully affected the imagination; they were read, secretly and surreptitiously, in all convents; on a sultry summer afternoon, during the learned discussion of their preceptor, one after another of the pupils would fall asleep; the preceptor, suddenly interrupting himself, would continue after a short pause: "and now i will tell you of king arthur," and all eyes would sparkle as the pupils listened with rapt attention. francis of assisi called one of his disciples "a knight of his round table," and three hundred years later don quixote lost his reason over the study of those legends; some of the finest works of art of the present time, wagner's "lohengrin," "tristan and isolde," and "parsifal," take their subject from the inexhaustible treasure of the celtic epic cycle. the longing for experience and adventure had laid hold of the imagination to an extraordinary degree. the recital of wondrous adventures no longer satisfied the listener; he yearned to participate in them. the young knight, trained in athletics and courtesy, and possessing a little knowledge of biblical history, left his father's castle to face the unknown world. there was a sanctuary, mysterious, almost supernal, carefully guarded in the dense forest of an inaccessible mountain. a knight whose heart was pure, and who had dedicated himself to the lifelong service of the divine, could find it; but he would have to wander for many years, through forests and glens and strange countries, alone and solitary, before his eyes would behold the most sacred relic in the world, the holy grail. the time was ripe for a great event, a universal and overwhelming enterprise which could absorb the passionate longing. maybe that the wisdom of the great popes--half unconsciously, certainly, and under the pressure of the age, but yet led by an unerring instinct--guided this stream into the bed of the church; the vague craving found a definite object: the crusades were organised. the holy sepulchre, the most sacred spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and defiled--what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its rescue and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? in the fantastic imagination of the men of that period the lord's sepulchre was nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the holy grail. as far back as a.d. gerbert had sent messengers to all nations, exhorting them to hoist their banners and march with him to the holy land. it had been prophesied that he should be the first to read mass in jerusalem; a few ships were actually equipped at pisa--the first attempt at a crusade. but at that time europe was not yet quite prepared for the extraordinary, almost incomprehensible, enterprise--the conquest of a country which hardly anybody had ever seen and in which nobody had any practical interest. before such an enterprise could be carried out all hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, so characteristic of the great period of fantasy. the suggestion that the wealth of the east, exciting the greed of the western nations, led to the crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. doubtless, rumours of the fabulous treasure of the orient had stirred the imagination of europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual than to his desire for something strange, new and incredible. it was impossible to foresee the result of the first crusade; the crusader went to a strange land in order to fight--the return was in god's hand. there have been at all times men coveting wealth, but to make such men the instigators and organisers of the crusades is a deliberate attempt to represent a characteristic and unique event in the history of the world in the light of a commonplace and every-day occurrence. in the first enchanted wood a man might chance upon a beautiful princess sitting beside a fountain, nude and weeping; but it was equally possible that a giant would rush upon the christian knight, break his shield and exact heavy penalties. it was possible to win the kingdom of a sultan or emir--it could be achieved by bravery and in a duel--and become a great king, for a king in those days was no more than a large landed proprietor. such dreams were actually fulfilled in the most extraordinary way. gottfried of bouillon, a poor alsatian knight, might have become king of jerusalem, had he not refused to wear a crown of gold in a land where his saviour had worn a crown of thorns, and contented himself with the title of "protector of the holy land." the embattled citadel of jerusalem, like the holy grail, was pictured as being situated outside the world. _there_ the longing which had become so vast that it had outgrown the earth, would be stilled. a direct way must lead from jerusalem, the centre of the earth--it still takes this position in dante's _divine comedy_--to paradise. was it not the spot where the cross of the saviour had been raised? had not once before heaven opened above the city to receive his risen body? was it not the scene of countless miracles in the past? why should it be different now? men knew practically nothing of palestine; they had in their minds a fantastic picture tallying, in every respect, with biblical accounts; doubtless, the footprints of the redeemer could easily be traced everywhere; the possession of the country promised the fulfilment of transcendental dreams. the impulse and the strength necessary for the organisation of the crusades were spiritual phenomena inherently foreign and even hostile to the church; but thanks to the mental superiority of the popes of that period, and the overpowering conception of a divine kingdom, they became the instruments of the greatest triumphs vouchsafed to the church of rome. the hosts, driven across the sea by inner restlessness and ill-defined longing, in reality fought for the aggrandisement of the church. the great hildebrand resolved to lead all christendom to jerusalem, to found on the site of the holy sepulchre the divine kingdom preached by st. augustine, and invest--a risen christ--the emperor and all the kings of the earth with their kingdoms. the crusader and the knight in quest of the holy grail present together a paradoxical combination of the christian-ecclesiastical and the mundane-chivalric spirit, which is quite in harmony with the spirit of the age. these two worlds, inward strangers, formed--in the order of the knight-templars, for instance--a union which, while possessing all the external symbols of chivalry, attributed to it heterogeneous, ecclesiastical motives; the glory of battle and victory, the caprice of a beautiful damsel, were no longer to become the mainsprings of doughty exploits; henceforth the knight fought solely for the glory of god and the victory of christianity. in addition to king arthur's knights, the classical middle ages worshipped the ideal of these priestly warriors who waded through streams of blood to kneel humbly at the grave of the saviour, of those seekers of the holy grail who dedicated themselves to a metaphysical task. king arthur's round table served the actual orders of knighthood as a model. not only the franciscans of italy, but also slow, german mystics, such as suso and the profound johannes tauler, delighted in borrowing their similes and metaphors from knighthood. tauler speaks of the "scarlet knightly robes" which christ received for his "knightly devotion": "and by his chivalric exploits he won those knightly weapons which he wears before the father and the angelic knighthood. therefore christ exults when his knights elect also to put on such knightly garments ...," etc. not infrequently the saracens behaved far more generously than the christian armies. a german chronicler, albert von stade, tells us that a.d. "the sultan of egypt of his own free will restored the lord's cross, permitted the christians to leave egypt with all their belongings, and commanded all prisoners to be set free, so that at that time , captives were released. he also commanded his subjects to sell food to the rich and give alms to the poor and the sick." occasionally the pope entered into an alliance with the enemies of christendom against the emperor, if the latter proved troublesome. a.d. the sultan of egypt (malek as saleh ejul) taught innocent iv., the speaker of all christendom, the judge of the christian peoples, the following lesson: "it is not befitting to us," he wrote to him, "that we should make a treaty with the christians without the counsel and consent of the emperor. and we have written to our ambassador at the court of the emperor, informing him of what has been proposed to us by the pope's nuncio, including your message and suggestions." the most pathetic symptom of the restlessness of the age was the children's crusade in , which, even at its actual occurrence, caused helpless amazement. the reports of two german chroniclers are sufficiently interesting to be quoted verbally: "in the same year happened a very strange thing, a thing which was all the more strange because it was unheard of since the creation of the world. at easter and whitsuntide many thousands of boys from franconia and teutonia, from six years upwards, took the cross without any external inducement or preaching, and against the wish of their parents and relations, who sought to restrain them. some left the plough which they had been guiding, others abandoned their flocks, or any other task which they had been set to do, banded together, and with hoisted banner began to march to jerusalem, in batches of twenty, fifty and a hundred. many people enquired of them at whose counsel and admonishment they were undertaking this journey, (for it was not many years ago that many kings, a great number of princes and countless people had travelled to the holy land, strongly armed, and had returned home without having accomplished their desire,) telling them that in their tender years they had not yet sufficient strength to achieve anything, and that therefore this thing was foolish and undertaken without due consideration; the children answered briefly that they were obeying god's will, and would willingly and gladly suffer all the trials he would send them. and they went their way, some turning back at mayence, others at piacenza, and others at rome; a small number arrived at marseilles, but whether they crossed the sea or not, and what happened to them, no one knows; only that much is certain, that of all the thousands who went forth, only very few returned." another chronicler wrote: "and at this time boys without a leader or guide, left the towns and villages of all countries, eagerly journeying to the lands across the sea, and when asked whither they were wending, they replied: 'to jerusalem, to the holy land.' many of them were kept by their parents behind locked doors, but they burst open the doors, broke through the walls and escaped. when the pope heard of these things he sighed heavily and said: 'these children shame us, for they hasten to the recovery of the holy land while we sleep.' no one knows how far they went and what became of them. but many returned, and when they were asked the reason of their expedition, they said they knew not. at the same time nude women were seen hurrying through towns and villages, speaking no word." if it had not been for the crusades, something else must have happened to relieve the unbearable tension. the world was longing for a great deed, a deed overstepping the border-line of metaphysics, and its enthusiasm was sufficient guarantee of achievement. in the case of the individual, vanity and boastfulness played no mean part. thus the austrian minnesinger, ulrich of lichtenstein, proposed taking the cross "not to serve god but to please his mistress." it is quite probable, though not historically proved, that this veritable don quixote dreamed of decorating the holy sepulchre with his lady's handkerchief, but in the end he remained at home. a journey to foreign lands, to return after years of yearning for the beloved, her loyalty, or her treachery, supplied the romantic imagination of the age with endless material. the story of the count von gleichen and his two wives is famous to this day. a charming provençal song tells of a maid who, day after day, sat by a fountain weeping for her lover. at this spot they had bidden farewell to each other, and here she was awaiting his return. one day a pilgrim arrived, and she at once asked for news of her knight. the pilgrim knew him and had a message for her. after a short conversation he threw back his cowl and drew the delighted maiden into his arms, for it was he himself, her lover, who after many years of absence had returned and was first visiting the spot where, years ago, he had said good-bye to her. but there was another motive, a religious one, which, joined to the universal lust of adventure, dominated the whole mediaeval period to an extraordinary degree; that motive was the idea of doing penance and--after all the failures of life--returning to god. the crusades offered an opportunity for combining one's heart's desire with this spiritual need. of all good works there were none more pleasing to god, and every participator was promised forgiveness of his sins. in the troubadours' songs of the crusaders there is a strong yearning for penance and sanctification, quite independent of the idea of the delivery of the holy sepulchre from the rule of the infidels. all i held dear i now abhor, my pride, my knightly rank and fame, and seek the spot which all adore, the pilgrim's goal--jerusalem. sang guillem of poitiers, one of the gayest of the troubadours. only very few of the more thoughtful minds realised that divine thoughts have their source in the soul of man, and that these crusades were obviously a senseless undertaking (not to mention the fact that god does not need human assistance). "it is a greater thing to worship god always in humility and poverty," said the abbot, peter of cluny, "than to journey to jerusalem in great pomp and circumstance. if, therefore, it is a good thing to visit jerusalem and stand on the soil which our lord's feet have trod, it is a far better thing still to strive after heaven where our lord can be seen face to face." both the great scholastic, anselm of canterbury, and bernard of clairvaux, were of the same opinion. "they shall aspire not to the earthly, but to the heavenly jerusalem, and travel there not with their feet, but with the desire of their hearts." and "they seek god in external objects, neglecting to look into their hearts, in whose innermost depths dwells the divine." and yet those same men, who even then seemed to have outgrown biblical religiosity, were under the spell of the all-absorbing idea of the age. bernard solved the contradiction in the following way: "it is not because his power has grown less that the lord calls us feeble worms to protect his own; his word is deed, and he could send more than twelve legions of angels to do his bidding; but because it is the will of the lord your god to save you from perdition, he gives you an opportunity to serve him." in these words a significant change of the fundamental idea can already be traced. peter of cluny worked for the crusades, and bernard, one of the most influential and venerable personalities of the middle ages, a man before whose word the popes bowed down, journeyed through the whole of france, inciting all hearts to fanatical enthusiasm. whoever heard him preach forsook his worldly possessions and took the cross, clamouring for peter himself to lead all christendom. "countless numbers flocked to his banner, towns and castles stood forsaken and there was hardly one man to seven women. the wives were made widows during the lifetime of their husbands." thus bernard wrote to the pope, travelling through germany, healing the sick by his mere presence, and preaching to the people in a tongue no one could understand. but the personality of this physically delicate man, whose body was only kept alive by his spirit, touched all hearts. the prudent emperor, conrad, resisted for a long time, and would have nothing to do with such an aimless enterprise. but bernard's first sermon in the cathedral at speyer, on christmas day, moved him to tears. bernard left the pulpit and pinned the cross on the shoulder of the kneeling emperor. by this symbolical act the metaphysical spirit of the time, of which the church had obtained control for her own purposes, visibly became master of political common-sense. the crusades were one of the great movements matured by the newly-awakened metaphysical yearning. the same spirit in another, profounder, way, manifested itself in the efforts of religious reform which were being made here and there. "the appearance and spread of heresy has always been the gauge by which the religious life of the individual must be measured," says büttner very pertinently in his preface to his edition of eckhart. for the first time since the days of christ true religious feeling was again quickening the hearts of men; the ecclesiastical dogma, which until then had represented absolute truth, no longer satisfied their need. soon opposition, timidly at first, made itself felt. laymen ventured to interfere in the domain of religion. all knowledge--and consequently all tradition and religion--had been for a thousand years the exclusive possession of the clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little latin and a few scholastic propositions. all this was changing. despite reiterated ecclesiastical prohibitions, parts of the bible were translated into the vulgar tongue and eagerly studied by ignorant folk; everywhere men appeared to whom religion was a matter of vital importance, men who strove to find god in their own souls, instead of blindly accepting the god of foreign doctrine. the more obvious cause of the growing dislike to ecclesiastical authority was the immorality of the priests. the contrast between the professions of humility, and the greed, vice and tyranny of the clergy was too pronounced. the ecclesiastical offices were publicly sold. divine forgiveness was cheaper than a new garment; every priest was allowed to keep a mistress if he paid a tax to the bishop. two poems of the troubadour, guillem figueiras, express the state of affairs very bluntly: "our shepherds have become thievish wolves, plundering and despoiling the fold under the guise of messengers of peace. they gently console their sheep night and day, but once they have them in their power, these false shepherds let their flock perish and die." in the other poem he says of the priest: he lies in a woman's arms all night, and wakes--defiled--in the morning light to proffer the sacred host. worse invectives even, no less forcible than those of later reformers, he hurled against rome. "in the flames and torments of hell is thy place!... thou hast the appearance of an innocent lamb, but inwardly thou art a raging wolf, a crowned snake, begotten by a viper, the friend of the devil!" even the good-natured german minnesinger, walter von der vogelweide, found bitter words against rome: "they point our way to god and go to hell themselves." bernard of clairvaux, the supporter of the church, sharply criticised the abuses of pope and clergy in his book, _de consideratione_: "the property of the poor is sown before the door of the rich, the gold glitters in the gutter, the people come hurrying up from all sides; but not to the neediest is it given, but to the strongest and to him who is first on the spot." he accused the pope of extravagance and luxury: "was peter clothed in robes of silk, covered with gold and precious stones? was he carried in a litter surrounded by soldiers and vassals?" and he uttered a word which to this day is a historical truth: "in all thy splendour thou art the successor of constantine rather than the successor of peter." dissatisfaction with the life of the clergy and the tyranny of rome was the more external reason which, although it vexed even those who were indifferent to religion, did not question the sacred tradition; the other reason was more a matter of principle; it was rooted in the desire for a religious revival and openly attacked perverted truths. the dreaded, hated, and cruelly persecuted heretics were fearless men, sturdily fighting for their convictions. the fundamental ideal of these reformers was the suppression of the outward pomp of the church and the return to the simplicity of the gospels. their fates varied. the gentle st. francis of assisi was canonised; the illumined eckhart, on the other hand, was tortured; most of them, like the ardent arnold of brescia, were burnt at the stake. this conduct of the hierarchy towards the truly religious men is easily explained. the church was faced by a problem; on the one hand, the genuine and profound piety of these men was unmistakable, but on the other, the contrast of their teaching with church tradition was too obvious, and by many of them too strongly emphasised to be silently ignored. the provençal heretic, peter of bruis, seems to have been the first reformer who preached against iconolatry and even objected to the images of the crucified. he ordered churches to be razed to the ground because he acknowledged only the invisible community of the saints. he was burnt at st. giles' by an infuriated mob. more powerful, and far more numerous than his followers, the peterbrusians, were the cathari and the waldenses (founded by peter valdez a.d. ) who soon spread to northern italy and amalgamated with the sect of the lombards. the cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the teaching of primitive christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. more radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, and saw in the eucharist only a symbol of the union of god and the soul. this made their name synonymous with heresy. but by far the most famous of heretical sects was the sect of the waldenses or albigenses. it numbered amongst its adherents--if not publicly, at any rate secretly--many of the great provençal lords, and there can be no doubt that this community was permeated by the spirit of a renewed christianity, the christianity of st. francis and the german mystics. the albigenses believed that not christ, but his semblance only, had been crucified; they rejected the god of the old testament and their doctrine of the two creators,--the devil who created the objective world, and the true god who created the spiritual world--is reminiscent of the loftiest parseeism and the profoundest gnosticism. they regarded man as placed between good and evil; the choice lay in his own hand. an extraordinary poem by peire cardinal--not by any means a heretic--breathes this spirit. he confronts god not with the customary humility, but as one power confronts the other. "i will write a new poem, and on the day of the last judgment i will read it to him who has created me from nothing. if he should condemn me to everlasting damnation, i will say to him: lord, have mercy on me, for i have always striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. the heavenly host will marvel at my speech. and i shall say to god that he sins against his creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil. rather let him drive away the devils, for then he will win more souls and all the world will be blessed.... i will not despair of thee and therefore thou must forgive my sins and save my soul and my heart. if i had not been born i should not have sinned. it would be a great wrong and a sin if thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for truly i may accuse thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one blessing." most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon provence by innocent iii. that highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put together. the system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with destruction. in the year the spanish nobleman dominicus guzman founded the order of the dominicans and the inquisition, which invaded provence together with the papal army supported by france for political reasons. half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma had ever been made. simon de montfort, the head of the expedition, sent the following laconic report to the pope: "we spared neither sex nor age nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword." the troubadours bewailed the desolate country, the beauty that was no more. montanhagol, although greatly intimidated by the inquisition, wrote a long poem on the subject, and the otherwise unknown bernard sicard de marvajols laments: oh! toulouse and provence, and thou, land of agence, carcassonne and beziers! as once i beheld you--as i behold you to-day! jacob of vitry, a cultured french prelate, took a different view. he inveighed against the "foolish poems, the lies of the poets, the sing-song of the women, the coarse innuendoes of the jesters." "such vermin flourishes on the stream of temporal abundance; it literally crawls over all food, for, as a rule, the meal is followed by a deluge of idle talk." a reconciliation of the two worlds was impossible. while the waldenses flourished in provence, various heretical sects arose in the west of germany and in the netherlands; prominent among them were the apostolics, who took the gospels literally, and introduced communism and polygamy, and the communities of the beghards and beguines, which roused little public attention, and did not aim at reform, but advocated a life of contemplation. they found supporters in all ranks of the community, and were connected with the later german mystics. an indictment preserved for us proves the religious originality of one of those sects, "the brethren of the free spirit," who upheld the heretical view that it were better that one man should attain to spiritual perfection than that a hundred monasteries should be founded. at the same time the inspired seer and hysterical nun, hildegarde of bingen, wrote wild letters to the popes, denouncing the vice existing in the church and the degradation of religion. "but thou, oh rome, who art well-nigh at the point of death, thou wilt be shaken so that the strength of thy feet shall forsake thee, because thou hast not loved the royal maiden righteousness with an ardent love, but with the torpor of sleep, and thou hast become a stranger to her. therefore she will desert thee if thou do not call her back." pope adrian iv. replied, almost humbly: "we long to hear words of warning from you, because men say that you are endowed with the spirit of the divine miracles." st. bernard craved hildegarde's prayer, two emperors, popes, bishops and abbots corresponded with her, requesting her prayer and advice, and the interpretation of difficult passages of the scriptures. hildegarde replied in an obscure, apocalyptical language: "in the mysteries of the true wisdom have i seen and heard this." prophets predicting the revival of the gospel of christ and the regeneration of the world appeared in the north and south. the italian monk and fanatic, joachim of floris (about a.d. ), preached that this regeneration was predestined to happen. a precursor of hegel, he taught three eras: the dominion of the father, or the first era, characterised by fear and the severity of the law; the dominion of the son, or the era of faith and compassion; and the dominion of the holy ghost, or the era of love. this last era was beginning to dawn, and in many places joachim's words were regarded as the prophecies of a seer. thus the monk, gerhard of borgo san domino, claimed for the dawning third era the preaching of a new gospel of the holy ghost, an unmistakable proof that the spirit of heresy was the outcome of religious enthusiasm. the people despised the clergy, and were favourably disposed to every reformer; at the same time they were entirely under the sway of a superstitious awe of the administrators of mysterious magic which, by appropriate practices, or by means of presents, could be turned to advantage. the fetichism of relics flourished everywhere; a sufficient number of pieces of the cross of christ were sold and worshipped to furnish trees for a big forest--to say nothing of the bones of numerous saints with which many monasteries, more especially french monasteries, did a lucrative trade. even at the time this traffic repelled the finer intellects; in a.d. , guibert, the abbot of novigentum, preached against the cult of the saints and the worship of relics, adducing all the well-known arguments which to this day, however, have proved insufficient to overcome the evil. in guibert's words, "it was an abominable nuisance that certain limbs should be detached from the body, thereby defying the law that all bodies must turn to dust. how can the bones of any man be worth framing in gold and silver," he asked, "when the body of the son of god was laid beneath a miserable stone?" he exhorted the people to turn from the visible and obvious to the invisible. he maintained that the worship of relics was opposed to true religion because "not until the disciples were bereaved of the bodily presence of christ could the holy ghost descend upon them." he even rejected the prevalent, entirely materialistic, view of a life after death, and dared to suggest that the torments of hell should be interpreted spiritually. "the eternal contemplation of the lord is the supreme bliss of the righteous; who could dare to deny that the misery of the damned consists in the eternal bereavement of the face of the lord?" religion had been lost; what should have been a vital force had become as far as the most learned were concerned a knowledge of historical events. many saw in a return to evangelical simplicity and love the only remedy; but it was the life, not the preaching of a man, which once again was vouchsafed to the world as a great example. "nobody has shown me what i should do; but the most high himself has commanded me to live according to the gospels." francis of assisi accepted the accounts of the life of christ with the utmost naïveté; he neither searched for an allegorical meaning (as the theologians did), nor did he subordinate the man jesus to the divine principle of the _logos_ (in the manner of the great mystics). to him the imitation of christ meant a ministry of love; he did not conceive religion as dogma and the political power of a hierarchy, but as a state of the heart. this is a characteristic which he shares with eckhart, the great recreator of european religion, although he was fundamentally alien to him. st. francis never uttered a single hostile word against tradition or the clergy; he never inveighed against the corruption of morals and religious indifference, as other reformers did; he exerted a reformatory influence solely by his life, for he possessed the secret of the great love. during his whole life he was averse to laying down rules for his followers, although continually urged to do so by popes and bishops. his importance does not lie in the foundation of an order with certain regulations and a specific object, but in the fact that he was a vital force. he broke the norms of the church whenever it seemed right to him to do so, for he was absolutely sure of himself; without being ordained he preached to the people in his own tongue, probably the first man (after the provençal peter valdez) who did so; without possessing the slightest authority he consecrated his friend clara as a nun. innocent iii., who made the suppression of heresy the task of his life, showed great intelligence and wisdom in sanctioning st. francis' sermons to the people and acknowledging his unecclesiastical brotherhood. this probably transformed a dangerous revolutionary into a faithful servant of the church. maybe the church was indebted to st. francis for being saved from a great early reformation; signs of it were not wanting, and another arnold of brescia might have arisen and brought about her overthrow. it is doubtful whether the church would have come out of a franciscan crusade as victoriously as she came out of her struggle with provence. st. francis regarded science with indifference. "every demon," he said, "has more scientific knowledge than all men on earth put together. but there is something a demon is incapable of, and in it lies the glory of man. a man can be faithful to god." with those words he had inwardly overcome tradition and theology, and direct knowledge of the divine had dawned in his soul. he even forbade his brethren to own copies of the scriptures. god in the heart--that was the core of his doctrine. with all his wonderful intuition he was absolutely innocent of the pride of ignorance; he really felt himself smaller than the smallest of men--unlike the bishops and popes who called themselves the servants of the servants of god, without attaching the least meaning to it. how characteristic of his simple mind was his passionate insistence on the respectful handling of the vessels used at holy mass, because they were destined to receive the body of the lord. and yet he hardly knew anything of the symbolic transmutation of bread and wine--he accepted the miracle without a thought, like a child. in the year , st. francis took part in a crusade. while the battle of damietta was raging, he went into the camp of the saracens and preached before the sultan, who received him with respect and sent him back unharmed. according to the legend, he then went to bethlehem and jerusalem, where the sultan, touched by his personality, gave him access to the sacred shrines. to francis this pilgrimage to the holy land had a profound meaning, for to him christianity meant the imitation of christ. although he lived on bread himself, and poverty was his chosen lady, he regarded the asceticism of the early middle ages as futile and rejected it. the fire of life burned in him so ardently that he gave no thought to the morrow, and literally followed the admonition of the gospels: "so likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." we read in the _fioretti_ (perhaps the oldest popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibited asceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age to have been an invention. he also disapproved of the secluded monastic life, then the universal ideal of the _vita contemplativa_, and insisted on his followers living in the world, radiating love and sustaining life by the charity of their fellow-men. there is an anecdote contained in the _fioretti_, reflecting the great superiority and lucidity of his mind. on a cold winter's day he and brother leo were tramping through the deep snow. "brother leo," said st. francis, "if we could restore sight to all blind men, heal all cripples, expel evil spirits and recall the dead to life--it would not be perfect joy." and after a while: "and if we knew all the secrets of science, the course of the stars, the ways of the beasts--it would not be perfect joy--and if by our preaching we could convert all infidels to the true faith--even that would not be perfect joy." "tell me then, father," said brother leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "if we now knocked at the convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently without murmuring--that would be perfect joy: the mercy of self-control." "he met death singing," says his biographer, thomas of celano, the author of the magnificent _dies irae, dies illa_. on his deathbed st. francis composed and sang without interruption the hymn to the sun, that lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for all created things,--is comprised and transfigured. it expresses a new form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility. he embraced in his heart his brother sun, his sister moon, the dear stars; his brother wind, his sister and mother earth; and on the day of his death this _brother seraphicus_ added to it a powerful and touching song of praise of his "brother death." the legend has it that a flock of singing-birds descended on the roof of the cottage in which he lay dying; the songs of his "little sisters" accompanied him to the world beyond the grave. we are justified in comparing this death, which was sustained by the fundamental forces of that era, soul and emotion, to that other, more famous, death of antiquity. socrates died without in the least succumbing to any personal feeling, supported by the purely logical consideration that it was expedient to obey the laws of the state. his death was the application of a universal proposition to an individual case, and because no one could accuse socrates of a dialectical error, the conclusion, his death, had to take place. francis and some of his successors realised in their lives the simple, religious, fundamental emotion of love in a way which the people could clearly understand. "god's minstrels" was the name given to his followers, because they spoke and sang of the love of god without ecclesiastical ceremony. jacopone da todi ( - ), probably next to dante and guinicelli the greatest poet which italy has produced, praised the transcendent love of god in ecstatic verses. he was the religious counterpart of the troubadours; his passionate devotion to the child jesus, the madonna and the crucified, eclipses their most ardent lyrics. these southerners could not forgo the visible emblems of their religion; the infinitely simple principle that only he who calls nothing his own, and desires no earthly goods, is perfectly free, and can never fall foul of his neighbour, was, if not lived up to, at any rate understood and respected. the grateful hearts of the people surrounded the name of st. francis with legends; the study of his life inspired giotto, the father of the new art, to the study of plant and animal life. the story of st. francis is written on the walls of the cathedral at assisi, the first monumental work of italian art. st. francis re-lived the terrestrial life of jesus; in one direction he excelled his model, for though the love of christ embraced all mankind, the heart of st. francis went out to all things, beasts and plants and stars. he applied the words, "whatsoever ye do to the least of my brethren, ye have done unto me," to _brother bear_ and _his sisters the little birds_. he was one of the first men, since the greek era, who saw nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and celestial phenomena. the discovery of the beauty of nature, and with it the revival of aesthetics, was an essential part of the new-born civilisation. this fact was accomplished--in an almost sentimental way--by the troubadours and minnesingers. but the relationship of st. francis to nature was something very different. the co-ordination of man and beast--in his sermon to the birds, for instance--cannot be called anything but frankly pagan. st. francis said to his disciples: "tarry a little while in the road while i go and preach to my little sisters, the birds." and he went into the fields and began to preach to the birds which sat on the ground; and straightway all the others flew down from the trees and flocked round him, and did not fly away until he had blessed them; and when he touched them, they did not move. and these were the words which he spoke to them: "my brothers and sisters, little birds, praise god and thank him that he has given you wings with which to fly and clothed you with a garment of feathers. that he admitted your kind into noah's ark so that your race should not disappear from the earth. be grateful to him that he has given you the air for your kingdom; you sow not, neither do you reap, but your heavenly father gives you abundance of food. he gave you the rivers and fountains; he gave you the mountains and valleys as a refuge, and the high trees so that you may build your nests in safety. and because you can neither spin nor cook, god clothed you and your little ones. behold the greatness of the love of your creator! beware of the sin of ingratitude and diligently praise god all day!" and when he had thus spoken, the birds opened their beaks, beat their wings and bowed to the ground. more than a hundred years later ( - ), a man was living in swabia whose soul was kindred to the soul of st. francis: suso, who is, as a rule, classed with the mystics. he had a profound, typically german love of meadow and forest, and expressed it more exquisitely than the best among the minnesingers. "look above you and around you and behold the vastness of heaven and the speed of its revolutions. the lord has emblazoned it with seven planets, each of which--not only the sun--is far larger than the earth; he has adorned it with myriads of radiant stars. see how serenely the glorious sun is riding in the cloudless sky, giving to the earth abundance of fruit! behold the verdure of the meadow! the trees are bursting into leaf and the grass is springing up; behold the smiling flowers and listen to glen and dale re-echoing with the sweet song of the nightingales and little singing birds; the beasts which the bitter winter drove into nooks and crannies, and into the dark ground, are emerging from their hiding-places to rejoice in the sun and seek a mate. young and old are glad with an exceeding joy. oh! thou gentle god, how fair art thou in thy creatures! oh! fields and meadows, how surpassing is your beauty!" or: "my dear brethren, what more shall i say to you than that my eyes have seen many gladsome sights. i walked across the flowering meadows and listened to the heavenly harps of the little birds praising their gentle and loving creator so that the woods echoed with their songs." and, more compassionate even than st. francis: "i will say nothing of the children of man; but the misery and sorrow of all the beasts and little birds, and all created things, is well-nigh breaking my heart; and having no power to help them, i sighed, and prayed to the most high, most merciful lord, that he would deliver them." his description of a paradisean meadow sounds like the description of a picture by fra angelico: "now behold with your own eyes the heavenly meadow! lo! what summer joy! behold the kingdom of sweet may, the valley of all true joy! glad eyes are gazing into glad eyes! hark to the harps and fiddles, the singing and laughter! young men and maidens are leading the dance! love without sorrow shall reign for ever...." etc. there is a picture, drawn by this same suso, representing the journey of man through life, his departure from god and his return. in this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism; death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and underneath is written: "this is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of the traditional hatred of the world which eckhart, his great master, had completely overcome. provençals and italians sang the delight of spring, and the german minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the open-air life which had again become possible, after the long imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. but some of the german epic poems, "tristan and isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere descriptions of sylvan beauty. the student of art, especially the german art of the renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird, or a flower, are treated. the familiar things of every-day life were in this way brought into connection with solemn biblico-historical subjects. there is no doubt that at all times a certain keen perception of the beauty of nature has been inherent in some favoured individuals; but the universally accepted opinion that only the supernal was really beautiful, and that terrestrial beauty was merely its reflected glory, was too strong even for them. thus we have seen suso translating the beauty of the earthly spring to the kingdom of heaven. at the same time men were beginning to travel to distant countries for the sole purpose of seeing new scenes and acquiring fresh knowledge. the famous venetian, marco polo, was the first european who (in ) visited central asia, crossed china and thibet, and brought news to europe of the fairyland of japan. sight-seeing as an end in itself was discovered. long sea-voyages for commercial purposes were no novelty, but no human foot had ever trod the summits of the lower alps, unless it had been the foot of a peasant whose cattle had strayed. petrarch was the first man (in ) to climb a barren mountain, the mont ventoux in provence, voluntarily undergoing a certain amount of fatigue for sheer delight in the beauty of nature. this was a great, an immortal deed, greater than all his sonnets and treatises put together. in a long letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance all the alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic exercises. the beauty of nature discovered and appreciated, interest began to be evinced in the relationship existing between the various phenomena and there arose a desire to obtain ocular proof of what was written in the venerable books--perhaps even make new discoveries. the first man of any importance in this direction was the german albrecht bollstädt (albertus magnus), who, although he contributed more than any other man to the promulgation of aristotelian philosophy, wrote a book on natural history founded on personal observation; his great english contemporary, however, roger bacon, is the true father of modern experimental science. it was he who coined the expression "scientia experimentalis," and framed the principle that all research must be based on the study of nature. he maintained that experience was the "mistress of all sciences," and said: "i respect aristotle and account him the prince of philosophers, but i do not always share his opinion. aristotle and the other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." this thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in the age of scholasticism. bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth of the christian dogma. here it is essential roughly to sketch the essence of the philosophical thought of that period, and point out the way which led from the christianity of the fathers of the church and scholasticism to the religion of unhistorical christianity, the so-called mysticism. scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century; universities were founded in paris, oxford and padua, and he who aspired to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even eckhart did not neglect to obtain his scholastic education in paris. scholasticism was an imposing and yet strangely grotesque system of the world, built up--before a background of blazing stakes--of scriptural passages and ecclesiastical tradition, lofty, pure thought and antique-mediaeval superstition. its fundamental problem, the determination of the border line between faith and knowledge, was purely philosophical. while the older scholasticism, based on platonic traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with christianity, that is to say, prove the revelations by dialectics, albertus magnus and, authoritatively, his pupil, thomas aquinas ( - ), strictly distinguished, by the use of aristotelian weapons, the rational or perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of faith. this distinction, made in order to safeguard dogma, quickly revealed its double-face. the handmaiden philosophy rebelled against her mistress theology, and asked her for her credentials. according to the classic and dogmatic doctrine of thomas, the natural verities alone could be grasped by human understanding; the supernatural or revealed truths (the dogmas) were beyond proof and scientific cognition. to submit them to research was not only an impossible task, but thomas stigmatised every effort in this direction as heresy, fondly believing that he had once and for all safeguarded the position of faith. but more resolute and profound thinkers, although not in so many words attacking the authority of the scriptures, and leaving thomas' border-line unquestioned, found the unfathomable truths not in ecclesiastical tradition but in their own souls, thus investing "faith" with a new meaning, unassailable by criticism. the idea of drawing a line between perceivable or rational truths and imperceivable or divine truths, is fraught with the burning question as to the limits of human knowledge, a question which to this day remains unanswered. in the course of time the limits were extended in favour of imperfect knowledge (but the character of the unknowable was problematised and questioned). while thomas was still convinced of the possibility of proving the existence of a god by the power of the human intellect, duns scotus removed the problem of the existence of a god and the immortality of the soul from the domain of science, and made both propositions a matter of faith. william of occam, more uncompromising than duns scotus, maintained the absolute impossibility of acquiring knowledge of supernatural things, and taught--on this point, too, anticipating kant--that objective knowledge acquired through the senses should precede abstract knowledge. the last conclusion of nominalism was thus arrived at, the existence of universal conceptions, or universals, supposed to exist outside material things--the curse of the platonic inheritance--declared to be impossible, and reality conceded to the individual only. roscellinus, the founder of this doctrine, had still been content to deny the existence of the conception of "deity," leaving the individual persons, father, son and holy ghost, as real individuals, untouched. we see from the foregoing that the universally derided scholasticism travelled along the whole line of modern thought: from the "realism" of thomas, which leaves the universals as yet unassailed by doubt and occupying the very heart of knowledge, past the first and, to our view, very modest doubts of the nominalists, to the agnosticism of bacon, duns and occam. with the new position of decided nominalism the foundation was prepared for the experimental sciences on the one hand, and mysticism on the other. for the conclusion that things supernatural are a closed book to us may have two results: on the one hand, the rejection of the transcendental and the victory of science; on the other, the need to descend into the profoundest depths of the universe and the soul, and grasp by intuition what common sense does not see. the time was ripe and the consummators came: dante in the south, eckhart in the countries north of the alps. with regard to dante, i will say one thing only; he gathered together all the achievements of the new art and transcended them in a work which has never been surpassed. the profoundly symbolical words, "the new life is beginning," are written at the commencement of his _vita nuova_, and with his _divine comedy_ the art of europe had attained perfection. it is necessary to give a more detailed account of eckhart. he had been almost forgotten in favour of his pupils, tauler and suso, and the unknown author of the _theologica germanica_ (to which luther wrote a preface), but to-day a faint idea of the great importance of this man is beginning to dawn upon the world. eckhart was the greatest creative religious genius since jesus, and i believe that in time his writings will be considered equal to the gospel of st. john. he grasped the spirit of religion with unparalleled depth; everything produced by the highly religious later mediaeval era pales before his illumination. compared to him, st. augustine, st. bernard, and even st. francis dwindle into insignificance; all the later reformers are small beside the greatness of his soul. every one of his sermons contains profound passages, such as "god must become i and i must become god." "the soul as a separate entity must be so completely annihilated that nothing remains except god, yea, that it becomes more glorious than god, as the sun is more glorious than the moon." "the scriptures were written and god created the world solely that he may be born in the soul and the soul again in him." "the essence of all grain is wheat, of all metal gold, and of all creatures man. thus spoke a great man: 'there is no beast, but it is in some way a semblance of man.'" "the least faculty of my soul is more infinite than the boundless heavens." "again we understand by the kingdom of god the soul; for the soul and the deity are one." "the soul is the universe and the kingdom of god." "god dwells so much within the soul that all his divinity depends on it." "man shall be free and master of all his deeds, undestroyed and unsubdued." eckhart was the first man who thought consecutively in the german vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a medium for expressing profound thought. in addition he wrote latin treatises which were discovered a short time ago; i have not read them, but i have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in the german tongue. the latin language has at all times fettered the spirit far more successfully than the still untainted and living german. the religious genius of a single individual had created christianity. but from the very beginning it was misunderstood; the salvation of the world was linked to the person of a man who had aspired to be an example to the whole race. the term, "son of god," was understood in the sense of the hero-cult of antiquity; possibly the jewish faith in a messiah, the politico-national hope of the children of israel, was a good deal to blame for this. a historical event was translated into metaphysic. the only truly religious man was made the centre of a new mythology and naïvely worshipped. it may sound like a paradox, but it is a fact that the whole of the first millenary was inwardly irreligious; it concealed its want of metaphysical intuition behind the falsification of historical events. the entire mediaeval (and a large proportion of the protestant) theology laboured to obtain an intellectual grasp of the doctrine of a unique historical salvation of humanity and frame it into a dogma. and thus occurred that unparalleled misunderstanding (a misunderstanding which never clouded the mind of india) which based religion, the timeless metaphysical treasure of the soul, on the historical record of an event which had happened in asia minor, and had come down to us in a more or less garbled--some say entirely falsified--version. this was the great sin of christianity: it regarded a historical event, revealing the very essence of religion, and consequently capable of being formulated, as a divine intervention for the purpose of bringing about the salvation of the world, instead of recognising in the sublime figure of the founder of the christian religion a great, perhaps even perfect, incarnation of the eternally new relationship between god and the soul. it promulgated the strange thought that only the one soul, the soul of the founder, was divine, and instead of teaching the divinity of humanity, it taught the divinity of this one man only--jesus became a god who could no longer be looked upon as the perfect specimen and prototype of the race, but before whom it behoved man to kneel and pray for salvation. perhaps it was not possible to understand the new doctrine in any other way; before men can conceive the idea of their divinity, they must have become conscious of their souls. this complete misunderstanding and externalising of religion which took place in the first millenary, and which can never now be retrieved, is fundamentally pagan, antique. the record of the salvation of the world, achieved by a hero once and for all time, the historification of the divine spark which is daily re-born in the soul, entirely corresponds to the greek myths of gods and demi-gods which before their new, symbolical interpretation, were taken quite literally. i am not now concerned with the problem of how far the antique heroes and eastern mysteries directly influenced the conception of the figure of christ; i only wish to emphasise the profound contrast between true religion which springs up in the soul of the individual, and historical tradition. if there is such a thing as religion, it must exist equally for all men, for those who accidentally received a report of a certain historical event, as well as for those who remained in ignorance of the fact. all heretical demonstrations were rooted in a vague realisation of this contrast. but eckhart accomplished the unparalleled deed of once more building a bridge between the soul and the deity; of relegating to the background all the ineradicable historical misrepresentations or, if there was no alternative, of unhesitatingly proclaiming them as erroneous, or interpreting them symbolically. "st. paul's words," he says, for instance, "are nothing but the words of paul; it is not true that he spoke them in a state of grace." he did not regard the scriptures as the bourne of truth, but as subsequent proof of the directly experienced truth of the divine event. with this conception christianity had reached its highest stage. henceforth the origin of all truths and values was no longer sought in doctrine and authority, but in the soul of man; god was neither to be found in the heavens nor in history, but in the soul; the soul must become divine and creative; it had found its task: the recreation of the world. it was true, st. augustine had said: "_non christianised, christi sumus_," but this saying had never been understood, and very probably st. augustine had not meant it in its literal sense. at last the fundamental consciousness of christianity had triumphed: the principle of the "son-of-godship" inspired the soul of the mystics; in future religion must emanate from the soul and find its goal in god; written documents and--in the case of the profoundest thinkers--examples were no longer needed. the heretical sects had been content to reject post-evangelical tradition, in order to lay greater stress on the words of christ. they were genuine reformers, but they were as much constrained by the historical facts as the roman catholic church, and their standpoint has to this day remained the standpoint of the protestant professions of faith. the fact of this new conception attaching no importance to the historical jesus of nazareth (had he never lived it would have made no difference) made of it a new religion. by putting aside this external and accidental moment, it placed the metaphysical and purely spiritual core of christianity, the fundamental conviction of the divinity of the soul, and the will to eternal life, within the centre of religious consciousness, and by so doing put itself beyond the reach of historical criticism and scepticism, eckhart, more than any other teacher, was profoundly convinced of the freedom and eternal value of the soul. "i, as the son, am the same as my heavenly father." he taught that christ is born in the soul, that the divine spark is continuously re-kindled in the soul: "it is the quality of eternity that life and youth are one," and that man must become more and more divine, more and more free from all that is unessential and accidental until he no longer differs from god. it is only a logical conclusion to say that a perfect man, mystically speaking, is god; his being and his will are in nothing differentiated from absolute, universal, divine will--german mysticism agrees in this with the upanishads. kant would have said that the principles of such a man would become cosmic laws; sin would be the estrangement from god, the will to draw away from god. the profound and only mission of religion is the endowment of man in this hurly-burly of life with the consciousness of eternity. religion places our transient life under the aspect of eternity, and therefore it must, in its essence, remain a stranger to things temporal. only that moment in the life of a man can be called religious which lifts him beyond himself, out of his petty, narrow existence, conditioned by and subject to accidents, into timeless, universal life; which gives him the certainty that historical events can never be regarded as definite and ultimate--that moment which has the power to set free, to deliver, to save. thus it is irreligious to regard an event which occurred on the temporal plane--and were it the greatest event which ever befell on earth--as the pivot of metaphysical value for all men; to link the salvation of the world to an occurrence which was relatively accidental, to base the consciousness of eternity on the knowledge of a fact. this would be a victory of time over eternity, a victory of irreligion over religion. i regard it as the greatest achievement of that great time that spontaneous religion again became possible. eckhart rediscovered the divine nature of man; never has the consciousness of timeless eternity been expressed as he expressed it in his tract, _on solitude_. doubtless there have been men before him who possessed direct religious intuitions, and now and then gave timid utterance to them; but the authority of tradition has always been too great, and they never did more than compromise between the historical events on which the christian religion is based and the genuinely religious experience of their own souls. eckhart, too, was careful not to offend against the letter, and his pupils, after suspicion had fallen on them, made many a concession in terms, and perhaps even in thought. st. augustine already had steered a middle course between the historical and the religious conception, in his phrase: _per christum hominem at christum deum_, and suso (in his _booklet of eternal wisdom_) followed his lead. "thus speaks the eternal wisdom: if ye will behold me in my eternal divinity ye must know and love me in my suffering humanity. for this is the quickest road to eternal salvation." the brutality of the tenet which maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to many thoughtful minds. the patriarchs of the old testament were looked upon as saved--to some extent--by the fact of their being the ancestors or prophets of christ; but pagans and greeks, including aristotle, were condemned even by the great dante. at the conclusion of his _divine comedy_ dante proved himself a truly inspired mystic, for he gave to us the profoundest vision of the divinity which has ever been vouchsafed to man. but his genius was directed and restricted by the dogmas of the church; his religious standpoint was the standpoint of the early middle ages and dogmatic catholicism. as poet and lover he was the inaugurator of a new world; here he represents the culmination and conclusion of the condemned world-system. he was the iron landmark of the ages--eckhart, the creator of eternal values. the foremost of the precursors of eckhart was bernard of clairvaux ( - ). he was the exponent of the love of god which he placed above knowledge; in one of his letters he calls love "the existence of god himself," basing his definition on the passage in the gospel of st. john, "god is love." "love is the eternal law which created and preserves the universe; the whole world is governed by love; but although love is the law to which all creation is subject, it is not itself without law, but it is a law unto itself. serfs and mercenaries are ruled by laws which are not from god, but which they made themselves; some because they do not love god, others because they love the things of this world better than god.... they made their own laws and subordinated the universal and eternal laws to their own will. but those (who live righteously) are in the world as god is: neither serfs nor mercenaries, but the children of god and, like god himself, they live only by the law of love." "his greatest happiness is complete absorption in the vision of the divine and forgetfulness of self." "all love is an emanation of that one love. it is the eternally creative and governing law of the universe." "to be penetrated by such emotion is to become deified. as a drop of water in a cup of wine is completely dissolved and takes the taste and colour of the wine, so also, in an indescribable manner, is the human will absorbed in the divine will, and transformed into the will of god. for how could god become all in all if anything human were left in man?" "they are completely immersed (the martyrs) in the infinite ocean of eternal light, in radiant eternity...." the entranced soul "shall lose all knowledge of itself and become completely absorbed in god; it shall become unlike itself in the measure as it has received the gift of becoming divine." sensuous metaphors from the song of songs and the psalms are again and again intermingled with these lofty thoughts. but in spite of his divine emotion, in spite of his anticipations of the german mystics, bernard took the standpoint of ecclesiastical orthodoxy whenever he was not in the ecstatic state; his contemplative mind was unable to grasp the importance of independent thought, a fact amply proved by his inglorious quarrel with abélard, the greatest thinker of his time. this quarrel was a typical illustration of the difference between the believer and the thinker. bernard forgot all about love, and did not hesitate to stir up unpleasantness whenever he could do so. so he wrote to pope innocent ii.: "peter abélard is striving to destroy the christian faith, and imagines that his human intellect can penetrate the depths of the divine mind.... nothing is hidden from him, neither in the earth below, nor in the heavens above; his intellectual pride exceeds all limits; he attacks the doctrines of faith, and ponders problems far above his intellectual capacity; he is an inventor of heresies ...," etc. thanks to his machinations, abélard was compelled to recant at the council of sens, and was condemned by the pope to eternal silence. berengar of poitier took abélard's part, and in a satirical treatise ventured to criticise st. bernard's conduct: "thus philosophise the old women at the looms. of course, when bernard tells us that we must love god, he speaks a true and venerable word; but he need not have opened his lips to do so, for it is a self-evident truth." as a matter of fact, these words branded and contradicted the merely subjective emotional mysticism; to the emotional mystic salvation lies in the "absorption in god," in shapeless, thoughtless contemplation. richard of st. victor, founding his theories on st. bernard, established six stages of meditation. the franciscan monk, bonaventura, the famous author of the _biblia pauperum_, added a seventh, a complete rest in god--"like the sabbath after the six days of labour." to bonaventura, as later on to dante, the world was a ladder leading up to god. if we turn from these thinkers of the neo-latin race, who in spite of their undeniable mysticism were completely under the dominion of the church--to german mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find above and beyond love, a new principle: the soul of man is the starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the religious consciousness is the soul's road to god. the nativity of christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth of the divine principle in the soul of man. in passing i will mention a german nun, mechthild of magdeburg ( - ), who anticipated some of the great thoughts of eckhart, although she was incapable of grasping their mutual connection. "the holy trinity and everything in heaven and earth must be subject to me" (the soul), were words in the true spirit of eckhart, leaving st. bernard far behind. mechthild found metaphors of true poetical grandeur when she spoke of the union of the soul with god. "the dominion of the fire has yet to come. that is jesus christ in whose hands the heavenly father has laid the salvation of the world and the last judgment. on the day of judgment he shall fashion cups of wondrous beauty out of the crackling sparks; therein the father will drink on his festival all the holiness which through his dear son he has poured into human souls." emotional mysticism was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; even eckhart's pupil, suso, belonged to this class of mystics. this vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid dogmas of the church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted in more than one way, it caused very little offence; but these visions and ecstasies, which are so often mistaken for true mysticism, have done much to bring the latter into contempt with the seriously minded. eckhart did not acknowledge it as genuine mysticism and directly condemned it in many of his writings; and as he rejected mystic sentimentalism, clearly divining its pathological cause, so he also rejected asceticism and all religious ceremonies. the evangelical poverty of the franciscan monks was an object of loathing to him. st. francis (and thirty years before him peter valdez) had naïvely interpreted the imitation of christ as a life of absolute poverty, and had been relentless in his denunciation of worldly wealth, which every monk of his order had to renounce. he himself never touched money, seeing in it the source of all evil. his transcendent treasure was "holy poverty"; jacopone wrote an ardent hymn to "queen poverty," and even thomas, the representative of dominican erudition, theoretically took up the cudgels on its behalf. but even in the primitive church the principle of worldly and spiritual poverty was widely spread and encouraged. in the defence of poverty, which was practically nearly always synonymous with idleness and begging, and therefore roused much hostility among the people, bonaventura pointed out (in his treatise, _de paupertate christi_) that jesus himself had never done any manual work. the universal preference for a contemplative life encouraged the tendency, and the extreme charitableness of the middle ages made its realisation possible. work was frequently looked upon as a punishment--a view which could easily be upheld by reference to adam's expulsion from paradise--and inflicted upon the monks for offences against the rules. dante's friend, guido cavalcanti, expressed the natural sentiment that poverty is a distressing condition, in a canzone which bristles with insults hurled at the queen of the franciscans: yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death, for he, at length, is longed for in the breast. but not with thee, wild beast, was ever aught found beautiful or good; for life is all that man can lose by death, not fame and the fair summits of applause; his glory shall not pause but live in men's perpetual gratitude. while he who on thy naked sill has stood he shall be counted low, etc. d.g. rossetti. the concept of the german mystics was infinitely more profound than the concept of the merely external poverty of the franciscans, which in the case of st. francis and jacopone was an inherent characteristic and pure, but in the case of the others more or less vicious. "man cannot live in this world without labour," says eckhart, "but labour is man's portion; therefore he must learn to have god in his heart, although surrounded by the things of this world, and not let his business or his surroundings be a barrier." there is a passage in the book of an unknown author, entitled _the imitation of christ's poverty_ (formerly ascribed to tauler), which reads as follows: "poverty is equality with god, a mind turned away from all creatures; poverty clings to nothing and nothing clings to it; a man who is poor clings to nothing which is beneath him, but to that alone which is greater than all things. and that is the loftiest virtue of poverty that it clings only to that which is sublime and takes no heed of the things which are base, so far as it is possible." "the soul while it is burdened with temporal and transient things is not free. before it can aspire to freedom and nobility it must cast away all the things of the world." "nobody can be really poor unless god make him so; but god makes no man poor unless he be in his inmost heart; then all things will be taken from him which are not god's. the more spiritual a man is, the poorer will he be, for spirituality and poverty are one...." pseudo-tauler even affirms that a man "can possess abundant wealth and yet be poor in spirit." the meaning of this is clear: he whose heart is not wrapped up in the things of the world, will find his way to god; a soul which is without desire is rich. but there was a still greater contrast between the naïve religion represented by st. francis of assisi and the religion of eckhart. the former lived entirely in the obvious and visible; the love of all creatures filled his heart and shaped his life. the heart of the mystic too, was filled with love, but it was love transcending the love of the individual, love of the primary cause. in the last sense eckhart taught, contrary to traditional christianity, and in conformity with indian wisdom, that the soul must be absorbed into the absolute and that everything transient and individual must cease to exist. "the highest freedom is that the soul should rise above itself and flow into the fathomless abyss of its archetype, of god himself." even st. bernard was not quite free from this mystical heresy (_cf._ the previously quoted passages). "when he has reached the highest degree of perfection, man is in a state of complete forgetfulness of self, and having entirely ceased to belong to himself, becomes one with god, released from everything not divine." even compassion must cease in this state, for there is nothing left but justice and perfection. we recognise here a characteristic of all those who are greatest among men: of goethe, for instance, of bach, or kant: namely, the correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to distinguish between itself and the world, has eradicated everything paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, impersonal, divine. st. francis knew nothing of this consciousness. "god has chosen me because among all men he could find no one more lowly, and because through my instrumentality he purposed to confound nobility, greatness, strength, beauty and the wisdom of the world." he was the disciple of the earthly jesus, who went through life the compassionate consoler of all those who were sorrowful. but eckhart aspired "to the shapeless nature of god." "we will follow him, but not in all things," he said of the historical jesus. "he did many things which he meant us to understand spiritually, not literally ... we must always follow him in the profounder sense." compared to the religion of eckhart, the religion of st. francis is the faith of a little child, picturing god as a benevolent old man. such a religion is equally true and sincere, but it represents an earlier stage on the road of humanity. if christianity were--as we are occasionally assured--the religion of jesus, then the great mystics cannot be called christians. and yet st. augustine's: "we are not christians, but christs," was fulfilled in them. the profoundest depth of european religion, of which eckhart was the exponent, and which found artistic expression in gothic art, was not sounded by music until very much later. bach, more emphatically in the high mass and the magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music, brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic perfection. the deep religious sentiment which pervades the high mass is so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any historical faith--it is pure consciousness of the divine. the peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become popular, or exert any very great influence. a few men, such as tauler, suso, merswin, and the unknown author of the _theologica germanica_ handed on--not by any means always unadulterated--the doctrine they had received from eckhart--which at all times appealed to a few thinkers--but the real influence on the world and on history was reserved for the reformers. the reformer, in his inmost nature, is related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. he has every appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on that against which he is fighting. he suffers under its inefficiency; his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious peace. the mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. he is not dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the relationship of the soul to god. but the reformer is possible only under certain circumstances. he, too, starts from an inner religious consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his energy to the world. the mystic is not even aware of the difference between his own conception of god and traditional religion; he is under the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has broken fresh ground; for he has taken from the traditional doctrine everything which he can re-animate. the remainder is dead as far as he is concerned. to accuse him of heresy appears to him as a monstrous misunderstanding. thus mystic and reformer drink from the same well of direct religious consciousness. but while in the case of the mystic the well is fathomless, it is much more shallow in the case of the reformer. certain of himself, he directs his energy to the conversion and reformation of the world. he resembles in some respects the public orator and agitator; he has a grasp of social conditions, strives to influence his surroundings by word and deed, and is ready to sacrifice his life to his convictions. the mystic remains solitary and misunderstood. luther, who was to some extent influenced by german mysticism, fought, at his best, against the dogma of historical salvation. it is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a system. a reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders still falls on their disciples: follow me! but the second generation already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn up and looked upon as sacred--religion has become a glimpse into the past. most people never have any direct religious experience, their salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. the founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of necessity. arnold of brescia died at the stake; st. francis was no more than a heretic tolerated by the church, and eckhart escaped the tribunal of the inquisition only through his death. i have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and psychical life, how powerfully _the christian principle of the individual soul, the real fundamental value of the european civilisation_, manifested itself at the time of the crusades, and everywhere became the germ of new things. the deepest thinkers teach the deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. this position, which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the ideal, has determined the european ideal of culture and differentiated it from all orientalism, including even the loftiest indian philosophy. every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its emotional content something else--whether it be pantheism, buddhism, or naturalism--will always remain a failure. side by side with the splendid achievement of the german mysticism, the teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous cliques. but even before this race began to play a part in history, at the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul was outwardly carried to extremes. while it was the ideal of the man of antiquity to serve the higher community of the state with body and soul, nascent christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a hermit's life in the desert, for instance. children left their parents, husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. the first convents--the outcome of christian individualism and asceticism--were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the emperor valens in the year of grace , was forced to legislate against the monastic life. this hatred of the world, which was quite in harmony with the spirit of christianity, was only overcome by the profounder concepts of german mysticism, for in the primitive dualistic view of the first millenary the renunciation of the world was the only possibility of avoiding sin. the emperor justinian decreed that any man who induced a consecrated nun to marry him should be punished by death. the thought that personal greatness did not consist in renouncing the world but in living in it and overcoming it, had not yet been conceived. the delight in the human form, characteristic of antiquity, was extinguished, a crude dualism denied all antique values. the body must be hated, so that the soul could flourish. but as the hellenic period was preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of christianity matured the individual soul. it found its climax in dante and eckhart, the greatest poet of the neo-latin race, and the most illumined religious genius of germany. these two men, who were contemporaries (dante died in and eckhart in ), finally revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and fructifying each other. in dante the great artistic power of the neo-latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty into the traditional myths of christendom. eckhart experienced and recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending of the soul with god. with these two men europe definitely severed herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star. the new world had come into existence! renascence, the lucky heir, gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so marvellously. god was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all emotion was projected into the world of sense. churches were built, not from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which were painted with amazing rapidity. the fundamental principle of personality was externalised in the renascence. vanity and boasting, traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew exuberantly. no less manifest than the incomparable genius and _esprit_ of the heyday of the renascence--although far less frequently commented on--was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and learning. the essence of personality, instead of being sought in the soul, was sought in outward magnificence. as a matter of fact, the much extolled renascence only perfected the various branches of art and poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the crusades. the latter was the time of the planting of the tree of european culture; all that followed was merely its growth and ramification. only exact science had its origin in the renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period. however paradoxical it may sound--the "impersonal" science is the perfection of the european system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains. the consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it could recover its external function: organic existence justified by itself. while art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made law--science strives to understand all things and all creatures according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend nature and humanity--even where they are foreign and hostile--not according to human values, but according to their inherent nature--and this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected. the method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the "i" with the whole system of natural phenomena, the "not-i," and expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter. chapter ii the deification of woman (the first form of metaphysical eroticism) _(a) the love of the troubadours_ in the long chapter on the birth of europe, i have attempted to bring corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of individuality, impersonated by the citizen of europe. we are now prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for progress of one of the greatest results of this new development--the spiritual love of man for woman. from this subject, the specific subject of my book, i shall not again digress. we are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the eastern nations of to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political grounds. in addition to this bond there existed a very distinct spiritual love, evolved by plato and his circle and projected by one man on another member of his own sex. in the true hellenic spirit this love aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. in christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. the primitive christian scorned the body, his own as well as that of his fellow; he despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to thomas and anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. the period discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until then, unknown feeling. in crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, deprecated alike by classical greece and primitive christianity, spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. it was composed of three clearly distinguishable elements: the platonic thought, maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. from these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the central creation of christianity, and the pivot of the new-born european spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of eroticism. the position of woman had changed; she was no longer the medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister of the first christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens and had become a goddess. she was loved and adored with a devotion not of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the universe. the rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the christian religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: renunciation. this view is very clearly expressed in the legends of alexius, and in barlaam and josaphat (which although of indian origin, had found a german interpreter and were known all over europe). the latter legend tells how prince josaphat, a devout christian, married a beautiful princess. on his wedding night he had a vision of the celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of sin. recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left her and fled into the desert. many legends illustrate the incapacity of the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any other sense. woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort. very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell of a thousand years was necessary. only the unnatural condemnation of love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by tertullian and origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality--purely spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of woman. there can be no doubt that the christian ideal of chastity was largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. the identity of love and chastity was propounded--in sharp contrast to sexuality and--more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as montanhagol, sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in italy--with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy. infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. it seemed as if man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped upon her for a thousand years. his instinctive need to worship had found an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. she was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "what were the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang johannes hadlaub, a german poet. once more i must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the european. in antiquity, even in greece and rome, personality in its higher sense did not exist. the hero was the epitome of all the energies of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal was the representation of the hellenic type in all its aspects. agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, achilles the headstrong hero, odysseus the cunning adventurer. the individual was a member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period when hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern men, but slightly differentiated. but the greek differed from the oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality. we find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in the platonic figure of socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated it sharply from base desire. though his conception was not yet personal love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. the greek state could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. but this same socrates also said (in "crito") that man was indebted to the state for his existence. "did not thy father, in obedience to the law, take thy mother to wife and beget thee?" this sentiment was as antique as it could well be, and the death of socrates--as related by plato--was the most magnificent confirmation of the greek idea that the individual, even the wisest, was entirely subordinate to the community. the civilisations of china and japan are impersonal even to a greater extent than the civilisation of ancient greece. percival lowell maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of absolute impersonality. he sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most striking characteristic of the far east", "the foundation on which the oriental character is built up." it is very instructive to observe how it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage, thoughts and acts, life and death. it is carried to so great an extreme that special terms for "i," "you," "he," do not even exist in the japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions. not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the ambition of the inhabitant of the far east to become more and more so as his life unfolds itself. witness the heroic exploits of japanese soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group. we europeans regard this in the light of heroism--and it would be heroism in the case of a european. but with the sacrifice of his individual life in the interest of the community, the japanese instinctively yields the smaller value. in the same way greeks and romans did not attach very much importance to life; suicide was very common, and frequently committed without any special motive. as true love is based on personality, it is impossible for the modern east-asiatic to know love in our sense. lowell agrees with this: "love, as we understand it, is an unknown feeling in the east." he reports that japanese women will appear before strangers entirely nude, without the least trace of embarrassment--as would greek women!--because they are innocent of that other aspect of personality--the feeling of shame. to be ashamed implies the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this is not the case, there can be no feeling of shame. finally, i should like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to china and japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore dependent on vice and perversity to satisfy its craving for variety. the first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in jesus, and he created the religion of love. in him personality and love were convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. he, first of all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct. it was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new force: spiritual love projected not only on god and nature, but also on woman. now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no longer meant--as it did in the mature greek world--the individual separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and virtue. personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating these ideal values in their higher form. it admits of the fusion of the subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "personality is the blending of the universal and the individual," said kierkegaard, expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it. i shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman--the position cannot be reversed--from its inception to its climax. i shall submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream of emotion clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. i do not pretend that i have exhausted the subject--that would be impossible. the works from which i have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one provençal, old-italian, or mediæval love-song without the "i." spiritual love first appeared as a naïve sentiment--unconscious of its own peculiar characteristics--in the poems of the earlier troubadours of provence. there is a poem in which the provençals claim the fathership of the cult of woman; their opponents do not deny it, but add that it was an invention which "could fill no man's stomach." these words express the great and insurmountable barrier between pure spiritual love and pleasure. the christian dualism: soul-body, spirit-matter, had invaded the domain of love. spontaneous, genuine love, untainted by speculations and metaphysics, is found in the songs of the earlier troubadours. the greatest among all of them, bernart of ventadour, was the first to praise chaste love. if any champion of civilisation deserves a monument, it is this poet. dead is the man who knows not love, a sweet tremor in the heart. love's rapture fills my heart with laughter and sighs. grief slays me a hundred times, joy bids me rise. sweet is love's happiness, sweeter love's pain. joy brings back grief to me, grief, joy again. guillem augier novella expressed the feeling of being "elated with exaltation and grieved to death" as follows: lady, often flow my tears, glad songs in my mem'ry ring, for the love that makes my blood dance and sing. i am yours with heart and soul, if it please you, lady, slay me.... aimeril de peguilhan is of opinion that the pain of love is no less sweet than the joy of love: for he who loves with all his heart would fain be sick with love, such rapture is his pain. and bernart again: god keep my lady fair from grief and woe, i'm close to her, however far i go; if god will be her shelter and her shield, then all my heart's desire is fulfilled. and: my mind was erring in a maze, that hour i was no longer i, when in your eyes i met my gaze as in a mirror strange and shy. oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me, sighing i fell beneath your spell; i perished in you utterly as did narcissus in the well. in the same poem he goes on to say that he will ask for no reward, but finally concludes: my fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover, for weeks they'd show the traces of her lover. the german minnesinger, heinrich of morungen, called woman "a mirror of all the delights of the world," and sang: blessed be the tender hour, blest the time, the precious day, when my brimming heart welled over, when my secret open lay. i was startled with great gladness, and bewildered so with love, i can hardly sing thereof. the sensuous element still dominated bernart and his contemporaries to some extent. in their poems, all of which are genuine and sincere, the longing for kisses, sometimes for more, is frankly expressed, but the tendency towards the not sensuous and super-sensuous is already apparent. the lover loves one woman only, and would rather love in vain, patiently enduring every pang she causes him, than receive favours from another woman, were she beautiful as venus her self. bernart says: my sorrow is a sweet distress to which no alien bliss compares, and if my pain such sweetness bears, how sweet would be my happiness! elias of barjols: full of joy i am and sorrow when i stand before her face. bonifacio calvo: there is no treasure-trove on earth which i would barter for my pain; i love my grief, but spite and wrath run riot in my heart; my brain is reeling--and i laugh and cry. jubilant and desperate, exultant, i bewail my fate. quarter! lady, ere i die. the earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to perfection--the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills--a saint or a sinner. thus guillem of poitiers says: love heals the sick and a grave does it delve for the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, makes a fool of the sage with its magic, a clown of the courteous knight, and a king of the lowliest wight. the equally early cercamon: false can i be or true for her, sincere or full of lies, a perfect knight or worthless cur, serene or grave, stupid or wise. raimon of toulouse: in the kingdom of love folly rules and not sense. it was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. the latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and german emperors composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to his mistress. the underlying thought is obvious: love, the loftiest value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, a force before which wealth is as dust. "i would rather win a kind glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of france," was a favourite profession of the poets. montanhagol, for instance, in a rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the least, a little doubtful. this supreme reverence for love soon became an accepted doctrine. we constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone can make a man noble, good and wise. i will select a few illustrations from a wealth of instances: miraval: noble is every deed whose root is love. peire rogier: full well i know that right and good is all i do for love of her. guirot riquier: the man who loves not is not noble-minded, for love is fruit and blossom of the highest. and: thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do, and love gives everything a deeper sense. love is the teaching of all genuine worth. so base is no man's heart on this wide earth, love could not guide it to great excellence. giraut of calenso said of the city of love that no base or ignorant man could enter it, and the italian lapo gianni sang: the youthful maiden who appeared to me so filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts, that henceforth all ignoble things i scorn. dante in the _vita nuova_ calls beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues." the very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover: "i cannot sin when i am in her thoughts." asserts the sincere guirot riquier, and he prays christ to teach him the true love of woman. while it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of man's perfection, i know of only one passage (by raimon of miraval) contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. perhaps the most classical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chastity, outside which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the somewhat pedantic montanhagol: the lover who loves not the highest love, is like a fool polluting precious wine. let loftiest love alone within thee move, and purity and virtue will be thine. guirot riquier expressed a similar sentiment: for chaste and pure my love has always been, from my "sweet bliss" i've never asked a boon; if i may humbly serve her night and noon, my life be her inalienable lien. walter von der vogelweide says: "love is a treasure heaped up of all virtues." as time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. parallel with chaste love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the contemporary "fabliaux," later german comedies and italian and french novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible coarseness. as against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. the following passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the italian poets of the _dolce stil nuovo_, will prove the historical reality of this relationship, the ideal of the declining middle ages. we need take no account of the german minnesingers, for although they shared the same ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-latin poets. bernart of ventadour: lady, i ask no other meed than that you suffer me to serve; my faith and love shall never swerve, i'm yours whatever you decreed. peire rogier: mine is her smile and mine her jest, and foolish were i more to ask and not to think me wholly blest. 'tis no deceit, to gaze at her is all i need, the sight of her is my reward. gaucelm faidit: of all the ways of love i chose the best, i love you, love, with ardour infinite, yours is my life, do as you will with it. nor kiss i ask, nor sweet embraces, lest i were blaspheming.... the most enthusiastic champions of pure love were montanhagol, sordello and guirot riqiuer. the former maintained that a lover who asked for favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor deserved to be loved.--"love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning of love can never forsake virtue." there is a controversy between peire guillem of toulouse and sordello, which contains the following passages: of all mankind i never saw a man like you, sordell', i wis, for he who woman does adore will never flout her love and kiss. and what to others is a prize you surely don't mean to despise? honour and joy i crave from her, and if a little rose she bind into the wreath, sir guillem peire, from mercy, not from duty, mind, that would be happiness indeed, oh! that such bliss should be my meed! a humble lover such as you, sordell', in faith, i never knew. sir peire, methinks what you express is lacking much in seemliness. in another poem the talented sordello says: my love for her is so profound i'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite ere with another i'd be found-- yet i'd not serve without requite, and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he would thank her even if she killed him, he continues: thus, lady, i commend to thee my fate and life, thy faithful squire i'd rather die in misery than have thee stoop to my desire. the knight who truly loves his dame not only loves her comely face, dearer to him is her fair fame undimmed, unsullied by disgrace. how grievously i should offend thy virtue, if i spoke of passion; but if i did--which god forfend! sweet lady, stoop not to compassion. although sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to death because his lady did not return his love. there is a poem in which he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save. this spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. bertran d'alaman taunted sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of his love," and granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his sincerity. it is very significant to find that sordello, that typical champion of chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of women. bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses: the jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me, for in the art of love i do excel, and there's no wife, however chaste she may be who can resist me if i woo her well. and if her husband hate me i'll not grumble, because his wife receives me in the night, if mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight, his pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble. no husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure, none can resist me, what i wish i gain, all do i love and never will refrain spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure. it may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of pure love should have led such a double life. but sordello's conduct is not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. we read that although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. petrarch, who--while living with a very earthly woman--extolled all his life long a lofty being whom he called laura, was akin to sordello, although he was a far less brutal character. the latter approached the type of the seeker of love, the don juan. in a tenzone between peirol and the dauphin of auvergne, the former maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "i cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after he has received the last favour." (otto weininger agrees with this.) but peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love. the troubadours never weary of drawing a line between _drudaria_ and _luxuria_, pure love and base desire. _mezura_, seemliness, is contrasted with _dezmezura_, licentiousness. pure love is regarded as the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. in the same way the german minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and "high" love. as both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire must dim her purity, occurs again and again. but it should not be forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without being in the least influenced by it. many a troubadour drew inspiration from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. not infrequently it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love and denunciation of base desire--a trick of his trade--suddenly came to himself and changed his mind. folquet of marseilles, for instance, after more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had been a fool. deceitful love beguiles the simple fool and binds with magic thongs the hapless wight; that like a moth lured by the candle-light, he hovers, helpless, round the heartless ghoul. i cast thee out and follow other stars full evil was my meed and recompense-- new courage steels my fainting heart, and hence i kneel at shrines which passion never mars. in an interesting poem garin the red implores _mezura_ to teach him the way to love purely and nobly; but he is anything but pleased with his instructress, and comes to the conclusion that her whole wisdom is "just good form" and nothing else. but by my merry mood impelled i kiss and dally night and morn and do the things i feel compelled to do--or else, with tonsure shorn, i'd seek a cloister.... elias of barjols, finding that his love will never be returned, and having no mind to sigh all his life in vain, renounces love altogether. "i should be a fool if i served love any longer!" "all you lovers are fools!" exclaimed another. "do you think you can change the nature of women?" this is one of the very rare criticisms of woman; as a rule we hear only of her angelic perfection, wisdom, beauty and aloofness. the distinguished poet marcabru was a woman-hater, and enemy of love from the very beginning. he said of himself that he had never loved a woman and that no woman had ever loved him. the love which is always a lie and deceiver of men, i decry and denounce; i had more than enough. can you count all the evil it wrought? when i think of it i am distraught. what a madman i was to believe, to sigh, to rejoice and to grieve; but no longer i'll squander my days, we have come to the parting of the ways. etc. he was indefatigable in abusing the tender passion, and had a great deal to say about the immorality of women. but it is characteristic of the strong public opinion of the time that even this misogynist (who, perhaps, after all was only a disappointed man) praised "high love." the subject also found its theorists, prominent among whom was the court-chaplain andreas, who wrote a very learned book on love in latin. he expressed in propositions and conclusions what the contemporary poets expressed in verse, proving thereby that spiritual love was not merely a poetic fiction but the profoundest belief of the period, supported by the full complement of its philosophical weapons. "in the whole world there is no good and no courtliness outside the fountain of love. therefore love is the beginning and foundation of all good." he also proved that a noble-minded man must be a lover, for if he were not, he could not have attained virtue. "love disregards all barriers, and makes the man of low origin the equal and superior of the nobleman." this conception of spiritual nobility, which was later on perfected in the theory of the _cor gentil_, only existed in provence and in italy; it remained unknown in france and germany. andreas drew a distinction between base love, the _amor mixtus sive communis_, and pure love, the _amor purus_. "love," he maintained, fully agreeing with the poets, "gives to a man the strength of chastity, for he whose heart is brimming over with the love of a woman, cannot think of dallying with another, however beautiful she may be." he proved from substance and form that a man cannot love two women. in the _leys d'amors_, a voluminous fourteenth-century provençal treatise, largely a text-book of grammar and prosody, we read: "and now lovers must be taught how to love; passionate lovers must be restrained, so that they may come to realise their evil and dishonourable desires. no good troubadour, who is at the same time an honest lover, has ever abandoned himself to base sensuality and ignoble desires." the same author opined that a troubadour who asked his lady for a kiss, was committing an act of indecency. on the other hand, andreas was very broad-minded in drawing the line between both kinds of love, allowing kisses, and even more, in the case of true love. (the best troubadours disagree with him in this respect.) a scholasticism of love, modelled on ecclesiastical scholasticism and substituting the beloved woman for the deity, was gradually evolved. love, veneration, humility, hope, etc., were the sacrifices offered at her shrine. she was full of grace and compassion, and was believed in as fervently as was god. some of the poets were animated by a curious ambition "to prove" their feelings with scholastic erudition, and more especially by the later, italian, school, _amore_, _cor gentil_, _valore_, were conceived as substances, attributes, inherent qualities, etc. the allegories of _amore_ played a prominent part, and spoiled many a masterpiece. the german poets steered clear of these absurdities, which even dante did not escape. at the famous courts of love, presided over by princesses, the most extraordinary questions relating to love were discussed and decided with a ceremonial closely following the ceremonial of the petty courts of law. andreas preserved for us a number of these judgments, some of which prove the really quite obvious fact that love and marriage are two very different things, for if spiritual love be considered the supreme value, matrimony can only be regarded as an inferior condition. and it was a fact that in the higher ranks of society,--the only ones with which we are concerned,--a marriage was nothing but a contract made for political and economical reasons. the baron desired to enlarge his estate, obtain a dowry, or marry into an influential family; no one dreamed of consulting the future bride, whom marriage alone could bring into contact with people outside her own family. to her marriage meant the permission to shine and be adored by a man who was not her husband. "it is an undeniable fact," propounded andreas as _regula amoris_, "that there is no room for love between husband and wife," and fauriel translated a passage as follows: "a husband who proposed to behave to his wife as a knight would to his lady, would propose to do something contrary to the canons of honour; such a proceeding could neither increase his virtue nor the virtue of his lady, and nothing could come of it but what already properly exists."--another judgment maintained "that a lady lost her admirer as soon as the latter became her husband; and that she was therefore entitled to take a new lover." at the court of love of the viscountess ermengarde, of narbonne, the problem whether the love between husband and wife or the love between lovers were the greater, was decided as follows: "the affection between a married couple and the tender love which unites two lovers are emotions which differ fundamentally and according to custom. it would be folly to attempt a comparison between two subjects which neither resemble each other, nor have any connection." a husband declared: "it is true, i have a beautiful wife, and i love her with conjugal love. but because true love is impossible between husband and wife, and because everything good which happens in this world has its origin in love, i am of opinion that i should seek an alliance of love outside my married life." all this was not frivolity, but the only logical conclusion of dualistic eroticism, incapable of blending sensuality and love. it was equally logical that love between divorced persons was not only regarded as not immoral, but as perfectly right and justifiable; it was even decided that "a new marriage could never become a drawback to old love." in the old novel, _gérard of roussillon_, the princess, beloved by gérard, is married to the emperor charles martel, and compelled to part from her knight. at their last meeting, before a number of witnesses, she called on the name of christ and said: "know ye all that i give my love to sir gérard with this ring and this flower from my chaplet. i love him more than father and husband, and now i must weep tears of bitter sorrow." after this they parted, but their love continued undiminished though there was nothing between them but tender wishes and secret thoughts. matrimony had no advantage over the love-alliance, not even the sanction of the church. a love-alliance was frequently accompanied by a ceremony in which a priest officiated. fauriel describes--without mentioning his source--such a ceremony as follows: "kneeling before his lady, with his folded hands between hers, he dedicated himself to her service, vowing to be faithful to her until death, and to shield her from all harm and insults as far as lay within his power. the lady, on her side, declared her willingness to accept his service, promised to devote her loftiest feelings to him, and as a rule gave him a ring as a symbol of their union. then she raised and kissed him, always for the first, usually for the last time." the parting of the lovers, too, was a solemn act, resembling in many ways the dissolution of a marriage. so that our solemn plighted troth when love is dead, we shall not break, we'll to the priest ourselves betake. you set me free, as i do you, a perfect right then shall we both enjoy to choose a love anew, wrote peire of barjac. it was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance; the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of his, and the church was ready to annul the contract. but the love-alliance--so sordello maintained, in a long poem--should be more binding than any marriage. only one love a woman can prefer. so let her choose her man with care. to him she must be true, for choosing once she ne'er may rue. more binding than the wedding-tie is love; for a diversity of causes wedlock may divide, by death alone be love untied. the idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire cannot together be projected on one woman. if matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony--an expedient chosen by the church--or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern sense. the first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and the world was not ripe for the second. the tendency of the rarest minds was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven. one of the early troubadours, jaufre rudel, prince of blaya, gave a practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady whom he had never seen. the story of his love was famous for centuries. he loved a countess of tripoli, a christian princess, and his whole soul was filled with his imaginary picture of her. the _provençal biography_ relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had narrated of her." in order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a dying condition. the countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to the inn where he lay. as she entered his room, jaufre regained consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. she was so touched by his love that she henceforth renounced the world.--this story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted genuine to-day. jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no _amour de tête_, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine _amour de coeur_, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved woman but permission to love her. there are other instances, and even in later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of imaginative people (i need only mention bürger and klopstock). we men of the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with uncomprehending eyes. perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in michelangelo, in goethe, and in beethoven. the church, dualistic and ascetic from its inception, waged war against sensuality as the evil of evils. "as fire and water will not mix," wrote st. bernard, "so spiritual and carnal delights cannot be experienced together." the toleration of matrimony was never more than a compromise; we require no proof that as far as the church was concerned, chastity was the only real value. even luther took up that position, and to this day christianity and sexuality remain unreconciled. but both the catholic and the protestant professions of faith regarded matrimony as the lesser evil, a concession made to the enemy, in order to render existence possible. it is very interesting to observe the position taken up by the church in connection with the new woman-worship which, although it sprang from the most genuine christian dualism, had for its object not god, but mortal woman. the logical attitude of the church would have been one of welcome, for the chaste worship of woman which regarded matrimony as an inferior state, was her natural ally. two clerics, the court-chaplain andreas, and the prolific rhymester matfre ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to the spirit of the church, but both men hastened to utter a timely recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of salvation. after establishing all the desirable details of love according to substance and accidents, andreas deduced that every love not dedicated to god was bound to offend him, and advanced eighteen points against the love of woman, starting with the well-known argument that woman was naturally of a base disposition, covetous, envious, greedy, fickle, garrulous, stubborn, proud, vain, sensual, deceitful, etc. "he who serves love, cannot serve god," he declared, "and god will punish every man who, apart from matrimony, serves venus. what good could come from acting against the will of god?" here we are face to face with a grotesque position: the official church favouring sexuality, that is matrimony, as against the newer and higher standard of ascetic, spiritual love. this attitude was quite logical, if not in the spirit of religion and in contradiction to the principle of asceticism, yet in the spirit of orthodoxy; for "whatever was not for her, was against her." the brave, janus-headed abbé was spokesman for the whole clergy, which branded love not projected on god as _fornicatio_. in his recantation andreas upheld the previously-despised matrimonial state at the expense of love; "love," he maintained, "destroys matrimony." matfre did exactly the same thing; after recapitulating in his _breviari d'amor_ all the splendid achievements rooted in the cult of woman, he suddenly veered round (at the , th verse): and satan blows on their desire, in monstrous flames leaps up the fire, and maddened by the raging fiend, from love of god and honour weaned, they turn from their creator's shrine and call their mistresses divine. with soul and body, mind and sense, they worship woman's excellence. abandoned in her beauty revel, and unawares adore the devil. three hundred years later the fanatical savanorola stormed: "you clothe and adorn the mother of god as you clothe and adorn your courtesans, and you give her the features of your mistresses!" which, as we shall presently see, was literally true. the clergy resisted all counsels of the _cortezia_ and _cavalaria_ with the sure instinct desiring the continuance of existing conditions rather than the victory of the higher conception. some writers aver that it was partly due to this fact that later on the cult of woman developed into the cult of mary. again we are confronted by a process which in the course of time has been repeated more than once: the spiritual-mystical principle of christianity entered upon a new stage, and took possession of a new and important domain; but the church, rigid and unyielding, preferred clinging to a past lower stage rather than tolerating any change. had she been absolutely consistent, her greatest poet would be on the index to-day, for, following his own intuition and ignoring her rigid dogma, he introduced his beloved beatrice into the catholic heaven. the new spiritual love was not without its caricatures. famous in provence for many strange exploits, committed in order to please his lady, was the talented peire vidal. on one occasion he caused himself to be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. he was an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. the prince of caricatures, however, was the german knight and minnesinger, ulrich of lichtenstein. he is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled _the service of woman_, which is faintly reminiscent of goethe's _werther_. as a page he commenced his glorious career by drinking the water in which his lady had washed her hands; later on he caused his upper lip to be amputated because it displeased his mistress, for "whatever she dislikes in me, i, too, hate." on another occasion he cut off one of his fingers and used it, set in gold, as a clasp for a volume of his poems which he sent to her. one of his most famous exploits was a journey through nearly the whole of austria, disguised as venus, jousting, dressed in women's clothes, with every knight he met. but in spite of his eccentricities, the tendency of his mind was not at all metaphysical; he craved very obvious favours, but as a rule contented himself with a kind, or even an unkind word. incidentally, we learn that he was married; but he devoted his whole life to "deeds of heroism" in honour of his lady. not the great book of cervantes, as is commonly believed, held up mediaeval court life to ridicule and destroyed it as an ideal, but the life and exploits of this knight and minnesinger. the same spirit animated guilhem of balaun. at the command of his lady he had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he was re-admitted to her favour. spiritual love was discovered by the provençals, but the greater and profounder italian poets developed it and brought it to perfection. what had been a naïve sentiment with the troubadours, became in dante's circle a system of the universe and a religion. the italian poet, sordello, who wrote in provençal, may be regarded as the connecting link, and the forerunner of the great italians. he died in the year of grace , and dante, who was almost a contemporary, immortalised his name in the _divine comedy_. the doctrine on which the _dolce stil nuovo_ was based pointed to the love of a noble heart as the source of all perfection in heaven and earth. purely spiritual woman-worship was regarded as an absolute virtue. the words of the last of the provençal troubadours, guirot riquier, "love is the doctrine of all sublime things"--was developed into a philosophy. i will quote a few characteristic verses, omitting dante for the present. one of the finest lyric poems of all tongues and ages, written by guido guinicelli, begins as follows: within the gentle heart love shelters him, as birds within the green shades of the grove; before the gentle heart in nature's scheme love was not, or the gentle heart ere love. (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) cino da pistoia says in epigrammatic brevity: you want to know the inmost core of love? 'tis art and guerdon of a noble heart. a wonderful canzone by guinicelli contains the following verses: a song she seems among the rest and these have all their beauties in her splendour drowned. in her is ev'ry grace,-- simplicity of wisdom, noble speech, accomplished loveliness; all earthly beauty is her diadem. this truth my song must teach-- my lady is of ladies chosen gem. (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) and cavalcanti sings: what's she whose coming rivets all men's eyes, who makes the air so tremble with delight, and thrills so every heart that no man might find tongue for words but vents his soul in sighs? (_transl. by_ sir theodore martin.) the sentiment which pervades these verses has lifted us into the higher sphere which will henceforth be our main theme. the beloved was more and more extolled; in her presence the lover became more and more convinced of his insignificance; she was worshipped, deified. the overwhelming emotion, the longing for metaphysical values which dominated the whole epoch, had reached its highest characteristic, had reached perfection. it proved the eternal quality of human emotion: the impossibility of finding satisfaction, the striving towards the infinite; it soared above its apparent object and sought its consummation in metaphysic. the love of woman and the mystical love of god were blended in a profounder devotion; love had become the sole giver of the eternal value and consolation, yearned for by mortal man. christianity had taught man to look up; now his upward gaze lost its rigidity and beheld living beauty--metaphysical eroticism had been evolved--the canonisation and deification of woman. the ideal of the troubadours to love the adored mistress chastely and devoutly from a distance in the hope of receiving a word of greeting, no longer satisfied the lover; she must become a divine being, must be enthroned above human joy and sorrow, queen of the world. traditional religion was transformed so that a place might be found in it for a woman. the reason for the recognition of spiritual love from the moment of its inception as something supernatural and divine, is obvious. the heart of man was filled with an emotion hitherto unknown, an emotion which pointed direct to heaven. the soul, the core of profound christian consciousness, had received a new, glad content, rousing a feeling of such intensity that it could only be compared to the religious ecstasy of the mystic; man divined that it was the mother of new and great things--was it not fitting to regard it as divine and proclaim it the supreme value? the troubadours had known it. bernart of ventadour had sung: i stand in my lady's sight in deep devotion; approach her with folded hands in sweet emotion; dumbly adoring her, humbly imploring her. peire raimon of toulouse: i would approach thee on my knees, lowly and meek, i would fare far o'er lands and seas thy ruth to seek. and come to thee--a slave to his lord-- i'd pay thee homage with eyes that mourn, until thy mercy i'd implored, heedless of laughter, heedless of scorn. raimon of miraval had said, "i am no lover, i am a worshipper," and cavalcanti: my lady's virtue has my blindness riven, a secret sighing thrills my humbled heart: when favoured with a sight of her thou art, thy soul will spread its wings and soar to heaven. peire vidal: god called the women close to him, because he saw all good in them. and: the god of righteousness endowed so well thy body and thy mind that his own radiancy grew blind. and many a soul that has not bowed to him for years in sin enmeshed, is by thy grace and charm refreshed. the beauty of the adored was divine. bernart of ventadour wrote: her glorious beauty sheds a brilliant ray on darkest night and dims the brightest day. guilhem of cabestaing: god has created her without a blemish of his own beauty. gaucelm faidit: the beauty which is god himself he poured into a single being. and montanhagol, anticipating dante: wherefore i tell you, and my words are true, from heaven came her beauty, rare and tender, her loveliness was wrought in paradise, men's dazzled eyes can scarce support her splendour. folquet of romans: when i behold her beauty rare, i'm so confused and startled by her worth, i ween i am no longer on this earth. a canzone which has been attributed to cavalcanti, cino da pistoia and dante, reads as follows: my lady comes and ev'ry lip is silent; so perfect is her beauty's high estate that mortal spirit swoons and falls prostrate before her glory. and she is so noble: if i uplift to her my inward eye, my soul is startled as if death were nigh. cavalcanti says: round you are flowers, is the tender green, the sun is not as bright as your dear face, all nature in her glorious summer-sheen has not so fair and beautiful a place, it pales beside you. earth has never seen a thing so full of loveliness and grace. the perfection which the mere presence of the beloved was supposed to bestow on the lover, is here conceived more broadly and freely; not only the lover, but all men are touched and transfigured by her appearance. the sentiment of the lover aspired to become objective truth. this was an important stage on the road from the spiritual to the deifying love, which i have called metaphysical eroticism. another rung of the ladder of evolution had been climbed--the mistress had become queen of the world and goddess, a being enthroned by the side of god. i will again quote guinicelli: ever as she walks she has a sober grace, making bold men abashed and good men glad, if she delight thee not, thy heart must err, no man dare look on her, his thoughts being base; nay, let me say even more than i have said, no man could think base thoughts who looked on her. (d.g. rossetti.) the same poet in his canzone, _al cor gentil_ says: "she shines on us as god shines on his angels." when madonna dies the angels receive her, rejoicing that she has joined them. the provençal, pons of capduelh, anticipated dante: and now we know that the celestial choir sings songs of jubilee at her release from this dull earth; i heard and am at rest; who praise his hosts, praise the eternal sire. i know she is in heaven with the blest, 'midst flow'rs whose glory time can never dim singing god's praise, and blest by seraphim. nought but the truth from my glad lips shall fall, in heaven she is, enthroned above all. folquet of romans wrote a letter to his beloved, in which he said amongst other things: kneeling in church before god's face, --a sinner to beseech his grace,-- and for my sins to make amends,-- 'twas you to whom i raised my hands; your loveliness alone was there, my soul knew only of one pray'r. i fancied "our father" framed my trembling lips, when they exclaimed exultant at his sacred shrine: oh! lady! all my soul is thine! lady, you have bewitched me with your beauty, that god i have forgotten and myself. cino da pistoia wrote the following commendatory prayer: into thy hands, sweet lady of my soul, the spirit that is dying i commend; and which departs so sorrowful that love views it with pity, while dismissing it. by you to his dominion it was bound, so firmly, that it since hath had no power to call on him but thus: oh, mighty lord, whate'er thou wilt of me, thy will is mine. (_transl. by_ c. lyell.) lancelot, one of the great mediaeval lovers, possessed a lock of guinevere's hair, which he prized above all the relics of the saints. when he parted from his mistress (whom he had loved not only spiritually) he fell on his knees before the door of her chamber and prayed as if "he were kneeling before the altar." spiritual love was obviously acquiring a religious tinge. the mistress took the place of god; her grace was the source of all joy and consolation; she led the souls of the dying to eternal life. god had yielded his position to her, she had stepped to his side, nay, above him. with the curse of the church still clinging to her, she had been remoulded by man's emotion into a perfect, a celestial being. the god of christianity was in danger--would the new religion of cultured minds, the religion of woman (unwilling to tolerate any other god beside her) replace the religion of the masses? was a reformation imminent? would the traditional religion be transformed into metaphysical eroticism, dethroning god, enthroning a goddess? it is impossible to say in what direction the spiritual history of europe would have developed if dante had been merely a metaphysical lover, and not also an orthodox theologian; if instead of penetrating to the vision of the divine secret, he had fainted before the face of beatrice.... the religion of woman and the dominant religion came to terms. this compromise was possible because the christian pantheon included a female deity who, although she had not hitherto played a prominent part, held an exceptional position: this was mary, the mother of the redeemer. from a.d. to a.d. , her rank had been on a level with the rank of the antique goddesses; now the new emotion enveloped and revivified her. the rigid, soulless image with the golden circle round the head slowly melted into sweet womanhood. in italy this sentiment inspired wonderful paintings of the madonna, and was responsible for the development of portraiture in general. the hold of the overwhelming tradition was broken. rejecting the universal conviction that the historical mary had resembled the mary of byzantine art, the artist, under the dominion of his woman-worship--which surpassed and re-valued all things--drew his inspiration from the fulness of life. i do not agree with thode that we are indebted to the legend of st. francis for the modern soulful and highly individualised art. its source must have been the strongest feeling of the most cultured minds, and that was undoubtedly spiritual love. the jesuit beissel wrote with deep regret: "every master almost formed his own conception of mary, but in such a way that the hieratic severity of earlier times disappeared but slowly." and he continued: "it is true, the artists' models were the noble ladies of their period; not only on account of their kindly smiling faces, but also on account of the charming coquetry with which their hands drew their cloaks across the bosom." and the art-historian, male, says: "it is a remarkable fact that in the thirteenth century the legend, or the story, of the virgin mary was depicted on the doors of all our (_i.e._, french) cathedrals." the difference between the catholic and the protestant world-principles is strongly marked in this connection. catholicism with its striving for absolute uniformity, acknowledging no individual differences, but eager to shape all life and all doctrines in harmony with one definite ideal, very consistently pronounced one single, historical woman to be divine, and made her the object of universal worship. this dogma had to be rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. again, the historic and pagan principle of catholicism was maintained; a unique event in the history of the world was immortalised and systematised and all new religious conceptions were excluded. catholicism invariably places all really important events in the past, even in a quite definite period of the past, a period unassailable by historical criticism. but with the commencement of individual intellectual life the uniform, ecclesiastical image of the madonna gradually gained life and individuality. just as according to protestant teaching every soul must establish its individual relationship with god (which is subject to change because individuality is not excluded as it is in catholicism), so the imaginative emotionalist created his own queen of heaven. frequently he was still under the impression--this was especially the case with monks--that he was worshipping the ecclesiastical deity, when he had long been praying to a metaphysical conception of his own. the great italian art since the fourteenth century, as well as the neo-latin and german cults of the virgin mary were, though apparently still orthodox, in their innermost essence the outcome of a personal desire for love, and had therefore abandoned the teaching of the church and become protestant. the fact that the so-called protestant church looked askance at mary, and that the rather coarse-minded luther said, in his annoyance: "popery has made a goddess of mary, and is therefore guilty of idolatry," does not contradict my statement. the true queen of heaven was a conception of the artist and lover, incomprehensible to those who were only thinkers and moralists. through the legitimation of a divine woman open enmity between the religion of woman and the religion of the church was avoided. a woman had stepped between god and humanity as mediator, intercessor and redeemer. every metaphysically-loving soul could conceive her as it pleased, could love her and pray to her without being a heretic and worshipper of the devil. matfre had complained that men abandoned in her beauty revel and unawares adore the devil.-- but now a means had been found to adore the beloved, and yet remain faithful to god. once in a way it was remembered that the adored, strictly speaking, was the mother of god--if for no other reason, for fear of the inquisition which the dominicans had founded and placed under the special patronage of mary--her bodyguard as it were, defending her from the onslaught of minds all too worldly. very rarely the adored earthly woman was identified with the official queen of heaven--(this may have been done occasionally by monks); sometimes as in the case of michelangelo and guinicelli, the beloved was the sole goddess; other poets, among whom we may include dante and goethe, conceived her as enthroned by the side of mary. at this point i must interrupt my argument, and briefly sketch the position occupied by mary in the western world from the dawn of christianity. _(b) the queen of heaven._ during the first two hundred years mary did not occupy a prominent place in the christian communities; even in the fourth century she was still regarded as a human woman and denied divinity by st. chrysostom, who reproached her with vainglory. but in proportion as christ transcended humanity, and was more dogmatically and formally interpreted by the church--more especially the greek church--the desire for a mediator between the wrathful deity and sinful humanity grew more pronounced, a mediator who, although a human being, could be endowed after the manner of the ancient demi-gods with super-human virtues. the mother of the saviour gradually assumed this position. she had been an earthly woman, born of earthly parents, and would be able to understand human needs and wishes, and she had become the mother of god. would not her intercession have weight with the son of god? simultaneously with the growing recognition of asceticism, the doctrine of the immaculate conception gained ground; in the course of time this moment was more and more emphasised, and virginity was set up as an ideal. st. athanasius (fourth century) had written: "what god did to mary is the glory of all virgins; for they are attached as virginal saplings to her who is the root." at the close of the fourth century a long and bitter controversy arose over the question as to whether mary had remained a virgin after the birth of jesus. st. ambrose, st. jerome and st. augustine were in favour of this new doctrine. st. ambrose, the founder of western music, was the first to praise her perfection in the latin tongue, and st. augustine in his treatise _de natura et gratia_, maintained that she was the only human being born without original sin. this was the first important step towards the stripping of the saviour's mother of her humanity, and establishing her as a divine being. st. irenaeus contrasted eve, the bringer of sin, with mary, the second eve, the bringer of salvation, and st. ambrose said: "from eve we inherited damnation through the fruit of the tree; but mary has brought us salvation through the gift of the tree, for christ too, hung on the tree like a fruit." hitherto mary had not been worshipped; all prayers had been addressed to god and to christ. the idea of approaching her in prayer appeared for the first time in a pamphlet entitled "on the death of mary," written about the end of the fourth century, and gregory of nazianz pictured mary in heaven, caring for the welfare of humanity. the fourth and fifth centuries produced the first hymns to the virgin, written in syriac; but orthodox bishops objected to her deification; st. epiphanus (end of fourth century) said: "let us honour mary by all means, but let us worship only the father, the son and the holy ghost." this was the position of the evangelical and historical mary before the famous and decisive council of ephesus. there is a very important fact which must not be overlooked. all the nations dwelling on the shores of the mediterranean, semites, and egyptians, as well as greeks and romans, had been accustomed to the worship of female deities. in the minds of the ancient peoples, woman, the symbol of sex, had always been endowed with qualities of magic and mystery. there was something supernatural in her power of bringing forth a living specimen of the race, and in all cults the maternal woman occupied a very important position. had christianity suddenly destroyed this ancient and natural need? we know that the church had assimilated a great number of antique superstitions; nor were the female deities sacrificed. the great asiatic mothers had not been forgotten; the very ancient babylonian istar (astarte), rhea kybele of asia minor, and above all the egyptian isis, still lived in the heart of man,--subconsciously, probably--as lofty, sacred memories, but nevertheless influencing his life. the egyptian isis with horus in her lap is the direct model of the madonna with the child. she represented earth, bringing forth fruit without fertilisation. "this religious custom (the worship of isis)," says flinders petrie, "exerted a powerful influence on nascent christianity. it is not too much to say that without the egyptians we should have had no madonna in our creed. the cult of isis was widely spread at the time of the first emperors, when it was fashionable all over the roman empire; when later on it merged into that other great religious movement, and fashion and conviction could be combined, its triumph was assured." advancing christianity had depopulated the national pantheon. there must have been a great sense of loss, especially among the lower classes, and it does not require much psychological insight to realise that it was the lack of female deities which more especially roused a feeling of anxiety and distress. the masses were yearning for a goddess, and it was at ephesus, the classical seat of the hundred-breasted diana, that the stolen divinity was restored to them. the theologians were divided into three camps. while some of them regarded mary merely as "the mother of man" others acknowledged her as the "mother of god," and nestorius suggested as a compromise the title "mother of christ." at the synod of alexandria, in the year of grace , and at the council of ephesus in , nestorius was found guilty of blasphemy and deprived of his bishopric. henceforth mary was [greek: theotochos], the "mother of god," and her worship was sanctioned by the church. "through thee the holy trinity has been glorified," exclaimed cyril joyfully, "through thee the cross of the saviour has been raised! through thee the angels triumphed, the devils were driven back; the tempter was beaten and human nature uplifted to heaven; through thee all intelligent creatures who were committing idolatry, have learned the truth!" loud rejoicing filled the streets of ephesus. when the judgment passed on nestorius was announced, the people exclaimed: "the enemy of the holy virgin has been overcome; glory be to the great, the divine mother of god!" the highest authority in the land had re-established the public worship of the great goddess, who had for many years been worshipped in secrecy. the ancient paganism had triumphed over the spiritual intuition of the loftier minds. according to ancient custom sacrifices were offered at mary's shrine; the second epoch of her history had begun. in the east the worship of female divinities was older and more spontaneous than in the western world, and thus the cult of mary existed in the orient long before it penetrated to italy and thence into the newly christianised countries. the virgin, who for the first few hundred years had held a clearly defined position in evangelical history, had become an independent object of worship. festivals were held in her honour; churches were dedicated to her; the will of the people triumphed in the litany; art took possession of the grateful subject. the tendency to make mary the equal of christ grew steadily. metaphors originally intended for christ alone were used indifferently for either. we constantly find her addressed as the "archetype, the light of the world, the vine, the mediator, the source of eternal life, etc." finally she ceased being regarded as a passive participator in the work of salvation, as the mother of the saviour, and was accredited with independent saving power. john of damascus (eighth century) first called mary [greek: sôteira tou chosmou], and soon after she was styled "saviour of the world" in the occident also. with this the cult of mary had reached its third stage, the stage which interests us; she had become the object of metaphysical love. but before dealing with this third stage, we must glance, in passing, at the ancient teutonic tribes. they, too, worshipped goddesses and sacred women; virginity, a virtue not appreciated by the orientals, here stood in high repute. according to tacitus and others, the teutons looked upon the virgin as a mysterious being, approaching divinity more closely than all others. thus there was here, perhaps, more than on the shores of the mediterranean, a favourable soil for the cult of mary. the characteristics of holda and freya, as well as their perfect beauty, were transferred to mary, and mary's name was substituted for the names of the old auxiliary goddesses. in the oldest german evangelical poems mary does not yet rank as a divinity, she is merely extolled as the most perfect of all earth-born women. in the "heliand" (about a.d. ) she is called "the most beautiful of all women, the loveliest of all maidens"; and the monk otfried, of weissenburg ( ), calls her, "of all women to god the most pleasing, the white jewel, the radiant maid." mary had now taken her place by the side of god, and was commonly addressed as divine. anselm of canterbury explains: "god is the father of all created things, mary the mother of all things recreated.... god begat the creator of the world, mary gave birth to its saviour." peter of blois declared that the virgin was the only mediatress between christ and humanity. "we were sinners and afraid of the wrath of the father, for he is terrible; but we have the virgin, in whom there is nothing terrible, for in her is the fulness of mercy and purity." the twelfth century produced the _ave maria_, the angelic salutation, the principal prayer to mary, which was introduced into all churches. the italian franciscan monk, bonaventura, and peter damiani, were above all others instrumental in spreading the worship of the virgin, and damiani said of her: "to thee has been given all power in heaven and on earth." the fresco of the camposanto at pisa, ascribed to orcagna, shows the transfigured virgin sitting by the side of christ, not below him. the numerous legends in which mary, often regardless of justice and propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers, were written during the same period. one of the most famous of these is the legend of theophilus, the forerunner of faust. in a german version (by brun of schönebeck) dating from the thirteenth century, theophilus abjures god and all things divine, with the sole exception of mary, wherefore she saves him from eternal damnation. this poem therefore shows us mary as absolutely opposed to god. we have now arrived at the third stage of the cult of mary; the new, spiritual love, translated into metaphysics, was projected on her; she was approached by her worshippers with the ardent love which hitherto had been the prerogative of earthly women. the two currents, the one arising in ecclesiastical tradition, and the other in the soul of the metaphysical lover, had met; the genuine spiritual cult of mary was the creation of the great metaphysical lovers, who existed not only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are met not infrequently later on; man's irresistible need to raise woman above him and worship her, created the true madonna, for whose sake romantic souls of all times have "returned home" into the fold of the church, the true madonna who at heart is alien to the principles of the church, but is re-born daily in the soul of the metaphysical lover. the hierarchy knew how to take advantage of and control this adoring love; the metaphysical lover raised his mistress above humanity and prayed before her shrine; religion said: "the celestial woman whom you may lovingly adore is here, with me. all you have to do is to call her by the name i have given her, and the kingdom of heaven will be yours." but on the other hand mary represents to-day, and doubtless will do for a long time to come, a dogmatically acknowledged deity, recognised by the spirit of protestantism as a remnant of paganism, and duly detested; the masses in italy and spain pray to-day to her image, as in bygone days the masses prayed to the images in greek and roman temples. this goddess is unchanging, and from the point of view of the psychologist uninteresting. it is not difficult to understand why the two conceptions of mary (more especially in the souls of the monks) were so often inextricably intermingled; circumstances frequently demanded a complete fusion. as late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, zacharias werner, said: oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune, and thou, the queen and ruler of the heavens, (i cannot keep you sundered and apart.) i shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible, for i am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its creation, womanhood deified, and not with catholic dogmas. with this object in view, i will return to the poets previously quoted, and continue the unfolding of the process of deification. as a rule the metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in, very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection. the quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure of the cosmos animated only one poet, dante, who, combining the catholic striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created a masterpiece which is unique in literature. typical among the later provençals was guirot riquier. several of his poems which have been preserved to us make it impossible to say whether they are addressed to an earthly woman or to the queen of heaven; these poems mark, in a sense, a period of transition. they are exceedingly vague, and it is not worth while to translate them; but as they are dated it is interesting to watch the poet's love growing more and more spiritual and religious, to see him gradually deserting his earthly love for the lady of heaven. in one poem he prays to his lady "who is worshipped by all true lovers," to teach him the right way of loving. in the next he repents his all too earthly passion: i often thought i was of true love singing, and knew not that to love my heart was blind, and folly was as love itself enshrined. but now such love in all my soul is ringing, that though to love and praise her i aspire as is her meed--in vain is my desire. henceforth her love alone shall be my guide and my new hope in that great love abide. for her great love the uttermost shall proffer of honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss, with her to love, my heart will never miss those who no gifts like her gifts have to offer. she the fulfilment is of my desire, therefore i vow myself her true esquire; she'll love me in return--my splendid meed-- if i but love aright in word and deed. and one of his rather more religious songs ends as follows: without true love there is on earth no peace, love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve, a noble mind and willingness to serve. how rare a thing on earth in perfect ease! to thee, oh virgin! mother of all love, i dedicate this song; if thou deniest me not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." with christ i pray thee, intercede for me above. in this song, then, he calls mary "his sweet bliss" (_bel deport_), a name which he had previously given to a certain countess with whom he had been in love. in the next poem, in which earthly love and love of the madonna are again brought into juxta-position, he commends himself "to the virgin, the sublime mother of love, on whom all my happiness depends." one of his poems which begins in quite an earthly strain, ends thus: i feel no jealousy; for he whose soul is filled with yearning for his heavenly love, has purest happiness; he is her serf, and he has all things that his heart can crave. but long before this, in one of his very worldly poems there is a sudden outburst, addressed to the madonna: "he who does not serve the mother of god, knows not the meaning of love." excellent proof of this intimate connection between earthly and madonna love is found in the poems of the trouvere ruteboeuf, who calls mary his "very sweet lady." lanfranc cigala wrote genuine love-songs to the virgin. the following are two stanzas from one of his poems: i worship a celestial maid, serene and wondrously adorned; and all she does is well; arrayed in noble love and gentleness. her smile is bliss to all who mourn, her tender love is happiness, and for her kiss the world i scorn. lady of heaven, thy heart incline to me, and untold bliss is mine. by day and night my only thought art, mary, thou. i am distraught say many men, for few can gauge the ardour which consumes my soul. i care not that they say bereft i am of sense; the world i've left, to worship thee, love's spring and goal. but other poems written by cigala are unmistakably addressed to the celestial madonna; some of them seem to be written in a penitential mood; he almost seems to repent of his former passionate adoration. the same poet, in his love-songs, uses all the metaphors which are commonly used for mary (or for christ), "root and climax, flower, fruit and seed of all goodness." a little older is an erotic hymn to mary by peire guillem of luserna; i quote a few stanzas: thy praise is happiness unmarred, for he who praises thee, proclaims the truth, thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth, full of compassion, with all grace bedight, from thy white hands we gather all delight. the love of mary had usurped the peculiar property of the love of woman: it had become the source of poetic and artistic inspiration. the songs of aimeric of peguilhan resemble those of cigala; the former bewails the decline of the service of woman; he sings of the "root and crown of all noble things," but it is not quite clear whether he is addressing an earthly or a heavenly lady. "suffer my love, which asks for no reward!" the terms, "friends" and "lovers" (_amans_) of the virgin are with these poets convertible terms, and the virgin is styled "the true friend" (_i.e._, the beloved). guilhem of autpol wrote a fine poem to the queen of heaven, beginning: thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love, thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace, thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness, thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope. thou house of god, thou garden of sweet shades, rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad, bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades, alien to death, and shelter in the mad whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port. lady of heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice, thou roseate dawn and light of paradise! perdigon, among many worldly songs, wrote one to the _regina d'auteza e de senhoria_, which might be translated thus: supreme ruler of the world, thy grace sustains and maintains the world. thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine, thou wert the chosen vessel of mercy divine. unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was folquet de lunel. some of his poems cannot be classed with any certainty. the first poem which obtained a prize at the academy of mastersingers of toulouse was a hymn to mary. this very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter into the feelings of that period. a modern philologist, karl appel, regards jaufre rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the countess of tripoli: oh, love in lands so far away, my heart is yearning, yearning.... as songs to the madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on an unknown countess of tripoli, or a still more unknown lady of heaven. it is not the loved woman who is of importance--what do we know of the ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? they have long been dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is the perfection of their grand-daughters. but the love of the poets is alive to-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman has passed. the following are a few stanzas by the german minnesinger, steinmar, which were later on adapted to the holy virgin: in summer-time how glad am i when over lea or down a country lass mine eyes espy, of maidens all the crown. oh! paradise! how glad am i when o'er the heavenly down god and god's mother i espy, of women all the crown. the italian poets, far more profound than the provençals, saw a goddess in the beloved (whom they always addressed as madonna), and humbled themselves before her. social differences, which played such a prominent part in the north, are here ignored. the impecunious poet no longer extols the princess, the wife of his lord and master. there is no question of such a relationship; the poet is a free citizen of the town, subject only to the emotion of the heart, and his song carries its own reward. it has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped her place. we know that lapo gianni, dino frescobaldi, guinicelli and dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought, and frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. the feeling of those lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect expression. in a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both cavalcanti and cino da pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that god needed her presence to perfect heaven, and that all the saints now worship her. she was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now: look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned, who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while to make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails. of thee she entertains the blessed throngs, and says to them, while yet my body thrave on earth, i gat much honour which he gave, commending me in his commended songs. (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) at the conclusion of his finest poem, "al cor gentil," guinicelli, next to dante doubtless the greatest poet of the middle ages, says: "god will ask me after my death: 'how could'st thou have loved aught but me?' and i will reply: 'she came from thy realm and bore the semblance of an angel. therefore in loving her, i was not unfaithful to thee!'" here we have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is god; he who loves her, loves god in her. cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the madonna actually bore the features of his lady. guido, an image of my lady dwells at san michele, in orto, consecrate, and daily worshipped. fair, in holy state, she listens to the tale each sinner tells. and among them who come to her, who ails the most, on him the most does blessing fall; she bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate; over the curse of blindness she prevails, and heals sick languors in the public squares.... (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) and guido orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as to a lost man: "had'st thou been speaking of mary, thou would'st have spoken the truth. but now i must bewail thy errors." a complete blending of sensuality and mary-worship was achieved in an italian poem of the fifteenth century. the author of this poem addressed mary as "queen of my heart," and "blossom of loveliness," and goes on to say: "i can tell by your gestures and your face that you respond to my love; when you look at me, you smile, and when you sigh, your eyes are full of tenderness.... sometimes, in the evening, i stand below your balcony; you hear my sighs, but you make no reply.... when i gaze at your beauty, i burn with love, but when i think of your cruelty, i call on death to release me." in this poem we have a caricature of metaphysical eroticism. in the sonnets of petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. adoration has become a phrase (as cupid has become a phrase with the earlier poets). it is obvious that he loves laura because the play on the word laura and _lauro_ (laurel) caught his fancy. i can find no spontaneous feeling in the famous canzoniero; all i see is erudition and perfection of form. but among the few sincere specimens there is one beautiful poem addressed to mary: "_vergine bella che di sol vestida!_" which is not without erotic warmth. but the singer and humanist expresses himself judiciously: oh, thou, the queen of heaven and our goddess (if it be fitting such a phrase to use). so far we have observed the current which, emanating from the beloved woman, lifted her into supernal regions and endowed her with perfection--the mistress is stripped of everything earthly, the longing which can never be stilled on earth, soars heavenward. now we will examine the opposite current; the current which emanates from the madonna of dogma, the lady of heaven who is the same to all men, in her last stage, that is to say when she is finally enthroned by the side of god. many a monk--earthly love being denied to him--was driven to a purely spiritual, metaphysical love by the fact of his being permitted to love the lady of heaven without hesitation or remorse. she was the fairest of women, and he was at liberty to interpret the meaning of "the fairest" in any sense he chose. the climax of the emotional worship of the ecclesiastical mary was reached by st. bernard, the _doctor marianus_ mentioned on a previous occasion. he was the author of sermons and homilies in honour of mary, and has been instrumental in dogmatising her worship by placing her side by side with the saviour. "it was more fitting that both sexes should take part in the renewal of mankind," he says, "because both were instrumental in bringing about the fall...." "man who fell through woman, can be raised only by her." "humanity kneels at thy feet, for the comfort of the wretched, the release of the prisoners, the delivery of the condemned, the salvation of the countless sons of adam depend on a word from thy lips. oh! virgin, hasten to reply! speak the word for which the earth, the nethermost hell, and the heavens even, are waiting; yea, the king and ruler of the universe, greatly as he desires thy loveliness, awaits thy consent, in which he has laid the salvation of the world." basing his description on the revelation of st. john the divine, he draws her picture as follows: "brilliant and white and dazzling are the garments of the virgin. she is so full of light and radiance that there is not the least darkness about her, and no part of her may be described as less brilliant, or not glowing with intense light." and with increasingly pronounced erotic emphasis, passing from the church dogma of salvation to passionate fervour, he goes on to say: "a garden of sacred delight art thou, oh, mary! in it we gather flowers of manifold joys as often as we reflect on the fulness of sweetness which through thee was poured out on the world.... right lovely art thou, oh, perfect one! a bed of heavenly spices and precious flowers of all virtues, filling the house of the lord with sweet perfume! oh! mary, thou violet of humility! thou lily of chastity! thou rose of love!" etc. st. bernard inaugurated that extraordinary blending of eroticism with half-crazy, inconceivable allegories and fantasies, which lasted for centuries. here, again, we perceive the ideal of metaphysical eroticism, which in the case of a loyal son of the church could only refer to the official queen of heaven, and consisted partly of the genuine emotion of love, partly of allegorically constructed connections with the church dogma. st. bernard's emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. his authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood in the way of this downright description of mary's charms. he became the model for all her later worshippers; suso, for instance, often quotes him, and brother hans called him _the harpist and fiddler of her praise_. the great ecstatic poet, jacopone da todi, sang mary's praise as follows: hail, purest of virgins, mother and maid, gentle as moonlight, lady of aid! i greet thee, life's fountain, fruitladen vine! infinite mercy thou sheddest on thine! hope's fairest sunshine, balm's well serene! i claim a dance with thee, all the world's queen! gate of beatitude! --all sins forgiven,-- lead us to paradise, sweet breeze of heaven! thou pointest us upward where angels adore, white lily of gentleness thy grace i implore. mirror of cherubim! seraphim laud thy grace, all things in heaven and earth ring with thy praise! the spiritual love of mary especially appealed to the german temper. among the adoring monks suso deserves particular mention. he laid great stress on the difference between _high_ love and _low_ love. "low love begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in eternity." he was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the inaccessible deity. "oh, thou! god's chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden song of the eternal wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a little of my sufferings. my soul prostrates itself before thee with timorous eyes, shamefaced. oh! thou mother of all mercies, i ween that neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the intercessor for all sinners." compared to his forerunner, st. bernard, suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with mary. he describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and mary keeping court, like any earthly princess. "now go and behold the sweet queen of heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her lover with roses and lilies! behold her wonderful beauty shedding light and joy on the heavenly hosts! eya! look up to her who giveth gladness to heart and mind; behold the mother of mercy resting her eyes, her tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners, powerfully protecting her beloved child." the whole sixteenth chapter of the _booklet of eternal wisdom_ is an ardent hymn to the madonna, almost comparable to st. bernard's prayer to mary in dante's _divine comedy_. it was written about the time of dante's death, not very long, therefore, after the composition of the last chapters of the _paradise_. _the life of suso_ (the first german biography ever written) evidences his adoration for the lady of heaven: "it was customary in his country, swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts' houses on new year's eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet in return. this custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, too, went on the eve of the new year to his eternal love, to beg her for a gift. before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the virginal mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful eternal wisdom, to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a chaplet from her child...." "he then said to the eternal wisdom" (and it is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child): "thou art my love, my glad easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the sake of which it has scorned earthly love. give me a guerdon, then, my heart's delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed." _with a sweet, low singing of his soul_, this worshipper approached the statue of the queen of heaven. this is love of woman undisguised, it merely has a religious undertone. other secular merry-makings were adapted by suso to his celestial mistress, as, for instance, the planting of the may-tree, and he repeatedly makes use of similes and metaphors borrowed from the chivalrous service of woman. he frequently alludes to himself as "the servant of the eternal wisdom"; the meaning of this expression is apparently intentionally obscured, but it has a savour of the feminine. suso pictured himself, after the manner of lovers, with a chaplet of roses on his brow. in his _life_ there is a passage unsurpassed by the best of the minnesingers: "in the golden summer-time when all the tender little flowers had opened their buds, he gathered none until he had dedicated the first blossoms to his spiritual love, the gentle, flower-like, rosy maiden and mother of god; when it seemed to him that the time had come, he culled the flowers with many loving thoughts, carried them into his cell and wove them into a garland; and after he had done so, he went into the choir, or into our lady's chapel, prostrated himself before his dear lady, and placed the sweet garland on her head, hoping that she would not scorn her servant's offering, as she was the most wondrous flower herself, and the summer-joy of his heart." doubtless we here have an analogy to the religious feeling of the mystics. the metaphysical lover is still under the impression that he is worshipping the mary of the catholic church; but as in the case of the mystic the christ of dogma is transformed into the divine spark in his own soul, so the love of mary has become undogmatic and pure woman-worship, the ideal of the great lovers of that age. another prominent madonna-worshipper was conrad of würzburg (died ). he began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery. he was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection of songs in praise of the queen of heaven. "the golden smithy" is an interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism and traditional church doctrines. conrad inextricably mingles all the biblical allegories more or less applicable to mary, the stories of the gospels, the doctrine of the immaculate conception, etc., with his own emotions, and thus creates a world of feeling which, though in many respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something entirely novel and unique: thy glorious form, though by beauty all envested, never passion has suggested nor has lit unholy fire in man's heart, that gross desire from thy purity should spring. he, too, describes the celestial paradise as a lovely garden, in which mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a reminiscence of the mythological german swan-maidens): thy white hand with blossoms their chaplets enhances, thou show'st them the dances of god's paradise. 'mid radiant skies thou gather'st heavenly roses. the italian franciscan monk giacomo of verona also wrote poems to the "queen of the heavenly meadows". "on the right hand of christ sits mary, more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened rose-buds. before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives them roses." just as pons of capduelh describes the transfiguration of his earthly mistress, jacopone describes mary's ascent into heaven, where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, their _sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_, replaced by a joyful _sancta, sancta, sancta_--a goddess has been received in the place of god. gottfried of strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic poem "tristan and isolde," composed a long poem in honour of mary couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper: thou vale of roses,--violet-dell, thou joy that makest hearts to swell, eternal well of valour; queen of heaven! thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red, thou steadfast friend when hope has fled, the living bread, oh! lady, hast thou given. thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight, thou bridal crown, all maids' delight, thou art bedight with heaven's golden splendour! thou of all sweetness sweetest shine, thou sweeter than the sweetest wine, the sweetness thine, is my salvation ever. thou art a potion sweet of love, sweetly pervading heaven above, to sailors rough sang syrens sweeter never. thou enterest through eye and ear, senses and soul pervading, thou givest to the heart great cheer, a guerdon dear, a glory never fading. the poet who wrote of isolde's love potion here calls the queen of heaven a _potion sweet of love_, a strange metaphor to use in connection with the mary of dogma. another characteristic frequently alluded to is her _sweet perfume_, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as exclusively celestial. quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of brother hans, an otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. he himself tells us that he deserted his earthly mistress for the queen of heaven. perhaps the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love did not gradually lead up to mary, the essence of womanhood, but an earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live. mary! gentle mistress mine! i humbly kneel before you; all my heart and soul are thine. and: oh, mary! secret fountain, closed garden of delight, the prince of heaven mirrors him in thy beauty bright. but after describing all the joys of heaven, brother hans comes to the conclusion that a man knows about as much of celestial matters as an ox knows of discant singing. his relationship to mary is tender, intimate and familiar: within my heart concealed there is a secret cell; at nightfall and at daybreak my lady there does dwell. the mistress of the house is she, i feel her love and care about. if she denies herself to me, methinks the mistress has gone out. in another poem he prays to mary to allow him to tear off a small piece of her robe, so that he may keep himself warm with it in the winter. like cino da pistoia, who commended his dying soul not to god but to his loved one, brother hans commends himself to mary: thus i commend my soul into thy hands, when it must journey to those unknown lands, where roads and paths are new and strange to it. and: oh, come to me, thou bride of god, when my faint soul departs from me! there remains one more motif to consider, a motif which in a way completes the picture of the celestial lady: as men love and desire the women of the earth, so god loves the lady of heaven. st. bernard first expressed this naïve idea, which makes god the father resemble a little the ancient jupiter. "she attracted the eyes of the heavenly hosts, even the heart of the king went out to her." "he himself, the supreme king and ruler, so much desires thy beauty, that he is awaiting thy consent, upon which he has decided to save the world. and him whom thou delightest in thy silence, thou wilt delight even more by thy speech, for he called to thee from heaven: 'oh! fairest among women! let me hear thy voice!'" etc. here we have st. bernard, the rock of orthodoxy, representing god as mary's languishing admirer! suso is irreproachable in this respect, but conrad says that the colour of mary's face was so bright and made it so lovely, that even the eternal sire was filled with sacred fire, and all the heavenly princes.... thus, at the turn of the fourteenth century the great celestial change was complete: by the side of god, nay, even in the place of god, a woman was enthroned. "the virgin became the god of the universe," says michelet, a thorough, though rather imaginative expert on the middle ages. the people primitively worshipped idols. the clergy, headed by the dominican and franciscan monks, introduced lady days into the calendar and invented the rosary to facilitate the recital of the _aves_; secular orders of knighthood placed themselves under the virgin's protection (la chevalerie de sainte marie), but the rarest minds, sublimating the beloved, raised her into heaven and worshipped her as divine. the established religion was compelled to enter into partnership with the great emotion of the time, metaphysical love, lest it ran the risk of losing its sway over humanity. and a feeling was born then which to this day constitutes one of the striking differences between the eastern and the western worlds: the respect for womanhood. it is based on the woman-worship of secular, and the madonna-worship of ecclesiastical circles. it is true that jesus, anticipating the intuition of europe, had taught the divinity of the human soul and recognised woman--in this respect--as on an equality with man, but the instincts of greece and the eastern nations had proved to be stronger than his teaching; for twelve hundred years woman was despised, and more than once the question as to whether or no she had a soul--in other words, as to whether or no she was a human being--had come under discussion. the crude and primitively dualistic minds of the period realised in her sex merely an embodiment of their own sensuality, the enemy against whom they fought, and to whom they knew themselves subject. the strongest argument in her favour which the first millenary could adduce, was the fact that the saviour of the world had been borne by a woman, and that consequently her sex had a share in the work of salvation; the idea that through the "other eve" a part of the sin of the first eve was expiated. but genuine appreciation and respect were only possible after base sensuality had been contrasted with spiritual love, whose vehicle again was woman. now the "eternal-feminine"-- contrasted with the "earthly-feminine"--drew the lovers upwards, and this new emotion threw such a glamour over the whole sex, that it never entirely died away; if to-day women are respected and their efforts at emancipation supported, they are not indebted, as they are sometimes told, to christian ethics, but rather to the mundane culture which had its origin at the courts of the provençal lords, whose ideals ultimately became the controlling ideals of europe, and whose inmost essence still influences the world. the evolution of love had obviously arrived at a stage when respect was considered due to women--though not perhaps to all women. i will not go to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode from the life of the dominican friar suso: "in crossing a field, suso met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. when he was close to her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her to pass. the woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'how is it, sir,' she said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that i should stand aside and make room for you?' 'why, my good woman,' replied suso, 'i like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle mother of god in heaven.'" it may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the german philosopher ludwig feuerbach, the enemy of christianity. in his _essence of christianity_, as well as in his treatise _on the cult of mary_, he refers to it more than once. "the holy virgin," he says, "the mother of god, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable and poetical figure of christian mythology, and the only one worthy of worship; for mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from dogma." feuerbach is right. the lady of heaven stands for the delivery from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed with but a few rags of dogma. "the monks vowed the vow of chastity," he continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the virgin in heaven. the more their ideal, fictitious representative of her sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they dispense with the women of flesh and blood. the more they emphasised in their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent became the part which the virgin played in their emotions; she usurped in many cases, the place of christ, and even the place of god." feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest sentiments on heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing in the mother of god, because the love of a child for its mother is the first strong feeling of man. "where the faith in the mother of god declines, the faith in the son of god, and in god the father, declines also." i will now leave the region of the historical and examine the emotion whose reality and influence i have substantiated, from a timeless standpoint, for my principal point is the psychical, and more particularly the metaphysical consummation of the emotion of love. the sole object of the abundant evidence i have been compelled to adduce is my desire to prove the existence and significance of all the emotions which stir the soul, and in the later middle ages strove so powerfully to express themselves. my thesis that sexuality and love are opposed principles will no doubt be rejected, for, under the strong influence of the theory of evolution, all the world is to-day agreed that love is nothing but the refinement of the sexual impulse. i maintain that (as far as man is concerned) they differ very essentially, and i have attempted to prove their incommensurability by submitting historical facts. that they may, and will, ultimately merge, is my unalterable conviction. my assertion that something so fundamental as the personal love of man and woman did not exist from the beginning, but came into existence in the course of history, at a not very remote period, may seem even more strange. my only reply is that instead of advancing opinions i have brought forward facts and allowed them to speak for themselves. moreover, to my mind the realisation of the intimate connection of love and evolving personality is a far more magnificent proof of the soundness of the evolutionary theory than the reflection that we have received all things ready-made from the hands of nature. has it not been proved to us that the religious consciousness of the divinity of the human soul was also evolved in historical time, and has never again disappeared? every strong love which finds no response is fraught with the possibility of an infinite unfolding; it may powerfully seize the whole soul and make life a tragedy. but this tragedy is not of the very essence of tragedy, inasmuch as here we have merely love confronted by an unsurmountable obstacle, meeting and overwhelming it; the discord is not inherent. many a lover suffering from unrequited love, is born with the tendency to become unhappy, with a secret will to the voluptuousness of pain and melancholy; he will enjoy his unhappiness, perhaps become productive through it. thus, this deliberately unhappy love may be regarded as an analogy to genuine metaphysical eroticism. for the worship of woman is in its essence infinite striving; its object is always unattainable, an illusion. every earthly love, even if it finds no response at all, may, in principle, be gratified, and is only unhappy if external circumstances intervene. but the love of the madonna is in itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. a lover filled with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. the beloved may have died young--as did beatrice--without his ever having come into close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward--and imagination has ample scope to transform and transfigure the dead. or he may have been disappointed in his mistress; it may have been that he, attuned to pure, spiritual love, has found her all too human. he flees from reality into the world of dreams, and envelops her with the veil of mysteriousness and divinity. purely spiritual love is an intense emotion, and as men and women of flesh and blood cannot always live at high pressure, hours of dejection and disappointment will necessarily have to be experienced. the soul takes refuge in an illusion which becomes more and more an end in itself, and gradually the lover creates an inaccessibly lofty, celestial woman. for purely spiritual love aspires to absolute transcendency; it cannot bear contact with every-day life. the psychologists of the present day tell us that a feeling, in becoming spiritualised, loses strength,--history teaches us that in the case of great souls the opposite is the rule. these suggestions purpose to explain the inception of an ecstatic love; but the true metaphysical erotic is born and needs no outside stimulus; his heart yearns for the inaccessible from the very beginning. there are certain elements of feeling which must be present in his soul simultaneously: a religious elementary feeling tending to the metaphysical; the need of a sacred--a divine--being, as the foundation of all existing things; a powerful and purely spiritual craving for love, hurt, perhaps unconsciously, in early youth, and finally an imagination endowed with plastic force--artistic tendencies. in the case of the mystic the soul, too, is filled with the consciousness of the divine; he, too, has the capacity for a great love, but with him it is not the love of woman, but of something universal, not individualised, the world, the cosmos, god. while the mystic attempts to embody the inconceivable deity in his soul, the worshipper of the madonna, like the artist, imaginatively creates a being which he sets up for contemplation at the greatest possible distance. the mystic is blind, as it were; he is yearning personified, and he would force god into his soul. the metaphysical lover needs a plastic figure which, in the extremest case, may represent the whole world to him, and this figure must be a woman. it is a historical accident that this woman is frequently connected with a woman of ecclesiastical tradition, an accident strengthened by insufficient creative power on the part of the lover, or lack of courage and self-confidence. he is grateful for the support given to him by tradition. the greatest metaphysical lovers, dante, goethe and michelangelo, freely created the objects of their love; the protestant goethe--whom some people even accuse of paganism--clung more closely than either of the others to the mary of catholicism (in the final scene of _faust_). the worship of the madonna is the love of great solitary souls, and--as is proved by goethe--of the great souls in the hours of their last solitude. while there was only unindividualised sexual instinct, the chastity of woman was of no account; we have seen that neither the eastern nations nor the greeks attached any value to it. the woman who had best fulfilled her vocation as a mother, was the woman most highly respected. in the east, as well as with jews and romans, a woman could be divorced by her husband for sterility. the only women who were, to some extent, appreciated for their own sakes, were the greek hetaerae. but when asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a profound significance. henceforth woman should no longer be regarded as the vehicle for the gratification of male sensuality; it should be her mission to lead the lover to spiritual perfection. the fusion of the older ideal of womanhood, the mother (acknowledged and sanctioned by religion in the mother of the saviour), with the newer ideal, the virgin, created the ideal of the late middle ages: the virgin with the child. here the natural vocation of woman and the fantastic mission laid upon her by man were united in a paradoxical higher intuition, and it is superfluous to point out that the most irreligious minds of the renascence, as well as those of all later eras, have to this day worshipped this ideal, and never wearied of representing it under new forms. but the worship of the virginal mother contains another element, an element of which man in his contact with woman is deeply conscious: the element of mystery. to a man a young girl, untouched by the faintest breath of sensuality, has a quality of strangeness and mysteriousness (this is probably a result of european sentiment), and at all times the woman who has become a mother has been regarded with a slight feeling of superstitious awe. in the virginal mother these two vaguely reverential feelings are blended; she is a strange and awe-inspiring being, and man, divining a mystery, bows down before her. otto weininger was the first to give us a psychology of the cult of the madonna, and he did it in a manner which proved his entire comprehension of this peculiar sentimental disposition. he realised and pointed out the contrast between sexuality and eroticism (his terms for sexual impulse and love), but in accordance with his extreme mental disposition he left these two principles in irreconcilable conflict, while i regard their antithesis merely in the light of a transient phase which will be followed by a reconciling synthesis. weininger is, i believe, in conflict with spiritual reality when (guided by ethical, not psychological considerations) he proposes the theory that a man endows the beloved woman with all the lofty values he desires for himself. "he projects his ideal of an absolutely perfect being on another human being, and this and nothing else is the meaning of his love." "to bestow all the qualities one would like to possess, but never can quite possess, on another individual, to make it the representative of all values, that is to love." it is a commonplace experience that genuine love will awaken in the soul new and transcendent emotions, compared to which all previous experience appears petty and insignificant. the waves of this emotion are able to carry the lover to the infinite, or at least his emotion will help him to divine the infinite. he sees, unexpectedly, his inmost soul revealed to him, he has exceeded the limits upon which he has hitherto looked as a matter of course; the barrier between him and the universe has fallen, the whole world belongs to him; the egoist becomes less selfish, the cruel man gentle, the dullard clairvoyant; every man feels that he has become greater and more human. this is neither illusion nor projection, nor is it a subtle, psychical deception--it is sober reality. weininger's suspicion of a delusion is nothing but the result of his ascetic solipsism, refusing to accept another being's help in his striving for perfection, a consequence of the one-sided, sterile cult of his individual soul, a noble but puerile pride refusing to be indebted to the world and to his fellow-men, the fanatical, metaphysical dualism which is so often met with in the second stage of eroticism, and to which stage he belongs. weininger shrank from the idea that an individual might be made the means to an end, instead of being an end in itself. in my opinion his justification for the translation of this formula--framed by kant for pure ethics--to empirical psychology, is doubtful. to use an individual only as a means to an end which is alien to his inmost being, is certainly immoral. but all social life is based on a mutual relationship of means and ends; a man is an end in himself at the same time that he is a means to other individuals and the community. the teacher is a means as far as his pupils are concerned; the poet is a means in respect to all who seek in his writings information or recreation. to carry the stigmatisation of these facts to a logical conclusion, one would have to call it immoral to accept anything from parents or teachers; one would have to reject every good influence--which always comes from outside--and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. one would even have to object to being born, and would have to create one's self out of nothing. it has always been regarded as the splendid privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others--why, therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her lover be objectionable? weininger's error in the sphere of eroticism arises from the fact of his imprisoning love in a formula which is by no means applicable to it. in love the mutual relationship of means and ends does not exist, the lover feels that the beloved is always an end in herself in the highest sense; he would find it impossible inwardly to establish such a relationship between himself and her; very frequently himself, his well-being and his life, are of no account to him if he can serve her. weininger's assertion that at the consummation of love every woman is merely the means of gratifying a man's passion, is simply not true. on the contrary, it is a characteristic of genuine love that the physical embrace is of no great importance, does not even rise to full consciousness. the personality of the beloved is everything, physical sensation nothing. weininger identifies love with passion and his argument is easily refutable by the experience of many. in love there is neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one might speak of a reciprocal action. equally erroneous is his corresponding assertion that the artist loves a woman spiritually, that is, in the sense of deifying her, for the purpose of drawing from her inspiration for his work. if he loves her, then his love is the alpha and omega of his striving, and if love inspires him to achieve a masterpiece, the effect of love on him must be considered great and good, because it is a creative effect. the extreme individualistic ideal would lead to an absolutely unproductive view of life. asceticism stands condemned because it is unproductive. i may regard an indian fakir who has become so godlike that he can sustain life on six grains of rice a day, and draw breath once every quarter of an hour--to say nothing of speech or cleanliness--as a very strange individual; but i see nothing positive or important in him. the road which leads from the individual to the universal cannot be the rejection of the world; it must be its perfection, resulting from productivity of mind, or soul, or deed. he who on principle refuses to be productive, condemns himself to annihilation in the higher sense. i admit that he who works at his own perfection does good work, too; but it is the inexplicable secret of all truly creative labour--in the highest as well as in the lowest sense--that it must ultimately affect the world and eternity. the strongest emotions, the inner illumination of the mystic and the love of the great erotic, have been conceived in the _heart of hearts_; and have ultimately grown beyond their creator, from the individual to the universal. the more intimate and powerful the creative impulse has been, the more retarded and abundant may, perhaps, be the effect. but the chain which links the great soul to humanity cannot be broken, the work will make itself manifest--the work of deed, the work of the mind, the work of love--i do not say to "the public," but to life, to the world. the creative personality alone is the father of the objective values of civilisation. the great love which led dante, goethe and wagner to the summits of humanity is in the highest sense positive and creative. and he who realises that love is not subject to sexual impulse, who knows it as something purely personal, foreign and even hostile to the genus, must admit that it is one of the very highest of values. a contrary ethic is sterile, indian, unproductive, not european. i am well aware that weininger did not explicitly draw this conclusion; but he rejects spiritual love because it endows the lover with new capacities, the capacities of growth and perfection, and he is therefore in the last resort a representative of philosophic nihilism. _(c) dante and goethe_ the worship of woman found its climax in dante. through the work of his youth, the _vita nuova_ and his masterpiece, _the divine comedy_, we can trace step by step the stages of the road, beginning with a glimpse of a young girl in florence, and ending with the incorporation of a woman into the world-system. we are face to face with an extraordinary process of evolution. the young girl he had seen a few times, and who died in her youth, goes on growing and developing in his soul, until, at last, in him the will to raise woman above time into eternity, the will to make her a member of the divine system, reaches its full realisation. what had been begun by the troubadours and fully comprehended by the poets of the _sweet new style_, reached completion in dante, and, was henceforth an eternal value for all humanity. we see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of their heart with the universal lady of heaven; the need of deifying the loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the inquisition (which never gained much importance in italy). the new poets deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared before the adored simply as lovers. they did not require the dogmatic support of the church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee. dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up and people it with sublime intelligences. and in this system, the crown and perfection of the mediaeval-catholic conception of the universe, he assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side of the deities. dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal dogma, and enriched the catholic heaven by his personal love. what for two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of faith and truth. now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and had become identical with the love of immortality. "love which moves the sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. the anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true beings and values. all that had been done before had merely prepared the ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart of the divine secrets. the _vita nuova_, which is at once a glorified historical record and the greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; beatrice is "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "when i saw her coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no enemy for me, yea, i was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such an extent, that i was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me. and whoever had begged me for a gift, i should have replied: love! and my face would have been full of humility." even before his love had been translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly any other poet before or after him. the women of florence ask dante: "why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her presence? tell us, for the end of such love must be incomprehensible to men." and he replies: "ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the salutation of that lady; therein i find that beatitude which is the goal of my desire. and now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." and the women: "tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "in the words that praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself and in its artistic expression). the lover never exchanged a word with her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship, beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. not until after her deification has become an established fact, does beatrice (in the beginning of the _divine comedy_) remember her lover and come to save him. in one of his poems dante says that not every woman could inspire such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character. it is very apparent that dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and becomes more sacred to him. it is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of eighteen is very vague and uncertain. some of dante's commentators believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the church, theology, etc. but at the death of her father beatrice again behaves like any other earthly maiden. there is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth with the system of the church; this could be done in an allegorical way without being inwardly untruthful. vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high in the _vita nuova_ and in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in sleep and sickness. in the third canzone dante speaks of the impossibility of comprehending what gave him a glimpse of the nature of his mistress. it was a foreboding of new and great things, struggling slowly and gradually to take shape, for the creation of a world-system, one of whose supporting pillars was personal love of an individual, was an unprecedented achievement. "when she speaks a spirit inclines from heaven." the angels implore god to call this "miracle" into their midst, but god wills that they shall have patience until the "hope of the blessed" appears. love says of her can there be mortal thing at once adorned so richly and so pure? then looks on her and silently affirms that heaven designed in her a creature new. (_transl. by_ c. lyell.) again and again recurs the motif of her beauty before which the world must fall prostrate. in a sonnet not included in the _vita nuova_ he says: in heaven itself that lady had her birth, i think, and is with us for our behoof; blessed are they who meet her on the earth. (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) the lover has a foreboding of the fate awaiting him: "i have set my feet into that phase of life from whence there is no return." he divines the sorrow to which love has predestined him. but others, too, divining that this man "expects more, perhaps, of love than others," ask him to explain to them the essence of love, and he answers them with the famous sonnet: _amor e cor gentil sono una cosa_ (love and the gentle heart are but one thing.) the death of beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the death of christ: the sun lost its brilliance, stars appeared in the sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; god visibly intervened in the course of nature. for from the lamp of her meek lowlihead such an exceeding glory went up hence, that it woke wonder in the eternal sire, until a sweet desire entered him for that lovely excellence, so that he bade her to himself aspire; counting this weary and most evil place unworthy of a thing so full of grace. (_transl. by_ d.g. rossetti.) in the th chapter, which we, to-day, do not readily understand, dante established by a system of symbolical numbers a connection between beatrice and the trinity; the deification of the beloved had been achieved in thought and emotion, religion enriched by a new divinity. "love, weeping, has filled my heart with new knowledge," he says, at the conclusion of the work of his youth. i repeat what i have already said in another place, and supported by passages from the _divine comedy_: it was never dante's intention to write fictitious poems in our meaning of the term, but at every hour of his life he was convinced that he was proclaiming the pure truth; he knew himself to be the chosen vehicle for the interpretation of the eternal system of the world. at the conclusion of the _vita nuova_, beatrice is a divine being, devoid of all emotion--enthroned in heaven; in the _comedy_ she becomes her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all humanity. the love of the youth had found no response in the heart of the florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired by love of him. she trembles for him, and when mary's messenger admonishes her: "why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so much?" she sends virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her redeemed lover to god. now she responds to his love; she has even wept for him. this ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing for love in return, gives the woman-worship of dante a peculiarly noble charm. at the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "into a free man thou transform'st a slave." love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and its desires, a personality--the fundamental motif of love. there is a close connection between the metaphysical love of dante and goethe's confession in the last scene of _faust_, which reveals the poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. the confessions of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. the _divine comedy_ represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the sense of the catholic middle ages. the fundamental idea of _faust_ is again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. here also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is heaven. hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the middle ages was clearly indicated in the bible. the love of his youth (which in the case of dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the beginning of the tragedy--the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of the world, finally to return home to the beloved. the last scene of _faust_ is an unfolding of metaphysical love into its inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. all human striving is determined and crowned by the saving grace of love. faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything subjective, and is briefly styled _a lover_; like dante, he has become representative of humanity. the hour of death revives the memory of the love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a crowded life, yet never quite extinguished in the heart of his heart. margaret is present and guides him (as beatrice guided dante) upward, to the _eternal-feminine_, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation of all male yearning for love. "the love from on high" saves faust as it has saved dante. _the blessed boys_ (who, as well as the angels, are present in both poems) singing: whom ye adore shall ye see face to face.[ ] are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. like beatrice, margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been woman's profoundest prayer) with the queen of heaven: incline, oh incline, all others excelling, in glory aye dwelling, unto my bliss thy glance benign; the loved one ascending, his long trouble ending, comes back, he is mine! these words are more intimate and human than the words of beatrice, but fundamentally they mean the same thing. dante, meeting beatrice again, says: and o'er my spirit that so long a time had from her presence felt no shuddering dread, albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved a hidden virtue from her, at whose touch the power of ancient love was strong within me.[ ] but when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is stricken dumb. beatrice receives dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the mysteries of life. similarly margaret beseeches the virgin: to guide him, be it given to me still dazzles him the new-born day! and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened beatrice knows intuitively: ascend, thine influence feeleth he, he'll follow on thine upward way. as beatrice approaches, the angels sing: oh! turn thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one, who to behold thee many a wearisome pace hath measured. and with the fundamental feeling of dante's _divine comedy_ faust concludes: the ever-womanly draws us above. the earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical love, in the dream of a divine woman. the genius creates, at the conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. it may sound paradoxical, but faust--like dante and peer gynt--unconsciously sought margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had seduced and deserted, but the _eternal-feminine_, the purely spiritual love, which in his youth he divined, but destroyed, bound by the shackles of desire. to dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as to goethe-faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all genuine, profound feeling; with dante love and beatrice are identical. in the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, gradually awoke to life. both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman, the catholic queen of heaven. in dante's, as well as in goethe's paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and adored. the second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper. st. bernard, the _doctor marianus_ of dante, prostrating himself before her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins: oh, virgin! mother! daughter of thy son! and in _faust_ we meet again the _doctor marianus_ burning--as the representative of the totality of her worshippers--with the "sacred joy of love" (dante says the queen of heaven for whom my soul burns with love's rapture) and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the madonna which the world possesses, and which is almost identical with dante's: virgin, pure from taint of earth, mother, we adore thee, with the godhead one by birth, queen, we bow before thee! and, prostrated before her: penitents, her saviour-glance gratefully beholding, to beatitude advance, still new pow'rs unfolding! thine each better thought shall be, to thy service given! holy virgin, gracious be, mother, queen of heaven! in the divine comedy st. bernard prays: so mighty art thou, lady, and so great, that he who grace desireth and comes not to thee for aidence, fain would have desire fly without wings. the _chorus mysticus_ could equally well form the conclusion of the _comedy_. the _inadequate_ which to _fulness groweth_, is what the provençals already, in their time, realised as _folly_, as a paradox: the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine. as the _mater gloriosa_ appears, dante exclaims: thenceforward what i saw was not for words to speak, nor memory's self to stand against such outrage on her skill. and goethe: in starry wreath is seen lofty and tender, midmost the heavenly queen, known by her splendour. here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its absolute climax. the universe is represented by a divine woman, and man, abandoning himself to her, worships her. goethe's _faust_ concludes at this point, but dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal glory of the deity, there to lose himself. i have previously said that the last scene of _faust_ was the final unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and i will proceed to establish my point. hitherto i have used the term metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman. henceforth i shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the divine. emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its essence. and in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between the temporal and the eternal may be divined. hence the christian mystery of mysteries, god giving his son to the world for love of humanity; god unable to approach the world other than as a lover--sacrificing himself for the sake of love. we cannot conceive the sublime with any other principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and profoundest emotion of the human heart, and, in accordance with the first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. on this point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "god is love" is written in the gospel of st. john. "love which moves the sun and all the stars," stands at the termination of dante's masterpiece: and in _faust_ the _pater profundus_ confesses: so love, almighty, all-pervading, does all things mould, does all sustain. he is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the temptations of doubt (of thought), oh, god! my troubled thoughts composing, my needy heart do thou illume! but the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate himself so as to become absorbed in god, the lover who no longer knows the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the _pater ecstaticus_: the condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving up and down, he sings: joy's everlasting fire, love's glow of pure desire, pang of the seething breast, rapture a hallowed guest! darts pierce me through and through, lances my flesh subdue, clubs me to atoms dash, lightnings athwart me flash, that all the worthless may pass like a cloud away, while shineth from afar, love's gem, a deathless star! these ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the self-destructive metaphysical erotic--he is conscious of nothing but his passion of love which eclipses all else. with him the second form of metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. goethe, in creating this character, must have had in his mind the unique jacopone da todi. for this rapturous love was the keynote of jacopone's character, his whole life was one great ecstasy: my heart was all to broken, as prostrate i was lying, with dear love's fiery token swift from the archer flying; wounded, with sweet pain soaken, peace became war--and dying, my soul with pain was soaken, distraught with throes of love. in transports i am dying, oh! love's astounding wonder!-- for love, his fell spear plying, has cleft my heart asunder. around the blade are lying sharp teeth, my life to sunder, in rapture i am dying, distraught with throes of love. and: oh, love! oh, love! oh, jesus, my desire, oh, love! i hold thee clasped in sweet embrace! oh, love! embracing thee, could i expire! oh, love! i'd die to see thee face to face. oh, love! oh, love! i burn in rapture's fire, i die, enravished in the soul's embrace. the legend has it that the heart of jacopone broke with the intensity of love. this would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur. before jacopone st. bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. some of his latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor: oh, most sweet jesu, saviour blest, my yearning spirit's hope and rest, to thee mine inmost nature cries, and seeks thy face with tears and sighs. thou, my heart's joy where'er i rove, thou art the perfecting of love; thou art my boast--all praise be thine, jesu, the world's salvation, mine! then his embrace, his holy kiss, the honeycomb were naught to this! 'twere bliss fast bound to christ for aye, but in these joys is little stay. this love with ceaseless ardour burns, how wondrous sweet no stranger learns; but tasted once, the enraptured wight, is filled with ever new delight. now i behold what most i sought; fulfilled at last my longing thought; lovesick, my soul to jesus turns, and all my heart within me burns. (_transl. by_ t.g. crippen.) we read in his writings: "blessed and sacred is he to whom it has been given to experience this in his earthly life; even if he have experienced it only once, for the space of a fleeting minute. for to melt away completely, as it were, as if one had ceased to exist, to be emptied of self, dissolved in holy emotion, has not been given to mortal life, but is the state of the blessed." i shall have to refer to both men in a future chapter, when i shall examine the degenerate growths of metaphysical eroticism; for the ardour of their souls was frequently kindled by sexual imaginings; in the case of emotional mystics it is often difficult to distinguish between sensual conceptions and the pure love of god (a fact which does not, however, justify the superficial opinion that all mysticism is diverted sexuality). it is obvious that this love of god is not the original creation of the lover, as is the deifying love of woman, but the mystic love whose self-evident object is god or eternity. jacopone's (and later on zinzendorf's) love of jesus, though projected on a historical personality, was fundamentally the same thing. the love of god also--and in this connection i might mention jacob boehme, alphonso da liguori, novalis--is metaphysical eroticism; but i have restricted my subject to the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. i will merely elucidate a little more the last scene of _faust_. _pater seraphicus_, a title given both to st. francis and to bonaventura--requires but a few words: he, too, praises metaphysical love, the essence of the supreme spirits. thus the spirits' nature stealing through the ether's depths profound; love eternal, self-revealing, sheds beatitude around. but even the _more perfect angels_ cannot free themselves from the dualism of all things human (body and soul)--an unmistakable confession of metaphysical dualism: parts them god's love alone, their union ending. the identity of the last scene of _faust_, goethe's masterpiece, and the conclusion of dante's _divine comedy_, is so obvious that i do not think any one could deny it. i have pointed out the thought underlying both works, and could easily advance further proof of their similarity, but i will keep within the limits of the last scene which contains the totality of metaphysico-erotic yearning, and i contend that it is very remarkable that a lifetime after the composition of margaret, faust (and with him goethe) very old, very wise, and a little cold, having had love-affairs with demi-goddesses, and having finally renounced the love of woman, found his mission and his happiness in uninterrupted, productive activity. he has discovered the final value in work. but the long-forgotten heaven opens and the love of his youth comes to meet him. stripped of everything earthly, a divine being, she still loves him and shows him the way to salvation, presented under the aspect of the _eternal-feminine_--exactly as in the _divine comedy_. there must be a reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest subjective poets of europe (shakespeare was greater than either, but he was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that goethe imitated dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained for a moment. their mutual characteristic is the longing for metaphysical love. when these great lovers experienced for the first time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they became poets. the first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (with the philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) this experience of first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics--interwoven, that is to say, with all transcendent longing. and though the aged faust had believed it to be buried in the dark night of forgotten things, it was still alive in his inmost heart, and the dying man's vision of the divine took colour and shape from it. the source of both great poems was the poet's will to assimilate the world and recreate it, impregnated with his own soul; the secret motive powers were the mystic love of eternity and the love of woman which had outgrown this world and aspired to the next. to goethe, thirsting to give a concrete shape to his yearning, god and eternity were too intangible, too remote and incomprehensible--but the woman he loved with religio-erotic intensity was familiar to him. the eternal-feminine is thus not fraught with incomprehensibility, but is rather, and this necessarily, the final conclusion. for this conclusion is a profession of metaphysical eroticism, that is to say, the _eternal-feminine_ in contradistinction to the _transitory-feminine_. both dante, the devout son of the middle ages, and goethe, the champion of modern culture, demand, in virtue of the inherent right of their genius, the consummation of their mystic yearning for love in another life, and achieve the creation of the divine woman. precisely because margaret was nothing but a little provincial, goethe could sublimate her into a new being, for the greater the tension between reality and the vision of the soul, the greater is the task and the more gigantic the creative power which such a task may develop. it has been said that, in this scene, goethe revealed leanings towards catholicism. i do not pretend to deny it offhand, but i must insist on these leanings being understood in the sense of my premises. goethe took from tradition those elements which were able to materialise his spiritual life and gave them a new interpretation. we are justified in believing that he accepted nothing but what was conformable to his nature; the madonna represented his profoundest feeling and, like dante (i attribute the greatest importance to this), he created a new deity, moulded in the shape of his first love, and placed it by the side of the universal queen of heaven, the madonna of the catholic church, transformed by love. the emotional life of both poets agrees fundamentally. they differ not so much in feeling as in thought and in faith. dante possessed unshakable faith in the reality of his visions; eternal love in the shape of beatrice was awaiting him; his vision was pure, eternal truth. the vision of goethe, on the other hand, was poetic longing, tragical, because the vision of the transcendent came to the modern poet only in rare hours. where dante possessed, goethe must seek, strive and err. the deifying love of woman is, as we have seen, the extreme development of the second stage, in which sexual impulse and spiritual love are strictly separated, in which man despises and fights his natural instinct, or abandons himself to it--which is the same in principle--while his soul, worshipping love, soars heavenward. this dualism of feeling corresponds to the persistent dualism of christianity and the whole mediaeval period. but as goethe is frequently looked upon as a _monist_, my proposition that he was a dualist _in eroticis_ will possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is revealed to us with great lucidity. his first important work, his _werther_, which is also one of the most important monuments of sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the beloved. i will revert to _werther_ later on. this third stage, love in the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) in _elective affinities_, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. many of his early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in the _venetian epigrams_ and in the _roman elegies_ it is even held up as a positive value. in the third elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires beyond it is rejected. in the same way his _west-eastern divan_ is characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies. the sensual quality of goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his relationship with christiane vulpius. the following passage, which forms an interesting counterpart to goethe's famous correspondence with charlotte von stein, is taken from a letter written to christiane vulpius during his absence from home. "the beds everywhere are very wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have at home. oh, my sweet heart! there is no such happiness on earth as being together." if christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling, frau von stein represented the most important object of goethe's craving for spiritual love. these two liaisons were to some extent contemporaneous; the _roman elegies_ and the famous letters to charlotte von stein were written at the same period. when she reproached him with his love-affair with christiane, he replied with consistent dualism: "and what sort of an affair is it? whose interests are suffering by it?" frau von stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old, and mother of seven children when goethe first met her. according to schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to koerner the latter says: "they say that their relationship (goethe's and charlotte von stein's) is absolutely pure and irreproachable." it was a great mistake ever to regard this relationship as anything but a purely spiritual one; goethe never felt any passion for charlotte; he called her "his sister," the "guide of his soul"; he told her of his little love-affairs and was never jealous of her husband. the following are a few typical passages culled from his letters, arranged chronologically: "my only love whom i can love without torment!" then, quite in the spirit of the _dolce stil nuovo_: "your soul, in which thousands believe in order to win happiness," "the purest, truest and most beautiful relationship which (with the exception of my sister) ever existed between me and any woman." "the relationship between us is so strange and sacred, that i strongly felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." the following passage written by goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by guinicelli or by dante: "you appeared to me like the madonna ascending into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return--she was absorbed in the splendour surrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering above her head." "i long to be purified in triple fire so as to be worthy of you." he addresses a prayer to her and says: "on my knees i implore you to complete your work and make a good man of me." "while writing tasso, i worshipped you." charlotte knew intuitively what he desired of her, and remained silent and passive like the madonna. not a single sensual, or even passionate word, replied to all these utterances. in the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his letters became friendship and familiarity. "farewell, sweet friend and beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." in another letter he said that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found everything in her. and just as spiritual love approached more and more the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on a single woman, on christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. but it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling remained unchanged. there was no woman in goethe's life in regard to whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in a higher intuition. even before his friendship with frau von stein, at the time of his engagement to lili schoenemann, goethe experienced a spiritual love for a girl he had never seen. he calls countess auguste stolberg "his angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "i have an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no other being on earth could do it." these letters also contain the significant passage: "miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." and touching the love of his youth, lotte, goethe wrote to kestner: "i really had no idea that all that was in her, for i always loved her far too much to observe her." the princess in "tasso" and "iphigenia" who delivers orestes from unrest and insanity, are modelled on charlotte. tasso is unmistakably a fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which leonore is fully aware: now he exalts her to the starry heavens, in radiant glory, and before that form bows down like angels in the realms above. then, stealing after her, through silent fields, he garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower. he loves not us--forgive me what i say-- his lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings and does invest it with the name we bear. he has relinquished passion's fickle sway, he clings no longer with delusion sweet to outward form and beauty to atone for brief excitement by disgust and hate.[ ] and tasso says: my very knees trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength was all required to hold myself erect, and curb the strong desire to throw myself prostrate before her. scarcely could i quell the giddy rapture. the significant avowal addressed by dante to beatrice: "into a free man thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was repeated by goethe in his letters to charlotte, and is again repeated in tasso: over my spirit's depths there comes a change; relieved from dark perplexity i feel, free as a god, and all i owe to you. very interesting is also a remark which goethe made to eckermann: "woman is a silver vessel in which we men lay golden apples. i did not deduce my idea of woman from reality, but i was born with it, or i conceived it--god knows how." these notable words, deliberately pronounced, reveal goethe's feeling very clearly; he knows that there is a little self-deception in his attitude towards woman, but he consciously and lovingly clings to it. his pronouncements are not contradictions; it is natural, almost essential, that in the soul of the highly-gifted and highly-developed representative of a mature civilisation the whole wealth of human emotions should be revivified. he possesses all psychical qualities--at least potentially--and one element after the other regains life and becomes productive. we shall see this with startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of richard wagner. the intimate connection between the individual and the entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident. it is remarkable that dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the imagination of her lover. i shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and that one is michelangelo. for the most part the poets whose emotions were akin to that of dante and goethe were men who created their ideal woman because reality left them unsatisfied. in passing i will mention beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("my angel, my all, my i!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it should ever be discovered, beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a figment of his brain, based on a human woman. together with beethoven, we may notice the other great "old bachelor" grillparzer, and his eternal fiancée kathi fröhlich, and the critical hebbel, who at the time of composing "genovefa" wrote in his diary: "all earthly love is merely the road to the heavenly love." before closing this chapter, i must draw attention to a strange fact in connection with the psychology of races. all nations endowed with fair mental gifts and a sympathetic understanding of nature, have in the period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the giver of joy and abundance. all the benevolent deities of the arians were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of darkness: olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld--aesir and giants. to the naïve mind of the indo-germanic races it appeared a matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon was usually conceived as a female deity. in primitive christianity christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the sun. thus we naturally find in the old and new indo-germanic languages the designation of the sun--or the sun-god--of the masculine gender. in the following words our word _sun_ is easily recognisable: savar and svari (the oldest indo-germanic tongue). svar and surya (sanscrit; savitar--the sungod). saval (the oldest european language). savel (gracco-italian). sol (latin and related languages). in the germanic languages and in the prussian-lithuanian both genders occur. (gothic sunnan and old high-german sunno). _sol_ in the norse edda is a female deity, and the anglo-saxon _sol_ is also feminine. the transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the middle-high-german language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the german language is the only one in which the word _sun_ is feminine. as the old teutonic deities of light were male (baldur and sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. the germanic tribes at all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to represent their highest values. the change of gender of the supreme symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine symbol of "lady sun." the great erotic, heinrich of morungen, says in one of his poems that his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." and also: my lady shines into the heart as through the glass the sun does shine; thus the beloved lady mine is sweet as may, full of delight, unclouded sunshine, golden light. mary, who had been called _maris stella_, the morning star, gradually assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. suso, in one of his poems, still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds. "when the radiant morning star, mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words: greeting, beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving hearts!" but he also calls mary: "thou dazzling mirror of the eternal sun!" and his biography contains the following beautiful passage: "and his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven; as the little birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul." this is pure and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of mary. so much for suso. in goethe's _faust_, doctor marianus prays: in thy tent of azure blue, queen supremely reigning, let me now thy secret view, vision high obtaining. it is obvious that here the queen of heaven and the sun are conceived as one. eichendorff makes use of the metaphor: the sun is smiling languidly like to a woman wondrous sweet. the typically un-teutonic modern poet, alfred mombert, on the other hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a poem: _der_ sonnengeist (the sun-spirit). the great italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of the supreme value; at the conclusion of the _paradise_ there is a passage (in st. bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in dante's mind between the sun and the queen of heaven: "the love that moves the sun in heaven!" _(d) michelangelo._ in michelangelo we meet the spirit of plato and the plastic genius of greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of christianity--the conception of the soul as an absolute value. michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty absolute, eternal and immutable. he felt profoundly the need of salvation, and he possessed an unprecedented power of spiritual vision. in the end, added to all these things, came consuming love for a woman, love raised to the pitch of self-destruction, an adoration which entitles us to regard him, next to dante, as the greatest metaphysical lover of all times. at the court of the medici at florence, ficinio had founded a platonic academy, where plato's works and the writings of plotinus--his greatest pupil--were after two thousand years translated and elucidated. many read and a few understood, but only in michelangelo did the spirit of platonic hellenism revive and become productive; the platonic ideal of a purely masculine culture, aesthetically and spiritually perfect, illumined his soul; once again the unconditional cult of beauty and the love of the perfect male form, which speaks to us from the _dialogues_, quickened an imagination, and boyhood and youth were portrayed in a manner which has never since been equalled. nearly all michelangelo's youthful male figures--with the exception, perhaps, of the gigantic david--deviate from the decidedly masculine and approach the mean, the human in the abstract; thus they seem to us imbued with a quality of femininity; they even exhibit decidedly female characteristics. i have in mind first and foremost the youths depicted on the ceiling of the sistine chapel (the most soulful adolescent figures in the world), but also bacchus, st. john, adonis and the figures in the background of the holy family at florence. cupid and david apollo (in the bargello) are almost hermaphroditic, and even the adam, and the unfinished slaves in the bobili gardens exhibit female characteristics. without going further into detail i would draw attention to the breasts and thighs, which positively raise a doubt on the question of sex. (i am referring to the two youths above the erythrean sybil.) seen from a distance they create the impression of female figures, while the youth above jeremiah is a perfect hellenic _ephebos_. on the other hand--with the exception of two of his early madonnas and, perhaps, eve--he has not given us one glorified female figure; all his women are characterised by something careworn and unlovely; some of his old women--most strikingly the cumaic sybil--are depicted with absolutely masculine features, masculine figures and gigantic musculature. his ideal was the hellenic ideal, was a human form neither man nor woman; all extremes, but also all peculiarities and everything personal, were, if not completely suppressed, at any rate pushed into the background. we regard this ideal, which is alien to our inherent nature, with a feeling akin to contempt, for the modern ideal is male and female, but it nevertheless was of great moment in the obliteration of sex and the accentuation of the purely human. the platonic (and also michelangelo's) love of young men was in its essence pure love of humanity, love of the perfect human body and the perfect human soul, whose greatest harmony was achieved in the adolescent. moreover, the superior mental endowment of the boy made an intelligent conversation--so highly appreciated by platonists and neo-platonists-- possible, whereas with a girl a man could only jest. civilisations and individuals inclining to erotic male friendships are endowed with great plastic talent. artists and poets whose genius lies in the direction of the plastic arts rather than in music, frequently have homo-sexual leanings. a musical talent, however, is as a rule accompanied by the love of woman. i know of no great musician, or great lyrical poet, inclined to erotic friendships with men. the simple song suggests the love of woman, the artificial metre, let us say the greek rhythm, the love of man. i am, however, merely pointing out this connection, without drawing any conclusions. the poems addressed by michelangelo to tommaso dei cavalieri breathe a deep longing for friendship and complete surrender, but above all things for a return of affection; all barriers between the friends must be thrown down, "for one soul is living in two bodies." these poems are calm and well-balanced, and differ greatly from the rest of his poetry. if each the other love, himself foregoing, with such delight, such savour and so well that both to one sole end their wills combine. (_transl. by_ j.a. symonds.) michelangelo painted "ganymede" for tommaso, and even at a ripe old age he addressed poems to cechino bracci, who died at the age of seventeen. his contempt of woman, without which the spirit of classical greece, too, is unthinkable, formed a parallel to his male friendships. in the prime of his life the platonic element was superseded by the other great element which stirred his soul so profoundly. exceeding the perfection of form of antique statuary, his later works throb with a spiritual and passionate life quite peculiar to him; an inward fire seems to consume his ardent figures. they are not creatures of this earth, a breath of eternity has touched them; they are an embodiment of the platonic heritage which accounts all earthly things as symbols of eternal beauty, fertilised and glorified by a deep mourning over human destiny and a longing for deliverance. and when his years were already beginning to decline, vittoria colonna came into his life, a semblance and symbol of divine perfection. the love which took possession of him transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. in his tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. michelangelo, who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction. his book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. earthly beauty is but an imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his love. we meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the futility of all he had hitherto valued. yea, well i see what folly 'twere to think that largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven could ever be paid by work so frail as mine. (_transl. by_ j.a. symonds.) and of love he says: from loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own, drawing the soul above, and such, we say, is love. (_transl. by_ harford.) his poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. they reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which culminated in the deification of the beloved. if we did not know that vittoria colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe her to be a mythical personage like beatrice portinari, or margaret in _faust_. but the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it. "michelangelo conceived love in the platonic sense," wrote his friend and biographer, condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. in the heart of michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation between the greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he blended the finest blossom of hellenism with the profoundest spirit of christianity; he sublimated plato and dante into a higher intuition; the _eroico furore_ of his contemporary, giordano, had found an embodiment. the two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the glorified woman. vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle. she was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which almost broke him. more than once the thought of vittoria filled him with sudden dread. in her he had seen god and the world in one. the powerful effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant nothing, may easily be imagined. all at once he had found a centre, and more than that--a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal dualism of the earthly and the divine. his love was not the love of a youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. with the passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. before vittoria he ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper. we realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of dante. the latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a poet, early in life. he never doubted the profoundest truth, the metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of michelangelo, the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by restlessness. the adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but a source of fresh shocks. it problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of his life. for before this new experience--perfection, met in the flesh--art broke down. the greatest of sculptors never made an attempt to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power of earthly endeavour. before vittoria michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the perfection for which he had always striven--and he despaired of his art. thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres: a symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven th' eternal artist sent it down to earth; if it diminish, years succeeding years, my love will lend it but a greater worth. age cannot fade the beauty god has given. and the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger and more tormenting. one instance from many: as heat from fire, from loveliness divine the mind that worships what recalls the sun, from whence she sprang, can be divided never. (_transl._ by j.a. symonds.) in the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to metaphysical love: the one love soars, the other downward tends, the soul lights this while that the senses stir. and: the highest beauty only i desire. it is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he saw in his mistress. in a sonnet he asks cupid whether her beauty really exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he receives the reply: the beauty thou discernest all is hers; but grows in radiance as it soars on high. (j.a. symonds.) it is indescribably tragic to watch michelangelo slowly despairing of his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. the religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the _forma universale_ became his last refuge. after vittoria's death michelangelo said to condivi: "i have only one regret and that is that i never kissed vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." more and more he brooded on sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. the beloved mistress had become the sole herald of eternal truths. melancholy and mourning took possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one happiness, death closely following on birth. but the thought of death again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion: and cleansed by fire, i shall live for ever. and as the flames are soaring to the sky, i, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven. oh, blissful day! when in a single flash time slips away into eternity-- the sun no longer rides across the skies.... michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with dante; he illustrated a copy of the _divine comedy_ which, unfortunately, is lost, and wrote a poem on dante in which the following lines occur: were i but he! born for like lingering pains, against his exile, coupled with his good, i'd gladly change the world's inheritage. (_transl. by_ j.a. symonds.) the paintings in the sistine chapel, with their materialised thoughts of destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the feeling underlying the _divine comedy_. both here and there the creation of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite longing of the artistic imagination. both men could spend the human and creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the supreme and universal. the eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to god, love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal--these are the common objects over which they brooded. but while it was given to dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. george simmel, in a profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which overshadows all michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to express the inexpressible. even the supremest plastic representation of the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul did not satisfy him. this tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical erotic overflowing its own specific domain. dante's faith in the absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his love in eternity--which was the sustaining power of his life--remained unshaken, but michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could divine, but could not grasp. his faith was no blissful certainty; he knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even the sublimest, of his art and his love. shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he found satisfaction in doing so. michelangelo's creative, plastic power seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. he had knocked at the iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. there is a stage in the life of every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. dante attempted to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, goethe timidly shrank back from it. in examining the prophets and youths in the sistine chapel, or the chained men in the louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are therefore "slaves" of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished slaves in the boboli gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. can there be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair? for art and wit and passion fade and vanish, countless achievements, ever new and great, are naught but dross within the sight of heaven. to vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic passion which abandons itself completely to art: now know i well that that fond phantasy which made my soul the worshipper and thrall of earthly art is vain. (_transl. by_ j.a. symonds.) faith, is to him "the mercy of mercies," for he has never possessed its deepest conviction. but the passion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his soul is torn between love and the thought of death. flames of love and chill of death are battling in my heart. he longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death for delivery, but in vain: burdened with years and full of sinfulness with evil customs grown inveterate, both deaths i dread that both before me wait, yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. (_transl. by_ j.a. symonds.) and later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not death. michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. we see his solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. his whole soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath of black laurel. he ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion that among the many years not one was his. this man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused himself of having wasted his life. no song of praise ever rose to the deity from michelangelo's heart, as it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of beethoven. he never had one hour of true inward peace. he represents the metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as fragmentary and pointing to a world beyond. if at an earlier stage it was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a metaphysical existence. the tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened into the supreme tragedy of life. footnotes: [ ] the quotations from _faust_ are from the translation of anna swanwick. [ ] the quotations from the _divine comedy_ are from the translation of henry francis cary. [ ] the quotations from tasso are from the translation of anna swanwick. chapter iii perversions of metaphysical eroticism _(a) the brides of christ_ hitherto i have confined myself to the analysis of the emotional life of man, but there are two other points which must be taken into account. the first is the question of woman's attitude towards the lofty position assigned to her by man; the second and more important one is the question as to whether the women of that period exhibit in their emotional life any traces of a feeling akin to the deification of their sex? the reply to the first question is simple enough. naturally the adoration and worship of their lovers could not have been anything but pleasant to women. there is a poem by the talented provençal countess beatrix de die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she--and probably a great many others--took the eulogies showered upon them by the enraptured poets, literally. once again woman accepts the position thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that of a perfect and godlike being. countess beatrix credits herself with all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts. hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught. my lover fills my soul with bitter woe, and yet is all the happiness i know. my grace and favour all avail me naught. my sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme, they cannot hold his love and tender thought, of all my lofty worth bereft i seem. but far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? the answer to this is a decided "no." at no time in the history of woman do we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the profound and tragic dualism of the middle ages--one result of which was the spiritual love of woman--passed her by without touching her. in the feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria. it may be argued that the love of jesus, which inspired both the nuns of the middle ages and those of a later period, represents a type of man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. the dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon the female soul. there can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman, in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution, and can therefore have no history. it is unadulterated nature and, in its way, it is perfect. in studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. these ecstatics were animated not by a pure, but by an impure spirit. perverted sensualists, they believed their hearts to be filled with spiritual love. contrary to the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. the loving soul repairing to the nuptial chamber is the transparent veil of desire half-concealed by religious conceptions. women have described similar situations in metaphors which--for sensuous passion--leave nothing to be desired, even the famous love-potion of tristan is not wanting. the material is abundant, and i have repeatedly touched upon it in previous chapters. at the period of great mystical enthusiasm (the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) this morbid love of god was a sinister attendant phenomenon of true mysticism. whole convents were seized by epidemics of hysteria, the women writhed in convulsions, flogged each other, sang hymns day and night and had hallucinations--for all of which the love of god, or the temptation of the devil, were made responsible. among the more notable of these pseudo-mystics are christine ebner (the author of a book entitled, _on the fullness of mercy_), and mary of oignies, a passionate worshipper of christ who mutilated herself in her ecstasies and who, on her deathbed, still sang: "how beautiful art thou, oh, my lord god!" a shining exception among the german nuns of that time was mechthild of magdeburg, a woman of rare gifts. she was a genuine mystic, but she, too, revelled in fervent, sensuous metaphors, and it would be an interesting task to separate the two elements in her case; but, having admitted her genuine mysticism in a previous chapter, i will here restrict myself to a few quotations which show her from her other side. her _dialogue between love and the soul_ abounds in passages like the following: "tell my beloved that his chamber is prepared, and that i am sick with love of him." "the closer the embrace, the sweeter the kisses." "then he took the soul into his divine arms, and placing his fatherly hand on her bosom, he gazed into her face and kissed her right well." mechthild, too, was ready to die with love. everyone of the most celebrated brides of christ belonged to the latin race; they were hysterics, and as such have long been claimed by the psychopathist. the love of jesus professed by catherine of siena ( - ), a clever politician, who was in correspondence with the leading statesmen of her time, found vent in passages like the following: "i desire, then, that you withdraw into the open side of the son of god, who is a bottle so full of perfume that even the things which are sinful become fragrant. there the bride reclines on a bed of fire and blood. there the secret of the heart of the son of god is revealed and made manifest. oh! thou overflowing cup, refreshing and intoxicating every loving and yearning heart." "i long to behold the body of my lord!" and straightway the bridegroom appeared to her, opened his side and said to her: "now drink as much of my blood as thou desirest." but the saint who enjoyed the greatest fame--partly on account of her frequent portrayal by the plastic arts--was doubtless st. teresa (teresia de jesus), a spanish nun ( - ). during childhood and early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was even believed to be dead. "before i felt the presence of god," she says in her biography, "i experienced for some time a very delightful sensation, a sensation which i believe one is partly able to produce at will (!), a pleasure which is neither quite sensuous, nor quite spiritual, but which comes from god." she describes in her "life" four stages of prayer, which gradually lead the soul to god: "there is no joy to be compared with the joy which the lord giveth to the soul in its exile. so great is this delight that frequently it seems that the least thing would make it forsake the body for ever." "when the soul seeks god in this way," the saint feels with supreme delight her strength ebbing away and a trance stealing over her until, devoid of breath and all physical strength she can only move her hand with great pain. the delights experienced by her are described in great detail and very sensuous language; hysterical conditions, such as painful convulsions, and hallucinations, are represented as religious phenomena. "it is dreadful what one has to suffer from confessors who do not understand these things," she says in one of her writings with deep regret. st. teresa relates her life with the well-known long-winded self-complacency of the hysterical subject. she frequently had visions of jesus, and again and again she emphasised the beauty of his hands. "standing by my side, he said to me: 'i have come to thee, my daughter, i am here; it is i; show me thy hands.' and it seemed to me that he took my hands in his, and laid them in his side. 'behold my wound,' he said, 'thou art not separated from me; bear this brief exile on earth....'" etc. on one occasion she had a vision of an angel whom she describes as follows: "he was not tall but small, very beautiful, his face so radiant that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who are, i believe, all fire ... in his hand he held a golden spear, at the point of which was a little flame; he appeared to thrust this spear into my heart again and again; it penetrated my entrails, and as he drew it out he seemed to draw them out also, and leave me on fire with a great love of god. the pain was so intense that i could not but sigh deeply; yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this pain that it made me wish never to be without it. it is not physical, but spiritual pain, although the body often suffers greatly from it. the caressing love between god and the soul is so sweet that i implore him of his mercy to let all those experience it who believe that i am lying." the treatise _thoughts of the love of god on some words of the song of songs_ is crowded with purely sensuous passages. in accordance with the general custom, she interprets this naïvely sensual semitic poem allegorically, becomes tremendously excited in meditating on the kiss of the beloved and discusses the question of what the soul should do to "satisfy so sweet a bridegroom." in the pamphlet _the fortress of the soul and its seven dwellings_, st. teresa describes similar states of mind: "the bridegroom commands the doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress and its surrounding walls. in freeing the soul from the body, he stops the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite deadened, speech is impossible. at other times all sensuous perceptions disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. this condition is of short duration. the rigidity passes away to some extent, the body slowly regains life, the breath comes and goes, only to die away again and thus endow the soul with greater freedom. but this deep trance does not endure long." she continues to describe her ecstasies and is careful to point out the complete fusion of supreme delight and bodily pain. perhaps no hysterical subject has ever described her states of mind so well. her avowal (made in a letter to father rodrigue alvarez) of her complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those states of rapture. she wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have never been translated from the original spanish. finally there is the famous madame guyon ( - ), who--in addition to many other works--wrote a very detailed autobiography. she lived with her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her spiritual intercourse with god. "i desire only the divine love which thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt my whole being." god burns her with his fire and still trembling with delight, she says to him: "oh, lord! the greatest libertine, if thou didst make him experience thy love as thou didst make me experience it, would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after thy divine love." "i was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of anything but my passion," etc. the fact that she sought in this love the pleasure of the senses is very apparent. we are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the beginning. but their spiritual love never rose above empty sentimentality and hysterical rapture. all of them, and some of them were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of jesus, they had visions of the "sweet wounds of the saviour," and so on; but their emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. the queen of heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving poets and monks. the women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse, arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of spiritual, deifying love. i have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine mystics. even schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with german mystics and indian philosophers; he calls madame guyon "a great and beautiful soul whose memory i venerate." and yet there can be no doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive, but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach god and the virgin with inflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine. the result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned, negative. the deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the emotional life of woman. (_b_) sexual mystics. sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. but frequently suppressed sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and a religious construction is put on the results. the sexually excited subject attributes religious motives to his ecstasy. i have no hesitation in asserting that the majority of these ecstasies--especially in the case of women--are rooted in sexuality, and that this so-called mysticism is nothing but a deviation or wrong interpretation of the sexual impulse. the same thing applies to the flagellants of the declining middle ages, and some protestant sects of modernity. the raptures of st. teresa and madame guyon, also, belong to this category, however much the fact may be concealed by pseudo-religious conceptions. i have no doubt that eastern mysticism, too, grew up on a sexual foundation, but (as i have done all along) i will limit my subject to the civilisation of europe. this counterfeit mysticism, fed from dubious sources and calling itself love of god, taints the pure intuitions of some of the genuine mystics and metaphysical erotics; they were not always able to steer clear of spurious outgrowths. (here, too, the psychological naïveté of mediaeval times must to some extent be held responsible.) conspicuous amongst these is st. bernard of clairvaux, who in his _sermones in canticum_ took the "song of songs" as a base for mystically-sexual imaginings. there is nothing really new in this direction. but i will cite a few stanzas written by st. bernard which might equally well have come from one of the amorous nuns: to the side-wound of christ. lord, with my mouth i touch and worship thee, with all the strength i have i cling to thee, with all my love i plunge my heart in thee, my very life blood would i draw from thee, oh, jesus! jesus! draw me unto thee! how sweet thy savour is! who tastes of thee, oh, jesus christ, can relish naught but thee! who tastes thy living sweetness lives by thee; all else is void; the soul must die for thee, so faints my heart--so would i die for thee! (_transl. by_ emily mary shapcote.) the greatest religious poet of all times after st. bernard was jacopone da todi, who also, though rarely, revelled in fervid utterances. the latin hymn, _stabat mater speciosa_, ascribed to him, is spurious. i quote a translation taken from the rosary of the b.v.m. other virgins far transcending, virgin, be not thou unbending, to thy humble suppliant's suit. grant me then, to thee united, by the love of christ excited, here to sing my jubilee. but he is undoubtedly the author of the following stanzas: soaring upwards love-enkindled, does the soul rejoice, afire in her glad triumphant flight. earthly cares to naught have dwindled, love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh her to espouse his heart's delight. all transformed and naked quite, laughing low, with joy imbued, pure, and like a snake renewed, love divine will ever tend her. but poems like the following undoubtedly originated in a truly religious and pure sentiment: enwrapt in love thine arms him fast enfolding, so closely clasp him that they loose him never; and in thy heart his sacred image holding, far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever. his death in twain shall blast thy callous heart as once the solid rock he rent apart. the most distinguished among the fervid lovers of god of later times were the saints jean de la croix, alfonso da liguori, and françois de sales. the _tract of the love of god_, written by françois de sales, surpasses everything ever achieved in this direction. i will not dilate further on this barren aspect of emotionalism so easily traceable through the later centuries in many a catholic and protestant sentimentalist, but will conclude this chapter with a brief discussion of novalis. if i mention this poet in this connexion it is not because i desire to depreciate his genius, but because, possessing as he did, in a rare degree, depth of feeling and power of expression, he is an important witness of an unusual type. true, here and there his poems are reminiscent of jacopone, but he is not sufficiently ingenuous, and is altogether too morbid to be classed with that ardent fanatic. he shares with jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp transcendental things with the senses, to approach the deity with a love which cannot be called anything but sensuous. novalis' _hymns to the night_ are the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancée, who died young, and the worship of mary. night has opened _infinite eyes_ in us, and we behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. the whole universe he conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. it is a new emotion: neither the chaste worship of the madonna, nor the sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. the night gives birth to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. the lover thus soliloquises of the night: in infinite space. thou'dst dissolve, if it held thee not, if it bound thee not, and thrilled thee, that afire thou begettest the world. verily before thou art i was, with my sex the mother sent me to live in thy world, and to hallow it with love. here the ancient, mystical longing to become one with god is conceived under the symbol of the night. (a symbol which we shall meet again, magnified, in wagner's _tristan_.) lo! love has burst its prison. no parting now shall be, and life's full tide has risen like to a boundless sea. one night of love supernal, only one golden song, and the face of the eternal to light our path along. in addition, novalis was a perfect woman-worshipper. he loved the middle ages and catholicism. "the reformation killed christianity; henceforth christianity has ceased to exist." "catholicism preached nothing but love for the holy, beautiful lady of christianity, who, endowed with divine virtue, was able to deliver all loyal hearts from the most terrible dangers." he wrote hymns to mary in the style of the pietists, emphasising more especially the principle of motherliness: oh, mary! at thy altar a thousand hearts lie prone, in this drear life of shadows they yearn for thee alone. all hoping to recover from life's distress and smart, if thou, oh holy mother, wilt take them to thy heart. he idolised his fiancée, who died young. "her memory shall be my better self, a sacred image in my heart before which a sanctuary lamp is ever burning, and which will save me from the temptations of the evil one." and through the mouth of heinrich of ofterdingen he proclaims: "my beloved is the abbreviation of the universe; the universe is the elongation of my beloved." "heaven has given you to me to worship. i adore you, you are a saint, you are divine glory, you are eternal life!" this sentimental worship of woman, combined with an all-transcending insatiable sensuousness, produced the peculiar sexually-mystic world-feeling which is so characteristic of him. night deeply moves his soul, longing, the memory of the beloved woman, adoration for the virgin, his fantastic conception of an incarnated universe are fused into one great emotion: praise to the queen of the world! the lofty herald of the sacred world. the patroness of rapturous love! thou art coming, beloved-- night has descended-- my soul is ravished-- over is this earthly journey and thou art mine again. i gaze into thy dark, deep eyes, and see naught but love and happiness. we sink down on the altar of the night, the soft couch-- the veil falls, and kindled by the rapturous embrace, glows the pure fire of the sweet sacrifice. the climax and unique example of sensuousness, unsurpassed for its symbols of the physical embrace, is the hymn: "few know the secret of love." it is too long to give in full. the following are a few stanzas: would that the ocean blushed! and in fragrant flesh melted the rock! infinite is the sweet repast, never satisfied is love; nor close, nor fast enough can it hold the beloved. by ever more tender lips transformed, the past ecstasy grows closer, more intimate. rapturous love thrills the soul; hungrier and thirstier grows the heart. and thus the transports of love endure for ever. here the remotest limit has been reached--sensuousness seems to flow into eternity, voluptuousness would shatter the world to pieces and create a new relationship of things. before this poem all ecstasies of sensuousness masquerading as cosmic emotion are dull and timid. the transcendent symbols of catholicism are used to guide the insatiable sensuous imagination to metaphysics. "who can say that he understands the nature of blood?" novalis may ask this question. it is truly blood, human blood, longing to gush forth and pulsate through the body of the universe. in time to come all will be body one body; in celestial blood, float the enraptured twain. the human blood has become _celestial blood_; the voluptuousness of man, the voluptuousness of the world, and because the whole world is one body, it needs no duality; sexuality which has become a cosmic law rules over humanity, god, christ and the universe. this hymn is the immortalisation of voluptuousness. if the love-death is the immortalisation of love unable to find satisfaction on earth, so its counterpart, cosmic sensuousness is, in the last sense, orientalism. only a genius could invent a new, symbolic language to express feelings so alien to the european. earthly sensuality did not satisfy novalis, voluptuousness detached from man, voluptuousness in itself, was his dream and his religion--the supremest creation ever achieved by sexuality intensified into a cosmic emotion. i think that i have now made clear the fact that the emotional life of man is rooted in two elements, completely distinct from the beginning: the sexual impulse and personal love. it is in studying the love of the transcendental, that culminating point of so many feelings springing from various sources, that the inherent contrast between the two fundamental principles becomes most apparent; and that we realise why they have always been intermingled both in theory and in reality. we have last examined the attempt of sexuality to possess itself of the whole universe; we will now turn our attention to the true union of both erotic elements. this union occurred at the time when goethe and novalis were bringing spiritual love and cosmic sensuousness to their highest summit. the third stage (the unity of sexual impulse and love) chapter i. the longing for the synthesis. humanity inherited the pairing-instinct from the animal-world; but as differentiation progressed, this instinct tended to restrict itself to a few individuals--sometimes even to a single representative only--of the other sex. in the beginning of the twelfth century a new and unprecedented emotion--spiritual love of man for woman based on personality--made its appearance, and until modern times the two fundamental erotic principles existed side by side without inner relationship. sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. in the second half of the eighteenth century there appeared--timidly at first, but gradually gaining in strength and determination--a tendency to find the sole course of every erotic emotion in the personality of the beloved, a longing no longer to dissociate sexual impulse and spiritual love, but to blend them in a harmonious whole. personality should knit body and soul together in a higher synthesis. the first signs of this longing became apparent in the period of the french revolution; (we find traces of it in the works of rousseau and in goethe's _werther_); it was developed by the romanticists and represents the typical form of modern love with all its incompleteness and inexhausted possibilities. the achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. the characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the generative by the spiritual and the personal. the physical and spiritual unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. in extreme cases--which are not at all rare--the bodily union is not realised as anything distinct, specifically pleasurable; it does not occupy a prominent position in the complex of love; sensuous pleasure, the universal inheritance from the animal world, has been vanquished by personality, the supreme treasure of man. the characteristic of the first stage was the unquestioned sway of one of the elements of erotic life, sensual gratification (this stage has, of course, never ceased to exist), as well as the aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of the human form. the second stage gave prominence to all those spiritual qualities which were most appreciated, virtue, purity, kindness, wisdom, etc., because love rouses and embraces everything in the human soul which is perfect. in the third stage, sensuous pleasure and spiritual love no longer exist as separate elements; the personality of the beloved in its individuality is the only essential, regardless as to whether she be the bringer of weal or woe, whether she be good or evil, beautiful or plain, wise or foolish. personality has--in principle--become the sole, supreme source of eroticism. in this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman--as in the sexual stage--no submission of man to woman--as in the stage of woman-worship; it is the stage of the complete equality of the sexes, a mutual giving and taking. if sexuality is infinite as matter, spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, the synthesis is human and personal. before the eighteenth century, this new erotic union did not exist as a phenomenon of civilisation, but occasionally we find it anticipated or vaguely alluded to. some of the early german minnesingers (such as dietmar von aist and kürnberg) sometimes betray, especially when speaking through the medium of a woman, sentiments prophetic of our modern sentimental ballads. the following verses by albrecht of johansdorf, express the reciprocity characteristic of modern love: when two hearts are so united that their love can never wane, then i ween no man should blight it, death alone should part the twain. even more modern in sentiment are the following stanzas: this is love's measure: two hearts and one pleasure, two loves one love, nor more nor less, and both right full of happiness. in woe one woe, and neither from the other go. though walter von der vogelweide adopted the contemporaneous conception of love as the source of everything good and noble ("tell me what is love?") he never quite accepted it: love is the ecstasy of two fond hearts, if both share equally, then love is there. more ancient evidence even is the definition of marriage by the scholastic hugo of st. victor, who had leanings towards mysticism: "marriage is the friendship between man and woman," he says. my knowledge of the subject cannot, of course, be unexceptional, but i do not believe that personal love of the third stage, that is, the blending of both erotic elements, was quite definitely expressed before the second half of the eighteenth century. we may be justified in maintaining that the tension between sexuality and spiritual love had been slackening in the course of the centuries, that sexuality was conceived as less diabolical, and love as less celestial than heretofore; but the principle had remained unchanged. only the female portraits of leonardo da vinci are deserving of special mention; the great artist was possibly the first who artistically divined, if he did not achieve, the synthesis. the exceptional position always granted to his women--particularly to his mona lisa--must doubtless be ascribed to this premonition. we may be certain that leonardo not only as artist, but as lover also, was ahead of his time; but he must be regarded as an isolated instance. the three stages apply to the eroticism of man only. his emotion soared from brutality to divinity, and then gradually became human; his feeling alone has a history. the force which seized, moulded and transformed him, had no influence over woman. compared to man, she is to-day what she was at the beginning, pure nature. her lover has always been everything to her; never merely a means for the gratification of the senses, nor, on the other hand, a higher being to whom she looked up and whom she worshipped with a purely spiritual love; but at all times he possessed her undivided love, unable in its naïve simplicity to differentiate between body and soul. the higher intuition, the object of the supreme erotic yearning of man, for the possession of which he has struggled for centuries, and even to-day does not fully possess, has always been a matter of course to her. she whose truest vocation is love, received from nature that which the greatest of men have striven hard to win and only half succeeded in winning. man's profound dualism is alien to her; her greatness--but also her limitation--lies in the simplicity and infallibility of her instinct, which has had no evolution and is consequently not liable to produce atavisms and aberrations. she is hardly conscious of the chasm between sexual instinct and personal love. wherever this is not so, we _may_ find intellectual greatness (as for instance in the case of the empress catherine of russia), but as a rule we find only morbidness, despondency and callousness. to the normal woman the phenomena of dualistic eroticism appear unintelligible, even unwholesome. the unity of love is a matter of course to her, so that the third stage is practically male acquiescence to female intuition. even in our time, when so much is said and written about modern woman and her claims, her feeling is still perfect in itself; compared to the discord and heterogeneity of man, she represents simplicity and harmony. both purely spiritual worship and undifferentiated sexual desire are exceptions as far as she is concerned and must still be regarded as abnormal. this unbroken, determinative female eroticism may possibly be explained (as weininger explains it) by woman's sexuality, which is absolute, and does not rise above the horizon of distinct consciousness, but weininger's dualism is in this direction attempting to value and standardise something which in its essence is alien to his standard. psycho-physical unity, then, is the basic characteristic of female eroticism, but the state of affairs in the case of male eroticism is a very different one. a study of the gradual origin of the erotic elements will facilitate a better understanding of the relevant phenomena. in the case of woman, the primary sexual instinct pervades the whole being; it has been refined and purified without any great fluctuations or changes; in the case of man it has always been restricted to certain regions of his physical and psychical life, and an entirely novel experience was required before it could win to the final form of personal love. this prize, in his case, is therefore enhanced by the fact of being the outcome of a long conflict; the reward of a task still showing the traces of the struggle and pain of centuries. the truth of the words "pleasure is degrading" had been established by experience. a few historical instances, illustrating female eroticism, will uphold my contention. in the remote days of greek antiquity, we find an example of undivided wifely love in alcestis, whose devotion to her husband sent her to voluntary death in order to lengthen his life. wifely devotion accomplished what parental love could not achieve. the _alcestis_ of euripides represents a feeling very familiar to us. penelope, the faithful martyr, is a similar instance. at the time when spiritual love, accompanied by eccentricities and latin treatises, gradually, and amidst heavy conflict, struggled into existence, the soul of woman was already glowing with the emotion which we, to-day, realise as love. i have three witnesses to prove this statement. the _lais_ of the french poetess marie de france, based on breton and celtic motifs, are permeated by a sweet sentimentality, very nearly related to the sentiment of our popular ballads. they tell of simple feelings, of love and longing and the grief of love. one of her _lais_ treats the touching story of lanval and guinevere, and another an episode of tristan and isolde. de tristan et de la reine, de leur amour qui tant fut fine, dont ils eurent mainte doulour puis en moururent en un jour. the naïve sentiment of these poems forms a delicious contrast to the contemporaneous mature and subtile art of provence, and the entire erudite armoury of love. a great baron declared that only the man who could carry his daughter in his arms to the summit of a certain mountain--an impossible feat--should win her hand in marriage. no man possessed strength to carry her farther than half way. but the knight whom she loved secretly went out into the world, and after years of searching, discovered a magic potion able to endow him who quaffed it with enormous strength. full of joy he returned home and, his beloved in his arms, began the laborious ascent. strong and jubilant, he laughed at the potion. but after a while, feeling his strength ebbing away, the maiden implored him: "drink, i beseech thee, beloved!" "my heart is strong, to drink were waste of time." and again she pleaded: "drink now, beloved, thy strength is diminishing fast." but he, eager to win her only by his own effort, staggered on and reached the summit, only to sink to the ground and expire. the maiden, throwing herself on his lifeless body, kissed his eyes and lips and died with him. we recognise in this simple tale the new form of love, mutual devotion, and the thought of the consummation of this love, the _love-death_, which was not definitely realised until six hundred years later. it originated in the celtic soul, as the worship of woman originated in the romanesque (the teutonic soul shared in the development of both). it was a dream of the suppressed celtic race, spending its whole soul in dreams and producing visions of such depth and beauty that even we of to-day cannot read them without being profoundly moved. next there are three love-letters written in latin by a german woman of the twelfth century. in very touching words she tells her lover that the love of him can never be torn out of her heart. "i turn to you whom i hold for ever enclosed in my inmost heart." she promises and claims faithfulness until death: "among thousands my heart has chosen you, you alone can satisfy my longing, and you will never find my love wanting. i trust myself to you, all my hope is centred in you. i could say a great deal more," she concludes, "but there is no need of it." and then follow the charming german stanzas: thou to me and i to thee, knit for all eternity. in my heart art thou imprisoned, and i threw away the key. nevermore canst thou be free. in the third letter she drops the formal latin and addresses him in intimate, simple german. but the man's replies are clumsy and strange, and plainly evidence his uncertainty of himself: "you have put a human head on a horse's neck, and the beautiful female form ends in an ugly fish's tail." it looks as if a parting were inevitable. but the most touching testimony from the middle ages is the famous love story of abélard and héloïse. we probably possess no older document of the passionate devotion of a woman, differing in nothing from the sentiment of the present age, than the letters of héloïse. abélard persuaded her to take the veil and repent in a convent the sin of voluptuousness--but she knows nothing of god--her whole soul is wrapped up in her lover: "i expect no reward from god, for what i did was not done for love of him.... i wanted nothing from you but yourself; i desired only you, not that which belonged to you; i did not expect marriage or gifts; i did not seek to gratify my desires and do my will, but yours, and well you know that i am speaking the truth! the name of wife may seem sacred and honourable to you, but i prefer to be called your mistress or even your harlot. the more i degraded myself for your sake, the more i hoped to find grace in your eyes.... i renounced all the pleasures of the world to live only for you; i kept nothing for myself but the desire to belong entirely to you." abélard's replies are pious sermons and theological treatises; he thinks of the love of the past only as _the cursed desires of the flesh_, the snare in which the devil had caught them, and urges héloïse to thank god that henceforth they are safe. "my love which entangled both of us in sin," he says in one of his letters, "deserves not the name of love, for it was naught but carnal lust. i sought in you the gratification of my sinful desires," etc. he blessed the savage crime committed on him because it saved him for ever from the sin of voluptuousness. what héloïse loved and treasured as her sweetest memory, was to him hell and devil's work. he wrote to her almost as if in mockery: "what splendid interest does the talent of your wisdom bear to the lord day after day! how many spiritual daughters you have borne to him! what a terrible loss it would have been if you had abandoned yourself to the lust of the flesh, had borne, with travail, a few earthly children, while now, with joy, you bear a great number of daughters for the kingdom of heaven. you would have remained a woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted even above men." this correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the lacerated man of the middle ages, as compared to the never-varying woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature. a long and toilsome road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a struggle, at the outset. how strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun: "it seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living creatures had lost their freshness, as if love had grown cold not in many, but in all hearts." what was really the final cause of the hostility to sensuousness displayed by dualistic mediaeval christianity? was it not contained in eroticism itself? this hostility was based on the fact that the world knew as yet only spiritual love and its antithesis, the sexuality which man shares with the animals; the only salvation, not merely in the christian sense, but from the point of view of every lofty conception of civilisation, lay in the victory over animalism. the contempt of and the struggle against the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture attainable by that period. (the rejection of spiritual love was an inconsistency on the part of the clergy.) the principle of personality was the fundamental principle of christianity; this is clearly expressed by the fact that christianity regarded the soul as the supreme value. and what is the soul but the consciousness of human personality conceived naïvely as substance? in the light of this higher intuition sensuousness was bound to appear base and degrading. it is therefore historically correct, though essentially an error, to regard christianity as the religion of asceticism, for the asceticism of the middle ages was nothing but the immature stage of the principle of personality. directly spiritual love was no longer in opposition to sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, christianity should have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. protestantism did so, half-heartedly. luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is typical of this indecision. at heart he could not justify sexuality; he regarded it, in the same way as did the fathers of the church, as an evil with which one had to make terms. his sanction of marriage was nothing but a crooked and ill-founded compromise; and as he remained at the old dualistic standpoint, it could not have been otherwise. but the moment the new sensuous-supersensuous form of love had come into existence, it behoved christianity, as the religion of personality, to acknowledge it. after this digression i return to the period of the inception of the third stage of love. if i were writing a history of eroticism, i should now have to describe the rococo period, a period essentially rationalistic and devoted to pleasure, a period which believed in nothing but the obvious and understood love only in the sense of sensual pleasure. if sensuality had hitherto been evil--at least theoretically--it now became obscene. stripped of every grand and cosmic feature, it degenerated into the principal form of amusement. the eighteenth century, though instructive and interesting to the student of eroticism, produced nothing new. under the undisputed sway of france, a period of sensuality set in, unparalleled by any other epoch in the history of the race, except, perhaps, the early oriental epoch; even the gynecocratic family of remote antiquity was openly revived by the ladies of paris. casanova was the sexual hero of the age (as he is to some extent the hero of our present impotent epoch). indefatigable in the pursuit of woman and successful until old age, he was a well-bred sexualist without subtlety or depth. the vicomte de valmont, the hero of choderlos de laclos' famous and realistic novel _les liaisons dangereuses_, an absolutely cold and cunning seducer, was its god. they were seconded by the pleasure-loving ninon de l'enclos, who was still desired at the age of eighty. this ultra-refinement was followed by the loathing of civilisation and love of nature expressed by rousseau, werther and hölderlin; closely allied to these passions was sentimental love, the direct precursor of our modern conception of love. its peculiarity lay in the fact that although spiritual in its source, it yearned for psycho-physical unity, and was therefore always slightly discordant. rousseau was the first exponent of this romantic nature cult and sentimental love of woman. he represents the sharp recoil from the frivolity of the _ancien régime_, and the beginning of the third stage of love. his _nouvelle héloïse_ ( ) was probably the first work in which sentimental love found expression. in goethe's _werther_ ( ), which is a faithful portrayal of the poet's personal feelings, it was represented more powerfully. werther's love was purely spiritual at its inception. "lotte is sacred to me. all desire is silent in her presence." but in the end he desires her with unconquerable passion; a dream undeceives him about the nature of his feelings, and as he clasps her in a passionate embrace he is conscious of having reached the summit of his longing. this would seem the goal of modern love, embodying all its previous stages. it is interesting to find embodiments of the extreme poles in two incidental characters; one has been driven mad by his adoring love for a woman and wanders about the fields in november to gather flowers for his queen; the other is a young peasant who kills his rival in jealous rage. but werther himself, steering a middle-course between these two extremes, walks straight into modern love, which means death to him. both the _new héloïse_ and _werther_ are, sentimentally, efforts to reach the synthesis _via_ the soul. friedrich schlegel, in his famous _lucinda_ ( ), tried the opposite way. he has been savagely attacked for it by one side and lauded to the skies by the other, and when "the emancipation of the flesh" became the motto of the day, he was glorified as a martyr. the philosopher and theologian schleiermacher saw in _lucinda_ a delivery from the tyranny of centuries. "love has become whole again and of one piece," he exclaims, joyfully calling the poem "a vision of a future world god knows how distant." "love shall come again; a new life shall unite and animate its broken limbs; it shall rule the hearts and works of men in freedom and gladness, and supersede the lifeless phantoms of fictitious virtues." schleiermacher also voiced the idea of the synthesis: "and why should we be arrested in this struggle (_i.e._, between love as the flower of sensuousness and the intellectual mystical component of love), when in all domains we are striving to bring the ideas, born by the new development of humanity, into harmony with the result of the work of past ages?" his _confidential letters on schlegel's lucinda_ have made the protestant pastor schleiermacher the philosopher of the third stage of eroticism, as the chaplain andreas was the theorist of the second. the third stage gained its first footing amongst the german romanticists. women were largely instrumental in achieving its victory. i will not go into detail but will confine myself to mentioning in passing the names of jean paul, henrietta herz, brentano, sophy mereau, dorothy vest, schelling, friedrich gentz. w. von humboldt records a conversation which he had in the year of the revolution with schiller. the latter unhesitatingly professed his faith in the unity of love. "it (the blending of love and sensuality) is always possible and always there." but humboldt was diffident, unable fully to grasp the new conception. "i said that it would sever the most beautiful, most delicate relationships, that it was too heterogeneous to admit of coherence; but my principal argument was that in the majority of cases it was out of the question...." there is a document from the year which contains in its entirety the modern conception of harmonious love, together with its ecstatic apotheosis, the love-death, a document which puts the later theorising romanticists and _lucinda_ completely in the shade. i am referring to the only one of gottfried august bürger's letters to molly, which has been preserved. it contains the following passages: "i cannot describe to you in words how ardently i embrace you in the spirit. there is in me such a tumult of life that frequently after an outburst my spirit and soul are left in such weariness that i seem to be on the point of death. every brief calm begets more violent storms. often in the black darkness of a stormy, rainy midnight, i long to hasten to you, throw myself into your arms, sink with you into the infinite ocean of delight and--die. oh love! oh love! what a strange and wonderful power art thou to hold body and soul in such unbreakable bonds!... i let my imagination roam through the whole world, yea, through all the heavens and the heaven of heavens, and examine every delight and compare it to you, but by the eternal god! there is nothing i desire so ardently as to hold you, sweetest and heavenliest of all women, in my arms. if i could win you by walking round the earth, naked and barefoot, through thorns and thistles, over rocks and snow and ice, and, on the point of death, with the last spark of life, sink into your arms and draw new life and happiness from your loving bosom, i should consider that i bought you for a trifle." to adduce more historical evidence of modern love would serve no purpose; in the next chapter i shall discuss its metaphysical consummation, the love-death. but i will briefly point out the not quite obvious difference between synthetic love and sexuality projected on a specific individual. in several of the higher animals the sexual instinct is to some extent individualised, but nevertheless it is no more than instinct, seeking a suitable mate for its gratification. all the well-known theories of "sexual attraction," from schopenhauer to weininger, accounting love as nothing but a mutual supplementing of two individuals for the purpose of the best possible reproduction of the species, do not apply to love in the modern sense, but to the sexual impulse; they completely disregard the individual, and are only aware of the species; they apprehend individualisation as an instrument in the service of the race. but genuine personal love is not kindled by instinct; it is not differentiated sexual impulse; it embraces the psycho-physical unity of the beloved without being conscious of sexual desire. it shares with the purely spiritual love the eagerness of man to raise and glorify the beloved woman, without ulterior motive or desire. this distinction may be called hair-splitting, and i admit that it is frequently impossible to make it in practice, but it is important in principle because it goes back to origins and finds in the metaphysical climax of the third stage, the love-death, its practical anti-generic proof. but with all this it is of common occurrence that spiritual and sensual love are at different times projected on one and the same woman. schopenhauer's instinct of philoprogenitiveness has to-day become an article of faith with the learned and unlearned. schopenhauer was the first, probably, to conceive the idea that love was the consciousness of the unconscious instincts in the service of the species, and had no other content or purpose than the will of the species to produce the best possible offspring. in a chapter of his principal work, entitled _the metaphysics of love_, he essayed to promulgate and prove his theory in detail. "all love, however ethereal it may pretend to be, is rooted solely in the sexual instinct; it is nothing more nor less than specialised, strictly speaking individualised, sexual desire." schopenhauer's conception of love does not rise above this specialised impulse. he calmly ignores all phenomena such as those i have described because they do not fit his theory. with the exception of his cheap observation that contrasts attract each other (which is the pith of all his "truths") he does not adduce the smallest evidence for the truth of his myth of "the genius of the species spreading his wings over the coming generation." however much the results of breeders may be applicable to the human species, they have nothing to do with love, and the believers in the theory of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness are silent on the subject of the best and most suitable subject for the purpose; is it the law-abiding citizen? the restless reformer? or the artist and thinker? strange to say, the legend of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness, intuitively conscious of the right way, is to-day accepted even by scientists who are in sympathy neither with schopenhauer's nor with any other metaphysic. it is taken for granted that love can only serve the purpose of the species; the fact that this theory is both metaphysically and scientifically unsound is ignored. for even leaving the genius of the species out of the question, his intelligent comprehension of the "composition of the next generation" is nevertheless devoutly believed in. even nietzsche, that arch-individualist, was completely under the spell of this dogma, as is proved by many of his utterances, for instance, by the well-known socialistic definition of marriage as "the will of twain to create that which is higher than its creators," and also by his theory that man is not an end in himself but a bridge to something else. nietzsche's pronouncement that he has not yet found the woman whom he would like to be the mother of his children, echoes the philosophy of schopenhauer, the superstition of the genius of philoprogenitiveness. the intrinsic worth of love without any ulterior motive, without a view to pleasure or to offspring, seems to have been unknown to nietzsche. schopenhauer's hero puts the purport of love not in the actual individual, but in a conception, and annihilates the value of the individual and the unique. every great emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of the emotion itself. the aim of the purely spiritual love of the second stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness cannot easily be surpassed. with the deification of woman love reached far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. but even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the sexual instinct only, its mysterious endeavour in the interest of the species would still remain pure imagination, and a conception far inferior to that of the winged god of love. the instinct does not possess a trace of "discretion," takes no interest in the weal and woe of humanity, but is utterly selfish, seeking its own gratification and nothing else. the theory which fits so well into schopenhauer's metaphysics has, without it, neither sense nor support. there is no instinct of philoprogenitiveness, but rather a pairing-instinct, and in addition to this a conscious desire for offspring. the difference between these two instincts is great, for as a rule, the pairing-instinct is not accompanied by a wish for children (that it should be so unconsciously is a theory not worth considering seriously), and the longing for children very frequently exists without any sexual desire; to manufacture an instinct out of those two inherently dissimilar impulses is fantastic metaphysics and not spiritual reality. the history of antiquity furnishes ample proof of my contention, for in the days of the remote past the sexual impulse had its special domain, as well as the wish for progeny, which was often regarded in the light of a duty. the legend of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness which is to-day so universally believed, is undoubtedly the result of the general feeling that sexual intercourse as such is base and degrading. but because of the more or less clear consciousness that sexual intercourse is really what is most desired in love, and because of the lack of courage openly to admit it, attempts are made to justify it from a social standpoint. the task of establishing the equilibrium between love and sensuousness has not yet been accomplished. what is so often realised as _the sexual trouble_ has its origin in the fact that the higher stage has not yet been finally reached. there is an infinite number of unions, all of which have a flaw. witness modern literature with its indefatigable treatment of eroticism. if a complete unity is ever to be established, then doubtless it will be the privilege of the germanic race to achieve it, for the neo-latin nations mean by love either the individualised instinct, or the rare, purely spiritual love. but it is not likely that the third stage will become a universal condition; in all probability it will, for a long time to come, be limited to special individuals, and even then only to specific phases of their lives. the feeling of the great majority of men has not changed; it is primitively sexual; in the state of mind which is called _to be in love_ it is centred on an individual woman, to be, after a time, gradually stifled by other interests. the emotional life of the majority of women, on the other hand, is still what it was in remotest antiquity. love impels woman into the arms of a man to whom she remains faithful, until slowly her instincts are transformed into love for her children. but in the case even of the average woman, body and soul are equally affected; there is no more terrible moment in a woman's life than the one in which she discovers that the man to whom she has given herself has merely used her as a means for gratification. harmoniously organised woman has given herself to a merely sexual man who sought in her only the satisfaction of his senses. this also is the cause of the horror with which the normal woman regards the prostitute, for the latter has made of herself a means for the gratification of male sexuality, losing thereby her inherent harmony and individuality. and it is also the reason why, in spite of ethical convictions and logical conclusions, we should have different standards for the loyalty of the husband and the loyalty of the wife; in man sexuality is a distinct element, an element, it is true, which we do not value, but which nevertheless exists and has, as we have seen, a historical root. when a man gives way to his instincts, his individuality is not only not destroyed, but it is hardly affected. it is very different in the case of the woman; with her, emancipated sexuality is synonymous with inward annihilation, for it has not the support of the past and cannot exist independently. a man's spiritual annihilation from the emotional sphere is unthinkable because his organisation is naturally heterogeneous. the mere sexualist represents a past stage of male eroticism which has been largely overcome, but he is rarely so completely under the spell of sexuality that he cannot highly develop other parts of his entity. the _double morality_ has, therefore, an objective reason (though perhaps not a higher justification), and would only be unjustifiable if man had achieved a complete erotic unity. the more complicated life becomes, the more numerous and complex are the relations between individuals and groups. a man is a member of a trades union; he has political, artistic, sporting and social relations; he may be a collector or interested in certain social phenomena, etc. in modern civilisation every component part of the human personality is separated from the entire personality and brought into a systematic connection with similar component parts of other entities. our social principle is division of labour, not only in the community but also in the individual. with one man one can talk only philosophy, with another music, with a third personal matters, and so on. but because in this way only one part of man, and never the whole being, can be satisfied at a time, the desire to expend one's whole personality in one great achievement, or in connection with another individual, is increasing exactly in proportion as specialisation is increasing in the community and in the individual. the more richly endowed and synthetic a man, the more inappeasable will be his yearning to find the talents scattered broadcast over humanity combined in one personality, and to give himself wholly and entirely to that personality. the splitting up of man caused by our social conditions is one of the principal causes of the longing for the great and strong love which we hear so much discussed. the yearning for the absolute, for perfection, no longer separating and selecting but embracing man as a whole, annihilating body and soul in a higher intuition, the longing for mutual self-surrender, for giving and receiving an undivided self, is growing stronger and stronger. the idea of modern love, a love embracing the whole breadth of human development, is unequalled in human history. a single person shall stand for all mankind. the lover has always been all the world to woman, but man has possessed many things in addition to the beloved. our age claims (wherever it understands its own eroticism) that woman, on her part, shall give to man all things in existence in a higher and purer form; not only complete satisfaction of the senses, not only the lofty emotion of spiritual love, but also friendship as a fellow-man; she shall be to him the friend who meant so much to the greek and the ancient teuton. it is self-evident that the true erotic of our time has very little to spare for friendship, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic in the true sense of the word, but merely sexual, has generally a poor idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friendship. but modern love does not only seek to combine all human relationships; it would fain include work, recreation, art. the instinctive jealousy of every occupation which she does not share with her lover, is nothing more than a loving woman's fear that the things which belong to him exclusively may become a danger to the unity of love. whether such an all-absorbing love is possible in richly-endowed natures, and whether it will not be the cause of new conflict, are questions which cannot here be entered upon. but one thing is certain: the great love cannot find its consummation on earth. chapter ii the love-death (the second form of metaphysical eroticism) the craving for infinitude is latent in love; its essence is the longing to reach beyond the attainable, to find the meaning of the world in ecstasy. the great erotic is a man whose inward being rests on emotion, who must bring this emotion to its climax--and who is wrecked on the incompleteness of human feeling. we recognise in him one of the tragic figures at the confines of humanity. for it is the final tragedy of a soul impelled by the inexorable will to self-realisation, to be broken on the wheel of human limitations. the tragedy of the great man of action is less conditioned by principle than the tragedy of other types of greatness, because he is not limited by the universal restrictions of humanity, but by individual and accidental ones. he recognises, partly because of his unmetaphysical constitution, no limits to human activity, and in gaining his individual object, he reaches a relative end. it is otherwise with the thinker, the artist, the religious enthusiast and the lover. the thinker possesses the highest intellectual endowments; he represents cognisant humanity, and his portion is the anguish of realising that the essence of being cannot be grasped by the intellect. the great artist creates a masterpiece; his heart is aglow with the ideal of perfect beauty beheld by none but him, but his ideal eternally eludes him; the saint has achieved perfection as far as perfection is possible to humanity, and stands aghast at the burden of insufficiency which weighs down mankind; the great erotic is the hero in the world of feeling, his soul yearns for the consummation of his love--and already he has reached the confines of life. there are various paths by which the erotic may travel towards perfection; they correspond to the principal erotic types. i have devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the don juan; the woman-worshipper who cannot find satisfaction on earth has been dealt with already. the great and rare lover, however, the exponent of the final form of love, who loves a woman of flesh and blood with every fibre of his being, differs very essentially from either of these types. the profounder the emotional depth of the soul, the greater is the difficulty of finding a complementary being. the erotically undifferentiated nature (whose intellectual level may, however, be a high one) finds, and in case of loss replaces, the complementary being comparatively easily. the difficulty both of finding and of substitution increases in proportion to the differentiation and the intensity of feeling. the true erotic, once he has found his complementary being, is overwhelmed by the will to the perfect realisation of his passion. it appears with the unanswerable logic of the unique and final, carrying in its train supreme happiness and infinite sorrow. a love able to deliver a soul from its solitude is rare; once there, the whole world is as nothing to it. all life is embraced and brought under its spell. (in this connection i need only mention michelangelo.) a lover of this type surrenders himself to love unconditionally--love shall completely annihilate, completely renew him. but it is just in this overwhelming love that the impassable barrier becomes apparent. the lovers are two beings and not one indivisible entity. the fundamental fact of individuality stands between them as the last obstacle to their complete union. the more intense the emotion, the more desperately it tilts against this barrier, against the impossibility of complete mutual absorption, and the more passionately it demands another common form of existence. individuality and the eternal duality of being is felt as a curse. the lovers cannot endure the thought of continuing life as distinct personalities. the great erotic who, against all expectation, finds the being to whom he can surrender himself unreservedly and with a sense of immortality, discovers within himself the supreme and only happiness, and by that very fact has himself become the source of his unhappiness. personality, the greatest gift bestowed upon the children of man, has flashed its light upon the tragedy of life: solitude, eternal duality. the soul recognises with unspeakable dismay in its own fundamental principle the cause of its isolation and the impossibility of final union with the beloved. the supreme value of european civilisation, the value of complete personality, into whose gradual development and perfecting all human forces had been built, and in whose interest countless sacrifices had been made, knows itself as the cause of supreme suffering, as an element which ought on no account to exist. not its completion, but its annihilation is what should really be desired. we have here arrived at the very confines of humanity. if the great thinker has found the boundaries of all knowledge in the limitations of the intellect, and is thus the representative of the human mind with its unattainable goal: knowledge of the secret of being, the erotic has gone a step further. he has found the boundary in the very perfection of his personality and, to him, the barrier is unendurable. in the rare love of the rare personality is discovered the eternal separateness of the ego; only the destruction of its origin, the annihilation of itself, might, perhaps, throw down the barrier which separates the lovers. inevitably there arises in the soul the desire and the will to escape, together with the beloved, the insufferable solitude of existence; to achieve in death what life denies; to realise another, a higher condition, divined in dreams and seen in visions; to become one with the beloved, to transform all human existence into a new, divine universal existence: "then i myself am the world!" everything individual, all life, is blotted out; the death of the lovers from love and through love is the mystic portal of a higher state of being. it is the last ecstasy of unity--the love-death--an ecstasy which life cannot give because it must always be wrecked on duality. it is the despairing attempt to escape from separateness, to effect a delivery which to human understanding seems final, and it is characteristic that wagner, who made the problem of redemption peculiarly his own, should have expressed this attempt uniquely and with unparalleled grandeur. it would be a mistake to read into the idea of the love-death a rejection of the european view of life, a denial of the world-feeling of personality, and a victory of the impotent philosophy of the east which exalts non-existence above existence (that is to say, individual existence). for the essence of the love-death is contained in the determination of personality to realise itself in a new and positive form of existence. it is felt as the final synthesis, exactly as (in other spheres) the union of the ideal with the personal is seen as the perfection of human life. how would it be possible at once to annihilate and to transcend the individual soul, the source of personal love, if this soul were not first presupposed as the essential and supreme value? where personal love does not exist, as in the orient and japan, the thought of the love-death would be an absurdity. the burning of indian widows is a phenomenon widely differing from the love-death. the indian widow slavishly abandons a life which has become aimless through her master's death; she does not make a sacrifice in the true sense of the word, and is not actuated by love. the complete unity of the lovers is possible on earth for a brief hour and it will, in most cases, satisfy erotic yearning. it can be realised in two ways: by the blissful rest of the lovers in each other, which silences all desires and apparently robs time of its tyranny. the heart is still, and nothing can disturb the deepest thought, the thought to be her own. says goethe; and a newer poet: close around me, wondrous being, wind thy magic veil oblivion, all my heart from unrest freeing, let there be untroubled calm. give me peace; the helter skelter of the wide world has gone by; and this narrow, silent shelter holds the potent healing balm. by the side of this idyllic consummation of the longing for love, there is the other, the ecstatic consummation of mutual rapture. it almost blots out individual consciousness in the singly (no longer doubly) felt, body and soul entrancing ecstasy; it is such sheer delight that pleasure is no longer perceived as a distinct element, but rather is there the consciousness of a complete transformation of life. pleasure, which, a great psychologist maintains, "craves eternity" is annihilated in its perfection, knows no more of itself, and is a part of the lovers' sense of complete unity. it does not "crave eternity"; such a craving is its last stage but one, the outer court (further than which nietzsche as far as eroticism is concerned never penetrated); in the innermost sanctuary pleasure disappears; it has no longer any meaning, it becomes void before the new consciousness. the supreme ecstasy of great love proves that the summit of human emotion is beyond pleasure and pain, and does not acknowledge the limitations of bodily existence. thus, of necessity, the rapture of love must engender the idea of its own eternity, the destruction of individual consciousness. i will quote in this connection a few verses by erika rheinsch: to open now my lips were vain indeed, nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess what sighs and joy and grief and happiness would flash from me to you with lightning speed. nor hope nor pray'r can still the soul's desire, for god himself can never join us twain; my bitter tears fall on my heart like rain and cannot quench its all-consuming fire. oh! now to break the spell--the storm to breast with broken heart and life-blood ebbing fast, bearing the pangs of death for you, at last, dark troubled love--at last thou wert at rest! we perceive that love can no longer content itself with the penultimate--it must dare the last heroic step which creates beyond body and soul something new and final, for "god himself can never join us twain." the love-death is the last and inevitable conclusion of reciprocal love which knows of no value but itself, and is resolved to face eternity, so that no alien influence shall reach it. the two powers, love and death, tower above human life fatefully and mysteriously; an isolated experience cannot appease them, they involve the whole existence. to the individual who loves with an all-absorbing love, and to the individual on the point of death, everything dwindles into insignificance. before the majesty of the love-death life breaks down, to be laid hold of and transcended in a new (divined) sphere. the thought of the love-death, the will that the world should be governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever laid down. for the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-problem and the world-process. it is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the poles of social life. the ecstasy of the love-death, however, owing to its all-transcending claim, unites the two poles. the climax of life shall also be its end. it is here, in the voluntary surrender of life in order to attain a divined unity, and not in the union of begetting and destroying, that the frequently assumed connection between love and death is to be found. voluptuousness and death are not interlinked, as is so frequently asserted since novalis (not on the higher plane of eroticism), but voluptuousness has immolated itself, has been annihilated in the love-death. the view that begetting and destroying are related functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with propagation. this is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding chord in the human soul. to base the relationship of love and death on an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but nothing more. modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure sexuality and to spiritual love. (wherever the desire to destroy is found hand in hand with sensuality, morbid instincts are at play.) it frequently occurs that lovers commit suicide together because external circumstances prevent their union. this is a step corresponding to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it away. but this has nothing whatever to do with the love-death; it is a purely negative act of despair, whereas the love-death is an altogether positive act, namely, the will to win to a higher (and to the intellect inconceivable and paradoxical) metaphysical unity. the love-death aspires to perform a miracle. it has, possibly, never been realised in its full greatness; the evidence of the common death of heinrich von kleist and henrietta vogel must be rejected. during the last days of his life kleist was wrapped up in the idea of their common death, and in a letter to his cousin, marie von kleist, he says: "if you could only realise how death and love strive to beautify these last moments of my life with heavenly and earthly roses, you would be content to let me die. i swear to you i am supremely happy." in the same letter he speaks of "the most voluptuous of deaths." and yet it was no real love-death, that is to say, death following as a necessary corollary in order that love may be consummated. kleist as well as henrietta had separately resolved to commit suicide, and when they--almost accidentally--heard of this mutual intention, they conceived the idea of the new voluptuousness of a common death. love did not play a very great part in this. kleist further says in the same letter: "her resolution to die with me drew me, i cannot tell you with what unspeakable and irresistible power, into her arms. do you remember that i asked you more than once to die with me. but you always said 'no.'" from this and other passages it is clear that kleist would have taken his life in any case, and that he only seized this specific opportunity to plunge into the ecstasy of a common death. the thought of the love-death is often present in the hearts of individuals who are genuinely in love. we read in schlegel's _lucinda_: "there (in a transcendental life) our longings may perhaps be satisfied." and in lenau's letters to sophy the same thought is more than once apparent. the idea reached perfection and immortality in wagner's "tristan and isolde." it is wagner's world-famous deed to have lived through and embodied this complex of emotion for the first, and so far for the last time; his lovers are in a superlative degree representative of human love; they typify the climaxes of human emotion. wagner has immortalised the metaphysical form of synthetic love; his importance to synthetic love surpasses dante's importance to deification. already in the first act the exchange of love-potion and death-draught is profoundly significant: both tristan and isolde seek death because they are alarmed by the external obstacles to their love. but the thought of death and love, the foreboding that their love can find rest only in the ultimate, in finality, has been in their hearts from the outset. together they receive new life from love, and together love leads them, step by step, to death. in the profoundest sense no exchange of potions has taken place, but the power of the love-potion has made them conscious of what was latent in their souls, waiting to burst into life. at the very moment when isolde proffers tristan the death-draught, the conviction flashes into his soul that she is giving him death through love: "when thy dear hand the goblet raised, i recognised that death thou gav'st." and in the same way isolde: "from golden day i sought to flee, in darkest night draw thee with me, where my heart divined the end of deceit, where illusion's haunting dream should fade, to drink eternal love to thee, joined everlastingly, to death i doom'd thee." the second act leads them further and further into the coils of their love; they are more and more convinced that death alone is left to them, step by step they discover the secret of the mystical union--and yet they are still completely imprisoned within the limits of their personalities and cannot quite understand the miracle: "how to grasp it, how to grasp it, this great gladness, far from daylight, far from sadness, far from parting?" for it is the profoundest secret of the world which here must be guessed by love--the final unity of two souls and through it unity with all life. clearer and clearer and more and more compelling looms the thought of a common death, until it is grasped and comprehended; the lovers realise that to be completely one they must surrender their lives, and that by losing life they can lose nothing essential. "all death can destroy is that which divides us." ultimately tristan pronounces the final decision, and isolde repeats it word by word, follows it step by step like a sleep-walker, so as to make it quite her own. "thus should we die no more to part, in endless joy, one soul, one heart, never waking, never haunted by pale fear, in love undaunted, each to each united aye, dream of love's eternity." the grand, artistic symbol for this state of consciousness touches metaphysic. wagner introduces night as the visible emblem of an existence in a world--inconceivable by our senses--beyond the grave, in contrast to the earthly day, to "the day's deceptive glamour." (nietzsche later on adopted this symbol "midnight" as the emblem of everything lofty.) the lovers who in their day-consciousness believed that they hated each other, now that they are walking towards eternal night divine that which is beyond the reach of their separated selves, beyond all illusion and duality. the duality is outwardly expressed by their different names, separated and united "by the little word _and_." all at once the knowledge dawns upon them that great love cannot be consummated in the day of the world, but that it points to a life beyond. they have discovered the final meaning of life and the world--the annihilation of individual life and death through love--analogous to the last wisdom of the mystic: "to become god." "i myself am the world." death is the inevitable corollary of supreme love. but as they tremblingly yearn for and await the inconceivable, earth once more stretches out her arms to them, the dream of metaphysical existence melts slowly away. in the orchestration _phantoms of the day, dreams of morning_, suppress the new, the divined conception. at the opening of the third act the motif for horns and violas gradually ascending and dying away, expresses the unspeakable dreariness and senselessness of material life, after its profound meaning, the re-creation of the world by love, has been lost. this feeling of absolute senselessness dominates the awakening sleeper; tristan, interpreting it in the sense of schopenhauer as the universal aimlessness of the world and of life, is merely expressing the doom of his own longing for the supreme: he has divined and has lost the loftiest value. wagner intuitively perceives that sin is a component part of the supreme sublimation of love and personality; tristan must curse himself and the beloved woman because love, as the last consequence of sin, demands the love-death, which can never find completion; "the terrible draught myself i have brewed it! a curse on thee, terrible draught! a curse on him who brewed it!" in the music at the end of the third act, which is known by the (not quite relevant) title of "isolde's love-death," wagner, after previously expressing by tristan's last words, "do i near light?" the inadequacy of the physical senses--attempts to describe the metaphysical condition of the unity of love, which to our consciousness can only have the negative characteristics of the unthinkable and intangible--the unconscious. this he tried to accomplish artistically by making use of the senses, by trying to convey in terms of sound, light, scent, what he understood by this complete immersion in the swirling totality of cosmic life--"_in des weltatem's wehendem all_." the essence of this condition is that the duality of the souls, and finally the multiplicity of the world, is resolved in a higher unity. but as we are concerned with the emotional life of the lovers and not with vague metaphysical propositions, we may say that such a death is not a being dead, destroyed, annihilated, dispersed, but a being transformed, perfected in love. the amazing phenomenon of this complex of feeling is the fact that real life has become unbearable, and that another life is created without the least regard to possibility or truth; it is as if the emotion of the lovers were endowed with divine, creative power. those who realise the love-death as a necessity of their inmost being, resemble the great ecstatic whom earthly life can no longer satisfy, because he is conscious of a force compelling him to enter into a higher cosmic existence. his inmost experience is the annihilation of the individual soul in god; he aspires to a direct pouring of the soul into the divine love. those who die in love are directly seeking complete unity with each other, and only indirectly, through this unity, the divined annihilation in metaphysical being. the love-death is the erotic, bi-human form of mystic ecstasy, and could not be evolved until the highest form of love had been developed. metaphysical eroticism is a product of the spirit of europe, for it is linked to personality whose will is the immortalisation of love. orientalism neither comprehends nor appreciates this emotion, for it lacks the foundation of the culture of personality. the semite, the indian and the japanese experience only the rapture of the senses; and gratification, restlessly revolving round itself between enjoyment and exhaustion, is condemned to eternal sterility. all religio-sexual orgies of which history tells us are so many attempts of sensuality to possess itself of a higher intuition--vain attempts, because casual intercourse and the annihilation of the individual can never produce new values. according to hegel the immanent sense of everything that happens in the world is the destiny of the individual to grow from slavery into freedom; but is it not rather the meaning of increased culture that man should realise himself as an individual (which is by no means a contradiction to the first proposition)? metaphysical eroticism is the completion of personality in love. simultaneously with the birth of personality originated the deification of woman; the destruction of the most highly evolved personality, the last painful consequence of its blessed-unblessed nature, gives birth to the conception of the love-death. like antique torch-bearing genii the two metaphysical forms of love stand at the head and the feet of self-conscious man. here and there erotic emotion, transcending all limitations, becomes the pathway leading to the ultimate secrets of life: deification creates a supernatural female being as the erotic representative of everything divine. this is a productive act, erotic, artistic and religious at the same time. it produces out of its own fulness new forces for the service of higher ideals; it creates a new world of emotion with new contents. simultaneously with the projection of the love of woman into eternity were sown the seeds of those great things on which the higher spiritual life of to-day is based. deification demands shape and individuality beyond the earthly sphere, in eternity. but from one side it is love, love without response (unless the lover finds response in and through artistic expression), the eroticism of the solitary man, and it occurs as such to this day in rare minds. woman-worship is the natural and the highest form of love for the man who does not seek his own perfection in duality--a reciprocal relationship with another being--but solitarily, and yet not, as the mystic, shapelessly, but rather in a love definitely projected on another being. the dream of the perfect woman is the only erotic dream which reality can never disappoint, for it makes no claim on reality. doubtless it is to some extent paradoxical that the inherently social feeling, anchored in duality, should be experienced and perfected solitarily, that it should waive all claim to response and reciprocity, to all appearances the most important elements of love. the love-death corresponds more completely to the erotic ideal inasmuch as it is founded on absolute equality in reciprocity. it finds its climax not in solitude but in the company of the beloved. the idea of complete abandonment is revolting to the solitarily loving individual; the lover whose whole soul turns to the beloved cannot understand the love of the solitary soul; it appears to him unnatural and cold, perhaps meaningless and crazy. woman does not know true solitude, the thought of deification is foreign to her nature; she attains to the supreme only with and through man; it is easier to her to give herself to her lover entirely, and even to follow him into death. but in this connection i am unable to suppress a doubt as to whether the fundamental emotion of the mystical world-union is altogether present in woman, whether she really divines behind her lover--eternity. while deification is universally creative, while it is fresh as the spring and full of faith, the love-death with its gloomy pathos demands the entire individual and destroys everything but itself. it has no creative power, for there is nothing beyond it. one may justly maintain that the love-death realises the mystico-ecstatic religious emotion, while in the deification of woman the religious need to worship finds satisfaction. both are combinations of love and religion, both are metaphysical eroticism, paradoxical and yet logical conclusions of human emotion. the overwhelming longing which is connected at least with the first stages of a great love, may be interpreted in another, in a social sense. love is the intensest and most direct relationship which can exist between two beings, and the impossibility of realising its final longing represents the most genuine tragedy of life among men and women of the social world. the need which impels two beings to each other lacks, in this union too, the possibility of complete consummation. and if the most powerful of all social emotions (and as many believe the root of all others) suffers from an inner duality, to how much greater an extent must the less intense feelings which unite individuals share the same lot! humanity, wherever it is comprehended profoundly and spiritually, not economically, carries within itself the germ of its tragical imperfection. whatever social relationship we may enter, we find that it has a flaw, and the more genuine and profound the relationship, the less dictated by utilitarian considerations (which in this connection correspond to the element of sensuality in eroticism), the more painfully does this flaw make itself felt,--whether it be in friendship, in the relationship of master and man, or in free companionship. every relationship between individuals is stricken with the curse of incompleteness--even love cannot escape this fate. love enforces in the deification of woman a transcending of earthly life--and it throws itself into the last embrace of a common death--that is to say, it shudderingly admits the impossibility of its consummation. chapter iii the conflict between sexuality and love _the seeker of love and the slave of love_ it is obvious that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. in the previous chapters i have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of eroticism; in the following i will attempt to throw light on some of the principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of sexuality and love, phenomena which i am convinced have never been correctly interpreted. i allude to perversions which are not inherently pathological, although they are as a rule only observed and described in their pathological form. the fundamental form of so-called sadism may be discovered in an erotic type which i will call the seeker of love. a lover of this type is characterised by an unappeasable longing for pure, spiritual love; he passes from woman to woman in the hope of realising this desire, but owing to his own material disposition he is unable to do so. time after time he succumbs to sexual promptings. thus groping, frequently quite unconsciously--for a fictitious being, he hates every woman whose fate it is to rouse his desire, for each one cheats him out of that which he seeks. a genuine illusionist, he knows nothing of the woman of flesh and blood, and continues seeking his ideal, only to be again and again disappointed. he blames every woman he conquers for what is really his own insufficiency; he despises her or revenges himself on her, punishes and ill-treats her; we recognise the true don juan and his morbid caricature, the sadist. but even the most brutal representative of this type may still be psychologically described as "a man who seeks spiritual love in woman after woman and, finding only sexuality, revenges himself on her." quite a number of men harbour sadistic feelings for only one woman, and that the one to whom they owe their great disillusionment. doubtless many men have almost lost the psychical roots of their perversions and are completely involved in physical acts. there is nothing remarkable in this fact; it occurs in every sphere of human life. the vague instinct of revenge on woman animates also, though perhaps unconsciously, the pathological sadist. there is one thing which the seeker of love and the woman-worshipper have in common: both seek a higher ideal far beyond the woman of every-day life; but while the worshipper safeguards the purity of his feeling by putting the greatest possible distance between him and the object of his worship (and is therefore never disappointed), the seeker of love, blinded by the illusion that he has at last found the object of his quest, draws every woman towards him and again and again discovers that he is nothing but a sensualist. every fresh conquest destroys his dream afresh, and he revenges himself, if he is a don juan, by despising and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by maltreating her. and yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. he differs very little from the type represented by sordello, who loved one woman spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. it is the tragedy of don juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a realm from which he is shut out. he is convinced that with the help of a woman he may redeem himself--and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough of his own sensuality. he becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the pleasure whose slave he is repels him: from craving to enjoyment thus i reel, and in enjoyment languish for desire. he is insatiable, but not as the primitive hedonist, whose natural element is pleasure, but because he again and again mistakes pleasure for love. he knows only "women," and thus he sins against personality and the love which is the outcome of personality. the opinion that don juan is no more than a votary of pleasure is not worthy of criticism; the famous casanova, for instance, has nothing in common with him. casanova was a sensualist without psychical complexity and without tragedy. his sole endeavour was to wring the utmost measure of enjoyment out of life. he knew the woman of reality and did not waste his time in running after phantoms. in his old age he revelled in the after-taste and settled down to write his memoirs. don juan, on the contrary, has such a loathing for all the women he betrays, that he hardly remembers them, and certainly has the strongest disinclination to evoke their memory. casanova was an entirely unmetaphysical and unproblematical nature. his philosophy is clearly expressed in the preface to his memoirs: "i always regarded the enjoyment of sensual pleasures as my principal object; i never knew a more important one." casanova, who, strange to say, enjoys such high erotic honours, was merely an ordinary, very successful man of the world, and is of no importance to the subject in hand. but even the greater and wilder vicomte de valmont (the hero of the famous novel of choderlos de laclos) is in spite of all his art and _esprit_ and perverse principles no seeker of love and no don juan, but a fop and a braggart, seducing women in order to boast of his success. he is moreover only a representative of the bored upper ten of the _ancien régime_, and not by any means unique. thoughtful critics contend that don juan was an autocrat, a destroyer, a criminal nature with satanic tendencies, bent on the enslavement of women, on their social and moral death; that conquest only, not enjoyment, was his passion. i do not altogether reject this interpretation, but it fastens too exclusively on the external and the obvious, and overlooks the essential. what is the reason of his preposterous procedure? is he really actuated by the evil desire to injure the women he woos? such a motive may occur occasionally (the vicomte de valmont was so constituted), but it cannot be regarded as the guiding principle of a life--and above everything its pettiness is the exact reverse of so great and demoniacal a character as don juan. were he conqueror in the highest sense, then--ascetic and proud--he would be content with the mere consciousness of victory. but his whole attitude belies the idea of a conqueror; he is not in the least interested in the women to whom he makes love. they are as necessary to him as "the air he breathes," but they are unable to give him what he seeks. at the moment of disappointment he abandons them in disgust, innocent of any despotic desires (which would pre-suppose interest). as far as he is concerned, women exist only for the purpose of quickening something in his soul. but his soul remains dead; divine love has no part in him, he cannot be saved and is doomed to eternal damnation. but what is the reason why women cannot resist him? let us first settle the point as to why women are attracted to men. i will answer this question briefly, and though my answer may appear dogmatical, it need not therefore be wrong. women know very little of man, but there is one thing they feel with unfailing certainty, and that is whether their sex is of great or of small significance to him. (i am only alluding to the general effect of men on women, not to genuine personal love which is always incommensurable.) the greater the importance a man attaches to women, the more readily do they respond to his influence. they are attracted by his erotic will, not by one or the other of his spiritual or physical qualities. women cannot resist a man to whom they mean much, everything. it is as if they were compelled to throw themselves into the chasm of his vacuity--every fresh victim with the fond hope of filling it--but all of them perish. and yet, at the moment of their defeat they are supremely happy, for they experience the full intensity of his passion and the boundlessness of his longing. the erotic craving of a man simply means that women are to him the most important thing in life. women instinctively yield to that man who most eagerly desires them. the coarse sensualist, to whom all women are alike, attracts sensual women, not exactly because they find in him the satisfaction of their craving, but because they themselves act on him indiscriminately. but a woman will adapt herself with the greatest ease to the needs of the differentiated erotic (for instance, she will become really sentimental to please the man who prefers sentimental women), for she loves to give herself to the man who most desires her and as he desires her. don juan, animated by illimitable erotic yearning, is therefore the undisputed master of the other sex. he has the power of bestowing absolute happiness, even if only for a brief hour, because in his boundless love (which is projected on anything but her) a woman receives the supreme value. maybe he would be saved if a woman denied herself to him--maybe he would cease to be a seeker of love and become a worshipper, for he could not refuse to believe in the woman who rejected him; but it is his fate that no woman he woos can resist him, that all throw themselves into his arms without an exception and without a struggle. thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality--his portion--and yearns for a higher form of love. he shares this attitude with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. the slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. what the psychopathist since kraft-ebbing designates as masochism, is the pathological degeneration of this particular emotion, which is very common and appears in various forms, but does not seem to me to be at all morbid. certainly it is morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss her feet, which in reward would spurn him. quite normal, too, is the boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (kraft-ebbing calls this pageism) described so beautifully in dostoievsky's novel, _a young hero_, and fairly common among troubadours and minnesingers. (i need only mention ulrich von lichtenstein.) there are numerous degrees of this feeling--we frequently come across it in the novels of dostoievsky, jacobsen, strindberg, d'annunzio, and others--but the essence of it is always contained in the fact that the man, although yearning to worship the beloved woman, cannot maintain himself in the sphere of spiritual love, and aspires to direct physical contact. his attitude, which closely imitates purely spiritual love, cannot be other than sexual. the blending of love and sexuality together with the incapacity of effecting a real synthesis, the confusion of value and pleasure is most clearly shown in the masochist--far more clearly than in the case of the (rare) seeker of love. the outward modes preferred by the individual are a matter of indifference; for the most part they are symbolical acts, indicating the lover's inferiority and the loftiness and power of his mistress. what is really of importance is the spiritual attitude which induces him to commit these strange acts, and in these we find the characteristic attitude of the woman-worshipper: that of the slave before his queen. the slave of love is a sensualist incapable of approaching woman in a normally manly, instinctive and natural way, but requiring the pose of the spiritual worshipper. one might be tempted to believe that he harboured the secret wish to atone for his incapacity of feeling a pure love by being degraded and ill-treated. thus from a human point of view the slave of love is a higher type than the seeker of love; all his transgressions, the fault of his morbid disposition, come home to him; he takes the blame of his sin upon his own shoulders, while the seeker of love revenges himself on his victims for his own shortcomings. the seeker of love is by nature polygamous, while the slave of love is, as a rule, monogamous (and consequently has little success with the opposite sex). both aspire to a union of sensual and spiritual eroticism, but in both cases the union is a failure. all the repulsive and terrible manifestations of these perversions which have been recorded, can easily be shown to fit my theory. in psychological research it is merely a question of selecting the great types from the mass of phenomena and determining them correctly. the so-called _fetichist_, too, whose passion is roused by indifferent objects which belonged, or might belong, to the beloved, or in fact to any woman, is a variant of the slave of love. the classical representative of fetichism is the mediaeval knight who carried a handkerchief, a glove, or any other article of clothing belonging to his lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil influences. there we see already spiritual love groping for material objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a dante, not every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this earthly sphere. but even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. to the same category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially artists--but also madmen--practise with female pictures and statues (more especially with heads). in this case the fundamental feeling of the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely spiritual eroticism, is made to serve sensual purposes. the desired illusion of spiritual worship is facilitated, and is protected from self-revelation, owing to the fact that a painted head rouses in the normal individual no passion, but inspires him with purely spiritual sentiments. i have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible, explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence; that they must exist because it obviously cannot _always_ be possible to maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. this chapter is therefore a necessary supplement to the previous ones in which the perfection of modern love is dealt with. the seeker of love and the slave of love are phenomena of dualistic eroticism incapable of attaining to unity. for this reason they neither existed in antiquity, nor do we find genuine examples of them in the female sex. all female perversions closely examined are hysteria--that is to say, want of inner balance--in various forms; a woman's subjection to the will of a man is in very many instances a natural symptom, and cannot be regarded as perverse. and thus we again perceive that the eroticism of woman is more harmonious and natural than that of the eternally groping and eternally erring man. chapter iv the revenge of sexuality _the demoniacal and the obscene_ in conclusion i will attempt to elucidate a group of phenomena which play a part, important though often ignored, in the emotional life of the present day. they are related to the subject under discussion, inasmuch as they, too, are the result of a lack of harmony between sensuousness and love. as long as sensuousness is felt and understood as a natural element, and one which does not under normal circumstances enter consciousness as a distinct principle, the emotional sphere which may be designated as demoniacal-sexual and obscene, does not exist. not until sensuousness is confronted by a higher principle, a now solely acknowledged spiritual-divine principle, will natural life, and particularly normal sexuality, be stigmatised as low and ungodly, even as demoniacal. in proportion as the conception of god became more spiritual and divine, the conception of the devil became more horrible; the higher the soul soared, the deeper sank the body. this philosophy of pure spirituality was expressed by st. bernard of clairvaux in the following words: "oh, soul, stamped with the image of god, adorned with his semblance, espoused to faith, endowed with his spirit, redeemed by his blood, the compeer of angels, invested with reason--what hast thou in common with the flesh, for which thou must suffer so much?... and yet it is thy dearest companion! behold, there will come a day when it shall be a miserable, pallid corpse, food for worms! for however beautifully it may be adorned, yet it is nothing but flesh!" the man of the later middle ages, and especially the cleric, who was completely dominated by the contrast of the ascetic and the sexual, feared the devil more than he loved god, and regarded the sensual temptations which beset his excited, superstitious and eternally unsatisfied imagination as sent by the devil. the naïveté of sensuality had passed away for ever; as goodness was looked upon as divine and supernatural, nature and natural instincts were condemned. man was torn asunder. but the devil was not only feared, he was also worshipped. a devil-worship, the details of which have been little studied, existed from the tenth to the fourteenth century (when it reached its climax), side by side with the worship of god. the greater the dread of heresy and witchcraft, the greater became the number of men who, despairing of salvation, prostrated themselves before the devil, whom they seemed unable to escape (a single evil thought was sufficient to doom their souls to eternal damnation), in the hope that he would at least save their bodies from the stake and vouchsafe them the pleasures of this world. satan promised his worshippers unlimited pleasure; he became the redeemer of those whom the clergy persecuted. it is asserted that his worship consisted in an obscene parody of the mass; according to michelet, the body of a female worshipper served as the altar on which a toad was consecrated and partaken of instead of the host. the adept solemnly renounced jesus and did homage to satan by kissing his image. asceticism and libertinism always go hand in hand. they are convertible principles rending their victim. _temptation_ is the fundamental motif of this condition. the devil was believed to send out his servants to win new souls; monks were visited by demons in the shape of a voluptuous woman, the _succubus_; satan himself, or one of his emissaries, disguised as a fashionable gentleman, the _incubus_, appeared to the nuns. undoubtedly the dreams of over-excited men and women played a very important part in this connection; many hysterical women felt the devil's kiss and embrace. all these women were themselves convinced of the truth of their hallucinations and imaginings, and once the belief in witchcraft was firmly established (in the thirteenth century) the obvious atonement for their hysteria was the stake. the fear of witches, which existed parallel with the love of the madonna, was typical of the declining middle ages. the first christian centuries knew neither the lady of heaven in the later meaning of the word, nor did they know anything of witches. in the reign of charlemagne the penalty for the belief in witchcraft was death. at all times man has exhibited a tendency to see in woman either a celestial or an infernal being, and nowhere was this tendency more strongly developed than in the soul of the mediaeval dualist: he created the beloved and adored queen of heaven, the mediator between god and humanity and, as her counterpart the witch, the despised and dreaded seducer, a being between man and devil. powerless to effect a reconciliation between spiritual love and sensuous pleasure, he required two distinct female types as personifications of the two directions of his desire; love and the pleasure of the senses could have nothing in common, and once the highest value was realised in the spiritual love of woman, pleasure could not appear otherwise than degraded, sinful and diabolical. in this respect, also, woman submitted without a murmur to the dictates of male will. mary and the devil became more and more the real hostile powers of the thirteenth century; the classical time of woman-worship was also the climax of the fear of the devil and witchcraft. the dominican monks who, above all other orders, contributed to the spread of the cult of mary, proceeded, soon after the establishment of the inquisition, against the witches, the enemies of mary. in the second half of the thirteenth century the persecution of heresy gradually gave way to the persecution of witchcraft. i will not go into these well-known details, for the psychical position is clear enough: to the man whose heart is filled with the love of good and the spiritual love of woman, sensuousness will appear as dangerous and perilous, and will have at the same time the glamour of the demoniacally-sexual. it is the diabolical element of dualistic consciousness in the sphere of eroticism. many people of the present day will not be able to understand this feeling, for it pre-supposes a completely inharmonious emotional life. the consciousness of the obscene is allied to the conception of the demoniacal; it accompanies modern synthetic love as its temptation and its shadow. in personal love sensuality and soul are no longer independent, contrasted principles; personality, taking the spiritual as its foundation, includes the sensuous. in this highest stage all eroticism not hallowed by mutual affection is felt as unpardonable. the purely sexual principle continues to exist, but whenever it appears in its impersonal and brutal crudity as an element hostile to personality, it creates the consciousness of the obscene. the obscene is, therefore, the purely sexual, not in its naïve normality, but as a force inimical to a value, as a rule to the value of personality. the obscene expresses scorn and hatred for personal love. it is the seduction of the primitive which is no longer something _earlier_, but something baser (for every age must gauge all things by its own standard). the aesthetic principle--in this connection the sense of the beauty of the human form--so powerful an element in naïve sensuality as well as in every other form of eroticism, is excluded, because in this particular condition the beauty of the human body is not objectively realised, but is looked upon with the eyes of the senses. the moment personality is acknowledged as the only decisive factor in erotic life, chaotic impersonal sensuality stands condemned. the obscene is the darker aspect of modern love, and without modern love it could not exist. its essence is negative, is the tendency to caricature and mock the highest form of love. the photograph of a nude woman is not obscene; but if the face is hidden, and thus the personal moment intentionally eliminated in favour of the generic element, it approaches the obscene. this accounts for the widely felt pleasure in obscene pictures; the beholder is not personally engaged, he can enjoy these pictures without taking upon his shoulders any kind of responsibility. even that minimum of respect which the very dregs of humanity may claim is not required of him. the picture is capable of affording pleasure without claiming a grain of human kindness. thus it would seem that sensual pleasure is possible without any sacrifice of the inwardly professed higher eroticism, a sacrifice which might be a bar to a primitive relationship with a woman of flesh and blood. actually, however, it is not possible, for with the surrender to the base source of enjoyment, the spiritual position is abandoned, and personally conceived humanity inwardly annihilated. it follows from the foregoing that the fascination of the obscene can only be fully felt by one who has completely acknowledged the principle of personality in eroticism, and who has also latent within him the possibility of erotic dualism. the more highly evolved the emotional life of a man (all these considerations apply only to a man in whom the possibility of dualism is latent), the more will he realise the purely sexual, the emphasis of the element of pleasure, as something unseemly and disagreeable; something which he ought to deny himself, but which attracts him with the irresistible fascination of the obscene. the man who surrenders himself naïvely to sensuality does not realise it as obscene, but the man who, conscious of his higher concept, strives against it, experiences the reaction of sensuality with the full force of its perverse seduction. even if only for a brief space, he annihilates the higher element and gives himself up to the pleasure of the base and degraded. in this connection we are face to face with the strange but still logical fact, that a man who has completely attained to the third stage of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its incompleteness. it strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual love. primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. he enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a venus by titian and an ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually stimulating. that it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of pleasure. this feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it is natural and harmonious. but the same feeling may become obscene if a man, aware of higher aesthetic values, ignores art and enjoys the picture merely as a representation of a nude figure. here, too, the seduction lies in a demoniacal element, namely in the destruction of the aesthetic value. the destructive characteristic of the obscene wars against all higher conceptions; it is the revenge of chaotic sex deposed by a higher principle, and has the special charm of secret wrong-doing. i might go even further, and maintain that because modern love does not admit pleasure as its foundation and content, and because the craving for pleasure is deeply rooted in human nature, love favours to a high degree the desire to reserve a sphere for pleasure distinct from personal love. this region is the obscene, and one might prophesy that it will grow in proportion as the principle of personal love acquires dominion; for pleasure will always need an undisturbed retreat untroubled by higher demands. this can only be found in the sphere of the obscene in which the element of personality is entirely eliminated. modern man is beset by another peculiar temptation. the beauty of woman, which in the days of the past was regarded as sacred, can be made a means of pleasure, and thus drawn from the realm of values into the realm of sensuality. this is a breach with the principle of personal love, for to the latter the beauty of a woman is so much part and parcel of the whole personality that it cannot be enjoyed separately, that indeed it can hardly be noticed as a distinct element. this cleavage has become so nearly universal that we are hardly conscious of its profound perversity. it is the arch-sin of all higher eroticism to realise beauty not as the undetachable and self-evident outward form of a beloved soul, but as a means of heightening pleasure. although in its essence it is the same thing as the examination of a work of art merely for the sake of the pleasure it affords to the senses, the offence is here aggravated because personality is involved. this degradation of the higher values, whether of nature, art, beauty, knowledge, kindness, religion or the human soul, to serve the ends of sensual pleasure is the expression of a perversity which is possibly the most radical and characteristic of our age. to-day the soul of a woman has frequently the same effect on man as her physical beauty; he enjoys it as a subtile charm instead of respecting it as a mystery. i can hardly expect to make my meaning quite clear to the multitude, but the tendency to enjoy beauty of form or soul as a distinct element represents a rupture with the principle of synthetic love, the love which does not separate but realises the personality of the beloved as an indivisible entity. the enjoyment of beauty as a separate element pre-supposes a conscious, spiritual division, not only of the beloved, but also of the lover, and is therefore the destruction of the principle of unity. aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of pleasure, and their emotions become obscene. there is no question of a division when tristan in his vision of isolde exclaims, "how beautiful thou art!" for great love can create the beauty of the beloved out of its own soul. prudery is based on a similar duality. it expresses a consciousness that the nude can only be alluring, obscene, "indecent," and should therefore be feared and avoided. it is the defensive weapon of sexually excited, for the most part, slightly hysterical women, against the purely sexual, whose sphere they often extend amazingly. prudery conceives sexuality as a distinct, restricted complex in consciousness. such division is alien to woman and, where it exists, a hysterical condition, a condition of inner discord, is clearly indicated. we may take it that the obscene which affects normal men, affects only hysterical, inwardly discordant women who try to take shelter behind prudery. to the normal woman the obscene does not exist as a spiritual principle; she turns with a feeling of displeasure from all the lower sexual manifestations, and even finds them absurd. the elimination of personality of eroticism, the charm of which is felt by even the most highly differentiated man, has always been foreign to woman--she lacks the duality of erotic emotion which man is slowly and laboriously striving to overcome--a still further proof of the unbroken, synthetic emotion of woman. conclusion the psychogenetic law _the individual as an epitome of the human race_ the biogenetic law of ernst haeckel teaches us that the human embryo passes through all the stages of development traversed by its ancestors in their evolution from the lower forms of the animal world. although each successive stage completely replaces the preceding one, the latter is there as its organic supposition. man is not born as a human being until he has travelled over the principal portions of the road to evolution. this law, which establishes the natural connection of the individual with the whole chain of organisms, is continued in a psychogenetic law, not founded on the heredity of the blood but on the heredity of culture (and therefore quite independent of the doctrine of the origin of species). in the course of his development the individual repeats the psycho-spiritual stages through which the species has passed. but while the human body cannot sustain life until it is perfectly developed, the degrees of psychic perfection vary very considerably; not every individual reaches perfection; most men attain to some degree, but there are others who do not even acquire the rudiments. it would be an attractive and grateful task to point out the halting-places of the human race in the life of the individual; to fix the moment when for the first time in his life the child says "i"--a moment which usually occurs in his second year, and represents the humanisation of the race, the great intuition, when primitive man, divining his spiritual nature, severed himself from the external world; to perceive the child--like its primitive ancestors in their day--treating all weaker creatures which fall into its hands with almost bestial cruelty; to watch the boyish games reflecting the period when the nations lived on war and the chase, their eagerness to draw up rules and regulations and create gradations of rank and marks of distinction. i am not able to carry out such a task in detail and, moreover, as i am dealing with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of place here. the psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: every well-developed male individual of the present day successively passes through the three stages of love through which the european races have passed. the three stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the greater the wealth and strength of a soul, the more perfectly will it reflect the history of the race. the evolution of every well-endowed individual presents a rough sketch of the history of civilisation; it has its prehistoric, its classical, its mediaeval, and its modern period. many men remain imprisoned in the past; others are fragmentary, or appear to be suspended in mid-air, rootless. the spirit of humanity has lived through the past and overcome it, so as to be able to create its future. the gynecocratic stage actually survives to this day in the nursery. here the mother rules supreme; the father is an intruder, the brothers are dominated by their sisters, often their juniors. women mature at an earlier age than men; this assertion applies with equal force to individual and sex in connection with the history of civilisation. after he has left the nursery, there follows in the life of the boy a period during which he associates only with his school-friends, shuns the society of his mother and sisters, and is ashamed of his female relatives. this represents the revival of the men's unions of remote antiquity in the life of the individual of the present day. at the period of puberty the sexual instinct makes itself felt for the first time; as a rule, if its nature is not recognised, it is accompanied by restlessness and depression. i do not believe that the instinct is, as soon as it appears, directed to the other sex, or anything else outside the individual. this fact cannot be explained by want of opportunity, shyness or bad example; there is a positive reason for it; the longing for a member of the other sex is still unfelt. between his twentieth and thirtieth year a man is often dominated by an enthusiastic spiritual love quite unconnected with the sensuality which has hitherto ruled his emotions. i will not elaborate the growth of this love and the new feelings which arise in connection with it; just as in the remote past the sense of personality was born as the centre of a new consciousness, so the individual now undergoes a period of purification and regeneration; through the love for his mistress he discovers his inmost self, of which, until now, he had been practically ignorant. the generative, undifferentiated impulse is supplanted by the love for an individual and stigmatised as base and contemptible. guincelli's words characterising the second erotic stage of the race: _amor e cor gentil sono una cosa_, to-day apply to the second stage in the life of the individual. it also occurs that in the heart of a man whom reality has failed to satisfy an ideal woman gradually wins life and shape. sometimes it is the idealised counterpart of an actual woman, but not infrequently it is a vague, unsubstantial shadow. here we have the deification of the woman reproduced in the heart of the individual. to illustrate my point, i will quote the very pertinent conversation between foldal, the embittered old clerk, and john gabriel borkman (ibsen). _borkman_: indeed! can you show me one who is any good? _foldal_: that's just the point. the few women i've known are no good at all. _borkman_: (with a sneer) what's the good of them if you don't know them? _foldal_ (excitedly): don't say that, john gabriel! isn't it a magnificent, an ennobling thought, to know that somewhere, far away, never mind where, the true woman lives? _borkman_ (impatiently): stop your high falutin' nonsense! _foldal_ (hurt): high falutin' nonsense? you call my most sacred belief high falutin' nonsense? in conclusion i should like to mention here that i look upon otto weininger as a tragic victim of the second stage of love which--in our days--is sick with an almost insurmountable inner insufficiency. there is no need to elaborate my subject further and point out that--the first stage passed--the prime of life brings with it the fusion of sexuality and love. this union is the inner meaning of marriage in the modern sense--whether it is rarely or frequently realised is beside the point. in previous chapters i have illustrated various phenomena of the emotional life by showing their reflections on the lives of two or three distinguished men. in conclusion i will endeavour to point out the reproduction of all the erotic stages through which the race has passed, in the psychical evolution of richard wagner, and their immortalisation in his works. we shall recognise in him the erotic representative of modern man, a personality in whom all that which as a rule is vague and only half expressed, has become great and typical. love has been the _leitmotif_ of his life. the concluding phrase of the crude fairy tale _die feen_ ("the fairies"), composed by the youth of nineteen, is: _the infinite power of love_, and the last words written down two days before his death, were: _love--tragedy_. the opera _das liebesverbot_ ("the prohibition to love"), written in , is eminently symptomatic of the first stage. it is a coarser rendering of that bluntest of all shakespearean plays, _measure for measure_; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for something higher. to detail the contents of the text--it cannot be called a poem--would serve no purpose; biographically, but not artistically interesting, it exhibits with amazing candour the first, purely sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. it was the period when "young germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. wagner himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against puritan cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. i was determined to understand the grave shakespearean subject only in this sense." and in his "autobiographical sketch" he says: "i learned to love matter." in addition to this wagner gives us the following synopsis of a (lost) libretto, "_die hochzeit_" ("the wedding"), written at an earlier period: "a youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancée, climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting the arrival of her lover; the fiancée struggles with the frenzied youth and throws him down into the yard, where he expires." the second, discordant, stage of love is embodied in _tannhäuser_, composed when wagner was twenty-nine years of age. there is probably no modern work of art in which the mediaeval feeling of dualism in the scheme of the universe has been expressed with greater pathos. we see man tossed between heaven and hell, between the worshipped saint and seductive sensuality, impersonated by a she-devil. a man of the middle ages would have recognised in this work the tragedy of his soul. wagner had planned the opera before he had really reached the second period, under the title of _der venusberg_ ("the mountain of venus"), and in this earlier version the purely sexual occupied a far more prominent place, probably in closer conformity with the old legend. for here tannhäuser returns to venus unsaved and defying the eternal values, determined to renounce a higher life and give himself up to the pleasure of the senses for all eternity. this idea was retained in a later version up to the decisive final turn; the purely spiritual love for elizabeth eventually overcomes the unrestrained instinct. as the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the love of god, turned to satan and worshipped him, so tannhäuser, cast out of the kingdom of heaven by the words of the pope, and renounced by elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal. tannhäuser is not vacillating between the love of two women--a spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely spiritual love of elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were, through her whole kingdom. the dualism which rends the whole universe is strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and wagner himself explained to the opera singer, schnorr von carolsfeld, that the main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling, changing abruptly and decisively." the closing words of the first scene: "my salvation lies in mary!" are the real turning point of the drama. as abrupt as his desertion of venus for mary, is his return to her in the third act. by the side of mary is placed the more human, the more earthly but yet idealised form of elizabeth, a figure closely resembling beatrice and margaret. the music of _tannhäuser_ (more especially the overture) expresses the contrast between the two erotic world-elements with striking abruptness. the harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many seductive elves. the venusberg music is probably the most perfect expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual rapture into the language of music. in the venusberg music composed for the performance in paris, this motive is still more richly elaborated, and the recently published "sketches" for the scene in the venusberg contain a number of details which were eliminated from the later version. here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of antique legends, such as leda and the swan, europa and the bull, symbols and illustrations of the climax of perversion. it is a magnificent, poetico-musical picture of untrammelled sexuality, whose queen is woman, the priestess of voluptuousness, represented by venus. tannhäuser's yearning for humanity and divinely pure love gives to this world a tinge of the demoniacal, for the latter is nothing but natural sensuality regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view of spiritual love. whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. at the moment of the abrupt inner change in tannhäuser, venus and her world must vanish like a phantom of the night. "a consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my blood and nerves tingling while i sketched and composed the music of _tannhäuser_...." says wagner in one place, and in another he confesses that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him with repugnance. he speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a higher, nobler element which, unpolluted by the sensuality so characteristic of modern life and art, appears to me as something pure, something chaste and virginal, unapproachable and intangible. what else can this longing for love, the noblest feeling i am capable of, be, than the yearning to leave this world of facts behind me and become absorbed in an element of infinite, transcendental love, to which death would be the gate...." the dualism in the music of _tannhäuser_ is consistently maintained. the two elements war against each other without ever merging into one. those parts of the music which characterise elizabeth are full of noble pathos and a little sentimental. at the beginning of the second act she is not yet herself; she can still laugh like a light-hearted girl, but when she again succumbs to tannhäuser's unearthly (and to her fatal) charm, and realises how irrevocably he has surrendered himself to venus, she rises to true greatness and resolutely faces the swords unsheathed to punish the offender. before our eyes she is transformed into the saint who realises her mission and is ready to take her burden upon her; more heroic than beatrice or margaret, she points to him "who laughingly stabbed her heart," the road to salvation. like her two predecessors elizabeth prays to mary for the salvation of her lover--the prayer for the beloved has ever been woman's truest and most fervent prayer. the thought of achieving a man's salvation through a great and steadfast love, is the subject of the _flying dutchman_, and plays, as is well known, an important part with wagner. strange to say he has for this very reason frequently been scoffed at by those who call themselves admirers of goethe. dante-goethe's great problem of salvation is represented in _tannhäuser_ with the utmost lucidity. the essence of it is that love can positively intervene in the life of a man whose soul is turned towards it, but who is confused and beset by temptations. his vacillating heart feels the love which is brooding over him and ultimately abandons itself to it, to be saved by its unswerving loyalty. maybe this is as much a miracle as "grace," but it is also a psychical fact, because the love which yearns for the sinner awakens and increases not only his faith in its power to help, but also in his own strength; darkness and evil dismay him and he turns towards the light. in _tannhäuser_ this spiritual condition, which is of such primary importance in the last scene of _faust_, is clearly expressed; his love for elizabeth has been strong enough to kill desire kindled in his heart again and again by venus; yet again he is on the point of succumbing to his senses. the vision of venus appears before his eyes, but at wolfram's exclamation, "elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life to save him. before this sudden illumination the power of venus sinks into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of light--"oh, sacred love's eternal power!"--it quickens his own love which is striving upwards, and with the words: "saint elizabeth, pray for me!" he sinks to the ground. his way, like faust's, although one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to him in the love of his glorified mistress. by the side of the struggling, suffering tannhäuser, tossed hither and thither between god and the devil, between elizabeth and venus, stands wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. the two extremes clash upon each other in the contest of the minnesingers. tannhäuser, at war with himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which wolfram sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of the senses. i need not lay stress on the fact that at that time of his life wagner's own heart was the arena in which the conflict was fought out; a work like _tannhäuser_ is not _made_, it is conceived in the innermost soul of its creator. every one of wagner's great works bears the unmistakable stamp of sincerity and intensity, while with goethe, on the other hand, it is not difficult to distinguish the genuine ones, that is to say, those which were written under the pressure of a compelling impulse, from those which owed their existence to the intellect rather than to the soul. _tannhäuser_ immortalises the adolescence of the european races of mankind; the third stage is not even anticipated. _lohengrin_, the principal interest of which is other than erotic, represents a transitional phase between the second and the third stage; body and soul are no longer regarded as warring against each other; a greater harmony beyond either is dimly divined. lohengrin has set out from a distant, transcendental kingdom to find earthly happiness in elsa's love--but he is doomed to disappointment. i will not analyse the theme, but rather quote a few passages from wagner: "lohengrin is seeking the woman who is ready to believe in him; who will not ask him who he is and whence he comes, but love him as he is and because he is so.... lohengrin's only desire is for love, to be loved, to be understood through love. in spite of the superior development of his senses, in spite of his intense consciousness, he desires nothing more than to live the life of an ordinary citizen of this earth, to love and be loved--to be a perfect specimen of humanity." wagner further speaks of his longing to find "the woman"; the female principle, quite simply, for ever appearing to him under new forms; the woman for whom the flying dutchman longed in his unfathomable distress; the woman who, like a radiant star, guided tannhäuser from the voluptuous caverns of the venusberg to the pure regions of the spirit, and drew lohengrin from his dazzling heights to the warm bosom of the earth. we find here the new form of love, not yet fully comprehended but desired and anticipated in art. in _tristan and isolde_ it is attained completely and in its highest perfection. we possess in wagner's letters to matilda wesendonk, and in the diary written for her, the documents of the personal experience out of which tristan grew, and which unfold one of the most touching love-stories. as i have already discussed _tristan and isolde_ in a previous chapter, i will here only quote a passage from a letter written by wagner and addressed to liszt at the time of his first meeting with matilda; it fully expresses the harmony of the third stage. "give me a heart, a mind, a woman's love in which i can plunge my whole being--who will fully understand me--how little else i should need in this world!" it is very significant that side by side with _tristan_ we have _die meistersinger_, composed a little later on. here the third stage of love is realised in its idyllic possibility; the synthesis has been given the shape of middle-class matter-of-factness, that is to say, the fulfilment of love in marriage: "i love a maid and claim her hand!" for this reason the work, although the fundamental idea is not erotic, is entitled to be placed by the side of _tristan_ with its demand for the absolute metaphysical consummation of love. it is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and portrayed both stages so perfectly. doubtless tannhäuser and tristan are the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the niebelungs, the lofty serenity of lohengrin and the wisdom of parsifal. wagner had finished the _ring_ before he conceived the idea of _tristan and isolde_. (it was printed in .) in the former he intentionally raised the value of love and its position in the universe to a problem, embodying his knowledge of the world, and more especially of the modern world, in supernatural, mythical figures. the greatest ambition of man is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. gold in itself is innocent--elementary--a bauble at the bottom of the river, a toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol of tyranny. only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to be bent to his will, and who has consequently renounced love, could have thus enslaved the world. love does not impair the worth of a fellow-creature, but sets him above all things; a lover cannot be entirely selfish; his feeling at least for his mistress, and through her for the rest of the world, must be pure and unselfish. the struggle between these two most powerful instincts, both in the race and in the heart of the individual (wotan), is the incomparable subject of this tragedy. the whole world-process is represented as a struggle between the apparently great, who are yet the slaves of gold and authority, and the truly free man who serves love, and on whom ambition has no hold. the representatives of the petty, greedy, toiling human vermin, who readily renounced love for the sake of wealth, because the latter will always buy lust and pleasure, are the niebelungs, the dwellers in the netherworld who never see the sun. they have but one standard: money; one supreme value: power, the gift of wealth. mime bewails his people (the small tradesmen as it were), as follows; "light-hearted smiths we used to fashion gems and trinkets for our wives, gorgeous jewels, the niebelungs' pretty trifles--we laughed at the labour." but alberich, the capitalist, through the magic of the ring, has usurped the power and enslaved his fellows. "now the felon compels us to creep in the heart of the mountains to labour for him. there we must delve and explore and despoil, plunder and smelt and hammer the metal, restlessly toiling to increase his treasure." the really daemonic property of the gold is that everybody succumbs to its seduction and strives to possess it. the former naïve joy of living, embodied in the rhine-daughters, and their not yet humanised song, which seems to come direct from the heart of nature, is destroyed by the theft of the rhine-gold. what till then had been a serenely shining "star of the deep," has been transformed into a means by which to win authority. the programme of the greedy and tyrannous never varies; alberich proclaims it; "the whole world will i win," and it is his daemonic will to depreciate love and set up power as the only value, so that nobody shall doubt his greatness and unique genius. "as i renounce love, so all shall renounce it, with gold have i bought you, for gold shall you crave." love shall die and lust shall take its place; he will force even the wives of the gods to do his will, for his wealth has made him master of the whole world. compared to his restless activity, the giant "fafner" is "stupid"; he is incapable of transforming gold into power; he merely enjoys its possession, content with the consciousness of his wealth. but the curse of alberich, the first who transmuted the shining metal into money, rests on gold and power. "it shall not bring gladness--who has it be seared by sorrow, who lacks it devoured by envy...." the curse of the eternal concatenation: tyranny--slavery, the care which accompanies wealth and the envy of the have-nots, can only be lifted from the world by a man who is inwardly free, who is neither master nor slave. siegfried understands the song of the birds and the elementary beings, the rhine-daughters; he is a stranger to human desires and passions. "i inherited nothing but my body--and living it is consumed." he is proof against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is love. alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "my curse has no sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring; he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his body is burning away." half way between alberich, the inwardly worthless wielder of power, and siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of all virtue, who is murdered by the powers of darkness, stands wotan, in whose heart both motives, authority and love, are struggling for supremacy, who will renounce neither love nor power. artistically and symbolically the salvation of the world from the curse of greed and tyranny is brought about by the restitution of the ring, and its dissolution in the pure waters of the river from whence it had been taken; the gold is given back to the rhine-daughters, to fulfil again its original purpose, namely, to delight the heart of man with its dazzling sheen. thus wagner, the greatest and most inspired exponent of love among modern artists, declared that of all values love was the greatest. his intuitive genius left all the doctrines formulated by schopenhauer and buddha far behind and definitely rejected pessimism as a creed. there is an interesting letter from him to matilda wesendonk, written while he was composing the music of _tristan_, and containing modifications of schopenhauer's philosophy which he considered requisite. "it is a question of pointing out the road to salvation which no philosopher, not even schopenhauer, discovered, the road which leads to the perfect pacification of the will through love; i do not mean abstract love for all humanity, but true love, based on sexual love, that is to say love between man and woman." in _parsifal_, the last and most mature of all his works, wagner is breaking new ground. here love between man and woman is deposed from the exalted position it hitherto held, subordinated to the metaphysical purpose of the world, that is to say, "the purpose of attaining to perfection," and absorbed in a higher association of ideas. sexual love has undergone a change, it is no longer love in the true sense, but the unconditional love of the mystic. the enigmatical figure of kundry is not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. the incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part of the erotic ideal. she is both positive and negative, a blind tool of the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher mission (reminiscent of the second mediaeval period), and passionately yearning for salvation. she dies before the holy grail, the religious ideal made visible. beside kundry there are the flower-maidens, naïvely sensuous beings, who blossom like the flowers and fade again, unconscious and irresponsible. i refrain from a discussion of this work, which would lead too far, and only maintain that the music, corresponding to the text, is entirely unerotic and unsentimental, absolutely pure and religious. the love of a man for a woman has been superseded by love for the absolute and supernatural. thus, after wagner had experienced all the stages of love through which humanity has passed, and embodied them in his works, he reached a new point of view, a stage to which we have not yet attained and which, very likely, we are not even able fully to understand. this fourth stage--not unlike weininger's ideal--is the overthrow of the female and earthly element in man by a voluntary surrender to the metaphysical. wagner's last position, taken up quite deliberately, permits of two explanations which i will point out without pressing either of them. only a man possessing both the wisdom of the aged wagner and a knowledge of the evolution of the race, and the road which still stretches out in front of it, would be entitled to speak a decisive word. the first obviously is that wagner divined a last stage in the emotional life of man, a period which has outgrown sexual love and replaced it by mysticism. in conjecturing a potential fourth stage, the three previous ones must be regarded as one. the second explanation is that wagner's feeling in his last work is no longer representative of the feeling of the race, but is, as it were, a personal matter, at least in so far as love is concerned. for although the principal subject in _parsifal_ is not love, yet it plays a very prominent part in it. i am only touching upon these two alternatives. but if the latter debatable point be omitted, my analysis of wagner's emotional life must have shown in which sense the inspired man may be rightly regarded as typical of the race. he leads the broadest and at the same time the most personal life, and yet he manifests in it something which is far greater, far more universal and representative. my argument proves that the evolution as well as the aberrations of love have affected man alone and, roughly speaking, to this day affect only him. he is the odysseus, wandering through heaven and hell, ultimately to return home, perhaps, to where woman, the unchangeable, is awaiting him. that which has been woman's natural endowment from all beginning, the blending of spiritual and sensual love, man looks upon and desires to-day as his highest erotic ideal. his chaotic sexual impulse, the inheritance of the past, appears to him low and base in the presence of her in whom sexuality has always been blended with love; his worship, intensified until it reached the metaphysical, seems to him unfounded and eccentric before her who has ever been and ever will be entirely human, and who is perfect in his eyes because she possesses what he is striving after. this and nothing else is the meaning of the vague statement that in all matters pertaining to love woman occupies a higher position than man. she is always the same; he is always new and problematical; never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she cannot err, for her instinct is nature herself, and she knows not the meaning of sin. whatever burden man has laid upon her, she has borne it patiently and silently; she has allowed him to worship her as a goddess and stigmatise her as a fiend, while all the time she remained problemless and natural, inwardly remote from the aberrations in which her intellect believed so readily. the conclusion which we have to draw, and which touches the foundation of the psychology of both sexes, is that only man's emotions have a history, while those of the woman have undergone no change. if there is a law by which the human race is reproduced in the individual, then the so-called atavism in the shape of abnormality cannot be the sudden, or apparently sudden reappearance of conditions which once were normal and then disappeared; rather must it be the final arrest of an individual on a previous and lower stage, preventing him from reaching our standard in one or the other emotional sphere. the more humanity a man has in him, the more perfectly will he repeat in his life the stages through which the race has passed, or, in other words: the oftener that which once quickened the heart of man is repeated and surpassed, the greater is the possibility that new things may grow out of it. atavism therefore is not so much the persistence of the earlier as the absence of the later stages. (this agrees with freud's conception of the neurotic subject.) it is obvious that the three stages of love are merely the expression of a period in one definite direction. the emotions of antiquity were entirely earthly, obvious and impersonal; the middle ages, on the other hand, attached value only to the world beyond the grave and matters pertaining to the soul. the beauty of spring was to them but a reflexion of another beauty. "how glorious is life below! what greater glories may the heavens hold!" sings brother john characteristically. but our period is conscious of the need of realising all our desires, and attaining to the highest possible spiritual perfection in this earthly life, and this not by destroying the transcendent ideals, but by stripping them of their metaphysical character, and bringing them to bear on this life, so that it may become a higher and holier one. the will of our intellectual heroes is not the rejection of the doctrine of the survival of the soul, but the comprehension of past transcendental values, so that they may become a safe guide to us in this earthly life; a more perfect blending of realism and idealism; the glorification of life under the aspect of eternity. this applies to love as well: the thought of the infinite, eternal love must transfigure and ennoble all that which is natural and human. if my theories are correct, they prove the ontological character of historical evolution and the value of the study of history for the comprehension of the human soul. i have shown in a specific and highly important domain that that which we are fond of regarding as the characteristic quality of man was not present from the beginning, but has gradually been evolved in historical time. in other words: history can and must teach us the origin and evolution of the spirit and soul of man, as anthropology teaches us the construction of the body. in philosophically approaching history, it must not be our object to discover "what has been," but "what has become, how we became and what we are." the science of history which loses sight of its bearing on our time, content with its knowledge of the past, is antiquarian and dead; at the most it has aesthetic value, but it is worthless as far as the history of civilisation is concerned. only that which has been productive in the past, which has had a quickening influence, producing new values, is historical in the highest sense. it creates a new and close relationship between psychology and history. the principal purpose, or one of the principal purposes of psychology, that is the knowledge of the construction of the normal human being, has received a new possibility of solution: every essential quality which the human race has evolved in the course of history must be present in every normally developed individual of our time. the normal man of to-day is not the normal man of the past; every successive century finds him richer and more complex, but he can always be discovered intuitively in history. in this sense history is an auxiliary science of psychology, or rather, the psychology of the human race, for the evolution of the psychology of the individual--which has been studied very little--is merely an abbreviated history of the evolution of the psychology of the species. a past period of civilisation can be traced in the life of every fully developed man, and _vice versa_ the stages in the life of the individual point the way in history. if it can be established that the fundamental emotions of the human heart originated in historical time, the widely spread, but unproved, theory that everything great and decisive existed from the beginning will be contradicted. the other complementary assertion that nothing which once existed ever quite disappears, must be admitted; nothing perishes in the soul of man; its position with regard to the whole is merely shifted by newly intervening motives and values; and even when it does not change its fundamental character, it becomes a different thing in the whole complex of the soul. sexuality, which in the remote past was a matter of course, unassailable by doubt, became problematical and demoniacal as soon as it entered into relationship with the new factors of erotic life. an existence in harmony with nature was possible as long as the human race was still in evolution, and not yet conscious of itself. but as soon as intellect and self-consciousness had been evolved, civilisation became possible. nature has no history in the sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one. certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment, but there are no moral values, and consequently there is no history. i have attempted to explain why tragedy is inseparable from love in its highest intensity, to show the limits which check all deep emotion and the yearning which would overstep them. the emotional life of man, which is capable of infinite evolution, can only find satisfaction on its lower, animal stages. hunger, thirst, and sexual craving can be satisfied without much difficulty, and therefore no tragic shadow falls on the first stage. but the emotion which overwhelms the soul cannot be appeased. not only the great thinker's thirst for knowledge, the mystic's religious yearning, the aesthetic will of the rare artist, but also the love and longing of the passionate lover must reach beyond the attainable to the infinite. this earth is the kingdom of "mean" actions, "mean" emotions and "mean" men. and the lover, unable to bear its limits, creates for himself a new world--the world of metaphysical love. studies in the psychology of sex, volume iii analysis of the sexual impulse love and pain the sexual impulse in women by havelock ellis preface to second edition. this volume has been thoroughly revised for the present edition and considerably enlarged throughout, in order to render it more accurate and more illustrative, while bringing it fairly up to date with reference to scientific investigation. numerous histories have also been added to the appendix. it has not been found necessary to modify the main doctrines set forth ten years ago. at the same time, however, it may be mentioned, as regards the first study in the volume, that our knowledge of the physiological mechanism of the sexual instinct has been revolutionized during recent years. this is due to the investigations that have been made, and the deductions that have been built up, concerning the part played by hormones, or internal secretions of the ductless glands, in the physical production of the sexual instinct and the secondary sexual characters. the conception of the psychology of the sexual impulse here set forth, while correlated to terms of a physical process of tumescence and detumescence, may be said to be independent of the ultimate physiological origins of that process. but we cannot fail to realize the bearing of physiological chemistry in this field; and the doctrine of internal secretions, since it may throw light on many complex problems presented by the sexual instinct, is full of interest for us. havelock ellis. june, . preface to first edition. the present volume of _studies_ deals with some of the most essential problems of sexual psychology. the _analysis of the sexual impulse_ is fundamental. unless we comprehend the exact process which is being worked out beneath the shifting and multifold phenomena presented to us we can never hope to grasp in their true relations any of the normal or abnormal manifestations of this instinct. i do not claim that the conception of the process here stated is novel or original. indeed, even since i began to work it out some years ago, various investigators in these fields, especially in germany, have deprived it of any novelty it might otherwise have possessed, while at the same time aiding me in reaching a more precise statement. this is to me a cause of satisfaction. on so fundamental a matter i should have been sorry to find myself tending to a peculiar and individual standpoint. it is a source of gratification to me that the positions i have reached are those toward which current intelligent and scientific opinions are tending. any originality in my study of this problem can only lie in the bringing together of elements from somewhat diverse fields. i shall be content if it is found that i have attained a fairly balanced, general, and judicial statement of these main factors in the sexual instinct. in the study of _love and pain_ i have discussed the sources of those aberrations which are commonly called, not altogether happily, "sadism" and "masochism." here we are brought before the most extreme and perhaps the most widely known group of sexual perversions. i have considered them from the medico-legal standpoint, because that has already been done by other writers whose works are accessible. i have preferred to show how these aberrations may be explained; how they may be linked on to normal and fundamental aspects of the sexual impulse; and, indeed, in their elementary forms, may themselves be regarded as normal. in some degree they are present, in every case, at some point of sexual development; their threads are subtly woven in and out of the whole psychological process of sex. i have made no attempt to reduce their complexity to a simplicity that would be fallacious. i hope that my attempt to unravel these long and tangled threads will be found to make them fairly clear. in the third study, on _the sexual impulse in women_, we approach a practical question of applied sexual psychology, and a question of the first importance. no doubt the sex impulse in men is of great moment from the social point of view. it is, however, fairly obvious and well understood. the impulse in women is not only of at least equal moment, but it is far more obscure. the natural difficulties of the subject have been increased by the assumption of most writers who have touched it--casually and hurriedly, for the most part--that the only differences to be sought in the sexual impulse in man and in woman are quantitative differences. i have pointed out that we may more profitably seek for qualitative differences, and have endeavored to indicate such of these differences as seem to be of significance. in an appendix will be found a selection of histories of more or less normal sexual development. histories of gross sexual perversion have often been presented in books devoted to the sexual instinct; it has not hitherto been usual to inquire into the facts of normal sexual development. yet it is concerning normal sexual development that our ignorance is greatest, and the innovation can scarcely need justification. i have inserted these histories not only because many of them are highly instructive in themselves, but also because they exhibit the nature of the material on which my work is mainly founded. i am indebted to many correspondents, medical and other, in various parts of the world, for much valuable assistance. when they have permitted me to do so i have usually mentioned their names in the text. this has not been possible in the case of many women friends and correspondents, to whom, however, my debt is very great. nature has put upon women the greater part of the burden of sexual reproduction; they have consequently become the supreme authorities on all matters in which the sexual emotions come into question. many circumstances, however, that are fairly obvious, conspire to make it difficult for women to assert publicly the wisdom and knowledge which, in matters of love, the experiences of life have brought to them. the ladies who, in all earnestness and sincerity, write books on these questions are often the last people to whom we should go as the representatives of their sex; those who know most have written least. i can therefore but express again, as in previous volumes i have expressed before, my deep gratitude to these anonymous collaborators who have aided me in throwing light on a field of human life which is of such primary social importance and is yet so dimly visible. havelock ellis. carbis water, lelant, cornwall, england. contents. analysis of the sexual impulse. definition of instinct--the sexual impulse a factor of the sexual instinct--theory of the sexual impulse as an impulse of evacuation--the evidence in support of this theory inadequate--the sexual impulse to some extent independent of the sexual glands--the sexual impulse in castrated animals and men--the sexual impulse in castrated women, after the menopause, and in the congenital absence of the sexual glands--the internal secretions--analogy between the sexual relationship and that of the suckling mother and her child--the theory of the sexual impulse as a reproductive impulse--this theory untenable--moll's definition--the impulse of detumescence--the impulse of contrectation--modification of this theory proposed--its relation to darwin's sexual selection--the essential element in darwin's conception--summary of the history of the doctrine of sexual selection. its psychological aspect--sexual selection a part of natural selection--the fundamental importance of tumescence--illustrated by the phenomena of courtship in animals and in man--the object of courtship is to produce sexual tumescence--the primitive significance of dancing in animals and man--dancing is a potent agent for producing tumescence--the element of truth in the comparison of the sexual impulse with an evacuation, especially of the bladder--both essentially involve nervous explosions--their intimate and sometimes vicarious relationships--analogy between coitus and epilepsy--analogy of the sexual impulse to hunger--final object of the impulses of tumescence and detumescence. love and pain. i. the chief key to the relationship between love and pain to be found in animal courtship--courtship a source of combativity and of cruelty--human play in the light of animal courtship--the frequency of crimes against the person in adolescence--marriage by capture and its psychological basis--man's pleasure in exerting force and woman's pleasure in experiencing it--resemblance of love to pain even in outward expression--the love-bite--in what sense pain may be pleasurable--the natural contradiction in the emotional attitude of women toward men--relative insensibility to pain of the organic sexual sphere in women--the significance of the use of the ampallang and similar appliances in coitus--the sexual subjection of women to men in part explainable as the necessary condition for sexual pleasure. ii. the definition of sadism--de sade--masochism to some extent normal--sacher-masoch--no real line of demarcation between sadism and masochism--algolagnia includes both groups of manifestations--the love-bite as a bridge from normal phenomena to algolagnia--the fascination of blood--the most extreme perversions are linked on to normal phenomena. iii. flagellation as a typical illustration of algolagnia--causes of connection between sexual emotion and whipping--physical causes--psychic causes probably more important--the varied emotional associations of whipping--its wide prevalence. iv. the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire--the wish to be strangled. respiratory disturbance the essential element in this group of phenomena--the part played by respiratory excitement in the process of courtship--swinging and suspension--the attraction exerted by the idea of being chained and fettered. v. pain, and not cruelty, the essential element in sadism and masochism--pain felt as pleasure--does the sadist identify himself with the feelings of his victim?--the sadist often a masochist in disguise--the spectacle of pain or struggle as a sexual stimulant. vi. why is pain a sexual stimulant?--it is the most effective method of arousing emotion--anger and fear the most powerful emotions--their biological significance in courtship--their general and special effects in stimulating the organism--grief as a sexual stimulant--the physiological mechanism of fatigue renders pain pleasurable. vii. summary of results reached--the joy of emotional expansion--the satisfaction of the craving for power--the influence of neurasthenic and neuropathic conditions--the problem of pain in love largely constitutes a special case of erotic symbolism. the sexual impulse in women. introduction. i. the primitive view of women--as a supernatural element in life--as peculiarly embodying the sexual instinct--the modern tendency to underestimate the sexual impulse in women--this tendency confined to recent times--sexual anæsthesia--its prevalence--difficulties in investigating the subject--some attempts to investigate it--sexual anæsthesia must be regarded as abnormal--the tendency to spontaneous manifestations of the sexual impulse in young girls at puberty. ii. special characters of the sexual impulse in women--the more passive part played by women in courtship--this passivity only apparent--the physical mechanism of the sexual process in women more complex--the slower development of orgasm in women--the sexual impulse in women more frequently needs to be actively aroused--the climax of sexual energy falls later in women's lives than in men's--sexual ardor in women increased after the establishment of sexual relationships--women bear sexual excesses better than men--the sexual sphere larger and more diffused in women--the sexual impulse in women shows a greater tendency to periodicity and a wider range of variation. iii. summary of conclusions. appendix a. the sexual instinct in savages. appendix b. the development of the sexual instinct. index of authors. index of subjects. analysis of the sexual impulse. definition of instinct--the sexual impulse a factor of the sexual instinct--theory of the sexual impulse as an impulse of evacuation--the evidence in support of this theory inadequate--the sexual impulse to some extent independent of the sexual glands--the sexual impulse in castrated animals and men--the sexual impulse in castrated women, after the menopause, and in the congenital absence of the sexual glands--the internal secretions--analogy between the sexual relationship and that of the suckling mother and her child--the theory of the sexual impulse as a reproductive impulse--this theory untenable--moll's definition--the impulse of detumescence--the impulse of contrectation--modification of this theory proposed--its relation to darwin's sexual selection--the essential element in darwin's conception--summary of the history of the doctrine of sexual selection--its psychological aspect--sexual selection a part of natural selection--the fundamental importance of tumescence--illustrated by the phenomena of courtship in animals and in man--the object of courtship is to produce sexual tumescence--the primitive significance of dancing in animals and man--dancing is a potent agent for producing tumescence--the element of truth in the comparison of the sexual impulse with an evacuation, especially of the bladder--both essentially involve nervous explosions--their intimate and sometimes vicarious relationships--analogy between coitus and epilepsy--analogy of the sexual impulse to hunger--final object of the impulses of tumescence and detumescence. the term "sexual instinct" may be said to cover the whole of the neuropsychic phenomena of reproduction which man shares with the lower animals. it is true that much discussion has taken place concerning the proper use of the term "instinct," and some definitions of instinctive action would appear to exclude the essential mechanism of the process whereby sexual reproduction is assured. such definitions scarcely seem legitimate, and are certainly unfortunate. herbert spencer's definition of instinct as "compound reflex action" is sufficiently clear and definite for ordinary use. a fairly satisfactory definition of instinct is that supplied by dr. and mrs. peckham in the course of their study _on the instincts and habits of solitary wasps_. "under the term 'instinct,'" they say, "we place all complex acts which are performed previous to experience and in a similar manner by all members of the same sex and race, leaving out as non-essential, at this time, the question of whether they are or are not accompanied by consciousness." this definition is quoted with approval by lloyd morgan, who modifies and further elaborates it (_animal behavior_, , p. ). "the distinction between instinctive and reflex behavior," he remarks, "turns in large degree on their relative complexity," and instinctive behavior, he concludes, may be said to comprise "those complex groups of co-ordinated acts which are, on their first occurrence, independent of experience; which tend to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race; which are due to the co-operation of external and internal stimuli; which are similarly performed by all the members of the same more or less restricted group of animals; but which are subject to variation, and to subsequent modification under the guidance of experience." such a definition clearly justifies us in speaking of a "sexual instinct." it may be added that the various questions involved in the definition of the sexual instinct have been fully discussed by moll in the early sections of his _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_. of recent years there has been a tendency to avoid the use of the term "instinct," or, at all events, to refrain from attaching any serious scientific sense to it. loeb's influence has especially given force to this tendency. thus, while piéron, in an interesting discussion of the question ("les problèmes actuels de l'instinct," _revue philosophique_, oct., ), thinks it would still be convenient to retain the term, giving it a philosophical meaning, georges bohn, who devotes a chapter to the notion of instinct (_la naissance de l'intelligence_, ), is strongly in favor of eliminating the word, as being merely a legacy of medieval theologians and metaphysicians, serving to conceal our ignorance or our lack of exact analysis. it may be said that the whole of the task undertaken in these _studies_ is really an attempt to analyze what is commonly called the sexual instinct. in order to grasp it we have to break it up into its component parts. lloyd morgan has pointed out that the components of an instinct may be regarded as four: first, the internal messages giving rise to the impulse; secondly, the external stimuli which co-operate with the impulse to affect the nervous centers; thirdly, the active response due to the co-ordinate outgoing discharges; and, fourthly, the message from the organs concerned in the behavior by which the central nervous system is further affected.[ ] in dealing with the sexual instinct the first two factors are those which we have most fully to discuss. with the external stimuli we shall be concerned in a future volume (iv). we may here confine ourselves mainly to the first factor: the nature of the internal messages which prompt the sexual act. we may, in other words, attempt to analyze the _sexual impulse_. the first definition of the sexual impulse we meet with is that which regards it as an impulse of evacuation. the psychological element is thus reduced to a minimum. it is true that, especially in early life, the emotions caused by forced repression of the excretions are frequently massive or acute in the highest degree, and the joy of relief correspondingly great. but in adult life, on most occasions, these desires can be largely pushed into the background of consciousness, partly by training, partly by the fact that involuntary muscular activity is less imperative in adult life; so that the ideal element in connection with the ordinary excretions is almost a negligible quantity. the evacuation theory of the sexual instinct is, however, that which has most popular vogue, and the cynic delights to express it in crude language. it is the view that appeals to the criminal mind, and in the slang of french criminals the brothel is _le cloaque_. it was also the view implicitly accepted by medieval ascetic writers, who regarded woman as "a temple built over a sewer," and from a very different standpoint it was concisely set forth by montaigne, who has doubtless contributed greatly to support this view of the matter: "i find," he said, "that venus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging our vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other parts."[ ] luther, again, always compared the sexual to the excretory impulse, and said that marriage was just as necessary as the emission of urine. sir thomas more, also, in the second book of _utopia_, referring to the pleasure of evacuation, speaks of that felt "when we do our natural easement, or when we be doing the act of generation." this view would, however, scarcely deserve serious consideration if various distinguished investigators, among whom féré may be specially mentioned, had not accepted it as the best and most accurate definition of the sexual impulse. "the genesic need may be considered," writes féré, "as a need of evacuation; the choice is determined by the excitations which render the evacuation more agreeable."[ ] certain facts observed in the lower animals tend to support this view; it is, therefore, necessary, in the first place, to set forth the main results of observation on this matter. spallanzani had shown how the male frog during coitus will undergo the most horrible mutilations, even decapitation, and yet resolutely continue the act of intercourse, which lasts from four to ten days, sitting on the back of the female and firmly clasping her with his forelegs. goltz confirmed spallanzani's observations and threw new light on the mechanism of the sexual instinct and the sexual act in the frog. by removing various parts of the female frog goltz found that every part of the female was attractive to the male at pairing time, and that he was not imposed on when parts of a male were substituted. by removing various of the sense-organs of the male goltz[ ] further found that it was not by any special organ, but by the whole of his sensitive system, that this activity was set in action. if, however, the skin of the arms and of the breast between was removed, no embrace took place; so that the sexual sensations seemed to be exerted through this apparatus. when the testicles were removed the embrace still took place. it could scarcely be said that these observations demonstrated, or in any way indicated, that the sexual impulse is dependent on the need of evacuation. professor tarchanoff, of st. petersburg, however, made an experiment which seemed to be crucial. he took several hundred frogs (_rana temporaria_), nearly all in the act of coitus, and in the first place repeated goltz's experiments. he removed the heart; but this led to no direct or indirect stoppage of coitus, nor did removal of the lungs, parts of the liver, the spleen, the intestines, the stomach, or the kidneys. in the same way even careful removal of both testicles had no result. but on removing the seminal receptacles coitus was immediately or very shortly stopped, and not renewed. thus, tarchanoff concluded that in frogs, and possibly therefore in mammals, the seminal receptacles are the starting-point of the centripetal impulse which by reflex action sets in motion the complicated apparatus of sexual activity.[ ] a few years later the question was again taken up by steinach, of prague. granting that tarchanoff's experiments are reliable as regards the frog, steinach points out that we may still ask whether in mammals the integrity of the seminal receptacles is bound up with the preservation of sexual excitability. this cannot be taken for granted, nor can we assume that the seminal receptacles of the frog are homologous with the seminal vesicles of mammals. in order to test the question, steinach chose the white rat, as possessing large seminal vesicles and a very developed sexual impulse. he found that removal of the seminal sacs led to no decrease in the intensity of the sexual impulse; the sexual act was still repeated with the same frequency and the same vigor. but these receptacles, steinach proceeded to argue, do not really contain semen, but a special secretion of their own; they are anatomically quite unlike the seminal receptacles of the frog; so that no doubt is thus thrown on tarchanoff's observations. steinach remarked, however, that one's faith is rather shaken by the fact that in the _esculenta_, which in sexual life closely resembles _rana temporaria_, there are no seminal receptacles. he therefore repeated tarchanoff's experiments, and found that the seminal receptacles were empty before coitus, only becoming gradually filled during coitus; it could not, therefore, be argued that the sexual impulse started from the receptacles. he then extirpated the seminal receptacles, avoiding hemorrhage as far as possible, and found that, in the majority of cases so operated on, coitus still continued for from five to seven days, and in the minority for a longer time. he therefore concluded, with goltz, that it is from the swollen testicles, not from the seminal receptacles, that the impulse first starts. goltz himself pointed out that the fact that the removal of the testicles did not stop coitus by no means proves that it did not begin it, for, when the central nervous mechanism is once set in action, it can continue even when the exciting stimulus is removed. by extirpating the testicles some months before the sexual season he found that no coitus occurred. at the same time, even in these frogs, a certain degree of sexual inclination and a certain excitability of the embracing center still persisted, disappearing when the sexual epoch was over. according to most recent writers, the seminal vesicles of mammals are receptacles for their own albuminous secretion, the function of which is unknown. steinach could find no spermatozoa in these "seminal" sacs, and therefore he proposed to use owen's name of _glandulæ vesiculares_. after extirpation of these vesicular glands in the white rat typical coitus occurred. but the capacity for _procreation_ was diminished, and extirpation of both _glandulæ vesiculares_ and _glandulæ prostaticæ_ led to disappearance of the capacity for procreation. steinach came to the conclusion that this is because the secretions of these glands impart increased vitality to the spermatozoa, and he points out that great fertility and high development of the accessory sexual glands go together. steinach found that, when sexually mature white rats were castrated, though at first they remained as potent as ever, their potency gradually declined; sexual excitement, however, and sexual inclination always persisted. he then proceeded to castrate rats before puberty and discovered the highly significant fact that in these also a quite considerable degree of sexual inclination appeared. they followed, sniffed, and licked the females like ordinary males; and that this was not a mere indication of curiosity was shown by the fact that they made attempts at coitus which only differed from those of normal males by the failure of erection and ejaculation, though, occasionally, there was imperfect erection. this lasted for a year, and then their sexual inclinations began to decline, and they showed signs of premature age. these manifestations of sexual sense steinach compares to those noted in the human species during childhood.[ ] the genesic tendencies are thus, to a certain degree, independent of the generative glands, although the development of these glands serves to increase the genesic ability and to furnish the impulsion necessary to assure procreation, as well as to insure the development of the secondary sexual characters, probably by the influence of secretions elaborated and thrown into the system from the primary sexual glands.[ ] halban ("die entstehung der geschlechtscharaktere," _archiv für gynäkologie_, , pp. - ) argues that the primary sex glands do not necessarily produce the secondary sex characters, nor inhibit the development of those characteristic of the opposite sex. it is indeed the rule, but it is not the inevitable result. sexual differences exist from the first. nussbaum made experiments on frogs (_rana fusca_), which go through a yearly cycle of secondary sexual changes at the period of heat. these changes cease on castration, but, if the testes of other frogs are introduced beneath the skin of the castrated frogs, nussbaum found that they acted as if the frog had not been castrated. it is the secretion of the testes which produces the secondary sexual changes. but nussbaum found that the testicular secretion does not work if the nerves of the secondary sexual region are cut, and that the secretion has no direct action on the organism. pflüger, discussing these experiments (_archiv für die gesammte physiologie_, , vol. cxvi, parts and ), disputes this conclusion, and argues that the secretion is not dependent on the action of the nervous system, and that therefore the secondary sexual characters are independent of the nervous system. steinach has also in later experiments ("geschlechtstrieb und echt sekundäre geschlechtsmerkmale als folge der innerskretorischen funktion der keimdrusen," _zentralblatt für physiologie_, bd. xxiv, nu. , ) argued against any local nervous influence. he found in _rana fusca_ and _esculenta_ that after castration in autumn the impulse to grasp the female persisted in some degrees and then disappeared, reappearing in a slight degree, however, every winter at the normal period of sexual activity. but when the testicular substance of actively sexual frogs was injected into the castrated frogs it exerted an elective action on the sexual reflex, sometimes in a few hours, but the action is, steinach concludes, first central. the testicular secretion of frogs that were not sexually active had no stimulating action, but if the frogs were sexually active the injection of their central nervous substance was as effective as their testicular substance. in either case, steinach concludes, there is the removal of an inhibition which is in operation at sexually quiescent periods. speaking generally, steinach considers that there is a process of "erotisation" (erotisieurung) of the nervous center under the influence of the internal testicular secretions, and that this persists even when the primary physical stimulus has been removed. the experience of veterinary surgeons also shows that the sexual impulse tends to persist in animals after castration. thus the ox and the gelding make frequent efforts to copulate with females in heat. in some cases, at all events in the case of the horse, castrated animals remain potent, and are even abnormally ardent, although impregnation cannot, of course, result.[ ] the results obtained by scientific experiment and veterinary experience on the lower animals are confirmed by observation of various groups of phenomena in the human species. there can be no doubt that castrated men may still possess sexual impulses. this has been noted by observers in various countries in which eunuchs are made and employed.[ ] it is important to remember that there are different degrees of castration, for in current language these are seldom distinguished. the romans recognized four different degrees: . true _castrati_, from whom both the testicles and the penis had been removed. . _spadones_, from whom the testicles only had been removed; this was the most common practice. . _thlibiæ_, in whom the testicles had not been removed, but destroyed by crushing; this practice is referred to by hippocrates. . _thlasiæ_, in whom the spermatic cord had simply been cut. millant, from whose paris thesis (_castration criminelle et maniaque_, ) i take these definitions, points out that it was recognized that _spadones_ remained apt for coitus if the operation was performed after puberty, a fact appreciated by many roman ladies, _ad seouras libidinationes_, as st. jerome remarked, while martial (lib. iv) said of a roman lady who sought eunuchs: "vult futui gallia, non parere." (see also millant, _les eunuques à travers les ages_, , and articles by lipa bey and zambaco, _sexual-probleme_, oct. and dec., .) in china, matignon, formerly physician to the french legation in pekin, tells us that eunuchs are by no means without sexual feeling, that they seek the company of women and, he believes, gratify their sexual desires by such methods as are left open to them, for the sexual organs are entirely removed. it would seem probable that, the earlier the age at which the operation is performed, the less marked are the sexual desires, for matignon mentions that boys castrated before the age of are regarded by the chinese as peculiarly virginal and pure.[ ] at constantinople, where the eunuchs are of negro race, castration is usually complete and performed before puberty, in order to abolish sexual potency and desire as far as possible. even when castration is effected in infancy, sexual desire is not necessarily rendered impossible. thus marie has recorded the case of an insane egyptian eunuch whose penis and scrotum were removed in infancy; yet, he had frequent and intense sexual desire with ejaculation of mucus and believed that an invisible princess touched him and aroused voluptuous sensations. although the body had a feminine appearance, the prostate was normal and the vesiculæ seminales not atrophied.[ ] it may be added that lancaster[ ] quotes the following remark, made by a resident for many years in the land, concerning nubian eunuchs: "as far as i can judge, sex feeling exists unmodified by absence of the sexual organs. the eunuch differs from the man not in the absence of sexual passion, but only in the fact that he cannot fully gratify it. as far as he can approach a gratification of it he does so." in this connection it may be noted that (as quoted by moll) jäger attributes the preference of some women--noted in ancient rome and in the east--for castrated men as due not only to the freedom from risk of impregnation in such intercourse, but also to the longer duration of erection in the castrated. when castration is performed without removal of the penis it is said that potency remains for at least ten years afterward, and disselhorst, who in his _die accessorischen geschlechtsdrüsen der wirbelthiere_ takes the same view as has been here adopted, mentions that, according to pelikan (_das skopzentum in rüssland_), those castrated at puberty are fit for coitus long afterward. when castration is performed for surgical reasons at a later age it is still less likely to affect potency or to change the sexual feelings.[ ] guinard concludes that the sexual impulse after castration is relatively more persistent in man than in the lower animals, and is sometimes even heightened, being probably more dependent on external stimuli.[ ] except in the east, castration is more often performed on women than on men, and then the evidence as to the influence of the removal of the ovaries on the sexual emotions shows varying results. it has been found that after castration sexual desire and sexual pleasure in coitus may either remain the same, be diminished or extinguished, or be increased. by some the diminution has been attributed to autosuggestion, the woman being convinced that she can no longer be like other women; the augmentation of desire and pleasure has been supposed to be due to the removal of the dread of impregnation. we have, of course, to take into account individual peculiarities, method of life, and the state of the health. in france jayle ("effets physiologiques de la castration chez la femme," _revue de gynécologie_, , pp. - ) found that, among patients in whom ovariotomy had been performed, in sexual desire remained the same, in it was diminished, in abolished, in increased; while pleasure in coitus remained the same in , was diminished in , abolished in , and increased in , in cases sexual intercourse was very painful. in two other groups of cases--one in which both ovaries and uterus were removed and another in which the uterus alone was removed--the results were not notably different. in germany gläveke (_archiv für gynäkologie_, bd. xxxv, ) found that desire remained in cases, was diminished in , and disappeared in , while pleasure in intercourse remained in , was diminished in , and was lost in . pfister, again (_archiv für gynäkologie_, bd. lvi, ), examined this point in castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual pleasure in intercourse were usually associated, and found the former unchanged in cases, decreased in , lost in , never present in , while the latter was unchanged in cases and diminished or lost in . keppler (international medical congress, berlin, ) found that among castrated women sexual feeling was in no case abolished. adler also, who discusses this question (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , p. et seq.), criticises gläveke's statements and concludes that there is no strict relation between the sexual organs and the sexual feelings. kisch, who has known several cases in which the feelings remained the same as before the operation, brings together (_the sexual life of women_) varying opinions of numerous authors regarding the effects of removal of the ovaries on the sexual appetite. in america bloom (as quoted in _medical standard_, , p. ) found that in none of the cases of women investigated, in which oöphorectomy had been performed before the age of , was the sexual appetite entirely lost; in most of them it had not materially diminished and in a few it was intensified. there was, however, a general consensus of opinion that the normal vaginal secretion during coitus was greatly lessened. in the cases of women over , including also hysterectomies, a gradual lessening of sexual feeling and desire was found to occur most generally. dr. isabel davenport records cases (reported in _medical standard_, , p. ) of women between and years of age whose erotic tendencies were extreme; the ovaries and tubes were removed, in one case for disease, in the other with a view of removing the sexual tendencies; in neither case was there any change. lapthorn smith (_medical record_, vol. xlviii) has reported the case of an unmarried woman of whose ovaries and tubes had been removed seven years previously for pain and enlargement, and the periods had disappeared for six years; she had had experience of sexual intercourse, and declared that she had never felt such extreme sexual excitement and pleasure as during coitus at the end of this time. in england lawson tait and bantock (_british medical journal_, october , , p. ) have noted that sexual passion seems sometimes to be increased even after the removal of ovaries, tubes, and uterus. lawson tait also stated (_british gynæcological journal_, feb., , p. ) that after systematic and extensive inquiry he had not found a single instance in which, provided that sexual appetite existed before the removal of the appendages, it was abolished by that operation. a medical inquiry committee appointed by the liverpool medical institute (ibid., p. ) had previously reported that a considerable number of patients stated that they had suffered a distinct loss of sexual feeling. lawson tait, however, throws doubts on the reliability of the committee's results, which were based on the statements of unintelligent hospital patients. i may quote the following remarks from a communication sent to me by an experienced physician in australia: "no rule can be laid down in cases in which both ovaries have been extirpated. some women say that, though formerly passionate, they have since become quite indifferent, but i am of opinion that the majority of women who have had prior sexual experience retain desire and gratification in an equal degree to that they had before operation. i know one case in which a young girl hardly years old, who had been accustomed to congress for some twelve months, had trouble which necessitated the removal of the ovaries and tubes on both sides. far from losing all her desire or gratification, both were very materially increased in intensity. menstruation has entirely ceased, without loss of femininity in either disposition or appearance. during intercourse, i am told, there is continuous spasmodic contraction of various parts of the vagina and vulva." the independence of the sexual impulse from the distention of the sexual glands is further indicated by the great frequency with which sexual sensations, in a faint or even strong degree, are experienced in childhood and sometimes in infancy, and by the fact that they often persist in women long after the sexual glands have ceased their functions. in the study of auto-erotism in another volume of these _studies_ i have brought together some of the evidence showing that even in very young children spontaneous self-induced sexual excitement, with orgasm, may occur. indeed, from an early age sexual differences pervade the whole nervous tissue. i may here quote the remarks of an experienced gynecologist: "i venture to think," braxton hicks said many years ago, "that those who have much attended to children will agree with me in saying that, almost from the cradle, a difference can be seen in manner, habits of mind, and in illness, requiring variations in their treatment. the change is certainly hastened and intensified at the time of puberty; but there is, even to an average observer, a clear difference between the sexes from early infancy, gradually becoming more marked up to puberty. that sexual feelings exist [it would be better to say 'may exist'] from earliest infancy is well known, and therefore this function does not depend upon puberty, though intensified by it. hence, may we not conclude that the progress toward development is not so abrupt as has been generally supposed?... the changes of puberty are all of them dependent on the primordial force which, gradually gathering in power, culminates in the perfection both of form and of the sexual system, primary and secondary." there appear to have been but few systematic observations on the persistence of the sexual impulse in women after the menopause. it is regarded as a fairly frequent phenomenon by kisch, and also by löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, p. ). in america, bloom (as quoted in _medical standard_, ), from an investigation of four hundred cases, found that in some cases the sexual impulse persisted to a very advanced age, and mentions a case of a woman of , twenty years past the menopause, who had been long a widow, but had recently married, and who declared that both desire and gratification were as great, if not greater, than before the menopause. reference may finally be made to those cases in which the sexual impulse has developed notwithstanding the absence, verified or probable, of any sexual glands at all. in such cases sexual desire and sexual gratification are sometimes even stronger than normal. colman has reported a case in which neither ovaries nor uterus could be detected, and the vagina was too small for coitus, but pleasurable intercourse took place by the rectum and sexual desire was at times so strong as to amount almost to nymphomania. clara barrus has reported the case of a woman in whom there was congenital absence of uterus and ovaries, as proved subsequently by autopsy, but the sexual impulse was very strong and she had had illicit intercourse with a lover. she suffered from recurrent mania, and then masturbated shamelessly; when sane she was attractively feminine. macnaughton-jones describes the case of a woman of with normal sexual feelings and fully developed breasts, clitoris, and labia, but no vagina or internal genitalia could be detected even under the most thorough examination. in a case of bridgman's, again, the womb and ovaries were absent, and the vagina small, but coitus was not painful, and the voluptuous sensations were complete and sexual passion was strong. in a case of cotterill's, the ovaries and uterus were of minute size and functionless, and the vagina was absent, but the sexual feelings were normal, and the clitoris preserved its usual sensibility. mundé had recorded two similar cases, of which he presents photographs. in all these cases not only was the sexual impulse present in full degree, but the subjects were feminine in disposition and of normal womanly conformation; in most cases the external sexual organs were properly developed.[ ] féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, p. ) has sought to explain away some of these phenomena, in so far as they may be brought against the theory that the secretions and excretions of the sexual glands are the sole source of the sexual impulse. the persistence of sexual feelings after castration may be due, he argues, to the presence of the nerves in the cicatrices, just as the amputated have the illusion that the missing limb is still there. exactly the same explanation has since been put forward by moll, _medizinische klinik_, , nrs. and . in the same way the presence of sexual feelings after the menopause may be due to similar irritation determined by degeneration during involution of the glands. the precocious appearance of the sexual impulse in childhood he would explain as due to an anomaly of development in the sexual organs. féré makes no attempt to explain the presence of the sexual impulse in the congenital absence of the sexual glands; here, however, mundé intervenes with the suggestion that it is possible that in most cases "an infinitesimal trace of ovary" may exist, and preserve femininity, though insufficient to produce ovulation or menstruation. it is proper to mention these ingenious arguments. they are, however, purely hypothetical, obviously invented to support a theory. it can scarcely be said that they carry conviction. we may rather agree with guinard that so great is the importance of reproduction that nature has multiplied the means by which preparation is made for the conjunction of the sexes and the roads by which sexual excitation may arrive. as hirschfeld puts it, in a discussion of this subject (_sexual-probleme_, feb., ), "nature has several irons in the fire." it will be seen that the conclusions we have reached indirectly involve the assumption that the spinal nervous centers, through which the sexual mechanism operates, are not sufficient to account for the whole of the phenomena of the sexual impulse. the nervous circuit tends to involve a cerebral element, which may sometimes be of dominant importance. various investigators, from the time of gall onward, have attempted to localize the sexual instinct centrally. such attempts, however, cannot be said to have succeeded, although they tend to show that there is a real connection between the brain and the generative organs. thus ceni, of modena, by experiments on chickens, claims to have proved the influence of the cortical centers of procreation on the faculty of generation, for he found that lesions of the cortex led to sterility corresponding in degree to the lesion; but as these results followed even independently of any disturbance of the sexual instinct, their significance is not altogether clear (carlo ceni, "l'influenza dei centri corticali sui fenomeni della generazione," _revista sperimentale di freniatria_, , fasc. - ). at present, as obici and marchesini have well remarked, all that we can do is to assume the existence of cerebral as well as spinal sexual centers; a cerebral sexual center, in the strictest sense, remains purely hypothetical. although gall's attempt to locate the sexual instinct in the cerebellum--well supported as it was by observations--is no longer considered to be tenable, his discussion of the sexual instinct was of great value, far in advance of his time, and accompanied by a mass of facts gathered from many fields. he maintained that the sexual instinct is a function of the brain, not of the sexual organs. he combated the view ruling in his day that the seat of erotic mania must be sought in the sexual organs. he fully dealt with the development of the sexual instinct in many children before maturity of the sexual glands, the prolongation of the instinct into old age, its existence in the castrated and in the congenital absence of the sexual glands; he pointed out that even with an apparently sound and normal sexual apparatus all sorts of psychic pathological deviations may yet occur. in fact, all the lines of argument i have briefly indicated in the foregoing pages--although when they were first written this fact was unknown to me--had been fully discussed by this remarkable man nearly a century ago. (the greater part of the third volume of gall's _sur les fonctions du cerveau_, in the edition of , is devoted to this subject. for a good summary, sympathetic, though critical, of gall's views on this matter, see möbius, "ueber gall's specielle organologie," _schmidt's jahrbücher der medicin_, , vol. cclxvii; also _ausgewahlte werke_, vol. vii.) it will be seen that the question of the nature of the sexual impulse has been slowly transformed. it is no longer a question of the formation of semen in the male, of the function of menstruation in the female. it has become largely a question of physiological chemistry. the chief parts in the drama of sex, alike on its psychic as on its physical sides, are thus supposed to be played by two mysterious protagonists, the hormones, or internal secretions, of the testes and of the ovary. even the part played by the brain is now often regarded as chemical, the brain being considered to be a great chemical laboratory. there is a tendency, moreover, to extend the sexual sphere so as to admit the influence of internal secretions from other glands. the thymus, the adrenals, the thyroid, the pituitary, even the kidneys: it is possible that internal secretions from all these glands may combine to fill in the complete picture of sexuality as we know it in men and women.[ ] the subject is, however, so complex and at present so little known that it would be hazardous, and for the present purpose it is needless, to attempt to set forth any conclusions. it is sufficiently clear that there is on the surface a striking analogy between sexual desire and the impulse to evacuate an excretion, and that this analogy is not only seen in the frog, but extends also to the highest vertebrates. it is quite another matter, however, to assert that the sexual impulse can be adequately defined as an impulse to evacuate. to show fully the inadequate nature of this conception would require a detailed consideration of the facts of sexual life. that is, however, unnecessary. it is enough to point out certain considerations which alone suffice to invalidate this view. in the first place, it must be remarked that the trifling amount of fluid emitted in sexual intercourse is altogether out of proportion to the emotions aroused by the act and to its after-effect on the organism; the ancient dictum _omne animal post coitum triste_ may not be exact, but it is certain that the effect of coitus on the organism is far more profound than that produced by the far more extensive evacuation of the bladder or bowels. again, this definition leaves unexplained all those elaborate preliminaries which, both in man and the lower animals, precede the sexual act, preliminaries which in civilized human beings sometimes themselves constitute a partial satisfaction to the sexual impulse. it must also be observed that, unlike the ordinary excretions, this discharge of the sexual glands is not always, or in every person, necessary at all. moreover, the theory of evacuation at once becomes hopelessly inadequate when we apply it to women; no one will venture to claim that an adequate psychological explanation of the sexual impulse in a woman is to be found in the desire to expel a little bland mucus from the minute glands of the genital tract. we must undoubtedly reject this view of the sexual impulse. it has a certain element of truth and it permits an instructive and helpful analogy; but that is all. the sexual act presents many characters which are absent in an ordinary act of evacuation, and, on the other hand, it lacks the special characteristic of the evacuation proper, the elimination of waste material; the seminal fluid is not a waste material, and its retention is, to some extent perhaps, rather an advantage than a disadvantage to the organism. eduard von hartmann long since remarked that the satisfaction of what we call the sexual instinct through an act carried out with a person of the opposite sex is a very wonderful phenomenon. it cannot be said, however, that the conception of the sexual act as a simple process of evacuation does anything to explain the wonder. we are, at most, in the same position as regards the stilling of normal sexual desire as we should be as regards the emptying of the bladder, supposing it were very difficult for either sex to effect this satisfactorily without the aid of a portion of the body of a person of the other sex acting as a catheter. in such a case our thoughts and ideals would center around persons of opposite sex, and we should court their attention and help precisely as we do now in the case of our sexual needs. some such relationship does actually exist in the case of the suckling mother and her infant. the mother is indebted to the child for the pleasurable relief of her distended breasts; and, while in civilization more subtle pleasures and intelligent reflection render this massive physical satisfaction comparatively unessential to the act of suckling, in more primitive conditions and among animals the need of this pleasurable physical satisfaction is a real bond between the mother and her offspring. the analogy is indeed very close: the erectile nipple corresponds to the erectile penis, the eager watery mouth of the infant to the moist and throbbing vagina, the vitally albuminous milk to the vitally albuminous semen.[ ] the complete mutual satisfaction, physical and psychic, of mother and child, in the transfer from one to the other of a precious organized fluid, is the one true physiological analogy to the relationship of a man and a woman at the climax of the sexual act. even this close analogy, however, fails to cover all the facts of the sexual life. a very different view is presented to us in the definition of the sexual instinct as a reproductive impulse, a desire for offspring. hegar, eulenburg, näcke, and löwenfeld have accepted this as, at all events, a partial definition.[ ] no one, indeed, would argue that it is a complete definition, although a few writers appear to have asserted that it is so sometimes as regards the sexual impulse in women. there is, however, considerable mental confusion in the attempt to set up such a definition. if we define an instinct as an action adapted to an end which is not present to consciousness, then it is quite true that the sexual instinct is an instinct of reproduction. but we do not adequately define the sexual instinct by merely stating its ultimate object. we might as well say that the impulse by which young animals seize food is "an instinct of nutrition." the object of reproduction certainly constitutes no part of the sexual impulse whatever in any animal apart from man, and it reveals a lack of the most elementary sense of biological continuity to assert that in man so fundamental and involuntary a process can suddenly be revolutionized. that the sexual impulse is very often associated with a strong desire for offspring there can be no doubt, and in women the longing for a child--that is to say, the longing to fulfill those functions for which their bodies are constituted--may become so urgent and imperative that we may regard it as scarcely less imperative than the sexual impulse. but it is not the sexual impulse, though intimately associated with it, and though it explains it. a reproductive instinct might be found in parthenogenetic animals, but would be meaningless, because useless, in organisms propagating by sexual union. a woman may not want a lover, but may yet want a child. this merely means that her maternal instincts have been aroused, while her sexual instincts are still latent. a desire for reproduction, as soon as that desire becomes instinctive, necessarily takes on the form of the sexual impulse, for there is no other instinctive mechanism by which it can possibly express itself. a "reproductive instinct," apart from the sexual instinct and apart from the maternal instinct, cannot be admitted; it would be an absurdity. even in women in whom the maternal instincts are strong, it may generally be observed that, although before a woman is in love, and also during the later stages of her love, the conscious desire for a child may be strong, during the time when sexual passion is at its highest the thought of offspring, under normally happy conditions, tends to recede into the background. reproduction is the natural end and object of the sexual instinct, but the statement that it is part of the contents of the sexual impulse, or can in any way be used to define that impulse, must be dismissed as altogether inacceptable. indeed, although the term "reproductive instinct" is frequently used, it is seldom used in a sense that we need take seriously; it is vaguely employed as a euphemism by those who wish to veil the facts of the sexual life; it is more precisely employed mainly by those who are unconsciously dominated by a superstitious repugnance to sex. i now turn to a very much more serious and elaborate attempt to define the constitution of the sexual impulse, that of moll. he finds that it is made up of two separate components, each of which may be looked upon as an uncontrollable impulse.[ ] one of these is that by which the tension of the sexual organs is spasmodically relieved; this he calls the _impulse of detumescence_,[ ] and he regards it as primary, resembling the impulse to empty a full bladder. the other impulse is the "instinct to approach, touch, and kiss another person, usually of the opposite sex"; this he terms the _impulse of contrectation_, and he includes under this head not only the tendency to general physical contact, but also the psychic inclination to become generally interested in a person of the opposite sex. each of these primary impulses moll regards as forming a constituent of the sexual instinct in both men and women. it seems to me undoubtedly true that these two impulses do correspond to the essential phenomena. the awkward and unsatisfactory part of moll's analysis is the relation of the one to the other. it is true that he traces both impulses back to the sexual glands, that of detumescence directly, that of contrectation indirectly; but evidently he does not regard them as intimately related to each other; he insists on the fact that they may exist apart from each other, that they do not appear synchronously in youth: the contrectation impulse he regards as secondary; it is, he states, an indirect result of the sexual glands, "only to be understood by the developmental history of these glands and the object which they subserve"; that is to say, that it is connected with the rise of the sexual method of reproduction and the desirability of the mingling of the two sexes in procreation, while the impulse of detumescence arose before the sexual method of reproduction had appeared; thus the contrectation impulse was propagated by natural selection together with the sexual method of reproduction. the impulse of contrectation is secondary, and moll even regards it as a secondary sexual character. while, therefore, this analysis seems to include all the phenomena and to be worthy of very careful study as a serious and elaborate attempt to present an adequate psychological definition of the sexual impulse, it scarcely seems to me that we can accept it in precisely the form in which moll presents it. i believe, however, that by analyzing the process a little more minutely we shall find that these two constituents of the sexual impulse are really much more intimately associated than at the first glance appears, and that we need by no means go back to the time when the sexual method of reproduction arose to explain the significance of the phenomena which moll includes under the term contrectation. to discover the true significance of the phenomena in men it is necessary to observe carefully the phenomena of love-making not only among men, but among animals, in which the impulse of contrectation plays a very large part, and involves an enormous expenditure of energy. darwin was the first to present a comprehensive view of, at all events a certain group of, the phenomena of contrectation in animals; on his interpretation of those phenomena he founded his famous theory of sexual selection. we are not primarily concerned with that theory; but the facts on which darwin based his theory lie at the very roots of our subject, and we are bound to consider their psychological significance. in the first place, since these phenomena are specially associated with darwin's name, it may not be out of place to ask what darwin himself considered to be their psychological significance. it is a somewhat important question, even for those who are mainly concerned with the validity of the theory which darwin established on those facts, but so far as i know it has not hitherto been asked. i find that a careful perusal of the _descent of man_ reveals the presence in darwin's mind of two quite distinct theories, neither of them fully developed, as to the psychological meaning of the facts he was collecting. the two following groups of extracts will serve to show this very conclusively: "the lower animals have a sense of beauty," he declares, "powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female" (p. [ ]); "the females habitually or occasionally prefer the more beautiful males," "there is little improbability in the females of insects appreciating beauty in form or color" (p. ); he speaks of birds as the most "esthetic" of all animals excepting man, and adds that they have "nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have" (p. ); he remarks that a change of any kind in the structure or color of the male bird "appears to have been admired by the female" (p. ). he speaks of the female argus pheasant as possessing "this almost human degree of taste." birds, again, "seem to have some taste for the beautiful both in color and sound," and "we ought not to feel too sure that the female does not attend to each detail of beauty" (p. ). novelty, he says, is "admired by birds for its own sake" (p. ). "birds have fine powers of discrimination and in some few instances it can be shown that they have a taste for the beautiful" (p. ). the "esthetic capacity" of female animals has been advanced by exercise just as our own taste has improved (p. ). on the other hand, we find running throughout the book quite another idea. of cicadas he tells us that it is probable that, "like female birds, they are excited or allured by the male with the most attractive voice" (p. ); and, coming to _locustidæ_, he states that "all observers agree that the sounds serve either to call or excite the mute females" (p. ). of birds he says, "i am led to believe that the females prefer or are most excited by the more brilliant males" (p. ). among birds also the males "endeavor to charm or excite their mates by love-notes," etc., and "the females are excited by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them" (p. ), while ornaments of all kinds "apparently serve to excite, attract, or fascinate the female" (p. ). in a supplemental note, also, written in , five years after the first publication of the _descent of man_, and therefore a late statement of his views, darwin remarks that "no supporter of the principle of sexual selection believes that the females select particular points of beauty in the males; they are merely excited or attracted in a greater degree by one male than by another, and this seems often to depend, especially with birds, on brilliant coloring" (p. ). thus, on the one hand, darwin interprets the phenomena as involving a real esthetic element, a taste for the beautiful; on the other hand, he states, without apparently any clear perception that the two views are quite distinct, that the colors and sounds and other characteristics of the male are not an appeal to any esthetic sense of the female, but an appeal to her sexual emotions, a stimulus to sexual excitement, an allurement to sexual contact. according to the first theory, the female admires beauty, consciously or unconsciously, and selects the most beautiful partner[ ]; according to the second theory, there is no esthetic question involved, but the female is unconsciously influenced by the most powerful or complex organic stimulus to which she is subjected. there can be no question that it is the second, and not the first, of these two views which we are justified in accepting. darwin, it must be remembered, was not a psychologist, and he lived before the methods of comparative psychology had begun to be developed; had he written twenty years later we may be sure he would never have used so incautiously some of the vague and hazardous expressions i have quoted. he certainly injured his theory of sexual selection by stating it in too anthropomorphic language, by insisting on "choice," "preference," "esthetic sense," etc. there is no need whatever to burden any statement of the actual facts by such terms borrowed from human psychology. the female responds to the stimulation of the male at the right moment just as the tree responds to the stimulation of the warmest days in spring. we should but obscure this fact by stating that the tree "chooses" the most beautiful days on which to put forth its young sprouts. in explaining the correlation between responsive females and accomplished males the supposition of esthetic choice is equally unnecessary. it is, however, interesting to observe that, though darwin failed to see that the love-combats, pursuits, dances, and parades of the males served as a method of stimulating the impulse of contrectation--or, as it would be better to term it, tumescence--in the male himself,[ ] he to some extent realized the part thus played in exciting the equally necessary activity of tumescence in the female. the justification for using the term "tumescence," which i here propose, is to be found in the fact that vascular congestion, more especially of the parts related to generation, is an essential preliminary to acute sexual desire. this is clearly brought out in heape's careful study of the "sexual season" in mammals. heape distinguishes between the "pro-estrum," or preliminary period of congestion, in female animals and the immediately following "estrus," or period of desire. the latter period is the result of the former, and, among the lower animals at all events, intercourse only takes place during the estrus, not during the pro-estrum. tumescence must thus be obtained before desire can become acute, and courtship runs _pari passu_ with physiological processes. "normal estrus," heape states, "occurs in conjunction with certain changes in the uterine tissue, and this is accompanied by congestion and stimulation or irritation of the copulatory organs.... congestion is invariably present and is an essential condition.... the first sign of pro-estrum noticed in the lower mammals is a swollen and congested vulva and a general restlessness, excitement, or uneasiness. there are other signs familiar to breeders of various mammals, such as the congested conjunctiva of the rabbit's eye and the drooping ears of the pig. many monkeys exhibit congestion of the face and nipples, as well as of the buttocks, thighs, and neighboring parts; sometimes they are congested to a very marked extent, and in some species a swelling, occasionally prodigious, of the soft tissues round the anal and generative openings, which is also at the time brilliantly congested, indicates the progress of the pro-estrum.... the growth of the stroma-tissue [in the uterus of monkeys during the pro-estrum] is rapidly followed by an increase in the number and size of the vessels of the stroma; the whole becomes richly supplied with blood, and the surface is flushed and highly vascular. this process goes on until the whole of the internal stroma becomes tense and brilliantly injected with blood.... in all essential points the menstruation or pro-estrum of the human female is identical with that of monkeys.... estrus is possible only after the changes due to pro-estrum have taken place in the uterus. a wave of disturbance, at first evident in the external generative organs, extends to the uterus, and after the various phases of pro-estrum have been gone through in that organ, and the excitement there is subsiding, it would seem as if the external organs gain renewed stimulus, and it is then that estrus takes place.... in all animals which have been investigated coition is not allowed by the female until some time after the swelling and congestion of the vulva and surrounding tissue are first demonstrated, and in those animals which suffer from a considerable discharge of blood the main portion of that discharge, if not the whole of it, will be evacuated before sexual intercourse is allowed." (w. heape, "the 'sexual season' of mammals," _quarterly journal of microscopical science_, vol. xliv, part i, . estrus has since been fully discussed in marshall's _physiology of reproduction_.) this description clearly brings out the fundamentally vascular character of the process i have termed "tumescence"; it must be added, however, that in man the nervous elements in the process tend to become more conspicuous, and more or less obliterate these primitive limitations of sexual desire. (see "sexual periodicity" in the first volume of these _studies_.) moll subsequently restated his position with reference to my somewhat different analysis of the sexual impulse, still maintaining his original view ("analyse des geschlechtstriebes," _medizinische klinik_, nos. and , ; also _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. ii, nos. and ). numa praetorius (_jahrbuch für sexeuelle zwischenstufen_, , p. ) accepts contrectation, tumescence, and detumescence as all being stages in the same process, contrectation, which he defines as the sexual craving for a definite individual, coming first. robert müller (_sexualbiologie_, , p. ) criticises moll much in the same sense as i have done and considers that contrectation and detumescence cannot be separated, but are two expressions of the same impulse; so also max katte, "die präliminarien des geschlechtsaktes," _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, oct., , and g. saint-paul, _l'homosexualité et les types homosexuels_, , p. . while i regard moll's analysis as a valuable contribution to the elucidation of the sexual impulse, i must repeat that i cannot regard it as final or completely adequate. as i understand the process, contrectation is an incident in the development of tumescence, an extremely important incident indeed, but not an absolutely fundamental and primitive part of it. it is equally an incident, highly important though not primitive and fundamental, of detumescence. contrectation, from first to last; furnishes the best conditions for the exercise of the sexual process, but it is not an absolutely essential part of the process and in the early stages of zoölogical development it had no existence at all. tumescence and detumescence are alike fundamental, primitive, and essential; in resting the sexual impulse on these necessarily connected processes we are basing ourselves on the solid bedrock of nature. moreover, of the two processes, tumescence, which in time comes first, is by far the most important, and nearly the whole of sexual psychology is rooted in it. to assert, with moll, that the sexual process may be analyzed into contrectation and detumescence alone is to omit the most essential part of the process. it is much the same as to analyze the mechanism of a gun into probable contact with the hand, and a more or less independent discharge, omitting all reference to the loading of the gun. the essential elements are the loading and the discharging. contrectation is a part of loading, though not a necessary part, since the loading may be effected mechanically. but to understand the process of firing a gun and to comprehend the mechanism of the discharge, we must insist on the act of loading and not merely on the contact of the hand. so it is in analyzing the sexual impulse. contrectation is indeed highly important, but it is important only in so far as it aids tumescence, and so may be subordinated to tumescence, exactly as it may also be subordinated to detumescence. it is tumescence which is the really essential part of the process, and we cannot afford, with moll, to ignore it altogether. wallace opposed darwin's theory of sexual selection, but it can scarcely be said that his attitude toward it bears critical examination. on the one hand, as has already been noted, he saw but one side of that theory and that the unessential side, and, on the other hand, his own view really coincided with the more essential elements in darwin's theory. in his _tropical nature_ he admitted that the male's "persistency and energy win the day," and also that this "vigor and liveliness" of the male are usually associated with intense coloration, while twenty years later (in his _darwinism_) he admitted also that it is highly probable that the female is pleased or excited by the male's display. but all that is really essential in darwin's theory is involved, directly or indirectly, in these admissions. espinas, in , in his suggestive book, _des sociétés animales_, described the odors, colors and forms, sounds, games, parades, and mock battles of animals, approaching the subject in a somewhat more psychological spirit than either darwin or wallace, and he somewhat more clearly apprehended the object of these phenomena in producing mutual excitement and stimulating tumescence. he noted the significance of the action of the hermaphroditic snails in inserting their darts into each other's flesh near the vulva in order to cause preliminary excitation. he remarks of this whole group of phenomena: "it is the preliminary of sexual union, it constitutes the first act of it. by it the image of the male is graven on the consciousness of the female, and in a manner impregnates it, so as to determine there, as the effects of this representation descend to the depths of the organism, the physiological modifications necessary to fecundation." beaunis, again, in an analysis of the sexual sensations, was inclined to think that the dances and parades of the male are solely intended to excite the female, not perceiving, however, that they at the same time serve to further excite the male also.[ ] a better and more comprehensive statement was reached by tillier, who, to some extent, may be said to have anticipated groos. darwin, tillier pointed out, had not sufficiently taken into account the coexistence of combat and courtship, nor the order of the phenomena. courtship without combat, tillier argued, is rare; "there is a normal coexistence of combat and courtship."[ ] moreover, he proceeded, force is the chief factor in determining the possession of the female by the male, who in some species is even prepared to exert force on her; so that the female has little opportunity of sexual selection, though she is always present at these combats. he then emphasized the significant fact that courtship takes place long after pairing has ceased, and the question of selection thus been eliminated. the object of courtship, he concluded, is not sexual selection by the female, but the sexual excitement of both male and female, such excitement, he asserted, not only rendering coupling easier, but favoring fecundation. modesty, also, tillier further argued, again anticipating groos, works toward the same end; it renders the male more ardent, and by retarding coupling may also increase the secretions of the sexual glands and favor the chances of reproduction.[ ] in a charming volume entitled _the naturalist in la plata_ ( ) mr. w.h. hudson included a remarkable chapter on "music and dancing in nature." in this chapter he described many of the dances, songs, and love-antics of birds, but regarded all such phenomena as merely "periodical fits of gladness." while, however, we may quite well agree with mr. hudson that conscious sexual gratification on the part of the female is not the cause of music and dancing performances in birds, nor of the brighter colors and ornaments that distinguish the male, such an opinion by no means excludes the conclusion that these phenomena are primarily sexual and intimately connected with the process of tumescence in both sexes. it is noteworthy that, according to h.e. howard ("on sexual selection in birds," _zoölogist_, nov., ), color is most developed just before pairing, rapidly becoming less beautiful--even within a few hours--after this, and the most beautiful male is most successful in getting paired. the fact that, as mr. hudson himself points out, it is at the season of love that these manifestations mainly, if not exclusively, appear, and that it is the more brilliant and highly endowed males which play the chief part in them, only serves to confirm such a conclusion. to argue, with mr. hudson, that they cannot be sexual because they sometimes occur before the arrival of the females, is much the same as to argue that the antics of a kitten with a feather or a reel have no relationship whatever to mice. the birds that began earliest to practise their accomplishments would probably have most chance of success when the females arrived. darwin himself said that nothing is commoner than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good. these manifestations are primarily for the sake of producing sexual tumescence, and could not well have been developed to the height they have reached unless they were connected closely with propagation. that they may incidentally serve to express "gladness" one need not feel called upon to question. another observer of birds, mr. e. selous, has made observations which are of interest in this connection. he finds that all bird-dances are not nuptial, but that some birds--the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example--have different kinds of dances. among these birds he has made the observation, very significant from our present point of view, that the nuptial dances, taken part in by both of the pair, are immediately followed by intercourse. in spring "all such runnings and chasings are, at this time, but a part of the business of pairing, and one divines at once that such attitudes are of a sexual character.... here we have a bird with distinct nuptial (sexual) and social (non-sexual) forms of display or antics, and the former as well as the latter are equally indulged in by both sexes." (e. selous, _bird watching_, pp. - .) the same author (ibid., pp. , ) argues that in the fights of two males for one female--with violent emotion on one side and interested curiosity on the other--the attitude of the former "might gradually come to be a display made entirely for the female, and of the latter a greater or less degree of pleasurable excitement raised by it, with a choice in accordance." on this view the interest of the female would first have been directed, not to the plumage, but to the frenzied actions and antics of the male. from these antics in undecorated birds would gradually develop the interest in waving plumes and fluttering wings. such a dance might come to be of a quite formal and non-courting nature. last, we owe to professor häcker what may fairly be regarded, in all main outlines, as an almost final statement of the matter. in his _gesang der vögel_ ( ) he gives a very clear account of the evolution of bird-song, which he regards as the most essential element in all this group of manifestations, furnishing the key also to the dancing and other antics. originally the song consists only of call-cries and recognition-notes. under the parallel influence of natural selection and sexual selection they become at the pairing season reflexes of excitement and thus develop into methods of producing excitement, in the male by the muscular energy required, and in the female through the ear; finally they become play, though here also it is probable that use is not excluded. thus, so far as the male bird is concerned, bird-song possesses a primary prenuptial significance in attracting the female, a secondary nuptial significance in producing excitement (p. ). he holds also that the less-developed voices of the females aid in attaining the same end (p. ). finally, bird-song possesses a tertiary extranuptial significance (including exercise play, expression of gladness). häcker points out, at the same time, that the maintenance of some degree of sexual excitement beyond pairing time may be of value for the preservation of the species, in case of disturbance during breeding and consequent necessity for commencing breeding over again. such a theory as this fairly coincides with the views brought forward in the preceding pages,--views which are believed to be in harmony with the general trend of thought today,--since it emphasizes the importance of tumescence and all that favors tumescence in the sexual process. the so-called esthetic element in sexual selection is only indirectly of importance. the male's beauty is really a symbol of his force. it will be seen that this attitude toward the facts of tumescence among birds and other animals includes the recognition of dances, songs, etc., as expressions of "gladness." as such they are closely comparable to the art manifestations among human races. here, as weismann in his _gedanken über musik_ has remarked, we may regard the artistic faculty as a by-product: "this [musical] faculty is, as it were, the mental hand with which we play on our own emotional nature, a hand not shaped for this purpose, not due to the necessity for the enjoyment of music, but owing its origin to entirely different requirements." the psychological significance of these facts has been carefully studied and admirably developed by groos in his classic works on the play instinct in animals and in men.[ ] going beyond wallace, groos denies _conscious_ sexual selection, but, as he points out, this by no means involves the denial of unconscious selection in the sense that "the female is most easily won by the male who most strongly excites her sexual instincts." groos further quotes a pregnant generalization of ziegler: "in all animals a high degree of excitement of the nervous system is _necessary to procreation_, and thus we find an excited prelude to procreation widely spread."[ ] such a stage, indeed, as groos points out, is usually necessary before any markedly passionate discharge of motor energy, as may be observed in angry dogs and the homeric heroes. while, however, in other motor explosions the prelude may be reduced to a minimum, in courtship it is found in a highly marked degree. the primary object of courtship, groos insists, is to produce sexual excitement. it is true that groos's main propositions were by no means novel. thus, as i have pointed out, he was at most points anticipated by tillier. but groos developed the argument in so masterly a manner, and with so many wide-ranging illustrations, that he has carried conviction where the mere insight of others had passed unperceived. since darwin wrote the _descent of man_ the chief step in the development of the theory of sexual selection has been taken by groos, who has at the same time made it clear that sexual selection is largely a special case of natural selection.[ ] the conjunction of the sexes is seen to be an end only to be obtained with much struggle; the difficulty of achieving sexual erethism in both sexes, the difficulty of so stimulating such erethism in the female that her instinctive coyness is overcome, these difficulties the best and most vigorous males,[ ] those most adapted in other respects to carry on the race, may most easily overcome. in this connection we may note what marro has said in another connection, when attempting to answer the question why it is that among savages courtship becomes so often a matter in which persuasion takes the form of force. the explanation, he remarks, is yet very simple. force is the foundation of virility, and its psychic manifestation is courage. in the struggle for life violence is the first virtue. the modesty of women--in its primordial form consisting in physical resistance, active or passive, to the assaults of the male--aided selection by putting to the test man's most important quality, force. thus it is that when choosing among rivals for her favors a woman attributes value to violence.[ ] marro thus independently confirms the result reached by groos. the debate which has for so many years been proceeding concerning the validity of the theory of sexual selection may now be said to be brought to an end. those who supported darwin and those who opposed him were, both alike, in part right and in part wrong, and it is now possible to combine the elements of truth on either side into a coherent whole. this is now beginning to be widely recognized; lloyd morgan,[ ] for instance, has readjusted his position as regards the "pairing instinct" in the light of groos's contribution to the subject. "the hypothesis of sexual selection," he concludes, "suggests that the accepted male is the one which adequately evokes the pairing impulse.... courtship may thus be regarded from the physiological point of view as a means of producing the requisite amount of pairing hunger; of stimulating the whole system and facilitating general and special vascular changes; of creating that state of profound and explosive irritability which has for its psychological concomitant or antecedent an imperious and irresistible craving.... courtship is thus the strong and steady bending of the bow that the arrow may find its mark in a biological end of the highest importance in the survival of a healthy and vigorous race." having thus viewed the matter broadly, we may consider in detail a few examples of the process of tumescence among the lower animals and man, for, as will be seen, the process in both is identical. as regards animal courtship, the best treasury of facts is brehm's _thierleben_, while büchner's _liebe und liebes-leben in der thierwelt_ is a useful summary; the admirable discussion of bird-dancing and other forms of courtship in häcker's _gesang der vögel_, chapter iv, may also be consulted. as regards man, wallaschek's _primitive music_, chapter vii, brings together much scattered material, and is all the more valuable since the author rejects any form of sexual selection; hirn's _origins of art_, chapter xvii, is well worth reading, and finck's _primitive love and love-stories_ contains a large amount of miscellaneous information. i have preferred not to draw on any of these easily accessible sources (except that in one or two cases i have utilized references they supplied), but here simply furnish illustrations met with in the course of my own reading. even in the hermaphroditic slugs (_limax maximus_) the process of courtship is slow and elaborate. it has been described by james bladon ("the loves of the slug [_limax cinereus_]," _zoölogist_, vol. xv, , p. ). it begins toward midnight on sultry summer nights, one slug slowly following another, resting its mouth on what may be called the tail of the first, and following its every movement. finally they stop and begin crawling around each other, emitting large quantities of mucus. when this has constituted a mass of sufficient size and consistence they suspend themselves from it by a cord of mucus from nine to fifteen inches in length, continuing to turn round each other till their bodies form a cone. then the organs of generation are protruded from their orifice near the mouth and, hanging down a short distance, touch each other. they also then begin again the same spiral motion, twisting around each other, like a two-strand cord, assuming various and beautiful forms, sometimes like an inverted agaric, or a foliated murex, or a leaf of curled parsley, the light falling on the ever-varying surface of the generative organs sometimes producing iridescence. it is not until after a considerable time that the organs untwist and are withdrawn and the bodies separate, to crawl up the suspending cord and depart. some snails have a special organ for creating sexual excitement. a remarkable part of the reproductive system in many of the true helicidæ is the so-called _dart, liebespfeil_, or _telum veneris_. it consists of a straight or curved, sometimes slightly twisted, tubular shaft of carbonate of lime, tapering to a fine point above, and enlarging gradually, more often somewhat abruptly, to the base. the sides of the shaft are sometimes furnished with two or more blades; these are apparently not for cutting purposes, but simply to brace the stem. the dart is contained in a dart-sac, which is attached as a sort of pocket to the vagina, at no great distance from its orifice. in _helix aspersa_ the dart is about five-sixteenths of an inch in length, and one-eighth of an inch in breadth at its base. it appears most probable that the dart is employed as an adjunct for the sexual act. besides the fact of the position of the dart-sac anatomically, we find that the darts are extended and become imbedded in the flesh, just before or during the act of copulation. it may be regarded, then, as an organ whose functions induce excitement preparatory to sexual union. it only occurs in well-grown specimens. (rev. l.h. cooke, "molluscs," _cambridge natural history_, vol. iii, p. .) racovitza has shown that in the octopus (_octopus vulgaris_) courtship is carried on with considerable delicacy, and not brutally, as had previously been supposed. the male gently stretches out his third arm on the right and caresses the female with its extremity, eventually passing it into the chamber formed by the mantle. the female contracts spasmodically, but does not attempt to move. they remain thus about an hour or more, and during this time the male shifts the arm from one oviduct to the other. finally he withdraws his arm, caresses her with it for a few moments, and then replaces it with his other arm. (e.g. racovitza, in _archives de zoölogie expérimentale_, quoted in _natural science_, november, .) the phenomena of courtship are very well illustrated by spiders. peckham, who has carefully studied them, tells us of _saitis pulex_: "on may th we found a mature female, and placed her in one of the larger boxes, and the next day we put a male in with her. he saw her as she stood perfectly still, twelve inches away; the glance seemed to excite him, and he at once moved toward her; when some four inches from her he stood still, and then began the most remarkable performances that an amorous male could offer to an admiring female. she eyed him eagerly, changing her position from time to time so that he might be always in view. he, raising his whole body on one side by straightening out the legs, and lowering it on the other by folding the first two pairs of legs up and under, leaned so far over as to be in danger of losing his balance, which he only maintained by sliding rapidly toward the lowered side. the palpus, too, on this side was turned back to correspond to the direction of the legs nearest it. he moved in a semicircle for about two inches, and then instantly reversed the position of the legs and circled in the opposite direction, gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the female. now she dashes toward him, while he, raising his first pair of legs, extends them upward and forward as if to hold her off, but withal slowly retreats. again and again he circles from side to side, she gazing toward him in a softer mood, evidently admiring the grace of his antics. this is repeated until we have counted one hundred and eleven circles made by the ardent little male. now he approaches nearer and nearer, and when almost within reach whirls madly around and around her, she joining and whirling with him in a giddy maze. again he falls back and resumes his semicircular motions, with his body tilted over; she, all excitement, lowers her head and raises her body so that it is almost vertical; both draw nearer; she moves slowly under him, he crawling over her head, and the mating is accomplished." the same author thus describes the courtship of _dendryphantes elegans_: "while from three to five inches distant from her, he begins to wave his plumy first legs in a way that reminds one of a windmill. she eyes him fiercely, and he keeps at a proper distance for a long time. if he comes close she dashes at him, and he quickly retreats. sometimes he becomes bolder, and when within an inch, pauses, with the first legs outstretched before him, not raised as is common in other species; the palpi also are held stiffly out in front with the points together. again she drives him off, and so the play continues. now the male grows excited as he approaches her, and while still several inches away, whirls completely around and around; pausing, he runs closer and begins to make his abdomen quiver as he stands on tiptoe in front of her. prancing from side to side, he grows bolder and bolder, while she seems less fierce, and yielding to the excitement, lifts up her magnificently iridescent abdomen, holding it at one time vertical, and at another sideways to him. she no longer rushes at him, but retreats a little as he approaches. at last he comes close to her, lying flat, with his first legs stretched out and quivering. with the tips of his front legs he gently pats her; this seems to arouse the old demon of resistance, and she drives him back. again and again he pats her with a caressing movement, gradually creeping nearer and nearer, which she now permits without resistance, until he crawls over her head to her abdomen, far enough to reach the epigynum with his palpus." (g.w. peckham, "sexual selection of spiders," _occasional papers of the natural history society of wisconsin_, , quoted in _nature_, august , .) the courtship of another spider, the _agelena labyrinthica_, has been studied by lécaillon ("les instincts et les psychismes des araignées," _revue scientifique_, sept. , .) the male enters the female's web and may be found there about the middle of july. when courtship has begun it is not interrupted by the closest observation, even under the magnifying glass. at first it is the male which seeks to couple and he pursues the female over her web till she consents. the pursuit may last some hours, the male agitating his abdomen in a peculiar way, while the female simply retreats a short distance without allowing herself to be approached. at last the female holds herself completely motionless, and then the male approaches, seizes her, places her on her side, sometimes carrying her to a more suitable part of the web. then one of his copulative apparatus is applied to the female genital opening, and copulation begins. when completed (on an average in about two hours) the male withdraws his copulatory palpus and turns over the female, who is still inert, on to her other side, then brings his second copulatory apparatus to the female opening and starts afresh. when the process is definitely completed the male leaves the female, suddenly retiring to a little distance. the female, who had remained completely motionless for four hours, suddenly runs after the male. but she only pursues him for a short distance, and the two spiders remain together without any danger to either. lécaillon disbelieves the statement of romanes (in his _animal intelligence_) that the female eats the male after copulation. but this certainly seems to occur sometimes among insects, as illustrated by the following instance described by so careful an observer of insects as fabre. the _mantis religiosa_ is described by fabre as contemplating the female for a long time in an attitude of ecstasy. she remains still and seems indifferent. he is small and she is large. at last he approaches; spreads his wings, which tremble convulsively; leaps on her back, and fixes himself there. the preludes are long and the coupling itself sometimes occupies five or six hours. then they separate. but the same day or the following day she seizes him and eats him up in small mouthfuls. she will permit a whole series of males to have intercourse with her, always eating them up directly afterward. fabre has even seen her eating the male while still on her back, his head and neck gone, but his body still firmly attached. (j.h. fabre, _souvenirs entomologiques_, fifth series, p. .) fabre also describes in great detail (ibid., ninth series, chs. xxi-xxii) the sexual parades of the languedoc scorpion (_scorpio occitanus_), an arachnid. these parades are in public; for their subsequent intercourse the couple seek complete seclusion, and the female finally eats the male. an insect (a species of _empis_) has been described which excites the female by manipulating a large balloon. "this is of elliptical shape, about seven millimeters long (nearly twice as long as the fly), hollow, and composed entirely of a single layer of minute bubbles, nearly uniform in size, arranged in regular circles concentric with the axis of the structure. the beautiful, glistening whiteness of the object when the sun shines upon it makes it very conspicuous. the bubbles were slightly viscid, and in nearly every case there was a small fly pressed into the front end of the balloon, apparently as food for the _empis_. in all cases they were dead. the balloon appears to be made while the insect is flying in the air. those flying highest had the smallest balloons. the bubbles are probably produced by some modification of the anal organs. it is possible that the captured fly serves as a nucleus to begin the balloon on. one case of a captured fly but no balloon was observed. after commencing, it is probable that the rest of the structure is made by revolving the completed part between the hind legs and adding more bubbles somewhat spirally. the posterior end of the balloon is left more or less open. the purpose of this structure is to attract the female. when numerous males were flying up and down the road, it happened several times that a female was seen to approach them from some choke-cherry blossoms near by. the males immediately gathered in her path, and she with little hesitation selected for a mate the one with the largest balloon, taking a position _upon his back_. after copulation had begun, the pair would settle down toward the ground, select a quiet spot, and the female would alight by placing her front legs across a horizontal grass blade, her head resting against the blade so as to brace the body in position. here she would continue to hold the male beneath her for a little time, until the process was finished. the male, meanwhile, would be rolling the balloon about in a variety of positions, juggling with it, one might almost say. after the male and female parted company, the male immediately dropped the balloon upon the ground, and it was greedily seized by ants. no illustration could properly show the beauty of the balloon." (aldrich and turley, "a balloon-making fly," _american naturalist_, october, .) "in many species of moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on early arrival. the female sits apparently motionless, while the little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes. suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others immediately disappear. in these cases the males do not fight or struggle in any way, and as one watches the ceremony the wonder arises as to how the moment is determined, and why the pairing did not take place before. proximity does not decide the point, for long beforehand the males often alight close to the female and brush against her with fluttering wings. i have watched the process exactly as i have described it in a common northern _noctua_, the antler moth (_charæax graminis_), and i have seen the same thing among beetles." (e.b. poulton, _the colors of animals_, , p. .) this author mentions that among some butterflies the females take the active part. the example here quoted of courtship among moths illustrates how phenomena which are with difficulty explicable by the theory of sexual selection in its original form become at once intelligible when we realize the importance of tumescence in courtship. of the argentine cow-bird (_molothrus bonariensis_) hudson says (_argentine ornithology_, vol. i, p. ): "the song of the male, particularly when making love, is accompanied with gestures and actions somewhat like those of the domestic pigeon. he swells himself out, beating the ground with his wings, and uttering a series of deep internal notes, followed by others loud and clear; and occasionally, when uttering them, he suddenly takes wing and flies directly away from the female to a distance of fifty yards, and performs a wide circuit about her in the air, singing all the time. the homely object of his passion always appears utterly indifferent to this curious and pretty performance; yet she must be even more impressionable than most female birds, since she continues scattering about her parasitical and often wasted eggs during four months in every year." of a tyrant-bird (_pitangus bolivianus_) hudson writes (_argentine ornithology_, vol. i, p. ): "though the male and female are greatly attached, they do not go afield to hunt in company, but separate to meet again at intervals during the day. one of a couple (say, the female) returns to the trees where they are accustomed to meet, and after a time, becoming impatient or anxious at the delay of her consort, utters a very long, clear call-note. he is perhaps a quarter of a mile away, watching for a frog beside a pool, or beating over a thistle-bed, but he hears the note and presently responds with one of equal power. then, perhaps, for half an hour, at intervals of half a minute, the birds answer each other, though the powerful call of the one must interfere with his hunting. at length he returns; then the two birds, perched close together, with their yellow bosoms almost touching, crests elevated, and beating the branch with their wings, scream their loudest notes in concert--a confused jubilant noise that rings through the whole plantation. their joy at meeting is patent, and their action corresponds to the warm embrace of a loving human couple." of the red-breasted marsh-bird (_leistes superciliaris_) hudson (_argentine ornithology_, vol. i, p. ) writes: "these birds are migratory, and appear everywhere in the eastern part of the argentine country early in october, arriving singly, after which each male takes up a position in a field or open space abounding with coarse grass and herbage, where he spends most of his time perched on the summit of a tall stalk or weed, his glowing crimson bosom showing at a distance like some splendid flower above the herbage. at intervals of two or three minutes he soars vertically up to a height of twenty or twenty-five yards to utter his song, composed of a single long, powerful and rather musical note, ending with an attempt at a flourish, during which the bird flutters and turns about in the air; then, as if discouraged at his failure, he drops down, emitting harsh, guttural chirps, to resume his stand. meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping closely concealed under the long grass. but at length, attracted perhaps by the bright bosom and aërial music of the male, she occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently drops into the grass once more. the moment she appears above the grass the male gives chase, and they vanish from sight together." "courtship with the mallard," says j.g. millais (_natural history of british ducks_, p. ), "appears to be carried on by both sexes, though generally three or four drakes are seen showing themselves off to attract the attention of a single duck. swimming round her, in a coy and semi-self-conscious manner, they now and again all stop quite still, nod, bow, and throw their necks out in token of their admiration and their desire of a favorable response. but the most interesting display is when all the drakes simultaneously stand up in the water and rapidly pass their bills down their breasts, uttering at the same time a low single note somewhat like the first half of the call that teal and pintail make when 'showing off.' at other times the love-making of the drake seems to be rather passive than active. while graciously allowing himself to be courted, he holds his head high with conscious pride, and accepts as a matter of course any attention that may be paid to him. a proud bird is he when three or four ducks come swimming along beside and around him, uttering a curious guttural note, and at the same time dipping their bills in quick succession to right and left. he knows what that means, and carries himself with even greater dignity than before. in the end, however, he must give in. as a last appeal, one of his lady lovers may coyly lower herself in the water till only the top of her back, head, and neck is seen, and so fascinating an advance as this no drake of any sensibility can withstand." the courting of the argus pheasant, noted for the extreme beauty of the male's plumage, was observed by h.o. forbes in sumatra. it is the habit of this bird to make "a large circus, some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in the forest, which it clears of every leaf and twig and branch, till the ground is perfectly swept and garnished. on the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch or high-arched root, at a few feet elevation above the ground, on which the female bird takes its place, while in the ring the male--the male birds alone possess great decoration--shows off all its magnificence for the gratification and pleasure of his consort and to exalt himself in her eyes." (h.o. forbes, _a. naturalist's wanderings_, , p. .) "all ostriches, adults as well as chicks, have a strange habit known as 'waltzing.' after running for a few hundred yards they will also stop, and, with raised wings, spin around rapidly for some time after until quite giddy, when a broken leg occasionally occurs.... vicious cocks 'roll' when challenging to fight or when wooing the hen. the cock will suddenly bump down on to his knees (the ankle-joint), open his wings, and then swing them alternately backward and forward, as if on a pivot.... while rolling, every feather over the whole body is on end, and the plumes are open, like a large white fan. at such a time the bird sees very imperfectly, if at all; in fact, he seems so preoccupied that, if pursued, one may often approach unnoticed. just before rolling, a cock, especially if courting the hen, will often run slowly and daintily on the points of his toes, with neck slightly inflated, upright, and rigid, the tail half-drooped, and all his body-feathers fluffed up; the wings raised and expanded, the inside edges touching the sides of the neck for nearly the whole of its length, and the plumes showing separately, like an open fan. in no other attitude is the splendid beauty of his plumage displayed to such advantage." (s.c. cronwright schreiner, "the ostrich," _zoölogist_, march, .) as may be seen from the foregoing fairly typical examples, the phenomena of courtship are highly developed, and have been most carefully studied, in animals outside the mammal series. it may seem a long leap from birds to man; yet, as will be seen, the phenomena among primitive human peoples, if not, indeed, among many civilized peoples also, closely resemble those found among birds, though, unfortunately, they have not usually been so carefully studied. in australia, where dancing is carried to a high pitch of elaboration, its association with the sexual impulse is close and unmistakable. thus, mr. samuel gason (of whom it has been said that "no man living has been more among blacks or knows more of their ways") remarks concerning a dance of the dieyerie tribe: "this dance men and women only take part in, in regular form and position, keeping splendid time to the rattle of the beat of two boomerangs; some of the women keep time by clapping their hands between their thighs; promiscuous sexual intercourse follows after the dance; jealousy is forbidden." again, at the mobierrie, or rat-harvest, "many weeks' preparation before the dance comes off; no quarreling is allowed; promiscuous sexual intercourse during the ceremony." the fact that jealousy is forbidden at these festivals clearly indicates that sexual intercourse is a recognized and probably essential element in the ceremonies. this is further emphasized by the fact that at other festivals open sexual intercourse is not allowed. thus, at the mindarie, or dance at a peace festival (when a number of tribes comes together), "there is great rejoicing at the coming festival, which is generally held at the full of the moon, and kept up all night. the men are artistically decorated with down and feathers, with all kinds of designs. the down and feathers are stuck on their bodies with blood freshly taken from their penis; they are also nicely painted with various colors; tufts of boughs are tied on their ankles to make a noise while dancing. promiscuous sexual intercourse is carried on _secretly_; many quarrels occur at this time." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xxiv, november, , p. .) in australian dances, sometimes men and women dance together, sometimes the men dance alone, sometimes the women. in one dance described by eyre: "women are the chief performers; their bodies are painted with white streaks, and their hair adorned with cockatoo feathers. they carry large sticks in their hands, and place themselves in a row in front, while the men with their spears stand in a row behind them. they then all commence their movements, but without intermingling, the males and females dancing by themselves. the women have occasionally another mode of dancing, by joining the hands together over the head, closing the feet, and bringing the knees into contact. the legs are then thrown outward from the knee, while the feet and hands are kept in their original position, and, being drawn quickly in again, a sharp sound is produced by the collision. this is also practised alone by young girls or by several together for their own amusement. it is adopted also when a single woman is placed in front of a row of male dancers to excite their passions." (e.j. eyre, _journals of expeditions into central australia_, vol. ii, p. .) a charming australian folk-tale concerning two sisters with wings, who disliked men, and their wooing by a man, clearly indicates, even among the australians (whose love-making is commonly supposed to be somewhat brutal in character), the consciousness that it is by his beauty, charm, and skill in courtship that a man wins a woman. unahanach, the lover, stole unperceived to the river where the girls were bathing and at last showed himself carelessly sitting on a high tree. the girls were startled, but thought it would be safe to amuse themselves by looking at the intruder. "young and with the most active figure, yet of a strength that defied the strongest emu, and even enabled him to resist an 'old man' kangaroo, he had no equal in the chase, and conscious power gave a dignity to his expression that at one glance calmed the fears of the two girls. his large brilliant eyes, shaded by a deep fringe of soft black eyelashes, gazed down upon them admiringly, and his rich black hair hung around his well-formed face, smooth and shining from the emu-oil with which it was abundantly covered." at last he persuaded them to talk and by and by induced them to call him husband. then they went off with him, with no thought of flight in their hearts. ("australian folklore stories," collected by w. dunlop, _journal of the anthropological institute_, new series, vol. i, , p. .) of the people of torres straits haddon states (_reports anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. ): "it was during the secular dance, or _kap_, that the girls usually lost their hearts to the young men. a young man who was a good dancer would find favor in the sight of the girls. this can be readily understood by anyone who has seen the active, skilful, and fatiguing dances of these people. a young man who could acquit himself well in these dances must be possessed of no mean strength and agility, qualities which everywhere appeal to the opposite sex. further, he was decorated, according to local custom, with all that would render him more imposing in the eyes of the spectators. as the former chief of mabuiag put it, 'in england if a man has plenty of money, women want to marry him; so here, if a man dances well they too want him.' in olden days the war-dance, which was performed after a successful foray, would be the most powerful excitement to a marriageable girl, especially if a young man had distinguished himself sufficiently to bring home the head of someone he had killed." among the tribes inhabiting the mouth of the wanigela river, new guinea, "when a boy admires a girl, he will not look at her, speak to her, or go near her. he, however, shows his love by athletic bounds, posing, and pursuit, and by the spearing of imaginary enemies, etc., before her, to attract her attention. if the girl reciprocates his love she will employ a small girl to give to him an _ugauga gauna_, or love invitation, consisting of an areca-nut whose skin has been marked with different designs, significant of her wish to _ugauga_. after dark he is apprised of the place where the girl awaits him; repairing thither, he seats himself beside her as close as possible, and they mutually share in the consumption of the betel-nut." this constitutes betrothal; henceforth he is free to visit the girl's house and sleep there. marriages usually take place at the most important festival of the year, the _kapa_, preparations for which are made during the three previous months, so that there may be a bountiful and unfailing supply of bananas. much dancing takes place among the unmarried girls, who, also, are tattooed at this time over the whole of the front of the body, special attention being paid to the lower parts, as a girl who is not properly tattooed there possesses no attraction in the eyes of young men. married women and widows and divorced women are not forbidden to take part in these dances, but it would be considered ridiculous for them to do so. (r.e. guise, "on the tribes of the wanigela river," _journal of the anthropological institute_, new series, vol. i, , pp. , et seq.) in the island of nias in the malay archipelago, modigliani (mainly on the excellent authority of sundermann, the missionary) states, at a wedding "dancing and singing go on throughout the day. the women, two or three at a time, a little apart from the men, take part in the dancing, which is very well adapted to emphasize the curves of the flanks and the breasts, though at the same time the defects of their legs are exhibited in this series of rhythmic contortions which constitute a nias dance. the most graceful movement they execute is a lascivious undulation of the flanks while the face and breast are slowly wound round by the _sarong_ [a sort of skirt] held in the hands, and then again revealed. these movements are executed with jerks of the wrist and contortions of the flanks, not always graceful, but which excite the admiration of the spectators, even of the women, who form in groups to sing in chorus a compliment, more or less sincere, in which they say: 'they dance with the grace of birds when they fly. they dance as the hawk flies; it is lovely to see.' they sing and dance both at weddings and at other festivals." (elio modigliani, _un viaggio a nias_, , p. .) in sumatra marsden states that chastity prevails more, perhaps, than among any other people: "but little apparent courtship precedes their marriages. their manners do not admit of it, the _boojong_ and _geddas_ (youths of each sex) being carefully kept asunder and the latter seldom trusted from under the wings of their mothers.... the opportunities which the young people have of seeing and conversing with each other are at the _birnbangs_, or public festivals. on these occasions the young people meet together and dance and sing in company. the men, when determined in their regard, generally employ an old woman as their agent, by whom they make known their sentiments, and send presents to the female of their choice. the parents then interfere, and the preliminaries being settled, a _birnbang_ takes place. the young women proceed in a body to the upper end of the _balli_ (hall), where there is a part divided off for them by a curtain. they do not always make their appearance before dinner, that time, previous to a second or third meal, being appropriated to cock-fighting or other diversions peculiar to men. in the evening their other amusements take place, of which the dances are the principal. these are performed either singly or by two women, two men, or with both mixed. their motions and attitudes are usually slow, approaching often to the lascivious. they bend forward as they dance, and usually carry a fan, which they close and strike smartly against their elbows at particular cadences.... the assembly seldom breaks up before daylight and these _birnbangs_ are often continued for several days together. the young men frequent them in order to look out for wives, and the lasses of course set themselves off to the best advantage. they wear their best silken dresses, of their own weaving, as many ornaments of filigree as they possess, silver rings upon their arms and legs, and ear-rings of a particular construction. their hair is variously adorned with flowers, and perfumed with oil of benjamin. civet is also in repute, but more used by the men. to render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of a white cosmetic called _poopoor_ [a mixture of ginger, patch-leaf, maize, sandal-wood, fairy-cotton, and mush-seed with a basis of fine rice]." (w. marsden, _history of sumatra_, , p. .) the alfurus of seram in the moluccas, who have not yet been spoilt by foreign influences, are very fond of music and dancing. their _maku_ dances, which take place at night, have been described by joest: "great torches of dry bamboos and piles of burning resinous leaves light up the giant trees to their very summits and reveal in the distance the little huts which the alfuras have built in the virgin forests, as well as the skulls of the slain. the women squat together by the fire, making a deafening noise with the gongs and the drums, while the young girls, richly adorned with pearls and fragrant flowers, await the beginning of the dance. then appear the men and youths without weapons, but in full war-costume, the girdle freshly marked with the number of slain enemies. [among the alfuras it is the man who has the largest number of heads to show who has most chance of winning the object of his love.] they hold each other's arms and form a circle, which is not, however, completely closed. a song is started, and with small, slow steps this ring of bodies, like a winding snake, moves sideways, backward, closes, opens again, the steps become heavier, the songs and drums louder, the girls enter the circle and with closed eyes grasp the girdle of their chosen youths, who clasp them by the hips and necks, the chain becomes longer and longer, the dance and song more ardent, until the dancers grow tired and disappear in the gloom of the forest." (w. joest, _welt-fahrten_, , bd. ii, p. .) the women of the new hebrides dance, or rather sway, to and fro in the midst of a circle formed by the men, with whom they do not directly mingle. they leap, show their genital parts to the men, and imitate the movements of coitus. meanwhile the men unfasten the _manou_ (penis-wrap) from their girdles with one hand, with the other imitating the action of seizing a woman, and, excited by the women, also go through a mock copulation. sometimes, it is said, the dancers masturbate. this takes place amid plaintive songs, interrupted from time to time by loud cries and howls. (_untrodden fields of anthropology_, by a french army-surgeon, , vol. ii, p. .) among the hill tribes of the central indian hills may be traced a desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied in vegetation. this appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which is carried out on a date associated not only with the growths of the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for marriage and the annual saturnalia. (w. crooke, "the hill tribes," _journal of the anthropological institute_, new series, vol. i, , p. .) the association of dancing with seasonal ritual festivals of a generative character--of which the above is a fairly typical instance--leads us to another aspect of these phenomena on which i have elsewhere touched in these _studies_ (vol. i) when discussing the "phenomena of periodicity." the tahitians, when first discovered by europeans, appear to have been highly civilized on the sexual side and very licentious. yet even at tahiti, when visited by cook, the strict primitive relationship between dancing and courtship still remained traceable. cook found "a dance called timorodee, which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. but the practice which is allowed to the virgin is prohibited to the woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in practice and realized the symbols of the dance." he added, however, that among the specially privileged class of the areoi these limitations were not observed, for he had heard that this dance was sometimes performed by them as a preliminary to sexual intercourse. (hawkesworth, _an account of the voyages_, etc., , vol. ii, p. .) among the marquesans at the marriage of a woman, even of high rank, she lies with her head at the bridegroom's knees and all the male guests come in single file, singing and dancing--those of lower class first and the great chiefs last--and have connection with the woman. there are often a very large number of guests and the bride is sometimes so exhausted at the end that she has to spend several days in bed. (tautain, "etude sur le mariage chez les polynésiens," _l'anthropologie_, november-december, , p. .) the interesting point for us here is that singing and dancing are still regarded as a preliminary to a sexual act. it has been noted that in sexual matters the polynesians, when first discovered by europeans, had largely gone beyond the primitive stage, and that this applies also to some of their dances. thus the _hula-hula_ dance, while primitive in origin, may probably be compared more to a civilized than to a primitive dance, since it has become divorced from real life. in the same way, while the sexual pantomime dance of the azimba girls of central africa has a direct and recognized relationship to the demands of real life, the somewhat allied _danses du ventre_ of the hamitic peoples of northern africa are merely an amusement, a play more or less based on the sexual instinct. at the same time it is important to bear in mind that there is no rigid distinction between dances that are, and those that are not, primitive. as haddon truly points out in a book containing valuable detailed descriptions of dances, even among savages dances are so developed that it is difficult to trace their origin, and at torres straits, he remarks, "there are certainly play or secular dances, dances for pure amusement without any ulterior design." (a.c. haddon, _head hunters_, p. .) when we remember that dancing had probably become highly developed long before man appeared on the earth, this difficulty in determining the precise origin of human dancing cannot cause surprise. spix and martius described how the muras of brazil by moonlight would engage all night in a bacchantic dance in a great circle, hand in hand, the men on one side, the women on the other, shouting out all the time, the men "who will marry me?" the women, "you are a beautiful devil; all women will marry you," (spix and martius, _reise in brasilien_, , vol. iii, p. .) they also described in detail the dance of the brazilian puris, performed in a state of complete nakedness, the men in a row, the women in another row behind them. they danced backward and forward, stamping and singing, at first in a slow and melancholy style, but gradually with increasing vigor and excitement. then the women began to rotate the pelvis backward and forward, and the men to thrust their bodies forward, the dance becoming a pantomimic representation of sexual intercourse (ibid., vol. i, , pp. - ). among the apinages of brazil, also, the women stand in a row, almost motionless, while the men dance and leap in front of them, both men and women at the same time singing. (buscalioni, "reise zu den apinages," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) among the gilas of new mexico, "when a young man sees a girl whom he desires for a wife, he first endeavors to gain the good-will of the parents; this accomplished, he proceeds to serenade his lady-love, and will often sit for hours, day after day, near her home, playing on his flute. should the girl not appear, it is a sign she rejects him; but if, on the other hand, she comes out to meet him, he knows that his suit is accepted, and he takes her to his home. no marriage ceremony is performed."[ ] (h.h. bancroft, _native races of the pacific_, vol. i, p. .) "among the minnetarees a singular night-dance is, it is said, sometimes held. during this amusement an opportunity is given to the squaws to select their favorites. a squaw, as she dances, will advance to a person with whom she is captivated, either for his personal attractions or for his renown in arms; she taps him on the shoulder and immediately runs out of the lodge and betakes herself to the bushes, followed by the favorite. but if it should happen that he has a particular preference for another from whom he expects the same favor, or if he is restrained by a vow, or is already satiated with indulgence, he politely declines her offer by placing his hand in her bosom, on which they return to the assembly and rejoin the dance." it is worthy of remark that in the language of the omahas the word _watche_ applies equally to the amusement of dancing and to sexual intercourse. (s.h. long, _expedition to the rocky mountains_, , vol. i, p. .) at a kaffir marriage "singing and dancing last until midnight. each party [the bride's and the bridegroom's] dances in front of the other, but they do not mingle together. as the evening advances, the spirits and passions of all become greatly excited; and the power of song, the display of muscular action, and the gesticulations of the dancers and leapers are something extraordinary. the manner in which, at certain times, one man or woman, more excited than the rest, bounds from the ranks, leaps into the air, bounces forward, and darts backward beggars all description. these violent exercises usually close about midnight, when each party retires; generally, each man selects a paramour, and, indulging in sexual gratification, spends the remainder of the night." (w.c. holden, _the kaffir race_, , p. .) at the initiation of kaffir boys into manhood, as described by holden, they were circumcised. "cattle are then slaughtered by the parents, and the boys are plentifully supplied with flesh meat; a good deal of dancing also ensues at this stage of the proceedings. the _ukut-shila_ consists in attiring themselves with the leaves of the wild date in the most fantastic manner; thus attired they visit each of the kraals to which they belong in rotation, for the purpose of dancing. these dances are the most licentious which can be imagined. the women act a prominent part in them, and endeavor to excite the passions of the novices by performing all sorts of obscene gesticulations. as soon as the soreness occasioned by the act of circumcision is healed the boys are, as it were, let loose upon society, and exempted from nearly all the restraints of law; so that should they even steal and slaughter their neighbor's cattle they would not be punished; and they have the special privilege of seizing by force, if force be necessary, every unmarried woman they choose, for the purpose of gratifying their passions." similar festivals take place at the initiation of girls. (w.c. holden, _the kaffir race_, , p. .) the rev. j. macdonald has described the ceremonies and customs attending and following the initiation-rites of a young girl on her first menstruation among the zulus between the tugela and delagoa bay. at this time the girl is called an _intonjane_. a beast is killed as a thank-offering to the ancestral spirits, high revel is held for several days, and dancing and music take place every night till those engaged in it are all exhausted or daylight arrives. "after a few days and when dancing has been discontinued, young men and girls congregate in the outer apartment of the hut, and begin singing, clapping their hands, and making a grunting noise to show their joy. at nightfall most of the young girls who were the intonjane's attendants, leave for their own homes for the night, to return the following morning. thereafter the young men and girls who gathered into the hut in the afternoon separate into pairs and sleep together _in puris naturalibus_, for that is strictly ordained by custom. sexual intercourse is not allowed, but what is known as _metsha_ or _ukumetsha_ is the sole purpose of the novel arrangement. _ukumetsha_ may be defined as partial intercourse. every man who sleeps thus with a girl has to send to the father of the intonjane an assegai; should he have formed an attachment for his partner of the night and wish to pay her his addresses, he sends two assegais." (rev. j. macdonald, "manners, etc., of south african tribes," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xx, november, , p. .) goncourt reports the account given him by a french officer from senegal of the dances of the women, "a dance which is a gentle oscillation of the body, with gradually increasing excitement, from time to time a woman darting forward from the group to stand in front of her lover, contorting herself as though in a passionate embrace, and, on passing her hand between her thighs, showing it covered with the moisture of amorous enjoyment." (_journal_, vol. ix, p. .) the dance here referred to is probably the bamboula dance of the wolofs, a spring festival which has been described by pierre loti in his _roman d'un spahi_, and concerning which various details are furnished by a french army-surgeon, acquainted with senegal, in his _untrodden fields of anthropology_. the dance, as described by the latter, takes place at night during full moon, the dancers, male and female, beginning timidly, but, as the beat of the tam-tams and the encouraging cries of the spectators become louder, the dance becomes more furious. the native name of the dance is _anamalis fobil_, "the dance of the treading drake." "the dancer in his movements imitates the copulation of the great indian duck. this drake has a member of a corkscrew shape, and a peculiar movement is required to introduce it into the duck. the woman tucks up her clothes and convulsively agitates the lower part of her body; she alternately shows her partner her vulva and hides it from him by a regular movement, backward and forward, of the body." (_untrodden fields of anthropology_, paris, , vol. ii, p. .) among the gurus of the ivory coast (gulf of guinea), eysséric observes, dancing is usually carried on at night and more especially by the men, and on certain occasions women must not appear, for if they assisted at fetichistic dances "they would die." under other circumstances men and women dance together with ardor, not forming couples but often _vis-à-vis_: their movements are lascivious. even the dances following a funeral tend to become sexual in character. at the end of the rites attending the funeral of a chief's son the entire population began to dance with ever-growing ardor; there was nothing ritualistic or sad in these contortions, which took on the character of a lascivious dance. men and women, boys and girls, young and old, sought to rival each other in suppleness, and the festival became joyous and general, as if in celebration of a marriage or a victory. (eysséric, "la côte d'ivoire," _nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques_, tome ix, , pp. - .) mrs. french-sheldon has described the marriage-rites she observed at taveta in east africa. "during this time the young people dance and carouse and make themselves generally merry and promiscuously drunk, carrying the excess of their dissipation to such an extent that they dance until they fall down in a species of epileptic fit." it is the privilege of the bridegroom's four groomsmen to enjoy the bride first, and she is then handed over to her legitimate husband. this people, both men and women, are "great dancers and merry-makers; the young fellows will collect in groups and dance as though in competition one with the other; one lad will dash out from the circle of his companions, rush into the middle of a circumscribed space, and scream out 'wow, wow!' another follows him and screams; then a third does the same. these men will dance with their knees almost rigid, jumping into the air until their excitement becomes very great and their energy almost spasmodic, leaving the ground frequently three feet as they spring into the air. at some of their festivals their dancing is carried to such an extent that i have seen a young fellow's muscles quiver from head to foot and his jaws tremble without any apparent ability on his part to control them, until, foaming at the mouth and with his eyes rolling, he falls in a paroxysm upon the ground, to be carried off by his companions." the writer adds significantly that this dancing "would seem to emanate from a species of voluptuousness." (mrs. french-sheldon, "customs among the natives of east africa," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xxi, may, , pp. - .) it may be added that among the suaheli dances are intimately associated with weddings; the suaheli dances have been minutely described by velten (_sitten und gebraüche der suaheli_, pp. - ). among the akamba of british east africa, also, according to h.r. tate (_journal of the anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. ), the dances are followed by connection between the young men and girls, approved of by the parents. the dances of the faroe islanders have been described by raymond pilet ("rapport sur une mission en islande et aux lies féroë," _nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques_, tome vii, , p. ). these dances, which are entirely decorous, include poetry, music, and much mimicry, especially of battle. they sometimes last for two consecutive days and nights. "the dance is simply a permitted and discreet method by which the young men may court the young girls. the islander enters the circle and places himself beside the girl to whom he desires to show his affection; if he meets with her approval she stays and continues to dance at his side; if not, she leaves the circle and appears later at another spot." pitre (_usi, etc., del popolo siciliano_, vol. ii, p. , as quoted in marro's _pubertà_) states that in sicily the youth who wishes to marry seeks to give some public proof of his valor and to show himself off. in chiaramonte, in evidence of his virile force, he bears in procession the standard of some confraternity, a high and richly adorned standard which makes its staff bend to a semicircle, of such enormous weight that the bearer must walk in a painfully bent position, his head thrown back and his feet forward. on reaching the house of his betrothed he makes proof of his boldness and skill in wielding this extremely heavy standard which at this moment seems a plaything in his hands, but may yet prove fatal to him through injury to the loins or other parts. this same tendency, which we find in so highly developed a degree among animals and primitive human peoples, is also universal among the children of even the most civilized human races, although in a less organized and more confused way. it manifests itself as "showing-off." sanford bell, in his study of the emotion of love in children, finds that "showing-off" is an essential element in the love of children in what he terms the second stage (from the eighth to the twelfth year in girls and the fourteenth in boys). "it constitutes one of the chief numbers in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent from the girl's. it is a most common sight to see the boys taxing their resources in devising means of exposing their own excellencies, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant things. running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling, turning handsprings, somersaults, climbing, walking fences, swinging, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the movements of animals, 'taking people off,' courting danger, affecting courage are some of its common forms.... this 'showing-off' in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skilful, purposive, and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult male and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their love-relations." (sanford bell, "the emotion of love between the sexes," _american journal psychology_, july, ; cf. "showing-off and bashfulness," _pedagogical seminary_, june, .) if, in the light of the previous discussion, we examine such facts as those here collected, we may easily trace throughout the perpetual operations of the same instinct. it is everywhere the instinctive object of the male, who is very rarely passive in the process of courtship, to assure by his activity in display, his energy or skill or beauty, both his own passion and the passion of the female. throughout nature sexual conjugation only takes place after much expenditure of energy.[ ] we are deceived by what we see among highly fed domesticated animals, and among the lazy classes of human society, whose sexual instincts are at once both unnaturally stimulated and unnaturally repressed, when we imagine that the instinct of detumescence is normally ever craving to be satisfied, and that throughout nature it can always be set off at a touch whenever the stimulus is applied. so far from the instinct of tumescence naturally needing to be crushed, it needs, on the contrary, in either sex to be submitted to the most elaborate and prolonged processes in order to bring about those conditions which detumescence relieves. a state of tumescence is not normally constant, and tumescence must be obtained before detumescence is possible.[ ] the whole object of courtship, of the mutual approximation and caresses of two persons of the opposite sex, is to create the state of sexual tumescence. it will be seen that the most usual method of attaining tumescence--a method found among the most various kinds of animals, from insects and birds to man--is some form of the dance. among the negritos of the philippines dancing is described by a.b. meyer as "jumping in a circle around a girl and stamping with the feet"; as we have seen, such a dance is, essentially, a form of courtship that is widespread among animals. "the true cake-walk," again, stanley hall remarks, "as seen in the south is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen in man."[ ] muscular movement of which the dance is the highest and most complex expression, is undoubtedly a method of auto-intoxication of the very greatest potency. all energetic movement, indeed, tends to produce active congestion. in its influence on the brain violent exercise may thus result in a state of intoxication even resembling insanity. as lagrange remarks, the visible effects of exercise--heightened color, bright eyes, resolute air and walk--are those of slight intoxication, and a girl who has waltzed for a quarter of an hour is in the same condition as if she had drunk champagne.[ ] groos regards the dance as, above all, an intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of intoxication,--and even apart from its relationship to combat and love,--the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and lead us into a self-created dream-world.[ ] that the dance is not only a narcotic, but also a powerful stimulant, we may clearly realize from the experiments which show that this effect is produced even by much less complex kinds of muscular movement. this has been clearly determined, for instance, by féré, in the course of a long and elaborate series of experiments dealing with the various influences that modify work as measured by mosso's ergograph. this investigator found that muscular movement is the most efficacious of all stimulants in increasing muscular power.[ ] it is easy to trace these pleasurable effects of combined narcotic and stimulant motion in everyday life and it is unnecessary to enumerate its manifestations.[ ] dancing is so powerful an agent on the organism, as sergi truly remarks (_les emotions_, p. ), because its excitation is general, because it touches every vital organ, the higher centers no longer dominating. primitive dancing differs very widely from that civilized kind of dancing--finding its extreme type in the ballet--in which energy is concentrated into the muscles below the knee. in the finest kinds of primitive dancing all the limbs, the whole body, take part. for instance, "the marquisan girls," herman melville remarked in _typee_, "dance all over, as it were; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers,--ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads. in good sooth, they so sway their floating forms, arch their necks, toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl," etc. if we turn to a very different people, we find this characteristic of primitive dancing admirably illustrated by the missionary, holden, in the case of kaffir dances. "so far as i have observed," he states, "the perfection of the art or science consists in their _being able to put every part of the body into motion at the same time_. and as they are naked, the bystander has a good opportunity of observing the whole process, which presents a remarkably odd and grotesque appearance,--the head, the trunk, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet, bones, muscles, sinews, skin, scalp, and hair, each and all in motion at the same time, with feathers waving, tails of monkeys and wild beasts dangling, and shields beating, accompanied with whistling, shouting, and leaping. it would appear as though the whole frame was hung on springing wires or cords. dances are held in high repute, being the natural expression of joyous emotion, or creating it when absent. there is, perhaps, no exercise in greater accordance with the sentiments or feelings of a barbarous people, or more fully calculated to gratify their wild and ungoverned passions." (w.c. holden, _the kaffir race_, , p. .) dancing, as the highest and most complex form of muscular movement, is the most potent method of obtaining the organic excitement muscular movement yields, and thus we understand how from the earliest zoölogical ages it has been brought to the service of the sexual instinct as a mode of attaining tumescence. among savages this use of dancing works harmoniously with the various other uses which dancing possesses in primitive times and which cause it to occupy so large and vital a part in savage life that it may possibly even affect the organism to such an extent as to mold the bones; so that some authorities have associated platycnemia with dancing. as civilization advances, the other uses of dancing fall away, but it still remains a sexual stimulant. burton, in his _anatomy of melancholy_, brings forward a number of quotations from old authors showing that dancing is an incitement to love.[ ] the catholic theologians (debreyne, _moechialogie_, pp. - ) for the most part condemn dancing with much severity. in protestant germany, also, it is held that dance meetings and musical gatherings are frequent occasions of unchastity. thus in the leipzig district when a girl is asked "how did you fall?" she nearly always replies "at the dance." (_die geschlechtlich-sittliche verhältnisse im deutschen reiche_, vol. i, p. .) it leads quite as often, and no doubt oftener, to marriage. rousseau defended it on this account (_nouvelle heloïse_, bk. iv, letter x); dancing is, he held, an admirable preliminary to courtship, and the best way for young people to reveal themselves to each other, in their grace and decorum, their qualities and defects, while its publicity is its safeguard. an international congress of dancing masters was held at barcelona in . in connection with this congress, giraudet, president of the international academy of dancing masters, issued an inquiry to over teachers of dancing throughout the world in order to ascertain the frequency with which dancing led to marriage. of over one million pupils of dancing, either married or engaged to be married, it was found that in most countries more than per cent. met their conjugal partners at dances. the smallest proportion was in norway, with only per cent., and the highest, germany, with per cent. intermediate are france, per cent.; america, per cent.; italy, per cent.; spain, per cent.; holland, bulgaria, and england, per cent.; australia and roumania, per cent., etc. of the teachers themselves per cent. met their partners at dances. (quoted from the _figaro_ in beiblatt "sexualreform" to _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, , p. .) in civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a preliminary to courtship, but it is often a substitute for the normal gratification of the sexual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure and relief of gratified love. in occasional abnormal cases this may be consciously realized. thus sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married hysterical woman of , with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly developed skin eroticism, who was a passionate dancer: "i often felt as though i was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was actually having coitus with him. i have the feeling that in me dancing takes the place of coitus."[ ] normally something of the same feeling is experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and relief.[ ] it is significant that, after sexual relations have begun, girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. even our modern dances, it is worthy of note, are often of sexual origin; thus, the most typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as schaller, quoted by groos, states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and finally the jubilation of the wedding."[ ] not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle of movement tends to produce the same effect. the pleasure of witnessing movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular system,--for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of power,--has been found susceptible of exact measurement by féré. he has shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger muscular contractions, as measured by the dynamometer, than to watch the same disk when motionless. even in the absence of color a similar influence of movement was noted, and watching a modified metronome produced a greater increase of work with the ergograph than when working to the rhythm of the metronome without watching it.[ ] this psychological fact has been independently discovered by advertisers, who seek to impress the value of their wares on the public by the device of announcing them by moving colored lights. the pleasure given by the ballet largely depends on the same fact. not only is dancing an excitation, but the spectacle of dancing is itself exciting, and even among savages dances have a public which becomes almost as passionately excited as the dancers themselves.[ ] it is in virtue of this effect of dancing and similar movements that we so frequently find, both among the lower animals and savage man, that to obtain tumescence in both sexes, it is sufficient for one sex alone, usually the male, to take the active part. this point attracted the attention of kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the dances of the men, among savages, excite the women, who watch them intently though unobtrusively, and are thus influenced in choosing their lovers. he was probably the first to insist that in man sexual selection has taken place mainly through the agency of dances, games, and festivals.[ ] it is now clear, therefore, why the evacuation theory of the sexual impulse must necessarily be partial and inadequate. it leaves out of account the whole of the phenomena connected with tumescence, and those phenomena constitute the most prolonged, the most important, the most significant stage of the sexual process. it is during tumescence that the whole psychology of the sexual impulse is built up; it is as an incident arising during tumescence and influencing its course that we must probably regard nearly every sexual aberration. it is with the second stage of the sexual process, when the instinct of detumescence arises, that the analogy of evacuation can alone be called in. even here, that analogy, though real, is not complete, the nervous element involved in detumescence being out of all proportion to the extent of the evacuation. the typical act of evacuation, however, is a nervous process, and when we bear this in mind we may see whatever truth the evacuation theory possesses. beaunis classes the sexual impulse with the "needs of activity," but under this head he coordinates it with the "need of urination." that is to say, that both alike are nervous explosions. micturition, like detumescence, is a convulsive act, and, like detumescence also, it is certainly connected with cerebral processes; thus in epilepsy the passage of urine which may occur (as in a girl described by gowers with minor attacks during which it was emitted consciously, but involuntarily) is really a part of the process.[ ] there appears, indeed, to be a special and intimate connection between the explosion of sexual detumescence and the explosive energy of the bladder; so that they may reinforce each other and to a limited extent act vicariously in relieving each other's tension. it is noteworthy that nocturnal and diurnal incontinence of urine, as well as "stammering" of the bladder, are all specially liable to begin or to cease at puberty. in men and even infants, distention of the bladder favors tumescence by producing venous congestion, though at the same time it acts as a physical hindrance to sexual detumescence[ ]; in women--probably not from pressure alone, but from reflex nervous action--a full bladder increases both sexual excitement and pleasure, and i have been informed by several women that they have independently discovered this fact for themselves and acted in accordance with it. conversely, sexual excitement increases the explosive force of the bladder, the desire to urinate is aroused, and in women the sexual orgasm, when very acute and occurring with a full bladder, is occasionally accompanied, alike in savage and civilized life, by an involuntary and sometimes full and forcible expulsion of urine.[ ] the desire to urinate may possibly be, as has been said, the normal accompaniment of sexual excitement in women (just as it is said to be in mares; so that the arabs judge that the mare is ready for the stallion when she urinates immediately on hearing him neigh). the association may even form the basis of sexual obsessions.[ ] i have elsewhere shown that, of all the influences which increase the expulsive force of the bladder, sexual excitement is the most powerful.[ ] it may also have a reverse influence and inhibit contraction of the bladder, sometimes in association with shyness, but also independently of shyness. there is also reason to suppose that the nervous energy expended in an explosion of the tension of the sexual organs may sometimes relieve the bladder; it is well recognized that a full bladder is a factor in producing sexual emissions during sleep, the explosive energy of the bladder being inhibited and passing over into the sexual sphere. conversely, it appears that explosion of the bladder relieves sexual tension. an explosion of the nervous centers connected with the contraction of the bladder will relieve nervous tension generally; there are forms of epilepsy in which the act of urination constitutes the climax, and gowers, in dealing with minor epilepsy, emphasizes the frequency of micturition, which "may occur with spasmodic energy when there is only the slightest general stiffness," especially in women. he adds the significant remark that it "sometimes seems to relieve the cerebral tension,"[ ] and gives the case of a girl in whom the aura consisted mainly of a desire to urinate; if she could satisfy this the fit was arrested; if not she lost consciousness and a severe fit followed. if micturition may thus relieve nervous tension generally, it is not surprising that it should relieve the tension of the centers with which it is most intimately connected. sérieux records the case of a girl of , possessed by an impulse to masturbation which she was unable to control, although anxious to conquer it, who only found relief in the act of urination; this soothed her and to some extent satisfied the sexual excitement; when the impulse to masturbate was restrained the impulse to urinate became imperative; she would rise four or five times in the night for this purpose, and even urinate in bed or in her clothes to obtain the desired sexual relief.[ ] i am acquainted with a lady who had a similar, but less intense, experience during childhood. sometimes, especially in children, the act of urination becomes an act of gratification at the climax of sexual pleasure, the imitative symbol of detumescence. thus schultze-malkowsky describes a little girl of who would bribe her girl companions with little presents to play the part of horses on all fours while she would ride on their necks with naked thighs in order to obtain the pleasurable sensation of close contact. with one special friend she would ride facing backward, and leaning forward to embrace her body impulsively, and at the same time pressing the neck closely between her thighs, would urinate.[ ] féré has recorded the interesting case of a man who, having all his life after puberty been subject to monthly attacks of sexual excitement, after the age of completely lost the liability to these manifestations, but found himself subject, in place of them, to monthly attacks of frequent and copious urination, accompanied by sexual day-dreams, but by no genital excitement.[ ] such a case admirably illustrates the compensatory relation of sexual and vesical excitation. this mutual interaction is easily comprehensible when we recall the very close nervous connection which exists between the mechanisms of the sexual organs and the bladder. nor are such relationships found to be confined to these two centers; in a lesser degree the more remote explosive centers are also affected; all motor influences may spread to related muscles; the convulsion of laughter, for instance, seems to be often in relation with the sexual center, and groos has suggested that the laughter which, especially in the sexually minded, often follows allusions to the genital sphere is merely an effort to dispel nascent sexual excitement by liberating an explosion of nervous energy in another direction.[ ] nervous discharges tend to spread, or to act vicariously, because the motor centers are more or less connected.[ ] of all the physiological motor explosions, the sexual orgasm, or detumescence, is the most massive, powerful, and overwhelming. so volcanic is it that to the ancient greek philosophers it seemed to be a minor kind of epilepsy. the relief of detumescence is not merely the relief of an evacuation; it is the discharge, by the most powerful apparatus for nervous explosion in the body, of the energy accumulated and stored up in the slow process of tumescence, and that discharge reverberates through all the nervous centers in the organism. "the sophist of abdera said that coitus is a slight fit of epilepsy, judging it to be an incurable disease." (clement of alexandria, _pædagogus_, bk. ii, chapter x.) and coelius aurelianus, one of the chief physicians of antiquity, said that "coitus is a brief epilepsy." féré has pointed out that both these forms of nervous storm are sometimes accompanied by similar phenomena, by subjective sensations of sight or smell, for example; and that the two kinds of discharge may even be combined. (féré, _les epileptiques_, pp. - ; also "exces vénériens et epilepsie," _comptes-rendus de la société de biologie_, april , , and the same author's _instinct sexuel_, pp. , , and his "priapisme epileptique," _la médecine moderne_, february , .) the epileptic convulsion in some cases involves the sexual mechanism, and it is noteworthy that epilepsy tends to appear at puberty. in modern times even so great a physician as boerhaave said that coitus is a "true epilepsy," and more recently roubaud, hammond, and kowalevsky have emphasized the resemblance between coitus and epilepsy, though without identifying the two states. some authorities have considered that coitus is a cause of epilepsy, but this is denied by christian, strümpell, and löwenfeld. (löwenfeld, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, , p. .) féré has recorded the case of a youth in whom the adoption of the practice of masturbation, several times a day, was followed by epileptic attacks which ceased when masturbation was abandoned. (féré, _comptes-rendus de la socitété de biologie_, april , .) it seems unprofitable at present to attempt any more fundamental analysis of the sexual impulse. beaunis, in the work already quoted, vaguely suggests that we ought possibly to connect the sexual excitation which leads the male to seek the female with chemical action, either exercised directly on the protoplasm of the organism or indirectly by the intermediary of the nervous system, and especially by smell in the higher animals. clevenger, spitzka, kiernan, and others have also regarded the sexual impulse as protoplasmic hunger, tracing it back to the presexual times when one protozoal form absorbed another. in the same way joanny roux, insisting that the sexual need is a need of the whole organism, and that "we love with the whole of our body," compares the sexual instinct to hunger, and distinguishes between "sexual hunger" affecting the whole system and "sexual appetite" as a more localized desire; he concludes that the sexual need is an aspect of the nutritive need.[ ] useful as these views are as a protest against too crude and narrow a conception of the part played by the sexual impulse, they carry us into a speculative region where proof is difficult. we are now, however, at all events, in a better position to define the contents of the sexual impulse. we see that there are certainly, as moll has indicated, two constituents in that impulse; but, instead of being unrelated, or only distantly related, we see that they are really so intimately connected as to form two distinct stages in the same process: a first stage, in which--usually under the parallel influence of internal and external stimuli--images, desires, and ideals grow up within the mind, while the organism generally is charged with energy and the sexual apparatus congested with blood; and a second stage, in which the sexual apparatus is discharged amid profound sexual excitement, followed by deep organic relief. by the first process is constituted the tension which the second process relieves. it seems best to call the first impulse the _process of tumescence_; the second the _process of detumescence_.[ ] the first, taking on usually a more active form in the male, has the double object of bringing the male himself into the condition in which discharge becomes imperative, and at the same time arousing in the female a similar ardent state of emotional excitement and sexual turgescence. the second process has the object, directly, of discharging the tension thus produced and, indirectly, of effecting the act by which the race is propagated. it seems to me that this is at present the most satisfactory way in which we can attempt to define the sexual impulse. footnotes: [ ] c. lloyd morgan, "instinct and intelligence in animals," _nature_, february , . [ ] _essais_, livre iii, ch. v. [ ] féré, "la prédisposition dans l'étiologie des perversions sexuelles," _revue de médecine_, . in his more recent work on the evolution and dissolution of the sexual instinct féré perhaps slightly modified his position by stating that "the sexual appetite is, above all, a general need of the organism based on a sensation of fullness, a sort of need of evacuation," _l'instinct sexuel_, , p. . löwenfeld (_ueber die sexuelle konstitution_, p. ) gives a qualified acceptance to the excretory theory, as also rohleder (_die zeugung beim menschen_, p. ). [ ] goltz, _centralblatt für die med. wissenschaften_, , no. , and , no. ; also _beiträge zur lehre von den funktionen des frosches_, berlin, , p. . [ ] j. tarchanoff, "zur physiologie des geschlechtsapparatus des frosches," _archiv für die gesammte physiologie_, , vol. xl, p. . [ ] e. steinach, "untersuchungen zur vergleichenden physiologie der männlicher geschlechtsorgane insbesondere der accessorischen geschlechtsdrüsen," _archiv für die gesammte physiologie_, vol. lvi, , pp. - . [ ] see, e.g., shattock and seligmann, "the acquirement of secondary sexual characters," _proceedings of the royal society_, vol. lxxiii, , p. . [ ] for facts bearing on this point, see guinard, art. "castration," richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_. the general results of castration are summarized by robert müller in ch. vii of his _sexualbiologie_; also by f.h.a. marshall, _the physiology of reproduction_, ch, ix; see also e. pittard, "les skoptzy," _l'anthropologie_, , p. . [ ] for an ancient discussion of this point, see schurig, _spermatologia_, , cap. ix. [ ] j.j. matignon, _superstition, crime, et misère en chine_, "les eunuques du palais impérial de pékin," . [ ] p. marie, "eunuchisme et erotisme," _nouvelle iconographie de la salpêtrière_, , no. , and _progrès médical_, jan. , . [ ] _pedagogical seminary_, july, , p. . [ ] see, for instance, the case reported in another volume of these _studies_ ("sexual inversion"), in which castration was performed on a sexual invert without effecting any change. [ ] guinard, art. "castration," _dictionnaire de physiologie_. [ ] m.a. colman, _medical standard_, august, ; clara barrus, _american journal of insanity_, april, ; macnaughton-jones, _british gynæcological journal_, august, ; w.g. bridgman, _medical standard_, ; j.m. cotterill, _british medical journal_, april , (also private communication); paul f. mundé, _american journal of obstetrics_, march, . [ ] see swale vincent, _internal secretion and the ductless glands_, ; f.h.a. marshall, _the physiology of reproduction_, , ch. ix; munzer, _berliner klinische wochenschrift_, nov., ; c. sajous, _the internal secretions_, vol. i, . the adrenal glands have been fully and interestingly studied by glynn, _quarterly journal of medicine_, jan., ; the thyroid, by ewan waller, _practitioner_, aug., ; the internal secretion of the ovary, by a. louise mcilroy, _proceedings royal society medicine_, july, . for a discussion at the neurology section of the british medical association meeting, , see _british medical journal_, nov. , . [ ] since this was written i have come across a passage in _hampa_ (p. ), by rafael salillas, the spanish sociologist, which shows that the analogy has been detected by the popular mind and been embodied in popular language: "a significant anatomico-physiological concordance supposes a resemblance between the mouth and the sexual organs of a woman, between coitus and the ingestion of food, and between foods which do not require mastication and the spermatic ejaculation; these representations find expression in the popular name _papo_ given to women's genital organs. 'papo' is the crop of birds, and is derived from 'papar' (latin, _papare_), to eat soft food such as we call pap. with this representation of infantile food is connected the term _leche_ [milk] as applied to the ejaculated genital fluid." cleland, it may be added, in the most remarkable of english erotic novels, _the memoirs of fanny hill_, refers to "the compressive exsuction with which the sensitive mechanism of that part [the vagina] thirstily draws and drains the nipple of love," and proceeds to compare it to the action of the child at the breast. it appears that, in some parts of the animal world at least, there is a real analogy of formation between the oral and vaginal ends of the trunk. this is notably the case in some insects, and the point has been elaborately discussed by walter wesché, "the genitalia of both the sexes in diptera, and their relation to the armature of the mouth," _transactions of the linnean society_, second series, vol. ix, zoölogy, . [ ] näcke now expresses himself very dubiously on the point; see, e.g., _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. . [ ] _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, berlin, - . [ ] moll adopts the term "impulse of detumescence" (_detumescenztrieb_) instead of "impulse of ejaculation," because in women there is either no ejaculation or it cannot be regarded as essential. [ ] i quote from the second edition, as issued in . [ ] this is the theory which by many has alone been seen in darwin's _descent of man_. thus even his friend wallace states unconditionally (_tropical nature_, p. ) that darwin accepted a "voluntary or conscious sexual selection," and seems to repeat the same statement in _darwinism_ ( ), p. . lloyd morgan, in his discussion of the pairing instinct in _habit and instinct_ ( ), seems also only to see this side of darwin's statement. [ ] in his _variation of animals and plants under domestication_, darwin was puzzled by the fact that, in captivity, animals often copulate without conceiving and failed to connect that fact with the processes behind his own theory of sexual selection. [ ] beaunis, _sensations internes_, ch. v, "besoins sexuels," . it may be noted that many years earlier burdach (in his _physiologie als erfahrungswissenschaft_, ) had recognized that the activity of the male favored procreation, and that mental and physical excitement seemed to have the same effect in the female also. [ ] it is scarcely necessary to point out that this is too extreme a position. as j.g. millais remarks of ducks (_natural history of british ducks_, p. ), in courtship "success in winning the admiration of the female is rather a matter of persistent and active attention than physical force," though the males occasionally fight over the female. the ruff (_machetes pugnax_) is a pugnacious bird, as his name indicates. yet, the reeve, the female of this species, is, as e. selous shows ("sexual selection in birds," _zoölogist_, feb. and may, ), completely mistress of the situation. "she seems the plain and unconcerned little mistress of a numerous and handsome seraglio, each member of which, however he flounce and bounce, can only wait to be chosen." any fighting among the males is only incidental and is not a factor in selection. moreover, as r. müller points out (loc. cit., p. ), fighting would not usually attain the end desired, for if the males expend their time and strength in a serious combat they merely afford a third less pugnacious male a better opportunity of running off with the prize. [ ] l. tillier, _l'instinct sexuel_, , pp. , , , et seq., . [ ] k. groos, _die spiele der thiere_, ; _die spiele der menschen_, ; both are translated into english. [ ] prof. h.e. ziegler, in a private letter to professor groos, _spiele der thiere_, p. . [ ] _die spiele der thiere_, p. . this had been briefly pointed out by earlier writers. thus, haeckel (_gen. morph._, ii, p. ) remarked that fighting for females is a special or modified kind of struggle for existence, and that it acts on both sexes. [ ] it may be added that in the human species, as bray remarks ("le beau dans la nature," _revue philosophique_, october, , p. ), "the hymen would seem to tend to the same end, as if nature had wished to reinforce by a natural obstacle the moral restraint of modesty, so that only the vigorous male could insure his reproduction." there can be no doubt that among many animals pairing is delayed so far as possible until maturity is reached. "it is a strict rule amongst birds," remarks j.g. millais (op. cit., p. ), "that they do not breed until both sexes have attained the perfect adult plumage." until that happens, it seems probable, the conditions for sexual excitation are not fully established. we know little, says howard (_zoölogist_, , p. ), of the age at which birds begin to breed, but it is known that "there are yearly great numbers of individuals who do not breed, and the evidence seems to show that such individuals are immature." [ ] a. marro, _la puberté_, , p. . [ ] lloyd morgan, _animal behavior_, , pp. - . it may be added that, on the esthetic side, hirn, in his study (_the origins of art_, ), reaches conclusions which likewise, in the main, concord with those of groos. [ ] it may be noted that the marriage ceremony itself is often of the nature of a courtship, a symbolic courtship, embodying a method of attaining tumescence. as crawley, who has brought out this point, puts it, "marriage-rites of union are essentially identical with love charms," and he refers in illustration to the custom of the australian arunta, among whom the man or woman by making music on the bull-roarer compels a person of the opposite sex to court him or her, the marriage being thus completed. (e. crawley, _the mystic rose_, p. .) [ ] the more carefully animals are observed, the more often this is found to be the case, even with respect to species which possess no obvious and elaborate process for obtaining tumescence. see, for instance, the detailed and very instructive account--too long to quote here--given by e. selous of the preliminaries to intercourse practised by a pair of great crested grebes, while nest-building. intercourse only took place with much difficulty, after many fruitless invitations, more usually given by the female. ("observational diary of the habits of the great crested grebe," _zöologist_, september, .) it is exactly the same with savages. the observation of foley (_bulletin de la société d'anthropologie de paris_, november , ) that in savages "sexual erethism is very difficult" is of great significance and certainly in accordance with the facts. this difficulty of erethism is the real cause of many savage practices which to the civilized person often seem perverse; the women of the caroline islands, for instance, as described by finsch, require the tongue or even the teeth to be applied to the clitoris, or a great ant to be applied to bite the parts, in order to stimulate orgasm. westermarck, after quoting a remark of mariner's concerning the women of tonga,--"it must not be supposed that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions and the most fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no other lover in the way,"--adds that these words "hold true for a great many, not to say all, savage and barbarous races now existing." (_human marriage_, p. .) the old notions, however, as to the sexual licentiousness of peoples living in natural conditions have scarcely yet disappeared. see appendix a; "the sexual instinct in savages." [ ] in men a certain degree of tumescence is essential before coitus can be effected at all; in women, though tumescence is not essential to coitus, it is essential to orgasm and the accompanying physical and psychic relief. the preference which women often experience for prolonged coitus is not, as might possibly be imagined, due to sensuality, but has a profound physiological basis. [ ] stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. . [ ] see lagrange's _physiology of bodily exercise_, especially chapter ii. it is a significant fact that, as sergi remarks (_les emotions_, p. ), the physiological results of dancing are identical with the physiological results of pleasure. [ ] groos, _spiele der menschen_, p. . zmigrodzki (_die mutter bei den volkern des arischen stammes_, p. et seq.) has an interesting passage describing the dance--especially the russian dance--in its orgiastic aspects. [ ] féré, "l'influence sur le travail volontaire d'un muscle de l'activité d'autres muscles," _nouvelles iconographie de la salpêtrière_, . [ ] "the sensation of motion," kline remarks ("the migratory impulse," _american journal of psychology_, october, , p. ), "as yet but little studied from a pleasure-pain standpoint, is undoubtedly a pleasure-giving sensation. for aristippus the end of life is pleasure, which he defines as gentle motion. motherhood long ago discovered its virtue as furnished by the cradle. galloping to town on the parental knee is a pleasing pastime in every nursery. the several varieties of swings, the hammock, see-saw, flying-jenny, merry-go-round, shooting the chutes, sailing, coasting, rowing, and skating, together with the fondness of children for rotating rapidly in one spot until dizzy and for jumping from high places, are all devices and sports for stimulating the sense of motion. in most of these modes of motion the body is passive or semipassive, save in such motions as skating and rotating on the feet. the passiveness of the body precludes any important contribution of stimuli from kinesthetic sources. the stimuli are probably furnished, as dr. hall and others have suggested, by a redistribution of fluid pressure (due to the unusual motions and positions of the body) to the inner walls of the several vascular systems of the body." [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii., sect. ii, mem. ii, subs. iv. [ ] sadger, "haut-, schleimhaut-, und muskel-erotik," _jahrbuch für psychoanalytische forschungen_, bd. iii, , p. . [ ] marro (_pubertà_, p. et seq.) has some observations on this point. it was an insight into this action of dancing which led the spanish clergy of the eighteenth century to encourage the national enthusiasm for dancing (as baretti informs us) in the interests of morality. [ ] it is scarcely necessary to remark that a primitive dance, even when associated with courtship, is not necessarily a sexual pantomime; as wallaschek, in his comprehensive survey of primitive dances, observes, it is more usually an animal pantomime, but nonetheless connected with the sexual instinct, separation of the sexes, also, being no proof to the contrary. (wallaschek, _primitive music_, pp. - .) grosse (_anfänge der kunst_, english translation, p. ) has pointed out that the best dancer would be the best fighter and hunter, and that sexual selection and natural selection would thus work in harmony. [ ] féré, "le plaisir de la vue du mouvement," _comptes-rendus de la société de biologie_, november , ; also _travail et plaisir_, ch. xxix. [ ] groos repeatedly emphasizes the significance of this fact (_spiele der menschen_, pp. - , et seq.); grosse (_anfänge der kunst_, p. ) had previously made some remarks on this point. [ ] m. kulischer, "die geschlechtliche zuchtwahl bei den menschen in der urzeit," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. _et seq._ [ ] sir w.r. gowers, _epilepsy_, d ed., , pp. , . [ ] guyon, _leçons cliniques sur les maladies des voies urinaires_, d ed., , vol. ii, p. . [ ] see, e.g., féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, pp. - : brantôme was probably the first writer in modern times who referred to this phenomenon. macgillicuddy (_functional disorders of the nervous system in women_, p. ) refers to the case of a lady who always had sudden and uncontrollable expulsion of urine whenever her husband even began to perform the marital act, on which account he finally ceased intercourse with her. kubary states that in ponape (western carolines) the men are accustomed to titillate the vulva of their women with the tongue until the excitement is so intense that involuntary emission of urine takes place; this is regarded as the proper moment for intercourse. [ ] thus pitres and régis (_transactions of the international medical congress, moscow_, vol. iv, p. ) record the case of a young girl whose life was for some years tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate. this obsession arose from once seeing at a theater a man whom she liked, and being overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by so strong a desire to urinate that she had to leave the theater. an exactly similar case in a young woman of erotic temperament, but prudish, has been recorded by freud (_zur neurosenlehre_, bd. i, p. ). morbid obsessions of modesty involving the urinary sphere and appearing at puberty are evidently based on transformed sexual emotion. such a case has been recorded by marandon de montyel (_archives de neurologie_, vol. xii, , p. ); this lady, who was of somewhat neuropathic temperament, from puberty onward, in order to be able to urinate found it necessary not only to be absolutely alone, but to feel assured that no one even knew what was taking place. [ ] h. ellis, "the bladder as a dynamometer," _american journal of dermatology_, may, . [ ] sir w. gowers, "minor epilepsy," _british medical journal_, january , ; ib., _epilepsy_, d ed., , p. ; see also h. ellis, art. "urinary bladder, influence of the mind on the," in tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_. [ ] sérieux, _recherches cliniques sur les anomalies de l'instinct sexuel_, p. . [ ] emil schultze-malkowsky, "der sexuelle trieb in kindesalter," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. ii, part , p. . [ ] féré, "note sur un cas de periodicité sexuelle chez l'homme," _comptes-rendus société de biologie_, july , . [ ] it is a familiar fact that, in women, occasionally, a violent explosion of laughter may be propagated to the bladder-center and produce urination. "she laughed till she nearly wetted the floor," i have heard a young woman in the country say, evidently using without thought a familiar locution. professor bechterew has recorded the case of a young married lady who, from childhood, wherever she might be--in friends' houses, in the street, in her own drawing-room--had always experienced an involuntary and forcible emission of urine, which could not be stopped or controlled, whenever she laughed; the bladder was quite sound and no muscular effort produced the same result. (w. bechterew, _neurologisches centralblatt_, .) in women these relationships are most easily observed, partly because in them the explosive centers are more easily discharged, and partly, it is probable, so far as the bladder is concerned, because, although after death the resistance to the emission of urine is notably less in women, during life about the same amount of force is necessary in both sexes; so that a greater amount of energy flows to the bladder in women, and any nervous storm or disturbance is thus specially apt to affect the bladder. [ ] "every pain," remarks marie de manacéine, "produces a number of movements which are apparently useless: we cry out, we groan, we move our limbs, we throw ourselves from one side to the other, and at bottom all these movements are logical because by interrupting and breaking our attention they render us less sensitive to the pain. in the days before chloroform, skillful surgeons requested their patients to cry out during the operation, as we are told by gratiolet, who could not explain so strange a fact, for in his time the antagonism of movements and attention was not recognized." (marie de manacéine, _archives italiennes de biologie_, , p. .) this antagonism of attention by movement is but another way of expressing the vicarious relationship of motor discharges. [ ] joanny roux, _psychologie de l'instinct sexuel_, , pp. - . it is disputed whether hunger is located in the whole organism, and powerful arguments have been brought against the view. (w. cannon, "the nature of hunger," _popular science monthly_, sept., .) thirst is usually regarded as organic (a. mayer, _la soif_, ). [ ] if there is any objection to these terms it is chiefly because they have reference to vascular congestion rather than to the underlying nervous charging and discharging, which is equally fundamental, and in man more prominent than the vascular phenomena. love and pain. i. the chief key to the relationship between love and pain to be found in animal courtship--courtship a source of combativity and of cruelty--human play in the light of animal courtship--the frequency of crimes against the person in adolescence--marriage by capture and its psychological basis--man's pleasure in exerting force and woman's pleasure in experiencing it--resemblance of love to pain even in outward expression--the love-bite--in what sense pain may be pleasurable--the natural contradiction in the emotional attitude of women toward men--relative insensibility to pain of the organic sexual sphere in women--the significance of the use of the ampallang and similar appliances in coitus--the sexual subjection of women to men in part explainable as the necessary condition for sexual pleasure. the relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems, and yet one of the most fundamental, in the whole range of sexual psychology. why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? why is it that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? in answering that question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route, sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great mysteries of love. at the same time we shall have made clear the normal basis on which rest the extreme aberrations of love. the chief key to the relationship of love to pain is to be found by returning to the consideration of the essential phenomena of courtship in the animal world generally. courtship is a play, a game; even its combats are often, to a large extent, mock-combats; but the process behind it is one of terrible earnestness, and the play may at any moment become deadly. courtship tends to involve a mock-combat between males for the possession of the female which may at any time become a real combat; it is a pursuit of the female by the male which may at any time become a kind of persecution; so that, as colin scott remarks, "courting may be looked upon as a refined and delicate form of combat." the note of courtship, more especially among mammals, is very easily forced, and as soon as we force it we reach pain.[ ] the intimate and inevitable association in the animal world of combat--of the fighting and hunting impulses--with the process of courtship alone suffices to bring love into close connection with pain. among mammals the male wins the female very largely by the display of force. the infliction of pain must inevitably be a frequent indirect result of the exertion of power. it is even more than this; the infliction of pain by the male on the female may itself be a gratification of the impulse to exert force. this tendency has always to be held in check, for it is of the essence of courtship that the male should win the female, and she can only be won by the promise of pleasure. the tendency of the male to inflict pain must be restrained, so far as the female is concerned, by the consideration of what is pleasing to her. yet, the more carefully we study the essential elements of courtship, the clearer it becomes that, playful as these manifestations may seem on the surface, in every direction they are verging on pain. it is so among animals generally; it is so in man among savages. "it is precisely the alliance of pleasure and pain," wrote the physiologist burdach, "which constitutes the voluptuous emotion." nor is this emotional attitude entirely confined to the male. the female also in courtship delights to arouse to the highest degree in the male the desire for her favors and to withhold those favors from him, thus finding on her part also the enjoyment of power in cruelty. "one's cruelty is one's power," millament says in congreve's _way of the world_, "and when one parts with one's cruelty one parts with one's power." at the outset, then, the impulse to inflict pain is brought into courtship, and at the same time rendered a pleasurable idea to the female, because with primitive man, as well as among his immediate ancestors, the victor in love has been the bravest and strongest rather than the most beautiful or the most skilful. until he can fight he is not reckoned a man and he cannot hope to win a woman. among the african masai a man is not supposed to marry until he has blooded his spear, and in a very different part of the world, among the dyaks of borneo, there can be little doubt that the chief incentive to head-hunting is the desire to please the women, the possession of a head decapitated by himself being an excellent way of winning a maiden's favor.[ ] such instances are too well known to need multiplication here, and they survive in civilization, for, even among ourselves, although courtship is now chiefly ruled by quite other considerations, most women are in some degree emotionally affected by strength and courage. but the direct result of this is that a group of phenomena with which cruelty and the infliction of pain must inevitably be more or less allied is brought within the sphere of courtship and rendered agreeable to women. here, indeed, we have the source of that love of cruelty which some have found so marked in women. this is a phase of courtship which helps us to understand how it is that, as we shall see, the idea of pain, having become associated with sexual emotion, may be pleasurable to women. thus, in order to understand the connection between love and pain, we have once more to return to the consideration, under a somewhat new aspect, of the fundamental elements in the sexual impulse. in discussing the "evolution of modesty" we found that the primary part of the female in courtship is the playful, yet serious, assumption of the rôle of a hunted animal who lures on the pursuer, not with the object of escaping, but with the object of being finally caught. in considering the "analysis of the sexual impulse" we found that the primary part of the male in courtship is by the display of his energy and skill to capture the female or to arouse in her an emotional condition which leads her to surrender herself to him, this process itself at the same time heightening his own excitement. in the playing of these two different parts is attained in both male and female that charging of nervous energy, that degree of vascular tumescence, necessary for adequate discharge and detumescence in an explosion by which sperm-cells and germ-cells are brought together for the propagation of the race. we are now concerned with the necessary interplay of the differing male and female rôles in courtship, and with their accidental emotional by-products. both male and female are instinctively seeking the same end of sexual union at the moment of highest excitement. there cannot, therefore, be real conflict.[ ] but there is the semblance of a conflict, an apparent clash of aim, an appearance of cruelty. moreover,--and this is a significant moment in the process from our present point of view,--when there are rivals for the possession of one female there is always a possibility of actual combat, so tending to introduce an element of real violence, of undisguised cruelty, which the male inflicts on his rival and which the female views with satisfaction and delight in the prowess of the successful claimant. here we are brought close to the zoölogical root of the connection between love and pain.[ ] in his admirable work on play in man groos has fully discussed the plays of combat (_kampfspiele_), which begin to develop even in childhood and assume full activity during adolescence; and he points out that, while the impulse to such play certainly has a wider biological significance, it still possesses a relationship to the sexual life and to the rivalries of animals in courtship which must not be forgotten.[ ] nor is it only in play that the connection between love and combativity may still be traced. with the epoch of the first sexual relationship, marro points out, awakes the instinct of cruelty, which prompts the youth to acts which are sometimes in absolute contrast to his previous conduct, and leads him to be careless of the lives of others as well as of his own life.[ ] marro presents a diagram showing how crimes against the person in italy rise rapidly from the age of to and reach a climax between and . in paris, gamier states, crimes of blood are six times more frequent in adolescents (aged to ) than in adults. it is the same elsewhere.[ ] this tendency to criminal violence during the age-period of courtship is a by-product of the sexual impulse, a kind of tertiary sexual character. in the process of what is commonly termed "marriage by capture" we have a method of courtship which closely resembles the most typical form of animal courtship, and is yet found in all but the highest and most artificial stages of human society. it may not be true that, as maclennan and others have argued, almost every race of man has passed through an actual stage of marriage by capture, but the phenomena in question have certainly been extremely widespread and exist in popular custom even among the highest races today. george sand has presented a charming picture of such a custom, existing in france, in her _mare au diable_. farther away, among the kirghiz, the young woman is pursued by all her lovers, but she is armed with a formidable whip, which she does not hesitate to use if overtaken by a lover to whom she is not favorable. among the malays, according to early travelers, courtship is carried on in the water in canoes with double-bladed paddles; or, if no water is near, the damsel, stripped naked of all but a waistband, is given a certain start and runs off on foot followed by her lover. vaughan stevens in reported that this performance is merely a sport; but skeat and blagden, in their more recent and very elaborate investigations in the malay states, find that it is a rite. even if we regard "marriage by capture" as simply a primitive human institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions, yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some element of pain into love. there are, however, two fundamentally different theories concerning "marriage by capture." according to the first, that of maclennan, which, until recently, has been very widely accepted, and to which professor tylor has given the weight of his authority, there has really been in primitive society a recognized stage in which marriages were effected by the capture of the wife. such a state of things maclennan regarded as once world-wide. there can be no doubt that women very frequently have been captured in this way among primitive peoples. nor, indeed, has the custom been confined to savages. in europe we find that even up to comparatively recent times the abduction of women was not only very common, but was often more or less recognized. in england it was not until henry vii's time that the violent seizure of a woman was made a criminal offense, and even then the statute was limited to women possessed of lands and goods. a man might still carry off a girl provided she was not an heiress; but even the abduction of heiresses continued to be common, and in ireland remained so until the end of the eighteenth century. but it is not so clear that such raids and abductions, even when not of a genuinely hostile character, have ever been a recognized and constant method of marriage. according to the second set of theories, the capture is not real, but simulated, and may be accounted for by psychological reasons. fustel de coulanges, in _la cité antique_,[ ] discussing simulated marriage by capture among the romans, mentioned the view that it was "a symbol of the young girl's modesty," but himself regarded it as an act of force to symbolize the husband's power. he was possibly alluding to herbert spencer, who suggested a psychological explanation of the apparent prevalence of marriage by capture based on the supposition that, capturing a wife being a proof of bravery, such a method of obtaining a wife would be practised by the strongest men and be admired, while, on the other hand, he considered that "female coyness" was "an important factor" in constituting the more formal kinds of marriage by capture ceremonial.[ ] westermarck, while accepting true marriage by capture, considers that spencer's statement "can scarcely be disproved."[ ] in his valuable study of certain aspects of primitive marriage crawley, developing the explanation rejected by fustel de coulanges, regards the fundamental fact to be the modesty of women, which has to be neutralized, and this is done by "a ceremonial use of force, which is half real and half make-believe." thus the manifestations are not survivals, but "arising in a natural way from normal human feelings. it is not the tribe from which the bride is abducted, nor, primarily, her family and kindred, but her _sex_"; and her "sexual characters of timidity, bashfulness, and passivity are sympathetically overcome by make-believe representations of male characteristic actions."[ ] it is not necessary for the present purpose that either of these two opposing theories concerning the origin of the customs and feelings we are here concerned with should be definitely rejected. whichever theory is adopted, the fundamental psychic element which here alone concerns us still exists intact.[ ] it may be pointed out, however, that we probably have to accept two groups of such phenomena: one, seldom or never existing as the sole form of marriage, in which the capture is real; and another in which the "capture" is more or less ceremonial or playful. the two groups coexist among the turcomans, as described by vambery, who are constantly capturing and enslaving the persians of both sexes, and, side by side with this, have a marriage ceremonial of mock-capture of entirely playful character. at the same time the two groups sometimes overlap, as is indicated by cases in which, while the "capture" appears to be ceremonial, the girl is still allowed to escape altogether if she wishes. the difficulty of disentangling the two groups is shown by the fact that so careful an investigator as westermarck cites cases of real capture and mock-capture together without attempting to distinguish between them. from our present point of view it is quite unnecessary to attempt such a distinction. whether the capture is simulated or real, the man is still playing the masculine and aggressive part proper to the male; the woman is still playing the feminine and defensive part proper to the female. the universal prevalence of these phenomena is due to the fact that manifestations of this kind, real or pretended, afford each sex the very best opportunity for playing its proper part in courtship, and so, even when the force is real, must always gratify a profound instinct. it is not necessary to quote examples of marriage by capture from the numerous and easily accessible books on the evolution of marriage. (sir a.b. ellis, adopting maclennan's standpoint, presented a concise statement of the facts in an article on "survivals from marriage by capture," _popular science monthly_, , p. .) it may, however, be worth while to bring together from scattered sources a few of the facts concerning the phenomena in this group and their accompanying emotional state, more especially as they bear on the association of love with force, inflicted or suffered. in new caledonia, foley remarks, the successful coquette goes off with her lover into the bush. "it usually happens that, when she is successful, she returns from her expedition, tumbled, beaten, scratched, even bitten on the nape and shoulders, her wounds thus bearing witness to the quadrupedal attitude she has assumed amid the foliage." (foley, _bulletin de la société d'anthropologie_, paris, november , .) of the natives of new south wales, turnbull remarked at the beginning of the nineteenth century that "their mode of courtship is not without its singularity. when a young man sees a female to his fancy he informs her she must accompany him home; the lady refuses; he not only enforces compliance with threats but blows; thus the gallant, according to the custom, never fails to gain the victory, and bears off the willing, though struggling pugilist. the colonists for some time entertained the idea that the women were compelled and forced away against their inclinations; but the young ladies informed them that this mode of gallantry was the custom, and perfectly to their taste," (j. turnbull, _a voyage round the world_, , p. ; cf. brough smyth, _aborigines of victoria_, , vol. i, p. .) as regards capture of women among central australian tribes, spencer and gillen remark: "we have never in any of these central tribes met with any such thing, and the clubbing part of the story may be dismissed, so far as the central area of the continent is concerned. to the casual observer what looks like a capture (we are, of course, only speaking of these tribes) is in reality an elopement, in which the woman is an aiding and abetting party." (_northern tribes of central australia_. p. .) "the new zealand method of courtship and matrimony is a most extraordinary one. a man sees a woman whom he fancies he should like for a wife; he asks the consent of her father, or, if an orphan, of her nearest relative, which, if he obtain, he carries his intended off by force, she resisting with all her strength, and, as the new zealand girls are generally fairly robust, sometimes a dreadful struggle takes place; both are soon stripped to the skin and it is sometimes the work of hours to remove the fair prize a hundred yards. it sometimes happens that she secures her retreat into her father's house, and the lover loses all chance of ever obtaining her." (a. earle, _narratives of residence in new zealand_, , p. .) among the eskimos (probably near smith sound) "there is no marriage ceremony further than that the boy is required to carry off his bride by main force, for even among these blubber-eating people the woman only saves her modesty by a show of resistance, although she knows years beforehand that her destiny is sealed and that she is to become the wife of the man from whose embraces, when the nuptial day comes, she is obliged by the inexorable law of public opinion to free herself, if possible, by kicking and screaming with might and main until she is safely landed in the hut of her future lord, when she gives up the combat very cheerfully and takes possession of her new abode. the betrothal often takes place at a very early period of life and at very dissimilar ages." marriage only takes place when the lover has killed his first seal; this is the test of manhood and maturity. (j.j. hayes, _open polar sea_, , p. .) marriage by "capture" is common in war and raiding in central africa. "the women, as a rule," johnston says, "make no very great resistance on these occasions. it is almost like playing a game. a woman is surprised as she goes to get water at the stream, or when she is on the way to or from the plantation. the man has only got to show her she is cornered and that escape is not easy or pleasant and she submits to be carried off. as a general rule, they seem to accept very cheerfully these abrupt changes in their matrimonial existence." (sir h.h. johnston, _british central africa_, p. .) among the wild tribes of the malay peninsula in one form of wedding rite the bridegroom is required to run seven times around an artificial mound decorated with flowers and the emblem of the people's religion. in the event of the bridegroom failing to catch the bride the marriage has to be postponed. among the orang laut, or sea-gipsies, the pursuit sometimes takes the form of a canoe-race; the woman is given a good start and must be overtaken before she has gone a certain distance. (w.w. skeat, _journal anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. ; skeat and blagden, _pagan races of the malay_, vol. ii, p. et seq., fully discuss the ceremony around the mound.) "calmuck women ride better than the men. a male calmuck on horseback looks as if he was intoxicated, and likely to fall off every instant, though he never loses his seat; but the women sit with more ease, and ride with extraordinary skill. the ceremony of marriage among the calmucks is performed on horseback. a girl is first mounted, who rides off at full speed. her lover pursues, and if he overtakes her she becomes his wife and the marriage is consummated upon the spot, after which she returns with him to his tent. but it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person by whom she is pursued, in which case she will not suffer him to overtake her; and we were assured that no instance occurs of a calmuck girl being thus caught, unless she has a partiality for her pursuer. if she dislikes him, she rides, to use the language of english sportsmen, 'neck or nothing,' until she has completely escaped or until the pursuer's horse is tired out, leaving her at liberty to return, to be afterward chased by some more favored admirer." (e.d. clarke, _travels_, , vol. i, p. .) among the bedouins marriage is arranged between the lover and the girl's father, often without consulting the girl herself. "among the arabs of sinai the young maid comes home in the evening with the cattle. at a short distance from the camp she is met by the future spouse and a couple of his young friends and carried off by force to her father's tent. if she entertains any suspicion of their designs she defends herself with stones, and often inflicts wounds on the young men, even though she does not dislike the lover, for, according to custom, the more she struggles, bites, kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after by her own companions." after being taken to her father's tent, where a man's cloak is thrown over her by one of the bridegroom's relations, she is dressed in garments provided by her future husband, and placed on a camel, "still continuing to struggle in a most unruly manner, and held by the bridegroom's friends on both sides." she is then placed in a recess of the husband's tent. here the marriage is finally consummated, "the bride still continuing to cry very loudly. it sometimes happens that the husband is obliged to tie his bride, and even to beat her, before she can be induced to comply with his desires." if, however, she really does not like her husband, she is perfectly free to leave him next morning, and her father is obliged to receive her back whether he wishes to or not. it is not considered proper for a widow or divorced woman to make any resistance on being married. (j.l. burckhardt, _notes on the bedouins and wahábys_, , p. et seq.) among the turcomans forays for capturing and enslaving their persian neighbors were once habitual. vambery describes their "marriage ceremonial when the young maiden, attired in bridal costume, mounts a high-bred courser, taking on her lap the carcass of a lamb or goat, and setting off at full gallop, followed by the bridegroom and other young men of the party, also on horseback; she is always to strive, by adroit turns, etc., to avoid her pursuers, that no one approach near enough to snatch from her the burden on her lap. this game, called _kökbüri_ (green wolf), is in use among all the nomads of central asia." (a. vambery, _travels in central asia_, , p. .) in china, a missionary describes how, when he was called upon to marry the daughter of a chinese christian brought up in native customs, he was compelled to wait several hours, as the bride refused to get up and dress until long after the time appointed for the wedding ceremony, and then only by force. "extreme reluctance and dislike and fear are the true marks of a happy and lively wedding." (a.e. moule, _new china and old_, p. .) it is interesting to find that in the indian art of love a kind of mock-combat, accompanied by striking, is a recognized and normal method of heightening tumescence. vatsyayana has a chapter "on various manners of striking," and he approves of the man striking the woman on the back, belly, flanks, and buttocks, before and during coitus, as a kind of play, increasing as sexual excitement increases, which the woman, with cries and groans, pretends to bid the man to stop. it is mentioned that, especially in southern india, various instruments (scissors, needles, etc.) are used in striking, but this practice is condemned as barbarous and dangerous. (_kama sutra_, french translation, iii, chapter v.) in the story of aladdin, in the _arabian nights_, the bride is undressed by the mother and the other women, who place her in the bridegroom's bed "as if by force, and, according to the custom of the newly married, she pretends to resist, twisting herself in every direction, and seeking to escape from their hands." (_les mille nuits_, tr. mardrus, vol. xi, p. .) it is said that in those parts of germany where preliminary _probenächte_ before formal marriage are the rule it is not uncommon for a young woman before finally giving herself to a man to provoke him to a physical struggle. if she proves stronger she dismisses him; if he is stronger she yields herself willingly. (w. henz, "probenächte," _sexual-probleme_, oct., , p. .) among the south slavs of servia and bulgaria, according to krauss, it is the custom to win a woman by seizing her by the ankle and bringing her to the ground by force. this method of wooing is to the taste of the woman, and they are refractory to any other method. the custom of beating or being beaten before coitus is also found among the south slavs. (kryptadia, vol. vi, p. .) in earlier days violent courtship was viewed with approval in the european world, even among aristocratic circles. thus in the medieval _lai de graélent_ of marie de france this breton knight is represented as very chaste, possessing a high ideal of love and able to withstand the wiles of women. one day when he is hunting in a forest he comes upon a naked damsel bathing, together with her handmaidens. overcome by her beauty, he seizes her clothes in case she should be alarmed, but is persuaded to hand them to her; then he proceeds to make love to her. she replies that his love is an insult to a woman of her high lineage. finding her so proud, graélent sees that his prayers are in vain. he drags her by force into the depth of the forest, has his will of her, and begs her very gently not to be angry, promising to love her loyally and never to leave her. the damsel saw that he was a good knight, courteous, and wise. she thought within herself that if she were to leave him she would never find a better friend. brantôme mentions a lady who confessed that she liked to be "half-forced" by her husband, and he remarks that a woman who is "a little difficult and resists" gives more pleasure also to her lover than one who yields at once, just as a hard-fought battle is a more notable triumph than an easily won victory. (brantôme, _vie des dames galantes_, discours i.) restif de la bretonne, again, whose experience was extensive, wrote in his _anti-justine_ that "all women of strong temperament like a sort of brutality in sexual intercourse and its accessories." ovid had said that a little force is pleasing to a woman, and that she is grateful to the ravisher against whom she struggles (_ars amatoria_, lib. i). one of janet's patients (raymond and janet, _les obsessions et la psychasthénie_, vol. ii, p. ) complained that her husband was too good, too devoted. "he does not know how to make me suffer a little. one cannot love anyone who does not make one suffer a little." another hysterical woman (a silk fetichist, frigid with men) had dreams of men and animals abusing her: "i cried with pain and was happy at the same time." (clérambault, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, june, , p. .) it has been said that among slavs of the lower class the wives feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. paullinus, in the seventeenth century, remarked that russian women are never more pleased and happy than when beaten by their husbands, and regard such treatment as proof of love. (see, e.g., c.f. von schlichtegroll, _sacher-masoch und der masochismus_, p. .) krafft-ebing believes that this is true at the present day, and adds that it is the same in hungary, a hungarian official having informed him that the peasant women of the somogyer comitate do not think they are loved by their husbands until they have received the first box on the ear. (krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of the tenth edition, p. .) i may add that a russian proverb says "love your wife like your soul and beat her like your _shuba_" (overcoat); and, according to another russian proverb, "a dear one's blows hurt not long." at the same time it has been remarked that the domination of men by women is peculiarly frequent among the slav peoples. (v. schlichtegroll, op. cit., p. .) cellini, in an interesting passage in his _life_ (book ii, chapters xxxiv-xxxv), describes his own brutal treatment of his model caterina, who was also his mistress, and the pleasure which, to his surprise, she took in it. dr. simon forman, also, the astrologist, tells in his _autobiography_ (p. ) how, as a young and puny apprentice to a hosier, he was beaten, scolded, and badly treated by the servant girl, but after some years of this treatment he turned on her, beat her black and blue, and ever after "mary would do for him all that she could." that it is a sign of love for a man to beat his sweetheart, and a sign much appreciated by women, is illustrated by the episode of cariharta and repolido, in "rinconete and cortadillo," one of cervantes's _exemplary novels_. the indian women of south america feel in the same way, and mantegazza when traveling in bolivia found that they complained when they were not beaten by their husbands, and that a girl was proud when she could say "he loves me greatly, for he often beats me." (_fisiologia della donna_, chapter xiii.) the same feeling evidently existed in classic antiquity, for we find lucian, in his "dialogues of courtesans," makes a woman say: "he who has not rained blows on his mistress and torn her hair and her garments is not yet in love," while ovid advises lovers sometimes to be angry with their sweethearts and to tear their dresses. among the italian camorrista, according to russo, wives are very badly treated. expression is given to this fact in the popular songs. but the women only feel themselves tenderly loved when they are badly treated by their husbands; the man who does not beat them they look upon as a fool. it is the same in the east end of london. "if anyone has doubts as to the brutalities practised on women by men," writes a london magistrate, "let him visit the london hospital on a saturday night. very terrible sights will meet his eye. sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen women may be seen seated in the receiving room, waiting for their bruised and bleeding faces and bodies to be attended to. in nine cases out of ten the injuries have been inflicted by brutal and perhaps drunken husbands. the nurses tell me, however, that any remarks they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. they positively will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians. 'sometimes,' said a nurse to me, 'when i have told a woman that her husband is a brute, she has drawn herself up and replied: "you mind your own business, miss. we find the rates and taxes, and the likes of you are paid out of 'em to wait on us."'" (montagu williams, _round london_, p. .) "the prostitute really loves her _souteneur_, notwithstanding all the persecutions he inflicts on her. their torments only increase the devotion of the poor slaves to their 'alphonses.' parent-duchâtelet wrote that he had seen them come to the hospital with their eyes out of their heads, faces bleeding, and bodies torn by the blows of their drunken lovers, but as soon as they were healed they went back to them. police-officers tell us that it is very difficult to make a prostitute confess anything concerning her _souteneur_. thus, rosa l., whom her 'alphonse' had often threatened to kill, even putting the knife to her throat, would say nothing, and denied everything when the magistrate questioned her. maria r., with her face marked by a terrible scar produced by her _souteneur_, still carefully preserved many years afterward the portrait of the aggressor, and when we asked her to explain her affection she replied: 'but he wounded me because he loved me.' the _souteneur's_ brutality only increases the ill-treated woman's love; the humiliation and slavery in which the woman's soul is drowned feed her love." (niceforo, _il gergo_, etc., , p. .) in a modern novel written in autobiographic form by a young australian lady the heroine is represented as striking her betrothed with a whip when he merely attempts to kiss her. later on her behavior so stings him that his self-control breaks down and he seizes her fiercely by the arms. for the first time she realizes that he loves her. "i laughed a joyous little laugh, saying 'hal, we are quits'; when on disrobing for the night i discovered on my soft white shoulders and arms--so susceptible to bruises--many marks, and black. it had been a very happy day for me." (miles franklin, _my brilliant career_.) it is in large measure the existence of this feeling of attraction for violence which accounts for the love-letters received by men who are accused of crimes of violence. thus in one instance, in chicago (as dr. kiernan writes to me), "a man arrested for conspiracy to commit abortion, and also suspected of being a sadist, received many proposals of marriage and other less modest expressions of affection from unknown women. to judge by the signatures, these women belonged to the germans and slavs rather than to the anglo-celts." neuropathic or degenerative conditions sometimes serve to accentuate or reveal ancestral traits that are very ancient in the race. under such conditions the tendency to find pleasure in subjection and pain, which is often faintly traceable even in normal civilized women, may become more pronounced. this may be seen in a case described in some detail in the _archivio di psichiatria_. the subject was a young lady of , of noble italian birth, but born in tunis. on the maternal side there is a somewhat neurotic heredity, and she is herself subject to attacks of hystero-epileptoid character. she was very carefully, but strictly, educated; she knows several languages, possesses marked intellectual aptitudes, and is greatly interested in social and political questions, in which she takes the socialistic and revolutionary side. she has an attractive and sympathetic personality; in complexion she is dark, with dark eyes and very dark and abundant hair; the fine down on the upper lip and lower parts of the cheeks is also much developed; the jaw is large, the head acrocephalic, and the external genital organs of normal size, but rather asymmetric. ever since she was a child she has loved to work and dream in solitude. her dreams have always been of love, since menstruation began as early as the age of , and accompanied by strong sexual feelings, though at that age these feelings remained vague and indefinite; but in them the desire for pleasure was always accompanied by the desire for pain, the desire to bite and destroy something, and, as it were, to annihilate herself. she experienced great relief after periods of "erotic rumination," and if this rumination took place at night she would sometimes masturbate, the contact of the bedclothes, she said, giving her the illusion of a man. in time this vague longing for the male gave place to more definite desires for a man who would love her, and, as she imagined, strike her. eventually she formed secret relationships with two or three lovers in succession, each of these relationships being, however, discovered by her family and leading to ineffectual attempts at suicide. but the association of pain with love, which had developed spontaneously in her solitary dreams, continued in her actual relations with her lovers. during coitus she would bite and squeeze her arms until the nails penetrated the flesh. when her lover asked her why at the moment of coitus she would vigorously repel him, she replied: "because i want to be possessed by force, to be hurt, suffocated, to be thrown down in a struggle." at another time she said: "i want a man with all his vitality, so that he can torture and kill my body." we seem to see here clearly the ancient biological character of animal courtship, the desire of the female to be violently subjugated by the male. in this case it was united to sensitiveness to the sexual domination of an intellectual man, and the subject also sought to stimulate her lovers' intellectual tastes. (_archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xx, fasc. - , p. .) this association between love and pain still persists even among the most normal civilized men and women possessing well-developed sexual impulses. the masculine tendency to delight in domination, the feminine tendency to delight in submission, still maintain the ancient traditions when the male animal pursued the female. the phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. but it has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in the presence of a favorable emotional aptitude, constituted by the zoölogical history of our race and still traceable even today. to exert power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the attitude of a man toward the woman he loves.[ ] it might be possible to maintain that the primitive element of more or less latent cruelty in courtship tends to be more rather than less marked in civilized man. in civilization the opportunity of dissipating the surplus energy of the courtship process by inflicting pain on rivals usually has to be inhibited; thus the woman to be wooed tends to become the recipient of the whole of this energy, both in its pleasure-giving and its pain-giving aspects. moreover, the natural process of courtship, as it exists among animals and usually among the lower human races, tends to become disguised and distorted in civilization, as well by economic conditions as by conventional social conditions and even ethical prescription. it becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an essential element in the process of courtship. a woman is often reduced to seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is sinful or shameful, that sex-matters are disgusting, and that it is a woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her husband. thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any passing over of masculine sexual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed. we have to admit that a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a woman by inflicting pain upon her is an outcome and survival of the primitive process of courtship, and an almost or quite normal constituent of the sexual impulse in man. but it must be at once added that in the normal well-balanced and well-conditioned man this constituent of the sexual impulse, when present, is always held in check. when the normal man inflicts, or feels the impulse to inflict, some degree of physical pain on the woman he loves he can scarcely be said to be moved by cruelty. he feels, more or less obscurely, that the pain he inflicts, or desires to inflict, is really a part of his love, and that, moreover, it is not really resented by the woman on whom it is exercised. his feeling is by no means always according to knowledge, but it has to be taken into account as an essential part of his emotional state. the physical force, the teasing and bullying, which he may be moved to exert under the stress of sexual excitement, are, he usually more or less unconsciously persuades himself, not really unwelcome to the object of his love.[ ] moreover, we have to bear in mind the fact--a very significant fact from more than one point of view--that the normal manifestations of a woman's sexual pleasure are exceedingly like those of pain. "the outward expressions of pain," as a lady very truly writes,--"tears, cries, etc.,--which are laid stress on to prove the cruelty of the person who inflicts it, are not so different from those of a woman in the ecstasy of passion, when she implores the man to desist, though that is really the last thing she desires."[ ] if a man is convinced that he is causing real and unmitigated pain, he becomes repentant at once. if this is not the case he must either be regarded as a radically abnormal person or as carried away by passion to a point of temporary insanity. the intimate connection of love with pain, its tendency to approach cruelty, is seen in one of the most widespread of the occasional and non-essential manifestations of strong sexual emotion, especially in women, the tendency to bite. we may find references to love-bites in the literature of ancient as well as of modern times, in the east as well as in the west. plautus, catullus, propertius, horace, ovid, petronius, and other latin writers refer to bites as associated with kisses and usually on the lips. plutarch says that flora, the mistress of cnæus pompey, in commending her lover remarked that he was so lovable that she could never leave him without giving him a bite. in the arabic _perfumed garden_ there are many references to love-bites, while in the indian _kama sutra_ of vatsyayana a chapter is devoted to this subject. biting in love is also common among the south slavs.[ ] the phenomenon is indeed sufficiently familiar to enable heine, in one of his _romancero_, to describe those marks by which the ancient chronicler states that edith swanneck recognized harold, after the battle of hastings, as the scars of the bites she had once given him. it would be fanciful to trace this tendency back to that process of devouring to which sexual congress has, in the primitive stages of its evolution, been reduced. but we may probably find one of the germs of the love-bite in the attitude of many mammals during or before coitus; in attaining a firm grip of the female it is not uncommon (as may be observed in the donkey) for the male to seize the female's neck between his teeth. the horse sometimes bites the mare before coitus and it is said that among the arabs when a mare is not apt for coitus she is sent to pasture with a small ardent horse, who excites her by playing with her and biting her.[ ] it may be noted, also, that dogs often show their affection for their masters by gentle bites. children also, as stanley hall has pointed out, are similarly fond of biting. perhaps a still more important factor is the element of combat in tumescence, since the primitive conditions associated with tumescence provide a reservoir of emotions which are constantly drawn on even in the sexual excitement of individuals belonging to civilization. the tendency to show affection by biting is, indeed, commoner among women than among men and not only in civilization. it has been noted among idiot girls as well as among the women of various savage races. it may thus be that the conservative instincts of women have preserved a primitive tendency that at its origin marked the male more than the female. but in any case the tendency to bite at the climax of sexual excitement is so common and widespread that it must be regarded, when occurring in women, as coming within the normal range of variation in such manifestations. the gradations are of wide extent; while in its slight forms it is more or less normal and is one of the origins of the kiss,[ ] in its extreme forms it tends to become one of the most violent and antisocial of sexual aberrations. a correspondent writes regarding his experience of biting and being bitten: "i have often felt inclination to bite a woman i love, even when not in coitus or even excited. (i like doing so also with my little boy, playfully, as a cat and kittens.) there seem to be several reasons for this: ( ) the muscular effect relieves me; ( ) i imagine i am giving the woman pleasure; ( ) i seem to attain to a more intimate possession of the loved one. i cannot remember when i first felt desire to be bitten in coitus, or whether the idea was first suggested to me. i was initiated into pinching by a french prostitute who once pinched my nates in coitus, no doubt as a matter of business; it heightened my pleasure, perhaps by stimulating muscular movement. it does not occur to me to ask to be pinched when i am very much excited already, but only at an earlier stage, no doubt with the object of promoting excitement. apart altogether from sexual excitement, being pinched is unpleasant to me. it has not seemed to me that women usually like to be bitten. one or two women have bitten and sucked my flesh. (the latter does not affect me.) i like being bitten, partly for the same reason as i like being pinched, because if spontaneous it is a sign of my partner's amorousness and the biting never seems too hard. women do not usually seem to like being bitten, though there are exceptions; 'i should like to bite you and i should like you to bite me,' said one woman; i did so hard, in coitus, and she did not flinch." "she is particularly anxious to eat me alive," another correspondent writes, "and nothing gives her greater satisfaction than to tear open my clothes and fasten her teeth into my flesh until i yell for mercy. my experience has generally been, however," the same correspondent continues, "that the cruelty is _unconscious_. a woman just grows mad with the desire to squeeze or bite something, with a complete unconsciousness of what result it will produce in the victim. she is astonished when she sees the result and will hardly believe she has done it." it is unnecessary to accumulate evidence of a tendency which is sufficiently common to be fairly well known, but one or two quotations may be presented to show its wide distribution. in the _kama sutra_ we read: "if she is very exalted, and if in the exaltation of her passionate transports she begins a sort of combat, then she takes her lover by the hair, draws his head to hers, kisses his lower lip, and then in her delirium bites him all over his body, shutting her eyes"; it is added that with the marks of such bites lovers can remind each other of their affections, and that such love will last for ages. in japan the maiden of ainu race feels the same impulse. a.h. savage landor (_alone with the hairy ainu_, , p. ) says of an ainu girl: "loving and biting went together with her. she could not do the one without the other. as we sat on a stone in the twilight she began by gently biting my fingers without hurting me, as affectionate dogs do to their masters. she then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she had worked herself up into a passion she put her arms around my neck and bit my cheeks. it was undoubtedly a curious way of making love, and, when i had been bitten all over, and was pretty tired of the new sensation, we retired to our respective homes. kissing, apparently, was an unknown art to her." the significance of biting, and the close relationship which, as will have to be pointed out later, it reveals to other phenomena, may be illustrated by some observations which have been made by alonzi on the peasant women of sicily. "the women of the people," he remarks, "especially in the districts where crimes of blood are prevalent, give vent to their affection for their little ones by kissing and sucking them on the neck and arms till they make them cry convulsively; all the while they say: 'how sweet you are! i will bite you, i will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every appearance of great pleasure. if a child commits some slight fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the blood flows. at such moments the face of even a beautiful woman is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and convulsive tremors. among both men and women a very common threat is 'i will drink your blood.' it is told on ocular evidence that a man who had murdered another in a quarrel licked the hot blood from the victim's hand." (g. alonzi, _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. vi, fasc. .) a few years ago a nurse girl in new york was sentenced to prison for cruelty to the baby in her charge. the mother had frequently noticed that the child was in pain and at last discovered the marks of teeth on its legs. the girl admitted that she had bitten the child because that action gave her intense pleasure. (_alienist and neurologist_, august, , p. .) in the light of such observations as these we may understand a morbid perversion of affection such as was recorded in the london police news some years ago ( ). a man of was charged with ill-treating his wife's illegitimate daughter, aged , during a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were bitten and bruised from sucking, and sometimes her pinafore was covered with blood. "defendant admitted he had bitten the child because he loved it." it is not surprising that such phenomena as these should sometimes be the stimulant and accompaniment to the sexual act. ferriani thus reports such a case in the words of the young man's mistress: "certainly he is a strange, maddish youth, though he is fond of me and spends money on me when he has any. he likes much sexual intercourse, but, to tell the truth, he has worn out my patience, for before our embraces there are always struggles which become assaults. he tells me he has no pleasure except when he sees me crying on account of his bites and vigorous pinching. lately, just before going with me, when i was groaning with pleasure, he threw himself on me and at the moment of emission furiously bit my right cheek till the blood came. then he kissed me and begged my pardon, but would do it again if the wish took him." (l. ferriani, _archivio di psicopatie sessuale_, vol. i, fasc. and , , p. .) in morbid cases biting may even become a substitute for coitus. thus, moll (_die konträre sexualempfindung_, second edition, p. ) records the case of a hysterical woman who was sexually anesthetic, though she greatly loved her husband. it was her chief delight to bite him till the blood flowed, and she was content if, instead of coitus, he bit her and she him, though she was grieved if she inflicted much pain. in other still more morbid cases the fear of inflicting pain is more or less abolished. an idealized view of the impulse of love to bite and devour is presented in the following passage from a letter by a lady who associates this impulse with the idea of the last supper: "your remarks about the lord's supper in 'whitman' make it natural to me to tell you my thoughts about that 'central sacrament of christianity.' i cannot tell many people because they misunderstand, and a clergyman, a very great friend of mine, when i once told what i thought and felt, said i was carnal. he did not understand the divinity and intensity of human love as i understand it. well, when one loves anyone very much,--a child, a woman, or a man,--one loves everything belonging to him: the things he wears, still more his hands, and his face, every bit of his body. we always want to have all, or part, of him as part of ourselves. hence the expression: i could _devour_ you, i love you so. in some such warm, devouring way jesus christ, i have always felt, loved each and every human creature. so it was that he took this mystery of food, which by eating became part of ourselves, as the symbol of the most intense human love, the most intense divine love. some day, perhaps, love will be so understood by all that this sacrament will cease to be a superstition, a bone of contention, an 'article' of the church, and become, in all simplicity, a symbol of pure love." while in men it is possible to trace a tendency to inflict pain, or the simulacrum of pain, on the women they love, it is still easier to trace in women a delight in experiencing physical pain when inflicted by a lover, and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. such a tendency is certainly normal. to abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious submission to another and stronger will--this is one of the commonest aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. in our own age these aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. in ages when life was more nakedly lived, and emotion more openly expressed, it was easier to trace this impulse. in the thirteenth century we have found marie de france--a french poetess living in england who has been credited with "an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart," and whose work was certainly highly appreciated in the best circles and among the most cultivated class of her day--describing as a perfect, wise, and courteous knight a man who practically commits a rape on a woman who has refused to have anything to do with him, and, in so acting, he wins her entire love. the savage beauty of new caledonia furnishes no better illustration of the fascination of force, for she, at all events, has done her best to court the violence she undergoes. in middleton's _spanish gypsy_ we find exactly the same episode, and the unhappy portuguese nun wrote: "love me for ever and make me suffer still more." to find in literature more attenuated examples of the same tendency is easy. shakespeare, whose observation so little escaped, has seldom depicted the adult passion of a grown woman, but in the play which he has mainly devoted to this subject he makes cleopatra refer to "amorous pinches," and she says in the end: "the stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired." "i think the sabine woman enjoyed being carried off like that," a woman remarked in front of rubens's "rape of the sabines," confessing that such a method of love-making appealed strongly to herself, and it is probable that the majority of women would be prepared to echo that remark. it may be argued that pain cannot give pleasure, and that when what would usually be pain is felt as pleasure it cannot be regarded as pain at all. it must be admitted that the emotional state is often somewhat complex. moreover, women by no means always agree in the statement of their experience. it is noteworthy, however, that even when the pleasurableness of pain in love is denied it is still admitted that, under some circumstances, pain, or the idea of pain, is felt as pleasurable. i am indebted to a lady for a somewhat elaborate discussion of this subject, which i may here quote at length: "as regards physical pain, though the idea of it is sometimes exciting, i think the reality is the reverse. a very slight amount of pain destroys my pleasure completely. this was the case with me for fully a month after marriage, and since. when pain has occasionally been associated with passion, pleasure has been sensibly diminished. i can imagine that, when there is a want of sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so. i cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain _to them_, if only from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention. this, however, is only my own idea drawn from my own negative experience. no woman has ever told me that she would like to have pain inflicted on her. on the other hand, the desire to inflict pain seems almost universal among men. i have only met one man in whom i have never at any time been able to detect it. at the same time most men shrink from putting their ideas into practice. a friend of my husband finds his chief pleasure in imagining women hurt and ill-treated, but is too tender-hearted ever to inflict pain on them in reality, even when they are willing to submit to it. perhaps a woman's readiness to submit to pain to please a man may sometimes be taken for pleasure in it. even when women like the idea of pain, i fancy it is only because it implies subjection to the man, from association with the fact that physical pleasure must necessarily be preceded by submission to his will." in a subsequent communication this lady enlarged and perhaps somewhat modified her statements on this point:-- "i don't think that what i said to you was quite correct. _actual_ pain gives me no pleasure, yet the _idea_ of pain does, _if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of the person suffering it_. this is essential. for instance, i once read a poem in which the devil and the lost souls in hell were represented as recognizing that they could not be good except under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of the flames of hell they so realized the beauty of holiness that they submitted willingly to their agony and praised god for the sternness of his judgment. this poem gave me decided physical pleasure, yet i know that if my hand were held in a fire for five minutes i should feel nothing but the pain of the burning. to get the feeling of pleasure, too, i must, for the moment, revert to my old religious beliefs and my old notion that mere suffering has an elevating influence; one's emotions are greatly modified by one's beliefs. when i was about fifteen i invented a game which i played with a younger sister, in which we were supposed to be going through a process of discipline and preparation for heaven after death. each person was supposed to enter this state on dying and to pass successively into the charge of different angels named after the special virtues it was their function to instill. the last angel was that of love, who governed solely by the quality whose name he bore. in the lower stages, we were under an angel called severity who prepared us by extreme harshness and by exacting implicit obedience to arbitrary orders for the acquirement of later virtues. our duties were to superintend the weather, paint the sunrise and sunset, etc., the constant work involved exercising us in patience and submission. the physical pleasure came in in inventing and recounting to each other our day's work and the penalties and hardships we had been subjected to. we never told each other that we got any physical pleasure out of this, and i cannot therefore be sure that my sister did so; i only imagine she did because she entered so heartily into the spirit of the game. i could get as much pleasure by imagining myself the angel and inflicting the pain, under the conditions mentioned; but my sister did not like this so much, as she then had no companion in subjection. i could not, however, thus reverse my feelings in regard to a man, as it would appear to me unnatural, and, besides, the greater physical strength is essential in the superior position. i can, however, by imagining myself a man, sometimes get pleasure in conceiving myself as educating and disciplining a woman by severe measures. there is, however, no real cruelty in this idea, as i always imagine her liking it. "i only get pleasure in the idea of a woman submitting herself to pain and harshness from the man she loves when the following conditions are fulfilled: . she must be absolutely sure of the man's love. . she must have perfect confidence in his judgment. . the pain must be deliberately inflicted, not accidental. . it must be inflicted in kindness and for her own improvement, not in anger or with any revengeful feelings, as that would spoil one's ideal of the man. . the pain must not be excessive and must be what when we were children we used to call a 'tidy' pain; i.e., there must be no mutilation, cutting, etc. . last, one would have to feel very sure of one's own influence over the man. so much for the idea. as i have never suffered pain under a combination of all these conditions, i have no right to say that i should or should not experience pleasure from its infliction in reality." another lady writes: "i quite agree that the idea of pain may be pleasurable, but must be associated with something to be gained by it. my experience is that it [coitus] does often hurt for a few moments, but that passes and the rest is easy; so that the little hurt is nothing terrible, but all the same annoying if only for the sake of a few minutes' pleasure, which is not long enough. i do not know how my experience compares with other women's, but i feel sure that in my case the time needed is longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me. as to liking pain--no, i do not really like it, although i can tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but i like to feel force and strength; this is usual, i think, women being--or supposed to be--passive in love. i have not found that 'pain at once kills pleasure.'" again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have been destroyed. the evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of pain in sexual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the pleasure which is to follow it. unless coitus is fundamentally pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated pain, and a craving for pain unassociated with a greater satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal. in this connection i may refer to a suggestive chapter on "the enjoyment of pain" in hirn's _origins of art_. "if we take into account," says hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement. this motive leads to the deliberate creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element. the violent activity which is involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness. it is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost undivided delight. such an accomplishment is far more difficult in the case of sorrow.... the creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state." the relation of pain and pleasure to emotion has been thoroughly discussed, i may add, by h.r. marshall in his _pain, pleasure, and Æsthetics_. he contends that pleasure and pain are "general qualities, one of which must, and either of which may, belong to any fixed element of consciousness." "pleasure," he considers, "is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the use of surplus stored force." we can see, therefore, how, if pain acts as a stimulant to emotion, it becomes the servant of pleasure by supplying it with surplus stored force. this problem of pain is thus one of psychic dynamics. if we realize this we shall begin to understand the place of cruelty in life. "one ought to learn anew about cruelty," said nietzsche (_beyond good and evil_, ), "and open one's eyes. almost everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of _cruelty_.... then, to be sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of _others_; there is an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering." the element of paradox disappears from this statement if we realize that it is not a question of "cruelty," but of the dynamics of pain. camille bos in a suggestive essay ("du plaisir de la douleur," _revue philosophique_, july, ) finds the explanation of the mystery in that complexity of the phenomena to which i have already referred. both pain and pleasure are complex feelings, the resultant of various components, and we name that resultant in accordance with the nature of the strongest component. "thus we give to a complexus a name which strictly belongs only to one of its factors, _and in pain all is not painful_." when pain becomes a desired end camille bos regards the desire as due to three causes: ( ) the pain contrasts with and revives a pleasure which custom threatens to dull; ( ) the pain by preceding the pleasure accentuates the positive character of the latter; ( ) pain momentarily raises the lowered level of sensibility and restores to the organism for a brief period the faculty of enjoyment it had lost. it must therefore be said that, in so far as pain is pleasurable, it is so only in so far as it is recognized as a prelude to pleasure, or else when it is an actual stimulus to the nerves conveying the sensation of pleasure. the nymphomaniac who experienced an orgasm at the moment when the knife passed through her clitoris (as recorded by mantegazza) and the prostitute who experienced keen pleasure when the surgeon removed vegetations from her vulva (as recorded by féré) took no pleasure in pain, but in one case the intense craving for strong sexual emotion, and in the other the long-blunted nerves of pleasure, welcomed the abnormally strong impulse; and the pain of the incision, if felt at all, was immediately swallowed up in the sensation of pleasure. moll remarks (_konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. ) that even in man a trace of physical pain may be normally combined with sexual pleasure, when the vagina contracts on the penis at the moment of ejaculation, the pain, when not too severe, being almost immediately felt as pleasure. that there is no pleasure in the actual pain, even in masochism, is indicated by the following statement which krafft-ebing gives as representing the experiences of a masochist (_psychopathia sexualis_ english translation, p. ): "the relation is not of such a nature that what causes physical pain is simply perceived as physical pleasure, for the person in a state of masochistic ecstasy feels no pain, either because by reason of his emotional state (like that of the soldier in battle) the physical effect on his cutaneous nerves is not apperceived, or because (as with religious martyrs and enthusiasts) in the preoccupation of consciousness with sexual emotion the idea of maltreatment remains merely a symbol, without its quality of pain. to a certain extent there is overcompensation of physical pain in psychic pleasure, and only the excess remains in consciousness as psychic lust. this also undergoes an increase, since, either through reflex spinal influence or through a peculiar coloring in the sensorium of sensory impressions, a kind of hallucination of bodily pleasure takes place, with a vague localization of the objectively projected sensation. in the self-torture of religious enthusiasts (fakirs, howling dervishes, religious flagellants) there is an analogous state, only with a difference in the quality of pleasurable feeling. here the conception of martyrdom is also apperceived without its pain, for consciousness is filled with the pleasurably colored idea of serving god, atoning for sins, deserving heaven, etc., through martyrdom." this statement cannot be said to clear up the matter entirely; but it is fairly evident that, when a woman says that she finds pleasure in the pain inflicted by a lover, she means that under the special circumstances she finds pleasure in treatment which would at other times be felt as pain, or else that the slight real pain experienced is so quickly followed by overwhelming pleasure that in memory the pain itself seems to have been pleasure and may even be regarded as the symbol of pleasure. there is a special peculiarity of physical pain, which may be well borne in mind in considering the phenomena now before us, for it helps to account for the tolerance with which the idea of pain is regarded. i refer to the great ease with which physical pain is forgotten, a fact well known to all mothers, or to all who have been present at the birth of a child. as professor von tschisch points out ("der schmerz," _zeitschrift für psychologie und physiologie der sinnesorgane_, bd. xxvi, ht. and , ), memory can only preserve impressions as a whole; physical pain consists of a sensation and of a feeling. but memory cannot easily reproduce the definite sensation of the pain, and thus the whole memory is disintegrated and speedily forgotten. it is quite otherwise with moral suffering, which persists in memory and has far more influence on conduct. no one wishes to suffer moral pain or has any pleasure even in the idea of suffering it. it is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. on the one hand, rooted in the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compassion; on the other hand, rooted in the sexual instinct, we find a delight in roughness, violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in others. the one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish and protect; the other delights in the spectacle of recklessness, audacity, sometimes even effrontery.[ ] a woman is not perfectly happy in her lover unless he can give at least some satisfaction to each of these two opposite longings. the psychological satisfaction which women tend to feel in a certain degree of pain in love is strictly co-ordinated with a physical fact. women possess a minor degree of sensibility in the sexual region. this fact must not be misunderstood. on the one hand, it by no means begs the question as to whether women's sensibility generally is greater or less than that of men; this is a disputed question and the evidence is still somewhat conflicting.[ ] on the other hand, it also by no means involves a less degree of specific sexual pleasure in women, for the tactile sensibility of the sexual organs is no index to the specific sexual sensibility of those organs when in a state of tumescence. the real significance of the less tactile sensibility of the genital region in women is to be found in parturition and the special liability of the sexual region in women to injury.[ ] the women who are less sensitive in this respect would be better able and more willing to endure the risks of childbirth, and would therefore tend to supplant those who were more sensitive. but, as a by-product of this less degree of sensibility, we have a condition in which physical irritation amounting even to pain may become to normal women in the state of extreme tumescence a source of pleasurable excitement, such as it would rarely be to normal men. to calmann appear to be due the first carefully made observations showing the minor sensibility of the genital tract in women. (adolf calmann, "sensibilitütsprufungen am weiblicken genitale nach forensichen gesichtspunkten," _archiv für gynäkologie_, , p. .) he investigated the vagina, urethra, and anus in eighteen women and found a great lack of sensibility, least marked in anus, and most marked in vagina. [this distribution of the insensitiveness alone indicates that it is due, as i have suggested, to natural selection.] sometimes a finger in the vagina could not be felt at all. one woman, when a catheter was introduced into the anus, said it might be the vagina or urethra, but was certainly not the anus. (calmann remarks that he was careful to put his questions in an intelligible form.) the women were only conscious of the urine being drawn off when they heard the familiar sound of the stream or when the bladder was very full; if the sound of the stream was deadened by a towel they were quite unconscious that the bladder had been emptied. [in confirmation of this statement i have noticed that in a lady whose distended bladder it was necessary to empty by the catheter shortly before the birth of her first child--but who had, indeed, been partly under the influence of chloroform--there was no consciousness of the artificial relief; she merely remarked that she thought she could now relieve herself.] there was some sense of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and judgment of size were often widely erroneous. it is significant that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those who had had children. calmann's experiments appear to be confirmed by the experiments of marco treves, of turin, on the thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the turin international congress of physiology (and briefly noted in _nature_, november , ). treves found that the sensitivity of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. the mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only slight, and that painful, sensation. in further illustration of this point reference may be made to the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless manner. it is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in paris by macé and briefly summarized in the _british medical journal_, may , . in the first the patient was a primipara years of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were quite painless. in the second case, the mother, aged , a tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the fetal head appeared at the vulva, and was soon born. further illustration may be found in those cases in which severe inflammatory processes may take place in the genital canal without being noticed. thus, maxwell reports the case of a young chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of her first child the vagina became almost obliterated, yet beyond slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the husband found that penetration was impossible (_british medical journal_, january , , p. ). the insensitiveness of the vagina and its contrast, in this respect, with the penis--though we are justified in regarding the penis as being, like organs of special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility--are vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported a few years ago in america by dr. g.w. allen in the _boston medical and surgical journal_: a man came under observation with an edematous, inflamed penis. the wife, the night previous, on advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the vagina just previous to coitus. the husband, ignorant of the fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. the next morning there were large blisters on the penis, but it was no longer painful. when seen by dr. allen the prepuce was retracted and edematous, the whole penis was much swollen, and there were large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans. in this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of phenomena concerning which much evidence has now accumulated. i refer to the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the penis, whether permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in congress. these appliances have their great center among the indonesian peoples (in borneo, java, sumatra, the malay peninsula, the philippines, etc.), thence extending in a modified form through china, to become, it appears, considerably prevalent in russia; i have also a note of their appearance in india. they have another widely diffused center, through which, however, they are more sparsely scattered, among the american indians of the northern and more especially of the southern continents. amerigo vespucci and other early travelers noted the existence of some of these appliances, and since miklucho-macleay carefully described them as used in borneo[ ] their existence has been generally recognized. they are usually regarded merely as ethnological curiosities. as such they would not concern us here. their real significance for us is that they illustrate the comparative insensitiveness of the genital canal in women, while at the same time they show that a certain amount of what we cannot but regard as painful stimulation is craved by women, in order to heighten tumescence and increase sexual pleasure, even though it can only by procured by artificial methods. it is, of course, possible to argue that in these cases we are not concerned with pain at all, but with a strong stimulation that is felt as purely pleasurable. there can be no doubt, however, that in the absence of sexual excitement this stimulation would be felt as purely painful, and--in the light of our previous discussion--we may, perhaps, fairly regard it as a painful stimulation which is craved, not because it is itself pleasurable, but because it heightens the highly pleasurable state of tumescence. borneo, the geographical center of the indonesian world, appears also to be the district in which these instruments are most popular. the _ampallang, palang, kambion_, or _sprit-sail yard_, as it is variously termed, is a little rod of bone or metal nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the kyans and dyaks of borneo. before coitus it is inserted into a transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. another instrument, used by the dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the malays, is the _palang anus_, which is a ring or collar of plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (brooke low, "the natives of borneo," _journal of the anthropological institute_, august and november, , p. ; the _ampallang_ and similar instruments are described by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, chapter xvii; also in _untrodden fields of anthropology_, by a french army surgeon, , vol. ii, pp. - ; also mantegazza, _gli amori degli uomini_, french translation, p. et seq.) riedel informed miklucho-macleay that in the celebes the alfurus fasten the eyelids of goats with the eyelashes round the corona of the glans penis, and in java a piece of goatskin is used in a similar way, so as to form a hairy sheath (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , pp. - ), while among the batta, of sumatra, hagen found that small stones are inserted by an incision under the skin of the penis (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. ). in the malay peninsula stevens found instruments somewhat similar to the _ampallang_ still in use among some tribes, and among others formerly in use. he thinks they were brought from borneo. (h.v. stevens, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) bloch, who brings forward other examples of similar devices (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, pp. - ), considers that the australian mica operation may thus in part be explained. such instruments are not, however, entirely unknown in europe. in france, in the eighteenth century, it appears that rings, sometimes set with hard knobs, and called "aides," were occasionally used by men to heighten the pleasure of women in intercourse. (dühren, _marquis de sade_, , p. .) in russia, according to weissenberg, of elizabethsgrad, it is not uncommon to use elastic rings set with little teeth; these rings are fastened around the base of the glans. (weissenberg, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) this instrument must have been brought to russia from the east, for burton (in the notes to his _arabian nights_) mentions a precisely similar instrument as in use in china. somewhat similar is the "chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same metal, which is slipped over the glans. in south america the araucanians of argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened around the penis; one of these is in the museum at la plata; it is said the custom may have been borrowed from the patagonians; these instruments, called _geskels_, are made by the women and the workmanship is very delicate. (lehmann-nitsche, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) it is noteworthy that a somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in borneo. (breitenstein, _ jahre in india_, , pt. i, p. .) most of the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the gratification afforded by such instruments. in borneo a modest woman symbolically indicates to her lover the exact length of the ampallang she would prefer by leaving at a particular spot a cigarette of that length. miklucho-macleay considers that these instruments were invented by women. brooke low remarks that "no woman once habituated to its use will ever dream of permitting her bedfellow to discontinue the practice of wearing it," and stevens states that at one time no woman would marry a man who was not furnished with such an apparatus. it may be added that a very similar appliance may be found in european countries (especially germany) in the use of a condom furnished with irregularities, or a frill, in order to increase the woman's excitement. it is not impossible to find evidence that, in european countries, even in the absence of such instruments, the craving which they gratify still exists in women. thus, mauriac tells of a patient with vegetations on the glans who delayed treatment because his mistress liked him so best (art. "végétations," _dictionnaire de médecine et chirurgie pratique_). it may seem that such impulses and such devices to gratify them are altogether unnatural. this is not so. they have a zoölogical basis and in many animals are embodied in the anatomical structure. many rodents, ruminants, and some of the carnivora show natural developments of the penis closely resembling some of those artificially adopted by man. thus the guinea-pigs possess two horny styles attached to the penis, while the glans of the penis is covered with sharp spines. some of the caviidæ also have two sharp, horny saws at the side of the penis. the cat, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and other animals possess projecting structures on the penis, and some species of ruminants, such as the sheep, the giraffe, and many antelopes, have, attached to the penis, long filiform processes through which the urethra passes. (f.h.a. marshall, _the physiology of reproduction_, pp. - .) we find, even in creatures so delicate and ethereal as the butterflies, a whole armory of keen weapons for use in coitus. these were described in detail in an elaborate and fully illustrated memoir by p.h. gosse ("on the clasping organs ancillary to generation in certain groups of the lepidoptera," _transactions of the linnæan society_, second series, vol. ii, zoölogy, ). these organs, which gosse terms _harpes_ (or grappling irons), are found in the papilionidæ and are very beautiful and varied, taking the forms of projecting claws, hooks, pikes, swords, knobs, and strange combinations of these, commonly brought to a keen edge and then cut into sharp teeth. it is probable that all these structures serve to excite the sexual apparatus of the female and to promote tumescence. to the careless observer there may seem to be something vicious or perverted in such manifestations in man. that opinion becomes very doubtful when we consider how these tendencies occur in people living under natural conditions in widely separated parts of the world. it becomes still further untenable if we are justified in believing that the ancestors of men possessed projecting epithelial appendages attached to the penis, and if we accept the discovery by friedenthal of the rudiment of these appendages on the penis of the human fetus at an early stage (friedenthal, "sonderformen der menschlichen leibesbildung," _sexual-probleme_, feb., , p. ). in this case human ingenuity would merely be seeking to supply an organ which nature has ceased to furnish, although it is still in some cases needed, especially among peoples whose aptitude for erethism has remained at, or fallen to, a subhuman level. at first sight the connection between love and pain--the tendency of men to delight in inflicting it and women in suffering it--seems strange and inexplicable. it seems amazing that a tender and even independent woman should maintain a passionate attachment to a man who subjects her to physical and moral insults, and that a strong man, often intelligent, reasonable, and even kind-hearted, should desire to subject to such insults a woman whom he loves passionately and who has given him every final proof of her own passion. in understanding such cases we have to remember that it is only within limits that a woman really enjoys the pain, discomfort, or subjection to which she submits. a little pain which the man knows he can himself soothe, a little pain which the woman gladly accepts as the sign and forerunner of pleasure--this degree of pain comes within the normal limits of love and is rooted, as we have seen, in the experience of the race. but when it is carried beyond these limits, though it may still be tolerated because of the support it receives from its biological basis, it is no longer enjoyed. the natural note has been too violently struck, and the rhythm of love has ceased to be perfect. a woman may desire to be forced, to be roughly forced, to be ravished away beyond her own will. but all the time she only desires to be forced toward those things which are essentially and profoundly agreeable to her. a man who fails to realize this has made little progress in the art of love. "i like being knocked about and made to do things i don't want to do," a woman said, but she admitted, on being questioned, that she would not like to have _much_ pain inflicted, and that she might not care to be made to do important things she did not want to do. the story of griselda's unbounded submissiveness can scarcely be said to be psychologically right, though it has its artistic rightness as an elaborate fantasia on this theme justified by its conclusion. this point is further illustrated by the following passage from a letter written by a lady: "submission to the man's will is still, and always must be, the prelude to pleasure, and the association of ideas will probably always produce this much misunderstood instinct. now, i find, indirectly from other women and directly from my own experience, that, when the point in dispute is very important and the man exerts his authority, the desire to get one's own way completely obliterates the sexual feeling, while, conversely, in small things the sexual feeling obliterates the desire to have one's own way. where the two are nearly equal a conflict between them ensues, and i can stand aside and wonder which will get the best of it, though i encourage the sexual feeling when possible, as, if the other conquers, it leaves a sense of great mental irritation and physical discomfort. a man should command in small things, as in nine cases out of ten this will produce excitement. he should _advise_ in large matters, or he may find either that he is unable to enforce his orders or that he produces a feeling of dislike and annoyance he was far from intending. women imagine men must be stronger than themselves to excite their passion. i disagree. a passionate man has the best chance, for in him the primitive instincts are strong. the wish to subdue the female is one of them, and in small things he will exert his authority to make her feel his power, while she knows that on a question of real importance she has a good chance of getting her own way by working on his greater susceptibility. perhaps an illustration will show what i mean. i was listening to the band and a girl and her _fiancé_ came up to occupy two seats near me. the girl sank into one seat, but for some reason the man wished her to take the other. she refused. he repeated his order twice, the second time so peremptorily that she changed places, and i heard him say: 'i don't think you heard what i said. i don't expect to give an order three times.' "this little scene interested me, and i afterward asked the girl the following questions:-- "'had you any reason for taking one chair more than the other?' "'no.' "'did mr. ----'s insistence on your changing give you any pleasure?' "'yes' (after a little hesitation). "'why?' "'i don't know.' "'would it have done so if you had particularly wished to sit in that chair; if, for instance, you had had a boil on your cheek and wished to turn that side away from him?' "'no; certainly not. the worry of thinking he was looking at it would have made me too cross to feel pleased.' "does this explain what i mean? the occasion, by the way, need not be really important, but, as in this imaginary case of the boil, if it _seems important_ to the woman, irritation will outweigh the physical sensation." i am well aware that in thus asserting a certain tendency in women to delight in suffering pain--however careful and qualified the position i have taken--many estimable people will cry out that i am degrading a whole sex and generally supporting the "subjection of women." but the day for academic discussion concerning the "subjection of women" has gone by. the tendency i have sought to make clear is too well established by the experience of normal and typical women--however numerous the exceptions may be--to be called in question. i would point out to those who would deprecate the influence of such facts in relation to social progress that nothing is gained by regarding women as simply men of smaller growth. they are not so; they have the laws of their own nature; their development must be along their own lines, and not along masculine lines. it is as true now as in bacon's day that we only learn to command nature by obeying her. to ignore facts is to court disappointment in our measure of progress. the particular fact with which we have here come in contact is very vital and radical, and most subtle in its influence. it is foolish to ignore it; we must allow for its existence. we can neither attain a sane view of life nor a sane social legislation of life unless we possess a just and accurate knowledge of the fundamental instincts upon which life is built. footnotes: [ ] various mammals, carried away by the reckless fury of the sexual impulse, are apt to ill-treat their females (r. müller, _sexualbiologie_, p. ). this treatment is, however, usually only an incident of courtship, the result of excess of ardor. "the chaffinches and saffron-finches (_fringella_ and _sycalis_) are very rough wooers," says a.g. butler (_zoölogist_, , p. ); "they sing vociferously, and chase their hens violently, knocking them over in their flight, pursuing and savagely pecking them even on the ground; but when once the hens become submissive, the males change their tactics, and become for the time model husbands, feeding their wives from their crop, and assisting in rearing the young." [ ] cf. a.c. haddon, _head hunters_, p. . [ ] marro considers that there may be transference of emotion,--the impulse of violence generated in the male by his rivals being turned against his partner,--according to a tendency noted by sully and illustrated by ribot in his _psychology of the emotions_, part i, chapter xii. [ ] several writers have found in the facts of primitive animal courtship the explanation of the connection between love and pain. thus, krafft-ebing (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth german edition, p. ) briefly notes that outbreaks of sadism are possibly atavistic. marro (_la pubertà_, , p. et seq.) has some suggestive pages on this subject. it would appear that this explanation was vaguely outlined by jäger. laserre, in a bordeaux thesis mentioned by féré, has argued in the same sense. féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, p. ), on grounds that are scarcely sufficient, regards this explanation as merely a superficial analogy. but it is certainly not a complete explanation. [ ] schäfer (_jahrbücher für psychologie_, bd. ii, p. , and quoted by krafft-ebing in _psychopathia sexualis_), in connection with a case in which sexual excitement was produced by the sight of battles or of paintings of them, remarks: "the pleasure of battle and murder is so predominantly an attribute of the male sex throughout the animal kingdom that there can be no question about the close connection between this side of the masculine character and male sexuality. i believe that i can show by observation that in men who are absolutely normal, mentally and physically, the first indefinite and incomprehensible precursors of sexual excitement may be induced by reading exciting scenes of chase and war. these give rise to unconscious longings for a kind of satisfaction in warlike games (wrestling, etc.) which express the fundamental sexual impulse to close and complete contact with a companion, with a secondary more or less clearly defined thought of conquest." groos (_spiele der menschen_, , p. ) also thinks there is more or less truth in this suggestion of a subconscious sexual element in the playful wrestling combats of boys. freud considers (_drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, p. ) that the tendency to sexual excitement through muscular activity in wrestling, etc., is one of the roots of sadism. i have been told of normal men who feel a conscious pleasure of this kind when lifted in games, as may happen, for instance, in football. it may be added that in some parts of the world the suitor has to throw the girl in a wrestling-bout in order to secure her hand. [ ] a minor manifestation of this tendency, appearing even in quite normal and well-conditioned individuals, is the impulse among boys at and after puberty to take pleasure in persecuting and hurting lower animals or their own young companions. some youths display a diabolical enjoyment and ingenuity in torturing sensitive juniors, and even a boy who is otherwise kindly and considerate may find enjoyment in deliberately mutilating a frog. in some cases, in boys and youths who have no true sadistic impulse and are not usually cruel, this infliction of torture on a lower animal produces an erection, though not necessarily any pleasant sexual sensations. [ ] marro, _la pubertà_, , p. ; garnier, "la criminalité juvenile," _comptes-rendus congrès internationale d'anthropologie criminelle_, amsterdam, , p. ; _archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. v-vi, p. . [ ] bk. ii, ch. ii. [ ] herbert spencer, _principles of sociology_, , vol. i, p. . [ ] westermarck, _human marriage_, p. . grosse is of the same opinion; he considers also that the mock-capture is often an imitation, due to admiration, of real capture; he does not believe that the latter has ever been a form of marriage recognized by custom and law, but only "an occasional and punishable act of violence." (_die formen der familie_, pp. - .) this position is too extreme. [ ] ernest crawley, _the mystic rose_, , p. et seq. van gennep rightly remarks that we cannot correctly say that the woman is abducted from "her sex," but only from her "sexual society." [ ] a. van gennep (_rites de passage_, , pp. - ) has put forward a third theory, though also of a psychological character, according to which the "capture" is a rite indicating the separation of the young girl from the special societies of her childhood. gennep regards this rite as one of a vast group of "rites of passage," which come into action whenever a person changes his social or natural environment. [ ] féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, p. ) appears to regard the satisfaction, based on the sentiment of personal power, which may be experienced in the suffering and subjection of a victim as an adequate explanation of the association of pain with love. this i can scarcely admit. it is a factor in the emotional attitude, but when it only exists in the sexual sphere it is reasonable to base this attitude largely on the still more fundamental biological attitude of the male toward the female in the process of courtship. féré regards this biological element as merely a superficial analogy, on the ground that an act of cruelty may become an equivalent of coitus. but a sexual perversion is quite commonly constituted by the selection and magnification of a single moment in the normal sexual process. [ ] the process may, however, be quite conscious. thus, a correspondent tells me that he not only finds sexual pleasure in cruelty toward the woman he loves, but that he regards this as an essential element. he is convinced that it gives the woman pleasure, and that it is possible to distinguish by gesture, inflection of voice, etc., an hysterical, assumed, or imagined feeling of pain from real pain. he would not wish to give real pain, and would regard that as sadism. [ ] de sade had already made the same remark, while duchenne, of boulogne, pointed out that the facial expressions of sexual passion and of cruelty are similar. [ ] kryptadia, vol. vi, p. . [ ] daumas, _chevaux de sahara_, p. . [ ] see in vol. iv of these _studies_ ("sexual selection in man"), appendix a, on "the origins of the kiss." [ ] de stendhal (_de l'amour_) mentions that when in london he was on terms of friendship with an english actress who was the mistress of a wealthy colonel, but privately had another lover. one day the colonel arrived when the other man was present. "this gentleman has called about the pony i want to sell," said the actress. "i have come for a very different purpose," said the little man, and thus aroused a love which was beginning to languish. [ ] see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, chapter vi, "the senses." [ ] this liability is emphasized by adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, bd. viii, , pp. - . ii. the definition of sadism--de sade--masochism to some extent normal--sacher-masoch--no real line of demarcation between sadism and masochism--algolagnia includes both groups of manifestations--the love-bite as a bridge from normal phenomena to algolagnia--the fascination of blood--the most extreme perversions are linked on to normal phenomena. we thus see that there are here two separate groups of feelings: one, in the masculine line, which delights in displaying force and often inflicts pain or the simulacrum of pain; the other, in the feminine line, which delights in submitting to that force, and even finds pleasure in a slight amount of pain, or the idea of pain, when associated with the experiences of love. we see, also, that these two groups of feelings are complementary. within the limits consistent with normal and healthy life, what men are impelled to give women love to receive. so that we need not unduly deprecate the "cruelty" of men within these limits, nor unduly commiserate the women who are subjected to it. such a conclusion, however, as we have also seen, only holds good within those normal limits which an attempt has here been made to determine. the phenomena we have been considering are strictly normal phenomena, having their basis in the conditions of tumescence and detumescence in animal and primitive human courtship. at one point, however, when discussing the phenomena of the love-bite, i referred to the facts which indicate how this purely normal manifestation yet insensibly passes over into the region of the morbid. it is an instance that enables us to realize how even the most terrible and repugnant sexual perversions are still demonstrably linked on to phenomena that are fundamentally normal. the love-bite may be said to give us the key to that perverse impulse which has been commonly called sadism. there is some difference of opinion as to how "sadism" may be best defined. perhaps the simplest and most usual definition is that of krafft-ebing, as sexual emotion associated with the wish to inflict pain and use violence, or, as he elsewhere expresses it, "the impulse to cruel and violent treatment of the opposite sex, and the coloring of the idea of such acts with lustful feeling."[ ] a more complete definition is that of moll, who describes sadism as a condition in which "the sexual impulse consists in the tendency to strike, ill-use, and humiliate the beloved person."[ ] this definition has the advantage of bringing in the element of moral pain. a further extension is made in féré's definition as "the need of association of violence and cruelty with sexual enjoyment, such violence or cruelty not being necessarily exerted by the person himself who seeks sexual pleasure in this association."[ ] garnier's definition, while comprising all these points, further allows for the fact that a certain degree of sadism may be regarded as normal. "pathological sadism," he states, "is an impulsive and obsessing sexual perversion characterized by a close connection between suffering inflicted or mentally represented and the sexual orgasm, without this necessary and sufficing condition frigidity usually remaining absolute."[ ] it must be added that these definitions are very incomplete if by "sadism" we are to understand the special sexual perversions which are displayed in de sade's novels. iwan bloch ("eugen dühren"), in the course of his book on de sade, has attempted a definition strictly on this basis, and, as will be seen, it is necessary to make it very elaborate: "a connection, whether intentionally sought or offered by chance, of sexual excitement and sexual enjoyment with the real or only symbolic (ideal, illusionary) appearance of frightful and shocking events, destructive occurrences and practices, which threaten or destroy the life, health, and property of man and other living creatures, and threaten and interrupt the continuity of inanimate objects, whereby the person who from such occurrences obtains sexual enjoyment may either himself be the direct cause, or cause them to take place by means of other persons, or merely be the spectator, or, finally, be, voluntarily or involuntarily, the object against which these processes are directed."[ ] this definition of sadism as found in de sade's works is thus, more especially by its final clause, a very much wider conception than the usual definition. donatien alphonse françois, marquis de sade, was born in at paris in the house of the great condé. he belonged to a very noble, ancient, and distinguished provençal family; petrarch's laura, who married a de sade, was one of his ancestors, and the family had cultivated both arms and letters with success. he was, according to lacroix, "an adorable youth whose delicately pale and dusky face, lighted up by two large black [according to another account blue] eyes, already bore the languorous imprint of the vice which was to corrupt his whole being"; his voice was "drawling and caressing"; his gait had "a softly feminine grace." unfortunately there is no authentic portrait of him. his early life is sketched in letter iv of his _aline et valcourt_. on leaving the collège-louis-le-grand he became a cavalry officer and went through the seven years' war in germany. there can be little doubt that the experiences of his military life, working on a femininely vicious temperament, had much to do with the development of his perversion. he appears to have got into numerous scrapes, of which the details are unknown, and his father sought to marry him to the daughter of an aristocratic friend of his own, a noble and amiable girl of . it so chanced that when young de sade first went to the house of his future wife only her younger sister, a girl of , was at home; with her he at once fell in love and his love was reciprocated; they were both musical enthusiasts, and she had a beautiful voice. the parents insisted on carrying out the original scheme of marriage. de sade's wife loved him, and, in spite of everything, served his interests with griselda-like devotion; she was, ginisty remarks, a saint, a saint of conjugal life; but her love was from the first only requited with repulsion, contempt, and suspicion. there were, however, children of the marriage; the career of the eldest--an estimable young man who went into the army and also had artistic ability, but otherwise had no community of tastes with his father--has been sketched by paul ginisty, who has also edited the letters of the marquise. de sade's passion for the younger sister continued (he idealized her as juliette), though she was placed in a convent beyond his reach, and at a much later period he eloped with her and spent perhaps the happiest period of his life, soon terminated by her death. it is evident that this unhappy marriage was decisive in determining de sade's career; he at once threw himself recklessly into every form of dissipation, spending his health and his substance sometimes among refinedly debauched nobles and sometimes among coarsely debauched lackeys. he was, however, always something of an artist, something of a student, something of a philosopher, and at an early period he began to write, apparently at the age of . it was at this age, and only a few months after his marriage, that on account of some excess he was for a time confined in vincennes. he was destined to spend years of his life in prisons, if we include the years which in old age he passed in the asylum at charenton. his actual offenses were by no means so terrible as those he loved to dwell on in imagination, and for the most part they have been greatly exaggerated. his most extreme offenses were the indecent and forcible flagellation in of a young woman, rosa keller, who had accosted him in the street for alms, and whom he induced by false pretenses to come to his house, and the administration of aphrodisiacal bonbons to some prostitutes at marseilles. it is owing to the fact that the prime of his manhood was spent in prisons that de sade fell back on dreaming, study, and novel-writing. shut out from real life, he solaced his imagination with the perverted visions--to a very large extent, however, founded on knowledge of the real facts of perverted life in his time--which he has recorded in _justine_ ( ); _les journées de sodome ou l'ecole du libertinage_ ( ); _aline et valcour ou le roman philosophique_ ( ); _juliette_ ( ); _la philosophie dans le boudoir_ ( ). these books constitute a sort of encyclopedia of sexual perversions, an eighteenth century _psychopathia sexualis_, and embody, at the same time, a philosophy. he was the first, bloch remarks, who realized the immense importance of the sexual question. his general attitude may be illustrated by the following passage (as quoted by lacassagne): "if there are beings in the world whose acts shock all accepted prejudices, we must not preach at them or punish them ... because their bizarre tastes no more depend upon themselves than it depends on you whether you are witty or stupid, well made or hump-backed.... what would become of your laws, your morality, your religion, your gallows, your paradise, your gods, your hell, if it were shown that such and such fluids, such fibers, or a certain acridity in the blood, or in the animal spirits, alone suffice to make a man the object of your punishments or your rewards?" he was enormously well read, bloch points out, and his interest extended to every field of literature: _belles lettres_, philosophy, theology, politics, sociology, ethnology, mythology, and history. perhaps his favorite reading was travels. he was minutely familiar with the bible, though his attitude was extremely critical. his favorite philosopher was lamettrie, whom he very frequently quotes, and he had carefully studied machiavelli. de sade had foreseen the revolution; he was an ardent admirer of marat, and at this period he entered into public life as a mild, gentle, rather bald and gray-haired person. many scenes of the revolution were the embodiment in real life of de sade's imagination; such, for instance, were the barbaric tortures inflicted, at the instigation of théroigne de méricourt, on la belle bouquetière. yet de sade played a very peaceful part in the events of that time, chiefly as a philanthropist, spending much of his time in the hospitals. he saved his parents-in-law from the scaffold, although they had always been hostile to him, and by his moderation aroused the suspicions of the revolutionary party, and was again imprisoned. later he wrote a pamphlet against napoleon, who never forgave him and had him shut up in charenton as a lunatic; it was a not unusual method at that time of disposing of persons whom it was wished to put out of the way, and, notwithstanding de sade's organically abnormal temperament, there is no reason to regard him as actually insane. royer-collard, an eminent alienist of that period, then at the head of charenton, declared de sade to be sane, and his detailed report is still extant. other specialists were of the same opinion. bloch, who quotes these opinions (_neue forschungen_, etc., p. ), says that the only possible conclusion is that de sade was sane, but neurasthenic, and eulenburg also concludes that he cannot be regarded as insane, although he was highly degenerate. in the asylum he amused himself by organizing a theater. lacroix, many years later, questioning old people who had known him, was surprised to find that even in the memory of most virtuous and respectable persons he lived merely as an "_aimable mauvais sujet_." it is noteworthy that de sade aroused, in a singular degree, the love and devotion of women,--whether or not we may regard this as evidence of the fascination exerted on women by cruelty. janin remarks that he had seen many pretty little letters written by young and charming women of the great world, begging for the release of the "_pauvre marquis_." sardou, the dramatist, has stated that in he visited the bicêtre and met an old gardener who had known de sade during his reclusion there. he told that one of the marquis's amusements was to procure baskets of the most beautiful and expensive roses; he would then sit on a footstool by a dirty streamlet which ran through the courtyard, and would take the roses, one by one, gaze at them, smell them with a voluptuous expression, soak them in the muddy water, and fling them away, laughing as he did so. he died on the d of december, , at the age of . he was almost blind, and had long been a martyr to gout, asthma, and an affection of the stomach. it was his wish that acorns should be planted over his grave and his memory effaced. at a later period his skull was examined by a phrenologist, who found it small and well formed; "one would take it at first for a woman's head." the skull belonged to dr. londe, but about the middle of the century it was stolen by a doctor who conveyed it to england, where it may possibly yet be found. [the foregoing account is mainly founded on paul lacroix, _revue de paris_, , and _curiosités de l'histoire de france_, second series, _procès célèbres_, p. ; janin, _revue de paris_, ; eugen dühren (iwan bloch), _der marquis de sade und seine zeit_, third edition, ; id., _neue forschungen über den marquis de sade und seine zeit_, ; lacassagne, _vacher l'eventreur et les crimes sadiques_, ; paul ginisty, _la marquise de sade_, .] the attempt to define sadism strictly and penetrate to its roots in de sade's personal temperament reveals a certain weakness in the current conception of this sexual perversion. it is not, as we might infer, both from the definition usually given and from its probable biological heredity from primitive times, a perversion due to excessive masculinity. the strong man is more apt to be tender than cruel, or at all events knows how to restrain within bounds any impulse to cruelty; the most extreme and elaborate forms of sadism (putting aside such as are associated with a considerable degree of imbecility) are more apt to be allied with a somewhat feminine organization. montaigne, indeed, observed long ago that cruelty is usually accompanied by feminine softness. in the same way it is a mistake to suppose that the very feminine woman is not capable of sadistic tendencies. even if we take into account the primitive animal conditions of combat, the male must suffer as well as inflict pain, and the female must not only experience subjection to the male, but also share in the emotions of her partner's victory over his rivals. as bearing on these points, i may quote the following remarks written by a lady: "it is said that, the weaker and more feminine a woman is, the greater the subjection she likes. i don't think it has anything at all to do with the general character, but depends entirely on whether the feeling of constraint and helplessness affects her sexually. in men i have several times noticed that those who were most desirous of subjection to the women they loved had, in ordinary life, very strong and determined characters. i know of others, too, who with very weak characters are very imperious toward the women they care for. among women i have often been surprised to see how a strong, determined woman will give way to a man she loves, and how tenacious of her own will may be some fragile, clinging creature who in daily life seems quite unable to act on her own responsibility. a certain amount of passivity, a desire to have their emotions worked on, seems to me, so far as my small experience goes, very common among ordinary, presumably normal men. a good deal of stress is laid on femininity as an attraction in a woman, and this may be so to very strong natures, but, so far as i have seen, the women who obtain extraordinary empire over men are those with a certain _virility_ in their character and passions. if with this virility they combine a fragility or childishness of appearance which appeals to a man in another way at the same time, they appear to be irresistible." i have noted some of the feminine traits in de sade's temperament and appearance. the same may often be noted in sadists whose crimes were very much more serious and brutal than those of de sade. a man who stabbed women in the streets at st. louis was a waiter with a high-pitched, effeminate voice and boyish appearance. reidel, the sadistic murderer, was timid, modest, and delicate; he was too shy to urinate in the presence of other people. a sadistic zoöphilist, described by a. marie, who attempted to strangle a woman fellow-worker, had always been very timid, blushed with much facility, could not look even children in the eyes, or urinate in the presence of another person, or make sexual advances to women. kiernan and moyer are inclined to connect the modesty and timidity of sadists with a disgust for normal coitus. they were called upon to examine an inverted married woman who had inflicted several hundred wounds, mostly superficial, with forks, scissors, etc., on the genital organs and other parts of a girl whom she had adopted from a "home." this woman was very prominent in church and social matters in the city in which she lived, so that many clergymen and local persons of importance testified to her chaste, modest, and even prudish character; she was found to be sane at the time of the acts. (moyer, _alienist and neurologist_, may, , and private letter from dr. kiernan.) we are thus led to another sexual perversion, which is usually considered the opposite of sadism. masochism is commonly regarded as a peculiarly feminine sexual perversion, in women, indeed, as normal in some degree, and in man as a sort of inversion of the normal masculine emotional attitude, but this view of the matter is not altogether justified, for definite and pronounced masochism seems to be much rarer in women than sadism.[ ] krafft-ebing, whose treatment of this phenomenon is, perhaps, his most valuable and original contribution to sexual psychology, has dealt very fully with the matter and brought forward many cases. he thus defines this perversion: "by masochism i understand a peculiar perversion of the psychical _vita sexualis_ in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. this idea is colored by sexual feeling; the masochist lives in fancies in which he creates situations of this kind, and he often attempts to realize them."[ ] in a minor degree, not amounting to a complete perversion of the sexual instinct, this sentiment of abnegation, the desire to be even physically subjected to the adored woman, cannot be regarded as abnormal. more than two centuries before krafft-ebing appeared, robert burton, who was no mean psychologist, dilated on the fact that love is a kind of slavery. "they are commonly slaves," he wrote of lovers, "captives, voluntary servants; _amator amicæ mancipium_, as castilio terms him; his mistress's servant, her drudge, prisoner, bondman, what not?"[ ] before burton's time the legend of the erotic servitude of aristotle was widely spread in europe, and pictures exist of the venerable philosopher on all fours ridden by a woman with a whip.[ ] in classic times various masochistic phenomena are noted with approval by ovid. it has been pointed out by moll[ ] that there are traces of masochistic feeling in some of goethe's poems, especially "lilis park" and "erwin und elmire." similar traces have been found in the poems of heine, platen, hamerling, and many other poets.[ ] the poetry of the people is also said to contain many such traces. it may, indeed, be said that passion in its more lyric exaltations almost necessarily involves some resort to masochistic expression. a popular lady novelist in a novel written many years ago represents her hero, a robust soldier, imploring the lady of his love, in a moment of passionate exaltation, to trample on him, certainly without any wish to suggest sexual perversion. if it is true that the antonio of otway's _venice preserved_ is a caricature of shaftesbury, then it would appear that one of the greatest of english statesmen was supposed to exhibit very pronounced and characteristic masochistic tendencies; and in more recent days masochistic expressions have been noted as occurring in the love-letters of so emphatically virile a statesman as bismarck. thus a minor degree of the masochistic tendency may be said to be fairly common, while its more pronounced manifestations are more common than pronounced sadism.[ ] it very frequently affects persons of a sensitive, refined, and artistic temperament. it may even be said that this tendency is in the line of civilization. krafft-ebing points out that some of the most delicate and romantic love-episodes of the middle ages are distinctly colored by masochistic emotion.[ ] the increasing tendency to masochism with increasing civilization becomes explicable if we accept colin scott's "secondary law of courting" as accessory to the primary law that the male is active, and the female passive and imaginatively attentive to the states of the excited male. according to the secondary law, "the female develops a superadded activity, the male becoming relatively passive and imaginatively attentive to the psychical and bodily states of the female."[ ] we may probably agree that this "secondary law of courting" does really represent a tendency of love in individuals of complex and sensitive nature, and the outcome of such a receptive attitude on the part of the male is undoubtedly in well-marked cases a desire of submission to the female's will, and a craving to experience in some physical or psychic form, not necessarily painful, the manifestations of her activity. when we turn from vague and unpronounced forms of the masochistic tendency to the more definite forms in which it becomes an unquestionable sexual perversion, we find a very eminent and fairly typical example in rousseau, an example all the more interesting because here the subject has himself portrayed his perversion in his famous _confessions_. it is, however, the name of a less eminent author, the austrian novelist, sacher-masoch, which has become identified with the perversion through the fact that krafft-ebing fixed upon it as furnishing a convenient counterpart to the term "sadism." it is on the strength of a considerable number of his novels and stories, more especially of _die venus im pelz_, that krafft-ebing took the scarcely warrantable liberty of identifying his name, while yet living, with a sexual perversion. sacher-masoch's biography has been written with intimate knowledge and much candor by c.f. von schlichtegroll (_sacher-masoch und der masochismus_, ) and, more indirectly, by his first wife wanda von sacher-masoch in her autobiography (_meine lebensbeichte_, ; french translation, _confession de ma vie_, ). schlichtegroll's book is written with a somewhat undue attempt to exalt his hero and to attribute his misfortunes to his first wife. the autobiography of the latter, however, enables us to form a more complete picture of sacher-masoch's life, for, while his wife by no means spares herself, she clearly shows that sacher-masoch was the victim of his own abnormal temperament, and she presents both the sensitive, refined, exalted, and generous aspects of his nature, and his morbid, imaginative, vain aspects. leopold von sacher-masoch was born in at lemberg in galicia. he was of spanish, german, and more especially slavonic race. the founder of the family may be said to be a certain don matthias sacher, a young spanish nobleman, in the sixteenth century, who settled in prague. the novelist's father was director of police in lemberg and married charlotte von masoch, a little russian lady of noble birth. the novelist, the eldest child of this union, was not born until after nine years of marriage, and in infancy was so delicate that he was not expected to survive. he began to improve, however, when his mother gave him to be suckled to a robust russian peasant woman, from whom, as he said later, he gained not only health, but "his soul"; from her he learned all the strange and melancholy legends of her people and a love of the little russians which never left him. while still a child young sacher-masoch was in the midst of the bloody scenes of the revolution which culminated in . when he was the family migrated to prague, and the boy, though precocious in his development, then first learned the german language, of which he attained so fine a mastery. at a very early age he had found the atmosphere, and even some of the most characteristic elements, of the peculiar types which mark his work as a novelist. it is interesting to trace the germinal elements of those peculiarities which so strongly affected his imagination on the sexual side. as a child, he was greatly attracted by representations of cruelty; he loved to gaze at pictures of executions, the legends of martyrs were his favorite reading, and with the onset of puberty he regularly dreamed that he was fettered and in the power of a cruel woman who tortured him. it has been said by an anonymous author that the women of galicia either rule their husbands entirely and make them their slaves or themselves sink to be the wretchedest of slaves. at the age of , according to schlichtegroll's narrative, the child leopold witnessed a scene in which a woman of the former kind, a certain countess xenobia x., a relative of his own on the paternal side, played the chief part, and this scene left an undying impress on his imagination. the countess was a beautiful but wanton creature, and the child adored her, impressed alike by her beauty and the costly furs she wore. she accepted his devotion and little services and would sometimes allow him to assist her in dressing; on one occasion, as he was kneeling before her to put on her ermine slippers, he kissed her feet; she smiled and gave him a kick which filled him with pleasure. not long afterward occurred the episode which so profoundly affected his imagination. he was playing with his sisters at hide-and-seek and had carefully hidden himself behind the dresses on a clothes-rail in the countess's bedroom. at this moment the countess suddenly entered the house and ascended the stairs, followed by a lover, and the child, who dared not betray his presence, saw the countess sink down on a sofa and begin to caress her lover. but a few moments later the husband, accompanied by two friends, dashed into the room. before, however, he could decide which of the lovers to turn against the countess had risen and struck him so powerful a blow in the face with her fist that he fell back streaming with blood. she then seized a whip, drove all three men out of the room, and in the confusion the lover slipped away. at this moment the clothes-rail fell and the child, the involuntary witness of the scene, was revealed to the countess, who now fell on him in anger, threw him to the ground, pressed her knee on his shoulder, and struck him unmercifully. the pain was great, and yet he was conscious of a strange pleasure. while this castigation was proceeding the count returned, no longer in a rage, but meek and humble as a slave, and kneeled down before her to beg forgiveness. as the boy escaped he saw her kick her husband. the child could not resist the temptation to return to the spot; the door was closed and he could see nothing, but he heard the sound of the whip and the groans of the count beneath his wife's blows. it is unnecessary to insist that in this scene, acting on a highly sensitive and somewhat peculiar child, we have the key to the emotional attitude which affected so much of sacher-masoch's work. as his biographer remarks, woman became to him, during a considerable part of his life, a creature at once to be loved and hated, a being whose beauty and brutality enabled her to set her foot at will on the necks of men, and in the heroine of his first important novel, the _emissär_, dealing with the polish revolution, he embodied the contradictory personality of countess xenobia. even the whip and the fur garments, sacher-masoch's favorite emotional symbols, find their explanation in this early episode. he was accustomed to say of an attractive woman: "i should like to see her in furs," and, of an unattractive woman: "i could not imagine her in furs." his writing-paper at one time was adorned with the figure of a woman in russian boyar costume, her cloak lined with ermine, and brandishing a scourge. on his walls he liked to have pictures of women in furs, of the kind of which there is so magnificent an example by rubens in the gallery at munich. he would even keep a woman's fur cloak on an ottoman in his study and stroke it from time to time, finding that his brain thus received the same kind of stimulation as schiller found in the odor of rotten apples.[ ] at the age of , in the revolution of , young sacher-masoch received his baptism of fire; carried away in the popular movement, he helped to defend the barricades together with a young lady, a relative of his family, an amazon with a pistol in her girdle, such as later he loved to depict. this episode was, however, but a brief interruption of his education; he pursued his studies with brilliance, and on the higher side his education was aided by his father's esthetic tastes. amateur theatricals were in special favor at his home, and here even the serious plays of goethe and gogol were performed, thus helping to train and direct the boy's taste. it is, perhaps, however, significant that it was a tragic event which, at the age of , first brought to him the full realization of life and the consciousness of his own power. this was the sudden death of his favorite sister. he became serious and quiet, and always regarded this grief as a turning-point in his life. at the universities of prague and graz he studied with such zeal that when only he took his doctor's degree in law and shortly afterward became a _privatdocent_ for german history at graz. gradually, however, the charms of literature asserted themselves definitely, and he soon abandoned teaching. he took part, however, in the war of in italy, and at the battle of solferino he was decorated on the field for bravery in action by the austrian field-marshal. these incidents, however, had little disturbing influence on sacher-masoch's literary career, and he was gradually acquiring a european reputation by his novels and stories. a far more seriously disturbing influence had already begun to be exerted on his life by a series of love-episodes. some of these were of slight and ephemeral character; some were a source of unalloyed happiness, all the more so if there was an element of extravagance to appeal to his quixotic nature. he always longed to give a dramatic and romantic character to his life, his wife says, and he spent some blissful days on an occasion when he ran away to florence with a russian princess as her private secretary. most often these episodes culminated in deception and misery. it was after a relationship of this kind from which he could not free himself for four years that he wrote _die geschiedene frau, passionsgeschichte eines idealisten_, putting into it much of his own personal history. at one time he was engaged to a sweet and charming young girl. then it was that he met a young woman at graz, laura rümelin, years of age, engaged as a glove-maker, and living with her mother. though of poor parentage, with little or no knowledge of the world, she had great natural ability and intelligence. schlichtegroll represents her as spontaneously engaging in a mysterious intrigue with the novelist. her own detailed narrative renders the circumstances more intelligible. she approached sacher-masoch by letter, adopting for disguise the name of his heroine wanda von dunajev, in order to recover possession of some compromising letters which had been written to him, as a joke, by a friend of hers. sacher-masoch insisted on seeing his correspondent before returning the letters, and with his eager thirst for romantic adventure he imagined that she was a married woman of the aristocratic world, probably a russian countess, whose simple costume was a disguise. not anxious to reveal the prosaic facts, she humored him in his imaginations and a web of mystification was thus formed. a strong attraction grew up on both sides and, though for some time laura rümelin maintained the mystery and held herself aloof from him, a relationship was formed and a child born. thereupon, in , they married. before long, however, there was disillusion on both sides. she began to detect the morbid, chimerical, and unpractical aspects of his character, and he realized that not only was his wife not an aristocrat, but, what was of more importance to him, she was by no means the domineering heroine of his dreams. soon after marriage, in the course of an innocent romp in which the whole of the small household took part, he asked his wife to inflict a whipping on him. she refused, and he thereupon suggested that the servant should do it; the wife failed to take this idea seriously; but he had it carried out, with great satisfaction at the severity of the castigation he received. when, however, his wife explained to him that, after this incident, it was impossible for the servant to stay, sacher-masoch quite agreed and she was at once discharged. but he constantly found pleasure in placing his wife in awkward or compromising circumstances, a pleasure she was too normal to share. this necessarily led to much domestic wretchedness. he had persuaded her, against her wish, to whip him nearly every day, with whips which he devised, having nails attached to them. he found this a stimulant to his literary work, and it enabled him to dispense in his novels with his stereotyped heroine who is always engaged in subjugating men, for, as he explained to his wife, when he had the reality in his life he was no longer obsessed by it in his imaginative dreams. not content with this, however, he was constantly desirous for his wife to be unfaithful. he even put an advertisement in a newspaper to the effect that a young and beautiful woman desired to make the acquaintance of an energetic man. the wife, however, though she wished to please her husband, was not anxious to do so to this extent. she went to an hotel by appointment to meet a stranger who had answered this advertisement, but when she had explained to him the state of affairs he chivalrously conducted her home. it was some time before sacher-masoch eventually succeeded in rendering his wife unfaithful. he attended to the minutest details of her toilette on this occasion, and as he bade her farewell at the door he exclaimed: "how i envy him!" this episode thoroughly humiliated the wife, and from that moment her love for her husband turned to hate. a final separation was only a question of time. sacher-masoch formed a relationship with hulda meister, who had come to act as secretary and translator to him, while his wife became attached to rosenthal, a clever journalist later known to readers of the _figaro_ as "jacques st.-cère," who realized her painful position and felt sympathy and affection for her. she went to live with him in paris and, having refused to divorce her husband, he eventually obtained a divorce from her; she states, however, that she never at any time had physical relationships with rosenthal, who was a man of fragile organization and health. sacher-masoch united himself to hulda meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost maternal devotion. no doubt there is truth in both descriptions. it must be noted that, as wanda clearly shows, apart from his abnormal sexual temperament, sacher-masoch was kind and sympathetic, and he was strongly attached to his eldest child. eulenburg also quotes the statement of a distinguished austrian woman writer acquainted with him that, "apart from his sexual eccentricities, he was an amiable, simple, and sympathetic man with a touchingly tender love for his children." he had very few needs, did not drink or smoke, and though he liked to put the woman he was attached to in rich furs and fantastically gorgeous raiment he dressed himself with extreme simplicity. his wife quotes the saying of another woman that he was as simple as a child and as naughty as a monkey. in sacher-masoch and hulda meister settled in lindheim, a village in germany near the taunus, a spot to which the novelist seems to have been attached because in the grounds of his little estate was a haunted and ruined tower associated with a tragic medieval episode. here, after many legal delays, sacher-masoch was able to render his union with hulda meister legitimate; here two children were in due course born, and here the novelist spent the remaining years of his life in comparative peace. at first, as is usual, treated with suspicion by the peasants, sacher-masoch gradually acquired great influence over them; he became a kind of tolstoy in the rural life around him, the friend and confidant of all the villagers (something of tolstoy's communism is also, it appears, to be seen in the books he wrote at this time), while the theatrical performances which he inaugurated, and in which his wife took an active part, spread the fame of the household in many neighboring villages. meanwhile his health began to break up; a visit to nauheim in was of no benefit, and he died march , . a careful consideration of the phenomena of sadism and masochism may be said to lead us to the conclusion that there is no real line of demarcation. even de sade himself was not a pure sadist, as bloch's careful definition is alone sufficient to indicate; it might even be argued that de sade was really a masochist; the investigation of histories of sadism and masochism, even those given by krafft-ebing (as, indeed, colin scott and féré have already pointed out), constantly reveals traces of both groups of phenomena in the same individual. they cannot, therefore, be regarded as opposed manifestations. this has been felt by some writers, who have, in consequence, proposed other names more clearly indicating the relationship of the phenomena. féré speaks of sexual algophily[ ]; he only applies the term to masochism; it might equally well be applied to sadism. schrenck-notzing, to cover both sadism and masochism, has invented the term algolagnia (algos, pain, and lagnos sexually excited), and calls the former active, the latter passive, algolagnia.[ ] eulenburg has also emphasized the close connection between these groups of perverted sexual manifestations, and has adopted the same terms, adding the further group of ideal (illusionary) algolagnia, to cover the cases in which the mere autosuggestive representation of pain, inflicted or suffered, suffices to give sexual gratification.[ ] a brief discussion of the terms "sadism" and "masochism" has imposed itself upon us at this point because as soon as, in any study of the relationship between love and pain, we pass over the limits of normal manifestations into a region which is more or less abnormal, these two conceptions are always brought before us, and it was necessary to show on what grounds they are here rejected as the pivots on which the discussion ought to turn. we may accept them as useful terms to indicate two groups of clinical phenomena; but we cannot regard them as of any real scientific value. having reached this result, we may continue our consideration of the love-bite, as the normal manifestation of the connection between love and pain which most naturally leads us across the frontier of the abnormal. the result of the love-bite in its extreme degree is to shed blood. this cannot be regarded as the direct aim of the bite in its normal manifestations, for the mingled feelings of close contact, of passionate gripping, of symbolic devouring, which constitute the emotional accompaniments of the bite would be too violently discomposed by actual wounding and real shedding of blood. with some persons, however, perhaps more especially women, the love-bite is really associated with a conscious desire, even if more or less restrained, to draw blood, a real delight in this process, a love of blood. probably this only occurs in persons who are not absolutely normal, but on the borderland of the abnormal. we have to admit that this craving has, however, a perfectly normal basis. there is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as blood, and it is very easy to understand why this should be so.[ ] moreover, blood enters into the sphere of courtship by virtue of the same conditions by which cruelty enters into it; they are both accidents of combat, and combat is of the very essence of animal and primitive human courtship, certainly its most frequent accompaniment. so that the repelling or attracting fascination of blood may be regarded as a by-product of normal courtship, which, like other such by-products, may become an essential element of abnormal courtship.[ ] normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or because the checks that inhibit it are inevitably very powerful. occasionally it becomes more clearly manifest, and this may happen early in life. féré records the case of a man of anglo-saxon origin, of sound heredity so far as could be ascertained and presenting no obvious stigmata of degeneration, who first experienced sexual manifestations at the age of when a boy cousin was attacked by bleeding at the nose. it was the first time he had seen such a thing and he experienced erection and much pleasure at the sight. this was repeated the next time the cousin's nose bled and also whenever he witnessed any injuries or wounds, especially when occurring in males. a few years later he began to find pleasure in pinching and otherwise inflicting slight suffering. this sadism was not, however, further developed, although a tendency to inversion persisted.[ ] somewhat similar may have been the origin of the attraction of blood in a case which has been reported to me of a youth of , the youngest of a large family who are all very strong and entirely normal. he is himself, however, delicate, overgrown, with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant powers of assimilation. he is intensely nervous, peevish, and subject to fits of childish rage. he takes violent fancies to persons of his own sex. but he appears to have only one way of obtaining sexual excitement and gratification. it is his custom to get into a hot bath and there to produce erection and emission, not by masturbation, but by thinking of flowing blood. he does not associate himself with the causation of this imaginary flow of blood; he is merely the passive but pleased spectator. he is aware of his peculiarity and endeavors to shake it off, but his efforts to obtain normal pleasure by thinking of a girl are vain. i may here narrate a case which has been communicated to me of algolagnia in a woman, combined with sexual hyperesthesia. r.d., aged , married, and of good social position; she is a small and dark woman, restless and alert in manner. she has one child. she has practised masturbation from an early age--ever since she can remember--by the method of external friction and pressure. from the age of she was able (and is still) to produce the orgasm almost without effort, by calling up the image of any man who had struck her fancy. she has often done so while seated talking to such a man, even when he is almost a stranger; in doing it, she says, a tightening of the muscles of the thighs and the slightest movement are sufficient. ugly men (if not deformed), as well as men with the reputation of being _roués_, greatly excite her sexually, more especially if of good social position, though this is not essential. at the age of she became hysterical, probably, she herself believes, in consequence of a great increase at that time of indulgence in masturbation. the doctors, apparently suspecting her habits, urged her parents to get her married early. she married, at the age of , a man about twice her own age. as a child (and in a less degree still) she was very fond of watching dog-fights. this spectacle produced strong sexual feelings and usually orgasm, especially if much blood was shed during the fight. clean cuts and wounds greatly attract her, whether on herself or a man. she has frequently slightly cut or scratched herself "to see the blood," and likes to suck the wound, thinking the taste "delicious." this produces strong sexual feelings and often orgasm, especially if at the time she thinks of some attractive man and imagines that she is sucking his blood. the sight of injury to a woman only very slightly affects her, and that, she thinks, only because of an involuntary association of ideas. nor has the sight of suffering in illness any exciting effects, only that which is due to violence, and when there is a visible cause for the suffering, such as cuts and wounds. (bruises, from the absence of blood, have only a slight effect.) the excitement is intensified if she imagines that she has herself inflicted the injury. she likes to imagine that the man wished to rape her, and that she fought him in order to make him more greatly value her favor, so wounding him. impersonal ideas of torture also excite her. she thinks fox's _book of martyrs_ "lovely," and the more horrible and bloody the tortures described the greater is the sexual excitement produced. the book excites her from the point of view of the torturer, not that of the victim. she has frequently masturbated while reading it. so far as practicable she has sought to carry out these ideas in her relations with her husband. she has several times bitten him till the blood came and sucked the bite during coitus. she likes to bite him enough to make him wince. the pleasure is greatly heightened by thinking of various tortures, chiefly by cutting. she likes to have her husband talk to her, and she to him, of all the tortures they could inflict on each other. she has, however, never actually tried to carry out these tortures. she would like to, but dares not, as she is sure he could not endure them. she has no desire for her husband to try them on her, although she likes to hear him talk about it. she is at the same time fond of normal coitus, even to excess. she likes her husband to remain entirely passive during connection, so that he can continue in a state of strong erection for a long time. she can thus, she says, procure for herself the orgasm a number of times in succession, even nine or ten, quite easily. on one occasion she even had the orgasm twenty-six times within about one and a quarter hours, her husband during this time having two orgasms. (she is quite certain about the accuracy of this statement.) during this feat much talk about torture was indulged in, and it took place after a month's separation from her husband, during which she was careful not to masturbate, so that she might have "a real good time" when he came back. she acknowledges that on this occasion she was a "complete wreck" for a couple of days afterward, but states that usually ten or a dozen orgasms (or spasms, as she terms them) only make her "feel lively." she becomes frenzied with excitement during intercourse and insensible to everything but the pleasure of it. she has never hitherto allowed anyone (except her husband after marriage) to know of her sadistic impulses, nor has she carried them out with anyone, though she would like to, if she dared. nor has she allowed any man but her husband to have connection with her or to take any liberties. outbursts of sadism may occur episodically in fairly normal persons. thus, coutagne describes the case of a lad of --always regarded as quite normal, and without any signs of degeneracy, even on careful examination, or any traces of hysteria or alcoholism, though there was insanity among his cousins--who had had occasional sexual relations for a year or two, and on one occasion, being in a state of erection, struck the girl three times on the breast and abdomen with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose. he was much ashamed of his act immediately afterward, and, all the circumstances being taken into consideration, he was acquitted by the court.[ ] here we seem to have the obscure and latent fascination of blood, which is almost normal, germinating momentarily into an active impulse which is distinctly abnormal, though it produced little beyond those incisions which vatsyayana disapproved of, but still regarded as a part of courtship. one step more and we are amid the most outrageous and extreme of all forms of sexual perversion: with the heroes of de sade's novels, who, in exemplification of their author's most cherished ideals, plan scenes of debauchery in which the flowing of blood is an essential element of coitus; with the marshall gilles de rais and the hungarian countess bathory, whose lust could only be satiated by the death of innumerable victims. this impulse to stab--with no desire to kill, or even in most cases to give pain, but only to draw blood and so either stimulate or altogether gratify the sexual impulse--is no doubt the commonest form of sanguinary sadism. these women-stabbers have been known in france as _piqueurs_ for nearly a century, and in germany are termed _stecher_ or _messerstecher_ (they have been studied by näcke, "zur psychologie der sadistischen messerstecher," _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, bd. , ). a case of this kind where a man stabbed girls in the abdomen occurred in paris in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in or there seems to have been an epidemic of _piqueurs_ in paris; as we learn from a letter of charlotte von schiller's to knebel; the offenders (though perhaps there was only one) frequented the boulevards and the palais royal and stabbed women in the buttocks or thighs; they were never caught. about the same time similar cases of a slighter kind occurred in london, brussels, hamburg, and munich. stabbers are nearly always men, but cases of the same perversion in women are not unknown. thus dr. kiernan informs me of an irish woman, aged , and at the beginning of the menopause, who, in new york in , stabbed five men with a hatpin. the motive was sexual and she told one of the men that she stabbed him because she "loved" him. gilles de rais, who had fought beside joan of arc, is the classic example of sadism in its extreme form, involving the murder of youths and maidens. bernelle considers that there is some truth in the contention of huysmans that the association with joan of arc was a predisposing cause in unbalancing gilles de rais. another cause was his luxurious habit of life. he himself, no doubt rightly, attached importance to the suggestions received in reading suetonius. he appears to have been a sexually precocious child, judging from an obscure passage in his confessions. he was artistic and scholarly, fond of books, of the society of learned men, and of music. bernelle sums him up as "a pious warrior, a cruel and keen artist, a voluptuous assassin, an exalted mystic," who was at the same time unbalanced, a superior degenerate, and morbidly impulsive. (the best books on gilles de rais are the abbé bossard's _gilles de rais_, in which, however, the author, being a priest, treats his subject as quite sane and abnormally wicked; huysmans's novel, _la-bas_, which embodies a detailed study of gilles de rais, and f.h. bernelle's thèse de paris, _la psychose de gilles de rais_, .) the opinion has been hazarded that the history of gilles de rais is merely a legend. this view is not accepted, but there can be no doubt that the sadistic manifestations which occurred in the middle ages were mixed up with legendary and folk-lore elements. these elements centered on the conception of the _werwolf_, supposed to be a man temporarily transformed into a wolf with blood-thirsty impulses. (see, e.g., articles "werwolf" and "lycanthropy" in _encyclopædia britannica_.) france, especially, was infested with werwolves in the sixteenth century. in , however, it was decided at bordeaux, in a trial involving a werwolf, that lycanthropy was only an insane delusion. dumas ("les loup-garous," _journal de psychologie normale et pathologique_, may-june, ) argues that the medieval werwolves were sadists whose crimes were largely imaginative, though sometimes real, the predecessor of the modern jack the ripper. the complex nature of the elements making up the belief in the werwolf is emphasized by ernest jones, _der alptraum_, . related to the werwolf, but distinct, was the _vampire_, supposed to be a dead person who rose from the dead to suck the blood of the living during sleep. by way of reprisal the living dug up, exorcised, and mutilated the supposed vampires. this was called vampirism. the name vampire was then transferred to the living person who had so treated a corpse. all profanation of the corpse, whatever its origin, is now frequently called vampirism (epaulow, _vampirisme_, thèse de lyon, ; id., "le vampire du muy," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, sept., ). the earliest definite reference to necrophily is in herodotus, who tells (bk. ii, ch. lxxxix) of an egyptian who had connection with the corpse of a woman recently dead. epaulow gives various old cases and, at full length, the case which he himself investigated, of ardisson, the "vampire du muy." w.a.f. browne also has an interesting article on "necrophilism" (_journal of mental science_, jan., ) which he regards as atavistic. when there is, in addition, mutilation of the corpse, the condition is termed necrosadism. there seems usually to be no true sadism in either necrosadism or necrophilism. (see, however, bloch, _beiträge_, vol. ii, p. et seq.) it must be said also that cases of rape followed by murder are quite commonly not sadistic. the type of such cases is represented by soleilland, who raped and then murdered children. he showed no sadistic perversion. he merely killed to prevent discovery, as a burglar who is interrupted may commit murder in order to escape. (e. dupré, "l'affaire soleilland," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan.-feb., .) a careful and elaborate study of a completely developed sadist has been furnished by lacassagne, rousset, and papillon ("l'affaire reidal," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, oct.-nov., ). reidal, a youth of , a seminarist, was a congenital sanguinary sadist who killed another youth and was finally sent to an asylum. from the age of he had voluptuous ideas connected with blood and killing, and liked to play at killing with other children. he was of infantile physical development, with a pleasant, childish expression of face, very religious, and hated obscenity and immorality. but the love of blood and murder was an irresistible obsession and its gratification produced immense emotional relief. sadism generally has been especially studied by lacassagne, _vacher l'eventreur et les crimes sadiques_, . zoösadism, or sadism toward animals, has been dealt with by p. thomas, "le sadisme sur les animaux," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, sept., . auto-sadism, or "auto-erotic cruelty," that is to say, injuries inflicted on a person by himself with a sexual motive, has been investigated by g. bach (_sexuelle verrirungen des menschen und der nature_, p. ); this condition seems, however, a form of algolagnia more masochistic than sadistic in character. with regard to the medico-legal aspects, kiernan ("responsibility in active algophily," _medicine_, april, ) sets forth the reasons in favor of the full and complete responsibility of sadists, and harold moyer comes to the same conclusion ("is sexual perversion insanity?" _alienist and neurologist_, may, ). see also thoinot's _medico-legal aspects of moral offenses_ (edited by weysse, ), ch. xviii. while we are probably justified in considering the sadist as morally not insane in the technical sense, we must remember that he is, for the most part, highly abnormal from the outset. as gaupp points out (_sexual-probleme_, oct., , p. ), we cannot measure the influences which create the sadist and we must not therefore attempt to "punish" him, but we are bound to place him in a position where he will not injure society. it is enough here to emphasize the fact that there is no solution of continuity in the links that bind the absolutely normal manifestations of sex with the most extreme violations of all human law. this is so true that in saying that these manifestations are violations of all human law we cannot go on to add, what would seem fairly obvious, that they are violations also of all natural law. we have but to go sufficiently far back, or sufficiently far afield, in the various zoölogical series to find that manifestations which, from the human point of view, are in the extreme degree abnormally sadistic here become actually normal. among very various species wounding and rending normally take place at or immediately after coitus; if we go back to the beginning of animal life in the protozoa sexual conjugation itself is sometimes found to present the similitude, if not the actuality, of the complete devouring of one organism by another. over a very large part of nature, as it has been truly said, "but a thin veil divides love from death."[ ] there is, indeed, on the whole, a point of difference. in that abnormal sadism which appears from time to time among civilized human beings it is nearly always the female who becomes the victim of the male. but in the normal sadism which occurs throughout a large part of nature it is nearly always the male who is the victim of the female. it is the male spider who impregnates the female at the risk of his life and sometimes perishes in the attempt; it is the male bee who, after intercourse with the queen, falls dead from that fatal embrace, leaving her to fling aside his entrails and calmly pursue her course.[ ] if it may seem to some that the course of our inquiry leads us to contemplate with equanimity, as a natural phenomenon, a certain semblance of cruelty in man in his relations with woman, they may, if they will, reflect that this phenomenon is but a very slight counterpoise to that cruelty which has been naturally exerted by the female on the male long even before man began to be. footnotes: [ ] krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth german edition, pp. , . it should be added that the object of the sadistic impulse is not necessarily a person of the opposite sex. [ ] a. moll, _die konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , p. . [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . [ ] p. garnier, "des perversions sexuelles," thirteenth international congress of medicine, section of psychiatry, paris, . [ ] e. dühren, _der marquis de sade und seine zeit_, third edition, , p. . [ ] see, for instance, bloch's _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, part ii, p. . [ ] krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth german edition, p. . stefanowsky, who also discussed this condition (_archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, may, , and translation, with notes by kiernan, _alienist and neurologist_, oct., ), termed it passivism. [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section , mem. iii, subs, . [ ] "aristoteles als masochist," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, ht. . [ ] _die konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. . cf. c.f. von schlichtegroll, _sacher-masoch und der masochismus_, p. . [ ] see c.f. von schlichtegroll, loc. cit., p. et seq. [ ] iwan bloch considers that it is the commonest of all sexual perversions, more prevalent even than homosexuality. [ ] it has no doubt been prominent in earlier civilization. a very pronounced masochist utterance may be found in an ancient egyptian love-song written about b.c.: "oh! were i made her porter, i should cause her to be wrathful with me. then when i did but hear her voice, the voice of her anger, a child shall i be for fear." (wiedemann, _popular literature in ancient egypt_, p. .) the activity and independence of the egyptian women at the time may well have offered many opportunities to the ancient egyptian masochist. [ ] colin scott, "sex and art," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. , p. . [ ] it must not be supposed that the attraction of fur or of the whip is altogether accounted for by such a casual early experience as in sacher-masoch's case served to evoke it. the whip we shall have to consider briefly later on. the fascination exerted by fur, whether manifesting itself as love or fear, would appear to be very common in many children, and almost instinctive. stanley hall, in his "study of fears" (_american journal of psychology_, vol. viii, p. ) has obtained as many as well-developed cases of fear of fur, or, as he terms it, doraphobia, in some cases appearing as early as the age of months, and he gives many examples. he remarks that the love of fur is still more common, and concludes that "both this love and fear are so strong and instinctive that they can hardly be fully accounted for without recourse to a time when association with animals was far closer than now, or perhaps when our remote ancestors were hairy." (cf. "erotic symbolism," iv, in the fifth volume of these _studies_.) [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . [ ] schrenck-notzing, _zeitschrift für hypnotismus_, bd. ix, ht. , . [ ] eulenburg, _sadismus und masochismus_, second edition, , p. . [ ] i have elsewhere dealt with this point in discussing the special emotional tone of red (havelock ellis, "the psychology of red," _popular science monthly_, august and september, ). [ ] it is probable that the motive of sexual murders is nearly always to shed blood, and not to cause death. leppmann (_bulletin internationale de droit pénal_, vol. vi, , p. ) points out that such murders are generally produced by wounds in the neck or mutilation of the abdomen, never by wounds of the head. t. claye shaw, who terms the lust for blood hemothymia, has written an interesting and suggestive paper ("a prominent motive in murder," _lancet_, june , ) on the natural fascination of blood. blumröder, in , seems to have been the first who definitely called attention to the connection between lust and blood. [ ] féré, _revue de chirurgie_, march , . [ ] h. coutagne, "cas de perversion sanguinaire de l'instinct sexuel," _annales médico-psychologiques_, july and august, . d.s. booth (_alienist and neurologist_, aug., ) describes the case of a man of neurotic heredity who slightly stabbed a woman with a penknife when on his way to a prostitute. [ ] kiernan appears to have been the first to suggest the bearing of these facts on sadism, which he would regard as the abnormal human form of phenomena which may be found at the very beginning of animal life, as, indeed, the survival or atavistic reappearance of a primitive sexual cannibalism. see his "psychological aspects of the sexual appetite," _alienist and neurologist_, april, , and "responsibility in sexual perversion," _chicago medical recorder_, march, . penta has also independently developed the conception of the biological basis of sadism and other sexual perversions (_i pervertimenti sessuali_, ). it must be added that, as remy de gourmont points out (_promenades philosophiques_, d series, p. ), this sexual cannibalism exerted by the female may have, primarily, no erotic significance: "she eats him because she is hungry and because when exhausted he is an easy prey." [ ] in the chapter entitled "le vol nuptial" of his charming book on the life of bees maeterlinck has given an incomparable picture of the tragic courtship of these insects. iii. flagellation as a typical illustration of algolagnia--causes of connection between sexual emotion and whipping--physical causes--psychic causes probably more important--the varied emotional associations of whipping--its wide prevalence. the whole problem of love and pain, in its complementary sadistic and masochistic aspects, is presented to us in connection with the pleasure sometimes experienced in whipping, or in being whipped, or in witnessing or thinking about scenes of whipping. the association of sexual emotion with bloodshed is so extreme a perversion, it so swiftly sinks to phases that are obviously cruel, repulsive, and monstrous in an extreme degree, that it is necessarily rare, and those who are afflicted by it are often more or less imbecile. with whipping it is otherwise. whipping has always been a recognized religious penance; it is still regarded as a beneficial and harmless method of chastisement; there is nothing necessarily cruel, repulsive, or monstrous in the idea or the reality of whipping, and it is perfectly easy and natural for an interest in the subject to arise in an innocent and even normal child, and thus to furnish a germ around which, temporarily at all events, sexual ideas may crystallize. for these reasons the connection between love and pain may be more clearly brought out in connection with whipping than with blood. there is, by no means, any necessary connection between flagellation and the sexual emotions. if there were, this form of penance would not have been so long approved or at all events tolerated by the church.[ ] as a matter of fact, indeed, it was not always approved or even tolerated. pope adrian iv in the eighth century forbade priests to beat their penitents, and at the time of the epidemic of flagellation in the thirteenth century, which was highly approved by many holy men, the abuses were yet so frequent that clement vi issued a bull against these processions. all such papal prohibitions remained without effect. the association of religious flagellation with perverted sexual motives is shown by its condemnation in later ages by the inquisition, which was accustomed to prosecute the priests who, in prescribing flagellation as a penance, exerted it personally, or caused it to be inflicted on the stripped penitent in his presence, or made a woman penitent discipline him, such offences being regarded as forms of "solicitation."[ ] there seems even to be some reason to suppose that the religious flagellation mania which was so prevalent in the later middle ages, when processions of penitents, male and female, eagerly flogged themselves and each other, may have had something to do with the discovery of erotic flagellation,[ ] which, at all events in europe, seems scarcely to have been known before the sixteenth century. it must, in any case, have assisted to create a predisposition. the introduction of flagellation as a definitely recognized sexual stimulant is by eulenburg, in his interesting book, _sadismus und masochismus_, attributed to the arabian physicians. it would appear to have been by the advice of an arabian physician that the duchess leonora gonzaga, of mantua, was whipped by her mother to aid her in responding more warmly to her husband's embraces and to conceive. whatever the precise origin of sexual flagellation in europe, there can be no doubt that it soon became extremely common, and so it remains at the present day. those who possess a special knowledge of such matters declare that sexual flagellation is the most frequent of all sexual perversions in england.[ ] this belief is, i know, shared by many people both inside and outside england. however this may be, the tendency is certainly common. i doubt if it is any or at all less common in germany, judging by the large number of books on the subject of flagellation which have been published in german. in a catalogue of "interesting books" on this and allied subjects issued by a german publisher and bookseller, i find that, of fifty-five volumes, as many as seventeen or eighteen, all in german, deal solely with the question of flagellation, while many of the other books appear to deal in part with the same subject.[ ] it is, no doubt, true that the large part which the rod has played in the past history of our civilization justifies a considerable amount of scientific interest in the subject of flagellation, but it is clear that the interest in these books is by no means always scientific, but very frequently sexual. it is remarkable that, while the sexual associations of whipping, whether in slight or in marked degrees, are so frequent in modern times, they appear to be by no means easy to trace in ancient times. "flagellation," i find it stated by a modern editor of the _priapeia_, "so extensively practised in england as a provocation to venery, is almost entirely unnoticed by the latin erotic writers, although, in the _satyricon_ of petronius (ch. cxxxviii), encolpius, in describing the steps taken by oenothea to undo the temporary impotence to which he was subjected, says: 'next she mixed nasturtium-juice with southern wood, and, having bathed my foreparts, she took a bunch of green nettles, and gently whipped my belly all over below the navel.'" it appears also that many ancient courtesans dedicated to venus as ex-votos a whip, a bridle, or a spur as tokens of their skill in riding their lovers. the whip was sometimes used in antiquity, but if it aroused sexual emotions they seem to have passed unregarded. "we naturally know nothing," eulenburg remarks (_sadismus und masochismus_, p. ), "of the feelings of the priestess of artemis at the flagellation of spartan youths; or what emotions inspired the priestess of the syrian goddess under similar circumstances; or what the roman pontifex maximus felt when he castigated the exposed body of a negligent vestal (as described by plutarch) behind a curtain, and the 'plagosus orbilius' only practised on children." it was at the renaissance that cases of abnormal sexual pleasure in flagellation began to be recorded. the earliest distinct reference to a masochistic flagellant seems to have been made by pico della mirandola, toward the end of the fifteenth century, in his _disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem_, bk. iii, ch. xxvii. coelius rhodiginus in , again, narrated the case of a man he knew who liked to be severely whipped, and found this a stimulant to coitus. otto brunfels, in his _onomasticon_ ( ), art. "coitus," refers to another case of a man who could not have intercourse with his wife until he had been whipped. then, a century later, in , meibomius wrote _de usu flagrorum in re venerea_, the earliest treatise on this subject, narrating various cases. numerous old cases of pleasure in flagellation and urtication were brought together by schurig in in his _spermatologia_, pp. - . the earliest definitely described medical case of sadistic pleasure in the sight of active whipping which i have myself come across belongs to the year , and occurs in a letter in which nesterus seeks the opinion of garmann. he knows intimately, he states, a very learned man--whose name, for the honor he bears him, he refrains from mentioning--who, whenever in a school or elsewhere he sees a boy unbreeched and birched, and hears him crying out, at once emits semen copiously without any erection, but with great mental commotion. the same accident frequently happens to him during sleep, accompanied by dreams of whipping. nesterus proceeds to mention that this "_laudatus vir_" was also extremely sensitive to the odor of strawberries and other fruits, which produced nausea. he was evidently a neurotic subject. (l.c.f. garmanni et aliorum virorum clarissimorum, _epistolarum centuria_, rostochi et lipsiæ, .) in england we find that toward the end of the sixteenth century one of marlowe's epigrams deals with a certain francus who before intercourse with his mistress "sends for rods and strips himself stark naked," and by the middle of the seventeenth century the existence of an association between flagellation and sexual pleasure seems to have been popularly recognized. in , in a vulgar "tragicomedy" entitled _the presbyterian lash_, we find: "i warrant he thought that the tickling of the wench's buttocks with the rod would provoke her to lechery." that whipping was well known as a sexual stimulant in england in the eighteenth century is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in one of hogarth's series representing the "harlot's progress" a birch rod hangs over the bed. the prevalence of sexual flagellation in england at the end of that century and the beginning of the nineteenth is discussed by dühren (iwan bloch) in his _geschlechtsleben in england_ ( - ), especially vol. ii, ch. vi. while, however, the evidence regarding sexual flagellation is rare, until recent times whipping as a punishment was extremely common. it is even possible that its very prevalence, and the consequent familiarity with which it was regarded, were unfavorable to the development of any mysterious emotional state likely to act on the sexual sphere, except in markedly neurotic subjects. thus, the corporal chastisement of wives by husbands was common and permitted. not only was this so to a proverbial extent in eastern europe, but also in the extreme west and among a people whose women enjoyed much freedom and honor. cymric law allowed a husband to chastise his wife for angry speaking, such as calling him a cur; for giving away property she was not entitled to give away; or for being found in hiding with another man. for the first two offenses she had the option of paying him three kine. when she accepted the chastisement she was to receive "three strokes with a rod of the length of her husband's forearm and the thickness of his long finger, and that wheresoever he might will, excepting on the head"; so that she was to suffer pain only, and not injury. (r.b. holt, "marriage laws and customs of the cymri," _journal of the anthropological institute_, august-november, , p. .) "the cymric law," writes a correspondent, "seems to have survived in popular belief in the eastern and middle states of the united states. in police-courts in new york, for example, it has been unsuccessfully pleaded that a man is entitled to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. in pennsylvania actual acquittals have been rendered." among all classes children were severely whipped by their parents and others in authority over them. it may be recalled that in the twelfth century when abelard became tutor to heloise, then about years of age, her uncle authorized him to beat her, if negligent in her studies. even in the sixteenth century jeanne d'albert, who became the mother of henry iv of france, at the age of ½ was married to the duke of cleves, and to overcome her resistance to this union the queen, her mother, had her whipped to such an extent that she thought she would die of it. the whip on this occasion was, however, only partially successful, for the duke never succeeded in consummating the marriage, which was, in consequence, annulled. (cabanès brings together numerous facts regarding the prevalence of flagellation as a chastisement in ancient france in the interesting chapter on "la flagellation a la cour et à la ville" in his _indiscretions de l'histoire_, .) as to the prevalence of whipping in england evidence is furnished by andrews, in the chapter on "whipping and whipping posts," in his book on ancient punishments. it existed from the earliest times and was administered for a great variety of offenses, to men and women alike, for vagrancy, for theft, to the fathers and mothers of illegitimate children, for drunkenness, for insanity, even sometimes for small-pox. at one time both sexes were whipped naked, but from queen elizabeth's time only from the waist upward. in the whipping of female vagrants ceased by law. (w. andrews, _bygone punishments_, .) it must, however, be remarked that law always lags far behind social feeling and custom, and flagellation as a common punishment had fallen into disuse or become very perfunctory long before any change was made in the law, though it is not absolutely extinct, even by law, today. there is even an ignorant and retrograde tendency to revive it. thus, even in severe commonwealth days, the alleged whipping with rods of a servant-girl by her master, though with no serious physical injury, produced a great public outcry, as we see by the case of the rev. zachary crofton, a distinguished london clergyman, who was prosecuted in on the charge of whipping his servant-girl, mary cadman, because she lay in bed late in the morning and stole sugar. this incident led to several pamphlets. in _the presbyterian, lash or noctroff's maid whipt_ ( ), a satire on crofton, we read: "it is not only contrary to gospel but good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all"; and in the doggerel ballad of "bo-peep," which was also written on the same subject, it is said that crofton should have left his wife to chastise the maid. crofton published two pamphlets, one under his own name and one under that of alethes noctroff ( ), in which he elaborately dealt with the charge as both false and frivolous. in one passage he offers a qualified defense of such an act: "i cannot but bewail the exceeding rudeness of our times to suffer such foolery to be prosecuted as of some high and notorious crime. suppose it were (as it is not) true, may not some eminent congregational brother be found guilty of the same act? is it not much short of drinking an health naked on a signpost? may it not be as theologically defended as the husband's correction of his wife?" this passage, and the whole episode, show that feeling in regard to this matter was at that time in a state of transition. flagellation as a penance, whether inflicted by the penitent himself or by another person, was also extremely common in medieval and later days. according to walsingham ("master of the rolls' collection," vol. i, p. ), in england, in the middle of the fourteenth century, penitents, sometimes men of noble birth, would severely flagellate themselves, even to the shedding of blood, weeping or singing as they did so; they used cords with knots containing nails. at a later time the custom of religious flagellation was more especially preserved in spain. the countess d'aulnoy, who visited spain in , has described the flagellations practised in public at madrid. after giving an account of the dress worn by these flagellants, which corresponds to that worn in spain in holy week at the present time by the members of the _cofradias_, the face concealed by the high sugar-loaf head-covering, she continues: "they attach ribbons to their scourges, and usually their mistresses honor them with their favors. in gaining public admiration they must not gesticulate with the arm, but only move the wrist and hand; the blows must be given without haste, and the blood must not spoil the costume. they make terrible wounds on their shoulders, from which the blood flows in streams; they march through the streets with measured steps; they pass before the windows of their mistresses, where they flagellate themselves with marvelous patience. the lady gazes at this fine sight through the blinds of her room, and by a sign she encourages him to flog himself, and lets him understand how much she likes this sort of gallantry. when they meet a good-looking woman they strike themselves in such a way that the blood goes on to her; this is a great honor, and the grateful lady thanks them.... all this is true to the letter." the countess proceeds to describe other and more genuine penitents, often of high birth, who may be seen in the street naked above the waist, and with naked feet on the rough and sharp pavement; some had swords passed through the skin of their body and arms, others heavy crosses that weighed them down. she remarks that she was told by the papal nuncio that he had forbidden confessors to impose such penances, and that they were due to the devotion of the penitents themselves. (_relation du voyage d'espagne_, , vol. ii, pp. - .) the practice of public self-flagellation in church during lent existed in spain and portugal up to the early years of the nineteenth century. descriptions of it will often be met with in old volumes of travel. thus, i find a traveler through spain in describing how, at barcelona, he was present when, in lent, at a miserere in the convent church of san felipe neri on friday evening the doors were shut, the lights put out, and in perfect darkness all bared their backs and applied the discipline, singing while they scourged themselves, ever louder and harsher and with ever greater vehemence until in twenty minutes' time the whole ended in a deep groan. it is mentioned that at malaga, after such a scene, the whole church was in the morning sprinkled with blood. (joseph townsend, _a journey through spain in _, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. .) even to our own day religious self-flagellation is practised by spaniards in the azores, in the darkened churches during lent, and the walls are often spotted and smeared with blood at this time. (o.h. howarth, "the survival of corporal punishment," _journal anthropological institute_, feb., .) in remote districts of spain (as near haro in rioja) there are also brotherhoods who will flagellate themselves on good friday, but not within the church. (dario de regoyos, _españa negra_, , p. .) when we glance over the history of flagellation and realize that, though whipping as a punishment has been very widespread and common, there have been periods and lands showing no clear knowledge of any sexual association of whipping, it becomes clear that whipping is not necessarily an algolagnic manifestation. it seems evident that there must be special circumstances, and perhaps a congenital predisposition, to bring out definitely the relationship of flagellation to the sexual impulse. thus, löwenfeld considers that only about per cent, of people can be sexually excited by flagellation of the buttocks,[ ] and näcke also is decidedly of opinion that there can be no sexual pleasure in flagellation without predisposition, which is rare.[ ] on these grounds many are of opinion that physical chastisement, provided it is moderate, seldom applied, and only to children who are quite healthy and vigorous, need not be absolutely prohibited.[ ] but, however rare and abnormal a sexual response to actual flagellation may be in adults, we shall see that the general sexual association of whipping in the minds of children, and frequently of their elders, is by; no means rare and scarcely abnormal. what is the cause of the connection between sexual emotion and whipping? a very simple physical cause has been believed by some to account fully for the phenomena. it is known that strong stimulation of the gluteal region may, especially under predisposing conditions, produce or heighten sexual excitement, by virtue of the fact that both regions are supplied by branches of the same nerve. there is another reason why whipping should exert a sexual influence. as féré especially has pointed out, in moderate amount it has a tonic effect, and as such has a general beneficial result in stimulating the whole body. this fact was, indeed, recognized by the classic physicians, and galen regarded flagellation as a tonic.[ ] thus, not only must it be said that whipping, when applied to the gluteal region, has a direct influence in stimulating the sexual organs, but its general tonic influence must naturally extend to the sexual system. it is possible that we must take into account here a biological factor, such as we have found involved in other forms of sadism and masochism. in this connection a lady writes to me: "with regard to the theory which connects the desire for whipping with the way in which animals make love, where blows or pressure on the hindquarters are almost a necessary preliminary to pleasure, have you ever noticed the way in which stags behave? their does seem as timid as the males are excitable, and the blows inflicted on them by the horns of their mates to reduce them to submission must be, i should think, an exact equivalent to being beaten with a stick." it is remarkable that in some cases the whip would even appear to have a psychic influence in producing sexual excitement in animals accustomed to its application as a stimulant to action. thus, professor cornevin, of lyons, describes the case of a hungarian stallion, otherwise quite potent, in whom erection could only be produced in the presence of a mare in heat when a whip was cracked near him, and occasionally applied gently to his legs. (cornevin, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, january, .) here, undoubtedly, we have a definite anatomical and physiological relationship which often serves as a starting-point for the turning of the sexual feelings in this direction, and will sometimes support the perversion when it has otherwise arisen. but this relationship, even if we regard it as a fairly frequent channel by which sexual emotion is aroused, will not suffice to account for most, or even many, of the cases in which whipping exerts a sexual fascination. in many, if not most, cases it is found that the idea of whipping asserts its sexual significance quite apart from any personal experience, even in persons who have never been whipped;[ ] not seldom also in persons who have been whipped and who feel nothing but repugnance for the actual performance, attractive as it may be in imagination. it is evident that we have to seek the explanation of this phenomenon largely in psychic causes. whipping, whether inflicted or suffered, tends to arouse, vaguely but massively, the very fundamental and primitive emotions of anger and fear, which, as we have seen, have always been associated with courtship, and it tends to arouse them at an age when the sexual emotions have not become clearly defined, and under circumstances which are likely to introduce sexual associations. from their earliest years children have been trained to fear whipping, even when not actually submitted to it, and an unjust punishment of this kind, whether inflicted on themselves or others, frequently arouses intense anger, nervous excitement, or terror in the sensitive minds of children.[ ] moreover, as has been pointed out to me by a lady who herself in early life was affected by the sexual associations of whipping, a child only sees the naked body of elder children when uncovered for whipping, and its sexual charm may in part be due to this cause. we further have to remark that the spectacle of suffering itself is, to some extent and under some circumstances, a stimulant of sexual emotion. it is evident that a number of factors contribute to surround whipping at a very early age with powerful emotional associations, and that these associations are of such a character that in predisposed subjects they are very easily led into a sexual channel.[ ] various lines of evidence support this conclusion. thus, from several reliable quarters i learn that the sight of a boy being caned at school may produce sexual excitement in the boys who look on. the association of sexual emotion with whipping is, again, very liable to show itself in schoolmasters, and many cases have been recorded in which the flogging of boys, under the stress of this impulse, has been carried to extreme lengths. an early and eminent example is furnished by udall, the humanist, at one time headmaster of eton, who was noted for his habit of inflicting frequent corporal punishment for little or no cause, and who confessed to sexual practices with the boys under his care.[ ] sanitchenko has called attention to the case of a russian functionary, a school inspector, who every day had some fifty pupils flogged in his presence, as evidence of a morbid pleasure in such scenes. even when no sexual element can be distinctly traced, scenes of whipping sometimes exert a singular fascination on some persons of sensitive emotional temperament. a friend, a clergyman, who has read many novels tells me that he has been struck by the frequency with which novelists describe such scenes with much luxury of detail; his list includes novels by well-known religious writers of both sexes. in some of these cases there is reason to believe that the writers felt this sexual association of whipping. it is natural that an interest in whipping should be developed very early in childhood, and, indeed, it enters very frequently into the games of young children, and constitutes a much relished element of such games, more especially among girls. i know of many cases in which young girls between and years of age took great pleasure in games in which the chief point consisted in unfastening each other's drawers and smacking each other, and some of these girls, when they grew older, realized that there was an element of sexual enjoyment in their games. it has indeed, it seems, always been a child's game, and even an amusement of older persons, to play at smacking each other's nates. in _the presbyter's lash_ in a young woman is represented as stating that she had done this as a child, and in ancient france it was a privileged custom on innocents' day (december th) to smack all the young people found lying late in bed; it was a custom which, as clement marot bears witness, was attractive to lovers. if we turn to the histories i have brought together in appendix b we find various references to whipping more or less clearly connected with the rudimentary sexual feelings of childhood. i am acquainted with numerous cases in which the idea of whipping, or the impulse to whip or be whipped, distinctly exists, though usually, when persisting to adult life, only in a rudimentary form. history i in the appendix b presents a well-marked instance. i may quote the remarks in another case of a lady regarding her early feelings: "as a child the idea of being whipped excited me, but only in connection with a person i loved, and, moreover, one who had the right to correct me. on one occasion i was beaten with the back of a brush, and the pain was sufficient to overcome any excitement; so that, ever after, this particular form of whipping left me unaffected, though the excitement still remained connected with forms of which i had no experience." another lady states that when a little girl of or the servants used to smack her nates with a soft brush to amuse themselves (undoubtedly, as she now believes, this gave them a kind of sexual pleasure); it did not hurt her, but she disliked it. her father used to whip her severely on the nates at this age and onward to the age of , but this never gave her any pleasure. when, however, she was about she began in waking dreams to imagine that she was whipping somebody, and would finish by imagining that she was herself being whipped. she would make up stories of which the climax was a whipping, and felt at the same time a pleasurable burning sensation in her sexual parts; she used to prolong the preliminaries of the story to heighten the climax; she felt more pleasure in the idea of being whipped than of whipping, although she never experienced any pleasure from an actual whipping. these day-dreams were most vivid when she was at school, between the ages of and . they began to fade with the growth of affection for real persons. but in dreams, even in adult life, she occasionally experienced sexual excitement accompanied by images of smacking. another correspondent, this time a man, writes: "i experienced the connection between sexual excitement and whipping long before i knew what sexuality meant or had any notion regarding the functions of the sexual organs. what i now know to be distinct sexual feeling used to occur whenever the idea of whipping arose or the mention of whipping was made in a way to arrest my attention. i well remember the strange, mysterious fascination it had, even apart from any actual physical excitement. i have been told by many men and a few women that it was the same with them. even now the feeling exists sometimes, especially when reading about whipping." the following confession, which i find recorded by a german manufacturer's wife, corresponds with those i have obtained in england: "when about years old i was playing with a little girl friend in the park. our governesses sat on a bench talking. for some reason--perhaps because we had wandered away too far and failed to hear a call to return--my friend aroused the anger of the governess in charge of her. that young lady, therefore, took her aside, raised her dress, and vigorously smacked her with the flat hand. i looked on fascinated, and possessed by an inexplicable feeling to which i naïvely gave myself up. the impression was so deep that the scene and the persons concerned are still clearly present to my mind, and i can even recall the little details of my companion's underclothing." when sexual associations are permanently brought into play through such an early incident it is possible that a special predisposition exists. (_gesellschaft und geschlecht_, bd. ii, ht. , p. .) it would certainly seem that we must look upon this association as coming well within the normal range of emotional life in childhood, although after puberty, when the sexual feelings become clearly defined, the attraction of whipping normally tends to be left behind as a piece of childishness, only surviving in the background of consciousness, if at all, to furnish a vaguely sexual emotional tone to the subject of whipping, but not affecting conduct, sometimes only emerging in erotic dreams. this, however, is not invariably the case in persons who are organically abnormal. in such cases, and especially, it would seem, in highly sensitive and emotional children, the impress left by the fact or the image of whipping may be so strong that it affects not only definitely, but permanently, the whole subsequent course of development of the sexual impulse. régis has recorded a case which well illustrates the circumstances and hereditary conditions under which the idea of whipping may take such firm root in the sexual emotional nature of a child as to persist into adult life; at the same time the case shows how a sexual perversion may, in an intelligent person, take on an intellectual character, and it also indicates a rational method of treatment. jules p., aged , of good heredity on father's side, but bad on that of mother, who is highly hysterical, while his grandmother was very impulsive and sometimes pursued other women with a knife. he has one brother and one sister, who are somewhat morbid and original. he is himself healthy, intelligent, good looking, and agreeable, though with slightly morbid peculiarities. at the age of or he suddenly opened a door and saw his sister, then a girl of or , kneeling, with her clothes raised and her head on her governess's lap, at the moment of being whipped for some offense. this trivial incident left a profound impression on his mind, and he recalls every detail of it, especially the sight of his sister's buttocks,--round, white, and enormous as they seemed to his childish eyes,--and that momentary vision gave a permanent direction to the whole of his sexual life. always after that he desired to touch and pat his sister's gluteal regions. he shared her bed, and, though only a child, acquired great skill in attaining his ends without attracting her attention, lifting her night-gown when she slept and gently caressing the buttocks, also contriving to turn her over on to her stomach and then make a pillow of her hips. this went on until the age of , when he began to play with two little girls of the neighborhood, the eldest of whom was ; he liked to take the part of the father and whip them. the older girl was big for her age, and he would separate her drawers and smack her with much voluptuous emotion; so that he frequently sought opportunities to repeat the experience, to which the girl willingly lent herself, and they were constantly together in dark corners, the girl herself opening her drawers to enable him to caress her thighs and buttocks with his hand until he became conscious of an erection. sometimes he would gently use a whip. on one occasion she asked him if he would not now like to see her in front, but he declined. one day, when or years old, being with a boy companion, he came upon a picture of a monk being flagellated, and thereupon persuaded his companion to let himself be whipped; the boy enjoyed the experience, which was therefore often repeated. jules p. himself, however, never took the slightest pleasure in playing the passive part. these practices were continued even after the friend became a conscript, when, however, they became very rare. only once or twice has he ever done anything of this kind to girls who were strangers to him. nor has he ever masturbated or had any desire for sexual intercourse. he contents himself with the pleasure of being occasionally able to witness scenes of whipping in public places--parks and gardens--or of catching glimpses of the thighs and buttocks of young girls or, if possible, women. his principal enjoyment is in imagination. from the first he has loved to invent stories in which whippings were the climax, and at such stories produced the first spontaneous emission. thus, he imagines, for instance, a young girl from the country who comes up to paris by train; on the way a lady is attracted by her, takes an interest in her, brings her home to dinner, and at last can no longer resist the temptation to take the girl in her arms and whip her amorously. he writes out these scenes and illustrates them with drawings, many of which régis reproduces. he has even written comedies in which whipping plays a prominent part. he has, moreover, searched public libraries for references to flagellation, inserted queries in the _intermédiare des chercheurs et des curieux_, and thus obtained a complete bibliography of flagellation which is of considerable value. régis is acquainted with these _archives de la fessée_, and states that they are carried on with great method and care. he is especially interested in the whipping of women by women. he considers that the pleasure of whippings should always be shared by the person whipped, and he is somewhat concerned to find that he has an increasing inclination to imagine an element of cruelty in the whipping. emissions are somewhat frequent. according to the latest information, he is much better; he has entered into sexual relationship with a woman who is much in love with him, and to whom he has confided his peculiarities. with her aid and suggestions he has been able to have intercourse with her, at the moment of coitus whipping her with a harmless india-rubber tube. (e. régis, "un cas de perversion sexuelle, a forme sadique," _archives d'anthropologie criminelles_, july, .) in a case also occurring in a highly educated man (narrated by marandon de montyel) a doctor of laws, brilliantly intellectual and belonging to a family in which there had been some insanity, when at school at the age of , saw for the first time a schoolfellow whipped on the nates, and experienced a new pleasure and emotion. he was never himself whipped at school, but would invent games with his sisters and playfellows in which whipping formed an essential part. at the age of he teased a young woman, a cook, until she seized him and whipped him. he put his arms around her and experienced his first voluptuous spasm of sex. the love of flagellation temporarily died out, however, and gave place to masturbation and later to a normal attraction to women. but at the age of the old ideas were aroused anew by a story his mistress told him. he suffered from various obsessions and finally committed suicide. (marandon de montyel, "obsessions et vie sexuelle," _archives de neurologie_, oct., .) in a case that has been reported to me, somewhat similar ideas played a part. the subject is a tall, well-developed man, aged , delicate in childhood, but now normal in health and physical condition, though not fond of athletics. his mental ability is much above the average, especially in scientific directions; he was brought up in narrow and strict religious views, but at an early age developed agnostic views of his own. from the age of , and perhaps earlier, he practised masturbation almost every night. this was a habit which he carried on in all innocence. it was as invariable a preliminary, he states, to going to sleep as was lying down, and at this period he would have felt no hesitation in telling all about it had the question been asked. at the age of or he recognized the habit as abnormal, and fear of ridicule then caused him to keep silence and to avoid observation. in carrying it out he would lie on his stomach with the penis directed downward, and not up, and the thumb resting on the region above the root of the penis. there was desire for micturition after the act, and when that was satisfied sound sleep followed. when he realized that the habit was abnormal he began to make efforts to discontinue it, and these efforts have been continued up to the present. the chief obstacle has been the difficulty of sleep without carrying out the practice. emissions first began to occur at the age of and at first caused some alarm. during the six following years indulgence was irregular, sometimes occurring every other night and sometimes with a week's intermission. then at the age of the habit was broken for a year, during which nocturnal emissions took place during sleep about every three weeks. since this, shorter periods of non-indulgence have occurred, these periods always coinciding with unusual mental or physical strain, as of examinations. he has some degree of attraction for women; this is strongest during cessation from masturbation and tends to disappear when the habit is resumed. he has never had sexual intercourse because he prefers his own method of gratification and feels great abhorrence for professional prostitutes; he could not afford to marry. any indecency or immorality, except (he observes) his own variety, disgusts him. at the earliest period no mental images accompanied the act of masturbation. at about the age of , however, sexual excitement began to be constantly associated with ideas of being whipped. at or soon after this age only the fear of disgrace prevented him from committing serious childish offenses likely to be punished by a good whipping. parents and masters, however, seem to have used corporal punishment very sparingly. at first this desire was for whipping in general, without reference to the operator. soon after the age of , however, he began to wish that certain boy friends should be the operators. at about the same time definite desire arose for closer contact with these friends and later for definite indecent acts which, however, the subject failed to specify; he probably meant mutual masturbation. these desires were under control, and the fear of ridicule seems to have been the chief restraining cause. at about the age of he began to realize that such acts might be considered morally bad and wrong, and this led to reticence and careful concealment. up to the age of there were four definite attachments to persons of his own sex. there was a tendency, sometimes, to regard women as possible whippers, and this became stronger at , the images of the two sexes then mingling in his thoughts of flagellation. latterly the mental accompaniments of masturbation have been less personal, lapsing into the mental picture of being whipped by an unknown and vague somebody. when definite it has always been a man, and preferably of the type of a schoolmaster. his desire has been for punishment by whips, canes, or birches, especially upon the buttocks. he has always shrunk from the thought of the production of blood or bruises. he wishes, in mental contemplation, for a punishment sufficiently severe to make him anxious to stop it, and yet not able to stop it. he also takes pleasure in the idea of being tied up so as to be unable to move. he has at times indulged in self-whipping, of no great severity. in the preceding case we see a tendency to erotic self-flagellation which in a minor degree is not uncommon. occasionally it becomes highly developed. max marcuse has presented such a case in elaborate detail (_zeitschrift für die gesamte neurologie_, , ht. , fully summarized in _sexual-probleme_, nov., , pp. - ). this is the case of a catholic priest of highly neurotic heredity, who spontaneously began to whip himself at the age of , this self-flagellation being continued and accompanied by masturbation after the age of . other associated perversions were narcissism and nates fetichism, as well as homosexual phantasies. he experienced a certain pleasure (with erection, not ejaculation) in punishing his boy pupils. it is not uncommon for all forms of erotic flagellation to be associated with a homosexual element. i have elsewhere brought forward a case of this kind (the case of a.f., vol. ii of these _studies_). significant is rousseau's account of the origin of his own masochistic pleasure in whipping at the age of : "mademoiselle lambercier showed toward me a mother's affection and also a mother's authority, which she sometimes carried so far as to inflict on us the usual punishment of children when we had deserved it. for a long time she was content with the threat, and that threat of a chastisement which for me was quite new seemed very terrible; but after it had been executed i found the experience less terrible than the expectation had been; and, strangely enough, this punishment increased my affection for her who had inflicted it. it needed all my affection and all my natural gentleness to prevent me from seeking a renewal of the same treatment by deserving it, for i had found in the pain and even in the shame of it an element of sensuality which left more desire than fear of receiving the experience again from the same hand. it is true that, as in all this a precocious sexual element was doubtless mixed, the same chastisement if inflicted by her brother would not have seemed so pleasant." he goes on to say that the punishment was inflicted a second time, but that that time was the last, mademoiselle lambercier having apparently noted the effects it produced, and, henceforth, instead of sleeping in her room, he was placed in another room and treated by her as a big boy. "who would have believed," he adds, "that this childish punishment, received at the age of from the hand of a young woman of , would have determined my tastes, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life?" he remarks that this strange taste drove him almost to madness, but maintained the purity of his morals, and the joys of love existed for him chiefly in imagination. (j.j. rousseau, _les confessions_, partie i, livre i.) it will be seen how all the favoring conditions of fear, shame, and precocious sexuality were here present in an extremely sensitive child destined to become the greatest emotional force of his century, and receptive to influences which would have had no permanent effect on any ordinary child. (when, as occasionally happens, the first sexual feelings are experienced under the stimulation of whipping in normal children, no permanent perversion necessarily follows; moll mentions that he knows such cases, _zeitschrift für pädagogie, psychiatrie, und pathologie_, .) it may be added that it is, perhaps, not fanciful to see a certain inevitableness in the fact that on rousseau's highly sensitive and receptive temperament it was a masochistic germ that fell and fructified, while on régis's subject, with his more impulsive ancestral antecedents, a sadistic germ found favorable soil. it may be noted that in régis's sadistic case the little girl who was the boy's playmate found scarcely less pleasure in the passive part of whipping than he found in the active. there is ample evidence to show that this is very often the case, and that the attractiveness of the idea of being whipped often even arises spontaneously in children. lombroso (_la donna delinquente_, p. ) refers to a girl of who had voluptuous pleasure in being whipped, and hammer (_monatschrift für harnkrankheiten_, , p. ) speaks of a young girl who similarly experienced pleasure in punishment by whipping. krafft-ebing records the case of a girl of between and years of age, never at that time having been whipped or seen anyone else whipped, who spontaneously acquired--how she did not know--the desire to be castigated in this manner. it gave her very great pleasure to imagine a woman friend doing this to her. she never desired to be whipped by a man, though there was no trace of inversion, and she never masturbated until the age of , when a marriage engagement was broken off. at the age of this longing passed away before it was ever actually realized. (krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, eighth edition, p. .) in the case of another young woman described by krafft-ebing--where there was neurasthenia with other minor morbid conditions in the family, but the girl herself appears to have been sound--the desire to be whipped existed from a very early age. she traced it to the fact that when she was years old a friend of her father's playfully placed her across his knees and pretended to whip her. since then she has always longed to be caned, but to her great regret the wish has never been realized. she longs to be the slave of a man whom she loves: "lying in fancy before him, he puts one foot on my neck while i kiss the other. i revel in the idea of being whipped by him and imagine different scenes in which he beats me. i take the blows as so many tokens of love; he is at first extremely kind and tender, but then in the excess of his love he beats me. i fancy that to beat me for love's sake gives him the highest pleasure." sometimes she imagines that she is his slave, but not his female slave, for every woman may be her husband's slave. she is of proud and independent nature in all other matters, and to imagine herself a man who consents to be a slave gives her a more satisfying sense of humiliation. she does not understand that these manifestations are of a sexual nature. (krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth edition, p. .) sometimes a woman desires to take the active part in whipping. thus marandon de montyel records the case of a girl of , hereditarily neuropathic (her father was alcoholic), but very intelligent and good-hearted, who had never been whipped or seen anyone whipped. at this age, however, she happened to visit a married friend who was just about to punish her boy of by whipping him with a wet towel. the girl spectator was much interested, and though the boy screamed and struggled she experienced a new sensation she could not define. "at every stroke," she said, "a strange shiver went through all my body from my brain to my heels." she would like to have whipped him herself and felt sorry when it was over. she could not forget the scene and would dream of herself whipping a boy. at last the desire became irresistible and she persuaded a boy of , whom she was very fond of, and who was much attached to her, to let her whip him on the naked nates. she did this so ferociously that he at last fainted. she was overcome by grief and remorse. (marandon de montyel, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., , p. .) although masochism in a pronounced degree may be said to be rare in women, the love of active flagellation, and sadistic impulses generally are not uncommon among them. bloch believes they are especially common among english women. cases occur from time to time of extreme harshness, cruelty, degrading punishment, and semi-starvation inflicted upon children. the accused are most usually women, and when a man and woman in conjunction are accused it appears generally to have been the woman who played the more active part. but it is rarely demonstrated in these cases that the cruelty exercised had a definite sexual origin. there is nothing, for instance, to indicate true sadism in the famous english case in the eighteenth century of mrs. brownrigg (bloch, _geschlechtsleben in england_, vol. ii, p. ). it may well be, however, in many of these cases that the real motive is sexual, although latent and unconscious. the normal sexual impulse in women is often obscured and disguised, and it would not be surprising if the perverse instinct is so likewise. it is noteworthy that a passion for whipping may be aroused by contact with a person who desires to be whipped. this is illustrated by the following case which has been communicated to me: "k. is a jew, about years of age, apparently normal. nothing is known of his antecedents. he is a manufacturer with several shops. s., an englishwoman, aged , entered his service; she is illegitimate, believed to have been reared in a brothel kept by her mother, is prepossessing in appearance. on entering k.'s service s. was continually negligent and careless. this so provoked k. that on one occasion he struck her. she showed great pleasure and confessed that her blunder had been deliberately intended to arouse him to physical violence. at her suggestion k. ultimately consented to thrash her. this operation took place in k.'s office, s. stripping for the purpose, and the leather driving band from a sewing-machine was used. s. manifested unmistakable pleasure during the flagellation, and connection occurred after it. these thrashings were repeated at frequent intervals, and k. found a growing liking for the operation on his own part. once, at the suggestion of s., a girl of employed by k. was thrashed by both k. and s. alternately. the child complained to her parents and k. made a money payment to them to avoid scandal, the parents agreeing to keep silence. other women (jewish tailoresses) employed by k. were subsequently thrashed by him. he asserts that they enjoyed the experience. mrs. k., discovering her husband's infatuation for s., commenced divorce proceedings. s. consented to leave the country at k.'s request, but returned almost immediately and was kept in hiding until the decree was granted. the mutual infatuation of k. and s. continues, though k. asserts that he cares less for her than formerly. flagellation has, however, now become a passion with him, though he declares that the practice was unknown to him before he met s. his great fear is that he will kill s. during one of these operations. he is convinced that s. is not an isolated case, and that all women enjoy flagellation. he claims that the experiences of the numerous women whom he has now thrashed bear out this opinion; one of them is a wealthy woman separated from her husband, and is now infatuated with k." flagellation, more especially in its masochistic form, is sometimes associated with true inversion. moll presents the case of a young inverted woman of , showing, indeed, many other minor sexual anomalies, who is sexually excited when beaten with a switch. a whip would not do, and the blows must only be on the nates; she cannot imagine being beaten by a small woman. she has often in this way been beaten by a friend, who should be naked at the time, and must submit afterward to cunnilinctus. (moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_ third edition, p. .) in the preceding case there were no masochistic ideas; it is likely that in such a case beating is desired largely on account of that purely physical effect to which attention has already been called. in the same way self-beating with a switch or whip has sometimes been spontaneously discovered as a method of self-excitement preliminary to masturbation. i am acquainted with a lady of much intellectual ability, sexually normal, who made this discovery at the age of , and practised it for a time. professor reverdin, also, speaks of the case of a young girl under his care who, after having exhausted all the resources of her intelligence, finally discovered that the climax of enjoyment was best reached by violently whipping her own buttocks and thighs. she had invented for this purpose a whip composed of twelve cords each of which terminated in a large chestnut-burr provided with its spines. (a. reverdin, _revue médicale de la suisse romande_, january , , p. .) footnotes: [ ] the discipline or scourge was classed with fasting as a method of mastering the flesh and of penance. see, e.g., lea, _history of auricular confession_, vol. ii, p. . for many centuries bishops and priests used themselves to apply the discipline to their penitents. at first it was applied to the back; later, especially in the case of female penitents, it was frequently applied to the nates. moreover, partial or complete nudity came to be frequently demanded, the humiliation thereby caused being pleasant in the sight of god. [ ] dulaure, _des divinités génératrices_, ch. xv; lea, _history of sacerdotal celibacy_, d ed., vol. ii, p. ; kiernan, "asceticism as an auto-erotism," _alienist and neurologist_, aug., . [ ] this is the opinion of löwenfeld, _ueber die sexuelle konstitution_, p. . [ ] thus, dühren (iwan bloch) remarks (_der marquis de sade und seine zeit_, , p. ): "it is well known that england is today the classic land of sexual flagellation." see the same author's _geschlechtsleben in england_, vol. ii, ch. vi. in america it appears also to be common, and kiernan mentions that in advertisements of chicago "massage shops" there often appears the announcement: "flagellation a specialty." the reports of police inspectors in eighteenth century france show how common flagellation then was in paris. it may be added that various men of distinguished intellectual ability of recent times and earlier are reported as addicted to passive flagellation; this was the case with helvétius. [ ] a full bibliography of flagellation would include many hundred items. the more important works on this subject, in connection with the sexual impulse, are enumerated by eulenburg, in his _sadismus und masochismus_. an elaborate history of flagellation generally is now being written by georg collas, _geschichte des flagellantismus_, vol. i, . [ ] löwenfeld, _ueber die sexuelle konstitution_, p. . [ ] _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. . he brings forward the evidence of a reliable and cultured man who at one time sought to obtain the pleasures of passive sexual flagellation. but in spite of his expectation and good will the only result was to disperse every trace of sexual desire. [ ] e.g., kiefer, _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, aug., . [ ] féré, _revue de médecine_, august, . in this paper féré brings together many interesting facts concerning flagellation in ancient times. [ ] schmidt-heuert (_monatschrift für harnkrankheiten_, , ht. ) argues that it is not so much the actual use of the rod as playful, threatening and mysterious suggestions playing around it which nowadays gives it sexual fascination. [ ] moll (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. , p. ) points out that these emotions frequently suffice to cause sexual emissions in schoolboys. [ ] as eulenburg truly points out, the circumstances attending the whipping of a woman may be sexually attractive, even in the absence of any morbid impulse. such circumstances are "the sight of naked feminine charms and especially--in the usual mode of flagellation--of those parts which possess for the sexual epicure a peculiar esthetic attraction; the idea of treating a loved, or at all events desired, person as a child, of having her in complete subjection and being able to dispose of her despotically; and finally the immediate results of whipping: the changes in skin-color, the to and fro movements which simulate or anticipate the initial phenomena of coitus." (eulenburg, _sexuale neuropathie_, p. .) [ ] see the article on udall in the _dictionary of national biography_. iv. the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire--the wish to be strangled--respiratory disturbance the essential element in this group of phenomena--the part played by respiratory excitement in the process of courtship--swinging and suspension--the attraction exerted by the idea of being chained and fettered. there is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love and pain. i allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire, and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. cases have been recorded in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled women at the moment of coitus.[ ] such cases are rare; but, as a mere idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently associated with sexual emotion. we must probably regard it as, in the main,--with whatever subsidiary elements,--an aspect of that physical seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of the primitive elements of courtship.[ ] the corresponding idea--the pleasurable connection of the thought of being strangled with sexual emotion--appears to occur still more frequently, perhaps especially in women. here we seem to have, as in the case of whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. not only is the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation, or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by hanging.[ ] it is noteworthy that, as eulenburg remarks, the method of treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension--a method much in vogue a few years ago--often produced sexual excitement.[ ] in brothels, it is said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord furnished with pads.[ ] a playful attempt to throttle her on the part of her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. sometimes, however, this feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual perversion, and i have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs bulge.[ ] "i think if i could be left my present feelings," a lady writes, "and be changed into a male imbecile,--that is, given a man's strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,--i might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do. and this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the passive side. the idea of being _strangled_ by a person i love does. the great sensitiveness of one's throat and neck come in here as well as the loss of breath. once when i was about to be separated from a man i cared for i put his hands on my throat and implored him to kill me. it was a moment of madness, which helps me to understand the feelings of a person always insane. even now that i am cool and collected i know that if i were deeply in love with a man who i thought was going to kill me, especially in that way, i would make no effort to save myself beforehand, though, of course, in the final moments nature would assert herself without my volition. what makes the horror of such cases in insanity is the fact of the love being left out. but i think i find no greater difficulty in picturing the mental attitude of a sadistic lunatic than that of a normal man who gets pleasure out of women for whom he has no love." the imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory elements. i refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. strangulation is the extreme and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element.[ ] in explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the state of sexual excitement associated with such activity. i have elsewhere, when studying the spontaneous solitary manifestation of the sexual instinct (_auto-erotism_, in vol. i of these _studies_), referred to the pleasurably emotional, and sometimes sexual, effects of swinging and similar kinds of movement. it is possible that there is a certain significance in the frequency with which the eighteenth-century french painters, who lived at a time when the refinements of sexual emotion were carefully sought out, have painted women in the act of swinging. fragonard mentions that in a gentleman invited him into the country, with the request to paint his mistress, especially stipulating that she should be depicted in a swing. the same motive was common among the leading artists of that time. it may be said that this attitude was merely a pretext to secure a vision of ankles, but that result could easily have been attained without the aid of the swing. i may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom i am indebted for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group of manifestations:-- "with regard to the connection between swinging and suspension, perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. temporary loss of breath with me produces excitement. swinging at a height or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and the attendant loss of breath. people suffering from lung disease are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the breathing. men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from the active side. one man used to put his wife on a high swinging shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work, though i have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to him. suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture. beatrice cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered queen of korea was similarly treated. in tolstoi's _my husband and i_ the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over a precipice. that passage gave me great pleasure.[ ] "the idea of slipping off an inclined plane gives me the same sensation. i always feel it on seeing michael angelo's 'night,' though the slipping look displeases me artistically. i remember that when i saw the 'night' first i did feel excited and was annoyed, and it seemed to me it was the slipping-off look that gave it; but i think i am now less affected by that idea. certain general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied. the sentence mentioned in tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but if i came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently, then it would excite me. i am very capricious in the small things, and i think women are so more than men. the idea of slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath still produces excitement. the idea of the plank does not now affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. i think, therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual organs. the effect is still produced, however, even without any clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that the idea of falling is strongly presented. i cannot recollect any early associations that would tend to explain these feelings, except that jumping from a height, which i used frequently to do as a child, has a tendency to create excitement. "with me, i may add, it is when i cannot express myself, or am trying to understand what i feel is beyond my grasp, that the first stage of sexual excitement results. for instance, i never get excited in thinking over sexual questions, because my ideas, correct or incorrect, are fairly clear and definite. but i often feel sexually excited over that question of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, not because i can't decide between the two sets of evidence, but because i don't feel confident of having fully grasped the true significance of either. this feeling of want of power, mental or physical, always has the same effect. i feel it if my eyes are blindfolded or my hands tied. i don't like to see the washington post dance, in which the man stands behind the woman and holds her hands, on that account. if he held her wrists the feeling would be stronger, as her apparent helplessness would be increased. the nervous irritability that is caused by being under restraint seems to manifest itself in that way, while in the case of mental disability the excitement, which should flow down a mental channel, being checked, seems to take a physical course instead. "possibly this would help to explain masochistic sexual feelings. a physical cause working in the present would be preferable as an explanation to a psychological cause to be traced back through heredity to primitive conditions. i believe such feelings are very common in men as well as in women, only people do not care to admit them, as a rule." the idea of being chained and fettered appears to be not uncommonly associated with pleasurable sexual feelings, for i have met with numerous cases in both men and women, and it not infrequently coexists with a tendency to inversion. it often arises at a very early age, and it is of considerable interest because we cannot account for its frequency by any chance association nor by any actual experiences. it would appear to be a purely psychic fantasia founded on the elementary physical fact that restraint of emotion, like suspension, produces a heightening of emotion. in any case the spontaneous character of such ideas and emotions in children of both sexes suffices to show that they must possess a very definite organic basis. in one of the histories (x) contained in appendix b at the end of the present volume a lady describes how, as a child, she reveled in the idea of being chained and tortured, these ideas appearing to rise spontaneously. in another case, that of a.n. (for the most part reproduced in "erotic symbolism," in vol. v of these _studies_), whose ideals are inverted and who is also affected by boot-fetichism, the idea of fetters is very attractive. in this case self-excitement was produced at a very early age, without the use of the hands, by strapping the legs together. we can, however, scarcely explain away the idea of fetters in this case as merely the result of an early association, for it may well be argued that the idea led to this method of self-excitement. "the mere idea of fetters," this subject writes, "produces the greatest excitement, and the sight of pictures representing such things is a temptation. the reading of books dealing with prison life, etc., anywhere where physical restraint is treated of, is a temptation. the temptation is aggravated when the picture represents the person booted. i suppose all this will have been intensified in my case by my practices as a child. but why should a child of do such things unless it were a natural instinct in him? nobody showed me; i have never mentioned such things to anyone. i used to read historical romances for the pleasure of reading of people being put in prison, in fetters, and tortured, and always envied them. i feel now that i should like to undergo the sensation. if i could get anyone to humor me without losing their self-respect, i should jump at the opportunity. i have been most powerfully excited by visiting an old australian convict-ship, where all the means of restraint are shown; i have been attracted to it night after night, wanting, but not daring to ask, to be allowed to have a practical experience." stcherbak, of warsaw, has recorded a case which resembles that of a.n., but there was no inversion and the attraction of fetters was active rather than passive; the subject desired to fetter and not to be fettered. it is possible that this difference is not fundamental, though stcherbak regards the case as one of fetichism of sadistic origin ("contribution à l'etude des perversions sexuelles," _archives de neurologie_, oct., ). the subject was a highly intelligent though neurasthenic youth, who from the age of had been deeply interested in criminals who were fettered and sent to prison. the fate of siberian prisoners was a frequent source of prolonged meditations. it was the fettering which alone interested him, and he spent much time in trying to imagine the feelings of the fettered prisoners, and he often imagined that he was himself a prisoner in fetters. (this seems to indicate that the impulse was in its origin masochistic as much as sadistic, and better described as algolagnia than as sadism.) he delighted in stories and pictures of fettered persons. at the age of the sex of the fettered person became important and he was interested chiefly in fettered women. a new element also appeared; he was attracted to well-dressed women and especially to those wearing elegant shoes, delighting to imagine them fettered. he fastened his own feet together with chains, attempting to walk about his room in this condition, but experienced comparatively little pleasure in this way. at the age of he met a lady years older than himself and of great intelligence. as he began to know her more intimately she allowed him to take liberties with her; he fastened her hands behind her back, and this caused him a violent but delicious emotion which he had never experienced before. next time he fastened her feet together as well as her hands; as he did so her shoes slightly touched his sexual organs; this caused erection and ejaculation, accompanied by the most acute sexual pleasure he had ever felt. he had no wish to see her naked or to uncover himself, and as long as this relationship lasted he had no abnormal thoughts at other times, or in connection with other people. he never masturbated, and his sexual dreams were of fettered men or women. stcherbak discusses the case at length and considers that it is essentially an example of sadism, on the ground that the impulse of fettering was prompted by the desire to humiliate. there is, however, no evidence of any such desire, and, as a matter of fact, no humiliation was effected. the primary and fundamental element in this and similar cases is an almost abstract sexual fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted, or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands. footnotes: [ ] an attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying sexual desire. prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse. lanphear, of st. louis (_alienist and neurologist_, may, , p. ) knew a woman, having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm occurred. [ ] even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful attempt to strangle. thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes (_sexual-probleme_, aug., , p. ): "i acquired a desire to seize people, especially girls, by the throat, and i enjoyed their way of screaming out." [ ] godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as during copulation. robin (art. "fécondation," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_), who quotes this observation, has the following remarks on this subject: "ejaculation occurring at the moment when the circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance. it shows how congestive conditions--or inversely anemic conditions--constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular contractility.... everything leads us to believe that at the moment when the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers also come into play." it must be added that minovici, in his elaborate study of death by hanging ("etude sur la pendaison," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, , especially p. et seq.), concludes that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence. there is, therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations. this was so even in the case, referred to by minovici, of a man who hanged himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure. [ ] eulenburg, _sexuale neuropathie_, p. . [ ] bernaldo de quirós and llanos aguilaniedo (_la mala vida en madrid_, p. ) knew the case of a man who found pleasure in lying back on an inclined couch while a prostitute behind him pulled at a slipknot until he was nearly suffocated; it was the only way in which he could attain sexual gratification. [ ] arrest of respiration, it may be noted, may accompany strong sexual excitement, as it may some other emotional states; one recalls passages in the _arabian nights_ in which we are told of ladies who at the sight of a very beautiful youth "felt their reason leave them, yearned to embrace the marvelous youth, and _ceased breathing_." inhibited respiration is indeed, as stevens shows ("study of attention," _american journal of psychology_, oct., ), a characteristic of all active attention. [ ] the exact part played by the respiration and even the circulation in constituting emotional states is still not clear, although various experiments have been made; see, e.g., angell and thompson, "a study of the relations between certain organic processes and consciousness," _psychological review_, january, . a summary statement of the relations of the respiration and circulation to emotional states will be found in külpe's _outlines of psychology_, part i, section , § . [ ] the words alluded to by my correspondent are as follows: "i needed a struggle; what i needed was that feeling should guide life, and not that life should guide feeling. i wanted to go with him to the edge of an abyss and say: 'here a step and i will throw myself over; and here a motion and i have gone to destruction'; and for him, turning pale, to seize me in his strong arms, hold me back over it till my heart grew cold within me, and then carry me away wherever he pleased." the whole of the passage in which these lines occur is of considerable psychological interest. in one english translation the story is entitled _family happiness_. v. pain, and not cruelty, the essential element in sadism and masochism--pain felt as pleasure--does the sadist identify himself with the feelings of his victim?--the sadist often a masochist in disguise--the spectacle of pain or struggle as a sexual stimulant. in the foregoing rapid survey of the great group of manifestations in which the sexual emotions come into intimate relationship with pain, it has become fairly clear that the ordinary division between "sadism" and "masochism," convenient as these terms may be, has a very slight correspondence with facts. sadism and masochism may be regarded as complementary emotional states; they cannot be regarded as opposed states.[ ] even de sade himself, we have seen, can scarcely be regarded as a pure sadist. a passage in one of his works expressing regret that sadistic feeling is rare among women, as well as his definite recognition of the fact that the suffering of pain may call forth voluptuous emotions, shows that he was not insensitive to the charm of masochistic experience, and it is evident that a merely blood-thirsty vampire, sane or insane, could never have retained, as de sade retained, the undying devotion of two women so superior in heart and intelligence as his wife and sister-in-law. had de sade possessed any wanton love of cruelty, it would have appeared during the days of the revolution, when it was safer for a man to simulate blood-thirstiness, even if he did not feel it, than to show humanity. but de sade distinguished himself at that time not merely by his general philanthropic activities, but by saving from the scaffold, at great risk to himself, those who had injured him. it is clear that, apart from the organically morbid twist by which he obtained sexual satisfaction in his partner's pain,--a craving which was, for the most part, only gratified in imaginary visions developed to an inhuman extent under the influence of solitude,--de sade was simply, to those who knew him, "_un aimable mauvais sujet_" gifted with exceptional intellectual powers. unless we realize this we run the risk of confounding de sade and his like with men of whom judge jeffreys was the sinister type. it is necessary to emphasize this point because there can be no doubt that de sade is really a typical instance of the group of perversions he represents, and when we understand that it is pain only, and not cruelty, that is the essential in this group of manifestations we begin to come nearer to their explanation. the masochist desires to experience pain, but he generally desires that it should be inflicted in love; the sadist desires to inflict pain, but in some cases, if not in most, he desires that it should be felt as love. how far de sade consciously desired that the pain he sought to inflict should be felt as pleasure it may not now be possible to discover, except by indirect inference, but the confessions of sadists show that such a desire is quite commonly essential. i am indebted to a lady for the following communication on the foregoing aspect of this question: "i believe that, when a person takes pleasure in inflicting pain, he or she imagines himself or herself in the victim's place. this would account for the transmutability of the two sets of feelings. this might be particularly so in the case of men. a man may not care to lower his dignity and vanity by putting himself in subjection to a woman, and he might fear she would feel contempt for him. by subduing her and subjecting her to passive restraint he would preserve, even enhance, his own power and dignity, while at the same time obtaining a reflected pleasure from what he imagined she was feeling. "i think that when i get pleasure out of the idea of subduing another it is this reflected pleasure i get. and if this is so one could thus feel more kindly to persons guilty of cruelty, which has hitherto always seemed the one unpardonable sin. even criminals, if it is true that they are themselves often very insensitive, may, in the excitement of the moment, imagine that they are only inflicting trifling pain, as it would be to them, and that their victim's feelings are really pleasurable. the men i have known most given to inflicting pain are all particularly tender-hearted when their passions are not in question. i cannot understand how (as in a case mentioned by krafft-ebing) a man could find any pleasure in binding a girl's hands except by imagining what he supposed were her feelings, though he would probably be unconscious that he put himself in her place. "as a child i exercised a good deal of authority and influence over my youngest sister. it used to give me considerable pleasure to be somewhat arbitrary and severe with her, but, though i never admitted it to myself or to her, i knew instinctively that she took pleasure in my treatment. i used to give her childish lessons, over which i was very strict. i invented catechisms and chapters of the bible in which elder sisters were exhorted to keep their juniors under discipline, and younger sisters were commanded to give implicit submission and obedience. some parts of the _imitation_ lent themselves to this sort of parody, which never struck me as in any way irreverent. i used to give her arbitrary orders to 'exercise her in obedience,' as i told her, and i used to punish her if she disobeyed me. in all this i was, _though only half consciously_, guided through my own feelings as to what i should have liked in her place. for instance, i would make her put down her playthings and come and repeat a lesson; but, though she was in appearance having her will subdued to mine, i always chose a moment when i foresaw she would soon be tired of play. there was sufficient resistance to make restraint pleasurable, not enough to render it irksome. in my punishments i acted on a similar principle. i used to tie her hands behind her (like the man in krafft-ebing's case), but only for a few moments; i once shut her in a sort of cupboard-room, also for a very short time. on two or three occasions i completely undressed her, made her lie down on the bed, tied her hands and feet to the bedstead, and gave her a slight whipping. i did not wish to hurt her, only to inflict just enough pain to produce the desire to move or resist. _my pleasure, a very keen one, came from the imagined excitement produced by the thwarting of this desire_. (are not your own words--that 'emotion' is 'motion in a more or less arrested form'--an epigrammatic summary of all this, though in a somewhat different connection?) i did not undress her from any connection of nakedness with sexual feeling, but simply to enhance her feeling of helplessness and defenselessness under my hands. if i were a man and the woman i loved were refractory i should undress her before finding fault with her. a woman's dress symbolizes to her the protection civilization affords to the weak and gives her a fictitious strength. naked, she is face to face with primitive conditions, her weakness opposed to the man's power. besides, the sense of shame at being naked under the eyes of a man who regarded her with displeasure would extend itself to her offense and give him a distinct, though perhaps unfair, advantage. i used the bristle side of a brush to chastise her with, as suggesting the greatest amount of severity with the least possible pain. in fact, my idea was to produce the maximum of emotion with the minimum of actual discomfort. "you must not, however, suppose that at the time i reasoned about it at all in this way. i was very fond of her, and honestly believed i was doing it for her good. had i realized then, as i do now, that my sole aim and object was physical pleasure, i believe my pleasure would have ceased; in any case i should not have felt justified in so treating her. do i at all persuade you that my pleasure was a reflection of hers? that it was, i think, is clear from the fact that i only obtained it when she was willing to submit. any _real_ resistance or signs that i was overpassing the boundary of pleasure in her and urging on pain without excitement caused me to desist and my own pleasure to cease. "i disclaim all altruism in my dealings with my sister. what occurs appears to me to be this: a situation appeals to one in imagination and one at once desires to transfer it to the realms of fact, being one's self one of the principal actors. if it is the passive side which appeals to one, one would prefer to be passive; but if that is not obtainable then one takes the active part as next best. in either case, however, it is _the realization of the imagined situation_ that gives the pleasure, not the other person's pleasure as such, although his or her supposed pleasure creates the situation. if i were a man it would afford me great delight to hold a woman over a precipice, even if she disliked it. the idea appeals to me so strongly that i could not help _imagining_ her pleasure, though i might _know_ she got none, and even though she made every demonstration of fear and dislike of it. the situation so often imagined would have become a fact. it seems to me i have to say a thing is and is not in the same breath, but the confusion is only in the words. "let me give you another example: i have a tame pigeon which has a great affection for me. it sits on my shoulder and squats down with its wings out as birds do when courting, pecking me to make me take notice of it, and flickering its wings. i like to hold it so that it can't move its wings, because i imagine this increases its excitement. if it struggles, or seems to dislike my holding it, i let it go. "in an early engagement (afterward broken off) my _fiancé_ used to take an evident pleasure in telling me how he would punish me if i disobeyed him when we were married. though we had but little in common mentally, i was frequently struck with the similarity between his ideas and what my own had been in regard to my sister. he used his authority over me most capriciously. on one occasion he would not let me have any supper at a dance. on another he objected to my drinking black coffee. no day passed without a command or prohibition on some trifling point. whenever he saw, though, that i really disliked the interference or made any decided resistance, which happened very seldom, he let me have my own way at once. i cannot but think, when i recall the various circumstances, that he got a certain pleasure, as i had done with my sister, by an almost unconscious transference of my feelings to himself. "i find, too, that, when i want a man to say or do to me what would cause me pleasure and he does not gratify me, i feel an intense longing to change places, to be the man and make him, as the woman, feel what i want to feel. combined with this is a sense of irritation at not being gratified and a desire to punish him for my deprivation, for his stupidity in not saying or doing the right thing. i don't feel any anger at a man not caring for me, but only for not divining my feelings when he does care. "now let me take another case: that of the man who used to experience pleasure when surprising a woman making water. (cf. _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, nov. , .) here the woman's embarrassment appears to be a factor; but it seems to me there must be more than this, as confusion might be produced in so many other ways, as if she were found bathing, or undressed, though it might not be so acute. in reality, i fancy she would be checked in what she was doing, and that the man, perhaps unconsciously, imagined this check and a resulting excitement. that such a check does sometimes produce excitement i know from experience in traveling. if the bladder is not emptied before connection the pleasure is often more intense. long before i understood these things at all i was struck by this quotation: 'cette volupté que ressentent les bords de la mer, d'être toujours pleins sans jamais déborder?' what would be the effect on a man of a sudden check at the supreme moment of sexual pleasure? in reality, i suppose, pain, as the nerves would be at their full tension and unable to respond to any further stimulus; but, in imagination, one's nerves are _not_ at their highest tension, and one imagines an increase or, at any rate, a prolongation of the pleasurable sensations. something of all this, some vague _reflection_ of the woman's possible sensations, seems to enter in the man's feelings in surprising the woman. in any case his pleasure in her confusion seems to me a reflection of her feelings, for the sense of shame and embarrassment before a man is very exciting, and doubly so if one realizes that the man enjoys it. ouida speaks of the 'delicious shame' experienced by 'folle farine.' "it seems to me that whenever we are affected by another's emotion we do practically, though unconsciously, put ourselves in his place; but we are not always able to gauge accurately its intensity or to allow for differences between ourselves and another, and, in the case of pain, it is doubly difficult, as we can never recall the pain itself, but only the mental effects upon us of the pain. we cannot even recall the feeling of heat when we are cold, or _vice versâ_, with any degree of vividness. "a woman tells me of a man who frequently asks her if she would not like him to whip her. he is greatly disappointed when she says she gets no pleasure from it, as it would give him so much to do it. he cannot believe she experiences none, because he would enjoy being whipped so keenly if he were a girl. in another case the man thinks the woman _must_ enjoy suffering, _because_ he would get intense pleasure from inflicting it! why is this, unless he would like it if a woman, and confuses in his mind the two personalities? all the men i know who are sadistically inclined admit that if they were women they would like to be harshly treated. "of course, i quite see there may be many complications; a man's natural anger at resistance may come in, and also simple, not sexual, pleasure in acts of crushing, etc. i always feel inclined to crush anything very soft or a person with very pretty thick hair, to rub together two shining surfaces, two bits of satin, etc., apart from any feelings of excitement. my explanation only refers to that part of sadism which is sexual enjoyment of another's pain." that the foregoing view holds good as regards the traces of sadism found within the normal limits of sexual emotion has already been stated. we may also believe that it is true in many genuinely perverse cases. in this connection reference may be made to an interesting case, reported by moll, of a married lady years of age, with pronounced sadistic feelings. she belongs to a normal family and is herself apparently quite healthy, a tall and strongly built person, of feminine aspect, fond of music and dancing, of more than average intelligence. her perverse inclinations commenced obscurely about the age of , when she began to be dominated by the thought of the pleasure it would be to strike and torture a man, but were not clearly defined until the age of , while at an early age she was fond of teasing and contradicting men, though she never experienced the same impulse toward women. she has never, except in a very slight degree, actually carried her ideas into practice, either with her husband or anyone else, being restrained, she says, by a feeling of shame. coitus, though frequently practised, gives her no pleasure, seems, indeed, somewhat disgusting to her, and has never produced orgasm. her own ideas, also, though very pleasurable to her, have not produced definite sexual excitement, except on two or three occasions, when they had been combined with the influence of alcohol. she frankly regrets that modern social relationship makes it impossible for her to find sexual satisfaction in the only way in which such satisfaction would be possible to her. her chief delight would be to torture the man she was attached to in every possible way; to inflict physical pain and mental pain would give her equal pleasure. "i would bite him till the blood came, as i have often done to my husband. at that moment all sympathy for him would disappear." she frequently identifies her imaginary lover with a real man to whom she feels that she could be much more attracted than she is to her husband. she imagines to herself that she makes appointments with this lover, and that she reaches the rendezvous in her carriage, but only after her lover has been waiting for her a very long time in the cold. then he must feel all her power, he must be her slave with no will of his own, and she would torture him with various implements as seemed good to her. she would use a rod, a riding-whip, bind him and chain him, and so on. but it is to be noted that she declares "_this could, in general, only give me enjoyment if the man concerned endured such torture with a certain pleasure_. he must, indeed, writhe with pain, but at the same time be in a state of sexual ecstasy, followed by satisfaction." his pleasure must not, however, be so great that it overwhelms his pain; if it did, her own pleasure would vanish, and she has found witty her husband that when in kissing him her bites have given him much pleasure she has at once refrained. it is further noteworthy that only the pain she herself had inflicted would give her pleasure. if the lover suffered pain from an accident or a wound she is convinced that she would be full of sympathy for him. outside her special sexual perversion she is sympathetic and very generous. (moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, , pp. - .) this case is interesting as an uncomplicated example of almost purely ideal sadism. it is interesting to note the feelings of the sadist subject toward her imaginary lover's feelings. it is probably significant that, while his pleasure is regarded as essential, his pain is regarded as even more essential, and the resulting apparent confusion may well be of the very essence of the whole phenomenon. the pleasure of the imaginary lover must be secured or the manifestation passes out of the sexual sphere; but his pleasure must, at all costs, be conciliated with his pain, for in the sadist's eyes the victim's pain has become a vicarious form of sexual emotion. that, at the same time, the sadist desires to give pleasure rather than pain finds confirmation in the fact that he often insists on pleasure being feigned even though it is not felt. some years ago a rich jewish merchant became notorious for torturing girls with whom he had intercourse; his performances acquired for him the title of "_l'homme qui pique_," and led to his prosecution. it was his custom to spend some hours in sticking pins into various parts of the girl's body, but it was essential that she should wear a smiling face throughout the proceedings. (hamon, _la france sociale et politique_, , p. et seq.) we have thus to recognize that sadism by no means involves any love of inflicting pain outside the sphere of sexual emotion, and is even compatible with a high degree of general tender-heartedness. we have also to recognize that even within the sexual sphere the sadist by no means wishes to exclude the victim's pleasure, and may even regard that pleasure as essential to his own satisfaction. we have, further, to recognize that, in view of the close connection between sadism and masochism, it is highly probable that in some cases the sadist is really a disguised masochist and enjoys his victim's pain because he identifies himself with that pain. but there is a further group of cases, and a very important group, on account of the light it throws on the essential nature of these phenomena, and that is the group in which the thought or the spectacle of pain acts as a sexual stimulant, without the subject identifying himself clearly either with the inflicter or the sufferer of the pain. such cases are sometimes classed as sadistic; but this is incorrect, for they might just as truly be called masochistic. the term algolagnia might properly be applied to them (and eulenburg now classes them as "ideal algolagnia"), for they reveal an undifferentiated connection between sexual excitement and pain not developed into either active or passive participation. such feelings may arise sporadically in persons in whom no sadistic or masochistic perversion can be said to exist, though they usually appear in individuals of neurotic temperament. casanova describes an instance of this association which came immediately under his own eyes at the torture and execution of damiens in .[ ] w.g. stearns knew a man (having masturbated and had intercourse to excess) who desired to see his wife delivered of a child, and finally became impotent without this idea. he witnessed many deliveries and especially obtained voluptuous gratification at the delivery of a primipara when the suffering was greatest.[ ] a very trifling episode may, however, suffice. in one case known to me a man, neither sadistic nor masochistic in his tendencies, when sitting looking out of his window saw a spider come out of its hole to capture and infold a fly which had just been caught in its web; as he watched the process he became conscious of a powerful erection, an occurrence which had never taken place under such circumstances before.[ ] under favoring conditions some incident of this kind at an early age may exert a decisive influence on the sexual life. tambroni, of ferrara, records the case of a boy of who first felt voluptuous emotions on seeing in an illustrated journal the picture of a man trampling on his daughter; ever afterward he was obliged to evoke this image in masturbation or coitus.[ ] an instructive case has been recorded by féré. in this case a lady of neurotic heredity on one side, and herself liable to hysteria, experienced her first sexual crisis at the age of , not long after menstruation had become established, and when she had just recovered from an attack of chorea. her old nurse, who had remained in the service of the family, had a ne'er-do-well son who had disappeared for some years and had just now suddenly returned and thrown himself, crying and sobbing, at the knees of his mother, who thrust him away. the young girl accidentally witnessed this scene. the cries and the sobs provoked in her a sexual excitement she had never experienced before. she rushed away in surprise to the next room, where, however, she could still hear the sobs, and soon she was overcome by a sexual orgasm. she was much troubled at this occurrence, and at the attraction which she now experienced for a man she had never seen before and whom she had always looked upon as a worthless vagabond. shortly afterward she had an erotic dream concerning a man who sobbed at her knees. later she again saw the nurse's son, but was agreeably surprised to find that, though a good-looking youth, he no longer caused her any emotion, and he disappeared from her mind, though the erotic dreams concerning an unknown sobbing man still occurred rather frequently. during the next ten years she suffered from various disorders of more or less hysterical character, and, although not disinclined to the idea of marriage, she refused all offers, for no man attracted her. at the age of , when staying in the pyrenees, she made an excursion into spain, and was present at a bull-fight. she was greatly excited by the charges of the bull, especially when the charge was suddenly arrested.[ ] she felt no interest in any of the men who took part in the performance or were present; no man was occupying her imagination. but she experienced sexual sensations and accompanying general exhilaration, which were highly agreeable. after one bull had charged successively several times the orgasm took place. she considered the whole performance barbarous, but could not resist the desire to be present at subsequent bull-fights, a desire several times gratified, always with the same results, which were often afterward repeated in dreams. from that time she began to take an interest in horse-races, which she now found produced the same effect, though not to the same degree, especially when there was a fall. she subsequently married, but never experienced sexual satisfaction except under these abnormal circumstances or in dreams.[ ] as the foregoing case indicates, horses, and especially running or struggling horses, sometimes have the same effect in stimulating the sexual emotions, especially on persons predisposed by neurotic heredity, as we have found that the spectacle of pain possesses. a medical correspondent in new zealand tells me of a patient of his own, a young carpenter of , not in good health, who had never masturbated or had connection with a woman. he lived in a room overlooking a livery-stable yard where was kept, among other animals, a large black horse. nearly every night he had a dream in which he seemed to be pursuing this large black horse, and when he caught it, which he invariably did, there was a copious emission. a holiday in the country and tonic treatment dispelled the dreams and reduced the nocturnal emissions to normal frequency. féré has recorded a case of a boy, of neuropathic heredity, who, when years of age, was one day about to practise mutual masturbation with another boy of his own age. they were seated on a hillside overlooking a steep road, and at this moment a heavy wagon came up the road drawn by four horses, which struggled painfully up, encouraged by the cries and the whip of the driver. this sight increased the boy's sexual excitement, which reached its climax when one of the horses suddenly fell. he had never before experienced such intense excitement, and always afterward a similar spectacle of struggling horses produced a similar effect.[ ] in this connection reference may be made to the frequency with which dreams of struggling horses occur in connection with disturbance or disease of the heart. in such cases it is clear that the struggling horses seem to dream-consciousness to embody and explain the panting struggles to which the heart is subjected. they become, as it were, a visual symbol of the cardiac oppression. in much the same way, it would appear, under the influence of sexual excitement, in which cardiac disturbance is one of the chief constituent elements, the struggling horses became a sexual symbol, and, having attained that position, they are henceforth alone adequate to produce sexual excitement. footnotes: [ ] this opinion appears to be in harmony with the conclusions of eulenburg, who has devoted special study to de sade, and points out that the ordinary conception of "sadism" is much too narrow. (eulenburg, _sexuale neuropathie_, , p. et seq.) [ ] casanova, _mémoires_, vol. viii, pp. - . goncourt in his _journal_, under date of april, (vol. ii, p. ), tells a story of an englishman who engaged a room overlooking a scaffold where a murderer was to be hanged, proposing to take a woman with him and to avail himself of the excitement aroused by the scene. this scheme was frustrated by the remission of the death penalty. [ ] _alienist and neurologist_, may, , p. . [ ] this spectacle of the spider and the fly seems indeed to be specially apt to exert a sexual influence. i have heard of a precisely similar case in a man of intellectual distinction, and another in a lady who acknowledged to a feeling of "exquisite pleasure," on one occasion, at the mere sound of the death agony of a fly in a spider's web. [ ] quoted by obici and marchesini, _le amicizie di collegio_, p. . [ ] it may be noted that we have already several times encountered this increase of excitement produced by arrest of movement. the effect is produced whether the arrest is witnessed or is actually experienced. "a man can increase a woman's excitement," a lady writes, "by forbidding her to respond in any way to his caresses. it is impossible to remain quite passive for more than a few seconds, but, during these few, excitement is considerably augmented." in a similar way i have been told of a man of brilliant intellectual ability who very seldom has connection with a woman without getting her to compress with her hand the base of the urethral canal to such an extent as to impede the passage of the semen. on withdrawal of the hand copious emission occurs, but it is the shock of the arrest caused by the constriction which gives him supreme pleasure. he has practised this method for years without evil results. [ ] féré, "le sadisme aux courses de taureaux," _revue de médecine_, august, . [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . vi. why is pain a sexual stimulant?--it is the most effective method of arousing emotion--anger and fear the most powerful emotions--their biological significance in courtship--their general and special effects in stimulating the organism--grief as a sexual stimulant--the physiological mechanism of fatigue renders pain pleasurable. we have seen that the distinction between "sadism" and "masochism" cannot be maintained; not only was even de sade himself something of a masochist and sacher-masoch something of a sadist, but between these two extreme groups of phenomena there is a central group in which the algolagnia is neither active nor passive. "sadism" and "masochism" are simply convenient clinical terms for classes of manifestations which quite commonly occur in the same person. we have further found that--as might have been anticipated in view of the foregoing result--it is scarcely correct to use the word "cruelty" in connection with the phenomena we have been considering. the persons who experience these impulses usually show no love of cruelty outside the sphere of sexual emotion; they may even be very intolerant of cruelty. even when their sexual impulses come into play they may still desire to secure the pleasure of the persons who arouse their sexual emotions, even though it may not be often true that those who desire to inflict pain at these moments identify themselves with the feelings of those on whom they inflict it. we have thus seen that when we take a comprehensive survey of all these phenomena a somewhat general formula will alone cover them. our conclusion so far must be that under certain abnormal circumstances pain, more especially the mental representation of pain, acts as a powerful sexual stimulant. the reader, however, who has followed the discussion to this point will be prepared to take the next and final step in our discussion and to reach a more definite conclusion. the question naturally arises: by what process does pain or its mental representation thus act as a sexual stimulant? the answer has over and over again been suggested by the facts brought forward in this study. pain acts as a sexual stimulant because it is the most powerful of all methods for arousing emotion. the two emotions most intimately associated with pain are anger and fear. the more masculine and sthenic emotion of anger, the more passive and asthenic emotion of fear, are the fundamental animal emotions through which, on the psychic side, the process of natural selection largely works. every animal in some degree owes its survival to the emotional reaction of anger against weaker rivals, to the emotional reaction of fear against stronger rivals. to this cause we owe it that these two emotions are so powerfully and deeply rooted in the whole zoölogical series to which we belong. but anger and fear are not less fundamental in the sexual life. courtship on the male's part is largely a display of combativity, and even the very gestures by which the male seeks to appeal to the female are often those gestures of angry hostility by which he seeks to intimidate enemies. on the female's part courtship is a skillful manipulation of her own fears, and, as we have seen elsewhere, when studying the phenomena of modesty, that fundamental attitude of the female in courtship is nothing but an agglomeration of fears. the biological significance of the emotions is now well recognized. "in general," remarks one of the shrewdest writers on animal psychology, "we may say that emotional states are, under natural conditions, closely associated with behavior of biological value--with tendencies that are beneficial in self-preservation and race preservation--with actions that promote survival, and especially with the behavior which clusters round the pairing and parental instincts. the value of the emotions in animals is that they are an indirect means of furthering survival." (lloyd morgan, _animal behavior_, p. .) emotional aptitudes persist not only by virtue of the fact that they are still beneficial, but because they once were; that is to say, they may exist as survivals. in this connection i may quote from a suggestive paper on "teasing and bullying," by f.l. burk; at the conclusion of this study, which is founded on a large body of data concerning american children, the author asks: "accepting for the moment the theories of spencer and ribot upon the transmission of rudimentary instincts, is it possible that the movements which comprise the chief elements of bullying, teasing, and the egotistic impulses in general of the classes cited--pursuing, throwing down, punching, striking, throwing missiles, etc.--are, from the standpoint of consciousness, broken neurological fragments, which are parts of old chains of activity involved in the pursuit, combat, capture, torture, and killing of men and enemies?... is not this hypothesis of transmitted fragments of instincts in accord with the strangely anomalous fact that children are at one moment seemingly cruel and at the next affectionate and kind, vibrating, as it were, between two worlds, egotistic and altruistic, without conscious sense of incongruity?" (f.l. burk, "teasing and bullying," _pedagogical seminary_, april, .) the primitive connection of the special emotions of anger and fear with the sexual impulse has been well expressed by colin scott in his remarkable study of "sex and art": "if the higher forms of courting are based on combat, among the males at least anger must be intimately associated with love. and below both of these lies the possibility of fear. in combat the animal is defeated who is first afraid. competitive exhibition of prowess will inspire the less able birds with a deterring fear. young grouse and woodcock do not enter the lists with the older birds, and sing very quietly. it is the same with the very oldest birds. audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the canada goose move off by themselves during the courting of the younger birds. in order to succeed in love, fear must be overcome in the male as well as in the female. courage is the essential male virtue, love is its outcome and reward. the strutting, crowing, dancing, and singing of male birds and the preliminary movements generally of animals must gorge the neuromotor and muscular systems with blood and put them in better fighting trim. the effects of this upon the feelings of the animal himself must be very great. hereditary tendencies swell his heart. he has 'the joy that warriors feel.' he becomes regardless of danger, and sometimes almost oblivious of his surroundings. this intense passionateness must react powerfully on the whole system, and more particularly on those parts which are capable, such as the brain, of using up a great surplus of blood, and on the naturally erethic functions of sex. the flood of anger or fighting instinct is drained off by the sexual desires, the antipathy of the female is overcome, and sexual union successfully ensues.... courting and combat shade into one another, courting tending to take the place of the more basal form of combat. the passions which thus come to be associated with love are those of fear and anger, both of which, by arousing the whole nature and stimulating the nutritive sources from which they flow, come to increase the force of the sexual passion to which they lead up and in which they culminate and are absorbed," (colin scott, "sex and art," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. , pp. and .) it must be remembered that fear is an element liable to arise in all courtship on one side or the other. it is usually on the side of the female, but not invariably. among spiders, for instance, it is usually the male who feels fear, and very reasonably, for he is much weaker than the female. "courtship by the male spider" says t.h. montgomery ("the courtship of araneads," _american naturalist_, march, , p. ), "results from a combination of the state of desire for and fear of the female." it is by his movements of fear that he advertises himself to the female as a male, and it is by the same movements that he is unconsciously impelled to display prominently his own ornamentation. we are thus brought to those essential facts of primitive courtship with which we started. but we are now able to understand more clearly how it is that alien emotional states became abnormally associated with the sexual life. normally the sexual impulse is sufficiently reinforced by the ordinary active energies of the organism which courtship itself arouses, energies which, while they may be ultimately in part founded on anger and fear, rarely allow these emotions to be otherwise than latent. motion, it may be said, is more prominent than emotion. even normally a stimulant to emotional activities is pleasurable, just as motion itself is pleasurable. it may even be useful, as was noted long ago by erasmus darwin; he tells of a friend of his who, when painfully fatigued by riding, would call up ideas arousing indignation, and thus relieve the fatigue, the indignation, as darwin pointed out, increasing muscular activity.[ ] it is owing to this stimulating action that discomfort, even pain, may be welcomed on account of the emotional waves they call up, because they "lash into movement the dreary calm of the sea's soul," and produce that alternation of pain and enjoyment for which faust longed. groos, who recalls this passage in his very thorough and profound discussion of the region wherein tragedy has its psychological roots, points out that it is the overwhelming might of the storm itself, and not the peace of calm after the storm, which appeals to us. in the same way, he observes, even surprise and shock may also be pleasurable, and fear, though the most depressing of emotional states, by virtue of the joy produced by strong stimuli is felt as attractive; we not only experience an impulse of pleasure in dominating our environment, but also have pleasure in being dominated and rendered helpless by a higher power.[ ] hirn, again, in his work on the origins of art, has an interesting chapter on "the enjoyment of pain," a phenomenon which he explains by its resultant reactions in increase of outward activity, of motor excitement. anger, he observes elsewhere, is "in its active stage a decidedly pleasurable emotion. fear, which in its initial stage is paralyzing and depressing, often changes in time when the first shock has been relieved by motor reaction.... anger, fear, sorrow, notwithstanding their distinctly painful initial stage, are often not only not avoided, but even deliberately sought."[ ] in the ordinary healthy organism, however, although the stimulants of strong emotion may be vaguely pleasurable, they do not have more than a general action on the sexual sphere, nor are they required for the due action of the sexual mechanism. but in a slightly abnormal organism--whether the anomaly is due to a congenital neuropathic condition, or to a possibly acquired neurasthenic condition, or merely to the physiological inadequacy of childhood or old age--the balance of nervous energy is less favorable for the adequate play of the ordinary energies in courtship. the sexual impulse is itself usually weaker, even when, as often happens, its irritability assumes the fallacious appearance of strength. it has become unusually sensitive to unusual stimuli and also, it is possible,--perhaps as a result of those conditions,--more liable to atavistic manifestations. an organism in this state becomes peculiarly apt to seize on the automatic sources of energy generated by emotion. the parched sexual instinct greedily drinks up and absorbs the force it obtains by applying abnormal stimuli to its emotional apparatus. it becomes largely, if not solely, dependent on the energy thus secured. the abnormal organism in this respect may become as dependent on anger or fear, and for the same reason, as in other respects it may become dependent on alcohol. we see the process very well illustrated by the occasional action of the emotion of anger. in animals the connection between love and anger is so close that even normally, as groos points out, in some birds the sight of an enemy may call out the gestures of courtship.[ ] as krafft-ebing remarks, both love and anger "seek their object, try to possess themselves of it, and naturally exhaust themselves in a physical effect on it; both throw the psychomotor sphere into the most intense excitement, and by means of this excitement reach their normal expression."[ ] féré has well remarked that the impatience of desire may itself be regarded as a true state of anger, and stanley hall, in his admirable study of anger, notes that "erethism of the breasts or sexual parts" was among the physical manifestations of anger occurring in some of his cases, and in one case a seminal emission accompanied every violent outburst.[ ] thus it is that anger may be used to reinforce a weak sexual impulse, and cases have been recorded in which coitus could only be performed when the man had succeeded in working himself up into an artificial state of anger.[ ] on the other hand, féré has recorded a case in which the sexual excitement accompanying delayed orgasm was always transformed into anger, though without any true sadistic manifestations.[ ] as a not unexpected complementary phenomenon to this connection of anger and sexual emotion in the male, it is sometimes found that the spectacle of masculine anger excites pleasurable emotion in women. the case has been recorded of a woman who delighted in arousing anger for the pleasure it gave her, and who advised another woman to follow her example and excite her husband's anger, as nothing was so enjoyable as to see a man in a fury of rage[ ]; lombroso mentions a woman who was mostly frigid, but experienced sexual feelings when she heard anyone swearing; and a medical friend tells me of a lady considerably past middle age who experienced sexual erethism after listening to a heated argument between her husband and a friend on religious topics. the case has also been recorded of a masochistic man who found sexual satisfaction in masturbating while a woman, by his instructions, addressed him in the lowest possible terms of abuse.[ ] such a feeling doubtless underlies that delight in teasing men which is so common among young women. stanley hall, referring to the almost morbid dread of witnessing manifestations of anger felt by many women, remarks: "in animals, females are often described as watching with complacency the conflict of rival males for their possession, and it seems probable that the intense horror of this state, which many females report, is associated more or less unconsciously with the sexual rage which has followed it."[ ] the dread may well be felt at least as much as regards the emotional state in themselves as in the males. even when the emotion aroused is disgust it may still act as a sexual stimulant. stcherbak has narrated the instructive case of a very intelligent and elegant married lady of rather delicate constitution, an artist of some talent, who never experienced any pleasure in sexual intercourse, but ever since sexual feelings first began to be manifested at all (at the age of ) has only experienced them in relation to disgusting things. anything that is repulsive, like vomit, etc., causes vague but pleasurable feelings which she gradually came to recognize as sexual. the sight of a crushed frog will cause very definite sexual sensations. she has had many admirers and she has observed that a declaration of love by a disagreeable or even repulsive man sexually excites her, though she has no desire for sexual intercourse with him.[ ] after all that has gone before it is easy to see how the emotion of fear may act in an analogous manner to anger. just as anger may reinforce the active forms of the sexual impulse to which it is allied, so fear may reinforce the passive forms of that impulse. the following observations, written by a lady, very well show how we may thus explain the sexual attractiveness of whipping: "the fascination of whipping, which has always greatly puzzled me, seems to be a sort of hankering after the stimulus of fear. in a wild state animals live in constant fear. in civilized life one but rarely feels it. a woman's pleasure in being afraid of a husband or lover may be an equivalent of a man's love of adventure; and the fear of children for their parents may be the dawning of the love of adventure. in a woman this desire of adventure receives a serious check when she begins to realize what she might be subjected to by a man if she gratified it. excessive fear is demoralizing, but it seems to me that the idea of being whipped gives a sense of fear which is not excessive. it is almost the only kind of pain (physical) which is inflicted on children or women by persons whom they can love and trust, and with a moral object. any other kind of bodily ill treatment suggests malignity and may rouse resentment, and, in extreme cases, an excess of fear which goes beyond the limits of pleasurable excitement. given a hereditary feeling of this sort, i think it is helped by the want of actual experience, as the association with excitement is freed from the idea of pain as such." in his very valuable and suggestive study of fears, stanley hall, while recognizing the evil of excessive fear, has emphasized the emotional and even the intellectual benefits of fear, and the great part played by fear in the evolution of the race as "the rudimentary organ on the full development and subsequent reduction of which many of the best things in the soul are dependent." "fears that paralyze some brains," he remarks, "are a good tonic for others. in some form and degree all need it always. without the fear apparatus in us, what a wealth of motive would be lost!"[ ] it is on the basis of this tonic influence of fear that in some morbidly sensitive natures fear acts as a sexual stimulant. cullerre has brought together a number of cases in both men and women, mostly neurasthenic, in which fits of extreme anxiety and dread, sometimes of a religious character and often in highly moral people, terminate in spontaneous orgasm or in masturbation.[ ] professor gurlitt mentions that his first full sexual emission took place in class at school, when he was absorbed in writing out the life of aristides and very anxious lest he should not be able to complete it within the set time.[ ] dread and anxiety not only excite sexual emotion, but in the more extreme morbid cases they may suppress and replace it. terror, say fliess, is transmuted coitus, and freud believes that the neurosis of anxiety always has a sexual cause, while ballet, capgras, löwenfeld, and others, though not regarding a sexual traumatism as the only cause, still regard it as frequent. it is worthy of note that not only fear, but even so depressing an emotion as grief, may act as a sexual stimulant, more especially in women. this fact is not sufficiently recognized, though probably everyone can recall instances from his personal knowledge, such cases being generally regarded as inexplicable. it is, however, not more surprising that grief should be transformed into sexual emotion than that (as in a case recorded by stanley hall) it should manifest itself as anger. in any case we have to bear in mind the frequency of this psychological transformation in the presence of cases which might otherwise seem to call for a cynical interpretation. the case has been recorded of an english lady of good social position who fell in love with an undertaker at her father's funeral and insisted on marrying him. it is known that some men have been so abnormally excited by the funeral trappings of death that only in such surroundings have they been able to effect coitus. a case has been recorded of a physician of unimpeachable morality who was unable to attend funerals, even of his own relatives, on account of the sexual excitement thus aroused. funerals, tragedies at the theater, pictures of martyrdom, scenes of execution, and trials at the law-courts have been grouped together as arousing pleasure in many people, especially women. (c.f. von schlichtegroll, _sacher-masoch und der masochismus_, pp. - .) wakes and similar festivals may here find their psychological basis, and funerals are an unquestionable source of enjoyment among some people, especially of so-called "celtic" race. the stimulating reaction after funerals is well known to many, and leigh hunt refers to this (in his _autobiography_) as affecting the sincerely devoted friends who had just cremated shelley. it may well be, as kiernan has argued (_alienist and neurologist_, ; ibid., , p. ), that in the disturbance of emotional balance caused by grief the primitive instincts become peculiarly apt to respond to stimulus, and that in the aboulia of grief the mind is specially liable to become the prey to obsessions. "when my child died at the age of months," a correspondent writes, "i had a violent paroxysm of weeping and for some days i could not eat. when i kissed the dead boy for the last time (i had never seen a corpse before) i felt i had reached the depths of misery and could never smile or have any deep emotions again. yet that night, though my thoughts had not strayed to sexual subjects since the child's death, i had a violent erection. i felt ashamed to desire carnal things when my dead child was still in the house, and explained to my wife. she was sympathetic, for her idea was that our common grief had intensified my love for her. i feel convinced, however, that my desire was the result of a stimulus propagated to the sexual centers from the centers affected by my grief, the transference of my emotion from one set of nerves to another. i do not perhaps express my meaning clearly." how far the emotional influence of grief entered into the following episode it is impossible to say, for here it is probable that we are mainly concerned with one of those almost irresistible impulses by which adolescent girls are sometimes overcome. the narrative is from the lips of a reliable witness, a railway guard, who, some thirty years ago, when a youth of , in cornwall, lodged with a man and woman who had a daughter of his own age. some months later, when requiring a night's lodging, he called at the house, and was greeted warmly by the woman, who told him her husband had just died and that she and her daughter were very nervous and would be glad if he would stay the night, but that as the corpse occupied the other bedroom he would have to share their bed ("we don't think very much of that among us," my informant added). he agreed, and went to bed, and when, a little later, the two women also came to bed, the girl, at her own suggestion, lay next to the youth. nothing happened during the night, but in the morning, when the mother went down to light the fire, the daughter immediately threw off the bedclothes, exposing her naked person, and before the youth had realized what was happening she had drawn him over on to her. he was so utterly surprised that nothing whatever happened, but the incident made a life-long impression on him. in this connection reference may be made to the story of the ephesian matron in petronius; the story of the widow, overcome by grief, who watches by her husband's tomb, and very speedily falls into the arms of the soldier who is on guard. this story, in very various forms, is found in china and india, and has occurred repeatedly in european literature during the last two thousand years. the history of the wanderings of this story has been told by grisebach (eduard grisebach, _die treulose witwe_, third edition, ). it is not probable, however, that all the stories of this type are actually related; in any case it would seem that their vitality is due to the fact that they have been found to show a real correspondence to life; one may note, for instance, the curious tone of personal emotion with which george chapman treated this theme in his play, _widow's tears_. it may be added that, in explaining the resort to pain as an emotional stimulus, we have to take into account not only the biological and psychological considerations here brought forward, but also the abnormal physiological conditions under which stimuli usually felt as painful come specially to possess a sexually exciting influence. the neurasthenic and neuropathic states may be regarded as conditions of more or less permanent fatigue. it is true that under the conditions we are considering there may be an extreme sensitiveness to stimuli not usually felt as of sexual character, a kind of hyperesthesia; but hyperesthesia, it has well been said, is nothing but the beginning of anesthesia.[ ] sergeant bertrand, the classical example of necrophily,[ ] began to masturbate at the age of , stimulating a sexual impulse which may have been congenitally feeble by accompanying thoughts of ill-treating women. it was not till subsequently that he began to imagine that the women were corpses. the sadistic thoughts were only incidents in the emotional evolution, and the real object throughout was to procure strong emotion and not to inflict cruelty. some observations of féré's as to the conditions which influence the amount of muscular work accomplished with the ergograph are instructive from the present point of view: "although sensibility diminishes in the course of fatigue," féré found that "there are periods during which the excitability increases before it disappears. as fatigue increases, the perception of the intercurrent excitation is retarded; an odor is perceived as exciting before it is perceived as a differentiated sensation; the most fetid odors arouse feelings of well-being before being perceived as odors, and their painful quality only appears afterward, or is not noticed at all." and after recording a series of results with the ergograph obtained under the stimulus of unpleasant odors he remarks: "we are thus struck by two facts: the diminution of work during painful excitation, and its increase when the excitation has ceased. when the effects following the excitation have disappeared the diminution is more rapid than in the ordinary state. when the fatigue is manifested by a notable diminution, if the same excitation is brought into action again, no diminution is produced, but a more or less durable increase, exactly as though there had been an agreeable excitation. moreover, the stimulus which appears painful in a state of repose loses that painful character either partially or completely when acting on the same subject in a more and more fatigued state." féré defines a painful stimulus as a strong excitation which causes displays of energy which the will cannot utilize; when, as a result of diminished sensibility, the excitants are attenuated, the will can utilize them, and so there is no pain.[ ] these experiments had no reference to the sexual instinct, but it will be seen at once that they have an extremely significant bearing on the subject before us, for they show us the mechanism of the process by which in an abnormal organism pain becomes a sexual stimulant. footnotes: [ ] erasmus darwin, _zoönomia_, vol. i, p. . [ ] k. groos, _spiele der menschen_, pp. - . [ ] hirn, _origins of art_, p. . reference may here perhaps be made to the fact that unpleasant memories persist in women more than in men (_american journal of psychology_, , p. ). this had already been pointed out by coleridge. "it is a remark that i have made many times," we find it said in one of his fragments (_anima poetæ_, p. ), "and many times, i guess, shall repeat, that women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and beating about, hanging upon and keeping up, and reluctantly letting fall any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of the same class and rank." [ ] groos, _spiele der thiere_, p. . maeder (_jahrbuch für psychoanalytische forschungen_, , vol. i, p. ) mentions an epileptic girl of who masturbates when she is in a rage with anyone. [ ] krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth edition, p. . [ ] stanley hall, "a study of anger," _american journal of psychology_, july, , p. . [ ] krafft-ebing refers to such a case as recorded by schulz, _psychopathia sexualis_, p. . [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . [ ] c.f. von schlichtegroll, _sacher-masoch und der masochismus_, p. . [ ] _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xv, p. . mention may also be made of the cases (described as hysterical mixoscopia by kiernan, _alienist and neurologist_, may, ) in which young women address to themselves anonymous letters of an abusive and disgusting character, and show them to others. [ ] stanley hall, loc. cit., p. . [ ] _archives de neurologie_, oct., . [ ] g. stanley hall, "a study of fears," _american journal of psychology_, vol. viii, no. . [ ] a. cullerre, "de l'excitation sexuelle dans les psychopathies anxieuses," _archives de neurologie_, feb., . [ ] l. gurlitt (_die neue generation_, july, ). moll (_sexualleben des kindes_, p. ) also give examples of the connection between anxiety and sexual excitement. freud (_der wahn und die traüme in jensen's gradiva_, p. ) considers that in dream-interpretation we may replace "terror" by "sexual excitement." in noting the general sexual effects of fear, we need not strictly separate the group of cases in which the sexual effects are physical only, and fail to be circuited through the brain. [ ] see the article on "neurasthenia" by rudolf arndt in tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_. [ ] lunier, _annales médico-psychologiques_, , p. . [ ] féré, _comptes-rendus de la société de biologie_, december and , ; id., _année psychologique_, seventh year, , pp. - ; more especially the same author's _travail et plaisir_, . vii. summary of results reached--the joy of emotional expansion--the satisfaction of the craving for power--the influence of neurasthenic and neuropathic conditions--the problem of pain in love largely constitutes a special case of erotic symbolism. it may seem to some that in our discussion of the relationships of love and pain we have covered a very wide field. this was inevitable. the subject is peculiarly difficult and complex, and if we are to gain a real insight into its nature we must not attempt to force the facts to fit into any narrow and artificial formulas of our own construction. yet, as we have unraveled this seemingly confused mass of phenomena it will not have escaped the careful reader that the apparently diverse threads we have disentangled run in a parallel and uniform manner; they all have a like source and they all converge to a like result. we have seen that the starting-point of the whole group of manifestations must be found in the essential facts of courtship among animal and primitive human societies. pain is seldom very far from some of the phases of primitive courtship; but it is not the pain which is the essential element in courtship, it is the state of intense emotion, of tumescence, with which at any moment, in some shape or another, pain may, in some way or another, be brought into connection. so that we have come to see that in the phrase "love and pain" we have to understand by "pain" a state of intense emotional excitement with which pain in the stricter sense may be associated, but is by no means necessarily associated. it is the strong emotion which exerts the irresistible fascination in the lover, in his partner, or in both. the pain is merely the means to that end. it is the lever which is employed to bring the emotional force to bear on the sexual impulse. the question of love and pain is mainly a question of emotional dynamics. in attaining this view of our subject we have learned that any impulse of true cruelty is almost outside the field altogether. the mistake was indeed obvious and inevitable. let us suppose that every musical instrument is sensitive and that every musical performance involves the infliction of pain on the instrument. it would then be very difficult indeed to realize that the pleasure of music lies by no means in the infliction of pain. we should certainly find would-be scientific and analytical people ready to declare that the pleasure of music is the pleasure of giving pain, and that the emotional effects of music are due to the pain thus inflicted. in algolagnia, as in music, it is not cruelty that is sought; it is the joy of being plunged among the waves of that great primitive ocean of emotions which underlies the variegated world of our everyday lives, and pain--a pain which, as we have seen, is often deprived so far as possible of cruelty, though sometimes by very thin and feeble devices--is merely the channel by which that ocean is reached. if we try to carry our inquiry beyond the point we have been content to reach, and ask ourselves why this emotional intoxication exerts so irresistible a fascination, we might find a final reply in the explanation of nietzsche--who regarded this kind of intoxication as of great significance both in life and in art--that it gives us the consciousness of energy and the satisfaction of our craving for power.[ ] to carry the inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to attempt to analyze further the joy of emotional expansion. we must be content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a widespread motor excitement, the elements of which we cannot yet completely analyze.[ ] it is because the joy of emotional intoxication is the end really sought that we have to regard the supposed opposition between "sadism" and "masochism" as unimportant and indeed misleading. the emotional value of pain is equally great whether the pain is inflicted, suffered, witnessed, or merely exists as a mental imagination, and there is no reason why it should not coexist in all these forms in the same person, as, in fact, we frequently find it. the particular emotions which are invoked by pain to reinforce the sexual impulse are more especially anger and fear, and, as we have seen, these two very powerful and primitive emotions are--on the active and passive sides, respectively--the emotions most constantly brought into play in animal and early human courtship; so that they naturally constitute the emotional reservoirs from which the sexual impulse may still most easily draw. it is not difficult to show that the various forms in which "pain"--as we must here understand pain--is employed in the service of the sexual impulse are mainly manifestations or transformations of anger or fear, either in their simple or usually more complex forms, in some of which anger and fear may be mingled. we thus accept the biological origin of the psychological association between love and pain; it is traceable to the phenomena of animal courtship. we do not on this account exclude the more direct physiological factor. it may seem surprising that manifestations that have their origin in primeval forms of courtship should in many cases coincide with actual sensations of definite anatomical base today, and still more surprising that these traditional manifestations and actual sensations should so often be complementary to each other in their active and passive aspects: that is to say, that the pleasure of whipping should be matched by the pleasure of being whipped, the pleasure of mock strangling by the pleasure of being so strangled, that pain inflicted is not more desirable than pain suffered. but such coincidence is of the very essence of the whole group of phenomena. the manifestations of courtship were from the first conditioned by physiological facts; it is not strange that they should always tend to run _pari passu_ with physiological facts. the manifestations which failed to find anchorage in physiological relationships might well tend to die out. even under the most normal circumstances, in healthy persons of healthy heredity, the manifestations we have been considering are liable to make themselves felt. under such circumstances, however, they never become of the first importance in the sexual process; they are often little more than play. it is only under neurasthenic or neuropathic conditions--that is to say, in an organism which from acquired or congenital causes, and usually perhaps both, has become enfeebled, irritable, "fatigued"--that these manifestations are liable to flourish vigorously, to come to the forefront of sexual consciousness, and even to attain such seriously urgent importance that they may in themselves constitute the entire end and aim of sexual desire. under these pathological conditions, pain, in the broad and special sense in which we have been obliged to define it, becomes a welcome tonic and a more or less indispensable stimulant to the sexual system. it will not have escaped the careful reader that in following out our subject we have sometimes been brought into contact with manifestations which scarcely seem to come within any definition of pain. this is undoubtedly so, and the references to these manifestations were not accidental, for they serve to indicate the real bearings of our subject. the relationships of love and pain constitute a subject at once of so much gravity and so much psychological significance that it was well to devote to them a special study. but pain, as we have here to understand it, largely constitutes a special case of what we shall later learn to know as erotic symbolism: that is to say, the psychic condition in which a part of the sexual process, a single idea or group of ideas, tends to assume unusual importance, or even to occupy the whole field of sexual consciousness, the part becoming a symbol that stands for the whole. when we come to the discussion of this great group of abnormal sexual manifestations it will frequently be necessary to refer to the results we have reached in studying the sexual significance of pain. footnotes: [ ] see, for instance, the section "zur physiologie der kunst" in nietzsche's fragmentary work, _der wille zur macht_, werke, bd. xv. groos (_spiele der menschen_, p. ) refers to the significance of the fact that nearly all races have special methods of procuring intoxication. cf. partridge's study of the psychology of alcohol (_american journal of psychology_, april, ). "it is hard to imagine," this writer remarks of intoxicants, "what the religious or social consciousness of primitive man would have been without them." [ ] the muscular element is the most conspicuous in emotion, though it is not possible, as a careful student of the emotions (h.r. marshall, _pain, pleasure, and Æsthetics_, p. ) well points out, "to limit the physical activities involved with the emotions to such effects of voluntary innervation or alteration of size of blood-vessels or spasm of organic muscle, as lange seems to think determines them; nor to increase or decrease of muscle-power, as féré's results might suggest; nor to such changes, in relation of size of capillaries, in voluntary innervation, in respiratory and heart functioning, as lehmann has observed. emotions seem to me to be coincidents of reactions of the whole organism tending to certain results." the sexual impulse in women. a special and detailed study of the normal characters of the sexual impulse in men seems unnecessary. i have elsewhere discussed various aspects of the male sexual impulse, and others remain for later discussion. but to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if only because it is predominantly open and aggressive. moreover, since the constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law. the sexual instinct in women is much more elusive. this, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting. the same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the sexual impulse in women. nor is it easy to find any full and authentic record of a social state clearly founded in sexual matters on the demands of woman's nature. an illustration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce to suicide in the two sexes. there can be no doubt that the sexual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining suicide. this is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of the suicide-rate in the sexes according to age; while in men the frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in women there is an arrest after the age of ; that is to say, when the period of most intense sexual emotion has been passed. this phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the french, the prussians, and the italians. now, how do marriage and divorce affect the sexual liability to suicide? we are always accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even asserted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the institution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women. professor durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the current assumption. he shows that if we take the tendency to suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men, who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase. after discussing these points exhaustively, "we reach a conclusion," he states, "considerably removed from the current view of marriage and the part it plays. it is regarded as having been instituted for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against masculine caprices. monogamy, especially, is very often presented as a sacrifice of man's polygamous instincts, made in order to ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage. in reality, whatever may have been the historical causes which determined this restriction, it is man who has profited most. the liberty which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of torment to him. woman had not the same reasons for abandoning freedom, and from this point of view we may say that in submitting to the same rule it is she who has made the sacrifice." (e. durkheim, _le suicide_, , pp. - , - .) there is possibly some significance in the varying incidence of insanity in unmarried men and unmarried women as compared with the married. at erlangen, for example, hagen found that among insane women the preponderance of the single over the married is not nearly so great as among insane men, marriage appearing to exert a much more marked prophylactic influence in the case of men than of women. (f.w. hagen, _statistische untersuchungen über geisteskrankheiten_, , p. .) the phenomena are here, however, highly complex, and, as hagen himself points out, the prophylactic influence of marriage, while very probable, is not the only or even the chief factor at work. it is worth noting that exactly the same sexual difference may be traced in england. it appears that, in ratio to similar groups in the general population (taking the years - , inclusive), the number of admissions to asylums is the same for both sexes among married people (i.e., . ), but for the single it is larger among the men ( . to . ), as also it is among the widowed ( . to . ) (_fifty-sixth annual report of the commissioners in lunacy, england and wales_, , p. ). this would seem to indicate that when living apart from men the tendency to insanity is less in women, but is raised to the male level when the sexes live together in marriage. much the same seems to hold true of criminality. it was long since noted by horsley that in england marriage decidedly increases the tendency to crime in women, though it decidedly decreases it in men. prinzing has shown (_zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaft_, bd. ii, ) that this is also the case in germany. similarly marriage decreases the tendency of men to become habitual drunkards and increases that of women. notwithstanding the fact that the average age of the men is greater than that of the women, the majority of the men admitted to the inebriate reformatories under the english inebriates acts are single; the majority of the women are married; of women so admitted per cent, were single, per cent, married, and per cent, widows. (_british medical journal_, sept. , , p. .) it thus happens that even the elementary characters of the sexual impulse in women still arouse, even among the most competent physiological and medical authorities,--not least so when they are themselves women,--the most divergent opinions. its very existence even may be said to be questioned. it would generally be agreed that among men the strength of the sexual impulse varies within a considerable range, but that it is very rarely altogether absent, such total absence being abnormal and probably more or less pathological. but if applied to women, this statement is by no means always accepted. by many, sexual anesthesia is considered natural in women, some even declaring that any other opinion would be degrading to women; even by those who do not hold this opinion it is believed that there is an unnatural prevalence of sexual frigidity among civilized women. on these grounds it is desirable to deal generally with this and other elementary questions of allied character. i. the primitive view of women--as a supernatural element in life--as peculiarly embodying the sexual instinct--the modern tendency to underestimate the sexual impulse in women--this tendency confined to recent times--sexual anæsthesia--its prevalence--difficulties in investigating the subject--some attempts to investigate it--sexual anesthesia must be regarded as abnormal--the tendency to spontaneous manifestations of the sexual impulse in young girls at puberty. from very early times it seems possible to trace two streams of opinion regarding women: on the one hand, a tendency to regard women as a supernatural element in life, more or less superior to men, and, on the other hand, a tendency to regard women as especially embodying the sexual instinct and as peculiarly prone to exhibit its manifestations. in the most primitive societies, indeed, the two views seem to be to some extent amalgamated; or, it should rather be said, they have not yet been differentiated; and, as in such societies it is usual to venerate the generative principle of nature and its embodiments in the human body and in human functions, such a co-ordination of ideas is entirely rational. but with the development of culture the tendency is for this homogeneous conception to be split up into two inharmonious tendencies. even apart from christianity and before its advent this may be noted. it was, however, to christianity and the christian ascetic spirit that we owe the complete differentiation and extreme development which these opposing views have reached. the condemnation of sexuality involved the glorification of the virgin; and indifference, even contempt, was felt for the woman who exercised sexual functions. it remained open to anyone, according to his own temperament, to identify the typical average woman with the one or with the other type; all the fund of latent sexual emotion which no ascetic rule can crush out of the human heart assured the picturesque idealization alike of the angelic and the diabolic types of woman. we may trace the same influence subtly lurking even in the most would-be scientific statements of anthropologists and physicians today.[ ] it may not be out of place to recall at this point, once more, the fact, fairly obvious indeed, that the judgments of men concerning women are very rarely matters of cold scientific observation, but are colored both by their own sexual emotions and by their own moral attitude toward the sexual impulse. the ascetic who is unsuccessfully warring with his own carnal impulses may (like the voluptuary) see nothing in women but incarnations of sexual impulse; the ascetic who has subdued his own carnal impulses may see no elements of sex in women at all. thus the opinions regarding this matter are not only tinged by elements of primitive culture, but by elements of individual disposition. statements about the sexual impulses of women often tell us less about women than about the persons who make them. the curious manner in which for men women become incarnations of the sexual impulse is shown by the tendency of both general and personal names for women to become applicable to prostitutes only. this is the case with the words "garce" and "fille" in french, "mädchen" and "dirne" in german, as well as with the french "catin" (catherine) and the german "metze" (mathilde). (see, e.g., r. kleinpaul, _die räthsel der sprache_, , pp. - .) at the same time, though we have to recognize the presence of elements which color and distort in various ways the judgments of men regarding women, it must not be hastily assumed that these elements render discussion of the question altogether unprofitable. in most cases such prejudices lead chiefly to a one-sided solution of facts, against which we can guard. while, however, these two opposing currents of opinion are of very ancient origin, it is only within quite recent times, and only in two or three countries, that they have led to any marked difference of opinion regarding the sexual aptitude of women. in ancient times men blamed women for concupiscence or praised them for chastity, but it seems to have been reserved for the nineteenth century to state that women are apt to be congenitally incapable of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and peculiarly liable to sexual anesthesia. this idea appears to have been almost unknown to the eighteenth century. during the last century, however, and more especially in england, germany, and italy, this opinion has been frequently set down, sometimes even as a matter of course, with a tincture of contempt or pity for any woman afflicted with sexual emotions. in the treatise _on generation_ (chapter v), which until recent times was commonly ascribed to hippocrates, it is stated that men have greater pleasure in coitus than women, though the pleasure of women lasts longer, and this opinion, though not usually accepted, was treated with great respect by medical authors down to the end of the seventeenth century. thus a. laurentius (du laurens), after a long discussion, decides that men have stronger sexual desire and greater pleasure in coitus than women. (_historia anatomica humani corporis_, , lib. viii, quest, ii and vii.) about half a century ago a book entitled _functions and disorders of the reproductive organs_, by w. acton, a surgeon, passed through many editions and was popularly regarded as a standard authority on the subjects with which it deals. this extraordinary book is almost solely concerned with men; the author evidently regards the function of reproduction as almost exclusively appertaining to men. women, if "well brought up," are, and should be, he states, in england, absolutely ignorant of all matters concerning it. "i should say," this author again remarks, "that the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind." the supposition that women do possess sexual feelings he considers "a vile aspersion." in the article "generation," contained in another medical work belonging to the middle of the nineteenth century,--rees's _cyclopedia_,--we find the following statement: "that a mucous fluid is sometimes found in coition from the internal organs and vagina is undoubted; but this only happens in lascivious women, or such as live luxuriously." gall had stated decisively that the sexual desires of men are stronger and more imperious than those of women. (_fonctions du cerveau_, , vol. iii, pp. - .) raciborski declared that three-fourths of women merely endure the approaches of men. (_de la puberté chez la femme_, , p. .) "when the question is carefully inquired into and without prejudice," said lawson tait, "it is found that women have their sexual appetites far less developed than men." (lawson tait, "remote effects of removal of the uterine appendages," _provincial medical journal_, may, .) "the sexual instinct is very powerful in man and comparatively weak in women," he stated elsewhere (_diseases of women_, , p. ). hammond stated that, leaving prostitutes out of consideration, it is doubtful if in one-tenth of the instances of intercourse they [women] experience the slightest pleasurable sensation from first to last (hammond, _sexual impotence_, p. ), and he considered (p. ) that this condition was sometimes congenital. lombroso and ferrero consider that sexual sensibility, as well as all other forms of sensibility, is less pronounced in women, and they bring forward various facts and opinions which seem to them to point in the same direction. "woman is naturally and organically frigid." at the same time they consider that, while erethism is less, sexuality is greater than in men. (lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente, la prostituta, e la donna normale_, , pp. - .) "it is an altogether false idea," fehling declared, in his rectorial address at the university of basel in , "that a young woman has just as strong an impulse to the opposite sex as a young man.... the appearance of the sexual side in the love of a young girl is pathological." (h. fehling, _die bestimmung der frau_, , p. .) in his _lehrbuch der frauenkrankheiten_ the same gynecological authority states his belief that half of all women are not sexually excitable. krafft-ebing was of opinion that women require less sexual satisfaction than men, being less sensual. (krafft-ebing, "ueber neurosen und psychosen durch sexuelle abstinenz," _jahrbücher für psychiatrie_, , bd. viii, ht. i and .) "in the normal woman, especially of the higher social classes," states windscheid, "the sexual instinct is acquired, not inborn; when it is inborn, or awakes by itself, there is abnormality. since women do not know this instinct before marriage, they do not miss it when they have no occasion in life to learn it." (f. windscheid, "die beziehungen zwischen gynäkologie und neurologie," _zentralblatt für gynäkologie_, , no. ; quoted by. moll, _libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. .) "the sensuality of men," moll states, "is in my opinion very much greater than that of women." (a. moll, _die konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , p. .) "women are, in general, less sensual than men," remarks näcke, "notwithstanding the alleged greater nervous supply of their sexual organs." (p. näcke, "kritisches zum kapitel der sexualität," _archiv für psychiatrie_, , p. .) löwenfeld states that in normal young girls the specifically sexual feelings are absolutely unknown; so that desire cannot exist in them. putting aside the not inconsiderable proportion of women in whom this absence of desire may persist and be permanent, even after sexual relationships have begun, thus constituting absolute frigidity, in a still larger number desire remains extremely moderate, constituting a state of relative frigidity. he adds that he cannot unconditionally support the view of fürbringer, who is inclined to ascribe sexual coldness to the majority of german married women. (l. löwenfeld, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, , second edition, p. .) adler, who discusses the question at some length, decides that the sexual needs of women are less than those of men, though in some cases the orgasm in quantity and quality greatly exceeds that of men. he believes, not only that the sexual impulse in women is absolutely less than in men, and requires stronger stimulation to arouse it, but that also it suffers from a latency due to inhibition, which acts like a foreign body in the brain (analogous to the psychic trauma of breuer and freud in hysteria), and demands great skill in the man who is to awaken the woman to love. (o. adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , pp. , et seq.; also enlarged second edition, ; id., "die frigide frau," _sexual-probleme_, jan., .) it must not, however, be supposed that this view of the natural tendency of women to frigidity has everywhere found acceptance. it is not only an opinion of very recent growth, but is confined, on the whole, to a few countries. "turn to history," wrote brierre de boismont, "and on every page you will be able to recognize the predominance of erotic ideas in women." it is the same today, he adds, and he attributes it to the fact that men are more easily able to gratify their sexual impulses. (_des hallucinations_, , p. .) the laws of manu attribute to women concupiscence and anger, the love of bed and of adornment. the jews attributed to women greater sexual desire than to men. this is illustrated, according to knobel (as quoted by dillmann), by _genesis_, chapter iii, v. . in greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex. theognis compared marriage to cattle-breeding. in love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. in all greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. Æschylus makes even a father assume that his daughters will misbehave if left to themselves. euripides emphasized the importance of women; "the euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all: 'how can i seduce the man i love?"' (e.f.m. benecke, _antimachus of colophon and the position of women in greek poetry_, , pp. , .) the most famous passage in latin literature as to the question of whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from sexual intercourse is that in which ovid narrates the legend of tiresias (_metamorphoses_, iii, - ). tiresias, having been both a man and a woman, decided in favor of women. this passage was frequently quoted down to the eighteenth century. in a passage quoted from a lost work of galen by the arabian biographer, abu-l-faraj, that great physician says of the christians "that they practice celibacy, that even many of their women do so." so that in galen's opinion it was more difficult for a woman than for a man to be continent. the same view is widely prevalent among arabic authors, and there is an arabic saying that "the longing of the woman for the penis is greater than that of the man for the vulva." in china, remarks dr. coltman, "when an old gentleman of my acquaintance was visiting me my little daughter, years old, ran into the room, and, climbing upon my knee, kissed me. my visitor expressed his surprise, and remarked: 'we never kiss our daughters when they are so large; we may when they are very small, but not after they are years old,' said he, 'because it is apt to excite in them bad emotions.'" (coltman, _the chinese_, , p. .) the early christian fathers clearly show that they regard women as more inclined to sexual enjoyment than men. that was, for instance, the opinion of tertullian (_de virginibus velandis_, chapter x), and it is clearly implied in some of st. jerome's epistles. notwithstanding the influence of christianity, among the vigorous barbarian races of medieval europe, the existence of sexual appetite in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a matter to be concealed or denied. thus in the ecclesiastical historian, ordericus vitalis (himself half norman and half english), narrates that the wives of the norman knights who had accompanied william the conqueror to england two years earlier sent over to their husbands to say that they were consumed by the fierce names of desire ("sæva libidinis face urebantur"), and that if their husbands failed to return very shortly they proposed to take other husbands. it is added that this threat brought a few husbands back to their wanton ladies ("lascivis dominabus suis"). during the medieval period in europe, largely in consequence, no doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who naturally regarded woman as the symbol of sex, the doctrine of the incontinence of woman became firmly fixed, and it is unnecessary and unprofitable to quote examples. it is sufficient to mention the very comprehensive statement of jean de meung (in the _roman de la rose_, ):-- "toutes estes, serés, ou fûtes de fait ou de volunté putes." the satirical jean de meung was, however, a somewhat extreme and untypical representative of his age, and the fourteenth century johannes de sancto amando (jean de st. amand) gives a somewhat more scientifically based opinion (quoted by pagel, _neue litterarische beiträge zur mittelalterlichen medicin_, , p. ) that sexual desire is stronger in women than in men. humanism and the spread of the renaissance movement brought in a spirit more sympathetic to women. soon after, especially in italy and france, we begin to find attempts at analyzing the sexual emotions, which are not always without a certain subtlety. in the seventeenth century a book of this kind was written by venette. in matters of love, venette declared, "men are but children compared to women. in these matters women have a more lively imagination, and they usually have more leisure to think of love. women are much more lascivious and amorous than men." this is the conclusion reached in a chapter devoted to the question whether men or women are the more amorous. in a subsequent chapter, dealing with the question whether men or women receive more pleasure from the sexual embrace, venette concludes, after admitting the great difficulty of the question, that man's pleasure is greater, but woman's lasts longer. (n. venette, _de la génération de l'homme ou tableau de l'amour conjugal_, amsterdam, .) at a much earlier date, however, montaigne had discussed this matter with his usual wisdom, and, while pointing out that men have imposed their own rule of life on women and their own ideals, and have demanded from them opposite and contradictory virtues,--a statement not yet antiquated,--he argues that women are incomparably more apt and more ardent in love than men are, and that in this matter they always know far more than men can teach them, for "it is a discipline that is born in their veins." (montaigne, _essais_, book iii, chapter v.) the old physiologists generally mentioned the appearance of sexual desire in girls as one of the normal signs of puberty. this may be seen in the numerous quotations brought together by schurig, in his _parthenologia_, cap. ii. a long succession of distinguished physicians throughout the seventeenth century discussed at more or less length the relative amount of sexual desire in men and women, and the relative degree of their pleasure in coitus. it is remarkable that, although they usually attach great weight to the supposed opinion of hippocrates in the opposite sense, most of them decide that both desire and pleasure are greater in women. plazzonus decides that women have more sources of pleasure in coitus than men because of the larger extent of surface excited; and if it were not so, he adds, women would not be induced to incur the pains and risks of pregnancy and childbirth. (plazzonus, _de partibus generationi inservientibus_, , lib. ii, cap. xiii.) "without doubt," says ferrand, "woman is more passionate than man, and more often torn by the evils of love." (ferrand, _de la maladie d'amour_, , chapter ii.) zacchia, mainly on _a priori_ grounds, concludes that women have more pleasure in coitus than men. (zacchia, _quæstiones medico-legales_, , lib. iii, quest, vii.) sinibaldus, discussing whether men or women have more salacity, decides in favor of women. (j.b. sinibaldus, _geneanthropeia_, , lib. ii, tract. ii, cap. v.) hornius believed that women have greater sexual pleasure than men, though he mainly supported his opinion by the authority of classical poets. (hornius, _historic naturalis_, , lib. iii, cap. i.) nenter describes what we may now call women's affectability, and considers that it makes them more prone than men to the sexual emotions, as is shown by the fact that, notwithstanding their modesty, they sometimes make sexual advances. this greater proneness of women to the sexual impulse is, he remarks, entirely natural and right, for the work of generation is mainly carried on by women, and love is its basis: "generationis fundamentum est amor." (g.p. nenter, _theoria hominis sani_, , cap. v, memb. ii.) the above opinions of seventeenth-century physicians are quoted from the original sources. schurig, in his _gynæcologia_, (pp. - and - ), quotes a number of passages on this subject from medical authorities of the same period, on which i have not drawn. sénancour, in his fine and suggestive book on love, first published in , asks: "has sexual pleasure the same power on the sex which less loudly demands it? it has more, at all events in some respects. the very vigor and laboriousness of men may lead them to neglect love, but the constant cares of maternity make women feel how important it must ever be to them. we must remember also that in men the special emotions of love only have a single focus, while in women the organs of lactation are united to those of conception. our feelings are all determined by these material causes." (sénancour, _de l'amour_, fourth edition, , vol. i, p. .) a later psychologist of love, this time a woman, ellen key, states that woman's erotic demands, though more silent than man's, are stronger. (ellen key, _ueber liebe und ehe_, p. .) michael ryan considered that sexual enjoyment "is more delicious and protracted" in women, and ascribed this to a more sensitive nervous system, a finer and more delicate skin, more acute feelings, and the fact that in women the mammæ are the seat of a vivid sensibility in sympathy with the uterus. (m. ryan, _philosophy of marriage_, , p. .) busch was inclined to think women have greater sexual pleasure than men. (d.w.h. busch, _das geschlechtsleben des weibes_, , vol. i, p. .) kobelt held that the anatomical conformation of the sexual organs in women led to the conclusion that this must be the case. guttceit, speaking of his thirty years' medical experience in russia, says: "in russia at all events, a girl, as very many have acknowledged to me, cannot resist the ever stronger impulses of sex beyond the twenty-second or twenty-third year. and if she cannot do so in natural ways she adopts artificial ways. the belief that the feminine sex feels the stimulus of sex less than the male is quite false." (guttceit, _dreissig jahre praxis_, , theil i, p. .) in scandinavia, according to vedeler, the sexual emotions are at least as strong in women as in men (vedeler, "de impotentia feminarum," _norsk magazin for laegevidenskaben_, march, ). in sweden, dr. eklund, of stockholm, remarking that from to per cent. of the births are illegitimate, adds: "we hardly ever hear anyone talk of a woman having been seduced, simply because the lust is at the worst in the woman, who, as a rule, is the seducing party." (eklund, _transactions of the american association of obstetricians_, philadelphia, , p. .) on the opposite side of the baltic, in the königsberg district, the same observation has been made. intercourse before marriage is the rule in most villages of this agricultural district, among the working classes, with or without intention of subsequent marriage; "the girls are often the seducing parties, or at least very willing; they seek to bind their lovers to them and compel them to marriage." in the köslin district of pomerania, where intercourse between the girls and youths is common, the girls come to the youths' rooms even more frequently than the youths to the girls'. in some of the dantzig districts the girls give themselves to the youths, and even seduce them, sometimes, but not always, with a view of marriage. (wittenberg, _die geschlechtsittlichen verhalten der landbewohner im deutschen reiche_, , bd. i, pp. , , .) mantegazza devoted great attention to this point in several of the works he published during fifty years, and was decidedly of the opinion that the sexual emotions are much stronger in women than in men, and that women have much more enjoyment in sexual intercourse. in his _fisiologia del piacere_ he supports this view, and refers to the greater complexity of the genital apparatus in women (as well as its larger surface and more protected position), to what he considers to be the keener sensibility of women generally, to the passivity of women, etc.; and he considers that sexual pleasure is rendered more seductive to women by the mystery in which it is veiled for them by modesty and our social habits. in a more recent work (_fisiologia della donna_, cap. viii) mantegazza returns to this subject, and remarks that long experience, while confirming his early opinion, has modified it to the extent that he now believes that, as compared with men, the sexual emotions of women vary within far wider limits. among men few are quite insensitive to the physical pleasures of love, while, on the other hand, few are thrown by the violence of its emotional manifestations into a state of syncope or convulsions. among women, while some are absolutely insensitive, others (as in cases with which he was acquainted) are so violently excited by the paradise of physical love that, after the sexual embrace, they faint or fall into a cataleptic condition for several hours. "physical sex is a larger factor in the life of the woman.... if this be true of the physical element, it is equally true of the mental element." (dr. elizabeth blackwell, _the human element in sex_, fifth edition, , p. .) "in the female sex," remarks clouston, "reproduction is a more dominant function of the organism than in the male, and has far larger, if not more intense, relationships to feeling, judgment, and volition." (clouston, _neuroses of development_, .) "it may be said," marro states, "that in woman the visceral system reacts, if not with greater intensity, certainly in a more general manner, to all the impressions, having a sexual basis, which dominate the life of woman, if not as sexual emotions properly so called, as related emotions closely dependent on the reproductive instinct." (a. marro, _la pubertà_, , p. .) forel also believed (_die sexuelle frage_, p. ) that women are more erotic than men. the gynecologist kisch states his belief that "the sexual impulse is so powerful in women that at certain periods of life its primitive force dominates her whole nature, and there can be no room left for reason to argue concerning reproduction; on the contrary, union is desired even in the presence of the fear of reproduction or when there can be no question of it." he regards absence of sexual feeling in women as pathological. (kisch, _sterilität des weibes_, second edition, pp. - .) in his later work (_the sexual life of woman_) kisch again asserts that sexual impulse always exists in mature women (in the absence of organic sexual defect and cerebral disease), though it varies in strength and may be repressed. in adolescent girls, however, it is weaker than in youths of the same age. after she has had sexual experiences, kisch maintains, a woman's sexual emotions are just as powerful as a man's, though she has more motives than a man for controlling them. eulenburg is of the same opinion as kisch, and sharply criticises the loose assertion of some authorities who have expressed themselves in an opposite sense. (a. eulenburg, _sexuale neuropathie_, pp. - ; the same author has dealt with the point in the _zukunft_, december , .) kossmann states that the opinion as to the widespread existence of frigidity among women is a fable. (kossmann, _allgemeine gynæcologie_, , p. .) bloch concludes that "in most cases the sexual coldness of women is in fact only apparent, either due to the concealment of glowing sexuality beneath the veil of outward reticence prescribed by conventional morality, or else to the husband who has not succeeded in arousing erotic sensations which are complicated and with difficulty awakened.... the sexual sensibility of women is certainly different from that of men, but in strength it is at least as great." (iwan bloch, _das sexualleben unserer zeit_ , ch. v.) nyström, also, after devoting a chapter to the discussion of the causes of sexual coldness in women, concludes: "my conviction, founded on experience, is, that only a small number of women would be without sexual feeling if sound views and teaching prevailed in respect to the sexual life, if due weight were given to inner devotion and tender caresses as the preliminaries of love in marriage, and if couples who wish to avoid pregnancy would adopt sensible preventive methods instead of _coitus interruptus_." (a. nyström, _das geschlichtsleben und seine gesetze_, eighth edition, , p. .) we thus find two opinions widely current: one, of world-wide existence and almost universally accepted in those ages and centers in which life is lived most nakedly, according to which the sexual impulse is stronger in women than in men; another, now widely prevalent in many countries, according to which the sexual instinct is distinctly weaker in women, if, indeed, it may not be regarded as normally absent altogether. a third view is possible: it may be held that there is no difference at all. this view, formerly not very widely held, is that of the french physiologist, beaunis, as it is of winckel; while rohleder, who formerly held that sexual feeling tends to be defective in women, now believes that men and women are equal in sexual impulse. at an earlier period, however, donatus (_de medica historia mirabili_, , lib. iv, cap. xvii) held the same view, and remarked that sometimes men and sometimes women are the more salacious, varying with the individual. roubaud (_de l'impuissance_, , p. ) stated that the question is so difficult as to be insoluble. in dealing with the characteristics of the sexual impulse in women, it will be seen, we have to consider the prevalence in them of what is commonly termed (in its slightest forms) frigidity or hyphedonia, and (in more complete form) sexual anesthesia or anaphrodism, or erotic blindness, or anhedonia.[ ] many modern writers have referred to the prevalence of frigidity among women. shufeldt believes (_pacific medical journal_, nov., ) that per cent, of married women in new york are afflicted with sexual frigidity, and that it is on the increase; it is rare, however, he adds, among jewish women. hegar gives per cent, as the proportion of sexually anesthetic women; fürbringer says the majority of women are so. effertz (quoted by löwenfeld, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, p. , apparently with approval) regards per cent, among women generally as sexually anesthetic, but only per cent, men. moll states (eulenburg's _encyclopädie_, fourth edition, art. "geschlechtstrieb") that the prevalence of sexual anesthesia among german women varies, according to different authorities, from to per cent. elsewhere moll (_konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , p. ) emphasizes the statement that "sexual anesthesia in women is much more frequent than is generally supposed." he explains that he is referring to the physical element of pleasure and satisfaction in intercourse, and of desire for intercourse. he adds that the psychic side of love is often more conspicuous in women than in men. he cannot agree with sollier that this kind of sexual frigidity is a symptom of hysteria. féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. ), in referring to the greater frequency of sexual anesthesia in women, remarks that it is often associated with neuropathic states, as well as with anomalies of the genital organs, or general troubles of nutrition, and is usually acquired. some authors attribute great importance to amenorrhea in this connection; one investigator has found that in out of cases of absolute amenorrhea sexual feeling was absent. löwenfeld, again (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_), referring to the common misconception that nervous disorder is associated with increased sexual desire, points out that nervously degenerate women far more often display frigidity than increased sexual desire. elsewhere (_ueber die sexuelle konstitution_) löwenfeld says it is only among the upper classes that sexual anesthesia is common. campbell clark, also, showed some years ago that, in young women with a tendency to chlorosis and a predisposition to insanity, defects of pelvic and mammary development are very prevalent. (_journal of mental science_, october, .) as regards the older medical authors, schurig (_spermatologia_, , p. , and _gynæcologia_, , p. ) brought together from the literature and from his own knowledge cases of women who felt no pleasure in coitus, as well as of some men who had erections without pleasure. there is, however, much uncertainty as to what precisely is meant by sexual frigidity or anesthesia. all the old medical authors carefully distinguish between the heat of sexual desire and the actual presence of pleasure in coitus; many modern writers also properly separate _libido_ from _voluptas_, since it is quite possible to experience sexual desires and not to be able to obtain their gratification during sexual intercourse, and it is possible to hold, with mantegazza, that women naturally have stronger sexual impulses than men, but are more liable than men to experience sexual anesthesia. but it is very much more difficult than most people seem to suppose, to obtain quite precise and definite data concerning the absence of either _voluptas_ or _libido_ in a woman. even if we accept the statement of the woman who asserts that she has either or both, the statement of their absence is by no means equally conclusive and final. as even adler--who discusses this question fully and has very pronounced opinions about it--admits, there are women who stoutly deny the existence of any sexual feelings until such feelings are actually discovered.[ ] some of the most marked characteristics of the sexual impulse in women, moreover,--its association with modesty, its comparatively late development, its seeming passivity, its need of stimulation,--all combine to render difficult the final pronouncement that a woman is sexually frigid. most significant of all in this connection is the complexity of the sexual apparatus in women and the corresponding psychic difficulty--based on the fundamental principle of sexual selection--of finding a fitting mate. the fact that a woman is cold with one man or even with a succession of men by no means shows that she is not apt to experience sexual emotions; it merely shows that these men have not been able to arouse them. "i recall two very striking cases," a distinguished gynecologist, the late dr. engelmann, of boston, wrote to me, "of very attractive young married women--one having had a child, the other a miscarriage--who were both absolutely cold to their husbands, as told me by both husband and wife. they could not understand desire or passion, and would not even believe that it existed. yet, both these women with other men developed ardent passion, all the stronger perhaps because it had been so long latent." in such cases it is scarcely necessary to invoke adler's theory of a morbid inhibition, or "foreign body in consciousness," which has to be overcome. we are simply in the presence of the natural fact that the female throughout nature not only requires much loving, but is usually fastidious in the choice of a lover. in the human species this natural fact is often disguised and perverted. women are not always free to choose the man whom they would prefer as a lover, nor even free to find out whether the man they prefer sexually fits them; they are, moreover, very often extremely ignorant of the whole question of sex, and the victims of the prejudice and false conventions they have been taught. on the one hand, they are driven into an unnatural primness and austerity; on the other hand, they rebound to an equally unnatural facility or even promiscuity. thus it happens that the men who find that a large number of women are not so facile as they themselves are, and as they have found a large number of women to be, rush to the conclusion that women tend to be "sexually anesthetic." if we wish to be accurate, it is very doubtful whether we can assert that a woman is ever absolutely without the aptitude for sexual satisfaction.[ ] she may unquestionably be without any conscious desire for actual coitus. but if we realize to how large an extent woman is a sexual organism, and how diffused and even unconscious the sexual impulses may be, it becomes very difficult to assert that she has never shown any manifestation of the sexual impulse. all we can assert with some degree of positiveness in some cases is that she has not manifested sexual gratification, more particularly as shown by the occurrence of the orgasm, but that is very far indeed from warranting us to assert that she never will experience such gratification or still less that she is organically incapable of experiencing it.[ ] it is therefore quite impossible to follow adler when he asks us to accept the existence of a condition which he solemnly terms _anæsthesia sexualis completa idiopathica_, in which there is no mechanical difficulty in the way or psychic inhibition, but an "absolute" lack of sexual sensibility and a complete absence of sexual inclination.[ ] it is instructive to observe that adler himself knows no "pure" case of this condition. to find such a case he has to go back nearly two centuries to madame de warens, to whom he devotes a whole chapter. he has, moreover, had the courage in writing this chapter to rely entirely on rousseau's _confessions_, which were written nearly half a century later than the episodes they narrated, and are therefore full of inaccuracies, besides being founded on an imperfect and false knowledge of madame de warens's earlier life, and written by a man who was, there can be no doubt, not able to arouse women's passions. adler shows himself completely ignorant of the historical investigations of de montet, mugnier, ritter, and others which, during recent years, have thrown a flood of light on the life and character of madame de warens, and not even acquainted with the highly significant fact that she was hysterical.[ ] this is the basis of "fact" on which we are asked to accept _anæsthesia sexualis completa idiopathica!_[ ] "in dealing with the alleged absence of the sexual impulse," a well-informed medical correspondent writes from america, "much caution has to be used in accepting statements as to its absence, from the fact that most women fear by the admission to place themselves in an impure category. i am also satisfied that influx of women into universities, etc., is often due to the sexual impulse causing restlessness, and that this factor finds expression in the prurient prudishness so often presenting itself in such women, which interferes with coeducation. this is becoming especially noticeable at the university of chicago, where prudishness interferes with classical, biological, sociological, and physiological discussion in the classroom. there have been complaints by such women that a given professor has not left out embryological facts not in themselves in any way implying indelicacy. i have even been informed that the opinion is often expressed in college dormitories that embryological facts and discussions should be left out of a course intended for both sexes." such prudishness, it is scarcely necessary to remark, whether found in women or men, indicates a mind that has become morbidly sensitive to sexual impressions. for the healthy mind embryological and allied facts have no emotionally sexual significance, and there is, therefore, no need to shun them. kolischer, of chicago ("sexual frigidity in women," _american journal of obstetrics_, sept., ), points out that it is often the failure of the husband to produce sexual excitement in the wife which leads to voluntary repression of sexual sensation on her part, or an acquired sexual anesthesia. "sexual excitement," he remarks, "not brought to its natural climax, the reaction leaves the woman in a very disagreeable condition, and repeated occurrences of this kind may even lead to general nervous disturbances. some of these unfortunate women learn to suppress their sexual sensation so as to avoid all these disagreeable sequelæ. such a state of affairs is not only unfortunate, because it deprives the female partner of her natural rights, but it is also to be deplored because it practically brings down such a married woman to the level of the prostitute." in illustration of the prevalence of inhibitions of various kinds, from without and from within, in suppressing or disguising sexual feeling in women, i may quote the following observations by an american lady concerning a series of women of her acquaintance:-- "mrs. a. this woman is handsome and healthy. she has never had children, much to the grief of herself and her husband. the man is also handsome and attractive. mrs. a. once asked me if love-making between me and my husband ever originated with me. i replied it was as often so as not, and she said that in that event she could not see how passion between husband and wife could be regulated. when i seemed not to be ashamed of the matter, but rather to be positive in my views that it should be so, she at once tried to impress me with the fact that she did not wish me to think she 'could not be aroused.' this woman several times hinted that she had learned a great amount that was not edifying at boarding school, and i always felt that, with proper encouragement, she would have retailed suggestive stories. "mrs. b. this woman lives to please her husband, who is a spoiled man. she gave birth to a child soon after marriage, but was left an invalid for some years. she told me coition always hurt her, and she said it made her sick to see her husband nude. i was therefore surprised, years afterward, to hear her say, in reply to a remark of another person, 'yes; women are not only as passionate as men, i am sure they are more so.' i therefore questioned the lack of passion she had on former occasions avowed, or else felt convinced her improvement in health had made intercourse pleasant. "miss c. a teacher. she is emotional and easily becomes hysterical. her life has been one of self-sacrifice and her rearing most puritanical. she told me she thought women did not crave sexual satisfaction unless it had been aroused in them. i consider her one who physically is injured by not having it. "mrs. d. after being married a few years this person told me she thought intercourse 'horrid.' some years after this, however, she fell in love with a man not her husband, which caused their separation. she always fancied men in love with her, and she told me that she and her husband tried to live without intercourse, fearing more children, but they could not do it; she also told of trying to refrain, for the same purpose, until safe parts of the menstrual month, but that 'was just the time she cared least for it.' these remarks made me doubt the sincerity of the first. "mrs. e. said she enjoyed intercourse as well as her husband, and she 'didn't see why she should not say so.' this same woman, whether using a current phrase or not, afterward said her husband 'did not bother her very often.' "mrs. f., the mother of several children, was married to a man she neither loved nor respected, but she said that when a strange man touched her it made her tremble all over. "mrs. g., the mother of many children, divorced on account of the dissipation, drinking and otherwise, of her husband. she is of the creole type, but large and almost repulsive. she is a brilliant talker and she supports herself by writing. she has fallen in love with a number of young men, 'wildly, madly, passionately,' as one of them told me, and i am sure she suffers greatly from the lack of satisfaction. she would no doubt procure it if it were possible. "i believe," the writer concludes, "women are as passionate as men, but the enforced restraint of years possibly smothers it. the fear of having children and the methods to prevent conception are, i am sure, potent factors in the injury to the emotions of married women. perhaps the lack of intercourse acts less disastrously upon a woman because of the renewed feeling which comes after each menstrual period." as bearing on the causes which have led to the disguise and misinterpretation of the sexual impulse in women i may quote the following communication from another lady:-- "i do think the coldness of women has been greatly exaggerated. men's theoretically ideal woman (though they don't care so much about it in practice) is passionless, and women are afraid to admit that they have any desire for sexual pleasure. rousseau, who was not very straight-laced, excuses the conduct of madame de warens on the ground that it was not the result of passion: an aggravation rather than a palliation of the offense, if society viewed it from the point of view of any other fault. even in the modern novels written by the 'new woman' the longing for maternity, always an honorable sentiment, is dragged in to veil the so-called 'lower' desire. that some women, at any rate, have very strong passions and that great suffering is entailed by their repression is not, i am sure, sufficiently recognized, even by women themselves. "besides the 'passionless ideal' which checks their sincerity, there are many causes which serve to disguise a woman's feelings to herself and make her seem to herself colder than she really is. briefly these are:-- " . unrecognized disease of the reproductive organs, especially after the birth of children. a friend of mine lamented to me her inability to feel pleasure, though she had done so before the birth of her child, then years old. with considerable difficulty i persuaded her to see a doctor, who told her all the reproductive organs were seriously congested; so that for three years she had lived in ignorance and regret for her husband's sake and her own. " . the dread of recommencing, once having suffered them, all the pains and discomforts of child-bearing. " . even when precautions are taken, much bother and anxiety is involved, which has a very dampening effect on excitement. " . the fact that men will never take any trouble to find out what specially excites a woman. a woman, as a rule, is at some pains to find out the little things which particularly affect the man she loves,--it may be a trick of speech, a rose in her hair, or what not,--and she makes use of her knowledge. but do you know one man who will take the same trouble? (it is difficult to specify, as what pleases one person may not another. i find that the things that affect me personally are the following: [_a_] admiration for a man's mental capacity will translate itself sometimes into direct physical excitement. [_b_] scents of white flowers, like tuberose or syringa. [_c_] the sight of fireflies. [_d_] the idea or the reality of suspension. [_e_] occasionally absolute passivity.) " . the fact that many women satisfy their husbands when themselves disinclined. this is like eating jam when one does not fancy it, and has a similar effect. it is a great mistake, in my opinion, to do so, except very rarely. a man, though perhaps cross at the time, prefers, i believe, to gratify himself a few times, when the woman also enjoys it, to many times when she does not. " . the masochistic tendency of women, or their desire for subjection to the man they love. i believe no point in the whole question is more misunderstood than this. nearly every man imagines that to secure a woman's love and respect he must give her her own way in small things, and compel her obedience in great ones. every man who desires success with a woman should exactly reverse that theory." when we are faced by these various and often conflicting statements of opinion it seems necessary to obtain, if possible, a definite basis of objective fact. it would be fairly obvious in any case, and it becomes unquestionable in view of the statements i have brought together, that the best-informed and most sagacious clinical observers, when giving an opinion on a very difficult and elusive subject which they have not studied with any attention and method, are liable to make unguarded assertions; sometimes, also, they become the victims of ethical or pseudoethical prejudices, so as to be most easily influenced by that class of cases which happens to fit in best with their prepossessions.[ ] in order to reach any conclusions on a reasonable basis it is necessary to take a series of unselected individuals and to ascertain carefully the condition of the sexual impulse in each. at present, however, this is extremely difficult to do at all satisfactorily, and quite impossible, indeed, to do in a manner likely to yield absolutely unimpeachable results. nevertheless, a few series of observations have been made. thus, dr. harry campbell[ ] records the result of an investigation, carried on in his hospital practice, of married women of the poorer class; they were not patients, but ordinary, healthy working-class women, and the inquiry was not made directly, but of the husbands, who were patients. sexual instinct was said to be present in cases before marriage, and absent in ; in of the it never appeared at all; so that it altogether appeared in , or in the ratio of something over per cent. among the in whom it existed before marriage it was said to have appeared in most with puberty; in , however, a few years before puberty, and in a few years later. in of those in whom it appeared before puberty, menstruation began late; in the third it rose almost to nymphomania on the day preceding the first menstruation. in nearly all the cases desire was said to be stronger in the husband than in the wife; when it was stronger in the wife, the husband was exceptionally indifferent. of the in whom desire was absent after marriage, had been married for a period under two years, and campbell remarks that it would be wrong to conclude that it would never develop in these cases, for in this group of cases the appearance of sexual instinct was sometimes a matter of days, sometimes of years, after the date of marriage. in two-thirds of the cases there was a diminution of desire, usually gradual, at the climacteric; in the remaining third there was either no change or exaltation of desire. the most important general result, campbell concludes, is that "the sexual instinct is very much less intense in woman than in man," and to this he elsewhere adds a corollary that "the sexual instinct in the civilized woman is, i believe, tending to atrophy." an eminent gynecologist, the late dr. matthews duncan, has (in his work on _sterility in women_) presented a table which, although foreign to this subject, has a certain bearing on the matter. matthews duncan, believing that the absence of sexual desire and of sexual pleasure in coitus are powerful influences working for sterility, noted their presence or absence in a number of cases, and found that, among sterile women between the ages of and , , or per cent., acknowledged the presence of sexual desire; and among sterile women (mostly the same cases), , or per cent., acknowledged the presence of sexual pleasure in coitus. omitting the cases over years of age, which were comparatively few, the largest proportion of affirmative answers, both as regards sexual pleasure and sexual desire, was from between and years of age. matthews duncan assumes that the absence of sexual desire and sexual pleasure in women is thoroughly abnormal.[ ] an english non-medical author, in the course of a thoughtful discussion of sexual phenomena, revealing considerable knowledge and observation,[ ] has devoted a chapter to this subject in another of its aspects. without attempting to ascertain the normal strength of the sexual instinct in women, he briefly describes cases of "sexual anesthesia" in women (in or of which there appears, however, to be an element of latent homosexuality) from among the circle of his own friends. this author concludes that sexual coldness is very common among english women, and that it involves questions of great social and ethical importance. i have not met with any series of observations made among seemingly healthy and normal women in other countries; there are, however, various series of somewhat abnormal cases in which the point was noted, and the results are not uninstructive. thus, in vienna at krafft-ebing's psychiatric clinic, gattel (_ueber die sexuellen ursachen der neurasthenie und angstneurose_, ) carefully investigated the cases of women, mostly at the height of sexual life,--i.e., between and ,--who were suffering from slight nervous disorders, especially neurasthenia and mild hysteria, but none of them from grave nervous or other disease. of these , at least had masturbated, at one time or another, either before or after marriage, in order to obtain relief of sexual feelings. in the case of it is stated that they do not obtain sexual satisfaction in marriage, but in these cases only _coitus interruptus_ is practised, and the fact that the absence of sexual satisfaction was complained of seems to indicate an aptitude for experiencing it. these cases can therefore scarcely be regarded as exceptions. in all the other cases sexual desire, sexual excitement, or sexual satisfaction is always clearly indicated, and in a considerable proportion of cases it is noted that the sexual impulse is very strongly developed. this series is valuable, since the facts of the sexual life are, as far as possible, recorded with much precision. the significance of the facts varies, however, according to the view taken as to the causation of neurasthenia and allied conditions of slight nervous disorder. gattel argues that sexual irregularities are a peculiarly fruitful, if not invariable, source of such disorders; according to the more commonly accepted view this is not so. if we accept the more usual view, these women fairly correspond to average women of lower class; if, however, we accept gattel's view, they may possess the sexual instinct in a more marked degree than average women. in a series of german women in whom the operation of removing the ovaries was performed, pfister usually noted briefly in what way the sexual impulse was affected by the operation ("die wirkung der castration auf den weiblichen organismus," _archiv für gynäkologie_, , p. ). in cases (all but unmarried) the presence of sexual desire at any time was denied, and of these expressed disgust of sexual matters. in cases the point is left doubtful. in all the other cases sexual desire had once been present, and in or cases it was acknowledged to be so strong as to approach nymphomania. in about of these (not including any in which it was previously very strong) it was extinguished by castration, in a few others it was diminished, and in the rest unaffected. thus, when we exclude the cases in which the point was not apparently investigated, and the unmarried women, in whom it may have been latent or unavowed, we find that, of married women, women acknowledged the existence of sexual desire and only denied it. schröter, again in germany, has investigated the manifestations of the sexual impulse among insane women in the asylum at eichberg in rheingau. ("wird bei jungen unverheiratheten zur zeit der menstruation stärkere sexuelle erregheit beobaehtet?" _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, vol. lvi, , pp. - .) there is no reason to suppose that the insane represent a class of the community specially liable to sexual emotion, although its manifestations may become unrestrained and conspicuous under the influence of insanity; and at the same time, while the appearance of such manifestations is evidence of the aptitude for sexual emotions, their absence may be only due to disease, seclusion, or to an intact power of self-control. of the women, were married and unmarried. schröter divided them into four groups: ( ) those below ; ( ) those between and ; ( ) those between and ; ( ) those from to the menopause. the patients included persons from the lowest class of the population, and only about a quarter of them could fairly be regarded as curable. thus the manifestations of sexuality were diminished, for with advance of mental disease sexual manifestations cease to appear. schröter only counted those cases in which the sexual manifestations were decided and fairly constant at the menstrual epoch; if not visibly manifested, sexual feeling was not taken into account. sexual phenomena accompanied the entry of the menstrual epoch in cases: i.e., in (or in the proportion of per cent.) of the first group, consisting entirely of unmarried women; in (or per cent.) of the second group; in (or per cent.) of the third group; and in (or per cent.) of the fourth group. it was found that patients showed no sexual phenomena at any time, while showed sexual phenomena frequently between the menstrual epochs, but only in a slight degree, and not at all during the period. at all ages sexual manifestations were more prevalent among the unmarried than among the married, though this difference became regularly and progressively less with increase in age. schröter inclines to think that sexual excitement is commoner among insane women belonging to the lower social classes than in those belonging to the better classes. among women in a private asylum, only ( . per cent.) showed very marked and constant excitement at menstrual periods. he points out, however, that this may be due to a greater ability to restrain the manifestations of feeling. there is some interest in schröter's results, though they cannot be put on a line with inquiries made among the sane; they only represent the prevalence of the grossest and strongest sexual manifestations when freed from the restraints of sanity. as a slight contribution toward the question, i have selected a series of cases of women of whose sexual development i possess precise information, with the following results: in cases distinct sexual feeling was experienced spontaneously at the age of and , but the complete orgasm only occurred some years after puberty; in cases sexual feeling appeared spontaneously for a few months to a year after the appearance of menstruation, which began between and years of age, usually at ; in another case sexual feeling first appeared shortly after menstruation began, but not spontaneously, being called out by a lover's advances; in the remaining cases sexual emotion never became definite and conscious until adult life (the ages being , , , ), in cases through being made love to, and in cases through self-manipulation out of accident or curiosity. it is noteworthy that the sexual feelings first developed in adult life were usually as strong as those arising at puberty. it may be added that, of these women, had at some time or another masturbated ( shortly after puberty, in adult life), but, except in case, rarely and at intervals. all belong to the middle class, or leading easy, though not idle, lives, while all the others are engaged in professional or other avocations often involving severe labor. they differ widely in character and mental ability; but, while or might be regarded as slightly abnormal, they are all fairly healthy. i am inclined to believe that the experiences of the foregoing group are fairly typical of the social class to which they belong. i may, however, bring forward another series of women, varying in age from to (with exceptions all over ), and in every respect comparable with the smaller group, but concerning whom my knowledge, though reliable, is usually less precise and detailed. in this group state that they have never experienced sexual emotion, these being all unmarried and leading strictly chaste lives; in cases the sexual impulse may be described as strong, or is so considered by the subject herself; in cases it is only moderate; in it is very slight when evoked, and with difficulty evoked, in of these only appearing two years after marriage, in another the exhaustion and worry of household cares being assigned for its comparative absence. it is noteworthy that all the more highly intelligent, energetic women in the series appear in the group of those with strong sexual emotions, and also that severe mental and physical labor, even when cultivated for this purpose, has usually had little or no influence in relieving sexual emotion. an american physician in the state of connecticut sends me the following notes concerning a series of married women, taken, as they occurred, in obstetric practice. they are in every way respectable and moral women:-- "mrs. a. says that her husband does not give her sufficient sexual attention, as he fears they will have more children than he can properly care for. mrs. b. always enjoys intercourse; so does mrs. c. mrs. d. is easily excited and very fond of sexual attention. mrs. e. likes intercourse if her husband is careful not to hurt her. mrs. f. never had any sexual desire until after second marriage, but it is now very urgent at times. mrs. g. is not easily excited, but has never objected to her husband's attention. mrs. h. would prefer to have her husband exhibit more attention. mrs. i. never refused her husband, but he does not trouble her much. mrs. j. thinks that three or four times a week is satisfactory, but would not object to nightly intercourse. mrs. k. does not think that her husband could give her more than she would like. mrs. l. would prefer to live with a woman if it were not for sexual intercourse. mrs. m., aged , says that her husband, aged , insists upon intercourse three times every night, and that he keeps her tired and disgusted. she each time has at least one orgasm, and would not object to reasonable attention." it may be remarked that, while these results in english women of the middle class are in fair agreement with the german and austrian observations i have quoted, they differ from campbell's results among women of the working class in london. this discrepancy is, perhaps, not difficult to explain. while the conditions of upper-class life may possibly be peculiarly favorable to the development of the sexual emotions, among the working classes in london, where the stress of the struggle for existence under bad hygienic conditions is so severe, they may be peculiarly unfavorable. it is thus possible that there really are a smaller number of women experiencing sexual emotion among the class dealt with by campbell than among the class to which my series belong.[ ] a more serious consideration is the method of investigation. a working man, who is perhaps unintelligent outside his own work, and in many cases married to a woman who is superior in refinement, may possibly be able to arouse his wife's sexual emotions, and also able to ascertain what those emotions are, and be willing to answer questions truthfully on this point, to the best of his ability, but he is by no means a witness whose evidence is final. while, however, campbell's facts may not be quite unquestionable, i am inclined to agree with his conclusion, and mantegazza's, that there is a very great range of variation in this matter, and that there is no age at which the sexual impulse in women may not appear. a lady who has received the confidence of very many women tells me that she has never found a woman who was without sexual feeling. i should myself be inclined to say that it is extremely difficult to find a woman who is without the aptitude for sexual emotion, although a great variety of circumstances may hinder, temporarily or permanently, the development of this latent aptitude. in other words, while the latent sexual aptitude may always be present, the sexual impulse is liable to be defective and the aptitude to remain latent, with consequent deficiency of sexual emotion, and absence of sexual satisfaction. this is not only indicated by the considerable proportion of my cases in which there is only moderate or slight sexual feeling. i have ample evidence that in many cases the element of pain, which may almost be said to be normal in the establishment of the sexual function, is never merged, as it normally is, in pleasurable sensations on the full establishment of sexual relationships. sometimes, no doubt, this may be due to dyspareunia. sometimes there may be an absolute sexual anesthesia, whether of congenital or hysterical origin. i have been told of the case of a married lady who has never been able to obtain sexual pleasure, although she has had relations with several men, partly to try if she could obtain the experience, and partly to please them; the very fact that the motives for sexual relationships arose from no stronger impulse itself indicates a congenital defect on the psychic as well as on the physical side. but, as a rule, the sexual anesthesia involved is not absolute, but lies in a disinclination to the sexual act due to various causes, in a defect of strong sexual impulse, and an inaptitude for the sexual orgasm. i am indebted to a lady who has written largely on the woman question, and is herself the mother of a numerous family, for several letters in regard to the prevalence among women of sexual coldness, a condition which she regards as by no means to be regretted. she considers that in all her own children the sexual impulse is very slightly developed, the boys being indifferent to women, the girls cold toward men and with no desire to marry, though all are intelligent and affectionate, the girls showing a very delicate and refined kind of beauty. (a large selection of photographs accompanied this communication.) something of the same tendency is said to mark the stocks from which this family springs, and they are said to be notable for their longevity, healthiness, and disinclination for excesses of all kinds. it is scarcely necessary to remark that a mother, however highly intelligent, is by no means an infallible judge as to the presence or absence in her children of so shy, subtle, and elusive an impulse as that of sex. at the same time i am by no means disposed to question the existence in individuals, and even in families or stocks, of a relatively weak sexual impulse, which, while still enabling procreation to take place, is accompanied by no strong attraction to the opposite sex and no marked inclination for marriage. (adler, op. cit., p. , found such a condition transmitted from mother to daughter.) such persons often possess a delicate type of beauty. even, however, when the health is good there seems usually to be a certain lack of vitality. it seems to me that a state of sexual anesthesia, relative or absolute, cannot be considered as anything but abnormal. to take even the lowest ground, the satisfaction of the reproductive function ought to be at least as gratifying as the evacuation of the bowels or bladder; while, if we take, as we certainly must, higher ground than this, an act which is at once the supreme fact and symbol of love and the supreme creative act cannot under normal conditions be other than the most pleasurable of all acts, or it would stand in violent opposition to all that we find in nature. how natural the sexual impulse is in women, whatever difficulties may arise in regard to its complete gratification, is clearly seen when we come to consider the frequency with which in young women we witness its more or less instinctive manifestations. such manifestations are liable to occur in a specially marked manner in the years immediately following the establishment of puberty, and are the more impressive when we remember the comparatively passive part played by the female generally in the game of courtship, and the immense social force working on women to compel them to even an unnatural extension of that passive part. the manifestations to which i allude not only occur with most frequency in young girls, but, contrary to the common belief, they seem to occur chiefly in innocent and unperverted girls. the more vicious are skillful enough to avoid the necessity for any such open manifestations. we have to bear this in mind when confronted by flagrant sexual phenomena in young girls. "a young girl," says hammer ("ueber die sinnlichkeit gesunder jungfrauen," _die neue generation_, aug., ), "who has not previously adopted any method of self-gratification experiences at the beginning of puberty, about the time of the first menstruation and the sprouting of the pubic hair, in the absence of all stimulation by a man, spontaneous sexual tendencies of both local and psychic nature. on the psychic side there is a feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction, a need of subjection and of serving, and, if the opportunity has so far been absent, the craving to see masculine nudity and to learn the facts of procreation. side by side with these wishes, there are at the same time inhibitory desires, such as the wish to keep herself pure, either for a man whom she represents to herself as the 'ideal,' or for her parents, who must not be worried, or as a member of a chosen people in whose spirit she must live and die, or out of love to jesus or to some saint. on the physical side, there is the feeling of fresh power and energy, of enterprise; the agreeable tension of the genital regions, which easily become moist. then there is the feeling of overirritability and excess of tension, and the need of relieving the tension through pinches, blows, tight lacing, and so forth. if the girl remains innocent of sex satisfaction, there takes place during sleep, at regular intervals of about three days, more or less the relief and emission of the tense glands, not corresponding to the menstrual period, but to intercourse, and serving better than sexual instruction to represent to her the phenomena of intercourse. if at this period actual intercourse takes place, it is, as a rule, free from pain, as also is the introduction of the speculum. without any seduction from without, the chaste girl now frequently finds a way to relieve the excessive tension without the aid of a man. it is self-abuse that leads gradually to the production of pain in defloration. the menstrual phenomena correspond to birth; self-gratification or relief during sleep to intercourse." this statement of the matter is somewhat too absolute and unqualified. under the artificial conditions of civilization the inhibitory influences of training speedily work powerfully, and more or less successfully, in banishing sexual phenomena into the subconscious, sometimes to work all the mischief there which freud attributes to them. it must also be said (as i have pointed out in the discussion of auto-erotism in another volume) that sexual dreams seem to be the exception rather than the rule in innocent girls. it remains true that sexual phenomena in girls at puberty must not be regarded as morbid or unnatural. there is also very good reason for believing (even apart from the testimony of so experienced a gynecologist as hammer) that on the physical side sexual processes tend to be accomplished with a facility that is often lost in later years with prolonged chastity. this is true alike of intercourse and of childbirth. (see vol. vi of these _studies_, ch. xii.) even, however, in the case of adults the active part played by women in real life in matters of love by no means corresponds to the conventional ideas on these subjects. no doubt nearly every woman receives her sexual initiation from an older and more experienced man. but, on the other hand, nearly every man receives his first initiation through the active and designed steps taken by an older and more experienced woman. it is too often forgotten by those who write on these subjects that the man who seduces a woman has usually himself in the first place been "seduced" by a woman. a well-known physician in chicago tells me that on making inquiry of middle-class married men in succession be found that had been first seduced by a woman. an officer in the indian medical service writes to me as follows: "once at a club in burma we were some at table and the subject of first intercourse came up. all had been led astray by servants save , whom their sisters' governesses had initiated. we were all men in the 'service,' so the facts may be taken to be typical of what occurs in our stratum of society. all had had sexual relations with respectable unmarried girls, and most with the wives of men known to their fathers, in some instances these being old enough to be their lovers' mothers. apparently up to the age of none had dared to make the first advances, yet from the age of onward all had had ample opportunity for gratifying their sexual instincts with women. though all had been to public schools where homosexuality was known to occur, yet (as i can assert from intimate knowledge) none had given signs of inversion or perversion in burma." in russia, tchlenoff, investigating the sexual life of over moscow students of upper and middle class (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, oct.-nov., ), found that in half of them the first coitus took place between and years of age; in per cent, with prostitutes, in per cent, with servants, and in per cent, with married women. in per cent, the young man declared that he had taken the initiative, in per cent, the women took it, and in per cent, the incitement came from a comrade. the histories i have recorded in appendix b (as well as in the two following volumes of these _studies_) very well illustrate the tendency of young girls to manifest sexual impulses when freed from the constraint which they feel in the presence of adult men and from the fear of consequences. these histories show especially how very frequently nurse-maids and servant-girls effect the sexual initiation of the young boys intrusted to them. how common this impulse is among adolescent girls of low social class is indicated by the fact that certainly the majority of middle-class men can recall instances from their own childhood. (i here leave out of account the widespread practice among nurses of soothing very young children in their charge by manipulating the sexual organs.) a medical correspondent, in emphasizing this point, writes that "many boys will tell you that, if a nurse-girl is allowed to sleep in the same room with them, she will attempt sexual manipulations. either the girl gets into bed with the boy and pulling him on to her tickles the penis and inserts it into the vulva, making the boy imitate sexual movements, or she simply masturbates the child, to get him excited and interested, often showing him the female sexual opening in herself or in his sisters, teaching him to finger it. in fact, a nurse-girl may ruin a boy, chiefly, i think, because she has been brought up to regard the sexual organs as a mystery, and is in utter ignorance about them. she thus takes the opportunity of investigating the boy's penis to find out how it works, etc., in order to satisfy her curiosity. i know of a case in which a nurse in a fashionable london square garden used to collect all the boys and girls (gentlemen's children) in a summer-house when it grew dark, and, turning up her petticoats, invite all the boys to look at and feel her vulva, and also incite the older boys of or to have coitus with her. girls are afraid of pregnancy, so do not allow an adult penis to operate. i think people should take on a far higher class of nurses, than they do." "children ought never to be allowed, under any circumstances whatever," wrote lawson tait (_diseases of women_, , p. ), "to sleep with servants. in every instance where i have found a number of children affected [by masturbation] the contagion has been traced to a servant." freud has found (_neurologisches centralblatt_, no. , ) that in cases of severe youthful hysteria the starting point may frequently be traced to sexual manipulations by servants, nurse-girls, and governesses. "when i was about or ," a friend writes, "a servant-maid of our family, who used to carry the candle out of my bedroom, often drew down the bedclothes and inspected my organs. one night she put the penis in her mouth. when i asked her why she did it her answer was that 'sucking a boy's little dangle' cured her of pains in her stomach. she said that she had done it to other little boys, and declared that she liked doing it. this girl was about ; she had lately been 'converted.' another maid in our family used to kiss me warmly on the naked abdomen when i was a small boy. but she never did more than that. i have heard of various instances of servant-girls tampering with boys before puberty, exciting the penis to premature erection by manipulation, suction, and contact with their own parts." such overstimulation must necessarily in some cases have an injurious influence on the boy's immature nervous system. thus, hutchinson (_archives of surgery_, vol. iv, p. ) describes a case of amblyopia in a boy, developing after he had been placed to sleep in a servant-girl's room. moll (_konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , p. ) refers to the frequency with which servant-girls (between the ages of and ) carry on sexual practices with young boys (between and ) committed to their care. more than a century earlier tissot, in his famous work on onanism, referred to the frequency with which servant-girls corrupt boys by teaching them to masturbate; and still earlier, in england, the author of _onania_ gave many such cases. we may, indeed, go back to the time of rabelais, who (as dr. kiernan reminds me) represents the governesses of gargantua, when he was a child, as taking pleasure in playing with his penis till it became wet, and joking with each other about it. (_gargantua_, book i, chapter ix.) the prevalence of such manifestations among servant-girls witnesses to their prevalence among lower-class girls generally. in judging such acts, even when they seem to be very deliberate, it is important to remember that at this age unreasoning instinct plays a very large part in the manifestations of the sexual impulse. this is clearly indicated by the phenomena observed in the insane. thus, as we have seen (page ), schröter has found that, among girls of low social class under years of age, spontaneous periodical sexual manifestations at menstrual epochs occurred in as large a proportion as per cent. among girls of better social position these impulses are inhibited, or at all events modified, by good taste or good feeling, the influences of tradition or education; it is only to the latter that children should be intrusted. hoche mentions a case in which a man was accused of repeatedly exhibiting his sexual organs to the servant-girl at a house; she enjoyed the spectacle (_neurologisches centralblatt_, , no. ). it may well be that in some cases of self-exhibition the offender has good reason, on the ground of previous experience, for thinking that he is giving pleasure. "when we used to go to bathe while i was at school," writes a correspondent, "girls from a poor quarter of the lower town (some quite ) often followed us and stood to watch about a hundred yards from the river. they used to 'giggle' and 'pass remarks.' i have seen girls of this class peeping through chinks of a palisade around a bathing-place on the thames." a correspondent who has given special attention to the point tells me of the great interest displayed by young girls of the people in italy in the sexual organs of men. curiosity--whether in the form of the desire for knowledge or the desire for sensation--is, of course, not confined to young girls and women of lower social strata, though in them it is less often restrained by motives of self-respect and good feeling. "at the age of ," writes a correspondent, "i was one day playing in a spare room with a girl of about or . she gave me a penholder, and, crouching upon her hands and knees, with her posterior toward me, invited me to introduce the instrument into the vulva. this was the first time i had seen the female parts, and, as i appeared to be somewhat repelled, she coaxed me to comply with her desire. i did as she directed, and she said that it gave her pleasure. several times after i repeated the same act at her request. a friend tells me that when he was a girl of asked him to lace up her boots. while he was kneeling at her feet his hand touched her ankle. she asked him to put his hand higher, and repeated 'higher, higher,' till he touched the pudenda, and finally, at her request, put his finger into the vestibule. this girl was very handsome and amiable, and a favorite of the boy's mother. no one suspected this propensity." again, a correspondent (a man of science) tells me of a friend who lately, when dining out, met a girl, the daughter of a country vicar; he was not specially attracted to her and paid her no special attention. "a few days afterward he was astonished to receive a call from her one afternoon (though his address is not discoverable from any recognized source). she sat down as near to him as she could, and rested her hand on his thigh, etc., while talking on different subjects and drinking tea. then without any verbal prelude she asked him to have connection with her. though not exactly a puritan, he is not the man to jump at such an offer from a woman he is not in love with, so, after ascertaining that the girl was _virgo intacta_, he declined and she went away. a fortnight or so later he received a letter from her in the country, making no reference to what had passed, but giving an account of her work with her sunday-school class. he did not reply, and then came a curt note asking him to return her letter. my friend feels sure she was devoted to auto-erotic performances, but, having become attracted to him, came to the conclusion she would like to try normal intercourse." wolbarst, studying the prevalence of gonorrhea among boys in new york (especially, it would appear, in quarters where the foreign-born elements--mainly russian jew and south italian--are large), states: "in my study of this subject there have been observed cases of gonorrheal urethritis, in boys aged, respectively, , , and years, which were acquired in the usual manner, from girls ranging between and years of age. in each case, according to the story told by the victim, the girl made the first advances, and in i case, that of the -year-old boy, the act was consummated in the form of an assault, by a girl years old, in which the child was threatened with injury unless he performed his part." (a.l. wolbarst, _journal of the american medical association_, sept. , .) in a further series of cases (_medical record_, oct. , ) wolbarst obtained similar results, though he recognizes also the frequency of precocious sexuality in the young boys themselves. gibb states, concerning assaults on children by women: "it is undeniably true that they occur much more frequently than is generally supposed, although but few of the cases are brought to public notice, owing to the difficulty of proving the charge." (w.t. gibb, article "indecent assaults upon children," in a. mclane hamilton's _system of legal medicine_, vol. i, p. .) gibb's opinion carries weight, since he is medical adviser for the new york society for the protection of children, and compelled to sift the evidence carefully in such cases. it should be mentioned that, while a sexual curiosity exercised on younger children is, in girls about the age of puberty, an ill-regulated, but scarcely morbid, manifestation, in older women it may be of pathological origin. thus, kisch records the case of a refined and educated lady of who had been married for nine years, but had never experienced sexual pleasure in coitus. for a long time past, however, she had felt a strong desire to play with the genital organs of children of either sex, a proceeding which gave her sexual pleasure. she sought to resist this impulse as much as possible, but during menstruation it was often irresistible. examination showed an enlarged and retroflexed uterus and anesthesia of vagina. (kisch, _die sterilität des weibes_, , p. .) the psychological mechanism by which an anesthetic vagina leads to a feeling of repulsion for normal coitus and normal sexual organs, and directs the sexual feelings toward more infantile forms of sexuality, is here not difficult to trace. it is not often that the sexual attempts of girls and young women on boys--notwithstanding their undoubted frequency--become of medico-legal interest. in france in the course of ten years ( to ) only women, who were mostly between and years of age, were actually convicted of sexual attempts on children below . (paul bernard, "viols et attentats a la pudeur," _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, .) lop ("attentats à la pudeur commis par des femmes sur des petits enfants," id., aug., ) brings together a number of cases chiefly committed by girls between the ages of and . in england such accusations against a young woman or girl may easily be circumvented. if she is under she is protected by the criminal law amendment act and cannot be punished. in any case, when found out, she can always easily bring the sympathy to her side by declaring that she is not the aggressor, but the victim. cases of violent sexual assault upon girls, lawson tait remarks, while they undoubtedly do occur, are very much rarer than the frequency with which the charge is made would lead us to suspect. at one time, by arrangement with the authority, such charges at birmingham were consecutively brought before lawson tait. these charges were all made under the criminal law amendment act. in only of these cases was he able to advise prosecution, in all of which cases conviction was obtained. in other cases in which the police decided to prosecute there was either no conviction or a very light sentence. in at least cases the charge was clearly trumped up. the average age of these girls was . "there is not a piece of sexual argot that ever had before reached my ears," remarks mr. tait, "but was used by these children in the descriptions given by them of what had been done to them; and they introduced, in addition, quite a new vocabulary on the subject. the minute and detailed descriptions of the sexual act given by chits of and would do credit to the pages of mirabeau. at first sight it is a puzzle to see how children so young obtained their information." "about the use of the word 'seduced,'" the same writer remarks, "i wish to say that the class of women from amongst whom the great bulk of these cases are drawn seem to use it in a sense altogether different from that generally employed. it is not with them a process in which male villainy succeeds by various arts in overcoming female virtue and reluctance, but simply a date at which an incident in their lives occurs for the first time; and, according to their use of the phrase, the ancient legend of the sacred scriptures, had it ended in the more ordinary and usual way by the virtue of joseph yielding to the temptation offered, would have to read as a record of the seduction of mrs. potiphar." with reference to lawson tait's observation that violent assaults on women, while they do occur, are very much rarer than the frequency with which such charges are made would lead us to believe, it may be remarked that many medico-legal authorities are of the same opinion. (see, e.g., g. vivian poore's _treatise on medical jurisprudence_, , p. . this writer also remarks: "i hold very strongly that a woman may rape a man as much as a man may rape a woman.") there can be little doubt that the plea of force is very frequently seized on by women as the easiest available weapon of defense when her connection with a man has been revealed. she has been so permeated by the current notion that no "respectable" woman can possibly have any sexual impulses of her own to gratify that, in order to screen what she feels to be regarded as an utterly shameful and wicked, as well as foolish, act, she declares it never took place by her own will at all. "now, i ask you, gentlemen," i once heard an experienced counsel address the jury in a criminal case, "as men of the world, have you ever known or heard of a woman, a single woman, confess that she had had sexual connection and not declare that force had been used to compel her to such connection?" the statement is a little sweeping, but in this matter there is some element of truth in the "man of the world's" opinion. one may refer to the story (told by etienne de bourbon, by francisco de osuna in a religious work, and by cervantes in _don quixote_, part ii, ch. xlv) concerning a magistrate who, when a girl came before him to complain of rape, ordered the accused young man either to marry her or pay her a sum of money. the fine was paid, and the magistrate then told the man to follow the girl and take the money from her by force; the man obeyed, but the girl defended herself so energetically that he could not secure the money. then the judge, calling the parties before him again, ordered the fine to be returned: "had you defended your chastity as well as you have defended your money it could not have been taken away from you." in most cases of "rape," in the case of adults, there has probably been some degree of consent, though that partial assent may have been basely secured by an appeal to the lower nervous centers alone, with no participation of the intelligence and will. freud (_zur psychopathologie des alltagslebens_, p. ) considers that on this ground the judge's decision in _don quixote_ is "psychologically unjust," because in such a case the woman's strength is paralyzed by the fact that an unconscious instinct in herself takes her assailant's part against her own conscious resistance. but it must be remembered that the factor of instinct plays a large part even when no violence is attempted. such facts and considerations as these tend to show that the sexual impulse is by no means so weak in women as many would lead us to think. it would appear that, whereas in earlier ages there was generally a tendency to credit women with an unduly large share of the sexual impulse, there is now a tendency to unduly minimize the sexual impulse in women. footnotes: [ ] i have had occasion to refer to the historic evolution of male opinion regarding women in previous volumes, as, e.g., _man and woman_, chapter i, and the appendix on "the influence of menstruation on the position of women" in the first volume of these _studies_. [ ] the terminology proposed by ziehen ("zur lehre von den psychopathischen konstitutionen," _charité annalen_, vol. xxxxiii, ) is as follows: for absence of sexual feeling, _anhedonia_; for diminution of the same, _hyphedonia_; for excess of sexual feeling, _hyperhedonia_; for qualitative sexual perversions, _parhedonia_. "erotic blindness" was suggested by nardelli. [ ] o. adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , p. . [ ] a correspondent tells me that he knows a woman who has been a prostitute since the age of , but never experienced sexual pleasure and a real, non-simulated orgasm till she was ; since then she has become very sensual. in other similar cases the hitherto indifferent prostitute, having found the man who suits her, abandons her profession, even though she is thereby compelled to live in extreme poverty. "an insensible woman," as la bruyère long ago remarked in his chapter "des femmes," "is merely one who has not yet seen the man she must love." [ ] guttceit (_dreissig jahre praxis_, vol. i, p. ) pointed out that the presence or absence of the orgasm is the only factor in "sexual anesthesia" of which we can speak at all definitely; and he believed that anaphrodism, in the sense of absence of the sexual impulse, never occurs at all, many women having confided to him that they had sexual desires, although those desires were not gratified by coitus. [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] havelock ellis, "madame de warens," _the venture_, . [ ] it is interesting to observe that finally even adler admits (op. cit., p. ) that there is no such thing as _congenital_ lack of aptitude for sexual sensibility. [ ] "i am not entirely satisfied with the testimony as to the alleged sexual anesthesia," a medical correspondent writes. "the same principle which makes the young harlot an old saint makes the repentant rake a believer in sexual anesthesia. most of the medical men who believe, or claim to believe, that sexual anesthesia is so prevalent do so either to flatter their hysterical patients or because they have the mentality of the hyacinthe of zola's _paris_." [ ] _differences in the nervous organization of man and woman_, ; chapter xiii, "sexual instinct in men and women compared." [ ] matthews duncan considered that "the healthy performance of the functions of child-bearing is surely connected with a well-regulated condition of desire and pleasure." "desire and pleasure," he adds, "may be excessive, furious, overpowering, without bringing the female into the class of maniacs; they may be temporary, healthy, and moderate; they may be absent or dull." (matthews duncan, _goulstonian lectures on sterility in woman_, pp. , .) [ ] geoffrey mortimer, _chapters on human love_, , ch. xvi. [ ] i do not, however, attach much weight to this possibility. the sexual instinct among the lower social classes everywhere is subject to comparatively weak inhibition, and löwenfeld is probably right in believing the women of the lower class do not suffer from sexual anesthesia to anything like the same extent as upper-class women. in england most women of the working class appear to have had sexual intercourse at some time in their lives, notwithstanding the risks of pregnancy, and if pregnancy occurs they refer to it calmly as an "accident," for which they cannot be held responsible; "well, i couldn't help that," i have heard a young widow remark when mildly reproached for the existence of her illegitimate child. again, among american negresses there seems to be no defect of sexual passion, and it is said that the majority of negresses in the southern states support not only their children, but their lovers and husbands. ii. special characters of the sexual impulse in women--the more passive part played by women in courtship--this passivity only apparent--the physical mechanism of the sexual process in women more complex--the slower development of orgasm in women--the sexual impulse in women more frequently needs to be actively aroused--the climax of sexual energy falls later in women's lives than in men's--sexual ardor in women increased after the establishment of sexual relationships--women bear sexual excesses better than men--the sexual sphere larger and more diffused in women--the sexual impulse in women shows a greater tendency to periodicity and a wider range of variation. so far i have been discussing the question of the sexual impulse in women on the ground upon which previous writers have usually placed it. the question, that is, has usually presented itself to them as one concerning the relative strength of the impulse in men and women. when so considered, not hastily and with prepossession, as is too often the case, but with a genuine desire to get at the real facts in all their aspects, there is no reason, as we have seen, to conclude that, on the whole, the sexual impulse in women is lacking in strength. but we have to push our investigation of the matter further. in reality, the question as to whether the sexual impulse is or is not stronger in one sex than in the other is a somewhat crude one. to put the question in that form is to reveal ignorance of the real facts of the matter. and in that form, moreover, no really definite and satisfactory answer can be given. it is necessary to put the matter on different ground. instead of taking more or less insolvable questions as to the strength of the sexual impulse in the two sexes, it is more profitable to consider its differences. what are the special characters of the sexual impulse in women? there is certainly one purely natural sexual difference of a fundamental character, which lies at the basis of whatever truth may be in the assertion that women are not susceptible of sexual emotion. as may he seen when considering the phenomena of modesty, the part played by the female in courtship throughout nature is usually different from that played by the male, and is, in some respects, a more difficult and complex part. except when the male fails to play his part properly, she is usually comparatively passive; in the proper playing of her part she has to appear to shun the male, to flee from his approaches--even actually to repel them.[ ] courtship resembles very closely, indeed, a drama or game; and the aggressiveness of the male, the coyness of the female, are alike unconsciously assumed in order to bring about in the most effectual manner the ultimate union of the sexes. the seeming reluctance of the female is not intended to inhibit sexual activity either in the male or in herself, but to increase it in both. the passivity of the female, therefore, is not a real, but only an apparent, passivity, and this holds true of our own species as much as of the lower animals. "women are like delicately adjusted alembics," said a seventeenth-century author. "no fire can be seen outside, but if you look underneath the alembic, if you place your hand on the hearts of women, in both places you will find a great furnace."[ ] or, as marro has finely put it, the passivity of women in love is the passivity of the magnet, which in its apparent immobility is drawing the iron toward it. an intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed preoccupation in the end to be attained. tarde, when exercising magistrate's functions, once had to inquire into a case in which a young man was accused of murder. in questioning a girl of , a shepherdess, who appeared before him as a witness, she told him that on the morning following the crime she had seen the footmarks of the accused up to a certain point. he asked how she recognized them, and she replied, ingenuously but with assurance, that she could recognize the footprints of every young man in the neighborhood, even in a plowed field.[ ] no better illustration could be given of the real significance of the sexual passivity of women, even at its most negative point. "the women i have known," a correspondent writes, "do not express their sensations and feelings as much as i do. nor have i found women usually anxious to practise 'luxuries.' they seldom care to practice _fellatio_; i have only known one woman who offered to do _fellatio_ because she liked it. nor do they generally care to masturbate a man; that is, they do not care greatly to enjoy the contemplation of the other person's excitement. (to me, to see the woman excited means almost more than my own pleasure.) they usually resist _cunnilinctus_, although they enjoy it. they do not seem to care to touch or look at a man's parts so much as he does at theirs. and they seem to dislike the tongue-kiss unless they feel very sexual or really love a man." my correspondent admits that his relationships have been numerous and facile, while his erotic demands tend also to deviate from the normal path. under such circumstances, which not uncommonly occur, the woman's passions fail to be deeply stirred, and she retains her normal attitude of relative passivity. it is owing to the fact that the sexual passivity of women is only an apparent, and not a real, passivity that women are apt to suffer, as men are, from prolonged sexual abstinence. this, indeed, has been denied, but can scarcely be said to admit of doubt. the only question is as to the relative amount of such suffering, necessarily a very difficult question. as far back as the fourteenth century johannes de sancto amando stated that women are more injured than men by sexual abstinence. in modern times maudsley considers that women "suffer more than men do from the entire deprivation of sexual intercourse" ("relations between body and mind," _lancet_, may , ). by some it has been held that this cause may produce actual disease. thus, tilt, an eminent gynecologist of the middle of the nineteenth century, in discussing this question, wrote: "when we consider how much of the lifetime of woman is occupied by the various phases of the generative process, and how terrible is often the conflict within her between the impulse of passion and the dictates of duty, it may be well understood how such a conflict reacts on the organs of the sexual economy in the unimpregnated female, and principally on the ovaria, causing an orgasm, which, if often repeated, may _possibly_ be productive of subacute ovaritis." (tilt, _on uterine and ovarian inflammation_, , pp. - .) long before tilt, haller, it seems, had said that women are especially liable to suffer from privation of sexual intercourse to which they have been accustomed, and referred to chlorosis, hysteria, nymphomania, and simple mania curable by intercourse. hegar considers that in women an injurious result follows the nonsatisfaction of the sexual impulse and of the "ideal feelings," and that symptoms thus arise (pallor, loss of flesh, cardialgia, malaise, sleeplessness, disturbances of menstruation) which are diagnosed as "chlorosis." (hegar, _zusammenhang der geschlechtskrankheiten mit nervösen leiden_, , p. .) freud, as well as gattel, has found that states of anxiety (_angstzustände_) are caused by sexual abstinence. löwenfeld, on careful examination of his own cases, is able to confirm this connection in both sexes. he has specially noticed it in young women who marry elderly husbands. löwenfeld believes, however, that, on the whole, healthy unmarried women bear sexual abstinence better than men. if, however, they are of at all neuropathic disposition, ungratified sexual emotions may easily lead to various morbid conditions, especially of a hysteroneurasthenic character. (löwenfeld, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, second edition, , pp. , , - .) balls-headley considers that unsatisfied sexual desires in women may lead to the following conditions: general atrophy, anemia, neuralgia and hysteria, irregular menstruation, leucorrhea, atrophy of sexual organs. he also refers to the frequency of myoma of the uterus among those who have not become pregnant or who have long ceased to bear children. (balls-headley, art. "etiology of diseases of female genital organs," allbutt and playfair, _system of gynæcology_, , p. .) it cannot, however, be said that he brings forward substantial evidence in favor of these beliefs. it may be added that in america, during recent years, leading gynecologists have recorded a number of cases in which widows on remarriage have shown marked improvement in uterine and pelvic conditions. the question as to whether men or women suffer most from sexual abstinence, as well as the question whether definite morbid conditions are produced by such abstinence, remains, however, an obscure and debated problem. the available data do not enable us to answer it decisively. it is one of those subtle and complex questions which can only be investigated properly by a gynecologist who is also a psychologist. incidentally, however, we have met and shall have occasion to meet with evidence bearing on this question. it is sufficient to say here, briefly, that it is impossible to believe, even if no evidence were forthcoming, that the exercise or non-exercise of so vastly important a function can make no difference to the organism generally. so far as the evidence goes, it may be said to indicate that the results of the abeyance of the sexual functions in healthy women in whom the sexual emotions have never been definitely aroused tend to be diffused and unconscious, as the sexual impulse itself often is, but that, in women in whom the sexual emotions have been definitely aroused and gratified, the results of sexual abstinence tend to be acute and conscious. these acute results are at the present day very often due to premature ejaculation by nervous or neurasthenic husbands, the rapidity with which detumescence is reached in the husband allowing insufficient time for tumescence in the wife, who consequently fails to reach the orgasm. this has of late been frequently pointed out. thus kafemann (_sexual-probleme_, march, , p. et seq.) emphasizes the prevalence of sexual incompetence in men. ferenczi, of budapest (_zentralblatt für psychoanalyse_, , ht. and , p. ), believes that the combination of neurasthenic husbands with resultantly nervous wives is extraordinarily common; even putting aside the neurasthenic, he considers it may be said that the whole male sex in relation to women suffer from precocious ejaculation. he adds that it is often difficult to say whether the lack of harmony may not be due to retarded orgasm in the woman. he regards the influence of masturbation in early life as tending to quicken orgasm in man, while when practised by the other sex it tends to slow orgasm, and thus increases the disharmony. he holds, however, that the chief cause lies in the education of women with its emphasis on sexual repression; this works too well and the result is that when the external impediments to the sexual impulse are removed the impulse has become incapable of normal action. porosz (_british medical journal_, april , ) has brought forward cases of serious nervous trouble in women which have been dispersed when the sexual weakness and premature ejaculation of the husband have been cured. the true nature of the passivity of the female is revealed by the ease with which it is thrown off, more especially when the male refuses to accept his cue. or, if we prefer to accept the analogy of a game, we may say that in the play of courtship the first move belongs to the male, but that, if he fails to play, it is then the female's turn to play. among many birds the males at mating time fall into a state of sexual frenzy, but not the females. "i cannot call to mind a single case," states an authority on birds (h.e. howard, _zoölogist_, , p. ), "where i have seen anything approaching frenzy in the female of any species while mating." another great authority on birds, a very patient and skillful observer, mr. edmund selous, remarks, however, in describing the courting habits of the ruffs and reeves (_machetes pugnax_) that, notwithstanding the passivity of the females beforehand, their movements during and after coitus show that they derive at least as much pleasure as the males. (e. selous, "selection in birds," _zoölogist_, feb. and may, .) the same observer, after speaking of the great beauty of the male eider duck, continues: "these glorified males--there were a dozen of these, perhaps, to some six or seven females--swam closely about the latter, but more in attendance upon them than as actively pursuing them, for the females seemed themselves almost as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers in wooing them. the male bird first dipped down his head till his beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a constrained and tense manner,--the curious rigid action so frequent in the nuptial antics of birds,--at the same time uttering his strange haunting note. the air became filled with it; every moment one or other of the birds--sometimes several together--with upturned bill would softly laugh or exclaim, and while the males did this, the females, turning excitedly, and with little eager demonstrations from one to another of them, kept lowering and extending forward the head and neck in the direction of each in turn.... i noticed that a female would often approach a male bird with her head and neck laid flat along the water as though in a very 'coming on' disposition, and that the male bird declined her advances. this, taken in conjunction with the actions of the female when courted by the male, appears to me to raise a doubt as to the universal application of the law that throughout nature the male, in courtship, is eager, and the female coy. here, to all appearances, courtship was proceeding, and the birds had not yet mated. the female eider ducks, however,--at any rate, some of them,--appeared to be anything but coy." (_bird watching_, pp. - .) among moor-hens and great-crested grebes sometimes what selous terms "functional hermaphroditism" occurs and the females play the part of the male toward their male companions, and then repeat the sexual act with a reversion to the normal order, the whole to the satisfaction of both parties. (e. selous, _zoölogist_, , p. .) it is not only among birds that the female sometimes takes the active part, but also among mammals. among white rats, for instance, the males are exceptionally eager. steinach, who has made many valuable experiments on these animals (_archiv für die gesammte physiologie_, bd. lvi, , p. ), tells us that, when a female white rat is introduced into the cage of a male, he at once leaves off eating, or whatever else he may be doing, becomes indifferent to noises or any other source of distraction, and devotes himself entirely to her. if, however, he is introduced into her cage the new environment renders him nervous and suspicious, and then it is she who takes the active part, trying to attract him in every way. the impetuosity during heat of female animals of various species, when at length admitted to the male, is indeed well known to all who are familiar with animals. i have referred to the frequency with which, in the human species,--and very markedly in early adolescence, when the sexual impulse is in a high degree unconscious and unrestrainedly instinctive,--similar manifestations may often be noted. we have to recognize that they are not necessarily abnormal and still less pathological. they merely represent the unseasonable apparition of a tendency which in due subordination is implied in the phases of courtship throughout the animal world. among some peoples and in some stages of culture, tending to withdraw the men from women and the thought of women, this phase of courtship and this attitude assume a prominence which is absolutely normal. the literature of the middle ages presents a state of society in which men were devoted to war and to warlike sports, while the women took the more active part in love-making. the medieval poets represent women as actively encouraging backward lovers, and as delighting to offer to great heroes the chastity they had preserved, sometimes entering their bed-chambers at night. schultz (_das höfische leben_, bd. i, pp. - ) considers that these representations are not exaggerated. cf. krabbes, _die frau im altfranzösischen karls-epos_, , p. et seq.; and m.a. potter, _sohrab and rustem_, , pp. - . among savages and barbarous races in various parts of the world it is the recognized custom, reversing the more usual method, for the girl to take the initiative in courtship. this is especially so in new guinea. here the girls almost invariably take the initiative, and in consequence hold a very independent position. women are always regarded as the seducers: "women steal men." a youth who proposed to a girl would be making himself ridiculous, would be called a woman, and be laughed at by the girls. the usual method by which a girl proposes is to send a present to the youth by a third party, following this up by repeated gifts of food; the young man sometimes waits a month or two, receiving presents all the time, in order to assure himself of the girl's constancy before decisively accepting her advances. (a.c. haddon, _cambridge expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, ch. viii; id., "western tribes of torres straits," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xix, february, , pp. , , , , , ; id., _head hunters_, pp. - ; r.e. guise, "tribes of the wanigela river," _journal of the anthropological institute_, new series, vol. i, february-may, , p. .) westermarck gives instances of races among whom the women take the initiative in courtship. (_history of marriage_, p. ; so also finck, _primitive love and love-stories_, , p. et seq.; and as regards celtic women, see rhys and brynmor jones, _the welsh people_.) there is another characteristic of great significance by which the sexual impulse in women differs from that in men: the widely unlike character of the physical mechanism involved in the process of coitus. considering how obvious this difference is, it is strange that its fundamental importance should so often be underrated. in man the process of tumescence and detumescence is simple. in women it is complex. in man we have the more or less spontaneously erectile penis, which needs but very simple conditions to secure the ejaculation which brings relief. in women we have in the clitoris a corresponding apparatus on a small scale, but behind this has developed a much more extensive mechanism, which also demands satisfaction, and requires for that satisfaction the presence of various conditions that are almost antagonistic. naturally the more complex mechanism is the more easily disturbed. it is the difference, roughly speaking, between a lock and a key. this analogy is far from indicating all the difficulties involved. we have to imagine a lock that not only requires a key to fit it, but should only be entered at the right moment, and, under the best conditions, may only become adjusted to the key by considerable use. the fact that the man takes the more active part in coitus has increased these difficulties; the woman is too often taught to believe that the whole function is low and impure, only to be submitted to at her husband's will and for his sake, and the man has no proper knowledge of the mechanism involved and the best way of dealing with it. the grossest brutality thus may be, and not infrequently is, exercised in all innocence by an ignorant husband who simply believes that he is performing his "marital duties." for a woman to exercise this physical brutality on a man is with difficulty possible; a man's pleasurable excitement is usually the necessary condition of the woman's sexual gratification. but the reverse is not the case, and, if the man is sufficiently ignorant or sufficiently coarse-grained to be satisfied with the woman's submission, he may easily become to her, in all innocence, a cause of torture. to the man coitus must be in some slight degree pleasurable or it cannot take place at all. to the woman the same act which, under some circumstances, in the desire it arouses and the satisfaction it imparts, will cause the whole universe to shrivel into nothingness, under other circumstances will be a source of anguish, physical and mental. this is so to some extent even in the presence of the right and fit man. there can be no doubt whatever that the mucus which is so profusely poured out over the external sexual organs in woman during the excitement of sexual desire has for its end the lubrication of the parts and the facilitation of the passage of the intromittent organ. the most casual inspection of the cold, contracted, dry vulva in its usual aspect and the same when distended, hot, and moist suffices to show which condition is and which is not that ready for intercourse, and until the proper condition is reached it is certain that coitus should not be attempted. the varying sensitiveness of the female parts again offers difficulties. sexual relations in women are, at the onset, almost inevitably painful; and to some extent the same experience may be repeated at every act of coitus. ordinary tactile sensibility in the female genitourinary region is notably obtuse, but at the beginning of the sexual act there is normally a hyperesthesia which may be painful or pleasurable as excitement culminates, passing into a seeming anesthesia, which even craves for rough contact; so that in sexual excitement a woman normally displays in quick succession that same quality of sensibility to superficial pressure and insensibility to deep pressure which the hysterical woman exhibits simultaneously. thus we see that a highly important practical result follows from the greater complexity of the sexual apparatus in women and the greater difficulty with which it is aroused. in coitus the orgasm tends to occur more slowly in women than in men. it may easily happen that the whole process of detumescence is completed in the man before it has begun in his partner, who is left either cold or unsatisfied. this is one of the respects in which women remain nearer than men to the primitive stage of humanity. in the hippocratic treatise, _of generation_, it is stated that, while woman has less pleasure in coitus than man, her pleasure lasts longer. (_oeuvres d'hippocrate_, edition littré, vol. vii, p. .) beaunis considers that the slower development of the orgasm in women is the only essential difference in the sexual process in men and women. (beaunis, _les sensations internes_, , p. .) this characteristic of the sexual impulse in women, though recognized for so long a period, is still far too often ignored or unknown. there is even a superstition that injurious results may follow if the male orgasm is not effected as rapidly as possible. that this is not so is shown by the experiences of the oneida community in america, who in their system of sexual relationship carried prolonged intercourse without ejaculation to an extreme degree. there can be no doubt whatever that very prolonged intercourse gives the maximum amount of pleasure and relief to the woman. not only is this the very decided opinion of women who have experienced it, but it is also indicated by the well-recognized fact that a woman who repeats the sexual act several times in succession often experiences more intense orgasm and pleasure with each repetition. this point is much better understood in the east than in the west. the prolongation of the man's excitement, in order to give the woman time for orgasm, is, remarks sir richard burton (_arabian nights_, vol. v, p. ), much studied by moslems, as also by hindoos, who, on this account, during the orgasm seek to avoid overtension of muscles and to preoccupy the brain. during coitus they will drink sherbet, chew betel-nut, and even smoke. europeans devote no care to this matter, and hindoo women, who require about twenty minutes to complete the act, contemptuously call them "village cocks." i have received confirmation of burton's statements on this point from medical correspondents in india. while the european desires to perform as many acts of coitus in one night as possible, breitenstein remarks, the malay, as still more the javanese, wishes, not to repeat the act many times, but to prolong it. his aim is to remain in the vagina for about a quarter of an hour. unlike the european, also, he boasts of the pleasure he has given his partner far more than of his own pleasure. (breitenstein, _ jahre in india_, theil i, "borneo," p. .) jäger (_entdeckung der seele_, second edition, vol. i, , p. ), as quoted by moll, explains the preference of some women for castrated men as due, not merely to the absence of risk of impregnation, but to the prolonged erections that take place in the castrated. aly-belfàdel remarks (_archivio di psichiatria_, , p. ) that he knows women who prefer old men in coitus simply because of their delay in ejaculation which allows more time to the women to become excited. a russian correspondent living in italy informs me that a neapolitan girl of , who had only recently ceased to be a virgin, explained to him that she preferred _coitus in ore vulvæ_ to real intercourse because the latter was over before she had time to obtain the orgasm (or, as she put it, "the big bird has fled from the cage and i am left in the lurch"), while in the other way she was able to experience the orgasm twice before her partner reached the climax. "this reminds me," my correspondent continues, "that a milanese cocotte once told me that she much liked intercourse with jews because, on account of the circumcised penis being less sensitive to contact, they ejaculate more slowly then christians. 'with christians,' she said, 'it constantly happens that i am left unsatisfied because they ejaculate before me, while in coitus with jews i sometimes ejaculate twice before the orgasm occurs in my partner, or, rather, i hold back the second orgasm until he is ready.' this is confirmed," my correspondent continues, "by what i was told by a russian jew, a student at the zürich polytechnic, who had a russian comrade living with a mistress, also a russian student, or pseudostudent. one day the jew, going early to see his friend, was told to enter by a woman's voice and found his friend's mistress alone and in her chemise beside the bed. he was about to retire, but the young woman bade him stay and in a few minutes he was in bed with her. she told him that her lover had just gone away and that she never had sexual relief with him because he always ejaculated too soon. that morning he had left her so excited and so unrelieved that she was just about to masturbate--which she rarely did because it gave her headache--when she heard the jew's voice, and, knowing that jews are slower in coitus than christians, she had suddenly resolved to give herself to him." i am informed that the sexual power of negroes and slower ejaculation (see appendix a) are the cause of the favor with which they are viewed by some white women of strong sexual passions in america, and by many prostitutes. at one time there was a special house in new york city to which white women resorted for these "buck lovers"; the women came heavily veiled and would inspect the penises of the men before making their selection. it is thus a result of the complexity of the sexual mechanism in women that the whole attitude of a woman toward the sexual relationship is liable to be affected disastrously by the husband's lack of skill or consideration in initiating her into this intimate mystery. normally the stage of apparent repulsion and passivity, often associated with great sensitiveness, physical and moral, passes into one of active participation and aid in the consummation of the sexual act. but if, from whatever cause, there is partial arrest on the woman's side of this evolution in the process of courtship, if her submission is merely a mental and deliberate act of will, and not an instinctive and impulsive participation, there is a necessary failure of sexual relief and gratification. when we find that a woman displays a certain degree of indifference in sexual relationships, and a failure of complete gratification, we have to recognize that the fault may possibly lie, not in her, but in the defective skill of a lover who has not known how to play successfully the complex and subtle game of courtship. sexual coldness due to the shock and suffering of the wedding-night is a phenomenon that is far too frequent.[ ] hence it is that many women may never experience sexual gratification and relief, through no defect on their part, but through the failure of the husband to understand the lover's part. we make a false analogy when we compare the courtship of animals exclusively with our own courtships before marriage. courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of sexual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for sexual intercourse. the play of courtship cannot, therefore, be considered to be definitely brought to an end by the ceremony of marriage; it may more properly be regarded as the natural preliminary to every act of coitus. tumescence is not merely a more or less essential condition for proper sexual intercourse. it is probably of more fundamental significance as one of the favoring conditions of impregnation. this has, indeed, been long recognized. van swieten, when consulted by the childless maria theresa, gave the opinion "ego vero censeo, vulvam sacratissimæ majestatis ante coitum diutius esse titillandam," and thereafter she had many children. "i think it very nearly certain," matthews duncan wrote (_goulstonian lectures on sterility in woman_, , p. ), "that desire and pleasure in due or moderate degree are very important aids to, or predisposing causes of, fecundity," as bringing into action the complicated processes of fecundation. hirst (_text-book of obstetrics_, , p. ) mentions the case of a childless married woman who for six years had had no orgasm during intercourse; then it occurred at the same time as coitus, and pregnancy resulted. kisch is very decidedly of the same opinion, and considers that the popular belief on this point is fully justified. it is a fact, he states, that an unfaithful wife is more likely to conceive with her lover than with her husband, and he concludes that, whatever the precise mechanism may be, "sexual excitement on the woman's part is a necessary link in the chain of conditions producing impregnation." (e.h. kisch, _die sterilität des weibes_, , p. .) kisch believes (p. ) that in the majority of women sexual pleasure only appears gradually, after the first cohabitation, and then develops progressively, and that the first conception usually coincides with its complete awakening. in cases of his own the most frequent epoch of first impregnation was found to be between ten and fifteen months after marriage. the removal of sexual frigidity thus becomes a matter of some importance. this removal may in some cases be effected by treatment through the husband, but that course is not always practicable. dr. douglas bryan, of leicester, informs me that in several cases he has succeeded in removing sexual coldness and physical aversion in the wife by hypnotic suggestion. the suggestions given to the patient are "that all her womanly natural feelings would be quickly and satisfactorily developed during coitus; that she would experience no feeling of disgust and nausea, would have no fear of the orgasm not developing; that there would be no involuntary resistance on her part." the fact that such suggestions can be permanently effective tends to show how superficial the sexual "anesthesia" of women usually is. not only, therefore, is the apparatus of sexual excitement in women more complex than in men, but--in part, possibly as a result of this greater complexity--it much more frequently requires to be actively aroused. in men tumescence tends to occur almost spontaneously, or under the simple influence of accumulated semen. in women, also, especially in those who live a natural and healthy life, sexual excitement also tends to occur spontaneously, but by no means so frequently as in men. the comparative rarity of sexual dreams in women who have not had sexual relationships alone serves to indicate this sexual difference. in a very large number of women the sexual impulse remains latent until aroused by a lover's caresses. the youth spontaneously becomes a man; but the maiden--as it has been said--"must be kissed into a woman." one result of this characteristic is that, more especially when love is unduly delayed beyond the first youth, this complex apparatus has difficulty in responding to the unfamiliar demands of sexual excitement. moreover, delayed normal sexual relations, when the sexual impulse is not absolutely latent, tend to induce all degrees of perverted or abnormal sexual gratification, and the physical mechanism when trained to respond in other ways often fails to respond normally when, at last, the normal conditions of response are presented. in all these ways passivity and even aversion may be produced in the conjugal relationship. the fact that it is almost normally the function of the male to arouse the female, and that the greater complexity of the sexual mechanism in women leads to more frequent disturbance of that mechanism, produces a simulation of organic sexual coldness which has deceived many. an instructive study of cases in which the sexual impulse has been thus perverted has been presented by smith baker ("the neuropsychical element in conjugal aversion," _journal of nervous and mental disease_, vol. xvii, september, ). raymond and janet, who believes that sexual coldness is extremely frequent in marriage, and that it plays an important part in the causation of physical and moral troubles, find that it is most often due to masturbation. (_les obsessions_, vol. ii, p. .) adler, after discussing the complexity of the feminine sexual mechanism, and the difficulty which women find in obtaining sexual gratification in normal coitus, concludes that "masturbation is a frequent, perhaps the most frequent, cause of defective sexual sensibility in women." (_op. cit._, p. .) he remarks that in women masturbation usually has less resemblance to normal coitus than in men and involves very frequently the special excitation of parts which are not the chief focus of excitement in coitus, so that coitus fails to supply the excitation which has become habitual (pp. - ). in the discussion of "auto-erotism" in the first volume of these _studies_, i had already referred to the divorce between the physical and the ideal sides of love which may, especially in women, be induced by masturbation. another cause of inhibited sexual feeling has been brought forward. a married lady with normal sexual impulse states (_sexual-probleme_, april, , p. ) that she cannot experience orgasm and sexual satisfaction when the intercourse is not for conception. this is a psychic inhibition independent of any disturbance due to the process of prevention. she knows other women who are similarly affected. such an inhibition must be regarded as artificial and abnormal, since the final result of sexual intercourse, under natural and normal conditions, forms no essential constituent of the psychic process of intercourse. as a result of the fact that in women the sexual emotions tend not to develop great intensity until submitted to powerful stimulation, we find that the maximum climax of sexual emotion tends to fall somewhat later in a woman's life than in a man's. among animals generally there appears to be frequently traceable a tendency for the sexual activities of the male to develop at a somewhat earlier age than those of the female. in the human, species we may certainly trace the same tendency. as the great physiologist, burdach, pointed out, throughout nature, with the accomplishment of the sexual act the part of the male in the work of generation comes to an end; but that act represents only the beginning of a woman's generative activity. a youth of may often display a passionate ardor in love which is very seldom indeed found in women who are under . it is rare for a woman, even though her sexual emotions may awaken at puberty or earlier, to experience the great passion of her life until after the age of has been passed. in confirmation of this statement, which is supported by daily observation, it may be pointed out that nearly all the most passionate love-letters of women, as well as their most passionate devotions, have come from women who had passed, sometimes long passed, their first youth. when heloise wrote to abelard the first of the letters which have come down to us she was at least . mademoiselle aissé's relation with the chevalier began when she was , and when she died, six years later, the passion of each was at its height. mary wollstonecraft was when her love-letters to imlay began, and her child was born in the following year. mademoiselle de lespinasse was when she began to write her letters to m. de guibert. in some cases the sexual impulse may not even appear until after the period of the menopause has been passed.[ ] in roman times ovid remarked (_ars amatoria_, lib. ii) that a woman fails to understand the art of love until she has reached the age of . "a girl of ," said stendhal (_de l'amour_, ch. viii), "has not the power to crystallize her emotions; she forms desires that are too limited by her lack of experience in the things of life, to be able to love with such passion as a woman of ." "sexual needs," said restif de la bretonne (_monsieur nicolas_, vol. xi, p. ), "often only appears in young women when they are between and years of age; at least, that is what i have observed." erb states that it is about the middle of the twenties that women begin to suffer physically, morally, and intellectually from their sexual needs. nyström (_das geschlechtsleben_, p. ) considers that it is about the age of that a woman first begins to feel conscious of sex needs. in a case of adler's (_op. cit._, p. ), sexual feelings first appeared after the birth of the third child, at the age of . forel (_die sexuelle frage_, , p. ) considers that sexual desire in woman is often strongest between the ages of and . leith napier (_menopause_, p. ) remarks that from to is often an important age in woman who have retained their virginity, erotism then appearing with the full maturity of the nervous system. yellowlees (art. "masturbation," _dictionary of psychological medicine_), again, states that at about the age of some women experience great sexual irritability, often resulting in masturbation. audiffrent (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan. , , p. ) considers that it is toward the age of that a woman reaches her full moral and physical development, and that at this period her emotional and idealizing impulses reach a degree of intensity which is sometimes irresistible. it has already been mentioned that matthews duncan's careful inquiries showed that it is between the ages of and that the largest proportion of women experience sexual desire and sexual pleasure. it may be remarked, also, that while the typical english novelists, who have generally sought to avoid touching the deeper and more complex aspects of passion, often choose very youthful heroines, french novelists, who have frequently had a predilection for the problems of passion, often choose heroines who are approaching the age of . hirschfeld (_von wesen der liebe_, p. ) was consulted by a lady who, being without any sexual desires or feelings, married an inverted man in order to live with him a life of simple comradeship. within six months, however, she fell violently in love with her husband, with the full manifestation of sexual feelings and accompanying emotions of jealousy. under all the circumstances, however, she would not enter into sexual relationship with her husband, and the torture she endured became so acute that she desired to be castrated. in this connection, also, i may mention a case, which has been communicated to me from glasgow, of a girl--strong and healthy and menstruating regularly since the age of --who was seduced at the age of without any sexual desire on her part, giving birth to a child nine months later. subsequently she became a prostitute for three years, and during this period had not the slightest sexual desire or any pleasure in sexual connection. thereafter she met a poor lad with whom she has full sexual desire and sexual pleasure, the result being that she refuses to go with any other man, and consequently is almost without food for several days every week. the late appearance of the great climax of sexual emotion in women is indicated by a tendency to nervous and psychic disturbances between the ages of and about , which has been independently noted by various alienists (though it may be noted that to is not an unusual age for first attacks of insanity in men also). thus, krafft-ebing states that adult unmarried women between the ages of and often show nervous symptoms and peculiarities. (krafft-ebing, "ueber neurosen und psychosen durch sexuelle abstinenz," _jahrbücher für psychiatrie_, bd. viii, ht. - , .) pitres and régis find also (_comptes-rendus xiie congrès international de médecine_, moscow, , vol. iv, p. ) that obsessions, which are commoner in women than in men and are commonly connected in their causation with strong moral emotion, occur in women chiefly between the ages of and , though in men much earlier. the average age at which in england women inebriates begin drinking in excess is . (_british medical journal_, sept. , , p. .) a case recorded by sérieux is instructive as regards the development of the sexual impulse, although it comes within the sphere of mental disorder. a woman of with bad heredity had in childhood had weak health and become shy, silent, and fond of solitude, teased by her companions and finding consolation in hard work. though very emotional, she never, even in the vaguest form, experienced any of those feelings and aspirations which reveal the presence of the sexual impulse. she had no love of dancing and was indifferent to any embraces she might chance to receive from young men. she never masturbated or showed inverted feelings. at the age of she married. she still, however, experienced no sexual feelings; twice only she felt a faint sensation of pleasure. a child was born, but her home was unhappy on account of her husband's drunken habits. he died and she worked hard for her own living and the support of her mother. then at the age of a new phase occurs in her life: she falls in love with the master of her workshop. it was at first a purely psychic affection, without any mixture of physical elements; it was enough to see him, and she trembled when she touched anything that belonged to him. she was constantly thinking about him; she loved him for his eyes, which seemed to her those of her own child, and especially for his intelligence. gradually, however, the lower nervous centers began to take part in these emotions; one day in passing her the master chanced to touch her shoulder; this contact was sufficient to produce sexual turgescence. she began to masturbate daily, thinking of her master, and for the first time in her life she desired coitus. she evoked the image of her master so constantly and vividly that at last hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing appeared, and it seemed to her that he was present. these hallucinations were only with difficulty dissipated. (p. sérieux, _les anomalies de l'instinct sexuel_, , p. .) this case presents in an insane form a phenomenon which is certainly by no means uncommon and is very significant. up to the age of we should certainly have been forced to conclude that this woman was sexually anesthetic to an almost absolute degree. in reality, we see this was by no means the case. weak health, hard work, and a brutal husband had prolonged the latency of the sexual emotions; but they were there, ready to explode with even insane intensity (this being due to the unsound heredity) in the presence of a man who appealed to these emotions. in connection with the late evolution of the sexual emotions in women reference may be made to what is usually termed "old maid's insanity," a condition not met with in men. in these cases, which are not, indeed, common, single women who have led severely strict and virtuous lives, devoting themselves to religious or intellectual work, and carefully repressing the animal side of their natures, at last, just before the climacteric, experience an awakening of the erotic impulse; they fall in love with some unfortunate man, often a clergyman, persecute him with their attentions, and frequently suffer from the delusion that he reciprocates their affections. when once duly aroused, there cannot usually be any doubt concerning the strength of the sexual impulse in normal and healthy women. there would, however, appear to be a distinct difference between the sexes at this point also. before sexual union the male tends to be more ardent; after sexual union it is the female who tends to be more ardent. the sexual energy of women, under these circumstances, would seem to be the greater on account of the long period during which it has been dormant. sinibaldus in the seventeenth century, in his _geneanthropeia_, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of passion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat. similarly mandeville said of women that "their passions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular object; but when this passion is once rooted in women it is much stronger and more durable than in men, and rather increases than diminishes by enjoying the person of the beloved." (_a modest defence of public stews_, , p. .) burdach considered that women only acquire the full enjoyment of their general strength after marriage and pregnancy, while it is before marriage that men have most vigor. schopenhauer also said that a man's love decreases with enjoyment, and a woman's increases. and ellen key has remarked (_love and marriage_) that "where there is no mixture of southern blood it is a long time, sometimes indeed not till years after marriage, that the senses of the northern women awake to consciousness." even among animals this tendency seems to be manifested. edmund selous (_bird watching_, p. ) remarks, concerning sea-gulls: "always, or almost always, one of the birds--and this i take to be the female--is more eager, has a more soliciting manner and tender begging look than the other. it is she who, as a rule, draws the male bird on. she looks fondly up at him, and, raising her bill to his, as though beseeching a kiss, just touches with it, in raising, the feathers of the throat--an action light, but full of endearment. and in every way she shows herself the most desirous, and, in fact, so worries and pesters the poor male gull that often, to avoid her importunities, he flies away. this may seem odd, but i have seen other instances of it. no doubt, in actual courting, before the sexes are paired, the male bird is usually the most eager, but after marriage the female often becomes the wooer. of this i have seen some marked instances." selous mentions especially the plover, kestrel hawk, and rook. in association with the fact that women tend to show an increase of sexual ardor after sexual relationships have been set up may be noted the probably related fact that sexual intercourse is undoubtedly less injurious to women than to men. other things being equal, that is to say, the threshold of excess is passed very much sooner by the man than by the woman. this was long ago pointed out by montaigne. the ancient saying, "_omne animal post coitum triste_," is of limited application at the best, but certainly has little reference to women.[ ] alacrity, rather than languor, as robin has truly observed,[ ] marks a woman after coitus, or, as a medical friend of my own has said, a woman then goes about the house singing.[ ] it is, indeed, only after intercourse with a woman for whom, in reality, he feels contempt that a man experiences that revulsion of feeling described by shakespeare (sonnet cxxix). such a passage should not be quoted, as it sometimes has been quoted, as the representation of a normal phenomenon. but, with equal gratification on both sides, it remains true that, while after a single coitus the man may experience a not unpleasant lassitude and readiness for sleep, this is rarely the case with his partner, for whom a single coitus is often but a pleasant stimulus, the climax of satisfaction not being reached until a second or subsequent act of intercourse. "excess in venery," which, rightly or wrongly, is set down as the cause of so many evils in men, seldom, indeed, appears in connection with women, although in every act of venery the woman has taken part.[ ] that women bear sexual excesses better than men was noted by cabanis and other early writers. alienists frequently refer to the fact that women are less liable to be affected by insanity following such excesses. (see, e.g., maudsley, "relations between body and mind," _lancet_, may , ; and g. savage, art. "marriage and insanity" in _dictionary of psychological medicine_.) trousseau remarked on the fact that women are not exhausted by repeated acts of coitus within a short period, notwithstanding that the nervous excitement in their case is as great, if not greater, and he considered that this showed that the loss of semen is a cause of exhaustion in men. löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, pp. , ) states that there cannot be question that the nervous system in women is less influenced by the after-effects of coitus than in men. not only, he remarks, are prostitutes very little liable to suffer from nervous overstimulation, and neurasthenia and hysteria when occurring in them be easily traceable to other causes, but "healthy women who are not given to prostitution, when they indulge in very frequent sexual intercourse, provided it is practised normally, do not experience the slightest injurious effect. i have seen many young married couples where the husband had been reduced to a pitiable condition of nervous prostration and general discomfort by the zeal with which he had exercised his marital duties, while the wife had been benefited and was in the uninterrupted enjoyment of the best health." this experience is by no means uncommon. a correspondent writes: "it is quite true that the threshold of excess is less easily reached by women than by men. i have found that women can reach the orgasm much more frequently than men. take an ordinary case. i spend two hours with ----. i have the orgasm times, with difficulty; she has it or , or even or , times. women can also experience it a second or third time in succession, with no interval between. sometimes the mere fact of realizing that the man is having the orgasm causes the woman to have it also, though it is true that a woman usually requires as many minutes to develop the orgasm as a man does seconds." i may also refer to the case recorded in another part of this volume in which a wife had the orgasm times to her husband's twice. hutchinson, under the name of post-marital amblyopia (_archives of surgery_, vol. iv, p. ), has described a condition occurring in men in good health who soon after marriage become nearly blind, but recover as soon as the cause is removed. he mentions no cases in women due to coitus, but finds that in women some failure of sight may occur after parturition. näcke states that, in his experience, while masturbation is, apparently, commoner in insane men than in insane women, masturbation repeated several times a day is much commoner in the women. (p. näcke, "die sexuellen perversitäten in der irrenanstalt," _psychiatrische bladen_, , no. .) great excesses in masturbation seem also to be commoner among women who may be said to be sane than among men. thus, bloch (_new orleans medical journal_, ) records the case of a young married woman of , of bad heredity, who had suffered from almost life-long sexual hyperesthesia, and would masturbate fourteen times daily during the menstrual periods. with regard to excesses in coitus the case may be mentioned of a country girl of , living in a rural district in north carolina where prostitution was unknown, who would cohabit with men almost openly. on one sunday she went to a secluded school-house and let three or four men wear themselves out cohabiting with her. on another occasion, at night, in a field, she allowed anyone who would to perform the sexual act, and men and boys then had intercourse with her. when seen she was much prostrated and with a tendency to spasm, but quite rational. subsequently she married and attacks of this nature became rare. mr. lawson made an "attested statement" of what he had observed among the marquesan women. "he mentions one case in which he heard a parcel of boys next morning count over and _name_ men who during the night had intercourse with _one_ woman." (_medico-chirurgical review_, , vol. ii, p. , apparently quoting chevers.) this statement seems open to question, but, if reliable, would furnish a case which must be unique. there is a further important difference, though intimately related to some of the differences already mentioned, between the sexual impulse in women and in men. in women it is at once larger and more diffused. as sinibaldus long ago said, the sexual pleasure of men is intensive, of women extensive. in men the sexual impulse is, as it were, focused to a single point. this is necessarily so, for the whole of the essentially necessary part of the male in the process of human procreation is confined to the ejaculation of semen into the vagina. but in women, mainly owing to the fact that women are the child-bearers, in place of one primary sexual center and one primary erogenous region, there are at least three such sexual centers and erogenous regions: the clitoris (corresponding to the penis), the vaginal passage up to the womb, and the nipple. in both sexes there are other secondary and reflex centers, but there is good reason for believing that these are more numerous and more widespread in women than in men.[ ] how numerous the secondary sexual centers in women may be is indicated by the case of a woman mentioned by moraglia, who boasted that she knew fourteen different ways of masturbating herself. this great diffusion of the sexual impulse and emotions in women is as visible on the psychic as on the physical side. a woman can find sexual satisfaction in a great number of ways that do not include the sexual act proper, and in a great number of ways that apparently are not physical at all, simply because their physical basis is diffused or is to be found in one of the outlying sexual zones. it is, moreover, owing to the diffused character of the sexual emotions in women that it so often happens that emotion really having a sexual origin is not recognized as such even by the woman herself. it is possible that the great prevalence in women of the religious emotional state of "storm and stress," noted by professor starbuck,[ ] is largely due to unemployed sexual impulse. in this and similar ways it happens that the magnitude of the sexual sphere in woman is unrealized by the careless observer. a number of converging facts tend to indicate that the sexual sphere is larger, and more potent in its influence on the organism, in women than in men. it would appear that among the males and females of lower animals the same difference may be found. it is stated that in birds there is a greater flow of blood to the ovaries than to the testes. in women the system generally is more affected by disturbances in the sexual sphere than in men. this appears to be the case as regards the eye. "the influence of the sexual system upon the eye in man," power states, "is far less potent, and the connection, in consequence, far less easy to trace than in woman." (h. power, "relation of ophthalmic disease to the sexual organs," _lancet_, november , .) the greater predominance of the sexual system in women on the psychic side is clearly brought out in insane conditions. it is well known that, while satyriasis is rare, nymphomania is comparatively common. these conditions are probably often forms of mania, and in mania, while sexual symptoms are common in men, they are often stated to be the rule in women (see, e.g., krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, tenth edition, english translation, p. ). bouchereau, in noting this difference in the prevalence of sexual manifestations during insanity, remarks that it is partly due to the naturally greater dependence of women on the organs of generation, and partly to the more active, independent, and laborious lives of men; in his opinion, satyriasis is specially apt to develop in men who lead lives resembling those of women. (bouchereau, art. "satyriasis," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.) again, postconnubial insanity is very much commoner in women than in men, a fact which may indicate the more predominant part played by the sexual sphere in women. (savage, art. "marriage and insanity," _dictionary of psychological medicine_.) insanity tends to remove the artificial inhibitory influences that rule in ordinary life, and there is therefore significance in such a fact as that the sexual appetite is often increased in general paralysis and to a notable extent in women. (pactet and colin, _les aliénés devant la justice_, , p. .) näcke, from his experiences among the insane, makes an interesting and possibly sound distinction regarding the character of the sexual manifestations in the two sexes. among men he finds these manifestations to be more of a reflex and purely spinal nature and chiefly manifested in masturbation; in women he finds them to be of a more cerebral character, and chiefly manifested in erotic gestures, lascivious conversation, etc. the sexual impulse would thus tend to involve to a greater extent the higher psychic region in women than in men. forel likewise (_die sexuelle frage_, , p. ), remarking on the much greater prevalence of erotic manifestations among insane women than insane men (and pointing out that it is by no means due merely to the presence of a male doctor, for it remains the same when the doctor is a woman), considers that it proves that in women the sexual impulse resides more prominently in the higher nervous centers and in men in the lower centers. (as regards the great prevalence of erotic manifestations among the female insane, i may also refer to claye shaw's interesting observations, "the sexes in lunacy," _st. bartholomew's hospital reports_, vol. xxiv, ; also quoted in havelock ellis, _man and woman_, p. et seq.) whether or not we may accept näcke's and forel's interpretation of the facts, which is at least doubtful, there can be little doubt that the sexual impulse is more fundamental in women. this is indicated by näcke's observation that among idiots sexual manifestations are commoner in females than in males. of idiot girls, of the age of and under, certainly masturbated, sometimes as often as fourteen times a day, while the remaining girl probably masturbated; but of youthful male idiots only played with his penis. (p. näcke, "die sexuellen perversitäten in der irrenanstalt," _psychiatrische bladen_, , no. , pp. , .) on the physical side bourneville and sollier found (_progrès médical_, ) that puberty is much retarded in idiot and imbecile boys, while j. voisin (_annales d'hygiène publique_, june, ) found that in idiot and imbecile girls, on the contrary, there is no lack of full sexual development or retardation of puberty, while masturbation is common. in women, it may be added, as ball pointed out (_folie érotique_, p. ), sexual hallucinations are especially common, while under the influence of anesthetics erotic manifestations and feelings are frequent in women, but rare in men. (havelock ellis, _man and woman_, p. .) the fact that the first coitus has a much more profound moral and psychic influence on a woman than on a man would also seem to indicate how much more fundamental the sexual region is in women. the fact may be considered as undoubted. (it is referred to by marro, _la pubertà_, p. .) the mere physical fact that, while in men coitus remains a merely exterior contact, in women it involves penetration into the sensitive and virginal interior of the body would alone indicate this difference. we are told that in the east there was once a woman named moârbeda who was a philosopher and considered to be the wisest woman of her time. when moârbeda was once asked: "in what part of a woman's body does her mind reside?" she replied: "between her thighs." to many women,--perhaps, indeed, we might even say to most women,--to a certain extent may be applied--and in no offensive sense--the dictum of the wise woman of the east; in a certain sense their brains are in their wombs. their mental activity may sometimes seem to be limited; they may appear to be passing through life always in a rather inert or dreamy state; but, when their sexual emotions are touched, then at once they spring into life; they become alert, resourceful, courageous, indefatigable. "but when i am not in love i am nothing!" exclaimed a woman when reproached by a french magistrate for living with a thief. there are many women who could truly make the same statement, not many men. that emotion, which, one is tempted to say, often unmans the man, makes the woman for the first time truly herself. "women are more occupied with love than men," wrote de sénancour (_de l'amour_, vol. ii, p. ); "it shows itself in all their movements, animates their looks, gives to their gestures a grace that is always new, to their smiles and voices an inexpressible charm; they live for love, while many men in obeying love feel that they are forgetting themselves." restif de la bretonne (_monsieur nicolas_, vol. vi, p. ) quotes a young girl who well describes the difference which love makes to a woman: "before i vegetated; now all my actions have a motive, an end; they have become important. when i wake my first thought is 'someone is occupied with me and desires me.' i am no longer alone, as i was before; another feels my existence and cherishes it," etc. "one is surprised to see in the south," remarks bonstetten, in his suggestive book, _l'homme du midi et l'homme du nord_ ( ),--and the remark by no means applies only to the south,--"how love imparts intelligence even to those who are most deficient in ideas. an italian woman in love is inexhaustible in the variety of her feelings, all subordinated to the supreme emotion which dominates her. her ideas follow one another with prodigious rapidity, and produce a lambent play which is fed by her heart alone. if she ceases to love, her mind becomes merely the scoria of the lava which yesterday had been so bright." cabanis had already made some observations to much the same effect. referring to the years of nubility following puberty, he remarks: "i have very often seen the greatest fecundity of ideas, the most brilliant imagination, a singular aptitude for the arts, suddenly develop in girls of this age, only to give place soon afterward to the most absolute mental mediocrity." (cabanis, "de l'influence des sexes," etc., _rapports du physique et du morale de l'homme_.) this phenomenon seems to be one of the indications of the immense organic significance of the sexual relations. woman's part in the world is less obtrusively active than man's, but there is a moment when nature cannot dispense with energy and mental vigor in women, and that is during the reproductive period. the languidest woman must needs be alive when her sexual emotions are profoundly stirred. people often marvel at the infatuation which men display for women who, in the eyes of all the world, seem commonplace and dull. this is not, as we usually suppose, always entirely due to the proverbial blindness of love. for the man whom she loves, such a woman is often alive and transformed. he sees a woman who is hidden from all the world. he experiences something of that surprise and awe which dostoieffsky felt when the seemingly dull and brutish criminals of siberia suddenly exhibited gleams of exquisite sensibility. in women, it must further be said, the sexual impulse shows a much more marked tendency to periodicity than in men; not only is it less apt to appear spontaneously, but its spontaneous manifestations are in a very pronounced manner correlated with menstruation. a woman who may experience almost overmastering sexual desire just before, during, or after the monthly period may remain perfectly calm and self-possessed during the rest of the month. in men such irregularities of the sexual impulse are far less marked. thus it is that a woman may often appear capricious, unaccountable, or cold, merely because her moments of strong emotion have been physiologically confined within a limited period. she may be one day capable of audacities of which on another the very memory might seem to have left her. not only is the intensity of the sexual impulse in women, as compared to men, more liable to vary from day to day, or from week to week, but the same greater variability is marked when we compare the whole cycle of life in women to that of men. the stress of early womanhood, when the reproductive functions are in fullest activity, and of late womanhood, when they are ceasing, produces a profound organic fermentation, psychic as much as physical, which is not paralleled in the lives of men. this greater variability in the cycle of a woman's life as compared with a man's is indicated very delicately and precisely by the varying incidence of insanity, and is made clearly visible in a diagram prepared by marro showing the relative liability to mental diseases in the two sexes according to age.[ ] at the age of the incidence of insanity in both sexes is equal; from that age onward the curve in men proceeds in a gradual and equable manner, with only the slightest oscillation, on to old age. but in women the curve is extremely irregular; it remains high during all the years from to , instead of falling like the masculine curve; then it falls rapidly to considerably below the masculine curve, rising again considerably above the masculine level during the climacteric years from to , after which age the two sexes remain fairly close together to the end of life. thus, as measured by the test of insanity, the curve of woman's life, in the sudden rise and sudden fall of its sexual crisis, differs from the curve of man's life and closely resembles the minor curve of her menstrual cycle. the general tendency of this difference in sexual life and impulse is to show a greater range of variation in women than in men. fairly uniform, on the whole, in men generally and in the same man throughout mature life, sexual impulse varies widely between woman and woman, and even in the same woman at different periods. footnotes: [ ] ovid remarks (_ars amatoria_, bk. i) that, if men were silent, women would take the active and suppliant part. [ ] ferrand, _de la maladie d'amour_, , ch. ii. [ ] tarde, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, may , . marro, who quotes this observation (_pubertà_, p. ; in french edition, p. ), remarks that his own evidence lends some support to lombroso's conclusion that under ordinary circumstances woman's sensory acuteness is less than that of man. he is, however, inclined to impute this to defective attention; within the sexual sphere women's attention becomes concentrated, and their sensory perceptions then go far beyond those of men. there is probably considerable truth in this subtle observation. [ ] a well-known gynecologist writes from america: "abhorrence due to suffering on first nights i have repeatedly seen. one very marked case is that of a fine womanly young woman with splendid figure; she is a very good woman, and admires her husband, but, though she tries to develop desire and passion, she cannot succeed. i fear the man will some day appear who will be able to develop the latent feelings." [ ] it is curious that, while the sexual impulse in women tends to develop at a late age more frequently than in men, it would also appear to develop more frequently at a very early age than in the other sex. the majority of cases of precocious sexual development seems to be in female children. w. roger williams ("precocious sexual development," _british gynæcological journal_, may, ) finds that such cases have been recorded in females and only in males, and, while is the earliest age at which boys have proved virile, girls have been known to conceive at . [ ] i find the same remark made by plazzonus in the seventeenth century. [ ] art. "fécondation," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_. [ ] this also is an ancient remark, for in the early treatise _de secretis mulierum_, once attributed to michael scot, it is stated, concerning the woman who finds pleasure in coitus, "cantat libenter." [ ] it is scarcely necessary to add that prostitutes can furnish little evidence one way or the other. not only may prostitutes refuse to participate in the sexual orgasm, but the evils of a prostitute's life are obviously connected with causes quite other than mere excess of sexual gratification. [ ] this is, for instance, indicated by the experiments of gualino concerning the sexual sensitiveness of the lips (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. ). he found that mechanical irritation applied to the lips produced more or less sexual feeling in out of women, but in only out of men, i.e., in three-fifths of the women and two-fifths of the men. [ ] "adolescence is for women primarily a period of storm and stress, while for men it is in the highest sense a period of doubt," (starbuck, _psychology of religion_, p. .) it is interesting to note that in the religious sphere, also, the emotions of women are more diffused than those of men; starbuck confirms the conclusion of professor coe that, while women have at least as much religious emotion as men, in them it is more all pervasive, and they experience fewer struggles and acute crises. (ibid., p. .) [ ] marro, _la pubertà_, p. . this table covers all those cases, nearly , of patients entering the turin asylum, from to , in which the age of the first appearance of insanity was known. iii. summary of conclusions. in conclusion it may be worth while to sum up the main points brought out in this brief discussion of a very large question. we have seen that there are two streams of opinion regarding the relative strength of the sexual impulse in men and women: one tending to regard it as greater in men, the other as greater in women. we have concluded that, since a large body of facts may be brought forward to support either view, we may fairly hold that, roughly speaking, the distribution of the sexual impulse between the two sexes is fairly balanced. we have, however, further seen that the phenomena are in reality too complex to be settled by the usual crude method of attempting to discover quantitative differences in the sexual impulse. we more nearly get to the bottom of the question by a more analytic method, breaking up our mass of facts into groups. in this way we find that there are certain well-marked characteristics by which the sexual impulse in women differs from the same impulse in men: . it shows greater apparent passivity. . it is more complex, less apt to appear spontaneously, and more often needing to be aroused, while the sexual orgasm develops more slowly than in men. . it tends to become stronger after sexual relationships are established. . the threshold of excess is less easily reached than in men. . the sexual sphere is larger and more diffused. . there is a more marked tendency to periodicity in the spontaneous manifestations of sexual desire. . largely as a result of these characteristics, the sexual impulse shows a greater range of variation in women than in men, both as between woman and woman and in the same woman at different periods. it may be added that a proper understanding of these sexual differences in men and women is of great importance, both in the practical management of sexual hygiene and in the comprehension of those wider psychological characteristics by which women differ from men. appendices. appendix a. the sexual instinct in savages. i. in the eighteenth century, when savage tribes in various parts of the world first began to be visited, extravagantly romantic views widely prevailed as to the simple and idyllic lives led by primitive peoples. during the greater part of the nineteenth century the tendency of opinion was to the opposite extreme, and it became usual to insist on the degraded and licentious morals of savages.[ ] in reality, however, savage life is just as little a prolonged debauch as a prolonged idyll. the inquiries of such writers as westermarck, frazer, and crawley are tending to introduce a sounder conception of the actual, often highly complex, conditions of primitive life in its relations to the sexual instinct. at the same time it is not difficult to account for the belief, widely spread during the nineteenth century, in the unbridled licentiousness of savages. in the first place, the doctrine of evolution inevitably created a prejudice in favor of such a view. it was assumed that modesty, chastity, and restraint were the finest and ultimate flowers of moral development; therefore at the beginnings of civilization we must needs expect to find the opposite of these things. apart, however, from any mere prejudice of this kind, a superficial observation of the actual facts necessarily led to much misunderstanding. just as the nakedness of many savage peoples led to the belief that they were lacking in modesty, although, as a matter of fact, modesty is more highly developed in savage life than in civilization,[ ] so the absence of our european rules of sexual behavior among savages led to the conclusion that they were abandoned to debauchery. the widespread custom of lending the wife under certain circumstances was especially regarded as indicating gross licentiousness. moreover, even when intercourse was found to be free before marriage, scarcely any investigator sought to ascertain what amount of sexual intercourse this freedom involved. it was not clearly understood that such freedom must by no means be necessarily assumed to involve very frequent intercourse. again, it often happened that no clear distinction was made between peoples contaminated by association with civilization, and peoples not so contaminated. for instance, when prostitution is attributed to a savage people we must usually suppose either that a mistake has been made or that the people in question have been degraded by intercourse with white peoples, for among unspoilt savages customs that can properly be called prostitution rarely prevail. nor, indeed, would they be in harmony with the conditions of primitive life. it has been seriously maintained that the chastity of savages, so far as it exists at all, is due to european civilization. it is doubtless true that this is the case with individual persons and tribes, but there is ample evidence from various parts of the world to show that this is by no means the rule. and, indeed, it may be said--with no disregard of the energy and sincerity of missionary efforts--that it could not be so. a new system of beliefs and practices, however excellent it may be in itself, can never possess the same stringent and unquestionable force as the system in which an individual and his ancestors have always lived, and which they have never doubted the validity of. that this is so we may have occasion to observe among ourselves. christian teachers question the wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because, although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief, but also on conduct. yet this dangerously unsettling process has been applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some respect are often little more than children. when, therefore, we are considering the chastity of savages we must not take into account those peoples which have been brought into close contact with europeans. in order to understand the sexual habits of savages generally there are two points which always have to be borne in mind as of the first importance: ( ) the checks restraining sexual intercourse among savages, especially as regards time and season, are so numerous, and the sanctions upholding those checks so stringent, that sexual excess cannot prevail to the same extent as in civilization; ( ) even in the absence of such checks, that difficulty of obtaining sexual erethism which has been noted as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor, tending to produce a natural chastity. there is a third consideration which, though from the present point of view subsidiary, is not without bearing on our conception of chastity among savages: the importance, even sacredness, of procreation is much more generally recognized by savage than by civilized peoples, and also a certain symbolic significance is frequently attached to human procreation as related to natural fruitfulness generally; so that a primitive sexual orgy, instead of being a mere manifestation of licentiousness, may have a ritual significance, as a magical means of evoking the fruitfulness of fields and herds.[ ] when a savage practises extraconjugal sexual intercourse, the act is frequently not, as it has come to be conventionally regarded in civilization, an immorality or at least an illegitimate indulgence; it is a useful and entirely justifiable act, producing definite benefits, conducing alike to cosmic order and social order, although these benefits are not always such as we in civilization believe to be caused by the act. thus, speaking of the northern tribes of central australia, spencer and gillen remark: "it is very usual amongst all of the tribes to allow considerable license during the performance of certain of their ceremonies when a large number of natives, some of them coming often from distant parts, are gathered together--in fact, on such occasions all of the ordinary marital rules seem to be more or less set aside for the time being. each day, in some tribes, one or more women are told off whose duty it is to attend at the corrobboree grounds,--sometimes only during the day, sometimes at night,--and all of the men, except those who are fathers, elder and younger brothers, and sons, have access to them.... the idea is that the sexual intercourse assists in some way in the proper performance of the ceremony, causing everything to work smoothly and preventing the decorations from falling off."[ ] it is largely this sacred character of sexual intercourse--the fact that it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thought--which leads to the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise. robertson smith added an appendix to his _religion of the semites_ on "taboo on the intercourse of the sexes."[ ] westermarck brought together evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to the chastity of savages.[ ] frazer has very luminously expounded the whole primitive conception of sexual intercourse, and showed how it affected chastity.[ ] warriors must often be chaste; the men who go on any hunting or other expedition require to be chaste to be successful; the women left behind must be strictly chaste; sometimes even the whole of the people left behind, and for long periods, must be chaste in order to insure the success of the expedition. hubert and maus touched on the same point in their elaborate essay on sacrifice, pointing out how frequently sexual relationships are prohibited on the occasion of any ceremony whatever.[ ] crawley, in elaborating the primitive conception of taboo, has dealt fully with ritual and traditional influences making for chastity among savages. he brings forward, for instance, a number of cases, from various parts of the world, in which intercourse has to be delayed for days, weeks, even months, after marriage. he considers that the sexual continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the sexes to each other that, as he points out, even now sexual separation of the sexes commonly occurs.[ ] there are thus a great number of constantly recurring occasions in savage life when continence must be preserved, and when, it is firmly believed, terrible risks would be incurred by its violation--during war, after victory, after festivals, during mourning, on journeys, in hunting and fishing, in a vast number of agricultural and industrial occupations. it might fairly be argued that the facility with which the savage places these checks on sexual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of the sexual impulse. evidence of another order which seems to point to the undeveloped state of the sexual impulse among savages may be found in the comparatively undeveloped condition of their sexual organs, a condition not, indeed, by any means constant, but very frequently noted. as regards women, it has in many parts of the world been observed to be the rule, and the data which ploss and bartels have accumulated seem to me, on the whole, to point clearly in this direction.[ ] at another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual impulse. it is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual organs--disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic representation--more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic emotion.[ ] and this is probably more marked in cases in which the sexual instinct is constitutionally feeble. a lady who had no marked sexual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such matters, on inspecting her sexual parts in a mirror for the first time in her life was shocked and disgusted at the sight. certainly many women could record a similar experience on being first approached by a man, although artistic conventions present the male form with greater truth than the female. moreover,--and here is the significant point,--this feeling is by no means restricted to the refined and cultured. "when working at michelangelo," wrote a correspondent from italy, "my upper gondolier used to see photographs and statuettes of all that man's works. stopping one day before the night and dawn of s. lorenzo, sprawling naked women, he exclaimed: 'how hideous they are!' i pressed him to explain himself. he went on: 'the ugliest man naked is handsomer than the finest woman naked. women have crooked legs, and their sexual organs stink. i only once saw a naked woman. it was in a brothel, when i was . the sight of her "natura" made me go out and vomit into the canal. you know i have been twice married, but i never saw either of my wives without clothing.' of very rank cheese he said one day: 'puzza come la natura d'una donna.'" this man, my correspondent added, was entirely normal and robust, but seemed to regard sexual congress as a mere evacuation, the sexual instinct apparently not being strong. it seems possible that, if the sexual impulse had no existence, all men would regard women with this _horror feminæ_. as things are, however, at all events in civilization, sexual emotions begin to develop even earlier, usually, than acquaintance with the organs of the other sex begins; so that this disgust is inhibited. if, however, among savages the sexual impulse is habitually weak, and only aroused to strength under the impetus of powerful stimuli, often acting periodically, then we should expect the _horror_ to be a factor of considerable importance. the weakness of the physical sexual impulse among savages is reflected in the psychic sphere. many writers have pointed out that love plays but a small part in their lives. they practise few endearments; they often only kiss children (westermarck notes that sexual love is far less strong than parental love); love-poems are among some primitive peoples few (mostly originating with the women), and their literature often gives little or no attention to passion.[ ] affection and devotion are, however, often strong, especially in savage women. it is not surprising that jealousy should often, though not by any means invariably, be absent, both among men and among women. among savages this is doubtless a proof of the weakness of the sexual impulse. spencer and gillen note the comparative absence of jealousy in men among the central australian tribes they studied.[ ] negresses, it is said by a french army surgeon in his _untrodden fields of anthropology_, do not know what jealousy is, and the first wife will even borrow money to buy the second wife. among a much higher race, the women in a korean household, it is said, live together happily, as an almost invariable rule, though it appears that this was not always the case among a polygamous people of european race, the mormons. the tendency of the sexual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal manifestations, i do not discuss here, as i have dealt with it in the first volume of these _studies_.[ ] it has, however, a very important bearing on this subject. periodicity of sexual manifestations is, indeed, less absolute in primitive man than in most animals, but it is still very often quite clearly marked. it is largely the occurrence of these violent occasional outbursts of the sexual instinct--during which the organic impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no longer necessary--that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of the impulse in savages.[ ] footnotes: [ ] thus, lubbock (lord avebury), in the _origin of civilization_, fifth edition, , brings forward a number of references in evidence of this belief. more recently finck, in his _primitive love and love-stories_, , seeks to accumulate data in favor of the unbounded licentiousness of savages. he admits, however, that a view of the matter opposed to his own is now tending to prevail. [ ] see "the evolution of modesty" in the first volume of these _studies_. [ ] the sacredness of sexual relations often applies also to individual marriage. thus, skeat, in his _malay magic_, shows that the bride and bridegroom are definitely recognized as sacred, in the same sense that the king is, and in malay states the king is a very sacred person. see also, concerning the sacred character of coitus, whether individual or collective, a. van gennep, _rites de passage, passim_. [ ] spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. . [ ] _religion of the semites_, second edition, , p. _et seq._ [ ] _history of marriage_, pp. - , - , etc. [ ] _golden bough_, third edition, part ii, _taboo and the perils of the soul_. frazer has discussed taboo generally. for a shorter account of taboo, see art. "taboo" by northcote thomas in _encyclopædia britannica_, eleventh edition, . freud has lately (_imago_, ) made an attempt to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic obsessions. taboo, freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established. in this way freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and things are both sacred and unclean. [ ] "essai sur le sacrifice," _l'année sociologique_, , pp. - . [ ] _the mystic rose_, , p. et seq., et seq., et seq. [ ] _das weib_, vol. i, section . [ ] this statement has been questioned. it should, however, be fairly evident that the sexual organs in either sex, when closely examined, can scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the opposite sex who is in a condition of sexual excitement, and they are not always attractive even then. moreover, it must be remembered that the snake-like aptitude of the penis to enter into a state of erection apart from the control of the will puts it in a different category from any other organ of the body, and could not fail to attract the attention of primitive peoples so easily alarmed by unusual manifestations. we find even in the early ages of christianity that st. augustine attached immense importance to this alarming aptitude of the penis as a sign of man's sinful and degenerate state. [ ] lubbock, _origin of civilization_, fifth edition, pp. , ; westermarck, _history of marriage_, p. ; grosse, _anfänge der kunst_, p. ; herbert spencer, "origin of music," _mind_, oct., . [ ] spencer and gillen, _native tribes of central australia_, p. ; cf. finck, _primitive love and love-stories_, p. et seq. [ ] "the phenomena of sexual periodicity." the subject has also been more recently discussed by walter heape, "the 'sexual season' of mammals," _quarterly journal of microscopical science_, vol. xliv, . see also f.h.a. marshall, _the physiology of reproduction_, . [ ] this view finds a belated supporter in max marcuse ("geschlechtstrieb des urmenschens," _sexual-probleme_, oct., ), who, on grounds which i cannot regard as sound, seeks to maintain the belief that the sexual instinct is more highly developed among savage than among civilized peoples. ii. the facts thus seem to indicate that among primitive peoples, while the magical, ceremonial, and traditional restraints on sexual intercourse are very numerous, very widespread, and nearly always very stringent, there is, underlying this prevalence of restraints on intercourse, a fundamental weakness of the sexual instinct, which craves less, and craves less frequently, than is the case among civilized peoples, but is liable to be powerfully manifested at special seasons. it is perfectly true that among savages, as sutherland states, "there is no ideal which makes chastity a thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that "it is untrue that in sexual license the savage has everything to learn," we must demand greater precision of statement.[ ] travelers, and too often would-be scientific writers, have been so much impressed by the absence among savages of the civilized ideal of chastity, and by the frequent freedom of sexual intercourse, that they have not paused to inquire more carefully into the phenomena, or to put themselves at the primitive point of view, but have assumed that freedom here means all that it would mean in a european population. in order to illustrate the actual circumstances of savage life in this respect from the scanty evidence furnished by the most careful observers, i have brought together from scattered sources a few statements concerning primitive peoples in very various parts of the world.[ ] among the andamanese, portman, who knows them well, says that sexual desire is very moderate; in males it appears at the age of , but, as "their love for sport is greater than their passions, these are not gratified to any great extent till after marriage, which rarely takes place till a man is about ."[ ] although chastity is not esteemed by the fuegians, and virginity is lost at a very early age, yet both men and women are extremely moderate in sexual indulgence.[ ] among the eskimo at the other end of the american continent, according to dr. f. cook, the sexual passions are suppressed during the long darkness of winter, as also is the menstrual function usually, and the majority of the children are born nine months after the appearance of the sun.[ ] among the indians of north america it is the custom of many tribes to refrain from sexual intercourse during the whole period of lactation, as also d'orbigny found to be the case among south american indians, although suckling went on for over three years.[ ] many of the indian tribes have now been rendered licentious by contact with civilization. in the primitive condition their customs were entirely different. dr. holder, who knows many tribes of north american indians well, has dealt in some detail with this point. "several of the virtues," he states, "and among them chastity, were more faithfully practised by the indian race before the invasion from the east than these same virtues are practised by the white race of the present day.... the race is less salacious than either the negro or white race.... that the women of some tribes are now more careful of their virtue than the women of any other community whose history i know, i am fully convinced."[ ] it is not only on the women that sexual abstinence is imposed. among some branches of the salish indians of british columbia a young widower must refrain from sexual intercourse for a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.[ ] in many parts of polynesia, although the sexual impulse seems often to have been highly developed before the arrival of europeans, it is very doubtful whether license, in the european sense, at all generally prevailed. the marquesans, who have sometimes been regarded as peculiarly licentious, are especially mentioned by foley as illustrating his statement that sexual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive peoples except during sexual seasons.[ ] herman melville's detailed account in _typee_ of the marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt) reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness. at rotuma, j. stanley gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came sexual intercourse before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prostitution and adultery were unknown. matters are much worse now.[ ] the maoris of new zealand, in the old days, according to one who had lived among them, were more chaste than the english, and, though a chief might lend his wife to a friend as an honor, it would be very difficult to take her (_private communication_).[ ] captain cook also represented these people as modest and virtuous. among the papuans of new guinea and torres straits, although intercourse before marriage is free, it is by no means unbridled, nor is it carried to excess. there are many circumstances restraining intercourse. thus, unmarried men must not indulge in it during october and november at torres straits. it is the general rule also that there should be no sexual intercourse during pregnancy, while a child is being suckled (which goes on for three or four years), or even until it can speak or walk.[ ] in astrolabe bay, new guinea, according to vahness, a young couple must abstain from intercourse for several weeks after marriage, and to break this rule would be disgraceful.[ ] as regards australia, brough smyth wrote: "promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is not practised by the aborigines, and their laws on the subject, particularly those of new south wales, are very strict. when at camp all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the extreme end, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the center. no conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or the married women. infractions of these laws were visited by punishment; ... five or six warriors threw from a comparatively short distance several spears at him [the offender]. the man was often severely wounded and sometimes killed."[ ] this author mentions that a black woman has been known to kill a white man who attempted to have intercourse with her by force. yet both sexes have occasional sexual intercourse from an early age. after marriage, in various parts of australia, there are numerous restraints on intercourse, which is forbidden not merely during menstruation, but during the latter part of pregnancy and for one moon after childbirth.[ ] concerning the people of the malay peninsula, hrolf vaughan stevens states: "the sexual impulse among the belendas is only developed to a slight extent; they are not sensual, and the husband has intercourse with his wife not oftener than three times a month. the women also are not ardent.... the orang lâut are more sensual than the dyaks, who are, however, more given to obscene jokes than their neighbors.... with the belendas there is little or no love-play in sexual relations".[ ] skeat tells us also that among malays in war-time strict chastity must be observed in a stockade, or the bullets of the garrison will lose their power.[ ] it is a common notion that the negro and negroid races of africa are peculiarly prone to sexual indulgence. this notion is not supported by those who have had the most intimate knowledge of these peoples. it probably gained currency in part owing to the open and expansive temperament of the negro, and in part owing to the extremely sexual character of many african orgies and festivals, though those might quite as legitimately be taken as evidence of difficulty in attaining sexual erethism. a french army surgeon, speaking from knowledge of the black races in various french colonies, states in his _untrodden fields of anthropology_ that it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. she is rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects she is very unlike the mulatto. the white man is usually powerless to excite her, partly from his small penis, partly from his rapidity of emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes three times as long to reach emission as the white man. among the mohammedan peoples of west africa, daniell remarks, as well as in central and northern africa, it is usual to suckle a child for two or more years. from the time when pregnancy becomes apparent to the end of weaning no intercourse takes place. it is believed that this would greatly endanger the infant, if not destroy it. this means that for every child the woman, at all events, must remain continent for about three years.[ ] sir h.h. johnston, writing concerning the peoples of central africa, remarks that the man also must remain chaste during these periods. thus, among the atonga the wife leaves her husband at the sixth month of pregnancy, and does not resume relations with him until five or six months after the birth of the child. if, in the interval, he has relations with any other woman, it is believed his wife will certainly die. "the negro is very rarely vicious," johnston says, "after he has attained to the age of puberty. he is only more or less uxorious. the children are vicious, as they are among most races of mankind, the boys outrageously so. as regards the little girls over nearly the whole of british central africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition, except perhaps among the a-nyanja. before a girl is become a woman it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about years of age."[ ] among the bangala of the upper congo a woman suckles her child for six to eighteen months and during all this period the husband has no intercourse with his wife, for that, it is believed, would kill the child.[ ] among the yoruba-speaking people of west africa a.b. ellis mentions that suckling lasts for three years, during the whole of which period the wife must not cohabit with her husband.[ ] although chastity before marriage appears to be, as a rule, little regarded in africa, this is not always so. in some parts of west africa, a girl, at all events if of high birth, when found guilty of unchastity may be punished by the insertion into her vagina of bird pepper, a kind of capsicum, beaten into a mass; this produces intense pain and such acute inflammation that the canal may even be obliterated.[ ] among the dahomey women there is no coitus during pregnancy nor during suckling, which lasts for nearly three years. the same is true among the jekris and other tribes on the niger, where it is believed that the milk would suffer if intercourse took place during lactation.[ ] in another part of africa, among the suaheli, even after marriage only incomplete coitus is at first allowed and there is no intercourse for a year after the child's birth.[ ] farther south, among the ba wenda of north transvaal, says the rev. r. wessmann, although the young men are permitted to "play" with the young girls before marriage, no sexual intercourse is allowed. if it is seen that a girl's labia are apart when she sits down on a stone, she is scolded, or even punished, as guilty of having had intercourse.[ ] among the higher races in india the sexual instinct is very developed, and sexual intercourse has been cultivated as an art, perhaps more elaborately than anywhere else. here, however, we are far removed from primitive conditions and among a people closely allied to the europeans. farther to the east, as among the cambodians, strict chastity seems to prevail, and if we cross the himalayas to the north we find ourselves among wild people to whom sexual license is unknown. thus, among the turcomans, even a few days after the marriage has been celebrated, the young couple are separated for an entire year.[ ] all the great organized religions have seized on this value of sexual abstinence, already consecrated by primitive magic and religion, and embodied it in their system. it was so in ancient egypt. thus, according to diodorus, on the death of a king, the entire population of egypt abstained from sexual intercourse for seventy-two days. the persians, again, attached great value to sexual as to all other kinds of purity. even involuntary seminal emissions were severely punishable. to lie with a menstruating woman, according to the _vendidad_, was as serious a matter as to pollute holy fire, and to lie with a pregnant woman was to incur a penalty of strokes. among the modern parsees a man must not lie with his wife after she is four months and ten days pregnant. mohammedanism cannot be described as an ascetic religion, yet long and frequent periods of sexual abstinence are enjoined. there must be no sexual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, during suckling, during menstruation (and for eight days before and after), nor during the thirty days of the ramedan fast. other times of sexual abstinence are also prescribed; thus among the mohammedan yezidis of mardin in northern mesopotamia there must be no sexual intercourse on wednesdays or fridays.[ ] in the early christian church many rules of sexual abstinence still prevailed, similar to those usual among savages, though not for such prolonged periods. in egbert's penitential, belonging to the ninth century, it is stated that a woman must abstain from intercourse with her husband three months after conception and for forty days after birth. there were a number of other occasions, including lent, when a husband must not know his wife.[ ] "some canonists say," remarks jeremy taylor, "that the church forbids a mutual congression of married pairs upon festival days.... the council of eliberis commanded abstinence from conjugal rights for three or four or seven days before the communion. pope liberius commanded the same during the whole time of lent, supposing the fast is polluted by such congressions."[ ] footnotes: [ ] a. sutherland, _origin and growth of the moral instinct_, vol. i, pp. , . as has been shown by, for instance, dr. iwan bloch (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, erster theil, ), every perverse sexual practice may be found, somewhere or other, among savages or barbarians; but, as the same writer acutely points out (p. ), these devices bear witness to the need of overcoming frigidity rather than to the strength of the sexual impulse. [ ] ploss and bartels have brought together in _das weib_ a large number of facts in the same sense, more especially under the headings of _abstinenz-vorschriften_ and _die fernhaltung der schwangeren_. i have not drawn upon their collection. [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, may, , p. . [ ] hyades and deniker, _mission scientifique du cap horn_, vol. vii, p. . [ ] f. cook, _new york journal of gynecology and obstetrics_, . [ ] a. d'orbigny, _l'homme américain_, , vol. i, p. . [ ] a.b. holder, "gynecic notes among the american indians," _american journal of obstetrics_, , vol. xxvi, no. . [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. . [ ] foley, _bulletin de la société d' anthropologie_, paris, november , . [ ] j.s. gardiner, _journal of the anthropological institute_, february, , p. . [ ] as regards the modern maoris, a medical correspondent in new zealand writes: "it is nothing for members of both sexes to live in the same room, and for promiscuous intercourse to take place between father and daughter or brother and sister. maori women, who will display a great deal of modesty when in the presence of male maoris, will openly ask strange europeans to have sexual intercourse with them, and without any desire for reward. the men, however, seem to prefer their own women, and even when staying in towns, where they can obtain prostitutes, they will remain continent until they return home again, a period of perhaps a month." [ ] schellong, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , i, pp. , ; haddon, _journal of the anthropological institute_, february, , pp. , ; guise, ib., february and may, , p. ; seligmann, ib., , pp. , - ; _reports cambridge expedition_, vol. v, pp. - , . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. v, p. . [ ] r. brough smyth, _the aborigines of victoria_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, , pp. , , . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , iv, pp. - . [ ] w.w. skeat, _malay magic_, p. . [ ] w.f. daniell, _medical topography of gulf of guinea_, , p. . [ ] sir h.h. johnston, _british central africa_, , pp. , . [ ] rev. j.h. weeks, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. . [ ] sir a.b. ellis, _yoruba-speaking peoples_, p. . [ ] w.f. daniell, op. cit., p. . [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, august and november, , p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ii and iii, p. ; velten, _sitten und gebraüche der suaheli_, p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . [ ] vambery, _travels in central asia_, , p. . [ ] heard, _journal of the anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. . the same rule is also observed by the christians of this district. [ ] haddon and stubbs, _councils and ecclesiastical documents_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] jeremy taylor, _the rule of conscience_, bk. iii, ch. iv, rule xx. iii. thus it would seem probable that, contrary to a belief once widely prevalent, the sexual instinct has increased rather than diminished with the growth of civilization. this fact was clear to the insight of lucretius, though it has often been lost sight of since.[ ] yet even observation of animals might have suggested the real bearing of the facts. the higher breeds of cattle, it is said, require the male more often than the inferior breeds.[ ] thorough-bred horses soon reach sexual maturity, and i understand that since pains have been taken to improve cart-horses the sexual instincts of the mares have become less trustworthy. there is certainly no doubt that in our domestic animals generally, which live under what may be called civilized conditions, the sexual system and the sexual needs are more developed than in the wild species most closely related to them.[ ] all observers seem to agree on this point, and it is sufficient to refer to the excellent summary of the question furnished by heape in the study of "the 'sexual season' of mammals," to which reference has already been made. he remarks, moreover, that, "while the sexual activity of domestic animals and of wild animals in captivity may be more frequently exhibited, it is not so violent as is shown by animals in the wild state."[ ] so that, it would seem, the greater periodicity of the instinct in the wild state, alike in animals and in man, is associated with greater violence of the manifestations when they do appear. certain rodents, such as the rat and the mouse, are well known to possess both great reproductive power and marked sexual proclivities. heape suggests that this also is "due to the advantages derived from their intimate relations with the luxuries of civilization." heape recognizes that, as regards reproductive power, the same development may be traced in man: "it would seem highly probable that the reproductive power of man has increased with civilization, precisely as it may be increased in the lower animals by domestication; that the effect of a regular supply of good food, together with all the other stimulating factors available and exercised in modern civilized communities, has resulted in such great activity of the generative organs, and so great an increase in the supply of the reproductive elements, that conception in the healthy human female may be said to be possible almost at any time during the reproductive period." "people of sense and reflection are most apt to have violent and constant passions," wrote mary wollstonecraft, "and to be preyed on by them."[ ] it is that fact which leads to the greater importance of sexual phenomena among the civilized as compared to savages. the conditions of civilization increase the sexual instinct, which consequently tends to be more intimately connected with moral feelings. morality is bound up with the development of the sexual instinct. the more casual and periodic character of the impulse in animals, since it involves greater sexual indifference, tends to favor a loose tie between the sexes, and hence is not favorable to the development of morals as we understand morals. in man the ever-present impulse of sex, idealizing each sex to the other sex, draws men and women together and holds them together. foolish and ignorant persons may deplore the full development which the sexual instinct has reached in civilized man; to a finer insight that development is seen to be indissolubly linked with all that is most poignant and most difficult, indeed, but also all that is best, in human life as we know it. footnotes: [ ] _de rerum naturâ_, v, . [ ] raciborski (_traité de la menstruation_, p. ) quotes the observation of an experienced breeder of choice cattle to this effect. [ ] "the organs which in the feral state," as adlerz remarks (_biologisches centralblatt_, no. , ; quoted in _science_, may , ), "are continually exercised in a severe struggle for existence, do not under domestication compete so closely with one another for the less needed nutriment. hence, organs like the reproductive glands, which are not so directly implicated in self-preservation, are able to avail themselves of more food." [ ] _quarterly journal of microscopical science_, vol. xliv, , p. , , . [ ] "love," in _thoughts on the education of daughters_. appendix b. the development of the sexual instinct. it is a very remarkable fact that, although for many years past serious attempts have been made to elucidate the psychology of sexual perversions, little or no endeavor has been made to study the development of the normal sexual emotions. nearly every writer seems either to take for granted that he and his readers are so familiar with all the facts of normal sex psychology that any detailed statement is altogether uncalled for, or else he is content to write a few fragmentary remarks, mostly made up of miscellaneous extracts from anatomical, philosophical, and historical works. yet it is as unreasonable to take normal phenomena for granted here as in any other region of science. a knowledge of such phenomena is as necessary here as physiology is to pathology or anatomy to surgery. so far from the facts of normal sex development, sex emotions, and sex needs being uniform and constant, as is assumed by those who consider their discussion unnecessary, the range of variation within fairly normal limits is immense, and it is impossible to meet with two individuals whose records are nearly identical. there are two fundamental reasons why the endeavor should be made to obtain a broad basis of clear information on the subject. in the first place, the normal phenomena give the key to the abnormal phenomena, and the majority of sexual perversions, including even those that are most repulsive, are but exaggerations of instincts and emotions that are germinal in normal human beings. in the second place, we cannot even know what is normal until we are acquainted with the sexual life of a large number of healthy individuals. and until we know the limits of normal sexuality we are not in position to lay down any reasonable rules of sexual hygiene. on these grounds i have for some time sought to obtain the sexual histories, and more especially the early histories, of men and women who, on _prima facie_ grounds, may fairly be considered, or are at all events by themselves and others considered, ordinarily healthy and normal. there are many difficulties about such a task, difficulties which are sufficiently obvious. there is, first of all, the natural reticence to reveal facts of so intimately personal a character. there is the prevailing ignorance and unintelligence which leads to the phenomena being obscure to the subject himself. when the first difficulty has been overcome, and the second is non-existent, there is still a lack of sufficiently strong motive to undertake the record, as well as a failure to realize the value of such records. i have, however, received a large number of such histories, for the most part offered spontaneously with permission to make such further inquiries as i thought desirable. some of these histories are extremely interesting and instructive. in the present appendix, and in a corresponding appendix to the two following volumes of these _studies_, i bring forward a varied selection of these narratives. in a few cases, it will be seen, the subjects are, to say the least, on the borderland of the abnormal, but they do not come before us as patients desiring treatment. they are playing their, usually active, sometimes even distinguished, part in the world, which knows nothing of their intimate histories. history i.--e.t. (i reproduce this history, written in the third person, as it reached my hands.) t.'s earliest recollections of ideas of a sexual character are vaguely associated with thoughts upon whipping inflicted on companions by their parents, and sometimes upon his own person. about the age of t. occasionally depicted to himself the appearance of the bare nates and genitalia of boys during flagellation. reflection upon whipping gave rise to slight curious sensations at the base of the abdomen and in the nerves of the sexual system. the sight of a boy being whipped upon the bare nates caused erection before the age of . he cannot account for these excitations, as at the time he had not learned the most rudimentary facts of sex. the spectacle of the boy's nudity had no attraction for him, while the beating aroused his indignation against the person who administered it. t. knew a boy and girl of about his own age whose imaginations dwelt somewhat morbidly upon whipping. the three used to talk together about such chastisement, and the little girl liked to read "stories that had whippings in them." none of these children delighted in cruelty; the fascination in the theme of castigation seemed to be in imagining the spectacle of the exposed nates, though actual witnessing of the whipping made them angry at the time. accustomed to watch a young sister being bathed, t. had no distinct curiosity concerning the differences in sex until the age of . about this time he asked his father where babies came from, and was told to be quiet. when he persisted in the inquiry his father threatened to box his ears. his mother told him subsequently that doctors brought babies to mothers. he credited the story so far as to carefully watch the doctor who came when his mother "was going to have a new baby," in the hope of seeing a bundle in his arm. t. was when he interrogated a servant-girl of about babies and their origin. she laughed and said that one day she would tell him how children came. one sunday this servant took t. for a country walk and initiated him in sexual intercourse, telling him he was too young to be a father, but that was the way babies were made. the girl took him into a field, saying she would show him how to do something which would make him "feel as though he was in heaven," informing him that she had often done this with young men. she then succeeded in causing erection and instructed him how to act. his feeling at the time was one of disgust; the appearance and odor of the female genitalia repelled him. afterward, however, he wished to repeat the experience with girls of his own age. finding the boy unresponsive, the girl took the masculine position and embraced him with great passion. t. can recall the expression of the girl's face, the perspiration on her forehead, and the whispered query whether it pleased him. the embrace lasted for about ten minutes, when the girl said it had "done her good." later the same day they met a girl cousin of this servant about or years old. the three went to a lonely part of the seashore. the servant there suggested that t. should repeat the act with the little girl. t. was too shy, though the girl seemed quite willing and experienced. the older girl told the younger to keep watch a few yards away, while she again brought about intercourse in the same way. the servant told t. not to tell anyone. intercourse with the servant was never repeated after that day; from shame he kept the promise for many years. after this episode t. began to speculate about sexual matters and to observe the coupling of dogs with newly acquired interest. at years he often lay awake, listening to a woman of singing to a piano accompaniment. the woman's voice seemed very beautiful, and so strongly impressed him that he fell in love with her and longed to embrace her sexually. this secret attachment was much more romantic than sensual, though the idea of embracing the woman seemed to t. a natural part of the romance. he was beginning to invest the sex with angelic qualities. the thought of his adventure with the servant no longer caused repulsion, but rather pleasure. he reflected that if he could meet the girl now he could be very fond of her and understand things better. at this time he had not masturbated, nor even heard of the practice. one day, while playing with a girl of his own age, he succeeded in overcoming her shyness and induced her to expose herself, at the same time uncovering his own sexual parts. on this occasion and once afterward he succeeded in penetrating the vulva. both he and the girl experienced imperfect enjoyment. at boarding-school, where he was sent at , t. learned the vulgar phrases for sexual organs and sexual acts, and acquired the habit of moderate masturbation. coarse talk and indecent jests about the opposite sex were common amusements of the playroom and dormitories. at first the obscene conversation was very distasteful; later he became more used to it, but thought it strange that sex intimacy should be a subject for ridicule and jest. he began to read love-stories and think much about girls. at the same time he learned the nature of "the sin of fornication," and wondered why it should be considered so heinous. parts of the bible condemning intercourse between the unmarried alarmed him. being of a serious as well as emotional and amorous nature, he became converted to evangelic belief. his mother warned him to beware of unclean companions at school. he tried to act as a christian and think only pure thoughts about women. the talk, however, was always of girls and of being in love. his mind was often engrossed with amatory ideas of a poetic, sensuous nature, his sexual experiences having a firm hold on his imagination, while they gave him gratifying assurance of actual knowledge concerning things merely imagined by most of his companions. his health was vigorous and he keenly enjoyed all outdoor games and excelled in daring and schoolboy mischief. at he fell deeply in love with a girl of corresponding age. he never felt any powerful sexual desire for his sweetheart, and never attempted anything but kissing and decorous caresses. he liked to walk and sit with the girl, to hold her hand, and stroke her soft hair. he felt real grief when separated from her. his thoughts of her were seldom sensual. a year or so afterward he had a temporary passion for a woman of , who used to flirt with him and allow kissing. t. thought her queen-like and very lovely, and wished to be her knight. one day he saw, for a moment, in a friend's house, a dark, earnest-looking girl of , who made a very deep impression upon him, and, though he did not exchange a word with her, he often thought about her afterward. five years later he met the dark girl again, and the pair were mutually drawn to one another. he proposed marriage and avowed a most desperate passion. a refusal on the plea of youth caused him the deepest misery. about eight years thereafter t. married the girl, and the marriage proved a very happy one for both. when he was t. made the acquaintance of a pretty blonde of the same age. she was a high-spirited hoiden. they were soon close friends and later lovers. they wrote a number of letters to each other and exchanged locks of hair and presents. their talk about love was unreserved. one day she told t. that she had been sexually embraced by a former lover, a boy of , hinting very plainly that she would like t. to embrace her. this amour lasted for about six months. the lovers had many opportunities for clandestine intercourse. they used to consummate their passion in a part of a wood they called "the bower." now and then one or the other would experience a pricking of conscience, but they were too passionately attached to each other to sever the intimacy. at length the girl began to dread the risk of conception and the intercourse ceased. looking back upon this episode t. avers that the attachment and its physical expression seemed quite natural, poetic, and beautiful, though at times his religious principles condemned his conduct. he now thinks that the experience is by no means to be regretted either by the girl or himself. it was a wholesome youthful passion, as innocent as the mating of birds, and the insight which it gave to both of the hidden emotions of human nature was morally advantageous in after-life. t. believes that his amative precocity was due to the early awakening of sex feeling by the servant-girl. but he also believes that the love passion would have asserted itself early in any case, since he inherits a warm temperament, had erectile power long before puberty, and has considerable seminal capacity. having closely watched the effects of suppressed normal emotions and desires in youth at the time of pubescence, he maintains that such suppression is disastrous, causing unhealthy thoughts and leading to the formation of a habit of masturbation which may persist throughout life. he believes that temporary sexual intimacies between boys and girls under from the period of puberty would be far less harmful than separation of the sexes until marriage, with its resultants: masturbation, hysteria, repressed and disordered functions in young women, seduction, prostitution, venereal affections, and many other evils. history ii.--the following narrative was written by a married lady: "my mother (herself a very passionate and attractive woman) recognized the difficulty for english girls of getting satisfactorily married, and determined, if possible, to shield us from disappointment by turning our thoughts in a different direction. theoretically the idea was perhaps good, but in practice it proved useless. the natural desires were there. disappointment and disillusion followed their repression none the less surely for having altered their natural shape. i think the love i had for my mother was almost sexual, as to be with her was a keen pleasure, and to be long away from her an almost unendurable pain. she used to talk to us a good deal on all sorts of subjects, but she never troubled about education in the ordinary sense. when years old i had been taught nothing except to read and write. she never forbade us to read anything, but if by accident we got hold of a book of which she did not approve she used to say: 'i think that is rather a silly story, don't you?' we were so eager to come up to her standard of taste that we at once imagined we thought it silly, too. in the same way she discouraged ideas about love or marriage, not by suggesting there was anything wrong or improper about them, but by implying great contempt for girls who thought about lovers, etc. up to the age of about i had a vague general impression that love was very well for ordinary women, but far beneath the dignity of a somewhat superior person like myself. to show how little it entered my thoughts i may add that, up to , i fancied a woman got a child by being kissed on the lips by a man. hence all the fuss in novels about the kiss on the mouth. "when i was years old i began to feel a great craving for scientific knowledge. _a child's guide to science_, which i discovered at a second-hand book-stall (and which, by the way, informed me that heat is due to a substance called caloric), became a constant companion. in order to learn about light and gravitation, i saved up my money and ordered (of all books) newton's _principia_, shedding bitter tears when i found i could not understand a word of it. at the same time i was horribly ashamed of this desire for knowledge. i got such books as i could surreptitiously and hid them in odd corners. why, i cannot imagine, as no one would have objected, but, on the contrary, i should have been helped to suitable books. "my sisters and i were all violently argumentative, but our quarrels were all on abstract subjects. we saw little of other children and made no friendships, preferring each other's society to that of outsiders. when i was about a girl of the same age came to stay with us for a few days. when we went to bed the first night she asked me if i ever played with myself, whereupon i took a great dislike to her. no sexual ideas or feelings were excited. when still quite a child, however, i had feelings of excitement which i now recognize as sexual. such feelings always came to me in bed (at least i cannot remember them at any other time) and were generally accompanied by a gradually increasing desire to make water. for a long time i would not dare to get out of bed for fear of being scolded for staying awake, and only did so at last when actually compelled. in the mean time the sexual excitement increased also, and i believe i thought the latter was the result of the former, or, perhaps, rather, that both were the same thing. (this was when i was about or years old.) so far as i can recollect, the excitement did not recur when the desire to make water had been gratified. i seemed to remember wondering why thinking of certain things (i can't remember what these were) should make one want to urinate. (in later life i have found that, if the bladder is not emptied before coitus, pleasure is often more intense.) there were also feelings, which i now recognize as sexual, in connection with ideas of whipping. "as a child and girl i had very strong religious feelings (i should have now if i could believe in the reality of religion), which were absent in my sisters. these feelings were much the same as i experienced later sexually; i felt toward god what i imagined i should like to feel to my husband if i married. this, i fancy, is what usually occurs. at i went to a boarding-school where there were seventy girls between and . i think it goes to show that there is but very little sexual precocity among english girls that during the three years i stayed there i never heard a word the strictest mother would have objected to. one or two of the older girls were occasionally a little sentimental, but on no occasion did i hear the physical side of things touched upon. i think this is partly due to the amount of exercise we took. when picturing my childhood i always see myself racing about, jumping walls, climbing trees. in france and italy i have been struck by the greater sedateness of continental children. our idea of naughtiness consisted chiefly in having suppers in our bedrooms and sliding down the banisters after being sent to bed. the first gratified our natural appetite, while the second supplied the necessary thrill in the fear of being caught. "i made no violent friendships with the other girls, but i became much attached to the french governess. she was , and a born teacher, very strict with all of us, and doubly so with me for fear of showing favoritism. but she was never unjust, and i was rather proud of her severity and took a certain pleasure in being punished by her, the punishment always taking the form of learning by heart, which i rather liked doing. so i had my thrill, excitement, i don't quite know what to call it, without any very great inconvenience to myself. just before we left school the sexual instinct began to show itself in enthusiasm for art with a capital a, ouida's novels being mainly responsible. my sister and i agreed that we would spend our lives traveling about france, italy, and the continent, generally _à la tricotrin_, with a violin in one pocket and an atravante dante in the other. to do this satisfactorily to ourselves we must be artists, and i resolved to go in for music and become a second liszt. when my father offered to take us to italy, the artist's mecca, for a couple of years, we were wild with delight. we went, and disillusionment began. it may perhaps seem absurd, but we suffered acutely that first summer. our villa was quite on the beach, the lowest of its flight of steps being washed by the mediterranean. at the back were grounds which seemed a paradise. long alleys covered over with vines and carpeted with long grass and poppies, grassy slopes dotted with olives and ilex, roses everywhere, and almost every flower in profusion, with, at night, the fireflies and the heavy scents of syringa and orange blossoms. in the midst of every possible excitement to the senses there was one thing wanting, and we did not know what that was. "we attributed our restlessness and dissatisfaction to the slow progress in our artistic education, and consoled ourselves by thinking when once we had mastered the technical difficulties we should feel all right. and of course we did derive a very real pleasure from all the beauties of art and nature with which italy abounds. "it seems to me, however, that the art craze is one of the modern phases of woman's sexual life. when we were in italy the great centers of the country were simply overrun with girls studying art, most of whom had very little talent, but who had mistaken the restlessness due to the first awakening of the sexual instinct for the divine flame of genius. in our case it did not matter, as we were not dependent upon our own exertions. but it must have been terribly hard for girls who had burned their boats and chosen art as a career, to have added to the repression of their natural desires the bitterness of knowing that in their chosen walk of life they were failures. the results as far as work goes might not be so bad if the passions, as in men, were occasionally gratified. it is the constant drudgery combined with the disappointment and finding that art alone does not satisfy which is so paralyzing. besides, sexual gratification is always followed by exaltation of the mental faculties, with, in my experience, no depressing reaction such as follows pleasure excited by mental causes alone. "at one time when living at the villa i met a man about , who took rather a fancy to me. i mention this because it woke me up; no emotion was excited, but i realized for the first time (i must have been nearly ) that i was no longer a child, and that a man could think of me in connection with love. it was only after this, and not immediately after, either, that men's society began to have an interest for me, and that i began to think a man's love would be a pleasant thing to possess, after all. "the sexual instinct, at any rate as regards consciousness, thus developed slowly and in what i believe to be a very usual sequence: religion, admiration for an older woman, and art. i am not sure that i have made quite enough of the first, yet i do not know that there is any more to say. there were very strong physical feelings connected with all these which were identical with those now connected with passion, but they were completely satisfied by the mental idea which excited them. "the first time i can remember feeling keen physical pleasure was when i was between and years old. i can't recollect the cause, but i remember lying quite still in my little cot clasping the iron rails at the top. it may be said that this is hardly slow development, but i mean slow as regards ( ) any connection of the idea with a man or ( ) any physical means of excitation. "i have laid stress on my desire for knowledge, as i think my sexual feelings were affected by it. a great part of my feeling for my mother was due to the stores of information she appeared to possess. the omniscience of god was to me his most striking attribute. my french teacher's capacity was her chief attraction. when, as a girl, i thought of marriage, i desired a man who 'could explain things to me.' one learns later to live one's mental and sexual life separately to a great extent. but at i could not have done so; given the opportunity, i should have made the mistake of dorothea in _middlemarch_. "i have spoken of the depressing after-effects of pleasure brought about by a purely mental cause, but i do not think this is the case in childhood and early youth. (perhaps some women feel no such depression afterward, and this may account for their coldness in regard to men.) this may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that it occurs much more rarely, and also it is perhaps a natural process before the sexual organs fully develop, and so not harmful. "i always find it difficult in expressing the different degrees of physical excitement even to myself, though i know exactly what i felt. as a child, from the time of the early experience already mentioned (about the age of or ), and as a young girl, the second stage (secretion of mucus) was always reached. the amount of secretion has always been excessive, but at first secretion only lasted a short time; later it began to last for several hours, or even sometimes the whole night, if the natural gratification has been withheld for a long time (say, three months). i do not remember ever feeling the third stage (complete orgasm) until i saw the first man i fancied i cared for. i do not think that mental causes alone have ever produced more than the first two stages (general diffuse excitement and secretion). i have sometimes wondered whether i could produce the third mechanically, but i have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the experiment; it would seem to materialize it too much. as a child and a girl i was contented to arrive at the second stage, possibly because i did not realize that there was any other, and perhaps this is why i have experienced no evil results. "in dreams the third stage seems to come suddenly without any leading up to it, either mental or physical, of which i am conscious. i do not, however, remember having any such dreams before i was engaged. they came at a later period; even then, when great pleasure was experienced, it came, as a rule, suddenly and sharply, with no dreams leading up to it. the dreams generally take a sad form (an evangeline and gabriel business), where one vainly seeks the person who eludes one. i have, however, sometimes had pleasurable dreams of men who were quite indifferent to me and of whom i never thought when awake. the impression on waking is so strong one could almost fancy one's self really in love with them. i can quite understand falling in love with a person by dreaming of him in this way. "the first time i remember experiencing the third stage in waking moments was at a picnic, when the man, to whom i have before referred as the first that i fancied i cared for, leaned against me accidentally in passing a plate or dish; but i was already in a violent state of excitement at being with him. there was no possibility of anything between us, as he was married. if he guessed my feelings, they were never admitted, as i did my best to hide them. i never experienced this, except at the touch of some one i loved. (i think the saying about the woman 'desiring the desire of the man' is just about as true as most epigrams. it is the man's personality alone which affects me. his feelings toward me are of--i was going to say--indifference, but at any rate quite secondary importance, and the gratification of my own vanity counts as nothing in such relations.) "as a rule, to reach even the second stage the exciting ideas must be associated with some particular person, except in the case of a story, where one identifies one's self with one of the characters. in childhood and early youth it was, in the case of religion, the idea of god and the presence and the personality of god which aroused my feelings and always seemed very vivid to me. in the case of my governess, my feelings were aroused in exactly the same way as later they would be by one's lover. in the art craze i am rather vague as to how it came about, but i think, as a rule, there was rather a craving for pleasure than pleasure itself. i do not remember ever thinking much about the physical feeling. it seemed as natural that a pleasant emotion should produce pleasant physical effects as that a painful one should cause tears. as a child, one takes so much for granted, and later on my mind was so much occupied with worrying about the truth of religion that i hardly thought enough about anything else to analyze it carefully. "i may summarize my own feelings thus: first, exciting ideas alone produce, as a rule, merely the first stage of sexual excitement. second, the same ideas connected with a particular person will produce the second stage. third, the same may be said of the presence of the beloved person. fourth, actual contact appears necessary for the third stage. if the first stage only be reached, the sensation is not pleasurable in reality, or would not be but for its association. if produced, as i have sometimes found it to be, by a sense of mental incapacity, it is distinctly disagreeable, especially if one feels that the energy which might have been used in coping with the difficulty is being thus dissipated. if it be produced, as it may be, as the result of physical or mental restraint, it is also unpleasant unless the restraint were put upon one by a person one loves. then, however, the second stage would probably be reached, but this would depend a good deal on one's mood. if the first stage only were reached, i think it would be disagreeable; it would mean a conflict between one's will and sexual feeling. perhaps women who feel actual repugnance to the sexual act with a man they love have never gone beyond the first stage, when their dislike to it would be quite intelligible to me. "some time after the life in italy had come to an end i became engaged. there was considerable difficulty in the way of marriage, but we saw a good deal of each other. my _fiancé_ often dined with us, and we met every day. the result of seeing him so frequently was that i was kept in a constant state of strong, but suppressed, sexual excitement. this was particularly the case when we met in the evening and wandered about the moonlit garden together. when this had gone on about three months i began to experience a sense of discomfort after each of his visits. the abdomen seemed to swell with a feeling of fullness and congestion; but, though these sensations were closely connected with the physical excitement, they were not sufficiently painful to cause me any alarm or make me endeavor to avoid their pleasurable cause. the symptoms got worse, however, and no longer passed off quickly as at first. the swelling increased; considerable pain and a dragged-down sensation resulted the moment i tried to walk even a short distance. i was troubled with constant indigestion, weight in the chest, pain in the head and eyes, and continual slight diarrhea. this went on for about nine months, and then my _fiancé_ was called away from the neighborhood. after his departure i got a trifle better, but the symptoms remained, though in less acute form. a few months later the engagement was broken off, and for some weeks i was severely ill with influenza and was on my back for several weeks. when i could get about a little, though very weak, all the swelling was gone, but pain returned whenever i tried to walk or stand for long. the indigestion and diarrhea were also very troublesome. i was treated for both by a physician, but without success. next year i became engaged to my husband and was shortly after married. the indigestion and diarrhea disappeared soon after. the pain and dragging feeling in the abdomen bothered me much in walking or any kind of exercise. one day i came across a medical work, _the elements of social science_, in which i found descriptions of symptoms like those i suffered from ascribed to uterine disease. i again applied to a doctor, telling him i thought there was displacement and possibly congestion. he confirmed my opinion and told me to wear a pessary. he ascribed the displacement to the relaxing climate, and said he did not think i should ever get quite right again. after the pessary had been placed in position every trace of pain, etc., left me. a year later i thought i would try and do without the pessary, and to my great satisfaction none of the old trials came back after its removal, in spite of much trouble, anxiety, sick nursing, and fatigue. i attribute the disorder entirely to violent sexual excitement which was not permitted its natural gratification and relief. "i have reason to believe that suppression acts very injuriously on a woman's mental capacity. when excitement is naturally relieved the mind turns of its own accord to another subject, but when suppressed it is unable to do this. personally, in the latter event, i find the greatest difficulty in concentrating my thoughts, and mental effort becomes painful. other women have complained to me of the same difficulty. i have tried mechanical mental work, such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems, but it does no good; in fact, it seems only to increase the excitement. (i may remark here that my feelings are always very strong not only before and after the monthly period, but also during the time itself; very unfortunately, as, of course, they cannot then be gratified. this only applies to desire from within, as i am strongly susceptible to influences from without at any time.) there seems nothing to be done but to bow to the storm till it passes over. anything i do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. the brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. a woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, while her attention is drawn from abstract ideas to her children." history iii.--b. states that his first sexual thoughts and acts were curiously connected with whipping. at he and another boy used to beat each other with a cricket bat upon the bare nates, and afterward indulge in mutual masturbation. he cannot remember the beginning of his sexual speculation as a child, nor how he learned masturbation. when he was he used to discuss erotic matters with a schoolfellow who was in the habit of engaging in vulvar intercourse with a girl of his own age. the intercourse was practised on the way home from school, and in a standing posture. b. embraced the girl in the same way. he is not interested in the psychological aspects of the sexual emotion. although his sex passion was early kindled, he never had commerce with prostitutes. he thinks that his youthful experiences had no ill effect upon him morally, mentally, or physically. he practised masturbation in moderation till he married, at the age of . history iv.--"i can remember" (writes the subject) "trotting away as a youngster about with another boy to 'see a girl's legs'; the idea emanated from the other boy, but i was vaguely interested. how or where we were going to see the object in question i do not remember nor anything further than the intention. when or i remember being put to bed with the nurse girl and feeling her bare arm with undoubted sexual excitement; i remember, too, gradually feeling along the arm very cautiously, fearing the girl would wake and being bitterly disappointed to find it was merely the arm. i am almost certain i had then no idea of sex, but the disappointment was actual. "these are the only early experiences of the sort i can remember. when about i had others. on the coast of the north of england, which had then very few visitors and seemed to me very remote, i lived in a farm-house and used to assist the girls of the farm in looking after young cattle. these girls certainly instilled sexual ideas, though i did not realize them with precision. they used to talk about things a good many of which, i can now see, i did not then understand as they did. i liked to see these girls wading with their dresses tucked up. about this time i fell passionately in love with a girl cousin, but do not remember having any sensual ideas in regard to her. i cannot say that these early experiences had any influence on my later sexual development so far as i am consciously aware. i have always remembered them vaguely, never with sexual excitement. "sexual dreams took place first at about the age of ; there was then emission and sensation in sleep. these were, however, not much associated with distinctly sexual dreams. all that i recall after them was the sensation, which, however, i did not even then absolutely localize. masturbation was undoubtedly the direct result of these dreams. it was tried at first tentatively, out of curiosity to determine if the sensation of the dream could be so reproduced. sexual dreams, such as i have described, occurred frequently, although i cannot say at what interval. i have never experienced the slightest attraction for the same sex." history v.--"my maternal grandfather" (writes the subject of this history) "was a small farmer who kept a few beagles and greyhounds for hare-hunting. he had three daughters, one of whom became my mother. one of his sporting companions, a doctor of profligate habits and a drunkard, seduced my mother at the age of . when her condition was discovered she had to flee from the violence of her father, and i was born some distance from her home. after my grandfather's death i was reared by my grandmother, and saw nothing of my mother until i was nearly ; she had left the country in shame and disgrace. "i believe that in my heredity the transmission comes chiefly from my mother, who is now years old. although her life has been blameless in every particular since her youthful indiscretion, she has never got over it. i feel in my character a reflection of her overstrung condition during pregnancy. "i can distinctly remember from the age of years, and am sure that i had no sexual feelings before the age of , though always in the company of girls. i had many boyish passions for girls, always older than myself, but these were never accompanied by sexual desires. i deified all my sweethearts, and was satisfied if i got a flower, a handkerchief, or even a shred of clothing of my inamorata for the time being. these things gave me a strange idealistic emotion, but caused no sexual desire or erection. "at a -year-old sister of a boy companion once sat down on a sheaf of corn so as to expose the mons veneris and enticed me to copulate. there was slight erection, and after the act had been continued some time a pleasurable sensation of ejaculation, but without true emission. i had frequent relations with this woman after that. "about this time the farm servant of a neighbor taught me masturbation. the mistress of the farm, a thin, willowy, dark woman, the mother of several children, treated me with such familiarity as once to urinate in my presence, so that i saw her very hirsute mons veneris. from that moment i conceived a great passion for her, and used to tremble as soon as i saw her. i had become well developed and virile, but, though i think she was a lustful woman, i never ventured to touch her. i found an extreme ecstasy in masturbating while gazing upon some article of her clothing. this gave me much greater sexual pleasure than actual connection with the ever-willing sister of my schoolfellow. i think i loved the married woman best because the mons veneris was more covered with hair. "this has always had a peculiar attraction for me. later, when accosted by prostitutes, i never would go with them unless i was assured the mons veneris was very hirsute. never much addicted to masturbation, i derived no great enjoyment therefrom unless i had hair or part of the clothing of the woman with whom i was indulging in psychic coitus. "at i left school and went to a large city to learn a business. at this time the sexual appetite was very strong. i frequently had intercourse with three women in one evening. "i have had but few lascivious dreams. in these the phantom partner was almost invariably a dead woman. (when about i had seen the dead body of an aunt who died at .) "when i went to london and took all the pleasure which came my way. i cared only for normal coitus. offers of another type created disgust. i once allowed a woman to exhaust me sexually orally, but felt degraded thereby. women with whom i had become very intimate often urged me to _cunnilingus_, but i could not do it. i have practised intermammary coitus a very few times. "at i married a pure, gentle woman, after having for ten months before marriage led a life of celibacy. my wife died when i was , and for about eight months i lived a celibate life. lascivious dreams sometimes occurred, but i invariably awoke before ejaculation. eventually i gave way to the cravings of my strong sexual nature, but never wished for anything out of the usual except intercourse from behind. a woman with marked development of the nates has great attraction for me. solitary masturbation has for some time ceased, but a nude woman in the act of masturbation with her back to me gives me great pleasure. i am as strong sexually at as i was at , only i never want women unless i am brought into actual contact with them and they are hairy and have large pelvic development. i am in excellent health. genitals are well developed, and i am clothed with hair from the chin to the genitals. my skull is dolichocephalic. i am violent and tenacious in temper, high-strung, and rapid in thought and action. my digestion is good, but i have a tendency to constipation. occasionally i have a twinge of pain below the occipital region. "my early views of women have changed; i no longer deify them, though i study them. i have known very sensual women living at home in respectable middle-class society. one, in particular, a girl of , after coitus used to excite me lingually. i have had a sweetheart who remained _virgo intacta_. had i seduced her, as i could have done, i should have lost all interest in her. i could never bear the presence of naked men, and would never go to a public swimming bath for that reason. i regard myself as a man of abnormally strong, but, on the whole, healthy and wholesome, sexual feelings. as a rule, i have coitus twice or oftener in one week and i practise withdrawal. i am a total abstainer, and never could embrace a woman who smelled of drink." history vi.--the writer of the following is a man of letters, married. "quite early i remember a strange and romantic interest in the feminine. certainly before i was i had a strong affection for a little girl playmate; our family lost sight of hers, and i saw and heard nothing of her for sixteen years; then, hearing she was coming to town, i experienced quite a flutter of heart, so strong had been the impression caused at even the early age of our acquaintance. not that i mean to say i never wavered in between! through the whole of my boyhood i remember persistent romantic interests in girls and women, whose smooth, fair faces and sweet voices exercised ever a subtle attraction over me. before i was i had picked out my 'future wife' a dozen times at least! (a different one each time of course!) curiosity as to the physical detail of sex and birth was singularly absent. possibly this was partly due to the fact that the only younger member of our family was born when i was but years old. grave, shy, and reserved, i was never taken into the counsels of prurient schoolmates. i was unaware that there was such discussion between them--though it is, i suppose, not probable that our school was exempt. i was a great reader, and when about or i came across a reference to an illegitimate child which puzzled me. ere long, however, in my random and extensive reading i hit on a book that touched on phallicism, and i learned that there were male and female organs of generation. i had neither shame nor curiosity; i jumped to the conclusion that during close caresses somehow a subtle aroma arose from the man to fertilize the woman; i left the subject at this, satisfied, and had no inkling of the real intimacy of the embrace. "about , much interested in bradlaugh, i bought both the knowlton pamphlet and mrs. besant's population book. i found the physical details in scientific language so dull that i could not peruse them. by reading the argumentative passages i learned that _somehow_ (i knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so admirable that it should be so that i wondered why there should be cavil. "about this age my elder brother believed it to be his duty to tell me the secrets of sex; i remember his talking to me, while i, bored and uninterested, thought of something else. when he finished i had heard nothing. remember, i felt no shame on the matter--none at all. i was simply bored. this i attribute to two things: first, my preponderating interest in the romantic side of things; secondly (and this bears with it a strong moral), _the feeling that the knowledge lay always within my grasp kept me from that curiosity which so oft consumes those who think it is hidden away from them_. "the changes of puberty came naturally and without startling me. even the fact of emissions--which took place during sleep at intervals, unaccompanied by dreams or by any physical prostration afterward--has left on my memory no recollection of surprise; i knew it to be somehow connected with generation, but i had no physical trouble, and i am quite sure i did not bother further about it. the best possible proof of this lies in the fact that my memory is a blank on the matter. at the age of (i take this from a diary, so i know it is correct) i was still ignorant as to intrinsic fact. then i pulled myself together and felt it was really time i learned the actual details of the matter. i went to a clever friend of mine and asked him to tell me all about it. he expressed himself astounded at my not knowing; and he had very great shyness about telling me. in fact, i had to drag facts out of him by a real cross-examination, during which he persistently marveled at my ignorance. though he had a great deal of false shame about the matter, i had none at all. his revelations considerably surprised me, because i had no idea that there was actual intromission. when i came to reflect on what i had learned the fact of this close physical intimacy appealed to me as being quite poetic and beautiful between two lovers; and i have had no reason since to change my opinion. "_summary._-- . romantic interest in girls and women commencing early and remaining persistently. " . knowledge before puberty of the fact that this interest was based on the all-important process of reproduction. " . absence of further physical curiosity even at puberty itself. " . knowledge ultimately acquired without shock. "the physical in sex has never been any bother to me, neither have i bothered about it. i have recognized it, frankly, and don't see why i shouldn't, but my unashamed recognition has probably been because the merely physical is less absorbing to me than to most. mental and emotional interest in passion has absorbed me greatly, but the merely physical has sunk into what i call its natural place of subordination. nature is kind. it is our 'conspiracy of silence' which tends to emphasize physical detail." history vii.--g.d., who is a doctor and a man of science, writes: "there is a strong history of gout on the paternal side. no history of alcohol, tubercle, brain trouble, or of the arthropathies. there is some reason to believe that two of my maternal aunts were sexually frigid, and perhaps this was true to a less extent of my mother, who had a contracted pelvis, necessitating the induction of labor at the eighth month of pregnancy. "about the age of a german nursery governess, b., took charge of me, and i soon became devoted to her. i was then a delicate child, and used to suffer frequently from nightmare, waking up screaming and covered with sweat. when this happened, b. would sometimes take me into her bed and soothe me with kisses, etc. these i returned, and can remember that i was particularly fond of kissing her breasts. "about this time a girl cousin, a., about a year older than myself, was one of my most frequent playmates. i endeavored to monopolize her company and attention, and on this account often came to blows with c., a cousin rather younger than myself, who has since told me that he was then 'in love' with a. and 'jealous' of me. i believe i was really jealous and in love at the time, but cannot remember that anything in the nature of caresses took place between a. and myself. "some time later, probably when i was about , something led up to b. saying that she was not built like i was, that she had no penis, etc. (i cannot remember my nursery term for penis.) i was incredulous, and demanded to be allowed to see if it was true; this was refused, and i made many plans to gratify my curiosity, such as slipping into her room when she was dressing, tipping up the chair she was sitting in, and trying to suddenly thrust my hand up under her skirts. i did not succeed in finding out, but have since thought that, although she did not allow me to attain the object of my efforts, the later game caused her pleasurable sensations. i regard these efforts as being prompted purely by curiosity; i had no feelings of warmth or irritations of the genitals, and i certainly never manipulated them, nor was i, as far as i can judge, an unusually prurient small boy. b. left when i was about , when i went to a preparatory school. "at ½ i was sent to a public school, and was then told by my father the chief facts of sex and warned to avoid masturbation. my first wet dream took place when i was . rather before this i had begun to suffer with severe intermittent testicular neuralgia which practically defied all treatment and continued on and off for four or five years, the attacks gradually becoming fewer and less severe. "when , circumstances compelled me to leave school and to live for two years at the seaside with no companions of my own age. i had, however, the run of a well-stocked library, and fished and collected insects energetically. "at i made love to the trained nurse attending my mother, but, owing more, i think, to my timidity than to the austerity of her virtue, got no further than kissing. about this time wet dreams became inconveniently frequent; they would occur three or four times weekly, and resisted the stock remedies. at i was advised to try connection. this i did, and found but little pleasure in the act, there being a strong esthetic objection to the 'love that keeps awake for lure.' "about this time i found in the united states pharmacopoeia a remedy for my emissions, which have, however, always remained rather more frequent than those of the average individual, judging from the experience of my friends. emissions are generally accompanied by lascivious dreams, but at times take place when i dream that i am hurrying to catch a train, or to micturate against time. "i have of late years (not noticed till after ) observed that the dream accompanying emission is shorter; so that, whereas up to, say, i generally performed the whole physiological act with my dream-charmer, i now almost invariably emit and awake before intromission has taken place. there has been no alternation comparable to this in the performance of the act while i am awake. "as regards my physique i should mention that all my reflexes are very brisk, though i am only slightly ticklish in the ordinary sense of the term. i sweat easily and am very shy, not only with women, but with any strangers. i have, however, trained myself not to show this. about averagely passionate, i should say, and extremely critical where women are concerned, the latter quality often keeping me chaste for months at a time." history viii.--"when i was about years old" (states the lady who is the subject of the present observation) "i remember that, with several other children, we used to play in an old garden at being father and mother, unfastening our drawers and bringing the sexual parts together, as we imagined married people to do, but no sexual feelings were aroused, nor did the boys have erections." when about years old she became conscious of a pleasurable sensation associated with the smell of leather, which has ever since persisted. at that age she was sometimes left to wait in the office of a wholesale business house full of leather-bound ledgers. she did not then notice the sensation particularly, and was certainly not conscious of any connection with sexual emotion. menstruation was established at ½ years. distinct sexual feelings were first observed a few months later. "the first feelings of love which i ever felt were at the age of for a nice, manly boy of my own age, who often came to our house. he liked me, but was not in love with me. it was very seldom that he would sit by me and hold my hand, as i wished him. this went on till i was about , when he went to the university. after his first term he came back and was then attracted to me; but, though i loved him very much, i was too proud to show it. when he tried to kiss me, i resisted, though i longed for it. thinking i was greatly offended, he apologized, which only made me angry. all these years i was worshiping at his shrine and mixed him up with all my ideas of life." whenever she was near him she experienced physical sensations, with moistening of the vulva. this continued till she was about , but the object of these emotions never again attempted any advances. at she became engaged to someone else. at the beginning she was physically indifferent to her lover, but when he first kissed her she became greatly excited. the engagement, however, was soon broken off from absence of strong affection on either side and chiefly, it would seem, from the cooling of the lover's ardor. she thinks he would have been more strongly attached to her if she had been colder to him, or pretended to be, instead of responding with simplicity and frankness. during the next few years little occurred. she was working hard, and her amusements would mostly, she says, be regarded as rather childish. she was extremely fond of dancing, and she was always pleased when anyone paid her attention. she was frequently conscious of sexual feelings, sometimes tormented by them, and she regarded this as something to be ashamed of. the constant longing for love was affected little or not at all by hard work. "at about this time i was very fond of abandoning myself to day-dreams. i was very glad if i could get everyone out of the house and lie on an easy chair or the bed. i liked especially to read poetry, all the more if i did not quite understand it. this would lead me on to all sorts of dreams of love, which, however, never went beyond the preliminaries of actual love--as that was all i then knew of love." the only climax to her dream of love was founded on a piece of information volunteered by a married woman many years earlier, when she was about . this lady--evidently agreeing with rousseau (who in _emile_ commended the mother's reply to the child's query whence babies come, "les femmes les pissent, mon enfant, avec des grands douleurs") that the unknown should first be explained to the young in terms of the known--told her that the husband micturated into the wife. she therefore used to imagine a lover who would bear her away into a forest and do this on her as she lay at the foot of a tree. (at a later date she accidentally discovered that a full bladder tended to enhance sexual feelings, and occasionally resorted to this physical measure of heightening excitement.) all the physical sensations of sexual desire were called out by these day-dreams, with abundant secretion, but never the orgasm. her reveries never led to masturbation or to allied manifestations, which have never taken place. such a method of relief has, indeed, never offered any temptation to her and she doubts even its possibility in her case. (at a later period of life, however, at the age of , masturbation began and was practised at intervals.) at the same time she remarks that, while no orgasm (of which, indeed, she was then ignorant) ever occurred, the sexual excitement produced by the day-dreams was sufficiently great to cause a feeling of relief afterward. these day-dreams were the only way in which the sexual erethism was discharged. she cannot recall having erotic dreams or any sexual manifestations during sleep. spontaneous sexual excitement was present a few days before menstruation, and fairly marked during and immediately after the period. it also tended to recur in the middle of the intermenstrual period. the pleasurable sensation connected with the smell of leather became more marked as she approached adult age. it was especially pronounced about the age of , and the sexual emotion it produced (with moisture of the vulva) was then clearly conscious. no other odor produced this effect in such a marked degree. it was often associated with leather bags, but not with boots, though on rubbing the leather of shoes she found that this odor was given out. she cannot account for its origin, and does not connect any association with it. it never affected her conduct or led to fetichistic habits. some other odors affect her in the same way, though not to the same degree as leather. this is more especially the case with some flowers, especially white flowers with heavy odors, like gardenias. many flowers, on the other hand, like primroses, seem rather opposed to sex effect, too fresh, though stimulating to the mind. some artificial scents tend to produce sexual effects also. personal odors have no influence of this kind. (at a later period the sexual influence of personal odors was occasionally experienced, but the present history deals only with the period before marriage.) she believes that most beautiful things, however unconnected with sex, have a tendency to produce distinctively sexual feelings in a faint degree, although sometimes more marked, with secretion. she has, however, never experienced homosexual feeling, and, on first consideration, was inclined to believe that the sight of a beautiful woman had no sexual effect on her, though she could quite understand such an effect. subsequently, on recalling as well as observing her experiences more carefully, she found that a lovely woman's face and figure (especially on one occasion the very graceful figure of a beautiful fairy in a ballet) produced distinct sexual sensations (with mucous emission). music, however, has strongly emotional effects upon her, and she cannot recall that she ever felt any equally powerful influence of this kind in the absence of music. looking back on the development of her feelings she finds that, though in some respects they may have been slow, they were simple, natural, spontaneous, and correspond to "the dawning and progress which go on in the development of every girl. while it is going on in actual fact, the girl does not know or bother herself about trying to understand it. afterward it seems quite clear and simple. full occupation of the brain, and hands too, while it does not do away with desire, is a great help and safeguard to a growing girl, when combined with proper information about herself and her relation to man the animal, so that she may realize where she is and how to choose the right man--though under the best conditions failure may occur." history ix.--the subject belongs to a large family having some neurotic members; she spent her early life on a large farm. she is vigorous and energetic, has intellectual tastes, and is accustomed to think for herself, from unconventional standpoints, on many subjects. her parents were very religious, and not, she thinks, of sensual temperament. her own early life was free from associations of a sexual character, and she can recall little that now seems to be significant in this respect. she remembers that in childhood and for some time later she believed that children were born through the navel. her activities went chiefly into humanitarian and utopian directions, and she cherished ideas of a large, healthy, free life, untrammeled by civilization. she regards herself as very passionate, but her sexual emotions appear to have developed very slowly and have been somewhat intellectualized. after reaching adult life she has formed several successive relationships with men to whom she has been attracted by affinity in temperament, in intellectual views, and in tastes. these relationships have usually been followed by some degree of disillusion, and so have been dissolved. she does not believe in legal marriage, though under fitting circumstances she would much like to have a child. she never masturbated until the age of . at that time a married friend told her that such a thing could be done. she found it gave her decided pleasure, indeed, more than coitus had ever given her except with one man. she has never practised it to excess, only at rare intervals, and is of the opinion that it is decidedly beneficial when thus moderately indulged in. she has sometimes found, for instance, that, after the mental excitement produced by delivering a lecture, sleep would be impossible if masturbation were not resorted to as a sedative to relieve the tension. spontaneous sexual excitement is strongest just before the monthly period. definite sexual dreams and sexual excitement during sleep have not occurred except possibly on one or two occasions. she has from girlhood experienced erotic day-dreams, imagining love-stories of which she herself was the heroine; the climax of these stories has developed with her own developing knowledge of sexual matters. she is not inverted, and has never been in love with a woman. she finds, however, that a beautiful woman is distinctly a sexual excitation, calling out definite physical manifestations of sexual emotion. she explains this by saying that she thinks she instinctively puts herself in the place of a man and feels as it seems to her a man would feel. she finds that music excites the sexual emotions, as well as many scents, whether of flowers, the personal odor of the beloved person, or artificial perfumes. history x.--the subject is of german extraction on both sides. the father is of marked intellectual tastes, as also is she herself. there is no unhealthy strain in the family so far as she is aware, though they all have very strong passions. she is well developed, healthy, vigorous, and athletic, any trouble to which she is subject being mainly due to overwork. looking back on her childhood, she can now see various sexual manifestations occurring at a period when she was quite ignorant of sex matters. "the very first," she writes, "was at the age of . i remember once sitting astride a banister while my parents were waiting for me outside. i distinctly remember a pleasurable sensation--probably in part due to a physical feeling--in the thought of staying there when i knew i ought to have run out to them. from that year till the age of i simply reveled in the idea of being tortured. i went gladly to bed every night to imagine myself a slave, chained, beaten, made to carry loads and do ignominious work. one of my imaginings, i remember, was that i was chained to a moldering skeleton." as she grew older these fancies were discontinued. at the same time there was a trace of sadistic tendency: "i used to frighten and tease a young child, driven to it by an irresistible impulse, and experiencing a certain pleasurable feeling in so doing. but this, i am glad to say, was rare, as i hate all cruelty." one of her favorite imaginings as a child was that she was a boy, and especially that she was a knight rescuing damsels in distress. she was not fond of girls' occupations, and has always had a sort of chivalrous feeling toward women. "when i first heard of the sexual act," she writes, "it appeared to me so absurd that i took little notice. about the age of i discussed it a good deal with other girls, and we used to play childishly indecent games--out of pure mischief and not from any definite physical feeling." about a year after menstruation was established she accidentally discovered the act of masturbation by leaning over a table. "i discovered it naturally; no one taught me; and the very naturalness of the impulse that led me to it often made me in later years question the harmfulness." both her sisters masturbated from a very early age, but not, to her knowledge, her brother. the practice of masturbation was continued. "for many years, imbued with the old ideas of morality, i struggled against it in vain. the sight of animals copulating, the perusal of various books (shakespeare, rabelais, gautier's _mademoiselle de maupin_, etc.), the sight of the nude in some bacchanalian pictures (such as rubens's), all aroused passion. coexistent with this--perhaps (though i doubt it) due to it--arose a disgust for normal intercourse. i fell in love and enjoyed kisses, etc., but the mere thought of anything beyond disgusted me. had my lover suggested such a thing i would have lost all love for him. but all this time i went on masturbating, though as seldom as possible and without thought of my lover. love was to me a thing ideal and quite apart from lust, and i still think that it is false to try to connect the two. i fear that even now, if i fell in love, sexual intercourse would break the charm. at the age of i came across tolstoy's _kreutzer sonata_ and was overjoyed to find all i had thought written down there. gradually, through seeing a friend happily married, i have grown to a more normal view of things. i am very critical of men and have never met one liberal-minded and just enough to please me. perhaps if i did i might take a perfectly healthy view of things." in course of time various devices had been adopted to heighten sexual excitement when indulging in masturbation. thus, for instance, she found that the effects of sexual excitement are increased by keeping the bladder full. but the chief method which she had devised for heightening and prolonging the preliminary excitement consisted in wearing tight stays (as a rule, she wears loose stays) and in painting her face. she cannot herself explain this. self-excitement is completed by friction, or sometimes by the introduction of a piece of wood into the vagina. she finds that, the more frequently she masturbates, the more easily she is excited. spontaneous sexual feeling is strongest before and after the menstrual period; not so much so during the periods. there are various faint traces of homosexuality, it may be gathered, in the history of this subject's sexual development. recently these have come to a climax in the formation of a homosexual relationship with a girl friend. this relationship has given her great pleasure and satisfaction. she does not, however, regard herself as being a really inverted person. there have been vivid sexual dreams from about (apparently about the period of the relationship with the lover). these dreams have not, however, had special reference to persons of either sex. apart from the influence of books and pictures already mentioned, she remarks that she is sexually affected by the personal odor of a beloved person, but is not consciously affected by any other odors. history xi.--widower, aged years. surgeon. "my experience of sexual matters began early. when i was about years of age a boy friend who was staying with us told me that his sister made him uncover his person, with which she played and encouraged him to do the same for her. he said it was great fun, and suggested that we should take two of my sisters into an old barn and repeat his experience on them. this we did, and tried all we could to have connection with them; they were nothing loath and did all they could to help us, but nothing was effected and i experienced no pleasure in it. "when i went back to school i attracted the attention of one of the big boys who slept in the same room with me; he came into my bed and began to play with my member, saying that it was the usual thing to do and would give me pleasure. i did not feel any pleasure, but i liked the attention, and rather enjoyed playing with his member, which was of large size, and surrounded by thick pubic hair. after i had played with him for some time i was surprised at his having an emission of sticky matter. afterward he rubbed me again, saying that if i let him do it long enough he would produce the same substance from me. this he failed to do, however, though he rubbed me long and frequently, on that and many other occasions. i was very disappointed at not being able to have an emission, and on every occasion that offered i endeavored to excite myself to the extent of compassing this. i used to ask to go out of school two or three times a day, and retired to the closet, where i practised on myself most diligently, but to no purpose, at that time, though i began to have pleasurable emotions in the act. "when i went home for the holidays i took a great interest in one of my father's maids, whose legs i felt as she ran upstairs one day. i was in great fear that she would complain of what i had done, but i was delighted to find that she did nothing of the sort; on the contrary, she took to kissing and fondling me, calling me her sweetheart and saying that i was a forward boy. this encouraged me greatly, and i was not long in getting to more intimate relations with her. she called me into her room one day when we were alone in the house, she being in a half-dressed condition, and put me on the bed and laid herself on me, kissing me passionately on the mouth. she next unbuttoned my trousers and fondled and kissed my member, and directed my hand to her privates. i became very much excited and trembled violently, but was able to do for her what she wanted in the way of masturbation until she became wet. after this we had many meetings in which we embraced and she let me introduce my member until she had satisfied herself, though i was too young to have an emission. "on return to school i practised mutual masturbation with several of my schoolfellows, and finally, at the age of years, had my first real emission. i was greatly pleased thereat, and, with this and the growth of hair which began to show on my pubis, began to feel myself quite a man. i loved lying in the arms of another boy, pressing against his body, and fondling his person and being fondled by him in return. we always finished up with mutual masturbation. we never indulged in any unnatural connections. "after leaving school i had no opportunity of indulging in relations with my own sex, and, indeed, did not wish for such, as i became a slave to the charms of the other sex, and passed most of my time in either enjoying, or planning to enjoy, love passages with them. "the sight of a woman's limbs or bust, especially if partly hidden by pretty underclothing, and the more so if seen by stealth, was sufficient to give a lustful feeling and a violent erection, accompanied by palpitation of the heart and throbbing in the head. "i had frequent coitus at the age of , as well as masturbating regularly. i liked to perform masturbation on a girl, even more than i liked having connection with her; and this was especially so in the case of girls who had never had masturbation practised on them before; i loved to see the look of surprised pleasure appear on their faces as they felt the delightful and novel sensation. "to gratify this desire i persuaded dozens of girls to allow me to take liberties with them, and it would surprise you to learn what a number of girls, many of them in good social position, permitted me the liberty i desired, though the supply was never equal to my demand. "with a view to enlarging my opportunities i took up the study of medicine as a profession, and reveled in the chances it gave of being on intimate sexual terms with many who would have been, otherwise, out of my reach. "at the age of i married the daughter of an officer, a beautiful girl with a fully developed figure and an amorous disposition. while engaged, we used to pass hours wrapped in each other's arms, practising mutual masturbation, or i would kiss her passionately on the mouth, introducing my tongue into her mouth at intervals, with the invariable result that i had an emission and she went off into sighs and shivers. after marriage we practised all sorts of fancy coitus, _coitus reservatus_, etc., and rarely passed twenty-four hours without two conjunctions, until she got far on in the family way, and our play had to cease for a while. "during this interval i went to stay at the house of an old schoolfellow, who had been one of my lovers of days gone by. it happened that on account of the number of guests staying in the house the bed accommodation was somewhat scanty, and i agreed to share my friend's bedroom. the sight of his naked body as he undressed gave rise to lustful feelings in me; and when he had turned out the light i stole across to his bed and got in beside him. he made no objection, and we passed the night in mutual masturbation and embraces, _coitus inter femora_, etc. i was surprised to find how much i preferred this state of affairs to coitus with my wife, and determined to enjoy the occasion to the full. we passed a fortnight together in the above fashion, and, though i afterward went back and did my duty by my wife, i never took the same pleasure in her again, and when she died, five years later, i felt no inclination to contract another marriage, but devoted myself heart and soul to my old school-friend, with whom i continued tender relations until his death by accident last year. since then i have lost all interest in life." "the patient," writes the well-known alienist to whom i am indebted for the above history, "consulted me lately. i found him a fairly healthy man to look at, suffering from some neurasthenia and a tendency to melancholia. generative organs large, one testicle shows some wasting, pubic hair abundant, form of body distinctly masculine; temperament neurotic. he improved under treatment, and, after seeing me three times and writing out the above history, came no more." history xii.--mrs. b., aged . father's family normal; mother's family clever, eccentric, somewhat neuropathic. she is herself normal, good-looking, usually healthy, highly intelligent, and with much practical ability, though at some periods of life, and especially in childhood, she has shared to some extent in the high-strung and supersensitive temperament of her mother's family. as a child she was sometimes spoiled and sometimes cuffed, and suffered tortures from nervousness. she has, however, acquired a large measure of self-control. the first sensations which she now recognizes as sexual were experienced at the age of , when her mother gave her an injection; afterward she declared herself unable to relieve her bowels naturally in order to obtain a repetition of this experience, which was several times repeated. at the age of a man pursued her with attentions and attempted to take liberties, but she rejected his advances in terror; four years later another man attempted to assault her, but she resisted vigorously, struck him, and escaped by running. neither of these sexual attempts appears to have left any serious permanent impression on the child's mind. at the age of , when her mother was giving her a bath, the sensation of her mother's fingers touching her private parts gave her what she now knows to be sexual feelings, and a year later when taking her bath she would pour hot water on to the sexual region in order to cause these sensations; this did not lead to masturbation, but she had a vague idea that it was "wrong." at the age of menstruation began; she suffered very severely from dysmenorrhea, the period sometimes lasting for ten days, and the pain being often extreme. she was not treated for this condition, her mother being of opinion that she would outgrow it. from the age of or until , or about the period of her marriage, she suffered from anemia. she had little curiosity about sexual matters; her mother wished that she should always come to her for information about things she became acquainted with as to the general facts of sex; she did not, however, know definitely the facts of copulation until her marriage. she knew nothing of erection or semen, and thought that when a man and woman placed their organs together a child resulted. she hated talking about these subjects indecently, and would not listen to the sexual conversation of her schoolfellows. she never felt any homosexual attraction. once another girl was much in love with her, but she despised and disliked her attentions; again, when a girl much older than herself, a friend of her mother's, slept with her and made advances, she repelled her and refused to sleep with her again. she always got on well with men, and men were attracted to her. she was direct and sincere, without undue modesty. but she never allowed men to touch her or kiss her. she was a good dancer, and fond of dancing, but denies that it ever led to sexual feelings. she never felt any sexual attraction for a man until, at the age of , she fell in love with her future husband five years or more before marriage. at this period she began to feel vague discomfort, which she knew to be localized near her sexual organs. she was aware, in a dim way, that it was connected with her love, and was of a sexual nature. but there was no definite idea of sexual intercourse. she felt nervous and depressed. if she had been asked to state what would relieve her, she could only have said b.'s presence and tenderness. a few days before he declared his love she experienced the nearest approach to sexual feeling she had ever had. it was summer and, with b. and some of her family, she had gone on a little expedition. one evening, in the train after a day's excursion, b. took her hand (unperceived by the others) and held it for some time. this aroused the strongest emotions in her; she closed her eyes, and, though she was not at the time aware that her sensations were localized in her sexual organs, she thinks, in the light of subsequent knowledge, that she then experienced the orgasm. during the engagement, which lasted between two and three years, circumstances prevented frequent meetings. b. would kiss her, suck her nipples, which became erect, and lie on her. she allowed him to take these liberties, feeling that if she refused him all satisfaction he might have relations with other women. she still felt no definite desire for contact of the sexual organs. she longed rather to be embraced and kissed, and to lie in her lover's arms all night. a few months before marriage, however, she masturbated occasionally, just before or just after menstruation, imagining, while doing it, that she was in her lover's arms. the act was usually followed by a sick feeling. just before marriage she underwent an operation for the relief of the dysmenorrhea. she was somewhat shocked and sickened by the experiences of the wedding night. it seemed to her that her husband approached her with the violence of an animal, and there was some difficulty in effecting entrance. coitus, though incomplete, took place some seven times on this first night. the bleeding from rupture of the hymen continued, so that for two days she had to wear a towel. for two months subsequently there was great pain during intercourse, although she suppressed the indications of this. there were several children born of the marriage and for some years she lived happily, on the whole, with her husband, notwithstanding various hardships and difficulties and some incompatibility of temper. as regards her sexual feelings she considers, from what other women have told her, that her feelings are, if anything, stronger than the average. the orgasm, however, was not fully developed until about five years after marriage. sexual feeling is most pronounced before, during, and after the menstrual period, more especially before and about the third day (the period usually lasts from five to seven days). there is more sexual desire during pregnancy, especially toward the end, than at any other time. she never refused normal intercourse to her husband, but any abnormal or perverted method of sexual gratification is repellent. she was awakened one night about the third month of pregnancy by her husband inserting his penis _in ore_; the child was born with palate defect and she is herself inclined to believe that this incident was the cause of the defect. though she desires normal intercourse, she has seldom obtained complete gratification. for a long time she disliked seeing or touching the penis, and the feel, and especially the smell, of the semen produced nausea and even vomiting. (she has a very delicate sense of smell as well as of taste; though fond of the scent of flowers, no sexual feelings are thus aroused.) withdrawal and the use of condoms are unsatisfactory to her, and mutual masturbation gives no relief and produces headache. feelings of friendship for her husband have been most potent in arousing the sexual emotions, and she has had most pleasure in intercourse after a day spent in bicycling together. she has been for many months at a time without sexual intercourse, and during such periods has suffered much from pain in the head; this, however, she has now completely surmounted. she eventually discovered that her husband's abstinence from marital intercourse was due to infidelity. this led to a definite separation. she still occasionally experiences sexual desire, but has no inclination to masturbate. her life is full and busy, affording ample scope for her energies and intelligence; moreover, she has her children to train and educate. she herself believes that her sexual life is at an end. history xiii.--g.r., army officer. "i am years of age. my parents married at the ages of and , and my father is now and my mother ; both are particularly strong and healthy in body and mind. i am of old lineage on both sides, and know of no disease, defect, or abnormality among any of my ancestors or relations, except that my mother's family has a slight tendency to drink and excess, the present members of it all being considered eccentric. i have one brother and one sister living (brother unmarried, sister with several children) and am the youngest of a family of five. my brother is abnormal, but i don't know exactly in what way or from what cause. i have a strong suspicion that he masturbates to excess. my father is artistic and my mother musical. i have no aptitude for either, but appreciate both enormously, though not until about ten years ago. my principal reading is religion, science, and philosophy, with an occasional standard novel, or a modern novel of the 'improper' type by way of relaxation. i became a convinced and militant rationalist about five years ago, but have been an unbeliever since i left school. i was anemic and threatened with bowel complaint at the age of , and was in consequence taken abroad for my health. i am now strong and vigorous, with great powers of endurance, and enjoy all forms of sport and exercise, particularly hunting, pig-sticking, and polo. i drink a lot, and am never fitter than when eating, drinking, and taking exercise in what most people would call excess. it takes more alcohol than i can hold to make me drunk when in england; but not so in the east. i have been told that i am very good-looking. "when i was about or i was constantly chaffed by my older companions about putting my hand down my trousers and playing with my privates. i don't remember getting an erection, nor at what age this first occurred with me. at one time my brother and i used to play about with my sister's underclothing, and took great pleasure in it, but we never saw her genitals. she told us that on carefully examining herself one day she was glad to find that she had a small penis like boys had--doubtless the clitoris. when in france, at the age of to , i began to notice the sexual parts of animals, and was very keen to know what mares kept between their hind legs. later on i took great pleasure with another boy in feeling the teats of a she-ass, and, by myself, the penis of a donkey, as i had seen the french grooms do; but i took no interest in my own penis. i used to put my finger as far up the anus as it would go, and got a vague satisfaction from it. i went to a small private school at the age of , having been previously told by my mother of the manner of birth of men and animals, of which i was quite ignorant till then. she made no mention of the part taken by the father, and i never thought about it. even then i was left with the impression that one was born through the navel. i was initiated at school, and used to handle the penis of the boy who told me. on several occasions i did _fellatio_ for him, and liked it, but he never offered to do the same for me, and i don't think he got much satisfaction out of it. soon after this i became conscious of pleasurable sensations when lying on my stomach with an erection, and used occasionally to gratify myself that way, caring little for the school tradition that it was 'wicked' and bad for one. on one occasion, when talking at night with another boy, we compared our organs, both in erection, and i then for the first time thought of trying what i had heard vaguely mentioned, viz., two boys playing at man and woman. i lay on him with my penis on his stomach and almost at once had an orgasm with emission, and experienced acute pleasure, though both he and i supposed that i had involuntarily micturated. i was when this happened. i did it once more with him before i left, this time the other way up, so as to spare him the unpleasantness. i used to like kissing and hugging the smaller boys, and had a great eye for good looks. on going home for the holidays i masturbated with my hand out of curiosity to see what happened when the orgasm occurred, and then only did i fully understand the nature of the act. after this the rush and strangeness of a large public school distracted my attention, but i heard about wet dreams, masturbation, and homosexuality from the other boys, and soon became thoroughly initiated. i believe the tone of my house, if not of the whole school, was exceptionally bad; though it may only be that i saw more of it because i was attracted by it, and that other schools are the same really. things involving certain expulsion if found out were done more or less in public, and i have myself openly got into bed with or masturbated other boys, and on more than one occasion have helped forcibly to masturbate small boys or to hold them while others had connection with them, the idea of the last two acts being that the boy would thereby be seduced and become available for, and willing to perform, homosexuality. before i became big enough to have boys myself i masturbated frequently (on one occasion three times in the day), and invariably by lying on my stomach without the use of the hands. in having connection with other boys i used to do it between the thighs or on the stomach, and i never heard of any other way at that school. _pædicatio_ would disgust me, and, moreover, would deprive me of the principal pleasure of intercourse, viz., the feeling of lying face to face and stomach to stomach. of course, the satisfaction used to be mutual, but, though good-looking, i was never the passive party only, like some small boys who might be called professionals and whom i used to pay for their services. i went back after i had left and had a boy in the dark whom i had never seen before, having been told that he was all right. i used to have a very genuine affection for any party to my pleasure, though i took delight in torturing one in particular, but for what reason i cannot say. for one boy i developed a deep love, which lasted long after we had left school and had ceased all sexual connection. this love was as strong as anything i have ever felt since. "i don't remember whether it was while i was at school or later that i first began again to take a sexual interest in animals. i used to masturbate a good deal and was always trying to find new ways of doing it and new substances to lie on. it was while feeling the vulva of a young mare that the brilliant thought struck me of trying to copulate with her, and thus getting the advantage of the soft vagina. it afforded me great satisfaction and i had an emission, though i did not then, nor at any other time with any other animal, succeed in penetrating properly. i afterward did the same with other mares and with a certain cow whenever i got a safe opportunity, which was not as often as i could have wished. i have not had connection with an animal for about ten years, but would have no objection to doing so, and feel sure i could perform the act properly now. after i left school at , i occasionally had longings for boys, but it was the exception and not the rule. i continued to masturbate, but not to excess, and used to make ineffectual efforts to stop it, but never succeeded for very long. when i was confirmed, at the age of , i became intensely religious, and was so remorseful at my first lapse from virtue that i burnt my leg with a red-hot poker, and i bear the scar still. on leaving school i went to germany and there had my first coitus with a woman, a fat old german who gave me very little satisfaction. my next, a jewess, gave me more than i asked for, in the shape of a soft chancre. in my ignorance i never had it treated, but it must have been very mild, for it disappeared of its own accord. when cramming in england i occasionally went home with a prostitute, but did not care much about them and could not afford good ones. on one occasion i was impotent. it may have been through drink, but it disgusted me with myself. i liked seeing the women naked, and always insisted that they should strip, especially the breasts, which i liked large and full. i had not learned to kiss on the lips, and had no desire to kiss the body, except the breasts, which i was generally too shy to do. but as i nearly always wore a condom and found penetration difficult i did not much enjoy the actual coitus. i am fully convinced that if women had been more accessible, if i had not thought myself bound to use preventives in self-defense, and if the act had not been looked upon with such disfavor by those in authority over me, i should have masturbated less or not at all, and would not have been tempted to bestiality. when i was i had coitus with a girl who was not a prostitute for the first time. i was violently excited and enjoyed it more than anything i had yet experienced, in spite of the facts that she would not undress and insisted on withdrawal before emission. on one other occasion only have i had coitus with a non-professional unmarried woman. shortly after this i caught syphilis from a girl of the streets. i was circumcised and stayed in a private hospital for six weeks. it never went beyond the primary stage, and i have felt no ill effects from it, except that i have got a hydrocele in the right testicle. of course, this incident necessitated the use of a condom on every occasion, and it greatly spoiled my pleasure. about this time a brother-officer older than myself made advances to me. he compared me to a greek statue, and wanted to kiss me. i would have nothing to do with him, but was glad to have his confessions of homosexuality and somewhat surprised to learn that he was not alone in the regiment. i afterward fell in love with his sister, and he married and had children. he was bisexual in his inclinations, but was really in love with me for a short time. "i had little to do with professionals until i went to south africa, and though i was fond of ladies' society, and liked by ladies, i looked upon them as something apart, especially married women, and never attempted to take liberties with them; though i used to with shopgirls, etc., in my cramming days, and had often been in love. in south africa i first began really to enjoy coitus, and on going to india continued to do so; in fact, i thought sexually of nothing else and rarely masturbated,--perhaps once in three weeks. i would go to brothels wherever they were available, durban, cape town, colombo, calcutta, bombay, and at one time preferred black women to white. i used to have horrible orgies with my brother-officers, and on one occasion i ordered six women to my bungalow in order to celebrate my birthday, and made a present of them to five of my friends after dinner. during this period, and until i went home, i rarely spoke to a lady, the chief exception being no. , a brother-officer's wife, with whom i began to be in love. "shortly after the south african war i fell violently in love with a young brother-officer, 'z.' it amounted to a passion and i was forced to make overtures to him. he did not understand, being ignorant of homosexuality and quite virile, and would have nothing to do with me, though he was very nice about it. this lasted for about a year, and then, thinking no doubt that he had better stop it, as i was really making myself very ridiculous and was mad with love, he threw me up altogether. i was intensely miserable for some time, and then i recovered and we made it up, and are now firm friends. i still want to kiss and stroke him when i see him naked, but would do nothing more. i went home by way of japan after several years' absence from home, taking the women of the eastern ports as i went, until i contracted gonorrhea in the tokio yoshiwara. i could not get rid of it, and arrived home in that state, having been deprived of the pleasure of trying several new races on the way in consequence. in england i rushed into a society which i had quit on such different terms, and it received me with open arms. i very soon began a flirtation with a married woman, and she completed my education in kissing which had been begun by the japanese harlots. i was just coming to the point with this woman when i met no. again, and my love for her was at once renewed. i told her so, but i knew that she did not return it. i then became attracted to no. , a girl older than myself, whom i had known all my life. i kissed her and fondled her breasts; but she would not allow anything else, until one night, when in the train with her, i got my hand down farther than she intended. it ended in my performing _cunnilingus_ on her first, and then obtaining satisfaction between her thighs--a large step to take after the former limitations. previous to this i had on several occasions obtained an emission, without meaning to, by lying on her fully dressed. she was aware of my disease, which by that time had become a gleet and did not inconvenience me in any way. from that time until i went back to india we went through the same performance whenever possible, i masturbating her sometimes with the finger, sometimes with the tongue, and having connection with various parts of her body, including the breasts, but always with a condom on account of my disease. she used to strip for my edification, and we frequently spent the night in the same bed. i was attracted to her mentally, but not very much physically; that is to say, that if circumstances had not thrown us together i should never have picked her out from other girls as being sexually attractive to me. i returned to india, and to no. , though i kept faithful to no. in word and deed for five months, but gradually the overmastering influence of no. reasserted itself over me. and then i met no. . we were attracted to each other at first acquaintance, and the attraction was mental and sexual. she was married and in love with another man, but that did not prevent her from kissing me. i felt her breasts, masturbated her, and had emissions by lying on her, but she drew the line at one thing, viz., kissing on the lips; and i drew it at coitus. we arranged a trip together during which i went to bed with her, but never had coitus, though we both had frequent orgasms in other ways. before starting on this trip i had thought that i should not see no. again, and she let me kiss her, to my unspeakable joy. circumstances, however, intervened, and i went straight to no. after parting with no. , told her all i had done, and then kissed her again, leaving her just before her real lover, with whom she was then living, arrived. later i returned again to no. , now in child to her lover. we lived together for three nights in spite of this. she then went home, and i had no connection with any woman for two years, except one black woman, being consumed with love and worship for no. . i was much in society, but never had any luck. at the end of this time i was traveling one night with a young officer ('x'), slight and effeminate and preferring men to women, with whom i had been until then on friendly but not intimate terms. i watched him undress and go to bed, and then, having myself undressed, went over to his bunk and put my hand under his clothes. he at once responded, and i got into his bed, both of us being in a frenzy of passion and surprise. but i was fairly sure of my ground or i would not have dared to take the risk. i used often to go to his bed after this, and on one occasion had coitus with a girl on a chair at a ball and the next night with my young officer. i scarcely knew the girl, and don't know her name now, but i took her measure, made her excited by manipulation and kissing, and then got her consent. i did not harm her, even if i had been the first, for orgasm occurred before i had penetrated beyond the lips. x surprised me by telling me that he had had connection with three other officers in my regiment, as well as with several others in the same station. he would not tell me their names, but i guessed easily enough. he used to drink heavily, and once i got into his bed when he was in a drunken stupor and he was quite unaware that i was there for some time. i myself was drinking too much at this time, and was frequently drunk before dinner. in the hot weather that followed i had one orgy in bombay which lasted three nights. i started on a greek and a pole and finished up with a japanese, two brother-officers accompanying me. afterward i was much alone during the day in my bungalow, and used to become possessed by intense desire. i masturbated occasionally, but by this time took but little pleasure in it, always craving for the moist human vagina. i had often heard, and myself quoted, the pathan proverb 'women for breeding; boys for pleasure; melons for delight,' and one day when seeking for some novelty with which to masturbate, and my eye being caught by a melon put ready for me to eat, it flashed across me to try whether the proverb was in any way true. i found it most satisfactory, and practised it several times after that, the pepita (papaye or pawpaw) being the nearest approach to the human vagina. the opportune arrival of a fairly good-looking punkah woman, however, put an end to this form of enjoyment by providing me with what i wanted. soon afterward i went home again, taking the japanese at bombay on my way. "i had kept up a correspondence with no. all this time, but we had made a compact that whatever each did until we met again was not to count, and i knew that she had had at least one liaison since our parting, and was in entire ignorance of the state of her feelings toward me. therefore, while trying to arrange a meeting with her, i took the first thing that chance threw in my way, thinking a bird in the hand better than the off chance of a better one in the bush. this was no. , with whom i spent three days at the seaside after having first had coitus with her in my own home while she was in the monthly state. immediately on parting from her i came home to receive no. . the first time we were alone she kissed me, and this was followed by mutual confessions and coitus, though at first she said my affair was too recent. i agreed not to have connection again with no. , and kept to this until when staying in the same house again with her i was tempted beyond my powers; and i may add that she gave me no assistance in keeping this promise, of which she was fully cognizant. i at once wrote and confessed to no. , and she very naturally would have nothing more to do with me. but i managed to reconcile her, and we afterward lived together for three days in the country, as well as in london and in her own house. meanwhile no. had been making advances to me which i could not well refuse, being a very old friend. nos. and were on one occasion staying together at my house, just after i had been faithless to no. with no. . i could not very well sleep with them both, so at the earnest entreaty of no. i went to her room first, told her my reasons for not having connection with her, left her in tears, and then went and slept with no. . this is the only transaction i have ever concealed from no. ; but no. knows my whole story and accepts the situation of being only second so long as i give her satisfaction whenever possible. about this time i again met no. and kissed and masturbated her in a cab, but she would not allow me to go home with her. at the bidding of no. i now broke entirely with no. , to the great grief and astonishment of my sister, whose friend she was. shortly after this i again returned to india, where i quarreled hopelessly with no. , and i don't know to this day what my fault was, except that she had got tired of me. her influence over me is, however, too great to be so easily broken, and i would return to her tomorrow if she moved a finger in reconciliation. during the following hot weather i slowly but surely, albeit quite unconsciously, obtained an influence over no. , and it ended by her falling desperately in love with me and allowing me to do what i liked. i did not love her, and told her about no. , whose image always remained in the back of my vision, whatever i was doing. she also accepted the situation, and i don't think has any grievance against me. for my part i have nothing but thanks and gratitude and as much love as i am capable of to give her, and all the other women with whom i have had any sexual relations. the following is a short account of the above women:-- "no. . had coitus before marriage, for love and with full knowledge of the nature of the act. agreement with her husband not to have coitus rigidly adhered to by both. has had connection with five other men since marriage. very passionate, but faddy and particular. slow at producing orgasm. likes being in bed naked, and liked me once for having kissed her mons veneris. thin, with undeveloped breasts. brilliant, good-looking. artistic and highly intellectual. never masturbated, and did not know of homosexuality among women; very sensitive to touch on the pudenda. "no. . has had sexual relations, but never coitus, with many men. mutually masturbated with one man. masturbated herself frequently, and took a long time to produce orgasm, even with _cunnilingus_, which delighted her immensely. after having it performed, she would stoop down and passionately kiss my lips. fond of prolonged kisses, during which the tongue played a prominent part. tall and fully developed, but no looks. clever, masculine brain, and strong physically. skillfully concealed her passionate nature, which, however, was long in developing and was long kept in check by maidenly modesty. "no. . innocent before marriage, and hated her _fiancé_ even to touch her, which feeling still persists. has had liaisons with many men, and several miscarriages, one legitimate, others illegitimate, and one illegitimate child. does not masturbate herself, but readily yields to its seduction when performed by others. the most passionate woman i have ever met. good, typical, womanly figure, but thin and weak. not much looks, but very fascinating to men. clever and intellectual. "no. . coitus only with her husband before myself. not very passionate. i know nothing about masturbation or homosexuality in her case. very broad hips, large breasts, and well-developed nates. deserted by her husband. no children. rather foolish and weak-minded. penetration difficult owing to long labia majora. "no. . knows all about homosexuality of both sexes and wants to know more about everything. probably masturbates. several children. in love with her husband at first, but now tired of him and took to other men for variety and because her husband had ceased to give her sexual pleasure. very passionate; has slow orgasm; likes nakedness and contact of body. very large vagina. broad hips and full breasts. intellectual, but not so by nature. artistic and very musical. "no. . absolutely innocent before marriage. was practically raped by her husband on her marriage night. this disgusted her with the whole performance, and she could not bear her husband's caresses. during pregnancy she was frightened because she did not know what was going to happen, i.e., how the child was going to be born; and no one enlightened her,--doctor, nurse, or mother. did not know the meaning of the words sexual feeling, and never thought about sexual matters at all until marriage. i roused her passion, put things in their true light, made her have an orgasm, and told her what it meant. the orgasms at first made her cry and nearly faint, and she thereafter became intensely passionate. very excited at cunnilingus, which i practised on her more than once. she confessed that the orgasm was stronger and more complete during coitus than during masturbation, which relieved my mind. she volunteered to strip naked and has but little shyness with me. cannot bear her husband yet. she admits that she was only half a woman before she knew me, but now regrets her marriage. short, thin, and slight, with narrow hips and no breasts. quick woman's wit, but not intellectual. "of the prostitutes i have known, perhaps in number, the japanese easily take the palm. they are scrupulously clean, have charming manners and beautiful bodies, and take an intelligent interest in the proceedings. also they are not always thinking about the money. perhaps the kashmiris come next, though the chinese run them very close. some of the more expensive london women are bearable, but they are such harlots! the white women in the east are insupportable, and small wonder, for they consist of the dregs of the european and american markets. my list comprises english, french, german, italian, spanish-american, american, bengali, punjabi, kashmiri, kaffir, singhalese, tamil, burmese, malay, japanese, chinese, greek, and pole. "i naturally prefer to satisfy myself with a woman, a friend and a lady of my own class; but in the absence of the best i gladly take the next best available, down the scale from a lady for whom i do not care to prostitutes of all classes and colors, men, boys, animals, melons, and masturbation. i would as cheerfully have connection with my sister, or any other female relative. i have frequent erotic dreams about the most extraordinary subjects--male and female relations, casual acquaintances of both sexes, and animals. when i have got an intrigue in hand with a woman, i have no wish to masturbate, and often restrain myself when i know that i am going to have access before long to prostitutes. after coitus it takes a long time before i am ready for the next, sometimes two hours; and the first is always very quick, nearly always too quick for the woman. with a strange woman i have difficulty in maintaining erection at the instant of penetration, and this has often given me trouble. "i know that most women like, and few dislike, being touched by me. my favorite colors are green and red, and i can whistle quite well. "i would be very glad to know whether i may be considered sexually normal or not, but i do not desire any opinion on the morality of my acts, for the simple reason that without knowing all the circumstances it would be impossible to judge. but i cannot help saying that i do not consider anything i have done is wrong in itself, and i am quite certain that i have never harmed in any way any of the ladies with whom i have had relations. i am certain, if i had made promises which i knew i could not keep, i might have married one of them. but the result would have been great unhappiness to both, quarrels, and ultimate separation or divorce--and she realized that as well as i did. i may seem egotistical in my attitude and assurance toward ladies, but i only speak the honest truth; and i know that no. , for instance, has only gratitude and worship to give me for having opened her eyes. i have made her promise to have intercourse with her husband as soon as she can bear it, and i have satisfied myself that i have not started her on the road to sexual perversion. so much in self-explanation. i may add that i do not deliberately seek 'affaires de coeur,' and that, when they come my way, i do my utmost to use all consideration for the lady, thinking, as i do, that i owe them a far bigger debt than i shall ever be able to pay." history xiv.--j.e., professional man, aged . public school and university education, in which he did well. from age of or had strong sexual emotions, and from sexually pleasurable dreams, though no emission till or . he remembers the association of sexual excitement with whipping, either at sight or imagination of it, and this feeling was certainly shared by boys aged to at his private boarding-school and others at the public school later on. his nurse-maid used to invent excuses for beating his nates with a long lead-pencil when he was aged about , and he saw occasional whippings with clothes removed in the family nursery. when nearly he was initiated into masturbation, which at once coincided with rapid mental development and success at school. he has practised it ever since under same conditions and restrictions as marital intercourse. religion has never acted as any restraint, and the best restraint to all young people, in his opinion, is to warn them on hygienic grounds. (he became a freethinker at , partly on observing the inconsistency of religious persons in this connection. he was twice set upon by catholics when , who attempted mutual masturbation.) he can vaguely remember some such warning when very young from his mother. no intercourse with women till age of , though strong homosexual feelings from upward, associated with feminine youths. these feelings were quite distinct from feelings of affection and friendship for more virile youths. an attack of gonorrhea at was followed by an operation for circumcision, which had beneficial effects, but did not prevent an attack of syphilis at age of , caught at a guaranteed state establishment in france. intercourse almost always with prostitutes, on prudential and worldly grounds, though what he approves would be greater laxity between boys and girls, with proper safeguards against undesired offspring. he is now happily married. he only indulges in masturbation at times when intercourse is impossible (e.g., childbirth). it is then practised once or twice a week in the early morning; overnight it causes troubled sleep, brain activity, and constipation. this seems ethically more desirable unless the wife were to condone physical infidelity, which she would not, and even then there might be risks of venereal disease. his general health and working power are in all respects excellent, as the venereal diseases were speedily and thoroughly cured. homosexual feeling has entirely disappeared since marriage. history xv.--g.d., english; aged . "my earliest essays in juvenile vice were due not so much to unguarded as to unguided ignorance. i slipped where my natural protectors suspected no danger, and i fell because i had never been warned of the treacherous nature of the ground. before or soon after i was years old, the example of an elder brother, who had lately begun to go to school as a day-boy, initiated me into the mysteries of masturbation, which seemed to me then as harmless as it was fascinating; and the novel pleasure was almost daily indulged in, after i had acquired sufficient dexterity to accomplish the act within a reasonable time, without a twinge of conscience, either in that brother's company or when alone. decency demanded secrecy in the gratification of what soon became an imperious desire, and the preliminary operations included, almost from the first, mutual _fellatio_ and approximation of the excited organs; but similar privacy was very properly sought during the performance of other bodily acts associated with those 'less honorable members,' and it appeared to me quite as natural and right for us to amuse ourselves together in that way as for a married couple to hide their most intimate embraces from the observation of others. indeed, i went farther than that, and even came to regard the absence of all shame between us as akin to the primeval innocence which adam and eve exhibited before the fall. i believed for long that we two were specially privileged and possessed a peculiar sense denied to other boys, for i had never heard of masturbation till i learnt, not the word indeed, but the thing itself. "my curiosity about the real nature of sexual union in the case of human beings set my intelligence to work at the interesting problem, and by carefully studying certain parts of the bible, lemprière's classical and other dictionaries, as well as by persistently watching when i could the amorous proceedings of domestic animals, i learnt enough to make its most prominent features pretty clear before i was years of age. i was then all eagerness to have the opportunity of inspecting at close quarters the genitals of women or young girls, and a stay at the seaside when i was made the latter at least feasible. when the shore was nearly deserted, between and p.m., the daughters of the fisherfolk used to besiege the bathing machines and disport themselves in the water, bathing and paddling in various stages of nudity. i would pretend that my whole attention was being given to the making of miniature tunnels in the sand, while all the time i slyly peeped at what i most desired to see, whether in front or from behind, as the dancing damsels stood upright or stooped till their haunches were higher than their heads. i had already read something somewhere about the _clitoris_, and wanted especially to see it, but indistinct glimpses were all that i could obtain; nor was it until i visited an anatomical museum, which then existed at the top of the haymarket in london, that i learned, a good many years later, from several life-sized models there displayed, the characteristic features of that part, as well as the abnormal modifications to which it is subject, either congenitally or in consequence of profligate habits. i was , i think, when i first came to know that girls can masturbate as well as boys. "long after i had realized why the terms male and female are so distinguished, my imagination was occupied with the possible postures in which the act of copulation may be accomplished by a man and woman; from horace, lucretius, martial, aristophanes, and, above all, from ovid's _ars amatoria_ i obtained much, but not always very clear, information while still a schoolboy. this was supplemented later by photographic pictures from pompeiian brothels and photographs from life, purchased at florence and gloated over one night, with twice-repeated masturbation, and afterward destroyed in a revulsion of shame. "but while continuing to practise self-abuse (with a certain degree of restraint indeed, but seldom less often than once or even twice a week), after i had been made fully aware of its perils by dr. adam clarke's alarming comments on genesis xxxviii, , when i was about or , i never had connection with a woman until i married somewhat late in life. this abstinence was not due to any frigidity of disposition, but from prudential and religious motives, and, to some extent perhaps, from the imperfect but genuine satisfaction afforded by solitary indulgence. my imagination, like that of young j.j. rousseau, as set forth in his _confessions_, was allowed free scope for its exercise, but in practice i confined myself to what seemed to me comparatively innocent as compared with fornication. i was never an unreserved 'exhibitionist' like rousseau, but i have on more than one occasion turned toward a hedge and pretended to make water, when a girl had just passed me on the road, showing a _turgens cauda_ if she should chance out of curiosity to look back, as once, at any rate, happened. "i watched with interest the first indications of puberty in my own person. i had, of course, seen the pubic hair on many of my own sex, but i was when i first saw a naked woman. she was standing at the door of her machine, wringing out her bathing-dress, as i swam past, and her face was hidden by the awning then used, so that she could not see me. a slight effusion of limpid mucus began to characterize the orgasm, at the age of or (before any ejaculation of semen was experienced), such as exuded later from the _urethra_ when salacious excitement reached a certain pitch, even though the final climax might be postponed or prevented altogether. i found it a refinement of luxury to prolong the period of tumescence as far as possible, by frequently checking a too rapid progress toward the goal. by this practice of repeated arrest when the orgasm was imminent, and the mental debauchery which was its habitual accompaniment, i believe i did my nervous system more damage than by anything else--even the early age at which the dangerous indulgence became established. nocturnal emissions (the sequel of lascivious dreams) commenced when i was about , at which age i had my first experience of an involuntary discharge when awake, under the influence of purely mental emotion; but this latter mode of escape did not often happen, and later on ceased altogether. my muscular strength was not impaired by too frequent indulgence, and i acquired some athletic prowess on the football field and on the running path, both as a boy and as a young man. walking tours were for long my favorite recreation, even after the bicycle became an increasing attraction. my health, however, suffered in other ways from too constant absorption in lustful thoughts, which found vent in erotic verses and tales, generally destroyed soon after they were written. i have been subject since i was a boy to more or less prolonged fits of mental depression. how far i have inherited this tendency (my father and his father both married first cousins, and a neurotic diathesis has been characteristic of our family), or how far it has been aggravated by pernicious habits, i cannot say; cause and effect have no doubt acted and reacted on each other. "as i grew toward adolescence i endeavored to make self-abuse as close an imitation as possible of sexual intercourse by such methods as may be easily imagined. my biological studies (i won a scholarship and took honors at my university) were directed with most intent predilection toward the reproductive system, particularly the modifications of the copulatory organs in different animals and the diverse manner of their employment. the sexual instinct, whether in its normal or abnormal manifestations, is a subject which has always had a strong attraction for me, nor has it lost its fascination with the growth of years (i am now ) nor the competition of other interests. "my very limited experience of the sexual system in women would lead me to believe that the _clitoris_ is the only peculiarly sensitive part of the female _genitalia_, coition giving no pleasure unless 'the trigger of love' is simultaneously manipulated, as can be done when intromission is effected _a tergo_; that the mind of a normally healthy maiden is altogether free from sexual excitement of a physical kind, and that little curiosity is felt about the precise _modus operandi_ of conjugal intercourse; but, nevertheless, i have good reason to believe that this, if not an unusual type, is by no means the only one that exists. "as to sexual inversion my personal experience has been confined to two or three _grandes passions_ for boys, the first of which possessed me when between the ages of and , and involved, when i was , the most intense mental emotion, of a romantic kind, tinged with poignant jealousy and vexation at comparative coldness toward myself. these love passages never led me into indelicate behavior (i was once threatened with such treatment myself by a stranger whose acquaintance i made one day at the british museum, when a lad of . he took me to his bedroom at an inn, locked the door, and showed me a collection of coins, giving me some, and, while doing so, attempted to take indecent liberties; but i pretended that i must catch a certain train, unlocked the door, and made a hasty escape), nor was any gratification sought beyond occasional kisses and other innocent endearments, though such caresses would sometimes excite an erection, which i carefully concealed. these amours were, however, no outcome of perverted instinct, nor were they any bar to fancies for the opposite sex which affected my imagination rather than my heart." history xvi.--this history is given in the subject's own words: a.n., years of age, a university graduate, devoted to learning and interested in philosophy and theology. he is happily married and the father of an only daughter. since puberty he has enjoyed excellent health. "looking back he finds the beginnings of sexual feeling obscure. this feeling is by no means identical in its progress with the knowledge of the phenomena of sex generally. the latter he acquired thus: his mother told him at a very early age the outlines of the phenomena of birth and explained to him (perhaps at that time unnecessarily) that the genital organs of little girls were different from his own. this piece of knowledge led to his asking, when years old, a little girl cousin who came to live with the family (he was an only child) and who shared his bed to let him see her genitalia. this she readily did and also invited him to coitus, which she described as a 'nice game.' he complied, but without, of course, any feeling of pleasure or any understanding of the nature of what he was doing. shortly after this he went to a day school, where, amid the extraordinarily coarse conversation of the boys, he was initiated into all the more obvious phenomena of sex. but still it was only a matter of intellectual curiosity. as such it had a strange fascination for him, and to this day he remembers many of the obscene words and phrases, as, for example, a set of indecent verses beginning 'william, the milkman, sat under a tree,' describing coitus, though some of the details were yet misunderstood by him. that up to his tenth or eleventh year no real sexual desire was awakened is plain from the fact that there was no desire for any repetition of attempts at coitus with his cousin, though he did indeed, again out of curiosity, finger her genitals sometimes, a thing which she, grown evidently more fastidious, reported to his mother, who gravely reprimanded him, telling him that it was the 'beginning of all evil.' "desire was awakened gradually and, as i have said, obscurely. not only at school, but among his own cousins, especially two girls (other than the one above mentioned) and a boy, the conversation was lascivious in the extreme, though words never proceeded to deeds as between the boys and the girls. he was soon, however, about his fifteenth year, so far as he can remember, initiated into the practice of masturbation, first, sleeping with his boy cousin, the two used to play at 'husband and wife,' and then, more directly, a neighbor, a heavy, sensual type of boy, took him aside one day and drawing out his own penis asked him 'if he knew how to make some buttermilk.' out of curiosity at first, and to obtain the new and voluptuous sensation afterward, he began assiduously to practise this vice, which, as he afterward found out, was very common, if not universal about him. that it was morally reprehensible he had not at that time the ghost of a notion; he considered that it belonged to the category of the 'dirty' only. his father quite neglected this development, believing, i suppose, in the superstition of the 'innocence of childhood.' "this practice of masturbation went on assiduously to his sixteenth year, when its true nature and danger were revealed to him by a good clergyman who prepared him for confirmation. he had at this time gone far, in both solitary vice and vice 'à deux,' with his male cousin, with whom he practised even 'fellatio' and 'intromissio in anum.' but now he began to struggle against it and made some headway, but never entirely shook it off before his marriage at , so deeply rooted was the hold it had on him. especially at the time between sleeping and waking, or while lying sleepless at night--when the monks prayed 'ne polluantur corpora'--did its attacks come insidiously upon him. he would struggle for weeks and then would come a relapse. on one occasion he slept with a young uncle who amused himself, thinking he was asleep, by playing with his penis until he had an emission. a.n. hailed the occasion with keen joy--he caustically argued that he experienced the pleasure without being culpable in its production! then on 'coming to himself' he would agonize over his vice, remembering, for example, that, while _he_ had rejoiced in what had been done, the very cousin who some time before used to share his sin was genuinely annoyed at the same uncle's attentions when it was he who suffered them. "looking back over the whole period of his youth and adolescence, he can trace the psychological effect of what was going on secretly, in his relations to girls and women. in a word, these relations were sentimental only. he often imagined himself in love; but it was imagination only. he was in love with a wraith, not a girl of flesh and blood. he hesitated to regard in any sexual way any girl of whom he had a high opinion; sexual desire and 'love' seemed for him to inhabit different worlds and that it would be a pollution to bring them together. in hours of relaxation from the very hard intellectual work which he was at this time engaged on at school and at the university, he was quite content with the society of quite young girls or even children when most of his friends would have sought out females of their own age. nothing could have been farther from his desires or intention than any lascivious or, indeed, unseemly act toward any female in whose company he might be: no mother need have hesitated to trust her daughter in his company. i firmly believe that the discipline of the same bed which gibbon (_decline and fall_, ed. bury, vol. ii, p. ) makes so merry over could have been endured by him without difficulty. his outward conduct was in all these respects most seemly and decorous, yet night after night he could masturbate, his imagination glowing with visions of female nakedness. "curiously the one and only actual female for whom he felt any desire at the earlier period (aged to ) began to be the cousin who lived in the house. on one occasion he touched her breasts, on another her naked thighs--and that was all! as she grew to puberty, she would have allowed far more liberties, but he contented himself with a sly glance now and again, when he could procure it, at her swelling bosom. the fear of putting her with child was ample to keep him away from her bed. later on even so much as the foregoing occurred no more, and, as i have said, his outward life became absolutely decorous. "consequently he was in no danger of having dealings with prostitutes. the preliminaries, the conversation of such women, especially their drinking habits, would have been disgusting and repugnant to him in the extreme. he would have shunned the possibility of acquiring venereal disease like the plague. but he was never free from solitary vice; he secretly envied those who had occasions for coitus in what i may call a seemly and cleanly manner, friends in the country with farm girls, etc., of whom he had heard. he indulged also in lascivious reading, the obscene when he could procure it, rather than the merely suggestive, which has never been to his taste. he was familiar with quite a large number of latin and greek indecent passages, knew the broader farces of the _canterbury tales_ and of the _decameron_, and, later, the 'contes' of la fontaine and the _facetiæ_ of poggio. as ste.-beuve says of gibbon, i think, he acquired an 'erudite and cold' sort of obscenity in this way. "all this, of course, is only one half, and by no means always the dominant half, of his nature. he was often repentant for these delinquencies, and he was sincerely religious. he was also fond of serious learning and contrived to take a first-class university degree. yet, ever and anon, the deeply sensual side of his nature made itself felt. scotched for a time it could be, but killed never. "yet, i do not think it could be said that he had the sexual instinct in any really high degree. it was more like a small fly that makes a large buzz than any considerable factor in his constitution. he had a companion about this time of whom such a remark is even more true. this man's mind was replete with all manner of risky stories, all sorts of sexual details. he would take long walks with girls of loose character, talk with prostitutes at home and abroad, and yet, i believe, he never proceeded to coitus. "such then, was the subject of this notice up to the time of his marriage. two men, one might say, in one skin. one learned, one merely obscene; one a pattern of decorousness, the other a self-polluter. "on the sexual side he was as one knowing everything there is to know--yet knowing nothing. like the boy-hero in wedekind's _frühling's erwachen_, he had been long in egypt, yet he had never seen the pyramids. he began to distress himself with questions as to whether he was yet capable; whether his recurring vice had not permanently injured him; whether he had made himself unfit for marriage. so shy and reserved was he about his secret that he could never have brought himself to mention it to a medical man. 'what! he! the good, the religious! the wholly moral and decorous!' (such was, indeed, the reputation he had among his friends); 'he, the victim of a vice so black!' no, no! '_secretum meum mihi_,' he cried. "fortune, however, was kind to him. he was at an early age free from financial worries, which had almost crushed him earlier in his career, and he met in course of time the family from which he selected his excellent wife. "the society in which he lived was of all english classes, i should suppose, the most reticent in matters of sex--the respectable, lower middle class; shopkeepers and the like, with a tradition of homely religion and virtue. the classes a little higher in the scale (to which, by the way, his mother had belonged) could far better sympathize with one in his position. well, the family of his future wife was of a higher class and, what is far more, of foreign origin, for whom a large number of our english 'convenances' do not exist. to them sex was frankly recognized as a factor in life, and the mother of this household, as he grew more intimate, broached subjects which he had never, in such a manner, discussed before. it is unnecessary to give here any general history of his relationships with this household, as they have nothing to do with the matter in hand. after some time he became engaged to the youngest daughter, two years his senior, a woman of remarkable beauty and splendid development, one who attracted him as none other had done, both on account of her intellectual and social qualities and her physical beauty (he had hitherto despaired of finding the two combined in one person), for she is certainly the most beautiful woman with whom he has ever been acquainted. "he now began to make the practical acquaintance of a woman--and one who, in impulses, temper, manner, and habit of thought, differed _toto cælo_ from the girls he had known in his old home. her sexual nature was ripe and developed, and it is lucky that the engagement was of short duration, or the strain and anticipation of that time might have been injurious to the health of both. as usual, in his outward relations toward women, so toward his _fiancée_, he was prepared for chaste caresses only. this, however, did not suffice for her hot and passionate nature. they went as far as possible short of actual coitus. "after a few months, however, the marriage took place, and, at first, this brought him bitter disappointment and seemed to confirm his worst fears. he found himself quite unable to have pleasure or satisfactory coitus; quite incapable, with any erection that he could command, of introducing his well-developed penis into his wife's extremely narrow and contracted vagina. about a fortnight after the marriage, however, on his return from their short wedding tour, he felt much stronger and copulated with her, especially in the early mornings, so satisfactorily that she soon found herself with child. coitus now began to be much more pleasurable for him, but to his wife still attended with pain. "after nine months of married life, the child, the only offspring of the marriage, a healthy girl, was born. the stress of this time, the upsetting of his wife's health, her nervous breakdown and consequently uncertain temper, seemed for a period of nearly two years effectually to repress any sexual desire in the husband, and this period is perhaps the chastest of his life. desire seemed to be the one thing absent. the revulsion of feeling in his wife was remarkable. the erstwhile amorous _fiancée_, who could hardly wait until marriage to test her lover, became now the wife and mother who hardly wished to be touched by her husband. "her health, however, gradually improved and a more normal state of affairs was brought about, which has continued to the present day, broken only by periods of abstention, chiefly caused by the attacks of anemia and menstrual irregularities from which his wife suffers from time to time. ordinarily, he enjoys coitus once or twice in the month, hardly oftener, taking one month with another. at one time he exemplified in his own person the saying _omne animal post coitum triste_, but now happily this depression of spirits is rarely felt. sometimes he has felt a depression of spirits, a general discontentedness, before experiencing a strong erection; in these cases coitus has cleared his spirits. he would naturally look upon coitus as an evacuation, although he recognizes the imperfectness of that view. for one thing he is constantly sorry, viz., that the act gives no pleasure to his wife, and that he has never been able to induce a crisis with her by normal means. in this state of affairs, knowing that 'après coup' she was still unsatisfied, he slipped into the practice of rubbing the clitoris with his fingers until the emission takes place. to do this, they assume the position 'ille sub, illa super.' from his own limited marital experience, he has never been able to understand the stories of women who masturbate several times a day, as his wife would be physically incapable (so he believes) of anything of the kind, and only easily reaches the crisis in any circumstances during the first few days after the menstrual flow has ceased. in fine, while agreeing theoretically with sir richard burton and others that the eastern style of coitus (directed with a view to the pleasure of your partner) is the right one, it is one of his standing regrets that he is unable to practise it. in the place of the twenty minutes required by the women of india (according to burton) he is happy if he can give two or three at the most, much as he would wish to prolong a pleasure as keen to himself as he could desire it to be to his dear and excellent spouse." history xvii.--r.l., american; aged ; height, ft. in.; weight, about lbs.; occupation, teacher; somewhat neurotic; a slight myopia associated with acute astigmatism and muscular weakness of the eyes, producing a tendency to migraine. uric acid diathesis, producing occasionally severe neuralgia, particularly in the intestines. these symptoms have been more or less constant since very early childhood. general health very good. not inclined to indulge in athletic sports, but prefers sedentary occupations and recreations. "my early ideas of sexual things are not very clear in recollection. i think that when or years of age i had a knowledge of the common or vulgar terms for intercourse and for the genital organs. boys of my own age and slightly older would discuss sex relations, and i had a general knowledge that, in some way connected with the sexual act, 'babies were made.' we would tell, occasionally, lewd stories, and a few times attempted sexual practices with one another. not till after puberty did i ever attempt masturbation. i must have been or years old before i learned that there was a difference in the sex organs of boys and girls. up to this time i had supposed that intercourse was _per anum._ i attended a public school with both sexes. talk among my boy associates was often nasty and concerned the sexual act with girls. at about years i began to have erotic day dreams. i always had a sentimental attachment for some girl acquaintance whom i would idealize and with whom i would imagine myself having sex relations. as a matter of fact, there was no real sexual feeling about this. as i was very shy and timid naturally, i never made any kind of advances toward any of them, and they were entirely ignorant of any sentiments of affection in me. "pubertal changes commenced, i presume, about the age of ½ years. i place it at this period from the following circumstances, which are fixed very strongly in my memory: i had, as a child, a soprano voice that was praised considerably by older friends, and about which i was inordinately conceited, i enjoyed greatly taking part in operettas, cantatas, etc. the dramatic instinct, if so it may be called, has always been marked with me, and amateur dramatics are still my chief diversion. when i was about the age mentioned above my voice changed quite rapidly, greatly to my distress of mind, as i was obliged to give up taking a part for which i had been cast in a school entertainment. the memory of that disappointment is still poignant. other changes, such as the appearance of the pubertal hair, must have made no impression on my mind, as i cannot recollect anything in connection therewith. no involuntary emissions occurred. indeed, during periods of continence in later life, when the sexual tension has been very strong, i have had very few such emissions. "as a lad of or , i had heard frequent allusions to masturbation by other boys who were older, but always in a way that indicated contempt. yet there is no doubt now in my mind that the practice was very general. i think that i was probably about when i decided to try the act. i think that there was little sex impulse in this decision. the animating purpose was rather curiosity. i succeeded in producing the complete orgasm and found it pleasurable, though there was a considerable shock of surprise at the ejaculation of semen. as nearly as i can estimate in my memory of an event as far back as this was, this was the beginning of definite sexual sensibility in me. i cannot but believe, however, that it would have been aroused sooner or later in some other way. thereafter i would imagine myself embracing some of the girl friends to whom i have referred above, and, when excited, would masturbate. the act was in every instance a psychic intercourse. for some time i did not know that the practice was considered harmful. i indulged whenever i felt the inclination. this at times was rather frequent; again only at considerable intervals. i did know that it was looked upon as being unmanly, and never admitted, except to perhaps two or three boy friends, that i ever indulged. with these boys i practised mutual masturbation a few times. there was no homosexual feeling connected with these acts in any of us. it was only that the normal method of gratifying our desires was not available. i know the subsequent history of each of these boys, and there has been nothing to indicate any perverted instinct in any of them. about the age of i heard a talk on sexual matters by a traveling evangelist, who portrayed the effects of masturbation in fearful colors. i now realize that he was an ignorant though well-intentioned man; but the general effect of his talk upon me was a bad one. one of the results of the habit, according to his statements, was insanity. therefore i expected at any moment to lose my mind. i felt that i must stop the practice at once, but the matter became so great an obsession that again and again i broke my resolutions for reform. i undertook exercise, dieting, the reading of serious literature: all of which i had seen referred to in books as methods of lessening sexual desire. the object of these disciplinary practices was always the thing most prominently in mind, and so they were of no avail. fortunately i entered college a little later, and the affairs of school life gradually took a commanding place in my thoughts, and the practice was not so much in mind. i did not, however, completely break away from it until almost the time of my marriage. if the present attitude of the scientific medical world toward the subject had been known to me, i do not believe that any evil would have come to me from the practice. at a later period of my life, say between and , i would not indulge the habit for a considerable interval. at times i did not notice the presence or lack of desire. but then there would come periods when i would be under a severe sexual tension. this would be marked by intense nervousness, an inability to fix my attention upon any one thing, and a great desire to have intercourse. an act of masturbation at such a time would generally give relief. however, when i yielded to this form of relief, there would always follow feelings of profound self-reproach and of self-repugnance. had i had nocturnal emissions they might have relieved me; but, as i have said before, they very rarely occurred. when, rarely, one did occur i would be greatly frightened, for i had the old, erroneous idea that they meant serious weakness and always ascribed them to my bad habit. that my habit of masturbation had any relation to the rarity of the involuntary emissions would, of course, be a matter of pure conjecture. in passing from the discussion of personal masturbation, i wish to say that my associations with boys as a pupil and as a teacher lead me to believe that the practice is practically universal. when discussing the hygienic evils of prostitution with boy pupils i have noted that, whereas not infrequently a boy will voluntarily protest that he has never had intercourse, there has always been a significant silence when masturbation is mentioned. i have never heard a boy make a denial, direct or indirect, that he had indulged in the practice. but it has seldom been a perversion. it has rather been, as in my own case, an available means of relieving a sexual impulse. "during my college life i associated with many boys who had more or less regular sexual relations with prostitutes or with girls who were not virtuous. their attitude toward the practice was an immoral one. the ethical aspect of irregular sexual relations never concerned them. it certainly did not concern me. what i have learned through my conversations on the subject with my pupils makes it evident to me that this is the common feeling of most boys of the adolescent period. i think of two things which operated strongly to prevent my entering into sexual relations with girls during this period of my life. one was an esthetic repugnance to the average prostitute. these are the women most easily available to the youth whose sexual desires are developed. i do not remember ever having seen an avowed prostitute who did not seem repulsive to me. i confess to an inclination to priggishness. i preferred to associate with people whom i called 'nice people.' it was fortunate for me that i was thrown into the society of a rather rough crowd of youths, who knocked a great deal of this snobbishness out of me. but it did act to prevent my having recourse to prostitution. a second preventive was my natural timidity in making advances to people. this has been a trait that i have never completely overcome. in my professional life this has been some detriment to my advancement. in the matter of sex relationship it tended to prevent my taking advantage of association with and even of advances from girls who, not prostitutes, were nevertheless not virtuous. there were a number of such in the town and neighborhood in which i lived, and i undoubtedly could have had sexual relations with them if i had only been able to overcome my shyness. the desire was not wanting. i really craved intercourse with them. it was simply a matter of cowardice. there was one girl whom i knew very well, with whom i was on friendly terms, who i knew had had sexual relations with other boys. she showed, at times, a marked preference for me, and i am sure would have welcomed any advances that i should have made. a number of times i sought her company with the intention of suggesting intercourse, but my resolution always failed. "all through my college course i was much in the society of girls. we were in class together, associated very freely in society, frequently studied together. this is the most usual state of things in the western part of our country. but they were simply comrades: sex thoughts never arose in connection with such association. and i am quite certain that this was the general attitude of the other boys. although the talk among the boy students was at times, very frankly and crudely, about sexual relations, no breath of scandal ever touched one of the college girls. again my experience as teacher and student brings a conclusion that coeducation of the sexes does not affect, in one way or the other, the strictly sexual life of the male student. a very intimate friend who has had a varied experience in school work has told me recently that his conclusions are the same. "when i was about years old i became acquainted with a very beautiful girl, four years my junior. our acquaintance very rapidly developed into deeper affection, and about five years later we were married. during all this time very little of the physical aspects of love entered into our attachment. my sweetheart had much of the same shyness as was so pronounced in my own character. for several years i think that the thought of marriage was never distinctly present in our minds. a formal betrothal between us did not take place until within a year and a half of our marriage. yet each of us had a very distinct understanding of the feelings of the other. but until our betrothal there were none of even those very innocent expressions of endearment common, i imagine, to all lovers. i am sure that during this period of our attachment no thought of any physical relations between us was ever in my mind; or, at any rate, was promptly banished if it occurred. yet all this time my sex desires were very strong and at times became an obsession. never, though, were they directed toward my sweetheart. the first time that we engaged in the endearments and caresses allowed to lovers i became conscious, after a time, of a state of sexual excitement. i experienced an erection. it was absolutely reflex; no thought had entered into it. i was at once overwhelmed with a feeling of shame. i felt that i had been guilty of unthinkable indecency toward my betrothed. then there arose a fear that it might be noticed. (men at that time wore abominably tight clothing.) as a matter of fact, i now know that there was no real danger of this, for she was absolutely ignorant of the nature of the male sexual organs. but i made a pretext for withdrawing from the room and tried to adjust my clothing so that no exposure could occur. i was fearful of coming into close proximity to her again, lest there should be a recurrence of the feeling. as a matter of fact it did occur a number of times, but my good sense finally suggested the explanation and after a time it ceased to trouble me. the thought was latent in my mind that sexual excitement was necessarily more or less indecent at all times, and i could not reconcile its manifestation with a pure love. "i have said that my sexual desire was strong. up to the time of marriage it was never gratified in the normal manner. my esthetic abhorrence of prostitutes continued to prevent its gratification in that manner. no other opportunity offered. i am positive that moral considerations did not enter into the matter at all. i think now that it was strange that the thought that it would be disloyal to my promised wife to have connection with other women did not affect me. but i am sure that it did not. i am inclined to think that conscientious scruples very rarely enter into the average young man's considerations of contemplated sexual relations. "as the time of my marriage drew near, thoughts of the physical relationship of husband and wife became, of course, more insistent. the idea of establishing sexual relations was not at all a pleasant one. i dreaded it as an ordeal. i wondered if it would be possible for us to retain the same love and affection for one another after such intimate relations were established. this was a recurrence of the fallacious notion that there was something inherently indecent in sexual things. i am in hopes that other ideas are replacing this wrong one, in the minds of the younger generation, as the result of the saner and franker discussion of sex. by a great effort, i had practically stopped masturbating. at times i felt almost maddened by desire. but never did the prospect of marriage seem desirable from this point of view. up to the very day of our wedding my affection for my betrothed seemed free from sexual desire. but my physical being was craving sexual companionship. "theoretically i knew a great deal of the nature of intercourse. practically i was absolutely ignorant. in some ways i was better informed, on matters that a new husband should know, than the average man entering the married life. a physician's library had been at my disposal, and i had read somewhat extensively on physiology and hygiene. my chosen lines of study had given me a theoretical knowledge of the anatomy of the female genital organs that was fairly thorough. i knew a little about the physiology of reproduction and rather less of intercourse. fortunately, i learned in the course of my reading that the first sexual approaches were likely to be quite painful to a woman, and that great care should be exercised at this time. i tried to put into practice what little i had learned in theory and i imagine that we got through the introductory attempts with less than the average difficulties. our first efforts were not satisfactory to either of us. my wife was absolutely unprepared so far as any definite knowledge of the act was concerned. i sincerely hope that the prudish notions of the past generations will give way to more sensible views in the future, and that the girl becoming a wife will be just as chaste, but wiser in matters of such importance to her happiness. i presume that my timidity was a valuable asset at this time; for i was afraid to force matters in any way, and time and repeated attempts finally overcame our difficulties. and when our sexual relations were once established, the whole tenor of my life was changed. all the former sexual unrest disappeared. my former feeling toward sexual relations was altered. they no longer seemed that which, though very desirable, was yet necessarily indecent. fortunately, after the first few weeks, they have been quite pleasurable to my wife. i am sure that our sexual life since marriage has been a large factor in deepening the love that has made our married life an ideal one. as i look back at the first year of marriage, i wonder that we got through it so well. my knowledge of sexual hygiene was a strange mixture of fact and nonsense. if the frequency of acts of intercourse advocated by some of the authorities i have lately read is correct, then we must have passed the bounds of moderation. but it is certain that our general health has been very good: better in both cases than before marriage. "in reviewing these phases of the development of my sexual life, one or two conclusions seem to me to be strongly emphasized. it was unfortunate that the real sexual desire was aroused as early and in the manner that it was. whether this would have been prevented by more definite education in the hygiene and the purpose of the function, i can only conjecture. i believe that mine was and is the common experience of boys. i am decidedly of the opinion that there should be instruction given of the anatomy of the genital organs and of the hygiene of intercourse, and this shortly after the youth has reached puberty. how this is to be done is a grave question. it will require tact and knowledge not possessed by the average teacher and parent. however it is done, it should be honest, frank, and free from piosity. "i am certain that, in my own case, rather frequent intercourse is decidedly beneficial. any prolonged abstinence always brings about the same nervous disturbances that i have referred to above. it is fortunate for me that this repetition of the act is satisfactory to both concerned." history xviii.--e.w., dentist, aged , of new england puritan stock. height, ft. ½ in.; weight, lbs. spare and active, of nervobilious temperament. "my earliest recollection is being punished for 'playing with myself' when i could not have been more than or years of age. i distinctly remember my exultation on discovering that i could excite myself (while my hands were tied behind my back for punishment) by rubbing my small but erect penis against the carpet while lying on my stomach. at this time, of course, i knew nothing of sex or of what i was doing. i did what my desires and instincts at that time prompted me to do. however, punishments and lectures failed utterly to break up this habit, and, though i always wished and tried faithfully to obey my parents, i soon grew to indulge quietly in bed when i was thought to be asleep. the matter apparently passed out of the minds of my parents as soon as they ceased to detect me further in the act, and they regarded it as abandoned. i now feel reasonably certain that this precocity was due to an adherent foreskin which covered the glans tightly almost to the meatus, and so kept up a continual irritation. "i have no recollection that anyone ever taught me the habit, and i know beyond a doubt that no one ever learned of the habit or even a word as to the possibility of autoexcitement through word or deed of mine. my recollection of the sensations is that there was a short period of excitation, usually by rubbing, which was not particularly, often not at all, pleasurable, and this was followed by a single thrill of pleasure that extended all over my little body. the curious thing was, however, that there seemed to be no limit to the number of times i could consecutively produce this sensation. my recollection is perfectly clear of how i would lie in bed of a morning and thus excite myself time after time. as i grew older this condition, of course, changed. masturbation was not a consuming passion with me at this or any other time. i enjoyed it and felt that in it i had a means of entertainment when other sources of enjoyment were not at hand. "by the time i was or i had figured out the difference in sex in animals and suspected that 'all was not as it should be' in some portions of a girl's anatomy. this suspicion was suddenly confirmed one never-to-be-forgotten morning, when i induced my dearest playmate, a little girl, to urinate in my presence. i was more thunderstruck than excited over this discovery, and it led to no results in any other way, nor did we ever again unveil ourselves to each other. at this time i began to learn from the older boys the pitiful, childish vulgarities and common terms of sex, and to invent and exchange rhymes and stories that were pathetic in their attempts at vulgarity. "at the age of a buxom servant-girl threw out some vague hints to me,--i was very tall for my age,--and tried to induce me to take liberties with her, at least to the extent of telling her vulgar stories, but i would not rise to the lure. i believe that the thing which held me in check was fear of discovery by my parents and the consequent humiliation. a short time previous to this my father had enlightened me as to the means and manner of reproduction and had encouraged me to talk to him and to my mother on such subjects rather than with anyone else. i think this had a great influence for good, as it made me feel that i had some authoritative knowledge and that i was trusted by my parents. my determination not to prove entirely unworthy of their trust has been the anchor that has held through all the storms and temptations of youth and young manhood. "about the age of puberty i began to long for more realistic experiences and tried through a period of a year or so the disgusting experiments of intercourse with animals, using hens and a cow for this purpose. details are of no importance, and i spare myself their repetition. my better nature or general mental development soon overcame my desires in this direction, and the practice was abandoned. "with the dawning of the power of emission i noticed that the adherent foreskin before alluded to, which had never been examined during all these years (as i had discovered that i was different from other boys and so was shy about exposing myself), began to trouble me by being painful during erections. accordingly i took a buttonhook and tore all the adhesions loose. a very painful though ultimately entirely satisfactory operation! "(i may mention in this connection that my two sons were afflicted with adherent foreskins to such an extent as to render circumcision necessary a few days after birth, in order that the function of urination might become fully established.) "as my powers developed i had my first wet dream at about the age of , and was much surprised thereat. my father, however, told me not to be alarmed and soothed my anxious fears, which were easily aroused by my guilty feelings on account of my habit of masturbation, in which i still indulged from one to three times a week. "between the ages of and my father had the good judgment to require a large amount of active outdoor labor from me, as well as sending me to excellent schools. certain kinds of study had a distinct effect upon the sexual organs, namely, difficult latin and german translations and problems in fractions. i considered at the time that it was because my mind wandered from the subject i was studying. now i am perfectly sure it was because my mind focused on the subject i was studying. at any rate the fact existed, and when alone in my room, wrestling with a knotty problem, i used almost as a rule to keep myself in the most violent state of erection for long periods--an hour or so--sometimes ending with an emission, but more often i forced myself to forego this climax through fear of overindulgence. during these years my curiosity as to the exact nature of the female organs was something terrible, and i wasted many hours and much ingenuity in the attempt to surreptitiously gratify it. my perseverance in the face of failure along this line was surely worthy of a nobler cause. "i was much in the society of girls of my own age or older during these years and until i was . i found with them a keen and entirely pure and wholesome enjoyment utterly separate and apart from the desires and indulgences which i have been describing. i never cared for any girl who was 'forward' or in any way unladylike, and the idea of taking any undue liberties with any of my youthful sweethearts was as remote from my thoughts as a trip to the moon. perhaps i can say this better and more distinctly by stating that i would be perfectly willing to have my wife know of, or my boys repeat, any action that i ever took with any woman. "i spent my spare time in their society and lavished upon my girl companions every cent i could spare, but had no thought of immediate sex desire or gratification. at the age of i went as an apprentice in my present profession of dentistry. whenever it became necessary for me, in assisting at the operating chair, to touch a lady's hair or face, i would be seized with the utmost confusion and could with difficulty control my hands so that they did not tremble. this soon wore off as i came to a realization of the true professional spirit and attitude toward all patients, and, needless to say, has now become a matter of the utmost indifference to me. "from to i attended a professional school in a large city, remote from my home, where i was an utter stranger. during these years i devoted myself to my professional studies and to music with much diligence. i took an active part in all student life and problems save only that of the 'eternal feminine.' "frequently i have been out with a crowd of 'the boys' when they headed for a brothel, and have been the only one to turn back or to remain on the sidewalk as the door closed behind my last companion. i say this not in self-praise, but in the same spirit of accuracy which has prompted me to put down everything concerning this greatest mystery of our natures as i have experienced it and worked it out. "it was during these three years at school that i placed upon myself the most stringent and effective curbs to my sex nature. i somehow never could 'get my own consent' to go to a brothel or stay with a 'soiled dove,' for i had by this time firmly resolved that i would bring to my wife, whoever she might turn out to be, a clean body at least. i limited myself in my autoexcitement to one emission a week and on one or two occasions went two weeks without inducing an emission. spontaneous nocturnal emissions were quite common during these years. i cannot state just how frequent they were, but perhaps one a week would be a fair average. "shortly after graduation at the age of i became engaged to the woman who is now my wife. (she was at the time of our engagement, brunette, well developed, and with a wisdom and charm that have held me a willing captive for ten years and no prospect of escape!) "with our engagement began for each of us that divine and mysterious unfolding of the nature of one to the nature of the other. our engagement lasted two years and a half and, ignorant as we both were, i am sure that it was none too long. never shall i forget the surprise i felt--to say nothing of the delight--when i discovered that my sweetheart was as anxious to find out the uttermost facts about me as i was to explore the divine mystery of her sweet body. "we lived in different towns and i used to spend sundays at her home. i slept in a room adjoining that occupied by my betrothed and a friend. there was a transom with clear glass over the door which connected these two rooms, and to have stood upon the foot of the bed and looked through this transom would have been the easiest thing in the world, and was such an opportunity as i would have given years of my life to have obtained in my adolescence; but now that the chance was afforded me to freely spy upon the chamber of my future bride my soul revolted, for the feeling was upon me that not until it was revealed to me because she could no longer bear to keep it concealed from me would i look upon the blessed vision of her maiden loveliness. nor was i disappointed, for gradually we became acquainted with each other's bodies, and this gradual unveiling of each to the other led, during the last months of our engagement, to mutual manual manipulations, excitement and gratification. intercourse did not take place until the second night after our marriage, and our first baby was born nine months and three days after our marriage, though my wife was ten days past the cessation of her period at the time of my first entering. "since marriage i have made it my first duty to study my wife's inclinations and desires with regard to our sexual relations, and can say that now, after seven years of married life, and after she has borne me two sons, we are enjoying a fullness of happiness that neither of us would have believed possible during the first year of our married life. "i have found that the woman must have the entire charge of the time and number of approaches in a week or month, and that when she is for any reason disinclined to the sexual act the husband must keep away, no matter how he feels about the matter. also the man must be sure that his wife reaches the orgasm or is at the point of it before he allows himself to 'let go.' "our meetings have averaged eight or nine a month. during the latter months of pregnancy they were _nil_, and in the month following an enforced separation of several weeks they were fourteen. we have never tried nor had the slightest curiosity to know how far we could indulge ourselves. "for myself i seem to demand a gratification of the sexual desire rather oftener than my wife, and when i feel i cannot get a good night's rest without first being relieved of my seminal burden, while at the same time my wife is disinclined to the sexual act, i have her perform manual manipulation until relief is effected. mind, i say _relief_, for the emission gives me very little pleasure under these circumstances, but it does give _relief_. in my present health i find i cannot sleep well if i go over more than two nights without an emission. my wife understands my condition, and is entirely willing to assist me in this way when she feels she cannot give me the gratification which i crave. we have come to see sex matters as they are, and respect and reverence have taken the place of ignorance and fear. "to sum up, owing to lack of circumcision the sex instinct developed too soon and out of all proportion during my early youth. i cannot see that masturbation has ever had the slightest bad effect upon my health or mental state (except as i was constantly loathing myself more or less for being unable to stop it). "the husband must subordinate himself to the wife in order to obtain the highest good and pleasure of both. "i have always been successful in my undertakings. stood at the head of my class at school, and in my professional work graduated with highest honors. i have a memory for prose or verse that is the cause of envy to many of my friends. the facts here set down are recorded in the interest of advancing study along this most important but neglected and ignored line. that they have been truthfully recorded without favor to the black or light on the white is my sincere belief." history xix.--e.b. parents sound; strong constitution in mother, moderately so in father; vigorous and healthy, but of refined nature. breast-milk for six months. "_age - _. took great delight in the little waterworks. severely punished for this. interest in the parts morbidly increased thereby. "_age _. earliest recollection of 'counter-erection'--the penis shrinking tensely into itself, producing local and general discomfort. this resulted from certain kinds of _mauvaise-honte_,--having to kiss aged persons, having officious help at micturition, bathing, dressing, etc., which caused a sort of physical disgust. toward puberty the experience grew rare. one such occasion was at about eighteen, when solicited on the street by a prostitute. the very _idea_ of homosexual relations produces it. it would appear to be a powerful safeguard against promiscuous sex relations. i have met two men subject to the same thing, and have heard of one woman subject to something analogous. it might be called a nausea of the 'nether heart' in georg hirth's phrase. "_age - _. earliest recollection of erection. unprovoked at first. a disposition to _punish_ the organ and satisfaction in doing so. from this time erection took place whenever it was thought about. "_age _. present at a discussion in the playground about the best way of intercourse, which i heard of for the first time. this was followed by enlightenment on the source of children. concluded it must be very painful to both parties. 'just the other way,' i was told. but the idea of pain to the genitals was 'interesting' to me. pain felt by the other sex was 'interesting.' pained looks captivated me--i liked to imagine some mysterious trouble; and, as i learned more, 'female complaints' interested me greatly in their subjects. i got a 'grateful pang' at the pit of the stomach at the thought, but neither erection nor the opposite. this hypogastric feeling has continued to associate itself with certain sexual impressions. the thought of a _woman mortifying herself_ later on excited me sexually. once, pulling a stay-string for fun (my wife never laced) gave me a powerful and quite unexpected erection. "_age _. a girl visitor of the same age got me talking about the genitals, and at bedtime came and proposed coitus. we failed to manage it. the vulva stripped back the foreskin, which was a voluptuous feeling; then we were alarmed by something and separated. i never saw her again. she too liked to 'punish' her vulva. she put whole pepper in it, and advised me to use the same. i continued greatly excited when she had gone; the hand flew to the phallus and worried it, and orgasm came on at once--the childish orgasm consisting of well-spaced spasms of the ejaculators, without the poignant preliminary nisus of the adult orgasm. there was no reaction or depression, except that the phallus--which did not subside at once--was painful to touch. a week or so later i tried again, but failed. a month later, being more excited, i succeeded. i found that i could only compass it about once in three weeks. there were no emissions. i used to have a spontaneous mental image of a small grecian temple in a sunny park, which charmed me, and i had no scruples. "_age - _. masturbated once or twice a month. "_age - _. was sent to a small public school, where it happened that a very good tone prevailed. i learned that masturbation was bad form and unmanly. the proper thing was to save one's self up for women--at about . i dropped the practice easily, in spite of indulging my imagination about coitus. i thought of the initiation with prostitutes at , with the mixed feelings that even the most combative soldier must regard the fray. the hypogastric feeling above referred to would come on--which i liked and disliked at the same time. the first occasion on which i remember this feeling was when i got my first braces. anything that harped on my sex produced it. every time i received the sacrament, which i was forced to do very young, i repented of my intention of whoring at --as a man 'must' do--and afterward i relapsed to the expectation. religion was a great reality to me, but it did not produce the radical effect that the development of the romantic sentiment did later on. (both my wife and i became free-thinkers at about .) "_age - _. read poetry and romance. conceived a high ideal of faithfulness and constancy. what a mockery all this loyalty is, i said to myself, if a man has stultified it beforehand. that was no mere castle-building. i had not understood what i was about in expecting to whore. the critical feelings were now awakening, and what they produced was revulsion against the abuse of sex, which got stronger every year. it became plain that there would be no whoring or the like for me; i was far too proud and fastidious. i neglected my tasks, which were uncongenial, and read a great deal of anatomy and physiology, which stood me in good stead later. as i rose in the school i was surprised to find the tone worse, but quite at the top it was better again, and with my latest companions sex was never even mentioned. at i had a friend who importuned me to come into his bed, but i never would get under his bedclothes, for the male sex repels me powerfully in personal contact; he began to talk of masturbation, and now i can understand what he was aiming at. but my day-dreams of nymphs and dryads kept me in a state of perpetual tension, and erection was very frequent. the early morbid admiration of delicate women became replaced by admiration of health and strength combined with grace. "_age - _. i was given a cubicle in which my neighbor on the right masturbated noisily two or three times a week, and the one on the left every night, using intermittent friction to drag it out longer. one night, kneeling at my bedside, saying prayers, my attention was divided between these and the occupation of my neighbor, when, after not having masturbated for four years,--the critical years of development,--the hand flew to the phallus and "'pulses pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers' "procured, in walt whitman's language, "'the wholesome relief,--repose, content.' "i slept well and had a sense of elation at the proof of manhood, for we boys were anxious about whether we secreted semen or not. the sexual obsession was tempered, and about three weeks later i had my first 'pollution'--the 'angel of the night,' as mantegazza with better sense calls it. from that time on i had pollutions every two or three weeks, with dreams sometimes of masturbation or of nymphs, or quite irrelevant matters. for a time these gave me perfect relief; then my 'dilectatio morosa' began to grow again, and the phallus would become so sensitive that working about on the belly would liberate the orgasm. "_age - _. i had kept on persuading myself i was not masturbating--avoiding the use of the hand--but now i dropped this pretense, and frankly conceded the need to myself. i got done with it in a peremptory way and thought no more of it. i had no evil effects, moral or physical, and my mother would often compliment me on my bright appearance the morning after. at that time the appetite matured every seven to ten days, and, though i dreaded the idea of slavery to it, it would have been very hard to forego it. headaches, which had begun to plague me from puberty on, grew rarer. pollutions occurred in between, but were less effectual. i had up to this point accepted the incidental pleasure under a sort of protest; but now i got over that too and i allowed what i would prefer to call an idio-erotism (rather than an auto-erotism) its way, always picturing beautiful nymphs to myself. surroundings of natural beauty moved me to this kind of reverie, partly perhaps because i had once secretly observed a lad basking naked on the sandy beach and toying with himself. the recollection is wholly unsullied to me. happening on one occasion to check the stimulation about two-thirds way to orgasm, i experienced a miniature orgasm like the childish one, but with no declension of the tumescence, and i was able to repeat this maneuver several times before the full orgasm. this i later practised in _coitus prolongatus_--giving the partner time to come up. i had already got into the way of poising the feeling on its climax. the ejaculator reflex, being habituated to this, seems to set in with its throbs when the maneuver is simulated, though no semen has yet been poured into the bulbous portion for the ejaculators to act upon. if this play be broken off before the critical spasm--as in the american 'karezza,' etc.--there is no perceptible reaction, though an unsatisfied feeling remains. but when the act proceeds to emission and the poignant _undercurrent_ of feeling sets in that ushers the ejaculation and may only last two to five seconds, it makes all the difference, and constitutional signs appear--perspiration, etc. this leads to the question whether the critical sensation specially involves the sympathetic nervous system? up to that point the process is under control, but then automatic. "an observation of practical importance to me at that time was this: i awoke in the morning after a pollution at night, with an acute headache of a specific kind, and erection. this had happened before, after pollution, and the erection suggested to me whether 'a hair of the dog that bit me' might not prove beneficial. as the excitation proceeded, the pain in the head was directly drained away, as if i were drawing it out. other pain is also relieved for the moment, such as neuralgia, but to return soon with interest. this, however, was specific and pure benefit. the next time i got a bad headache of this character, without preceding pollution, i tried the remedy, at about a.m. the semen was copious and watery, and the relief was marked, but in an hour's time the headache returned. i had never repeated the act at short interval, i.e., while the organs were under the influence of a previous act, and now i tried the effect of that. the second emission was also profuse, but much thicker, and the relief much greater. in about three hours the headache was, however, again intolerable, and, the connection being now clear, i ventured on a third act, which proved to be the most voluptuous i had so far experienced, the nisus being far more intense. the semen was copious, but thick and ropy, with lumps as large as small peas that could scarcely be crushed with the finger, and yellow in color and rank in odor. after that i was perfectly well and kept so. (the urethra was blocked so that i could with difficulty stroke the masses out.) later i have examined such semen microscopically and found the spermatozoa dead and disintegrating. my period in my best years-- to --was twice a week, the odd number being an inconvenience, and i have since endeavored to avoid accumulations, emptying the receptacles on the fourth day, when i remembered the interval, even if the organs did not remind me. on the fifth day headache would otherwise appear and perhaps two acts be needful, or, if i forgot about it for a week, three acts running. that i did not abuse the function the fact proves that every year i would forget about it two to three times and have to resort to this drastic mode.[ ] but there is quite a different headache that follows on indulgence during convalescence or when the system is otherwise much lowered. railway traveling greatly accentuates the need with me; also riding. girls aroused no physical desire, though i chiefly sought their society, and even after the genital tension was so pronounced, up to , i was troubled by the fact that women did not affect me sexually. about this time a buxom girl i liked and who liked me vehemently laid her hand on my arm, in trying to persuade me to give up shooting. the phallus leaped simultaneously. that was my first _sexual_ experience--the proof that the _nexus_ was established between the genital mechanism and the complex of feeling we call sexual. "_age _. at this age i went to stay at a house where there were two very pretty girls. i at once lost my heart to the elder, l.b., as she did to me (strong constitution, but refined nature; parents sound; brought up in the country; eleven months' breast-milk). 'what a mother she will make,' i said to myself. now began a time of the spiritual and physical communion that i had pictured to myself.... "i am now; she is . we are still like lovers. no; not _like_ lovers; we _are_ lovers. of course, i do not mean to imply that sexual impressions have preponderated in our life, as they do in this account. quite the contrary. we are both strong and, according to all accounts, unusually well preserved. we are very temperate. since i notice a gradual decline of the erotic propensity. it is now once in five or seven days. since the menopause her propensity has declined markedly, but it is not extinct, and she delights as much as ever in my delight. she began to menstruate at , was regular till ; then got chlorotic for a few months, soon recovered, though menstruation was often irregular, but never painful. sexual experience began at . i have often wondered if a moderate self-gymnastic of the faculty, in venturi's sense, would not have educated her genital sphere, and made her a still better comrade--excluded the periods of irregularity and frigidity. the stage of latency was too protracted. we often noticed that, when menstruation was due or nearly so, prolonged love-sports at bedtime would be followed by menstruation in the morning. we never were separated for longer than three months, and on that occasion, menstruation being delayed, she tried what masturbation would do to determine it, and with a positive result. my need, though less, is as imperative as ever. seminal headaches--as i would call them--have ceased since ; the accumulation only produces muddleheadedness. but i have not suffered accumulation over ten to at most twelve days. the quantity of semen is also less. the sensibility of the corpora has declined much; that of the glans is unimpaired. erection is good. orgasm takes two to four minutes to provoke, against forty to fifty seconds when young; it is in some respects even more enjoyable--perhaps less intense, but much more prolonged. i have no reaction from indulgence. but i never press it; it always presses me. for overaccumulation, with headache or muddleheadedness, the wifely hand is more efficacious than the vulva. even the most vivid dream of coitus fails to compass the orgasm now. the peripheral stimulus is essential. "in our case physical and psychical intensity of emotion have gone hand in hand. i have become specialized to one woman, despite an erotic endowment certainly not meager. the pervasive fragrance makes one adore the whole sex, but my wife does not interpret this homage in a sexually promiscuous sense. we both agree in the principle that if one cannot hold the affection of the other there is no title to it. tarde says that constancy in love is rarely anything but a voyage of discovery round the beloved object. i am perpetually making fresh discoveries. but her constancy, i mean the high level of her passion, is independent of discoveries." footnotes: [ ] "a practical question arising out of the foregoing is whether such semen should be committed to the vagina? its presence is known to me by constitutional symptoms (toxic). it is the last to be expelled, and its degenerate germ-cells have no chance against those of the normal fluid deposited in preceding acts, supposing that to be retained. but it may well happen that the prior emissions only reach the pouch, whereas the last is injected into the womb itself. i have frequently had the sense of the orifices of meatus and cervix matching directly, especially when she had powerful orgasm (including two conceptions), and of the semen being sucked from me rather than occluded in its exit, as also happens, requiring me to relax the urge a little. at to the semen of a 'pollution' has left tender red patches where it dried on the neighboring skin, and deep straw-colored stains in the linen." index of authors. abu-l-faraj acton, w. adler, o. adlerz aguilaniedo aldrich allen, g.w. alonzi aly-belfàdel amand, st. andrews, w. angell arndt, r. avebury, lord bach, g. baker, smith ballet balls-headley bancroft, h.h. bantock baretti barrus, clara bartels, max beaunis bechterew bell, sanford benecke, e.f.m. bernard, p. bernelle blackwell, e. bladon, j. blagden bloch bloch, iwan bloom blumröder boerhaave bohn, g. bonstetten booth, d.s. bos, c. bossard bouchereau bourneville brantôme bray brehm breitenstein bridgman, w.g. brierre de boismont browne, w.a.f. brunfels bryan, d. büchner burckhardt, j.l. burdach burk, f.l. burton, robert burton, si: r. buscalioni busch, d.w.h. butler, a.g. cabanès cabanis calmann campbell, harry cannon, w. capgras casanova catullus cellini ceni cervantes chapman, g. christian clark, campbell clarke, e.d. cleland clement of alexandria clérambault clevenger clouston coelius aurelianus coleridge colin collas colman, w.a. coltman congreve cook, f. cook, j. cooke, kev. l.h. cornevin cotterill, j.m. coutagne crawley, e. crofton crooke, w. cullerre daniell, w.f. darwin, c. darwin, e. d'aulnoy, countess daumas davenport, isabel debreyne dillmann diodorus disselhorst d'orbigny duchenne dühren, e. _see_ bloch, iwan. dulaure dumas, g. duncan, matthews dunlop, w. dupré durkheim earle, a. effertz eklund ellis, havelock ellis, sir a.b. engelmann epaulow erb espinas eulenburg eysséric eyre, e.j. fabre, j.h. fehling féré ferenczi ferrand ferrero ferriani finck fliess foley forbes, h.o. forel forman, s. franklin, miles frazer, j.g. french-sheldon, mrs. freud friedenthal fürbringer fustel de coulanges galen gall gardiner, j.s. garnier, p. gason, s. gattel gaupp gennep, a. van gibb gillen ginisty gläveke glynn godard goltz goncourt, j. de gosse, p.h. gourmont, remy de gowers, sir w. grisebach, e. groos, k. grosse, e. gualino guinard guise guyon gurlitt guttceit häcker haddon, a.c. haeckel hagen halban hall, g. stanley haller hamerling hammer hammond hamon hartmann, e. von hawkesworth hayes, j.j. heape, w. heard hegar heine henz herodotus hicks, braxton hippocrates hirn hirschfeld hoche holden, w.c. holder, a.b. holt, r.b. horace hornius horsley howard howard, h.e. howarth, o.h. hubert hudson, w.h. hutchinson, sir j. huysmans hyades jäger janet janin jayle jerome, st. joest, w. johnston, sir h. jones, brynmor jones, ernest kafemann keppler key, ellen kiefer kiernan, j.g. kisch, e.h. kleinpaul kline kolischer kossmann kowalevsky krabbes krafft-ebing krauss kubary kulischer külpe lacassagne lacroix, p. lagrange lancaster landor, a.h., savage lanphear laserre laurentius lawson lea lécaillon lehmann-nitsche leppmann lipa bey loeb lombroso long, s.h. lop low, brooke loti, p. löwenfeld lubbock (lord avebury) lucian lucretius lunier luther macdonald, rev. j. macé macgillicuddy maclennan macnaughton-jones maeder maeterlinck manacéine, marie de mandeville mantegazza marandon de montyel marchesini marcuse, max mardrus marie, a. marie, p. marie de france mariner marlowe marot, clement marro marsden, w. marshall, f.h.a. marshall, h.r. martial martins matignon maudsley mauriac maus maxwell mayer, a. mcilroy, a.l. meibomius melville, herman meung, jean de meyer, a.b. middleton, t. miklucho-macleay millais, j.g. millant minovici mirandola, pico della möbius modigliani, e. moll montaigne montet montgomery, t.h. moraglia more, sir thomas morgan, c. lloyd mortimer, g. moule moyer mugnier müller, r. mundé, p. munzer näcke napier, leith nardelli nenter nesterus nicefero nietzsche nussbaum nyström obici ordericus, vitalis otway ovid owen, sir r. pactet papillon parent-duchâtelet partridge paullinus peckham, g.w. pelikan penta petronius pfister pflüger piéron pilet, r. pitre pitres pittard platen plautus plazzonus ploss plutarch poore, g.v. porosz portman potter, m.a. poulton, e.b. power, h. prinzing propertius purnell, c.w. quirós, b. de rabelais raciborski racovitza, e.g. raymond rees régis regoyos restif de la bretonne reverdin rhodiginus rhys ribot riedel ritter robin rohleder roubaud rousseau, j.j. rousset roux, j. russo ryan, m. sacher-masoch sacher-masoch, wanda von sade, de sadger sajous salillas sand, george sanitchenko savage, sir g. schäfer schaller schellong schlichtegroll, c.f. von schmidt-heuert schopenhauer schreiner, s.c. cronwright schrenck-notzing schröter schultz schultze-malkowsky schurig scott, colin seligmann selous, edmund sénancour sérieux sergi shakespeare shattock shaw, claye shufeldt sinibaldus skeat smith, lapthorn smith, w. robertson smyth, brough sollier spallanzani spencer, baldwin spencer, herbert spitzka spix starbuck stcherbak stearns stefanowsky steinach, e. stendhal, de stevens stevens, h.v. strümpell stubbs sully sutherland, a. swieten, van tait, lawson tambroni tarchanoff tarde tate, h.r. tautain taylor, jeremy tchlenoff tertullian thoinot thomas, n. thomas, p. thompson tillier tilt tolstoy townsend, j. treves, marco trousseau tschisch turley turnbull, j. tylor vahness vambery vatsyayana vedeler velten venette vespucci, amerigo vincent, swale voisin wallace, a.r. wallaschek waller, e. walsingham weismann weissenberg wesché, w. wessmann, rev. r. westermarck wiedemann weysse williams, montagu williams, w. roger winckel windscheid wittenberg wolbarst wollstonecraft, mary yellowlees zacchia zambaco ziegler, h.e. ziehen zmigrodski index of subjects. abduction of women in great britain abstinence in women, effects of sexual adolescence, criminality and adolescent girls, sexual manifestations in adrenal glands africa, marriage by capture in sexual instinct in _agelena labyrinthica_ ainu, love-bite among algolagnia ideal algophily amblyopia, post-marital american indians, courtship among sexual instinct in ampallang anæsthesia in women, sexual a cause of sterility causes of anger and sexual emotion anhedonia anxiety as a sexual stimulant ardisson argus pheasant, courtship of aristotle as a masochist arrest of movement producing sexual excitement ascetic attitude toward women, the assaults on children by women, sexual australians, courtship among sexual instinct in auto-intoxication by muscular movement auto-sadism bambula dance bathory, countess bedouins, marriage by capture among bertrand, sergeant birds, sexual impulse in bismarck, traces of masochism in biting in relationship to sexual instinct bladder and sexual organs, relationship between blood, the fascination of borneo, use of ampallang in brazil, courtship in bullying capture, marriage by castration cerebellum as a sexual center cerebral sexual centers, alleged chained, the idea of being chastity among savages china, marriage ceremony in chinese eunuchs chinese hedgehog christianity and women church and flagellation, the coitus, mechanism of compared to epilepsy often sacred among savages combat and courtship contrectation courtship cow-birds, courtship of crime as a manifestation of adolescence criminality in relation to marriage cruelty among animals in human beings cymri, marriage customs of dancing in relation to sexual impulse dancing among australians the most usual method of attaining tumescence why it acts so powerfully on the organism day-dreams, erotic degenerative conditions on sexual desire, influence of _dendryphantes elegans_ detumescence, impulse of diffusion of sexual impulse in women discipline, the disgust as a sexual stimulant divorce in relation to sexual difference in the suicide-rate doraphobia dreams of struggling horses erotic drunkenness in relation to marriage ducks, courtship among ductless glands eider-ducks, courtship of ejaculation, premature emotion aroused by pain ephesian matron, the epilepsy and micturition analogy between coitus erotic symbolism erotisation eskimos, marriage by capture among sexual instinct in esthetic sense of animals, alleged estrus eunuchs, sexual impulse in evacuation theory of sexual impulse excess in intercourse not injurious to women exercise, the intoxication of muscular exhibitionism, a cause of faroe islanders, courtship among. fatigue fear as a sexual stimulant fetichism fetters, the fascination of flagellation frigidity, in women, sexual a cause of sterility frog, sexual instinct of fuegians, sexual instinct in funerals as a sexual stimulant fur, fascination of gelding, sexual impulse in genital sphere larger in women geskel _glandulæ vesiculares_ goethe's masochism gonorrhoea in young boys greek antiquity, love in grief as a sexual stimulant griselda gurus, courtship among hanging and sexual excitement head hunting _helix aspersa_ hemothymia hormones _horror feminæ_ normal in absence of sexual impulse horses, sexual perversion in sexual excitement produced by spectacle of hungary, masochism in hunger, analogy between sexual impulse and hyperhedonia hyphedonia hypnotic suggestions and frigidity impregnation in relation to tumescence impulse, definition of sexual india, courtship in sexual instinct in indians, courtship among american sexual instinct among american indonesian peoples, use of ampallang, etc., among insanity, in relation to marriage in relation to sexual instinct instinct, definition of internal secretions intoxication, the fascination of of muscular movement inversion, associated with masochism jealousy among savages jew, sexual impulse in kaffirs, courtship among kambion kirghiz, marriage by capture among kiss, origin of lactation, no intercourse among some savages during laughter and the sexual sphere _leistes superciliaris_ love-bite, the love-songs rare among savages lycanthropy malays, coitus among courtship among sexual instinct in _mantis religiosa_ maoris, marriage by capture among sexual instinct in marquesans, courtship among sexual instinct in marriage by capture in relation to suicide in relation to insanity and criminality marsh-bird, courtship of masochism among slav women definition of its psychological mechanism masturbation in women menopause, sexual impulse after menstruation and sexual impulse micturition and sexual impulse mixoscopia, hysterical modesty among savages object of obsessions of _molothrus bonariensis_ moluccas, courtship in monogamy, its advantages for men mortality connected with the development of the sexual instinct moslems, coitus among moths, courtship of motion, the pleasure of arrest of muscular movement, auto-intoxication by music, sexual influence of necrophilism necrosadism negresses not jealous negro eunuchs negroes, sexual instinct in neurasthenia, sexual new caledonia, courtship in new guinea, courtship in new hebrides, courtship in new mexico, courtship in new zealand, marriage by capture in nubia, eunuchs in obsessions, sexual octopus, courtship of odour, excitation by oneida community oöphorectomy and sexual impulse orgasm lasts longer in women ostrich, courtship of ovariotomy and sexual impulse ovary, secretions of ox, sexual impulse in pain the essential element in algolagnia palang papuans, courtship among sexual instinct in parturition sometimes painless passivism passivity of women only apparent penis in lower animals, peculiarities of periodicity of sexual impulse among savages greater in women _pitangus bolivianus_ pleasure, in what sense pain may be felt as its manifestations resemble those of pain plover, dances of great power in sexual sphere, love of precocity of women, sexual pregnancy, savages often avoid intercourse during _probenächte_ procreation among savages, sacredness of pro-estrum prostitutes' love of _souteneur_ prostitution not found under primitive conditions puberty in girls, sexual manifestations at rais, gilles de _rana temporaria_ rape and sadism rat, sexual instinct of white reeves and ruffs reflex action, instinct and reidal religious flagellation religious storm and stress in women reproductive impulse, alleged respiration in connection with sexual emotion responsibility of sadists rome, eunuchs in ancient rosseau's masochism russia, masochism in sacher-masoch sacredness of procreation among savages sade, de sadism definition of its psychological mechanism responsibility in often combined with masochism ideal _saitis pulex_ savages, sexual erethism in dancing among sexual impulse weak in sea-gulls, courtship among secondary sexual characters seminal receptacles of frogs seminal vesicles functions of senegal, courtship in sensibility of genital sphere in women sensory acuteness in women sexual cerebral centers, hypothetical sexual impulse, definition of sexual incompetence, prevalence of sexual selection, psychological aspects of sexual season shaftesbury's supposed masochism shoe-fetichism sicily, courtship in love-bite in slavery, erotic slavs, courtship customs of masochism among slug, courtship of smell, stimulation of snails, sexual process in social class and sexual feeling soleilland song of birds, sexual significance of _spadones_ spain, flagellation in spiders, courtship of sprit-sail yard stabbers sterility, absence of sexual desire in women as a cause of stone-curlew, dances of storm and stress in women, religious strangle, the impulse to subjection in women, sexual suckling, compared to sexual act no intercourse among some savages during suicide, divorce and sumatra, courtship in suspension and sexual excitement swinging and sexual excitement symbolism, erotic taboo, sexual tahitians, courtship among teasing _telum veneris_ _thlasiæ_ _thlibiæ_ torture, the attraction of tumescence turcomans, marriage by capture among tyrant-bird, courtship of urination in relation to sexual excitement vacher vampirism variation in sexual impulse greater in women venereal disease in the young vesicles, function of seminal waltz, origin of the warens, mme. de werwolf whipping in relation to the sexual emotions women-stabbers wrestling combats zoösadism zulus, courtship among studies in spermatogenesis part ii. (pages - . plates viii-xv.) a comparative study of the heterochromosomes in certain species of coleoptera, hemiptera and lepidoptera, with especial reference to sex determination. by n. m. stevens [illustration] washington, d. c.: published by the carnegie institution of washington october, carnegie institution of washington publication no. , part ii. from the press of the wilkens-sheiry printing co. washington, d. c. studies in spermatogenesis.--ii. a comparative study of the heterochromosomes in certain species of coleoptera, hemiptera, and lepidoptera, with especial reference to sex determination. by n. m. stevens. introduction. in part i of this series of papers, the spermatogenesis of five species belonging to four different orders of insects was considered. in two species of orthoptera an "accessory chromosome" was found; in _tenebrio molitor_, one of the coleoptera, an unequal pair of chromosomes was described; in the other species no heterochromosomes were discovered. the apparent bearing of the chromosome conditions in _tenebrio molitor_ on the problem of sex determination has led to a further investigation of the germ cells of the coleoptera. one of the hemiptera homoptera and two of the lepidoptera have also been examined for comparison with the coleoptera and the hemiptera heteroptera. methods. as a result of previous experience with similar material, only two general methods of fixing and staining have been employed: ( ) fixation in flemming's strong solution or hermann's platino-aceto-osmic, followed by either heidenhain's iron-hæmatoxylin or hermann's safranin-gentian staining method (arch. f. mikr. anat. ). ( ) fixation after gilson's mercuro-nitric formula, followed by iron-hæmatoxylin, delafield's hæmatoxylin and orange g, auerbach's combination of methyl green and acid fuchsin, or thionin. the iron-hæmatoxylin with either mode of fixation gives by far the most satisfactory preparations for general study. the other stains were used mainly for the purpose of distinguishing between heterochromosomes and plasmosomes in resting stages of the nucleus. coleoptera. trirhabda virgata (family chrysomelidæ). two species of _trirhabda_ were found in larval, pupal, and adult stage on _solidago sempervirens_, one at harpswell, maine, the other at woods hole, massachusetts. the adult insects of the two species differ slightly in size and color, the germ cells mainly in the number of chromosomes, _trirhabda virgata_ having and _trirhabda canadense_ in spermatogonia and somatic cells. in _trirhabda virgata_, the metaphase of a spermatogonial mitosis (plate viii, fig. ) contains chromosomes, one of which, as in _tenebrio molitor_ is very much smaller than any of the others. the maternal homologue of the small chromosome is, as later stages show, one of the largest chromosomes. in _tenebrio_ the unequal pair could not be distinguished in the growth stages of the spermatocytes. in _trirhabda_ it has not been detected in the synizesis stage (fig. ), but in the later growth stages (figs. - ) this pair is conspicuous in preparations stained by the various methods cited above, while the spireme is pale and inconspicuous. the size of the heterochromosome pair varies considerably at different times in the growth period, and in some nuclei (fig. ) both chromosomes appear to be attached to a plasmosome. the ordinary chromosomes assume the form of rings and crosses in the prophase of the first maturation mitosis (fig. ), but usually appear in the spindle as dumb-bells or occasionally as tetrads (fig. ), or crosses (fig. ). the unsymmetrical pair is plainly seen in figures and , but is not distinguishable in a polar view of the metaphase (fig. ). in the anaphase (figs. - ) the larger and the smaller components of the pair separate as in _tenebrio_. this is, therefore, clearly a reducing division as far as this pair is concerned, and probably for all of the other pairs, though neither the synapsis stage nor the prophase forms are so clear on this point as in some of the other species studied. figures and show metaphases of the two classes of second spermatocytes, the chromosomes varying somewhat in form in different preparations and even in different cysts of the same preparation. an early anaphase of this mitosis is shown in figure ; here the small chromosome is already divided. it was impossible to find good polar views of the daughter plates in the two classes of second spermatocytes, but it is evident from figure and other similar views of the second spermatocyte spindle that, as in _tenebrio_, one-half of the spermatids will contain one of the derivatives of the small chromosome, the other half one of the products of its larger homologue. sections of male pupæ were examined for equatorial plates of somatic mitoses. figure is a specimen of such plates. as might be expected, this figure resembles quite closely the spermatogonial equatorial plate (fig. ) in number, form, and size of chromosomes, the small one being present in both. figure is from the follicle of a young egg; here we find chromosomes, but no small one. the chromosome corresponding to the larger member of the unequal pair in the male evidently has a homologue of equal size in the female. the chromosome relations in the male and female somatic cells are therefore the same as in _tenebrio molitor_, and must have been brought about by the development of a male from an egg fertilized by a spermatozoön containing the small chromosome, and a female from an egg fertilized by a spermatozoön containing the larger heterochromosome. trirhabda canadense. in _trirhabda canadense_ the spermatogonial chromosomes are invariably smaller than in _t. virgata_, but similar size relations prevail. the spermatogonial plate (fig. ) contains chromosomes, large and extremely small. in the growth stages the association of the two unequally paired chromosomes with a rather large plasmosome is more evident than in _t. virgata_ (figs. - ). in this species the unequal pair is more often found at a different level from the other chromosomes in the early metaphase of the first maturation mitosis (fig. ), but it later comes into the plate with the other chromosomes (figs. - ), and divides earlier than most of the other bivalents (fig. ). in a polar view of this metaphase the largest chromosome often appears double (fig. ); in a front view it is a tetrad as in _t. virgata_, figure . figure is the equatorial plate of a metaphase in which the larger component of the unequal pair has been removed in sectioning. the daughter plates of a first spermatocyte in anaphase (fig. ) show the separation of the components of the heterochromosome pair; and equatorial plates of the resulting two classes of second spermatocytes (fig. ) show the same conditions. figures and are prophases of the second division, figure showing the small chromosome ready for metakinesis. it was impossible here also to get good drawings of daughter plates of the second spermatocytes to show the content of the two classes of spermatozoa, but there is no doubt that all of the chromosomes divide in the second mitosis, giving one class of spermatids containing the small chromosome, the other class its larger homologue. no male somatic cells were found in mitosis, but they would, if found, show the same conditions as in the spermatogonia. one of many good equatorial plates from egg follicles (fig. ) shows large chromosomes, indicating an equal pair in place of the unequal pair of the male. chelymorpha argus (family chrysomelidæ). this species was found in larval and adult stages on _convolvulus arvensis_ at harpswell, maine, in july and august. it shows the same conditions as _trirhabda_ and _tenebrio_, so far as the unequal pair of chromosomes is concerned, and is especially favorable for study of synapsis stages. the number of chromosomes in the spermatogonia (plate ix, fig. ) is . here the components of the unequal pair are the small spherical chromosome and one of the several chromosomes third in size, forming a comparatively small unsymmetrical bivalent (figs. - ). the spermatogonia occupy the outer end of each follicle, and next to them comes a layer of cysts in which the chromosomes from the last spermatogonial division are closely massed in the form of short deeply staining loops at one side of the nuclear space (fig. ). following this synizesis stage comes one in which some of the short loops have straightened, their free ends extending out into the nuclear space (figs. and ). figure shows the nucleus of a slightly later stage in which the free ends of two straightened chromosomes are on the point of uniting. in figures and the point of union of homologous chromosomes is indicated in some cases by a knob, in others by a sharply acute angle. in a slightly later stage (fig. ), when all of the short loops have straightened and united in pairs, the point of union is no longer visible, all of the loops being rounded at the bend and of equal thickness throughout. my attention was first called to this method of synapsis by the conspicuous difference in number and length of loops in the synizesis stage compared with the later bouquet stage just before the spireme is formed. following the synapsis stage shown in figure comes one in which the loops lose their polarized arrangement and unite to form a continuous spireme (figs. and ). in this form, the heterochromosome pair could not be distinguished until the spireme stage, and it is, therefore, uncertain whether these chromosomes remain condensed after the last spermatogonial divisions and are hidden among the massed and deeply staining loops of the synizesis and synapsis stages, or whether they pass through the same synaptic phases as the other chromosomes, condensing and remaining isolated at the beginning of the spireme stage. an early prophase of the first maturation mitosis (fig. ) shows segments of the spireme longitudinally split, and in some cases transformed into crosses which show a transverse division also. most of the equal bivalents have the dumb-bell form in the spindle (figs. - ). one is ring-shaped, the ring being formed by union of the free ends of the segment so that the spindle fibers are attached to the middle of each univalent chromosome (fig. ). this method of ring formation, like that described by montgomery (' ) for the amphibia, is of very frequent occurrence in the spermatocytes of the coleoptera. the dumb-bells are so bent at the ends (fig. ) that the spindle fibers, here also, are attached at or near the center of each univalent component of a bivalent chromosome, and the separated, univalent chromosomes go to the poles of the spindle in the form of vs. as in _tenebrio_ the heterochromosome pair is late about coming into the equatorial plate (figs. - ), but it does finally take its position with the others (fig. ) and separates into its component parts somewhat earlier than the other bivalents (figs. , ). figures and show polar views of the metaphase, the smaller element (_x_) being the unequal pair. the chromosomes in late anaphase are too much crowded to give clear drawings. as in all the beetles so far studied there is no rest stage between the two maturation divisions, but the late anaphase of the first mitosis passes over quickly into the second spindle. figures and are typical equatorial plates of the second division, one showing the small chromosome (_s_), the other its mate more nearly spherical than the others (_l_). an anaphase including the small chromosome is shown in figure . as in the species previously described the spermatozoa are evidently dimorphic. female somatic equatorial plates from egg follicles are shown in figures and ; chromosomes are present and no one is without an equal mate. odontota dorsalis (family chrysomelidæ). _odontota dorsalis_ is a small leaf-beetle found on _robinia pseudacacia_. the chromosomes are comparatively few in number, in the spermatogonia (figs. and ), and of immense size when one considers the smallness of the beetle. in some of the spermatogonial cysts many of the chromosomes are v-shaped as in figure , while in others all, with the exception of the small one, are rod-shaped as in figure , which looks like a hemipteran equatorial plate. the spermatogonial resting nucleus (fig. ) contains a large plasmosome (_p_), but no condensed chromatin. the synizesis and synapsis stages are similar to those in chelymorpha (figs. and ). the spireme stage (figs. , ) contains, in addition to the pale spireme, a very conspicuous group consisting of a large plasmosome with a large and a small chromosome attached to it. in the prophase, before the nuclear membrane has disappeared, this group is easily distinguished from the other dumb-bell and ring-shaped bivalents (figs. - ). in preparations much destained (fig. ) the small chromosome component of the group retains the stain longer than the larger one. the spindle in prophase (fig. ) is much elongated and the chromosomes are often spread out upon it so as to be easily counted. in the early metaphase the parachute-like heterochromosome group is always nearer one pole of the spindle (plate x, figs. and ). the equatorial plate often shows both the larger component of the pair and the plasmosome (fig. ). figures - show the metakinesis of the heterochromosome bivalent. in figure the two unequal elements are completely separated and the plasmosome has disappeared. the equatorial plates of the two resulting kinds of second spermatocytes appear in figures and . in the anaphase of the second division all of the chromosomes are divided quantitatively as may be seen in figures and . a few dividing male somatic cells were found in the walls of the testis. figure (plate ix) is an equatorial plate from one of these. the chromosomes are like those of the spermatogonia (figs. and ), large and small. no dividing female somatic cells were found. a few drawings of developing spermatids are given to show the transformations of a peculiar body which seems to be characteristic of insect spermatids. figure is a very young spermatid showing only diffuse chromatin in the nucleus. the nucleus soon enlarges (fig. ) and a large dense body (_n_) appears which stains like chromatin with various staining media. a little later (fig. ) the chromatin forms a homogeneous, more or less hemispherical or sometimes crescent-shaped mass which stains an even gray in iron-hæmatoxylin. in addition the nucleus contains a body (_n_) smaller than in the preceding stage, but staining the same. as the nucleus condenses and elongates to form the sperm head, a light region containing this deeply staining body is seen on one side (figs. , ). a little later the body is divided into two, which appear sometimes spherical (fig. ), sometimes elongated (fig. ). as the sperm head elongates still more, approaching maturity, these bodies diminish in size (figs. , ) and ultimately disappear. a cross section of the sperm head at such a stage as figure shows the chromatin in crescent shape with material which stains very little within (fig. ). the chromatin-like body described above was observed in _tenebrio_ in a stage corresponding to figure , and it was thought that the larger body seen in some cases and the smaller one in others might be the larger and smaller heterochromosomes, but a study of this element in more favorable material disproves that supposition by showing that the different sizes are merely different phases in the evolution of the body. throughout its history it stains like dense chromatin, and my only suggestion as to its origin is that it seems, from a study of this and other species of beetles, to be a derivative of the chromatin of the spermatid, increasing in size for a time, then decreasing, and finally breaking up into granules and dissolving in the karyolymph. whether it has any function connected with the development of the spermatozoön, or whether it is merely material rejected from the chromosomes, as in many cases in oögenesis, one can only surmise. in one testis a peculiar abnormality was found. in all of the perfect spermatogonial plates two small chromosomes were present (figs. , ). nineteen such plates were counted in five different cysts. all of the equatorial plates of the first spermatocytes showed chromosomes, as usual. in a few favorable growth stages (fig. ) the two small chromosomes were seen to be combined with the larger heterochromosome and a plasmosome, and one first spermatocyte spindle was found in which the same combination could be clearly seen (fig. ). all of the second spermatocyte metaphases in which a small chromosome occurred, contained two small ones, making in all (fig. ). the others contained large chromosomes, as usual. the only explanation suggested by the conditions is that somewhere in its history, the small chromosome had undergone an extra division, and that ever afterward the two products behaved like the one small heterochromosome of a normal individual. the chief interest in this abnormality centers in the fact that the two small chromosomes of this specimen behave exactly like the usual single one, emphasizing the individuality of this particular heterochromosome. both evidently have the same individual characteristics and affinities as the one in other cases. epilachna borealis (family coccinellidæ). _epilachna borealis_ was found in abundance on squash vines at woods hole, massachusetts, in september. the testes, unlike those of most of the coleoptera, consist of many free follicles similar to those of the orthoptera. the germ glands were rather far advanced, but some good spermatogonial and spermatocyte cysts were found. in figure , a spermatogonial metaphase, the small chromosome is shown with larger ones. the heterochromosome pair appears in condensed form in the spireme stage (fig. ), and again in the first maturation spindle (figs. , ). the varying forms of the ordinary chromosomes are shown in figure . figures and are equatorial plates of the first mitosis. the unequal pair is shown by itself in figure , and the separation of the heterochromosomes is seen in figure . equatorial plates of the second division, one containing the small chromosome (_b_), are shown in figure . a prophase of the same division (fig. ) proves that the small chromosome divides quantitatively like the others. it was interesting to find here and there in this material whole cysts in which the nuclei were like those described by paulmier (' ) for _anasa tristis_ (plate xiii, fig. ) as cells which were being transformed to serve as food for the glowing spermatids (figs. , ). the only occasional appearance of these cysts seems to me to preclude their being a special dispensation to furnish the spermatids with nutrition during their transformation. their appearance and size make me suspect that they are giant spermatids due to the failure of one of the spermatogonial or spermatocyte mitoses. the smaller chromatin body seems to correspond to that described for the spermatids of _odontota dorsalis_. euphoria inda (family scarabæidæ). of _euphoria inda_ only one male was captured, but the numerous testes furnished abundant material in desirable stages. the spermatogonial equatorial plate (fig. ) contains chromosomes of which the two smallest (_l_ and _s_) form the unequal pair. the resting spermatogonium contains a two-lobed plasmosome (fig. ). the growth stages are similar to those in _tenebrio_ in showing no distinct bouquet stage, but there is a spireme stage in which the heterochromosome pair is clearly seen (fig. ). figure (plate xi) is an early prophase, and figure one in which the unequal pair appears with a tetrad and several dumb-bell forms. the prophase of the spindle, as in _odontota_, is much elongated (fig. ). in figures - the small heterochromosome pair is shown in various positions with reference to the other chromosomes of the metaphase of the first spermatocyte. figure shows it more deeply stained than the others in the equatorial plate. this pair divides in advance of the others, and the larger and smaller elements are plainly seen nearer the poles in anaphase than the other univalent chromosomes (figs. - ). daughter plates of the first spermatocyte are shown in figure , and equatorial plates of the second spermatocyte in figure . figure shows the telophase of the first division with the spindle for the second division forming. in figures and we have daughter plates of the two classes of second spermatocytes, showing the content of the two equal classes of dimorphic spermatozoa, as this was shown in _tenebrio_. figures and are anaphases showing the division of the heterochromosomes (_l_ and _s_). figures - are early stages in the development of the spermatid showing the chromatin nucleolus (_n_) in various phases. blepharida rhois (family chrysomelidæ). the testes were rather too far advanced when this material was collected and no dividing spermatogonia were present. the growth stages (figs. , ) show a faintly staining spireme and a heterochromosome group similar to that of _odontota_, a large and a small chromosome attached to a large plasmosome. the spireme appears to go directly over by condensation and segmentation into the dumb-bell-shaped figures seen in the first maturation spindle (figs. , ), though cross-shaped bivalents occasionally occur (fig. ). the heterochromosome pair, slightly separated by plasmosome material, is usually found at the periphery of the plate (figs. - ). figure is an exceptional anaphase in which the heterochromosome elements are not mingled with the polar masses of chromatin. figures _a_ and _b_ are equatorial plates of the second mitosis, and figures and are pairs of daughter plates from second spermatocytes showing again the dimorphism of the spermatozoa as to their chromatin content. as in several of the forms studied, material was collected for examination of the somatic cells, but no favorable cases of mitosis were to be found. silpha americana (family silphidæ). only one male of this species was secured, but the large testes gave all stages in abundance. the chromosomes, however, were very small and too numerous, in the spermatogonia (fig. ). the small chromosome is, nevertheless clearly distinguished in many of these plates (_s_). the resting spermatogonium contains one very large plasmosome and often one or two smaller ones (fig. , _p_). the unequal pair is seen in the growth stages (figs. , ), and may frequently be seen outside of the equatorial plate of the first spermatocyte spindle (fig. ). in favorable sections it may also be found in the plate among the other bivalents (fig. ). figure is a prophase showing the bivalent chromosomes still connected by linin fibers. an equatorial plate of the first division is shown in figure , and a pair of corresponding plates of the second spermatocyte in figure . the small heterochromosome divides in the second spindle in advance of the others as seen in figure . therefore, although this form is not especially favorable for detailed study on account of the large number of small chromosomes, the conditions are evidently the same as in the other species described--an unsymmetrical heterochromosome bivalent in the first spermatocyte, giving rise by the second maturation division to equal numbers of dimorphic spermatozoa, one class receiving the large heterochromosome, the other class the small one. doryphora decemlineata (family chrysomelidæ). _doryphora decemlineata_ has been the most difficult one of the collection to work out satisfactorily. the chromosomes in the spermatogonial plates were in most cases much tangled, and the behavior of the heterochromosome pair was such as to suggest an "accessory chromosome" rather than an unequal pair. abundant material for the study of somatic cells was at hand, but nothing favorable could be found in the sections. two spermatogonial plates, containing chromosomes, are shown in figures and (plate xii). the small heterochromosome (_s_) is slightly elongated. the synizesis and synapsis stages are especially clear. the chromosomes, after the last spermatogonial mitosis go over immediately into a synizesis stage consisting of a polarized group of short loops, which later straighten and unite in pairs (figs. and ). from these loops are formed the spireme (figs. - ), which splits and segments, producing various cross, dumb-bell, and ring forms (figs. - ). as in most of the other species of coleoptera, the unequal pair is not distinguishable until the spireme stage. figure is an unusual prophase in which all of the equal pairs show a longitudinal split as well as a transverse constriction, and the larger heterochromosome (_l_) is also split. figure shows a somewhat later and more common prophase in which the unequal pair, one ring, crosses, and dumb-bells may be seen. this figure, as well as figures - , show the unequal pair in various relations to the other chromosomes. this pair in _doryphora_ consists of a large v-shaped chromosome with a small spherical one attached to it in different positions. when the small one is behind the v, the group has the appearance of an orthopteran "accessory." figures - show the separation of the two elements outside of the equatorial plate, while in figure the unequal pair is in line with the other chromosomes. in figure , an anaphase, the unequal elements are barely separated, while the metakinesis of the other pairs is much further advanced. figures and are equatorial plates of the first division, one showing only the larger element of the heterochromosome pair (fig. , _x_), the other both elements (fig. , _l_ and _s_). in the late anaphase (fig. ) the larger heterochromosome is often seen outside of the polar mass, reminding one again of the "accessory" in the orthoptera. occasionally it is found in some other isolated position (fig. ). equatorial plates of the second division show the same conditions as in the other species; some contain the larger heterochromosome, others the smaller one (fig. , _a_ and _b_). it was impossible to draw anaphases of the second division from a polar view and the lateral view showed nothing unusual, merely the longitudinal division of all of the chromosomes. the spermatids show some interesting variations from the other species which have been examined. in figures and we have telophases of the second spermatocyte, showing centrosome and archoplasm (fig. ) and certain masses of deeply staining material in the cytoplasm (fig. , _a_{ }_). figures and are young spermatids showing the archoplasm from the second spindle (_a_{ }_) and a smaller, more deeply staining mass (_a_{ }_), derived from the irregular masses of the earlier stage (fig. , _a_{ }_). in figures and , the axial fiber has appeared and the larger mass of archoplasm (_a_{ }_) is being transformed into a sheath. the other body remains unchanged. during the following stages this smaller archoplasmic body (_a_{ }_) lies in close contact with the axial fiber and sheath (_a_{ }_), and gradually decreases in size (figs. - ) until it disappears in a slightly later stage. the acrosome seems to develop directly out of the cytoplasm. the enigmatical body (_a_{ }_), which is probably archoplasm from the first maturation spindle, as it is not found in the cytoplasm of the first spermatocyte, may serve as nutriment for the developing axial fiber. the sperm head has a peculiar triangular form, staining more deeply on two sides. miscellaneous coleoptera. considerable material from the spruce borers was collected at harpswell, maine, but the species were not identified. although these insects were in the pupa stage, most of the testes were too old. there were no dividing spermatogonia and few spermatocyte mitoses. most of the spermatocytes contained chromosomes, one of which was plainly an unequal pair. in a few testes the number was , indicating that pupæ of two species had been collected. figure shows the metaphase of first spermatocyte mitosis with the unequal pair in metakinesis. figures and are first spermatocyte equatorial plates of the two species, containing and chromosomes respectively. figure is a first spermatocyte spindle in anaphase, showing the unequal pair behind the other chromosomes. figure is an equatorial plate from a second spermatocyte, showing the small chromosome. in figure are shown several of the bivalent chromosomes, including the unsymmetrical pair, from nuclear prophases of the first division, all from the same cyst. _adalia bipunctata_ (family coccinellidæ), the common lady beetle, has a very conspicuous pair of unequal heterochromosomes, as may be seen in figures - (plate xiii). this would seem to be a favorable form for determining the chromosome conditions in somatic cells, but no clear equatorial plates were found in either larvæ or pupæ. in _cicindela primeriana_ (family cicindelidæ) there are chromosomes in the spermatogonium (fig. ), one being small. the heterochromosome group is blended into a vacuolated sphere in growth stages (figs. , ). in the metaphase of the first division it is trilobed, or tripartite (fig. ), and in metakinesis, a small spherical chromosome separates from a much larger v-shaped one (fig. ). equatorial plates of first and second spermatocytes are shown in figures and . whole cysts of giant first spermatocytes were found both in growth stages (fig. ) and prophases (fig. ). here the heterochromosome group is plainly double (fig. ), and the conditions observed must have been due to the failure of a spermatogonial mitosis to complete itself. several of the carabidæ have been studied, and the material, though not especially favorable, is interesting in that some members of the family have an unequal pair of heterochromosomes, others an odd one. _chlænius æstivus_ (figs. - ), _chlænius pennsylvanicus_ (figs. - ), and _galerita bicolor_ (fig. ) have the unequal pair, while _anomoglossus emarginatus_ (figs. - ) has an odd heterochromosome (_x_), which behaves exactly like the larger heterochromosome in other carabs. in the elateridæ and lampyridæ we also have examples of the second type with the odd chromosome. two elaters, species not determined (figs. - and - ), have each chromosomes in the spermatogonia (figs. and ), and in the first spermatocyte division an odd chromosome (_x_) which is in each case the smallest. in the first of these elaters, the female somatic number was determined to be (fig. ). in the second elater the pairs of second spermatocytes, containing and chromosomes respectively in the two cells, were in nearly every case connected as shown in figure , one pair of chromosomes not having separated completely in the first mitosis. of _ellychnia corrusca_ (family lampyridæ) only the spermatogonial equatorial plate, containing chromosomes (_x_, the odd one) is given, as no material in maturation has yet been obtained, and a comparative study of the germ cells of the elateridæ and lampyridæ will be made as soon as suitable material can be secured. in addition to the species of coleoptera described here, two others, _coptocycla aurichalcea_ and _coptocycla guttata_ have been studied by one of my students and the results published elsewhere (nowlin, ' ). in both an even number of chromosomes ( , ) was found in the spermatogonia, one being very small and forming with a larger one an unequal pair which remained condensed during the growth stage and separated into its larger and smaller components in the first spermatocyte mitosis. the result of maturation, as in the other species here described and in _tenebrio molitor_, is dimorphism of the spermatozoa. the method of synapsis in coptocycla is like that described for _chelymorpha argus_. hemiptera homoptera. aphrophora quadrangularis. the abundance of aphrophora at harpswell, maine, in june and july, , suggested that it might be well to examine at least one more of the hemiptera homoptera for comparison with the many species of hemiptera heteroptera which have been recently reexamined by wilson (' , ' , ' ). the larvæ only were collected, as they gave all the desired stages for a study of the spermatogenesis, and also oögonia and synizesis and synapsis stages of the oöcytes. in the first collections the testes were dissected out, but the many free follicles break apart so easily that the later material was prepared by cutting out the abdominal segments which contained the reproductive organs, and fixing those without dissection. the same methods of fixation and staining were employed as for the coleoptera. hermann's safranin-gentian method was especially effective with this material. in _aphrophora_ the follicles of each testis are free, forming a dense cluster, each follicle being connected with the vas deferens by a short duct. the very young follicles are spherical, the older ones ovoid in form. the primary spermatogonia (plate xiv, fig. )--very clear cells with a lobed nucleus which stains slightly--occupy the tip of the follicle. next to these comes a layer of cysts of secondary spermatogonia which are conspicuous for their deeper staining quality (fig. ). there appears to be no plasmosome in either class of spermatogonia. figure is the equatorial plate of a secondary spermatogonium. there are chromosomes, two of which are conspicuously larger than the others and evidently form a pair. the odd one is one of the three next in size. next to the secondary spermatogonia are cysts of young spermatocytes, whose nuclei show a continuous spireme and an elongated deeply staining chromatin rod which is the odd chromosome (fig. ). this is often more elongated than in the figure and more or less wormlike in appearance. a pair of smaller chromatin masses may sometimes be detected at this stage, and are readily found a little later (fig. ) when the nucleus has enlarged and the spireme has become looser and stains less deeply. here the odd chromosome is more condensed, or shortened, and split. there is no synizesis and no polarized or bouquet stage, but the nuclei of all of the spermatocytes contain a continuous spireme throughout the growth stage. synapsis must occur at the close of the last spermatogonial mitosis before the spireme is formed. figures and show a slightly later growth stage. the form and connection of the "_m_-chromosome" pair (wilson, ' _{b}) comes out clearly here. figure , from a safranin-gentian preparation, shows both the odd chromosome and the _m_-chromosomes. some time before the first mitosis, the spireme splits and the pairs of granules embedded in linin are wonderfully distinct, both in iron-hæmatoxylin and safranin-gentian preparations (fig. ). the _m_-chromosomes have here formed a precocious tetrad (_m_). figure is a similar stage from a safranin-gentian preparation. figures and show the condensation of chromatin granules to form tetrads of various sizes, still embedded in the linin spireme. as these tetrads come into the spindle without losing their elongated form, it is evident that each one consists of two longitudinally split chromosomes united end to end in synapsis and separated in the first maturation mitosis, which is therefore reductional. the odd chromosome and the _m_-chromosomes show no longitudinal split in these figures, but they may appear as in figure . occasionally one of the tetrads takes the form of a cross (fig. ). in this figure the split "accessory" (_x_) lies against the nuclear membrane and the archoplasmic material for the spindle is seen along one side of the nucleus. it is certain here that the spindle fibers come from extranuclear material, not from nuclear substance, as paulmier (' ) describes for _anasa tristis_. figures and show the first maturation mitosis as it usually appears in sections from mercuro-nitric material stained with iron-hæmatoxylin. the odd chromosome is always more or less eccentric and is attached by a spindle fiber to one pole. in hermann material, considerably destained, the tetrads and the odd chromosome appear as in figures , , and , the tetrads being in position for a transverse division. the odd chromosome is always so placed that its longitudinal split is at right angles to the axis of the spindle, as though it were to divide in this mitosis. it does not do so, however, but goes to one daughter cell, always lagging behind, as is shown in figures and . figures , _a_ and _b_, are polar plates of the first mitosis with and chromosomes, respectively, and figures , _a_, _b_, and _c_, show the polar plates (_a_ and _c_) each containing chromosomes, and the odd chromosome at a different level (_b_). the latter is a view of the anaphase which one often gets at three foci in one section. figures , _a_ and _b_, are equatorial plates of the second mitosis with and chromosomes respectively. figure shows a side view of the second spindle in metaphase, and figure in anaphase. figures and are daughter plates from two spindles showing the chromosome content of the two equal classes of spermatozoa, one class containing ordinary chromosomes, the other ordinary chromosomes plus the odd heterochromosome, for the odd chromosome divides with the others in the second spindle as in orthoptera (mcclung and sutton). in figures and (plate xv) are seen the telophase of the two kinds of second spermatocytes, one (fig. ) showing the divided odd chromosome, which continues to stain more deeply after the others have become diffuse. all of the spermatids (figs. - ) contain, in the early stages of development, a body (_n_) which stains like chromatin, but increases in size from a small granule in the telophase (figs. , ) to the large dense body (_n_) seen in figure . this is probably homologous with the chromatin nucleolus described for the spermatids of the coleoptera. in addition to this, in one-half of the spermatid nuclei there is a condensed mass of chromatin which is evidently the derivative of the odd chromosome of the spermatogonia and spermatocytes (figs. and , _x_). in common with the spermatids of other hemiptera these show two masses of archoplasm, the larger of which forms the sheath (_s_) of the axial fiber of the tail, and the smaller the acrosome (_a_). the axial fiber grows out directly from the centrosome, on either side of which there is a dense band forming the lateral boundary of the middle piece. it will be seen that the odd chromosome of aphrophora is in its behavior precisely like the typical orthopteran "accessory" of mcclung, and similar to the odd chromosome of the coleoptera. in various parts of the young male larvæ dividing cells were found and the number determined (fig. ). turning now to the female larvæ to determine the somatic number, the oögonia proved to be more favorable for counting. twenty-four chromosomes were present in equatorial plates of oögonial mitoses (fig. ), thus confirming wilson's results for the _anasa_ group of the hemiptera heteroptera. in examining sections of female larvæ stained with safranin-gentian-violet, i was surprised to see a very marked polarized or bouquet stage and to find among the loops something resembling the odd chromosome of the growing spermatocytes. it was difficult to get a clear view of this body as it lay within the loops. in one section of a slightly earlier stage before synapsis, there were found two pairs of chromosomes (fig. , _x_{ }_, _x_{ }_, and _m_{ }_, _m_{ }_) which were stained with safranin in contrast with the violet spireme. these two pairs i interpret as being ( ) the homologues of the pair of _m_-chromosomes, which remain condensed during the growth stage of the spermatocytes, and ( ) a pair of heterochromosomes corresponding to the odd chromosome of the male. various combinations of these heterochromosomes are shown in figures - . figures and were taken from mercuro-nitric material stained with iron-hæmatoxylin. in section the "bouquet" was cut through, showing the bivalent corresponding to the larger pair in figure , and in figure this element is seen behind the paler loops. the history of these two pairs of heterochromosomes, which have not, so far as i know, been found before in oöcytes, should be followed up in older ovaries, and related species should be examined for similar phenomena. lepidoptera. cacoecia and euvanessa. i had no intention of making an extended study of the spermatogenesis of the lepidoptera, but was interested to see if anything corresponding to the heterochromosomes of other orders could be found. the material studied was the testes of the larvæ of _cacoecia cerasivorana_ and _euvanessa antiopa_. the number of chromosomes is large, but the equatorial plates are diagrammatically clear. in both species chromosomes are found in both first and second spermatocytes. in both, one chromosome is larger (figs. and , _x_). in the growth stage (figs. , ) there is a two-lobed body (or sometimes two separate spherical bodies) which seems to correspond in size to the larger pair of chromosomes in the first spermatocyte. in iron-hæmatoxylin preparations this pair is often obscured by parts of the spireme which are tangled around it. in safranin-gentian preparations it stains, not like a plasmosome, but red like the heterochromosomes, while the spireme is violet. the staining reaction at least suggests that this equal pair of chromosomes, which may be traced through the synizesis stage (fig. ), synapsis stage (figs. , ), growth stages (figs. , ), and prophases (figs. - ), into the first spermatocyte spindle (figs. , ), and on to the second spermatocyte (figs. , , ), is an equal pair of heterochromosomes comparable to the equal pair of "idiochromosomes" found by wilson in _nezara_ (' ). as the various stages are practically the same in _euvanessa antiopa_, but somewhat clearer in _cacoecia_, only one figure is given for _euvanessa_--the equatorial plate of the first spermatocyte (fig. ). summary of results. ( ) an unequal pair of heterochromosomes has been found by the author in species of coleoptera belonging to families: family. species. i. buprestidæ two spruce-borers, species not determined. { . _chlænius æstivus._ ii. carabidæ { . _chlænius pennsylvanicus._ { . _galerita bicolor._ { . _blepharida rhois._ { . _chelymorpha argus._ { . _coptocycla aurichalcea._ iii. chrysomelidæ { . _coptocycla guttata._ { . _doryphora decemlineata._ { . _odontota dorsalis._ { . _trirhabda virgata._ { . _trirhabda canadense._ iv. cicindelidæ _cicindela primeriana._ v. coccinellidæ { _adalia bipunctata._ { _epilachna borealis._ vi. scarabæidæ _euphoria inda._ vii. silphidæ _silpha americana._ viii. tenebrionidæ _tenebrio molitor._ ( ) an odd chromosome, which behaves during the growth stage of the first spermatocytes like the "accessory" of the orthoptera, has been found in species of coleoptera,[a] belonging to families: family. species. i. carabidæ _anomoglossus emarginatus._ ii. elateridæ two elaters; species not determined. iii. lampyridæ _ellychnia corrusca._ ( ) in most of the species of coleoptera examined, the unequal pair or the odd chromosome remains condensed during the growth period of the first spermatocyte, like the "accessory" of the orthoptera and the various heterochromosomes of the hemiptera. ( ) several of these species of coleoptera have a synizesis stage in which the spermatogonial number of short loops is massed at one side of the nucleus. this is followed by a synapsis stage in which the loops straighten and unite in pairs, forming longer loops which soon spread out in the nuclear space, and, with the exception of the heterochromosomes, unite to form a continuous spireme. ( ) in several of the species of coleoptera and in aphrophora, it has been shown that a body staining like chromatin develops in the spermatids, increasing in size for a time, then breaking up into granules and disappearing. this body evidently has no relation to the heterochromosomes, as it is the same for all of the spermatids. its staining qualities suggest that it may be material derived from the chromosomes. it is finally dissolved in the karyolymph. ( ) in iron-hæmatoxylin preparations the heterochromosomes of the coleoptera vary greatly in their staining properties during mitosis. in some species they stain exactly like the ordinary chromosomes, in others the larger one of the unequal pair holds the stain more tenaciously than the others and also than its smaller mate, and this is true in several cases where the heterochromosome is smaller than the other chromosomes, which destain more readily. the odd chromosome of the elaters stains less deeply than the others in the first spermatocyte. in the growth stage they stain more deeply, as a rule, than the spireme, with iron-hæmatoxylin or thionin, stain red with safranin-gentian and green with auerbach's methyl green-fuchsin combination. ( ) _aphrophora quadrangularis_ agrees with the _anasa_ group of hemiptera heteroptera in having a pair of _m_-chromosomes and an odd chromosome in the spermatocytes, but differs from many of that group in that the odd chromosome divides in the second mitosis instead of the first. it also differs from other known forms in exhibiting heterochromosomes in certain stages of the oöcytes. ( ) the two species of lepidoptera examined have an equal pair of heterochromosomes. footnotes: [a] aug. , .--since this paper was prepared, other species of coleoptera have been studied. of these, have an unequal pair of heterochromosomes in the spermatocytes. six belong to the chrysomelidæ, making of that family that have been examined. representatives of new families--melandryidæ, lamiinæ, meloidæ, cerambycinæ have been studied. in only two species-- elater and lampyrid--has the odd chromosome been found in place of the unequal pair. no species of coleoptera has yet been examined in which one or the other of these two types of heterochromosomes does not occur in the spermatocytes. of the species of coleoptera whose germ cells have been studied, . per cent are characterized by the presence of an unequal pair of heterochromosomes in the male germ cells, . per cent by the presence of an odd chromosome. comparison of results in different species of coleoptera. in number of chromosomes there is great variation, the smallest number ( ) having been found in _odontota dorsalis_, and the largest ( ) in _silpha americana_. the difference in size is also very marked, as may be seen by comparing the spermatogonial plates in figures and with those shown in figures and . no other species of the tenebrionidæ has yet been secured, and all of the other beetles examined differ in a marked degree from _tenebrio molitor_ in the growth stages of the spermatocytes. while in _tenebrio_ the chromatin stains very dark throughout the growth stage, and the unequal pair can not be distinguished until the prophase of division (' , plate vi, figs. - ), in most of the others there are very distinct synizesis and synapsis stages, following the last spermatogonial mitosis, then a spireme stage in which the condensed unequal pair of heterochromosomes or the odd chromosome is conspicuous in contrast with the pale spireme, whether the preparation is stained with iron-hæmatoxylin, gentian, or thionin. in _tenebrio molitor_, the unequal pair behaved in every respect like the other bivalent chromosomes. in the other forms, though it behaves during the two maturation divisions like the symmetrical bivalents, it remains condensed during the growth period like the "accessory" of the orthoptera, the odd chromosome, "_m_-chromosomes," and "idiochromosomes" of the hemiptera. in several cases the heterochromosomes of the coleoptera are associated with a plasmosome (figs. , , , , , ), as is often true in other orders. this peculiar pair of unequal heterochromosomes varies considerably in size during the growth stage in some of the species studied, but changes very little in form, differing in this respect from the "accessory" in some of the orthoptera (mcclung, ' ) and from the large idiochromosome in some of the hemiptera (wilson, ' ). the odd chromosome, so far as it has been studied, behaves precisely like the larger member of the unequal pair without its smaller mate (figs. , , , ). in the growth stage it remains condensed and either spherical or sometimes flattened against the nuclear membrane (figs. , , ). in the first maturation mitosis it is attached to one pole of the spindle, does not divide, but goes to one of the two second spermatocytes (figs. , ). in the second spermatocyte it divides with the other chromosomes, giving two equal classes of spermatids differing by the presence or absence of this odd chromosome. all of the evidence at hand leads to the conclusion that in the coleoptera, the univalent elements of all the pairs, equal and unequal, separate in the first spermatocyte mitosis and divide quantitatively in the second. in this respect the behavior of the chromosomes in this order appears to be much more uniform than in the orthoptera and hemiptera. comparison of the coleoptera with the hemiptera and lepidoptera. as has been seen above, the conditions in the coleoptera, so far as the heterochromosomes are concerned, correspond very closely in final results with those in the hemiptera heteroptera and the orthoptera. in minor details these chromosomes are less peculiar in the coleoptera than in either of the other orders. even condensation during the growth stage is not universal, and synapsis of the heterochromosomes apparently occurs simultaneously with that of the ordinary chromosomes, instead of being delayed, as in many of the hemiptera heteroptera. _aphrophora_ (hemiptera homoptera) agrees with the _anasa_ group of the hemiptera heteroptera in having a pair of condensed _m_-chromosomes, in the growth stage, but this pair is already united in synapsis when first seen. it differs from _anasa_, but agrees with _banasa_ and _archimerus_ in exhibiting a typical odd chromosome which goes to one pole without division in the first spermatocyte, and divides with the other chromosomes in the second spermatocyte. the odd chromosome in this species of hemiptera, therefore, behaves like that in the coleoptera and orthoptera. the most interesting points in the results of this study of the germ cells of _aphrophora_ is the discovery of two pairs of condensed chromosomes in certain phases of the growth stages of the oöcytes. this has not been shown to be the case in any other species of hemiptera, so far as i can ascertain. it is now evident that in the heteroptera homoptera there are at least two distinct classes as to behavior of chromosomes. in one class we have the aphids (stevens, ' and ' ) and phylloxera (morgan, ' ) in which no heterochromosomes have been found, while in the other class are such forms as aphrophora with both a pair of _m_-chromosomes and a typical odd heterochromosome. the two species of lepidoptera examined indicate that here we may have conditions comparable to those in _nezara_--an equal pair of heterochromosomes whose only apparent peculiarity is their condensed form during the growth stage. doubtless the results of other investigators will soon throw more light on the heterochromosomes of this order. general discussion. it will be seen from the foregoing that the results obtained in the study of the germ cells of _tenebrio molitor_ have been confirmed in full for several species of coleoptera, and in part for [b] different species belonging to [b] families. it has also been shown that a different type of coleopteran spermatogenesis exists in at least families, where an odd chromosome like that in the orthoptera occurs in place of the unequal pair. in all of these insects the spermatozoa are distinctly dimorphic, forming two equal classes, one of which either contains one smaller chromosome or lacks one chromosome. the most difficult part of the work has been the determination of the somatic number of chromosomes in the male and female. in some cases suitable material has been lacking; in others, though material was abundant, no metaphases could be found in which the chromosomes were sufficiently separated to be counted with certainty. in three species (in addition to _tenebrio molitor_) where the unequal pair is present, the female somatic cells have been shown to contain the same number of chromosomes as the spermatogonia, but an equal pair in place of the unequal pair of the male. in two new cases the male somatic number and size have been shown to be the same as in the spermatogonia. in one of the elateridæ, where the spermatogonial number is , the female somatic number is , and in _aphrophora_ the numbers in male and female cells are respectively and . no exception has been found to the rule established by previous work on the coleoptera (stevens, ' ) and on the hemiptera (wilson, ' and ' ), that ( ) in cases where an unequal pair is present in the male germ cells, it is also present in the male somatic cells, but is replaced in the female by an equal pair, each component being equal in volume to the larger member of the unequal pair, and ( ) in cases where an odd chromosome occurs in the male, a pair of equal size are found in the female. it is therefore evident that an egg fertilized by a spermatozoön ( ) containing the small member of an unequal pair or ( ) lacking one chromosome, must develop into a male, while an egg fertilized by a spermatozoön containing the larger element of an unequal pair of heterochromosomes or the odd chromosome must produce a female. whether these heterochromosomes are to be regarded as sex chromosomes in the sense that they both represent sex characters and determine sex, one can not decide without further evidence. comparison of the two types in coleoptera, especially where, as in the carabidæ, both occur in one family, has suggested to me that here it is possible that the small chromosome represents not a degenerate female sex chromosome, as suggested by wilson, but some character or characters which are correlated with the sex character in some species and not in others. assuming this to be the case, a pair of small chromosomes might be subtracted from the unequal pair, leaving an odd chromosome. the two types would then be reduced to one. it may be possible to determine the validity of this suggestion for particular cases by observation or experiment. since the first of this series of papers was published, there have appeared three important papers by prof. e. b. wilson, bearing on the problem of sex determination in insects. these papers are based on a study of many species of the hemiptera heteroptera. these insects fall into two classes--one in which a pair of "idiochromosomes," usually of different size, remain separate and divide quantitatively in the first spermatocyte, conjugate and then separate in the second maturation mitosis; and another class in which an odd chromosome--the "heterotropic" chromosome--divides in one of the maturation mitoses, but not in the other. wilson regards the odd chromosome as the equivalent of the larger of the "idiochromosomes," its smaller mate having disappeared. in the somatic cells of the former class he finds in the male the unequal pair, in the female an equal pair, the smaller chromosome being replaced by an equivalent of the larger "idiochromosome." in the latter class the male somatic cells contain the odd number, the female somatic cells and oögonia an even number, the homologue of the odd chromosome of the male being present and giving to the female one more chromosome than are found in the male. in his latest paper wilson (' ) makes a variety of suggestions as to sex determination. he shows that if the "idiochromosomes" and the heterotropic chromosome be regarded as sex chromosomes in the double sense that they both bear sex characters and determine sex, the following scheme accounts for the observed facts in all cases where an unequal pair or an odd heterochromosome have been found: sperm. egg. {large [male] "idiochromosome"} i. {or } + large [female] sex chromosome = a [female] {odd chromosome. } ii. {small [female] "idiochromosome"} {or } + large [male] sex chromosome = a [male] {no sex chromosome } here we know that such a combination of gametes must occur to give the observed results, but we are not certain that we have a right to attribute the sex characters to these particular chromosomes or in fact to any chromosomes. it seems, however, a reasonable assumption in accordance with the observed conditions. the scheme also assumes either selective fertilization or, what amounts to the same thing, infertility of gametic unions where like sex chromosomes are present. it also assumes that the large female sex chromosome is dominant in the presence of the male sex chromosome, and that the male sex chromosome is dominant in the presence of the small female sex chromosome. or, it might rather be said that these are not really assumptions, but inferences as to what must be true if the heterochromosomes are sex chromosomes. this theory of sex determination brings the facts observed in regard to the heterochromosomes under castle's modification of mendel's law of heredity (' ). the question of dominance is a difficult one, especially in parthenogenetic eggs and eggs which are distinctly male or female before fertilization. it may be possible that the sex character of the egg after maturation is always dominant in the fertilized egg, as appears to be the case in these insects (see scheme). conditions external to the chromosomes may determine in certain cases, such as dinophilus, which sex character shall dominate in the growing oöcyte, and maturation occur accordingly. it is evident that this reasoning would lead to the conclusion that sex is or may be determined in the egg before fertilization, and that selective fertilization, or infertility of gametic unions containing like sex characters, has to do, not with actual sex determination, but with suitable distribution of the sex characters to future generations. if both sex characters are present in parthenogenetic eggs, as appears to be the case in aphids and phylloxera, dominance of one or the other must be determined by conditions external to the chromosomes, for we have both sexes at different points in the same line of descent without either reduction or fertilization. wilson suggests as alternatives to the chromosome sex determinant theory according to mendel's law, ( ) that the heterochromosomes may merely transmit sex characters, sex being determined by protoplasmic conditions external to the chromosomes; ( ) that the heterochromosomes may be sex-determining factors only by virtue of difference in activity or amount of chromatin, the female sex chromosome in the male being less active. the first of these alternatives is an attempt to cover such cases as _dinophilus_, _hydatina_, and _phylloxera_ with large female and small male eggs. here morgan's (' ) suggestion as to degenerate males seems much to the point. the male sex character, having become dominant in certain eggs at an early stage, may, from that time on, determine the kind of development. as to the second alternative, i see no reason for supposing that the small heterochromosome of a pair is in any different condition, as to activity, from the large one. the condensed condition may not mean inactivity, but some special form of activity. and, moreover, it has been shown that in certain stages of the development of the oöcyte of one form, _aphrophora quadrangularis_, there are pairs of condensed chromosomes corresponding to those of the spermatocyte, so that there would hardly seem to be any basis for wilson's attempt to associate the difference in development of male and female germ cells with activity or inactivity of chromosomes, as indicated by condensed or diffuse condition of the chromatin. on the whole, the first theory, which brings the sex determination question under mendel's law in a modified form, seems most in accordance with the facts, and makes one hopeful that in the near future it may be possible to formulate a general theory of sex determination. this work has been done in connection with a study of the problem of sex determination, but, whatever may be the final decision on that question, it brings together a mass of evidence in favor of the belief in both morphological and physiological individuality of the chromosomes, as advocated by boveri, sutton, and montgomery. it also gives the strongest kind of evidence that maternal and paternal homologues unite in synapsis and separate in maturation, leaving the ripe germ cells pure with regard to each pair of characters. bryn mawr college, _june , _. footnotes: [b] aug. , .-- species belonging to families. see note, p. . bibliography. boveri, th. ' . ueber mehrpolige mitosen als mittel zur analyse des zellkerns. verh. d. phys.-med. ges. würzburg, n. f., vol. . castle, w. e. ' . the heredity of sex. bull. mus. comp. zoöl. harvard college, vol. , no. . mcclung, c. e. ' . a peculiar nuclear element in the male reproductive cells of insects. zoöl. bull., vol. . ' . the spermatocyte divisions of the acridiidæ. kans. univ. quart., vol. , no. . ' . notes on the accessory chromosome. anat. anz., vol. , nos. and . ' . the accessory chromosome--sex-determinant? biol. bull., vol. , nos. and . ' _a_. the spermatocyte divisions of the locustidæ. kans. univ. quart., vol. , no. . ' . the chromosome complex of orthopteran spermatocytes. biol. bull., vol. , no. . montgomery, thos. h., jr. ' . a study of the chromosomes of the germ-cells of metazoa. trans. amer. phil. soc., vol. . ' . the heterotypic maturation mitosis in amphibia and its general significance. biol. bull., vol. , no. . ' _a_. further studies on the chromosomes of the hemiptera heteroptera. proc. acad. nat. sci. phila., . ' . some observations and considerations upon the maturation phenomena of the germ-cells. biol. bull., vol. , no. . ' . the spermatogenesis of _syrbula_ and _lycosæ_ and general considerations upon chromosome reduction and heterochromosomes. proc. acad. nat. sci. phila., . morgan, t. h. ' . the male and female eggs of phylloxerans of the hickories. biol. bull., vol. , no. . nowlin, w. n. ' . a study of the spermatogenesis of _coptocycla aurichalcea_ and _coptocycla guttata_. journ. of exp. zoöl., vol. , no. . paulmier, f. c. ' . the spermatogenesis of _anasa tristis_. journ. of morph., vol. . de sinÉty. ' . recherches sur la biologie et l'anatomie des phasms. la cellule, vol. . stevens, n. m. ' . a study of the germ cells of _aphis rosæ_ and _aphis oenotheræ_. journ. of exp. zoöl., vol. , no. . ' _a_. studies in spermatogenesis, with especial reference to the "accessory chromosome." carnegie inst. of wash., pub. no. . ' . studies on the germ cell of aphids. ibid., pub. no. . sutton, w. s. ' . on the morphology of the chromosome group in _brachystola magna_. biol. bull., vol. , no. . ' . the chromosomes in heredity. biol. bull., vol. , no. . wilson, e. b. ' . studies on chromosomes. i. the behavior of the idiochromosomes in hemiptera. journ. exp. zoöl., vol. , no. . ' _a_. the chromosomes in relation to the determination of sex in insects. science, vol. , no. . ' _b_. studies on chromosomes. ii. the paired microchromosomes, idiochromosomes, and heterotropic chromosomes in hemiptera. journ. exp. zoöl., vol. , no. . ' . studies on chromosomes. iii. the sexual differences of the chromosome-groups in hemiptera, with some considerations of the determination and inheritance of sex. ibid., vol. , no. . description of plates [the figures were all drawn with zeiss oil-immersion mm., oc. , and have been reduced one-third, giving a magnification of , diameters.] plate viii. _trirhabda virgata_ (_family chrysomelidæ_). fig. . equatorial plate from somatic tissues of a male pupa, large chromosomes, small one. . equatorial plate from an egg follicle, large chromosomes. . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, large chromosomes, small one. . first spermatocyte, synizesis stage. . first spermatocyte, early spireme stage, showing unequal pair of chromosomes. - . first spermatocyte, later growth stages. . first spermatocyte, prophase. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. - . first spermatocyte, anaphase, showing separation of the elements of the unequal pair (_l_ and _s_). . first spermatocyte, daughter plates. . second spermatocytes, equatorial plates. . second spermatocytes, equatorial plates showing v-shaped chromosomes. . second spermatocyte, early anaphase, the small chromosome in metakinesis. _trirhabda canadense._ . equatorial plate from egg follicle, large chromosomes. . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, large chromosomes, small one. . first spermatocyte, growth stage showing the heterochromosome group. . heterochromosome group. _p_ = plasmosome, _l_ = large heterochromosome, _s_ = small heterochromosome. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, small member of the unequal pair only present. . first spermatocyte, daughter plates. . second spermatocytes, equatorial plates. - . second spermatocytes, prophase. [illustration: stevens plate viii n. m. s. del. coleoptera] plate ix. _chelymortha argus_ (_family chrysomelidæ_). figs. - . equatorial plates from egg follicles, equal pairs, no small chromosome. . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, large chromosomes, small one. . first spermatocyte, synizesis stage. - . first spermatocyte, synapsis stage. - . first spermatocyte, bouquet stage after synapsis. - . first spermatocyte, spireme stage showing the unequal pair of heterochromosomes. . first spermatocyte, prophase. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. - . first spermatocyte, equatorial plates, _x_ the heterochromosome pair. . first spermatocyte, showing metakinesis of the unequal pair. . first spermatocyte, anaphase. - . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. . second spermatocyte, anaphase. _odontota dorsalis_ (_family chrysomelidæ_). . equatorial plate of male somatic cell from walls of the testis, large chromosomes, small one. - . equatorial plates of spermatogonia, large chromosomes, small one. . resting nucleus of spermatogonium, showing plasmosome (_p_). . first spermatocyte, synizesis stage. . first spermatocyte, synapsis stage. - . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, showing the larger and smaller heterochromosome associated with a plasmosome. - . first spermatocyte, prophases. [illustration: stevens plate ix. n. m. s. del. coleoptera] plate x. _odontota dorsalis._ figs. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . first spermatocyte, metaphase, showing metakinesis of the heterochromosomes. - . first spermatocyte, anaphase. - . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. . second spermatocyte, showing metakinesis of the small chromosome (_s_). . second spermatocyte, prophase, showing chromosomes longitudinally split. - . young spermatids, _n_ the chromatin nucleolus. - . a series of stages in the development of the sperm head, showing the various phases in the history of the chromatin nucleolus (_n_). . cross-sections of nearly mature sperm heads. - . equatorial plates of spermatogonia of abnormal individual, large chromosomes, small ones. . first spermatocyte from same testis, spireme stage, showing small chromosomes associated with large one and a plasmosome. . first spermatocyte from the same testis, metaphase showing a similar heterochromosome group. . second spermatocyte from same testis, equatorial plate, showing small chromosomes. _epilachna borealis_ (_family coccinellidæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, large chromosomes and small one. . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, showing the unequal pair. - . first spermatocyte, late prophases. . first spermatocyte, metaphase, showing chromosomes of different forms. - . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . unequal heterochromosome pair from a metaphase. . first spermatocyte, anaphase; ordinary chromosomes stippled to show more clearly the metakinesis of the unequal pair. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. . second spermatocyte, prophase. - . abnormal giant spermatids, probably in process of degeneration. _euphoria inda_ (_family scarabæidæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes. the smallest are the unequal pair of heterochromosomes (_l_ and _s_). . resting spermatogonium, showing plasmosome (_p_). . first spermatocyte, spireme stage. [illustration: stevens plate x. n. m. s. del. coleoptera] plate xi. _euphoria inda._ figs. - . first spermatocyte, prophases. - . first spermatocyte, late prophase. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, _x_ the unequal pair. - . first spermatocyte, anaphase. . first spermatocyte, daughter plates. . second spermatocyte, prophase. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. - . second spermatocyte, daughter plates of the two classes. - . second spermatocyte, anaphase. - . spermatids, _n_ the chromatin nucleolus. _blepharida rhois_ (_family chrysomelidæ_). - . first spermatocyte, spireme stages, showing the heterochromosome group. - . first spermatocyte, beginning of metakinesis. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, _x_ the unequal pair. . first spermatocyte, late anaphase, showing the heterochromosomes _l_ and _s_. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. - . second spermatocyte, daughter plates of the two classes. _silpha americana_ (_family silphidæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes-- large, small. . resting nucleus of spermatogonium, showing plasmosomes (_p_). - . first spermatocyte, spireme stage. . first spermatocyte, prophase. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. . second spermatocyte, showing metakinesis of the small chromosome. [illustration: stevens plate xi. n. m. s. del. coleoptera] plate xii. _doryphora decemlineata_ (_family chrysomelidæ_). figs. - . equatorial plates of spermatogonia, chromosomes-- large, small. . first spermatocyte, synizesis stage. . first spermatocyte, synapsis stage. - . first spermatocyte, spireme stages. . first spermatocyte, spireme segmented and split. - . first spermatocyte, prophases. - . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, anaphase. - . first spermatocyte, equatorial plates. - . first spermatocyte, late anaphase. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. - . second spermatocyte, telophase, _a_{ }_, archoplasmic material. - . spermatids in different stages; _a_{ }_, archoplasmic material from first spermatocyte spindle, _a_{ }_ archoplasmic material from second maturation spindle. _spruce-borers_ (_family buprestidæ_). . first spermatocyte, metaphase. - . first spermatocyte, equatorial plates of two species, and chromosomes. . first spermatocyte, anaphase. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates containing large chromosomes and small one. . chromosomes from prophase of the first spermatocyte, all from the same cyst. [illustration: stevens plate xii. n. m. s. del coleoptera] plate xiii. _adalia bipunctata_ (_family coccinellidæ_). fig. . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes-- large, small. . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, _x_ the heterochromosome group. . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. _cicindela primeriana_ (_family cicindelidæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes-- large, small. . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, _x_ the heterochromosome group. . first spermatocyte, prophase. . first spermatocyte, metaphase, _x_ the unequal pair in tripartite form. . first spermatocyte, showing metakinesis of the heterochromosomes (_l_ and _s_). . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. . giant spermatocyte, spireme stage, heterochromosome group double the usual size. . giant spermatocyte, prophase. _chlænius æstivus_ (_family carabidæ_). . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, showing the unequal pair associated with a large plasmosome. . first spermatocyte, metaphase. - . first spermatocyte, beginning of metakinesis. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, chromosomes. . first spermatocyte, anaphase, showing elongated centrosome and diverging univalent chromosomes. _chlænius pennsylvanicus._ . first spermatocyte, spireme stage. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, _x_ the unequal bivalent. . first spermatocyte, late prophase. _galerita bicolor_ (_family carabidæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes-- large, small. _anomoglossus emarginatus_ (_family carabidæ_). . first spermatocyte, growth stage, _x_ the odd chromosome. . first spermatocyte, prophase. - . first spermatocytes, metaphase, _x_ the odd chromosome. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . first spermatocyte, daughter plates containing and chromosomes, respectively. . second spermatocytes, equatorial plates. _elater i_ (_family elateridæ, species not determined_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes, _x_ the odd one. . first spermatocyte, spireme stage, _x_ the odd chromosome. . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, prophase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. . equatorial plate from egg follicle, chromosomes, _x_{ }_ and _x_{ }_ the pair corresponding to _x_ in the spermatogonium. _elater ii_ (_species not determined_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes, _x_ the odd one. . first spermatocyte, spireme stage. . first spermatocyte, prophase. . first spermatocyte, beginning of metakinesis. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate, _x_ the odd chromosome. . a pair of second spermatocytes in metaphase, two chromosomes connected, _x_ the odd chromosome. _ellychnia corrusca_ (_family lampyridæ_). . equatorial plate of spermatogonium, chromosomes. [illustration: stevens plate xiii. n. m. s. del. coleoptera] plate xiv. _aphrophora quadrangularis_ (_hemiptera homoptera_). fig. . resting primary spermatogonium with lobed nucleus. . resting secondary spermatogonium, with nucleus staining much more deeply. . equatorial plate of secondary spermatogonium, chromosomes. . first spermatocytes, very early growth stage, _x_ the odd chromosome. - . first spermatocyte, later spireme stages, showing the odd chromosome (_x_) and a pair of _m_-chromosomes (_m_). . similar stage from a safranin-gentian preparation. . first spermatocyte, split-spireme stage, _x_ the odd chromosome, _m_ the _m_-chromosome tetrad. . similar stage from a safranin-gentian preparation. - . first spermatocyte, condensation of chromatin granules to form tetrads in the linin spireme. . later tetrad stage. - . first spermatocytes, metaphase from mercuro-nitric material. - . similar stages from hermann material, showing longitudinal split in both the bivalents, and the odd chromosome (_x_). . first spermatocyte, anaphase. . first spermatocyte, telophase. . first spermatocyte, daughter plates containing and chromosomes, respectively. . first spermatocyte, _a_ and _c_ daughter plates, each containing chromosomes, _x_ the odd chromosome at a different level (_b_). . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates of the two classes. . second spermatocyte, metaphase. . second spermatocyte, anaphase. - . second spermatocyte, daughter plates of the two classes. [illustration: stevens plate xiv. n. m. s. del. hemiptera homoptera] plate xv. _aphrophora quadrangularis._ figs. - . second spermatocyte, telophase, showing chromatin nucleolus (_n_) and the products of division of the odd chromosome (_x_). . a spermatid containing the chromatin nucleolus (_n_). - . spermatids containing both the chromatin nucleolus (_n_) and the odd chromosome (_x_), _a_ the acrosome. . equatorial plate from a somatic cell of a male larva, chromosomes. . equatorial plate of an oögonium, chromosomes. . resting nucleus of a young oöcyte before synapsis, showing two pairs of condensed chromosomes, corresponding in size to the _m_-chromosomes and the odd chromosome of the spermatocytes. - . sections of nuclei of oöcytes, showing one or more of these heterochromosomes, from safranin-gentian preparations. - . bouquet stage from iron-hæmatoxylin preparations, showing the heterochromosome bivalent (_x_). _cacoecia cerasivorana_ (_lepidoptera_). . first spermatocyte, synizesis stage, showing condensed chromosomes (_x_{ }_ and _x_{ }_). - . first spermatocyte, synapsis stage. - . first spermatocyte, growth stages. . first spermatocyte, prophase. - . first spermatocyte, later prophases, showing the heterochromosome pair (_x_). . first spermatocyte, metaphase. . second spermatocyte, metaphase. . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. - . second spermatocyte, equatorial plates. _euvanessa antiopa_ (_lepidoptera_). . first spermatocyte, equatorial plate. [illustration: stevens plate xv. n. m. s. del. hemiptera and lepidoptera] produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) sex avoided subjects discussed in plain english _by_ henry stanton [illustration] social culture publications fifth avenue · new york copyright, social culture publications manufactured in u. s. a. contents page i. sex ii. the transition from cell to human being iii. sex in male childhood iv. sex in female childhood v. sex in the adolescent male vi. sex in the adolescent female vii. sex in the marriage relation (the husband) viii. sex in the marriage relation (the wife) ix. sex diseases x. love and sex chapter i sex the happiness of all human beings, men and women, depends largely on their rational solution of the sexual problem. sex and the part it plays in human life cannot be ignored. in the case of animals sex plays a simpler and less complex rôle. it is a purely natural and instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of the species. it is not complicated by the many incidental phenomena which result, in man's case, from psychologic, economic, moral and religious causes. climate, social conditions, individual modes of life and work, alcohol, wealth and poverty, and other factors affect sexual activity in human beings. sexual love, which is practically unknown to the animals, is a special development of the sex urge in the human soul. the deeper purpose of the sex function in human beings, likewise, is procreation, the reproduction of species. the average man, woman and child should know the essential sex facts in order to be able to deal with the sex problems of life. of late years there has been a greater diffusion of such knowledge. to a large extent, however, children and adolescents are still taught to look on all that pertains to sex as something shameful and immodest, something not to be discussed. sex is an "avoided subject." this is fundamentally wrong. sex affects the very root of all human life. its activities are not obscene, but nature's own means to certain legitimate ends. the sex functions, when properly controlled and led into the proper channels, are a most essential and legitimate form of physical self-expression. the veil of secrecy with which they are so often shrouded tends to create an altogether false impression regarding them. this discussion of these "avoided subjects," in "plain english," is intended to give the salient facts regarding sex in a direct, straightforward manner, bearing in mind the true purpose of normal sex activities. the more we know of the facts of sex, the right and normal part sex activities play in life, and all that tends to abuse and degrade them, the better able we will be to make sex a factor for happiness in our own lives and that of our descendants. mankind, for its own general good, must desire that reproduction--the real purpose of every sexual function--occur in such a way as to perpetuate its own best physical and mental qualities. the law of physical life it is a universal rule of physical life that every individual being undergoes a development which we know as its individual life and which, so far as its physical substance is concerned, ends with death. death is the destruction of the greater part of this individual organism which, when death ensues, once more becomes lifeless matter. only small portions of this matter, the germ cells, continue to live under certain conditions which nature has fixed. the germ cell--as has been established by the microscope--is the tiny cell which in the lowest living organisms as well as in man himself, forms the unit of physical development. yet even this tiny cell is already a highly organized and perfected thing. it is composed of the most widely differing elements which, taken together, form the so-called protoplasm or cellular substance. and for all life established in nature the cell remains the constant and unchanging form element. it comprises the cell-protoplasm and a nucleus imbedded in it whose substance is known as the nucleoplasm. the nucleus is the more important of the two and, so to say, governs the life of the cell-protoplasm. the lower one-celled organisms in nature increase by division, just as do the individual cells of a more highly organized, many-celled order of living beings. and in all cases, though death or destruction of the cells is synonymous with the death or destruction of the living organism, the latter in most cases already has recreated itself by reproduction. we will not go into the very complicated details of the actual process of the growth and division of the protoplasmic cells. it is enough to say that in the case of living creatures provided with more complicated organisms, such as the higher plants, animals and man, the little cell units divide and grow as they do in the case of the lower organisms. the fact is one which shows the intimate inner relationship of all living beings. the ladder of organic ascent as we mount the ascending ladder of plant and animal life the unit-cell of the lower organisms is replaced by a great number of individual cells, which have grown together to form a completed whole. in this complete whole the cells, in accordance with the specific purpose for which they are intended, all have a different form and a different chemical composition. thus it is that in the case of the plants leaves, flowers, buds, bark, branches and stems are formed, and in that of animals skin, intestines, glands, blood, muscles, nerves, brain and the organs of sense. in spite of the complicated nature of numerous organisms we find that many of them still possess the power of reproducing themselves by division or a process of "budding." in the case of certain plants and animals, cell-groups grow together into a so-called "bud," which later detaches itself from the parent body and forms a new individual living organism, as in the case of the polyps or the tubers in plant life. a tree, for instance, may be grown from a graft which has been cut off and planted in the ground. and ants and bees which have not been fecundated are quite capable of laying eggs out of which develop perfect, well-formed descendants. this last process is called parthenogenesis. it is a process, however, which if carried on through several generations, ends in deterioration and degeneracy. in the case of the higher animals, vertebrates and man, such reproduction is an impossibility. these higher types of animal life have been provided by nature with special organs of reproduction and reproductive glands whose secretions, when they are projected from the body under certain conditions, reproduce themselves, and increase and develop in such wise that the living organism from which they proceed is reproduced in practically its identical form. thus it perpetuates the original type. philosophically it may be said that these cells directly continue the life of the parents, so that death in reality only destroys a part of the individual. every individual lives again in his offspring. the true mission of sex this rebirth of the individual in his descendants represents the true mission of sex where the human being is concerned. and reproduction, the perpetuation of the species, underlies all rightful and normal sex functions and activities. the actual physical process of reproduction, the details which initiate reproduction in the case of the human being, it seems unnecessary here to describe. in the animal world, into which the moral equation does not really enter, the facts of conjugation represent a simple and natural working-out of functional bodily laws, usually with a seasonal determination. but where man is concerned these facts are so largely made to serve the purposes of pruriency, so exploited to inflame the imagination in an undesirable and directly harmful way that they can be approached only with the utmost caution. the intimate fact knowledge necessary in this connection is of a peculiarly personal and sacred nature, and represents information which is better communicated by the spoken than by the printed word. the wise father and mother are those naturally indicated to convey this information to their sons and daughters by word of mouth. by analogy, by fuller development and description of the reproductive processes of plant and animal life on which we have touched, the matter of human procreation may be approached. parents should stress the point, when trying to present this subject to the youthful mind, that man's special functions are only a detail--albeit a most important one--in nature's vast plan for the propagation of life on earth. this will have the advantage of correcting a trend on the part of the imaginative boy or girl to lay too much stress on the part humanity plays in this great general reproductive scheme. it will lay weight on the fact that the functional workings of reproduction are not, primarily, a source of pleasure, but that--when safeguarded by the institution of matrimony, on which civilized social life is based--they stand for the observance of solemn duties and obligations, duties to church and state, and obligations to posterity. hence, parents, in talking to their children about these matters should do so in a sober and instructive fashion. the attention of a mother, perhaps, need not be called to this. but fathers may be inclined, in many cases, to inform their sons without insisting that the information they give them is, in the final analysis, intended to be applied to lofty constructive purposes. they may, in their desire to speak _practically_, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. restraint and decency should always mark them. in making clear to the mind of youth the fact data which initiates and governs reproduction in animal and in human life, the ideal to be cultivated is continence, the refraining from all experimentation undertaken in a spirit of curiosity, until such time as a well-placed affection, sanctioned by the divine blessing, will justify a sane and normal exploitation of physical needs and urges in the matrimonial state. to this end hard bodily and mental work should be encouraged in the youth of both sexes. "satan finds work for idle hands to do," has special application in this connection, and a chaste and continent youth is usually the forerunner of a happy and contented marriage. and incidentally, a happy marriage is the best guarantee that reproduction, the carrying on of the species, will be morally and physically a success. here, too, the fact should be strongly stressed that prostitution cannot be justified on any moral grounds. it represents a deliberate ignoring of the rightful function of sex, and the perversion of the sane and natural laws of reproduction. it is in marriage, in the sane and normal activities of that unit of our whole social system--the family--that reproduction develops nature's basic principle of perpetuation in the highest and worthiest manner, in obedience to laws humane and divine. chapter ii the transition from cell to human being in the functional processes alluded to in the preceding chapter, the male germ-cell and the female germ-cell unite in a practically equal division of substance. we say "practically" because the maternal and the paternal influences are not equally divided in the offspring. one or the other usually predominates. but, as a general rule, it may be said that in the development of the embryonal life the process of cell division proceeds in such a way that every germ of the child's future organism represents approximately one-half maternal and one-half paternal substance and energy. in this process lies the true secret of heredity. the inherited energies retain their full measure of power, and all their original quality in the growing and dividing chromosomes (the chromosome is one of the segments into which the chromoplasmic filaments of a cell-nucleus break up just before indirect division). on the other hand, the egg-substance of the female germ-cell, which is assimilated by the chromosomes, and which is turned into _their_ substance by the process of organic chemistry, loses its specific plastic vital energy completely. it is in the same way that food eaten by the adult has absolutely no effect on his qualitative organic structure. we may eat ever so many beef-steaks without acquiring any of the characteristics of an ox. and the germ-cell may devour any amount of egg-protoplasma without losing its original paternal energy. as a rule a child inherits as many qualities from its mother as from its father. determination of sex sex is determined after conception has taken place. at an early stage of the embryo certain cells are set apart. these, later, form the sex glands. modern research claims to have discovered the secret of absolutely determining sex in the human embryo, but even if these claims are valid they have not as yet met with any general application. early development some twelve days after conception, the female ovule or egg, which has been impregnated by the male spermatazoön, escapes from the ovary where it was impregnated, and entering a tube (fallopian) gradually descends by means of it into the cavity of the womb or uterus. here the little germ begins to mature in order to develop into an exact counterpart of its parents. in the human being the womb has only a single cavity, and usually develops but a single embryo. twins sometimes two ovules are matured at the same time. if fecundated, two embryos instead of one will develop, producing twins. triplets and quadruplets, the results of the maturing of three or four ovules at the same time, occur more rarely. as many as five children have been born alive at a single birth, but have seldom lived for more than a few minutes. gestation the development of the ovule in the womb is known as gestation or pregnancy. the process is one of continued cell division and growth, and while it goes on the ovule sticks to the inner wall of the womb. there it is soon enveloped by a mucous membrane, which grows around it and incloses it. the embryo the _primitive trace_, a delicate straight line appearing on the surface of the growing layer of cells is the base of the embryonic spinal column. around this the whole embryo develops in an intricate process of cell division and duplication. one end of the primitive trace becomes the head, the other the tail, for every human being has a tail at this stage of his existence. the neck is marked by a slight depression; the body by a swollen center. soon little buds or "pads" appear in the proper positions. these represent arms and legs, whose ends, finally, split up into fingers and toes. the embryonic human being has been steadily increasing in size, meanwhile. by the fifth week the heart and lungs are present in a rudimentary form, and ears and face are distinctly outlined. during the seventh week the kidneys are formed, and a little later the genital organs. at two months, though sex is not determined as yet, eyes and nose are visible, the mouth is gaping, and the skin can be distinguished. at ten weeks the sexual organs form more definitely, and in the third month sex can be definitely determined. the foetus at the end of its fourth month the embryo--now four or five inches long and weighing about an ounce--is promoted. it receives the name of foetus. hairs appear on the scalp, the eyes are provided with lids, the tongue appears far back in the mouth. the movements of the foetus are plainly felt by the mother. if born at this time it lives but a few minutes. it continues to gain rapidly in weight. by the sixth month the nails are solid, the liver large and red, and there is fluid in the gall bladder. the seventh month finds the foetus from twelve and a half to fourteen inches long, and weighing about fifty-five ounces. it is now well proportioned, the bones of the cranium, formerly flat, are arched. all its parts are well defined, and it can live if born. by the end of the eighth month the foetus has thickened out. its skin is red and covered by a delicate down; the lower jaw has grown to the same length as the upper one. the convolutions of the brain structure also appear during this month. placenta and umbilical cord during gestation the unborn infant has been supplied with air and nourishment by the mother. an organ called the _placenta_, a spongy growth of blood vessels, develops on the inner point of the womb. to this organ the growing foetus is moored by a species of cable, the _umbilical cord_. this cord, also made up mainly of blood vessels, carries the blood of the foetus to and from the _placenta_, absorbing it through the thin walls which separate it from the mother's blood. only through her blood can the mother influence the child, since the umbilical cord contains no nerves. the umbilical cord, attached to the body of the child at the navel, is cut at birth, and with the placenta is expelled from the womb soon after the child has been born. together with the placenta it forms a shapeless mass, familiarly known as the "afterbirth," and when it is retained instead of being expelled is apt to cause serious trouble. childbirth or parturition at nine month's time the foetus is violently thrust from that laboratory of nature in which it has formed. it is born, and comes into the world as a child. considering the ordinary size of the generative passages, the expelling of the foetus from the womb would seem impossible. but nature, during those months in which she enlarged the womb to hold its gradually increasing contents, has also increased the generative passages in size. she has made them soft and distensible, so that an apparent physical impossibility could take place, though it is often accompanied by intense suffering. modern medical science has made childbirth easier, but the act of childbirth is usually accompanied by more or less suffering. excessive pain, however, is often the result of causes which proper treatment can remove before and at the time of confinement. twilight sleep the so-called "twilight sleep," a modern development, by which the pangs of childbirth are obviated by the administration of drugs or by hypnotic suggestion, has its opponents and defenders. the advantage of a painless childbirth, upon which the mother can look back as on a dream, is evident. the "twilight sleep" process has been used with the happiest results both for parent and child. opponents of this system declare that the use of powerful drugs may injure the child. a method commended is the administration of a mixture of laughing gas and oxygen, which relieves the mother and does not affect the child. the new-born infant the average weight of the new-born child is about seven and a half pounds. it is insensitive to pain for the first few days, and seems deaf (since its middle ears are filled with a thick mucus) for the first two weeks. during the first few days, too, it does not seem able to see. the first month of its existence is purely automatic. evidences of dawning intelligence appear in the second month and at four months it will recognize mother or nurse. muscularly it is poorly developed. not until two months old is it able to hold up its head, and not until three months does voluntary muscular movement put in an appearance. the new-born's first self-conscious act is to draw breath. deprived of its usual means of supply it must breathe or suffocate. its next is to suck milk, lest it starve. heredity we often find children who offer a striking resemblance to a paternal grandfather, a maternal aunt or a maternal great-grandmother. this is known as atavism. there are many curious variations with regard to the inheritance of ancestral traits. some children show a remarkable resemblance to their fathers in childhood, others to their mothers. and many qualities of certain individual ancestors appear quite suddenly late in life. everything may be inherited, from the most delicate shadings of the disposition, the intelligence and the will power, to the least details of hair, nails and bone structure, etc. and the combination of the qualities of one's ancestors in heredity is so manifold and so unequal that it is extremely difficult to arrive at fixed conclusions regarding it. hereditary traits and tendencies are developed out of the energies of the original conjugated germ-cells throughout life, up to the very day of death. even aged men often show peculiarities in the evening of their life which may be clearly recognized as inherited, and duplicating others shown by their forbears at the same period of life. as has already been mentioned every individual inherits, generally speaking, as much from his paternal as from his maternal progenitors. this in spite of the fact that the tiny paternal germ-cell is the only medium of transmission of the paternal qualities, while the mother furnishes the much larger egg-cell, and feeds him throughout the embryonic period. the engram an interesting theory maintains that the external impressions made upon an organism which reacts to them and receives them, might be called _engrams_ or "inscriptions." thus the impression of some object we have seen or touched (let us say we have seen a lion) may remain engraved on our mind as an impression. hence every memory picture is one of engrams, whether the impression is a conscious one or an unconscious one. according to this same theory the reawakening of an older impression is an _ecphory_. some new stimulation may thus ecphorate an old engram. now the entire embryonal development of the human child is in reality no more than a continuous process of ecphoration of old engrams, one after another. and the entire complex of our living human organism is made up entirely of these energy-complexes engraved on our consciousness or subconsciousness. the sum total of all these engrams, in a living human being, according to the theory advanced, is given the name of _mnema_. that which the child receives in the way of energies contained in the germ-cells from its ancestors is his hereditary _mnema_. and that which he acquires in the course of his own individual life is his acquired or individual _mnema_. chapter iii sex in male childhood (from to ) during the first years of child life all those laws of practical hygiene which make for good health should be carefully observed. every organ of the body should be carefully protected, even at this early age. the genital organs, especially, should not be rubbed or handled under any pretext, beyond what is absolutely necessary for cleanliness. the organs of generation, which we are apt to treat as nonexistent in children, just because they are children, claim just as much watchful care as any others. sex precautions in infancy even in infancy, the diaper should fit easily about the organs which it covers, so as not to give rise to undue friction or heating of the parts. and for the same reason it should always be changed immediately after urination or a movement of the bowels. no material which prevents the escape of perspiration, urine or fecal matter should be employed for a diaper. the use of a chair-commode as early as the end of the first year is highly to be commended, as being more comfortable for the sex organs and healthier for the child. it favors, in particular, a more perfect development of limbs and hip joints. early sex impressions sex impressions and reactions are apt to develop at an early age, especially in the case of boys. if the child's physical health is normal, however, they should not affect his mind or body. the growing boy should be encouraged to take his sex questions and sex problems to his parents (in his case preferably the father) for explanation. thus they may be made clear to him naturally and logically. he should not be told what he soon discovers is not true: that babies are "dug up with a silver spade," or make their appearances in the family thanks to the kind offices of storks or angels. instead, by analogy with the reproductive processes of all nature, the true facts of sex may be explained to him in a soothing and normal way. evil communications too often, the growing boy receives his first lessons regarding sex from ignorant and vicious associates. curiosity is one of the greatest natural factors in the child's proper development, if rightly directed. when wrongly led, however, it may have the worst consequences. even before puberty occurs, a boy's attention may be quite naturally drawn to his own sex organs. natural causes of infant sexual precocity sexual precocity in boys may be natural or it may be artificially called forth. among natural causes which develop sex precocity is promiscuous playing with other boys and girls for hours without supervision. it may also be produced by playful repose on the stomach, sliding down banisters, going too long without urinating, by constipation or straining at stool, irritant cutaneous affections, and rectal worms. sliding down banisters, for instance, produces a titillation. the act may be repeated until inveterate masturbation results, even at an early age. needless laving, handling and rubbing of the private parts is another natural incitement to sexual precocity. priapism _priapism_ is a disease which boys often develop. it may be either a result or a cause of sexual precocity, and may come from undue handling of the genital parts or from a morbid state of health. it takes the form of paroxysms, more or less frequent, and of violent and often painful erection, calling for a physician's attention. if the result of a functional disorder, and not arrested, it is in danger of giving rise to masturbation. this morbid condition sometimes seriously impairs the health. masturbation _masturbation_, the habit of self-abuse, often formed before puberty, is an artificial development of sexual precocity. most boys, from the age of nine to fourteen, interest themselves in sex questions and matters, but these are usually presented to them in a lewd and improper manner, by improperly informed companions. dwelling upon these thoughts the boy is led to play with his sex organs in secret and masturbation results. a secret vice of the most dangerous kind, masturbation or self-pollution is often taught by older boys and takes place, to quote an authority "in many of our colleges, boarding, public and private schools," and is also indulged in by companions beneath the home roof. if it becomes habitual, generally impaired health, and often epilepsy, and total moral and physical degradation results. stains on the nightshirt or sheet occurring before puberty are absolute evidence of the vice in boys. what fathers should do for their boys make sex facts clear to your boy as interesting, matter-of-fact developments of general natural laws. ungratified or improperly gratified curiosity is what leads to a young boy's overemphasizing the facts of sex as they apply to him. make him your confidant. teach him to think cleanly and to act cleanly, neither to ignore nor to exalt the sexual. especially, when he himself is directly disturbed sexually, either in a mental or physical way, let him feel that he can apply to you naturally for relief and explanation. if this be done, your boy's sex development before puberty will be natural and normal, and when the more serious and difficult problems of adolescence present themselves, he will be prepared to handle them on the basis of right thinking and right living. natural and healthy sport in the open air, and the avoidance of foul language and indecency should be stressed. the use of alcohol, coffee and tea by children tends to weaken their sexual organs. every boy should know that chastity means continence. he should know that lascivious thoughts lead to lascivious actions, and that these are a drain on his system which may spoil his life in later years. in the education of his children the average man is only too apt to repeat the same mistake of unconsciously crediting the child with the possession of his own feelings and his own outlook, that is the feelings and outlook of the adult. in general, things which may make an impression in a sex way on the adult are a matter of indifference to the sexually unripe boy. hence it is quite possible for a father to discuss sex matters with his young son and inform him constructively, without in any undue way rousing his sex curiosity or awakening desire. such talks, of course, should be in accordance with the principles already laid down in the section on "reproduction." if a boy is accustomed and taught to regard sex conditions and matters in a proper and innocent manner, as something perfectly natural, improper curiosity and eroticism are far less likely to be aroused than when this is not the case. for the whole subject will have lost the dangerous attraction of novelty. on the other hand, we find boys who have been brought up with great prudery and in complete ignorance of sex matters (save that which may come to them from impure sources) greatly excited and ashamed by the first appearance of the indications of puberty. secrecy is the enemy of a clean, normal conception on the part of the child as to the right place sex and the sex function play in life and in the world. it stands to reason, of course, that every least detail of the sex question cannot be intelligently made clear to a little child. but his questions should all be answered, honestly, and with due regard for his age and his capacity to understand what is explained to him. one very great advantage of an early paternal explanation of sex matters to the boy is its beneficial effect on the mind and the nerves. many boys brood or grow melancholy when confronted with sex riddles and problems for which they are unable to find a solution; and as the result of totally erroneous ideas they may have formed with regard to sex matters. at the same time too much attention should not be paid the discussion of sex questions between father and son. a father should, so far as possible, endeavor to develop other interests and preoccupations in his boy, and turn his mind as much as may be _away_ from matters sexual, until the age when the youth is ripe for marriage is reached. chapter iv sex in female childhood (from to ) what has been said in general about practical observance of the laws of sex hygiene in the preceding chapter for boys, applies to girls as well. if anything the sex precautions taken in infancy should be even more closely followed, as girls are by nature less robust than boys. if children could be raised in entire accordance with natural laws, the sexual instinct of girls as well as boys would probably remain dormant during the period stretching from infancy to puberty. as in the case of the boy, so in that of the girl, any manifestation of sexual precocity should be investigated, to see whether it be due to natural or artificial causes. in either case the proper remedies should be applied. sex precocity in girls there are cases of extraordinary sex precocity in girls. one case reported in the united states was that of a female child who at birth possessed all the characteristics usually developed at puberty. in this case the natural periodical changes began at birth! fortunately, this is a case more or less unique. in little girls and boys undue sexual handling or titillating of their genital organs tends to quiet them, so nurses (let us hope in ignorance of the consequences!) often resort to it. sending children to bed very early, to "get rid of them," or confining them in a room by themselves, tends to encourage the development of vicious habits. a single bed, both in the school and in the home, is indispensable to purity of morals and personal cleanliness. it tends to restrain too early development of the sexual instinct both in small girls and small boys. sexual self-abuse in girls small girls, like small boys, display an intelligent curiosity as regards the phenomena of sex at an early age. and what has already been said regarding its improper gratification in the preceding chapter, so far as boys are concerned, applies with equal force to them. in their case, however, the mother is a girl's natural confidant and friend. self-abuse in one or another form is as common in the case of the girl as in that of the boy. as a rule, girls who live an outdoor life, and work with their muscles more than their mind, do not develop undue precocious sexual curiosities or desires. at least they do not do so to the same extent as those more nervously and susceptibly constituted. the less delicate and sensitive children of the country tend less to these habits than their more sensitively organized city brothers and sisters. girls who have formed vicious habits are apt to indulge in the practice of self-abuse at night when going to bed. if there is cause for suspicion, the bedclothes should be quickly and suddenly thrown off under some pretense. self-abuse usually has a marked effect on the genital organs of girls. the inner organs become unnaturally enlarged and distended, and _leucorrhea_, catarrh of the vagina, attended by a discharge of greenish-white mucus, often develops. results of self-abuse in girls local diseases, due to this cause, result in girls as well as boys. temporary congestions become permanent, and develop into permanent irritations and disorders. leucorrhea has already been mentioned. contact with the acrid, irritating internal secretions also causes _soreness of the fingers at the root of the nails_, and warts. congestion and other diseases are other ultimate results of the habit; and these congestions to which it gives rise unduly hasten the advent of puberty. any _decided enlargement of the labia and clitoris in a young girl_ may be taken as a positive evidence of the existence of the habit of self-abuse. sterility, and atrophy of the breasts--their deficient development--when the vice is begun before puberty, is another result. pruritis and feminine nocturnal emissions _pruritis_ (itching genitals), though not necessarily caused by self-abuse, may be one of its consequences. continued congestion causes the genital parts to itch terribly. this itching increases until the desire to manipulate the genitals becomes irresistible. it will then be indulged in even in the presence of strangers, though the girl in question at other times may be exceptionally modest. girls addicted to the vice also suffer from nocturnal emissions. the general effect of self-abuse is much the same in the case of a girl as in that of a boy, for leucorrhea is injurious in somewhat the same fashion as seminal loss. in the case of girls the greatest injury, however, is due to the nervous exhaustion which succeeds the unnatural excitement. what mothers should do for their girls a healthy girl should be happy and comfortable in all respects. she will not be so, especially with regard to her sex problems, unless she can appeal to her mother as a friend and confidant. while keeping your girl's mind pure and healthy by precept and example, do not forget that the best way to protect her against evil influences and communications is to tell her the exact truth about sex facts, as they apply to her, just as the father should his boy. keep your girl fully occupied and do not leave her sex education to the evil winds of chance. let sex knowledge take its place as a proper, necessary part of her general education. if your daughter feels she can at all times talk freely to you all will be well. gratify her natural sex curiosity in a natural way. see that _immediate_ medical attention is given inflammations, excoriations, itchings and swellings of her genital organs. such conditions will lead her to rub and scratch these parts--never to be touched--for relief. if, as a result of the sensations experienced, masturbation results, _yours is the sin_. chapter v sex in the adolescent male (from puberty to maturity) adolescence is the period when the boy is lost in the man. it is the time of life embraced between the ages of fourteen or sixteen and the age of twenty-five. every boy, if properly trained, should reach this period in a state of good general health and spirits. hitherto he has been led and guided. now he must develop mental strength and will power himself to choose the good and refuse the evil in the sexual problems confronting him. puberty according to climate puberty, the age when the human male becomes sexually perfect, varies from ten to fifteen years. in the united states puberty in the male usually occurs at the age of fourteen and a half years. in tropical climates it occurs at nine or ten, and in cold countries, such as norway and siberia, it may not take place until eighteen or nineteen. vigorous physical exercise tends to delay puberty, anything exciting the emotions tends to hasten it. stimulating foods, pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, tea and coffee, excess meat nutriment hasten puberty. a cool, unstimulating vegetable and farinaceous diet may delay the development of the sexual system several months or a year. the signs and changes of puberty in the boy the signs of puberty are the growth of hair on the skin covering the pubes and in the armpits. chest and arms broaden, the frame grows more angular, the masculine proportions more pronounced. the vocal cords grow longer and lower the pitch of the voice. hair grows on chin, upper lip, cheeks, and often on the body surface. the sexual moral law the sexual moral law is the same for both sexes, and equally binding. it may be summed up as follows: "your sexual urges, instincts and desires should never consciously injure an individual human being or mankind in general. they should be exercised to further the value and happiness of both." the male adolescent and continence the perfect carrying out of this general moral law implies continence on the part of the male adolescent until marriage. continence is positive restraint under all circumstances. strict continence is neither injurious to health, nor does it produce impotence. while self-denial is difficult, since the promptings of nature often seem imperious, it is not impossible. it is certain that no youth will suffer, physically, by remaining sexually pure. the demands which occur during adolescence are mainly abnormal, due to the excitements of an overstimulating diet, pornographic literature and art, and the temptations of impure association. why young men go wrong foul thoughts, once they enter the mind, corrode it. the sensual glance, the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the smutty story, the obscene song may be met with on street corner, in the car, train, hotel lobby, lecture hall and workshop. mental unchastity ends in physical unchastity. the habit common to most adolescent boys and young men of relating smutty stories, repeating foul jokes and making indecent allusions destroys respect for virtue. in addition there are such direct physical causes of undue adolescent sexual excitement as constipation and alcoholism, and such mental ones as nervous irritability. to the constant discussion and speculation regarding sex and its mysteries by the adolescent young male, must be added the artificial idea that idle prattling on the subject is a sign of "manhood." thus many young men whose natural trend is in the direction of decency and right sexual living, "step out" or "go to see the girls," as the phrase is, because they think that otherwise "they are not real men." more subtle in its evil effect, yet somewhat less dangerous physically, perhaps, than the professional prostitute is the lure of the "hidden" prostitute, who carefully conceals her derelictions, and publicly wraps herself in a mantle of virtue. prostitution the training of the average male mind in impure language and thought during boyhood and adolescence, the cultivation of his animal at the expense of the moral nature, often leads the adolescent to seek satisfaction by frequenting the prostitute. _prostitution_, known as the "social evil," is promiscuous unchastity for gain. it has existed in all civilized countries from earliest times. prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer to other means. love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities, indolence and abnormal sex appetite are first causes of prostitution. difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amusements are secondary causes. they all contribute to debauch male and female youth and lead it to form dangerous habits of vicious sensual indulgence. prostitution seems inseparable from human society in large communities. the fact is acknowledged in the name given it, "the necessary evil." regulation and medical control only arrest in a degree the spread of venereal diseases to which prostitution gives rise. the elementary laws on which prostitution rests seems to be stronger than the artificial codes imposed by moral teaching. it is an evil which must be combatted _individually_. men are principally responsible, in one way or another, for the existence of the social evil. in the case of the young man, abstention is the only cure for the probable results of indulging his animal passions by recourse to the prostitute. prostitution, both public and private is the most dangerous menace to society at large. it is the curse of individual young manhood because of the venereal diseases it spreads. one visit to a house of prostitution may ruin a young man's health and life, and millions of human beings die annually from the effects of poison contracted in these houses. "wild oats" sown in company with the prostitute usually bear fruit in the shape of the most loathsome and destructive sex disorders. the development of self-control, the avoidance of impure thoughts and associations, the cultivation of the higher moral nature instead of the lower animal one, and, finally, _marriage_, should prevent the young man from falling into prostitution. all the state and medical regulation in the world will not protect him from the venereal diseases he is so apt to acquire by such indulgence. free love free love is the doctrine of _unrestrained choice, without binding ties_, in sexual relations. for altogether different reasons, however, it is quite as objectionable as prostitution for the young man. it may offer better hygienic guarantees. but it is a sexual partnership which is opposed to the fundamental institution of _marriage_, on which society in general is based throughout the world. and, aside from the fact that it is a promiscuous relationship not sanctioned by law or society, it is seldom practically successful. it cannot admit of true love without bitter jealousies. chapter vi sex in the adolescent female (from puberty to maturity) adolescence in the girl is the period when she develops into a woman. it is that stage in female life embraced between the ages of twelve or fourteen and twenty-one years. elasticity of body, a clear complexion, and a happy control of her feelings should mark the young girl at this time, if she has been so fortunate as to escape the dangers and baneful influences of childhood and infancy. her numerous bodily functions should be well performed. thus constituted she should be in a condition to take up her coming struggle with the world, and the sex problem it will present. puberty it has been noticed that in the case of girls, puberty usually occurs earlier in brunettes than in blondes. in general, it makes its appearance earlier in those of a nervous or bilio-nervous temperament than in those whose temperament is phlegmatic or lymphatic. in the united states fourteen and a half years is the usual age of puberty in girls. in tropical lands, however, it is not uncommon for a girl to be a mother at twelve. country girls (and boys) usually mature several months or a year later than those living in cities. too early a puberty in girls may well arouse concern. it usually indicates some inherent constitutional weakness. premature puberty is often associated with premature decay. the signs and changes of puberty in the girl the sign of puberty is the growth of hair about the pubes, private organs and armpits. her whole frame remains more slender than in the male. muscles and joints are less prominent, limbs more rounded and tapering. internal and external organs undergo rapid enlargement, locally. the _mammæ_ (the breasts) enlarge, the ovaries dilate, and a periodical uteral discharge (menstruation) is established. menstruation no young girl should feel alarmed if, owing to the negligence of her parents or guardians to prepare her, she is surprised by this first flow from the genital organs. puberty is the proper time for the appearance of menstruation. this is the periodical development and discharge of an ovule (one or more) by the female, accompanied by the discharge of a fluid, known as menses or catamenia. menstruation, in general good health, should occur about every twenty-eight days, or once in four weeks. this rule, however, is subject to great variation. menstruation continues from puberty to about the forty-fifth year, which usually marks the _menopause_, or "change of life." when it disappears a woman is no longer capable of bearing children. her period of fertility has passed. in rare cases menstruation has stopped at , or lasted till . hints for observance during menstruation when the period arrives a girl or woman has a feeling of discomfort and lassitude, there is a sense of weight, and a disclination for society. menstruation should not, however, be regarded as a nuisance; a girl's friends respect her most when she is "unwell." she should keep more than usually quiet while the flow continues, which it will do for a few days. also, she should avoid all unnecessary fatigue, exposure to wet or to extremes of temperature. some girls are guilty of the crime of trying to arrest the menstruation flow, and resorting to methods of stopping it. why? in order to attend a dance or pleasure excursion! lives have been lost by thus suppressing the monthly flux. mothers should instruct their daughters when the menses are apt to begin, and what their function is. during menstruation great care must be taken in using water internally. a chill is sufficient to arrest the flow. if menstruation does not establish itself in a healthy or normal manner at the proper time, consult a physician in order to remove this abnormal condition. any disturbance of the delicate menstrual functions during the period, by constrained positions, muscular effort, brain work and mental or physical excitement, is apt to have serious consequences. continence and the young adolescent girl continence is, as a rule more easily observed by the adolescent girl than by the adolescent youth. ordinarily the normal young girl has no _undue_ sexual propensities, amorous thoughts or feelings. though she is exposed to the danger of meeting other girls who may be lewd in thought and speech, in the houses of friends or at school, she is not apt to be carried away by their example. yet even a good, pure-minded young girl may be debauched. especially during adolescence, the easy observance of natural continence depends greatly on the proper functioning of the feminine genital organs. these may be easily disturbed. the syringe used for injections, for so-called purposes of cleanliness, is in reality a danger. the inner organs are self-cleansing. water or other fluids cast into them disorder the mucous follicles, and dry up their secretions, preventing the flowing out of some of nature's necessities. a daily washing of the inner organs for a long period with water also produces chronic leucorrhea. why young girls fall lack of proper early training, abnormal sex instincts, weak good nature, poverty, all may be responsible for a young girl's moral downfall. as a general thing, right home training and home environment, and sane sex education will prevent the normally good girl from going wrong. it should be remembered, though, that a naturally more gentle and yielding disposition may easily lead her into temptation. girls who are sentimentally inclined should beware of giving way to advances on the part of young men which have only one object in view: the gratification of their animal passion. the holding of hands and similar innocent beginnings often pave the way for more familiar caresses. passionate kisses--the promiscuous kiss, by the way, may be the carrier of that dread infection, syphilis--violently awaken a young girl's sex instincts. the fact is that many innocent girls idealize their seducers. they believe their lying promises, actually come to love them, and think that in gratifying their inflamed desires, they are giving a proof of the depth and purity of their own affection. here, as in the case of the young man, self-control should be the first thing cultivated. and self-control should be made doubly sure by never permitting one of the opposite sex to show undue familiarity. many a seemingly innocent flirtation, begun with a kiss, has ended in shame and disgrace, in loss of social standing and position, venereal disease, or even death. the pure-minded and innocent girl often becomes a victim of her ignorance of the consequences entailed by giving in to the desires of some male companion. _the girl who has a knowledge of sex facts is less apt to be taken advantage of in this manner._ modern conditions which encourage immorality _excessive freedom._--the excessive freedom granted the young girl, especially since the world war, must be held responsible for a great increase in familiarity between the adolescent youth of both sexes. many young girls of the "flapper" type, in particular, are victims of these conditions of unrestrained sex association. sex precocity is furthered in coeducational colleges, in the high school and the home. adolescents of both sexes too often are practically unhampered in their comings and goings, their words and actions. the surreptitious pocket flask, filled with "hooch," is often a feature of social parties, dances and affairs frequented by young people. girls and boys drink together, and as alcohol weakens moral resistance in the one case, and stimulates desire in the other, deplorable consequences naturally result. in the united states the number of girls "sent home" from colleges, and of high-school girls being privately treated by physicians to save them from disgrace, is incredibly large. parents who do not control the social activities of their daughters, who permit them to spend their evenings away from home with only a general idea of what they are doing or whom they are meeting, need not be surprised if their morals are undermined. _the auto._--the advent of the automobile is responsible for an easy and convenient manner of satisfying precociously aroused sex instincts in young girls and boys. often, unconscientious pleasure-seekers roam the roads in their auto. they accost girls who are walking and offer them a "lift." when the latter refuse to gratify their desires they are often beaten and flung from the car. the daily press has given such publicity to this civilized form of "head hunting," that it is difficult to sympathize with girls who are thus treated. they cannot help but know that in nine cases out of ten, a stranger who invites them to a ride, who "picks" them up, does so with the definite purpose already mentioned in view. _poverty._--poverty, too, plays a large part in driving young girls into a life of vice. in all our large cities there are hundreds of young women who earn hardly enough to buy food and fuel and pay for the rent of a room in a cheap lodging house. feminine youth longs for dress, for company, for entertainment. it is easy enough to find a "gentleman friend" who will provide all three, in exchange for "companionship." so the bargain is struck. these conditions exist in a hundred and one occupations. a young woman may go to a large city as pure as snow, but finding no lucrative employment, lonely and despondent, she is led to take her first step on the downward path. soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. the heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "find, ... and forget!" it is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application of such a maxim. virginity both mental and physical purity are rightfully required of the young girl about to marry. how shall she acquire and maintain this desirable state of purity? the process is a simple one. _she must let a knowledge of the true hygienic and moral laws of her sex guide her in her relations with men._ she must cultivate clean thought on a basis of physical cleanliness. she need not be ignorant to be pure. men she should study carefully. she should not allow them to sit with their arm about her waist, to hold her hand, to kiss her. no approach nor touch beyond what the best social observance sanctions should be permitted. even the tendernesses and familiarities of courtship should be restrained. an engagement does not necessarily culminate in a marriage, and once the foot has slipped on virtue's path the error cannot be recalled. these considerations, together with those adduced in the preceding section, "why young girls fall," are well worth taking to heart by every young woman who wishes to approach matrimony in the right and proper way. chapter vii sex in the marriage relation the husband marriage is the process by which a man and woman enter into a complete physical, legal and moral union. the natural object of marriage is the complete community of life for the establishment of a family. the marriageable age and adaptation at twenty-four the male body attains its complete development; and twenty-five is a proper age for the young man to marry. romantic love, personal affection on a basis of congeniality, mutual adaptation, a similar social sphere of life, should determine his choice. nature and custom indicate that the husband should be somewhat older than the wife. men who should not marry men suffering with diseases which may be communicated by contagion or heredity should not marry. these diseases include: tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, epilepsy and some nervous disorders, some skin diseases and insanity. a worn-out rake has no business to marry, since marriage is not a hospital for the treatment of disease, or a reformatory institution for moral lepers. those having a marked tendency to disease must not marry those of similar tendency. the marriage of cousins is not to be advocated. the blood relation tends to bring together persons with similar morbid tendencies. where both are healthy, however, there seems to be no special liability to mental incompetency, though such marriages are accused of producing defective or idiot children. men suffering from congenital defects should not marry. natural blindness, deafness, muteness, and congenital deformities of limb are more or less likely to be passed on to their children. there are cases of natural blindness, though, to which this rule does not apply. criminals, alcoholics, and persons disproportionate in size should not marry. in the last-mentioned, lack of mutual physical adaptability may produce much unhappiness, especially on the part of the wife. serious local disease, sterility, and great risk in childbirth may result. disparity of years, disparity of race, a poverty which will not permit the proper raising of children, undesirable moral character are all good reasons for not marrying. medical examination before marriage medical examination as a preliminary to marriage is practically more valuable than a marriage license. since many entirely innocent young girls to-day suffer from disease, incurred either through hereditary or accidental infection, a would-be husband may be said to be quite as much entitled to protection as his bride-to-be. prohibitive physical defects are also discovered in this connection. chapter viii sex in the marriage relation the wife girls marry, in the final analysis, because love for the male is an innate natural principle of the female nature. at its best this love is pure and chaste. the good woman realizes that its first purpose is not mere carnal pleasure. it is a special avowal of the wife's relations to her husband, and its natural as well as moral end is the establishment of the family on the basis of a healthy progeny. before marriage the wife-to-be, like her prospective husband, will be well advised to ask for a medical health certificate. no man, no matter how good his reputation may be, should marry (on his own account as well as that of the girl) without thorough examination by a physician. the consequences of venereal infection administered to unborn children by their parents are too horrible to allow of any risk being taken. another bit of advice, which cannot be too highly commended, is that the prospective husband and wife, before they marry, have a plain talk with each other regarding individual sexual peculiarities and needs. a heart-to-heart talk of this kind would be apt to prevent great disappointments and incompatibilities which otherwise may become permanent. the wife and her position the natural instinct of a man is to seek his mate. on her he depends for an orderly and lawful indulgence of his sex demands. the greatest longevity and best health are to be found among happily married fathers and mothers. no young woman should marry without a full knowledge of her sex duties to her husband. and she should never consummate the marriage vow grudgingly. childbirth hygiene childbirth is the natural consequence of marriage. its processes have already been explained in chapter ii of this book. there are, however, some hygienic facts in connection with it which should be noted. once pregnancy is established, as soon as the fact is suspected, the mother-to-be should look on the little embryo as already a member of the family. every act of each parent should now be performed (at least to some degree) with reference to the forthcoming infant. the mother's thoughts should be directed to it as much as possible. mentally she should read literature of a lofty and ennobling character. the theory is that this serves a good purpose in producing a more perfect, healthy and intelligent child. physically, she should take plenty of active exercise during gestation. active exercise does not, of course, mean violent exercise. and she should use a "health lift." during this time she should subsist as far as possible on a farinaceous diet, fruits and vegetables. the foods should be plainly cooked, without spices. if all else is as it should be, the birth of the child at the end of the customary nine months will be attended by comparatively little pain and danger. how often should childbirth take place? it is most important that the childbearing wife and mother have a long period of rest between births. at least one year should separate a birth and the conception following it. this means that about two years should elapse between two births. if this rule be followed, the wife will retain her health, and her children will also be healthy. it is far better to give birth to seven children, who will live and be healthy, than to bear fourteen, of whom seven are likely to die, while the numerous successive births wear out and age the unfortunate mother. matrimonial adjustment the above paragraph deals with one detail of what might be called "matrimonial adjustment." this adjustment or compromise is a feature of all successful marriages. the individual cravings of husband and wife must be reconciled by mutual good will and forbearance if they are to be happy. attention should be paid in particular to not allowing habit, "the worst foe of married happiness," to become too well established in the home, and to cultivate that love and affection which survives the decline of the sexual faculties. the ideal marriage the ideal marriage is the one in which affection combines to bring happiness to both partners in a sane union of sex and soul. as one commentator has rather unhappily expressed it: "when married the _battle_ for one united and harmonious life really begins!" it is, indeed, but too often a _battle_! forbearance, consideration and respect must be the foundation on which the ideal married state is built. the husband should realize that his wife's love for him induces her to allow privileges of a personal nature which her innate chastity and timidity might otherwise refuse. in return, he should accept these privileges with consideration. he should, in particular, on his wedding night, take care not to shock his young bride's sensibilities. he may easily give her a shock from which she will not recover for years, and lead her to form an antipathy against the very act which is "the bond and seal of a truly happy married life." birth control material changes have taken place in the birth-rate of a number of countries during the past fifteen or twenty years which cannot be attributed to purely economic causes. they do not seem to depend on such things as trade, employment and prices; but on the spread of an idea or influence whose tendency must be deplored, that of "birth control," a phrase much heard in these days. the fact that a decline in human fertility and a falling birth rate are most noticeable in the relatively prosperous countries is a proof that it does not proceed from economic causes; but is due rather to the spread of the doctrine that it is permissible to restrict or control birth. in such countries as the united states, england and australasia, where the standards of human comfort and living are notoriously high, the decline in the birth rate has been most noticeable. on the other hand, we find perhaps the greatest decline in the birth rate in france, a country where the general well-being probably reaches a lower depth in the community than in any other part of europe. a comparison of the birth rates of france and of ireland, for example, offer a valuable illustration of the point under consideration. in france, more than half the women who have reached the age of nubility are married; in ireland, generally speaking, less than a third. in both countries the crude birth rate is far below that in other european lands. yet the fertility of the irish wife exceeded that of her french compeer by per cent in , and by no less than per cent in . and since that time the prolificity of the irish mother has so increased that she is now, approximately speaking, inferior only to the dutch or finnish mother in this respect. in general, in any country where we find a diminished prolificity a falling off of childbirth _unaccompanied_ by a decrease in the number of marriages occurring at the reproductive ages, we may attribute this decrease to _voluntary restriction of childbearing_ on the part of the married, or in other words, to the prevalence of "birth control." this incidentally, is not a theoretical statement, but one supported by the almost unanimous medical opinion in all countries. everywhere and especially here in our own united states, we find evidence of the extensive employ of "birth control" measures to prevent that normal development of family life which underlies the vigor and racial power of every nation. these preventive measures which arbitrarily control human birth had long been in use in france with results which, especially since the war, have been frequently and publicly deplored in the press, and have led the french government to offer substantial rewards to encourage the propagation of large families. from france the preventive practices of "birth control" had spread, after , over nearly all the countries of western europe, to england and to the united states; though they are not as much apparent in those countries where the roman church has a strong hold on the people. as a general thing, the practice of thus unnaturally limiting families--"unnaturally" since the custom of "birth control" derives from no natural, physical law--prevails, in the first instance, among the well-to-do, who should rather be the first to set the example of protest against it by having the families they are so much better able to support and educate than those less favored with the world's goods. if the evil of voluntary control of human birth were restricted to a privileged class, say one of wealth, the harm done would, perhaps, not be so great. but, unfortunately, in the course of time it filters down as a "gospel of comfort"--erroneous term!--to those whose resources are less. they accept and practice this invidious system of prevention and gradually the entire community is more or less affected. the whole system of "birth control" is opposed to natural, human and religious law. nature, in none of her manifestations, introduces anything which may tend to prevent her great reason for being--the propagation of the species. birth as the natural sequence of mating is her solemn and invariable law. it is in birth and rebirth that nature renews herself and all the life of the animal and vegetable world, and her primal aim is to encourage it. human law recognizes this underlying law of nature by forbidding man to tamper in a preventive way with her hallowed and mysterious processes for perpetuating the human race. religious law, based on the divine dispensation of the scriptures, indorses the law of nature and that of the state. we may take it, then, that "birth control" represents a deliberate and reprehensible attempt to nullify those innate laws of reproduction sanctioned by religion, tradition and man's own ingrained instinct. to say that the human instinct for the perpetuation of his race and family has become atrophied during the flight of time, and that he is therefore justified in denying it, is merely begging the question. the instinct may be denied, just as other higher and nobler instincts are disregarded; but its validity cannot be questioned. whether those who practice "birth control" are influenced by economic, selfishly personal or other reasons, they are offending in a threefold manner: against the inborn wish and desire which is a priceless possession of even the least of god's creatures, that of living anew in its offspring; against the law of the state, which after all, stands for the crystallization of the best feeling of the community; and against the divine injunction handed down to us in holy writ, to "increase and multiply." "birth control" is the foe to the direct end and aim of marriage, which, in the last analysis, is childbirth. as an enemy to the procreation of children it is an enemy of the family and the family group. as an enemy of the family, it is an enemy of the state, the community, a foe to the whole social system. mankind has been able to attain its comparatively recent state of moral and physical advancement without having recourse to the dangerous principle which "birth control" represents. surely that wise provision of our existing legal code which makes the printing or dissemination of information regarding the physical facts of "birth control" illegal and punishable as an offense, can only be approved by those who respect the omnipotent will, and the time-hallowed traditions which date back to the very inception of the race. chapter ix sex diseases the sex diseases are the same in both sexes, whether developed by direct or accidental infection. they are the greatest practical argument in favor of continence, morality and marriage in the sex relation. gonorrhea gonorrhea is a pus-discharging inflammation of the canal known as the _urethra_, which passing through the entire length of the organ, carries both the urine and the seminal fluid. it is caused by a venereal bacillus, the _gonococcus_. under favorable conditions and with right treatment, gonorrhea may be cured, though violently painful, in fourteen days. often the inflammation extends, becomes chronic and attacks other organs. this chronic gonorrhea often causes permanent contraction of the urethra, which leads to the painful retention of urine, catarrh of the bladder, and stone. chronic gonorrhea, too, often ends in death, especially if the kidneys are attacked. a cured case of gonorrhea does not mean immunity from further attacks. new infections are all the more easily acquired. gonorrhea has even more dangerous consequences in women than in men. the _gonococcus_ bacilli infect all the inner female genital organs. they cause frequent inflammations and lead to growths in the belly. women thus attacked usually are apt to be sterile; they suffer agonies, and often become chronic invalids. the child born of a gonorrheal mother, while passing through the infected genital organs, comes to life with infected eyelids. this is _blennorrhea_, which may result in total blindness. gonorrhea also causes inflammation of the joints, gonorrheal rheumatism, testicular inflammations which may lead to sterility. some authorities claim that fully half the sterility in women is caused by gonorrheal infection of the fallopian tubes. gonorrheal infection of the eyes at birth is now prevented by first washing them in a saturated solution of boric acid, then treating them with a drop of weak silver solution. syphilis syphilis is a still more terrible venereal disease. it usually appears first in small, hard sores, hard chancres, on the sexual parts or the mouth. then the syphilitic poison spreads throughout the whole body by means of the blood. after a few weeks it breaks out on the face or body. its final cure is always questionable. syphilis may lie dormant for years, and then suddenly become active again. it breaks out in sores on all parts of the body, often eats up the bone, destroys internal organs, such as the liver, causes hardening of the lungs, diseases of the blood vessels and eye diseases. ulcers of the brain and nerve paralysis often result from it. one of its most terrible consequences is consumption of the spinal marrow and paralysis of the brain, or paresis. the first slowly hardens and destroys the spinal marrow, the second the brain. these diseases are only developed by previous syphilitics. as a rule they occur from to years after infection, usually or years after it. and they usually happen to persons who believed themselves completely cured. consumption of the spinal marrow leads to death in the course of a few years of continual torture. paralysis of the brain turns the sufferer into a human ruin, gradually extinguishing all mental and nervous functions, sentience, movement, speech and intellect. one danger of syphilis is the fact that its true nature may be overlooked during the first period, because of the lack of pronounced symptoms. its early sores may easily be mistaken for some skin affection. mercury and other means are successful in doing away with at least the more noticeable signs of syphilis during the first and secondary stages. the modern medical treatment using mercury and salvarsan ( ) in alternation, has been very successful. it is claimed that by following it, syphilis may be totally cured if taken in hand during the first stage. the sores developed during the first two or three years of the disease are very infectious. in the case of a chronic syphilis of three or four years' standing, the sores as a rule are no longer infectious. it is possible, however, for a syphilitic of this description to bring forth syphilitic children, _without infecting his wife_. such children either die at birth, or later, of this congenital syphilis. they may also die of spinal consumption or paresis between the ages of and . the mortality of all syphilitic children is very great. in most cases, however, healthy children are born of the wedlock of _relatively cured_ syphilitics, though they are often sterile. young men who have had recourse to prostitutes, often inoculate their wives with gonorrhea or syphilis, and thus the plague is spread. the soft chancre the soft chancre is the third form of venereal disease (the hard chancre being the first stage of syphilis). it is the least dangerous of the venereal diseases, but unfortunately, relatively the one which occurs most seldom. when not complicated with syphilis, it appears locally. it is a larger or smaller sore feeding and growing on the genital organs. venereal disease an advocate of continence the most tragic consequence of all venereal disease is the part it plays in the infection of innocent children, and innocent wives and mothers. often a pure and chaste woman is thus deprived in the most cruel and brutal manner of the fruit of all her hopes and dreams of happiness. similarly, a young man may find himself hopelessly condemned to a short life of pain and misery. he may also suffer from the knowledge that he has ruined the lives of those dearest to him. venereal disease, syphilis in particular, emphasizes the _practical_ value of continence--quite aside from its moral one--in a manner which cannot be ignored! chapter x love and sex when we take under consideration the higher, truer love of one sex for the other, that is, an affection which is not simply a friendship, but has a sex basis, we realize that it may be a very noble emotion. there is no manner of doubt but that the normal human being feels a great need for love. sex in love and its manifestation in the life of the soul is one of the first conditions of human happiness, and a main aim of human existence. all know the tale of cupid's arrow. a man falls in love with a face, a pair of eyes, the sound of a voice, and his affection is developed from this trifling beginning until it takes complete possession of him. this love is usually made up of two components: a sex instinct, and feelings of sympathy and interest which hark back to primal times. and this love, in its true sense, should stand for an affection purified from egoism. when, among the lower animal forms we find individuals without a determined sex, egoism develops free from all restraint. each individual creature devours as much as it can and feeding, together with propagation by division, "budding" or conjunction, makes up the total of its vital activities. it need do no more to accomplish the purpose of its existence. even when propagation commences to take place by means of individual male and female parents, the same principle of egoism largely obtains. the spiders are typical instances of this: in their case the carrying out of the natural functions of the male spider is attended with much danger for him, owing to the fact that if he does not exercise the greatest care, he is apt to be devoured immediately afterward by his female partner, in order that no useful food matter may be lost. yet even in the case of the spiders, the female spider already gives proof of a certain capacity for sacrifice where her young are concerned, at any rate for a short time after they have crept from the egg. in animals somewhat higher in the creative scale, more or less powerful feelings of affection may develop out of their sex association. there is affection on the part of the male for his mate, and on the part of the female for her young. often these feelings develop into a strong, lasting affection between the sexes, and years of what might be called faithful matrimonial union have been observed in the case of birds. this in itself is sufficient to establish the intimate relationship between love in a sex sense and love in a general sense. and even in the animal creation we find the same analogy existing between these feelings of sympathy and their opposites which occur in the case of human beings. every feeling of attachment or sympathy existing between two individuals has a counterpart in an opposite feeling of discontent when the object of the love or attachment in question dies, falls sick, or runs away. this feeling of discontent may assume the form of a sorrow ending in lasting melancholy. in the case of apes and of certain parrots, it has been noticed that the death of a mate has frequently led the survivor to refuse nourishment, and die in turn from increasing grief and depression. if, on the other hand, an animal discovers the cause of the grief or loss which threatens it; if some enemy creature tries to rob it of its mate or little ones, the mixed reactive feeling of rage or anger is born in it, anger against the originator of its discontent. jealousy is only a definite special form of this anger reaction. a further development of the feeling of sympathy is that of duty. every feeling of love or sympathy urges those who feel it to do certain things which will benefit the object of that love. a mother will feed her young, bed them down comfortably, caress them; a father will bring nourishment to the mother and her brood, and protect them against foes. all these actions, not performed to benefit the creature itself, but to help its beloved mate, represent exertion, trouble, the overcoming of danger, and lead to a struggle between egoism and the feeling of sympathy. out of this struggle is born a third feeling, that of responsibility and conscience. thus the elements of the human social feelings are already quite pronounced in the case of many animals, including those of love as well as sex. in the human animal, speaking in general, these feelings of sympathy (love) and duty are strongly developed in the family connection; that is, they are developed with special strength in those who are most intimately united in sex life, in husband and wife and in children. consequently the feelings of sympathy or love which extend to larger communal groups, such as more distant family connections, the tribe, the community, those speaking the same tongue, the nation, are relatively far weaker. weakest of all, in all probability, is that general human feeling which sees a brother in every other human being and is conscious of the social duties owed him. as regards man and wife, the relation of the actual sex instinct to love is often a very complicated one. in the case of man the sex feeling may, and frequently does exist independent of love in the higher sense; in the case of woman it is quite certain that love occurs far less seldom unaccompanied by the sex inclination. it is also quite possible for love to develop before the development of the sex feeling, and this often, in married life, leads to the happiest relationships. the mutual adoration of two individuals, husband and wife, often degenerates into a species of egoistic enmity toward the remainder of the world. and this, in turn, in many cases reacts unfavorably upon the love the two feel for each other. human solidarity, especially in this day, is already too great not to revenge itself upon the egotistical character of so exclusive a love. the real ideal of sex in love might be expressed as follows: a man and a woman should be induced to unite in marriage through genuine sex attraction and harmony of character and disposition. in this union they should mutually encourage each other to labor socially for the common good of mankind, in such wise that _they further their own mutual education and that of their children_, the beings nearest and dearest to them, _as the natural point of departure for helping general human betterment_. if love in its relation to sex be conceived in this manner, it will purify it by doing away with its pettinesses and it is just into these pettinesses that the most honest and upright of matrimonial loves too often degenerate. the constructive work done in common by two human beings who, while they care lovingly for each other, at the same time encourage each other to strive and endure in carrying out the principles of right living and high thinking, will last. love and marriage looked at from this point of view, are relatively immune from the small jealousies and other evil little developments of a one-sided, purely physical affection. it will work for an ever more ideal realization of love in its higher and nobler dispensations. real and true love is lasting. the suddenly awakened storm of sex affection for a hitherto totally unknown person can never be accepted as a true measure for love. this sudden surge of the sex feeling warps the judgment, makes it possible to overlook the grossest defects, colors all and everything with heavenly hues. it makes a man who is "in love," or two beings who are in love, mutually blind, and causes each to carefully conceal his or her real inward self from the other. this may be the case even when the feelings of both are absolutely honest, especially if the sex feeling is not paired with cool egoistic calculation. not until the first storm of the sex feeling has subsided, when honeymoon weeks are over, is a more normal point of view regained. and then love, indifference, or hatred, as the case may be develops. it is for this reason that love at first sight is always dangerous, and that only a longer and more intimate acquaintance with the object of one's affection is calculated to give a lasting union a relatively good chance of turning out happily. one thing is worth bearing in mind. woman invariably represents the conservative element in the family. her emotional qualities, combined with wonderful endurance, always control her intellect more powerfully than is the case with man; and the feelings and emotions form the conservative element in the human soul. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) studies in the psychology of sex, volume i the evolution of modesty the phenomena of sexual periodicity auto-erotism by havelock ellis general preface. the origin of these _studies_ dates from many years back. as a youth i was faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. living partly in an australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, i was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. a resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work should be to make clear the problems of sex. that was more than twenty years ago. since then i can honestly say that in all that i have done that resolve has never been very far from my thoughts. i have always been slowly working up to this central problem; and in a book published some three years ago--_man and woman: a study of human secondary sexual characters_--i put forward what was, in my own eyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexual psychology. now that i have at length reached the time for beginning to publish my results, these results scarcely seem to me large. as a youth, i had hoped to settle problems for those who came after; now i am quietly content if i do little more than state them. for even that, i now think, is much; it is at least the half of knowledge. in this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. i have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone bring little light. i have tried to get at the facts, and, having got at the facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. if i cannot perhaps turn the lock myself, i bring the key which can alone in the end rightly open the door: the key of sincerity. that is my one panacea: sincerity. i know that many of my friends, people on whose side i, too, am to be found, retort with another word: reticence. it is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. but, as a matter of fact, that is precisely what we can not and will not ever allow them to do. there are very few middle-aged men and women who can clearly recall the facts of their lives and tell you in all honesty that their sexual instincts have developed easily and wholesomely throughout. and it should not be difficult to see why this is so. let my friends try to transfer their feelings and theories from the reproductive region to, let us say, the nutritive region, the only other which can be compared to it for importance. suppose that eating and drinking was never spoken of openly, save in veiled or poetic language, and that no one ever ate food publicly, because it was considered immoral and immodest to reveal the mysteries of this natural function. we know what would occur. a considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. they would have so many problems to puzzle over: how often ought i to eat? what ought i to eat? is it wrong to eat fruit, which i like? ought i to eat grass, which i don't like? instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably and wholesomely. the sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing or misdirecting it, partly because the sexual impulse normally develops at the same time as the intellectual impulse, not in the early years of life, when wholesome instinctive habits might be formed. and there is always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle things: eat a meal every other day! eat twelve meals a day! never eat fruit! always eat grass! the advice emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less absurd than this. when, however, the matter is fully open, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved, but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to reach some sort of situation suited to his own case. and when the rigid secrecy is once swept away a sane and natural reticence becomes for the first time possible. this secrecy has not always been maintained. when the catholic church was at the summit of its power and influence it fully realized the magnitude of sexual problems and took an active and inquiring interest in all the details of normal and abnormal sexuality. even to the present time there are certain phenomena of the sexual life which have scarcely been accurately described except in ancient theological treatises. as the type of such treatises i will mention the great tome of sanchez, _de matrimonio_. here you will find the whole sexual life of men and women analyzed in its relationships to sin. everything is set forth, as clearly and as concisely as it can be--without morbid prudery on the one hand, or morbid sentimentality on the other--in the coldest scientific language; the right course of action is pointed out for all the cases that may occur, and we are told what is lawful, what a venial sin, what a mortal sin. now i do not consider that sexual matters concern the theologian alone, and i deny altogether that he is competent to deal with them. in his hands, also, undoubtedly, they sometimes become prurient, as they can scarcely fail to become on the non-natural and unwholesome basis of asceticism, and as they with difficulty become in the open-air light of science. but we are bound to recognize the thoroughness with which the catholic theologians dealt with these matters, and, from their own point of view, indeed, the entire reasonableness; we are bound to recognize the admirable spirit in which, successfully or not, they sought to approach them. we need to-day the same spirit and temper applied from a different standpoint. these things concern everyone; the study of these things concerns the physiologist, the psychologist, the moralist. we want to get into possession of the actual facts, and from the investigation of the facts we want to ascertain what is normal and what is abnormal, from the point of view of physiology and of psychology. we want to know what is naturally lawful under the various sexual chances that may befall man, not as the born child of sin, but as a naturally social animal. what is a venial sin against nature, what a mortal sin against nature? the answers are less easy to reach than the theologians' answers generally were, but we can at least put ourselves in the right attitude; we may succeed in asking that question which is sometimes even more than the half of knowledge. it is perhaps a mistake to show so plainly at the outset that i approach what may seem only a psychological question not without moral fervour. but i do not wish any mistake to be made. i regard sex as the central problem of life. and now that the problem of religion has practically been settled, and that the problem of labor has at least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of sex--with the racial questions that rest on it--stands before the coming generations as the chief problem for solution. sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.--so, at least, it seems to me. having said so much, i will try to present such results as i have to record in that cold and dry light through which alone the goal of knowledge may truly be seen. havelock ellis. july, . preface to the third edition. the first edition of this volume was published in , following "sexual inversion," which now forms volume ii. the second edition, issued by the present publishers and substantially identical with the first edition, appeared in the following year. ten years have elapsed since then and this new edition will be found to reflect the course of that long interval. not only is the volume greatly enlarged, but nearly every page has been partly rewritten. this is mainly due to three causes: much new literature required to be taken into account; my own knowledge of the historical and ethnographic aspects of the sexual impulse has increased; many fresh illustrative cases of a valuable and instructive character have accumulated in my hands. it is to these three sources of improvement that the book owes its greatly revised and enlarged condition, and not to the need for modifying any of its essential conclusions. these, far from undergoing any change, have by the new material been greatly strengthened. it may be added that the general preface to the whole work, which was originally published in at the beginning of "sexual inversion," now finds its proper place at the outset of the present volume. havelock ellis. carbis bay, cornwall, eng. preface to the first edition. the present volume contains three studies which seem to me to be necessary _prolegomena_ to that analysis of the sexual instinct which must form the chief part of an investigation into the psychology of sex. the first sketches the main outlines of a complex emotional state which is of fundamental importance in sexual psychology; the second, by bringing together evidence from widely different regions, suggests a tentative explanation of facts that are still imperfectly known; the third attempts to show that even in fields where we assume our knowledge to be adequate a broader view of the phenomena teaches us to suspend judgment and to adopt a more cautious attitude. so far as they go, these studies are complete in themselves; their special use, as an introduction to a more comprehensive analysis of sexual phenomena, is that they bring before us, under varying aspects, a characteristic which, though often ignored, is of the first importance in obtaining a clear understanding of the facts: the tendency of the sexual impulse to appear in a spontaneous and to some extent periodic manner, affecting women differently from men. this is a tendency which, later, i hope to make still more apparent, for it has practical and social, as well as psychological, implications. here--and more especially in the study of those spontaneous solitary manifestations which i call auto-erotic--i have attempted to clear the ground, and to indicate the main lines along which the progress of our knowledge in these fields may best be attained. it may surprise many medical readers that in the third and longest study i have said little, save incidentally, either of treatment or prevention. the omission of such considerations at this stage is intentional. it may safely be said that in no other field of human activity is so vast an amount of strenuous didactic morality founded on so slender a basis of facts. in most other departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content ourselves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, often ostentatiously second-hand, usually unreliable. i wish to emphasize the fact that before we can safely talk either of curing or preventing these manifestations we must know a great deal more than we know at present regarding their distribution, etiology, and symptomatology; and we must exercise the same coolness and caution as--if our work is to be fruitful--we require in any other field of serious study. we must approach these facts as physicians, it is true, but also as psychologists, primarily concerned to find out the workings of such manifestations in fairly healthy and normal people. if we found a divorce-court judge writing a treatise on marriage we should smile. but it is equally absurd for the physician, so long as his knowledge is confined to disease, to write regarding sex at large; valuable as the facts he brings forward may be, he can never be in a position to generalize concerning them. and to me, at all events, it seems that we have had more than enough pictures of gross sexual perversity, whether furnished by the asylum or the brothel. they are only really instructive when they are seen in their proper perspective as the rare and ultimate extremes of a chain of phenomena which we may more profitably study nearer home. yet, although we are, on every hand, surrounded by the normal manifestations of sex, conscious or unconscious, these manifestations are extremely difficult to observe, and, in those cases in which we are best able to observe them, it frequently happens that we are unable to make any use of our knowledge. moreover, even when we have obtained our data, the difficulties--at all events, for an english investigator--are by no means overcome. he may take for granted that any serious and precise study of the sexual instinct will not meet with general approval; his work will be misunderstood; his motives will be called in question; among those for whom he is chiefly working he will find indifference. indeed, the pioneer in this field may well count himself happy if he meets with nothing worse than indifference. hence it is that the present volume will not be published in england, but that, availing myself of the generous sympathy with which my work has been received in america, i have sought the wider medical and scientific audience of the united states. in matters of faith, "liberty of prophesying" was centuries since eloquently vindicated for englishmen; the liberty of investigating facts is still called in question, under one pretence or another, and to seek out the most vital facts of life is still in england a perilous task. i desire most heartily to thank the numerous friends and correspondents, some living in remote parts of the world, who have freely assisted me in my work with valuable information and personal histories. to mr. f.h. perry-coste i owe an appendix which is by far the most elaborate attempt yet made to find evidence of periodicity in the spontaneous sexual manifestations of sleep; my debts to various medical and other correspondents are duly stated in the text. to many women friends and correspondents i may here express my gratitude for the manner in which they have furnished me with intimate personal records, and for the cross-examination to which they have allowed me to subject them. i may already say here, what i shall have occasion to say more emphatically in subsequent volumes, that without the assistance i have received from women of fine intelligence and high character my work would be impossible. i regret that i cannot make my thanks more specific. havelock ellis. contents. the evolution of modesty. i. the definition of modesty--the significance of modesty--difficulties in the way of its analysis--the varying phenomena of modesty among different peoples and in different ages. ii. modesty an agglomeration of fears--children in relation to modesty--modesty in animals--the attitude of the medicean venus--the sexual factor of modesty based on sexual periodicity and on the primitive phenomena of courtship--the necessity of seclusion in primitive sexual intercourse--the meaning of coquetry--the sexual charm of modesty--modesty as an expression of feminine erotic impulse--the fear of causing disgust as a factor of modesty--the modesty of savages in regard to eating in the presence of others--the sacro-pubic region as a focus of disgust--the idea of ceremonial uncleanliness--the custom of veiling the face--ornaments and clothing--modesty becomes concentrated in the garment--the economic factor in modesty--the contribution of civilization to modesty--the elaboration of social ritual. iii. the blush the sanction of modesty--the phenomena of blushing--influences which modify the aptitude to blush--darkness, concealment of the face, etc. iv. summary of the factors of modesty--the future of modesty--modesty an essential element of love. the phenomena of sexual periodicity. i. the various physiological and psychological rhythms--menstruation--the alleged influence of the moon--frequent suppression of menstruation among primitive races--mittelschmerz--possible tendency to a future intermenstrual cycle--menstruation among animals--menstruating monkeys and apes--what is menstruation--its primary cause still obscure--the relation of menstruation to ovulation--the occasional absence of menstruation in health--the relation of menstruation to "heat"--the prohibition of intercourse during menstruation--the predominance of sexual excitement at and around the menstrual period--its absence during the period frequently apparent only. ii. the question of a monthly sexual cycle in men--the earliest suggestions of a general physiological cycle in men--periodicity in disease--insanity, heart disease, etc.--the alleged twenty-three days' cycle--the physiological periodicity of seminal emissions during sleep--original observations--fortnightly and weekly rhythms. iii. the annual sexual rhythm--in animals--in man--tendency of the sexual impulse to become heightened in spring and autumn--the prevalence of seasonal erotic festivals--the feast of fools--the easter and midsummer bonfires--the seasonal variations in birthrate--the causes of those variations--the typical conception-rate curve for europe--the seasonal periodicity of seminal emissions during sleep--original observations--spring and autumn the chief periods of involuntary sexual excitement--the seasonal periodicity of rapes--of outbreaks among prisoners--the seasonal curves of insanity and suicide--the growth of children according to season--the annual curve of bread-consumption in prisons--seasonal periodicity of scarlet fever--the underlying causes of these seasonal phenomena. auto-erotism: a study of the spontaneous manifestations of the sexual impulse. i. definition of auto-erotism--masturbation only covers a small portion of the auto-erotic field--the importance of this study, especially to-day--auto-erotic phenomena in animals--among savage and barbaric races--the japanese _rin-no-tama_ and other special instruments for obtaining auto-erotic gratification--abuse of the ordinary implements and objects of daily life--the frequency of hair-pin in the bladder--the influence of horse-exercise and railway traveling--the sewing-machine and the bicycle--spontaneous passive sexual excitement--_delectatio morosa_--day-dreaming--_pollutio_--sexual excitement during sleep--erotic dreams--the analogy of nocturnal enuresis--differences in the erotic dreams of men and women--the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep in the hysterical--their frequently painful character. ii. hysteria and the question of its relation to the sexual emotions--the early greek theories of its nature and causation--the gradual rise of modern views--charcot--the revolt against charcot's too absolute conclusions--fallacies involved--charcot's attitude the outcome of his personal temperament--breuer and freud--their views supplement and complete charcot's--at the same time they furnish a justification for the earlier doctrine of hysteria--but they must not be regarded as final--the diffused hysteroid condition in normal persons--the physiological basis of hysteria--true pathological hysteria is linked on to almost normal states, especially to sex-hunger. iii. the prevalence of masturbation--its occurrence in infancy and childhood--is it more frequent in males or females?--after adolescence apparently more frequent in women--reasons for the sexual distribution of masturbation--the alleged evils of masturbation--historical sketch of the views held on this point--the symptoms and results of masturbation--its alleged influence in causing eye disorders--its relation to insanity and nervous disorders--the evil effects of masturbation usually occur on the basis of a congenitally morbid nervous system--neurasthenia probably the commonest accompaniment of excessive masturbation--precocious masturbation tends to produce aversion to coitus--psychic results of habitual masturbation--masturbation in men of genius--masturbation as a nervous sedative--typical cases--the greek attitude toward masturbation--attitude of the catholic theologians--the mohammedan attitude--the modern scientific attitude--in what sense is masturbation normal?--the immense part in life played by transmuted auto-erotic phenomena. appendix a. the influence of menstruation on the position of women. appendix b. sexual periodicity in men. appendix c. the auto-erotic factor in religion. index. diagrams. the evolution of modesty. i. the definition of modesty--the significance of modesty--difficulties in the way of its analysis--the varying phenomena of modesty among different peoples and in different ages. modesty, which may be provisionally defined as an almost instinctive fear prompting to concealment and usually centering around the sexual processes, while common to both sexes is more peculiarly feminine, so that it may almost be regarded as the chief secondary sexual character of women on the psychical side. the woman who is lacking in this kind of fear is lacking, also, in sexual attractiveness to the normal and average man. the apparent exceptions seem to prove the rule, for it will generally be found that the women who are, not immodest (for immodesty is more closely related to modesty than mere negative absence of the sense of modesty), but without that fear which implies the presence of a complex emotional feminine organization to defend, only make a strong sexual appeal to men who are themselves lacking in the complementary masculine qualities. as a psychical secondary sexual character of the first rank, it is necessary, before any psychology of sex can be arranged in order, to obtain a clear view of modesty. the immense importance of feminine modesty in creating masculine passion must be fairly obvious. i may, however, quote the observations of two writers who have shown evidence of insight and knowledge regarding this matter. casanova describes how, when at berne, he went to the baths, and was, according to custom, attended by a young girl, whom he selected from a group of bath attendants. she undressed him, proceeded to undress herself, and then entered the bath with him, and rubbed him thoroughly all over, the operation being performed in the most serious manner and without a word being spoken. when all was over, however, he perceived that the girl had expected him to make advances, and he proceeds to describe and discuss his own feelings of indifference under such circumstances. "though without gazing on the girl's figure, i had seen enough to recognize that she had all that a man can desire to find in a woman: a beautiful face, lively and well-formed eyes, a beautiful mouth, with good teeth, a healthy complexion, well-developed breasts, and everything in harmony. it is true that i had felt that her hands could have been smoother, but i could only attribute this to hard work; moreover, my swiss girl was only eighteen, and yet i remained entirely cold. what was the cause of this? that was the question that i asked myself." "it is clear," wrote stendhal, "that three parts of modesty are taught. this is, perhaps, the only law born of civilization which produces nothing but happiness. it has been observed that birds of prey hide themselves to drink, because, being obliged to plunge their heads in the water, they are at that moment defenceless. after having considered what passes at otaheite, i can see no other natural foundation for modesty. love is the miracle of civilization. among savage and very barbarous races we find nothing but physical love of a gross character. it is modesty that gives to love the aid of imagination, and in so doing imparts life to it. modesty is very early taught to little girls by their mothers, and with extreme jealousy, one might say, by _esprit de corps_. they are watching in advance over the happiness of the future lover. to a timid and tender woman there ought to be no greater torture than to allow herself in the presence of a man something which she thinks she ought to blush at. i am convinced that a proud woman would prefer a thousand deaths. a slight liberty taken on the tender side by the man she loves gives a woman a moment of keen pleasure, but if he has the air of blaming her for it, or only of not enjoying it with transport, an awful doubt must be left in her mind. for a woman above the vulgar level there is, then, everything to gain by very reserved manners. the play is not equal. she hazards against a slight pleasure, or against the advantage of appearing a little amiable, the danger of biting remorse, and a feeling of shame which must render even the lover less dear. an evening passed gaily and thoughtlessly, without thinking of what comes after, is dearly paid at this price. the sight of a lover with whom one fears that one has had this kind of wrong must become odious for several days. can one be surprised at the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with such atrocious shame? as to the utility of modesty, it is the mother of love. as to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. the mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. it is evident that every tender and proud woman--and these two things, being cause and effect, naturally go together--must contract habits of coldness which the people whom she disconcerts call prudery. the power of modesty is so great that a tender woman betrays herself with her lover rather by deeds than by words. the evil of modesty is that it constantly leads to falsehood." (stendhal, _de l'amour_, chapter xxiv.) it thus happens that, as adler remarks (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, p. ), the sexual impulse in women is fettered by an inhibition which has to be conquered. a thin veil of reticence, shyness, and anxiety is constantly cast anew over a woman's love, and her wooer, in every act of courtship, has the enjoyment of conquering afresh an oft-won woman. an interesting testimony to the part played by modesty in effecting the union of the sexes is furnished by the fact--to which attention has often been called--that the special modesty of women usually tends to diminish, though not to disappear, with the complete gratification of the sexual impulses. this may be noted among savage as well as among civilized women. the comparatively evanescent character of modesty has led to the argument (venturi, _degenerazioni psico-sessuali_, pp. - ) that modesty (_pudore_) is possessed by women alone, men exhibiting, instead, a sense of decency which remains at about the same level of persistency throughout life. viazzi ("pudore nell 'uomo e nella donna," _rivista mensile di psichiatria forense_, ), on the contrary, following sergi, argues that men are, throughout, more modest than women; but the points he brings forward, though often just, scarcely justify his conclusion. while the young virgin, however, is more modest and shy than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is usually less so than her husband, and in a woman who is a mother the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly felt to be ridiculous. ("les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour les mères," remarks goncourt, _journal des goncourt_, vol. iii, p. .) she has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any important part to play in life, and would, indeed, be inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage when the pairing season is over. madame céline renooz, in an elaborate study of the psychological sexual differences between men and women (_psychologie comparée de l'homme et de la femme_, , pp. - ), also believes that modesty is not really a feminine characteristic. "modesty," she argues, "is masculine shame attributed to women for two reasons: first, because man believes that woman is subject to the same laws as himself; secondly, because the course of human evolution has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women the psychological results of masculine sexuality. this is the origin of the conventional lies which by a sort of social suggestion have intimidated women. they have, in appearance at least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it is really an outrage to their sex. this reversal of psychological laws has, however, only been accepted by women with a struggle. primitive woman, proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. and in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. at this moment, wavering between the laws of nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. a sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch." in support of this view the authoress proceeds to point out that the _décolleté_ constantly reappears in feminine clothing, never in male; that missionaries experience great difficulty in persuading women to cover themselves; that, while women accept with facility an examination by male doctors, men cannot force themselves to accept examination by a woman doctor, etc. (these and similar points had already been independently brought forward by sergi, _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xiii, .) it cannot be said that madame renooz's arguments will all bear examination, if only on the ground that nakedness by no means involves absence of modesty, but the point of view which she expresses is one which usually fails to gain recognition, though it probably contains an important element of truth. it is quite true, as stendhal said, that modesty is very largely taught; from the earliest years, a girl child is trained to show a modesty which she quickly begins really to feel. this fact cannot fail to strike any one who reads the histories of pseudo-hermaphroditic persons, really males, who have from infancy been brought up in the belief that they are girls, and who show, and feel, all the shrinking reticence and blushing modesty of their supposed sex. but when the error is discovered, and they are restored to their proper sex, this is quickly changed, and they exhibit all the boldness of masculinity. (see e.g., neugebauer, "beobachtungen aus dem gebiete des scheinzwittertumes," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, jahrgang iv, , esp. p. .) at the same time this is only one thread in the tangled skein with which we are here concerned. the mass of facts which meets us when we turn to the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of artificially-imposed customs. they gain rather than lose in importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual demands of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the temporary suppression of another feminine instinct of opposite, though doubtless allied, nature. but these somewhat conflicting, though not really contradictory, statements serve to bring out the fact that a woman's modesty is often an incalculable element. the woman who, under some circumstances and at some times, is extreme in her reticences, under other circumstances or at other times, may be extreme in her abandonment. not that her modesty is an artificial garment, which she throws off or on at will. it is organic, but like the snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impenetrable covering, and sometimes glides off almost altogether. a man's modesty is more rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either extreme. thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be impatient with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked at her abandonments. the significance of our inquiry becomes greater when we reflect that to the reticences of sexual modesty, in their progression, expansion, and complication, we largely owe, not only the refinement and development of the sexual emotions,--"_la pudeur_" as guyau remarked, "_a civilisé l'amour_"--but the subtle and pervading part which the sexual instinct has played in the evolution of all human culture. "it is certain that very much of what is best in religion, art, and life," remark stanley hall and allin, "owes its charm to the progressively-widening irradiation of sexual feeling. perhaps the reluctance of the female first long-circuited the exquisite sensations connected with sexual organs and acts to the antics of animal and human courtship, while restraint had the physiological function of developing the colors, plumes, excessive activity, and exuberant life of the pairing season. to keep certain parts of the body covered, irradiated the sense of beauty to eyes, hair, face, complexion, dress, form, etc., while many savage dances, costumes and postures are irradiations of the sexual act. thus reticence, concealment, and restraint are among the prime conditions of religion and human culture." (stanley hall and allin, "the psychology of tickling," _american journal of psychology_, , p. .) groos attributes the deepening of the conjugal relation among birds to the circumstance that the male seeks to overcome the reticence of the female by the display of his charms and abilities. "and in the human world," he continues, "it is the same; without the modest reserve of the woman that must, in most cases, be overcome by lovable qualities, the sexual relationship would with difficulty find a singer who would extol in love the highest movements of the human soul." (groos, _spiele der menschen_, p. .) i have not, however, been, able to find that the subject of modesty has been treated in any comprehensive way by psychologists. though valuable facts and suggestions bearing on the sexual emotions, on disgust, the origins of tatooing, on ornament and clothing, have been, brought forward by physiologists, psychologists, and ethnographists, few or no attempts appear to have been made to reach a general synthetic statement of these facts and suggestions. it is true that a great many unreliable, slight, or fragmentary efforts have been made to ascertain the constitution or basis of this emotion.[ ] many psychologists have regarded modesty simply as the result of clothing. this view is overturned by the well-ascertained fact that many races which go absolutely naked possess a highly-developed sense of modesty. these writers have not realized that physiological modesty is earlier in appearance, and more fundamental, than anatomical modesty. a partial contribution to the analysis of modesty has been made by professor james, who, with his usual insight and lucidity, has set forth certain of its characteristics, especially the element due to "the application to ourselves of judgments primarily passed upon our mates." guyau, in a very brief discussion of modesty, realized its great significance and touched on most of its chief elements.[ ] westermarck, again, followed by grosse, has very ably and convincingly set forth certain factors in the origin of ornament and clothing, a subject which many writers imagine to cover the whole field of modesty. more recently ribot, in his work on the emotions, has vaguely outlined most of the factors of modesty, but has not developed a coherent view of their origins and relationships. since the present _study_ first appeared, hohenemser, who considers that my analysis of modesty is unsatisfactory, has made a notable attempt to define the psychological mechanism of shame. ("versuch einer analyse der scham," _archiv für die gesamte psychologie_, bd. ii, heft - , .) he regards shame as a general psycho-physical phenomenon, "a definite tension of the whole soul," with an emotion superadded. "the state of shame consists in a certain psychic lameness or inhibition," sometimes accompanied by physical phenomena of paralysis, such as sinking of the head and inability to meet the eye. it is a special case of lipps's psychic stasis or damming up (_psychische stauung_), always produced when the psychic activities are at the same time drawn in two or more different directions. in shame there is always something present in consciousness which conflicts with the rest of the personality, and cannot be brought into harmony with it, which cannot be brought, that is, into moral (not logical) relationship with it. a young man in love with a girl is ashamed when told that he is in love, because his reverence for one whom he regards as a higher being cannot be brought into relationship with his own lower personality. a child in the same way feels shame in approaching a big, grown-up person, who seems a higher sort of being. sometimes, likewise, we feel shame in approaching a stranger, for a new person tends to seem higher and more interesting than ourselves. it is not so in approaching a new natural phenomenon, because we do not compare it with ourselves. another kind of shame is seen when this mental contest is lower than our personality, and on this account in conflict with it, as when we are ashamed of sexual thoughts. sexual ideas tend to evoke shame, hohenemser remarks, because they so easily tend to pass into sexual feelings; when they do not so pass (as in scientific discussions) they do not evoke shame. it will be seen that this discussion of modesty is highly generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism of the process. hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic stasis, and i have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. we may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. the analysis of modesty has still to be carried very much further. the discussion of modesty is complicated by the difficulty, and even impossibility, of excluding closely-allied emotions--shame, shyness, bashfulness, timidity, etc.--all of which, indeed, however defined, adjoin or overlap modesty.[ ] it is not, however, impossible to isolate the main body of the emotion of modesty, on account of its special connection, on the whole, with the consciousness of sex. i here attempt, however imperfectly, to sketch out a fairly-complete analysis of its constitution and to trace its development. in entering upon this investigation a few facts with regard to the various manifestations of modesty may be helpful to us. i have selected these from scattered original sources, and have sought to bring out the variety and complexity of the problems with which we are here concerned. the new georgians of the solomon islands, so low a race that they are ignorant both of pottery and weaving, and wear only a loin cloth, "have the same ideas of what is decent with regard to certain acts and exposures that we ourselves have;" so that it is difficult to observe whether they practice circumcision. (somerville, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) in the new hebrides "the closest secrecy is adopted with regard to the penis, not at all from a sense of decency, but to avoid narak, the _sight_ even of that of another man being considered most dangerous. the natives of this savage island, accordingly, wrap the penis around with many yards of calico, and other like materials, winding and folding them until a preposterous bundle inches, or feet long, and inches or more in diameter is formed, which is then supported upward by means of a belt, in the extremity decorated with flowering grasses, etc. the testicles are left naked." there is no other body covering. (somerville, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) in the pelew islands, says kubary, as quoted by bastian, it is said that when the god irakaderugel and his wife were creating man and woman (he forming man and she forming woman), and were at work on the sexual organs, the god wished to see his consort's handiwork. she, however, was cross, and persisted in concealing what she had made. ever since then women wear an apron of pandanus-leaves and men go naked. (a. bastian, _inselgruppen in oceanien_, p. .) in the pelew islands, semper tells us that when approaching a large water-hole he was surprised to hear an affrighted, long-drawn cry from his native friends. "a girl's voice answered out of the bushes, and my people held us back, for there were women bathing there who would not allow us to pass. when i remarked that they were only women, of whom they need not be afraid, they replied that it was not so, that women had an unbounded right to punish men who passed them when bathing without their permission, and could inflict fines or even death. on this account, the women's bathing place is a safe and favorite spot for a secret rendezvous. fortunately a lady's toilet lasts but a short time in this island." (carl semper, _die palau-inseln_, , p. .) among the western tribes of torres strait, haddon states, "the men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but i gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. a man would never go nude before me. the women would never voluntarily expose their breasts to white men's gaze; this applies to quite young girls, less so to old women. amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but i believe they are becoming more so.... formerly, i imagine, there was no restraint in speech; now there is a great deal of prudery; for instance, the men were always much ashamed when i asked for the name of the sexual parts of a woman." (a.c. haddon, "ethnography of the western tribes of torres straits," _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) after a subsequent expedition to the same region, the author reiterates his observations as to the "ridiculously prudish manner" of the men, attributable to missionary influence during the past thirty years, and notes that even the children are affected by it. "at mabuiag, some small children were paddling in the water, and a boy of about ten years of age reprimanded a little girl of five or six years because she held up her dress too high." (_reports of the cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. .) "although the women of new guinea," vahness says, "are very slightly clothed, they are by no means lacking in a well-developed sense of decorum. if they notice, for instance, that any one is paying special attention to their nakedness, they become ashamed and turn round." when a woman had to climb the fence to enter the wild-pig enclosure, she would never do it in vahness's presence. (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, verhdlgen., , heft , p. .) in australia "the feeling of decency is decidedly less prevalent among males than females;" the clothed females retire out of sight to bathe. (curr, _australian race_.) "except for waist-bands, forehead-bands, necklets, and armlets, and a conventional pubic tassel, shell, or, in the case of the women, a small apron, the central australian native is naked. the pubic tassel is a diminutive structure, about the size of a five-shilling piece, made of a few short strands of fur-strings flattened out into a fan-shape and attached to the pubic hair. as the string, especially at _corrobboree_ times, is covered with white kaolin or gypsum, it serves as a decoration rather than a covering. among the arunta and luritcha the women usually wear nothing, but further north, a small apron is made and worn." (baldwin spencer and gillen, _native tribes of central australia_, p. .) of the central australians stirling says: "no sense of shame of exposure was exhibited by the men on removal of the diminutive articles worn as conventional coverings; they were taken off _coram populo_, and bartered without hesitation. on the other hand, some little persuasion was necessary to allow inspection of the effect of [urethral] sub-incision, assent being given only after dismissal to a distance of the women and young children. as to the women, it was nearly always observed that when in camp without clothing they, especially the younger ones, exhibited by their attitude a keen sense of modesty, if, indeed, a consciousness of their nakedness can be thus considered. when we desired to take a photograph of a group of young women, they were very coy at the proposal to remove their scanty garments, and retired behind a wall to do so; but once in a state of nudity they made no objection to exposure to the camera." (_report of the horn scientific expedition_, , vol. iv, p. .) in northern queensland "phallocrypts," or "penis-concealers," only used by the males at _corrobborees_ and other public rejoicings, are either formed of pearl-shell or opossum-string. the _koom-pa-ra_, or opossum-string form of phallocrypt, forms a kind of tassel, and is colored red; it is hung from the waist-belt in the middle line. in both sexes the privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when in close proximity to white settlements. (w. roth, _ethnological studies among the northwest-central-queensland aborigines_, , pp. - .) "the principle of chastity," said forster, of his experiences in the south sea islands in their unspoilt state, "we found in many families exceedingly well understood. i have seen many fine women who, with a modesty mixed with politeness, refuse the greatest and most tempting offers made them by our forward youths; often they excuse themselves with a simple _tirra-tano_, 'i am married,' and at other times they smiled and declined it with _epia_, 'no.' ... virtuous women hear a joke without emotion, which, amongst us, might put some men to the blush. neither austerity and anger, nor joy and ecstasy is the consequence, but sometimes a modest, dignified, serene smile spreads itself over their face, and seems gently to rebuke the uncouth jester." (j.r. forster, _observations made during a voyage round the world_, , p. .) captain cook, at tahiti, in , after performing divine service on sunday, witnessed "vespers of a very different kind. a young man, near six feet high, performed the rites of venus with a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people and a great number of the natives, without the least sense of its being indecent or improper, but, as it appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place. among the spectators were several women of superior rank, who may properly be said to have assisted at the ceremony; for they gave instructions to the girl how to perform her part, which, young as she was, she did not seem much to stand in need of." (j. hawkesworth, _account of the voyages_, etc., , vol. i, p. .) at tahiti, according to cook, it was customary to "gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses," and it is added, "in the conversation of these people, that which is the principal source of their pleasure is always the principal topic; everything is mentioned without any restraint or emotion, and in the most direct terms, by both sexes." (hawkesworth, op. cit., vol ii, p. .) "i have observed," captain cook wrote, "that our friends in the south seas have not even the idea of indecency, with respect to any object or any action, but this was by no means the case with the inhabitants of new zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there was as much modest reserve and decorum with respect to actions, which yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the politest people in europe. the women were not impregnable; but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us, and according to their notions, the agreement was as innocent. when any of our people made an overture to any of their young women, he was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary to treat the wife for a night with the same delicacy that is here required by the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated, was sure to be disappointed." (hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, p. .) cook found that the people of new zealand "bring the prepuce over the gland, and to prevent it from being drawn back by contraction of the part, they tie the string which hangs from the girdle round the end of it. the glans, indeed, seemed to be the only part of their body which they were solicitous to conceal, for they frequently threw off all their dress but the belt and string, with the most careless indifference, but showed manifest signs of confusion when, to gratify our curiosity, they were requested to untie the string, and never consented but with the utmost reluctance and shame.... the women's lower garment was always bound fast round them, except when they went into the water to catch lobsters, and then they took great care not to be seen by the men. we surprised several of them at this employment, and the chaste diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered more confusion and distress at the sight of actæon, than these women expressed upon our approach. some of them hid themselves among the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they had made themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they could find, and when they came out, even with this veil, we could see that their modesty suffered much pain by our presence." (hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. - .) in rotuma, in polynesia, where the women enjoy much freedom, but where, at all events in old days, married people were, as a rule, faithful to each other, "the language is not chaste according to our ideas, and there is a great deal of freedom in speaking of immoral vices. in this connection a man and his wife will speak freely to one another before their friends. i am informed, though, by european traders well conversant with the language, that there are grades of language, and that certain coarse phrases would never be used to any decent woman; so that probably, in their way, they have much modesty, only we cannot appreciate it." (j. stanley gardiner, "the natives of rotuma," _journal of the anthropological institute_, may, , p. .) the men of rotuma, says the same writer, are very clean, the women also, bathing twice a day in the sea; but "bathing in public without the _kukuluga_, or _sulu_ [loin-cloth, which is the ordinary dress], around the waist is absolutely unheard of, and would be much looked down upon." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) in ancient samoa the only necessary garment for either man or woman was an apron of leaves, but they possessed so "delicate a sense of propriety" that even "while bathing they have a girdle of leaves or some other covering around the waist." (turner, _samoa a hundred years ago_, p. .) after babyhood the indians of guiana are never seen naked. when they change their single garment they retire. the women wear a little apron, now generally made of european beads, but the warraus still make it of the inner bark of a tree, and some of seeds. (everard im thurn, _among the indians of guiana_, .) the mandurucu women of brazil, according to tocantins (quoted by mantegazza), are completely naked, but they are careful to avoid any postures which might be considered indecorous, and they do this so skilfully that it is impossible to tell when they have their menstrual periods. (mantegazza, _fisiologia della donna_, cap .) the indians of central brazil have no "private parts." in men the little girdle, or string, surrounding the lower part of the abdomen, hides nothing; it is worn after puberty, the penis being often raised and placed beneath it to lengthen the prepuce. the women also use a little strip of bast that goes down the groin and passes between the thighs. among some tribes (karibs, tupis, nu-arwaks) a little, triangular, coquettishly-made piece of bark-bast comes just below the mons veneris; it is only a few centimetres in width, and is called the _uluri. in both sexes concealment of the sexual mucous membrane is attained_. these articles cannot be called clothing. "the red thread of the trumai, the elegant _uluri_, and the variegated flag of the bororó attract attention, like ornaments, instead of drawing attention away." von den steinen thinks this proceeding a necessary protection against the attacks of insects, which are often serious in brazil. he does think, however, that there is more than this, and that the people are ashamed to show the glans penis. (karl von den steinen, _unter den naturvölkern zentral-brasiliens_, , pp. et seq.) other travelers mention that on the amazon among some tribes the women are clothed and the men naked; among others the women naked, and the men clothed. thus, among the guaycurus the men are quite naked, while the women wear a short petticoat; among the uaupás the men always wear a loin-cloth, while the women are quite naked. "the feeling of modesty is very developed among the fuegians, who are accustomed to live naked. they manifest it in their bearing and in the ease with which they show themselves in a state of nudity, compared with the awkwardness, blushing, and shame which both men and women exhibit if one gazes at certain parts of their bodies. among themselves this is never done even between husband and wife. there is no fuegian word for modesty, perhaps because the feeling is universal among them." the women wear a minute triangular garment of skin suspended between the thighs and never removed, being merely raised during conjugal relations. (hyades and deniker, _mission scientifique du cap horn_, vol. vii, pp. , , and .) among the crow indians of montana, writes dr. holder, who has lived with them for several years, "a sense of modesty forbids the attendance upon the female in labor of any male, white man or indian, physician or layman. this antipathy to receiving assistance at the hands of the physician is overcome as the tribes progress toward civilization, and it is especially noticeable that half-breeds almost constantly seek the physician's aid." dr. holder mentions the case of a young woman who, although brought near the verge of death in a very difficult first confinement, repeatedly refused to allow him to examine her; at last she consented; "her modest preparation was to take bits of quilt and cover thighs and lips of vulva, leaving only the aperture exposed.... their modesty would not be so striking were it not that, almost to a woman, the females of this tribe are prostitutes, and for a consideration will admit the connection of any man." (a.b. holder, _american journal of obstetrics_, vol. xxv, no. , .) "in every north american tribe, from the most northern to the most southern, the skirt of the woman is longer than that of the men. in esquimau land the _parka_ of deerskin and sealskin reaches to the knees. throughout central north america the buckskin dress of the women reached quite to the ankles. the west-coast women, from oregon to the gulf of california, wore a petticoat of shredded bark, of plaited grass, or of strings, upon which were strung hundreds of seeds. even in the most tropical areas the rule was universal, as anyone can see from the codices or in pictures of the natives." (otis t. mason, _woman's share in primitive culture_, p. .) describing the loin-cloth worn by nicobarese men, man says: "from the clumsy mode in which this garment is worn by the shom pen--necessitating frequent readjustment of the folds--one is led to infer that its use is not _de rigueur_, but reserved for special occasions, as when receiving or visiting strangers." (e.h. man, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) the semi-nude natives of the island of nias in the indian ocean are "modest by nature," paying no attention to their own nudity or that of others, and much scandalized by any attempt to go beyond the limits ordained by custom. when they pass near places where women are bathing they raise their voices in order to warn them of their presence, and even although any bold youth addressed the women, and the latter replied, no attempt would be made to approach them; any such attempt would be severely punished by the head man of the village. (modigliani, _un viaggio a nias_, p. .) man says that the andamanese in modesty and self-respect compare favorably with many classes among civilized peoples. "women are so modest that they will not renew their leaf-aprons in the presence of one another, but retire to a secluded spot for this purpose; even when parting with one of their _bod_ appendages [tails of leaves suspended from back of girdle] to a female friend, the delicacy they manifest for the feelings of the bystanders in their mode of removing it amounts to prudishness; yet they wear no clothing in the ordinary sense." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , pp. and .) of the garo women of bengal dalton says: "their sole garment is a piece of cloth less than a foot in width that just meets around the loins, and in order that it may not restrain the limbs it is only fastened where it meets under the hip at the upper corners. the girls are thus greatly restricted in the positions they may modestly assume, but decorum is, in their opinion, sufficiently preserved if they only keep their legs well together when they sit or kneel." (e.t. dalton, _ethnology of bengal_, , p. .) of the naga women of assam it is said: "of clothing there was not much to see; but in spite of this i doubt whether we could excel them in true decency and modesty. ibn muhammed wali had already remarked in his history of the conquest of assam ( - ), that the naga women only cover their breasts. they declare that it is absurd to cover those parts of the body which everyone has been able to see from their births, but that it is different with the breasts, which appeared later, and are, therefore, to be covered. dalton (_journal of the asiatic society_, bengal, , , ) adds that in the presence of strangers naga women simply cross their arms over their breasts, without caring much what other charms they may reveal to the observer. as regards some clans of the naked nagas, to whom the banpara belong, this may still hold good." (k. klemm, "peal's ausflug nach banpara," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. .) "in ceylon, a woman always bathes in public streams, but she never removes all her clothes. she washes under the cloth, bit by bit, and then slips on the dry, new cloth, and pulls out the wet one from underneath (much in the same sliding way as servant girls and young women in england). this is the common custom in india and the malay states. the breasts are always bare in their own houses, but in the public roads are covered whenever a european passes. the vulva is never exposed. they say that a devil, imagined as a white and hairy being, might have intercourse with them." (private communication.) in borneo, "the _sirat_, called _chawal_ by the malays, is a strip of cloth a yard wide, worn round the loins and in between the thighs, so as to cover the pudenda and perinæum; it is generally six yards or so in length, but the younger men of the present generation use as much as twelve or fourteen yards (sometimes even more), which they twist and coil with great precision round and round their body, until the waist and stomach are fully enveloped in its folds." (h. ling roth, "low's natives of borneo," _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) "in their own houses in the depths of the forest the dwarfs are said to neglect coverings for decency in the men as in the women, but certainly when they emerge from the forest into the villages of the agricultural negroes, they are always observed to be wearing some small piece of bark-cloth or skin, or a bunch of leaves over the pudenda. elsewhere in all the regions of africa visited by the writer, or described by other observers, a neglect of decency in the male has only been recorded among the efik people of old calabar. the nudity of women is another question. in parts of west africa, between the niger and the gaboon (especially on the cameroon river, at old calabar, and in the niger delta), it is, or was, customary for young women to go about completely nude before they were married. in swaziland, until quite recently, unmarried women and very often matrons went stark naked. even amongst the prudish baganda, who made it a punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above the knee, the wives of the king would attend at his court perfectly naked. among the kavirondo, all unmarried girls are completely nude, and although women who have become mothers are supposed to wear a tiny covering before and behind, they very often completely neglect to do so when in their own villages. yet, as a general rule, among the nile negroes, and still more markedly among the hamites and people of masai stock, the women are particular about concealing the pudenda, whereas the men are ostentatiously naked. the baganda hold nudity in the male to be such an abhorrent thing that for centuries they have referred with scorn and disgust to the nile negroes as the 'naked people.' male nudity extends northwest to within some miles of khartum, or, in fact, wherever the nile negroes of the dinka-acholi stock inhabit the country." (sir h.h. johnston, _uganda protectorate_, vol. ii, pp. - .) among the nilotic ja-luo, johnston states that "unmarried men go naked. married men who have children wear a small piece of goat skin, which, though quite inadequate for purposes of decency, is, nevertheless, a very important thing in etiquette, for a married man with a child must on no account call on his mother-in-law without wearing this piece of goat's skin. to call on her in a state of absolute nudity would be regarded as a serious insult, only to be atoned for by the payment of goats. even if under the new dispensation he wears european trousers, he must have a piece of goat's skin underneath. married women wear a tail of strings behind." it is very bad manners for a woman to serve food to her husband without putting on this tail. (sir h.h. johnston, _uganda protectorate_, vol. ii, p. .) mrs. french-sheldon remarks that the masai and other east african tribes, with regard to menstruation, "observe the greatest delicacy, and are more than modest." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) at the same time the masai, among whom the penis is of enormous size, consider it disreputable to conceal that member, and in the highest degree reputable to display it, even ostentatiously. (sir h.h. johnston, _kilima-njaro expedition_, p. .) among the african dinka, who are scrupulously clean and delicate (smearing themselves with burnt cows' dung, and washing themselves daily with cows' urine), and are exquisite cooks, reaching in many respects a higher stage of civilization, in schweinfurth's opinion, than is elsewhere attained in africa, only the women wear aprons. the neighboring tribes of the red soil--bongo, mittoo, niam-niam, etc.--are called "women" by the dinka, because among these tribes the men wear an apron, while the women obstinately refuse to wear any clothes whatsoever of skin or stuff, going into the woods every day, however, to get a supple bough for a girdle, with, perhaps, a bundle of fine grass. (schweinfurth, _heart of africa_, vol. i, pp. , etc.) lombroso and carrara, examining some dinka negroes brought from the white nile, remark: "as to their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." they add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (lombroso and carrara, _archivio di psichiatria_, , vol. xvii, fasc. .) "the negro is very rarely knowingly indecent or addicted to lubricity," says sir h.h. johnston. "in this land of nudity, which i have known for seven years, i do not remember once having seen an indecent gesture on the part of either man or woman, and only very rarely (and that not among unspoiled savages) in the case of that most shameless member of the community--the little boy." he adds that the native dances are only an apparent exception, being serious in character, though indecent to our eyes, almost constituting a religious ceremony. the only really indecent dance indigenous to central africa "is one which originally represented the act of coition, but it is so altered to a stereotyped formula that its exact purport is not obvious until explained somewhat shyly by the natives.... it may safely be asserted that the negro race in central africa is much more truly modest, is much more free from real vice, than are most european nations. neither boys nor girls wear clothing (unless they are the children of chiefs) until nearing the age of puberty. among the wankonda, practically no covering is worn by the men except a ring of brass wire around the stomach. the wankonda women are likewise almost entirely naked, but generally cover the pudenda with a tiny bead-work apron, often a piece of very beautiful workmanship, and exactly resembling the same article worn by kaffir women. a like degree of nudity prevails among many of the awemba, among the a-lungu, the batumbuka, and the angoni. most of the angoni men, however, adopt the zulu fashion of covering the glans penis with a small wooden case or the outer shell of a fruit. the wa-yao have a strong sense of decency in matters of this kind, which is the more curious since they are more given to obscenity in their rites, ceremonies, and dances than any other tribe. not only is it extremely rare to see any yao uncovered, but both men and women have the strongest dislike to exposing their persons even to the inspection of a doctor. the atonga and many of the a-nyanga people, and all the tribes west of nyassa (with the exception possibly of the a-lunda) have not the yao regard for decency, and, although they can seldom or ever be accused of a deliberate intention to expose themselves, the men are relatively indifferent as to whether their nakedness is or is not concealed, though the women are modest and careful in this respect." (h.h. johnston, _british central africa_, , pp. - .) in azimba land, central africa, h. crawford angus, who has spent many years in this part of africa, writes: "it has been my experience that the more naked the people, and the more to us obscene and shameless their manners and customs, the more moral and strict they are in the matter of sexual intercourse." he proceeds to give a description of the _chensamwali_, or initiation ceremony of girls at puberty, a season of rejoicing when the girl is initiated into all the secrets of marriage, amid songs and dances referring to the act of coition. "the whole matter is looked upon as a matter of course, and not as a thing to be ashamed of or to hide, and, being thus openly treated of and no secrecy made about it, you find in this tribe that the women are very virtuous. they know from the first all that is to be known, and cannot see any reason for secrecy concerning natural laws or the powers and senses that have been given them from birth." (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. .) of the monbuttu of central africa, another observer says: "it is surprising how a monbuttu woman of birth can, without the aid of dress, impress others with her dignity and modesty." (_british medical journal_. june , .) "the women at upoto wear no clothes whatever, and came up to us in the most unreserved manner. an interesting gradation in the arrangement of the female costume has been observed by us: as we ascended the congo, the higher up the river we found ourselves, the higher the dress reached, till it has now, at last, culminated in absolute nudity." (t.h. parke, _my personal experiences in equatorial africa_, , p. .) "there exists throughout the congo population a marked appreciation of the sentiment of decency and shame as applied to private actions," says mr. herbert ward. in explanation of the nudity of the women at upoto, a chief remarked to ward that "concealment is food for the inquisitive." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) in the gold coast and surrounding countries complete nudity is extremely rare, except when circumstances make it desirable; on occasion clothing is abandoned with unconcern. "i have on several occasions," says dr. freeman, "seen women at accra walk from the beach, where they have been bathing, across the road to their houses, where they would proceed to dry themselves, and resume their garments; and women may not infrequently be seen bathing in pools by the wayside, conversing quite unconstrainedly with their male acquaintances, who are seated on the bank. the mere unclothed body conveys to their minds no idea of indecency. immodesty and indelicacy of manner are practically unknown." he adds that the excessive zeal of missionaries in urging their converts to adopt european dress--which they are only too ready to do--is much to be regretted, since the close-fitting, thin garments are really less modest than the loose clothes they replace, besides being much less cleanly. (r.a. freeman, _travels and life in ashanti and jaman_, , p. .) at loango, says pechuel-loesche, "the well-bred negress likes to cover her bosom, and is sensitive to critical male eyes; if she meets a european when without her overgarment, she instinctively, though not without coquetry, takes the attitude of the medicean venus." men and women bathe separately, and hide themselves from each other when naked. the women also exhibit shame when discovered suckling their babies. (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , pp. - .) the koran (sura xxiv) forbids showing the pudenda, as well as the face, yet a veiled mohammedan woman, stern remarks, even in the streets of constantinople, will stand still and pull up her clothes to scratch her private parts, and in beyrout, he saw turkish prostitutes, still veiled, place themselves in the position for coitus. (b. stern, _medizin, etc., in der türkei_, vol. ii, p. .) "an englishman surprised a woman while bathing in the euphrates; she held her hands over her face, without troubling as to what else the stranger might see. in egypt, i have myself seen quite naked young peasant girls, who hastened to see us, after covering their faces." (c. niebuhr, _reisebeschreibung nach arabien_, , vol. i, p. .) when helfer was taken to visit the ladies in the palace of the imam of muskat, at buscheir, he found that their faces were covered with black masks, though the rest of the body might be clothed in a transparent sort of crape; to look at a naked face was very painful to the ladies themselves; even a mother never lifts the mask from the face of her daughter after the age of twelve; that is reserved for her lord and husband. "i observed that the ladies looked at me with a certain confusion, and after they had glanced into my face, lowered their eyes, ashamed. on making inquiries, i found that my uncovered face was indecent, as a naked person would be to us. they begged me to assume a mask, and when a waiting-woman had bound a splendidly decorated one round my head, they all exclaimed: 'tahip! tahip!'--beautiful, beautiful." (j.w. helfer, _reisen in vorderasian und indien_, vol. ii, p. .) in algeria--in the provinces of constantine, in biskra, even aures,--"among the women especially, not one is restrained by any modesty in unfastening her girdle to any comer" (when a search was being made for tattoo-marks on the lower extremities). "in spite of the great licentiousness of the manners," the same writer continues, "the arab and the kabyle possess great personal modesty, and with difficulty are persuaded to exhibit the body nude; is it the result of real modesty, or of their inveterate habits of active pederasty? whatever the cause, they always hide the sexual organs with their hands or their handkerchiefs, and are disagreeably affected even by the slightest touch of the doctor." (batut, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, january , .) "moslem modesty," remarks wellhausen, "was carried to great lengths, insufficient clothing being forbidden. it was marked even among the heathen arabs, as among semites and old civilizations generally; we must not be deceived by the occasional examples of immodesty in individual cases. the sunna prescribes that a man shall not uncover himself even to himself, and shall not wash naked--from fear of god and of spirits; job did so, and atoned for it heavily. when in arab antiquity grown-up persons showed themselves naked, it was only under extraordinary circumstances, and to attain unusual ends.... women when mourning uncovered not only the face and bosom, but also tore all their garments. the messenger who brought bad news tore his garments. a mother desiring to bring pressure to bear on her son took off her clothes. a man to whom vengeance is forbidden showed his despair and disapproval by uncovering his posterior and strewing earth on his head, or by raising his garment behind and covering his head with it. this was done also in fulfilling natural necessities." (wellhausen, _reste arabischen heidentums_, , pp. , - .) mantegazza mentions that a lapland woman refused even for the sum of francs to allow him to photograph her naked, though the men placed themselves before the camera in the costume of adam for a much smaller sum. in the same book mantegazza remarks that in the eighteenth century, travelers found it extremely difficult to persuade samoyed women to show themselves naked. among the same people, he says, the newly-married wife must conceal her face from her husband for two months after marriage, and only then yield to his embraces. (mantegazza, _la donna_, cap. iv.) "the beauty of a chinese woman," says dr. matignon, "resides largely in her foot. 'a foot which is not deformed is a dishonor,' says a poet. for the husband the foot is more interesting than the face. only the husband may see his wife's foot naked. a chinese woman is as reticent in showing her feet to a man as a european woman her breasts. i have often had to treat chinese women with ridiculously small feet for wounds and excoriations, the result of tight-bandaging. they exhibited the prudishness of school-girls, blushed, turned their backs to unfasten the bandages, and then concealed the foot in a cloth, leaving only the affected part uncovered. modesty is a question of convention; chinese have it for their feet," (j. matignon, "a propos d'un pied de chinoise," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, , p. .) among the yakuts of northeast siberia, "there was a well-known custom according to which a bride should avoid showing herself or her uncovered body to her father-in-law. in ancient times, they say, a bride concealed herself for seven years from her father-in-law, and from the brothers and other masculine relations of her husband.... the men also tried not to meet her, saying, 'the poor child will be ashamed.' if a meeting could not be avoided the young woman put a mask on her face.... nowadays, the young wives only avoid showing to their male relatives-in-law the uncovered body. amongst the rich they avoid going about in the presence of these in the chemise alone. in some places, they lay especial emphasis on the fact that it is a shame for young wives to show their uncovered hair and feet to the male relatives of their husbands. on the other side, the male relatives of the husband ought to avoid showing to the young wife the body uncovered above the elbow or the sole of the foot, and they ought to avoid indecent expressions and vulgar vituperations in her presence.... that these observances are not the result of a specially delicate modesty, is proved by the fact that even young girls constantly twist thread upon the naked thigh, unembarrassed by the presence of men who do not belong to the household; nor do they show any embarrassment if a strange man comes upon them when uncovered to the waist. the one thing which they do not like, and at which they show anger, is that such persons look carefully at their uncovered feet.... the former simplicity, with lack of shame in uncovering the body, is disappearing." (sieroshevski, "the yakuts," _journal of the anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. .) "in japan (captain ---- tells me), the bathing-place of the women was perfectly open (the shampooing, indeed, was done by a man), and englishmen were offered no obstacle, nor excited the least repugnance; indeed, girls after their bath would freely pass, sometimes as if holding out their hair for innocent admiration, and this continued until countrymen of ours, by vile laughter and jests, made them guard themselves from insult by secrecy. so corruption spreads, and heathenism is blacker by our contact." (private communication.) "speaking once with a japanese gentleman, i observed that we considered it an act of indecency for men and women to wash together. he shrugged his shoulders as he answered: 'but these westerns have such prurient minds!'" (mitford, _tales of old japan_, .) dr. carl davidsohn, who remarks that he had ample opportunity of noting the great beauty of the japanese women in a national dance, performed naked, points out that the japanese have no æsthetic sense for the nude. "this was shown at the jubilee exposition at kyoto. here, among many rooms full of art objects, one was devoted to oil pictures in the european manner. among these only one represented a nude figure, a psyche, or truth. it was the first time such a picture had been seen. men and women crowded around it. after they had gazed at it for a time, most began to giggle and laugh; some by their air and gestures clearly showed their disgust; all found that it was not æsthetic to paint a naked woman, though in nature, nakedness was in no way offensive to them. in the middle of the same city, at a fountain reputed to possess special virtues, men and women will stand together naked and let the water run over them." (carl davidsohn, "das nackte bei den japanern," _globus_, , no. .) "it is very difficult to investigate the hairiness of ainu women," baelz remarks, "for they possess a really incredible degree of modesty. even when in summer they bathe--which happens but seldom--they keep their clothes on." he records that he was once asked to examine a girl at the mission school, in order to advise as regards the treatment of a diseased spine; although she had been at the school for seven years, she declared that "she would rather die than show her back to a man, even though a doctor." (baelz, "die aino," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. .) the greeks, etruscans, and romans, appear to have been accustomed to cover the foreskin with the _kynodesme_ (a band), or the _fibula_ (a ring), for custom and modesty demanded that the glans should be concealed. such covering is represented in persons who were compelled to be naked, and is referred to by celsus as "decori causâ." (l. stieda, "anatomisch-archäologische studien," _anatomische hefte_, bd. xix, heft , .) "among the lydians, and, indeed, among the barbarians generally, it is considered a deep disgrace, even for a man, to be seen naked." (herodotus, book i, chapter x.) "the simple dress which is now common was first worn in sparta, and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was assimilated to that of the people. the lacedæmonians, too, were the first who, in their athletic exercises, stripped naked and rubbed themselves over with oil. this was not the ancient custom; athletes formerly, even when they were contending at olympia, wore girdles about their loins [earlier still, the mycenæans had always worn a loin-cloth], a practice which lasted until quite lately, and still persists among barbarians, especially those of asia, where the combatants at boxing and wrestling matches wear girdles." (thucydides, _history_, book i, chapter vi.) "the notion of the women exercising naked in the schools with the men ... at the present day would appear truly ridiculous.... not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for men to be seen naked. and when the cretans first, and after them the lacedæmonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties.... as for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom.'" (plato, _republic_, book v.) according to plutarch, however, among the spartans, at all events, nakedness in women was not ridiculous, since the institutes of lycurgus ordained that at solemn feasts and sacrifices the young women should dance naked and sing, the young men standing around in a circle to see and hear them. aristotle says that in his time spartan girls only wore a very slight garment. as described by pausanias, and as shown by a statue in the vatican, the ordinary tunic, which was the sole garment worn by women when running, left bare the right shoulder and breast, and only reached to the upper third of the thighs. (m.m. evans, _chapters on greek dress_, p. .) among the greeks who were inclined to accept the doctrines of cynicism, it was held that, while shame is not unreasonable, what is good may be done and discussed before all men. there are a number of authorities who say that crates and hipparchia consummated their marriage in the presence of many spectators. lactantius (_inst._ iii, ) says that the practice was common, but this zeller is inclined to doubt. (zeller, _socrates and the socratic schools_, translated from the third german edition, .) "among the tyrrhenians, who carry their luxury to an extraordinary pitch, timæus, in his first book, relates that the female servants wait on the men in a state of nudity. and theopompus, in the forty-third book of his _history_, states that it is a law among the tyrrhenians that all their women should be in common; and that the women pay the greatest attention to their persons, and often practice gymnastic exercises, naked, among the men, and sometimes with one another; for that it is not accounted shameful for them to be seen naked.... nor is it reckoned among the tyrrhenians at all disgraceful either to do or suffer anything in the open air, or to be seen while it is going on; for it is quite the custom of their country, and they are so far from thinking it disgraceful that they even say, when the master of the house is indulging his appetite, and anyone asks for him, that he is doing so and so, using the coarsest possible words.... and they are very beautiful, as is natural for people to be who live delicately, and who take care of their persons." (athenæus, _deipnosophists_, yonge's translation, vol. iii, p. .) dennis throws doubt on the foregoing statement of athenæus regarding the tyrrhenians or etruscans, and points out that the representations of women in etruscan tombs shows them as clothed, even the breast being rarely uncovered. nudity, he remarks, was a greek, not an etruscan, characteristic. "to the nudity of the spartan women i need but refer; the thessalian women are described by persæus dancing at banquets naked, or with a very scanty covering (_apud_ athenæus, xiii, c. ). the maidens of chios wrestled naked with the youths in the gymnasium, which athenæus (xiii, ) pronounces to be 'a beautiful sight.' and at the marriage feast of caranus, the macedonian women tumblers performed naked before the guests (athenæus, iv, )." (g. dennis, _cities and cemeteries of etruria_, , vol. i, p. .) in rome, "when there was at first much less freedom in this matter than in greece, the bath became common to both sexes, and though each had its basin and hot room apart, they could see each other, meet, speak, form intrigues, arrange meetings, and multiply adulteries. at first, the baths were so dark that men and women could wash side by side, without recognizing each other except by the voice; but soon the light of day was allowed to enter from every side. 'in the bath of scipio,' said seneca, 'there were narrow ventholes, rather than windows, hardly admitting enough light to outrage modesty; but nowadays, baths are called caves if they do not receive the sun's rays through large windows.' ... hadrian severely prohibited this mingling of men and women, and ordained separate lavaera for the sexes. marcus aurelius and alexander severus renewed this edict, but in the interval, heliogabalus had authorized the sexes to meet in the baths." (dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. ii, ch. xviii; cf. smith's _dictionary of greek and roman antiquities_, art. balneæ.) in rome, according to ancient custom, actors were compelled to wear drawers (_subligaculum_) on the stage, in order to safeguard the modesty of roman matrons. respectable women, it seems, also always wore some sort of _subligaculum_, even sometimes when bathing. the name was also applied to a leathern girdle laced behind, which they were occasionally made to wear as a girdle of chastity. (dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p. .) greek women also wore a cloth round the loins when taking the bath, as did the men who bathed there; and a woman is represented bathing and wearing a sort of thin combinations reaching to the middle of the thigh. (smith's _dictionary_, loc. cit.) at a later period, st. augustine refers to the _compestria_, the drawers or apron worn by young men who stripped for exercise in the _campus_. (_de civitate dei_, bk. xiv, ch. xvii.) lecky (_history of morals_, vol. ii, p. ), brings together instances of women, in both pagan and early christian times, who showed their modesty by drawing their garments around them, even at the moment that they were being brutally killed. plutarch, in his essay on the "virtues of women,"--moralizing on the well-known story of the young women of milesia, among whom an epidemic of suicide was only brought to an end by the decree that in future women who hanged themselves should be carried naked through the market-places,--observes: "they, who had no dread of the most terrible things in the world, death and pain, could not abide the imagination of dishonor, and exposure to shame, even after death." in the second century the physician aretæus, writing at rome, remarks: "in many cases, owing to involuntary restraint from modesty at assemblies, and at banquets, the bladder becomes distended, and from the consequent loss of its contractile power, it no longer evacuates the urine." (_on the causes and symptoms of acute diseases_, book ii, chapter x.) apuleius, writing in the second century, says: "most women, in order to exhibit their native gracefulness and allurements, divest themselves of all their garments, and long to show their naked beauty, being conscious that they shall please more by the rosy redness of their skin than by the golden splendor of their robes." (thomas taylor's translation of _metamorphosis_, p. .) christianity seems to have profoundly affected habits of thought and feeling by uniting together the merely natural emotion of sexual reserve with, on the one hand, the masculine virtue of modesty--_modestia_--and, on the other, the prescription of sexual abstinence. tertullian admirably illustrates this confusion, and his treatises _de pudicitia_ and _de cultu feminarum_ are instructive from the present point of view. in the latter he remarks (book ii, chapter i): "salvation--and not of women only, but likewise of men--consists in the exhibition, principally, of modesty. since we are all the temple of god, modesty is the sacristan and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or profane to enter it, for fear that the god who inhabits it should be offended.... most women, either from simple ignorance or from dissimulation, have the hardihood so to walk as if modesty consisted only in the integrity of the flesh, and in turning away from fornication, and there were no need for anything else,--in dress and ornament, the studied graces of form,--wearing in their gait the self-same appearance as the women of the nations from whom the sense of _true_ modesty is absent." the earliest christian ideal of modesty, not long maintained, is well shown in an epistle which, there is some reason to suppose, was written by clement of rome. "and if we see it to be requisite to stand and pray for the sake of the woman, and to speak words of exhortation and edification, we call the brethren and all the holy sisters and maidens, likewise all the other women who are there, with all modesty and becoming behavior, to come and feast on the truth. and those among us who are skilled in speaking, speak to them, and exhort them in those words which god has given us. and then we pray, and salute one another, the men the men. but the women and the maidens will wrap their hands in their garments; we also, with circumspection and with all purity, our eyes looking upward, shall wrap our right hand in our garments; and then they will come and give us the salutation on our right hand, wrapped in our garments. then we go where god permits us." (_two epistles concerning virginity_; second epistle, chapter iii, vol. xiv. ante-nicene christian library, p. .) "women will scarce strip naked before their own husbands, affecting a plausible pretense of modesty," writes clement of alexandria, about the end of the second century, "but any others who wish may see them at home, shut up in their own baths, for they are not ashamed to strip before spectators, as if exposing their persons for sale. the baths are opened promiscuously to men and women; and there they strip for licentious indulgence (for, from looking, men get to loving), as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to show audacity in lust, casting off fear in consequence of the wicked custom. the ancient athletes, ashamed to exhibit a man naked, preserved their modesty by going through the contest in drawers; but these women, divesting themselves of their modesty along with their chemise, wish to appear beautiful, but, contrary to their wish, are simply proved to be wicked." (clement of alexandria, _pædagogus_, book iii, chapter v. for elucidations of this passage, see migne's _patrologiæ cursus completus_, vol. vii.) promiscuous bathing was forbidden by the early apostolical constitutions, but cyprian, bishop of carthage, found it necessary, in the third century, to upbraid even virgins vowed to chastity for continuing the custom. "what of those," he asks, "who frequent baths, who prostitute to eyes that are curious to lust, bodies that are dedicated to chastity and modesty? they who disgracefully behold naked men, and are seen naked by men? do they not themselves afford enticement to vice? do they not solicit and invite the desires of those present to their own corruption and wrong? 'let every one,' say you, 'look to the disposition with which he comes thither: my care is only that of refreshing and washing my poor body.' that kind of defence does not clear you, nor does it excuse the crime of lasciviousness and wantonness. such a washing defiles; it does not purify nor cleanse the limbs, but stains them. you behold no one immodestly, but you, yourself, are gazed upon immodestly; you do not pollute your eyes with disgraceful delight, but in delighting others you yourself are polluted; you make a show of the bathing-place; the places where you assemble are fouler than a theatre. there all modesty is put off; together with the clothing of garments, the honor and modesty of the body is laid aside, virginity is exposed, to be pointed at and to be handled.... let your baths be performed with women, whose behavior is modest towards you." (cyprian, _de habitu virginum_, cap. , .) the church carried the same spirit among the barbarians of northern europe, and several centuries later the promiscuous bathing of men and women was prohibited in some of the penitentials. (the custom was, however, preserved here and there in northern europe, even to the end of the eighteenth century, or later. in rudeck's _geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit in deutschland_, an interesting chapter, with contemporary illustrations, is devoted to this custom; also, max bauer, _das geschlechtsleben in der deutschen vergangenheit_, pp. - .) "women," says clement again, "should not seek to be graceful by avoiding broad drinking vessels that oblige them to stretch their mouths, in order to drink from narrow alabastra that cause them indecently to throw back the head, revealing to men their necks and breasts. the mere thought of what she is ought to inspire a woman with modesty.... on no account must a woman be permitted to show to a man any portion of her body naked, for fear lest both fall: the one by gazing eagerly, the other by delighting to attract those eager glances." (_pædagogus_, book ii, chapter v.) james, bishop of nisibis, in the fourth century, was a man of great holiness. we are told by thedoret that once, when james had newly come into persia, it was vouchsafed to him to perform a miracle under the following circumstances: he chanced to pass by a fountain where young women were washing their linen, and, his modesty being profoundly shocked by the exposure involved in this occupation, he cursed the fountain, which instantly dried up, and he changed the hair of the girls from black to a sandy color. (jortin, _remarks on ecclesiastical history_, vol. iii, p. .) procopius, writing in the sixth century after christ, and narrating how the empress theodora, in early life, would often appear almost naked before the public in the theatre, adds that she would willingly have appeared altogether nude, but that "no woman is allowed to expose herself altogether, unless she wears at least short drawers over the lower part of the abdomen." chrysostom mentions, at the end of the fourth century, that arcadius attempted to put down the august festival (majuma), during which women appeared naked in the theatres, or swimming in large baths. in mediæval days, "ladies, at all events, as represented by the poets, were not, on the whole, very prudish. meleranz surprised a lady who was taking a bath under a lime tree; the bath was covered with samite, and by it was a magnificent ivory bed, surrounded by tapestries representing the history of paris and helen, the destruction of troy, the adventures of Ã�neas, etc. as meleranz rides by, the lady's waiting-maids run away; she herself, however, with quick decision, raises the samite which covers the tub, and orders him to wait on her in place of the maids. he brings her shift and mantle, and shoes, and then stands aside till she is dressed; when she has placed herself on the bed, she calls him back and commands him to drive away the flies while she sleeps. strange to say, the men are represented as more modest than the women. when two maidens prepared a bath for parzival, and proposed to bathe him, according to custom, the inexperienced young knight was shy, and would not enter the bath until they had gone; on another occasion, he jumped quickly into bed when the maidens entered the room. when wolfdieterich was about to undress, he had to ask the ladies who pressed around him to leave him alone for a short time, as he was ashamed they should see him naked. when amphons of spain, bewitched by his step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last restored, and stood suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. the maiden who healed iwein was tender of his modesty. in his love-madness, the hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three women find him asleep, and send a waiting-maid to annoint him with salve; when he came to himself, the maiden hid herself. on the whole, however, the ladies were not so delicate; they had no hesitation in bathing with gentlemen, and on these occasions would put their finest ornaments on their heads. i know no pictures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries representing such a scene, but such baths in common are clearly represented in miniatures of the fifteenth century." (a. schultz, _das höfische leben zur zeit der minnesänger_, vol. i, p. .) "in the years - , the use of the cod-piece was introduced, whereby the attributes of manhood were accentuated in the most shameless manner. it was, in fact, the avowed aim at that period to attract attention to these parts. the cod-piece was sometimes colored differently from the rest of the garments, often stuffed out to enlarge it artificially, and decorated with ribbons." (rudeck, _geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit in deutschland_, pp. - ; dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. vi, pp. - . groos refers to the significance of this fashion, _spiele der menschen_, p. .) "the first shirt began to be worn [in germany] in the sixteenth century. from this fact, as well as from the custom of public bathing, we reach the remarkable result, that for the german people, the sight of complete nakedness was the daily rule up to the sixteenth century. everyone undressed completely before going to bed, and, in the vapor-baths, no covering was used. again, the dances, both of the peasants and the townspeople, were characterized by very high leaps into the air. it was the chief delight of the dancers for the male to raise his partner as high as possible in the air, so that her dress flew up. that feminine modesty was in this respect very indifferent, we know from countless references made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. it must not be forgotten that throughout the middle ages women wore no underclothes, and even in the seventeenth century, the wearing of drawers by italian women was regarded as singular. that with the disappearance of the baths, and the use of body-linen, a powerful influence was exerted on the creation of modesty, there can be little doubt." (rudeck, op. cit., pp. , , etc.) in , when louis xi entered paris, three very beautiful maidens, quite naked, represented the syrens, and declaimed poems before him; they were greatly admired by the public. in , when charles the bold entered lille, he was specially pleased, among the various festivities, with a representation of the judgment of paris, in which the three goddesses were nude. when charles the fifth entered antwerp, the most beautiful maidens of the city danced before him, in nothing but gauze, and were closely contemplated by dürer, as he told his friend, melancthon. (b. ritter, "nuditäten im mittelalter," _jahrbücher für wissenschaft und kunst_, , p. ; this writer shows how luxury, fashion, poverty, and certain festivals, all combined to make nudity familiar; cf. fahne, _der carneval_, p. . dulaure quotes many old writers concerning the important part played by nude persons in ancient festivals, _des divinités génératrices_, chapter xiv.) passek, a polish officer who wrote an account of his campaigns, admired the ladies of denmark in , but considered their customs immodest. "everyone sleeps naked as at birth, and none consider it shameful to dress or undress before others. no notice, even, is taken of the guest, and in the light one garment is taken off after another, even the chemise is hung on the hook. then the door is bolted, the light blown out, and one goes to bed. as we blamed their ways, saying that among us a woman would not act so, even in the presence of her husband alone, they replied that they knew nothing of such shame, and that there was no need to be ashamed of limbs which god had created. moreover, to sleep without a shift was good, because, like the other garments, it sufficiently served the body during the day. also, why take fleas and other insects to bed with one? although our men teased them in various ways, they would not change their habits." (passek, _denkwürdigkeiten_, german translation, p. .) until late in the seventeenth century, women in england, as well as france, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male physicians to attend them. dr. willoughby, of derby, tells how, in , he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived. in france, clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of louis xiv in their confinements; to the first he was conducted blindfold, while the king was concealed among the bed-curtains, and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. (e. malins, "midwifery and midwives," _british medical journal_, june , ; witkowski, _histoire des accouchements_, , pp. et seq.) even until the revolution, the examination of women in france in cases of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury of matrons. in old english manuals of midwifery, even in the early nineteenth century, we still find much insistence on the demands of modesty. thus, dr. john burns, of glasgow, in his _principles of midwifery_, states that "some women, from motives of false delicacy, are averse from examination until the pains become severe." he adds that "it is usual for the room to be darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an examination." many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in the dark, beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women in childbirth. (a. kind, "das weib als gebärerin in der kunst," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, heft , p. .) in iceland, winkler stated in that he sometimes slept in the same room as a whole family; "it is often the custom for ten or more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping, young and old, master and servant, male and female, and from motives of economy, all the clothes, without exception, are removed." (g. winkler, _island; seine bewohner_, etc., pp. , .) "at cork," saye fynes moryson, in , "i have seen with these eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to make cakes thereof." (moryson, _itinerary_, part , book iii, chapter v.) "in the more remote parts of ireland," moryson elsewhere says, where the english laws and manners are unknown, "the very chief of the irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time, only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose mantle. this i speak of my own experience." he goes on to tell of a bohemian baron, just come from the north of ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that he, coming to the house of ocane, a great lord among them, was met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. soon after, ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in the latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with this naked company. but the baron... for shame, durst not put off his apparel." (ib. part , book iv, chapter ii.) coryat, when traveling in italy in the early part of the seventeenth century, found that in lombardy many of the women and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. at venice and padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the middle. (coryat, _crudities_, . the fashion of _décolleté_ garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth century; previously, the women of europe generally covered themselves up to the neck.) in northern italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the custom. one threw herself out and was saved, the other returned for a garment, and was burnt to death. the narrator of the incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest girl's action. (private communication.) it may be added that the custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to lippert and stratz), in jutland, in iceland, in some parts of norway, and sometimes even in berlin. lady mary wortley montague writes in , of the turkish ladies at the baths at sophia: "the first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all being in a state of nature; that is, in plain english, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture among them. they walked and moved with the same majestic grace which milton describes of our general mother. i am here convinced of the truth of a reflection i had often made, that if it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed." (_letters and works_, , vol. i, p. .) at st. petersburg, in , sir nicholas wraxall observed "the promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both sexes. there are several of these public bagnios," he adds, "in petersburg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance. there are, indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but they seem quite regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe in a state of absolute nudity among each other." (sir n. wraxall, _a tour through some of the northern parts of europe_, d ed., , p. .) it is still usual for women in the country parts of russia to bathe naked in the streams. in , wedgwood wrote to flaxman: "the nude is so general in the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid the introduction of naked figures. on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own use; for none, either male or female, of the present generation will take or apply them as furniture if the figures are naked." (meteyard, _life of wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. .) mary wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for approval) the following remarks: "the lady who asked the question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of botany, was accused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she had proposed the question to me, i should certainly have answered: 'they cannot!'" she further quotes from an educational book: "it would be needless to caution you against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman never did so." (mary wollstonecraft, _the rights of woman_, , pp. , .) at the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants is not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge of animal physiology is still so considered by many. dr. h.r. hopkins, of new york, wrote in , regarding the teaching of physiology: "how can we teach growing girls the functions of the various parts of the human body, and still leave them their modesty? that is the practical question that has puzzled me for years." in england, the use of drawers was almost unknown among women half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine. tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee, on hygienic grounds. "thus understood," he added, "the adoption of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country, as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer, they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an appendage deemed masculine." (tilt, _elements of health_, , p. .) drawers came into general use among women during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. drawers are an oriental garment, and seem to have reached europe through venice, the great channel of communication with the east. like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account, there was long a prejudice against them. even at the present day, it is said that in france, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if asked whether she wears drawers: "i wear drawers, madame? a respectable girl!" drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized in france, and dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. ) even regards them as essentially a french garment. they were introduced at the court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new fashion of the _vertugale_, or farthingale. in , a lady's _caleçons_ are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. it is noteworthy that in london, in the middle of the same century, young mrs. pepys, who was the daughter of french parents, usually wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (_diary_ of s. pepys, ed. wheatley, may , , vol. iii.) they were probably not worn by englishwomen, and even in france, with the decay of the farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use during the seventeenth century. in a technical and very complete book, _l'art de la lingerie_, published in , women's drawers are not even mentioned, and mercier (_tableau de paris_, , vol. vii, p. ) says that, except actresses, parisian women do not wear drawers. even by ballet dancers and actresses on the stage, they were not invariably worn. camargo, the famous dancer, who first shortened the skirt in dancing, early in the eighteenth century, always observed great decorum, never showing the leg above the knee; when appealed to as to whether she wore drawers, she replied that she could not possibly appear without such a "precaution." but they were not necessarily worn by dancers, and in a young _ballerina_, having had her skirt accidentally torn away by a piece of stage machinery, the police issued an order that in future no actress or dancer should appear on the stage without drawers; this regulation does not appear, however, to have been long strictly maintained, though schulz (_ueber paris und die pariser_, p. ) refers to it as in force in . (the obscure origin and history of feminine drawers have been discussed from time to time in the _intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux_, especially vols. xxv, lii, and liii.) prof. irving rosse, of washington, refers to "new england prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some new york policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than oral testimony." he adds: "i have known this sentiment carried to such an extent in a massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed in his window." (irving rosse, _virginia medical monthly_, october, .) i am told that popular feeling in south africa would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the art collections of cape town. even in italy, nude statues are disfigured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic manifestations of horror at the presence of nude statues, even when of most classic type, are liable to occur in all parts of europe, including france and germany. (examples of this are recorded from time to time in _sexual-reform_, published as an appendix to _geschlecht und gesellschaft_.) some years ago, ( ), it was stated that the philadelphia _ladies' home journal_ had decided to avoid, in future, all reference to ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this subject in print calls for _minutiæ_ of detail which is extremely and pardonably offensive to refined and sensitive women." "a man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen his wife entirely nude. such concealment of the external reproductive organs, by married people, appears to be common. judging from my own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no beauty in man's form. some are positively repelled by the sight of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. on the contrary, most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women. it seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as i am told by a lady artist). or else the majority of women dissemble their curiosity or admiration. a woman of seventy, mother of several children, said to a young wife with whom i am acquainted: 'i have never seen a naked man in my life.' this old lady's sister confessed that she had never looked at _her own_ nakedness in the whole course of her life. she said that it 'frightened' her. she was the mother of three sons. a maiden woman of the same family told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have monthly discharges.' the niece suggested that women have no choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'i know that; but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' i have heard of a girl who died from hæmorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to make the ailment known to her family. the misery suffered by some women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be very acute. husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes alarming. e, aged , refused her husband for six weeks after marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. ignorance of the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of exaggerated alarm. in jersey, i used to hear of a bride who ran to the window and screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night." (private communication.) at the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the thigh. in swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be combined with the demands of modesty. in england, the regulations of the swimming clubs affiliated to the amateur swimming association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more than three inches from the knee. (a prolonged discussion, we are told, arose as to whether the costume should come to one, two, or three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the youngest lady swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very scanty, met with little approval.) the modesty of women is thus seen to be greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches. the same difference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve must extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down the arm. (daily papers, september , .) "at ----, bathing in a state of nature was _de rigueur_ for the _élite_ of the bathers, while our sunday visitors from the slums frequently made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was frequently noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid exposing their persons were distinguished by the foulness of their language. my impression was that their foul-mindedness deprived them of the consciousness of safety from coarse jests. if i were bathing alone among blackguards, i should probably feel uncomfortable myself, if without costume." (private communication.) a lady in a little city of the south of italy, told paola lombroso that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to go out except to mass, and cannot even show themselves at the window except under their mother's eye; yet they do not think it necessary to have a cabin when sea-bathing, and even dispense with a bathing costume without consciousness of immodesty. (p. lombroso, _archivio di psichiatria_, , p. .) "a woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her in confidence his distress of mind: he feared he had _corrupted_ his wife because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby, and enjoyed his looking at her splashing about. he was deeply distressed, thinking he must have done her harm, and destroyed her modesty. the woman to whom this was said felt naturally indignant, but also it gave her the feeling as if every man may secretly despise a woman for the very things he teaches her, and only meets her confiding delight with regret or dislike." (private communication.) "women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be hardly credible," writes dr. w. wynn westcott, an experienced coroner. "i have known several cases of female deaths, reported as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured varices of the vulva." (_british medical journal_, feb. , .) the foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be indefinitely enlarged, since i have not generally quoted from any previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty. such collections may be found in ploss and max bartels _das weib_, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged editions; herbert spencer, _descriptive sociology_ (especially under such headings as "clothing," "moral sentiments," and "Ã�sthetic products"); w.g. sumner, _folkways_, ch. xi; mantegazza, _amori degli uomini_, chapter ii; westermarck, _marriage_, chapter ix; letourneau, _l'evolution de la morale_, pp. et seq.; g. mortimer, _chapters on human love_, chapter iv; and in the general anthropological works of waitz-gerland, peschel, ratzel and others. footnotes: [ ] the earliest theory i have met with is that of st. augustine, who states (_de civitate dei_, bk. xiv, ch. xvii) that erections of the penis never occurred until after the fall of man. it was the occurrence of this "shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. this theory fails to account for modesty in women. [ ] guyau, _l'irreligion de l'avenir_, ch. vii. [ ] timidity, as understood by dugas, in his interesting essay on that subject, is probably most remote. dr. h. campbell's "morbid shyness" (_british medical journal_, september , ) is, in part, identical with timidity, in part, with modesty. the matter is further complicated by the fact that modesty itself has in english (like virtue) two distinct meanings. in its original form it has no special connection with sex or women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. cicero regards "modestia" as the equivalent of the greek sôphrosunê. this is the "modesty" which mary wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, the outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the graceful calm virtue of maturity." in french, it is possible to avoid the confusion, and _modestie_ is entirely distinct from _pudeur_. it is, of course, mainly with _pudeur_ that i am here concerned. ii. modesty an agglomeration of fears--children in relation to modesty--modesty in animals--the attitude of the medicean venus--the sexual factor of modesty based on sexual periodicity and on the primitive phenomena of courtship--the necessity of seclusion in primitive sexual intercourse--the meaning of coquetry--the sexual charm of modesty--modesty as an expression of feminine erotic impulse--the fear of causing disgust as a factor of modesty--the modesty of savages in regard to eating in the presence of others--the sacro-pubic region as a focus of disgust--the idea of ceremonial uncleanliness--the custom of veiling the face--ornaments and clothing--modesty becomes concentrated in the garment--the economic factor in modesty--the contribution of civilization to modesty--the elaboration of social ritual. that modesty--like all the closely-allied emotions--is based on fear, one of the most primitive of the emotions, seems to be fairly evident.[ ] the association of modesty and fear is even a very ancient observation, and is found in the fragments of epicharmus, while according to one of the most recent definitions, "modesty is the timidity of the body." modesty is, indeed, an agglomeration of fears, especially, as i hope to show, of two important and distinct fears: one of much earlier than human origin, and supplied solely by the female; the other of more distinctly human character, and of social, rather than sexual, origin. a child left to itself, though very bashful, is wholly devoid of modesty.[ ] everyone is familiar with the shocking _inconvenances_ of children in speech and act, with the charming ways in which they innocently disregard the conventions of modesty their elders thrust upon them, or, even when anxious to carry them out, wholly miss the point at issue: as when a child thinks that to put a little garment round the neck satisfies the demands of modesty. julius moses states that modesty in the uncovering of the sexual parts begins about the age of four. but in cases when this occurs it is difficult to exclude teaching and example. under civilized conditions the convention of modesty long precedes its real development. bell has found that in love affairs before the age of nine the girl is more aggressive than the boy and that at that age she begins to be modest.[ ] it may fairly be said that complete development of modesty only takes place at the advent of puberty.[ ] we may admit, with perez, one of the very few writers who touch on the evolution of this emotion, that modesty may appear at a very early age if sexual desire appears early.[ ] we should not, however, be justified in asserting that on this account modesty is a purely sexual phenomenon. the social impulses also develop about puberty, and to that coincidence the compound nature of the emotion of modesty may well be largely due. the sexual factor is, however, the simplest and most primitive element of modesty, and may, therefore, be mentioned first. anyone who watches a bitch, not in heat, when approached by a dog with tail wagging gallantly, may see the beginnings of modesty. when the dog's attentions become a little too marked, the bitch squats firmly down on the front legs and hind quarters though when the period of oestrus comes her modesty may be flung to the air and she eagerly turns her hind quarters to her admirer's nose and elevates her tail high in the air. her attitude of refusal is equivalent, that is to say, to that which in the human race is typified by the classical example of womanly modesty in the medicean venus, who withdraws the pelvis, at the same time holding one hand to guard the pubes, the other to guard the breasts.[ ] the essential expression in each case is that of defence of the sexual centers against the undesired advances of the male.[ ] stratz, who criticizes the above statement, argues (with photographs of nude women in illustration) that the normal type of european surprised modesty is shown by an attitude in which the arms are crossed over the breast, the most sexually attractive region, while the thighs are pressed together, one being placed before the other, the shoulder raised and the back slightly curved; occasionally, he adds, the hands may be used to cover the face, and then the crossed arms conceal the breasts. the medicean venus, he remarks, is only a pretty woman coquetting with her body. canova's venus in the pitti (who has drapery in front of her, and presses her arms across her breast) being a more accurate rendering of the attitude of modesty. but stratz admits that when a surprised woman is gazed at for some time, she turns her head away, sinks or closes her eyes, and covers her pubes (or any other part she thinks is being gazed at) with one hand, while with the other she hides her breast or face. this he terms the secondary expression of modesty. (stratz, _die frauenkleidung_, third ed., p. .) it is certainly true that the medicean venus merely represents an artistic convention, a generalized tradition, not founded on exact and precise observation of the gestures of modesty, and it is equally true that all the instinctive movements noted by stratz are commonly resorted to by a woman whose nakedness is surprised. but in the absence of any series of carefully recorded observations, one may doubt whether the distinction drawn by stratz between the primary and the secondary expression of modesty can be upheld as the general rule, while it is most certainly not true for every case. when a young woman is surprised in a state of nakedness by a person of the opposite, or even of the same, sex, it is her instinct to conceal the primary centers of sexual function and attractiveness, in the first place, the pubes, in the second place the breasts. the exact attitude and the particular gestures of the hands in achieving the desired end vary with the individual, and with the circumstances. the hand may not be used at all as a veil, and, indeed, the instinct of modesty itself may inhibit the use of the hand for the protection of modesty (to turn the back towards the beholder is often the chief impulse of blushing modesty, even when clothed), but the application of the hand to this end is primitive and natural. the lowly fuegian woman, depicted by hyades and deniker, who holds her hand to her pubes while being photographed, is one at this point with the roman venus described by ovid (_ars amatoria_, book ii):-- "ipsa venus pubem, quoties velamnia ponit, protegitur læva semireducta manus." it may be added that young men of the lower social classes, at all events in england, when bathing at the seaside in complete nudity, commonly grasp the sexual organs with one hand, for concealment, as they walk up from the sea. the sexual modesty of the female animal is rooted in the sexual periodicity of the female, and is an involuntary expression of the organic fact that the time for love is not now. inasmuch as this fact is true of the greater part of the lives of all female animals below man, the expression itself becomes so habitual that it even intrudes at those moments when it has ceased to be in place. we may see this again illustrated in the bitch, who, when in heat, herself runs after the male, and again turns to flee, perhaps only submitting with much persuasion to his embrace. thus, modesty becomes something more than a mere refusal of the male; it becomes an invitation to the male, and is mixed up with his ideas of what is sexually desirable in the female. this would alone serve to account for the existence of modesty as a psychical secondary sexual character. in this sense, and in this sense only, we may say, with colin scott, that "the feeling of shame is made to be overcome," and is thus correlated with its physical representative, the hymen, in the rupture of which, as groos remarks, there is, in some degree, a disruption also of modesty. the sexual modesty of the female is thus an inevitable by-product of the naturally aggressive attitude of the male in sexual relationships, and the naturally defensive attitude of the female, this again being founded on the fact that, while--in man and the species allied to him--the sexual function in the female is periodic, and during most of life a function to be guarded from the opposite sex, in the male it rarely or never needs to be so guarded.[ ] both male and female, however, need to guard themselves during the exercise of their sexual activities from jealous rivals, as well as from enemies who might take advantage of their position to attack them. it is highly probable that this is one important sexual factor in the constitution of modesty, and it helps to explain how the male, not less than the female, cultivates modesty, and shuns publicity, in the exercise of sexual functions. northcote has especially emphasized this element in modesty, as originating in the fear of rivals. "that from this seeking after secrecy from motives of fear should arise an instinctive feeling that the sexual act must always be hidden, is a natural enough sequence. and since it is not a long step between thinking of an act as needing concealment and thinking of it as wrong, it is easily conceivable that sexual intercourse comes to be regarded as a stolen and therefore, in some degree, a sinful pleasure."[ ] animals in a state of nature usually appear to seek seclusion for sexual intercourse, although this instinct is lost under domestication. even the lowest savages, also, if uncorrupted by civilized influences, seek the solitude of the forest or the protection of their huts for the same purpose; the rare cases in which coitus is public seem usually to involve a ceremonial or social observance, rather than mere personal gratification. at loango, for instance, it would be highly improper to have intercourse in an exposed spot; it must only be performed inside the hut, with closed doors, at night, when no one is present.[ ] it is on the sexual factor of modesty, existing in a well-marked form even among animals, that coquetry is founded. i am glad to find myself on this point in agreement with professor groos, who, in his elaborate study of the play-instinct, has reached the same conclusion. so far from being the mere heartless play by which a woman shows her power over a man, groos points out that coquetry possesses "high biological and psychological significance," being rooted in the antagonism between the sexual instinct and inborn modesty. he refers to the roe, who runs away from the stag--but in a circle. (groos, _die spiele der menschen_, , p. ; also the same author's _die spiele der thiere_, pp. _et seq._) another example of coquetry is furnished by the female kingfisher (_alcedo ispida_), which will spend all the morning in teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly to look back, and never to let him out of her sight. (many examples are given by büchner, in _liebe und liebesleben in der tierwelt_.) robert müller (_sexualbiologie_, p. ) emphasizes the importance of coquetry as a lure to the male. "it is quite true," a lady writes to me in a private letter, "that 'coquetry is a poor thing,' and that every milkmaid can assume it, but a woman uses it principally in self-defence, while she is finding out what the man himself is like." this is in accordance with the remark of marro, that modesty enables a woman "to put lovers to the test, in order to select him who is best able to serve the natural ends of love." it is doubtless the necessity for this probationary period, as a test of masculine qualities, which usually leads a woman to repel instinctively a too hasty and impatient suitor, for, as arthur macdonald remarks, "it seems to be instinctive in young women to reject the impetuous lover, without the least consideration of his character, ability, and fitness." this essential element in courtship, this fundamental attitude of pursuer and pursued, is clearly to be seen even in animals and savages; it is equally pronounced in the most civilized men and women, manifesting itself in crude and subtle ways alike. shakespeare's angelo, whose virtue had always resisted the temptations of vice, discovered at last that "modesty may more betray our sense than woman's lightness." "what," asked the wise montaigne, "is the object of that virginal shame, that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, that pretence of not knowing things which they understand better than we who teach them, except to increase in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under our appetite, all that ceremony and those obstacles? for there is not only matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that soft sweetness and infantine modesty."[ ] the masculine attitude in the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse. restif de la bretonne, describing his own shame and timidity as a pretty boy whom the girls would run after and kiss, adds: "it is surprising that at the same time i would imagine the pleasure i should have in embracing a girl who resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and in pursuing her; that was a part which i burned to play."[ ] it is the instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike. the arabs have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they emphasize the importance of feminine modesty, and declare that the best woman is "she who sees not men and whom they see not."[ ] this deep-rooted modesty of women towards men in courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage customs and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has survived in many civilized practices to-day.[ ] the prostitute must be able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, and the immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious woman lies largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions of modesty are fresh and vigorous. "i cannot imagine anything that is more sexually exciting," remarks hans menjago, "than to observe a person of the opposite sex, who, by some external or internal force, is compelled to fight against her physical modesty. the more modest she is the more sexually exciting is the picture she presents."[ ] it is notable that even in abnormal, as well as in normal, erotic passion the desire is for innocent and not for vicious women, and, in association with this, the desired favor to be keenly relished must often be gained by sudden surprise and not by mutual agreement. a foot fetichist writes to me: "it is the _stolen_ glimpse of a pretty foot or ankle which produces the greatest effect on me." a urolagnic symbolist was chiefly excited by the act of urination when he caught a young woman unawares in the act. a fetichistic admirer of the nates only desired to see this region in innocent girls, not in prostitutes. the exhibitionist, almost invariably, only exposes himself to apparently respectable girls. a russian correspondent, who feels this charm of women in a particularly strong degree, is inclined to think that there is an element of perversity in it. "in the erotic action of the idea of feminine enjoyment," he writes, "i think there are traces of a certain perversity. in fact, owing to the impressions of early youth, woman (even if we feel contempt for her in theory) is placed above us, on a certain pedestal, as an almost sacred being, and the more so because mysterious. now sensuality and sexual desire are considered as rather vulgar, and a little dirty, even ridiculous and degrading, not to say bestial. the woman who enjoys it, is, therefore, rather like a profaned altar, or, at least, like a divinity who has descended on to the earth. to give enjoyment to a woman is, therefore, like perpetrating a sacrilege, or at least like taking a liberty with a god. the feelings bequeathed to us by a long social civilization maintain themselves in spite of our rational and deliberate opinions. reason tells us that there is nothing evil in sexual enjoyment, whether in man or woman, but an unconscious feeling directs our emotions, and this feeling (having a germ that was placed in modern men by christianity, and perhaps by still older religions) says that woman _ought_ to be an absolutely pure being, with ethereal sensations, and that in her sexual enjoyment is out of place, improper, scandalous. to arouse sexual emotions in a woman, if not to profane a sacred host, is, at all events, the staining of an immaculate peplos; if not sacrilege, it is, at least, irreverence or impertinence. for all men, the chaster a woman is, the more agreeable it is to bring her to the orgasm. that is felt as a triumph of the body over the soul, of sin over virtue, of earth over heaven. there is something diabolic in such pleasure, especially when it is felt by a man intoxicated with love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his election. this feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd, and in its tendencies, immoral; but it is delicious in its sacredly voluptuous subtlety. defloration thus has its powerful fascination in the respect consciously or unconsciously felt for woman's chastity. in marriage, the feeling is yet more complicated: in deflowering his bride, the christian (that is, any man brought up in a christian civilization) has the feeling of committing a sort of sin (for the 'flesh' is, for him, always connected with sin) which, by a special privilege, has for him become legitimate. he has received a special permit to corrupt innocence. hence, the peculiar prestige for civilized christians, of the wedding night, sung by shelley, in ecstatic verses:-- "'oh, joy! oh, fear! what will be done in the absence of the sun!'" this feeling has, however, its normal range, and is not, _per se_, a perversity, though it may doubtless become so when unduly heightened by christian sentiment, and especially if it leads, as to some extent it has led in my russian correspondent, to an abnormal feeling of the sexual attraction of girls who have only or scarcely reached the age of puberty. the sexual charm of this period of girlhood is well illustrated in many of the poems of thomas ashe, and it is worthy of note, as perhaps supporting the contention that this attraction is based on christian feeling, that ashe had been a clergyman. an attentiveness to the woman's pleasure remains, in itself, very far from a perversion, but increases, as colin scott has pointed out, with civilization, while its absence--the indifference to the partner's pleasure--is a perversion of the most degraded kind. there is no such instinctive demand on the woman's part for innocence in the man.[ ] in the nature of things that could not be. such emotion is required for properly playing the part of the pursued; it is by no means an added attraction on the part of the pursuer. there is, however, an allied and corresponding desire which is very often clearly or latently present in the woman: a longing for pleasure that is stolen or forbidden. it is a mistake to suppose that this is an indication of viciousness or perversity. it appears to be an impulse that occurs quite naturally in altogether innocent women. the exciting charm of the risky and dangerous naturally arises on a background of feminine shyness and timidity. we may trace its recognition at a very early stage of history in the story of eve and the forbidden fruit that has so often been the symbol of the masculine organs of sex. it is on this ground that many have argued the folly of laying external restrictions on women in matters of love. thus in quoting the great italian writer who afterwards became pope pius ii, robert burton remarked: "i am of Ã�neas sylvius' mind, 'those jealous italians do very ill to lock up their wives; for women are of such a disposition they will mostly covet that which is denied most, and offend least when they have free liberty to trespass.'"[ ] it is the spontaneous and natural instinct of the lover to desire modesty in his mistress, and by no means any calculated opinion on his part that modesty is the sign of sexual emotion. it remains true, however, that modesty is an expression of feminine erotic impulse. we have here one of the instances, of which there, are so many, of that curious and instinctive harmony by which nature has sought the more effectively to bring about the ends of courtship. as to the fact itself there can be little doubt. it constantly forces itself on the notice of careful observers, and has long been decided in the affirmative by those who have discussed the matter. venette, one of the earliest writers on the psychology of sex, after discussing the question at length, decided that the timid woman is a more ardent lover than the bold woman.[ ] "it is the most pudent girl," remarked restif de la bretonne whose experience of women was so extensive, "the girl who blushes most, who is most disposed to the pleasures of love," he adds that, in girls and boys alike, shyness is a premature consciousness of sex.[ ] this observation has even become embodied in popular proverbs. "do as the lasses do--say no, but take it," is a scotch saying, to which corresponds the welsh saying, "the more prudish the more unchaste."[ ] it is not, at first, quite clear why an excessively shy and modest woman should be the most apt for intimate relationships with a man, and in such a case the woman is often charged with hypocrisy. there is, however, no hypocrisy in the matter. the shy and reserved woman holds herself aloof from intimacy in ordinary friendship, because she is acutely sensitive to the judgments of others, and fears that any seemingly immodest action may make an unfavorable opinion. with a lover, however, in whose eyes she feels assured that her actions can not be viewed unfavorably, these barriers of modesty fall down, and the resulting intimacy becomes all the more fascinating to the woman because of its contrast with the extreme reserve she is impelled to maintain in other relationships. it thus happens that many modest women who, in non-sexual relationships with their own sex, are not able to act with the physical unreserve not uncommon with women among themselves, yet feel no such reserve with a man, when they are once confident of his good opinion. much the same is true of modest and sensitive men in their relations with women. this fundamental animal factor of modesty, rooted in the natural facts of the sexual life of the higher mammals, and especially man, obviously will not explain all the phenomena of modesty. we must turn to the other great primary element of modesty, the social factor. we cannot doubt that one of the most primitive and universal of the social characteristics of man is an aptitude for disgust, founded, as it is, on a yet more primitive and animal aptitude for disgust, which has little or no social significance. in nearly all races, even the most savage, we seem to find distinct traces of this aptitude for disgust in the presence of certain actions of others, an emotion naturally reflected in the individual's own actions, and hence a guide to conduct. notwithstanding our gastric community of disgust with lower animals, it is only in man that this disgust seems to become transformed and developed, to possess a distinctly social character, and to serve as a guide to social conduct.[ ] the objects of disgust vary infinitely according to the circumstances and habits of particular races, but the reaction of disgust is fundamental throughout. the best study of the phenomena of disgust known to me is, without doubt, professor richet's.[ ] richet concludes that it is the _dangerous_ and the _useless_ which evoke disgust. the digestive and sexual excretions and secretions, being either useless or, in accordance with widespread primitive ideas, highly dangerous, the genito-anal region became a concentrated focus of disgust.[ ] it is largely for this reason, no doubt, that savage men exhibit modesty, not only toward women, but toward their own sex, and that so many of the lowest savages take great precautions in obtaining seclusion for the fulfillment of natural functions. the statement, now so often made, that the primary object of clothes is to accentuate, rather than to conceal, has in it--as i shall point out later--a large element of truth, but it is by no means a complete account of the matter. it seems difficult not to admit that, alongside the impulse to accentuate sexual differences, there is also in both men and women a genuine impulse to concealment among the most primitive peoples, and the invincible repugnance often felt by savages to remove the girdle or apron, is scarcely accounted for by the theory that it is solely a sexual lure. in this connection it seems to me instructive to consider a special form of modesty very strongly marked among savages in some parts of the world. i refer to the feeling of immodesty in eating. where this feeling exists, modesty is offended when one eats in public; the modest man retires to eat. indecency, said cook, was utterly unknown among the tahitians; but they would not eat together; even brothers and sisters had their separate baskets of provisions, and generally sat some yards apart, with their backs to each other, when they ate.[ ] the warrua of central africa, cameron found, when offered a drink, put up a cloth before their faces while they swallowed it, and would not allow anyone to see them eat or drink; so that every man or woman must have his own fire and cook for himself.[ ] karl von den steinen remarks, in his interesting book on brazil, that though the bakairi of central brazil have no feeling of shame about nakedness, they are ashamed to eat in public; they retire to eat, and hung their heads in shame-faced confusion when they saw him innocently eat in public. hrolf vaughan stevens found that, when he gave an orang laut (malay) woman anything to eat, she not only would not eat it if her husband were present, but if any man were present she would go outside before eating or giving her children to eat.[ ] thus among these peoples the act of eating in public produces the same feelings as among ourselves the indecent exposure of the body in public.[ ] it is quite easy to understand how this arises. whenever there is any pressure on the means of subsistence, as among savages at some time or another there nearly always is, it must necessarily arouse a profound and mixed emotion of desire and disgust to see another person putting into his stomach what one might just as well have put into one's own.[ ] the special secrecy sometimes observed by women is probably due to the fact that women would be less able to resist the emotions that the act of eating would arouse in onlookers. as social feeling develops, a man desires not only to eat in safety, but also to avoid being an object of disgust, and to spare his friends all unpleasant emotions. hence it becomes a requirement of ordinary decency to eat in private. a man who eats in public becomes--like the man who in our cities exposes his person in public--an object of disgust and contempt. long ago, when a hospital student on midwifery duty in london slums, i had occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being disgusting. there was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's eyes. this anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty. but, as soon as the woman realized that i found nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary to be done under the circumstances, it almost invariably happened that every sign of modesty at once disappeared.[ ] in the special and elementary conditions of parturition, modesty is reduced to this one fear of causing disgust; so that, when that is negated, the emotion is non-existent, and the subject becomes, without effort, as direct and natural as a little child. a fellow-student on similar duty, who also discovered for himself the same character of modesty--that if he was careful to guard her modesty the woman was careful also, and that if he was not the woman was not--remarked on it to me with sadness; it seemed to him derogatory to womanhood that what he had been accustomed to consider its supreme grace should be so superficial that he could at will set limits to it.[ ] i thought then, as i think still, that that was rather a perversion of the matter, and that nothing becomes degrading because we happen to have learned something about its operations. but i am more convinced than ever that the fear of causing disgust--a fear quite distinct from that of losing a sexual lure or breaking a rule of social etiquette--plays a very large part in the modesty of the more modest sex, and in modesty generally. our venuses, as lucretius long since remarked and montaigne after him, are careful to conceal from their lovers the _vita postscenia_, and that fantastic fate which placed so near together the supreme foci of physical attraction and physical repugnance, has immensely contributed to build up all the subtlest coquetries of courtship. whatever stimulates self-confidence and lulls the fear of evoking disgust--whether it is the presence of a beloved person in whose good opinion complete confidence is felt, or whether it is merely the grosser narcotizing influence of a slight degree of intoxication--always automatically lulls the emotion of modesty.[ ] together with the animal factor of sexual refusal, this social fear of evoking disgust seems to me the most fundamental element in modesty. it is, of course, impossible to argue that the fact of the sacro-pubic region of the body being the chief focus of concealment proves the importance of this factor of modesty. but it may fairly be argued that it owes this position not merely to being the sexual centre, but also as being the excretory centre. even among many lower mammals, as well as among birds and insects, there is a well-marked horror of dirt, somewhat disguised by the varying ways in which an animal may be said to define "dirt." many animals spend more time and energy in the duties of cleanliness than human beings, and they often show well-marked anxiety to remove their own excrement, or to keep away from it.[ ] thus this element of modesty also may be said to have an animal basis. it is on this animal basis that the human and social fear of arousing disgust has developed. its probably wide extension is indicated not only by the strong feeling attached to the constant presence of clothing on this part of the body,--such constant presence being quite uncalled for if the garment or ornament is merely a sort of sexual war-paint,--but by the repugnance felt by many savages very low down in the scale to the public satisfaction of natural needs, and to their more than civilized cleanliness in this connection;[ ] it is further of interest to note that in some parts of the world the covering is not in front, but behind; though of this fact there are probably other explanations. among civilized people, also, it may be added, the final and invincible seat of modesty is sometimes not around the pubes, but the anus; that is to say, that in such cases the fear of arousing disgust is the ultimate and most fundamental element of modesty.[ ] the concentration of modesty around the anus is sometimes very marked. many women feel so high a degree of shame and reserve with regard to this region, that they are comparatively indifferent to an anterior examination of the sexual organs. a similar feeling is not seldom found in men. "i would permit of an examination of my genitals by a medical man, without any feeling of discomfort," a correspondent writes, "but i think i would rather die than submit to any rectal examination." even physicians have been known to endure painful rectal disorders for years, rather than undergo examination. "among ordinary english girls," a medical correspondent writes, "i have often noticed that the dislike and shame of allowing a man to have sexual intercourse with them, when newly married, is simply due to the fact that the sexual aperture is so closely apposed to the anus and bladder. if the vulva and vagina were situated between a woman's shoulder blades, and a man had a separate instrument for coitus, not used for any excretory purpose, i do not think women would feel about intercourse as they sometimes do. again, in their ignorance of anatomy, women often look upon the vagina and womb as part of the bowel and its exit of discharge, and sometimes say, for instance, 'inflammation of the _bowel_', when they mean _womb_. again, many, perhaps most, women believe that they pass water through the vagina, and are ignorant of the existence of the separate urethral orifice. again, women associate the vulva with the anus, and so feel ashamed of it; even when speaking to their husbands, or to a doctor, or among themselves; they have absolutely no name for the vulva (i mean among the upper classes, and people of gentle birth), but speak of it as 'down below,' 'low down,' etc." even though this feeling is largely based on wrong and ignorant ideas, it must still be recognized that it is to some extent natural and inevitable. "how much is risked," exclaims dugas, "in the privacies of love! the results may be disillusion, disgust, the consciousness of physical imperfection, of brutality or coldness, of æsthetic disenchantment, of a sentimental shock, seen or divined. to be without modesty, that is to say, to have no fear of the ordeals of love, one must be sure of one's self, of one's grace, of one's physical emotions, of one's feelings, and be sure, moreover, of the effect of all these on the nerves, the imagination, and the heart of another person. let us suppose modesty reduced to æsthetic discomfort, to a woman's fear of displeasing, or of not seeming beautiful enough. even thus defined, how can modesty avoid being always awake and restless? what woman could repeat, without risk, the tranquil action of phryne? and even in that action, who knows how much may not have been due to mere professional insolence!" (dugas, "la pudeur," _revue philosophique_, november, .) "men and women," schurtz points out (_altersklassen und männerbünde_, pp. - ), "have certainly the capacity mutually to supplement and enrich each other; but when this completion fails, or is not sought, the difference may easily become a strong antipathy;" and he proceeds to develop the wide-reaching significance of this psychic fact. i have emphasized the proximity of the excretory centres to the sexual focus in discussing this important factor of modesty, because, in analyzing so complex and elusive an emotion as modesty it is desirable to keep as near as possible to the essential and fundamental facts on which it is based. it is scarcely necessary to point out that, in ordinary civilized society, these fundamental facts are not usually present at the surface of consciousness and may even be absent altogether; on the foundation of them may arise all sorts of idealized fears, of delicate reserves, of æsthetic refinements, as the emotions of love become more complex and more subtle, and the crude simplicity of the basis on which they finally rest becomes inevitably concealed. another factor of modesty, which reaches a high development in savagery, is the ritual element, especially the idea of ceremonial uncleanness, based on a dread of the supernatural influences which the sexual organs and functions are supposed to exert. it may be to some extent rooted in the elements already referred to, and it leads us into a much wider field than that of modesty, so that it is only necessary to touch slightly on it here; it has been exhaustively studied by frazer and by crawley. offences against the ritual rendered necessary by this mysterious dread, though more serious than offences against sexual reticence or the fear of causing disgust, are so obviously allied that they all reinforce one another and cannot easily be disentangled. nearly everywhere all over the world at a primitive stage of thought, and even to some extent in the highest civilization, the sight of the sexual organs or of the sexual act, the image or even the names of the sexual parts of either man or woman, are believed to have a curiously potent influence, sometimes beneficent, but quite as often maleficent. the two kinds of influence may even be combined, and riedel, quoted by ploss and bartels,[ ] states that the ambon islanders carve a schematic representation of the vulva on their fruit trees, in part to promote the productiveness of the trees, and in part to scare any unauthorized person who might be tempted to steal the fruit. the precautions prescribed as regards coitus at loango[ ] are evidently associated with religious fears. in ceylon, again (as a medical correspondent there informs me), where the penis is worshipped and held sacred, a native never allows it to be seen, except under compulsion, by a doctor, and even a wife must neither see it nor touch it nor ask for coitus, though she must grant as much as the husband desires. all savage and barbarous peoples who have attained any high degree of ceremonialism have included the functions not only of sex, but also of excretion, more or less stringently within the bounds of that ceremonialism.[ ] it is only necessary to refer to the jewish ritual books of the old testament, to hesiod, and to the customs prevalent among mohammedan peoples. modesty in eating, also, has its roots by no means only in the fear of causing disgust, but very largely in this kind of ritual, and crawley has shown how numerous and frequent among primitive peoples are the religious implications of eating and drinking.[ ] so profound is this dread of the sacred mystery of sex, and so widespread is the ritual based upon it, that some have imagined that here alone we may find the complete explanation of modesty, and salomon reinach declares that "at the origin of the emotion of modesty lies a taboo."[ ] durkheim ("la prohibition de l'inceste," _l'année sociologique_, , p. ), arguing that whatever sense of repugnance women may inspire must necessarily reach the highest point around the womb, which is hence subjected to the most stringent taboo, incidentally suggests that here is an origin of modesty. "the sexual organs must be veiled at an early period, to prevent the dangerous effluvia which they give off from reaching the environment. the veil is often a method of intercepting magic action. once constituted, the practice would be maintained and transformed." it was doubtless as a secondary and derived significance that the veil became, as reinach ("le voile de l'oblation," op. cit., pp. - ) shows it was, alike among the romans and in the catholic church, the sign of consecration to the gods. at an early stage of culture, again, menstruation is regarded as a process of purification, a dangerous expulsion of vitiated humors. hence the term _katharsis_ applied to it by the greeks. hence also the mediæval view of women: "_mulier speciosa templum ædificatum super cloacam_," said boethius. the sacro-pubic region in women, because it includes the source of menstruation, thus becomes a specially heightened seat of taboo. according to the mosiac law (leviticus, chapter xx, v. ), if a man uncovered a menstruating woman, both were to be cut off. it is probable that the mohammedan custom of veiling the face and head really has its source solely in another aspect of this ritual factor of modesty. it must be remembered that this custom is not mohammedan in its origin, since it existed long previously among the arabians, and is described by tertullian.[ ] in early arabia very handsome men also veiled their faces, in order to preserve themselves from the evil eye, and it has been conjectured with much probability that the origin of the custom of women veiling their faces may be traced to this magico-religious precaution.[ ] among the jews of the same period, according to büchler,[ ] the women had their heads covered and never cut their hair; to appear in the streets without such covering would be like a prostitute and was adequate ground for divorce; adulterous women were punished by uncovering their heads and cutting their hair. it is possible, though not certain, that st. paul's obscure injunction to women to cover their heads "because of the angels," may really be based on the ancient reason, that when uncovered they would be exposed to the wanton assaults of spirits ( corinthians, ch. xi, vv. - ),[ ] exactly as singhalese women believe that they must keep the vulva covered lest demons should have intercourse with them. even at the present day st. paul's injunction is still observed by christendom, which is, however, far from accepting, or even perhaps understanding, the folk-lore ground on which are based such injunctions. crawley thus summarizes some of the evidence concerning the significance of the veil:-- "sexual shyness, not only in woman, but in man, is intensified at marriage, and forms a chief feature of the dangerous sexual properties mutually feared. when fully ceremonial, the idea takes on the meaning that satisfaction of these feelings will lead to their neutralization, as, in fact, it does. the bridegroom in ancient sparta supped on the wedding night at the men's mess, and then visited his bride, leaving her before daybreak. this practice was continued, and sometimes children were born before the pair had ever seen each other's faces by day. at weddings in the babar islands, the bridegroom has to hunt for his bride in a darkened room. this lasts a good while if she is shy. in south africa, the bridegroom may not see his bride till the whole of the marriage ceremonies have been performed. in persia, a husband never sees his wife till he has consummated the marriage. at marriages in south arabia, the bride and bridegroom have to sit immovable in the same position from noon till midnight, fasting, in separate rooms. the bride is attended by ladies, and the groom by men. they may not see each other till the night of the fourth day. in egypt, the groom cannot see the face of his bride, even by a surreptitious glance, till she is in his absolute possession. then comes the ceremony, which he performs, of uncovering her face. in egypt, of course, this has been accentuated by the seclusion and veiling of women. in morocco, at the feast before the marriage, the bride and groom sit together on a sort of throne; all the time, the poor bride's eyes are firmly closed, and she sits amidst the revelry as immovable as a statue. on the next day is the marriage. she is conducted after dark to her future home, accompanied by a crowd with lanterns and candles. she is led with closed eyes along the street by two relatives, each holding one of her hands. the bride's head is held in its proper position by a female relative, who walks behind her. she wears a veil, and is not allowed to open her eyes until she is set on the bridal bed, with a girl friend beside her. amongst the zulus, the bridal party proceeds to the house of the groom, having the bride hidden amongst them. they stand facing the groom, while the bride sings a song. her companions then suddenly break away, and she is discovered standing in the middle, with a fringe of beads covering her face. amongst the people of kumaun, the husband sees his wife first after the joining of hands. amongst the bedui of north east africa, the bride is brought on the evening of the wedding-day by her girl friends, to the groom's house. she is closely muffled up. amongst the jews of jerusalem, the bride, at the marriage ceremony, stands under the nuptial canopy, her eyes being closed, that she may not behold the face of her future husband before she reaches the bridal chamber. in melanesia, the bride is carried to her new home on some one's back, wrapped in many mats, with palm-fans held about her face, because she is supposed to be modest and shy. among the damaras, the groom cannot see his bride for four days after marriage. when a damara woman is asked in marriage, she covers her face for a time with the flap of a headdress made for this purpose. at the thlinkeet marriage ceremony, the bride must look down, and keep her head bowed all the time; during the wedding-day, she remains hiding in a corner of the house, and the groom is forbidden to enter. at a yezedee marriage, the bride is covered from head to foot with a thick veil, and when arrived at her new home, she retires behind a curtain in the corner of a darkened room, where she remains for three days before her husband is permitted to see her. in corea, the bride has to cover her face with her long sleeves, when meeting the bridegroom at the wedding. the manchurian bride uncovers her face for the first time when she descends from the nuptial couch. it is dangerous even to see dangerous persons. sight is a method of contagion in primitive science, and the idea coincides with the psychological aversion to see dangerous things, and with sexual shyness and timidity. in the customs noticed, we can distinguish the feeling that it is dangerous to the bride for her husband's eyes to be upon her, and the feeling of bashfulness in her which induces her neither to see him nor to be seen by him. these ideas explain the origin of the bridal veil and similar concealments. the bridal veil is used, to take a few instances, in china, burmah, corea, russia, bulgaria, manchuria, and persia, and in all these cases it conceals the face entirely." (e. crawley, _the mystic rose_, pp. et seq.) alexander walker, writing in , remarks: "among old-fashioned people, of whom a good example may be found in old country people of the middle class in england, it is indecent to be seen with the head unclothed; such a woman is terrified at the chance of being seen in that condition, and if intruded on at that time, she shrieks with terror, and flies to conceal herself." (a. walker, _beauty_, p. .) this fear of being seen with the head uncovered exists still, m. van gennep informs me, in some regions of france, as in brittany. so far it has only been necessary to refer incidentally to the connection of modesty with clothing. i have sought to emphasize the unquestionable, but often forgotten, fact that modesty is in its origin independent of clothing, that physiological modesty takes precedence of anatomical modesty, and that the primary factors of modesty were certainly developed long before the discovery of either ornament or garments. the rise of clothing probably had its first psychical basis on an emotion of modesty already compositely formed of the elements we have traced. both the main elementary factors, it must be noted, must naturally tend to develop and unite in a more complex, though--it may well be--much less intense, emotion. the impulse which leads the female animal, as it leads some african women when found without their girdles, to squat firmly down on the earth, becomes a more refined and extended play of gesture and ornament and garment. a very notable advance, i may remark, is made when this primary attitude of defence against the action of the male becomes a defence against his eyes. we may thus explain the spread of modesty to various parts of the body, even when we exclude the more special influence of the evil eye. the breasts very early become a focus of modesty in women; this may be observed among many naked, or nearly naked, negro races; the tendency of the nates to become the chief seat of modesty in many parts of africa may probably be, in large part, thus explained, since the full development of the gluteal regions is often the greatest attraction an african woman can possess.[ ] the same cause contributes, doubtless, to the face becoming, in some races, the centre of modesty. we see the influence of this defence against strange eyes in the special precautions in gesture or clothing taken by the women in various parts of the world, against the more offensive eyes of civilized europeans. but in thus becoming directed only against sight, and not against action, the gestures of modesty are at once free to become merely those of coquetry. when there is no real danger of offensive action, there is no need for more than playful defence, and no serious anxiety should that defence be taken as a disguised invitation. thus the road is at once fully open toward the most civilized manifestations of the comedy of courtship. in the same way the social fear of arousing disgust combines easily and perfectly with any new development in the invention of ornament or clothing as sexual lures. even among the most civilized races it has often been noted that the fashion of feminine garments (as also sometimes the use of scents) has the double object of concealing and attracting. it is so with the little apron of the young savage belle. the heightening of the attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking disgust. it is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,[ ] that intercrural cords and other primitive garments have a physical ground, inasmuch as they protect the most sensitive and unprotected part of the body, especially in women. we may note in this connection the significant remarks of k. von den steinen, who argues that among brazilian tribes the object of the _uluri_, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment. among the eskimo, as nansen noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often practically invisible; this may be noted, i may add, in the excellent photographs of eskimo women given by holm. but it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little or no extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the body. thus the tribes of central australia wear no clothes, although they often suffer from the cold. but, in addition to armlets, neck-bands and head-bands, they have string or hair girdles, with, for the women, a very small apron and, for the men, a pubic tassel. the latter does not conceal the organs, being no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white pipeclay, especially during the progress of _corrobborees_, when a large number of men and women meet together; it serves the purpose of drawing attention to the organs.[ ] when forster visited the unspoilt islanders of the pacific early in the eighteenth century, he tells us that, though they wore no clothes, they found it necessary to cover themselves with various ornaments, especially on, the sexual parts. "but though their males," he remarks, "were to all appearances equally anxious in this respect with their females, this part of their dress served only to make that more conspicuous which it intended to hide."[ ] he adds the significant remark that "these ideas of decency and modesty are only observed at the age of sexual maturity," just as in central australia women may only wear aprons after the initiation of puberty. "there are certain things," said montaigne, "which are hidden in order to be shown;" and there can be no doubt that the contention of westermarck and others, that ornament and clothing were, in the first place, intended, not to conceal or even to protect the body, but, in large part, to render it sexually attractive, is fully proved.[ ] we cannot, in the light of all that has gone before, regard ornaments and clothing as the sole cause of modesty, but the feelings that are thus gathered around the garment constitute a highly important factor of modesty. among some australian tribes it is said that the sexual organs are only covered during their erotic dances; and it is further said that in some parts of the world only prostitutes are clothed. "the scanty covering," as westermarck observes, "was found to act as the most powerful obtainable sexual stimulus." it is undoubtedly true that this statement may be made not merely of the savage, but of the most civilized world. all observers agree that the complete nudity of savages, unlike the civilized _décolleté_ or _détroussé_, has no suggestion of sexual allurement. (westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this point, op. cit., pp. et seq.) dr. r.w. felkin remarks concerning central africa, that he has never met more indecency than in uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an adult found naked in the street. (_edinburgh medical journal_, april, .) a study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than partial clothing. as a well-known artist, du maurier, has remarked (in _trilby_), it is "a fact well known to all painters and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity. venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her armory by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men." burton, in the _anatomy of melancholy_ (part iii, sect. ii, subsect. ), deals at length with the "allurements of love," and concludes that "the greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel." the artist's model, as one informs me, is much less exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is partially clothed, and it may be noted that in paris studios the model who poses naked undresses behind a screen. an admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy of clothing has been given by herrick, that master of erotic psychology, in "a lily in crystal," where he argues that a lily in crystal, and amber in a stream, and strawberries in cream, gain an added delight from semi-concealment; and so, he concludes, we obtain "a rule, how far, to teach, your nakedness must reach." in this connection, also, it is worth noting that stanley hall, in a report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons, mostly teachers, ("the early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, , p. ), finds that of the three functions of clothes--protection, ornament, and lotzean "self-feeling"--the second is by far the most conspicuous in childhood. the attitude of children is testimony to the primitive attitude toward clothing. it cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been developed. in japan, where nakedness is accepted without shame, clothes are worn to cover and conceal, and not to reveal, the body. it is so, also, in china. a distinguished chinese gentleman, who had long resided in europe, once told baelz that he had gradually learnt to grasp the european point of view, but that it would be impossible to persuade his fellow-countrymen that a woman who used her clothes to show off her figure could possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (baelz, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. .) the great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of ornament or clothing, even when very small, and the fact--as shown by karl von den steinen regarding the brazilian _uluri_--that they may serve as common motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects attract rather than avoid attention. and while there is an invincible repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their aprons are accurately adjusted. the mere presence or possession of the article gives the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of sexual desirability. thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him; this was so even in homeric times, for we may recall the threat of ulysses to strip thyestes.[ ] when clothing is once established, another element, this time a social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and increase the anatomical modesty of women. i mean the growth of the conception of women as property. waitz, followed by schurtz and letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. diderot in the eighteenth century had already given clear expression to the same view. it is undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed, the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining naked. in many parts of the world, also, as mantegazza and others have shown, where the men are naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace, and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. before marriage a woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same time was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. to the husband's mind, the garment appears--illogically, though naturally--a moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[ ] thus a new motive was furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making nakedness, in women at all events, disgraceful. as the conception of property also extended to the father's right over his daughters, and the appreciation of female chastity developed, this motive spread to unmarried as well as married women. a woman on the west coast of africa must always be chaste because she is first the property of her parents and afterwards of her husband,[ ] and even in the seventeenth century of christendom so able a thinker as bishop burnet furnished precisely the same reason for feminine chastity.[ ] this conception probably constituted the chief and most persistent element furnished to the complex emotion of modesty by the barbarous stages of human civilization. this economic factor necessarily involved the introduction of a new moral element into modesty. if a woman's chastity is the property of another person, it is essential that she shall be modest in order that men may not be tempted to incur the penalties involved by the infringement of property rights. thus modesty is strictly inculcated on women in order that men may be safeguarded from temptation. the fact was overlooked that modesty is itself a temptation. immodesty being, on this ground, disapproved by men, a new motive for modesty is furnished to women. in the book which the knight of the tower, landry, wrote in the fourteenth century, for the instruction of his daughters, this factor of modesty is naïvely revealed. he tells his daughters of the trouble that david got into through the thoughtlessness of bathsheba, and warns them that "every woman ought religiously to conceal herself when dressing and washing, and neither out of vanity nor yet to attract attention show either her hair, or her neck, or her breast, or any part which ought to be covered." hinton went so far as to regard what he termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed upon women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. while this motive is far from being the sole source of modesty, it must certainly be borne in mind as an inevitable outcome of the economic factor of modesty. in europe it seems probable that the generally accepted conceptions of mediæval chivalry were not without influence in constituting the forms in which modesty shows itself among us. in the early middle ages there seems to have been a much greater degree of physical familiarity between the sexes than is commonly found among barbarians elsewhere. there was certainly considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to nakedness. it seems probable, as durkheim points out,[ ] that this state of things was modified in part by the growing force of the dictates of christian morality, which regarded all intimate approaches between the sexes as sinful, and in part by the influence of chivalry with its æsthetic and moral ideals of women, as the representative of all the delicacies and elegancies of civilization. this ideal was regarded as incompatible with the familiarities of the existing social relationships between the sexes, and thus a separation, which at first existed only in art and literature, began by a curious reaction to exert an influence on real life. the chief new feature--it is scarcely a new element--added to modesty when an advanced civilization slowly emerges from barbarism is the elaboration of its social ritual.[ ] civilization expands the range of modesty, and renders it, at the same time, more changeable. the french seventeenth century, and the english eighteenth, represent early stages of modern european civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the elaboration of the minute details of modesty. the frequenters of the hotel rambouillet, the _précieuses_ satirized by molière, were not only engaged in refining the language; they were refining feelings and ideas and enlarging the boundaries of modesty.[ ] in england such famous and popular authors as swift and sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty in the sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found throughout their works. the altogether new quality of literary prurience, of which sterne is still the classical example, could only have arisen on the basis of the new modesty which was then overspreading society and literature. idle people, mostly, no doubt, the women in _salons_ and drawing-rooms, people more familiar with books than with the realities of life, now laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, ever inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it would be immodest to neglect, and which are ever being rendered vulgar by use and ever changing. it was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. it is not confined to any european country, and has been studied in italy by niceforo (_il gergo_, , cap. and ), who regards it as a weapon of social defence against an inquisitive or hostile environment, since it enables things to be said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but the initiated person. while it is quite true that the custom is supported by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it has another source in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the vulgar immodesty of direct speech. this is sufficiently shown by the fact that such slang is mostly concerned with the sacro-pubic sphere. it is one of the chief contributions to the phenomena of modesty furnished by civilization. the claims of modesty having effected the clothing of the body, the impulse of modesty finds a further sphere of activity--half-playful, yet wholly imperative--in the clothing of language. modesty of speech has, however, a deep and primitive basis, although in modern europe it only became conspicuous at the beginning of the eighteenth century. "all over the world," as dufour put it, "to do is good, to say is bad." reticences of speech are not adequately accounted for by the statement that modesty tends to irradiate from the action to the words describing the action, for there is a tendency for modesty to be more deeply rooted in the words than in the actions. "modest women," as kleinpaul truly remarks, "have a much greater horror of saying immodest things than of doing them; they believe that fig-leaves were especially made for the mouth." (kleinpaul, _sprache ohne worte_, p. .) it is a tendency which is linked on to the religious and ritual feeling which we have already found to be a factor of modesty, and which, even when applied to language, appears to have an almost or quite instinctive basis, for it is found among the most primitive savages, who very frequently regard a name as too sacred or dangerous to utter. among the tribes of central australia, in addition to his ordinary name, each individual has his sacred or secret name, only known to the older and fully initiated members of his own totemic group; among the warramunga, it is not permitted to women to utter even a man's ordinary name, though she knows it. (spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. .) in the mysterious region of sex, this feeling easily takes root. in many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and women use among themselves, words and even languages which they may not use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the opposite sex, and it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact that the wife belongs to a different tribe, will not always account for this phenomenon. (crawley, _the mystic rose_, p. .) a special vocabulary for the generative organs and functions is very widespread. thus, in northwest central queensland, there is both a decent and an indecent vocabulary for the sexual parts; in mitakoodi language, for instance, _me-ne_ may be used for the vulva in the best aboriginal society, but _koon-ja_ and _pukkil_, which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly words known to the natives. (w. roth, _ethnological studies among the queensland aborigines_, p. .) among the malays, _puki_ is also a name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and it is only used in public by people under the influence of an obsessive nervous disorder. (w. gilman ellis, "latah," _journal of mental science_, jan., .) the swahili women of africa have a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to sexual matters (zache, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft - , pp. et seq.), and in samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic name for the penis, _aualuma_, which is not that in common use (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ); exactly the same thing is found in europe, to-day, and is sometimes more marked among young peasant women than among those of better social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the necessity for using any definite name. singular as it may seem, the romans, who in their literature impress us by their vigorous and naked grip of the most private facts of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene language--a dread ultimately founded, it is evident, on religious grounds--far exceeding that which prevails among ourselves to-day in civilization. "it is remarkable," dufour observes, "that the prostitutes of ancient rome would have blushed to say an indecent word in public. the little tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. he called her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any licentious interjection, but only 'i will love!' (_amabo_), a frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. when intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother' and 'sister.' these appellations were common among the humblest and the proudest courtesans alike." (dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. ii, p. .) so excessive was the roman horror of obscenity that even physicians were compelled to use a euphemism for _urina_, and though the _urinal_ or _vas urinarium_ was openly used at the dining-table (following a custom introduced by the sybarites, according to athenæus, book xii, cap. ), the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but only by a snap of the fingers (dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p. ). in modern europe, as seems fairly evident from the early realistic dramatic literature of various countries, no special horror of speaking plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and their functions existed among the general population until the seventeenth century. there is, however, one marked exception. such a feeling clearly existed as regards menstruation. it is not difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. we have here not only a function confined to one sex and, therefore, easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one sex; but, what is even of more importance, the belief which existed among the romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, concerning the specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstruation, survived throughout mediæval times. (see e.g., ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, xiv; also havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth ed. ch. xi.) the very name, _menses_ ("monthlies"), is a euphemism, and most of the old scientific names for this function are similarly vague. as regards popular feminine terminology previous to the eighteenth century, schurig gives us fairly ample information (_parthenologia_, , pp. et seq.). he remarks that both in latin and germanic countries, menstruation was commonly designated by some term equivalent to "flowers," because, he says, it is a blossoming that indicates the possibility of fruit. german peasant women, he tells us, called it the rose-wreath (rosenkrantz). among the other current feminine names for menstruation which he gives, some are purely fanciful; thus, the italian women dignified the function with the title of "marchese magnifico;" german ladies, again, would use the locution, "i have had a letter," or would say that their cousin or aunt had arrived. these are closely similar to the euphemisms still used by women. it should be added that euphemisms for menstruation are not confined to europe, and are found among savages. according to hill tout (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. ; and , p. ), one of these euphemisms was "putting on the moccasin," and in another branch of the same people, "putting the knees together," "going outside" (in allusion to the customary seclusion at this period in a solitary hut), and so on. it would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this process is an intensification of modesty. it is, on the contrary, an attenuation of it. the observances of modesty become merely a part of a vast body of rules of social etiquette, though a somewhat stringent part on account of the vague sense still persisting of a deep-lying natural basis. it is a significant coincidence that the eighteenth century, which was marked by this new extension of the social ritual of modesty, also saw the first appearance of a new philosophic impulse not merely to analyze, but to dissolve the conception of modesty. this took place more especially in france. the swift rise to supremacy, during the seventeenth century, of logical and rational methods of thinking, in conjunction with the new development of geometrical and mathematical science, led in the eighteenth century to a widespread belief in france that human customs and human society ought to be founded on a strictly logical and rational basis. it was a belief which ignored those legitimate claims of the emotional nature which the nineteenth century afterwards investigated and developed, but it was of immense service to mankind in clearing away useless prejudices and superstitions, and it culminated in the reforms of the great revolution which most other nations have since been painfully struggling to attain. modesty offered a tempting field for the eighteenth century philosophic spirit to explore. the manner in which the most distinguished and adventurous minds of the century approached it, can scarcely be better illustrated than by a conversation, reported by madame d'epinay, which took place in at the table of mlle. quinault, the eminent actress. "a fine virtue," duclos remarked, "which one fastens on in the morning with pins." he proceeded to argue that "a moral law must hold good always and everywhere, which modesty does not." saint-lambert, the poet, observed that "it must be acknowledged that one can say nothing good about innocence without being a little corrupted," and duclos added "or of modesty without being impudent." saint-lambert finally held forth with much poetic enthusiasm concerning the desirability of consummating marriages in public.[ ] this view of modesty, combined with the introduction of greek fashions, gained ground to such an extent that towards the end of the century women, to the detriment of their health, were sometimes content to dress in transparent gauze, and even to walk abroad in the champs elysées without any clothing; that, however, was too much for the public.[ ] the final outcome of the eighteenth century spirit in this direction was, as we know, by no means the dissolution of modesty. but it led to a clearer realization of what is permanent in its organic foundations and what is merely temporary in its shifting manifestations. that is a realization which is no mean task to achieve, and is difficult for many, even yet. so intelligent a traveler as mrs. bishop (miss bird), on her first visit to japan came to the conclusion that japanese women had no modesty, because they had no objection to being seen naked when bathing. twenty years later she admitted to dr. baelz that she had made a mistake, and that "a woman may be naked and yet behave like a lady."[ ] in civilized countries the observances of modesty differ in different regions, and in different social classes, but, however various the forms may be, the impulse itself remains persistent.[ ] modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, a vague but massive force, bearing with special power on those who cannot reason, and yet having its root in the instincts of all people of all classes.[ ] it has become mainly transformed into the allied emotion of decency, which has been described as "modesty fossilized into social customs." the emotion yields more readily than in its primitive state to any sufficiently-strong motive. even fashion in the more civilized countries can easily inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate, in turn, almost any part of the body, while the savage indian woman of america, the barbarous woman of some mohammedan countries, can scarcely sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of childbirth. even when, among uncivilized races, the focus of modesty may be said to be eccentric and arbitrary, it still remains very rigid. in such savage and barbarous countries modesty possesses the strength of a genuine and irresistible instinct. in civilized countries, however, anyone who places considerations of modesty before the claims of some real human need excites ridicule and contempt. footnotes: [ ] fliess (_die beziehungen zwischen nase und weiblichen geschlechts-organen_, p. ) remarks on the fact that, in the bible narrative of eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into the world together: adam feared god because he was naked. melinaud ("psychologie de la pudeur," _la revue_, nov. , ) remarks that shame differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this position seems untenable. [ ] bashfulness in children has been dealt with by professor baldwin; see especially his _mental development in the child and the race_, chapter vi, pp. et seq., and _social interpretations in mental development_, chapter vi. [ ] bell, "a preliminary study of the emotion of love between the sexes," _american journal psychology_, july, . [ ] professor starbuck (_psychology of religion_, chapter xxx) refers to unpublished investigations showing that recognition of the rights of others also exhibits a sudden increment at the age of puberty. [ ] perez, _l'enfant de trois à sept ans_, , pp. - . [ ] it must be remembered that the medicean venus is merely a comparatively recent and familiar embodiment of a natural attitude which is very ancient, and had impressed sculptors at a far earlier period. reinach, indeed, believes ("la sculpture en europe," _l'anthropologie_, no. , ) that the hand was first brought to the breast to press out the milk, and expresses the idea of exuberance, and that the attitude of the venus of medici as a symbol of modesty came later; he remarks that, as regards both hands, this attitude may be found in a figurine of cyprus, , years before christ. this is, no doubt, correct, and i may add that babylonian figurines of ishtar, the goddess of fertility, represent her as clasping her hands to her breasts or her womb. [ ] when there is no sexual fear the impulse of modesty may be entirely inhibited. french ladies under the old régime (as a. franklin points out in his _vie privée d'autrefois_) sometimes showed no modesty towards their valets, not admitting the possibility of any sexual advance, and a lady would, for example, stand up in her bath while a valet added hot water by pouring it between her separated feet. [ ] i do not hereby mean to deny a certain degree of normal periodicity even to the human male; but such periodicity scarcely involves any element of sexual fear or attitude of sexual defence, in man because it is too slight to involve complete latency of the sexual functions, in other species because latency of sexual function in the male is always accompanied by corresponding latency in the female. [ ] h. northcote, _christianity and the sex problem_, p. . crawley had previously argued (_the mystic rose_, pp. , ) that this same necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, sexual, and excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a potential sacredness, so that the concealment of them became a religious duty. [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . [ ] _essais_, livre ii, ch. xv. [ ] _monsieur nicolas_, vol. i, p. . [ ] lane, _arabian society_, p. . the arab insistence on the value of virginal modesty is well brought out in one of the most charming stories of the _arabian nights_, "the history of the mirror of virginity." [ ] this has especially been emphasized by crawley, _the mystic rose_, pp. , et seq., . [ ] _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, heft , p. . [ ] this, however, is not always or altogether true of experienced women. thus, the russian correspondent already referred to, who as a youth was accustomed, partly out of shyness, to feign complete ignorance of sexual matters, informs me that it repeatedly happened to him at this time that young married women took pleasure in imposing on themselves, not without shyness but with evident pleasure, the task of initiating him, though they always hastened to tell him that it was for his good, to preserve him from bad women and masturbation. prostitutes, also, often take pleasure in innocent men, and hans ostwald tells (_sexual-probleme_, june, , p. ) of a prostitute who fell violently in love with a youth who had never known a woman before; she had never met an innocent man before, and it excited her greatly. and i have been told of an italian prostitute who spoke of the exciting pleasure which an unspoilt youth gave her by his freshness, _tutta questa freschezza_. [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, sect. iii. mem. iv. subs. i. [ ] n. venette, _la génération de l'homme_, part ii, ch. x. [ ] _monsieur nicolas_, vol. i, p. . [ ] kryptadia, vol. ii, p. , . ib. vol. iii, p. . [ ] "modesty is, at first," said renouvier, "a fear which we have of displeasing others, and of blushing at our own natural imperfections." (renouvier and prat, _la nouvelle monadologie_, p. .) [ ] c. richet, "les causes du dégoût," _l'homme et l'intelligence_, . this eminent physiologist's elaborate study of disgust was not written as a contribution to the psychology of modesty, but it forms an admirable introduction to the investigation of the social factor of modesty. [ ] it is interesting to note that where, as among the eskimo, urine, for instance, is preserved as a highly-valuable commodity, the act of urination, even at table, is not regarded as in the slightest degree disgusting or immodest (bourke, _scatologic rites_, p. ). [ ] hawkesworth, _an account of the voyages_, etc., , vol. ii, p. . [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. vi, p. . [ ] stevens, "mittheilungen aus dem frauenleben der orang belendas," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, heft , p. , . crawley, (_mystic rose_, ch. viii, p. ) gives numerous other instances, even in europe, with, however, special reference to sexual taboo. i may remark that english people of lower class, especially women, are often modest about eating in the presence of people of higher class. this feeling is, no doubt, due, in part, to the consciousness of defective etiquette, but that very consciousness is, in part, a development of the fear of causing disgust, which is a component of modesty. [ ] shame in regard to eating, it may be added, occasionally appears as a neurasthenic obsession in civilization, and has been studied as a form of psychasthenia by janet. see e.g., (raymond and janet, _les obsessions et la psychasthénie_, vol. ii, p. ) the case of a young girl of , who, from the age of or (the epoch of puberty) had been ashamed to eat in public, thinking it nasty and ugly to do so, and arguing that it ought only to be done in private, like urination. [ ] "desire and disgust are curiously blended," remarks crawley (_the mystic rose_, p. ), "when, with one's own desire unsatisfied, one sees the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic stage beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in others, and the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation is the psychological result." [ ] hohenemser argues that the fear of causing disgust cannot be a part of shame. but he also argues that shame is simply psychic stasis, and it is quite easy to see, as in the above case, that the fear of causing disgust is simply a manifestation of psychic stasis. there is a conflict in the woman's mind between the idea of herself which she has already given, and the more degraded idea of herself which she fears she is likely to give, and this conflict is settled when she is made to feel that the first idea may still be maintained under the new circumstances. [ ] we neither of us knew that we had merely made afresh a very ancient discovery. casanova, more than a century ago, quoted the remark of a friend of his, that the easiest way to overcome the modesty of a woman is to suppose it non-existent; and he adds a saying, which he attributes to clement of alexandria, that modesty, which seems so deeply rooted in women, only resides in the linen that covers them, and vanishes when it vanishes. the passage to which casanova referred occurs in the _pædagogus_, and has already been quoted. the observation seems to have appealed strongly to the fathers, always glad to make a point against women, and i have met with it in cyprian's _de habitu feminarum_. it also occurs in jerome's treatise against jovinian. jerome, with more scholarly instinct, rightly presents the remark as a quotation: "_scribit herodotus quod mulier cum veste deponat et verecundiam_." in herodotus the saying is attributed to gyges (book i, chapter viii). we may thus trace very far back into antiquity an observation which in english has received its classical expression from chaucer, who, in his "wife of bath's prologue," has:-- "he sayde, a woman cast hir shame away, when she cast of hir smok." i need not point out that the analysis of modesty offered above robs this venerable saying of any sting it may have possessed as a slur upon women. in such a case, modesty is largely a doubt as to the spectator's attitude, and necessarily disappears when that doubt is satisfactorily resolved. as we have seen, the central australian maidens were very modest with regard to the removal of their single garment, but when that removal was accomplished and accepted, they were fearless. [ ] the same result occurs more markedly under the deadening influence of insanity. grimaldi (_il manicomio moderno_, ) found that modesty is lacking in per cent, of the insane. [ ] for some facts bearing on this point, see houssay, _industries of animals_, chapter vii. "the defence and sanitation of dwellings;" also p. ballion, _de l'instinct de propreté chez les animaux_. [ ] thus, stevens mentions (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, p. , ) that the dyaks of malacca always wash the sexual organs, even after urination, and are careful to use the left hand in doing so. the left hand is also reserved for such uses among the jekris of the niger coast (_journal of the anthropological institute_, p. , ). [ ] lombroso and ferrero--who adopt the derivation of _pudor_ from _putere_; i.e., from the repugnance caused by the decomposition of the vaginal secretions--consider that the fear of causing disgust to men is the sole origin of modesty among savage women, as also it remains the sole form of modesty among some prostitutes to-day. (_la donna delinquente_, p. .) important as this factor is in the constitution of the emotion of modesty, i need scarcely add that i regard so exclusive a theory as altogether untenable. [ ] _das weib_, ch. vi. [ ] for references as to a similar feeling among other savages, see westermarck, _history of human marriage_, p. . [ ] see e.g., bourke, _scatologic rites_, pp. , , etc. [ ] crawley, op. cit., ch. vii. [ ] s, reinach, _cultes, mythes et religions_, p. . [ ] tertullian, _de virginibus velandis_, cap. . hottentot women, also (fritsch, _eingeborene südafrika's_, p. ), cover their head with a cloth, and will not be persuaded to remove it. [ ] wellhausen, _reste arabischen heidentums_, p. . the same custom is found among tuareg men though it is not imperative for the women (duveyrier, _les touaregs du nord_, p. ). [ ] quoted in _zentralblatt für anthropologie_, , heft i, p. . [ ] or rather, perhaps, because the sight of their nakedness might lead the angels into sin. see w.g. sumner, _folkways_, p. . [ ] in moruland, emin bey remarked that women are mostly naked, but some wear a girdle, with a few leaves hanging behind. the women of some negro tribes, who thus cover themselves behind, if deprived of this sole covering, immediately throw themselves on the ground on their backs, in order to hide their nakedness. [ ] e.g., letourneau, _l'evolution de la morale_, p. . [ ] spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. . [ ] j.r. forster, _observations made during a voyage round the world_, , p. . [ ] westermarck (_history of human marriage_, ch. ix) ably sets forth this argument, with his usual wealth of illustration. crawley (_mystic rose_, p. ) seeks to qualify this conclusion by arguing that tattooing, etc., of the sex organs is not for ornament but for the purpose of magically insulating the organs, and is practically a permanent amulet or charm. [ ] _iliad_, ii, . waitz gives instances (_anthropology_, p. ) showing that nakedness is sometimes a mark of submission. [ ] the celtic races, in their days of developed barbarism, seem to have been relatively free from the idea of proprietorship in women, and it was probably among the irish (as we learn from the seventeenth century _itinerary_ of fynes moryson) that the habit of nakedness was longest preserved among the upper social class women of western europe. [ ] a.b. ellis, _tshi-speaking peoples_, p. . [ ] burnet, _life and death of rochester_, p. . [ ] _l'année sociologique_, seventh year, , p. . [ ] tallemont des réaux, who began to write his _historiettes_ in , says of the marquise de rambouillet: "elle est un peu trop délicate ... on n'oscrait prononcer le mot de _cul_. cela va dans l'excès." half a century later, in england, mandeville, in the remarks appended to his _fable of the bees_, refers to the almost prudish modesty inculcated on children from their earliest years. [ ] in one of its civilized developments, this ritualized modesty becomes prudery, which is defined by forel (_die sexuelle frage_, fifth ed., p. ) as "codified sexual morality." prudery is fossilized modesty, and no longer reacts vitally. true modesty, in an intelligent civilized person, is instinctively affected by motives and circumstances, responding sensitively to its relationships. [ ] _memoires de madame d'epinay_, part i, ch. v. thirty years earlier, mandeville had written, in england, that "the modesty of women is the result of custom and education." [ ] goncourt, _histoire de la société française pendant le directoire_, p. . clothes became so gauze-like, and receded to such an extent from the limbs, that for a time the chemise was discarded as an awkward and antiquated garment. [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. . [ ] in the rural districts of hanover, pastor grashoff states, "even when natural necessities are performed with the greatest possible freedom, there is no offence to modesty, in rural opinion." but he makes a statement which is both contradictory and false, when he adds that "modesty is, to the country man in general, a foreign idea." (_geschlechtlich-sittliche verhältnisse im deutsche reiche_, vol. ii, p. .) [ ] it is frequently stated that prostitutes are devoid of modesty, but this is incorrect; they possess a partial and diminished modesty which, for a considerable period still remains genuine (see e.g., reuss, _la prostitution_, p. ). lombroso and ferrero (_la donna_, p. ) refer to the objection of prostitutes to be examined during the monthly periods as often greater than that of respectable women. again, callari states ("prostituzione in sicilia," _archivio di psichiatria_, , p. ), that sicilian prostitutes can only with difficulty be persuaded to expose themselves naked in the practice of their profession. aretino long since remarked (in _la pippa_) that no women so detest gratuitous _décolletage_ as prostitutes. when prostitutes do not possess modesty, they frequently simulate it, and ferriani remarks (in his _delinquenti minorenni_) that of ninety-seven minors (mostly females) accused of offences against public decency, seventy-five simulated a modesty which, in his opinion, they were entirely without. iii. the blush the sanction of modesty--the phenomena of blushing--influences which modify the aptitude to blush--darkness, concealment of the face, etc. it is impossible to contemplate this series of phenomena, so radically persistent whatever its changes of form, and so constant throughout every stage of civilization, without feeling that, although modesty cannot properly be called an instinct, there must be some physiological basis to support it. undoubtedly such a basis is formed by that vasomotor mechanism of which the most obvious outward sign is, in human beings, the blush. all the allied emotional forms of fear--shame, bashfulness, timidity--are to some extent upheld by this mechanism, but such is especially the case with the emotion we are now concerned with.[ ] the blush is the sanction of modesty. the blush is, indeed, only a part, almost, perhaps, an accidental part, of the organic turmoil with which it is associated. partridge, who has studied the phenomena of blushing in one hundred and twenty cases (_pedagogical seminary_, april, ), finds that the following are the general symptoms: tremors near the waist, weakness in the limbs, pressure, trembling, warmth, weight or beating in the chest, warm wave from feet upward, quivering of heart, stoppage and then rapid beating of heart, coldness all over followed by heat, dizziness, tingling of toes and fingers, numbness, something rising in throat, smarting of eyes, singing in ears, prickling sensations of face, and pressure inside head. partridge considers that the disturbance is primarily central, a change in the cerebral circulation, and that the actual redness of the surface comes late in the nerve storm, and is really but a small part of it. there has been some discussion as to why, and indeed how far, blushing is confined to the face. henle (_ueber das erröthen_) thought that we blush in the face because all nervous phenomena produced by mental states appear first in the face, owing to the anatomical arrangement of the nerves of the body. darwin (_expression of the emotions_) argued that attention to a part tends to produce capillary activity in the part, and that the face has been the chief object of attention. it has also been argued, on the other hand, that the blush is the vestigial remains of a general erethism of sex, in which shame originated; that the blush was thus once more widely diffused, and is so still among the women of some lower races, its limitation to the face being due to sexual selection and the enhanced beauty thus achieved. féré once had occasion to examine, when completely nude, a boy of thirteen whose sexual organs were deformed; when accused of masturbation he became covered by a blush which spread uniformly over his face, neck, body and limbs, before and behind, except only the hands and feet. féré asks whether such a universal blush is more common than we imagine, or whether the state of nudity favors its manifestation. (_comptes rendus, société de biologie_, april , .) it may be added that partridge mentions one case in which the hands blushed. the sexual relationships of blushing are unquestionable. it occurs chiefly in women; it attains its chief intensity at puberty and during adolescence; its most common occasion is some more or less sexual suggestion; among one hundred and sixty-two occasions of blushing enumerated by partridge, by far the most frequent cause was teasing, usually about the other sex. "an erection," it has been said, "is a blushing of the penis." stanley hall seems to suggest that the sexual blush is a vicarious genital flushing of blood, diverted from the genital sphere by an inhibition of fear, just as, in girls, giggling is also very frequently a vicarious outlet of shame; the sexual blush would thus be the outcome of an ancestral sex-fear; it is as an irradiation of sexual erethism that the blush may contain an element of pleasure.[ ] bloch remarks that the blush is sexual, because reddening of the face, as well as of the genitals, is an accompaniment of sexual emotion (_beiträge zur Ã�tiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, p. ). "do you not think," a correspondent writes, "that the sexual blush, at least, really represents a vaso-relaxor effect quite the same as erection? the embarrassment which arises is due to a perception of this fact under circumstances which are felt to be unsuited for such a condition. there may arise the fear of awakening disgust by the exhibition of a state which is out of place. i have noticed that such a blush is produced when a sufficiently young and susceptible woman is pumped full of compliments. this blush seems accompanied by pleasure which does not always change to fear or disgust, but is felt to be attractive. when discomfort arises, most women say that they feel this because 'it looks as if they had no control over themselves.' when they feel that there is no need for control, they no longer feel fear, and the relaxor effect has a wider field of operation, producing a general rosiness, erection of spinal sexual organs, etc. such a blush would thus be a partial sexual equivalent, and allow of the inhibition of other sexual effects, through the warning it gives, and the fear aroused, as well as being in itself a slight outlet of relaxor energy. when the relationships of the persons concerned allow freedom to the special sexual stimuli, as in marriage, blushing does not occur so often, and when it does it has not so often the consequent of fear." there can be no doubt that the blush is sexually attractive. the blush is the expression of an impulse to concealment and flight, which tends automatically to arouse in the beholder the corresponding impulse of pursuit, so that the central situation of courtship is at once presented. women are more or less conscious of this, as well as men, and this recognition is an added source of embarrassment when it cannot become a source of pleasure. the ancient use of rouge testifies to the beauty of the blush, and darwin stated that, in turkish slave-markets, the girls who readily blushed fetched the highest prices. to evoke a blush, even by producing embarrassment, is very commonly a cause of masculine gratification. savages, both men and women, blush even beneath a dusky skin (for the phenomenon of blushing among different races, see waitz, _anthropologie der naturvölker_, bd. i, pp. - ), and it is possible that natural selection, as well as sexual selection, has been favorable to the development of the blush. it is scarcely an accident that, as has been often observed, criminals, or the antisocial element of the community--whether by the habits of their lives or by congenital abnormality--blush less easily than normal persons. kroner (_das körperliche gefühl_, , p. ) remarks: "the origin of a specific connection between shame and blushing is the work of a _social selection_. it is certainly an immediate advantage for a man not to blush; indirectly, however, it is a disadvantage, because in other ways he will be known as shameless, and on that account, as a rule, he will be shut out from propagation. this social selection will be specially exercised on the female sex, and on this account, women blush to a greater extent, and more readily, than men." the importance of the blush, and the emotional confusion behind it, as the sanction of modesty is shown by the significant fact that, by lulling emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit the sense of modesty. in other words, we are here in the presence of a fear--to a large extent a sex-fear--impelling to concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it becomes apparent that there is no reason for fear. that is the reason why nakedness in itself has nothing to do with modesty or immodesty; it is the conditions under which the nakedness occurs which determine whether or not modesty will be roused. if none of the factors of modesty are violated, if no embarrassing self-attention is excited, if there is a consciousness of perfect propriety alike in the subject and in the spectator, nakedness is entirely compatible with the most scrupulous modesty. a. duval, a pupil of ingres, tells that a female model was once quietly posing, completely nude, at the Ã�cole des beaux arts. suddenly she screamed and ran to cover herself with her garments. she had seen a workman on the roof gazing inquisitively at her through a skylight.[ ] and paola lombroso describes how a lady, a diplomatist's wife, who went to a gathering where she found herself the only woman in evening dress, felt, to her own surprise, such sudden shame that she could not keep back her tears. it thus comes about that the emotion of modesty necessarily depends on the feelings of the people around. the absence of the emotion by no means signifies immodesty, provided that the reactions of modesty are at once set in motion under the stress of a spectator's eye that is seen to be lustful, inquisitive, or reproachful. this is proved to be the case among primitive peoples everywhere. the japanese woman, naked as in daily life she sometimes is, remains unconcerned because she excites no disagreeable attention, but the inquisitive and unmannerly european's eye at once causes her to feel confusion. stratz, a physician, and one, moreover, who had long lived among the javanese who frequently go naked, found that naked japanese women felt no embarrassment in his presence. it is doubtless as a cloak to the blush that we must explain the curious influence of darkness in restraining the manifestations of modesty, as many lovers have discovered, and as we may notice in our cities after dark. this influence of darkness in inhibiting modesty is a very ancient observation. burton, in the _anatomy of melancholy_, quotes from dandinus the saying "_nox facit impudentes_," directly associating this with blushing, and bargagli, the siennese novelist, wrote in the sixteenth century that, "it is commonly said of women, that they will do in the dark what they would not do in the light." it is true that the immodesty of a large city at night is to some extent explained by the irruption of prostitutes at that time; prostitutes, being habitually nearer to the threshold of immodesty, are more markedly affected by this influence. but it is an influence to which the most modest women are, at all events in some degree, susceptible. it has, indeed, been said that a woman is always more her real self in the dark than in the glare of daylight; this is part of what chamberlain calls her night-inspiration. "traces of the night-inspiration, of the influence of the primitive fire-group, abound in woman. indeed, it may be said (the life of southern europe and of american society of to-day illustrates this point abundantly) that she is, in a sense, a night-being, for the activity, physical and moral, of modern women (revealed e.g. in the dance and the nocturnal intellectualities of society) in this direction is remarkable. perhaps we may style a good deal of her ordinary day-labor as rest, or the commonplaces and banalities of her existence, her evening and night life being the true side of her activities" (a.f. chamberlain, "work and rest," _popular science monthly_, march, ). giessler, who has studied the general influence of darkness on human psychic life, reaches conclusions which harmonize with these (c.m. giessler, "der einfluss der dunkelheit auf das seelenleben des menschen," _vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche philosophie_, , pp. - ). i have not been able to see giessler's paper, but, according to a summary of it, he comes to the result that in the dark the soul's activities are nearer to its motor pole than to its sensitive pole, and that there is a tendency for phenomena belonging to the early period of development to be prominent, motor memory functioning more than representative memory, attention more than apperception, imagination more than logical thinking, egoistic more than altruistic morals. it is curious to note that short-sightedness, naturally, though illogically, tends to exert the same influence as darkness in this respect; i am assured by short-sighted persons of both sexes that they are much more liable to the emotions of shyness and modesty with their glasses than without them; such persons with difficulty realize that they are not so dim to others as others are to them. to be in the company of a blind person seems also to be a protection against shyness.[ ] it is interesting to learn that congenitally blind children are as sensitive to appearances as normal children, and blush as readily.[ ] this would seem to be due to the fact that the habitually blind have permanently adjusted their mental focus to that of normal persons, and react in the same manner as normal persons; blindness is not for them, as it is for the short-sighted without their glasses, a temporary and relative, almost unconscious refuge from clear vision. it is, of course, not as the mere cloak of a possible blush that darkness gives courage; it is because it lulls detailed self-realization, such conscious self-realization being always a source of fears, and the blush their definite symbol and visible climax. it is to the blush that we must attribute a curious complementary relationship between the face and the sacro-pubic region as centres of anatomical modesty. the women of some african tribes who go naked, emin bey remarked, cover the face with the hand under the influence of modesty. martial long since observed (lib. iii, lxviii) that when an innocent girl looks at the penis she gazes through her fingers. where, as among many mohammedan peoples, the face is the chief focus of modesty, the exposure of the rest of the body, including sometimes even the sacro-pubic region, and certainly the legs and thighs, often becomes a matter of indifference.[ ] this concealment of the face is more than a convention; it has a psychological basis. we may observe among ourselves the well-marked feminine tendency to hide the face in order to cloak a possible blush, and to hide the eyes as a method of lulling self-consciousness, a method fabulously attributed to the ostrich with the same end of concealment.[ ] a woman who is shy with her lover will sometimes experience little or no difficulty in showing any part of her person provided she may cover her face. when, in gynecological practice, examination of the sexual organs is necessary, women frequently find evident satisfaction in concealing the face with the hands, although not the slightest attention is being directed toward the face, and when an unsophisticated woman is betrayed into a confession which affects her modesty she is apt to turn her back to her interlocutor. "when the face of woman is covered," it has been said, "her heart is bared," and the catholic church has recognized this psychological truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent's face shall not be visible. the gay and innocent freedom of southern women during carnival is due not entirely to the permitted license of the season or the concealment of identity, but to the mask that hides the face. in england, during queen elizabeth's reign and at the restoration, it was possible for respectable women to be present at the theatre, even during the performance of the most free-spoken plays, because they wore masks. the fan has often subserved a similar end.[ ] all such facts serve to show that, though the forms of modesty may change, it is yet a very radical constituent of human nature in all stages of civilization, and that it is, to a large extent, maintained by the mechanism of blushing. footnotes: [ ] melinaud ("pourquoi rougit-on?" _revue des deux mondes_, octobre, ) points out that blushing is always associated with fear, and indicates, in the various conditions under which it may arise,--modesty, timidity, confusion,--that we have something to conceal which we fear may be discovered. "all the evidence," partridge states, "seems to point to the conclusion that the mental state underlying blushing belongs to the fear family. the presence of the feeling of dread, the palpitation of the heart, the impulse to escape, to hide, the shock, all confirms this view." [ ] g. stanley hall, "a study of fears," _american journal psychology_, . [ ] men are also very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the part of the opposite sex. to this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress before women artists and women doctors. i am told there is often difficulty in getting men to pose nude to women artists. sir jonathan hutchinson was compelled, some years ago, to exclude lady members of the medical profession from the instructive demonstrations at his museum, "on account of the unwillingness of male patients to undress before them." a similar unwillingness is not found among women patients, but it must be remembered that, while women are accustomed to men as doctors, men (in england) are not yet accustomed to women as doctors. [ ] "i am acquainted with the case of a shy man," writes dr. harry campbell, in his interesting study of "morbid shyness" (_british medical journal_, september , ), "who will make himself quite at home in the house of a blind person, and help himself to wine with the utmost confidence, whereas if a member of the family, who can see, comes into the room, all his old shyness returns, and he wishes himself far away." [ ] stanley hall ("showing off and bashfulness," _pedagogical seminary_, june, ), quotes dr. anagnos, of the perkins institute for the blind, to this effect. [ ] thus, sonnini, in the eighteenth century, noted that the country women in egypt only wore a single garment, open from the armpits to the knees on each side, so that it revealed the body at every movement; "but this troubles the women little, provided the face is not exposed." (_voyage dans la haute et basse egypte_, , vol. i, p, .) when casanova was at constantinople, the comte de bonneval, a convert to islam, assured him that he was mistaken in trying to see a woman's face when he might easily obtain greater favors from her. "the most reserved of turkish women," the comte assured him, "only carries her modesty in her face, and as soon as her veil is on she is sure that she will never blush at anything." (_mémoires_, vol. i, p. .) [ ] it is worth noting that this impulse is rooted in the natural instinctive acts and ideas of childhood. stanley hall, dealing with the "early sense of self," in the report already mentioned, refers to the eyes as perhaps even more than the hands, feet, and mouth, "the centres of that kind of self-consciousness which is always mindful of how the self appears to others," and proceeds to mention "the very common impression of young children that if the eyes are covered or closed they cannot be seen. some think the entire body thus vanishes from sight of others; some, that the head also ceases to be visible; and a still higher form of this curious psychosis is that, when they are closed, the soul cannot be seen." (_american journal of psychology_, vol. ix, no. , .) the instinctive and unreasoned character of this act is further shown by its occurrence in idiots. näcke mentions that he once had occasion to examine the abdomen of an idiot, who, thereupon, attempted to draw down his shirt with the left hand, while with the right he covered his eyes. [ ] cf. stanley hall and t. smith, "showing off and bashfulness," _american journal of psychology_, june, . iv. summary of the factors of modesty--the future of modesty--modesty an essential element of love. we have seen that the factors of modesty are numerous. to attempt to explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an example of psychic paralysis, of _stauung_, is to elude the problem by the statement of what is little more than a truism. modesty is a complexus of emotions with their concomitant ideas which we must unravel to comprehend. we have found among the factors of modesty: ( ) the primitive animal gesture of sexual refusal on the part of the female when she is not at that moment of her generative life at which she desires the male's advances; ( ) the fear of arousing disgust, a fear primarily due to the close proximity of the sexual centre to the points of exit of those excretions which are useless and unpleasant, even in many cases to animals; ( ) the fear of the magic influence of sexual phenomena, and the ceremonial and ritual practices primarily based on this fear, and ultimately passing into simple rules of decorum which are signs and guardians of modesty; ( ) the development of ornament and clothing, concomitantly fostering alike the modesty which represses male sexual desire and the coquetry which seeks to allure it; ( ) the conception of women as property, imparting a new and powerful sanction to an emotion already based on more natural and primitive facts. it must always be remembered that these factors do not usually occur separately. very often they are all of them implied in a single impulse of modesty. we unravel the cord in order to investigate its construction, but in real life the strands are more or less indistinguishably twisted together. it may still be asked finally whether, on the whole, modesty really becomes a more prominent emotion as civilization advances. i do not think this position can be maintained. it is a great mistake, as we have seen, to suppose that in becoming extended modesty also becomes intensified. on the contrary, this very extension is a sign of weakness. among savages, modesty is far more radical and invincible than among the civilized. of the araucanian women of chile, treutler has remarked that they are distinctly more modest than the christian white population, and such observations might be indefinitely extended. it is, as we have already noted, in a new and crude civilization, eager to mark its separation from a barbarism it has yet scarcely escaped, that we find an extravagant and fantastic anxiety to extend the limits of modesty in life, and art, and literature. in older and more mature civilizations--in classical antiquity, in old japan, in france--modesty, while still a very real influence, becomes a much less predominant and all-pervading influence. in life it becomes subservient to human use, in art to beauty, in literature to expression. among ourselves we may note that modesty is a much more invincible motive among the lower social classes than among the more cultivated classes. this is so even when we should expect the influence of occupation to induce familiarity. thus i have been told of a ballet-girl who thinks it immodest to bathe in the fashion customary at the seaside, and cannot make up her mind to do so, but she appears on the stage every night in tights as a matter of course; while fanny kemble, in her _reminiscences_, tells of an actress, accustomed to appear in tights, who died a martyr to modesty rather than allow a surgeon to see her inflamed knee. modesty is, indeed, a part of self-respect, but in the fully-developed human being self-respect itself holds in check any excessive modesty.[ ] we must remember, moreover, that there are more definite grounds for the subordination of modesty with the development of civilization. we have seen that the factors of modesty are many, and that most of them are based on emotions which make little urgent appeal save to races in a savage or barbarous condition. thus, disgust, as richet has truly pointed out, necessarily decreases as knowledge increases.[ ] as we analyze and understand our experiences better, so they cause us less disgust. a rotten egg is disgusting, but the chemist feels no disgust toward sulphuretted hydrogen; while a solution of propylamin does not produce the disgusting impression of that human physical uncleanliness of which it is an odorous constituent. as disgust becomes analyzed, and as self-respect tends to increased physical purity, so the factor of disgust in modesty is minimized. the factor of ceremonial uncleanness, again, which plays so urgent a part in modesty at certain stages of culture, is to-day without influence except in so far as it survives in etiquette. in the same way the social-economic factor of modesty, based on the conception of women as property, belongs to a stage of human development which is wholly alien to an advanced civilization. even the most fundamental impulse of all, the gesture of sexual refusal, is normally only imperative among animals and savages. thus civilization tends to subordinate, if not to minimize, modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a fundamental social law of life. but an essential grace of life it still remains, and whatever delicate variations it may assume we can scarcely conceive of its disappearance. in the art of love, however, it is more than a grace; it must always be fundamental. modesty is not indeed the last word of love, but it is the necessary foundation for all love's most exquisite audacities, the foundation which alone gives worth and sweetness to what sénancour calls its "delicious impudence."[ ] without modesty we could not have, nor rightly value at its true worth, that bold and pure candor which is at once the final revelation of love and the seal of its sincerity. even hohenemser--who argues that for the perfect man there could be no shame, because shame rests on an inner conflict in one's own personality, and "the perfect man knows no inner conflict"--believes that, since humanity is imperfect, modesty possesses a high and, indeed, symptomatic value, for "its presence shows that according to the measure of a man's ideal personality, his valuations are established." dugas goes further, and asserts that the ideals of modesty develop with human development, and forever take on new and finer forms. "there is," he declares, "a very close relationship between naturalness, or sincerity, and modesty, for in love, naturalness is the ideal attained, and modesty is only the fear of coming short of that ideal. naturalness is the sign and the test of perfect love. it is the sign of it, for, when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. it is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. what we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; it is the gift of a physical and moral evolution which it is precisely the object of modesty to keep. modesty is the feeling of the true, that is to say, of the healthy, in love; it long exists as a vision, not yet attained; vague, yet sufficiently clear for all that deviates from it to be repelled as offensive and painful. at first, a remote and seemingly inaccessible ideal, as it comes nearer it grows human and individual, and emerges from the region of dream, ceasing not to be loved as ideal, even when it is possessed as real. "at first sight, it seems paradoxical to define modesty as an aspiration towards truth in love; it seems, on the contrary, to be an altogether factitious feeling. but to simplify the problem, we have to suppose modesty reduced to its normal functions, disengaged from its superstitions, its variegated customs and prejudices, the true modesty of simple and healthy natures, as far removed from prudery as from immodesty. and what we term the natural, or the true in love, is the singular mingling of two forms of imaginations, wrongly supposed to be incompatible: ideal aspiration and the sense for the realities of life. thus defined, modesty not only repudiates that cold and dissolving criticism which deprives love of all poetry, and prepares the way for a brutal realism; it also excludes that light and detached imagination which floats above love, the mere idealism of heroic sentiments, which cherishes poetic illusions, and passes, without seeing it, the love that is real and alive. true modesty implies a love not addressed to the heroes of vain romances, but to living people, with their feet on the earth. but on the other hand, modesty is the respect of love; if it is not shocked by its physical necessities, if it accepts physiological and psychological conditions, it also maintains the ideal of those moral proprieties outside of which, for all of us, love cannot be enjoyed. when love is really felt, and not vainly imagined, modesty is the requirement of an ideal of dignity, conceived as the very condition of that love. separate modesty from love, that is, from love which is not floating in the air, but crystallized around a real person, and its psychological reality, its poignant and tragic character, disappears." (dugas, "la pudeur," _revue philosophique_, nov., .) so conceived, modesty becomes a virtue, almost identical with the roman _modestia_. footnotes: [ ] freud remarks that one may often hear, concerning elderly ladies, that in their youth in the country, they suffered, almost to collapse, from hæmorrhages from the genital passage, because they were too modest to seek medical advice and examination; he adds that it is extremely rare to find such an attitude among our young women to-day. (s. freud, _zur neurosenlehre_, , p. .) it would be easy to find evidence of the disappearance of misplaced signs of modesty formerly prevalent, although this mark of increasing civilization has not always penetrated to our laws and regulations. [ ] "disgust," he remarks, "is a sort of synthesis which attaches to the total form of objects, and which must diminish and disappear as scientific analysis separates into parts what, as a whole, is so repugnant." [ ] sénancour, _de l'amour_, , vol. i, p. . he remarks that a useless and false reserve is due to stupidity rather than to modesty. the phenomena of sexual periodicity. i. the various physiological and psychological rhythms--menstruation--the alleged influence of the moon--frequent suppression of menstruation among primitive races--mittelschmerz--possible tendency to a future intermenstrual cycle--menstruation among animals--menstruating monkeys and apes--what is menstruation--its primary cause still obscure--the relation of menstruation to ovulation--the occasional absence of menstruation in health--the relation of menstruation to "heat"--the prohibition of intercourse during menstruation--the predominance of sexual excitement at and around the menstrual period--its absence during the period frequently apparent only. throughout the vegetable and animal worlds the sexual functions are periodic. from the usually annual period of flowering in plants, with its play of sperm-cell and germ-cell and consequent seed-production, through the varying sexual energies of animals, up to the monthly effervescence of the generative organism in woman, seeking not without the shedding of blood for the gratification of its reproductive function, from first to last we find unfailing evidence of the periodicity of sex. at first the sun, and then, as some have thought, the moon, have marked throughout a rhythmic impress on the phenomena of sex. to understand these phenomena we have not only to recognize the bare existence of that periodic fact, but to realize its implications. rhythm, it is scarcely necessary to remark, is far from characterizing sexual activity alone. it is the character of all biological activity, alike on the physical and the psychic sides. all the organs of the body appear to be in a perpetual process of rhythmic contraction and expansion. the heart is rhythmic, so is the respiration. the spleen is rhythmic, so also the bladder. the uterus constantly undergoes regular rhythmic contractions at brief intervals. the vascular system, down to the smallest capillaries, is acted on by three series of vibrations, and every separate fragment of muscular tissue possesses rhythmic contractility. growth itself is rhythmic, and, as malling-hansen and subsequent observers have found, follows a regular annual course as well as a larger cycle. on the psychic sides attention is rhythmic. we are always irresistibly compelled to impart a rhythm to every succession of sounds, however uniform and monotonous. a familiar example of this is the rhythm we can seldom refrain from hearing in the puffing of an engine. a series of experiments, by bolton, on thirty subjects showed that the clicks of an electric telephone connected in an induction-apparatus nearly always fell into rhythmic groups, usually of two or four, rarely of three or five, the rhythmic perception being accompanied by a strong impulse to make corresponding muscular movements.[ ] it is, however, with the influence--to some extent real, to some extent, perhaps, only apparent--of cosmic rhythm that we are here concerned. the general tendency, physical and psychic, of nervous action to fall into rhythm is merely interesting from the present point of view as showing a biological predisposition to accept any periodicity that is habitually imposed upon the organism.[ ] menstruation has always been associated with the lunar revolutions.[ ] darwin, without specifically mentioning menstruation, has suggested that the explanation of the allied cycle of gestation in mammals, as well as incubation in birds, may be found in the condition under which ascidians live at high and low water in consequence of the phenomena of tidal change.[ ] it must, however, be remembered that the ascidian origin of the vertebrates has since been contested from many sides, and, even if we admit that at all events some such allied conditions in the early history of vertebrates and their ancestors tended to impress a lunar cycle on the race, it must still be remembered that the monthly periodicity of menstruation only becomes well marked in the human species.[ ] bearing in mind the influence exerted on both the habits and the emotions even of animals by the brightness of moonlight nights, it is perhaps not extravagant to suppose that, on organisms already ancestrally predisposed to the influence of rhythm in general and of cosmic rhythm in particular, the periodically recurring full moon, not merely by its stimulation of the nervous system, but possibly by the special opportunities which it gave for the exercise of the sexual functions, served to implant a lunar rhythm on menstruation. how important such a factor may be we have evidence in the fact that the daily life of even the most civilized peoples is still regulated by a weekly cycle which is apparently a segment of the cosmic lunar cycle. mantegazza has suggested that the sexual period became established with relation to the lunar period because moonlight nights were favorable to courting,[ ] and nelson remarks that in his experience young and robust persons are subject to recurrent periods of wakefulness at night which they attribute to the action of the full moon. one may perhaps refer also to the tendency of bright moonlight to stir the emotions of the young, especially at puberty, a tendency which in neurotic persons may become almost morbid.[ ] it is interesting to point out that, the farther back we are able to trace the beginnings of culture, the more important we find the part played by the moon. next to the alteration of day and night, the moon's changes are the most conspicuous and startling phenomena of nature; they first suggest a basis for reckoning time; they are of the greatest use in primitive agriculture; and everywhere the moon is held to have vast influence on the whole of organic life. hahn has suggested that the reason why mythological systems do not usually present the moon in the supreme position which we should expect, is that its immense importance is so ancient a fact that it tends, with mythological development, to become overlaid by other elements.[ ] according to seler, quetzalcouatl and tezeatlipoca, the two most considerable figures in the mexican pantheon, are to be regarded mainly as complementary forms of the moon divinity, and the moon was the chief mexican measurer of time.[ ] even in babylonia, where the sun was most specially revered, at the earliest period the moon ranked higher, being gradually superseded by the worship of the sun.[ ] although such considerations as these will by no means take us as far back as the earliest appearance of menstruation, they may serve to indicate that the phases of the moon probably played a large part in the earliest evolution of man. with that statement we must at present rest content. it is possible that the monthly character of menstruation, while representing a general tendency of the human race, always and everywhere prevalent, may be modified in the future. it is a noteworthy fact that among many primitive races menstruation only occurs at long intervals. thus among eskimo women menstruation follows the peculiar cosmic conditions to which the people are subjected; cook, the ethnologist of the peary north greenland expedition, found that menstruation only began after the age of nineteen, and that it was usually suppressed during the winter months, when there is no sun, only about one in ten women continuing to menstruate during this period.[ ] it was stated by velpeau that lapland and greenland women usually only menstruate every three months, or even only two or three times during the year. on the faroe islands it is said that menstruation is frequently absent. among the samoyeds, mantegazza mentions that menstruation is so slight that some travelers have denied its existence. azara noted among the guaranis of paraguay that menstruation was not only slight in amount, but the periods were separated by long intervals. among the indians in north america, again, menstruation appears to be scanty. thus, holder, speaking of his experience with the crow indians of montana, says: "i am quite sure that full-blood indians in this latitude do not menstruate so freely as white women, not usually exceeding three days."[ ] among the naked women of tierra del fuego, it is said that there is often no physical sign of the menses for six months at a time. these observations are noteworthy, though they clearly indicate, on the whole, that primitiveness in race is a very powerless factor without a cold climate. on the other hand, again, there is some reason to suppose that in europe there is a latent tendency in some women for the menstrual cycle to split up further into two cycles, by the appearance of a latent minor climax in the middle of the monthly interval. i allude to the phenomenon usually called _mittelschmerz_, middle period, or intermenstrual pain. since the investigations of goodman, stephenson, van ott, reinl, jacobi, and others, it has been generally recognized that menstruation is a continuous process, the flow being merely the climax of a menstrual cycle, a physiological wave which is in constant flux or reflux. this cycle manifests itself in all a woman's activities, in metabolism, respiration, temperature, etc., as well as on the nervous and psychic side. the healthier the woman is, the less conscious is the cyclic return of her life, but the cycle may be traced (as hegar has found) even before puberty takes place, while salerni has found that even in amenorrhoea the menstrual cycle still manifests itself in the temperature and respiration. (_rivista sperimentale di freniatria_, xxx, fasc. - .) for a summary of the phenomena of the menstrual cycle, see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth ed., revised and enlarged, ch. xi; "the functional periodicity of women." cf. keller, _archives générales de médecine_, may, ; hegar, _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , heft and ; helen macmurchy, _lancet_, oct. . ; a.e. giles, _transactions obstetrical society london_, vol. xxxix, p. , etc. _mittelschmerz_ is a condition of pain occurring about the middle of the intermenstrual period, either alone or accompanied by a slight sanguineous discharge, or, more frequently, a non-sanguineous discharge. (in a case described by van voornveld, the manifestation was confined to a regularly occurring rise of temperature.) the phenomenon varies, but seems usually to occur about the fourteenth day, and to last two or three days. laycock, in (_nervous diseases of women_, p. ), gave instances of women with an intermenstrual period. depaul and guéniot (_dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_, art., "menstruation," p. ) speak of intermenstrual symptoms, and even actual flow, as occurring in women who are in a perfect state of health, and constituting genuine "_règles surnuméraries_." the condition is, however, said to have been first fully described by valleix; then, in by sir william priestley; and subsequently by fehling, fasbender, sorel, halliday croom, findley, addinsell, and others. (see, for instance, "mittelschmerz," by j. halliday croom, _transactions of edinburgh obstetrical society_, vol. xxi, . also, krieger, _menstruation_, pp. - .) fliess (_die beziehungen zwischen nase und weiblichen geschlechts-organen_, p. ) goes so far as to assert that an intermenstrual period of menstrual symptoms--which he terms _nebenmenstruation_--is "a phenomenon well known to most healthy women." observations are at present too few to allow any definite conclusions, and in some of the cases so far recorded a pathological condition of the sexual organs has been found to exist. rosner, of cracow, however, found that only in one case out of twelve was there any disease present (_la gynécologie_, june, ), and storer, who has met with twenty cases, insists on the remarkable and definite regularity of the manifestations, wholly unlike those of neuralgia (_boston medical and surgical journal_, april , ). there is no agreement as to the cause of _mittelschmerz_. addinsell attributed it to disease of the fallopian tubes. this, however, is denied by such competent authorities as cullingworth and bland sutton. others, like priestley, and subsequently marsh (_american journal of obstetrics_, july, ), have sought to find the explanation in the occurrence of ovulation. this theory is, however, unsupported by facts, and eventually rests on the exploded belief that ovulation is the cause of menstruation. rosner, following richelet, vaguely attributes it to the diffused hyperæmia which is generally present. van de velde also attributes it to an abnormal fall of vascular tone, causing passive congestion of the pelvic viscera. others again, like armand routh and maclean, in the course of an interesting discussion on _mittelschmerz_ at the obstetric society of london, on the second day of march, , believe that we may trace here a double menstruation, and would explain the phenomenon by assuming that in certain cases there is an intermenstrual as well as a menstrual cycle. the question is not yet ripe for settlement, though it is fully evident that, looking broadly at the phenomena of rut and menstruation, the main basis of their increasing frequency as we rise toward civilized man is increase of nutrition, heat and sunlight being factors of nutrition. when dealing with civilized man, however, we are probably concerned not merely with general nutrition, but with the nervous direction of that nutrition. at this stage it is natural to inquire what the corresponding phenomena are among animals. unfortunately, imperfect as is our comprehension of the human phenomena, our knowledge of the corresponding phenomena among animals is much more fragmentary and incomplete. among most animals menstruation does not exist, being replaced by what is known as heat, or oestrus, which usually occurs once or twice a year, in spring and in autumn, sometimes affecting the male as well as the female.[ ] there is, however, a great deal of progression in the upward march of the phenomena, as we approach our own and allied zoölogical series. heat in domesticated cows usually occurs every three weeks. the female hippopotamus in the zoölogical gardens has been observed to exhibit monthly sexual excitement, with swelling and secretion from the vulva. progression is not only toward greater frequency with higher evolution or with increased domestication, but there is also a change in the character of the flow. as wiltshire,[ ] in his remarkable lectures on the "comparative physiology of menstruation," asserted as a law, the more highly evolved the animal, the more sanguineous the catamenial flow. it is not until we reach the monkeys that this character of the flow becomes well marked. monthly sanguineous discharges have been observed among many monkeys. in the seventeenth century various observers in many parts of the world--bohnius, peyer, helbigius, van der wiel, and others--noted menstruation in monkeys.[ ] buffon observed it among various monkeys as well as in the orang-utan. j.g. st. hilaire and cuvier, many years ago, declared that menstruation exists among a variety of monkeys and lower apes. rengger described a vaginal discharge in a species of cebus in paraguay, while raciborski observed in the jardin des plantes that the menstrual hæmorrhage in guenons was so abundant that the floor of the cage was covered by it to a considerable extent; the same variety of monkey was observed at surinam, by hill, a surgeon in the dutch army, who noted an abundant sanguineous flow occurring at every new moon, and lasting about three days, the animal at this time also showing signs of sexual excitement.[ ] the macaque and the baboon appear to be the non-human animals, in which menstruation has been most carefully observed. in the former, besides the flow, bland sutton remarks that "all the naked or pale-colored parts of the body, such as the face, neck, and ischial regions, assume a lively pink color; in some cases, it is a vivid red."[ ] the flow is slight, but the coloring lasts several days, and in warm weather the labia are much swollen. heape[ ] has most fully and carefully described menstruation in monkeys. he found at calcutta that the _macacus cynomolgus_ menstruated regularly on the th of december, th of january, and about the th of february. the _cynocephalus porcaria_ and the _semnopithecus entellus_ both menstruated each month for about four days. in the _macaci rhesus_ and _cynomolgus_ at menstruation "the nipples and vulva become swollen and deeply congested, and the skin of the buttocks swollen, tense, and of a brilliant-red or even purple color. the abdominal wall also, for a short space upward, and the inside of the thighs, sometimes as far down as the heel, and the under surface of the tail for half its length or more, are all colored a vivid red, while the skin of the face, especially about the eyes, is flushed or blotched with red." in late gestation the coloring is still more vivid. something similar is to be seen in the males also. distant, who kept a female baboon for some time, has recorded the dates of menstruation during a year. he found that nine periods occurred during the year. the average length between the periods was nearly six weeks, but they occurred more frequently in the late autumn and the winter than in the summer.[ ] it is an interesting fact, heape noted, that, notwithstanding menstruation, the seasonal influence, or rut, still persisted in the monkeys he investigated. in the anthropoid apes, hartmann remarks that several observers have recorded periodic menstruation in the chimpanzee, with flushing and enlargement of the external parts, and protrusion of the external lips, which are not usually visible, while there is often excessive enlargement and reddening of these parts and of the posterior callosities during sexual excitement. very little, however, appears to be definitely known regarding any form of menstruation in the higher apes. m. deniker, who has made a special study of the anthropoid apes, informs me that he has so far been unable to make definite observations regarding the existence of menstruation. moll remarks that he received information regarding such a phenomenon in the orang-utan. a pair of orang-utans was kept in the berlin zoölogical gardens some years ago, and the female was stated to have at intervals a menstrual flow resembling that of women, and during this period to refrain from sexual congress, which was otherwise usually exercised at regular intervals, at least every two or three days; moll adds, however, that, while his informant is a reliable man, the length of time that has elapsed may have led him to make mistakes in details. keith, in a paper read before the zoölogical society of london, has described menstruation in a chimpanzee; it occurred every twenty-third or twenty-fourth day, and lasted for three days; the discharge was profuse, and first appeared in about the ninth or tenth year.[ ] what is menstruation? it is easy to describe it, by its obvious symptoms, as a monthly discharge of blood from the uterus, but nearly as much as that was known in the infancy of the world. when we seek to probe more intimately into the nature of menstruation we are still baffled, not merely as regards its cause, but even as regards its precise mechanism. "the primary cause of menstruation remains unexplained"; "the cause of menstruation remains as obscure as ever"; so conclude two of the most thorough and cautious investigators into this subject.[ ] it is, however, widely accepted that the main cause of menstruation is a rhythmic contraction of the uterus,--the result of a disappointed preparation for impregnation,--a kind of miniature childbirth. this seems to be the most reasonable view of menstruation; i.e., as an abortion of a decidua. burdach (according to beard) was the first who described menstruation as an abortive parturition. "the hypothesis," marshall and jolly conclude, "that the entire pro-oestrous process is of the nature of a preparation for the lodgment of the ovum is in accordance with the facts."[ ] fortunately, since we are here primarily concerned with its psychological aspects, the precise biological cause and physiological nature of menstruation do not greatly concern us. there is, however, one point which of late years has been definitely determined, and which should not be passed without mention: the relation of menstruation to ovulation. it was once supposed that the maturation of an ovule in the ovaries was the necessary accompaniment, and even cause, of menstruation. we now know that ovulation proceeds throughout the whole of life, even before birth, and during gestation,[ ] and that removal of the ovaries by no means necessarily involves a cessation of menstruation. it has been shown that regular and even excessive menstruation may take place in the congenital absence of a trace of ovaries or fallopian tubes.[ ] on the other hand, a rudimentary state of the uterus, and a complete absence of menstruation, may exist with well-developed ovaries and normal ovulation.[ ] we must regard the uterus as to some extent an independent organ, and menstruation as a process which arose, no doubt, with the object, teleologically speaking, of cooperating more effectively with ovulation, but has become largely independent.[ ] it is sometimes stated that menstruation may be entirely absent in perfect health. few cases of this condition have, however, been recorded with the detail necessary to prove the assertion. one such case was investigated by dr. h.w. mitchell, and described in a paper read to the new york county medical society, february , (to be found in _medical reprints_, june, ). the subject was a young, unmarried woman, years of age. she was born in ireland, and, until her emigration, lived quietly at home with her parents. being then twenty years of age, she left home and came to new york. up to that time no signs of menstruation had appeared, and she had never heard that such a function existed. soon after her arrival in new york, she obtained a situation as a waiting-maid, and it was noticed, after a time, that she was not unwell at each month. friends filled her ears with wild stories about the dreadful effects likely to follow the absence of menstruation. this worried her greatly, and as a consequence she became pale and anæmic, with loss of flesh, appetite, and sleep, and a long train of imaginary nervous symptoms. she presented herself for treatment, and insisted upon a uterine examination. this revealed no pathological condition of her uterus. she was assured that she would not die, or become insane, nor a chronic invalid. in consequence she soon forgot that she differed in any way from other girls. a course of chalybeate tonics, generous diet, and proper care of her general health, soon restored her to her normal condition. after close observation for several years, she submitted to a thorough examination, although entirely free from any abnormal symptoms. the examination revealed the following physical condition: weight, pounds (her weight before leaving ireland was ); girth of chest, twenty-nine and a half inches; girth of abdomen, twenty-five inches; girth of pelvis, thirty-four and a half inches; girth of thigh, upper third, twenty inches; heart healthy, sounds and rhythm perfectly normal; pulse, ; lungs healthy; respiratory murmur clear and distinct over every part; respiration, easy and twenty per minute; the mammæ are well developed, firm, and round; nipples, small, no areola; her skin is soft, smooth, and healthy; figure erect, plump, and symmetrical; her bowels are regular; kidneys, healthy. she has a good appetite, sleeps well, and in no particular shows any sign of ill health. the uterine examination reveals a short vagina, and a small, round cervix uteri, rather less in size than the average, and projecting very slightly into the vaginal canal. depth of uterus from os to fundus, two and a quarter inches, is very nearly normal. no external sign of abnormal ovaries. she is a well-developed, healthy young woman, performing all her physiological functions naturally and regularly, except the single function of menstruation. no vicarious menstruation takes the place of the natural function, though she has been watched very closely during the past two years, nor the least periodical excitement. it is added that, though the clitoris is normal, the mons veneris is almost destitute of hair, and the labia rather undeveloped, while, "as far as is known," sexual instincts and desire are entirely absent. these latter facts, i may add, would seem to suggest that, in spite of the health of the subject, there is yet some concealed lack of development of the sexual system, of congenital character. in a case recorded by plant (_centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , , summarized in the _british medical journal_, april , ), in which the internal sexual organs were almost wholly undeveloped, and menstruation absent, the labia were similarly undeveloped, and the pubic hair scanty, while the axillary hair was wholly absent, though that of the head was long and strong. we may now regard as purely academic the discussion formerly carried on as to whether menstruation is to be regarded as analogous to heat in female animals. for many centuries at least the resemblance has been sufficiently obvious. raciborski and pouchet, who first established the regular periodicity of ovulation in mammals, identified heat and menstruation.[ ] during the past century there was, notwithstanding, an occasional tendency to deny any real connection. no satisfactory grounds for this denial have, however, been brought forward. lawson tait, indeed, and more recently beard, have stated that menstruation cannot be the period of heat, because women have a disinclination to the approach of the male at that time.[ ] but, as we shall see later, this statement is unfounded. an argument which might, indeed, be brought forward is the very remarkable fact that, while in animals the period of heat is the only period for sexual intercourse, among all human races, from the very lowest, the period of menstruation is the one period during which sexual intercourse is strictly prohibited, sometimes under severe penalties, even life itself. this, however, is a social, not a physiological, fact. ploss and bartels call attention to the curious contrast, in this respect, between heat and menstruation. the same authors also mention that in the middle ages, however, preachers found it necessary to warn their hearers against the sin of intercourse during the menstrual period. it may be added that aquinas and many other early theologians held, not only that such intercourse was a deadly sin, but that it engendered leprous and monstrous children. some later theologians, however, like sanchez, argued that the mosaic enactments (such as leviticus, ch. xx, v. ) no longer hold good. modern theologians--in part influenced by the tolerant traditions of liguori, and, in part, like debreyne (_moechialogie_, pp. et seq.) informed by medical science--no longer prohibit intercourse during menstruation, or regard it as only a venial sin. we have here a remarkable, but not an isolated, example of the tendency of the human mind in its development to rebel against the claims of primitive nature. the whole of religion is a similar remolding of nature, a repression of natural impulses, an effort to turn them into new channels. prohibition of intercourse during menstruation is a fundamental element of savage ritual, an element which is universal merely because the conditions which caused it are universal, and because--as is now beginning to be generally recognized--the causes of human psychic evolution are everywhere the same. a strictly analogous phenomenon, in the sexual sphere itself, is the opposed attitude in barbarism and civilization toward the sexual organs. under barbaric conditions and among savages, when no magico-religious ideas intervene, the sexual organs are beautiful and pleasurable objects. under modern conditions this is not so. this difference of attitude is reflected in sculpture. in savage and barbaric carvings of human beings, the sexual organs of both sexes are often enormously exaggerated. this is true of the archaic european figures on which salomon reinach has thrown so much light, but in modern sculpture, from the time when it reached its perfection in greece onward, the sexual regions in both men and women are systematically minimized.[ ] with advancing culture--as again we shall see later--there is a conflict of claims, and certain considerations are regarded as "higher" and more potent than merely "natural" claims. nakedness is more natural than clothing, and on many grounds more desirable under the average circumstances of life, yet, everywhere, under the stress of what are regarded as higher considerations, there is a tendency for all races to add more and more to the burden of clothes. in the same way it happens that the tendency of the female to sexual intercourse during menstruation[ ] has everywhere been overlaid by the ideas of a culture which has insisted on regarding menstruation as a supernatural phenomenon which, for the protection of everybody, must be strictly tabooed.[ ] this tendency is reinforced, and in high civilization replaced, by the claims of an æsthetic regard for concealment and reserve during this period. such facts are significant for the early history of culture, but they must not blind us to the real analogy between heat and menstruation, an analogy or even identity which may be said to be accepted now by most careful investigators.[ ] if it is, perhaps, somewhat excessive to declare, with johnstone, that "woman is the only animal in which rut is omnipresent," we must admit that the two groups of phenomena merge into or replace each other, that their object is identical, that they involve similar psychic conditions. here, also, we see a striking example of the way in which women preserve a primitive phenomenon which earlier in the zoölogical series was common to both sexes, but which man has now lost. heat and menstruation, with whatever difference of detail, are practically the same phenomenon. we cannot understand menstruation unless we bear this in mind. on the psychic side the chief normal and primitive characteristic of the menstrual state is the more predominant presence of the sexual impulse. there are other mental and emotional signs of irritability and instability which tend to slightly impair complete mental integrity, and to render, in some unbalanced individuals explosions of anger or depression, in rarer cases crime, more common;[ ] but the heightening of the sexual impulse, languor, shyness, and caprice are the more human manifestations of an emotional state which in some of the lower female animals during heat may produce a state of fury. the actual period of the menstrual flow, at all events the first two or three days, does not, among european women, usually appear to show any heightening of sexual emotion.[ ] this heightening occurs usually a few days before, and especially during, the latter part of the flow, and immediately after it ceases.[ ] i have, however, convinced myself by inquiry that this absence of sexual feeling during the height of the flow is, in large part, apparent only. no doubt, the onset of the flow, often producing a general depression of vitality, may tend directly to depress the emotions, which are heightened by the general emotional state and local congestion of the days immediately preceding; but among some women, at all events, who are normal and in good health, i find that the period of menstruation itself is covered by the period of the climax of sexual feeling. thus, a married lady writes: "my feelings are always very strong, not only just before and after, but during the period; very unfortunately, as, of course, they cannot then be gratified"; while a refined girl of , living a chaste life, without either coitus or masturbation, which she has never practiced, habitually feels very strong sexual excitement about the time of menstruation, and more especially during the period; this desire torments her life, prevents her from sleeping at these times, and she looks upon it as a kind of illness.[ ] i could quote many other similar and equally emphatic statements, and the fact that so cardinal a relationship of the sexual life of women should be ignored or denied by most writers on this matter, is a curious proof of the prevailing ignorance.[ ] this ignorance has been fostered by the fact that women, often disguise even to themselves the real state of their feelings. one lady remarks that while she would be very ready for coitus during menstruation, the thought that it is impossible during that time makes her put the idea of it out of her mind. i have reason to think that this statement may be taken to represent the real feelings of very many women. the aversion to coitus is real, but it is often due, not to failure of sexual desire, but to the inhibitory action of powerful extraneous causes. the absence of active sexual desire in women during the height of the flow may thus be regarded as, in part, a physiological fact, following from the correspondence of the actual menstrual flow to the period of _pro-oestrum_, and in part, a psychological fact due to the æsthetic repugnance to union when in such a condition, and to the unquestioned acceptance of the general belief that at such a period intercourse is out of the question. some of the strongest factors of modesty, especially the fear of causing disgust and the sense of the demands of ceremonial ritual, would thus help to hold in check the sexual emotions during this period, and when, under the influence of insanity, these motives are in abeyance, the coincidence of sexual desire with the menstrual flow often becomes more obvious.[ ] it must be added that, especially among the lower social classes, the primitive belief of the savage that coitus during menstruation is bad for the man still persists. ploss and bartels mention that among the peasants in some parts of germany, where it is believed that impregnation is impossible during menstruation, coitus at that time would be frequent were it not thought dangerous for the man.[ ] it has also been a common belief both in ancient and modern times that coitus during menstruation engenders monsters.[ ] notwithstanding all the obstacles that are thus placed in the way of coitus during menstruation, there is nevertheless good reason to believe that the first coitus very frequently takes place at this point of least psychic resistance. when still a student i was struck by the occurrence of cases in which seduction took place during the menstrual flow, though at that time they seemed to me inexplicable, except as evidencing brutality on the part of the seducer. négrier,[ ] in the lying-in wards of the hôtel-dieu at angers, constantly found that the women from the country who came there pregnant as the result of a single coitus had been impregnated at or near the menstrual epoch, more especially when the period coincided with a feast-day, as st. john's day or christmas. whatever doubt may exist as to the most frequent state of the sexual emotions during the period of menstruation, there can be no doubt whatever that immediately before and immediately after, very commonly at both times,--this varying slightly in different women,--there is usually a marked heightening of actual desire. it is at this period (and sometimes during the menstrual flow) that masturbation may take place in women who at other times have no strong auto-erotic impulse. the only women who do not show this heightening of sexual emotion seem to be those in whom sexual feelings have not yet been definitely called into consciousness, or the small minority, usually suffering from some disorder of sexual or general health, in whom there is a high degree of sexual anæsthesia.[ ] the majority of authorities admit a heightening of sexual emotion before or after the menstrual crisis. see e.g., krafft-ebing, who places it at the post-menstrual period (_psychopathia sexualis_, eng. translation of tenth edition, p. ). adler states that sexual feeling is increased before, during and after menstruation (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , p. ). kossmann (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, i, ), advises intercourse just after menstruation, or even during the latter days of the flow, as the period when it is most needed. guyot says that the eight days after menstruation are the period of sexual desire in women (_bréviaire de l'amour expérimentale_, p. ). harry campbell investigated the periodicity of sexual desire in healthy women of the working classes, in a series of cases, by inquiries made of their husbands who were patients at a london hospital. people of this class are not always skilful in observation, and the method adopted would permit many facts to pass unrecorded; it is, therefore, noteworthy that only in one-third of the cases had no connection between menstruation and sexual feeling been observed; in the other two-thirds, sexual feeling was increased, either before, after, or during the flow, or at all of these times; the proportion of cases in which sexual feeling was increased before the flow, to those in which it was increased after, was as three to two. (h. campbell, _nervous organization of men and women_, p. .) even this elementary fact of the sexual life has, however, been denied, and, strange to say, by two women doctors. dr. mary putnam jacobi, of new york, who furnished valuable contributions to the physiology of menstruation, wrote some years ago, in a paper on "the theory of menstruation," in reference to the question of the connection between oestrus and menstruation: "neither can any such rhythmical alternation of sexual instinct be demonstrated in women as would lead to the inference that the menstrual crisis was an expression of this," i.e., of oestrus. dr. elizabeth blackwell, again, in her book on _the human element in sex_, asserts that the menstrual flow itself affords complete relief for the sexual feelings in women (like sexual emissions during sleep in men), and thus practically denies the prevalence of sexual desire in the immediately post-menstrual period, when, on such a theory, sexual feeling should be at its minimum. it is fair to add that dr. blackwell's opinion is merely the survival of a view which was widely held a century ago, when various writers (bordeu, roussel, duffieux, j. arnould, etc.), as icard has pointed out, regarded menstruation as a device of providence for safeguarding the virginity of women. footnotes: [ ] thaddeus l. bolton, "rhythm," _american journal of psychology_, january, . [ ] it is scarcely necessary to warn the reader that this statement does not prejudge the question of the inheritance of acquired characters, although it fits in with semon's mnemic theory. we can, however, very well suppose that the organism became adjusted to the rhythms of its environment by a series of congenital variations. or it might be held, on the basis of weismann's doctrine, that the germ-plasm has been directly modified by the environment. [ ] thus, the papuans, in some districts, believe that the first menstruation is due to an actual connection, during sleep, with the moon in the shape of a man, the girl dreaming that a real man is embracing her. (_reports cambridge expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. .) [ ] darwin, _descent of man_, p. . [ ] while in the majority of women the menstrual cycle is regular for the individual, and corresponds to the lunar month of days, it must be added that in a considerable minority it is rather longer, or, more usually, shorter than this, and in many individuals is not constant. osterloh found a regular type of menstruation in per cent, healthy women, four weeks being the most usual length of the cycle; in per cent, the cycle was always irregular. see näcke, "die menstruation und ihr einfluss bei chronischen psychosen," _archiv für psychiatrie_, , bd, , heft . [ ] among the duala and allied negro peoples of bantu stock dances of markedly erotic character take place at full moon. gason describes the dances and sexual festivals of the south australian blacks, generally followed by promiscuous intercourse, as taking place at full moon. (_journal of the anthropological institute_, november, , p. .) in all parts of the world, indeed, including christendom, festivals are frequently regulated by the phases of the moon. [ ] it has often been held that the course of insanity is influenced by the moon. of comparatively recent years, this thesis has been maintained by koster (_ueber die gesetze des periodischen irreseins und verwandter nervenzustände_, bonn, ), who argues in detail that periodic insanity tends to fall into periods of seven days or multiples of seven. [ ] ed. hahn, _demeter und baubo_, p. . [ ] e. seler, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft i, p. . and as regards the primitive importance of the moon, see also frazer, _adonis, attis, osiris_, ch. viii. [ ] jastrow, _religion of babylonia_, , pp. , - , . [ ] even in england, barnes has known women of feeble sexual constitution who menstruated only in summer (r. barnes, _diseases of women_, , p. ). [ ] a.b. holder, "gynecic notes among american indians," _american journal of obstetrics_, no. , . [ ] in the male, the phenomenon is termed rut, and is most familiar in the stag. i quote from marshall and jolly some remarks on the infrequency of rut: "'the male wild cat,' mr. cocks informs us, (like the stag), 'has a rutting season, calls loudly, almost day and night, making far more noise than the female.' this information is of interest, inasmuch as the males of most carnivores, although they undoubtedly show signs of increased sexual activity at some times more than at others, are not known to have anything of the nature of a regularly recurrent rutting season. nothing of the kind is known in the dog, nor, so far as we are aware, in the males of the domestic cat, or the ferret, all of which seem to be capable of copulation at any time of the year. on the other hand, the males of seals appear to have a rutting season at the same time as the sexual season of the female." (marshall and jolly, "contributions to the physiology of mammalian reproduction," _philosophical transactions_, , b. .) [ ] a. wiltshire, _british medical journal_, march, . the best account of heat known to me is contained in ellenberger's _vergleichende physiologie der haussaügethiere_, , band , theil , pp. - . [ ] schurig (_parthenologia_, , p. ), gives numerous references and quotations. [ ] quoted by icard, _la femme_, etc., p. . [ ] bland sutton, _surgical diseases of the ovaries_, and _british gynecological journal_, vol. ii. [ ] w. heape, "the menstruation of _semnopithecus entellus_," _philosophical transactions_, ; "menstruation and ovulation of _macacus rhesus_," _philosophical transactions_, . [ ] w.l. distant, "notes on the chacma baboon," _zoölogist_, january, , p, . [ ] _nature_, march , . [ ] w. heape, "the menstruation of _semnopithecus entellus_," _philosophical transactions_, , p. ; bland sutton, _surgical diseases of the ovaries_, . [ ] t. bryce and j. teacher (_contributions to the study of the early development of the human ovum_, ), putting the matter somewhat differently, regard menstruation as a cyclical process, providing for the maintenance of the endometrium in a suitable condition of immaturity for the production of the decidua of pregnancy, which they believe may take place at any time of the month, though most favorably shortly before or after a menstrual period which has been accompanied by ovulation. [ ] robinson, _american gynecological and obstetrical journal_, august, . [ ] bossi, _annali di ostetrica e ginecologia_, september, ; summarized in the _british medical journal_, october , . as regards the more normal influence of the ovaries over the uterus, see e.g. carmichael and f.h.a. marshall, "correlation of the ovarian and uterine functions," _proceedings royal society_, vol. , series b, . [ ] beuttner, _centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , ; summarized in _british medical journal_, december, . many cases show that pregnancy may occur in the absence of menstruation. see, e.g., _nouvelles archives d'obstétrique et de gynécologie_, janvier, , supplement, p. . [ ] it is still possible, and even probable, that the primordial cause of both phenomena is the same. heape (_transactions obstetrical society of london_, , vol. xl, p. ) argues that both menstruation and ovulation are closely connected with and influenced by congestion, and that in the primitive condition they are largely due to the same cause. this primary cause he is inclined to regard as a ferment, due to a change in the constitution of the blood brought about by climatic influences and food, which he proposes to call gonadin. (w. heape, _proceedings of royal society_, , vol. b. , p. .) marshall, who has found that in the ferret and other animals, ovulation may be dependent upon copulation, also considers that ovulation and menstruation, though connected and able to react on each other, may both be dependent upon a common cause; he finds that in bitches and rats heat can be produced by injection of extract from ovaries in the oestrous state (f.h.a. marshall, _philosophical transactions_, , vol. b. ; also marshall and jolly, id., , b. ). cf. c.j. bond, "an inquiry into some points in uterine and ovarian physiology and pathology in rabbits," _british medical journal_, july , . [ ] pouchet, _théorie de l'ovulation spontanée_, . as blair bell and pontland hick remark ("menstruation," _british medical journal_, march , ), the repeated oestrus of unimpregnated animals (once a fortnight in rabbits) is surely comparable to menstruation. [ ] tait, _provincial medical journal_, may, ; j. beard, _the span of gestation_, , p. . lawson tait is reduced to the assertion that ovulation and menstruation are identical. [ ] as moll points out, even the secondary sexual characters have undergone a somewhat similar change. the beard was once an important sexual attraction, but men can now afford to dispense with it without fear of loss in attractiveness. (_libido sexualis_, band i, p. .) these points are discussed at greater length in the fourth volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man." [ ] it is not absolutely established that in menstruating animals the period of menstruation is always a period of sexual congress; probably not, the influence of menstruation being diminished by the more fundamental influence of breeding seasons, which affect the male also; monkeys have a breeding season, though they menstruate regularly all the year round. [ ] see appendix a. [ ] bland sutton, loc. cit., p. . [ ] see h. ellis, _man and woman_, chapter xi. [ ] this is by no means true of european women only. thus, we read in an arabic book, _the perfumed garden_, that women have an aversion to coitus during menstruation. on the other hand, the old hindoo physician, susruta, appears to have stated that a tendency to run after men is one of the signs of menstruation. [ ] the actual period of the menstrual flow corresponds, in heape's terminology, to the congestive stage, or _pro-oestrum_, in female animals; the _oestrus_, or period of sexual desire, immediately follows the _pro-oestrum_, and is the direct result of it. see heape, "the 'sexual season' of mammals," _quarterly journal of microscopical science_, , vol. xliv, part i. [ ] it may be noted that (as barnes, oliver, and others have pointed out) there is heightened blood-pressure during menstruation. haig remarks that he has found a tendency for high pressure to be accompanied by increased sexual appetite (_uric acid_, th edition, p. ). [ ] sir w.f. wade, however, remarked, some years ago, in his ingleby lectures (_lancet_, june , ): "it is far from exceptional to find that there is an extreme enhancement of concupiscence in the immediate precatamenial period," and adds, "i am satisfied that evidence is obtainable that in some instances, ardor is at its maximum during the actual period, and suspect that cases occur in which it is almost, if not entirely, limited to that time." long ago, however, the genius of haller had noted the same fact. more recently, icard (_la femme_, chapter vi and elsewhere, e.g., p. ) has brought forward much evidence in confirmation of this view. it may be added that there is considerable significance in the fact that the erotic hallucinations, which are not infrequently experienced by women under the influence of nitrous oxide gas, are more likely to appear at the monthly period than at any other time. (d.w. buxton, _anesthetics_, , p. .) [ ] gehrung considers that in healthy young girls amorous sensations are normal during menstruation, and in some women persist, during this period, throughout life. more usually, however, as menstrual period after menstrual period recurs, without the natural interruption of pregnancy, the feeling abates, and gives place to sensations of discomfort or pain. he ascribes this to the vital tissues being sapped of more blood than can be replaced in the intervals. "the vital powers, being thus kept in abeyance, the amative sensations are either not developed, or destroyed. this, superadded by the usual moral and religious teachings, is amply sufficient, by degrees, to extinguish or prevent such feelings with the great majority. the sequestration as 'unclean,' of women during their catamenial period, as practiced in olden times, had the same tendency." (e.c. gehrung, "the status of menstruation," _transactions american gynecology society_, , p. .) [ ] it is possible there may be an element of truth in this belief. diday, of lyons, found that chronic urethorrhoea is an occasional result of intercourse during menstruation. raciborski (_traité de la menstruation_, , p. ), who also paid attention to this point, while confirming diday, came to the conclusion that some special conditions must be present on one or both sides. [ ] see, e.g., ballantyne, "teratogenesis," _transactions of the edinburgh obstetrical society_, , vol. xxi, pp. - . [ ] as quoted by icard, _la femme_, etc., p. . i have not been able to see négrier's work. [ ] i deal with the question of sexual anæsthesia in women in the third volume of these _studies_: "the sexual impulse in women." ii. the question of a monthly sexual cycle in men--the earliest suggestions of a general physiological cycle in men--periodicity in disease--insanity, heart disease, etc.--the alleged twenty-three days' cycle--the physiological periodicity of seminal emissions during sleep--original observations--fortnightly and weekly rhythms. for some centuries, at least, inquisitive observers here and there have thought they found reason to believe that men, as well as women, present various signs of a menstrual physiological cycle. it would be possible to collect a number of opinions in favor of such a monthly physiological periodicity in men. precise evidence, however, is, for the most part, lacking. men have expended infinite ingenuity in establishing the remote rhythms of the solar system and the periodicity of comets. they have disdained to trouble about the simpler task of proving or disproving the cycles of their own organisms.[ ] it is over half a century since laycock wrote that "the _scientific_ observation and treatment of disease are impossible without a knowledge of the mysterious revolutions continually taking place in the system"; yet the task of summarizing the whole of our knowledge regarding these "mysterious revolutions" is even to-day no heavy one. as to the existence of a monthly cycle in the sexual instincts of men, with a single exception, i am not aware that any attempt has been made to bring forward definite evidence.[ ] a certain interest and novelty attaches, therefore, to the evidence i am able to produce, although that evidence will not suffice to settle the question finally. the great italian physician, sanctorius, who was in so many ways the precursor of our modern methods of physiological research by the means of instruments of precision, was the first, so far as i am aware, to suggest a monthly cycle of the organism in men. he had carefully studied the weight of the body with reference to the amount of excretions, and believed that a monthly increase in weight to the amount of one or two pounds occurred in men, followed by a critical discharge of urine, this crisis being preceded by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.[ ] gall, another great initiator of modern views, likewise asserted a monthly cycle in men. he insisted that there is a monthly critical period, more marked in nervous people than in others, and that at this time the complexion becomes dull, the breath stronger, digestion more laborious, while there is sometimes disturbance of the urine, together with general _malaise_, in which the temper takes part; ideas are formed with more difficulty, and there is a tendency to melancholy, with unusual irascibility and mental inertia, lasting a few days. more recently stephenson, who established the cyclical wave-theory of menstruation, argued that it exists in men also, and is really "a general law of vital energy."[ ] sanctorius does not appear to have published the data on which his belief was founded. keill, an english, follower of sanctorius, in his _medicina statica britannica_ ( ), published a series of daily (morning and evening) body-weights for the year, without referring to the question of a monthly cycle. a period of maximum weight is shown usually, by keill's figures, to occur about once a month, but it is generally irregular, and cannot usually be shown to occur at definite intervals. monthly discharges of blood from the sexual organs and other parts of the body in men have been recorded in ancient and modern times, and were treated of by the older medical writers as an affliction peculiar to men with a feminine system. (laycock, _nervous diseases of women_, p. .) a summary of such cases will be found in gould and pyle (_anomalies and curiosities of medicine_, , pp. - ). laycock (_lancet_, - , vols. i and ii) brought forward cases of monthly and fortnightly cycles in disease, and asserted "the general principle that there are greater and less cycles of movements going on in the system, involving each other, and closely connected with the organization of the individual." he was inclined to accept lunar influence, and believed that the physiological cycle is made up of definite fractions and multiples of a period of seven days, especially a unit of three and a half days. albrecht, a somewhat erratic zoölogist, put forth the view a few years ago that there are menstrual periods in men, giving the following reasons: ( ) males are rudimentary females, ( ) in all males of mammals, a rudimentary masculine uterus (müller's ducts) still persists, ( ) totally hypospadic male individuals menstruate; and believed that he had shown that in man there is a rudimentary menstruation consisting in an almost monthly periodic appearance, lasting for three or four days, of white corpuscles in the urine (_anomalo_, february, ). dr. campbell clark, some years since, made observations on asylum attendants in regard to the temperature, during five weeks, which tended to show that the normal male temperature varies considerably within certain limits, and that "so far as i have been able to observe, there is one marked and prolonged rise every month or five weeks, averaging three days, occasional lesser rises appearing irregularly and of shorter duration. these observations are only made in three cases, and i have no proof that they refer to the sexual appetite" (campbell clark, "the sexual reproductive functions," psychological section, british medical association, glasgow, ; also, private letters). hammond (_treatise on insanity_, p. ) says: "i have certainly noted in some of my friends, the tendency to some monthly periodic abnormal manifestations. this may be in the form of a headache, or a nasal hæmorrhage, or diarrhoea, or abundant discharge of uric acid, or some other unusual occurrence. i think," he adds, "this is much more common than is ordinarily supposed, and a careful examination or inquiry will generally, if not invariably, establish the existence of a periodicity of the character referred to." dr. harry campbell, in his book on _differences in the nervous organization of men and women_, deals fully with the monthly rhythm (pp. et seq.), and devotes a short chapter to the question, "is the menstrual rhythm peculiar to the female sex?" he brings forward a few pathological cases indicating such a rhythm, but although he had written a letter to the _lancet_, asking medical men to supply him with evidence bearing on this question, it can scarcely be said that he has brought forward much evidence of a convincing kind, and such as he has brought forward is purely pathological. he believes, however, that we may accept a monthly cycle in men. "we may," he concludes, "regard the human being--both male and female--as the subject of a monthly pulsation which begins with the beginning of life, and continues till death," menstruation being regarded as a function accidentally ingrafted upon this primordial rhythm. it is not unreasonable to argue that the possibility of such a menstrual cycle is increased, if we can believe that in women, also, the menstrual cycle persists even when its outward manifestations no longer occur. aëtius said that menstrual changes take place during gestation; in more modern times, buffon was of the same opinion. laycock also maintained that menstrual changes take place during pregnancy (_nervous diseases of women_, p. ). fliess considers that it is certainly incorrect to assert that the menstrual process is arrested during pregnancy, and he refers to the frequency of monthly epistaxis and other nasal symptoms throughout this period (w. fliess, _beziehungen zwischen nase und geschlechts-organen_, pp. et seq.). beard, who attaches importance to the persistence of a cyclical period in gestation, calls it the muffled striking of the clock. harry campbell (_causation of disease_, p. ) has found post-climacteric menstrual rhythm in a fair sprinkling of cases up to the age of sixty. it is somewhat remarkable that, so far as i have observed, none of these authors refer to the possibility of any heightening of the sexual appetite at the monthly crisis which they believe to exist in men. this omission indicates that, as is suggested by the absence of definite statements on the matter of increase of sexual desire at menstruation, it was an ignored or unknown fact. of recent years, however, many writers, especially alienists, have stated their conviction that sexual desire in men tends to be heightened at approximately monthly intervals, though they have not always been able to give definite evidence in support of their statements. clouston, for instance, has frequently asserted this monthly periodic sexual heightening in men. in the article, "developmental insanity," in tuke's _psychological dictionary_, he refers to the periodic physiological heightening of the reproductive _nisus_; and, again, in an article on "alternation, periodicity, and relapse in mental diseases" (_edinburgh medical journal_, july, ), he records the case of "an insane gentleman, aged , who, for the past twenty-six years, has been subject to the most regularly occurring brain-exaltation every four weeks, almost to a day. it sometimes passes off without becoming acutely maniacal, or even showing itself in outward acts; at other times it becomes so, and lasts for periods of from one to four weeks. it is always preceded by an uncomfortable feeling in the head, and pain in the back, mental hebetude, and slight depression. the _nisus generativus_ is greatly increased, and he says that, if in that condition, he has full and free seminal emissions during sleep, the excitement passes off; if not, it goes on. a full dose of bromide or iodide of potassium often, but not always, has the effect of stopping the excitement, and a very long walk sometimes does the same. when the excitement gets to a height, it is always followed by about a week of stupid depression." in the same article clouston remarks: "i have for a long time been impressed with the relationship of the mental and bodily alternations and periodicities in insanity to the great physiological alternations and periodicities, and i have generally been led to the conclusion that they are the same in all essential respects, and only differ in degree of intensity or duration. by far the majority of the cases in women follow the law of the menstrual and sexual periodicity; the majority of the cases in men follow the law of the more irregular periodicities of the _nisus generativus_ in that sex. many of the cases in both sexes follow the seasonal periodicity which perhaps in man is merely a reversion to the seasonal generative activities of the majority of the lower animals." he found that among cases of insanity, chiefly mania and melancholia, per cent, of females and per cent, of males showed periodicity,--diurnal, monthly, seasonal, or annual, and more marked in women than in men, and in mania than in melancholia,--and adds: "i found that the younger the patient, the greater is the tendency to periodic remission and relapse. the phenomenon finds its acme in the cases of pubescent and adolescent insanity." conolly norman, in the article "mania, hysterical" (tuke's _psychological dictionary_), states that "the activity of the sexual organs is probably in both sexes fundamentally periodic." krafft-ebing records the case of a neurasthenic russian, aged , who experienced sexual desires of urologinic character, with fair regularity, every four weeks (_psychopathia sexualis_), and näcke mentions the case of a man who had nocturnal emissions at intervals of four weeks (_archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. ), while moll (_libido sexualis_, bd. i, pp. - ) recorded the case of a man, otherwise normal, who had attacks of homosexual feeling every four weeks, and rohleder (_zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, nov., ) gives the case of an unmarried slightly neuropathic physician who for several days every three to five weeks has attacks of almost satyriacal sexual excitement. féré, whose attention was called to this point, from time to time noted the existence of sexual periodicity. thus, in a case of general paralysis, attacks of continuous sexual excitement, with sleeplessness, occurred every twenty-eight days; at other times, the patient, a man of , in the stage of dementia, slept well, and showed no signs of sexual excitation (_société de biologie_, october , ). in another case, of a man of sound heredity and good health till middle life, periodic sexual manifestations began from puberty, with localized genital congestion, erotic ideas, and copious urination, lasting for two or three days. these manifestations became menstrual, with a period of intermenstrual excitement appearing regularly, but never became intense. between the age of and , the intermenstrual crises gradually ceased; at about , the menstrual crises ceased; the periodic crises continued, however, with the sole manifestation of increased frequency of urination (_société de biologie_, july , ). in a third case, of sexual neurasthenia, féré found that from puberty, onwards to middle life, there appeared, every twenty-five to twenty-eight days, tenderness and swelling below the nipple, accompanied by slight sexual excitation and erotic dreams, lasting for one or two days (_revue de médecine_, march, ). it is in the domain of disease that the most strenuous and, on the whole, the most successful efforts have been made to discover a menstrual cycle in men. such a field seems promising at the outset, for many morbid exaggerations or defects of the nervous system might be expected to emphasize, or to free from inhibition, fundamental rhythmical processes of the organism which in health, and under the varying conditions of social existence, are overlaid by the higher mental activities and the pressure of external stimuli. in the eighteenth century erasmus darwin wrote a remarkable and interesting chapter on "the periods of disease," dealing with solar and lunar influence on biological processes.[ ] since then, many writers have brought forward evidence, especially in the domain of nervous and mental disease, which seems to justify a belief that, under pathological conditions, a tendency to a male menstrual rhythm may be clearly laid bare. we should expect an organ so primitive in character as the heart, and with so powerful a rhythm already stamped upon its nervous organization, to be peculiarly apt to display a menstrual rhythm under the stress of abnormal conditions. this expectation might be strengthened by the menstrual rhythm which mr. perry-coste has found reason to suspect in pulse-frequency during health. i am able to present a case in which such a periodicity seems to be indicated. it is that of a gentleman who suffered severely for some years before his death from valvular disease of the heart, with a tendency to pulmonary congestion, and attacks of "cardiac asthma." his wife, a lady of great intelligence, kept notes of her husband's condition,[ ] and at last observed that there was a certain periodicity in the occurrence of the exacerbations. the periods were not quite regular, but show a curious tendency to recur at about thirty days' interval, a few days before the end of every month; it was during one of these attacks that he finally died. there was also a tendency to minor attacks about ten days after the major attacks. it is noteworthy that the subject showed a tendency to periodicity when in health, and once remarked laughingly before his illness: "i am just like a woman, always most excitable at a particular time of the month." periodicity has been noted in various disorders of nervous character. periodic insanity has long been known and studied (see, e.g., pilcz, _die periodischen geistesstörungen_, ); it is much commoner in women than in men. periodicity has been observed in stammering (a six-weekly period in one case), and notably in hemicrania or migraine, by harry campbell, osler, etc. (the periodicity of a case of hemicrania has been studied in detail by d. fraser harris, _edinburgh medical journal_, july, .) but the cycle in these cases is not always, or even usually, of a menstrual type. it is now possible to turn to an investigation which, although of very limited extent, serves to place the question of a male menstrual cycle for the first time on a sound basis. if there is such a cycle analogous to menstruation in women, it must be a recurring period of nervous erethism, and it must be demonstrably accompanied by greater sexual activity. in the _american journal of psychology_ for , mr. julius nelson, afterward professor of biology at the rutgers college of agriculture, new brunswick, published a study of dreams in which he recorded the results of detailed observations of his dreams, and also of seminal emissions during sleep (by him termed "gonekbole" or "ecbole"), during a period of something over two years. mr. nelson found that both dreams and ecboles fell into a physiological cycle of days. the climax of maximum dreaming (as determined by the number of words in the dream record) and the climax of maximum ecbole fell at the same point of the cycle, the ecbolic climax being more distinctly marked than the dream climax. the question of cyclic physiological changes is considerably complicated by our uncertainty regarding the precise length of the cycle we may expect to find. nelson finds a -day cycle satisfactory. perry-coste, as we shall see, accepts a strictly lunar cycle of ½ days. fliess has argued that in both women and men, many physiological facts fall into a cycle of days, which he calls male, the -day cycle being female. (w. fliess, _die beziehungen zwischen nase und weiblichen geschlechts-organen_, , pp. et seq.) although fliess brings forward a number of minutely-observed cases, i cannot say that i am yet convinced of the reality of this -day cycle. it is somewhat curious, however, that at the same time as fliess, though in apparent independence, and from a different point of view, another worker also suggested that there is a -day physiological cycle (john beard, _the span of gestation and the cause of birth_, jena, ). beard approaches the question from the embryological standpoint, and argues that there is what he terms an "ovulation unit" of about ½ days, in the interval from the end of one menstruation to the beginning of the next. two "ovulation units" make up one "critical unit," and the length of pregnancy, according to beard, is always a multiple of the "critical unit;" in man, the gestation period amounts to six critical units. these attempts to prove a new physiological cycle deserve careful study and further investigation. the possibility of such a cycle should be borne in mind, but at present we are scarcely entitled to accept it. so far as i am aware, professor nelson's very interesting series of observations, which, for the first time, placed the question of a menstrual rhythm in men on a sound and workable basis, have not directly led to any further observations. i am, however, in possession of a much more extended series of ecbolic observations completed before nelson's paper was published, although the results have only been calculated at a comparatively-recent date. i now propose to present a summary of these observations, and consider how far they confirm nelson's conclusions. these observations cover no less a period than twelve years, between the ages of and , the subject, w.k., being a student, and afterward schoolmaster, leading, on the whole, a chaste life. the records were faithfully made throughout the whole of this long period. here, if anywhere, should be material for the construction of a menstrual rhythm on an ecbolic basis. while the results are in many respects instructive, it can scarcely, perhaps, be said that they absolutely demonstrate a monthly cycle. when summated in a somewhat similar manner to that adopted by nelson in his ecbolic observations, it is not difficult to regard the maximum, which is reached on the th to st days of the summated physiological month, as a real menstrual ecbolic climax, for no other three consecutive days at all approach these in number of ecboles, while there is a marked depression occurring four days earlier, on the th day of the month. if, however, we split up the curve by dividing the period of twelve years into two nearly equal periods, the earlier of about seven years and the latter of about four years, and summate these separately, the two curves do not present any parallel as regards the menstrual cycle. it scarcely seems to me, therefore, that these curves present any convincing evidence in this case of a monthly ecbolic cycle (and, therefore, i refrain from reproducing them), although they seem to suggest such a cycle. nor is there any reason to suppose that by adopting a different cycle of thirty days, or of twenty-three days, any more conclusive results would be obtained. it seems, however, when we look at these curves more closely, that they are not wholly without significance. if i am justified in concluding that they scarcely demonstrate a monthly cycle, it may certainly be added that they show a rudimentary tendency for the ecboles to fall into a fortnightly rhythm, and a very marked and unmistakable tendency to a weekly rhythm. the fortnightly rhythm is shown in the curve for the earlier period, but is somewhat disguised in the curve for the total period, because the first climax is spread over two days, the th and th of the month. if we readjust the curve for the total period by presenting the days in pairs, the fortnightly tendency is more clearly brought out (chart i). a more pronounced tendency still is traceable to a weekly rhythm. this is, indeed, the most unquestionable fact brought out by these curves. all the maxima occur on saturday or sunday, with the minima on tuesday, wednesday, thursday, or friday. this very pronounced weekly rhythm will serve to swamp more or less completely any monthly rhythm on a -day basis. although here probably seen in an exaggerated form, it is almost certainly a characteristic of the ecbolic curve generally.[ ] i have been told by several young men and women, especially those who work hard during the week, that saturday, and especially sunday afternoon, are periods when the thoughts spontaneously go in an erotic direction, and at this time there is a special tendency to masturbation or to spontaneous sexual excitement. it is on friday, saturday, sunday, and monday, according to guerry's tables,[ ] that the fewest suicides are committed, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday, with, however, a partial fall on wednesday, those on which most suicides are committed, so that there would appear to be an antagonism between sexual activity and the desire to throw off life. it also appears (in the reports of the bavarian factory inspectors) that accidents in factories have a tendency to occur chiefly at the beginning of the week, and toward the end rather than in the middle.[ ] even growth, as fleischmann has shown in the case of children, tends to fall into weekly cycles. it is evident that the nervous system is profoundly affected by the social influences resulting from the weekly cycle. the analysis of this series of ecbolic curves may thus be said to recall the suggestion of laycock, that the menstrual cycle is really made up of four weekly cycles, the periodic unit, according to laycock, being three and one-half days. i think it would, however, be more correct to say that the menstrual cycle, perhaps originally formed with reference to the influence of the moon on the sexual and social habits of men and other animals, tends to break up by a process of segmentation into fortnightly and weekly cycles. if we are justified in assuming that there is a male menstrual cycle, we must conclude that in such a case as that just analyzed, the weekly rhythm has become so marked as almost entirely to obliterate the larger monthly rhythm. however constituted, there seems little doubt that a physiological weekly cycle really exists. this was, indeed, very clearly indicated many years ago by the observations of edward smith, who showed that there are weekly rhythms in pulse, respiration, temperature, carbonic acid evolution, urea, and body-weight, sunday being the great day of repair and increase of weight.[ ] in an appendix to this volume i am able to present the results of another long series of observations of nocturnal ecbolic manifestations carried out by mr. perry-coste, who has elaborately calculated the results, and has convinced himself that on the basis of a strictly lunar month, thus abolishing the disturbing influence of the weekly rhythm, which in his case also appears, a real menstrual rhythm may be traced.[ ] it does not appear to me, however, even yet, that a final answer to the question whether a menstrual sexual rhythm occurs in men can be decisively given in the affirmative. that such a cycle will be proved in many cases seems to me highly probable, but before this can be decisively affirmed it is necessary that a much larger number of persons should be induced to carry out on themselves the simple, but protracted, series of observations that are required. since the first edition of this volume appeared, numerous series of ecbolic records have reached me from different parts of the world. the most notable of these series comes from a professional man, of scientific training, who has for the past six years lived in different parts of india, where the record was kept. though the record extends over nearly six years, there are two breaks in it, due to a visit to england, and to loss of interest. both involuntary and voluntary discharges are included in the record. the involuntary discharges occurred during sleep, usually with an erotic dream, in which the subject invariably awaked and frequently made an effort to check the emission. the voluntary discharges in most cases commenced during sleep, or in the half-waking state; deliberate masturbation, when fully awake, was comparatively rare. the proportion of involuntary to more or less voluntary ecboles was about to . a third kind of sexual manifestation (of frequency intermediate between the other two forms) is also included, in which a high degree of erethism is induced during the half waking state, culminating in an orgasm in which the power of preventing discharge has been artificially acquired. the subject, e.m., was years of age when the record began. he belongs to a healthy family, and is himself physically sound, feet inches in height, but weight low, due to rickets in infancy. in early life he stammered badly; his temperament is emotional and self-conscious, while his work is unusually exacting, and he lives for most of the year in a very trying climate. as a boy he was very religious, and has always felt obliged to resist sexual vice to the utmost, though there have been occasional lapses. as regards lunar periodicity, e.m., has summated his results in a curve, after the same manner as mr. perry-coste, beginning with the new moon. the periods covered include lunar months, and the total number of discharges is ; the average frequency is about per month of twenty-eight days. the curve, for the most part, zigzags between a frequency of and , but on the twenty-fourth day it falls to , and then rises uninterruptedly to a height of on the twenty-seventh day, falling to on the next day. whether a really menstrual rhythm is thus indicated i do not undertake to decide, but i am inclined to agree with e.m. himself that there is no definite evidence of it. "it looks to me," he writes, "as if the only real rhythm (putting aside the annual cycle) will be found to be the average period between the ecboles, varying in different persons, but in my case, about nine and one-eighth days. may not the ecbolic period in men be compared to the menstrual period in women, and be an example of the greater katabolic activity of men? there is the period of tumescence, and the ecbole constituting the detumescence. the week-end holiday would hasten the detumescence, but about every third week-end there would tend to be delay to enable the system to get back into its regulation nine or ten days' stride. this might possibly be the explanation of the curves. the recent emissions were nearly all involuntary during sleep. age may have something to do with the change in character." e.m.'s curves frequently show the influence of weekly periodicity, in the tendency to ecbole on sunday, or sometimes on saturday or monday. in recent years there has been some tendency for this climax to be thrown towards the middle of the week, but, on the whole, wednesday is the point of lowest frequency. in another case, the subject, a.n., who has spent nearly all his life in the state of indiana, has kept a record of sexual manifestations between the ages of and . the data, which cover four years, have not been sent to me in a form which enables the possibility of a monthly curve to be estimated, but a.n., who has himself arranged the data on a lunar monthly basis, considers that a monthly curve is thus revealed. "my memoranda," he writes, "show that discharges occur most frequently on the first, second, and third days after new moon. there is also another period on the fourteenth and fifteenth, which might indicate a semi-lunar rhythm. the days of minimum discharge are the seventh, eighth, twenty-second, and twenty-third." it may be added that the yearly average of ecbolic manifestations, varying between and , comes out as , or exactly one per week. a weekly periodicity is very definitely shown by a.n.'s data. sunday once more stands at the head of the week as regards frequency, in this case very decisively. the figures are as follows:-- sun. mon. tues. wed. thurs. fri. sat. in another case which has reached me from the united states, the data are slighter, but deserve note, as the subject is a trained psychologist, and i quote the case in his own words. here, it will be seen, there appears to be a tendency for the ecbolic cycle to cover a period of about six weeks. in this case, also, there is a tendency for the climax to occur about saturday or sunday. "x. is years old, unmarried, fair health, pretty good heredity; university trained, and engaged in academic pursuits. he thinks he may have completed puberty at about , though he has no proof that he was in the full possession of his sex-powers until he was years months old (when he had his first emission). his sex life has been normal. he masturbated somewhat when he slept with other boys (or men) during early manhood, but not to excess. "during the autumn of (when years of age) he observed that at certain times he had an itching feeling about the testicles; that he felt slightly irritable; that the penis erected with the slightest provocation, and that this peculiar feeling usually passed away with a nightly emission. indeed, so regular was the matter that he usually wore a loin garment at these times, to prevent the semen getting on the bedding. this peculiar feeling ordinarily continued for two or three days. he recalls at these times that he felt that he would like to wrestle with some one, for there seemed to be a muscular tension. these states returned with apparent regularity, and the intervals seemed to be about six weeks, though no effort was made to measure the periods until . the following notes are taken from the diaries of x.:-- "thursday, december , . the peculiar feeling. (this is the only entry.) "thursday, february , . the peculiar feeling. (the diary notes that x. awoke nights to find erections, and that the feeling continued until sunday night following, when there was an emission.) "friday, march , . the peculiar feeling. (the diary notes that there was an emission the next night, and that the feeling disappeared.) "wednesday, may , . the peculiar feeling. (the diary notes that it continued until saturday night, when x. had sexual relations, and that it then disappeared.) "wednesday, june , . the peculiar feeling. (the diary states that the next night x. had an emission, and the disappearance of the feeling.) "thursday, july , . the peculiar feeling. (the diary notes that it was apparent at about o'clock that afternoon. that night at o'clock, x. had sexual intercourse, and the feeling was not noted the next day.) "friday, september , . the peculiar feeling. (continued until tuesday, the th, and then disappeared. no sexual intercourse, and no nightly emission.) "wednesday, october , . the peculiar feeling. (continued until saturday night, when there was a nightly emission.) "saturday, december , . the peculiar feeling. (continued until monday night, when there was sexual relations.) "it will be noted that the intervals observed were of about six weeks' duration, excepting one, that from september to october, when it was nearly seven weeks. "these observations were not recorded after . x. thinks that in the intervals were longer, an opinion which is based on the fact that for a period of six months he had no sexual intercourse and no nightly emissions. the times during this six months when he had the 'peculiar feeling,' the sensation was so slight as to be scarcely noted. in , the feeling seemed more pronounced than ever before, and x. thinks that it may have recurred as often as once a month. in , , and , the intervals, he thinks, lengthened--at times, he thought, wholly disappeared. during , while they did not recur often, when they did come the sensation was pronounced, although the emission was less common. there was a peculiar 'heavy' feeling about the testicles, and a marked tendency towards erection of the penis, especially at night-time (while sleeping). x. often awoke to find a tense erection. moreover, these feelings usually continued a week. " . in general, x. is of the opinion that as he grows older these intervals lengthen, though this inference is not based on _recorded_ data. " . he notes that a discharge (through sexual intercourse or in sleep) invariably brings the peculiar feeling to a close for the time being. " . he notes that sexual intercourse _at the time_ stops it; but, when there has been sexual intercourse within a week or ten days of the time (based upon the observations of ), that it had no tendency to check the feeling." in another case, that of f.c., an irish farmer, born in waterford, the data are still more meagre, though the periodicity is stated to be very pronounced. he is chaste, steady, with occasional lapses from strict sobriety, healthy and mentally normal, living a regular open-air life, far from the artificial stimuli of towns. the observations refer to a period when he was from to years of age. during this period, nocturnal emissions occurred at regular intervals of exactly a month. they were ushered in by fits of irritability and depression, and usually occurred in dreamless sleep. the discharges were abundant and physically weakening, but they relieved the psychic symptoms, though they occasioned mental distress, since f.c. is scrupulous in a religious sense, and also apprehensive of bad constitutional effects, the result of reading alarmist quack pamphlets. in another case known to me, a young man leading a chaste life, experienced crises of sexual excitement every ten to fourteen days, the crisis lasting for several days. finally, an interesting contribution to this subject, suggested by this _study_, has been made and published (in the proceedings of the amsterdam international congress of psychology, in ) by the well-known amsterdam neurologist and psychologist, dr. l.s.a.m. von römer under the title, "ueber das verhältniss zwischen mondalter und sexualität." von römer's data are made up not of nocturnal involuntary emissions, but of the voluntary acts of sexual intercourse of an unmarried man, during a period of four years. von römer believes that these, to a much greater extent than those of a married man, would be liable to periodic influence, if such exist. on making a curve of exact lunar length (similarly to perry-coste), he finds that there are, every month, two maxima and two minima, in a way that approximately resemble perry-coste's curve. the main point in von römer's results is, however, the correspondence that he finds with the actual lunar phases; the chief maximum occurs at the time of the full moon, and the secondary maximum at the time of the new moon, the minima being at the first and fourth quarters. he hazards no theory in explanation of this coincidence, but insists on the need for further observations. it will be seen that a.n.'s results (_ante_ p. ) seem in the main to correspond to von römer's. footnotes: [ ] even counting the pulse is a comparatively recent method of physiological examination. it was not until that nicolas of cusa advocated counting the pulse-beats. (binz, _deutsche medizinische wochenschrift_, october , .) [ ] i leave this statement as it stands, though since the first publication of this book it has ceased to be strictly accurate. [ ] sanctorius, _medicina statica_, sect. i, aph. lxv. [ ] _american journal of obstetrics_, xiv, . [ ] _zoönomia_, section xxxvi. [ ] i reproduced these notes in full in earlier editions of this volume. [ ] moll refers to the case of a man whose erotic dreams occurred every fortnight, and always on friday night (_libido sexualis_, band i, p. ). one is inclined to suspect an element of autosuggestion in such a case; still, the coincidence is noteworthy. [ ] see durkheim, _le suicide_, p. . [ ] we must, of course, see here the results of the disorganization produced by holidays, and the exhaustion produced by the week's labor; but such influences are still the social effects of the cosmic week. [ ] e. smith, _health and disease_, chapter iii. i may remark that, according to kemsoes (_deutsche medizinische wochenschrift_, january , , and _british medical journal_, january , ), school-children work best on monday and tuesday. [ ] see appendix b. iii. the annual sexual rhythm--in animals--in man--tendency of the sexual impulse to become heightened in spring and autumn--the prevalence of seasonal erotic festivals--the feast of fools--the easter and midsummer bonfires--the seasonal variations in birthrate--the causes of those variations--the typical conception-rate curve for europe--the seasonal periodicity of seminal emissions during sleep--original observations--spring and autumn the chief periods of involuntary sexual excitement--the seasonal periodicity of rapes--of outbreaks among prisoners--the seasonal curves of insanity and suicide--the growth of children according to season--the annual curve of bread-consumption in prisons--seasonal periodicity of scarlet fever--the underlying causes of these seasonal phenomena. that there are annual seasonal changes in the human organism, especially connected with the sexual function, is a statement that has been made by physiologists and others from time to time, and the statement has even reached the poets, who have frequently declared that spring is the season of love. thus, sixty years ago, laycock, an acute pioneer in the investigation of the working of the human organism, brought together (in a chapter on "the periodic movements in the reproductive organs of woman," in his _nervous diseases of women_, , pp. - ) much interesting evidence to show that the system undergoes changes about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and that these changes are largely sexual. edward smith, also a notable pioneer in this field of human periodicity, and, indeed, the first to make definite observations on a number of points bearing on it, sums up, in his remarkable book, _health and disease as influenced by daily, seasonal, and other cyclical changes in the human system_ ( ), to the effect that season is a more powerful influence on the system than temperature or atmospheric pressure; "in the early and middle parts of spring every function of the body is in its highest degree of efficiency," while autumn is "essentially a period of change from the minimum toward the maximum of vital conditions." he found that in april and may most carbonic acid is evolved, there being then a progressive diminution to september, and then a progressive increase; the respiratory rate also fell from a maximum in april to a minimum maintained at exactly the same level throughout august, september, october, and november; spring was found to be the season of maximum, autumn of minimum, muscular power; sensibility to tactile and temperature impressions was also greater in spring. kulischer, studying the sexual customs of various human races, concluded that in primitive times, only at two special seasons--at spring and in harvest-time--did pairing take place; and that, when pairing ceased to be strictly confined to these periods, its symbolical representation was still so confined, even among the civilized nations of europe. he further argued that the physiological impulse was only felt at these periods. (kulischer, "die geschlechtliche zuchtwahl bei den menschen in der urzeit," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , pp. and .) cohnstein ("ueber prädilectionszeiten bei schwangerschaft," _archiv für gynäkologie_, ) also suggested that women sometimes only conceive at certain periods of the year. wiltshire, who made various interesting observations regarding the physiology of menstruation, wrote: "many years ago, i concluded that every women had a law peculiar to herself, which governed the times of her bringing forth (and conceiving); that she was more prone to bring forth at certain epochs than at others; and subsequent researches have established the accuracy of the forecast." he further stated his belief in a "primordial seasonal aptitude for procreation, the impress of which still remains, and, to some extent, governs the breeding-times of humanity." (a. wiltshire, "lectures on the comparative physiology of menstruation," _british medical journal_, march, , pp. , etc.) westermarck, in a chapter of his _history of human marriage_, dealing with the question of "a human pairing season in primitive times," brings forward evidence showing that spring, or, rather, early summer, is the time for increase of the sexual instinct, and argues that this is a survival of an ancient pairing season; spring, he points out, is a season of want, rather than abundance, for a frugivorous species, but when men took to herbs, roots, and animal food, spring became a time of abundance, and suitable for the birth of children. he thus considers that in man, as in lower animals, the times of conception are governed by the times most suitable for birth. rosenstadt, as we shall see later, also believes that men to-day have inherited a physiological custom of procreating at a certain epoch, and he thus accounts for the seasonal changes in the birthrate. heape, who also believes that "at one period of its existence the human species had a special breeding season," follows wiltshire in suggesting that "there is some reason to believe that the human female is not always in a condition to breed." (w. heape, "menstruation and ovulation of _macacus rhesus_," _philosophical transactions_, ; id. "the sexual season of mammals," _quarterly journal microscopical science_, .) except, however, in one important respect, with which we shall presently have to deal, few attempts have been made to demonstrate any annual organic sexual rhythm. the supposition of such annual cycle is usually little more than a deduction from the existence of the well-marked seasonal sexual rhythm in animals. most of the higher animals breed only once or twice a year, and at such a period that the young are born when food is most plentiful. at other periods the female is incapable of breeding, and without sexual desires, while the male is either in the same condition or in a condition of latent sexuality. under the influence of domestication, animals tend to lose the strict periodicity of the wild condition, and become apt for breeding at more frequent intervals. thus among dogs in the wild state the bitch only experiences heat once a year, in the spring. among domesticated dogs, there is not only the spring period of heat, early in the year, but also an autumn period, about six months later; the primitive period, however, remains the most important one, and the best litters of pups are said to be produced in the spring. the mare is in season in spring and summer; sheep take the ram in autumn.[ ] many of the menstruating monkeys also, whether or not sexual desire is present throughout the year, only conceive in spring and in autumn. almost any time of the year may be an animal's pairing season, this season being apparently in part determined by the economic conditions which will prevail at birth. while it is essential that animals should be born during the season of greatest abundance, it is equally essential that pairing, which involves great expenditure of energy, should also take place at a season of maximum physical vigor. as an example of the sexual history of an animal through the year, i may quote the following description, by dr. a.w. johnstone, of the habits of the american deer: "our common american deer, in winter-time, is half-starved for lack of vegetation in the woods; the low temperature, snow, and ice, make his conditions of life harder for lack of the proper amount of food, whereby he becomes an easier prey to carnivorous animals. he has difficulty even in preserving life. in spring he sheds his winter coat, and is provided with a suit of lighter hair, and while this is going on the male grows antlers for defence. the female about this time is far along in pregnancy, and when the antlers are fully grown she drops the fawn. when the fawns are dropped vegetation is plentiful and lactation sets in. during this time the male is kept fully employed in getting food and guarding his more or less helpless family. as the season advances the vegetation increases and the fawn begins to eat grass. when the summer heat commences the little streams begin to dry up, and the animal once more has difficulty in supporting life because of the enervating heat, the effect of drought on the vegetation, and the distance which has to be traveled to get water; therefore, fully ten months in each year the deer has all he can do to live without extra exertion incident to rutting. soon after the autumn rains commence vegetation becomes more luxurious, the antlers of the male and new suits of hair for both are fully grown, heat of the summer is gone, food and drink are plentiful everywhere, the fawns are weaned, and both sexes are in the very finest condition. then, and then only, in the whole year, comes the rut, which, to them as to most other animals, means an unwonted amount of physical exercise besides the everyday runs for life from their natural enemies, and an unusual amount of energy is used up. if a doe dislikes the attention of a special buck, miles of racing result. if jealous males meet, furious battles take place. the strain on both sexes could not possibly be endured at any other season of the year. with approach of cold weather, climatic deprivations and winter dangers commence and rut closes. in all wild animals, rut occurs only when the climatic and other conditions favor the highest physical development. this law holds good in all wild birds, for it is then only that they can stand the strain incident to love-making. the common american crow is a very good study. in the winter he travels around the ricefields of the south, leading a tramp's existence in a country foreign to him, and to which he goes only to escape the rigors of the northern climate. for several weeks in the spring he goes about the fields, gathering up the worms and grubs. after his long flight from the south he experiences several weeks of an almost ideal existence, his food is plentiful, he becomes strong and hearty, and then he turns to thoughts of love. in the pairing season he does more work than at any other time in the year: fantastic dances, racing and chasing after the females, and savage fights with rivals. he endures more than would be possible in his ordinary physical state. then come the care of the young and the long flights for water and food during the drought of the summer. after the molt, autumn finds him once more in flock, and with the first frosts he is off again to the south. in the wild state, rut is the capstone of perfect physical condition." (a.w. johnstone, "the relation of menstruation to the other reproductive functions," _american journal of obstetrics_, vol. xxxii, .) wiltshire ("lectures on the comparative physiology of menstruation," _british medical journal_, march, ) and westermarck (_history of human marriage_, chapter ii) enumerate the pairing season of a number of different animals. with regard to the breeding seasons of monkeys, little seems to be positively known. heape made special inquiries with reference to the two species whose sexual life he investigated. he was informed that _semnopithecus entellus_ breeds twice a year, in april and in october. he accepts aitcheson's statement that the _macacus rhesus_, in simla, copulates in october, and adds that in the very different climate of the plains it appears to copulate in may. he concludes that the breeding season varies greatly in dependence on climate, but believes that the breeding season is always preserved, and that it affects the sexual aptitude of the male. he could not make his monkeys copulate during february or march, but is unable to say whether or not sexual intercourse is generally admitted outside the breeding season. he quotes the observation of breschet that monkeys copulate during pregnancy. in primitive human races we very frequently trace precisely the same influence of the seasonal impulse as may be witnessed in the higher animals, although among human races it does not always result that the children are born at the time of the greatest plenty, and on account of the development of human skill such a result is not necessary. thus dr. cook found among the eskimo that during the long winter nights the secretions are diminished, muscular power is weak, and the passions are depressed. soon after the sun appears a kind of rut affects the young population. they tremble with the intensity of sexual passion, and for several weeks much of the time is taken up with courtship and love. hence, the majority of the children are born nine months later, when the four months of perpetual night are beginning. a marked seasonal periodicity of this kind is not confined to the arctic regions. we may also find it in the tropics. in cambodia, mondière has found that twice a year, in april and september, men seem to experience a "veritable rut," and will sometimes even kill women who resist them.[ ] these two periods, spring and autumn--the season for greeting the appearance of life and the season for reveling in its final fruition--seem to be everywhere throughout the world the most usual seasons for erotic festivals. in classical greece and rome, in india, among the indians of north and south america, spring is the most usual season, while in africa the yam harvest of autumn is the season chiefly selected. there are, of course, numerous exceptions to this rule, and it is common to find both seasons observed. taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it;[ ] the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. but it is rarely that we find a people seriously celebrating more than two of these festival seasons. in australia, according to müller as quoted by ploss and bartels, marriage and conception take place during the warm season, when there is greatest abundance of food, and to some extent is even confined to that period. oldfield and others state that the australian erotic festivals take place only in spring. among some tribes, müller adds, such as the watschandis, conception is inaugurated by a festival called _kaaro_, which takes place in the warm season at the first new moon after the yams are ripe. the leading feature of this festival is a moonlight dance, representing the sexual act symbolically. with their spears, regarded as the symbols of the male organ, the men attack bushes, which represent the female organs. they thus work themselves up to a state of extreme sexual excitement.[ ] among the papuans of new guinea, also, according to miklucho-macleay, conceptions chiefly occur at the end of harvest, and guise describes the great annual festival of the year which takes place at the time of the yam and banana harvest, when the girls undergo a ceremony of initiation and marriages are effected.[ ] in central africa, says sir h.h. johnston, in his _central africa_, sexual orgies are seriously entered into at certain seasons of the year, but he neglects to mention what these seasons are. the people of new britain, according to weisser (as quoted by ploss and bartels), carefully guard their young girls from the young men. at certain times, however, a loud trumpet is blown in the evening, and the girls are then allowed to go away into the bush to mix freely with the young men. in ancient peru (according to an account derived from a pastoral letter of archbishop villagomez of lima), in december, when the fruit of the _paltay_ is ripe, a festival was held, preceded by a five days' fast. during the festival, which lasted six days and six nights, men and women met together in a state of complete nudity at a certain spot among the gardens, and all raced toward a certain hill. every man who caught up with a woman in the race was bound at once to have intercourse with her. very instructive, from our present point of view, is the account given by dalton, of the festivals of the various bengal races. thus the hos (a kolarian tribe), of bengal, are a purely agricultural people, and the chief festival of the year with them is the _mágh parah_. it is held in the month of january, "when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, full of devilry." it is the festival of the harvest-home, the termination of the year's toil, and is always held at full moon. the festival is a _saturnalia_, when all rules of duty and decorum are forgotten, and the utmost liberty is allowed to women and girls, who become like bacchantes. the people believe that at this time both men and women become overcharged with vitality, and that a safety valve is absolutely necessary. the festival begins with a religious sacrifice made by the village priest or elders, and with prayers for the departed and for the vouchsafing of seasonable rain and good crops. the religious ceremonies over, the people give themselves up to feasting and to drinking the home-made beer, the preparation of which from fermented rice is one of a girl's chief accomplishments. "the ho population," wrote dalton, "are at other seasons quiet and reserved in manner, and in their demeanor toward women gentle and decorous; even in their flirtations they never transcend the bounds of decency. the girls, though full of spirits and somewhat saucy, have innate notions of propriety that make them modest in demeanor, though devoid of all prudery, and of the obscene abuse, so frequently heard from the lips of common women in bengal, they appear to have no knowledge. they are delicately sensitive under harsh language of any kind, and never use it to others; and since their adoption of clothing they are careful to drape themselves decently, as well as gracefully; but they throw all this aside during the _mágh_ feast. their nature appears to undergo a temporary change. sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities. they enact all that was ever portrayed by prurient artists in a bacchanalian festival or pandean orgy; and as the light of the sun they adore, and the presence of numerous spectators, seems to be no restraint on their indulgence, it cannot be expected that chastity is preserved when the shades of night fall on such a scene of licentiousness and debauchery." while, however, thus representing the festival as a mere debauch, dalton adds that relationships formed at this time generally end in marriage. there is also a flower festival in april and may, of religious nature, but the dances at this festival are quieter in character.[ ] in burmah the great festival of the year is the full moon of october, following the buddhist lent season (which is also the wet season), during which there is no sexual intercourse. the other great festival is the new year in march.[ ] in classical times the great festivals were held at the same time as in northern and modern europe. the _brumalia_ took place in midwinter, when the days were shortest, and the _rosalia_, according to early custom in may or june, and at a later time about easter. after the establishment of christianity the church made constant efforts to suppress this latter festival, and it was referred to by an eighth century council as "a wicked and reprehensible holiday-making." these festivals appear to be intimately associated with dionysus worship, and the flower-festival of dionysus, as well as the roman liberales in honor of bacchus, was celebrated in march with worship of priapus. the festivals of the delian apollo and of artemis, both took place during the first week in may and the roman bacchanales in october.[ ] the mediæval feast of fools was to a large extent a seasonal orgy licensed by the church. it may be traced directly back through the barbatories of the lower empire to the roman _saturnalia_, and at sens, the ancient ecclesiastical metropolis of france, it was held at about the same time as the _saturnalia_, on the feast of the circumcision, i.e., new year's day. it was not, however, always held at this time; thus at evreux it took place on the st of may.[ ] the easter bonfires of northern-central europe, the midsummer (st. john's eve) fires of southern-central europe, still bear witness to the ancient festivals.[ ] there is certainly a connection between these bonfires and erotic festivals; it is noteworthy that they occur chiefly at the period of spring and early summer, which, on other grounds, is widely regarded as the time for the increase of the sexual instinct, while the less frequent period for the bonfires is that of the minor sexual climax. mannhardt was perhaps the first to show how intimately these spring and early summer festivals--held with bonfires and dances and the music of violin--have been associated with love-making and the choice of a mate.[ ] in spring, the first monday in lent (quadrigesima) and easter eve were frequent days for such bonfires. in may, among the franks of the main, the unmarried women, naked and adorned with flowers, danced on the blocksberg before the men, as described by herbels in the tenth century.[ ] in the central highlands of scotland the beltane fires were kindled on the st of may. bonfires sometimes took place on halloween (october st) and christmas. but the great season all over europe for these bonfires, then often held with erotic ceremonial, is the summer solstice, the d of june, the eve of midsummer, or st. john's day.[ ] the bohemians and other slavonic races formerly had meetings with sexual license. this was so up to the beginning of the sixteenth century on the banks of rivers near novgorod. the meetings took place, as a rule, the day before the festival of john the baptist, which, in pagan times, was that of a divinity known by the name of jarilo (equivalent to priapus). half a century later, a new ecclesiastical code sought to abolish every vestige of the early festivals held on christmas day, on the day of the baptism, of our lord, and on john the baptist's day. a general feature of all these festivals (says kowalewsky) was the prevalence of the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. among the ehstonians, at the end of the eighteenth century, thousands of persons would gather around an old ruined church (in the fellinschen) on the eve of st. john, light a bonfire, and throw sacrificial gifts into it. sterile women danced naked among the ruins; much eating and drinking went on, while the young men and maidens disappeared into the woods to do what they would. festivals of this character still take place at the end of june in some districts. young unmarried couples jump barefoot over large fires, usually near rivers or ponds. licentiousness is rare.[ ] but in many parts of russia the peasants still attach little value to virginity, and even prefer women who have been mothers. the population of the grisons in the sixteenth century held regular meetings not less licentious than those of the cossacks. these were abolished by law. kowalewsky regards all such customs as a survival of early forms of promiscuity.[ ] frazer (_golden bough_, d ed., , vol. iii, pp. - ) fully describes and discusses the dances, bonfires and festivals of spring and summer, of halloween (october ), and christmas. he also explains the sexual character of these festivals. "there are clear indications," he observes (p. ), "that even human fecundity is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of the fires. it is an irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over the midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of many children; and in various parts of france they think that if a girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry within a year. on the other hand, in lechrain, people say that if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother within twelve months--the flames have not touched and fertilized her. the rule observed in some parts of france and belgium, that the bonfires on the first sunday in lent should be kindled by the person who was last married, seems to belong to the same class of ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive from, or impart to, the fire a generative and fertilizing influence. the common practice of lovers leaping over the fires hand-in-hand may very well have originated in a notion that thereby their marriage would be more likely to be blessed with offspring. and the scenes of profligacy which appear to have marked the midsummer celebration among the ehstonians, as they once marked the celebration of may day among ourselves, may have sprung, not from the mere license of holiday-makers, but from a crude notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by some mysterious bond which linked the life of man, to the courses of the heavens at the turning-point of the year." as regards these primitive festivals, although the evidence is scattered and sometimes obscure, certain main conclusions clearly emerge. in early europe there were, according to grimm, only two seasons, sometimes regarded as spring and winter, sometimes as spring and autumn, and for mythical purposes these seasons were alone available.[ ] the appearance of each of these two seasons was inaugurated by festivals which were religious and often erotic in character. the slavonic year began in march, at which time there was formerly, it is believed, a great festival, not only in slavonic but also in teutonic countries. in northern germany there were easter bonfires always associated with mountains or hills. the celtic bonfires were held at the beginning of may, while the teutonic may-day, or _walpurgisnacht_, is a very ancient sacred festival, associated with erotic ceremonial, and regarded by grimm as having a common origin with the roman _floralia_ and the greek _dionysia_. thus, in europe, grimm concludes: "there are four different ways of welcoming summer. in sweden and gothland a battle of winter and summer, a triumphal entry of the latter. in schonen, denmark, lower saxony, and england, simply may-riding, or fetching of the may-wagon. on the rhine merely a battle of winter and summer, without immersion, without the pomp of an entry. in franconia, thuringia, meissen, silesia, and bohemia only the carrying out of wintry death; no battle, no formal introduction of summer. of these festivals the first and second fall in may, the third and fourth in march. in the first two, the whole population take part with unabated enthusiasm; in the last two only the lower poorer class.... everything goes to prove that the approach of summer was to our forefathers a holy tide, welcomed by sacrifice, feast, and dance, and largely governing and brightening the people's life."[ ] the early spring festival of march, the festival of ostara, the goddess of spring, has become identified with the christian festival of resurrection (just as the summer solstice festival has been placed beneath the patronage of st. john the baptist); but there has been only an amalgamation of closely-allied rites, for the christian festival also may be traced back to a similar origin. among the early arabians the great _ragab_ feast, identified by ewald and robertson smith with the jewish _paschal_ feast, fell in the spring or early summer, when the camels and other domestic animals brought forth their young and the shepherds offered their sacrifices.[ ] babylonia, the supreme early centre of religious and cosmological culture, presents a more decisive example of the sex festival. the festival of tammuz is precisely analogous to the european festival of st. john's day. tammuz was the solar god of spring vegetation, and closely associated with ishtar, also an agricultural deity of fertility. the tammuz festival was, in the earliest times, held toward the summer solstice, at the time of the first wheat and barley harvest. in babylonia, as in primitive europe, there were only two seasons; the festival of tammuz, coming at the end of winter and the beginning of summer, was a fast followed by a feast, a time of mourning for winter, of rejoicing for summer. it is part of the primitive function of sacred ritual to be symbolical of natural processes, a mysterious representation of natural processes with the object of bringing them about.[ ] the tammuz festival was an appeal to the powers of nature to exhibit their generative functions; its erotic character is indicated not only by the well-known fact that the priestesses of ishtar (the kadishtu, or "holy ones") were prostitutes, but by the statements in babylonian legends concerning the state of the earth during ishtar's winter absence, when the bull, the ass, and man ceased to reproduce. it is evident that the return of spring, coincident with the tammuz festival, was regarded as the period for the return of the reproductive instinct even in man.[ ] so that along this line also we are led back to a great procreative festival. thus the great spring festivals were held between march and june, frequently culminating in a great orgy on midsummer's eve. the next great season of festivals in europe was in autumn. the beginning of august was a great festival in celtic lands, and the echoes of it, rhys remarks, have not yet died out in wales.[ ] the beginning of november, both in celtic and teutonic countries, was a period of bonfires.[ ] in germanic countries especially there was a great festival at the time. the germanic year began at martinmas (november th), and the great festival of the year was then held. it is the oldest germanic festival on record, and retained its importance even in the middle ages. there was feasting all night, and the cattle that were to be killed were devoted to the gods; the goose was associated with this festival.[ ] these autumn festivals culminated in the great festival of the winter solstice which we have perpetuated in the celebrations of christmas and new year. thus, while the two great primitive culminating festivals of spring and autumn correspond exactly (as we shall see) with the seasons of maximum fecundation, even in the europe of to-day, the earlier spring (march) and--though less closely--autumn (november) festivals correspond with the periods of maximum spontaneous sexual disturbance, as far as i have been able to obtain precise evidence of such disturbance. that the maximum of physiological sexual excitement should tend to appear earlier than the maximum of fecundation is a result that might be expected. the considerations so far brought forward clearly indicate that among primitive races there are frequently one or two seasons in the year--especially spring and autumn--during which sexual intercourse is chiefly or even exclusively carried on, and they further indicate that these primitive customs persist to some extent even in europe to-day. it would still remain, to determine whether any such influence affects the whole mass of the civilized population and determines the times at which intercourse, or fecundation, most frequently takes place. this question can be most conveniently answered by studying the seasonal variation in the birthrate, calculating back to the time of conception. wargentin, in sweden, first called attention to the periodicity of the birthrate in .[ ] the matter seems to have attracted little further attention until quetelet, who instinctively scented unreclaimed fields of statistical investigation, showed that in belgium and holland there is a maximum of births in february, and, consequently, of conceptions in may, and a minimum of births about july, with consequent minimum of conceptions in october. quetelet considered that the spring maximum of conceptions corresponded to an increase of vitality after the winter cold. he pointed out that this sexual climax was better marked in the country than in towns, and accounted for this by the consideration that in the country the winter cold is more keenly felt. later, wappäus investigated the matter in various parts of northern and southern europe as well as in chile, and found that there was a maximum of conceptions in may and june attributable to season, and in catholic countries strengthened by customs connected with ecclesiastical seasons. this maximum was, he found, followed by a minimum in september, october, and november, due to gradually increasing exhaustion, and the influence of epidemic diseases, as well as the strain of harvest-work. the minimum is reached in the south earlier than in the north. about november conceptions again become more frequent, and reach the second maximum at about christmas and new year. this second maximum is very slightly marked in southern countries, but strongly marked in northern countries (in sweden the absolute maximum of conceptions is reached in december), and is due, in the opinion of wappäus, solely to social causes. villermé reached somewhat similar results. founding his study on , , births, he showed that in france it was in april, may, and june, or from the spring equinox to the summer solstice, and nearer to the solstice than the equinox, that the maximum of fecundations takes place; while the minimum of births is normally in july, but is retarded by a wet and cold summer in such a manner that in august there are scarcely more births than in july, and, on the other hand, a very hot summer, accelerating the minimum of births, causes it to fall in june instead of in july.[ ] he also showed that in buenos ayres, where the seasons are reversed, the conception-rate follows the reversed seasons, and is also raised by epochs of repose, of plentiful food, and of increased social life. sormani studied the periodicity of conception in italy, and found that the spring maximum in the southern provinces occurs in may, and gradually falls later as one proceeds northward, until, in the extreme north of the peninsula, it occurs in july. in southern italy there is only one maximum and one minimum; in the north there are two. the minimum which follows the spring or summer maximum increases as we approach the south, while the minimum associated with the winter cold increases as we approach the north.[ ] beukemann, who studied the matter in various parts of germany, found that seasonal influence was specially marked in the case of illegitimate births. the maximum of conceptions of illegitimate children takes place in the spring and summer of europe generally; in russia it takes place in the autumn and winter, when the harvest-working months for the population are over, and the period of rest, and also of minimum deathrate (september, october, and november), comes round. in russia the general conception-rate has been studied by various investigators. here the maximum number of conceptions is in winter, the minimum varying among different elements of the population. looked at more closely, there are maxima of conceptions in russia in january and in april. (in russian towns, however, the maximum number of conceptions occurs in the autumn.) the special characteristics of the russian conception-rate are held to be due to the prevalence of marriages in autumn and winter,[ ] to the severely observed fasts of spring, and to the exhausting harvest-work of summer. it is instructive to compare the conception-rate of europe with that of a non-european country. such a comparison has been made by s.a. hill for the northwest provinces of india. here the holi and other erotic festivals take place in spring; but spring is not the period when conceptions chiefly take place; indeed, the prevalence of erotic festivals in spring appears to hill an argument in favor of those festivals having originated in a colder climate. the conceptions show a rise through october and november to a maximum in december and january, followed by a steady and prolonged fall to a minimum in september. this curve can be accounted for by climatic and economic conditions. september is near the end of the long and depressing hot season, when malarial influences are rapidly increasing to a maximum, the food-supply is nearly exhausted, and there is the greatest tendency to suicide. with october it forms the period of greatest mortality. december, on the other hand, is the month when food is most abundant, and it is also a very healthy month.[ ] for a summary of the chief researches into this question, see ploss and bartels, _das weib_; also, rosenstadt, "zur frage nach den ursachen welche die zahl der conceptionen, etc," _mittheilungen aus den embryologischen institute universität wien_, second series, fasc. , . rosenstadt concludes that man has inherited from animal ancestors a "physiological custom" which has probably been further favored by climatic and social conditions. "primitive man," he proceeds, "had inherited from his ancestors the faculty of only reproducing himself at determined epochs. on the arrival of this period of rut, fecundation took place on a large scale, this being very easy, thanks to the promiscuity in which primitive man lived. with the development of civilization, men give themselves up to sexual relations all the year around, but the 'physiological custom' of procreating at a certain epoch has not completely disappeared; it remains as a survival of the animal condition, and manifests itself in the recrudescence of the number of conceptions during certain months of the year." o. rosenbach ("bemerkungen über das problem einer brunstzeit beim menschen," _archiv für rassen und gesellschafts-biologie_, bd. iii, heft ) has also argued in favor of a chief sexual period in the year in man, with secondary and even tertiary climaxes, in march, august, and december. he finds that in some families, for several generations, birthdays tend to fall in the same months, but his paper is, on the whole, inconclusive. some years ago, prof. j.b. haycraft argued, on the basis of data furnished by scotland, that the conception-rate corresponds to the temperature-curve (haycraft, "physiological results of temperature variation," _transactions of the royal society of edinburgh_, vol. xxix, ). "temperature," he concluded, "is the main factor regulating the variations in the number of conceptions which occur during the year. it increases their number with its elevation, and this on an average of . per cent, for an elevation of ° f." whether or not this theory may fit the facts as regards scotland, it is certainly altogether untenable when we take a broader view of the phenomena. recently dr. paul gaedeken of copenhagen has argued in a detailed statistical study ("la réaction de l'organisme sous l'influence physico-chimiques des agents météorologiques," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, feb., ) that the conception-rate, as well as the periodicity of suicide and allied phenomena, is due to the action of the chemical rays on the unpigmented skin in early spring, this action being physiologically similar to that of alcohol. he seeks thus to account for the marked and early occurrence of such periodic phenomena in greenland and other northern countries where there is much chemical action (owing to the clear air) in early spring, but little heat. this explanation would not cover an autumnal climax, the existence of which gaedeken denies. in order to obtain a fairly typical conception-curve for europe, and to allow the variations of local habit and custom to some extent to annihilate each other, i have summated the figures given by mayr for about a quarter of a million births in germany, france, and italy,[ ] obtaining a curve (chart ) of the conception-rate which may be said roughly to be that of europe generally. if we begin at september as the lowest point, we find an autumn rise culminating in the lesser maximum of christmas, followed by a minor depression in january and february. then comes the great spring rise, culminating in may, and followed after june by a rapid descent to the minimum. in canada (see e.g., _report of the registrar general of the province of ontario_ for ), the maximum and minimum of conceptions alike fall later than in europe; the months of maximum conception are june, july, and august; of minimum conception, january, february, and march. june is the favorite month for marriage. it would be of some interest to know the conception-curve for the well-to-do classes, who are largely free from the industrial and social influences which evidently, to a great extent, control the conception-rate. it seems probable that the seasonal influence would here be specially well shown. the only attempt i have made in this direction is to examine a well-filled birthday-book. the entries show a very high and equally maintained maximum of conceptions throughout april, may and june, followed by a marked minimum during the next three months, and an autumn rise very strongly marked, in november. there is no december rise. as will be seen, there is here a fairly exact resemblance to the yearly ecbolic curve of people of the same class. the inquiry needs, however, to be extended to a very much larger number of cases. mr. john douglass brown, of philadelphia, has kindly prepared and sent me, since the above was written, a series of curves showing the, annual periodicity of births among the educated classes in the state of pennsylvania, using the statistics as to , births contained in the biographical catalogue of matriculates of the college of the university of pennsylvania. mr. brown prepared four curves: the first, covering the earliest period, - ; the second, the period - ; the third, - ; while the fourth presented the summated results for the whole period. (the dates named are those of the entry to classes, and not of actual occurrence of birth.) a very definite and well-marked curve is shown, and the average number of births (not conceptions) per day, for the whole period, is as follows:-- jan. feb. mar. apr. may june july aug. sept. oct. nov. dec. . . . . . . . . . . there is thus a well-marked minimum of conceptions (a depression appearing here in each of the three periods, separately) about the month of july. (in the second period, however, which contains the smallest number of births, the minimum occurs in september.) from that low minimum there is steady and unbroken rise up to the chief maximum in november. (in the first period, however, the maximum is delayed till january, and in the second period it is somewhat diffused.) there is a tendency to a minor maximum in february, specially well marked in the third and most important period, and in the first period delayed until march. a very curious and perhaps not accidental coincidence might be briefly pointed out before we leave this part of the subject. it is found[ ] by taking cases of children dying under one year that, among the general population, children born in february and september (and therefore conceived in may and december) appear to possess the greatest vitality, and those born in june, and, therefore, conceived in september, the least vitality.[ ] as we have seen, may and december are precisely the periods when conceptions in europe generally are at a maximum, and september is precisely the period when they are at a minimum, so that, if this coincidence is not accidental, the strongest children are conceived when there is the strongest tendency to procreate, and the feeblest children when that tendency is feeblest. nelson, in his study of dreams and their relation to seasonal ecbolic manifestations, does not present any yearly ecbolic curve, as the two years and a half over which his observations extend scarcely supply a sufficient basis. on examining his figures, however, i find there is a certain amount of evidence of a yearly rhythm. there are spring and autumn climaxes throughout (in february and in november); there is no december rise. during one year there is a marked minimum from may to september, though it is but slightly traceable in the succeeding year. these figures are too uncertain to prove anything, but, as far as they go, they are in fair agreement with the much more extensive record, that of w.k. (_ante_ p. ), which i have already made use of in discussing the question of a monthly rhythm. this record, covering nearly twelve years, shows a general tendency, when the year is divided into four periods (november-january, february-april, may-july, august-october) and the results summated, to rise steadily throughout, from the minimum in the winter period to the maximum in the autumn period. this steady upward progress is not seen in each year taken separately. in three years there is a fall in passing from the november-january to the february-april quarter (always followed by a rise in the subsequent quarter); in three cases there is a fall in passing from the second to the third quarter (again always followed by a rise in the following quarter), and in two successive years there is a fall in passing from the third to the fourth quarter. if, however, beginning at the second year, we summate the results for each year with those for all previous years, a steady rise from season to season is seen throughout. if we analyze the data according to the months of the year, still more precise and interesting results (as shown in the curve, chart ) are obtained; two maximum points are seen, one in spring (march), one in autumn (october, or, rather, august-october), and each of these maximum points is followed by; a steep and sudden descent to the minimum points in april and in december. if we compare this result with perry-coste's also extending over a long series of years, we find a marked similarity. in both alike there are spring and autumn maxima, in both the autumn maximum is the highest, and in both also there is an intervening fall. in both cases, again, the maxima are followed by steep descents, but while in both the spring maximum occurs in march, in perry-coste's case the second maximum, though of precisely similar shape, occurs earlier, in june-september instead of august-october. in perry-coste's case, also, there is an apparently abnormal tendency, only shown in the more recent years of the record, to an additional maximum in january. the records certainly show far more points of agreement than of discrepancy, and by their harmony, as well with each other as with themselves, when the years are taken separately, certainly go far to prove that there is a very marked annual rhythm in the phenomena of seminal emissions during sleep, or, as nelson has termed it, the ecbolic curve. we see, also, that the great yearly organic climax of sexual effervescence corresponds with the period following harvest, which, throughout the primitive world, has been a season of sexual erethism and orgy; though those customs have died out of our waking lives, they are still imprinted on our nervous texture, and become manifest during sleep. the fresh records that have reached me since the first edition of this book was published show well-marked annual curves, though each curve always has some slight personal peculiarities of its own. the most interesting and significant is that of e.m. (see _ante_ p. ), covering four years. it is indicated by the following monthly frequencies, summated for the four years:-- jan. feb. mar. apr. may june july aug. sept. oct. nov. dec. e.m. lives in india. april, may, and june, are hot months, but not unhealthy, and during this season, moreover, he lives in the hills, under favorable conditions, getting plenty of outdoor exercise. july, august, and september, are nearly as hot, but much damper, and more trying; during these months, e.m. is living in the city, and his work is then, also, more exacting than at other times, september is the worst month of all; he has a short holiday at the end of it. during december, january, and february, the climate is very fine, and e.m.'s work is easier. it will be seen that his ecbolic curve corresponds to his circumstances and environment, although until he analyzed the record he had no idea that any such relationship existed. unfavorable climatic conditions and hard work, favorable conditions and lighter work, happen to coincide in his life, and the former depress the frequency of seminal emissions; the latter increase their frequency. at the same time, the curve is not out of harmony with the northern curves. there is what corresponds to a late spring (april) climax, and another still higher, late autumn (december) climax. a very interesting point is the general resemblance of the ecbolic curves to the indian conception-curves as set forth by hill (_ante_ p. ). the conception-curve is at its lowest point in september, and at its highest point in december-january, and this ecbolic curve follows it, except that both the minimum and the maximum are reached a little earlier. when compared with the english annual ecbolic curves (w.k. and perry-coste), both spring and autumn maxima fall rather later, but all agree in representing the autumn rise as the chief climax. the annual curve of a.n. (_ante_ p. ), who lives in indiana, u.s.a., also covers four years. it presents the usual spring (may-june, in this case) and autumn (september-october) climaxes. the exact monthly results, summated for the four years, are given below; in order to allow for the irregular lengths of the months, i have reduced them to daily averages, for convenience treating the four years as one year:-- jan. feb. mar. apr. may june july aug. sept. oct. nov. dec. . . . . . . . . . . . . in his book on _adolescence_, stanley hall refers to three ecbolic records in his possession, all made by men who were doctors of philosophy, and all considering themselves normal. the best of these records made by "a virtuous, active and able man," covered nearly eight years. stanley hall thus summarizes the records, which are not presented in detail: "the best of these records averages about three and a half such experiences per month, the most frequent being . for july, and the least frequent . , for september, for all the years taken together. there appears also a slight rise in april, and another in november, with a fall in december." the frequency varies in the different individuals. there was no tendency to a monthly cycle. in the best case, the minimum number for the year was thirty-seven, and the maximum, fifty. fifty-nine per cent. of all were at an interval of a week or less; forty per cent. at an interval of from one to four days; thirty-four per cent, at an interval of from eight to seventeen days, the longest being forty-two days. poor condition, overwork, and undersleep, led to infrequency. early morning was the most common time. normally there was a sense of distinct relief, but in low conditions, or with over-frequency, depression. (g.s. hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. .) i may add that an anonymous article on "nocturnal emissions" (_american journal of psychology_, jan., ) is evidently a fuller presentation of the first of stanley hall's three cases. it is the history of a healthy, unmarried, chaste man, who kept a record of his nocturnal emissions (and their accompanying dreams) from the age of thirty to thirty-eight. in what american state he lived is not mentioned. he was ignorant of the existence of any previous records. the yearly average was to , remaining fairly constant; the monthly average was . . i reproduce the total results summated for the months, separately, and i have worked out the daily average for each month, for convenience counting the summated eight years as one year:-- jan. feb. mar. apr. may june july aug. sept. oct. nov. dec. . . . . . . . . . . . . here, as in all the other curves we have been able to consider, we may see the usual two points of climax in spring and in autumn; the major climax covers april, may, june, and july, the minor autumnal climax is confined to november. in the light of the evidence which has thus accumulated, we may conclude that the existence of an annual ecbolic curve, with its spring and autumn climaxes, as described in the first edition of this book, is now definitely established. if we are to believe, as these records tend to show, that the nocturnal and involuntary voice of the sexual impulse usually speaks at least as loudly in autumn as in spring, we are confronted by a certain divergence of the sleeping sexual impulse from the waking sexual instinct, as witnessed by the conception-curve, and also, it may be added, by the general voice of tradition, and, indeed, of individual feeling, which concur, on the whole, in placing the chief epoch of sexual activity in spring and early summer, more especially as regards women.[ ] it is not impossible to reconcile the contradiction, assuming it to be real, but i will refrain here from suggesting the various explanations which arise. we need a broader basis of facts. there are many facts to show that early spring and, to a certain extent, autumn are periods of visible excitement, mainly sexual in character. we have already seen that among the eskimo menstruation and sexual desire occur chiefly in spring, but cases are known of healthy women in temperate climes who only menstruate twice a year, and in such cases the menstrual epochs appear to be usually in spring and autumn. such, at all events, was the case in a girl of , whose history has been recorded by dr. mary wenck, of philadelphia.[ ] she menstruated first when years old. six months later the flow again appeared for the second time, and lasted three weeks, without cessation. since then, for five years, she menstruated during march and september only, each time for three weeks, the flow being profuse, but not exhaustingly so, without pain or systemic disturbance. examination revealed perfectly normal uterus and ovarian organs. treatment, accompanied by sitz-baths during the time of month the flow should appear, accomplished nothing. the semi-annual flow continued and the girl seemed in excellent health. it is a remarkable fact that, as noted by dr. hamilton wey at elmira, sexual outbursts among prisoners appear to occur at about march and october. "beginning with the middle of february," writes dr. wey in a private letter, "and continuing for about two months, is a season of ascending sexual wave; also the latter half of september and the month of october. we are now (march th) in the midst of a wave." according to chinese medicine, it is the spring which awakens human passions. in early greek tradition, spring and summer were noted as the time of greatest wantonness. "in the season of toilsome summer," says hesiod (_works and days_, xi, - ), "the goats are fattest, wine is best, women most wanton, and men weakest." it was so, also, in the experience of the romans. pliny (_natural history_, bk. xii, ch. xliii) states that when the asparagus blooms and the cicada sings loudest, is the season when women are most amorous, but men least inclined to pleasure. paulus Ã�gineta said that hysteria specially abounds during spring and autumn in lascivious girls and sterile women, while more recent observers have believed that hysteria is particularly difficult to treat in autumn. oribasius (_synopsis_, lib. i, cap. ) quotes from rufus to the effect that sexual feeling is most strong in spring, and least so in summer. rabelais said that it was in march that the sexual impulse is strongest, referring this to the early warmth of spring, and that august is the month least favorable to sexual activity (_pantagruel_, liv. v, ch. xxix). nipho, in his book on love dedicated to joan of aragon, discussed the reasons why "women are more lustful and amorous in summer, and men in winter." venette, in his _génération de l'homme_, harmonized somewhat conflicting statements with the observation that spring is the season of love for both men and women; in summer, women are more amorous than men; in autumn, men revive to some extent, but are still oppressed by the heat, which, sexually, has a less depressing effect on women. there is probably a real element of truth in this view, and both extremes of heat and cold may be regarded as unfavorable to masculine virility. it is highly probable that the well-recognized tendency of piles to become troublesome in spring and in autumn, is due to increased sexual activity. piles are favored by congestion, and sexual excitement is the most powerful cause of sudden congestion in the genito-anal region. erasmus darwin called attention to the tendency of piles to recur about the equinoxes (_zoönomia_, section xxxvi), and since his days gant, bonavia, and cullimore have correlated this periodicity with sexual activity. laycock, quoting the opinions of some earlier authorities as to the prevalence of sexual feeling in spring, stated that that popular opinion "appears to be founded on fact" (_nervous diseases of women_, p. ). i find that many people, and perhaps especially women, confirm from their own experience, the statement that sexual feeling is strongest in spring and summer. wichmann states that pollutions are most common in spring (being perhaps the first to make that statement), and also nymphomania. (in the eighteenth century, schurig recorded a case of extreme and life-long sexual desire in a woman whose salacity was always at its height towards the festival of st. john, _gynæcologia_, p. .) a correspondent in the argentine republic writes to me that "on big estancias, where we have a good many shepherds, nearly always married, or, rather, i should say, living with some woman (for our standard of morality is not very high in these parts), we always look out for trouble in springtime, as it is a very common thing at this season for wives to leave their husbands and go and live with some other man." a corresponding tendency has been noted even among children. thus, sanford bell ("the emotion of love between the sexes," _american journal psychology_, july, ) remarks: "the season of the year seems to have its effect upon the intensity of the emotion of sex-love among children. one teacher, from texas, who furnished me with seventy-six cases, said that he had noticed that in the matter of love children seemed 'fairly to break out in the springtime.' many of the others who reported, incidentally mentioned the love affairs as beginning in the spring. this also agrees with my own observations." crichton-browne remarks that children in springtime exhibit restlessness, excitability, perversity, and indisposition to exertion that are not displayed at other times. this condition, sometimes known as "spring fever," has been studied in over a hundred cases, both children and adults, by kline. the majority of these report a feeling of tiredness, languor, lassitude, sometimes restlessness, sometimes drowsiness. there is often a feeling of suffocation, and a longing for nature and fresh air and day-dreams, while work seems distasteful and unsatisfactory. change is felt to be necessary at all costs, and sometimes there is a desire to begin some new plan of life.[ ] in both sexes there is frequently a wave of sexual emotion, a longing for love. kline also found by examination of a very large number of cases that between the ages of four and seventeen it is in spring that running away from home most often occurs. he suggests that this whole group of phenomena may be due to the shifting of the metabolic processes from the ordinary grooves into reproductive channels, and seeks to bring it into connection with the migrations of animals for reproductive purposes.[ ] it has long been known that the occurrence of insanity follows an annual curve,[ ] and though our knowledge of this curve, being founded on the date of admissions to asylums, cannot be said to be quite precise, it fairly corresponds to the outbreaks of acute insanity. the curve presented in chart shows the admissions to the london county council lunatic asylums during the years to inclusive; i have arranged it in two-month periods, to neutralize unimportant oscillations. in order to show that this curve is not due to local or accidental circumstances, we may turn to france and take a special and chronic form of mental disease: garnier, in his _folie à paris_, presents an almost exactly similar curve of the admissions of cases of general paralysis to the infirmerie spéciale at paris during the years - (chart ). both curves alike show a major climax in spring and a minor climax in autumn. crime in general in temperate climates tends to reach its maximum at the beginning of the hot season, usually in june. thus, in belgium, the minimum is in february; the maximum in june, thence gradually diminishing (lentz, _bulletin société médecine mentale belgique_, march, ). in france, lacassagne has summated the data extending over more than years, and finds that for all crimes june is the maximum month, the minimum being reached in november. he also gives the figures for each class of crime separately, and every crime is found to have its own yearly curve. poisonings show a chief maximum in may, with slow fall and a minor climax in december; assassinations have a february and a november climax. parricides culminate in may-june, and in october (lacassagne's tables are given by laurent, _les habitués des prisons de paris_, ch. ). notwithstanding the general tendency for crime to reach its maximum in the first hot month (a tendency not necessarily due to the direct influence of heat), we also find, when we consider the statistics of crime generally (including sexual crime), that there is another tendency for minor climaxes in spring and autumn. thus, in italy, penta, taking the statistics of nearly four thousand crimes (murder, highway robbery, and sexual offences), found the maximum in the first summer months, but there were also minor climaxes in spring and in august and september (penta, _rivista mensile di psichiatria_, ). in nearly all europe (as is shown by a diagram given by lombroso and laschi, at the end of the first volume of _le crime politique_), while the chief climaxes occur about july, there is, in most countries, a distinct tendency to spring (usually about march) and autumn (september and november) climaxes, though they rarely rise as high as the july climax. if we consider the separate periodicity of sexual offences, we find that they follow the rule for crimes generally, and usually show a chief maximum in early summer. aschaffenburg finds that the annual periodicity of the sexual impulse appears more strongly marked the more abnormal its manifestations, which he places in the following order of increasing periodicity: conceptions in marriage, conceptions out of marriage, offences against decency, rape, assaults on children (_centralblatt für nervenheilkunde_, january, ). in france, rapes and offences against modesty are most numerous in may, june, and july, as villermé, lacassagne, and others have shown. villermé, investigating , such cases, found a gradual ascent in frequency (only slightly broken in march) to a maximum in june (oscillating between may and july, when the years are considered separately), and then a gradual descent to a minimum in december. legludic gives, for the cases he had investigated, a table showing a small february-march climax, and a large june-august maximum, the minimum being reached in november-january. (legludic, _attentats aux moeurs_, , p. .) in germany, aschaffenburg finds that sexual offences begin to increase in march and april, reach a maximum in june or july, and fall to a minimum in winter (_monatsschrift für psychiatrie_, , heft ). in italy, penta shows that sexual offences reach a minor climax in may (corresponding, in his experience, with the maximum for crimes generally, as well as with the maximum for conceptions), and a more marked climax in august-september (penta, _i pervertimenti sessuali_, , p. ; id. _rivista mensile di psichiatria_, ). corre, in his _crime en pays créole_, presents charts of the seasonal distribution of crime in guadeloupe, with relation to temperature, which show that while, in a mild temperature like that of france and england, crime attains its maximum in the hot season, it is not so in a more tropical climate; in july, when in guadeloupe the heat attains its maximum degree, crime of all kinds falls suddenly to a very low minimum. even in the united states, where the summer heat is often excessive, it tends to produce a diminution of crime. dexter, in an elaborate study of the relationship of conduct to the weather, shows that in the united states assaults present the maximum of frequency in april and october, with a decrease during the summer and the winter. "the unusual and interesting fact demonstrated here with a certainty that cannot be doubted is," he concludes, "that the unseasonably hot days of spring and autumn are the pugnacious ones, even though the actual heat be much less than for summer. we might infer from this that conditions of heat, up to a certain extent, are vitalizing, while, at the same time, irritating, but above that limit, heat is so devitalizing in its effects as to leave hardly energy enough to carry on a fight." (e.g. dexter, _conduct and the weather_, , pp. _et seq._) it is not impossible that the phenomena of seasonal periodicity in crimes may possess a real significance in relation to sexual periodicity. if, as is possible, the occurrence of spring and autumn climaxes of criminal activity is due less to any special exciting causes at these seasons than to the depressing influences of heat and cold in summer and winter, it may appear reasonable to ask whether the spring and autumn climaxes of sexual activity are not really also largely due to a like depressing influence of extreme temperatures at the other two seasons. not only is there periodicity in criminal conduct, but even within the normal range of good and bad conduct seasonal periodicity may still be traced. in his _physical and industrial training of criminals_, h.d. wey gives charts of the conduct of seven prisoners during several years, as shown by the marks received. these charts show that there is a very decided tendency to good behavior during summer and winter, while in spring (february, march, and april) and in autumn (august, september and october) there are very marked falls to bad conduct, each individual tending to adhere to a conduct-curve of his own. wey does not himself appear to have noticed this seasonal periodicity. marro, however, has investigated this question in turin on a large scale and reaches results not very dissimilar from those shown by wey's figures in new york. he noted the months in which over , punishments were inflicted on prisoners for assaults, insults, threatening language, etc., and shows the annual curve in tavola vi of his _caratteri dei delinquenti_. there is a marked and isolated climax in may; a still more sudden rise leads to the chief maximum of punishment in august; and from the minimum in october there is rapid ascent during the two following months to a climax much inferior to that of may. the seasonal periodicity of bad conduct in prisons is of interest as showing that we cannot account for psychic periodicity by invoking exclusively social causes. this theory of psychic periodicity has been seriously put forward, but has been investigated and dismissed, so far as crime in holland is concerned, by j.r.b. de roos, in the transactions of the sixth congress of criminal anthropology, at turin, in (_archivio di psichiatria_ fasc. , ). the general statistics of suicides in continental europe show a very regular and unbroken curve, attaining a maximum in june and a minimum in december, the curve rising steadily through the first six months, sinking steadily through the last six months, but always reaching a somewhat greater height in may than in july.[ ] morselli shows that in various european countries there is always a rise in spring and in autumn (october or november).[ ] morselli attributes these spring and autumn rises to the influence of the strain of the early heat and the early cold.[ ] in england, also, if we take a very large number of statistics, for instance, the figures for london during the twenty years between and , as given by ogle (in a paper read before the statistical society in ), we find that, although the general curve has the same maximum and minimum points, it is interrupted by a break on each side of the maximum, and these two breaks occur precisely at about march and october.[ ] this is shown in the curve in chart , which presents the daily average for the different months. the growth of children follows an annual rhythm. wahl, the director of an educational establishment for homeless girls in denmark, who investigated this question, found that the increase of weight for all the ages investigated was constantly about per cent. greater in the summer half-year than in the winter half-year. it was noteworthy that even the children who had not reached school-age, and therefore could not be influenced by school-life, showed a similar, though slighter, difference in the same direction. it is, however, malling-hansen, the director of an institution for deaf-mutes in copenhagen, who has most thoroughly investigated this matter over a great many years. he finds that there are three periods of growth throughout the year, marked off in a fairly sharp manner, and that during each of these periods the growth in weight and height shows constant characteristics. from about the end of november up to about the end of march is a period when growth, both in height and weight, proceeds at a medium rate, reaching neither a maximum nor a minimum; increase in weight is slight, the increase in height, although trifling, preponderating. after this follows a period during which the children show a marked increase in height, while increase in weight is reduced to a minimum. the children constantly lose in weight during this period of growth in height almost as much as they gain in the preceding period. this period lasts from march and april to july and august. then follows the third period, which continues until november and december. during this period increase in height is very slight, being at its early minimum; increase in weight, on the other hand, at the beginning of the period (in september and october), is rapid and to the middle of december very considerable, daily increase in weight being three times as great as during the winter months. thus it may be said that the spring sexual climax corresponds, roughly, with growth in height and arrest of growth in weight, while the autumn climax corresponds roughly with a period of growth in weight and arrest of growth in height. malling-hansen found that slight variations in the growth of the children were often dependent on changes in temperature, in such a way that a rise of temperature, even lasting for only a few days, caused an increase of growth, and a fall of temperature a decrease in growth. at halle, schmid-monnard found that nearly all growth in weight took place in the second half of the year, and that the holidays made little difference. in america, peckham has shown that increase of growth is chiefly from the st of may to the st of september.[ ] among young girls in st. petersburg, jenjko found that increase in weight takes place in summer. goepel found that increase in height takes place mostly during the first eight months of the year, reaching a maximum in august, declining during the autumn and winter, in february being _nil_, while in march there is sometimes loss in weight even in healthy children. in the course of a study as to the consumption of bread in normal schools during each month of the year, as illustrating the relationship between intellectual work and nutrition, binet presents a number of curves which bring out results to which he makes no allusion, as they are outside his own investigation. almost without exception, these curves show that there is an increase in the consumption of bread in spring and in autumn, the spring rise being in february, march, and april; the autumn rise in october or november. there are, however, certain fallacies in dealing with institutions like normal schools, where the conditions are not perfectly regular throughout the year, owing to vacations, etc. it is, therefore, instructive to find that under the monotonous conditions of prison-life precisely the same spring and autumn rises are found. binet takes the consumption of bread in the women's prison at clermont, where some four hundred prisoners, chiefly between the ages of thirty and forty, are confined, and he presents two curves for the years and . the curves for these two years show certain marked disagreements with each other, but both unite in presenting a distinct rise in april, preceded and followed by a fall, and both present a still more marked autumn rise, in one case in september and november, in the other case in october.[ ] some years ago, sir j. crichton-browne stated that a manifestation of the sexual stimulus of spring is to be found in the large number of novels read during the month of march ("address in psychology" at the annual meeting of the british medical association, leeds, ; _lancet_, august , ). the statement was supported by figures furnished by lending libraries, and has since been widely copied. it would certainly be interesting if we could so simply show the connection between love and season, by proving that when the birds began to sing their notes, the young person's fancy naturally turns to brood over the pictures of mating in novels. i accordingly applied to mr. capel shaw, chief librarian of the birmingham free libraries (specially referred to by sir j. crichton-browne), who furnished me with the reports for and - (this latter report is carried on to the end of march, ). the readers who use the birmingham free lending libraries are about , in number; they consist very largely of young people between the ages of and ; somewhat less than half are women. certainly we seem to have here a good field for the determination of this question. the monthly figures for each of the ten birmingham libraries are given separately, and it is clear at a glance that without exception the maximum number of readers of prose-fiction at all the libraries during - is found in the month of march. (i have chiefly taken into consideration the figures for - ; the figures for are somewhat abnormal and irregular, probably owing to a decrease in readers, attributed to increased activity in trade, and partly to a disturbing influence caused by the opening of a large new library in the course of the year, suddenly increasing the number of readers, and drafting off borrowers from some of the other libraries.) not only so, but there is a second, or autumnal climax, almost equaling the spring climax, and occuring with equal certainty, appearing during - either in october or november, and during , constantly in october. thus, the periodicity of the rate of consumption of prose-fiction corresponds with the periodicity which is found to occur in the conception rate and in sexual ecbolic manifestations. it is necessary, however, to examine somewhat more closely the tables presented in these reports, and to compare the rate of the consumption of novels with that of other classes of literature. in the first place, if, instead of merely considering the consumption of novels per month, we make allowance for the varying length of the months, and consider the average _daily_ consumption per month, the supremacy of march at once vanishes. february is really the month during which most novels were read during the first quarter of , except at two libraries, where february and march are equal. the result is similar if we ascertain the daily averages for the first quarter in , while, in (which, however, as i have already remarked, is a rather abnormal year), the daily average for march in many of the libraries falls below that for january, as well as for february. again, when we turn to the other classes of books, we find that this predominance which february possesses, and to some extent shares with march and january, by no means exclusively applies to novels. it is not only shared by both music and poetry,--which would fit in well with the assumption of a sexual _nisus_,--but the department of "history, biography, voyages, and travels" shares it also with considerable regularity; so, also, does that of "arts, sciences, and natural history," and it is quite well marked in "theology, moral philosophy, etc.," and in "juvenile literature." we even have to admit that the promptings of the sexual instinct bring an increased body of visitors to the reference library (where there are no novels), for here, also, both the spring and autumnal climaxes are quite distinct. certainly this theory carries us a little too far. the main factor in producing this very marked annual periodicity seems to me to be wholly unconnected with the sexual impulse. the winter half of the year (from the beginning of october to the end of march), when outdoor life has lost its attractions, and much time must be spent in the house, is naturally the season for reading. but during the two central months of winter, december and january, the attraction of reading meets with a powerful counter-attraction in the excitement produced by the approach of christmas, and the increased activity of social life which accompanies and for several weeks follows christmas. in this way the other four winter months--october and november at the autumnal end, and february and march at the spring end--must inevitably present the two chief reading climaxes of the year; and so the reports of lending libraries present us with figures which show a striking, but fallacious, resemblance to the curves which are probably produced by more organic causes. i am far from wishing to deny that the impulse which draws young men and women to imaginative literature is unconnected with the obscure promptings of the sexual instinct. but, until the disturbing influence i have just pointed out is eliminated, i see no evidence here for any true seasonal periodicity. possibly in prisons--the value of which, as laboratories of experimental psychology we have scarcely yet begun to realize--more reliable evidence might be obtained; and those french and other prisons where novels are freely allowed to the prisoners might yield evidence as regards the consumption of fiction as instructive as that yielded at clermont concerning the consumption of bread. certain diseases show a very regular annual curve. this is notably the case with scarlet fever. caiger found in a london fever hospital a marked seasonal prevalence: there was a minor climax in may (repeated in july), and a great autumnal climax in october, falling to a minimum in december and january. this curve corresponds closely to that usually observed in london.[ ] it is not peculiar to london, or to urban districts, for in rural districts we find nearly the same spring minor maximum and major autumnal maximum. in russia it is precisely the same. many other epidemic diseases show very similar curves. an annual curve may be found in the expulsive force of the bladder as measured by the distance to which the urinary stream can be projected. this curve, as ascertained for one case, is interesting on account of the close relationship between sexual and vesical activity. after a minimum point in autumn there is a rise through the early part of the year to a height maintained through spring and summer, and reaching its maximum in august.[ ] this may be said to correspond with the general tendency found in some cases of nocturnal seminal emissions from a winter minimum to an autumn maximum. there is an annual curve in voluntary muscle strength. thus in antwerp, where the scientific study of children is systematically carried out by a pedological bureau, schuyten found that, measured by the dynamometer, both at the ages of and , both boys and girls showed a gradual increase of strength from october to january, a fall from january to march and a rise to june or july. march was the weakest month, june and july the strongest.[ ] schuyten also found an annual curve for mental ability, as tested by power of attention, which for much of the year corresponded to the curve of muscular strength, being high during the cold winter months. lobsien, at kiel, seeking to test schuyten's results and adopting a different method so as to gauge memory as well as attention, came to conclusions which confirmed those of schuyten. he found a very marked increase of ability in december and january, with a fall in april; april and may were the minimum months, while july and october also stood low.[ ] the inquiries of schuyten and lobsien thus seem to indicate that the voluntary aptitudes of muscular and mental force in children reach their maximum at a time of the year when most of the more or less involuntary activities we have been considering show a minimum of energy. if this conclusion should be confirmed by more extended investigations, it would scarcely be matter for surprise and would involve no true contradiction. it would, indeed, be natural to suppose that the voluntary and regulated activities of the nervous system should work most efficiently at those periods when they are least exposed to organic and emotional disturbance. so persistent a disturbing element in spring and autumn suggests that some physiological conditions underlie it, and that there is a real metabolic disturbance at these times of the year. so few continuous observations have yet been made on the metabolic processes of the body that it is not easy to verify such a surmise with absolute precision. edward smith's investigations, so far as they go, support it, and perry-coste's long-continued observations of pulse-frequency seem to show with fair regularity a maximum in early spring and another maximum in late autumn.[ ] i may also note that haig, who has devoted many years of observations to the phenomena of uric-acid excretion, finds that uric acid tends to be highest in the spring months, (march, april, may) and lowest at the first onset of cold in october.[ ] thus, while the sexual climaxes of spring and autumn are rooted in animal procreative cycles which in man have found expression in primitive festivals--these, again, perhaps, strengthening and developing the sexual rhythm--they yet have a wider significance. they constitute one among many manifestations of spring and autumn physiological disturbance corresponding with fair precision to the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. they resemble those periods of atmospheric tension, of storm and wind, which accompany the spring and autumn phases in the earth's rhythm, and they may fairly be regarded as ultimately a physiological reaction to those cosmic influences. footnotes: [ ] f. smith, _veterinary physiology_; dalziel, _the collie_. [ ] mondière, art "cambodgiens," _dictionnaire des sciences anthropologiques_. [ ] this primitive aspect of the festival is well shown by the human sacrifices which the ancient mexicans offered at this time, in order to enable the sun to recuperate his strength. the custom survives in a symbolical form among the mokis, who observe the festivals of the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. ("aspects of sun-worship among the moki indians," _nature_, july , .) the walpi, a tusayan people, hold a similar great sun-festival at the winter solstice, and december is with them a sacred month, in which there is no work and little play. this festival, in which there is a dance dramatizing the fructification of the earth and the imparting of virility to the seeds of corn, is fully described by j. walter fewkes (_american anthropologist_, march, ). that these solemn annual dances and festivals of north america frequently merge into "a lecherous _saturnalia_" when "all is joy and happiness," is stated by h.h. bancroft (_native races of pacific states_, vol. i, p. ). [ ] as regards the northern tribes of central australia, spencer and gillen state that, during the performance of certain ceremonies which bring together a large number of natives from different parts, the ordinary marital rules are more or less set aside (_northern tribes of central australia_, p. ). just in the same way, among the siberian yakuts, according to sieroshevski, during weddings and at the great festivals of the year, the usual oversight of maidens is largely removed. (_journal of the anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. .) [ ] r.e. guise, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , pp. - . [ ] dalton, _ethnology of bengal_, pp. et seq. w. crooke (_journal of the anthropological institute_, p. , ) also refers to the annual harvest-tree dance and _saturnalia_, and its association with the seasonal period for marriage. we find a similar phenomenon in the malay peninsula: "in former days, at harvest-time, the jakuns kept an annual festival, at which, the entire settlement having been called together, fermented liquor, brewed from jungle fruits, was drunk; and to the accompaniments of strains of their rude and incondite music, both sexes, crowning themselves with fragrant leaves and flowers, indulged in bouts of singing and dancing, which grew gradually wilder throughout the night, and terminated in a strange kind of sexual orgie." (w.w. skeat, "the wild tribes of the malay peninsula," _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. .) [ ] fielding hall, _the soul of a people_, , chapter xiii. [ ] see e.g., l. dyer, _studies of the gods in greece_, , pp. - , , etc. [ ] for a popular account of the feast of fools, see loliée, "la fête des fous," _revue des revues_, may , ; also, j.g. bourke, _scatologic rites of all nations_, pp. - . [ ] j. grimm (_teutonic mythology_, p. ) points out that the observance of the spring or easter bonfires marks off the saxon from the franconian peoples. the easter bonfires are held in lower saxony, westphalia, lower hesse, geldern, holland, friesland, jutland, and zealand. the midsummer bonfires are held on the rhine, in franconia, thuringia, swabia, bavaria, austria, and silesia. schwartz (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. ) shows that at lauterberg, in the harz mountains, the line of demarcation between these two primitive districts may still be clearly traced. [ ] _wald und feldkulte_, , vol. i, pp. et seq. he also mentions (p. ) that st. valentine's day ( th of february),--or ember day, or the last day of february,--when the pairing of birds was supposed to take place, was associated, especially in england, with love-making and the choice of a mate. in lorraine, it may be added, on the st of may, the young girls chose young men as their valentines, a custom known by this name to rabelais. [ ] rochholz, _drei gaugöttinnen_, p, . [ ] mannhardt, ibid., pp. et seq. also j.g. frazer, _golden bough_, vol ii, chapter iv. for further facts and references, see k. pearson (_the chances of death_, , vol, ii, "woman as witch," "kindred group-marriage," and appendix on "the '_mailehn_' and '_kiltgang_,'") who incidentally brings together some of the evidence concerning primitive sex-festivals in europe. also, e. hahn, _demeter und baubo_, , pp. - ; and for some modern survivals, see deniker, _races of man_, , chapter iii. on a lofty tumulus near the megalithic remains at carnac, in brittany, the custom still prevails of lighting a large bonfire at the time of the summer solstice; it is called tan heol, or tan st. jean. in ireland, the bonfires also take place on st. john's eve, and a correspondent, who has often witnessed them in county waterford, writes that "women, with garments raised, jump through these fires, and conduct which, on ordinary occasions would be reprobated, is regarded as excusable and harmless." outside europe, the berbers of morocco still maintain this midsummer festival, and in the rif they light bonfires; here the fires seem to be now regarded as mainly purificatory, but they are associated with eating ceremonies which are still regarded as multiplicative. (westermarck, "midsummer customs in morocco," _folk-lore_, march, .) [ ] mannhardt (op. cit., p. ) quotes a description of an ehstonian festival in the island of moon, when the girls dance in a circle round the fire, and one of them,--to the envy of the rest, and the pride of her own family,--is chosen by the young men, borne away so violently that her clothes are often torn, and thrown down by a youth, who places one leg over her body in a kind of symbolical coitus, and lies quietly by her side till morning. the spring festivals of the young people of ukrainia, in which, also, there is singing, dancing, and sleeping together, are described in "folk-lore de l'ukrainie." kryptadia, vol. v, pp. - , and vol. viii, pp. et seq. [ ] m. kowalewsky, "marriage among the early slavs," _folk-lore_, december, . [ ] a. tille, however (_yule and christmas_, ), while admitting that the general aryan division of the year was dual, follows tacitus in asserting that the germanic division of the year (like the egyptian) was tripartite: winter, spring, and summer. [ ] grimm, _teutonic mythology_ (english translation by stallybrass), pp. - , , . [ ] wellhausen, _reste arabischen heidentums_, , p. . [ ] see, e.g., the chapter on ritual in gérard-varet's interesting book, _l'ignorance et l'irreflexion_, , for a popular account of this and allied primitive conceptions. [ ] jastrow, _religion of babylonia_, especially pp. , ; regarding the priestesses, jastrow remarks: "among many nations, the mysterious aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that, by a perversion of their original import, appear to be obscene. the prostitutes were priestesses attached to the ishtar cult, and who took part in ceremonies intended to symbolize fertility." whether there is any significance in the fact that the first two months of the babylonian year (roughly corresponding to our march and april), when we should expect births to be at a maximum, were dedicated to ea and bel, who, according to varying legends, were the creators of man, and that new year's day was the festival of bau, regarded as the mother of mankind, i cannot say, but the suggestion may be put forward. [ ] _celtic heathendom_, p. . [ ] grimm, _teutonic mythology_, p. . in england, the november, bonfires have become merged into the guy fawkes celebrations. in the east, the great primitive autumn festivals seem to have fallen somewhat earlier. in babylonia, the seventh month (roughly corresponding to september) was specially sacred, though nothing is known of its festivals, and this also was the sacred festival month of the hebrews, and originally of the arabs. in europe, among the southern slavs, the reigen, or kolo--wild dances by girls, adorned with flowers, and with skirts girt high, followed by sexual intercourse--take place in autumn, during the nights following harvest time. [ ] a. tille, _yule and christmas_, p. , etc. [ ] long before wargentin, however, rabelais had shown some interest in this question, and had found that there were most christenings in october and november, this showing, he pointed out, that the early warmth of spring influenced the number of conceptions (_pantagruel_, liv. v, ch. xxix). the spring maximum of conceptions is not now so early in france. [ ] villermé, "de la distribution par mois des conceptions," _annales d'hygiène publique_, tome v, , pp. - . [ ] sormani, _giornale di medicina militare_, . [ ] throughout europe, it may be said, marriages tend to take place either in spring or autumn (oettinger _moralstatistik_, p. , gives details). that is to say, that there is a tendency for marriages to take place at the season of the great public festivals, during which sexual intercourse was prevalent in more primitive times. [ ] hill, _nature_, july , . [ ] g. mayr, _die gesetzmässigkeit im gesellschaftsleben_, , p. . [ ] edward smith (_health and disease_), who attributes this to the lessened vitality of offspring at that season. beukemann also states that children born in september have most vitality. [ ] westermarck has even suggested that the december maximum of conceptions may be due to better chance of survival for september offspring (_human marriage_, chapter ii). it may be noted that though the maximum of conceptions is in may, relatively the smallest proportion of boys is conceived at that time. (rauber, _der ueberschuss an knabengeburten_, p. .) [ ] krieger found that the great majority of german women investigated by him menstruated for the first time in september, october, or november. in america, bowditch states that the first menstruation of country girls more often occurs in spring than at any other season. [ ] _women's medical journal_, . [ ] it is, perhaps, worth while noting that the wisdom of the mediæval church found an outlet for this "spring fever" in pilgrimages to remote shrines. as chaucer wrote, in the _canterbury tales_:-- "whané that aprille with his showers sote the droughts of march hath piercèd to the root, thaen longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, and palmers for to seeken strangé stronds." [ ] l.w. kline, "the migratory impulse," _american journal of psychology_, , vol. x, especially pp. - . [ ] mania comes to a crisis in spring, said the old physician, aretæus (bk. , ch. v). [ ] this is, at all events, the case in france, prussia, and italy. see, for instance, durkheim's discussion of the cosmic factors of suicide, _le suicide_, , chapter iii. in spain, as bernaldo de quirós shows (_criminologia_, p. ), there is a slight irregular rise in december, but otherwise the curve is perfectly regular, with maximum in june, and minimum in january. [ ] this holds good of a south european country, taken separately. a chart of the annual incidence of suicide by hanging, in roumania, presented by minovici (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, , p. ), shows climaxes of equal height in may and september. [ ] morselli, _suicide_, pp. - . [ ] ogle himself was inclined to think that these breaks were accidental, being unaware of the allied phenomena with which they may be brought into line. it is true that (as gaedeken objects to me) the autumnal break is very slight, but it is probably real when we are dealing with so large a mass of data. [ ] _pedagogical seminary_, june, , p. . for a very full summary and bibliography of investigations regarding growth, see f. burk, "growth of children in height and weight," _american journal of psychology_, april, . [ ] _l'année psychologique_, . [ ] _lancet_, june , . edward smith had pointed out many years earlier that scarlet fever is most fatal in periods of increasing vitality. [ ] havelock ellis, "the bladder as a dynamometer," _american journal of dermatology_, may, . [ ] see, e.g., summary in _internationales centrablatt für anthropologie_, , heft , p. . [ ] summarized in _zeitschrift für psychologie der sinnesorgane_, , p. . [ ] camerer found that from september to november is the period of greatest metabolic activity. [ ] haig, _uric acid_, th edition, , p. . auto-erotism: a study of the spontaneous manifestations of the sexual impulse. i. definition of auto-erotism--masturbation only covers a small portion of the auto-erotic field--the importance of this study, especially to-day--auto-erotic phenomena in animals--among savage and barbaric races--the japanese _rin-no-tama_ and other special instruments for obtaining auto-erotic gratification--abuse of the ordinary implements and objects of daily life--the frequency of hair-pin in the bladder--the influence of horse-exercise and railway traveling--the sewing-machine and the bicycle--spontaneous passive sexual excitement--_delectatio morosa_--day-dreaming--_pollutio_--sexual excitement during sleep--erotic dreams--the analogy of nocturnal enuresis--differences in the erotic dreams of men and women--the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep in the hysterical--their frequently painful character. by "auto-erotism" i mean the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person. in a wide sense, which cannot be wholly ignored here, auto-erotism may be said to include those transformations of repressed sexual activity which are a factor of some morbid conditions as well as of the normal manifestation of art and poetry, and, indeed, more or less color the whole of life. such a definition excludes the normal sexual excitement aroused by the presence of a beloved person of the opposite sex; it also excludes the perverted sexuality associated with an attraction to a person of the same sex; it further excludes the manifold forms of erotic fetichism, in which the normal focus of sexual attraction is displaced, and voluptuous emotions are only aroused by some object--hair, shoes, garments, etc.--which, to the ordinary lover, are of subordinate--though still, indeed, considerable--importance.[ ] the auto-erotic field remains extensive; it ranges from occasional voluptuous day-dreams, in which the subject is entirely passive, to the perpetual unashamed efforts at sexual self-manipulation witnessed among the insane. it also includes, though chiefly as curiosities, those cases in which individuals fall in love with themselves. among auto-erotic phenomena, or on the borderland, we must further include those religious sexual manifestations for an ideal object, of which we may find evidence in the lives of saints and ecstatics.[ ] the typical form of auto-erotism is the occurrence of the sexual orgasm during sleep. i do not know that any apology is needful for the invention of the term "auto-erotism."[ ] there is no existing word in current use to indicate the whole range of phenomena i am here concerned with. we are familiar with "masturbation," but that, strictly speaking, only covers a special and arbitrary subdivision of the field, although, it is true, the subdivision with which physicians and alienists have chiefly occupied themselves. "self-abuse" is somewhat wider, but by no means covers the whole ground, while for various reasons it is an unsatisfactory term. "onanism" is largely used, especially in france, and some writers even include all forms of homosexual connection under this name; it may be convenient to do so from a physiological point of view, but it is a confusing and antiquated mode of procedure, and from the psychological standpoint altogether illegitimate; "onanism" ought never to be used in this connection, if only on the ground that onan's device was not auto-erotic, but was an early example of withdrawal before emission, or _coitus interruptus_. while the name that i have chosen may possibly not be the best, there should be no question as to the importance of grouping all these phenomena together. it seems to me that this field has rarely been viewed in a scientifically sound and morally sane light, simply because it has not been viewed as a whole. we have made it difficult so to view it by directing our attention on the special group of auto-erotic facts--that group included under masturbation--which was most easy to observe and which in an extreme form came plainly under medical observation in insanity and allied conditions, and we have wilfully torn this group of facts away from the larger group to which it naturally belongs. the questions which have been so widely, so diversely, and--it must unfortunately be added--often so mischievously discussed, concerning the nature and evils of masturbation are not seen in their true light and proportions until we realize that masturbation is but a specialized form of a tendency which in some form or in some degree normally affects not only man, but all the higher animals. from a medical point of view it is often convenient to regard masturbation as an isolated fact; but in order to understand it we must bear in mind its relationships. in this study of auto-erotism i shall frequently have occasion to refer to the old entity of "masturbation," because it has been more carefully studied than any other part of the auto-erotic field; but i hope it will always be borne in mind that the psychological significance and even the medical diagnostic value of masturbation cannot be appreciated unless we realize that it is an artificial subdivision of a great group of natural facts. the study of auto-erotism is far from being an unimportant or merely curious study. yet psychologists, medical and non-medical, almost without exception, treat its manifestations--when they refer to them at all--in a dogmatic and off-hand manner which is far from scientific. it is not surprising, therefore, that the most widely divergent opinions are expressed. nor is it surprising that ignorant and chaotic notions among the general population should lead to results that would be ludicrous if they were not pathetic. to mention one instance known to me: a married lady who is a leader in social-purity movements and an enthusiast for sexual chastity, discovered, through reading some pamphlet against solitary vice, that she had herself been practicing masturbation for years without knowing it. the profound anguish and hopeless despair of this woman in face of what she believed to be the moral ruin of her whole life cannot well be described. it would be easy to give further examples, though scarcely a more striking one, to show the utter confusion into which we are thrown by leaving this matter in the hands of blind leaders of the blind. moreover, the conditions of modern civilization render auto-erotism a matter of increasing social significance. as our marriage-rate declines, and as illicit sexual relationships continue to be openly discouraged, it is absolutely inevitable that auto-erotic phenomena of one kind or another, not only among women but also among men, should increase among us both in amount and intensity. it becomes, therefore, a matter of some importance, both to the moralist and the physician, to investigate the psychological nature of these phenomena and to decide precisely what their attitude should be toward them. i do not purpose to enter into a thorough discussion of all the aspects of auto-erotism. that would involve a very extensive study indeed. i wish to consider briefly certain salient points concerning auto-erotic phenomena, especially their prevalence, their nature, and their moral, physical, and other effects. i base my study partly on the facts and opinions which during the last thirty years have been scattered through the periodical and other medical literature of europe and america, and partly on the experience of individuals, especially of fairly normal individuals. among animals in isolation, and sometimes in freedom--though this can less often be observed--it is well known that various forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement occur. horses when leading a lazy life may be observed flapping the penis until some degree of emission takes place. welsh ponies, i learn from a man who has had much experience with these animals, habitually produce erections and emissions in their stalls; they do not bring their hind quarters up during this process, and they close their eyes, which does not take place when they have congress with mares. the same informant observed that bulls and goats produce emissions by using their forelegs as a stimulus, bringing up their hind quarters, and mares rub themselves against objects. i am informed by a gentleman who is a recognized authority on goats, that they sometimes take the penis into the mouth and produce actual orgasm, thus practicing auto-fellatio. as regards ferrets, the rev. h. northcote states: "i am informed by a gentleman who has had considerable experience of ferrets, that if the bitch, when in heat, cannot obtain a dog she pines and becomes ill. if a smooth pebble is introduced into the hutch, she will masturbate upon it, thus preserving her normal health for one season. but if this artificial substitute is given to her a second season, she will not, as formerly, be content with it."[ ] stags in the rutting season, when they have no partners, rub themselves against trees to produce ejaculation. sheep masturbate; as also do camels, pressing themselves down against convenient objects; and elephants compress the penis between the hind legs to obtain emissions.[ ] blumenbach observed a bear act somewhat similarly on seeing other bears coupling, and hyenas, according to ploss and bartels, have been seen practicing mutual masturbation by licking each other's genitals. mammary masturbation, remarks féré, is found in certain female and even male animals, like the dog and the cat.[ ] apes are much given to masturbation, even in freedom, according to the evidence of good observers; for while no female apes are celibates, many of the males are obliged to lead a life of celibacy.[ ] male monkeys use the hand in masturbation, to rub and shake the penis.[ ] in the human species these phenomena are by no means found in civilization alone. to whatever extent masturbation may have been developed by the conditions of european life, which carry to the utmost extreme the concomitant stimulation, and repression of the sexual emotions, it is far from being, as mantegazza has declared it to be, one of the moral characteristics of europeans.[ ] it is found among the people of nearly every race of which we have any intimate knowledge, however natural the conditions under which men and women may live.[ ] thus, among the nama hottentots, among the young women at all events, gustav fritsch found that masturbation is so common that it is regarded as a custom of the country; no secret is made of it, and in the stories and legends of the race it is treated as one of the most ordinary facts of life. it is so also among the basutos, and the kaffirs are addicted to the same habit.[ ] the fuegians have a word for masturbation, and a special word for masturbation by women.[ ] when the spaniards first arrived at vizcaya, in the philippines, they found that masturbation was universal, and that it was customary for the women to use an artificial penis and other abnormal methods of sexual gratification. among the balinese, according to jacobs (as quoted by ploss and bartels), masturbation is general; in the boudoir of many a bali beauty, he adds, and certainly in every harem, may be found a wax penis to which many hours of solitude are devoted. throughout the east, as eram, speaking from a long medical experience, has declared, masturbation is very prevalent, especially among young girls. in egypt, according to sonnini, it is prevalent in harems. in india, a medical correspondent tells me, he once treated the widow of a wealthy mohammedan, who informed him that she began masturbation at an early age, "just like all other women." the same informant tells me that on the _façade_ of a large temple in orissa are bas-reliefs, representing both men and women, alone, masturbating, and also women masturbating men. among the tamils of ceylon masturbation is said to be common. in cochin china, lorion remarks, it is practiced by both sexes, but especially by the married women.[ ] japanese women have probably carried the mechanical arts of auto-erotism to the highest degree of perfection. they use two hollow balls about the size of a pigeon's egg (sometimes one alone is used), which, as described by joest, christian, and others,[ ] are made of very thin leaf of brass; one is empty, the other (called the little man) contains a small heavy metal ball, or else some quicksilver, and sometimes metal tongues which vibrate when set in movement; so that if the balls are held in the hand side by side there is a continuous movement. the empty one is first introduced into the vagina in contact with the uterus, then the other; the slightest movement of the pelvis or thighs, or even spontaneous movement of the organs, causes the metal ball (or the quicksilver) to roll, and the resulting vibration produces a prolonged voluptuous titillation, a gentle shock as from a weak electric inductive apparatus; the balls are called _rin-no-tama_, and are held in the vagina by a paper tampon. the women who use these balls delight to swing themselves in a hammock or rocking-chair, the delicate vibration of the balls slowly producing the highest degree of sexual excitement. joest mentions that this apparatus, though well known by name to ordinary girls, is chiefly used by the more fashionable _geishas_, as well as by prostitutes. its use has now spread to china, annam, and india. japanese women also, it is said, frequently use an artificial penis of paper or clay, called e.g.. among the atjeh, again, according to jacobs (as quoted by ploss), the young of both sexes masturbate and the elder girls use an artificial penis of wax. in china, also, the artificial penis--made of rosin, supple and (like the classical instrument described by herondas) rose-colored--is publicly sold and widely used by women.[ ] it may be noticed that among non-european races it is among women, and especially among those who are subjected to the excitement of a life professionally devoted to some form of pleasure, that the use of the artificial instruments of auto-erotism is chiefly practiced. the same is markedly true in europe. the use of an artificial penis in solitary sexual gratification may be traced down from classic times, and doubtless prevailed in the very earliest human civilization, for such an instrument is said to be represented in old babylonian sculptures, and it is referred to by ezekiel (ch. xvi. v. ). the lesbian women are said to have used such instruments, made of ivory or gold with silken stuffs and linen. aristophanes (_lysistrata_, v. ) speaks of the manufacture by the milesian women of a leather artificial penis, or olisbos. in the british museum is a vase representing a _hetaira_ holding such instruments, which, as found at pompeii, may be seen in the museum at naples. one of the best of herondas's mimes, "the private conversation," presents a dialogue between two ladies concerning a certain olisbos (or nbôn), which one of them vaunts as a dream of delight. through the middle ages (when from time to time the clergy reprobated the use of such instruments[ ]) they continued to be known, and after the fifteenth century the references to them became more precise. thus fortini, the siennese novelist of the sixteenth century, refers in his _novelle dei novizi_ ( th day, novella xxxix) to "the glass object filled with warm water which nuns use to calm the sting of the flesh and to satisfy themselves as well as they can"; he adds that widows and other women anxious to avoid pregnancy availed themselves of it. in elizabethan england, at the same time, it appears to have been of similar character and marston in his satires tells how lucea prefers "a glassy instrument" to "her husband's lukewarm bed." in sixteenth century france, also, such instruments were sometimes made of glass, and brantôme refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century germany they were called _samthanse_, and their use, according to heinse, as quoted by dühren, was common among aristocratic women. in england by that time the dildo appears to have become common. archemholtz states that while in paris they are only sold secretly, in london a certain mrs. philips sold them openly on a large scale in her shop in leicester square. john bee in , stating that the name was originally dil-dol, remarks that their use was formerly commoner than it was in his day. in france, madame gourdan, the most notorious brothel-keeper of the eighteenth century, carried on a wholesale trade in _consolateurs_, as they were called, and "at her death numberless letters from abbesses and simple nuns were found among her papers, asking for a 'consolateur' to be sent."[ ] the modern french instrument is described by gamier as of hardened red rubber, exactly imitating the penis and capable of holding warm milk or other fluid for injection at the moment of orgasm; the compressible scrotum is said to have been first added in the eighteenth century.[ ] in islam the artificial penis has reached nearly as high a development as in christendom. turkish women use it and it is said to be openly sold in smyrna. in the harems of zanzibar, according to baumann, it is of considerable size, carved out of ebony or ivory, and commonly bored through so that warm water may be injected. it is here regarded as an arab invention.[ ] somewhat similar appliances may be traced in all centres of civilization. but throughout they appear to be frequently confined to the world of prostitutes and to those women who live on the fashionable or semi-artistic verge of that world. ignorance and delicacy combine with a less versatile and perverted concentration on the sexual impulse to prevent any general recourse to such highly specialized methods of solitary gratification. on the other hand, the use, or rather abuse, of the ordinary objects and implements of daily life in obtaining auto-erotic gratification, among the ordinary population in civilized modern lands, has reached an extraordinary degree of extent and variety we can only feebly estimate by the occasional resulting mischances which come under the surgeon's hands, because only a certain proportion of such instruments are dangerous. thus the banana seems to be widely used for masturbation by women, and appears to be marked out for the purpose by its size and shape[ ]; it is, however, innocuous, and never comes under the surgeon's notice; the same may probably be said of the cucumbers and other vegetables more especially used by country and factory girls in masturbation; a lady living near vichy told pouillet that she had often heard (and had herself been able to verify the fact) that the young peasant women commonly used turnips, carrots, and beet-roots. in the eighteenth century mirabeau, in his _erotikca biblion_ gave a list of the various objects used in convents (which he describes as "vast theatres" of such practices) to obtain solitary sexual excitement. in more recent years the following are a few of the objects found in the vagina or bladder whence they could only be removed by surgical interference[ ]: pencils, sticks of sealing-wax, cotton-reels, hair-pins (and in italy very commonly the bone-pins used in the hair), bodkins, knitting-needles, crochet-needles, needle-cases, compasses, glass stoppers, candles, corks, tumblers, forks, tooth-picks, toothbrushes, pomade-pots (in a case recorded by schroeder with a cockchafer inside, a makeshift substitute for the japanese _rin-no-tama_), while in one recent english case a full-sized hen's egg was removed from the vagina of a middle-aged married woman. more than nine-tenths of the foreign bodies found in the female bladder or urethra are due to masturbation. the age of the individuals in whom such objects have been found is usually from to , but in a few cases they have been found in girls below , infrequently in women between and ; the large objects, naturally, are found chiefly in the vagina, and in married women.[ ] hair-pins have, above all, been found in the female bladder with special frequency; this point is worth some consideration as an illustration of the enormous frequency of this form of auto-erotism. the female urethra is undoubtedly a normal centre of sexual feeling, as pouillet pointed out many years ago; a woman medical correspondent, also, writes that in some women the maximum of voluptuous sensation is at the vesical sphincter or orifice, though not always so limited. e.h. smith, indeed, considers that "the urethra is the part in which the orgasm occurs," and remarks that in sexual excitement mucus always flows largely from the urethra.[ ] it should be added that when once introduced the physiological mechanism of the bladder apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow" the foreign object. yet for every case in which the hair-pin disappears and is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or the oblivion of the sexual spasm, there must be a vast number of cases in which the instrument is used without any such unfortunate result. there is thus great significance in the frequency with which cases of hair-pin in the bladder are strewn through the medical literature of all countries. in , a german surgeon found the accident so common that he invented a special instrument for extracting hair-pins from the female bladder, as, indeed, italian and french surgeons have also done. in france, denucé, of bordeaux, came to the conclusion that hair-pin in the bladder is the commonest result of masturbation as known to the surgeon. in england cases are constantly being recorded. lawson tait, stating that most cases of stone in the bladder in women are due to the introduction of a foreign body, very often a hair-pin, adds: "i have removed hair-pins encrusted with phosphates from ten different female bladders, and not one of the owners of these bladders would give any account of the incident."[ ] stokes, again, records that during four years he had four cases of hair-pin in the female urethra.[ ] in new york one physician met with four cases in a short experience.[ ] in switzerland professor reverdin had a precisely similar experience.[ ] there is, however, another class of material objects, widely employed for producing physical auto-erotism, which in the nature of things never reaches the surgeon. i refer to the effects that, naturally or unnaturally, may be produced by many of the objects and implements of daily life that do not normally come in direct contact with the sexual organs. children sometimes, even when scarcely more than infants, produce sexual excitement by friction against the corner of a chair or other piece of furniture, and women sometimes do the same.[ ] guttceit, in russia, knew women who made a large knot in their chemises to rub against, and mentions a woman who would sit on her naked heel and rub it against her. girls in france, i am informed, are fond of riding on the _chevaux-de-bois_, or hobby-horses, because of the sexual excitement thus aroused; and that the sexual emotions play a part in the fascination exerted by this form of amusement everywhere is indicated by the ecstatic faces of its devotees.[ ] at the temples in some parts of central india, i am told, swings are hung up in pairs, men and women swinging in these until sexually excited; during the months when the men in these districts have to be away from home the girls put up swings to console themselves for the loss of their husbands. it is interesting to observe the very wide prevalence of swinging, often of a religious or magic character, and the evident sexual significance underlying it, although this is not always clearly brought out. groos, discussing the frequency of swinging (_die spiele der menschen_, p. ) refers, for instance, to the custom of the gilbert islanders for a young man to swing a girl from a coco palm, and then to cling on and swing with her. in ancient greece, women and grown-up girls were fond of see-saws and swings. the athenians had, indeed, a swinging festival (athenæus, bk. xiv, ch. x). songs of a voluptuous character, we gather from athenæus, were sung by the women at this festival. j.g. frazer (_the golden bough_, vol. ii, note a, "swinging as a magical rite") discusses the question, and brings forward instances in which men, or, especially, women swing. "the notion seems to be," he states, "that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether in the vegetable or in the animal kingdom; though why it should be supposed to do so, i confess myself unable to explain" (loc. cit., p. ). the explanation seems, however, not far to seek, in view of the facts quoted above, and frazer himself refers to the voluptuous character of the songs sometimes sung. even apart from actual swinging of the whole body, a swinging movement may suffice to arouse sexual excitement, and may,--at all events, in women,--constitute an essential part of methods of attaining solitary sexual gratification. kiernan thus describes the habitual auto-erotic procedure of a young american woman: "the patient knelt before a chair, let her elbows drop on its seat, grasping the arms with a firm grip, then commenced a swinging, writhing motion, seeming to fix her pelvis, and moving her trunk and limbs. the muscles were rigid, the face took on a passionate expression; the features were contorted, the eyes rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed, while the cheeks were purple. the condition bore a striking resemblance to the passional stage of grand hysteria. the reveling took only a moment to commence, but lasted a long time. swaying induced a pleasurable sensation, accompanied with a feeling of suction upon the clitoris. almost immediately after, a sensation of bursting, caused by discharge from the vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs, followed by a rapture prolonged for an indefinite time." the accompanying sexual imagery is so vivid as almost to become hallucinatory. (j.g. kiernan, "sex transformation and psychic impotence," _american journal of dermatology_, vol. ix, no. .) somewhat similarly sensations of sexual character are sometimes experienced by boys when climbing up a pole. it is not even necessary that there should be direct external contact with the sexual organs, and howe states that gymnastic swinging poles around which boys swing while supporting the whole weight on the hands, may suffice to produce sexual excitement. several writers have pointed out that riding, especially in women, may produce sexual excitement and orgasm.[ ] it is well-known, also, that both in men and women the vibratory motion of a railway-train frequently produces a certain degree of sexual excitement, especially when sitting forward. such excitement may remain latent and not become specifically sexual.[ ] i am not aware that this quality of railway traveling has ever been fostered as a sexual perversion, but the sewing-machine has attracted considerable attention on account of its influence in exciting auto-erotic manifestations. the early type of sewing-machine, especially, was of very heavy character and involved much up and down movement of the legs; langdon down pointed out many years ago that this frequently produced great sexual erethism which led to masturbation.[ ] according to one french authority, it is a well-recognized fact that to work a sewing-machine with the body in a certain position produces sexual excitement leading to the orgasm. the occurrence of the orgasm is indicated to the observer by the machine being worked for a few seconds with uncontrollable rapidity. this sound is said to be frequently heard in large french workrooms, and it is part of the duty of the superintendents of the rooms to make the girls sit properly.[ ] "during a visit which i once paid to a manufactory of military clothing," pouillet writes, "i witnessed the following scene. in the midst of the uniform sound produced by some thirty sewing-machines, i suddenly heard one of the machines working with much more velocity than the others. i looked at the person who was working it, a brunette of or . while she was automatically occupied with the trousers she was making on the machine, her face became animated, her mouth opened slightly, her nostrils dilated, her feet moved the pedals with constantly increasing rapidity. soon i saw a convulsive look in her eyes, her eyelids were lowered, her face turned pale and was thrown backward; hands and legs stopped and became extended; a suffocated cry, followed by a long sigh, was lost in the noise of the workroom. the girl remained motionless a few seconds, drew out her handkerchief to wipe away the pearls of sweat from her forehead, and, after casting a timid and ashamed glance at her companions, resumed her work. the forewoman, who acted as my guide, having observed the direction of my gaze, took me up to the girl, who blushed, lowered her face, and murmured some incoherent words before the forewoman had opened her mouth, to advise her to sit fully on the chair, and not on its edge. "as i was leaving, i heard another machine at another part of the room in accelerated movement. the forewoman smiled at me, and remarked that that was so frequent that it attracted no notice. it was specially observed, she told me, in the case of young work-girls, apprentices, and those who sat on the edge of their seats, thus much facilitating friction of the labia." in cases where the sewing-machine does not lead to direct self-excitement it has been held, as by fothergill,[ ] to predispose to frequency of involuntary sexual orgasm during sleep, from the irritation set up by the movement of the feet in the sitting posture during the day. the essential movement in working the sewing-machine is the flexion and extension of the ankle, but the muscles of the thighs are used to maintain the feet firmly on the treadle, the thighs are held together, and there is a considerable degree of flexion or extension of the thighs on the trunk; by a special adjustment of the body, and sometimes perhaps merely in the presence of sexual hyperæsthesia, it is thus possible to act upon the sexual organs; but this is by no means a necessary result of using the sewing-machine, and inquiry of various women, with well-developed sexual feelings, who are accustomed to work the treadle, has not shown the presence of any tendency in this direction. sexual irritation may also be produced by the bicycle in women. thus, moll[ ] remarks that he knows many married women, and some unmarried, who experience sexual excitement when cycling; in several cases he has ascertained that the excitement is carried as far as complete orgasm. this result cannot, however, easily happen unless the seat is too high, the peak in contact with the organs, and a rolling movement is adopted; in the absence of marked hyperæsthesia these results are only effected by a bad seat or an improper attitude, the body during cycling resting under proper conditions on the buttocks, and the work being mainly done by the muscles of the thighs and legs which control the ankles, flexion of the thigh on the pelvis being very small. most medical authorities on cycling are of opinion that when cycling leads to sexual excitement the fault lies more with the woman than with the machine. this conclusion does not appear to me to be absolutely correct. i find on inquiry that with the old-fashioned saddle, with an elevated peak rising toward the pubes, a certain degree of sexual excitement, not usually producing the orgasm (but, as one lady expressed it, making one feel quite ready for it), is fairly common among women. lydston finds that irritation of the genital organs may unquestionably be produced in both males and females by cycling. the aggravation of hæmorrhoids sometimes produced by cycling indicates also the tendency to local congestion. with the improved flat saddles, however, constructed with more definite adjustment to the anatomical formation of the parts, this general tendency is reduced to a negligible minimum. reference may be made at this point to the influence of tight-lacing. this has been recognized by gynæcologists as a factor of sexual excitement and a method of masturbation.[ ] women who have never worn corsets sometimes find that, on first putting them on, sexual feeling is so intensified that it is necessary to abandon their use.[ ] the reason of this (as siebert points out in his _buch für eltern_) seems to be that the corset both favors pelvic congestion and at the same time exerts a pressure on the abdominal muscles which brings them into the state produced during coitus. it is doubtless for the same reason that, as some women have found, more distension of the bladder is possible without corsets than with them. in a further class of cases no external object whatever is used to procure the sexual orgasm, but the more or less voluntary pressure of the thighs alone is brought to bear upon the sexual regions. it is done either when sitting or standing, the thighs being placed together and firmly crossed, and the pelvis rocked so that the sexual organs are pressed against the inner and posterior parts of the thighs.[ ] this is sometimes done by men, and is fairly common among women, especially, according to martineau,[ ] among those who sit much, such as dressmakers and milliners, those who use the sewing-machine, and those who ride. vedeler remarks that in his experience in scandinavia, thigh-friction is the commonest form of masturbation in women. the practice is widespread, and a medical correspondent in india tells me of a brahmin widow who confessed to this form of masturbation. i am told that in london board schools, at the present time, thigh-rubbing is not infrequent among the girl scholars; the proportion mentioned in one school was about ten per cent, of the girls over eleven; the thigh-rubbing is done more or less openly and is interpreted by the uninitiated as due merely to a desire to relieve the bladder. it is found in female infants. thus, townsend records the case of an infant, months old, who would cross her right thigh over the left, close her eyes and clench her fists; after a minute or two there would be complete relaxation, with sweating and redness of face; this would occur about once a week or oftener; the child was quite healthy, with no abnormal condition of the genital organs.[ ] the frequency of thigh-friction among women as a form of masturbation is due to the fact that it is usually acquired innocently and it involves no indecorum. thus soutzo reports the case of a girl of who at school, when having to wait her turn at the water-closet, for fear of wetting herself would put her clothes between her legs and press her thighs together, moving them backwards and forwards in the effort to control the bladder; she discovered that a pleasurable sensation was thus produced and acquired the habit of practicing the manoeuvre for its own sake; at the age of she began to vary it in different ways; thus she would hang from a tree with her legs swinging and her chemise pressed between her thighs which she would rub together.[ ] thigh-friction in some of its forms is so comparatively decorous a form of masturbation that it may even be performed in public places; thus, a few years ago, while waiting for a train at a station on the outskirts of a provincial town, i became aware of the presence of a young woman, sitting alone on a seat at a little distance, whom i could observe unnoticed. she was leaning back with legs crossed, swinging the crossed foot vigorously and continuously; this continued without interruption for some ten minutes after i first observed her; then the swinging movement reached a climax; she leant still further back, thus bringing the sexual region still more closely in contact with the edge of the bench and straightened and stiffened her body and legs in what appeared to be a momentary spasm; there could be little doubt as to what had taken place. a few moments later she slowly walked from her solitary seat into the waiting-room and sat down among the other waiting passengers, quite still now and with uncrossed legs, a pale quiet young woman, possibly a farmer's daughter, serenely unconscious that her manoeuvre had been detected, and very possibly herself ignorant of its true nature. there are many other forms in which the impulse of auto-erotism presents itself. dancing is often a powerful method of sexual excitement, not only among civilized but among savage peoples, and zache describes the erotic dances of swaheli women as having a masturbatory object.[ ] stimulation of the nates is a potent adjuvant to the production of self-excitement, and self-flagellation with rods, etc., is practiced by some individuals, especially young women.[ ] urtication is another form of this stimulation; reverdin knew a young woman who obtained sexual gratification by flogging herself with chestnut burrs, and it is stated that in some parts of france (departments of the ain and côte d'or) it is not uncommon for young girls to masturbate by rubbing the leaves of the _linaria cymbalaria_ (here called "pinton" or "timbarde") on to the sexual parts, thus producing a burning sensation.[ ] stimulation of the mamma, normally an erogenous centre in women, may occasionally serve as a method for obtaining auto-erotic satisfaction, including the orgasm, in both sexes. i have been told of a case in a man, and a medical correspondent in india informs me that he knows a eurasian woman, addicted to masturbation, who can only obtain the orgasm by rubbing the genitals with one hand while with the other she rubs and finally squeezes her breasts. the tactile stimulation even of regions of the body which are not normally erogenous zones in either sex may sometimes lead on to sexual excitement; hirschsprung, as well as freud, believes that this is often the case as regards finger-sucking and toe-sucking in infancy. even stroking the chin, remarks debreyne, may produce a pollution.[ ] taylor refers to the case of a young woman of , who was liable to attacks of choreic movements of the hands which would terminate in alternately pressing the middle finger on the tip of the nose and the tragus of the ear, when a "far-away, pleased expression" would appear on her face; she thus produced sexual excitement and satisfaction. she had no idea of wrong-doing and was surprised and ashamed when she realized the nature of her act.[ ] most of the foregoing examples of auto-erotism, are commonly included, by no means correctly, under the heading of "masturbation." there are, however, a vast number of people, possessing strong sexual emotions and living a solitary life, who experience, sometimes by instinct and sometimes on moral grounds, a strong repugnance for these manifestations of auto-erotism. as one highly intelligent lady writes: "i have sometimes wondered whether i could produce it (complete sexual excitement) mechanically, but i have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the experiment. it would materialize it too much." the same repugnance may be traced in the tendency to avoid, so far as possible, the use of the hands. it is quite common to find this instinctive unreasoning repugnance among women, a healthy repugnance, not founded on any moral ground. in men the same repugnance exists, more often combined with, or replaced by, a very strong moral and æsthetic objection to such practices. but the presence of such a repugnance, however invincible, is very far from carrying us outside the auto-erotic field. the production of the sexual orgasm is not necessarily dependent on any external contact or voluntary mechanical cause. as an example, though not of specifically auto-erotic manifestations, i may mention the case of a man of , a somewhat eccentric preacher, etc., who writes: "my whole nature goes out so to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that i have an emission while sitting by them with no thought of sex, only the gladness of soul found its way out thus, and a glow of health suffused the whole body. there was no spasmodic conclusion, but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops of semen passed." (in reality, no doubt, not semen, but urethral fluid.) this man's condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he is attracted to both men and women, and the sexual impulse seems to be irritable and weak; but a similar state of things exists so often in women, no doubt due to sexual repression, and in individuals who are in a general state of normal and good health, that in these it can scarcely be called morbid. brooding on sexual images, which the theologians termed _delectatio morosa_, may lead to spontaneous orgasm in either sex, even in perfectly normal persons. hammond described as a not uncommon form of "psychic coitus," a condition in which the simple act of imagination alone, in the presence of the desired object, suffices to produce orgasm. in some public conveyance, theatre, or elsewhere, the man sees a desirable woman and by concentrating his attention on her person and imagining all the stages of intimacy he quickly succeeds in producing orgasm.[ ] niceforo refers to an italian work-girl of who could obtain ejaculation of mucus four times a day, in the workroom in the presence of the other girls, without touching herself or moving her body, by simply thinking of sexual things.[ ] if the orgasm occurs spontaneously, without the aid of mental impressions, or any manipulations _ad hoc_, though under such conditions it ceases to be sinful from the theological standpoint, it certainly ceases also to be normal. sérieux records the case of a somewhat neurotic woman of , who had been separated from her husband for ten years, and since lived a chaste life; at this age, however, she became subject to violent crises of sexual orgasm, which would come on without any accompaniment of voluptuous thoughts. macgillicuddy records three cases of spontaneous orgasm in women coming under his notice.[ ] such crises are frequently found in both men and women, who, from moral reasons, ignorance, or on other grounds are restrained from attaining the complete sexual orgasm, but whose sexual emotions are, literally, continually dribbling from them. schrenck-notzing knows a lady who is spontaneously sexually excited on hearing music or seeing pictures without anything lascivious in them; she knows nothing of sexual relationships. another lady is sexually excited on seeing beautiful and natural scenes, like the sea; sexual ideas are mixed up in her mind with these things, and the contemplation of a specially strong and sympathetic man brings the orgasm on in about a minute. both these ladies "masturbate" in the streets, restaurants, railways, theatres, without anyone perceiving it.[ ] a brahmin woman informed a medical correspondent in india that she had distinct though feeble orgasm, with copious outflow of mucus, if she stayed long near a man whose face she liked, and this is not uncommon among european women. evidently under such conditions there is a state of hyperæsthetic weakness. here, however, we are passing the frontiers of strictly auto-erotic phenomena. _delectatio morosa_, as understood by the theologians, is distinct from desire, and also distinct from the definite intention of effecting the sexual act, although it may lead to those things. it is the voluntary and complacent dallying in imagination with voluptuous thoughts, when no effort is made to repel them. it is, as aquinas and others point out, constituted by this act of complacent dallying, and has no reference to the duration of the imaginative process. debreyne, in his _moechialogie_ (pp. - ), deals fully with this question, and quotes the opinions of theologians. i may add that in the early penitentials, before the elaboration of catholic theology, the voluntary emission of semen through the influence of evil thoughts, was recognized as a sin, though usually only if it occurred in church. in egbert's penitential of the eighth or ninth century (cap. ix, ), the penance assigned for this offence in the case of a deacon, is days; in the case of a monk, days; a priest, days; a bishop, . (haddon and stubbs, _councils and ecclesiastical documents_, vol. iii, p. .) the frequency of spontaneous orgasm in women seems to have been recognized in the seventeenth century. thus, schurig (_syllepsilogia_, p. ), apparently quoting riolan, states that some women are so wanton that the sight of a handsome man, or of their lover, or speech with such a one, will cause them to ejaculate their semen. there is, however, a closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping form of auto-erotism which may be considered here: i mean that associated with revery, or day-dreaming. although this is a very common and important form of auto-erotism, besides being in a large proportion of cases the early stage of masturbation, it appears to have attracted little attention.[ ] the day-dream has, indeed, been studied in its chief form, in the "continued story," by mabel learoyd, of wellesley college. the continued story is an imagined narrative, more or less peculiar to the individual, by whom it is cherished with fondness, and regarded as an especially sacred mental possession, to be shared only, if at all, with very sympathizing friends. it is commoner among girls and young women than among boys and young men; among persons of both sexes, per cent. among the women and only per cent. among the men, have any continued story. the starting-point is an incident from a book, or, more usually, some actual experience, which the subject develops; the subject is nearly always the hero or the heroine of the story. the growth of the story is favored by solitude, and lying in bed before going to sleep is the time specially sacred to its cultivation.[ ] no distinct reference, perhaps naturally enough, is made by miss learoyd to the element of sexual emotion with which these stories are often strongly tinged, and which is frequently their real motive. though by no means easy to detect, these elaborate and more or less erotic day-dreams are not uncommon in young men and especially in young women. each individual has his own particular dream, which is always varying or developing, but, except in very imaginative persons, to no great extent. such a day-dream is often founded on a basis of pleasurable personal experience, and develops on that basis. it may involve an element of perversity, even though that element finds no expression in real life. it is, of course, fostered by sexual abstinence; hence its frequency in young women. most usually there is little attempt to realize it. it does not necessarily lead to masturbation, though it often causes some sexual congestion or even spontaneous sexual orgasm. the day-dream is a strictly private and intimate experience, not only from its very nature, but also because it occurs in images which the subject finds great difficulty in translating into language, even when willing to do so. in other cases it is elaborately dramatic or romantic in character, the hero or heroine passing through many experiences before attaining the erotic climax of the story. this climax tends to develop in harmony with the subject's growing knowledge or experience; at first, merely a kiss, it may develop into any refinement of voluptuous gratification. the day-dream may occur either in normal or abnormal persons. rousseau, in his _confessions_, describes such dreams, in his case combined with masochism and masturbation. a distinguished american novelist, hamlin garland, has admirably described in _rose of dutcher's coolly_ the part played in the erotic day-dreams of a healthy normal girl at adolescence by a circus-rider, seen on the first visit to a circus, and becoming a majestic ideal to dominate the girl's thoughts for many years.[ ] raffalovich[ ] describes the process by which in sexual inverts the vision of a person of the same sex, perhaps seen in the streets or the theatre, is evoked in solitary reveries, producing a kind of "psychic onanism," whether or not it leads on to physical manifestations. although day-dreaming of this kind has at present been very little studied, since it loves solitude and secrecy, and has never been counted of sufficient interest for scientific inquisition, it is really a process of considerable importance, and occupies a large part of the auto-erotic field. it is frequently cultivated by refined and imaginative young men and women who lead a chaste life and would often be repelled by masturbation. in such persons, under such circumstances, it must be considered as strictly normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of the sexual impulse. no doubt it may often become morbid, and is never a healthy process when indulged in to excess, as it is liable to be by refined young people with artistic impulses, to whom it is in the highest degree seductive and insidious.[ ] as we have seen, however, day-dreaming is far from always colored by sexual emotion; yet it is a significant indication of its really sexual origin that, as i have been informed by persons of both sexes, even in these apparently non-sexual cases it frequently ceases altogether on marriage. even when we have eliminated all these forms of auto-erotic activity, however refined, in which the subject takes a voluntary part, we have still left unexplored an important portion of the auto-erotic field, a portion which many people are alone inclined to consider normal: sexual orgasm during sleep. that under conditions of sexual abstinence in healthy individuals there must inevitably be some auto-erotic manifestations during waking life, a careful study of the facts compels us to believe. there can be no doubt, also, that, under the same conditions, the occurrence of the complete orgasm during sleep with, in men, seminal emissions, is altogether normal. even zeus himself, as pausanias has recorded, was liable to such accidents: a statement which, at all events, shows that to the greek mind there was nothing derogatory in such an occurrence.[ ] the jews, however, regarded it as an impurity,[ ] and the same idea was transmitted to the christian church and embodied in the word _pollutio_, by which the phenomenon was designated in ecclesiastical phraseology.[ ] according to billuart and other theologians, pollution in sleep is not sin, unless voluntarily caused; if, however, it begins in sleep, and is completed in the half-waking state, with a sense of pleasure, it is a venial sin. but it seems allowable to permit a nocturnal pollution to complete itself on awaking, if it occurs without intention; and st. thomas even says "_si pollutio placeat ut naturæ exoneratio vel alleviatio peccatum non creditur_." notwithstanding the fair and logical position of the more distinguished latin theologians, there has certainly been a widely prevalent belief in catholic countries that pollution during sleep is a sin. in the "parson's tale," chaucer makes the parson say: "another sin appertaineth to lechery that cometh in sleeping; and the sin cometh oft to them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these four manners being ( ) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, ( ) infirmity, ( ) surfeit of meat and drink, and ( ) villainous thoughts. four hundred years later, madame roland, in her _mémoires particulières_, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. she menstruated first at the age of . "before this," she writes, "i had sometimes been awakened from the deepest sleep in a surprising manner. imagination played no part; i exercised it on too many serious subjects, and my timorous conscience preserved it from amusement with other subjects, so that it could not represent what i would not allow it to seek to understand. but an extraordinary effervescence aroused my senses in the heat of repose, and, by virtue of my excellent constitution, operated by itself a purification which was as strange to me as its cause. the first feeling which resulted was, i know not why, a sort of fear. i had observed in my _philotée_, that we are not allowed to obtain any pleasure from our bodies except in lawful marriage. what i had experienced could be called a pleasure. i was then guilty, and in a class of offences which caused me the most shame and sorrow, since it was that which was most displeasing to the spotless lamb. there was great agitation in my poor heart, prayers and mortifications. how could i avoid it? for, indeed, i had not foreseen it, but at the instant when i experienced it, i had not taken the trouble to prevent it. my watchfulness became extreme. i scrupulously avoided positions which i found specially exposed me to the accident. my restlessness became so great that, at last i was able to awake before the catastrophe. when i was not in time to prevent it, i would jump out of bed, with naked feet on to the polished floor, and with crossed arms pray to the saviour to preserve me from the wiles of the devil. i would then impose some penance on myself, and i have carried out to the letter what the prophet king probably only transmitted to us as a figure of oriental speech, mixing ashes with my bread and watering it with my tears." to the early protestant mind, as illustrated by luther, there was something diseased, though not impure, in sexual excitement during sleep; thus, in his _table talk_ luther remarks that girls who have such dreams should be married at once, "taking the medicine which god has given." it is only of comparatively recent years that medical science has obtained currency for the belief that this auto-erotic process is entirely normal. blumenbach stated that nocturnal emissions are normal.[ ] sir james paget declared that he had never known celibate men who had not such emissions from once or twice a week to twice every three months, both extremes being within the limits of good health, while sir lauder brunton considers once a fortnight or once a month about the usual frequency, at these periods the emissions often following two nights in succession. rohleder believes that they may normally follow for several nights in succession. hammond considers that they occur about once a fortnight.[ ] ribbing regards ten to fourteen days as the normal interval.[ ] löwenfeld puts the normal frequency at about once a week;[ ] this seems to be nearer the truth as regards most fairly healthy young men. in proof of this it is only necessary to refer to the exact records of healthy young adults summarized in the study of periodicity in the present volume. it occasionally happens, however, that nocturnal emissions are entirely absent. i am acquainted with some cases. in other fairly healthy young men they seldom occur except at times of intellectual activity or of anxiety and worry. lately there has been some tendency for medical opinion to revert to the view of luther, and to regard sexual excitement during sleep as a somewhat unhealthy phenomenon. moll is a distinguished advocate of this view. sexual excitement during sleep is the normal result of celibacy, but it is another thing to say that it is, on that account, satisfactory. we might, then, moll remarks, maintain that nocturnal incontinence of urine is satisfactory, since the bladder is thus emptied. yet, we take every precaution against this by insisting that the bladder shall be emptied before going to sleep. (_libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. .) this remark is supported by the fact, to which i find that both men and women can bear witness, that sexual excitement during sleep is more fatiguing than in the waking state, though this is not an invariable rule, and it is sometimes found to be refreshing. in a similar way, eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, p. ) states that nocturnal emissions are no more normal than coughing or vomiting. nocturnal emissions are usually, though not invariably, accompanied by dreams of a voluptuous character in which the dreamer becomes conscious in a more or less fantastic manner of the more or less intimate presence or contact of a person of the opposite sex. it would seem, as a general rule, that the more vivid and voluptuous the dream, the greater is the physical excitement and the greater also the relief experienced on awakening. sometimes the erotic dream occurs without any emission, and not infrequently the emission takes place after the dreamer has awakened. the widest and most comprehensive investigation of erotic dreams is that carried out by gualino, in northern italy, and based on inquiries among normal men--doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc.--who had all had experience of the phenomenon. (l. gualino, "il sogno erotico nell' uomo normale," _rivista di psicologia_, jan.-feb., .) gualino shows that erotic dreams, with emissions (whether or not seminal), began somewhat earlier than the period of physical development as ascertained by marro for youths of the same part of northern italy. gualino found that all his cases had had erotic dreams at the age of seventeen; marro found per cent, of youths still sexually undeveloped at that age, and while sexual development began at thirteen years, erotic dreams began at twelve. their appearance was preceded, in most cases for some months, by erections. in per cent, of the cases there had been no actual sexual experiences (either masturbation or intercourse); in per cent, there had been masturbation; in the rest, some form of sexual contact. the dreams are mainly visual, tactual elements coming second, and the _dramatis persona_ is either an unknown woman ( per cent, cases), or only known by sight ( per cent.), and in the majority is, at all events in the beginning, an ugly or fantastic figure, becoming more attractive later in life, but never identical with the woman loved during waking life. this, as gualino points out, accords with the general tendency for the emotions of the day to be latent in sleep. masturbation only formed the subject of the dream in four cases. the emotional state in the pubertal stage, apart from pleasure, was anxiety ( per cent.), desire ( per cent.), fear ( per cent.). in the adult stage, anxiety and fear receded to per cent, and per cent., respectively. thirty-three of the subjects, as a result of sexual or general disturbances, had had nocturnal emissions without dreams; these were always found exhausting. normally (in more than per cent.) erotic dreams are the most vivid of all dreams. in no case was there knowledge of any monthly or other cyclic periodicity in the occurrence of the manifestations. in per cent, of cases, they tended to occur very soon after sexual intercourse. in numerous cases they were peculiarly frequent (even three in one night) during courtship, when the young man was in the habit of kissing and caressing his betrothed, but ceased after marriage. it was not noted that position in bed or a full bladder exerted any marked influence in the occurrence of erotic dreams; repletion of the seminal vesicles is regarded as the main factor. in germany erotic dreams have been discussed by volkelt (_die traum-phantasie_, , pp. - ), and especially by löwenfeld (_sexual-probleme_, oct., ), while in america, stanley hall thus summarizes the general characteristics of erotic dreams in men: "in by far the most cases, consciousness, even when the act causes full awakening from sleep, finds only scattered images, single words, gestures, and acts, many of which would perhaps normally constitute no provocation. many times the mental activity seems to be remote and incidental, and the mind retains in the morning nothing except, perhaps, a peculiar dress pattern, the shape of a finger-nail, the back of a neck, the toss of a head, the movement of a foot, or the dressing of the hair. in such cases, these images stand out for a time with the distinctness of a cameo, and suggest that the origin of erotic fetichisms is largely to be found in sexual dreams. very rarely is there any imagery of the organs themselves, but the tendency to irradiation is so strong as to re-enforce the suggestion of so many other phenomena in this field, that nature designs this experience to be long circuited, and that it may give a peculiar ictus to almost any experience. when waking occurs just afterward, it seems at least possible that there may be much imagery that existed, but failed to be recalled to memory, possibly because the flow of psychic impressions was over very familiar fields, and this, therefore, was forgotten, while any eruption into new or unwonted channels, stood out with distinctness. all these psychic phenomena, although very characteristic of man in his prime, are not so of the dreams of dawning puberty, which are far more vivid." (g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. .) i may, further, quote the experience of an anonymous contributor--a healthy and chaste man between and years of age--to the _american journal of psychology_ ("nocturnal emissions," jan., ): "legs and breasts often figured prominently in these dreams, the other sexual parts, however, very seldom, and then they turned out to be male organs in most cases. there were but two instances of copulation dreamt. girls and young women were the, usual _dramatis personæ_, and, curiously enough, often the aggressors. sometimes the face or faces were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes, entirely unknown. the orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of the dream, the physical and psychical running parallel. this most erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite an innocent looking incident enough. as, for example: while passing a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after me some question. at first, i pay no heed, but when she calls again, i hesitate whether to turn back and answer or not--emission. again, walking beside a young woman, she said, 'shall i take your arm?' i offered it, and she took it, entwining her arm around it, and raising it high--emission. i could feel stronger erection as she asked the question. sometimes, a word was enough; sometimes, a gesture. once emission took place on my noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails. another example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a dream by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's dress. as an illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, i one night, in my dream (i had been observing partridges in the summer) fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm--a sort of undina!" these experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic dreams of healthy and chaste young men. the bird, for instance, that changes into a woman while retaining some elements of the bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men. it is indeed remarkable that, as de gubernatis observes, "the bird is a well-known phallic symbol," while maeder finds ("interprétations de quelques rêves," _archives de psychologie_, april, ) that birds have a sexual significance both in life and in dreams. the appearance of male organs in the dream-woman is doubtless due to the dreamer's greater familiarity with those organs; but, though it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely be said to be the rule in erotic dreams. even men who have never had connection with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence of a woman's sexual organs in their erotic dreams. moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance, and at the same time seeming contrast. in both cases we are concerned with viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable, spasmodically eject their contents during sleep. there is a further resemblance which usually becomes clear when, as occasionally happens, nocturnal incontinence of urine persists on to late childhood or adolescence: both phenomena are frequently accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate character. (see e.g. ries, "ueber enuresis nocturna," _monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten und sexuelle hygiene_, ; a.p. buchan, nearly a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the experiences of young persons who wetted the bed, _venus sine concubitu_, , p. .) thus, in one case known to me, a child of seven, who occasionally wetted the bed, usually dreamed at the same time that she wanted to make water, and was out of doors, running to find a suitable spot, which she at last found, and, on awaking, discovered that she had wetted the bed; fifteen years later she still sometimes had similar dreams, which caused her much alarm until, when thoroughly awake, she realized that no accident had happened; these later dreams were not the result of any actual strong desire to urinate. in another case with which i am acquainted, a little girl of eight, after mental excitement or indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted herself in consequence, after the manner of the ganymede in the eagle's clutch, as depicted by rembrandt. these two cases, it may be noted, belong to two quite different types. in the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative solution offered; it is, according to fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism of the bladder." in the other case, there is no such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous system which is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand the inflow of excitement. in children of somewhat nervous temperament, manifestations of this kind may occur as an occasional accident, up to about the age of seven or eight; and thereafter, the nervous control of the bladder having become firmly established, they cease to happen, the nervous energy required to affect the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. in very rare cases, however, the phenomenon may still occasionally happen, even in adolescence or later, in individuals who are otherwise quite free from it. this is most apt to occur in young women even in waking life. in men it is probably extremely rare. the erotic dream seems to differ flagrantly from the vesical dream, in that it occurs in adult life, and is with difficulty brought under control. the contrast is, however, very superficial. when we remember that sexual activity only begins normally at puberty, we realize that the youth of twenty is, in the matter of sexual control, scarcely much older than in the matter of vesical control he was at the age of six. moreover, if we were habitually, from our earliest years, to go to bed with a full bladder, as the chaste man goes to bed with unrelieved sexual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical control during sleep as it now is to gain sexual control. ultimately, such sexual control is attained; after the age of forty, it seems that erotic dreams with emission become more and more rare; either the dream occurs without actual emission, exactly as dreams of urination occur in adults with full bladder, or else the organic stress, with or without dreams, serves to awaken the sleeper before any emission has occurred. but this stage is not easily or completely attained. st. augustine, even at the period when he wrote his _confessions_, mentions, as a matter of course, that sexual dreams "not merely arouse pleasure, but gain the consent of the will." (x. .) not infrequently there is a struggle in sleep, just as the hypnotic subject may resist suggestions; thus, a lady of thirty-five dreamed a sexual dream, and awoke without excitement; again she fell asleep, and had another dream of sexual character, but resisted the tendency to excitement, and again awoke; finally, she fell asleep and had a third sexual dream, which was this time accompanied by the orgasm. (this has recently been described also by näcke, who terms it _pollutio interrupta, neurologisches centralblatt_, oct. , ; the corresponding voluntary process in the waking state is described by rohleder and termed _masturbatio interrupta, zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, aug., .) the factors involved in the acquirement of vesical and sexual control during sleep are the same, but the conditions are somewhat different. there is a very intimate connection between the vesical and the sexual spheres, as i have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g. in the third volume of these _studies_, "analysis of the sexual impulse"). this connection is psychic as well as organic. both in men and women, a full bladder tends to develop erotic dreams. (see e.g. k.a. scherner, _das leben des traums_, , pp. et seq.; spitta also points out the connection between vesical and erotic dreams, _die schlaf und traumzustände_, d ed., , pp. et seq.) raymond and janet state (_les obscessions_, vol. ii, p. ) that nocturnal incontinence of urine, accompanied by dreams of urination, may be replaced at puberty by masturbation. in the reverse direction, freud believes (_monatsschrift für psychiatrie_, bd. xviii, p. ) that masturbation plays a large part in causing the bed-wetting of children who have passed the age when that usually ceases, and he even finds that children are themselves aware of the connection. the diagnostic value of sexual dreams, as an indication of the sexual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized by various writers. (e.g., moll, _die konträre sexualempfindung_, ch. ix; näcke, "der traum als feinstes reagens für die art des sexuellen empfindens," _monatsschrift für kriminalpsychologie_, , p. .) sexual dreams tend to reproduce, and even to accentuate, those characteristics which make the strongest sexual appeal to the subject when awake. at the same time, this general statement has to be qualified, more especially as regards inverted dreams. in the first place, a young man, however normal, who is not familiar with the feminine body when awake, is not likely to see it when asleep, even in dreams of women; in the second place, the confusions and combinations of dream imagery often tend to obliterate sexual distinctions, however free from perversions the subjects may be. thus, a correspondent tells me of a healthy man, of very pure character, totally inexperienced in sexual matters, and never having seen a woman naked, who, in his sexual dreams, always sees the woman with male organs, though he has never had any sexual inclinations for men, and is much in love with a lady. the confusions and associations of dream imagery, leading to abnormal combinations, may be illustrated by a dream which once occurred to me after reading joest's account of how a young negress, whose tattoo-marks he was sketching, having become bored, suddenly pressed her hands to her breasts, spirting two streams of lukewarm milk into his face, and ran away laughing; i dreamed of a woman performing a similar action, not from her breasts, however, but from a penis with which she was furnished. again, by another kind of confusion, a man dreams sexually that he is with a man, although the figure of the partner revealed in the dream is a woman. the following dream, in a normal man who had never been, or wished to be, in the position shown by the dream, may be quoted: "i dreamed that i was a big boy, and that a younger boy lay close beside me, and that we (or, certainly, he) had seminal emissions; i was complacently passive, and had a feeling of shame when the boy was discovered. on awaking i found i had had no emission, but was lying very close to my wife. the day before, i had seen boys in a swimming-match." this was, it seems to me, an example of dream confusion, and not an erotic inverted dream. (näcke also brings forward inverted dreams by normal persons; see e.g. his "beiträge zu den sexuellen träumen," _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, bd. xx, , p. .) so far as i have been able to ascertain, there seem to be, generally speaking, certain differences in the manifestations of auto-erotism during sleep in men and women which i believe to be not without psychological significance. in men the phenomenon is fairly simple; it usually appears about puberty continues at intervals of varying duration during sexual life provided the individual is living chastely, and is generally, though not always, accompanied by erotic dreams which lead up to the climax, its occurrence being, to some extent, influenced by a variety of circumstances: physical, mental, or emotional excitement, alcohol taken before retiring, position in bed (as lying on the back), the state of the bladder, sometimes the mere fact of being in a strange bed, and to some extent apparently by the existence of monthly and yearly rhythms. on the whole, it is a fairly definite and regular phenomenon which usually leaves little conscious trace on awaking, beyond probably some sense of fatigue and, occasionally, a headache. in women, however, the phenomena of auto-erotism during sleep seem to be much more irregular, varied, and diffused. so far as i have been able to make inquiries, it is the exception rather than the rule for girls to experience definitely erotic dreams about the period of puberty or adolescence.[ ] auto-erotic phenomena during sleep in women who have never experienced the orgasm when awake are usually of a very vague kind; while it is the rule in a chaste youth for the orgasm thus to manifest itself, it is the exception in a chaste girl. it is not, as a rule, until the orgasm has been definitely produced in the waking state--under whatever conditions it may have been produced--that it begins to occur during sleep, and even in a strongly sexual woman living a repressed life it is often comparatively infrequent.[ ] thus, a young medical woman who endeavors to deal strenuously with her physical sexual emotions writes: "i sleep soundly, and do not dream at all. occasionally, but very rarely, i have had sensations which awakened me suddenly. they can scarcely be called dreams, for they are mere impulses, nothing connected or coherent, yet prompted, i know, by sexual feeling. this is probably an experience common to all." another lady (with a restrained psycho-sexual tendency to be attracted to both sexes), states that her first sexual sensations with orgasm were felt in dreams at the age of , but these dreams, which she has now forgotten, were not agreeable and not erotic; two or three years later spontaneous orgasm began to occur occasionally when awake, and after this, orgasm took place regularly once or twice a week in sleep, but still without erotic dreams; she merely dreamt that the orgasm was occurring and awoke as it took place. it is possible that to the comparative rarity in chaste women of complete orgasm during sleep, we may in part attribute the violence with which repressed sexual emotion in women often manifests itself.[ ] there is thus a difference here between men and women which is of some significance when we are considering the natural satisfaction of the sexual impulse in chaste women. in women, who have become accustomed to sexual intercourse, erotic dreams of fully developed character occur, with complete orgasm and accompanying relief--as may occasionally be the case in women who are not acquainted with actual intercourse;[ ] some women, however, even when familiar with actual coitus, find that sexual dreams, though accompanied by emissions, are only the symptoms of desire and do not produce actual relief. some interest attaches to cases in which young women, even girls at puberty, experience dreams of erotic character, or at all events dream concerning coitus or men in erection, although they profess, and almost certainly with truth, to be quite ignorant of sexual phenomena. several such dreams of remarkable character have been communicated to me. one can imagine that the psychologists of some schools would see in these dreams the spontaneous eruption of the experiences of the race. i am inclined to regard them as forgotten memories, such as we know to occur sometimes in sleep. the child has somehow seen or heard of sexual phenomena and felt no interest, and the memory may subsequently be aroused in sleep, under the stimulation of new-born sexual sensations. it is a curious proof of the ignorance which has prevailed in recent times concerning the psychic sexual nature of women that, although in earlier ages the fact that women are normally liable to erotic dreams was fully recognized, in recent times it has been denied, even by writers who have made a special study of the sexual impulse in women. eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, , pp. , ) appears to regard the appearances of sexual phenomena during sleep, in women, as the result of masturbation. adler, in what is in many respects an extremely careful study of sexual phenomena in women (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , p. ), boldly states that they do not have erotic dreams. in , e. guibout ("des pollutions involontaires chez la femme," _union médicale_, p. ) presented the case of a married lady who masturbated from the age of ten, and continued the practice, even after her marriage at twenty-four, and at twenty-nine began to have erotic dreams with emissions every few nights, and later sometimes even several times a night, though they ceased to be voluptuous; he believed the case to be the first ever reported of such a condition in a woman. yet, thousands of years ago, the indian of vedic days recognized erotic dreams in women as an ordinary and normal occurrence. (löwenfeld quotes a passage to this effect from the oupnek'hat, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, d ed., p. .) even savages recognize the occurrence of erotic dreams in women as normal, for the papuans, for instance, believe that a young girl's first menstruation is due to intercourse with the moon in the shape of a man, the girl dreaming that a man is embracing her. (_reports cambridge expedition to torres straits_, vol. v., p. .) in the seventeenth century, rolfincius, in a well-informed study (_de pollutione nocturna_, a jena inaugural dissertation, ), concluded that women experience such manifestations, and quotes aristotle, galen, and fernelius, in the same sense. sir thomas overbury, in his _characters_, written in the early part of the same century, describing the ideal milkmaid, says that "her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them," clearly implying that it was not so with most women. the notion that women are not subject to erotic dreams thus appears to be of comparatively recent origin. one of the most interesting and important characters by which the erotic dreams of women--and, indeed, their dreams generally--differ from those of men is in the tendency to evoke a repercussion on the waking life, a tendency more rarely noted in men's erotic dreams, and then only to a minor extent. this is very common, even in healthy and normal women, and is exaggerated to a high degree in neurotic subjects, by whom the dream may even be interpreted as a reality, and so declared on oath, a fact of practical importance. hersman--having met with a case in which a school-girl with chorea, after having dreamed of an assault, accused the principal of a school of assault, securing his conviction--obtained the opinions of various american alienists as to the frequency with which such dreams in unstable mental subjects lead to delusions and criminal accusations. dercum, h.c. wood, and rohé had not personally met with such cases; burr believed that there was strong evidence "that a sexual dream may be so vivid as to make the subject believe she has had sexual congress"; kiernan knew of such cases; c.h. hughes, in persons with every appearance of sanity, had known the erotic dreams of the night to become the erotic delusions of the day, the patient protesting violently the truth of her story; while hersman reports the case[ ] of a young lady in an asylum who had nightly delusions that a medical officer visited her every night, and had to do with her, coming up the hot-air flue. i am acquainted with a similar case in a clever, but highly neurotic, young woman, who writes: "for years i have been trying to stamp out my passional nature, and was beginning to succeed when a strange thing happened to me last autumn. one night, as i lay in bed, i felt an influence so powerful that a man seemed present with me. i crimsoned with shame and wonder. i remember that i lay upon my back, and marveled when the spell had passed. the influence, i was assured, came from a priest whom i believed in and admired above everyone in the world. i had never dreamed of love in connection with him, because i always thought him so far above me. the influence has been upon me ever since--sometimes by day and nearly always by night; from it i generally go into a deep sleep, which lasts until morning. i am always much refreshed when i awake. this influence has the best effect upon my life that anything has ever had as regards health and mind. it is the knowledge that i am loved _fittingly_ that makes me so indifferent to my future. what worries me is that i sometimes wonder if i suffer from a nervous disorder merely." the subject thus seemed to regard these occurrences as objectively caused, but was sufficiently sane to wonder whether her experiences were not due to mental disorder.[ ] the tendency of the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep to be manifested with such energy as to flow over into the waking life and influence conscious emotion and action, while very well marked in normal and healthy women, is seen to an exaggerated extent in hysterical women, in whom it has, therefore, chiefly been studied. sante de sanctis, who has investigated the dreams of many classes of people, remarks on the frequently sexual character of the dreams of hysterical women, and the repercussion of such dreams on the waking life of the following day; he gives a typical case of hysterical erotic dreaming in an uneducated servant-girl of , in whom such dreams occur usually a few days before the menstrual period; her dreams, especially if erotic, make an enormous impression on her; in the morning she is bad-tempered if they were unpleasant, while she feels lascivious and gives herself up to masturbation if she has had erotic dreams of men; she then has a feeling of pleasure throughout the day, and her sexual organs are bathed with moisture.[ ] pitres and gilles de la tourette, two of charcot's most distinguished pupils, in their elaborate works on hysteria, both consider that dreams generally have a great influence on the waking life of the hysterical, and they deal with the special influence of erotic dreams, to which, doubtless, we must refer those conceptions of _incubi_ and _succubi_ which played so vast and so important a part in the demonology of the middle ages, and while not unknown in men were most frequent in women. such erotic dreams--as these observers, confirming the experience of old writers, have found among the hysterical to-day--are by no means always, or even usually, of a pleasurable character. "it is very rare," pitres remarks, when insisting on the sexual character of the hallucinations of the hysterical, "for these erotic hallucinations to be accompanied by agreeable voluptuous sensations. in most cases the illusion of sexual intercourse even provokes acute pain. the witches of old times nearly all affirmed that in their relations with the devil they suffered greatly.[ ] they said that his organ was long and rough and pointed, with scales which lifted on withdrawal and tore the vagina." (it seems probable, i may remark, that the witches' representations, both of the devil and of sexual intercourse, were largely influenced by familiarity with the coupling of animals). as gilles de la tourette is careful to warn his readers, we must not too hastily assume, from the prevalence of nocturnal auto-erotic phenomena in hysterical women, that such women are necessarily sexual and libidinous in excess; the disorder is in them psychic, he points out, and not physical, and they usually receive sexual approaches with indifference and repugnance, because their sexual centres are anæsthetic or hyperæsthetic. "during the period of sexual activity they seek much more the care and delicate attention of men than the genital act, which they often only tolerate. many households, begun under the happiest auspices--the bride all the more apt to believe that she loves her betrothed in virtue of her suggestibility, easily exalted, perhaps at the expense of the senses--become hells on earth. the sexual act has for the hysterical woman more than one disillusion; she cannot understand it; it inspires her with insurmountable repugnance."[ ] i refer to these hysterical phenomena because they present to us, in an extreme form, facts which are common among women whom, under the artificial conditions of civilized life, we are compelled to regard as ordinarily healthy and normal. the frequent painfulness of auto-erotic phenomena is by no means an exclusively hysterical phenomenon, although often seen in a heightened form in hysterical conditions. it is probably to some extent simply the result of a conflict in consciousness with a merely physical impulse which is strong enough to assert itself in spite of the emotional and intellectual abhorrence of the subject. it is thus but an extreme form of the disgust which all sexual physical manifestations tend to inspire in a person who is not inclined to respond to them. somewhat similar psychic disgust and physical pain are produced in the attempts to stimulate the sexual emotions and organs when these are exhausted by exercise. in the detailed history which moll presents, of the sexual experiences of a sister in an american nursing guild,--a most instructive history of a woman fairly normal except for the results of repressed sexual emotion, and with strong moral tendencies,--various episodes are narrated well illustrating the way in which sexual excitement becomes unpleasant or even painful when it takes place as a physical reflex which the emotions and intellect are all the time struggling against.[ ] it is quite probable, however, that there is a physiological, as well as a psychic, factor in this phenomenon, and sollier, in his elaborate study of the nature and genesis of hysteria, by insisting on the capital importance of the disturbance of sensibility in hysteria, and the definite character of the phenomena produced in the passage between anæsthesia and normal sensation, has greatly helped to reveal the mechanism of this feature of auto-erotic excitement in the hysterical. no doubt there has been a tendency to exaggerate the unpleasant character of the auto-erotic phenomena of hysteria. that tendency was an inevitable reaction against an earlier view, according to which hysteria was little more than an unconscious expression of the sexual emotions and as such was unscientifically dismissed without any careful investigation. i agree with breuer and freud that the sexual needs of the hysterical are just as individual and various as those of normal women, but that they suffer from them more, largely through a moral struggle with their own instincts, and the attempt to put them into the background of consciousness.[ ] in many hysterical and psychically abnormal women, auto-erotic phenomena, and sexual phenomena generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons may be quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the experience. i have come across interesting and extreme examples of this in the published experiences of the women followers of the american religious leader, t.l. harris, founder of the "brotherhood of the new life." thus, in a pamphlet entitled "internal respiration," by respiro, a letter is quoted from a lady physician, who writes: "one morning i awoke with a strange new feeling in the womb, which lasted for a day or two; i was so very happy, but the joy was in my womb, not in my heart."[ ] "at last," writes a lady quoted in the same pamphlet, "i fell into a slumber, lying on my back with arms and feet folded, a position i almost always find myself in when i awake, no matter in which position i may go to sleep. very soon i awoke from this slumber with a most delightful sensation, every fibre tingling with an exquisite glow of warmth. i was lying on my left side (something i am never able to do), and was folded in the arms of my counterpart. unless you have seen it, i cannot give you an idea of the beauty of his flesh, and with what joy i beheld and felt it. think of it, luminous flesh; and oh! such tints, you never could imagine without seeing. he folded me so closely in his arms," etc. in such cases there is no conflict between the physical and the psychic, and therefore the resulting excitement is pleasurable and not painful. at this point our study of auto-erotism brings us into the sphere of mysticism. leuba, in a penetrating and suggestive essay on christian mysticism, after quoting the present _study_, refers to the famous passages in which st. theresa describes how a beautiful little angel inserted a flame-tipped dart into her heart until it descended into her bowels and left her inflamed with divine love. "what physiological difference," he asks, "is there between this voluptuous sensation and that enjoyed by the disciple of the brotherhood of new life? st. theresa says 'bowels,' the woman doctor says 'womb,' that is all."[ ] the extreme form of auto-erotism is the tendency for the sexual emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lost in self-admiration. this narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in a minor degree in some men, and is sometimes well marked in women, usually in association with an attraction for other persons, to which attraction it is, of course, normally subservient. "the mirror," remarks bloch (_beiträge_ , p. ), "plays an important part in the genesis of sexual aberration.... it cannot be doubted that many a boy and girl have first experienced sexual excitement at the sight of their own bodies in a mirror." valera, the spanish novelist, very well described this impulse in his _genio y figura_. rafaela, the heroine of this novel, says that, after her bath: "i fall into a puerility which may be innocent or vicious, i cannot decide. i only know that it is a purely contemplative act, a disinterested admiration of beauty. it is not coarse sensuality, but æsthetic platonism. i imitate narcissus; and i apply my lips to the cold surface of the mirror and kiss my image. it is the love of beauty, the expression of tenderness and affection for what god has made manifest, in an ingenuous kiss imprinted on the empty and incorporeal reflection." in the same spirit the real heroine of the _tagebuch einer verlorenen_ (p. ), at the point when she was about to become a prostitute, wrote: "i am pretty. it gives me pleasure to throw off my clothes, one by one, before the mirror, and to look at myself, just as i am, white as snow and straight as a fir, with my long, fine, hair, like a cloak of black silk. when i spread abroad the black stream of it, with both hands, i am like a white swan with black wings." a typical case known to me is that of a lady of , brought up on a farm. she is a handsome woman, of very large and fine proportions, active and healthy and intelligent, with, however, no marked sexual attraction to the opposite sex; at the same time she is not inverted, though she would like to be a man, and has a considerable degree of contempt for women. she has an intense admiration for her own person, especially her limbs; she is never so happy as when alone and naked in her own bedroom, and, so far as possible, she cultivates nakedness. she knows by heart the various measurements of her body, is proud of the fact that they are strictly in accordance with the canons of proportion, and she laughs proudly at the thought that her thigh is larger than many a woman's waist. she is frank and assured in her manners, without sexual shyness, and, while willing to receive the attention and admiration of others, she makes no attempt to gain it, and seems never to have experienced any emotions stronger than her own pleasure in herself. i should add that i have had no opportunity of detailed examination, and cannot speak positively as to the absence of masturbation. in the extreme form in which alone the name of narcissus may properly be invoked, there is comparative indifference to sexual intercourse or even the admiration of the opposite sex. such a condition seems to be rare, except, perhaps, in insanity. since i called attention to this form of auto-erotism (_alienist and neurologist_, april, ), several writers have discussed the condition, especially näcke, who, following out the suggestion, terms the condition narcissism. among , insane persons, näcke has found it in four men and one woman (_psychiatrische en neurologische bladen_, no. , ), dr. c.h. hughes writes (in a private letter) that he is acquainted with such cases, in which men have been absorbed in admiration of their own manly forms, and of their sexual organs, and women, likewise, absorbed in admiration of their own mammæ and physical proportions, especially of limbs. "the whole subject," he adds, "is a singular phase of psychology, and it is not all morbid psychology, either. it is closely allied to that æsthetic sense which admires the nude in art." féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, d ed., p. ) mentions a woman who experienced sexual excitement in kissing her own hand. näcke knew a woman in an asylum who, during periodical fits of excitement, would kiss her own arms and hands, at the same time looking like a person in love. he also knew a young man with dementia præcox? who would kiss his own image ("der kuss bei geisteskranken," _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, bd. lxiii, p. ). moll refers to a young homosexual lawyer, who experienced great pleasure in gazing at himself in a mirror (_konträre sexualempfindung_, d ed., p. ), and mentions another inverted man, an admirer of the nates of men, who, chancing to observe his own nates in a mirror, when changing his shirt, was struck by their beauty, and subsequently found pleasure in admiring them (_libido sexualis_, bd. i, theil i, p. ). krafft-ebing knew a man who masturbated before a mirror, imagining, at the same time, how much better a real lover would be. the best-observed cases of narcissism have, however, been recorded by rohleder, who confers upon this condition the ponderous name of automonosexualism, and believes that it has not been previously observed (h. rohleder, _der automonosexualismus_, being heft of _berliner klinik_, march, ). in the two cases investigated by rohleder, both men, there was sexual excitement in the contemplation of the individual's own body, actually or in a mirror, with little or no sexual attraction to other persons. rohleder is inclined to regard the condition as due to a congenital defect in the "sexual centre" of the brain. footnotes: [ ] all the above groups of phenomena are dealt with in other volumes of these _studies_: the manifestations of normal sexual excitement, in vols. iii, iv, and v; homosexuality, in vol. ii, and erotic fetichism, in vol. v. [ ] see appendix c. [ ] letamendi, of madrid, has suggested "_auto-erastia_" to cover what is probably much the same field. in the beginning of the nineteenth century, hufeland, in his _makrobiotic_, invented the term "_geistige onanie_," to express the filling and heating of the imagination with voluptuous images, without unchastity of body; and in , kaan, in his _psychopathia sexualis_, used, but did not invent, the term "_onania psychica_." gustav jaeger, in his _entdeckung der seele_, proposed "monosexual idiosyncrasy," to indicate the most animal forms of masturbation taking place without any correlative imaginative element, a condition illustrated by cases given in moll's _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, pp. et seq. dr. laupts (a pseudonym for the accomplished psychologist, dr. saint-paul) uses the term _autophilie_, for solitary vice. (_perversion et perversité sexuelles_, , p. .) but all these terms only cover a portion of the field. [ ] h. northcote, _christianity and sex problems_, p. . [ ] rosse observed two elephants procuring erection by entwining their proboscides, the act being completed by one elephant opening his mouth and allowing the other to tickle the roof of it. (i. rosse, _virginia medical monthly_, october, .) [ ] féré, "perversions sexuelles chez les animaux," _revue philosophique_, may, . [ ] tillier, _l'instinct sexuel_, , p. . [ ] moll, _libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. . the same author mentions (ibid., p. ) that parrots living in solitary confinement masturbate by rubbing the posterior part of the body against some object until ejaculation occurs. edmund selous ("habits of the peewit," _zoölogist_, april, ) suggests that the peewit, when rolling on the ground, and exerting pressure on the anal region, is moved by a sexual impulse to satisfy desire; he adds that actual orgasm appears eventually to take place, a spasm of energy passing through the bird. [ ] dr. j.w. howe (_excessive venery, masturbation, and continence_, london and new york, , p. ) writes of masturbation: "in savage lands it is of rare occurrence. savages live in a state of nature. no moral obligations exist which compel them to abstain from a natural gratification of their passions. there is no social law which prevents them from following the dictates of their lower nature. hence, they have no reason for adopting onanism as an outlet for passions. the moral trammels of civilized society, and ignorance of physiological laws, give origin to the vice." every one of these six sentences is incorrect or misleading. they are worth quoting as a statement of the popular view of savage life. [ ] i can recall little evidence of its existence among the australian aborigines, though there is, in the wiradyuri language, spoken over a large part of new south wales, a word (whether ancient or not, i do not know) meaning masturbation (_journal of the anthropological institute_, july-dec., , p. ). dr. w. roth (_ethnological studies among the northwest-central queensland aborigines_, p. ), who has carefully studied the blacks of his district, remarks that he has no evidence as to the practice of either masturbation or sodomy among them. more recently ( ) roth has stated that married men in north queensland and elsewhere masturbate during their wives' absence. as regards the maori of new zealand, northcote adds, there is a rare word for masturbation (as also at rarotonga), but according to a distinguished maori scholar there are no allusions to the practice in maori literature, and it was probably not practiced in primitive times. the maori and the polynesians of the cook islands, northcote remarks, consider the act unmanly, applying to it a phrase meaning "to make women of themselves." (northcote, loc. cit., p. .) [ ] greenlees, _journal of mental science_, july, . a gentleman long resident among the kaffirs of south natal, told northcote, however, that he had met with no word for masturbation, and did not believe the practice prevailed there. [ ] hyades and deniker, _mission scientifique du cap horn_, vol. vii, p. . [ ] _la criminalité en cochin-chine_, , p. ; also mondière, "monographie de la femme annamite," _mémoires société d'anthropologie_, tome ii, p. . [ ] christian, article on "onanisme," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_; ploss and bartels, _das weib_; moraglia, "die onanie beim normalen weibe," _zeitschrift für criminal-anthropologie_, ; dartigues, _de la procréation volontaire des sexes_, p. . in the eighteenth century, the _rin-no-tama_ was known in france, sometimes as "pommes d'amour." thus bachaumont, in his journal (under date july , ), refers to "a very extraordinary instrument of amorous mystery," brought by a traveler from india; he describes this "boule erotique" as the size of a pigeon's egg, covered with soft skin, and gilded. cf. f.s. krauss, _geschlechtsleben in brauch und sitte der japaner_, leipzig, . [ ] it may be worth mentioning that the salish indians of british columbia have a myth of an old woman having intercourse with young women, by means of a horn worn as a penis (_journal of the anthropological institute_, july-dec., , p. ). [ ] in burchard's penitential (cap. - ), penalties are assigned to the woman who makes a phallus for use on herself or other women. (wasserschleben, _bussordnungen der abendländlichen kirche_, p. .) the _penis succedaneus_, the latin _phallus_ or _fascinum_, is in france called _godemiche_; in italy, _passatempo_, and also _diletto_, whence _dildo_, by which it is most commonly known in england. for men, the corresponding _cunnus succedaneus_ is, in england, called _merkin_, which meant originally (as defined in old editions of bailey's _dictionary_) "counterfeit hair for women's privy parts." [ ] dühren, _der marquis de sade und seine zeit_, d ed., pp. , ; id. _geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. ii, pp. et seq. [ ] gamier, _onanisme_, p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . [ ] the mythology of hawaii, one may note, tells of goddesses who were impregnated by bananas they had placed beneath their garments. b. stern mentions (_medizin in der türkei_, bd. ii, p. ) that the women of turkey and egypt use the banana, as well as the cucumber, etc., for masturbation. in a poem in the _arabian nights_, also ("history of the young nour with the frank"), we read: "o bananas, of soft and smooth skins, which dilate the eyes of young girls ... you, alone among fruits are endowed with a pitying heart, o consolers of widows and divorced women." in france and england they are not uncommonly used for the same purpose. [ ] see, e.g., winckel, _die krankheiten der weiblichen harnrohre und blase_, , p. ; and "lehrbuch der frauenkrankheiten," , p. ; also, hyrtl, _handbuch du topographischen anatomie_, th ed., bd. ii, pp. - . grünfeld (_wiener medizinische blätter_, november , ), collected cases of foreign body in the bladder-- in men, in women; but while those found in men were usually the result of a surgical accident, those found in women were mostly introduced by the patients themselves. the patient usually professes profound ignorance as to how the object came there; or she explains that she accidentally sat down upon it, or that she used it to produce freer urination. the earliest surgical case of this kind i happen to have met with, was recorded by plazzon, in italy, in (_de partibus generationi inservientibus_, lib. ii, ch. xiii); it was that of a certain honorable maiden with a large clitoris, who, seeking to lull sexual excitement with the aid of a bone needle, inserted it in the bladder, whence it was removed by aquapendente. [ ] a. poulet, _traité des corps étrangers en chirurgie_, . english translation, , vol. ii, pp. , . rohleder (_die masturbation_, , pp. - ) also gives examples of strange objects found in the sexual organs. [ ] e.h. smith, "signs of masturbation in the female," _pacific medical journal_, february, , quoted by r.w. taylor, _practical treatise on sexual disorders_, d ed., p. . [ ] l. tait, _diseases of women_, , vol. i, p. . [ ] _obstetric journal_, vol. i, , p. . cf. g.j. arnold, _british, medical journal_, january , , p. . [ ] dudley, _american journal of obstetrics_, july, , p. . [ ] a. reverdin, "epingles à cheveux dans la vessie," _revue médicale de la suisse romande_, january , . his cases are fully recorded, and his paper is an able and interesting contribution to this by-way of sexual psychology. the first case was a school-master's wife, aged , who confessed in her husband's presence, without embarrassment or hesitation, that the manoeuvre was habitual, learned from a school-companion, and continued after marriage. the second was a single woman of , a _curé's_ servant, who attempted to elude confession, but on leaving the doctor's house remarked to the house-maid, "never go to bed without taking out your hair-pins; accidents happen so easily." the third was an english girl of who finally acknowledged that she had lost two hair-pins in this way. the fourth was a child of , driven by the pain to confess that the practice had become a habit with her. [ ] "one of my patients," remarks dr. r.t. morris, of new york, (_transactions of the american association of obstetricians_, for , philadelphia, vol. v), "who is a devout church-member, had never allowed herself to entertain sexual thoughts referring to men, but she masturbated every morning, when standing before the mirror, by rubbing against a key in the bureau-drawer. a man never excited her passions, but the sight of a key in any bureau-drawer aroused erotic desires." [ ] freud (_drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, p. ) refers to the sexual pleasure of swinging. swinging another person may be a source of voluptuous excitement, and one of the forms of sexual pleasure enumerated in de sade's _les journées de sodome_ is (according to dühren) to propel a girl vigorously in a swing. [ ] the fact that horse exercise may produce pollutions was well recognized by catholic theologians, and sanchez states that this fact need not be made a reason for traveling on foot. rolfincius, in , pointed out that horse-riding, in those unaccustomed to it, may lead to nocturnal pollutions. rohleder (_die masturbation_, pp. - ) brings together evidence regarding the influence of horse exercise in producing sexual excitement. [ ] a correspondent, to whom the idea was presented for the first time, wrote: "henceforward i shall know to what i must attribute the bliss--almost the beatitude--i so often have experienced after traveling for four or five hours in a train." penta mentions the case of a young girl who first experienced sexual desire at the age of twelve, after a railway journey. [ ] langdon down, _british medical journal_, january , . [ ] pouillet, _l'onanisme chez la femme_, paris, ; fournier, _de l'onanisme_, ; rohleder, _die masturbation_, p. . [ ] _west-riding asylum reports_, , vol. vi. [ ] _das nervöse weib_, , p. . [ ] in the appendix to volume iii of these _studies_, i have recorded the experience of a lady who found sexual gratification in this manner. [ ] dr. j.g. kiernan, to whom i am indebted for a note on this point, calls my attention also to the case of a homosexual and masochistic man (_medical record_, vol. xix) whose feelings were intensified by tight-lacing. [ ] some women are also able to produce the orgasm, when in a state of sexual excitement, by placing a cushion between the knees and pressing the thighs firmly together. [ ] _leçons sur les déformations vulvaires_, p. . martineau was informed by a dressmaker that it is very frequent in workrooms and can usually be done without attracting attention. an ironer informed him that while standing at her work, she crossed her legs, slightly bending the trunk forward and supporting herself on the table by the hands; then a few movements of contraction of the adductor muscles of the thigh would suffice to produce the orgasm. [ ] c.w. townsend, "thigh-friction in children under one year," annual meeting of the american pediatric society, montreal, . five cases are recorded by this writer, all in female infants. [ ] soutzo, _archives de neurologie_, february, , p. . [ ] zache, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . i have discussed what may be regarded as the normally sexual influence of dancing, in the third volume of these _studies_, "the analysis of the sexual impulse." [ ] the case has been recorded of a russian who had the spontaneous impulse to self-flagellation on the nates with a rod, for the sake of sexual excitement, from the age of . (_rivista mensile di psichiatria_ april, , p. .) [ ] kryptadia, vol. v, p. . as regards the use of nettles, see dühren, _geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. ii, p. . [ ] debreyne, _moechialogie_, p. . [ ] r.w. taylor, _a practical treatise on sexual disorders_, rd ed., ch. xxx. [ ] hammond, _sexual impotence_, pp. et seq. [ ] niceforo, _il gergo_, p. . [ ] _functional disorders of the nervous system in women_, p. . [ ] schrenck-notzing, _suggestions-therapie_, p. . a. kind (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, jahrgang ix, , p. ) gives the case of a young homosexual woman, a trick cyclist at the music halls, who often, when excited by the sight of her colleague in tights, would experience the orgasm while cycling before the public. [ ] janet has, however, used day-dreaming--which he calls "_reveries subconscients_"--to explain a remarkable case of demon-possession, which he investigated and cured. (_névroses et idées fixes_, vol. i, pp. et seq.) [ ] "minor studies from the psychological laboratory of wellesley college," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. . g.e. partridge ("reverie," _pedagogical seminary_, april, ) well describes the physical accompaniments of day-dreaming, especially in normal school girls between sixteen and twenty-two. pick ("clinical studies in pathological dreaming," _journal of mental sciences_, july, ) records three more or less morbid cases of day-dreaming, usually with an erotic basis, all in apparently hysterical men. an important study of day-dreaming, based on the experiences of nearly , young people (more than two-thirds girls and women), has been published by theodate l. smith ("the psychology of day dreams," _american journal psychology_, october, ). continued stories were found to be rare--only one per cent. healthy boys, before fifteen, had day-dreams in which sports, athletics, and adventure had a large part; girls put themselves in the place of their favorite heroines in novels. after seventeen, and earlier in the case of girls, day-dreams of love and marriage were found to be frequent. a typical confession is that of a girl of nineteen: "i seldom have time to build castles in spain, but when i do, i am not different from most southern girls; i.e., my dreams are usually about a pretty fair specimen of a six-foot three-inch biped." [ ] the case has been recorded of a married woman, in love with her doctor, who kept a day-dream diary, at last filling three bulky volumes, when it was discovered by her husband, and led to an action for divorce; it was shown that the doctor knew nothing of the romance in which he played the part of hero. kiernan, in referring to this case (as recorded in john paget's _judicial puzzles_), mentions a similar case in chicago. [ ] _uranisme_, p. . [ ] the acute anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his work on _neuralgia_: "it is a comparatively frequent thing to see an unsocial, solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with the bad influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and false work in literature and art." from the literary side, m. léon bazalgette has dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote itself to what he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counterpart, he seems to hint, is a physical process of auto-erotism. (léon bazalgette, "l'onanisme considéré comme principe createur en art," _l'esprit nouveau_, .) [ ] pausanias, _achaia_, chapter xvii. the ancient babylonians believed in a certain "maid of the night," who appeared to men in sleep and roused without satisfying their passions. (jastrow, _religion of babylonia_, p. .) this succubus was the assyrian liler, connected with the hebrew lilith. there was a corresponding incubus, "the little night man," who had nocturnal intercourse with women. (cf. ploss, _das weib_, th ed., pp. et seq.) the succubus and the incubus (the latter being more common) were adopted by christendom; st. augustine (_de civitate dei_, bk. xv, ch. xxiii) said that the wicked assaults of sylvans and fauns, otherwise called incubi, on women, are so generally affirmed that it would be impudent to deny them. incubi flourished in mediæval belief, and can scarcely, indeed, be said to be extinct even to-day. they have been studied by many authors; see, e.g., dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. v, ch. xxv, saint-andré, physician-in-ordinary to the french king, pointed out in that the incubus was a dream. it may be added that the belief in the succubus and incubus appears to be widespread. thus, the west african yorubas (according to a.b. ellis) believe that erotic dreams are due to the god elegbra, who, either as a male or a female, consorts with men and women in sleep. [ ] "if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall bathe all his flesh in water and be unclean until the even. and every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water and be unclean until the even." leviticus, xv, v. - . [ ] it should be added that the term _pollutio_ also covers voluntary effusion of semen outside copulation. (debreyne, _moechialogie_, p. ; for a full discussion of the opinions of theologians concerning nocturnal and diurnal pollutions, see the same author's _essai sur la théologie morale_, pp. - .) [ ] _memoirs_, translated by bendyshe, p. . [ ] _sexual impotence_, p. . [ ] _l'hygiène sexuelle_, p. . [ ] _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, p. . [ ] i may here refer to the curious opinion expressed by dr. elizabeth blackwell, that, while the sexual impulse in man is usually relieved by seminal emissions during sleep, in women it is relieved by the occurrence of menstruation. this latter statement is flagrantly at variance with the facts; but it may perhaps be quoted in support of the view expressed above as to the comparative rarity of sexual excitement during sleep in young girls. [ ] löwenfeld has recently expressed the same opinion. rohleder believes that pollutions are physically impossible in a _real_ virgin, but that opinion is too extreme. [ ] it may be added that in more or less neurotic women and girls, erotic dreams may be very frequent and depressing. thus, j.m. fothergill (_west-riding asylum report_, , vol. vi) remarks: "these dreams are much more frequent than is ordinarily thought, and are the cause of a great deal of nervous depression among women. women of a highly-nervous diathesis suffer much more from these drains than robust women. not only are these involuntary orgasms more frequent among such women, but they cause more disturbance of the general health in them than in other women." [ ] i may remark here that a russian correspondent considers that i have greatly underestimated the frequency of erotic manifestations during sleep in young girls. "all the women i have interrogated on this point," he informs me, "say that they have had such pollutions from the time of puberty, or even earlier, accompanied by erotic dreams. i have put the question to some twenty or thirty women. it is true that they were of southern race (italian, spanish, and french), and i believe that southerners are, in this matter, franker than northern women, who consider the activity of the flesh as shameful, and seek to conceal it." my correspondent makes no reference to the chief point of sexual difference, so far as my observation goes, which is that erotic dreams are comparatively rare in those women "_who have yet had no sort of sexual experience in waking life_." whether or not this is correct, i do not question the frequency of erotic dreams in girls who have had such experience. [ ] c.c. hersman, "medico-legal aspects of eroto-choreic insanities," _alienist and neurologist_, july, . i may mention that pitres (_leçons cliniques sur l'hystérie_, vol. ii, p. ) records the almost identical case of a hysterical girl in one of his wards, who was at first grateful to the clinical clerk to whom her case was intrusted, but afterward changed her behavior, accused him of coming nightly through the window, lying beside her, caressing her, and then exerting violent coitus three or four times in succession, until she was utterly exhausted. i may here refer to the tendency to erotic excitement in women under the influence of chloroform and nitrous oxide, a tendency rarely or never noted in men, and of the frequency with which the phenomenon is attributed by the subject to actual assault. see h. ellis, _man and woman_, pp. - . [ ] in australia, some years ago, a man was charged with rape, found guilty of "attempt," and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, on the accusation of a girl of , who subsequently confessed that the charge was imaginary; in this case, the jury found it impossible to believe that so young a girl could have been lying, or hallucinated, because she narrated the details of the alleged offence with such circumstantial detail. such cases are not uncommon, and in some measure, no doubt, they may be accounted for by auto-erotic nocturnal hallucinations. [ ] sante de sanctis, _i sogni e il sonno nell'isterismo e nella epilessia_, rome, , p. . [ ] pitres, _leçons cliniques sur l'hystérie_, vol. ii, pp. et seq. the lorraine inquisitor, nicolas remy, very carefully investigated the question of the feelings of witches when having intercourse with the devil, questioning them minutely, and ascertained that such intercourse was usually extremely painful, filling them with icy horror (see, e.g., dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. v, p. ; the same author presents an interesting summary of the phenomena of the witches' sabbath). but intercourse with the devil was by no means always painful. isabel gowdie, a scotch witch, bore clear testimony to this point: "the youngest and lustiest women," she stated, "will have very great pleasure in their carnal copulation with him, yea, much more than with their own husbands.... he is abler for us than any man can be. (alack! that i should compare him to a man!)" yet her description scarcely sounds attractive; he was a "large, black, hairy man, very cold, and i found his nature as cold within me as spring well-water." his foot was forked and cloven; he was sometimes like a deer, or a roe; and he would hold up his tail while the witches kissed that region (pitcairn, _criminal trials in scotland_, vol. iii, appendix vii; see, also, the illustrations at the end of dr. a. marie's _folie et mysticisme_, ). [ ] gilles de la tourette, loc. cit., p. . erotic hallucinations have also been studied by bellamy, in a bordeaux thesis, _hallucinations erotiques_, - . [ ] on one occasion, when still a girl, whenever an artist whom she admired touched her hand she felt erection and moisture of the sexual parts, but without any sensation of pleasure; a little later, when an uncle's knee casually came in contact with her thigh, ejaculation of mucus took place, though she disliked the uncle; again, when a nurse, on casually seeing a man's sexual organs, an electric shock went through her, though the sight was disgusting to her; and when she had once to assist a man to urinate, she became in the highest degree excited, though without pleasure, and lay down on a couch in the next room, while a conclusive ejaculation took place. (moll, _libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. .) [ ] breuer and freud, _studien über hysterie_, , p. . [ ] calmeil (_de la folie_, vol. i, p. ) called attention to the large part played by uterine sensations in the hallucinations of some famous women ascetics, and added: "it is well recognized that the narrative of such sensations nearly always occupies the first place in the divagations of hysterical virgins." [ ] h. leuba, "les tendances religieuses chez les mystiques chrétiens," _revue philosophique_, november, , p. . st. theresa herself states that physical sensations played a considerable part in this experience. ii. hysteria and the question of its relation to the sexual emotions--the early greek theories of its nature and causation--the gradual rise of modern views--charcot--the revolt against charcot's too absolute conclusions--fallacies involved--charcot's attitude the outcome of his personal temperament--breuer and freud--their views supplement and complete charcot's--at the same time they furnish a justification for the earlier doctrine of hysteria--but they must not be regarded as final--the diffused hysteroid condition in normal persons--the physiological basis of hysteria--true pathological hysteria is linked on to almost normal states, especially to sex-hunger. the nocturnal hallucinations of hysteria, as all careful students of this condition now seem to agree, are closely allied to the hysterical attack proper. sollier, indeed, one of the ablest of the more recent investigators of hysteria, has argued with much force that the subjects of hysteria really live in a state of pathological sleep, of vigilambulism.[ ] he regards all the various accidents of hysteria as having a common basis in disturbances of sensibility, in the widest sense of the word "sensibility,"--as the very foundation of personality,--while anæsthesia is "the real _sigillum hysteriæ_." whatever the form of hysteria, we are thus only concerned with a more or less profound state of vigilambulism: a state in which the subject seems, often even to himself, to be more or less always asleep, whether the sleep may be regarded as local or general. sollier agrees with féré that the disorder of sensibility may be regarded as due to an exhaustion of the sensory centres of the brain, whether as the result of constitutional cerebral weakness, of the shock of a violent emotion, or of some toxic influence on the cerebral cells. we may, therefore, fitly turn from the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep which in women generally, and especially in hysterical women, seem to possess so much importance and significance, to the question--which has been so divergently answered at different periods and by different investigators--concerning the causation of hysteria, and especially concerning its alleged connection with conscious or unconscious sexual emotion.[ ] it was the belief of the ancient greeks that hysteria came from the womb; hence its name. we first find that statement in plato's _timæus_: "in men the organ of generation--becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust--seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb, or uterus, of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and, when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and, wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration,[ ] drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease." plato, it is true, cannot be said to reveal anywhere a very scientific attitude toward nature. yet he was here probably only giving expression to the current medical doctrine of his day. we find precisely the same doctrine attributed to hippocrates, though without a clear distinction between hysteria and epilepsy.[ ] if we turn to the best roman physicians we find again that aretæus, "the esquirol of antiquity," has set forth the same view, adding to his description of the movements of the womb in hysteria: "it delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances toward them; and it has an aversion to foetid smells, and flies from them; and, on the whole, the womb is like an animal within an animal."[ ] consequently, the treatment was by applying foetid smells to the nose and rubbing fragrant ointments around the sexual parts.[ ] the arab physicians, who carried on the traditions of greek medicine, appear to have said nothing new about hysteria, and possibly had little knowledge of it. in christian mediæval europe, also, nothing new was added to the theory of hysteria; it was, indeed, less known medically than it had ever been, and, in part it may be as a result of this ignorance, in part as a result of general wretchedness (the hysterical phenomena of witchcraft reaching their height, michelet points out, in the fourteenth century, which was a period of special misery for the poor), it flourished more vigorously. not alone have we the records of nervous epidemics, but illuminated manuscripts, ivories, miniatures, bas-reliefs, frescoes, and engravings furnish the most vivid iconographic evidence of the prevalence of hysteria in its most violent forms during the middle ages. much of this evidence is brought to the service of science in the fascinating works of dr. p. richer, one of charcot's pupils.[ ] in the seventeenth century ambroise paré was still talking, like hippocrates, about "suffocation of the womb"; forestus was still, like aretæus, applying friction to the vulva; fernel was still reproaching galen, who had denied that the movements of the womb produced hysteria. it was in the seventeenth century ( ) that a french physician, charles lepois (carolus piso), physician to henry ii, trusting, as he said, to experience and reason, overthrew at one stroke the doctrine of hysteria that had ruled almost unquestioned for two thousand years, and showed that the malady occurred at all ages and in both sexes, that its seat was not in the womb, but in the brain, and that it must be considered a nervous disease.[ ] so revolutionary a doctrine could not fail to meet with violent opposition, but it was confirmed by willis, and in , we owe to the genius of sydenham a picture of hysteria which for lucidity, precision, and comprehensiveness has only been excelled in our own times. it was not possible any longer to maintain the womb theory of hippocrates in its crude form, but in modified forms, and especially with the object of preserving the connection which many observers continued to find between hysteria and the sexual emotions, it still found supporters in the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries. james, in the middle of the eighteenth century, returned to the classical view, and in his _dictionary of medicine_ maintained that the womb is the seat of hysteria. louyer villermay in asserted that the most frequent causes of hysteria are deprivation of the pleasures of love, griefs connected with this passion, and disorders of menstruation. foville in and landouzy in advocated somewhat similar views. the acute laycock in quoted as "almost a medical proverb" the saying, "_salacitas major, major ad hysteriam proclivitas_," fully indorsing it. more recently still clouston has defined hysteria as "the loss of the inhibitory influence exercised on the reproductive and sexual instincts of women by the higher mental and moral functions" (a position evidently requiring some modification in view of the fact that hysteria is by no means confined to women), while the same authority remarks that more or less concealed sexual phenomena are the chief symptoms of "hysterical insanity."[ ] two gynæcologists of high position in different parts of the world, hegar in germany and balls-headley in australia, attribute hysteria, as well as anæmia, largely to unsatisfied sexual desire, including the non-satisfaction of the "ideal feelings."[ ] lombroso and ferrero, again, while admitting that the sexual feelings might be either heightened or depressed in hysteria, referred to the frequency of what they termed "a paradoxical sexual instinct" in the hysterical, by which, for instance, sexual frigidity is combined with intense sexual pre-occupations; and they also pointed out the significant fact that the crimes of the hysterical nearly always revolve around the sexual sphere.[ ] thus, even up to the time when the conception of hysteria which absolutely ignored and excluded any sexual relationship whatever had reached its height, independent views favoring such a relationship still found expression. of recent years, however, such views usually aroused violent antagonism. the main current of opinion was with briquet ( ), who, treating the matter with considerable ability and a wide induction of facts, indignantly repelled the idea that there is any connection between hysteria and the sexual facts of life, physical or psychic. as he himself admitted, briquet was moved to deny a sexual causation of hysteria by the thought that such an origin would be degrading for women ("_a quelque chose de dégradant pour les femmes_"). it was, however, the genius of charcot, and the influence of his able pupils, which finally secured the overthrow of the sexual theory of hysteria. charcot emphatically anathematized the visceral origin of hysteria; he declared that it is a psychic disorder, and to leave no loop-hole of escape for those who maintained a sexual causation he asserted that there are no varieties of hysteria, that the disease is one and indivisible. charcot recognized no primordial cause of hysteria beyond heredity, which here plays a more important part than in any other neuropathic condition. such heredity is either direct or more occasionally by transformation, any deviation of nutrition found in the ancestors (gout, diabetes, arthritis) being a possible cause of hysteria in the descendants. "we do not know anything about the nature of hysteria," charcot wrote in ; "we must make it objective in order to recognize it. the dominant idea for us in the etiology of hysteria is, in the widest sense, its hereditary predisposition. the greater number of those suffering from this affection are simply born _hystérisables_, and on them the occasional causes act directly, either through autosuggestion or by causing derangement of general nutrition, and more particularly of the nutrition of the nervous system."[ ] these views were ably and decisively stated in gilles de la tourette's _traité de l'hystérie_, written under the inspiration of charcot. while charcot's doctrine was thus being affirmed and generally accepted, there were at the same time workers in these fields who, though they by no means ignored this doctrine of hysteria or even rejected it, were inclined to think that it was too absolutely stated. writing in the _dictionary of psychological medicine_ at the same time as charcot, donkin, while deprecating any exclusive emphasis on the sexual causation, pointed out the enormous part played by the emotions in the production of hysteria, and the great influence of puberty in women due to the greater extent of the sexual organs, and the consequently large area of central innervation involved, and thus rendered liable to fall into a state of unstable equilibrium. enforced abstinence from the gratification of any of the inherent and primitive desires, he pointed out, may be an adequate exciting cause. such a view as this indicated that to set aside the ancient doctrine of a physical sexual cause of hysteria was by no means to exclude a psychic sexual cause. ten years earlier axenfeld and huchard had pointed out that the reaction against the sexual origin of hysteria was becoming excessive, and they referred to the evidence brought forward by veterinary surgeons showing that unsatisfied sexual desire in animals may produce nervous symptoms very similar to hysteria.[ ] the present writer, when in briefly discussing hysteria as an element in secondary sexual characterization, ventured to reflect the view, confirmed by his own observation, that there was a tendency to unduly minimize the sexual factor in hysteria, and further pointed out that the old error of a special connection between hysteria and the female sexual organs, probably arose from the fact that in woman the organic sexual sphere is larger than in man.[ ] when, indeed, we analyze the foundation of the once predominant opinions of charcot and his school regarding the sexual relationships of hysteria, it becomes clear that many fallacies and misunderstandings were involved. briquet, charcot's chief predecessor, acknowledged that his own view was that a sexual origin of hysteria would be "degrading to women"; that is to say, he admitted that he was influenced by a foolish and improper prejudice, for the belief that the unconscious and involuntary morbid reaction of the nervous system to any disturbance of a great primary instinct can have "_quelque chose de dégradant_" is itself an immoral belief; such disturbance of the nervous system might or might not be caused, but in any case the alleged "degradation" could only be the fiction of a distorted imagination. again, confusion had been caused by the ancient error of making the physical sexual organs responsible for hysteria, first the womb, more recently the ovaries; the outcome of this belief was the extirpation of the sexual organs for the cure of hysteria. charcot condemned absolutely all such operations as unscientific and dangerous, declaring that there is no such thing as hysteria of menstrual origin.[ ] subsequently, angelucci and pierracini carried out an international inquiry into the results of the surgical treatment of hysteria, and condemned it in the most unqualified manner.[ ] it is clearly demonstrated that the physical sexual organs are not the seat of hysteria. it does not, however, follow that even physical sexual desire, when repressed, is not a cause of hysteria. the opinion that it was so formed an essential part of the early doctrine of hysteria, and was embodied in the ancient maxim: "_nubat illa et morbus effugiet_." the womb, it seemed to the ancients, was crying out for satisfaction, and when that was received the disease vanished.[ ] but when it became clear that sexual desire, though ultimately founded on the sexual apparatus, is a nervous and psychic fact, to put the sexual organs out of count was not sufficient; for the sexual emotions may exist before puberty, and persist after complete removal of the sexual organs. thus it has been the object of many writers to repel the idea that unsatisfied sexual desire can be a cause of hysteria. briquet pointed out that hysteria is rare among nuns and frequent among prostitutes. krafft-ebing believed that most hysterical women are not anxious for sexual satisfaction, and declared that "hysteria caused through the non-satisfaction of the coarse sensual sexual impulse i have never seen,"[ ] while pitres and others refer to the frequently painful nature of sexual hallucinations in the hysterical. but it soon becomes obvious that the psychic sexual sphere is not confined to the gratification of conscious physical sexual desire. it is not true that hysteria is rare among nuns, some of the most tremendous epidemics of hysteria, and the most carefully studied, having occurred in convents,[ ] while the hysterical phenomena sometimes associated with revivals are well known. the supposed prevalence among prostitutes would not be evidence against the sexual relationships of hysteria; it has, however, been denied, even by so great an authority as parent-duchâtelet who found it very rare, even in prostitutes in hospitals, when it was often associated with masturbation; in prostitutes, however, who returned to a respectable life, giving up their old habits, he found hysteria common and severe.[ ] the frequent absence of physical sexual feeling, again, may quite reasonably be taken as evidence of a disorder of the sexual emotions, while the undoubted fact that sexual intercourse usually has little beneficial effect on pronounced hysteria, and that sexual excitement during sleep and sexual hallucinations are often painful in the same condition, is far from showing that injury or repression of the sexual emotions had nothing to do with the production of the hysteria. it would be as reasonable to argue that the evil effect of a heavy meal on a starving man must be taken as evidence that he was not suffering from starvation. the fact, indeed, on which gilles de la tourette and others have remarked, that the hysterical often desire not so much sexual intercourse as simple affection, would tend to show that there is here a real analogy, and that starvation or lesion of the sexual emotions may produce, like bodily starvation, a rejection of those satisfactions which are demanded in health. thus, even a mainly _a priori_ examination of the matter may lead us to see that many arguments brought forward in favor of charcot's position on this point fall to the ground when we realize that the sexual emotions may constitute a highly complex sphere, often hidden from observation, sometimes not conscious at all, and liable to many lesions besides that due to the non-satisfaction of sexual desire. at the same time we are not thus enabled to overthrow any of the positive results attained by charcot and his school. it may, however, be pointed out that charcot's attitude toward hysteria was the outcome of his own temperament. he was primarily a neurologist, the bent of his genius was toward the investigation of facts that could be objectively demonstrated. his first interest in hysteria, dating from as far back as , was in hystero-epileptic convulsive attacks, and to the last he remained indifferent to all facts which could not be objectively demonstrated. that was the secret of the advances he was enabled to make in neurology. for purely psychological investigation he had no liking, and probably no aptitude. anyone who was privileged to observe his methods of work at the salpêtrière will easily recall the great master's towering figure; the disdainful expression, sometimes, even, it seemed, a little sour; the lofty bearing which enthusiastic admirers called napoleonic. the questions addressed to the patient were cold, distant, sometimes impatient. charcot clearly had little faith in the value of any results so attained. one may well believe, also, that a man whose superficial personality was so haughty and awe-inspiring to strangers would, in any case, have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating the mysteries of a psychic world so obscure and elusive as that presented by the hysterical.[ ] the way was thus opened for further investigations on the psychic side. charcot had affirmed the power, not only of physical traumatism, but even of psychic lesions--of moral shocks--to provoke its manifestations, but his sole contribution to the psychology of this psychic malady,--and this was borrowed from the nancy school,--lay in the one word "suggestibility"; the nature and mechanism of this psychic process he left wholly unexplained. this step has been taken by others, in part by janet, who, from onward, has not only insisted that the emotions stand in the first line among the causes of hysteria, but has also pointed out some portion of the mechanism of this process; thus, he saw the significance of the fact, already recognized, that strong emotions tend to produce anæsthesia and to lead to a condition of mental disaggregation, favorable to abulia, or abolition of will-power. it remained to show in detail the mechanism by which the most potent of all the emotions effects its influence, and, by attempting to do this, the viennese investigators, breuer and especially freud, have greatly aided the study of hysteria.[ ] they have not, it is important to remark, overturned the positive elements in their great forerunner's work. freud began as a disciple of charcot, and he himself remarks that, in his earlier investigations of hysteria, he had no thought of finding any sexual etiology for that malady; he would have regarded any such suggestion as an insult to his patient. the results reached by these workers were the outcome of long and detailed investigation. freud has investigated many cases of hysteria in minute detail, often devoting to a single case over a hundred hours of work. the patients, unlike those on whom the results of the french school have been mainly founded, all belonged to the educated classes, and it was thus possible to carry out an elaborate psychic investigation which would be impossible among the uneducated. breuer and freud insist on the fine qualities of mind and character frequently found among the hysterical. they cannot accept suggestibility as an invariable characteristic of hysteria, only abnormal excitability; they are far from agreeing with janet (although on many points at one with him), that psychic weakness marks hysteria; there is merely an appearance of mental weakness, they say, because the mental activity of the hysterical is split up, and only a part of it is conscious.[ ] the superiority of character of the hysterical is indicated by the fact that the conflict between their ideas of right and the bent of their inclinations is often an element in the constitution of the hysterical state. breuer and freud are prepared to assert that the hysterical are among "the flower of humanity," and they refer to those qualities of combined imaginative genius and practical energy which characterized st. theresa, "the patron saint of the hysterical." to understand the position of breuer and freud we may start from the phenomenon of "nervous shock" produced by physical traumatism, often of a very slight character. charcot had shown that such "nervous shock," with the chain of resulting symptoms, is nothing more or less than hysteria. breuer and freud may be linked on to charcot at this point. they began by regarding the most typical hysteria as really a _psychic traumatism_; that is to say, that it starts in a lesion, or rather in repeated lesions, of the emotional organism. it is true that the school of charcot admitted the influence of moral shock, especially of the emotion of fear, but that merely as an "_agent provocateur_," and with a curious perversity gilles de la tourette, certainly reflecting the attitude of charcot, in his elaborate treatise on hysteria fails to refer to the sphere of the sexual emotions even when enumerating the "_agents provocateurs_."[ ] the influence of fear is not denied by breuer and freud, but they have found that careful psychic analysis frequently shows that the shock of a commonplace "fear" is really rooted in a lesion of the sexual emotions. a typical and very simple illustration is furnished in a case, recorded by breuer, in which a young girl of seventeen had her first hysterical attack after a cat sprang on her shoulders as she was going downstairs. careful investigation showed that this girl had been the object of somewhat ardent attentions from a young man whose advances she had resisted, although her own sexual emotions had been aroused. a few days before, she had been surprised by this young man on these same dark stairs, and had forcibly escaped from his hands. here was the real psychic traumatism, the operation of which merely became manifest in the cat. "but in how many cases," asks breuer, "is a cat thus reckoned as a completely sufficient _causa efficiens_?" in every case that they have investigated breuer and freud have found some similar secret lesion of the psychic sexual sphere. in one case a governess, whose training has been severely upright, is, in spite of herself and without any encouragement, led to experience for the father of the children under her care an affection which she refuses to acknowledge even to herself; in another, a young woman finds herself falling in love with her brother-in-law; again, an innocent girl suddenly discovers her uncle in the act of sexual intercourse with her playmate, and a boy on his way home from school is subjected to the coarse advances of a sexual invert. in nearly every case, as freud eventually found reason to believe, a primary lesion of the sexual emotions dates from the period of puberty and frequently of childhood, and in nearly every case the intimately private nature of the lesion causes it to be carefully hidden from everyone, and even to be unacknowledged by the subject of it. in the earlier cases breuer and freud found that a slight degree of hypnosis is necessary to bring the lesion into consciousness, and the accuracy of the revelations thus obtained has been tested by independent witness. freud has, however, long abandoned the induction of any degree of hypnosis; he simply tries to arrange that the patient shall feel absolutely free to tell her own story, and so proceeds from the surface downwards, slowly finding and piecing together such essential fragments of the history as may be recovered, in the same way he remarks, as the archæologist excavates below the surface and recovers and puts together the fragments of an antique statue. much of the material found, however, has only a symbolic value requiring interpretation and is sometimes pure fantasy. freud now attaches great importance to dreams as symbolically representing much in the subject's mental history which is otherwise difficult to reach.[ ] the subtle and slender clues which freud frequently follows in interpreting dreams cannot fail sometimes to arouse doubt in his readers' minds, but he certainly seems to have been often successful in thus reaching latent facts in consciousness. the primary lesion may thus act as "a foreign body in consciousness." something is introduced into psychic life which refuses to merge in the general flow of consciousness. it cannot be accepted simply as other facts of life are accepted; it cannot even be talked about, and so submitted to the slow usure by which our experiences are worn down and gradually transformed. breuer illustrates what happens by reference to the sneezing reflex. "when an irritation to the nasal mucous membrane for some reason fails to liberate this reflex, a feeling of excitement and tension arises. this excitement, being unable to stream out along motor channels, now spreads itself over the brain, inhibiting other activities.... _in the highest spheres of human activity we may watch the same process_." it is a result of this process that, as breuer and freud found, the mere act of confession may greatly relieve the hysterical symptoms produced by this psychic mechanism, and in some cases may wholly and permanently remove them. it is on this fact that they founded their method of treatment, devised by breuer and by him termed the cathartic method, though freud prefers to call it the "analytic" method. it is, as freud points out, the reverse of the hypnotic method of suggestive treatment; there is the same difference, freud remarks, between the two methods as leonardo da vinci found for the two technical methods of art, _per via di porre_ and _per via di levare_; the hypnotic method, like painting, works by putting in, the cathartic or analytic method, like sculpture, works by taking out.[ ] it is part of the mechanism of this process, as understood by these authors, that the physical symptoms of hysteria are constituted, by a process of conversion, out of the injured emotions, which then sink into the background or altogether out of consciousness. thus, they found the prolonged tension of nursing a near and dear relative to be a very frequent factor in the production of hysteria. for instance, an originally rheumatic pain experienced by a daughter when nursing her father becomes the symbol in memory of her painful psychic excitement, and this perhaps for several reasons, but chiefly because _its presence in consciousness almost exactly coincided with that excitement_. in another way, again, nausea and vomiting may become a symbol through the profound sense of disgust with which some emotional shock was associated. then the symbol begins to have a life of its own, and draws hidden strength from the emotion with which it is correlated. breuer and freud have found by careful investigation that the pains and physical troubles of hysteria are far from being capricious, but may be traced in a varying manner to an origin in some incident, some pain, some action, which was associated with a moment of acute psychic agony. the process of conversion was an involuntary escape from an intolerable emotion, comparable to the physical pain sometimes sought in intense mental grief, and the patient wins some relief from the tortured emotions, though at the cost of psychic abnormality, of a more or less divided state of consciousness and of physical pain, or else anæsthesia. in charcot's third stage of the hysterical convulsion, that of "_attitudes passionnelles_," breuer and freud see the hallucinatory reproduction of a recollection which is full of significance for the origin of the hysterical manifestations. the final result reached by these workers is clearly stated by each writer. "the main observation of our predecessors," states breuer,[ ] "still preserved in the word 'hysteria,' is nearer to the truth than the more recent view which puts sexuality almost in the last line, with the object of protecting the patient from moral reproaches. certainly the sexual needs of the hysterical are just as individual and as various in force as those of the healthy. but they suffer from them, and in large measure, indeed, they suffer precisely through the struggle with them, through the effort to thrust sexuality aside." "the weightiest fact," concludes freud,[ ] "on which we strike in a thorough pursuit of the analysis is this: from whatever side and from whatever symptoms we start, we always unfailingly reach the region of the sexual life. here, first of all, an etiological condition of hysterical states is revealed.... at the bottom of every case of hysteria--and reproducible by an analytical effort after even an interval of long years--may be found one or more facts of precocious sexual experience belonging to earliest youth. i regard this as an important result, as the discovery of a _caput nili_ of neuropathology." ten years later, enlarging rather than restricting his conception, freud remarks: "sexuality is not a mere _deus ex machina_ which intervenes but once in the hysterical process; it is the motive force of every separate symptom and every expression of a symptom. the morbid phenomena constitute, to speak plainly, the patient's sexual activity."[ ] the actual hysterical fit, freud now states, may be regarded as "the substitute for a once practiced and then abandoned _auto-erotic_ satisfaction," and similarly it may be regarded as an equivalent of coitus.[ ] it is natural to ask how this conception affects that elaborate picture of hysteria laboriously achieved by charcot and his school. it cannot be said that it abolishes any of the positive results reached by charcot, but it certainly alters their significance and value; it presents them in a new light and changes the whole perspective. with his passion for getting at tangible definite physical facts, charcot was on very safe ground. but he was content to neglect the psychic analysis of hysteria, while yet proclaiming that hysteria is a purely psychic disorder. he had no cause of hysteria to present save only heredity. freud certainly admits heredity, but, as he points out, the part it plays has been overrated. it is too vague and general to carry us far, and when a specific and definite cause can be found, the part played by heredity recedes to become merely a condition, the soil on which the "specific etiology" works. here probably freud's enthusiasm at first carried him too far and the most important modification he has made in his views occurs at this point: he now attaches a preponderant influence to heredity. he has realized that sexual activity in one form or another is far too common in childhood to make it possible to lay very great emphasis on "traumatic lesions" of this character, and he has also realized that an outcrop of fantasies may somewhat later develop on these childish activities, intervening between them and the subsequent morbid symptoms. he is thus led to emphasize anew the significance of heredity, not, however, in charcot's sense, as general neuropathic disposition but as "sexual constitution." the significance of "infantile sexual lesions" has also tended to give place to that of "infantilism of sexuality."[ ] the real merit of freud's subtle investigations is that--while possibly furnishing a justification of the imperfectly-understood idea that had floated in the mind of observers ever since the name "hysteria" was first invented--he has certainly supplied a definite psychic explanation of a psychic malady. he has succeeded in presenting clearly, at the expense of much labor, insight, and sympathy, a dynamic view of the psychic processes involved in the constitution of the hysterical state, and such a view seems to show that the physical symptoms laboriously brought to light by charcot are largely but epiphenomena and by-products of an emotional process, often of tragic significance to the subject, which is taking place in the most sensitive recess of the psychic organism. that the picture of the mechanism involved, presented to us by professor freud, cannot be regarded as a final and complete account of the matter, may readily be admitted. it has developed in freud's own hands, and some of the developments will require very considerable confirmation before they can be accepted as generally true.[ ] but these investigations have at least served to open the door, which charcot had inconsistently held closed, into the deeper mysteries of hysteria, and have shown that here, if anywhere, further research will be profitable. they have also served to show that hysteria may be definitely regarded as, in very many cases at least, a manifestation of the sexual emotions and their lesions; in other words, a transformation of auto-erotism. the conception of hysteria so vigorously enforced by charcot and his school is thus now beginning to appear incomplete. but we have to recognize that that incompleteness was right and necessary. a strong reaction was needed against a widespread view of hysteria that was in large measure scientifically false. it was necessary to show clearly that hysteria is a definite disorder, even when the sexual organs and emotions are swept wholly out of consideration; and it was also necessary to show that the lying and dissimulation so widely attributed to the hysterical were merely the result of an ignorant and unscientific misinterpretation of psychic elements of the disease. this was finally and triumphantly achieved by charcot's school. there is only one other point in the explanation of hysteria which i will here refer to, and that because it is usually ignored, and because it has relationship to the general psychology of the sexual emotions. i refer to that physiological hysteria which is the normal counterpart of the pathological hysteria which has been described in its physical details by charcot, and to which alone the term should strictly be applied. even though hysteria as a disease may be described as one and indivisible, there are yet to be found, among the ordinary and fairly healthy population, vague and diffused hysteroid symptoms which are dissipated in a healthy environment, or pass nearly unnoted, only to develop in a small proportion of cases, under the influence of a more pronounced heredity, or a severe physical or psychic lesion, into that definite morbid state which is properly called hysteria. this diffused hysteroid condition may be illustrated by the results of a psychological investigation carried on in america by miss gertrude stein among the ordinary male and female students of harvard university and radcliffe college. the object of the investigation was to study, with the aid of a planchette, the varying liability to automatic movements among normal individuals. nearly one hundred students were submitted to experiment. it was found that automatic responses could be obtained in two sittings from all but a small proportion of the students of both sexes, but that there were two types of individual who showed a special aptitude. one type (probably showing the embryonic form of neurasthenia) was a nervous, high-strung, imaginative type, not easily influenced from without, and not so much suggestible as autosuggestible. the other type, which is significant from our present point of view, is thus described by miss stein: "in general the individuals, often blonde and pale, are distinctly phlegmatic. if emotional, decidedly of the weakest, sentimental order. they may be either large, healthy, rather heavy, and lacking in vigor or they may be what we call anæmic and phlegmatic. their power of concentrated attention is very small. they describe themselves as never being held by their work; they say that their minds wander easily; that they work on after they are tired, and just keep pegging away. they are very apt to have premonitory conversations, they anticipate the words of their friends, they imagine whole conversations that afterward come true. the feeling of having been there is very common with them; that is, they feel under given circumstances that they have had that identical experience before in all its details. they are often fatalistic in their ideas. they indulge in day-dreams. as a rule, they are highly suggestible."[ ] there we have a picture of the physical constitution and psychic temperament on which the classical symptoms of hysteria might easily be built up.[ ] but these persons were ordinary students, and while a few of their characteristics are what is commonly and vaguely called "morbid," on the whole they must be regarded as ordinarily healthy individuals. they have the congenital constitution and predisposition on which some severe psychic lesion at the "psychological moment" might develop the most definite and obstinate symptoms of hysteria, but under favorable circumstances they will be ordinary men and women, of no more than ordinary abnormality or ordinary power. they are among the many who have been called to hysteria at birth; they may never be among the few who are chosen. we may have to recognize that on the side of the sexual emotions, as well as in general constitution, a condition may be traced among normal persons that is hysteroid in character, and serves as the healthy counterpart of a condition which in hysteria is morbid. in women such a condition has been traced (though misnamed) by dr. king.[ ] dr. king describes what he calls "sexual hysteria in women," which he considers a chief variety of hysteria. he adds, however, that it is not strictly a disease, but simply an automatic reaction of the reproductive system, which tends to become abnormal under conditions of civilization, and to be perpetuated in a morbid form. in this condition he finds twelve characters: . time of life, usually between puberty and climacteric. . attacks rarely occur when subject is alone. . subject appears unconscious, but is not really so. . she is instinctively ashamed afterward. . it occurs usually in single women, or in those, single or married, whose sexual needs are unsatisfied. . no external evidence of disease, and (as aitken pointed out) the nates are not flattened; the woman's physical condition is not impaired, and she may be specially attractive to men. . warmth of climate and the season of spring and summer are conducive to the condition. . the paroxysm in short and temporary. . while light touches are painful, firm pressure and rough handling give relief. . it may occur in the occupied, but an idle, purposeless life is conducive. . the subject delights in exciting sympathy and in being fondled and caressed. . there is defect of will and a strong stimulus is required to lead to action. among civilized women, the author proceeds, this condition does not appear to subserve any useful purpose. "let us, however, go back to aboriginal woman--to woman of the woods and the fields. let us picture ourselves a young aboriginal venus in one of her earliest hysterical paroxysms. in doing so, let us not forget some of the twelve characteristics previously mentioned. she will not be 'acting her part' alone, or, if alone, it will be in a place where someone else is likely soon to discover her. let this venus be now discovered by a youthful apollo of the woods, a man with fully developed animal instincts. he and she, like any other animals, are in the free field of nature. he cannot but observe to himself: 'this woman is not dead; she breathes and is warm; she does not look ill; she is plump and rosy.' he speaks to her; she neither hears (apparently) nor responds. her eyes are closed. he touches, moves, and handles her at his pleasure. she makes no resistance. what will this primitive apollo do next? he will cure the fit, and bring the woman back to consciousness, satisfy her emotions, and restore her volition--not by delicate touches that might be 'agonizing' to her hyperesthetic skin, but by vigorous massage, passive motions, and succussion that would be painless. the emotional process on the part of the woman would end, perhaps, with mingled laughter, tears, and shame; and when accused afterward of the part which the ancestrally acquired properties of her nervous system had compelled her to act, as a preliminary to the event, what woman would not deny it and be angry? but the course of nature having been followed, the natural purpose of the hysterical paroxysm accomplished, there would remain as a result of the treatment--instead of one discontented woman--two happy people, and the possible beginning of a third." "natural, primary sexual hysteria in woman," king concludes, "is a temporary modification of the nervous government of the body and the distribution of nerve-force (occurring for the most part, as we see it to-day, in prudish women of strong moral principle, whose volition has disposed them to resist every sort of liberty or approach from the other sex), consisting in a transient abdication of the general, volitional, and self-preservational ego, while the reins of government are temporarily assigned to the usurping power of the reproductive ego, so that the reproductive government overrules the government by volition, and thus, as it were, forcibly compels the woman's organism to so dispose itself, at a suitable time and place, as to allow, invite, and secure the approach of the other sex, whether she will or not, to the end that nature's imperious demand for reproduction shall be obeyed." this perhaps rather fantastic description is not a presentation of hysteria in the technical sense, but we may admit that it presents a state which, if not the real physiological counterpart of the hysterical convulsion, is yet distinctly analogous to the latter. the sexual orgasm has this correspondence with the hysterical fit, that they both serve to discharge the nervous centres and relieve emotional tension. it may even happen, especially in the less severe forms of hysteria, that the sexual orgasm takes place during the hysterical fit; this was found by rosenthal, of vienna, to be always the case in the semiconscious paroxysms of a young girl whose condition was easily cured;[ ] no doubt such cases would be more frequently found if they were sought for. in severe forms of hysteria, however, it frequently happens, as so many observers have noted, that normal sexual excitement has ceased to give satisfaction, has become painful, perverted, paradoxical. freud has enabled us to see how a shock to the sexual emotions, injuring the emotional life at its source, can scarcely fail sometimes to produce such a result. but the necessity for nervous explosion still persists.[ ] it may, indeed, persist, even in an abnormally strong degree, in consequence of the inhibition of normal activities generally. the convulsive fit is the only form of relief open to the tension. "a lady whom i long attended," remarks ashwell, "always rejoiced when the fit was over, since it relieved her system generally, and especially her brain, from painful irritation which had existed for several previous days." that the fit mostly fails to give real satisfaction, and that it fails to cure the disease, is due to the fact that it is a morbid form of relief. the same character of hysteria is seen, with more satisfactory results for the most part, in the influence of external nervous shock. it was the misunderstood influence of such shocks in removing hysteria which in former times led to the refusal to regard hysteria as a serious disease. during the rebellion of - in scotland, cullen remarks that there was little hysteria. the same was true of the french revolution and of the irish rebellion, while rush (in a study _on the influence of the american revolution on the human body_) observed that many hysterical women were "restored to perfect health by the events of the time." in such cases the emotional tension is given an opportunity of explosion in new and impersonal channels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is broken. it has been urged by some that the fact that the sexual orgasm usually fails to remove the disorder in true hysteria excludes a sexual factor of hysteria. it is really, one may point out, an argument in favor of such an element as one of the factors of hysteria. if there were no initial lesion of the sexual emotions, if the natural healthy sexual channel still remained free for the passage of the emotional overflow, then we should expect that it would much oftener come into play in the removal of hysteria. in the more healthy, merely hysteroid condition, the psychic sexual organism is not injured, and still responds normally, removing the abnormal symptoms when allowed to do so. it is the confusion between this almost natural condition and the truly morbid condition, alone properly called hysteria, which led to the ancient opinion, inaugurated by plato and hippocrates, that hysteria may be cured by marriage.[ ] the difference may be illustrated by the difference between a distended bladder which is still able to contract normally on its contents when at last an opportunity of doing so is afforded and the bladder in which distension has been so prolonged that nervous control had been lost and spontaneous expulsion has become impossible. the first condition corresponds to the constitution, which, while simulating the hysterical condition, is healthy enough to react normally in spite of psychic lesions; the second corresponds to a state in which, owing to the prolonged stress of psychic traumatism,--sexual or not,--a definite condition of hysteria has arisen. the one state is healthy, though abnormal; the other is one of pronounced morbidity. the condition of true hysteria is thus linked on to almost healthy states, and especially to a condition which may be described as one of sex-hunger. such a suggestion may help us to see these puzzling phenomena in their true nature and perspective. at this point i may refer to the interesting parallel, and probable real relationship, between hysteria and chlorosis. as luzet has said, hysteria and chlorosis are sisters. we have seen that there is some ground for regarding hysteria as an exaggerated form of a normal process which is really an auto-erotic phenomenon. there is some ground, also, for regarding chlorosis as the exaggeration of a physiological state connected with sexual conditions, more specifically with the preparation for maternity. hysteria is so frequently associated with anæmic conditions that biernacki has argued that such conditions really constitute the primary and fundamental cause of hysteria (_neurologisches centralblatt_, march, ). and, centuries before biernacki, sydenham had stated his belief that poverty of the blood is the chief cause of hysteria. it would be some confirmation of this position if we could believe that chlorosis, like hysteria, is in some degree a congenital condition. this was the view of virchow, who regarded chlorosis as essentially dependent on a congenital hyoplasia of the arterial system. stieda, on the basis of an elaborate study of twenty-three cases, has endeavored to prove that chlorosis is due to a congenital defect of development (_zeitschrift für geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, vol. xxxii, part i, ). his facts tend to prove that in chlorosis there are signs of general ill-development, and that, in particular, there is imperfect development of the breasts and sexual organs, with a tendency to contracted pelvis. charrin, again, regards utero-ovarian inadequacy as at least one of the factors of chlorosis. chlorosis, in its extreme form, may thus be regarded as a disorder of development, a sign of physical degeneracy. even if not strictly a cause, a congenital condition may, as stockman believes (_british medical journal_, december , ), be a predisposing influence. however it may be in extreme cases, there is very considerable evidence to indicate that the ordinary anæmia of young women may be due to a storing up of iron in the system, and is so far normal, being a preparation for the function of reproduction. some observations of bunge's seem to throw much light on the real cause of what may be termed physiological chlorosis. he found by a series of experiments on animals of different ages that young animals contain a much greater amount of iron in their tissues than adult animals; that, for instance, the body of a rabbit an hour after birth contains more than four times as much iron as that of a rabbit two and a half months old. it thus appears probable that at the period of puberty, and later, there is a storage of iron in the system preparatory to the exercise of the maternal functions. it is precisely between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three, as stockman found by an analysis of his own cases (_british medical journal_, december , ), that the majority of cases occur; there was, indeed, he found, no case in which the first onset was later than the age of twenty-three. a similar result is revealed by the charts of lloyd jones, which cover a vastly greater number of cases. we owe to lloyd jones an important contribution to the knowledge of chlorosis in its physiological or normal relationships. he has shown that chlorosis is but the exaggeration of a condition that is normal at puberty (and, in many women, at each menstrual period), and which, there is good reason to believe, even has a favorable influence on fertility. he found that light-complexioned persons are more fertile than the dark-complexioned, and that at the same time the blood of the latter is of less specific gravity, containing less hæmoglobin. lloyd jones also reached the generalization that girls who have had chlorosis are often remarkably pretty, so that the tendency to chlorosis is associated with all the sexual and reproductive aptitudes that make a woman attractive to a man. his conclusion is that the normal condition of which chlorosis is the extreme and pathological condition, is a preparation for motherhood (e. lloyd jones, "chlorosis: the special anæmia of young women," ; also numerous reports to the british medical association, published in the _british medical journal_. there was an interesting discussion of the theories of chlorosis at the moscow international medical congress, in ; see proceedings of the congress, volume in, section v, pp. et seq.). we may thus, perhaps, understand why it is that hysteria and anæmia are often combined, and why they are both most frequently found in adolescent young women who have yet had no sexual experiences. chlorosis is a physical phenomenon; hysteria, largely a psychic phenomenon; yet, both alike may, to some extent at least, be regarded as sexual aptitude showing itself in extreme and pathological forms. footnotes: [ ] _genèse et nature de l'hystérie_, ; and, for sollier's latest statement, see "hystérie et sommeil," _archives de neurologie_, may and june, . lombroso (_l'uomo delinquente_, , vol. ii, p. ), referring to the diminished metabolism of the hysterical, had already compared them to hibernating animals, while babinsky states that the hysterical are in a state of subconsciousness, a state, as metchnikoff remarks (_essais optimistes_, p. ), reminiscent of our prehistoric past. [ ] professor freud, while welcoming the introduction of the term "auto-erotism," remarks that it should not be made to include the whole of hysteria. this i fully admit, and have never questioned. hysteria is far too large and complex a phenomenon to be classed as entirely a manifestation of auto-erotism, but certain aspects of it are admirable illustrations of auto-erotic transformation. [ ] the hysterical phenomenon of _globus hystericus_ was long afterward attributed to obstruction of respiration by the womb. the interesting case has been recorded by e. bloch (_wiener klinische wochenschrift_, , p. ) of a lady who had the feeling of a ball rising from her stomach to her throat, and then sinking. this feeling was associated with thoughts of her husband's rising and falling penis, and was always most liable to occur when she wished for coitus. [ ] as gilles de la tourette points out, it is not difficult to show that epilepsy, the _morbus sacer_ of the ancients, owed much of its sacred character to this confusion with hysteria. those priestesses who, struck by the _morbus sacer_, gave forth their oracles amid convulsions, were certainly not the victims of epilepsy, but of hysteria (_traité de l'hystérie_, vol. i, p. ). [ ] aretæus, _on the causes and symptoms of acute diseases_, book ii, chapter ii. [ ] it may be noted that this treatment furnishes another instance of the continuity of therapeutic methods, through all changes of theory, from the earliest to the latest times. drugs of unpleasant odor, like asafoetida, have always been used in hysteria, and scientific medicine to-day still finds that asafoetida is a powerful sedative to the uterus, controlling nervous conditions during pregnancy and arresting uterine irritation when abortion is threatened (see, e.g., warman, _der frauenarzt_, august, ). again, the rubbing of fragrant ointments into the sexual regions is but a form of that massage which is one of the modern methods of treating the sexual disorders of women. [ ] _les démoniaques dans l'art_, ; _les malades et les difformes dans l'art_, . [ ] glafira abricosoff, of moscow, in her paris thesis, _l'hystérie aux xvii et xviii siécles_, , presents a summary of the various views held at this time; as also gilles de la tourette, _traité de l'hystérie_, vol. i, chapter i. [ ] _edinburgh medical journal_, june, , p. , and _mental diseases_, , p. . [ ] hegar, _zusammenhang der geschlechtskrankheiten mit nervösen leiden_, stuttgart, . (hegar, however, went much further than this, and was largely responsible for the surgical treatment of hysteria now generally recognized as worse than futile.) balls-headley, "etiology of nervous diseases of the female genital organs," allbutt and playfair, _system of gynecology_, , p. . [ ] lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente_, , pp. - . [ ] charcot and marie, article on "hysteria," tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_. [ ] axenfeld and huchard, _traité des névroses_, , pp. - . icard (_la femme pendant la période menstruelle_, pp. - ) has also referred to recorded cases of hysteria in animals (coste's and peter's cases), as has gilles de la tourette (op. cit., vol. i, p. ). see also, for references, féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . [ ] _man and woman_, th ed., p. . a distinguished gynæcologist, matthews duncan, had remarked some years earlier (_lancet_, may , ) that hysteria, though not a womb disease, "especially attaches itself to the generative system, because the genital system, more than any other, exerts emotional power over the individual, power also in morals, power in social questions." [ ] gilles de la tourette, _archives de tocologie et de gynécologie_, june, . [ ] _rivista sperimentale di freniatria_, , p. ; summarized in the _journal of mental science_, january, . [ ] from the earliest times it was held that menstruation favors hysteria; more recently, landouzy recorded a number of observations showing that hysterical attacks coincide with perfectly healthy menstruation; while ball has maintained that it is only during menstruation that hysteria appears in its true color. see the opinions collected by icard, _la femme pendant la période menstruelle_, pp. - . [ ] krafft-ebing, "ueber neurosen und psychosen durch sexuelle abstinenz," _jahrbücher für psychiatrie_, vol. iii, . it must, however, be added that the relief of hysteria by sexual satisfaction is not rare, and that rosenthal finds that the convulsions are thus diminished. (_allgemeine wiener medizinal-zeitung_, nos. and , .) so they are also, in simple and uncomplicated cases, according to mongeri, by pregnancy. [ ] "all doctors who have patients in convents," remarks marro (_la pubertà_, p. ), "know how hysteria dominates among them;" he adds that his own experience confirms that of raciborski, who found that nuns devoted to the contemplative life are more liable to hysteria than those who are occupied in teaching or in nursing. it must be added, however, that there is not unanimity as to the prevalence of hysteria in convents. brachet was of the same opinion as briquet, and so considered it rare. imbert-goubeyre, also (_la stigmatisation_, p. ) states that during more than forty years of medical life, though he has been connected with a number of religious communities, he has not found in them a single hysterical subject, the reason being, he remarks, that the unbalanced and extravagant are refused admission to the cloister. [ ] parent-duchâtelet, _de la prostitution_, vol. i, p. . [ ] it may not be unnecessary to point out that here and throughout, in speaking of the psychic mechanism of hysteria, i do not admit that any process can be _purely_ psychic. as féré puts it in an admirable study of hysteria (_twentieth century practice of medicine_, , vol. x, p. ): "in the genesis of hysterical troubles everything takes place as if the psychical and the somatic phenomena were two aspects of the same biological fact." [ ] pierre janet, _l'automatisme psychologique_, ; _l'etat mental des hystériques_, ; _névroses et idées fixes_, ; breuer und freud, _studien über hysterie_, vienna, ; the best introduction to freud's work is, however, to be found in the two series of his _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, published in a collected form in and . it may be added that a useful selection of freud's papers has lately ( ) been published in english. [ ] we might, perhaps, even say that in hysteria the so-called higher centres have an abnormally strong inhibitory influence over the lower centres. gioffredi (_gazzetta degli ospedali_, october , ) has shown that some hysterical symptoms, such as mutism, can be cured by etherization, thus loosening the control of the higher centres. [ ] charcot's school could not fail to recognize the erotic tone which often dominates hysterical hallucinations. gilles de la tourette seeks to minimize it by the remark that "it is more mental than real." he means to say that it is more psychic than physical, but he implies that the physical element in sex is alone "real," a strange assumption in any case, as well as destructive of gilles de la tourette's own fundamental assertion that hysteria is a real disease and yet purely psychic. [ ] see, e.g., his substantial volume, _die traumdeutung_, , d ed. . [ ] _sammlung_, first series, p. . [ ] _studien über hysterie_, p. . [ ] _sammlung_, first series, p. . [ ] _sammlung_, second series, p. . [ ] ib. p. . [ ] _sammlung_, first series, p. . freud has developed his conception of sexual constitution in _drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, . [ ] as moll remarks, freud's conceptions are still somewhat subjective, and in need of objective demonstration; but whatever may be thought of their theories, he adds, there can be no doubt that breuer and freud have done a great service by calling attention to the important action of the sexual life on the nervous system. [ ] gertrude stein, "cultivated motor automatism," _psychological review_, may, . [ ] charcot's most faithful followers refuse to recognize a "hysteric temperament," and are quite right, if such a conception is used to destroy the conception of hysteria as a definite disease. we cannot, however, fail to recognize a diathesis which, while still apparently healthy, is predisposed to hysteria. so distinguished a disciple of charcot as janet thoroughly recognizes this, and argues (_l'etat mental_, etc., p. ) that "we may find in the habits, the passions, the psychic automatism of the normal man, the germ of all hysterical phenomena." féré held a somewhat similar view. [ ] a.f.a. king, "hysteria," _american journal of obstetrics_, may , . [ ] m. rosenthal, _diseases of the nervous system_, vol. ii, p. . féré notes similar cases (_twentieth century practice of medicine_, vol. x, p. ). long previously, gall had recorded the case of a young widow of ardent temperament who had convulsive attacks, apparently of hysterical nature, which always terminated in sexual orgasm (_fonctions du cerveau_, , vol. iii, p. ). [ ] there seems to be a greater necessity for such explosive manifestations in women than in men, whatever the reason may be. i have brought together some of the evidence pointing in this direction in _man and woman_, th ed., revised and enlarged, chapters xii and xiii. [ ] there is no doubt an element of real truth in this ancient belief, though it mainly holds good of minor cases of hysteria. many excellent authorities accept it. "hysteria is certainly common in the single," herman remarks (_diseases of women_, , p. ), "and is generally cured by a happy marriage." löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, p. ) says that "it cannot be denied that marriage produces a beneficial change in the general condition of many hysterical patients," though, he adds, it will not remove the hysterical temperament. the advantage of marriage for the hysterical is not necessarily due, solely or at all, to the exercise of sexual functions. this is pointed out by mongeri, who observes (_allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , heft , p. ): "i have known and treated several hysterical girls who are now married, and do not show the least neuropathic indications. some of these no longer have any wish for sexual gratification, and even fulfil their marital duties unwillingly, though loving their husbands and living with them in an extremely happy way. in my opinion, marriage is a sovereign remedy for neuropathic women, who need to find a support in another personality, able to share with them the battle of life." iii. the prevalence of masturbation--its occurrence in infancy and childhood--is it more frequent in males or females?--after adolescence apparently more frequent in women--reasons for the sexual distribution of masturbation--the alleged evils of masturbation--historical sketch of the views held on this point--the symptoms and results of masturbation--its alleged influence in causing eye disorders--its relation to insanity and nervous disorders--the evil effects of masturbation usually occur on the basis of a congenitally morbid nervous system--neurasthenia probably the commonest accompaniment of excessive masturbation--precocious masturbation tends to produce aversion to coitus--psychic results of habitual masturbation--masturbation in men of genius--masturbation as a nervous sedative--typical cases--the greek attitude toward masturbation--attitude of the catholic theologians--the mohammedan attitude--the modern scientific attitude--in what sense is masturbation normal?--the immense part in life played by transmuted auto-erotic phenomena. the foregoing sketch will serve to show how vast is the field of life--of normal and not merely abnormal life--more or less infused by auto-erotic phenomena. if, however, we proceed to investigate precisely the exact extent, degree, and significance of such phenomena, we are met by many difficulties. we find, indeed, that no attempts have been made to study auto-erotic phenomena, except as regards the group--a somewhat artificial group, as i have already tried to show--collected under the term "masturbation" while even here such attempts have only been made among abnormal classes of people, or have been conducted in a manner scarcely likely to yield reliable results.[ ] still there is a certain significance in the more careful investigations which have been made to ascertain the precise frequency of masturbation. berger, an experienced specialist in nervous diseases, concluded, in his _vorlesungen_, that per cent. of young men and women masturbate occasionally, while the hundredth conceals the truth;[ ] and hermann cohn appears to accept this statement as generally true in germany. so high an estimate has, of course, been called in question, and, since it appears to rest on no basis of careful investigation, we need not seriously consider it. it is useless to argue on suppositions; we must cling to our definite evidence, even though it yields figures which are probably below the mark. rohleder considers that during adolescence at least per cent. of both sexes masturbate, but his figures are not founded on precise investigation.[ ] julian marcuse, on the basis of his own statistics, concludes that per cent. male individuals have to some extent masturbated in youth. perhaps, also, weight attaches to the opinion of dukes, physician to rugby school, who states that from to per cent. of all boys at boarding school masturbate.[ ] seerley, of springfield, mass., found that of academic students only assured him they had never masturbated; while of , who answered his questions, denied that they practiced masturbation, which seems to imply that per cent. admitted that they practiced it.[ ] brockman, also in america, among theological students, of the average age of ½ years and coming from various parts of the united states, found that spontaneously admitted that masturbation was their most serious temptation and all but one of these admitted that he yielded, of them to a considerable extent. this is a proportion of at least per cent., the real proportion being doubtless larger, since no question had been asked as to sexual offenses; practiced masturbation after conversion, and after they had decided to become ministers; only mentioned sexual intercourse as their chief temptation; but altogether sexual temptations outnumbered all others together.[ ] moraglia, who made inquiry of women of the lower class in italy, found that acknowledged either that they still masturbate or that they had done so during a long period.[ ] gualino found that per cent. men of the professional classes in north italy masturbate about puberty; no account was taken of those who began later. "here in switzerland," a correspondent writes, "i have had occasion to learn from adult men, whom i can trust, that they have reached the age of twenty-five, or over, without sexual congress. '_wir haben nicht dieses bedürfniss_,' is what they say. but i believe that, in the case of the swiss mountaineers, moderate onanism is practiced, as a rule." in hot countries the same habits are found at a more precocious age. in venezuela, for instance, among the spanish creoles, ernst found that in all classes boys and girls are infested with the vice of onanism. they learn it early, in the very beginning of life, from their wet-nurses, generally low mulatto women, and many reasons help to foster the habit; the young men are often dissipated and the young women often remain single.[ ] niceforo, who shows a special knowledge of the working-girl class at rome, states that in many milliners' and dressmakers' workrooms, where young girls are employed, it frequently happens that during the hottest hours of the day, between twelve and two, when the mistress or forewoman is asleep, all the girls without exception give themselves up to masturbation.[ ] in france a country _curé_ assured debreyne that among the little girls who come up for their first communion, out of were given to masturbation.[ ] the medical officer of a prussian reformatory told rohleder that nearly all the inmates over the age of puberty masturbated. stanley hall knew a reform school in america where masturbation was practiced without exception, and he who could practice it oftenest was regarded with hero-worship.[ ] ferriani, who has made an elaborate study of youthful criminality in italy, states that even if all boys and girls among the general population do not masturbate, it is certainly so among those who have a tendency to crime. among adult male criminals, marro (as he states in his _caratteri dei delinquenti_) found that only denied masturbation, while had practiced it from an early age, of them before the age of thirteen. among criminal women moraglia found that acknowledged the practice, at all events in early youth ( of them before the age of , a precocity accompanied by average precocity in menstruation), while he suspected that most of the remainder were not unfamiliar with the practice. among prostitutes of whatever class or position moraglia found masturbation (though it must be pointed out that he does not appear to distinguish masturbation very clearly from homosexual practices) to be universal; in one group of prostitutes everyone had practiced masturbation at some period; began between the ages of and ; , between and , the most usual period--a precocious one--of commencing puberty; the remaining at and ; the average age of commencing masturbation, it may be added, was , while that of the first sexual intercourse was .[ ] in a larger group of prostitutes, belonging to genoa, turin, venice, etc., and among "elegant cocottes," of italian and foreign origin, moraglia obtained the same results; everyone admitted masturbation, and not less than preferred masturbation, either solitary or mutual, to normal coitus. among the insane, as among idiots, masturbation is somewhat more common among males, according to blandford, in england, as also it is in germany, according to näcke,[ ] while venturi, in italy, has found it more common among females.[ ] there appears to be no limit to the age at which spontaneous masturbation may begin to appear. i have already referred to the practice of thigh-rubbing in infants under one year of age. j.p. west has reported in detail cases of masturbation in very early childhood-- in girls, in a boy--in which the practice had been acquired spontaneously, and could only be traced to some source of irritation in pressure from clothing, etc.[ ] probably there is often in such cases some hereditary lack of nervous stability. block has recorded the case of a girl--very bright for her age, though excessively shy and taciturn--who began masturbating spontaneously at the age of two; in this case the mother had masturbated all her life, even continuing the practice after marriage, and, though she succeeded in refraining during pregnancy, her thoughts still dwelt upon it, while the maternal grandmother had died in an asylum from "masturbatory insanity." freud considers that auto-erotic manifestations are common in infancy, and that the rhythmic function of any sensitive spot, primarily the lips, may easily pass into masturbation. he regards the infantile manifestations of which thumb-sucking is the most familiar example (lüdeln or lutschen in german) as auto-erotic, the germ arising in sucking the breasts since the lips are an erogenous zone which may easily be excited by the warm stream of milk. but this only occurs, he points out, in subjects in whom the sensitivity of the lip zone is heightened and especially in those who at a later age are liable to become hysterical.[ ] shuttleworth also points out that the mere fidgetiness of a neurotic infant, even when only a few months old, sometimes leads to the spontaneous and accidental discovery of pleasurable sexual sensations, which for a time appease the restlessness of nervous instability, though a vicious circle is thus established. he has found that, especially among quite young girls of neurotic heredity, self-induced excitement, often in the form of thigh-friction, is more common than is usually supposed.[ ] normally there appears to be a varying aptitude to experience the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations before puberty. i find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; in other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early years; in yet other cases complete sexual anæsthesia until the age of puberty. that the latter condition is not due to mere absence of peripheral irritation is shown by a case i am acquainted with, in which a boy of , incited by a companion, innocently attempted, at intervals during several weeks, to produce erection by friction of the penis; no result of any kind followed, although erections occurred spontaneously at puberty, with normal sexual feelings.[ ] i am indebted to a correspondent for the following notes:-- "from my observation during five years at a boarding-school, it _seems_ that eight out of ten boys were more or less addicted to the practice. but i would not state _positively_ that such was the proportion of masturbators among an average of thirty pupils, though the habit was very common. i know that in one bedroom, sleeping seven boys, the whole number masturbated frequently. the act was performed in bed, in the closets, and sometimes in the classrooms during lessons. inquiry among my friends as to onanism in the boarding-schools to which they were sent, elicited somewhat contradictory answers concerning the frequency of the habit. dr. ----, who went to a french school, told me that _all_ the older boys had younger accomplices in mutual masturbation. he also spoke with experience of the prevalence of the practice in a well-known public school in the west of england. b. said _all_ the boys at his school masturbated; g. stated that _most_ of his schoolmates were onanists; l. said 'more than half' was the proportion. "at my school, manual masturbation was both solitary and mutual; and sometimes younger boys, who had not acquired the habit, were induced to manipulate bigger boys. one very precocious boy of fifteen always chose a companion of ten 'because his hand was like a woman's.' sometimes boys entered their friend's bed for mutual excitement. in after-life they showed no signs of inversion. another boy, aged about fourteen, who had been seduced by a servant-girl, embraced the bolster; the pleasurable sensations, according to his statement, were heightened by imagining that the bolster was a woman. he said that the enjoyment of the act was greatly increased during the holidays, when he was able to spread a pair of his sister's drawers upon the pillow, and so intensify the illusion. "before puberty the boys appeared to be more continent than afterward. a few of the older and more intelligent masturbators regulated the habit, as some married men regulate intercourse. the big boy referred to, who chose always the same manipulator, professed to indulge only once in twenty days, his reason being that more frequent repetition of the act would injure his health. about twice a week for boys who had reached puberty, and once a week for younger boys, was, i think, about the average indulgence. i have never met with a parallel of one of those cases of excessive masturbation recorded by many doctors. there may have been such cases at this school; but, if so, the boys concealed the frequency of their gratifications. "my experience proved that many of the lads regarded masturbation as reprehensible; but their plea was 'everyone does it.' some, often those who indulged inordinately and more secretly than their companions, gravely condemned the practice as sinful. a few seemed to think there was 'no harm in it,' but that the habit might stunt the growth and weaken the body if practiced very frequently. the greater number made no attempt to conceal the habit, they enlarged upon the pleasure of it; it was 'ever so much nicer than eating tarts,' etc. "the chief cause i believe to be initiation by an older schoolmate. but i have known accidental causes, such as the discovery that swarming up a pole pleasurably excited the organ, rubbing to allay irritation, and simple, curious handling of the erect penis in the early morning before rising from bed." i quote the foregoing communication as perhaps a fairly typical experience in a british school, though i am myself inclined to think that the prevalence of masturbation in schools is often much overrated, for, while in some schools the practice is doubtless rampant, in others it is practically unknown, or, at all events, only practiced by a few individuals in secret. my own early recollections of (private) school-life fail to yield any reminiscences of any kind connected with either masturbation or homosexuality; and, while such happy ignorance may be the exception rather than the rule, i am certainly inclined to believe that--owing to race and climate, and healthier conditions of life--the sexual impulse is less precocious and less prominently developed during the school-age in england than in some continental countries. it is probably to this delayed development that we should attribute the contrast that ferrero finds (_l'europa giovane_, pp. - ), and certainly states too absolutely, between the sexual reserve of young englishmen and the sexual immodesty of his own countrymen. in germany, näcke has also stated ("kritisches zum kapitel der sexualität," _archiv für psychiatrie_, pp. - , ) that he heard nothing at school either of masturbation or homosexuality, and he records the experience of medical friends who stated that such phenomena were only rare exceptions, and regarded by the majority of the boys as exhibitions of "_schweinerei_." at other german schools, as hoche has shown, sexual practices are very prevalent. it is evident that at different schools, and even at the same school at different times, these manifestations vary in frequency within wide limits. such variations, it seems to me, are due to two causes. in the first place, they largely depend upon the character of the more influential elder boys. in the second place, they depend upon the attitude of the head-master. with reference to this point i may quote from a letter written by an experienced master in one of the most famous english public schools: "when i first came to ----, a quarter of a century ago, dr. ---- was making a crusade against this failing; boys were sent away wholesale; the school was summoned and lectured solemnly; and the more the severities, the more rampant the disease. i thought to myself that the remedy was creating the malady, and i heard afterward, from an old boy, that in those days they used to talk things over by the fireside, and think there must be something very choice in a sin that braved so much. dr. ---- went, and, under ----, we never spoke of such things. curiosity died down, and the thing itself, i believe, was lessened. we were told to warn new boys of the dangers to health and morals of such offences, lest the innocent should be caught in ignorance. i have only spoken to a few; i think the great thing is not to put it in boys' heads. i have noticed solitary faults most commonly, and then i tell the boy how he is physically weakening himself. if you notice, it is puppies that seem to go against nature, but grown dogs, never. so, if two small boys acted thus, i should think it merely an instinctive feeling after nature, which would amend itself. many here would consider it a heinous sin, but those who think such things sins make them sins. i have seen, in the old days, most delightful little children sent away, branded with infamy, and scarce knowing why--you might as well expel a boy for scratching his head when it itched. i am sure the soundest way is to treat it as a doctor would, and explain to the boy the physical effects of over-indulgence of any sort. when it is combated from the monkish standpoint, the evil becomes an epidemic." i am, however, far from anxious to indorse the policy of ignoring the sexual phenomena of youth. it is not the speaking about such things that should be called in question, but the wisdom and good sense of the speaker. we ought to expect a head-master to possess both an adequate acquaintance with the nature of the phenomena of auto-erotism and homosexuality, and a reasonable amount of tact in dealing with boys; he may then fairly be trusted to exercise his own judgment. it may be doubted whether boys should be made too alive to the existence of sexual phenomena; there can be no doubt about their teachers. the same is, of course, true as regards girls, among whom the same phenomena, though less obtrusive, are not less liable to occur. as to whether masturbation is more common in one sex than the other, there have been considerable differences of opinion. tissot considered it more prevalent among women; christian believed it commoner among men; deslandes and iwan bloch hold that there are no sexual differences, and garnier was doubtful. lawson tait, in his _diseases of women_, stated his opinion that in england, while very common among boys, it is relatively rare among women, and then usually taught. spitzka, in america, also found it relatively rare among women, and dana considers it commoner in boys than in girls or adults.[ ] moll is inclined to think that masturbation is less common in women and girls than in the male sex. rohleder believes that after puberty, when it is equally common in both sexes, it is more frequently found in men, but that women masturbate with more passion and imaginative fervor.[ ] kellogg, in america, says it is equally prevalent in both sexes, but that women are more secretive. morris, also in america, considers, on the other hand, that persistent masturbation is commoner in women, and accounts for this by the healthier life and traditions of boys. pouillet, who studied the matter with considerable thoroughness in france, came to the conclusion that masturbation is commoner among women, among whom he found it to be equally prevalent in rich and poor, and especially so in the great centres of civilization. in russia, guttceit states in his _dreissig jahre praxis_, that from the ages of to boys masturbate more than girls, who know less about the practice which has not for them the charm of the forbidden, but after he finds the practice more frequent in girls and women than in youths and men. näcke, in germany, believes that there is much evidence pointing in the same direction, and adler considers masturbation very common in women. moraglia is decidedly of the opinion, on the ground of his own observations already alluded to, that masturbation is more frequent among women; he refers to the fact--a very significant fact, as i shall elsewhere have to point out--that, while in man there is only one sexual centre, the penis, in woman there are several centres,--the clitoris, the vagina, the uterus, the breasts,[ ]--and he mentions that he knew a prostitute, a well-developed brunette of somewhat nervous temperament, who boasted that she knew fourteen ways of masturbating herself. my own opinion is that the question of the sexual distribution of masturbation has been somewhat obscured by that harmful tendency, to which i have already alluded, to concentrate attention on a particular set of auto-erotic phenomena. we must group and divide our facts rationally if we wish to command them. if we confine our attention to very young children, the available evidence shows that the practice is much more common in females,[ ] and such a result is in harmony with the fact that precocious puberty is most often found in female children.[ ] at puberty and adolescence occasional or frequent masturbation is common in both boys and girls, though, i believe, less common than is sometimes supposed; it is difficult to say whether it is more prevalent among boys or girls; one is inclined to conclude that it prevails more widely among boys. the sexual impulse, and consequently the tendency to masturbation, tend to be aroused later, and less easily in girls than in youths, though it must also be remembered that boys' traditions and their more active life keep the tendency in abeyance, while in girls there is much less frequently any restraining influence of corresponding character.[ ] in my study of inversion i have found that ignorance and the same absence of tradition are probably factors in the prevalence of homosexual tendencies among women.[ ] after adolescence i think there can be no doubt that masturbation is more common in women than in men. men have, by this time, mostly adopted some method of sexual gratification with the opposite sex; women are to a much larger extent shut out from such gratification; moreover, while in rare cases women are sexually precocious, it more often happens that their sexual impulses only gain strength and self-consciousness after adolescence has passed. i have been much impressed by the frequency with which masturbation is occasionally (especially about the period of menstruation) practiced by active, intelligent, and healthy women who otherwise lead a chaste life. this experience is confirmed by others who are in a position to ascertain the facts among normal people; thus a lady, who has received the confidence of many women, told me that she believes that all women who remain unmarried masturbate, as she found so much evidence pointing in this direction.[ ] this statement certainly needs some qualification, though i believe it is not far from the truth as regards young and healthy women who, after having normal sexual relationships, have been compelled for some reason or other to break them off and lead a lonely life.[ ] but we have to remember that there are some women, evidently with a considerable degree of congenital sexual anæsthesia (no doubt, in some respect or another below the standard of normal health), in whom the sexual instinct has never been aroused, and who not only do not masturbate, but do not show any desire for normal gratification; while in a large proportion of other cases the impulse is gratified passively in ways i have already referred to. the auto-erotic phenomena which take place in this way, spontaneously, by yielding to revery, with little or no active interference, certainly occur much more frequently in women than in men. on the other hand, contrary to what one might be led to expect, the closely-related auto-erotic phenomena during sleep seem to take place more frequently in men, although in women, as we have found ground for concluding, they reverberate much more widely and impressively on the waking psychical life. we owe to restif de la bretonne what is perhaps the earliest precise description of a woman masturbating. in he knew a dark young woman, plain but well-made, and of warm temperament, educated in a convent. she was observed one day, when gazing from her window at a young man in whom she was tenderly interested, to become much excited. "her movements became agitated; i approached her, and really believe that she was uttering affectionate expressions; she had become red. then she sighed deeply, and became motionless, stretching out her legs, which she stiffened, as if she felt pain." it is further hinted that her hands took part in this manoeuvre (_monsieur nicolas_, vol. vi, p. ). pictorial representations of a woman masturbating also occur in eighteenth century engravings. thus, in france, baudouin's "le midi" (reproduced in fuchs's _das erotische element in der karikatur_, fig. ), represents an elegant young lady in a rococo garden-bower; she has been reading a book she has now just dropped, together with her sunshade; she leans languorously back, and her hand begins to find its way through her placket-hole. adler, who has studied masturbation in women with more care than any previous writer, has recorded in detail the auto-erotic manifestations involved in the case of an intelligent and unprejudiced woman, aged , who had begun masturbating when twenty, and practiced it at intervals of a few weeks. she experienced the desire for sexual gratification under the following circumstances: ( ) spontaneously, directly before or after menstruation; ( ) as a method to cure sleeplessness; ( ) after washing the parts with warm (but not cold) water; ( ) after erotic dreams; ( ) quite suddenly, without definite cause. the phenomena of the masturbatory process fell into two stages: ( ) incomplete excitement, ( ) the highest pleasurable gratification. it only took place in the evening, or at night, and a special position was necessary, with the right knee bent, and the right foot against the knee of the extended left leg. the bent index and middle fingers of the right hand were then applied firmly to the lower third of the left labium minus, which was rubbed against the underlying parts. at this stage, the manifestations sometimes stopped, either from an effort of self-control or from fatigue of the arm. there was no emission of mucus, or general perspiration, but some degree of satisfaction and of fatigue, followed by sleep. if, however, the manipulation was continued, the second stage was reached, and the middle finger sank into the vagina, while the index finger remained on the labium, the rest of the hand holding and compressing the whole of the vulva, from pubes to anus, against the symphysis, with a backwards and forwards movement, the left hand also being frequently used to support and assist the right. the parts now gave a mushroom-like feeling to the touch, and in a few seconds, or after a longer interval, the complete feeling of pleasurable satisfaction was attained. at the same moment there was (but only after she had had experience of coitus) an involuntary elevation of the pelvis, together with emission of mucus, making the hand wet, this mucus having an odor, and being quite distinct from the ordinary odorless mucus of the vagina; at the same time, the finger in the vagina felt slight contractions of the whole vaginal wall. the climax of sexual pleasure lasted a few seconds, with its concomitant vaginal contractions, then slowly subsided with a feeling of general well-being, the finger at the same time slipping out of the vagina, and she was left in a state of general perspiration, and sleep would immediately follow; when this was not the case, she was frequently conscious of some degree of sensibility in the sacrum, lasting for several hours, and especially felt when sitting. when masturbation was the result of an erotic dream (which occurred but seldom), the first stage was already reached in sleep, and the second was more quickly obtained. during the act it was only occasionally that any thoughts of men or of coitus were present, the attention being fixed on the coming climax. the psychic state afterwards was usually one of self-reproach. (o. adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , pp. - .) the phenomena in this case may be regarded as fairly typical, but there are many individual variations; mucus emissions and vaginal contractions frequently occur before actual orgasm, and there is not usually any insertion of the finger into the vagina in women who have never experienced coitus, or, indeed, even in those who have. we must now turn to that aspect of our subject which in the past has always seemed the only aspect of auto-erotic phenomena meriting attention: the symptoms and results of chronic masturbation. it appears to have been an englishman who, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, first called popular attention to the supposed evils of masturbation. his book was published in london, and entitled: _onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, and all its frightful consequences in both sexes, considered, with spiritual and physical advice_, etc. it is not a serious medical treatise, but an early and certainly superior example of a kind of literature which we have since become familiar with through the daily newspapers. a large part of the book, which is cleverly written, is devoted in the later editions to the letters of nervous and hypochondriacal young men and women, who are too shy to visit the author, but request him to send a bottle of his "strengthening tincture," and mention that they are inclosing half a guinea, a guinea, or still larger sum. concerning the composition of the "strengthening tincture" we are not informed.[ ] this work, which was subsequently attributed to a writer named bekkers, is said to have passed through no less than eighty editions, and it was translated into german. tissot, a physician of lausanne, followed with his _traité de l'onanisme: dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation_, first published in latin ( ), then in french ( ), and afterward in nearly all european languages. he regarded masturbation as a crime, and as "an act of suicide." his book is a production of amusing exaggeration and rhetoric, zealously setting forth the prodigious evils of masturbation in a style which combines, as christian remarks, the strains of rousseau with a vein of religious piety. tissot included only manual self-abuse under the term "onanism;" shortly afterward, voltaire, in his _dictionnaire philosophique_, took up the subject, giving it a wider meaning and still further popularizing it. finally lallemand, at a somewhat later period ( ), wrote a book which was, indeed, more scientific in character, but which still sought to represent masturbation as the source of all evils. these four writers--the author of _onania_, tissot, voltaire, lallemand--are certainly responsible for much. the mistaken notions of many medical authorities, carried on by tradition, even down to our own time; the powerful lever which has been put into the hand of unscrupulous quacks; the suffering, dread, and remorse experienced in silence by many thousands of ignorant and often innocent young people may all be traced in large measure back to these four well-meaning, but (on this question) misguided, authors. there is really no end to the list of real or supposed symptoms and results of masturbation, as given by various medical writers during the last century. insanity, epilepsy, numerous forms of eye disease, supra-orbital headache, occipital headache (spitzka), strange sensations at the top of the head (savage), various forms of neuralgia (anstie, j. chapman), tenderness of the skin in the lower dorsal region (chapman), mammary tenderness in young girls (lacassagne), mammary hypertrophy (ossendovsky), asthma (peyer), cardiac murmurs (seerley), the appearance of vesicles on wounds (baraduc), acne and other forms of cutaneous eruptions (the author of _onania_, clipson), dilated pupils (skene, lewis, moraglia), eyes directed upward and sideways (pouillet), dark rings around the eyes, intermittent functional deafness (bonnier), painful menstruation (j. chapman), catarrh of uterus and vagina (winckel, pouillet), ovarian disease (jessett), pale and discolored skin (lewis, moraglia), redness of nose (gruner), epistaxis (joal, j.n. mackenzie), morbid changes in nose (fliess), convulsive cough of puberty (gowers), acidity of vagina (r.w. shufeldt), incontinence of urine in young women (girandeau), warts on the hands in women (durr, kreichmar, von oye), hallucinations of smell and hearing, (griesinger, lewis), intermittent functional deafness (bonnier), indican in the urine (herter), an indescribable odor of the skin in women (skene), these are but a few of the signs and consequences of masturbation given by various prominent authorities.[ ] that many of these manifestations do occur in connection with masturbation is unquestionable; there is also good reason to believe that some of them may be the results of masturbation acting on an imperfectly healthy organism. but in all such cases we must speak with great caution, for there appears to be little reliable evidence to show that simple masturbation, in a well-born and healthy individual, can produce any evil results beyond slight functional disturbances, and these only when it is practiced in excess. to illustrate the real pathological relationships of masturbation, a few typical and important disorders may be briefly considered. the delicate mechanism of the eye is one of the first portions of the nervous apparatus to be disturbed by any undue strain on the system; it is not surprising that masturbation should be widely incriminated as a cause of eye troubles. if, however, we inquire into the results obtained by the most cautious and experienced ophthalmological observers, it grows evident that masturbation, as a cause of disease of the eye, becomes merged into wider causes. in germany, hermann cohn, the distinguished ophthalmic surgeon of breslau, has dealt fully with the question.[ ] cohn, who believes that all young men and women masturbate to some extent, finds that masturbation must be excessive for eye trouble to become apparent. in most of his cases there was masturbation several times daily during from five to seven years, in many during ten years, and in one during twenty-three years. in such cases we are obviously dealing with abnormal persons, and no one will dispute the possibility of harmful results; in some of the cases, when masturbation was stopped, the eye trouble improved. even in these cases, however, the troubles were but slight, the chief being, apparently, photopsia (a subjective sensation of light) with otherwise normal conditions of pupil, vision, color-sense, and retina. in some cases there was photophobia, and he has also found paralysis of accommodation and conjunctivitis. at a later date salmo cohn, in his comprehensive monograph on the relationship between the eye and the sexual organs in women, brought together numerous cases of eye troubles in young women associated with masturbation, but in most of these cases masturbation had been practiced with great frequency for a long period and the ocular affections were usually not serious.[ ] in england, power has investigated the relations of the sexual system to eye disease. he is inclined to think that the effects of masturbation have been exaggerated, but he believes that it may produce such for the most part trivial complaints as photopsisæ, muscsæ, muscular asthenopia, possibly blepharospasm, and perhaps conjunctivitis. he goes on, however, to point out that more serious complaints of the eye are caused by excess in normal coitus, by sexual abstinence, and especially by disordered menstruation. thus we see that even when we are considering a mechanism so delicately poised and one so easily disturbed by any jar of the system as vision, masturbation produces no effect except when carried to an extent which argues a hereditarily imperfect organism, while even in these cases the effects are usually but slight, moreover, in no respect specific, but are paralleled and even exceeded by the results of other disturbances of the sexual system. let us turn to the supposed influence of masturbation in causing insanity and nervous diseases. here we may chiefly realize the immense influence exerted on medical science by tissot and his followers during a hundred years. mental weakness is the cause and not the result of excessive masturbation, gall declared,[ ] but he was a man of genius, in isolation. sir william ellis, an alienist of considerable reputation at the beginning of the last century, could write with scientific equanimity: "i have no hesitation in saying that, in a very large number of patients in all public asylums, the disease may be attributed to that cause." he does, indeed, admit that it may be only a symptom sometimes, but goes on to assert that masturbation "has not hitherto been exhibited in the awful light in which it deserves to be shown," and that "in by far the greater number of cases" it is the true cause of dementia.[ ] esquirol lent his name and influence to a similar view of the pernicious influence of masturbation. throughout the century, even down to the present day, this point of view has been traditionally preserved in a modified form. in apparent ignorance of the enormous prevalence of masturbation, and without, so far as can be seen, any attempt to distinguish between cause and effect or to eliminate the hereditary neuropathic element, many alienists have set down a large proportion of cases of insanity, idiocy, epilepsy, and disease of the spinal cord to uncomplicated masturbation. thus, at the matteawan state hospital (new york) for criminal lunatics and insane prisoners, from to , masturbation was the sole assigned cause of insanity in men (out of , ); while, according to dr. clara barrus, among cases of insanity in young women, masturbation is the cause in ten cases.[ ] it is unnecessary to multiply examples, for this traditional tendency is familiar to all. it appears to have been largely due to griesinger, in the middle of the last century, that we owe the first authoritative appearance of a saner, more discriminating view regarding the results of masturbation. although still to some extent fettered by the traditions prevalent in his day, griesinger saw that it was not so much masturbation itself as the feelings aroused in sensitive minds by the social attitude toward masturbation which produced evil effects. "that constant struggle," he wrote, "against a desire which is even overpowering, and to which the individual always in the end succumbs, that hidden strife between shame, repentance, good intentions, and the irritation which impels to the act, this, after not a little acquaintance with onanists, we consider to be far more important than the primary direct physical effect." he added that there are no specific signs of masturbation, and concluded that it is oftener a symptom than a cause. the general progress of educated opinions since that date has, in the main, confirmed and carried forward the results cautiously stated by griesinger. this distinguished alienist thought that, when practiced in childhood, masturbation might lead to insanity. berkhan, in his investigation of the psychoses of childhood, found that in no single case was masturbation a cause. vogel, uffelmann, and emminghaus, in the course of similar studies, have all come to almost similar conclusions.[ ] it is only on a congenitally morbid nervous system, emminghaus insists, that masturbation can produce any serious results. "most of the cases charged to masturbation," writes kiernan (in a private letter), basing his opinion on wide clinical experience, "are either hebephrenia or hysteria in which an effect is taken for the cause." christian, during twenty years' experience in hospitals, asylums, and private practice in town and country, has not found any seriously evil effects from masturbation.[ ] he thinks, indeed, that it may be a more serious evil in women than in men. but yellowlees considers that in women "it is possibly less exhausting and injurious than in the other sex," which was also the opinion of hammond, as well as of guttceit, though he found that women pushed the practice much further than men, and näcke, who has given special attention to this point, could not find that masturbation is a definite cause of insanity in women in a single case.[ ] koch also reaches a similar conclusion, as regards both sexes, though he admits that masturbation may cause some degree of psychopathic deterioration. even in this respect, however, he points out that "when practiced in moderation it is not injurious in the certain and exceptionless way in which it is believed to be in many circles. it is the people whose nervous systems are already injured who masturbate most easily and practice it more immoderately than others"; the chief source of its evil is self-reproach and the struggle with the impulse.[ ] kahlbaum, it is true, under the influence of the older tradition, when he erected katatonia into a separate disorder (not always accepted in later times), regarded prolonged and excessive masturbation as a chief cause, but i am not aware that he ever asserted that it was a sole and sufficient cause in a healthy organism. kiernan, one of the earliest writers on katatonia, was careful to point out that masturbation was probably as much effect as cause of the morbid nervous condition.[ ] maudsley (in _body and mind_) recognized masturbation as a special exciting cause of a characteristic form of insanity; but he cautiously added: "nevertheless, i think that self-abuse seldom, if ever, produces it without the co-operation of the insane neurosis."[ ] schüle also recognized a specific masturbatory insanity, but the general tendency to reject any such nosological form is becoming marked; krafft-ebing long since rejected it and näcke decidedly opposes it. kraepelin states that excessive masturbation can only occur in a dangerous degree in predisposed subjects; so, also, forel and löwenfeld, as at an earlier period, trousseau.[ ] it is true that marro, in his admirable and detailed study of the normal and abnormal aspects of puberty, accepts a form of masturbatory insanity; but the only illustrative case he brings forward is a young man possessing various stigmata of degeneracy and the son of an alcoholic father; such a case tells us nothing regarding the results of simple masturbation.[ ] even spitzka, who maintained several years ago the traditional views as to the terrible results of masturbation, and recognized a special "insanity of masturbation," stated his conclusions with a caution that undermined his position: "self-abuse," he concluded, "to become a sole cause of insanity, must be begun early and carried very far. in persons of sound antecedents it rarely, under these circumstances, suffices to produce an actual vesania."[ ] when we remember that there is no convincing evidence to show that masturbation is "begun early and carried very far" by "persons of sound antecedents," the significance of spitzka's "typical psychosis of masturbation" is somewhat annulled. it is evident that these distinguished investigators, marro and spitzka, have been induced by tradition to take up a position which their own scientific consciences have compelled them practically to evacuate. recent authorities are almost unanimous in rejecting masturbation as a cause of insanity. thus, rohleder, in his comprehensive monograph (_die masturbation_, , pp. - ), although taking a very serious view of the evil results of masturbation, points out the unanimity which is now tending to prevail on this point, and lays it down that "masturbation is never the direct cause of insanity." sexual excesses of any kind, he adds (following curschmann), can, at the most, merely give an impetus to a latent form of insanity. on the whole, he concludes, the best authorities are unanimous in agreeing that masturbation may certainly injure mental capacity, by weakening memory and depressing intellectual energy; that, further, in hereditarily neurotic subjects, it may produce slight psychoses like _folie du doute_, hypochondria, hysteria; that, finally, under no circumstances can it produce severe psychoses like paranoia or general paralysis. "if it caused insanity, as often as some claim," as kellogg remarks, "the whole race would long since have passed into masturbatic degeneracy of mind.... it is especially injurious in the very young, and in all who have weak nervous systems," but "the physical traits attributed to the habit are common to thousands of neurasthenic and neurotic individuals." (kellogg, _a text-book of mental diseases_, , pp. - .) again, at the outset of the article on "masturbation," in tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_, yellowlees states that, on account of the mischief formerly done by reckless statements, it is necessary to state plainly that "unless the practice has been long and greatly indulged, no permanent evil effects may be observed to follow." näcke, again, has declared ("kritisches zum kapitel der sexualität," _archiv für psychiatrie_, ): "there are neither somatic nor psychic symptoms peculiar on onanism. nor is there any specific onanistic psychosis. i am prepared to deny that onanism ever produces any psychoses in those who are not already predisposed." that such a view is now becoming widely prevalent is illustrated by the cautious and temperate discussion of masturbation in a recent work by a non-medical writer, geoffrey mortimer (_chapters on human love_, pp. - ). the testimony of expert witnesses with regard to the influence of masturbation in producing other forms of psychoses and neuroses is becoming equally decisive; and here, also, the traditions of tissot are being slowly effaced. "i have not, in the whole of my practice," wrote west, forty years ago, "out of a large experience among children and women, seen convulsions, epilepsy, or idiocy _induced_ by masturbation in any child of either sex. neither have i seen any instance in which hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity in women after puberty was _due_ to masturbation, as its efficient cause."[ ] gowers speaks somewhat less positively, but regards masturbation as not so much a cause of true epilepsy as of atypical attacks, sometimes of a character intermediate between the hysteroid and the epileptoid form; this relationship he has frequently seen in boys.[ ] leyden, among the causes of diseases of the spinal cord, does not include any form of sexual excess. "in moderation," erb remarks, "masturbation is not more dangerous to the spinal cord than natural coitus, and has no bad effects";[ ] it makes no difference, erb considers, whether the orgasm is effected normally or in solitude. this is also the opinion of toulouse, of fürbringer, and of curschmann, as at an earlier period it was of roubaud. while these authorities are doubtless justified in refusing to ascribe to masturbation any part in the production of psychic or nervous diseases, it seems to me that they are going somewhat beyond their province when they assert that masturbation has no more injurious effect than coitus. if sexual coitus were a purely physiological phenomenon, this position would be sound. but the sexual orgasm is normally bound up with a mass of powerful emotions aroused by a person of the opposite sex. it is in the joy caused by the play of these emotions, as well as in the discharge of the sexual orgasm, that the satisfaction of coitus resides. in the absence of the desired partner the orgasm, whatever relief it may give, must be followed by a sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps of depression, even of exhaustion, often of shame and remorse. the same remark has since been made by stanley hall.[ ] practically, also, as john hunter pointed out, there is more probability of excess in masturbation than in coitus. whether, as some have asserted, masturbation involves a greater nervous effort than coitus is more doubtful.[ ] it thus seems somewhat misleading to assert that masturbation has no more injurious effect than coitus.[ ] reviewing the general question of the supposed grave symptoms and signs of masturbation, and its pernicious results, we may reach the conclusion that in the case of moderate masturbation in healthy, well-born individuals, no seriously pernicious results necessarily follow.[ ] with regard to the general signs, we may accept, as concerns both sexes, what the obstetrical and gynecological society of berlin decided in , in a discussion of it in women, that there are none which can be regarded as reliable.[ ] we may conclude finally, with clouston, that the opposing views on the subject may be simply explained by the fact that the writers on both sides have ignored or insufficiently recognized the influence of heredity and temperament. they have done precisely what so many unscientific writers on inebriety have continued to do unto the present day, when describing the terrible results of alcohol without pointing out that the chief factor in such cases has not been the alcohol, but the organization on which the alcohol acted. excess may act, according to the familiar old-fashioned adage, like the lighted match. but we must always remember the obvious truth, that it makes a considerable difference whether you threw your lighted match into a powder magazine or into the sea. while we may thus dismiss the extravagant views widely held during the past century, concerning the awful results of masturbation, as due to ignorance and false tradition, it must be pointed out that, even in healthy or moderately healthy individuals, any excess in solitary self-excitement may still produce results which, though slight, are yet harmful. the skin, digestion, and circulation may all be disordered; headache and neuralgia may occur; and, as in normal sexual excess or in undue frequency of sexual excitement during sleep, there is a certain general lowering of nervous tone. probably the most important of the comparatively frequent results--though this also arises usually on a somewhat morbid soil--is neurasthenia with its manifold symptoms. there can be little doubt that the ancient belief, dating from the time of hippocrates, that sexual excesses produce spinal disease, as well as the belief that masturbation causes insanity, are largely due to the failure to diagnose neurasthenia. the following case of neurasthenia, recorded by eulenburg, may be given as a classical picture of the nervous disturbances which may be associated with masturbation, and are frequently regarded as solely caused by habits of masturbation: miss h.h., years of age, a robust brunette, with fully developed figure, without any trace of anæmia or chlorosis, but with an apathetic expression, bluish rings around the eyes, with hypochondriacal and melancholy feelings. she complains of pressure on the head ("as if head would burst"), giddiness, ringing in the ears, photopsia, hemicrania, pains in the back and at sacrum, and symptoms of spinal adynamia, with a sense of fatigue on the least exertion in walking or standing; she sways when standing with closed eyes, tendon-reflexes exaggerated; there is a sense of oppression, intercostal neuralgia, and all the signs of neurasthenic dyspepsia; and cardialgia, nausea, flatulence, meteorism, and alternate constipation and diarrhoea. she chiefly complains of a feeling of weight and pain in the abdomen, caused by the slightest movement, and of a form of pollution (with clitoridian spasms), especially near menstruation, with copious flow of mucus, characteristic pains, and hyperexcitability. menstruation was irregular and profuse. examination showed tumid and elongated nymphæ, with brown pigmentation; rather large vagina, with rudimentary hymen; and retroflexion of uterus. after much persuasion the patient confessed that, when a girl of , and as the result of repeated attempts at coitus by a boy of , she had been impelled to frequent masturbation. this had caused great shame and remorse, which, however, had not sufficed to restrain the habit. her mother having died, she lived alone with her invalid father, and had no one in whom to confide. regarding herself as no longer a virgin, she had refused several offers of marriage, and thus still further aggravated her mental condition. (eulenburg, _sexuale neuropathie_, p. .) since beard first described neurasthenia, many diverse opinions have been expressed concerning the relationships of sexual irregularities to neurasthenia. gilles de la tourette, in his little monograph on neurasthenia, following the traditions of charcot's school, dismisses the question of any sexual causation without discussion. binswanger (_die pathologie und therapie der neurasthenie_), while admitting that nearly all neurasthenic persons acknowledge masturbation at some period, considers it is not an important cause of neurasthenia, only differing from coitus by the fact that the opportunities for it are more frequent, and that the sexual disturbances of neurasthenia are, in the majority of cases, secondary. rohleder, on the other hand, who takes a very grave view of the importance of masturbation, considers that its most serious results are a question of neurasthenia. krafft-ebing has declared his opinion that masturbation is a cause of neurasthenia. christian, leyden, erb, rosenthal, beard, hummel, hammond, hermann cohn, curschmann, savill, herman, fürbringer, all attach chief importance to neurasthenia as a result of masturbation. collins and phillip (_medical record_, march , ), in an analysis of cases of neurasthenia, found that cases were apparently due to overwork or masturbation. freud concludes that neurasthenia proper can nearly always be traced to excessive masturbation, or to spontaneous pollutions. (e.g., _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, first series, p. .) this view is confirmed by gattel's careful study (_ueber die sexuellen ursachen der neurasthenie und angstneurose_, ). gattel investigated consecutive cases of severe functional nervous disorder in krafft-ebing's clinic at vienna, and found that in every case of neurasthenia in a male ( in all) there was masturbation, while of the women with neurasthenia, only one is recorded as not masturbating, and she practiced _coitus reservatus_. irrespective of the particular form of the nervous disorder, gattel found that women out of , and men out of , acknowledged masturbation. (this shows a slightly larger proportion among the men, but the men were mostly young, while the women were mostly of more mature age.) it must, however, always be remembered that we have no equally careful statistics of masturbation in perfectly healthy persons. we must also remember that we have to distinguish between the _post_ and the _propter_, and that it is quite possible that neurasthenic persons are specially predisposed to masturbation. bloch is of this opinion, and remarks that a vicious circle may thus be formed. on the whole, there can be little doubt that neurasthenia is liable to be associated with masturbation carried to an excessive extent. but, while neurasthenia is probably the severest affection that is liable to result from, or accompany, masturbation, we are scarcely yet entitled to accept the conclusion of gattel that in such cases there is no hereditary neurotic predisposition. we must steer clearly between the opposite errors of those, on the one hand, who assert that heredity is the sole cause of functional nervous disorders, and those, on the other hand, who consider that the incident that may call out the disorder is itself a sole sufficient cause. in many cases it has seemed to me that masturbation, when practiced in excess, especially if begun before the age of puberty, leads to inaptitude for coitus, as well as to indifference to it, and sometimes to undue sexual irritability, involving premature emission and practical impotence. this is, however, the exception, especially if the practice has not been begun until after puberty. in women i attach considerable importance, as a result of masturbation, to an aversion for normal coitus in later life. in such cases some peripheral irritation or abnormal mental stimulus trains the physical sexual orgasm to respond to an appeal which has nothing whatever to do with the fascination normally exerted by the opposite sex. at puberty, however, the claim of passion and the real charm of sex begin to make themselves felt, but, owing to the physical sexual feelings having been trained into a foreign channel, these new and more normal sex associations remain of a purely ideal and emotional character, without the strong sensual impulses with which under healthy conditions they tend to be more and more associated as puberty passes on into adolescence or mature adult life. i am fairly certain that in many women, often highly intellectual women, the precocious excess in masturbation has been a main cause, not necessarily the sole efficient cause, in producing a divorce in later life between the physical sensuous impulses and the ideal emotions. the sensuous impulse having been evolved and perverted before the manifestation of the higher emotion, the two groups of feelings have become divorced for the whole of life. this is a common source of much personal misery and family unhappiness, though at the same time the clash of contending impulses may lead to a high development of moral character. when early masturbation is a factor in producing sexual inversion it usually operates in the manner i have here indicated, the repulsion for normal coitus helping to furnish a soil on which the inverted impulse may develop unimpeded. this point has not wholly escaped previous observers, though they do not seem to have noted its psychological mechanism. tissot stated that masturbation causes an aversion to marriage. more recently, loiman ("ueber onanismus beim weibe," _therapeutische monatshefte_, april, ) considered that masturbation in women, leading to a perversion of sexual feeling, including inability to find satisfaction in coitus, affects the associated centres. smith baker, again ("the neuropsychical element in conjugal aversion," _journal of nervous and mental disease_, september, ), finds that a "source of marital aversion seems to lie in the fact that substitution of mechanical and iniquitous excitations affords more thorough satisfaction than the mutual legitimate ones do," and gives cases in point. savill, also, who believes that masturbation is more common in women than is usually supposed, regards dyspareunia, or pain in coition, as one of the signs of the habit. masturbation in women thus becomes, as raymond and janet point out (_les obsessions_, vol. ii, p. ) a frequent cause of sexual frigidity in marriage. these authors illustrate the train of evils which may thus be set up, by the case of a lady, years of age, a normal woman, of healthy family, who, at the age of , was taught by a servant to masturbate. at the age of she married. she loved her husband, but she had no sexual feelings in coitus, and she continued to masturbate, sometimes several times a day, without evil consequences. at she had to go into a hospital for floating kidney, and was so obliged to stop masturbating. she here accidentally learnt of the evil results attributed to the habit. she resolved not to do it again, and she kept her resolution. but while still in hospital she fell wildly in love with a man. to escape from the constant thought of this man, she sought relations with her husband, and at times masturbated, but now it no longer gave her pleasure. she wished to give up sexual things altogether. but that was easier said than done. she became subject to nervous crises, often brought on by the sight of a man, and accompanied by sexual excitement. they disappeared under treatment, and she thereupon became entirely frigid sexually. but, far from being happy, she has lost all energy and interest in life, and it is her sole desire to attain the sexual feelings she has lost. adler considers that even when masturbation in women becomes an overmastering passion, so far as organic effects are concerned it is usually harmless, its effects being primarily psychic, and he attaches especial significance to it as a cause of sexual anæsthesia in normal coitus, being, perhaps, the most frequent cause of such anæsthesia. he devotes an important chapter to this matter, and brings forward numerous cases in illustration (adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, pp. - , also - ). adler considers that the frequency of masturbation in women is largely due to the fact that women experience greater difficulties than men in obtaining sexual satisfaction, and so are impelled by unsatisfying coitus to continue masturbation after marriage. he adds that partly from natural shyness, partly from shame of acknowledging what is commonly accounted a sin, and partly from the fear of seeming disgusting or unworthy of sympathy in the doctor's eyes, women are usually silent on this matter, and very great tact and patience may be necessary before a confession is obtained. on the psychic side, no doubt, the most frequent and the most characteristic result of persistent and excessive masturbation is a morbid heightening of self-consciousness without any co-ordinated heightening of self-esteem.[ ] the man or woman who is kissed by a desirable and desired person of the opposite sex feels a satisfying sense of pride and elation, which must always be absent from the manifestations of auto-erotic activity.[ ] this must be so, even apart from the masturbator's consciousness of the general social attitude toward his practices and his dread of detection, for that may also exist as regards normal coitus without any corresponding psychic effects. the masturbator, if his practice is habitual, is thus compelled to cultivate an artificial consciousness of self-esteem, and may show a tendency to mental arrogance. self-righteousness and religiosity constitute, as it were, a protection against the tendency to remorse. a morbid mental soil is, of course, required for the full development of these characteristics. the habitual male masturbator, it must be remembered, is often a shy and solitary person; individuals of this temperament are especially predisposed to excesses in all the manifestations of auto-erotism, while the yielding to such tendencies increases the reserve and the horror of society, at the same time producing a certain suspicion of others. in some extreme cases there is, no doubt, as kraepelin believes, some decrease of psychic capacity, an inability to grasp and co-ordinate external impressions, weakness of memory, deadening of emotions, or else the general phenomena of increased irritability, leading on to neurasthenia. i find good reason to believe that in many cases the psychic influence of masturbation on women is different from its effect on men. as spitzka observed, although it may sometimes render women self-reproachful and hesitant, it often seems to make them bold. boys, as we have seen, early assimilate the tradition that self-abuse is "unmanly" and injurious, but girls have seldom any corresponding tradition that it is "unwomanly," and thus, whether or not they are reticent on the matter, before the forum of their own conscience they are often less ashamed of it than men are and less troubled by remorse. eulenburg considers that the comparative absence of bad effects from masturbation in girls is largely due to the fact that, unlike boys, they are not terrorized by exaggerated warnings and quack literature concerning the awful results of the practice. forel, who has also remarked that women are often comparatively little troubled by qualms of conscience after masturbation, denies that this is due to a lower moral tone than men possess (forel, _die sexuelle frage_, p. ). in this connection, i may refer to history iv, recorded in the appendix to the fifth volume of these _studies_, in which it is stated that of prostitutes of various nationalities, with whom the subject had had relations, spontaneously told him that they were habitual masturbators, while of normal women, made the same confession, unasked. guttceit, in russia, after stating that women of good constitution had told him that they masturbated as much as six or ten times a day or night (until they fell asleep, tired), without bad results, adds that, according to his observations, "masturbation, when not excessive, is, on the whole, a quite innocent matter, which exerts little or no permanent effect," and adds that it never, in any case, leads to _hypochondria onanica_ in women, because they have not been taught to expect bad results (_dreissig jahre praxis_, p. ). there is, i think, some truth--though the exceptions are doubtless many--in the distinction drawn by w.c. krauss ("masturbational neuroses," _medical news_, july , ): "from my experience it [masturbation] seems to have an opposite effect upon the two sexes, dulling the mental and making clumsy the physical exertions of the male, while in the female it quickens and excites the physical and psychical movements. the man is rendered hypoesthetic, the woman hyperesthetic." in either sex auto-erotic excesses during adolescence in young men and women of intelligence--whatever absence of gross injury there may be--still often produce a certain degree of psychic perversion, and tend to foster false and high-strung ideals of life. kraepelin refers to the frequency of exalted enthusiasms in masturbators, and i have already quoted anstie's remarks on the connection between masturbation and premature false work in literature and art. it may be added that excess in masturbation has often occurred in men and women whose work in literature and art cannot be described as premature and false. k.p. moritz, in early adult life, gave himself up to excess in masturbation, and up to the age of thirty had no relations with women. lenau is said--though the statement is sometimes denied--to have been a masturbator from early life, the habit profoundly effecting his life and work. rousseau, in his _confessions_, admirably describes how his own solitary, timid, and imaginative life found its chief sexual satisfaction in masturbation.[ ] gogol, the great russian novelist, masturbated to excess, and it has been suggested that the dreamy melancholy thus induced was a factor in his success as a novelist. goethe, it has been asserted, at one time masturbated to excess; i am not certain on what authority the statement is made, probably on a passage in the seventh book of _dichtung und wahrheit_, in which, describing his student-life at leipzig, and his loss of aennchen owing to his neglect of her, he tells how he revenged that neglect on his own physical nature by foolish practices from which he thinks he suffered for a considerable period.[ ] the great scandinavian philosopher, sören kierkegaard, suffered severely, according to rasmussen, from excessive masturbation. that, at the present day, eminence in art, literature, and other fields may be combined with the excessive practice of masturbation is a fact of which i have unquestionable evidence. i have the detailed history of a man of , of high ability in a scientific direction, who, except during periods of mental strain, has practiced masturbation nightly (though seldom more than once a night) from early childhood, without any traceable evil results, so far as his general health and energy are concerned. in another case, a schoolteacher, age , a hard worker and accomplished musician, has masturbated every night, sometimes more than once a night, ever since he was at school, without, so far as he knows, any bad results; he has never had connection with a woman, and seldom touches wine or tobacco. curschmann knew a young and able author who, from the age of had masturbated excessively, but who retained physical and mental freshness. it would be very easy to refer to other examples, and i may remark that, as regards the histories recorded in various volumes of these _studies_, a notable proportion of those in which excessive masturbation is admitted, are of persons of eminent and recognized ability. it is often possible to trace the precise mechanism of the relationship between auto-erotic excitement and intellectual activity. brown-séquard, in old age, considered that to induce a certain amount of sexual excitement, not proceeding to emission, was an aid to mental work. raymond and janet knew a man considering himself a poet, who, in order to attain the excitation necessary to compose his ideal verses, would write with one hand while with the other he caressed his penis, though not to the extent of producing ejaculation.[ ] we must not believe, however, that this is by any means the method of workers who deserve to be accepted seriously; it would be felt, to say the least, as unworthy. it is indeed a method that would only appeal to a person of feeble or failing mental power. what more usually happens is that the auto-erotic excitement develops, _pari passu_ and spontaneously, with the mental activity and at the climax of the latter the auto-erotic excitement also culminates, almost or even quite spontaneously, in an explosion of detumescence which relieves the mental tension. i am acquainted with such cases in both young men and women of intellectual ability, and they probably occur much more frequently than we usually suspect. in illustration of the foregoing observations, i may quote the following narrative, written by a man of letters: "from puberty to the age of (when i married), i lived in virgin continence, in accord with my principle. during these years i worked exceedingly hard--chiefly at art (music and poetry). my days being spent earning my livelihood, these art studies fell into my evening time. i noticed that productive power came in periods--periods of irregular length, and which certainly, to a partial extent, could be controlled by the will. such a period of vital power began usually with a sensation of melancholy, and it quickened my normal revolt against the narrowness of conventional life into a red-hot detestation of the paltriness and pettiness with which so many mortals seem to content themselves. as the mood grew in intensity, this scorn of the lower things mixed with and gave place to a vivid insight into higher truths. the oppression began to give place to a realization of the eternity of the heroic things; the fatuities were seen as mere fashions; love was seen as the true lord of life; the eternal romance was evident in its glory; the naked strength and beauty of men were known despite their clothes. in such mood my work was produced; bitter protest and keen-sighted passion mingled in its building. the arising vitality had certainly deep relation to the periodicity of the sex-force of manhood. at the height of the power of the art-creative mood would come those natural emissions with which nature calmly disposes of the unused force of the male. such emissions were natural and healthy, and not exhaustive or hysterical. the process is undoubtedly sane and protective, unless the subject be unhealthy. the period of creative art power extended a little beyond the end of the period of natural seed emission--the art work of this last stage being less vibrant, and of a gentler force. then followed a time of calm natural rest, which gradually led up to the next sequence of melancholy and power. the periods certainly varied in length of time, controlled somewhat by the force of the mind and the mental will to create; that is to say, i could somewhat delay the natural emission, by which i gained an extension of the period of power." how far masturbation in moderately healthy persons living without normal sexual relationships may be considered normal is a difficult question only to be decided with reference to individual cases. as a general rule, when only practiced at rare intervals, and _faute de mieux_, in order to obtain relief for physical oppression and mental obsession, it may be regarded as the often inevitable result of the unnatural circumstances of our civilized social life. when, as often happens in mental degeneracy,--and as in shy and imaginative persons, perhaps of neurotic temperament, may also sometimes become the case,--it is practiced in preference to sexual relationships, it at once becomes abnormal and may possibly lead to a variety of harmful results, mental and physical.[ ] it must always be remembered, however, that, while the practice of masturbation may be harmful in its consequences, it is also, in the absence of normal sexual relationships, frequently not without good results. in the medical literature of the last hundred years a number of cases have been incidentally recorded in which the patients found masturbation beneficial, and such cases might certainly have been enormously increased if there had been any open-eyed desire to discover them. my own observations agree with those of sudduth, who asserts that "masturbation is, in the main, practiced for its sedative effect on the nervous system. the relaxation that follows the act constitutes its real attraction.... both masturbation and sexual intercourse should be classed as typical sedatives."[ ] gall (_fonctions du cerveau_, , vol. iii, p. ) mentioned a woman who was tormented by strong sexual desire, which she satisfied by masturbation ten or twelve times a day; this caused no bad results, and led to the immediate disappearance of a severe pain in the back of the neck, from which she often suffered. clouston (_mental diseases_, , p. ) quotes as follows from a letter written by a youth of : "i am sure i cannot explain myself, nor give account of such conduct. sometimes i felt so uneasy at my work that i would go to the water-closet to do it, and it seemed to give me ease, and then i would work like a hatter for a whole week, till the sensation overpowered me again. i have been the most filthy scoundrel in existence," etc. garnier presents the case of a monk, aged , living a chaste life, who wrote the following account of his experiences: "for the past three years, at least, i have felt, every two or three weeks, a kind of fatigue in the penis, or, rather, slight shooting pains, increasing during several days, and then i feel a strong desire to expel the semen. when no nocturnal pollution follows, the retention of the semen causes general disturbance, headache, and sleeplessness. i must confess that, occasionally, to free myself from the general and local oppression, i lie on my stomach and obtain ejaculation. i am at once relieved; a weight seems to be lifted from my chest, and sleep returns." this patient consulted gamier as to whether this artificial relief was not more dangerous than the sufferings it relieved. gamier advised that if the ordinary _régime_ of a well-ordered monastry, together with anaphrodisiac sedatives, proved inefficacious, the manoeuvre might be continued when necessary (p. garnier, _célibat et célibataires_, , p. ). h.c. coe (_american journal of obstetrics_, p. , july, ) gives the case of a married lady who was deeply sensitive of the wrong nature of masturbation, but found in it the only means of relieving the severe ovarian pain, associated with intense sexual excitement, which attended menstruation. during the intermenstrual period the temptation was absent. turnbull knew a youth who found that masturbation gave great relief to feelings of heaviness and confusion which came on him periodically; and wigglesworth has frequently seen masturbation after epileptic fits in patients who never masturbated at other times. moll (_libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ) refers to a woman of , an artist of nervous and excitable temperament, who could not find sexual satisfaction with her lover, but only when masturbating, which she did once or twice a day, or oftener; without masturbation, she said, she would be in a much more nervous state. a friend tells me of a married lady of , separated from her husband on account of incompatibility, who suffered from irregular menstruation; she tried masturbation, and, in her own words, "became normal again;" she had never masturbated previously. i have also been informed of the case of a young unmarried woman, intellectual, athletic, and well developed, who, from the age of seven or eight, has masturbated nearly every night before going to sleep, and would be restless and unable to sleep if she did not. judging from my own observations among both sexes, i should say that in normal persons, well past the age of puberty, and otherwise leading a chaste life, masturbation would be little practiced except for the physical and mental relief it brings. many vigorous and healthy unmarried women or married women apart from their husbands, living a life of sexual abstinence, have asserted emphatically that only by sexually exciting themselves, at intervals, could they escape from a condition of nervous oppression and sexual obsession which they felt to be a state of hysteria. in most cases this happens about the menstrual period, and, whether accomplished as a purely physical act--in the same way as they would soothe a baby to sleep by rocking it or patting it--or by the co-operation of voluptuous mental imagery, the practice is not cultivated for its own sake during the rest of the month. in illustration of the foregoing statements i will here record a few typical observations of experiences with regard to masturbation. the cases selected are all women, and are all in a fairly normal, and, for the most part, excellent, state of health; some of them, however, belong to somewhat neurotic families, and these are persons of unusual mental ability and intelligence. observation i.--unmarried, aged . she is very vigorous and healthy, of a strongly passionate nature, but never masturbated until a few years ago, when she was made love to by a man who used to kiss her, etc. although she did not respond to these advances, she was thrown into a state of restless sexual excitement; on one occasion, when in bed in this restless state, she accidentally found, on passing her hand over her body, that, by playing with "a round thing" [clitoris] a pleasurable feeling was produced. she found herself greatly relieved and quieted by these manipulations, though there remained a feeling of tiredness afterward. she has sometimes masturbated six times in a night, especially before and after the menstrual period, until she was unable to produce the orgasm or any feeling of pleasure. observation ii.--unmarried, aged , of rather nervous temperament. she has for many years been accustomed, usually about a week before the appearance of the menses, to obtain sexual relief by kicking out her legs when lying down. in this way, she says, she obtains complete satisfaction. she never touches herself. on the following day she frequently has pains over the lower part of the abdomen, such pains being apparently muscular and due to the exertion. observation iii.--aged , recently married, belonging to a neurotic and morbid family, herself healthy, and living usually in the country; vivacious, passionate, enthusiastic, intellectual, and taking a prominent part in philanthropic schemes and municipal affairs; at the same time, fond of society, and very attractive to men. for many years she had been accustomed to excite herself, though she felt it was not good for her. the habit was merely practiced _faute de mieux_. "i used to sit on the edge of the bed sometimes," she said, "and it came over me so strongly that i simply couldn't resist it. i felt that i should go mad, and i thought it was better to touch myself than be insane.... i used to press my clitoris in.... it made me very tired afterward--not like being with my husband." the confession was made from a conviction of the importance of the subject, and with the hope that some way might be found out of the difficulties which so often beset women. observation iv.--unmarried, aged ; possesses much force of character and high intelligence; is actively engaged in a professional career. as a child of seven or eight she began to experience what she describes as lightning-like sensations, "mere, vague, uneasy feelings or momentary twitches, which took place alike in the vulva or the vagina or the uterus, not amounting to an orgasm and nothing like it." these sensations, it should be added, have continued into adult life. "i always experience them just before menstruation, and afterward for a few days, and, occasionally, though it seems to me not so often, during the period itself. i may have the sensation four or five times during the day; it is not dependent at all upon external impressions, or my own thoughts, and is sometimes absent for days together. it is just one flash, as if you would snap your fingers, and it is over." as a child, she was, of course, quite unconscious that there was anything sexual in these sensations. they were then usually associated with various imaginary scenes. the one usually indulged in was that a black bear was waiting for her up in a tree, and that she was slowly raised up toward the bear by means of ropes and then lowered again, and raised, feeling afraid of being caught by the bear, and yet having a morbid desire to be caught. in after years she realized that there was a physical sexual cause underlying these imaginations, and that what she liked was a feeling of resistance to the bear giving rise to the physical sensation. at a somewhat later age, though while still a child, she cherished an ideal passion for a person very much older than herself, this passion absorbing her thoughts for a period of two years, during which, however, there was no progress made in physical sensation. it was when she was nearly thirteen years of age, soon after the appearance of menstruation, and under the influence of this ideal passion, that she first learned to experience conscious orgasm, which was not associated with the thought of any person. "i did not associate it with anything high or beautiful, owing to the fact that i had imbibed our current ideas in regard to sexual feelings, and viewed them in a very poor light indeed." she considers that her sexual feelings were stronger at this period than at any other time in her life. she could, however, often deny herself physical satisfaction for weeks at a time, in order that she might not feel unworthy of the object of her ideal passion. "as for the sexual satisfaction," she writes, "it was experimental. i had heard older girls speak of the pleasure of such feelings, but i was not taught anything by example, or otherwise. i merely rubbed myself with the wash-rag while bathing, waiting for a result, and having the same peculiar feeling i had so often experienced. i am not aware of any ill effects having resulted, but i felt degraded, and tried hard to overcome the habit. no one had spoken to me of the habit, but from the secrecy of grown people, and passages i had heard from the bible, i conceived the idea that it was a reprehensible practice. and, while this did not curb my desire, it taught me self-control, and i vowed that each time should be the last. i was often able to keep the resolution for two or three weeks." some four years later she gradually succeeded in breaking herself of the practice in so far as it had become a habit; she has, however, acquired a fuller knowledge of sexual matters, and, though she has still a great dread of masturbation as a vice, she does not hesitate to relieve her physical feelings when it seems best to her to do so. "i am usually able to direct my thoughts from these sensations," she writes, "but if they seem to make me irritable or wakeful, i relieve myself. it is a physical act, unassociated with deep feeling of any kind. i have always felt that it was a rather unpleasant compromise with my physical nature, but certainly necessary in my case. yet, i have abstained from gratification for very long periods. if the feeling is not strong at the menstrual period, i go on very well without either the sensation or the gratification until the next period. and, strange as it may seem, the best antidote i have found and the best preventive is to think about spiritual things or someone whom i love. it is simply a matter of training, i suppose,--a sort of mental gymnastics,--which draws the attention away from the physical feelings." this lady has never had any sexual relationships, and, since she is ambitious, and believes that the sexual emotions may be transformed so as to become a source of motive power throughout the whole of life, she wishes to avoid such relationships. observation v.--unmarried, aged , in good health, with, however, a somewhat hysterical excess of energy. "when i was about years of age," she writes, "a friend came to me with the confession that for several years she had masturbated, and had become such a slave to the habit that she severely suffered from its ill effects. at that time i had never heard of self-abuse by women. i listened to her story with much sympathy and interest, but some skepticism, and determined to try experiments upon myself, with the idea of getting to understand the matter in order to assist my friend. after some manipulation, i succeeded in awakening what had before been unconscious and unknown. i purposely allowed the habit to grow upon me, and one night--for i always operated upon myself before going to sleep, never in the morning--i obtained considerable pleasurable satisfaction, but the following day my conscience awoke; i also felt pain located at the back of my head and down the spinal column. i ceased my operations for a time, and then began again somewhat regularly, once a month, a few days after menstruation. during those months in which i exercised moderation, i think i obtained much local relief with comparatively little injury, but, later on, finding myself in robust health, i increased my experiments, the habit grew upon me, and it was only with an almost superhuman effort that i broke myself free. needless to say that i gave no assistance to my suffering friend, nor did i ever refer to the subject after her confession to me. "some two years later i heard of sexual practices between women as a frequent habit in certain quarters. i again interested myself in masturbation, for i had been told something that led me to believe that there was much more for me to discover. not knowing the most elementary physiology, i questioned some of my friends, and then commenced again. i restricted myself to relief from local congestion and irritation by calling forth the emission of mucus, rather than by seeking pleasure. at the same time, i sought to discover what manipulation of the clitoris would lead to. the habit grew upon me with startling rapidity, and i became more or less its slave, but i suffered from no very great ill effects until i started in search of more discoveries. i found that i was a complete ignoramus as to the formation of a woman's body, and by experiments upon myself sought to discover the vagina. i continued my operations until i obtained an entrance. i think the rough handling of myself during this final stage disturbed my nervous system, and caused me considerable pain and exhaustion at the back of my head, the spinal column, the back of my eyes, and a general feeling of languor, etc. "i could not bear to be the slave of a habit, and after much suffering and efforts, which only led to falls to lower depths of conscious failure, my better self rebelled, until, by a great effort and much prayer, i kept myself pure for a whole week. this partial recovery gave me hope, but then i again fell a victim to the habit, much to my chagrin, and became hopeless of ever retracing my steps toward my ideal of virtue. for some days i lost energy, spirit, and hope; my nervous system appeared to be ruined, but i did not really despair of victory in the end. i thought of all the drunkards chained by their intemperate habits, of inveterate smokers who could not exist without tobacco, and of all the various methods by which men were slaves, and the longing to be freed of what had, in my case, proved to be a painful and unnecessary habit, increased daily until, after one night when i struggled with myself for hours, i believed i had finally succeeded. "at times, when i reached a high degree of sexual excitement, i felt that i was at least one step removed from those of morbid and repressed sex, who had not the slightest suspicion of the latent joys of womanhood within them. for a little while the habit took the shape of an exalted passion, but i rapidly tired it out by rough, thoughtless, and too impatient handling. revulsion set in with the pain of an exhausted and badly used nervous system, and finding myself the slave of a passion, i determined to endeavor to be its master. "in conclusion, i should say that masturbation has proved itself to be to me one of the blind turnings of my life's history, from which i have gained much valuable experience." the practice was, however, by no means thus dismissed. some time later the subject writes: "i have again restarted masturbation for the relief of localized feelings. one morning i was engaged in reading a very heavy volume which, for convenience sake, i held in my lap, leaning back on my chair. i had become deep in my study for an hour or so when i became aware of certain feelings roused by the weight of the book. being tempted to see what would happen by such conduct, i shifted so that the edge of the volume came in closer contact. the pleasurable feelings increased, so i gave myself up to my emotions for some thirty minutes. "notwithstanding the intense pleasure i enjoyed for so long a period, i maintain that it is wiser to refrain, and, although i admit in the same breath that, by gentle treatment, such pleasure may be harmless to the general health, it does lead to a desire for solitude, which is not conducive to a happy frame of mind. there is an accompanying reticence of speech concerning the pleasure, which, therefore, appears to be unnatural, like the eating of stolen fruit. after such an event, one seems to require to fly to the woods, and to listen to the song of the birds, so as to shake off after-effects." in a letter dated some months later, she writes: "i think i have risen above the masturbation habit." in the same letter the writer remarks: "if i had consciously abnormal or unsatisfied appetites i would satisfy them in the easiest and least harmful way." again, eighteen months later, she writes: "it is curious to note that for months this habit is forgotten, but awakens sometimes to self-assertion. if a feeling of pressure is felt in the head, and a slight irritation elsewhere, and experience shows that the time has come for pacification, exquisite pleasure can be enjoyed, never more than twice a month, and sometimes less often." observation vi.--unmarried, actively engaged in the practice of her profession. well-developed, feminine in contour, but boyish in manner and movements; strong, though muscles small, and healthy, with sound nervous system; never had anæmia. thick brown hair; pubic hair thick, and hair on toes and legs up to umbilicus; it began to appear at the age of (before pubic hair) and continued until . a few stray hairs round nipples, and much dark down on upper lip, as well as light down on arms and hands. hips, normal; nates, small; labia minora, large; and clitoris, deeply hooded. hymen thick, vagina, probably small. considerable pigmentation of parts. menstruation began at , but not regular till ; is painless and scanty; the better the state of health, the less it is. no change of sexual or other feelings connected with it; it lasts one to three days. "i believe," she writes, "my first experience of physical sex sensations was when i was about , and in sleep. but i did not then recognize it, and seldom, indeed, gave the subject of sex a thought. i was a child far beyond the age of childhood. the accompanying dreams were disagreeable, but i cannot remember what they were about. it was not until i was nearly that i knew the sexual orgasm in my waking state. it surprised me completely, but i knew that i had known it before in my sleep. "the knowledge came one summer when i was leading a rather isolated life, and my mind was far from sex subjects, being deep in books, carlyle, ruskin, huxley, darwin, scott, etc. i noticed that when i got up in the morning i felt very hot and uncomfortable. the clitoris and the parts around were swollen and erect, and often tender and painful. i had no idea what it was, but found i was unable to pass my water for an hour or two. one day, when i was straining a little to pass water, the full orgasm occurred. the next time it happened, i tried to check it by holding myself firmly, of course, with the opposite result. i do not know that i found it highly pleasurable, but it was a very great relief. i allowed myself a good many experiments, to come to a conclusion in the matter, and i thought about it. i was much too shy to speak to any one, and thought it was probably a sin. i tried not to do it, and not to think about it, saying to myself that surely i was lord of my body. but i found that the matter was not entirely under my control. however unwilling or passive i might be, there were times when the involuntary discomfort was not in my keeping. my touching myself or not did not save me from it. because it sometimes gave me pleasure, i thought it might be a form of self-indulgence, and did not do it until it could scarcely be helped. soon the orgasm began to occur fairly frequently in my sleep, perhaps once or twice a week. i had no erotic dreams, then or at any other time, but i had nights of restless sleep, and woke as it occurred, dreaming that it was happening, as, in fact, it was. at times i hardly awoke, but went to sleep again in a moment. i continued for two or three years to be sorely tried by day at frequent intervals. i acquired a remarkable degree of control, so that, though one touch or steadily directed thought would have caused the orgasm, i could keep it off, and go to sleep without 'wrong doing.' of course, when i fell asleep, my control ended. all this gave me a good deal of physical worry, and kept my attention unwillingly fixed upon the matter. i do not think my body was readily irritable, but i had unquestionably very strong sexual impulses. "after a year or two, when i was working hard, i could not afford the attention the control cost me, or the prolonged mitigated sexual excitement it caused. i took drugs for a time, but they lost effect, produced lassitude, and agreed with me badly. i therefore put away my scruples and determined to try the effect of giving myself an instant and business-like relief. instead of allowing my feelings to gather strength, i satisfied them out of hand. instead of five hours of heat and discomfort, i did not allow myself five minutes, if i could help it. "the effect was marvelous. i practically had no more trouble. the thing rarely came to me at all by day, and though it continued at times by night, it became less frequent and less strong; often it did not wake me. the erotic images and speculations that had begun to come to me died down. i left off being afraid of my feelings, or, indeed, thinking about them. i may say that i had decided that i should be obliged to lead a single life, and that the less i thought about matters of sex, the more easy i should find life. later on i had religious ideas which helped me considerably in my ideals of a decent, orderly, self-contained life. i do not lay stress on these; they were not at all emotional, and my physical and psychical development do not appear to have run much on parallel lines. i had a strong moral sense before i had a religious one, and a 'common-sense' which i perhaps trusted more than either. "when i was about i thought i might perhaps leave off the habit of regular relief i had got into. (it was not regular as regards time, being anything from one day to six weeks.) the change was probably made easier by a severe illness i had had. i gave this abstinence a fair trial for several years (until i was about ), but my nocturnal manifestations certainly gathered strength, especially when i got much better in health, and, finally, as at puberty, began to worry my waking life. i reasoned that by my attempt at abstinence i had only exchanged control for uncontrol, and reverted to my old habits of relief, with the same good results as before. the whole trouble subsided and i got better at once. (the orgasm during sleep continued, and occurs about once a fortnight; it is increased by change of air, especially at the seaside, when it may occur on two or three nights running.) i decided that, for the proper control of my single life, relief was normal and right. it would be very difficult for anyone to demonstrate the contrary to me. my aim has always been to keep myself in the best condition of physical and mental balance that a single person is capable of." there is some interest in briefly reviewing the remarkable transformations in the attitude toward masturbation from greek times down to our own day. the greeks treated masturbation with little opprobrium. at the worst they regarded it as unmanly, and aristophanes, in various passages, connects the practice with women, children, slaves, and feeble old men. Ã�schines seems to have publicly brought it as a charge against demosthenes that he had practiced masturbation, though, on the other hand, plutarch tells us that diogenes--described by zeller, the historian of greek philosophy, as "the most typical figure of ancient greece"--was praised by chrysippus, the famous philosopher, for masturbating in the market-place. the more strenuous romans, at all events as exemplified by juvenal and martial, condemned masturbation more vigorously.[ ] aretæus, without alluding to masturbation, dwells on the tonic effects of retaining the semen; but, on the other hand, galen regarded the retention of semen as injurious, and advocated its frequent expulsion, a point of view which tended to justify masturbation. in classical days, doubtless, masturbation and all other forms of the auto-erotic impulse were comparatively rare. so much scope was allowed in early adult age for homosexual and later for heterosexual relationships that any excessive or morbid development of solitary self-indulgence could seldom occur. the case was altered when christian ideals became prominent. christian morality strongly proscribed sexual relationships except under certain specified conditions. it is true that christianity discouraged all sexual manifestations, and that therefore its ban fell equally on masturbation, but, obviously, masturbation lay at the weakest line of defence against the assaults of the flesh; it was there that resistance would most readily yield. christianity thus probably led to a considerable increase of masturbation. the attention which the theologians devoted to its manifestations clearly bears witness to their magnitude. it is noteworthy that mohammedan theologians regarded masturbation as a christian vice. in islam both doctrine and practice tended to encourage sexual relationships, and not much attention was paid to masturbation, nor even any severe reprobation directed against it. omer haleby remarks that certain theologians of islam are inclined to consider the practice of masturbation in vogue among christians as allowable to devout mussulmans when alone on a journey; he himself regards this as a practice good neither for soul nor body (seminal emissions during sleep providing all necessary relief); should, however, a mussulman fall into this error, god is merciful![ ] in theodore's penitential of the seventh century, forty days' penance is prescribed for masturbation. aquinas condemned masturbation as worse than fornication, though less heinous than other sexual offences against nature; in opposition, also, to those who believed that _distillatio_ usually takes place without pleasure, he observed that it was often caused by sexual emotion, and should, therefore, always be mentioned to the confessor. liguori also regarded masturbation as a graver sin than fornication, and even said that _distillatio_, if voluntary and with notable physical commotion, is without doubt a mortal sin, for in such a case it is the beginning of a pollution. on the other hand, some theologians have thought that _distillatio_ may be permitted, even if there is some commotion, so long as it has not been voluntarily procured, and caramuel, who has been described as a theological _enfant terrible_, declared that "natural law does not forbid masturbation," but that proposition was condemned by innocent xi. the most enlightened modern catholic view is probably represented by debreyne, who, after remarking that he has known pious and intelligent persons who had an irresistible impulse to masturbate, continues: "must we excuse, or condemn, these people? neither the one nor the other. if you condemn and repulse absolutely these persons as altogether guilty, against their own convictions, you will perhaps throw them into despair; if, on the contrary, you completely excuse them, you maintain them in a disorder from which they may, perhaps, never emerge. adopt a wise middle course, and, perhaps, with god's aid, you may often cure them." under certain circumstances some catholic theologians have permitted a married woman to masturbate. thus, the jesuit theologian, gury, asserts that the wife does not sin "_quæ se ipsam tactibus excitat ad seminationem statim post copulam in quâ vir solus seminavit_." this teaching seems to have been misunderstood, since ethical and even medical writers have expended a certain amount of moral indignation on the church whose theologians committed themselves to this statement. as a matter of fact, this qualified permission to masturbate merely rests on a false theory of procreation, which is clearly expressed in the word _seminatio_. it was believed that ejaculation in the woman is as necessary to fecundation as ejaculation in the man. galen, avicenna, and aquinas recognized, indeed, that such feminine semination was not necessary; sanchez, however, was doubtful, while suarez and zacchia, following hippocrates, regarded it as necessary. as sexual intercourse without fecundation is not approved by the catholic church, it thus became logically necessary to permit women to masturbate whenever the ejaculation of mucus had not occurred at or before coitus. the belief that the emission of vaginal mucus, under the influence of sexual excitement in women, corresponded to spermatic emission, has led to the practice of masturbation on hygienic grounds. garnier (_célibat_, p. ) mentions that mesué, in the eighteenth century, invented a special pessary to take the place of the penis, and, as he stated, effect the due expulsion of the feminine sperm. protestantism, no doubt, in the main accepted the general catholic, tradition, but the tendency of protestantism, in reaction against the minute inquisition of the earlier theologians, has always been to exercise a certain degree of what it regarded as wholesome indifference toward the less obvious manifestations of the flesh. thus in protestant countries masturbation seems to have been almost ignored until tissot, combining with his reputation as a physician the fanaticism of a devout believer, raised masturbation to the position of a colossal bogy which during a hundred years has not only had an unfortunate influence on medical opinion in these matters, but has been productive of incalculable harm to ignorant youth and tender consciences. during the past forty years the efforts of many distinguished physicians--a few of whose opinions i have already quoted--have gradually dragged the bogy down from its pedestal, and now, as i have ventured to suggest, there is a tendency for the reaction to be excessive. there is even a tendency to-day to regard masturbation, with various qualifications, as normal. remy de gourmont, for instance, considers that masturbation is natural because it is the method by which fishes procreate: "all things considered, it must be accepted that masturbation is part of the doings of nature. a different conclusion might be agreeable, but in every ocean and under the reeds of every river, myriads of beings would protest."[ ] tillier remarks that since masturbation appears to be universal among the higher animals we are not entitled to regard it as a vice; it has only been so considered because studied exclusively by physicians under abnormal conditions.[ ] hirth, while asserting that masturbation must be strongly repressed in the young, regards it as a desirable method of relief for adults, and especially, under some circumstances, for women.[ ] venturi, a well-known italian alienist, on the other hand, regards masturbation as strictly physiological in youth; it is the normal and natural passage toward the generous and healthy passion of early manhood; it only becomes abnormal and vicious, he holds, when continued into adult life. the appearance of masturbation at puberty, venturi considers, "is a moment in the course of the development of the function of that organ which is the necessary instrument of sexuality." it finds its motive in the satisfaction of an organic need having much analogy with that which arises from the tickling of a very sensitive cutaneous surface. in this masturbation of early adolescence lies, according to venturi, the germ of what will later be love: a pleasure of the body and of the spirit, following the relief of a satisfied need. "as the youth develops, onanism becomes a sexual act comparable to coitus as a dream is comparable to reality, imagery forming in correspondence with the desires. in its fully developed form in adolescence," venturi continues, "masturbation has an almost hallucinatory character; onanism at this period psychically approximates to the true sexual act, and passes insensibly into it. if, however, continued on into adult age, it becomes morbid, passing into erotic fetichism; what in the inexperienced youth is the natural auxiliary and stimulus to imagination, in the degenerate onanist of adult age is a sign of arrested development. thus, onanism," the author concludes, "is not always a vice such as is fiercely combated by educators and moralists. it is the natural transition by which we reach the warm and generous love of youth, and, in natural succession to this, the tranquil, positive, matrimonial love of the mature man." (silvio venturi, _le degenerazioni psico-sessuale_, , pp. - .) it may be questioned whether this view is acceptable even for the warm climate of the south of europe, where the impulses of sexuality are undoubtedly precocious. it is certainly not in harmony with general experience and opinion in the north; this is well expressed in the following passage by edward carpenter (_international journal of ethics_, july, ): "after all, purity (in the sense of continence) _is_ of the first importance to boyhood. to prolong the period of continence in a boy's life is to prolong the period of _growth_. this is a simple physiological law, and a very obvious one; and, whatever other things may be said in favor of purity, it remains, perhaps, the most weighty. to introduce sensual and sexual habits--and one of the worst of them is self-abuse--at an early age, is to arrest growth, both physical and mental. and what is even more, it means to arrest the capacity for affection. all experience shows that the early outlet toward sex cheapens and weakens affectional capacity." i do not consider that we can decide the precise degree in which masturbation may fairly be called normal so long as we take masturbation by itself. we are thus, in conclusion, brought back to the point which i sought to emphasize at the outset: masturbation belongs to a group of auto-erotic phenomena. from one point of view it may be said that all auto-erotic phenomena are unnatural, since the natural aim of the sexual impulse is sexual conjunction, and all exercise of that impulse outside such conjunction is away from the end of nature. but we do not live in a state of nature which answers to such demands; all our life is "unnatural." and as soon as we begin to restrain the free play of sexual impulse toward sexual ends, at once auto-erotic phenomena inevitably spring up on every side. there is no end to them; it is impossible to say what finest elements in art, in morals, in civilization generally, may not really be rooted in an auto-erotic impulse. "without a certain overheating of the sexual system," said nietzsche, "we could not have a raphael." auto-erotic phenomena are inevitable. it is our wisest course to recognize this inevitableness of sexual and transmuted sexual manifestations under the perpetual restraints of civilized life, and, while avoiding any attitude of excessive indulgence or indifference,[ ] to avoid also any attitude of excessive horror, for our horror not only leads to the facts being effectually veiled from our sight, but itself serves to manufacture artificially a greater evil than that which we seek to combat. the sexual impulse is not, as some have imagined, the sole root of the most massive human emotions, the most brilliant human aptitudes,--of sympathy, of art, of religion. in the complex human organism, where all the parts are so many-fibred and so closely interwoven, no great manifestation can be reduced to one single source. but it largely enters into and molds all of these emotions and aptitudes, and that by virtue of its two most peculiar characteristics: it is, in the first place, the deepest and most volcanic of human impulses, and, in the second place,--unlike the only other human impulse with which it can be compared, the nutritive impulse,--it can, to a large extent, be transmuted into a new force capable of the strangest and most various uses. so that in the presence of all these manifestations we may assert that in a real sense, though subtly mingled with very diverse elements, auto-erotism everywhere plays its part. in the phenomena of auto-erotism, when we take a broad view of those phenomena, we are concerned, not with a form of insanity, not necessarily with a form of depravity, but with the inevitable by-products of that mighty process on which the animal creation rests. footnotes: [ ] for a bibliography of masturbation, see rohleder, _die masturbation_, pp. - ; also, arthur macdonald, _le criminel type_, pp. et seq.; cf. g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._ [ ] oskar berger, _archiv für psychiatrie_, bd. , . [ ] _die masturbation_, p. . [ ] dukes, _preservation of health_, , p. . [ ] g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. . [ ] f.s. brockman, "a study of the moral and religious life of students in the united states," _pedagogical seminary_, september, . many pitiful narratives are reproduced. [ ] moraglia, "die onanie beim normalen weibe und bei den prostituten," _zeitschrift für criminal-anthropologie_, , p. . it should be added that moraglia is not a very critical investigator. it is probable, however, that on this point his results are an approximation to the truth. [ ] ernst, "anthropological researches on the population of venezuela," _memoirs of the anthropological society_, vol. iii, , p. . [ ] niceforo, _il gergo nei normali_, etc., , cap. v. [ ] debreyne, _moechialogie_, p. . yet theologians and casuists, debreyne remarks, frequently never refer to masturbation in women. [ ] stanley hall, op. cit., vol. i, p. . hall mentions, also, that masturbation is specially common among the blind. [ ] moraglia, _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xvi, fasc. and , p. . [ ] see his careful study, "die sexuellen perversitäten in der irrenanstalt," _psychiatrische bladen_, no. . . [ ] venturi, _degenerazioni psico-sessuali_, pp. , , , . [ ] j.p. west, _transactions of the ohio pediatric society_, . _abstract in medical standard_, november, ; cases are also recorded by j.t. winter, "self-abuse in infancy and childhood," _american journal obstetrics_, june, . [ ] freud, _abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, pp. et seq. [ ] g.e. shuttleworth, _british medical journal_, october , . [ ] see for a detailed study of sexuality in childhood, moll's valuable book, _das sexualleben des kindes_; cf. vol. vi of these _studies_, ch. ii. [ ] this is, no doubt, the most common opinion, and it is frequently repeated in text-books. it is scarcely necessary, however, to point out that only the opinions of those who have given special attention to the matter can carry any weight. r.w. shufeldt ("on a case of female impotency," pp. - ) quotes the opinions of various cautious observers as to the difficulty of detecting masturbation in women. [ ] this latter opinion is confirmed by näcke so far as the insane are concerned. in a careful study of sexual perversity in a large asylum, näcke found that, while moderate masturbation could be more easily traced among men than among women, excessive masturbation was more common among women. and, while among the men masturbation was most frequent in the lowest grades of mental development (idiocy and imbecility), and least frequent in the highest grades (general paralysis), in the women it was the reverse. (p. näcke, "die sexuellen perversitäten in der irrenanstalt," _psychiatrische en neurologische bladen_, no. , .) [ ] mammary masturbation sometimes occurs; see, e.g., rohleder, _die masturbation_ (pp. - ); it is, however, rare. [ ] hirschsprung pointed out this, indeed, many years ago, on the ground of his own experience. and see rohleder, op. cit., pp. - . [ ] in many cases, of course, the physical precocity is associated with precocity in sexual habits. an instructive case is reported (_alienist and neurologist_, october, ) of a girl of , a beautiful child, of healthy family, and very intelligent, who, from the age of three, was perpetually masturbating, when not watched. the clitoris and mons veneris were those of a fully-grown woman, and the child was as well informed upon most subjects as an average woman. she was cured by care and hygienic attention, and when seen last was in excellent condition. a medical friend tells me of a little girl of two, whose external genital organs are greatly developed, and who is always rubbing herself. [ ] r.t. morris, of new york, has also pointed out the influence of traditions in this respect. "among boys," he remarks, "there are traditions to the effect that self-abuse is harmful. among girls, however, there are no such saving traditions." dr. kiernan writes in a private letter: "it has been by experience, that from ignorance or otherwise, there are young women who do not look upon sexual manipulation with the same fear that men do." guttceit, similarly, remarks that men have been warned of masturbation, and fear its evil results, while girls, even if warned, attach little importance to the warning; he adds that in healthy women, masturbation, even in excess, has little bad results. the attitude of many women in this matter may be illustrated by the following passage from a letter written by a medical friend in india: "the other day one of my english women patients gave me the following reason for having taught the -year-old daughter of a retired colonel to masturbate: 'poor girl, she was troubled with dreams of men, and in case she should be tempted with one, and become pregnant, i taught her to bring the feeling on herself--as it is safer, and, after all, nearly as nice as with a man.'" [ ] h. ellis, _studies in the psychology of sex_, volume ii, "sexual inversion," chapter iv. [ ] see, also, the appendix to the third volume of these _studies_, in which i have brought forward sexual histories of normal persons. [ ] e.h. smith, also, states that from to is the age when most women come under the physician's eye with manifest and pronounced habits of masturbation. [ ] it may, however, be instructive to observe that at the end of the volume we find an advertisement of "dr. robinson's treatise on the virtues and efficacy of a crust of bread, eat early in the morning fasting." [ ] pouillet alone enumerates and apparently accepts considerably over one hundred different morbid conditions as signs and results of masturbation. [ ] "augenkrankheiten bei masturbanten," knapp-schweigger's _archiv für augenheitkunde_, bd. ii, , p. . [ ] salmo cohn, _uterus und auge_, , pp. - . [ ] _fonctions du cerveau_, , vol. iii, p. . [ ] w. ellis, _treatise on insanity_, , pp. , . [ ] clara barrus, "insanity in young women," _journal of nervous and mental disease_, june, . [ ] see, for instance, h. emminghaus, "die psychosen des kindesalters," gerlandt's _handbuch der kinder-krankheiten_, nachtrag ii, pp. - . [ ] christian, article "onanisme," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_. [ ] näcke, _verbrechen und wahnsinn beim weibe_, , p. . [ ] j.l.a. koch, _die psychopathischen minderwertigkeiten_, , p. et seq. [ ] j.g. kiernan, _american journal of insanity_, july, . [ ] maudsley dealt, in his vigorous, picturesque manner, with the more extreme morbid mental conditions sometimes found associated with masturbation, in "illustrations of a variety of insanity," _journal of mental science_, july, . [ ] see, e.g., löwenfeld, _sexualleben und nervenleiden_, d. ed., ch. viii. [ ] marro, _la pubertà_, turin, , p. . [ ] e.c. spitzka, "cases of masturbation," _journal of mental science_, july, . [ ] charles west, _lancet_, november , . [ ] gowers, _epilepsy_, , p. . löwenfeld believes that epileptic attacks are certainly caused by masturbation. féré thought that both epilepsy and hysteria may be caused by masturbation. [ ] ziemssen's _handbuch_, bd. xi. [ ] _adolescence_, vol. i, p. . [ ] see a discussion of these points by rohleder, _die masturbation_, pp. - . [ ] the surgeons, it may be remarked, have especially stated the harmlessness of masturbation in too absolute a manner. thus, john hunter (_treatise on the venereal disease_, , p. ), after pointing out that "the books on this subject have done more harm than good," adds, "i think i may affirm that this act does less harm to the constitution in general than the natural." and sir james paget, in his lecture on "sexual hypochondriasis," said: "masturbation does neither more nor less harm than sexual intercourse practiced with the same frequency, in the same conditions of general health and age and circumstances." [ ] it is interesting to note that an analogous result seems to hold with animals. among highly-bred horses excessive masturbation is liable to occur with injurious results. it is scarcely necessary to point out that highly-bred horses are apt to be abnormal. [ ] with regard to the physical signs, the same conclusion is reached by legludic (in opposition to martineau) on the basis of a large experience. he has repeatedly found, in young girls who acknowledged frequent masturbation, that the organs were perfectly healthy and normal, and his convictions are the more noteworthy, since he speaks as a pupil of tardieu, who attached very grave significance to the local signs of sexual perversity and excess. (legludic, _notes et observations de médecine légale_, , p. .) matthews duncan (_goulstonian lectures on sterility in women_, , p. ) was often struck by the smallness, and even imperfect development, of the external genitals of women who masturbate. clara barrus considers that there is no necessary connection between hypertrophy of the external female genital organs and masturbation, though in six cases of prolonged masturbation she found such a condition in three (_american journal of insanity_, april, , p. ). bachterew denies that masturbation produces enlargement of the penis, and hammond considers there is no evidence to show that it enlarges the clitoris, while guttceit states that it does not enlarge the nymphæ; this, however, is doubtful. it would not suffice in many cases to show that large sexual organs are correlated with masturbation; it would still be necessary to show whether the size of the organs stood to masturbation in the relation of effect or of cause. [ ] thus, bechterew ("la phobie du regard," _archives de neurologie_, july, ) considers that masturbation plays a large part in producing the morbid fear of the eyes of others. [ ] it is especially an undesirable tendency of masturbation, that it deadens the need for affection, and merely eludes, instead of satisfying, the sexual impulse. "masturbation," as godfrey well says (_the science of sex_, p. ), "though a manifestation of sexual activity, is not a sexual act in the higher, or even in the real fundamental sense. for sex implies duality, a characteristic to which masturbation can plainly lay no claim. the physical, moral, and mental reciprocity which gives stability and beauty to a normal sexual intimacy, are as foreign to the masturbator as to the celibate. in a sense, therefore, masturbation is as complete a negative of the sexual life as chastity itself. it is, therefore, an evasion of, not an answer to, the sexual problem; and it will ever remain so, no matter how surely we may be convinced of its physical harmlessness." [ ] "i learnt that dangerous supplement," rousseau tells us (part i, bk. iii), "which deceives nature. this vice, which bashfulness and timidity find so convenient, has, moreover, a great attraction for lively imaginations, for it enables them to do what they will, so to speak, with the whole fair sex, and to enjoy at pleasure the beauty who attracts them, without having obtained her consent." [ ] "ich hatte sie wirklich verloren, und die tollheit, mit der ich meinen fehler an mir selbst rächte, indem ich auf mancherlei unsinnige weise in meine physische natur sturmte, um der sittlichen etwas zu leide zu thun, hat sehr viel zu den körperlichen uebeln beigetragen, unter denen ich einige der besten jahre meines lebens verlor; ja ich wäre vielleicht an diesem verlust vollig zu grunde gegangen, hätte sich hier nicht das poetische talent mit seinen heilkraften besonders hülfreich erwiesen." this is scarcely conclusive, and it may be added that there were many reasons why goethe should have suffered physically at this time, quite apart from masturbation. see, e.g., bielschowsky, _life of goethe_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _les obsessions_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] a somewhat similar classification has already been made by max dessoir, who points out that we must distinguish between onanists _aus noth_, and onanists _aus leidenschaft_, the latter group alone being of really serious importance. the classification of dallemagne is also somewhat similar; he distinguishes _onanie par impulsion_, occurring in mental degeneration and in persons of inferior intelligence, from _onanie par evocation ou obsession_. [ ] w. xavier sudduth, "a study in the psycho-physics of masturbation," _chicago medical recorder_, march, . haig, who reaches a similar conclusion, has sought to find its precise mechanism in the blood-pressure. "as the sexual act produces lower and falling blood-pressure," he remarks, "it will of necessity relieve conditions which are due to high and rising blood-pressure, such, for instance, as mental depression and bad temper; and, unless my observation deceives me, we have here a connection between conditions of high blood-pressure with mental and bodily depression and acts of masturbation, for this act will relieve these conditions and tend to be practiced for this purpose." (_uric acid_, th edition, p. .) [ ] northcote discusses the classic attitude towards masturbation, _christianity and sex problems_, p. . [ ] _el ktab_, traduction de paul de régla, paris, . [ ] remy de gourmont, _physique de l'amour_, p. . [ ] tillier, _l'instinct sexuel_, paris, , p. . [ ] g. hirth, _wege zur heimat_, p. . [ ] féré, in the course of his valuable work, _l'instinct sexuel_, stated that my conclusion is that masturbation is normal, and that "_l'indulgence s'impose_." i had, however, already guarded myself against this misinterpretation. appendix a. the influence of menstruation on the position of women. a question of historical psychology which, so far as i know, has never been fully investigated is the influence of menstruation in constituting the emotional atmosphere through which men habitually view women.[ ] i do not purpose to deal fully with this question, because it is one which may be more properly dealt with at length by the student of culture and by the historian, rather than from the standpoint of empirical psychology. it is, moreover, a question full of complexities in regard to which it is impossible to speak with certainty. but we here strike on a factor of such importance, such neglected importance, for the proper understanding of the sexual relations of men and women, that it cannot be wholly ignored. among the negroes of surinam a woman must live in solitude during the time of her period; it is dangerous for any man or woman to approach her, and when she sees a person coming near she cries out anxiously: "_mi kay! mi kay!_"--i am unclean! i am unclean! throughout the world we find traces of the custom of which this is a typical example, but we must not too hastily assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior position occupied by semi-civilized women. it is necessary to take a broad view, not only of the beliefs of semi-civilized man regarding menstruation, but of his general beliefs regarding the supernatural forces of the world. there is no fragment of folk-lore so familiar to the european world as that which connects woman with the serpent. it is, indeed, one of the foundation stones of christian theology.[ ] yet there is no fragment of folk-lore which remains more obscure. how has it happened that in all parts of the world the snake or his congeners, the lizard and the crocodile, have been credited with some design, sinister or erotic, on women? of the wide prevalence of the belief there can be no doubt. among the port lincoln tribe of south australia a lizard is said to have divided man from woman.[ ] among the chiriguanos of bolivia, on the appearance of menstruation, old women ran about with sticks to hunt the snake that had wounded the girl. frazer, who quotes this example from the "_lettres édifiantes et curieuses_," also refers to a modern greek folk-tale, according to which a princess at puberty must not let the sun shine upon her, or she would be turned into a lizard.[ ] the lizard was a sexual symbol among the mexicans. in some parts of brazil at the onset of puberty a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous attacks of snakes, and so it is also among the macusi indians of british guiana, according to schomburgk. among the basutos of south africa the young girls must dance around the clay image of a snake. in polynesian mythology the lizard is a very sacred animal, and legends represent women as often giving birth to lizards.[ ] at a widely remote spot, in bengal, if you dream of a snake a child will be born to you, reports sarat chandra mitra.[ ] in the berlin museum für volkerkunde there is a carved wooden figure from new guinea of a woman into whose vulva a crocodile is inserting its snout, while the same museum contains another figure of a snake-like crocodile crawling out of a woman's vulva, and a third figure shows a small round snake with a small head, and closely resembling a penis, at the mouth of the vagina. all these figures are reproduced by ploss and bartels. even in modern europe the same ideas prevail. in portugal, according to reys, it is believed that during menstruation women are liable to be bitten by lizards, and to guard against this risk they wear drawers during the period. in germany, again, it was believed, up to the eighteenth century at least, that the hair of a menstruating woman, if buried, would turn into a snake. it may be added that in various parts of the world virgin priestesses are dedicated to a snake-god and are married to the god.[ ] at rome, it is interesting to note, the serpent was the symbol of fecundation, and as such often figures at pompeii as the _genius patrisfamilias_, the generative power of the family.[ ] in rabbinical tradition, also, the serpent is the symbol of sexual desire. there can be no doubt that--as ploss and bartels, from whom some of these examples have been taken, point out--in widely different parts of the world menstruation is believed to have been originally caused by a snake, and that this conception is frequently associated with an erotic and mystic idea.[ ] how the connection arose ploss and bartels are unable to say. it can only be suggested that its shape and appearance, as well as its venomous nature, may have contributed to the mystery everywhere associated with the snake--a mystery itself fortified by the association with women--to build up this world-wide belief regarding the origin of menstruation. this primitive theory of the origin of menstruation probably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate bond which has ever been held to connect women, by virtue of the menstrual process, with the natural or supernatural powers of the world. everywhere menstruating women are supposed to be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces. it is at this point that a serious misconception, due to ignorance of primitive religious ideas, has constantly intruded. it is stated that the menstruating woman is "unclean" and possessed by an evil spirit. as a matter of fact, however, the savage rarely discriminates between bad and good spirits. every spirit may have either a beneficial or malignant influence. an interesting instance of this is given in colenso's _maori lexicon_ as illustrated by the meaning of the maori word _atua_. the importance of recognizing the special sense in which the word "unclean" is used in this connection was clearly pointed out by robertson smith in the case of the semites. "the hebrew word _tame_ (unclean)," he remarked, "is not the ordinary word for things physically foul; it is a ritual term, and corresponds exactly to the idea of _taboo_. the ideas 'unclean' and 'holy' seem to us to stand in polar opposition to one another, but it was not so with the semites. among the later jews the holy books 'defiled the hands' of the reader as contact with an impure thing did; among lucian's syrians the dove was so holy that he who touched it was unclean for a day; and the _taboo_ attaching to the swine was explained by some, and beyond question correctly explained, in the same way. among the heathen semites,[ ] therefore, unclean animals, which it was pollution to eat, were simply holy animals." robertson smith here made no reference to menstruation, but he exactly described the primitive attitude toward menstruation. wellhausen, however, dealing with the early arabians, expressly mentions that in pre-islamic days, "clean" and "unclean" were used solely with reference to women in and out of the menstrual state. at a later date frazer developed this aspect of the conception of taboo, and showed how it occurs among savage races generally. he pointed out that the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been differentiated, women at childbirth and during menstruation are on the same level as divine kings, chiefs, and priests, and must observe the same rules of ceremonial purity. to seclude such persons from the rest of the world, so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall not spread, is the object of the taboo, which frazer compares to "an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting, harm by contact with the outer world." after describing the phenomena (especially the prohibition to touch the ground or see the sun) found among various races, frazer concludes: "the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. the general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in south america, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in new zealand, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others.... in short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. to repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question. the same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. the uncleanliness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from each other. they are only different manifestations of the same supernatural energy, which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or malignant according to its application."[ ] more recently this view of the matter has been further extended by the distinguished french sociologist, durkheim. investigating the origins of the prohibition of incest, and arguing that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy (or marriage outside the clan), and that this rests on certain ideas about blood, which, again, are traceable to totemism,--a theory which we need not here discuss,--durkheim is brought face to face with the group of conceptions that now concern us. he insists on the extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the notion of the divine, and the close connection between aversion and veneration, and points out that it is not only at puberty and each recurrence of the menstrual epoch that women have aroused these emotions, but also at childbirth. "a sentiment of religious horror," he continues, "which can reach such a degree of intensity, which can be called forth by so many circumstances, and reappears regularly every month to last for a week at least, cannot fail to extend its influence beyond the periods to which it was originally confined, and to affect the whole course of life. a being who must be secluded or avoided for weeks, months, or years preserves something of the characteristics to which the isolation was due, even outside those special periods. and, in fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. the two elements of the population live separately." durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. all sorts of precautions must be observed with regard to blood; in it resides a divine principle, or as romans, jews, and arabs believed, life itself. the prohibition to drink wine, the blood of the grape, found among some peoples, is traced to its resemblance to blood, and to its sacrificial employment (as among the ancient arabians and still in the christian sacrament) as a substitute for drinking blood. throughout, blood is generally taboo, and it taboos everything that comes in contact with it. now woman is chronically "the theatre of bloody manifestations," and therefore she tends to become chronically taboo for the other members of the community. "a more or less conscious anxiety, a certain religious fear, cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions with her, and that is why all such relations are reduced to a minimum. relations of a sexual character are specially excluded. in the first place, such relations are so intimate that they are incompatible with the sort of repulsion which the sexes must experience for each other; the barrier between them does not permit of such a close union. in the second place, the organs of the body here specially concerned are precisely the source of the dreaded manifestations. thus it is natural that the feelings of aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this point. thus it is, also, that of all parts of the feminine organization it is this region which is most severely shut out from commerce." so that, while the primitive emotion is mainly one of veneration, and is allied to that experienced for kings and priests, there is an element of fear in such veneration, and what men fear is to some extent odious to them.[ ] these conceptions necessarily mingled at a very early period with men's ideas of sexual intercourse with women and especially with menstruating women. contact with women, as crawley shows by abundant illustration, is dangerous. in any case, indeed, the same ideas being transferred to women also, coitus produces weakness, and it prevents the acquisition of supernatural powers. thus, among the western tribes of canada, boas states: "only a youth who has never touched a woman, or a virgin, both being called _te 'e 'its_, can become shamans. after having had sexual intercourse men as well as women, become _t 'k-e 'el_, i.e., weak, incapable of gaining supernatural powers. the faculty cannot be regained by subsequent fasting and abstinence."[ ] the mysterious effects of sexual intercourse in general are intensified in the case of intercourse with a menstruating woman. thus the ancient indian legislator declares that "the wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man who approaches a woman covered with menstrual excretions utterly perish."[ ] it will be seen that these ideas are impartially spread over the most widely separated parts of the globe. they equally affected the christian church, and the penitentials ordained forty or fifty days penance for sexual intercourse during menstruation. yet the twofold influence of the menstruating woman remains clear when we review the whole group of influences which in this state she is supposed to exert. she by no means acts only by paralyzing social activities and destroying the powers of life, by causing flowers to fade, fruit to fall from the trees, grains to lose their germinative power, and grafts to die. she is not accurately summed up in the old lines:-- "oh! menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend from whom all nature should be closely screened." her powers are also beneficial. a woman at this time, as Ã�lian expressed it, is in regular communication with the starry bodies. even at other times a woman when led naked around the orchard protected it from caterpillars, said pliny, and this belief is acted upon (according to bastanzi) even in the italy of to-day.[ ] a garment stained with a virgin's menstrual blood, it is said in bavaria, is a certain safeguard against cuts and stabs. it will also extinguish fire. it was valuable as a love-philter; as a medicine its uses have been endless.[ ] a sect of valentinians even attributed sacramental virtues to menstrual blood, and partook of it as the blood of christ. the church soon, however, acquired a horror of menstruating women; they were frequently not allowed to take the sacrament or to enter sacred places, and it was sometimes thought best to prohibit the presence of women altogether.[ ] the anglo-saxon penitentials declared that menstruating women must not enter a church. it appears to have been gregory ii who overturned this doctrine. in our own time the slow disintegration of primitive animistic conceptions, aided certainly by the degraded conception of sexual phenomena taught by mediæval monks--for whom woman was "_templum ædificatum super cloacam_"--has led to a disbelief in the more salutary influences of the menstruating woman. a fairly widespread faith in her pernicious influence alone survives. it may be traced even in practical and commercial--one might add, medical--quarters. in the great sugar-refineries in the north of france the regulations strictly forbid a woman to enter the factory while the sugar is boiling or cooling, the reason given being that, if a woman were to enter during her period, the sugar would blacken. for the same reason--to turn to the east--no woman is employed in the opium manufactory at saigon, it being said that the opium would turn and become bitter, while annamite women say that it is very difficult for them to prepare opium-pipes during the catamenial period.[ ] in india, again, when a native in charge of a limekiln which had gone wrong, declared that one of the women workers must be menstruating, all the women--hindus, mahometans, aboriginal gonds, etc.,--showed by their energetic denials that they understood this superstition.[ ] in a member of the british medical association wrote to the _british medical journal_, asking whether it was true that if a woman cured hams while menstruating the hams would be spoiled. he had known this to happen twice. another medical man wrote that if so, what would happen to the patients of menstruating lady doctors? a third wrote (in the _journal_ for april , ): "i thought the fact was so generally known to every housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual period, that i am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the _journal_. if i am not mistaken, the question was mooted many years ago in the periodicals. it is undoubtedly the fact that meat will be tainted if cured by women at the catamenial period. whatever the rationale may be, i can speak positively as to the fact." it is probably the influence of these primitive ideas which has caused surgeons and gynæcologists to dread operations during the catamenial period. such, at all events, is the opinion of a distinguished authority, dr. william goodell, who wrote in [ ]: "i have learned to unlearn the teaching that women must not be subjected to a surgical operation during the monthly flux. our forefathers, from time immemorial, have thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute solemn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in wine-vats, and much other mischief in a general way. influenced by hoary tradition, modern physicians very generally postpone all operative treatment until the flow has ceased. but why this delay, if time is precious, and it enters as an important factor in the case? i have found menstruation to be the very best time to curette away fungous vegetations of the endometrium, for, being swollen then by the afflux of blood, they are larger than at any other time, and can the more readily be removed. there is, indeed, no surer way of checking or of stopping a metrorrhagia than by curetting the womb during the very flow. while i do not select this period for the removal of ovarian cysts, or for other abdominal work, such as the extirpation of the ovaries, or a kidney, or breaking up intestinal adhesions, etc., yet i have not hesitated to perform these operations at such a time, and have never had reason to regret the course. the only operations that i should dislike to perform during menstruation would be those involving the womb itself." it must be added to this that we still have to take into consideration not merely the surviving influence of ancient primitive beliefs, but the possible existence of actual nervous conditions during the menstrual period, producing what may be described as an abnormal nervous tension. in this way, we are doubtless concerned with a tissue of phenomena, inextricably woven of folk-lore, autosuggestion, false observation, and real mental and nervous abnormality. laurent (loc. cit.) has brought forward several cases which may illustrate this point. thus, he speaks of two young girls of about and , slightly neuropathic, but without definite hysterical symptoms, who, during the menstrual period, feel themselves in a sort of electrical state, "with tingling and prickling sensations and feelings of attraction or repulsion at the contact of various objects." these girls believe their garments stick to their skin during the periods; it was only with difficulty that they could remove their slippers, though fitting easily; stockings had to be drawn off violently by another person, and they had given up changing their chemises during the period because the linen became so glued to the skin. an orchestral performer on the double-bass informed laurent that whenever he left a tuned double-bass in his lodgings during his wife's period a string snapped; consequently he always removed his instrument at this time to a friend's house. he added that the same thing happened two years earlier with a mistress, a _café-concert_ singer, who had, indeed, warned him beforehand. a harpist also informed laurent that she had been obliged to give up her profession because during her periods several strings of her harp, always the same strings, broke, especially when she was playing. a friend of laurent's, an official in cochin china, also told him that the strings of his violin often snapped during the menstrual periods of his annamite mistress, who informed him that annamite women are familiar with the phenomenon, and are careful not to play on their instruments at this time. two young ladies, both good violinists, also affirmed that ever since their first menstruation they had noted a tendency for the strings to snap at this period; one, a genuine artist, who often performed at charity concerts, systematically refused to play at these times, and was often embarrassed to find a pretext; the other, who admitted that she was nervous and irritable at such times, had given up playing on account of the trouble of changing the strings so frequently. laurent also refers to the frequency with which women break things during the menstrual periods, and considers that this is not simply due to the awkwardness caused by nervous exhaustion or hysterical tremors, but that there is spontaneous breakage. most usually it happens that a glass breaks when it is being dried with a cloth; needles also break with unusual facility at this time; clocks are stopped by merely placing the hand upon them. i do not here attempt to estimate critically the validity of these alleged manifestations (some of which may certainly be explained by the unconscious muscular action which forms the basis of the phenomena of table-turning and thought-reading); such a task may best be undertaken through the minute study of isolated cases, and in this place i am merely concerned with the general influence of the menstrual state in affecting the social position of women, without reference to the analysis of the elements that go to make up that influence. there is only one further point to which attention may be called. i allude to the way in which the more favorable side of the primitive conception of the menstruating woman--as priestess, sibyl, prophetess, an almost miraculous agent for good, an angel, the peculiar home of the divine element--was slowly and continuously carried on side by side with the less favorable view, through the beginnings of european civilization until our own times. the actual physical phenomena of menstruation, with the ideas of taboo associated with that state, sank into the background as culture evolved; but, on the other hand, the ideas of the angelic position and spiritual mission of women, based on the primitive conception of the mystery associated with menstruation, still in some degree persisted. it is evident, however, that, while, in one form or another, the more favorable aspect of the primitive view of women's magic function has never quite died out, the gradual decay and degradation of the primitive view has, on the whole, involved a lower estimate of women's nature and position. woman has always been the witch; she was so even in ancient babylonia; but she has ceased to be the priestess. the early teutons saw "_sanctum aliquid et providum_" in women who, for the mediæval german preacher, were only "_bestiæ bipedales_"; and schopenhauer and even nietzsche have been more inclined to side with the preacher than with the half-naked philosophers of tacitus's day. but both views alike are but the extremes of the same primitive conception; and the gradual evolution from one extreme of the magical doctrine to the other was inevitable. in an advanced civilization, as we see, these ideas having their ultimate basis on the old story of the serpent, and on a special and mysterious connection between the menstruating woman and the occult forces of magic, tend to die out. the separation of the sexes they involve becomes unnecessary. living in greater community with men, women are seen to possess something, it may well be, but less than before, of the angel-devil of early theories. menstruation is no longer a monstrific state requiring spiritual taboo, but a normal physiological process, not without its psychic influences on the woman herself and on those who live with her. footnotes: [ ] several recent works, however, notably frazer's _golden bough_ and crawley's _mystic rose_, throw light directly or indirectly on this question. [ ] robertson smith points out that since snakes are the last noxious animals which man is able to exterminate, they are the last to be associated with demons. they were ultimately the only animals directly and constantly associated with the arabian _jinn_, or demon, and the serpent of eden was a demon, and not a temporary disguise of satan (_religion of semites_, pp. and ). perhaps it was, in part, because the snake was thus the last embodiment of demonic power that women were associated with it, women being always connected with the most ancient religious beliefs. [ ] in the northern territory of the same colony menstruation is said to be due to a bandicoot scratching the vagina and causing blood to flow (_journal of the anthropological institute_, p. , november, ). at glenelg, and near portland, in victoria, the head of a snake was inserted into a virgin's vagina, when not considered large enough for intercourse (brough smyth, _aborigines of victoria_, vol. ii, p. ). [ ] frazer, _golden bough_, vol. ii, p. . crawley (_the mystic rose_, p. ) also brings together various cases of primitive peoples who believe the bite of a snake to be the cause of menstruation. [ ] meyners d'estrez, "etude ethnographique sur le lézard chez les peuples malais et polynésiens," _l'anthropologie_, ; see also, as regards the lizard in samoan folk-lore, _globus_, vol. lxxiv, no. . [ ] _journal anthropological society of bombay_, , p. . [ ] boudin (_etude anthropologique: culte du serpent_, paris, , pp. - ) brings forward examples of this aspect of snake-worship. [ ] attilio de marchi, _il culto privato di roma_, p. . the association of the power of generation with a god in the form of a serpent is, indeed, common; see, e.g. sir w.m. ramsay, _cities of phrygia_, vol. i, p. . [ ] it is noteworthy that one of the names for the penis used by the swahili women of german east africa, in a kind of private language of their own, is "the snake" (zache, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, p. , ). it may be added that maeder ("interprétation de quelques rêves," _archives de psychologie_, april, ) brings forward various items of folk-lore showing the phallic significance of the serpent, as well as evidence indicating that, in the dreams of women of to-day, the snake sometimes has a sexual significance. [ ] w.r. smith, _kinship and marriage in early arabia_, , p. . the point is elaborated in the same author's _religion of semites_, second edition, appendix on "holiness, uncleanness, and taboo," pp. - . see also wellhausen, _reste arabischen heidentums_, second edition, pp. - . even to the early arabians, wellhausen remarks (p. ), "clean" meant "profane and allowed," while "unclean" meant "sacred and forbidden." it was the same, as jastrow remarks (_religion of babylonia_, p. ), among the babylonian semites. [ ] j.c. frazer, _the golden bough_, chapter iv. [ ] e. durkheim, "la prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," _l'année sociologique_, première année, , esp. pp. , - , , - . crawley (_mystic rose_, p. ) opposes durkheim's view as to the significance of blood in relation to the attitude towards women. [ ] _british association report on north western tribes of canada_, , p. . [ ] _laws of manu_, iv, . [ ] pliny, who, in book vii, chapter xiii, and book xxviii, chapter xxiii, of his _natural history_, gives long lists of the various good and evil influences attributed to menstruation, writes in the latter place: "hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. the same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be stilled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. at any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn." [ ] see bourke, _scatologic rites of all nations_, , pp. - , and ; ploss and max bartels, _das weib_, vol. i; h.l. strack, _der blutaberglaube in der menschheit_, fourth edition, , pp. - . the last mentioned refers to the efficacy frequently attributed to menstrual blood in the middle ages in curing leprosy, and gives instances, occurring even in germany to-day, of girls who have administered drops of menstrual blood in coffee to their sweethearts, to make sure of retaining their affections. [ ] see, e.g., dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] dr. l. laurent gives these instances, "de quelques phenomènes mécaniques produits au moment de la menstruation," _annales des sciences psychiques_, september and october, . [ ] _journal anthropological society of bombay_, , p. . even the glance of a menstruating woman is widely believed to have serious results. see tuchmann, "la fascination," _mélasine_, , pp. _et seq._ [ ] as quoted in the _provincial medical journal_, april, . appendix b. sexual periodicity in men. by f.h. perry-coste, b. sc. (lond.). in a recent _brochure_ on the "rhythm of the pulse"[ ] i showed _inter alia_ that the readings of the pulse, in both man and woman, if arranged in lunar monthly periods, and averaged over several years, displayed a clear, and sometimes very strongly marked and symmetrical, rhythm.[ ] after pointing out that, in at any rate some cases, the male and female pulse-curves, both monthly and annual, seemed to be converse to one another, i added: "it is difficult to ignore the suggestion that in this tracing of the monthly rhythm of the pulse we have a history of the monthly function in women; and that, if so, the tracing of the male pulse may eventually afford us some help in discovering a corresponding monthly period in men: the existence of which has been suggested by mr. havelock ellis and professor stanley hall, among other writers. certainly the mere fact that we can trace a clear monthly rhythm in man's pulse seems to point strongly to the existence of a monthly physiological period in him also." obviously, however, it is only indirectly and by inference that we can argue from a monthly rhythm of the pulse in men to a male sexual periodicity; but i am now able to adduce more direct evidence that will fairly demonstrate the existence of a sexual periodicity in men. we will start from the fact that celibacy is profoundly unnatural, and is, therefore, a physical--as well as an emotional and intellectual--abnormality. this being so, it is entirety in accord with all that we know of physiology that, when relief to the sexual secretory system by nature's means is denied, and when, in consequence, a certain degree of tension or pressure has been attained, the system should relieve itself by a spontaneous discharge--such discharge being, of course, in the strict sense of the term, pathological, since it would never occur in any animal that followed the strict law of its physical being without any regard to other and higher laws of concern for its fellows. notoriously, that which we should have anticipated _a priori_ actually occurs; for any unmarried man, who lives in strict chastity, periodically experiences, while sleeping, a loss of seminal fluid--such phenomena being popularly referred to as _wet dreams_.[ ] during some eight or ten years i have carefully recorded the occurrence of such discharges as i have experienced myself, and i have now accumulated sufficient data to justify an attempt to formulate some provisional conclusions.[ ] in order to render these observations as serviceable as may be to students of periodicity, i here repeat (at the request of mr. havelock ellis) the statement which was subjoined, for the same reasons, to my "rhythm of the pulse." these observations upon myself were made between the ages of and . i am about feet, inches tall, broad-shouldered, and weigh about stone lbs. _net_--this weight being, i believe, about lbs. below the normal for my height. also i have green-brown eyes, very dark-brown hair, and a complexion that leads strangers frequently to mistake me for a foreigner--this complexion being, perhaps, attributable to some huguenot blood, although on the maternal side i am, so far as all information goes, pure english. i can stand a good deal of heat, enjoy relaxing climates, am at once upset by "bracing" sea-air, hate the cold, and sweat profusely after exercise. to this it will suffice to add that my temperament is of a decidedly nervous and emotional type. before proceeding to remark upon the various rhythms that i have discovered, i will tabulate the data on which my conclusions are founded. the numbers of discharges recorded in the years in question are as follows:-- in , . (records commenced in april.) in , . in , . in , . (pretty certainly not fully recorded.) in , (no records kept this year.[ ]) in , . (records recommenced in june.) in , . in , . in , . in , . in , . in , . average, . (omitting , , and .) thus i have complete records for eight years, and incomplete records for three more; and the remarkable concord between the respective annual numbers of observations in these eight years not only affords us intrinsic evidence of the accuracy of my records, but, also, at once proves that there is an undeniable regularity in the occurrence of these sexual discharges, and, therefore, gives us reason for expecting to find this regularity rhythmical. moreover, since it seemed reasonable to expect that there might be more than one rhythm, i have examined my data with a view to discovering ( ) an annual, ( ) a lunar-monthly, and ( ) a weekly rhythm, and i now proceed to show that all three such rhythms exist. the annual rhythm. it is obvious that, in searching for an annual rhythm, we must ignore the records of the three incomplete years; but those of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon chart . the curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. the curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,--viz., in march, june, and september,--these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is most active; and the later curves show that there is also often a fourth maximum in january. in the earlier years the march and june maxima are more strikingly marked than the september one; but the uppermost curve shows that on the average of all eight years the september maximum is the highest, the june and january maxima occupying the second place, and the march maximum being the least strongly marked of all. now, remembering that, in calculating the curves of the annual rhythm of the pulse, i had found it necessary to average two months' records together, in order to bring out the full significance of the rhythm, i thought it well to try the effect upon these curves also of similarly averaging two months together. at first my results were fairly satisfactory; but, as my data increased year by year, i found that these curves were contradicting one another, and therefore concluded that i had selected unnatural periods for my averaging. my first attempted remedy was to arrange the months in the pairs december-january, february-march, etc., instead of in january-february, march-april, etc.; but with these pairs i fared no better than with the former. i then arranged the months in the triplets, january-february-march, etc.; and the results are graphically recorded on chart . here, again, comment would be quite futile, but i need only point out that, _on the whole_, the sexual activity rises steadily during the first nine months in the year to its maximum in september, and then sinks rapidly and abruptly during the next three to its minimum in december. the study of these curves suggests two interesting questions, to neither of which, however, do the data afford us an answer. in the first place, are the alterations, in my case, of the maximum of the discharges from march and june in the earlier years to september in the later, and the interpolation of a new secondary maximum in january, correlated with the increase in age; or is the discrepancy due simply to a temporary irregularity that would have been equally averaged out had i recorded the discharges of - instead of those from to ? the second question is one of very great importance--socially, ethically, and physically. how often, in this climate, should a man have sexual connection with his wife in order to maintain himself in perfect physiological equilibrium? my results enable us to state definitely the minimum limits, and to reply that embraces annually would be too few; but, unfortunately, they give us no clue to the maximum limit. it is obvious that the necessary frequency should be greater than times annually,--possibly very considerably in excess thereof,--seeing that the spontaneous discharges, with which we are dealing, are due to over-pressure, and occur only when the system, being denied natural relief, can no longer retain its secretions; and, therefore, it seems very reasonable to suggest that the frequency of natural relief should be some multiple of . i do not perceive, however, that the data in hand afford us any clue to this multiple, or enable us to suggest either , , , or as the required multiple of . it is true that other observations upon myself have afforded me what i believe to be a fairly satisfactory and reliable answer so far as concerns myself; but these observations are of such a nature that they cannot be discussed here, and i have no inclination to offer as a counsel to others an opinion which i am unable to justify by the citation of facts and statistics. moreover, i am quite unable to opine whether, given as the annual frequency of spontaneous discharges in a number of men, the multiple required for the frequency of natural relief should be the same in every case. for aught i know to the contrary, the physiological idiosyncrasies of men may be so varied that, given two men with an annual frequency of spontaneous discharges, the desired multiple may be in one case x and in the other x.[ ] our data, however, do clearly denote that the frequency in the six or eight summer months should bear to the frequency of the six or four winter months the proportion of three or four to two.[ ] it should never be forgotten, however, that, under all conditions, both man and wife should exercise prudence, both _selfward_ and _otherward_, and that each should utterly refuse to gratify self by accepting a sacrifice, however willingly offered, that may be gravely prejudicial to the health of the other; for only experience can show whether, in any union, the receptivity of the woman be greater or less than, or equal to, the _physical_ desire of the man. to those, of course, who regard marriage from the old-fashioned and grossly immoral standpoint of melancthon and other theologians, and who consider a wife as the divinely ordained vehicle for the chartered intemperance of her husband, it will seem grotesque in the highest degree that a physiological inquirer should attempt to advise them how often to seek the embraces of their wives; but those who regard woman from the standpoint of a higher ethics, who abhor the notion that she should be only the vehicle for her husband's passions, and who demand that she shall be mistress of her own body, will not be ungrateful for any guidance that physiology can afford them. it will be seen presently, moreover, that the study of the weekly rhythm does afford us some less inexact clue to the desired solution. one curious fact may be mentioned before we quit this interesting question. it is stated that "solon required [of the husband] three _payments_ per month. by the misna a daily debt was imposed upon an idle vigorous young husband; _twice a week_ on a citizen; once in thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman."[ ] now it is certainly striking that solon's "three payments per month" exactly correspond with my records of discharges annually. had solon similarly recorded a series of observations upon himself? the lunar-monthly rhythm. we now come to that division of the inquiry which is of the greatest physiological interest, although of little social import. is there a monthly period in man as well as in woman? my records indicate clearly that there is. in searching for this monthly rhythm i have utilized not only the data of the eight completely-recorded years, but also those of the three years of , , and , for, although it would obviously have been inaccurate to utilize these incomplete records when calculating the yearly rhythm, there seems no objection to making use of them in the present section of the inquiry. it is hardly necessary to remark that the terms "first day of the month," "second day," "third day," etc., are to be understood as denoting "new-moon day," "day after new moon," "third lunar day," and so on; but it should be explained that, since these discharges occur at night, i have adopted the astronomical, instead of the civil, day; so that a new moon occurring between noon yesterday and noon to-day is reckoned as occurring yesterday, and yesterday is regarded as the first lunar day: thus, a discharge occurring in the night between december st and january st is tabulated as occurring on december st, and, in the present discussion, is assigned to the lunar day comprised between noon of december st and noon of january st. since it is obvious that the number of discharges in any one year--averaging, as they do, only . per day--are far too few to yield a curve of any value, i have combined my data in two series. the dotted curve on chart is obtained by combining the results of the years - : two of these years are incompletely recorded, and there are no records for ; the total number of observations was . the broken curve is obtained by combining those of the years - , the total number of observations being . even so, the data are far too scanty to yield a really characteristic curve; but the _continuous_ curve, which sums up the results of the eleven years, is more reliable, and obviously more satisfactory. if the two former curves be compared, it will be seen that, on the whole, they display a general concordance, such differences as exist being attributable chiefly to two facts: ( ) that the second curve is more even throughout, neither maximum nor minimum being so strongly marked as in the first; and ( ) that the main maximum occurs in the middle of the month instead of on the second lunar day, and the absence of the marked initial maximum alters the character of the first week or so of this curve. it is, however, scarcely fair to lay any great stress on the characters of curves obtained from such scanty data, and we will, therefore, pass to the continuous curve, the study of which will prove more valuable.[ ] now, even a cursory examination of this continuous curve will yield the following results:-- . the discharges occur most frequently on the second lunar day. . the days of the next most frequent discharges are the d; the th; the th, th, and th; the th and th; so that, if we regard only the first six of these, we find that the discharges occur most frequently on the d, th, th, th, d, and th lunar days--i.e., the discharges occur most frequently on days separated, on the average, by four-day intervals; but actually the period between the th and d days is that characterized by the most frequent discharges. . the days of minimum of discharge are the st, th, th, th, and st. . the curve is characterized by a continual see-sawing; so that every notable maximum is immediately followed by a notable minimum. thus, the curve is of an entirely different character from that representing the monthly rhythm of the pulse,[ ] and this is only what one might have expected; for, whereas the _mean_ pulsations vary only very slightly from day to day,--thus giving rise to a gradually rising or sinking curve,--a discharge from the sexual system relieves the tension by exhausting the stored-up secretion, and is necessarily followed by some days of rest and inactivity. in the very nature of the case, therefore, a curve of this kind could not possibly be otherwise than most irregular if the discharges tended to occur most frequently upon definite days of the month; and thus the very irregularity of the curve affords us proof that there is a regular male periodicity, such that on certain days of the month there is greater probability of a spontaneous discharge than on any other days. . gratifying, however, though this irregularity of the curve may be, yet it entails a corresponding disadvantage, for we are precluded thereby from readily perceiving the characteristics of the monthly rhythm as a whole. i thought that perhaps this aspect of the rhythm might be rendered plainer if i calculated the data into two-day averages; and the result, as shown in chart , is extremely satisfactory. here we can at once perceive the wonderful and almost geometric symmetry of the monthly rhythm; indeed, if the third maximum were one unit higher, if the first minimum were one unit lower, and if the lines joining the second minimum and third maximum, and the fourth maximum and fourth minimum, were straight instead of being slightly broken, then the curve would, in its chief features, be geometrically symmetrical; and this symmetry appears to me to afford a convincing proof of the representative accuracy of the curve. we see that the month is divided into five periods; that the maxima occur on the following pairs of days: the th- th, th- th, th- th, st- d, th- th; and that the minima occur at the beginning, end, and exact middle of the month. there have been many idle superstitions as to the influence of the moon upon the earth and its inhabitants, and some beliefs that--once deemed equally idle--have now been re-instated in the regard of science; but it would certainly seem to be a very fascinating and very curious fact if the influence of the moon upon men should be such as to regulate the spontaneous discharges of their sexual system. certainly the lovers of all ages would then have "builded better than they knew," when they reared altars of devotional verse to that chaste goddess artemis. the weekly rhythm. we now come to the third branch of our inquiry, and have to ask whether there be any weekly rhythm of the sexual activity. _a priori_ it might be answered that to expect any such weekly rhythm were absurd, seeing that our week--unlike the lunar month of the year--is a purely artificial and conventional period; while, on the other hand, it might be retorted that the existence of an _induced_ weekly periodicity is quite conceivable, such periodicity being induced by the habitual difference between our occupation, or mode of life, on one or two days of the week and that on the remaining days. in such an inquiry, however, _a priori_ argument is futile, as the question can be answered only by an induction from observations, and the curves on chart (_a_ and _b_) prove conclusively that there is a notable weekly rhythm. the existence of this weekly rhythm being granted, it would naturally be assumed that either the maximum or the minimum would regularly occur on saturday or sunday; but an examination of the curves discloses the unexpected result that the day of maximum discharge varies from year to year. thus it is[ ] sunday in , , . tuesday in . thursday in , . friday in . saturday in and . since, in chart , the curves are drawn from sunday to sunday, it is obvious that the real symmetry of the curve is brought out in those years only which are characterized by a sunday maximum; and, accordingly, in chart i have depicted the curves in a more suitable form. chart _a_ is obtained by combining the data of , , and : the years of a sunday maximum. curve _b_ represents the results of , the year of a tuesday maximum--multiplied throughout by three in order to render the curve strictly comparable with the former. curve _c_ represents and --the years of a thursday maximum--similarly multiplied by . . in curve _d_ we have the results of --the year of a friday maximum--again multiplied by three; and in curve _e_ those of and --the years of a saturday maximum--multiplied by . . finally, curve _f_ represents the combined results of all nine years plus (the latter half of) ; and this curve shows that, on the whole period, there is a very strongly marked sunday maximum. i hardly think that these curves call for much comment. in their general character they display a notable concord among themselves; and it is significant that the most regular of the five curves are _a_ and _e_, representing the combinations of three years and of two years, respectively, while the least regular is _b_, which is based upon the records of one year only. in every case we find that the maximum which opens the week is rapidly succeeded by a minimum, which is itself succeeded by a secondary maximum,--usually very secondary, although in it nearly equals the primary maximum,--followed again by a second minimum--usually nearly identical with the first minimum,--after which there is a rapid rise to the original maximum. the study of these curves fortunately amplifies the conclusion drawn from our study of the annual rhythm, and suggests that, in at least part of the year, the physiological condition of man requires sexual union at least twice a week. as to curve _f_, its remarkable symmetry speaks for itself. the existence of two secondary maxima, however, has not the same significance as had that of our secondary maximum in the preceding curves; for one of these secondary maxima is due to the influence of the curve with its primary tuesday maximum, and the other to the similar influence of curve _c_ with its primary thursday maximum. similarly, the veiled third secondary maximum is due to the influence of curve _e_. probably, any student of curves will concede that, on a still larger average, the two secondary maxima of curve _f_ would be replaced by a single one on wednesday or thursday. one more question remains for consideration in connection with this weekly rhythm. is it possible to trace any connection between the weekly and yearly rhythms of such a character that the weekly day of maximum discharge should vary from month to month in the year; in other words, does the greater frequency of a sunday discharge characterize one part of the year, that of a tuesday another, and so on? in order to answer this question i have re-calculated all my data, with results that are graphically represented in chart . these curves prove that the sunday maxima discharges occur in march and september, and the minima in june; that the monday maxima discharges occur in september, friday in july, and so on. thus, there is a regular rhythm, according to which the days of maximum discharge vary from one month of the year to another; and the existence of this final rhythm appears to me very remarkable. i would especially direct attention to the almost geometric symmetry of the sunday curve, and to the only less complete symmetry of the thursday and friday curves. certainly in these rhythms we have an ample field for farther study and speculation. i have now concluded my study of this fascinating inquiry; a study that is necessarily incomplete, since it is based upon records furnished by one individual only. the fact, however, that, even with so few observations, and notwithstanding the consequently exaggerated disturbing influence of minor irregularities, such remarkable and unexpected symmetry is evidenced by these curves, only increases one's desire to have the opportunity of handling a series of observations sufficiently numerous to render the generalizations induced from them absolutely conclusive. i would again appeal[ ] to heads of colleges to assist this inquiry by enlisting in its aid a band of students. if only one hundred students, living under similar conditions, could be induced to keep such records with scrupulous regularity for only twelve months, the results induced from such a series of observations would be more than ten times as valuable as those which have only been reached after ten years' observations on my part; and, if other centuries of students in foreign and colonial colleges--e.g., in italy, india, australia, and america--could be similarly enlisted in this work, we should quickly obtain a series of results exhibiting the sexual needs and sexual peculiarities of the male human animal in various climates. obviously, however, the records of any such students would be worse than useless unless their care and accuracy, on the one hand, and their habitual chastity, on the other, could be implicitly guaranteed. footnotes: [ ] first published in the _university magazine and free review_ of february, , and since reprinted as a pamphlet. a preliminary communication appeared in _nature_, may , . [ ] [later study ( ) has convinced me that my attempt to find a lunar-monthly period in the female pulse was vitiated by a hopeless error: for any monthly rhythm in a woman must be sought by arranging her records according to her own menstrual month; and this menstrual month may vary in different women, from considerably less than a lunar month to thirty days or more.] [ ] i may add, however, that in my own case these discharges are--so far as i can trust my waking consciousness--frequently, if not usually, dreamless; and that strictly sexual dreams are extremely rare, notwithstanding the possession of a strongly emotional temperament. [ ] if i can trust my memory, i first experienced this discharge when a few months under fifteen years of age, and, if so, within a few weeks of the time when i was, in an instant, suddenly struck with the thought that possibly the religion in which i had been educated might be false. it is curiously interesting that the advent of puberty should have been heralded by this intellectual crisis. [ ] this unfortunate breach in the records was due to the fact that, failing to discover any regularity in, or law of, the occurrences of the discharges, i became discouraged and abandoned my records. in june, , a re-examination of my pulse-records having led to my discovery of a lunar-monthly rhythm of the pulse, my interest in other physiological periodicities was reawakened, and i recommenced my records of these discharges. [ ] as a matter of fact, i take it that we may safely assert that no man who is content to be guided by his own instinctive cravings, and who neither suppresses these, on the one hand, nor endeavors to force himself, on the other hand, will be in any danger of erring by either excess or the contrary. [ ] [it is obvious that the opportunity of continuing such an inquiry as that described in this appendix, ceases with marriage; but i may add ( ) that certain notes that i have kept with scrupulous exactness during eight years of married life, lend almost no support to the suggestion made in the text--i.e., that sexual desire is greater at one season of the year than at another. the nature of these notes i cannot discuss; but, they clearly indicate that, although there is a slight degree more of sexual desire in the second and third quarters of the year, than in the first and fourth, yet, this difference is so slight as to be almost negligible. even if the months be rearranged in the triplets--november-december-january, etc.,--so as to bring the maximum months of may, june, and july together, the difference between the highest quarter and the lowest amounts to an increase of only ten per cent, upon the latter--after allowing, of course, for the abnormal shortness of february; and, neglecting february, the increase in the maximum months (june and july) over the minimum (november) is equal to an increase of under per cent, upon the latter. these differences are so vastly less than those shown on chart that they possess almost no significance: but, lest too much stress be laid upon the apparently _equalizing_ influence of married life, it must be added that the records discussed in the text were obtained during residence in london, whereas, since my marriage, i have lived in south cornwall, where the climate is both milder and more equable.] [ ] selden's _uxor hebraica_ as quoted in gibbon's _decline and fall_, vol. v, p. , of bonn's edition. [ ] i may add that the curve yielded by - is remarkably parallel with that yielded by the preceding nine years, but i have not thought it worth while to chart these two additional curves. [ ] see "rhythm of the pulse," chart . [ ] as will be observed, i have omitted the results of the incompletely recorded years of and . the apparent explanation of this curious oscillation will be given directly. [ ] see "rhythm of the pulse," p. . appendix c. the auto-erotic factor in religion. the intimate association between the emotions of love and religion is well known to all those who are habitually brought into close contact with the phenomena of the religious life. love and religion are the two most volcanic emotions to which the human organism is liable, and it is not surprising that, when there is a disturbance in one of these spheres, the vibrations should readily extend to the other. nor is it surprising that the two emotions should have a dynamic relation to each other, and that the auto-erotic impulse, being the more primitive and fundamental of the two impulses, should be able to pass its unexpended energy over to the religious emotion, there to find the expansion hitherto denied it, the love of the human becoming the love of the divine. "i was not good enough for man, and so am given to god." even when there is absolute physical suppression on the sexual side, it seems probable that thereby a greater intensity of spiritual fervor is caused. many eminent thinkers seem to have been without sexual desire. it is a noteworthy and significant fact that the age of love is also the age of conversion. starbuck, for instance, in his very elaborate study of the psychology of conversion shows that the majority of conversions take place during the period of adolescence; that is, from the age of puberty to about or .[ ] it would be easy to bring forward a long series of observations, from the most various points of view, to show the wide recognition of this close affinity between the sexual and the religious emotions. it is probable, as hahn points out, that the connection between sexual suppression and religious rites, which we may trace at the very beginning of culture, was due to an instinctive impulse to heighten rather than abolish the sexual element. early religious rites were largely sexual and orgiastic because they were largely an appeal to the generative forces of nature to exhibit a beneficial productiveness. among happily married people, as hahn remarks, the sexual emotions rapidly give place to the cares and anxieties involved in supporting children; but when the exercise of the sexual function is prevented by celibacy, or even by castration, the most complete form of celibacy, the sexual emotions may pass into the psychical sphere to take on a more pronounced shape.[ ] the early christians adopted the traditional eastern association between religion and celibacy, and, as the writings of the fathers amply show, they expended on sexual matters a concentrated fervor of thought rarely known to the greek and roman writers of the best period.[ ] as christian theology developed, the minute inquisition into sexual things sometimes became almost an obsession. so far as i am aware, however (i cannot profess to have made any special investigation), it was not until the late middle ages that there is any clear recognition of the fact that, between the religious emotions and the sexual emotions, there is not only a superficial antagonism, but an underlying relationship. at this time so great a theologian and philosopher as aquinas said that it is especially on the days when a man is seeking to make himself pleasing to god that the devil troubles him by polluting him with seminal emissions. with somewhat more psychological insight, the wise old knight of the tower, landry, in the fourteenth century, tells his daughters that "no young woman, in love, can ever serve her god with that unfeignedness which she did aforetime. for i have heard it argued by many who, in their young days, had been in love that, when they were in the church, the condition and the pleasing melancholy in which they found themselves would infallibly set them brooding over all their tender love-sick longings and all their amorous passages, when they should have been attending to the service which was going on at the time. and such is the property of this mystery of love that it is ever at the moment when the priest is holding our saviour upon the altar that the most enticing emotions come." after narrating the history of two queens beyond the seas who indulged in amours even on holy thursday and good friday, at midnight in their oratories, when the lights were put out, he concludes: "every woman in love is more liable to fall in church or at her devotion than at any other time." the connection between religious emotion and sexual emotion was very clearly set forth by swift about the end of the seventeenth century, in a passage which it may be worth while to quote from his "discourse concerning the mechanical operation of the spirit." after mentioning that he was informed by a very eminent physician that when the quakers first appeared he was seldom without female quaker patients affected with nymphomania, swift continues: "persons of a visionary devotion, either men or women, are, in their complexion, of all others the most amorous. for zeal is frequently kindled from the same spark with other fires, and from inflaming brotherly love will proceed to raise that of a gallant. if we inspect into the usual process of modern courtship, we shall find it to consist in a devout turn of the eyes, called _ogling_; an artificial form of canting and whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter, made up with a shrug, or a hum; a sigh or a groan; the style compact of insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. these i take to be the most accomplished rules of address to a mistress; and where are these performed with more dexterity than by the _saints_? nay, to bring this argument yet closer, i have been informed by certain sanguine brethren of the first class, that in the height and _orgasmus_ of their spiritual exercise, it has been frequent with them[ ]; ... immediately after which, they found the _spirit_ to relax and flag of a sudden with the nerves, and they were forced to hasten to a conclusion. this may be farther strengthened by observing with wonder how unaccountably all females are attracted by visionary or enthusiastic preachers, though never so contemptible in their _outward mien_; which is usually supposed to be done upon considerations purely spiritual, without any carnal regards at all. but i have reason to think, the sex hath certain characteristics, by which they form a truer judgment of human abilities and performings than we ourselves can possibly do of each other. let that be as it will, thus much is certain, that however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally conclude like all others; they may branch upwards toward heaven, but the root is in the earth. too intense a contemplation is not the business of flesh and blood; it must, by the necessary course of things, in a little time let go its hold, and fall into _matter_. lovers for the sake of celestial converse, are but another sort of platonics, who pretend to see stars and heaven in ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower; but the same _pit_ is provided for both." to come down to recent times, in the last century the head-master of clifton college, when discussing the sexual vices of boyhood, remarked that the boys whose temperament exposes them to these faults are usually far from destitute of religious feelings; that there is, and always has been, an undoubted co-existence of religion and animalism; that emotional appeals and revivals are far from rooting out carnal sin; and that in some places, as is well known, they seem actually to stimulate, even at the present day, to increased licentiousness.[ ] it is not difficult to see how, even in technique, the method of the revivalist is a quasi-sexual method, and resembles the attempt of the male to overcome the sexual shyness of the female. "in each case," as w. thomas remarks, "the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic and pleading kind. in the effort to make a moral adjustment it consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual manifestations."[ ] the relationship of the sexual and the religious emotions--like so many other of the essential characters of human nature--is seen in its nakedest shape by the alienist. esquirol referred to this relationship, and, many years ago, j.b. friedreich, a german alienist of wide outlook and considerable insight, emphasized the connection between the sexual and the religious emotions, and brought forward illustrative cases.[ ] schroeder van der kolk also remarked: "i venture to express my conviction that we should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the sexual apparatus to be implicated."[ ] régis, in france, lays it down that "there exists a close connection between mystic ideas and erotic ideas, and most often these two orders of conception are associated in insanity."[ ] berthier considered that erotic forms of insanity are those most frequently found in convents. bevan-lewis points out how frequently religious exaltation occurs at puberty in women, and religious depression at the climacteric, the period of sexual decline.[ ] "religion is very closely allied to love," remarks savage, "and the love of woman and the worship of god are constantly sources of trouble in unstable youth; it is very interesting to note the frequency with which these two deep feelings are associated."[ ] "closely connected with salacity, particularly in women," remarks conolly norman, when discussing mania (tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_), "is religious excitement.... ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. the same association is constantly seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features in the conversation of an acutely maniacal woman is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas." "patients who believe," remarks clara barrus, "that they are the virgin mary, the bride of christ, the church, 'god's wife,' and 'raphael's consort,' are sure, sooner or later, to disclose symptoms which show that they are some way or other sexually depraved."[ ] forel, who devotes a chapter of his book _die sexuelle frage_, to the subject, argues that the strongest feelings of religious emotion are often unconsciously rooted in erotic emotion or represent a transformation of such emotion; and, in an interesting discussion (ch. vi) of this question in his _sexualleben unserer zeit_, bloch states that "in a certain sense we may describe the history of religions as the history of a special manifestation of the human sexual instinct." ball, brouardel, morselli, vallon and marie,[ ] c.h. hughes,[ ] to mention but a few names among many, have emphasized the same point.[ ] krafft-ebing deals briefly with the connection between holiness and the sexual emotion, and the special liability of the saints to sexual temptations; he thus states his own conclusions: "religious and sexual emotional states at the height of their development exhibit a harmony in quantity and quality of excitement, and can thus in certain circumstances act vicariously. both," he adds, "can be converted into cruelty under pathological conditions."[ ] after quoting these opinions it is, perhaps, not unnecessary to point out that, while sexual emotion constitutes the main reservoir of energy on which religion can draw, it is far from constituting either the whole content of religion or its root. murisier, in an able study of the psychology of religious ecstasy, justly protests against too crude an explanation of its nature, though at the same time he admits that "the passion of the religious ecstatic lacks nothing of what goes to make up sexual love, not even jealousy."[ ] sérieux, in his little work, _recherches cliniques sur les anomalies de l'instinct sexuel_, valuable on account of its instructive cases, records in detail a case which so admirably illustrates this phase of auto-erotism on the borderland between ordinary erotic day-dreaming and religious mysticism, the phenomena for a time reaching an insane degree of intensity, that i summarize it. "thérèse m., aged , shows physical stigmata of degeneration. the heredity is also bad; the father is a man of reckless and irregular conduct; the mother was at one time in a lunatic asylum. the patient was brought up in an orphanage, and was a troublesome, volatile child; she treated household occupations with contempt, but was fond of study. even at an early age her lively imagination attracted attention, and the pleasure which she took in building castles in the air. from the age of seven to ten she masturbated. at her first communion she felt that jesus would for ever be the one master of her heart. at thirteen, after the death of her mother, she seemed to see her, and to hear her say that she was watching over her child. shortly afterward she was overwhelmed by a new grief, the death of a teacher for whom she cherished great affection on account of her pure character. on the following day she seemed to see and hear this teacher, and would not leave the house where the body lay. tendencies to melancholy appeared. saddened by the funeral ceremonies, exhorted by nuns, fed on mystic revery, she passed from the orphanage to a convent. she devoted herself solely to the worship of jesus; to be like jesus, to be near jesus, became her constant pre-occupations. the virgin's name was rarely seen in her writings, god's name never. 'i wanted', she said, 'to love jesus more than any of the nuns i saw, and i even thought that he had a partiality for me.' she was also haunted by the idea of preserving her purity. she avoided frivolous conversation, and left the room when marriage was discussed, such a union being incompatible with a pure life; 'it was my fixed idea for two years to make my soul ever more pure in order to be agreeable to him; the beloved is well pleased among the lilies.' "already, however, in a rudimentary form appeared contrary tendencies [strictly speaking they were not contrary, but related, tendencies]. beneath the mystic passion which concealed it sexual desire was sometimes felt. at sixteen she experienced emotions which she could not master, when thinking of a priest who, she said, loved her. in spite of all remorse she would have been willing to have relations with him. notwithstanding these passing weaknesses, the idea of purity always possessed her. the nuns, however, were concerned about her exaltation. she was sent away from the convent, became discouraged, and took a place as a servant, but her fervor continued. her confessor inspired her with great affection; she sends him tender letters. she would be willing to have relations with him, even though she considers the desire a temptation of the devil. the ground was now prepared for the manifestation of hallucinations. 'one evening in may', she writes, 'after being absorbed in thoughts of my confessor, and feeling discouraged, as i thought that jesus, whom i loved so much, would have nothing to do with me, "mother," i cried out, "what must i do to win your son?" my eyes were fixed on the sky, and i remained in a state of mad expectation. it was absurd. i to become the mother of the world! my heart went on repeating: "yes, he is coming; jesus is coming!"' the psychic erethism, reverberating on the sensorial and sensory centres, led to genital, auditory, and visual hallucinations, which produced the sensation of sexual connection. 'for the first time i went to bed and was not alone. as soon as i felt that touch, i heard the words: "fear not, it is i." i was lost in him whom i loved. for many days i was cradled in a world of pleasure; i saw him everywhere, overwhelming me with his chaste caresses.' on the following day at mass she seemed to see calvary before her. 'jesus was naked and surrounded by a thousand voluptuous imaginations; his arms were loosened from the cross, and he said to me: "come!" i longed to fly to him with my body, but could not make up my mind to show myself naked. however, i was carried away by a force i could not control, i threw myself on my saviour's neck, and felt that all was over between the world and me.' from that day, 'by sheer reasoning,' she has understood everything. previously she thought that the religious life was a renunciation of the joys of marriage and enjoyment generally; now she understands its object. jesus christ desires that she should have relations with a priest; he is himself incarnated in priests; just as st. joseph was the guardian of the virgin, so are priests the guardians of nuns. she has been impregnated by jesus, and this imaginary pregnancy pre-occupies her in the highest degree. from this time she masturbated daily. she cannot even go to communion without experiencing voluptuous sensations. her delusions having thus become systematized, nothing shakes her tenacity in seeking to carry them out; she attempts at all costs to have relations with her confessor, embraces him, throws herself at his knees, pursues him, and so becomes a cause of scandal. when brought to the asylum, there is intense sexual excitement, and she masturbates a dozen times a day, even when talking to the doctor. the sexual organs are normal, the vulva moist and red, the vagina is painful to touch; the contact of the finger causes erectile turgescence. she has had no rest, she says, since she has learned to love her jesus. he desires her to have sexual relations with someone, and she cannot succeed; 'all my soul's strength is arrested by this constant endeavor.' her new surroundings modify her behavior, and now it is the doctor whom she pursues with her obsessions. 'i expected everything from the charity of the priests i have known; i have not deserved what i wanted from them. but is not a doctor free to do everything for the good of the patients intrusted to him by providence? cannot a doctor thus devote himself? since i have tasted the tree of life i am tormented by the desire to share it with a loving friend.' then she falls in love with an employee, and makes the crudest advances to him, believing that she is thus executing the will of jesus. 'necessity makes laws,' she exclaims to him, 'the moments are pressing, i have been waiting too long.' she still speaks of her religious vocation which might be compromised by so long a delay. 'i do not want to get married.' gradually a transformation took place; the love of god was effaced and earthly love became more intense than ever. 'quitting the heights in which i wished to soar, i am coming so near to earth that i shall soon fix my desires there.' in a last letter thérèse recognizes with terror the insanity to which the exaltation of her imagination had led her. 'now i only believe in god and in suffering; i feel that it is necessary for me to get married.'" mariani[ ] has very fully described a case of erotico-religious insanity (climacteric paranoia on an hysterical basis) in a married woman of . during the early stages of her disorder she inflicted all sorts of penances upon herself (fasting, constant prayer, drinking her own urine, cleaning dirty plates with her tongue, etc.). finally she felt that by her penances she had obtained forgiveness of her sins, and then began a stage of joy and satisfaction during which she believed that she had entered into a state of the most intimate personal relationship with jesus. she finally recovered. mariani shows how closely this history corresponds with the histories of the saints, and that all the acts and emotions of this woman can be exactly paralleled in the lives of famous saints.[ ] the justice of these comparisons becomes manifest when we turn to the records that have been left by holy persons. a most instructive record from this point of view is the autobiography of soeur jeanne des anges, superior of the ursulines of loudun in the seventeenth century.[ ] she was clever, beautiful, ambitious, fond of pleasure, still more of power. with this, as sometimes happens, she was highly hysterical, and in the early years of her religious life was possessed by various demons of unchastity and blasphemy with whom for many years she was in constant struggle. she fell in love with a priest of loudun, grandier, a man whom she had never even seen, only knowing of him as a powerful and fascinating personality at whose feet all women fell, and she imagined that she and the other nuns of her convent were possessed through his influence. she was thus the cause of the trial and execution of grandier, a famous case in the annals of witchcraft. in her autobiography soeur jeanne describes in detail how the demons assailed her at night, appearing in lascivious attitudes, making indecent proposals, raising the bed-clothes, touching all parts of her body, imploring her to yield to them, and she tells how strong her temptation was to yield. on one night, for instance, she writes: "i seemed to feel someone's breath, and i heard a voice saying: 'the time for resistance has gone by, you must no longer rebel; by putting off your consent to what has been proposed you will be injured; you cannot persist in this resistance; god has subjected you to the demands of a nature which you must satisfy on occasions so urgent.' then i felt impure impressions in my imagination and disordered movements in my body. i persisted in saying at the bottom of my heart that i would do nothing. i turned to god and asked him for strength in this extraordinary struggle. then there was a loud noise in my room, and i felt as if someone had approached me and put his hand into my bed and touched me; and having perceived this i rose, in a state of restlessness, which lasted for a long time afterward. some days later, at midnight, i began to tremble all over my body as i lay in bed, and to experience much mental anxiety without knowing the cause. after this had lasted for some time i heard noises in various parts of my room; the sheet was twice pulled without entirely uncovering me; the oratory close to my bed was upset. i heard a voice on the left side, toward which i was lying. i was asked if i had thought over the advantageous offer that had been made to me. it was added: 'i have come to know your reply; i will keep my promise if you will give your consent; if, on the contrary, you refuse, you will be the most miserable girl in the world, and all sorts of mischances will happen to you.' i replied: 'if there were no god i would fear those threats; i am consecrated to him.' it was replied to me: 'you will not get much help from god; he will abandon you.' i replied: 'god is my father; he will take care of me; i have resolved to be faithful to him.' he said: 'i will give you three days to think over it.' i rose and went to the holy sacrament with an anxious mind. having returned to my room, and being seated on a chair, it was drawn from under me so that i fell on the floor. then the same things happened again. i heard a man's voice saying lascivious and pleasant things to seduce me; he pressed me to give him room in my bed; he tried to touch me in an indecent way; i resisted and prevented him, calling the nuns who were near my room; the window had been open, it was closed; i felt strong movements of love for a certain person, and improper desire for dishonorable things." she writes again, at a later period: "these impurities and the fire of concupiscence which the evil spirit caused me to feel, beyond all that i can say, forced me to throw myself on to braziers of hot coal, where i would remain for half an hour at a time, in order to extinguish that other fire, so that half my body was quite burnt. at other times, in the depth of winter, i have sometimes passed part of the night entirely naked in the snow, or in tubs of icy water. i have besides often gone among thorns so that i have been torn by them; at other times i have rolled in nettles, and i have passed whole nights defying my enemies to attack me, and assuring them that i was resolved to defend myself with the grace of god." with her confessor's permission, she also had an iron girdle made, with spikes, and wore this day and night for nearly six months until the spikes so entered her flesh that the girdle could only be removed with difficulty. by means of these austerities she succeeded in almost exorcising the demons of unchastity, and a little later, after a severe illness, of which she believed that she was miraculously cured by st. joseph, she appeared before the world almost as a saint, herself possessing a miraculous power of healing; she traveled through france, bringing healing wherever she went; the king, the queen, and cardinal richelieu were at her feet, and so great became the fame of her holiness that her tomb was a shrine for pilgrims for more than a century after her death. it was not until late in life, and after her autobiography terminates, that sexual desire in soeur jeanne (though its sting seems never to have quite disappeared) became transformed into passionate love of jesus, and it is only in her later letters that we catch glimpses of the complete transmutation. thus, in one of her later letters we read: "i cried with ardor, 'lord! join me to thyself, transform thyself into me!' it seemed to me that that lovable spouse was reposing in my heart as on his throne. what makes me almost swoon with love and admiration is a certain pleasure which it seems to me that he takes when all my being flows into his, restoring to him with respect and love all that he has given to me. sometimes i have permission to speak to our lord with more familiarity, calling him my love, interesting him in all that i ask of him, as well for myself as for others." the lives of all the great saints and mystics bear witness to operations similar to those so vividly described by soeur jeanne des anges, though it is very rarely that any saint has so frankly presented the dynamic mechanism of the auto-erotic process. the indications they give us, however, are sufficiently clear. it is enough to refer to the special affection which the mystics have ever borne toward the song of songs,[ ] and to note how the most earthly expressions of love in that poem enter as a perpetual refrain into their writings.[ ] the courage of the early christian martyrs, it is abundantly evident, was in part supported by an exaltation which they frankly drew from the sexual impulse. felicula, we are told in the acts of achilles and nereus,[ ] preferred imprisonment, torture, and death to marriage or pagan sacrifices. when on the rack she was bidden to deny christianity, she exclaimed: "_ego non nego amatorem meum!_"--i will not deny my lover who for my sake has eaten gall and drunk vinegar, crowned with thorns, and fastened to the cross. christian mysticism and its sexual coloring was absorbed by the islamic world at a very early period and intensified. in the thirteenth century it was reintroduced into christendom in this intensified form by the genius of raymond lull who had himself been born on the confines of islam, and his "book of the lover and the friend" is a typical manifestation of sexual mysticism which inspired the great spanish school of mystics a few centuries later. the "delicious agony" the "sweet martyrdom," the strongly combined pleasure and pain experienced by st. theresa were certainly associated with physical sexual sensations.[ ] the case of marguerite-marie alacoque is typical. jesus, as her autobiography shows, was always her lover, her husband, her dear master; she is betrothed to him, he is the most passionate of lovers, nothing can be sweeter than his caresses, they are so excessive she is beside herself with the delight of them. the central imagination of the mystic consists essentially, as ribot remarks, in a love romance.[ ] if we turn to the most popular devotional work that was ever written, _the imitation of christ_, we shall find that the "love" there expressed is precisely and exactly the love that finds its motive power in the emotions aroused by a person of the other sex. (a very intellectual woman once remarked to me that the book seemed to her "a sort of religious aphrodisiac.") if we read, for instance, book iii, chapter v, of this work ("de mirabili affectu divini amoris"), we shall find in the eloquence of this solitary monk in the low countries neither more nor less than the emotions of every human lover at their highest limit of exaltation. "nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller nor better in heaven or in earth. he who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and cannot be held. he gives all in exchange for all, and possesses all in all. he looks not at gifts, but turns to the giver above all good things. love knows no measure, but is fervent beyond all measure. love feels no burden, thinks nothing of labor, strives beyond its force, reckons not of impossibility, for it judges that all things are possible. therefore it attempts all things, and therefore it effects much when he who is not a lover fails and falls.... my love! thou all mine, and i all thine." there is a certain natural disinclination in many quarters to recognize any special connection between the sexual emotions and the religious emotions. but this attitude is not reasonable. a man who is swayed by religious emotions cannot be held responsible for the indirect emotional results of his condition; he can be held responsible for their control. nothing is gained by refusing to face the possibility that such control may be necessary, and much is lost. there is certainly, as i have tried to indicate, good reason to think that the action and interaction between the spheres of sexual and religious emotion are very intimate. the obscure promptings of the organism at puberty frequently assume on the psychic side a wholly religious character; the activity of the religious emotions sometimes tends to pass over into the sexual region; the suppression of the sexual emotions often furnishes a powerful reservoir of energy to the religious emotions; occasionally the suppressed sexual emotions break through all obstacles. footnotes: [ ] starbuck, _the psychology of religion_, . also, a.h. daniels, "the new life," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vi, . cf. william james, _the varieties of religious experience_. [ ] ed. hahn, _demeter und baubo_, , pp. - . hahn is arguing for the religious origin of the plough, as a generative implement, drawn by a sacred and castrated animal, the ox. g. herman, in his _genesis_, develops the idea that modern religious rites have arisen out of sexual feasts and mysteries. [ ] bloch (_beiträge zur Ã�tiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, bd. i, p. ) points out the great interest taken by the saints and ascetics in sex matters. [ ] this omission was made by the original publisher of the "discourse;" several of the most important passages throughout have been similarly cut out. [ ] rev. j.m. wilson, _journal of education_, . at about the same period ( ) spurgeon pointed out in one of his sermons that by a strange, yet natural law, excess of spirituality is next door to sensuality. theodore schroeder has recently brought together a number of opinions of religious teachers, from henry more the platonist to baring gould, concerning the close relationship between sexual passion and religious passion, _american journal of religious psychology_, . [ ] w. thomas, "the sexual element in sensibility," _psychological review_, jan., . [ ] _system der gerichtlichen psychologie_, second edition, , pp. - ; and more at length in his _allgemeine diagnostik der psychischen krankheiten_, second edition, , pp. - . [ ] _handboek van de pathologie en therapie der krankzinnigheid_, , p. of english edition. [ ] _manuel pratique de médecine mentale_, , p. . [ ] _text-book of mental diseases_, p. . [ ] g.h. savage, _insanity_, . [ ] _american journal of insanity_, april, . [ ] "des psychoses religieuses," _archives de neurologie_, . [ ] "erotopathia," _alienist and neurologist_, october, . [ ] reference may be specially made to the interesting chapter on "délire religieux" in icard's _la femme pendant la période menstruelle_, pp. - . [ ] _psychopathia sexualis_, eighth edition, pp. and . gannouchkine ("la volupté, la cruanté et la religion," _annales medico-psychologique_, , no. ) has further emphasized this convertibility. [ ] e. murisier, "le sentiment religieux dans l'extase," _revue philosophique_, november, . starbuck, again (_psychology of religion_, chapter xxx), in a brief discussion of this point, concludes that "the sexual life, although it has left its impress on fully developed religion, seems to have originally given the psychic impulse which called out the latent possibilities of developments, rather than to have furnished the raw material out of which religion was constructed." [ ] "una santa," _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xix, pp. - , . [ ] with regard to the sexual element in the worship of the virgin, see "ueber den mariencultus," l. feuerbach's _sammtliche werke_, bd. i, . [ ] published for the first time (with a preface by charcot) in a volume of the _bibliothèque diabolique_, . [ ] the hebrews, themselves, used the same word for the love of woman and for the divine love (northcote, _christianity and sex problems_, p. ). [ ] thus, in st. theresa's _conceptos del amor de dios_, the words "_beseme con el beso de su boca_,"--let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth--constantly recur. [ ] _acta sanctorum_, may th. [ ] leuba and montmorand, in their valuable and detailed studies of christian mysticism, though differing from each other in some points, are agreed on this; h. leuba, "les tendances religieuses chez les mystiques chrétiens," _revue philosophique_, july and nov., ; b. de montmorand, "l'erotomanie des mystiques chrétiens," id., oct., . montmorand points out that physical sexual manifestations were sometimes recognized and frankly accepted by mystics. he quotes from molinos, a passage in which the famous spanish quietist states that there is no reason to be disquieted even at the occurrence of pollutions or masturbation, _et etiam pejora_. [ ] ribot, _la logique des sentiments_, p. . index of authors. abricosoff, g. addinsell adler Ã�lian Ã�schines aëtius alacoque, m. albrecht allin anagnos angelucci anges, soeur jeanne des angus, h.c. anstie apuleius aquinas, st. thomas archemholtz aretæus aretino aristophanes aristotle arnold, g.j. aschaffenburg ashe, t. ashwell athenæus augustine, st. avicenna axenfeld azara babinsky bachaumont baelz baker, smith baldwin, j.m. ball ballantyne ballion balls-headley bancroft, h.h. baraduc bargagli barnes, k. barrus, clara bartels, max bastanzi bastian batut bauer, max baumann bazalgette beard beard, j. bechterew bee, j. bekkers bell, blair bell, sanford berger bellamy berkhan berthier beukemann beuttner bevan-lewis biernacki billuart binet binswanger bishop, mrs. blackwell, elizabeth blandford bloch, iwan block blumenbach boas, f. boethius bohnius bolton, t.l. bonavia bond, c.h. bonnier bossi boudin bourke, j.g. brachet brantôme breuer briquet brockman brouardel brown, j.d. brown-séquard brunton, sir lauder bryce, t. buchan, a.p. büchler büchner buffon bunge burchard burdach burk, f. burnet burns, j. burr burton, robert buxton, d.w. caiger callari calmeil camerer cameron campbell, h. caramuel carmichael carpenter, e. carrara casanova chamberlain, a.f. chapman, j. charcot charrin chaucer christian chrysostom cicero clark, campbell clement of alexandria clement of rome clipson clouston coe, h.c. cohn, hermann cohn, salmo cohnstein colenso, w. cook, capt. cook, dr. f. corre coryat crawley, a.e. crichton-browne, sir j. crooke, w. croom, sir j. halliday cullen cullingworth curr curschmann cuvier cyprian dallemagne dalton, e.t. dalziel dana dandinus daniels dartigues darwin, c. darwin, erasmus davidsohn debreyne deniker dennis denucé depaul d'epinay, mme. dercum deslandes dessoir, max dexter diday diderot distant, w.l. donkin down, langdon dudley dufour, p. dugas dühren, _see_ bloch, iwan. dukes, c. dulaure du maurier duncan, matthews durr duval, a. duveyrier dyer, l. ellenberger ellis, sir a.b. ellis, havelock ellis, sir w. ellis, w.g. emin, pasha emminghaus epicharmus eram erb ernst esquirol eulenburg evans, m.m. ezekiel fahne fasbender fehling felkin féré fernel ferrero ferriani fewkes, j.w. findley fleischmann fliess forel forestus forster, j.r. fortini fothergill, j.m. fournier foville franklin, a. frazer, j.g. freeman, r.a. french-sheldon, mrs. freud friedreich, j.b. fritsch, g. fuchs fürbringer gaedeken galen gall gant gardiner, j.s. garland, hamlin gamier gason gattel gehrung gennep, a. von gérard-varet gerland gibbon giessler giles, a.e. gillen gilles de la tourette gioffredi girandeau godfrey goepel goethe goncourt goodell, w. goodman gould gourmont, remy de gowers, sir w.r. grashoff greenlees griesinger grimaldi grimm, j. groos grosse gruner grünfeld gualino gubernatis guéniot guerry guibout guise, r.e. gury guttceit guyau guyot haddon, a.c. hahn, e. haig hall, fielding hall, g. stanley haller hammond, w. harris, d.f. hartmann hawkesworth, j. haycraft heape, w. hegar helbigius, o. heifer, j.w. henle herman herodotus herondas herrick hersman herter hesiod hick, p. hill, s.a. hinton, james hippocrates hirschsprung hirth, g. hoche hohenemser holder, a.b. holm homer hopkins, h.r. houssay howe, j.w. huchard hufeland hughes, c.h. hummel hunter, john hutchinson, sir j. hyades hyrtl icard imbert-goubeyre jacobi, m.p. jacobs jaeger james james, w. janet, pierre jastrow, morris jenjko jerome, st. jessett joal joest johnston, sir h.h. johnstone, a.w. jolly jones, lloyd jortin juvenal kaan kahlbaum keill keith keller kellogg kemble, fanny kemsoes kiernan, j.g. kind, a. king, a.f.a. kleinpaul klemm, k. kline, l.w. koch, j.l.a. koster kossmann kowalewsky, m. kraepelin krafft-ebing krauss, f.s. krauss, w.c. krieger kreichmar kroner kulischer lacassagne lactantius lallemand landouzy landry lane laschi laupts laurent, l. laycock learoyd, mabel lecky legludic lentz lepois, c. letamendi letourneau leuba leyden liguori lippert lipps lobsien loiman loliée lombroso, c. lombroso, p. lorion löwenfeld lucretius lull, raymond luther luzet lydston macdonald, a. macgillicuddy mackenzie, j.n. maclean macmurchy maeder malins malling-hansen man, e.h. mandeville mannhardt mantegazza marchi, attilio de marcuse, j. mariani marie, a. marie, p. marro marsh marshall, f. marston martial martineau mason, otis matignon maudsley mayr, g. melinaud menjago mercier metchnikoff meteyard meyners, d'estrez michelet miklucho-macleay minovici mirabeau mitchell, h.w. mitford modigliani molière moll mondière mongeri montague, lady m.w. montaigne montmorand moraglia morris, r.t. morselli mortimer, g. moryson, fynes moses, julius müller, r. murisier näcke nansen négrier nelson, j. neugebauer niceforo nicolas of cusa niebuhr, c. nietzsche nipho norman, conolly northcote, h. oettinger ogle oldfield oliver omer, haleby oribasius osier ossendovsky osterloh ostwald, hans ott, von overbury, sir t. ovid paget, sir j. paget, john paré, a. parent-duchâtelet parke, t.h. partridge passek paulus, Ã�gineta pausanias pearson, k. pechuel-loesche peckham penta pepys, s. perez perry-coste peschel peyer, a. peyer, j. pick pierracini pilcz pitcairn pitres plant plato plazzon pliny the elder ploss plutarch pouchet pouillet poulet power prat priestley, sir w. procopius pyle quetelet quirós, bernaldo de rabelais raciborski raffalovich ramsay, sir w.m. rasmussen ratzel rauber raymond régis reinach, s. reinl rengger renooz, mine. céline renouvier restif de la bretonne reuss reverdin reys rhys, sir j. ribbing ribot richelet richer richet riedel ries riolan ritter rochholz rohé rohleder roland, mme. rolfincius römer, l.s.a.m. von roos, j. de rosenbach rosenstadt rosenthal rosner rosse, irving roth, h. ling roth, w. roubaud rousseau routh, a. rudeck rush sade, de st. andré st. hilaire, j.g. st. paul, dr. salerni sanchez, t. sanctis, sante de sanctorius savage savill schemer schmid-monnard schrenck-notzing schroeder, t. schroeder, van der kolk schüle schultz, alwyn schulz schurig schurtz schuyten schwartz schweinfurth scott, colin seerley selden seler selous, e. semon semper sénancour sérieux sergi shakespeare shaw, capel shufeldt, r.w. shuttleworth siebert sieroshevski skeat, w.w. skene smith, e. smith, e.h. smith, f. smith, robertson smith, theodate smyth, brough sollier solon somerville sonnini sorel sormani soutzo spencer, baldwin spencer, herbert spitta spitzka, e.c. spurgeon starbuck stein, g. steinen, karl von den stendhal stephenson stern, b. sterne stevens, h.v. stieda stirling stockman stokes storer strack stratz stubbs sudduth sumner, w.g. susruta sutton, bland swift sydenham tacitus tait, lawson tallemont des réaux tardieu taylor, r.w. teacher, j. tertullian theresa, st. thomas, w. thucydides thurn, sir e. im tille tillier tilt tissot toulouse tout, hill townsend, c.w. treutler trousseau tuchmann turner uffelmann vahness valera valleix vallon vedeler velde, van de velpeau venette venturi viazzi villagomez villermay villermé virchow vogel volkelt voltaire voornveld, van wade, sir w.f. wahl waitz walker, a. wappäus ward, h. wargentin warman wasserschleben wedge wood weismann weisser wellhausen wenck west, c. west, j.p. westcott, wynn westermarck wey, h.d. wichmann wiel, van der willis wilson, j.m. wiltshire, a. winckel winkler, g. winter, j.t. witkowski wollstonecraft, m. wood, h.c. wraxall, sir n. yellowlees zacchia zache zeller index of subjects. africa, modesty in sexual periodicity in ainu, modesty of american indians, menstruation in modesty of anæmia and hysteria andamanese modesty animals, breeding season of hysteria in masturbation in modesty in their dislike of dirt annual sexual rhythm anus as a centre of modesty apes, masturbation in menstruation in arabian festivals arabs, modesty in their ancient conception of uncleanness art and auto-erotism asafoetida in hysteria _attitudes passionnelles_ australia, modesty in sexual festivals in autumn festivals baboon, menstruation in babylonian festivals bashfulness bathing, promiscuous beltane fires bengal, modesty in sexual periodicity in birds, dreams of birthrate, periodicity of bladder, as a source of dreams foreign bodies in periodicity in expulsive force of blindness in relation to modesty blood, primitive ideas about supposed virtues of menstrual blood-pressure blushing, the significance of bonfire festivals borneo, modesty in bosom in relation to modesty brazil, modesty in bread, periodicity in consumption of breeding season _brumalia_ camargo catholic theologians, on _delectatio morosa_ on erotic dreams on masturbation celibacy and religion ceremonial element in religion chastity in polynesia chemical rays and sexual periodicity childbirth, modesty in children, masturbation in periodicity of growth in spring fever in their lack of modesty chimpanzee, menstruation in chinese modesty chivalry and modesty chlorosis and hysteria christianity, in relation to modesty its attitude towards masturbation christmas festivals clothing and modesty cod-piece coitus, and ceremonial ritual as a sedative in relation to masturbation in relation to menstruation in relation to modesty often painful in hysteria conception rate conduct, periodicity in continence, importance of convents, hysteria in coquetry, function of courtship, the essential element in crime, periodicity of criminals, masturbation among sexual outbursts in crow, breeding habits of cycling in relation to sexual excitement dancing, auto-erotic aspects of dancing and modesty darkness in relation to blushing day-dreaming deer, breeding habits of _delectatio morosa_ denmark, modesty in diogenes dionysian festivals disgust as a factor of modesty _distillatio_ dog, breeding season of drawers, origin of feminine dreams, and sexual periodicity day erotic freud on inverted vesical easter festivals eating, modesty in ecbolic curve economic factor of modesty elephants, masturbation in enuresis, nocturnal epilepsy, anciently confused with hysteria in relation to masturbation erotic dreams festivals hallucinations eskimo, menstruation in modesty of sexual habits of etruscans, modesty among evil eye and modesty excretory customs and modesty eye disorders and masturbation face as a centre of modesty fear, modesty based on ferrets, masturbation in festivals, erotic fools, feast of foot and modesty frigidity caused by masturbation fuegians, modesty of general paralysis, annual curve of _globus hystericus_ goethe gogol greeks, festivals of modesty among their attitude towards masturbation growth, periodicity in hair-pin used in masturbation hallucinations, erotic head, covering the heart disease, monthly rhythm in "heat" in animals its relation to menstruation hemicrania, periodicity in horse exercise and sexual excitement horses, masturbation in hottentots, masturbation among hymen in relation to modesty hysteria, alleged seasonal prevalence of and chlorosis and masturbation breuer and freud on charcot and coitus often painful in in relation to sexual emotion nocturnal hallucinations of physiological the theory of iceland, modesty in illegitimate births, periodicity of incubus india, conception rate in masturbation in modesty in infants, masturbation in insane, masturbation in the modesty in the insanity and masturbation periodicity of inversion, dreams in ireland, modesty in ishtar italy, modesty in japanese, masturbation among modesty of jealousy in relation to modesty kadishtu kierkegaard lapps, menstruation among modesty of lizard and women in folk-lore love largely based on modesty macaque, menstruation in malay festivals maori, modesty marriage caused by masturbation, aversion to marriage and the hysterical masturbation among animals among lower human races among higher human races as a sedative combined with religious emotions in men of genius interrupted in the insane methods of periodicity of prevalence of symptoms and results of may-day festivals mediæval modesty medicean venus, attitude of menstrual blood, supposed virtues of menstrual cycle in men menstruation, among primitive peoples and hysteria and modesty and pregnancy and social position of women as a continuous process as a process of purification cause doubtful euphemisms for in animals occasional absence in health origin of precocity in primitive theory of relation to "heat" relation to ovulation relation to sexual desire mental energy, periodicity of metabolism, seasonal influences on _mittelschmerz_ mohammedans, attitude towards menstruation modesty of mysticism among midsummer festivals monkeys, breeding season of masturbation in menstruation in moon and masturbation moral element in modesty moritz, k.p. muscular force, periodicity of mysticism and sexual emotion nakedness, chaste in its effects in relation to modesty narcissism nates as a centre of modesty negroes, modesty of nervous diseases and masturbation neurasthenia and masturbation new england, modesty in new georgians, modesty among new guinea, folk-lore of menstruation in modesty in new hebrides, modesty in new zealand, modesty in nicobarese modesty night-inspiration novel-reading, alleged sexual periodicity in obscenity, roman horror of oestrus "onanism," the term orang-utan, menstruation in orgasm, spontaneous ornament as a sexual lure ovaries with hysteria, alleged association of ovulation and menstruation papuans, modesty of sexual periodicity among _penis suecedaneus_ _pollutio_ _pollutio interruptus_ polynesian modesty precocity, sexual pregnancy, menstrual cycle during prostitutes, hysteria among masturbation in modesty of prudery prurience based on modesty psychic coitus psychic traumatism pulse, periodicity of the railway travelling as cause of sexual excitement rapes, periodicity of religion and sexual emotions revery rhythm riding as a cause of sexual excitement ritual factor of modesty roland, mme. romans, modesty of rosalia rousseau russia, conception rate in modesty in rest sacro-pubic region as a centre of modesty st. john's eve, festival of samoa samoyeds, menstruation among saturnalia scarlet fever, periodicity of schools, auto-erotic phenomena in seasonal periodicity of sexual impulse seduction and menstruation seminal emissions during sleep serpent in folk-lore sewing-machine as a cause of sexual excitement sexual anæsthesia induced by masturbation sexual factor of modesty sexual desire, in relation to blushing in relation to hysteria in relation to menstruation in relation to modesty in relation to season in women sexual periodicity in men what we owe to irradiations of sexual organs viewed differently by savage and civilized peoples shame, definition and nature of short sight and modesty shyness slang, private sleep in relation to sexual activity snake and women in folk-lore somnambulism of bladder speech, modesty in spring, as season of sexual excitement festivals of swinging, auto-erotic aspects of succubus suicide, periodicity of taboo and menstruation and modesty tahiti tammuz festival theologians, opinions of theresa, st. thigh-friction thumb-sucking timidity tight-lacing as a cause of sexual excitement torres straits, modesty at turkish modesty uncleanness, primitive conception of uric acid, excretion, periodicity of urine, incontinence of urtication, as a form of auto-erotism valentine's day veil, origin of the vesical dreams vocabularies, private _walpurgisnacht_ weekly sexual rhythm witches, erotic hallucinations of womb anciently thought source of hysteria women, as property in relation to modesty masturbation among menstruation in sexual impulse in their auto-erotic manifestations in sleep their night-inspiration whether more modest than men year, primitive divisions of zeus, auto-erotic manifestations in diagrams i.--the monthly ecbolic curve. ii.--the annual curve of the conception-rate in europe. iii.--the annual ecbolic curve. iv.--curve of the annual incidence of insanity in london. v.--curve of the annual incidence of general paralysis in paris (garnier). vi.--the suicide-rate in london. vii. viii. ix.--lunar-monthly rhythm of male sexual period. x.--curves of lunar-monthly rhythm as smoothed by taking pairs of days. xia.--weekly rhythm of male sexual period. xib.--weekly rhythm of male sexual period. xii.--weekly rhythm of male sexual period. xiii.--joint weekly rhythm of male sexual period, years , , , , , , , , combined. studies in the psychology of sex, volume ii sexual inversion by havelock ellis preface to the third edition. it has been remarked by professor wilhelm ostwald that the problem of homosexuality is a problem left over to us by the middle ages, which for five hundred years dealt with inverts as it dealt with heretics and witches. to regard the matter thus is to emphasize its social and humanitarian interest rather than its biological and psychological significance. it is no doubt this human interest of the question of inversion, rather than its scientific importance, great as the latter is, which is mainly responsible for the remarkable activity with which the study of homosexuality has been carried on during recent years. the result has been that, during the fourteen years that have passed since the last edition of this _study_ was issued, so vast an amount of work has been carried on in this field that the preparation of a new edition of the book has been a long and serious task. nearly every page has been rewritten or enlarged and the index of authors consulted has more than doubled in length. the original portions of the book have been still more changed; sixteen new histories have been added, selected from others in my possession as being varied, typical, and full. these extensive additions to the volume have rendered necessary various omissions. many of the shorter and less instructive histories contained in earlier editions have been omitted, as well as three appendices which no longer seem of sufficient interest to retain. in order to avoid undue increase in the size of this volume, already much larger than in the previous editions, a new study of eonism, or sexo-esthetic inversion, will be inserted in vol. v, where it will perhaps be at least as much in place as here. havelock ellis. preface to first edition. it was not my intention to publish a study of an abnormal manifestation of the sexual instinct before discussing its normal manifestations. it has happened, however, that this part of my work is ready first, and, since i thus gain a longer period to develop the central part of my subject, i do not regret the change of plan. i had not at first proposed to devote a whole volume to sexual inversion. it may even be that i was inclined to slur it over as an unpleasant subject, and one that it was not wise to enlarge on. but i found in time that several persons for whom i felt respect and admiration were the congenital subjects of this abnormality. at the same time i realized that in england, more than in any other country, the law and public opinion combine to place a heavy penal burden and a severe social stigma on the manifestations of an instinct which to those persons who possess it frequently appears natural and normal. it was clear, therefore, that the matter was in special need of elucidation and discussion. there can be no doubt that a peculiar amount of ignorance exists regarding the subject of sexual inversion. i know medical men of many years' general experience who have never, to their knowledge, come across a single case. we may remember, indeed, that some fifteen years ago the total number of cases recorded in scientific literature scarcely equaled those of british race which i have obtained, and that before my first cases were published not a single british case, unconnected with the asylum or the prison, had ever been recorded. probably not a very large number of people are even aware that the turning in of the sexual instinct toward persons of the same sex can ever be regarded as inborn, so far as any sexual instinct is inborn. and very few, indeed, would not be surprised if it were possible to publish a list of the names of sexually inverted men and women who at the present time are honorably known in church, state, society, art, or letters. it could not be positively affirmed of all such persons that they were born inverted, but in most the inverted tendency seems to be instinctive, and appears at a somewhat early age. in any case, however, it must be realized that in this volume we are not dealing with subjects belonging to the lunatic asylum, or the prison. we are concerned with individuals who live in freedom, some of them suffering intensely from their abnormal organization, but otherwise ordinary members of society. in a few cases we are concerned with individuals whose moral or artistic ideals have widely influenced their fellows, who know nothing of the peculiar organization which has largely molded those ideals. i am indebted to several friends for notes, observations, and correspondence on this subject, more especially to one, referred to as "z.," and to another as "q.," who have obtained a considerable number of reliable histories for me, and have also supplied many valuable notes; to "josiah flynt" (whose articles on tramps in _atlantic monthly_ and _harper's magazine_ have attracted wide attention) for an appendix on homosexuality among tramps; to drs. kiernan, lydston, and talbot for assistance at various points noted in the text; and to dr. k., an american woman physician, who kindly assisted me in obtaining cases, and has also supplied an appendix. other obligations are mentioned in the text. all those portions of the book which are of medical or medico-legal interest, including most of the cases, have appeared during the last three years in the _alienist and neurologist_, the _journal of mental science_, the _centralblatt für nervenheilkunde_, the _medico-legal journal_, and the _archivo delle psicopatie sessuale_. the cases, as they appear in the present volume, have been slightly condensed, but nothing of genuine psychological interest has been omitted. owing to some delay in the publication of the english edition of the work, a german translation by my friend, dr. hans kurella, editor of the _centralblatt für nervenheilkunde_, has already appeared ( ) in the _bibliothek für sozialwissenschaft_. the german edition contains some matter which has finally been rejected from the english edition as of minor importance; on the other hand, much has been added to the english edition, and the whole carefully revised. i have only to add that if it may seem that i have unduly ignored the cases and arguments brought forward by other writers, it is by no means because i wish to depreciate the valuable work done by my predecessors in this field. it is solely because i have not desired to popularize the results previously reached, but simply to bring forward my own results. if i had not been able to present new facts in what is perhaps a new light, i should not feel justified in approaching the subject of sexual inversion at all. havelock ellis. contents chapter i. introduction. homosexuality among animals--among the lower human races--the albanians--the greeks--the eskimos--the tribes of the northwest united states--homosexuality among soldiers in europe--indifference frequently manifested by european lower classes--sexual inversion at rome--homosexuality in prisons--among men of exceptional intellect and moral leaders--muret--michelangelo--winkelmann--homosexuality in english history--walt whitman--verlaine--burton's climatic theory of homosexuality--the racial factor--the prevalence of homosexuality today. chapter ii. the study of sexual inversion. westphal--hössli--casper--ulrichs--krafft-ebing--moll--féré--kiernan-- lydston--raffalovich--edward carpenter--hirschfeld. chapter iii. sexual inversion in men. relatively undifferentiated state of the sexual impulse in early life--the freudian view--homosexuality in schools--the question of acquired homosexuality--latent inversion--retarded inversion--bisexuality--the question of the invert's truthfulness--histories. chapter iv. sexual inversion in women. prevalence of sexual inversion among women--among women of ability--among the lower races--temporary homosexuality in schools, etc.--histories--physical and psychic characteristics of inverted women--the modern development of homosexuality among women. chapter v. the nature of sexual inversion. analysis of histories--race--heredity--general health--first appearance of homosexual impulse--sexual precocity and hyperesthesia--suggestion and other exciting causes of inversion--masturbation--attitude toward women--erotic dreams--methods of sexual relationship--pseudo-sexual attraction--physical sexual abnormalities--artistic and other aptitudes--moral attitude of the invert. chapter vi. the theory of sexual inversion. what is sexual inversion?--causes of diverging views--the theory of suggestion unworkable--importance of the congenital element in inversion--the freudian theory--embryonic hermaphroditism as a key to inversion--inversion as a variation or "sport"--comparison with color-blindness, color-hearing, and similar abnormalities--what is an abnormality?--not necessarily a disease--relation of inversion to degeneration--exciting causes of inversion--not operative in the absence of predisposition. chapter vii. conclusions. the prevention of homosexuality--the influence of the school--coeducation--the treatment of sexual inversion--castration--hypnotism--associational therapy--psycho-analysis--mental and physical hygiene--marriage--the children of inverts--the attitude of society--the horror aroused by homosexuality--justinian--the _code napoléon_--the state of the law in europe today--germany--england--what should be our attitude toward homosexuality? appendix a. homosexuality among tramps. appendix b. the school-friendships of girls. index of authors. index of subjects. sexual inversion. chapter i. introduction. homosexuality among animals--among the lower human races--the albanians--the greeks--the eskimos--the tribes of the northwest united states--homosexuality among soldiers in europe--indifference frequently manifested by european lower classes--sexual inversion at rome--homosexuality in prisons--among men of exceptional intellect and moral leaders--muret--michelangelo--winkelmann--homosexuality in english history--walt whitman--verlaine--burton's climatic theory of homosexuality--the racial factor--the prevalence of homosexuality today. sexual inversion, as here understood, means sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex. it is thus a narrower term than homosexuality, which includes all sexual attractions between persons of the same sex, even when seemingly due to the accidental absence of the natural objects of sexual attraction, a phenomenon of wide occurrence among all human races and among most of the higher animals. it is only during recent years that sexual inversion has been recognized; previously it was not distinguished from homosexuality in general, and homosexuality was regarded as a national custom, as an individual vice, or as an unimportant episode in grave forms of insanity.[ ] we have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself is concerned, heterosexual, that is to say, normal. inversion of this kind leads a person to feel like a person of the opposite sex, and to adopt, so far as possible, the tastes, habits, and dress of the opposite sex, while the direction of the sexual impulse remains normal. this condition i term sexo-esthetic inversion, or eonism. the nomenclature of the highly important form of sexual perversion with which we are here concerned is extremely varied, and most investigators have been much puzzled in coming to a conclusion as to the best, most exact, and at the same time most colorless names to apply to it. the first in the field in modern times was ulrichs who, as early as , used the appellation "uranian" (uranier), based on the well-known myth in plato's _banquet_. later he germanized this term into "urning" for the male, and "urningin" for the female, and referred to the condition itself as "urningtum." he also invented a number of other related terms on the same basis; some of these terms have had a considerable vogue, but they are too fanciful and high-strung to secure general acceptance. if used in other languages than german they certainly should not be used in their germanized shape, and it is scarcely legitimate to use the term "urning" in english. "uranian" is more correct. in germany the first term accepted by recognized scientific authorities was "contrary sexual feeling" (konträre sexualempfindung). it was devised by westphal in , and used by krafft-ebing and moll. though thus accepted by the earliest authorities in this field, and to be regarded as a fairly harmless and vaguely descriptive term, it is somewhat awkward, and is now little used in germany; it was never currently used outside germany. it has been largely superseded by the term "homosexuality." this also was devised (by a little-known hungarian doctor, benkert, who used the pseudonym kertbeny) in the same year ( ), but at first attracted no attention. it has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being a bastard term compounded of greek and latin elements, but its significance--sexual attraction to the same sex--is fairly clear and definite, while it is free from any question-begging association of either favorable or unfavorable character. (edward carpenter has proposed to remedy its bastardly linguistic character by transforming it into "homogenic;" this, however, might mean not only "toward the same sex," but "of the same kind," and in german already possesses actually that meaning.) the term "homosexual" has the further advantage that on account of its classical origin it is easily translatable into many languages. it is now the most widespread general term for the phenomena we are dealing with, and it has been used by hirschfeld, now the chief authority in this field, as the title of his encyclopedic work, _die homosexualität_. "sexual inversion" (in french "inversion sexuelle," and in italian "inversione sessuale") is the term which has from the first been chiefly used in france and italy, ever since charcot and magnan, in , published their cases of this anomaly in the _archives de neurologie_. it had already been employed in italy by tamassia in the _revista sperimentale di freniatria_, in . i have not discovered when and where the term "sexual inversion" was first used. possibly it first appeared in english, for long before the paper of charcot and magnan i have noticed, in an anonymous review of westphal's first paper in the _journal of mental science_ (then edited by dr. maudsley) for october, , that "conträre sexualempfindung" is translated as "inverted sexual proclivity." so far as i am aware, "sexual inversion" was first used in english, as the best term, by j.a. symonds in , in his privately printed essay, _a problem in greek ethics_. later, in , the same term was adopted, i believe for the first time publicly in english, in the present work. it is unnecessary to refer to the numerous other names which have been proposed. (a discussion of the nomenclature will be found in the first chapter of hirschfeld's work, _die homosexualität_, and of some special terms in an article by schouten, _sexual-probleme_, december, .) it may suffice to mention the ancient theological and legal term "sodomy" (sodomia) because it is still the most popular term for this perversion, though, it must be remembered, it has become attached to the physical act of intercourse _per anum_, even when carried out heterosexually, and has little reference to psychic sexual proclivity. this term has its origin in the story (narrated in genesis, ch. xix) of lot's visitors whom the men of sodom desired to have intercourse with, and of the subsequent destruction of sodom and gomorrah. this story furnishes a sufficiently good ground for the use of the term, though the jews do not regard sodomy as the sin of sodom, but rather inhospitality and hardness of heart to the poor (j. preuss, _biblisch-talmudische medizin_, pp. - ), and christian theologians also, both catholic and protestant (see, e.g., _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iv, p. , and hirschfeld, _homosexualität_, p. ), have argued that it was not homosexuality, but their other offenses, which provoked the destruction of the cities of the plain. in germany "sodomy" has long been used to denote bestiality, or sexual intercourse with animals, but this use of the term is quite unjustified. in english there is another term, "buggery," identical in meaning with sodomy, and equally familiar. "bugger" (in french, _bougre_) is a corruption of "bulgar," the ancient bulgarian heretics having been popularly supposed to practise this perversion. the people of every country have always been eager to associate sexual perversions with some other country than their own. the terms usually adopted in the present volume are "sexual inversion" and "homosexuality." the first is used more especially to indicate that the sexual impulse is organically and innately turned toward individuals of the same sex. the second is used more comprehensively of the general phenomena of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex, even if only of a slight and temporary character. it may be admitted that there is no precise warrant for any distinction of this kind between the two terms. the distinction in the phenomena is, however, still generally recognized; thus iwan bloch applies the term "homosexuality" to the congenital form, and "pseudo-homosexuality" to its spurious or simulated forms. those persons who are attracted to both sexes are now usually termed "bisexual," a more convenient term than "psycho-sexual hermaphrodite," which was formerly used. there remains the normal person, who is "heterosexual." before approaching the study of sexual inversion in cases which we may investigate with some degree of scientific accuracy, there is interest in glancing briefly at the phenomena as they appear before us, as yet scarcely or at all differentiated, among animals, among various human races, and at various periods. among animals in a domesticated or confined state it is easy to find evidence of homosexual attraction, due merely to the absence of the other sex.[ ] this was known to the ancients; the egyptians regarded two male partridges as the symbol of homosexuality, and aristotle noted that two female pigeons would cover each other if no male was at hand. buffon observed many examples, especially among birds. he found that, if male or female birds of various species--such as partridges, fowls, and doves--were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner and more frequently than the females. more recently sainte-claire deville observed that dogs, rams, and bulls, when isolated, first became restless and dangerous, and then acquired a permanent state of sexual excitement, not obeying the laws of heat, and leading them to attempts to couple together; the presence of the opposite sex at once restored them to normal conditions.[ ] bombarda of lisbon states that in portugal it is well known that in every herd of bulls there is nearly always one bull who is ready to lend himself to the perverted whims of his companions.[ ] it may easily be observed how a cow in heat exerts an exciting influence on other cows, impelling them to attempt to play the bull's part. lacassagne has also noted among young fowls and puppies, etc., that, before ever having had relations with the opposite sex, and while in complete liberty, they make hesitating attempts at intercourse with their own sex.[ ] this, indeed, together with similar perversions, may often be observed, especially in puppies, who afterward become perfectly normal. among white rats, which are very sexual animals, steinach found that, when deprived of females, the males practise homosexuality, though only with males with whom they have long associated; the weaker rats play the passive part. but when a female is introduced they immediately turn to her; although they are occasionally altogether indifferent to sex, they never actually prefer their own sex.[ ] with regard to the playing of the female part by the weaker rats it is interesting to observe that féré found among insects that the passive part in homosexual relations is favored by fatigue; among cockchafers it was the male just separated from the female who would take the passive part (on the rare occasions when homosexual relations occurred) with a fresh male.[ ] homosexuality appears to be specially common among birds. it was among birds that it attracted the attention of the ancients, and numerous interesting observations have been made in more recent times. thus selous, a careful bird-watcher, finds that the ruff, the male of the _machetes pugnax_, suffers from sexual repression owing to the coyness of the female (the reeve), and consequently the males often resort to homosexual intercourse. it is still more remarkable that the reeves also, even in the presence of the males, will court each other and have intercourse.[ ] we may associate this with the high erotic development of birds, the difficulty with which tumescence seems to occur in them, and their long courtships. among the higher animals, again, female monkeys, even when grown up (as moll was informed), behave in a sexual way to each other, though it is difficult to say how far this is merely in play. dr. seitz, director of the frankfurt zoölogical garden, gave moll a record of his own careful observations of homosexual phenomena among the males and females of various animals confined in the garden (_antelope cervicapra, bos indicus, capra hircus, ovis steatopyga_).[ ] in all such cases we are not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the absence of the normal object. it is probable, however, that cases of true sexual inversion--in which gratification is preferably sought in the same sex--may be found among animals, although observations have rarely been made or recorded. it has been found by muccioli, an italian authority on pigeons, that among belgian carrier-pigeons inverted practices may occur, even in the presence of many of the other sex.[ ] this seems to be true inversion, though we are not told whether these birds were also attracted toward the opposite sex. the birds of this family appear to be specially liable to sexual perversion. thus m.j. bailly-maitre, a breeder of great knowledge and a keen observer, wrote to girard that "they are strange creatures in their manners and customs and are apt to elude the most persistent observer. no animal is more depraved. mating between males, and still more frequently between females, often occurs at an early age: up to the second year. i have had several pairs of pigeons formed by subjects of the same sex who for many months behaved as if the mating were natural. in some cases this had taken place among young birds of the same nest, who acted like real mates, though both subjects were males. in order to mate them productively we have had to separate them and shut each of them up for some days with a female."[ ] in the berlin zoölogical gardens also, it has been noticed that two birds of the same sex will occasionally become attached to each other and remain so in spite of repeated advances from individuals of opposite sex. this occurred, for instance, in the case of two males of the egyptian goose who were thus to all appearance paired, and always kept together, vigorously driving away any female that approached. similarly a male australian sheldrake was paired to a male of another species.[ ] among birds generally, inverted sexuality seems to accompany the development of the secondary sexual characters of the opposite sex which is sometimes found. thus, a poultry-breeder describes a hen (colored dorking) crowing like a cock, only somewhat more harshly, as a cockerel crows, and with an enormous comb, larger than is ever seen in the male. this bird used to try to tread her fellow-hens. at the same time she laid early and regularly, and produced "grand chickens."[ ] among ducks, also, it has occasionally been observed that the female assumes at the same time both male livery and male sexual tendencies. it is probable that such observations will be multiplied in the future, and that sexual inversion in the true sense will be found commoner among animals than at present it appears to be. traces of homosexual practices, sometimes on a large scale, have been found among all the great divisions of the human race. it would be possible to collect a considerable body of evidence under this head.[ ] unfortunately, however, the travellers and others on whose records we are dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race. travellers have spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise relationship involved nor inquiring how far any congenital impulse could be distinguished. looking at the phenomena generally, so far as they have been recorded among various lower races, we seem bound to recognize that there is a widespread natural instinct impelling men toward homosexual relationships, and that this has been sometimes, though very exceptionally, seized upon and developed for advantageous social purposes. on the whole, however, unnatural intercourse (sodomy) has been regarded as an antisocial offense, and punishable sometimes by the most serious penalties that could be invented. this was, for instance, the case in ancient mexico, in peru, among the persians, in china, and among the hebrews and mohammedans. even in very early history it is possible to find traces of homosexuality, with or without an implied disapproval. its existence in assyria and babylonia is indicated by the codex hamurabi and by inscriptions which do not on the whole refer to it favorably.[ ] as regards egypt we learn from a fayum papyrus, found by flinders petrie, translated by griffiths, and discussed by oefele,[ ] that more than four thousand years ago homosexual practices were so ancient that they were attributed to the gods horus and set. the egyptians showed great admiration of masculine beauty, and it would seem that they never regarded homosexuality as punishable or even reprehensible. it is notable, also, that egyptian women were sometimes of very virile type, and hirschfeld considers that intermediate sexual types were specially widespread among the egyptians.[ ] one might be tempted to expect that homosexual practices would be encouraged whenever it was necessary to keep down the population. aristotle says that it was allowed by law in crete for this end. and professor haddon tells me that at torres straits a native advocated sodomy on this ground.[ ] there seems, however, on the whole, to be little evidence pointing to this utilization of the practice. the homosexual tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike peoples. during war and the separation from women that war involves, the homosexual instinct tends to develop; it flourished, for instance, among the carthaginians and among the normans, as well as among the warlike dorians, scythians, tartars, and celts,[ ] and, when there has been an absence of any strong moral feeling against it, the instinct has been cultivated and, idealized as a military virtue, partly because it counteracts the longing for the softening feminine influences of the home and partly because it seems to have an inspiring influence in promoting heroism and heightening _esprit de corps_. in the lament of david over jonathan we have a picture of intimate friendship--"passing the love of women"--between comrades in arms among a barbarous, warlike race. there is nothing to show that such a relationship was sexual, but among warriors in new caledonia friendships that were undoubtedly homosexual were recognized and regulated; the fraternity of arms, according to foley,[ ] complicated with pederasty, was more sacred than uterine fraternity. we have, moreover, a recent example of the same relationships recognized in a modern european race--the albanians. hahn, in the course of his _albanische studien_ ( , p. ), says that the young men between and lore boys from about to . a gege marries at the age of or , and then he usually, but not always, gives up boy-love. the following passage is reported by hahn as the actual language used to him by an albanian gege: "the lover's feeling for the boy is pure as sunshine. it places the beloved on the same pedestal as a saint. it is the highest and most exalted passion of which the human breast is capable. the sight of a beautiful youth awakens astonishment in the lover, and opens the door of his heart to the delight which the contemplation of this loveliness affords. love takes possession of him so completely that all his thought and feeling goes out in it. if he finds himself in the presence of the beloved, he rests absorbed in gazing on him. absent, he thinks of nought but him. if the beloved unexpectedly appears, he falls into confusion, changes color, turns alternately pale and red. his heart beats faster and impedes his breathing. he has ears and eyes only for the beloved. he shuns touching him with the hand, kisses him only on the forehead, sings his praise in verse, a woman's never." one of these love-poems of an albanian gege runs as follows: "the sun, when it rises in the morning, is like you, boy, when you are near me. when your dark eye turns upon me, it drives my reason from my head." it should be added that prof. weigand, who knew the albanians well, assured bethe (_rheinisches museum für philologie_, , p. ) that the relations described by hahn are really sexual, although tempered by idealism. a german scholar who travelled in albania some years ago, also, assured näcke (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ix, , p. ) that he could fully confirm hahn's statements, and that, though it was difficult to speak positively, he doubted whether these relationships were purely ideal. while most prevalent among the moslems, they are also found among the christians, and receive the blessing of the priest in church. jealousy is frequently aroused, the same writer remarks, and even murder may be committed on account of a boy. it may be mentioned here that among the tschuktsches, kamschatdals, and allied peoples (according to a russian anthropological journal quoted in _sexual-probleme_, january, , p. ) there are homosexual marriages among the men, and occasionally among the women, ritually consecrated and openly recognized. the albanians, it is possible, belonged to the same stock which produced the dorian greeks, and the most important and the most thoroughly known case of socially recognized homosexuality is that of greece during its period of highest military as well as ethical and intellectual vigor. in this case, as in those already mentioned, the homosexual tendency was frequently regarded as having beneficial results, which caused it to be condoned, if not, indeed, fostered as a virtue. plutarch repeated the old greek statement that the beotians, the lacedemonians, and the cretans were the most warlike stocks because they were the strongest in love; an army composed of loving homosexual couples, it was held, would be invincible. it appears that the dorians introduced _paiderastia_, as the greek form of homosexuality is termed, into greece; they were the latest invaders, a vigorous mountain race from the northwest (the region including what is now albania) who spread over the whole land, the islands, and asia minor, becoming the ruling race. homosexuality was, of course, known before they came, but they made it honorable. homer never mentions it, and it was not known as legitimate to the Æolians or the ionians. bethe, who has written a valuable study of dorian _paiderastia_, states that the dorians admitted a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, bethe believes, that it was a general custom among the dorians before the invasion of greece. such unions even received a kind of religions consecration. it was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in crete to have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. by _paiderastia_ a man propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them by the act of intercourse. in its later greek phases _paiderastia_ was associated less with war than with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and philosophy. it cannot be doubted that both Æschylus and sophocles cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of plato has caused it to be almost identified with his name; thus in the early _charmides_ we have an attractive account of the youth who gives his name to the dialogue and the emotions he excites are described. but even in the early dialogues plato only conditionally approved of the sexual side of _paiderastia_ and he condemned it altogether in the final _laws_.[ ] the early stages of greek _paiderastia_ are very interestingly studied by bethe, "die dorische knabenliebe," _rheinisches museum für philologie_, . j.a. symonds's essay on the later aspects of _paiderastia_, especially as reflected in greek literature, _a problem in greek ethics_, is contained in the early german edition of the present study, but (though privately printed in by the author in an edition of twelve copies and since pirated in another private edition) it has not yet been published in english. _paiderastia_ in greek poetry has also been studied by paul brandt, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vols. viii and ix ( and ), and by otto knapp (_anthropophyteia_, vol. iii, pp. - ) who seeks to demonstrate the sensual side of _paiderastia_. on the other hand, licht, working on somewhat the same lines as bethe (_zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, august, ), deals with the ethical element in _paiderastia_, points out its beneficial moral influence, and argues that it was largely on this ground that it was counted sacred. licht has also published a learned study of _paiderastia_ in attic comedy (_anthropophyteia_, vol. vii, ), and remarks that "without _paiderastia_ greek comedy is unthinkable." _paiderastia_ in the greek anthology has been fully explored by p. stephanus (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ix, , p. ). kiefer, who has studied socrates in relation to homosexuality (o. kiefer, "socrates und die homosexualität," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ix, ), concludes that he was bisexual but that his sexual impulses had been sublimated. it may be added that many results of recent investigation concerning _paiderastia_ are summarized by hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, pp. - , and by edward carpenter, _intermediate types among primitive folk_, , part ii; see also bloch, _die prostitution_, vol. i, p. et seq., and _der ursprung der syphilis_, vol. ii, p. . it would appear that almost the only indications outside greece of _paiderastic_ homosexuality showing a high degree of tenderness and esthetic feeling are to be found in persian and arabian literature, after the time of the abbasids, although this practice was forbidden by the koran.[ ] in constantinople, as näcke was informed by german inverts living in that city, homosexuality is widespread, most cultivated turks being capable of relations with boys as well as with women, though very few are exclusively homosexual, so that their attitude would seem to be largely due to custom and tradition. adult males rarely have homosexual relations together; one of the couple is usually a boy of to years, and this condition of things among the refined classes is said to resemble ancient greek _paiderastia_. but ordinary homosexual prostitution is prevalent; it is especially recognized in the baths which abound in constantinople and are often open all night. the attendants at these baths are youths who scarcely need an invitation to induce them to gratify the client in this respect, the gratification usually consisting in masturbation, mutual or one-sided, as desired. the practice, though little spoken of, is carried on almost openly, and blackmailing is said to be unknown.[ ] in the new turkey, however, it is stated by adler bey that homosexual prostitution has almost disappeared.[ ] there is abundant evidence to show that homosexual practices exist and have long existed in most parts of the world outside europe, when subserving no obvious social or moral end. how far they are associated with congenital inversion is usually very doubtful. in china, for instance, it seems that there are special houses devoted to male prostitution, though less numerous than the houses devoted to females, for homosexuality cannot be considered common in china (its prevalence among chinese abroad being due to the absence of women) and it is chiefly found in the north.[ ] when a rich man gives a feast he sends for women to cheer the repast by music and song, and for boys to serve at table and to entertain the guests by their lively conversation. the boys have been carefully brought up for this occupation, receiving an excellent education, and their mental qualities are even more highly valued than their physical attractiveness. the women are less carefully brought up and less esteemed. after the meal the lads usually return home with a considerable fee. what further occurs the chinese say little about. it seems that real and deep affection is often born of these relations, at first platonic, but in the end becoming physical, not a matter for great concern in the eyes of the chinese. in the chinese novels, often of a very literary character, devoted to masculine love, it seems that all the preliminaries and transports of normal love are to be found, while physical union may terminate the scene. in china, however, the law may be brought into action for attempts against nature even with mutual consent; the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month's imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; i am not able to say how far the law is a dead letter. according to matignon, so far as homosexuality exists in china, it is carried on with much more decorum and restraint than it is in europe, and he thinks it may be put down to the credit of the chinese that, unlike europeans, they never practice unnatural connection with women. his account of the customs of the chinese confirms morache's earlier account, and he remarks that, though not much spoken of, homosexuality is not looked down upon. he gives some interesting details concerning the boy prostitutes. these are sold by their parents (sometimes stolen from them), about the age of , and educated, while they are also subjected to a special physical training, which includes massage of the gluteal regions to favor development, dilatation of the anus, and epilation (which is not, however, practised by chinese women). at the same time, they are taught music, singing, drawing, and the art of poetry. the waiters at the restaurants always know where these young gentlemen are to be found when they are required to grace a rich man's feast. they are generally accompanied by a guardian, and usually nothing very serious takes place, for they know their value, and money will not always buy their expensive favors. they are very effeminate, luxuriously dressed and perfumed, and they seldom go on foot. there are, however, lower orders of such prostitutes.[ ] homosexuality is easily traceable in india. dubois referred to houses devoted to male prostitution, with men dressed as women, and imitating the ways of women.[ ] burton in the "terminal essay" to his translation of the _arabian nights_, states that when in sir charles napier conquered and annexed sind three brothels of eunuchs and boys were found in the small town of karachi, and burton was instructed to visit and report on them. hindus, in general, however, it appears, hold homosexuality in abhorrence. in afghanistan homosexuality is more generally accepted, and burton stated that "each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman's attire, with kohled eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and hennaed fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in camel paniers." if we turn to the new world, we find that among the american indians, from the eskimo of alaska downward to brazil and still farther south, homosexual customs have been very frequently observed. sometimes they are regarded by the tribe with honor, sometimes with indifference, sometimes with contempt; but they appear to be always tolerated. although there are local differences, these customs, on the whole, seem to have much in common. the best early description which i have been able to find is by langsdorff[ ] and concerns the aleuts of oonalashka in alaska: "boys, if they happen to be very handsome," he says, "are often brought up entirely in the manner of girls, and instructed in the arts women use to please men; their beards are carefully plucked out as soon as they begin to appear, and their chins tattooed like those of women; they wear ornaments of glass beads upon their legs and arms, bind and cut their hair in the same manner as the women, and supply their place with the men as concubines. this shocking, unnatural, and immoral practice has obtained here even from the remotest times; nor have any measures hitherto been taken to repress and restrain it; such men are known under the name of _schopans_." among the konyagas langsdorff found the custom much more common than among the aleuts; he remarks that, although the mothers brought up some of their children in this way, they seemed very fond of their offspring. lisiansky, at about the same period, tells us that: "of all the customs of these islanders, the most disgusting is that of men, called _schoopans_, living with men, and supplying the place of women. these are brought up from their infancy with females, and taught all the feminine arts. they even assume the manner and dress of the women so nearly that a stranger would naturally take them for what they are not. this odious practice was formerly so prevalent that the residence of one of these monsters in a house was considered as fortunate; it is, however, daily losing ground."[ ] he mentions a case in which a priest had nearly married two males, when an interpreter chanced to come in and was able to inform him what he was doing. the practice has, however, apparently continued to be fairly common among the alaska eskimos down to recent times. thus dr. engelmann mentioned to me that he was informed by those who had lived in alaska, especially near point barrow, that as many as such individuals (regarded by uninstructed strangers as "hermaphrodites") might be found in a single comparatively small community. it is stated by davydoff, as quoted by holmberg,[ ] that the boy is selected to be a _schopan_ because he is girl-like. this is a point of some interest as it indicates that the schopan is not effeminated solely by suggestion and association, but is probably feminine by inborn constitution. in louisiana, florida, yucatan, etc., somewhat similar customs exist or have existed. in brazil men are to be found dressed as women and solely occupying themselves with feminine occupations; they are not very highly regarded.[ ] they are called _cudinas_: i.e., circumcized. among the pueblo indians of new mexico these individuals are called _mujerados_ (supposed to be a corruption of _mujeriego_) and are the chief passive agents in the homosexual ceremonies of these people. they are said to be intentionally effeminated in early life by much masturbation and by constant horse-riding.[ ] among all the tribes of the northwest united states sexual inverts may be found. the invert is called a _boté_ ("not man, not woman") by the montana, and a _burdash_ ("half-man, half-woman") by the washington indians. the _boté_ has been carefully studied by dr. a.b. holder.[ ] holder finds that the _boté_ wears woman's dress, and that his speech and manners are feminine. the dress and manners are assumed in childhood, but no sexual practices take place until puberty. these consist in the practice of _fellatio_ by the _boté_, who probably himself experiences the orgasm at the same time. the _boté_ is not a pederast, although pederasty occurs among these indians. holder examined _boté_ who was splendidly made, prepossessing, and in perfect health. with much reluctance he agreed to a careful examination. the sexual organs were quite normal, though perhaps not quite so large as his _physique_ would suggest, but he had never had intercourse with a woman. on removing his clothes he pressed his thighs together, as a timid woman would, so as to conceal completely the sexual organs; holder says that the thighs "really, or to my fancy," had the feminine rotundity. he has heard a _boté_ "_beg_ a male indian to submit to his caress," and he tells that "one little fellow, while in the agency boarding-school, was found frequently surreptitiously wearing female attire. he was punished, but finally escaped from school and became a _boté_, which vocation he has since followed." at tahiti at the beginning of the nineteenth century, turnbull[ ] found that "there are a set of men in this country whose open profession is of such abomination that the laudable delicacy of our language will not admit it to be mentioned. these are called by the natives _mahoos_; they assume the dress, attitude, and manners of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. they mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. with the manners of the women they adopt their peculiar employments, making cloth, bonnets, and mats; and so completely are they unsexed that had they not been pointed out to me i should not have known them but as women. i add, with some satisfaction, that the encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs." among the sakalaves of madagascar there are certain boys called _sekatra_, as described by lasnet, who are apparently chosen from childhood on account of weak or delicate appearance and brought up as girls. they live like women and have intercourse with men, with or without sodomy, paying the men who please them.[ ] among the negro population of zanzibar forms of homosexuality which are believed to be congenital (as well as acquired forms) are said to be fairly common. their frequency is thought to be due to arab influence. the male congenital inverts show from their earliest years no aptitude for men's occupations, but are attracted toward female occupations. as they grow older they wear women's clothes, dress their hair in women's fashion, and behave altogether like women. they associate only with women and with male prostitutes, and they obtain sexual satisfaction by passive pederasty or in ways simulating coitus. in appearance they resemble ordinary male prostitutes, who are common in zanzibar, but it is noteworthy that the natives make a clear distinction between them and men prostitutes. the latter are looked down on with contempt, while the former, as being what they are "by the will of god," are tolerated.[ ] homosexuality; occurs in various parts of africa. cases of _effeminatio_ and passive sodomy have been reported from unyamwezi and uganda. among the bangala of the upper congo sodomy between men is very common, especially when they are away from home, in strange towns, or in fishing camps. if, however, a man had intercourse with a woman _per anum_ he was at one time liable to be put to death.[ ] among the papuans in some parts of new guinea, as already mentioned, homosexuality is said to be well recognized, and is resorted to for convenience as well, perhaps, as for malthusian reasons.[ ] but in the rigo district of british new guinea, where habitual sodomy is not practised, dr. seligmann, of the cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits, made some highly important observations on several men and women who clearly appeared to be cases of congenital sexual inversion with some degree of esthetic inversion and even some anatomical modification.[ ] these people, it may be noted, belong to a primitive race, uncontaminated by contact with white races, and practically still in the stone age. finally, among another allied primitive people, the australians, it would appear that homosexuality has long been well established in tribal customs. among the natives of kimberley, western australia (who are by no means of low type, quick and intelligent, with special aptitudes for learning languages and music), if a wife is not obtainable for a young man he is presented with a boy-wife between the ages of and (the age when a boy receives his masculine initiation). the exact nature of the relations between the boy-wife and his protector are doubtful; they certainly have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy.[ ] further light is thrown on homosexuality in australia by the supposition of spencer and gillen that the _mika_ operation (urethral subincision), an artificial hypospadias, is for the purpose of homosexual intercourse. klaatsch has discussed the homosexual origin of the _mika_ operation on the basis of information he received from missionaries at niol-niol, on the northwest coast. the subincised man acts as a female to the as yet unoperated boys, who perform coitus in the incised opening. both informed klaatsch in that at boulia in queensland the operated men are said to "possess a vulva."[ ] these various accounts are of considerable interest, though for the most part their precise significance remains doubtful. some of them, however,--such as holder's description of the _boté_, baumann's account of homosexual phenomena in zanzibar, and especially seligmann's observations in british new guinea,--indicate not only the presence of esthetic inversion but of true congenital sexual inversion. the extent of the evidence will doubtless be greatly enlarged as the number of competent observers increases, and crucial points are no longer so frequently overlooked. on the whole, the evidence shows that among lower races homosexual practices are regarded with considerable indifference, and the real invert, if he exists among them, as doubtless he does exist, generally passes unperceived or joins some sacred caste which sanctifies his exclusively homosexual inclinations. even in europe today a considerable lack of repugnance to homosexual practices may be found among the lower classes. in this matter, as folklore shows in so many other matters, the uncultured man of civilization is linked to the savage. in england, i am told, the soldier often has little or no objection to prostitute himself to the "swell" who pays him, although for pleasure he prefers to go to women; and hyde park is spoken of as a center of male prostitution. "among the working masses of england and scotland," q. writes, "'comradeship' is well marked, though not (as in italy) very conscious of itself. friends often kiss each other, though this habit seems to vary a good deal in different sections and coteries. men commonly sleep together, whether comrades or not, and so easily get familiar. occasionally, but not so very often, this relation delays for a time, or even indefinitely, actual marriage, and in some instances is highly passionate and romantic. there is a good deal of grossness, no doubt, here and there in this direction among the masses; but there are no male prostitutes (that i am aware of) whose regular clients are manual workers. this kind of prostitution in london is common enough, but i have only a slight personal knowledge of it. many youths are 'kept' handsomely in apartments by wealthy men, and they are, of course, not always inaccessible to others. many keep themselves in lodgings by this means, and others eke out scanty wages by the same device: just like women, in fact. choirboys reinforce the ranks to a considerable extent, and private soldiers to a large extent. some of the barracks (notably knightsbridge) are great centres. on summer evenings hyde park and the neighborhood of albert gate is full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out. in these cases it sometimes only amounts to a chat on a retired seat or a drink at a bar; sometimes recourse is had to a room in some known lodging-house, or to one or two hotels which lend themselves to this kind of business. in any case it means a covetable addition to tommy atkins's pocket-money." and mr. raffalovich, speaking of london, remarks: "the number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. it is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men." it is worth noting that there is a perfect understanding in this matter between soldiers and the police, who may always be relied upon by the former for assistance and advice. i am indebted to my correspondent "z" for the following notes: "soldiers are no less sought after in france than in england or in germany, and special houses exist for military prostitution both in paris and the garrison-towns. many facts known about the french army go to prove that these habits have been contracted in algeria, and have spread to a formidable extent through whole regiments. the facts related by ulrichs about the french foreign legion, on the testimony of a credible witness who had been a pathic in his regiment, deserve attention (_ara spei_, p. ; _memnon_, p. ). this man, who was a german, told ulrichs that the spanish, french, and italian soldiers were the lovers, the swiss and german their beloved (see also general brossier's report, quoted by burton, _arabian nights_, vol. x, p. ). in lucien descaves's military novel, _sous offs_ (paris, tresse et stock, ), some details are given regarding establishments for male prostitution. see pages , , and for description of the drinking-shop called 'aux amis de l'armée,' where a few maids were kept for show, and also of its frequenters, including, in particular, the adjutant laprévotte. ulrichs reports that in the austrian army lectures on homosexual vices are regularly given to cadets and conscripts (_memnon_, p. ). a soldier who had left the army told a friend of mine that he and many of his comrades had taken to homosexual indulgences when abroad on foreign service in a lonely station. he kept the practice up in england 'because the women of his class were so unattractive.' the captain of an english man-of-war said that he was always glad to send his men on shore after a long cruise at sea, never feeling sure how far they might not all go if left without women for a certain space of time." i may add that a. hamon (_la france sociale et politique_, , pp. - ; also in his _psychologie du militaire professional_, chapter x) gives details as to the prevalence of homosexuality in the french army, especially in algeria; he regards it as extremely common, although the majority are free. a fragment of a letter by general lamoricière (speaking of marshal changarnier) is quoted: _en afrique nous en étions tous, mais lui en est resté ici_. this primitive indifference is doubtless also a factor in the prevalence of homosexuality among criminals, although, here, it must be remembered, two other factors (congenital abnormality and the isolation of imprisonment) have to be considered. in russia, tarnowsky observes that all pederasts are agreed that the common people are tolerably indifferent to their sexual advances, which they call "gentlemen's games." a correspondent remarks on "the fact, patent to all observers, that simple folk not infrequently display no greater disgust for the abnormalities of sexual appetite than they do for its normal manifestations."[ ] he knows of many cases in which men of lower class were flattered and pleased by the attentions of men of higher class, although not themselves inverted. and from this point of view the following case, which he mentions, is very instructive:-- a pervert whom i can trust told me that he had made advances to upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which case the man later on offered himself spontaneously) and only once with an attempt to extort money. permanent relations of friendship sprang up in most instances. he admitted that he looked after these persons and helped them with his social influence and a certain amount of pecuniary support--setting one up in business, giving another something to marry on, and finding places for others. among the peasantry in switzerland, i am informed, homosexual relationships are not uncommon before marriage, and such relationships are lightly spoken of as "dummheiten". no doubt, similar traits might be found in the peasantry of other parts of europe. what may be regarded as true sexual inversion can be traced in europe from the beginning of the christian era (though we can scarcely demonstrate the congenital element) especially among two classes--men of exceptional ability and criminals; and also, it may be added, among those neurotic and degenerate individuals who may be said to lie between these two classes, and on or over the borders of both. homosexuality, mingled with various other sexual abnormalities and excesses, seems to have flourished in rome during the empire, and is well exemplified in the persons of many of the emperors.[ ] julius cæsar, augustus, tiberius, caligula, claudius, nero, galba, titus, domitian, nerva, trajan, hadrian, commodus, and heliogabalus--many of them men of great ability and, from a roman standpoint, great moral worth--are all charged, on more or less solid evidence, with homosexual practices. in julius cæsar--"the husband of all women and the wife of all men" as he was satirically termed--excess of sexual activity seems to have accompanied, as is sometimes seen, an excess of intellectual activity. he was first accused of homosexual practices after a long stay in bithynia with king nikomedes, and the charge was very often renewed. cæsar was proud of his physical beauty, and, like some modern inverts, he was accustomed carefully to shave and epilate his body to preserve the smoothness of the skin. hadrian's love for his beautiful slave antinoüs is well known; the love seems to have been deep and mutual, and antinoüs has become immortalized, partly by the romance of his obscure death and partly by the new and strangely beautiful type which he has given to sculpture.[ ] heliogabalus, "the most homosexual of all the company," as he has been termed, seems to have been a true sexual invert, of feminine type; he dressed as a woman and was devoted to the men he loved.[ ] homosexual practices everywhere flourish and abound in prisons. there is abundant evidence on this point. i will only bring forward the evidence of dr. wey, formerly physician to the elmira reformatory, new york. "sexuality" (he wrote in a private letter) "is one of the most troublesome elements with which we have to contend. i have no data as to the number of prisoners here who are sexually perverse. in my pessimistic moments i should feel like saying that all were; but probably per cent, would be a fair estimate." and, referring to the sexual influence which some men have over others, he remarks that "there are many men with features suggestive of femininity that attract others to them in a way that reminds me of a bitch in heat followed by a pack of dogs."[ ] in sing sing prison of new york, per cent, of the prisoners are said to be actively homosexual and a large number of the rest passively homosexual. these prison relationships are not always of a brutal character, mcmurtrie states, the attraction sometimes being more spiritual than physical.[ ] prison life develops and fosters the homosexual tendency of criminals; but there can be little doubt that that tendency, or else a tendency to sexual indifference or bisexuality, is a radical character of a very large number of criminals. we may also find it to a considerable extent among tramps, an allied class of undoubted degenerates, who, save for brief seasons, are less familiar with prison life. i am able to bring forward interesting evidence on this point by an acute observer who lived much among tramps in various countries, and largely devoted himself to the study of them.[ ] the fact that homosexuality is especially common among men of exceptional intellect was long since noted by dante:-- "in somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci e litterati grandi, et di gran fama d'un medismo peccato al mondo lerci."[ ] it has often been noted since and remains a remarkable fact. there cannot be the slightest doubt that intellectual and artistic abilities of the highest order have frequently been associated with a congenitally inverted sexual temperament. there has been a tendency among inverts themselves to discover their own temperament in many distinguished persons on evidence of the most slender character. but it remains a demonstrable fact that numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the present, in various countries, have been inverts. i may here refer to my own observations on this point in the preface. mantegazza (_gli amori degli uomini_) remarks that in his own restricted circle he is acquainted with "a french publicist, a german poet, an italian statesman, and a spanish jurist, all men of exquisite taste and highly cultivated mind," who are sexually inverted. krafft-ebing, in the preface to his _psychopathia sexualis_, referring to the "numberless" communications he has received from these "step-children of nature," remarks that "the majority of the writers are men of high intellectual and social position, and often possess very keen emotions." raffalovich (_uranisme_, p. ) names among distinguished inverts, alexander the great, epaminondas, virgil, the great condé, prince eugène, etc. (the question of virgil's inversion is discussed in the _revista di filologia_, , fas. - , but i have not been able to see this review.) moll, in his _berühmte homosexuelle_ ( , in the series of _grenzfragen des nerven- und seelenlebens_) discusses the homosexuality of a number of eminent persons, for the most part with his usual caution and sagacity; speaking of the alleged homosexuality of wagner he remarks, with entire truth, that "the method of arguing the existence of homosexuality from the presence of feminine traits must be decisively rejected." hirschfeld has more recently included in his great work _die homosexualität_ ( , pp. - ) two lists, ancient and modern, of alleged inverts among the distinguished persons of history, briefly stating the nature of the evidence in each case. they amount to nearly . not all of them, however, can be properly described as distinguished. thus we end in the list english names; of these at least half a dozen were noblemen who were concerned in homosexual prosecutions, but were of no intellectual distinction. others, again, are of undoubted eminence, but there is no good reason to regard them as homosexual; this is the case, for instance, as regards swift, who may have been mentally abnormal, but appears to have been heterosexual rather than homosexual; fletcher, of whom we know nothing definite in this respect, is also included, as well as tennyson, whose youthful sentimental friendship for arthur hallam is exactly comparable to that of montaigne for etienne de la boëtie, yet montaigne is not included in the list. it may be added, however, that while some of the english names in the list are thus extremely doubtful, it would have been possible to add some others who were without doubt inverts. it has not, i think, been noted--largely because the evidence was insufficiently clear--that among moral leaders, and persons with strong ethical instincts, there is a tendency toward the more elevated forms of homosexual feeling. this may be traced, not only in some of the great moral teachers of old, but also in men and women of our own day. it is fairly evident why this should be so. just as the repressed love of a woman or a man has, in normally constituted persons, frequently furnished the motive power for an enlarged philanthropic activity, so the person who sees his own sex also bathed in sexual glamour, brings to his work of human service an ardor wholly unknown to the normally constituted individual; morality to him has become one with love.[ ] i am not prepared here to insist on this point, but no one, i think, who studies sympathetically the histories and experiences of great moral leaders can fail in many cases to note the presence of this feeling, more or less finely sublimated from any gross physical manifestation. if it is probable that in moral movements persons of homosexual temperament have sometimes become prominent, it is undoubtedly true, beyond possibility of doubt, that they have been prominent in religion. many years ago (in ) the ethnologist, elie reclus, in his charming book, _les primitifs_,[ ] setting forth the phenomena of homosexuality among the eskimo innuit tribe, clearly insisted that from time immemorial there has been a connection between the invert and the priest, and showed how well this connection is illustrated by the eskimo _schupans_. much more recently, in his elaborate study of the priest, horneffer discusses the feminine traits of priests and shows that, among the most various peoples, persons of sexually abnormal and especially homosexual temperament have assumed the functions of priesthood. to the popular eye the unnatural is the supernatural, and the abnormal has appeared to be specially close to the secret power of the world. abnormal persons are themselves of the same opinion and regard themselves as divine. as horneffer points out, they often really possess special aptitude.[ ] karsch in his _gleichgeschlechtliche leben der naturvölker_ ( ) has brought out the high religious as well as social significance of castes of cross-dressed and often homosexual persons among primitive peoples. at the same time edward carpenter in his remarkable book, _intermediate types among primitive folk_ ( ), has shown with much insight how it comes about that there is an organic connection between the homosexual temperament and unusual psychic or divinatory powers. homosexual men were non-warlike and homosexual women non-domestic, so that their energies sought different outlets from those of ordinary men and women; they became the initiators of new activities. thus it is that from among them would in some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests. such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence by some and with contempt by others, they would be compelled to face the problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world generally. moreover, carpenter points out, persons in whom the masculine and feminine temperaments were combined would in many cases be persons of intuition and complex mind beyond their fellows, and so able to exercise divination and prophecy in a very real and natural sense.[ ] this aptitude of the invert for primitive religion, for sorcery and divination, would have its reaction on popular feeling, more especially when magic and the primitive forms of religion began to fall into disrepute. the invert would be regarded as the sorcerer of a false and evil religion and be submerged in the same ignominy. this point has been emphasized by westermarck in the instructive chapter on homosexuality in his great work on moral ideas.[ ] he points out the significance of the fact, at the first glance apparently inexplicable, that homosexuality in the general opinion of medieval christianity was constantly associated, even confounded, with heresy, as we see significantly illustrated by the fact that in france and england the popular designation for homosexuality is derived from the bulgarian heretics. it was, westermarck believes, chiefly as a heresy and out of religious zeal that homosexuality was so violently reprobated and so ferociously punished. in modern europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of the renaissance. the intellectual independence of those days and the influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no clear expression, and passed unnoticed.[ ] muret, the humanist, may perhaps be regarded as a typical example of the nature and fate of the superior invert of the renaissance. born in at muret (limousin), of poor but noble family, he was of independent, somewhat capricious character, unable to endure professors, and consequently he was mainly his own teacher, though he often sought advice from jules-césar scaliger. muret was universally admired in his day for his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence, and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that quality was not too common. his portrait shows a somewhat coarse and rustic but intelligent face. he conquered honor and respect before he died in , at the age of . in early life muret wrote wanton erotic poems to women which seem based on personal experience. but in we find him imprisoned in the châtelet for sodomy and in danger of his life, so that he thought of starving himself to death. friends, however, obtained his release and he settled in toulouse. but the very next year he was burnt in effigy in toulouse, as a huguenot and sodomist, this being the result of a judicial sentence which had caused him to flee from the city and from france. four years later he had to flee from padua owing to a similar accusation. he had many friends but none of them protested against the charge, though they aided him to escape from the penalty. it is very doubtful whether he was a huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to pederasty it is with strong disapproval. but his writings reveal passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him. it was after fleeing into italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and exposure that muret is said to have made the famous retort (to the physician by his bedside who had said: "faciamus experimentum in anima vili"): "vilem animam appellas pro qua christus non dedignatus est mori."[ ] a greater humanist than muret, erasmus himself, seems as a young man, when in the augustinian monastery of stein, to have had a homosexual attraction to another brother (afterward prior) to whom he addressed many passionately affectionate letters; his affection seems, however, to have been unrequited.[ ] as the renaissance developed, homosexuality seems to become more prominent among distinguished persons. poliziano was accused of pederasty. aretino was a pederast, as pope julius ii seems also to have been. ariosto wrote in his satires, no doubt too extremely:-- "senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti."[ ] tasso had a homosexual strain in his nature, but he was of weak and feminine constitution, sensitively emotional and physically frail.[ ] it is, however, among artists, at that time and later, that homosexuality may most notably be traced. leonardo da vinci, whose ideals as revealed in his work are so strangely bisexual, lay under homosexual suspicion in his youth. in , when he was years of age, charges were made against him before the florentine officials for the control of public morality, and were repeated, though they do not appear to have been substantiated. there is, however, some ground for supposing that leonardo was imprisoned in his youth.[ ] throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful youths and his pupils were more remarkable for their attractive appearance than for their skill; to one at least of them he was strongly attached, while there is no record of any attachment to a woman. freud, who has studied leonardo with his usual subtlety, considers that his temperament was marked by "ideal homosexuality."[ ] michelangelo, one of the very chief artists of the renaissance period, we cannot now doubt, was sexually inverted. the evidence furnished by his own letters and poems, as well as the researches of numerous recent workers,--parlagreco, scheffler, j.a. symonds, etc.,--may be said to have placed this beyond question.[ ] he belonged to a family of brothers, of whom never married, and so far as is known left no offspring; the fifth only left male heir. his biographer describes michelangelo as "a man of peculiar, not altogether healthy, nervous temperament." he was indifferent to women; only in one case, indeed, during his long life is there evidence even of friendship with a woman, while he was very sensitive to the beauty of men, and his friendships were very tender and enthusiastic. at the same time there is no reason to suppose that he formed any physically passionate relationships with men, and even his enemies seldom or never made this accusation against him. we may probably accept the estimate of his character given by symonds:-- michelangelo buonarotti was one of those exceptional, but not uncommon men who are born with sensibilities abnormally deflected from the ordinary channel. he showed no partiality for women, and a notable enthusiasm for the beauty of young men.... he was a man of physically frigid temperament, extremely sensitive to beauty of the male type, who habitually philosophized his emotions, and contemplated the living objects of his admiration as amiable, not only for their personal qualities, but also for their esthetical attractiveness.[ ] a temperament of this kind seems to have had no significance for the men of those days; they were blind to all homosexual emotion which had no result in sodomy. plato found such attraction a subject for sentimental metaphysics, but it was not until nearly our own time that it again became a subject of interest and study. yet it undoubtedly had profound influence on michelangelo's art, impelling him to find every kind of human beauty in the male form, and only a grave dignity or tenderness, divorced from every quality that is sexually desirable, in the female form. this deeply rooted abnormality is at once the key to the melancholy of michelangelo and to the mystery of his art. michelangelo's contemporary, the painter bazzi ( - ), seems also to have been radically inverted, and to this fact he owed his nickname sodoma. as, however, he was married and had children, it may be that he was, as we should now say, of bisexual temperament. he was a great artist who has been dealt with unjustly, partly, perhaps, because of the prejudice of vasari,--whose admiration for michelangelo amounted to worship, but who is contemptuous toward sodoma and grudging of praise,--partly because his work is little known out of italy and not very easy of access there. reckless, unbalanced, and eccentric in his life, sodoma revealed in his painting a peculiar feminine softness and warmth--which indeed we seem to see also in his portrait of himself at monte oliveto maggiore--and a very marked and tender feeling for masculine, but scarcely virile, beauty.[ ] cellini was probably homosexual. he was imprisoned on a charge of unnatural vice and is himself suspiciously silent in his autobiography concerning this imprisonment.[ ] in the seventeenth century another notable sculptor who has been termed the flemish cellini, jérôme duquesnoy (whose still more distinguished brother françois executed the manneken pis in brussels), was an invert; having finally been accused of sexual relations with a youth in a chapel of the ghent cathedral, where he was executing a monument for the bishop, he was strangled and burned, notwithstanding that much influence, including that of the bishop, was brought to bear in his behalf.[ ] in more recent times winkelmann, who was the initiator of a new greek renaissance and of the modern appreciation of ancient art, lies under what seems to be a well-grounded suspicion of sexual inversion. his letters to male friends are full of the most passionate expressions of love. his violent death also appears to have been due to a love-adventure with a man. the murderer was a cook, a wholly uncultivated man, a criminal who had already been condemned to death, and shortly before murdering winkelmann for the sake of plunder he was found to be on very intimate terms with him.[ ] it is noteworthy that sexual inversion should so often be found associated with the study of antiquity. it must not, however, be too hastily concluded that this is due to suggestion and that to abolish the study of greek literature and art would be largely to abolish sexual inversion. what has really occurred in those recent cases that may be studied, and therefore without doubt in the older cases, is that the subject of congenital sexual inversion is attracted to the study of greek antiquity because he finds there the explanation and the apotheosis of his own obscure impulses. undoubtedly that study tends to develop these impulses. while it is peculiarly easy to name men of distinguished ability who, either certainly or in all probability, have been affected by homosexual tendencies, they are not isolated manifestations. they spring out of an element of diffused homosexuality which is at least as marked in civilization as it is in savagery. it is easy to find illustrations in every country. here it may suffice to refer to france, germany, and england. in france in the thirteenth century the church was so impressed by the prevalence of homosexuality that it reasserted the death penalty for sodomy at the councils of paris ( ) and rouen ( ), while we are told that even by rejecting a woman's advances (as illustrated in marie de france's _lai de lanval_) a man fell under suspicion as a sodomist, which was also held to involve heresy.[ ] at the end of this century (about ) alain de lille was impelled to write a book, _de planctu naturæ_, in order to call attention to the prevalence of homosexual feeling; he also associated the neglect of women with sodomy. "man is made woman," he writes; "he blackens the honor of his sex, the craft of magic venus makes him of double gender"; nobly beautiful youths have "turned their hammers of love to the office of anvils," and "many kisses lie untouched on maiden lips." the result is that "the natural anvils," that is to say the neglected maidens, "bewail the absence of their hammers and are seen sadly to demand them." alain de lille makes himself the voice of this demand.[ ] a few years later, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, sodomy was still regarded as very prevalent. at that time it was especially associated with the templars who, it has been supposed, brought it from the east. such a supposition, however, is not required to account for the existence of homosexuality in france. nor is it necessary, at a somewhat later period, to invoke, as is frequently done, the italian origin of catherine de medici, in order to explain the prevalence of homosexual practices at her court. notwithstanding its prevalence, sodomy was still severely punished from time to time. thus in , dadon, who had formerly been rector of the university of paris, was hanged and then burned for injuring a child through sodomy.[ ] in the seventeenth century, homosexuality continued, however, to flourish, and it is said that nearly all the numerous omissions made in the published editions of tallement des reaux's _historiettes_ refer to sodomy.[ ] how prominent homosexuality was, in the early eighteenth century in france, we learn from the frequent references to it in the letters of madame, the mother of the regent, whose husband was himself effeminate and probably inverted.[ ] for the later years of the century the evidence abounds on every hand. at this time the bastille was performing a useful function, until recently overlooked by historians, as an _asile de sureté_ for abnormal persons whom it was considered unsafe to leave at large. inverts whose conduct became too offensive to be tolerated were frequently placed in the bastille which, indeed "abounded in homosexual subjects," to a greater extent than any other class of sexual perverts. some of the affairs which led to the bastille have a modern air. one such case on a large scale occurred in , and reveals an organized system of homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a handsome, well-made youth named lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing himself off as a man of quality. seduced at the age of by a famous sodomist named duplessis, he had since been at the disposition of a number of homosexual persons, including officers, priests, and marquises. some of the persons involved in these affairs were burned alive; some cut their own throats; others again were set at liberty or transferred to the bicêtre.[ ] during the latter part of the eighteenth century, also, we find another modern homosexual practice recognized in france; the rendezvous or center where homosexual persons could quietly meet each other.[ ] inversion has always been easy to trace in germany. ammianus marcellinus bears witness to its prevalence among some german tribes in later roman days.[ ] in mediæval times, as schultz points out, references to sodomy in germany were far from uncommon. various princes of the german imperial house, and of other princely families in the middle ages, were noted for their intimate friendships. at a later date, attention has frequently been called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked german friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual relationship.[ ] the eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that abandonment to sentiment initiated by rousseau, proved peculiarly favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. on this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come to the surface and find expression. we find this well illustrated in the poet heinrich von kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament, and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler than those for his friend. to this friend, ernst von pfuël (afterward prussian war minister), kleist wrote in at the age of : "you bring the days of the greeks back to me; i could sleep with you, dear youth, my whole soul so embraces you. when you used to bathe in the lake of thun i would gaze with the real feelings of a girl at your beautiful body. it would serve an artist to study from." there follows an enthusiastic account of his friend's beauty and of the greek "idea of the love of youths," and kleist concludes: "go with me to anspach, and let us enjoy the sweets of friendship.... i shall never marry; you must be wife and children to me."[ ] in all social classes and in all fields of activity, germany during the nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious homosexual persons. at the one end we find people of the highest intellectual distinction, such as alexander von humboldt, whom näcke, a cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an invert.[ ] at the other end we find prosperous commercial and manufacturing people who leave germany to find solace in the free and congenial homosexual atmosphere of capri; of these f.a. krupp, the head of the famous essen factory, may be regarded as the type.[ ] in england (and the same is true today of the united states), although homosexuality has been less openly manifest and less thoroughly explored, it is doubtful whether it has been less prevalent than in germany. at an early period, indeed, the evidence may even seem to show that it was more prevalent. in the penitentials of the ninth and tenth centuries "natural fornication and sodomy" were frequently put together and the same penance assigned to both; it was recognized that priests and bishops, as well as laymen, might fall into this sin, though to the bishop nearly three times as much penance was assigned as to the layman. among the normans, everywhere, homosexuality was markedly prevalent; the spread of sodomy in france about the eleventh century is attributed to the normans, and their coming seems to have rendered it at times almost fashionable, at all events at court. in england william rufus was undoubtedly inverted, as later on were edward ii, james i, and, perhaps, though not in so conspicuous a degree, william iii.[ ] ordericus vitalis, who was himself half norman and half english, says that the normans had become very effeminate in his time, and that after the death of william the conqueror sodomy was common both in england and normandy. guillaume de nangis, in his chronicle for about , speaking of the two sons of henry and the company of young nobles who went down with them, in the _white ship_, states that nearly all were considered to be sodomists, and henry of huntingdon, in his _history_, looked upon the loss of the _white ship_ as a judgment of heaven upon sodomy. anselm, in writing to archdeacon william to inform him concerning the recent council at london ( ), gives advice as to how to deal with people who have committed the sin of sodomy, and instructs him not to be too harsh with those who have not realized its gravity, for hitherto "this sin has been so public that hardly anyone has blushed for it, and many, therefore, have plunged into it without realizing its gravity."[ ] so temperate a remark by a man of such unquestionably high character is more significant of the prevalence of homosexuality than much denunciation. in religious circles far from courts and cities, as we might expect, homosexuality was regarded with great horror, though even here we may discover evidence of its wide prevalence. thus in the remarkable _revelation_ of the monk of evesham, written in english in , we find that in the very worst part of purgatory are confined an innumerable company of sodomists (including a wealthy, witty, and learned divine, a doctor of laws, personally known to the monk), and whether these people would ever be delivered from purgatory was a matter of doubt; of the salvation of no other sinners does the monk of evesham seem so dubious. sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense. the statute of ( henry viii, c. ) made it a felony; and pollock and maitland consider that this "affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past."[ ] the temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality. at this period the renaissance movement was reaching england, and here as elsewhere it brought with it, if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an idealization of homosexuality.[ ] an eminent humanist and notable pioneer in dramatic literature, nicholas udall, to whom is attributed _ralph roister doister_, the first english comedy, stands out as unquestionably addicted to homosexual tastes, although he has left no literary evidence of this tendency. he was an early adherent of the protestant movement, and when head-master of eton he was noted for his love of inflicting corporal punishment on the boys. tusser says he once received from udall stripes for "fault but small or none at all." here there was evidently a sexual sadistic impulse, for in (the year of _ralph roister doister_) udall was charged with unnatural crime and confessed his guilt before the privy council. he was dismissed from the head-mastership and imprisoned, but only for a short time, "and his reputation," his modern biographer states, "was not permanently injured." he retained the vicarage of braintree, and was much favored by edward vi, who nominated him to a prebend of windsor. queen mary was also favorable and he became head-master of westminster school.[ ] an elizabethan lyrical poet of high quality, whose work has had the honor of being confused with shakespeare's, richard barnfield, appears to have possessed the temperament, at least, of the invert. his poems to male friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests of a very tolerant age. very little is known of barnfield's life. born in he published his first poem, _the affectionate shepherd_, at the age of , while still at the university. it was issued anonymously, revealed much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth of whom the poet declares:-- "if it be sin to love a lovely lad, oh then sin i." in his subsequent volume, _cynthia_ ( ), barnfield disclaims any intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating virgil's second eclogue. but the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he found a lass whose beauty surpassed that "of the swain whom i never could obtain." after the age of barnfield wrote no more, but, being in easy circumstances, retired to his beautiful manor house and country estate in shropshire, lived there for twenty years and died leaving a wife and son.[ ] it seems probable that he was of bisexual temperament, and that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, the homosexual element developed early under the influence of a classical education and university associations, while the normal heterosexual element developed later and, as may happen in bisexual persons, was associated with the more commonplace and prosaic side of life. barnfield was only a genuine poet on the homosexual side of his nature. greater men of that age than barnfield may be suspected of homosexual tendencies. marlowe, whose most powerful drama, _edward ii_, is devoted to a picture of the relations between that king and his minions, is himself suspected of homosexuality. an ignorant informer brought certain charges of freethought and criminality against him, and further accused him of asserting that they are fools who love not boys. these charges have doubtless been colored by the vulgar channel through which they passed, but it seems absolutely impossible to regard them as the inventions of a mere gallows-bird such as this informer was.[ ] moreover, marlowe's poetic work, while it shows him by no means insensitive to the beauty of women, also reveals a special and peculiar sensitiveness to masculine beauty. marlowe clearly had a reckless delight in all things unlawful, and it seems probable that he possessed the bisexual temperament. shakespeare has also been discussed from this point of view. all that can be said, however, is that he addressed a long series of sonnets to a youthful male friend. these sonnets are written in lover's language of a very tender and noble order. they do not appear to imply any relationship that the writer regarded as shameful or that would be so regarded by the world. moreover, they seem to represent but a single episode in the life of a very sensitive, many-sided nature.[ ] there is no other evidence in shakespeare's work of homosexual instinct such as we may trace throughout marlowe's, while there is abundant evidence of a constant preoccupation with women. while shakespeare thus narrowly escapes inclusion in the list of distinguished inverts, there is much better ground for the inclusion of his great contemporary, francis bacon. aubrey in his laboriously compiled _short lives_, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by sir simonds d'ewes in his _autobiography_. d'ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of suffolk as bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. he was an upright and honorable man of scholarly habits, and, moreover, a trained lawyer, who had many opportunities of obtaining first-hand information, for he had lived in the chancery office from childhood. he is very precise as to bacon's homosexual practices with his own servants, both before and after his fall, and even gives the name of a "very effeminate-faced youth" who was his "catamite and bedfellow"; he states, further, that there had been some question of bringing bacon to trial for sodomy. these allegations may be supported by a letter of bacon's own mother (printed in spedding's _life of bacon_), reproving him on account of what she had heard concerning his behavior with the young welshmen in his service whom he made his bedfellows. it is notable that bacon seems to have been specially attracted to welshmen (one might even find evidence of this in the life of the welshman, henry vii), a people of vivacious temperament unlike his own; this is illustrated by his long and intimate friendship with the mercurial sir toby mathew, his "alter ego," a man of dissipated habits in early life, though we are not told that he was homosexual. bacon had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever in love or cherished any affectionate intimacy with a woman. women play no part at all in his life. his marriage, which was childless, took place at the mature age of ; it was effected in a business-like manner, and though he always treated his wife with formal consideration it is probable that he neglected her, and certain that he failed to secure her devotion; it is clear that toward the end of bacon's life she formed a relationship with her gentleman usher, whom subsequently she married. bacon's writings, it may be added, equally with his letters, show no evidence of love or attraction to women; in his _essays_ he is brief and judicial on the subject of marriage, copious and eloquent on the subject of friendship, while the essay on beauty deals exclusively with masculine beauty. during the first half of the eighteenth century we have clear evidence that homosexuality flourished in london with the features which it presents today in all large cities everywhere. there was a generally known name, "mollies," applied to homosexual persons, evidently having reference to their frequently feminine characteristics; there were houses of private resort for them ("molly houses"), there were special public places of rendezvous whither they went in search of adventure, exactly as there are today. a walk in upper moorfields was especially frequented by the homosexual about . a detective employed by the police about that date gave evidence as follows at the old bailey; "i takes a turn that way and leans over the wall. in a little time the prisoner passes by, and looks hard at me, and at a small distance from me stands up against the wall as if he was going to make water. then by degrees he siddles nearer and nearer to where i stood, till at last he was close to me. 'tis a very fine night,' says he. 'aye,' say i, 'and so it is.' then he takes me by the hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little, he conveys it to his breeches," whereupon the detective seizes the man by his sexual organs and holds him until the constable comes up and effects an arrest. at the same period margaret clap, commonly called mother clap, kept a house in field lane, holborn, which was a noted resort of the homosexual. to mother clap's molly-house or clients would resort every night; on sunday there might be as many as , for, as in berlin and other cities today, that was the great homosexual gala night; there were beds in every room in this house. we are told that the "men would sit in one another's laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hands indecently. then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women, 'oh, fie, sir,'--'pray, sir,'--'dear sir,'--'lord, how can you serve me so?'--'i swear i'll cry out,'--'you're a wicked devil,'--'and you're a bold face,'--'eh, ye dear little toad,'--'come, bus.' they'd hug and play and toy and go out by couples into another room, on the same floor, to be 'married,' as they called it." on the whole one gains the impression that homosexual practices were more prevalent in london in the eighteenth century, bearing in mind its population at that time, than they are today.[ ] it must not, however, be supposed that the law was indulgent and its administration lax. the very reverse was the case. the punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted. homosexual intercourse, without evidence of penetration, was regarded as "attempt" and was usually punished by the pillory and a heavy fine, followed by two years' imprisonment. moreover, it would appear that more activity was shown by the police in prosecution than is nowadays the case; this is, for instance, suggested by the evidence of the detective already quoted. to keep a homosexual resort was also a severely punishable offense. mother clap was charged at the old bailey in with "keeping a sodomitical house"; she protested that she could not herself have taken part in these practices, but that availed her nothing; she could bring forward no witnesses on her behalf and was condemned to pay a fine, to stand in the pillory, and to undergo imprisonment for two years. the cases were dealt with in a matter-of-fact way which seems to bear further witness to the frequency of the offense, and with no effort to expend any specially vindictive harshness on this class of offenders. if there was the slightest doubt as to the facts, even though the balance of evidence was against the accused, he was usually acquitted, and the man who could bring witnesses to his general good character might often thereby escape. in a religious young man, married, was convicted of attempting sodomy with two young men he slept with; he was fined, placed in the pillory and imprisoned for two months. next year a man was acquitted on a similar charge, and another man, of decent aspect, although the evidence indicated that he might have been guilty of sodomy, was only convicted of attempt, and sentenced to fine, pillory, and two years' imprisonment. in , again, a schoolmaster was acquitted, on account of his good reputation, of the charge of attempt on a boy of , his pupil, though the evidence seemed decidedly against him. in a man was sentenced to death for sodomy effected on his young apprentice; this was a bad case and the surgeon's evidence indicated laceration of the perineum. homosexuality of all kinds flourished, it will be seen, notwithstanding the fearless yet fair application of a very severe law.[ ] in more recent times byron has frequently been referred to as experiencing homosexual affections, and i have been informed that some of his poems nominally addressed to women were really inspired by men. it is certain that he experienced very strong emotions toward his male friends. "my school-friendships," he wrote, "were with me passions." when he afterward met one of these friends, lord clare, in italy, he was painfully agitated; and could never hear the name without a beating of the heart. at the age of he formed one of his strong attachments for a youth to whom he left £ in his will.[ ] it is probable, however, that here, as well as in the case of shakespeare, and in that of tennyson's love for his youthful friend, arthur hallam, as well as of montaigne for etienne de la boëtie, although such strong friendships may involve an element of sexual emotion, we have no true and definite homosexual impulse; homosexuality is merely simulated by the ardent and hyperesthetic emotions of the poet.[ ] the same quality of the poet's emotional temperament may doubtless, also, be invoked in the case of goethe, who is said to have written elegies which, on account of their homosexual character, still remain unpublished. the most famous homosexual trial of recent times in england was that of oscar wilde, a writer whose literary reputation may be said to be still growing, not only in england but throughout the world. wilde was the son of parents who were both of unusual ability and somewhat eccentric. both these tendencies became in him more concentrated. he was born with, as it were, a congenital antipathy to the commonplace, a natural love of paradox, and he possessed the skill to embody the characteristic in finished literary form. at the same time, it must not be forgotten, beneath this natural attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life and literature were usually sound and reasonable. his essay on "the soul of man under socialism" witnessed to his large and enlightened conception of life, and his profound admiration for flaubert to the sanity and solidity of his literary taste. in early life he revealed no homosexual tendencies; he married and had children. after he had begun to outgrow his youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame, he developed what was at first a simply inquisitive interest in inversion. such inquisitive interest is sometimes the sign of an emerging homosexual impulse. it proved to be so in wilde's case and ultimately he was found to be cultivating the acquaintance of youths of low class and doubtful character. although this development occurred comparatively late in life, we must hesitate to describe wilde's homosexuality as acquired. if we consider his constitution and his history, it is not difficult to suppose that homosexual germs were present in a latent form from the first, and it may quite well be that wilde's inversion was of that kind which is now described as retarded, though still congenital. as is usual in england, no active efforts were made to implicate wilde in any criminal charge. it was his own action, as even he himself seems to have vaguely realized beforehand, which brought the storm about his head. he was arrested, tried, condemned, and at once there arose a general howl of execration, joined in even by the judge, whose attitude compared unfavorably with the more impartial attitude of the eighteenth century judges in similar cases. wilde came out of prison ambitious to retrieve his reputation by the quality of his literary work. but he left reading gaol merely to enter a larger and colder prison. he soon realized that his spirit was broken even more than his health. he drifted at last to paris, where he shortly after died, shunned by all but a few of his friends.[ ] in a writer of the first order, edward fitzgerald, to whom we owe the immortal and highly individualized version of _omar khayyam_, it is easy to trace an element of homosexuality, though it appears never to have reached full and conscious development. fitzgerald was an eccentric person who, though rich and on friendly terms with some of the most distinguished men of his time, was always out of harmony with his environment. he felt himself called on to marry, very unhappily, a woman whom he had never been in love with and with whom he had nothing in common. all his affections were for his male friends. in early life he was devoted to his friend w.k. browne, whom he glorified in _euphranor_. "to him browne was at once jonathan, gamaliel, apollo,--the friend, the master, the god,--there was scarcely a limit to his devotion and admiration."[ ] on browne's premature death fitzgerald's heart was empty. in at lowestoft, fitzgerald, as he wrote to mrs. browne, "used to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart." it was then that he met "posh" (joseph fletcher), a fisherman, feet tall, said to be of the best suffolk type, both in body and character. posh reminded fitzgerald of his dead friend browne; he made him captain of his lugger, and was thereafter devoted to him. posh was, said fitzgerald, "a man of the finest saxon type, with a complexion _vif, mâle et flamboyant_, blue eyes, a nose less than roman, more than greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman might envy. further he was a man of simplicity; of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of nature's grandest type," in fact the "greatest man" fitzgerald had ever met. posh was not, however, quite so absolutely perfect as this description suggests, and various misunderstandings arose in consequence between the two friends so unequal in culture and social traditions. these difficulties are reflected in some of the yet extant letters from the enormous mass which fitzgerald addressed to "my dear poshy."[ ] a great personality of recent times, widely regarded with reverence as the prophet-poet of democracy[ ]--walt whitman--has aroused discussion by his sympathetic attitude toward passionate friendship, or "manly love" as he calls it, in _leaves of grass_. in this book--in "calamus," "drumtaps," and elsewhere--whitman celebrates a friendship in which physical contact and a kind of silent voluptuous emotion are essential elements. in order to settle the question as to the precise significance of "calamus," j.a. symonds wrote to whitman, frankly posing the question. the answer (written from camden, n.j., on august , ) is the only statement of whitman's attitude toward homosexuality, and it is therefore desirable that it should be set on record:-- "about the questions on 'calamus,' etc., they quite daze me. _leaves of grass_ is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character--all its pages and pieces so coming strictly under. that the 'calamus' part has ever allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is terrible. i am fain to hope that the pages themselves are not to be even mentioned for such gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and unwished possibility of morbid inferences--which are disavowed by me and seem damnable." it would seem from this letter[ ] that whitman had never realized that there is any relationship whatever between the passionate emotion of physical contact from man to man, as he had experienced it and sung it, and the act which with other people he would regard as a crime against nature. this may be singular, for there are many inverted persons who have found satisfaction in friendships less physical and passionate than those described in _leaves of grass_, but whitman was a man of concrete, emotional, instinctive temperament, lacking in analytical power, receptive to all influences, and careless of harmonizing them. he would most certainly have refused to admit that he was the subject of inverted sexuality. it remains true, however, that "manly love" occupies in his work a predominance which it would scarcely hold in the feelings of the "average man," whom whitman wishes to honor. a normally constituted person, having assumed the very frank attitude taken up by whitman, would be impelled to devote far more space and far more ardor to the subject of sexual relationships with women and all that is involved in maternity than is accorded to them in _leaves of grass_. some of whitman's extant letters to young men, though they do not throw definite light on this question, are of a very affectionate character,[ ] and, although a man of remarkable physical vigor, he never felt inclined to marry.[ ] it remains somewhat difficult to classify him from the sexual point of view, but we can scarcely fail to recognize the presence of a homosexual tendency. i should add that some friends and admirers of whitman are not prepared to accept the evidence of the letter to symonds. i am indebted to "q." for the following statement of the objections:-- "i think myself that it is a mistake to give much weight to this letter--perhaps a mistake to introduce it at all, since if introduced it will, of course, carry weight. and this for three or four reasons:-- " . that it is difficult to reconcile the letter itself (with its strong tone of disapprobation) with the general 'atmosphere' of _leaves of grass_, the tenor of which is to leave everything open and free. " . that the letter is in hopeless conflict with the 'calamus' section of poems. for, whatever moral lines whitman may have drawn at the time of writing these poems, it seems to me quite incredible that the possibility of certain inferences, morbid or other, was undreamed of. " . that the letter was written only a few months before his last illness and death, and is the only expression of the kind that he appears to have given utterance to. " . that symonds's letter, to which this was a reply, is not forth coming; and we consequently do not know what rash expressions it may have contained--leading whitman (with his extreme caution) to hedge his name from possible use to justify dubious practices." i may add that i endeavored to obtain symonds's letter, but he was unable to produce it, nor has any copy of it been found among his papers. it should be said that whitman's attitude toward symonds was marked by high regard and admiration. "a wonderful man is addington symonds," he remarked shortly before his own death; "some ways the most indicative and penetrating and significant man of our time. symonds is a curious fellow; i love him dearly. he is of college breed and education, horribly literary and suspicious, and enjoys things. a great fellow for delving into persons and into the concrete, and even into the physiological and the gastric, and wonderfully cute." but on this occasion he delved in vain. the foregoing remarks (substantially contained in the previous editions of this book) were based mainly on the information received from j.a. symonds's side. but of more recent years interesting light has been thrown on this remarkable letter from walt whitman's side. the boswellian patience, enthusiasm, and skill which horace traubel has brought to his full and elaborate work, now in course of publication, _with walt whitman in camden_, clearly reveal, in the course of various conversations, whitman's attitude to symonds's question and the state of mind which led up to this letter. whitman talked to traubel much about symonds from the twenty-seventh of april, (very soon after the date when traubel's work begins), onward. symonds had written to him repeatedly, it seems, concerning the "passional relations of men with men," as whitman expressed it. "he is always driving at me about that: is that what calamus means?--because of me or in spite of me, is that what it means? i have said no, but no does not satisfy him. [there is, however, no record from symonds's side of any letter by whitman to symonds in this sense up to this date.] but read this letter--read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard, almost compels me--it is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says 'i won't move till you answer my question.' you see, this is an old letter--sixteen years old--and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in one of his latest notes. he is surely a wonderful man--a rare, cleaned-up man--a white-souled, heroic character.... you will be writing something about calamus some day," said w. [to traubel], "and this letter, and what i say, may help to clear your ideas. calamus needs clear ideas; it may be easily, innocently distorted from its natural, its motive, body of doctrine." the letter, dated feb. , , of some length, is then reproduced. it tells how much _leaves of grass_, and especially the calamus section, had helped the writer. "what the love of man for man has been in the past," symonds wrote, "i think i know. what it is here now, i know also--alas! what you say it can and should be i dimly discern in your poems. but this hardly satisfies me--so desirous am i of learning what you teach. some day, perhaps,--in some form, i know not what, but in your own chosen form,--you will tell me more about the love of friends. till then i wait." "said w: 'well, what do you think of that? do you think that could be answered?' 'i don't see why you call that letter driving you hard. it's quiet enough--it only asks questions, and asks the questions mildly enough,' 'i suppose you are right--"drive" is not exactly the word: yet you know how i hate to be catechised. symonds is right, no doubt, to ask the questions: i am just as much right if i do not answer them: just as much right if i do answer them. i often say to myself about calamus--perhaps it means more or less than what i thought myself--means different: perhaps i don't know what it all means--perhaps never did know. my first instinct about all that symonds writes is violently reactionary--is strong and brutal for no, no, no. then the thought intervenes that i maybe do not know all my own meanings: i say to myself: "you, too, go away, come back, study your own book--as alien or stranger, study your own book, see what it amounts to." some time or other i will have to write to him definitely about calamus--give him my word for it what i meant or mean it to mean.'" again, a month later (may , ), whitman speaks to traubel of a "beautiful letter" from symonds. "you will see that he harps on the calamus poems again. i don't see why it should, but his recurrence to that subject irritates me a little. i suppose you might say--why don't you shut him up by answering him? there is no logical answer to that i suppose: but i may ask in my turn: 'what right has he to ask questions anyway?'" w. laughed a bit. "anyway the question comes back to me almost every time he writes. he is courteous enough about it--that is the reason i do not resent him. i suppose the whole thing will end in an answer some day." the letter follows. the chief point in it is that the writer hopes he has not been importunate in the question he had asked about calamus three years before. "i [traubel] said to w.: 'that's a humble letter enough: i don't see anything in that to get excited about. he doesn't ask you to answer the old question. in fact he rather apologizes for having asked it.' w. fired up 'who is excited? as to that question, he does ask it again and again: asks it, asks it, asks it.' i laughed at his vehemence. 'well, suppose he does? it does not harm. besides, you've got nothing to hide. i think your silence might lead him to suppose there was a nigger in your wood pile.' 'oh, nonsense! but for thirty years my enemies and friends have been asking me questions about the _leaves_: i'm tired of not answering questions.' it was very funny to see his face when he gave a humorous twist to the fling in his last phrase. then he relaxed and added: 'anyway i love symonds. who could fail to love a man who could write such a letter? i suppose he will yet have to be answered, damn 'im!'" it is clear that these conversations considerably diminish the force of the declaration in whitman's letter. we see that the letter which, on the face of it, might have represented the swift and indignant reaction of a man who, suddenly faced by the possibility that his work may be interpreted in a perverse sense, emphatically repudiates that interpretation, was really nothing of the kind. symonds for at least eighteen years had been gently, considerately, even humbly, yet persistently, asking the same perfectly legitimate question. if the answer was really an emphatic no, it would more naturally have been made in than . moreover, in the face of this ever-recurring question, whitman constantly speaks to his friends of his great affection for symonds and his admiration for his intellectual cuteness, feelings that would both be singularly out of place if applied to a man who was all the time suggesting the possibility that his writings contained inferences that were "terrible," "morbid," and "damnable." evidently, during all those years, whitman could not decide what to reply. on the one hand he was moved by his horror of being questioned, by his caution, by his natural aversion to express approval of anything that could be called unnatural or abnormal. on the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him. it was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that--being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement--he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.[ ] concerning another great modern writer--paul verlaine, the first of modern french poets--it seems possible to speak with less hesitation. a man who possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of genius, verlaine--as his work shows and as he himself admitted--all his life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period attracted to women, at another to men. he was without doubt, it seems to me, bisexual. an early connection with another young poet, arthur rimbaud, terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to verlaine's imprisonment at mons. in after-years he gave expression to the exalted passion of this relationship--_mon grand péché radieux_--in _læti et errabundi_, published in the volume entitled _parallèlement_; and in later poems he has told of less passionate and less sensual relationships which yet were more than friendship, for instance, in the poem, "_mon ami, ma plus belle amitié, ma meilleure_" in _bonheur_.[ ] in this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious, and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon which may be mentioned. this is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to homosexuality (whether or not involving a greater frequency of congenital inversion is not usually clear) among certain races and in certain regions.[ ] in europe this would be best illustrated by the case of southern italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern italy, although italians generally are franker than men of northern race in admitting their sexual practices.[ ] how far the supposed greater homosexuality of southern italy may be due to greek influence and greek blood it is not very easy to say. it must be remembered that, in dealing with a northern country like england, homosexual phenomena do not present themselves in the same way as they do in southern italy today, or in ancient greece. in greece the homosexual impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an open homosexual lover, and yet, like epaminondas, be a great and honored citizen of his country. there was no reason whatever why a man, who in mental and physical constitution was perfectly normal, should not adopt a custom that was regarded as respectable, and sometimes as even specially honorable. but it is quite otherwise today in a country like england or the united states.[ ] in these countries all our traditions and all our moral ideals, as well as the law, are energetically opposed to every manifestation of homosexual passion. it requires a very strong impetus to go against this compact social force which, on every side, constrains the individual into the paths of heterosexual love. that impetus, in a well-bred individual who leads the normal life of his fellow-men and who feels the ordinary degree of respect for the social feeling surrounding him, can only be supplied by a fundamental--usually, it is probable, inborn--perversion of the sexual instinct, rendering the individual organically abnormal. it is with this fundamental abnormality, usually called sexual inversion, that we shall here be concerned. there is no evidence to show that homosexuality in greece was a congenital perversion, although it appears that coelius aurelianus affirms that in the opinion of parmenides it was hereditary. aristotle also, in his fragment on physical love, though treating the whole matter with indulgence, seems to have distinguished abnormal congenital homosexuality from acquired homosexual vice. doubtless in a certain proportion of cases the impulse was organic, and it may well be that there was an organic and racial predisposition to homosexuality among the greeks, or, at all events, the dorians. but the state of social feeling, however it originated, induced a large proportion of the ordinary population to adopt homosexuality as a fashion, or, it may be said, the environment was peculiarly favorable to the development of latent homosexual tendencies. so that any given number of homosexual persons among the greeks would have presented a far smaller proportion of constitutionally abnormal individuals than a like number in england. in a similar manner--though i do not regard the analogy as complete--infanticide or the exposition of children was practised in some of the early greek states by parents who were completely healthy and normal; in england a married woman who destroys her child is in nearly every case demonstrably diseased or abnormal. for this reason i am unable to see that homosexuality in ancient greece--while of great interest as a social and psychological problem--throws light on sexual inversion as we know it in england or the united states. concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion and of homosexual phenomena generally, there can be no manner of doubt. this question has been most fully investigated in germany. in berlin, moll states that he has himself seen between and homosexual persons and heard of some to others. hirschfeld states that he has known over , homosexual persons. there are, i am informed, several large cafés in berlin which are almost exclusively patronized by inverts who come here to flirt and make acquaintances; as these cafés are frequented by male street prostitutes (pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home or to a hotel with a café acquaintance. there are also a considerable number of homosexual _kneipen_, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors insist on good order and allow no extortion, while the police, though of course aware of their existence, never interfere. homosexual cafés for women are also found in berlin. there is some reason for believing that homosexuality is especially prominent in germany and among germans. i have elsewhere referred to the highly emotional and sentimental traits which have frequently marked german friendships. germany is the only country in which there is a definite and well-supported movement for the defense and social rehabilitation of inverts. the study of sexual inversion began in germany, and the scientific and literary publications dealing with homosexuality issued from the german press probably surpass in quantity and importance those issued from all other countries put together. the homosexual tendencies of germans outside germany have been noted in various countries. among my english cases i have found that a strain of german blood occurs much more frequently than we are entitled to expect; parisian prostitutes are said to be aware of the homosexual tastes of germans; it is significant that (as a german invert familiar with turkey informed näcke), at constantinople, the procurers, who naturally supply girls as well as youths, regard germans and austrians as more tending to homosexuality than the foreigners from any other land. germans usually deny, however, that there is any special german proclivity to inversion, and it would not appear that such statistics as are available (though all such statistics cannot be regarded as more than approximations) show any pronounced predominance of inversion among germans. it is to hirschfeld that we owe the chief attempt to gain some notion of the percentage of homosexual persons among the general population.[ ] it may be said to vary in different regions and more especially in different occupations, from to per cent. but the average when the individuals belonging to a large number of groups are combined is generally found to be rather over per cent. so that there are about a million and a half inverted persons in germany.[ ] this would be a minimum which can scarcely fail to be below the actual proportion, as no one can be certain that he is acquainted with the real proclivities of all the persons comprising a larger group of acquaintances.[ ] it is not found in the estimates which have reached hirschfeld that the french groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual persons than the german groups, and a japanese group comes out near to the general average for the whole. various authorities, especially germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in france as in germany.[ ] saint-paul ("dr. laupts"), on the other hand, is unable to accept this view. as an army surgeon who has long served in africa he can (as also rebierre in his _joyeux et demifous_) bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among the african battalions of the french army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the french army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population.[ ] näcke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in celtic lands, and in the latin countries generally, than in teutonic and slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question of race.[ ] the question is still undecided. it is possible that the undoubted fact that homosexuality is less conspicuous in france and the other latin countries than in teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence of a smaller proportion of congenital inverts in the former lands, but mainly to general difference in temperament and in the social reaction.[ ] the french idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much greater degree than the germans, while at the same time inverts in france have much less occasion than in germany to proclaim their legal grievances. apart from such considerations as these it seems very doubtful whether inborn inversion is in any considerable degree rarer in france than in germany. as to the frequency of homosexuality in england[ ] and the united states there is much evidence. in england its manifestations are well marked for those whose eyes have once been opened. the manifestations are of the same character as those in germany, modified by social and national differences, and especially by the greater reserve, puritanism, and prudery of england.[ ] in the united states these same influences exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of homosexuality. hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the investigation of homosexuality, states that when visiting philadelphia and boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of homosexuality, though he was afterward assured by those acquainted with local conditions that its extension in both cities is "colossal." there have been numerous criminal cases and scandals in the united states in which homosexuality has come to the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases of transvestism or cross-dressing in the states seem to be in a large proportion associated with homosexuality. in the opinion of some, english homosexuality has become much more conspicuous during recent years, and this is sometimes attributed to the oscar wilde case. no doubt, the celebrity of oscar wilde and the universal publicity given to the facts of the case by the newspapers may have brought conviction of their perversion to many inverts who were before only vaguely conscious of their abnormality, and, paradoxical though it may seem, have imparted greater courage to others; but it can scarcely have sufficed to increase the number of inverts. rather, one may say, the development of urban life renders easier the exhibition and satisfaction of this as of all other forms of perversion. regarding the proportion of inverts among the general population, it is very difficult to speak positively. the invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. the estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, because his homosexual acquaintances are careful not to inform him concerning their proclivities. a writer who has studied the phenomena of homosexuality is apt to be misguided in the same way as the invert himself, and to overestimate the prevalence of the perversion. striving to put aside this source of fallacy, and only considering those individuals with whom i have been brought in contact by the ordinary circumstances of life, and with whose modes of feeling i am acquainted, i am still led to the conclusion that the proportion is considerable. among the professional and most cultured element of the middle class in england, there must be a distinct percentage of inverts which may sometimes be as much as per cent., though such estimates must always be hazardous. among women of the same class the percentage seems to be at least double, though here the phenomena are less definite and deep-seated. this seems to be a moderate estimate for this class, which includes, however, it must be remembered, a considerable proportion of individuals who are somewhat abnormal in other respects. as we descend the scale the phenomena are doubtless less common, though when we reach the working class we come to that comparative indifference to which allusion has already been made. taken altogether we may probably conclude that the proportion of inverts is the same as in other related and neighboring lands, that is to say, slightly over per cent. that would give the homosexual population of great britain as somewhere about a million. footnotes: [ ] taking all its forms _en bloc_, as they are known to the police, homosexuality is seen to possess formidable proportions. thus in france, from official papers which passed through m. carlier's bureau during ten years ( - ), he compiled a list of pederasts who came within the cognizance of the police; parisians, provincials, and foreigners. of these, , or more than the half, could not be convicted of illegal acts. [ ] the chief general collection of data (not here drawn upon) concerning homosexuality among animals is by the zoölogist prof. karsch, "päderastie und tribadie bei den tieren," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ii. brehm's _tierleben_ also contains many examples. see also a short chapter (ch. xxix) in hirschfeld's _homosexualität_. [ ] h. sainte-claire deville, "de l'internat et son influence sur l'education de la jeunesse," a paper read to the académie des sciences morales et politiques, july , , and quoted by chevalier, _l'inversion sexuelle_, pp. - . [ ] m. bombarda, _comptes rendus congrès internationale de l'anthropologie criminelle_, amsterdam, p. . [ ] lacassagne, "de la criminalité chez les animaux," _revue scientifique_, . [ ] steinach, "utersuchungen zu vergleichende physiologie," _archiv für die gesammte physiologie_, bd. lvi, , p. . [ ] féré, _comptes-rendus société de biologie_, july , . we may perhaps connect this with an observation of e. selous (_zoölogist_, may and sept., ) on a bird, the great crested grebe; after pairing, the male would crouch to the female, who played his part to him; the same thing is found among pigeons. selous suggests that this is a relic of primitive hermaphroditism. but it may be remembered that in the male generally sexual intercourse tends to be more exhausting than in the female; this fact would favor a reversion of their respective parts. [ ] e. selous, "sexual selection in birds," _zoölogist_, feb., , p. ; ib., may, p. . sexual aberrations generally are not uncommon among birds; see, e.g., a. heim, "sexuelle verirrungen bei vögeln in den tropen," _sexual-probleme_, april, . [ ] see moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, , bd. i, pp. , - . for a summary of facts concerning homosexuality in animals see f. karsch, "päderastie und tribadie bei den tieren auf grund der literatur," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. ii, , pp. - [ ] muccioli, "degenerazione e criminalità nei colombi," _archivio di psichiatria_, , p. . [ ] _l'intermédiare des biologistes_, november , . [ ] r.i. pocock, _field_, oct., . [ ] r.s. rutherford, "crowing hens," _poultry_, january , . [ ] this has now been very thoroughly done by prof. f. karsch-haack in a large book, _das gleichgeschlechtliche leben der naturvölker_, . an earlier and shorter study by the same author was published in the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iii, . [ ] see a brief and rather inconclusive treatment of the question by bruns meissner, "assyriologische studien," iv, _mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen gesellschaft_, . [ ] _monatshefte für praktische dermatologie_, bd. xxix, , p. . [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] beardmore also notes that sodomy is "regularly indulged in" in new guinea on this account. (_journal of the anthropological institute_, may, , p. .) [ ] i have been told by medical men in india that it is specially common among the sikhs, the finest soldier-race in india. [ ] foley, _bulletin société d'anthropologie de paris_, october , . [ ] see, e.g., o. kiefer, "plato's stellung zu homosexualität," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. vii. [ ] bethe, op. cit., p. . in old japan (before the revolution of ) also, however, according to f.s. krauss (_das geschlechtsleben der japaner_, ch. xiii, ), the homosexual relations between knights and their pages resembled those of ancient greece. [ ] _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, , heft , p. . [ ] among the sarts of turkestan a class of well-trained and educated homosexual prostitutes, resembling those found in china and many regions of northern asia, bearing also the same name of _batsha_, are said to be especially common because fostered by the scarcity of women through polygamy and by the women's ignorance and coarseness. the institution of the _batsha_ is supposed to have come to turkestan from persia. (herman, "die päderastie bei den sarten," _sexual-probleme_, june, .) this would seem to suggest that persia may have been a general center of diffusions of this kind of refined homosexuality in northern asia. [ ] morache, art. "chine," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_; matignon, "la péderastie en chine," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., ; von der choven, summarized in _archives de neurologie_, march, ; scié-ton-fa, "l'homosexualité en chine," _revue de l'hypnotisme_, april, . [ ] _moeurs des peuples de l'inde_, , vol. i, part ii, ch. xii. in lahore and lucknow, as quoted by burton, daville describes "men dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech, ogling their admirer with all the coquetry of bayaderes." [ ] _voyages and travels_, , part ii, p. . [ ] a. lisiansky, _voyage, etc._, london, , p. . [ ] _ethnographische skizzen_, , p. . [ ] c.f.p. von martius, _zur ethnographie amerika's_, leipzig, , bd. i, p. . in ancient mexico bernal diaz wrote: _erant quasi omnes sodomia commaculati, et adolescentes multi, muliebriter vestiti, ibant publice, cibum quarentes ab isto diabolico et abominabili labore_. [ ] hammond, _sexual impotence_, pp. - . [ ] _new york medical journal_, dec. , . [ ] j. turnbull, "_a voyage round the world in the year _," etc., , p. . [ ] _annales d'hygiène et de médecine coloniale_, , p. . [ ] oskar baumann, "conträre sexual-erscheinungen bei die neger-bevölkerung zanzibars," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. . [ ] rev. j.h. weeks, _journal anthropological institute_, , p. . i am informed by a medical correspondent in the united states that inversion is extremely prevalent among american negroes. "i have good reason to believe," he writes, "that it is far more prevalent among them than among the white people of any nation. if inversion is to be regarded as a penalty of 'civilization' this is remarkable. perhaps, however, the negro, _relatively to his capacity_, is more highly civilized than we are; at any rate his civilization has been thrust upon him, and not acquired through the long throes of evolution. colored inverts desire white men as a rule, but are not averse to men of their own race. i believe that per cent, of negroes in the united states are sexually inverted." [ ] among the papuans of german new guinea, where the women have great power, marriage is late, and the young men are compelled to live separated from the women in communal houses. here, says moskowski (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ), homosexual orgies are openly carried on. [ ] c.g. seligmann, "sexual inversion among primitive races," _alienist and neurologist_, jan., . in a tale of the western solomon islands, reported by j.c. wheeler (_anthropophyteia_, vol. ix, p. ) we find a story of a man who would be a woman, and married another man and did woman's work. [ ] hardman, "habits and customs of natives of kimberley, western australia," _proceedings royal irish academy_, d series, vol. i, , p. . [ ] klaatsch, "some notes on scientific travel amongst the black populations of tropic australia," adelaide meeting of _australian association for the advancement of science_, january, , p. . [ ] in further illustration of this i have been told that among the common people there is often no feeling against connection with a woman _per anum_. [ ] chevalier (_l'inversion sexuelle_, pp. - ) brings forward a considerable amount of evidence regarding homosexuality at rome under the emperors. see also moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, , pp. - , and hirschfeld, _homosexualität_, , pp. - . on the literary side, petronius best reveals the homosexual aspect of roman life about the time of tiberius. [ ] j.a. symonds wrote an interesting essay on this subject; see also kiefer, _jahrbuch f. sex. zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, . [ ] see l. von scheffler, "elagabal," _jahrbuch f. sex. zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, ; also duviquet, _héliogabale (mercure de france_). [ ] the following note has been furnished to me: "balzac, in _une dernière incarnation de vautrin_, describes the morals of the french _bagnes_. dostoieffsky, in _prison-life in siberia_, touches on the same subject. see his portrait of sirotkin, p. et seq., p. (edition j. and r. maxwell, london). we may compare carlier, _les deux prostitutions_, pp. - , for an account of the violence of homosexual passions in french prisons. the initiated are familiar with the fact in english prisons. bouchard, in his _confessions_, paris, liseux, , describes the convict station at marseilles in ." homosexuality among french recidivists at saint-jean-du-maroni in french guiana has been described by dr. cazanova, _arch. d'anth. crim._, january, , p. . see also davitt's _leaves from a prison diary_, and berkman's _prison memoirs of an anarchist_; also rebierre, _joyeux et demifous_, . [ ] d. mcmurtrie, _chicago medical recorder_, january, . [ ] see appendix a: "homosexuality among tramps," by "josiah flynt." [ ] _inferno_, xv. the place of homosexuality in the _divine comedy_ itself has been briefly studied by undine freün von verschuer, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. viii, . [ ] hirschfeld and others have pointed out, very truly, that inverts are less prone than normal persons to regard caste and social position. this innately democratic attitude renders it easier for them than for ordinary people to rise to what cyples has called the "ecstasy of humanity," the emotional attitude, that is to say, of those rare souls of whom it may be said, in the same writer's words, that "beggars' rags to their unhesitating lips grew fit for kissing because humanity had touched the garb." edward carpenter (_intermediate types among primitive folk_, p. ) remarks that great ethical leaders have often exhibited feminine traits, and adds: "it becomes easy to suppose of those early figures--who once probably were men--those apollos, buddhas, dionysus, osiris, and so forth--to suppose that they too were somewhat bisexual in temperament, and that it was really largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with far-reaching powers and became leaders of mankind." [ ] english translation, _primitive folk_, in contemporary science series. [ ] r. horneffer, _der priester_, vols., . j.g. frazer, in the volume entitled "adonis, attis, osiris" (pp. - ) of the third edition of his _golden bough_, discusses priests dressed as women, and finds various reasons for the custom. [ ] edward carpenter, _intermediate types among primitive folk_, . [ ] westermarck, _origin and development of moral ideas_, vol. ii, ch. xliii. [ ] "italian literature," remarks symonds, "can show the _rime burlesche_, becadelli's _hermaphroditus_, the _canti carnascialeschi_, the macaronic poems of fidentius, and the remarkably outspoken romance entitled _alcibiade fanciullo a scola_." [ ] the life of muret has been well written by c. dejob, _marc-antoine muret_, . [ ] f.m. nichols, _epistles of erasmus_, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] burckhardt, _die kultur der renaissance_, vol. ii, _excursus_ ci. [ ] f. de gaudenzi in ch. v of his _studio psico-patologico sopra t. tasso_ ( ) deals fully with the poet's homosexual tendencies. [ ] herbert p. horne, _leonardo da vinci_, , p. . [ ] s. freud, _eine kindheitserinnerung des leonardo da vinci_, . [ ] see parlagreco, _michelangelo buonarotti_, naples, ; ludwig von scheffler, _michelangelo: ein renaissance studie_, ; _archivo di psichiatria_, vol. xv, fasc. i, ii, p. ; j.a. symonds, _life of michelangelo_, ; dr. jur. numa praetorius, "michel angelo's urningtum," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ii, , pp, - . [ ] j.a. symonds, _life of michelangelo_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] sodoma's life and temperament have been studied and his pictures copiously reproduced by elisár von kupffer, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. ix, , p. et seq., and by r.h. hobart cust, _giovanni antonio bazzi_. [ ] cellini, _life_, translated by j.a. symonds, introduction, p. xxxv, and p. . queringhi (_la psiche di b. cellini_, ) argues that cellini was not homosexual. [ ] see the interesting account of duquesnoy by eekhoud (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. ii, ), an eminent belgian novelist who has himself been subjected to prosecution on account of the pictures of homosexuality in his novels and stories, _escal-vigor_ and _le cycle patibulaire_ (see _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iii, ). [ ] see justi's _life of winkelmann_, and also moll's _die konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , pp. - . in this work, as well as in raffalovich's _uranisme et unisexualité_, as also in moll's _berühmte homosexuelle_ ( ) and hirschfeld's _die homosexualität_, p. et seq., there will be found some account of many eminent men who are, on more or less reliable grounds, suspected of homosexuality. other german writers brought forward as inverted are platen, k.p. moritz, and iffland. platen was clearly a congenital invert, who sought, however, the satisfaction of his impulses in platonic friendship; his homosexual poems and the recently published unabridged edition of his diary render him an interesting object of study; see for a sympathetic account of him, ludwig frey, "aus dem seelenleben des grafen platen," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vols. i and vi. various kings and potentates have been mentioned in this connection, including the sultan baber; henri iii of france; edward ii, william ii, james i, and william iii of england, and perhaps queen anne and george iii, frederick the great and his brother, heinrich, popes paul ii, sixtus iv, and julius ii, ludwig ii of bavaria, and others. kings, indeed, seem peculiarly inclined to homosexuality. [ ] schultz, _das höfische leben_, bd. i, ch. xiii. [ ] _de planctu naturæ_ has been translated by douglas moffat, _yale studies in english_, no. xxxvi, . [ ] p. de l'estoile, _mémoires-journaux_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] laborde, _le palais mazarin_, p. . [ ] thus she writes in (_correspondence_, edited by brunet, vol. i, p. ): "our heroes take as their models hercules, theseus, alexander, and cæsar, who all had their male favorites. those who give themselves up to this vice, while believing in holy scripture, imagine that it was only a sin when there were few people in the world, and that now the earth is populated it may be regarded as a _divertissement_. among the common people, indeed, accusations of this kind are, so far as possible, avoided; but among persons of quality it is publicly spoken of; it is considered a fine saying that since sodom and gomorrah, the lord has punished no one for such offences." [ ] sérieux and libert, "la bastille et ses prisonniers," _l'encéphale_, september, . [ ] witry, "notes historiques sur l'homosexualité en france," _revue de l'hypnotisme_, january, . [ ] in early teutonic days there was little or no trace of any punishment for homosexual practices in germany. this, according to hermann michaëlis, only appeared after the church had gained power among the west goths; in the breviarium of alaric ii ( ), the sodomist was condemned to the stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of king chindasvinds, to castration. the frankish capitularies of charlemange's time adopted ecclesiastical penances. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the german codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the justinian code on which they were modelled. [ ] raffalovich discusses german friendship, _uranisme et unisexualité_, pp. - . see also birnbaum, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. viii, p. ; he especially illustrates this kind of friendship by the correspondence of the poets gleim and jacobi, who used to each other the language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves. [ ] this letter may be found in ernst schur's _heinrich von kleist in seinen briefen_, p. . dr. j. sadger has written a pathographic and psychological study of kleist, emphasizing the homosexual strain, in the _grenzfragen des nerven- und seelenlebens_ series. [ ] alexander's not less distinguished brother, wilhelm von humboldt, though not homosexual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, "the soul of a woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness i have ever found in your sex;" he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature. spranger (_wilhelm von humboldt_, p. ) says of him that "he had that dual sexuality without which the moral summits of humanity cannot be reached." [ ] krupp caused much scandal by his life at capri, where he was constantly surrounded by the handsome youths of the place, mandolinists and street arabs, with whom he was on familiar terms, and on whom he lavished money. h.d. davray, a reliable eyewitness, has written "souvenirs sur m. krupp à capri," _l'européen_, november, . it is not, however, definitely agreed that krupp was of fully developed homosexual temperament (see, e.g., _jahrbuch f. sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. v, p. et seq.) an account of his life at capri was published in the _vorwärts_, against which krupp finally brought a libel action; but he died immediately afterward, it is widely believed, by his own hand, and the libel action was withdrawn. [ ] madame, the mother of the regent, in her letters of th october, th november, and th december, , repeatedly makes this assertion, and implies that it was supported by the english who at that time came over to paris with the english ambassador, lord portland. the king was very indifferent to women. [ ] anselm, epistola lxii, in migne's _patrologia_, vol. clix, col. . john of salisbury, in his _polycrates_, describes the homosexual and effeminate habits of his time. [ ] pollock and maitland, _history of english law_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] coleridge in his _table talk_ ( may, ) remarked: "a man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object--an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. in elizabeth's and james's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling. certainly the language of the two friends musidorus and pyrocles in the _arcadia_ is such as we could not use except to women." this passage of coleridge's is interesting as an early english recognition by a distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal homosexuality. [ ] see account of udall in the _national dictionary of biography_. [ ] _complete poems of richard barnfield_, edited with an introduction by a.b. grosart, . the poems of barnfield were also edited by arber, in the english scholar's library, . arber, who always felt much horror for the abnormal, argues that barnfield's occupation with homosexual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for the most part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it." those readers of barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his poems. this is also the opinion of moll in his _berühmte homosexuelle_. [ ] see appendix to my edition of marlowe in the _mermaid series_, first edition. for a study of marlowe's "gaveston," regarded as "the hermaphrodite in soul," see j.a. nicklin, _free review_, december, . [ ] as raffalovich acutely points out, the twentieth sonnet, with its reference to the "one thing to my purpose nothing," is alone enough to show that shakespeare was not a genuine invert, as then he would have found the virility of the loved object beautiful. his sonnets may fairly be compared to the _in memoriam_ of tennyson, whom it is impossible to describe as inverted, though in his youth he cherished an ardent friendship for another youth, such as was also felt in youth by montaigne. [ ] a scene in vanbrugh's _relapse_, and the chapter (ch. li) in smollett's _roderick random_ describing lord strutwell, may also be mentioned as evidencing familiarity with inversion. "in our country," said lord strutwell to rawdon, putting forward arguments familiar to modern champions of homosexuality, "it gains ground apace, and in all probability will become in a short time a more fashionable vice than simple fornication." [ ] these observations on eighteenth century homosexuality in london are chiefly based on the volumes of _select trials_ at the old bailey, published in . [ ] numa praetorius (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iv, p. ), who has studied byron from this point of view, considers that, though his biography has not yet been fully written on the sexual side, he was probably of bisexual temperament; raffalovich (_uranisme et unisexualité_, p. ) is of the same opinion. [ ] a youthful attraction of this kind in a poet is well illustrated by dolben, who died at the age of nineteen. in addition to a passion for greek poetry he cherished a romantic friendship of extraordinary ardor, revealed in his poems, for a slightly older schoolfellow, who was never even aware of the idolatry he aroused. dolben's life has been written, and his poems edited, by his friend the eminent poet, robert bridges (_the poems of d.m. dolben_, edited with a memoir by r. bridges, ). [ ] a well-informed narrative of the oscar wilde trial is given by raffalovich in his _uranisme et unisexualité_, pp. - ; the full report of the trial has been published by mason. the best life of wilde is probably that of arthur ransome. andré gide's little volume of reminiscences, _oscar wilde_ (also translated into english), is well worth reading. wilde has been discussed in relation to homosexuality by numa praetorius (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, ). an instructive document, an unpublished portion of _de profundis_, in which wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend,--his "ancient affection" for whom has, he declares, been turned to "loathing, bitterness, and contempt,"--was published in the _times_, th april, ; it clearly reveals an element of weakness of character. [ ] t. wright, _life of edward fitzgerald_, vol. i, p. . [ ] most of these were carelessly lost or destroyed by posh. a few have been published by james blyth, _edward fitzgerald and_ '_posh_,' . [ ] it is as such that whitman should be approached, and i would desire to protest against the tendency, now marked in many quarters, to treat him merely as an invert, and to vilify him or glorify him accordingly. however important inversion may be as a psychological key to whitman's personality, it plays but a small part in whitman's work, and for many who care for that work a negligible part. (i may be allowed to refer to my own essay on whitman, in _the new spirit_, written nearly thirty years ago.) [ ] i may add that symonds (in his book on whitman) accepted this letter as a candid and final statement showing that whitman was absolutely hostile to sexual inversion, that he had not even taken its phenomena into account, and that he had "omitted to perceive that there are inevitable points of contact between sexual inversion and his doctrine of friendship." he recalls, however, whitman's own lines at the end of "calamus" in the camden edition of :-- "here my last words, and the most baffling, here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting, here i shade down and hide my thoughts--i do not expose them, and yet they expose me more than all my other poems." [ ] whitman's letters to peter doyle, an uncultured young tram-conductor deeply loved by the poet, have been edited by dr. bucke, and published at boston: _calamus: a series of letters_, . [ ] whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the south. (see a chapter on walt whitman's children in edward carpenter's interesting book, _days with walt whitman_, .) yet his brother george whitman said: "i never knew walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention." and doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: "women in that sense never came into his head." the early heterosexual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. with regard to the number of children i am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew whitman in the south, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren. [ ] while the homosexual strain in walt whitman has been more or less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to present the homosexual character of his personality and work are due to eduard bertz in germany, and to dr. w.c. rivers in england. bertz has issued three publications on whitman: see especially his _der yankee-heiland_, , and _whitman-mysterien_, . the arguments of rivers are concisely stated in a pamphlet entitled _walt whitman's anomaly_ (london: george allen, ). both bertz and rivers emphasize the feminine traits in whitman. an interesting independent picture of whitman, at about the date of the letter to symonds, accompanied by the author's excellent original photographs, is furnished by dr. john johnston, _a visit to walt whitman_, . it may be added that, probably, both the extent and the significance of the feminine traits in whitman have been overestimated by some writers. most artists and men of genius have some feminine traits; they do not prove the existence of inversion, nor does their absence disprove it. dr. clark bell writes to me in reference to the little book by dr. rivers: "i knew walt whitman personally. to me mr. whitman was one of the most robust and virile of men, extraordinarily so. he was from my standpoint not feminine at all, but physically masculine and robust. the difficulty is that a virile and strong man who is poetic in temperament, ardent and tender, may have phases and moods of passion and emotion which are apt to be misinterpreted." a somewhat similar view, in opposition to bertz and rivers, has been vigorously set forth by bazalgette (who has written a very thorough study of whitman in french), especially in the _mercure de france_ for st july, st oct., and th nov., . [ ] lepelletier, in what may be regarded as the official biography of verlaine (_paul verlaine_, ) seeks to minimize or explain away the homosexual aspect of the poet's life. so also berrichon, rimbaud's brother-in-law, _mercure de france_, july, and feb., . p. escoube, in a judicious essay (included in _préférences_, ), presents a more reasonable view of this aspect of verlaine's temperament. even apart altogether from the evidence as to the poet's tendency to passionate friendship, there can be no appeal from the poems themselves, which clearly possess an absolute and unquestionable sincerity. [ ] sir richard burton, who helped to popularize this view, regarded the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial," and held that within what he called the sotadic zone "the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, while the races to the north and south of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust." he adds: "the only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the sotadic zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere only occurs sporadically" (_arabian nights_, , vol. x, pp. - ). the theory of the sotadic zone fails to account for the custom among the normans, celts, scythians, bulgars, and tartars, and, moreover, in various of these regions different views have prevailed at different periods. burton was wholly unacquainted with the psychological investigations into sexual inversion which had, indeed, scarcely begun in his day. [ ] spectator (_anthropophyteia_, vol. vii, ), referring especially to the neighborhood of sorrento, states that the southern italians regard passive _pedicatio_ as disgraceful, but attach little or no shame to active _pedicatio_. this indifference enables them to exploit the homosexual foreigners who are specially attracted to southern italy in the development of a flourishing homosexual industry. [ ] it is true that in the solitude of great modern cities it is possible for small homosexual coteries to form, in a certain sense, an environment of their own, favorable to their abnormality; yet this fact hardly modifies the general statement made in the text. [ ] see especially hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, chs. xxiv and xxv. [ ] ulrichs, in his _argonauticus_, in , estimated the number as only , , but admitted that this was probably a decided underestimate. bloch (_die prostitution_, bd. i, p. ) has found reason to believe that in cologne in the fifteenth century the percentage was nearly as high as hirschfeld finds it today. a few years earlier bloch had believed (_beiträge_, part i, p. , ) that hirschfeld's estimate of per cent, was "sheer nonsense." [ ] hirschfeld mentions the case of two men, artists, one of them married, who were intimate friends for a great many years before each discovered that the other was an invert. [ ] see articles by numa praetorius and fernan, maintaining that homosexuality is at least as frequent in france (_sexual-probleme_, march and december, ). [ ] dr. laupts, _l'homosexualité_, , pp. , . [ ] näcke, _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, , heft . [ ] it is a fact significant of the french attitude toward homosexuality that the psychologist, dr. saint-paul, when writing a book on this subject, though in a completely normal and correct manner, thought it desirable to adopt a pseudonym. [ ] a well-informed series of papers dealing with english homosexuality generally, and especially with london (l. pavia, "die männliche homosexualität in england," _vierteljahrsberichte des wissenschaftlich-humanitären komitees_, - ) will be found instructive even by those who are familiar with london. and see also hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. xxvi. much information of historical nature concerning homosexuality in england will be found in eugen dühren (iwan bloch), _das geschlechtsleben in england_. [ ] this: is doubtless the reason why so many english inverts establish themselves outside england. paris, florence, nice, naples, cairo, and other places, are said to swarm with homosexual englishmen. chapter ii. the study of sexual inversion. westphal--hössli--casper--ulrichs--krafft-ebing--moll--féré--kiernan-- lydston--raffalovich--edward carpenter--hirschfeld. westphal, an eminent professor of psychiatry at berlin, may be said to be the first to put the study of sexual inversion on an assured scientific basis. in he published, in the _archiv für psychiatrie_, of which he was for many years editor, the detailed history of a young woman who, from her earliest years, differed from other girls: she liked to dress as a boy, only cared for boys' games, and as she grew up was sexually attracted only to women, with whom she formed a series of tender relationships, in which the friends obtained sexual gratification by mutual caresses; while she blushed and was shy in the presence of women, more especially the girl with whom she chanced to be in love, she was always absolutely indifferent in the presence of men. westphal--a pupil, it may be noted, of griesinger, who had already called attention to the high character sometimes shown by subjects of this perversion--combined keen scientific insight with a rare degree of personal sympathy for those who came under his care, and it was this combination of qualities which enabled him to grasp the true nature of a case such as this, which by most medical men at that time would have been hastily dismissed as a vulgar instance of vice or insanity. westphal perceived that this abnormality was congenital, not acquired, so that it could not be termed vice; and, while he insisted on the presence of neurotic elements, his observations showed the absence of anything that could legitimately be termed insanity. he gave to this condition the name of "contrary sexual feeling" (_konträre sexualempfindung_), by which it was long usually known in germany. the way was thus made clear for the rapid progress of our knowledge of this abnormality. new cases were published in quick succession, at first exclusively in germany, and more especially in westphal's _archiv_, but soon in other countries also, chiefly italy and france.[ ] while westphal was the first to place the study of sexual inversion on a progressive footing, many persons had previously obtained glimpses into the subject. thus, in , two cases were published[ ] of men who showed a typical emotional attraction to their own sex, though it was not quite clearly made out that the inversion was congenital. in , again, a swiss writer, heinrich hössli, published a rather diffuse but remarkable work, entitled _eros_, which contained much material of a literary character bearing on this matter. he seems to have been moved to write this book by a trial which had excited considerable attention at that time. a man of good position had suddenly murdered a youth, and was executed for the crime, which, according to hössli, was due to homosexual love and jealousy. hössli was not a trained scholar; he was in business at glarus as a skillful milliner, the most successful in the town. his own temperament is supposed to have been bisexual. his book was prohibited by the local authorities and at a later period the entire remaining stock was destroyed in a fire, so that its circulation was very small. it is now, however, regarded by some as the first serious attempt to deal with the problem of homosexuality since plato's _banquet_.[ ] some years later, in , casper, the chief medico-legal authority of his time in germany,--for it is in germany that the foundations of the study of sexual inversion have been laid,--pointed out in casper's _vierteljahrsschrift_ that pederasty, in a broad sense of the word, was sometimes a kind of "moral hermaphroditism," due to a congenital psychic condition, and also that it by no means necessarily involved sodomy (_immissio penis in anum_). casper brought forward a considerable amount of valuable evidence concerning these cardinal points, which he was the first to note,[ ] but he failed to realize the full significance of his observations, and they had no immediate influence, though tardieu, in , admitted a congenital element in some pederasts. the man, however, who more than anyone else brought to light the phenomena of sexual inversion had not been concerned either with the medical or the criminal aspects of the matter. karl heinrich ulrichs (born in near aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing westphal's attention to the matter, was a hanoverian legal official (_amtsassessor_), himself sexually inverted. from onward, at first under the name of "numa numantius" and subsequently under his own name, ulrichs published, in various parts of germany, a long series of works dealing with this question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal position of the sexual invert in germany. although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific weight, ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not only well versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in archeology; he was also regarded by many as the best latinist of his time. in he left germany and settled in naples, and afterward at aquila in the abruzzi, whence he issued a latin periodical. he died in .[ ] john addington symonds, who went to aquila in , wrote: "ulrichs is _chrysostomos_ to the last degree, sweet, noble, a true gentleman and man of genius. he must have been at one time a man of singular personal distinction, so finely cut are his features, and so grand the lines of his skull."[ ] for many years ulrichs was alone in his efforts to gain scientific recognition for congenital homosexuality. he devised (with allusion to uranos in plato's _symposium_) the word uranian or urning, ever since frequently used for the homosexual lover, while he called the normal heterosexual lover a dioning (from dione). he regarded uranism, or homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had become united with a male body--_anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa_--and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point for many similar speculations. his writings are remarkable in various respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one pleading _pro domo_, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on scientific thought.[ ] this privilege was reserved for westphal. after he had shown the way and thrown open his journal for their publication, new cases appeared in rapid succession. in italy, also, ritti, tamassia, lombroso, and others began to study these phenomena. in charcot and magnan published in the _archives de neurologie_ the first important study which appeared in france concerning sexual inversion and allied sexual perversions. they regarded sexual inversion as an episode (_syndrome_) in a more fundamental process of hereditary degeneration, and compared it with such morbid obsessions as dipsomania and kleptomania. from a somewhat more medico-legal standpoint, the study of sexual inversion in france was furthered by brouardel, and still more by lacassagne, whose stimulating influence at lyons has produced fruitful results in the work of many pupils.[ ] of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion was the work of richard von krafft-ebing (born at mannheim in and died at graz in ), for many years professor of psychiatry at vienna university and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. while active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook, from onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual impulse. his _psychopathia sexualis_ contained over two hundred histories, not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion. for many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained the chief storehouse of facts. it passed through many editions and was translated into many languages (there are two translations in english), enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue. krafft-ebing's methods were open to some objection. his mind was not of a severely critical order. he poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. he introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted. krafft-ebing's great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the study of sexual perversions. with the firm conviction that he was conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers. it is as a clinician, rather than as a psychologist, that we must regard krafft-ebing. at the outset he considered inversion to be a functional sign of degeneration, a partial manifestation of a neuropathic and psychopathic state which is in most cases hereditary. this perverse sexuality appears spontaneously with the developing sexual life, without external causes, as the individual manifestation of an abnormal modification of the _vita sexualis_, and must then be regarded as congenital; or it develops as a result of special injurious influences working on a sexuality which had at first been normal, and must then be regarded as acquired. careful investigation of these so-called acquired cases, however, krafft-ebing in the end finally believed, would indicate that the predisposition consists in a latent homosexuality, or at least bisexuality, which requires for its manifestation the operation of accidental causes. in the last edition of his work krafft-ebing was inclined to regard inversion as being not so much a degeneration as a variation, a simple anomaly, and acknowledged that his opinion thus approximated to that which had long been held by inverts themselves.[ ] at the time of his death, krafft-ebing, who had begun by accepting the view, at that time prevalent among alienists, that homosexuality is a sign of degeneration, thus fully adopted and set the seal of his authority on the view, already expressed alike by some scientific investigators as well as by inverts themselves, that sexual inversion is to be regarded simply as an anomaly, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the value of the anomaly. the way was even opened for such a view as that of freud and most of the psychoanalysts today who regard a strain of homosexuality as normal and almost constant, with a profound significance for the psychonervous life. in dr. albert moll, of berlin, published his work, _die konträre sexualempfindung_, which subsequently appeared in much enlarged and revised editions. it speedily superseded all previous books as a complete statement and judicious discussion of sexual inversion. moll was not content merely to present fresh clinical material. he attacked the problem which had now become of primary importance: the nature and causes of sexual inversion. he discussed the phenomena as a psychologist even more than as a physician, bearing in mind the broader aspects of the problem, keenly critical of accepted opinions, but judiciously cautious in the statement of conclusions. he cleared away various ancient prejudices and superstitions which even krafft-ebing sometimes incautiously repeated. he accepted the generally received doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. he also rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. at the same time he cast doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense, except in occasional cases, and he pointed out that even when a normal heterosexual impulse appears at puberty, and a homosexual impulse later, it may still be the former that was acquired and the latter that was inborn. in america attention had been given to the phenomena at a fairly early period. mention may be specially made of j.g. kiernan and g. frank lydston, both of whom put forward convenient classifications of homosexual manifestations some thirty years ago.[ ] more recently ( ) an american writer, under the pseudonym of xavier mayne, privately printed an extensive work entitled _the intersexes: a history of similisexualism as a problem in social life_, popularly written and compiled from many sources. this book, from a subjective and scarcely scientific standpoint, claims that homosexual relationships are natural, necessary, and legitimate.[ ] in england the first attempts to deal seriously, from the modern point of view, with the problem of homosexuality came late, and were either published privately or abroad. in john addington symonds privately printed his discussion of _paiderastia_ in ancient greece, under the title of _a problem in greek ethics_, and in - he further wrote, and in privately printed, _a problem of modern ethics: being an enquiry into the phenomena of sexual inversion_. in sir richard burton added to his translation of the _arabian nights_ a terminal essay on the same subject. in edward carpenter privately printed in manchester a pamphlet entitled _homogenic love_, in which he criticised various psychiatric views of inversion at that time current, and claimed that the laws of homosexual love are the same as those of heterosexual love, urging, however, that the former possesses a special aptitude to be exalted to a higher and more spiritual level of comradeship, so fulfilling a beneficent social function. more recently ( ) edward carpenter published a volume of papers on homosexuality and its problems, under the title of _the intermediate sex_, and later ( ) a more special study of the invert in early religion and in warfare, _intermediate types among primitive folk_. in the most comprehensive book so far written on the subject in england was published in french by mr. andré raffalovich (in lacassagne's _bibliothèque de criminologie_), _uranisme et unisexualité_. this book dealt chiefly with congenital inversion, publishing no new cases, but revealing a wide knowledge of the matter. raffalovich put forward many just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion, and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality. the historical portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the remarkable prevalence of inversion in england, neglected by previous investigators. raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the catholic standpoint, he condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim at an ideal of chastity. on the whole, it may be said that the book is the work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition. in recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as dr. magnus hirschfeld of berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of homosexuality in all their aspects. he has studied the matter exhaustively in germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand homosexual persons. as editor of the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, which he established in , and author of various important monographs--more especially on transitional psychic and physical stages between masculinity and femininity--hirschfeld had already contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before the appearance in of his great work, _die homosexualität des mannes und des weibes_. this is not only the largest but the most precise, detailed, and comprehensive--even the most condensed--work which has yet appeared on the subject. it is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality. for such a task hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the courts, and his position as president of the _wissenschaftlich-humanitären komitee_ which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the homosexual in germany. in hirschfeld's book the pathological conception of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily as a social phenomenon of serious importance. there is no attempt to invent new theories; the main value of hirschfeld's work lies, indeed, in the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts. it is this quality which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek enlightened and precise information on this question. even the existence of such a treatise as this of hirschfeld's is enough to show how rapidly the study of this subject has grown. a few years ago--for instance, when dr. paul moreau wrote his _aberrations du sens génésique_--sexual inversion was scarcely even a name. it was a loathsome and nameless vice, only to be touched with a pair of tongs, rapidly and with precautions. as it now presents itself, it is a psychological and medico-legal problem so full of interest that we need not fear to face it, and so full of grave social actuality that we are bound to face it. footnotes: [ ] in england aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been referred to in the _medical times and gazette_, february , ; sir g. savage first described a case of "sexual perversion" in the _journal of mental science_, vol. xxx, october, . [ ] moritz, _magazin für erfahrungsseelenkunde_, berlin, bd. viii. [ ] a full and interesting account of hössli and his book is given by karsch in the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. v, , pp. - . [ ] "eugen dühren" (iwan bloch) remarks, however (_neue forschungen über den marquis de sade und seine zeit_, p. ), that de sade in his _aline et valcour_ seems to recognize that inversion is sometimes inborn, or at least natural, and apt to develop at a very early age, in spite of all provocations to the normal attitude. "and if this inclination were not natural," he makes sarmiento say, "would the impression of it be received in childhood?... let us study better this indulgent nature before daring to fix her limits." still earlier, in (as schouten has pointed out, _sexual-probleme_, january, , p. ), an italian priest called carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate. [ ] for some account of ulrichs see _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. i, , p. . [ ] horatio brown, _john addington symonds, a biography_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been argued more recently. [ ] special mention may be made of _l'inversion sexuelle_, a copious and comprehensive, though sometimes uncritical book by dr. j. chevalier, published in , and the _perversion et perversité sexuelles_ of dr. saint-paul, writing under the pseudonym of "dr. laupts," published in and republished in an enlarged form, under the title of _l'homosexualité et les types homosexuels_, in . [ ] krafft-ebing set forth his latest views in a paper read before the international medical congress, at paris, in (_comptes-rendus_, "section de psychiatrie," pp. , ; also in contributions to the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iii, ). [ ] kiernan, _detroit lancet_, , _alienist and neurologist_, april, ; lydston, _philadelphia medical and surgical reporter_, september , , and _addresses and essays_, . [ ] a summary of the conclusion of this book, of which but few copies were printed, will be found in hirschfeld's _vierteljahrsberichte_, october, , pp. - . chapter iii. sexual inversion in men. relatively undifferentiated state of the sexual impulse in early life--the freudian view--homosexuality in schools--the question of acquired homosexuality--latent inversion--retarded inversion--bisexuality--the question of the invert's truthfulness--histories. when the sexual instinct first appears in early youth, it is much less specialized than normally it becomes later. not only is it, at the outset, less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but even the sex of its object is sometimes uncertain.[ ] this has always been so well recognized that those in authority over young men have sometimes forced women upon them to avoid the risk of possible unnatural offenses.[ ] the institution which presents these phenomena to us in the most marked and the most important manner is, naturally, the school, in england especially the public school. in france, where the same phenomena are noted, tarde called attention to these relationships, "most usually platonic in the primitive meaning of the word, which indicate a simple indecision of frontier between friendship and love, still undifferentiated in the dawn of the awakening heart," and he regretted that no one had studied them. in england we are very familiar with vague allusions to the vices of public schools. from time to time we read letters in the newspapers denouncing public schools as "hot-beds of vice" and one anonymous writer remarks that "some of our public schools almost provoke the punishment of the cities of the plain."[ ] but these allegations are rarely or never submitted to accurate investigation. the physicians and masters of public schools who are in a position to study the matter usually possess no psychological training, and appear to view homosexuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention to it. what knowledge they possess they keep to themselves, for it is considered to be in the interests of public schools that these things should be hushed up. when anything very scandalous occurs one or two lads are expelled, to their own grave and, perhaps, lifelong injury, and without benefit to those who remain, whose awakening sexual life rarely receives intelligent sympathy. in several of the histories which follow in this chapter, as well as in histories contained in other volumes of these _studies_, details will be found concerning homosexuality as it occurs in english schools, public or private. (see also the study "auto-erotism" in vol. i.) the prevalence of homosexual and erotic phenomena in schools varies greatly at different schools and at different times in the same school, while in small private schools such phenomena may be entirely unknown. as an english schoolboy i never myself saw or heard anything of such practices, and in germany, professor gurlitt (_die neue generation_, january, ), among others, testifies to similar absence of experience during his whole school life, although there was much talk and joking among the boys over sexual things. i have added some observations by a correspondent whose experiences of english public school life are still recent:-- "in the years i was a member of a public school, i saw and heard a good deal of homosexuality, though till my last two years i did not understand its meaning. as a prefect, i discussed with other prefects the methods of checking it, and of punishing it when detected. my own observations, supported by those of others, led me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school homosexualists as being in one class together, and has only one way of dealing with them--the birch for a first offense, expulsion for a second. now, i think we may distinguish _three_ classes of school homosexualists:-- "(a) a very small number who are probably radically inverted, and who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their passions. these, and these only, are a real moral danger to others, and i believe them to be rare. "(b) boys of various ages who, having been initiated into the passive part in their young days, continue practices of an active or passive kind; but only with boys already known to be homosexualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims. this class realize more or less what they are about, but cannot be called a danger to the morals of pure boys. "(c) young boys who, whether in the development of their own physical nature, or by the instruction of older boys of the class (a), find out the pleasures of masturbation or intercrural connection. (i never heard of a case of _pedicatio_ at my school, and only once of _fellatio_, which was attempted on a quite young boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was expelled). boys in this class have probably little or no idea of what sexual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a _moral_ offense at all. "i submit that these three classes should receive quite different treatment. expulsion may occasionally be necessary for class (a), but the few who belong to this class are usually too cunning to get caught. it used to be notorious at school that it was almost always the wrong people who got dropped on. i do not think a boy in the other two classes should ever be expelled, and even when expulsion is unavoidable, it should, if possible, be deferred till the end of the term, so as to make it indistinguishable from an ordinary departure. after all, there is no reason to ruin a boy's prospects because he is a little beast at sixteen; there are very few hopeless incorrigibles at that age. "as regards the other two classes, i should begin by giving boys very much fuller enlightenment on sexual subjects than is usually done, before they go to a public school at all. either a boy is pitchforked into the place in utter innocence and ignorance, and yields to temptations to do things which he vaguely, if at all, realizes are wrong, and that only because a puzzling sort of instinct tells him so; or else he is given just enough information to whet his curiosity, usually in the shape of warnings against certain apparently harmless bodily acts, which he not unnaturally tries out of curiosity, and finds them very pleasant. it may be undesirable that a boy should have full knowledge, at the time he goes to school, but it is more undesirable that he should go with a burning curiosity, or a total ignorance on the subject. i am convinced that much might be done in the way of prevention if boys were told more, and allowed to be _open_. much of the pleasure of sexual talk among boys i believe to be due to the spurious interest aroused by the fact that it is forbidden fruit, and involves risk if caught. it seems to me that frankness is far more moral than suggestion. i would not 'expurgate' school editions of great authors; the frank obscenity of parts of shakespeare is far less immoral than the prurient prudishness which declines to print it, but numbers the lines in such a way that the boy can go home and look up the omitted passage in a complete edition, with a distinct sense of guilt, which is where the harm comes in." it is probable that only a small proportion of homosexual boys in schools can properly be described as "vicious." a. hoche, describing homosexuality in german schools ("zür frage der forensischen beurteilung sexuellen vergehen," _neurologisches centralblatt_, , no. ), and putting together communications received from various medical men regarding their own youthful experiences at school, finds relationships of the kind very common, usually between boys of different ages and school-classes. according to one observer, the feminine, or passive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical manifestations. from his own youthful experience hoche records precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school. (the elder scholars, of or years of age, formed regular sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) it is probable that the homosexual relationships in english schools are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by hoche, but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to exaggeration. in the course of a discussion on this matter over thirty years ago, "olim etoniensis" wrote (_journal of education_, , p. ) that, on making a list of the vicious boys he had known at eton, he found that "these very boys had become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen, country-gentlemen, etc., and that they are nearly all of them fathers of thriving families, respected and prosperous." but, as marro has remarked, the question is not thus settled. public distinction by no means necessarily implies any fine degree of private morality. sometimes the manifestations thus appearing in schools or wherever youths are congregated together are not truly homosexual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even sadistic perversion of the immature sexual instinct. this may be illustrated by the following narrative concerning a large london city warehouse: "a youth left my class at the age of ½," writes a correspondent, "to take up an apprenticeship in a large wholesale firm in g---- street. fortunately he went on probation of three weeks before articling. he came to me at the end of the first week asking me to intercede with his mother (he had no father) not to let him return. he told me that almost nightly, and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory (eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. the boy who could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys entered, when they would sometimes be subjected to this for a week. this boy, having been brought up strictly, was shocked, dazed, and alarmed; but they stopped him from calling out, and he dared not report it. most boys entered direct on their apprenticeship without probation, and had no chance to get out. i procured the boy's release from the place and gave the manager to understand what went on." in such a case as this it has usually happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and some force of character initiates proceedings which the others either fall into with complacency or are too weak to resist. max dessoir[ ] came to the conclusion that "an undifferentiated sexual feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of puberty,--i.e., from to in boys and from to in girls,--while in later years it must be regarded as pathological." he added very truly that in this early period the sexual emotion has not become centered in the sexual organs. this latter fact is certainly far too often forgotten by grown-up persons who suspect the idealized passion of boys and girls of a physical side which children have often no suspicion of, and would view with repulsion and horror. how far the sexual instinct may be said to be undifferentiated in early puberty as regards sex is a little doubtful. it is comparatively undifferentiated, but except in rare cases it is not absolutely undifferentiated. we have to admit, however, that, in the opinion of the latest physiologists of sex, such as castle, heape, and marshall, each sex contains the latent characters of the other or recessive sex. each sex is latent in the other, and each, as it contains the characters of both sexes (and can transmit those of the recessive sex) is latently hermaphrodite. a homosexual tendency may thus be regarded as simply the psychical manifestation of special characters of the recessive sex, susceptible of being evolved under changed circumstances, such as may occur near puberty, and associated with changed metabolism.[ ] william james (_principles of psychology_, vol. ii, p. ) considered inversion "a kind of sexual appetite of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility." conolly norman (article "sexual perversion," tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_) also stated that "the sexual passion, at its first appearance, is always indefinite, and is very easily turned in a wrong direction," and he apparently accounted for inversion by this fact, and by the precocity of neurotics. obici and marchesini (_le 'amicizie' di collegio_, p. ) refer to the indeterminate character of the sexual feelings when they first begin to develop. a correspondent believes that sexual feelings are undifferentiated in the early years about puberty, but at the same time considers that school life is to some extent responsible; "the holidays," he adds, "are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and i think most boys 'fool about' with servants or their sisters' friends." moll (_konträre sexualempfindung_, , pp. and ) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of frequent occurrence. in his later work ( , _das sexualleben des kindes_, english translation, _the sexual life of the child_, ch. iv), moll remains of the same opinion that a homosexual tendency is very frequent in normal children, whose later development is quite normal; it begins between the ages of and (or even at ) and may last to . in recent years freud has accepted and developed the conception of the homosexual strain; as normal in early life. thus, in , in his "bruchstück einer hysterie-analyse" (reprinted in the second series of _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, ), freud regards it as a well-known fact that boys and girls at puberty normally show plain signs of the existence of a homosexual tendency. under favorable circumstances this tendency is overcome, but when a happy heterosexual love is not established it remains liable to reappear under the influence of an appropriate stimulus. in the neurotic these homosexual germs are more highly developed. "i have never carried through any psychoanalysis of a man or a woman," freud states, "without discovering a very significant homosexual tendency." ferenczi, again (_jahrbuch für psychoanalytische forschungen_, bd. iii, , p. ), without reference to any physical basis of the impulse, accepts "the psychic capacity of the child to direct his originally objectless eroticism to one or both sexes," and terms this disposition _ambisexuality_. the normality of a homosexual element in early life may be said to be accepted by most psychoanalysts, even of the schools that are separated from freud. stekel would go farther, and regards various psychic sexual anomalies as signs of a concealed bisexual tendency; psychic impotence, the admiration of men for masculine women and of women for feminine men, various forms of fetichism,--they are all masks of homosexuality (stekel, _zentralblatt für psychoanalyse_, vol. ii, april, ). these schoolboy affections and passions arise, to a large extent, spontaneously, with the evolution of the sexual emotions, though the method of manifestation may be a matter of example or suggestion. as the sexual emotions become stronger, and as the lad leaves school or college to mix with men and women in the world, the instinct usually turns into the normal channel, in which channel the instincts of the majority of boys have been directed from the earliest appearance of puberty, if not earlier. but a certain proportion remain insensitive to the influence of women, and these may be regarded as true sexual inverts. some of them are probably individuals of somewhat undeveloped sexual instincts. the members of this group are of some interest psychologically, although from the comparative quiescence of their sexual emotions they have received little attention. the following communication which i have received from a well-accredited source is noteworthy from this point of view:-- "the following facts may possibly be of interest to you, though my statement of them is necessarily general and vague. i happen to know intimately three cases of men whose affections have chiefly been directed exclusively to persons of their own sex. the first, having practised masturbation as a boy, and then for some ten years ceased to practise it (to such an extent that he even inhibited his erotic dreams), has since recurred to it deliberately (at about fortnightly intervals) as a substitute for copulation, for which he has never felt the least desire. but occasionally, when sleeping with a male friend, he has emissions in the act of embracing. the second is constantly and to an abnormal extent (i should say) troubled with erotic dreams and emissions, and takes drugs, by doctor's advice, to reduce this activity. he has recently developed a sexual interest in women, but for ethical and other reasons does not copulate with them. of the third i can say little, as he has not talked to me on the subject; but i know that he has never had intercourse with women, and has always had a natural and instinctive repulsion to the idea. in all these, i imagine, the physical impulse of sex is less imperative than in the average man. the emotional impulse, on the other hand, is very strong. it has given birth to friendships of which i find no adequate description anywhere but in the dialogues of plato; and, beyond a certain feeling of strangeness at the gradual discovery of a temperament apparently different to that of most men, it has provoked no kind of self-reproach or shame. on the contrary, the feeling has been rather one of elation in the consciousness of a capacity of affection which appears to be finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different sexes. these men are all of intellectual capacity above the average; and one is actively engaged in the world, where he is both respected for his capacity and admired for his character. i mention this particularly, because it appears to be the habit, in books upon this subject, to regard the relation in question as pathological, and to select cases where those who are concerned in it are tormented with shame and remorse. in the cases to which i am referring nothing of the kind subsists. "in all these cases a physical sexual attraction is recognized as the basis of the relation, but as a matter of feeling, and partly also of theory, the ascetic ideal is adopted. "these are the only cases with which i am personally and intimately acquainted. but no one can have passed through a public-school and college life without constantly observing indications of the phenomenon in question. it is clear to me that in a large number of instances there is no fixed line between what is called distinctively 'friendship' and love; and it is probably the influence of custom and public opinion that in most cases finally specializes the physical passion in the direction of the opposite sex." the classification of the varieties of homosexuality is a matter of difficulty, and no classification is very fundamental. the early attempts of krafft-ebing and others at elaborate classification are no longer acceptable. even the most elementary groupings become doubtful when we have definitely to fit our cases into them. the old distinction between congenital and acquired homosexuality has ceased to possess significance. when we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line.[ ] we have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality,--a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,--in addition to the more specific sexual inversion.[ ] it may now be said to be recognized by all authorities, even by freud who emphasizes a special psychological mechanism by which homosexuality may become established, that a congenital predisposition as well as an acquired tendency is necessary to constitute true inversion, apparent exceptions being too few to carry much weight. krafft-ebing, näcke, iwan bloch, who at one time believed in the possibility of acquired inversion, all finally abandoned that view, and even schrenck-notzing, a vigorous champion of the doctrine of acquired inversion twenty years ago, admits the necessity of a favoring predisposition, an admission which renders the distinction between innate and acquired an unimportant, if not a merely verbal, distinction.[ ] supposing, indeed, that we are prepared to admit that true inversion may be purely acquired the decision in any particular case must be extremely difficult, and i have found very few cases which, even with imperfect knowledge, could fairly so be termed. even the cases (to which schopenhauer long since referred) in which inversion is only established late in life, are no longer regarded as constituting a difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the congenital nature of inversion; in such cases the inversion is merely retarded. the conception of retarded inversion,--that is to say a latent congenital inversion becoming manifest at a late period in life,--was first brought forward by thoinot in in his _attentats aux moeurs_, in order to supersede the unsatisfactory conception, as he considered it to be, of acquired inversion. thoinot regarded retarded inversion as relatively rare and of no great importance but more accessible to therapeutic measures. three years later, krafft-ebing, toward the close of his life, adopted the same conception; the cases to which he applied it were all, he considered, of bisexual disposition and usually, also, marked by sexual hyperesthesia. this way of looking at the matter was speedily championed by näcke and may now be said to be widely accepted.[ ] moll, earlier than thoinot, had pointed out that it is difficult to believe that homosexuality in late life can ever be produced without at least some inborn weakness of the heterosexual impulse, and that we must not deny the possibility of heredity even when homosexuality appears at the age of or .[ ] moll believes it is very doubtful whether heterosexual satiety alone can ever suffice to produce homosexuality. näcke was careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was once attached, in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to boys. in such cases, which include the majority of those appearing late, näcke regarded the inversion as merely spurious, the _faute de mieux_ of persons no longer apt for normal sexual activity. such cases no doubt need more careful psychological study than they usually receive. féré once investigated a case of this kind in which a healthy young man (though with slightly neurotic heredity on one side) practised sexual intercourse excessively between the ages of and --often impelled more by _amour propre_ (or what adler would term the "masculine protest" of the organically inferior) than sexual desire--and then suddenly became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without any other loss of health. six months later potency slowly returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. at the age of symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some years later he again became impotent, but without losing sexual desire. suddenly one day, on sitting in close contact with a young man at a _table d'hôte_, he experienced a violent erection; he afterward found that the same thing occurred with other young men, and, though he had no psychic desire for men, he was constrained to seek such contact, and a repugnance for women and their sexuality arose. five months later a complete paraplegic impotence set in; and then both the homosexual tendency and the aversion to women disappeared. (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. .) in such a case, under the influence of disease, excessive stimulation seems to result in more or less complete sexual anesthesia, just as temporarily we may be more or less blinded by excess of light; and functional power reasserts itself under the influence of a different and normally much weaker stimulus. leppmann, who has studied the homosexual manifestations of previously normal old men toward boys ("greisenalter und kriminalität," _zeitschrift für psychotherapie_, bd. i, heft , ), considers the chief factor to be a flaring up of the sexual impulse in a perverted direction in an early stage of morbid cerebral disturbance, not amounting to insanity and not involving complete irresponsibility. in such cases, leppmann believes, the subject may, through his lack of power, be brought back to the beginning of his sexual life and to the perhaps unconsciously homosexual attractions of that age. with the recognition that homosexuality in youth may be due to an as yet undifferentiated sexual impulse, homosexuality in mature age to a retarded development on a congenital basis, and homosexuality in sold age to a return to the attitude of youth, the area of spurious or "pseudo" homosexuality seems to me to be very much restricted. most, perhaps all, authorities still accept the reality of this spurious homosexuality in heterosexual persons. but they enter into no details concerning it, and they bring forward no minutely observed cases in which it occurred. hirschfeld, in discussing the diagnosis of homosexuality and seeking to distinguish genuine from spurious inverts,[ ] enumerates three classes of the latter: ( ) those who practise homosexuality for purposes of gain, more especially male prostitutes and blackmailers; ( ) persons who, from motives of pity, good nature, friendship, etc., allow themselves to be the objects of homosexual desire; ( ) normal persons who, when excluded from the society of the opposite sex, as in schools, barracks, on board ship, or in prison, have sexual relations with persons of their own sex. now hirschfeld clearly realizes that the mere sexual act is no proof of the direction of the sexual impulse; it may be rendered possible by mechanical irritation (as by the stimulation of a full bladder) and in women without any stimulation at all; such cases can have little psychological significance. moreover, he seems to admit that some subdivisions of his first class are true inverts. he further mentions that some per cent. of the individuals included in these classes are between and years of age, that is to say, that they have scarcely emerged from the period when we have reason to believe that, in a large number of individuals at all events, the sexual impulse is not yet definitely differentiated; so that neither its homosexual nor its heterosexual tendencies can properly be regarded as spurious. if, indeed, we really accept the very reasonable view, that the basis of the sexual life is bisexual, although its direction may be definitely fixed in a heterosexual or homosexual direction at a very early period in life, it becomes difficult to see how we can any longer speak with certainty of a definitely spurious class of homosexual persons. everyone of hirschfeld's three classes may well contain a majority of genuinely homosexual or bisexual persons. the prostitutes and even the blackmailers are certainly genuine inverts in very many cases. those persons, again, who allow themselves to be the recipients of homosexual attentions may well possess traces of homosexual feeling, and are undoubtedly in very many cases lacking in vigorous heterosexual impulse. finally, the persons who turn to their own sex when forcibly excluded from the society of the opposite sex, can by no means be assumed, without question, to be normal heterosexual persons. it is only a small proportion of heterosexual persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. there are always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted to the opposite sex and sexually indifferent to their own sex. there is evidently a difference, and that difference may most reasonably be supposed to be in the existence of a trace of homosexual feeling which is called into activity under the abnormal conditions, and subsides when the stronger heterosexual impulse can again be gratified. the real distinction would seem, therefore, to be between a homosexual impulse so strong that it subsists even in the presence of the heterosexual object, and a homosexual impulse so weak that it is eclipsed by the presence of the heterosexual object. we could not, however, properly speak of the latter as any more "spurious" or "pseudo" than the former. a heterosexual person who experiences a homosexual impulse in the absence of any homosexual disposition is not today easy to accept. we can certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-sexual stimulus leading to a sexual act contrary to the individual's disposition. but usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. we may expect, therefore, to find "pseudo-homosexuality," or spurious homosexuality, playing a dwindling part in classification. the simplest of all possible classifications, and that which i adopted in the earlier editions of the present _study_, merely seeks to distinguish between those who, not being exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, are exclusively attracted to the same sex, and those who are attracted to both sexes. the first are the homosexual, whether or not the attraction springs from genuine inversion. the second are the bisexual, or, as they were formerly more often termed, following krafft-ebing, psycho-sexual hermaphrodites.[ ] there would thus seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual. even this elementary classification seems however of no great practical use. the bisexual group is found to introduce uncertainty and doubt. not only a large proportion of persons who may fairly be considered normally heterosexual have at some time in their lives experienced a feeling which may be termed sexual toward individuals of their own sex, but a very large proportion of persons who are definitely and markedly homosexual are found to have experienced sexual attraction toward, and have had relationships with, persons of the opposite sex. the social pressure, urging all persons into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them bisexual. in the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual tendency. bisexuality would thus in a large number of cases be comparable to ambidexterity, which biervliet has found to occur most usually in people who are organically left-handed.[ ] while therefore the division into heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual is a useful superficial division, it is scarcely a scientific classification. in the face of these various considerations, and in view of the fact that, while i feel justified in regarding the histories of my cases as reliable so far as they go, i have not been always able to explore them extensively, it has seemed best to me to attempt no classification at all. the order in which the following histories appear is not, therefore, to be regarded as possessing any significance. it may be proper, at this point, to say a few words as to the reliability of the statements furnished by homosexual persons. this has sometimes been called in question. many years ago we used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything they said. it was also usual to say that when they wrote autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to mold them in the fashion of those published by krafft-ebing. more recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is held, the most significant facts in his own sexual history are concealed. thus sadger ("ueber den wert der autobiographien sexuell perverser," _fortschritte der medizin_, nos. - , ) vigorously puts forward this view and asserts that the autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his assertions are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he attributes much value. the objection to homosexual autobiographic statements dates from a period when the homosexual were very little known, and it was supposed that their moral character generally was fairly represented by a small section among them which attracted more attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. but, in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just as among normal people. sadger (_archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. ) complains of the "great insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;" but, as sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so long as inversion is counted a crime. the most normal persons, under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. if the homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely emotional. these tendencies, while on the one hand they are liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. on the whole, it may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories written by the homosexual compare favorably for frankness, intelligence, and power of self-analysis with those written by the heterosexual. the ancient allegation that inverts have written their own histories on the model, or under the suggestion, of those published in krafft-ebing's _psychopathia sexualis_ can scarcely have much force now that the published histories are so extremely varied and numerous that they cannot possibly produce any uniform impression on the most sensitively receptive mind. as a matter of fact, there is no doubt that inverts have frequently been stimulated to set down the narrative of their own experiences through reading those written by others. but the stimulation has, as often as not, lain in the fact that their own experiences have seemed different, not that they have seemed identical. the histories that they read only serve as models in the sense that they indicate the points on which information is desired. i have often been able to verify this influence, which would in any case seem to be fairly obvious. psycho-analysis is, in theory, an ideal method of exploring many psychic conditions, such as hysteria and obsessions, which are obscure and largely concealed beneath the psychic surface. in most homosexual cases the main facts are, with the patient's good-will and the investigator's tact, not difficult to ascertain. any difficulties which psychoanalysis may help to elucidate mainly concern the early history of the case in childhood, and, regarding these, psychoanalysis may sometimes raise questions which it cannot definitely settle. psycho-analysis reveals an immense mass of small details, any of which may or may not possess significance, and in determining which are significant the individuality of the psychoanalyst cannot fail to come into play. he will necessarily tend to arrange them according to a system. if, for instance, he regards infantile incestuous emotions or early narcissism as an essential feature of the mechanism of homosexuality, a conscientious investigator will not rest until he has discovered traces of them, as he very probably will. (see, e.g., sadger, "fragment der psychoanalyse eines homosexuellen," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. ix, ; and cf. hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. ). but the exact weight and significance of these traces may still be doubtful, and, even if considerable in one case, may be inconsiderable in another. freud, who sets forth one type of homosexual mechanism, admits that there may be others. moreover, it must be added that the psychoanalytic method by no means excludes unconscious deception by the subject, as freud found, and so was compelled to admit the patient's tendency to "fantasy," as adler has to "fictions," as a fundamental psychic tendency of the "unconscious." the force of these considerations is now beginning to be generally recognized. thus moll (art. "homosexualität," in th ed. of eulenburg's _realencyclopädie der gesamten heilkunde_, , p. ) rightly says that while the invert may occasionally embroider his story, "the expert can usually distinguish between the truth and the poetry, though it is unnecessary to add that complete confidence on the patient's part is necessary," näcke, again (_sexual-probleme_, september, , p. ), after quoting with approval the remark of one of the chief german authorities, dr. numa praetorius, that "a great number of inverts' histories are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of psychoanalysts, especially when they come from persons skillful in self-analysis," adds that "even freudian analysis gives no absolute guarantee for truth. a healthy skepticism is justifiable--but not an unhealthy skepticism!" hirschfeld, also (_die homosexualität_, p. ), whose knowledge of such histories is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a case of _pseudo-logia fantastica_ in connection with psychic debility on the basis of a psychopathic constitution, "taken all in all any generalized assertion of the falsehood of inverts is an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women who consult them." my own experience has fully convinced me of the truth of this, statement. i am assured that many of the inverts i have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual self-analysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast between their own feelings and those of the world around them), but an unsparing sincerity in that self-analysis not so very often attained by normal people. the histories which follow have been obtained in various ways, and are of varying degrees of value. some are of persons whom i have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom i can speak very positively. a few are from complete strangers whose good faith, however, i judge from internal evidence that i am able to accept. two or three were written by persons who--though educated, in one case a journalist--had never heard of inversion, and imagined that their own homosexual feelings were absolutely unique in the world. a fair number were written by persons whom i do not myself know, but who are well known to others in whose judgment i feel confidence. perhaps the largest number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me spontaneously in the first place, and whom i have at intervals seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long period, so that i have slowly been able to fill in their histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may have the air of being written down at a single sitting. i have not admitted any narrative which i do not feel that i am entitled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion, of his own personality. history i.--both parents healthy; father of unusually fine _physique_. he is himself a manual worker and also of exceptionally fine _physique_. he is, however, of nervous temperament. he is mentally bright, though not highly educated, a keen sportsman, and in general a good example of an all-around healthy englishman. while very affectionate, his sexual desires are not strongly developed on the physical side, and seem never to have been so. he sometimes masturbated about the age of puberty, but never afterward. he does not appear to have well-marked erotic dreams. there used to be some attraction toward women, though it was never strong. at the age of he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. this induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. a year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear and defined. he is now , and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even to speak of marriage. there has only been one really strong attraction, toward a man of about the same age, but of different social class, and somewhat a contrast to him, both physically and mentally. so far as the physical act is concerned this relationship is not definitely sexual, but it is of the most intimate possible kind, and the absence of the physical act is probably largely due to circumstances. at the same time there is no conscious desire for the act for its own sake, and the existing harmony and satisfaction are described as very complete. there is no repulsion to the physical side, and he regards the whole relationship as quite natural. history ii.--b.o., english, aged , missionary abroad. a brother is more definitely inverted. b.o. has never had any definitely homosexual relationships, although he has always been devoted to boys; nor has he had any relationships with women. "as regards women," he says, "i feel i have not the patience to try and understand them; they are petulant and changeable," etc. he objects to being called "abnormal," and thinks that people like himself are "_extremely_ common." "i have never wanted to kiss boys," he writes, "nor to handle them in any way except to put my arm around them at their studies and at other similar times. of course, with really little boys, it is different, but boys and girls under seem to me much alike, and i can love either equally well. as to any sort of sexual connection between myself and one of my own sex, i cannot think of it otherwise than with disgust. i can imagine great pleasure in having connection with a woman, but their natures do not attract me. indeed, my liking for my own sex seems to consist almost entirely in a preference for the masculine character, and the feeling that as an object to _look at_ the male body is really more beautiful than the female. when any strong temptations to sexual passion come over me in my waking moments, it is of women i think. on the other hand, i have to confess that after being with some lad i love for an hour or two, i have sometimes felt my sexual organs roused. but only once in my life have i experienced a strong desire to sleep in the same bed with a particular lad, and even then no idea of doing anything entered my mind. needless to say, i did not sleep with him. "i never feel tempted by any girls here, although i see so many with their bodies freely exposed, and plenty of them have really pretty faces. neither do i feel tempted to do anything improper with any of the boys, although i frequently sit talking with one who has very little on. but i find the constant sight of well-shaped bare limbs has a curious effect on the mind and comes before one's imagination as a picture at unlooked-for times. but the most curious thing of all is this: there are several lads here of whom i am very fond. now when they are near me i think of them with only the purest and most tender feelings, but sometimes at night when i am half asleep, or when i am taking my midday siesta, my imagination pictures one of these lads approaching a girl, or actually lying with her, and the strange thing is that i do not feel any desire myself to approach the girl, but i feel i wish i were in _her_ place and the lad was coming to _me_. in my calm, waking moments it disgusts and rather horrifies me to find myself apparently so unsexed--yet such is the fact, and the experience, with only slight changes, repeats itself over and over again. it is not that i, as a man, wish even in imagination to act improperly with a boy, but i feel i would like to be in the girl's place, and the strange thing is that in all these dreams and imaginings i can always apparently enter into the feelings of the woman better than into those of the man. sometimes i fancy for a moment that perhaps reincarnation is true and i was a woman in my last life. sometimes i fancy that when i was in the womb i was formed as a girl and the sexual organs changed just at the last moment. it is a curious problem. don't think i worry about it. only at long intervals do i think of it.... the thing has its bright side. boys and men seem to have tender feelings toward me, such as one expects them to have for members of the opposite sex, and i get into all the closer contact with them in consequence." history iii.--f.r., english, aged , belongs on both sides to healthy, normal families, of more than average ability. father was at birth, and mother . he is the second of four children. there was a considerable interval between the births of the children, which were spread over twenty-one years. all are normal, except f.r., two of them married and with families. owing to the difference of age between the children, f.r. (who was three years younger than his elder brother, and more than four years older than his sister, the third child) had no male companionship and was constantly alone with his mother. "being naturally imitative," he remarks, "i think i acquired her tastes and interests and habits of thought. however that may be, i feel sure that my interests and amusements were more girlish than boyish. by way of illustration, i may mention that i have often been told by a friend of my mother's that, on one occasion, i was wanting a new hat, and none being found of a size to fit me, i congratulated myself that i should therefore be obliged to have a _bonnet!_ as regards my feminine tastes and instincts, i have always been conscious of taking interest in questions of family relationships, etiquette, dress (women's as much as, or more than, men's) and other things of that kind, which, as a rule, were treated with indifference or contempt. in the house i take more notice than my sister does of the servants' deficiencies and neglects, and am much more orderly in my arrangements than she is." there is nothing markedly feminine in the general appearance. pubertal development took place at an early age, long before fourteen, with nocturnal emissions, but without erotic dreams. the testicles are well developed, the penis perhaps rather below the average in size, and the prepuce long and narrow. erection occurs with much facility, especially at night. when young he knew nothing of masturbation, but he began the habit about ten years ago, and has practised it occasionally ever since. although he likes the society of women to a certain extent, he soon grows tired of it, and has never had any desire to marry. his sexual dreams never have any relation to women. "i am generally doing or saying something," he remarks, "to some man whom i know when awake, something which i admit i might wish to do or say if it were not quite out of the question on grounds of propriety and self-respect." he has, however, never had any intimate relationships with men, and much that he has heard of such relationships fills him with horror. "what i feel about myself is," he writes, "that i have to a certain extent, or in some respects, a feminine mind in a male body; or, i might put it that i am a combination of an immoral (in tendency, rather than in act) woman and a religious man. from time to time i have felt strong affection for young men, but i cannot flatter myself that my affection has been reciprocated. at the present time there is a young fellow ( years old) who acts as my clerk and sits in my room. he is extremely good-looking, and of a type which is generally considered 'aristocratic,' but so far as i (or he) know, he is quite of the lower middle class. he has little to recommend him but a fine face and figure, and there is nothing approaching to mental or social equality between us. but i constantly feel the strongest desire to treat him as a man might a young girl he warmly loved. various obvious considerations keep me from more than quasi-paternal caresses, and i feel sure he would resent very strongly anything more. this constant repression is trying beyond measure to the nerves, and i often feel quite ill from that cause. having had no experiences of my own, i am always anxious to learn anything i can of the sexual relations of other men, and their organs, but i have no curiosity whatever concerning the other sex. my chief pleasure and source of gratification is found in the opportunities afforded by turkish and other baths; wherever, in fact, there is the nude male to be found. but i seldom find in these places anyone who seems to have the same tendency as myself, and certainly i have not met with more than two cases among the attendants, who responded to my hinted desire to see everything. under a shampooer, particularly an unfamiliar one, i occasionally experience an orgasm, but less often now than when i was younger." f.r. is very short-sighted. his favorite color is blue. he is able to whistle. his tastes are chiefly of a literary character, and he has never had any liking for sports. "i have been generally considered ineffective in the use of my hands," he writes, "and i am certainly not skillful. all i have ever been able to do in that way is to net and do the simpler forms of needlework; but it seems more natural to me to do, or try to do, everything of that sort, and to play on the piano, rather than to shoot or play games. i may add that i am fonder of babies than many women, and am generally considered to be surprisingly capable of holding them! certainly i enjoy doing so. as a youth, i used to act in charades; but i was too shy to do so unless i was dressed as a woman and veiled; and when i took a woman's part i _felt_ less like _acting_ than i have done in _propria persona_. a remark made by an uncle once rather annoyed me: that it seemed more like nature than art. but he was quite right." history iv.--of lowland scotch parentage. both sides of house healthy and without cerebral or nervous disease. homosexual desires began at puberty. he practised onanism to a limited extent at school and up to the age of about . his erotic dreams are exclusively about males. while very friendly and intimate with women of all ages, he is instantly repelled by any display of sexual affection on their side. this has happened in varying degree in three or four cases. with regard to marriage, he remarks: "as there seems no immediate danger of the race dying out, i leave marriage to those who like it." his male ideal has varied to some extent. it has for some years tended toward a healthy, well-developed, athletic or out-of-door working type, intelligent and sympathetic, but not specially intellectual. at school his sexual relations were of the simplest type. since then there have been none. "this," he says, "is not due either to absence of desire or presence of 'morals.' to put it shortly, 'there were never the time and the place and the loved one together.' in another view, physical desire and the general affection have not always coexisted toward the same person; and the former without the latter is comparatively transient; while the latter stops the gratification of the former, if it is felt that that gratification could in any way make the object of affection unhappy, mentally or emotionally." he is healthy and fairly well developed; of sensitive, emotional nature, but self-controlled; mentally he is receptive and aggressive by turns, sometimes uncritical, sometimes analytical. his temper is equable, and he is strongly affectionate. very fond of music and other arts, but not highly imaginative. of sexual inversion in the abstract he says he has no views, but he thus sums up his moral attitude: "i presume that, if it is there, it is there for use or abuse, as men please. i condemn gratification of bodily desire at the expense of others, in whatever form it may take. i condemn it no more in its inverted form than in the ordinary. i believe that affection between persons of the same sex, even when it includes the sexual passion and its indulgences, may lead to results as splendid as human nature can ever attain to. in short, i place it on an absolute equality with love as ordinarily understood." history v.--s.w., aged , english, musical journalist. the communication which follows (somewhat abbreviated) was written before s.w. had heard or read anything about sexual inversion, and when he still believed that his own case was absolutely unique. "i am the son of a clergyman, and lived for the first thirteen years of my life in the country town where i was born. then my father became the vicar of a country village, where i lived until i went out into the world at the age of . as during the whole of this time my father had a few pupils, i was educated with them, and never went to school. i was born, i fancy, with sexual passions about as strong as can well be imagined, and at the same time was very precocious in my entry into the stage of puberty. semen began to form a little before my twelfth birthday; hair soon followed, and in a year i was in that respect the equal of an average boy of or . i conversed freely with my companions on the relations of the sexes, but, unlike them, had no personal feeling toward girls. in time i became conscious that i was different, as i then believed, and believe now, from all other men. my sexual organs were quite perfect. but in the frame of a man i had the sexual mind of a female. i distinctly disclaim the faintest inclination to perform unnatural acts; the idea of committing sodomy would be _most disgusting_. "to come to my actual condition of mind: while totally indifferent to the person of woman (i always enjoyed their friendship and companionship, and many of my best friends have been ladies), i had a burning desire to have carnal intercourse with a male, and had the capacity for falling in love, as it is called, to the utmost extent. in imagination, i possessed the female organ, and felt toward man exactly as an amorous female would. at the time when i became fully conscious of my condition, i attached little importance to it; i had not a notion of its terrible import, nor of the future misery it would entail. all that i had to learn by bitter experience. "i did once think of forcing myself to have connection with a prostitute in order to see whether the actual sensual enjoyment might bring a change, and so have the power to marry. but when it came to thinking over ways and means, my repugnance to the act became so strong that it was quite out of the question. in the case of any male to whom i became attached, i wanted to feel ourselves together, skin to skin, and to be privileged to take such liberties as an amorous female would take if that were all permitted. i sought no purely sensual gratification of any kind; my love was far too genuine for that. "during the rather more than half a century which has elapsed since my twelfth birthday, i have been genuinely in love about thirteen times. i despair attempting to give an idea of the depth and reality of my feelings. i have alluded to my precocity. i was in love when years old, the object being a man of , a well-known analytical chemist. he came to my father's house very frequently; and my heart beat almost at the mention of his name. "the next serious time i was about . it was a farmer's son, about two years older. i don't think that i was ever alone with him, and really only knew him as a member of his family, yet for a time he was my chief interest in life. "when i had a 'chum,' a youth of , who entertained for me, at any rate, a brotherly affection. we were under the same roof, and early one summer morning he got out of bed and came direct to my room to talk about some matter or other. in order to talk more comfortably he got into bed with me and we lay there just as two school-girls might have done. this proximity was more than i could stand, and my heart began to beat so that it was impossible that he should not notice it. as, of course, he could not have the slightest notion of the reason, he said in all innocence, 'why, how your heart beats. i can hear it quite plainly.' "so far my details are purely innocent. up to , familiarities passed at intervals between me and the son of the village doctor, a youth about two years older than myself, and precociously immoral. i did not really care for him much, but he was my chief companion. then i became a school-assistant, and for about six years managed to control myself, only, alas, to fall again. another resolution i kept for eight years, one long fight with my nature. again i sinned in three instances, extending over three or four years. i now come to a very painful and eventful episode in my unhappy life which i would gladly pass over were it possible. it was a case, in middle life, of sin, discovery, and great folly in addition. "before going into details, so far as may be necessary, i cannot help asking you to consider calmly and dispassionately my exact condition compared with that of my fellow-creatures as a whole. in my struggles to resist in the past, i have at times felt as if wrestling in the folds of a python. i again sinned, then, with a youth and his friend. oddly enough, discovery followed through a man who was actuated by a feeling of revenge for a strictly right act on my part. the lads refused to state more than the truth, and this did not satisfy the man, and a _third_ lad was introduced, who was prepared to say anything. this was not all; some twelve or fifteen more boys made similar accusations! the general belief, in consequence, was that i had committed 'nameless' crimes in all directions, _ad lib_. if you were to ask me for an explanation of the action of all these boys beyond the _third_, who, of course, had some special inducements, i can offer none. they may have thought that the original trio were regarded rather in the light of _heroes_; why should _they_ not be heroes, too? "i might well feel crushed under such a load of accusations, but that does not excuse the incredible folly of my conduct. i denied alike the modicum of truth and the mass of lying, and went off to america. however, as time passed on and my mind got into a proper state, i felt that the truth must be told some time or other. i accordingly wrote from america to the proper quarter a full confession of my sin with regard to the two youths who had told merely the truth, at the same time pointing out the falsehood of all the rest of the accusations. "i remained in america six years, and actually made money, so that i could return to england with a small capital. i was also under a promise to my three sisters (all older than myself) that i would return in their lifetime. my programme was to purchase a small, light business in london, and quietly earn my living; at the same time making my presence known to no one. i _did_ buy such a business, got swindled in the most clever way, and lost every farthing i possessed in the world! i had to make my plight known to old friends who all either gave or lent me money. still my position was a very precarious one. i tried an insurance agency, one of the last resources of the educated destitute, but soon found out that i was unfitted for work in which _impudence_ is a prime factor. then an extraordinary stroke of good fortune took place; almost simultaneously i began to get a few music pupils, and literary work in connection with a good musical journal. "making my presence known to old friends involved the same information to those who were _not_ friends. my identity as a journalist became known, and as time passed by it seemed to me as if half the world had heard of my alleged iniquities. people who have never set eyes on me seem to regard me in the light of a monster of iniquity who ought not to be suffered to exist. all these outsiders believe that i have committed 'nameless' offenses times innumerable and lift up their hands in speechless horror at the audacity of a man who, so situated, dares to appear openly in public, under his own name, and look people in the face. they have not even the brains to see that this very fearlessness proves the fictitious character of their beliefs. next, they believe that if only they could get my dismissal from my journalistic post i should be brought to starvation point. this up to a year ago was true. then an old relative died and left me some property which i sold to invest in an annuity, and thus have just enough to live on quietly, apart from what i may earn. under such strange conditions it might be asked whether life was not unendurable. frankly speaking, i cannot say that i find it so. i have in london a few bachelor friends who go with me to theaters, etc. in the suburbs i have about half a dozen family friends. here i meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. i am passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear the best concerts in europe. i go to all good plays. i am a good chess player. lastly, i am an omnivorous reader. you will allow that my resources for passing the time are not limited. "of course, i am sorry that i sinned, and wish that i had not done so. but i disclaim any feeling of shame." s.w. was the youngest of four children and the only boy. his father was at his birth, his mother . the father was an intellectual man of weak character, the mother a woman of violent and eccentric temper, with, he believes, strong sexual passions. s.w. knows of nothing in the family to account for his own abnormal condition. he is short (five feet five inches), but well built, with strong chest and a powerful voice. his arms are weak and flabby (feminine, he thinks), but the legs muscular. as a boy of he could walk forty miles with ease, and he played football till near the age of . he is considered manly in character and tastes, but is easily moved to tears under strong excitement. there is no information as to the type of man to whom he is attracted. i may observe, however, that the analytical chemist who first evoked s.w.'s admiration was well known to me some thirty years later, as he was my own teacher in chemistry. at that time he was an elderly man of attractive appearance and character, sympathetic and winning in manner to an almost feminine extent. s.w. has never felt the slightest sexual attraction toward the opposite sex. the first indications of inverted feeling were at the age of or . watching his father's pupils, boys of or , from the windows, he speculated on what their organs of generation were like. "in connection with a girl," he writes, "i should no more have thought of such a thing than in the case of a block of marble." about this time, indeed, he at times slept with a sister of , who induced him to go through the form of sexual connection, saying that it felt "so funny;" but he merely did this to please her, and without the slightest interest or feeling on his own part. this attitude became more marked with increased knowledge, until he fell ardently in love at the age of . throughout life he has practised masturbation to a certain extent, and is prepared to defend the practice in his own case. his erotic dreams have been of only the vaguest and most shadowy character. he is able to whistle. he takes a warm interest in politics and in philanthropic work. but his chief love is for music and he has published many musical compositions. on the whole, and notwithstanding the persecution he has endured, he does not regard his life as unhappy. at the same time he is keenly conscious of the atmosphere of "pariahdom" which surrounds inverts, and in his own case this has never been alleviated by any sense of companionship in misery. the facility with which some inverts are said to recognize others of their own kind is quite incomprehensible to him; he has never to his knowledge met one. history vi.--e.s., physician, aged . "i have some reason," he writes, "for believing that some of my relatives (on the paternal side) were not normal in their sexual life. but i am sure that no such suspicion was entertained by their friends or associates; they were very reticent people. a great proportion of my near relatives have remained unmarried or deferred marriage until late in life. none of them have been good business men; all seem to have been more deeply concerned in other things than in making--or in keeping--money. they have mostly taken little or no share in public life, and not cared much for society. yet they have been folk of more than average ability, with intellectual and æsthetic interests. we are prone to enthusiasms, but lack perseverance. we are discursive and superficial, perhaps, but none would call us stupid. we are perhaps abnormally self-centered and self-conscious--never cruel or vicious. our powers of self-control are considerable; we are conventional people only because we are lazy and intensely dislike any open self-assertion. yet we are nervous rather than phlegmatic. all that is on the father's side. my maternal ancestors have been concerned with farming and the sea and have also had a similar lack of business capacity, but with less mental adaptiveness and alertness, with more steadiness of purpose, however, always doers rather than dreamers. among them i remember one cousin who was probably abnormal, although he died when i was too young to notice much. again, they were all rather reserved people, but more genial with strangers, more socially inclined, and with less self-control. "i was an only child and a spoilt one. i was always quick at school, fond of learning, and finding my lessons no trouble. serious study i disliked. but for school purposes i did not find it necessary, and had no difficulty in carrying all before me. i was never fond of games, although very fond of being out of doors and of walking. few of my relatives have been at all keen on sport. i made no close friendships at school and was never very popular with my schoolfellows, who, however, tolerated my odd ways better than might have been expected. i was easily brought to appreciate good literature, but i never had much power of expression or of strenuous thought. i was extremely susceptible and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all ambitious or in any way creative. i was easily stimulated to work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted itself, and i wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. my memory was very quick and retentive, in the main, but curiously capricious. i always lacked initiative and decision. at college my successes were continued. i gained medals and prizes, passed my examinations easily, and graduated 'with first-class honors.' in my professional lifework i have been successful rather beyond the average. i love it with all my heart. "i cannot speak with any confidence about the first stirrings of my sexual instincts, but i think i can assert that they have at no time led me to any desire for the opposite sex. it is true that my earliest recollection of the kind is concerned with intimacies with a girl play-fellow, but as we had at the time reached only the mature age of (at the most) i fancy that our mutual exhibitions--for there was nothing more--simply satisfied our natural curiosity. certainly these memories are, in my mind, in no way set apart from the recollections of other kinds of play. next to that i remember the usual schoolboy talk about things hidden and forbidden, but up till i was or so this was simply dirty talk, concerned more with renal and intestinal functions than with any sexual feelings or understanding. one boy was known to us all (and of my not inconsiderable circle of early friends, all grew up to be normal people, who married and had children in due course) for the unusual size of his parts and for the freedom with which he invited and satisfied the curiosity of his friends. he must have been precocious, for he could not have been more than , and i remember to have heard that he had a thick growth of pubic hair. even then, although i know that my curiosity--to put it at that only--was active, i never allowed myself to have any dealings with him; and i think i should have discouraged them had they been suggested to me. that is the odd thing about my life: the things i longed intensely to do i would not let myself do, not from any religious or moral scruple, but from some inexplicable fastidiousness or scrupulosity which is yet as active as ever, although i am sure that it would not be able to hold its own could these favorable conditions be repeated, but would be overcome by the imperious and fully grown desires which, by long repression, or by unsatisfactory diversion, have grown to be so strong. indeed, given the opportunity, and the assurance that no first seduction or corruption of anyone was in question, they would prove quite irrepressible. "certainly, long before puberty--which was early with me--i remember being greatly attracted to certain boys, and wishing to have an opportunity of sleeping with them. had i been able to do so, i am sure i should have been impelled to get into as close contact with their naked body as possible, and i do not think i should then have craved for anything more. i knew some boys--perhaps a little older--who even then had relations, which were certainly not innocent, with a girl who was a year or two older than any of us. she once kissed me, to my intense shame. but i felt that these relations would have been unspeakably disgusting and i took no particular interest in hearing about them. i remember being fondled and caressed by a very good-looking boy of when i was three or four years younger and had sustained some hurt at play; and i am still able to recall the thrill of delight that i experienced at his touch. nothing took place that all the world might not have seen, but i remember being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an unspeakable effect on me. "about this time, too, an older boy, perhaps about , used to get hold of smaller boys when on country walks, to throw them down and then look at and toy with their genitals. he was himself a handsome boy, and i was greatly excited when told about this by boys who had experienced it, and wished greatly to have it done to me. it never was; and if it had been attempted i know i should have resisted with all my strength, although my desires would have set me aflame. this boy died before he was , with a psoas abscess, and i remember crying myself to sleep the night i learned of his death. another boy, about three years older than myself, who had very silky hair, i used to be attracted by and i was always trying to stroke his hair, but he always objected. "i must have been about when i first was taught to masturbate by a cousin who was slightly older. at first i thought it silly, but i used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time to time until i became old enough to experience the proper sensation. then i have reason to think i gave myself up to it rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it was long before i realized that there was anything wrong about it or that it might prove hurtful. looking back now, i feel perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from the very first. this cousin, who possessed notable intellectual and artistic gifts, married, but i feel sure his liking for his own sex was not normal. "with another cousin, almost years my junior, i was always on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. my holidays at his parents' house were my greatest delight. we were always together by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each other's arms. to me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to press close to his naked body. we used mutually to handle and caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation, although at that period i regularly practised it on myself. i asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others; and to my great pride and satisfaction i can say that i never either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. this i mention as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and desires knew no such curb. i remember also an elder brother of his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then about , i suppose) his semierect penis. he would not allow me to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to uncover the glans. his penis was large, and the incident was not forgotten. we had no other relation and i know that both he and my own friend grew up to be quite normal men. "i think i must have been about when i got frightened about the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which i believed were the evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years i continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my second or third year at college, i summoned up courage enough to consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, i now think, too light of my confidences, so that i relapsed the more readily, although much later on, into old habits. "from our windows at home we looked over a bit of common or down to the beach, and i used to keep watch on warm summer afternoons; over boys who might be bathing, to observe them through our telescope. all this i kept strictly secret and i was never surprised. i might just as well, and without arousing the slightest suspicion of my motive, have walked down to the beach and seen them and chatted with them; but this i could not have brought myself to do. it gave me considerable sexual satisfaction when i was able to see them bathing without pants. i also used to watch them at play on the common, and felt rewarded when i saw, as i not infrequently did, sexual familiarities taking place. these violently excited me and sometimes brought on orgasm, always erection with pleasure. indeed, it was an experience of this kind that made me return to masturbation after i had given it up for a while. i remember one day seeing two lads of about lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad put out his hand and tried to open his companion's trousers. he resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by the other. even at this day the recollection of this excites me. both lads grew up to be normal men. "twice only have i been approached by grown-up people. when i was about i used to meet often, when going to school by train, an old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific collections, but i always had a vague distrust of him and never went. one day in the summer during a spare hour i met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment. he came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness. 'i would be very grateful,' he said, 'if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.' he then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen. i avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that direction until, burning with shame, i made my escape and ran off, not stopping until i was safe in school. i scarcely understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever afterward. i learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from falling into bad company. he died at a great age and left most of his fortune to an institution for lads, as well as large legacies to youths in whom he had been interested. "the other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk, praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my loose cloak and felt up toward my parts. at the same time he took hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in the dusk). this excited me and, if we had not been at our destination, i think i would gladly have permitted further familiarities. he tried to ask me where i lived, but there was no time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any further sequel. "on more than one occasion i have experienced the sexual orgasm as the result of mental anxiety. the first time this occurred was when i was hurrying to avoid being late for school. another time was when i was about , and was extremely anxious to fill an appointment for which i was late. so copious was the emission that i had to go home and change. "as a medical student, the first reference bearing definitely on the subject of sexual inversion was made in the class of medical jurisprudence, where certain sexual crimes were alluded to--very summarily and inadequately--but nothing was said of the existence of sexual inversion as the 'normal' condition of certain unhappy people, nor was any distinction drawn between the various non-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane people. to a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows, nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me up more completely in my reserve than ever. i felt that this teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or misapprehension, for i knew from my own very clear remembrance of my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault. "it was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures on clinical medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the subject. all sorts of rare diseases--some of which i have not yet met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy practice--were fully discussed, but we were left entirely ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and, as it seems to me, to the profession to which i aspired. there might have been an incidental reference to masturbation--although i do not remember it--but its real significance received no attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our reading or of our personal experiences. "in the class of mental disease there was, naturally, more detailed and systematic reference to facts in the sexual life and to sexual inversion as a rare pathological condition. but still there was not a comforting word to reassure me, growing ever more hopelessly ashamed of what it seemed was a criminal or a gravely morbid nature. "among all my fellow-students i knew of no one constituted like myself; but my natural reserve--increased, of course, by my consciousness of what i saw would be thought to be a criminal tendency--did not urge me to exchange of confidences or to the formation of; close friendships. "after graduation i became a resident medical officer in the hospital and private assistant to one of the professors--a physician and teacher of worldwide reputation. with him i associated on the most cordial and affectionate terms; and often in the course of conversation i tried to bring him to discuss the subject, but without success. it was obviously unpleasant and uninteresting to him. enough was said, however, to enable me to realize that he held the current ideas on the subject; and i would not for worlds have allowed him, to guess that i myself came under the despised and tainted category. "i have seldom heard sexual inversion discussed among my professional friends. they speak of it with disgust or amusement. i have never met a professional man who would consider it dispassionately and scientifically. for them it was a subject entirely belonging to psychological medicine. "i have had no admitted case of it among my patients; but i have often instinctively felt that some who consulted me about other matters would have taken me into their confidence about that, but for their fear of being cruelly misunderstood. "as to my moral attitude i fear to speak. grossness disgusts me; but i am not sure that i should be able to resist temptation placed in my way. but i am absolutely sure that i should never, under any circumstances, tempt others to any disgraceful act. if i ever committed any sexual act with one of my own sex whom i loved, i could not look at it or approach it in any other than a sacramental way. this sounds blasphemous and shocking, but i cannot otherwise express my meaning. "as regards the marriage of inverts, my own feeling is that for a congenital invert--no matter how fully the situation be explained beforehand--it is a step fraught with too great possibilities of tragedy and of the deepest unhappiness, to be advised at all. my view is that for the invert, far more than for the ordinary person, there is no escape from the supreme necessity of self-control in any relationship he may form. if that be attained then the ideal is a relationship with another man of similar temperament--not a platonic one, necessarily--by means of which the highest happiness of both may be reached. but this can occur _very_ seldom. "to poetry and the fine arts i am very susceptible, and i have given a great deal of time to this study. i am devoted heart and soul to music, which is more and more to me every year i live. trivial or light music i cannot endure, but of beethoven, bach, händel, schumann, schubert, brahms, tschaikowsky, and wagner i should never hear enough. here, too, my sympathies, are very catholic, and i delight in mcdowell, debussy, richard strauss, and hugo wolf." history vii.--"my parentage is very sound and healthy. both my parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good general health; nor can i trace any marked abnormal or diseased tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family. "though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive, my health is good. i am not aware of any tendency to physical disease. in early manhood, however, owing, i believe, to the great emotional tension under which i lived, my nervous system was a good deal shattered and exhausted. mentally and morally my nature is pretty well balanced, and i have never had any serious perturbations in these departments. "at the age of or , and long before distinct sexual feelings declared themselves, i felt a friendly attraction toward my own sex, and this developed after the age of puberty into a passionate sense of love, which, however, never found any expression for itself till i was fully years of age. i was a day-boarder at school and heard little of school-talk on sex subjects, was very reserved and modest besides; no elder person or parent ever spoke to me on such matters; and the passion for my own sex developed gradually, utterly uninfluenced from the outside. i never even, during all this period, and till a good deal later, learned the practice of masturbation. my own sexual nature was a mystery to me. i found myself cut off from the understanding of others, felt myself an outcast, and, with a highly loving and clinging temperament, was intensely miserable. i thought about my male friends--sometimes boys of my own age, sometimes elder boys, and once even a master--during the day and dreamed about them at night, but was too convinced that i was a hopeless monstrosity ever to make any effectual advances. later on it was much the same, but gradually, though slowly, i came to find that there were others like myself. i made a few special friends, and at last it came to me occasionally to sleep with them and to satisfy my imperious need by mutual embraces and emissions. before this happened, however, i was once or twice on the brink of despair and madness with repressed passion and torment. "meanwhile, from the first, my feeling, physically, toward the female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion. though having several female friends, whose society i like and to whom i am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me. "as a boy i was attracted in general by boys rather older than myself; after leaving school i still fell in love, in a romantic vein, with comrades of my own standing. now,--at the age of ,--my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger--preferably of the working class. though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. if endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively. "i have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. my chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent enough, seems a secondary matter. pederasty, either active or passive, might seem in place to me with one i loved very devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but i think not otherwise. i am an artist by temperament and choice, fond of all beautiful things, especially the male human form; of active, slight, muscular build; and sympathetic, but somewhat indecisive character, though possessing self-control. "i cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. all that i have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form; and, with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person's distress or degradation. i am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so; and i think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex gratifications (whatever they may be) probably hold a less important place in this love than in the other." history viii.--m.n., aged . "my grandfather might be said to be of abnormal temperament, for, though of very humble origin, he organized and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and became an accomplished linguist, translating the bible into an eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that language. he died, practically of overwork, at the age of . he was twice married, my father being his third son by the second wife. i believe that two, if not more, of the family (numbering seven in all) were inverted, and the only one of them to marry was my father. my grandmother was the last representative of an old and very 'wild' irish family. she died at an advanced age, of paralysis. my father was and my mother at the time of their marriage. i was born three years after and was their only child. the marriage proved a most unhappy one, they being utterly unsuited to each other in every way. "my father's health during the first years of his marriage was very delicate, and i have reason to believe that it had been undermined in certain ways by his life abroad. i understand i was born with slight gonorrheal affection, and as a child my health was very indifferent. this latter may have been brought about by the peculiarly unhappy and unnatural life i led. i had no companions of my own age, and did not even attend any school until after my mother's death. my father superintended my education up to that time, and i had free access to a large and very varied library, and a great deal of solitary leisure to enjoy it in. there were a number of medical and scientific books in it, which were my principal favorites, and i remember deciding at a very early age to be a doctor. when about years old i recollect having a sexual dream connected with a railway porter. it afforded me great pleasure to recall this dream, and about that time i discovered a method of self-gratification (there is not much 'teaching' required in these matters!). "i cannot say that the dream i have mentioned constituted absolutely the first intimation of inverted feeling, but rather that it crystallized vague ideas which i might have already had on the subject. i can recollect that when about between and years of age a young fellow of about came to our house several times as a visitor. he was fond of children, i suppose, and i generally sat on his knee and was kissed by him. this was a source of great pleasure to me, but i cannot remember if it was accompanied by erection. i can only recall that his attention and caresses made a greater impression upon me than those of women. when about that age too i was often aroused when sleeping with my mother, and told not to lie on my face. i remember that erection was always present on these occasions. the dream was the first of many of its kind, and in my case they have never been accompanied by emission. they have always been of an 'inverted' character, though i have occasionally had dreams about women. these latter, however, have usually partaken somewhat of the nature of a nightmare! "up to the age of i felt much perplexed and depressed by my views on sexual desire, and was convinced that they were peculiar to myself. this, combined with the solitary condition of my life, and about four years' continued ill-treatment prior to my mother's death (she had given way to drink for that period), had a very injurious effect on my health, mental and bodily. looking back from my present point of view, i can understand and forgive many things which appeared monstrous and unjust to me as a child. my mother's life must have been a very unhappy one, and she was bitterly disappointed in many ways, very likely in me as well. my unfortunate, misunderstood temperament led me to be shy and secretive, and i was often ailing, and my training was not calculated to improve matters. at last, however, change and freedom came, and i was sent to a boarding-school. here, of course, i soon met with attachments and gratifications with other boys. i arrived at puberty, and my health improved under happier surroundings. i was not long in discovering that my companions viewed the pleasures that meant so much to me from an entirely different standpoint. their gratifications were usually accompanied by conversation about, and a general direction of thought toward, females. when i had turned , owing to monetary difficulties i was obliged to leave school, and was soon not only thrown on my own resources, but accountable to no one but myself for my conduct. of course, my next discovery was that my case, so far from being peculiar, was a most common one, and i was quickly initiated into all the mysteries of inversion, with its freemasonry and 'argot.' altogether my experience of inverts has been a pretty wide and varied one, and i have always endeavored to classify and compare cases which have come under my notice with a view to arriving at some sort of conclusion or explanation. "i suppose it is due to female versatility or impressibility that it is possible for me to experience mentally the emotions attributable to either sex, according to the age and temperament of my companion; for instance, with one older than myself, possessing well-marked male characteristics, i am able to feel all that surrender and dependence which is so essentially feminine. on the other hand, if with a youth of feminine type and behavior i can realize, with an equal amount of pleasure, the tender, yet dominant, attitude of the male. "i experience no particular 'horror' of women sexually. i should imagine that my feeling toward them resembles very much what normal people feel with regard to others of their own sex." m.n. remarks that he cannot whistle, and that his favorite color is green. in this case the subject easily found a moral _modus vivendi_ with his inverted instinct, and he takes its gratification for granted. in the following case, which, i believe, is typical of a large group, the subject has never yielded to his inverted impulses, and, except so far as masturbation is concerned, has preserved strict chastity. history ix.--r.s., aged , american of french descent. "upon the question of heredity i may say that i belong to a reasonably healthy, prolific, and long-lived family. on my father's side, however, there is a tendency toward pulmonary troubles. he himself died of pneumonia, and two of his brothers and a nephew of consumption. neither of my parents were morbid or eccentric. excepting for a certain shyness with strangers, my father was a very masculine man. my mother is somewhat nervous, but is not imaginative, nor at all demonstrative in her affections. i think that my own imaginative and artistic temperament must come from my father's side. perhaps my french ancestry has something to do with it. with the exception of my maternal grandfather, all my progenitors have been of french descent. my mother's father was english. "i possess a mercurial temperament and a strong sense of the ludicrous. though my _physique_ is slight, my health has always been excellent. of late years especially i have been greatly given to introspection and self-scrutiny, but have never had any hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at all superstitious. spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or no attraction for me. in fact, i have always been skeptical of them, and they rather bore me. "at school i was an indolent, dreamy boy, shirking study, but otherwise fairly docile to my teachers. from earliest childhood i have indulged in omnivorous taste for reading, my particular likings being for travels, esthetics, metaphysical and theological subjects, and more recently for poetry and certain forms of mysticism. i never cared much for history or for scientific subjects. from the beginning, too, i showed a strong artistic bent, and possessed an overpowering love for all things beautiful. as a child i was passionately fond of flowers, loved to be in the woods and alone, and wanted to become an artist. my parents opposed the latter wish and i gave way before their opposition. "in me the homosexual nature is singularly complete, and is undoubtedly congenital. the most intense delight of my childhood (even when a tiny boy in a nurse's charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at the circus. this was not so much for the skillful feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. even then i cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. people told me that circus actors were wicked, and would steal little boys, and so i came to look upon my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. when i was older and could go about alone, i would often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching a glimpse of the actors. i longed to see them naked, without their tights, and used to lie awake at night thinking of them and longing to be loved and embraced by them. a certain bareback rider, a sort of jockey, used especially to please me on account of his handsome legs, which were clothed in fleshlings up to his waist, leaving his beautiful loins uncovered by a breech-clout. there was nothing consciously sensual about these reveries, because at the time i had no sensual feelings or knowledge. curiously enough, the women-actors repelled me then (as they do to this day) quite as strongly as i was attracted by the men. "i used, also, to take great pleasure in watching men and boys in swimming, but my opportunities for seeing them thus were extremely rare. i never dared let my comrades know how i felt about these matters, but the sight of a well-formed, naked youth or man would fill me (and does now) with mingled feelings of bashfulness, anguish, and delight. i used to tell myself endless stories of a visionary castle inhabited by beautiful boys, one of whom was especially my dear chum. "it was always the _prince_, in fairy tales, who held my interest or affection. i was constantly falling in love with handsome boys whom i never knew; nor did i ever try to mix in their company, for i was abashed before them, and had no liking nor aptitude for boyish games. sometimes i played with girls because they were more quiet and gentler, but i cared for them little or not at all. "as is usually the case, my parents neglected to impart to me any sexual knowledge, and such as i possessed was gathered furtively from tainted sources, bad boys' talk at school and elsewhere. my elders let me know, in a vague way, that talk of the kind was wicked, and natural timidity and a wish to be 'good' kept me from learning much about sexual matters. as i never went to boarding-school, i was spared, perhaps, many of the degrading initiations administered by knowing boys at such institutions. "in spite of what has been said above, i do not believe that i was sexually very precocious, and even now i feel that more pleasure would ensue from merely contemplating than from personal contact with the object of my amorous attentions. "as i grew older there came, of course, an undefined physical longing, but it was the _beauty_ of those i admired which mainly appealed to me. at the time of puberty i spontaneously acquired the habit of masturbation. once while bathing i found that a pleasant feeling came with touching the sexual organs. it was not long before i was confirmed in the habit. at first i practised it but seldom, but afterward much more frequently (say, once a week), though at times months have elapsed without any indulgences on my part. i have only had erotic dreams three or four times in my life. the masturbation habit i regard as morally reprehensible and have made many resolutions to break it, but without avail. it affords me only the most momentary satisfaction, and is always followed by remorseful scruples. "i have never in my life had any sexual feeling for a woman, nor any sexual connection with any woman whatsoever. the very thought of such a thing is excessively repugnant and disgusting to me. this is true, apart from any moral considerations, and i do not think i could bring myself to it. i am not attracted by young women in any way. even their physical beauty has little or no charm for me, and i often wonder how men can be so affected by it. on the other hand, i am not a woman-hater, and have several strong friends of the opposite sex. they are, however, women older than myself, and our friendship is based solely on certain intellectual or esthetic tastes we have in common. "i have had practically no physical relations with men; at any rate, none specifically sexual. once, when about or , i started to embrace a beautifully formed youth with whom i was sleeping, but timidity and scruples got the better of my feelings, and, as my bedfellow was not amorously inclined toward me, nothing came of it. a few years after this i became strongly attached to a friend whom i had already known for several years. circumstances threw us very much together during one summer. it was now that i felt for the first time the full shock of love. he returned my affection, but both of us were shy of showing our feelings or speaking of them. often when walking together after night-fall we would put our arms about each other. sometimes, too, when sleeping together we would lie in close contact, and my friend once suggested that i put my legs against his. he frequently begged me to spend the night with him; but i began to fear my feelings, and slept with him but seldom. we neither of us had any definite ideas about homosexual relations, and, apart from what i have related above, we had no further contact with each other. a few months after our amorous feelings had developed my friend died. his death caused me great distress, and my naturally religious temperament began to manifest itself quite strongly. at this time, too, i first read some writings of mr. addington symonds, and certain allusions in his work, coupled with my recent experience, soon stirred me to a full consciousness of my inverted nature. "about eight months after my friend's death i happened to meet in a strange town a youth of about my own age who exerted upon me a strong and instant attraction. he possessed a refined, handsome face, was gracefully built, and, though he was rather undemonstrative, we soon became fast friends. "we were together only for a few days, when i was obliged to leave for my home, and the parting caused me great unhappiness and depression. a few months after we spent a vacation together. one day during our trip we went swimming, and undressed in the same bathhouse. when i saw my friend naked for the first time he seemed to me so beautiful that i longed to throw my arms about him and cover him with kisses. i kept my feelings hidden, however, hardly daring to look at him for fear of being unable to restrain my desires. several times afterward, in his room, i saw him stripped, with the same effect upon my emotions. until i had seen him naked my feelings for him were not of a physical character, but afterward i longed for actual contact, but only by embraces and kisses. though he was fond of me, he had absolutely no amorous longings for me, and being a simple, pure-minded fellow, would have loathed me for mine and my inverted nature. i was careful never to let him discover it, and i was made very unhappy when he confided that he was in love with a young girl whom he wished to marry. this episode took place several years ago, and though we are still friends my emotional feelings for him have cooled considerably. "i have always been very shy of showing any affectionate tendencies. most of my acquaintances (and close friends even) think me curiously cold, and often wonder why i have never fallen in love or married. for obvious reasons i have never been able to tell them. "three or four years ago a little book by coventry patmore fell into my hands, and from its perusal resulted a strange blending of my religious and erotic notions. the desire to love and be loved is hard to drown, and, when i realized that homosexually it was neither lawful nor possible for me to love in this world, i began to project my longings into the next. by birth i am a roman catholic, and in spite of a somewhat skeptical temper, manage to remain one by conviction. "from the doctrines of the trinity, incarnation, and eucharist, i have drawn conclusions which would fill the minds of the average pietist with holy horror; nevertheless i believe that (granting the premises) these conclusions are both logically and theologically defensible. the divinity of my fancied paradise resembles in no way the vapid conceptions of fra angelico, or the quartier st. sulpice. his physical aspect, at least, would be better represented by some praxitilean demigod or flandrin's naked, brooding boy. "while these imaginings have caused me considerable moral disquietude, they do not seem wholly reprehensible, because i feel that the chief happiness i would derive by their realization would be mainly from the contemplation of the loved one, rather than from closer joys. "i possess only a slight knowledge of the history and particulars of erotic mysticism, but it is likely that my notions are neither new nor peculiar, and many utterances of the few mystical writers with whose works i am acquainted seem substantially in accord with my own longings and conclusions. in endeavoring to find for them some sanction of valid authority, i have always sought corroboration from members of my own sex; hence am less likely to have fashioned my views after those of hypersensitive or hysterical women. "you will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to say exactly how i regard (morally) the homosexual tendency. of this much, however, i am certain, that, even, if it were possible, i would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one. i suspect that the sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more subtle significance than is generally attributed to them; but modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental interpretations or see none, and i am ignorant and unable to solve the mystery these feelings seem to imply. "patmore speaks boldly enough, in his way, and lacordaire has hinted at things, but in a very guarded manner. i have neither the ability nor opportunity to study what the mystics of the middle ages have to say along these lines, and, besides, the medieval way of looking at things is not congenial to me. the chief characteristic of my tendency is an overpowering admiration for male beauty, and in this i am more akin to the greeks. "i have absolutely no words to tell you how powerfully such beauty affects me. moral and intellectual worth is, i know, of greater value, but physical beauty i _see_ more clearly, and it appears to me the most _vivid_ (if not the most perfect) manifestation of the divine. a little incident may, perhaps, reveal to you my feelings more completely. not long ago i happened to see an unusually well-formed young fellow enter a house of assignation with a common woman of the streets. the sight filled me with the keenest anguish, and the thought that his beauty would soon be at the disposal of a prostitute made me feel as if i were a powerless and unhappy witness to a sacrilege. it may be that my rage for male loveliness is only another outbreaking of the old platonic mania, for as time goes on i find that i long less for the actual youth before me, and more and more for some ideal, perfect being whose bodily splendor and loving heart are the realities whose reflections only we see in this cave of shadows. since the birth and development within me of what, for lack of a better name, i term my homosexualized patmorean ideal, life has become, in the main, a weary business. i am not despondent, however, because many things still hold for me a certain interest. when that interest dies down, as it is wont from time to time, i endeavor to be patient. god grant that, after the end _here_, i may be drawn from the shadow, and seemingly vain imaginings into the possession of their never-ending reality _hereafter_." history x.--a.h., aged . belongs to a family which cannot be regarded as healthy, but there is no insanity among near relations. father a very virile man of high character and good intelligence, but not sound physical health. mother was high-strung and nervous, but possessed of indomitable courage and very affectionate; she lived very happily with her husband. she became a chronic invalid and died of consumption. a.h. was a seven months' child, the third in the family, who were born very rapidly, so that there is only three years difference in the ages of the first and third children. a.h. believes that one of his brothers, who has never married and prefers men to women, is also inverted, though not to the same degree as himself, and he also suspects that a relation of his mother's may have been an invert. sister, who resembles the father in character, is married, but is spoken of as a woman's woman rather than a man's woman. the family generally are considered proud and reserved, but of superior mental endowment. in early life a.h. was delicate and his studies were often interrupted by illness. though living under happy conditions he was shy and nervous, often depressed. in later life his health has been up to the average, and he has usually been able to conceal his mental doubts and diffidence. as a child he played with dolls and made girls his companions until an age when he grew conscious that his conduct was unusual and became ashamed, while his father seemed troubled about him. he regards himself as having been a very childish child. his conscious sexual life began between the ages of and . he was playing in the garden when he saw a manservant who had long been with the family, standing at the door of a shed with his penis exposed and erect. the boy had never seen anything of the kind before, but felt great delight in the exhibition and moved shyly toward the man, who retreated into the shed. the boy followed and was allowed to caress and play with the penis until ejaculation took place, the man replying, in reply to the child's innocent inquiries, that it "felt good." this experience was frequently repeated with the same man, and the boy confided in a boy friend, with whom he tried to ascertain by personal experience what the "good feeling" was like, but they were too young to derive any pleasure from the attempt beyond the joy of what was instinctively felt to be "eating forbidden fruit." from this period his sexual tendencies began to become fixed and self-conscious. he has never at any period of life had a moment's conscious sexual attraction toward a person of the opposite sex. his warmest friendships have, indeed, been with women and much, perhaps most, of the happiness he has enjoyed has been furnished by those friendships. but passion has only been aroused by persons of his own sex, generally by men much younger than himself. he feels shy and uncomfortable in the presence of men of his own age. but even at his present age, a touch of a man or boy may cause the liveliest gratification. shortly after the incident in boyhood, already narrated, a.h. induced a little boy companion to go to a quiet spot, where, at a.h.'s suggestion, each placed the other's penis in his mouth by turns. a.h. had never heard of such a proceeding. it was a natural instinct. he began to masturbate at an early age. but he soon found a companion to share his passion. an older man, especially, married and with a family, became his accomplice on every possible opportunity, and they would manipulate each other. at the age of , _fellatio_ began to be practised with this man. it became a lifelong practice, and the preferred method of sexual gratification. he likes best to have it performed on himself, but he has never asked anyone to do for him what he would not himself do for the other if desired. there has never been _pedicatio_. the penis, it may be added, is of good size, and the testicles rather large. no one has ever suspected a.h.'s sexual perversion, not even his physician, with whom he has long had a close friendship, until at a time of great mental distress a.h. voluntarily revealed his state. he is accustomed to refined society, has always read much, abhorred athletic pursuits, and loved poetry, children, and flowers. his love of nature amounts, indeed, to a passion. wherever he has been he has made friends among the best people. he confesses to occasional periods of addiction to intoxicants, induced by sociable companionship, and only controlled by force of will. for business he has not the slightest aptitude, and cannot look after his own affairs. he is always dreading poverty and destitution. he believes, however, that he passes among his friends as fairly capable. he considers that inversion is natural in his case and that he has a perfect right to gratify his own natural instincts, though he also admits they may be vices. he has never sought to influence an innocent person toward his own tendencies. history xi.--t.d., knows of nothing abnormal in his ancestry. his brother has homosexual tendencies, but is also attracted to women. a sister, who is very religious, states that she has little or no sexual inclinations. they were all of a dreamy disposition when young, to the disgust of their teachers. he sent the following account of himself from the university at the age of :-- "when i was a child (before i went to school at )," he writes, "i was already of an affectionate disposition, an affection turned readily to either sex. no boy was the cause of my inclinations, which were quite spontaneous. (no doubt, part of the cause may be found in our social system, by which ladies are rather drawing-room creatures to be treated with distant respect.) when i was , at a preparatory school, i first began to form attachments with other boys of my own age, in which i always had regard to physical beauty. it is this stage, in which the sexual element is latent, that shelley speaks of as preceding love in ardent natures. "at i learned masturbation, apparently by instinct, and, i regret to say, practised it to excess for the next seven years, always secretly and with shame, and often with the accompaniment of prurient imaginings which did not prevent my relations with those i loved being of a very spiritual nature. masturbation was often practised daily, with bursts of repentance and abstinence, latterly more rarely. but until i was i really knew nothing of sexual matters, and it was not till i was at least that i was conscious of sexual desire, which i repressed with shame. "owing to excessive self-abuse, i am unable to emit except manually, but desire is strong. i think naked contact would suffice, and in any case intercrural connection. _pedicatio_ and _fellatio_ i abhor. i love boys between the ages of and ; they must be of my own class, refined, and lovable. i only desire the active masculine part. i now regard my inclinations as natural and normal to me. the difficulty is that of leading the other party to regard it as such, besides the young age required and clandestine nature of proceedings necessary. the moral difficulties of circumstances are so strong that i have little hope of ever gratifying my passion fully. i have found myself deceived in the character of the boy twice. the last friendship lasted three years, during which time i only saw him naked two or three times (this caused erection), never touched him pruriently, and only kissed him once. "i have never found a satisfactory object of my affections, and my happiness, perhaps my health, have been seriously injured. at my public school a master helped me to a truer understanding of these things. the merely animal sodomy which exists in many public schools was unknown. what i learned of sex i learned for myself. i am recommended to turn my aspirations to the abstract universal maid; but so far at least i cannot do it. "male greek statuary and the _phoedrus_ of plato have had a great, though only confirmatory, influence on my feelings. my ideal is that of theocritus xiii, wherein hercules was bringing hylas to the perfect measure of a man. my first thought is the good of my friend, but, except for the good subjective influence of passion, i have failed utterly. "i am very tall, dark, rather strong, fond of games, though i do not excel, owing to short sight. i am english, though i have french blood, which may account for an unreservedly passionate disposition. though unlike other people, i am not in the least feminine, nor has anyone thought so to my knowledge. i can whistle easily and well. i am so masculine that i cannot even conceive of passive sexual pleasure in women, much less in men. (that is one of the difficulties in boy-love.) my affections are inextricably bound up in the ideals of protection of one weaker than myself. in the earlier days, when sexuality was less conscious, this was a great source of romantic feeling, the glamour of which is rather departing. i cannot understand love of adult males, much less if they are of lower class, and the idea of prostitution is nauseous to me. "i think i may say that i have the esthetic and moral sense very strongly ingrained. indeed, they are largely synonymous with me. i have no dramatic aptitude, and, though i flatter myself that my taste is good in music, i have no knowledge of music. if i have a favorite color, it is a dark crimson or blue, of the nature of old stained glass. i derive great pleasure from all literary and pictorial art and architecture; indeed, art of all kinds. i have facility in writing personal lyrical verse; it affords me relief. "i think my inversion must be congenital, as the desire of contact with those boys i loved began before masturbation and has lasted through private and public resorts and into university life. the other sex does not attract me, but i am very fond of children, girls as well as boys. (if there is sexuality in this, which i trust there is not, it is latent)." this statement is of interest because it may well lead us to suppose that the writer, who is of balanced mind and sound judgment, possesses a confirmed homosexual outlook on life. while, however, it is the rule for the permanent direction of the sexual impulse to be decided by the age of , that age is too early to permit us to speak positively, especially in a youth whose adolescent undifferentiated or homosexual impulses are fostered by university life. this proved to be! the case with t.d., who, though doubtless possessing a psychically anomalous strain, is yet predominantly masculine. on leaving the university his heterosexuality asserted itself normally. about six years after the earlier statement, he wrote that he had fallen in love. "i am on the eve of marrying a girl of nearly my own age. she has sympathy as well as knowledge in my fields of study; it was thus easier for me to explain my past, and i found that she could not understand the moral objections to homosexual practices. my own opinion always was that the moral objections were very considerable, but might in some cases be overcome. in any case i have entirely lost my sexual attraction toward boys; though i am glad to say that the appreciation of their charm and grace remains. my instincts, therefore, have undergone a considerable change, but the change is not entirely in the direction of normality. the instinct for sodomy in the proper sense of the word used to be unintelligible to me; since the object of attraction has become a woman this instinct is mixed with the normal in my desire. further, an element which much troubled me, as being most foreign to my ideal feelings, has not quite left me--the indecent and often scatologic curiosity about immature girls. i can only hope that the realization of the normal in marriage may finally kill these painful aberrations. i should add that the practice of masturbation has been abandoned." history xii.--aged . father and mother both living; the latter is of a better social standing than the father. he is much attached to his mother, and she gives him some sympathy. he has a brother who is normally attracted to women. he himself has never been attracted to women, and takes no interest in them nor in their society. at the age of he first became conscious of an attraction for older males. from the ages of and , at a large grammar-school, he had relationships with about one hundred boys. needless to add, he considers homosexuality extremely common in schools. it was, however, the oscar wilde case which first opened his eyes to the wide prevalence of homosexuality, and he considers that the publicity of that case has done much, if not to increase homosexuality, at all events to make it more conspicuous and outspoken. he is now attracted to youths about or years younger than himself; they must be good-looking. he has never perverted a boy not already inclined to homosexuality. in his relationship he does not feel exclusively like a male or a female: sometimes one, sometimes the other. he is often liked, he says, because of his masculine character. he is fully developed and healthy, well over middle height, inclined to be plump, with full face and small moustache. he smokes many cigarettes and cannot get on without them. though his manners are very slightly if at all feminine, he acknowledges many feminine ways. he is fond of jewelry, until lately always wore a bangle, and likes women's rings; he is very particular about fine ties, and uses very delicate women's handkerchiefs. he has always had a taste for music, and sings. he has a special predilection for green; it is the predominant color in the decoration of his room, and everything green appeals to him. he finds that the love of green (and also of violet and purple) is very widespread among his inverted friends. history xiii.--artist, aged . "the earliest sex impression that i am conscious of," he writes, "is at the age of or falling in love with a handsome boy who must have been about two years my senior. i do not recollect ever having spoken to him, but my desire, so far as i can recall, was that he should seize hold of and handle me. i have a distinct impression yet of how pleasurable even physical pain or cruelty would have been at his hands. (i have noticed that in young children it is often difficult to differentiate the sexual emotions from what in the grown up would be definite cruelty.) "it must have been at about this time that i discovered--entirely by myself--the act of masturbation. the process grew up quite naturally, though i cannot but think that the cooped-up life in a london street and a london school, with want of physical exercise, as well as want of landscape, color, and beautiful form, had much to do with it. the tone of the school i was at was singularly clean, but i question whether the vaunted cleanliness of tone of day-schools can compensate for the open life and large discipline of an english public school. "how far the rather frequent masturbation between the ages of and may have had to do with weakly health i do not know, but when i was i was taken by my mother to a famous doctor. he made no inquiries of a sexual nature, but he advised that i should be sent away from london. he had a sentimental horror of violent games, etc., for boys, and put aside various suggested public schools. finally i was sent to a private school at the seaside. "the private school was clean and wholesome. the plunge into the sexual cocytus of the great public school that followed was effectually sudden. in my day ---- was a perfect stew of uncleanness. there was plenty of incontinence, not much cruelty, no end of dirty conversation, and a great deal of genuine affection, even to heroism, shown among the boys in their relations to one another. all these things were treated by masters and boys alike as more or less unholy, with the result that they were either sought after or flung aside, according to the sexual or emotional instinct of each. no attempt was made at discrimination. a kiss was as unclean as the act of _fellatio_, and no one had any gauge or principle whatever on which to guide the cravings of boyhood. "my first initiation into the mysteries of sex was at the hands of the dormitory servant, who showed me his penis when he woke me in the mornings, and masturbated me when he gave me my hot bath on a saturday night. this old reprobate of committed the act of _fellatio_ with most of the boys in turn as he went the dormitory rounds. for the older lads i cannot speak, but over us younger ones of and he exercised a sort of unholy terror and fascination. he was very popular; we came to him like doves to a snake. when i revisited my old school many years later he was occupying a very responsible position in the college chapel, and i noticed that he wore that expression of sly reverence which i think i can now instantly detect when i see it in a man. "for the rest the dormitory was boisterous and lewd, and there was a good deal of bullying, which probably did little harm. my principal recollection now is of the filthy mystery of foul talk, that i neither cared for nor understood. what i really needed, like all the other boys, was a little timely help over the sexual problems, but this we none of us got, and each had to work out his own principle of conduct for himself. it was a long, difficult, and wasteful process, and i cannot but believe that many of us failed in the endeavor. we had come unprepared with any advice. the principle upon which we were apparently trained was the repression of every instinct. my mother was ignorant from innocence, my father from indifference, and so between them i was sent out helpless. a mother incurs great responsibility in sending her child away unprepared. a parent should not seek to shift his responsibility upon the schoolmaster. love alone should be the fount from which revelations should flow; the master, from the very nature of his position, cannot reveal. "an imminent breakdown in health--due, it would now appear, to quite obvious causes--relieved me from the purgatory of the college dormitory, and i was removed to one of the private houses. these establishments were considered more select and less 'rough.' the social atmosphere was, however, perhaps more unwholesome, because more effeminate, and was full of noble young sucklings. the nominal head of the house under normal conditions might have been a real leader; as it was, the real head of the house was a gilded young pariah, fairly low down in the school and full of hypocrisy and unnatural lusts. the boy who occupied the cubicle next to mine was also a bad case of sexual misdirection, though he had not the social distinction to make him quite so refined a terror. i had every opportunity of watching him until, two years later, he was fortunately asked to leave. he talked bawd from morning till night, got drunk on one or two occasions, masturbated constantly without concealment, had several of the younger boys _inter femora_, though without evincing any care or affection for them, and gave one the impression of having been born for a brothel. his one redeeming quality was an element of good nature: a characteristic one often finds among such as are selfish and irresponsible. i have since been told that he has gone completely to the dogs. whether this young cub's sexual instincts could have been turned or guided i do not know; but in a rougher and simpler life than that of a public school, in a more open and less hypocritical atmosphere, he might, perhaps, have been licked into better shape. hypocrisy is a vice, however, that schoolboys themselves are fortunately free from. it comes later. the tone among the boys was frankly and violently unclean, though unclean not from instinct, but from want of direction and from repression. "i have not a single happy recollection of this period of my school life. yet out of this morass of misbegotten virtues i plucked my first blossom of genuine affection. i call it a blossom because it never ripened even to flower. i had been given the extreme of filth to feed upon at the outset, and now i found for myself the extreme of chastity. it will be a matter of lifelong regret to me that the love which was the lodestar of my school years was never fulfilled or set upon a sound basis of comradeship. "when i was about ½ years old there came into the house a boy about two years younger than myself, and who became the absorbing thought of my school days. i do not remember a moment, from the time i first saw him to the time i left school, that i was not in love with him, and the affection was reciprocated, if somewhat reservedly. he was always a little ahead of me in books and scholarship, but as our affection ripened we spent most of our spare time together, and he received my advances much as a girl who is being wooed, a little mockingly, perhaps, but with real pleasure. he allowed me to fondle and caress him, but our intimacy never went further than a kiss, and about that even was the slur of shame; there was always a barrier between us, and we never so much as whispered to one another concerning those things of which all the school obscenely talked. any connection between our own emotions and the sexual morals of the school never occurred to us. in fact, we lived a dream-life of chastity that could not relate itself to any human conditions. this was suddenly broken in upon. my friend was very beautiful and an object of attraction to others. that some of the elder boys had made offers of sexual intercourse to him i knew, but to him, as to me, that was unspeakable wickedness. one day i heard that four or five of these suitors of his had mishandled him; they had, i believe, taken off his trousers and attempted to masturbate him. the offense was probably horse play of an animal nature; to me it seemed an unpardonable offense. the matter had been reported to the master by a servant, but confirmatory evidence was needed before punishment could follow. i was torn asunder by passions i could not then analyze and in the end committed the greatest of schoolboy crimes,--i sneaked. the action under the circumstances was courageous, but i was indifferent so long as the boy i loved judged me rightly. the result was that at the close of the term four or five of the senior boys were 'asked to leave.' the remaining brief period of my school life, which had previously been a living hell, became really happy. that this should have been brought about to the harm of four or five boys whose sin, after all, was but a misdirected impulse for which the system was responsible, seems to me now all very wrong. of the boys sent away, however, certainly three have made honorable careers. for my friend and i, we became more afraid of each other than before; as our affections increased, so our fear of them increased also. the friendship was too ethereal to live; but even yet we still have a deep respect for one another. "when at the age of i left school i was allowed to knock about for a year before entering college. during this time i picked up a sexual experience that may or may not have been a valuable one, i certainly look back upon it now, with regret, if not with horror. my father had discovered, some months before this date, that i was in the habit of masturbating, and he gave me what he conceived to be the right counsel under the circumstances: 'if you do this,' he said, 'you will never be able to use your penis with a woman. therefore your best plan will be to go with a prostitute. should you do this, however, you will probably pick up a beastly disease. therefore the safest way would be to do it abroad if you get the chance, for there the houses are licensed.' having delivered himself of this advice he troubled himself no further in the matter, but left me to work out my own destiny. the great physician, to whom i was taken about this time, also gave me his advice on this point. 'masturbation,' he said, 'is death. a number of young men come to me with the same story. i tell them they are killing themselves, and you will kill yourself, too.' the doctor's hope was apparently to frighten his young patients into what he conceived to be natural conditions of life, and one went away from him with the impression that every sexual manifestation in one's self was a physical infirmity, due to one's own moral weakness. it took me some time before i could make up my mind to follow my father's advice, but after a period of real moral agony i deliberately and entirely in cold blood acted upon it. i sought out a scarlet woman in the streets of ---- and went home with her. from something she said to me i know that i gave her pleasure, and she asked me to come to her again. this i did twice, but without any real pleasure. the whole thing was too sordid and soulless, and the man who decides to take an evil medicine regularly has first to make up his mind that he really needs it. "at about the same time i chanced to be, for a few months, in a german university town, and i determined, as i had the opportunity, to carry the parental advice to the logical conclusion. i tried a licensed house. the place was clean and decent, and the conditions, i take it, such as one would normally find in any properly regulated continental city; but to me the whole thing appeared unspeakably horrible. it was a purely commercial transaction, and it had not even the redeeming element of risk to one's self, or of offense against a social or disciplinary code. i came away feeling that i had touched bottom in my sexual experiences, and i understood what it was that faust saw when the red mouse sprang from the mouth of the witch in the walpurgis dance. "these were the only occasions upon which i have had sexual intercourse with women. looking back to them now, they appear to me to have been almost inevitable; but if i had my life over again i would shun them as i would a lethal draught. i believe i came out of the fire unscathed; probably, indeed, it did me good, in the sense that it made it possible for me to look deeper into life; though to what extent seeing the torments of the damned makes us do this, perhaps only a dante could tell. to gain knowledge at the expense of the shame and misery of others i hold to be fundamentally wrong and immoral. what is to me, however, the chief and bitterest thought is that i flung away the first spring of manhood where i got no love in return. his virginity is, or should be, as glorious and sacred a possession to a youth as to a maiden; to be guarded jealously; to be given only at the call of love, to one who loves him--be it comrade, mistress, or wife--and whom he can love in return. "the full university life into which i now entered at the age of brought with it a flood of new ideas, feelings and sensations. the friendships i made there will always remain the central ones in my life. up to my last term at college at the age of i still wore my chain-mail of artificial chastity; but then a change gradually set in, and i began to understand the relationship of the physical phenomena of sex to its intellectual and imaginative manifestations. (i was not destined to fully realize this for some years and then exclusively through and out of my own personal experience.) it was the study of walt whitman's _leaves of grass_ that first brought me light upon this question. hitherto i had kept the two things locked up, as it were, in two separate air-tight compartments,--my friendships in one, my sex instincts in another,--to be kept under and repressed by the public-school code as i conceived it. "it is needless to say that i was continually troubled by the customary sex phenomena: erotic dreams, loss of semen, troublesome erections at night, etc. these i repressed as best i could, by habitual masturbation and by the regular diet and exercise which academic life made possible. at one time, for the period of a year i should say, i tried to overcome the desire for masturbation by gradual stages, on the principle of the drunkard's cure by which he took every day less tipple by the insertion of one pebble more in his bottle. i marked on my calendar the erotic dreams and the nights on which i masturbated, and sought gradually to extend the intervening periods. six weeks, however, was the longest time for which i was able to abstain." a few years later the writer of this communication formed an intimate relationship (in which he did not make the first advances) with a youth, some years younger than himself and of lower social class, whose development he was able to assist. "but for my part," he remarks, "i owe him as much as i gave him, for his love lighted up the gold of affection that was in me and consumed the dross. it was from him that i first learned that there was no such thing as a hard-and-fast line between the physical and the spiritual in friendship." this relationship lasted for some years, when the young man married; its effects are described as very beneficial to both parties; all the sexual troubles vanished, together with the desire to masturbate. "everything in life began to sing with joy, and what little of real creative work i may have done i attribute largely to the power of work that was born in me during those years." history xiv.--scotchman, aged . his paternal ancestors were normal, so far as he knows. his mother belonged to a very eccentric old celtic family. soon after he became so enamored of a young shepherd that the boy had to be sent away. he practised masturbation many years before the age of puberty, and attaches importance to this as a factor in the evolution of his homosexual life. he has had erotic dreams rarely about men, about women more frequently. while indifferent to women, he has no repulsion toward them. he has had connection with women two or three times, but without experiencing the same passionate emotions as with men. he would like a son, but he has never been able to get up the necessary amount of passion to lead to marriage. he has always had a sentimental and platonic affection for men. of late years he has formed two friendships with adults of an affectionate and also erotic character. he cares little for anything beyond mutual masturbation and kissing; what he desires is the love of the male. in appearance there is nothing abnormal about him except an air of youth. he is vigorous both in body and mind, and has enormous power of resisting fatigue. he is an excellent man of business. is a patient student. he sees no harm in his homosexual passions. he is averse to promiscuity. his ideal is a permanent union which includes sexual relations. history xv.--t.s., artist, aged . "i was born in england. my father was a jew, the first to marry out of his family and to marry a christian. my great-grandparents were cousins; he was a german and she was a dane. my grandparents were also cousins; he was a swede and she was a dane. "my maternal grandfather was an english protestant, and my maternal grandmother was irish, fanatically roman catholic, and a very eccentric woman. "in my father's family there have been many members of note. in my mother's family there were many renowned lawyers. "my father had an elder brother who was homosexual. he was already, at years of age, a prominent author, when he died of consumption. i have also a second cousin on my father's side who is a very good tenor; he is also homosexual. in my mother's family i know of nothing abnormal. "in neither family is there or has there been any insanity, but rather an overwealth of brain. "my parents were an ideally happy couple. they were engaged after knowing each other six days, and after being separated three months they married. they were married thirty-five years without a quarrel. i have a brother three years older, born a year after their marriage, and a sister seven years younger. "my brother takes after his father in appearance. he is a great lover of women and much spoiled by them. he is quite normal and abstemious. "my sister is a very womanly woman. as a girl she disapproved very much of girl friendships and always confided in her mother. at years of age she met the man she is now married to. they waited ten years before marrying and are now an ideally happy couple. my sister is perfectly normal and very abstemious. "i lived my first ten years in england, eighteen years in sweden, two years in denmark, two years in bavaria, austria, and italy, and am now living in berlin. i consider myself english. i am mentally a man, but all my physical feelings and desires are those of a woman. "i am middle height and very slight. weigh english pounds, without clothes. my hands and feet are small and well-shaped. head of normal size. features small. eyes green. have worn glasses since i was years old. complexion fair. appearance not jewish. the skin of my body is very white, without blemish. very little hair on my face. hair on head and abdomen luxuriant. no hair whatever on stomach and chest. color of hair auburn everywhere except below navel, that black. (my father's, mother's, and brother's hair was brown. my sister has auburn hair, and so had the aforementioned uncle.) my breasts are slightly round; my hips are normal. i do not gesticulate much. from my material self it would be difficult to draw the conclusion that i was homosexual. my sexual organs are normal. "my disposition is apparently bright, but in reality melancholy. have very little love for human nature, but have a partiality for the british and jewish races. hate business, politics, sports, and society. love music, art, literature, and nature. deep interest in mysticism. am clairvoyant. have been used many times as a medium. lead two separate lives, an outer and inner psychic life. am a fatalist and a theosophist. profound belief in reincarnation, always have had, because when i was a little child i could 'remember' so much. have an excellent memory, dating back to my third year. have always been too self-analytical. have from my earliest childhood felt myself an alien. am very sensitive, physically and psychically. have no wish to wear woman's clothing or do woman's work. as to clothes for myself, i prefer black and not much jewelry. "i could only love a perfectly manly man from to years of age. he must be physically beautiful and well made. size of sexual organs plays no part. the muscles must be developed and the hands must be especially well shaped. hands are my fetish. (i could never love anyone with ugly hands.) he must have no odor issuing from his body (though i do not dislike faint perfume when clothed), and, above all, never have a bad breath. he must be intelligent, love music, art, literature, and nature. he must be refined and cultured and have been about the world. he must have simplicity in behavior, dress, and manner, and, above all, be clean-bodied as clean-minded. cynicism i cannot stand. (here i may state i once owned a st. bernard dog which reminded me much of my ideal. he was always sedate, always loving, and faithful; generally quiet. he only got excited when out in the elements.) i have not been able to get on with people who have no sense of humor. from my birth i was physically weak. first i suffered from eczema. being born with a double squint, i was operated on at ½ and again at ½ years of age, with excellent result. from to years of age i had convulsions (often), and all the illnesses of childhood. at the age of ½ years i took scarlet fever, followed by a weak heart, which grew stronger after a year, and bright's disease, which lasted fifteen years with hardly a break. this illness had its wonted effect of producing melancholia and upsetting the whole nervous system. bright's disease stopped suddenly but was followed by a succession of illnesses. then i had neuritis very badly. i then removed to bavaria, and to regain nervous strength i was treated by freud's psychoanalytical method, with great success. i had a very bad relapse, as my brother, who had just heard i was homosexual, came to visit me and threatened to have me put under guardians, if my father should die. it took me weeks to recover from the shock. we broke off all intercourse and though my brother has been several times in the same town where i have been, we remain strangers. at this time my father died suddenly. last spring four suicides of friends in so many weeks had a very bad effect on my nerves. i am now in berlin in better spirits, but the cramp continues badly at times. "to this i must add that since my fourteenth year, independent of any illness, i have suffered mentally and physically from menstrual pains recurring every twenty-eight days and lasting from six to eight days. that these were the equivalent pains to a woman's menstruation periods i could get no doctor to admit till i was treated for a length of time by a german nerve specialist. "the physical pains begin abruptly. sudden congestions of blood in the brain and in the abdomen. sudden perspirations, heat and cold. great nervous pains in the small of the back, also in the nerve-centers of abdomen and stomach. sharp, shooting pains in the breasts and especially the nipples. sudden toothache which stops as suddenly. the skin becomes darker, sometimes mottled. i have the whole time a taste of blood in my mouth and often everything i eat tastes of blood. i have great difficulty at that time in eating meat. physical longings for erotic adventure, counterbalanced by mental nausea at the bare idea. "the mental symptoms are: sudden feeling of deep depression, suicidal tendencies, alternating with sudden inexplicable lightheartedness. capriciousness and great dissatisfaction with myself and life generally. horror at my own incompleteness of sex and sudden fits of hatred toward women and a great longing to be loved by men. this condition changes slowly back to the normal one. it takes several days for me to lose my physical weakness owing to it. "physically i was developed at years of age. mentally i was developed at a very early age, but i kept my inner life quite dark, always playing the innocent. nobody at home believed me to know anything about life. they were at times very surprised when i fell out of the rôle i had planned for myself. up till i was years of age nothing to do with other people's morals was ever discussed before me. i looked so pure, and do now, that people are always careful in front of me. my father never discussed such things with me. from my earliest childhood i loved men dearly, though i was always at daggers drawn with my father and brother. i worshipped my mother then, as i do now. my sister and i did not at all get on as children, though we are the best of friends now. she and her husband as well as my mother have been kindness itself ever since they knew of my condition. not till i was over years did i meet a man i loved as well as my mother, and he is heterosexual. i must have loved my father and brother at first, but continual conflicts, incompatible temperaments and mutual misunderstandings and want of sympathy made life at home horrible. i must admit from my earliest childhood i had a certain contempt for my father and brother because i found them so materialistic. i had all my childhood rows with my brother. my father took his part, my mother mine. after i had recovered from my father's sudden death (my first words were after reading the letter: 'thank god it isn't mother!') i felt a great relief, but it took a long time for me to grasp that i was really free. "i have always liked women's society and, as a youth, i was very fond of gossip, which i by no means am now. i have many women friends, more than men friends. these women friends are all heterosexual except one. i very often like elderly women; i suppose i see mother in such women. a woman never could make me blush, but a man i admired could easily. "i was years of age when a married woman of good family asked me to come and spend the night with her. i went, and though she was beautifully built, cleanly, and though her garments and apartments were of the utmost good taste, i did not have any erection. on the other hand, i felt myself to be most unclean and bathed three times each of the following three days. since then i have never tried to have sexual intercourse with women. "in copenhagen i tried to excite my feelings with every class of woman, in vain. i suppose it is that my nature is so like woman's that there can be no reaction. with men i am often very shy and nervous, tongue-tied, and my hands perspire. never so with women. "as a child i loved men and used to fall desperately in love with some who came to the house. i would, when no one was there, kiss their hats, or gloves, or even their sticks. "i can remember, when i was about years, how i fell in love with a very good-looking -year-old german. he had very curly hair and his hands were very beautiful. he was very fond of me and i used to call him 'my boy.' when visiting us he often used to 'tuck me in' after the nurse had gone down. he always had sweets or something for me. i can remember how i used to fling my arms round his neck and cover his face with kisses. i would then draw his head down on my pillow and he would tell me fairy-tales and i would go off to sleep quite happy. "at years of age, while staying in the country, a very good-looking groom, about years of age, misbehaved himself with me. i often used to visit him in the stables, as this man had a strange attraction for me. one day he tickled me. while doing so he produced my penis and also his own, which was in full erection. he tried in every way to excite my feelings, in vain. for him the occasion terminated in an ejaculation. he forbade me to tell anyone, and i did not do so, but tried to find out all i could on the subject, with little or no result. from that day i hated the groom and i felt a sort of guilt, as if i had 'lost something.' not till i was years did i understand. "from my earliest childhood i had one ideal of a man. from that ideal i have never swerved. at the age of i found a friend who, though quite heterosexual, has, without giving me any sexual intercourse, given me the love i have always needed. he has been for the last couple of years a second mother, father, sister, brother, and lover. through him i have regained my health, my love of nature, and he has helped to deaden my hatred toward human nature and my bitterness. a better friend i never wish to find. it has made up for all the years of mental and physical suffering. one strange thing is that the feeling is mutual. he has had a tragic life, for his wife, whom he loved beyond everything, died under very sad circumstances. he says i am the best male friend he has ever had. while with him, much of the lower nature in me was stamped out. i shall always look upon him as the turning point in my life. i think he wrought some of his finest influence through his music. he played beethoven and wagner for me for a couple of hours every day for months, and thus opened up a new world to me.... he is six years older than i am. "at years of age we moved to sweden, a country i hated from first to last. about this time i began to notice that there was something strange about myself. i felt myself an alien, and have done so ever since. an event of importance in my life was, i feel sure, when my father's sister tried to take away my mother's character. it was done in jealousy and spite, and my aunt had to beg my parents' pardon. outwardly the affair was patched up; but i feel sure my father never really forgave his sister. jews never forgive. "this event awoke in me a great hatred toward women, and it was many years before i could at all control it. "at the age of i was much with a good-looking, musical american, a year older than myself. one day, while romping, very much the same thing occurred as with the groom. i still had no sexual feelings. we remained good friends. i often wished to kiss him. after the first time he would not allow it. he was very much liked among the officers and so-called high society men, and had always much money. about ten years later i heard he used to accept money after intimate intercourse with those society men. "during my fifteenth year i had great longing for sexual intercourse with men. at this time the first signs of hair were to be seen on my abdomen. "at the age of a gardener, a married man with family, initiated me into mutual self-abuse. he lived in the back house of the apartment house we then inhabited. he was about years of age, an ugly but muscularly developed man. these practices took place in the cellar, to which there were three entrances. i never allowed him to kiss me and the sight of his children always awoke in me a great feeling of nausea. that was the natural reaction of a bad conscience. for the man himself i had the utmost contempt. this man told me of several parks and _pissoirs_ where men met, and i went to these places now and again for erotic adventure. "i must here relate that at the age of my mother warned me against self-abuse. it had the opposite effect, made me curious, so i began at once. i have continued ever since, at least once a day. (i have never had an involuntary emission in my whole life.) between and it became necessary for me to do so several times a day. working at art, painting, and above all music and beauty have a strong influence over me and set my erotic longings in violent motion. i have never found this do me any harm. abstinence, on the other hand, has a very harmful effect on me, upsetting the whole nervous and physical system. i often find that there is a something very much wanting in self-abuse: the commingling of two human bodies who are _mentally_ as well as physically in sympathy gives an electrical satisfaction which quiets the whole nervous system. that at least has been my experience. "the gardener left and moved to the country. i then sometimes visited _pissoirs_ or, as they are often called, 'panoramas' (because they are round and one sees much there). what i saw in the parks during the long summer nights was quite a revelation. during the summer, when the husbands had sent their families in the country, many of them led a very indiscreet life. what i saw the first summer killed all the respect i had for elderly people. i had always connected marriage and gray hairs with virtue and morals; then i learnt otherwise. i must say i became about this time a _sensual pig_. i knew how dangerous these places were on account of the police and blackmailers, but that gave the hunt a double zest. at this time i led a double life and was always watching and analyzing myself. i had to do with heaps of men of all classes. i was often offered money, but that i would on no condition accept. to pay or to be paid kills every sort of erotic feeling in me and always has done so. i once wished to experiment with myself. i was offered a small sum of money by a former schoolmaster. i accepted this just to see how it would affect me. the next moment i threw the money as far away as possible. then i saw i had none of the prostitute nature in me. i was simply overwhelmed with sensuality. i considered i was a criminal and wished to see in how many ways my nature had the criminal instinct. i wanted to see if i could become a thief. i stole a silver button in a shop where antiquities were sold, but i went to the shop the same day again and returned the button, without the people knowing. i found i could not become a thief. then the question came. why had i felt a criminal since my seventh year? was it my fault? if not, whose fault was it? not till i studied freud's psychoanalytical system did i get a clear insight into my own character. "when i was years of age i met a gentleman one night in a heavy snow-storm. we walked and talked and understood each other. he belonged to one of sweden's first aristocratic families. he was extremely refined. he asked me to his rooms. we undressed and lay down. he had a very beautiful head and a still more beautiful body. i think that all my erotic feelings were numbed by looking at his beautiful body. to me anything sensual would have been sacrilege, i thought, and i can remember the feeling of awe which came over me. he was them years of age, but his hair was quite white. first he did not understand, and then he was very gentle to me. i kept perfectly chaste for three whole months after the sight of his body. we saw each other often. eight years later we met for the last time. he suffered much from melancholia. at that time i prevented him from committing suicide. this winter, however, he shot himself. "at the age of my sister introduced me to a charming, intelligent and refined, half-english, half-swedish painter. we 'recognized' each other at once, though we had never seen each other before, and even knew each other's characters to the smallest traits. my parents liked him better than any friend i had ever had. my sister and he were from the first like sister and brother. the first evening in my home he and i kissed each other. the women were mad about him. later i found many men were too. i was three weeks his senior. he had his own rooms. i have never felt any such wonderful harmony as when our naked bodies mingled. it was like floating in ether. with him it was the only time i had been active in _fellatio_. we were much together, though not much physically, for he had many love affairs with women. what i loved was the way he would cut off all advances of men, i was his 'little brother' and so he calls me to this day. he is now married in america, and the father of a pretty little daughter. we are the best of friends to this day. "the two years in copenhagen were some of the happiest i have spent, though nearly the whole time i was in physical pain. in austria i found, among the tyrolese peasants, that the englishmen, who come there in winter for sports and in the summer for mountain climbing, have demoralized the young male peasants with money. homosexual intercourse is easy to get if you are willing to pay the price,--larger in season, less out of season. "in italy it is merely a question of money or passion, but everything in love there is quite transient. "in bavaria i found the love and peace 'which passeth all understanding.' this love and friendship without anything of a physically intimate nature brought me back from the 'deep black gulf' to which i was swiftly floating. when i met my friend i was nearly at the end of my tether. what his love and friendship has done for me, together with freud's psychoanalytical system, nobody will ever know. "since being in berlin, a town i like very much, a new life has opened for me, a life where one lives as one likes if one does not have to do with young boys. here are homosexual baths, pensions, restaurants, and hotels, where you can go with one of your own sex at a certain fee per hour. berlin is a revelation. but since being here i find the physical erotic side of my nature is little excited. i suppose it is the old story of 'forbidden fruit.' "my parents kept a very hospitable home. the last two years in sweden i was never at home. i hated society and knew much too much about the private histories of those who came to my home. they all belonged to the highest society. the highest society and the lowest are very much alike. of course my parents knew nothing about these people. when i told my mother a great deal of private history of people who came to our house, she was thunderstruck and could at last understand my contempt for so-called good society. i have visited in later years only in artistic and theatrical circles; i consider that class of people more natural than the other class and much more kind-hearted. "my life has quite another side, the mystic side. but that would be a much longer story than this. suffice it to say, i am of a highly sensitive nature, gifted with second sight." [a detailed record of the subject's visions, premonitions of death of acquaintances, etc., has been furnished by him.] "i tried on four occasions to commit suicide, but i now see there is nothing to be gained by doing so. "two years ago i told my parents about my sexual condition. it was a frightful blow to them. my father had the circumstances explained to him; he never understood the matter and never discussed it with me. had i told him earlier i feel quite certain that, with his despotic nature, he would have put me in a madhouse. my mother and sister have treated me very kindly always. my brother has disowned me." history xvi.--irish, aged ; knows of nothing unusual in his ancestry. his tastes are masculine in every respect. he is strong, healthy, and fond of exercises and sports. the sexual instincts are abnormally developed; he confesses to an, enormous appetite for almost everything,--food, drink, smoking, and all the good things of life. at about the age of he practised masturbation with other boys of the same age, and also had much pleasure in being in bed with an uncle with whom the same thing was practised. later on he practised masturbation with every boy or man with whom he was on terms of intimacy; to have been in bed with anyone without anything of the sort taking place would have made sleep impossible, and rendered him utterly wretched. his erotic dreams at first were concerned with women, but more recently they are usually of young men, and very rarely of women. he is mostly indifferent to women, as also they have always been to him. although good-looking, strong, and masculine, he has never known a woman to be in love with him. when about the age of he imagined he was in love with a girl; and he had often, between the ages of to , cohabited with prostitutes. he remembers on one occasion, many years ago, having connection with a woman seven or eight times in one night, and then having to masturbate at noon the next day. he is unmarried, and thinks it is unlikely that he ever will marry, but he adds that if a healthy, handsome, and intelligent woman fell in love with him he might change his mind, as it would be lonely to be old and alone, and he would like to have children. he is never attracted to men older than himself, and prefers youths between the ages of and . they may be of any class, but he does not like common people, and is not attached to uniforms or liveries. the requisite attractions are an intelligent eye, a voluptuous mouth, and "intelligent teeth." "if alcibiades himself tried to woo me," he says, "and had bad teeth, his labor would be in vain." he has sometimes been the active participant in _pedicatio_, and has tried the passive rôle out of curiosity, but prefers _fellatio_. he does not consider that he is doing anything wrong, and regards his acts as quite natural. his only regret is the absorbing nature of his passions, which obtrude themselves in season and out of season, seldom or never leaving him quiet, and sometimes making his life a hell. yet he doubts whether he would change himself, even if he had the power. history xvii.--age ; is employed in an ordinary workshop, and lives in the back alley of a large town in which he was born and bred. fair, slight, and refined in appearance. the sexual organs are normal and well developed, and the sexual passions strong. his mother is a big masculine woman, and he is much attached to her. father is slight and weakly. he has seven brothers and one sister. homosexual desires began at an early age, though he does not seem to have come under any perverse influences. he is not inclined to masturbation. erotic dreams are always of males. he declares he never cared for any woman except his mother, and that he could not endure to sleep with a woman. he says he generally falls in love with a man at first sight--as a rule, some one older than himself and of higher class--and longs to sleep and be with him. in one case he fell in love with a man twice his own age, and would not rest until he had won his affection. he does not much care what form the sexual relation takes. he is sensitive and feminine by nature, gentle, and affectionate. he is neat and orderly in his habits, and fond of housework; helps his mother in washing, etc. he appears to think that male attachments are perfectly natural. history xviii.--englishman, born in paris; aged ; an actor. he belongs to an old english family; his father, so far as he is aware, had no homosexual inclinations, nor had any of his ancestors on the paternal side; but he believes that his mother's family, and especially a maternal uncle who had a strong feeling for beauty of form, were more akin to him in this respect. his earliest recollections show an attraction for males. at children's parties he incurred his father's anger by kissing other small boys, and his feelings grew in intensity with years. he has never practised self-abuse, and seldom had erotic dreams; when they do occur they are about males. his physical feeling for women is one of absolute indifference. he admires beautiful women in the same way as one admires beautiful scenery. at the same time he likes to talk with clever women, and has formed many friendships with frank, pure, and cultivated english girls, for whom he has the utmost admiration and respect. marriage is impossible, because physical pleasure with women is impossible; he has tried, but cannot obtain, the slightest sexual feeling or excitement. he especially admires youths (though they must not be immature) from or to about . the type which physically appeals to him most, and to which he appeals, is fair, smooth-skinned, gentle, rather girlish and effeminate, with the effeminacy of the _ingénue_, not the _cocotte_. his favorite to attract him must be submissive and womanly; he likes to be the man and the master. on this point he adds: "the great passion of my life is an exception, and stands on an utterly different level. it realizes an ideal of marriage in which neither is master, but both share a joint empire, and in which tyranny would be equally painful to both. but this friendship and love is for an equal, a year younger than myself, and does not preclude other and less creditable _liaisons, physical_ constancy being impossible to men of our caliber." _pedicatio_ is the satisfaction he prefers, provided he takes the active, never the passive, rôle. he is handsome, with broad shoulders, good figure, and somewhat classic type of face, with fine blue eyes. he likes boating and skating, though not cricket or football, and is usually ready for fun, but has, at the same time, a taste for reading. he has no moral feelings on these matters; he regards them as outside ethics, mere matters of temperament and social feeling. if england were underpopulated he thinks he might possibly feel some slight pangs of remorse; but, as things are, he feels that in prostituting males rather than females he is doing a meritorious action. history xix.--t.n. his history is given in his own words. "from the time of my earliest imaginings i have always been attached by strength in men and often thought about being carried off by big warriors and living with them in caves and elsewhere. when about a young man used to show me his penis and handle mine occasionally. at private boarding school masturbation was fairly frequent and i suppose i was initiated about or . after leaving i occasionally indulged, but nothing happened until i was about , except that i was often attracted by strong, well-built young men of good character; a man who was not honest and good-hearted had no attraction. at i was much attached to a young man of my own age. he was engaged. this did not prevent him on one occasion endeavoring playfully and with his brother to obtain access to my person. i successfully resisted, although if _he_ only had been present i should not have done so, but welcomed the attempt, and i have often regretted i did not let him know this. but i had a dim idea that my penis was somewhat undeveloped and this made me shy. circumstances separated us. about two years later i was crossing the channel when i engaged in conversation with a man about eight years older, who was one of our travelling party. i think the attraction was a case of love at sight, certainly on my side. a few nights later he had so arranged that we shared a bedroom, and he very soon came over to me and tenderly handled my person. i reciprocated and i look back all these years to that night with pleasure and no feeling of shame. on one occasion, about this time, i happened to be sleeping with another young fellow (an office mate) on a holiday, when i awoke and found him handling my penis caressingly. i gently removed his hand and turned over. i thought none the less of him, but my body seemed to belong only to myself and the friend i loved. he was not an urning, i am sure, but we were often together and i much entered into his interests and felt infinite satisfaction with life, made good progress and many friends. our physical intimacy was repeated, he taking the active part in intercrural contact. then he married very happily. our friendship remains, but circumstances prevent our often meeting, and there is no longer desire on either part. "for some years i was rather lonely in spite of friends. i was somewhat attracted to another man, but his superior social position was a defect to me. then when about i came in contact with a young man of , of the artisan class, but superior in ideals and intelligence to most men. i loved him at first glance and to this day. at first it was just friendship, but soon his form, voice, and thoughts entered into my very soul by day and night. i longed always to be near him, to see him progress and help him if i could. i would joyfully have given up home, friends, and income, and followed him to the end of the world, preferably an island where we two might at least be the only white men. he seemed to embody all i longed for in the way of knowledge of nature, of strength, of practical ability, and the desire to imitate him in these things widened and strengthened my character. the first time i slept with him i could only summon courage to put my arm over his chest, but i could not sleep for unsatisfied desire, and the unrelieved erection caused a dull pain on the morrow. i had always disliked conversation that might be regarded as bordering on the obscene, and consequently was very ignorant on most matters; it pained me even to hear him laugh at such remarks. i think if he had been intimate with me i should have not conversed much on such topics, but now i felt pleasure in such things with him as they expressed intimacy. i dreamed about him and was never really happy in his absence; the greatest joy would have been to have slept in his arms; the hairiness of his legs and arms were also most fascinating. perhaps a year later, we were again at night together, and this time i by degrees felt his private organs, but he was cold and i felt a little unsatisfied. i wanted to be hugged. this happened once more, and then on a later occasion,--not that it afforded me much gratification, but because i wanted to stimulate him to ardor,--i attempted masturbation. this aroused his disgust and i was consequently dismayed. he told me i ought to marry and, although i knew his love was all i wanted, i did not feel but what i could make a woman happy. the constant unrelieved erections which took place when i saw my friend adopt a graceful attitude caused pain at the bottom of my back, and i consulted two specialists, who also advised marriage. i did not tell them i was an 'invert,' for i hardly knew it was a recognized thing, but i did tell them something of what had taken place, and they made next to no comment, but implied it was frequent. my friend now felt repulsion toward me, but did not express himself, and as other circumstances then caused a barrier between us to a certain extent, i did not realize the true reason of his coldness. but i felt utterly miserable. when i met a noble woman whom i had long known i asked her to be my wife and she consented. although i told her very soon, and long before our marriage, of my limitations as a husband and of my continued longing for my friend, i feel now i did a great wrong, and i cannot understand why i was not more conscious of this at the time; that i was to a certain extent deceiving her relations was inevitable. i had expected to devote my life in making her happy, but i soon found that the true reason of my friend's apparent unfaithfulness was my own action, combined with a feeling on his part that it was as well that our affection should cease even at the cost of misunderstanding. since then, three years ago, i have not had a happy day or night, and am therefore quite unable to promote happiness in others. without my friend, i can find no satisfaction with wife, child, or home. life has become almost unbearable. often i have seriously thought of committing suicide, only to postpone it to a time which would be less cruelly inopportune to others. i see my friend (now married) almost daily, and suffer tortures at seeing others nearer to him than myself. no explanation seems possible, as the whole idea of inversion is so repugnant to him, and being an honorable man he would feel marital ties preclude _any_ warmth of affection. but all the longing of my life seems to be culminating in a driving force which will carry me to the male prostitute or to death. i can concentrate my mind on nothing else, and consequently have become inefficient in work and have no heart for play. i know if my longings could be occasionally satisfied i should immediately recover, but my fear is that if i killed myself those who knew me in happier days would only be confirmed in the impression of my degeneracy and would feel my instincts had caused it, whereas it is the denial and starvation of them which would have brought about the result. i know now by experience of self and others that my disposition is congenital and that i have been rendered unhappy myself and a cause of unhappiness to others by the too late knowledge of myself. the example of my former friend who married misled me to think i too _could_ marry and make a happy home; so that when the man i loved advised me i resolved to do so, as i would have done almost anything else _he_ suggested. if i could have withdrawn from the engagement without embarrassment to the devoted woman who became my wife i would have done so, if she gave me the opportunity. nothing in my married state has brought me pleasure and i often wish my wife would cease to love me so that we might separate. but she would be heart-broken at the suggestion and i feel driven to attempt to relieve my feelings even in a way that has previously seemed repulsive to me,--i mean by use of money. "about my feelings toward my child there is not much to say, as they are not very strong. i believe i carry him and help bathe and attend to him as much as most fathers, and when he is a few years older i hope i may find him very companionable. but he has brought me no real joy, though i see other men look at him almost with affection. but he has brought added happiness to his mother." the next case is interesting as showing the mental and emotional development in a very radical case of sexual inversion. history xx.--englishman, of independent means, aged . his father and his father's family were robust, healthy, and prolific. on his mother's side, phthisis, insanity, and eccentricity are traceable. he belongs to a large family, some of whom died in early childhood and at birth, while others are normal. he himself was a weakly and highly nervous child, subject to night-terrors and somnambulism, excessive shyness and religious disquietude. sexual consciousness awoke before the age of , when his attention was directed to his own penis. his nurse, while out walking with him one day, told him that when little boys grow' up their penes fall off. the nursery-maid sniggered, and he felt that there must be something peculiar about the penis. he suffered from; irritability of the prepuce, and the nurse powdered it before he went to sleep. there was no transition from this to self-abuse. about the same time he became subject to curious half-waking dreams. in these he imagined himself the servant of several adult naked sailors; he crouched between their thighs and called himself their dirty pig, and by their orders he performed services for their genitals and buttocks, which he contemplated and handled with relish. at about the same period, when these visions began to come to him, he casually heard that a man used to come and expose his person before the window of a room where the maids sat; this troubled him vaguely. between the age of and he twice took the penis of a cousin into his mouth, after they had slept together; the feeling of the penis pleased him. when sleeping with another cousin, they used to lie with hands outstretched to cover each other's penis or nates. he preferred the nates, but his cousin the penis. neither of these cousins was homosexual, and there was no attempt at mutual masturbation. he was in the habit of playing with five male cousins. one of these boys was unpopular with the others, and they invented a method of punishing him for supposed offenses. they sat around the room on chairs, each with his penis exposed, and the boy to be punished went around the room on his knees and took each penis into his mouth in turn. this was supposed to humiliate him. it did not lead to masturbation. on one occasion the child accidentally observed a boy who sat next to him in school playing with his penis and caressing it. this gave him a powerful, uneasy sensation. with regard to all these points the subject observes that none of the boys with whom he was connected at this period, and who were exposed to precisely the same influences, became homosexual. he was himself, from the first, indifferent to the opposite sex. in early childhood, and up to the age of , he had frequent opportunities of closely inspecting the sexual organs of girls, his playfellows. these roused no sexual excitement. on the contrary, the smell of the female parts affected him disagreeably. when he once saw a schoolfellow copulating with a little girl, it gave him a sense of mystical horror. nor did the sight of the male organs arouse any particular sensations. he is, however, of opinion that, living with his sisters in childhood, he felt more curious about his own sex as being more remote from him. he showed no effeminacy in his preferences for games or work. he went to a public school. here he was provoked by boy friends to masturbate, but, though he often saw the act in process, it only inspired him with a sense of indecency. in his fifteenth year puberty commenced with nocturnal emissions, and, at the same time, he began to masturbate, and continued to do so about once a week, or once a fortnight, during a period of eight months; always with a feeling that that was a poor satisfaction and repulsive. his thoughts were not directed either to males or females while masturbating. he spoke to his father about these signs of puberty, and by his father's advice he entirely abandoned onanism; he only resumed the practice, to some extent, after the age of , when he was without male comradeship. the nocturnal emissions, after he had abandoned self-abuse, became very frequent and exhausting. they were medically treated by tonics such as quinine and strychnine. he thinks this treatment exaggerated his neurosis. all this time, no kind of sexual feeling for girls made itself felt. he could not understand what his schoolfellows found in women, or the stories they told about wantonness and delight of coitus. his old dreams about the sailors had disappeared. but now he enjoyed visions of beautiful young men and exquisite statues; he often shed tears when he thought of them. these dreams persisted for years. but another kind gradually usurped their place to some extent. these second visions took the form of the large, erect organs of naked young grooms or peasants. these gross visions offended his taste and hurt him, though, at the same time, they evoked a strong, active desire for possession; he took a strange, poetic pleasure in the ideal form. but the seminal losses which accompanied both kinds of dreams were a perpetual source of misery to him. there is no doubt that at this time--that is, between the fifteenth and seventeenth years--a homosexual diathesis had become established. he never frequented loose women, though he sometimes thought that would be the best way of combating his growing inclination for males. and he thinks that he might have brought himself to indulge freely in purely sexual pleasure with women if he made their first acquaintance in a male costume, as _débardeuses, cherubino_, court-pages, young halberdiers, as it is only when so clothed that women on the stage or in the ball-room have excited him. his ideal of morality and fear of venereal infection, more than physical incapacity, kept him what is called chaste. he never dreamed of women, never sought their society, never felt the slightest sexual excitement in their presence, never idealized them. esthetically, he thought them far less beautiful than men. statues and pictures of naked women had no attraction for him, while all objects of art which represented handsome males deeply stirred him. it was in his eighteenth year that an event occurred which he regards as decisive in his development. he read plato. a new world opened, and he felt that his own nature had been revealed. next year he formed a passionate, but pure, friendship with a boy of . personal contact with the boy caused erection, extreme agitation, and aching pleasure, but not ejaculation. through four years he never saw the boy naked or touched him pruriently. only twice he kissed him. he says that these two kisses were the most perfect joys he ever felt. his father now became seriously anxious both about his health and his reputation. he warned him of the social and legal dangers attending his temperament. but he did not encourage him to try coitus with women. he himself thinks that his own sense of danger might have made this method successful, or that, at all events, the habit of intercourse with women might have lessened neurosis and diverted his mind to some extent from homosexual thoughts. a period of great pain and anxiety now opened for him. but his neurasthenia increased; he suffered from insomnia, obscure cerebral discomfort, stammering, chronic conjunctivitis, inability to concentrate his attention, and dejection. meanwhile his homosexual emotions strengthened, and assumed a more sensual character. he abstained from indulging them, as also from onanism, but he was often forced, with shame and reluctance, to frequent places--baths, urinaries, and so forth--where there were opportunities of seeing naked men. having no passion for women, it was easy to avoid them. yet they inspired him with no exact horror. he used to dream of finding an exit from his painful situation by cohabitation with some coarse, boyish girl of the people; but his dread of syphilis stood in the way. he felt, however, that he must conquer himself by efforts of will, and by a persistent direction of his thoughts to heterosexual images. he sought the society of distinguished women. once he coaxed up a romantic affection for a young girl of , which came to nothing, probably because the girl felt the want of absolute passion in his wooing. she excited his imagination, and he really loved her; but she did not, even in the closest contact, stimulate his sexual appetite. once, when he kissed her just after she had risen from bed in the morning, a curious physical repugnance came over him, attended with a sad feeling of disappointment. he was strongly advised to marry by physicians. at last he did so. he found that he was potent, and begot several children, but he also found, to his disappointment, that the tyranny of the male genital organs on his fancy increased. owing to this cause his physical, mental, and moral discomfort became acute. his health gave way. at about the age of , unable to endure his position any longer, he at last yielded to his sexual inclinations. as he began to do this, he also began to regain calm and comparative health. he formed a close alliance with a youth of . this _liaison_ was largely sentimental, and marked by a kind of etherealized sensuality. it involved no sexual acts beyond kissing, naked contact, and rare involuntary emissions. about the age of he began freely to follow homosexual inclinations. after this he rapidly recovered his health. the neurotic disturbances subsided. he has always loved men younger than himself. at about the age of he had begun to admire young soldiers. since he yielded freely to his inclinations the men he has sought are invariably persons of a lower social rank than his own. he carried on one _liaison_ continuously for twelve years; it began without passion on the friend's side, but gradually grew to nearly equal strength on both sides. he is not attracted by uniforms, but seeks some uncontaminated child of nature. the methods of satisfaction have varied with the phases of his passion. at first they were romantic and platonic, when a hand-touch, a rare kiss, or mere presence sufficed. in the second period sleeping side by side, inspection of the naked body of the loved man, embracements, and occasional emissions after prolonged contact. in the third period the gratification became more frankly sensual. it took every shape: mutual masturbation, intercrural coitus, _fellatio, irrumatio_, and occasionally active _pedicatio_; always according to the inclination or concession of the beloved male. he himself always plays the active, masculine part. he never yields himself to the other, and he asserts that he never has the joy of finding himself desired with ardor equal to his own. he does not shrink from passive _pedicatio_; but it is never demanded of him. coitus with males, as above described, always seems to him healthy and natural; it leaves a deep sense of well-being, and has cemented durable friendships. he has always sought to form permanent ties with the men whom he has adored so excessively. he is of medium height, not robust, but with great nervous energy, with strong power of will and self-control, able to resist fatigue and changes of external circumstances. in boyhood he had no liking for female occupations, or for the society of girls, preferring study and solitude. he avoided games and the noisy occupations of boys, but was only non-masculine in his indifference to sport, was never feminine in dress or habit. he never succeeded in his attempts to whistle. he is a great smoker, and has at times drunk much. he likes riding, skating, and climbing, but is a poor horseman, and is clumsy with his hands. he has no capacity for the fine arts and music, though much interested in them, and is a prolific author. he has suffered extremely throughout life, owing to his sense of the difference between himself and normal human beings. no pleasure he has enjoyed, he declares, can equal a thousandth part of the pain caused by the internal consciousness of pariahdom. the utmost he can plead in his own defense, he admits, is irresponsibility, for he acknowledges that his impulse may be morbid. but he feels absolutely certain that in early life his health was ruined and his moral repose destroyed owing to the perpetual conflict with his own inborn nature, and that relief and strength came with indulgence. although he always has before him the terror of discovery, he is convinced that his sexual dealings with men have been thoroughly wholesome to himself, largely increasing his physical, moral, and intellectual energy, and not injurious to others. he has no sense whatever of moral wrong in his actions, and he regards the attitude of society toward those in his position as utterly unjust and founded on false principles. the next case is, like the foregoing, that of a successful man of letters who also passed through a long period of mental conflict before he became reconciled to his homosexual instincts. he belongs to a family who are all healthy and have shown marked ability in different intellectual departments. he feels certain that one of his brothers is as absolute an invert as himself and that another is attracted to both sexes. i am indebted to him for the following detailed narrative, describing his emotions and experiences in childhood, which i regard as of very great interest, not only as a contribution to the psychology of inversion, but to the embryology of the sexual emotions generally. we here see described, in an unduly precocious and hyperesthetic form, ideas and feelings which, in a slighter and more fragmentary shape, may be paralleled in the early experiences of many normal men and women. but it must be rare to find so many points in sexual psychology so definitely illustrated in a single child. it may be added that the narrative is also not without interest as a study in the evolution of a man of letters; a child whose imagination was thus early exercised and developed was predestined for a literary career. history xxi.--"almost the earliest recollection i have is of a dream, which, from my vivid recollection of its details, must have repeated itself, i think, more than once, unless my waking thoughts unconsciously added definition. from this dream dated my consciousness of the attraction to me of my own sex, which has ever since dominated my life. the dream, suggested in part, i think, by a picture in an illustrated newspaper of a mob murdering a church dignitary, took this form: i dreamed that i saw my own father murdered by a gang of ruffians, but i do not remember that i felt any grief, though i was actually an exceedingly affectionate child. the body was then stripped of its clothing and eviscerated. i had at the time no notion of anatomical details; but the particulars remain distinct to my mind's eye, of entrails uniformly brown, the color of dung, and there was no accompaniment of blood. when the abdomen had been emptied, the incident in which i became an active participant occurred. i was seized (and the fact that i was overpowered contributed to the agony of delight it afforded me) and was laid between the thighs of my murdered parent; and from there i had presently crawled my way into the evacuated, abdomen. the act, so far as i can decide of a dream at an age when emission was out of the question, caused in me extreme organic excitement. at all events, i used afterward definitely to recur to it in the waking moments before sleep for the purpose of gaining a state of erection. the dream had no outcome; it seemed to reach its goal in the excitement it caused. i was at that time between and years old. (i have been told that erections occurred when i was only years old. it was between and that i used to induce, at all events, the _sensation_ of an erection. but i was nearer when, sitting on my bed and waiting to be dressed, i got an involuntary erection and called my nurse's attention to it, asking what it meant. the _appearance_ must, therefore, have been usual to me at that date, but certainly the sensation was not.) "at that time i was totally ignorant of the conditions, of puberty, which afterward, when i discovered them, so powerfully affected me. i could not even visualize the private organs of a man; i made no deductions from myself. the only naked bodies i had seen then--i judge from circumstances, not from any actual memory of the facts--were those of my own sisters. in the waking dreams which i began to construct, though i recurred often to the one already narrated, the goal of my desire was generally to nestle between the thighs or to have my face pressed against the hinder parts of the object of my worship. but for a time my first dream so engrossed me that i did not indulge in any promiscuity. gradually, however, my horizon enlarged, and took in, besides the first mentioned, three others: a cousin very much my elder, an uncle, and the curate of the parish. "at this stage i began to invent circumstances for the indulgence of my passion. one of the earliest was to imagine myself in a tank with my three lovers floating in the water above me. from this position i visited their limbs in turn; the attraction rested in the thighs and buttocks only. i fancy this limitation of the charm to the lower parts only lasted until actual experience of a more complete embrace made me as much a lover of the arms and breast; indeed, later i became more emotionally enamored of these parts than of all the rest. at the beginning of things i simply loved best what my mind could first get hold of. "quite early in my experience, when i was not more than , i awoke earlier than usual, and saw my nurse standing in complete nudity, commencing her toilet. she seemed to me a gross, coarse, and meaningless object; the hair under her armpits displeased me, and still more that on the lower part of her body. in the case of men, directly i came to have cognizance of the same thing on their bodies, the effect was exactly the opposite. it so happened that about this time the gardener had received some injury to his leg, and in showing the bruise to another exhibited before my eyes a skin completely shagged over with dark hair. though the sight of the bruise repulsed me, my pleasure was intense, and the vision of the gardener's legs was in my bed every night for a week afterward. my point is that the sight of my nurse was liable to rouse interest just as much as the far more prosaic display of the gardener's wounded leg, but my nature made it impossible. "it was about this time, if not before, that an enormous sense of shyness with regard to all my private duties began to afflict me. so great was it that i could endure from no hand except my mother's or my nurse's the necessary assistance in the buttoning and unbuttoning of my garments, always excepting those who were about my own age, toward whom i felt no privacy whatever. "when i was a little more than i formed a friendship with a young clerk, a youth of about , though he seemed to me a grown-up person. one day, as he sat at his desk writing, i sat down and began playing with his feet, investigating the height to which his socks went under his trousers; in this way i obtained six inches of bare leg. conscious of my courage i fell to kissing it. my friend laughed, but left me to my devotions in peace. this was the first time in which a feeling of romance mixed itself in my dreams; the physical excitement was less, but the pleasure was greater. i cannot understand why i never repeated the experience. he remained to me an object of very special and tender consideration. "in the next episode i have to relate the ideal was totally absent, and the part i played was passive rather than active. i was put to sleep with a boy considerably my senior. his initiation led to a physical familiarity between us which was not warm or kind, and i was allowed no scope for my own instinctive desires for a warmer kind of contact; if i sought it under cover of my companion's slumbers i found myself kicked away. only on one occasion did i find a few moments of supreme charm, while his sleep remained sound, by discovering in the recesses of the sheet an exposed surface of flesh against which i pressed my face in an abandonment of joy. for the rest i was a passive participant, his pleasure seeming to end in the mere handling of the fleshy portions of my body. for this purpose i usually lay face downward across his knees. so far as i can remember, this intimacy led to a decrease in my pursuit of imaginative pleasures; for about a year no further development took place. "at about this date i was circumcised on account of the prepuce being too long. "between the th and th years a change of environment brought me into contact with a new set of faces. i had then a bed to myself, and once more my imagination awoke to life. it was at this time that i found myself constructing from men's faces suppositions as to the rest of their bodies: a brown face led me to suppose a uniformly brown body, a pale face a pale body. this idea of variety began to charm me. i now made definite choice in my reveries whether i would go to sleep between white thighs, or red thighs, or brown thighs. going to sleep definitely describes the goal of the method to which i had addicted myself. as soon as i entered my bed i abandoned myself to the construction of an amour and retained it as long as i had consciousness. i may say that i was not conscious of any emissions under these circumstances (until some years later, when i brought it about by my own act), but the pleasure was fairly acute. "all this time there were secret meetings, with my bedfellow of the year before. but they now took place by day, in various hiding-places, with little unclothing or exposure, and my companion was cold and fastidious and repelled any warmth on my part; it became to me a dry sort of ritual. i had an idea at that time that the whole thing was so much an original invention of his and mine that there was no likelihood of it being practised by anyone else in the world. but this consideration did not restrain me in constructing love scenes with all those whose appearance attracted me. at this period nearly every man with whom i came in contact won at least my transient desire; only the quite old and deformed lay outside the scope of my wishes. many of my amours developed in church; the men who sat near me were the objects of my attention, and the clergyman, whose sermon i did not listen to, supplied me with an occasion for reverie on the charms his person would have for me under other circumstances. it must have been at this time that i began to elaborate ideas of a serried rank of congregated thighs across which i lay and was dragged. i would arrange them in definite order and then imagine myself drawn across from one to the other somewhat forcibly. admiration of strength was beginning at this time to have a definite part in my conceptions, but anything of the nature of cruelty had not then appealed to me. (i except the original dream of my childhood, which seems to me still to stand fantastically apart.) in the inventions to which i now gave myself the sense of being passed across limbs of different texture and color was subtle and pleasurable. i think the note of constructive cruelty which now followed arose from an imagined rivalry among my lovers for possession of me; the idea that i was desired made me soon take a delight in imagining myself torn and snatched about by the contending parties. presently out of this i began constructing definite scenes of violence. i was able in imagination to lie in the thick and stress of conglomerated deliciousness of thighs struggling to hold me; i was able to imagine at least six bodies encircling me with passionate contact. at the same time i had an ingrained feeling of my own physical smallness in relation to the limbs whose contact threw me into such paroxysms of delight. a new and sufficiently ludicrous invention took possession of me; i imagined myself strapped to the thigh (always, i think, the right one) of the man on whom i chose, for the time, to concentrate my desires, and so to be worn by him during his day's work, hidden beneath his garments. i was not conscious of any difficulty due to my size. the charm of bondage and compulsion was here, again, in the ascendant. i fancy that it was in this connection that i first anticipated whipping as the delightful climax to my emotions, administered when my possessor, at the end of his day's work, unclothed himself for rest. "up to this stage my attraction to the male organ of generation had been slight and vague. two things now contributed to bring thought of it into prominence. on two or three occasions when i accompanied farm laborers to their occupations i saw them pause by the way to relieve nature. my extreme shyness as regards such matters in my own person made this performance in my presence like an outrage on my modesty; it had about it the suggestion of an indecent solicitation to one whose inclination was to headlong and delirious surrender. i stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties. when i afterward reviewed the circumstances they had the same attraction for me that amorous cruelty was just then beginning to exercise on my imagination. my mind secretly embraced the fearful sweetness of the newly discovered sensation, surrounding the performance of the function with all sorts of atrocious and bizarre inventions. for a time my intellect hung back from accepting this as the central and most fiery secret of the male attraction; but shortly afterward, when out walking with my father, i saw him perform the same act; i was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. even today, when my mind has been long accustomed to the knowledge of generative facts, i cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me. the attraction my father's person had always had for me was now increased tenfold by the performance i had witnessed (though i had not seen the penis in any of these cases). "for a considerable time only those lovers were dominant in my imagination whom i had witnessed in the act that had so poignantly affected me. my delight now took the form of imagining myself strapped to the thighs of the person while this function was in progress. "by this time i must have been years old. the cold and secret relationship of which i have given an account had continued without instructing me in any of the ardent possibilities it might have suggested; no force or cruelty was used upon me, no warmth was lavished. it made little difference that my companion had now discovered the act of masturbation; it had no meaning to me, since it led to no warmth of embrace. his method was to avert himself from me; i had to fawn upon him from the rear and also to invent indecent stories to stimulate his imagination. i felt myself a despised instrument, the mere spectator of an act which, if directed toward me with any warmth, would have aroused the liveliest appetite. at this time, as i have since seen, my companion was gaining knowledge from the ancient classics. for a time some charm was imparted by his instructing me to adopt a superincumbent face-to-face embrace. the beginning of his puberty was enormously attractive to me; had he been less cold-blooded i could have responded passionately to his endearments; but he always insisted on rigorous passivity on my part, and he explained nothing. one day, by a small gratuity, he induced me to offer him my mouth, though i still had no comprehension of the result i was helping to attain. once the orgasm occurred, and the effect was extremely nauseous; after that he was more careful. my companion was approaching manhood, and his demands became more frequent, his exactions more humiliating. "at the same time my passion for male love was growing stronger. i was able to construct from the unsatisfactory bondage in which i was held images of bodily embrace which i had not before had sufficient sense of human contact to form, though i seldom imagined any of the acts that in actual experience repulsed me. one day, however, i shirked a particularly repulsive humiliation which my companion had forced upon me. he discovered the deception, rose from the prone position in which he lay, and throwing me across his knees thrashed me violently. i submitted without a struggle, experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain. when he repeated his order i found its accomplishment no longer repulsive. one of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abasement to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to be brutal to me. "it must have been from this incident that the calculated effect of flagellation began to have weight with me when i indulged my imagination. a wish to be repulsed, trampled, violated by the object of my passion took hold of my instincts. even then--and, indeed, up to my th year--i had no idea of normal sexual connection. i knew vaguely that children were born from women's bodies; i did not know--and when told i did not believe--the true facts of the marital relationship. all that i had experienced--both in fact and imagination--was to me so highly individual that i had no notion anything kindred to it could exist outside of my own experience. i had no notion of sex as the basis of life. even when i came gradually to realize that men and women were formed in a way that argued connection with each other, i still believed it to be a dissolute sort of conduct, not to be indulged in by those who had claims to respectability. "i had, however, by this time arrived at a strong attraction toward the organs of generation and all aspects of puberty, and my imagination spent itself in a fantastic worship of every sign of masculinity. my enjoyment now was to imagine myself forced to undergo physical humiliation and submission to the caprice of my male captors, and the central fact became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if i were very fond of him, i let it be in my face. this was followed usually by a half-caressing castigation, in which the hand only was instrumental. "the period of which i am now writing was that of my entry into school life. my imaginary lovers immediately became numerous; all the masters and all the boys above a certain age attracted me; for two i had in addition a feeling of romantic as well as physical attachment. indeed, from this time onward i was never without some heroes toward whom i indulged a perfectly separate and tenderly ideal passion. the announcement that one was about to leave surprised me into a passionate fit of weeping; yet my reserve was so great and my sense of isolation so crushing that i made no effort at intimacy, and to one for whom i felt inexhaustible devotion i barely spoke for the first three years, though meeting him daily. at this time the subjects of my contemplation had distinctly individualized methods of approach. thus in one case i imagined we stood face to face in our night-gear; suddenly mine was stripped from me; i was seized and forcibly thrust under his and made to hang with my feet off the ground by my full weight on the erect organ which inserted itself between my thighs; so suspended--my body enveloped in the folds of his linen and my face pressed upon his heart--i underwent a castigation which continued until i was thrown down to receive a discharge of urine over my prostrate body. such images seemed to come independently of my will. "it was at this time that i found a large pleasure in imagining contact with people whom i disliked; the prevailing note of these intimacies was always cruelty, to which i submitted with acute relish. i discovered, however, from the ordinary school experiences of corporal punishment, that it had no charm to me when administered for school offenses, even from the hands under which at other times i imagined myself as delighting to receive pain. the necessary link was lacking; had i perceived on the part of my judge any liking for the operation, there would probably have been a response on my side. on one occasion i was flogged unjustly; conscious as i was of its cruel instead of judiciary character, this was the only castigation i received which had in it an element of gratification for my instincts. at the same time i never forgave the hand that administered it; it is the only instance i remember in myself of a grudge nourished for years. "meanwhile, amid this chaos of confused love and hatred, of relish for cruelty and loathing for injustice, my first thoroughly romantic and ideal attachment was developing itself. i may say, of those to whom romance as well as physical attachment bound me, that they have remained unchangeable parts of my nature. today, as it was twenty years ago, when i think of them the blood gushes to my brain, my hands tingle and moisten with an emotion i cannot subdue: i am at their feet worshipping them. of them my dreams were entirely tender; the idea of cruelty never touched the conception i had of them. but i return to that one who was the chief influence of my youth: older than myself by only three years, he was of fine build and athletic, with adolescence showing in his face; my tremulous beginnings of worship were confirmed by a word of encouragement thrown to me one day as i went to receive my first flogging; no doubt my small, scared face excited his kind pity. i made it my concern afterward to let him know that i had not cried under the ordeal, and i believe he passed the word around that i had taken my punishment pluckily. so little contact had i with him that beyond constant worship on my part i remember nothing till, about three years later, i received from him a kind, half-joking solicitation, spoken in clean and simple language. so terrific was my shyness and secrecy that i had even then no idea that familiarity of the sort was common enough in schools. i was absolutely unable to connect my own sensations with those of the world at large or to believe that others felt as i did. on this occasion i simply felt that some shrewd thrust had been made at me for the detection of my secret. he had drawn me upon his knee; i sat there silent, flushing and dumbfounded. he made no attempt to press me; he had, as he thought, said enough if i chose to be reciprocal; beyond that he would not tempt me. a few years ago i heard of him married and prosperous. "in following up my emotions in this direction i have far outstripped the period up to which i have given a complete exposition of my development. i must have been more than years old before school life persuaded me to face (as taught by sniggering novices) the actual facts of sexual intercourse. at the same time i learned that i had means of extracting enjoyment from my own body in a definite direction which i had not till then suspected. a growing resistance on my part to his cold desires had led to a break with my former intimate; to the last he had taught me nothing, except distaste for himself. i now found ready teachers right and left of me. one of my schoolfellows invited me to watch; him in the process of masturbation; the spectacle left me quite unmoved; the result appeared to me far less exciting than the discharge of urine which, until then, i had associated with male virility. i was so accustomed to my own lone amorous broodings that the effort and action required for this process, when i attempted to imitate it, disconcerted my thoughts and interfered with concentration on my own inventions. i had never experienced the pleasure accompanying the spasm of emission, and there seemed to be nothing worth trying for along that road. i desisted and returned to my reveries. i was now in a perfect maze of promiscuity; there must have been at least fifty people who attracted me at that time. i developed a liking for imagining myself between two lovers, generally men who were physical contrasts. it was my habit to analyze as minutely as possible those who attracted me. to gain intimacy with what was below the surface i studied with attention their hands, the wrists where they disappeared (showing the hair of the forearm), and the neck; i estimated the comparative size of the generative organs, the formation of the thighs and buttocks, and thus constructed a presentment of the whole man. the more vividly i could do this, the keener was the pleasure i was able to obtain from their contemplated embraces. "till now i had been absolutely untouched by any moral scruples. i had the usual acquiescence in the religious beliefs in which i had been trained; it did not enter my head that there was any divine law, one way or the other, concerning the allurements of the imagination. from my thirteenth year slight hints of uneasiness began to creep into my conscience. i began perhaps to understand that the formulas of religion, to which i had listened all my life with as little attention as possible, had some meaning which now and then touched the circumstances of my own life. i had not yet realized that my past foretold my future, and that women would be to me a repulsion instead of an attraction where things sexual were concerned. i had the full conviction that one day i should be married; i had also some fear that as i grew to manhood i might succumb to the temptations of loose women. i had an incipient revulsion from such a fate, and this seemed to me to indicate that moral stirrings were at work within me. one night i was amorously attacked in my bedroom by two of the domestics. i experienced an acute horror which i hid under laughter; my resistance was so desperate that i escaped with a tickling. i had been accustomed to sit on the servants' knees, a habit i had innocently retained from childhood; i can now recall in detail the approaches these women had been used to make me. at the time i was utterly oblivious that anything was intended. "i was equally oblivious to things that had a nearer relation to my own feelings. in passing along a side-street one night i was overtaken by a man who began conversation on the weather. he asked me if i were not cold, began passing his hand up and down my back; then came a question about caning at school, whether certain parts of me were not sore, leading to an investigating touch. i put his hand aside shyly, but did not resent the action. presently he was for exploring my trousers pockets and i began to think him a pickpocket; repulsed in that direction, he returned, to rubbing my back. the sensation was pleasant. i now took him for a pimp who wished to take me to a prostitute, and as at that time i had begun to realize that such pleasures were not to my taste i was glad to find myself at my destination, and said good-bye sharply, leaving him standing full of astonishment at his failure with one who had taken his advances so pleasantly. i could not bring myself to believe that others had the same feelings as myself. later i realized my escape, not without a certain amount of regret, and constructed for my own pleasure a different termination to the incident. "i was now so possessed by masculine attraction that i became a lover of all the heroes i read of in books. some became as vivid to me as those with whom i was living in daily contact. for a time i became an ardent lover of napoléon (the incident of his anticipation of the nuptials with his second wife attracting me by its impetuous brutality), of edward i, and of julius cæsar. charles ii i remember by a caressing cruelty with which my imagination gifted him. jugurtha was a great acquisition. bothwell, judge jefferies, and many villains of history and fiction appealed to me by their cruelty. "i had become an adept in the mental construction necessary for the satisfaction of my desires. and yet up to that date i had never seen the nude body of a full-grown adult. i had no knowledge of the extent to which hair in certain instances develops on the torso; indeed, my efforts at characterization centered, for the most part, around the thighs and generative organs. at this time one of my schoolfellows saw a common workman, known to me by name, bathing in a stream with some companions; all his body was, my informant told me, covered with hair from throat to belly. in face the man was coarse and repulsive, but i now began to regard him as a lovely monstrosity, and for many nights embraced the vision of him passionately, with face buried in the jungle growth of hair that covered his chest. i was, for the first time, conscious of deliberately (and successfully) willing not to see his face, which was distasteful to me. at the same time another schoolfellow told me, concerning a master who bathed with the boys, that hair showed above his bathing-drawers as high as the navel. i now began definitely to construct bodies in detail; the suggestion of extensive hairiness maddened me with delight, but remained in my mind strongly associated with cruelty; my hairy lovers never behaved to me with tenderness; everything at this period, i think, tended to draw me toward force and violence as an expression of amativeness. a schoolfellow, a few years my senior, of a cruel, bullying disposition, took a particular delight in inflicting pain on me: he had particularly pointed shoes, and it was his custom to make me stand with my back to him while he addressed me in petting and caressing tones; just when his words were at their kindliest he would inflict a sharp stroke with the toe of his boot so as to reach the most tender part of my fundament; the pain was exquisite; i was conscious that he experienced sexual pleasure (i had seen definite signs of it beneath his clothing), and, though loathing him, i would, after i had suffered from his kicks, throw myself into his imaginary embraces and indulge in a perfect rage of abject submission. yet all the time i would gladly have killed him. "at the age of i went, for a time, to a farm-house, where i was allowed to mingle familiarly with the farm-laborers, a fine set of muscular young men. i became a great favorite, and, having childish, caressing manners a good deal behind my real age, i was allowed to take many liberties with them. they all lived under the farmer's roof in the old-fashioned way, and in the evening i used to sit on their knees and caress and hug them to my heart's content. they took it phlegmatically; it apparently gave them no surprise. one of the men used to return my squeezes and caresses and once allowed me to put my hand under his shirt, but there were no further liberties. "it was not until i was nearly that the event happened which made me, for the first time, restless in my enforced solitude. i was verging on puberty, and perhaps in the hope that i should find my own development met by a corresponding warmth i again came into intimate relations with the companion whose frigid performances had caused me weariness and disgust. he was now a man, having reached majority. he put me into his bed while he undressed himself and came toward me in perfect nudity. in a moment we were in each other's arms and the deliciousness of that moment intoxicated me. suddenly, lying on the bed, i felt attacked, as i thought, by an imperative need to make water. i leaped up with a hurried excuse, but already the paroxysm had subsided. no discharge came to my relief, yet the need seemed to have passed. i returned to my companion, but the glamour of the meeting was already over. my companion evidently found more pleasure in my person than when i was a mere child; i felt moved and flattered by the pleasure he took in pressing his face against certain parts of my body. on a second occasion, one day, i seemed involuntarily about to transgress decency, but again, as before, separated myself, and remained ignorant of what it was on which i had verged in my excitement. at another meeting, however, i had been allowed to prolong my embrace and to act, indeed, upon my full instincts. once more i felt suddenly the coming of something acutely impending; i took my courage in my hands and went boldly forward. in another moment i had hold of the mysterious secret of masculine energy, to which all my years of dilirious imaginings had been but as a waiting at the threshold, the knocking on a closed door. "it was inevitable that from that day our intimacy should dwindle into dissolution (though other causes anticipated this natural decay), but i no longer found masturbation a dry and wearisome formula. in my novitiate i was disheartened to find how long it took me to dissociate myself from the contemplative and attach myself to the active form of self-gratification. but i presently found myself committed to the repetition of the act three times a day. on almost the last occasion i met my intimate he showed an exceptional ardor. at that meeting he proposed to attempt an act i had not previously considered possible, far less had i heard that it was considered the worst criminal connection that could take place. i had a slight fear of pain, but was willing to gratify him, and for the first time found in my submission a union of the two amative instincts which had before disputed sway in me: the instinct for tenderness and the instinct for cruelty. _pedicatio_ failed to take place, but i received an embrace which for the first time gave me full satisfaction. my delight was enormous; i was filled with emotions. i have no words to describe the extraordinary charm of the warm, smooth flesh upon mine, and the rougher contact of the hairy parts. yet i was conscious, even at the time, that this was but the physical side of pleasure, and that he was not and never could be one whom i might truly be said to love. "i was now in my sixteenth year, and under the influence of these and many other emotions then, for the first time, beginning to seize me, a sense of literary power and a desire to express myself through imaginative channels began to take hold of me. i feared that my indulgence was having an enfeebling power on my faculties (i had begun to experience physical languor and depression), and certain religious scruples, the result of my early training, took hold of me. for the first time i became conscious that the ardors i felt toward my own sex were a diversion of the sex-instinct itself, and to my astonishment and consternation i found by chance the practices i had already indulged in definitely denounced in the bible as an abomination. from that moment began a struggle which lasted for years. i made a final breach with my former intimate, and thereupon a long dispute took place between the conflicting influences that strove for possession of my body. for a time i broke off the habit of masturbation, but i could not so easily rid myself of the mental indulgence, which was now almost an essential sedative for inducing sleep. at this time a visit to the seaside, where, for the first time, i was able to see men bathing in complete nudity, frankly, in the full light of day, plunged me again for a time headforemost into imaginative amours, and my scruples and resolutions were flung to the winds. but, on the whole, i had now entered a stage which, for want of a better term, i must describe as the emotionally moral. to whatever depth of indulgence i descended i carried a sense of obliquity with me; i believed that i was a rebel from a law, natural and divine, of which yet no instinct had been implanted in me. i still held unquestioned the truth of the religion i had been brought up in, and my whole life, every thought of my brain, every impulse of my body, were in direct antagonism to the will of god. at times physical desire broke down these barriers, but i practised considerable restraint physically, though not mentally, and made great efforts to conquer my aversion from women and extreme devotion for men, without the slightest success. i was , however, before i found a companion to love me in the way my nature required. i am quite a healthy person, and capable of working at very high pressure. under sexual freedom i have become stronger." history xxii.--t.j., aged ; man of letters. height feet inches; weight stone, but formerly much less. belongs to an entirely normal family, all married and with children. "owing to the fact that my mother suffered from some malady the whole period of gestation prior to my birth, i came into the world so puny a child, so ill-nourished, that for some time the doctors despaired of my life. till the age of puberty, though never ill, i suffered greatly from delicate health. i was abnormally sensitive and all my affections and passions extraordinarily developed. owing to my brothers being much older than myself i was thrown into the society of my sister. till years old she was my chief playmate. with her i played with dolls and abandoned myself wholly to the delights of an imaginary land which was much more real to me than the world around me. i never remember learning to read, but at the _arabian nights_ and kingsley's _hereward the wake_ were my favorite books. living in the country the society of other children was difficult to obtain. my whole affections centered in my father, my mother having died when i was a child. this affection for my father was rather a morbid passion which absorbed my life. i dared not leave his side for fear of a final separation from him. i would wake him when asleep to see if he still lived. to this day, though he died twenty-six years ago, his memory haunts me. "my first abnormal desires were connected with him. i had seen him occasionally micturating in the garden alleys or out in the country. these occasions excited me terribly, and i would, if possible, wait till he had gone, and touch the humid leaves, drawing a terrible pleasure from the contact. afterward, though he never suspected it, desire for him became a consuming passion, and i remember on one occasion, when on a holiday, i occupied the same bed with him, the excitement of his propinquity brought on such a formidable attack of heart palpitation that my father called in the family physician on our return home. needless to say my heart was found quite sound. the desire still remains after all these years, and nothing excites me more even now than the memory of my father in his morning bath. "the whole world for me in my early childhood was peopled with imaginary beings. while still a young child i would invent stories and relate them to any listener i could find, one such story lasting three years. i was an omnivorous reader, but my favorite reading was poetry. at i could repeat the greater part of longfellow's poems; scott followed; then milton captivated me when i was ; then came tennyson, arnold, swinburne, and morris. later came the greek and latin poets. from years on i wrote verses to my father. till years i was excessively timid of the dark and, indeed, of all loneliness. this passed, however, and developed into an extreme sensitiveness of seeing or meeting people. even on a country road i would walk miles out of my way to avoid meeting the ordinary yokel. at this period my day-dreams were my favorite occupation. even to the present day my visions take up the greater part of my life. though timid i was not wanting in courage. at an early age i would fight boys even older than myself. later i have risked my life many times in various parts of europe. as regards sports, i can do a little of everything: swimming, riding, fencing, shooting,--a little of each. cricket and football i also played passably, but sports never interested me much. literature became and is the passion of my life and for some years has remained my sole occupation. "at years the sexual inversion began to manifest itself, though till i had attained years of age i was practically quite innocent. at years of age, my family removed to another country and i made the acquaintance of a little boy who attracted me sexually. we masturbated in company, without any reason except the pleasure of seeing each other exposed. then i had connection with him _in anum_. this really at that time was an exception to my ordinary tastes which speedily developed into an intense desire of _fellatio_ and later on of intercrural pleasures. this latter perhaps may be accounted for by the visit to our house of a small boy with whom i slept for about a year. every night during this period, i had intercrural connection with him twice and sometimes three times. then came a consuming passion for all young boys and very old men. boys after or ceased to attract me, more particularly when the hair of the pubes began to develop. from to , when first i had sexual emissions, i masturbated at every opportunity. from to , always once a day, generally twice and sometimes three times a day. at i took rooms and formed acquaintance with the family occupying the house. the boys, one by one, were allowed to sleep with me and i conceived an extraordinary passion for one of them, an attachment which lasted till i finally left england. the attachment was much more that of a man for his wife and had nothing degrading in it. i was wretched when away from him, and as he was very attached to sport of all kinds i suffered 'divers kinds of death' each time that i imagined his life to be endangered. i can honestly say that in each of my attachments, and i have had many, the prevailing sentiment was the delight of protecting a weaker being than myself. each person whom i have loved has been perfectly normal and all are now fathers of families. each still regards me with affection and respect in spite of what has passed between us. all my life i have been possessed with the passion for paternity, i could almost say maternity. willingly would i have suffered the pains of hell could i have borne a son to the person i loved. that i can honestly say has been the dominant instinct of my life. in my passion i have never been brutal, nor save under the influence of wine have i had connection with men over the age of puberty. in southern europe my experiences have been the same, a predominant passion for a boy exhibiting itself in every species of protecting care, and though terminating so far as sexual passion was concerned when the boy reached or years, yet still lasting and enduring in an honest and unselfish affection. at the age of , i still masturbate once or twice a week, though i long for some person whom i love to share the pleasure with me. i tried vainly at the age of to bring myself into line with others. prostitutes caused me horror, whether male or female. i attempted the act of coitus four or five times, twice with women of loose lives and at other times with married women. save in one case the attempts were either abortive or caused me extreme disgust. "practically from the time of puberty i have attracted sexually not only women but men. women, oddly enough, though i care nothing for them sexually, either hate me or adore me, and i have had five offers of marriage. at the same time up till five years ago, i was pursued by men and have had the oddest experiences both in england and abroad. in the early period of this history i suffered tremendously from the feeling that i was isolated and unique in the world. i strove against the habit of masturbation and my perverted tastes with all my might. scourges, vigils, burnings, all were of no avail. deeper reading in the classics showed me how common was the taste of sex for the same sex. at i began to have a settled philosophy. then as now, i made endless resolutions to avoid masturbation, though i can see nothing wrong in the mutual act of two persons drawn together by love. i am and always have been an extremely religious man, and if i am not altogether an orthodox catholic, do my duties and have a high sense of the supernatural. i suffered much from melancholy from my earliest years. at , though nothing definitely was wrong, a vague but profound _malaise_ induced me to open the veins of my arm. i fainted, however, and was promptly succored. at the age of , after a return from abroad, i took an enormous dose of poison. this time again a singular coincidence saved me, and i once more came back to life. after this i purposely went abroad to obtain death and sought it in every possible way. quite in vain, as you see. one thing i have never had a fear of, but have always longed for--death. i am sure that if we only knew what joys lay on the other side of death, the whole world would rush madly to suicide. i have, apart from any perversion of taste, an honest and genuine passion for children and animals, and i am never happier than when in their society. both adore me. "my life has not dimmed nor deadened my faculties, for i am occupied at the present time with very important work and i write steadily. but my real life is passed in my visions, which take me into another world quite as real as this sensuous one, and where i always retreat on all occasions possible. and yet, a strange paradox--i am a convinced stoic and almost confine my reading to epictetus, marcus aurelius, and the 'imitation.' i am extremely emotional, fond of the society of women, though i loathe the sexual side of them, and when i love, though passion is certainly inextricably mixed, the prevailing sentiment is spiritual. i shall probably end by being a carthusian or a fakir." history xxiii.--englishman, aged , of german descent on father's side. was first child of his mother, who was at his birth; a younger brother normal; has no other relatives. he was brought up in england, and went to school at the age of . at a very early age, between and , was deeply impressed by the handsome face of a young man, a royal trumpeter on horseback, seen in a procession. this, and the sight of the naked body of young men in a rowing-match on the river, caused great commotion, but not of a definitely sexual character. this was increased by the sight of a beautiful male model of a young turk smoking, with his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the waist. he became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures of italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the antinous, and he read with avidity the _arabian nights_ and other oriental tales, translations from the classics, suetonius, petronius, etc. he drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. as a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled in female parts, and sang the songs of madame vestris, encouraged in this by his father. the sexual organs have never been fully developed, and the testicles, though large, are of a flabby consistence. he cannot whistle. he thinks he ought to have been a woman. at school he was shy and reserved, and had no particular intimacy with anyone, although he once desired it. he learned self-abuse from his younger brother, who had learned it from an older boy. he has never had erotic dreams. he never touched anyone but his brother until later when travelling in italy, and then only his fellow-traveller. when travelling in asia minor he had many opportunities, but always put them aside from fear, afterward regretting his fearfulness. he yearned for intimacy with particular friends, but never dared to express it. he went much to theaters, and what he saw there incited him to masturbation. when he was about years of age his reserve, and his fear of treachery and extortion, were at last overcome by an incident which occurred late at night at the royal exchange, and again in a dark recess in the gallery of the olympic theater when gustavus brooke was performing. from that time the adelphi theater, the italian opera, and the open parks at night became his fields of adventure. he remarks that among people crowding to witness a fire he found many opportunities. his especial intimates were a railway clerk and an italian model. in more recent years he has chiefly found gratification among footmen and policemen. he is exclusively passive; also likes mutual _fellatio_. he used greatly to admire finely developed forms (conscious of his own shortcomings), shapely limbs, and delicate brown hair, and always admired strength and manly vigor. he never took any interest in boys, and has always been indifferent to women. history xxiv.--a medical man, english, aged . he believes that his father, who was a magistrate, was very sympathetic toward men; on several occasions he has sat with him on the bench when cases of indecent assault were brought up; he discharged three cases, although there could be little doubt as to their guilt, and was very lenient to the others. from the age of he loved to sleep with his brother, ten years older, who was in the navy; they slept in different beds, and the child went to bed early, but he always kept awake to see his brother undress, as he adored his naked body; and would then get into his bed. he learned the habit of masturbation from his brother at the age of ; at that time there was no sexual orgasm, but watching it in his brother was a perpetual source of wonder and pleasure. during his brother's absence at sea the boy longed for his return and would practice self-abuse with the thought of his brother's naked body before him. this brother's death was a source of great grief. at the age of he went to boarding-school and was constantly falling in love with good-looking boys. he was always taken into one of the bigger boys' beds. at this age he was thoroughly able to enjoy the sexual orgasm with boys. his erotic dreams have always been of men and especially of boys; he has never dreamed sexually of women. from the age of to the age of , when he left school, he never gave women a thought sexually, though he always liked their society. for two years after leaving school he had connection with women, not because he thought there was sin in loving his own sex, but because he regarded it as a thing that no one did after leaving school. during these two years he still really preferred men and used to admire the figures of soldiers and sailors. he then paid a visit to london, which may be described in his own words: "i went to see an old schoolfellow who was living there. in his room was a young fellow, fair, extremely good looking, with a good figure and charming manners. from that moment all my past recollections came back. i could not get him out of my mind; in fact, i was in love with him. i pictured him naked before me as a lovely statue; my dreams were frequent at night, always of him. for a fortnight afterward i practised masturbation with the picture of his lovely face and form always before me. we became fast friends, and from that day women have never entered my thoughts." although up to the present he has no wish or intention to marry, he believes that he will eventually do so, because it is thought desirable in his profession; but he is quite sure that his love and affection for men and boys will never lessen. in earlier life he preferred men from to ; now he likes boys from upward; grooms, for instance, who must be good looking, well developed, cleanly, and of a lovable, unchanging nature; but he would prefer gentlemen. he does not care for mere mutual embracing and reciprocal masturbation; when he really loves a man he desires _pedicatio_ in which he is himself the passive subject. he has curly hair and moustache, and well-developed sexual organs. his habits are masculine; he has always enjoyed field sports, and can swim, ride, drive, and skate. at the same time, he is devoted to music, can draw and paint, and is an ardent admirer of male statuary. while fond of practical occupations of every sort, he dislikes anything that is theoretical. he adds: "as a medical man, i fail to see morally any unhealthiness, or anything that nature should be ashamed of, in connection with, and sympathy for, men." history xxv.--a.s. schoolmaster, aged . "my father was, i should say, below the average in capacity for friendship. he liked young girls, and was never interested in boys. he was a man of strongly puritanical morality, capable of condemning with gloomy bitterness. he was also a man capable of great sacrifice for principle, and mentally very well endowed. my mother was a clever, practical woman, with wide sympathies. she was capable of warm friendship, especially toward those younger than herself. her father (whom i never saw) was a teacher. he was devoted to his wife, but also delighted in the company of young men. he had always some young man on his arm, my mother would tell me. my mother's family is of welsh descent. i learned to read at , and i can scarcely have been more than when i used to read again and again david's lament for absalom. even now i can dimly recall the siren charm for me of that melancholy refrain, 'o my son absalom.... o absalom, my son, my son!' of late, when i have thought of the amount of devotion i have shown to lads, and the amount i have sometimes suffered for them, i have felt as if there were something almost weirdly prophetic in that early incident. "i was always an impressionable creature. my mother was very musical, and her singing 'got hold' of me wonderfully. the dramatic and the poetic always strongly appealed to me. "i felt i should like to act; but i never dared. in the same way i felt that one day i should like to be a schoolmaster, but i dared not say so. a shy, retiring creature was obviously unfitted for such occupations. well, the teaching came about, and the strange part was that the boys were somehow or other attracted by me, and the 'worst' customers were attracted most. and there came a chance of acting too. owing to some difficulties about the cast in a play at school, i took a part. after that i _knew_ that (within a certain range) i could act. i spent two holidays with a dramatic company. i should undoubtedly have remained on the stage, but for one thing. i don't wish to be sanctimonious, but dirty and ugly jokes are odious to me. it was this sort of thing that drove me away. i threw myself into the school work instead. "it was partly the dramatic interest, partly a quite genuine interest in human nature, that led me to do some preaching too. when i had been badly hurt by one or two youngsters whom i loved, i thought of going in for pastoral work, but this too was given up--and very wisely. i should never be able to work comfortably with any organization. for one thing i have a way of taking on new ideas, and organizations do not like that. for another, all social functions are anathema to me. "interest in 'art' as usually understood began to be marked only after i was . it started with architecture and passed on to painting and sculpture. the tendency to do rather a variety (too great a variety) of things characterizes many uranians. we are rather like the labile chemical compounds: our molecules readily rearrange themselves. "as a boy of i had the ordinary sweethearting with a girl of the same age. the incident is worth perhaps a little further comment for the following reason: when i was years old the girl lived with us for a year. she was a nice, pleasant, bright girl, and she thought a great deal of me. i was strongly attracted by her. i remember especially one little incident. i had been showing her how to do some algebra and she was kneeling at the table by the side of my chair. her hair was flowing over her shoulders and she looked rather charming. she expressed warm admiration of the way i had worked the problem out. i remember that i deliberately squashed out the feeling of attraction that came over me. i scarcely know why i did this; but i fancy there was a vague sense that i did not want my work disturbed. there was no sexual attraction or, at least, none that was manifest. the girl, there is no doubt, grew to love me. i am sorry to say that in two other cases, later, women loved me, and have both permanently remained unmarried on my account. i sometimes feel that in a wisely free society i should be able to give both of these women children. that i believe i could do, and i think it would be an immense satisfaction to them. a permanent union with a woman would, however, be impossible to me. a permanent union with a man would, i believe, be possible. at least i know that attractions which have been at all homosexual in character have in my case been very lasting. "i was strongly attracted when not more than to a lad slightly older. it was a love story, there is no doubt, but i do not recollect any outer sexual signs. there were other passing cases, but in no case was there any warm response till i was . i then made friends with a lad of entirely different type from myself. i was a reader. i liked long walks and fresh air, but i was too shy to go in for sports. indeed i was frightfully shy. he was a great sportsman and always at home in society. but he asked me to help him with some work, and we took to working together. i grew passionately fond of him. his caresses always caused some erection. personally, i believe it would have been wiser to have obtained complete sexual expression. the absence of knowledge led to two distinctly undesirable results. the first was marked congestion and pain at times; the second was a tendency to a sort of modified masochism. there is always, i suppose, some erotic attraction about the buttocks, and of course also, to boys, they afford an irresistibly attractive mark for a good smack. i found that when this lad spanked me it produced some amount of sexual excitement, and the desire for this form of stimulus grew upon me. the result, in my case, was bad. it was sensualism, not love. i can say this with confidence, because in a much later case of deeply passionate love, i shrank from any such method, but the mutual, naked embrace i found was for me an absolutely natural and _pure_ expression of love. i never felt any touch of grossness in it, and it destroyed the earlier and (for me at least) less wholesome desire. "the school friendship disappeared with the marriage of my friend. i was furiously jealous, and the young man's mother was opposed to me, but i still think of that early friendship with tenderness. i know that my boy friend was the first who made me capable of self-expression, the first who taught me how to make friends at all. and if he still cared for me, i know that his love would be dear to me still. "my chief regret, as i look back, is that i did not know about these things early. i cannot but think that all youngsters should be spoken to about the love of comrades and encouraged to seek help in any sort of trouble that this may bring. we homogenic folk may be but a small percentage of mankind, but our numbers are still great, and surely the making or marring of our lives should count for something. at college i fell violently in love with a friend with whom i did work in science. he loved me too, though not with such heat. he also was largely uranian, but this i only realized a year or two back. he remains unmarried, and is still my friend. we did some research work together which is pretty well known. i am quite sure that the love we had for each other gave tremendous zest to our work and greatly increased our powers. "while i was working at college i was interested in a lad who was working as errand boy for a city firm. i helped him to get better training, and spent money on him. my father was making me some allowance at the time and demurred. i said i would in future support myself, and in this way came to take up schoolmastering. i at once became quite absorbed in my work with the boys. of course i loved them. and here i feel i must touch upon what seems to me a characteristic of most of us uranians. our genital organs are with us ordinarily and usually organs of _expression_. the clean-minded heterogenic man is apt to look upon such a view of the genital organs as monstrous; we, on the other hand, are compelled (at least for ourselves) to regard it as the natural and pure one. for my own part i had many puritan prejudices--prejudices that i retained for many a long and weary day--but my affection for those of my own sex so often expressed itself by some sexual stirring, and more or less erection, that i was _obliged_ to look upon this as inevitable, and in general i paid no attention to it whatever. it was the older boys' who sometimes attracted me strongly. my love for them was i know a genuinely spiritual thing, though inevitably having some physical expression. i was capable of great devotion to them and sacrifice for them, and i would certainly rather have died than have injured them. the boys got on well with me. i was never weak with them, and i was able to allow all kinds of familiarities without any loss of respect. the older boys usually, out of class, called me by my christian name, and i remember one writing to ask me whether he might do so, as it made him feel 'nearer' to me. a few of the lads i of course loved with special devotion. they kissed me and loved to have me embrace them. one of these was, i now know, pure uranian, and there was in his case certainly some sexual response, but though i often slept with him, when he was a lad of and , there was never any idea in our minds of any sexual act. we are still warm friends, and always kiss when we meet. looking back upon those days, i feel that i was a little inclined to pass on from one love to another, but each was a genuine devotion, and involved real hard work on the lad's behalf. and i know that where the lad stuck to me into manhood a real tenderness and love remain still. "while teaching i made the acquaintance of a non-conformist minister, who, though happily married, had certainly some homogenic tendencies. he was most devoted to boys and helped me with regard to some difficult cases. it was the difficult cases that always attracted me. i had to punish these lads and my friend recommended spanking with the hand on the bare buttocks. i mention that i adopted this method, because it might have been thought specially dangerous to me. it certainly never produced in me the remotest suggestion of any sexual act, though it did sometimes produce a slight amount of sexual excitement. i disregarded this, or put it out of my mind, as i found the method most efficacious. it was capable of great variation of intensity, and the boys were always ready to joke about it. i never came across a case where any sexual excitement was produced by it. the boys whom i had to be most 'down' on almost always, however, grew fonder of me. there may be a slight and normal masochistic tendency in most boys, and _perhaps_ the erogenic character of the buttocks has something to do with the development of affection. if so, i am inclined to regard it as normal and useful rather than otherwise, for in my experience no undesirable result was ever produced. but then, of course, there was no playing with the business; that might, i am sure, in some cases be decidedly injurious. "one experience of my schoolmastering days is, i think, important in its bearing upon general sexual psychology. i always noticed that during the term i was specially free from 'wet dreams.' what is noteworthy is this: during term there was never anything more than a very partial sexual expression of any feeling of mine, such expression indeed as was wholly inevitable. there was therefore no actual loss of semen, and it seems clear that the 'wet dreams' were not due to mere physical pressure. the psychic satisfaction of love in this case made the complete physical expression less urgent. but it was a love of a distinctly tender kind that was needed to keep the physical from obtruding. of that further experience has made me sure. i am, moreover, now convinced that a _mutual_ uranian love will reach its best results, both spiritual and physical, where there is complete sexual expression. "of the character of the sexual dreams i have had, there is not much to be said. during the period of masochistic tendency, they were masochistic in character; otherwise they have been dreams simply of the naked embrace. usually there has been a considerable element of ideal love in the dream. i have not more than three times at most dreamed of intercourse with one of the opposite sex. there was only in one case anything that i could call actual emotion in such a dream. the other dreams have often (not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what i should call merely sensual. "in the course of time i wanted more freedom to do things in my own way than could be obtained in a public school. i started a school of my own. the work was for a good many years very happy. i loved the boys, and they loved me. i was active, ardent, and they made a chum of me. but people got into the way of sending me awkward customers. i poured out my love on these, i used myself up for them. unfortunately (though i was never 'orthodox') my puritanical morality was still strong within me, my views of human psychology were too limited, and i imposed them on the boys. some were very devoted; but, as years went by and the proportion of _mauvais sujets_ increased, there tended to be a split in the small camp and one or two boys whom i loved deceived me terribly. to a man of my temperament this was heart-rending and from then the work was doomed. troubles at school went along with troubles at home, and these things contributed to center my affection upon a lad who was with me, and who had given me much trouble. for some reason or other i went on believing that he would get right. deceit was his great difficulty. he was certainly partly homosexual himself. looking back i can see that with a wider and more charitable knowledge i could have dealt more wisely and helpfully with certain homosexual episodes of his. i am convinced now that mere sweeping condemnation of the physical is not the wholesome way of help. however, to cut the story short, all seemed at last to go well, and the lad was growing into a young man. our love deepened, and we always slept together, but quite ascetically. later, when quite in his young manhood he had left school, there was, unfortunately, misunderstandings with his parents, who forbad him to sleep with me. what followed is of some importance. up till then, though certainly his affection seemed ardent, i had observed no sexual signs on his part. i had been quite frank with him as to mine. he was then , and i thought old enough to have things explained to him. sleeping with him i had found peaceful and helpful, and more than once he told me that it greatly helped him. but _after we were forbidden to sleep together_, i found the passion in me more difficult to control, and it suddenly leaped out in him. we were still, however, rather ascetic, though we used to kiss each other, and we used to embrace naked. this produced emission not infrequently with me, but only once with him, though always powerful erection. i would not allow any friction. perhaps this was a mistake. a more complete expression might have helped him. "all my life i had been hungry for a complete response, and at one time the lad thought he could give it. he was then nearing . 'i have never been so happy in my life,' he said. it was a blow to me when i found he had mistaken his own feelings, but i was quite ready to accept what love he could give. i also never dreamed of any sort of insistence on sexual expression. with such love as he could give i was quite ready to make myself content. 'the true measure of love,' wrote a uranian schoolmaster to me once, 'is self-sacrifice'; not 'what will you give?' but 'what will you give up?' not 'what will you do for him?' but 'what will you forego for his sake?' i quote this gladly, for the conventional english moralists regard an invert as a kind of deformed beast. i can only say that i tried to realize the ideal which these words express. no 'moralist' would have helped me one whit. the parents, also, separated us. they have done much harm by their mistake. how difficult it is for parents to allow freedom to their children! their ideal is successful constraint, not free self-discovery. but in spite of them, and in spite of the separation, i know that my friend and i have helped each other. "there is one fear parents have which i believe is unwarranted. as far as i have seen, i do not conclude that the early expression of homosexual love prevents heterosexual love from developing later. where this love is a part of the individual's inborn nature, it will show itself. i do, however, believe that a noble homogenic love in early life will sometimes help a lad to avoid a low standard of heterogenic attachment. the greeks did well, at their best time, in cultivating and ennobling the homogenic love. amongst us, as can be understood by all who know the working of society taboos, it is the baser forms that are unhindered, the noblest forms that are debased. "we urnings are, i think, dependent upon individual love. many of us, i know, need to work for an individual to do our best. is this the outcome of the woman in the uranian temperament? and the tragedy of our fate is that we whose souls vibrate only to the touch of the hand of eros are faced with the fiercest taboo of all that can give our lives meaning. the other taboos have been given up one by one. will not this, the last of the taboos, soon vanish? i have known lives darkened by it, weakened by it, crushed out by it. how long are the western moralists to maim and brand and persecute where they do not understand?" the next case belongs to a totally different class from all the preceding histories. these--all british or american--were obtained privately; they are not the inmates of prisons or of asylums, and in most cases they have never consulted a physician concerning their abnormal instincts. they pass through life as ordinary, sometimes as honored, members of society. the following case, which happens to be that of an american, is acquainted with both the prison and the lunatic asylum. there are several points of interest in his history, and he illustrates the way in which sexual inversion can become a matter of medico-legal importance. i think, however, that i am justified in believing that the proportion of sexually inverted persons who reach the police-court or the lunatic asylum is not much larger in proportion to the number of sexually inverted persons among us than it is among my cases. for the documents on which i have founded the history of guy olmstead i am indebted to the kindness of dr. talbot, of chicago, well known from his studies of abnormalities of the jaws and face, so often associated with nervous and mental abnormality. he knew the man who addressed to him the letters from which i here quote:-- history xxvi.--on the twenty-eighth of march, , at noon, in the open street in chicago, guy t. olmstead fired a revolver at a letter-carrier named william l. clifford. he came up from behind, and deliberately fired four shots, the first entering clifford's loins, the other three penetrating the back of his head, so that the man fell and was supposed to be fatally wounded. olmstead made little attempt to escape, as a crowd rushed up with the usual cry of "lynch him!" but waved his revolver, exclaiming: "i'll never be taken alive!" and when a police-officer disarmed him: "don't take my gun; let me finish what i have to do." this was evidently an allusion, as will be seen later on, to an intention to destroy himself. he eagerly entered the prison-van, however, to escape the threatening mob. olmstead, who was years of age, was born near danville, ill., in which city he lived for many years. both parents were born in illinois. his father, some twenty years ago, shot and nearly killed a wealthy coal operator, induced to commit the crime, it is said, by a secret organization of a hundred prominent citizens to whom the victim had made himself obnoxious by bringing suits against them for trivial causes. the victim became insane, but the criminal was never punished, and died a few years later at the age of . this man had another son who was considered peculiar. guy olmstead began to show signs of sexual perversity at the age of . he was seduced (we are led to believe) by a man who occupied the same bedroom. olmstead's early history is not clear from the data to hand. it appears that he began his career as a schoolteacher in connecticut, and that he there married the daughter of a prosperous farmer; but shortly after he "fell in love" with her male cousin, whom he describes as a very handsome young man. this led to a separation from his wife, and he went west. he was never considered perfectly sane, and from october, , to may, he was in the kankakee insane asylum. his illness was reported as of three years' duration, and caused by general ill-health; heredity doubtful, habits good, occupation that of a schoolteacher. his condition was diagnosed as paranoia. on admission he was irritable, alternately excited and depressed. he returned home in good condition. at this period, and again when examined later, olmstead's physical condition is described as, on the whole, normal and fairly good. height, feet inches; weight, pounds. special senses normal; genitals abnormally small, with rudimentary penis. his head is asymmetrical, and is full at the occiput, slightly sunken at the bregma, and the forehead is low. his cephalic index is . the hair is sandy, and normal in amount over head, face, and body. his eyes are gray, small, and deeply set; the zygomæ are normal. the nose is large and very thin. there is arrested development of upper jaw. the ears are excessively developed and malformed. the face is very much lined, the nasolabial fissure is deeply cut, and there are well-marked horizontal wrinkles on the forehead, so that he looks at least ten years older than his actual age. the upper jaw is of partial v-shape, the lower well developed. the teeth and their tubercles and the alveolar process are normal. the breasts are full. the body is generally well developed; the hands and feet are large. olmstead's history is defective for some years after he left kankakee. in october, , we hear of him as a letter-carrier in chicago. during the following summer he developed a passion for william clifford, a fellow letter-carrier about his own age, also previously a schoolteacher, and regarded as one of the most reliable and efficient men in the service. for a time clifford seems to have shared this passion, or to have submitted to it, but he quickly ended the relationship and urged his friend to undergo medical treatment, offering to pay the expenses himself. olmstead continued to write letters of the most passionate description to clifford, and followed him about constantly until the latter's life was made miserable. in december, , clifford placed the letters in the postmaster's hands, and olmstead was requested to resign at once. olmstead complained to the civil service commission at washington that he had been dismissed without cause, and also applied for reinstatement, but without success. in the meanwhile, apparently on the advice of friends, he went into hospital, and in the middle of february, , his testicles were removed. no report from the hospital is to hand. the effect of removing the testicles was far from beneficial, and he began to suffer from hysterical melancholia. a little later he went into hospital again. on march th he wrote to dr. talbot from the mercy hospital, chicago: "i returned to chicago last wednesday night, but felt so miserable i concluded to enter a hospital again, and so came to mercy, which is very good as hospitals go. but i might as well go to hades as far as any hope of my getting well is concerned. i am utterly incorrigible, utterly incurable, and utterly impossible. at home i thought for a time that i was cured, but i was mistaken, and after seeing clifford last thursday i have grown worse than ever so far as my passion for him is concerned. heaven, only knows how hard i have tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is uncontrollable, and i might as well give up and die. i wonder if the doctors knew that after emasculation it was possible for a man to have erections, commit masturbation, and have the same passion as before. i am ashamed of myself; i hate myself; but i can't help it. i have friends among nice people, play the piano, love music, books, and everything that is beautiful and elevating; yet they can't elevate me, because this load of inborn vileness drags me down and prevents my perfect enjoyment of anything. doctors are the only ones who understand and know my helplessness before this monster. i think and work till my brain whirls, and i can scarce refrain from crying out my troubles." this letter was written a few days before the crime was committed. when conveyed to the police station olmstead completely broke down and wept bitterly, crying: "oh! will, will, come to me! why don't you kill me and let me go to him!" (at this time he supposed he had killed clifford.) a letter was found on him, as follows: "mercy, march th. to him who cares to read: fearing that my motives in killing clifford and myself may be misunderstood, i write this to explain the cause of this homicide and suicide. last summer clifford and i began a friendship which developed into love." he then recited the details of the friendship, and continued: "after playing a liszt rhapsody for clifford over and over, he said that when our time to die came he hoped we would die together, listening to such glorious music as that. our time has now come to die, but death will not be accompanied by music. clifford's love has, alas! turned to deadly hatred. for some reason clifford suddenly ended our relations and friendship." in his cell he behaved in a wildly excited manner, and made several attempts at suicide; so that he had to be closely watched. a few weeks later he wrote to dr. talbot: "cook county gaol, april . i feel as though i had neglected you in not writing you in all this time, though you may not care to hear from me, as i have never done anything but trespass on your kindness. but please do me the justice of thinking that i never expected all this trouble, as i thought will and i would be in our graves and at peace long before this. but my plans failed miserably. poor will was not dead, and i was grabbed before i could shoot myself. i think will really shot himself, and i feel certain others will think so, too, when the whole story comes out in court. i can't understand the surprise and indignation my act seemed to engender, as it was perfectly right and natural that will and i should die together, and nobody else's business. do you know i believe that poor boy will yet kill himself, for last november when i in my grief and anger told his relations about our marriage he was so frightened, hurt, and angry that he wanted us both; to kill ourselves. i acquiesced gladly in this proposal to commit suicide, but he backed out in a day or two. i am glad now that will is alive, and am glad that i am alive, even with the prospect of years of imprisonment before me, but which i will cheerfully endure for his sake. and yet for the last ten months his influence has so completely controlled me, both body and soul, that if i have done right he should have the credit for my good deeds, and if i have done wrong he should be blamed for the mischief, as i have not been myself at all, but a part of him, and happy to merge my individuality into his." olmstead was tried privately in july. no new points were brought out. he was sentenced to the criminal insane asylum. shortly afterward, while still in the prison at chicago, he wrote to dr. talbot: "as you have been interested in my case from a scientific point of view, there is a little something more i might tell you about myself, but which i have withheld, because i was ashamed to admit certain facts and features of my deplorable weakness. among the few sexual perverts i have known i have noticed that all are in the habit of often closing the mouth with the lower lip protruding beyond the upper. [usually due to arrested development of upper jaw.] i noticed the peculiarity in mr. clifford before we became intimate, and i have often caught myself at the trick. before that operation my testicles would swell and become sore and hurt me, and have seemed to do so since, just as a man will sometimes complain that his amputated leg hurts him. then, too, my breasts would swell, and about the nipples would become hard and sore and red. since the operation there has never been a day that i have been free from sharp, shooting pains down the abdomen to the scrotum, being worse at the base of the penis. now that my fate is decided, i will say that really my passion for mr. clifford is on the wane, but i don't know whether the improvement is permanent or not. i have absolutely no passion for other men, and have begun to hope now that i can yet outlive my desire for clifford, or at least control it. i have not yet told of this improvement in my condition, because i wished people to still think i was insane, so that i would be sure to escape being sent to the penitentiary. i know i was insane at the time i tried to kill both clifford and myself, and feel that i don't deserve such a dreadful punishment as being sent to a state prison. however, i think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused my insanity rather than passion for clifford. i should very much like to know if you really consider sexual perversion an insanity." when discharged from the criminal insane asylum, olmstead returned to chicago and demanded his testicles from the city postmaster, whom he accused of being in a systematized conspiracy against him. he asserted that the postmaster was one of the chief agents in a plot against him, dating from before the castration. he was then sent to the cook insane hospital. it seems probable that a condition of paranoia is now firmly established. the following cases are all bisexual, attraction being felt toward both sexes, usually in predominant degree toward the male:-- history xxvii.--h.c., american, aged , of independent means, unmarried, the elder of two children. his history may best be given in his own words:-- "i am on both sides distantly of english ancestry, the first colonists of my name having come to new england in . both my mother's and my father's families have been prolific in soldiers and statesmen; my mother's contributed one president to the united states. so far as i am aware, none of my antecedents have betrayed mental vagaries, except a maternal uncle, who, from overstudy, became for a year insane. "i am a graduate of two universities with degrees in arts and medicine. after a year as physician in a hospital, i relinquished medicine altogether, to follow literature, a predilection since early boyhood. "i awoke to sexual feeling at the age of , when, at a small private school, glimpsing bare thighs above the stockings of girl schoolmates, i dimly exulted. this fetishism, as it grew more definite, centered at last upon the thighs and then the whole person of one girl in particular. my first sexually tinged dream was of her--that while she stood near i impinged my penis upon a red-hot anvil and then, in beatific self-immolation, exhibited the charred stump to her wondering, round eyes. this love, however, abated at the coming of a new girl to the school, who, not more beautiful, but more buxom, made stronger appeal to my nascent sexuality. one afternoon, in the loft of her father's stable, she induced me to disrobe, herself setting the example. the erection our mutual handlings produced on me was without conscious impulse; i felt only a childish curiosity on beholding our genital difference. but the episode started extravagant whimsies, one of which persistently obsessed me: with these obviously compensatory differences, why might not the girl and i effect some sort of copulation? this fantasy, drawn exclusively from that unique experience, charmed with its grotesqueness only, for at that time my sense of sex was but inchoate and my knowledge of it was nothing. the bizarre conceit, submitted to the equally ignorant girl and approved, was borne to the paternal hay-loft and there, with much bungling, brought to surprising and pleasurable consummation. "in the four ensuing years i repeated the act not seldom with this girl and with others. "when i was my sister and i were taken by our parents to europe, where we remained six years, attending school each winter in a different city and, during the summer, travelling in various countries. "abroad my lust was glutted to the full: the amenable girl-playmate was ubiquitous, whom i plied with ardor at swiss hotels, german watering-places, french pensions,--where not? toward puberty i first repaired at times to prostitutes. "masturbation, excepting a few experiments, i never resorted to. few of my schoolmates avowedly practised it. "of homosexuality my sole hearing was through the classics, where, with no long pondering, i opined it merely our modern comradery, poetically aggrandized, masquerading in antique habiliments and phraseology. it never came home to me; it attuned to no tone in the scale of my sympathies; i possessed no touchstone for transmitting the recitals of those ambiguous amours into fiery messages. the relation to my own sex was, intellectually, an occasional friendship devoid of strong affection; physically, a mild antagonism, the naked body of a man was slightly repellant. statues of women evoked both carnal and esthetic response; of men, no emotions whatever, save a deepening of that native antipathy. similarly in paintings, in literature, the drama, the men served but as foils for the delicious maidens, who visited my aërial seraglios and lapped me in roseate dreamings. "in my eighteenth year we returned to america, where i entered the university. "the course of my love of women was now a little erratic; normal connection began to lose fascination. as long ago i had formulated untutored the _rationale_ of coitus, so now imagination, groping in the dark, conceived a fresh fillip for the appetite--_cunnilinctus_. but this, though for a while quite adequate, soon ceased to gratify. at this juncture, christmas of my first college year, i was appointed editor of a small magazine, an early stricture of whose new conduct was paucity of love stories. such improvident neglect was in keeping with my altering view of women, a view accorded to me by self-dissipation of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. i had wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of sex intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a raddled humanity, as likable as ever, but desirable no longer. "soon after this the oscar wilde case was bruiting about. the newspaper accounts of it, while illuminating, flashed upon me no light of self-revelation; they only amended some idle conjectures as to certain mystic vices i had heard whispered of. here and there a newspaper allusion still too recondite was painstakingly clarified by an effeminate fellow-student, who, i fancy now, would have shown no reluctance had i begged him to adduce practical illustration. i purchased, too, photographs of oscar wilde, scrutinizing them under the unctuous auspices of this same emasculate and blandiloquent mentor. if my interest in oscar wilde arose from any other emotion than the rather morbid curiosity then almost universal, i was not conscious of it. "erotic dreams, precluded hitherto by coition, came now to beset me. the persons of these dreams were (and still are) invariably women, with this one remembered exception: i dreamed that oscar wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with a buffoon languishment and perpetrated _fellatio_, an act verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. for a month or more, recalling this dream disgusted me. "the few subsequent endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because i had feared they were, to failure: erection was incomplete, ejaculation without pleasure. "there seemed a fallacy in this behavior. why coitus without sensual desire for it? no sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of sexual aberration. the explanation is this: attraction to females was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer importing women from observation, created its own delectable sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, petitioned reality in vain. substance had receded for good now, and soon even these tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until they too at length faded into nothingness. "the antipodes of the sexual sphere turned more and more toward the light of my tolerance. inversion, till now stained with a slight repugnance, became esthetically colorless at last, and then delicately retinted, at first solely with pity for its victims, but finally, the color deepening, with half-conscious inclination to attach it to myself as a remote contingency. this revolution, however, was not without external impetus. the prejudiced tone of a book i was reading, krafft-ebing's _psychopathia sexualis_, by prompting resentment, led me on to sympathy. my championing, purely abstract though it was to begin with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes hypothetically inverted,--an orientation for the sake of argument. after a while, insensibly and at no one moment, hypothesis merged into reality: i myself was inverted. that occasional and fictitious inversion had never, i believe, superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly called. "in presenting myself thus sexually transformed, i do not aver having had at the outset any definitive inclination. the instinct so freshly evolved remained for a while obscure. its primary expression was a feebly sensuous interest in the physical character of boys--in their feminine resemblances especially. to this interest i opposed no discountenance; for wantonness with women under many and diverse conditions having long ago medicined my sexual conscience to lethargy, no access of reasons came to me now for its refreshment. on the other hand, intellectual delight in the promises of the new world, as well as sensuality, conduced to its deliberate exploration. still, for a year, the yearning settled with true lust upon no object more concrete than youths whose only habitation was my fancy. "a young surgeon, having read my copy of _psychopathia sexualis_, fell one evening to discussing inverts with such relish that i inquired ingenuously if he himself was one. he colored, whether confirmatively or otherwise i could not guess, in spite of his vehement no. presently he very subtly recanted his denial. but to his counter-question i maintained my own no, lest he propose some sexual act, a point the esthetics of my developing inversion would not yet concede, the boys of my imagination being still predominant. "one evening, soon after this, he convoyed me to several of the café's where inverts are accustomed to foregather. these trysting places were much alike: a long hall, with sparse orchestra at one end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor free for dancing. round the tables sat boys and youths, adonises both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the chance samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for which, upstairs, were small rooms to let. one of the boys, supported by the orchestra, sang the 'jewel song' out of '_faust_.' his voice had the limpid, treble purity of a clarinet, and his face the beauty of an angel. the song concluded, we invited him to our table, where he sat sipping neat brandy, as he mockingly encountered my book-begotten queries. the boy-prostitutes gracing these halls, he apprised us, bore fanciful names, some of well-known actresses, others of heroes in fiction, his own being dorian gray. rivals, he complained, had assumed the same appellation, but he was the original dorian; the others were jealous impostors. his curly hair was golden; his cheeks were pink; his lips, coral red, parted incessantly to reveal the glistening pearliness of his teeth. yet, though deeming him the beautifulest youth in the world, i experienced no sexual interest either in him or in the other boys, who indeed were all beautiful--beauty was their chief asset. dorian, further, dilated on the splendor of his female attire, satin corsets, low-cut evening gowns, etc., donned on gala nights to display his gleaming shoulders and dimpled, plump, white arms. thus arrayed, he bantered, he would bewitch even me, now so impassive, until i should throw myself, in tears of happiness, into his loving embrace. "my first venture upon _fellatio_ was a month later, with the young surgeon. i confessed the whim to try it, and he acceded. though this nauseous and fatiguing act, very imperfectly performed, was prompted mostly by curiosity, there arose soon a passional hankering for repetition. in short, appetence for _fellatio_ grew slowly from the night of that mawkish fiasco and waxed eventually into a sovereign want. "perhaps miscarriage of that initiatory experiment was due to precipitance, incubation of my perverse instinct being not yet complete. a hiatus of a month now supervened, in which, while further _fellatio_ was not attempted, my mind came always nearer to a reconcilement with the grossness of the act, and began to discover for its creatures some correlation in pretty boys beheld in the flesh. one evening, in broadway, i conceived suddenly a full-fledged desire for a youth issuing from an hotel as i passed. our glances met and dwelled together. at a shop-window he first accosted me. he was an invert. with him, in his room at the hotel whence i had seen him emerge, i passed an apocalyptic night. thereafter commerce with boys only in the spirit ceased to be an end; the images were carnalized, stepped from their framework into the streets. that boy, that god out of the machine, i see him clearly: his brown, curling hair; his eyes blue as the sea; his chest both arched and so plump, his rounded arms, his taper waist, the graceful swell of his hips and full, snowy thighs; i recall as of yesterday the dimples in his knees, the slenderness of his ankles, the softness of his little feet, with insteps pink like the inside of a shell. how i gloated over his ample roundness, his rich undulations! "in the last eight years i have performed _fellatio_ (never _pedicatio_) with more than three hundred men and boys. my preference is for boys between and , refined, pretty, girlish, and themselves homosexual. "personally, barring this love for males, i am in all ways masculine, given to outdoor sports, and to smoking and drinking moderately. in appearance i am but a boy of . my face and figure are generally considered beautiful: i am clean-shaved, with black, curling hair, red cheeks and brown eyes; features delicate and regular; body, of medium height, everywhere practically hairless. by years of training i have attained alike great strength and classic proportions, the muscular contours smoothly rounded with adipose tissue. my hands and feet are small. my penis, though perfectly shaped, is rather enormous--erect, ten and a half inches in length, seven and a quarter inches in circumference. "some abetment of my apostasy from orthodox methods was, no doubt, this hypertrophy of the penis, which already in my twentieth year had acquired its present redundance, rendering coitus impracticable with most women i essayed and painful where insertion was effected. since falling heir to inversion, a unique recurrence of normal desire, six years ago, persuaded me to attempt coitus with eleven or twelve prostitutes, and, strangely enough, with much of the old-time salacity and full erection, but, as it chanced, always with too great disparity of parts for success." a certain preciosity in the manner of this communication may be put down partly to the nature of the literary avocations with which the writer is by preference occupied, and partly, no doubt more fundamentally, to the special character of his predominantly esthetic temperament and attraction to the exotic. an attraction for exotic experiences will not, however, suffice to account for the rather late development of homosexual tendencies, a late development which may be held to place this case in the retarded group of inverts. h.c. has himself pointed out to me that his aversion to women, beginning to appear in the eighteenth year, was already well pronounced before he had ever heard definitely of specific homosexual acts, and fully a year before he experienced the slightest sexual interest in men or boys. moreover, while it is true that the actual tendency to homosexual attraction only appeared after he had read krafft-ebing and come in contact with inverts, such influences would not suffice to change the sexual nature of a normally constituted man. it may be added that h.c. is not attracted to normal males. as regards his moral attitude he remarks: "i have no scruples in the indulgence of my passion. i perceive the moral objections advanced, but how speculative they are, and constructive; while, immediately, inversion is the source of so much good." he looks upon the whole sexual question as largely a matter of taste. i regard the foregoing case as of considerable interest. it presents what is commonly supposed to be a very common type of inversion, oscar wilde being the supreme exemplar, in which a heterosexual person apparently becomes homosexual by the exercise of intellectual curiosity and esthetic interest. in reality the type is far from common; indeed, an intellectual curiosity and an esthetic interest, strong enough even apparently to direct the sexual impulse in any new channel, are themselves far from common. moreover, a critical reading of this history suggests that the apparent control over the sexual impulse by reason is merely a superficial phenomenon. here, as ever, reason is but a tool in the hands of the passions. the apparent causes are really the results; we are witnessing the gradual emergence of a retarded homosexual impulse. history xxviii.--english, aged , surgeon. sexual experiences began early, about the age of , when a companion induced him to play at intercourse with their sisters. he experienced no pleasure. a little later a servant-girl began to treat him affectionately and at last called him into her bedroom when she was partially undressed, fondled and kissed his member, and taught him to masturbate her. on subsequent occasions she attempted a simulation of intercourse, which gave her satisfaction, but failed to induce emission in him. on returning to school mutual masturbation was practised with schoolfellows, and the first emission took place at the age of . on leaving school he became a slave to the charms of women, and had frequent coitus about the age of , but he preferred masturbating girls and especially in persuading girls of good position, to whom the experience was entirely novel, to allow him to take liberties with them. at he became engaged, and mutual masturbation was practised to excess during the engagement; after marriage connection generally took place twice every twenty-four hours until pregnancy. "at this time," he writes, "i stayed at the house of an old school-fellow, due of my lovers of old days. there were so many guests that i shared my friend's bedroom. the sight of his body gave rise to lustful feelings, and when the light was out i stole across to his bed. he made no objection, and we passed the night in mutual masturbation. we passed the next fortnight together, and i never took the same pleasure in coitus with my wife, though i did my duty. she died five years later, and i devoted myself heart and soul to my friend until his death by accident last year. since then i have lost all interest in life." i am indebted for this case to a well-known english alienist, who remarks that the patient is fairly healthy to look at, but with neurasthenia and tendency to melancholia, and neurotic temperament. the body is masculine and pubic hair abundant. one testicle shows wasting. histories xxix and xxx.--i give the following narrative in the words of an intimate friend of one of the cases in question: "my attention was first drawn to the study of inversion--though i then regarded all forms of it as depraving and abominable--at a public school, where in our dormitory a boy of initiated his select friends into the secrets of mutual masturbation, which he had learned from his brother, a midshipman. i gave no heed to this at the time, though i remembered it in after-years when immersed in plato, lucretius, and the epicurean writers. but my attention was riveted to it at the age of , when i spent a holiday with a., a companion with whom i was, and still am, on terms of great friendship. we enjoyed many things in common, studied together and discussed most unconventional matters, but not this. previously we had always occupied separate sleeping apartments; on this occasion we were abroad in a country place, and were compelled to put up with what we could get. we not only had to share a room, but a bed. i was not surprised at his throwing his arm over me, as i knew he was extraordinarily attached to me, and i had always felt a brute for not returning his affection so warmly. but i was surprised when later i awoke to find him occupied in _fellatio_ and endeavoring to obtain my response. had it been anyone else i should have resented strongly such a liberty, and our acquaintance would have ended, but i cared for him too well, though never very demonstrative. this episode led to discussion of the topic. he told me that his sexual strength was great, that he had tested it in many ways, and that it was essential to his well-being that he should have satisfaction in some way. he loathed prostitution and considered it degrading; he felt physically attracted to some women and intellectually to others, but the two elements were never combined, and though he had been intimate with a few he felt that it was not right to them, as he could not marry them because he held too high an ideal of marriage. he had always felt attracted to his own sex, and had kept up a platonic friendship with a college chum, x (to whom i knew he was passionately attached), for some years. both considered it perfectly moral, and both, felt better for it. both abhor _pedicatio_. x., however, would never discuss the subject, and seemed half-ashamed of it. a., on the other hand, though showing a great self-respect in all things else, feels no shame, though he says he would never discuss it except with close friends or if asked for private advice. "a. is the elder child of a military officer. his parents were and , respectively, at the time of his birth. both parents are healthy, and the two children (both boys) have good constitutions, though the elder has the better. he is of medium height and slender limbs, proud carriage, handsome and intellectual face (classic greek type), excellent complexion, charming manners, and good temper. the penis is large, the foreskin very short. he is fond of philosophy, natural science, history, and literature. he is reflective and patient rather than smart, but strong-willed and very active when roused, never resting till he has accomplished what he wants, even if this takes years. he sings excellently, and is fond of cycling, boating, swimming, and mountain-climbing. he enjoys excellent health, and has never had a day's illness since he was years of age. he says the only time he cannot sleep has been when in bed with some one who could not or would not satisfy him. he requires satisfaction at least once a week, twice or thrice in the hot season. he never smokes, nor drinks beer or spirits. he is still single, but believes that marriage would meet all his needs. "x. is also an oldest child, of young and healthy parents (between and at his birth) of different class; father a builder. he is of pleasing, but not handsome, appearance; very sensitive, very neat, and methodical in all things; not very strong-willed, and very reserved to women. he is of very studious disposition, especially fond of philosophy, politics, and natural science; a good musician. takes moderate exercise, but rather easily fatigued. is generally healthy, but not overstrong. he is a vegetarian, and was brought up as a free-thinker. until two years ago he was never attracted toward a girl; indeed, he disliked girls; but he is now engaged. for about eighteen months, he has relinquished homosexuality, but has suffered from dreams, bad digestion, and peevishness since. he thinks the only remedy is marriage, which he is pushing on. he regards homosexuality as quite natural and normal, though his desires are not strong, and once a fortnight has always satisfied him. he was led to the practice by the reasoning of a., and because he felt a certain vague need, and this comforted him. he thinks it a matter of temperament and not to be discussed, except by scientists. he says he could never perform it except with his dearest friend, whose request he could not resist. he has a long foreskin, flesh like a woman's, and is well proportioned. "both men are ardent for social reform, the one actively, the other passively engaged in it. both also regard the law as to homosexuality as absurd and demoralizing. they also think that the law prohibiting polygamy is largely the cause of prostitution, as many women are prevented from living honest lives and being cared for by someone, and many men could marry one woman for physical satisfaction and another for intellectual. "they were devoted to each other when i first knew them; they are still friends, but separated by distance. both are exceedingly honorable, and the latter is truthful to a fault." according to later information x. had married and his homosexual tendencies were almost completely in abeyance, partly, perhaps, owing to the fact that he now lives quietly in the country. a. has surprised his friends by his ardent attachment to a lady of about his own age to whom he has become engaged. he declares that he loves this woman better than any man, but nevertheless he still feels strong passion for his men friends. it is evident that the homosexual tendency in a. is distinctly more pronounced than in his friend x. as is found more often in bisexual than in homosexual persons, he is of predominantly masculine type, possesses great vitality, and desires to exert all his faculties. he has a sound nervous system and is very free from all "nervousness." he has written a scientific treatise and can study undisturbed amid violent noises. his voice is manly (in singing deep base). he can whistle. he is not vain, though well formed, and his hands are delicate. his favorite color is green. the demonstrative warmth of his affection for his friends is the chief feminine trait noted in him. he rarely dreams and has never had an erotic dream; this he explains by saying (earlier than freud) that all dreams not caused by physical conditions are wish-dreams, and as he always satisfies his sexual needs at once, with a friend or by masturbation, his sexual needs have no opportunity of affecting his subconscious life. there may be some doubt as to the classification of the two foregoing cases: they are not personally known to me. the following case, with which i have been acquainted for many years, i regard as clearly a genuine example of bisexuality:-- history xxxi.--englishman, independent means, aged , married. his ancestry is of a complicated character. some of his mother's forefathers in the last and earlier centuries are supposed to have been inverted. he remembers liking the caresses of his father's footmen when he was quite a little boy. he dreams indifferently about men and women, and has strong sexual feeling for women. can copulate, but does not insist on this act; there is a tendency to refined, voluptuous pleasure. he has been married for many years, and there are several children by the marriage. he is not particular about the class or age of the men he loves. he feels with regard to older men as a women does, and likes to be caressed by them. he is immensely vain of his physical beauty; he shuns _pedicatio_ and does not much care for the sexual act, but likes long hours of voluptuous communion during which his lover admires him. he feels the beauty of boyhood. at the same time he is much attracted by young girls. he is decidedly feminine in his dress, manner of walking, love of scents, ornaments, and fine things. his body is excessively smooth and white, the hips and buttocks rounded. genital organs normal. his temperament is feminine, especially in vanity, irritability, and petty preoccupations. he is much preoccupied with his personal appearance and fond of admiration; on one occasion he was photographed naked as bacchus. he is physically and morally courageous. he has a genius for poetry and speculation, with a tendency to mysticism. he feels the discord between his love for men and society, also between it and his love for his wife. he regards it as, in part, at least, hereditary and inborn in him. history xxxii.--c.r., physician; age . nationality, irish, with a portuguese strain. "my mother came of an old quaker family. i was quite unaware of sexual differences until i was about , as i was carefully kept separate from my sisters and, although from time to time strange longings which i did not understand possessed me, i was a virgin in thought and deed until that period of life. "when i was a cousin some years older than myself came to stay with us and shared my bed. to my surprise he took hold of my penis and rubbed it for a time, when a most pleasant feeling seized me and increased until a discharge came out of my organ; he then asked me to do the same to him. we frequently repeated the process during the following month; i was quite unaware of any harm resulting. "the same year i went to school, but none of my schoolmates for some time even suggested such actions until a friend staying with us for the holidays one day in the bathroom repeated the process and pressed his penis between my thighs, when a similar discharge took place. i shortly found out that several of my school friends and male cousins had the same desires, and an elder brother of my first introducer into sexuality repeatedly spent the night with me, when we would amuse ourselves in a similar way. "a little later, my mother being away from home, i shared my father's bed and he took my penis in his hand and pulled my foreskin back. i in return took hold of his and found that he had an erection. i proceeded to rub him when he stopped me and told me that i should not do so, that when i was a little older i should love a woman to do it and that if i did not rub myself and allow other boys to do so, i would enjoy myself much more. i am quite certain that my father was inverted, as he frequently, if sleeping with me, used to press my naked body against his and he always had a strong erection. on one occasion he rubbed me until i had a discharge and then, turning over on his back, made me take his penis in my hand and rub him for a few minutes. i used to jest frequently with my father, as from my seventeenth year my penis was larger than his. i will return to my father a little later. when i was a college friend shared my bed, and when undressing he said that he envied me my penis being so much larger than his; after getting into bed, he asked me to turn on my side and i found that he was attempting _pedicatio_. i was astonished at his doing so when he informed me that next to a woman this process gave most pleasure. however, nothing resulted and this is the only experience of _pedicatio_ that i have ever had. "when i was one evening a college chum introduced me to a woman and she was the first i ever had connection with. we went behind some rocks and she took hold of my penis and pressed it into her body, lying against me. "my father evidently suspected me when i came home, and a few days afterward told me that it was very dangerous to have anything to do with women, that i should wait until i was older, that when a boy became a man he ought to have a woman occasionally, and that if i ever had a nasty disease i should promptly tell him so that i could be properly cured. "at college i found several chums who were fond of sharing my bed and indulging in mutual masturbation, pressing our bodies together face to face until there was mutual discharge, but never again anyone who tried anal connection. "a short time afterward i was in brussels and i paid my first visit to a brothel, a place close to the cathedral. i picked a girl of about from eight naked beauties paraded for my choice. she was avaricious and demanded francs, i had paid for my room and had only left. i wanted her to play with me, but she only seized the penis and pulled me to her with such vigorous action that i discharged very rapidly. i was so disgusted with the result that i masturbated when i returned to my boarding house. "a year later i paid portugal a visit and my friends there frequently brought me to brothels and also introduced me to ladies of easy virtue. i had connection with them; the portuguese prostitutes never suggested anything unnatural and in no instance did a male approach me for sexual purposes. "when i became a medical student, i used to visit a turkish bath frequently; on one occasion i playfully slapped a friend on the buttocks, when my father, who was present, told me not to do so as it was not proper conduct in public, that if i liked to do so to him or one or two others it was no harm in private. until i was , in the bath my father always covered his penis from my view, but after i attained my majority he always exposed himself and repeatedly showed me pictures of naked women; he also taught me the use of the condom. "in my twenty-fourth year, a tall, handsome man who used to frequent the baths one day sat down beside me and playfully knocked my toes with his; he then pressed his naked thigh against mine and a little later in the cooling room slipped his hand under my sheet and grasped my penis; he then asked me to meet him a few days later in the baths, saying i would be pleased with what he would do. "i kept the appointment and he took me into the hottest room, where we lay on the floor; in a few minutes he turned on his side and threw one of his legs across me; i got frightened and jumped up; he had a powerful erection, but i refused to lie down again, although he pulled his foreskin back to excite my desires; i was afraid of being surprised by another bather. twice on future occasions i met this man and he made advances. i believe that i would have yielded then if we had met at a private house. "shortly afterward i met an elderly gentleman at the baths who also made advances to me, but from fear i resisted him. i also disliked him as he had a foul breath and bad teeth; besides i was now able to go to the continent and enjoy female charms to my heart's desire. "after qualification i joined the army in south africa and to my astonishment found many of my comrades fond of male society; one officer who had been wounded shared my bedroom at a military hospital and when undressing frequently admired my penis; we used to play with each other until we had powerful erections, but we never masturbated or tried any unnatural vice. "i used to have connection with women as frequently as i could, and i frequently visited the turkish baths and found that several clients were abnormal, including one of the masseurs; the latter enjoyed playing with my penis, kissing and tickling me. "i married at . my married life has been normal and my wife and i are still in love with one another; we have had several children. "my last sexual experiences have been in australia; once in sydney at the baths a fellow-bather playfully began tickling me, when i had an erection; he grasped my penis, i jumped up, and he asked me to do anything that i liked with him. i refused. once on board a coasting steamer a fellow-passenger used to expose himself, posing as a statue; we became very familiar and he wanted me to spend a night with him. i also refused his offers. "i am very healthy and strong, fond of riding, fishing, and shooting. i lead a very active life. i am neither musician nor artist, but fond of hearing music and i admire works of art. "in person i am feet high, inclined to fat; my body is very strong; my penis is six inches long in repose and eight in erection; i can without fatigue discharge twice in the night and have connection at least twice a week. my scrotum is tense and both testicles large. i am rather slow at discharging. i have never had any desire to have connection with any other woman since marriage, but several times i have met men who attracted me. i have a friend (another doctor) who is very familiar with me and if we spend a night together we will play with each other. i have a great desire for him to circumcize me. we have never indulged in anything beyond feeling or pressing our bodies together like schoolboys. "my favorite color is green. "my erotic dreams, when i have any, are of my wife or of a male lover. "sexual inversion is more widespread than is popularly supposed and i have never had any twinge of conscience after any of my affairs. i regard the homosexual instinct as quite natural, and, except in regard to my wife, it is stronger in my case than the heterosexual instinct. i have never initiated a youth into the sexual life or had any desire to seduce a girl. boys under , or persons of lower social class, have no attraction for me." history xxxiii.--m.o., years of age, born in the united states, of english father and of mother whose father was scotch,--the rest of his ancestry being english of long standing in america, with a very little admixture of dutch blood. he is feet inches in height, and has brown hair and eyes. no hereditary troubles so far as known. in childhood, for some time "threatened with chorea." is subject to tonsillitis and a stubborn though not severe form of indigestion, induced by sedentary habits. he is of quick, nervous temperament. has an aversion from most outdoor sports, but a great esthetic attraction to nature. highly educated. as far back as he can remember, he lived in a house from which his parents removed when he was years old. before this removal, he remembers two distinctly sexual experiences. a cousin five years older was in the bathroom, seated, and m.o. was feeling his sexual organs; his mother called him out. on another occasion he was in a wagonhouse with a girl of his own age. they were lying on a carriage-seat attempting intercourse. the girl's older sister came in and found them. she said: "i am going to tell mamma; you know she said for you not to do that any more." with each of these clear memories comes the strong impression that it was but one among many. five years ago m.o. met a man of his own age who had lived in that neighborhood at the same time. comparing notes, they found that nearly all the small children in it had been given to such practices. the neighborhood was a thoroughly "respectable" middle-class one. from it, m.o. removed to another of just about the same character, and lived there until he was years old. of this period his memories are very fresh and abundant. with a single exception, all the children between and years of age appear to have indulged freely in promiscuous sexual play. in little companies of from four to twelve they went where trees or long grass hid them from observation, and exhibited their persons to one another; sometimes, also, they handled one another, but not in the way of masturbation. of this last, m.o. was wholly ignorant. sometimes when but two or three were together, intercourse was attempted. in m.o.'s case there was eager sexual curiosity, and a more or less keen desire, but actual contact brought no great satisfaction. on two or three occasions girls practised _fellatio_, and he then reciprocated with _cunnilinctus_, but without pleasure. in all these plays he is sure that girls took the initiative as often as boys did. during all this period, m.o. had now one girl sweetheart and now another. this was conventional among the children, and was fostered by the banter of older persons. m.o.'s sexual curiosity was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. at this time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. with a boy two or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where they looked at each other's organs and handled them. he and another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off all their clothes, the better to examine each other. the other boy then offered to kiss m.o.'s fundament, and did so. it caused a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. he refused to reciprocate, however, when asked. toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual in character. he began to feel toward certain boys in a way very different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls, although at the time he made no comparisons. for instance there was a boy whom he considered very pretty. they visited each other often and spent long times playing together. in school they looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable giggling spells came on. sexual matters were never discussed or thought of. these experiences were, in their way, very sentimental and ideal. m.o. is sure that with himself the main consideration was always the other boy's beauty. he began to recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. he seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and much interested when other people spoke of him. a cousin about two years younger than m.o. often visited him and slept with him. they were very fond of each other, and handled each other's organs. when m.o. was about years of age the family removed to a distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his own age, and where any association with those in the one just left was practically impossible. from this time until the changes of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. he remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to get their heads between his legs. he thinks they were not aware of his sexual impulses. he flirted, consciously flirted, with certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to them. he read a few family medical books. one day, lying on an old uneven couch, innocently enough at first, he induced a new and delicious sensation, altogether different from any he had ever dreamed of--something far beyond the satisfaction of mere curiosity. he repeated the thing and before long produced emissions. masturbation soon followed. certain days he would perform the act two or three times, but again he would avoid it for days. he began at once to fight the tendency, and felt very guilty and very ashamed for indulging it. he prayed for help and at times wept over his failures to break the habit so quickly formed. for a certain period, after two or three years, he seemed to have succeeded, but he observed that he had intense erotic dreams with copious emissions regularly every eight days. just then certain newspaper advertisements fell under his eye, and these persuaded him that he had produced in himself a diseased condition. he never resorted to the remedies advertised, but he was discouraged in his efforts to overcome the bad habit; and since the evil effects appeared to consist only in the seminal losses, he concluded that he might as well have the greater enjoyment of masturbation. for a short time, he remembers that he had an intense but revolting interest in the sexual organs of animals, especially horses. the males were much more interesting. gradually he began to develop, entirely from within, the ideal of a male comrade,--a beautiful, emotional boy between whom and himself there might exist a powerful romantic passion. he lay for hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations. suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth, edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings. m.o. was then ½ and edmund . a real wooing ensued, edmund finally yielding to the physical appeals of m.o. after several fits of misgiving. the yielding was in the end complete, however. the two spent night after night together, enjoying intercrural intercourse and sometimes mutual masturbation. their parents may have been slightly uneasy at times, but the connection continued uninterruptedly for a year and a half or more. in the meantime m.o. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never wavered in his real preference for edmund. for girls he had no sexual desire whatever, though he was much associated with them. then m.o. and edmund went to college at different places, but they met in vacations and wrote frequent and ardent love-letters. both had genuine attacks of love-sickness and of jealousy. as m.o. looks back on this first love passion he can by no means regret it. it doubtless had great formative influence. after the first year at college, edmund transferred to another school farther away from m.o. and the opportunities for meeting became rarer, but their affection was maintained and the intercourse resumed whenever it was possible. gradually, however, edmund became interested in women and finally married. m.o. also formed relations repeatedly with college friends and occasionally with others. on the whole m.o. preferred boys a year or two younger than himself, but as he grew older the age difference increased. at he regarded himself as virtually "engaged" to a youth of , one unusually mature, however, and much larger than himself. m.o. is always unhappy unless his affections have fairly free course. life has been very disappointing to him in other respects. his greatest joys have come to him in this way. if he is able to consummate his present plan of union with the youth just referred to, he will feel that his life has been crowned by what is for him the best possible end; otherwise, he declares, he would not care to live at all. he admires male beauty passionately. feminine beauty he perceives objectively, as he would any design of flowing curves and delicate coloring, but it has no sexual charm for him whatever. women have put themselves in his way repeatedly, but he finds himself more and more irritated by their specifically feminine foibles. with men generally he is much more patient and sympathetic. the first literature that appealed to him was plato's dialogues, first read at years of age. until then he had not known but what he stood alone in his peculiarity. he read what he could of classic literature. he enjoys pater, appreciating his attitude toward his own sex. four or five years, later he came across raffalovich's book, and ever since has felt a real debt of gratitude to its author. m.o. has no wish to injure society at large. as an individual he holds that he has the same right to be himself that anyone else has. he thinks that while boys of from to might possibly be rendered inverts, those who reach without it cannot be bent that way. they may be devoted to an invert enough in other ways to yield him what he wishes sexually, but they will remain essentially normal themselves. his observations are based on about homosexual relationships that have lasted various lengths of time. m.o. feels strongly the poetic and elevated character of his principal homosexual relationships, but he shrinks from appearing too sentimental. with regard to the traces of feminism in inverts he writes:-- "up to the age of i associated much with a cousin five years older (the one referred to above) and took great delight in a game we often played, in which i was a girl,--a never-ending romance, a non-sexual love story. "somewhat later and until puberty, i took great delight in acting, but generally took female roles, wearing skirts, shawls, beads, wigs, head-dresses. when i was about my family began to make fun of me for it. i played secretly for a while, and then the desire for it left, never to return. "there still lingers, however, a minor interest, which began before puberty, in valentines. my feeling for them is much like my feeling for flowers. "before i reached puberty i was sometimes called a 'sissy' by my father. such taunts humiliated me more than anything else has ever done. after puberty my father no longer applied the term, and gradually other persons ceased to tease me that way. the sting of it lasted, though, and led me more than once to ask intimate friends, both men and women, if they considered me at all feminine. every one of them has been very emphatically of the opinion that my rational life is distinctively masculine, being logical, impartial, skeptical. one or two have suggested that i have a finer discrimination than most men, and that i take care of my rooms somewhat as a woman might, though this does not extend to the style of decorations. one man said that i lacked sympathy with certain 'grosser manifestations of masculine character, such as smoking.' some women think me unusually observing of women's dress. my own is by no means effeminate. in a muscular way i have average strength, but am supple far beyond what is usual. if trained for it early, i believe i would have made a good contortionist. "i have never had the least inclination to use tobacco, generally take neither tea nor coffee, and seldom any liquor, never malt liquors. the dessert is always the best part of the meal. these tastes i attribute largely to my sedentary life. when out camping i observed a marked change in the direction of heartier food and mild stimulants. "my physical courage has never been put to the test, but i observe that others appear to count on it. i am very aggressive in matters of religious, political, social opinion. in moral courage i am either reckless or courageous, i do not know which. "i am, perhaps, a better whistler than most men. "when i was quite little my grandmother taught me to do certain kinds of fancy-work, and i continued to do a little from time to time until i was . then i became irritated over a piece that troubled me, put it in the fire, and have not wanted to touch any since. as a pet economy i continue to do nearly all of my own mending. "i have a decided aversion for much jewelry. my estheticism is very pronounced as compared with most of the men with whom i associate, although i have never been able to give it much scope. it makes for cleanliness, order, and general good taste. my dress is economical and by no means fastidious; yet it seems to be generally approved. i have been complimented often on my ability to select appropriate presents, clothing, and to arrange a room." m.o. states that he practises the love-bite at times, though very gently. he often wants to pinch one who interests him sexually. he considers very silly the statement somewhere made, that inverts are always liars. very few people, he says, are perfectly honest, and the more dangerous society makes it for a man to be so, the less likely he is to be. while he himself has been unable in two or three instances to keep promises made to withhold from sexual intercourse with certain attractive individuals, he has never otherwise been guilty of untruth about his homosexual relations. the foregoing narrative was received eight years ago. during this interval m.o.'s health has very greatly improved. there has been a marked increase in outdoor activities and interests. two years since m.o. consulted a prominent specialist who performed a thorough psychoanalysis. he informed m.o. that he was less strongly homosexual than he himself supposed, and recommended marriage with some young and pretty woman. he attributed the homosexual bent to m.o.'s having had his "nose broken" at the age of , by the birth of a younger brother, who from that time on received all the attention and petting. m.o. had continued up to that age very affectionate toward his mother and dependent on her. he can remember friends and neighbors commenting on it. at first m.o. was inclined to reject this suggestion of the specialist, but on long reflection he inclines to believe that it was indeed a very important factor, though not the sole one. from his later observations of children and comparisons of these with memories of his own childhood, m.o. says he is sure he was affectionate and demonstrative much beyond the average. his greatest craving was for affection, and his greatest grief the fancied belief that no one cared for him. at or he attempted suicide for this reason. also as a result of the psychoanalysis, but trying to eliminate the influence of suggestion, he recollects and emphasizes more the attraction he felt toward girls before the age of . had his sexual experiences subsequently proved normal, he doubts if those before could be held to give evidence of homosexuality, but only of precocious nervous and sexual irritability, greatly heightened and directed by the secret practices of the children with whom he associated. he does not see why these experiences should have given him a homosexual bent any more than a heterosexual one. the psychoanalysis recalled to m.o. that during the period of early flirtation he had often kissed and embraced various girls, but likewise he recalled having observed at the same time, with some surprise, that no definitely sexual desire arose, though the way was probably open to gratify it. such interest as did exist ceased wholly or almost so as the relation with edmund developed. there was no aversion from the company of girls and women, however; the intellectual friendships were mainly with them, while the emotional ones were with boys. very recently m.o. spent several days with edmund, who has been married for several years. with absolutely no sexual interest in each other, they nevertheless found a great bond of love still subsisting. neither regrets anything of the past, but feels that the final outcome of their earlier relation has been good. edmund's beauty is still pronounced, and is remarked by others. in spite of his precocious sexuality, m.o. had from the very first an extreme disgust for obscene stories, and for any association of sexual things with filthy words and anecdotes. owing in part to this and in part to his temperamental skepticism, he disbelieved what associates told him regarding sexual emissions, only becoming convinced when he actually experienced them; and the facts of reproduction he denied indignantly until he read them in a medical work. until he was well over the physical aversion from any thought of reproduction was intense. he knows other, normal, young men who have felt the same way, but he believes it would be prevented or overcome by sex-education such as is now being introduced in american schools. again, as to traces of feminism: perhaps two years ago, all impulse to give the love-bite disappeared suddenly. there has been lately a marked increase of dramatic interest, arising in perfectly natural ways, and without any of the peculiarities noted before. the childish pleasure in valentines has all gone; m.o. believes that _circumstances_ have lately been more favorable for the development of a more robust estheticism. for some years he has heard no definite reproach for feminism, though some persons tell his friends that he is "very peculiar." he forms many intimate, enduring, non-sexual friendships with both men and women, and he doubts if the peculiarity noted by others is due so much to his homosexuality as it is to his estheticism, skepticism, and the unconventional opinions which he expresses quite indiscreetly at times. with the improvement in general health, has come the changes that would be expected in food and other matters of daily life. resuming his narrative at the point where the earlier communication left it, m.o. says that about a year after that time, the youth of to whom he had considered himself virtually engaged withdrew from the agreement so far as it bore on his own future, but not from the sentimental relation as it existed. although separated most of the time by distance, the physical relation was resumed whenever they met. subsequently, however, the young man fell in love with a young woman and became engaged to her. his physical relation with m.o. then ceased, but the friendship otherwise continues strong. shortly after the first break in this relation, m.o. became, through the force of quite unusual circumstances, very friendly and intimate with a young woman of considerable charm. he confided to her his abnormality, and was not repulsed. to others their relation probably appeared that of lovers, and a painful situation was created by the slander of a jealous woman. m.o. felt that in honor he must propose marriage to her. the young woman was non-committal, but invited m.o. to spend several months at her home. shortly after his arrival a sad occurrence in his own family compelled him to go away, and they did not meet again for four years. they corresponded, but less and less often. his relations with boys continued. before his final meeting with her he became acquainted with a woman whom he has since married. the acquaintance began in a wholly non-sentimental community of interests in certain practical affairs, and very gradually widened into an intellectual and sympathetic friendship. m.o. had no secrets from this woman. after a full and prolonged consideration of all sides of the matter they married. since that event he has had no sexual relations except with his wife. with her they are not passionate, but they are animated by the strong desire for children. of the parental instinct he had become aware several years before this. m.o. believes that no moral stigma should be attached to homosexuality until it can be proved to result from the vicious life of a free moral agent,--and of this he has no expectation. he believes that much of its danger and unhappiness would be prevented by a thorough yet discreet sex-education, such as should be given to all children, whether normal or abnormal. footnotes: [ ] thus godard described the little boys in cairo as amusing themselves indifferently either with boys or girls in sexual play. (_egypte et palestine_, , p. .) the same thing may be observed in england and elsewhere. [ ] thus, of the duc d'orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described in bouchard's _confessions_, one of my correspondents writes: "this prince was of the same mind as campanella, who, in the _città del sole_, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance of sexual aberrations. aretino and berni enable us to comprehend the sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of roman prelates." the homosexuality of youth was also well recognized among the romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify it, as the existence of the _concubinus_, referred to by catullus, clearly shows. [ ] "our public schools: their methods and morals." _new review_, july, . [ ] max dessoir, "zür psychologie der vita sexualis," _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , h. . [ ] f.h.a. marshall, _the physiology of reproduction_, , pp. - . [ ] iwan bloch, in _the sexual life of our time_, makes this distinction as between "homosexuality" (corresponding to inversion) and "pseudo-homosexuality." according to the terminology i have accepted, the term "pseudo-homosexuality" would be unnecessary and incorrect. more recently (_die prostitution_, bd. i, , p. ) bloch has preferred, in place of pseudo-homosexuality, the more satisfactory term, "secondary homosexuality." [ ] see, for instance, hirschfeld's reasonable discussion of the matter, _die homosexualität_, ch. xvii. [ ] alfred fuchs, who edited krafft-ebing's _psychopathia sexualis_ after the latter's death, distinguishes between congenital homosexuality, manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and homosexuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external influences to arouse it (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iv, , p. ). [ ] krafft-ebing, "ueber tardive homosexualität," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, bd. iii, , p. ; näcke, "probleme auf den gebiete der homosexualität," _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , p. ; ib., "ueber tardive homosexualität," _sexual-probleme_, september, . numa praetorius (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, january, , p. ) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period. [ ] moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, , pp, - . [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. viii. [ ] this was the term used in the earlier editions of the present _study_. i willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear term now more generally employed. it is true that by bisexuality it is possible to understand not only the double direction of the sexual instinct, but also the presence of both sexes in the same individual, which in french is more accurately distinguished as "bisexuation." [ ] j. van biervliet, "l'homme droit et l'homme gauche," _revue philosophique_, october, . it is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the left side. chapter iv. sexual inversion in women. prevalence of sexual inversion among women--among women of ability--among the lower races--temporary homosexuality in schools, etc.--histories--physical and psychic characteristics of inverted women--the modern development of homosexuality among women. homosexuality is not less common in women than in men. in the seriocomic theory of sex set forth by aristophanes in plato's _symposium_, males and females are placed on a footing of complete equality, and, however fantastic, the theory suffices to indicate that to the greek mind, so familiar with homosexuality, its manifestations seemed just as likely to occur in women as in men. that is undoubtedly the case. like other anomalies, indeed, in its more pronounced forms it may be less frequently met with in women; in its less pronounced forms, almost certainly, it is more frequently found. a catholic confessor, a friend tells me, informed him that for one man who acknowledges homosexual practices there are three women. for the most part feminine homosexuality runs everywhere a parallel course to masculine homosexuality and is found under the same conditions. it is as common in girls as in boys; it has been found, under certain conditions, to abound among women in colleges and convents and prisons, as well as under the ordinary conditions of society. perhaps the earliest case of homosexuality recorded in detail occurred in a woman,[ ] and it was with the investigation of such a case in a woman that westphal may be said to have inaugurated the scientific study of inversion. moreover, inversion is as likely to be accompanied by high intellectual ability in a woman as in a man. the importance of a clear conception of inversion is indeed in some respects, under present social conditions, really even greater in the case of women than of men. for if, as has sometimes been said of our civilization, "this is a man's world," the large proportion of able women inverts, whose masculine qualities render it comparatively easy for them to adopt masculine avocations, becomes a highly significant fact.[ ] it has been noted of distinguished women in all ages and in all fields of activity that they have frequently displayed some masculine traits.[ ] even "the first great woman in history," as she has been called by a historian of egypt, queen hatschepsu, was clearly of markedly virile temperament, and always had herself represented on her monuments in masculine costume, and even with a false beard.[ ] other famous queens have on more or less satisfactory grounds been suspected of a homosexual temperament, such as catherine ii of russia, who appears to have been bisexual, and queen christina of sweden, whose very marked masculine traits and high intelligence seem to have been combined with a definitely homosexual or bisexual temperament.[ ] great religious and moral leaders, like madame blavatsky and louise michel, have been either homosexual or bisexual or, at least, of pronounced masculine temperament.[ ] great actresses from the eighteenth century onward have frequently been more or less correctly identified with homosexuality, as also many women distinguished in other arts.[ ] above all, sappho, the greatest of women poets, the peer of the greatest poets of the other sex in the supreme power of uniting art and passion, has left a name which is permanently associated with homosexuality. it can scarcely be said that opinion is unanimous in regard to sappho, and the reliable information about her, outside the evidence of the fragments of her poems which have reached us, is scanty. her fame has always been great; in classic times her name was coupled with homer's. but even to antiquity she was somewhat of an enigma, and many legends grew up around her name, such as the familiar story that she threw herself into the sea for the love of phaon. what remains clear is that she was regarded with great respect and admiration by her contemporaries, that she was of aristocratic family, that she was probably married and had a daughter, that at one time she had to take her part in political exile, and that she addressed her girl friends in precisely similar terms to those addressed by alcaeus to youths. we know that in antiquity feminine homosexuality was regarded as especially common in sparta, lesbos, and miletus. horace, who was able to read sappho's complete poems, states that the objects of her love-plaints were the young girls of lesbos, while ovid, who played so considerable a part in weaving fantastic stories round sappho's name, never claimed that they had any basis of truth. it was inevitable that the early christians should eagerly attack so ambiguous a figure, and tatian (_oratio ad graecos_, cap. ) reproached the greeks that they honored statues of the tribade sappho, a prostitute who had celebrated her own wantonness and infatuation. the result is that in modern times there have been some who placed sappho's character in a very bad light and others who have gone to the opposite extreme in an attempt at "rehabilitation." thus, w. mure, in his _history of the language and literature of ancient greece_ ( , vol. iii, pp. - , - ), dealing very fully with sappho, is disposed to accept many of the worst stories about her, though he has no pronounced animus, and, as regards female homosexuality, which he considers to be "far more venial" than male homosexuality, he remarks that "in modern times it has numbered among its votaries females distinguished for refinement of manners and elegant accomplishments." bascoul, on the other hand, will accept no statements about sappho which conflict with modern ideals of complete respectability, and even seeks to rewrite her most famous ode in accordance with the colorless literary sense which he supposes that it originally bore (j.m.f. bascoul, _la chaste sappho et le mouvement feministe à athènes_, ). wilamowitz-moellendorff (_sappho und simonides_, ) also represents the antiquated view, formerly championed by welcker, according to which the attribution of homosexuality is a charge of "vice," to be repudiated with indignation. most competent and reliable authorities today, however, while rejecting the accretions of legend around sappho's name and not disputing her claim to respect, are not disposed to question the personal and homosexual character of her poems. "all ancient tradition and the character of her extant fragments," says prof. j.a. platt (_encyclopedia britannica_, th. ed., art. "sappho"), "show that her morality was what has ever since been known as 'lesbian.'" what exactly that "lesbian morality" involved, we cannot indeed exactly ascertain. "it is altogether idle," as a. croiset remarks of sappho (_histoire de la littérature grecque_, vol. ii, ch. v), "to discuss the exact quality of this friendship or this love, or to seek to determine with precision the frontiers, which language itself often seems to seek to confuse, of a friendship more or less esthetic and sensual, of a love more or less platonic." (see also j.m. edmonds, _sappho in the added light of the new fragments_, ). iwan bloch similarly concludes (_ursprung der syphilis_, vol. ii, , p. ) that sappho probably combined, as modern investigation shows to be easily possible, lofty ideal feelings with passionate sensuality, exactly as happens in normal love. it must also be said that in literature homosexuality in women has furnished a much more frequent motive to the artist than homosexuality in men. among the greeks, indeed, homosexuality in women seldom receives literary consecration, and in the revival of the classical spirit at the renaissance it was still chiefly in male adolescents, as we see, for instance, in marino's _adone_, that the homosexual ideal found expression. after that date male inversion was for a long period rarely touched in literature, save briefly and satirically, while inversion in women becomes a subject which might be treated in detail and even with complacence. many poets and novelists, especially in france, might be cited in evidence. ariosto, it has been pointed out, has described the homosexual attractions of women. diderot's famous novel, _la religieuse_, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, diderot found a model in the abbess of chelles, a daughter of the regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. diderot's narrative has been described as a faithful description of the homosexual phenomena liable to occur in convents. feminine homosexuality, especially in convents, was often touched on less seriously in the eighteenth century. thus we find a homosexual scene in _les plaisirs du cloître_, a play written in (_le théâtre d'amour an xviiie siècle_, .) balzac, who treated so many psychological aspects of love in a more or less veiled manner, has touched on this in _la fille aux yeux d'or_, in a vague and extravagantly romantic fashion. gautier made the adventures of a woman who was predisposed to homosexuality, and slowly realizes the fact, the central motive of his wonderful romance, _mademoiselle de maupin_ ( ). he approached the subject purely as an artist and poet, but his handling of it shows remarkable insight. gautier based his romance to some extent on the life of madame maupin or, as she preferred to call herself, mademoiselle maupin, who was born in (her father's name being d'aubigny), dressed as a man, and became famous as a teacher of fencing, afterward as an opera singer. she was apparently of bisexual temperament, and her devotion to women led her into various adventures. she ultimately entered a convent, and died, at the age of , with a reputation for sanctity. (e.c. clayton, _queens of song_, vol. i, pp, - ; f. karsch, "mademoiselle maupin," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. v, , pp. - .) a still greater writer, flaubert, in _salammbô_ ( ) made his heroine homosexual. zola has described sexual inversion in _nona_ and elsewhere. some thirty years ago a popular novelist, a. belot, published a novel called _mademoiselle giraud, ma femme_, which was much read; the novelist took the attitude of a moralist who is bound to treat frankly, but with all decorous propriety, a subject of increasing social gravity. the story is that of a man whose bride will not allow his approach on account of her own _liaison_ with a female friend continued after marriage. this book appears to have given origin to a large number of novels, some of which touched the question with considerable less affectation of propriety. among other novelists who have dealt with the matter may be mentioned guy de maupassant (_la femme de paul_), bourget (_crime d'amour_), catulle mendès (_méphistophéla_), and willy in the _claudine_ series. among poets who have used the motive of homosexuality in women with more or less boldness may be found lamartine (_regina_), swinburne (first series of _poems and ballads_), verlaine (_parallèlement_), and pierre louys (_chansons de bilitis_). the last-named book, a collection of homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered oriental greek poetess; bilitis (more usually beltis) is the syrian name for aphrodite. _les chansons de bilitis_ are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by wilamowitz-moellendorff (_sappho und simonides_, , p. et seq.) as "a travesty of hellenism," betraying inadequate knowledge of greek antiquity. more interesting, as the work of a woman who was not only highly gifted, but herself of homosexual temperament, are the various volumes of poems published by "renée vivien." this lady, whose real name was pauline tarn, was born in ; her father was of scotch descent, and her mother an american lady from honolulu. as a child she was taken to paris, and was brought up as a french girl. she travelled much and at one time took a house at mitylene, the chief city of ancient lesbos. she had a love of solitude, hated publicity, and was devoted to her women friends, especially to one whose early death about was the great sorrow of pauline tarn's life. she is described as very beautiful, very simple and sweet-natured, and highly accomplished in many directions. she suffered, however, from nervous overtension and incurable melancholy. toward the close of her life she was converted to catholicism and died in , at the age of . she is buried in the cemetery at passy. her best verse is by some considered among the finest in the french language. (charles brun, "pauline tarn," _notes and queries_, aug., ; the same writer, who knew her well, has also written a pamphlet, _renée vivien_, sansot, paris, .) her chief volumes of poems are _etudes et preludes_ ( ), _cendres et poussières_ ( ), _evocations_ ( ). a novel, _une femme m'apparut_ ( ), is said to be to some extent autobiographical. "renée vivien" also wrote a volume on sappho with translations, and a further volume of poems, _les kitharèdes_, suggested by the fragments which remain of the minor women poets of greece, followers of sappho. it is, moreover, noteworthy that a remarkably large proportion of the cases in which homosexuality has led to crimes of violence, or otherwise come under medico-legal observation, has been among women. it is well know that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men.[ ] in the homosexual field, as we might have anticipated, the conditions are to some extent reversed. inverted men, in whom a more or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide. inverted women, who may retain their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter into the invert's life. the first conspicuous example of this tendency in recent times is the memphis case ( ) in the united states. (arthur macdonald, "observation de sexualité pathologique feminine," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, may, ; see also krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, eng. trans, of th ed., p. .) in this case a congenital sexual invert, alice mitchell, planned a marriage with freda ward, taking a male-name and costume. this scheme was frustrated by freda's sister, and alice mitchell then cut freda's throat. there is no reason to suppose that she was insane at the time of the murder. she was a typical invert of a very pronounced kind. her mother had been insane and had homicidal impulses. she herself was considered unbalanced, and was masculine in her habits from her earliest years. her face was obviously unsymmetrical and she had an appearance of youthfulness below her age. she was not vicious, and had little knowledge of sexual matters, but when she kissed freda she was ashamed of being seen, while freda could see no reason for being ashamed. she was adjudged insane. there have been numerous cases in america more recently. one case (for some details concerning which i am indebted to dr. j.g. kiernan, of chicago) is that of the "tiller sisters," two quintroons, who for many years had acted together under that name in cheap theaters. one, who was an invert, with a horror of men dating from early girlhood, was sexually attached to the other, who was without inborn inversion, and was eventually induced by a man to leave the invert. the latter, overcome by jealousy, broke into the apartment of the couple and shot the man dead. she was tried, and sent to prison for life. a defense of insanity was made, but for this there was no evidence. in another case, also occurring in chicago (reported in _medicine_, june, , and _alienist and neurologist_, october, ), a trained nurse lived for fourteen years with a young woman who left her on four different occasions, but was each time induced to return; finally, however, she left and married, whereupon the nurse shot the husband, who was not, however, fatally wounded. the culprit in this case had been twice married, but had not lived with either of her husbands; it was stated that her mother had died in an asylum, and that her brother had committed suicide. she was charged with disorderly conduct, and subjected to a fine. in another later case in chicago a russian girl of , named anna rubinowitch, shot from motives of jealousy another russian girl to whom she had been devoted from childhood, and then fatally shot herself. the relations between the two girls had been very intimate. "our love affair is one purely of the soul," anna rubinowitch was accustomed to say; "we love each other on a higher plane than that of earth." (i am informed that there were in fact physical relationships; the sexual organs were normal.) this continued, with great devotion on each side, until anna's "sweetheart" began to show herself susceptible to the advances of a male wooer. this aroused uncontrollable jealousy in anna, whose father, it may be noted, had committed suicide by shooting some years previously. homosexual relationships are also a cause of suicide among women. such a case was reported in massachusetts early in . a girl of had been tended during a period of nervous prostration, apparently of hysterical nature, by a friend and neighbor, fourteen years her senior, married and having children. an intimate friendship grew up, equally ardent on both sides. the mother of the younger woman and the husband of the other took measures to put a stop to the intimacy, and the girl was sent away to a distant city; stolen interviews, however, still occurred. finally, when the obstacles became insurmountable, the younger woman bought a revolver and deliberately shot herself in the temple, in presence of her mother, dying immediately. though sometimes thought to act rather strangely, she was a great favorite with all, handsome, very athletic, fond of all outdoor sports, an energetic religious worker, possessing a fine voice, and was an active member of many clubs and societies. the older woman belonged to an aristocratic family and was loved and respected by all. in another case in new york in a retired sailor, "captain john weed," who had commanded transatlantic vessels for many years, was admitted to a home for old sailors and shortly after became ill and despondent, and cut his throat. it was then found that "captain weed" was really a woman. i am informed that the old sailor's despondency and suicide were due to enforced separation from a female companion. the infatuation of young girls for actresses and other prominent women may occasionally lead to suicide. thus in philadelphia, a few years ago, a girl of , belonging to a very wealthy family, beautiful and highly educated, acquired an absorbing infatuation for miss mary garden, the _prima donna_, with whom she had no personal acquaintance. the young girl would kneel in worship before the singer's portrait, and studied hairdressing and manicuring in the hope of becoming miss garden's maid. when she realized that her dream was hopeless she shot herself with a revolver. (cases more or less resembling those here brought forward occur from time to time in all parts of the civilized world. reports, mostly from current newspapers, of such cases, as well as of simple transvestism, or eonism, in both women and men, will be found in the publications of the berlin wissenschaftlich-humanitären komitee: the _monatsberichte_ up to , then in the _vierteljahrsberichte_, and from onward in the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_.) yet, until recently, comparatively little has been known of sexual inversion in women. even so lately as (after the publication of the first edition of the present study), krafft-ebing wrote that scarcely fifty cases had been recorded. the chief monographs devoted but little space to women. krafft-ebing himself, in the earlier editions of _psychopathia sexualis_, gave little special attention to inversion in women, although he published a few cases. moll, however, included a valuable chapter on the subject in his _konträre sexualempfindung_, narrating numerous cases, and inversion in women also received special attention in the present study. hirschfeld, however, in his _homosexualität_ ( ) is the first authority who has been able to deal with feminine homosexuality as completely co-ordinate with masculine homosexuality. the two manifestations, masculine and feminine, are placed on the same basis and treated together throughout the work. it is, no doubt, not difficult to account for this retardation in the investigation of sexual inversion in women. notwithstanding the severity with which homosexuality in women has been visited in a few cases, for the most part men seem to have been indifferent toward it; when it has been made a crime or a cause for divorce in men, it has usually been considered as no offense at all in women.[ ] another reason is that it is less easy to detect in women; we are accustomed to a much greater familiarity and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to suspect the existence of any abnormal passion. and, allied with this cause, we have also to bear in mind the extreme ignorance and the extreme reticence of women regarding any abnormal or even normal manifestation of their sexual life. a woman may feel a high degree of sexual attraction for another woman without realizing that her affection is sexual, and when she does realize this, she is nearly always very unwilling to reveal the nature of her intimate experience, even with the adoption of precautions, and although the fact may be present to her that, by helping to reveal the nature of her abnormality, she may be helping to lighten the burden of it on other women. among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to krafft-ebing there is not one by a woman. there is, again, the further reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.[ ] the same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere found among women. feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a vice of modern refined civilization. yet it was familiar to the anglo-saxons, and theodore's penitential in the seventh century assigned a penance of three years (considerably less than that assigned to men, or for bestiality) to "a woman fornicating with a woman." among the women of savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is less frequently recorded than among men.[ ] in new zealand it is stated on the authority of moerenhout (though i have not been able to find the reference) that the women practised lesbianism. in south america, where inversion is common among men, we find similar phenomena in women. among brazilian tribes gandavo[ ] wrote:-- "there are certain women among these indians who determine to be chaste and know no man. these leave every womanly occupation and imitate the men. they wear their hair the same way as the men; they go to war with them or hunting, bearing their bows; they continue always in the company of men, and each has a woman who serves her and with whom she lives." this has some analogy with the phenomena seen among north american men. dr. holder, who has carefully studied the _boté_, tells me that he has met no corresponding phenomena in women. there is no doubt, however, that homosexuality among women is well known to the american indians in various regions. thus the salish indians of british columbia have a myth of an old woman who had intercourse with a young woman by means of a horn used as a penis.[ ] in the mythology of the assiniboine indians (of canada and montana) and the fox indians (of iowa) there are also legends of feminine homosexuality, supposed to have been derived from the algonkin cree indians, who were closely connected with both.[ ] according to the assiniboine legend, a man's wife fell in love with his sister and eloped with her, a boneless child being the result of the union; the husband pursued the couple, and killed his wife as well as the child; no one cared to avenge her death. the fox legend, entitled "two maidens who played the harlot with each other," runs as follows: "it is said that once on a time long ago there were two young women who were friends together. it is told that there were also two youths who tried to woo the two maidens, but they were not able even so much as to talk with them. after awhile the youths began to suspect something wrong. so once during the summer, when the two maidens started away to peel off bark, the youths followed, staying just far enough behind to keep them in sight. while the girls were peeling the bark, the youths kept themselves hidden. after awhile they no longer heard the sound of the maidens at work. whereupon they began to creep up to where they were. when they drew nigh, behold, the maidens were in the act of taking off their clothes. the first to disrobe flung herself down on the ground and lay there. 'pray, what are these girls going to do?' was the feeling in the hearts of the youths. and to their amazement the girls began to lie with each other. thereupon the youths ran to where the girls were. she who was lying on top instantly fell over backward. her clitoris was standing out and had a queer shape; it was like a turtle's penis. thereupon the maidens began to plead with the youths: 'oh, don't tell on us!' they said. 'truly it is not of our own free desire that we have done this thing we have done it under the influence of some unknown being.' it is said that afterward one of the maidens became big with child. in the course of time, she gave birth, and the child was like a soft-shell turtle." in bali, according to jacobs (as quoted by ploss and bartels), homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is more secretly exercised; the methods of gratification adopted are either digital or lingual, or else by bringing the parts together (tribadism). baumann, who noted inversion among the male negro population of zanzibar, finds that it is also not rare among women. although oriental manners render it impossible for such women to wear men's clothes openly, they do so in private, and are recognized by other women by their man-like bearing, as also by the fact that women's garments do not suit them. they show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclinations, or else among normal women, who are won over by presents or other means. in addition to tribadism or cunnilinctus, they sometimes use an ebony or ivory phallus, with a kind of glans at one end, or sometimes at both ends; in the latter case it can be used by two women at once, and sometimes it has a hole bored through it by which warm water can be injected; it is regarded as an arab invention, and is sometimes used by normal women shut up in harems, and practically deprived of sexual satisfaction.[ ] among the arab women, according to kocher, homosexual practices are rare, though very common among arab men. in egypt, however, according to godard, kocher, and others, it is almost fashionable, and every woman in the harem has a "friend." in turkey homosexuality is sometimes said to be rare among women. but it would appear to be found in the harems and women's baths of turkey, as well as of islam generally. brantôme in the sixteenth century referred to the lesbianism of turkish women at the baths, and leo africanus in the same century mentioned the tribadism of moorish women and the formal organization of tribadic prostitution in fez. there was an osmanli sapphic poetess, mihiri, whose grave is at amasia, and vambery and achestorides agree as to the prevalence of feminine homosexuality in turkey.[ ] among the negroes and mulattoes of french creole countries, according to corre, homosexuality is very common. "i know a lady of great beauty," he remarks, "a stranger in guadalupe and the mother of a family, who is obliged to stay away from the markets and certain shops because of the excessive admiration of mulatto women and negresses, and the impudent invitations which they dare to address to her."[ ] he refers to several cases of more or less violent sexual attempts by women on young colored girls of or , and observes that such attempts by men on children of their own sex are much rarer. in china (according to matignon) and in cochin china (according to lorion) homosexuality does not appear to be common among women. in india, however, it is probably as prevalent among women as it certainly is among men. in the first edition of this study i quoted the opinion of dr. buchanan, then superintendant of the central gaol of bengal at bhagalpur, who informed me that he had never come across a case and that his head-gaoler had never heard of such a thing in twenty-five years' experience. another officer in the indian medical service assures me, however, that there cannot be the least doubt as to the frequency of homosexuality among women in india, either inside or outside gaols. i am indebted to him for the following notes on this point:-- "that homosexual relationships are common enough among indian women is evidenced by the fact that the hindustani language has five words to denote the tribade: ( ) _dúgáná_, ( ) _zanàkhé_, ( ) _sa'tar_, ( ) _chapathái_, and ( ) _chapatbáz_. the _modus operandi_ is generally what martial calls _geminos committere cunnos_, but sometimes a phallus, called _saburah_, is employed. the act itself is called _chapat_ or _chapti_, and the hindustani poets, nazir, rangin, ján s'áheb, treat of lesbian love very extensively and sometimes very crudely. ján s'áheb, a woman poet, sings to the effect that intercourse with a woman by means of a phallus is to be preferred to the satisfaction offered by a male lover. the common euphemism employed when speaking of two tribades who live together is that they 'live apart.' so much for the literary evidence as to the prevalence of what, _mirable dictu_, dr. buchanan's gaoler was ignorant of. "now for facts. in the gaol of r. the superintendent discovered a number of phalli in the females' inclosure; they were made of clay and sun-dried and bore marks of use. in the gaol of s. was a woman who (as is usual with tribades in india) wore male attire, and was well known for her sexual proclivities. an examination revealed the following: face much lined, mammæ of masculine type, but nipples elongated and readily erectile; gluteal and iliac regions quite of masculine type, as also the thighs; clitoris, with enlarged glands, readily erectile; nymphæ thickened and enlarged; vulvar orifice patent, for she had in early youth been a prostitute; the voice was almost contralto. her partner was of low type, but eminently feminine in configuration and manner. in this case i heard that 'the man' went to a local ascetic and begged his intercession with the deity, so that she might impregnate her partner. ('the hindoo medical works mention the possibility of a woman uniting with another woman in sexual embraces and begetting a boneless fetus.' _short history of aryan medical science_, p. .) "in the town of d. there 'lived apart' two women, one a brahmin, the other a grazier; their _modus operandi_ was tribadism, as an eyewitness informed me. in s. i was called in to treat the widow of a wealthy mohammedan; i had occasion to examine the pudenda, and found what martineau would have called the indelible stigmata of early masturbation and later sapphism. she admitted the impeachment and confessed that she was on the best of terms with her three remarkably well-formed and good-looking handmaidens. this lady said that she began masturbation at an early age, 'just like all other women,' and that sapphism came after the age of puberty. another mohammedan woman whom i knew, and who had a very large clitoris, told me that she had been initiated into lesbian love at by a neighbor and had intermittently practised it ever since. i might also instance two sisters of the gardener caste, both widows, who 'lived apart' and indulged in simultaneous sapphism. "that sometimes the actors in tribadism are most vigorous is shown by the fact that, in the central gaol of ----, swelling of the vulva was admitted to have been caused by the embraces of two female convicts. the subordinate who told me this mentioned it quite incidentally while relating his experiences as hospital assistant at this gaol. when i questioned him he stated that the woman, whom he was called to treat, told him that she could never 'satisfy herself' with men, but only with women. he added that tribadism was 'quite common in the gaol.'" the foregoing sketch may serve to show that homosexual practices certainly, and probably definite sexual inversion, are very widespread among women in very many and various parts of the world, though it is likely that, as among men, there are variations--geographical, racial, national, or social--in the frequency or intensity of its obvious manifestations. thus, in the eighteenth century, casanova remarked that the women of provence are specially inclined to lesbianism. in european prisons homosexual practices flourish among the women fully as much, it may probably be said, as among the men. there is, indeed, some reason for supposing that these phenomena are here sometimes even more decisively marked than among men.[ ] this prevalence of homosexuality among women in prison is connected with the close relationship between feminine criminality and prostitution. the frequency of homosexual practices among prostitutes is a fact of some interest, and calls for special explanation, for, at the first glance, it seems in opposition to all that we know concerning the exciting causes of homosexuality. regarding the fact there can be no question.[ ] it has been noted by all who are acquainted with the lives of prostitutes, though opinion may differ as to its frequency. in berlin, moll was told in well-informed quarters, the proportion of prostitutes with lesbian tendencies is about per cent. this was almost the proportion at paris many years ago, according to parent-duchâtelet; today, according to chevalier, it is larger; and bourneville believes that per cent, of the inmates of the parisian venereal hospitals have practised homosexuality. hammer in germany has found among prostitutes that were homosexual.[ ] hirschfeld thinks that inverted women are specially prone to become prostitutes.[ ] eulenburg believes, on the other hand, that the conditions of their life favor homosexuality among prostitutes; "a homosexual union seems to them higher, purer, more innocent, and more ideal."[ ] there is, however, no fundamental contradiction between these two views; they are probably both right. in london, so far as my inquiries extend, homosexuality among prostitutes is very much less prevalent, and in a well-marked form is confined to a comparatively small section. i am indebted to a friend for the following note: "from my experience of the parisian prostitute, i gather that lesbianism in paris is extremely prevalent; indeed, one might almost say normal. in particular, most of the chahut-dancers of the moulin-rouge, casino de paris, and the other public balls are notorious for going in couples, and, for the most part, they prefer not to be separated, even in their most professional moments with the other sex. in london the thing is, naturally, much less obvious, and, i think, much less prevalent; but it is certainly not infrequent. a certain number of well-known prostitutes are known for their tendencies in this direction, which do not, however, interfere in any marked way with the ordinary details of their profession. i do not personally know of a single prostitute who is exclusively lesbian; i have heard vaguely that there are one or two such anomalies. but i have heard a swell _cocotte_ at the corinthian announce to the whole room that she was going home with a girl; and no one doubted the statement. her name, indeed, was generally coupled with that of a fifth-rate actress. another woman of the same kind has a little clientele of women who buy her photographs in burlington arcade. in the lower ranks of the profession all this is much less common. one often finds women who have simply never heard of such a thing; they know of it in regard to men, but not in regard to women. and they are, for the most part, quite horrified at the notion, which they consider part and parcel of 'french beastliness.' of course, almost every girl has her friend, and, when not separately occupied, they often sleep together; but, while in separate, rare cases, this undoubtedly means all that it can mean, for the most part, so far as one can judge, it means no more than it would mean among ordinary girls." it is evident that there must be some radical causes for the frequency of homosexuality among prostitutes. one such cause doubtless lies in the character of the prostitute's relations with men; these relations are of a professional character, and, as the business element becomes emphasized, the possibility of sexual satisfaction diminishes; at the best, also; there lacks the sense of social equality, the feeling of possession, and scope for the exercise of feminine affection and devotion. these the prostitute must usually be forced to find either in a "bully" or in another woman.[ ] apart from this fact it must be borne in mind that, in a very large number of cases, prostitutes show in slight or more marked degree many of the signs of neurotic heredity,[ ] and it would not be surprising if they present the germs of homosexuality in an unusually high degree. the life of the prostitute may well develop such latent germs; and so we have an undue tendency to homosexuality, just as we have it among criminals, and, to a much less extent, among persons of genius and intellect. homosexuality is specially fostered by those employments which keep women in constant association, not only by day, but often at night also, without the company of men. this is, for instance, the case in convents, and formerly, at all events,--however, it may be today,--homosexuality was held to be very prevalent in convents. this was especially so in the eighteenth century when very many young girls, without any religious vocation, were put into convents.[ ] the same again is today the case with the female servants in large hotels, among whom homosexual practices nave been found very common.[ ] laycock, many years ago, noted the prevalence of manifestations of this kind, which he regarded as hysterical, among seamstresses, lace-makers, etc., confined for hours in close contact with one another in heated rooms. the circumstances under which numbers of young women are employed during the day in large shops and factories, and sleep in the establishment, two in a room or even two in a bed, are favorable to the development of homosexual practices. in england it is seldom that anyone cares to investigate these phenomena, though, they certainly exist. they have been more thoroughly studied elsewhere. thus, in rome, niceforo, who studied various aspects of the lives of the working classes, succeeded in obtaining much precise information concerning the manners and customs of the young girls in dressmaking and tailoring work-rooms. he remarks that few of those who see the "virtuous daughters of the people," often not more than years old, walking along the streets with the dressmaker's box under their arm, modestly bent head and virginal air, realize the intense sexual preoccupations often underlying these appearances. in the work-rooms the conversation perpetually revolves around sexual subjects in the absence of the mistress or forewoman, and even in her presence the slang that prevails in the work-rooms leads to dialogues with a double meaning. a state of sexual excitement is thus aroused which sometimes relieves itself mentally by psychic onanism, sometimes by some form of masturbation; one girl admitted to niceforo that by allowing her thoughts to dwell on the subject while at work she sometimes produced physical sexual excitement as often as four times a day. (see also vol. i of these _studies_, "auto-erotism.") sometimes, however, a vague kind of homosexuality is produced, the girls, excited by their own thoughts and their conversation, being still further excited by contact with each other. "in summer, in one work-room, some of the girls wear no drawers, and they unbutton their bodices, and work with crossed legs, more or less uncovered. in this position, the girls draw near and inspect one another; some boast of their white legs, and, then the petticoats are raised altogether for more careful comparison. many enjoy this inspection of nudity, and experience real sexual pleasure. from midday till p.m., during the hours of greatest heat, when all are in this condition, and the mistress, in her chemise (and sometimes, with no shame at the workers' presence, even without it), falls asleep on the sofa, all the girls, _without one exception_, masturbate themselves. the heat seems to sharpen their desires and morbidly arouse all their senses. the voluptuous emotions, restrained during the rest of the day, break out with irresistible force; stimulated by the spectacle of each other's nakedness, some place their legs together and thus heighten the spasm by the illusion of contact with a man." in this way they reach mutual masturbation. "it is noteworthy, however," niceforo points out, "that these couples for mutual masturbation are never lesbian couples. tribadism is altogether absent from the factories and work-rooms." he even believes that it does not exist among girls of the working class. he further describes how, in another work-room, during the hot hours of the day in summer, when no work is done, some of the girls retire into the fitting-room, and, having fastened their chemises round their legs and thighs with pins, so as to imitate trousers, play at being men and pretend to have intercourse with the others. (niceforo, _il gergo_, cap. vi, , turin.) i have reproduced these details from niceforo's careful study because, although they may seem to be trivial at some points, they clearly bring out the very important distinction between a merely temporary homosexuality and true inversion. the amusements of these young girls may not be considered eminently innocent or wholesome, but, on the other hand, they are not radically morbid or vicious. they are strictly, and even consciously, _play_; they are dominated by the thought that the true sexual ideal is normal relationship with a man, and they would certainly disappear in the presence of a man. it must be remembered that niceforo's observations were made among girls who were mostly young. in the large factories, where many adult women are employed, the phenomena tend to be rarer, but of much less trivial and playful character. at wolverhampton, some forty years ago, the case was reported of a woman in a galvanizing "store" who, after dinner, indecently assaulted a girl who was a new hand. two young women held the victim down, and this seems to show that homosexual vice was here common and recognized. no doubt, this case is exceptional in its brutality. it throws, however, a significant light on the conditions prevailing in factories. in spain, in the large factories where many adult women are employed, especially in the great tobacco factory at seville, lesbian relationships seem to be not uncommon. here the women work in an atmosphere which in summer is so hot that they throw off the greater part of their clothing, to such an extent that a bell is rung whenever a visitor is introduced into a work-room, in order to warn the workers. such an environment predisposes to the formation of homosexual relationships. when i was in spain some years ago an incident occurred at the seville fábrica de tabacos which attracted much attention in the newspapers, and, though it was regarded as unusual, it throws light on the life of the workers. one morning as the women were entering the work-room and amid the usual scene of animation changing their manila shawls for the light costume worn during work, one drew out a small clasp-knife and, attacking another, rapidly inflicted six or seven wounds on her face and neck, threatening to kill anyone who approached. both these _cigarreras_ were superior workers, engaged in the most skilled kind of work, and had been at the factory for many years. in appearance they were described as presenting a striking contrast: the aggressor, who was years of age, was of masculine air, tall and thin, with an expression of firm determination on her wrinkled face; the victim, on the other hand, whose age was , was plump and good-looking and of pleasing disposition. the reason at first assigned for the attack on the younger woman was that her mother had insulted the elder woman's son. it appeared, however, that a close friendship had existed between the two women, that latterly the younger woman had formed a friendship with the forewoman of her work-room, and that the elder woman, animated by jealousy, then resolved to murder both; this design was frustrated by the accidental absence of the forewoman that day. in theaters the abnormal sexuality stimulated by such association in work is complicated by the general tendency for homosexuality to be connected with dramatic aptitude, a point to which i shall have to refer later on. i am indebted to a friend for the following note: "passionate friendships among girls, from the most innocent to the most elaborate excursions in the direction of lesbos, are extremely common in theaters, both among actresses and, even more, among chorus-and ballet-girls. here the pell-mell of the dressing-rooms, the wait of perhaps two hours between the performances, during which all the girls are cooped up, in a state of inaction and of excitement, in a few crowded dressing-rooms, afford every opportunity for the growth of this particular kind of sentiment. in most of the theaters there is a little circle of girls, somewhat avoided by the others, or themselves careless of further acquaintanceship, who profess the most unbounded devotion to one another. most of these girls are equally ready to flirt with the opposite sex, but i know certain ones among them who will scarcely speak to a man, and who are never seen without their particular 'pal' or 'chum,' who, if she gets moved to another theater, will come around and wait for her friend at the stage-door. but here, again, it is but seldom that the experience is carried very far. the fact is that the english girl, especially of the lower and middle classes, whether she has lost her virtue or not, is extremely fettered by conventional notions. ignorance and habit are two restraining influences from the carrying out of this particular kind of perversion to its logical conclusions. it is, therefore, among the upper ranks, alike of society and of prostitution, that lesbianism is most definitely to be met with, for here we have much greater liberty of action, and much greater freedom from prejudices." with girls, as with boys, it is in the school, at the evolution of puberty, that homosexuality usually first shows itself. it may originate in a way mainly peripheral or mainly central. in the first case, two children, perhaps when close to each other in bed, more or less unintentionally generate in each other a certain amount of sexual irritation, which they foster by mutual touching and kissing. this is a spurious kind of homosexuality, the often precocious play of the normal instinct. in the girl who is congenitally predisposed to homosexuality it will continue and develop; in the majority it will be forgotten as quickly as possible, not without shame, in the presence of the normal object of sexual love. i may quote as fairly typical the following observation supplied by a lady who cannot be called inverted: "like so many other children and girls, i was first taught self-indulgence by a girl at school, and i passed on my knowledge to one or two others, with one of whom i remember once, when we were just , spending the night sensually. we were horribly ashamed after, and that was the only time. when i was only there was a girl of who liked to play with my body, and taught me to play with hers, though i rather disliked doing so. we slept together, and this went on at intervals for six months. these things, for the sake of getting enjoyment, and not with any passion, are not uncommon with children, but less common, i think, than people sometimes imagine. i believe i could recall without much difficulty, the number of times such things happened with me. in the case i mentioned when i did for one night feel--or try to excite in myself and my girl-companion of --sensual passion, we had as little children slept together a few times and done these things, and meeting after an absence, just at that age, recalled our childish memories, and were carried away by sexual impulse. but i never felt any peculiar affection or passion for her even at the time, nor she for me. we only felt that our sensual nature was strong at the time, and had betrayed us into something we were ashamed of, and, therefore, we avoided letting ourselves sleep too close after that day. i think we disliked each other, and were revolted whenever we thought of that night, feeling that each had degraded the other and herself." the cases in which the source is mainly central, rather than peripheral, nevertheless merge into the foregoing, with no clear line of demarcation. in such cases a girl forms an ardent attachment for another girl, probably somewhat older than herself, often a schoolfellow, sometimes her schoolmistress, upon whom she will lavish an astonishing amount of affection and devotion. there may or not be any return; usually the return consists of a gracious acceptance of the affectionate services. the girl who expends this wealth of devotion is surcharged with emotion, but she is often unconscious or ignorant of the sexual impulse, and she seeks for no form of sexual satisfaction. kissing and the privilege of sleeping with the friend are, however, sought, and at such times it often happens that even the comparatively unresponsive friend feels more or less definite sexual emotion (pudendal turgescence, with secretion of mucus and involuntary twitching of the neighboring muscles), though little or no attention may be paid to this phenomenon, and in the common ignorance of girls concerning sex matters it may not be understood. in some cases there is an attempt, either instinctive or intentional, to develop the sexual feeling by close embraces and kissing. this rudimentary kind of homosexual relationship is, i believe, more common among girls than among boys, and for this there are several reasons: ( ) a boy more often has some acquaintance with sexual phenomena, and would frequently regard such a relationship as unmanly; ( ) the girl has a stronger need of affection and self-devotion to another person than a boy has; ( ) she has not, under our existing social conditions which compel young women to hold the opposite sex at arm's length, the same opportunities of finding an outlet for her sexual emotions; while ( ) conventional propriety recognizes a considerable degree of physical intimacy between girls, thus at once encouraging and cloaking the manifestations of homosexuality. the ardent attachments which girls in schools and colleges form to each other and to their teachers constitute a subject which is of considerable psychological interest and of no little practical importance.[ ] these girlish devotions, on the borderland between friendship and sexual passion, are found in all countries where girls are segregated for educational purposes, and their symptoms are, on the whole, singularly uniform, though they vary in intensity and character to some extent, from time to time and from place to place, sometimes assuming an epidemic form. they have been most carefully studied in italy, where obici and marchesini--an alienist and a psychologist working in conjunction--have analyzed the phenomena with remarkable insight and delicacy and much wealth of illustrative material.[ ] but exactly the same phenomena are everywhere found in english girls' schools, even of the most modern type, and in some of the large american women's colleges they have sometimes become so acute as to cause much anxiety.[ ] on the whole, however, it is probable that such manifestations are regarded more indulgently in girls' than in boys' schools, and in view of the fact that the manifestations of affection are normally more pronounced between girls than between boys, this seems reasonable. the head mistress of an english training college writes:-- "my own assumption on such, matters has been that affection does naturally belong to the body as well as the mind, and between two women is naturally and innocently expressed by, caresses. i have never therefore felt that i ought to warn any girl against the physical element in friendship, as such. the test i should probably suggest to them would be the same as one would use for any other relation--was the friendship helping life as a whole, making them keener, kinder, more industrious, etc., or was it hindering it?" passionate friendships, of a more or less unconsciously sexual character, are common even outside and beyond school-life. it frequently happens that a period during which a young woman falls in love at a distance with some young man of her acquaintance alternates with periods of intimate attachment to a friend of her own sex. no congenital inversion is usually involved. it generally happens, in the end, either that relationship with a man brings the normal impulse into permanent play, or the steadying of the emotions in the stress of practical life leads to a knowledge of the real nature of such feelings and a consequent distaste for them. in some cases, on the other hand, such relationships, especially when formed after school-life, are fairly permanent. an energetic emotional woman, not usually beautiful, will perhaps be devoted to another who may have found some rather specialized lifework, but who may be very unpractical, and who has probably a very feeble sexual instinct; she is grateful for her friends's devotion, but may not actively reciprocate it. the actual specific sexual phenomena generated in such cases vary very greatly. the emotion may be latent or unconscious; it may be all on one side; it is often more or less recognized and shared. such cases are on the borderland of true sexual inversion, but they cannot be included within its region. sex in these relationships is scarcely the essential and fundamental element; it is more or less subordinate and parasitic. there is often a semblance of a sex-relationship from the marked divergence of the friends in physical and psychic qualities, and the nervous development of one or both the friends is sometimes slightly abnormal. we have to regard such relationships as hypertrophied friendships, the hypertrophy being due to unemployed sexual instinct. the following narrative is written by a lady who holds a responsible educational position: "a friend of mine, two or three years older than myself (i am ), and living in the same house with me, has been passing through a very unhappy time. long nervous strain connected with this has made her sleep badly, and apt to wake in terrible depression about o'clock in the morning. in the early days of our friendship, about eight months ago, she occasionally at these times took refuge with me. after a while i insisted on her consulting a doctor, who advised her, amongst other things, not to sleep alone. thenceforth for two or three months i induced her to share my room. after a week or two she generally shared my bed for a time at the beginning of the night, as it seemed to help her to sleep. "before this, about the second or third time that she came to me in the early morning, i had been surprised and a little frightened to find how pleasant it was to me to have her, and how reluctant i was that she should go away. when we began regularly to sleep in the same room, the physical part of our affection grew rapidly very strong. it is natural for me generally to caress my friends, but i soon could not be alone in a room with this one without wanting to have my arms round her. it would have been intolerable to me to live with her without being able to touch her. we did not discuss it, but it was evident that the desire was even stronger in her than in me. "for some time it satisfied us fully to be in bed together. one night, however, when she had had a cruelly trying day and i wanted to find all ways of comforting her, i bared by breast for her to lie on. afterward it was clear that neither of us could be satisfied without this. she groped for it like a child, and it excited me much more to feel that than to uncover my breast and arms altogether at once. "much of this excitement was sexually localized, and i was haunted in the daytime by images of holding this woman in my arms. i noticed also that my inclination to caress my other women friends was not diminished, but increased. all this disturbed me a good deal. the homosexual practices of which i had read lately struck me as merely nasty; i could not imagines myself tempted to them;--at the same time the whole matter was new to me, for i had never wanted anyone even to share my bed before; i had read that sex instinct was mysterious and unexpected, and i felt that i did not know what might come next. "i knew only one elder person whom (for wide-mindedness, gentleness, and saintliness) i could bear to consult; and to this person, a middle-aged man, i wrote for advice. he replied by a long letter of the most tender warning. i had better not weaken my influence with my friend, he wrote, by going back suddenly or without her consent, but i was to be very wary of going further; there was fire about. i tried to put this into practice by restraining myself constantly in our intercourse, by refraining from caressing her, for instance, when i wanted to caress her and knew that she wanted it. the only result seemed to be that the desire was more tormenting and constant than ever. "if at this point my friend had happened to die or go away, and the incident had come to an end, i should probably have been left nervous in these matters for years to come. i should have faltered in the opinion i had always held, that bodily expressions of love between women were as innocent as they were natural; and i might have come nearer than i ever expected to the doctrine of those convent teachers who forbid their girls to embrace one another for fear an incalculable instinct should carry them to the edge of an abyss. "as it was, after a while i said a little on the subject to my friend herself. i had been inclined to think that she might share my anxiety, but she did not share it at all. she said to me that she did not like these thoughts, that she cared for me more than she had ever done for any person except one (now causing most of her unhappiness), and wanted me in all possible ways, and that it would make her sad to feel that i was trying not to want her in one way because i thought it was wrong. "on my part, i knew very well how much she did need and want me. i knew that in relations with others she was spending the greatest effort in following a course that i urged on her, and was doing what i thought right in spite of the most painful pressure on her to do wrong; and that she needed all the support and comfort i could give her. it seemed to me, after our conversation, that the right path for me lay not in giving way to fears and scruples, but in giving my friend straightforwardly all the love i could and all the kinds of love i could. i decided to keep my eyes open for danger, but meanwhile to go on. "we were living alone together at the time, and thenceforward we did as we liked doing. as soon as we could, we moved to a bed where we could sleep together all night. in the day when no one was there we sat as close together as we wished, which was very close. we kissed each other as often as we wanted to kiss each other, which was very many times a day. "the results of this, so far as i can see, have been wholly good. we love each other warmly, but no temptation to nastiness has ever come, and i cannot see now that it is at all likely to come. with custom, the localized physical excitement has practically disappeared, and i am no longer obsessed by imagined embraces. the spiritual side of our affection seems to have grown steadily stronger and more profitable since the physical side has, been allowed to take its natural place." a class in which homosexuality, while fairly distinct, is only slightly marked, is formed by the women to whom the actively inverted woman is most attracted. these women differ, in the first place, from the normal, or average, woman in that they are not repelled or disgusted by lover-like advances from persons of their own sex. they are not usually attractive to the average man, though to this rule there are many exceptions. their faces may be plain or ill-made, but not seldom they possess good figures: a point which is apt to carry more weight with the inverted woman than beauty of face. their sexual impulses are seldom well marked, but they are of strongly affectionate nature. on the whole, they are women who are not very robust and well developed, physically or nervously, and who are not well adapted for child-bearing, but who still possess many excellent qualities, and they are always womanly. one may, perhaps, say that they are the pick of the women whom the average man would pass by. no doubt, this is often the reason why they are open to homosexual advances, but i do not think it is the sole reason. so far as they may be said to constitute a class, they seem to possess a genuine, though not precisely sexual, preference for women over men, and it is this coldness, rather than lack of charm, which often renders men rather indifferent to them. the actively inverted woman usually differs from the woman of the class just mentioned in one fairly essential character: a more or less distinct trace of masculinity. she may not be, and frequently is not, what would be called a "mannish" woman, for the latter may imitate men on grounds of taste and habit unconnected with sexual perversion, while in the inverted woman the masculine traits are part of an organic instinct which she by no means always wishes to accentuate. the inverted woman's masculine element may, in the least degree, consist only in the fact that she makes advances to the woman to whom she is attracted and treats all men in a cool, direct manner, which may not exclude comradeship, but which excludes every sexual relationship, whether of passion or merely of coquetry. usually the inverted woman feels absolute indifference toward men, and not seldom repulsion. and this feeling, as a rule, is instinctively reciprocated by men. at the same time bisexual women are at least as common as bisexual men. history xxxiv.--miss s., aged , living in a city of the united states, a business woman of fine intelligence, prominent in professional and literary circles. her general health is good, but she belongs to a family in which there is a marked neuropathic element. she is of rather phlegmatic temperament, well poised, always perfectly calm and self-possessed, rather retiring in disposition, with gentle, dignified bearing. she says she cannot care for men, but that all her life has been "glorified and made beautiful by friendship with women," whom she loves as a man loves women. her character is, however, well disciplined, and her friends are not aware of the nature of her affections. she tries not to give all her love to one person, and endeavors (as she herself expresses it) to use this "gift of loving" as a stepping-stone to high mental and spiritual attainments. she is described by one who has known her for several years as "having a high nature, and instincts unerringly toward high things." history xxxv.--miss b., artist, of german ancestry on the paternal side. among her brothers and sisters, one is of neurotic temperament and another is inverted. she is herself healthy. she has no repugnance to men, and would even like to try marriage, if the union were not permanent, but she has seldom felt any sexual attraction to a man. in one exceptional instance, early in life, realizing that she was not adapted for heterosexual relationships, she broke off the engagement she had formed. much later in life, she formed a more permanent relationship with a man of congenial tastes. she is attracted to women of various kinds, though she recognizes that there are some women to whom only men are attracted. many years since she had a friend to whom she was very strongly attached, but the physical manifestations do not appear to have become pronounced. after that her thoughts were much occupied by several women to whom she made advances, which were not encouraged to pass beyond ordinary friendship. in one case, however, she formed an intimate relationship with a girl somewhat younger than herself, and a very feminine personality, who accepted miss b.'s ardent love with pleasure, but in a passive manner, and did not consider that the relationship would stand in the way of her marrying, though she would on no account tell her husband. the relationship for the first time aroused miss b.'s latent sexual emotions. she found sexual satisfaction in kissing and embracing her friend's body, but there appeared to be no orgasm. the relationship made a considerable change in her, and rendered her radiant and happy. in her behavior toward men miss b. reveals no sexual shyness. men are not usually attracted to her. there is nothing striking in her appearance; her person and manners, though careless, are not conspicuously man-like. she is fond of exercise and smokes a good deal. history xxxvi.--miss h., aged . among her paternal relatives there is a tendency to eccentricity and to nervous disease. her grandfather drank; her father was eccentric and hypochondriacal, and suffered from obsessions. her mother and mother's relatives are entirely healthy, and normal in disposition. at the age of she liked to see the nates of a little girl who lived near. when she was about , the nurse-maid, sitting in the fields, used to play with her own parts, and told her to do likewise, saying it would make a baby come; she occasionally touched herself in consequence, but without producing any effect of any kind. when she was about she used to see various nurse-maids uncover their children's sexual parts and show them to each other. she used to think about this when alone, and also about whipping. she never cared to play with dolls, and in her games always took the part of a man. her first rudimentary sex-feelings appeared at the age of or , and were associated with dreams of whipping and being whipped, which were most vivid between the ages of and , when they died away on the appearance of affection for girls. she menstruated at . her earliest affection, at the age of , was for a schoolfellow, a graceful, coquettish girl with long golden hair and blue eyes. her affection displayed itself in performing all sorts of small services for this girl, in constantly thinking about her, and in feeling deliciously grateful for the smallest return. at the age of she had a similar passion for a girl cousin; she used to look forward with ecstasy to her visits, and especially to the rare occasions when the cousin slept with her; her excitement was then so great that she could not sleep, but there was no conscious sexual excitement. at the age of or she fell in love with another cousin; her experiences with this girl were full of delicious sensations; if the cousin only touched her neck, a thrill went through her body which she now regards as sexual. again, at , she had an overwhelming, passionate fascination for a schoolfellow, a pretty, commonplace girl, whom she idealized and etherealized to an extravagant extent. this passion was so violent that her health was, to some extent, impaired; but it was purely unselfish, and there was nothing sexual in it. on leaving school at the age of she met a girl of about the same age as herself, very womanly, but not much attracted to men. this girl became very much attached to her, and sought to gain her love. after some time miss h. was attracted by this love, partly from the sense of power it gave her, and an intimate relation grew up. this relation became vaguely physical, miss h. taking the initiative, but her friend desiring such relations and taking extreme pleasure in them; they used to touch and kiss each other tenderly (especially on the _mons veneris_), with equal ardor. they each experienced a strong pleasurable feeling in doing this, and sexual erethism, but no orgasm, and it does not appear that this ever occurred. their general behavior to each other was that of lovers, but they endeavored, as far as possible, to hide this fact from the world. this relation lasted for several years, and would have continued, had not miss h.'s friend, from religious and moral scruples, put an end to the physical relationship. miss h. had been very well and happy during this relationship; the interference with it seems to have exerted a disturbing influence, and also to have aroused her sexual desires, though she was still scarcely conscious of their real nature. soon afterward another girl of exceedingly voluptuous type made love to miss h., to which the latter yielded, giving way to her feelings as well as to her love of domination. she was afterward ashamed of this episode, though the physical element in it had remained vague and indefinite. her remorse was so great that when her friend, repenting her scruples, implored her to let their relationship be on the same footing as of old, miss h., in her return, resisted every effort to restore the physical relation. she kept to this resolution for some years, and sought to divert her thoughts into intellectual channels. when she again formed an intimate relationship it was with a congenial friend, and lasted for several years. she has never masturbated. occasionally, but very rarely, she has had dreams of riding accompanied by pleasurable sexual emotions (she cannot recall any actual experience to suggest this, though fond of riding). she has never had any kind of sexual dreams about a man; of late years she has occasionally had erotic dreams about women. her feeling toward men is friendly, but she has never had sexual attraction toward a man. she likes them as good comrades, as men like each other. she enjoys the society of men on account of their intellectual attraction. she is herself very active in social and intellectual work. her feeling toward marriage has always been one of repugnance. she can, however, imagine a man whom she could love or marry. she is attracted to womanly women, sincere, reserved, pure, but courageous in character. she is not attracted to intellectual women, but at the same time cannot endure silly women. the physical qualities that attract her most are not so much beauty of face as a graceful, but not too slender, body with beautiful curves. the women she is drawn to are usually somewhat younger than herself. women are much attracted to her, and without any effort on her part. she likes to take the active part and protecting rôle with them. she is herself energetic in character, and with a somewhat neurotic temperament. she finds sexual satisfaction in tenderly touching, caressing, and kissing the loved one's body. (there is no _cunnilinctus_, which she regards with abhorrence.) she feels more tenderness than passion. there is a high degree of sexual erethism when kissing, but orgasm is rare and is produced by lying on the friend or by the friend lying on her, without any special contact. she likes being herself kissed, but not so much as taking the active part. she believes that homosexual love is morally right when it is really part of a person's nature, and provided that the nature of homosexual love is always made plain to the object of such affection. she does not approve of it as a mere makeshift, or expression of sensuality, in normal women. she has sometimes resisted the sexual expression of her feelings, once for years at a time, but always in vain. the effect on her of loving women is distinctly good, she asserts, both spiritually and physically, while repression leads to morbidity and hysteria. she has suffered much from neurasthenia at various periods, but under appropriate treatment it has slowly diminished. the inverted instinct is too deeply rooted to eradicate, but it is well under control. history xxxvii.--miss m., the daughter of english parents (both musicians), who were both of what is described as "intense" temperament, and there is a neurotic element in the family, though no history of insanity or alcoholism, and she is herself free from nervous disease. at birth she was very small. in a portrait taken at the age of the nose, mouth, and ears are abnormally large, and she wears a little boy's hat. as a child she did not care for dolls or for pretty clothes, and often wondered why other children found so much pleasure in them. "as far back as my memory goes," she writes, "i cannot recall a time when i was not different from other children. i felt bored when other little girls came to play with me, though i was never rough or boisterous in my sports." sewing was distasteful to her. still she cared little more for the pastimes of boys, and found her favorite amusement in reading, especially adventures and fairy-tales. she was always quiet, timid, and self-conscious. the instinct first made its appearance in the latter part of her eighth or the first part of her ninth year. she was strongly attracted by the face of a teacher who used to appear at a side-window on the second floor of the school-building and ring a bell to summon the children to their classes. the teacher's face seemed very beautiful, but sad, and she thought about her continually, though not coming in personal contact with, her. a year later this teacher was married and left the school, and the impression gradually faded away. "there was no consciousness of sex at this time," she wrote; "no knowledge of sexual matters or practices, and the feelings evoked were feelings of pity and compassion and tenderness for a person who seemed to be very sad and very much depressed. it is this quality or combination of qualities which has always made the appeal in my own case. i may go on for years in comparative peace, when something may happen, in spite of my busy practical life, to call it all out." the next feelings were experienced when, she was about years of age. a young lady came to visit a next-door neighbor, and made so profound an impression on the child that she was ridiculed by her playmates for preferring to sit in a dark corner on the lawn--where she might watch this young lady--rather than to play games. being a sensitive child, after this experience she was careful not to reveal her feelings to anyone. she felt instinctively that in this she was different from others. her sense of beauty developed early, but there was always an indefinable feeling of melancholy associated with it. the twilight, a dark night when the stars shone brightly; these had a very depressing effect upon her, but possessed a strong attraction nevertheless, and pictures appealed to her. at the age of she fell in love with a schoolmate, two years older than herself, who was absorbed in the boys and never suspected this affection; she wept bitterly because they could not be confirmed at the same time, but feared to appear undignified and sentimental by revealing her feelings. the face of this friend reminded her of one of dolce's madonnas which she loved. later on, at the age of , she loved another friend very dearly and devoted herself to her care. there was a tinge of masculinity among the women of this friend's family, but it is not clear if she can be termed inverted. this was the happiest period of miss m.'s life. upon the death of this friend, who had long been in ill health, eight years afterward, she resolved never to let her heart go out to anyone again. specific physical gratification plays no part in these relationships. the physical sexual feelings began to assert themselves at puberty, but not in association with her ideal emotions. "in that connection," she writes, "i would have considered such things a sacrilege. i fought them and in a measure successfully. the practice of self-indulgence which might have become a daily habit was only occasional. her image evoked at such times drove away such feelings, for which i felt a repugnance, much preferring the romantic ideal feelings. in this way, quite unconscious of the fact that i was at all different from, any other person, i contrived to train myself to suppress or at least to dominate my physical sensations when they arose. that is the reason why friendship and love have always seemed such holy and beautiful things to me. i have never connected the two sets of feelings. i think i am as strongly sexed as anyone, but i am able to hold a friend in my arms and experience deep comfort and peace without having even a hint of physical sexual feeling. sexual expression may be quite necessary at certain times and right under certain conditions, but i am convinced that free expression of affection along sentimental channels will do much to minimize the necessity for it along specifically sexual channels. i have gone three months without the physical outlet. the only time i was ever on the verge of nervous prostration was after having suppressed the instinct for ten months. the other feelings, which i do not consider as sexual feelings at all, so fill my life in every department--love, literature, poetry, music, professional and philanthropic activities--that i am able to let the physical take care of itself. when the physical sensations come, it is usually when i am not thinking of a loved one at all. i could dissipate them by raising my thought to that spiritual friendship. i do not know if this was right and wise. i know it is what occurred. it seems a good thing to practise some sort of inhibition of the centers and acquire this kind of domination. one bad result, however, was that i suffered much at times from the physical sensations, and felt horribly depressed and wretched whenever they seemed to get the better of me." "i have been able," she writes, "successfully to master the desire for a more perfect and complete expression of my feelings, and i have done so without serious detriment to my health." "i love few people," she writes again, "but in these instances when i have permitted my heart to go out to a friend i have always experienced most exalted feelings, and have been made better by them morally, mentally, and spiritually. love is with me a religion." with regard to her attitude toward the other sex, she writes: "i have never felt a dislike for men, but have good comrades among them. during my childhood i associated with both girls and boys, enjoying them all, but wondering why the girls cared to flirt with boys. later in life i have had other friendships with men, some of whom cared for me, much to my regret, for, naturally, i do not care to marry." she is a musician, and herself attributes her nature in part to artistic temperament. she is of good intelligence, and shows remarkable talent for various branches of physical science. she is about feet inches in height, and her features are rather large. the pelvic measurements are normal, and the external sexual organs are fairly normal in most respects, though somewhat small. at a period ten years subsequent to the date of this history, further examination, under anesthetics, by a gynecologist, showed no traces of ovary on one side. the general conformation of the body is feminine. but with arms, palms up, extended in front of her with inner sides of hands touching, she cannot bring the inner sides of forearms together, as nearly every woman can, showing that the feminine angle of arm is lost. she is left-handed and shows a better development throughout on the left side. she is quiet and dignified, but has many boyish tricks of manner and speech which seem to be instinctive; she tries to watch herself continually, however, in order to avoid them, affecting feminine ways and feminine interests, but always being conscious of an effort in so doing. miss m. can see nothing wrong in her feelings; and, until, at the age of , she came across the translation of krafft-ebing's book, she had no idea "that feelings like mine were 'under the ban of society' as he puts it, or were considered unnatural and depraved." she would like to help to bring light on the subject and to lift the shadow from other lives. "i emphatically protest," she says, "against the uselessness and the inhumanity of attempts to 'cure' inverts. i am quite sure they have perfect right to live in freedom and happiness as long as they live unselfish lives. one must bear in mind that it is the soul that needs to be satisfied, and not merely the senses." history xxxviii.--miss v., aged . throughout early life up to adult age she was a mystery to herself, and morbidly conscious of some fundamental difference between herself and other people. there was no one she could speak to about this peculiarity. in the effort to conquer it, or to ignore it, she became a hard student and has attained success in the profession she adopted. a few years ago she came across a book on sexual inversion which proved to be a complete revelation to her of her own nature, and, by showing her that she was not an anomaly to be regarded with repulsion, brought her comfort and peace. she is willing that her experiences should be published for the sake of other women who may be suffering as in the past she has suffered. "i am a teacher in a college for women. i am years old and of medium size. up to the age of i looked much younger, and since older, than my age. until i had a strikingly child-like appearance. my physique has nothing masculine in it that i am aware of; but i am conscious that my walk is mannish, and i have very frequently been told that i do things--such as sewing,--'just like a man.' my voice is quite low but not coarse. i dislike household work, but am fond of sports, gardening, etc. when so young that i cannot remember it, i learned to whistle, a practice at which i am still expert. when a young girl, i learned to smoke, and should still enjoy it. "several men have been good friends of mine, but very few suitors. i scarcely ever feel at ease with a man; but women i understand and can nearly always make my friends. "i am of scotch-irish descent. my father's family were respectable, prosperous, religious people; my mother's family only semi-respectable, hard livers, shrewd, but not intelligent, industrious and money-getting, but fond of drinking and carousing. there were many illegitimates among them. both grandmothers, though of little education, were unusual women. of my four maternal uncles, three drank heavily. "when , my mother gave birth to me, the youngest of children. of those who grew to adult years, seem quite normal sexually; is exceedingly erratic, entirely unprincipled, has been a thief and a forger, is a probable bigamist, and has betrayed several respectable women. aside from his having inordinate desire, i know of no sexual abnormality. another brother, married and a father, as a boy was much given to infatuations for men. i fancy this never went beyond infatuation and of late years has not been noticeable. a third brother, single, though much courted by women on account of his good looks and personal charm, is wholly unresponsive, has no gallantry, nor was ever, to my knowledge, a suitor. he is, however, fond of the society of women, especially those older than he. he has a somewhat effeminate voice and walk. though he has begun of late years to smoke and drink a little, these habits sit rather oddly upon him. when a child, one of his favorite make-believe games was to pretend that he was a famous woman singer. at school he was always found hanging around the older girls. "as a child i loved to stay in the fields, refused to wear a sunbonnet, used to pretend i was a boy, climbed trees, and played ball. i liked to play with dolls, but i did not fondle them, or even make them dresses. when my hair was clipped, i was delighted and made everyone call me 'john.' i used to like to wear a man's broad-brimmed hat and make corn-cob pipes. i was very fond of my father and tried to imitate him as much as possible. where animals were concerned, i was entirely fearless. "i think i was not a sexually precocious child, though i seem to have always known in a dim way that there were two sexes. very early i had a sense of shame at having my body exposed; i remember on one occasion i could not be persuaded to undress before a young girl visitor. at that time i must have been about . when i was a neighbor who had often petted me took me on his lap and clasped my hand around his penis. though he was interrupted in a moment, this made a lasting impression on me. i had no physical sensation nor did i have any conception of the significance of the act. yet i had a slight feeling of repulsion, and i must have dimly felt that it was wrong, for i did not tell my mother. i was not accustomed to confide in her, for, though truthful, i was secretive. "at the age of i commenced to attend a district school. i remember that on my first day i was greatly attracted by a little girl who wore a bright-red dress. "my first definite knowledge of sex came in this way: i was attending sabbath school and had become ambitious to read the bible through. i had gotten as far as the account of the birth of esau and jacob, which aroused my curiosity. so i asked my mother the meaning of some word in the passage. she seemed embarrassed and evaded my question. this attitude stimulated my curiosity further, and i re-read the chapter until i understood it pretty well. later i was further enlightened by girl playmates. i fancy i enjoyed listening to their talk and repeating what i knew on account of the mystery and secrecy with which sex subjects are surrounded rather than any sensual delight. "i cannot recall any act of mine growing directly from sexual feeling until i was years old. several other little girls and myself two or three times exposed private parts of our bodies to each other. in one instance, at least, i was the instigator. this act gave me some pleasure, though no distinct physical sensation. one incident i recall that happened when i was about . a girl cousin and myself had been playing 'house' together. i do not recall what immediately led to it, but we began to address each other as boys and tried to urinate through long tubes of some sort. i also recall feeling a vague interest in this process in animals, and observing them closely in the act. "from this time until i was about i grew ruder, more boisterous and uncontrollable. prior to this i had been a quite tractable child. when i became interested in a boy in my grade at school, and tried to attract him, but failed. once at a children's party where we were playing kissing games i tried to get him to kiss me, but he was unresponsive. i do not recall bothering myself about him after that. a year later i had a boy chum about whom my schoolmaster teased me. i thought this ridiculous. at the age of i menstruated, a fact that caused me shame and anger. gradually i grew to feel myself peculiar, why, i cannot explain. i did not seem to myself to be like other girls of my acquaintance. i adopted, as a defense, a brusque and defiant air. i spent a good deal of time playing alone in our backyard, where i made a pair of stilts, practised rope-walking, and such things. at school i felt i was not liked by the nicer girls and began to associate with girls whom i now believe were immoral, but whom i then supposed did nothing worse than talk in an obscene manner. i copied their conversation and grew more reckless and uncontrollable. the principal of the high school i was attending, i learned afterward, said i was the hardest pupil to control she had ever had. about this time i read a book where a girl was represented as saying she had a 'boy's soul in a girl's body.' the applicability of this to myself struck me at once, and i read the sentence to my mother who disgusted me by appearing shocked. "during this period i began to fall in love,--a practice which clung to me until i was nearly years old. i recall various older women with whom i became much enamored, and one man. of these there was only one with whom i became acquainted well enough to show any affection; another was a teacher, and another was a young married woman at whom i used to gaze ardently during an entire church service. toward all my women teachers i had a somewhat sentimental attitude. they stimulated me, while the men gave me a wholly impersonal feeling. this abnormal sentimentality may have been caused, or at least was increased, by the reading of novels, some of a highly voluptuous nature. i began to read novels at , and from to i absorbed a great many undesirable ones. this lead to my picturing my future with a lover, fancying myself in romantic scenes and being caressed and embraced. i had always supposed i should marry. when about i decided that when i grew up i would marry a certain young man who used to come to our house. several years later he married, to my real disappointment. i had no affection for him, but merely thought he would make a desirable husband. "during my unhappy adolescence i heard that a former playmate was going to visit at my home. i began to look forward to the visit with much eagerness and at her arrival was much excited. i wished to stay alone with her and to caress her, and when we slept together i pressed my body against her in a sensual manner, which act she permitted, but without passion. i was greatly excited and could scarcely sleep. this was the first time i had acted in such a way, and after she left i felt shame and dislike for her. at future meetings there was never the least sensuality; we never referred to the first visit and are still friends, though not intimate. "a diary which i kept during my fourteenth and fifteenth years is filled with romantic sentiments and endearing terms applied successively to three girls of my own age. i had but a speaking acquaintance with them, but i was strongly infatuated with all. one boy was also the object of adoration. "during my thirteenth year i became for a time very religious and devoted to religious exercises. this passed and by my fourteenth year i had become heretical, but was still keenly sensitive to religious influences. "when barely i slept one night with a woman of low morals. she acted toward me in a sensual manner and aroused my sexual feelings. i felt at the time that this was a sin, but i was carried away by passion. afterward i hated this woman and despised myself. "i then went away to a co-educational boarding school. here for the first time i became happy. a girl of my own age, of fine character and noticeable refinement, fell in love with me and caused me to reciprocate. on retrospection i believe this to have been a genuine and beautiful love on both sides. after a few months, however, our relation, at my initiative and against my friend's will, became a physical one. we expressed our affection by mutual caresses, close embraces and lying on each other's bodies. i sometimes touched her sexual organs sensually. all this contact gave me exquisite thrills. after three years we had a misunderstanding and separated. i was greatly grieved and troubled for many years, and came to regret greatly the physical relationship that had existed between us. my friend at length fell in love and married. i had several other slighter infatuations for women, was courted by several men to whom i remained cold and bored except in one instance, where i was somewhat touched, and finally found a lasting friendship with a woman who had fallen deeply in love with me in her school days and had never been able to care for any one else. she is a woman of considerable literary talent and of good general ability and high ideals. she is usually much liked by men. her love for me is the most real thing in the world for me, and seems the most permanent. at first my feeling for her was almost purely physical, although there were no sexual relations. i hated this feeling and have succeeded in overcoming it pretty largely. at times after long separations we have embraced with great passion, at least on my part. this has always had a bad physical effect on me. at present, however, it very rarely occurs. we both consider sexual feelings degrading and deleterious to real love. whether at any time we have had complete physical satisfaction or gratification, i hardly know. i have experienced very keen physical pleasure, mingled with what i took to be great mental exaltation and quickening of the emotions. this condition was brought about by close contact with the body of my friend, usually by lying upon it. but if by 'gratification' it is meant that desire, having been completely satisfied, ceases temporarily, i think i have never had that experience. if i did, it was when i was about when i lived with a girl friend in intimate relations. of late years, at any rate, it has never happened to me, and an embrace, however close, always leaves me with a desire for a closer union, both physical and spiritual. so a few years since, i came to the conclusion that it was impossible to obtain physical satisfaction through the woman i loved. i came to this conclusion because of the bad physical effects of contact. my sexual organs became highly sensitive and inflamed and i suffered pain from the inflammation and resulting leucorrhea. should i allow myself to indulge in caresses this condition would return. my friend, fortunately, though very affectionate and demonstrative toward me, has very little sexual passion. the idea that our relationship is based upon it is very repugnant to her. i was at one time, a few years since, much discouraged and almost hopeless of being able to overcome my appetite, and i decided that we could not associate unless i succeeded. at present, with help, i have very largely succeeded in living with my friend on a basis of normal, though affectionate and tender, companionship. i have been helped more, and have learned more, through this companionship, than through anything else. the keen pleasure that i have felt when in responsive contact i never experienced in masturbation. so far as i remember it never took place till i was well along in my 'teens and was never an habitual practice, except the first summer i was separated from a school friend whom i loved. thoughts of her aroused feelings which i attempted to satisfy in this way, but the entire sensuality of the act soon led me to refrain and to see that that was not what i wanted. "a peculiar incident that might have some significance occurred to me about five years ago. i was sitting in a small room where a seminar was being conducted. the leader of the discussion was a man about , whom i looked up to on account of his attainments and respected as a man, though i knew him socially very slightly. i had lost a night's sleep from toothache and was feeling nervous. i was giving my entire attention to the subject in hand, when suddenly i felt a very strong physical compulsion toward that man. i did not know what i was going to do, but i felt on the point of losing all control of myself. i was afraid to leave, for fear the slightest movement would throw me into a panic. the attraction was entirely physical and like nothing i had felt before. and i had a strange feeling that its cause was in the man himself; that he was willing it; i was like a spectator. it was some moments before the assemblage broke up, when my 'possession' completely disappeared and never recurred. "regarding dreams, i will say that not until the past year or two have i been conscious of having clear-cut dreams with definite happenings. they seemed usually to leave only vague impressions, such as a feeling that i had been riding horseback, or trying to perform some hard task. sexual dreams i do not recall having had for several years, except that occasionally i am awakened by a feeling of uncomfortable sexual desire, which seems usually caused by a need to urinate. between the ages of and , approximately, i frequently, perhaps several times a month, would have vague sexual dreams. these always, i think, occurred when i happened to be sleeping with someone whom, in my dream, i would mistake for my intimate friend, and would awaken myself by embracing my bedfellow with sometimes a slight, sometimes considerable degree of passion. i have finally arrived at some understanding of my own temperament, and am no longer miserable and melancholy. i regret that i am not a man, because i could then have a home and children." history xxxix.--miss d., actively engaged in the practice of her profession, aged . heredity good, nervous system sound, general health on the whole satisfactory. development feminine but manner and movements somewhat boyish. menstruation scanty and painless. hips normal, nates small, sexual organs showing some approximation toward infantile type with large labia minora and probably small vagina. tendency to development of hair on body and especially lower limbs. the narrative is given in her own words:-- "ever since i can remember anything at all i could never think of myself as a girl and i was in perpetual trouble, with this as the real reason. when i was or years old i began to say to myself that, whatever anyone said, if i was not a boy at any rate i was not a girl. this has been my unchanged conviction all through my life. "when i was little, nothing ever made me doubt it, in spite of external appearance. i regarded the conformation of my body as a mysterious accident. i could not see why it should have anything to do with the matter. the things that really affected the question were my own likes and dislikes, and the fact that i was not allowed to follow them. i was to like the things which belonged to me as a girl,--frocks and toys and games which i did not like at all. i fancy i was more strongly 'boyish' than the ordinary little boy. when i could only crawl my absorbing interest was hammers and carpet-nails. before i could walk i begged to be put on horses' backs, so that i seem to have been born with the love of tools and animals which has never left me. "i did not play with dolls, though my little sister did. i was often reproached for not playing her games. i always chose boys' toys,--tops and guns and horses; i hated being kept indoors and was always longing to go out. by the time i was it seemed to me that everything i liked was called wrong for a girl. i left off telling my elders what i did like. they confused and wearied me by their talk of boys and girls. i did not believe them and could hardly imagine that they believed themselves. by the time i was or i used to wonder whether they were dupes, or liars, or hypocrites, or all three. i never believed or trusted a grown person in consequence. i led my younger brothers in everything. i was not at all a happy little child and often cried and was made irritable; i was so confused by the talk, about boys and girls. i was held up as an evil example to other little girls who virtuously despised me. "when i was about years old i went to a day school and began to have a better time. from to i practically shaped my own life. i learned very little at school, and openly hated it, but i read a great deal at home and got plenty of ideas. i lived, however, mainly out of doors whenever i could get out. i spent all my pocket money on tools, rabbits, pigeons and many other animals. i became an ardent pigeon-catcher, not to say thief, though i did not knowingly steal. "my brothers were as devoted to the animals as i was. the men were supposed to look after them, but we alone did so. we observed, mated, separated, and bred them with considerable skill. we had no language to express ourselves, but one of our own. we were absolutely innocent, and sweetly sympathetic with every beast. i don't think we ever connected their affairs with those of human beings, but as i do not remember the time when i did not know all about the actual facts of sex and reproduction, i presume i learned it all in that way, and life never had any surprises for me in that direction. though i saw many sights that a child should not have seen, while running about wild, i never gave them a thought; all animals great and small from rabbits to men had the same customs, all natural and right. my initiation here was, in my eyes, as nearly perfect as a child's should be. i never asked grown people questions. i thought all those in charge of me coarse and untruthful and i disliked all ugly things and suggestions. "every half-holiday i went out with the boys from my brothers' school. they always liked me to play with them, and, though not pleasant-tongued boys, were always civil and polite to me. i organized games and fortifications that they would never have imagined for themselves, led storming parties, and instituted some rather dangerous games of a fighting kind. i taught my brothers; to throw stones. sometimes i led adventures such as breaking into empty houses. i liked being out after dark. "in the winter i made and rigged boats and went sailing them, and i went rafting and pole-leaping. i became a very good jumper and climber, could go up a rope, bowl overhand, throw like a boy, and whistle three different ways. i collected beetles and butterflies and went shrimping and learned to fish. i had very little money to spend, but i picked things up and i made all traps, nets, cages, etc., myself. i learned from every working-man, i could get hold of the use of all ordinary carpenters' tools, and how to weld hot iron, pave, lay bricks and turf, and so on. "when i was about my parents got more mortified at my behavior and perpetually threatened me with a boarding-school. i was told for months how it would take the nonsense out of me--'shape me,' 'turn me into a young lady.' my going was finally announced to me as a punishment to me for being what i was. "certainly, the horror of going to this school and the cruel and unsympathetic way that i was sent there gave me a shock that i never got over. the only thing that reconciled me to going was my intense indignation with those who sent me. i appealed to be allowed to learn latin and boys' subjects, but was laughed at. "i was so helpless that i knew i could not run away without being caught, or i would have run away anywhere from home and school. i never cried or fretted, but burnt with anger and went like a trapped rabbit. "in no words can i describe the severity of the nervous shock, or the suffering of my first year at school. the school was noted for its severity and i heard that at one period the elder girls ran away so often that they wore a uniform dress. i knew two who had run away. the teachers in my time were ignorant, self-indulgent women who cared nothing for the girls or their education and made much money out of them. there was a suspicious reformatory atmosphere, and my money was taken from me and my letters read. "i was intensely shy. i hated the other girls. there were no refinements anywhere; i had no privacy in my room, which was always overcrowded; we had no hot water, no baths, improper food, and no education. we were not allowed to wear enough clean linen, and for five years i never felt clean. "i never had one moment to myself, was not allowed to read anything, had even not enough lesson books, was taught nothing to speak of except a little inferior music and drawing. i never got enough exercise, and was always tired and dull, and could not keep my digestion in order. my pride and self-respect were degraded in innumerable ways, i suffered agonies of disgust, and the whole thing was a dreary penal servitude. "i did not complain. i made friends with a few of the girls. some of the older girls were attracted to me. some talked of men and love affairs to me, but i was not greatly interested. no one ever spoke of any other matters of sex to me or in my hearing, but most of the girls were shy with me and i with them. "in about two years' time the teachers got to like me and thought me one of their nicest girls. i certainly influenced them and got them to allow the girls more privileges. "i lay great stress upon the physical privations and disgust that i felt during these years. the mental starvation was not quite so great because it was impossible for them to crush my mind as they did my body. that it all materially aided to arrest the development of my body i am certain. "it is difficult to estimate sexual influences of which as a child i was practically unaware. i certainly admired the liveliest and cleverest girls and made friends with them and disliked the common, lumpy, uneducated type that made two-thirds of my companions. the lively girls liked me, and i made several nice friends whom i have kept ever since. one girl of about took a violent liking for me and figuratively speaking licked the dust from my shoes. i would never take any notice of her. when i was nearly one of my teachers began to notice me and be very kind to me. she was twenty years older than i was. she seemed to pity my loneliness and took me out for walks and sketching, and encouraged me to talk and think. it was the first time in my life that anyone had ever sympathized with me or tried to understand me and it was a most beautiful thing to me. i felt like an orphan child who had suddenly acquired a mother, and through her i began to feel less antagonistic to grown people and to feel the first respect i had ever felt for what they said. she petted me into a state of comparative docility and made the other teachers like and trust me. my love for her was perfectly pure, and i thought of her's as simply maternal. she never roused the least feeling in me that i can think of as sexual. i liked her to touch me and she sometimes held me in her arms or let me sit on her lap. at bedtime she used to come and say good-night and kiss me upon the mouth. i think now that what she did was injudicious to a degree, and i wish i could believe it was as purely unselfish and kind as it seemed to me then. after i had left school i wrote to her and visited her during a few years. once she wrote to me that if i could give her employment she would come and live with me. once when she was ill with neurasthenia her friends asked me to go to the seaside with her, which i did. here she behaved in an extraordinary way, becoming violently jealous over me with another elderly friend of mine who was there. i could hardly believe my senses and was so astonished and disgusted that i never went near her again. she also accused me of not being 'loyal' to her; to this day i have no idea what she meant. she then wrote and asked me what was wrong between us, and i replied that after the words she had had with me my confidence in her was at an end. it gave me no particular pang as i had by this time outgrown the simple gratitude of my childish days and not replaced it by any stronger feeling. all my life i have had the profoundest repugnance to having any 'words' with other women. "i was much less interested in sex matters than other children of my age. i was altogether less precocious, though i knew more, i imagine, than other girls. nevertheless, by the time i was social matters had begun to interest me greatly. it is difficult to say how this happened, as i was forbidden all books and newspapers (except in my holidays when i had generally a reading orgy, though not the books i needed or wanted). i had abundant opportunities for speculation, but no materials for any profitable thinking. "dreaming was forced upon me. i dreamed fairy-tales by night and social dreams by day. in the nightdreams, sometimes in the day-dreams, i was always the prince or the pirate, rescuing beauty in distress, or killing the unworthy. i had one dream which i dreamed over and over again and enjoyed and still sometimes dream. in this i was always hunting and fighting, often in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom i admired, somewhere in the background, but i have never really seen her. sometimes i was a stowaway on board ship or an indian hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather some companion. my daythoughts were not about the women round about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were almost impersonal. i went on, at any rate, from myself to what i thought the really ideal and built up a very beautiful vision of solid human friendship in which there was everything that was strong and wholesome on either side, but very little of sex. to imagine this in its fullness i had to imagine all social, family, and educational conditions vastly different from anything i had come across. from this my thoughts ran largely on social matters. in whatever direction my thoughts ran i always surveyed them from the point of view of a boy. i was trying to wait patiently till i could escape from slavery and starvation, and trying to keep the open mind i have spoken of, though i never opened a book of poetry, or a novel, or a history, but i slipped naturally back into my non-girl's attitude and read it through my own eyes. all my surface-life was a sham, and only through books, which were few, did i ever see the world naturally. a consideration of social matters led me to feel very sorry for women, whom i regarded as made by a deliberate process of manufacture into the fools i thought they were, and by the same process that i myself was being made one. i felt more and more that men were to be envied and women pitied. i lay stress on this for it started in me a deliberate interest in women as women. i began to feel protective and kindly toward women and children and to excuse women from their responsibility for calamities such as my school-career. i never imagined that men required, or would have thanked me for, any sort of sympathy. but it came about in these ways, and without the least help that i can trace, that by the time i was years of age i was keenly interested in all kinds of questions: pity for downtrodden women, suffrage questions, marriage laws, questions of liberty, freedom of thought, care of the poor, views of nature and man and god. all these things filled my mind to the exclusion of individual men and women. as soon as i left school i made a headlong plunge into books where these things were treated; i had the answers to everything to find after a long period of enforced starvation. i had to work for my knowledge. no books or ideas came near me but what i went in search of. another thing that helped me to take an expansive view of life at this time was my intense love of nature. all birds and animals affected me by their beauty and grace, and i have always kept a profound sympathy with them as well as some subtle understanding which enables me to tame them, at times remarkably. i not only loved all other creatures, but i believed that men and women were the most beautiful things in the universe and i would rather look at them (unclothed) than on any other thing, as my greatest pleasure. i was prepared to like them because they were beautiful. when the time came for me to leave school i rather dreaded it, chiefly because i dreaded my life at home. i had a great longing at this time to run away and try my fortune anywhere; possibly if i had been stronger i might have done so. but i was in very poor health through the physical crushing i had had, and in very poor spirits through this and my mental repression. i still knew myself a prisoner and i was bitterly disappointed and ashamed at having no education. i afterward had myself taught arithmetic and other things. "the next period of my life which covered about six years was not less important to my development, and was a time of extreme misery to me. it found me, on leaving school, almost a child. this time between and should, i think, count as my proper period of puberty, which probably in most children occupies the end years of their school-life. "it was at this time that i began to make a good many friends of my own and to become aware of psychical and sexual attractions. i had never come across any theories on the subject, but i decided that i must belong to a third sex of some kind. i used to wonder if i was like the neuter bees! i knew physical and psychical sex feeling and yet i seemed to know it quite otherwise from other men and women. i asked myself if i could endure living a woman's life, bearing children and doing my duty by them. i asked myself what hiatus there could be between my bodily structure and my feelings, and also what was the meaning of the strong physical feelings which had me in their grip without choice of my own. [experience of physical sex sensations first began about in sleep; masturbation was accidentally discovered at the age of , abandoned at , and then at deliberately resumed as a method of purely physical relief.] these three things simply would not be reconciled and i said to myself that i must find a way of living in which there was as little sex of any kind as possible. there was something that i simply lacked; that i never doubted. curiously enough, i thought that the ultimate explanation might be that there were men's minds in women's bodies, but i was more concerned in finding a way of life than in asking riddles without answers. "i thought that one day when i had money and opportunity i would dress in men's clothes and go to another country, in order that i might be unhampered by sex considerations and conventions. i determined to live an honorable, upright, but simple life. "i had no idea at first that homosexual attractions in women existed; afterward observations on the lower animals put the idea into my head. i made no preparation in my mind for any sexual life, though i thought it would be a dreary business repressing my body all my days. "my relations with other women were entirely pure. my attitude toward my sexual physical feelings was one of reserve and repression, and i think the growing conviction of my radical deficiency somewhere, would have made intimate affection for anyone, with any demonstration in it, a kind of impropriety for which i had no taste. "however, between and other things happened to me. "during these few years i saw plenty of men and plenty of women. as regards the men i liked them very well, but i never thought the man would turn up with whom i should care to live. several men were very friendly with me and three in particular used to write me letters and give me much of their confidence. i invited two of them to visit at my house. all these men talked to me with freedom and even told me about their sexual ideas and doings. one asked me to believe that he was leading a good life; the other two owned that they were not. one discussed the question of homosexuality with me; he has never married. i liked one of them a good deal, being attracted by his softness and gentleness and almost feminine voice. it was hoped that i would take to him and he very cautiously made love to me. i allowed him to kiss me a few times and wrote him a few responsive letters, wondering what i liked in him. someone then commented on the acquaintance and said 'marriage,' and i woke up to the fact that i did not really want him at all. i think he found the friendship too insipid and was glad to be out of it. all these men were a trifle feminine in characteristics, and two played no games. i thought it odd that they should all express admiration for the very boyish qualities in me that other people disliked. a fourth man, something of the same type, told another friend that he always felt surprised at how freely he was able to talk to me, but that he never could feel that i was a woman. two of these were brilliantly clever men; two were artists. "at the same period, or earlier, i made a number of women friends, and of course saw more of them. i chose out some and some chose me; i think i attracted them as much as, or even more than, they attracted me. i do not quite remember if this was so, though i can say for certain that it was so at school. there were three or four bright, clever, young women whom i got to know then with whom i was great friends. we were interested in books, social theories, politics, art. sometimes i visited them or we went on exploring expeditions to many country places or towns. they all in the end either had love affairs or married. i know that in spite of all our free conversations they never talked to me as they did to each other; we were always a little shy with each other. but i got very fond of at least four of them. i admired them and when i was tired and worried i often thought how easily, if i had been a man, i could have married and settled down with one or the other. i used to think it would be delightful to have a woman to work for and take care of. my attraction to these women was very strong, but i don't think they knew it. i seldom even kissed them, but i should often have cheerfully given them a good hugging and kissing if i had thought it a right or proper thing to do. i never wanted them to kiss me half so much as i wanted to kiss them. in these years i felt this with every woman i admired. "occasionally, i experienced slight erections when close to other women. i am sure that no deliberate thought of mine caused them, and as i had them at other times too, when i was not expecting them, i think it may have been accidental. what i felt with my mind and what i felt with my body always at this time seemed apart. i cannot accurately describe the interest and attraction that women then were to me. i only know i never felt anything like it for men. all my feelings of desire to do kindnesses, to give presents, to be liked and respected and all such natural small matters, referred to women, not to men, and at this time, both openly and to myself, i said unhesitatingly that i liked women best. it must be remembered that at this time a dislike for men was being fostered in me by those who wanted me to marry, and this must have counted for more than i now remember. "as regards my physical sexual feelings, which were well established during these few years, i don't think i often indulged in any erotic imaginations worth estimating, but so far as i did at all, i always imagined myself as a man loving a woman. i cannot recall ever imagining the opposite, but i seldom imagined anything at all, and i suppose ultimate sex sensations know no sex. "but as time went on and my physical and psychical feelings met, at any rate in my own mind, i became fully aware of the meaning of love and even, of homosexual possibilities. "i should probably have thought more of this side of things except that during this time i was so worried by the difficulty of living in my home under the perpetual friction of comparison with other people. my life was a sham; i was an actor never off the boards. i had to play at being a something i was not front morning till night, and i had no cessation of the long fatigue i had had at school; in addition i had sex to deal with actively and consciously. "looking back on these twenty-four years of my life i only look back on a round of misery. the nervous strain was enormous and so was the moral strain. instead of a child i felt myself, whenever i desired to please anyone else, a performing monkey. my pleasures were stolen or i was snubbed for taking them. i was not taught and was called a fool. my hand was against everybody's. how it was that with my high spirits and vivid imagination i did not grow up a moral imbecile full of perverted instincts i do not know. i describe myself as a docile child, but i was full of temptations to be otherwise. there were times when i was silent before people, but if i had had a knife in my hand i could have stuck it into them. if it had been desired to make me a thoroughly perverted being i can imagine no better way than the attempt to mould me by force into a particular pattern of girl. "looking at my instincts in my first childhood and my mental confusion over myself, i do not believe the most sympathetic and scientific treatment would have turned me into an average girl, but i see no reason why proper physical conditions should not have induced a better physical development and that in its turn have led to tastes more approximate to those of the normal woman. that i do not even now desire to be a normal woman is not to the point. "instead of any such help, i suffered during the time that should have been puberty from a profound mental and physical shock which was extended over several years, and in addition i suffered from the outrage of every fine and wholesome feeling i had. these things by checking my physical development gave, i am perfectly convinced, a traumatic impetus to my general abnormality, and this was further kept up by demanding of me (at the dawn of my real sexual activity, and when still practically a child) an interest in men and marriage which i was no more capable of feeling than any ordinary boy or girl of . if you had taken a boy of and given him all my conditions, bound him hand and foot, when you became afraid of him petted him into docility, and then placed him in the world and, while urging normal sexuality upon him on the one hand, made him disgusted with it on the other, what would have been the probable result? "looking back, i can only say i think, the results in my own case were marvellously good, and that i was saved from worse by my own innocence and by the physical backwardness which nature, probably in mercy, bestowed upon me. "i find it difficult to sum up the way in which i affect other women and they me. i can only record my conviction that i do affect a large number, whether abnormally or not i don't know, but i attract them and it would be easy for some of them to become very fond of me if i gave them a chance. they are also, i am certain, more shy with me than they are with other women. "i find it difficult also to sum up their effect on me. i only know that some women attract me and some tempt me physically, and have done ever since i was about or . i know that psychically i have always been more interested in women than in men, but have not considered them the best companions or confidants. i feel protective towards them, never feel jealous of them, and hate having differences with them. and i feel always that i am not one of them. if there had been any period in my life when health, and temptation and money and opportunity had made homosexual relations easy i cannot say how i should have resisted. i think that i have never had any such relations simply because i have in a way been safeguarded from them. for a long time i thought i must do without all actual sexual relations and acted up to that. if i had thought any relations right and possible i think i should have striven for heterosexual experiences because of the respect that i had cultivated, indeed i think always had, for the normal and natural. if i had thought it right to indulge any sort of gratification which was within my reach i think i might probably have chosen the homosexual as being perhaps more satisfying and more convenient. i always wanted love and friendship first; later i should have been glad of something to satisfy my sex hunger too, but by that time i could have done without it, or i thought so." at a period rather later than that dealt with in this narrative, the subject of it became strongly attracted to a man who was of somewhat feminine and abnormal disposition. but on consideration she decided that it would not be wise to marry him. the commonest characteristic of the sexually inverted woman is a certain degree of masculinity or boyishness. as i have already pointed out, transvestism in either women or men by no means necessarily involves inversion. in the volume of _women adventurers_, edited by mrs. norman for the adventure series, there is no trace of inversion; in most of these cases, indeed, love for a man was precisely the motive for adopting male garments and manners. again, colley cibber's daughter, charlotte charke, a boyish and vivacious woman, who spent much of her life in men's clothes, and ultimately wrote a lively volume of memoirs, appears never to have been attracted to women, though women were often attracted to her, believing her to be a man; it is, indeed, noteworthy that women seem, with special frequency, to fall in love with disguised persons of their own sex.[ ] there is, however, a very pronounced tendency among sexually inverted women to adopt male attire when practicable. in such cases male garments are not usually regarded as desirable chiefly on account of practical convenience, nor even in order to make an impression on other women, but because the wearer feels more at home in them. thus, moll mentions the case of a young governess of who, while still unconscious of her sexual perversion, used to find pleasure, when everyone was out of the house, in putting on the clothes of a youth belonging to the family. cases have been recorded of inverted women who spent the greater part of their lives in men's clothing and been generally regarded as men. i may cite the case of lucy ann slater, _alias_ the rev. joseph lobdell, recorded by wise (_alienist and neurologist_, ). she was masculine in character, features, and attire. in early life she married and had a child, but had no affection for her husband, who eventually left her. as usual in such cases, her masculine habits appeared in early childhood. she was expert with the rifle, lived the life of a trapper and hunter among the indians, and was known as the "female hunter of long eddy." she published a book regarding those experiences. i have not been able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. she regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her husband. the affection was strong and emotional, and, of course, without deception. it was interrupted by her recognition and imprisonment as a vagabond, but on the petition of her "wife" she was released. "i may be a woman in one sense," she said, "but i have peculiar organs which make me more a man than a woman." she alluded to an enlarged clitoris which she could erect, she said, as a turtle protrudes its head, but there was no question of its use in coitus. she was ultimately brought to the asylum with paroxysmal attacks of exaltation and erotomania (without self-abuse apparently) and corresponding periods of depression, and she died with progressive dementia. i may also mention the case (briefly recorded in the _lancet_, february , ) of a person called john coulter, who was employed for twelve years as a laborer by the belfast harbor commissioners. when death resulted from injuries caused in falling down stairs, it was found that this person was a woman. she was fifty years of age, and had apparently spent the greater part of her life as a man. when employed in early life as a manservant on a farm, she had married her mistress's daughter. the pair were married for twenty-nine years, but during the last six years lived apart, owing to the "husband's" dissipated habits. no one ever suspected her sex. she was of masculine appearance and good muscular development. the "wife" took charge of the body and buried it. a more recent case of the same kind is that of "murray hall," who died in new york in . her real name was mary anderson, and she was born at govan, in scotland. early left an orphan, on the death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to edinburgh, working as a man. her secret was discovered during an illness, and she finally went to america, where she lived as a man for thirty years, making money, and becoming somewhat notorious as a tammany politician, a rather riotous "man about town." the secret was not discovered till her death, when it was a complete revelation, even to her adopted daughter. she married twice; the first marriage ended in separation, but the second marriage seemed to have been happy, for it lasted twenty years, when the "wife" died. she associated much with pretty girls, and was very jealous of them. she seems to have been slight and not very masculine in general build, with a squeaky voice, but her ways, attitude, and habits were all essentially masculine. she associated with politicians, drank somewhat to excess, though not heavily, swore a great deal, smoked and chewed tobacco, sang ribald songs; could run, dance, and fight like a man, and had divested herself of every trace of feminine daintiness. she wore clothes that were always rather too large in order to hide her form, baggy trousers, and an overcoat even in summer. she is said to have died of cancer of the breast. (i quote from an account, which appears to be reliable, contained in the _weekly scotsman_, february , .) another case, described in the london papers, is that of catharine coome, who for forty years successfully personated a man and adopted masculine habits generally. she married a lady's maid, with whom she lived for fourteen years. having latterly adopted a life of fraud, her case gained publicity as that of the "man-woman." in the death on board ship was recorded of miss caroline hall, of boston, a water-color painter who had long resided in milan. three years previously she discarded female dress and lived as "husband" to a young italian lady, also an artist, whom she had already known for seven years. she called herself "mr. hall" and appeared to be a thoroughly normal young man, able to shoot with a rifle and fond of manly sports. the officers of the ship stated that she smoked and drank heartily, joked with the other male passengers, and was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone. death was due to advanced tuberculosis of the lungs, hastened by excessive drinking and smoking. ellen glenn, _alias_ ellis glenn, a notorious swindler, who came prominently before the public in chicago during , was another "man-woman," of large and masculine type. she preferred to dress as a man and had many love escapades with women. "she can fiddle as well as anyone in the state," said a man who knew her, "can box like a pugilist, and can dance and play cards." in seville, a few years ago, an elderly policeman, who had been in attendance on successive governors of that city for thirty years, was badly injured in a street accident. he was taken to the hospital and the doctor there discovered that the "policeman" was a woman. she went by the name of fernando mackenzie and during the whole of her long service no suspicion whatever was aroused as to her sex. she was french by birth, born in paris in , but her father was english and her mother spanish. she assumed her male disguise when she was a girl and served her time in the french army, then emigrated to spain, at the age of , and contrived to enter the madrid police force disguised as a man. she married there and pretended that her wife's child was her own son. she removed to seville, still serving as a policeman, and was engaged there as cook and orderly at the governor's palace. she served seven successive governors. in consequence of the discovery of her sex she has been discharged from the police without the pension due to her; her wife had died two years previously, and "fernando" spent all she possessed on the woman's funeral. mackenzie had a soft voice, a refined face with delicate features, and was neatly dressed in male attire. when asked how she escaped detection so long, she replied that she always lived quietly in her own house with her wife and did her duty by her employers so that no one meddled with her. in chicago in much attention was attracted to the case of "nicholai de raylan," confidential secretary to the russian consul, who at death (of tuberculosis) at the age of was found to be a woman. she was born in russia and was in many respects very feminine, small and slight in build, but was regarded as a man, and even as very "manly," by both men and women who knew her intimately. she was always very neat in dress, fastidious in regard to shirts and ties, and wore a long-waisted coat to disguise the lines of her figure. she was married twice in america, being divorced by the first wife, after a union lasting ten years, on the ground of cruelty and misconduct with chorus girls. the second wife, a chorus girl who had been previously married and had a child, was devoted to her "husband." both wives were firmly convinced that their husband was a man and ridiculed the idea that "he" could be a woman. i am informed that de raylan wore a very elaborately constructed artificial penis. in her will she made careful arrangements to prevent detection of sex after death, but these were frustrated, as she died in a hospital. in st. louis, in , the case was brought forward of a young woman of , who had posed as a man for nine years. her masculine career began at the age of after the galveston flood which swept away all her family. she was saved and left texas dressed as a boy. she worked in livery stables, in a plough factory, and as a bill-poster. at one time she was the adopted son of the family in which she lived and had no difficulty in deceiving her sisters by adoption as to her sex. on coming to st. louis in she made chairs and baskets at the american rattan works, associating with fellow-workmen on a footing of masculine equality. one day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and dexterity of her hands. "gee, bill, you should have been a girl." "how do you know i'm not?" she retorted. in such ways her ready wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. she shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are told, and never avoided the severest tests. "she drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. she even chewed tobacco." girls began to fall in love with the good-looking boy at an early period, and she frequently boasted of her feminine conquests; with one girl who worshipped her there was a question of marriage. on account of lack of education she was restricted to manual labor, and she often chose hard work. at one time she became a boiler-maker's apprentice, wielding a hammer and driving in hot rivets. here she was very popular and became local secretary of the international brotherhood of boiler-makers. in physical development she was now somewhat of an athlete. "she could outrun any of her friends on a sprint; she could kick higher, play baseball, and throw the ball overhand like a man, and she was fond of football. as a wrestler she could throw most of the club members." the physician who examined her for an insurance policy remarked: "you are a fine specimen of physical manhood, young fellow. take good care of yourself." finally, in a moment of weakness, she admitted her sex and returned to the garments of womanhood. in london, in , a servant-girl of was charged in the acton police court with being "disorderly and masquerading," having assumed man's clothes and living with another girl, taller and more handsome than herself, as husband and wife. she had had slight brain trouble as a child, and was very intelligent, with a too active brain; in her spare time she had written stories for magazines. the two girls became attached through doing christian social work together in their spare time, and resolved to live as husband and wife to prevent any young man from coming forward. the "husband" became a plumber's mate, and displayed some skill at fisticuffs when at length discovered by the "wife's" brother. hence her appearance in the police court. both girls were sent back to their friends, and situations found for them as day-servants. but as they remained devoted to each other arrangements were made for them to live together. another case that may be mentioned is that of cora anderson, "the man-woman of milwaukee," who posed for thirteen years as a man, and during that period lived with two women as her wives without her disguise being penetrated. (her "confessions" were published in the _day book_ of chicago during may, .) it would be easy to bring forward other cases. a few instances of marriage between women will be found in the _alienist and neurologist_, nov., , p. . in all such cases more or less fraud has been exercised. i know of one case, probably unique, in which the ceremony was gone through without any deception on any side: a congenitally inverted englishwoman of distinguished intellectual ability, now dead, was attached to the wife of a clergyman, who, in full cognizance of all the facts of the case, privately married the two ladies in his own church. when they still retain female garments, these usually show some traits of masculine simplicity, and there is nearly always a disdain for the petty feminine artifices of the toilet. even when this is not obvious, there are all sorts of instinctive gestures and habits which may suggest to female acquaintances the remark that such a person "ought to have been a man." the brusque, energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and sense of honor, and especially the attitude toward men, free from any suggestion either of shyness or audacity, will often suggest the underlying psychic abnormality to a keen observer. in the habits not only is there frequently a pronounced taste for smoking cigarettes, often found in quite feminine women, but also a decided taste and toleration for cigars. there is also a dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations, while there is often some capacity for athletics. as regards the general bearing of the inverted woman, in its most marked and undisguised form, i may quote an admirable description by prof. zuccarelli, of naples, of an unmarried middle-class woman of : "while retaining feminine garments, her bearing is as nearly as possible a man's. she wears her thin hair thrown carelessly back _alla umberto_, and fastened in a simple knot at the back of her head. the breasts are little developed, and compressed beneath a high corset; her gown is narrow without the expansion demanded by fashion. her straw hat with broad plaits is perhaps adorned by a feather, or she wears a small hat like a boy's. she does not carry an umbrella or sunshade, and walks out alone, refusing the company of men; or she is accompanied by a woman, as she prefers, offering her arm and carrying the other hand at her waist, with the air of a fine gentleman. in a carriage her bearing is peculiar and unlike that habitual with women. seated in the middle of the double seat, her knees being crossed or else the legs well separated, with a virile air and careless easy movements she turns her head in every direction, finding an acquaintance here and there with her eye, saluting men and women with a large gesture of the hand as a business man would. in conversation her pose is similar; she gesticulates much, is vivacious in speech, with much power of mimicry, and while talking she arches the inner angles of her eyebrow, making vertical wrinkles at the center of her forehead. her laugh is open and explosive and uncovers her white rows of teeth. with men she is on terms of careless equality." ("inversione congenita dell'istinto sessuale in una donna," _l'anomalo_, february, .) "the inverted woman," hirschfeld truly remarks (_die homosexualität_, p. ), "is more full of life, of enterprise, of practical energy, more aggressive, more heroic, more apt for adventure, than either the heterosexual woman or the homosexual man." sometimes, he adds, her mannishness may approach reckless brutality, and her courage becomes rashness. this author observes, however, in another place (p. ) that, in addition to this group of inverted women with masculine traits there is another group, "not less large," of equally inverted women who are outwardly as thoroughly feminine as are normal women. this is not an observation which i am able to confirm. it appears to me that the great majority of inverted women possess some masculine or boyish traits, even though only as slight as those which may occasionally be revealed by normal women. extreme femininity, in my observation, is much more likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual women, just as extreme masculinity is much more likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual men. while inverted women frequently, though not always, convey an impression of mannishness or boyishness, there are no invariable anatomical characteristics associated with this impression. there is, for instance, no uniform tendency to a masculine distribution of hair. nor must it be supposed that the presence of a beard in a woman indicates a homosexual tendency. "bearded women," as hirschfeld remarks, are scarcely ever inverted, and it would seem that the strongest reversals of secondary sexual characters less often accompany homosexuality than slighter modifications of these characters.[ ] a faint moustache and other slight manifestations of hypertrichosis also by no means necessarily indicate homosexuality. to some extent it is a matter of race; thus in the pera district of constantinople, weissenberg, among nearly seven hundred women between about and years of age, noted that per cent, showed hair on the upper lip; they were most often armenians, the greeks coming next.[ ] there has been some dispute as to whether, apart from homosexuality, hypertrichosis in a woman can be regarded as an indication of a general masculinity. this is denied by max bartels (in his elaborate study, "ueber abnorme behaarung beim menschen," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. ; , p. ) and, as regards insanity, by l. harris-liston ("cases of bearded women," _british medical journal_, june , ). on the other hand, j.h. claiborne ("hypertrichosis in women," _new york medical journal_, june , ) believes that hair on the face and body in a woman is a sign of masculinity; "women with hypertrichosis possess masculine traits." there seems to be very little doubt that fully developed "bearded women" are in most, possibly not all, cases decidedly feminine in all other respects. a typical instance is furnished by annie jones, the "esau lady" of virginia. she belonged to a large and entirely normal family, but herself possessed a full beard with thick whiskers and moustache of an entirely masculine type; she also showed short, dark hair on arms and hands resembling a man. apart from this heterogeny, she was entirely normal and feminine. at the age of , when examined in berlin, the hair of the head was very long, the expression of the face entirely feminine, the voice also feminine, the figure elegant, the hands and feet entirely of feminine type, the external and internal genitalia altogether feminine. annie jones was married. max bartels, who studied annie jones and published her portrait (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ), remarks that in these respects annie jones resembles other "bearded women"; they marry, have children, and are able to suckle them. a beard in women seems, as dupré and duflos believe (_revue neurologique_, aug. , ), to be more closely correlated with neuropathy than with masculinity; comparing a thousand sane women with a thousand insane women in paris, they found unusual degree of hair or down on the face in per cent. of the former and per cent. of the latter; but even the sane bearded women frequently belonged to neuropathic families. a tendency to slight widely diffused hypertrichosis of the body generally, not localized or highly developed on the face, seems much more likely than a beard to be associated with masculinity, even when it occurs in little girls. thus virchow once presented to the berlin anthropological society a little girl of of this type who also possessed a deep and rough voice (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ). a typical example of slight hypertrichosis in a woman associated with general masculine traits is furnished by a description and figure of the body of a woman of in an anatomical institute, furnished by c. strauch (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ). in this case there was a growth of hair around both nipples and a line of hair extended from the pubes to the navel; both these two dispositions of hair are very rare in women. (in vienna among nearly women coe only found a tendency to hair distribution toward the navel in about per cent.). while the hair in this subject was otherwise fairly normal, there were many approximations to the masculine type in other respects: the muscles were strongly developed, the bones massive, the limbs long, the joints powerful, the hands and feet large, the thorax well developed, the lower jaw massive; there was an absence of feminine curves on the body and the breasts were scarcely perceptible. at the same time the genital organs were normal and there had been childbirth. it was further notable that this woman had committed suicide by self-strangulation, a rare method which requires great resolution and strength of will, as at any moment of the process the pressure can be removed. there seems little doubt that inverted women frequently tend to show minor anomalies of the piliferous system, and especially slight hypertrichosis and a masculine distribution of hair. thus in a very typical case of inversion in an italian girl of who dressed as a man and ran away from home, the down on the arms and legs was marked to an unusual extent, and there was very abundant hair in the armpits and on the pubes, with a tendency to the masculine distribution.[ ] of the three cases described in this chapter which i am best acquainted with, one possesses an unusually small amount of hair on the pubes and in the axillæ (oligotrichosis terminalis), approximating to the infantile type, while another presents a complex and very rare piliferous heterogeny. there is marked dark down on the upper lip; the pubic hair is thick, and there is hair on toes and feet and legs to umbilicus; there are also a few hairs around the nipples. a woman physician in the united states who knows many female inverts similarly tells me that she has observed the tendency to growth of hair on the legs. if, as is not improbable, inversion is associated with some abnormal balance in the internal secretions, it is not difficult to understand this tendency to piliferous anomalies; and we know that the thyroid secretion, for instance, and much more the testicular and ovarian secretions, have a powerful influence on the hair. ballantyne, some years ago, in discussing congenital hypertrichosis (_manual of antenatal pathology_, , pp. - ) concluded that the theory of arrested development is best supported by the facts; persistence of lanugo is such an arrest, and hypertrichosis may largely be considered a persistence of lanugo. such a conclusion is still tenable,--though it encounters some difficulties and inconsistencies,--and it largely agrees with what we know of the condition as associated with inversion in women. but we are now beginning to see that this arrested development may be definitely associated with anomalies in the internal secretions, and even with special chemical defects in these secretions. virile strength has always been associated with hair, as the story of samson bears witness. ammon found among baden conscripts (_l'anthropologie_, , p. ) that when the men were divided into classes according to the amount of hair on body, the first class, with least hair, have the smallest circumference of testicle, the fewest number of men with glans penis uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest average height, weight, and chest circumference, while in all these respects the men with hairy bodies were at the other extreme. it has been known from antiquity that in men early castration affects the growth of hair. it is now known that in women the presence or absence of the ovary and, other glands affects the hair, as well as sexual development. thus hegar (_beiträge zur geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, vol. i, p. , ) described a girl with pelvis of infantile type and uterine malformation who had been unusually hairy on face and body from infancy, with masculine arrangement of hair on pubes and abdomen; menstruation was scanty, breasts atrophic; the hair was of lanugo type; we see here how in women infantile and masculine characteristics are associated with, and both probably dependent on, defects in the sexual glands. plant (_centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , ) described another girl with very small ovaries, rudimentary uterus, small vagina, and prominent nymphæ, in whom menstruation was absent, hair on head long and strong, but hair absent in armpits and scanty on mons veneris. these two cases seem inconsistent as regards hair, and we should now wish to know the condition of the other internal glands. the thyroid, for instance, it is now known, controls the hair, as well as do the sexual glands; and the thyroid, as gautier has shown (académie de médecine, july , ) elaborates arsenic and iodine, which nourish the skin and hair; he found that the administration of sodium cacodylate to young women produced abundant growth of hair on head. again, the kidneys, and especially the adrenal glands, influence the hair. it has long been known that in girls with congenital renal tumors there is an abnormally early growth of axillary and pubic hair; goldschwend (_präger medizinische wochenschrift_, nos. and , ) has described the case of a woman of , with small ovaries and adrenal tumor, in whom hair began to grow on chin and cheeks. (see also c.t. ewart, _lancet_, may , .) once more, the glans hypophysis also affects hair growth and it has been found by lévi (quoted in _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, august-september, , p. ) that the administration of hypophysis extract to an infantile, hairless woman of , without sexual feeling, produced a general tendency to growth of hair. such facts not only help to explain the anomalies of hair development, but also indicate the direction in which we may find an explanation of the anomalies of the sexual impulse. apart from the complicated problem presented by the hair, there are genuine approximations to the masculine type. the muscles tend to be everywhere firm, with a comparative absence of soft connective tissue; so that an inverted woman may give an unfeminine impression to the sense of touch. a certain tonicity of the muscles has indeed often been observed in homosexual women. hirschfeld found that two-thirds of inverted women are more muscular than normal women, while, on the other hand, he found that among inverted men the musculature was often weak. not only is the tone of the voice often different, but there is reason to suppose that this rests on a basis, of anatomical modification. at moll's suggestion, flatau examined the larynx in a large number of inverted women, and found in several a very decidedly masculine type of larynx, or an approach to it, especially in cases of distinctly congenital origin. hirschfeld has confirmed flatau's observations on this point. it may be added that inverted women are very often good whistlers; hirschfeld even knows two who are public performers in whistling. it is scarcely necessary to remark that while the old proverb associates whistling in a woman with crowing in a hen, whistling in a woman is no evidence of any general physical or psychic inversion. as regards the sexual organs it seems possible, so far as my observations go, to speak more definitely of inverted women than of inverted men. in all three of the cases concerning whom i have precise information, among those whose histories are recorded in the present chapter, there is more or less arrested development and infantilism. in one a somewhat small vagina and prominent nymphæ, with local sensitiveness, are associated with oligotrichosis. in another the sexual parts are in some respects rather small, while there is no trace of ovary on one side. in the third case, together with hypertrichosis, the nates are small, the nymphæ large, the clitoris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the vagina probably small. these observations, though few, are significant, and they accord with those of other observers.[ ] krafft-ebing well described a case which i should be inclined to regard as typical of many: sexual organs feminine in character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of ; small clitoris, prominent cockscomb-like nymphæ, small vagina scarcely permitting normal intercourse and very sensitive. hirschfeld agrees in finding common an approach to the type described by krafft-ebing; atrophic anomalies he regards as more common than hypertrophic, and he refers to thickness of hymen and a tendency to notably small uterus and ovaries. the clitoris is more usually small than large; women with a large clitoris (as parent-duchâtelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine type. notwithstanding these tendencies, however, sexual inversion in a woman is, as a rule, not more obvious than in a man. at the same time, the inverted woman is not usually attractive to men. she herself generally feels the greatest indifference to men, and often, cannot understand why a woman should love a man, though she easily understands why a man should love a woman. she shows, therefore, nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. the man who is passionately attracted to an inverted woman is usually of rather a feminine type. for instance, in one case present to my mind he was of somewhat neurotic heredity, of slight physical development, not sexually attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in short, a man who might easily have been passionately attracted to his own sex. while the inverted woman is cold, or, at most, comradely in her bearing toward men, she may become shy and confused in the presence of attractive persons of her own sex, even unable to undress in their presence, and full of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[ ] homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes called "lying spoons," when one woman lies on her side with her back turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into the bend of her companion's legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose contact with the other's buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild erethism. one may also lie on the other's body, or there may be mutual masturbation. mutual contact and friction of the sexual parts seem to be comparatively rare, but it seems to have been common in antiquity, for we owe to it the term "tribadism" which is sometimes used as a synonym of feminine homosexuality, and this method is said to be practised today by the southern slav women of the balkans.[ ] the extreme gratification is _cunnilinctus_, or oral stimulation of the feminine sexual organs, not usually mutual, but practised by the more active and masculine partner; this act is sometimes termed, by no means satisfactorily, "sapphism," and "lesbianism."[ ] an enlarged clitoris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very small part in the gratification of feminine homosexuality. kiernan refers; to a case, occurring in america, in which an inverted woman, married and a mother, possessed a clitoris which measured ½ inches when erect. casanova described an inverted swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development, whose clitoris in excitement was longer than his little finger, and capable of penetration.[ ] the older literature contains many similar cases. in most such cases, however, we are probably concerned with some form of pseudohermaphroditism, and the "clitoris" may more properly be regarded as a penis; there is thus no inversion involved.[ ] while the use of the clitoris is rare in homosexuality, the use of an artificial penis is by no means uncommon and very widespread. in several of the modern cases in which inverted women have married women (such as those of sarolta vay and de raylan) the belief of the wife in the masculinity of the "husband" has been due to an appliance of this kind used in intercourse. the artificial penis (the olisbos, or baubon) was well known to the greeks and is described by herondas. its invention was ascribed by suidas to the milesian women, and miletus, according to aristophanes in the _lysistrata_, was the chief place of its manufacture.[ ] it was still known in medieval times, and in the twelfth century bishop burchard, of worms, speaks of its use as a thing "which some women are accustomed to do." in the early eighteenth century, margaretha lincken, again in germany, married another woman with the aid of an artificial male organ.[ ] the artificial penis is also used by homosexual women in various parts of the world. thus we find it mentioned in legends of the north american indians and it is employed in zanzibar and madagascar.[ ] the various phenomena of sadism, masochism, and fetichism which are liable to arise, spontaneously or by suggestion, in the relationships of normal lovers, as well as of male inverts, may also arise in the same way among inverted women, though, probably, not often in a very pronounced form. moll, however, narrates a case (_konträre sexualempfindung_, , pp. - ) in which various minor but very definite perversions were combined with inversion. a young lady of , of good heredity, from the age of had only been attracted to her own sex, and even in childhood had practised mutual _cunnilinctus_. she was extremely intelligent, and of generous and good-natured disposition, with various masculine tastes, but, on the whole, of feminine build and with completely feminine larynx. during seven years she lived exclusively with one woman. she found complete satisfaction in active _cunnilinctus_. during the course of this relationship various other methods of excitement and gratification arose--it seems, for the most part, spontaneously. she found much pleasure in urolagnic and coprolagnic practices. in addition to these and similar perversions, the subject liked being bitten, especially in the lobule of the ear, and she was highly excited when whipped by her friend, who should, if possible, be naked at the time; only the nates must be whipped and only a birch rod be used, or the effect would not be obtained. these practices would not be possible to her in the absence of extreme intimacy and mutual understanding, and they only took place with the one friend. in this case the perverse phenomena were masochistic rather than sadistic. many homosexual women, however, display sadistic tendencies in a more or less degree. thus dr. kiernan tells me of an american case, with which he was professionally concerned with dr. moyer (see also paper by kiernan and moyer in _alienist and neurologist_, may, ), of a sadistic inverted woman in a small illinois city, married and with two young children. she was of undoubted neuropathic stock and there was a history of pre-marital masturbation and bestiality with a dog. she was a prominent club woman in her city and a leader in religious and social matters; as is often the case with sadists she was pruriently prudish, and there was strong testimony to her chaste and modest character by clergymen, club women, and local magnates. the victim of her sadistic passion was a girl she had adopted from a home, but whom she half starved. on this girl she inflicted over three hundred wounds. many of these wounds were stabs with forks and scissors which merely penetrated the skin. this was especially the case with those inflicted on the breasts, labia, and clitoris. during the infliction of these she experienced intense excitement, but this excitement was under control, and when she heard anyone approaching she instantly desisted. she was found sane and responsible at the time of these actions, but the jury also found that she had since become insane and she was sent to an insane hospital, after recovery to serve a sentence of two years in prison. the alleged insanity, dr. kiernan adds, was of the dubious manic and depressive variety, and perhaps chiefly due to wounded pride. the inverted woman is an enthusiastic admirer of feminine beauty, especially of the statuesque beauty of the body, unlike, in this, the normal woman, whose sexual emotion is but faintly tinged by esthetic feeling. in her sexual habits we perhaps less often find the degree of promiscuity which is not uncommon among inverted men, and we may perhaps agree with moll that homosexual women are more often apt to love faithfully and lastingly than homosexual men. hirschfeld remarks that inverted women are not usually attracted in girlhood by the autoerotic and homosexual vices of school-life,[ ] and nearly all the women whose histories i have recorded in this chapter felt a pronounced repugnance to such manifestations and cherished lofty ideals of love. inverted women are not rarely married. moll, from various confidences which he has received, believes that inverted women have not the same horror of normal coitus as inverted, men; this is probably due to the fact that the woman under such circumstances can retain a certain passivity. in other cases there is some degree of bisexuality, although, as among inverted men, the homosexual instinct seems usually to give the greater relief and gratification. it has been stated by many observers--in america, in france, in germany, and in england--that homosexuality is increasing among women.[ ] there are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such manifestations.[ ] the modern movement of emancipation--the movement to obtain the same rights and duties as men, the same freedom and responsibility, the same education and the same work--must be regarded as, on the whole, a wholesome and inevitable movement. but it carries with it certain disadvantages.[ ] women are, very justly, coming to look upon knowledge and experience generally as their right as much as their brothers' right. but when this doctrine is applied to the sexual sphere it finds certain limitations. intimacies of any kind between young men and young women are as much discouraged socially now as ever they were; as regards higher education, the mere association of the sexes in the lecture-room or the laboratory or the hospital is discouraged in england and in america. while men are allowed freedom, the sexual field of women is becoming restricted to trivial flirtation with the opposite sex, and to intimacy with their own sex; having been taught independence of men and disdain for the old theory which placed women in the moated grange of the home to sigh for a man who never comes, a tendency develops for women to carry this independence still farther and to find love where they find work. these unquestionable influences of modern movements cannot directly cause sexual inversion, but they develop the germs of it, and they probably cause a spurious imitation. this spurious imitation is due to the fact that the congenital anomaly occurs with special frequency in women of high intelligence who, voluntarily or involuntarily, influence others. kurella, bloch, and others believe that the woman movement has helped to develop homosexuality (see, e.g., i. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, , vol. i, p. ). various "feminine strindbergs of the woman movement," as they have been termed, displayed marked hostility to men. anna rüling claims that many leaders of the movement, from the outset until today, have been inverted. hirschfeld, however (_die homosexualität_, p. ), after giving special attention to the matter, concludes that, alike among english suffragettes and in the german verein für frauenstimmrecht, the percentage of inverts is less than per cent. footnotes: [ ] catharina margaretha lincken, who married another woman, somewhat after the manner of the hungarian countess sarolta vay (i.e., with the aid of an artificial male organ), was condemned to death for sodomy, and executed in at the age of (f.c. müller, "ein weiterer fall von conträrer sexualempfindung," _friedrich's blätter für gerichtliche medizin_, heft , ). the most fully investigated case of sexual inversion in a woman in modern times is that of countess sarolta vay (_friedrich's blätter_, heft, , ; also krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, eng. trans. of th. ed., - ; also summarized in appendix e of earlier editions of the present study). sarolta always dressed as a man, and went through a pseudo-marriage with a girl who was ignorant of the real sex of her "husband." she was acquitted and allowed to return home and continue dressing as a man. [ ] anna rüling has some remarks on this point, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. vii, , p. et seq. [ ] this, of course, by no means necessarily indicates the existence of sexual inversion, any more than the presence of feminine traits in distinguished men. i have elsewhere pointed out (e.g., _man and woman_, th ed., , p. ) that genius in either sex frequently involves the coexistence of masculine, feminine, and infantile traits. [ ] various references to queen hatschepsu are given by hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ). hirschfeld's not severely critical list of distinguished homosexual persons includes women. it would not be difficult to add others. [ ] sophie hochstetter, in a study of queen christina in the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_ (vol. ix, , p. et seq.), regards her as bisexual, while h.j. schouten (_monatsschrift für kriminalanthropologie_, , heft ) concludes that she was homosexual, and believes that it was monaldeschi's knowledge on this point which led her to instigate his murder. [ ] cf. hans freimark, _helena petrovna blavatsky_; levetzow, "louise michel," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. vii, , p. et seq. [ ] rosa bonheur, the painter, is a specially conspicuous example of pronounced masculinity in, a woman of genius. she frequently dressed as a man, and when dressed as a woman her masculine air occasionally attracted the attention of the police. see theodore stanton's biography. [ ] there is some difference of opinion as to whether there is less real delinquency among women (see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, th ed., , p. ), but we are here concerned with judicial criminality. [ ] this apparently widespread opinion is represented by the remark of a young man in the eighteenth century (concerning the lesbian friend of the woman he wishes to marry), quoted in the comte de tilly's _souvenirs_: "i confess that that is a kind of rivalry which causes me no annoyance; on the contrary it amuses me, and i am immoral enough to laugh at it." that attitude of the educated and refined was not probably shared by the populace. madame de lamballe, who was guillotined at the revolution, was popularly regarded as a tribade, and it was said that on this account her charming head received the special insults of the mob. [ ] havelock ellis, _man and woman_, th ed., , especially chapters xiii and xv. [ ] karsch (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, , pp. - ) brings together some passages concerning homosexuality in women among various peoples. [ ] gandavo, quoted by lomaeco, _archivio per l'antropologia_, , fasc. . [ ] _journal anthropological institute_, july-dec., , p. . [ ] g.h. lowie, "the assiniboine," am. museum of nat. hist., _anthropological papers_, new york, , vol. xiv, p. ; w. jones, "fox texts," _publications of am. ethnological soc._, leyden, , vol. i, p. ; quoted by d.c. mcmurtrie, "a legend of lesbian love among the north american indians," _urologic review_, april, . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, heft , , p. . [ ] i. bloch, _die prostitution_, vol. i, pp. , . [ ] corre, _crime en pays creoles_, . [ ] in a spanish prison, some years ago, when a new governor endeavored to reform the homosexual manners of the women, the latter made his post so uncomfortable that he was compelled to resign. salillas (_vida penal en españa_) asserts that all the evidence shows the extraordinary expansion of lesbian love in prisons. the _mujeres hombrunas_ receive masculine names--pepe, chulo, bernardo, valiente; new-comers are surrounded in the court-yard by a crowd of lascivious women, who overwhelm them with honeyed compliments and gallantries and promises of protection, the most robust virago having most successes; a single day and night complete the initiation. [ ] even among arab prostitutes it is found, according to kocher, though among arab women generally it is rare. [ ] _monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten_, nov., ; in his _tribadie berlins_, he states that among prostitutes at least ten per cent. were homosexual. see also parent-duchâtelet, _de la prostitution_, d ed., vol. i, pp. , ; martineau, _les déformations vulvaires et anales_; and iwan bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, , vol. i, p. . [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] eulenburg, _sexuelle neuropathie_, p. . [ ] see vol. vi of these _studies_, "sex in relation to society," ch. vii. [ ] the prostitute has sometimes been regarded as a special type, analogous to the instinctive criminal. this point of view has been specially emphasized by lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente_. apart from this, these authors regard homosexuality among prostitutes as due to the following causes (p. et seq.): (_a_) excessive and often unnatural venery; (_b_) confinement in a prison, with separation from men; (_c_) close association with the same sex, such as is common in brothels; (_d_) maturity and old age, inverting the secondary sexual characters and predisposing to sexual inversion; (_e_) disgust of men produced by a prostitute's profession, combined with the longing for love. for cases of homosexuality in american prostitutes, see d. mcmurtrie, _lancet-clinic_, nov. , . [ ] thus casanova, who knew several nuns intimately, refers to homosexuality as a childish sin so common in convents that confessors imposed no penance for it (_mémoires_, ed. garnier, vol. iv, p. ). homosexuality in convent schools has been studied by mercante, _archivos di psiquiatria_, , pp. - . [ ] i quote the following from a private letter written in switzerland: "an english resident has told me that his wife has lately had to send away her parlor-maid (a pretty girl) because she was always taking in strange women to sleep with her. i asked if she had been taken from hotel service, and found, as i expected, that she had. but neither my friend nor his wife suspected the real cause of these nocturnal visits." [ ] for a series of cases of affection of girls for girls, in apparently normal subjects in the united states, see, e.g., lancaster, "the psychology and pedagogy of adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, july, , p. ; also, for school friendships between girls, exactly resembling those between boys and girls, theodate l. smith, "types of adolescent affection," ib., june, , pp. , . [ ] obici and marchesini, _le "amicizie" di collegio_, rome, . [ ] see appendix b, in which i have briefly summarized the result of the investigation by obici and marchesini, and also brought forward observations concerning english colleges. [ ] an interesting ancient example of a woman with an irresistible impulse to adopt men's clothing and lead a man's life, but who did not, so far as is known, possess any sexual impulses, is that of mary frith, commonly called moll cutpurse, who lived in london at the beginning of the seventeenth century. _the life and death of mrs. mary frith_ appeared in ; middleton and rowley also made her the heroine of their delightful comedy, _the roaring girl (mermaid series, middleton's plays_, volume ii), somewhat idealizing her, however. she seems to have belonged to a neurotic and eccentric stock; "each of the family," her biographer says, "had his peculiar freak." as a child she only cared for boys' games, and could never adapt herself to any woman's avocations. "she had a natural abhorrence to the tending of children." her disposition was altogether masculine; "she was not for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely, whatever came uppermost." she never had any children, and was not taxed with debauchery: "no man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart or any such fond thing to dally with her;" a mastiff was the only living thing she cared for. her life was not altogether honest, but not so much from any organic tendency to crime, it seems, as because her abnormal nature and restlessness made her an outcast. she was too fond of drink, and is said to have been the first woman who smoked tobacco. nothing is said or suggested of any homosexual practices, but we see clearly here what may be termed the homosexual diathesis. [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] s. weissenberg, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. . [ ] this case was described by gasparini, _archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. - . [ ] bringing together ten cases of inverted women from various sources (including the three original cases mentioned above), in only four were the sexual organs normal; in the others they were more or less undeveloped. [ ] homosexual persons generally, male and female, unlike the heterosexual, are apt to feel more modesty with persons of the same sex than with those of the opposite sex. see, e.g., hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] kryptadia, vol. vi, p. . [ ] the term "cunnilinctus" was suggested to me by the late dr. j. bonus, and i have ever since used it; the latin authors commonly used "cunnilingus" for the actor, but had no corresponding term for the action. hirschfeld has lately used the term "cunnilinctio" in the same sense, but such a formation is quite inadmissible. for information on the classic terms for this perversion, see, e.g., iwan bloch, _ursprung der syphilis_, vol. ii, p. et seq. [ ] casanova, _mémoires_, ed. gamier, vol. iv, p. . [ ] hirschfeld deals in a full and authoritative manner with the differential diagnosis of inversion and the other groups of transitional sexuality in _die homosexualität_, ch. ii; also in his fully illustrated book _geschlechtsübergänge_, . [ ] havelock ellis, "auto-erotism," in vol. i of these _studies_; iwan bloch, _ursprung der syphilis_, vol. ii, p. ; ib., _die prostitution_, vol, i, pp. - ; for early references, crusius, _untersuchungen zu den mimiamben der herondas_, pp. - . [ ] i have found a notice of a similar case in france, during the sixteenth century, in montaigne's _journal du voyage en italie en_ (written by his secretary); it took place near vitry le françois. seven or eight girls belonging to chaumont, we are told, resolved to dress and to work as men; one of these came to vitry to work as a weaver, and was looked upon as a well-conditioned young man, and liked by everyone. at vitry she became betrothed to a woman, but, a quarrel arising, no marriage took place. afterward "she fell in love with a woman whom she married, and with whom she lived for four or five months, to the wife's great contentment, it is said; but, having been recognized by some one from chaumont, and brought to justice, she was condemned to be hanged. she said she would even prefer this to living again as a girl, and was hanged for using illicit inventions to supply the defects of her sex" (_journal_, ed. by d'ancona, , p. ). [ ] roux, _bulletin société d'anthropologie_, , no. . roux knew a comarian woman who, at the age of , after her husband's death, became homosexual and made herself an artificial penis which she used with younger women. [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] there are few traces of feminine homosexuality in english social history of the past. in charles the second's court, the _mémoires de ghrammont_ tell us, miss hobart was credited with lesbian tendencies. "soon the rumor, true or false, of this singularity spread through the court. they were gross enough there never to have heard of that refinement of ancient greece in the tastes of tenderness, and the idea came into their heads that the illustrious hobart, who seemed so affectionate to pretty women, must be different from what she appeared." this passage is interesting because it shows us how rare was the exception. a century later, however, homosexuality among english women seems to have been regarded by the french as common, and bacchaumont, on january , , when recording that mlle. heinel of the opera was settling in england, added: "her taste for women will there find attractive satisfaction, for though paris furnishes many tribades it is said that london is herein superior." [ ] "i believe," writes a well-informed american correspondent, "that sexual inversion is increasing among americans--both men and women--and the obvious reasons are: first, the growing independence of the women, their lessening need for marriage; secondly, the nervous strain that business competition has brought upon the whole nation. in a word, the rapidly increasing masculinity in women and the unhealthy nervous systems of the men offer the ideal factors for the production of sexual inversion in their children." [ ] homosexual women, like homosexual men, now insert advertisements in the newspapers, seeking a "friend." näcke ("zeitungsannoncen von weiblichen homosexuellen," _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , p. ) brought together from munich newspapers a collection of such advertisements, most of which were fairly unambiguous: "actress with modern ideas desires to know rich lady with similar views, for the sake of friendly relations, etc.;" "young lady of , a pretty blonde, seeks another like herself for walks, theatre, etc.," and so on. chapter v. the nature of sexual inversion. analysis of histories--race--heredity--general health--first appearance of homosexual impulse--sexual precocity and hyperesthesia--suggestion and other exciting causes of inversion--masturbation--attitude toward women--erotic dreams--methods of sexual relationship--pseudo-sexual attraction--physical sexual abnormalities--artistic and other aptitudes--moral attitude of the invert. before stating briefly my own conclusions as to the nature of sexual inversion, i propose to analyze the facts brought out in the histories which i have been able to study.[ ] race.--all my cases, in number, are british and american, living in the united states and the rest being british. ancestry, from the point of view of race, was not made a matter of special investigation. it appears, however, that at least are english or mainly english; at least are scotch or of scotch extraction; are irish and others largely irish; have german fathers or mothers; another is of german descent on both sides, while others are of remote german extraction; are partly, and entirely, french; have a portuguese strain, and at least are more or less jewish. except the apparently frequent presence of the german element, there is nothing remarkable in this ancestry. heredity.--it is always difficult to deal securely with the significance of heredity, or even to establish a definite basis of facts. i have by no means escaped this difficulty, for in some cases i have not even had an opportunity of cross-examining the subjects whose histories i have obtained. still, the facts, so far as they emerge, have some interest. i possess some record of heredity in of my cases. of these, not less than , or in the proportion of nearly per cent., assert that they have reason to believe that other cases of inversion have occurred in their families, and, while in some it is only a strong suspicion, in others there is no doubt whatever. in one case there is reason to suspect inversion on both sides. usually the inverted relatives have been brothers, sisters, cousins, or uncles. in one case a bisexual son seems to have had a bisexual father. this hereditary character of inversion (which was denied by näcke) is a fact of great significance, and, as it occurs in cases with which i am well acquainted, i can have no doubt concerning the existence of the tendency. the influence of suggestion may often be entirely excluded, especially when the persons are of different sex. both krafft-ebing and moll noted a similar tendency. von römer states that in one-third of his cases there was inversion in other members of the family. hirschfeld also found that there is a relatively high proportion of cases of family inversion. twenty-six, so far as can be ascertained, belong to reasonably healthy families; minute investigation would probably reduce the number of these, and it is noteworthy that even in some of the healthy families there was only one child born of the parents' marriage. in cases there is more or less frequency of morbidity or abnormality--eccentricity, alcoholism, neurasthenia, insanity, or nervous disease--on one or both sides, in addition to inversion or apart from it. in some of these cases the inverted offspring is the outcome of the union, of a very healthy with a thoroughly morbid stock; in some others there is a minor degree of abnormality on both sides. general health.--it is possible to speak with more certainty of the health of the individual than of that of his family. of the cases, --or about two-thirds--may be said to enjoy good, and sometimes even very good, health, though occasionally there is some slight qualification to be made. in cases the health is delicate, or at best only fair; in these cases there is sometimes a tendency to consumption, and often marked neurasthenia and a more or less unbalanced temperament. four cases are morbid to a considerable degree; the remaining case has had insane delusions which required treatment in an asylum. a considerable proportion, included among those as having either good or fair health, may be described as of extremely nervous temperament, and in most cases they so describe themselves; a certain proportion of these combine great physical and, especially, mental energy with this nervousness; all these are doubtless of neurotic temperament.[ ] very few can be said to be conspicuously lacking in energy. on the whole, therefore, a large proportion of these inverted individuals are passing through life in an unimpaired state of health, which enables them to do at least their fair share of work in the world; in a considerable proportion of my cases that work is of high intellectual value. only in cases, it will be seen, or at most , can the general health be said to be distinctly bad. this result may, perhaps, seem surprising. it must, however, be remembered that my cases do not, on the whole, represent the class which alone the physician is usually able to bring forward: i.e., the sexual inverts who are suffering from a more or less severe degree of complete nervous breakdown. there is no frequent relationship between homosexuality and insanity, and such homosexuality as is found in asylums is mostly of a spurious character. this point was specially emphasized by näcke (e.g., "homosexualität und psychose," _zeitschrift für psichiatrie_, vol. lxviii, no. , ). he quoted the opinions of various distinguished alienists as to the rarity with which they had met genuine inverts, and recorded his own experiences. he had never met a genuine invert in the asylum throughout his extensive experience, although he was quite willing to admit that there may be unrecognized inverts in asylums, and one patient informed him, after leaving, that he was inverted, and had attracted the attention of the police both before and afterward, though nothing happened in the asylum. among patients in the asylum during one year, active _pedicatio_ occurred in about per cent. of cases, these patients being frequently idiots or imbeciles and at the same time masturbators, solitary or mutual. hirschfeld informed näcke that, among homosexual persons, hysterical conditions (not usually on hereditary basis) are fairly common, and neurasthenia of high degree decidedly frequent, but though stages of depression are common he had never seen pure melancholia and very seldom mania, but paranoiac delusional ideas frequently, and he agreed with bryan of broadmoor that religious delusions are not uncommon. general paralysis occurs, but is comparatively rare, and the same may be said of dementia præcox. on the whole, although hirschfeld was unable to give precise figures, there was no reason whatever to suppose an abnormal prevalence of insanity. this was näcke's own view. it is quite true, näcke concluded, that homosexual actions occur in every form of psychosis, especially in congenital and secondary dements, and at periods of excitement, but we are here more concerned with "pseudo-homosexuality" than with true inversion. hirschfeld finds that per cent. inverts are of sound heredity; this seems too large a proportion; in any case allowance must be made for differences in method and minuteness of investigation. i am fairly certain that thorough investigation would very considerably enlarge the proportion of cases with morbid heredity. at the same time this enlargement would be chiefly obtained by bringing minor abnormalities to the front, and it would then have to be shown how far the families of average or normal persons are free from such abnormalities. the question is sometimes asked: what family is free from neuropathic taint? at present it is difficult to answer this question precisely. there is good ground to believe that a fairly large proportion of families are free from such taint. in any case it seems probable that the families to which the inverted belong do not usually present such profound signs of nervous degeneration as we were formerly led to suppose. what we vaguely call "eccentricity" is common among them; insanity is much rarer. first appearance of homosexual instinct.--out of cases, in the instinct veered round to the same sex in adult age or at all events after puberty; in of these there had been a love-disappointment with a woman; no other cause than this can be assigned for the transition; but it is noteworthy that in at least of these cases the sexual instinct is undeveloped or morbidly weak, while a third individual is of somewhat weak _physique_, and another has long been in delicate health. in a further case, also somewhat morbid, the development was rather more complicated. in cases, or in a proportion of per cent., the abnormal instinct began in early life, without previous attraction to the opposite sex.[ ] in of these it dates from about puberty, usually beginning at school. in cases the tendency began before puberty, between the ages of and , usually between and , sometimes as early as the subject can remember. it must not be supposed that, in these numerous cases of the early appearance of homosexuality, the manifestations were of a specifically physical character, although erections are noted in a few cases. for the most part sexual manifestations at this early age, whether homosexual or heterosexual, are purely psychic.[ ] sexual precocity and hyperesthesia.--it is a fact of considerable interest and significance that in so large a number of my cases there was distinct precocity of the sexual emotions, both on the physical and psychic sides. there can be little doubt that, as many previous observers have found, inversion tends strongly to be associated with sexual precocity. i think it may further be said that sexual precocity tends to encourage the inverted habit where it exists. why this should be so is obvious, if we believe--as there is some reason for believing--that at an early age the sexual instinct is comparatively undifferentiated in its manifestations. the precocious accentuation of the sexual impulse leads to definite crystallization of the emotions at a premature stage. it must be added that precocious sexual energy is likely to remain feeble, and that a feeble sexual energy adapts itself more easily to homosexual relationships, in which there is no definite act to be accomplished, than to normal relationships. it is difficult to say how many of my cases exhibit sexual weakness. in or it is evident, and it may be suspected in many others, especially in those who are, and often describe themselves as, "sensitive" or "nervous," as well as in those whose sexual development was very late. in many cases there is marked hyperesthesia, or irritable weakness. hyperesthesia simulates strength, and, while there can be little doubt that some sexual inverts (and more especially bisexuals) do possess unusual sexual energy, in others it is but apparent; the frequent repetition of seminal emissions, for example, may be the result of weakness as well as of strength. it must be added that this irritability of the sexual centers is, in a considerable proportion of inverts, associated with marked emotional tendencies to affection and self-sacrifice. in the extravagance of his affection and devotion, it has been frequently observed, the male invert resembles many normal women. suggestion and other exciting causes of inversion.--in of my cases it is possible that some event, or special environment, in early life had more or less influence in turning the sexual instinct into homosexual channels, or in calling out a latent inversion. in cases a disappointment in normal love seems to have produced a profound nervous and emotional shock, acting, as we seem bound to admit, on a predisposed organism, and developing a fairly permanent tendency to inversion. in cases there was seduction by an older person, but in at least or of these there was already a well-marked predisposition. in at least other cases, example, usually at school, may probably be regarded as having exerted some influence. it is noteworthy that in very few of my cases can we trace the influence of any definite "suggestion," as asserted by schrenck-notzing, who believes that, in the causation of sexual inversion (as undoubtedly in the causation of erotic fetichism), we must give the first place to "accidental factors of education and external influence." he records the case of a little boy who innocently gazed in curiosity at the penis of his father who was urinating, and had his ears boxed, whence arose a train of thought and feeling which resulted in complete sexual inversion. in two of the cases i have reported we have parallel incidents, and here we see clearly that the homosexual tendency already existed. i do not question the occurrence of such incidents, but i refuse to accept them as supplying the causation of inversion, and in so doing i am supported by all the evidence i am able to obtain. i am in agreement with a correspondent who wrote:-- "considering that all boys are exposed to the same order of suggestions (sight of a man's naked organs, sleeping with a man, being handled by a man), and that only a few of them become sexually perverted, i think it reasonable to conclude that those few were previously constituted to receive the suggestion. in fact, suggestion seems to play exactly the same part in the normal and abnormal awakening of sex." i would go so far as to assert that for normal boys and girls the developed sexual organs of the adult man or woman--from their size, hairiness, and the mystery which envelops them--nearly always exert a certain fascination, whether of attraction or horror.[ ] but this has no connection with homosexuality, and scarcely with sexuality at all. thus, in one case known to me, a boy of or took pleasure in caressing the organs of another boy, twice his own age, who remained passive and indifferent; yet this child grew up without ever manifesting any homosexual instinct. the seed of suggestion can only develop when it falls on a suitable soil. if it is to act on a fairly normal nature the perverted suggestion must be very powerful or iterated, and even then its influence will probably only be temporary, disappearing in the presence of the normal stimulus.[ ] not only is "suggestion" unnecessary to develop a sexual impulse already rooted in the organism, but when exerted in an opposite direction it is powerless to divert that impulse. we see this illustrated in several of the cases whose histories i have presented. thus in one case a boy was seduced by the housemaid at the age of and even derived pleasure from the girl, yet none the less the native homosexual instinct asserted itself a year later. in another case heterosexual suggestions were offered and accepted in early life, yet, notwithstanding, the homosexual attraction was slowly evolved from within. i have, therefore, but little to say of the influence of suggestion, which was formerly exalted to a position of the first importance in books on sexual inversion. this is not because i underestimate the great part played by suggestion in many fields of normal and abnormal life. it is because i have been able to find but few decided traces of it in sexual inversion. in many cases, doubtless, there may be some slight elements of suggestion in developing the inversion, though they cannot be traced.[ ] their importance seems usually questionable even when they are discovered. take schrenck-notzing's case of the little boy whose ears were boxed for what his father considered improper curiosity. i find it difficult to realize that a mighty suggestion can thereby be generated unless a strong emotion exists for it to unite with; in that case the seed falls on prepared soil. is the wide prevalence of normal sexuality due to the fact that so many little boys have had their ears boxed for taking naughty liberties with women? if so, i am quite prepared to accept schrenck-notzing's explanation as a complete account of the matter. i know of one case, indeed, in which an element of what may fairly be called suggestion can be detected. it is that of a physician who had always been on very friendly terms with men, but had sexual relations exclusively with women, finding fair satisfaction, until the confessions of an inverted patient one day came to him as a revelation; thereafter he adopted inverted practices and ceased to find any attraction in women. but even in this case, as i understand the matter, suggestion merely served to reveal his own nature to the man. for a physician to adopt the perverted habits which the visit of a chance patient suggests to him can scarcely be a phenomenon of pure suggestion. we have no reason to suppose that this physician practised every perversion he heard of from patients; he adopted that which fitted his own nature.[ ] in another case homosexual advances were made to a youth and accepted, but he had already been attracted to men in childhood. again, in another case, there were homosexual influences in the boyhood of a subject who became bisexual, but as the subject's father was of similar bisexual temperament we can attach no potency to the mere suggestions. in another case we find homosexual influence in childhood, but the child was already delicate, shy, nervous, and feminine, clearly possessing a temperament predestined to develop in a homosexual direction. the irresistible potency of the inner impulse is well illustrated in a case presented by hirschfeld and burchard: "my daughter erna," said the subject's mother, "showed boyish inclinations at the age of , and they increased from year to year. she never played with dolls, only with tin soldiers, guns, and castles. she would climb trees and jump ditches; she made friends with the drivers of all the carts that came to our house and they would place her on the horse's back. the annual circus was a joy to her for all the year. even as a child of she was so fearless on horseback that lookers-on shouted bravo! and all declared she was a born horsewoman. it was her greatest wish to be a boy. she would wear her elder brother's clothes all day, notwithstanding her grandmother's indignation. cycling, gymnastics, boating, swimming, were her passion, and she showed skill in them. as she grew older she hated prettily adorned hats and clothes. i had much trouble with her for she would not wear pretty things. the older she grew the more her masculine and decided ways developed. this excited much outcry and offence. people found my daughter unfeminine and disagreeable, but all my trouble and exhortations availed nothing to change her." now this young woman whom all the influences of a normal feminine environment failed to render feminine was not physiologically a woman at all; the case proved to be the unique instance of an individual possessing all the external characteristics of a woman combined with internal testicular tissue capable of emitting true masculine semen through the feminine urethra. no suggestions of the environment could suffice to overcome this fundamental fact of internal constitution. (hirschfeld and burchard, "spermasekretion aus einer weiblichen harnröhre," _deutsche medizinische wochenschrift_, no. , .) i may here quote three american cases (not previously published), for which i am indebted to prof. g. frank lydston, of chicago. they seem to me to illustrate the only kind of suggestions which play much part in the evolution of inversion. i give them in dr. lydston's words:-- case i.--a man, years of age, attracted by the allusion to my essay on "social perversion" contained in the english translation of krafft-ebing's _psychopathia sexualis_, consulted me regarding the possible cure of his condition. this individual was a finely educated, very intelligent man, who was an excellent linguist, had considerable musical ability, and was in the employ of a firm whose business was such as to demand on the part of its employés considerable legal acumen, clerical ability, and knowledge of real-estate transactions. this man stated that at the age of puberty, without any knowledge of perversity of sexual feeling, he was thrown intimately in contact with males of more advanced years, who took various means to excite his sexual passions, the result being that perverted sexual practices were developed, which were continued for a number of years. he thereafter noticed an aversion to women. at the solicitations of his family he finally married, without any very intelligent idea as to what, if anything, might be expected of him in the marital relation. absolute impotence--indeed, repugnance for association with his wife--was the lamentable sequence. a divorce was in contemplation when, fortunately for all parties concerned, the wife suddenly died. being a man of more than ordinary intelligence, this individual, prior to seeking my aid, had sought vainly for some remedy for his unfortunate condition. he stated that he believed there was an element of heredity in his case, his father having been a dipsomaniac and one brother having died insane. he nevertheless stated it to be his opinion that, notwithstanding the hereditary taint, he would have been perfectly normal from a sexual standpoint had it not been for acquired impressions at or about the period of puberty. this man presented a typically neurotic type of _physique_, complained of being intensely nervous, was prematurely gray, of only fair stature, and had an uncontrollable nystagmus, which, he said, had existed for some fifteen years. as might be expected, treatment in this case was of no avail. i began the use of hypnotic suggestion at the hands of an expert professional hypnotist. the patient, being called out of the state, finally gave up treatment, and i have no means of knowing what his present condition is. case ii.--a lady patient of mine who happened to be an actress, and consequently a woman of the world, brought to me for an opinion some correspondence which had passed between her younger brother and a man living in another state, with whom he was on quite intimate terms. in one of these letters various flying trips to chicago for the purpose of meeting the lad, who, by the way, was only years of age, were alluded to. it transpired also, as evidenced by the letters, that on several occasions the young lad had been taken on trips in pullman cars by his friend, who was a prominent railroad official. the character of the correspondence was such as the average healthy man would address to a woman with whom he was enamored. it seemed that the author of the correspondence had applied to his boy affinity the name cinderella, and the protestations of passionate affection that were made toward cinderella certainly would have satisfied the most exacting woman. the young lad subsequently made a confession to me, and i put myself in correspondence with his male friend, with the result that he called upon me and i obtained a full history of the case. the method of indulgence in this case was the usual one of oral masturbation, in which the lad was the passive party. i was unable to obtain any definite data regarding the family history of the elder individual in this case, but understand that there was a taint of insanity in his family. he himself was a robust, fine-looking man, above middle age, who was well educated and very intelligent, as he necessarily must have been, because of the prominent position he held with an important railway company. i will state, as a matter of interest, that the lad in this case, who is now years of age, has recently consulted me for _impotentia coëundi_, manifesting a frigidity for women, and, from the young man's statements, i am convinced that he is well on the road to confirmed sexual perversion. an interesting point in this connection is that the young man's sister, the actress already alluded to, has recently had an attack of acute mania. i have had other unpublished cases that might be of interest, but these two are somewhat classical, and typify to a greater or less degree the majority of other cases. i will, however, mention one other case, occurring in a woman. case iii.--a married woman years of age. has been deserted by her husband because of her perverted sexuality. neurotic history on both sides of the family, and several cases of insanity on mother's side. in this case affinity for the same sex and perverted desire for the opposite sex existed, a combination by no means infrequent. hypnotic suggestion tried, but without success. cause was evidently suggestion and example on the part of another female pervert with whom she associated before her marriage. marriage was late, at age of . in all these cases there was an element of what may be called suggestion, but it was really much more than this; it was probably in each case active seduction by an elder person of a predisposed younger person. it will be observed that in each case there was, at the least, an organic neurotic basis for suggestion and seduction to work on. i cannot regard these cases as entitled to modify our attitude toward suggestion. masturbation.--moreau believed that masturbation was a cause of sexual inversion, and krafft-ebing looked upon it as leading to all sorts of sexual perversions; the same opinion was currently repeated by many writers. it is not now accepted. moll emphatically rejected the idea that masturbation can be the cause of inversion; näcke repeatedly denies that masturbation, any more than seduction, can ever produce true inversion; hirschfeld attaches to it no etiological significance. many years ago i gave special attention to this point and reached a similar conclusion. that masturbation, especially at an early age, may sometimes enfeeble the sexual activities, and aid the manifestations of inversion, i certainly believe. but beyond this there is little in the history of my male cases to indicate masturbation as a cause of inversion. it is true that out of admit that they have practised masturbation,--at all events, occasionally, or at some period in their lives,--and it is possible that this proportion is larger than that found among normal people. even if so, however, it is not difficult to account for, bearing in mind the fact that the homosexual person has not the same opportunities as has the heterosexual person to gratify his instincts, and that masturbation may sometimes legitimately appear to him as the lesser of two evils.[ ] not only has masturbation been practised at no period in at least of the cases (for concerning several i have no information), but in several others it was never practised until long after the homosexual instinct had appeared, in case not till the age of , and then only occasionally. in at least it was only practised at puberty; in at least , however, it began before the age of puberty; at least left off before about the age of . unfortunately, as yet, we have little definite evidence as to the prevalence and extent of masturbation among normal individuals. among the women masturbation is found in at least cases out of . in case there was no masturbation until comparatively late in life, and then only at rare intervals and under exceptional circumstances. in another case, some years after the homosexual attraction had been experienced, it was practised, though not in excess, from the age of puberty for about four years, and then abandoned; during these years the physical sexual feelings were more imperative than they were afterward felt to be. in cases masturbation was learned spontaneously soon after puberty, and in of these practised in excess before the manifestations of inversion became definite. in all cases the subjects are emphatic in asserting that this practice neither led to, nor was caused by, the homosexual attraction, which they regard as a much higher feeling, and it must be added that the occasional practice of masturbation is very far from rare among fairly normal women.[ ] while this is so, i am certainly inclined to believe that an early and excessive indulgence in masturbation, though not an adequate cause, is a favoring condition for the development of inversion, and that this is especially so in women. the sexual precocity indicated by early and excessive masturbation doubtless sometimes reveals an organism already predisposed to homosexuality. but, apart from this, when masturbation arises spontaneously at an early age on a purely physical basis it seems to tend to produce a divorce between the physical and the psychic aspects of sexual love. the sexual manifestations are all diverted into this physical direction, and the child is ignorant that such phenomena are normally allied to love; then, when a more spiritual attraction appears with adolescent development, this divorce is perpetuated. instead of the physical and psychic feelings appearing together when the age for sexual attraction comes, the physical feelings are prematurely twisted from their natural end, and it becomes abnormally easy for a person of the same sex to step in and take the place rightfully belonging to a person of the opposite sex. this has certainly seemed to me the course of events in some cases i have observed. attitude toward the opposite sex.--in cases (of whom are married and others purposing to marry) there is sexual attraction to both sexes, a condition formerly called psycho-sexual hermaphroditism, but now more usually bisexuality. in such cases, although there is pleasure and satisfaction in relationships with both sexes, there is usually a greater degree of satisfaction in connection with one sex. most of the bisexual prefer their own sex. it is curiously rare to find a person, whether man or woman, who by choice exercises relationships with both sexes and prefers the opposite sex. this would seem to indicate that the bisexual may really be inverts. in any case bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion. in at least of cases of simple inversion in men there has been connection with women, in some instances only once or twice, in others during several years, but it was always with an effort, or from a sense of duty and anxiety to be normal; they never experienced any real pleasure in the act, or sense of satisfaction after it. four of these cases are married, but martial relationships usually ceased after a few years. at least four others were attracted to women when younger, but are not now; another once felt sexually attracted to a boyish woman, but never made any attempt to obtain any relationships with her; or others, again, have tried to have connection with women, but failed. the largest proportion of my cases have never had any sexual intimacy with the opposite sex,[ ] and some of these experience what, in the case of the male invert, is sometimes called _horror feminæ_. but, while woman as an object of sexual desire is in such cases disgusting to them, and it is usually difficult for a genuine invert to have connection with a woman except by setting up images of his own sex, for the most part inverts are capable of genuine friendships, irrespective of sex. it is, perhaps, not difficult to account for the horror--much stronger than that normally felt toward a person of the same sex--with which the invert often regards the sexual organs of persons of the opposite sex. it cannot be said that the sexual organs of either sex under the influence of sexual excitement are esthetically pleasing; they only become emotionally desirable through the parallel excitement of the beholder. when the absence of parallel excitement is accompanied in the beholder by the sense of unfamiliarity as in childhood, or by a neurotic hypersensitiveness, the conditions are present for the production of intense _horror feminæ_ or _horror masculis_, as the case may be. it is possible that, as otto rank argues in his interesting study, "die naktheit im sage und dichtung," this horror of the sexual organs of the opposite sex, to some extent felt even by normal people, is embodied in the melusine type of legend.[ ] erotic dreams.--our dreams follow, as a general rule, the impulses that stir our waking psychic life. the normal man or woman in sexual vigor dreams of loving a person of the opposite sex; the inverted man dreams of loving a man, the inverted woman of loving a woman.[ ] dreams thus have a certain value in diagnosis, more especially since there is less unwillingness to confess to a perverted dream than to a perverted action. ulrichs first referred to the significance of the dreams of inverts. at a later period moll pointed out that they have some value in diagnosis when we are not sure how far the inverted tendency is radical. then näcke repeatedly emphasized the importance of dreams as constituting, he believed, the most delicate test we possess in the diagnosis of homosexuality;[ ] this was an exaggerated view which failed to take into account the various influences which may deflect dreams. hirschfeld has made the most extensive investigation on this point, and found that among inverts had exclusively homosexual dreams, while most of the rest had no dreams at all.[ ] among my cases, only definitely state that there are no erotic dreams, while acknowledge that the dreams are concerned more or less with persons of the same sex. of these, at least assert or imply that their dreams are exclusively of the same sex. two, though apparently inverted congenitally, have had erotic dreams of women, in one case more frequently than of men; these two exceptions have no apparent explanation. another appears to have sexual dreams of a nightmare character in which women appear. in another case there were always at first dreams of women, but this subject had sometimes had connection with prostitutes, and is not absolutely indifferent to women, while another, whose dreams remain heterosexual, had in early life some attraction to girls. in the cases of distinct bisexuality there is no unanimity; dream of their own sex, dream of both sexes, usually dreams of the opposite sex, and man, while dreaming of both, dislikes those dreams in which women figure. in at least cases dreams of a sexual character began at the age of or earlier. the phenomena presented by erotic dreams, alike in normal and abnormal persons, are somewhat complex, and dreams are by no means a sure guide to the dreamer's real sexual attitude. the fluctuations of dream imagery may be illustrated by the experiences of one of my subjects who thus indirectly summarises his own experiences: "when he was quite a child, he used to be haunted by gross and grotesque dreams of naked adult men, which must have been erotic. at the age of puberty he dreamed in two ways, but always about males. one species of vision was highly idealistic; a radiant and lovely young man's face with floating hair appeared to him on a background of dim shadows. the other was obscene, being generally the sight of a groom's or carter's genitals in a state of violent erection. he never dreamed erotically or sentimentally about women; but when the dream was frightful, the terror-making personage was invariably female. in ordinary dreams, women of his family or acquaintance played a trivial part. at the age of , having determined to conquer his homosexual passions, he married, found no difficulty in cohabiting with his wife, and begat several children, although he took but little passionate delight in the sexual act. he still continued to dream exclusively of men, for several years; and the obscene visions became more frequent than the idealistic. gradually, coarse and uninteresting erotic dreams of women began to haunt his mind in sleep. a curious particular regarding the new type of vision was that he never dreamed of whole females, only of their sexual parts, seen in a blur; and the seminal emissions which attended the mental pictures left a feeling of fatigue and disgust. in course of time, his wife and he agreed to live separately so far as sexual relations are concerned. he then indulged his passion for males, and wholly lost those rudimentary female dreams which had been developed during the period of nuptial cohabitation." not only is it possible for the genuine invert to be trained into heterosexual erotic dreams, but homosexual dreams may occasionally be experienced by persons who are, and always have been, exclusively heterosexual. i could bring forward much evidence on this point. (cf. "auto-erotism" in vol. i of these _studies_.) both men and women who have always been of pronounced heterosexual tendency, without a trace of inversion, are liable to rare homosexual dreams, not necessarily involving orgasm or even definite sexual excitement, and sometimes accompanied by a feeling of repugnance. as an example i may present a dream (which had no known origin) of an exclusively heterosexual lady aged ; she dreamed she was in bed with another woman, unknown to her, and lying on her own stomach, while with her right hand stretched out she was feeling the other's sexual parts. she could distinctly perceive the clitoris, vagina, etc.; she felt a sort of disgust with herself for what she was doing, but continued until she awoke; she then found herself lying on her stomach as in the dream and at first thought she must have been touching herself, but realized that this could not have been the case. (niceforo, who believes that inversion may develop out of masturbation, considers that dreams of masturbation by association of ideas may take on an inverted character [_le psicopatie sessuale_, , pp. , ]; this, however, must be rare, and will not account for most of the dreams in question.) näcke and colin scott, some years ago, independently referred to cases in which normal persons were liable to homosexual dreams, and féré (_revue de médecine_, dec., ) referred to a man who had a horror of women, but appeared only to manifest homosexuality in his dreams. näcke (_archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , heft i, ) calls dreams which represent a reaction of opposition to the dreamer's ordinary life "contrast dreams." hirschfeld, who accepts näcke's "contrast dreams" in relation to homosexuality, considers that they indicate a latent bisexuality. we may admit this is so, in the same sense in which a complementary color image called up by another color indicates the possibility of perceiving that color. in most cases, however, it seems to me that homosexual dreams in normal persons may be simply explained as due to the ordinary confusion and transition of dream imagery. (see ellis, _the world of dreams_, especially ch. ii.) _methods of sexual relationship_.--the exact mode in which an inverted instinct finds satisfaction is frequently of importance from the medico-legal standpoint;[ ] from a psychological standpoint it is of minor significance, being chiefly of interest as showing the degree to which the individual has departed from the instinctive feelings of his normal fellow-beings. taking inverted men of whom i have definite knowledge, i find that , restrained by moral or other considerations, have never had any physical relationship with their own sex. in some cases the sexual relationship rarely goes beyond close physical contact and fondling, or at most mutual masturbation and intercrural intercourse. in or cases _fellatio_ (oral excitation)--frequently in addition to some form of mutual masturbation, and usually, though not always, as the active agency--is the form preferred. in cases, actual _pedicatio_[ ]--usually active, not passive--has been exercised. in these cases, however, _pedicatio_ is by no means always the habitual or even the preferred method of gratification. it seems to be the preferred method in about cases. several who have never experienced it, including some who have never practised any form of physical relationship, state that they feel no objection to _pedicatio_; some have this feeling in regard to active, others in regard to passive, _pedicatio_. the proportion of inverts who practise or have at some time experienced _pedicatio_ thus revealed (nearly per cent.) is large; in germany hirschfeld finds it to be only per cent., and merzbach only . i believe, however, that a wider induction from a larger number of english and american cases would yield a proportion much nearer to that found in germany.[ ] pseudosexual attraction.--it is sometimes supposed that in homosexual relationships one person is always active, physically and emotionally, the other passive. between men, at all events, this is very frequently not the case, and the invert cannot tell if he feels like a man or like a woman. thus, one writes:-- "in bed with my friend i feel as he feels, and he feels as i feel. the result is masturbation, and nothing more or desire for more on my part. i get it over, too, as soon as possible, in order to come to the best--sleeping arms round each other, or talking so." it remains true, however, that there may usually be traced what it is possible to call pseudosexual attraction, by which i mean a tendency for the invert to be attracted toward persons unlike himself, so that in his sexual relationships there is a certain semblance of sexual opposition. numa praetorius considers that in homosexuality the attraction of opposites--the attraction for soldiers and other primitive vigorous types--plays a greater part than among normal lovers.[ ] this pseudosexual attraction is, however, as hirschfeld points out,[ ] and as we see by the histories here presented, by no means invariable. m.n. writes: "to me it appears that the female element must, of necessity, exist in the body that desires the male, and that nature keeps her law in the spirit, though she breaks it in the form. the rest is all a matter of individual temperament and environment. the female nature of the invert, hampered though it is by its disguise of flesh, is still able to exert an extraordinary influence, and calls insistently upon the male. this influence seems called into action most violently in the presence of males possessed of strong sexual magnetism of their own. such men are generally more or less conscious of the influence, and the result is either a vague appreciation, which will make the male wonder why he gets on so well with the invert, or else the influence will be realized to be something incongruous and unnatural, and will be resented accordingly. sometimes, indeed, the reciprocated feeling (circumstance and opportunity permitting) will prove strong enough to induce sexual relations. reason will then generally overpower instinct, and the feeling, aroused unaware, will probably be changed into repulsion. further, the influence reacts in the same way on women, who, particularly if they are strongly sexual, experience involuntary sensations of dislike or antagonism on association with inverts. there is, however, one terrible reality for the invert to face, no matter how much he may wish to avoid it and seek to deceive himself. there exists for him an almost absolute lack of any genuine satisfaction either in the way of the affections or desires. his whole life is passed in vainly seeking and desiring the male, the antithesis of his nature, and in consorting with inverts he must perforce be content with the male in form only, the shadow without the substance. indeed, one invert necessarily regards another as being of the same undesired female sex as himself, and for this reason it will be found that, while friendships between inverts frequently exist (and these are characteristically feminine, unstable, and liable to betrayal), love-attachments are less common, and when they occur must naturally be based upon considerable self-deception. venal gratifications are always, of course, as possible as they are unsatisfactory, and here perhaps some of the peculiarities of taste accompanying inversion may admit of elucidation. in considering the peculiar predilection shown by inverts for youths of inferior social position, for the wearers of uniforms, and for extreme physical development and virility not necessarily accompanied by intellectuality, regard must be had to the probable conduct of women placed in a position of complete irresponsibility combined with absolute freedom of action and every opportunity for promiscuity. it seems to me that the importance of recognizing the underlying female element in inversion cannot be too strongly insisted upon." "the majority" [of inverts], writes "z," "differ in no detail of their outward appearance, their _physique_, or their dress from normal men. they are athletic, masculine in habit, frank in manner, passing through society year after year without arousing a suspicion of their inner temperament; were it not so, society would long ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted sexuality it harbors." these lines were written, not in opposition to the more subtle distinctions pointed out above, but in refutation of the vulgar error which confuses the typical invert with the painted and petticoated creatures who appear in police-courts from time to time, and whose portraits are presented by lombroso, legludic, etc. on another occasion the same writer remarked, while expressing general agreement with the idea of a pseudosexual attraction: "the _liaison_ is by no means always sought and begun by the person who is abnormally constituted. i mean that i can cite cases of decided males who have made up to inverts, and have found their happiness in the reciprocated passion. one pronounced male of this sort, again, once said to me, 'men are so much more affectionate than women.' [precisely the same words were used by one of my subjects.] also, the _liaison_ springs up now and then quite accidentally through juxtaposition, when it is difficult to say whether either at the outset had an inverted tendency of any marked quality. in these cases the sexual relation seems to come on as a heightening of comradely affection, and is found to be pleasurable--sometimes, i think, discovered to be safe as well as satisfying. on the other hand, so far as i know, it is extremely rare to observe a permanent _liaison_ between two pronounced inverts." the tendency to pseudosexual attraction in the homosexual would thus seem to involve a preference for normal persons. how far this is the case it seems difficult to state positively. usually, one may say, an invert falls in love (exactly as in the case of a normal person) without any intellectual calculation as to the temperamental ability to return the affection which the object of his love may possess. naturally, however, there cannot be any adequate return of the affection in the absence of an actual or latent homosexual disposition. on this point an american correspondent (h.c.), with a wide knowledge of inversion in many lands, writes: "one of your correspondents declares that inverts long for sexual relations with normal men rather than with one another. if this be true, i have never once found it exemplified in all my wide experience of inverts; and i have submitted his assertion to more than . these have replied invariably that unless a man is himself homosexual, nearly all the pleasure of _fellatio_ is absent. the fact is, the majority of inverts flock together not from exigency, but from choice. the mere sexual act is, if anything, far less the sole object between inverts than it is between normal men and women. why should the invert sigh for intercourse with normal men, where mutual confidences and sympathies and love would be out of the question? personally, i decline to commit _fellatio_ with a man who is given to women; the thought of it is repugnant to me. and this is the attitude with every invert i have questioned. the nearest approach to confirmation of your correspondent's theory has been when an extremely feminine invert here and there has admitted the wish that a certain normal man _were_ inverted. indeed, the temperamental gamut of inversion is itself broad enough to embrace the most widely divergent ideals. as my furthest-reaching demands attain fruition in the gentle and pretty boy, so his own robuster affinity resides in me. if inverts were actually women, then indeed the normal male would be their ideal. but inverts are not women. inverts are males capable of passionate friendship, and their ideal is the male who will give them passionate friendship in return." in at least , probably many more, of my male cases there is a marked contrast, and in a still larger number a less-marked contrast, between the subject and the individuals he is attracted to; either he is of somewhat feminine and sensitive nature, and admires more simple and virile natures, or he is fairly vigorous and admires boys who are often of lower social class. inverted women also are attracted to more clinging feminine persons.[ ] a sexual attraction for boys is, no doubt, as moll points out, that form of inversion which comes nearest to normal sexuality, for the subject of it usually approaches nearer to the average man in physical and mental disposition. the reason of this is obvious: boys resemble women, and therefore it requires a less profound organic twist to become sexually attracted to them. anyone who has watched private theatricals in boys' schools will have observed how easy it is for boys to personate women successfully, and it is well known that until the middle of the seventeenth century women's parts on the stage were always taken by boys, whether or not with injury to their own or other people's morals.[ ] it is also worthy of note that in greece, where homosexuality flourished so extensively, and apparently with so little accompaniment of neurotic degeneration, it was often held that only boys under should be loved; so that the love of boys merged into love of women. about of my cases are most strongly attracted to youths,--preferably of about the age of to ,--and they are, for the most part, among the more normal and healthy of the cases. a preference for older men, or else a considerable degree of indifference to age alone, is more common, and perhaps indicates a deeper degree of perversion. putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to approach the feminine type, either in psychic disposition or physical constitution, or both.[ ] i cannot say how far this is explained by the irritable nervous system and delicate health which are so often associated with inversion, though this is certainly an important factor. although the invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority of inverts who take an exclusively passive rôle, though in these it is usually most marked. in this i am confirmed by q., who writes: "in all, or certainly almost all, the cases of congenital male inverts (excluding psycho-sexual hermaphrodites) that i know there has been a remarkable sensitiveness and delicacy of sentiment, sympathy, and an intuitive habit of mind, such as we generally associate with the feminine sex, even though the body might be quite masculine in its form and habit."[ ] when, however, a distinguished invert said to moll: "we are all women; that we do not deny," he put the matter in too extreme a form. the feminine traits of the homosexual are not usually of a conspicuous character. "i believe that inverts of plainly feminine nature are rare exceptions," wrote näcke:[ ] and that statement may be accepted even by those who emphasize the prevalence of feminine traits among inverts. in inverted women some degree of masculinity or boyishness is equally prevalent, and it is not usually found in the women to whom they are attracted. even in inversion the need for a certain sexual opposition--the longing for something which the lover himself does not possess--still prevails. it expresses itself sometimes in an attraction between persons of different race and color. i am told that in american prisons for women lesbian relationships are specially frequent between white and black women.[ ] a similar affinity is found among the arabs, says kocher; and if an arab woman has a lesbian friend the latter is usually european. in cochin china, too, according to lorion, while the chinese are chiefly active pederasts, the annamites are chiefly passive. it must, however, be remembered that, in normal love, homogamy, the attraction of the like, prevails over heterogamy, the attraction of the unlike, which is chiefly confined to those features which belong to the sphere of the secondary sexual characters;[ ] the same appears to be true in inversion, and the homosexual are probably, on the whole, more attracted by the traits which they seem to themselves to possess than by those which are foreign to themselves.[ ] physical abnormalities.--the circumstances under which many of my cases were investigated often made information under this head difficult to obtain, or to verify. in at least cases the penis is very large, while in at least it is small and undeveloped, with small and flabby testes. it seems probable that variations in these two directions are both common, but it is doubtful whether they possess as much significance as the tendency to infantilism of the sexual organs in inverted women seems to possess. hirschfeld considers that the genital organs of inverts resemble those of normal people. he finds, however, that phimosis is rather common.[ ] more significant, perhaps, than specifically genital peculiarities are the deviations found in the general conformation of the body.[ ] in at least cases there are well-developed breasts, in the breasts swelling and becoming red.[ ] in case there are "menstrual" phenomena, physical and psychic, recurring every four weeks. in several cases the hips are broad and the arms rounded, while some are skillful in throwing a ball. one was born with a double squint. at least were months' children. in the previous chapter i have referred to the tendency to hypertrichosis and occasionally oligotrichosis among inverted women; among the men it is the latter condition which seems more common, and in several cases the bodies are hairless, or with but scanty hair. a few are left-handed, though not perhaps an abnormal proportion.[ ] the sexual characters of the handwriting are in some cases clearly inverted, the men writing a feminine hand and the women a masculine hand.[ ] a high feminine voice is sometimes found.[ ] a marked characteristic of many inverts, though one not easy of precise definition, is their youthfulness of appearance, and frequently child-like faces, equally in both sexes. this has often been remarked,[ ] and is pronounced among many of my subjects. the frequent inability of male inverts to whistle was first pointed out by ulrichs, and hirschfeld has found it in per cent. many of my cases confess to this inability, while some of the women inverts can whistle admirably. although this inability of male inverts is only found among a minority, i am quite satisfied that it is well marked among a considerable minority. one of my correspondents, m.n., writes to me: "with regard to the general inability of inverts to whistle (i am not able to do so myself), their fondness for green (my favorite color), their feminine caligraphy, skill at female occupations, etc., these all seem to me but indications of the one principle. to go still farther and include trivial things, few inverts even smoke in the same manner and with the same enjoyment as a man; they have seldom the male facility at games, cannot throw at a mark with precision, or even spit!" nearly all these peculiarities indicate a minor degree of nervous disturbance and lead to modification, as my correspondent points out, in a feminine direction. it is scarcely necessary to add that they by no means necessarily imply inversion. shelley, for instance, was unable to whistle, though he never gave an indication of inversion; but he was a person of somewhat abnormal and feminine organization, and he illustrates the tendency of these apparently very insignificant functional anomalies to be correlated with other and more important psychic anomalies. the greater part of these various anatomical peculiarities and functional anomalies point, more or less clearly, to the prevalence among inverts of a tendency to infantilism, combined with feminism in men and masculinism in women.[ ] this tendency is denied by hirschfeld, but it is often well indicated among the subjects whose histories i have been able to present, and is indeed suggested by hirschfeld's own elaborate results; so that it can scarcely be passed over. i regard it as highly significant, and it is in harmony with all that we are learning to know regarding the important part played by the internal secretions, alike in inversion and the general bodily modifications in an infantile, feminine, and masculine direction. if we are justified in believing that there is a tendency for inverted persons to be somewhat arrested in development, approaching the child type, we may connect this fact with the sexual precocity sometimes marked in inverts, for precocity is commonly accompanied by rapid arrest of development. a correspondent, who is himself inverted, furnishes the following notes of cases he is well acquainted with; i quote them here, as they illustrate the anomalies commonly found:-- . a., male, eldest child of typically neurotic family. three children in all: male and female. the other are somewhat eccentric, unsocial, and sexually frigid, in a marked degree. the curious point about this case is that a., the only one of the family possessed of mental ability and social qualifications, should be inverted. parents' marriage was very ill-assorted and inharmonious, the father being of great stature and the mother abnormally small and of highly nervous temperament, both of feeble health. ancestry unfortunate, especially on mother's side. . b., male, invert, younger of sons, no other children, has extremely feminine disposition and appearance, of considerable personal attraction, and has great musical talent. penis very small and marked breast-development. . c., male, invert, younger of sons, no other children. interval of six years between first and second son. parents' marriage one of great affection, but degenerate ancestry on mother's side. cancer and scrofula in family. . d., male, invert, second child of ; remainder girls. of humble social position. considerable depravity evinced by all the members of this family, with the exception of d., who alone proved steady, honest, and industrious. . e., male, invert, second son of family of , the youngest child being a girl, stillborn. of extreme neurotic temperament fostered by upbringing. effeminate in build and disposition; musically gifted. . f., male, invert, second child of family of . eldest child a girl, died in youth. after f. a boy g., a girl h., and another girl stillborn. parents badly matched; mother of considerable mental and physical strength; father last representative of moribund stock, the result of intermarriage. children all resembling father in appearance and mother in disposition. drink-tendency in both boys, to which f.'s death at the age of was mainly due. g. committed suicide some years later. the girl h. married into a family with worse ancestry than her own. has two children:-- . i. and j., boy and girl, both inverted as far as i am able to judge. the boy was born with some deformity of the feet and ankles; is of effeminate tastes and appearance. boy resembles mother, and girl, who is of great physical development, resembles father. the same correspondent adds:-- "i have noticed little abnormal with regard to the genital formation of inverts. there are, however, frequent abnormalities of proportion in their figures, the hands and feet being noticeably smaller and more shapely, the waist more marked, the body softer and less muscular. almost invariably there is either cranial malformation or the head approaches the feminine in type and shape." artistic and other aptitudes.--all avocations are represented among inverts. among the subjects here dealt with are found, at one end of the scale, numerous manual workers, and at the other end an equal number, sometimes of aristocratic family, who exercise no profession at all. there are physicians, men of letters, at least are engaged in commercial life, are artists, architects, or composers, are or have been actors. these figures cannot give any clue to the relative extent of inversion in various occupations, but they indicate that no class of occupation furnishes a safeguard against inversion. there are, however, certain avocations to which inverts seem especially called.[ ] one of the chief of these is literature. the apparent predominance of physicians is easily explicable. the frequency with which literature is represented is probably more genuine. here, indeed, inverts seem to find the highest degree of success and reputation. at least half a dozen of my subjects are successful men of letters, and i could easily add others by going outside the group of histories included in this study. they especially cultivate those regions of _belles-lettres_ which lie on the borderland between prose and verse. though they do not usually attain much eminence in poetry, they are often very accomplished writers of verse. they may be attracted to history, but rarely attempt tasks of great magnitude, involving much patient labor, though to this rule there are exceptions. pure science seems to have relatively little attraction for the homosexual.[ ] an examination of my histories reveals the interesting fact that of the subjects, or in the proportion of per cent., possess artistic aptitudes of varying degree. galton found, from the investigation of nearly persons, that the average showing artistic tastes in england was only about per cent. it must also be said that my figures are probably below the truth, as no special point was made of investigating the matter, and also that in some cases the artistic ability is of high order. it is suggested that adler's theory of _minderwertigkeit_--according to which we react strenuously against our congenital organic defects and fortify them into virtues--may be applied to the invert's acquirement of artistic abilities (g. rosenstein, "die theorien der organminderwertigkeit und die bisexualität," _jahrbuch für psychoanalytische forschungen_, vol. ii, , p. ). this theory is in some cases of valuable application, but it seems doubtful to me whether it is very profitable in the present connection. the artistic aptitudes of inverts may better be regarded as part of their organic tendencies than as a reaction against those tendencies. in this connection i may quote the remarks of an american correspondent, himself homosexual: "regarding the connection between inversion and artistic capacity, so far as i can see, the temperament of every invert seems to strive to find artistic expression--crudely or otherwise. inverts, as a rule, seek the paths of life that lie in pleasant places; their resistance to opposing obstacles is elastic, their work is never strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly ever of practical use. this is all true of the born artist, as well. both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise; both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little energy. in a word, they seem to be 'born tired,' begotten by parents who were tired, too." hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) gives a list of pictures and sculptures which specially appeal to the homosexual. prominent among them are representations of st. sebastian, gainsborough's blue boy, vandyck's youthful men, the hermes of praxiteles, michelangelo's slave, rodin's and meunier's working-men types. as regards music, my cases reveal the aptitude which has been remarked by others as peculiarly common among inverts. it has been extravagantly said that all musicians are inverts; it is certain that various famous musicians, among the dead and the living, have been homosexual. ingegnieros speaks of a "genito-musical synæsthesia," analogous to color-hearing, in this connection. calesia states (_archivio di psichiatria_, , p. ) that per cent, inverts are musicians. hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) regards this estimate as excessive, but he himself elsewhere states (p. ) that per cent, of male inverts are greatly attracted to music, the women being decidedly less attracted. oppenheim (in a paper summarized in the _neurologische centralblatt_ for june , , and the _alienist and neurologist_ for nov., ) well remarks that the musical disposition is marked by a great emotional instability, and this instability is a disposition to nervousness. it is thus that neurasthenia is so common among musicians. the musician has not been rendered nervous by the music, but he owes his nervousness (as also, it may be added, his disposition to homosexuality) to the same disposition to which he owes his musical aptitude. moreover, the musician is frequently one-sided in his gifts, and the possession of a single hypertrophied aptitude is itself closely related to the neuropathic and psychopathic diathesis. the tendency to dramatic aptitude--found among a large proportion of my subjects who have never been professional actors--has attracted the attention of previous investigators in this field.[ ] thus, moll refers to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. after pointing out that the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always actors, he goes on to say:-- apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both phenomena are due to the same source. i am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, i believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic genius. the dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore, partly due to the circumstances of the invert's life, which render him necessarily an actor,--and in some few cases lead him into a love of deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,--and partly, it is probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the predisposition to dramatic aptitude. one of my correspondents has long been interested in the frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. he knew an inverted actor who told him he adopted the profession because it would enable him to indulge his proclivity; but, on the whole, he regards this tendency as due to "hitherto unconsidered imaginative flexibilities and curiosities in the individual. the actor, _ex hypothesi_, is one who works himself by sympathy (intellectual and emotional) into states of psychological being that are not his own. he learns to comprehend--nay, to live himself into--relations which were originally alien to his nature. the capacity for doing this--what makes a born actor--implies a faculty for extending his artistically acquired experience into life. in the process of his trade, therefore, he becomes at all points sensitive to human emotions, and, sexuality being the most intellectually undetermined of the appetites after hunger, the actor might discover in himself a sort of sexual indifference, out of which a sexual aberration could easily arise. a man devoid of this imaginative flexibility could not be a successful actor. the man who possesses it would be exposed to divagations of the sexual instinct under esthetical or merely wanton influences. something of the same kind is applicable to musicians and artists, in whom sexual inversion prevails beyond the average. they are conditioned by their esthetical faculty, and encouraged by the circumstances of their life to feel and express the whole gamut of emotional experience. thus they get an environment which (unless they are sharply otherwise differentiated) leads easily to experiments in passion. all this joins on to what you call the 'variational diathesis' of men of genius. but i should seek the explanation of the phenomenon less in the original sexual constitution than in the exercise of sympathetic, assimilative emotional qualities, powerfully stimulated and acted on by the conditions of the individual's life. the artist, the singer, the actor, the painter, are more exposed to the influences out of which sexual differentiation in an abnormal direction may arise. some persons are certainly made abnormal by nature, others, of this sympathetic artistic temperament, may become so through their sympathies plus their conditions of life." it is possible there may be some element of truth in this view, which my correspondent regarded as purely hypothetical. in this connection i may, perhaps, mention a moral quality which is very often associated with dramatic aptitude, and also with minor degrees of nervous degeneration, and that is vanity and the love of applause. while among a considerable section of inverts it is not more marked than among the non-inverted, if not, indeed, less marked, among another section it is found in an exaggerated degree. in at least one of my cases vanity and delight in admiration, both as regards personal qualities and artistic productions, reach an almost morbid extent. and the quotations from letters written by various others of my subjects show a curious complacency in the description of their personal physical characters, markedly absent in other cases. it is suggested by alexander schmid, on the basis of adler's views, that this vanity, which sometimes in the inverted artist becomes an exalted pride, as of a guardian of sacred mysteries, may be regarded as an effort to secure a compensation for the consciousness of feminine defect.[ ] the extreme type of this preoccupation with personal beauty is represented by the history of himself sent by a young italian of good family to zola in the hope--itself a sign of vanity--that the distinguished novelist would make it the subject of one of his works. the history is reproduced in the _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_ ( ) and in _l'homosexualité et les types homosexuels_ ( ) by "dr. laupts" (g. saint-paul). i quote the following passage: "at the age of i was, with few differences, what i am now (at ). i am rather below the medium height ( . metres), well proportioned, slender, but not lean. my torso is superb; a sculptor could find nothing against it, and would not find it very different from that of antinotis. my back is very arched, perhaps too much so; and my hips are very developed; my pelvis is broad, like a woman's; my knees slightly approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut squarely like those of ancient statues. my neck is long and round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. my head is charming, and at was more so. the oval of it is perfect and strikes all by its infantine form. at i am to be taken for at most. my complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the faintest emotion. the forehead is not beautiful; it recedes slightly and is hollow at the temples, but, fortunately, it is half-covered by long hair, of a dark blonde, which curls naturally. the head is perfect in form, because of the curly hair, but on examination there is an enormous protuberance at the occiput. my eyes are oval, of a gray blue, with dark chestnut eyelashes and thick, arched eyebrows. my eyes are very liquid, but with dark circles, and bistered; and they are subject to slight temporary inflammation. my mouth is fairly large, with thick red lips, the lower pendent; they tell me i have the austrian mouth. my teeth are dazzling, though three are decayed and stopped; fortunately, they cannot be seen. my ears are small and with very colored lobes. my chin is very fat, and at it was smooth and velvety as a woman's; at present there is a slight beard, always shaved. two beauty spots, black and velvety, on my left cheek, contrast with my blue eyes. my nose is thin and straight, with delicate nostrils and a slight, almost insensible curve. my voice is gentle, and people always regret that i have not learned to sing." this description is noteworthy as a detailed portrait of a sexual invert of a certain type; the whole history is interesting and instructive. certain peculiarities in taste as regards costume have rightly or wrongly been attributed to inverts,--apart from the tendency of a certain group to adopt feminine habits,--and may here be mentioned. tardieu many years ago referred to the taste for keeping the neck uncovered. this peculiarity may occasionally be observed among inverts, especially the more artistic among them. the cause does not appear to be precisely vanity so much as that physical consciousness which is so curiously marked in inverts, and induces the more feminine among them to cultivate feminine grace of form, and the more masculine to emphasize the masculine athletic habit. it has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green garments. in rome _cinædi_ were for this reason called _galbanati_. chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of pederasts at paris wore green cravats as a badge. this decided preference for green is well marked in several of my cases of both sexes, and in some at least the preference certainly arose spontaneously. green (as jastrow and others have shown) is very rarely the favorite color of adults of the anglo-saxon race, though some inquirers have found it to be more commonly a preferred color among children, especially girls, and it is more often preferred by women than by men.[ ] the favorite color among normal women, and indeed very often among normal men, though here not so often as blue, is red, and it is notable that of recent years there has been a fashion for a red tie to be adopted by inverts as their badge. this is especially marked among the "fairies" (as a _fellator_ is there termed) in new york. "it is red," writes an american correspondent, himself inverted, "that has become almost a synonym for sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts themselves, but in the popular mind. to wear a red necktie on the street is to invite remarks from newsboys and others--remarks that have the practices of inverts for their theme. a friend told me once that when a group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they sucked their fingers in imitation of _fellatio_. male prostitutes who walk the streets of philadelphia and new york almost invariably wear red neckties. it is the badge of all their tribe. the rooms of many of my inverted friends have red as the prevailing color in decorations. among my classmates, at the medical school, few ever had the courage to wear a red tie; those who did never repeated the experiment." moral attitude of the invert.--there is some interest in tracing the invert's own attitude toward his anomaly, and his estimate of its morality. as my cases are not patients seeking to be cured of their perversion, this attitude cannot be taken for granted. i have noted the moral attitude in cases. in the subjects loathe themselves, and have fought in vain against their perversion, which they often regard as a sin. nine or ten are doubtful, and have little to say in justification of their condition, which they regard as perhaps morbid, a "moral disease." one, while thinking it right to gratify his natural instincts, admits that they may be vices. the remainder, a large majority (including all the women) are, on the other hand, emphatic in their assertion that their moral position is precisely the same as that of the normally constituted individual, on the lowest ground a matter of taste, and at least two state that a homosexual relationship should be regarded as sacramental, a holy matrimony; two or three even regard inverted love as nobler than ordinary sexual love; several add the proviso that there should be consent and understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. the chief regret of or is the double life they are obliged to lead. when inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of the police, as the attitude of the world. an american correspondent writes: "it is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the sword of damocles. this fear is the heritage of all of us. it is not the fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing. rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every side. the true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and i have known hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially different from that of the normal man with regard to his." it is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change his sexual ideals. the male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find, any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a man. and a woman invert writes: "i cannot conceive a sadder fate than to be a woman--an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!" it will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking contrast to those of westphal, who believed that every invert regarded himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of self-approving inverts than any previous series.[ ] this is largely due to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles, have found consolation in the example of the greeks, or elsewhere, and have succeeded in attaining a _modus vivendi_ with the moral world, as they have come to conceive it. footnotes: [ ] the following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as well as on various other histories which are not here published at all. numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained. [ ] this frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most reliable observation everywhere. thus, hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) states that of inverts, per cent. showed nervous symptoms of one kind or another: sleeplessness, sleepiness, tremors, stammering, etc. [ ] hirschfeld finds that per cent, of inverts become conscious of their anomaly under the age of . the anomaly may, however, be present at this early age, but not consciously until later. hence the larger percentage recorded above. [ ] in this connection i may quote an observation by raffalovich: "it is natural that the invert should very clearly recall the precocity of his inclinations. in the existence of every invert a moment arrives when he discovers the enigma of his homosexual tastes. he then classes all his recollections, and to justify himself in his own eyes he remembers that he has been what he is from his earliest childhood. homosexuality has colored all his young life; he has thought over it, dreamed over it, reflected over it--very often in perfect innocence. when he was quite small he imagined that he had been carried off by brigands, by savages; at or he dreamed of the warmth of their chests and of their naked arms. he dreamed that he was their slave and he loved his slavery and his masters. he has had not the least thought that is crudely sexual, but he has discovered his sentimental vocation." [ ] leppmann mentions a case (certainly extreme and abnormal) of a little girl of who spent the night hidden on the roof, merely in order to be able to observe in the morning the sexual organs of an adult male cousin (_bulletin de l'union internationale de droit pénal_, , p. ). [ ] i fully admit, as all investigators must, the difficulty of tracing the influence of early suggestions, especially in dealing with persons who are unaccustomed to self-analysis. sometimes it happens, especially in regard to erotic fetichism, that, while direct questioning fails to reach any early formative suggestion, such influence is casually elicited on a subsequent occasion. [ ] i may add that i see no fundamental irreconcilability between the point of view here adopted and the facts brought forward (and wrongly interpreted) by schrenck-notzing. in his _beiträge zur Ætiologie der conträrer sexualempfindung_ (vienna, ), this writer states: "the neuropathic disposition is congenital, as is the tendency to precocious appearance of the appetites, the lack of psychic resistance, and the tendency to imperative associations; but that heredity can extend to the object of the appetite, and influence the contents of these characters, is not shown. psychological experiences are against it, and the possibility, which i have shown, of changing these impulses by experiment and so removing their danger to the character of the individual." it need not be asserted that "heredity extends to the object of the appetite," but simply that heredity culminates in an organism which is sexually best satisfied by that object. it is also a mistake to suppose that congenital characters cannot be, in some cases, largely modified by such patient and laborious processes as those carried on by schrenck-notzing. in the same pamphlet this writer refers to moral insanity and idiocy as supporting his point of view. it is curious that both these congenital manifestations had independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. the experiences of elmira reformatory and bicêtre--not to mention institutions of more recent establishment--long since showed that both the morally insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment. schrenck-notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in hypnotism and suggestion. [ ] "if an invert acquires, under the influence of external conditions," féré wrote with truth (_l'instinct sexuel_, p. ), "it is because he was born with an aptitude for such acquisition: an aptitude lacking in those who have been subjected to the same conditions without making the same acquisitions." [ ] one of my subjects writes: "inverts are, i think, naturally more liable to indulge in self-gratification than normal people, partly because of the perpetual suppression and disappointment of their desires, and also because of the fact that they actually possess in themselves the desired form of the male. this idea is a little difficult of explanation, but you can readily imagine to what frenzies of self-abuse a normal man would be impelled supposing that he included in his own the form of the female." [ ] i do not here enter upon the consideration of the normal prevalence and significance of masturbation and allied phenomena, as i have dealt with this subject in the study of "auto-erotism," in volume i of these _studies_. [ ] hirschfeld also finds, among german inverts (_die homosexualität_, ch. iii), that the majority (though a smaller majority than i find in england and the united states) have not had intercourse with women; per cent., he states, including a few married men, have never even attempted coitus, and over per cent, are presumably impotent. the number of inverted women who have never had intercourse with men is still larger. [ ] otto rank, _imago_, heft , . [ ] erotic dreams have been discussed in "auto-erotism," vol. i of these _studies_, and the wider bearings of the subject in another work, _the study of dreams_. many references to the extensive literature will be found in both these places. [ ] e.g., _archiv für psychiatrie_, ; _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, . [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. et seq. hirschfeld considers that the dreams of the inverted fall into two groups: one in which the dreamer imagines he is embracing a person of the same sex, and another in which he imagines that he is himself of the opposite sex. the latter class of dreams, constituting a pseudo-heterosexual group, seems to me to be rare, and they may, moreover, occur in heterosexual persons. [ ] see thoinot and weysse, _medico-legal aspects of moral offenses_, pp. , , etc. [ ] _pedicatio_ (or _pædicatio_) is the most generally accepted technical term for the sodomitical intromission of the penis into the anus. it is usually derived from the greek _pais_ (boy), but some authorities have derived it from _pedex_ or _podex_ (anus). the terms "paiderastia" and "pederast" are sometimes used to indicate the same act and agent. this use, however, is undesirable. it is best to confine the word "paiderastia" to its proper use as the name of the special institution of greek boy love. it may be added that the greeks themselves had many names (as many as ) for paiderastia. see, on this subject of nomenclature, iwan bloch, _der ursprung der syphilis_, vol. ii, pp. , . [ ] it is the grosser forms of perversion which are first revealed in every field. in the first edition of this study the predominance of _pedicatio_ was still greater; it is not practised by any of the subjects of the histories added to the present edition, though several see no objection to it. [ ] _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, , p. . [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. et seq. [ ] "men," remarks q., "tend to fall in love with boys or youths, boys or youths with grown men, feminine natures with virile natures and _vice versâ_, and different races with each other." [ ] stubbes, in his _anatomy of abuses_, affirmed that "players and play-haunters in their secret conclaves play the sodomites," and refers to some recent examples of men who had been desperately enamoured of player-boys thus clad in women's apparel, so far as to solicit them by words, by letters, even actually to abuse them. later on, in , prynne, in his _histrio-mastix_ (part , p. et seq.), strongly condemned "this putting on of woman's array" by actors on the same ground, and adds that he has heard credibly reported of a scholar of balliol college that he was violently enamoured of a boy-player. in japan, again where, as in china, woman's parts on the stage are taken by men (not always youths), the homosexuality of these players became, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so notorious that they constituted a class requiring special regulation as joro, or prostitutes. [ ] this was remarked by even the earliest modern writers on homosexuality, like hössli. see hirschfeld, "vom wesen der liebe," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, , p. et seq. [ ] similarly numa praetorius asserts (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, p. ) that even the most virile homosexual men exhibit feminine traits, and adds that we could scarcely expect it to be otherwise when we find how constantly homosexual women show masculine traits. [ ] näcke, "die diagnose der homosexualität," _neurologisches centralblatt_, april , . [ ] so also among american boarding-school girls. thus margaret otis (_journal of abnormal psychology_, june, ) has described the attraction which negro girls exert on white girls at school. the correspondence of these lovers, and sometimes their method of sex gratification, may occasionally be of an even coarsely passionate nature. [ ] see "sexual selection in man," vol. iv of these _studies_. [ ] hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) found that per cent. of inverts are attracted to qualities unlike their own, and per cent. to qualities resembling their own, without regard to whether these qualities belonged to the secondary sexual sphere. it may be added that as regards the age of the persons they are attracted to, hirschfeld (p. ) admits two main groups, each including about per cent. of the homosexual; _ephebophils_, attracted to youths between and , and _androphils_, attracted to adults in the prime of life. this division, as may be seen from the histories included in the present volume, seems to hold good of british and american inverts. [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. v. [ ] krafft-ebing tells of an inverted physician (a man of masculine development and tastes) who had had sexual relations with more or less inverted men. he observed no tendency to sexual malformation among them, but very frequently an approximation to a feminine form of body, as well as insufficient hair, delicate complexion, and high voice. well-developed breasts were not rare, and some per cent, showed a taste for feminine occupations. [ ] a similar condition of gynecomasty has been observed in connection with inversion by moll, laurent, wey, etc. olano ("la secrecion mamaria en los invertidos sexuales," _archivos de criminologia_, may, , p. ) further observed a certain amount of mammary secretion in an inverted man, years of age, in lima. [ ] hirschfeld finds. per cent, inverts left-handed, and per cent, partly so. fliess attaches special importance to left-handedness in inversion, believing that in left-handed men feminine secondary sexual characters are marked, and in left-handed women masculine sexual character (_der ablauf des lebens_, ). i am not prepared to deny this statement, but, more evidence is needed. [ ] this point has been discussed by hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, pp. - . [ ] bloch (_the sexual life of our time_, p. ) attaches importance to this peculiarity, but it must be remembered that a high-pitched voice occurs frequently in undoubtedly heterosexual men in whom it seems often associated with high intellectual ability (havelock ellis, _a study of british genius_, p. ). [ ] see, e.g., hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. . [ ] on the general signs of these conditions, see, e.g., h. meige, "l'infantilisme, le féminisme et les hermaphrodites antiques," _l'anthropologie_. ; also hastings gilford, "infantilism," _lancet_, february and march , . [ ] merzbach has dealt with the tendency of inverts to adopt special professions: "homosexualität und beruf," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iv, . [ ] moll's experience in germany also reveals the prevalence of inversion among literary men, though, of all occupations, he found the highest proportion among actors. jäger has referred to the frequency of homosexuality among barbers. i have been told that among london hairdressers homosexuality is so prevalent that there is even a special attitude which the client may adopt in the chair to make known that he is an invert. dr. kiernan informs me that in chicago, also, inversion is specially prevalent among barbers, and he adds that he is acquainted with two cases among women-barbers, a relatively large proportion. it is not difficult to understand this, bearing in mind the close physical association between the barber and his client. "w.g. was a barber's assistant," writes one of my subjects, "and i took an immense fancy to him at first-sight. he used to lather me, and the touch of his fingers was a delight. later on he shaved me and i always looked forward to going to the barber's. if he were not able to attend to me i felt an incredible sinking of heart. the whole day seemed dull and useless. i used to make a mark in my pocket-diary every time he shaved me." [ ] see, e.g., "vom weibmann auf der bühne," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, , p. . it is curious to find a medico-legal record of this connection long before inversion was recognized. in june, (see _annual register_ under this date), a man died who had lived as a kept woman under the name of eliza edwards. he was very effeminate in appearance, with beautiful hair, in ringlets two feet long, and a cracked voice; he played female parts in the theater, "in the first line of tragedy," and "appeared as a most lady-like woman." the coroner's jury "strongly recommended to the proper authorities that some means may be adopted in the disposal of the body which will mark the ignominy of the crime." [ ] a. schmid, "zur homosexualität," _zentralblatt für psychoanalyse_, vol. i, , p. . [ ] see for a summary of various statistics in several countries, havelock ellis, _man and woman_, th ed., , p. ; also ib., "the psychology of red," _popular science monthly_, august and september, . [ ] the proportion is not so large, however, as hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) now finds in germany, where inverts are better informed on the subject of this anomaly, for here per cent. regard their feelings as natural. chapter vi. the theory of sexual inversion. what is sexual inversion?--causes of diverging views--the theory of suggestion unworkable--importance of the congenital element in inversion--the freudian theory--embryonic hermaphroditism as a key to inversion--inversion as a variation or "sport"--comparison with color-blindness, color-hearing, and similar abnormalities--what is an abnormality?--not necessarily a disease--relation of inversion to degeneration--exciting causes of inversion--not operative in the absence of predisposition. the analysis of these cases leads directly up to a question of the first importance: what is sexual inversion? is it, as many would have us believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should be tolerated or even fostered? is it a diseased condition which qualifies its subject for the lunatic asylum? or is it a natural monstrosity, a human "sport," the manifestations of which must be regulated when they become antisocial? there is probably an element of truth in more than one of these views. very widely divergent views of sexual inversion are largely justified by the position and attitude of the investigator. it is natural that the police-official should find that his cases are largely mere examples of disgusting vice and crime. it is natural that the asylum superintendent should find that we are chiefly dealing with a form of insanity. it is equally natural that the sexual invert himself should find that he and his inverted friends are not so very unlike ordinary persons. we have to recognize the influence of professional and personal bias and the influence of environment. there have been two main streams of tendency in the views regarding sexual inversion: one seeking to enlarge the sphere of the acquired (represented by binet,--who, however, recognized predisposition,--schrenck-notzing, and recently the freudians), the other seeking to enlarge the sphere of the congenital (represented by krafft-ebing, moll, féré, and today by the majority of authorities). there is, as usually happens, truth in both these views. but, inasmuch as those who represent the acquired view often deny any congenital element, we are called upon to discuss the question. the view that sexual inversion is entirely explained by the influence of early association, or of "suggestion," is an attractive one and at first sight it seems to be supported by what we know of erotic fetichism, by which a woman's hair, or foot, or even clothing, becomes the focus of a man's sexual aspirations. but it must be remembered that what we see in erotic fetichism is merely the exaggeration of a normal impulse; every lover is to some extent excited by his mistress's hair, or foot, or clothing. even here, therefore, there is really what may fairly be regarded as a congenital element; and, moreover, there is reason to believe that the erotic fetichist usually displays the further congenital element of hereditary neurosis. therefore, the analogy with erotic fetichism does not bring much help to those who argue that inversion is purely acquired. it must also be pointed out that the argument for acquired or suggested inversion logically involves the assertion that normal sexuality is also acquired or suggested. if a man becomes attracted to his own sex simply because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him, then we are bound to believe that a man becomes attracted to the opposite sex only because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him. such a theory is unworkable. in nearly every country of the world men associate with men, and women with women; if association and suggestion were the only influential causes, then inversion, instead of being the exception, ought to be the rule throughout the human species, if not, indeed, throughout the whole zoölogical series. we should, moreover, have to admit that the most fundamental human instinct is so constituted as to be equally well adapted for sterility as for that propagation of the race which, as a matter of fact, we find dominant throughout the whole of life. we must, therefore, put aside entirely the notion that the direction of the sexual impulse is merely a suggested phenomenon; such a notion is entirely opposed to observation and experience, and will with difficulty fit into a rational biological scheme. the freudians--alike of the orthodox and the heterodox schools--have sometimes contributed, unintentionally or not, to revive the now antiquated conception of homosexuality as an acquired phenomenon, and that by insisting that its mechanism is a purely psychic though unconscious process which may be readjusted to the normal order by psychoanalytic methods. freud first put forth a comprehensive statement of his view of homosexuality in the original and pregnant little book, _drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_ ( ), and has elsewhere frequently touched on the subject, as have many other psychoanalysts, including alfred adler and stekel, who no longer belong to the orthodox freudian school. when inverts are psycho-analytically studied, freud believes, it is found that in early childhood they go through a phase of intense but brief fixation on a woman, usually the mother, or perhaps sister. then, an internal censure inhibiting this incestuous impulse, they overcome it by identifying themselves with women and taking refuge in narcissism, the self becoming the sexual object. finally they look for youthful males resembling themselves, whom they love as their mothers loved them. their pursuit of men is thus determined by their flight from women. this view has been set forth not only by freud but by sadger, stekel, and many others.[ ] freud himself, however, is careful to state that this process only represents one type of stunted sexual activity, and that the problem of inversion is complex and diversified. this view may be said to assume a bisexual constitution as normal, and homosexuality arises by the suppression, owing to some accident, of the heterosexual component, and the path through an autoerotic process of narcissism to homosexuality. on this general freudian conception of homosexuality numerous variations have been based, and separate features specially emphasized, by individual psychoanalysts. thus sadger considers that, beneath the male individual loved by the invert, a female is concealed, and that this fact may be revealed by psychoanalysis which removes the upper layer of the psychic palimpsest; he believes that this disposition of the invert is favored by a frequent mixture of male and female traits in his near relatives; originally, "it is not man whom the homosexual man loves and desires but man and woman together in one form"; the heterosexual element is later suppressed, and then pure inversion is left. further, developing freud's view of the importance of anal eroticism (freud, _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, vol. ii), sadger thinks that it is even the rule for a passive invert to have experienced anal eroticism in childhood and been frequently subjected to enemas, which have led to the desire for the anal intromission of the penis. (_medizinische klinik_, , no. .) jekels pushes this doctrine further and declares that all inverts are really passive; the invert is, in his love, he states, both subject and object; he identifies himself with his mother and sees in the object of his love his own youthful person. and what, jekels asks, is the aim of this mental arrangement? it can scarcely by other, he replies, than in the part of the mother to stimulate the anal region of the object which has now become himself, and to procure the same pleasure which in childhood he experienced when his mother satisfied his anal eroticism. jekels regards this view as the continuation and concretization of freud's interpretation; and the main point in homosexuality, even when apparently passive, becomes the craving for anal-erotic satisfaction (l. jekels, "einige bemerkungen zur trieblehre," _internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_, sept., ). most psychoanalysts are cautious in denying a constitutional or congenital basis to inversion, though they leave it in the background. ferenczi, in an interesting attempt to classify the homosexual (_internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_, march, ), remarks: "psychoanalytic investigation shows that under the name of homosexuality the most various psychic states are thrown together, on the one hand true constitutional anomalies (inversion, or subject homoeroticism), on the other hand psychoneurotic obsessional conditions (object homoeroticism, or obsessional homoeroticism). the individual of the first kind essentially feels himself a woman who wishes to be loved by a man, while the other represents a neurotic flight from women rather than sympathy to men." the constitutional basis is very definitely accepted by rudolf ortvay who points out (_internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_, jan., ) that the biological doctrine of recessives and dominants in heredity helps to make clear the emergence or suppression of homosexuality on a bisexual disposition. "infantile events," he adds, "which, according to freud, decide the sexual relations of adults, can only exert their operation on the foundation of an organic predisposition, infantile impressions being determined by hereditary predisposition." isador coriat, on the other hand, while recognizing two forms of inversion, incomplete and complete, boldly asserts that it is never congenital and never transmitted through heredity; it is always "originated through a definite unconscious mechanism" (coriat, "homosexuality," _new york medical journal_, march , ). adler's view of homosexuality, as of other allied conditions, differs from that of most psychoanalysts by insisting on the presence of an original organic defect which the subject seeks to fortify into a point of strength; he accepts two chief components of inversion: a vagueness as to sexual differences and a process of self-assurance in the form of rebellion and defiance, and even the feminism of the invert may become a method of gaining power (a. adler, _ueber den neurösen charakter_, , p. ). the mechanism of the genesis of homosexuality put forward by freud need not be dismissed offhand. freud has often manifested the insight of genius, and he refrains from molding his conceptions in those inflexible shapes which have sometimes been adopted by the more dogmatic psychoanalysts who have followed him. nor need we be unduly shocked by the "incestuous" air of the "oedipus complex,"[ ] as it is commonly called, which figures as a component of the process. the word "incest," though it has been used by freud himself, seems scarcely a proper word to apply to the vague and elementary feelings of children, especially when those feelings scarcely pass beyond a stage of non-localized and therefore really presexual feelings (in the ordinary use of the term "sexual") which may be regarded as natural and normal. the freudian conception is misrepresented and prejudiced by the statement that it involves "incest."[ ] when a child loves its mother with an entire love, that love necessarily involves the germs which in later life become separated and developed into sexual love, but it is inaccurate to term this love of the child "incestuous." it is quite easily conceivable that the psychic mechanism of the establishment of homosexuality has in some cases corresponded to the course described by freud. it may also be admitted that, as psychoanalysts claim, the pronounced _horror feminæ_ occasionally found in male inverts may plausibly be regarded as the reversal of an early and disappointed feminine attraction. but it is impossible to regard this mechanism as invariable or even frequent. it is quite true, and i have found ample evidence of the fact, that inverts are often very closely attached to their mothers, even to a greater degree, indeed, than is the rule among normal children, and often like to be in constant association with their mothers. but this attraction is quite misunderstood if it is regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. so far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence of its absence; just as the association of boys among themselves, and of girls among themselves, even in co-educational schools, is proof of the prevalence of heterosexual rather than of homosexual feeling. confirmation of this point of view may be found in the fact--overlooked and sometimes even denied by psychoanalysts--that frequently, even in early childhood and simultaneously with this community of feeling with his mother, the homosexual boy is already experiencing the predominant fascination of the male. he feels it long before the age at which narcissism is apt to occur, or at which self-consciousness has become sufficiently developed to allow the internal censure on unpermitted emotions to operate, or any flight from them to take place. moreover, while most authorities have rarely been able to find any clear evidence of the sexual attraction of male inverts in childhood to mother or sister,[ ] an attraction of this kind to father or brother seems less difficult to find, and if found it is incompatible with the typical freudian process. in my own observation, among the histories here recorded, there are at least two clear examples of such an attraction in childhood. it must further be said that any theory of the etiology of homosexuality which leaves out of account the hereditary factor in inversion cannot be admitted. the evidence for the frequency of homosexuality among the near relatives of the inverted is now indisputable. i have traced it in a considerable proportion of cases, and in many of these the evidence is unquestionable and altogether independent of the statement of the subject himself, whose opinion may be held to be possibly biased or unreliable.[ ] this hereditary factor seems indeed to be called for by the freudian theory itself. on that theory we need to know how it is that the subject passes through psychic phases, and reaches an emotional disposition, so unlike that of normal persona. the existence of a definite hereditary tendency in a homosexual direction removes that difficulty. freud himself recognizes this and clearly asserts congenital psycho-sexual constitution, which must involve predisposition. on a general survey, therefore, it would appear that, on the psychic side, we may accept the reality of unconscious dynamic processes which in particular cases may be of the freudian or similar type. but while the study of such mechanisms may illuminate the psychology of homosexuality, they leave untouched the fundamental organic factors now accepted by most authorities.[ ] the rational way of regarding the normal sexual instinct is as an inborn organic impulse, reaching full development about the time of puberty.[ ] during the period of development suggestion and association may come in to play a part in defining the object of the emotion; the soil is now ready, but the variety of seeds likely to thrive in it is limited. that there is a greater indefiniteness in the aim of the sexual impulse at this period we may well believe. this is shown not only by occasional tentative signs of sexual emotion directed toward the same sex in childhood, but by the frequently ideal and unlocalized character of the normal passion even at puberty. but the channel of sexual emotion is not thereby turned into an abnormal path. whenever this happens we are bound to believe--and we have many grounds for believing--that we are dealing with an organism which from the beginning is abnormal. the same seed of suggestion is sown in various soils; in the many it dies out; in the few it flourishes. the cause can only be a difference in the soil. if, then, we must postulate a congenital abnormality in order to account satisfactorily for at least a large proportion of sexual inverts, wherein does that abnormality consist? ulrichs explained the matter by saying that in sexual inverts a male body coexists with a female soul: _anima muliebris in corpore virile inclusa_. even writers of scientific eminence, like magnan and gley, have adopted this phrase in a modified form, considering that in inversion a female brain is combined with a male body or male glands. this is, however, not an explanation. it merely crystallizes into an epigram the superficial impression of the matter.[ ] we can probably grasp the nature of the abnormality better if we reflect on the development of the sexes and on the latent organic bisexuality in each sex. at an early stage of development the sexes are indistinguishable, and throughout life the traces of this early community of sex remain. the hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. the sexually inverted person does not usually possess any gross exaggeration of these signs of community with the opposite sex. but, as we have seen, there are a considerable number of more subtle approximations to the opposite sex in inverted persons, both on the physical and the psychic side. putting the matter in a purely speculative shape, it may be said that at conception the organism is provided with about per cent. of male germs and about per cent. of female germs, and that, as development proceeds, either the male or the female germs assume the upper hand, until in the maturely developed individual only a few aborted germs of the opposite sex are left. in the homosexual, however, and in the bisexual, we may imagine that the process has not proceeded normally, on account of some peculiarity in the number or character of either the original male germs or female germs, or both, the result being that we have a person who is organically twisted into a shape that is more fitted for the exercise of the inverted than of the normal sexual impulse, or else equally fitted for both.[ ] the conception of the latent bisexuality of all males and females cannot fail to be fairly obvious to intelligent observers of the human body. it emerges at an early period in the history of philosophic thought, and from the first was occasionally used for the explanation of homosexuality. plato's myth in the _banquet_ and the hermaphroditic statues of antiquity show how acute minds, working ahead of science, exercised themselves with these problems. (for a fully illustrated study of the ancient conception of hermaphroditism in sculpture see l.s.a.m. von römer, "ueber die androgynische idee des lebens," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. v, , pp. - .) parmenides, following alcmaeon, the philosophic physician who discovered that the brain is the central organ of intellect, remarks gomperz (_greek thinkers_, eng. tr., vol. i, p. ), used the idea of variation in the proportion of male and female generative elements to account for idiosyncrasies of sexual character. after an immense interval hössli, the inverted swiss man-milliner, in his _eros_ ( ) put forth the greek view anew. schopenhauer, again from the philosophical side, recognized the bisexuality of the human individual (see juliusburger, _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , p. ), and ulrichs, from onward, adopted a similar doctrine, on a platonic basis, to explain the "uranian" constitution. after this the idea began to be more precisely developed from the scientific side, though not at first with reference to homosexuality, and more especially by the great pioneers of the doctrine of evolution. darwin emphasized the significance of the facts on this point, as later weismann, while haeckel, who was one of the earliest darwinians, has in recent years clearly recognized the bearing on the interpretation of homosexuality of the fact that the ancestors of the vertebrates were hermaphrodites, as vertebrates themselves still are in their embryonic disposition (haeckel, in _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, april, , pp. - , ). this view had, however, been set forth at an earlier date by individual physicians, notably in america by kiernan (_american lancet_, , and _medical standard_, november and december, ), and lydston (_philadelphia medical and surgical reporter_, september, , and _addresses and essays_, ). in , in his _l'inversion sexuelle_, chevalier, a pupil of lacassagne--who had already applied the term "hermaphrodisme moral" to this anomaly--explained congenital homosexuality by the idea of latent bisexuality. dr. g. de letamendi, dean of the faculty of medicine of madrid, in a paper read before the international medical congress at rome in , set forth a principle of panhermaphroditism--a hermaphroditic bipolarity--which involved the existence of latent female germs in the male, latent male germs in the female, which latent germs may strive for, and sometimes obtain, the mastery. in february, , the first version of the present chapter, setting forth the conception of inversion as a psychic and somatic development on the basis of a latent bisexuality, was published in the _centralblatt für nervenheilkunde und psychiatrie_. kurella (ib., may, ) adopted a somewhat similar view, even arguing that the invert is a transitional form between the complete man or woman and the hermaphrodite. in germany a patient of krafft-ebing had worked out the same idea, connecting inversion with fetal bisexuality (eighth edition _psychopathia sexualis_, p. ). krafft-ebing himself at first simply asserted that, whether congenital or acquired, there must be _belastung_; inversion is a "degenerate phenomenon," a functional sign of degeneration (krafft-ebing, "zur erklärung der conträren sexualempfindung," _jahrbuch für psychiatrie_, ). in the later editions of _psychopathia sexualis_, however ( and onward and notably in _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, ), he went farther, adopting the explanation on the lines of original bisexuality (english translation of tenth edition, pp. - ). in much the same language as i have used he argued that there has been a struggle in the centers, homosexuality resulting when the center antagonistic to that represented by the sexual gland conquers, and psycho-sexual hermaphroditism resulting when both centers are too weak to obtain victory, in either case such disturbance not being a psychic degeneration or disease, but simply an anomaly comparable to a malformation and quite consonant with psychic health. this is the view now widely accepted by investigators of sexual inversion. (much material bearing on the history of this conception has been brought together by hirschfeld, in _die homosexualität_, ch. xix, and previously in "vom wesen der liebe," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, , pp. - .) a similar or allied view is now constantly met with in writers of scientific authority who are only incidentally concerned with the study of sexual inversion. thus halban ("die entstehung des geschlechtscharaktere," _archiv für gynäkologie_, ) regards hermaphroditism, which he would extend to the psychic sphere, as a state in which a double sexual impulse determines the course of fetal and later development. shattock and seligmann ("true hermaphroditism in the domestic fowl, with remarks on allopterotism," _transactions of pathological society of london_, vol. lvii, part i, ), pointing out that mere atrophy of the ovary cannot account for the appearance in the hen bird of male characters which are not retrogressive but progressive, argues that such birds are really bisexual or hermaphrodite, either by the single "ovary" being really bisexual, as was the case with a fowl they examined, or that the sexual glands are paired, one being male and the other female, or else that there is misplaced male tissue in a neighboring viscus like the adrenal or kidney, the male elements asserting themselves when the female elements degenerate. "hermaphroditism," they conclude, "far from being a phenomenon altogether abnormal amongst the higher vertebrates, should be viewed rather as a reversion to the primitive ancestral phase in which bisexualism was the normal disposition.... true hermaphroditism in man being established, the question arises whether lesser grades do not occur.... remote evidence of bisexuality in the human subject may, perhaps, be afforded by the psychical phenomenon of sexual perversion and inversion." similarly in a case of unilateral secondary male character in an otherwise female pheasant, c.j. bond has more recently shown (section of zoölogy, birmingham meeting of british medical association, _british medical journal_, sept. , ) that an ovi-testis was present, with degenerating ovarian tissue and developing testicular tissue, and such islands of actively growing male tissue can frequently be found, he states, in the degenerating ovaries of female birds which have put forth male plumage. sir john bland-sutton, referring to the fact that the external conformation of the body affords no positive certainty as to the nature of the internal sexual glands, adds (_british medical journal_, oct. , ): "it is a fair presumption that some examples of sexual frigidity and sex perversion may be explained by the possibility that the individuals concerned may possess sexual glands opposite in character to those indicated by the external configuration of their bodies." looking at the matter more broadly and fundamentally in its normal aspects, heape declares (_proceedings of the cambridge philosophical society_, vol. xiv, part ii, ) that "there is no such thing as a pure male or female animal, but that all contain a dominant and recessive sex, except those hermaphrodites in which both sexes are equally represented.... there seems to me ample evidence for the conclusion that there is no such thing as a pure male or female." f.h.a. marshall, again, in his standard manual, _the physiology of reproduction_ ( , p. et seq.), is inclined to accept the same view. "if it be true," he remarks, "that all individuals are potentially bisexual and that changed circumstances, leading to a changed metabolism, may, in exceptional circumstances, even in adult life, cause the development of the recessive characters, it would seem extremely probable that the dominance of one set of sexual characters over the other may be determined in some cases at an early stage of development in response to a stimulus which may be either internal or external." so also berry hart ("atypical male and female sex-ensemble," a paper read before edinburgh obstetrical society, _british medical journal_, june , , p. ) regards the normal male or female as embodying a maximum of the potent organs of his or her own sex with a minimum of non-potent organs of the other sex, with secondary sex traits congruent. any increase in the minimum gives a diminished maximum and non-congruence of the secondary characters. we thus see that the ancient medico-philosophic conception of organic bisexuality put forth by the greeks as the key to the explanation of sexual inversion, after sinking out of sight for two thousand years, was revived early in the nineteenth century by two amateur philosophers who were themselves inverted (hössli, ulrichs), as well as by a genuine philosopher who was not inverted (schopenhauer). then the conception of latent bisexuality, independently of homosexuality, was developed from the purely scientific side (by darwin and evolutionists generally). in the next stage this conception was adopted by the psychiatric and other scientific authorities on homosexuality (krafft-ebing and the majority of other students). finally, embryologists, physiologists of sex and biologists generally, not only accept the conception of bisexuality, but admit that it probably helps to account for homosexuality. in this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. we cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. the chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: ( ) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; ( ) gynandromorphism, or eunuchoidism, in which men possess characters resembling those of males who have been early castrated and women possess similarly masculine characters; ( ) sexo-esthetic inversion, or eonism (hirschfeld's transvestism or cross-dressing), in which, outside the specifically sexual emotions, men possess the tastes of women and women those of men. hirschfeld has discussed these intermediate sexual stages in various works, especially in _geschlechtsübergänge_ ( ), _die transvestiten_ ( ), and ch. xi of _die homosexualität_. hermaphroditism (the reality of which has only of late been recognized and is still disputed) and pseudohermaphroditism; in their physical variations are fully dealt with in the great work, richly illustrated, _hermaphroditismus beim menschen_, by f.l. von neugebauer, of warsaw. neugebauer published an earlier and briefer study of the subject in the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_ vol. iv, , pp. - , with a bibliography in vol. viii ( ) of the same _jahrbuch_, pp. - . hirschfeld emphasizes the fact that neither hermaphroditism nor eunuchoidism is commonly associated with homosexuality, and that a large proportion of the cases of transvestism, as defined by him, are heterosexual. true inversion seems, however, to be not infrequently found among pseudohermaphrodites; neugebauer records numerous cases; magnan has published a case in a girl brought up as a youth (_gazette médical de paris_, march , ) and lapointe a case in a man brought up as a girl (_revue de psychiatrie_, , p. ). such cases may be accounted for by the training and associations involved by the early error in recognition of sex, and perhaps still more by a really organic predisposition to homosexuality, although the sexual psychic characters are not necessarily bound up with the coexistence of corresponding sexual glands. halban (_archiv für gynäkologie_ ) goes so far as to class the homosexual as "real pseudohermaphrodites," exactly comparable to a man with a female breast or a woman with a beard, and proposes to term homosexuality "pseudohermaphroditus masculinus psychicus." this, however, is an unnecessary and scarcely satisfactory confusion. to place the group of homosexual phenomena among other intermediate groups on the organic bisexual basis is a convenient classification. it can scarcely be regarded as a complete explanation. it is probable that we may ultimately find a more fundamental source of these various phenomena in the stimulating and inhibiting play of the internal secretions.[ ] our knowledge of the intimate association between the hormones and sexual phenomena is already sufficient to make such an explanation intelligible; the complex interaction of the glandular internal secretions and their liability to varying disturbance in balance may well suffice to account for the complexity of the phenomena. it would harmonize with what we know of the occasional delayed manifestations of homosexuality, and would not clash with their congenital nature, for we know that a disordered state of the thymus, for instance, may be hereditary, and it is held that status lymphaticus may be either inborn or acquired.[ ] normal sexual characters seem to depend largely upon the due co-ordination of the internal secretions, and it is reasonable to suppose that sexual deviations depend upon their inco-ordination. if a man is a man, and a woman a woman, because (in blair bell's phrase) of the totality of their internal secretions, the intermediate stages between the man and the woman must be due to redistribution of those internal secretions.[ ] we know that various internal secretions possess an influential sexual effect. thus the atrophy of the thymus seems to be connected with sexual development at puberty; the thyroid reinforces the genital glands; adrenal overdevelopment can produce in a female the secondary characteristics of the male, as well as cause precocious development of maleness; etc. "an alteration in the metabolism," as f.h.a. marshall suggests, "even in comparatively late life, may initiate changes in the direction of the opposite sex." metabolic chemical processes may thus be found to furnish a key to complex and subtle sexual variations, alike somatic and psychic, although we must still regard such processes as arising on an inborn predisposition. whatever its ultimate explanation, sexual inversion may thus fairly be considered a "sport," or variation, one of those organic aberrations which we see throughout living nature, in plants and in animals. it is not here asserted, as i would carefully point out, that an inverted sexual instinct, or organ for such instinct, is developed in early embryonic life; such a notion is rightly rejected as absurd. what we may reasonably regard as formed at an early stage of development is strictly a predisposition; that is to say, such a modification of the organism that it becomes more adapted than the normal or average organism to experience sexual attraction to the same sex. the sexual invert may thus be roughly compared to the congenital idiot, to the instinctive criminal, to the man of genius, who are all not strictly concordant with the usual biological variation (because this is of a less subtle character), but who become somewhat more intelligible to us if we bear in mind their affinity to variations. symonds compared inversion to color-blindness; and such a comparison is reasonable. just as the ordinary color-blind person is congenitally insensitive to those red-green rays which are precisely the most impressive to the normal eye, and gives an extended value to the other colors,--finding that blood is the same color as grass, and a florid complexion blue as the sky,--so the invert fails to see emotional values patent to normal persons, transferring those values to emotional associations which, for the rest of the world, are utterly distinct. or we may compare inversion to such a phenomenon as color-hearing, in which there is not so much defect as an abnormality of nervous tracks producing new and involuntary combinations. just as the color-hearer instinctively associates colors with sounds, like the young japanese lady who remarked when listening to singing, "that boy's voice is red!" so the invert has his sexual sensations brought into relationship with objects that are normally without sexual appeal.[ ] and inversion, like color-hearing is found more commonly in young subjects, tending to become less marked, or to die out, after puberty. color-hearing, while an abnormal phenomenon, it must be added, cannot be called a diseased condition, and it is probably much less frequently associated with other abnormal or degenerative stigmata than is inversion; there is often a congenital element, shown by the tendency to hereditary transmission, while the associations are developed in very early life, and are too regular to be the simple result of suggestion.[ ] all such organic variations are abnormalities. it is important that we should have a clear idea as to what an abnormality is. many people imagine that what is abnormal is necessarily diseased. that is not the case, unless we give the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately wide extension. it is both inconvenient and inexact to speak of color-blindness, criminality, and genius as diseases in the same sense as we speak of scarlet fever or tuberculosis or general paralysis as diseases. every congenital abnormality is doubtless due to a peculiarity in the sperm or oval elements or in their mingling, or to some disturbance in their early development. but the same may doubtless be said of the normal dissimilarities between brothers and sisters. it is quite true that any of these aberrations may be due to antenatal disease, but to call them abnormal does not beg that question. if it is thought that any authority is needed to support this view, we can scarcely find a weightier than that of virchow, who repeatedly insisted on the right use of the word "anomaly," and who taught that, though an anomaly may constitute a predisposition to disease, the study of anomalies--pathology, as he called it, teratology as we may perhaps prefer to call it--is not the study of disease, which he termed nosology; the study of the abnormal is perfectly distinct from the study of the morbid. virchow considers that the region of the abnormal is the region of pathology, and that the study of disease must be regarded distinctly as nosology. whether we adopt this terminology, or whether we consider the study of the abnormal as part of teratology, is a secondary matter, not affecting the right understanding of the term "anomaly" and its due differentiation from the term "disease." at the innsbruck meeting of the german anthropological society, in , virchow thus expressed himself: "in old days an anomaly was called pathos, and in this sense every departure from the norm is for me a pathological event. if we have ascertained such a pathological event, we are further led to investigate what _pathos_ was the special cause of it.... this cause may be, for example, an external force, or a chemical substance, or a physical agent, producing in the normal condition of the body a change, an anomaly pathos. this can become hereditary under some circumstances, and then become the foundation for certain small hereditary characters which are propagated in a family; in themselves they belong to pathology, even although they produce no injury. for i must remark that pathological does not mean harmful; it does not indicate disease; disease in greek is nosos, and it is nosology that is concerned with disease. the pathological under some circumstances can be advantageous" (_correspondenz-blatt deutsch gesellschaft für anthropologie_, ). these remarks are of interest when we are attempting to find the wider bearings of such an anomaly as sexual inversion. this same distinction has more recently been emphasized by professor aschoff (_deutsche medizinische wochenschrift_, february , ; of. _british medical journal_, april , , p. ), as against ribbert and others who would unduly narrow the conception of pathos. aschoff points out that, not merely for the sake of precision and uniformity of terminology but of clear thinking, it is desirable that we should retain a distinction in regard to which galen and the ancient physicians were very definite. they used pathos as the wider term involving affection (_affectio_) in general, not necessarily impairment of vital tissue; when that was involved there was nosos, disease. we have to recognize the distinction even if we reject the terminology. a word may be said as to the connection between sexual inversion and degeneration. in france especially, since the days of morel, the stigmata of degeneration are much spoken of. sexual inversion is frequently regarded as one of them: i.e., as an episodic syndrome of a hereditary disease, taking its place beside other psychic stigmata, such as kleptomania and pyromania. krafft-ebing long so regarded inversion; it is the view of magnan, one of the earliest investigators of homosexuality;[ ] and it was adopted by möbius. strictly speaking, the invert is degenerate; he has fallen away from the genus. so is a color-blind person. but morel's conception of degenerescence has unfortunately been coarsened and vulgarized.[ ] as it now stands, we gain little or no information by being told that a person is a "degenerate." it is only, as näcke constantly argued, when we find a complexus of well-marked abnormalities that we are fairly justified in asserting that we have to deal with a condition of degeneration. inversion is sometimes found in such a condition. i have, indeed, already tried to suggest that a condition of diffused minor abnormality may be regarded as a basis of congenital inversion. in other words, inversion is bound up with a modification of the secondary sexual characters. but these anomalies and modifications are not invariable,[ ] and are not usually of a serious character; inversion is rare in the profoundly degenerate. it is undesirable to call these modifications "stigmata of degeneration," a term which threatens to disappear from scientific terminology, to become a mere term of literary and journalistic abuse. so much may be said concerning a conception or a phrase of which far too much has been made in popular literature. at the best it remains vague and unfitted for scientific use. it is now widely recognized that we gain little by describing inversion as a degeneration. näcke, who attached significance to the stigmata of degeneration when numerous, was especially active in pointing out that inverts are not degenerate, and frequently returned to this point. löwenfeld, freud, hirschfeld, bloch, rohleder all reject the conception of sexual inversion as a degeneracy. moll is still unable to abandon altogether the position that since inversion involves a disharmony between psychic disposition and physical conformation we must regard it as morbid, but he recognizes (like krafft-ebing) that it is properly viewed as being on the level of a deformity, that is, an abnormality, comparable to physical hermaphroditism. (a. moll, "sexuelle zwischenstufen," _zeitschrift für aerztliche fortbildung_, no. , .) näcke repeatedly emphasized the view that inversion is a congenital non-morbid abnormality; thus in the last year of his life he wrote (_zeitschrift für die gesamte neurologie und psychiatrie_, vol. xv, heft , ): "we must not conceive of homosexuality as a degeneration or a disease, but at most as an abnormality, due to a disturbance of development." löwenfeld, always a cautious and sagacious clinical observer, agreeing with näcke and hirschfeld, regards inversion as certainly an abnormality, but not therefore morbid; it may be associated with disease and degeneration, but is usually simply a variation from the norm, not to be regarded as morbid or degenerate, and not diminishing the value of the individual as a member of society (löwenfeld, _ueber die sexuelle konstitution_, , p. ; also _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, feb., , and _sexual-probleme_, april, ). aletrino of amsterdam pushes the view that inversion is a non-morbid abnormality to an undue extreme by asserting that "the uranist is a normal variety of the species _homo sapiens_" ("uranisme et dégénérescence," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, aug.-sept., ); inversion may be regarded as (in the correct sense of the word here adopted) a pathological abnormality, but not as an anthropological human variety comparable to the negro or the mongolian man. (for further opinions in favor of inversion as an anomaly, see hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. et seq.) sexual inversion, therefore, remains a congenital anomaly, to be classed with other congenital abnormalities which have psychic concomitants. at the very least such congenital abnormality usually exists as a predisposition to inversion. it is probable that many persons go through the world with a congenital predisposition to inversion which always remains latent and unroused; in others the instinct is so strong that it forces its own way in spite of all obstacles; in others, again, the predisposition is weaker, and a powerful exciting cause plays the predominant part. we are thus led to the consideration of the causes that excite the latent predisposition. a great variety of causes has been held to excite to sexual inversion. it is only necessary to mention those which i have found influential. the first to come before us is our school-system, with its segregation of boys and girls apart from each other during the periods of puberty and adolescence. many inverts have not been to school at all, and many who have been pass through school-life without forming any passionate or sexual relationship; but there remain a large number who date the development of homosexuality from the influences and examples of school-life. the impressions received at the time are not less potent because they are often purely sentimental and without any obvious sensual admixture. whether they are sufficiently potent to generate permanent inversion alone may be doubtful, but, if it is true that in early life the sexual instincts are less definitely determined than when adolescence is complete, it is conceivable, though unproved, that a very strong impression, acting even on a normal organism, may cause arrest of sexual development on the psychic side. another exciting cause of inversion is seduction. by this i mean the initiation of the young boy or girl by some older and more experienced person in whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the gratification of the abnormal instinct. this appears to be a not uncommon incident in the early history of sexual inverts. that such seduction--sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual gratification--could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely to produce disgust, as it did in the case of the youthful rousseau. "he only can be seduced," as moll puts it, "who is capable of being seduced." no doubt it frequently happens in these, as so often in more normal "seductions," that the victim has offered a voluntary or involuntary invitation. another exciting cause of inversion, to which little importance is usually attached, but which i find to have some weight, is disappointment in normal love. it happens that a man in whom the homosexual instinct is yet only latent, or at all events held in a state of repression, tries to form a relationship with a woman. this relationship may be ardent on one or both sides, but--often, doubtless, from the latent homosexuality of the lover--it comes to nothing. such love-disappointments, in a more or less acute form, occur at some time or another to nearly everyone. but in these persons the disappointment with one woman constitutes motive strong enough to disgust the lover with the whole sex and to turn his attention toward his own sex. it is evident that the instinct which can thus be turned round can scarcely be strong, and it seems probable that in some of these cases the episode of normal love simply serves to bring home to the invert the fact that he is not made for normal love. in other cases, it seems,--especially those that are somewhat feeble-minded and unbalanced,--a love-disappointment really does poison the normal instinct, and a more or less impotent love for women becomes an equally impotent love for men. the prevalence of homosexuality among prostitutes may be, to a large extent, explained by a similar and better-founded disgust with normal sexuality.[ ] these three influences, therefore,--example at school, seduction, disappointment in normal love,--all of them drawing the subject away from the opposite sex and concentrating him on his own sex, are exciting causes of inversion; but they require a favorable organic predisposition to act on, while there are a large number of cases in which no exciting cause at all can be found, but in which, from earliest childhood, the subject's interest seems to be turned on his own sex, and continues to be so turned throughout life. at this point i conclude the analysis of the psychology of sexual inversion as it presents itself to me. i have sought only to bring out the more salient points, neglecting minor points, neglecting also those groups of inverts who may be regarded as of secondary importance. the average invert, moving in ordinary society, is a person of average general health, though very frequently with hereditary relationships that are markedly neurotic. he is usually the subject of a congenital predisposing abnormality, or complexus of minor abnormalities, making it difficult or impossible for him to feel sexual attraction to the opposite sex, and easy to feel sexual attraction to his own sex. this abnormality either appears spontaneously from the first, by development or arrest of development, or it is called into activity by some accidental circumstance. footnotes: [ ] see _passim, jahrbuch für psychoanalytische forschungen, zentralblatt für psychoanalyse_, and _internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_; also sadger, "zur aetiologie der konträren sexualempfindung," _medizinische klinik_, , no. . [ ] for an exposition of this by an able english representative of freudian doctrines, see ernest jones, "the oedipus complex as an explanation of hamlet's mystery," _american journal of psychology_, january, . [ ] the love of relations may be tinctured by all degrees of sexual love, some of which are so faint and vague that they cannot be considered unnatural or abnormal; it is misleading to term them incestuous. the russian novelist, artzibascheff, in his _sanine_ described a brother's affection for his sister as thus touched with a perception of her sexual charm (i refer to the french translation), and the book has consequently been much abused as "incestuous," though the attitude described is very pale and conventional compared to the romantic passion sung in shelley's _laon and cythna_, or the tragic exaltation of the same passion in ford's great play, "_'tis pity she's a whore_." [ ] thus numa praetorius, a sagacious observer with, a very wide and thorough knowledge of homosexuality, finds himself quite unable to accept the "oedipus complex" explanation of inversion (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, july, , p. ). [ ] it cannot be maintained that the frequency of inversion among the near relatives of inverts is a chance coincidence, for it must be remembered that few estimates of the prevalence of inversion yield a higher proportion than per cent. [ ] see also a discussion of the freudian view by hirschfeld, who concludes (_die homosexualität_, p. ) that we can only accept the freudian mechanism as rare, and in all cases subordinate to organic predisposition. [ ] it has been denied by some (meynert, näcke, etc.) that there is any sexual _instinct_ at all. i may as well, therefore, explain in what sense i use the word. (see also "analysis of the sexual impulse" in vol. iii of these _studies_.) i mean an inherited aptitude the performance of which normally demands for its full satisfaction the presence of a person of the opposite sex. it might be asserted that there is no such thing as an instinct for food, that it is all imitation, etc. in a sense this is true, but the automatic basis remains. a chicken from an incubator needs no hen to teach it to eat. it seems to discover eating and drinking, as it were, by chance, at first eating awkwardly and eating everything, until it learns what will best satisfy its organic mechanism. there is no instinct for food, it may be, but there is an instinct which is only satisfied by food. it is the same with the "sexual instinct." the tentative and omnivorous habits of the newly hatched chicken may be compared to the uncertainty of the sexual instinct at puberty, while the sexual pervert is like a chicken that should carry on into adult age an appetite for worsted and paper. it may be added here that the question of the hereditary nature of the sexual instinct has been exhaustively discussed and decisively affirmed by moll in his _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, . moll attaches importance to the inheritance of the normal aptitudes for sexual reaction in an abnormally weak degree as a factor in the development of sexual perversions. [ ] this view was revived in a modified form by näcke (_zeitschrift für die gesamte neurologie und psychiatrie_, vol. xv, heft , ), who supposed that there may be an anatomical "homosexual center" in the brain; i.e., a feminine libido-center in the inverted man, and a masculine libido-center in the inverted woman. he expressed a hope that in the future the brains of inverted persons would be more carefully investigated. [ ] i do not present this view as more than a picture which helps us to realize the actual phenomena which we witness in homosexuality, although i may add that so able a teratologist as dr. j.w. ballantyne considers that "it seems a very possible theory." [ ] this explanation of homosexuality has already been tentatively put forth. thus, iwan bloch (_sexual life of our time_, ch. xix, appendix) vaguely suggests a new theory of homosexuality as dependent on chemical influences. hirschfeld also believes (_die homosexualität_, ch. xx) that the study of the internal secretions is the path to the deepest foundations of inversion. [ ] a.e. garrod, "the thymus gland in its clinical aspects," _british medical journal_, oct. , [ ] "the pure female and the pure male are produced by all the internal secretions," blair bell, "the internal secretions," _british medical journal_, nov. , . [ ] after this chapter was first published (in the _centralblatt für nervenheilkunde_, february, ), féré also compared congenital inversion to color-blindness and similar anomalies (féré, "la descendance d'un inverti," _revue générale de clinique et thérapeutique_, ), while ribot referred to the analogy with color-hearing (_psychology of the emotions_, part ii, ch. vii). [ ] see, e.g., flournoy, _des phenomènes de synopsie_, geneva, ; and for a brief discussion of the general phenomena of synesthesia, e. parish, _hallucinations and illusions (contemporary science series_), chapter vii; bleuler, article "secondary sensations," in tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_; and havelock ellis, _man and woman_, th ed., , pp. - . [ ] magnan has in recent years reaffirmed this view ("inversion sexuelle et pathologic mentale," _revue de psychothérapie_, march, ): "the invert is a diseased person, a degenerate." [ ] it is this fact which has caused the italians to be shy of using the word "degeneration;" thus, marro, in his great work, _i caratteri del delinquenti_, made a notable attempt to analyze the phenomena lumped together as degenerate into three groups: atypical, atavistic, and morbid. [ ] hirschfeld and burchard among inverts found pronounced stigmata of degeneration in only per cent. (hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. xx.) [ ] alcohol has sometimes been considered an important exciting cause of homosexuality, and alcoholism is certainly not uncommon in the heredity of inverts; according to hirschfeld (_die homosexualität_, p. ) it is well marked in one of the parents in over per cent, of cases. but it probably has no more influence as an exciting cause in the individual homosexual person than in the individual heterosexual person. from the freudian standpoint, indeed, abraham believes (_zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, heft , ) that even in normal persons alcohol removes the inhibition from a latent homosexuality, and juliusburger from the same standpoint (_zentralblatt für psychoanalyse_, heft and , ) thinks that the alcoholic tendency is unconsciously aroused by the homosexual impulse in order to reach its own gratification. but we may accept näcke's conclusions (_allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, vol. lxviii, , p. ), that ( ) alcohol cannot produce homosexuality in persons not predisposed, that ( ) it may arouse it in those who are predisposed, that ( ) the action of alcohol is the same on the homosexual as the heterosexual, and that ( ) alcoholism is not common among inverts. chapter vii. conclusions. the prevention of homosexuality--the influence of the school--coeducation--the treatment of sexual inversion--castration--hypnotism--associational therapy--psycho-analysis--mental and physical hygiene--marriage--the children of inverts--the attitude of society--the horror aroused by homosexuality--justinian--the _code napoléon_--the state of the law in europe today--germany--england--what should be our attitude toward homosexuality? having now completed the psychological analysis of the sexual invert, so far as i have been able to study him, it only remains to speak briefly of the attitude of society and the law. first, however, a few words as to the medical and hygienic aspects of inversion. the preliminary question of the prevention of homosexuality is in too vague a position at present to be profitably discussed. so far as the really congenital invert is concerned, prevention can have but small influence; but sound social hygiene should render difficult the acquisition of homosexual perversity, or what has been termed pseudo-homosexuality. it is the school which is naturally the chief theater of immature and temporary homosexual manifestations, partly because school life largely coincides with the period during which the sexual impulse frequently tends to be undifferentiated, and partly because in the traditions of large and old schools an artificial homosexuality is often deeply rooted. homosexuality in english schools has already been briefly referred to in chapter iii. as a precise and interesting picture of the phenomena in french schools, i may mention a story by albert nortal, _les adolescents passionnés_ ( ), written immediately after the author left college, though not published until more than twenty-five years later, and clearly based on personal observation and experience. as regards german schools, see, e.g., moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, p. et seq., and for sexual manifestations in early life generally, the same author's _sexual life of the child_; also hirschfeld, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. v, , p. et seq., and, for references, hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, p. et seq. while much may be done by physical hygiene and other means to prevent the extension of homosexuality in schools,[ ] it is impossible, and even undesirable, to repress absolutely the emotional manifestations of sex in either boys or girls who have reached the age of puberty.[ ] it must always be remembered that profoundly rooted organic impulses cannot be effectually combated by direct methods. writing of a period two centuries ago, casanova, in relating his early life as a seminarist trained to the priesthood, describes the precautions taken to prevent the youths entering each other's beds, and points out the folly of such precautions.[ ] as that master of the human heart remarks, such prohibitions intensify the very evil they are intended to prevent by invoking in its aid the impulse to disobedience natural to every child of adam and eve, and the observation has often been repeated by teachers since. we probably have to recognize that a way to render such manifestations wholesome, as well as to prepare for the relationships of later life, is the adoption, so far as possible, of the method of coeducation of the sexes,[ ]--not, of course, necessarily involving identity of education for both sexes,--since a certain amount of association between the sexes helps to preserve the healthiness of the sexual emotional attitude. association between the sexes will not, of course, prevent the development of congenital inversion. in this connection it is pointed out by bethe that it was precisely in sparta and lesbos, where homosexuality was most ideally cultivated, that the sexes, so far as we know, associated more freely than in any other greek state.[ ] the question of the treatment of homosexuality must be approached with discrimination, caution, and skepticism. nowadays we can have but little sympathy with those who, at all costs, are prepared to "cure" the invert. there is no sound method of cure in radical cases. at one time the seemingly very radical method of castration was advocated and occasionally carried out, as in a case i have recorded in a previous chapter (history xxvi). like all methods of treatment, it is sometimes believed to have been successful by those who carried it out. usually, after a short period, it is found to be unsuccessful, and in some cases the condition, especially the mental condition, is rendered worse. it is not difficult to understand why this should be. sexual inversion, is not a localized genital condition. it is a diffused condition, and firmly imprinted on the whole psychic state. there may be reasons for castration, or the slighter operation of vasectomy, but, although sexual tension may be thereby diminished, no authority now believes that any such operation will affect the actual inversion. castration of the body in adult age cannot be expected to produce castration of the mind. moll, féré, näcke, bloch, rohleder, hirschfeld, are all either opposed to castration for inversion, or very doubtful as to any beneficial results. in a case communicated to me by dr. shufeldt, an invert had himself castrated at the age of to diminish sexual desire, make himself more like a woman, and to stop growth of beard. "but the only apparent physical effect," he wrote, "was to increase my weight per cent., and render me a semi-invalid for the rest of my life. after two years my sexuality decreased, but that may have been due to satiety or to advancing years. i was also rendered more easily irritated over trifles and more revengeful. terrible criminal auto-suggestions came into my head, never experienced before." féré (_revue de chirurgie_, march , ) published the case of an invert of english origin who had been castrated. the inverted impulse remained unchanged, as well as sexual desire and the aptitude for erection; but neurasthenic symptoms, which had existed before, were aggravated; he felt less capable to resist his impulses, became migratory in his habits of life, and addicted to the use of laudanum. in a case recorded by c.h. hughes (_alienist and neurologist_, aug., ) the results were less unsatisfactory; in this case the dorsal nerve of the penis was first excised, without any result (see also _alienist and neurologist_, feb., , p. , as regards worse than useless results of cutting the pudic nerve), and a year or so later the testes were removed and the patient gained tranquillity and satisfaction; his homosexual inclinations appeared to go, and he began to show inclination for asexualized women, being specially anxious to meet with a woman whose ovaries had been removed on account of inversion. (reference may also be made to näcke, "die ersten kastrationen aus sozialen grunden auf europäischen boden," _neurologisches centralblatt_, , no. , and e. wilhelm in _juristisch-psychiatrische grenzfragen_, vol. viii, heft and , .) more trust has usually been placed in the psychotherapeutical than the surgical treatment of homosexuality. at one time hypnotic suggestion was carried out very energetically on homosexual subjects. krafft-ebing seems to have been the first distinguished advocate of hypnotism for application to the homosexual. dr. von schrenck-notzing displayed special zeal and persistency in this treatment. he undertook to treat even the most pronounced cases of inversion by courses lasting more than a year, and involving, in at least one case, nearly one hundred and fifty hypnotic sittings; he prescribed frequent visits to the brothel, previous to which the patient took large doses of alcohol; by prolonged manipulations a prostitute endeavored to excite erection, a process attended with varying results. it appears that in some cases this course of treatment was attended by a certain sort of success, to which an unlimited good will on the part of the patient, it is needless to say, largely contributed. the treatment was, however, usually interrupted by continual backsliding to homosexual practices, and sometimes, naturally, the cure involved a venereal disorder. the patient was enabled to marry and to beget children.[ ] it is a method of treatment which seems to have found few imitators. this we need not regret. the histories i have recorded in previous chapters show that it is not uncommon for even a pronounced invert to be able sometimes to effect coitus. it often becomes easy if at the time he fixes his thoughts on images connected with his own sex. but the perversion remains unaffected; the subject is merely (as one of moll's inverts expressed it) practising masturbation _per vaginam_. such treatment is a training in vice, and, as raffalovich points out, the invert is simply perverted and brought down to the vicious level which necessarily accompanies perversity.[ ] there can be no doubt that in slight and superficial cases of homosexuality, suggestion may really exert an influence. we can scarcely expect it to exert such influence when the homosexual tendency is deeply rooted in an organic inborn temperament. in such cases indeed the subject may resist suggestion even when in the hypnotic state. this is pointed out by moll, a great authority on hypnotism, and with much experience of its application to homosexuality, but never inclined to encourage an exaggerated notion of its efficacy in this field. forel, who was also an authority on hypnotism, was equally doubtful as to its value in relation to inversion, especially in clearly inborn cases. krafft-ebing at the end said little about it, and näcke (who was himself without faith in this method of treating inversion) stated that he had been informed by the last homosexual case treated by krafft-ebing by hypnotism that, in spite of all good-will on the patient's side, the treatment had been quite useless. féré, also, had no belief in the efficacy of suggestive treatment, nor has merzbach, nor rohleder. numa praetorius states that the homosexual subjects he is acquainted with, who had been so treated, were not cured, and hirschfeld remarks that the inverts "cured" by hypnotism were either not cured or not inverted.[ ] moll has shown his doubt as to the wide applicability of suggestive therapeutics in homosexuality by developing in recent years what he terms association-therapy. in nearly all perverse individuals, he points out, there is a bridge,--more or less weak, no doubt,--which leads to the normal sexual life. by developing such links of association with normality, moll believes, it may be possible to exert a healing influence on the homosexual. thus a man who is attracted to boys may be brought to love a boyish woman.[ ] indications of this kind have long been observed and utilized, though not developed into a systematic method of treatment. in the case of bisexual individuals, or of youthful subjects whose homosexuality is not fully developed, it is probable that this method is beneficial. it is difficult to believe, however, that it possesses any marked influence on pronounced and developed cases of inversion.[ ] somewhat the same aim as moll's association-therapy, though on the basis of a more elaborate theory, is sought by freud's psychoanalytic method of treating homosexuality. for the psychoanalytic theory (to which reference was made in the previous chapter) the congenital element of inversion is a rare and usually unimportant factor; the chief part is played by perverse psychic mechanisms. it is the business of psychoanalysis to straighten these out, and from the bisexual constitution, which is regarded as common to every one, to bring into the foreground the heterosexual elements, and so to reconstruct a normal personality, developing new sexual ideals from the patient's own latent and subconscious nature. sadger has especially occupied himself with the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality and claims many successes.[ ] sadger admits that there are many limits to the success of this treatment, and that it cannot affect the inborn factors of homosexuality when present. other psychoanalysts are less sanguine as to the cure of inversion. stekel appears to have stated that he has never seen a complete cure by psychoanalysis, and ferenezi is not able to give a good account of the results; especially as regards what he terms obsessional homosexuality, he states that he has never succeeded in effecting a complete cure, although obsessions in general are especially amenable to psychoanalysis.[ ] i have met with at least two homosexual persons who had undergone psychoanalytic treatment and found it beneficial. one, however, was bisexual, so that the difficulties in the way of the success--granting it to be real--were not serious. in the other case, the inversion persisted after treatment, exactly the same as before. the benefit he received was due to the fact that he was enabled to understand himself better and to overcome some of his mental difficulties. the treatment, therefore, in his case, was not a method of cure, but of psychic hygiene, of what hirschfeld would call "adaptation-therapy." there can be no doubt that--even if we put aside all effort at cure and regard an invert's condition as inborn and permanent--a large and important field of treatment here still remains. as we have seen in the two previous chapters, sexual inversion cannot be regarded as essentially an insane or psychopathic state.[ ] but it is frequently associated with nervous conditions which may be greatly benefited by hygiene and treatment, without any attempt at all to overcome a homosexual attitude which may be too deeply rooted to be changed. the invert is specially liable to suffer from a high degree of neurasthenia, often involving much nervous weakness and irritability, loss of self-control, and genital hyperesthesia.[ ] hirschfeld finds that over per cent. inverts suffer from nervous troubles, and among the cases dealt with in the present _study_ (as shown in chapter v) slight nervous functional disturbances are very common. these are conditions which may be ameliorated, and they may be treated in much the same way as if no inversion existed, by physical and mental tonics; or, if necessary, sedatives; by regulated gymnastics and out-of-door exercises; and by occupations which employ, without overexerting, the mind. very great and permanent benefit may be obtained by a prolonged course of such mental and physical hygiene; the associated neurasthenic conditions may be largely removed, with the morbid fears, suspicions, and irritabilities that are usually part of neurasthenia, and the invert may be brought into a fairly wholesome and tonic condition of self-control. the inversion is not thus removed. but if the patient is still young, and if the perversion does not appear to be deeply rooted in the organism, it is probable that--provided his own good-will is aiding--general hygienic measures, together with removal to a favorable environment, may gradually lead to the development of the normal sexual impulse. if it fails to do so, it becomes necessary to exercise great caution in recommending stronger methods. purely "platonic association with the other sex," moll points out, "leads to better results than any prescribed attempt at coitus." for even when such attempt is successful, it is not usually possible to regard the results with much satisfaction. not only is the acquisition of the normal instinct by an invert very much on a level with the acquisition of a vice, but probably it seldom succeeds in eradicating the original inverted instinct.[ ] what usually happens is that the person becomes capable of experiencing both impulses,--not a specially satisfactory state of things. it may be disastrous, especially if it leads to marriage, as it may do in an inverted man or still more easily in an inverted woman. the apparent change does not turn out to be deep, and the invert's position is more unfortunate than his original position, both for himself and for his wife.[ ] it may be observed in the histories brought forward in chapter iii that the position of married inverts (we must, of course, put aside the bisexual) is usually more distressing than that of the unmarried. among my cases per cent. are married. hirschfeld finds that per cent. of inverts are married and per cent. are impotent; he is unable to find a single cure of homosexuality, and seldom any improvement, due to marriage; nearly always the impulse remains unaffected. the invert's happiness is, however, often affected for the worse, and not least by the feeling that he is depriving his wife of happiness. an invert, who had left his country through fear of arrest and married a rich woman who was in love with him, said to hirschfeld: "five years' imprisonment would not have been worse than one year of marriage."[ ] in a marriage of this kind the homosexual partner and the normal partner--however ignorant of sexual matters--are both conscious, often with equal pain, that, even in the presence of affection and esteem and the best will in the world, there is something lacking. the instinctive and emotional element, which is the essence of sexual love and springs from the central core of organic personality, cannot voluntarily be created or even assumed.[ ] for the sake of the possible offspring, also, marriage is to be avoided. it is sometimes entirely for the sake of children that the invert desires to marry. but it must be pointed out that homosexuality is undoubtedly in many cases inherited. often, it is true, the children turn out fairly well, but, in many cases, they bear witness that they belong to a neurotic and failing stock;[ ] hirschfeld goes so far as to say that it is always so, and concludes that from the eugenic standpoint the marriage of a homosexual person is always very risky. in a large number of cases such marriages prove sterile. the tendency to sexual inversion in eccentric and neurotic families seems merely to be nature's merciful method of winding up a concern which, from her point of view, has ceased to be profitable. as a rule, inverts have no desire to be different from what they are, and, if they have any desire for marriage, it is usually only momentary. very pathetic appeals for help are, however, sometimes made. i may quote from a letter addressed to me by a gentleman who desired advice on this matter: "in part, i write to you as a moralist and, in part, as to a physician. dr. q. has published a book in which, without discussion, hypnotic treatment of such cases was reported as successful. i am eager to know if your opinion remains what it was. this new assurance comes from a man whose moral firmness and delicacy are unquestionable, but you will easily imagine how one might shrink from the implantation of new impulses in the unconscious self, since newly created inclinations might disturb the conditions of life. at any rate, in my ignorance of hypnotism i fear that the effort to give the normal instinct might lead to marriage without the assurance that the normal instinct would be stable. i write, therefore, to explain my present condition and crave your counsel. it is with the greatest reluctance that i reveal the closely guarded secret of my life. i have no other abnormality, and have not hitherto betrayed my abnormal instinct. i have never made any person the victim of passion: moral and religious feelings were too powerful. i have found my reverence for other souls a perfect safeguard against any approach to impurity. i have never had sexual interest in women. once i had a great friendship with a beautiful and noble woman, without any mixture of sexual feeling on my part. i was ignorant of my condition, and i have the bitter regret of having caused in her a hopeless love--proudly and tragically concealed to her death. my friendships with men, younger men, have been colored by passion, against which i have fought continually. the shame of this has made life a hell, and the horror of this abnormality, since i came to know it as such, has been an enemy to my religious faith. here there could be no case of a divinely given instinct which i was to learn to use in a rational and chaste fashion, under the control of spiritual loyalty. the power which gave me life seemed to insist on my doing that for which the same power would sting me with remorse. if there is no remedy i must either cry out against the injustice of this life of torment between nature and conscience, or submit to the blind trust of baffled ignorance. if there is a remedy life will not seem to be such an intolerable ordeal. i am not pleading that i must succumb to impulse. i do not doubt that a pure celibate life is possible so far as action is concerned. but i cannot discover that friendship with younger men can go on uncolored by a sensuous admixture which fills me with shame and loathing. the gratification of passion--normal or abnormal--is repulsive to esthetic feeling. i am nearly and i have always diverted myself from personal interests that threatened to become dangerous to me. more than a year ago, however, a new fate seemed to open to my unhappy and lonely life. i became intimate with a young man of , of the rarest beauty of form and character. i am confident that he is and always has been pure. he lives an exalted moral and religious life dominated by the idea that he and all men are partners of the divine nature, and able in the strength of that nature to be free from evil. i believe him to be normal. he shows pleasure in the society of attractive young women and in an innocent, light-hearted way refers to the time when he may be able to marry. he is a general favorite, but turned to me as to a friend and teacher. he is poor, and it was possible for me to guarantee him a good education. i began to help him from the longings of a lonely life. i wanted a son and a friend in my inward desolation. i craved the companionship of this pure and happy nature. i felt such a reverence for him that i hoped to find the sensuous element in me purged away by his purity. i am, indeed, utterly incapable of doing him harm; i am not morally weak; nevertheless the sensuous element is there, and it poisons my happiness. he is ardently affectionate and demonstrative. he spends the summers with me in europe, and the tenderness he feels for me has prompted him at times to embrace and kiss me as he always has done to his father. of late i have begun to fear that without will or desire i may injure the springs of feeling in him, especially if it is true that the homosexual tendency is latent in most men. the love he shows me is my joy, but a poisoned joy. it is the bread and wine of life to me; but i dare not think what his ardent affection might ripen into. i can go on fighting the battle of good and evil in my attachment to him, but i cannot define my duty to him. to shun him would be cruelty and would belie his trust in human fidelity. without my friendship he will not take my money--the condition of a large career. i might, indeed, explain to him what i explain to you, but the ordeal and shame are too great, and i cannot see what good it would do. if he has the capacity of homosexual feeling he might be violently stimulated; if he is incapable of it, he would feel repulsion. "suppose, then, that i should seek hypnotic treatment, i still do not know what tricks an abnormal nature might play me when diverted by suggestion. i might lose the joy of this friendship without any compensation. i am afraid; i am afraid! might i not be influenced to shun the only persons who inspire unselfish feeling? "bear with this account of my story. many virtues are easy for me, and my life is spent in pursuits of culture. alas, that all the culture with which i am credited, all the prayers and aspirations, all the strong will and heroic resolves have not rid my nature of this evil bent! what i long for is the right to love, not for the mere physical gratification, for the right to take another into the arms of my heart and profess all the tenderness i feel, to find my joy in planning his career with him, as one who is rightfully and naturally entitled to do so. i crave this since i cannot have a son. i leave the matter here. "when i read what i have written i see how pointless it is. it is possible, indeed, that brooding over my personal calamity magnifies in my mind the sense of danger to this friend through me, and that i only need to find the right relation of friendliness coupled with aloofness which will secure him against any too ardent attachment. certainly i have no fear that i shall forget myself. yet two things array themselves on the other side: i rebel inwardly against the necessity of isolating myself as if i were a pestilence, and i rebel against the taint of sensuous feeling. the normal man can feel that his instinct is no shame when the spirit is in control. i know that to the consciousness of others my instinct itself would be a shame and a baseness, and i have no tendency to construct a moral system for myself. i have, to be sure, moments when i declare to myself that i will have my sensuous gratification as well as other men, but, the moment i think of the wickedness of it, the rebellion is soon over. the disesteem of self, the sense of taint, the necessity of withdrawing from happiness lest i communicate my taint, that is a spiritual malady which makes the ground-tone of my existence one of pain and melancholy. should you have only some moral consolation without the promise of medical assistance i should feel grateful." in such a case as this, one can do little more than advise the sufferer that, however painful his lot may be, it is not without its consolations, and that he would be best advised to pursue, as cheerfully as may be, the path that he has already long since marked out for himself. the invert sometimes fails to realize that for no man with high moral ideals, however normal he may be, is the conduct of life easy, and that if the invert has to be satisfied with affection without passion, and to live a life of chastity, he is doing no more than thousands of normal men have done, voluntarily and contentedly. as to hypnotism in such a case as this, it is altogether unreasonable to expect that suggestion will supplant the deeply rooted organic impulses that have grown up during a lifetime. we may thus conclude that in the treatment of inversion the most satisfactory result is usually obtained when it is possible by direct and indirect methods to reduce the sexual hyperesthesia which frequently exists, and by psychic methods to refine and spiritualize the inverted impulse, so that the invert's natural perversion may not become a cause of acquired perversity in others. the invert is not only the victim of his own abnormal obsession, he is the victim of social hostility. we must seek to distinguish the part in his sufferings due to these two causes. when i review the cases i have brought forward and the mental history of inverts i have known, i am inclined to say that if we can enable an invert to be healthy, selfrestrained and selfrespecting, we have often done better than to convert him into the mere feeble simulacrum of a normal man. an appeal to the _paiderastia_ of the best greek days, and the dignity, temperance, even chastity, which it involved, will sometimes find a ready response in the emotional, enthusiastic nature of the congenital invert. plato's dialogues have frequently been found a source of great help and consolation by inverts. the "manly love" celebrated by walt whitman in _leaves of grass_, although it may be of more doubtful value for general use, furnishes a wholesome and robust ideal to the invert who is insensitive to normal ideals.[ ] among recent books, _ioläus: an anthology of friendship_, edited by edward carpenter, may be recommended. a similar book in german, of a more extended character, is _lieblingminne und freudesliebe in der weltliteratur_, edited by elisár von kupffer. mention may also be made of the _freundschaft_ ( ) of baron von gleichen-russwurm, a sort of literary history of friendship, without specific reference to homosexuality, although many writers of inverted tendency are introduced. platen's _tagebücher_ are notable as the diary of an invert of high character and ideals. the volumes of the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_ contain many studies bearing on the ideal and esthetic aspects of homosexuality. various modern poets of high ability have given expression to emotions of exalted or passionate friendship toward individuals of the same sex, whether or not such friendship can properly be termed homosexual. it is scarcely necessary to refer to _in memoriam_, in which tennyson enshrined his affection for his early friend, arthur hallam, and developed a picture of the universe on the basis of that affection. the poems of edward cracroft lefroy are notable, and mr. john gambril nicholson has privately issued several volumes of verse (_a chaplet of southernwood, a garland of ladslove_, etc.) showing delicate charm combined with high technical skill. some books mainly or entirely written in prose may fairly be included in the same group. such are _in the key of blue_, by john addington symonds, and the _memoirs of arthur hamilton_ (published anonymously by a well-known author, a.c. benson), in which on somewhat platonic lines the idea is worked out that the individual sufferer must pass "from the love of one fair form to the love of abstract beauty" and "from the contemplation of his own suffering to the consideration of the root of all human suffering." as regards the modern poetic literature of feminine homosexuality there is probably nothing to put beside the various volumes--pathetic in their brave simplicity and sincerity--of "renée vivien" (see _ante_, p. ). most other feminine singers of homosexuality have cautiously thrown a veil of heterosexuality over their songs. novels of a more or less definitely homosexual tone are now very numerous in english, french, german, and other languages. in english the homosexuality is for the most part veiled and the narrative deals largely with school-life and boys in order that the emotional and romantic character of the relations described may appear more natural. thus _tim_, an anonymously published book by h.o. sturgis ( ), described the devotion of a boy to an older boy at eton and his death at an early age. _jaspar tristram_, by a.w. clarke ( ), again, is a well-written story of a schoolboy friendship of homosexual tone; a boy is represented as feeling attraction to boys who are like girls, and a girl became attractive to the hero because she is like a boy and recalls her brother whom he had formerly loved. _the garden god: a tale of two boys_, by forrest reid ( ), is another rather similar book, in its way a charming and delicately written idyll. _imre: a memorandum_, ( ), by "xavier mayne" (the pseudonym of an american author, who has also written _the intersexes_), privately issued at naples, is a book of a different class; representing the frankly homosexual passion of two mutually attracted men, an englishman who is supposed to write the story and a hungarian officer; it embodies a notable narrative of homosexual development which is probably more or less real. in french there are a number of novels dealing with homosexuality, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes with artistic indifference, sometimes satirically. andré gide (in _l'immoraliste_ and other books), rachilde (madame vallette), willy (in the well-known _claudine_ series) may be mentioned, among other writers of more or less distinction, who have once or oftener dealt with homosexuality. special reference should be made to the belgian author george eekhoud, whose _escal-vigor_ (prosecuted at bruges on its publication) is a book of special power. the homosexual stories of essebac, of which _l'elu_ ( ) is considered the best, are of a romantic and sentimental character. _lucien_ ( ), by binet-valmer, is a penetrating and scarcely sympathetic study of inversion. nortal's _les adolescents passionnés_ (already mentioned, p. ) is a notably intimate and precise study of homosexuality in french schools. it would be easy to mention many others. in germany during recent years many novels of homosexual character have been published. they are not usually, it would seem, of high literary character, but are sometimes notable as being more or less disguised narratives of real fact. body's _aus eines mannes mädchenjahren_ is said to be a faithful autobiography. _der neue werther: eine hellenische passions-geschichte_ by narkissos ( ) is also said to be authentic. another book that may be mentioned is konradin's _ein junger platos: aus dem leben eines entgbeistes_ ( ). the german belletristic literature of homosexuality, as well as that of other countries, will be found adequately summarized and criticised by numa praetorius in the volumes of the _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_. see also hirschfeld's _die homosexualität_, pp. and et seq. it is by some such method of self-treatment as this that most of the more highly intelligent men and women whose histories i have already briefly recorded have at last slowly and instinctively reached a condition of relative health and peace, both physical and moral. the method of self-restraint and self-culture, without self-repression, seems to be the most rational method of dealing with sexual inversion when that condition is really organic and deeply rooted. it is better that a man should be enabled to make the best of his own strong natural instincts, with all their disadvantages, than that he should be unsexed and perverted, crushed into a position which he has no natural aptitude to occupy. as both raffalovich and féré have insisted, it is the ideal of chastity, rather than of normal sexuality, which the congenital invert should hold before his eyes. he may not have in him the making of _l'homme moyen sensuel_; he may have in him the making of a saint.[ ] what good work in the world the inverted may do is shown by the historical examples of distinguished inverts; and, while it is certainly true that these considerations apply chiefly to the finer-grained natures, the histories i have brought together suffice to show that such natures constitute a considerable proportion of inverts. the helplessly gross sexual appetite cannot thus be influenced; but that remains true whether the appetite is homosexual or heterosexual, and nothing is gained by enabling it to feed on women as well as on men. a strictly ascetic life, it needs scarcely be said, is with difficulty possible for all persons, either homosexual or heterosexual. it is, however, outside the province of the physician to recommend his inverted patients to live according to their homosexual impulses, even when those impulses seem to be natural to the person displaying them. the most that the physician is entitled to do, it seems to me, is to present the situation clearly, and leave to the patient a decision for which he must himself accept the responsibility. forel goes so far as to say that he sees no reason why inverts should not build cities of their own and marry each other if they so please, since they can do no harm to normal adults, while children can be protected from them.[ ] such notions are, however, too far removed from our existing social conventions to be worth serious consideration. the standpoint here taken up, it may be remarked, by no means denies to the invert a right to the fulfillment of his impulses. numa praetorius remarks, it would seem justly, that while the invert must properly be warned against unnatural sexual license, and while those who are capable of continence do well to preserve it, to deny all right to sexual activity to the invert merely causes those inverts who are incapable of self-control to throw recklessly aside all restraints (_zeitschrift für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, , p. ). the invert has the right to sexual indulgence, it may be, but he has also the duty to accept the full responsibility for his own actions, and the necessity to recognize the present attitude of the society he lives in. he cannot be advised to set himself in violent opposition to that society. the world will not be a tolerable place for pronounced inverts until they are better understood, and that will involve a radical change in general and even medical opinion. an inverted physician, of high character and successful in his profession, writes to me on this point: "the first, and easiest, thing to do, it seems to me, is to convince the medical profession that we unfortunate people are not only as sane, but as moral, as our normal brothers; and that we are even more alive to the supreme necessity of self-control (necessary from every point of view) than they. it is not license we want, but justice; it is the cruelty and prejudice of convention which we wish to abolish--not the proper and just indignation of society with crimes against the social order. we want to make it possible for us to satisfy our inborn instincts (which are not concerned essentially with sexual acts, so called, alone) without thereby becoming criminals. one of us who would, under any circumstances, seduce a person of his own sex of immature age, and particularly one whose sexual complexion was unknown, deserves the severe punishment which would be meted out to a normal person who did the same to a young girl--_but no more_; while, so long as no public offense is given, there should be _no penalty or obloquy whatever_ attached to sexual acts committed with full consent between mature persons. these acts may or may not be wrong and immoral, just as sexual acts between mature persons of different sexes may or may not be wrong or immoral. but in neither case has the law any concern; and public opinion should make no distinction between the two. it is in the highest degree important that it should be clearly understood that we want no relaxation of moral obligations. at present we suffer an inconceivably cruel wrong." we have always to remember, and there is, indeed, no possibility of forgetting, that the question of homosexuality is a social question. within certain limits, the gratification of the normal sexual impulse, even outside marriage, arouses no general or profound indignation; and is regarded as a private matter; rightly or wrongly, the gratification of the homosexual impulse is regarded as a public matter. this attitude is more or less exactly reflected in the law. thus it happens that whenever a man is openly detected in a homosexual act, however exemplary his life may previously have been, however admirable it may still be in all other relations, every ordinary normal citizen, however licentious and pleasure-loving his own life may be, feels it a moral duty to regard the offender as hopelessly damned and to help in hounding him out of society. at very brief intervals cases occur, and without reaching the newspapers are more or less widely known, in which distinguished men in various fields, not seldom clergymen, suddenly disappear from the country or commit suicide in consequence of some such exposure or the threat of it. it is probable that many obscure tragedies could find their explanation in a homosexual cause. some of the various tragic ways in which homosexual passions are revealed to society may be illustrated by the following communication from a correspondent, not himself inverted, who here narrates cases that came under his observation in various parts of the united states. the cases referred to will be known to many, but i have disguised the names of persons and places:-- "at the age of i was a chorister at ---- church, whose choirmaster, an englishman named m.w.m., was an accomplished man, seemingly a perfect gentleman, and a devout churchman. he never seemed to care for the society of ladies, never mingled much with the men, but sought companionship with the choristers of my age. he frequently visited at the homes of his favorites, to tea, and when he asked the parents' consent for george's or frank's company on an excursion or to the theater, and then to spend the night with him, such request was invariably granted. i shall ever remember my first night with him; he began by fondling and caressing me, quieting my alarm by assurances of not hurting me, and after invoking me to secrecy and with promises of many future pleasures, i consented to his desire or passion, which he seemed to satisfy by an attempt at _fellatio_. was this depravity? i would say 'no!' after reading his subsequent confession, found in his room after his death by suicide. this was brought about by his too intimate relations with the rector's son who contracted st. vitus's dance and in the delirium of a fever that followed from nervous exhaustion told of him and his doings. a thorough investigation took place and m. fled, a broken-hearted and disgraced man, who, as the result of remorse, relentless persecution, and exposure through several years, ended his life by drowning himself. in his confession he spoke of having been raised under a very strong moral restraint and having lived an exemplary life, with the exception of this strange desire that his will-power could not control. "the next case is that of c.h. he came of an old family of brainy men who have, and do yet, occupy prominent places in the pulpit and the bar, and was himself a gifted young attorney. i knew him intimately, as for six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. he was an effeminate little fellow: height, feet inches; weight, pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. he had served his country as its representative in the legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over a hard-fought political battle. the last canvass and speeches were made at a town which was, in consequence, crowded. that night h. had to occupy a room with a stranger, named e., a travelling salesman. there were two beds in this room. mr. e., on the following day told several people that during the night he was awakened by h., who had come over to his bed and had his mouth on his 'person,' and that he had threatened to kick him out of the room, but that h. pleaded with him and fell on his knees and swore that he had been overcome by a passion that he had heretofore controlled, and begged of him not to expose him. these facts coming to the notice of his opponents, within twenty-four hours, they hastened to take advantage of it by placarding h. as a second oscar wilde, and stating the facts as far as decency and the law allowed. h.'s friends came to him and gave him one of two alternatives: if guilty, either to kill himself or leave that section forever; if not guilty, to slay his traducer, e.h. affirmed his innocence, and in company with two friends, c. and j., took the train for ----. learning there that e. was at a town twelve miles east, they hired a fast livery and drove overland. they found e. at the station, awaiting the arrival of a train. h., with a pistol, strode forward and in his excitement said: 'you exposed me, did you?' being near-sighted, his aim proved wide of the mark. e. sprang forward and grappled with h. for possession of the pistol, and was fired upon by c. and j., who shot him in the back. he expired in a few minutes, his last statement being to the effect that h. was guilty as accused. h., c., and j. were sentenced to the penitentiary for life. during my six years' acquaintance with h. i knew of nothing derogatory to his character, nor has anyone ever come forward to say that on any other occasion he ever displayed this weakness. i know his early life had a pure atmosphere, as he was an only child and the idol of both his parents, who builded high their hopes of his future success, and who survive this disgrace, but are broken-hearted. "the next case is that of the rev. t.w., professor at the university of ----. mr. w. is a scholarly gentleman, affable in his address, eloquent in his oratory, and a fine classical scholar. he was exposed by some of his students, who, to use a slang phrase, accused him of being a 'head-worker.' at his examination by the faculty he confessed his weakness, and said he could not control his unholy passion. his resignation was accepted both by the church and the college, and he left. "i know of a few other cases that have their peculiar traits, and am confident that these persons did not become possessed of this habit through the so-called 'indiscretions of youth,' as in every case their early life was freer from contamination than that of per cent. of the boys who, on reaching man's estate, have, like myself, no desire to deviate from the old-fashioned way formulated by our ancient sire, adam." it can scarcely be said that the consciousness of this attitude of society is favorable to the invert's attainment of a fairly sane and well-balanced state of mind. this is, indeed, one of the great difficulties in his way, and often causes him to waver between extremes of melancholia and egotistic exaltation. we regard all homosexuality with absolute and unmitigated disgust. we have been taught to venerate alexander the great, epaminondas, socrates, and other antique heroes; but they are safely buried in the remote past, and do not affect our scorn of homosexuality in the present. it was in the fourth century, at rome, that the strong modern opposition to homosexuality was first clearly formulated in law.[ ] the roman race had long been decaying; sexual perversions of all kinds flourished; the population was dwindling. at the same time, christianity, with its judaic-pauline antagonism to homosexuality, was rapidly spreading. the statesmen of the day, anxious to quicken the failing pulses of national life, utilized this powerful christian feeling. constantine, theodosius, and valentinian all passed laws against homosexuality, the last, at all events, ordaining as penalty the _vindices flammæ_; but their enactments do not seem to have been strictly carried out. in the year , justinian, professing terror of certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in which he saw the mysterious "recompense which was meet" prophesied by st. paul,[ ] issued his edict condemning unnatural offenders to the sword, "lest as the result of these impious acts" (as the preamble to his novella has it) "whole cities should perish, together with their inhabitants; for we are taught by holy scripture that through these acts cities have perished with the men in them."[ ] this edict (which justinian followed up by a fresh ordinance to the same effect) constituted the foundation of legal enactment and social opinion concerning the matter in europe for thirteen hundred years.[ ] in france the _vindices flammæ_ survived to the last; st. louis had handed over these sacrilegious offenders to the church to be burned; in two pederasts were burned in the place de grève, and only a few years before the revolution a capuchin monk named pascal was also burned. after the revolution, however, began a new movement, which has continued slowly and steadily ever since, though it still divides european nations into two groups. justinian, charlemagne, and st. louis had insisted on the sin and sacrilege of sodomy as the ground for its punishment.[ ] it was doubtless largely as a religious offense that the _code napoléon_ omitted to punish it. the french law makes a clear and logical distinction between crime on the one hand, vice and irreligion on the other, only concerning itself with the former. homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely unpunished by the _code napoléon_ and by french law of today. only under three conditions does the homosexual act come under the cognizance of the law as a crime: ( ) when there is _outrage public à la pudeur_,--i.e., when the act is performed in public or with a possibility of witnesses; ( ) when there is violence or absence of consent, in whatever degree the act may have been consummated; ( ) when one of the parties is under age, or unable to give valid consent; in some cases it appears possible to apply article of the penal code, directed against habitual excitation to debauch of young persons of either sex under the age of . this method of dealing with unnatural offenses has spread widely, at first because of the political influence of france, and more recently because such an attitude has commended itself on its merits. in belgium the law is similar to that of the _code napoléon_, as it is also in italy, spain, portugal, roumania, japan, and numerous south american lands. in switzerland the law is a little vague and varies slightly in the different cantons, but it is not severe; in geneva and some other cantons there is no penalty; the general tendency is to inflict brief imprisonment when serious complaints have been lodged, and cases can sometimes be settled privately by the magistrate. the only large european countries in which homosexuality _per se_ remains a penal offense appear to be germany, austria, russia, and england. in several of the german states, such as bavaria and hanover, simple homosexuality formerly went unpunished, but when the laws of prussia were in applied to the new german empire this ceased to be the case, and unnatural carnality between males became an offense against the law. this article of the german code (section ) has caused great discussion and much practical difficulty, because, although the terms of the law make it necessary to understand by _widernatürliche unzucht_ other practices besides _pædicatio_, not every homosexual practice is included; it must be some practice resembling normal coitus. there is a widespread opinion that this article of the code should be abolished; it appears that at one time an authoritative committee pronounced in favor of this step, and their proposition came near adoption. the austrian law is somewhat similar to the german, but it applies to women as well as to men; this is logical, for there is no reason why homosexuality should be punished in men and left unpunished in women. in russia the law against homosexual practices appears to be very severe, involving, in some cases, banishment to siberia and deprivation of civil rights; but it can scarcely be rigorously executed. the existing law in england is severe, but simple. carnal knowledge _per anum_ of either a man or a woman or an animal is punishable by a sentence of penal servitude with not less than three years, or of imprisonment with not more than two years. even "gross indecency" between males, however privately committed, has been since a penal offense.[ ] the clause is open to criticism. with the omission of the words "or private," it would be sound and in harmony with the most enlightened european legislation; but it must be pointed out that an act only becomes indecent when those who perform it or witness it regard it as indecent. the act which brought each of us into the world is not indecent; it would become so if carried on in public. if two male persons, who have reached years of discretion, consent together to perform some act of sexual intimacy in private, no indecency has been committed. if one of the consenting parties subsequently proclaims the act, indecency may doubtless be created, as may happen also in the case of normal sexual intercourse, but it seems contrary to good policy that such proclamation should convert the act itself into a penal offense. moreover, "gross indecency" between males usually means some form of mutual masturbation; no penal code regards masturbation as an offense, and there seems to be no sufficient reason why mutual masturbation should be so regarded.[ ] the main point to be insured is that no boy or girl who has not reached years of discretion should be seduced or abused by an older person, and this point is equally well guaranteed on the basis introduced by the _code napoléon_. however shameful, disgusting, personally immoral, and indirectly antisocial it may be for two adult persons of the same sex, men or women, to consent together to perform an act of sexual intimacy in private, there is no sound or adequate ground for constituting such act a penal offense by law. one of the most serious objections to the legal recognition of private "gross indecency" is the obvious fact that only in the rarest cases can such indecency become known to the police, and we thus perpetrate what is very much like a legal farce. "the breaking of few laws," as moll truly observes, regarding the german law, "so often goes unpunished as of this." it is the same in england, as is amply evidenced by the fact that, of the english sexual inverts, whose histories i have obtained, not one, so far as i am aware, has ever appeared in a police-court on this charge. it may further be pointed out that legislation against homosexuality has no clear effect either in diminishing or increasing its prevalence. this must necessarily be so as regards the kernel of the homosexual group, if we are to regard a considerable proportion of cases as congenital. in france homosexuality _per se_ has been untouched by the law for a century; yet it abounds, chiefly, it seems, among the lowest in the community; although the law is silent, social feeling is strong, and when--as has been the case in one instance--a man of undoubted genius has his name associated with this perversion it becomes difficult or impossible for the admirers of his work to associate with him personally; very few cases of homosexuality have been recorded in france among the more intelligent classes; the literature of homosexuality is there little more than the literature of male prostitution, as described by police-officials, and as carried on largely for the benefit of foreigners. in germany and austria, where the law against homosexuality is severe, it abounds also, perhaps to a much greater extent than in france;[ ] it certainly asserts itself more vigorously; a far greater number of cases have been recorded than in any other country, and the german literature of homosexuality is very extensive, often issued in popular form, and sometimes enthusiastically eulogistic. in england the law is exceptionally severe; yet, according to the evidence of those who have an international acquaintance with these matters, homosexuality is fully as prevalent as on the continent; some would say that it is more so. much the same is true of the united states, though there is less to be seen on the surface. it cannot, therefore, be said that legislative enactments have very much influence on the prevalence of homosexuality. the chief effect seems to be that the attempt at suppression arouses the finer minds among sexual inverts to undertake the enthusiastic defense of homosexuality, while coarser minds are stimulated to cynical bravado.[ ] as regards the prevalence of homosexuality in the united states, i may quote from a well-informed american correspondent:-- "the great prevalence of sexual inversion in american cities is shown by the wide knowledge of its existence. ninety-nine normal men out of a hundred have been accosted on the streets by inverts, or have among their acquaintances men whom they know to be sexually inverted. everyone has seen inverts and knows what they are. the public attitude toward them is generally a negative one--indifference, amusement, contempt. "the world of sexual inverts is, indeed, a large one in any american city, and it is a community distinctly organized--words, customs, traditions of its own; and every city has its numerous meeting-places: certain churches where inverts congregate; certain cafés well known for the inverted character of their patrons; certain streets where, at night, every fifth man is an invert. the inverts have their own 'clubs,' with nightly meetings. these 'clubs' are, really, dance-halls, attached to _saloons_, and presided over by the proprietor of the saloon, himself almost invariably an invert, as are all the waiters and musicians. the frequenters of these places are male sexual inverts (usually ranging from to years of age); sightseers find no difficulty in gaining entrance; truly, they are welcomed for the drinks they buy for the company--and other reasons. singing and dancing turns by certain favorite performers are the features of these gatherings, with much gossip and drinking at the small tables ranged along the four walls of the room. the habitués of these places are, generally, inverts of the most pronounced type, i.e., the completely feminine in voice and manners, with the characteristic hip motion in their walk; though i have never seen any approach to feminine dress there, doubtless the desire for it is not wanting and only police regulations relegate it to other occasions and places. you will rightly infer that the police know of these places and endure their existence for a consideration; it is not unusual for the inquiring stranger to be directed there by a policeman." the oscar wilde trial (see _ante_, p. ), with its wide publicity, and the fundamental nature of the questions it suggested, appears to have generally contributed to give definiteness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality, and to have aroused inverts to take up a definite attitude. i have been assured in several quarters that this is so and that since that case the manifestations of homosexuality have become more pronounced. one correspondent writes:-- "up to the time of the oscar wilde trial i had not known what the condition of the law was. the moral question in itself--its relation to my own life and that of my friends--i reckoned i had solved; but i now had to ask myself how far i was justified in not only breaking the law, but in being the cause of a like breach in others, and others younger than myself. i have never allowed the _dictum_ of the law to interfere with what i deemed to be a moral development in any youth for whom i am responsible. i cannot say that the trial made me alter my course of life, of the rightness of which i was too convincingly persuaded, but it made me much more careful, and it probably sharpened my sense of responsibility for the young. reviewing the results of the trial as a whole, it doubtless did incalculable harm, and it intensified our national vice of hypocrisy. but i think it also may have done some good in that it made those who, like myself, have thought and experienced deeply in the matter--and these must be no small few--ready to strike a blow, when the time comes, for what we deem to be right, honorable, and clean." from america a lady writes with reference to the moral position of inverts, though without allusion to the wilde trial:-- "inverts should have the courage and independence to be themselves, and to demand an investigation. if one strives to live honorably, and considers the greatest good to the greatest number, it is not a crime nor a disgrace to be an invert. i do not need the law to defend me, neither do i desire to have any concessions made for me, nor do i ask my friends to sacrifice their ideals for me. i too have ideals which i shall always hold. all that i desire--and i claim it as my right--is the freedom to exercise this divine gift of loving, which is not a menace to society nor a disgrace to me. let it once be understood that the average invert is not a moral degenerate nor a mental degenerate, but simply a man or a woman who is less highly specialized, less completely differentiated, than other men and women, and i believe the prejudice against them will disappear, and if they live uprightly they will surely win the esteem and consideration of all thoughtful people. i know what it means to an invert--who feels himself set apart from the rest of mankind--to find one human heart who trusts him and understands him, and i know how almost impossible this is, and will be, until the world is made aware of these facts." but, while the law has had no more influence in repressing abnormal sexuality than, wherever it has tried to do so, it has had in repressing the normal sexual instinct, it has served to foster another offense. what is called blackmailing in england, _chantage_ in france, and _erpressung_ in germany--in other words, the extortion of money by threats of exposing some real or fictitious offense--finds its chief field of activity in connection with homosexuality.[ ] no doubt the removal of the penalty against simple homosexuality does not abolish blackmailing, as the existence of this kind of _chantage_ in france shows, but it renders its success less probable. on all these grounds, and taking into consideration the fact that the tendency of modern legislation generally, and the consensus of authoritative opinion in all countries, are in this direction, it seems reasonable to conclude that neither "sodomy" (i.e., _immissio membri in anum hominis vel mulieris_) nor "gross indecency" ought to be penal offenses, except under certain special circumstances. that is to say, that if two persons of either or both sexes, having reached years of discretion,[ ] privately consent to practise some perverted mode of sexual relationship, the law cannot be called upon to interfere. it should be the function of the law in this matter to prevent violence, to protect the young, and to preserve public order and decency. whatever laws are laid down beyond this must be left to the individuals themselves, to the moralists, and to social opinion. at the same time, and while such a modification in the law seems to be reasonable, the change effected would be less considerable than may appear at first sight. in a very large proportion, indeed, of cases boys are involved. it is instructive to observe that in legludic's cases (including victims and aggressors together) in france, , or more than half, were between the ages of and , and , or exactly one-third, were between the ages of and . a very considerable field of operation is thus still left for the law, whatever proportion of cases may meet with no other penalty than social opinion. that, however, social opinion--law or no law--will speak with no uncertain voice is very evident. once homosexuality was primarily a question of population or of religion. now we hear little either of its economic aspects or of its sacrilegiousness; it is for us primarily a disgusting abomination, i.e., a matter of taste, of esthetics; and, while unspeakably ugly to the majority, it is proclaimed as beautiful by a small minority. i do not know that we need find fault with this esthetic method of judging homosexuality. but it scarcely lends itself to legal purposes. to indulge in violent denunciation of the disgusting nature of homosexuality, and to measure the sentence by the disgust aroused, or to regret, as one english judge is reported to have regretted when giving sentence, that "gross indecency" is not punishable by death, is to import utterly foreign considerations into the matter. the judges who yield to this temptation would certainly never allow themselves to be consciously influenced on the bench by their political opinions. yet esthetic opinions are quite as foreign to law as political opinions. an act does not become criminal because it is disgusting. to eat excrement, as moll remarks, is extremely disgusting, but it is not criminal. the confusion which thus exists, even in the legal mind, between the disgusting and the criminal is additional evidence of the undesirability of the legal penalty for simple homosexuality. at the same time it shows that social opinion is amply adequate to deal with the manifestations of inverted sexuality. so much for the legal aspects of sexual inversion. but while there can be no doubt about the amply adequate character of the existing social reaction to all manifestations of perverted sexuality, the question still remains how far not merely the law, but also the state of public opinion, should be modified in the light of such a psychological study as we have here undertaken. it is clear that this public opinion, molded chiefly or entirely with reference to gross vice, tends to be unduly violent in its reaction. what, then, is the reasonable attitude of society toward the congenital sexual invert? it seems to lie in the avoidance of two extremes. on the one hand, it cannot be expected to tolerate the invert who flouts his perversion in its face, and assumes that, because he would rather take his pleasure with a soldier or a policeman than with their sisters, he is of finer clay than the vulgar herd. on the other, it might well refrain from crushing with undiscerning ignorance beneath a burden of shame the subject of an abnormality which, as we have seen, has not been found incapable of fine uses. inversion is an aberration from the usual course of nature. but the clash of contending elements which must often mark the history of such a deviation results now and again--by no means infrequently--in nobler activities than those yielded by the vast majority who are born to consume the fruits of the earth. it bears, for the most part, its penalty in the structure of its own organism. we are bound to protect the helpless members of society against the invert. if we go farther, and seek to destroy the invert himself before he has sinned against society, we exceed the warrant of reason, and in so doing we may, perhaps, destroy also those children of the spirit which possess sometimes a greater worth than the children of the flesh. here we may leave this question of sexual inversion. in dealing with it i have sought to avoid that attitude of moral superiority which is so common in the literature of this subject, and have refrained from pointing out how loathsome this phenomenon is, or how hideous that. such an attitude is as much out of place in scientific investigation as it is in judicial investigation, and may well be left to the amateur. the physician who feels nothing but disgust at the sight of disease is unlikely to bring either succor to his patients or instruction to his pupils. that the investigation we have here pursued is not only profitable to us in succoring the social organism and its members, but also in bringing light into the region of sexual psychology, is now, i hope, clear to every reader who has followed me to this point. there are a multitude of social questions which we cannot face squarely and honestly unless we possess such precise knowledge as has been here brought together concerning the part played by the homosexual tendency in human life. moreover, the study of this perverted tendency stretches beyond itself; "o'er that art which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes." pathology is but physiology working under new conditions. the stream of nature still flows into the bent channel of sexual inversion, and still runs according to law. we have not wasted our time in this toilsome excursion. with the knowledge here gained we are the better equipped to enter upon the study of the wider questions of sex. footnotes: [ ] in this connection i may refer to moll's _sexual life of the child_, to the writings of dr. clement dukes, physician to rugby school, who fully recognizes the risks of school-life, and to the discussion on sexual vice in schools, started by an address by the rev. j.m. wilson, head-master of clifton college, in the english _journal of education_, - . [ ] with regard to the importance of the sexual emotions generally and their training, see the well-known book by edward carpenter, _love's coming of age_; professor gurlitt ("knabenfreundschaften," _sexual-probleme_, oct., ) also upholds the intimate friendships of youth, which in his own experience have not had even a suspicion of homosexuality. [ ] casanova, _mémoires_, vol. i (edition garnier), p. . see also remarks by an experienced master in one of the largest english public schools, which i have brought forward in vol. i of these _studies_, "auto-erotism," d ed., . [ ] see, e.g., professor j.r. angell, "some reflections upon the reaction from coeducation," _popular science monthly_, nov., ; also moll's _sexual life of the child_, ch. ix, and for a general discussion of coeducation, s. poirson, _la coéducation_, . [ ] bethe, "die dorische knabenliebe," _rheinisches museum für philologie_; vol. lxii, heft , p. ; cf. edward carpenter, _intermediate types among primitive folk_, ch. vi. [ ] schrenck-notzing, _die suggestionstherapie bei krankhaften erscheinungen des geschlechtsinnes_, . (eng. trans. _therapeutic suggestion_, .) [ ] raffalovich, _uranisme et unisexualité_, , p. . he remarks that the congenital invert who has never had relations with women, and whose abnormality, to use krafft-ebing's distinction, is a perversion and not a perversity, is much less dangerous and apt to seduce others than the more versatile and corrupt person who has known all methods of gratification. [ ] see, e.g., moll, _die konträre sexualempfindung_, ch. xi; forel, _die sexuelle frage_, ch. xiv; näcke, "die behandlung der homosexualität," _sexual-probleme_, aug., ; hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. xxii. [ ] moll, _zeitschrift für psychotherapie_, , heft ; id., _handbuch der sexualwissenschaften_, , p. et seq. [ ] this is also the opinion of numa praetorius, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, jan., , p. . [ ] see, especially, sadger, _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, heft , ; also _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. ix, ; sadger's methods are criticised by hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. xxii, and defended by sadger, _internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_, july, , p. . for a discussion of the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality by a leading american freudian, see brill, _journal american medical association_, aug. , . [ ] _internationale zeitschrift für aerztliche psychoanalyse_, march, . [ ] this is now generally recognized. see, e.g., roubinovitch and borel, "un cas d'uranisme," _l'encéphale_, aug., . these authors conclude that it is today impossible to look upon inversion as the equivalent or the symptom of a psychopathic state, though we have to recognize that it frequently coexists with morbid emotional states. näcke, also, in his extensive experience, found that homosexuality is rare in asylums and slight in character; he dealt with this question on various occasions; see, e.g., _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, . [ ] krafft-ebing considered that the temporary or lasting association of homosexuality with neurasthenia having its root in congenital conditions is "almost invariable," and some authorities (like meynert) have regarded inversion as an accidental growth on the foundation of neurasthenia. [ ] féré expressed himself concerning the general treatment of homosexuality in the same sense, and even more emphatically (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, , pp. , ). he considers that all forms of congenital inversion resist treatment, and that, since a change in the invert's instincts must be regarded rather as a perversion of the invert than a cure of the inversion, one may be permitted to doubt not only the utility of the treatment, but even the legitimacy of attempting it. the treatment of sexual inversion, he declared, is as much outside the province of medicine as the restoration of color-vision in the color-blind. the ideal which the physician and the teacher must place before the invert is that of chastity; he must seek to harness his wagon to a star. [ ] i have been told by a distinguished physician, who was consulted in the case, of a congenital invert highly placed in the english government service, who married in the hope of escaping his perversion, and was not even able to consummate the marriage. it is needless to insist on the misery which is created in such cases. it is not, of course, denied that such marriages may not sometimes become eventually happy. thus kiernan ("psychical treatment of congenital sexual inversion," _review of insanity and nervous diseases_, june, ) reports the case of a thoroughly inverted girl who married the brother of the friend to whom she was previously attached merely in order to secure his sister's companionship. she was able to endure and even enjoy intercourse by imagining that her husband, who resembled his sister, was another sister. liking and esteem for the husband gradually increased and after the sister died a child was born who much resembled her; "the wife's esteem passed through love of the sister to intense natural love of the daughter, as resembling the sister; through this to normal love of the husband as the father and brother." the final result may have been satisfactory, but this train of circumstances could not have been calculated beforehand. moll is also opposed, on the whole (e.g., _deutsche medicinische presse_, no. , ), to marriage and procreation by inverts. [ ] hirschfeld, _die homosexualität_, ch. xxi. it might seem on theoretical grounds that the marriage of a homosexual man with a homosexual woman might turn out well. hirschfeld, however, states that he knows of such marriages, and the theoretical expectation has not been justified; of the cases speedily terminated in divorce, of the couples lived separately, and all but of the remaining couples regretted the step they had taken. i may add that in such a case even the expectation of happiness scarcely seems reasonable, since neither of the parties can feel a true mating impulse toward the other. [ ] hirschfeld also notes (_die homosexualität_, p. ) that women often instinctively feel that there is something wrong in the love of their inverted husbands who may perhaps succeed in copulating, but betray their deepest feelings by a repugnance to touch the sexual parts with the hand. the homosexual woman, also, as hirschfeld elsewhere points out with cases in illustration (p. ), may suffer seriously through being subjected to normal sexual relationships. [ ] féré reports the case of an invert of great intellectual ability who had never had any sexual relationships, and was not averse from a chaste life; he was urged by his doctor to acquire the power of normal intercourse and to marry, on the ground that his perversion was merely a perversion of the imagination. he did so, and, though he married a perfectly strong and healthy woman, and was himself healthy, except in so far as his perversion was concerned, the offspring turned out disastrously. the eldest child was an epileptic, almost an imbecile, and with strongly marked homosexual impulses; the second and third children were absolute idiots; the youngest died of convulsions in infancy (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. et seq.) no doubt this is not an average case, but the numerous examples of the offspring of similar marriages brought forward by hirschfeld (op. cit., p. ) scarcely present a much better result. [ ] it is scarcely necessary to add that the same principle is adaptable to the case of homosexual women. "in all such cases," writes an american woman physician, "i would recommend that the moral sense be trained and fostered, and the persons allowed to keep their individuality, being taught to remember always that they are different from others, rather sacrificing their own feelings or happiness when necessary. it is good discipline for them, and will serve in the long run to bring them more favor and affection than any other course. this quality or idiosyncrasy is not essentially evil, but, if rightly used, may prove a blessing to others and a power for good in the life of the individual; nor does it reflect any discredit upon its possessor." [ ] the existence of an affinity between homosexuality and the religious temperament has been referred to in ch. i as recognized in many parts of the world. see, for a more extended discussion, horneffer, _der priester_, and bloch, _die prostitution_, vol. i, pp. - . the psychoanalysts have also touched on this point; thus pfister, _die frommingkeit des grafen von zinzendorf_ ( ), argues that the founder of the pietistic sect of the herrenhuter was of sublimated homosexual (or bisexual) temperament. [ ] forel, _die sexuelle frage_, p. . such ideas are, of course, often put forward by inverts themselves. [ ] roman law previously seems to have been confined in this matter to the protection of boys. the scantinian and other roman laws against paiderasty seem to have been usually a dead letter. see, for various notes and references, w.g. holmes, _the age of justinian and theodora_, vol. i, p. . [ ] epistle to the romans, chapter i, verses - . [ ] in practice this penalty of death appears to have been sometimes commuted to ablation of the sexual organs. [ ] for a full sketch of the legal enactments against homosexual intercourse in ancient and modern times, see numa praetorius, "die straflichen bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen verkehr," _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, vol. i, pp. - . this writer points out that justinian, and still more clearly, pius v, in the sixteenth century, distinguished between occasional homosexuality and deep-rooted inversion, habitual offenders alone, not those who had only been guilty once or twice, being punished. [ ] the influence of the supposed connection of sodomy with unbelief, idolatry, and heresy in arousing the horror of it among earlier religions has been emphasized by westermarck, _the origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. i, p. et seq. [ ] "any male person who in public or private commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor." [ ] this point is brought forward by dr. léon de rode in his report on "l'inversion génitale et la législation," prepared for the third (brussels) congress of criminal anthropology in . the same point is insisted on by some of my correspondents. [ ] it is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while homosexuality is today in absolute disrepute in france, it was not so under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. the duc de gesvres, as described by besenval (_mémoires_, i, p. ), was a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration. in madame, the mother of the regent, writes implying that "all the young men and many of the old" practised pederasty: _il n'y a que les gens du commun qui aiment les femmes_. the marked tendency to inversion in the french royal family at this time is well known. [ ] a man with homosexual habits, i have been told, declared he would be sorry to see the english law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in his practices. [ ] blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert runs. hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (_jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, april, ) that his experience shows that among , homosexual persons hardly one falls a victim to the law, but over are victimized by blackmailers. [ ] krafft-ebing would place this age not under , the age at which in england girls may legally consent to normal sexual intercourse (_psychopathia sexualis_, , p. ). it certainly should not be lower. appendices. appendix a. homosexuality among tramps. by "josiah flynt." i have made a rather minute study of the tramp class in the united states, england, and germany, but i know it best in the states. i have lived with the tramps there for eight consecutive months, besides passing numerous shorter periods in their company, and my acquaintance with them is nearly of ten years' standing. my purpose in going among them has been to learn about their life in particular and outcast life in general. this can only be done by becoming part and parcel of its manifestations. there are two kinds of tramps in the united states: out-of-works and "hoboes." the out-of-works are not genuine vagabonds; they really want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes. the latter are the real tramps. they make a business of begging--a very good business too--and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days. whisky and _wanderlust_, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit. they become tramps because they find that life "on the road" comes the nearest to the life they hoped to lead. they have enough talent to do very well as beggars, better, generally speaking, then the men who have reached the road simply as drunkards; they know more about the tricks of the trade and are cleverer in thinking out schemes and stories. all genuine tramps in america are, however, pretty much the same, as far as manners and philosophy are concerned, and all are equally welcome at the "hang-out."[ ] the class of society from which they are drawn is generally the very lowest of all, but there are some hoboes who have come from the very highest, and these latter are frequently as vicious and depraved as their less well-born brethren. concerning sexual inversion among tramps, there is a great deal to be said, and i cannot attempt to tell all i have heard about it, but merely to give a general account of the matter. every hobo in the united states knows what "unnatural intercourse" means, talking about it freely, and, according to my finding, every tenth man practises it, and defends his conduct. boys are the victims of this passion. the tramps gain possession of these boys in various ways. a common method is to stop for awhile in some town, and gain acquaintance with the slum children. they tell these children all sorts of stories about life "on the road," how they can ride on the railways for nothing, shoot indians, and be "perfeshunnels" (professionals), and they choose some boy who specially pleases them. by smiles and flattering caresses they let him know that the stories are meant for him alone, and before long, if the boy is a suitable subject, he smiles back just as slyly. in time he learns to think that he is the favorite of the tramp, who will take him on his travels, and he begins to plan secret meetings with the man. the tramp, of course, continues to excite his imagination with stories and caresses, and some fine night there is one boy less in the town. on the road the lad is called a "prushun," and his protector a "jocker." the majority of prushuns are between and years of age, but i have known some under and a few over . each is compelled by hobo law to let his jocker do with him as he will, and many, i fear, learn to enjoy his treatment of them. they are also expected to beg in every town they come to, any laziness on their part receiving very severe punishment. how the act of unnatural intercourse takes place is not entirely clear; the hoboes are not agreed. from what i have personally observed i should say that it is usually what they call "leg-work" (intercrural), but sometimes _immissio penis in anum_, the boy, in either case, lying on his stomach. i have heard terrible stories of the physical results to the boy of anal intercourse. one evening, near cumberland, pennsylvania, i was an unwilling witness of one of the worst scenes that can be imagined. in company with eight hoboes, i was in a freight-car attached to a slowly moving train. a colored boy succeeded in scrambling into the car, and when the train was well under way again he was tripped up and "seduced" (to use the hobo euphemism) by each of the tramps. he made almost no resistance, and joked and laughed about the business as if he had expected it. this, indeed, i find to be the general feeling among the boys when they have been thoroughly initiated. at first they do not submit, and are inclined to run away or fight, but the men fondle and pet them, and after awhile they do not seem to care. some of them have told me that they get as much pleasure out of the affair as the jocker does. even little fellows under have told me this, and i have known them to willfully tempt their jockers to intercourse. what the pleasure consists in i cannot say. the youngsters themselves describe it as a delightful tickling sensation in the parts involved, and this is possibly all that it amounts to among the smallest lads. those who have passed the age of puberty seem to be satisfied in pretty much the same way that the men are. among the men the practice is decidedly one of passion. the majority of them prefer a prushun to a woman, and nothing is more severely judged than rape. one often reads in the newspapers that a woman has been assaulted by a tramp, but the perverted tramp is never the guilty party. i believe, however, that there are a few hoboes who have taken to boys because women are so scarce "on the road." for every woman in hoboland there are a hundred men. that this disproportion has something to do with the popularity of boys is made clear by the following case: in a gaol, where i was confined for a month during my life in vagabondage, i got acquainted with a tramp who had the reputation of being a "sod" (sodomist). one day a woman came to the gaol to see her husband, who was awaiting trial. one of the prisoners said he had known her before she was married and had lived with her. the tramp was soon to be discharged, and he inquired where the woman lived. on learning that she was still approachable, he looked her up immediately after his release, and succeeded in staying with her for nearly a month. he told me later that he enjoyed his life with her much more than his intercourse with boys. i asked him why he went with boys at all, and he replied: "'cause there ain't women enough. if i can't get them i've got to have the other." it is in gaols that one sees the worst side of this perversion. in the daytime the prisoners are let out into a long hall, and can do much as they please; at night they are shut up, two and even four in a cell. if there are any boys in the crowd, they are made use of by all who care to have them. if they refuse to submit, they are gagged and held down. the sheriff seldom knows what goes on, and for the boys to say anything to him would be suicidal. there is a criminal ignorance all over the states concerning the life of these gaols, and things go on that would be impossible in any well-regulated prison. in one of these places i once witnessed the fiercest fight i have ever seen among hoboes; a boy was the cause of it. two men said they loved him, and he seemed to return the affection of both with equal desire. a fight with razors was suggested to settle who should have him.[ ] the men prepared for action, while the crowd gathered round to watch. they slashed away for over half an hour, cutting each other terribly, and then their backers stopped them for fear of fatal results. the boy was given to the one who was hurt the least. jealousy is one of the first things one notices in connection with this passion. i have known them to withdraw entirely from the "hang-out" life simply to be sure that their prushuns were not touched by other tramps. such attachments frequently last for years, and some boys remain with their first jockers until they are "emancipated." emancipation means freedom to "snare" some other boy, and make him submit as the other had been obliged to submit when younger. as a rule, the prushun is freed when he is able to protect himself. if he can defend his "honor" from all who come, he is accepted into the class of "old stagers," and may do as he likes. this is the one reward held out to prushuns during their apprenticeship. they are told that some day they can have a boy and use him as they have been used. thus hoboland is always sure of recruits. it is difficult to say how many tramps are sexually inverted. it is not even certainly known how many vagabonds there are in the country. i have stated in one of my papers on tramps that, counting the boys, there are between fifty and sixty thousand genuine hoboes in the united states. a vagabond in texas who saw this statement wrote me that he considered my estimate too low. the newspapers have criticised it as too high, but they are unable to judge. if my figures are, as i believe, at least approximately correct, the sexually perverted tramps may be estimated at between five and six thousand; this includes men and boys. i have been told lately by tramps that the boys are less numerous than they were a few years ago. they say that it is now a risky business to be seen with a boy, and that it is more profitable, as far as begging is concerned, to go without them. whether this means that the passion is less fierce than it used to be, or that the men find sexual satisfaction among themselves, i cannot say definitely. but from what i know of their disinclination to adopt the latter alternative, i am inclined to think that the passion may be dying out somewhat. i am sure that women are not more numerous "on the road" than formerly, and that the change, if real, has not been caused by them. so much for my finding in the united states. in england, where i have also lived with tramps for some time, i have found very little contrary sexual feeling. in germany, also, excepting in prisons and work-houses, it seems very little known among vagabonds. there are a few jewish wanderers (sometimes peddlers) who are said to have boys in their company, and i am told that they use them as the hoboes in the united states use their boys, but i cannot prove this from personal observation. in england i have met a number of male tramps who had no hesitation in declaring their preference for their own sex, and particularly for boys, but i am bound to say that i have seldom seen them with boys; as a rule, they were quite alone, and they seem to live chiefly by themselves. it is a noteworthy fact that both in england and germany there are a great many women "on the road," or, at all events, so near it that intercourse with them is easy and cheap. in germany almost every town has its quarter of "stadt-schieze"[ ]: women who sell their bodies for a very small sum. they seldom ask over thirty or forty pfennigs for a night, which is usually spent in the open air. in england it is practically the same thing. in all the large cities there are women who are glad to do business for three or four pence, and those "on the road" for even less. the general impression made on me by the sexually perverted men i have met in vagabondage is that they are abnormally masculine. in their intercourse with boys they always take the active part. the boys have, in some cases, seemed to me uncommonly feminine, but not as a rule. in the main, they are very much like other lads, and i am unable to say whether their liking for the inverted relationship is inborn or acquired. that it is, however, a genuine liking, in altogether too many instances, i do not, in the least, doubt. as such, and all the more because it is such, it deserves to be more thoroughly investigated and more reasonably treated. "josiah flynt" who wrote the foregoing account of tramp-life for the second edition of this volume, was well known as author, sociologist, and tramp. he was especially, and it would seem by innate temperament, the tramp, which part he looked to perfection (he himself referred to his "weasoned face and diminutive form") and felt completely at home in. he was thus able to throw much light on the psychology of the tramp, and his books (such as _tramping with tramps_) are valuable from this point of view. his real name was f. willard and he was a nephew of miss frances willard. he died in chicago, in , at the age of , shortly after writing a frank and remarkable _autobiography_. i am able to supplement his observations on tramps, so far as england is concerned, by the following passages from a detailed record sent to me by an english correspondent:-- "i am a male invert with complete feminine, sexual inclinations. different meetings with 'tramps' led me to seek intimacy with them and for about twenty years i have gone on the 'tramp' myself so that i might come in the closest contact with them, in england, scotland, and wales. "as in the united states, there are two classes of tramps those who would work, such as harvesters, road-makers, etc., and those who will not work, but make tramping a profession. among both these classes my experience is that per cent, or i even would be bold enough to say per cent, indulge in homosexuality when the opportunity occurs, and i do not make any distinction between the two classes. "there are numerous reasons for this and i will state a few. a certain number may prefer normal connection with a female, but except for those who tramp in vans and a limited number who have 'donnas' with them, women are not available, as prostitutes very seldom allow intimacy for 'love' except when drunk. tramps are also afraid of any venereal disease as it means the misery of the lock hospital. most of them are sociable and prefer to tramp with a 'make.' with this mate, with whom he sleeps and rests and 'boozes' when they are in funds, sexual intimacy naturally takes place, as my experience has been that one of the two is male and the other female in their sexual desires, but i have known instances where they have acted both roles. then male prostitution is to be had for nothing, and even occasionally when a tramp meets a 'toff' it is a means of earning money, either fairly or otherwise. i have never known a male tramp to refuse satisfaction if i offered a drink or two, or a small sum of money. one told me that he envied 'no lords or toffs' as long as he got plenty of 'booze and buggery.' "another one, who told me that he had been twenty-five years on the road, said that he could not endure to sleep alone. (he was a pedlar, openly of cheap religious books and secretly of the vilest pamphlets and photographs). he had 'done time' and he said the greatest punishment to him was not being able to have a 'make' who would submit to penetration, though he was not particular what form the sexual act took. another fine young man, whom i chanced to meet the very day he had been released from a long sentence in prison for burglary and with whom i passed a night of incessant and almost brutal intimacy, said his punishment was seeing men always about him and being unable to have connection with them. another and very powerful influence in 'tramps' toward homosexuality is that, in the low lodging houses they are obliged to frequent, a single bed is perhaps double to one with a bedmate whom perhaps he has never seen before, and especially in hot weather, when the rule is nakedness. "my sexual desires being for the male invert i have come most in contact with them and have found that they form much the larger class. among harvesters and seafaring tramps it is seldom you find a 'dandy' such as i was considered, and as such i was eagerly courted, and any suggestion of intimacy on my part quickly responded to. as regards the use of young boys for homosexual indulgence, it is not common as it is too dangerous, though i have known boys, especially those belonging to vans or gypsies, to prostitute themselves, always for money. "on one occasion i saw a boy who created quite an outburst of lust of homosexual nature. the incident took place in a small seafaring town in scotland one evening before a fair was to be held. it occurred in a low public house where a number of very rough and mostly drunken men were assembled. a blind man came in led by an extremely pretty but effeminate-looking youth of about , wearing a ragged kilt and with bare legs and feet. he had long, curling, fair hair which reached to his shoulders and on it an old bonnet was perched. he also wore an old velveteen shooting jacket. all eyes were turned on the pair and they were quickly offered drinks. a remark was made by one man that he believed the youth was a lassie. the boy said, 'i will show you i am a laddie,' and pulled up his kilt, exposing his genitals and then his posterior. boisterous laughter greeted this indecent exposure and suggestion, and more drinks were provided. the blind man then played his fiddle and the boy danced with frequent recurrences of the same indecencies. he was seized, kissed, and caressed by quite a number of men, some of whom endeavored to masturbate him, which he resisted, but performed it for them. after the closing time came, i and about ten or twelve men all occupied the same room; the old man continued to play, and the youth, stark naked, continued to dance and suggested we others should do so, and an erotic scene took place which was only closed to view by the 'boss' who was present putting out the lamp. "two classes of tramps i have met openly declare their preference for homosexuality. they are men who have been in the army and sailors and seafaring men in general. it is said that 'jack has a wife in every port,' but i believe from my experience that the wife in many cases is of the male sex, and this among those of all nationalities, as is the case with soldiers. among these also jealousy is more common than amongst ordinary tramps, and if you are 'dandy' to a soldier, if you make advances or receive them from a senior, trouble is likely to occur between them. "i could give many instances of my own personal experiences to show that 'tramps' are looked upon by men in the country districts as legitimate, complacent, and purchaseable objects for homosexual lust." footnotes: [ ] this is the home of the fraternity. practically it is any corner where they can lay their heads; but, as a rule, it is either a lodging-house, a freight-car, or a nest in the grass near the railway watering-tank. [ ] all hoboes carry razors, both for shaving and for defense. strange to say, they succeed in smuggling them into gaols, as they are never searched thoroughly. [ ] this word is of hebrew origin, and means girl (_mädchen_). appendix b. the school-friendships of girls. i. a school-friendship is termed by italian girls a "flame" (_flamma_). this term, as explained by obici and marchesini, indicates, in school-slang, both the beloved person and the friendship in the abstract; but it is a friendship which has the note of passion as felt and understood in this environment. in every college the "flame" is regarded as a necessary institution. the relationship is usually of a markedly platonic character, and generally exists between a boarder on one side and a day-pupil on the other. notwithstanding, however, its apparently non-sexual nature, all the sexual manifestations of college youth circle around it, and in its varying aspects of differing intensity all the gradations of sexual sentiment may be expressed. obici and marchesini carried on their investigation chiefly among the pupils of normal schools, the age of the girls being between and or . there are both boarders and day-pupils at these colleges; the boarders are most inflammable, but it is the day-pupils who furnish the sparks. obici and marchesini received much assistance in their studies from former pupils who are now themselves teachers. one of these, a day-pupil who had never herself been either the object or the agent in one of these passions, but had had ample opportunity of making personal observations, writes as follows: "the 'flame' proceeds exactly like a love-relationship; it often happens that one of the girls shows man-like characteristics, either in physical type or in energy and decision of character; the other lets herself be loved, acting with all the obstinacy--and one might almost say the shyness--of a girl with her lover. the beginning of these relationships is quite different from the usual beginnings of friendship. it is not by being always together, talking and studying together, that two become 'flames'; no, generally they do not even know each other; one sees the other on the stairs, in the garden, in the corridors, and the emotion that arises is nearly always called forth by beauty and physical grace. then the one who is first struck begins a regular courtship: frequent walks in the garden when the other is likely to be at the window of her class-room, pauses on the stairs to see her pass; in short, a mute adoration made up of glances and sighs. later come presents of beautiful flowers, and little messages conveyed by complacent companions. finally, if the 'flame' shows signs of appreciating all these proofs of affection, comes the letter of declaration. letters of declaration are long and ardent, to such a degree that they equal or surpass real love-declarations. the courted one nearly always accepts, sometimes with enthusiasm, oftenest with many objections and doubts as to the affection declared. it is only after many entreaties that she yields and the relationship begins." another collaborator who has herself always aroused very numerous "flames" gives a very similar description, together with other particulars. thus she states: "it may be said that per cent. of the girls in a college have 'flame' relationships, and that of the remaining only half refuse from deliberate repulsion to such affections; the other are excluded either because they are not sufficiently pleasing in appearance or because their characters do not inspire sympathy." and, regarding the method of beginning the relationship, she writes: "sometimes 'flames' arise before the two future friends have even seen each other, merely because one of them is considered as beautiful, sympathetic, nice, or elegant. elegance exerts an immense fascination, especially on the boarders, who are bound down by monotonous and simple habits. as soon as a boarder hears of a day-pupil that she is charming and elegant she begins to feel a lively sympathy toward her, rapidly reaching anxiety to see her. the longed-for morning at length arrives. the beloved, unconscious of the tumult of passions she has aroused, goes into school, not knowing that her walk, her movements, her garments are being observed from stairs or dormitory corridor.... for the boarders these events constitute an important part of college-life, and often assume, for some, the aspect of a tragedy, which, fortunately, may be gradually resolved into a comedy or a farce." many letters are written in the course of these relationships; obici and marchesini have been able to read over such letters which had been carefully preserved by the receivers and which, indeed, formed the chief material for their study. these letters clearly show that the "flame" most usually arises from a physical sympathy, an admiration of beauty and elegance. the letters written in this "flame" relationship are full of passion; they appear to be often written during periods of physical excitement and psychic erethism, and may be considered, obici and marchesini remark, a form of intellectual onanism, of which the writers afterward feel remorse and shame as of a physically dishonorable act. in reference to the underlying connection of these feelings with the sexual impulse, one of the lady collaborators writes: "i can say that a girl who is in love with a man never experiences 'flame' emotions for a companion." obici and marchesini thus summarize the differential character of "flames" as distinguished from ordinary friendships: "( ) the extraordinary frequency with which, even by means of subterfuges, the lovers exchange letters; ( ) the anxiety to see and talk to each other, to press each other's hands, to embrace and kiss; ( ) the long conversations and the very long reveries; ( ) persistent jealousy, with its manifold arts and usual results; ( ) exaltation of the beloved's qualities; ( ) the habit of writing the beloved's name everywhere; ( ) absence of envy for the loved one's qualities; ( ) the lover's abnegation in conquering all obstacles to the manifestations of her love; ( ) the vanity with which some respond to 'flame' declarations; ( ) the consciousness of doing a prohibited thing; ( ) the pleasure of conquest, of which the trophies (letters, etc.) are preserved." the difference between a "flame" and a friendship is very well marked in the absolute exclusiveness of the former, whence arises the possibility of jealousy. at the same time friendship and love are here woven together. the letters are chaste (a few exceptions among so many letters not affecting this general rule), and the purity of the flame relationship is also shown by the fact that it is usually between boarders and day-pupils, girls in different classes and different rooms, and seldom between those who are living in close proximity to each other. "certainly," writes one of the lady collaborators, "the first sensual manifestations develop in girls with physical excitement pure and simple, but (at all events, i would wish to believe it) the majority of college-girls find sufficient satisfaction in being as near as possible to the beloved person (of whichever sex), in mutual admiration and in kissing, or, very frequently, in conversation that is by no means moral, though usually very metaphorical. the object of such conversation is to discover the most important mysteries of human nature, the why and the wherefore; it deals with natural necessities, which the girl feels and has an intuition of, but as yet knows nothing definite about. such conversations are the order of the day in schools and in colleges and specially revolve around procreation, the most difficult mystery of all. they are a heap of stupidities." this lady had only known of one definitely homosexual relationship during the whole of her college-life; the couple in question were little liked and had no other "flames." the chief general sexual manifestations, this lady concludes, which she had noted among her companions was a constant preoccupation with sexual mysteries and the necessity of talking about them perpetually. another lady collaborator who had lived in a normal school had had somewhat wider experiences. she entered at the age of and experienced the usual loneliness and unhappiness of a new pupil. one day as she was standing pensive and alone in a corner of the room, a companion--one who on her arrival had been charged to show her over the college--ran up to her, "embracing me, closing by mouth with a kiss, and softly caressing my hair. i gazed at her in astonishment, but experienced a delicious sensation of supreme comfort. here began the idyll! i was subjected to a furious tempest of kisses and caresses which quite stunned me and made me ask myself the reason of such a new and unforeseen affection. i ingenuously inquired the reason, and the reply was: 'i love you; you struck me immediately i saw you, because you are so beautiful and so white, and because it makes me happy and _soothes_ me when i can pass my hands through your hair and kiss your plump, white face. i need a soul and a body.' this seemed to me the language of a superior person, for i could not grasp all its importance. as on the occasion when she first embraced me, i looked at her in astonishment and could not for the moment respond to a new fury of caresses and kisses. i felt that they were not like the kisses of my mamma, my papa, my brother, and other companions; they gave me unknown sensations; the contact of those moist and fleshy lips disturbed me. then came the exchange of letters and the usual rights and duties of 'flames.' when we met in the presence of others we were only to greet each other simply, for 'flames' were strictly prohibited. i obeyed because i liked her, but also because i was afraid of her othello-like jealousy. she would suffocate me, even bite me, when i played, joyously and thoughtlessly, with others, and woe to me if i failed to call her when i was combing my hair. she liked to see me with my hair down and would rest her head on my shoulder, especially if i were partially undressed. i let her do as she liked, and she would scold me severely because i was never first in longing for her, running to meet her, and kissing her. but at the same time the thought of losing her, the thought that perhaps one day she would shower her caresses on others, secretly wounded my heart. but i never told her this! one day, however, when with the head-mistress gazing at a beautiful landscape, i was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and burst out crying. the head-mistress inquired what was the matter, and throwing myself in her arms i sobbed: 'i love her, and i shall die if she leaves off loving me!' she smiled, and the smile went through my heart. i saw at once how silly i was, and what a wrong road my companion was on. from that day i could no longer endure my 'flame.' the separation was absolute; i courageously bore bites and insults, even scratches on my face, followed by long complaints and complete prostration. i thought it would be mean to accuse her, but i invented a pretext for having the number of my bed changed. this was because she would dress quietly and come to pass hours by my bed, resting her head on the pillow. she said she wished to smell the perfume of my health and freshness. this continual turbulent desire had now nauseated me, and i wished to avoid it altogether. later i heard that she had formed a relationship which was not blessed by any sacred rite." notwithstanding the platonic character of the correspondences, obici and marchesini remark, there is really a substratum of emotional sexuality beneath it, and it is this which finds its expression in the indecorous conversations already referred to. the "flame" is a _love-fiction, a play of sexual love_. this characteristic comes out in the frequently romantic names, of men and women, invented to sign the letters. even in the letters themselves, however, the element of sexual impressionability may be traced. "on friday we went to a service at san b.," writes one who was in an institution directed by nuns, "but unfortunately i saw m.l. at a window when i thought she was at a. and i was in a nervous state the whole time. imagine that that dear woman was at the window with bare arms, and, as it seemed to me, in her chemise." no doubt a similar impression might have been made on a girl living in her own family. but it is certain that the imaginative coloring tends to be more lively in those living in colleges and shut off from that varied and innocent observation which renders those outside colleges freer and more unprejudiced. on a boy who is free to see as many women as he chooses a woman's face cannot make such an impression as on a boy who lives in a college and who is liable to be, as it were, electrified if he sees any object belonging to a woman, especially if he sees it by stealth or during a mood of erotism. such an object calls out a whole series of wanton imaginations, which it could not do in one who, by his environment, was already armed against any tendencies to erotic fetichism. the attraction exerted by that which we see but seldom, and around which fancy assiduously plays, the attraction of forbidden fruit, produces tendencies and habits which could scarcely develop in freedom. curiosity is acute, and is augmented by the obstacles which stand in the way of its satisfaction. "flame" attraction is the beginning of such a morbid fetichism. a sentiment which under other conditions would never have gone beyond ordinary friendship may thus become a "flame," and even a "flame" of markedly sexual character. under these influences boys and girls feel the purest and simplest sentiments in a hyperesthetic manner. the girls here studied have lost an exact conception of the simple manifestations of friendship, and think they are giving evidence of exquisite sensibility and true friendship by loving a companion to madness; friendship in them has become a passion. that this intense desire to love a companion passionately is the result of the college environments may be seen by the following extract from a letter: "you know, dear, much better than i do how acutely girls living away from their own homes, and far from all those who are dearest to them on earth, feel the need of loving and being loved. you can understand how hard it is to be obliged to live without anyone to surround you with affection;" and the writer goes on to say how all her love turns to her correspondent. while there is an unquestionable sexual element in the "flame" relationship, this cannot be regarded as an absolute expression of real congenital perversion of the sex-instinct. the frequency of the phenomena, as well as the fact that, on leaving college to enter social life, the girl usually ceases to feel these emotions, are sufficient to show the absence of congenital abnormality. the estimate of the frequency of "flames" in normal schools, given to obici and marchesini by several lady collaborators, was about per cent., but there is no reason to suppose that women teachers furnish a larger contingent of perverted individuals than other women. the root is organic, but the manifestations are ideal and platonic, in contrast with some other manifestations found in college-life. no inquiry was made as to the details of solitary sexual manifestations in the colleges, the fact that they exist to more or less extent being sufficiently recognized. the conversations already referred to are a measure of the excitations of sexuality existing in these college inmates and multiplied in energy by communication. such discourse was, wrote one collaborator, the order of the day, and it took place chiefly at the time when letter-writing also was easiest. it may well be that sensual excitations, transformed into ethereal sentiments, serve to increase the intensity of the "flames." taken altogether, obici and marchesini conclude, the flame may be regarded as a _provisional synthesis_. we find here, in solution together, the physiological element of incipient sexuality, the psychical element of the tenderness natural to this age and sex, the element of occasion offered by the environment, and the social element with its nascent altruism. ii. that the phenomena described in minute detail by obici and marchesini closely resemble the phenomena as they exist in english girls' schools is indicated by the following communication, for which i am indebted to a lady who is familiar with an english girls' college of very modern type:-- "from inquiries made in various quarters and through personal observation and experience i have come to the conclusion that the romantic and emotional attachments formed by girls for their female friends and companions, attachments which take a great hold of their minds for the time being, are far commoner than is generally supposed among english girls, more especially at school or college, or wherever a number of girls or young women live together in one institution, and are much secluded. "as far as i have been able to find out, these attachments--which have their own local names, e.g., 'raves,' 'spoons,' etc.--are comparatively rare in the smaller private schools, and totally absent among girls of the poorer class attending board and national schools, perhaps because they mix more freely with the opposite sex. "i can say from personal experience that in one of the largest and best english colleges, where i spent some years, 'raving' is especially common in spite of arrangements which one would have thought would have abolished most unhealthy feelings. the arrangements there are very similar to a large boys' college. there are numerous boarding-houses, which have, on an average, forty to fifty students. each house is under the management of a well-educated house-mistress assisted by house-governesses (quite separate from college-teachers). each house has a large garden with tennis-courts, etc.; and cricket, hockey, and other games are carried on to a large extent, games being not only much encouraged, but much enjoyed. each girl has a separate cubicle, or bedroom, and no junior (under years of age) is allowed to enter the cubicle, or bedroom, of another without asking permission, or to go to the bedrooms during the day. in fact, everything is done to discourage any morbid feelings. but all the same, as far as my experience goes, the friendships there seem more violent and more emotional than in most places, and sex subjects form one of the chief topics of conversation. "in such large schools and colleges these 'raves' are not only numerous, but seem to be perennial among the girls of all ages, from years upward. girls under that age may be fond of some other student or teacher, but in quite a different way. these 'raves' are not mere friendships in the ordinary sense of the word, nor are they incompatible with ordinary friendships. a girl with a 'rave' often has several intimate friends for whom affection is felt without the emotional feelings and pleasurable excitement which characterize a 'rave.' "from what i have been told by those who have experienced these 'raves' and have since been in love with men, the emotions called forth in both cases were similar, although in the case of the 'rave' this fact was not recognized at the time. this appears to point to a sexual basis, but, on the other hand, there are many cases where the feeling seems to be more spiritual, a sort of uplifting of the whole soul with an intense desire to lead a very good life--the feeling being one of reverence more than anything else for the loved one, with no desire to become too intimate and no desire for physical contact. "'raves,' as a rule, begin quite suddenly. they may be mutual or all on one side. in the case of school-girls the mutual 'rave' is generally found between two companions, or the girls may have a 'rave' for one of their teachers or some grown-up acquaintance, who does not necessarily enter into the school-life. in this case there may or may not be a feeling of affection for the girl by her 'rave,' though minus all the emotional feelings. "occasionally a senior student will have a 'rave' on a little girl, but these cases are rare and not very active in their symptoms, girls over having fewer 'raves' and generally condemning them. "in the large school already referred to, of which i have personal knowledge, 'raving' was very general, hardly anyone being free from it. any fresh student would soon fall a victim to the fashion, which rather points to the fact that it is infectious. sometimes there might be a lull in the general raving, only to reappear after an interval in more or less of an epidemic form. sometimes nearly all the 'raves' were felt by students for their teachers; at other times it was more apparent between the girls themselves. "sometimes one teacher was raved on by several girls. in many cases, the girls raving on a teacher would have a very great friendship with one of their companions--talking with each other constantly of their respective 'raves,' describing their feelings and generally letting off steam to one another, indulging sometimes in the active demonstrations of affection which they were debarred from showing the teacher herself, and in some cases having no desire to do so even if they could. "as far as i have been able to judge, there is not necessarily any attraction for physical characteristics, as beauty, elegance, etc.; the two participants are probably both of strong character or a weak character raves on a stronger, but rarely _vice versâ_. "i have often noticed that the same person may be raved on at different times by several people of different characters and of all ages: say, up to years of age. it is hard to say why some persons more than others should inspire this feeling. often they are reserved, without any particular physical attraction, and often despising raving and emotional friendships, and give no encouragement to them. that the majority of 'raves' have a sexual basis may be true, but i am sure that in the majority of cases where young girls are concerned this is not in the least recognized, and no impurity is indulged in or wished for. the majority of the girls are entirely ignorant of all sexual matters, and understand nothing whatever about them. but they do wonder about them and talk about them constantly, more especially when they have a 'rave,' which seems to point to some subtle connection between the two. that this ignorance exists is largely to be deplored. the subject, if once thought of, is always thought of and talked of, and information is at length generally gained in a regrettable manner. from personal experience i know the evil results that this ignorance and constant endeavoring to find out everything has on the mind and bodies of school-girls. if children had the natural and simple laws of creation carefully explained to them by their parents, much harm would be prevented, and the conversation would not always turn on sexual matters. the bible is often consulted for the discovery of hidden mysteries. "'raves' on teachers are far commoner than between two girls. in this case the girl makes no secret of her attachment, constantly talking of it and describing her feelings to any who care to listen and writing long letters to her friends about the same. in the case of two girls there is more likely to be a sexual element, great pleasure being taken in close contact with one another and frequent kissing and hugging. when parted, long letters are written, often daily; they are full of affectionate expressions of love, etc., but there is also a frequent reference to the happiness and desire to do well that their love has inspired them with, while often very deeply religious feelings appear to be generated and many good resolutions are made. their various emotional feelings are described in every minute detail to each other. "the duration of 'raves' varies. i have known them to last three or four years, more often only a few months. occasionally what began as a 'rave' will turn, into a sensible firm friendship. i imagine that there is seldom any actual inversion, and on growing up the 'raves' generally cease. that the 'ravers' feel and act like a pair of lovers there is no doubt, and the majority put down these romantic friendships for their own sex as due, in a great extent, in the case of girls at schools, to being without the society of the opposite sex. this may be true in some cases, but personally i think the question open to discussion. these friendships are often found among girls who have left school and have every liberty, even among girls who have had numerous flirtations with the opposite sex, who cannot be accused of inversion, and who have all the feminine and domestic characteristics. "in illustration of these points i may bring forward the following case: a. and b. were two girls at the same college. they belonged to different cliques, or sets; occupied different bedrooms; never met in their school-work, and were practically only known to one another by name. one day they chanced to sit next to one another at some meal. they both already had 'raves,' a. on an actor she had lately seen, b. on a married woman at her home. the conversation happened to turn on 'raves,' and mutual attraction was _suddenly_ felt. from that moment a new interest came into their lives. they lived for one another. at the time a. was , b. a year older. both were somewhat precocious for their age, were practical, with plenty of common sense, very keen on games, interested in their lessons, and very independent, but at the same time with marked feminine characteristics and popular with the opposite sex. after the first feeling of interest there was a subtle excitement and desire to meet again. all their thoughts were occupied with the subject. each day they managed as many private meetings as possible. they met in the passages in order to say good-night with many embraces. as far as possible they hid their feelings from the rest of their world. they became inseparable, and a very lasting and real, but somewhat emotional, affection, in which the sexual element was certainly marked, sprang up between them. although at the time they were both quite ignorant of sexual matters, yet they indulged their sexual instincts to some extent. they felt surcharged with hitherto unexperienced feelings and emotions, instinct urged them to let these have play, but instinctively they also had a feeling that to do so would be wrong. this feeling they endeavored to argue out and find reasons for. when parted for any length of time they felt very miserable and wrote pages to one another every day, pouring forth in writing their feelings for one another. in this time of active attraction they both became deeply religious for a time. the active part of the affection continued for three or four years, and now, after an interval of ten years, they are both exceedingly fond of one another, although their paths in life are divided and each has since experienced love for a man. both look back upon the sexual element in their friendship with some interest. it may be remarked in passing that a. and b. are both attractive girls to men and women, and b. especially appears always to have roused 'rave' feelings in her own sex, without the slightest encouragement on her part. the duration of this 'rave' was exceptionally long, the majority only lasting a few months, while some girls have one 'rave' after another or two or three together. "i may mention one other case, where i believe that if it a sexual basis this was not recognized by the parties concerned or their friends. two girls, over years of age, passed in a corridor. a few words were exchanged: the beginning of a very warm and fast friendship. they said it was _not_ a 'rave.' they were absolutely devoted to one another, but from what i know of them and what they have since told me, their feelings were quite free from any sexual desires, though their love for one another was great. when parted they exchanged letters daily, but were always endeavoring to urge one another on in all the virtues, and as far as i can gather they never gave way to any feeling they thought was not for the good of their souls. "letters and presents are exchanged, vows of eternal love are made, quarrels are engaged in for the mere pleasure of reconciliation, and jealousy is easily manifested. although 'raves' are chiefly found among school-girls, they are by no means confined to them, but are common among any community of women of any age, say, under , and are not unknown among married women when there is no inversion. in these oases there is usually, of course, no ignorance of sexual matters. "whether there is any direct harm in these friendships i have not been able to make up my mind. in the case of school-girls, if there is not too much emotion generated and if the sexual feelings are not indulged in, i think they may do more good than harm. later on in life, when all one's desires and feelings are at their strongest, it is more doubtful." iii. that the phenomena as found in the girls' colleges of america are exactly similar to those in italy and england is shown, among other evidence, by some communications sent to mr. e.g. lancaster, of clark university, worcester, mass., a few years ago. mr. e.g. lancaster sent out a _questionnaire_ to over teachers and older pupils dealing with various points connected with adolescence, and received answers from persons containing information which bore on the present question.[ ] of this number, male and female had been in love before the age of , while of each sex had had no love experiences, this indicating, since the women were in a majority, that the absence of love experience is more common in men than in women. these answers were from young people between and years of age. two males and females have loved imaginary characters, while males and not less than females speak of passionate love for the same sex. love of the same sex, lancaster remarks, though not generally known, is very common; it is not mere friendship; the love is strong, real, and passionate. it may be remarked that these cases were reported without solicitation, since there was no reference to homosexual love in the _questionnaire_. many of the answers to the syllabus are so beautiful, lancaster observes, that if they could be printed in full no comment would be necessary. he quotes a few of the answers. thus a woman of writes: "at i had my first case of love, but it was with a girl. it was insane, intense love, but had the same quality and sensations as my first love with a man at . in neither case was the object idealized. i was perfectly aware of their faults; nevertheless my whole being was lost, immersed in their existence. the first lasted two years, the second seven years. no love has since been so intense, but now these persons, though living, are no more to me than the veriest stranger." another woman of writes: "girls between the ages of and at college or girls' schools often fall in love with the same sex. this is not friendship. the loved one is older, more advanced, more charming or beautiful. when i was a freshman in college i knew at least thirty girls who were in love with a senior. some sought her because it was the fashion, but i knew that my own homage and that of many others was sincere and passionate. i loved her because she was brilliant and utterly indifferent to the love shown her. she was not pretty, though at the time we thought her beautiful. one of her adorers, on being slighted, was ill for two weeks. on her return she was speaking to me when the object of our admiration came into the room. the shock was too great and she fainted. when i reached the senior year i was the recipient of languishing glances, original verses, roses, and passionate letters written at midnight and three in the morning." no similar confessions are recorded from men. iv. in south america corresponding phenomena have been found in schools and colleges of the same class. there they have been especially studied by mercante in the convent high schools of buenos aires where the students are girls between the ages of and .[ ] mercante found that homosexuality here is not clearly defined or explicit and usually it is combined with a predisposition to romanticism and mysticism. it is usually of a passive kind, but in this form so widespread as to constitute a kind of epidemic. it was most manifest in institutions where the greatest stress was placed on religious instruction. the recreations of the school in question were quiet and enervating; active or boisterous sports were prohibited to the end that good manners might be cultivated. in the play-rooms, the girls observed the strictest etiquette, and discipline was maintained independent of oversight by teachers. mercante could hardly believe, however, that the decorum was more than external. later, when the girls broke up, they were found in pairs or small groups, in corners, on benches, beside the pillars, arm in arm or holding hands. what they were speaking of could be surmised. "their conversation and confidences came to me indirectly. they were sweethearts talking about their affairs. in spite of the spiritual and feminine character of these unions, one element was active, the other passive, thus confirming the authorities on this matter, gamier, régis, lombroso, bonfigli." mercante found the points of view of the two members of each pair to be quite different in moral aspect. "one takes the initiative, she commands, she cares for, she offers, she gives, she makes decisions, she considers the present, she imagines the future, she smoothes over difficulties, gives encouragement and initiative, she commands, she cares for, she offers, she gives, she docile, gives way in matters of dispute, and expresses her affection with sweet words and promises of love and submission. the atmosphere, silent and quiet, was, however, charged with jealousy, squabble, desires, illusions, dreams, and lamentations." mercante's informant assured him that practically every girl had her affinity, and that there were at least twenty well-defined love affairs. the active party starts the conquest by making eyes, next she becomes more intimate, and finally proposes. women being highly adaptable, the neophyte, unless she is rebellious, gets into the spirit of it all. if she is not complaisant, she must prepare for conflict, because the prey becomes more desirable the more the resistance encountered. opportunity was offered to mercante to observe some of the correspondence between the girls. though of indifferent training and ability in other respects, the girls speak and write regarding their affairs with most admirable diction and style. no data are given regarding the actual intimate relations between the girls. footnotes: [ ] e.g. lancaster, "the psychology and pedagogy of adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, july, , p. . [ ] victor mercante, "fetiquismo y uranismo feminino en los internados educativos," _archivos de psiquiatria y criminologia_, , pp. - ; abstracted by d.c. mcmurtrie, _urologic review_, august, . index of authors. abraham adler, a. adler bey alain de lille aletrino ammon angell, j.r. anselm arber ariosto aristophanes aristotle aschoff aubrey bacchaumont bailly-maitre ballantyne balzac bartels, max bascoul baumann bazalgette beardmore bell, clark bell, blair benkert benson, a. c berkman berrichon bertz besenval bethe biervliet binet binet-valmer birnbaum bleuler bloch, iwan blyth, j. body bombarda bond, c.j. borel bouchard brandt, p. brehm brill brown, h. brouardel brun, c. buchanan bucke buffon burchard burckhardt burton, sir r. calesia campanella carlier carpenter, edward carretto casanova casper castle cazanova charcot chevalier claiborne clarke, a.w. clayton coelius aurelianus coleridge coriat corre croiset, a. crusius cust, r.h.h. dante darwin daville davitt, m. davray dejob descaves dessoir d'ewes diaz, b. diderot dostoieffsky dubois duflos dukes, o. dupré duviquet edmonds, j.m. eekhoud ellis, havelock engelmann escoube essebac eulenburg ewart, c.t. féré ferenczi fernan ferrero flatau fliess flournoy flynt, josiah foley forel frazer, sir j.g. freimark freud frey, l. fuchs, a. galton gandavo garrod, a.b. gasparini gaudenzi gautier, a. gautier, t. gide gilford, h. gillen gleichen-russwurm gley godard goldschwend gomperz gurlitt haddon, a.c. haeckel hahn halban hammer hamon hardman harris-liston hart, berry heape hegar heim herman herondas hirschfeld hoche hochstetter, s. holder holmberg holmes, w.g. homer home, h. horneffer hössli hughes, c.h. ingegnieros jacobs james, w. jastrow jekels john of salisbury johnston, j. jones, ernest jones, w. juliusburger justi karsch kiefer kiernan klaatsch knapp kocher konradin krafft-ebing krauss, f.s. kupffer, e. von kurella laborde lacassagne lancaster, e.g. langsdorff lapointe lasnet laupts, _see_ saint-paul, g. laurent laycock lefroy, e.c. legludic lepelletier leppmann l'estoile, p. de letamendi levetzow lévi libert licht lisiansky lombroso lorion löwenfeld lowie lydston macdonald, a. magnan maitland mantegazza marchesini marie de france marro marshall, f.h.r. martineau martius mason matignon mayne, xavier mcmurtrie meige meissner, b. mercante merzbach meynert middleton möbius moerenhout moffat, d. moll monk of evesham montaigne morache moreau morel moskowski moyer muccioli müller, f.c. mure, w. näcke neugebauer niceforo nicholson, j.g. nicklin norman, conolly nortal obici oefele olano oppenheim ordericus vitalis ortvay otis, m. parent-duchâtelet parish parlagreco pavia petronius pfister plant platen plato platt, j.a. ploss plutarch pocock, r. poisson pollock praetorius, numa preuss, j. prynne queringhi rachilde raffalovich rank, o. ransome reclus, elie reid, forrest ribot ritti rivers, w.c. rode, léon de rohleder römer rosenstein, g. roth roubinovitch roux rowley rüling, a. rutherford sadger saint-paul, g. sainte-claire, deville salillas savage, sir g. scheffler schmid, a. schopenhauer schouten schrenck-notzing schultz schur scott, colin seitz seligmann selous, e. sérieux shattock shufeldt smith, theodate smollett spranger steinach stekel stephanus strauch stubbes sturgis, h.o. sutton, sir j. bland symonds, j.a. talbot tamassia tarde tardieu tarnowsky tennyson thoinot tilly traubel turnbull ulrichs vanbrugh virchow vivien, renée weeks weigand weismann weissenberg westermarck wey, h.d. weysse wheeler whitman, walt. wilamowitz-moellendorff wilhelm, e. willy wilson, j.m. wise witry wright, t. zola zuccarelli index of subjects. abnormalities, physical abnormality and disease, difference between acquired inversion actors and homosexuality actresses, homosexuality among adaptation therapy advertisements, homosexual africa, homosexuality in albanians, homosexuality among aleuts, homosexuality among ambisexuality anal eroticism anglo-saxons animals, homosexuality in arabs, homosexuality among artistic aptitudes of inverts association therapy australia austrian law autobiographies, homosexual auto-erotism bacon, lord bali, homosexuality among women in barnfield bastille, inverts in the bazzi bearded women berlin birds, homosexuality among bisexual, the term bisexuality blackmailing blavatsky, madame bonheur, rosa _boté_ brazil, homosexuality in buggery, the term _burdash_ byron castration cellini charke, charlotte chastity, the ideal of christina of sweden classification of the homosexual clitoris in inverted women clothes, inverted women in men's _code napoléon_ coeducation color-blindness compared to inversion congenital inversion contrary sexual feeling, the term convents, homosexuality in costume creoles, homosexuality among criminals, homosexuality among cross-dressing _cudinas_ _cunnilinctus_ dadon degeneration and inversion disease and abnormality, difference between dolben dorians dramatic aptitude and inversion dreams, erotic duquesnoy egypt, homosexuality in ancient modern england, homosexuality in english law and homosexuality eonism erasmus erotic dreams eskimo eunuchoidism factories, homosexuality among women in _fellatio_ feminine characteristics of inverts fetichism, erotic fitzgerald, edward france, homosexuality in freudianism friendship frith, mary genital organs and inversion genius, homosexuality among men of germany, homosexuality in law in relation to homosexuality in gleim goethe greece, homosexuality in ancient green, inverts, preference for gynandromorphism gynecomasty hair on body hall, murray handwriting harems, homosexuality in hatschepsu, queen health of inverts, general heliogabalus heredity in inversion heresy and homosexuality hermaphroditism hobart, miss homogenic, the term homosexuality, the term hormones _horror feminæ_ hössli humboldt, a. and w., von hygiene of homosexuality hyperesthesia of inverts, sexual hypertrichosis hypnotism in treatment of homosexuality india, homosexuality in indians, homosexuality among american infantilism in inverts insanity and inversion insects, homosexuality among internal secretions inversion, the term italy, homosexuality in law in james i julius cæsar justinian's enactments kleist krupp, f.a. larynx in inverted women law in relation to homosexuality lefthandedness lesbianism lincken, catharina london, homosexuality in madagascar, homosexuality in _mahoos_ marlowe marriage of inverts masculine protest masochism in inverted women masturbation maupin, madame medico-legal aspects of homosexuality michel, louise michelangelo mihiri _mika_ operation mitchell, alice molly houses monkeys, homosexuality among moral attitude of inverts moral leaders, inversion in _mujerados_ muret musculature music narcissism neurasthenia and inversion new caledonia, homosexuality in new guinea, homosexuality in new zealand, homosexuality among women in normans nosology and pathology novels, homosexual oedipus complex oligotrichosis ovaries _paiderastia_ partridges, homosexuality in pathology and nosology _pedicatio_ persia phallus, use of artificial physical abnormalities pigeons, inversion in platen precocity of inverts prevalence of homosexuality prevention of homosexuality priests and inversion prisons, homosexuality in prostitutes, homosexuality among prostitution, male pseudo-homosexuality pseudo-sexual attraction psycho-analysis psycho-sexual hermaphroditism _and see_ bisexuality. psycho-therapeutics race and inversion rats, homosexuality among raylan, n. de red, invert's preference for renaissance and inversion, the retarded inversion rome, homosexuality in ancient russian law sadism in inverted women sakaltaves, homosexuality among sappho sapphism savages, homosexuality among schools and homosexuality _schopans_ _seoatra_ secondary sexual-characters and inversion seduction and inversion senile homosexuality sex, the theory of sexo-esthetic inversion sexual organs sexual precocity of inverts shakespeare society and inversion sodoma sodomy, the term soldiers, homosexuality among sotadic zone, burton's spain, homosexuality among women in spurious homosexuality suicide and inversion suggestion as an exciting cause of inversion switzerland, law in tahiti tarn, pauline tasso templars theaters and homosexuality tramps, homosexuality among transvestism treatment of inversion tribadism turkey, homosexuality in udall ulrichs undifferentiated sex stage in youth united states, homosexuality in uranism, the term urning, the term vanity of inverts vasectomy vay, sarolta verlaine vinci, l. da virgil vivien, renée voice in inversion war and homosexuality whisky and inversion whitman, walt wilde, oscar william iii william rufus winkelmann women movement and homosexuality working classes, homosexuality in zanzibar, homosexuality in sex-love, and its place in a free society: (second edition) by edward carpenter. price fourpence. manchester: the labour press society limited, printers and publishers . sex-love the subject of sex is most difficult to deal with, not only on account of a certain prudery as well as a natural reticence on the subject, but doubtless also because the passion itself being so tremendously strong and occupying such a large part of human thought--and words being so scanty and inadequate on the subject--everything that _is_ said is liable to be misunderstood; the most violent inferences are made, and equivocations surmised, from the simplest remarks; qualified admissions of liberty are interpreted into recommendations of unbridled licence; and generally the perspective of literary expression is turned upside down by the effect of the unfamiliarity of the topic on the reader's mind. there is indeed a vast deal of fetishism in the current treatment of sex; and the subject is dealt with as though it lay quite out of line with any other need or faculty of human nature. nor can one altogether be surprised at this when one perceives of what vast import sex is in the scheme of things, and how deeply it it has been associated since the earliest times not only with man's personal impulses but even with his religious sentiments and ceremonials. next to hunger this is doubtless the most primitive and imperative of our needs. but in modern civilised life sex enters probably even more into _consciousness_ than hunger. for the hunger-needs of the human race are in the later societies fairly well satisfied, but the sex-desires are strongly restrained, both by law and custom, from satisfaction--and so assert themselves all the more in thought. to find the place of these desires, their utterance, their control, their personal import, their social import, is a tremendous problem to every youth and girl, man and woman. there are a few of both sexes, doubtless, who hardly feel the passion--who have never been "in love," and who experience no strong sexual appetite--but these are rare. practically the passion is a matter of universal experience; and speaking broadly and generally we may say it is a matter on which it is quite desirable that every adult at some time or other _should_ have experience--actual and physical, as well as emotional. there may be exceptions; but, as said, the sex-instinct lies so deep and is so universal, that for the understanding of life--of one's own life, of that of others, and of human nature in general--as well as for the proper development of one's own capacities, such experience is almost indispensable. and here in passing i would say that in the social life of the future this need will surely be recognised, and not only will young people be deliberately prepared and instructed for the fulfilment of sex when their time comes, but (while there will be no stigma attaching to voluntary celibacy) the state of enforced celibacy in which vast numbers of women live to-day will be looked upon as a national wrong, almost as grievous as that of prostitution--of which latter evil indeed it is in some degree the counterpart or necessary accompaniment. of course nature (personifying under this term the more unconscious, even though human, instincts and forces) takes pretty good care in her own way that most people should have sexual experience. she has her own purposes to work out, which in a sense have nothing to do with the individual--her racial purposes. but she acts in the rough, with tremendous sweep and power, and with little adjustment to or consideration for the later developed and more conscious and intelligent ideals of humanity. the youth, deeply infected with the sex-passion, suddenly finds himself in the presence of titanic forces--the titanic but sub-conscious forces of his own nature. "in love" he feels a superhuman strength--and rightly so, for he identifies himself with cosmic energies and entities, powers that are preparing the future of the race, and whose operations extend over vast regions of space and millennial lapses of time. he sees into the abysmal deeps of his own being, and trembles with a kind of awe at the disclosure. and what he feels concerning himself he feels similarly concerning the one who has inspired his passion. the glances of the two lovers penetrate far beyond the surface, ages down into each other, waking a myriad antenatal dreams. for the moment he lets himself go, rejoicing in the sense of limitless power beneath him--borne onwards like a man down rapids, too intoxicated with the glory of motion to think of whither he is going; then the next moment he discovers that he is being hurried into impossible situations--situations which his own moral conscience, as well as the moral conscience of society, embodied in law and custom, will not admit. he finds perhaps that the satisfaction of his imperious impulse is, to all appearances, inconsistent with the welfare of her he loves. his own passion arises before him as a kind of rude giant which he or the race to which he belongs may, frankenstein-like, have created ages back, but which he now has to dominate or be dominated by; and there declares itself in him the fiercest conflict--that between his far-back titanic instinctive and sub-conscious nature, and his later developed, more especially human and moral self. while the glory of sex pervades and suffuses all nature; while the flowers are rayed and starred out towards the sun in the very ecstasy of generation; while the nostrils of the animals dilate, and their forms become instinct, under the passion, with a proud and fiery beauty; while even the human lover is transformed, and in the great splendors of the mountains and the sky perceives something to which he had not the key before--yet it is curious that just here, in man, we find the magic wand of nature suddenly broken, and doubt and conflict and division entering in, where a kind of unconscious harmony had first prevailed. heine i think says somewhere that the man who loves unsuccessfully knows himself to be a god. it is not perhaps till the great current of sexual love is checked and brought into conflict with the other parts of his being that the whole nature of the man, sexual and moral, under the tremendous stress rises into consciousness and reveals in fire its god-like quality. this is the work of the artificer who makes immortal souls--who out of the natural love evolves even a more perfect love. "in tutti gli amanti," says giordano bruno, "é questo fabro vulcano" ("in all lovers is this olympian blacksmith present"). it is the subject of this conflict, or at least differentiation, between the sexual and the more purely moral and social instincts in man which interests us here. it is clear, i think, that if sex is to be treated rationally, that is, neither superstitiously on the one hand nor licentiously on the other, we must be willing to admit that both the satisfaction of the passion and the non-satisfaction of it are desirable and beautiful. they both have their results, and man has to reap the fruits which belong to both experiences. may we not say that there is probably some sort of transmutation of essences continually effected and effectible in the human frame? lust and love--the _aphrodite pandemos_ and the _aphrodite ouranios_--are subtly interchangeable. perhaps the corporeal amatory instinct and the ethereal human yearning for personal union are really and in essence one thing, with diverse forms of manifestation. however that may be, it is pretty evident that there is some deep relationship between them. it is a matter of common experience that the unrestrained outlet of merely physical desire leaves the nature drained of its higher love-forces; while on the other hand if the physical satisfaction be denied the body becomes surcharged with waves of emotion--sometimes to an unhealthy and dangerous degree. yet at times this emotional love may, by reason of its expression being checked or restricted, transform itself into the all-penetrating subtle influence of spiritual love. marcus aurelius quotes a saying of heraclitus to the effect that the death of earth is to become water (liquefaction), and the death of water is to become air (evaporation), and the death of air is to become fire (combustion). so in the human body are there sensual, emotional, spiritual, and other elements of which it may be said that their death on one plane means their transformation and new birth on other planes. it will readily be seen that i am not arguing that the lower or more physical manifestations of love should be killed out in order to force the growth of the more spiritual and enduring forms--because nature in her slow evolutions does not generally countenance such high and mighty methods; but am merely trying to indicate that there are grounds for believing in the transmutability of the various forms of the passion, and grounds for thinking that the sacrifice of a lower phase may sometimes be the only condition on which a higher and more durable phase can be attained; and that therefore restraint (which is absolutely necessary at times) _has_ its compensation. any one who has once realised how glorious a thing love is in its essence, and how indestructible, will hardly need to call anything that leads to it a sacrifice; and he is indeed a master of life who accepting the grosser desires as they come to his body, and not refusing them, knows how to transform them at will into the most rare and fragrant flowers of human emotion. until these subjects are openly put before children and young people with some degree of intelligent and sympathetic handling, it can scarcely be expected that anything but the utmost confusion, in mind and in morals, should reign in matters of sex. that we should leave our children to pick up their information about the most sacred, the most profound and vital, of all human functions, from the mere gutter, and learn to know it first from the lips of ignorance and vice, seems almost incredible, and certainly indicates the deeply-rooted unbelief and uncleanness of our own thoughts. yet a child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional, and serene appreciation of what sex means (generally more so, as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian); and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame--that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth. to teach the child first, quite openly, its physical relation to its own mother, its long indwelling in her body, and the deep and sacred bond of tenderness between mother and child in consequence; then, after a time, to explain the work of fatherhood, and how the love of the parents for each other was the cause of its own (the child's) existence: these things are easy and natural--at least they are so to the young mind--and excite in it no surprise, or sense of unfitness, but only gratitude and a kind of tender wonderment.* then, later on, as the special sexual needs and desires develop, to instruct the girl or boy in the further details of the matter, and the care and right conduct of her or his own sexual nature; on the meaning and the dangers of solitary indulgence--if this habit has been contracted; on the need of self-control and the presence of affection in all relations with others, and (without asceticism) on the possibility of deflecting physical desire to some degree into affectional and emotional channels, and the great gain so resulting: all these are things which an ordinary youth of either sex will easily understand and appreciate, and which may be of priceless value, saving such an one from years of struggle in foul morasses, and waste of precious life-strength. finally, with the maturity of the moral nature, the supremacy of the pure human relation should be taught--not the extinguishment of desire, but the attainment of the real kernel of it, its dedication to the well-being of another--the evolution of the _human_ element in love, balancing the natural--till at last the snatching of an unglad pleasure, regardless of the other from whom it is snatched, or the surrender of one's body to another, for any reason except that of love, become things impossible. *see appendix. between lovers then a kind of hardy temperance is much to be recommended--for all reasons, but especially because it lifts their satisfaction and delight in each other out of the region of ephemeralities (which too soon turn to dull indifference and satiety) into the region of more lasting things--one step nearer at any rate to the eternal kingdom. how intoxicating indeed, how penetrating--like a most precious wine--is that love which is the sexual transformed by the magic of the will into the emotional and spiritual! and what a loss on the merest grounds of prudence and the economy of pleasure is its unbridled waste along physical channels! so nothing is so much to be dreaded between lovers as just this--the vulgarisation of love--and this is the rock upon which marriage so often splits. there is a kind of illusion about physical desire similar to that which a child suffers from when, seeing a beautiful flower, it instantly snatches the same, and destroys in a few moments the form and fragrance which attracted it. he only gets the full glory who holds himself back a little, and truly possesses who is willing if need be not to possess. on the other hand it must not be pretended that the physical passions are by their nature abhorrent, or anything but admirable and desirable in their place. any attempt to absolutely disown or despite them, carried out over long periods either by individuals or bodies of people, only ends in the _thinning out_ of the human nature--by the very consequent stinting of the supply of its growth-material, and is liable to stultify itself in time by leading to reactionary excesses. it must never be forgotten that the physical basis throughout life is of the first importance, and supplies the nutrition and food-stuff without which the higher powers cannot exist or at least manifest themselves. intimacies founded on intellectual and moral affinities alone are seldom very deep and lasting; if the physical or sexual basis is quite absent, the acquaintanceship is liable to die away again like an ill-rooted plant. in many cases (especially of women) the nature is never really understood or disclosed till the sex-feeling is touched--however lightly. besides it must be remembered that in order for a perfect intimacy between two people their bodies must by the nature of the case be free to each other. the sexual and bodily intimacy may not be the object for which they come together; but if it is denied, its denial will bar any real sense of repose and affiance, and make the relation restless, vague, tentative and unsatisfied. in these lights it will be seen that what we call asceticism and what we call libertinism are two sides practically of the same shield. so long as the tendency towards mere pleasure-indulgence is strong and uncontrolled, so long will the instinct towards asceticism assert itself--and rightly, else we might speedily find ourselves in headlong phaethonian career. asceticism is in its place (as the word would indicate) as an _exercise_; but let it not be looked upon as an end in itself, for that is a mistake of the same kind as going to the opposite extreme. certainly if the welfare and happiness of the beloved one were always really the main purpose in our minds we should have plenty of occasion for self-control, and an artificial asceticism would not be needed. we look for a time doubtless when the hostility between these two parts of man's unperfected nature will be merged in the perfect love; but at present and until this happens their conflict is certainly one of the most pregnant things in all our experience; and must not by any means be blinked or evaded, but boldly faced. it is in itself almost a sexual act. the mortal nature through it is, so to speak, torn asunder; and through the rent so made in his mortality does it sometimes happen that a new and immortal man is born. the sex-act affords the type of all pleasures. the dissatisfaction which at times follows on it is the same as follows on all pleasure which is _sought_, and which does not come unsought. the dissatisfaction is not in the nature of pleasure itself but in the nature of _seeking_. in consciously surrendering oneself to the pursuit of things external, the "i" (since it really has everything and needs nothing) deceives itself, goes out from its true home, tears itself asunder, and admits a gap or rent in its own being. this is what is meant by _sin_--the separation or sundering (german _sünde_) of one's being--and all the pain that goes therewith. it all consists in _seeking_ those external things and pleasures; not (a thousand times be it said) in those external things or pleasures themselves. they are all fair and gracious enough; their place is to stand round the throne and offer their homage--rank behind rank in their multitudes--if so be we will accept it. but for us to go out of ourselves to run after _them_, to allow ourselves to be divided and rent in twain by _their_ attraction, that is an inversion of the order of heaven; and in so doing does sin and all suffering enter in. of all pleasures the sexual tempts most strongly to this desertion of one's true self, and stands as the type of maya and the world-illusion; yet the beauty of the loved one and the delight of corporeal union all turn to dust and ashes if bought at the price of disunion and disloyalty in the higher spheres--disloyalty even to the person whose mortal love is sought. the higher and more durable part of man, whirled along in the rapids and whirlpools of desire, experiences tortures the moment it comes to recognise that it is something other than physical. then comes the struggle to regain its lost paradise, and the frightful effort of co-ordination between the two natures, by which the centre of consciousness is gradually transferred from the fugitive to the more permanent part, and the mortal and changeable is assigned its due place in the outer chambers and forecourts of the temple. pleasure should come as the natural (and indeed inevitable) accompaniment of life, believed in with a kind of free faith, but never sought as the object of life. it is in the inversion of this order that the uncleanness of the senses arises. sex to-day throughout the domains of civilisation is thoroughly unclean. everywhere it is slimed over with the thought of pleasure. not for joy, not for mere delight in and excess of life, not for pride in the generation of children, not for a symbol and expression of deepest soul-union, does it exist--but for pleasure. hence we disown it in our thoughts, and cover it up with false shame and unbelief--knowing well that to seek a social act for a private pleasure is a falsehood. the body itself is kept religiously covered, smothered away from the rush of the great purifying life of nature, infected with dirt and disease, and a subject for prurient thought and exaggerated lust such as in its naked state it would never provoke. the skin becomes sickly and corrupt, and of a dead leaden white hue, which strangely enough is supposed to be more beautiful than the rich rose-brown, delicately shaded into lighter tints in the less exposed parts, which it would wear if tanned by daily welcome of sun and wind. sexual embraces themselves are seldom sanctified by the glories of nature, in whose presence alone, under the burning sun or the high canopy of the stars and surrounded by the fragrant atmosphere, their meaning can be fully understood: but take place in stuffy dens of dirty upholstery and are associated with all unbeautiful things. even literature, which might have been expected to preserve some decent expression on this topic, reflects all too clearly by its silence or by its pruriency the prevailing spirit of unbelief; and in order to find any sane faithful strong and calm words on the subject, one has to wade right back through the marshes and bogs of civilised scribbledom, and toil eastward across its arid wastes to the very dawn-hymns of the aryan races. in one of the upanishads of the vedic sacred books (the brihadaranyaka upanishad) there is a very beautiful passage in which instruction is given to the man who desires a noble son as to the prayers which he shall offer to the gods on the occasion of congress with his wife. in primitive simple and serene language it directs him how "when he has placed his virile member in the body of his wife and joined his mouth to her mouth" he should pray to the various forms of deity who preside over the operations of nature: to vishnu to prepare the womb of the future mother, to prajapati to watch over the influx of the semen, and to the other gods to nourish the foetus, etc. nothing could be (i am judging from the only translation i have met with, a latin one) more composed, serene, simple and religious in feeling, and well might it be if such instructions were preserved and followed, even down to the present day; yet such is the degradation we have come to that actually max müller in his translations of the sacred books of the east appears to have been unable to persuade himself to render this and a few other quite similar passages into english, but gives them in the original sanskrit! one might have thought that as professor in the university of oxford, presumedly _sans peur et sans reproche_, and professedly engaged in making a translation of these books for students, it was his duty and it might have been his delight to make intelligible just such passages as these, which give the pure and pious sentiment of the early world in so perfect a form; unless indeed he thought the sentiment impure and impious--in which case we have indeed a measure of the degradation of the public opinion which must have swayed his mind. as to the only german translation of the upanishad which i can find, it baulks at the same passages in the same feeble way--repeating _nicht zu wiedergeben, nicht zu wiedergeben_, over and over again, till at last one can but conclude that the translator is right, and that the simplicity and sacredness of the feeling is in this our time indeed "not to be reproduced." our public opinion, our literature, our customs, our laws, are saturated with the notion of the uncleanness of sex, and are so making the conditions of its cleanness more and more difficult. our children, as said, have to pick up their intelligence on the subject in the gutter. little boys bathing on the outskirts of our towns are hunted down by idiotic policemen, apparently infuriated by the sight of the naked body, even of childhood. lately in one of our northern towns, the boys and men bathing in a public pool set apart by the corporation for the purpose, were--though forced to wear some kind of covering--kept till nine o'clock at night before they were allowed to go into the water--lest in the full daylight mrs. grundy should behold any portion of their bodies! and as for women and girls their disabilities in the matter are most serious. till this dirty and dismal sentiment with regard to the human body is removed there can be little hope of anything like a free and gracious public life. with the regeneration of our social ideas the whole conception of sex as a thing covert and to be ashamed of, marketable and unclean, will have to be regenerated. that inestimable freedom and pride which is the basis of all true manhood and womanhood will have to enter into this most intimate relation to preserve it frank and pure--pure from the damnable commercialism which buys and sells all human things, and from the religious hypocrisy which covers and conceals; and a healthy delight in and cultivation of the body and all its natural functions and a determination to keep them pure and beautiful, open and sane and free, will have to become a recognised part of national life. possibly, and indeed probably, as the sentiment of common life and common interest grows, and the capacity for true companionship increases with the decrease of self-regarding anxiety, the importance of the mere sex-act will dwindle till it comes to be regarded as only one very specialised factor in the full total of human love. there is no doubt that with the full realisation of affectional union the need of actual bodily congress loses some of its urgency; and it is not difficult to see in our present-day social life that the want of the former is (according to the law of transmutation) one marked cause of the violence and extravagance of the lower passions. but however things may change with the further evolution of man, there is no doubt that first of all the sex-relation must be divested of the sentiment of uncleanness which surrounds it, and rehabilitated again with a sense almost of religious consecration; and this means, as i have said, a free people, proud in the mastery and the divinity of their own lives, and in the beauty and openness of their own bodies. sex is the allegory of love in the physical world. it is from this fact that it derives its immense power. the aim of love is non-differentiation--absolute union of being; but absolute union can only be found at the centre of existence. therefore whoever has truly found another has found not only that other, and with that other himself, but has found also a third--who dwells at the centre and holds the plastic material of the universe in the palm of his hand, and is a creator of sensible forms. similarly the aim of sex is union and non-differentiation--but on the physical plane,--and in the moment when this union is accomplished creation takes place, and the generation (in the plastic material of the sex-elements) of sensible forms. in the animal and lower human world--and wherever the creature is incapable of realising the perfect love (which is indeed able to transform it into a god)--nature in the purely physical instincts does the next best thing, that is, she effects a corporeal union and so generates another creature who by the very process of his generation shall be one step nearer to the universal soul and the realisation of the desired end. nevertheless the moment the other love and all that goes with it is realised the natural sexual love has to fall into a secondary place--the lover must stand on his feet and not on his head--or else the most dire confusions ensue, and torments _æonian_. taking all together i think it may fairly be said that the prime object of sex is _union_, the physical union as the allegory and expression of the real union, and that generation is a secondary object or result of this union. if we go to the lowest material expressions of sex--as among the protozoic cells--we find that they, the cells, unite together, two into one; and that, as a result of the nutrition that ensues, this joint cell after a time (but not always) breaks up by fission into a number of progeny cells; or if on the other hand we go to the very highest expression of sex, in the sentiment of love, we find the latter takes the form chiefly and before all else of a desire for union, and only in lesser degree of a desire for race-propagation. i mention this because it probably makes a good deal of difference in our estimate of sex whether the one function or the other is considered primary. there is perhaps a slight tendency among medical and other authorities to overlook the question of the important physical actions and reactions, and even corporeal modifications, which may ensue upon sexual intercourse between two people, and to fix their attention too exclusively upon their child-bearing function; but in truth it is probable, i think, from various considerations, that the spermatozoa pass through the tissues and affect the general body of the female, as well as that the male absorbs minutest cells _from_ the female; and that generally, even without the actual sex-act, there is an interchange of vital and etherial elements--so that there is a kind of generation taking place _in each other_, as well as that more specialised generation which consists in the propagation of the race. at the last and taking it as a whole one has the same difficulty in dealing with the subject of love which meets one at every turn in modern life--the monstrous separation of one part of our nature from another--the way in which--no doubt in the necessary course of evolution--we have cut ourselves in twain as it were, and assigned "right" and "wrong," heaven and hell, spiritual and material, and other violent distinctions, to the separate portions. we have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil with a vengeance! the lord has indeed driven us out of paradise into the domain of that "fabro vulcano" who with tremendous hammer-strokes must _hammer the knowledge of good and evil out of us again_. i feel that i owe an apology to the beautiful god for daring even for a moment to think of dissecting him soul from body, and for speaking as if these artificial distinctions were in any wise eternal. will the man or woman, or race of men and women, never come, to whom love in its various manifestations shall be from the beginning a perfect whole, pure and natural, free and standing sanely on its feet? appendix. "i analysed a flower, i pointed out to her the beauty of colouring, the gracefulness of shape, the tender shades, the difference between the parts composing the flowers. gradually, i told her what these parts were called. i showed her the pollen, which clung like a beautiful golden powder to her little rosy fingers. i showed her through the microscope that this beautiful powder was composed of an infinite number of small grains. i made her examine the pistil more closely, and i showed her, at the end of the tube, the ovary, which i called a 'little house full of very tiny children.' i showed her the pollen glued to the pistil, and i told her, that when the pollen of one flower, carried away by the wind, or by the insects, fell on the pistil of another flower, the small grains died, and a tiny drop of moisture passed through the tube and entered into the little house where the very tiny children dwelt; that these tiny children were like small eggs, that in each small egg there was an almost invisible opening, through which a little of the small drop passed; that when this drop of pollen mixed with some other wonderful power in the ovary, that both joined together to give life, and the eggs developed and became grains or fruit. i have shown her flowers which had only a pistil and others which had only stamens. i said to her, smiling, that the pistils were like little mothers, and the stamens like little fathers of the fruit.... "thus i sowed in this innocent heart and searching mind the seeds of that delicate science, which degenerates into obscenity, if the mother, through false shame, leaves the instruction of her child to its schoolfellows. let my little girl ask me, if she likes, the much dreaded question; i will only have to remind her of the botany lessons, simply adding, the same thing happens to human beings, with this difference, that what is done unconsciously by the plants, is done consciously by us; that in a properly arranged society one only unites one's self to the person one loves.'"--(translated from "la revendication des droits féminins," _shafts_, april , p. .) studies in the psychology of sex, volume iv sexual selection in man i. touch. ii. smell. iii. hearing. iv. vision. by havelock ellis preface. as in many other of these _studies_, and perhaps more than in most, the task attempted in the present volume is mainly of a tentative and preliminary character. there is here little scope yet for the presentation of definite scientific results. however it may be in the physical universe, in the cosmos of science our knowledge must be nebulous before it constellates into definitely measurable shapes, and nothing is gained by attempting to anticipate the evolutionary process. thus it is that here, for the most part, we have to content ourselves at present with the task of mapping out the field in broad and general outlines, bringing together the facts and considerations which indicate the direction in which more extended and precise results will in the future be probably found. in his famous _descent of man_, wherein he first set forth the doctrine of sexual selection, darwin injured an essentially sound principle by introducing into it a psychological confusion whereby the physiological sensory stimuli through which sexual selection operates were regarded as equivalent to æsthetic preferences. this confusion misled many, and it is only within recent years (as has been set forth in the "analysis of the sexual impulse" in the previous volume of these _studies_) that the investigations and criticisms of numerous workers have placed the doctrine of sexual selection on a firm basis by eliminating its hazardous æsthetic element. love springs up as a response to a number of stimuli to tumescence, the object that most adequately arouses tumescence being that which evokes love; the question of æsthetic beauty, although it develops on this basis, is not itself fundamental and need not even be consciously present at all. when we look at these phenomena in their broadest biological aspects, love is only to a limited extent a response to beauty; to a greater extent beauty is simply a name for the complexus of stimuli which most adequately arouses love. if we analyze these stimuli to tumescence as they proceed from a person of the opposite sex we find that they are all appeals which must come through the channels of four senses: touch, smell, hearing, and, above all, vision. when a man or a woman experiences sexual love for one particular person from among the multitude by which he or she is surrounded, this is due to the influences of a group of stimuli coming through the channels of one or more of these senses. there has been a sexual selection conditioned by sensory stimuli. this is true even of the finer and more spiritual influences that proceed from one person to another, although, in order to grasp the phenomena adequately, it is best to insist on the more fundamental and less complex forms which they assume. in this sense sexual selection is no longer a hypothesis concerning the truth of which it is possible to dispute; it is a self-evident fact. the difficulty is not as to its existence, but as to the methods by which it may be most precisely measured. it is fundamentally a psychological process, and should be approached from the psychological side. this is the reason for dealing with it here. obscure as the psychological aspects of sexual selection still remain, they are full of fascination, for they reveal to us the more intimate sides of human evolution, of the process whereby man is molded into the shapes we know. havelock ellis. carbis water, lelant, cornwall, england. contents. sexual selection in man. the external sensory stimuli affecting selection in man. the four senses involved. touch. i. the primitive character of the skin. its qualities. touch the earliest source of sensory pleasure. the characteristics of touch. as the alpha and omega of affection. the sexual organs a special adaptation of touch. sexual attraction as originated by touch. sexual hyperæsthesia to touch. the sexual associations of acne. ii. ticklishness. its origin and significance. the psychology of tickling. laughter. laughter as a kind of detumescence. the sexual relationships of itching. the pleasure of tickling. its decrease with age and sexual activity. iii. the secondary sexual skin centres. orificial contacts. cunnilingus and fellatio. the kiss. the nipples. the sympathy of the breasts with the primary sexual centres. this connection operative both through the nerves and through the blood. the influence of lactation on the sexual centres. suckling and sexual emotion. the significance of the association between suckling and sexual emotion. the association as a cause of sexual perversity. iv. the bath. antagonism of primitive christianity to the cult of the skin. its cult of personal filth. the reasons which justified this attitude. the world-wide tendency to association between extreme cleanliness and sexual licentiousness. the immorality associated with public baths in europe down to modern times. v. summary. fundamental importance of touch. the skin the mother of all the other senses. smell. i. the primitiveness of smell. the anatomical seat of the olfactory centres. predominance of smell among the lower mammals. its diminished importance in man. the attention paid to odors by savages. ii. rise of the study of olfaction. cloquet. zwaardemaker. the theory of smell. the classification of odors. the special characteristics of olfactory sensation in man. smell as the sense of imagination. odors as nervous stimulants. vasomotor and muscular effects. odorous substances as drugs. iii. the specific body odors of various peoples. the negro, etc. the european. the ability to distinguish individuals by smell. the odor of sanctity. the odor of death. the odors of different parts of the body. the appearance of specific odors at puberty. the odors of sexual excitement. the odors of menstruation. body odors as a secondary sexual character. the custom of salutation by smell. the kiss. sexual selection by smell. the alleged association between size of nose and sexual vigor. the probably intimate relationship between the olfactory and genital spheres. reflex influences from the nose. reflex influences from the genital sphere. olfactory hallucinations in insanity as related to sexual states. the olfactive type. the sense of smell in neurasthenic and allied states. in certain poets and novelists. olfactory fetichism. the part played by olfaction in normal sexual attraction. in the east, etc. in modern europe. the odor of the armpit and its variations. as a sexual and general stimulant. body odors in civilization tend to cause sexual antipathy unless some degree of tumescence is already present. the question whether men or women are more liable to feel olfactory influences. women usually more attentive to odors. the special interest in odors felt by sexual inverts. iv. the influence of perfumes. their aboriginal relationship to sexual body odors. this true even of the fragrance of flowers. the synthetic manufacture of perfumes. the sexual effects of perfumes. perfumes perhaps originally used to heighten the body odors. the special significance of the musk odor. its wide natural diffusion in plants and animals and man. musk a powerful stimulant. its widespread use as a perfume. peau d'espagne. the smell of leather and its occasional sexual effects. the sexual influence of the odors of flowers. the identity of many plant odors with certain normal and abnormal body odors. the smell of semen in this connection. v. the evil effects of excessive olfactory stimulation. the symptoms of vanillism. the occasional dangerous results of the odors of flowers. effects of flowers on the voice. vi. the place of smell in human sexual selections. it has given place to the predominance of vision largely because in civilized man it fails to act at a distance. it still plays a part by contributing to the sympathies or the antipathies of intimate contact. hearing i. the physiological basis of rhythm. rhythm as a physiological stimulus. the intimate relation of rhythm to movement. the physiological influence of music on muscular action, circulation, respiration, etc. the place of music in sexual selection among the lower animals. its comparatively small place in courtship among mammals. the larynx and voice in man. the significance of the pubertal changes. ancient beliefs concerning the influence of music in morals, education and medicine. its therapeutic uses. significance of the romantic interest in music at puberty. men comparatively insusceptible to the specifically sexual influence of music. rarity of sexual perversions on the basis of the sense of hearing. the part of music in primitive human courtship. women notably susceptible to the specifically sexual influence of music and the voice. ii. summary. why the influence of music in human sexual selection is comparatively small. vision. i. primacy of vision in man. beauty as a sexual allurement. the objective element in beauty. ideals of feminine beauty in various parts of the world. savage women sometimes beautiful from european point of view. savages often admire european beauty. the appeal of beauty to some extent common even to animals and man. ii. beauty to some extent consists primitively in an exaggeration of the sexual characters. the sexual organs. mutilations, adornments, and garments. sexual allurement the original object of such devices. the religious element. unæsthetic character of the sexual organs. importance of the secondary sexual characters. the pelvis and hips. steatopygia. obesity. gait. the pregnant woman as a mediæval type of beauty. the ideals of the renaissance. the breasts. the corset. its object. its history. hair. the beard. the element of national or racial type in beauty. the relative beauty of blondes and brunettes. the general european admiration for blondes. the individual factors in the constitution of the idea of beauty. the love of the exotic. iii. beauty not the sole element in the sexual appeal of vision. movement. the mirror. narcissism. pygmalionism. mixoscopy. the indifference of women to male beauty. the significance of woman's admiration of strength. the spectacle of strength is a tactile quality made visible. iv. the alleged charm of disparity in sexual attraction. the admiration for high stature. the admiration for dark pigmentation. the charm of parity. conjugal mating. the statistical results of observation as regards general appearance, stature, and pigmentation of married couples. preferential mating and assortative mating. the nature of the advantage attained by the fair in sexual selection. the abhorrence of incest and the theories of its cause. the explanation in reality simple. the abhorrence of incest in relation to sexual selection. the limits to the charm of parity in conjugal mating. the charm of disparity in secondary sexual characters. v. summary of the conclusions at present attainable in regard to the nature of beauty and its relation to sexual selection. appendix a. the origins of the kiss. appendix b. histories of sexual development. sexual selection in man. the external sensory stimuli affecting selection in man--the four senses involved. tumescence--the process by which the organism is brought into the physical and psychic state necessary to insure conjugation and detumescence--to some extent comes about through the spontaneous action of internal forces. to that extent it is analogous to the physical and psychic changes which accompany the gradual filling of the bladder and precede its evacuation. but even among animals who are by no means high in the zoölogical scale the process is more complicated than this. external stimuli act at every stage, arousing or heightening the process of tumescence, and in normal human beings it may be said that the process is never completed without the aid of such stimuli, for even in the auto-erotic sphere external stimuli are still active, either actually or in imagination. the chief stimuli which influence tumescence and thus direct sexual choice come chiefly--indeed, exclusively--through the four senses of touch, smell, hearing, and sight. all the phenomena of sexual selection, so far as they are based externally, act through these four senses.[ ] the reality of the influence thus exerted may be demonstrated statistically even in civilized man, and it has been shown that, as regards, for instance, eye-color, conjugal partners differ sensibly from the unmarried persons by whom they are surrounded. when, therefore, we are exploring the nature of the influence which stimuli, acting through the sensory channels, exert on the strength and direction of the sexual impulse, we are intimately concerned with the process by which the actual form and color, not alone of living things generally, but of our own species, have been shaped and are still being shaped. at the same time, it is probable, we are exploring the mystery which underlies all the subtle appreciations, all the emotional undertones, which are woven in the web of the whole world as it appeals to us through those sensory passages by which alone it can reach us. we are here approaching, therefore, a fundamental subject of unsurpassable importance, a subject which has not yet been accurately explored save at a few isolated points and one which it is therefore impossible to deal with fully and adequately. yet it cannot be passed over, for it enters into the whole psychology of the sexual instinct. of the four senses--touch, smell, hearing, and sight--with which we are here concerned, touch is the most primitive, and it may be said to be the most important, though it is usually the last to make its appeal felt. smell, which occupies the chief place among many animals, is of comparatively less importance, though of considerable interest, in man; it is only less intimate and final than touch. sight occupies an intermediate position, and on this account, and also on account of the very great part played by vision in life generally as well as in art, it is the most important of all the senses from the human sexual point of view. hearing, from the same point of view, is the most remote of all the senses in its appeal to the sexual impulse, and on that account it is, when it intervenes, among the first to make its influence felt. footnotes: [ ] taste must, i believe, be excluded, for if we abstract the parts of touch and smell, even in those abnormal sexual acts in which it may seem to be affected, taste could scarcely have any influence. most of our "tasting," as waller puts it, is done by the nose, which, in man, is in specially close relationship, posteriorly, with the mouth. there are at most four taste sensations--sweet, bitter, salt, and sour--if even all of these are simple tastes. what commonly pass for taste sensations, as shown by some experiments of g.t.w. patrick (_psychological review_, , p. ), are the composite results of the mingling of sensations of smell, touch, temperature, sight, and taste. touch. i. the primitive character of the skin--its qualities--touch the earliest source of sensory pleasure--the characteristics of touch--as the alpha and omega of affection--the sexual organs a special adaptation of touch--sexual attraction as originated by touch--sexual hyperæsthesia to touch--the sexual associations of acne. we are accustomed to regard the skin as mainly owing its existence to the need for the protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and muscles underneath. undoubtedly it performs, and by its tough and elastic texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely important service. but the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external world; it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the external world. it is thus, as the organ of touch, the seat of the most widely diffused sense we possess, and, moreover, the sense which is the most ancient and fundamental of all--the mother of the other senses. it is scarcely necessary to insist that the primitive nature of the sensory function of the skin with the derivative nature of the other senses, is a well ascertained and demonstrable fact. the lower we descend in the animal scale, the more varied we find the functions of the skin to be, and if in the higher animals much of the complexity has disappeared, that is only because the specialization of the various skin regions into distinct organs has rendered this complexity unnecessary. even yet, however, in man himself the skin still retains, in a more or less latent condition, much of its varied and primary power, and the analysis of pathological and even normal phenomena serves to bring these old powers into clear light. woods hutchinson (_studies in human and comparative pathology_, , chapters vii and viii) has admirably set forth the immense importance of the skin, as in the first place "a tissue which is silk to the touch, the most exquisitely beautiful surface in the universe to the eye, and yet a wall of adamant against hostile attack. impervious alike, by virtue of its wonderful responsive vitality, to moisture and drought, cold and heat, electrical changes, hostile bacteria, the most virulent of poisons and the deadliest of gases, it is one of the real wonders of the world. more beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk, more impervious than rubber, and more durable under exposure than steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents as glass, it is one of the toughest and most dangerproof substances in the three kingdoms of nature" (although, as this author adds, we "hardly dare permit it to see the sunlight or breathe the open air"). but it is more than this. it is, as woods hutchinson expresses it, the creator of the entire body; its embryonic infoldings form the alimentary canal, the brain, the spinal cord, while every sense is but a specialization of its general organic activity. it is furthermore a kind of "skin-heart," promoting the circulation by its own energy; it is the great heat-regulating organ of the body; it is an excretory organ only second to the kidneys, which descend from it, and finally it still remains the seat of touch. it may be added that the extreme beauty of the skin as a surface is very clearly brought out by the inadequacy of the comparisons commonly used in order to express its beauty. snow, marble, alabaster, ivory, milk, cream, silk, velvet, and all the other conventional similes furnish surfaces which from any point of view are incomparably inferior to the skin itself. (cf. stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, chapter xii.) with reference to the extraordinary vitality of the skin, emphasized by woods hutchinson, it may be added that, when experimenting on the skin with the electric current, waller found that healthy skin showed signs of life ten days or more after excision. it has been found also that fragments of skin which have been preserved in sterile fluid for even as long as nine months may still be successfully transplanted on to the body. (_british medical journal_, july , .) everything indicates, remark stanley hall and donaldson ("motor sensations in the skin," _mind_, ), that the skin is "not only the primeval and most reliable source of our knowledge of the external world or the archæological field of psychology," but a field in which work may shed light on some of the most fundamental problems of psychic action. groos (_spiele der menschen_, pp. - ) also deals with the primitive character of touch sensations. touch sensations are without doubt the first of all the sensory impressions to prove pleasurable. we should, indeed, expect this from the fact that the skin reflexes have already appeared before birth, while a pleasurable sensitiveness of the lips is doubtless a factor in the child's response to the contact of the maternal nipple. very early memories of sensory pleasure seem to be frequently, perhaps most frequently, tactile in character, though this fact is often disguised in recollection, owing to tactile impression being vague and diffused; there is thus in elizabeth potwin's "study of early memories" (_psychological review_, november, ) no separate group of tactile memories, and the more elaborate investigation by colegrove ("individual memories," _american journal of psychology_, january, ) yields no decisive results under this head. see, however, stanley hall's valuable study, "some aspects of the early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, april, . külpe has a discussion of the psychology of cutaneous sensations (_outlines of psychology_ [english translation], pp. et seq.) harriet martineau, at the beginning of her _autobiography_, referring to the vivid character of tactile sensations in early childhood, remarks, concerning an early memory of touching a velvet button, that "the rapture of the sensation was really monstrous." and a lady tells me that one of her earliest memories at the age of is of the exquisite sensation of the casual contact of a cool stone with the vulva in the act of urinating. such sensations, of course, cannot be termed specifically sexual, though they help to furnish the tactile basis on which the specifically sexual sensations develop. the elementary sensitiveness of the skin is shown by the fact that moderate excitation suffices to raise the temperature, while heidenhain and others have shown that in animals cutaneous stimuli modify the sensibility of the brain cortex, slight stimulus increasing excitability and strong stimulus diminishing it. féré has shown that the slight stimulus to the skin furnished by placing a piece of metal on the arm or elsewhere suffices to increase the output of work with the ergograph. (féré, _comptes rendus société de biologie_, july , ; id., _pathologic des emotions_, pp. et seq.) féré found that the application of a mustard plaster to the skin, or an icebag, or a hot-water bottle, or even a light touch with a painter's brush, all exerted a powerful effect in increasing muscular work with the ergograph. "the tonic effect of cutaneous excitation," he remarks, "throws light on the psychology of the caress. it is always the most sensitive parts of the body which seek to give or to receive caresses. many animals rub or lick each other. the mucous surfaces share in this irritability of the skin. the kiss is not only an expression of feeling; it is a means of provoking it. cataglottism is by no means confined to pigeons. the tonic value of cutaneous stimulation is indeed a commonly accepted idea. wrestlers rub their hands or limbs, and the hand-shake also is not without its physiological basis. "cutaneous excitations may cause painful sensations to cease. many massage practices which favor work act chiefly as sensorial stimulants; on this account many nervous persons cannot abandon them, and the greeks and romans found in massage not only health, but pleasure. lauder brunton regards many common manoeuvres, like scratching the head and pulling the mustache, as methods of dilating the bloodvessels of the brain by stimulating the facial nerve. the motor reactions of cutaneous excitations favor this hypothesis." (féré, _travail et plaisir_, chapter xv, "influence des excitations du toucher sur le travail.") the main characteristics of the primitive sense of touch are its wide diffusion over the whole body and the massive vagueness and imprecision of the messages it sends to the brain. this is the reason, why it is, of all the senses, the least intellectual and the least æsthetic; it is also the reason why it is, of all the senses, the most-profoundly emotional. "touch," wrote bain in his _emotions and will_, "is both the alpha and the omega of affection," and he insisted on the special significance in this connection of "tenderness"--a characteristic emotional quality of affection which is directly founded on sensations of touch. if tenderness is the alpha of affection, even between the sexes, its omega is to be found in the sexual embrace, which may be said to be a method of obtaining, through a specialized organization of the skin, the most exquisite and intense sensations of touch. "we believe nothing is so exciting to the instinct or mere passions as the presence of the hand or those tactile caresses which mark affection," states the anonymous author of an article on "woman in her psychological relations," in the _journal of psychological medicine_, . "they are the most general stimuli in lower animals. the first recourse in difficulty or danger, and the primary solace in anguish, for woman is the bosom of her husband or her lover. she seeks solace and protection and repose on that part of the body where she herself places the objects of her own affection. woman appears to have the same instinctive impulse in this respect all over the world." it is because the sexual orgasm is founded on a special adaptation and intensification of touch sensations that the sense of touch generally is to be regarded as occupying the very first place in reference to the sexual emotions. féré, mantegazza, penta, and most other writers on this question are here agreed. touch sensations constitute a vast gamut for the expression of affection, with at one end the note of minimum personal affection in the brief and limited touch involved by the conventional hand-shake and the conventional kiss, and at the other end the final and intimate contact in which passion finds the supreme satisfaction of its most profound desire. the intermediate region has its great significance for us because it offers a field in which affection has its full scope, but in which every road may possibly lead to the goal of sexual love. it is the intimacy of touch contacts, their inevitable approach to the threshold of sexual emotion, which leads to a jealous and instinctive parsimony in the contact of skin and skin and to the tendency with the increased sensitiveness of the nervous system involved by civilization to restrain even the conventional touch manifestation of ordinary affection and esteem. in china fathers leave off kissing their daughters while they are still young children. in england the kiss as an ordinary greeting between men and women--a custom inherited from classic and early christian antiquity--still persisted to the beginning of the eighteenth century. in france the same custom existed in the seventeenth century, but in the middle of that century was beginning to be regarded as dangerous,[ ] while at the present time the conventional kiss on the cheek is strictly differentiated from the kiss on the mouth, which is reserved for lovers. touch contacts between person and person, other than those limited and defined by custom, tend to become either unpleasant--as an undesired intrusion into an intimate sphere--or else, when occurring between man and woman at some peculiar moment, they may make a powerful reverberation in the emotional and more specifically sexual sphere. one man falls in love with his future wife because he has to carry her upstairs with a sprained ankle. another dates his love-story from a romp in which his cheek accidentally came in contact with that of his future wife. a woman will sometimes instinctively strive to attract the attention of the man who appeals to her by a peculiar and prolonged pressure of the hand--the only touch contact permitted to her. dante, as penta has remarked, refers to "sight or touch" as the two channels through which a woman's love is revived (_purgatorio_, viii, ). even the hand-shake of a sympathetic man is enough in some chaste and sensitive women to produce sexual excitement or sometimes even the orgasm. the cases in which love arises from the influence of stimuli coming through the sense of touch are no doubt frequent, and they would be still more frequent if it were not that the very proximity of this sense to the sexual sphere causes it to be guarded with a care which in the case of the other senses it is impossible to exercise. this intimacy of touch and the reaction against its sexual approximations leads to what james has called "the _antisexual instinct_, the instinct of personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the idea of intimate contact with most of the persons we meet, especially those of our own sex." he refers in this connection to the unpleasantness of the sensation felt on occupying a seat still warm from the body of another person.[ ] the catholic church has always recognized the risks of vuluptuous emotion involved in tactile contacts, and the facility with which even the most innocent contacts may take on a libidinous character.[ ] the following observations were written by a lady (aged ) who has never had sexual relationships: "i am only conscious of a very sweet and pleasurable emotion when coming in contact with honorable men, and consider that a comparison can be made between the idealism of such emotions and those of music, of beauties of nature, and of productions of art. while studying and writing articles upon a new subject i came in contact with a specialist, who rendered me considerable aid, and, one day, while jointly correcting a piece of work, he touched my hand. this produced a sweet and pure sensation of thrill through the whole system. i said nothing; in fact, was too thrilled for speech; and never to this day have shown any responsive action, but for months at certain periods, generally twice a month, i have experienced the most pleasurable emotions. i have seen this friend twice since, and have a curious feeling that i stand on one side of a hedge, while he is on the other, and, as neither makes an approach, pleasure of the highest kind is experienced, but not allowed to go beyond reasonable and health-giving bounds. in some moments i feel overcome by a sense of mastery by this man, and yet, feeling that any approach would be undignified, some pleasure is experienced in restraining and keeping within proper bounds this passional emotion. all these thrills of pleasurable emotion possess a psychic value, and, so long as the nervous system is kept in perfect health, they do not seem to have the power to injure, but rather one is able to utilize the passionate emotions as weapons for pleasure and work." various parts of the skin surface appear to have special sexual sensitiveness, peculiarly marked in many individuals, especially women; so that, as féré remarks (_l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, , p. ), contact stimulation of the lips, lobe of ear, nape of neck, little finger, knee, etc., may suffice even to produce the orgasm. some sexually hyperæsthetic women, as has already been noted, experience this when shaking hands with a man who is attractive to them. in some neurotic persons this sensibility, as féré shows, may exist in so morbid a degree that even the contact of the sensitive spot with unattractive persons or inanimate objects may produce the orgasm. in this connection reference may be made to the well-known fact that in some hysterical subjects there are so-called "erogenous zones" simple pressure on which suffices to evoke the complete orgasm. there is, perhaps, some significance, from our present point of view, in the fact that, as emphasized by savill ("hysterical skin symptoms," _lancet_, january , ), the skin is one of the very best places to study hysteria. the intimate connection between the skin and the sexual sphere is also shown in pathological conditions of the skin, especially in acne as well as simple pimples on the face. the sexual development of puberty involves a development of hair in various regions of the body which previously were hairless. as, however, the sebaceous glands on the face and elsewhere are the vestiges of former hairs and survive from a period when the whole body was hairy, they also tend to experience in an abortive manner this same impulse. thus, we may say that, with the development of the sexual organs at puberty, there is correlated excitement of the whole pilo-sebaceous apparatus. in the regions where this apparatus is vestigial, and notably in the face, this abortive attempt of the hair-follicles and their sebaceous appendages to produce hairs tends only to disorganization, and simple _comedones_ or pustular acne pimples are liable to occur. as a rule, acne appears about puberty and dies out slowly during adolescence. while fairly common in young women, it is usually much less severe, but tends to be exacerbated at the menstrual periods; it is also apt to appear at the change of life. (stephen mackenzie, "the etiology and treatment of acne vulgaris," _british medical journal_, september , . laycock [_nervous diseases of women_, , p. ] pointed out that acne occurs chiefly in those parts of the surface covered by sexual hair. a lucid account of the origin of acne will be found in woods hutchinson's _studies in human and comparative pathology_, pp. - . g.j. engelmann ["the hystero-neuroses," _gynæcological transactions_, , pp. et seq.] discusses various pathological disorders of the skin as reflex disturbances originating in the sexual sphere.) the influence of menstruation in exacerbating acne has been called in question, but it seems to be well established. thus, bulkley ("relation between certain diseases of the skin and the menstrual function," _transactions of the medical society of new york_, , p. ) found that, in cases of acne in women, , or nearly one-third, were worse about the monthly period. sometimes it only appeared during menstruation. the exacerbation occurred much more frequently just before than just after the period. there was usually some disturbance of menstruation. various other disorders of the skin show a similar relationship to menstruation. it has been asserted that masturbation is a frequent or constant cause of acne at puberty. (see, e.g., discussion in _british medical journal_, july, .) this cannot be accepted. acne very frequently occurs without masturbation, and masturbation is very frequently practiced without producing acne. at the same time we may well believe that at the period of puberty, when the pilo-sebaceous system is already in sensitive touch with the sexual system, the shock of frequently repeated masturbation may (in the same way as disordered menstruation) have its repercussion on the skin. thus, a lady has informed me that at about the age of she found that frequently repeated masturbation was followed by the appearance of _comedones_. footnotes: [ ] a. franklin, _les soins de toilette_, p. . [ ] w. james, _principles of psychology_, vol. ii. p. . [ ] numerous passages from the theologians bearing on this point are brought together in _moechialogia_, pp. - . ii. ticklishness--its origin and significance--the psychology of tickling--laughter--laughter as a kind of detumescence--the sexual relationships of itching--the pleasure of tickling--its decrease with age and sexual activity. touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the senses. there is, however, one form of touch sensation--that is to say, ticklishness--which is of so special and peculiar a nature that it has sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch sensations. scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate, sense. alrutz, of upsala, regards tickling as a milder degree of itching, and considers that the two together constitute a sensation of distinct quality with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality.[ ] however we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized modification of touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the closest connection with the sexual sphere. to regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation may cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is a form of sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness remains small. but its presence here has been independently recognized by various investigators. groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling.[ ] louis robinson considers that ticklishness "appears to be one of the simplest developments of mechanical and automatic nervous processes in the direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes within the scope of psychology,"[ ] stanley hall and allin remark that "these minimal touch excitations represent the very oldest stratum of psychic life in the soul."[ ] hirman stanley, in a somewhat similar manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back and associates it with "tentacular experience." "by temporary self-extension," he remarks, "even low amoeboid organisms have slight, but suggestive, touch experiences that stimulate very general and violent reactions, and in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as tentacles, antennæ, hair, etc., become permanent and very delicately sensitive organs, where minimal contacts have very distinct and powerful reactions." thus ticklishness would be the survival of long passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation producing intense agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure.[ ] we need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain the origin and significance of tickling in the human species. sir j.y. simpson suggested, in an elaborate study of the position of the child in the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the skin in various regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which already exists before birth, has for its object the excitation and preservation of the muscular movements necessary to keep the foetus in the most favorable position in the womb.[ ] it is, in fact, certainly the case that the stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to produce exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion and general ovoid shape which is the normal position of the foetus in the womb. we may well believe that in this early developed reflex activity we have the basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness which appears somewhat later. the mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child, in whom ticklishness is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that tickling is not a simple reflex. this fact was long ago pointed out by erasmus darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing that voluntary exertion diminishes the energy of sensation.[ ] this explanation is, however, inadmissible, for, although we cannot easily tickle ourselves by the contact of the skin with our own fingers, we can do so with the aid of a foreign body, like a feather. we may perhaps suppose that, as ticklishness has probably developed under the influence of natural selection as a method of protection against attack and a warning of the approach of foreign bodies, its end would be defeated if it involved a simple reaction to the contact of the organism with itself. this need of protection it is which involves the necessity of a minimal excitation producing a maximal effect, though the mechanism whereby this takes place has caused considerable discussion. we may, it is probable, best account for it by invoking the summation-irradiation theory of pain-pleasure, the summation of the stimuli in their course through the nerves, aided by capillary congestion, leading to irradiation due to anastomoses between the tactile corpuscles, not to speak of the much wider irradiation which is possible by means of central nervous connections. prof. c.l. herrick adopts this explanation of the phenomena of tickling, and rests it, in part, on dogiel's study of the tactile corpuscles ("psychological corollaries of modern neurological discoveries," _journal of comparative neurology_, march, ). the following remarks of prof. a. allin may also be quoted in further explanation of the same theory: "so far as ticklishness is concerned, a very important factor in the production of this feeling is undoubtedly that of the summation of stimuli. in a research of stirling's, carried on under ludwig's direction, it was shown that reflex contractions only occur from repeated shocks to the nerve-centres--that is, through summation of successive stimuli. that this result is also due in some degree to an alternating increase in the sensibility of the various areas in question from altered supply of blood is reasonably certain. as a consequence of this summation-process there would result in many cases and in cases of excessive nervous discharge the opposite of pleasure, namely: pain. a number of instances have been recorded of death resulting from tickling, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement that simon de montfort, during the persecution of the albigenses, put some of them to death by tickling the soles of their feet with a feather. an additional causal factor in the production of tickling may lie in the nature and structure of the nervous process involved in perception in general. according to certain histological researches of recent years we know that between the sense-organs and the central nervous system there exist closely connected chains of conductors or neurons, along which an impression received by a single sensory cell on the periphery is propagated avalanchelike through an increasing number of neurons until the brain is reached. if on the periphery a single cell is excited the avalanchelike process continues until finally hundreds or thousands of nerve-cells in the cortex are aroused to considerable activity. golgi, ramón y cajal, koelliker, held, retzius, and others have demonstrated the histological basis of this law for vision, hearing, and smell, and we may safely assume from the phenomena of tickling that the sense of touch is not lacking in a similar arrangement. may not a suggestion be offered, with some plausibility, that even in ideal or representative tickling, where tickling results, say, from someone pointing a finger at the ticklish places, this avalanchelike process may be incited from central centres, thus producing, although in a modified degree, the pleasant phenomena in question? as to the deepest causal factor, i should say that tickling is the result of vasomotor shock." (a. allin, "on laughter," _psychological review_, may, .) the intellectual element in tickling conies out in its connection with laughter and the sense of the comic, of which it may be said to constitute the physical basis. while we are not here concerned with laughter and the comic sense,--a subject which has lately attracted considerable attention,--it may be instructive to point out that there is more than an analogy between laughter and the phenomena of sexual tumescence and detumescence. the process whereby prolonged tickling, with its nervous summation and irradiation and accompanying hyperæmia, finds sudden relief in an explosion of laughter is a real example of tumescence--as it has been defined in the study in another volume entitled "an analysis of the sexual impulse"--resulting finally in the orgasm of detumescence. the reality of the connection between the sexual embrace and tickling is indicated by the fact that in some languages, as in that of the fuegians,[ ] the same word is applied to both. that ordinary tickling is not sexual is due to the circumstances of the case and the regions to which the tickling is applied. if, however, the tickling is applied within the sexual sphere, then there is a tendency for orgasm to take place instead of laughter. the connection which, through the phenomena of tickling, laughter thus bears to the sexual sphere is well indicated, as groos has pointed out, by the fact that in sexually-minded people sexual allusions tend to produce laughter, this being the method by which they are diverted from the risks of more specifically sexual detumescence.[ ] reference has been made to the view of alrutz, according to which tickling is a milder degree of itching. it is more convenient and probably more correct to regard itching or pruritus, as it is termed in its pathological forms, as a distinct sensation, for it does not arise under precisely the same conditions as tickling nor is it relieved in the same way. there is interest, however, in pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching has a real parallelism to the specialized sexual sensations. bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching (new york neurological society, october , ; _medical news_, february , , and summarized in the _british medical journal_, march , ; and elsewhere), regards it as a perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed nerve-excitation with imperfect conduction of the generated force into correlated nervous energy. the scratching which relieves itching directs the nervous energy into freer channels, sometimes substituting for the pruritus either painful or voluptuous sensations. such voluptuous sensations may be regarded as a generalized aphrodisiac sense comparable to the specialized sexual orgasm. bronson refers to the significant fact that itching occurs so frequently in the sexual region, and states that sexual neurasthenia is sometimes the only discoverable cause of genital and anal pruritus. (cf. discussion on pruritus, _british medical journal_, november , .) gilman, again (_american journal of psychology_, vi, p. ), considers that scratching, as well as sneezing, is comparable to coitus. the sexual embrace has an intimate connection with the phenomena of ticklishness which could not fail to be recognized. this connection is, indeed, the basis of spinoza's famous definition of love,--"_amor est titillatio quædam concomitante idea causæ externæ_,"--a statement which seems to be reflected in chamfort's definition of love as "_l'échange de deux fantaisies, et le contact de deux epidermes_." the sexual act, says gowers, is, in fact, a skin reflex.[ ] "the sexual parts," hall and allin state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their function and as keen as their importance." herrick finds the supreme illustration of the summation and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement, and points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is, as dogiel has shown, that portion of the body in which the tactile corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately provided with anastomosing fibres. it has been pointed out[ ] that, when ordinary tactile sensibility is partially abolished,--especially in hemianæsthesia in the insane,--some sexual disturbance is specially apt to be found in association. in young children, in girls even when they are no longer children, and occasionally in men, tickling may be a source of acute pleasure, which in very early life is not sexual, but later tends to become so under circumstances predisposing to the production of erotic emotion, and especially when the nervous system is keyed up to a high tone favorable for the production of the maximum effect of tickling. "when young," writes a lady aged , "i was extremely fond of being tickled, and i am to some extent still. between the ages of and it gave me exquisite pleasure, which i now regard as sexual in character. i used to bribe my younger sister to tickle my feet until she was tired." stanley hall and allin in their investigation of the phenomena of tickling, largely carried out among young women teachers, found that in clearly marked cases ticklishness was more marked at one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or are in a happy mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal, when being washed, when in perfect health, when with people they like, etc." (hall and allin, "tickling and laughter," _american journal of psychology_, october, .) it will be observed that most of the conditions mentioned are such as would be favorable to excitations of an emotionally sexual character. the palms of the hands may be very ticklish during sexual excitement, especially in women, and moll (_konträre sexualempfindung_, p. ) remarks that in some men titillation of the skin of the back, of the feet, and even of the forehead evokes erotic feelings. it may be added that, as might be expected, titillation of the skin often has the same significance in animals as in man. "in some animals," remarks louis robinson (art. "ticklishness," _dictionary of psychological medicine_), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. thus, harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,--which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,--but also caused it to reveal its sex by laying an egg." the sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established. dr. gina lombroso, who investigated the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar reflexes, which are well marked in childhood and in young people between the ages of and , were much diminished in older persons, and to a greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent in the abdominal region than on the soles of the feet;[ ] her results do not directly show the influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing which is worth noting. the difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married woman corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty. both modesty and ticklishness may be said to be characters which are no longer needed. from this point of view the general ticklishness of the skin is a kind of body modesty. it is so even apart from any sexual significance of tickling, and louis robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies, and other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight, and that consequently in the mock fights of early life skill in defending these spots is attained. in iceland, according to margarethe filhés (as quoted by max bartels, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. - , p. ), it may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact by their susceptibility to tickling. it is considered a bad sign if that is lost. i am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following communication: "married women have told me that they find that after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these regions, especially by a man, would make them jump or get hysterical or 'queer,' as they call it. before coitus the sexual energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary sexual routes,--the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon, etc.,--but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished. i have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. again, in ordinary routine practice i have observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. perhaps ticklishness in virgins is nature's self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent these parts being touched. the married woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up these parts, as she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer requires ticklishness as a protection against sexual aggression." footnotes: [ ] alrutz's views are summarized in _psychological review_, sept., . [ ] _die spiele der menschen_, , p. . [ ] l. robinson, art. "ticklishness," tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_. [ ] stanley hall and allin, "tickling and laughter," _american journal of psychology_, october, . [ ] h.m. stanley, "remarks on tickling and laughter," _american journal of psychology_, vol. ix, january, . [ ] simpson, "on the attitude of the foetus in utero," _obstetric memoirs_, , vol. ii. [ ] erasmus darwin, _zoönomia_, sect. xvii, . [ ] hyades and deniker, _mission scientifique du cap horn_, vol. vii. p. . [ ] such an interpretation is supported by the arguments of w. mcdougall ("the theory of laughter," _nature_, february , ), who contends, without any reference to the sexual field, that one of the objects of laughter is automatically to "disperse our attention." [ ] even the structure of the vaginal mucous membrane, it may be noted, is analogous to that of the skin. d. berry hart, "note on the development of the clitoris, vagina, and hymen," _transactions of the edinburgh obstetrical society_, vol. xxi, . [ ] w.h.b. stoddart, "anæsthesia in the insane," _journal of mental science_, october, . [ ] gina lombroso, "sur les réflexes cutanés," international congress of criminal anthropology, amsterdam, _comptes rendus_, p. . iii. the secondary sexual skin centres--orificial contacts--cunnilingus and fellatio--the kiss--the nipples--the sympathy of the breasts with the primary sexual centres--this connection operative both through the nerves and through the blood--the influence of lactation on the sexual centres--suckling and sexual emotion--the significance of the association between suckling and sexual emotion--this association as a cause of sexual perversity. we have seen that the skin generally has a high degree of sensibility, which frequently tends to be in more or less definite association with the sexual centres. we have seen also that the central and specific sexual sensation, the sexual embrace itself, is, in large measure, a specialized kind of skin reflex. between the generalized skin sensations and the great primary sexual centre of sensation there are certain secondary sexual centres which, on account of their importance, may here be briefly considered. these secondary centres have in common the fact that they always involve the entrances and the exits of the body--the regions, that is, where skin merges into mucous membrane, and where, in the course of evolution, tactile sensibility has become highly refined. it may, indeed, be said generally of these frontier regions of the body that their contact with the same or a similar frontier region in another person of opposite sex, under conditions otherwise favorable to tumescence, will tend to produce a minimum and even sometimes a maximum degree of sexual excitation. contact of these regions with each other or with the sexual region itself so closely simulates the central sexual reflex that channels are set up for the same nervous energy and secondary sexual centres are constituted. it is important to remember that the phenomena we are here concerned with are essentially normal. many of them are commonly spoken of as perversions. in so far, however, as they are aids to tumescence they must be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation. they may be considered unæsthetic, but that is another matter. it has, moreover, to be remembered that æsthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual emotion; from the lover's point of view many things are beautiful which are unbeautiful from the point of view of him who is not a lover, and the greater the degree to which the lover is swayed by his passion the greater the extent to which his normal æsthetic standard is liable to be modified. a broad consideration of the phenomena among civilized and uncivilized peoples amply suffices to show the fallacy of the tendency, so common among unscientific writers on these subjects, to introduce normal æsthetic standards into the sexual sphere. from the normal standpoint of ordinary daily life, indeed, the whole process of sex is unæsthetic, except the earlier stages of tumescence.[ ] so long as they constitute a part of the phase of tumescence, the utilization of the sexual excitations obtainable through these channels must be considered within the normal range of variation, as we may observe, indeed, among many animals. when, however, such contacts of the orifices of the body, other than those of the male and female sexual organs proper, are used to procure not merely tumescence, but detumescence, they become, in the strict and technical sense, perversions. they are perversions in exactly the same sense as are the methods of intercourse which involve the use of checks to prevent fecundation. the æsthetic question, however, remains the same as if we were dealing with tumescence. it is necessary that this should be pointed out clearly, even at the risk of misapprehension, as confusions are here very common. the essentially sexual character of the sensitivity of the orificial contacts is shown by the fact that it may sometimes be accidentally developed even in early childhood. this is well illustrated in a case recorded by féré. a little girl of , of nervous temperament and liable to fits of anger in which she would roll on the ground and tear her clothes, once ran out into the garden in such a fit of temper and threw herself on the lawn in a half-naked condition. as she lay there two dogs with whom she was accustomed to play came up and began to lick the uncovered parts of the body. it so happened that as one dog licked her mouth the other licked her sexual parts. she experienced a shock of intense sensation which she could never forget and never describe, accompanied by a delicious tension of the sexual organs. she rose and ran away with a feeling of shame, though she could not comprehend what had happened. the impression thus made was so profound that it persisted throughout life and served as the point of departure of sexual perversions, while the contact of a dog's tongue with her mouth alone afterward sufficed to evoke sexual pleasure. (féré, _archives de neurologie_, , no. .) i do not purpose to discuss here either _cunnilingus_ (the apposition of the mouth to the female pudendum) or _fellatio_ (the apposition of the mouth to the male organ), the agent in the former case being, in normal heterosexual relationships, a man, in the latter a woman; they are not purely tactile phenomena, but involve various other physical and psychic elements. _cunnilingus_ was a very familiar manifestation in classic times, as shown by frequent and mostly very contemptuous references in aristophanes, juvenal, and many other greek and roman writers; the greeks regarded it as a phoenician practice, just as it is now commonly considered french; it tends to be especially prevalent at all periods of high civilization. _fellatio_ has also been equally well known, in both ancient and modern times, especially as practiced by inverted men. it may be accepted that both _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_, as practiced by either sex, are liable to occur among healthy or morbid persons, in heterosexual or homosexual relationships. they have little psychological significance, except to the extent that when practiced to the exclusion of normal sexual relationships they become perversions, and as such tend to be associated with various degenerative conditions, although such associations are not invariable. the essentially normal character of _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_, when occurring as incidents in the process of tumescence, is shown by the fact that they are practiced by many animals. this is the case, for instance, among dogs. moll points out that not infrequently the bitch, while under the dog, but before intromission, will change her position to lick the dog's penis--apparently from an instinctive impulse to heighten her own and his excitement--and then return to the normal position, while _cunnilingus_ is of constant occurrence among animals, and on account of its frequency among dogs was called by the greeks skylax (rosenbaum, _geschichte der lustseuche im altertume_, fifth edition, pp. - ; also notes in moll, _untersuchungen über pie libido sexualis_, bd. i, pp. , ; and bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. et seq.) the occurrence of _cunnilingus_ as a sexual episode of tumescence among lower human races is well illustrated by a practice of the natives of the caroline islands (as recorded by kubary in his ethnographic study of this people and quoted by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i). it is here customary for a man to place a piece of fish between the labia, while he stimulates the latter by his tongue and teeth until under stress of sexual excitement the woman urinates; this is regarded as an indication that the proper moment for intercourse has arrived. such a practice rests on physiologically sound facts whatever may be thought of it from an æsthetic standpoint. the contrast between the normal æsthetic standpoint in this matter and the lover's is well illustrated by the following quotations: dr. a.b. holder, in the course of his description of the american indian _boté_, remarks, concerning _fellatio_: "of all the many varieties of sexual perversion, this, it seems to me, is the most debased that could be conceived of." on the other hand, in a communication from a writer and scholar of high intellectual distinction occurs the statement: "i affirm that, of all sexual acts, _fellatio_ is most an affair of imagination and sympathy." it must be pointed out that there is no contradiction in these two statements, and that each is justified, according as we take the point of view of the ordinary onlooker or of the impassioned lover eager to give a final proof of his or her devotion. it must be added that from a scientific point of view we are not entitled to take either side. of the whole of this group of phenomena, the most typical and the most widespread example is certainly the kiss. we have in the lips a highly sensitive frontier region between skin and mucous membrane, in many respects analogous to the vulvo-vaginal orifice, and reinforcible, moreover, by the active movements of the still more highly sensitive tongue. close and prolonged contact of these regions, therefore, under conditions favorable to tumescence sets up a powerful current of nervous stimulation. after those contacts in which the sexual regions themselves take a direct part, there is certainly no such channel for directing nervous force into the sexual sphere as the kiss. this is nowhere so well recognized as in france, where a young girl's lips are religiously kept for her lover, to such an extent, indeed, that young girls sometimes come to believe that the whole physical side of love is comprehended in a kiss on the mouth; so highly intelligent a woman as madam adam has described the agony she felt as a girl when kissed on the lips by a man, owing to the conviction that she had thereby lost her virtue. although the lips occupy this highly important position as a secondary sexual focus in the sphere of touch, the kiss is--unlike _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_--confined to man and, indeed, to a large extent, to civilized man. it is the outcome of a compound evolution which had its beginning outside the sphere of touch, and it would therefore be out of place to deal with the interesting question of its development in this place. it will be discussed elsewhere.[ ] there is yet another orificial frontier region which is a highly important tactile sexual focus: the nipple. the breasts raise, indeed, several interesting questions in their intimate connection with the sexual sphere and it may be worth while to consider them at this point. the breasts have from the present point of view this special significance among the sexual centres that they primarily exist, not for the contact of the lover, but the contact of the child. this is doubtless, indeed, the fundamental fact on which all the touch contacts we are here concerned with have grown up. the sexual sensitivity of the lover's lips to orificial contacts has been developed from the sensitivity of the infant's lips to contact with his mother's nipple. it is on the ground of that evolution that we are bound to consider here the precise position of the breasts as a sexual centre. as the great secreting organs of milk, the function of the breasts must begin immediately the child is cut off from the nutrition derived from direct contact with his mother's blood. it is therefore essential that the connection between the sexual organs proper, more especially the womb, and the breasts should be exceedingly intimate, so that the breasts may be in a condition to respond adequately to the demand of the child's sucking lips at the earliest moment after birth. as a matter of fact, this connection is very intimate, so intimate that it takes place in two totally distinct ways--by the nervous system and by the blood. the breasts of young girls sometimes become tender at puberty in sympathy with the evolution of the sexual organs, although the swelling of the breasts at this period is not normally a glandular process. at the recurring periods of menstruation, again, sensations in the breasts are not uncommon. it is not, however, until impregnation occurs that really decisive changes take place in the breasts. "as soon as the ovum is impregnated, that is to say within a few days," as w.d.a. griffith states it ("the diagnosis of pregnancy," _british medical journal_, april , ), "the changes begin to occur in the breast, changes which are just as well worked out as are the changes in the uterus and the vagina, which, from the commencement of pregnancy, prepare for the labor which ought to follow nine months afterward. these are changes in the direction of marked activity of function. an organ which was previously quite passive, without activity of circulation and the effects of active circulation, begins to grow and continues to grow in activity and size as pregnancy progresses." the association between breasts and womb is so obvious that it has not escaped many savage peoples, who are often, indeed, excellent observers. among one primitive people at least the activity of the breast at impregnation seems to be clearly recognized. the sinangolo of british new guinea, says seligmann (_journal of the anthropological institute_, july-december, , p. ) believe that conception takes place in the breasts; on this account they hold that coitus should never take place before the child is weaned or he might imbibe semen with the milk. it is natural to assume that this connection between the activity of the womb and the glandular activity of the breasts is a nervous connection, by means of the spinal cord, and such a connection certainly exists and plays a very important part in the stimulating action of the breasts on the sexual organs. but that there is a more direct channel of communication even than the nervous system is shown by the fact that the secretion of milk will take place at parturition, even when the nervous connection has been destroyed. mironoff found that, when the mammary gland is completely separated from the central nervous system, secretion, though slightly diminished, still continued. in two goats he cut the nerves shortly before parturition and after birth the breasts still swelled and functioned normally (_archives des sciences biologiques_, st. petersburg, , summarized in _l'année biologique_; , p. ). ribbert, again, cut out the mammary gland of a young rabbit and transplanted it into the ear; five months after the rabbit bore young and the gland secreted milk freely. the case has been reported of a woman whose spinal cord was destroyed by an accident at the level of the fifth and sixth dorsal vertebræ, yet lactation was perfectly normal (_british medical journal_, august , , p. ). we are driven to suppose that there is some chemical change in the blood, some internal secretion from the uterus or the ovaries, which acts as a direct stimulant to the breasts. (see a comprehensive discussion of the phenomena of the connection between the breasts and sexual organs, though the conclusions are not unassailable, by temesvary, _journal of obstetrics and gynæcology of the british empire_, june, ). that this hypothetical secretion starts from the womb rather than the ovaries seems to be indicated by the fact that removal of both ovaries during pregnancy will not suffice to prevent lactation. in favor of the ovaries, see beatson, _lancet_, july, ; in favor of the uterus, armand routh, "on the interaction between the ovaries and the mammary glands," _british medical journal_, september , . while, however, the communications from the sexual organs to the breast are of a complex and at present ill understood character, the communication from the breasts to the sexual organs is without doubt mainly and chiefly nervous. when the child is put to the breast after birth the suction of the nipple causes a reflex contraction of the womb, and it is held by many, though not all, authorities that in a woman who does not suckle her child there is some risk that the womb will not return to its normal involuted size. it has also been asserted that to put a child to the breast during the early months of pregnancy causes so great a degree of uterine contraction that abortion may result. freund found in germany that stimulation of the nipples by an electrical cupping apparatus brought about contraction of the pregnant uterus. at an earlier period it was recommended to irritate the nipple in order to excite the uterus to parturient action. simpson, while pointing out that this was scarcely adequate to produce the effect desired, thought that placing a child to the breast after labor had begun might increase uterine action. (j.y. simpson, _obstetric memoirs_, vol. i, p. ; also féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. ). the influence of lactation over the womb in preventing the return of menstruation during its continuance is well known. according to remfry's investigation of cases in england, in per cent. of cases there is no menstruation during lactation. (l. remfry, in paper read before obstetrical society of london, summarized in the _british medical journal_, january , , p. ). bendix, in germany, found among cases that in about per cent. there was no menstruation during lactation (paper read before düsseldorf meeting of the society of german naturalists and physicians, ). when the child is not suckled menstruation tends to reappear about six months after parturition. it is possible that the divergent opinions of authorities concerning the necessarily favorable influence of lactation in promoting the return of the womb to its normal size may be due to a confusion of two distinct influences: the reflex action of the nipple on the womb and the effects of prolonged glandular secretion of the breasts in debilitated persons. the act of suckling undoubtedly tends to promote uterine contraction, and in healthy women during lactation the womb may even (according to vineberg) be temporarily reduced to a smaller size than before impregnation, thus producing what is known as "lactation atrophy." in debilitated women, however, the strain of milk-production may lead to general lack of muscular tone, and involution of the womb thus be hindered rather than aided by lactation. on the objective side, then, the nipple is to be regarded as an erectile organ, richly supplied with nerves and vessels, which, under the stimulation of the infant's lips--or any similar compression, and even under the influence of emotion or cold,--becomes firm and projects, mainly as a result of muscular contraction; for, unlike the penis and the clitoris, the nipple contains no true erectile tissue and little capacity for vascular engorgement.[ ] we must then suppose that an impetus tends to be transmitted through the spinal cord to the sexual organs, setting up a greater or less degree of nervous and muscular excitement with uterine contraction. these being the objective manifestations, what manifestations are to be noted on the subjective side? it is a remarkable proof of the general indifference with which in europe even the fairly constant and prominent characteristics of the psychology of women have been treated until recent times that, so far as i am aware,--though i have made no special research to this end,--no one before the end of the eighteenth century had recorded the fact that the act of suckling tends to produce in women voluptuous sexual emotions. cabanis in , in the memoir on "influence des sexes" in his _rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme_, wrote that several suckling women had told him that the child in sucking the breast made them experience a vivid sensation of pleasure, shared in some degree by the sexual organs. there can be no doubt that in healthy suckling women this phenomenon is exceedingly common, though in the absence of any methodical and precise investigation it cannot be affirmed that it is experienced by every woman in some degree, and it is highly probable that this is not the case. one lady, perfectly normal, states that she has had stronger sexual feelings in suckling her children than she has ever experienced with her husband, but that so far as possible she has tried to repress them, as she regards them as brutish under these circumstances. many other women state generally that suckling is the most delicious physical feeling they have ever experienced. in most cases, however, it does not appear to lead to a desire for intercourse, and some of those who make this statement have no desire for coitus during lactation, though they may have strong sexual needs at other times. it is probable that this corresponds to the normal condition, and that the voluptuous sensations aroused by suckling are adequately gratified by the child. it may be added that there are probably many women who could say, with a lady quoted by féré,[ ] that the only real pleasures of sex they have ever known are those derived from their suckling infants. it is not difficult to see why this normal association of sexual emotion with suckling should have come about. it is essential for the preservation of the lives of young mammals that the mothers should have an adequate motive in pleasurable sensation for enduring the trouble of suckling. the most obvious method for obtaining the necessary degree of pleasurable sensation lay in utilizing the reservoir of sexual emotion, with which channels of communication might already be said to be open through the action of the sexual organs on the breasts during pregnancy. the voluptuous element in suckling may thus be called a merciful provision of nature for securing the maintenance of the child. cabanis seems to have realized the significance of this connection as the basis of the sympathy between mother and child, and more recently lombroso and ferrero have remarked (_la donna delinquente_, p. ) on the fact that maternal love has a sexual basis in the element of venereal pleasure, though usually inconsiderable, experienced during suckling. houzeau has referred to the fact that in the majority of animals the relation between mother and offspring is only close during the period of lactation, and this is certainly connected with the fact that it is only during lactation that the female animal can derive physical gratification from her offspring. when living on a farm i have ascertained that cows sometimes, though not frequently, exhibit slight signs of sexual excitement, with secretion of mucus, while being milked; so that, as the dairymaid herself observed, it is as if they were being "bulled." the sow, like some other mammals, often eats her own young after birth, mistaking them, it is thought, for the placenta, which is normally eaten by most mammals; it is said that the sow never eats her young when they have once taken the teat. it occasionally happens that this normal tendency for suckling to produce voluptuous sexual emotions is present in an extreme degree, and may lead to sexual perversions. it does not appear that the sexual sensations aroused by suckling usually culminate in the orgasm; this however, was noted in a case recorded by féré, of a slightly neurotic woman in whom intense sexual excitement occurred during suckling, especially if prolonged; so far as possible, she shortened the periods of suckling in order to prevent, not always successfully, the occurrence of the orgasm (féré, _archives de neurologie_ no. , ). icard refers to the case of a woman who sought to become pregnant solely for the sake of the voluptuous sensations she derived from suckling, and yellowlees (art. "masturbation," _dictionary of psychological medicine_) speaks of the overwhelming character of "the storms of sexual feeling sometimes observed during lactation." it may be remarked that the frequency of the association between lactation and the sexual sensations is indicated by the fact that, as savage remarks, lactational insanity is often accompanied by fancies regarding the reproductive organs. when we have realized the special sensitivity of the orificial regions and the peculiarly close relationships between the breasts and the sexual organs we may easily understand the considerable part which they normally play in the art of love. as one of the chief secondary sexual characters in women, and one of her chief beauties, a woman's breasts offer themselves to the lover's lips with a less intimate attraction than her mouth only because the mouth is better able to respond. on her side, such contact is often instinctively desired. just as the sexual disturbance of pregnancy is accompanied by a sympathetic disturbance in the breasts, so the sexual excitement produced by the lover's proximity reacts on the breasts; the nipple becomes turgid and erect in sympathy with the clitoris; the woman craves to place her lover in the place of the child, and experiences a sensation in which these two supreme objects of her desire are deliciously mingled. the powerful effect which stimulation of the nipple produces on the sexual sphere has led to the breasts playing a prominent part in the erotic art of those lands in which this art has been most carefully cultivated. thus in india, according to vatsyayana, many authors are of the opinion that in approaching a woman a lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her breasts, and in the songs of the bayaderes of southern india sucking the nipple is mentioned as one of the natural preliminaries of coitus. in some cases, and more especially in neurotic persons, the sexual pleasure derived from manipulation of the nipple passes normal limits and, being preferred even to coitus, becomes a perversion. in girls' schools, it is said, especially in france, sucking and titillation of the breasts are not uncommon; in men, also, titillation of the nipples occasionally produces sexual sensations (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. ). hildebrandt recorded the case of a young woman whose nipples had been sucked by her lover; by constantly drawing her breasts she became able to suck them herself and thus attained extreme sexual pleasure. a.j. bloch, of new orleans, has noted the case of a woman who complained of swelling of the breasts; the gentlest manipulation produced an orgasm, and it was found that the swelling had been intentionally produced for the sake of this manipulation. moraglia in italy knew a very beautiful woman who was perfectly cold in normal sexual relationships, but madly excited when her husband pressed or sucked her breasts. lombroso (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. iv) has described the somewhat similar case of a woman who had no sexual sensitivity in the clitoris, vagina, or labia, and no pleasure in coitus except in very strange positions, but possessed intense sexual feelings in the right nipple as well as in the upper third of the thigh. it is remarkable that not only is suckling apt to be accompanied by sexual pleasure in the mother, but that, in some cases, the infant also appears to have a somewhat similar experience. this is, at all events, indicated in a remarkable case recorded by féré (_l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. ). a female infant child of slightly neurotic heredity was weaned at the age of months, but so great was her affection for her mother's breasts, though she had already become accustomed to other food, that this was only accomplished with great difficulty and by allowing her still to caress the naked breasts several times a day. this went on for many months, when the mother, becoming again pregnant, insisted on putting an end to it. so jealous was the child, however, that it was necessary to conceal from her the fact that her younger sister was suckled at her mother's breasts, and once at the age of , when she saw her father aiding her mother to undress, she became violently jealous of him. this jealousy, as well as the passion for her mother's breasts, persisted to the age of puberty, though she learned to conceal it. at the age of , when menstruation began, she noticed in dancing with her favorite girl friends that when her breasts came in contact with theirs she experienced a very agreeable sensation, with erection of the nipples; but it was not till the age of that she observed that the sexual region took part in this excitement and became moist. from this period she had erotic dreams about young girls. she never experienced any attraction for young men, but eventually married; though having much esteem and affection for her husband, she never felt any but the slightest sexual enjoyment in his arms, and then only by evoking feminine images. this case, in which the sensations of an infant at the breast formed the point of departure of a sexual perversion which lasted through life, is, so far as i am aware, unique. footnotes: [ ] jonas cohn (_allgemeine Æsthetik_, , p. ) lays it down that psychology has nothing to do with good or bad taste. "the distinction between good and bad taste has no meaning for psychology. on this account, the fundamental conceptions of æsthetics cannot arise from psychology." it may be a question whether this view can be accepted quite absolutely. [ ] see appendix a: "the origins of the kiss." [ ] see j.b. hellier, "on the nipple reflex," _british medical journal_, november , . [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. . iv. the bath--antagonism of primitive christianity to the cult of the skin--its cult of personal filth--the reasons which justified this attitude--the world-wide tendency to association between extreme cleanliness and sexual licentiousness--the immorality associated with public baths in europe down to modern times. the hygiene of the skin, as well as its special cult, consists in bathing. the bath, as is well known, attained under the romans a degree of development which, in europe at all events, it has never reached before or since, and the modern visitor to rome carries away with him no more impressive memory than that of the baths of caracalla. since the coming of christianity the cult of the skin, and even its hygiene, have never again attained the same general and unquestioned exaltation. the church killed the bath. st. jerome tells us with approval that when the holy paula noted that any of her nuns were too careful in this matter she would gravely reprove them, saying that "the purity of the body and its garments means the impurity of the soul."[ ] or, as the modern monk of mount athos still declares: "a man should live in dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his soul may sojourn more securely within." our knowledge of the bathing arrangements of roman days is chiefly derived from pompeii. three public baths (two for both men and women, who were also probably allowed to use the third occasionally) have so far been excavated in this small town, as well as at least three private bathing establishments (at least one of them for women), while about a dozen houses contain complete baths for private use. even in a little farm house at boscoreale (two miles out of pompeii) there was an elaborate series of bathing rooms. it may be added that pompeii was well supplied with water. all houses but the poorest had flowing jets, and some houses had as many as ten jets. (see man's _pompeii_, chapters xxvi-xxviii.) the church succeeded to the domination of imperial rome, and adopted many of the methods of its predecessor. but there could be no greater contrast than is presented by the attitude of paganism and of christianity toward the bath. as regards the tendencies of the public baths in imperial rome, some of the evidence is brought together in the section on this subject in rosenbaum's _geschichte der lustseuche im alterthume_. as regards the attitude of the earliest christian ascetics in this matter i may refer the reader to an interesting passage in lecky's _history of european morals_ (vol. ii, pp. - ), in which are brought together a number of highly instructive examples of the manner in which many of the most eminent of the early saints deliberately cultivated personal filth. in the middle ages, when the extreme excesses of the early ascetics had died out, and monasticiam became regulated, monks generally took two baths a year when in health; in illness they could be taken as often as necessary. the rules of cluny only allowed three towels to the community: one for the novices, one for the professed, and one for the lay brothers. at the end of the seventeenth century madame de mazarin, having retired to a convent of visitandines, one day desired to wash her feet, but the whole establishment was set in an uproar at such an idea, and she received a direct refusal. in the dominican richard wrote that in itself the bath is permissible, but it must be taken solely for necessity, not for pleasure. the church taught, and this lesson is still inculcated in convent schools, that it is wrong to expose the body even to one's own gaze, and it is not surprising that many holy persons boasted that they had never even washed their hands. (most of these facts have been taken from a. franklin, _les soins de toilette_, one of the _vie privée d'autrefois_ series, in which further details may be found.) in sixteenth-century italy, a land of supreme elegance and fashion, superior even to france, the conditions were the same, and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which abound with recipes against itch and similar diseases. it should be added that burckhardt (_die cultur der renaissance in italien_, eighth edition, volume ii, p. ) considers that in spite of skin diseases the italians of the renaissance were the first nation in europe for cleanliness. it is unnecessary to consider the state of things in other european countries. the aristocratic conditions of former days are the plebeian conditions of to-day. so far as england is concerned, such documents as chadwick's _report on the sanitary condition of the laboring population of great britain_ ( ) sufficiently illustrate the ideas and the practices as regards personal cleanliness which prevailed among the masses during the nineteenth century and which to a large extent still prevail. a considerable amount of opprobrium has been cast upon the catholic church for its direct and indirect influence in promoting bodily uncleanliness. nietzsche sarcastically refers to the facts, and mr. frederick harrison asserts that "the tone of the middle ages in the matter of dirt was a form of mental disease." it would be easy to quote many other authors to the same effect. it is necessary to point out, however, that the writers who have committed themselves to such utterances have not only done an injustice to christianity, but have shown a lack of historical insight. christianity was essentially and fundamentally a rebellion against the classic world, against its vices, and against their concomitant virtues, against both its practices and its ideals. it sprang up in a different part of the mediterranean basin, from a different level of culture; it found its supporters in a new and lower social stratum. the cult of charity, simplicity, and faith, while not primarily ascetic, became inevitably allied with asceticism, because from its point of view: sexuality was the very stronghold of the classic world. in the second century the genius of clement of alexandria and of the great christian thinkers who followed him seized on all those elements in classic life and philosophy which could be amalgamated with christianity without, as they trusted, destroying its essence, but in the matter of sexuality there could be no compromise, and the condemnation of sexuality involved the condemnation of the bath. it required very little insight and sagacity for the christians to see--though we are now apt to slur over the fact--that the cult of the bath was in very truth the cult of the flesh.[ ] however profound their ignorance of anatomy, physiology, and psychology might be, they had before them ample evidence to show that the skin is an outlying sexual zone and that every application which promoted the purity, brilliance, and healthfulness of the skin constituted a direct appeal, feeble or strong as the case might be, to those passions against which they were warring. the moral was evident: better let the temporary garment of your flesh be soaked with dirt than risk staining the radiant purity of your immortal soul. if christianity had not drawn that moral with clear insight and relentless logic christianity would never have been a great force in the world. if any doubt is felt as to the really essential character of the connection between cleanliness and the sexual impulse it may be dispelled by the consideration that the association is by no means confined to christian europe. if we go outside europe and even christendom altogether, to the other side of the world, we find it still well marked. the wantonness of the luxurious people of tahiti when first discovered by european voyagers is notorious. the areoi of tahiti, a society largely constituted on a basis of debauchery, is a unique institution so far as primitive peoples are concerned. cook, after giving one of the earliest descriptions of this society and its objects at tahiti (hawkesworth, _an account of voyages_, etc., , vol. ii, p. ), immediately goes on to describe the extreme and scrupulous cleanliness of the people of tahiti in every respect; they not only bathed their bodies and clothes every day, but in all respects they carried cleanliness to a higher point than even "the politest assembly in europe." another traveler bears similar testimony: "the inhabitants of the society isles are, among all the nations of the south seas, the most cleanly; and the better sort of them carry cleanliness to a very great length"; they bathe morning and evening in the sea, he remarks, and afterward in fresh water to remove the particles of salt, wash their hands before and after meals, etc. (j.r. forster, "_observations made during a voyage round the world_," , p. .) and william ellis, in his detailed description of the people of tahiti (_polynesian researches_, , vol. i, especially chapters vi and ix), while emphasizing their extreme cleanliness, every person of every class bathing at least once or twice a day, dwells on what he considers their unspeakable moral debasement; "notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition and the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the human race was ever perhaps sunk lower in brutal licentiousness and moral degradation." after leaving tahiti cook went on to new zealand. here he found that the people were more virtuous than at tahiti, and also, he found, less clean. it is, however, a mistake to suppose that physical uncleanliness ruled supreme through mediæval and later times. it is true that the eighteenth century, which saw the birth of so much that marks our modern world, witnessed a revival of the old ideal of bodily purity. but the struggle between two opposing ideals had been carried on for a thousand years or more before this. the church, indeed, was in this matter founded on an impregnable rock. but there never has been a time when influences outside the church have not found a shelter somewhere. those traditions of the classic world which christianity threw aside as useless or worse quietly reappeared. in no respect was this more notably the case than in regard to the love of pure water and the cult of the bath. islam adopted the complete roman bath, and made it an institution of daily life, a necessity for all classes. granada is the spot in europe where to-day we find the most exquisite remains of mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of granada, even yet streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. the flower of christian chivalry and christian intelligence went to palestine to wrest the holy sepulchre from the hands of pagan mohammedans. they found there many excellent things which they had not gone out to seek, and the crusaders produced a kind of premature and abortive renaissance, the shadow of lost classic things reflected on christian europe from the mirror of islam. yet it is worth while to point out, as bearing on the associations of the bath here emphasized, that even in islam we may trace the existence of a religious attitude unfavorable to the bath. before the time of mohammed there were no public baths in arabia, and it was and is believed that baths are specially haunted by the djinn--the evil spirits. mohammed himself was at first so prejudiced against public baths that he forbade both men and women to enter them. afterward, however, he permitted men to use them provided they wore a cloth round the loins, and women also when they could not conveniently bathe at home. among the prophet's sayings is found the assertion: "whatever woman enters a bath the devil is with her," and "all the earth is given to me as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial ground and the bath." (see, e.g., e.w. lane, _arabian society in the middle ages_, , pp. - .) although, therefore, the bath, or _hammam_, on grounds of ritual ablution, hygiene, and enjoyment speedily became universally popular in islam among all classes and both sexes, mohammed himself may be said to have opposed it. among the discoveries which the crusaders made and brought home with them one of the most notable was that of the bath, which in its more elaborate forms seems to have been absolutely forgotten in europe, though roman baths might everywhere have been found underground. all authorities seem to be agreed in finding here the origin of the revival of the public bath. it is to rome first, and later to islam, the lineal inheritor of classic culture, that we owe the cult of water and of physical purity. even to-day the turkish bath, which is the most popular of elaborate methods of bathing, recalls by its characteristics and its name the fact that it is a mohammedan survival of roman life. from the twelfth century onward baths have repeatedly been introduced from the east, and reintroduced afresh in slightly modified forms, and have flourished with varying degrees of success. in the thirteenth century they were very common, especially in paris, and though they were often used, more especially in germany, by both sexes in common, every effort was made to keep them orderly and respectable. these efforts were, however, always unsuccessful in the end. a bath always tended in the end to become a brothel, and hence either became unfashionable or was suppressed by the authorities. it is sufficient to refer to the reputation in england of "hot-houses" and "bagnios." it was not until toward the end of the eighteenth century that it began to be recognized that the claims of physical cleanliness were sufficiently imperative to make it necessary that the fairly avoidable risks to morality in bathing should be avoided and the unavoidable risks bravely incurred. at the present day, now that we are accustomed to weave ingeniously together in the texture of our lives the conflicting traditions of classic and christian days, we have almost persuaded ourselves that the pagan virtue of cleanliness comes next after godliness, and we bathe, forgetful of the great moral struggle which once went on around the bath. but we refrain from building ourselves palaces to bathe in, and for the most part we bathe with exceeding moderation.[ ] it is probable that we may best harmonize our conflicting traditions by rejecting not only the christian glorification of dirt, but also, save for definitely therapeutic purposes, the excessive heat, friction, and stimulation involved by the classic forms of bathing. our reasonable ideal should render it easy and natural for every man, woman, and child to have a simple bath, tepid in winter, cold in summer, all the year round. for the history of the bath in mediæval times and later europe, see a. franklin, _les soins de toilette_, in the _vie privée d'autrefois_ series; rudeck, _geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit in deutschland_; t. wright, _the homes of other days_; e. dühren, _das geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. . outside the church, there was a greater amount of cleanliness than we are sometimes apt to suppose. it may, indeed, be said that the uncleanliness of holy men and women would have attracted no attention if it had corresponded to the condition generally prevailing. before public baths were established bathing in private was certainly practiced; thus ordericus vitalis, in narrating the murder of mabel, the countess de montgomery, in normandy in , casually mentions that she was lying on the bed after her bath (_ecclesiastical history_, book v, chapter xiii). in warm weather, it would appear, mediæval ladies bathed in streams, as we may still see countrywomen do in russia, bohemia, and occasionally nearer home. the statement of the historian michelet, therefore, that percival, iseult, and the other ethereal personages of mediæval times "certainly never washed" (_la sorcière_, p. ) requires some qualification. in there were twenty-six bathing establishments in paris, and an attendant would go through the streets in the morning announcing that they were ready. one could have a vapor bath only or a hot bath to succeed it, as in the east. no woman of bad reputation, leper, or vagabond was at this time allowed to frequent the baths, which were closed on sundays and feast-days. by the fourteenth century, however, the baths began to have a reputation for immorality, as well as luxury, and, according to dufour, the baths of paris "rivaled those of imperial rome: love, prostitution, and debauchery attracted the majority to the bathing establishments, where everything was covered by a decent veil." he adds that, notwithstanding the scandal thus caused and the invectives of preachers, all went to the baths, young and old, rich and poor, and he makes the statement, which seems to echo the constant assertion of the early fathers, that "a woman who frequented the baths returned home physically pure only at the expense of her moral purity." in germany there was even greater freedom of manners in bathing, though, it would seem, less real licentiousness. even the smallest towns had their baths, which were frequented by all classes. as soon as the horn blew to announce that the baths were ready all hastened along the street, the poorer folk almost completely undressing themselves before leaving their homes. bathing was nearly always in common without any garment being worn, women attendants commonly rubbed and massaged both sexes, and the dressing room was frequently used by men and women in common; this led to obvious evils. the germans, as weinhold points out (_die deutschen frauen im mittelalter_, , bd. ii, pp. et seq.), have been fond of bathing in the open air in streams from the days of tacitus and cæsar until comparatively modern times, when the police have interfered. it was the same in switzerland. poggio, early in the sixteenth century, found it the custom for men and women to bathe together at baden, and said that he seemed to be assisting at the _floralia_ of ancient rome, or in plato's republic. sénancour, who quotes the passage (_de l'amour_, , vol. i, p. ), remarks that at the beginning of the nineteenth century there was still great liberty at the baden baths. of the thirteenth century in england thomas wright (_homes of other days_, , p. ) remarks: "the practice of warm bathing prevailed very generally in all classes of society, and is frequently alluded to in the mediæval romances and stories. for this purpose a large bathing-tub was used. people sometimes bathed immediately after rising in the morning, and we find the bath used after dinner and before going to bed. a bath was also often prepared for a visitor on his arrival from a journey; and, what seems still more singular, in the numerous stories of amorous intrigues the two lovers usually began their interviews by bathing together." in england the association between bathing and immorality was established with special rapidity and thoroughness. baths were here officially recognized as brothels, and this as early as the twelfth century, under henry ii. these organized bath-brothels were confined to southwark, outside the walls of the city, a quarter which was also given up to various sports and amusements. at a later period, "hot-houses," bagnios, and hummums (the eastern _hammam_) were spread all over london and remained closely identified with prostitution, these names, indeed, constantly tending to become synonymous with brothels. (t. wright, _homes of other days_, , pp. - , gives an account of them.) in france the baths, being anathematized by both catholics and huguenots, began to lose vogue and disappear. "morality gained," remarks franklin, "but cleanliness lost." even the charming and elegant margaret of navarre found it quite natural for a lady to mention incidentally to her lover that she had not washed her hands for a week. then began an extreme tendency to use cosmetics, essences, perfumes, and a fierce war with vermin, up to the seventeenth century, when some progress was made, and persons who desired to be very elegant and refined were recommended to wash their faces "nearly every day." even in , however, while a linen cloth was advised for the purpose of cleaning the face and hands, the use of water was still somewhat discountenanced. the use of hot and cold baths was now, however, beginning to be established in paris and elsewhere, and the bathing establishments at the great european health resorts were also beginning to be put on the orderly footing which is now customary. when casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth century, went to the public baths at berne he was evidently somewhat surprised when he found that he was invited to choose his own attendant from a number of young women, and when he realized that these attendants were, in all respects, at the disposition of the bathers. it is evident that establishments of this kind were then already dying out, although it may be added that the customs described by casanova appear to have persisted in budapest and st. petersburg almost or quite up to the present. the great european public baths have long been above suspicion in this respect (though homosexual practices are not quite excluded), while it is well recognized that many kinds of hot baths now in use produce a powerfully stimulating action upon the sexual system, and patients taking such baths for medical purposes are frequently warned against giving way to these influences. the struggle which in former ages went on around bathing establishments has now been in part transferred to massage establishments. massage is an equally powerful stimulant to the skin and the sexual sphere,--acting mainly by friction instead of mainly by heat,--and it has not yet attained that position of general recognition and popularity which, in the case of bathing establishments, renders it bad policy to court disrepute. like bathing, massage is a hygienic and therapeutic method of influencing the skin and subjacent tissues which, together with its advantages, has certain concomitant disadvantages in its liability to affect the sexual sphere. this influence is apt to be experienced by individuals of both sexes, though it is perhaps specially marked in women. jouin (quoted in paris _journal de médecine_, april , ) found that of women treated by massage, of whom he made inquiries, declared that they experienced voluptuous sensations; of these belonged to respectable families; the other were women of the _demimonde_ and gave precise details; jouin refers in this connection to the _aliptes_ of rome. it is unnecessary to add that the gynæcological massage introduced in recent years by the swedish teacher of gymnastics, thure-brandt, as involving prolonged rubbing and kneading of the pelvic regions, "_pression glissante du vagin_" etc. (_massage gynécologique_, by g. de frumerie, ), whatever its therapeutic value, cannot fail in a large proportion of cases to stimulate the sexual emotions. (eulenburg remarks that for sexual anæsthesia in women the thure-brandt system of massage may "naturally" be recommended, _sexuale neuropathie_, p. .) i have been informed that in london and elsewhere massage establishments are sometimes visited by women who seek sexual gratification by massage of the genital regions by the _masseuse_. footnotes: [ ] "_dicens munditiam corporis atque vestitus animæ esse immunditiam_"--st. jerome, _ad eustochium virginem_. [ ] with regard to the physiological mechanism by which bathing produces its tonic and stimulating effects woods hutchinson has an interesting discussion (chapter vii) in his _studies in human and comparative pathology_. [ ] thus among the young women admitted to the chicago normal school to be trained as teachers, miss lura sanborn, the director of physical training, states (_doctor's magazine_, december, ) that a bath once a fortnight is found to be not unusual. v. summary--fundamental importance of touch--the skin the mother of all the other senses. the sense of touch is so universally diffused over the whole skin, and in so many various degrees and modifications, and it is, moreover, so truly the alpha and the omega of affection, that a broken and fragmentary treatment of the subject has been inevitable. the skin is the archæological field of human and prehuman experience, the foundation on which all forms of sensory perception have grown up, and as sexual sensibility is among the most ancient of all forms of sensibility, the sexual instinct is necessarily, in the main, a comparatively slightly modified form of general touch sensibility. this primitive character of the great region of tactile sensation, its vagueness and diffusion, the comparatively unintellectual as well as unæsthetic nature of the mental conceptions which arise on the tactile basis make it difficult to deal precisely with the psychology of touch. the very same qualities, however, serve greatly to heighten the emotional intensity of skin sensations. so that, of all the great sensory fields, the field of touch is at once the least intellectual and the most massively emotional. these qualities, as well as its intimate and primitive association with the apparatus of tumescence and detumescence, make touch the readiest and most powerful channel by which the sexual sphere may be reached. in disentangling the phenomena of tactile sensibility ticklishness has been selected for special consideration as a kind of sensation, founded on reflexes developing even before birth, which is very closely related to sexual phenomena. it is, as it were, a play of tumescence, on which laughter supervenes as a play of detumescence. it leads on to the more serious phenomena of tumescence, and it tends to die out after adolescence, at the period during which sexual relationships normally begin. such a view of ticklishness, as a kind of modesty of the skin, existing merely to be destroyed, need only be regarded as one of its aspects. ticklishness certainly arose from a non-sexual starting-point, and may well have protective uses in the young animal. the readiness with which tactile sensibility takes on a sexual character and forms reflex channels of communication with the sexual sphere proper is illustrated by the existence of certain secondary sexual foci only inferior in sexual excitability to the genital region. we have seen that the chief of these normal foci are situated in the orificial regions where skin and mucous membrane meet, and that the contact of any two orificial regions between two persons of different sex brought together under favorable conditions is apt, when prolonged, to produce a very intense degree of sexual erethism. this is a normal phenomenon in so far as it is a part of tumescence, and not a method of obtaining detumescence. the kiss is a typical example of these contacts, while the nipple is of special interest in this connection, because we are thereby enabled to bring the psychology of lactation into intimate relationship with the psychology of sexual love. the extreme sensitiveness of the skin, the readiness with which its stimulation reverberates into the sexual sphere, clearly brought out by the present study, enable us to understand better a very ancient contest--the moral struggle around the bath. there has always been a tendency for the extreme cultivation of physical purity to lead on to the excessive stimulation of the sexual sphere; so that the christian ascetics were entirely justified, on their premises, in fighting against the bath and in directly or indirectly fostering a cult of physical uncleanliness. while, however, in the past there has clearly been a general tendency for the cult of physical purity to be associated with moral licentiousness, and there are sufficient grounds for such an association, it is important to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to licentiousness; a physically unclean person is by no means necessarily morally pure. when we have eliminated certain forms of the bath which must be regarded as luxuries rather than hygienic necessities, though they occasionally possess therapeutic virtues, we have eliminated the most violent appeals of the bath to the sexual impulse. so imperative are the demands of physical purity now becoming, in general opinion, that such small risks to moral purity as may still remain are constantly and wisely disregarded, and the immoral traditions of the bath now, for the most part, belong to the past. smell. i. the primitiveness of smell--the anatomical seat of the olfactory centres--predominance of smell among the lower mammals--its diminished importance in man--the attention paid to odors by savages. the first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell. at first, indeed, olfactory sensibility is not clearly differentiated from general tactile sensibility; the pit of thickened and ciliated epithelium or the highly mobile antennæ which in many lower animals are sensitive to odorous stimuli are also extremely sensitive to tactile stimuli; this is, for instance, the case with the snail, in whom at the same time olfactive sensibility seems to be spread over the whole body.[ ] the sense of smell is gradually specialized, and when taste also begins to develop a kind of chemical sense is constituted. the organ of smell, however, speedily begins to rise in importance as we ascend the zoölogical scale. in the lower vertebrates, when they began to adopt a life on dry land, the sense of smell seems to have been that part of their sensory equipment which proved most useful under the new conditions, and it developed with astonishing rapidity. edinger finds that in the brain of reptiles the "area olfactoria" is of enormous extent, covering, indeed, the greater part of the cortex, though it may be quite true, as herrick remarks, that, while smell is preponderant, it is perhaps not correct to attribute an exclusively olfactory tone to the cerebral activities of the _sauropsida_ or even the _ichthyopsida_. among most mammals, however, in any case, smell is certainly the most highly developed of the senses; it gives the first information of remote objects that concern them; it gives the most precise information concerning the near objects that concern them; it is the sense in terms of which most of their mental operations must be conducted and their emotional impulses reach consciousness. among the apes it has greatly lost importance and in man it has become almost rudimentary, giving place to the supremacy of vision. prof. g. elliot smith, a leading authority on the brain, has well summarized the facts concerning the predominance of the olfactory region in the mammal brain, and his conclusions may be quoted. it should be premised that elliot smith divides the brain into rhinencephalon and neopallium. rhinencephalon designates the regions which are pre-eminently olfactory in function: the olfactory bulb, its peduncle, the tuberculum olfactorium and locus perforatus, the pyriform lobe, the paraterminal body, and the whole hippocampal formation. the neopallium is the dorsal cap of the brain, with frontal, parietal, and occipital areas, comprehending all that part of the brain which is the seat of the higher associative activities, reaching its fullest development in man. "in the early mammals the olfactory areas form by far the greater part of the cerebral hemisphere, which is not surprising when it is recalled that the forebrain is, in the primitive brain, essentially an appendage, so to speak, of the smell apparatus. when the cerebral hemisphere comes to occupy such a dominant position in the brain it is perhaps not unnatural to find that the sense of smell is the most influential and the chief source of information to the animal; or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that the olfactory sense, which conveys general information to the animal such as no other sense can bring concerning its prey (whether near or far, hidden or exposed), is much the most serviceable of all the avenues of information to the lowly mammal leading a terrestrial life, and therefore becomes predominant; and its particular domain--the forebrain--becomes the ruling portion of the nervous system. "this early predominance of the sense of smell persists in most mammals (unless an aquatic mode of life interferes and deposes it: compare the _cetacea, sirenia_, and _pinnipedia_, for example) even though a large neopallium develops to receive visual, auditory, tactile, and other impressions pouring into the forebrain. in the _anthropoidea_ alone of nonaquatic mammals the olfactory regions undergo an absolute (and not only relative, as in the _carnivora_ and _ungulata_) dwindling, which is equally shared by the human brain, in common with those of the other _simiidæ_, the _cercopithecidæ_, and the _cebidæ_. but all the parts of the rhinencephalon, which are so distinct in macrosmatic mammals, can also be recognized in the human brain. the small ellipsoidal olfactory bulb is moored, so to speak, on the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone by the olfactory nerves; so that, as the place of attachment of the olfactory peduncle to the expanding cerebral hemisphere becomes removed (as a result of the forward extension of the hemisphere) progressively farther and farther backward, the peduncle becomes greatly stretched and elongated. and, as this stretching involves the gray matter without lessening the number of nerve-fibres in the olfactory tract, the peduncle becomes practically what it is usually called--i.e., the olfactory 'tract.' the tuberculum olfactorium becomes greatly reduced and at the same time flattened; so that it is not easy to draw a line of demarcation between it and the anterior perforated space. the anterior rhinal fissure, which is present in the early human foetus, vanishes (almost, if not altogether) in the adult. part of the posterior rhinal fissure is always present in the 'incisura temporalis,' and sometimes, especially in some of the non-european races, the whole of the posterior rhinal fissure is retained in that typical form which we find in the anthropoid apes." (g. elliot smith, in _descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the physiological series of comparative anatomy contained in the museum of the royal college of surgeons of england_, second edition, vol. ii.) a full statement of elliot smith's investigations, with diagrams, is given by bullen, _journal of mental science_, july, . it may be added that the whole subject of the olfactory centres has been thoroughly studied by elliot smith, as well as by edinger, mayer, and c.l. herrick. in the _journal of comparative neurology_, edited by the last named, numerous discussions and summaries bearing on the subject will be found from onward. regarding the primitive sense-organs of smell in the various invertebrate groups some information will be found in a.b. griffiths's _physiology of the invertebrata_, chapter xi. the predominance of the olfactory area in the nervous system of the vertebrates generally has inevitably involved intimate psychic associations between olfactory stimuli and the sexual impulse. for most mammals not only are all sexual associations mainly olfactory, but the impressions received by this sense suffice to dominate all others. an animal not only receives adequate sexual excitement from olfactory stimuli, but those stimuli often suffice to counterbalance all the evidence of the other senses. we may observe this very well in the case of the dog. thus, a young dog, well known to me, who had never had connection with a bitch, but was always in the society of its father, once met the latter directly after the elder dog had been with a bitch. he immediately endeavored to behave toward the elder dog, in spite of angry repulses, exactly as a dog behaves toward a bitch in heat. the messages received by the sense of smell were sufficiently urgent not only to set the sexual mechanism in action, but to overcome the experiences of a lifetime. there is an interesting chapter on the sense of smell in the mental life of the dog in giessler's _psychologie des geruches_, , chapter xi, passy (in the appendix to his memoir on olfaction, _l'année psychologique_, ) gives the result of some interesting experiments as to the effects of perfume on dogs; civet and castoreum were found to have the most powerfully exciting effect. the influences of smell are equally omnipotent in the sexual life of many insects. thus, féré has found that in cockchafers sexual coupling failed to take place when the antennæ, which are the organs of smell, were removed; he also found that males, after they had coupled with females, proved sexually attractive to other males (_comptes rendus de la société de biologie_, may , ). féré similarly found that, in a species of _bombyx_, males after contact with females sometimes proved attractive to other males, although no abnormal relationships followed. (_soc. de biol_, july , .) with the advent of the higher apes, and especially of man, all this has been changed. the sense of smell, indeed, still persists universally and it is still also exceedingly delicate, though often neglected.[ ] it is, moreover, a useful auxiliary in the exploration of the external world, for, in contrast to the very few sensations furnished to us by touch and by taste, we are acquainted with a vast number of smells, though the information they give us is frequently vague. an experienced perfumer, says piesse, will have two hundred odors in his laboratory and can distinguish them all. to a sensitive nose nearly everything smells. passy goes so far as to state that he has "never met with any object that is really inodorous when one pays attention to it, not even excepting glass," and, though we can scarcely accept this statement absolutely,--especially in view of the careful experiments of ayrton, which show that, contrary to a common belief, metals when perfectly clean and free from traces of contact with the skin or with salt solutions have no smell,--odor is still extremely widely diffused. this is especially the case in hot countries, and the experiments of the cambridge anthropological expedition on the sense of smell of the papuans were considerably impeded by the fact that at torres straits everything, even water, seemed to have a smell. savages are often accused more or less justly of indifference to bad odors. they are very often, however, keenly alive to the significance of smells and their varieties, though it does not appear that the sense of smell is notably more developed in savage than in civilized peoples. odors also continue to play a part in the emotional life of man, more especially in hot countries. nevertheless both in practical life and in emotional life, in science and in art, smell is, at the best, under normal conditions, merely an auxiliary. if the sense of smell were abolished altogether the life of mankind would continue as before, with little or no sensible modification, though the pleasures of life, and especially of eating and drinking, would be to some extent diminished. in new ireland, duffield remarks (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. ), the natives have a very keen sense of smell; unusual odors are repulsive to them, and "carbolic acid drove them wild." the new caledonians, according to foley (_bulletin de la société d'anthropologie_, november , ), only like the smells of meat and fish which are becoming "high," like _popoya_, which smells of fowl manure, and _kava_, of rotten eggs. fruits and vegetables which are beginning to go bad seem the best to them, while the fresh and natural odors which we prefer seem merely to say to them: "we are not yet eatable." (a taste for putrefying food, common among savages, by no means necessarily involves a distaste for agreeable scents, and even among europeans there is a widespread taste for offensively smelling and putrid foods, especially cheese and game.) the natives of torres straits were carefully examined by dr. c.s. myers with regard to their olfactory acuteness and olfactory preferences. it was found that acuteness was, if anything, slightly greater than among europeans. this appeared to be largely due to the careful attention they pay to odors. the resemblances which they detected among different odorous substances were frequently found to rest on real chemical affinities. the odors they were observed to dislike most frequently were asafoetida, valerianic acid, and civet, the last being regarded as most repulsive of all on account of its resemblance to fæcal odor, which these people regard with intense disgust. their favorite odors were musk, thyme, and especially violet. (_report of the cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. ii, part ii, .) in australia lumholtz (_among cannibals_, p. ) found that the blacks had a keener sense of smell than he possessed. in new zealand the maoris, as w. colenso shows, possessed, formerly at all events, a very keen sense of smell or else were very attentive to smell, and their taste as regarded agreeable and disagreeable odors corresponded very closely to european taste, although it must be added that some of their common articles of food possessed a very offensive odor. they are not only sensitive to european perfumes, but possessed various perfumes of their own, derived from plants and possessing a pleasant, powerful, and lasting odor; the choicest and rarest was the gum of the _taramea_ (_aciphylla colensoi_), which was gathered by virgins after the use of prayers and charms. sir joseph banks noted that maori chiefs wore little bundles of perfumes around their necks, and cook made the same observation concerning the young women. references to the four chief maori perfumes are contained in a stanza which is still often hummed to express satisfaction, and sung by a mother to her child:-- "my little neck-satchel of sweet-scented moss, my little neck-satchel of fragrant fern, my little neck-satchel of odoriferous gum, my sweet-smelling neck-locket of sharp-pointed _taramea_." in the summer season the sleeping houses of maori chiefs were often strewed with a large, sweet-scented, flowering grass of powerful odor. (w. colenso, _transactions of the new zealand institute_, vol. xxiv, reprinted in _nature_, november , .) javanese women rub themselves with a mixture of chalk and strong essence which, when rubbed off, leaves a distinct perfume on the body. (stratz, _die frauenkleidung_, p. .) the samoans, friedländer states (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. ), are very fond of fragrant and aromatic odors. he gives a list of some twenty odorous plants which they use, more especially as garlands for the head and neck, including ylang-ylang and gardenia; he remarks that of one of these plants (cordyline) he could not himself detect the odor. the nicobarese, man remarks (_journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. ), like the natives of new zealand, particularly dislike the smell of carbolic acid. both young men and women are very partial to scents; the former say they find their use a certain passport to the favor of their wives, and they bring home from the jungle the scented leaves of a certain creeper to their sweethearts and wives. swahili women devote much attention to perfuming themselves. when a woman wishes to make herself desirable she anoints herself all over with fragrant ointments, sprinkles herself with rose-water, puts perfume into her clothes, strews jasmine flowers on her bed as well as binding them round her neck and waist, and smokes _ûdi_, the perfumed wood of the aloe; "every man is glad when his wife smells of _ûdi_" (velten, _sitten und gebraüche der suaheli_, pp. - ). footnotes: [ ] emile yung, "le sens olfactif de l'escargot (helix pomata)," _archives de psychologie_, november, . [ ] the sensitiveness of smell in man generally exceeds that of chemical reaction or even of spectral analysis; see passy, _l'année psychologique_, second year, , p. . ii. rise of the study of olfaction--cloquet--zwaardemaker--the theory of smell--the classification of odors--the special characteristics of olfactory sensation in man--smell as the sense of imagination--odors as nervous stimulants--vasomotor and muscular effects--odorous substances as drugs. during the eighteenth century a great impetus was given to the physiological and psychological study of the senses by the philosophical doctrines of locke and the english school generally which then prevailed in europe. these thinkers had emphasized the immense importance of the information derived through the senses in building up the intellect, so that the study of all the sensory channels assumed a significance which it had never possessed before. the olfactory sense fully shared in the impetus thus given to sensory investigation. at the beginning of the nineteenth century a distinguished french physician, hippolyte cloquet, a disciple of cabanis, devoted himself more especially to this subject. after publishing in a preliminary work, he issued in his _osphrésiologie, ou traité des odeurs, du sens et des organes de l'olfaction_, a complete monograph on the anatomy, physiology, psychology, and pathology of the olfactory organ and its functions, and a work that may still be consulted with profit, if indeed it can even yet be said to be at every point superseded. after cloquet's time the study of the sense of smell seems to have fallen into some degree of discredit. for more than half a century no important progress was made in this field. serious investigators seemed to have become shy of the primitive senses generally, and the subject of smell was mainly left to those interested in "curious" subjects. many interesting observations were, however, incidentally made; thus laycock, who was a pioneer in so many by-paths of psychology and anthropology, showed a special interest in the olfactory sense, and frequently touched on it in his _nervous diseases of women_ and elsewhere. the writer who more than any other has in recent years restored the study of the sense of smell from a by-path to its proper position as a highway for investigation is without doubt professor zwaardemaker, of utrecht. the invention of his first olfactometer in and the appearance in of his great work _die physiologie des geruchs_ have served to give the physiology of the sense of smell an assured status and to open the way anew for much fruitful investigation, while a number of inquirers in many countries have had their attention directed to the elucidation of this sense. notwithstanding, however, the amount of work which has been done in this field during recent years, it cannot be said that the body of assured conclusions so far reached is large. the most fundamental principles of olfactory physiology and psychology are still somewhat vague and uncertain. although sensations of smell are numerous and varied, in this respect approaching the sensations of vision and hearing, smell still remains close to touch in the vagueness of its messages (while the most sensitive of the senses, remarks passy, it is the least precise), the difficulty of classifying them, the impossibility of so controlling them as to found upon them any art. it seems better, therefore, not to attempt to force the present study of a special aspect of olfaction into any general scheme which may possibly not be really valid. the earliest and most general tendency in regard to the theory of smell was to regard it as a kind of chemical sense directly stimulated by minute particles of solid substance. a vibratory theory of smell, however, making it somewhat analogous to hearing, easily presents itself. when i first began the study of physiology in , a speculation of this kind presented itself to my mind. long before philipp von walther, a professor at landshut, had put forward a dynamic theory of olfaction (_physiologie des menschen_, - , vol. ii, p. ). "it is a purely dynamic operation of the odorous substance in the olfactory organ," he stated. odor is conveyed by the air, he believed, in the same way as heat. it must be added that his reasons for this theory will not always bear examination. more recently a similar theory has been seriously put forward in various quarters. sir william ramsay tentatively suggested such a theory (_nature_, vol. xxv, p. ) in analogy with light and sound. haycraft (_proceedings of the royal society of edinburgh_, - , and _brain_, - ), largely starting from mendelieff's law of periodicity, similarly sought to bring smell into line with the higher senses, arguing that molecules with the same vibration have the same smell. rutherford (_nature_, august , , p. ), attaching importance to the evidence brought forward by von brunn showing that the olfactory cells terminate in very delicate short hairs, also stated his belief that the different qualities of smell result from differences in the frequency and form of the vibrations initiated by the action of the chemical molecules on these olfactory cells, though he admitted that such a conception involved a very subtle conception of molecular vibration. vaschide and van melle (paris academy of sciences, december , ) have, again, argued that smell is produced by rays of short wave-lengths, analogous to light-rays, röntgen rays, etc. chemical action is however, a very important factor in the production of odors; this has been well shown by ayrton (_nature_, september , ). we seem to be forced in the direction of a chemico-vibratory theory, as pointed out by southerden (_nature_, march , ), the olfactory cells being directly stimulated, not by the ordinary vibrations of the molecules, but by the agitations accompanying chemical changes. the vibratory hypothesis of the action of odors has had some influence on the recent physiologists who have chiefly occupied themselves with olfaction. "it is probable," zwaardemaker writes (_l'année psychologique_, ), "that aroma is a physico-chemical attribute of the molecules"; he points out that there is an intimate analogy between color and odor, and remarks that this analogy leads us to suppose in an aroma ether vibrations of which the period is determined by the structure of the molecule. since the physiology of olfaction is yet so obscure it is not surprising that we have no thoroughly scientific classification of smells, notwithstanding various ambitious attempts to reach a classification. the classification adopted by zwaardemaker is founded on the ancient scheme of linnæus, and may here be reproduced:-- i. ethereal odors (chiefly esters; rimmel's fruity series). ii. aromatic odors (terpenes, camphors, and the spicy, herbaceous, rosaceous, and almond series; the chemical types are well determined: cineol, eugenol, anethol, geraniol, benzaldehyde). iii. the balsamic odors (chiefly aldehydes, rimmel's jasmin, violet, and balsamic series, with the chemical types: terpineol, ionone, vanillin). iv. the ambrosiacal odors (ambergris and musk). v. the alliaceous odors, with the cacodylic group (asafoetida, ichthyol, etc.). vi. empyreumatic odors. vii. valerianaceous odors (linnæus's _odores hircini_, the capryl group, largely composed of sexual odors). viii. narcotic odors (linnæus's _odores tetri_). ix. stenches. a valuable and interesting memoir, "revue générale sur les sensations olfactives," by j. passy, the chief french authority on this subject, will be found in the second volume of _l'année psychologique_, . in the fifth issue of the same year-book (for ) zwaardemaker presents a full summary of his work and views, "les sensations olfactives, leurs combinaisons et leurs compensations." a convenient, but less authoritative, summary of the facts of normal and pathological olfaction will be found in a little volume of the "actualités médicales" series by dr. collet, _l'odorat et ses troubles_, . in a little book entitled _wegweiser zu einer psychologie des geruches_ ( ) giessler has sought to outline a psychology of smell, but his sketch can only be regarded as tentative and provisional. at the outset, nevertheless, it seems desirable that we should at least have some conception of the special characteristics which mark the great and varied mass of sensations reaching the brain through the channel of the olfactory organ. the main special character of olfactory images seems to be conditioned by the fact that they are intermediate in character between those of touch or taste and those of sight or sound, that they have much of the vagueness of the first and something of the richness and variety of the second. Æsthetically, also, they occupy an intermediate position between the higher and the lower senses.[ ] they are, at the same time, less practically useful than either the lower or the higher senses. they furnish us with a great mass of what we may call by-sensations, which are of little practical use, but inevitably become intimately mixed with the experiences of life by association and thus acquire an emotional significance which is often very considerable. their emotional force, it may well be, is connected with the fact that their anatomical seat is the most ancient part of the brain. they lie in a remote almost disused storehouse of our minds and show the fascination or the repulsiveness of all vague and remote things. it is for this reason that they are--to an extent that is remarkable when we consider that they are much more precise than touch sensations--subject to the influence of emotional associations. the very same odor may be at one moment highly pleasant, at the next moment highly unpleasant, in accordance with the emotional attitude resulting from its associations. visual images have no such extreme flexibility; they are too definite to be so easily influenced. our feelings about the beauty of a flower cannot oscillate so easily or so far as may our feelings about the agreeableness of its odor. our olfactory experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote ancestral reverberations through our brains. it is the existence of these characteristics--at once so vague and so specific, so useless and so intimate--which led various writers to describe the sense of smell as, above all others, the sense of imagination. no sense has so strong a power of suggestion, the power of calling up ancient memories with a wider and deeper emotional reverberation, while at the same time no sense furnishes impressions which so easily change emotional color and tone, in harmony with the recipient's general attitude. odors are thus specially apt both to control the emotional life and to become its slaves. with the use of incense religions have utilized the imaginative and symbolical virtues of fragrance. all the legends of the saints have insisted on the odor of sanctity that exhales from the bodies of holy persons, especially at the moment of death. under the conditions of civilization these primitive emotional associations of odor tend to be dispersed, but, on the other hand, the imaginative side of the olfactory sense becomes accentuated, and personal idiosyncrasies of all kinds tend to manifest themselves in the sphere of smell. rousseau (in _emile_, bk. ii) regarded smell as the sense of the imagination. so, also, at an earlier period, it was termed (according to cloquet) by cardano. cloquet frequently insisted on the qualities of odors which cause them to appeal to the imagination; on their irregular and inconstant character; on their power of intoxicating the mind on some occasions; on the curious individual and racial preferences in the matter of odors. he remarked on the fact that the persians employed asafoetida as a seasoning, while valerian was accounted a perfume in antiquity. (cloquet, _osphrésiologie_, pp. , , , .) it may be added, as a curious example familiar to most people of the dependence of the emotional tone of a smell on its associations, that, while the exhalations of other people's bodies are ordinarily disagreeable to us, such is not the case with our own; this is expressed in the crude and vigorous dictum of the elizabethan poet, marston, "every man's dung smell sweet i' his own nose." there are doubtless many implications, moral as well as psychological, in that statement. the modern authorities on olfaction, passy and zwaardemaker, both alike insist on the same characteristics of the sense of smell: its extreme acuity and yet its vagueness. "we live in a world of odor," zwaardemaker remarks (_l'année psychologique_, , p. ), "as we live in a world of light and of sound. but smell yields us no distinct ideas grouped in regular order, still less that are fixed in the memory as a grammatical discipline. olfactory sensations awake vague and half-understood perceptions, which are accompanied by very strong emotion. the emotion dominates us, but the sensation which was the cause of it remains unperceived." even in the same individual there are wide variations in the sensitiveness to odors at different times, more especially as regards faint odors; passy (_l'année psychologique_, , p. ) brings forward some observations on this point. maudsley noted the peculiarly suggestive power of odors; "there are certain smells," he remarked, "which never fail to bring back to me instantly and visibly scenes of my boyhood"; many of us could probably say the same. another writer (e. dillon, "a neglected sense," _nineteenth century_, april, ) remarks that "no sense has a stronger power of suggestion." ribot has made an interesting investigation as to the prevalence and nature of the emotional memory of odors (_psychology of the emotions_, chapter xi). by "emotional memory" is meant the spontaneous or voluntary revivability of the image, olfactory or other. (for the general question, see an article by f. pillon, "la mémoire affective, son importance théorique et pratique," _revue philosophique_, february, ; also paulhan, "sur la mémoire affective," _revue philosophique_, december, and january, .) ribot found that per cent. of persons are unable to revive any such images of taste or smell; per cent, could revive some; per cent, declared themselves capable of reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure. in some persons there is no necessary accompanying revival of visual or tactile representations, but in the majority the revived odor ultimately excites a corresponding visual image. the odors most frequently recalled were pinks, musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the country, of grass, etc. piéron (_revue philosophique_, december, ) has described the special power possessed by vague odors, in his own case, of evoking ancient impressions. dr. j.n. mackenzie (_american journal of the medical sciences_, january, ) considers that civilization exerts an influence in heightening or encouraging the influence of olfaction as it affects our emotions and judgment, and that, in the same way, as we ascend the social scale the more readily our minds are influenced and perhaps perverted by impressions received through the sense of smell. odors are powerful stimulants to the whole nervous system, causing, like other stimulants, an increase of energy which, if excessive or prolonged, leads to nervous exhaustion. thus, it is well recognized in medicine that the aromatics containing volatile oils (such as anise, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, coriander, and peppermint) are antispasmodics and anæsthetics, and that they stimulate digestion, circulation, and the nervous system, in large doses producing depression. the carefully arranged plethysmographic experiments of shields, at the johns hopkins university, have shown that olfactory sensations, by their action on the vasomotor system, cause an increase of blood in the brain and sometimes in addition stimulation of the heart; musk, wintergreen, wood violet, and especially heliotrope were found to act strongly in these ways.[ ] féré's experiments with the dynamometer and the ergograph have greatly contributed to illustrate the stimulating effects of odors. thus, he found that smelling musk suffices to double muscular effort. with a number of odorous substances he has found that muscular work is temporarily heightened; when taste stimulation was added the increase of energy, notably when using lemon was "colossal." a kind of "sensorial intoxication" could be produced by the inhalation of odors and the whole system stimulated to greater activity; the visual acuity was increased, and electric and general excitability heightened.[ ] such effects may be obtained in perfectly healthy persons, though both shields and féré have found that in highly nervous persons the effects are liable to be much greater. it is doubtless on this account that it is among civilized peoples that attention is chiefly directed to perfumes, and that under the conditions of modern life the interest in olfaction and its study has been revived. it is the genuinely stimulant qualities of odorous substances which led to the widespread use of the more potent among them by ancient physicians, and has led a few modern physicians to employ them still. thus, vanilla, according to eloy, deserves to be much more frequently used therapeutically than it is, on account of its excitomotor properties; he states that its qualities as an excitant of sexual desire have long been recognized and that fonssagrives used to prescribe it for sexual frigidity.[ ] footnotes: [ ] the opinions of psychologists concerning the æsthetic significance of smell, not on the whole very favorable, are brought together and discussed by j.v. volkelt, "der Æsthetische wert der niederen sinne," _zeitschrift für psychologie und physiologie der sinnesorgane_, , ht. . [ ] t.e. shields, "the effect of odors, etc., upon the blood-flow," _journal of experimental medicine_, vol. i, november, . in france, o. henry and tardif have made somewhat similar experiments on respiration and circulation. see the latter's _les odeurs et les parfums_, chapter iii. [ ] féré, _sensation et mouvement_, chapter vi; ib., _comptes rendus de la société de biologie_, november , december and , . [ ] eloy, art. "vanille," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_. iii. the specific body odors of various peoples--the negro, etc.--the european--the ability to distinguish individuals by smell--the odor of sanctity--the odor of death--the odors of different parts of the body--the appearance of specific odors at puberty--the odors of sexual excitement--the odors of menstruation--body odors as a secondary sexual character--the custom of salutation by smell--the kiss--sexual selection by smell--the alleged association between size of nose and sexual vigor--the probably intimate relationship between the olfactory and genital spheres--reflex influences from the nose--reflex influences from the genital sphere--olfactory hallucinations in insanity as related to sexual states--the olfactive type--the sense of smell in neurasthenic and allied states--in certain poets and novelists--olfactory fetichism--the part played by olfaction in normal sexual attraction--in the east, etc.--in modern europe--the odor of the armpit and its variations--as a sexual and general stimulant--body odors in civilization tend to cause sexual antipathy unless some degree of tumescence is already present--the question whether men or women are more liable to feel olfactory influences--women usually more attentive to odors--the special interest in odors felt by sexual inverts. in approaching the specifically sexual aspect of odor in the human species we may start from the fundamental fact--a fact we seek so far as possible to disguise in our ordinary social relations--that all men and women are odorous. this is marked among all races. the powerful odor of many, though not all, negroes is well known; it is by no means due to uncleanly habits, and joest remarks that it is even increased by cleanliness, which opens the pores of the skin; according to sir h. johnston, it is most marked in the armpits and is stronger in men than in women. pruner bey describes it as "ammoniacal and rancid; it is like the odor of the he-goat." the odor varies not only individually, but according to the tribe; castellani states that the negress of the congo has merely a slight "_goût de noisette_" which is agreeable rather than otherwise. monbuttu women, according to parke, have a strong gorgonzola perfume, and emin told parke that he could distinguish the members of different tribes by their characteristic odor. in the same way the nicobarese, according to man, can distinguish a member of each of the six tribes of the archipelago by smell. the odor of australian blacks is less strong than that of negroes and has been described as of a phosphoric character. the south american indians, d'orbigny stated, have an odor stronger than that of europeans, though not as strong as most negroes; it is marked, latcham states, even among those who, like the araucanos, bathe constantly. the chinese have a musky odor. the odor of many peoples is described as being of garlic.[ ] a south sea islander, we are told by charles de varigny, on coming to sydney and seeing the ladies walking about the streets and apparently doing nothing, expressed much astonishment, adding, with a gesture of contempt, "and they have no smell!" it is by no means true, however, that europeans are odorless. they are, indeed, considerably more odorous than are many other races,--for instance, the japanese,--and there is doubtless some association between the greater hairiness of europeans and their marked odor, since the sebaceous glands are part of the hair apparatus. a japanese anthropologist, adachi, has published an interesting study on the odor of europeans,[ ] which he describes as a strong and pungent smell,--sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter,--of varying strength in different individuals, absent in children and the aged, and having its chief focus in the armpits, which, however carefully they are washed, immediately become odorous again. adachi has found that the sweat-glands are larger in europeans than in the japanese, among whom a strong personal odor is so uncommon that "armpit stink" is a disqualification for the army. it is certainly true that the white races smell less strongly than most of the dark races, odor seeming to be correlated to some extent with intensity of pigmentation, as well as with hairiness; but even the most scrupulously clean europeans all smell. this fact may not always be obvious to human nostrils, apart from intimate contact, but it is well known to dogs, to whom their masters are recognizable by smell. when hue traveled in tibet in chinese disguise he was not detected by the natives, but the dogs recognized him as a foreigner by his smell and barked at him. many chinese can tell by smell when a european has been in a room.[ ] there are, however, some europeans who can recognize and distinguish their friends by smell. the case has been recorded of a man who with bandaged eyes could recognize his acquaintances, at the distance of several paces, the moment they entered the room. in another case a deaf and blind mute woman in massachusetts knew all her acquaintances by smell, and could sort linen after it came from the wash by the odor alone. governesses have been known to be able when blindfolded to recognize the ownership of their pupil's garments by smell; such a case is known to me. such odor is usually described as being agreeable, but not one person in fifty, it is stated, is able to distinguish it with sufficient precision to use it as a method of recognition. among some races, however this aptitude would appear to be better developed. dr. c.s. myers at sarawak noted that his malay boy sorted the clean linen according to the skin-odor of the wearer.[ ] chinese servants are said to do the same, as well as australians and natives of luzon.[ ] although the distinctively individual odor of most persons is not sufficiently marked to be generally perceptible, there are cases in which it is more distinct to all nostrils. the most famous case of this kind is that of alexander the great, who, according to plutarch, exhaled so sweet an odor that his tunics were soaked with aromatic perfume (_convivalium disputationum_, lib. i, quest. ). malherbe, cujas, and haller are said to have diffused a musky odor. the agreeable odor of walt whitman has been remarked by kennedy and others. the perfume exhaled by many holy men and women, so often noted by ancient writers (discussed by görres in the second volume of his _christliche mystik_) and which has entered into current phraseology as a merely metaphorical "odor of sanctity," was doubtless due, as hammond first pointed out, to abnormal nervous conditions, for it is well known that such conditions affect the odor, and in insanity, for instance, the presence is noted of bodily odors which have sometimes even been considered of diagnostic importance. j.b. friedreich, _allgemeine diagnostik der psychischen krankheiten_, second edition, , pp. - , quotes passages from various authors on this point, which he accepts; various writers of more recent date have made similar observations. the odor of sanctity was specially noted at death, and was doubtless confused with the _odor mortis_, which frequently precedes death and by some is regarded as an almost certain indication of its approach. in the _british medical journal_, for may and june, , will be found letters from several correspondents substantiating this point. one of these correspondents (dr. tuckey, of tywardwreath, cornwall) mentions that he has in cornwall often seen ravens flying over houses in which persons lay dying, evidently attracted by a characteristic odor. it must be borne in mind, however, that, while every person has, to a sensitive nose, a distinguishing odor, we must regard that odor either as but one of the various sensations given off by the body, or else as a combination of two or more of these emanations. the body in reality gives off a number of different odors. the most important of these are: ( ) the general skin odor, a faint, but agreeable, fragrance often to be detected on the skin even immediately after washing; ( ) the smell of the hair and scalp; ( ) the odor of the breath; ( ) the odor of the armpit; ( ) the odor of the feet; ( ) the perineal odor; ( ) in men the odor of the preputial smegma; ( ) in women the odor of the mons veneris, that of vulvar smegma, that of vaginal mucus, and the menstrual odor. all these are odors which may usually be detected, though sometimes only in a very faint degree, in healthy and well-washed persons under normal conditions. it is unnecessary here to take into account the special odors of various secretions and excretions.[ ] it is a significant fact, both as regards the ancestral sexual connections of the body odors and their actual sexual associations to-day, that, as hippocrates long ago noted, it is not until puberty that they assume their adult characteristics. the infant, the adult, the aged person, each has his own kind of smell, and, as monin remarks, it might be possible, within certain limits, to discover the age of a person by his odor. jorg in pointed out that in girls the appearance of a specific smell of the excreta indicates the establishment of puberty, and kaan, in his _psychopathia sexualis_, remarked that at puberty "the sweat gives out a more acrid odor resembling musk." in both sexes puberty, adolescence, early manhood and womanhood are marked by a gradual development of the adult odor of skin and excreta, in general harmony with the secondary sexual development of hair and pigment. venturi, indeed, has, not without reason, described the odor of the body as a secondary sexual character.[ ] it may be added that, as is the case with the pigment in various parts of the body in women, some of these odors tend to become exaggerated in sympathy with sexual and other emotional states. the odor of the infant is said to be of butyric acid; that of old people to resemble dry leaves. continent young men have been said by many ancient writers to smell more strongly than the unchaste, and some writers have described as "seminal odor"--an odor resembling that of animals in heat, faintly recalling that of the he-goat, according to venturi--the exhalations of the skin at such times. during sexual excitement, as women can testify, a man very frequently, if not normally, gives out an odor which, as usually described, proceeds from the skin, the breath, or both. grimaldi states that it is as of rancid butter; others say it resembles chloroform. it is said to be sometimes perceptible for a distance of several feet and to last for several hours after coitus. (various quotations are given by gould and pyle, _anomalies and curiosities of medicine_, section on "human odors," pp. - .) st. philip neri is said to have been able to recognize a chaste man by smell. during menstruation girls and young women frequently give off an odor which is quite distinct from that of the menstrual fluid, and is specially marked in the breath, which may smell of chloroform or violets. pouchet (confirmed by raciborski, _traité de la menstruation_, , p. ) stated that about a day before the onset of menstruation a characteristic smell is exuded. menstruating girls are also said sometimes to give off a smell of leather. aubert, of lyons (as quoted by galopin), describes the odor of the skin of a woman during menstruation as an agreeable aromatic or acidulous perfume of chloroform character. by some this is described as emanating especially from the armpits. sandras (quoted by raciborski) knew a lady who could always tell by a sensation of faintness and _malaise_--apparently due to a sensation of smell--when she was in contact with a menstruating woman. i am acquainted with a man, having strong olfactory sympathies and antipathies, who detects the presence of menstruation by smell. it is said that hortense baré, who accompanied her lover, the botanist commerson, to the pacific disguised as a man, was recognized by the natives as a woman by means of smell. women, like men, frequently give out an odor during coitus or strong sexual excitement. this odor may be entirely different from that normally emanating from the woman, of an acid or hircine character, and sufficiently strong to remain in a room for a considerable period. many of the ancient medical writers (as quoted by schurigius, _parthenologia_, p. ) described the goaty smell produced by venery, especially in women; they regarded it as specially marked in harlots and in the newly married, and sometimes even considered it a certain sign of defloration. the case has been recorded of a woman who emitted a rose odor for two days after coitus (mcbride, quoted by kiernan in an interesting summary, "odor in pathology," _doctor's magazine_, december, ). there was, it is said (_journal des savans_ , p. , quoting from the _journal d'angleterre_) a monk in prague who could recognize by smell the chastity of the women who approached him. (this monk, it is added, when he died, was composing a new science of odors.) gustav klein (as quoted by adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindungen des weibes_, p. ) argues that the special function of the glands at the vulvar orifice--the _glandulæ vestibulares majores_--is to give out an odorous secretion to act as an attraction to the male, this relic of sexual periodicity no longer, however, playing an important part in the human species. the vulvar secretion, however, it may be added, still has a more aromatic odor than the vaginal secretion, with its simple mucous odor, very clearly perceived during parturition. it may be added that we still know extremely little concerning the sexual odors of women among primitive peoples. ploss and bartels are only able to bring forward (_das weib_, , bd. , p. ) a statement concerning the women of new caledonia, who, according to moncelon, when young and ardent, give out during coitus a powerful odor which no ablution will remove. in abnormal states of sexual excitement such odor may be persistent, and, according to an ancient observation, a nymphomaniac, whose periods of sexual excitement lasted all through the spring-time, at these periods always emitted a goatlike odor. it has been said (g. tourdes, art. "aphrodisie," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_) that the erotic temperament is characterized by a special odor. if the body odors tend to develop at puberty, to be maintained during sexual life, especially in sympathy with conditions of sexual disturbance, and to become diminished in old age, being thus a kind of secondary sexual character, we should expect them to be less marked in those cases in which the primary sexual characters are less marked. it is possible that this is actually the case. hagen, in his _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, quotes from roubaud's _traité de l'impuissance_ the statement that the body odor of the castrated differs from that of normal individuals. burdach had previously stated that the odor of the eunuch is less marked than that of the normal man. it is thus possible that defective sexual development tends to be associated with corresponding olfactory defect. heschl[ ] has reported a case in which absence of both olfactory nerves coincided with defective development of the sexual organs. féré remarks that the impotent show a repugnance for sexual odors. dr. kiernan informs me that in women after oöphorectomy he has noted a tendency to diminished (and occasionally increased) sense of smell. these questions, however, await more careful and extended observation. a very significant transition from the phenomena of personal odor to those of sexual attraction by personal odor is to be found in the fact that among the peoples inhabiting a large part of the world's surface the ordinary salutation between friends is by mutual smelling of the person. in some form or another the method of salutation by applying the nose to the nose, face, or hand of a friend in greeting is found throughout a large part of the pacific, among the papuans, the eskimo, the hill tribes of india, in africa, and elsewhere.[ ] thus, among a certain hill tribe in india, according to lewin, they smell a friend's cheek: "in their language, they do not say, 'give me a kiss,' but they say 'smell me.'" and on the gambia, according to f. moore, "when the men salute the women, they, instead of shaking their hands, put it up to their noses, and smell twice to the back of it." here we have very clearly a recognition of the emotional value of personal odor widely prevailing throughout the world. the salutation on an olfactory basis may, indeed, be said to be more general than the salutation on a tactile basis on which european handshaking rests, each form involving one of the two most intimate and emotional senses. the kiss may be said to be a development proceeding both from the olfactory and the tactile bases, with perhaps some other elements as well, and is too complex to be regarded as a phenomenon of either purely tactile or purely olfactory origin.[ ] as the sole factor in sexual selection olfaction must be rare. it is said that asiatic princes have sometimes caused a number of the ladies to race in the seraglio garden until they were heated; their garments have then been brought to the prince, who has selected one of them solely by the odor.[ ] there was here a sexual selection mainly by odor. any exclusive efficacy of the olfactory sense is rare, not so much because the impressions of this sense are inoperative, but because agreeable personal odors are not sufficiently powerful, and the olfactory organ is too obtuse, to enable smell to take precedence of sight. nevertheless, in many people, it is probable that certain odors, especially those that are correlated with a healthy and sexually desirable person, tend to be agreeable; they are fortified by their association with the loved person, sometimes to an irresistible degree; and their potency is doubtless increased by the fact, to which reference has already been made, that many odors, including some bodily odors, are nervous stimulants. it is possible that the sexual associations of odors have been still further fortified by a tendency to correlation between a high development of the olfactory organ and a high development of the sexual apparatus. an association between a large nose and a large male organ is a very ancient observation and has been verified occasionally in recent times. there is normally at puberty a great increase in the septum of the nose, and it is quite conceivable, in view of the sympathy, which, as we shall see, certainly exists between the olfactory and sexual region, that the two regions may develop together under a common influence. the romans firmly believed in the connection between a large nose and a large penis. "noscitur e naso quanta sit hasta viro," stated ovid. this belief continued to prevail, especially in italy, through the middle ages; the physiognomists made much of it, and licentious women (like joanna of naples) were, it appears, accustomed to bear it in mind, although disappointment is recorded often to have followed. (see e.g., the quotations and references given by j.n. mackenzie, "physiological and pathological relations between the nose and the sexual apparatus in man." _johns hopkins hospital bulletin_, no. , january, ; also hagen, _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, pp. - .) a similar belief as to the association between the sexual impulse in women and a long nose was evidently common in england in the sixteenth century, for in massinger's _emperor of the east_ (act ii, scene i) we read, "her nose, which by its length assures me of storms at midnight if i fail to pay her the tribute she expects." at the present day, a proverb of the venetian people still embodies the belief in the connection between a large nose and a large sexual member. the probability that such an association tends in many cases to prevail is indicated not only by the beliefs of antiquity, when more careful attention was paid to these matters, but by the testimony of various modern observers, although it does not appear that any series of exact observations have yet been made. it may be noted that marro, in his careful anthropological study of criminals (_i caratteri dei delinquenti_), found no class of criminals with so large a proportion alike of anomalies of the nose and anomalies of the genital organs as sexual offenders. however this may be, it is less doubtful that there is a very intimate relation both in men and women between the olfactory mucous membrane of the nose and the whole genital apparatus, that they frequently show a sympathetic action, that influences acting on the genital sphere will affect the nose, and occasionally, it is probable, influences acting on the nose reflexly affect the genital sphere. to discuss these relationships would here be out of place, since specialists are not altogether in agreement concerning the matter. a few are inclined to regard the association as extremely intimate, so that each region is sensitive even to slight stimuli applied to the other region, while, on the other hand, many authorities ignore altogether the question of the relationship. it would appear, however, that there really is, in a considerable number of people at all events, a reflex connection of this kind. it has especially been noted that in many cases congestion of the nose precedes menstruation. bleeding of the nose is specially apt to occur at puberty and during adolescence, while in women it may take the place of menstruation and is sometimes more apt to occur at the menstrual periods; disorders of the nose have also been found to be aggravated at these periods. it has even been possible to control bleeding of the nose, both in men and women, by applying ice to the sexual regions. in both men and women, again, cases have been recorded in which sexual excitement, whether of coitus or masturbation, has been followed by bleeding of the nose. in numerous cases it is followed by slight congestive conditions of the nasal passages and especially by sneezing. various authors have referred to this phenomenon; i am acquainted with a lady in whom it is fairly constant.[ ] féré records the case of a lady, a nervous subject, who began to experience intense spontaneous sexual excitement shortly after marriage, accompanied by much secretion from the nose.[ ] j.n. mackenzie is acquainted with a number of such cases, and he considers that the popular expression "bride's cold" indicates that this effect of strong sexual excitement is widely recognized. the late professor hack, of freiburg, in , called general medical attention to the intimate connection between the nose and states of nervous hyperexcitability in various parts of the body, although such a connection had been recognized for many centuries in medical literature. while hack and his disciples thus gave prominence to this association, they undoubtedly greatly exaggerated its importance and significance. (sir felix semon, _british medical journal_, november , .) even many workers who have more recently further added to our knowledge have also, as sometimes happens with enthusiasts, unduly strained their own data. starting from the fact that in women during menstruation examination of the nose reveals a degree of congestion not found during the rest of the month, fliess (_die beziehungen zwischen nase und weiblichen geschlechtsorganen_, ), with the help of a number of elaborate and prolonged observations, has reached conclusions which, while they seem to be hazardous at some points, have certainly contributed to build up our knowledge of this obscure subject. schiff (_wiener klinische wochenschrift_, , p. , summarized in _british medical journal_, february , ), starting from a skeptical standpoint, has confirmed some of fliess's results, and in a large number of cases controlled painful menstruation by painting with cocaine the so-called "genital spots" in the nose, all possibility of suggestion being avoided. ries, of chicago, has been similarly successful with the method of fliess (_american gynæcology_, vol. iii, no. , ). benedikt (_wiener medicinische wochenschrift_, no. , , summarized in _journal of medical science_, october, ), while pointing out that the nose is not the only organ in sympathetic relation with the sexual sphere, suggests that the mechanism of the relationship is involved in the larger problem of the harmony in growth and in nutrition of the different parts of the organism. in this way, probably, we may attach considerable significance to the existence of a kind of erectile tissue in the nose. an interesting example of a reflex influence from the nose affecting the genital sphere has been brought forward by dr. e.s. talbot, of chicago: "a -year-old man was operated on (september , ) for the removal of the left cartilage of the septum of the nose owing to a previous traumatic fracture at the sixteenth year. no pain was experienced until two years ago, when a continual soreness occurred at the apical end of the fracture during the winter months. the operation was decided upon fearing more serious complications. the parts were cocainized. no pain was experienced in the operation except at one point at the lower posterior portion near the floor of the nose. a profound shock to the general system followed. the reflex influence of the pain upon the genital organs caused semen to flow continually for three weeks. treatment of general motor irritability with camphor monobromate and conium, on consultation with dr. kiernan, checked the flow. the discharge produced spinal neurasthenia. the legs and feet felt heavy. erythromelalgia caused uneasiness. the patient walked with difficulty. the tired feeling in the feet and limbs was quite noticeable four months after the operation, although the pain had, to a great extent diminished." (chicago academy of medicine, january, , and private letter.) j.n. mackenzie has brought together a great many original observations, together with interesting quotations from old medical literature, in his two papers: "the pathological nasal reflex" (_new york medical journal_, august , ) and "the physiological and pathological relations between the nose and the sexual apparatus of man" (_johns hopkins hospital bulletin_, january , ). a number of cases have also been brought together from the literature by g. endriss in his inaugural dissertation, _die bisherigen beobachtungen von physiologischen und pathologischen beziehungen der oberen luftwege zu den sexualorganen_, teil. ii, würzburg, . the intimate association between the sexual centers and the olfactory tract is well illustrated by the fact that this primitive and ancient association tends to come to the surface in insanity. it is recognized by many alienists that insanity of a sexual character is specially liable to be associated with hallucinations of smell. many eminent alienists in various countries are very decidedly of the opinion that there is a special tendency to the association of olfactory hallucinations with sexual manifestations, and, although one or two authorities have expressed doubt on the matter, the available evidence clearly indicates such an association. hallucinations of smell are comparatively rare as compared to hallucinations of sight and hearing; they are commoner in women than in men and they not infrequently occur at periods of sexual disturbance, at adolescence, in puerperal fever, at the change of life, in women with ovarian troubles, and in old people troubled with sexual desires or remorse for such desires. they have often been noted as specially frequent in cases of excessive masturbation. krafft-ebing, who found olfactory hallucinations common in various sexual states, considers that they are directly dependent on sexual excitement (_allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, bd. , ht. , ). conolly norman believes in a distinct and frequent association between olfactory hallucinations and sexual disturbance (_journal of mental science_, july, , p. ). savage is also impressed by the close association between sexual disturbance or changes in the reproductive organs and hallucinations of smell as well as of touch. he has found that persistent hallucinations of smell disappeared when a diseased ovary was removed, although the patient remained insane. he considers that such hallucinations of smell are allied to reversions. (g.h. savage, "smell, hallucinations of," tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_; cf. the same author's manual of _insanity and allied neuroses_.) matusch, while not finding olfactory hallucinations common at the climacteric, states that when they are present they are connected with uterine trouble and sexual craving. he finds them more common in young women. (matusch, "der einfluss des climacterium auf entstchung und form der geistesstörung," _allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, vol. xlvi, ht. ). féré has related a significant case of a young man in whom hallucinations of smell accompanied the sexual orgasm; he subsequently developed epilepsy, to which the hallucination then constituted the aura (_comptes rendus de la société de biologie_, december, ). the prevalence of a sexual element in olfactory hallucinations has been investigated by bullen, who examined into cases of hallucinations of smell among the patients in several asylums. (in a few cases there were reasons for believing that peripheral conditions existed which would render these hallucinations more strictly illusions.) of these, were women. sixteen of the women were climacteric cases, and of them had sexual hallucinations or delusions. fourteen other women (chiefly cases of chronic delusional insanity) had sexual delusions. altogether, men and women had sexual delusions. this is a large proportion. bullen is not, however, inclined to admit any direct connection between the reproductive system and the sense of smell. he finds that other hallucinations are very frequently associated with the olfactory hallucinations, and considers that the co-existence of olfactory and sexual troubles simply indicates a very deep and widespread nervous disturbance. (f. st. john bullen, "olfactory hallucinations in the insane," _journal of mental science_, july, .) in order to elucidate the matter fully we require further precise inquiries on the lines bullen has laid down. it may be of interest to note, in this connection, that smell and taste hallucinations appear to be specially frequent in forms of religious insanity. thus, dr. zurcher, in her inaugural dissertation on joan of arc (_jeanne d'arc_, leipzig, , p. ), estimates that on the average in such insanity nearly per cent, of the hallucinations affect smell and taste; she refers also to the olfactory hallucinations of great religious leaders, francis of assisi, katherina emmerich, lazzaretti, and the anabaptists. it may well be, as zwaardemaker has suggested in his _physiologie des geruchs_, that the nasal congestion at menstruation and similar phenomena are connected with that association of smell and sexuality which is observable throughout the whole animal world, and that the congestion brings about a temporary increase of olfactory sensitiveness during the stage of sexual excitation.[ ] careful investigation of olfactory acuteness would reveal the existence of such menstrual heightening of its acuity. in a few exceptional, but still quite healthy people, smell would appear to possess an emotional predominance which it cannot be said to possess in the average person. these exceptional people are of what binet in his study of sexual fetichism calls olfactive type; such persons form a group which, though of smaller size and less importance, is fairly comparable to the well-known groups of visual type, of auditory type, and of psychomotor type. such people would be more attentive to odors, more moved by olfactory sympathies and antipathies, than are ordinary people. for these, it may well be, the supremacy accorded to olfactory influences in jäger's _entdeckung der seele_, though extravagantly incorrect for ordinary persons, may appear quite reasonable. it is certain also that a great many neurasthenic people, and particularly those who are sexually neurasthenic, are peculiarly susceptible to olfactory influences. a number of eminent poets and novelists--especially, it would appear, in france--seem to be in this case. baudelaire, of all great poets, has most persistently and most elaborately emphasized the imaginative and emotional significance of odor; the _fleurs du mal_ and many of the _petits poèmes en prose_ are, from this point of view, of great interest. there can be no doubt that in baudelaire's own imaginative and emotional life the sense of smell played a highly important part; and that, in his own words, odor was to him what music is to others. throughout zola's novels--and perhaps more especially in _la faute de l'abbé mouret_--there is an extreme insistence on odors of every kind. prof. leopold bernard wrote an elaborate study of this aspect of zola's work[ ]; he believed that underlying zola's interest in odors there was an abnormally keen olfactory sensibility and large development of the olfactory region of the brain. such a supposition is, however, unnecessary, and, as a matter of fact, a careful examination of zola's olfactory sensibility, conducted by m. passy, showed that it was somewhat below normal.[ ] at the same time it was shown that zola was really a person of olfactory psychic type, with a special attention to odors and a special memory for them; as is frequently the case with perfumers with less than normal olfactory acuity he possessed a more than normal power of discriminating odors; it is possible that in early life his olfactory acuity may also have been above normal. in the same way nietzsche, in his writings, shows a marked sensibility, and especially antipathy, as regards odors, which has by some been regarded as an index to a real physical sensibility of abnormal keenness; according to möbius, however, there was no reason for supposing this to be the case.[ ] huysmans, who throughout his books reveals a very intense preoccupation with the exact shades of many kinds of sensory impressions, and an apparently abnormally keen sensibility to them, has shown a great interest in odors, more especially in an oft-quoted passage in _a rebours_. the blind milton of "paradise lost" (as the late mr. grant allen once remarked to me), dwells much on scents; in this case it is doubtless to the blindness and not to any special organic predisposition that we must attribute this direction of sensory attention.[ ] among our older english poets, also, herrick displays a special interest in odors with a definite realization of their sexual attractiveness.[ ] shelley, who was alive to so many of the unusual æsthetic aspects of things, often shows an enthusiastic delight in odors, more especially those of flowers. it may, indeed, be said that most poets--though to a less degree than those i have mentioned--devote a special attention to odors, and, since it has been possible to describe smell as the sense of imagination, this need not surprise us. that shakespeare, for instance, ranked this sense very high indeed is shown by various passages in his works and notably by sonnet liv: "o, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem?"--in which he implicitly places the attraction of odor on at least as high a level as that of vision.[ ] a neurasthenic sensitiveness to odors, specially sexual odors, is frequently accompanied by lack of sexual vigor. in this way we may account for the numerous cases in which old men in whom sexual desire survives the loss of virile powers--probably somewhat abnormal persons at the outset--find satisfaction in sexual odors. here, also, we have the basis for olfactory fetichism. in such fetichism the odor of the woman alone, whoever she may be and however unattractive she may be, suffices to furnish complete sexual satisfaction. in many, although not all, of those cases in which articles of women's clothing become the object of fetichistic attraction, there is certainly an olfactory element due to the personal odor attaching to the garments.[ ] olfactory influences play a certain part in various sexually abnormal tendencies and practices which do not proceed from an exclusively olfactory fascination. thus, _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_ derive part of their attraction, more especially in some individuals, from a predilection for the odors of the sexual parts. (see, e.g., moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. , p. .) in many cases smell plays no part in the attraction; "i enjoy _cunnilingus_, if i like the girl very much," a correspondent writes, "_in spite_ of the smell." we may associate this impulse with the prevalence of these practices among sexual inverts, in whom olfactory attractions are often specially marked. those individuals, also, who are sexually affected by the urinary and alvine excretions ("_renifleurs_," "_stereoraires_," etc.) are largely, though not necessarily altogether, moved by olfactory impressions. the attraction was, however, exclusively olfactory in the case of the young woman recorded by moraglia (_archivio di psichiatria_, , p. ), who was irresistibly excited by the odor of the fermented urine of men, and possibly also in the case narrated to moraglia by prof. l. bianchi (ib. p. ), in which a wife required flatus from her husband. the sexual pleasure derived from partial strangulation (discussed in the study of "love and pain" in a previous volume) may be associated with heightened olfactory sexual excitation. dr. kiernan, who points this out to me, has investigated a few neuropathic patients who like to have their necks squeezed, as they express it, and finds that in the majority the olfactory sensibility is thus intensified. even in ordinary normal persons, however, there can be no doubt that personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions and sexual repulsions. as a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. the comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to possess the same significance in sexual attraction in man that it possesses in the lower animals. with that reservation there can be no doubt that odor has a certain favorable or unfavorable influence in sexual relationships in all human races from the lowest to the highest. the polynesian spoke with contempt of those women of european race who "have no smell," and in view of the pronounced personal odor of so many savage peoples as well as of the careful attention which they so often pay to odors, we may certainly assume, even in the absence of much definite evidence, that smell counts for much in their sexual relationships. this is confirmed by such practices as that found among some primitive peoples--as, it is stated, in the philippines--of lovers exchanging their garments to have the smell of the loved one about them. in the barbaric stages of society this element becomes self-conscious and is clearly avowed; personal odors are constantly described with complacency, sometimes as mingled with the lavish use of artificial perfumes, in much of the erotic literature produced in the highest stages of barbarism, especially by eastern peoples living in hot climates; it is only necessary to refer to the _song of songs_, the _arabian nights_, and the indian treatises on love. even in some parts of europe the same influence is recognized in the crudest animal form, and krauss states that among the southern slavs it is sometimes customary to leave the sexual parts unwashed because a strong odor of these parts is regarded as a sexual stimulant. under the usual conditions of life in europe personal odor has sunk into the background; this has been so equally under the conditions of classic, mediæval, and modern life. personal odor has been generally regarded as unæsthetic; it has, for the most part, only been mentioned to be reprobated, and even those poets and others who during recent centuries have shown a sensitive delight and interest in odors--herrick, shelley, baudelaire, zola, and huysmans--have seldom ventured to insist that a purely natural and personal odor can be agreeable. the fact that it may be so, and that for most people such odors cannot be a matter of indifference in the most intimate of all relationships, is usually only to be learned casually and incidentally. there can be no doubt, however, that, as kiernan points out, the extent to which olfaction influences the sexual sphere in civilized man has been much underestimated. we need not, therefore, be surprised at the greater interest which has recently been taken in this subject. as usually happens, indeed, there has been in some writers a tendency to run to the opposite extreme, and we cannot, with gustav jäger, regard the sexual instinct as mainly or altogether an olfactory matter. of the padmini, the perfect woman, the "lotus woman," hindu writers say that "her sweat has the odor of musk," while the vulgar woman, they say, smells of fish (_kama sutra of vatsyayana_). ploss and bartels (_das weib_, , p. ) bring forward a passage from the tamil _kokkôgam_, minutely describing various kinds of sexual odor in women, which they regard as resting on sound observation. four things in a woman, says the arab, should be perfumed: the mouth, the armpits, the pudenda, and the nose. the persian poets, in describing the body, delighted to use metaphors involving odor. not only the hair and the down on the face, but the chin, the mouth, the beauty spots, the neck, all suggested odorous images. the epithets applied to the hair frequently refer to musk, ambergris, and civet. (_anis el-ochchâq_ translated by huart, _bibliothèque de l'ecole des hautes etudes_, fasc. , .) the hebrew _song of songs_ furnishes a typical example of a very beautiful eastern love-poem in which the importance of the appeal to the sense of smell is throughout emphasized. there are in this short poem as many as twenty-four fairly definite references to odors,--personal odors, perfumes, and flowers,--while numerous other references to flowers, etc., seem to point to olfactory associations. both the lover and his sweetheart express pleasure in each other's personal odor. "my beloved is unto me," she sings, "as a bag of myrrh that lieth between my breasts; my beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyard of en-gedi." and again: "his cheeks are as a bed of spices [or balsam], as banks of sweet herbs." while of her he says: "the smell of thy breath [or nose] is like apples." greek and roman antiquity, which has so largely influenced the traditions of modern europe, was lavish in the use of perfumes, but showed no sympathy with personal odors. for the roman satirists, like martial, a personal odor is nearly always an unpleasant odor, though, there are a few allusions in classic literature recognizing bodily smell as a sexual attraction. ovid, in his _ars amandi_ (book iii), says it is scarcely necessary to remind a lady that she must not keep a goat in her armpits: "_ne trux caper iret in alas_." "_mulier tum bene olet ubi nihil olet_" is an ancient dictum, and in the sixteenth century montaigne still repeated the same saying with complete approval. a different current of feeling began to appear with the new emotional movement during the eighteenth century. rousseau called attention to the importance of the olfactory sense, and in his educational work, _emile_ (bk. ii), he referred to the odor of a woman's "_cabinet de toilette_" as not so feeble a snare as is commonly supposed. in the same century casanova wrote still more emphatically concerning the same point; in the preface to his _mémoires_ he states: "i have always found sweet the odor of the women i have loved"; and elsewhere: "there is something in the air of the bedroom of the woman one loves, something so intimate, so balsamic, such voluptuous emanations, that if a lover had to choose between heaven and this place of delight his hesitation would not last for a moment" (_mémoires_, vol. iii). in the previous century, in england, sir kenelm digby, in his interesting and remarkable _private memoirs_, when describing a visit to lady venetia stanley, afterward his wife, touches on personal odor as an element of attraction; he had found her asleep in bed and on her breasts "did glisten a few drops of sweatlike diamond sparks, and had a more fragrant odor than the violets or primroses whose season was newly passed." in cadet-devaux published, in the _revue encyclopédique_, a study entitled "de l'atmosphère de la femme et de sa puissance," which attracted a great deal of attention in germany as well as in france; he considered that the exhalations of the feminine body are of the first importance in sexual attraction. prof. a. galopin in wrote a semiscientific book, _le parfum de la femme_, in which the sexual significance of personal odor is developed to its fullest. he writes with enthusiasm concerning the sweet and health-giving character of the natural perfume of a beloved woman, and the mischief done both to health and love by the use of artificial perfumes. "the purest marriage that can be contracted between a man and a woman," he asserts (p. ) "is that engendered by olfaction and sanctioned by a common assimilation in the brain of the animated molecules due to the secretion and evaporation of two bodies in contact and sympathy." in a book written during the first half of the nineteenth century which contains various subtle observations on love we read, with reference to the sweet odor which poets have found in the breath of women: "in reality many women have an intoxicatingly agreeable breath which plays no small part in the love-compelling atmosphere which they spread around them" (_eros oder wörterbuch über die physiologie_, , bd. , p. ). most of the writers on the psychology of love at this period, however, seem to have passed over the olfactory element in sexual attraction, regarding it probably as too unæsthetic. it receives no emphasis either in sénancour's _de l'amour_ or stendhal's _de l'amour_ or michelet's _l'amour_. the poets within recent times have frequently referred to odors, personal and other, but the novelists have more rarely done so. zola and huysmans, the two novelists who have most elaborately and insistently developed the olfactory side of life, have dwelt more on odors that are repulsive than on those that are agreeable. it is therefore of interest to note that in a few remarkable novels of recent times the attractiveness of personal odor has been emphasized. this is notably so in tolstoy's _war and peace_, in which count peter suddenly resolves to marry princess helena after inhaling her odor at a ball. in d'annunzio's _trionfo della morte_ the seductive and consoling odor of the beloved woman's skin is described in several passages; thus, when giorgio kissed ippolita's arms and shoulders, we are told, "he perceived the sharp and yet delicate perfume of her, the perfume of the skin that in the hour of joy became intoxicating as that of the tuberose, and a terrible lash to desire." when we are dealing with the sexual significance of personal odors in man there is at the outset an important difference to be noticed in comparison with the lower mammals. not only is the significance of odor altogether very much less, but the focus of olfactory attractiveness has been displaced. the centre of olfactory attractiveness is not, as usually among animals, in the sexual region, but is transferred to the upper part of the body. in this respect the sexual olfactory allurement in man resembles what we find in the sphere of vision, for neither the sexual organs of man nor of woman are usually beautiful in the eyes of the opposite sex, and their exhibition is not among us regarded as a necessary stage in courtship. the odor of the body, like its beauty, in so far as it can be regarded as a possible sexual allurement, has in the course of development been transferred to the upper parts. the careful concealment of the sexual region has doubtless favored this transfer. it has thus happened that when personal odor acts as a sexual allurement it is the armpit, in any case normally the chief focus of odor in the body, which mainly comes into play, together with the skin and the hair. aubert, of lyons, noted that during menstruation the odor of the armpits may become more powerful, and describes it as being at this time an aromatic odor of acidulous or chloroform character. galopin remarks that, while some women's armpits smell of sheep in rut, others, when exposed to the air, have a fragrance of ambergris or violet. dark persons (according to gould and pyle) are said sometimes to exhale a prussic acid odor, and blondes more frequently musk; galopin associates the ambergris odor more especially with blondes. while some european poets have faintly indicated the woman's armpit as a centre of sexual attraction, it is among eastern poets that we may find the idea more directly and naturally expressed. thus, in a chinese drama ("the transmigration of yo-chow," _mercure de france_, no. , ) we find a learned young doctor addressing the following poem to his betrothed:-- "when i have climbed to the bushy summit of mount chao, i have still not reached to the level of your odorous armpit. i must needs mount to the sky before the breeze brings to me the perfume of that embalsamed nest!" this poet seems, however, to have been carried to a pitch of enthusiasm unusual even in china, for his future mother-in-law, after expressing her admiration for the poem, remarks: "but who would have thought one could find so many beautiful things under my daughter's armpit!" the odor of the armpit is the most powerful in the body, sufficiently powerful to act as a muscular stimulant even in the absence of any direct sexual association. this is indicated by an observation made by féré, who noticed, when living opposite a laundry, that an old woman who worked near the window would, toward the close of the day, introduce her right hand under the sleeve of the other to the armpit and then hold it to her nose; this she would do about every five minutes. it was evident that the odor acted as a stimulant to her failing energies. féré has been informed by others who have had occasion to frequent workrooms that this proceeding is by no means uncommon among persons of both sexes. (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. .) i have myself noticed the same gesture very deliberately made in the street by a young english woman of the working class, under circumstances which suggested that it acted as an immediate stimulant in fatigue. huysmans--who in his novels has insisted on odors, both those of a personal kind and perfumes, with great precision--has devoted one of the sketches, "le gousset," in his _croquis parisiens_ ( ) to the varying odors of women's armpits. "i have followed this fragrance in the country," he remarks, "behind a group of women gleaners under the bright sun. it was excessive and terrible; it stung your nostrils like an unstoppered bottle of alkali; it seized you, irritating your mucous membrane with a rough odor which had in it something of the relish of wild duck cooked with olives and the sharp odor of the shallot. on the whole, it was not a vile or repugnant emanation; it united, as an anticipated thing, with the formidable odors of the landscape; it was the pure note, completing with the human animals' cry of heat the odorous melody of beasts and woods." he goes on to speak of the perfume of feminine arms in the ball-room. "there the aroma is of ammoniated valerian, of chlorinated urine, brutally accentuated sometimes, even with a slight scent of prussic acid about it, a faint whiff of overripe peaches." these "spice-boxes," however, huysmans continues, are more seductive when their perfume is filtered through the garments. "the appeal of the balsam of their arms is then less insolent, less cynical, than at the ball where they are more naked, but it more easily uncages the animal in man. various as the color of the hair, the odor of the armpit is infinitely divisible; its gamut covers the whole keyboard of odors, reaching the obstinate scents of syringa and elder, and sometimes recalling the sweet perfume of the rubbed fingers that have held a cigarette. audacious and sometimes fatiguing in the brunette and the black woman, sharp and fierce in the red woman, the armpit is heady as some sugared wines in the blondes." it will be noted that this very exact description corresponds at various points with the remarks of more scientific observers. sometimes the odor of the armpit may even become a kind of fetich which is craved for its own sake and in itself suffices to give pleasure. féré has recorded such a case, in a friend of his own, a man of , with whom at one time he used to hunt, of robust health and belonging to a healthy family. on these hunting expeditions he used to tease the girls and women he met (sometimes even rather old women) in a surprising manner, when he came upon them walking in the fields with their short-sleeved chemises exposed. when he had succeeded in introducing his hand into the woman's armpit he went away satisfied, and frequently held the hand to his nose with evident pleasure. after long hesitation féré asked for an explanation, which was frankly given. as a child he had liked the odor, without knowing why. as a young man women with strong odors had stimulated him to extraordinary sexual exploits, and now they were the only women who had any influence on him. he professed to be able to recognize continence by the odor, as well as the most favorable moment for approaching a woman. throughout life a cold in the head had always been accompanied by persistent general excitement. (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, , p. .) we not only have to recognize that in the course of evolution the specific odors of the sexual region have sunk into the background as a source of sexual allurements, we have further to recognize the significant fact that even those personal odors which are chiefly liable under normal circumstances to come occasionally within the conscious sexual sphere, and indeed purely personal odors of all kinds, fail to exert any attraction, but rather tend to cause antipathy, unless some degree of tumescence has already been attained. that is to say, our olfactory experiences of the human body approximate rather to our tactile experiences of it than to our visual experiences. sight is our most intellectual sense, and we trust ourselves to it with comparative boldness without any undue dread that its messages will hurt us by their personal intimacy; we even court its experiences, for it is the chief organ of our curiosity, as smell is of a dog's. but smell with us has ceased to be a leading channel of intellectual curiosity. personal odors do not, as vision does, give us information that is very largely intellectual; they make an appeal that is mainly of an intimate, emotional, imaginative character. they thus tend, when we are in our normal condition, to arouse what james calls the antisexual instinct. "i cannot understand how people do not see how the senses are connected," said jenny lind to j.a. symonds (horatio brown, _j.a. symonds_, vol. i, p. ). "what i have suffered from my sense of smell! my youth was misery from my acuteness of sensibility." mantegazza discusses the strength of olfactory antipathies (_fisiologia dell' odio_, p. ), and mentions that once when ill in paraguay he was nursed by an indian girl of , who was fresh as a peach and extremely clean, but whose odor--"a mixture of wild beast's lair and decayed onions"--caused nausea and almost made him faint. moll (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ) records the case of a neuropathic man who was constantly rendered impotent by his antipathy to personal body odors. it had very frequently happened to him to be attracted by the face and appearance of a girl, but at the last moment potency was inhibited by the perception of personal odor. in the case of a man of distinguished ability known to me, belonging to a somewhat neuropathic family, there is extreme sensitiveness to the smell of a woman, which is frequently the most obvious thing to him about her. he has seldom known a woman whose natural perfume entirely suits him, and his olfactory impressions have frequently been the immediate cause of a rupture of relationships. it was formerly discussed whether strong personal odor constituted adequate ground for divorce. hagen, who brings forward references on this point (_sexuelle osphrésiologie_, pp. - ), considers that the body odors are normally and naturally repulsive because they are closely associated with the capryl group of odors, which are those of many of the excretions. olfactory antipathies are, however, often strictly subordinated to the individual's general emotional attitude toward the object from which they emanate. this is illustrated in the case, known to me, of a man who on a hot day entering a steamboat with a woman to whom he was attached seated himself between her and a man, a stranger. he soon became conscious of an axillary odor which he concluded to come from the man and which he felt as disagreeable. but a little later he realized that it proceeded from his own companion, and with this discovery the odor at once lost its disagreeable character. in this respect a personal odor resembles a personal touch. two intimate touches of the hand, though of precisely similar physical quality, may in their emotional effects be separated by an immeasurable interval, in dependence on our attitude toward the person from whom they proceed. personal odor, in order to make its allurement felt, and not to arouse antipathy, must, in normal persons, have been preceded by conditions which have inhibited the play of the antisexual instinct. a certain degree of tumescence must already have been attained. it is even possible, when we bear in mind the intimate sympathy between the sexual sphere and the nose, that the olfactory organ needs to have its sensibility modified in a form receptive to sexual messages, though such an assumption is by no means necessary. it is when such a faint preliminary degree of tumescence has been attained, however it may have been attained,--for the methods of tumescence, as we know, are innumerable,--that a sympathetic personal odor is enabled to make its appeal. if we analyze the cases in which olfactory perceptions have proved potent in love, we shall nearly always find that they have been experienced under circumstances favorable for the occurrence of tumescence. when this is not the case we may reasonably suspect the presence of some degree of perversion. in the oft-quoted case of the austrian peasant who found that he was aided in seducing young women by dancing with them and then wiping their faces with a handkerchief he had kept in his armpit, we may doubtless regard the preliminary excitement of the dance as an essential factor in the influence produced. in the same way, i am acquainted with the ease of a lady not usually sensitive to simple body odors (though affected by perfumes and flowers) who on one occasion, when already in a state of sexual erethism, was highly excited when perceiving the odor of her lover's axilla. the same influence of preliminary excitement may be seen in another instance known to me, that of a gentlemen who when traveling abroad fell in with three charming young ladies during a long railway journey. he was conscious of a pleasurable excitement caused by the prolonged intimacy of the journey, but this only became definitely sexual when the youngest of the ladies, stretching before him to look out of the window and holding on to the rack above, accidentally brought her axilla into close proximity with his face, whereupon erection was caused, although he himself regards personal odors, at all events when emanating from strangers, as indifferent or repulsive. a medical correspondent, referring to the fact that with many men (indeed women also) sexual excitement occurs after dancing for a considerable time, remarks that he considers the odor of the woman's sweat is here a considerable factor. the characteristics of olfaction which our investigation has so far revealed have not, on the whole, been favorable to the influence of personal odors as a sexual attraction in civilized men. it is a primitive sense which had its flowering time before men arose; it is a comparatively unæsthetic sense; it is a somewhat obtuse sense which among europeans is usually incapable of perceiving the odor of the "human flower"--to use goethe's phrase--except on very close contact, and on this account, and on account of the fact that it is a predominantly emotional sense, personal odors in ordinary social intercourse are less likely to arouse the sexual instinct than the antisexual instinct. if a certain degree of tumescence is required before a personal odor can exert an attractive influence, a powerful personal odor, strong enough to be perceived before any degree of tumescence is attained, will tend to cause repulsion, and in so doing tend, consciously or unconsciously, to excite prejudice against personal odor altogether. this is actually the case in civilization, and most people, it would appear, view with more or less antipathy the personal odors of those persons to whom they are not sexually attracted, while their attitude is neutral in this respect toward the individuals to whom they are sexually attracted.[ ] the following statement by a correspondent seems to me to express the experience of the majority of men in this respect: "i do not notice that different people have different smells. certain women i have known have been in the habit of using particular scents, but no associations could be aroused if i were to smell the same scent now, for i should not identify it. as a boy i was very fond of scent, and i associate this with my marked sexual proclivities. i like a woman to use a little scent. it rouses my sexual feelings, but not to any large extent. i dislike the smell of a woman's vagina." while the last statement seems to express the feeling of many if not most men, it may be proper to add that there seems no natural reason why the vulvar odor of a clean and healthy woman should be other than agreeable to a normal man who is her lover. in literature it is the natural odor of women rather than men which receives attention. we should expect this to be the case since literature is chiefly produced by men. the question as to whether men or women are really more apt to be sexually influenced in this way cannot thus be decided. among animals, it seems probable, both sexes are alike influenced by odors, for, while it is usually the male whose sexual regions are furnished with special scent glands, when such occur, the peculiar odor of the female during the sexual season is certainly not less efficacious as an allurement to the male. if we compare the general susceptibility of men and women to agreeable odors, apart from the question of sexual allurement, there can be little doubt that it is most marked among women. as groos points out, even among children little girls are more interested in scents than boys, and the investigations of various workers, especially garbini, have shown that there is actually a greater power of discriminating odors among girls than among boys. marro has gone further, and in an extended series of observations on girls before and after the establishment of puberty--which is of considerable interest from the point of view of the sexual significance of olfaction--he has shown reason to believe that girls acquire an increased susceptibility to odors when sexual life begins, although they show no such increased powers as regards the other senses.[ ] on the whole, it would appear that, while women are not apt to be seriously affected, in the absence of any preliminary excitation, by crude body odors, they are by no means insusceptible to the sexual influence of olfactory impressions. it is probable, indeed, that they are more affected, and more frequently affected, in this way, than are men. edouard de goncourt, in his novel _chérie_--the intimate history of a young girl, founded, he states, on much personal observation--describes (chapter lxxxv) the delight with which sensuous, but chaste young girls often take in strong perfumes. "perfume and love," he remarks, "impart delights which are closely allied." in an earlier chapter (xliv) he writes of his heroine at the age of : "the intimately happy emotion which the young girl experienced in reading _paul et virginie_ and other honestly amorous books she sought to make more complete and intense and penetrating by soaking the book with scent, and the love-story reached her senses and imagination through pages moist with liquid perfume." carbini (_archivio per l'antropologia_, , fasc. ) in a very thorough investigation of a large number of children, found that the earliest osmo-gustative sensations occurred in the fourth week in girls, the fifth week in boys; the first real and definite olfactory sensations appeared in the fifteenth month in girls, in the sixteenth in boys; while experiments on several hundred children between the ages of and years showed the girls slightly, but distinctly, superior to the boys. it may, of course, be argued that these results merely show a somewhat greater precocity of girls. i have summarized the main investigations into this question in _man and woman_, revised and enlarged edition, , pp. - . on the whole, they seem to indicate greater olfactory acuteness on the part of women, but the evidence is by no means altogether concordant in this sense. popular and general scientific opinion is also by no means always in harmony. thus, tardif, in his book on odors in relation to the sexual instinct, throughout assumes, as a matter of course, that the sense of smell is most keen in men; while, on the other hand, i note that in a pamphlet by mr. martin perls, a manufacturing perfumer, it is stated with equal confidence that "it is a well-known fact that ladies have, even without a practice of long standing, a keener sense of smell than men," and on this account he employs a staff of young ladies for testing perfumes by smell in the laboratory by the glazed paper test. it is sometimes said that the use of strong perfumes by women indicates a dulled olfactory organ. on the other hand, it is said that the use of tobacco deadens the sensitiveness of the masculine nose. both these statements seem to be without foundation. the use of a large amount of perfume is rather a question of taste than a question of sensory acuteness (not to mention that those who live in an atmosphere of perfume are, of course, only faintly conscious of it), and the chemist perfumer in his laboratory surrounded by strong odors can distinguish them all with great delicacy. as regards tobacco, in spain the _cigarreras_ are women and girls who live perpetually in an atmosphere of tobacco, and señora pardo bazan, who knows them well, remarks in her novel, _la tribuna_, which deals with life in a tobacco factory, that "the acuity of the sense of smell of the _cigarreras_ is notable, and it would seem that instead of blunting the nasal membrane the tobacco makes the olfactory nerves keener." "it was the same as if i was in a sweet apple garden, from the sweetness that came to me when the light wind passed over them and stirred their clothes," a woman is represented as saying concerning a troop of handsome men in the irish sagas (_cuchulain of muirthemne_, p. ). the pleasure and excitement experienced by a woman in the odor of her lover is usually felt concerning a vague and mixed odor which may be characteristic, but is not definitely traceable to any specific bodily sexual odor. the general odor of the man she loves, one woman states, is highly, sometimes even overwhelmingly, attractive to her; but the specific odor of the male sexual organs which she describes as fishy has no attraction. a man writes that in his relations with women he has never been able to detect that they were influenced by the axillary or other specific odors. a woman writes: "to me any personal odor, as that of perspiration, is very disagreeable, and the healthy _naked_ human body is very free from any odor. fresh perspiration has no disagreeable smell; it is only by retention in the clothing that it becomes objectionable. the faint smell of smoke which lingers round men who smoke much is rather exciting to me, but only when it is _very_ faint. if at all strong it becomes disagreeable. as most of the men who have attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association of ideas. it has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant smell became attractive in connection with some particular person. in this case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold cigar or cigarette. it was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume. i think, however, only a very strong attraction could overcome a dislike of this sort, and i doubt if i could experience such a twist-round if it had been a personal odor. stale tobacco, though nasty, conveys no mentally disagreeable idea. i mean it does not suggest dirt or unhealthiness." it is probably significant of the somewhat considerable part which, in one way or another, odors and perfumes play in the emotional life of women, that, of the women whose sexual histories are recorded in appendix b of vol. iii of these _studies_, all are liable to experience sexual effects from olfactory stimuli, of them from personal odors (though this fact is not in every case brought out in the histories as recorded), while of the men not one has considered his olfactory experiences in this respect as worthy of mention. the very marked sexual fascination which odor, associated with the men they love, exerts on women has easily passed unperceived, since women have not felt called upon to proclaim it. in sexual inversion, however, when the woman takes a more active and outspoken part than in normal love, it may very clearly be traced. here, indeed, it is often exaggerated, in consequence of the common tendency for neurotic and neurasthenic persons to be more than normally susceptible to the influence of odors. in the majority of inverted women, it may safely be said, the odor of the beloved person plays a very considerable part. thus, one inverted woman asks the woman she loves to send her some of her hair that she may intoxicate herself in solitude with its perfume (_archivio di psicopatie sessuali_, vol. i, fasc. , p. ). again, a young girl with some homosexual tendencies, was apt to experience sexual emotions when in ordinary contact with schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. ). such examples are fairly typical. that the body odor of men may in a large number of cases be highly agreeable and sexually attractive is shown by the testimony of male sexual inverts. there is abundant evidence to this effect. raffalovich (_l'uranisme et l'unisexualité_, p. ) insists on the importance of body odors as a sexual attraction to the male invert, and is inclined to think that the increased odor of the man's own body during sexual excitement may have an auto-aphrodisiacal effect which is reflected on the body of the loved person. the odor of peasants, of men who work in the open air, is specially apt to be found attractive. moll mentions the case of an inverted man who found the "forest, mosslike odor" of a schoolfellow irresistibly attractive. the following passage from a letter written by an italian marquis has been sent to me: "bonifazio stripped one evening, to give me pleasure. he has the full, rounded flesh and amber coloring which painters of the giorgione school gave to their s. sebastians. when he began to dress, i took up an old _fascia_, or girdle of netted silk, which was lying under his breeches, and which still preserved the warmth of his body. i buried my face in it, and was half inebriated by its exquisite aroma of young manhood and fresh hay. he told me he had worn it for two years. no wonder it was redolent of him. i asked him to let me keep it as a souvenir. he smiled and said: 'you like it because it has lain so long upon my _panoia_.' 'yes, just so,' i replied; 'whenever i kiss it, thus and thus, it will bring you back to me.' sometimes i tie it round my naked waist before i go to bed. the smell of it is enough to cause a powerful erection, and the contact of its fringes with my testicles and phallus has once or twice produced an involuntary emission." i may here reproduce a communication which has reached me concerning the attractiveness of the odor of peasants: "one predominant attraction of these men is that they are pure and clean; their bodies in a state of healthy normal function. then they possess, if they are temperate, what the greek poet straton called the phydikê chrôtos (a quality which, according to this authority, is never found in women). this 'natural fair perfume of the flesh' is a peculiar attribute of young men who live in the open air and deal with natural objects. even their perspiration has an odor very different from that of girls in ball-rooms: more refined, ethereal, pervasive, delicate, and difficult to seize. when they have handled hay--in the time of hay-harvest, or in winter, when they bring hay down from mountain huts--the youthful peasants carry about with them the smell of 'a field the lord hath blessed.' their bodies and their clothes exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and sex combined. every gland of the robust frame seems to have accumulated scent from herbs and grasses, which slowly exudes from the cool, fresh skin of the lad. you do not perceive it in a room. you must take the young man's hands and bury your face in them, or be covered with him under the same blanket in one bed, to feel this aroma. no sensual impression on the nerves of smell is more poignantly impregnated with spiritual poetry--the poetry of adolescence, and early hours upon the hills, and labor cheerfully accomplished, and the harvest of god's gifts to man brought home by human industry. it is worth mentioning that aristophanes, in his description of the perfect athenian ephebus, dwells upon his being redolent of natural perfumes." in a passage in the second part of _faust_ goethe (who appears to have felt considerable interest in the psychology of smell) makes three women speak concerning the ambrosiacal odor of young men. in this connection, also, i note a passage in a poem ("appleton house") by our own english poet marvell, which it is of interest to quote:-- "and now the careless victors play, dancing the triumphs of the hay, when every mower's wholesome heat smells like an alexander's sweat. their females fragrant as the mead which they in fairy circles tread, when at their dance's end they kiss, their new-mown hay not sweeter is." footnotes: [ ] r. andree, "völkergeruch," in _ethnographische parallelen_, neue folge, , pp. - , brings together many passages describing the odors of various peoples. hagen, _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, pp. et seq., has a chapter on the subject; joest, supplement to _international archiv für ethnographie_, , p. , has an interesting passage on the smells of various races, as also waitz, _introduction to anthropology_, p. . cf. sir h.h. johnston, _british central africa_, p. ; t.h. parke, _experiences in equatorial africa_, p. ; e.h. man, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. ; brough smyth, _aborigines of victoria_, vol. i, p. ; d'orbigny, _l'homme américain_, vol. i, p. , etc. [ ] b. adachi "geruch der europaer," _globus_, , no. . [ ] hagen quotes testimonies on this point, _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, p. . the negro, castellani states, considers that europeans have a smell of death. [ ] _reports of the cambridge anthropological expedition_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] waitz, _introduction to anthropology_, p. . [ ] monin, _les odeurs du corps humain_, second edition, paris, , discusses briefly but comprehensively the normal and more especially the pathological odors of the body and of its secretions and excretions. [ ] venturi, _degenerazione psicho-sessuale_, p. . [ ] quoted by féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, , p. . [ ] h. ling roth, "on salutations," _journal of the anthropological institute_, november, . [ ] see appendix a: "the origins of the kiss." [ ] see, e.g., passage quoted by i. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, p. . [ ] it must at the same time be remembered that the more or less degree of exposure involved by sexual intercourse is itself a cause of nasal congestion and sneezing. [ ] féré, _pathologie des emotions_, p. [ ] j.n. mackenzie similarly suggests (_johns hopkins hospital bulletin_, no. , ) that "irritation and congestion of the nasal mucous membrane precede, or are the excitants of, the olfactory impression that forms the connecting link between the sense of smell and erethism of the reproductive organs exhibited in the lower animals." [ ] _les odeurs dans les romans de zola_, montpellier, . [ ] toulouse, _emile zola_, pp. - , - . [ ] p.j. möbius, _das pathologische bei nietzsche_. [ ] moll has a passage on the sense of smell in the blind, more especially in sexual respects, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. , pp. et seq. [ ] see, for instance, his poem, "love perfumes all parts," in which he declares that "hands and thighs and legs are all richly aromatical." and compare the lyrics entitled "a song to the maskers," "on julia's breath," "upon julia's unlacing herself," "upon julia's sweat," and "to mistress anne soame." [ ] there are various indications that goethe was attentive to the attraction of personal odors; and that he experienced this attraction himself is shown by the fact that, as he confessed, when he once had to leave weimar on an official journey for two days he took a bodice of frau von stein's away in order to carry the scent of her body with him. [ ] hagen has brought together from the literature of the subject a number of typical cases of olfactory fetichism, _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, , pp. et seq. [ ] moll's inquiries among normal persons have also shown that few people are conscious of odor as a sexual attraction. (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_. bd. i, p. .) [ ] marro, _la, pubertà_, , chapter ii. tardif found in boys that perfumes exerted little or no influence on circulation and respiration before puberty, though his observations on this point were too few to carry weight. iv. the influence of perfumes--their aboriginal relationship to sexual body odors--this true even of the fragrance of flowers--the synthetic manufacture of perfumes--the sexual effects of perfumes--perfumes perhaps originally used to heighten the body odors--the special significance of the musk odor--its wide natural diffusion in plants and animals and man--musk a powerful stimulant--its widespread use as a perfume--peau d'espagne--the smell of leather and its occasional sexual effects--the sexual influence of the odors of flowers--the identity of many plant odors with certain normal and abnormal body odors--the smell of semen in this connection. so far we have been mainly concerned with purely personal odors. it is, however, no longer possible to confine the discussion of the sexual significance of odor within the purely animal limit. the various characteristics of personal odor which have been noted--alike those which tend to make it repulsive and those which tend to make it attractive--have led to the use of artificial perfumes, to heighten the natural odor when it is regarded as attractive, to disguise it when it is regarded as repellent; while at the same time, happily covering both of these impulses, has developed the pure delight in perfume for its own agreeableness, the æsthetic side of olfaction. in this way--although in a much less constant and less elaborate manner--the body became adorned to the sense of smell just as by clothing and ornament it is adorned to the sense of sight. but--and this is a point of great significance from our present standpoint--we do not really leave the sexual sphere by introducing artificial perfumes. the perfumes which we extract from natural products, or, as is now frequently the case, produce by chemical synthesis, are themselves either actually animal sexual odors or allied in character or composition, to the personal odors they are used to heighten or disguise. musk is the product of glands of the male _moschus moschiferus_ which correspond to preputial sebaceous glands; castoreum is the product of similar sexual glands in the beaver, and civet likewise from the civet; ambergris is an intestinal calculus found in the rectum of the cachelot.[ ] not only, however, are nearly all the perfumes of animal origin, in use by civilized man, odors which have a specially sexual object among the animals from which they are derived, but even the perfumes of flowers may be said to be of sexual character. they are given out at the reproductive period in the lives of plants, and they clearly have very largely as their object an appeal to the insects who secure plant fertilization, such appeal having as its basis the fact that among insects themselves olfactory sensibility has in many cases been developed in their own mating.[ ] there is, for example, a moth in which both sexes are similarly and inconspicuously marked, but the males diffuse an agreeable odor, said to be like pineapple, which attracts the females.[ ] if, therefore, the odors of flowers have developed because they proved useful to the plant by attracting insects or other living creatures, it is obvious that the advantage would lie with those plants which could put forth an animal sexual odor of agreeable character, since such an odor would prove fascinating to animal creatures. we here have a very simple explanation of the fundamental identity of odors in the animal and vegetable worlds. it thus comes about that from a psychological point of view we are not really entering a new field when we begin to discuss the influence of perfumes other than those of the animal body. we are merely concerned with somewhat more complex or somewhat more refined sexual odors; they are not specifically different from the human odors and they mingle with them harmoniously. popular language bears witness to the truth of this statement, and the normal and abnormal human odors, as we have already seen, are constantly compared to artificial, animal, and plant odors, to chloroform, to musk, to violet, to mention only those similitudes which seem to occur most frequently. the methods now employed for obtaining the perfumes universally used in civilized lands are three: ( ) the extraction of odoriferous compounds from the neutral products in which they occur; ( ) the artificial preparation of naturally occurring odoriferous compounds by synthetic processes; ( ) the manufacture of materials which yield odors resembling those of pleasant smelling natural objects. (see, e.g., "natural and artificial perfumes," _nature_, december , .) the essential principles of most of our perfumes belong to the complex class of organic compounds known as terpenes. during recent years a number of the essential elements of natural perfumes have been studied, in many cases the methods of preparing them artificially discovered, and they are largely replacing the use of natural perfumes not only for soaps, etc., but for scent essences, though it appears to be very difficult to imitate exactly the delicate fragrance achieved by nature. artificial musk was discovered accidentally by bauer when studying the butyltoluenes contained in a resin extractive. vanillin, the odoriferous principle of the vanilla bean, is an aldehyde which was first artificially prepared by tiemann and haarmann in by oxidizing coniferin, a glucoside contained in the sap of various coniferæ, but it now appears to be usually manufactured from eugenol, a phenol contained in oil of cloves. piperonal, an aldehyde closely allied to vanillin, is used in perfumery under the name of heliotropin and is prepared from oil of sassafras and oil of camphor. cumarine, the material to which tonka bean, sweet woodruff, and new-mown hay owe their characteristic odors, was synthetically prepared by w.h. parkin in by heating sodiosalicylic aldehyde with acetic anhydride, though now more cheaply prepared from an herb growing in florida. irone, which has the perfume of violets, was isolated in from a ketone contained in orris-root; and ionone, another ketone which has a very closely similar odor of fresh violets and was isolated after some years' further work, is largely used in the preparation of violet perfume. irone and ionone are closely similar in composition to oil of turpentine which when taken into the body is partly converted into perfume and gives a strong odor of violets to the urine. "little has yet been accomplished toward ascertaining the relation between the odor and the chemical constitution of substances in general. hydrocarbons as a class possess considerable similarity in odor, so also do the organic sulphides and, to a much smaller extent, the ketones. the subject waits for some one to correlate its various physiological, psychological and physical aspects in the same way that helmholtz did for sound. it seems, as yet, impossible to assign any probable reason to the fact that many substances have a pleasant odor. it may, however, be worth suggesting that certain compounds, such as the volatile sulphides and the indoles, have very unpleasant odors because they are normal constituents of mammalian excreta and of putrefied animal products; the repulsive odors may be simply necessary results of evolutionary processes." (_loc. cit._, _nature_, december , .) many of the perfumes in use are really combinations of a great many different odors in varying proportions, such as oil of rose, lavender oil, ylang-ylang, etc. the most highly appreciated perfumes are often made up of elements which in stronger proportion would be regarded as highly unpleasant. in the study and manufacture of perfumes germany and france have taken the lead in recent times. the industry is one of great importance. in france alone the trade in perfumes amounts to £ , , . it is doubtless largely owing to the essential and fundamental identity of odors--to the chemical resemblances even of odors from the most widely remote sources--that we find that perfumes in many cases have the same sexual effects as are primitively possessed by the body odors. in northern countries, where the use of perfumes is chiefly cultivated by women, it is by women that this sexual influence is most liable to be felt. in the south and in the east it appears to be at least equally often experienced by men. thus, in italy mantegazza remarks that "many men of strong sexual temperament cannot visit with impunity a laboratory of essences and perfumes."[ ] in the east we find it stated in the islamic book entitled _the perfumed garden of sheik nefzaoui_ that the use of perfumes by women, as well as by men, excites to the generative act. it is largely in reliance on this fact that in many parts of the world, especially among eastern peoples and occasionally among ourselves in europe, women have been accustomed to perfume the body and especially the vulva.[ ] it seems highly probable that, as has been especially emphasized by hagen, perfumes were primitively used by women, not as is sometimes the case in civilization, with the idea of disguising any possible natural odor, but with the object of heightening and fortifying the natural odor.[ ] if the primitive man was inclined to disparage a woman whose odor was slight or imperceptible,--turning away from her with contempt, as the polynesian turned away from the ladies of sydney: "they have no smell!"--women would inevitably seek to supplement any natural defects in this respect, and to accentuate their odorous qualities, in the same way as by corsets and bustles, even in civilization, they have sought to accentuate the sexual saliencies of their bodies. in this way we may, as hagen suggests, explain the fact that until recent times the odors preferred by women have not been the most delicate or exquisite, but the strongest, the most animal, the most sexual: musk, castoreum, civet, and ambergris. in that interesting novel--dealing with the adventures of a jewish maiden at the persian court of xerxes--which under the title of _esther_ has found its way into the old testament we are told that it was customary in the royal harem at shushan to submit the women to a very prolonged course of perfuming before they were admitted to the king: "six months with oil of myrrh and six months with sweet odors." (_esther_, chapter ii, v. .) in the _arabian nights_ there are many allusions to the use of perfumes by women with a more or less definitely stated aphrodisiacal intent. thus we read in the story of kamaralzaman: "with fine incense i will perfume my breasts, my belly, my whole body, so that my skin may melt more sweetly in thy mouth, o apple of my eye!" even among savages the perfuming of the body is sometimes practiced with the object of inducing love in the partner. schellong states that the papuans of kaiser wilhelm's land rub various fragrant plants into their bodies for this purpose. (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. i, p. .) the significance of this practice is more fully revealed by haddon when studying the papuans of torres straits among whom the initiative in courtship is taken by the women. it was by scenting himself with a pungent odorous substance that a young man indicated that he was ready to be sued by the girls. a man would wear this scent at the back of his neck during a dance in order to attract the attention of a particular girl; it was believed to act with magical certainty, after the manner of a charm (_reports of the cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, pp. , , and ). the perfume which is of all perfumes the most interesting from the present point of view is certainly musk. with ambergris, musk is the chief member of linnæus's group of _odores ambrosiacæ_, a group which in sexual significances, as zwaardemaker remarks, ranks besides the capryl group of odors. it is a perfume of ancient origin; its name is persian[ ] (indicating doubtless the channel whence it reached europe) and ultimately derived from the sanskrit word for testicle in allusion to the fact that it was contained in a pouch removed from the sexual parts of the male musk-deer. musk odors, however, often of considerable strength, are very widely distributed in nature, alike among animals and plants. this is indicated by the frequency with which the word "musk" forms part of the names of animals and plants which are by no means always nearly related. we have the musk-ox, the musky mole, several species called musk-rat, the musk-duct, the musk-beetle; while among plants which have received their names from a real or supposed musky odor are, besides several that are called musk-plant, the musk-rose, the musk-hyacinth, the musk-mallow, the musk-orchid, the musk-melon, the musk-cherry, the musk-pear, the musk-plum, muskat and muscatels, musk-seed, musk-tree, musk-wood, etc.[ ] but a musky odor is not merely widespread in nature among plants and the lower animals, it is peculiarly associated with man. incidentally we have already seen how it is regarded as characteristic of some races of man, especially the chinese. moreover, the smell of the negress is said to be musky in character, and among europeans a musky odor is said to be characteristic of blondes. laycock, in his _nervous diseases of women_, stated his opinion that "the musk odor is certainly the sexual odor of man"; and féré states that the musk odor is that among natural perfumes most nearly approaching the odor of the sexual secretions. we have seen that the chinese poet vaunts the musky odor of his mistress's armpits, while another oriental saying concerning the attractive woman is that "her navel is filled with musk." persian literature contains many references to musk as an attractive body odor, and firdusi speaks of a woman's hair as "a crown of musk," while the arabian poet motannabi says of his mistress that "her hyacinthine hair smells sweeter than scythian musk." galopin stated that he knew women whose natural odor of musk (and less frequently of ambergris) was sufficiently strong to impart to a bath in less than an hour a perfume due entirely to the exhalations of the musky body; it must be added that galopin was an enthusiast in this matter. the special significance of musk from our present point of view lies not only in the fact that we here have a perfume, widely scattered throughout nature and often in an agreeable form, which is at the same time a very frequent personal odor in man. musk is the odor which not only in the animals to which it has given a name, but in many others, is a specifically sexual odor, chiefly emitted during the sexual season. the sexual odors, indeed, of most animals seem to be modifications of musk. the sphinx moth has a musky odor which is confined to the male and is doubtless sexual. some lizards have a musky odor which is heightened at the sexual season; crocodiles during the pairing season emit from their submaxillary glands a musky odor which pervades their haunts. in the same way elephants emit a musky odor from their facial glands during the rutting season. the odor of the musk-duck is chiefly confined to the breeding season.[ ] the musky odor of the negress is said to be heightened during sexual excitement. the predominance of musk as a sexual odor is associated with the fact that its actual nervous influence, apart from the presence of sexual association, is very considerable. féré found it to be a powerful muscular stimulant. in former times musk enjoyed a high reputation as a cardiac stimulant; it fell into disuse, but in recent years its use in asthenic states has been revived, and excellent results, it has been claimed, have followed its administration in cases of collapse from asiatic cholera. for sexual torpor in women it still has (like vanilla and sandal) a certain degree of reputation, though it is not often used, and some of the old arabian physicians (especially avicenna) recommended it, with castoreum and myrrh, for amenorrhoea. its powerful action is indicated by the experience of esquirol, who stated that he had seen cases in which sensory stimulation by musk in women during lactation had produced mania. it has always had the reputation, more especially in the mohammedan east, of being a sexual stimulant to men; "the noblest of perfumes," it is called in _el ktab_, "and that which most provokes to venery." it is doubtless a fact significant of the special sexual effects of musk that, as laycock remarked, in cases of special idiosyncrasy to odors, musk appears to be that odor which is most liked or disliked. thus, the old english physician whytt remarked that "several delicate women who could easily bear the stronger smell of tobacco have been thrown into fits by musk, ambergris, or a pale rose."[ ] it may be remarked that in the _perfumed garden of sheik nefzaoui_ it is stated that it is by their sexual effects that perfumes tend to throw women into a kind of swoon, and lucretius remarks that a woman who smells castoreum, another animal sexual perfume, at the time of her menstrual period may swoon.[ ] not only is musk the most cherished perfume of the islamic world, and the special favorite of the prophet himself, who greatly delighted in perfumes ("i love your world," he is reported to have said in old age, "for its women and its perfumes"),[ ] it is the only perfume generally used by the women of a land in which the refinements of life have been carried so far as japan, and they received it from the chinese.[ ] moreover, musk is still the most popular of european perfumes. it is the perfumes containing musk, piesse states in his well-known book on the _art of perfumery_, which sell best. it is certainly true that in its simple form the odor of musk is not nowadays highly considered in europe. this fact is connected with the ever-growing refinement in accordance with which the specific odors of the sexual regions in human beings tend to lose their primitive attractiveness and bodily odors generally become mingled with artificial perfumes and so disguised. but, although musk in its simple form, and under its ancient name, has lost its hold in europe, it is an interesting and significant fact that it is still the perfumes which contain musk that are the most widely popular. peau d'espagne may be mentioned as a highly complex and luxurious perfume, often the favorite scent of sensuous persons, which really owes a large part of its potency to the presence of the crude animal sexual odors of musk and civet. it consists of wash-leather steeped in ottos of neroli, rose, santal, lavender, verbena, bergamot, cloves, and cinnamon, subsequently smeared with civet and musk. it is said by some, probably with a certain degree of truth, that peau d'espagne is of all perfumes that which most nearly approaches the odor of a woman's skin; whether it also suggests the odor of leather is not so clear. there is, however, no doubt that the smell of leather has a curiously stimulating sexual influence on many men and women. it is an odor which seems to occupy an intermediate place between the natural body odors and the artificial perfumes for which it sometimes serves as a basis; possibly it is to this fact that its occasional sexual influence is owing, for, as we have already seen, there is a tendency for sexual allurement to attach to odors which are not the specific personal body odors but yet are related to them. moll considers, no doubt rightly, that shoe fetichism, perhaps the most frequent of sexual fetichistic perversions, is greatly favored, if, indeed, it does not owe its origin to, the associated odor of the feet and of the shoes.[ ] he narrates a case of shoe fetichism in a man in which the perversion began at the age of ; when for the first time he wore new shoes, having previously used only the left-off shoes of his elder brother; he felt and smelt these new shoes with sensations of unmeasured pleasure; and a few years later began to use shoes as a method of masturbation.[ ] näcke has also recorded the case of a shoe fetichist who declared that the sexual attraction of shoes (usually his wife's) lay largely in the odor of the leather.[ ] krafft-ebing, again, brings forward a case of shoe fetichism in which the significant fact is mentioned that the subject bought a pair of leather cuffs to smell while masturbating.[ ] restif de la bretonne, who was somewhat of a shoe fetichist, appears to have enjoyed smelling shoes. it is not probable that the odor of leather explains the whole of shoe fetichism,--as we shall see when, in another "study," this question comes before us--and in many cases it cannot be said to enter at all; it is, however, one of the factors. such a conclusion is further supported by the fact that by many the odor of new shoes is sometimes desired as an adjuvant to coitus. it is in the experience of prostitutes that such a device is not infrequent. näcke mentions that a colleague of his was informed by a prostitute that several of her clients desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was accustomed to obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment over the flame of a spirit lamp. the direct sexual influence of the odor of leather is, however, more conclusively proved by those instances in which it exists apart from shoes or other objects having any connection with the human body. i have elsewhere in these "studies"[ ] recorded the case of a lady, entirely normal in sexual and other respects, who is conscious of a considerable degree of pleasurable sexual excitement in the presence of the smell of leather objects, more especially of leather-bound ledgers and in shops where leather objects are sold. she thinks this dates from the period when, as a child of , she was sometimes left alone for a time on a high stool in an office. a possible explanation in this case lies in the supposition that on one of these early occasions sexual excitement was produced by the contact with the stool (in a way that is not infrequent in young girls) and that the accidentally associated odor of leather permanently affected the nervous system, while the really significant contact left no permanent impression. even on such a supposition it might, however, still be maintained that a real potency of the leather odor is illustrated by this case, and this is likewise suggested by the fact that the same subject is also sexually affected by various perfumes and odorous flowers not recalling leather.[ ] it has been suggested to me by a lady that the odor of leather suggests that of the sexual organs. the same suggestion is made by hagen,[ ] and i find it stated by gould and pyle that menstruating girls sometimes smell of leather. the secret of its influence may thus be not altogether obscure; in the fact that leather is animal skin, and that it may thus vaguely stir the olfactory sensibilities which had been ancestrally affected by the sexual stimulus of the skin odor lies the probable foundation of the mystery. in the absence of all suggestion of personal or animal odors, in its most exquisite forms in the fragrance of flowers, olfactory sensations are still very frequently of a voluptuous character. mantegazza has remarked that it is a proof of the close connection between the sense of smell and the sexual organs that the expression of pleasure produced by olfaction resembles the expression of sexual pleasures.[ ] make the chastest woman smell the flowers she likes best, he remarks, and she will close her eyes, breathe deeply, and, if very sensitive, tremble all over, presenting an intimate picture which otherwise she never shows, except perhaps to her lover. he mentions a lady who said: "i sometimes feel such pleasure in smelling flowers that i seem to be committing a sin."[ ] it is really the case that in many persons--usually, if not exclusively, women--the odor of flowers produces not only a highly pleasurable, but a distinctly and specifically sexual, effect. i have met with numerous cases in which this effect was well marked. it is usually white flowers with heavy, penetrating odors which exert this influence. thus, one lady (who is similarly affected by various perfumes, forget-me-nots, ylang-ylang, etc.) finds that a number of flowers produce on her a definite sexual effect, with moistening of the pudenda. this effect is especially produced by white flowers like the gardenia, tuberose, etc. another lady, who lives in india, has a similar experience with flowers. she writes: a scent to cause me sexual excitement must be somewhat heavy and _penetrating_. nearly all white flowers so affect me and many indian flowers with heavy, almost pungent scents. (all the flower scents are quite unconnected with me with any individual.) tuberose, lilies of the valley, and frangipani flowers have an almost intoxicating effect on me. violets, roses, mignonette, and many others, though very delicious, give me no sexual feeling at all. for this reason the line, 'the lilies and languors of virtue for the roses and raptures of vice' seems all wrong to me. the lily seems to me a very sensual flower, while the rose and its scent seem very good and countrified and virtuous. shelley's description of the lily of the valley, 'whom youth makes so fair and _passion_ so pale,' falls in much more with my ideas. "i can quite understand," she adds, "that leather, especially of books, might have an exciting effect, as the smell has this _penetrating_ quality, but i do not think it produces any special feeling in me." this more sensuous character of white flowers is fairly obvious to many persons who do not experience from them any specifically sexual effects. to some people lilies have an odor which they describe as sexual, although these persons may be quite unaware that hindu authors long since described the vulvar secretion of the _padmini_, or perfect woman, during coitus, as "perfumed like the lily that has newly burst."[ ] it is noteworthy that it was more especially the white flowers--lily, tuberose, etc.--which were long ago noted by cloquet as liable to cause various unpleasant nervous effects, cardiac oppression and syncope.[ ] when we are concerned with the fragrances of flowers it would seem that we are far removed from the human sexual field, and that their sexual effects are inexplicable. it is not so. the animal and vegetable odors, as, indeed, we have already seen, are very closely connected. the recorded cases are very numerous in which human persons have exhaled from their skins--sometimes in a very pronounced degree--the odors of plants and flowers, of violets, of roses, of pineapple, of vanilla. on the other hand, there are various plant odors which distinctly recall, not merely the general odor of the human body, but even the specifically sexual odors. a rare garden weed, the stinking goosefoot, _chenopodium vulvaria_, it is well known, possesses a herring brine or putrid fish odor--due, it appears, to propylamin, which is also found in the flowers of the common white thorn or mayflower (_cratægus oxyacantha_) and many others of the _rosaceæ_--which recalls the odor of the animal and human sexual regions.[ ] the reason is that both plant and animal odors belong chemically to the same group of capryl odors (linnæus's _odores hircini_), so called from the goat, the most important group of odors from the sexual point of view. caproic and capryl acid are contained not only in the odor of the goat and in human sweat, and in animal products as many cheeses, but also in various plants, such as herb robert (_geranium robertianum_), and the stinking st. john's worts (_hypericum hircinum_), as well as the _chenopodium_. zwaardemaker considers it probable that the odor of the vagina belongs to the same group, as well as the odor of semen (which haller called _odor aphrodisiacus_), which last odor is also found, as cloquet pointed out, in the flowers of the common berberry (_berberis vulgaris_) and in the chestnut. a very remarkable and significant example of the same odor seems to occur in the case of the flowers of the henna plant, the white-flowered lawsonia (_lawsonia inermis_), so widely used in some mohammedan lands for dyeing the nails and other parts of the body. "these flowers diffuse the sweetest odor," wrote sonnini in egypt a century ago; "the women delight to wear them, to adorn their houses with them, to carry them to the baths, to hold them in their hands, and to perfume their bosoms with them. they cannot patiently endure that christian and jewish women shall share the privilege with them. it is very remarkable that the perfume of the henna flowers, when closely inhaled, is almost entirely lost in a very decided spermatic odor. if the flowers are crushed between the fingers this odor prevails, and is, indeed, the only one perceptible. it is not surprising that so delicious a flower has furnished oriental poetry with many charming traits and amorous similes." such a simile sonnini finds in the _song of songs_, i. - .[ ] the odor of semen has not been investigated, but, according to zwaardemaker, artificially produced odors (like cadaverin) resemble it. the odor of the leguminous fenugreek, a botanical friend considers, closely approaches the odor given off in some cases by the armpit in women. it is noteworthy that fenugreek contains cumarine, which imparts its fragrance to new-mown hay and to various flowers of somewhat similar odor. on some persons these have a sexually exciting effect, and it is of considerable interest to observe that they recall to many the odor of semen. "it seems very natural," a lady writes, "that flowers, etc., should have an exciting effect, as the original and by far the pleasantest way of love-making was in the open among flowers and fields; but a more purely physical reason may, i think, be found in the exact resemblance between the scent of semen and that of the pollen of flowering grasses. the first time i became aware of this resemblance it came on me with a rush that here was the explanation of the very exciting effect of a field of flowering grasses and, perhaps through them, of the scents of other flowers. if i am right, i suppose flower scents should affect women more powerfully than men in a sexual way. i do not think anyone would be likely to notice the odor of semen in this connection unless they had been greatly struck by the exciting effects of the pollen of grasses. i had often noticed it and puzzled over it." as pollen is the male sexual element of flowers, its occasionally stimulating effect in this direction is perhaps but an accidental result of a unity running through the organic world, though it may be perhaps more simply explained as a special form of that nasal irritation which is felt by so many persons in a hay-field. another correspondent, this time a man, tells me that he has noted the resemblance of the odor of semen to that of crushed grasses. a scientific friend who has done much work in the field of organic chemistry tells me he associates the odor of semen with that produced by diastasic action on mixing flour and water, which he regards as sexual in character. this again brings us to the starchy products of the leguminous plants. it is evident that, subtle and obscure as many questions in the physiology and psychology of olfaction still remain, we cannot easily escape from their sexual associations. footnotes: [ ] h. beauregard, _matière médicale zoölogique: histoire des drogues d'origine animate_, . [ ] professor plateau, of ghent, has for many years carried on a series of experiments which would even tend to show that insects are scarcely attracted by the colors of flowers at all, but mainly influenced by a sense which would appear to be smell. his experiments have been recorded during recent years (from ) in the _bulletins de l'académie royale de belgique_, and have from time to time been summarized in _nature_, e.g., february , . [ ] david sharp, _cambridge natural history: insects_, part ii, p. . [ ] mantegazza, _fisiologia dell' amore_, , p. . [ ] mantegazza (_l'amour dans l'humanité_, p. ) refers to various peoples who practice this last custom. egypt was a great centre of the practice more than years ago. [ ] hagen, _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, , p. . it has been suggested to me by a medical correspondent that one of the primitive objects of the hair, alike on head, mons veneris, and axilla, was to collect sweat and heighten its odor to sexual ends. [ ] the names of all our chief perfumes are arabic or persian: civet, musk, ambergris, attar, camphor, etc. [ ] cloquet (_osphrésiologie_, pp. - ) has an interesting passage on the prevalence of the musk odor in animals, plants, and even mineral substances. [ ] laycock brings together various instances of the sexual odors of animals, insisting on their musky character (_nervous diseases of women_; section, "odors"). see also a section in the _descent of man_ (part ii, chapter xviii), in which darwin argues that "the most odoriferous males are the most successful in winning the females." distant also has an interesting paper on this subject, "biological suggestions," _zoölogist_, may, ; he points out the significant fact that musky odors are usually confined to the male, and argues that animal odors generally are more often attractive than protective. [ ] r. whytt, _works_, , p. . [ ] lucretius, vi, - . [ ] mohammed, said ayesha, was very fond of perfumes, especially "men's scents," musk and ambergris. he used also to burn camphor on odoriferous wood and enjoy the fragrant smell, while he never refused perfumes when offered them as a present. the things he cared for most, said ayesha, were women, scents, and foods. muir, _life of mahomet_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] h. ten kate, _international centralblatt für anthropologie_, ht. , . this author, who made observations on japanese with zwaardemaker's olfactometer, found that, contrary to an opinion sometimes stated, they have a somewhat defective sense of smell. he remarks that there are no really native japanese perfumes. [ ] moll: _die konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, , p. . [ ] moll: _libido sexualis_, bd. , p. . [ ] p. näcke, "un cas de fetichisme de souliers," _bulletin de la société de médecine mentale de belgique_, . [ ] _psychopathia sexualis_, english edition, p. . [ ] philip salmuth (_observationes medicæ_, centuria ii, no. ) in the seventeenth century recorded a case in which a young girl of noble birth (whose sister was fond of eating chalk, cinnamon, and cloves) experienced extreme pleasure in smelling old books. it would appear, however, that in this case the fascination lay not so much in the odor of the leather as in the mouldy odor of worm-eaten books; "_fætore veterum liborum, a blattis et tineis exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum_" are salmuth's words. [ ] _studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. iii, "appendix b, history viii." [ ] _sexuelle osphrésiologie_, p. . [ ] mantegazza, _fisiologia dell' amore_, p. . [ ] in this connection i may quote the remark of the writer of a thoughtful article in the _journal of psychological medicine_, : "the use of scents, especially those allied to the musky, is one of the luxuries of women, and in some constitutions cannot be indulged without some danger to the morals, by the excitement to the ovaria which results. and although less potent as aphrodisiacs in their action on the sexual system of women than of men, we have reason to think that they cannot be used to excess with impunity by most." [ ] _kama sutra_ of vatsyayana, , p. . [ ] cloquet, _osphrésiologie_, p. . [ ] in normandy the _chenopodium_, it is said, is called "conio," and in italy erba connina (con, cunnus), on account of its vulvar odor. the attraction of dogs to this plant has been noted. in the same way cats are irresistibly attracted to preparations of valerian because their own urine contains valerianic acid. [ ] sonnini, _voyage dans la haute et basse egypte_, , vol. i. p. . v. the evil effects of excessive olfactory stimulation--the symptoms of vanillism--the occasional dangerous results of the odors of flowers--effects of flowers on the voice. the reality of the olfactory influences with which we have been concerned, however slight they may sometimes appear, is shown by the fact that odors, both agreeable and disagreeable, are stimulants, obeying the laws which hold good for stimulants generally. they whip up the nervous energies momentarily, but in the end, if the excitation is excessive and prolonged, they produce fatigue and exhaustion. this is clearly shown by féré's elaborate experiments on the influences of odors, as compared with other sensory stimulants, on the amount of muscular work performed with the ergograph.[ ] commenting on the remark of bernardin de saint-pierre, that "man uses perfumes to impart energy to his passion," féré remarks: "but perfumes cannot keep up the fires which they light." their prolonged use involves fatigue, which is not different from that produced by excessive work, and reproduces all the bodily and psychic accompaniments of excessive work.[ ] it is well known that workers in perfumes are apt to suffer from the inhalation of the odors amid which they live. dealers in musk are said to be specially liable to precocious dementia. the symptoms generally experienced by the men and women who work in vanilla factories where the crude fruit is prepared for commerce have often been studied and are well known. they are due to the inhalation of the scent, which has all the properties of the aromatic aldehydes, and include skin eruptions,[ ] general excitement, sleeplessness, headache, excessive menstruation, and irritable bladder. there is nearly always sexual excitement, which may be very pronounced.[ ] we are here in the presence, it may be insisted, not of a nervous influence only, but of a direct effect of odor on the vital processes. the experiments of tardif on the influence of perfumes on frogs and rabbits showed that a poisonous effect was exerted;[ ] while féré, by incubating fowls' eggs in the presence of musk, found repeatedly that many abnormalities occurred, and that development was retarded even in the embryos that remained normal; while he obtained somewhat similar results by using essences of lavender, cloves, etc.[ ] the influence of odors is thus deeper than is indicated by their nervous effects; they act directly on nutrition. we are led, as passy remarks, to regard odors as very intimately related to the physiological properties of organic substances, and the sense of smell as a detached fragment of generally sensibility, reacting to the same stimuli as general sensibility, but highly specialized in view of its protective function. the reality and subtlety of the influence of odors is further shown, by the cases in which very intense effects are produced even by the temporary inhalation of flowers or perfumes or other odors. such cases of idiosyncrasy in which a person--frequently of somewhat neurotic temperament--becomes acutely sensitive to some odor or odors have been recorded in medical literature for many centuries. in these cases the obnoxious odor produces congestion of the respiratory passages, sneezing, headache, fainting, etc., but occasionally, it has been recorded, even death. (dr. j.n. mackenzie, in his interesting and learned paper on "the production of the so-called 'rose cold,' etc.," _american journal of medical sciences_, january, , quotes many cases, and gives a number of references to ancient medical authors; see also layet, art. "odeur," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.) an interesting phenomenon of the group--though it is almost too common to be described as an idiosyncrasy--is the tendency of the odor of certain flowers to affect the voice and sometimes even to produce complete loss of voice. the mechanism of the process is not fully understood, but it would appear that congestion and paresis of the larynx is produced and spasm of the bronchial tube. botallus in recorded cases in which the scent of flowers brought on difficulty of breathing, and the danger of flowers from this point of view is well recognized by professional singers. joal has studied this question in an elaborate paper (summarized in the _british medical journal_, march , ), and dr. cabanès has brought together (_figaro_, january , ) the experiences of a number of well-known singers, teachers of singing, and laryngologists. thus, madame renée richard, of the paris opera, has frequently found that when her pupils have arrived with a bunch of violets fastened to the bodice or even with a violet and iris sachet beneath the corset, the voice has been marked by weakness and, on using the laryngoscope, she has found the vocal cords congested. madame calvé confirmed this opinion, and stated that she was specially sensitive to tuberose and mimosa, and that on one occasion a bouquet of white lilac has caused her, for a time, complete loss of voice. the flowers mentioned are equally dangerous to a number of other singers; the most injurious flower of all is found to be the violet. the rose is seldom mentioned, and artificial perfumes are comparatively harmless, though some singers consider it desirable to be cautious in using them. footnotes: [ ] féré, _travail et plaisir_, chapter xiii. [ ] _travail et plaisir_, p. . it is doubtless true of the effects of odors on the sexual sphere. féré records the case of a neurasthenic lady whose sexual coldness toward her husband only disappeared after the abandonment of a perfume (in which heliotrope was apparently the chief constituent) she had been accustomed to use in excessive amounts. [ ] it is perhaps significant that many colors are especially liable to produce skin disorders, especially urticaria; a number of cases have been recorded by joal, _journal de médecine_, july , . [ ] layet, art. "vanillisme," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_; cf. audeoud, _revue médicale de la suisse romande_, october , , summarized in the _british medical journal_, . [ ] e. tardif, _les odeurs et parfums_, chapter iii. [ ] féré, _société de biologie_, march , . vi. the place of smell in human sexual selections--it has given place to the predominance of vision largely because in civilized man it fails to act at a distance--it still plays a part by contributing to the sympathies or the antipathies of intimate contact. when we survey comprehensively the extensive field we have here rapidly traversed, it seems not impossible to gain a fairly accurate view of the special place which olfactory sensations play in human sexual selection. the special peculiarity of this group of sensations in man, and that which gives them an importance they would not otherwise possess, is due to the fact that we here witness the decadence of a sense which in man's remote ancestors was the very chiefest avenue of sexual allurement. in man, even the most primitive man,--to some degree even in the apes,--it has declined in importance to give place to the predominance of vision.[ ] yet, at that lower threshold of acuity at which it persists in man it still bathes us in a more or less constant atmosphere of odors, which perpetually move us to sympathy or to antipathy, and which in their finer manifestations we do not neglect, but even cultivate with the increase of our civilization. it thus comes about that the grosser manifestations of sexual allurement by smell belong, so far as man is concerned, to a remote animal past which we have outgrown and which, on account of the diminished acuity of our olfactory organs, we could not completely recall even if we desired to; the sense of sight inevitably comes into play long before it is possible for close contact to bring into action the sense of smell. but the latent possibilities of sexual allurement by olfaction, which are inevitably embodied in the nervous structure we have inherited from our animal ancestors, still remain ready to be called into play. they emerge prominently from time to time in exceptional and abnormal persons. they tend to play an unusually larger part in the psychic lives of neurasthenic persons, with their sensitive and comparatively unbalanced nervous systems, and this is doubtless the reason why poets and men of letters have insisted on olfactory impressions so frequently and to so notable a degree; for the same reason sexual inverts are peculiarly susceptible to odors. for a different reason, warmer climates, which heighten all odors and also favor the growth of powerfully odorous plants, lead to a heightened susceptibility to the sexual and other attractions of smell even among normal persons; thus we find a general tendency to delight in odors throughout the east, notably in india, among the ancient hebrews, and in mohammedan lands. among the ordinary civilized population in europe the sexual influences of smell play a smaller and yet not altogether negligible part. the diminished prominence of odors only enables them to come into action, as sexual influences, on close contact, when, in some persons at all events, personal odors may have a distinct influence in heightening sympathy or arousing antipathy. the range of variation among individuals is in this matter considerable. in a few persons olfactory sympathy or antipathy is so pronounced that it exerts a decisive influence in their sexual relationships; such persons are of olfactory type. in other persons smell has no part in constituting sexual relationships, but it comes into play in the intimate association of love, and acts as an additional excitant; when reinforced by association such olfactory impressions may at times prove irresistible. other persons, again, are neutral in this respect, and remain indifferent either to the sympathetic or antipathetic working of personal odors, unless they happen to be extremely marked. it is probable that the majority of refined and educated people belong to the middle group of those persons who are not of predominantly olfactory type, but are liable from time to time to be influenced in this manner. women are probably at least as often affected in this manner as men, probably more often. on the whole, it may be said that in the usual life of man odors play a not inconsiderable part and raise problems which are not without interest, but that their demonstrable part in actual sexual selection--whether in preferential mating or in assortative mating--is comparatively small. footnotes: [ ] moll has a passage on this subject, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_. bd. i, pp. - . hearing. i. the physiological basis of rhythm--rhythm as a physiological stimulus--the intimate relation of rhythm to movement--the physiological influence of music on muscular action, circulation, respiration, etc.--the place of music in sexual selection among the lower animals--its comparatively small place in courtship among mammals--the larynx and voice in man--the significance of the pubertal changes--ancient beliefs concerning the influence of music in morals, education, and medicine--its therapeutic uses--significance of the romantic interest in music at puberty--men comparatively insusceptible to the specifically sexual influence of music--rarity of sexual perversions on the basis of the sense of hearing--the part of music in primitive human courtship--women notably susceptible to the specifically sexual influence of music and the voice. the sense of rhythm--on which it may be said that the sensory exciting effects of hearing, including music, finally rest--may probably be regarded as a fundamental quality of neuro-muscular tissue. not only are the chief physiological functions of the body, like the circulation and the respiration, definitely rhythmical, but our senses insist on imparting a rhythmic grouping even to an absolutely uniform succession of sensations. it seems probable, although this view is still liable to be disputed, that this rhythm is the result of kinæsthetic sensations,--sensations arising from movement or tension started reflexly in the muscles by the external stimuli,--impressing themselves on the sensations that are thus grouped.[ ] we may thus say, with wilks, that music appears to have had its origin in muscular action.[ ] whatever its exact origin may be, rhythm is certainly very deeply impressed on our organisms. the result is that, whatever lends itself to the neuro-muscular rhythmical tendency of our organisms, whatever tends still further to heighten and develop that rhythmical tendency, exerts upon us a very decidedly stimulating and exciting influence. all muscular action being stimulated by rhythm, in its simple form or in its more developed form as music, rhythm is a stimulant to work. it has even been argued by bücher and by wundt[ ] that human song had its chief or exclusive origin in rhythmical vocal accompaniments to systematized work. this view cannot, however, be maintained; systematized work can scarcely be said to exist, even to-day, among most very primitive races; it is much more probable that rhythmical song arose at a period antecedent to the origin of systematized work, in the primitive military, religious, and erotic dances, such as exist in a highly developed degree among the australians and other savage races who have not evolved co-ordinated systematic labor. there can, however, be no doubt that as soon as systematic work appears the importance of vocal rhythm in stimulating its energy is at once everywhere recognized. bücher has brought together innumerable examples of this association, and in the march music of soldiers and the heaving and hoisting songs of sailors we have instances that have universally persisted into civilization, although in civilization the rhythmical stimulation of work, physiologically sound as is its basis, tends to die out. even in the laboratory the influence of simple rhythm in increasing the output of work may be demonstrated; and féré found with the ergograph that a rhythmical grouping of the movements caused an increase of energy which often more than compensated the loss of time caused by the rhythm.[ ] rhythm is the most primitive element of music, and the most fundamental. wallaschek, in his book on _primitive music_, and most other writers on the subject are agreed on this point. "rhythm," remarks an american anthropologist,[ ] "naturally precedes the development of any fine perception of differences in pitch, of time-quality, or of tonality. almost, if not all, indian songs," he adds, "are as strictly developed out of modified repetitions of a motive as are the movements of a mozart or a beethoven symphony." "in all primitive music," asserts alice c. fletcher,[ ] "rhythm is strongly developed. the pulsations of the drum and the sharp crash of the rattles are thrown against each other and against the voice, so that it would seem that the pleasure derived by the performers lay not so much in the tonality of the song as in the measured sounds arrayed in contesting rhythm, and which by their clash start the nerves and spur the body to action, for the voice which alone carries the tone is often subordinated and treated as an additional instrument." groos points out that a melody gives us the essential impression of a _voice that dances_;[ ] it is a translation of spatial movement into sound, and, as we shall see, its physiological action on the organism is a reflection of that which, as we have elsewhere found,[ ] dancing itself produces, and thus resembles that produced by the sight of movement. dancing, music, and poetry were primitively so closely allied as to be almost identical; they were still inseparable among the early greeks. the refrains in our english ballads indicate the dancer's part in them. the technical use of the word "foot" in metrical matters still persists to show that a poem is fundamentally a dance. aristotle seems to have first suggested that rhythm and melodies are motions, as actions are motions, and therefore signs of feeling. "all melodies are motions," says helmholtz. "graceful rapidity, gravel procession, quiet advance, wild leaping, all these different characters of motion and a thousand others can be represented by successions of tones. and as music expresses these motions it gives an expression also to those mental conditions which naturally evoke similar motions, whether of the body and the voice, or of the thinking and feeling principle itself." (helmholtz, _on the sensations of tone_, translated by a. j. ellis, , p. .) from another point of view the motor stimulus of music has been emphasized by cyples: "music connects with the only sense that can be perfectly manipulated. its emotional charm has struck men as a great mystery. there appears to be no doubt whatever that it gets all the marvelous effects it has beyond the mere pleasing of the ear, from its random, but multitudinous summonses of the efferent activity, which at its vague challenges stirs unceasingly in faintly tumultuous irrelevancy. in this way, music arouses aimlessly, but splendidly, the sheer, as yet unfulfilled, potentiality within us." (w. copies, _the process of human experience_, p. .) the fundamental element of transformed motion in music has been well brought out in a suggestive essay by goblot ("la musique descriptive," _revue philosophique_, july, ): "sung or played, melody figures to the ear a successive design, a moving arabesque. we talk of _ascending_ and _descending_ the gamut, of _high_ notes or _low_ notes; the; higher voice of woman is called _soprano_, or _above_, the deeper voice of man is called _bass_. _grave_ tones were so called by the greeks because they seemed heavy and to incline downward. sounds seem to be subject to the action of gravity; so that some rise and others fall. baudelaire, speaking of the prelude to _lohengrin_, remarks: 'i felt myself _delivered from the bonds of weight_.' and when wagner sought to represent, in the highest regions of celestial space, the apparition of the angels bearing the holy grail to earth, he uses very high notes, and a kind of chorus played exclusively by the violins, divided into eight parts, in the highest notes of their register. the descent to earth of the celestial choir is rendered by lower and lower notes, the progressive disappearance of which represents the reascension to the ethereal regions. "sounds seem to rise and fall; that is a fact. it is difficult to explain it. some have seen in it a habit derived from the usual notation by which the height of the note corresponds to its height in the score. but the impression is too deep and general to be explained by so superficial and recent a cause. it has been suggested also that high notes are generally produced by small and light bodies, low notes by heavy bodies. but that is not always true. it has been said, again, that high notes in nature are usually produced by highly placed objects, while low notes arise from caves and low placed regions. but the thunder is heard in the sky, and the murmur of a spring or the song of a cricket arise from the earth. in the human voice, again, it is said, the low notes seem to resound in the chest, high notes in the head. all this is unsatisfactory. we cannot explain by such coarse analogies an impression which is very precise, and more sensible (this fact has its importance) for an interval of half a tone than for an interval of an octave. it is probable that the true explanation is to be found in the still little understood connection between the elements of our nervous apparatus. "nearly all our emotions tend to produce movement. but education renders us economical of our acts. most of these movements are repressed, especially in the adult and civilized man, as harmful, dangerous, or merely useless. some are not completed, others are reduced to a faint incitation which externally is scarcely perceptible. enough remain to constitute all that is expressive in our gestures, physiognomy, and attitudes. melodic intervals possess in a high degree this property of provoking impulses of movement, which, even when repressed, leave behind internal sensations and motor images. it would be possible to study these facts experimentally if we had at our disposition a human being who, while retaining his sensations and their motor reactions, was by special circumstances rendered entirely spontaneous like a sensitive automaton, whose movements were neither intentionally produced nor intentionally repressed. in this way, melodic intervals in a hypnotized subject might be very instructive." a number of experiments of the kind desired by goblot had already been made by a. de rochas in a book, copiously illustrated by very numerous instantaneous photographs, entitled _les sentiments, la musique et la geste_, . chapter iii. de rochas experimented on a single subject, lina, formerly a model, who was placed in a condition of slight hypnosis, when various simple fragments of music were performed: recitatives, popular airs, and more especially national dances, often from remote parts of the world. the subject's gestures were exceedingly marked and varied in accordance with the character of the music. it was found that she often imitated with considerable precision the actual gestures of dances she could never have seen. the same music always evoked the same gestures, as was shown by instantaneous photographs. this subject, stated to be a chaste and well-behaved girl, exhibited no indications of definite sexual emotion under the influence of any kind of music. some account is given in the same volume of other hypnotic experiments with music which were also negative as regards specific sexual phenomena. it must be noted that, as a physiological stimulus, a single musical note is effective, even apart from rhythm, as is well shown by féré's experiments with the dynamometer and the ergograph.[ ] it is, however, the influence of music on muscular work which has been most frequently investigated, and both on brief efforts with the dynamometer and prolonged work with the ergograph it has been found to exert a stimulating influence. thus, scripture found that, while his own maximum thumb and finger grip with the dynamometer is pounds, when the giant's motive from wagner's _rheingold_ is played it rises to ¾ pounds.[ ] with the ergograph tarchanoff found that lively music, in nervously sensitive persons, will temporarily cause the disappearance of fatigue, though slow music in a minor key had an opposite effect.[ ] the varying influence on work with the ergograph of different musical intervals and different keys has been carefully studied by féré with many interesting results. there was a very considerable degree of constancy in the results. discords were depressing; most, but not all, major keys were stimulating; and most, but not all, minor keys depressing. in states of fatigue, however, the minor keys were more stimulating than the major, an interesting result in harmony with that stimulating influence of various painful emotions in states of organic fatigue which we have elsewhere encountered when investigating sadism.[ ] "our musical culture," féré remarks, "only renders more perceptible to us the unconscious relationships which exist between musical art and our organisms. those whom we consider more endowed in this respect have a deeper penetration of the phenomena accomplished within them; they feel more profoundly the marvelous reactions between the organism and the principles of musical art, they experience more strongly that art is within them."[ ] both the higher and the lower muscular processes, the voluntary and the involuntary, are stimulated by music. darlington and talbot, in titchener's laboratory at cornell university, found that the estimation of relative weights was aided by music.[ ] lombard found, when investigating the normal variations in the knee-jerk, that involuntary reflex processes are always reinforced by music; a military band playing a lively march caused the knee-jerk to increase at the loud passages and to diminish at the soft passages, while remaining always above the normal level.[ ] with this stimulating influence of rhythm and music on the neuro-muscular system--which may or may not be direct--there is a concomitant influence on the circulatory and breathing apparatus. during recent years a great many experiments have been made on man and animals bearing on the effects of music on the heart and respiration. perhaps the earliest of these were carried out by the russian physiologist dogiel in .[ ] his methods were perhaps defective and his results, at all events as regards man, uncertain, but in animals the force and rapidity of the heart were markedly increased. subsequent investigations have shown very clearly the influence of music on the circulatory and respiratory systems in man as well as in animals. that music has an apparently direct influence on the circulation of the brain is shown by the observations of patrizi on a youth who had received a severe wound of the head which had removed a large portion of the skull wall. the stimulus of melody produced an immediate increase in the afflux of blood to the brain.[ ] in germany the question was investigated at about the same time by mentz.[ ] observing the pulse with a sphygmograph and marey tambour he found distinct evidence of an effect on the heart; when attention was given to the music the pulse was quickened, in the absence of attention it was slowed; mentz also found that pleasurable sensations tended to slow the pulse and disagreeable ones to quicken it. binet and courtier made an elaborate series of experiments on the action of music on the respiration (with the double pneumograph), the heart, and the capillary circulation (with the plethysmograph of hallion and comte) on a single subject, a man very sensitive to music and himself a cultured musician. simple musical sounds with no emotional content accelerated the respiration without changing its regularity or amplitude. musical fragments, mostly sung, usually well known to the subject, and having an emotional effect on him, produced respiratory irregularity either in amplitude or rapidity of breathing, in two-thirds of the trials. exciting music, such as military marches, accelerated the breathing more than sad melodies, but the intensity of the excitation had an effect at least as great as its quality, for intense excitations always produced both quickened and deeper breathing. the heart was quickened in harmony with the quickened breathing. neither breathing nor heart was ever slowed. as regards the capillary pulsation, an influence was exerted chiefly, if not exclusively, by gay and exciting melodies, which produced a shrinking. throughout the experiments it was found that the most profound physiological effects were exerted by those pieces which the subject found to be most emotional in their influence on him.[ ] guibaud studied the question on a number of subjects, confirming and extending the conclusions of binet and courtier. he found that the reactions of different individuals varied, but that for the same individual reactions were constant. circulatory reaction was more often manifest than respiratory reaction. the latter might be either a simultaneous modification of depth and of rapidity or of either of these. the circulatory reaction was a peripheral vasoconstriction with diminished fullness of pulse and slight acceleration of cardiac rhythm; there was never any distinct slowing of heart under the influence of music. guibaud remarks that when people say they feel a shudder at some passage of music, this sensation of cold finds its explanation in the production of a peripheral vasoconstriction which may be registered by the plethysmograph.[ ] since music thus directly and powerfully affects the chief vital processes, it is not surprising that it should indirectly influence various viscera and functions. as tarchanoff and others have demonstrated, it affects the skin, increasing the perspiration; it may produce a tendency to tears; it sometimes produces desire to urinate, or even actual urination, as in scaliger's case of the gascon gentleman who was always thus affected on hearing the bagpipes. in dogs it has been shown by tarchanoff and wartanoff that auditory stimulation increases the consumption of oxygen per cent., and the elimination of carbonic acid per cent. in addition to the effects of musical sound already mentioned, it may be added that, as epstein, of berne, has shown,[ ] the other senses are stimulated under the influence of sound, and notably there is an increase in acuteness of vision which may be experimentally demonstrated. it is probable that this effect of music in heightening the impressions received by the other senses is of considerable significance from our present point of view. why are musical tones in a certain order and rhythm pleasurable? asked darwin in _the descent of man_, and he concluded that the question was insoluble. we see that, in reality, whatever the ultimate answer may be, the immediate reason is quite simple. pleasure is a condition of slight and diffused stimulation, in which the heart and breathing are faintly excited, the neuro-muscular system receives additional tone, the viscera gently stirred, the skin activity increased; and certain combinations of musical notes and intervals act as a physiological stimulus in producing these effects.[ ] among animals of all kinds, from insects upward, this physiological action appears to exist, for among nearly all of them certain sounds are agreeable and attractive, and other sounds indifferent and disagreeable. it appears that insects of quite different genera show much appreciation of the song of the cicada.[ ] birds show intense interest in the singing of good performers even of other species. experiments among a variety of animals in the zoölogical gardens with performances on various instruments showed that with the exception of seals none were indifferent, and all felt a discord as offensive. many animals showed marked likes and dislikes; thus, a tiger, who was obviously soothed by the violin, was infuriated by the piccolo; the violin and the flute were preferred by most animals.[ ] most persons have probably had occasion to observe the susceptibility of dogs to music. it may here suffice to give one personal observation. a dog (of mixed breed, partly collie), very well known to me, on hearing a nocturne of chopin, whined and howled, especially at the more pathetic passages, once or twice catching and drawing out the actual note played; he panted, walked about anxiously, and now and then placed his head on the player's lap. when the player proceeded to a more cheerful piece by grieg, the dog at once became indifferent, sat down, yawned, and scratched himself; but as soon as the player returned once more to the nocturne the dog at once repeated his accompaniment. there can be no doubt that among a very large number of animals of most various classes, more especially among insects and birds, the attraction of music is supported and developed on the basis of sexual attraction, the musical notes emitted serving as a sexual lure to the other sex. the evidence on this point was carefully investigated by darwin on a very wide basis.[ ] it has been questioned, some writers preferring to adopt the view of herbert spencer,[ ] that the singing of birds is due to "overflow of energy," the relation between courtship and singing being merely "a relation of concomitance." this view is no longer tenable; whatever the precise origin of the musical notes of animals may be,--and it is not necessary to suppose that sexual attraction had a large part in their first rudimentary beginnings,--there can now be little doubt that musical sounds, and, among birds, singing, play a very large part indeed in bringing the male and the female together.[ ] usually, it would appear, it is the performance of the male that attracts the female; it is only among very simple and primitive musicians, like some insects, that the female thus attracts the male.[ ] the fact that it is nearly always one sex only that is thus musically gifted should alone have sufficed to throw suspicion on any but a sexual solution of this problem of animal song. it is, however, an exceedingly remarkable fact that, although among insects and lower vertebrates the sexual influence of music is so large, and although among mammals and predominantly in man the emotional and æsthetic influence of music is so great, yet neither in man nor any of the higher mammals has music been found to exert a predominant sexual influence, or even in most cases any influence at all. darwin, while calling attention to the fact that the males of most species of mammals use their vocal powers chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, during the breeding-season, adds that "it is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the female."[ ] from a very different standpoint, féré, in studying the pathology of the human sexual instinct in the light of a very full knowledge of the available evidence, states that he knows of no detailed observations showing the existence of any morbid sexual perversions based on the sense of hearing, either in reference to the human voice or to instrumental music.[ ] when, however, we consider that not only in the animals most nearly related to man, but in man himself, the larynx and the voice undergo a marked sexual differentiation at puberty, it is difficult not to believe that this change has an influence on sexual selection and sexual psychology. at puberty there is a slight hyperæmia of the larynx, accompanied by rapid development alike of the larynx itself and of the vocal cords, which become larger and thicker, while there is an associated change in the voice, which deepens. all these changes are very slight in girls, but very pronounced in boys, whose voices are said to "break" and then become lower by at least an octave. the feminine larynx at puberty only increases in the proportion of to , but the masculine larynx in the proportion of to . the direct dependence of this change on the general sexual development is shown not merely by its occurrence at puberty, but by the fact that in eunuchs in whom the testicles have been removed before puberty the voice retains its childlike qualities.[ ] as a matter of fact, i believe that we may attach a considerable degree of importance to the voice and to music generally as a method of sexual appeal. on this point i agree with moll, who remarks that "the sense of hearing here plays a considerable part, and the stimulation received through the ears is much larger than is usually believed."[ ] i am not, however, inclined to think that this influence is considerable in its action on men, although mantegazza remarks, doubtless with a certain truth, that "some women's voices cannot be heard with impunity." it is true that the ancients deprecated the sexual or at all events the effeminating influence of some kinds of music, but they seem to have regarded it as sedative rather than stimulating; the kind of music they approved of as martial and stimulating was the kind most likely to have sexual effects in predisposed persons. the chinese and the greeks have more especially insisted on the ethical qualities of music and on its moralizing and demoralizing effects. some three thousand years ago, it is stated, a chinese emperor, believing that only they who understood music are capable of governing, distributed administrative functions in accordance with this belief. he acted entirely in accordance with chinese morality, the texts of confucianism (see translations in the "sacred books of the east series") show clearly that music and ceremony (or social ritual in a wide sense) are regarded as the two main guiding influences of life--music as the internal guide, ceremony as the external guide, the former being looked upon as the more important. among the greeks menander said that to many people music is a powerful stimulant to love. plato, in the third book of the _republic_, discusses what kinds of music should be encouraged in his ideal state. he does not clearly state that music is ever a sexual stimulant, but he appears to associate plaintive music (mixed lydian and hypolydian) with drunkenness, effeminacy, and idleness and considers that such music is "useless even to women that are to be virtuously given, not to say to men." he only admits two kinds of music: one violent and suited to war, the other tranquil and suited to prayer or to persuasion. he sets out the ethical qualities of music with a thoroughness which almost approaches the great chinese philosopher: "on these accounts we attach such importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses of the soul, and take most powerful hold of it, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, ... leading him to commend beautiful objects, and gladly receive them into his soul, and feed upon them, and grow to be noble and good." plato is, however, by no means so consistent and thorough as the chinese moralist, for having thus asserted that it is the influence of music which molds the soul into virtue, he proceeds to destroy his position with the statement that "we shall never become truly musical until we know the essential forms of temperance and courage and liberality and munificence," thus moving in a circle. it must be added that the greek conception of music was very comprehensive and included poetry. aristotle took a wider view of music than plato and admitted a greater variety of uses for it. he was less anxious to exclude those uses which were not strictly ethical. he disapproved, indeed, of the phrygian harmony as the expression of bacchic excitement. he accepts, however, the function of music as a katharsis of emotion, a notion which is said to have originated with the pythagoreans. (for a discussion of aristotle's views on music, see w.l. newman, _the politics of aristotle_, vol. i, pp. - .) athenæus, in his frequent allusions to music, attributes to it many intellectual and emotional properties (e.g., book xiv, chapter xxv) and in one place refers to "melodies inciting to lawless indulgence" (book xiii, chapter lxxv). we may gather from the _priapeia_ (xxvi) that cymbals and castanets were the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton songs and dances: "_cymbala, cum crotalis, pruriginis arma_." the ancient belief in the moralizing influence of music has survived into modern times mainly in a somewhat more scientific form as a belief in its therapeutic effects in disordered nervous and mental conditions. (this also is an ancient belief as witnessed by the well-known example of david playing to saul to dispel his melancholia.) in an apothecary of oakham, richard broune, published a work entitled _medicina musica_, in which he argued that music was beneficial in many maladies. in more recent days there have been various experiments and cases brought forward showing its efficacy in special conditions. an american physician (w.f. hutchinson) has shown that anæsthesia may be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain rates of vibration (summarized in the _british medical journal_, june , ). ferrand in a paper read before the paris academy of medicine in september, , gives reasons for classing some kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with beneficial therapeutic action. the case was subsequently reported of a child in whom night-terrors were eased by calming music in a minor key. the value of music in lunatic asylums is well recognized; see e.g., näcke, _revue de psychiatrie_, october, . vaschide and vurpas (_comptes rendus de la société de biologie_, december , ) have recorded the case of a girl of , suffering from mental confusion with excitation and central motor disequilibrium, whose muscular equilibrium was restored and movements rendered more co-ordinated and adaptive under the influence of music. while there has been much extravagance in the ancient doctrine concerning the effects of music, the real effects are still considerable. not only is this demonstrated by the experiments already referred to (p. ), indicating the efficacy of musical sounds as physiological stimulants, but also by anatomical considerations. the roots of the auditory nerves, mckendrick has pointed out, are probably more widely distributed and have more extensive connections than those of any other nerve. the intricate connections of these nerves are still only being unraveled. this points to an explanation of how music penetrates to the very roots of our being, influencing by associational paths reflex mechanisms both cerebral and somatic, so that there is scarcely a function of the body that may not be affected by the rhythmical pulsations, melodic progressions, and harmonic combinations of musical tones. (_nature_, june , , p. .) just as we are not entitled from the ancient belief in the influence of music on morals or the modern beliefs in its therapeutic influence--even though this has sometimes gone to the length of advocating its use in impotence[ ]--to argue that music has a marked influence in exciting the specifically sexual instincts, neither are we entitled to find any similar argument in the fact that music is frequently associated with the love-feelings of youth. men are often able to associate many of their earliest ideas of love in boyhood with women singing or playing; but in these cases it will always be found that the fascination was romantic and sentimental, and not specifically erotic.[ ] in adult life the music which often seems to us to be most definitely sexual in its appeal (such as much of wagner's _tristan_) really produces this effect in part from the association with the story, and in part from the intellectual realization of the composer's effort to translate passion into æsthetic terms; the actual effect of the music is not sexual, and it can well be believed that the results of experiments as regards the sexual influence of the _tristan_ music on men under the influence of hypnotism have been, as reported, negative. helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. it is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. but the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. even in its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual fascination exerted by a great singer, though certainly considerable, cannot be compared with that commonly exerted by the actress. cases have, indeed, been recorded--chiefly occurring, it is probable, in men of somewhat morbid nervous disposition--in which sexual attraction was exerted chiefly through the ear, or in which there was a special sexual sensibility to particular inflections or accents.[ ] féré mentions the case of a young man in hospital with acute arthritis who complained of painful erections whenever he heard through the door the very agreeable voice of the young woman (invisible to him) who superintended the linen.[ ] but these phenomena do not appear to be common, or, at all events, very pronounced. so far as my own inquiries go, only a small proportion of men would appear to experience definite sexual feelings on listening to music. and the fact that in woman the voice is so slightly differentiated from that of the child, as well as the very significant fact that among man's immediate or even remote ancestors the female's voice can seldom have served to attract the male, sufficiently account for the small part played by the voice and by music as a sexual allurement working on men.[ ] it is otherwise with women. it may, indeed, be said at the outset that the reasons which make it antecedently improbable that men should be sexually attracted through hearing render it probable that women should be so attracted. the change in the voice at puberty makes the deeper masculine voice a characteristic secondary sexual attribute of man, while the fact that among mammals generally it is the male that is most vocal--and that chiefly, or even sometimes exclusively, at the rutting season--renders it antecedently likely that among mammals generally, including the human species, there is in the female an actual or latent susceptibility to the sexual significance of the male voice,[ ] a susceptibility which, under the conditions of human civilization, may be transferred to music generally. it is noteworthy that in novels written by women there is a very frequent attentiveness to the qualities of the hero's voice and to its emotional effects on the heroine.[ ] we may also note the special and peculiar personal enthusiasm aroused in women by popular musicians, a more pronounced enthusiasm than is evoked in them by popular actors. as an interesting example of the importance attached by women novelists to the effects of the male voice i may refer to george eliot's _mill on the floss_, probably the most intimate and personal of george eliot's works. in book vi of this novel the influence of stephen guest (a somewhat commonplace young man) over maggie tulliver is ascribed almost exclusively to the effect of his base voice in singing. we are definitely told of maggie tulliver's "sensibility to the supreme excitement of music." thus, on one occasion, "all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet--emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. poor maggie! she looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. you might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wideopen, childish expression of wondering delight, which always came back in her happiest moments." george eliot's novels contain many allusions to the powerful emotional effects of music. it is unnecessary to refer to tolstoy's _kreutzer sonata_, in which music is regarded as the galeotto to bring lovers together--"the connecting bond of music, the most refined lust of the senses." in primitive human courtship music very frequently plays a considerable part, though not usually the sole part, being generally found as the accompaniment of the song and the dance at erotic festivals.[ ] the gilas, of new mexico, among whom courtship consists in a prolonged serenade day after day with the flute, furnish a somewhat exceptional case. savage women are evidently very attentive to music; backhouse (as quoted, by ling roth[ ]) mentions how a woman belonging to the very primitive and now extinct tasmanian race, when shown a musical box, listened "with intensity; her ears moved like those of a dog or horse, to catch the sound." i have found little evidence to show that music, except in occasional cases, exerts even the slightest specifically sexual effect on men, whether musical or unmusical. but i have ample evidence that it very frequently exerts to a slight but definite extent such an influence on women, even when quite normal. judging from my own inquiries it would, indeed, seem likely that the majority of normal educated women are liable to experience some degree of definite sexual excitement from music; one states that orchestral music generally tends to produce this effect; another finds it chiefly from wagner's music; another from military music, etc. others simply state--what, indeed, probably expresses the experience of most persons of either sex--that it heightens one's mood. one lady mentions that some of her friends, whose erotic feelings are aroused by music, are especially affected in this way by the choral singing in roman catholic churches.[ ] in the typical cases just mentioned, all fairly normal and healthy women, the sexual effects of music though definite were usually quite slight. in neuropathic subjects they may occasionally be more pronounced. thus, a medical correspondent has communicated to me the case of a married lady with one child, a refined, very beautiful, but highly neurotic, woman, married to a man with whom she has nothing in common. her tastes lie in the direction of music; she is a splendid pianist, and her highly trained voice would have made a fortune. she confesses to strong sexual feelings and does not understand why intercourse never affords what she knows she wants. but the hearing of beautiful music, or at times the excitement of her own singing, will sometimes cause intense orgasm. vaschide and vurpas, who emphasize the sexually stimulating effects of music, only bring forward one case in any detail, and it is doubtless significant that this case is a woman. "while listening to a piece of music x changes expression, her eyes become bright, the features are accentuated, a smile begins to form, an expression of pleasure appears, the body becomes more erect, there is a general muscular hypertonicity. x tells us that as she listens to the music she experiences sensations very like those of normal intercourse. the difference chiefly concerns the local genital apparatus, for there is no flow of vaginal mucus. on the psychic side the resemblance is marked." (vaschide and vurpas, "du coefficient sexual de l'impulsion musicale," _archives de neurologie_, may, .) it is sometimes said, or implied, that a woman (or a man) sings better under the influence of sexual emotion. the writer of an article already quoted, on "woman in her psychological relations" (_journal of psychological medicine_, ), mentions that "a young lady remarkable for her musical and poetical talents naïvely remarked to a friend who complimented her upon her singing: 'i never sing half so well as when i've had a love-fit.'" and george eliot says. "there is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not make a man sing or play the better." while, however, it may be admitted that some degree of general emotional exaltation may exercise a favorable influence on the singing voice, it is difficult to believe that definite physical excitement at or immediately before the exercise of the voice can, as a rule, have anything but a deleterious effect on its quality. it is recognized that tenors (whose voices resemble those of women more than basses, who are not called upon to be so careful in this respect) should observe rules of sexual hygiene; and menstruation frequently has a definite influence in impairing the voice (h. ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, p. ). as the neighborhood of menstruation is also the period when sexual excitement is most likely to be felt, we have here a further indication that sexual emotion is not favorable to singing. i agree with the remarks of a correspondent, a musical amateur, who writes: "sexual excitement and good singing do not appear to be correlated. a woman's emotional capacity in singing or acting may be remotely associated with hysterical neuroses, but is better evinced for art purposes in the absence of disturbing sexual influences. a woman may, indeed, fancy herself the heroine of a wanton romance and 'let herself go' a little in singing with improved results. but a memory of sexual ardors will help no woman to make the best of her voice in training. some women can only sing their best when they think of the other women they are outsinging. one girl 'lets her soul go out into her voice' thinking of jamroll, another thinking of her lover (when she has none), and most, no doubt, when they think of nothing. but no woman is likely to 'find herself' in an artistic sense because she has lost herself in another sense--not even if she has done so quite respectably." the reality of the association between the sexual impulse and music--and, indeed, art generally--is shown by the fact that the evolution of puberty tends to be accompanied by a very marked interest in musical and other kinds of art. lancaster, in a study of this question among a large number of young people (without reference to difference in sex, though they were largely female), found that from to per cent of young people feel an impulse to art about the period of puberty, lasting a few months, or at most a year or two. it appears that young people showed an increased and passionate love for music, against only who experienced no change in this respect. the curve culminates at the age of and falls rapidly after . many of these cases were really quite unmusical.[ ] footnotes: [ ] this view has been more especially developed by j.b. miner, _motor, visual, and applied rhythms_, psychological review monograph supplements, vol. v, no. , . [ ] sir s. wilks, _medical magazine_, january, ; cf. clifford allbutt, "music, rhythm, and muscle," _nature_, february , . [ ] bücher, _arbeit und rhythmus_, third edition, ; wundt, _völkerpsychologie_, , part i, p. . [ ] féré deals fully with the question in his book, _travail et plaisir_, , chapter iii, "influence du rhythme sur le travail." [ ] fillmore, "primitive scales and rhythms," _proceedings of the international congress of anthropology_, chicago, . [ ] "love songs among the omaha indians," in _proceedings_ of same congress. [ ] groos, _spiele der menschen_, p. . [ ] "analysis of the sexual impulse," _studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. iii. [ ] féré, _sensation et mouvement_, chapter v; id., _travail et plaisir_, chapter xii. [ ] scripture, _thinking, feeling, doing_, p. . [ ] tarchanoff, "influence de la musique sur l'homme et sur les animaux," _atti dell' xi congresso medico internationale_, rome, , vol. ii, p. ; also in _archives italiennes de biologie_, . [ ] "love and pain," _studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. iii. [ ] féré, _travail et plaisir_, chapter xii, "action physiologique des sens musicaux." "a practical treatise on harmony," goblot remarks (_revue philosophique_, july, , p. ), "ought to tell us in what way such an interval, or such a succession of intervals, affects us. a theoretical treatise on harmony ought to tell us the explanation of these impressions. in a word, musical harmony is a psychological science." he adds that this science is very far from being constituted yet; we have hardly even obtained a glimpse of it. [ ] _american journal of psychology_, april, . [ ] _american journal of psychology_, november, . the influence of rhythm on the involuntary muscular system is indicated by the occasional effect of music in producing a tendency to contraction of the bladder. [ ] _archiv für anatomie und physiologie_ (physiologisches abtheilung), , p. . [ ] m.l. patrizi, "primi esperimenti intorno all' influenza della musica sulla circolozione del sangue nel cervello umano," _international congress für psychologie_, munich, , p. . [ ] _philosophische studien_, vol. xi. [ ] binet and courtier, "la vie emotionelle," _année psychologique_, third year, , pp. - . [ ] guibaud, _contribution à l'étude expérimentale de l'influence de la musique sur la circulation et la respiration_. thèse de bordeaux, , summarized in _année psychologique_, fifth year, , pp. - . [ ] _international congress of physiology_, berne, . [ ] the influence of association plays no necessary part in these pleasurable influences, for féré's experiments show that an unmusical subject responds physiologically, with much precision, to musical intervals he is unable to recognize. r. macdougall also finds that the effective quality of rhythmical sequences does not appear to be dependent on secondary associations (_psychological review_, january, ). [ ] r.t. lewis, in _nature notes_, august, . [ ] cornish, "orpheus at the zoo," in _life at the zoo_, pp. - . [ ] _descent of man_, chapters xiii and xix. [ ] "the origin of music" ( ), _essays_, vol. ii. [ ] anyone who is in doubt on this point, as regards bird song, may consult the little book in which the evidence has been well summarized by häcker, _der gesang der vögel_, or the discussion in groos's _spiele der thiere_, pp. et seq. [ ] thus, mosquitoes are irresistibly attracted by music, and especially by those musical tones which resemble the buzzing of the female; the males alone are thus attracted. (nuttall and shipley, and sir hiram maxim, quoted in _nature_, october , , p. , and in _lancet_, february , .) [ ] _descent of man_, second edition, p. . groos, in his discussion of music, also expresses doubt whether hearing plays a considerable part in the courtship of mammals, _spiele der menschen_, p. . [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. . [ ] see biérent, _la puberté_ chapter iv; also havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, pp. - . endriss (_die bisherigen beobachtungen von physiologischen und pathologischen beziehungen der oberen luftwege zu den sexualorganen_, teil iii) brings together various observations on the normal and abnormal relations of the larynx to the sexual sphere. [ ] moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. , p. . [ ] j.l. roger, _traité des effets de la musique_, , pp. and . [ ] a typical example occurs in the early life of history i in appendix b to vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] vaschide and vurpas state (_archives de neurologie_, may, ) that in their experience music may facilitate sexual approaches in some cases of satiety, and that in certain pathological cases the sexual act can only be accomplished under the influence of music. [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, p. . bloch (_beiträge_, etc., vol. ii, p. ) quotes some remarks of kistemaecker's concerning the sound of women's garments and the way in which savages and sometimes civilized women cultivate this rustling and clinking. gutzkow, in his _autobiography_, said that the _frou-frou_ of a woman's dress was the music of the spheres to him. [ ] the voice is doubtless a factor of the first importance in sexual attraction among the blind. on this point i have no data. the expressiveness of the voice to the blind, and the extent to which their likes and dislikes are founded on vocal qualities, is well shown by an interesting paper written by an american physician, blind from early infancy, james cocke, "the voice as an index to the soul," _arena_, january, . [ ] long before darwin had set forth his theory of sexual selection laycock had pointed out the influence which the voice of the male, among man and other animals, exerts on the female (_nervous diseases of women_, p. ). and a few years later the writer of a suggestive article on "woman in her psychological relations" (_journal of psychological medicine_, ) remarked: "the sonorous voice of the male man is exactly analogous in its effect on woman to the neigh and bellow of other animals. this voice will have its effect on an amorous or susceptible organization much in the same way as color and the other visual ovarian stimuli." the writer adds that it exercises a still more important influence when modulated to music: "in this respect man has something in common with insects as well as birds." [ ] groos refers more than once to the important part played in german novels written by women by what one of them terms the "bearded male voice." [ ] various instances are quoted in the third volume of these _studies_ when discussing the general phenomena of courtship and tumescence, "an analysis of the sexual impulse." [ ] _the tasmanians_, p. . [ ] an early reference to the sexual influence of music on women may perhaps be found in a playful passage in swift's _martinus scriblerus_ (possibly due to his medical collaborator, arbuthnot): "does not Ælian tell how the libyan mares were excited to horsing by music? (which ought to be a caution to modest women against frequenting operas)." _memoirs of martinus scriblerus_, book i, chapter . (the reference is to Ælian, _hist. animal_, lib. xi, cap. , and lib. xii, cap. .) [ ] e. lancaster, "psychology of adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, july, . ii. summary--why the influence of music in human sexual selection is comparatively small. we have seen that it is possible to set forth in a brief space the facts at present available concerning the influence on the pairing impulse of stimuli acting through the ear. they are fairly simple and uncomplicated; they suggest few obscure problems which call for analysis; they do not bring before us any remarkable perversions of feeling. at the same time, the stimuli to sexual excitement received through the sense of hearing, although very seldom of exclusive or preponderant influence, are yet somewhat more important than is usually believed. primarily the voice, and secondarily instrumental music, exert a distinct effect in this direction, an effect representing a specialization of a generally stimulating physiological influence which all musical sounds exercise upon the organism. there is, however, in this respect, a definite difference between the sexes. it is comparatively rare to find that the voice or instrumental music, however powerful its generally emotional influence, has any specifically sexual effect on men. on the other hand, it seems probable that the majority of women, at all events among the educated classes, are liable to show some degree of sexual sensibility to the male voice or to instrumental music. it is not surprising to find that music should have some share in arousing sexual emotion when we bear in mind that in the majority of persons the development of sexual life is accompanied by a period of special interest in music. it is not unexpected that the specifically sexual effects of the voice and music should be chiefly experienced by women when we remember that not only in the human species is it the male in whom the larynx and voice are chiefly modified at puberty, but that among mammals generally it is the male who is chiefly or exclusively vocal at the period of sexual activity; so that any sexual sensibility to vocal manifestations must be chiefly or exclusively manifested in female mammals. at the best, however, although æsthetic sensibility to sound is highly developed and emotional sensibility to it profound and widespread, although women may be thrilled by the masculine voice and men charmed by the feminine voice, it cannot be claimed that in the human species hearing is a powerful factor in mating. this sense has here suffered between the lower senses of touch and smell, on the one hand, with their vague and massive appeal, and the higher sense, vision, on the other hand, with its exceedingly specialized appeal. the position of touch as the primary and fundamental sense is assured. smell, though in normal persons it has no decisive influence on sexual attraction, acts by virtue of its emotional sympathies and antipathies, while, by virtue of the fact that among man's ancestors it was the fundamental channel of sexual sensibility, it furnishes a latent reservoir of impressions to which nervously abnormal persons, and even normal persons under the influence of excitement or of fatigue, are always liable to become sensitive. hearing, as a sense for receiving distant perceptions has a wider field than is in man possessed by either touch or smell. but here it comes into competition with vision, and vision is, in man, the supreme and dominant sense.[ ] we are always more affected by what we see than by what we hear. men and women seldom hear each other without speedily seeing each other, and then the chief focus of interest is at once transferred to the visual centre.[ ] in human sexual selection, therefore, hearing plays a part which is nearly always subordinated to that of vision. footnotes: [ ] nietzsche has even suggested that among primitive men delicacy of hearing and the evolution of music can only have been produced under conditions which made it difficult for vision to come into play: "the ear, the organ of fear, could only have developed, as it has, in the night and in the twilight of dark woods and caves.... in the brightness the ear is less necessary. hence the character of music as an art of night and twilight." (_morgenröthe_, p. .) [ ] at a concert most people are instinctively anxious to _see_ the performers, thus distracting the purely musical impression, and the reasonable suggestion of goethe that the performers should be invisible is still seldom carried into practice. vision i. primacy of vision in man--beauty as a sexual allurement--the objective element in beauty--ideals of feminine beauty in various parts of the world--savage women sometimes beautiful from european point of view--savages often admire european beauty--the appeal of beauty to some extent common even to animals and man. vision is the main channel by which man receives his impressions. to a large extent it has slowly superseded all the other senses. its range is practically infinite; it brings before us remote worlds, it enables us to understand the minute details of our own structure. while apt for the most abstract or the most intimate uses, its intermediate range is of universal service. it furnishes the basis on which a number of arts make their appeal to us, and, while thus the most æsthetic of the senses, it is the sense on which we chiefly rely in exercising the animal function of nutrition. it is not surprising, therefore, that from the point of view of sexual selection vision should be the supreme sense, and that the love-thoughts of men have always been a perpetual meditation of beauty. it would be out of place here to discuss comparatively the origins of our ideas of beauty. that is a question which belongs to æsthetics, not to sexual psychology, and it is a question on which æstheticians are not altogether in agreement. we need not even be concerned to make any definite assertion on the question whether our ideas of sexual beauty have developed under the influence of more general and fundamental laws, or whether sexual ideals themselves underlie our more general conceptions of beauty. practically, so far as man and his immediate ancestors are concerned, the sexual and the extra-sexual factors of beauty have been interwoven from the first. the sexually beautiful object must have appealed to fundamental physiological aptitudes of reaction; the generally beautiful object must have shared in the thrill which the specifically sexual object imparted. there has been an inevitable action and reaction throughout. just as we found that the sexual and the non-sexual influences of agreeable odors throughout nature are inextricably mingled, so it is with the motives that make an object beautiful to our eyes.[ ] the sexual element in the constitution of beauty is well recognized even by those writers who concern themselves exclusively with the æsthetic conception of beauty or with its relation to culture. it is enough to quote two or three testimonies on this point. "the whole sentimental side of our æsthetic sensibility," remarks santayana, "--without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than æsthetic,--is due to our sexual organization remotely stirred.... if anyone were desirous to produce a being with a great susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for that object than sex. individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage independence. for them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. but sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solitude an eternal melancholy. what more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? the attention is fixed upon a well-defined object, and all the effects it produces in the mind are easily regarded as powers or qualities of that object.... to a certain extent this kind of interest will center in the proper object of sexual passion, and in the special characteristics of the opposite sex[ ]; and we find, accordingly, that woman is the most lovely object to man, and man, if female modesty would confess it, the most interesting to woman. but the effects of so fundamental and primitive a reaction are much more general. sex is not the only object of sexual passion. when love lacks its specific object, when it does not yet understand itself, or has been sacrificed to some other interest, we see the stifled fire bursting out in various directions.... passion then overflows and visibly floods those neighboring regions which it had always secretly watered. for the same nervous organization which sex involves, with its necessarily wide branchings and associations in the brain, must be partially stimulated by other objects than its specific or ultimate one; especially in man, who, unlike some of the lower animals, has not his instincts clearly distinct and intermittent, but always partially active, and never active in isolation. we may say, then, that for man all nature is a secondary object of sexual passion, and that to this fact the beauty of nature is largely due." (g. santayana, _the sense of beauty_, pp. - .) not only is the general fact of sexual attraction an essential element of æsthetic contemplation, as santayana remarks, but we have to recognize also that specific sexual emotion properly comes within the æsthetic field. it is quite erroneous, as groos well points out, to assert that sexual emotion has no æsthetic value. on the contrary, it has quite as much value as the emotion of terror or of pity. such emotion, must, however, be duly subordinated to the total æsthetic effect. (k. groos, _der Æsthetische genuss_, p. .) "the idea of beauty," remy de gourmont says, "is not an unmixed idea; it is intimately united with the idea of carnal pleasure. stendhal obscurely perceived this when he defined beauty as 'a promise of happiness.' beauty is a woman, and women themselves have carried docility to men so far as to accept this aphorism which they can only understand in extreme sexual perversion.... beauty is so sexual that the only uncontested works of art are those that simply show the human body in its nudity. by its perseverance in remaining purely sexual greek statuary has placed itself forever above all discussion. it is beautiful because it is a beautiful human body, such a one as every man or every woman would desire to unite with in the perpetuation of the race.... that which inclines to love seems beautiful; that which seems beautiful inclines to love. this intimate union of art and of love is, indeed, the only explanation of art. without this genital echo art would never have been born and never have been perpetuated. there is nothing useless in these deep human depths; everything which has endured is necessary. art is the accomplice of love. when love is taken away there is no art; when art is taken away love is nothing but a physiological need." (remy de gourmont, _culture des idées_, , p. , and _mercure de france_, august, , pp. et seq.) beauty as incarnated in the feminine body has to some extent become the symbol of love even for women. colin scott finds that it is common among women who are not inverted for female beauty whether on the stage or in art to arouse sexual emotion to a greater extent than male beauty, and this is confirmed by some of the histories i have recorded in the appendix to the third volume of these _studies_. scott considers that female beauty has come to be regarded as typical of ideal beauty, and thus tends to produce an emotional effect on both sexes alike. it is certainly rare to find any æsthetic admiration of men among women, except in the case of women who have had some training in art. in this matter it would seem that woman passively accepts the ideals of man. "objects which excite a man's desire," colin scott remarks, "are often, if not generally, the same as those affecting woman. the female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon both sexes. statues of female forms are more liable than those of male form to have a stimulating effect upon women as well as men. the evidence of numerous literary expressions seems to show that under the influence of sexual excitement a woman regards her body as made for man's gratification, and that it is this complex emotion which forms the initial stage, at least, of her own pleasure. her body is the symbol for her partner, and indirectly for her, through his admiration of it, of their mutual joy and satisfaction." (colin scott, "sex and art," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. , p. ; also private letter.) at the same time it must be remembered that beauty and the conception of beauty have developed on a wider basis than that of the sexual impulse only, and also that our conceptions of the beautiful, even as concerns the human form, are to some extent objective, and may thus be in part reduced to law. stratz, in his books on feminine beauty, and notably in _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, insists on the objective element in beauty. papillault, again, when discussing the laws of growth and the beauty of the face, argues that beauty of line in the face is objective, and not a creation of fancy, since it is associated with the highest human functions, moral and social. he remarks on the contrast between the prehistoric man of chancelade,--delicately made, with elegant face and high forehead,--who created the great magdalenian civilization, and his seemingly much more powerful, but less beautiful, predecessor, the man of spy, with enormous muscles and powerful jaws. (_bulletin de la société d'anthropologie_, , p. .) the largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health. a well and harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage--all these things which are essential to beauty are the conditions of health. it has not been demonstrated that there is any correlation between beauty and longevity, and the proof would not be easy to give, but it is quite probable that such a correlation may exist, and various indications point in this direction. one of the most delightful of opie's pictures is the portrait of pleasance reeve (afterward lady smith) at the age of . this singularly beautiful and animated brunette lived to the age of . most people are probably acquainted with similar, if less marked, cases of the same tendency. the extreme sexual importance of beauty, so far, at all events, as conscious experience is concerned is well illustrated by the fact that, although three other senses may and often do play a not inconsiderable part in the constitution of a person's sexual attractiveness,--the tactile element being, indeed, fundamental,--yet in nearly all the most elaborate descriptions of attractive individuals it is the visible elements that are in most cases chiefly emphasized. whether among the lowest savages or in the highest civilization, the poet and story-teller who seeks to describe an ideally lovely and desirable woman always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those characters which appeal to the eye. the richly laden word _beauty_ is a synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so simple, comparatively, and vague are the impressions derived from the other senses that none of them can furnish us with any corresponding word. before attempting to analyze the conception of beauty, regarded in its sexual appeal to the human mind, it may be well to bring together a few fairly typical descriptions of a beautiful woman as she appears to the men of various nations. in an australian folklore story taken down from the lips of a native some sixty years ago by w. dunlop (but evidently not in the native's exact words) we find this description of an australian beauty: "a man took as his wife a beautiful girl who had long, glossy hair hanging around her face and down her shoulders, which were plump and round. her face was adorned with red clay and her person wrapped in a fine large opossum rug fastened by a pin formed from the small bone of the kangaroo's leg, and also by a string attached to a wallet made of rushes neatly plaited of small strips skinned from their outside after they had been for some time exposed to the heat of the fire; which being thrown on her back, the string passing under one arm and across her breast, held the soft rug in a fanciful position of considerable elegance; and she knew well how to show to advantage her queenlike figure when she walked with her polished yam stick held in one of her small hands and her little feet appearing below the edge of the rug" (w. dunlop, "australian folklore stories," _journal of the anthropological institute_, august and november, , p. ). a malay description of female beauty is furnished by skeat. "the brow (of the malay helen for whose sake a thousand desperate battles are fought in malay romances) is like the one-day-old moon; her eyebrows resemble 'pictured clouds,' and are 'arched like the fighting-cock's (artificial) spur'; her cheek resembles the 'sliced-off cheek of a mango'; her nose, 'an opening jasmine bud'; her hair, the 'wavy blossom shoots of the areca-palm'; slender is her neck, 'with a triple row of dimples'; her bosom ripening, her waist 'lissom as the stalk of a flower,' her head; 'of a perfect oval' (literally, bird's-egg shaped), her fingers like the leafy 'spears of lemon-grass' or the 'quills of the porcupine,' her eyes 'like the splendor of the planet venus,' and her lips 'like the fissure of a pomegranate.'" (w.w. skeat, _malay magic_, , p. .) in mitford's _tales of old japan_ (vol. i, p. ) a "peerlessly beautiful girl of " is thus described: "she was neither too fat nor too thin, neither too tall nor too short; her face was oval, like a melon-seed, and her complexion fair and white;; her eyes were narrow and bright, her teeth small and even; her nose was aquiline, and her mouth delicately formed, with lovely red lips; her eyebrows were long and fine; she had a profusion of long black hair; she spoke modestly, with a soft, sweet voice, and when she smiled, two lovely dimples appeared in her cheeks; in all her movements she was gentle and refined." the japanese belle of ancient times, dr. nagayo sensai remarks (_lancet_, february , ) had a white face, a long, slender throat and neck, a narrow chest, small thighs, and small feet and hands. bälz, also, has emphasized the ethereal character of the japanese ideal of feminine beauty, delicate, pale and slender, almost uncanny; and stratz, in his interesting book, _die körperformen in kunst und leben der japaner_ (second edition, ), has dealt fully with the subject of japanese beauty. the singalese are great connoisseurs of beauty, and a kandyan deeply learned in the matter gave dr. davy the following enumeration of a woman's points of beauty: "her hair should be voluminous, like the tail of the peacock, long, reaching to her knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her eyebrows should resemble the rainbow, her eyes, the blue sapphire and the petals of the blue manilla-flower. her nose should be like the bill of the hawk; her lips should be bright and red, like coral or the young leaf of the iron-tree. her teeth should be small, regular, and closely set, and like jessamine buds. her neck should be large and round, resembling the berrigodea. her chest should be capacious; her breasts, firm and conical, like the yellow cocoa-nut, and her waist small--almost small enough to be clasped by the hand. her hips should be wide; her limbs tapering; the soles of her feet, without any hollow, and the surface of her body in general soft, delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones and sinews." (j. davy, _an account of the interior of ceylon_, , p. .) the "padmini," or lotus-woman, is described by hindu writers as the type of most perfect feminine beauty. "she in whom the following signs and symptoms appear is called a _padmini_: her face is pleasing as the full moon; her body, well clothed with flesh, is as soft as the shiras or mustard flower; her skin is fine, tender, and fair as the yellow lotus, never dark colored. her eyes are bright and beautiful as the orbs of the fawn, well cut, and with reddish corners. her bosom is hard, full, and high; she; has a good neck; her nose is straight and lovely; and three folds or wrinkles cross her middle--about the umbilical region. her _yoni_ [vulva] resembles the opening lotus bud, and her love-seed is perfumed like the lily that has newly burst. she walks with swanlike [more exactly, flamingolike] gait, and her voice is low and musical as the note of the kokila bird [the indian cuckoo]; she delights in white raiment, in fine jewels, and in rich dresses. she eats little, sleeps lightly, and being as respectful and religious as she is clever and courteous, she is ever anxious to worship the gods and to enjoy the conversation of brahmans. such, then, is the padmini, or lotus-woman." (_the kama sutra of vatsyayana_, , p. .) the hebrew ideal of feminine beauty is set forth in various passages of the _song of songs_. the poem is familiar, and it will suffice to quote one passage:-- "how beautiful are thy feet in sandals, o prince's daughter! thy rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. thy navel is like a rounded goblet wherein no mingled wine is wanting; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. thy two breasts are like two fawns they are twins of a roe. thy neck is like the tower of ivory; thine eyes as the pools in heshbon, by the gate of bathrabbim; thy nose is like the tower of lebanon that looketh toward damascus. thine head upon thee is like carmel and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held captive in the tresses thereof. this thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes, and the smell of thy breath like apples, and thy mouth like the best wine." and the man is thus described in the same poem:-- "my beloved is fair and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. his head as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy (or curling), and black as a raven. his eyes are like doves beside the water-brooks, washed with milk and fitly set. his cheeks are as a bed of spices, as banks of sweet herbs; his lips are as lilies, dropping liquid myrrh. his hands are as rings of gold, set with beryl; his body is as ivory work, overlaid with sapphires. his legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold. his aspect is like lebanon, excellent as the cedars. his mouth is most sweet; yea, he is altogether lovely." "the maiden whose loveliness inspires the most impassioned expressions in arabic poetry," lane states, "is celebrated for her slender figure: she is like the cane among plants, and is elegant as a twig of the oriental willow. her face is like the full moon, presenting the strongest contrast to the color of her hair, which is of the deepest hue of night, and falls to the middle of her back (arab ladies are extremely fond of full and long hair). a rosy blush overspreads the center of each cheek; and a mole is considered an additional charm. the arabs, indeed, are particularly extravagant in their admiration of this natural beauty spot, which, according to its place, is compared to a drop of ambergris upon a dish of alabaster or upon the surface of a ruby. the eyes of the arab beauty are intensely black,[ ] large, and long, of the form of an almond: they are full of brilliancy; but this is softened by long silken lashes, giving a tender and languid expression that is full of enchantment and scarcely to be improved by the adventitious aid of the black border of kohl; for this the lovely maiden adds rather for the sake of fashion than necessity, having what the arabs term natural kohl. the eyebrows are thin and arched; the forehead is wide and fair as ivory; the nose straight; the mouth, small; the lips of a brilliant red; and the teeth, like pearls set in coral. the forms of the bosom are compared to two pomegranates; the waist is slender; the hips are wide and large; the feet and hands, small; the fingers, tapering, and their extremities dyed with the deep orange tint imparted by the leaves of the henna." lane adds a more minute analysis from an unknown author quoted by el-ishákee: "four things in a woman should be _black_--the hair of the head, the eyebrows, the eyelashes, and the dark part of the eyes; four _white_--the complexion of the skin, the white of the eyes, the teeth, and the legs; four _red_--the tongue, the lips, the middle of the cheeks, and the gums; four _round_--the head, the neck, the forearms, and the ankles; four _long_--the back, the fingers, the arms, and the legs; four _wide_--the forehead, the eyes, the bosom, and the hips; four _fine_--the eyebrows, the nose, the lips, and the fingers; four _thick_--the lower part of the back, the thighs, the calves of the legs, and the knees; four _small_--the ears, the breasts, the hands, and the feet." (e.w. lane, _arabian society in the middle ages_, , pp. - .) a persian treatise on the figurative terms relating to beauty shows that the hair should be black, abundant, and wavy, the eyebrows dark and arched. the eyelashes also must be dark, and like arrows from the bow of the eyebrows. there is, however, no insistence on the blackness of the eyes. we hear of four varieties of eye: the dark-gray eye (or narcissus eye); the narrow, elongated eye of turkish beauties; the languishing, or love-intoxicated, eye; and the wine-colored eye. much stress is laid on the quality of brilliancy. the face is sometimes described as brown, but more especially as white and rosy. there are many references to the down on the lips, which is described as greenish (sometimes bluish) and compared to herbage. this down and that on the cheeks and the stray hairs near the ears were regarded as very great beauties. a beauty spot on the chin, cheek, or elsewhere was also greatly admired, and evoked many poetic comparisons. the mouth must be very small. in stature a beautiful woman must be tall and erect, like the cypress or the maritime pine. while the arabs admired the rosiness of the legs and thighs, the persians insisted on white legs and compared them to silver and crystal. (_anis el-ochchâq_, by shereef-eddin romi, translated by huart, _bibliothèque de l'ecole des hautes etudes_, paris, fasc. , .) in the story of kamaralzaman in the _arabian nights_ el-sett budur is thus described: "her hair is so brown that it is blacker than the separation of friends. and when it is arrayed in three tresses that reach to her feet i seem to see three nights at once. "her face is as white as the day on which friends meet again. if i look on it at the time of the full moon i see two moons at once. "her cheeks are formed of an anemone divided into two corollas; they have the purple tinge of wine, and her nose is straighter and more delicate than the finest sword-blade. "her lips are colored agate and coral; her tongue secretes eloquence; her saliva is more desirable than the juice of grapes. "but her bosom, blessed be the creator, is a living seduction. it bears twin breasts of the purest ivory, rounded, and that may be held within the five fingers of one hand. "her belly has dimples full of shade and arranged with the harmony of the arabic characters on the seal of a coptic scribe in egypt. and the belly gives origin to her finely modeled and elastic waist. "at the thought of her flanks i shudder, for thence depends a mass so weighty that it obliges its owner to sit down when she has risen and to rise when she lies. "such are her flanks, and from them descend, like white marble, her glorious thighs, solid and straight, united above beneath their crown. then come the legs and the slender feet, so small that i am astounded they can bear so great a weight." an egyptian stela in the louvre sings the praise of a beautiful woman, a queen who died about b.c., as follows: "the beloved before all women, the king's daughter who is sweet in love, the fairest among women, a maid whose like none has seen. blacker is her hair than the darkness of night, blacker than the berries of the blackberry bush (?). harder are her teeth (?) than the flints on the sickle. a wreath of flowers is each of her breasts, close nestling on her arms." wiedemann, who quotes this, adds: "during the whole classic period of egyptian history with few exceptions (such, for example, as the reign of that great innovator, amenophis iv) the ideal alike for the male and the female body was a slender and but slightly developed form. under the ethiopian rule and during the ptolemaic period in egypt itself we find, for the first time, that the goddesses are represented with plump and well-developed outlines. examination of the mummies shows that the earlier ideal was based upon actual facts, and that in ancient egypt slender, sinewy forms distinguished both men and women. intermarriage with other races and harem life may have combined in later times to alter the physical type, and with it to change also the ideal of beauty." (a. wiedemann, _popular literature in ancient egypt_, p. .) commenting on plato's ideas of beauty in the _banquet_ eméric-david gives references from greek literature showing that the typical greek beautiful woman must be tall, her body supple, her fingers long, her foot small and light, the eyes clear and moderately large, the eyebrows slightly arched and almost meeting, the nose straight and firm, nearly--but not quite--aquiline, the breath sweet as honey. (eméric-david, _recherches sur l'art statuaire_, new edition, , p. .) at the end of classic antiquity, probably in the fifth century, aristænetus in his first epistle thus described his mistress lais: "her cheeks are white, but mixed in imitation of the splendor of the rose; her lips are thin, by a narrow space separated from the cheeks, but more red; her eyebrows are black and divided in the middle; the nose straight and proportioned to the thin lips; the eyes large and bright, with very black pupils, surrounded by the clearest white, each color more brilliant by contrast. her hair is naturally curled, and, as homer's saying is, like the hyacinth. the neck is white and proportioned to the face, and though unadorned more conspicuous by its delicacy; but a necklace of gems encircles it, on which her name is written in jewels. she is tall and elegantly dressed in garments fitted to her body and limbs. when dressed her appearance is beautiful; when undressed she is all beauty. her walk is composed and slow; she looks like a cypress or a palm stirred by the wind. i cannot describe how the swelling, symmetrical breasts raise the constraining vest, nor how delicate and supple her limbs are. and when she speaks, what sweetness in her discourse!" renier has studied the feminine ideal of the provençal poets, the troubadours who used the "langue d'oc." "they avoid any description of the feminine type. the indications refer in great part to the slender, erect, fresh appearance of the body, and to the white and rosy coloring. after the person generally, the eyes receive most praise; they are sweet, amorous, clear, smiling, and bright. the color is never mentioned. the mouth is laughing, and vermilion, and, smiling sweetly, it reveals the white teeth and calls for the delights of the kiss. the face is clear and fresh, the hand white and the hair constantly blonde. the troubadours seldom speak of the rest of the body. peire vidal is an exception, and his reference to the well-raised breasts may be placed beside a reference by bertran de born. the general impression conveyed by the love lyrics of the langue d'oc is one of great convention. there seemed to be no salvation outside certain phrases and epithets. the woman of provence, sung by hundreds of poets, seems to have been composed all of milk and roses, a blonde nuremburg doll." (r. renier, _il tipo estetico della donna nel medioevo_, , pp. - .) the conventional ideal of the troubadours is, again, thus described: "she is a lady whose skin is white as milk, whiter than the driven snow, of peculiar purity in whiteness. her cheeks, on which vermilion hues alone appear, are like the rosebud in spring, when it has not yet opened to the full. her hair, which is nearly always bedecked and adorned with flowers, is invariably of the color of flax, as soft as silk, and shimmering with a sheen of the finest gold." (j.f. rowbotham, _the troubadours and courts of love_, p. .) in the most ancient spanish romances, renier remarks, the definite indications of physical beauty are slight. the hair is "of pure gold," or simply fair (_rudios_, which is equal to _blondos_, a word of later introduction), the face white and rosy, the hand soft, white, and fragrant; in one place we find a reference to the uncovered breasts, whiter than crystal. but usually the ancient castilian romances do not deal with these details. the poet contents himself with the statement that a lady is the sweetest woman in the world, "_la mas linda mujer del mundo_." (r. renier, _il tipo estetico della donna nel medioevo_, pp. et seq.) in a detailed and well-documented thesis, alwin schultz describes the characteristics of the beautiful woman as she appealed to the german authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. she must be of medium height and slender. her hair must be fair, like gold; long, bright, and curly; a man's must only reach to his shoulders. dark hair is seldom mentioned and was not admired. the parting of the hair must be white, but not too broad. the forehead must be white and bright and rounded, without wrinkles. the eyebrows must be darker than the hair, arched, and not too broad, as though drawn with a pencil, the space between them not too broad. the eyes must be bright, clear, and sparkling, not too large or too small; nothing definite was said of the color, but they were evidently usually blue. the nose must be of medium size, straight, and not curved. the cheeks must be white, tinged with red; if the red was absent by nature women used rouge. the mouth must be small; the lips full and red. the teeth must be small, white, and even. the chin must be white, rounded, lovable, dimpled; the ears small and beautiful; the neck of medium size, soft, white, and spotless; the arm small; the hands and fingers long; the joints small, the nails white and bright and well cared for. the bosom must be white and large; the breasts high and rounded, like apples or pears, small and soft. the body generally must be slender and active. the lower parts of the body are very seldom mentioned, and many poets are even too modest to mention the breasts. the buttocks must be rounded, one poet, indeed, mentions, and the thighs soft and white, the _meinel_ (mons) brown. the legs must be straight and narrow, the calves full, the feet small and narrow, with high instep. the color of the skin generally must be clear and of a tempered rosiness. (a. schultz, _quid de perfecta corporis humani pulchritudine germani soeculi xii et xiii senserint_, .) a somewhat similar, but shorter, account is given by k. weinhold (_die deutschen frauen im mittelalter_, , bd. , pp. et seq.). weinhold considers that, like the french, the germans admired the mixed eye, _vair_ or gray. adam de la halle, the artois _trouvère_ of the thirteenth century, in a piece ("li jus adan ou de la feuillie") in which he brings himself forward, thus describes his mistress: "her hair had the brilliance of gold, and was twisted into rebellious curls. her forehead was very regular, white, and smooth; her eyebrows, delicate and even, were two brown arches, which seemed traced with a brush. her eyes, bright and well cut, seemed to me _vairs_ and full of caresses; they were large beneath, and their lids like little sickles, adorned by twin folds, veiled or revealed at her will her loving gaze. between her eyes descended the pipe of her nose, straight and beautiful, mobile when she was gay; on either side were her rounded, white cheeks, on which laughter impressed two dimples, and which one could see blushing beneath her veil. beneath the nose opened a mouth with blossoming lips; this mouth, fresh and vermilion as a rose, revealed the white teeth, in regular array; beneath the chin sprang the white neck, descending full and round to the shoulder. the powerful nape, white and without any little wandering hairs, protruded a little over the dress. to her sloping shoulders were attached long arms, large or slender where they so should be. what shall i say of her white hands, with their long fingers, and knuckles without knots, delicately ending in rosy nails attached to the flesh by a clear and single line? i come to her bosom with its firm breasts, but short and high pointed, revealing the valley of love between them, to her round belly, her arched flanks. her hips were flat, her legs round, her calf large; she had a slender ankle, a lean and arched foot. such she was as i saw her, and that which her chemise hid was not of less worth." (houdoy, _la beauté des femmes_, p. , who quotes the original of this passage, considers it the ideal model of the mediæval woman.) in the twelfth century story of _aucassin et nicolette_, "nicolette had fair hair, delicate and curling; her eyes were gray (_vairs_) and smiling; her face admirably modeled. her nose was high and well placed; her lips small and more vermilion than the cherry or the rose in summer; her teeth were small and white; her firm little breasts raised her dress as would two walnuts. her figure was so slender that you could inclose it with your two hands, and the flowers of the marguerite, which her toes broke as she walked with naked feet, seemed black in comparison with her feet and legs, so white was she." "her hair was divided into a double tress," says alain of lille in the twelfth century, "which was long enough to kiss the ground; the parting, white as the lily and obliquely traced, separated the hair, and this want of symmetry, far from hurting her face, was one of the elements of her beauty. a golden comb maintained that abundant hair whose brilliance rivaled it, so that the fascinated eye could scarce distinguish the gold of the hair from the gold of the comb. the expanded forehead had the whiteness of milk, and rivaled the lily; her bright eyebrows shone like gold, not standing up in a brush, and, without being too scanty, orderly arranged. the eyes, serene and brilliant in their friendly light, seemed twin stars, her nostrils embalsamed with the odor of honey, neither too depressed in shape nor too prominent, were of distinguished form; the nard of her mouth offered to the smell a treat of sweet odors, and her half-open lips invited a kiss. the teeth seemed cut in ivory; her cheeks, like the carnation of the rose, gently illuminated her face and were tempered by the transparent whiteness of her veil. her chin, more polished than crystal, showed silver reflections, and her slender neck fitly separated her head from the shoulders. the firm rotundity of her breasts attested the full expansion of youth; her charming arms, advancing toward you, seemed to call for caresses; the regular curve of her flanks, justly proportioned, completed her beauty. all the visible traits of her face and form thus sufficiently told what those charms must be that the bed alone knew." (the latin text is given by houdoy, _la beauté des femmes du xiie au xvie siècle_, p. . robert de flagy's portrait of blanchefleur in _sarin-le-loherain_, written in same century, reveals very similar traits.) "the young woman appeared with twenty brightly polished daggers and swords," we read in the irish _tain bo cuailgne_ of the badhbh or banshee who appeared to meidhbh, "together with seven braids for the dead, of bright gold, in her right hand; a speckled garment of green ground, fastened by a bodkin at the breast under her fair, ruddy countenance, enveloped her form; her teeth were so new and bright that they appeared like pearls artistically set in her gums; like the ripe berry of the mountain ash were her lips; sweeter was her voice than the notes of the gentle harp-strings when touched by the most skillful fingers, and emitting the most enchanting melody; whiter than the snow of one night was her skin, and beautiful to behold were her garments, which reached to her well molded, bright-nailed feet; copious tresses of her tendriled, glossy, golden hair hung before, while others dangled behind and reached the calf of her leg." (_ossianio transactions_, vol. ii, p. .) an ancient irish hero is thus described: "they saw a great hero approaching them; fairest of the heroes of the world; larger and taller than any man; bluer than ice his eye; redder than the fresh rowan berries his lips; whiter than showers of pearl his teeth; fairer than the snow of one night his skin; a protecting shield with a golden border was upon him, two battle-lances in his hands; a sword with knobs of ivory [teeth of the sea-horse], and ornamented with gold, at his side; he had no other accoutrements of a hero besides these; he had golden hair on his head, and had a fair, ruddy countenance." (_the banquet of dun na n-gedh_, translated by o'donovan, _irish archæological society_, .) the feminine ideal of the italian poets closely resembles that of those north of the alps. petrarch's laura, as described in the _canzoniere_, is white as snow; her eyes, indeed, are black, but the fairness of her hair is constantly emphasized; her lips are rosy; her teeth white; her cheeks rosy; her breast youthful; her hands white and slender. other poets insist on the tall, white, delicate body; the golden or blonde hair; the bright or starry eyes (without mention of color), the brown or black arched eyebrows, the straight nose, the small mouth, the thin vermilion lips, the small and firm breasts. (renier, _il tipo estetico_, pp. et seq.) marie de france, a french mediæval writer of the twelfth century, who spent a large part of her life in england, in the _lai of lanval_ thus described a beautiful woman: "her body was beautiful, her hips low, the neck whiter than snow, the eyes gray (_vairs_), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the nose well placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than her hair beneath the sun." the traits of boccaccio's ideal of feminine beauty, a voluptuous ideal as compared with the ascetic mediæval ideal which had previously prevailed, together with the characteristics of the very beautiful and almost classic garments in which he arrayed women, have been brought together by hortis (_studi sulle opere latine del boccaccio_, , pp. et seq.). boccaccio admired fair and abundant wavy hair, dark and delicate eyebrows, and brown or even black eyes. it was not until some centuries later, as hortis remarks, that boccaccio's ideal woman was embodied by the painter in the canvases of titian. the first precise description of a famous beautiful woman was written by niphus in the sixteenth century in his _de pulchro et amore_, which is regarded as the first modern treatise on æsthetics. the lady described is joan of aragon, the greatest beauty of her time, whose portrait by raphael (or more probably giulio romano) is in the louvre. niphus, who was the philosopher of the pontifical court and the friend of leo x, thus describes this princess, whom, as a physician, he had opportunities of observing accurately: "she is of medium stature, straight, and elegant, and possesses the grace which can only be imparted by an assemblage of characteristics which are individually faultless. she is neither fat nor bony, but succulent; her complexion is not pale, but white tinged with rose; her long hair is golden; her ears are small and in proportion with the size of her mouth. her brown eyebrows are semicircular, not too bushy, and the individual hairs short. her eyes are blue (_oæsius_), brighter than stars, radiant with grace and gaiety beneath the dark-brown eyelashes, which are well spaced and not too long. the nose, symmetrical and of medium size, descends perpendicularly from between the eyebrows. the little valley separating the nose from the upper lip is divinely proportioned. the mouth, inclined to be rather small, is always stirred by a sweet smile; the rather thick lips are made of honey and coral. the teeth are small, polished as ivory, and symmetrically ranged, and the breath has the odor of the sweetest perfumes. her voice is that of a goddess. the chin is divided by a dimple; the whole face approximates to a virile rotundity. the straight long neck, white and full, rises gracefully from the shoulders. on the ample bosom, revealing no indication of the bones, arise the rounded breasts, of equal and fitting size, and exhaling the perfume of the peaches they resemble. the rather plump hands, on the back like snow, on the palm like ivory, are exactly the length of the face; the full and rounded fingers are long and terminating in round, curved nails of soft color. the chest as a whole has the form of a pear, reversed, but a little compressed, and the base attached to the neck in a delightfully well-proportioned manner. the belly, the flanks, and the secret parts are worthy of the chest; the hips are large and rounded; the thighs, the legs, and the arms are in just proportion. the breadth of the shoulders is also in the most perfect relation to the dimensions of the other parts of the body; the feet, of medium length, terminate in beautifully arranged toes." (houdoy reproduces this passage in _la beauté des femmes_; cf. also stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, chapter iii.) gabriel de minut, who published in a treatise of no very great importance, _de la beauté_, also wrote under the title of _la paulegraphie_ a very elaborate description, covering sixty pages, of paule de viguier, a gascon lady of good family and virtuous life living at toulouse. minut was her devoted admirer and addressed an affectionate poem to her just before his death. she was seventy years of age when he wrote the elaborate account of her beauty. she had blue eyes and fair hair, though belonging to one of the darkest parts of france. ploss and bartels (_das weib_, bd. , sec. ) have independently brought together a number of passages from the writers of many countries describing their ideals of beauty. on this collection i have not drawn. when we survey broadly the ideals of feminine beauty set down by the peoples of many lands, it is interesting to note that they all contain many features which appeal to the æsthetic taste of the modern european, and many of them, indeed, contain no features which obviously clash with his canons of taste. it may even be said that the ideals of some savages affect us more sympathetically than some of the ideals of our own mediæval ancestors. as a matter of fact, european travelers in all parts of the world have met with women who were gracious and pleasant to look on, and not seldom even in the strict sense beautiful, from the standpoint of european standards. such individuals have been found even among those races with the greatest notoriety for ugliness. even among so primitive and remote a people as the australians beauty in the european sense is sometimes found. "i have on two occasions," lumholtz states, "seen what might be called beauties among the women of western queensland. their hands were small, their feet neat and well shaped, with so high an instep that one asked oneself involuntarily where in the world they had acquired this aristocratic mark of beauty. their figure was above criticism, and their skin, as is usually the case among the young women, was as soft as velvet. when these black daughters of eve smiled and showed their beautiful white teeth, and when their eyes peeped coquettishly from beneath the curly hair which hung in quite the modern fashion down their foreheads," lumholtz realized that even here women could exert the influence ascribed by goethe to women generally. (c. lumholtz, _among cannibals_, p. .) much has, again, been written about the beauty of the american indians. see, e.g., an article by dr. shufeldt, "beauty from an indian's point of view," _cosmopolitan magazine_, april, . among the seminole indians, especially, it is said that types of handsome and comely women are not uncommon. (_clay_ maccauley, "seminole indians of florida," _fifth annual report of the bureau of ethnology_, - , pp. et seq.) there is much even in the negress which appeals to the european as beautiful. "i have met many negresses," remarks castellani (_les femmes au congo_, p. ), "who could say proudly in the words of the song of songs, 'i am black, but comely.' many of our peasant women have neither the same grace nor the same delicate skin as some natives of cassai or songha. as to color, i have seen on the african continent creatures of pale gold or even red copper whose fine and satiny skin rivals the most delicate white skins; one may, indeed, find beauties among women of the darkest ebony." he adds that, on the whole, there is no comparison with white women, and that the negress soon becomes hideous. the very numerous quotations from travelers concerning the women of all lands quoted by ploss and bartels (_das weib_, seventh edition, bd. i, pp. - ) amply suffice to show how frequently some degree of beauty is found even among the lowest human races. cf., also, mantegazza's survey of the women of different races from this point of view, _fisiologia della donna_, cap. iv. the fact that the modern european, whose culture may be supposed to have made him especially sensitive to æsthetic beauty, is yet able to find beauty among even the women of savage races serves to illustrate the statement already made that, whatever modifying influences may have to be admitted, beauty is to a large extent an objective matter. the existence of this objective element in beauty is confirmed by the fact that it is sometimes found that the men of the lower races admire european women more than women of their own race. there is reason to believe that it is among the more intelligent men of lower race--that is to say those whose æsthetic feelings are more developed--that the admiration for white women is most likely to be found. "mr. winwood reade," stated darwin, "who has had ample opportunities for observation, not only with the negroes of the west coast of africa, but with those of the interior who have never associated with europeans, is convinced that their ideas of beauty are, _on the whole_, the same as ours; and dr. rohlfs writes to me to the same effect with respect to bornu and the countries inhabited by the pullo tribes. mr. reade found that he agreed with the negroes in their estimation of the beauty of the native girls; and that their appreciation of the beauty of european women corresponded with ours.... the fuegians, as i have been informed by a missionary who long resided with them, considered european women as extremely beautiful ... i should add that a most experienced observer, captain [sir r.] burton, believes that a woman whom we consider beautiful is admired throughout the world." (darwin, _descent of man_, chapter xix.) mantegazza quotes a conversation between a south american chief and an argentine who had asked him which he preferred, the women of his own people or christian women; the chief replied that he admired christian women most, and when asked the reason said that they were whiter and taller, had finer hair and smoother skin. (mantegazza, _fisiologia della donna_, appendix to cap. viii.) nordenskjöld, as quoted by ploss and bartels, states that the eskimo regard their own type as more ugly than that produced by crossing with white persons, and, according to kropf, the nosa kaffers admire and seek the fairer half-castes in preference to their own women of pure race (ploss and bartels, _das weib_, seventh edition, bd. , p. ). there is a widespread admiration for fairness, it may be added, among dark peoples. fair men are admired by the papuans at torres straits (_reports of the cambridge anthropological expedition_, vol. v, p. ). the common use of powder among the women of dark-skinned peoples bears witness to the existence of the same ideal. stratz, in his books _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_ and _die rassenschönheit des weibes_, argues that the ideal of beauty is fundamentally the same throughout the world, and that the finest persons among the lower races admire and struggle to attain the type which is found commonly and in perfection among the white peoples of europe. when in japan he found that among the numerous photographs of japanese beauties everywhere to be seen, his dragoman, a japanese of low birth, selected as the most beautiful those which displayed markedly the japanese type with narrow-slitted eyes and broad nose. when he sought the opinion of a japanese photographer, who called himself an artist and had some claim to be so considered, the latter selected as most beautiful three japanese girls who in europe also would have been considered pretty. in java, also, when selecting from a large number of javanese girls a few suitable for photographing, stratz was surprised to find that a javanese doctor pointed out as most beautiful those which most closely corresponded to the european type. (stratz, _die rassenschönheit des weibes_, fourth edition, , p. ; id., _die körperformen der japaner_, , p. .) stratz reproduces (rassenschönheit, pp. et seq.) a representation of kwan-yin, the chinese goddess of divine love, and quotes some remarks of borel's concerning the wide deviation of the representations of the goddess, a type of gracious beauty, from the chinese racial type. stratz further reproduces the figure of a buddhistic goddess from java (now in the archæological museum of leyden) which represents a type of loveliness corresponding to the most refined and classic european ideal. not only is there a fundamentally objective element in beauty throughout the human species, but it is probably a significant fact that we may find a similar element throughout the whole animated world. the things that to man are most beautiful throughout nature are those that are intimately associated with, or dependent upon, the sexual process and the sexual instinct. this is the case in the plant world. it is so throughout most of the animal world, and, as professor poulton, in referring to this often unexplained and indeed unnoticed fact, remarks, "the song or plume which excites the mating impulse in the hen is also in a high proportion of cases most pleasing to man himself. and not only this, but in their past history, so far as it has been traced (e.g., in the development of the characteristic markings of the male peacock and argus pheasant), such features have gradually become more and more pleasing to us as they have acted as stronger and stronger stimuli to the hen."[ ] footnotes: [ ] "it is likely that all visible parts of the organism, even those with a definite physiological meaning, appeal to the æsthetic sense of the opposite sex," poulton remarks, speaking primarily of insects, in words that apply still more accurately to the human species. e. poulton, _the colors of animals_, , p. . [ ] "the arabs in general," lane remarks, "entertain a prejudice against blue eyes--a prejudice said to have arisen from the great number of blue-eyed persons among certain of their northern enemies." [ ] _nature_, april , , p. . ii. beauty to some extent consists primitively in an exaggeration of the sexual characters--the sexual organs--mutilations, adornments, and garments--sexual allurement the original object of such devices--the religious element--unæsthetic character of the sexual organs--importance of the secondary sexual characters--the pelvis and hips--steatopygia--obesity--gait--the pregnant woman as a mediæval type of beauty--the ideals of the renaissance--the breasts--the corset--its object--its history--hair--the beard--the element of national or racial type in beauty--the relative beauty of blondes and brunettes--the general european admiration for blondes--the individual factors in the constitution of the idea of beauty--the love of the exotic. in the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in the history of man form an important element. from a primitive point of view a sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. the beautiful woman is one endowed, as chaucer expresses it, "with buttokes brode and brestës rounde and hye"; that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children and to suckle them. these two physical characters, indeed, since they represent aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the purgatorium of the temple of isis we find a representation of perseus rescuing andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large breasts, and large projecting nates.[ ] to a certain extent--and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only--the primary sexual characters are objects of admiration among primitive peoples. in the primitive dances of many peoples, often of sexual significance, the display of the sexual organs on the part of both men and women is frequently a prominent feature. even down to mediæval times in europe the garments of men sometimes permitted the sexual organs to be visible. in some parts of the world, also, the artificial enlargement of the female sexual organs is practised, and thus enlarged they are considered an important and attractive feature of beauty. sir andrew smith informed darwin that the elongated nymphæ (or "hottentot apron") found among the women of some south african tribes was formerly greatly admired by the men (_descent of man_, chapter xix). this formation is probably a natural peculiarity of the women of these races which is very much exaggerated by intentional manipulation due to the admiration it arouses. the missionary merensky reported the prevalence of the practice of artificial elongation among the basuto and other peoples, and the anatomical evidence is in favor of its partly artificial character. (the hottentot apron is fully discussed by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, sec. vi.) in the jaboo country on the bight of benin in west africa, daniell stated, it was considered ornamental to elongate the labia and the clitoris artificially; small weights were appended to the clitoris and gradually increased. (w.f. daniell, _topography of gulf of guinea_, , pp. , .) among the bawenda of the northern transvaal, the missionary wessmann states, it is customary for young girls from the age of to spend a certain amount of time every day in pulling the _labia majora_ in order to elongate them; in selecting a wife the young men attach much importance to this elongation, and the girl whose labia stand out most is most attractive. (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) it may be added that in various parts of the world mutilations of the sexual organs of men and women, or operations upon them, are practiced, for reasons which are imperfectly known, since it usually happens that the people who practice them are unable to give the reason for this practice, or they assign a reason which is manifestly not that which originally prompted the practice. thus, the excision of the clitoris, practiced in many parts of east africa and frequently supposed to be for the sake of dulling sexual feeling (j.s. king _journal of the anthropological society_, bombay, , p. ), seems very doubtfully accounted for thus, for the women have it done of their own accord; "all sobo women [niger coast] have their clitoris cut off; unless they have this done they are looked down upon, as slave women who do not get cut; as soon, therefore, as a sobo woman has collected enough money, she goes to an operating woman and pays her to do the cutting." (_journal of the anthropological institute_, august-november, , p. .) the comte de cardi investigated this matter in the niger delta: "i have questioned both native men and women," he states, "to try and get the natives' reason for this rite, but the almost universal answer to my queries was, 'it is our country's fashion.'" one old man told him it was practiced because favorable to continence, and several old women said that once the women of the land used to suffer from a peculiar kind of madness which this rite reduced. (_journal of the anthropological institute_, august-november, , p. .) in the same way the subincision of the urethra (mika operation of australia) is frequently supposed to be for the purpose of preventing conception (see, e.g., the description of the operation by j.g. garson, _medical press_, february , ), but this is very doubtful, and e.c. stirling found that subincised natives often had large families. (_intercolonial quarterly journal of medicine and surgery_, .) a passage in the _mainz chronicle_ for (as quoted by schultz, _das höfische leben_, p. ) shows that at that time the tunics of the men were so made that it was always possible for the sexual organs to be seen in walking or sitting. this insistence on the naked sexual organs as objects of attraction is, however, comparatively rare, and confined to peoples in a low state of culture. very much more widespread is the attempt to beautify and call attention to the sexual organs by tattooing,[ ] by adornment and by striking peculiarities of clothing. the tendency for beauty of clothing to be accepted as a substitute for beauty of body appears early in the history of mankind, and, as we know, tends to be absolutely accepted in civilization.[ ] "we exclaim," as goethe remarks, "'what a beautiful little foot!' when we have merely seen a pretty shoe; we admire the lovely waist when nothing has met out eyes but an elegant girdle." our realities and our traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the greeks represented their statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. our artists are themselves equally ignorant and confused, and, as stratz has repeatedly shown, they constantly reproduce in all innocence the deformations and pathological characters of defective models. if we were honest, we should say--like the little boy before a picture of the judgment of paris, in answer to his mother's question as to which of the three goddesses he thought most beautiful--"i can't tell, because they haven't their clothes on." the concealment actually attained was not, however, it would appear, originally sought. various authors have brought together evidence to show that the main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among savages is not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more attractive. westermarck, especially, brings forward numerous examples of savage adornments which serve to attract attention to the sexual regions of man and woman.[ ] he further argues that the primitive object of various savage peoples in practicing circumcision, as other similar mutilations, is really to secure sexual attractiveness, whatever religious significance they may sometimes have developed subsequently. a more recent view represents the magical influence of both adornment and mutilation as primary, as a method of guarding and insulating dangerous bodily functions. frazer, in _the golden bough_, is the most able and brilliant champion of this view, which undoubtedly embodies a large element of truth, although it must not be accepted to the absolute exclusion of the influence of sexual attractiveness. the two are largely woven in together.[ ] there is, indeed, a general tendency for the sexual functions to take on a religious character and for the sexual organs to become sacred at a very early period in culture. generation, the reproductive force in man, animals, and plants, was realized by primitive man to be a fact of the first magnitude, and he symbolized it in the sexual organs of man and woman, which thus attained to a solemnity which was entirely independent of purposes of sexual allurement. phallus worship may almost be said to be a universal phenomenon; it is found even among races of high culture, among the romans of the empire and the japanese to-day; it has, indeed, been thought by some that one of the origins of the cross is to be found in the phallus. "hardly any other object," remarks dr. richard andree, "has been with such great unanimity represented by nearly all peoples as the phallus, the symbol of procreative force in the religions of the east and an object of veneration at public festivals. in the moabitic baal peor, in the cult of dionysos, everywhere, indeed, except in persia, we meet with priapic representations and the veneration accorded to the generative organ. it is needless to refer to the great significance of the _linga puja_, the procreative organ of the god siva, in india, a god to whom more temples were erected than to any other indian deity. our museums amply show how common phallic representations are in africa, east asia, the pacific, frequently in connection with religious worship." (r. andree, "amerikansche phallus-darstellungen," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. .) women have no external generative organ like the phallus to play a large part in life as a sacred symbol. there is, however, some reason to believe that the triangle is to some extent such a symbol. lejeune ("la representation sexuelle en religion, art, et pédagogie," _bulletin de la société d'anthropologie_, paris, october , ) brings forward reasons in favor of the view that the triangular hair-covered region of the mons veneris has had considerable significance in this respect, and he presents various primitive figures in illustration. apart from the religions and magical properties so widely accorded to the primary sexual characters, there are other reasons why they should not often have gained or long retained any great importance as objects of sexual allurement. they are unnecessary and inconvenient for this purpose. the erect attitude of man gives them here, indeed, an advantage possessed by very few animals, among whom it happens with extreme rarity that the primary sexual characters are rendered attractive to the eye of the opposite sex, though they often are to the sense of smell. the sexual regions constitute a peculiarly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent display required for a sexual allurement. this end is far more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous parts of the body. this method is well-nigh universal among animals as well as in man. there is another reason why the sexual organs should be discarded as objects of sexual allurement, a reason which always proves finally decisive as a people advances in culture. they are not æsthetically beautiful. it is fundamentally necessary that the intromittent organ of the male and the receptive canal of the female should retain their primitive characteristics; they cannot, therefore, be greatly modified by sexual or natural selection, and the exceedingly primitive character they are thus compelled to retain, however sexually desirable and attractive they may become to the opposite sex under the influence of emotion, can rarely be regarded as beautiful from the point of view of æsthetic contemplation. under the influence of art there is a tendency for the sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of ideal masculine beauty. it is mainly because the unæsthetic character of a woman's sexual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more æsthetically beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine. apart from this character we are probably bound, from a strictly æsthetic point of view, to regard the male form as more æsthetically beautiful.[ ] the female form, moreover, usually overpasses very swiftly the period of the climax of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks. the following communication from a correspondent well brings out the divergences of feeling in this matter: "you write that the sex organs, in an excited condition, cannot be called æsthetic. but i believe that they are a source, not only of curiosity and wonder to many persons, but also objects of admiration. i happen to know of one man, extremely intellectual and refined, who delights in lying between his mistress's thighs and gazing long at the dilated vagina. also another man, married, and not intellectual, who always tenderly gazes at his wife's organs, in a strong light, before intercourse, and kisses her there and upon the abdomen. the wife, though amative, confessed to another woman that she could not understand the attraction. on the other hand, two married men have told me that the sight of their wives' genital parts would disgust them, and that they have never seen them. "if the sexual parts cannot be called æsthetic, they have still a strong charm for many passionate lovers, of both sexes, though not often, i believe, among the unimaginative and the uneducated, who are apt to ridicule the organs or to be repelled by them. many women confess that they are revolted by the sight of even a husband's complete nudity, though they have no indifference for sexual embraces. i think that the stupid bungle of nature in making the generative organs serve as means of relieving the bladder has much to do with this revulsion. but some women of erotic temperament find pleasure in looking at the penis of a husband or lover, in handling it, and kissing it. prostitutes do this in the way of business; some chaste, passionate wives act thus voluntarily. this is scarcely morbid, as the mammalia of most species smell and lick each others' genitals. probably primitive man did the same." brantôme (_vie des dames galantes_, discours ii) has some remarks to much the same effect concerning the difference between men, some of whom take no pleasure in seeing the private parts of their wives or mistresses, while others admire them and delight to kiss them. i must add that, however natural or legitimate the attraction of the sexual parts may be to either sex, the question of their purely æsthetic beauty remains unaffected. remy de gourmont, in a discussion of the æsthetic element in sexual beauty, considers that the invisibility of the sexual organs is the decisive fact in rendering women more beautiful than men. "sex, which is sometimes an advantage, is always a burden and always a flaw; it exists for the race and not for the individual. in the human male, and precisely because of his erect attitude, sex is the predominantly striking and visible fact, the point of attack in a struggle at close quarters, the point aimed at from a distance, an obstacle for the eye, whether regarded as a rugosity on the surface or as breaking the middle of a line. the harmony of the feminine body is thus geometrically much more perfect, especially when we consider the male and the female at the moment of desire when they present the most intense and natural expression of life. then the woman, whose movements are all interior, or only visible by the undulation of her curves, preserves her full æsthetic value, while the man, as it were, all at once receding toward the primitive state of animality, seems to throw off all beauty and become reduced to the simple and naked condition of a genital organism." (remy de gourmont, _physique de l'amour_, p. .) remy de gourmont proceeds, however, to point out that man has his revenge after a woman has become pregnant, and that, moreover, the proportions of the masculine body are more beautiful than those of the feminine body. the primary sexual characters of man and woman have thus never at any time played a very large part in sexual allurement. with the growth of culture, indeed, the very methods which had been adopted to call attention to the sexual organs were by a further development retained for the purpose of concealing them. from the first the secondary sexual characters have been a far more widespread method of sexual allurement than the primary sexual characters, and in the most civilized countries to-day they still constitute the most attractive of such methods to the majority of the population. the main secondary sexual characters in woman and the type which they present in beautiful and well-developed persons are summarized as follows by stratz, who in his book on the beauty of the body in woman sets forth the reasons for the characteristics here given:-- delicate bony structure. rounded forms and breasts. broad pelvis. long and abundant hair. low and narrow boundary of pubic hair. sparse hair in armpit. no hair on body. delicate skin. rounded skull. small face. large orbits. high and slender eyebrows. low and small lower jaw. soft transition from cheek to neck. rounded neck. slender wrist. small hand, with long index finger. rounded shoulders. straight, small clavicle. small and long thorax. slender waist. hollow sacrum. prominent and domed nates. sacral dimples. rounded and thick thighs. low and obtuse pubic arch. soft contour of knee. rounded calves. slender ankle. small toes. long second and short fifth toe. broad middle incisor teeth. (stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, fourteenth edition, , p. . this statement agrees at most points with my own exposition of the secondary sexual characters: _man and woman_, fourth edition, revised and enlarged, .) thus we find, among most of the peoples of europe, asia, and africa, the chief continents of the world, that the large hips and buttocks of women are commonly regarded as an important feature of beauty. this secondary sexual character represents the most decided structural deviation of the feminine type from the masculine, a deviation demanded by the reproductive function of women, and in the admiration it arouses sexual selection is thus working in a line with natural selection. it cannot be said that, except in a very moderate degree, it has always been regarded as at the same time in a line with claims of purely æsthetic beauty. the european artist frequently seeks to attenuate rather than accentuate the protuberant lines of the feminine hips, and it is noteworthy that the japanese also regard small hips as beautiful. nearly everywhere else large hips and buttocks are regarded as a mark of beauty, and the average man is of this opinion even in the most æsthetic countries. the contrast of this exuberance with the more closely knit male form, the force of association, and the unquestionable fact that such development is the condition needed for healthy motherhood, have served as a basis for an ideal of sexual attractiveness which appeals to nearly all people more strongly than a more narrowly æsthetic ideal, which must inevitably be somewhat hermaphroditic in character. broad hips, which involve a large pelvis, are necessarily a characteristic of the highest human races, because the races with the largest heads must be endowed also with the largest pelvis to enable their large heads to enter the world. the white race, according to bacarisse, has the broadest sacrum, the yellow race coming next, the black race last. the white race is also stated to show the greatest curvature of the sacrum, the yellow race next, while the black race has the flattest sacrum.[ ] the black race thus possesses the least developed pelvis, the narrowest, and the flattest. it is certainly not an accidental coincidence that it is precisely among people of black race that we find a simulation of the large pelvis of the higher races admired and cultivated in the form of steatopygia. this is an enormously exaggerated development of the subcutaneous layer of fat which normally covers the buttocks and upper parts of the thighs in woman, and in this extreme form constitutes a kind of natural fatty tumor. steatopygia cannot be said to exist, according to deniker, unless the projection of the buttocks exceeds per cent of the individual's height; it frequently equals per cent. true steatopygia only exists among bushman and hottentot women, and among the peoples who are by blood connected with them. an unusual development of the buttocks is, however, found among the woloffs and many other african peoples.[ ] there can be no doubt that among the black peoples of africa generally, whether true steatopygia exists among them or not, extreme gluteal development is regarded as a very important, if not the most important, mark of beauty, and burton stated that a somali man was supposed to choose his wife by ranging women in a row and selecting her who projected farthest _a tergo_.[ ] in europe, it must be added, clothing enables this feature of beauty to be simulated. even by some african peoples the posterior development has been made to appear still larger by the use of cushions, and in england in the sixteenth century we find the same practice well recognized, and the elizabethan dramatists refer to the "bum-roll," which in more recent times has become the bustle, devices which bear witness to what watts, the painter, called "the persistent tendency to suggest that the most beautiful half of humanity is furnished with tails."[ ] in reality, as we see, it is simply a tendency, not to simulate an animal character, but to emphasize the most human and the most feminine of the secondary sexual characters, and therefore, from the sexual point of view, a beautiful feature.[ ] sometimes admiration for this characteristic is associated with admiration for marked obesity generally, and it may be noted that a somewhat greater degree of fatness may also be regarded as a feminine secondary sexual character. this admiration is specially marked among several of the black peoples of africa, and here to become a beauty a woman must, by drinking enormous quantities of milk, seek to become very fat. sonnini noted that to some extent the same thing might be found among the mohammedan women of egypt. after bright eyes and a soft, polished, hairless skin, an egyptian woman, he stated, most desired to obtain _embonpoint_; men admired fat women and women sought to become fat. "the idea of a very fat woman," sonnini adds, "is nearly always accompanied in europe by that of softness of flesh, effacement of form, and defect of elasticity in the outlines. it would be a mistake thus to represent the women of turkey in general, where all seek to become fat. it is certain that the women of the east, more favored by nature, preserve longer than others the firmness of the flesh, and this precious property, joined to the freshness and whiteness of their skin, renders them very agreeable. it must be added that in no part of the world is cleanliness carried so far as by the women of the east."[ ] the special characteristics of the feminine hips and buttocks become conspicuous in walking and may be further emphasized by the special method of walking or carriage. the women of some southern countries are famous for the beauty of their way of walk; "the goddess is revealed by her walk," as virgil said. in spain, especially, among european countries, the walk very notably gives expression to the hips and buttocks. the spine is in spain very curved, producing what is termed _ensellure_, or saddle-back--a characteristic which gives great flexibility to the back and prominence to the gluteal regions, sometimes slightly simulating steatopygia. the vibratory movement naturally produced by walking and sometimes artificially heightened thus becomes a trait of sexual beauty. outside of europe such vibration of the flanks and buttocks is more frankly displayed and cultivated as a sexual allurement. the papuans are said to admire this vibratory movement of the buttocks in their women. young girls are practiced in it by their mothers for hours at a time as soon as they have reached the age of or , and the papuan maiden walks thus whenever she is in the presence of men, subsiding into a simpler gait when no men are present. in some parts of tropical africa the women walk in this fashion. it is also known to the egyptians, and by the arabs is called _ghung_.[ ] as mantegazza remarks, the essentially feminine character of this gait makes it a method of sexual allurement. it should be observed that it rests on feminine anatomical characteristics, and that the natural walk of a femininely developed woman is inevitably different from that of a man. in an elaborate discussion of beauty of movement stratz summarizes the special characters of the gait in woman as follows: "a woman's walk is chiefly distinguished from a man's by shorter steps, the more marked forward movement of the hips, the greater length of the phase of rest in relation to the phase of motion, and by the fact that the compensatory movements of the upper parts of the body are less powerfully supported by the action of the arms and more by the revolution of the flanks. a man's walk has a more pushing and active character, a woman's a more rolling and passive character; while a man seems to seek to catch his fleeing equilibrium, a woman seems to seek to preserve the equilibrium she has reached.... a woman's walk is beautiful when it shows the definitely feminine and rolling character, with the greatest predominance of the moment of extension over that of flexion." (stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, fourteenth edition, p. .) an occasional development of the idea of sexual beauty as associated with developed hips is found in the tendency to regard the pregnant woman as the most beautiful type. stratz observes that a woman artist once remarked to him that since motherhood is the final aim of woman, and a woman reaches her full flowering period in pregnancy, she ought to be most beautiful when pregnant. this is so, stratz replied, if the period of her full physical bloom chances to correspond with the early months of pregnancy, for with the onset of pregnancy metabolism is heightened, the tissues become active, the tone of the skin softer and brighter, the breasts firmer, so that the charm of fullest bloom is increased until the moment when the expansion of the womb begins to destroy the harmony of the form. at one period of european culture, however,--at a moment and among a people not very sensitive to the most exquisite æsthetic sensations,--the ideal of beauty has even involved the character of advanced pregnancy. in northern europe during the centuries immediately preceding the renaissance the ideal of beauty, as we may see by the pictures of the time, was a pregnant woman, with protuberant abdomen and body more or less extended backward. this is notably apparent in the work of the van eycks: in the eve in the brussels gallery; in the wife of arnolfini in the highly finished portrait group in the national gallery; even the virgins in the great masterpiece of the van eycks in the cathedral at ghent assume the type of the pregnant woman. "through all the middle ages down to dürer and cranach," quite truly remarks laura marholm (as quoted by i. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, p. ), "we find a very peculiar type which has falsely been regarded as one of merely ascetic character. it represents quiet, peaceful, and cheerful faces, full of innocence; tall, slender, young figures; the shoulders still scanty; the breasts small, with slender legs beneath their garments; and round the upper part of the body clothing that is tight almost to the point of constriction. the waist comes just under the bosom, and from this point the broad skirts in folds give to the most feminine part of the feminine body full and absolutely unhampered power of movement and expansion. the womanly belly even in saints and virgins is very pronounced in the carriage of the body and clearly protuberant beneath the clothing. it is the maternal function, in sacred and profane figures alike, which marks the whole type--indeed, the whole conception--of woman." for a brief period this fashion reappeared in the eighteenth century, and women wore pads and other devices to increase the size of the abdomen. with the renaissance this ideal of beauty disappeared from art. but in real life we still seem to trace its survival in the fashion for that class of garments which involved an immense amount of expansion below the waist and secured such expansion by the use of whalebone hoops and similar devices. the elizabethan farthingale was such a garment. this was originally a spanish invention, as indicated by the name (from _verdugardo_, provided with hoops), and reached england through france. we find the fashion at its most extreme point in the fashionable dress of spain in the seventeenth century, such as it has been immortalized by velasquez. in england hoops died out during the reign of george iii but were revived for a time, half a century later, in the victorian crinoline.[ ] only second to the pelvis and its integuments as a secondary sexual character in woman we must place the breasts.[ ] among barbarous and civilized peoples the beauty of the breast is usually highly esteemed. among europeans, indeed, the importance of this region is so highly esteemed that the general rule against the exposure of the body is in its favor abrogated, and the breasts are the only portion of the body, in the narrow sense, which a european lady in full dress is allowed more or less to uncover. moreover, at various periods and notably in the eighteenth century, women naturally deficient in this respect have sometimes worn artificial busts made of wax. savages, also, sometimes show admiration for this part of the body, and in the papuan folk-tales, for instance, the sole distinguishing mark of a beautiful woman is breasts that stand up.[ ] on the other hand, various savage peoples even appear to regard the development of the breasts as ugly and adopt devices for flattening this part of the body.[ ] the feeling that prompts this practice is not unknown in modern europe, for the bulgarians are said to regard developed breasts as ugly; in mediæval europe, indeed, the general ideal of feminine slenderness was opposed to developed breasts, and the garments tended to compress them. but in a very high degree of civilization this feeling is unknown, as, indeed, it is unknown to most barbarians, and the beauty of a woman's breasts, and of any natural or artificial object which suggests the gracious curves of the bosom, is a universal source of pleasure. the casual vision of a girl's breasts may, in the chastest youth, evoke a strange perturbation. (cf., e.g., a passage in an early chapter of marcelle tinayre's _la maison du péché_.) we need not regard this feeling as of purely sexual origin; and in addition even to the æsthetic element it is probably founded to some extent on a reminiscence of the earliest associations of life. this element of early association was very well set forth long ago by erasmus darwin:-- "when the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother's bosom, its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odor of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavor of it; afterward the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their object, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, last, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of happiness. "all these various kinds of pleasure at length become associated with the form of the mother's breast, which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom than of the odor, flavor, and warmth which it perceives by its other senses. and hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us which by its wavy or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a landscape with soft gradations of raising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight which seems to influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large we experience an attraction to embrace it with our lips as we did in our early infancy the bosom of our mothers." (e. darwin, _zoönomia_, , vol. i, p. .) the general admiration accorded to developed breasts and a developed pelvis is evidenced by a practice which, as embodied in the corset, is all but universal in many european countries, as well as the extra-european countries inhabited by the white race, and in one form or another is by no means unknown to peoples of other than the white race. the tightening of the waist girth was little known to the greeks of the best period, but it was practiced by the greeks of the decadence and by them transmitted to the romans; there are many references in latin literature to this practice, and the ancient physician wrote against it in the same sense as modern doctors. so far as christian europe is concerned it would appear that the corset arose to gratify an ideal of asceticism rather than of sexual allurement. the bodice in early mediæval days bound and compressed the breasts and thus tended to efface the specifically feminine character of a woman's body. gradually, however, the bodice was displaced downward, and its effect, ultimately, was to render the breasts more prominent instead of effacing them. not only does the corset render the breasts more prominent; it has the further effect of displacing the breathing activity of the lungs in an upward direction, the advantage from the point of sexual allurement thus gained being that additional attention is drawn to the bosom from the respiratory movement thus imparted to it. so marked and so constant is this artificial respiratory effect, under the influence of the waist compression habitual among civilized women, that until recent years it was commonly supposed that there is a real and fundamental difference in breathing between men and women, that women's breathing is thoracic and men's abdominal. it is now known that under natural and healthy conditions there is no such difference, but that men and women breathe in a precisely identical manner. the corset may thus be regarded as the chief instrument of sexual allurement which the armory of costume supplies to a woman, for it furnishes her with a method of heightening at once her two chief sexual secondary characters, the bosom above, the hips and buttocks below. we cannot be surprised that all the scientific evidence in the world of the evil of the corset is powerless not merely to cause its abolition, but even to secure the general adoption of its comparatively harmless modifications. several books have been written on the history of the corset. léoty (_le corset à travers les ages_, ) accepts bouvier's division of the phases through which the corset has passed: ( ) the bands, or fasciæ, of greek and roman ladies; ( ) period of transition during greater part of middle ages, classic traditions still subsisting; ( ) end of middle ages and beginning of renaissance, when tight bodices were worn; ( ) the period of whalebone bodices, from middle of sixteenth to end of eighteenth centuries; ( ) the period of the modern corset. we hear of embroidered girdles in homer. even in rome, however, the fasciæ were not in general use, and were chiefly employed either to support the breasts or to compress their excessive development, and then called _mamillare_. the _zona_ was a girdle, worn usually round the hips, especially by young girls. the modern corset is a combination of the _fascia_ and the _zona_. it was at the end of the fourteenth century that isabeau of bavaria introduced the custom of showing the breasts uncovered, and the word "corset" was then used for the first time. stratz, in his _frauenkleidung_ (pp. et seq.), and in his _schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, chapters viii, x, and xvi, also deals with the corset, and illustrates the results of compression on the body. for a summary of the evidence concerning the difference of respiration in man and woman, its causes and results, see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, , pp. - . with reference to the probable influence of the corset and unsuitable clothing generally during early life in impeding the development of the mammary glands, causing inability to suckle properly, and thus increasing infant mortality, see especially a paper by professor bollinger (_correspondenz-blatt deutsch. gesell. anthropologie_, october, ). the compression caused by the corset, it must be added, is not usually realized or known by those who wear it. thus, rushton parker and hugh smith found, in two independent series of measurements, that the waist measurement was, on the average, two inches less over the corset than round the naked waist; "the great majority seemed quite unaware of the fact." in one case the difference was as much as five inches. (_british medical journal_, september and , .) the breasts and the developed hips are characteristics of women and are indications of functional effectiveness as well as sexual allurement. another prominent sexual character which belongs to man, and is not obviously an index of function, is furnished by the hair on the face. the beard may be regarded as purely a sexual adornment, and thus comparable to the somewhat similar growth on the heads of many male animals. from this point of view its history is interesting, for it illustrates the tendency with increase of civilization not merely to dispense with sexual allurement in the primary sexual organs, but even to disregard those growths which would appear to have been developed solely to act as sexual allurements. the cultivation of the beard belongs peculiarly to barbarous races. among these races it is frequently regarded as the most sacred and beautiful part of the person, as an object to swear by, an object to which the slightest insult must be treated as deadly. holding such a position, it must doubtless act as a sexual allurement. "allah has specially created an angel in heaven," it is said in the _arabian nights_, "who has no other occupation than to sing the praises of the creator for giving a beard to men and long hair to women." the sexual character of the beard and the other hirsute appendage is significantly indicated by the fact that the ascetic spirit in christianity has always sought to minimize or to hide the hair. altogether apart, however, from this religious influence, civilization tends to be opposed to the growth of hair on the masculine face and especially to the beard. it is part of the well-marked tendency with civilization to the abolition of sexual differences. we find this general tendency among the greeks and romans, and, on the whole, with certain variations and fluctuations of fashion, in modern europe also. schopenhauer frequently referred to this disappearance of the beard as a mark of civilization, "a barometer of culture."[ ] the absence of facial hair heightens æsthetic beauty of form, and is not felt to remove any substantial sexual attraction. that even the egyptians regarded the beard as a mark of beauty and an object of veneration is shown by the fact that the priests wore it long and cut it off in grief (herodotus, _euterpe_, chapter xxxvi). the respect with which the beard was regarded among the ancient hebrews is indicated in the narrative (ii samuel, chapter x) which tells how, when david sent his servants to king hanun the latter shaved off half their beards; they were too ashamed to return in this condition, and remained at jericho until their beards had grown again. a passage in ordericus vitalis (_ecclesiastical history_, book viii, chapter x) is interesting both as regards the fashions of the twelfth century in england and normandy and the feeling that prompted ordericus. speaking of the men of his time, he wrote: "the forepart of their head is bare after the manner of thieves, while at the back they nourish long hair like harlots. in former times penitents, captives and pilgrims usually went unshaved and wore long beards, as an outward mark of their penance or captivity or pilgrimage. now almost all the world wear crisped hair and beards, carrying on their faces the token of their filthy lust like stinking goats. their locks are curled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps they bind their heads with fillets. a knight seldom appears in public with his head uncovered, and properly shaved, according to the apostolic precept (i corinthians, chapter xi, verses and )." we have seen that there is good reason for assuming a certain fundamental tendency whereby the most various peoples of the world, at all events in the person of their most intelligent members, recognize and accept a common ideal of feminine beauty, so that to a certain extent beauty may be said to have an objectively æsthetic basis. we have further found that this æsthetic human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in different countries and even in the same country at different periods, by a tendency, prompted by a sexual impulse which is not necessarily in harmony with æsthetic cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or other of the prominent secondary sexual characters of the body. we now come to another tendency which is apt to an even greater extent to limit the cultivation of the purely æsthetic ideal of beauty: the influences of national or racial type. to the average man of every race the woman who most completely embodies the type of his race is usually the most beautiful, and even mutilations and deformities often have their origin, as humboldt long since pointed out, in the effort to accentuate the racial type.[ ] eastern women possess by nature large and conspicuous eyes, and this characteristic they seek still further to heighten by art. the ainu are the hairiest of races, and there is nothing which they consider so beautiful as hair. it is difficult to be sexually attracted to persons who are fundamentally unlike ourselves in racial constitution.[ ] it frequently happens that this admiration for racial characteristics leads to the idealization of features which are far removed from æsthetic beauty. the firm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty, but among many of the black peoples of africa the breasts fall at a very early period, and here we sometimes find that the hanging breast is admired as beautiful. the african baganda, the rev. j. roscoe states (_journal of the anthropological institute_, january-june, , p. ), admire hanging breasts to such an extent that their young women tie them down in order to hasten the arrival of this condition. "the most remarkable trait of beauty in the east," wrote sonnini, "is to have large black eyes, and nature has made this a characteristic sign of the women of these countries. but, not content with this, the women of egypt wish their eyes to be still larger and blacker. to attain this mussulmans, jewesses, and christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena. they also blacken the lashes (as juvenal tells us the roman ladies did) and mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure appears larger." (sonnini, _voyage dans la haute et basse egypte_, , vol. i, p. .) kohl is thus only used by the women who have what the arabs call "natural kohl." as flinders petrie has found, the women of the so-called "new race," between the sixth and tenth dynasties of ancient egypt, used galena and malachite for painting their faces. jewish women in the days of the prophets painted their eyes with kohl, as do some hindu women to-day. "the ainu have a great affection for their beards. they regard them as a sign of manhood and strength and consider them as especially handsome. they look upon them, indeed, as a great and highly prized treasure." (j. batchelor, _the ainu and their folklore_, p. .) a great many theories have been put forward to explain the chinese fashion of compressing and deforming the foot. the chinese are great admirers of the feminine foot, and show extreme sexual sensitiveness in regard to it. chinese women naturally possess very small feet, and the main reason for binding them is probably to be found in the desire to make them still smaller. (see, e.g., stratz, _die frauenkleidung_, , p. .) an interesting question, which in part finds its explanation here and is of considerable significance from the point of view of sexual selection, concerns the relative admiration bestowed on blondes and brunettes. the question is not, indeed, one which is entirely settled by racial characteristics. there is something to be said on the matter from the objective standpoint of æsthetic considerations. stratz, in a chapter on beauty of coloring in woman, points out that fair hair is more beautiful because it harmonizes better with the soft outlines of woman, and, one may add, it is more brilliantly conspicuous; a golden object looks larger than a black object. the hair of the armpit, also, stratz considers should be light. on the other hand, the pubic hair should be dark in order to emphasize the breadth of the pelvis and the obtusity of the angle between the mons veneris and the thighs. the eyebrows and eyelashes should also be dark in order to increase the apparent size of the orbits. stratz adds that among many thousand women he has only seen one who, together with an otherwise perfect form, has also possessed these excellencies in the highest measure. with an equable and matt complexion she had blonde, very long, smooth hair, with sparse, blonde, and curly axillary hair; but, although her eyes were blue, the eyebrows and eyelashes were black, as also was the not overdeveloped pubic hair.[ ] we may accept it as fairly certain that, so far as any objective standard of æsthetic beauty is recognizable, that standard involves the supremacy of the fair type of woman. such supremacy in beauty has doubtless been further supported by the fact that in most european countries the ruling caste, the aristocratic class, whose superior energy has brought it to the top, is somewhat blonder than the average population. the main cause, however, in determining the relative amount of admiration accorded in europe to blondes and to brunettes is the fact that the population of europe must be regarded as predominantly fair, and that our conception of beauty in feminine coloring is influenced by an instinctive desire to seek this type in its finest forms. in the north of europe there can, of course, be no question concerning the predominant fairness of the population, but in portions of the centre and especially in the south it may be considered a question. it must, however, be remembered that the white population occupying all the shores of the mediterranean have the black peoples of africa immediately to the south of them. they have been liable to come in contact with the black peoples and in contrast with them they have tended not only to be more impressed with their own whiteness, but to appraise still more highly its blondest manifestations as representing a type the farthest removed from the negro. it must be added that the northerner who comes into the south is apt to overestimate the darkness of the southerner because of the extreme fairness of his own people. the differences are, however, less extreme than we are apt to suppose; there are more dark people in the north than we commonly assume, and more fair people in the south. thus, if we take italy, we find in its fairest part, venetia, according to raseri, that there are per cent. communes in which fair hair predominates, per cent. in which brown predominates, and only per cent. in which black predominates; as we go farther south black hair becomes more prevalent, but there are in most provinces a few communes in which fair hair is not only frequent, but even predominant. it is somewhat the same with light eyes, which are also most abundant in venetia and decrease to a slighter extent as we go south. it is possible that in former days the blondes prevailed to a greater degree than to-day in the south of europe. among the berbers of the atlas mountains, who are probably allied to the south europeans, there appears to be a fairly considerable proportion of blondes,[ ] while on the other hand there is some reason to believe that blondes die out under the influence of civilization as well as of a hot climate. however this may be, the european admiration for blondes dates back to early classic times. gods and men in homer would appear to be frequently described as fair.[ ] venus is nearly always blonde, as was milton's eve. lucian refers to women who dye their hair. the greek sculptors gilded the hair of their statues, and the figurines in many cases show very fair hair.[ ] the roman custom of dyeing the hair light, as renier has shown, was not due to the desire to be like the fair germans, and when rome fell it would appear that the custom of dyeing the hair persisted, and never died out; it is mentioned by anselm, who died at the beginning of the twelfth century.[ ] in the poetry of the people in italy brunettes, as we should expect, receive much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred. when we turn to the painters and poets of italy, and the æsthetic writers on beauty from the renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is unqualified, though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for blue eyes. angelico and most of the pre-raphaelite artists usually painted their women with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown with the artists of the renaissance period. firenzuola, in his admirable dialogue on feminine beauty, says that a woman's hair should be like gold or honey or the rays of the sun. luigini also, in his _libro della bella donna_, says that hair must be golden. so also thought petrarch and ariosto. there is, however, no corresponding predilection among these writers for blue eyes. firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though not black. luigini said that they must be bright and black. niphus had previously said that the eyes should be "black like those of venus" and the skin ivory, even a little brown. he mentions that avicenna had praised the mixed, or gray eye. in france and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is just as marked as in italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we have a record. "even before the thirteenth century," remarks houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern france during mediæval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost exclusively used."[ ] he mentions that in the _acta sanctorum_ it is stated that saint godelive of bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. in the _chanson de roland_ and all the french mediæval poems the eyes are invariably _vairs_. this epithet is somewhat vague. it comes from _varius_, and signifies mixed, which houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term _iris_ to describe the pupillary membrane.[ ] _vair_ would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality. while houdoy may have been correct, it still seems probable that the eye described as _vair_ was usually assumed to be "various" in color also, of the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually applied to blue eyes encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown pigment. such eyes are fairly typical of northern france and frequently beautiful. that this was the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact that, as houdoy himself points out, a few centuries later the _vair_ eye was regarded as _vert_, and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[ ] the etymology was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to change an ideal. at the renaissance jehan lemaire, when describing venus as the type of beauty, speaks of her green eyes, and ronsard, a little later, sang: "noir je veux l'oeil et brun le teint, bien que l'oeil verd toute la france adore." early in the sixteenth century brantôme quotes some lines current in france, spain, and italy according to which a woman should have a white skin, but black eyes and eyebrows, and adds that personally he agrees with the spaniard that "a brunette is sometimes equal to a blonde,"[ ] but there is also a marked admiration for green eyes in spanish literature; not only in the typical description of a spanish beauty in the _celestina_ (act. i) are the eyes green, but cervantes, for example, when referring to the beautiful eyes of a woman, frequently speaks of them as green. it would thus appear that in continental europe generally, from south to north, there is a fair uniformity of opinion as regards the pigmentary type of feminine beauty. such variation as exists seemingly involves a somewhat greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony with the greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations fluctuate within a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type, for blue eyes have not, on the whole, been considered to form part of the admired type. if we turn to england no serious modification of this conclusion is called for. beauty is still fair. indeed, the very word "fair" in england itself means beautiful. that in the seventeenth century it was generally held essential that beauty should be blonde is indicated by a passage in the _anatomy of melancholy_, where burton argues that "golden hair was ever in great account," and quotes many examples from classic and more modern literature.[ ] that this remains the case is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that the ballet and chorus on the english stage wear yellow wigs, and the heroine of the stage is blonde, while the female villain of melodrama is a brunette. while, however, this admiration of fairness as a mark of beauty unquestionably prevails in england, i do not think it can be said--as it probably can be said of the neighboring and closely allied country of france--that the most beautiful women belong to the fairest group of the community. in most parts of europe the coarse and unbeautiful plebeian type tends to be very dark; in england it tends to be very fair. england is, however, somewhat fairer generally than most parts of europe; so that, while it may be said that a very beautiful woman in france or in spain may belong to the blondest section of the community, a very beautiful woman in england, even though of the same degree of blondness as her continental sister, will not belong to the extremely blonde section of the english community. it thus comes about that when we are in northern france we find that gray eyes, a very fair but yet unfreckled complexion, brown hair, finely molded features, and highly sensitive facial expression combine to constitute a type which is more beautiful than any other we meet in france, and it belongs to the fairest section of the french population. when we cross over to england, however, unless we go to a so-called "celtic" district, it is hopeless to seek among the blondest section of the community for any such beautiful and refined type. the english beautiful woman, though she may still be fair, is by no means very fair, and from the english standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat dark:[ ] in determining what i call the index of pigmentation--or degree of darkness of the eyes and hair--of different groups in the national portrait gallery i found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal criterion of beauty not being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to the dark than to the light end of the scale.[ ] if we consider, at random, individual instances of famous english beauties they are not extremely fair. lady venetia stanley, in the early seventeenth century, who became the wife of sir kenelm digby, was somewhat dark, with brown hair and eyebrows. mrs. overall, a little later in the same century, a lancashire woman, the wife of the dean of st. paul's, was, says aubrey, "the greatest beauty in her time in england," though very wanton, with "the loveliest eyes that were ever seen"; if we may trust a ballad given by aubrey she was dark with black hair. the gunnings, the famous beauties of the eighteenth century, were not extremely fair, and lady hamilton, the most characteristic type of english beauty, had blue, brown-flecked eyes and dark chestnut hair. coloration is only one of the elements of beauty, though an important one. other things being equal, the most blonde is most beautiful; but it so happens that among the races of great britain the other things are very frequently not equal, and that, notwithstanding a conviction ingrained in the language, with us the fairest of women is not always the "fairest." so magical, however, is the effect of brilliant coloring that it serves to keep alive in popular opinion an unqualified belief in the universal european creed of the beauty of blondness. we have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three fundamental elements: first there is the general beauty of the species as it tends to culminate in the white peoples of european origin; then there is the beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the sexual and more especially the secondary sexual characters; and last there is the beauty due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or national type. to make the analysis fairly complete must be added at least one other factor: the influence of individual taste. every individual, at all events in civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own special organization and its demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. it is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in civilized man. but its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. it may be said of many a man, as d'annunzio says of the hero of his _trionfo della morte_ in relation to the woman he loved, that "he felt himself bound to her by the real qualities of her body, and not only by those which were most beautiful, but specially by _those which were least beautiful_" (the novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was fixed upon her defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself an impetuous state of desire. without invoking defects, however, there are endless personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits of possible beauty or charm. "there are no two women," as stratz remarks, "who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement."[ ] among the multitude of minute differences--which yet can be seen and felt--the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual selection are effected accordingly. another factor in the constitution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual, the remote, the exotic. it is commonly stated that rarity is admired in beauty. this is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally admired type. "_jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas_," according to the saying of publilius syrus. the greater nervous restlessness and sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not infrequently found also among men of artistic genius. one may refer, for instance, to baudelaire's profound admiration for the mulatto type of beauty.[ ] in every great centre of civilization the national ideal of beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions, and foreign ideals, as well as foreign fashions, become preferred to those that are native. it is significant of this tendency that when, a few years since, an enterprising parisian journal hung in its _salle_ the portraits of one hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and invited the votes of the public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not one of the three women who came out at the head of the poll was french. a dancer of belgian origin (cléo de merode) was by far at the head with over votes, followed by an american from san francisco (sybil sanderson), and then a polish woman. footnotes: [ ] figured in mau's _pompeii_, p. . [ ] as a native of lukunor said to the traveler mertens, "it has the same object as your clothes, to please the women." [ ] "the greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel," as burton states (_anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, sec. ii, mem. ii, subs. iii), illustrating this proposition with immense learning. stanley hall (_american journal of psychology_, vol. ix, part iii, pp. _et seq._) has some interesting observations on the various psychic influences of clothing; cf. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. et seq. [ ] _history of human marriage_, chapter ix, especially p, . we have a striking and comparatively modern european example of an article of clothing designed to draw attention to the sexual sphere in the codpiece (the french _braguette_), familiar to us through fifteenth and sixteenth century pictures and numerous allusions in rabelais and in elizabethan literature. this was originally a metal box for the protection of the sexual organs in war, but subsequently gave place to a leather case only worn by the lower classes, and became finally an elegant article of fashionable apparel, often made of silk and adorned with ribbons, even with gold and jewels. (see, e.g., bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, p. .) [ ] a correspondent in ceylon has pointed out to me that in the indian statues of buddha, vishnu, goddesses, etc., the necklace always covers the nipples, a sexually attractive adornment being thus at the same time the guardian of the orifices of the body. crawley (_the mystic rose_, p. ) regards mutilations as in the nature of permanent amulets or charms. [ ] mantegazza, in his discussion of this point, although an ardent admirer of feminine beauty, decides that woman's form is not, on the whole, more beautiful than man's. see appendix to cap. iv of _fisiologia della donna_. [ ] for a discussion of the anthropology of the feminine pelvis, see ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. . sec. vi. [ ] ploss and bartels, loc. cit.; deniker, _revue d'anthropologie_, january , , and _races of man_, p. . [ ] darwin. [ ] g.f. watts, "on taste in dress," _nineteenth century_, . [ ] from mediæval times onwards there has been a tendency to treat the gluteal region with contempt, a tendency well marked in speech and custom among the lowest classes in europe to-day, but not easily traceable in classic times. dühren (_das geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. ii, pp. et seq.) brings forward quotations from æsthetic writers and others dealing with the beauty of this part of the body. [ ] sonnini, _voyage, etc._, vol. i, p. . [ ] ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. , sec. iii; mantegazza, _fisiologia della donna_, chapter iii. [ ] bloch brings together various interesting quotations concerning the farthingale and the crinoline. (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, p. .) he states that, like most other feminine fashions in dress, it was certainly invented by prostitutes. [ ] the racial variations in the form and character of the breasts are great, and there are considerable variations even among europeans. even as regards the latter our knowledge is, however, still very vague and incomplete; there is here a fruitful field for the medical anthropologist. ploss and bartels have brought together the existing data (_das weib_, bd. i, sec. viii). stratz also discusses the subject (_die schönheit das weiblichen körpers_, chapter x). [ ] _cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. . [ ] these devices are dealt with and illustrations given by ploss and bartels, _das weib_ (loc. cit.). [ ] see, e.g., _parerga und paralipomena_, bd. i, p. , and bd. , p. . moll has also discussed this point (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, pp. et seq.). [ ] speaking of some south american tribes, he remarks (_travels_, english translations, , vol. iii. p. ) that they "have as great an antipathy to the beard as the eastern nations hold it in reverence. this antipathy is derived from the same source as the predilection for flat foreheads, which is seen in so singular a manner in the statues of the aztec heroes and divinities. nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy." see also westermarck, _history of marriage_, p. . ripley (_races of europe_, pp. , ) attaches much importance to the sexual selection founded on a tendency of this kind. [ ] "differences of race are irreducible," abel hermant remarks (_confession d'un enfant d'hier_, p. ), "and between two beings who love each other they cannot fail to produce exceptional and instructive reactions. in the first superficial ebullition of love, indeed, nothing notable may be manifested, but in a fairly short time the two lovers, innately hostile, in striving to approach each other strike against an invisible partition which separates them. their sensibilities are divergent; everything in each shocks the other; even their anatomical conformation, even the language of their gestures; all is foreign." [ ] c.h. stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, fourteenth edition, chapter xii. [ ] see, e.g., sergi, _the mediterranean race_, pp. - . [ ] sergi (_the mediterranean race_, chapter ), by an analysis of homer's color epithets, argues that in very few cases do they involve fairness; but his attempt scarcely seems successful, although most of these epithets are undoubtedly vague and involve a certain range of possible color. [ ] léchat's study of the numerous realistic colored statues recently discovered in greece (summarized in _zentralblatt für anthropologie_, , ht. , p. ) shows that with few exceptions the hair is fair. [ ] renier, _il tipo estetico_, pp. et seq. in another book, _les femmes blondes selon les peintres de l'ecole de venise_, par deux venitiens (one of these "venetians" being armand baschet), is brought together much information concerning the preference for blondes in literature, together with a great many of the recipes anciently used for making the hair fair. [ ] j. houdoy, _la beauté des femmes dans la littérature et dans l'art du xiie au xvie siècle_, , pp. et seq. [ ] houdoy, op. cit., pp. et seq. [ ] houdoy, op. cit., p. . [ ] brantôme, _vie des dames galantes_, discours ii. [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, sec. ii, mem. ii, subs. ii. [ ] it is significant that burton (_anatomy of melancholy_, loc. cit.), while praising golden hair, also argues that "of all eyes black are moist amiable," quoting many examples to this effect from classic and later literature. [ ] "relative abilities of the fair and the dark," _monthly review_, august, ; cf. h. ellis, _a study of british genius_, p. . [ ] stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, p. . [ ] bloch (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. et seq.) brings together some facts bearing on the admiration for negresses in paris and elsewhere. iii. beauty not the sole element in the sexual appeal of vision--movement--the mirror--narcissism--pygmalionism--mixoscopy--the indifference of women to male beauty--the significance of woman's admiration of strength--the spectacle of strength is a tactile quality made visible. our discussion of the sensory element of vision in human sexual selection has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in so far as beauty is a stimulus to the sexual instinct. beauty by no means comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement through vision, but it is the point at which all the most powerful and subtle of these are focussed; it represents a fairly definite complexus, appealing at once to the sexual and to the æsthetic impulses, to which no other sense can furnish anything in any degree analogous. it is because this conception of beauty has arisen upon it that vision properly occupies the supreme position in man from the point of view which we here occupy. beauty is thus the chief, but it is not the sole, element in the sexual appeal of vision. in all parts of the world this has always been well understood, and in courtship, in the effort to arouse tumescence, the appeals to vision have been multiplied and at the same time aided by appeals to the other senses. movement, especially in the form of dancing, is the most important of the secondary appeals to vision. this is so well recognized that it is scarcely necessary to insist upon it here; it may suffice to refer to a single typical example. the most decent of polynesian dances, according to william ellis, was the _hura_, which was danced by the daughters of chiefs in the presence of young men of rank with the hope of gaining a future husband. "the daughters of the chiefs, who were the dancers on these occasions, at times amounted to five or six, though occasionally only one exhibited her symmetry of figure and gracefulness of action. their dress was singular, but elegant. the head was ornamented with a fine and beautiful braid of human hair, wound round the head in the form of a turban. a triple wreath of scarlet, white, and yellow flowers adorned the head-dress. a loose vest of spotted cloth covered the lower part of the bosom. the tihi, of fine white stiffened cloth frequently edged with a scarlet border, gathered like a large frill, passed under the arms and reached below the waist; while a handsome fine cloth, fastened round the waist with a band or sash, covered the feet. the breasts were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl shells, and a covering of curiously wrought network and feathers. the music of the hura was the large and small drum and occasionally the flute. the movements were generally slow, but always easy and natural, and no exertion on the part of the performers was wanting to render them graceful and attractive."[ ] we see here, in this very typical example, how the extraneous visual aids of movement, color, and brilliancy are invoked in conjunction with music to make the appeal of beauty more convincing in the process of sexual selection. it may be in place here to mention, in passing, the considerable place which vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of heightening tumescence under circumstances which exclude definite selection by beauty. the action of mirrors belongs to this group of phenomena. mirrors are present in profusion in high-class brothels--on the walls and also above the beds. innocent youths and girls are also often impelled to contemplate themselves in mirrors and sometimes thus, produce the first traces of sexual excitement. i have referred to the developed forms of this kind of self-contemplation in the study of auto-erotism, and in this connection have alluded to the fable of narcissus, whence näcke has since devised the term narcissism for this group of phenomena. it is only necessary to mention the enormous production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or of gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the eyes. pygmalionism, or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of erotomania founded on the sense of vision and closely related to the allurement of beauty. (i here use "pygmalionism" as a general term for the sexual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted to cases in which a man requires of a prostitute that she shall assume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; eulenburg quotes examples, _sexuale neuropathie_, p. .) an emotional interest in statues is by no means uncommon among young men during adolescence. heine, in _florentine nights_, records the experiences of a boy who conceived a sentimental love for a statue, and, as this book appears to be largely autobiographical, the incident may have been founded on fact. youths have sometimes masturbated before statues, and even before the image of the virgin; such cases are known to priests and mentioned in manuals for confessors. pygmalionism appears to have been not uncommon among the ancient greeks, and this has been ascribed to their æsthetic sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the absence than to the presence of æsthetic feeling, and we may observe among ourselves that it is the ignorant and uncultured who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray their sense of the sexual appeal of such objects. we have to remember that in greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also that they were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us. lucian, athenæus, Ælian, and others refer to cases of men who fell in love with statues. tarnowsky (_sexual instinct_, english edition, p. ) mentions the case of a young man who was arrested in st. petersburg for paying moonlight visits to the statue of a nymph on the terrace of a country house, and krafft-ebing quotes from a french newspaper the case which occurred in paris during the spring of of a gardener who fell in love with a venus in one of the parks. (i. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. - , brings together various facts bearing on this group of manifestations.) necrophily, or a sexual attraction for corpses, is sometimes regarded as related to pygmalionism. it is, however, a more profoundly morbid manifestation, and may perhaps he regarded as a kind of perverted sadism. founded on the sense of vision also we find a phenomenon, bordering on the abnormal, which is by moll termed mixoscopy. this means the sexual pleasure derived from the spectacle of other persons engaged in natural or perverse sexual actions. (moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. . moll considers that in some cases mixoscopy is related to masochism. there is, however, no necessary connection between the two phenomena.) brothels are prepared to accommodate visitors who merely desire to look on, and for their convenience carefully contrived peepholes are provided; such visitors are in paris termed "_voyeurs_." it is said by coffignon that persons hide at night in the bushes in the champs elysées in the hope of witnessing such scenes between servant girls and their lovers. in england during a country walk i have come across an elderly man carefully ensconced behind a bush and intently watching through his field-glass a couple of lovers reclining on a bank, though the actions of the latter were not apparently marked by any excess of indecorum. such impulses are only slightly abnormal, whatever may be said of them from the point of view of good taste. they are not very far removed from the legitimate curiosity of the young woman who, believing herself unobserved, turns her glass on to a group of young men bathing naked. they only become truly perverse when the gratification thus derived is sought in preference to natural sexual gratification. they are also not normal when they involve, for instance, a man desiring to witness his wife in the act of coitus with another man. i have been told of the case of a scientific man who encouraged his wife to promote the advances of a young friend of his own, in his own drawing-room, he himself remaining present and apparently taking no notice; the younger man was astonished, but accepted the situation. in such a case, when the motives that led up to the episode are obscure, we must not too hastily assume that masochism or even mixoscopy is involved. for information on some of the points mentioned above see, e.g., i. bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, pp. _et seq._; teil ii, pp. et seq. wide, however, as is the appeal of beauty in sexual selection, it cannot be said to cover by any means the whole of the visual field in its sexual relationship. beauty in the human species is, above all, a feminine attribute, making its appeal to men. even for women, as has already been noted, beauty is still a feminine quality, which they usually admire, and in cases of inversion worship with an ardor which equals, if it does not surpass, that experienced by normal men. but the normal woman experiences no corresponding cult for the beauty of man. the perfection of the body of man is not behind that of woman in beauty, but the study of it only appeals to the artist or the æsthetician; it arouses sexual enthusiasm almost exclusively in the male sexual invert. whatever may be the case among animals or even among savages, in civilization the man is most successful with women is not the most handsome man, and may be the reverse of handsome.[ ] the maiden, according to the old saying, who has to choose between adonis and hercules, will turn to hercules. a correspondent writes: "men are generally attracted in the first instance by a woman's beauty, either of face or figure. frequently this is the highest form of love they are capable of. personally, my own love is always prompted by this. in the case of my wife there was certainly a leaven of friendship and moral sympathies but these alone would never have been translated into love had she not been young and good-looking. moreover, i have felt intense passion for other women, in my relations with whom the elements of moral or mental sympathy have not entered. and always, as youth and beauty went, i believe i should transfer my love to some one else. "now, in woman i fancy this element of beauty and youth does not enter so much. i have questioned a large number of women--some married, some unmarried, young and old ladies, shopgirls, servants, prostitutes, women whom i have known only as friends, others with whom i have had sexual relations--and i cannot recollect one instance when a woman said she had fallen in love with a man for his looks. the nearest approach to any sign of this was in the instance of one, who noticed a handsome man sitting near us in a hotel, and said to me: 'i should like him to kiss me.' "i have also noticed that women do not like looking at my body, when naked, as i like looking at theirs. my wife has, on a few occasions, put her hand over my body, and expressed pleasure at the feeling of my skin. (i have very fair, soft skin.) but i have never seen women exhibit the excitement that is caused in me by the sight of their bodies, which i love to look at, to stroke, to kiss all over." it is interesting to point out, in this connection, that the admiration of strength is not confined to the human female. it is by the spectacle of his force that the male among many of the lower animals sexually affects the female. darwin duly allows for this fact, while some evolutionists, and notably wallace, consider that it covers the whole field of sexual selection. when choice exists, wallace states, "all the facts appear to be consistent with the choice depending on a variety of male characteristics, with some of which color is often correlated. thus, it is the opinion of some of the best observers that vigor and liveliness are most attractive, and these are, no doubt, usually associated with some intensity of color, ... there is reason to believe that it is his [the male bird's] persistency and energy rather than his beauty which wins the day." (a.r. wallace, _tropical nature_, , p. .) in his later book, _darwinism_ (p. ), wallace reaffirms his position that sexual selection means that in the rivalry of males for the female the most vigorous secures the advantage; "ornament," he adds, "is the natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor." as regards woman's love of strength, see westermarck, _history of marriage_, p. . women admire a man's strength rather than his beauty. this statement is commonly made, and with truth, but, so far as i am aware, its meaning is never analyzed. when we look into it, i think, we shall find that it leads us into a special division of the visual sphere of sexual allurement. the spectacle of force, while it remains strictly within the field of vision, really brings to us, although unconsciously, impressions that are correlated with another sense--that of touch. we instinctively and unconsciously translate visible energy into energy of pressure. in admiring strength we are really admiring a tactile quality which has been made visible. it may therefore be said that, while through vision men are sexually affected mainly by the more purely visual quality of beauty, women are more strongly affected by visual impressions which express qualities belonging to the more fundamentally sexual sense of touch. the distinction between the man's view and the woman's view, here pointed out, is not, it must be added, absolute. even for a man, beauty, with all these components which we have already analyzed in it, is not the sole sexual allurement of vision. a woman is not necessarily sexually attractive in the ratio of her beauty, and with even a high degree of beauty may have a low degree of attraction. the addition of vivacity or the addition of languor may each furnish a sexual allurement, and each of these is a translated tactile quality which possesses an obscure potency from vague sexual implications.[ ] but while in the man the demand for these translated pressure qualities in the visible attractiveness of a woman are not usually quite clearly realized, in a woman the corresponding craving for the visual expression of pressure energy is much more pronounced and predominant. it is not difficult to see why this should be so, even without falling back on the usual explanation that natural selection implies that the female shall choose the male who will be the most likely father of strong children and the best protector of his family. the more energetic part in physical love belongs to the man, the more passive part to the woman; so that, while energy in a woman is no index to effectiveness in love, energy in a man furnishes a seeming index to the existence of the primary quality of sexual energy which a woman demands of a man in the sexual embrace. it may be a fallacious index, for muscular strength is not necessarily correlated with sexual vigor, and in its extreme degrees appears to be more correlated with its absence. but it furnishes, in stendhal's phrase, a probability of passion, and in any case it still remains a symbol which cannot be without its effect. we must not, of course, suppose that these considerations are always or often present to the consciousness of the maiden who "blushingly turns from adonis to hercules," but the emotional attitude is rooted in more or less unerring instincts. in this way it happens that even in the field of visual attraction sexual selection influences women on the underlying basis of the more primitive sense of touch, the fundamentally sexual sense. women are very sensitive to the quality of a man's touch, and appear to seek and enjoy contact and pressure to a greater extent than do men, although in early adolescence this impulse seems to be marked in both sexes. "there is something strangely winning to most women," remarks george eliot, in _the mill on the floss_, "in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help--the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs--meets a continual want of the imagination." women are often very critical concerning a man's touch and his method of shaking hands. stanley hall (_adolescence_, vol. ii, p. ) quotes a gifted lady as remarking: "i used to say that, however much i liked a man, i could never marry him if i did not like the touch of his hand, and i feel so yet." among the elements of sexual attractiveness which make a special appeal to women, extreme personal cleanliness would appear to take higher rank than it takes in the eyes of a man, some men, indeed, seeming to make surprisingly small demands of a woman in this respect. if this is so we may connect it with the fact that beauty in a woman's eye is to a much greater extent than in a man's a picture of energy, in other words, a translation of pressure contracts, with which the question of physical purity is necessarily more intimately associated than it is with the picture of purely visual beauty. it is noteworthy that ovid (_ars amandi_, lib. i) urges men who desire to please women to leave the arts of adornment and effeminacy to those whose loves are homosexual, and to practice a scrupulous attention to extreme neatness and cleanliness of body and garments in every detail, a sun-browned skin, and the absence of all odor. some two thousand years later brummell in an age when extravagance and effeminacy often marked the fashions of men, introduced a new ideal of unobtrusive simplicity, extreme cleanliness (with avoidance of perfumes), and exquisite good taste; he abhorred all eccentricity, and may be said to have constituted a tradition which englishmen have ever since sought, more or less successfully to follow; he was idolized by women. it may be added that the attentiveness of women to tactile contacts is indicated by the frequency with which in them it takes on morbid forms, as the _délire du contact_, the horror of contamination, the exaggerated fear of touching dirt. (see, e.g., raymond and janet, _les obsessions et la psychasthénie_.) footnotes: [ ] william ellis, _polynesian researches_, second edition, , vol. , p. . [ ] stendhal (_de l'amour_, chapter xviii) has some remarks on this point, and refers to the influence over women possessed by lekain, the famous actor, who was singularly ugly. "it is _passion_," he remarks, "which we demand; beauty only furnishes _probabilities_." [ ] the charm of a woman's garments to a man is often due in part to their expressiveness in rendering impressions of energy, vivacity, or languor. this has often been realized by the poets, and notably by herrick, who was singularly sensitive to these qualities in a woman's garments. iv. the alleged charm of disparity in sexual attraction--the admiration for high stature--the admiration for dark pigmentation--the charm of parity--conjugal mating--the statistical results of observation as regards general appearance, stature, and pigmentation of married couples--preferential mating and assortative mating--the nature of the advantage attained by the fair in sexual selection--the abhorrence of incest and the theories of its cause--the explanation in reality simple--the abhorrence of incest in relation to sexual selection--the limits to the charm of parity in conjugal mating--the charm of disparity in secondary sexual characters. when we are dealing with the senses of touch, smell, and hearing it is impossible at present, and must always remain somewhat difficult, to investigate precisely the degree and direction of their influence in sexual selection. we can marshal in order--as has here been attempted--the main facts and considerations which clearly indicate that there is and must be such an influence, but we cannot even attempt to estimate its definite direction and still less to measure it precisely. with regard to vision, we are in a somewhat better position. it is possible to estimate the direction of the influence which certain visible characters exert on sexual selection, and it is even possible to attempt their actual measurement, although there must frequently be doubt as to the interpretation of such measurements. two facts render it thus possible to deal more exactly with the influence of vision on sexual selection than with the influence of the other senses. in the first place, men and women consciously seek for certain visible characters in the persons to whom they are attracted; in other words, their "ideals" of a fitting mate are visual rather than tactile, olfactory, or auditory. in the second place, whether such "ideals" are potent in actual mating, or whether they are modified or even inhibited by more potent psychological or general biological influences, it is in either case possible to measure and compare the visible characters of mated persons. the two visible characters which are at once most frequently sought in a mate and most easily measurable are degree of stature and degree of pigmentation. every youth or maiden pictures the person he or she would like for a lover as tall or short, fair or dark, and such characters are measurable and have on a large scale been measured. it is of interest in illustration of the problem of sexual selection in man to consider briefly what results are at present obtainable regarding the influence of these two characters. it has long been a widespread belief that short people are sexually attracted to tall people, and tall people to short; that in the matter of stature men and women are affected by what bain called the "charm of disparity." it has not always prevailed. many centuries ago leonardo da vinci, whose insight at so many points anticipated our most modern discoveries, affirmed clearly and repeatedly the charm of parity. after remarking that painters tend to delineate the figures that resemble themselves he adds that men also fall in love with and marry those who resemble themselves; "_chi s'innamora voluntieri s'innamorano de cose a loro simiglianti_," he elsewhere puts it.[ ] but from that day to this, it would seem leonardo's statements have remained unknown or unnoticed. bernardin de saint-pierre said that "love is the result of contrasts," and schopenhauer affirmed the same point very decisively; various scientific and unscientific writers have repeated this statement.[ ] so far as stature is concerned, there appears to be very little reason to suppose that this "charm of disparity" plays any notable part in constituting the sexual ideals of either men or women. indeed, it may probably be affirmed that both men and women seek tallness in the person to whom they are sexually attracted. darwin quotes the opinion of mayhew that among dogs the females are strongly attracted to males of large size.[ ] i believe this is true, and it is probably merely a particular instance of a general psychological tendency. it is noteworthy as an indication of the direction of the sexual ideal in this matter that the heroines of male novelists are rarely short and the heroes of female novelists almost invariably tall. a reviewer of novels addressing to lady novelists in the _speaker_ (july , ) "a plea for shorter heroes," publishes statistics on this point. "heroes," he states, "are longer this year than ever. of the of whom i have had my word to say since october of last year, were merely tall, and were only slightly above the middle height. no less than stood exactly six feet in their stocking soles, and the remainder were considerably over the two yards. i take the average to be six feet three." as a slight test alike of the supposed "charm of disparity" as well as of the general degree in which tall and short persons are sought as mates by those of the opposite sex i have examined a series of entries in the _round-about_, a publication issued by a club, of which the president is mr. w.t. stead, having for its object the purpose of promoting correspondence, friendship, and marriage between its members. there are two classes, of entries, one inserted with a view to "intellectual friendship," the other with a view to marriage. i have not thought it necessary to recognize this distinction here; if a man describes his own physical characteristics and those of the lady he would like as a friend, i assume that, from the point of view of the present inquiry, he is much on the same footing as the man who seeks a wife. in the series of entries which i have examined men and women state approximately the height of the man or woman they seek to know; state in addition their own height. the results are expressed in the table on the following page. although the cases are few, the results are, in two main respects, sufficiently clear without multiplication of data. in the first place, those who seek parity, whether men or women, are in a majority over those who seek disparity. in the second place, the existence of any disparity at all is due only to the universal desire to find a tall person. not one man or woman sets down shortness as his or her ideal. the very fact that no man in these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short (although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall) indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves as tall. the same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards pigmentation. the fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to the fair. again, it must be said that this common assumption is not confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a statistical basis.[ ] women. men. totals. tall women seek tall men.. tall men seek tall women.. short women seek short men short men seek short women medium-sized women seek medium-sized men seek medium-sized men ....... medium-sized women .... seek parity........... seek parity........... tall women seek short men. tall men seek short women. short women seek tall men. short men seek tall women. medium-sized woman seeks medium-sized men seek tall tall man................ women .................. seek disparity........ seek disparity........ men of unknown height seek tall women.............. most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary characters. even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or darkness,--either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to the imagination,--it is usually found, on testing the feeling for particular persons, that the variation from the personal type of the subject is usually only agreeable within narrow limits, and that there is a very common tendency for persons of totally opposed pigmentary types, even though they may sometimes be considered to possess a certain æsthetic beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive or even repulsive. with this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling, certainly very widely felt, that one would not like to marry a person of foreign, even though closely allied, race. from the same number of the _round-about_ from which i have extracted the data on stature, i have obtained corresponding data on pigmentation, and have embodied them in the following table. they are likewise very scanty, but they probably furnish as good a general indication of the drift of ideals in this matter as we should obtain from more extensive data of the same character. women. men. totals. fair women seek fair men. fair men seek fair women dark woman seeks dark man dark men seek dark women seek parity.......... seek parity......... fair women seek dark men. fair men seek dark women dark woman seeks fair man dark men seek fair women medium-colored man seeks seek disparity....... dark woman ........... medium-colored man seeks fair woman ........... seek disparity...... men of unknown color seek dark women ........... it will be seen that in the case of pigmentation there is not as in the case of stature a decided charm of parity in the formation of sexual ideals. the phenomenon, however, remains essentially analogous. just as in regard to stature there is without exception an abstract admiration for tall persons, so here, though to a less marked extent, there is a general admiration for dark persons. as many as out of women and out of men seek a dark partner. this tendency ranges itself with the considerations already brought forward (p. ), leading us to believe that, in england at all events, the admiration of fairness is not efficacious to promote any sexual selection, and that if there is actually any such selection it must be put down to other causes. no doubt, even in england the abstract æsthetic admiration of fairness is justifiable and may influence the artist. probably also it influences the poet, who is affected by a long-established convention in favor of fairness, and perhaps also by a general tendency on the part of our poets to be themselves fair and to yield to the charm of parity,--the tendency to prefer the women of one's own stock,--which we have already found to be a real force.[ ] but, as a matter of fact, our famous english beauties are not very fair; probably our handsomest men are not very fair, and the abstract sexual ideals of both our men and our women thus go out toward the dark. the formation of a sexual ideal, while it furnishes a predisposition to be attracted in a certain direction, and undoubtedly has a certain weight in sexual choice, is not by any means the whole of sexual selection. it is not even the whole of the psychic element in sexual selection. let us take, for instance, the question of stature. there would seem to be a general tendency for both men and women, apart from and before experience, to desire sexually large persons of the opposite sex. it may even be that this is part of a wider zoölogical tendency. in the human species it shows itself also on the spiritual plane, in the desire for the infinite, in the deep and unreasoning feeling that it is impossible to have too much of a good thing. but it not infrequently happens that a man in whose youthful dreams of love the heroine has always been large, has not been able to calculate what are the special nervous and other characteristics most likely to be met in large women, nor how far these correlated characteristics would suit his own instinctive demands. he may, and sometimes does, find that in these other demands, which prove to be more important and insistent than the desire for stature, the tall women he meets are less likely to suit him than the medium or short women.[ ] it may thus happen that a man whose ideal of woman has always been as tall may yet throughout life never be in intimate relationship with a tall woman because he finds that practically he has more marked affinities in the case of shorter women. his abstract ideals are modified or negatived by more imperative sympathies or antipathies. in one field such sympathies have long been recognized, especially by alienists, as leading to sexual unions of parity, notwithstanding the belief in the generally superior attraction of disparity. it has often been pointed out that the neuropathic, the insane and criminal, "degenerates" of all kinds, show a notable tendency to marry each other. this tendency has not, however, been investigated with any precision.[ ] the first attempt on a statistical basis to ascertain what degree of parity or disparity is actually attained by sexual selection was made by alphonse de candolle.[ ] obtaining his facts from switzerland, north germany, and belgium, he came to the conclusion that marriages are most commonly contracted between persons with different eye-colors, except in the case of brown-eyed women, who (as schopenhauer stated, and as is seen in the english data of the sexual ideal i have brought forward) are found more attractive than others. the first series of serious observations tending to confirm the result reached by the genius of leonardo da vinci and to show that sexual selection results in the pairing of like rather than of unlike persons was made by hermann fol, the embryologist.[ ] he set out with the popular notion that married people end by resembling each other, but when at nice, which is visited by many young married couples on their honeymoons, he was struck by the resemblances already existing immediately after marriage. in order to test the matter he obtained the photographs of young and old married couples not personally known to him. the results were as follows: resemblances nonresemblances couples. (percentage). (percentage). total. young.............. , about , , about . old ................ , about . , about . he concluded that in the immense majority of marriages of inclination the contracting parties are attracted by similarities, and not by dissimilarities, and that, consequently, the resemblances between aged married couples are not acquired during conjugal life. although fol's results were not obtained by good methods, and do not cover definite points like stature and eye-color, they represented the conclusions of a highly skilled and acute observer and have since been amply confirmed. galton could not find that the average results from a fairly large number of cases indicated that stature, eye-color, or other personal characteristics notably influenced sexual selection, as evidenced by a comparison of married couples.[ ] karl pearson, however, in part making use of a large body of data obtained by galton, referring to stature and eye-color, has reached the conclusion that sexual selection ultimately results in a marked degree of parity so far as these characters are concerned.[ ] as regards stature, he is unable to find evidence of what he terms "preferential mating"; that is to say, it does not appear that any preconceived ideals concerning the desirability of tallness in sexual mates leads to any perceptibly greater tallness of the chosen mate; husbands are not taller than men in general, nor wives than women in general. in regard to eye-color, however, there appeared to be evidence of preferential mating. husbands are very decidedly fairer than men in general, and though there is no such marked difference in women, wives are also somewhat fairer than women in general. as regards "assortative mating" as it is termed by pearson,--the tendency to parity or to disparity between husbands and wives,--the result were in both cases decisive. tall men marry women who are somewhat above the average in height; short men marry women who are somewhat below the average, so that husband and wife resemble each other in stature as closely as uncle and niece. as regards eye-color there is also a tendency for like to marry like; the light-eyed men tend to marry light-eyed women more often than dark-eyed women; the dark-eyed men tend to marry dark-eyed women more often than light-eyed. there remains, however, a very considerable difference in the eye-color of husband and wife; in the couples dealt with by pearson there are dark-eyed women to only dark-eyed men, and light-eyed men to only light-eyed women. the women in the english population are darker-eyed than the men;[ ] but the difference is scarcely so great as this; so that even if wives are not so dark-eyed as women generally it would appear that the ideal admiration for the dark-eyed may still to some extent make itself felt in actual mating. while we have to recognize that the modification and even total inhibition of sexual ideals in the process of actual mating is largely due to psychic causes, such causes do not appear to cover the whole of the phenomena. undoubtedly they count for much, and the man or the woman who, from whatever causes, has constituted a sexual ideal with certain characters may in the actual contacts of life find that individuals with other and even opposed characters most adequately respond to his or her psychic demands. there are, however, other causes in play here which at first sight may seem to be not of a purely psychic character. one unquestionable cause of this kind comes into action in regard to pigmentary selection. fair people, possibly as a matter of race more than from absence of pigment, are more energetic than dark people. they possess a sanguine vigor and impetuosity which, in most, though not in all, fields and especially in the competition of practical life, tend to give them some superiority over their darker brethren. the greater fairness of husbands in comparison with men in general, as found by karl pearson, is thus accounted for; fair men are most likely to obtain wives. husbands are fairer than men in general for the same reason that, as i have shown elsewhere,[ ] created peers are fairer than either hereditary peers or even most groups of intellectual persons; they have possessed in higher measure the qualities that insure success. it may be added that with the recognition of this fact we have not really left the field of sexual psychology, for, as has already been pointed out, that energy which thus insures success in practical life is itself a sexual allurement to women. energy in a woman in courtship is less congenial to her sexual attitude than to a man's, and is not attractive to men; thus it is not surprising, even apart from the probably greater beauty of dark women, that the preponderance of fairness among wives as compared to women generally, indicated by karl pearson's data, is very slight. it may possibly be accounted for altogether by homogamy--the tendency of like to marry like--in the fair husbands. the energy and vitality of fair people is not, however, it is probable, merely an indirect cause of the greater tendency of fair men to become husbands; that is to say, it is not merely the result of the generally somewhat greater ability of the fair to attain success in temporal affairs. in addition to this, fair men, if not fair women, would appear to show a tendency to a greater activity in their specifically sexual proclivities. this is a point which we shall encounter in a later _study_ and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss it here. in dealing with the question of sexual selection in man various writers have been puzzled by the problem presented by that abhorrence of incest which is usually, though not always so clearly marked among the different races of mankind.[ ] it was once commonly stated, as by morgan and by maine, that this abhorrence was the result of experience; the marriages of closely related persons were found to be injurious to offspring and were therefore avoided. this theory, however, is baseless because the marriages of closely related persons are not injurious to the offspring. consanguineous marriages, so closely as they can be investigated on a large scale,--that is to say, marriages between cousins,--as huth was the first to show, develop no tendency to the production of offspring of impaired quality provided the parents are sound; they are only injurious in this respect in so far as they may lead to the union of couples who are both defective in the same direction. according to another theory, that of westermarck, who has very fully and ably discussed the whole question,[ ] "there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin." westermarck points out very truly that the prohibition of incest could not be founded on experience even if (as he is himself inclined to believe) consanguineous marriages are injurious to the offspring; incest is prevented "neither by laws, nor by customs, nor by education, but by an _instinct_ which under normal circumstances makes sexual love between the nearest kin a psychic impossibility." there is, however, a very radical objection to this theory. it assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with difficulty be accepted. an instinct is fundamentally a more or less complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus. an innate tendency at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at the same time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain force be introduced into the accepted class of instincts. it is as awkward and artificial an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid eating the apples that grew in one's own yard.[ ] the explanation of the abhorrence to incest is really, however, exceedingly simple. any reader who has followed the discussion of sexual selection in the present volume and is also familiar with the "analysis of the sexual impulse" set forth in the previous volume of these _studies_ will quickly perceive that the normal failure of the pairing instinct to manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls brought up together from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to the inevitable absence under those circumstances of the conditions which evoke the pairing impulse. courtship is the process by which powerful sensory stimuli proceeding from a person of the opposite sex gradually produce the physiological state of tumescence, with its psychic concomitant of love and desire, more or less necessary for mating to be effected. but between those who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of their potency to arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence.[ ] brothers and sisters in relation to each other have at puberty already reached that state to which old married couples by the exhaustion of youthful passion and the slow usage of daily life gradually approximate. passion between brother and sister is, indeed, by no means so rare as is sometimes supposed, and it may be very strong, but it is usually aroused by the aid of those conditions which are normally required for the appearance of passion, more especially by the unfamiliarity caused by a long separation. in reality, therefore, the usual absence of sexual attraction between brothers and sisters requires no special explanation; it is merely due to the normal absence under these circumstances of the conditions that tend to produce sexual tumescence and the play of those sensory allurements which lead to sexual selection.[ ] it is a purely negative phenomenon and it is quite unnecessary, even if it were legitimate, to invoke any instinct for its explanation. it is probable that the same tendency also operates among animals to some extent, tending to produce a stronger sexual attraction toward those of their species to whom they have not become habituated.[ ] in animals, and in man also when living under primitive conditions, sexual attraction is not a constant phenomenon[ ]; it is an occasional manifestation only called out by the powerful stimulation. it is not its absence which we need to explain; it is its presence which needs explanation, and such an explanation we find in the analysis of the phenomena of courtship. the abhorrence of incest is an interesting and significant phenomenon from our present point of view, because it instructively points out to us the limits to that charm of parity which apparently makes itself felt to some considerable extent in the constitution of the sexual ideal and still more in the actual homogamy which seems to predominate over heterogamy. this homogamy is, it will be observed, a _racial_ homogamy; it relates to anthropological characters which mark stocks. even in this racial field, it is unnecessary to remark, the homogamy attained is not, and could not be, absolute; nor would it appear that such absolute racial homogamy is even desired. a tall man who seeks a tall woman can seldom wish her to be as tall as himself; a dark man who seeks a dark woman, certainly will not be displeased at the inevitably greater or less degree of pigment which he finds in her eyes as compared to his own. but when we go outside the racial field this tendency to homogamy disappears at once. a man marries a woman who, with slight, but agreeable, variations, belongs to a like stock to himself. the abhorrence of incest indicates that even the sexual attraction to people of the same stock has its limits, for it is not strong enough to overcome the sexual indifference between persons of near kin. the desire for novelty shown in this sexual indifference to near kin and to those who have been housemates from childhood, together with the notable sexual attractiveness often possessed by a strange youth or maiden who arrives in a small town or village, indicates that slight differences in stock, if not, indeed, a positive advantage from this point of view, are certainly not a disadvantage. when we leave the consideration of racial differences to consider sexual differences, not only do we no longer find any charm of parity, but we find that there is an actual charm of disparity. at this point it is necessary to remember all that has been brought forward in earlier pages[ ] concerning the emphasis of the secondary sexual characters in the ideal of beauty. all those qualities which the woman desires to see emphasized in the man are the precise opposite of the qualities which the man desires to see emphasized in the woman. the man must be strong, vigorous, energetic, hairy, even rough, to stir the primitive instincts of the woman's nature; the woman who satisfies this man must be smooth, rounded, and gentle. it would be hopeless to seek for any homogamy between the manly man and the virile woman, between the feminine woman and the effeminate man. it is not impossible that this tendency to seek disparity in sexual characters may exert some disturbing influences on the tendency to seek parity in anthropological racial characters, for the sexual difference to some extent makes itself felt in racial characters. a somewhat greater darkness of women is a secondary (or, more precisely, tertiary) sexual character, and on this account alone, it is possible, somewhat attractive to men[ ]. a difference in size and stature is a very marked secondary sexual character. in the considerable body of data concerning the stature of married couples reproduced by pearson from galton's tables, although the tall on the average tend to marry the tall, and the short the short, it is yet noteworthy that, while the men of ft. ins. have more wives at ft. ins. than at any other height, men of ft. show, in an exactly similar manner, more wives at ft. ins. than at any other height, although for many intermediate heights the most numerous groups of wives are taller[ ]. in matters of carriage, habit, and especially clothing the love of sexual disparity is instinctive, everywhere well marked, and often carried to very great lengths. to some extent such differences are due to the opposing demands of more fundamental differences in custom and occupation. but this cause by no means adequately accounts for them, since it may sometimes happen that what in one land is the practice of the men is in another the practice of the women, and yet the practices of the two sexes are still opposed[ ]. men instinctively desire to avoid doing things in women's ways, and women instinctively avoid doing things in men's ways, yet both sexes admire in the other sex those things which in themselves they avoid. in the matter of clothing this charm of disparity reaches its highest point, and it has constantly happened that men have even called in the aid of religion to enforce a distinction which seemed to them so urgent[ ]. one of the greatest of sex allurements would be lost and the extreme importance of clothes would disappear at once if the two sexes were to dress alike; such identity of dress has, however, never come about among any people. footnotes: [ ] l. da vinci, _frammenti_, selected by solmi, pp. - . [ ] westermarck, who accepts the "charm of disparity," gives references, _history of human marriage_, p. . [ ] _descent of man_. part ii, chapter xviii. [ ] bloch (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. et seq.) refers to the tendency to admixture of races and to the sexual attraction occasionally exerted by the negress and sometimes the negro on white persons as evidence in favor of such charm of disparity. in part, however, we are here concerned with vague statements concerning imperfectly known facts, in part with merely individual variations, and with that love of the exotic under the stimulation of civilized conditions to which reference has already been made (p. ). [ ] in this connection the exceptional case of tennyson is of interest. he was born and bred in the very fairest part of england (lincolnshire), but he himself and the stock from which he sprang were dark to a very remarkable degree. in his work, although it reveals traces of the conventional admiration for the fair, there is a marked and unusual admiration for distinctly dark women, the women resembling the stock to which he himself belonged. see havelock ellis, "the color sense in literature," _contemporary review_, may, . [ ] it is noteworthy that in the _round-about_, already referred to, although no man expresses a desire to meet a short woman, when he refers to announcements by women as being such as would be likely to suit him, the persons thus pointed out are in a notable proportion short. [ ] it has been discussed by f.j. debret, _la selection naturelle dans l'espèce humaine_ (thèse de paris), . debret regards it as due to natural selection. [ ] "hérédité de la couleur des yeux dans l'espèce humaine," _archives des sciences physiques et naturelles_, sér. iii, vol. xii, , p. . [ ] _revue scientifique_, jan., . [ ] f. galton, _natural inheritance_, p. . it may be remarked that while galton's tables on page show a slight excess of disparity as regards sexual selection in stature, in regard to eye color they anticipate karl pearson's more extensive data and in marriages of disparity show a decided deficiency of observed over chance results. in _english men of science_ (pp. - ), also, galton found that among the parents parity decidedly prevailed over disparity ( to ) alike as regards temperament, hair color, and eye color. [ ] karl pearson, _phil. trans. royal society_, vol. clxxxvii, p. , and vol. cxcv, p. ; _proceedings of the royal society_, vol. lxvi, p. ; _grammar of science_, second edition, , pp. _et seq._; _biometrika_, november, . the last-named periodical also contains a study on "assortative mating in man," bringing forward evidence to show that, apart from environmental influence, "length of life is a character which is subject to selection;" that is to say, the long-lived tend to marry the long-lived, and the short-lived to marry the short-lived. [ ] for a summary of the evidence on this point see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, , pp. - . [ ] "the comparative abilities of the fair and the dark," _monthly review_, august, . [ ] the fact that even in europe the abhorrence to incest is not always strongly felt is brought out by bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. et seq. [ ] westermarck, _history of marriage_, chapters xiv and xv. [ ] crawley (_the mystic rose_, p. ) has pointed out that it is not legitimate to assume the possibility of an "instinct" of this character; instinct has "nothing in its character but a response of function to environment." [ ] fromentin, in his largely autobiographic novel _dominique_, makes olivier say: "julie is my cousin, which is perhaps a reason why she should please me less than anyone else. i have always known her. we have, as it were, slept in the same cradle. there may be people who would be attracted by this almost fraternal relationship. to me the very idea of marrying someone whom i knew as a baby is as absurd as that of coupling two dolls." [ ] it may well be, as crawley argues (_the mystic rose_, chapter xvii), that sexual taboo plays some part among primitive people in preventing incestuous union, as, undoubtedly, training and moral ideas do among civilized peoples. [ ] the remarks of the marquis de brisay, an authority on doves, as communicated to giard (_l'intermédiare des biologistes_, november , ), are of much interest on this point, since they correspond to what we find in the human species: "two birds from the same nest rarely couple. birds coming from the same nest behave as though they regarded coupling as prohibited, or, rather, they know each other too well, and seem to be ignorant of their difference in sex, remaining unaffected in their relations by the changes which make them adults." westermarck (op. cit., p. ) has some remarks on a somewhat similar tendency sometimes observed in dogs and horses. [ ] see appendix to vol. lii of these _studies_, "the sexual impulse among savages." [ ] see, especially, _ante_, pp. et seq. [ ] kistemaecker, as quoted by bloch (_beiträge, etc._, ii. p. ), alludes in this connection to the dark clothes of men and to the tendency of women to wear lighter garments, to emphasize the white underlinen, to cultivate pallor of the face, to use powder. "i am white and you are brown; ergo, you must love me"; this affirmation, he states, may be found in the depths of every woman's heart. [ ] k. pearson, _grammar of science_, second edition, p. . [ ] in _man and woman_ (fourth edition, p. ) i have referred to a curious example of this tendency to opposition, which is of almost worldwide extent. among some people it is, or has been, the custom for the women to stand during urination, and in these countries it is usually the custom for the man to squat; in most countries the practices of the sexes in this matter are opposed. [ ] it is sufficient to quote one example. at the end of the sixteenth century it was a serious objection to the fashionable wife of an english brownist pastor in amsterdam that she had "bodies [a bodice or corset] tied to the petticoat with points [laces] as men do their doublets and their hose, contrary to i thess., v, , conferred with deut. xxii, ; and i john ii, ." v. summary of the conclusions at present attainable in regard to the nature of beauty and its relation to sexual selection. the consideration of vision has led us into a region in which, more definitely and precisely than is the case with any other sense, we can observe and even hope to measure the operation of sexual selection in man. in the conception of feminine beauty we possess an instrument of universal extension by which it seems possible to measure the nature and extent of such selection as exercised by men on women. this conception, with which we set out, is, however, by no means so precise, so easily available for the attainment of sound conclusions, as at first it may seem to be. it is true that beauty is not, as some have supposed, a mere matter of caprice. it rests in part on ( ) an objective basis of æsthetic character which holds all its variations together and leads to a remarkable approximation among the ideals of feminine beauty cherished by the most intelligent men of all races. but beyond this general objective basis we find that ( ) the specific characters of the race or nation tend to cause divergence in the ideals of beauty, since beauty is often held to consist in the extreme development of these racial or national anthropological features; and it would, indeed, appear that the full development of racial characters indicates at the same time the full development of health and vigor. we have further to consider that ( ) in most countries an important and usually essential element of beauty lies in the emphasis of the secondary and tertiary sexual characters: the special characters of the hair in woman, her breasts, her hips, and innumerable other qualities of minor saliency, but all apt to be of significance from the point of view of sexual selection. in addition we have ( ) the factor of individual taste, constituted by the special organization and the peculiar experiences of the individual and inevitably affecting his ideal of beauty. often this individual factor is merged into collective shapes, and in this way are constituted passing fashions in the matter of beauty, certain influences which normally affect only the individual having become potent enough to affect many individuals. finally, in states of high civilization and in individuals of that restless and nervous temperament which is common in civilization, we have ( ) a tendency to the appearance of an exotic element in the ideal of beauty, and in place of admiring that kind of beauty which most closely approximates to the type of their own race men begin to be agreeably affected by types which more or less deviate from that with which they are most familiar. while we have these various and to some extent conflicting elements in a man's ideal of feminine beauty, the question is still further complicated by the fact that sexual selection in the human species is not merely the choice of the woman by the man, but also the choice of the man by the woman. and when we come to consider this we find that the standard is altogether different, that many of the elements of beauty as it exists in woman for man have here fallen away altogether, while a new and preponderant element has to be recognized in the shape of a regard for strength and vigor. this, as i have pointed out, is not a purely visual character, but a tactile pressure character translated into visual terms. when we have stated the sexual ideal we have not yet, however, by any means stated the complete problem of human sexual selection. the ideal that is desired and sought is, in a large measure, not the outcome of experience; it is not even necessarily the expression of the individual's temperament and idiosyncrasy. it may be largely the result of fortuitous circumstances, of slight chance attractions in childhood, of accepted traditions consecrated by romance. in the actual contacts of life the individual may find that his sexual impulse is stirred by sensory stimuli which are other than those of the ideal he had cherished and may even be the reverse of them. beyond this, also, we have reason for believing that factors of a still more fundamentally biological character, to some extent deeper even than all these psychic elements, enter into the problem of sexual selection. certain individuals, apart altogether from the question of whether they are either ideally or practically the most fit mates, display a greater energy and achieve a greater success than others in securing partners. these individuals possess a greater constitutional vigor, physical or mental, which conduces to their success in practical affairs generally, and probably also heightens their specifically philogamic activities. thus, the problem of human sexual selection is in the highest degree complicated. when we gather together such scanty data of precise nature as are at present available, we realize that, while generally according with the results which the evidence not of a quantitative nature would lead us to accept, their precise significance is not at present altogether clear. it would appear on the whole that in choosing a mate we tend to seek parity of racial and individual characters together with disparity of secondary sexual characters. but we need a much larger number of groups of evidence of varying character and obtained under varying conditions. such evidence will doubtless accumulate now that its nature is becoming defined and the need for it recognized. in the meanwhile we are, at all events, in a position to assert, even with the evidence before us, that now that the real meaning of sexual selection is becoming clear its efficacy in human evolution can no longer be questioned. appendices appendix a. the origins of the kiss. manifestations resembling the kiss, whether with the object of expressing affection or sexual emotion, are found among various animals much lower than man. the caressing of the antennæ practiced by snails and various insects during sexual intercourse is of the nature of a kiss. birds use their bills for a kind of caress. thus, referring to guillemots and their practice of nibbling each other's feet, and the interest the mate always takes in this proceeding, which probably relieves irritation caused by insects, edmund selous remarks: "when they nibble and preen each other they may, i think, be rightly said to cosset and caress, the expression and pose of the bird receiving the benefit being often beatific."[ ] among mammals, such as the dog, we have what closely resembles a kiss, and the dog who smells, licks, and gently bites his master or a bitch, combines most of the sensory activities involved in the various forms of the human kiss. as practiced by man, the kiss involves mainly either the sense of touch or that of smell. occasionally it involves to some extent both sensory elements.[ ] the tactile kiss is certainly very ancient and primitive. it is common among mammals generally. the human infant exhibits, in a very marked degree, the impulse to carry everything to the mouth and to lick or attempt to taste it, possibly, as compayre suggests,[ ] from a memory of the action of the lips protruded to seize the maternal nipple. the affectionate child, as mantegazza remarks,[ ] not only applies inanimate objects to its lips or tongue, but of its own impulse licks the people it likes. stanley hall, in the light of a large amount of information he obtained on this point, found that "some children insist on licking the cheeks, necks, and hands of those they wish to caress," or like having animals lick them.[ ] this impulse in children may be associated with the maternal impulse in animals to lick the young. "the method of licking the young practiced by the mother," remarks s.s. buckman, "would cause licking to be associated with happy feelings. and, further, there is the allaying of parasitical irritation which is afforded by the rubbing and hence results in pleasure. it may even be suggested that the desire of the mother to lick her young was prompted in the first place by a desire to bestow on her offspring a pleasure she felt herself." the licking impulse in the child may thus, it is possible, be regarded as the evanescent manifestation of a more fundamental animal impulse,[ ] a manifestation which is liable to appear in adult life under the stress of strong sexual emotion. such an association is of interest if, as there is some reason to believe, the kiss of sexual love originated as a development of the more primitive kiss bestowed by the mother on her child, for it is sometimes found that the maternal kiss is practiced where the sexual kiss is unknown. the impulse to bite is also a part of the tactile element which lies at the origin of kissing. as stanley hall notes, children are fond of biting, though by no means always as a method of affection. there is, however, in biting a distinctly sexual origin to invoke, for among many animals the teeth (and among birds the bill) are used by the male to grasp the female more firmly during intercourse. this point has been discussed in the previous volume of these _studies_ in reference to "love and pain," and it is unnecessary to enter into further details here. the heroine of kleist's _penthesilea_ remarks: "kissing (küsse) rhymes with biting (bisse), and one who loves with the whole heart may easily confound the two." the kiss, as known in europe, has developed on a sensory basis that is mainly tactile, although an olfactory element may sometimes coexist. the kiss thus understood is not very widely spread and is not usually found among rude and uncultured peoples. we can trace it in aryan and semitic antiquity, but in no very pronounced form; homer scarcely knew it, and the greek poets seldom mention it. today it may be said to be known all over europe except in lapland. even in europe it is probably a comparatively modern discovery; and in all the celtic tongues, rhys states, there is no word for "kiss," the word employed being always borrowed from the latin _pax_.[ ] at a fairly early historic period, however, the welsh cymri, at all events, acquired a knowledge of the kiss, but it was regarded as a serious matter and very sparingly used, being by law only permitted on special occasions, as at a game called rope-playing or a carousal; otherwise a wife who kissed a man not her husband could be repudiated. throughout eastern asia it is unknown; thus, in japanese literature kisses and embraces have no existence. "kisses, and embraces are simply unknown in japan as tokens of affection," lafcadio hearn states, "if we except the solitary fact that japanese mothers, like mothers all over the world, lip and hug their little ones betimes. after babyhood there is no more hugging or kisses; such actions, except in the case of infants, are held to be immodest. never do girls kiss one another; never do parents kiss or embrace their children who have become able to walk." this holds true, and has always held true, of all classes; hand-clasping is also foreign to them. on meeting after a long absence, hearn remarks, they smile, perhaps cry a little, they may even stroke each other, but that is all. japanese affection "is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and kindness."[ ] among nearly all of the black races of africa lovers never kiss nor do mothers usually kiss their babies.[ ] among the american indians the tactile kiss is, for the most part, unknown, though here and there, as among the fuegians, lovers rub their cheeks together.[ ] kissing is unknown to the malays. in north queensland, however, roth states, kissing takes place between mothers (not fathers) and infants, also between husbands and wives; but whether it is an introduced custom roth is unable to say; he adds that the pitta-pitta language possesses a word for kissing.[ ] it must be remarked, however, that in many parts of the world where the tactile kiss, as we understand it, is usually said to be unknown, it still exists as between a mother and her baby, and this seems to support the view advocated by lombroso that the lovers' kiss is developed from the maternal kiss. thus, the angoni zulus to the north of the zambesi, wiese states, kiss their small children on both cheeks[ ] and among the fuegians, according to hyades, mothers kiss their small children. even in europe the kiss in early mediæval days was, it seems probable, not widely known as an expression of sexual love; it would appear to have been a refinement of love only practiced by the more cultivated classes. in the old ballad of glasgerion the lady suspected that her secret visitor was only a churl, and not the knight he pretended to be, because when he came in his master's place to spend the night with her he kissed her neither coming nor going, but simply got her with child. it is only under a comparatively high stage of civilization that the kiss has been emphasized and developed in the art of love. thus the arabic author of the _perfumed garden_, a work revealing the existence of a high degree of social refinement, insists on the great importance of the kiss, especially if applied to the inner part of the mouth, and he quotes a proverb that "a moist kiss is better than a hasty coitus." such kisses, as well as on the face generally, and all over the body, are frequently referred to by hindu, latin, and more modern erotic writers as among the most efficacious methods of arousing love.[ ] a reason which may have stood in the way of the development of the kiss in a sexual direction has probably been the fact that in the near east the kiss was largely monopolized for sacred uses, so that its erotic potentialities were not easily perceived. among the early arabians the gods were worshiped by a kiss.[ ] this was the usual way of greeting the house gods on entering or leaving.[ ] in rome the kiss was a sign of reverence and respect far more than a method of sexual excitation.[ ] among the early christians it had an all but sacramental significance. it retains its ancient and serious meaning in many usages of the western and still more the eastern churches; the relics of saints, the foot of the pope, the hands of bishops, are kissed, just as the ancient greeks kissed the images of the gods. among ourselves we still have a legally recognized example of the sacredness of the kiss in the form of taking an oath by kissing the testament.[ ] so far we have been concerned mainly with the tactile kiss, which is sometimes supposed to have arisen in remote times to the east of the mediterranean--where the vassal kissed his suzerain and where the kiss of love was known, as we learn from the songs of songs, to the hebrews--and has now conquered nearly the whole of europe. but over a much larger part of the world and even in one corner of europe (lapland, as well as among the russian yakuts) a different kind of salutation rules, the olfactory kiss. this varies in form in different regions and sometimes simulates a tactile kiss, but, as it exists in a typical form in china, where it has been carefully studied by d'enjoy, it may be said to be made up of three phases: ( ) the nose is applied to the cheek of the beloved person; ( ) there is a long nasal inspiration accompanied by lowering of the eyelids; ( ) there is a slight smacking of the lips without the application of the mouth to the embraced cheek. the whole process, d'enjoy considers, is founded on sexual desire and the desire for food, smell being the sense employed in both fields. in the form described by d'enjoy, we have the mongolian variety of the olfactory kiss. the chinese regard the european kiss as odious, suggesting voracious cannibals, and yellow mothers in the french colonies still frighten children by threatening to give them the white man's kiss. their own kiss the chinese regard as exclusively voluptuous; it is only befitting as between lovers, and not only do fathers refrain from kissing their children except when very young, but even the mothers only give their children a rare and furtive kiss. among some of the hill-tribes of south-east india the olfactory kiss is found, the nose being applied to the cheek during salutation with a strong inhalation; instead of saying "kiss me," they here say "smell me." the tamils, i am told by a medical correspondent in ceylon, do not kiss during coitus, but rub noses and also lick each other's mouth and tongue. the olfactory kiss is known in africa; thus, on the gambia in inland africa when a man salutes a woman he takes her hand and places it to his nose, twice smelling the back of it. among the jekris of the niger coast mothers rub their babies with their cheeks or mouths, but they do not kiss them, nor do lovers kiss, though they squeeze, cuddle, and embrace.[ ] among the swahilis a smell kiss exists, and very young boys are taught to raise their clothes before women visitors, who thereupon playfully smell the penis; the child who does this is said to "give tobacco."[ ] kissing of any kind appears to be unknown to the indians throughout a large part of america: im thurn states that it is unknown to the indians of guiana, and at the other end of south america hyades and deniker state that it is unknown to the fuegians. in forth america the olfactory kiss is known to the eskimo, and has been noted among some indian tribes, as the blackfeet. it is also known in polynesia. at samoa kissing was smelling.[ ] in new zealand, also, the _hongi_, or nose-pressing, was the kiss of welcome, of mourning, and of sympathy.[ ] in the malay archipelago, it is said, the same word is used for "greeting" and "smelling." among the dyaks of the malay archipelago, however, vaughan stevens states that any form of kissing is unknown.[ ] in borneo, breitenstein tells us, kissing is a kind of smelling, the word for smelling being used, but he never himself saw a man kiss a woman; it is always done in private.[ ] the olfactory kiss is thus seen to have a much wider extension over the world than the european (or mediterranean) tactile kiss. in its most complete development, however, it is mainly found among the people of mongolian race, or those yellow peoples more or less related to them. the literature of the kiss is extensive. so far, however, as that literature is known to me, the following list includes everything that may be profitably studied: darwin, _the expression of the emotions_; ling roth, "salutations," _journal of the anthropological institute_, november, ; k. andree, "nasengruss," _ethnographische parallelen_, second series, , pp. - ; alfred kirchhoff, "vom ursprung des küsses," _deutsche revue_, may, ; lombroso, "l'origine du baiser," _nouvelle revue_, , p. ; paul d'enjoy, "le baiser en europe et en chine," _bulletin de la société d'anthropologie_, paris, , fasc. . professor nyrop's book, _the kiss and its history_ (translated from the danish by w.f. harvey), deals rather with the history of the kiss in civilization and literature than with its biological origins and psychological significance. footnotes: [ ] e. selous, _bird watching_, , p. . this author adds: "it seems probable indeed that the conferring a practical benefit of the kind indicated may be the origin of the caress throughout nature." [ ] tylor terms the kiss "the salute by tasting," and d'enjoy defines it as "a bite and a suction"; there seems, however, little evidence to show that the kiss contains any gustatory element in the strict sense. [ ] compayre, _l'evolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant_, p. . [ ] mantegazza, _physiognomy and expression_, p. . [ ] g. stanley hall, "the early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, april, , p. . [ ] in some parts of the world the impulse persists into adult life. sir s. baker (_ismailia_, p. ) mentions licking the eyes as a sign of affection. [ ] _book of common prayer in manx gaelic_, edited by a.w. moore and j. rhys, . [ ] l. hearn, _out of the east_, , p. . [ ] see, e.g., a.b. ellis, _tshi-speaking peoples_, p. . among the swahili the kiss is practiced, but exclusively between married people and with very young children. velten believes they learned it from the arabs. [ ] hyades and deniker, _mission scientifique du cap horn_, vol. vii, p. . [ ] w. roth, _ethnological notes among the queensland aborigines_, p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. . [ ] e.g., the _kama sutra_ of vatsyayana, bk. iii, chapter i. [ ] hosea, chapter xiii, v. ; i kings, chapter xix, v. . [ ] wellhausen, _reste arabischen heidentums_, p. . [ ] the romans recognized at least three kinds of kiss: the _osculum_, for friendship, given on the face; the _basium_, for affection, given on the lips; the _suavium_, given between the lips, reserved for lovers. [ ] in other parts of the world it would appear that the kiss sometimes has a sacred or ritual character. thus, according to rev. j. macdonald (_journal of the anthropological institute_, november, , p. ), it is part of the initiation ceremony of a girl at her first menstruation that the women of the village should kiss her on the cheek, and on the mons veneris and labia. [ ] _journal of the anthropological institute_, august and november, , p. . [ ] velten, _sitten und gebraüche der suaheli_, p. . [ ] turner, _samoa_, p. . [ ] tregear, _journal of the anthropological institute_, . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ht. , p. . [ ] breitenstein, _ jahre in india_, vol. i, p. . appendix b. histories of sexual development. the histories here recorded are similar in character to those given in appendix b of the previous volume. history i.--c.d., clergyman, age, . height about ft. in. weight, st. lb. complexion, fair. physical infirmities, very myopic, tendency to consumption. "my family is of old lineage on both sides. my parents were normal and fairly healthy; but i consider that heredity, though not vitiated, is somewhat overrefined, and there is a neuropathic tendency, which has appeared in myself and in one or two other members of the family. as a child, i suffered, though not very frequently, from nocturnal enuresis. my sexual nature, though normal, has been keenly alive and sensitive as far back as i can remember; and as i look back i discern within myself in early childhood what i now understand to be a decided masochistic or passively algolagnic tendency. so far as i remember, this manifested itself in me in two aspects; one psychic or sentimental and free from carnality, expressing itself in imaginative visions such as the following: i used, to imagine myself kneeling before a young and beautiful woman and being sentenced by her to some punishment, and even threatened with death. at other times i would picture myself as a wounded soldier watched over on his sickbed by queenly women. these visions always included an imagination of something heroic in my own personality. no doubt they were the same kind of dreamings as are present in multitudes of imaginative children; they are only of interest in so far as a sexual element was present; and that was algolagnic in character. "i had a small fund of natural common sense; and my surroundings were not favorable to sentimental imaginings; consequently i believe i began to throw them off at an early age, though the temperament which produced them is still a part of my nature. "on the carnal side, the sexual instinct was decidedly algolagnic. masturbation is one of my earliest recollections; indeed, it was not at first, so far as i remember, associated with any sexual ideas at all; but began as a reflex animal act. i do not remember its first occurrence. it soon, however, became associated in my mind with algolagnic excitement, giving rise to reveries which took the ordinary form of imagining oneself stripped and whipped, etc., by persons of the opposite sex. the _dramatis personæ_ in my own algolagnic reveries were elderly women; somewhat strangely, i did not associate physical sexuality at this period with young and attractive women. if scientific light on these matters were generally available in the practical bringing up of children, persons in charge of young children might refrain from exciting an algolagnic tendency or doing anything calculated to awake sexual emotions prematurely. in my own case, i recollect acts performed by older persons in ignorance and thoughtlessness which undoubtedly tended to foster and strengthen my algolagnic instinct. "little or nothing was done to prevent, discover, or remedy the pernicious habit into which i was falling unknowingly. circumcision was perhaps little thought of in those days as a preventive of juvenile masturbation; at any rate, it was not resorted to in my case. i remember, indeed, that a nurse discovered that i was practicing masturbation, and i think she made a few half-hearted attempts to stop it. it was probably these attempts which gave me a growing feeling that there was something wrong about masturbation, and that it must be practiced secretly. but they were unsuccessful in their main object. the practice continued. "i went to school at the age of . there i came in contact almost without warning, with the ordinary lewdness and grossness of school conversation, and took to it readily. i soon became conversant with the theory of sexual relations; but never got the opportunity of sexual intercourse, and probably should have felt some moral restraint even had such opportunity presented itself, for coitus, however interesting it might be to talk about, was a bigger thing to practice than masturbation. i masturbated fairly frequently, occasionally producing two orgasms in quick succession. i seldom masturbated with the hand; my method was to lie face downward. there was probably little or no homosexuality at my first school. i never heard of it till later, and it was always repugnant to me, though surrounded with a certain morbid interest. masturbation was discountenanced openly at the school, but was, i believe, extensively practiced, both at that school and at the two others i afterward attended. the boys often talked about the hygiene of it; and the general theory was that it was somehow physically detrimental; but i heard no arguments advanced sufficiently cogent to make me see the necessity for a real moral effort against the habit, though, as i neared puberty, i was indulging more moderately and with greater misgivings. "the fact of becoming acquainted with the theory of sexual intercourse tended to diminish the algolagnia, and to impel my sexual instinct into an ordinary channel. on one occasion circumstances brought me into close contact with a woman for about three or four weeks, i being a mere boy and she very much my senior. i felt sexually attracted by this woman, and allowed myself a degree of familiarity with her which i have since recognized as undue and have deeply regretted. it did not, however, go to the length of seduction, and i trust may have passed away without leaving any permanent harm. it should, indeed, be remarked here that i never knew a woman sexually till my marriage; and with the one exception mentioned i do not recall any instance of conduct on my part toward a woman which could be described as giving her an impulse downhill. "on the psychic side my sexual emotions awoke in early childhood; and though my love affairs as a boy were not frequent and were kept to myself, they attained a considerable degree of emotional power. leaving out of account the precocious movements of the sexual instinct to which i have already referred as colored by psychic algolagnia, i may say that somewhat later, from the age of puberty and onward, i had three or four love affairs, devoid of any algolagnic tendency, and considerably more developed on the psychic and emotional, than on the physical, side. in fact, my experience has been that when deeply in love, when the mind is full of the love ecstasy, the physical element of sexuality is kept--doubtless only temporarily--in abeyance. "to return now to the subject of masturbation. here befell the chief moral struggle of my early life; and no terms that i have at command will adequately describe the stress of it. "a casual remark heard one day as i was arriving at puberty convinced me that there must be truth in the vague schoolboy theory that masturbation was _weakening_. it was to the effect that the evil results of masturbation practiced in boyhood would manifest themselves in later life. i then realized that i must relinquish masturbation, and i set myself to fight it; but with grave misgivings that, owing to the early age at which i had formed the habit, i had already done myself serious harm. "before many weeks had passed, i had formed a resolution to abstain, which i kept thereafter without--so far as i remember--more than one conscious lapse into my former habit. here it must be said at once that, so far as touches my own experience of a struggle of this kind, the religious factor is of primary importance as strengthening and sustaining the moral effort which has to be made. i am writing an account of my sexual, not my spiritual, experiences; but i should not only be untrue to my convictions, but unable to give an accurate and penetrating survey of the development of my sex life, unless i were clearly to state that it was to a large extent on that life that my strongest and most valuable religious experiences arose.[ ] it is to the endeavor to discipline the sexual instinct, and to grapple with the difficulties and anxieties of the sex life, that i owe what i possess of spiritual religion, of the consciousness that my life has been brought into contact with divine love and power. "my early habits, after they were broken off, left me none the less a legacy of sexual neurasthenia and a slight varicocele. my nocturnal pollutions were overfrequent; and i brooded over them, being too reticent and too much afraid of exposure at school and possible expulsion to confide in a doctor. far better for me had i done so, for a few years later i received the truest kindness and sympathy in regard to sexual matters at the hands of more than one medical man. but while at school i was afraid to speak of the trouble which so unnerved and depressed me; and as a consequence my morbid fears grew stronger, being intensified by generalities which i met with from time to time in my reading on the subject of the punishment which nature metes out to impurity. "on leaving school my sex life continued for some years on the same lines: a struggle for chastity, morbid fears and regrets about the past, efforts to cope with the neurasthenia, and a haunting dread of coming insanity. these troubles were increased by my sedentary life. however i obtained medical aid, and put as good a face on matters as possible. "but the most trying thing of all has yet to be mentioned--the discovery that i had not yet got fully clear of the habit of masturbation. i had, indeed, repudiated it as far as my conscious waking moments were concerned, even though strongly impelled by sexual desire; but one night, about a year after i had relinquished the practice, i found myself again giving way to it in those moments between sleeping and waking when the will is only semiconscious. it was as if a race took place for wakefulness between my physical instinct, on the one side, and my moral sense and inhibitory nerves on the other; and very frequently the physical instinct won. this, perhaps, is not an uncommon experience, but it distressed me greatly; and i never felt safe from it until marriage. i resorted to various expedients to combat this tendency, at length having to tie myself in a certain position every night with a cord round my legs, so as to render it impossible to turn over upon my face. "in my early manhood the strain on my constitution was considerable from causes other than the sexual neurasthenia, which, indeed, i am now well aware i exaggerated in importance. medical advisers whom i consulted in that period assured me that this was so; and, though at the time i often thought that they were concealing the real facts from me out of kindness, my own reading has since convinced me that they spoke nothing but scientific truth. "the years went on. i went through a university course, and in spite of my poor health took a good degree. the agony of my struggle for chastity seemed to come to a climax about four years later when for a long period, partly owing to overstudy and partly to the sexual strain, i fell into a condition of severe nervous exhaustion, one of the most distressing symptoms of which was insomnia. the dreaded cloud of insanity seemed to come closer. i had to use alcohol freely at nights; and might by now have become a drunkard, had i not been casually--or i must say, providentially--directed to the common sense plan of measuring my whisky in a dram glass; so that the alcohol could not steal a march upon me. "this period was one of acute mental suffering. one cause of the nervous tension was--as i have now no doubt--the need of healthy sexual intercourse. i proved this eventually. my circumstances, which had long been adverse to marriage, at length were shaped in that direction. i renewed acquaintance with a lady whom i had known well some years before; and our friendship ripened until, after much perplexity on my side, owing to the uncertainty of my health and prospects, i decided that it was right to speak. we were married after a few months; and i realized that i had gained an excellent wife. we did not come together sexually for some nights after marriage; but, having once tasted the pleasure of the marriage bed, i have to admit that, partly owing to ignorance of the hygiene of marriage, i was for some time rather unrestrained in conjugal relations, requiring intercourse as often as eight or nine times a month. this was not unnatural when one considers that i had now for the first time free access to a woman, after a long and weary struggle to preserve chastity. married life, however, tends naturally--or did so in my case--to regulate desire; and when i began to understand the ethics and hygiene of sex, as i did a year or two after marriage, i was enabled to exercise increasing self-restraint. we are now sparing in our enjoyment of conjugal pleasure. we have had no children; and i attribute this chiefly to the remaining sexual weakness in myself.[ ] but i may say that not only my sexual power, but my nerve-power and general health, were greatly improved by marriage; and though i have fallen back, the last year or two, into a poor state of health, the cause of this is probably overwork rather than anything to do with sex. not but what it must be said that, had it not been for the juvenile masturbation superadded to a neuropathic temperament, my constitution would no doubt have endured the general strain of life better than it has done. the algolagnia, being one of the congenital conditions of my sexual instinct, must be considered fundamental, and certainly has not been eliminated. if i were to allow myself indulgence in algolagnic reveries they would even now excite me without difficulty; but i have systematically discouraged them, so that they give me little or no practical trouble. my erotic dreams, which years ago were (to the best of my remembrance) frequently algolagnic, are now almost invariably normal. "my conjugal relations have always been on the lines of strictly normal sexuality. i have a deep sense of the obligations of monogamous marriage, besides a sincere affection for my wife; consequently i repress as far as possible all sexual inclinations, such as will come involuntarily sometimes, toward other women. "from what i have disclosed, it will be seen that i am but a frail man; but for many years i have striven honestly and hard to discipline sexuality within myself, and to regulate it according to right reason, pure hygiene, and the moral law; and i can but hope and believe that the divine power in which i have endeavored to trust will in the future, as it has done in the past, working by natural methods and through the current events of my life, amend and control my sex life and conduct it to safe and honorable issues." history ii.--a.b., married, good general health, dark hair, fair complexion, short-sighted, and below medium height. parents both belong to healthy families, but the mother suffered from nerves during early years of married life, and the father, a very energetic and ambitious man, was cold, passionless, and unscrupulous. a.b. is the oldest child; two of the brothers and sisters are slightly abnormal, nervously. but, so far as is known, none of the family has ever been sexually abnormal. a.b. was a bright, intelligent child, though inclined to be melancholy (and in later years prone to self-analysis). at preparatory school was fairly forward in studies, at public school somewhat backward, at university suddenly took a liking to intellectual pursuits. throughout he was slack at games. has never been able to learn to swim from nervousness. can whistle well. has always been fond of reading, and would like to have been an author by profession. he married at , and has had two children, both of whom showed congenital physical abnormalities. before the age of or a.b. can remember various trifling incidents. "one of the games i used to play with my sister," he writes, "consisted in pretending we were 'father and mother' and were relieving ourselves at the w.c. we would squat down in various parts of the room, prolong the simulated act, and talk. i do not remember what our conversation was about, nor whether i had an erection. i used also to make water from a balcony into the garden, and in other unusual places. "the first occasion on which i can recollect experiencing sensations or emotions similar in character to later and more developed feelings of desire was at the age of about or , when i was a dayboy at a large school in a country town and absolutely innocent as to deed, thought, or knowledge. i fell in love with a boy with whom i was brought in contact in my class, about my own age. i remember thinking him pretty. he paid me no attention. i had no distinct desire, except a wish to be near him, to touch him, and to kiss him. i blushed if i suddenly saw him, and thought of him when absent and speculated on my chances of seeing him again. i was put into a state of high ecstasy when he invited me to join him and some friends one summer evening in a game of rounders. "at the age of i was told by my father's groom where babies came from and how they were produced. (i already knew the difference in sexual organs, as my sister and i were bathed in the same room.) he told me no details about erection, semen, etc. nor did he take any liberties with me. i used to notice him urinating; he used to push back the foreskin and i thought his penis large. "when about years old the nursemaid told me that the boy at her last place had intercourse with his sister. i thought it disgusting. about a year later i told the nurse i thought the story of adam and eve was not true and that when eve gave adam the apple he had intercourse with her and she was punished by having children. i don't know if i had thought this out, or if it had been suggested to me by others. this nurse used often to talk about my 'tassel.' "a family of several brothers went to the same school with me, and we used to indulge in dirty stories, chiefly, however, of the w.c. type rather than sexual. "when i was about i learned much from my father's coachman. he used to talk about the girls he had had intercourse with, and how he would have liked this with my nursemaid. "a year later i went to a large day school. i think most of the boys, if not nearly all, were very ignorant and innocent in sexual matters. the only incident in this connection i can recollect is asking a boy to let me see his penis; he did so. "during the summer holidays, at a watering place i attended a theatrical performance and fell in love with a girl of about who acted a part. i bought a photograph of her, which i kept and kissed for several years after. about the same time i thought rather tenderly of a girl of my own age whose parents knew mine. i remember feeling that i should like to kiss her. once i furtively touched her hair. "when i was i was sent to a small preparatory boarding school, in the country. during the holidays i used to talk about sexual things with my father's footman. he must have told me a good deal. i used to have erections. one evening, when i was in bed and everyone else out (my mother and the children in the country) he came up to my room and tried to put his hand on my penis. i had been thinking of sexual matters and had an erection. i resisted, but he persisted, and when he succeeded in touching me i gave in. he then proceeded to masturbate me. i sank back, overcome by the pleasant sensation. he then stopped and i went on myself. in the meantime he had taken out his penis and masturbated himself before me until the orgasm occurred. i was disgusted at the sight of his large organ and the semen. he then left me. i could hardly sleep from excitement. i felt i had been initiated into a great and delightful mystery. "i at once fell into the habit of masturbation. it was some months before i could produce the orgasm; at about a slight froth came; at about a little semen. i do not know how frequently i did it--perhaps once or twice a week. i used to feel ashamed of myself afterward. i told the man i was doing it and he expressed surprise i had not known about it before he told me. he warned me to stop doing it or it would injure my health. i pretended later that i had stopped doing it. "i practiced solitary masturbation for some months. at first the semen was small in amount and watery. "i had not at this time ever succeeded in drawing the foreskin below the 'corona.' after masturbation i would sometimes feel local pain in the penis, sometimes pains in the testicles, and generally a feeling of shame, but not, i think, any lassitude. the shame was a vague sense of discomfort at having done what i knew others would regard as dirty. i also experienced fears that i was injuring my health. "it was not long before i found other boys at the preparatory school with whom i talked of sexual things and in some cases proceeded to acts. the boys were between the ages of and ; they left at or for the public schools. we slept in bedrooms--several in one room. "there was no general conversation on sexual matters. few of the boys knew anything about things--perhaps or out of . before describing my experiences at the school i may mention that i cannot remember having at this period any wish to experience heterosexual intercourse; i knew as yet nothing of homosexual practices; and i did not have, except in one case, any love or affection for any of the boys. "one night, in my bedroom--there were about six of us--we were talking till rather late. my recollection commences with being aware that all the boys were asleep except myself and one other, p. (the son of a clergyman), who was in a bed at exactly the opposite end of the room. i suppose we must have been talking about this sort of thing, for i vividly remember having an erection, and suddenly--as if by premonition--getting out of my bed, and, with heart beating, going softly over to p.'s bed. he exhibited no surprise at my presence; a few whispered words took place; i placed my hand on his penis, and found he had an erection. i started masturbating him, but he said he had just finished. i then suggested, getting into bed with him. (i had never heard at that time of such a thing being done, the idea arose spontaneously.) he said it was not safe, and placed his hand on my penis, i think with the object of satisfying and getting rid of me. he masturbated me till the orgasm occurred. "i had no further relations with him, except on one occasion, shortly afterward, when one day, in the w.c. he asked me to masturbate him. i did so. he did not offer to do the same to me. "he was a delicate, feeble boy; not good at work; womanish in his ways; inclined to go in for petty bullying, until a boy showed fight, when he discovered himself to be an arrant coward. four or five years later i met him at the university. his greeting was cool. my next affair was with a boy who was about my age ( ), strong, full-blooded, coarse, always in 'hot water.' he was the son of the headmaster of one of the best-known public schools. it was reported that two brothers had been expelled from this public school for what we called 'beastliness.' he told me his older brother used to have intercrural intercourse with him. this was the first i had heard of this. we used to masturbate mutually. i had, however, no affection or desire for him. "with e., another boy, i had no relations, but i remember him as the first person of the same sex for whom i experienced love. he was a small, fair, thin, and little boy, some two years younger than myself, so my inferior in the social hierarchy of a school. "at the end of my last term i had two disappointments. i was beaten by a younger and clever boy for the first place in the school, and also beaten by one point in the competition for the athletic cup by a stronger boy who had only come to the school that very term. however, as a consolation prize, and as i was leaving, the headmaster gave me a second prize. this soothed my hurt feelings, and i remember, just after the 'head' had read out the prizes, on the last day of term, e., coming up to me, putting his arm on my shoulder, looking at me rather pensively, and in a voice that thrilled me and made me wish to kiss and hug him, tell me he was so glad i had got a prize and that it was a shame that other chap had beaten me for the cup. "i was three years (aged to ) at the preparatory school. i started in the bottom form and ended second in the school. my reports were generally good, and i was keen to do well in work. i was considerably influenced by the 'head.' he was a clergyman, but a man of wide reading, broad opinion, great scholarship, and great enthusiasm. we became very friendly. "during the holidays i now first practiced intercrural intercourse with a younger brother. i started touching his penis, and causing erections, when he was about . afterward i got him to masturbate me and i masturbated him; i used to get him into bed with me. on one occasion i spontaneously (never having heard of such a thing) made him take my penis in his mouth. "this went on for several years. when i was about and he about , the old family nurse spoke to me about it. she told me he had complained of my doing it. i was in great fear that my parents might hear of it. i went to him; told him i was sorry, but i had not understood he disliked it, but that i would not do it again. "about a year later (having persisted in this promise) i made overtures to him, but he refused. i then commended his conduct, and said i knew he was quite right, and begged him to refuse again if i should ever suggest it. i did not ever suggest it again. for many years i bitterly reproached myself for having corrupted him. however, i do not think any harm has been done him. but my self-reproaches have caused me to feel i owe some reparation to him. i also have more affection for him than for my other brothers and sisters. "at the age of i went to one of the large public schools. i was fairly forward for my age, and entered high. but i made small progress. i had bad reports; i was 'slack in games,' and not popular among the boys. in fact, i stood still, so that when i left i was backward in comparison with other boys of even less natural intelligence. "the teaching was certainly bad. moreover, i had not any friends, and this made me very sensitive. it was to a great extent my fault. when i first went there i was taken up by a set above me--boys who were 'senior' to me in standing. when they left i found myself alone. "my unpopularity was increased by my being considered to put on 'side'; also because i paid attention to my dress. "at the public school i had homosexual relations with various boys, usually without any passion. with one boy, however, i was deeply in love for over a year; i thought of him, dreamed of him, would have been content only to kiss him. but my courtship met with no success. "when carrying on with other boys the desire to reach the crisis was not always strong, perhaps out of shyness or modesty. occasionally i had intercrural connection, which gave me the first intimation of what intercourse with a woman was like. when i masturbated in solitude i used to continue till the orgasm. "my housemaster one day sent for me and said he had walked through my cubicle and noticed a stain on the sheet. at this time i used to have nocturnal emissions. i cannot remember whether on this occasion the stain was due to one, or to masturbation. but i imagined that one did not have 'wet dreams' unless one masturbated. so when he went on to say that this was a proof that i was immoral i acknowledged i masturbated. he then told me i would injure my health--possibly 'weaken my heart,' or 'send myself mad'; he said that he would ask me to promise never to do it again. "i promised. i left humiliated and ashamed of myself; also generally frightened. he used to send for me every now and then, and ask me if i had kept my promise. for some months i did. then i relapsed, and told him when he asked me. ultimately he ceased sending for me--apparently convinced either that i was cured or that i was incorrigible. "a year or so afterward he discovered in my study (for i was now in the upper school and had a study) a french photograph that a boy had given me, entitled '_qui est dans ma chambre?_' it represented a man going by mistake into the wrong bedroom; inside the room was a woman, in nightdress, in an attitude that suggested she had just been relieving herself. my housemaster told me the picture was terribly indecent, and that, taken with what he knew of my habits, it showed i was not a safe boy to be in the school. he added that he did not wish to make trouble at home, but that he advised me to get my parents to remove me at the end of that term, instead of the following term, when, in the ordinary course of things, i should have left. "i wrote to my people to say i was miserable at school, and i was removed at the end of that term. "my first case of true heterosexual passion was with a girl called d., whom i first knew when she was about . my family and hers were friendly. my attraction to her soon became a matter of common knowledge and joking to members of my family. she was a dark, passionate-looking child, with large eyes that--to me--seemed full of an inner knowledge of sexual mysteries. precocious, vain, jealous, untruthful--those were qualities in her that i myself soon recognized. but the very fact that she was not conventionally 'goody-goody' proved an attraction to me. "i never openly made love to her, but i delighted to be near her. our ages were sufficiently separated for this to be noticeable. i dreamed of her, and my highest ideal of blessedness was to kiss her and tell her i loved her. i heard that she had been discovered talking indecently in a w.c. to some little boys, sons of a friend of my family's. the knowledge of this precocity on her part intensified my fascination for her. "when i left home to return to school i kissed her--the only time. absence did nothing to diminish my affection. i thought of her all day long, at work or at play. i wrote her a letter--not openly passionate, but my real feelings toward her must have been apparent. i found out afterward that her mother opened the letter. "when i returned home for the holidays her mother asked me not; to write her any letters and not to pay attentions to her, as i might 'spoil her.' i promised. i was, of course, greatly distressed. "d. used to come to our house to see my younger sister. she had clearly been warned by her mother not to allow me to speak to her. i was too nervous to make any advances; besides, i had promised. as i grew older, my passion died out. i have hardly ever seen her since. she married some years ago. i still retain sentimental feelings toward her. "i was now ; i had stopped growing and was fairly broad and healthy. intellectually i was rather precocious, though not ambitious. but i was no good at games, had no tastes for physical exercises, and no hobbies. "during the holidays, in my last year at school, i had gone to the royal aquarium with a school companion. this was followed by one or two visits to the empire theatre. it was then that i first discovered that sexual intercourse took place outside the limits of married life. on one occasion my friend talked to one of the women who were walking about. this same friend spoke to a prostitute at oxford. (at this time i went up to the university.) once or twice i met this girl. she used to ask about my friend. my feelings toward her were a combination of admiration for her physical beauty, a sense of the 'mystery' of her life, and pity for her isolated position. "on the whole, my first university term produced considerable improvement in me. i began to be interested in my work and to read a fair amount of general literature. i learned to bicycle and to row. i also made one intimate friend. "in my first holiday i went to the empire and made the acquaintance of a girl there, w.h. she attracted me by her quiet appearance. i eventually made arrangements to pay her a visit. my apprehensions consisted of: . fear of catching venereal disease. this i decided to safeguard by using a 'french letter.' . fear that she might have a 'bully.' "the girl showed no sexual desire; but at that time this did not attract my attention. "i got very much 'gone' on her, paid her several visits, gave her some presents i could ill afford, and felt very distressed when she informed me she was to be married and therefore could not see me any more. "my experiences with prostitutes cover a period of twelve years. during three years of this period i was continually in their company. i have had intercourse with some two dozen; in some cases only once; in others on numerous occasions. they have usually been of the class that frequent piccadilly, st. james restaurant, the continental hotel, and the dancing clubs. usual fee, £ for the night; in one case, £ . " . not one of them, as far as i knew, was a drunkard. " . as a rule, they were not mercenary or dishonest. " . in their language and general behavior they compared favorably with respectable women. " . i never caught venereal disease. " . i twice caught pediculi. " . i did not find them, as a rule, very sensual or fond of indecent talk. as a rule, they objected to stripping naked; they did not touch my organs; they did not suggest masturbation, sodomy, or _fellatio_. they seldom exhibited transports, but the better among them seemed sentimental and affectionate. " . their accounts of their first fall were nearly always the same. they got to know a 'gentleman,' often by his addressing them in the street; he took them about to dinners and theatres; they were quite innocent and even ignorant; on one occasion they drank too much; and before they knew what was happening they were no longer virgins. they do not, however, apparently round on the man or expose him or refuse to have anything more to do with him. " . they state--in common with the outwardly 'respectable' women whom i have had a chance of catechising--that before the first intercourse they did not feel any conscious desire for intercourse and hardly devoted any thought to it, that it was very painful the first time, and that some time elapsed before they commenced to derive pleasure from it or to experience the orgasm. "e.b. was the second woman i had intercourse with. she was a prostitute, but very young (about ) and had only been in london a few months. i met her first in the st. james restaurant. i spoke a few words to her. the next day i saw her in the burlington arcade. i was not much attracted to her; she was pretty, in a coarse, buxom style; vulgar in manners, voice, and dress. she asked me to go home with her; i refused. she pressed me; i said i had no money. she still urged me, just to drive home with her and talk to her while she dressed for the evening. i consented. we drove to lodgings in albany street. we went in. she proceeded to kiss me. i remained cold, and told her again i had no money. she then said: 'that does not matter. you remind me of a boy i love. i want you to be my fancy boy.' i was flattered by this. i saw a good deal of her. she was sentimental. i never gave her any money. when i had some, she refused to take it, but allowed me to spend a little in buying her a present. on the night before i left london she wept. she wrote me illiterate, but affectionate letters. one day she wrote to me that she was to be kept by a man, but that she had made it a condition with him that she should be allowed to have me. i had never been in love with her, because of her vulgarity. i therefore took the earliest opportunity of letting matters cool, by not writing often, etc. the next thing i remember was my fascination, a few months later, for s.h. "she was not a regular prostitute. she had taken a very minor part in light opera. she was american by birth, young, slim, and spoke like a lady. her hair was dyed; her breasts padded. she acted sentiment, but was less affectionate than e.b. i met her when she was out of a job. i gave her £ whenever i met her. she was not mercenary. she was sensual. i became very much in love with her. i discovered her, however, writing letters to a fellow whom i had met one day when i was walking with her. he was only an acquaintance, but the brother of my most intimate friend. what i objected to was that in this letter to him she protested she did not care for me, but could not afford to give me up. she had to plead guilty, but i was so fascinated by her i still kept in with her, for a time, until she was kept by a man, and i had found other women to interest me. "owing to the strict regulations made by the university authorities, prostitutes find it hard to make a living there, and i never had anything to do with one. my adventures were among the shopgirl class, and were of a comparatively innocent nature. one of them, however, m.s., a very undemonstrative shopgirl, was the only girl not a prostitute with whom i had so far had intercourse. "about this time i made the acquaintance of three other prostitutes, who, however, were nice, gentle, quiet girls, neither vulgar nor mercenary. a night passed with them always meant to me much more than mere intercourse. they were--especially two of them--of a sentimental nature, and would go to sleep in my arms. there was, on my part, not any passion, but a certain sympathy with them, and pity and affection. i remained faithful to the first, j.h., until she was kept by a man, and gave up her gentlemen friends. then came d.v. she got in the family way and left london. last, m.p. she was not pretty, but a good figure, well dressed, a bright conversationalist, and an intelligent mind. her regular price for the night was £ , but when she got to know one she would take one for less and take one 'on tick.' she was very sensual. on one occasion, between p.m. and about midday the following day i experienced the orgasm eleven or twelve times. "during term time i was often prevented from having women by want of money and absence from london. i considered myself lucky if i could have a woman once or twice a month. my allowance was not large enough to admit of such luxuries; and i was only able to do what i did by being economical in my general expenditure and living, and by running up bills for whatever i could get on credit. i lived in the hopes of picking up 'amateurs' who would give me what i wanted for the love of it and without payment. my efforts were not very successful at present, except in the case of m.s. i considered myself very lucky in having discovered her, and i should have stuck to her for longer but for the rival attraction of another. there was, however, no deep sentiment on either side. "but in order to preserve a continuity in my account of the women, i have left out two cases of temporary reversion to homosexual practices. during the periods when i could not get a woman i had recourse once more to masturbation. at times i had 'wet dreams' in which boys figured; and my thoughts, in waking hours, sometimes reverted to memories of my school experiences. i think, however, that i should have preferred a woman." the homosexual reversions were as follows:-- " . i had arranged to meet a shopgirl one evening, outside the town. she did not turn up. the meeting place was a railway bridge. waiting there too, a few feet from me, was a boy of about . he was employed (i afterward found) by a gardener, and was waiting to meet his brother, who was engaged on the line. i got into casual conversation with him, and suddenly found myself wondering whether he ever masturbated. with a feeling, that i can only describe by calling it an intuition, i moved nearer him, and asked: 'do you ever play with yourself?' he did not seem surprised at the abruptness of my question, and answered 'yes.' i thereupon touched his penis, and _found he had an erection_! i suggested retiring to a bench that was near. we sat down. i masturbated him till he experienced the orgasm; then intercrurally. i gave him a shilling, and said good night. " . during my last summer at the university i took to gardening. there was a small piece of garden behind the house in which i had lodgings. my landlady suggested getting a cousin of hers, employed by a nurseryman, to supply me with plants, etc. he was a youth of about or , tall, dark, not bad favored in looks. i forget how many times i saw him--not many, perhaps twice or thrice; but one day, when he came to see me in my room, about something connected with the garden, i gave him some old clothes of mine. he was a great deal taller than myself, and i suggested his trying on the trousers to see if they would fit. i do not know whether i made this suggestion with any ulterior motive or whether i had ever before thought of him in connection with any sexual relations. i only know that once more, as if guided by instinct, i felt he would not rebuff me, although certainly no indecent talk had ever taken place between us. i pretended to help him to pull up the trousers, and let my hand touch his penis. he did not resist; and i felt his penis for a few seconds. i then proposed he should come upstairs to my bedroom. no one was in the house. we went up. he did not at first have an erection. i asked why. he said 'because you are strange to me.' he then felt my penis. eventually we mutually masturbated one another. i gave him half a crown. "some short time afterward he came again to the house. on this occasion i attempted _fellatio_. i don't think i had at that time ever heard of such a practice. he said, however, he did not like it. he masturbated intercrurally. he said he had never done this before, although he had had girls. (the other boy also told me he had had girls.) " . on another occasion i was out bicycling. a boy, of about years of age, offered me a bunch of violets for a penny. i told him i would give him a shilling to pick me a large bunch. i am not sure if i had any ulterior motive. he proceeded into a wood on the side of the road; i dismounted from my machine and followed him. he was a pretty, dark boy. he made water. i went up to him and asked him to let me feel his penis. he at once jumped away, and ran off shrieking. i was frightened, mounted my bicycle, and rode as fast as i could home. "there was no sentiment in the above cases. it is also to be noted that in neither instance did i make any arrangements to see the person again. as far as i can remember, when once i was satisfied i felt disgust for my act. in the case of women this was never so. "two of the women described in the foregoing pages stand out above the others. perhaps i have not sufficiently shown that in the cases of w.h. and s.h. i felt a considerable degree of _passion_. w.h. was the first woman with whom i had had intercourse; this invested her in my heart, with a peculiar sentiment. in neither case can i be accused of fickleness. indeed, i may say that up to this time i had had no opportunity of being fickle. i never saw enough, or had enough, of a woman to get a surfeit of her. "the case i now come to presents the features of the cases of w.h. and s.h. in a stronger form. i was then ; i have since then married; i am a father; my experiences have been many and varied; but still i must confess that no other woman has ever stirred my emotions more than--i doubt if as much as--d.c. up to date, if there has been any grand passion in my life, it is my love for her. d.c., when i got to know her--by talking to her in the street--was a girl of about . she was short and plump; dark hair; dark, mischievous eyes; a fair complexion; small features; quiet manners, and a sensual _ensemble_. i do not know what her father was. he was dead, her mother kept a university lodging house. she spoke and behaved like a lady. she dressed quietly; was absolutely unmercenary; her intelligence--i.e., her intellectual calibre--was not great. her master-passion was one thing. the first evening i walked out with her she put her hand down on my penis, before i had even kissed her, and proposed intercourse. i was surprised, almost embarrassed; she herself led me to a wall, and standing up made me do it. "next day we went away for the day together. i may say she was _always_ ready and never satisfied. she was sensual rather than sentimental. she was ready to shower her favors anywhere and to anyone. my feelings toward her soon became affectionate and sentimental, and then passionate. i thought of nothing else all day long; wrote her long letters daily; simply lived to see her. "i found she was engaged to be married. her _fiancé_, a schoolmaster, himself used to have intercourse with her, but he had taken a religious turn and thought it was wicked to do it until they married. i had intercourse with her on every possible occasion: in private rooms at hotels, in railway carriages, in a field, against a wall, and--when the holidays came--she stayed a night with me in london. she had apparently no fear of getting in the family way, and never used any precaution. sensual as she was, she did not show her feelings by outward demonstration. "on one occasion she proposed _fellatio_. she said she had done it to her _fiancé_ and liked it. this is the only case i have known of a woman wishing to do it for the love of it. "the emotional tension on my nerves--the continual jealousy i was in, the knowledge that before long she would marry and we must part--eventually caused me to get ill. she never told me she loved me more than any other man; yet, owing to my importunity, she saw much more of me than anyone else. it came to the ears of her _fiancé_ that she was in my company a great deal; there was a meeting of the three of us--convened at his wish--at which she had formally, before him, to say 'good-bye' to me. yet we still continued to meet and to have intercourse. "then the date of her marriage drew near. she wrote me saying that she could not see me any more. i forced myself, however, on her, and our relations still continued. her elder sister interviewed me and said she would inform the authorities unless i gave her up; a brother, too, came to see me and made a row. "i had what i seriously intended to be a last meeting with her. but after that she came up to london to see me, we went to a hotel together. we arranged to see one another again, but she did not write. i had now left the university. i heard she was married. "it was now four years since i had first had intercourse with a woman. during this time i was almost continually under the influence, either of a definite love affair or of a general lasciviousness and desire for intercourse with women. my character and life were naturally affected by this. my studies were interfered with; i had become extravagant and had run into debt. it is worthy of note that i had never up to this time considered the desirability of marriage. this was perhaps chiefly because i had no means to marry. but even in the midst of my affairs i always retained sufficient sense to criticise the moral and intellectual calibre of the women i loved, and i held strong views on the advisability of mental and moral sympathies and congenital tastes existing between people who married. in my amours i had hitherto found no intellectual equality or sympathies. my passion for d.c. was prompted by ( ) the bond that sexual intercourse with a woman has nearly always produced in my feelings, ( ) her physical beauty, ( ) that she was sensual, ( ) that she was a lady, ( ) that she was young, ( ) that she was not mercenary. it was kept alive by the obstacles in the way of my seeing her enough and by her engagement to another. "the d.c. affair left me worn out emotionally. i reviewed my life of the last four years. it seemed to show much more heartache, anxiety, and suffering than pleasure. i concluded that this unsatisfactory result was inseparable from the pursuit of illegitimate amours. i saw that my work had been interfered with, and that i was in debt, owing to the same cause. yet i felt that i could never do without a woman. in this quandary i found myself thinking that marriage was the only salvation for me. then i should always have a woman by me. i was sufficiently sensible to know that unless there were congenial tastes and sympathies, a marriage could not turn out happily, especially as my chief interests in life (after woman) were literature, history, and philosophy. but i imagined that if i could find a girl who would satisfy the condition of being an intellectual companion to me, all my troubles would be over; my sexual desire would be satisfied, and i could devote myself to work. "in this frame of mind i turned my thoughts more seriously in the direction of a girl whom i had known for some two years. her age was nearly the same as mine. my family and hers were acquainted with one another. i had established a platonic friendship with her. undoubtedly the prime attraction was that she was young and pretty. but she was also a girl of considerable character. without being as well educated as i was, she was above the average girl in general intelligence. she was fond of reading; books formed our chief subject of conversation and common interest. she was, in fact, a girl of more intelligence than i had yet encountered. on her side, as i afterward discovered, the interest in me was less purely platonic. our relations toward one another were absolutely correct. yet we were intimate, informal, and talked on subjects that would be considered forbidden topics between two young persons by most people. i felt she was a true friend. she, too, confided to me her troubles. "we corresponded with one another frequently. sometimes it occurred, to me that it was rather strange she should be so keen to write to me, to hear from me, and to see me; but i had never thought of her, consciously, except as a friend; i never for a moment imagined she thought of me except as an interesting and intelligent friend. nor did the idea of illicit love ever suggest itself to me. she was one of those women whose face and expression put aside any such thought. i was, indeed, inclined to regard her as a good influence on me, but as passionless. i confided to her the affair of d.c., which took place during our acquaintance. she was distressed, but sympathetic and not prudish. i did not suspect the cause of her distress; i thought it was owing to her disappointment in the ideals she had formed of me. she invited me to join her and her family for a part of the summer (i had now left the university, having obtained my degree in low honors) and i decided to join them. at this stage there began to impress itself on my mind the possibility that she cared for me; also the desirability, if that were so, of becoming engaged to her. i found my feelings became warmer. on several occasions we found ourselves alone. then, one day, our talk became more personal, more tender; and i kissed her. i do recollect distinctly the thought flashing through my mind, as she allowed me to kiss her, that she was not after all the passionless and 'straight' girl i had thought. but the idea must have been a very temporary one; it did not return; she declared her love for me; and without any express 'proposal' on my part we walked home that afternoon mutually taking it for granted that we were engaged. i was happy, and calmly happy; proud and elated. "circumstances now made it necessary for me to make money for myself and i was forced to enter a profession for which i had never felt any attraction; indeed, i had never considered the possibility of it, until i became engaged, and saw i must support myself if i were ever to marry. i worked hard, and rapidly improved my position. "i think i am correct in stating that from the day i became engaged my sexual troubles seemed to have ceased. my thoughts and passions were centred on one woman. we wrote to one another twice every week, and as far as i was concerned every thought and feeling i had i told her, and the receipt of her letters was for me the event of my life for nearly three years. my anxiety in connection with my work used up a great deal of my energy, and, although i looked forward to the time when i should have a woman at my side every night, my sexual desires were in abeyance. nor did i feel any desire or temptation for other women. "i masturbated, but not frequently. generally i did it to the accompaniment of images or scenes associated with my betrothed, sometimes the act was purely auto-erotic. my leisure time was devoted to reading. "on only one occasion did i have intercourse with a woman during my engagement (three years); it was with a girl whose acquaintance i had made at the university and who asked me to come to see her. "i married at the age of . looking back on the early days of my married life it is now a matter of surprise to me that i was so far from exhibiting the transports of passion which since then have accompanied any intercourse with a new woman. partly i was frightened of shocking her; partly my three years of comparative abstinence had chastened me. it was some weeks before i ever saw my wife entirely naked; i never touched her parts with my hand for many months; and after the first few weeks i did not have intercourse with her frequently. "perhaps this was to be expected. the basis of my affection for her had always been a moral or mental one rather than physical, although she was a handsome, well-made girl. besides, money and other worries kept my thoughts busy, as well as struggles to make both ends meet. "indeed, i may say my sexual nature seemed to be dying out. when i had been married less than six months i discovered that sexual intercourse with my wife no longer meant what sexual intercourse used to mean--no excitement or exaltation or ecstasy. my wife perhaps contributed to this by her attitude. she confessed afterward to me that for the first week or so she positively dreaded bedtime, so physically painful was intercourse to her; that it was many weeks, if not months, before she experienced the orgasm. for the first year and more of marriage she could not endure touching my penis. this at first disappointed me; then annoyed and finally almost disgusted me. "later on, she learned to experience the orgasm. but she was very undemonstrative during the act, and it was seldom that the orgasm occurred simultaneously; she took a much longer time. "i ceased to think about sexual matters. when i had been married about three years i was aware that, in my case, marriage meant the loss of all mad ecstasy in the act. i knew that if i had no work to do, and plenty of money, and temptation came my way, i should like to have another woman. but there was no particular woman to enchain my fancy and i did not have time or money or inclination to hunt for one. "at times i masturbated. sometimes i did this to the accompaniment of homosexual desires or memories of the past. then i got my wife to masturbate me. "about four years after marriage i got a woman from piccadilly circus to do _fellatio_. i had never had this done before. she did not do it genuinely, but used her fingers. "as stated above various anxieties, the fact that i could always satisfy my physical desires, all served to calm me. i was also interested in my work and had become ambitious to improve my position and was very energetic. "on the whole, notwithstanding money worries, the first four or five years of my married life were the happiest in my life. certainly i was very free from sexual desires; and the general effect of marriage was to make me economical, energetic, ambitious, and unselfish. i was certainly overworked. i seldom got to bed before or ; my meals were irregular; and i became worried and nervous. at the beginning of my fifth year of married life i got run down, and had a severe illness, and at one time my life was in danger, but i had a fairly rapid convalescence. "my illness was critical, in more senses than one. my convalescence was accompanied by a remarkable recrudescence of my sexual feelings. i will trace this in detail: . as i got well--but while still in bed--i found myself experiencing, almost continually, violent erections. these were at first of an auto-erotic character, and i masturbated myself, thus gaining relief to my nerves. . i also found my thoughts tending toward sexual images, and i felt a desire toward my nurse. i first became conscious of this when i noticed that i experienced an erection during the time that she was washing me. i mentioned the matter to my doctor, who told me not to worry, and said the symptoms were usual in the circumstances. . when i got up and about i found myself desiring very keenly to have intercourse with my wife. i can almost say that i felt more sexually excited than i had done for four or five years. as soon, however, as i had had intercourse with my wife a few times i felt my desire toward her cease. . my thoughts now centered on having a woman to do _fellatio_, and as soon as i was well enough to go out i got a prostitute to do this. "just before i was ill my wife had a child, which was born with more than one abnormality. no doubt the shock and worry caused by this got me into a low state and predisposed me to my illness. but the consequences were farther reaching still. the child underwent an operation, and my wife had to take her away into the country for nearly six weeks, so as to give her better air. i was left alone in london, for the first time since my marriage. the worry in connection with the child, and the heavy expense, served to keep me nervously upset after i had apparently recovered physically from the illness. once more i found myself thinking about women. as an additional factor in the situation i became friendly with an old college-chum whom i had not seen much of for many years. he lived the life of a fashionable young bachelor and was at the time keeping a woman. the only common interest between us was women. i found myself reverting to the old condition of rampant lust that had been such a curse to me in my university days. some books he lent me had a decided effect. they gave me erections; and it was on top of the excitement thus engendered that one day i got a woman to do _fellatio_, as already mentioned. moreover, since my illness, i found all my previous energy and ambition had gone. "i have stated that i was in london alone with two servants. the housemaid was a young girl; nice looking, with beautiful eyes and a sensual expression. she had been with us for about a year. i cannot remember when i first thought of her in a sexual way. but one evening i suddenly felt a desire for her. i talked to her; i found my voice trembling; i let my hand, as if by accident, touch hers; she did not withdraw it; and in a second i had kissed her. she did not resist. i took her on my knee, and tried to take liberties, which she resisted, and i desisted. "next day i kissed her again, and put my hand inside her breasts. the same evening i took her to an exhibition. on the way home, in a hansom cab, i made her masturbate me. this was followed by a feeling of great relief, elation, and _pride_. "next morning, when she came up to my bedroom to call me, i kissed and embraced her; she allowed me to take liberties, and, reassuring her by saying i would use a preventive, i had intercourse with her. she flinched somewhat. she then told me she was at her period and that she had never had intercourse with a man before. "during the next few weeks i found her an adept pupil, though always shy and undemonstrative. i took her to a hotel, and experienced the intensest pleasure i had ever had in undressing her. i had lately heard about _cunnilingus_. i now did it to her. i soon found i experienced very great pleasure in this, as did she. (i had attempted it with my wife, but found it disgusted me.) i also had intercourse _per anum_. (this again was an act i had heard about, but had never been able to regard as pleasurable. but books i had been reading stated it was most pleasant both to man and woman.) she resisted at first, finding it hurt her much; it excited me greatly; and when i had done it in this way several times she herself seemed to like it, especially if i kept my hand on her clitoris at the same time. "my relations with the housemaid, with whom i cannot pretend that i was in love, were only put an end to by satiety, and when i went away for my holidays i was utterly exhausted. this was, however, only the first of a series of relationships, at least one of which deeply stirred my emotional nature. these experiences, however, it is unnecessary to detail. there have also been occasional homosexual episodes. "i think i am now in a much healthier condition than i have been for some years. (i assume that it is _not_ healthy for all one's thoughts to be always occupied on sexual subjects.) the conclusion i come to is that i can live a normal, healthy life, devoting my thoughts to my work, and finding pleasure in friendship, in my children, in reading, and in other sources of amusement, as long as i can have occasional relations with a young girl--i.e., about once a week. but if this outlet for my sexual emotions is stopped sexual thoughts obsess my brain; i become both useless and miserable. "i have never regretted my marriage. not only do i feel that life without a wife and home and children would be miserable, but i entertain feelings of great affection toward my wife. we are well suited to one another; she is a woman of character and intelligence; she looks after my home well, is a sensible and devoted mother, and understands me. i have never met a woman i would have sooner married. we have many tastes and likings in common, and--what is not possible with most women--i can, as a rule, speak to her about my feelings and find a listener who understands. "on the other hand, all passion and sentiment have died out. it seems to me that this is inevitable. perhaps it is a good thing this should be so. if men and women remained in the state of erotic excitement they are in when they marry, the business and work of the world would go hang. unfortunately, in my case this very erotic excitement is the chief thing in life that appeals to me! "the factors that in my case have produced this death of passion and sentiment are as follows:-- " . familiarity. when one is continually in the company of a person all novelty dies out. in the case of husband and wife, the husband sees his wife every day; at all times and seasons; dressed, undressed; ill; good tempered, bad tempered. he sees her wash and perform other functions; he sees her naked whenever he likes; he can have intercourse with her whenever he feels inclined. how can love (as i use the expression--i.e., sexual passion) continue? " . satiety. i am of a 'hot,' sensual disposition, inclined to excess, as far as my health and nerves are concerned. the appetite gets jaded. " . absence of strong sexual reciprocity on the part of my wife. i have referred to this above. she likes intercourse, but she is never outwardly demonstrative. she has naturally a chaste mind. she never is guilty of those little indecencies which affect some men a great deal. she does not like talking of these things; and she tells me that if i died, she would never want to have intercourse again with anyone. at times, especially recently, she has even asked me to have intercourse with her, or to masturbate her; but it is seldom that the orgasm occurs contemporaneously. in this respect she is different from other women i knew, in whom the mere fact that the orgasm was occurring in me at once produced it in them. at the same time i doubt whether even strong sexual reciprocity would have retained my passion for long. " . during the early years of our married life money worries caused at times disagreements, reproaches and quarrels. passion and sentiment are fragile and cannot stand these things. " . the fact that i had already had other women diminished the feeling of awe with which many regard the sexual act and the violation of sexual conventions. " . loss of beauty. loss of figure is, i fear, inseparable from childbearing especially if the woman works hard. we have always had servants, still my wife has always worked hard, at sewing, etc. "i have stated that i entertain feelings of respect and admiration for my wife. but i almost _loathe_ the idea of intercourse with her. i would sooner masturbate, and think of another woman than have intercourse with her. it causes nausea in me to touch her private parts. yet with other women it affords me mad pleasure to kiss them, every part of their bodies. but my wife still feels for me the love she had when we first married. there lies the tragedy." the following narrative is a continuation of history xii in the previous volume:-- history iii.--i had become good looking. for a time i knew what it was to have loving looks from every woman i met, and being saner and healthier i would seem to be moving in a divine atmosphere of color and fragrance, pearly teeth and bright eyes. even the old women with daughters looked at me amiably--married women with challenge and maidens with paradise in their eyes. "i was standing one morning at st. peter's corner, with two young friends, when a girl went by, coming over from the roman catholic cathedral. when she had passed she looked back, with that imperious swing that is almost a command, at me, as my friends distinctly admitted. they advised me to follow her; i did so, and she turned a pretty, blushing face and pair of dark gray eyes, with just the kind of eyebrows i liked: brown, very level, rather thick, but long. her teeth and mouth were perfect, and she spoke with a slight irish brogue. she let me do all the talking while she took my measure. god knows what she saw in me! i spoke in an affected manner, i remember, imitating some swell character i had seen on the stage a night or two before, but i was wise enough not to talk too much and to behave myself. she promised to meet me again and made the appointment. she was a school-teacher and engaged to be married to some one else. she meant to amuse herself her own way before she married. the second night i met her she allowed me to kiss her as much as i liked and promised all her favors for the third night. we took a long walk, and in the dark she gave herself to me, but i hurt her so much i had to stop two or three times. she had had connection only once, years before, when at school herself. she was inclined to be sensual, but she was young, fresh, and pretty, and her kisses turned my head. i fell genuinely in love with her and told her so, one night when she was particularly fascinating, with the tears in my eyes; and her face met mine with equal love. the first night or two i had felt no pleasure--whether through years of self-abuse or not i do not know,--but this night my whole being was excited. i met her once and sometimes twice a week and was always thinking of her. my sister saw me looking love-sick one day and i heard her say 'he's in love,' which rather flattered me, and i looked more love-sick and idiotic than ever. it was all wrong and perverted. she continued to meet her _fiancé_, and intended to marry him. we both spoke of 'him' as an adultress speaks of her husband. that high level of tears and childlike joy in our youth and love was never reached again. but i realized her _sex_, her kisses, her presence--after all those years of horror (if she had only known)--more even than the sexual act itself; while she, as time went on, commenced to show a curiosity which i thought desecrating; she liked to examine--to 'let her hand stray,' were her words. even her beauty seemed impaired some nights and i caught a gleam in her eye and a curve of her lip i thought vulgar. but perhaps the next night i met her she would be as bright as ever. "i introduced her to my friends, who knew our relations, for i blabbed everything. but she did not mind their knowing and if we met would give them all a kiss, so that i felt i had been rather too profuse in my hospitality, though i still would say: 'have another one, bert; i don't mind.' but whatever ass i made of myself she forgave me anything, and was fonder of me every time we met, while i, although i did not know it for a long time, was less fond of her. she knew how to revive my love, however. some nights she would not meet me, and i would be like a madman. other nights she would meet me, but not let me raise her dress. she would lie on me, on a moonlit night, and her young face in shadow like a siren's in its frame of hair, merely to kiss me. but what kisses! slow, cold kisses changing to clinging, passionate ones. she would leave my mouth to look around, as if frightened, and come back, open-mouthed, with a side-contact of lips that brought out unexpected felicities. "one night her _fiancé_ saw us together, and followed me after i left her, but on turning a corner i ran. i ridiculed him to her and despised him. i should have found it difficult to say why. another night her brother attacked me, and it would have gone hard with me, but annie pulled me in and banged the door. we were in a friend's house, but her father came around soon and laid a stick about her shoulders, in my presence. i tried to talk big, and said something idiotic about being as good a man as her betrothed, as though my intentions were honorable, which for one brief moment made anne look at me, paler faced and changed, such a strange glance. but he beat her home, enjoying my rage, and she went away, crying in her hands. i was allowed to go unmolested. "i soon received a letter from her asking me not to mind and making an appointment, at which she turned up cheerful and unconcerned. she went to confession, and would meet me afterwards; and her faith in that, and the difference of our religions (if i had any religion) would make her seem strange and alien to me at times, even banal. at last our meetings became a mere habit of sensuality, with all charm, and suggestion of better things eliminated.... "i went with my friend george (who shared my room) one afternoon and called at annie's school; she kept an infants' school of her own. she came to the door herself. it was the first time i had seen her in daylight, and i thought her cheek-bones bigger; she certainly was not so pretty as on the first evening i met her. george had told me he would sleep away if i wanted the room, and when next i met her she promised to come and sleep with me. before i had always met her on the grass, under trees. she came, and the sight of her young limbs and breasts revived something of my love for her, my better love. but she was insatiable and more sensual every day. one day she came when i was not well, and would not go away disappointed. i had met a very pretty girl about this time, and now resolved to give annie up, which i did in the cruelest manner, cutting her dead, and refusing to answer her letters and touching messages. i heard that she would cry for hours, but i was harder than adamant.... "i thought myself very much in love with the very pretty girl for whom i had thrown up annie. she lived with her mother and two sisters, one older than herself, the other a mere child. the eldest sister, a handsome, dark girl like a spaniard, was not virtuous. she was good natured; too much so, and took her pleasure with several of us, dying, not long after, of consumption. i thought her sister, my girl, was virtuous, and i meant to marry her--some day. at any rate, i saw her mother, who lived in a well-furnished house and was a superior woman. this did not prevent my trying to seduce her daughter. i did not succeed for a long time, though she did not cease meeting me. the sisters came to see us. i knew, one night, her sister was upstairs with d. and i guessed what they were at, so i suggested to her she should creep up on them for fun. she did so, came back, excited and pale--and gave herself to me. but she was not a virgin and in time i had a glimpse of her unhappy fate and her mother's position. her father was dead or divorced, and her mother, i believe, was mistress to some wealthy bookmaker. i am not sure, there was always a mystery hanging over the mother, nor am i certain that she connived at her daughter's seduction, but the girl's account was that after some successful cup day there had been too much champagne drunk all around, and that a man she looked on as a friend came into her bedroom that night when she was _tête montée_ and seduced or violated her--whichever word you like to choose. since then his visits had been frequent until she met me, she said, and if i would be true to her she would be a true wife to me, and i believed her and still believe she meant what she said. but i left melbourne shortly after this, our letters got few and far between, and ultimately i heard she was married to a young man who had always been in love with her.... "among the inmates of the boarding house was a 'married' couple who stayed for some time; he was an insignificant, ugly, little, crosseyed commercial traveler; she was a pretty, little creature who looked as innocent and was as merry as a child; we all vied in paying her attentions and waiting on her like slaves, the husband always smiling a cryptic smile. after they had left it was hinted they were not married at all; the oldest hands had been taken in.... one afternoon i met dolly, the commercial traveler's wife, and she stopped and spoke to me. i remembered what i had heard and ventured on some pleasantry at which she laughed, and on my proposing that we should go for a walk she consented. she had left the commercial traveler, it came out in conversation, and we went on talking and walking, one idea only in my mind now; could i detain her till dark? dolly, who was very pretty indeed, amused herself with me for hours, playing hot and cold, snubbing me one minute, encouraging me with her eyed another. hour after hour went and she found this game so entertaining that she accompanied me to the park behind the botanical gardens, and it was not until it was too late for me to catch a train home that she gave herself to me. in fact, we stayed out the whole of that warm summer night. as the hours went by she told me of her home in london and how she first went wrong. she had been a good girl till one day on an excursion she drank some rum or gin, which seemingly revived some dormant taint of heritage; when she went home that night she fell flat at her mother's feet. her parents, well-to-do shopkeepers, who had forgiven her several times before, turned her out. she became one man's mistress and then another's. she began early, and was scarcely now. she would leave off the drink for a time and try to be respectable. she loved her father and mother, but she could not help drinking at times. she spoke cheerfully and laughingly about it all; she was young, strong, good natured, and careless. we went to sleep for a little while and then wandered in the early morning down toward the cemetery, when she tried to tidy her hair, asking me how i had enjoyed myself and not waiting for an answer. she was thirsty, she said, and when the public houses opened we went and had a drink. it was the first time i had seen her drink alcohol,--at the boarding house she had always been the picture of health and sweetness,--and i saw a change come over her at once, so that i understood all that she had told me. the sleepless night may have made it worse, but the look that came into her eyes, and the looseness of the fibres not only of her tell-tale wet mouth, but of every muscle of her face was startling and piteous to see. she saw my look and laughed, but her laugh was equally piteous to hear, and when she spoke again her voice had changed too, and was equally piteous. she asked for another. 'no, don't,' i begged, for the pretty girl i had flattered myself i had passed a summer's night with that most young men would envy, showed signs of changing, like some siren, into a flabby, blear-eyed boozer. that hurt my vanity. "i met her another night and she took, me to her lodgings, and i slept with her all night. i no longer tried to stop her drinking, but drank with her. i ceased to treat her with courtesy and gallantry; she noticed it, but only drank the more, drank till she became dirty in her ways, till her good looks vanished. i left her, too drunk to stand, as some friend, a woman, called on her. "she came to see me once more, like her old self, so well dressed and well behaved, and chatted so cheerfully to my landlady that the latter afterward congratulated me on having such a friend. dolly carried a parcel of underclothing she had made, with a few toys, for the children of a poor man in the suburbs, and i accompanied her to the house. there was great excitement among the ragged children; in fact, the atmosphere became so dangerously full of love and charity that i commenced to feel uncomfortable,--the shower of roses again,--and was glad to find myself in the open air. we went for a walk and had several drinks, which made the usual change in dolly. i got tired of her, determined i would leave her, spoke cruelly, and finally--after having connection with her on the dry seaweed--rose and left her brutally, walked away faster and faster, deaf to her remonstrances, and careless whether or how she reached the station.... "i had gone to lodge with a family whom i had been accustomed to visit as a friend; there were two daughters; the elder, engaged to a young german who was away with a survey party, had a rather plain face, but a strong one and was herself a strong character, and i came to like her in spite of myself; the second girl had light golden hair, a fresh complexion, a short nose, and rather large mouth, which contained beautiful teeth; they were both good, obedient, innocent church-going daughters. as there was plenty of amusement there of an evening, singing and dancing, i did not go out, got into better ways, and gradually gave up drinking to excess. i was so improved in appearance that an old acquaintance did not recognize me. my anecdotes and fun amused mrs. s., the mother of the girls. she could be very violent on occasions, i found, and i learned that there had been terrible scenes at times, and that from time to time it had been necessary to place her in an asylum. i went for drives with the girls and to theatres, and ought to have been happy and glad to find myself in such good quarters. the mother trusted me so entirely that she left me for hours with the girls, the younger one of whom i would kiss sometimes. she was engaged to a young fellow whom i spoke to patronizingly, but whose shoes i was not worthy to fasten. i was the cause of quarrels between them. they made it up again but i think he noticed the change that was taking place in alice. for from kissing her i had gone on--all larking at first. we formed the habit of sitting down on the sofa when alone and kissing steadily for ten minutes or more at a time. she was excited without knowing what was the matter with her--but i knew. and one day when our mouths were together i drew her to me and commenced to stroke her legs gently down. she trembled like a string bow, and allowed my hand to go farther. and then she was frightened and ashamed and commenced to laugh and cry together. she had these hysterical attacks several times and they always frightened me. it ended in my seducing her. she broke off her engagement, and then was sorry; but soon she thought only of me.... one day alice and i were nearly caught. i had just left her on the sofa and had commenced drawing at a table with my back to her when suddenly her mother came in without her shoes, while alice had one hand up her clothes arranging her underclothing. the mother stopped dead and shot me one glance i shall never forget. 'why, alice, you frighten me!' she said. i feigned surprise and asked 'what is the matter?' alice, although she was frightened out of her wits, managed to stammer: 'he couldn't see me--you couldn't see me, could you?' appealing to me. but i had managed to collect my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye i asked,--at last turning slowly around to alice: 'see? what do you mean? see what?' and i looked so mystified that the mother was deceived, and contented herself with scolding alice and telling her to run no risks of that sort. i breathed again. "but i was near the end of my tether. alice and i talked about everything now. she told me about her life at boarding school and the strange ideas some of the girls had about men and marriage. after leaving school she had been sent to a large millinery or drapery establishment to learn sewing and dressmaking. here, she said, the talk was awful at times, and one girl had a book with pictures of men's organs of generation, which was passed around and excited their curiosity to the highest pitch. "i had days of tenderness and contrition, and even told her i would get on and marry her. then the tears would come into her eyes and she would say: 'i seem to feel as if you were my husband now.' ... "i had to see a man on business and went to his cottage. the door was opened by his wife, a handsome, dark-eyed young woman, who looked as if butter would not melt in her mouth. after leaving a message i went on talking to her on other subjects. she piqued my vanity in some way, and made me feel curious and restless. i found myself thinking of her after i left and looking back i saw she was still looking at me. "to make a long story short, she encouraged me. it ended by my leaving the s. family and going to board with them. t.d., the husband, was glad of my company and my money. they had a little boy--whose father t. was not. i soon understood her inviting looks at me. for she was a general lover, and an old man, in a good government billet, visited her often when t.d. was away: i will call him silenus. there was also a dark, handsome man who built organs. the latter came one day and sent for some beer. i was working in my room, and it so happened that before he knocked she had been going further than usual in her talk with me; in fact, as good as giving me the word. when her friend was admitted he had to pass my open door and he gave me a look with his black eyes and i gave him a look which told each what the other's game was. it is wonderful what a lot can be learned from a single glance of the eyes. when i saw the little boy bringing in the beer i felt that he had bested me. but she brought me in a glass first, and putting her down on the sofa i scored first. it was done so suddenly, so brutally, that, accustomed as she must have been to such scenes she turned red and bit her under lip. but she sent the other man away in a few minutes. after that she was insatiable; it was every day and sometimes twice in one day. i commenced to be gloomy and miserable again. and there was not even a pretense of love. there was no deception about her; she even introduced me to silenus and we made excursions together, for which he paid, as he had plenty of money. we were always drinking, until at last i could eat nothing unless i had two or three whiskies. i became very thin, my horizon seemed black and all things at an end. (but t.d. enjoyed his meals and was really fond of his wife and her boy and his work; life was pleasant to him.) she would go up to town with me and to a certain hotel; after drinking she would leave me waiting while she retired with the handsome young landlord for a short time. she told me when she came back that he was a great favorite with married women. "she told me that silenus visited a woman who practiced _fellatio_ on him. mrs. d. thought such practices abominable and could not imagine how a woman could like doing such a thing. "when she was out walking with me one day t.d.'s name came up and she said in a slightly altered voice: 'he told me he loved me!' it was a word seldom used by her except in jest. i threw a startled look at her and caught an inquisitive and apologetic look in return, such a strange and touching glance that i saw i had not yet understood her,--there was an enigma somewhere. when, bit by bit, she told me her life, i understood, or thought i understood, that strange childlike glance in this young woman steeped to her eyes in sin. no one had ever made love to her or spoken to her of love in her life. "it had commenced at school. she must have been a particularly fine and handsome girl, judging from her photographs. she had seen boys playing with girls' privates under the form and felt jealous that they did not play with her's. she had no mother to look after her and she soon found plenty of boys to play with her, and young men, too, as she grew older. she took it as she took her meals. she had been really fond of her child's father, but as he had shown no tenderness for her, nothing but a craving for sensual gratification, she would rather have died than let him know. she soon tired of her attachments, she told me. she did not like t.d. he was not the complacent husband; he was spirited enough, but he believed everything she told him. one day he came home unexpectedly when we were together on the bare palliass in her room. it was a critical moment when his knocks were heard, and in the hurry and excitement some moisture was left on the bed. the knocks became louder, but she was calmer than i, and bade me run down to the closet. i could hear her cheerful and chaffing voice greeting him. when i walked in back to my own room she called out: 'here's t. home!' i learned afterward that he had been surly and suspicious, and had seen the moisture on the bed, and asked about it, whereupon she had turned the tables upon him completely; he ought to be ashamed of himself; she knew what he meant by his insinuations; if he must know how that moisture come on the bed, why she put the soap there in a hurry to catch a flea. he believed her and brought her a present next day in atonement for his suspicions. "during her monthly periods, when i could not touch her, she would come in and play with me until emissions occurred, and my feelings had become so perverted that i even preferred this to coitus. the orgasm would occur twice in her to once in me, and though her eyes were rather hard and her mouth too, she always looked well and cheerful, while i was gloomy and depressed. in her side, however, was a hard lump, which pained her at times, and which, doubtless, was waiting its time.... "one day i felt so low in health that i proposed to t.d. that we should take a boat and sail out in the bay for a day or two. the sea, the change, the open air revived me, and i even made sketches of the black sailor as he steered the boat. one day when i was left alone in charge of the boat, as i felt the time hanging on my hands, for the sea, the blue sky, the lovely day gave me no real pleasure, i remember abusing myself, the old habit reasserting itself as soon as i was alone and idle. when t.d. came back he brought mrs. d. with him, laughing and jolly as usual. she was surprised when lying next to me under the deck on our return i did not respond to her advances. it would have pleased her, with her husband only a few feet away. after that i spent a night with her, but she was getting tired of me. i did not care for her, but it hurt my vanity and i made a few attempts to be impertinent. she looked at me coldly and threatened to complain to t.... "i want to relate an impression i received one night about this time when with several friends we called at a brothel. i forget my companion, but i remember two faces. it was winter, and great depression prevailed in adelaide. we had been talking to the mistress as we drank some beer and were pretending to be jolly fellows, although we were wet, cold, and had not enjoyed ourselves (at least, i had not), and she was speaking harshly and jeeringly about two girls she had now who had not earned a penny for the past week. just then we heard footsteps and she said in a lower tone: 'here they are,' they came in, unattended, having ascertained which the brothel-keeper snorted and turned her back to them. the faces of the girls, who were quite young, looked so miserable that even i pitied them. the look on the face of one of those girls as she stood by the hearth drawing off her gloves lives in my memory. too deep for tears was its sorrow, shame, and hopelessness.... "i had given up drink and was living in the bush. to anyone with normal nerves it would have been a happy time of quiet, rustic peace, beauty, and relief from city life. with me it was restless vanity amounting to madness. in every relation, action, or possible event in which i figured or might figure in the future, i always instantaneously called up an imaginary audience. and then this imaginary audience admired everything i did or might do, and put the most heroic, gallant, and romantic construction on my acts, appearance, lineage, and breeding. suppose i saw a pretty girl on a bush road. instead of thinking 'there is a pretty girl; i should like to know her or kiss her,' as i suppose a healthy, normal young man would think, i thought after this fashion: 'there is a pretty girl; now, as i pass her she will think i am a handsome and aristocratic-looking stranger, and, as i carry a sketch-book, an artist--"a landscape painter! how romantic!" she will say, and then she will fall in love with me,' etc. this preoccupation with what other people might think or would think so engrossed all my time that i had no means of enjoying the presence, thought, or favor of the divine creatures i met, and i must have appeared 'cracked' to them with my reticence, pride, and silly airs. "i met girls as foolish as myself sometimes. once at a _table d'hôte_ i met a young girl who went for a walk with me and let me know her carnally although she was little more than a schoolgirl. she was going down to town soon, she said, and would meet me at a certain hotel (belonging to relations of hers) in adelaide on a certain date, some time ahead; if i took a room there she would come into it during the night. in the meanwhile i had given way to drink again and abused myself at intervals. i came down to town, drunk, in the coach, and kept my appointment with the young girl at the hotel, expecting a night of pleasure; but she merely stared at me coldly as if she had never seen me before. i abused myself twice in my solitary room.... "i met a middle-aged schoolteacher (who had once been an officer in the army) down for his holidays. as he spoke well, and was a 'gentleman,' i cultivated him. one night he asked me to meet a girl he had an appointment with and tell her he was not well enough to meet her. he foolishly told me the purpose of their intended meeting. i went to the trysting-place, at the back of the hotel, and met the girl. on delivering my message she smiled, made some joke about her friend, and looked at me as much as to say: 'you will do as well.' i had been drinking, and in the most brutal manner i took her into a closet. by some strange chance or state of nerves she gave me exquisite pleasure, but the orgasm came with me before it did with her, and in spite of her disappointment and protests i stood up and pulled her out of the place for fear some one should find us there. still protesting she followed me, but her foot slipped on the paved court, and she fell down on her face. when she rose i saw that her front teeth were broken. i looked at her without pity, with impatience, and abruptly leaving her i went into the hotel to 'the colonel.' i commenced to tell him lies, when he asked me with a weak laugh what had been keeping me. i smiled with low cunning and drunken vanity, evading the question. then he accused me directly. i only laughed; but, drunk as i was, i remember the look of the ageing bachelor as he saw he had been betrayed by a younger man. he had known her for years.... "i was now living in the home of a woman who was separated from her husband and kept lodgers. she had a daughter, with whom i walked out, a pretty girl who drank like a fish, as her mother also did. there were other lodgers coming and going. i would lie down all day and keep myself saturated with beer. i commenced to get fat and bloated, with the ways of a brothel bully. a broken-down, drunken old woman who visited the house and had been a beautiful lady in her youth told me i should end my days on the gallows trap. the same woman when drunk would lift up her dress, sardonically, exposing herself. other old women would congregate in the neglected and dirty bedrooms and tell fortunes with the cards. one little woman, an onanist, was like a character out of dickens, exaggerated, affected, unnatural, with remains of gentility and society manners. amidst all this drunkenness and abandonment may, the landlady's daughter, preserved her virginity. young lodgers would take liberties with her, but at a certain stage would receive a stinger on the face. the girl liked me and would kiss me, but nothing else. and then--out of this home of drunkenness and shame--may fell in love with some pretty boy she met by chance, whom she never asked to her home. she began to neglect me, even to neglect drink, and to dream, preoccupied. i felt a restless jealousy, but she would look at me, without resentment, without recognition, without seeing me, look me straight in the eyes as i was talking to her, and dream and dream. this same pretty boy seduced her, i believe. when next i met her she was 'on the town,' her one dream of spring over.... "about this time i had one of those salutary turns that have marked epochs in my life, and as a result i left that house and resolutely abstained from drink.... i was now in a small up-country town. i commenced to play croquet and to ride out. sometimes i was invited to dinner by a young man at the bank, whose house was kept by his sister. she had a small figure, a pretty but rather narrow face, and well-bred manners; but there was a look in her asymmetrical eyes, in the shape of her thin hands, even in the stoop of her shoulders, that seemed passionate. one day--when her brother, a fine, sweet-blooded manly young athlete, was absent--i commenced to pull her about. she gave me one passionate kiss, but said: 'no! do you know what keeps me straight? it is the thought of my brother.' i refrained from molesting her further. i met other girls, some pretty and arrogant, others plain and hungry-eyed; it was a country town where there were four or five females to every male. but i could not speak frankly and candidly to a young woman as the young banker did.... "i remember that one night, when i was living at the port, i slept all night with a prostitute who had taken a fancy to me and who used to cry on my shoulder, much to my impatience and annoyance. in the same bed with us, lying beside me, was a girl aged about . on my expressing surprise i was told she was used to it and noticed nothing. but in the morning i turned my head and looked at her, and even in the dim light of that dirty bedroom i could see that her eyes had noticed and understood. she pressed herself against me and smiled; it was not the smile of an infant. i could record many instances i have observed of the precocity of children. "at one time i made the acquaintance of three young men, two in the customs, the other in a surveyor's office. at the first glance you would have said they were ordinary nice young clerks, but on becoming better acquainted you would notice certain peculiarities, a looseness of mouth, a restless, nervous inquietude of manner, an indescribable gleam of the eye. they were very fond of performing and singing at amateur minstrel shows and developed a certain comic vein they thought original, though it reminded me of professional corner-men. however, i enjoyed their singing and drinking habits and went to their lodgings several nights to play cards, drink beer, and tell funny stories. one night they asked me to stay all night and on going to a room with two beds i was told to have one. presently one of the young men came in and commenced to undress. but before going to his bed he made a remark which, though i had been drinking, opened my eyes. i told him to shut up and go to bed, speaking firmly and rather coldly, and he went reluctantly to his own bed. but another night when they had shifted their lodgings and were all sleeping in the same room i was drunk and went to bed with the same fair-haired young man. on waking up in the night i found my bedmate tampering with me. the old force came over me and i abused him, but refused to commit the crime he wanted me to. his penis was small and pointed. i rose early in the morning, sobered, suffering, and covered with shame, and went hastily away, refusing to stay for breakfast. i thought i caught an amazed and evil smile on the faces of the other two. meeting the three the same evening in the street, i passed them blushing, and my bedmate of the previous night blushed also.... "i now took cheap lodgings in north adelaide. here i had slight recurrences of the strangeness and fear of going mad which i had experienced once before. i led such a solitary life and fell into such a queer state that i turned to religion and attended church regularly. it was approaching the time for those young men and women who wished to be confirmed to prepare themselves, and a struggle now ensued between my pride and my wish to gain rest and peace of mind in jesus. i was self-conscious to an incredible degree, and dreaded exposure or making an exhibition of myself, but still went to church, hoping the grace of god would descend on me. i had no other resources. i had no pleasure in life, and was so shattered and in such misery of dread that i welcomed the only refuge that seemed open to me. at last, one sunday, i had what i thought was a call; i shed a few tears, and although tingling all down my spine i went up in the cathedral and joined those who were going to be confirmed. i attended special meetings and shocked the good bishop very much by telling him i had never been baptized. i had to be baptized first and went one day to the cathedral and he baptized me. when the critical awful moment came the bishop, whose faith even then surprised me somehow, held my hand in his cold palm, and gave it a pressure, eyeing me, expectantly, inquisitively, to see any change for the better. but, it so happened, that morning i was in a horrible temper and black mood, hard and dry-eyed, and no change came. still, i tried to believe there was a change. "i was confirmed with others, had a prayer-book given me with prayers for nearly every hour in the day, and was always kneeling and praying. i procured a long, white surplice, and assisted at suburban services, even conducting small ones myself, reading the sermons out of books. but my mood of rage increased, and one sunday i had to walk a long way in a new pair of boots. i shall never forget that hot sunday afternoon. my feet commenced to ache and a murderous humor seized me. i swore and blasphemed one moment and prayed to god to forgive me the next. when i reached the chapel where i had to assist the chaplain i was exhausted with rage, pain, fear, and religious mania. i thought it probable i had offended the holy ghost. when, next sunday, i went to try my hand at sunday-school teaching i wore a pair of boots so old that the little boys laughed. i was always talking of my conversion and the spirit of our saviour. i do not know what the clergymen i met thought of me. i thought i should like to be a minister myself, and questioned a church of england parson as to the amount of study necessary. he received my question rather coldly, i thought, which discouraged me. as my dread gradually diminished, though i still felt strange, i made excuses for not conducting services, although i continued to read my bible and prayer-book, and really believed i had been 'born again.' "surely now, i thought, that i had christ's aid, i shall be able to break off my habit of self-abuse that had been the curse of my youth. what was my horror and dismay to find that, when the mood came on me next, i went down the same as ever. and after all my suffering and dread and fear of fits! what could i do? was i mad, or what? i was really frightened at my helplessness in the matter and decided on a course of conduct that ultimately brought me past this danger to better health and comparative happiness. i said to myself that there is always a certain amount of preliminary thought and dalliance before i do this deed; doubtless this it is that renders me incapable of resisting. i decided, therefore, never to let my thoughts _commence_ to dwell on lustful things, but to think of something else on the _first_ intimation of their appearance in my mind. i rigorously followed this rule; and it proved successful, and i recommend it to others in the same predicament as myself. after suffering weeks and months of dread and illness once more, falling away in flesh and turning yellow, i gradually mended a little. i had a better color and tone, and was something like other young men, barring a strange alternate exaltation and depression. even this gradually became less noticeable, and my moods more even and reliable." footnotes: [ ] my christian faith is of a somewhat nonemotional, intellectual type, with a considerable element of agnostic reserve. [ ] on having connection with my wife i frequently exhibit sufficient sexual power to produce orgasm in her; but on occasion, especially during the first year or so of married life, i have been unable to do this, owing to the too rapid action of the reflexes in myself, and have even, now and again, had emissions _ante portam_. index of authors. adachi adam, madame adler Ælian allbutt, gifford allen, grant allin, a. alrutz andree anselm, st. arbuthnot ariosto aristænetus aristophanes aristotle athenæus aubert audeoud avicenna ayrton bacarisse backhouse bain, a. baker, sir s. bälz baschet, armand batchelor, j. baudelaire bazan, pardo beatson beauregard bendix benedikt bernard, l. bernardin de st. pierre bianchi, l. biérent binet bloch, a.g. bloch, i. boccaccio bollinger borel botallus brantôme breitenstein brisay, marquis de bronson broune, r. brown, h. brunton, sir lauder bücher buckman, s.s. bulkley bullen, f. st. john burckhardt burdach burton, sir r. burton, r. cabanès cabanis cadet-devaux candolle, a. de cardano cardi, comte di casanova castellani cervantes chadwick chamfort chaucer clement of alexandria cloquet cocke, j. coffignon cohn, jonas colegrove colenso, w. collet compayre cook, captain cornish courtier crawley cyples, w. daniell, w.f. d'annunzio dante darlington, l. darwin, c. darwin, e. davy, j. deniker d'enjoy digby, sir k. dillon, e. distant dogiel donaldson, h.h. d'orbigny duffield dufour dühren, e. dunlop, w. edinger eliot, george ellis, a.b. ellis, a.j. ellis, havelock ellis, w. eloy eméric-david emin pasha endriss, j. engelmann, i.j. epstein esquirol eulenburg féré ferrand ferrero filhés, margarethe fillmore firenzuola flagy, r. de fletcher, a.c. fliess fol, h. foley forster, j.b. franklin, a. frazer, j.g. friedländer friedreich, j.b. fromentin frumerie, g. de galopin galton, f. garbini garson giard giessler gilman goblot goethe goncourt, e. de görres gould gourmont, remy de griffith, w.d.a. griffiths, a.b. grimaldi groos, k. guibaud hack häcker hagen hall, g. stanley halle, a. de la haller harrison, f. hart, d. berry harvey, w.f. hawkesworth haycraft hearn, lafcadio heine hellier, j.b. helmholtz henry, c. hermant, abel herodotus herrick, c.l. herrick, r. heschl hildebrandt hippocrates holder, a.b. hortis houdoy houzeau huart humboldt, w. von hutchinson, w.f. hutchinson, woods huysmans hyades jäger james, w. janet jerome, st. joal joest johnston, sir h.h. jorg jouin juvenal kaan kate, h. ten kennedy kiernan, j.g. king, j.s. kirchhoff, a. kistemaecker klein, g. kleist krafft-ebing krauss kubary külpe lane, e.w. lancaster, e. latcham laycock layet léchat lecky lejeune lemaire, j. léoty lewin lewis, a.t. linnæus lombard lombroso, c. lombroso, gina lucian lucretius luigini lumholtz maccauley macdonald, j. macdougall, b. mackenzie, j.n. mackenzie, s. man, e.h. mantegazza marholm, l. marie de france marro marston, j. martial martineau, harriet massinger matusch mau maudsley, h. maxim, sir h. mcbride mcdougall, w. mckendrick melle, van menander mentz merensky mertens michelet milton miner, j.b. minut, g. de mironoff mitford möbius moll moncelon monin moore, a.w. moore, f. moraglia motannabi muir, sir w. myers, c.s. näcke newman, w.l. nietzsche niphus nordenskjöld norman, conolly nuttall nyrop o'donovan ordericus vitalis ovid papillault parke, t.h. parker, rushton passy, j. patrick, g.t.w. patrizi, m.l. paulhan pearson, k. penta perls petrarch petrie, flinders piéron piesse pillon, e. plateau plato ploss plutarch potwin, e. pouchet poulton, e.b. pruner bey pyle raciborski raffalovich ramsey, sir w. raseri raymond reade, winwood remfry renier, r. restif de la bretonne rhys, j. ribbert ribot ries ripley robinson, louis rochas, a. de roger, j.l. rohlfs romi, shereef-eddin ronsard roscoe, j. rosenbaum roth, h. ling roth, w. roubaud rousseau routh, a. rowbotham, j.f. rudeck rutherford salmuth, p. sanborn, l. santayana, g. savage, g. savill schellong schiff schopenhauer schultz, a. schurigius scott, colin scripture, e.w. seligmann selous, e. semon, sir f. sénancour sensai, nagayo sergi shakespeare sharp, d. shelley shields, t.e. shipley shufeldt simpson, sir j.y. skeat, w.w. smith, sir a. smith, g. elliot smith, h. smyth, brough sonnini southerden spencer, herbert spinoza stanley, hiram stendhal stevens, vaughan stirling, e.c. stoddart, w.h.b. stratz, c.h. swift symonds, j.a. syrus, publilius talbot, e.b. talbot, e.s. tarchanoff tardif tarnowsky temesvary tennyson tinayre, marcelle tolstoy toulouse tourdes, g. tregear tuckey turner tylor, e.b. varigny, o. de vaschide vatsyayana velten venturi vinci, l. de vineberg volkelt vurpas waits wallace, a.e. wallaschek waller, a. walther, p. von wartanoff watts, g.f. weinhold, k. wellhausen wessmann westermarck whytt wiedemann, a. wiese wilks, sir s. wright, t. wundt yellowlees yung, e. zola zurcher zwaardemaker index of subjects. acne in relation to sexual development Æsthetics, standard modified by love in region of smell in relation to the sexual impulse ainu alexander the great, odor of ambergris american indians types of beauty ideas of beauty seldom acquainted with kiss anæsthesia produced by tuning forks antisexual instinct arabs, ideal of beauty kissing among armpit, odor of asafoetida assortative mating australians ideal of beauty kissing among bath, its history in modern europe opposed by early christians also by mohammed baudelaire's olfactory sensibility beard in relation to beauty beauty, as the symbol of love the chief agent in sexual selection the sexual element in æsthetic its largely objective character ideals of, among various peoples sometimes found in lowest races primary sex characters as an element of beauty, clothing in relation to secondary sexual characters as an element of in relation to pigmentation the individual element in ideal of the exotic element in relation to stature bird song, origin of biting in relation to origin of kissing blind, sense of smell in the sensitiveness to voice blondes, the admiration for breasts, as an element of beauty as a tactile sexual focus breath, odor of brothels, public baths once synonymous with brummell brunettes, the admiration for bustle capryl odors carbolic acid disliked by savages castoreum cataglottism catholic theologians, on danger of tactile contacts opposed bathing _chenopodium vulvaria_ chinese ideal of beauty odor of music among practice the olfactory kiss christianity, its use of the kiss opposition to bathing civet cleanliness and christianity cleanliness in relation to sexual attraction clitoris, deformation of clothing, sexual attraction of codpiece coitus, body odor during comic sense continence, odor of corset crinoline cumarine _cunnilingus_ cutaneous excitation, tonic effects of dancing in sexual selection death, odor of degenerates sexually attracted to one another disparity, the sexual charm of dogs practice _cunnilingus_ predominance of smell in mental life of susceptibility to music doves, sexual attraction among dyeing the hair, origin of egyptian ideal of beauty emotional memory english type of beauty erogenous zone eskimo eunuchs, odor of europeans, odor of exotic element in ideal of beauty eyes as a factor of beauty fairness in relation to vigor the admiration for farthingale _fellatio_ fetichism, olfactory urinary shoe flowers, occasional injurious effect of perfumes of sexual character of their perfume french ideal of beauty fuegians german ideal of beauty goethe's olfactory sensibility gray eyes, admiration for greeks, conception of music ideal of beauty pygmalionism among green eyes, admiration for gunnings, the hair as an element of beauty sexual development of suggested function of odor of hallucinations of smell hamilton, lady hebrews acquainted with kiss ideal of beauty henna plant, odor of heterogamy hindu ideal of beauty hips as a feature of beauty homogamy hottentot apron as a feature of beauty hura dance hypnosis, effect of music during hysteria and the skin immorality and bathing incest, origin of the abhorrence of incontinence, odor of indians, american, ideas of beauty odor of types of beauty seldom acquainted with kiss infants, odor of insects and music smell in their sexual life inversion, influence of odor in sexual irish ideal of beauty italian ideal of beauty itching, its parallelism to sexual tumescence japanese, ideal of beauty odor of perfumes among unacquainted with kiss javanese jewish ideal of beauty joan of aragon as a type of beauty kiss, the kwan-yin as a type of beauty lactation, controlling influences on in relation to menstruation larynx at puberty laughter as a form of detumescence leather, odor of lily, odor of longevity and beauty malays, ideals of beauty the kiss among maoris married couples, degree of resemblance between massage as a sexual stimulant masturbation, in relation to acne in relation to bleeding of nose in relation to hallucinations of smell melody, the nature of memories, olfactory tactile menstruation, in relation to acne in relation to lactation in relation to body odors in relation to bleeding of nose mirror as a method of heightening tumescence mixoscopy modesty in relation to ticklishness mohammed, his love of perfumes his opinion of public baths mohammedans, attitude toward bath preference for musk perfume mosquitoes, attracted by music moths, sexual odors of movement, beauty of music, among chinese and greeks origins of effects of, during hypnosis physiological influence of music, why it is pleasurable its sexual attraction among animals in man supposed therapeutic effects musk mutilations, among savages for magic purposes for sake of beauty narcissism nasal mucous membrane and genital sphere nates as a feature of beauty necklace, significance of necrophily negress, beauty of odor of negro ideas of beauty odor of mode of kissing neopallium neurasthenia and olfactory susceptibility in relation to pruritus nicobarese nietzsche's supposed olfactory sensibility nipple as a sexual focus nose and sexual organs, supposed connection, between obesity, the oriental admiration for odors, artificial classification of as stimulants as medicines distinctive of various human races of sanctity odors of death of the body olfaction in relation to sexual selection (see "odors" and "smells.") the study of olfactory area of brain oöphorectomy and sense of smell orgasm as a skin reflex founded on tactile sensations produced by various tactile contacts ornament, its religious significance sexual significance of overall, mrs. _padmini_ papuans parity, the sexual charm of peasants, odor of peau d'espagne perfume, ancient use of sexual influence of results of excessive stimulation by persian ideal of beauty phallus worship pigmentation connected with intensity of odor in relation to beauty in relation to vigor polynesian dancing pompeii preferential mating pregnancy as an ideal of beauty primary sex characters as an element of beauty provençal ideal of beauty pruritus puberty, accompanied by increased interest in art olfactory sensibility at pygmalionism reeve, pleasance renaissance type of beauty restif de la bretonne rhinencephalon rhythm, as a stimulant the sense of saddleback as a feature of beauty salutation by smelling samoans sanctity, odor of savages, important part played by odor in their mental life sometimes beautiful their ideals of beauty secondary sexual characters in relation to sexual attraction semen, odor of sexual differences in admiration of beauty in olfactory acuteness in urination shoe fetichism singalese ideal of beauty singing as affected by sexual emotion skin, complexity of its functions smell, antipathies aroused by its evolution sexual significance in animals its significance in man theory of special characteristics of as the sense of the imagination as distinctive of races and individuals hallucinations of in part the foundation of kiss results of its excessive stimulation sneezing and sexual stimulation spanish ideal of beauty saddle-back as an element of stanley, lady venetia statues, sexual love of statue in relation to beauty steatopygia strength, the admiration of women for suckling as a cause of perversion as a source of sexual emotion swahilis tahiti tallness, the admiration of taste no part in sexual selection tattooing tennyson thure-brandt system of massage as a sexual stimulant ticklishness not a simple reflex explainable by summation-irradiation theory in relation to the sexual embrace diminishes with age also after marriage touch, of kiss touch, in part, foundation of kiss the most primitive of all senses the first to prove pleasurable the most emotional sense foundation of sexual orgasm triangle as a sexual symbol tumescence as a necessary preliminary to sexual influence of odors the chief stimuli of urinary fetichism urination, habits of sexes in uterus, its relations to breast _vair_, significance of term valerianic acid vanilla viguier, paule de violet perfume voice as a source of sexual stimulation vulvar odor, alleged function of wagner's music, emotional effects of walk, beauty of whitman, odor of walt zola's olfactory sensibility book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) transcriber's notes . typographical errors were silently corrected. . the text version is coded for italics and other mark-ups i.e., (a) italics are indicated thus _italic_; (b) bold thus =bold=; and (c) images are indicated as [illustration]; (d) footnotes are placed at the end. * * * * * psychoanalysis and love psychoanalysis and love by andre tridon member of "the medico-legal society of new york city," "the society for forensic medicine of new york city," and "the international association for individual psychology of vienna, austria." [illustration] new york brentano's publishers copyright, , by brentano's _all rights reserved_ printed in the united states of america contents chapter page i the head and the heart love is independent from the will. victims of venus. love and affection. erotropism. what is the heart? a dead heart can be made to beat. the heart is a respectable organ. the antithesis head-heart. nerve memory. ii the choice of a mate what we see in our mate. the meaning of choice. the donkey's dilemma. chance in the discard. the dog's choice. the behavior of copepods. iii the quest of the fetish the hair fetishist. everybody a fetishist. most common fetishes. the breast and the bottle. feminine fetishes. physiological necessities. foot and shoe fetishism. non-physical fetishes. symbolical fetishes. antifetishes. attraction or obsession? iv the family romance and the family feud the oedipus complex. the freudian view. jung's interpretation. adler. pseudo-incest. the neurotic life plan. imitation. the glands. identification mania. early conflicts. death wishes. our preferences. craig's birds. v incest the incest fear. incest in ancient times. inbreeding. the primal horde. repressed incestuous feelings. blood relations. vi the physiology of love the organism a unit. love's stimulation. the successful lover. the unsuccessful lover. calf love. vii the senses in love sight. auditory sensations. smell. the sense of taste. touch. holding hands. the kiss. the birth of the kiss. kisses and electricity. viii ego and sex neurotic complications. self-love. ego in sex guise. fatherhood. war prisoners. neurotic motherliness. when ego and sex do not conflict. ix hatred and love a worried wife. the test of love. sour grapes. brothers and sisters. a negro hater. reformers. the syphilophobiac. deluded martyrs. x plural love and infidelity polyandry. infidelity. when love dies. iwan bloch's and hirth's theories. bored wives. getting even. varietists and don juans. the ultra-feminine. messalina. xi is free love possible? man, the dissatisfied. the next step. blissful blindness. what of the child? disharmony between the parents. the institution child. free love plus birth control. xii prostitution economic factors. lombrosos's theory. sensuality. father fixation. prostitution a neurosis. the pimp. prevention. prostitution has no redeeming grace. xiii virginity what men experienced in love want? ethical prostitution. the fear of woman. the will-to-be-the-first. telegony. goldschmidt's explanations. xiv modesty, normal and abnormal in turkey. on the modern stage. normal modesty. suggestive draperies. excessive modesty. immodest modesty. fear of love. the masculine protest. lack of modesty. xv jealousy forel's rules for husbands. very few men and women admit their jealousy. jealousy and impotence. childish behavior. the ego rampant. sexless jealousy. husbands and lovers. cruelty. making people jealous. xvi insane jealousy delusional jealousy. homosexualism and jealousy. a jealous wife. a case of projection. masked sadism. xvii homosexualism. its genesis male lovers in greece. women were harem slaves. the tide turns. theories. the third sex. transvestites. are transvestites homosexual? metatropism. steinach's experiments. perverse birds. freud denies the third sex. active and passive types. the homosexual neurosis. a safety device. above and below. a way out. the escape from biological duties. xviii homosexualism a neurotic symptom a denial of life. homosexualism is negative love. the love letters of famous homosexuals. deeds of violence. a homosexual tragedy. women more homosexual than men. boastful homosexuals. the nietzsche-wagner feud. shall perverse love be recognized? man's emancipation from woman. homosexualism and war. is homosexualism necessary? xix cruelty and love--sadism algolagnists. the marquis de sade's biography. what bonaparte thought of him. glandular drunkenness. atavism. primitive religions. primitive races and sex violence. animal love fights. the sadistic mob. is the male more cruel? xx love that craves suffering--masochism sacher masoch's biography. love of the whip. the masochist is like a tired horse. shoe fetishism. craving for humiliation. masochistic fancies. are women masochistic? women who enjoy a beating. a freudian suggestion. xxi what love owes to sadists and masochists sadistic and masochistic lovers and their fascination. the vamp. those who are too normal to be interesting or romantic. xxii love among the artists dissatisfaction. the male artist. the female artist. the woman who accomplishes things. flattery. xxiii the personality behind the fetishes. glands the parent-child relationship. modern endocrinologists ignorant of psychology. reciprocal influence of glands and behavior. the pituitary gland. the thyroid. the adrenals. the gonads. xxiv glandular personalities the dark skinned type. the tall type. the lean type. the obese type. the slender type. environment. comfort and behavior. what teeth indicate. matrimonial engineers. xxv love and mother love sex cravings and motherhood cravings. pregnancy means health. fear of pregnancy. when mother love is lacking. frigid wives. mother and father love. mothers adore their sons. fathers partial to daughters. the flapper and her mother. xxvi should winter mate with spring? two disinterested brides. the case of wagner. a parent fixation. physical incompatibility. the plight of two neurotics. what will people say? having her fixation-fling. physical results. the fate of the younger mate. king david. xxvii negative love a "clean" life. utterances and conduct. oracles and prophecies. can we save our vital force. sublimation. the sexless. ideal love. protective measures. lovers of the absolute. a troublesome patient. higher aspirations. xxviii the new woman and love george bernard shaw's view. the rebellion against nature. woman in commercial life. was it a sacrifice? the pursuit. the passing of respectable prostitution. the abettor of ethical sins. health versus sickness. the passing of the flirt and of the doll. modesty, old and new. the unadapted woman. the proud husband. xxix birth control what we expect of the modern woman. the only solution. the human milch cow. the nightmare of abortion. the plight of the neurotic woman. the child of the neurotic woman. birth control and indulgence. a great love is a holy thing. the passing of the double standard. xxx the passing of the husband worship is man's vitality declining? undue pessimism. the wise husband. is the male indispensable? loeb's experiments. twins to order. the mother is the race. matriarchal communities. modern woman is conceited. the terrors of the climacteric. masculine man is in no danger of passing away. xxxi perfect matrimonial adjustments marriage a compromise. attractiveness an asset. forty and hideous. athletic movie idols. the foe of married happiness. friendship may survive love. separate vacations for the married. the play function of love. psychoanalysis to the rescue. wounded egotism. democracy in the home. introduction life would be much simpler if love among human beings were similar to love among the animals. at mating time, any animal of any species feels automatically attracted to any animal of the opposite sex belonging to the same species. age, appearance or relationship seem of no account in the animal world. the love activities begin at a definite time of the year, have as their obvious and exclusive purpose the reproduction of the species and, after attaining their goal, end very early in the summer of the same year. an exception may be made for a few wild and domesticated animals which have several mating seasons and for a few survivals of the prehistoric fauna, like the elephants, among which the family group seems more permanent than among more "recent" biological specimens. nor do love activities among the animals result in lasting disturbances of their psychological life. in certain varieties of fish the male never even sees the female whose eggs he fecundates. while we observe at times duels to the death between two males for the possession of one female (elks or moose), animal life seems to suffer few lasting complications from the fact of such conflicts, which, like animal love, are purely seasonal. a greater regularity of the food supply which has intensified the sex urge among human beings and removed its seasonal character, and the progress of civilization which, for economic reasons, has placed upon the union of male and female a thousand restrictions, has complicated terribly what was merely among animals a periodic biological activity. restrictions, however, never bring about the complete suppression of biological cravings and merely compel them to remain repressed for varying periods of time. repressed cravings, denied a direct normal outlet, create for themselves indirect, morbid outlets. we are little more than civilized animals who have been trained not to reveal their primal cravings at certain forbidden times and places. the cravings are there, struggling for expression and denial of their reality does not suffice to make them unreal. it only invests them with morbidity and abnormality. much of the fearsome mystery which surrounds sex is due to the fact that we have forgotten our origin. we have set up a goal which, like all goals worth striving for, is far ahead of the human procession and somewhere between the earth and the stars. but that goal should not cause us to forget our starting point. it happens too often that "what we should be" blinds us to "what we really are." hence our surprise, our puzzled expression, our painful disappointment, when one of us reveals himself suddenly as he is instead of as he should be. hence our absurd statutes which punish the laggards on the road of evolution instead of helping them along. hence our fears in the presence of a mystery we have made mysterious, of a danger we have made dangerous and which we make more terrifying yet by burying our heads in the sand. to this day the study of love has been considered as the almost exclusive province of poets, playwrights, novelists, movie authors and philosophers. those people have reveled in love's dramatic complications which they have, whenever possible, exaggerated, for "artistic" reasons. instead of clarifying the problem, they have beclouded it. in anglo-saxon countries a class of neurotics countenanced by the police and the courts, the puritans, have further distorted the popular misconception of love by swathing it in the morbid veils woven by their unhealthy minds. it is high time, therefore, that the subject of love be reviewed from an impartial angle, from a purely scientific point of view. only one science is qualified to undertake that review, psychoanalysis, for it has effected in the last twenty years a synthesis of all the data which biology, neurology, endocrinology and other sciences have contributed to the knowledge of human psychology and of the human personality. no scientist is satisfied with his findings unless they can be described in terms of accurate measurements, hence, repeated and checked up by any other scientist having acquired the requisite minimum of technical skill. the basis for such a study of love was established by the great pioneer in the science of psychoanalysis, sigmund freud of vienna. by his masterly analysis of the sex life, to which, however, he has ascribed an undue importance, he has stripped love of many veils which made it look like a scarecrow. his successors, recognizing the importance of other factors in the love life, ego cravings, organic predispositions, etc., have in turn stripped love of other veils which made it look too romantically unreal. thus we are gradually reaching the heart of the problem. love to-day is no longer animal love, nor is it as yet angelic love. we are no longer beasts, altho the primal beast still disports itself in our unconscious. nor are we angels, arduous as our striving toward the stars may be. to determine what love should be, could be or might be, seems to be an academic waste of time and little else. to determine, on the other hand, what love really is at the present day, what actual level it has reached, to explain some of the difficulties it encounters in trying to remain on that level, and finally to suggest to men and women of to-day workable modes of adaption at that level, shall be the mission of this book. in the coming chapters, i will show that our choice of a mate is as completely "determined" as any other biological phenomenon; that the "reasons" for that choice are compelling "habits" acquired in our childhood and infancy within the family circle; that our "standards of beauty" are memories from childhood and infancy; that in our search for a mate we are influenced as powerfully by ego and safety cravings as by sex cravings that the so-called "perversions" are due, at times, to wrong training, at times, to organic disabilities and at times to unrecognized safety cravings; that jealousy is, in the majority of cases, due to ego cravings, not to sex cravings; finally that no perfect adjustment of the married relation can be brought about until democracy obtains in the home, replacing the various forms of autocracy against which bullied wives and henpecked husbands have directed many ineffective, neurotic revolts. new york city june , psychoanalysis and love chapter i the head and the heart love, like hunger, fear or pain, is an absolutely involuntary craving. we may deny it expression and gratification, even as we may pretend that we are not hungry, afraid or in pain, and go without food, protection or relief from pain; but no exertion on our part will prevent us from experiencing love and craving its gratification. nor can we experience it thru an act of will. this absolutely involuntary character of the love craving must be borne in mind whenever we discuss the complicated and at times puzzling relations which it brings about between human beings. the attitude of the average person to this question is extremely vague and illogical. the person obsessed by love cravings which are not meeting with the approval of his environment, justifies himself by stating loudly the overpowering character of his feelings: "i cannot help loving him or her," "it is a feeling stronger than myself," "it came over me suddenly," "it was a case of love at first sight." =victims of venus.= the ancients expressed their strong belief in man's helplessness against the allpowerful fascination of the love object by calling the lovelorn a victim of cupid or of venus, a puppet of the gods, of fate. and on the other hand, we behold modern and ancient lovers, whenever they feel that the love object is growing indifferent to them, reversing their attitude, denying their belief in love's involuntary character, and using words like fickle, changeling, to designate the love object they are losing. they speak of deception, of betrayal, of faithlessness. "you no longer love me," they state reproachfully. they may ask the stupid question: "why have you ceased to care for me?" worse yet, they may say to the love object; "you should be ashamed of your inconstancy." such remarks are not infrequently coupled with another remark which goes more deeply to the root of the matter: "you should not show your indifference so plainly." in other words pretence is expected when actual love has died. and indeed nothing else could be expected logically by such illogical lovers, unless of course a deep affection, which may have grown between two human beings in the course of many years of life partnership, successfully masks the passing of the peculiar fascination which differentiates love proper from any other human feeling. =love and affection.= we may love a human being more than ourselves, enjoy infinitely his presence, delight in giving to him mental and physical happiness, lavish on him a thousand caresses and yet not experience the flash of desire which leads compulsively toward complete physical communion with that human being. a simile from the animal world will make my meaning clearer. a large number of animals "enjoy" light but only a small number of them are so "fascinated" by light that they cannot resist a "craving" to fly toward a light, contact with which may mean death to them. only that small minority can be called in scientific jargon "positively phototropic," in sentimental parlance "hopelessly in love" with light. all animals are affected in some fashion by an electric current passing thru their bodies, but only a minority of them are so affected by it that they must, whether they wish it or not, face the positive electrode, as a lover fascinated by the face of his sweetheart. only these can be characterised as "positively galvanotropic." =erotropism.= likewise a hundred men may be charmed by the sight of a woman. only one or two from their number may feel compelled to seek complete union with her regardless of the obstacles to be surmounted, of the criticism their actions may arouse, of the expenditure of time, money and energy the adventure may entail. only this minority may be considered as "positively erotropic." in other words it is the primal compulsion which nature uses to assure the continuance of the race and which i might designate as "erotropism" which must be considered the basis for a discussion of love. love as commonly understood or misunderstood at the present day, is a series of variations on the theme of erotropism, variations due to the complication of modern civilisation and the restrictions placed upon all biological phenomena by the necessities of life in communities. =what is the heart?= the reader will notice that i have thus far avoided any mention of the "heart" altho that organ is commonly identified with the various emotions of love. physiologically speaking, the heart is no more vitally concerned with love than with any other disturbing feeling and emotion. love may at times cause our heart to beat wildly, but so does strong coffee, so does acute indigestion, so does blood poisoning, so does any sort of violent fear. the heart, we must not forget, is a mere muscle, which is no more capable of being the seat of an emotion than our biceps or our calves. the heart is an elaborate centripetal and centrifugal pump which, in obedience to orders or impulses coming from elsewhere, draws the blood out of the veins and sends it into the arteries at a varying rate of speed. =a dead heart can be made to beat.= the heart, taken out of the body and attached to a well fitted system of pipes, thru which an appropriate fluid is circulating, will start beating anew and keep on beating until decay sets in, due to the fact that the proper nourishment is lacking. talking of a sensitive heart, of a tender heart or of a heart of stone means merely juggling with pretty pictures which correspond to nothing physiologically. there may be sensitiveness, tenderness or stony harshness somewhere in the organism and the heart may give them expression by its fluctuating beats, but it acts on such occasions as a mere registering apparatus. adrenin taken by the mouth or injected into the blood stream causes the heart pump of a perfect indifferent man to throb as wildly as the heart of a lovelorn swain. strong doses of the nitrates may cause valvular insufficiency and "break" a heart more effectively than any catastrophe in one's sentimental life. =the heart is a respectable organ.= the choice of the heart as the organ of the emotions, in particular of the love emotion, is certainly due to the fact that it is such a faithful registering apparatus and also to a "displacement upward" frequently observed in modern civilised thought. we do not willingly mention the abdomen and therefore have rechristened it the stomach. we have read many times the appalling statement that a woman carries her child "under her heart." the seat of the mind which materialist physicians of ancient greece located in the intestines, rose later to the level of the solar plexus and with descartes finally reached the pineal gland. likewise the part of the body where love cravings receive their physical satisfaction having become taboo, the seat of love has been raised from the pelvis to the thorax, from the primary genital region to the breast, which bears secondary sexual characteristics. after which, the popular imagination has established an arbitrary contrast and antagonism between the mysterious clocklike organ in the chest and the mysterious soft mass in the skull. =the antithesis head-heart= is one which literature is not likely to abandon for years to come. we read that women "follow the dictates of their heart" while men are not so prone "to lose their head." the head is represented as the well-spring of reason while the heart is a fount of tenderness, if not of foolishness. modern scientific research has demonstrated that the brain is nothing but an apparatus for burning sugar which is transformed into electric current which the nervous systems distribute throughout the body. thought of the normal type is impossible unless the various parts of the brain are perfectly coordinated, just as the slightest accident to a telephone wire may leave a subscriber cut off from the rest of the world, but thoughts, feelings, emotions, cravings, originate elsewhere, in the autonomic nervous system. =nerve memory.= in our autonomic nervous system all our life impressions are indelibly recorded, probably thru infinitesimal chemical modifications of the nerves and the resultant tensions. pleasant nerve impressions (pleasant memories) direct us toward certain objects which are the source of such impressions, unpleasant impressions drive us away from the outside stimuli which once produced them. the former cause our heart to beat slowly, peacefully, powerfully, the latter speed up the cardiac pump so as to send energy as fast as possible wherever it is needed for defence against harm. pleasure, indifference and pain, built upon billions of nerve memories, make up the woof of our thinking. they are our mind, the mind that falls in love or falls out of love. the head supplies the energy and the heart registers the rate at which energy is sent thru the body, but the memories of which our thinking is made are stored up elsewhere. in a scientific study of love, therefore, i shall leave the head and the heart as individual organs out of consideration. chapter ii the choice of a mate =love is a compulsion.= the most striking characteristic in the love craving, one which differentiates it sharply from other cravings, is the compulsory exclusiveness of its choice. hunger drives us to seek a large number of substances which, by filling the stomach, relieve what cannon describes as a gastric itch. the person in love, on the other hand, seeks only one single object at a time, which alone seems capable of vouchsafing the desired gratification. a lovelorn man may be surrounded by many women, all extremely attractive and accessible, and yet pine away for some other woman who perhaps does not compare favorably with those he might conquer. he may, at times, yield to the temporary attraction of a new woman, but in the majority of cases, he will soon return to the woman he actually loves. not infrequently his environment will wonder at his choice. "what can he see in her?" physically or intellectually, anyone but himself would see very little to "admire" in her. =what we see in our mate.= the many handsome men whom we have met, and who are mated to homely wives, the many wives we have observed, mated to impossible husbands, and whose affection for their unprepossessing life partner is genuine and in no way dictated by sordid considerations, the many triangles we know of, in which a very inferior lover or mistress is preferred to an admittedly superior husband or wife, are evidence of the involuntary, nay compulsory, character of the love choice. a comparison imposes itself with certain obsessive fears or cravings bearing upon one object which, to any one but the person experiencing such fears or cravings, may appear anything but fearful or desirable. the psychoanalytic investigation of the origin of such obsessions always shows that they can be traced back to childhood impressions which have modified our nervous reactions to certain objects or ideas. =the meaning of choice.= applied psychology and laboratory research have in recent years attached a more and more deterministic connotation to the term "choice." the word, which to academic psychologists, implied the exercise of free will and "judgment," will have some day to be accepted as synonymous with "compulsion." a few examples from animal behavior will illustrate my meaning. philosophers have for years wasted breath and ink on the academic consideration of the following puzzle: a donkey is standing at equal distance from two bales of hay; the two masses of fodder are mathematically alike in size, shape, color, fragrance, quality, etc. unless the animal, certain philosophers said, was able to "make a choice" of his own, he would remain motionless between the two bales whose attraction would be perfectly balanced. he would, like some celestial bodies, be held suspended by two forces which would not allow him to turn to the right nor to the left. he would rationally have to starve if attraction were a force exerting itself from the outside exclusively. yet no donkey placed in such a situation will fail to make an immediate choice. he will turn to one of the bales and start eating it. even if we imagine a philosophising donkey reasoning as follows: "the two bales are equally attractive. hence it makes no difference which one i start with. let us begin with either." even then, he will have to "make a choice," altho his selection of one of the bales seems to be due entirely to "chance." =chance in the discard.= psychological research has eliminated chance as a factor in human behavior, and whether our donkey starts with the right or with the left bale, an analyst will insist that there are reasons why he picks out that one bale to be eaten first. laboratory dogs which have supplied solutions for so many psychological difficulties, have proved of service in this case too. if the slightest surgical operation has been performed on one side of a dog's brain, he becomes unable to move in a straight line. he deviates from the straight line toward the side on which his brain has been injured. if the lesion is on the right side he will be compelled to turn to the right and vice versa. this is due to the fact that the injury has weakened that side and the cerebral dynamo which supplies the body with power produces less current on the injured than on the uninjured side. when you row a boat and slack one oar the boat turns toward the side on which you are expending more effort. of course the process is reversed in a dog because the nerves of the dog cross over, the right side of his brain supplying the left side of the body, the left side of the brain supplying the right side of the body with power. let us repeat on two dogs, the experiment which academic psychologists imagined performed on a mythical jackass. =the dog's choice.= offer two pieces of meat to a dog whose brain has been injured on the right side and he will invariably eat the piece of meat nearer that side. repeat the test on a dog whose brain has suffered a lesion on the left side and you will see him gobble the piece of meat on the left side. go even further and place both pieces of meat on the left side of the dog injured on the left side of his brain and he will "pick out" the one farther out. not that he "prefers" that one. he will aim at the nearest but his injury will cause him to deviate too far to the left and he will be unable to reach the nearest one. other experiments on dogs illustrate the purely organic "motives" back of certain lines of conduct. when both sides of a dog's brain have been injured in the frontal region, the dog refuses to go forward or downstairs but has a tendency to move backwards and to run upstairs. when the back of a dog's brain has been injured on both sides, the dog has a tendency to keep on running forward all the time and while he is unwilling to climb stairs he will willingly go downstairs. =the behavior of copepods.= when we pour carbonated water or beer or alcohol into an aquarium, certain crustaceans called copepods will at once swim toward the source of light, as tho they "loved" light, and appear so interested in light that they will "forget," to eat their food, if that food is placed away from the source of light. the same animals when placed in water containing strychnine or caffein, will shun the light as tho they "hated" it, and as tho they "loved" the darkness. we know that if a galvanic current is sent thru our head we will lean involuntarily against the positive pole. if the current is sent thru an aquarium, a number of the animals swimming in it will be compelled to seek the positive pole and to remain there, others to seek the negative pole. in the case of the laboratory dogs, a permanent modification of the nervous system caused a permanent modification of the animal's behavior, which could not be "cured," (for brain injuries do not "heal," the cells of the brain being unable to reproduce themselves), but which would probably be compensated for by gradual adaptation. in the case of the "phototropic" or "galvanotropic" animals, the modification of the nervous system was only temporary but might cause a more or less durable modification of the animals' behavior, if allowed to last a considerable length of time. the love attraction or "erotropism" is likewise due to certain more or less lasting modifications of man's nervous system caused by the fact that his nervous system was for variable periods of time exposed to the influence of certain outside stimuli. chapter iii the quest of the fetish the papers now and then tell the story of some man who was caught in the act of clipping a little girl's braid of hair. that man is what is called technically a hair fetishist. hair is his fetish, that is the part of a woman's body which attracts him more powerfully than any other part. a search of the living quarters of that variety of "delinquents" generally reveals that they are in the habit of collecting women's tresses acquired in that fashion. the tresses are almost always of the same color. =the hair fetishist= whose unlawful activities bring him sooner or later into the clutches of the police is a neurotic who presents to an exaggerated, abnormal extent, a trait we find in all normal human beings. every one of us is especially attracted by some part of the human body. the young man who raves over his sweetheart's hair, the young woman who blissfully runs her fingers thru her lover's hair are also hair fetishists. but their craving is not strong enough to lead them into committing unlawful, perverse, socially inacceptable acts. another widely spread type of abnormal fetishist described by novelists and psychiatrists, but which very seldom gains newspaper notoriety, is the foot and shoe fetishist, who buys or steals all sorts of shoes. he too is merely the exaggeration of the man who is delighted by the sight of a cinderella foot or a slim ankle. with hair and shoe fetishists, the fetish is more than a mere attraction; it is generally a powerful sexual stimulant. such fetishists experience, while kissing or caressing their fetish, sexual gratification of the autoerotic or of the involuntary type. =everybody a fetishist.= there are hundreds of varieties of fetishism, normal or abnormal. there is no person living who is not more or less subject to the compulsive attraction of some fetish. there is in every man or every woman something which catches the onlooker's eye first and retains his attention longest. this varies with every human being. ask ten men to describe one pretty woman. every one of them will probably head the list of physical qualities he has observed in her with a different fetish. one will describe her as a blonde with a beautiful skin, rather tall and well shaped; another will state that she is a well-shaped woman, rather tall and with blonde hair; another will characterise her as a tall woman with an abundance of blonde hair, etc. i knew a man, in no way abnormal, who could not describe a pretty woman, regardless of whatever her build was, without making a gesture of the hand outlining ample breast curves. =most common fetishes.= women's hair, throat, neck, shoulders, arms and breasts seem to be the most frequently mentioned fetishes. fashion and the law recognise that fact. whenever women plan to make a physical appeal to men or women, they dress their hair with special care and they wear low neck gowns, thereby exhibiting those various fetishes. it will be noticed that the parts of the body constituting the most widely appreciated fetishes are those with which the nursing child comes in most intimate and continuous contact. to the child, they mean safety, comfort, caresses, food. the color of skin or hair, the shape of neck, head and shoulders on which his glances rest while nursing or while being carried about by the mother, are the only ones which will appear "natural" and safe, hence beautiful, to him in after life. the breasts from which he derives a perfect food, at the right temperature, which flows easily into his stomach and is assimilated without effort, the breasts, whose texture and elasticity make them pleasant to lean upon while nursing, may eventually become to his simple mind the most valuable part of the female's body. =the breast and the bottle.= my observations on several hundred men fed at the breast or on the bottle in infancy, have revealed to me that practically all the men nursed by a woman were greatly attracted to women with well developed breasts. the majority of men nursed on the bottle, on the other hand, preferred thin, boyish looking girls, some of them even expressing a distinct repugnance for rather buxom women. it may be stated that of the few who did not confirm that rule there were several more or less neurotic individuals, whom an unconscious fear of incest (see chapter v) had conditioned to fear the very type of women by whom they had been nursed. arms and hands, which to the nursling mean protection, service, caresses, transportation, etc., derive therefrom their great attraction as fetishes. =feminine fetishes.= i have thus far mentioned almost exclusively fetishes from the female body. there are several reasons why feminine fetishes are far more important to both men and women than masculine fetishes. children of both sexes are exposed to the influence of the mother's fetishes more intimately, more constantly and more "profitably" (nursing), than they are to the influence of the father's fetishes. hence masculine fetishes are fewer and less numerous. woman is less of a fetishist than man. the most frequently mentioned masculine fetishes are the bodily attributes characteristic of strength, and which, hence, would afford most protection to the infant and the female. no perverse fetishism is observed in women, no abnormal craving driving women into securing unlawfully men's hair or clothing, etc. some writers consider transvestite women, women who enjoy masquerading in men's clothes, as clothing fetishists, but such cases are extremely rare and can be accounted for in other ways. =physiological necessities.= there is another reason, a physiological reason, for the great importance which men and women attach to the feminine fetishes. more sexual excitement and a greater muscular tension are necessary in the male than in the female at the time of the sexual union. the female, being physiologically submissive, can wait for her desire to grow under the influence of the male's caresses. the male, on the contrary, has to be aggressive and cannot fulfill his biological part unless his desire has been aroused by other sensations than that of the sexual union. hence the greater expenditure of time and effort on the part of the female to make herself attractive to the male. hence also the long drawn courtship of flirtation thru which the female of every animal species endeavors to bring the male to the highest possible point of sexual excitement before surrendering herself to him. =foot and shoe fetishism= is more complicated. the mother's feet are the part of her body which the infant, crawling on the floor or attempting to walk, beholds most frequently and at the closest range. that variety of fetish, however, should not be as strong as other fetishes more directly related to the child's nutrition, comfort and safety. when shoe fetishism become compulsive, it is a neurosis due to the repression of some erotic desire aroused in childhood by some striking incident. one case cited by freud, illustrates that process. "a man to whom the various sex attractions of woman now mean nothing, who in fact, can only be aroused sexually by the sight of a shoe on a foot of a certain form, is able to recall an experience he had in his sixth year and which proved decisive for the fixation of his libido. one day he sat on a stool beside his governess. she was a shriveled old maid who, that day, on account of some accident, had put a velvet slipper on her foot and stretched it out on a foot stool. "after a diffident attempt at normal sexual activity, undertaken at the time of his puberty, a thin, sinewy foot like that of his governess, had become the sole object of his desires. the man was carried away irresistibly if other features, reminiscent of his governess, appeared in conjunction with the foot. through this fixation, the man did not become neurotic but perverse, a foot fetishist, as we say." i wish to call the reader's attention to the expression "after a diffident attempt at normal sexual expression." it indicates a feeling of inferiority, likely to cause failure and also increased by failure which is always in evidence in every neurotic and which drives him toward easier goals, along the line of least effort. some of the freudians have suggested that foot fetishism is due to the repression of an early craving for the unpleasant odors emitted by perspiring feet. as against such a far-fetched explanation, i would offer the fact that foot and shoe are always associated in the unconscious of neurotic patients with the male and female genitals, respectively. we find the association of shoe and genitals clearly indicated in the old custom of throwing shoes and rice at departing newlyweds (rice symbolising the fertilising seed). odors, sounds, tactile sensations, etc., may also be powerful fetishes or antifetishes, according to the impression they may have made on the nursling. this will be discussed in more detail in the chapter entitled "the senses in love." =fetishes may be of a non-physical kind.= a profession may be a fetish, and so can a mental attitude, in short, anything which in childhood may have been considered as a source of safety, comfort, egotistical gratification, etc. age itself, is at times a fetish. gerontophilia is a neurosis, the victims of which are only attracted to very old men or women, safety, comfort and food having been assured them probably by a grandfather or grandmother to whom they clung for neurotic reasons. =many fetishes are purely symbolical.= some women fall in love with a uniform because that type of garment symbolises to them physical strength, virility, courage, etc. a uniform fetishist who consulted me during the war had given herself to half a dozen officers who appeared to her irresistible until they undressed or donned civilian clothes. after which she felt indifferent to them and suffered remorse. =antifetishes=, parts of the body or their symbols which repel us in persons of the opposite sex, can be due either to unpleasant experiences of childhood connected with such parts of the body or to a neurotic fear of incest. a neurotic's resistance to a mother fixation may be so strong that in his (unconscious) fear of committing incest, he shuns everything which in any woman reminds him of his mother. a man whose violent mother and sister fixation had kept him till forty-five away from all women and made him homosexual, felt extremely uneasy and slightly ashamed in the presence of tall blonde women, the mother and sister type. while he never enjoyed greatly the company of any woman, he felt more at ease with small brunettes. in his case, blonde hair and a high stature had become strong antifetishes. =the quest of the fetish= means then, in last analysis, the quest of safety. if fetishes are so closely linked with sexuality, it is mainly because a feeling of safety is one of the necessary conditions for sexual potency in the male and the female alike. as soon as fear dominates, the pelvic regions are starved of blood, for the blood is then needed in other parts of the body, head and limbs, for fight or flight. sexual impotence is the result. this is probably why in primitive races we often find the erect phallus used as a symbol of safety, as a primitive "fetish" vouchsafing imaginary safety and confidence. this throws an interesting sidelight upon the real meaning of morbid fetishism. as i said in one of the preceding paragraphs, every neurotic feels inferior and seeks safety. the hair fetishist, for instance, is inferior in some respect or considers himself inferior, which is about the same and has the same consequences, as far as ultimate mental or physical results are concerned. the normal hair fetishist seeks a woman whose hair will symbolise to him the safety he enjoyed close to his mother's hair. the abnormal fetishist will crave the possession of hair which alone will place him in turn in possession of safety, a condition in which his sexual cravings will be easily satisfied. not feeling capable of conquering a woman, however, he will cut off some one's tresses, which will symbolise to him woman, and the safety enjoyed in woman's (his mother's) arms. in that fashion, he also gratifies his craving for the line of least effort. unwilling to face the social, economic, biological responsibilities that go with the possession of a woman, he seeks in the fetish which he steals, an easy, selfish, unsocial form of gratification. that gratification is also a regression, for it leads him back to the autoerotic practices of childhood. =attraction or obsession.= in the normal man, then, the fetish is an attraction, influencing his choice of a mate. in the abnormal man it becomes an obsession, the fetish at times becoming infinitely more important than the part of the body it suggests, at times causing the elimination of the sexual mate which it replaces entirely. in the normal man, the fetish, being the bearer of pleasant memories from childhood days, facilitates one's adaption to a life partner. the abnormal individual, unwilling to part with his childhood ways, which were easier and safer, either demands that the life partner be the absolute image of the person from whom he acquired his fetishes or prefers one safe fetish to any life partner. in the next chapter we shall see how mental and physical, real and symbolic fetishes are forced upon us by the various developments of the family romance which is always accompanied by a more or less marked family feud. chapter iv the family romance and the family feud the craving for food and safety, gratified in our mother's arms, the craving for safety gratified by the strong father's presence, develop in our nerves automatic reactions of love or hatred (fear) toward other human beings endowed with or lacking our mother's and father's fetishes. exposure to pleasurable or painful stimuli in infancy produces in our nerves a modification which could be roughly compared to the modification produced surgically in the brain of the dog mentioned in chapter ii. even as a dog can be conditioned to "prefer" turning to the right and to "hate" (or fear) running down stairs, a human being can, thru continued exposure to the sight of red hair in infancy, become conditioned to "prefer" red hair. many other factors, however, complicate the question of our likes and dislikes. a child's environment contains many sources of stimulation besides the mother's and the father's fetishes, all of them varying in intensity, duration and character (pleasant or unpleasant). besides, the child is forced at some period of his life into a more or less sudden and more or less pleasant contact with the outside world. that contact, which at times is a conflict, often causes some of the early impressions made upon the infant's or child's nerves to be "repressed," thereby originating a conflict in the individual's nervous system. and thus we are brought to a consideration of the family romance which various conflicts within the family circle and with the outside world, not infrequently transform into a family feud. =the oedipus complex.= the complication designated by freud as the oedipus complex is one of the most potent, altho at times one of the least obvious factors in family conflicts and in the mental disturbances which those conflicts occasion. the oedipus complex is named after the greek legend according to which oedipus killed his father and later married his mother without being aware of their identity. this is the form in which the oedipus situation appears in real life: a male child may become overattached to his mother and develop a morbid, more or less concealed, hostility to his father. the female child may become overattached to her father and manifest a more or less overt hostility to her mother. there is no case of neurosis in which analysts do not discover a more or less marked maladjustment of that type. in fact freud has gone as far as stating that the oedipus complex is the central complex of every neurotic disturbance. =the freudian view.= freudian analysts have somewhat dramatised the oedipus complex which they consider as due to incestuous longings. those incestuous longings, according to freud, are in their last analysis, a yearning of the child to return to the mother's body where the child enjoyed, in its prenatal life, absolute peace and comfort. the average child manages to free himself gradually from the mother's body, first seeking pleasurable sensations in his own body, sucking his thumb, playing with his genitals, later becoming interested in other children like himself, finally, at puberty, seeking human beings of the opposite sex, etc. some children, on the other hand, never seem to free themselves from the parent of the opposite sex. they are technically designated as the victims of a mother fixation in the case of boys, of a father fixation in the case of girls. =jung's interpretation.= jung, head of the swiss school of psychoanalysis, considers the oedipus complication from a broader point of view. to him the father and mother are not real persons, but more or less symbolic and distorted figures created by the imagination of the child. the yearning of the child for its mother, its jealousy toward the father are simply due to its desire to monopolise a perfect provider and protector. =pseudo-incest.= to adler of vienna, the oedipus complex is a fiction created unconsciously by the neurotic who is trying to fall back on the father or mother for support. the boy, afraid of life and of the responsibilities imposed upon a man by a normal sexual life, is naturally inclined to cling fondly to his mother, from whom he receives a love and adoration which need not be won or paid for or reciprocated and which in their demonstrativeness only stop short of sexual gratification. the neurotic girl dreams of monopolising the father's affection and financial support which are not to be repaid by sexual intercourse with its consequences, etc. freud's interpretation explains certain details of behavior in boys with a mother fixation but the yearning to return to the mother's body does not explain a father fixation in a woman. on the other hand, jung's explanation fails to account for some of the grossly sexual details in the behavior of the fixation child, such as great curiosity directed toward the parent of the opposite sex, at times, even, attempts on the part of a boy to possess the mother in her sleep, etc. =the neurotic life plan.= adler has clearly seen that the oedipus situation is not the cause, but merely one of the details of the neurotic life plan. a human being adopts that plan because, owing to some inferiority, real or imaginary, (real to him), he feels unable to compete with other human beings on a footing of equality. the neurosis supplies him with a short cut to power along the line of least effort. that short cut is selfish, unsocial and, hence, productive of unpleasant results. the mother-fixation man, the father-fixation woman shirk their biological duties, thereby leading an easier, cheaper, self-centered life which, in the end, vouchsafes them no real positive gratification. what adler has left unexplained is how the parent fixation establishes itself in the neurotic. =imitation.= the oedipus situation is simply one of the consequences of the imitation by the child of the parent of the opposite sex. imitation plays a tremendous part in human life and, as far as behavior is concerned, is an infinitely more powerful factor than heredity. heredity endows us with a certain set of physical organs, hence with a number of potentialities. but the utilisation of those potentialities is left to the individual's destiny determined by his environment. if the son of a splendidly developed prize fighter finds himself in an environment which countenances and lauds prize fighting, physical power will probably become his goal early in life. if his environment casts disobliging reflections on ring activities or if those activities have an unpleasant financial connotation for him, (father disabled and poor), the same boy will abstain from athletic training, remain physically undeveloped, perhaps even grow weak and stunted. =the glands.= as we shall see in another chapter, the various glands of our body have a good deal to do with the shaping of our personality but the pressure of the social herd within which we live is also a tremendous factor for it compels us to adopt as models for imitation certain physical and intellectual types which are acceptable to the herd. the degree of the pressure exerted by the herd varies greatly with social conditions. the pressure is not the same in an alaska camp and in a new england village. unnoticeable in an artists' colony, it may become difficult to bear in a large family group including several members of the clergy. children become grown ups by imitating grown ups. a boy acquires a man's behavior by imitating his father. a girl acquires womanly manners by imitating her mother. at the same time a boy with a strong organism and, consequently, a fair amount of self confidence, is not as slavish in his imitation of his father's ways as one who is cursed with a delicate constitution or who may have been made timid by fear-producing or humiliating experiences. the former is more adventurous in every way and will, not only roam farther away from his home, but let his eyes also roam on men outside of the family circle, whom he will pick out as secondary models. the weak boy, seeking safety and following the line of least effort, will cling to the closest model, his father, and in extreme cases, will identify himself with him. =the identification mania.= an exaggerated mania for identification is always a symptom of weakness and inferiority. the weak man joins numberless organisations and derives a great deal of pride from the mere fact of his membership in them. in general he will not allow anyone to discuss or criticise those organisations. the anonymous citizen of chicago or chillicothe is easily aroused by criticisms of his native city overheard elsewhere, for he identifies himself with his native city for lack of any distinction of his own. members of so called "aristocratic" families, themselves incapable of any achievement, are most unbearable owing to their family pride. they obscurely feel that if their relationship to some more or less distinguished ancestor was taken away from them they would sink into complete obscurity. the stupid traveler who constantly flaunts the flag of his country wherever he happens to be, is also an inferior who is trying to claim all the virtues which the jingoes of his land consider as national characteristics. close imitation and identification with the person we imitate cannot but lead to conflicts, for it sooner or later means that we encroach upon the rights of our model. =early conflicts.= the little boy who imitates his father, identifies himself with him and tries to "become" his father, may only provoke mirth when he dons his father's garments or carries his father's walking stick. when he carries his imitation to the point of handling his father's razors or sampling his cigars, he may court what, to him, is a very unintelligible, illogical and humiliating form of punishment. "if father is always right, why do i get spanked for doing what father does?" the child asks himself with a child's pitiless logic. a profound hostility to the oppressive father may then grow in the mind of the imitative child, in no wise due to sexual complications. this is also the way in which a rivalry may arise between son and father for the non-sexual possession of the mother, the freedom of her room and her bed, the sole enjoyment of her caresses, the sole disposal of her time, the sole domination over her. the father enjoys all those privileges, and in order to be exactly like him, the son must also enjoy them "exclusively" which is logically impossible and leads to unconscious death wishes. =death wishes.= the death wishes that lurk in the son's mind when his father and rival is concerned and reveal themselves thru dreams, are not simply murderous cravings. they are symbolical, like the death wishes which some fond mother may express thru her dreams when her beloved child has interfered too much with her activities in her waking hours. the imitative boy, beaten in the race for all of his father's possessions, of which the mother is the most valuable, wishes his father "out of the way." if there are female children, the imitative boy may, after giving up the mother as an unattainable goal, adopt toward one of his sisters the attitude of protection and ownership his father assumes toward his mother. in such cases, the feud is far from being as serious as it would be otherwise. a sister fixation, it goes without saying, is far less dangerous than a mother fixation. the sister is younger than the mother, the obsession of her image being unlikely to attract the brother later to women much older than himself. the love which a sister returns is also far from being as unselfish, intelligent and indulgent as that which a mother lavishes on her child. almost everything which has been said about the mother fixation applies to the father fixation in girls. but we must bear in mind that owing to the tremendous biological importance of the mother, a mother fixation is likely to have a deeper influence on a boy than a father fixation on a girl. =our preferences.= thus it is that the "preferences" we show when grown up, for a certain human type, are determined by the appearance and behavior of the males and females which were closest to us in the formative years of our life. in the majority of cases it is the mother type or the father type which proves most attractive to boys and girls respectively, the type being represented or symbolised by certain physical or mental fetishes. in many cases, the mother or father type have been modified or replaced by other masculine or feminine types which took the place of the mother or father during that important period of our life. the woman who suckled us or fed us and attended to our various physical needs, nurse or nurse maid, may become the bearer of our fetishes. in europe where the wet nurse and the nurse girl are infinitely more common than in this country, the ancillary type of love, love for servants and menials, is observed with much greater frequency than here. the southern man does not show the same repugnance as the northern man to consort sexually with colored women of the servant class. the colored mammy's fetishes are found competing successfully in many cases with those of the white mother. =craig's birds.= those who believe that heredity, instinct, the call of the blood, etc., have much to do with the choice of a mate, should read reports of experiments performed by william craig on pigeons. ring doves and passenger pigeons never mate. when the eggs of a passenger pigeon, however, have been hatched by a ring dove, the young male passenger pigeons will, at mating time, ignore entirely the females of their species, "their flesh and blood," and mate with female ring doves (the mother image) exclusively. the fetishes which to them meant food and safety in the nest mean to them beauty and eroticism when they reach adulthood. chapter v incest the family romance has been presented by the freudians as complicated by actual incestuous entanglements. adler on the other hand has shown that the incestuous situation is rather an "as if" introduced by the neurotic as a part of his absurd life plan. barring a few exceptions, the small boy does not desire his mother sexually nor does the small girl feel erotic at the thought of her father. that such incestuous desires arise at the time of puberty cannot be doubted. but they are observed mostly in neurotics to whom the incestuous situation suggests, as i pointed out in the previous chapter, to the boy, food, comfort, the mother's easily won love, to the girl, the protection and the attentions of the strong father. in many cases too, homosexual and incestuous practices among the children in one family mean nothing but the neurotic search for the line of least effort. freud seeks at times very far fetched explanations for very simple phenomena in order to show the sexual motive at the bottom of them. he states in his _introduction to psychoanalysis_ that a girl may show great affection for a younger sister "as a substitute for the child she vainly wished from the father." the truth is that the older daughter, in her close imitation of her mother, also starts "mothering" a child. "a boy," freud states in the same book, "may take his sister as the object of his love to replace his _faithless_ mother." he rather imitates his father and starts to protect and order about a little female of his age, which at times, when both have witnessed the parental embraces, may lead to actual incest. =the incest fear.= incest is at the present day the form of sexual relation which provokes the most powerful expression of disapproval on the part of civilised and uncivilised races alike. in fact the primitive races seem obsessed by a panicky fear of incest. in many tribes, brothers and sisters are not allowed to meet or speak to each other and, in certain cases, they must even avoid the sight of each other and eschew every mention of each other's names. in the fiji islands, where the rules against incest are especially rigorous, there are, on the other hand, special holidays on which orgies are held in which incest becomes permissible. in other words, the natives of those islands, while recognising the irresistible nature of the incest temptation and taking all sorts of measures in order to prevent the commission of that sin, supply at stated intervals an outlet for incestuous cravings. innumerable details of primitive legislation separate the son-in-law from the mother-in-law, the father-in-law from his son's bride. the basogas of the upper nile loathe incest to such a degree that they punish it even in animals whenever it can be observed among them. =incest in ancient times.= the horror of incest, however, is a relatively recent development in human psychology and ethics. the ancient dynasties of egypt and peru practiced incest. incest was indulged in by all the archaic gods. the authors of the book of genesis must have accepted the idea of incest as the sole means of explaining adam's and eve's descendants. the horror of incest which we all feel or pretend to feel, is indeed an acquired feeling. since every race has adopted stern legal measures to prevent incest, it can only be because a desire for incest is one of the cravings which mankind is constantly struggling against. as frazer says: "there is no law commanding men to eat and drink or forbidding them to put their hands in the fire. men eat and drink and keep their hands out of the fire instinctively." if men and women avoided incest instinctively no legislation would be needed compelling them to avoid it. indeed the confessions received by psychoanalysts reveal that the first sexual desires of the young are directed toward children of the opposite sex within the family circle. the many slight or serious indiscretions of an incestuous nature in which neurotic brothers and sisters indulge in infancy and childhood are generally "forgotten," that is, repressed, in later years, but analytic probing brings a great amount of such repressed material to the surface. since neither animals nor human beings experience any natural fear of incest, why is it that all races are officially so afraid of it? =inbreeding.= it cannot be due to the fear of race deterioration consequent upon inbreeding. inbreeding is not necessarily a harmful process of reproduction as east and jones have shown in their book on "inbreeding and outbreeding." it seems to have, at times, for instance in athens during the classic age, led to the production of many very superior individuals. furthermore the primitive savages who punish incest even among domestic animals have no conception of such eugenic theories. some of them, incredible as it may sound, do not even realise the relation of cause to effect which exists between intercourse and pregnancy. freud offers an explanation based upon the darwinian hypothesis of the primal horde in which the old father kept all the females for himself and drove away the growing sons. this state of affairs has been observed among herds of wild cattle and horses. it generally leads to the killing of the oldest bull or stallion by the younger males. =the primal horde.= freud assumes that this must have been the usual occurrence in the primal horde. one day the sons joined hands and killed the father. "though the brothers had joined forces in order to overcome the father, each was the others' rival among the women. each one wanted to have them all to himself like the father, and in the fight of each against the others the new organization would have perished. for there was no longer any one stronger than all the rest who could have successfully assumed the role of the father. thus there was nothing left for the brothers to do, if they wished to live together, but to erect incest prohibitions, perhaps after many difficult experiments, in the course of which they may all have renounced the women whom they desired." in other words, the incest taboo was adopted to assure peace within the family circle, a convenience measure dictated by jealousy. =repressed incestuous feelings= may at times drive one into a most objectional form of behavior. a brother who in childhood was too fond of his sister (or vice versa) may, from an unconscious desire for self-protection, adopt a hostile attitude to his sister. the more attracted he was to her the more sadistic he will appear in later years. he may even avoid all the women who would in any way suggest his sister and in that way never feel satisfied in love, for the women who cannot possibly suggest to him his sister, lack all the fetishes which would vouchsafe him safety and eroticism. such a man should be analysed and made to realise the incestuous cravings which he has repressed into his unconscious. his hatred would then change into affection and in his search of a mate he would logically seek the sister image which alone would insure him sexual happiness. i have reconciled in that way several groups of brothers and sisters who had never been able to get along after puberty, altho most of them had developed a dangerous fondness for each other before puberty. repressed sister fixation like repressed mother fixation has been found on several occasions as one of the components of homosexualism in the man, father or brother fixation as one of the causes of frigidity in the woman. =blood relations.= mother or sister fixation is frequently the cause of marriage between blood relations. this sort of union has been unjustly suspected of breeding mental inferiors. we should rather say that it is the mental inferiors who seek their mate within the family circle. unable to secure the mother or the sister as a mate, they select a woman who has as many of the family traits as possible, that they may feel more secure in her company. if a defective child is bred of such unions, it is not due to the close relationship of the parents but to the fact that too often one of the mates was deficient physically or mentally. in this respect as in many others, self-knowledge and acceptance of one's personality, coupled with a courageous understanding of unavoidable biological facts, are the necessary conditions for perfect mental health and freedom. the man with a mother or sister fixation, the woman with a father or brother fixation should be made aware of it, however slight or severe the fixation may be. they must be made to realise that incestuous cravings are biological phenomena which for reasons of convenience have been made unlawful but which do not brand the individual experiencing them as a degenerate or a vicious person. they must also be made to realise that their incestuous craving may be one of the symptoms of the neurotic search for the line of least effort, knowledge of which weakens the craving to the point of insignificance. the individual with a biologically real incestuous fixation should accept it and seek its substitute gratification thru association with a suitable mate presenting in his or her person the fetishes of the loved parent or brother or sister. the individual whose fixation is purely neurotic should be freed of it by analysis and allowed to seek a mate without being inhibited by ghosts. chapter vi the physiology of love a human being has met another human being of the opposite sex and is attracted to him or her by the conscious or unconscious memories which his or her physical and mental make up brings back. an organic compulsion drives a man to seek a certain woman who is to be his sexual mate. we say then that the man is in love. what is the tangible, observable, measurable meaning of the condition of being in love? to understand this clearly we must bear in mind the principle which modern psychology is gradually adopting, that of the unity of the organism. =the organism is a unit= which cannot, except for reasons of pure convenience, be split into entities of a contrasted character, such as body and mind, matter and soul, etc. to every physical phenomenon corresponds a simultaneous mental manifestation and vice versa. the body is the tangible aspect, the mind, the intangible aspect of the organism. nor can any scientific distinction be drawn between the so-called grossness of the body and the spiritual quality of the mind. nor can we establish in the body absolute lines of cleavage between the various organs, heart, stomach, liver or sexual organs. they are all closely interrelated and there again we find a profound unity of action. when the nerves of the "life division" of the autonomic nervous system are set working, the pupil will be contracted, the saliva flow, the heart beat more slowly, the stomach secrete gastric juice and churn food, the intestines push digested food toward the rectum, and the sexual organs fill up with blood. when the "safety nerves" are in action the pupil is dilated, the saliva scarce, the heart beats faster, gastric activities cease or become reversed (vomiting), the intestines either stop their activity or are affected by diarrhea and the sexual organs are emptied of blood. any stimulation applied to any of those organs will produce the specific stimulation indicated above in all the other organs, tho in varying degrees. in other words perfect peace and safety promote all the activities of the "life nerves," danger and fear promote all the activities of the "safety nerves." peace and safety build up the body and assure the continuance of the race. danger and fear stop all the activities which are not directly concerned with fight or flight, hence weaken the organism and stop the sex life. peace and safety represented by the mental and physical fetishes of the mate toward whom we are driven by an organic compulsion are bound to produce in us most gratifying results. the sight, smell and taste of good food, the sight of pleasant objects, the sound of good music, etc., produce a powerful stimulation. =love's stimulation=, reaching us, as we shall see in another chapter, thru all the senses and thru a thousand memories, is incomparably more powerful than that of any other craving. nutritious food in sufficient quantities is generally synonymous with good health. improper food in insufficient quantities is generally synonymous with bad health. the mental connotation of good and bad food, however, is far from being as important as the mental connotation of love or lack of love. there are besides the sexual factors, such tremendous egotistical factors in the love life (as will be shown in chapter viii,) that love is the most powerful stimulus known and the lack of love or the loss of love the most terrible depressant for the human organism. =the successful lover= has a good appetite, regular heart action, (hence a healthy complexion); he enjoys sleep undisturbed by nightmares, is capable of continued effort (good thyroid action), has firm muscles (regular adrenal section), is self-reliant, etc. in other words his organism is working on a hundred-per-cent basis and under the influence of that stimulation he can accomplish tasks which, under any other circumstances, would appear too difficult, and understand things which under the influence of a sluggish thyroid or bowels would have appeared very obscure. people indifferent to physiology might attribute some of love's magic results to "inspiration," to "spiritual uplift" and other vaguely conceived factors of a romantic and sentimental nature. i am always reminded when encountering such explanations in the literature of love, of the nuptial flight of the bee. when a male and female bee fall in love, they both fly to a dizzy height in the direction of the sun and there perform the sexual union. to an unscientific mind of the maeterlinckian type, there might be in that picture a beautiful symbol of love's exaltation. the cold blooded scientist, on the other hand, will simply tell us that erotic excitement in the bee produces a large amount of irritating phototropic materials which compel the bees to fly toward the source of light. at the end of the sexual act, the production of phototropic materials ceases and the bees come back to earth .... like lovers tired of each other. in love the conqueror feels like a conqueror and is a hard adversary to defeat. like the amorous bees which can reach, physically speaking, heights which they would never dream of exploring when out of love, the successful lover can rise to infinite heights physically and mentally. =the unsuccessful lover=, on the other hand, may be, in extreme cases, a pitiful individual to contemplate. the humiliation of defeat and the fear of other defeats, the starvation of all the senses which the love object would have gratified, produce a depression which stops temporarily all the life activities. appetite is lacking and there may be nausea and vomiting; diarrhea or constipation replace the normal activities of the intestine, thereby inducing weakness or autointoxication which, through a vicious circle, still increase the depression. the heart action is disturbed, which increases the uneasiness of the sufferer, his breathing is difficult, causing much sighing, the surface capillaries are emptied of blood, producing a morbid pallor, etc. a person in that condition is incapable of continued effort in any direction. the stoppage of all the life functions induces a sense of worthlessness. the fear of defeat not infrequently drives the sufferer to suicide, which is a symbolic attempt at returning to the safest condition in which the organism ever found itself: death, the return to uterine life, to _mother_ earth, etc. it may, if the adrenal cortex, productive of anger and violence chemicals, has been sufficiently stimulated by suffering, provoke attempts at vengeance, cause hatred, murderous cravings, which, if indulged in, land the patient in jail, if repressed with difficulty, land him in a sanitarium. =calf love.= those things should be borne in mind by parents attempting, for instance, to break up some absurd infatuation which is the more overwhelming as the unexperienced lover is not restrained by the many social or financial considerations which hover in the mind of a more sophisticated person in the throes of "erotropism." those complications are to be borne in mind too by the psychoanalyst who must not mistake symptoms of physical deterioration due to unsatisfied love cravings with gastric or intestinal derangement due to toxic agents, and who must bend all his energies to separate what is "purely" sexual, from all the parasitic cravings of an egotistical nature which make the patient's sufferings more acute. chapter vii the senses in love friedlander has wisely remarked that there is more sensuality than sexuality in love. which after all means that sex is only a small part of love. it is only after the various senses have reported to the central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolising peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human beings. =sight= is naturally the most important of the senses. like hearing, it is a long distance sense, which does not require close proximity like smell, nor close contact like taste and touch. thru association of memories, sight becomes the perfect, all embracing, descriptive sense, able to substitute for all the other senses. a glance reveals not only the color, size and shape of an object, but its consistency, firmness or softness, its state of preservation or deterioration, its probable odor and taste, etc. sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious. visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism; a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than major injuries to any other nerve of the body. the popularity of the movies is based upon that characteristic. to the unimaginative, primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory gratification. i have shown in chapter iii that the large majority of fetishes are visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body. =auditory sensations= which enhance erotic states also hark back very obviously to infancy. the caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that would enable the nursling to doze off. =smell.= in animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important part than the sense of sight. in man the olfactory sense has become more negative and protective than positive. it enables him to avoid rather than to locate certain objects. this partial atrophy of the positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of hygiene and cleanliness in human life. the child whose mother is carefully shampooed and bathed will not consider strong odors emanating from hair or arm pits as a symbol of safety. on the contrary, they will be something foreign to him, hence suggestive of danger. in ancient times, bodily odors were frequently mentioned as love stimulants. the homeric poems, the song of songs, the kamasutra and other hindoo erotic works, the arabian perfumed garden and even in more recent times, poems like herrick's "julia's sweat," extolled strong body odors which at the present day not only are deemed offensive but cannot be mentioned except in medical writings. the modern bathroom has exiled olfactory allusions from literature. odors can be, not only fetishes but very often powerful antifetishes. this is partly due to a repression of the child's interest in his excretions which later burst forth in the use of perfume by women, smoking by men and women. cigar smoking for instance supplies an outlet for a number of childish polymorphous perversions, to use freud's expression. in this case as in many others, violent repugnance to odors good or bad in adulthood may be traced to a morbid craving for them in childhood. =the sense of taste= is not very important in love, altho some experienced lovers detect a distinct flavor in the skin of various parts of one woman's skin, cheeks, arms, etc. taste observed in purely nutritional activities reveals constantly its unconscious infantile origin. however completely we may have been weaned, we constantly pay a tribute of appreciation to our first food. the exaggerated and unjustified importance we attribute to milk in the diet of adults, the way in which we designate a white complexion as "milky" or "creamy," and in which we praise many tender foods by stating that they are "like cream" or "melt in our mouth" illustrates, together with the popularity of breast fetishism, the influence which infantile gustatory impressions have made on all of us. =touch= is probably as important as sight for physico-chemical reasons. all animals seem to enjoy the close contact of other animals of their own species. even on very warm days, puppies, kittens and young birds derive a very great comfort from being huddled together in kennel, basket or nest. there are two reasons for that craving for contact. the safest period of our life which our automatic nerves remember is the fetal period during which the contact of the child with the womb is constant and in perfect relation to the fetus' growth. also, contact facilitates the electrical exchanges between human beings, especially between male and female, exchanges which owing to the removal of organic inhibitions, must be singularly powerful between lovers. =holding hands.= whenever conditions separate their bodies, lovers generally revert to the childish practice of holding hands, which to the child meant an assurance of safety when led by the strong parents and also facilitated electrical exchanges of distinct value to the young and old alike. =the kiss.= this brings us to the consideration of a love manifestation in which sensations of a tactile, gustatory and olfactory character are combined: the kiss. the kiss, curiously enough, is found both in certain animal and human races but not in all human races. many mammals, birds and insects exchange caresses which remind one of the human kiss. "love birds" seem to spend much of their time kissing each other. on the other hand, eastern races do not seem to relish the caress which western peoples call a kiss. in china a form of affectionate greeting corresponding to our kiss consists in rubbing one's nose against the cheek of the other person after which a deep breath is taken thru the nose with the eyes half-shut. in some primitive races the equivalent for our "kiss me" is "smell me." in other races, the kiss is a manifestation of respect rather than a proof of love. anglo saxons on certain occasions kiss the bible. in the early christian and arab civilisations, the kiss was a ritual gesture and has remained so in certain catholic customs: kissing the pope's foot, relics, a bishop's ring, etc. in certain races, kissing is a proof of affection but not of love. japanese mothers kiss their children but japanese lovers do not exchange caresses of the lips, according to lafcadio hearn. the dark races of africa are ignorant of that caress and so are the malays, the aborigines of australia and many other primitive tribes. =the birth of the kiss.= it appears that even among the kissing races, the kiss is a relatively recent development. it is rarely mentioned in greek literature. in the middle ages it was a sign of refinement, being almost unknown among the lower classes. some analysts have come to the conclusion that the kissing habit is derived from sucking the mother's nipple. if this was the proper explanation, all the races would naturally indulge in it. the kiss is infinitely more complicated than that. the freudian explanation should not be discarded entirely but it does not explain everything. the kiss has grown in importance with the restrictions placed by civilisation on sexual activities. the more primitive the races, the more promiscuous they are and the less they kiss. the kiss seems to have become among the more repressed and advanced races a displacement upward of the act of possession, a sublimation of intercourse. it is, next to sexual union, the closest contact which the male and female may attain. =kisses and electricity.= if we adopt crile's theory according to which the life stream is an electric current produced by the brain and constantly discharging itself, we may realise concretely the import of the kiss. the physical union is probably the neutralisation of two electric currents, positive and negative, altho we do not know as yet what correspondence there is between sexes and opposite electric currents. anyone familiar, however, with experiences in galvanotropism, some of which i have mentioned in chapter ii, will when reflecting upon the way in which the spermatozoon directs itself infallibly toward the egg, conclude that it is headed toward a strong electric current issuing from the woman's womb and ovaries. the kiss is only a milder, less complete neutralisation of the currents issuing from two human beings. if the kiss on the lips is preferred by lovers, it is because the moist mucus of the lips is a better conductor of electrical current than the skin. in very passionate kisses, the lovers' tongues play a double part, a symbolic part, representing the mother's nipple, and a physico-chemical part, securing a closer connection, like plug and socket in electric appliances. in anglo-saxon fiction which does not countenance descriptions of lovers' embraces, a very passionate kiss is always symbolical of complete surrender. physiologically this symbolism is quite accurate. the temporary exhaustion which follows a protracted kiss is often equal to that following a lovers' embrace and this can be easily understood when we remember the protracted electrical discharge which must follow the contact of the conductive surfaces of the mucus of the lips. chapter viii ego and sex if the course of love was regulated solely by sexual factors its study would be a comparatively simple matter. sexual cravings find themselves, however, in conflict with many other manifestations of the life force. for the _sexual libido_ is not the life force as certain psychoanalysts believe. it is only one of the manifestations of the electric stream produced in the brain and seeking an outlet. in fact, sex is only a _temporary_ manifestation of the life force, late to appear, early to disappear. embryonic life begins several months before sex becomes observable in the fetus. actual extrauterine life is in full swing before sex is ripe, that is, capable of fulfilling its biological destiny. life continues sometimes many years after sex has ceased to serve its reproductive purpose. the most powerful urge to which sex has to adapt itself in the life of the human animal is the ego urge, the craving for food and power, the selfish urge par excellence. at times, sex and ego work in perfect accord as they should, considering the close relationship of the nervous divisions carrying power to them. =neurotic complications=, however, due to the necessary repressions of modern civilisation, throw them too often into conflict. we might say that there is a natural source of conflict between them, for the ego urge is selfish, aiming as it does at the conservation of the individual and its personal upbuilding, while the sex urge, whose aim is to assure the continuance of the species, is altruistic. by altruistic i mean that one human being must, before finding the complete gratification of his sex urge, join his body to that of another human being of the opposite sex, whose sex urge he helps gratify, the result of that cooperation being the creation of a third human being. from this we may see clearly how the neurotic temperament, unusually self-centered, is likely to exacerbate whatever conflicts may exist between ego and sex. even in the so called normal human being, that is, the human being who in spite of life's repressions, manages to live at peace with his environment and himself, the will-to-power, the desire for possession and domination expresses itself constantly in what is generally considered as typically sexual manifestations of love. do not lovers say that they "possess" each other. was not the biblical god power before he became creation? in the beginning there was the word, that is the expression, the utterance of the divine ego. does not the unmated god of the western nations symbolise the absolute supremacy of power over sex? and when people pray to god, what do they ask for, in the majority of cases, if not power (help)? =self-love.= yet we often consider the craving for power as a form of love, self-love. when jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself" he testified to the fact that our self-love is the most powerful human feeling and he presented it as a goal which our love for others _might_ reach. he admitted that we all love ourselves first and he was too world-wise to advise men, as some of his followers have done, to repress their self-love. he only advised men to try and love others as much as they loved themselves. all the great conflicts between nations have been precipitated by ego rather than by love. love and sex were responsible, we are told for the most famous war in history and legend, the trojan war. i am quite sceptical about it in spite of the "evidence" presented by a poet who probably never existed as an individual, homer. i know, however, that the most atrocious war ever fought, the world war, was unchained, not by sexual jealousy, but by the most sordid, the grossest form of predatory ego cravings, the will-to-commercial-power. in innumerable cases, ego overpowers sex and compels it to suit its purposes. it masquerades in the guise of sex and deceives many as to its true nature. prostitution, in its last analysis, is the enslavement of sex by ego, sex working to feed the ego and supply it with necessities or luxuries. =ego in sex guise.= certain customs of ages past are sexual in appearance but the egotistical motive back of them is easily discovered. take the right of the first night, which in several parts of the world survived until modern times. the tribal chief or the lord of the manor had the right to spend a night with every bride within his jurisdiction before the rightful husband was allowed to enjoy his marital privileges. that custom made the first born of every family the putative descendent of the chief and fostered a deeper loyalty to him among his followers. even as economic exhibitionism prompts people to spend at show eating places sums in no way commensurate with their hunger, or to buy diamonds which are not in any way beautiful but only symbolical of the wearer's indifference to returns on his investments, egotism causes many men to pretend sexual cravings which they do not feel. many stage women, actresses, singers, dancers, etc., are kept by men whose sex life is at low ebb but who parade their "conquest" before their associates or perfect strangers to demonstrate their sexual and financial powers. =fatherhood.= a constant craving for fatherhood is not infrequently a neurotic symptom, an egotistical desire to compensate for low sexual potency. physicians and druggists dispensing aphrodisiacs can testify to the prevalence of large families in the homes of almost impotent men. the man who can fulfill his sexual duties once a year for fifteen years and foils his mate's attempts at contraception, is quite able to raise a very large family and to pass among his associates for a very virile man. the sight of his numerous progeny silences any scepticism as to his sexual vitality. some of the most astonishing vagaries in the choice of a mate are traceable to purely egotistical cravings. neurotic women married to a superior man may refuse to express any sexual joy in his arms. they remain frigid in his company and then give themselves to some rather inferior individual to whom they feel superior and in whose arms they show the most complete abandon. the medical and lay press very often relates cases of fine looking and apparently normal women who marry idiots or morons. their sense of inferiority and their fear of ego-defeat makes them seek inferior mates unlikely to dominate them in any respect. some young women conceal their morbid desire to mate with a degenerate under a philanthropic mask. they pretend, when marrying a drunkard or a thief, that their aim is to regenerate him. and so do some young men with an inferiority complex explain to their family and friends that they have married a menial or a prostitute to reclaim her. =war prisoners.= german newspapers mentioned several times during the war that war prisoners were treated too cordially by the women, many of whom had affairs with the defeated enemies. in several cities, it became necessary for the military authorities to issue proclamations on the subject, berating the offenders for their "shameless behavior." the same facts were observed in france and in italy altho they were given less prominence in the american newspapers. why was it that those women idolised men they were supposed to hate as enemies and accorded sexual favors to them? why was it that they did not enjoy more completely the victory of the males of their race and jeer at the defeated foes? those women were neurotics who, unable to enjoy the embraces of victorious, superior males, felt themselves superior in the arms of defeated and humiliated men. =neurotic motherliness.= a patient of mine who had always shown herself rebellious in her attitude to her sexually potent lover, became all tenderness and submissiveness one day when sickness almost cut off his potency. "i never loved him as much as i did yesterday," she told me, "for i felt then that i could really mother him." which translated into honest parlance meant, to use adler's vocabulary, that on that occasion he was "below" and she was "above." =when ego and sex do not conflict=, a combination of the two gives results which stamp human love as distinctly superior to animal sexuality. just as higher egotism has created cooperation, which eliminates individual fights and establishes in their place group fighting, healthy egotism added to sex has introduced cooperation and altruism into love. the egotistical desire to please and dominate the female thru vigorous caresses has thrown into the shade the primitive cavemanlike ways. man no longer strikes the female unconscious in order to satisfy his sex cravings on her prostrate body. his aim is rather to satisfy his mate first. this of course carries sexuality far away from its primal aims. love's byplays, in many cases, replace love's specific functions, the road from sensuality to sterility being a short one. when the goal of sterility is attained, we see sex willingly relinquishing its biological aims to egotism. in the plays of sex and ego as in the conflicts between the two urges, ego is more frequently victorious than sex. chapter ix hatred and love hatred and love seem diametrically opposed feelings. yet there are many cases when love masquerades as hatred and hatred as love. altho such hatred and such love are not genuine they may drive us at times into acts of cruelty or self-sacrifice which to all appearances seem to emanate from perfect love or from savage hatred. very exaggerated feelings should always be viewed suspiciously as blinds for the opposite feelings. an extravagant display of affection is generally a desperate attempt on the person indulging in that display at repressing loathing and hatred. on the other hand, morbid hostility toward one person is generally an attempt at repressing a love which would be unjustifiable or detrimental for the personality. a few illustrations from life will make my meaning clear. =a worried wife.= one woman i analysed was thrown into hysterical anxiety whenever her husband reached home a little late. she pictured him dead, dismembered by a train or knocked down by robbers. when she first called on me, she stressed the struggle going on in her heart. she loved two men and her nobility of soul, her delicacy of feelings, and many other qualities she bestowed on herself very liberally, were making that double life unbearable for her. "i have wronged my dear, dear, hubby," she kept repeating. "and he is so good, so kind, so considerate." the wife who never tires of singing her husband's praise is always somebody else's mistress. it is generally her way of settling accounts with her conscience. in this case, the anxiety she felt over her husband's whereabouts and health when he was late in reaching home, supplied the expiation which neurotics seem to crave for their misdeeds. but there was more in that anxiety than one of the manifestations of her sense of sin. i asked her whether she had ever experienced the same anxiety when her lover was late in coming to their trysting place. "no," she said, "and this is what leads me to think that i don't love him nearly as much as i do my husband." her reaction to her lover's lateness was simply one of anger. she felt herself slighted and she suspected him of stopping somewhere to flirt with some woman. even once, when a wreck on a suburban line leading to his home town, had prevented him from meeting her, she never imagined him the victim of any accident. further questioning elicited the information that death wishes had crossed her mind on several occasions in relation to her husband. she finally came to see that those repressed wishes were simply finding an outlet in her wish fulfilment fears. she was constantly visualizing the tragedy which would have given her her freedom. =the test of love.= in other words, her unconscious wished her husband dead. the repression of that wish compelled it to masquerade as a hysterical concern for his health. the thought of her lover, however, never suggested to her any death scenes. during the war a woman patient who had two sons at the front, was tortured every night by a nightmare in which she saw her older son killed in action. she very naturally interpreted those dreams to herself as convincing evidence of her greater fondness for that boy than for his brother. in the course of our conversations, however, she gradually admitted that her elder son was a gambler and drunkard and had found himself in many an unpleasant complication. she had thought several times, altho she had at once repressed the thought, that death would be preferable to his life of embarrassment and degradation. those repressed death wishes found an outlet in nightmares accompanied by a great display of emotion consciously felt as love and grief. parents who continually warn their children against accidents "likely" to happen to them, who grow panicky when some street commotion takes place and imagine that their child has been hurt or killed, are not quite as loving as they imagine. in such unjustified fears, as in death dreams, there lurks an ill concealed desire to be freed from the thraldom of parenthood and to regain the selfish happiness of the childless state. a young woman fainted several times when she heard shouts on the street where her young child had been taken by the maid. she "knew" something must have happened to her boy. her dreams would with alarming frequency picture accidents befalling the child. after i made her realise the way in which her child had interfered with her social activities, with her attending dances, theatrical performances, etc., a change became noticeable in her dreams. instead of visualising her child dead she saw him in her day and night dreams as an adolescent, no longer in her way, no longer a handicap to her in her pursuit of pleasure. her panics disappeared about the same time. more elusive at times are cases of hatred which analysis reduces to a struggle of the personality against an inacceptable love. =sour grapes.= a man, unduly attracted to a woman who socially, intellectually or financially, is or should remain outside of his reach, and would probably make an impossible mate, is likely to manifest violent hostility to her, to disparage her or even slander her. every analyst has seen in his office the middle aged woman who "breaks down" soon after her daughter's marriage to a man whom she "despises." either a family scene or a campaign of nagging and disparagement has caused a break between her and her daughter and son-in-law. analysis reveals that she is love with her son-in-law, a situation more frequent than the layman imagines. this infatuation which she cannot accept as a fact is repressed savagely. to protect herself against overt acts which would make her sinful or ridiculous, she exaggerates every defect of the man she loves. she pursues him with a stubbornness which cannot deceive a psychologist. his name is constantly on her lips, coupled, of course, with abusive remarks, but the fact remains that she is constantly speaking, if not dreaming of him. her peace of mind is only restored to her when she accepts as a fact a situation which need not be translated into a transgression of the ethical laws. for, in spite of what puritanical critics of psychoanalysis repeat, a conscious sex craving is more easily controlled and less likely to overthrow our willpower than an unconscious one. =brothers and sisters.= a similar complication is frequently found, as i stated in chapter v, in the history of neurotic brothers and sisters. a brother and sister may to all appearance be irreconcilable enemies. investigate their childhood and you will find memories of actual or attempted incestuous indiscretions which, after a while, were repressed either by punishment or voluntary restraint. in later years, fear of a possible recurrence of tabooed incidents may express itself in the shape of hatred leading at times to acute family conflicts, the brother or sister running away, the sister becoming a prostitute, etc. when hatred is unmasked and revealed as one of the avatars of inacceptable love, it dies off and is replaced by protective measures of a less objectionable nature, reserve or distance. =a negro hater.= a hysterical patient of mine who had always been a terrific negro hater and advocate of lynching, was disturbed at night by symbolic sexual dreams in which negroes took an active part. she could not help feeling uneasy in the presence of a colored man. "those beasts" was her favorite designation for colored people. what drove her into my office was that on one occasion she had behaved in a, to her, inconceivable way to a colored janitor's helper who had come to her apartment to inspect the radiator. the presence of that man had aroused her so powerfully that for a few minutes she had been on the point of making advances to him. she fortunately came to her senses and fled from what had always been to her an unconscious temptation. such incidents as that make one wonder how many lynchings have been precipitated by the hysterical actions of neurotic women. it may be stated broadly that every exaggerated attempt at protecting ourselves against a danger or a temptation is a confession on our part that the danger or the temptation is very fascinating to us. =reformers.= many "bold" reformers are merely very weak individuals struggling against sexual temptation and hating some vice which holds them in its power. the biography of anthony comstock which i have reviewed in detail in "psychoanalysis and behavior" proves that the obscenity he was so stubbornly ferreting held a strange fascination for him. i must not create the absurd impression, however, that all reformers are abnormal and moved by neurotic impulses. but between the scientist who warns people of venereal disease and combats it whenever possible and the so called "syphilophobiac" who sees everywhere chances for infection and would jail every prostitute, there is a great difference. =the syphilophobiac= is always a weak, oversexed individual, whose only protection against his promiscuous cravings is the fear of disease and the absurd assumption that every woman is infected. the syphilophobiac hates prostitutes because he would love them too well but for the protection he erects between their body and his desire. the feverish energy displayed by many prohibition enthusiasts is at bottom the hurrying away from a temptation to which they know they would have to yield. the great prohibitionists crave alcohol and could not, without a terrible struggle, protect themselves against the lure of drunkenness if strong beverages were available. the stage has pictured many times the crusty old bachelor who is a ferocious woman hater. in the end he succumbs to the wiles of the ingénue, who is generally the first woman he ever associated with. the poor devil realised too well all his life the irresistible charm of women as well as his overwhelming craving for love and the joys of the flesh. some neurotic incest fear, or craving for selfish pleasures, or money complex, however, caused him to avoid women and to protect himself against them by a display of hostility. the first time, however, when fate forces him into close contact with temptation he has to yield. =deluded martyrs.= in every social upheaval there are martyrs who sacrifice themselves for apparently very noble causes but whose unconscious reasons for their acts are much less sublime. stupid bomb throwers who wreck a building or kill an individual, (acts most unlikely to change a social system to which they object), profess to be moved by their love for the people. their actual motive is father hatred. brutus and others who delivered the "people" from some "tyrant," in reality gratified an unconscious grudge and sought their own liberation from some form of authority made loathsome by infantile complexes. the most grotesque example of it was the destruction of the bastille on july , by a french mob which imagined that it was thereby freeing crowds of innocent prisoners and abolishing arbitrary death sentences. there were less than a dozen people in the fortress at that time. the mob venting its wrath on a symbol of authority pretended to be animated by a love of freedom and a desire to benefit others. chapter x plural love and infidelity lecture audiences often ask me whether plural love is possible. this would indicate on the part of the questioner a more or less unconscious wish to justify polygamous cravings. plural marriages exist but i doubt whether any such thing as plural love has even been observed at any period of mankind's history. for the most complicated examples of plural marriage, as for all the varieties of sexual complications, we must turn to greece of the classical period. demosthenes wrote somewhere: "we have prostitutes to give us pleasure, concubines to minister to our daily needs and wives to bear us children and to watch over our homes." when we remember that besides the three types of women with whom they had sexual relations, many and among them some of the greatest men of those times, indulged in homosexual unions with young men of feminine appearance, we must draw two conclusions: first, that those men must have been sexual supermen, as they were at times mental supermen, second, that love as we understand it at the present day, can only have had very little to do with their sexual life. modern love as we shall see in chapter xxxi means mutual love, the equal gratification of the mates thru the rites of sex communion. =plural love=, be it of the ancient greek type, of the oriental or mormon type, means varietism for the male, scanty gratification for the female. at best a mild form of sexual slavery, most humiliating to the woman and possible only under a social system debarring woman from financial independence. only a man suffering from priapism could gratify the eroticism of a large number of wives and the latest or youngest wife would naturally receive a larger share of physical attention than the earlier and older mates. the jealousy and hatred thus engendered are in no way minimised by the fact that the custom of certain lands countenances such arrangements. =polyandry= as it existed in ancient times and still exsists in tibet, where a woman marries several men (generally brothers) may be more satisfactory for the primitive female. owing to her physiological make up, and also to her passive rôle in love, woman can gratify several men and receive gratification from them. the neurotic disturbances which may arise as a result of a woman's lack of sexual gratification are avoided by the polyandric scheme of union. but this is the only superiority which polyandry has over polygamy. both polygamous and polyandric nations and civilisations have gradually receded as far as numerical importance and world prestige go and both institutions are bound to disappear. the development of the human ego, both in men and women, will not permit much longer of the enslavement of one sex to gratify the pleasures of the other. nor can any group, male or female, enforce its domination over individuals of the opposite sex and make them accept the dogma of an inferior sex by embodying that dogma in any religious creed of the mormon or mohammedan type. =infidelity.= plural love is passing but infidelity has taken its place in every possible respect as a sexual and an egotistical form of gratification. when dealing with infidelity we must establish a careful distinction between forms of infidelity due to "normal" causes and other forms due to unconscious complexes. on the other hand we should beware of admitting, as many unscientific writers do, that there is a distinct difference of attitude to infidelity in the two sexes. that shortsighted viewpoint has been unfortunately voiced in hundreds of popular sayings which represent man as the great examplary of infidelity and woman as faithfulness incarnate. economic conditions, not sexual differences, are at the bottom of the levity with which men treat their heart affairs and of the gravity with which women, officially at least, consider the marriage relationship. financial dependence and the fear of motherhood compel the domesticated, parasitic type of woman to secure the services of a breadwinner, and after achieving that object, to avoid hurting his susceptibilities. independent and professional women, especially the sterile or sterilised ones, are frankly "masculine" in their love habits. but i insist on considering certain forms of infidelity as normal and others as abnormal, independently from the question as to whether they are socially desirable or undesirable. the human type which is so perfectly normal that it has no fixation and no definite fetishes, except species fetishes, and which weaklings and puritans designate as "animal," is not likely to be faithful to any mate. like every strong and healthy animal at rutting time, he or she is sexually aroused by every individual of the opposite sex. no safety complex restrains him as far as sexuality is concerned. the only fears which restrain his search for gratification are fear of exposure and ostracism within his herd, fear of pregnancy or infection and fear of final complications, not to mention of course the fear of inflicting suffering upon a lifemate of whom he may be extremely fond. for we must never forget the fact, unpleasant as it may appear to unscientific hypocrites, that lasting love is a matter of fixation and fetishism, hence, always slightly tainted with neurosis. =when love dies.= "normal" infidelity may also be merely the only hope of sexual gratification for the normal man or woman whose mate has ceased to present the fetishes needed to awaken his or her eroticism. healthy individuals are neither willing nor capable to forego sexual gratification. now and then complications arise, a man being very fond, for sexual reasons, of a woman who would prove undesirable as his mate and, for sentimental reasons, of a woman who is infinitely congenial but no longer arouses his desire. likewise, a woman may be deeply attached to both her lover and her husband. ivan bloch writes: "it is quite possible to love more than one person at the same time with nearly equal tenderness and be honestly able to assure each of the passion felt for him or her. the vast psychic differentiation involved by modern civilization increases the possibility of this double love for it is difficult to find one's complement in a single person and this applies to women as well as to men." george hirth, in his "wege zur heimat" also points out that women, as well as men, can love two persons at the same time. men flatter themselves with the prejudice that the female heart, or rather brain, can only hold one man at a time and that if there is a second man, it is by a kind of prostitution. nearly all the erotic writers, poets and novelists, even physicians and psychologists, belong to this class. they look upon a woman as property and of course two men cannot "possess" one woman. "regarding novelists, however," remarks havelock ellis, "the remark may be interpolated that there are many exceptions. thomas hardy, for instance, frequently represents a woman as more or less in love with two men at the same time." hirth maintains that a woman is not necessarily obliged to be untrue to one man because she has conceived a passion for another man. "today," hirth writes, "truly love and justice can count as honorable motives in marriage. the modern man accords to the beloved wife and life companion the same freedom he himself took before marriage, and perhaps still, takes in marriage. if she makes no use of it, as is to be hoped, so much the better. but let there be no lies, no deception, the indispensable foundation of modern marriage is boundless sincerity and friendship, the deepest trust, affectionate devotion and consideration. that is the best safeguard against adultery. let him, however, who is, nevertheless, overtaken by the outbreak of it, console himself with the undoubted fact that of two real lovers, the most noble minded and deep seeing friend will always have the preference." even under an economic system countenancing free love and birth control, such complications would surely arise and cause much suffering. =bored wives.= infidelity is often also a refuge from boredom for the middle class woman who has no definite training or ability in any direction and is thereby condemned to idleness. left alone all day and a few evenings every month by a busy husband, she yearns for companionship. unless she is slightly homosexual, she soon tires of stupid teas, bridge and gossip parties and she accepts the attentions of some man who brings into her life a little romance and a different aspect of the world's activities. the french cynic willy had that type in mind when he wrote: "adultery has become the key stone of society. by making married life tolerable it prevents the breaking up of the home." besides normal sexual cravings, there are many unconscious or only partly conscious causes which drive human beings into being faithless to their life mates. many women take lovers, many men take mistresses for purely egotistical reasons. justly or unjustly they feel a certain lack of appreciation in their mates and make up their minds to get even with them. ="getting even"= is one of the great neurotic cravings, one which has led to numberless offences, including crime and suicide. to some neurotics with a sense of inferiority, an extramatrimonial affair seems to be the sole means of restoring one's self confidence. "i am of no account at home but to some one else i mean the world." many neurotics use "romance" and "inspiration" as convenient scapegoats. "but for the inspiration i derive from my affair with so and so, i could not do my work properly," and this is true in a good many cases, but in many more cases, any one else would do just as well as a lover or mistress. some neurotics, who remind one of madame bovary, the heroine of flaubert's great novel, feel that accomplishment and the fullness of life are naturally associated with sexual irregularities. too inferior to accomplish anything by dint of hard work, emma bovary childishly expected love to accomplish everything for her. other neurotics, incapable of any creative work, consider romance as an achievement in itself and proceed to call every carnal dissipation romance. just as inferior boys at the gang age steal or destroy in an absurd attempt at "doing something out of the ordinary." some neurotics never feel safe very long with any sexual mate; they grow afraid or suspicious and seek safety in the arms of some other human being in whom they unconsciously hope to find the father or mother image to which they were over-attached. their search for the safe mate, that is, for the parent image, is, of course, always unsuccessful. =varietists.= i have observed a number of men and women who liked to designate themselves as varietists and who were simply unconscious or partly conscious homosexuals struggling against perverse tendencies to which they did not wish to yield. i have seen in my office several don juans who were unconsciously attracted to men and refused for a long while to admit that such a craving was a part of their personality. every woman they met only meant one thing to them: "if i could capture her, i would feel sure that i was a real man." a few days after catching their prey they were once more obsessed by doubts and had to seek new evidence. many partly conscious homosexuals seek women who in their appearance, manner of dress and behavior are the best substitutes for men, that is, mannish girls, flat chested, with narrow hips, bobbed hair, wearing tailor-made garments, engaged in masculine pursuits, etc. they often meet with disappointment for such women are frequently homosexual and hence unlikely to yield to a man. when the woman is sexually normal, however, the neurotic's happiness is far from assured. as soon as sentimentalism or tenderness allows the feminine component of those masculine women to break thru their masculinity, the unconscious homosexual loses his love for them. one patient of mine did his hunting among equestriennes in central park. on two occasions his attentions were accepted. his disappointment was terrible; calling upon the women who had attracted him when wearing a mannish derby and riding breeches, he was greeted by very womanly persons attired in the most feminine finery. several times in his life my patient has been in love with rather masculine women. the first flash of femininity in them had always cured him entirely of his infatuation. =the ultrafeminine.= other homosexuals struggling savagely against the appeal of the masculine, seek safety in the arms of extremely feminine creatures who could not in any way awaken the slightest suggestion of a perversion. their obsessive fear, however, does not allow them to enjoy the affair very long. small physical details which a normal man would not notice suddenly fill them with fear or disgust. a masculine gesture, a raucous intonation, a slight growth of hair on the upper lip or the limbs may suggest unavoidably the sex from which they are fleeing in panic. their love cools off and safety has to be sought, altho it is never found, in the arms of some other woman of very feminine appearance, who is in turn discarded for the same absurd reasons. as fixations and fetishism have infinitely more importance for men than for women (see chapter iii) the male neurotic is naturally more "promiscuous" and faithless than the female neurotic. =messalina.= every psychoanalyst, however, has met the messalina type, who is constantly seeking the "love that will endure." like her masculine counterpart, the don juan, she is in the majority of cases seeking safety and trying, by conquering many men, to reestablish her self-confidence which every little disappointment and humiliation destroys so easily. however loving and worshipful the neurotic's mate may be, he or she cannot hope to save the neurotic from further love entanglements. one of the most striking neurotic traits is a craving to disparage everything and everybody in his environment. the praise of the most affectionate husband or lover, wife or mistress, is insufficient to raise the neurotic's self-esteem. with all neurotics, familiarity breeds contempt and it must be from the lips of a new man or new woman that they must hear their praise sung before their feeling of inferiority is deadened and allows them to enjoy that praise. chapter xi is free love possible? "american medicine" commenting upon the fact that divorces have increased twenty per cent in eight years and that, if the rate of increase continues, there will be as many divorces as marriages in thirty years from now, reaches the conclusion that "the individual has moved on far in the past two thousand years, while the institution of marriage has remained unaltered through the centuries.... the basis of marriage as it was originally conceived was entirely a racial one in which the individual counted for little; it was meant as a means of building a family and conserving it. nothing else counted and the primitive individual exacted little else.... the modern man and woman demands in his mate more than that and it is here that the marriage institution is most defective in that it does not yield to these greater demands." polygamy and polyandry have been found wanting and have been abandoned. monogamy is, at the present day, tempered by frequent infidelity and numerous divorces. which means that it does not satisfy the needs of the human race. shall free love offer a solution? =man the dissatisfied.= i might as well voice here my pessimistic belief that there is no permanent solution for any human problems. the only tangible difference between man and the animals is that the animals are satisfied and man everlastingly dissatisfied. no cat was ever dissatisfied enough with the primitive feline way of catching mice to invent a mouse trap. the animals solved their problems thousands of years ago. unless domesticated and exposed to the exclusive influence of men, they never vary from the form of behavior of their particular species. the only problem they have been unable to solve is how to get rid of man, the invader and parasite, and they will never cope with it. man's satisfaction with every new improvement is only temporary. =the next step.= free love may be the next step in the evolution of the sexual partnership but it certainly will not be _the_ solution of the marriage problem. as far as the mates themselves are concerned, free love will only be a success in the case of extremely normal individuals for whom the sexual relationship means solely physical gratification. as soon as affection intervenes in those unions, the thousand forms of jealousy we shall describe in another chapter will enter into play. jealousy among free lovers cannot but rage more fiercely than among the legally married. a thousand details of married life are simply meant to establish the mates' ownership of each other in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world. the number of war marriages contracted hastily during the great european conflict by young men and women on the eve of the bridegroom's departure for europe testifies to the powerful "safety" symbolism of the marriage ceremony. a gullible young man in love with a girl would not have trusted her alone during his absence from home. she might have experienced a change of heart. after going thru a wedding ceremony with him, however, he _knew_ that she could not change her mind and love another. as a matter of fact most of those unions were disastrous. a virgin might have waited. a young woman left alone after a few days of erotic enjoyment was naturally an easy prey for any clever tempter. the bridegroom, on the other hand, went away blissfully, secure in the thought that the marriage certificate, the ceremony, the wedding ring, the transformation of mary brown into mrs. john smith would protect his "honor" while he was away. =blissful blindness.= some of the cleverest, most cynically suspicious husbands and wives go thru life blissfully blind to their mate's sidesteps. they see thru anyone else's husband or wife but they seldom suspect _their_ husband or _their_ wife. the stress which they place on the possessive works in their case as the fetish which a savage takes into battle. in hoc signo vinces. it is only in the so called smart set that men and women allude to their mates by their first names. the working classes, sexually the most conservative and puritanical, use the expressions "my man" or "the missus"; middle class men and women pompously refer to their mates as mr. smith or mrs. smith, always reminding their hearers of the legitimacy of their union. the celebration of wooden weddings, silver weddings, etc., is a means of reminding the community that mr. and mrs. john smith _own_ each other, just as the engagement diamond is a scarecrow proportionate in visibility to the prospective bridegroom's fortune. even if free love unions became the adopted standard of the land, those unions would be celebrated with appropriate ritual, the aim of which would be to tie the man to the woman and the woman to the man and to warn away sexual hunters of both sexes. free love will not be possible until the absolute equality of men and women has been accepted, not only theoretically but practically. before that equality is a fact, there must be written into the statute books some form of financial assistance to the woman disabled by pregnancy and lactation and which will enable her to retain her independence regardless of her physiological condition. even this will not be enough. birth control measures will have to become lawful and the subject of careful scientific teaching before woman can hope to lead her life unenslaved to her children's father. =what of the child?= besides, in free love arrangements, the mates are not the only parties to be considered. there is a party of the third part: the children, if any. if a perfectly independent male decides to cohabit for an indefinite period of time with a perfectly independent female, the community can hardly interpose any objection. for after all, most of our ethical indignation at the thought of temporary unions is due to the miserly fear of the community lest a pregnant woman and fatherless children be thrown upon it for support. no one's rights would be trespassed upon by such arrangements, ephemeral as they might be. as they would not cost anyone any money they would be considered acceptable. when a self supporting sarah bernhardt or isadora duncan bears children out of wedlock and we run no risk of being taxed for the support of her "illegitimate" progeny, we assume more liberal views than we would should a stenographer or a switchboard operator commit the same "errors." when children are the outcome of any form of union, however, the psychoanalyst, broad as he may be, is compelled to remember the pitiful stories he has heard in his office. no neurotic ever had a pleasant childhood. no neurotic was the child of a father and mother united by real love and manifesting within the family circle the mutual tenderness which is the poetry or the music of the home. =disharmony between the parents=, culminating in divorce or desertion, has wrecked the future of thousands of children. not every unhappy home has produced neurotics, but, every neurotic is the product of undesirable home conditions. furthermore, it seems as tho a child in order to reach normal adulthood should be brought up by both a male and female. many male homosexuals i have observed were brought up by a widowed mother or a woman abandoned by her husband or lover. in other cases, impotence or frigidity affected respectively boys and girls who had lost the parent of the same sex. many other disturbances of the mental life, due to incompleteness of the parental environment or to its imperfection, could be mentioned if the limits of this book would permit. from the point of view of psychiatry, there is only one answer to be given to the question if free love is acceptable. free love _must_ be supplemented by birth control. those free lovers who decide to procreate children must also agree to live together until the youngest of their offspring has reached at least its fifteenth year. creating children with the intention of turning them over to some charitable institution is also a proposition which to a student of mental disturbances appears just short of criminal. =the institution child.= few children thrive well mentally or physically under institutional treatment. children need love in order to grow strong mentally or physically. i read somewhere a story to the effect that a mediaeval ruler directed that some children be brought up by nurses who would never show them the slightest sign of affection or interest, his aim being, if my memory serves me well, to make extremely virile fighters out of those children, by protecting them against any weakening influence. as the story goes, all the children died. i do not vouch for the authenticity of the story but the vital statistics of orphan asylums affirm its plausibility. children fare better in a poor, unsanitary home, at the hands of a stupid and ignorant but affectionate mother than in an up to date, well appointed, sanitary asylum. they need, in order to develop a strong, serviceable, well balanced autonomic nervous system, the safety which emanates from the breasts, the kisses, the hands, the admiring glances of their mother. if no doting mother has ever told a child that he is wonderful and the most precious thing on earth, he will never quite consider himself as of much avail and will probably never become wonderful in any respect. =free love plus birth control= may reduce the actual population of the earth, but when only real lovers deeply attached to each other and only bound to each other by sexual desire and intellectual regard, will live together and decide to rear children as a monument to their love, free love and birth control will cause the population of insane asylums to dwindle to nothing and will save the world from the thousands of morons and neurotics who are the products of married disharmony and married slavery. chapter xii prostitution prostitution, as i stated in a previous chapter is one of the results of the overthrowing of sex by the ego. the craving for food and power triumphs over all the sexual cravings and compels one individual to pursue apparently sexual goals which are no longer sexual as far as that individual is concerned. the female prostitute lends her sexual organs to many men for money (food, power), not for her own gratification or to reproduce her species. that phenomenon is very complex and cannot be dealt with in detail within the limits of this book. i shall confine myself to pointing out some of the psychological problems which have to be elucidated before the causes, nature and results of prostitution can be clearly understood. =economic factors.= certain radicals simplify a little too much the problem of prostitution by considering it solely as a by-product of the competitive system which would disappear as soon as a more equitable system of production and distribution was introduced into the modern world. no one can deny that under our social system, woman, burdened as she is, by many physical and social handicaps, is easily driven to the wall in times of stress and compelled to sell her body. nor is there any doubt that under a system assuring every one a livelihood, regardless of business conditions, many women would be saved from adopting such a disgusting form of labor. at the same time, the radical interpretation fails to explain why, when submitted to a practically identical pressure, some women do not become prostitutes but either kill themselves or beg or steal. =lombroso's theory.= very unsatisfactory also is lombroso's attitude to prostitution. he finds a constant coincidence between prostitution and crime and states that the female offender _is_ a prostitute, one of the varieties of the "reo nato," of the born criminal. the female offender is not always a prostitute and modern research makes the theory of "congenital criminality" untenable. kurt schneider in his exhaustive study of seventy prostitutes brings out interesting details of their biography which throw a clearer light upon the psychology of prostitution. there were certain characteristics which all of those seventy women exhibited. they were all unwilling to work. they all were very grasping, altho, at the same time, very extravagant spenders when it came to personal adornment. eroticism seemed to play a very insignificant part in their choice of a livelihood. most of them were frigid, many homosexual, the majority of them sadistic. fifteen of them had been punished for larceny (money and clothes). many of them kept a pimp or cadet. most of them were unhappy, dissatisfied types. all of them were greatly attached to children. many of them were drunkards. one half of them were weak minded. seven per cent of them had been brought up in institutions. we have there a striking picture of inferiority. an endocrinological examination of those unfortunates, similar to those which have been conducted recently at st. elizabeth hospital, washington, d. c., would have probably revealed back of their unwillingness to work and of their thirst for money, weak thyroids and poor adrenals, not to mention unbalanced pituitary glands. the fires of the body burnt slow in them, producing and consuming little energy, a condition which, causing an obscure unconscious fear of the future, compelled those women to seek easy ways of gathering money, the only protection they could think of. their inferiority complex revealed itself in their craving for personal adornment, to which they sacrificed their protective earnings. =sensuality.= all the rant of the purity prophets to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not sensuality which "lures" women into a "life of shame." if the prostitute sought in her means of livelihood mere gratification of "vicious" instincts, why would she so often submit to the whims of a pimp who despoils her of her earnings. the prostitute hates the men who can compel her thru their financial superiority to submit to their sexual desires. the pimp, whom she keeps and who depends upon her bounty, is her inferior and the more she degrades him, the less she feels her own degradation. the prostitute, like all inferiors, is dissatisfied, but so are the man of genius, the inventor and the artist. the genius is the dissatisfied individual who organically is able to compensate for his feeling of inferiority by creating a more pleasant environment, physical or mental, and derives therefrom credit, praise, rewards, small as those rewards may be. the prostitute, too weak organically to find a suitable, socially valuable, form of compensation, flees from a reality which is unpleasant to her. alcohol and drugs supply her with a convenient form of escape from reality, the more acceptable to her as her intelligence is the more limited. =father fixation.= kurt schneider found that fifty per cent of the prostitutes he examined were weak minded. the chicago vice report published a few years ago revealed the fact that fifty per cent of the prostitutes examined by the vice investigators were the victims of a violent father fixation. one half of them, when asked by whom they had been seduced, incriminated their fathers. to a psychoanalyst such an answer is an obvious morbid wish fulfilment. all of the women probably experienced unconscious incestuous cravings at some time or other, and in the minds of the weak minded, (fifty per cent of them according to schneider), those cravings had produced an absolute delusion. whether the incest was real or imaginary, the fact remains that those unfortunates either believed in it or considered it as a plausible explanation and scapegoat. a lie, when accepted as a part of our biography, often affects us as mightily as tho it were an actual fact. for, after all, every lie we tell is a fact unconsciously acceptable to us and which affords our ego a certain protection. the woman with a father fixation is usually frigid. she either never marries or is a prey to prostitution fancies, until analysis has freed her of her unconscious incest fear or has led her to accept her incestuous cravings as a part of her personality. =prostitution is a neurosis=, affecting mostly the hypothyroid, hypoadrenal female of low culture and low intelligence. psychoanalysis, which requires a certain grade of mental development on the part of the patient, is rather impotent in the majority of cases of prostitution when the woman has crossed the line which separates fancies from practice. there are male prostitutes also, of the normal sexual type. i do not allude here to the homosexual males whose mentality shall be considered in another chapter. by male prostitutes, i mean men who consort with women, in or out of wedlock, for purely sordid considerations. =the pimp= who exploits some prostitute is a prostitute himself, but so is the man who marries for money or power a woman who does not attract him sexually. the male prostitute is, if anything, ethically inferior to the female prostitute. =prevention=, rather than any form of cure, may some day solve the problem of prostitution. repressive measures are, of course, a dishonest farce which deceives no one and benefits no one. the prostitute cannot be reeducated or adapted, for she is a weakling and the modern world offers to her no equivalent for what she would have to give up in order to reform. female children, on the other hand, if trained properly and made independent, mentally and financially, could grow up free from the handicaps and the fears which, at the present day, drive too many girls into adopting the "easiest way." =prostitution has no redeeming grace.= it may have saved many young men from impotence but it has made quite as many impotent thru venereal infection. some claim that it has saved many pure wives and daughters from temptation but it has contributed also thru infection to making thousands of innocent women sexual invalids. prostitution is a maladjustment whose worst sin is perhaps the maladjustment of married life which it occasions in thousands of cases. too many young men, who acquired their sexual experience with prostitutes solely, imagine that they know and understand women, and they proceed to treat their life mates as tho the latter were only slightly different from the unfortunate neurotics they hired to relieve their sexual cravings. to that sort of experience we owe the horrible type of the "typical husband" who never misses an opportunity of reminding his wife of the fact that "she is only a woman." chapter xiii virginity i am very sceptical when it comes to drawing a clear line of cleavage between what is typically masculine and what is typically feminine in behavior, and i believe that many of the so-called fundamental differences between the sexes are artificial and temporary ones due to the economic and social pressure which woman has to bear. even in the valuation of virginity, it is difficult to say that there is a masculine attitude and a feminine attitude. broadly speaking, we might state however that women, the world over, are more indifferent to the prematrimonial past of their future husbands than men are to the purity of their brides. =men experienced in matters of love= wield a definite attraction over all women, whether the latter are willing to admit it or not. this is not due to any especially feminine trait but rather to the difficulties which women encounter when they endeavor to secure positive information on tabooed sexual topics. they expect, therefore, their initiators to be conversant with the subject which is kept carefully shrouded in morbid mystery. the majority of men, on the other hand, when marrying a woman who is neither a widow nor a divorcée, expect her to be absolutely pure, that is, not to have had any sexual relations with any other man. =ethical prostitution.= in certain parts of the world, on the other hand, males appear rather indifferent to the female's past. in some parts of japan and among certain arab tribes, comely girls may go to larger centers of the population and devote themselves for a period of years to prostitution. after which, they return to their native place sometimes with a dowry they have accumulated thriftily, find a husband and settle down as wives and mothers, in no way disqualified by their promiscuous past. in certain parts of central europe, "window courting," as it is sometimes called, leads to unofficial trial marriages which do not arouse the jealousy of the final winner of a girl's favours. among the western nations, it is rather the very young, the stupidly conservative, the unsophisticated and the senile, who consider virginity as a great attraction and in some cases as a powerful sexual stimulant. the reasons for that are to be sought in the egotistical component of the masculine attitude. the strong and powerful male who has frequently proved his virility is not obsessed by the fear of defeat in love's intimacies. the innocent young man, on the other hand, who is full of misgivings and of diffidence, the elderly man whose sexual powers are on the wane and who is no longer sure of himself, prefer a woman who is totally ignorant of physical love. their embarrassment or their shortcomings may escape a virgin but would not escape a woman of the world, a widow or a divorcée. there is, therefore, in the search for virginity, a slightly neurotic factor, the fear of defeat, the line of least effort, the search for ego safety. it must be noticed that it was during the great neurotic ages, the middle ages, which witnessed the bursting forth of so many hysterical epidemics, that both the cult of the virgin and the belief in witches spread over europe. =the fear of woman.= man has always tried to protect himself against woman. in his fear of sex equality he has either made her an angel or a beast. the witch, perverse and filthy, was lowered to the level of hell. the virgin, on the other hand, unsexed and raised to heaven, was removed far enough from the world for perfect safety. =the will-to-be-the-first.= in the overemphasis placed by certain men upon virginity in the woman, and in the anxiety shown by certain husbands at the thought that their wife may have had sexual relations with another man previous to her marriage, we see the operation of the neurotic trait which adler has called "the will-to-be-the-first" and which manifests itself, not only in the love life, but in all of life's situations. the neurotic of that type, obsessed with a feeling of inferiority is tortured by the thought that he may not have been the first to caress his wife. analysis proves that in early childhood, he had a tendency (observable in certain breeds of dogs) to try to outrun every waggon, horse, train, etc.; that in later life he always tries to walk ahead when in company and hastens his steps whenever anyone threatens to pass him on the street. that type is given to hero worship, as he likes to identify himself with his favorite hero, cæsar, napoleon, etc. states of anxiety develop whenever his preeminence in society or business is threatened. =telegony.= in the search for virginity there may also be in the male an unconscious "intuition" of some scientific facts. the phenomenon of telegony, explained by dr. jules goldschmidt, of paris, in the medical review of reviews for april , would, if confirmed by careful observations, throw a new light on the meaning of virginity. the first male, goldsmith states, leaves an indelible impress on the female he possesses. goldsmith believes that sperm plays a twofold part in the female organism that receives it. it not only fecundates the egg but modifies the blood of the female. he cannot believe that nature would waste millions of spermatozoa in order that one of them should reach the egg. the millions of spermatozoa which are not needed for purposes of fecundation are absorbed, he thinks, by the mucous tissues of the woman's genitals and make her gradually more and more like her mate. to this factor goldschmidt attributes the likeness of mates who have lived together many years. "when we reflect," he writes, "on the deep impress produced by the action of a single spermatic cell, we at once ask what will be the fate of the myriads of spermatozoids entering at the moment of fecundation, and later on into the female organism. again we have to insist on the fact that nature works with excessive profusion, and that to secure success its means of action are multiple. everywhere in the living world male generative cells are brought forth in an overwhelming abundance. "their multiplicity guarantees at least the possibility of meeting the rather far-off ovulum, just as out of the multitude of male bees only one is chosen to impregnate the queen. "but it is inconceivable that the uncounted other male cells are condemned to useless death without any action on the entire female organism, into which, by reason of their mobility they can easily penetrate, either into the mucous membrance of the uterus or into the lymphatic and blood capillaries, and thru them into the whole circulation. "kohlbrugge has demonstrated that in the case of a certain bat, the spermatozoids do enter in great numbers into the superficial stratum of the mucous membrance as well as into the glands and the adjacent tissues. their fate is, of course, dissolution. we know that blood is the receptacle of all the products that are created by healthy life or disease. we know of no other liquid in the whole organic world so rich in the most heterogeneous chemical substances as blood. "certain important substances circulate in it, which we only assume are there, not having been able to isolate them, but with which we work when we elaborate preventive or curative serums. all the antigens, antitoxins, antibodies, introduced into the blood by the living action of pathogenic bacilli, as those of diphtheria, typhoid, tetanus, after the happy termination of these diseases, present themselves in such infinitesimal quantities that we can only designate them by their most remarkable biological effects. they either confer for a lifetime an efficient immunity against renewal or, exceptionally, an increased susceptibility (anaphylaxis) for the bacilli which have created them. "if nature, in its morbific attacks on the organism, uses great quantities, extremely small ones answer its purpose for defense. can we not by analogy conclude that the dissolved spermatozoids confer on the blood and thru it on the whole female organism, qualities which it had not possessed before their invasion? "from all of these facts we may return to our problem, and infer that not alone the solitary male cell which fecundates the ovulum is of importance to the economy of the female organism, but that we must not disregard the extremely numerous spermatic cells accompanying fecundation or the further introduction of these elements. "just as the bacillary products during and after infectious diseases represent substances able to confer immunity from any renewed attack and therefore cause an important transformation of the human system, so the inference must be allowed that the spermatozoids, too, do exercise an ultimate lasting effect on the females organism, which will acquire a greater sensibility for the original and an insensibility for, or non-susceptibility towards extraneous generative cells, even those able to fecundate." this exclusive adaptation of the female organism to the male one is the phenomenon called telegony. "a curious example of telegony offers itself when a white woman, who has at first lived with a negro and afterwards with a man of her own race, presents her second husband or lover with a more or less intensely colored child. such cases have given rise to dramatic and even tragic scenes when the innocent woman was simply modified (telegonized) by her first cohabitant. "all breeders are acquainted with the fact that the bull confers telegony on the cow. the dark colored bull having fecundated a light colored cow, the latter being subsequently covered by a red bull will put down dark and white streaked calves. "it is quite possible that the biological reaction of the blood in human and animal impregnation becomes identical in the mother with that of the first father, and that the influence of another male does not change sensibly the maternal blood." if demonstrated beyond the possibility of doubt, thru careful observation, telegony would be a tremendous fact which would, to all the egotists and neurotics, enhance tremendously the value of virginity in the woman. what a joy it would be for the self-centered, narcistic neurotic to know that he can gradually make his mate like unto himself! on the other hand, it might lead to most interesting experiments in eugenics and animal breeding. thru deferred impregnation, brought about by special contraceptive measures, a better human type and better breeds of animals might be evolved. it might also sound the death knell of certain contraceptive methods which prevent the human mates from attaining the physical and mental oneness which, goldschmidt says, is the result of life-long sexual association. goldschmidt's thesis is worth investigating. thus far the unverified observations and the sayings of more or less scientific breeders do not allow us to draw positive deductions. chapter xiv. modesty, normal and abnormal modesty is not easy to define, for it varies with races, epochs and climes. as i said in the preceding chapter, in some parts of japan and in one arab tribe, it is almost shameful for a young woman to be married without having had sexual experience. a woman of the western races on the other hand, regardless of her age and past, must in order to show a ladylike breeding, pretend a certain ignorance of things sexual when in the company of men, even in the company of her fifth or sixth husband. =in turkey=, a woman may show her eyes but must veil her mouth; in the southern sahara, men of the tuareg tribes go about veiled like turkish ladies. certain african tribes cover their backs carefully while exposing the rest of their bodies. in other tribes, men, instead of concealing their genitals, wear sheaths which exaggerate the size of their organs. in most parts of the earth, women keep the fact of their menstruation a secret. in others, they wear a cloth of a special color proclaiming that condition when present. =on the modern stage=, modesty seems satisfied if the nipples and the genitals are duly covered. in some parts of europe entirely naked dancers have been seen in public. until recently, an unwritten law made it more or less necessary for the male performers to wear more clothing than female ones did. the wave of homosexualism which has followed the war is probably responsible for the growing numbers of naked male actors and dancers who disport themselves nowadays on the french stage and elsewhere. there is a normal form of modesty, however, and there are many abnormal aspects of that elusive feeling. many animals seek safety and seclusion when performing certain important functions of their life, nutrition, reproduction and defecation, which naturally place them at a disadvantage in emergencies requiring flight or fight. even the boldest among the carnivorous animals, lions and tigers, drag their prey to a cave or into the depths of the bush before devouring it. naked and otherwise shameless and "indelicate" savages will often walk a considerable distance from their village to satisfy their natural needs, and then hide behind bushes or trees. many birds and animals pair off and isolate themselves at mating time. races and nations differ greatly in their degree of modesty in relation to nutrition, reproduction and defecation. european races dine in the open, are more or less "shameless" in their love making, they talk freely on sexual topics and erect urinals and comfort stations, designated by their exact name, in many public places. anglo-saxons hide themselves while eating, are very silent about the processes of reproduction, seldom indulge in public kissing and designate urinals and toilets, which are very scarce in their lands, by cover names such as lavatories, smoking rooms, etc. =normal modesty= may then be a survival of the fear which the primitive men and women experienced of being surprised and overpowered by hostile animals or tribesmen during an embrace or when unprotected by garments or armor. in fact, modesty seems to disappear as soon as safety reigns or when no hostile element may be suspected of lurking in the environment. a woman strips without shame to undergo a medical examination, men and women appear naked in public baths where only one sex is admitted at a time, etc. then also normal modesty must be considered as an offgrowth of the unavoidable repressions of modern, civilised life. like the incest taboo, it has been cultivated for reasons of convenience. modern community life having placed a thousand restrictions upon the age at which we can marry and the conditions under which we should marry, in other words, having delayed considerably our normal sexual gratification, an effort has been made to "repress" erotism by concealing "suggestive" parts of the human body. this is, of course, an abortive attempt, for habit is a more potent protector against temptation than veils. the races which live practically naked are not more erotic than the fully clothed, civilised races or the arabs who not only cover their entire body and heads but conceal even the shape of their bodies in the loose folds of their ample garments. a husband, no longer erotically aroused by his wife's naked body, may be attracted violently by the partly draped body of another woman. =suggestive draperies.= one of the results of the policy of body-concealment has been to transform certain draperies into sexual symbols of great aphrodisiac power. certain garments lend to the human body an appeal which it might not have if fully exposed. in other words, the obstacles which are meant to hold back erotism may be used neurotically as a morbid expression of erotism. at the present day, however, that form of protection against temptation serves its purpose to some extent and cannot be discarded until mankind has been reeducated. custom and the law uphold official modesty. the mere fact, however, that modesty has to be enforced legally is one of the best arguments against the sentimental, unscientific view that modesty is an "innate," "natural" feeling of "delicacy" based upon some "higher," "spiritual" values, etc. modern, official modesty is merely a compromise with sexual reality. it has been, like all inhibitory feelings, greatly overestimated and forced upon the weaker sex by egotistical men to prevent a display of their female's charms, likely to attract other women-hunters. weak males with a sense of inferiority have called modesty the typically feminine virtue. =excessive modesty=, in men as well as in women, is an abnormal phenomenon, a mask for unconscious lewdness and obscenity. it is a neurotic means of protection against uncontrollable desires, or at times an expression of one's "sour grapes" attitude to others. it is always the shapeless and unattractive woman who is the most vociferous champion of highneck gowns and long skirts. a sense of bodily inferiority obsesses the woman who does not allow any caresses unless the room is darkened. her modesty yields rapidly, however, to the praise of her attractions which she hears from the mouth of her lover. =immodest modesty.= a woman took her daughter to a specialist's office for an examination. the girl, asked to strip, complied at once with the doctor's request and stood naked before him without any display of shame. when they left, the mother made the very unwise remark that her daughter must have lacked modesty entirely to have stood the ordeal without any embarrassment. in this case, it was the mother who lacked "true modesty" and the daughter whose mind was "pure." the girl knew she was in the presence of a physician, but to the more highly sexed mother, the physician was above everything a "man." this sort of prurient modesty which, very often, exerts a baneful influence on the love-life of the individual, is usually due to repressed childhood memories and complexes. =fear of love.= stekel, of vienna, cites the case of a girl who evinced on every occasion a morbid fear of everything connected with love. she avoided men, she protected herself zealously against every "suggestive" influence, she decried love and marriage and was constantly trying to "spiritualise" the things of the flesh which she considered "bestial." analysis showed that until the age of thirteen she had been perfectly normal in her behavior, considering love and marriage as natural human goals. one day, however, she chanced upon a collection of pornographic photographs belonging to her father. instead of "corrupting" her mind, the incident disgusted her and caused her to renounce all the things of the flesh and to become unusually, negatively modest. a patient of mine declared on the occasion of her first call at my office that all men were "beasts." whenever she associated with a man, at dinner, theater or dancing parties, she suffered from choking sensations, nausea, etc. analysis revealed that at the age of six she had been subjected to an attempt at seduction. another woman patient who went thru a mental crisis in the course of which she gave up all worldly pleasures and decided never to marry, merging into hysterical states very soon afterward, had bow legs and a tendency to skin eruptions which had, on many occasions, proved humiliating to her egotism. her decision never to marry meant: "i shall not risk showing my deformed legs and my skin blemishes to a man." also, at the age of ten, she had witnessed a scene of brutality in which a man had dragged his wife on the street by her hair. she was morbidly modest and wept bitterly once when a man whom she knew only slightly, pressed a kiss upon her lips. withal her dreams revealed a violently erotic temperament. like all exaggerated feelings morbid modesty is the mask for the opposite feelings, passionate sexual cravings. the woman who allows every one to kiss her is aroused but little by such caresses. the woman who never kisses any one and pretends she does not like being kissed, is usually the one who knows that a kiss might cause her to lose her self-control and to abandon all modesty. the puritanical male, paragon of modesty among his sex, is either an inflammable type who is afraid of his own sensuality or an impotent individual who protects himself against being put to any sexual test. that exaggerated modesty is only one of the components of the neurotic temperament has been well demonstrated by adler: "the morbid modesty of neurotics," he writes, "who cannot visit a public toilet, who are unable to urinate in the presence of others, who avoid the society of women on account of blushing or anxiety or heart palpitations, reveals to us the strained manly ambition which supports itself against the original feeling of inferiority. "=the masculine protest= (craving for virility) of those patients, insecure to the core, forces them into this arrangement whose boundaries encroach upon those of bashfulness and awkwardness. often, in neurotics of either sex, one observes an inability to go to a toilet in cases of great necessity if some one is looking at them. the greater modesty of women, especially of neurotic women, in all relations of life, originates from the fear which is implanted in them from the earliest childhood that attention might be directed to their sex. "i have often convinced myself that the behavior of girls and of women is considerably influenced by this more or less unconscious factor, indeed that the progress of their sexual development, like that of male patients who feel unmanly, the formation of social and professional relations and love relations, are immediately checked as soon as the patient is allowed to play a real 'feminine' or subordinate part or presupposes this expectation from others. "this fact is in no way affected when repressed sexual stimuli come to light as the present source of the checks of aggression. they are similarly arranged and have the purpose of enhancing the fear of the partner and of permitting the retreat decided upon in the plan of life, to be entered upon with certainty; they are therefore acts of foresight. the neurotic had already in childhood laid the foundation of this foresight and in it is reflected the feeling of shame as the guiding line of reassuring modesty and the prudery of civilisation. "the previous history of the patient reveals an exaggerated modesty and this is true at times of those who in other respects show a boyish nature; the anxiety of nervous children on being exposed may be observed in their conduct. they exclude every one from the room and lock the door when they are going to undress. this conduct is also observable in boys who have grown up among girls. in the prognosis of neurosis, this expedient of cowardice is a bad symptom. it is the equivalent of later castration thoughts and neurotic wishes, the wish to be a woman, for instance, which expresses itself as soon as the fear of the life mate becomes actual or a decision has to be avoided." =lack of modesty=, when it assumes a morbid form, has, according to adler, the same meaning as prurient modesty. "the very shameless, obscene talker," adler writes, "is trying to demonstrate to his listeners the fact of his great manliness of which he is not very sure himself, the very immodest woman merely demonstrates her inability to adapt herself to her feminine role.... in the analysis of such women, at times only in their dreams, is observed the childish expectation of a metamorphosis into a male, an attempted substitute for the will-to-power, the will-to-be-above." chapter xv jealousy jealousy has been subjected to the distortion which every sexual manifestation suffers under the influence of our modern puritanical civilisation. it has to be concealed and lied about and derives from that fact an immense obsessional power. it becomes a mask for other feelings and, in its turn, may masquerade in the guise of other feelings. both its presence and its absence may denote normality or abnormality. intense jealousy may be the projection of our feelings into another individual and be a symptom of paranoia. on the other hand, the entire lack of jealousy of a husband who enjoys the sight of his wife caressed by another man, certainly reveals a most morbid masochism. hunger, thirst, erotism always find their satisfaction at some time. intense pain deadens itself thru its very intensity. jealousy on the contrary feeds on itself. it can be aroused by the unseen as well as by the obvious. in fact, like many neurotic elements, it thrives best on the invisible and the unreal. jealousy based upon unseen things, hunches, intuition, borders dangerously on hallucinatory states. the absolute blindness of some husbands, on the other hand, reveals a form of egotistical cocksureness closely allied to delusions of greatness. =rules for husbands.= forel, in some ways very old fashioned and unimaginative, has summarised as follows the proper rules of conduct for "reasonable husbands" suffering from jealousy. "an intelligent husband," he writes, "should quietly find out thru the usual agencies whether his suspicions are justified or not. for what is the use of being jealous? if his suspicions are unfounded, he can only annoy his wife and make her unhappy thru his jealous behavior. if he was right in suspecting her, there is only one of two things to be done: either an otherwise excellent wife has yielded to the attraction of another man and may feel perfectly miserable over it. she should be forgiven and led back into the right path. or a wife has no affection left for her husband or she is an unworthy, characterless deceiver, and in such cases, what is needed is not jealousy but a divorce." instead of "reasonable" husbands, forel should have written, husbands "free from complexes," for jealousy is little besides a neurotic mask for an unrecognized feeling of inferiority. there are thousands of husbands who would not dare to find out whether their wives are untrue or not. some may be so enslaved to their wives' bodies that they cannot contemplate the possibility of losing them. public opinion, if a scandal should break out, would compel them to seek a divorce and therefore they prefer to remain in ignorance of the real state of affairs and of their "defeat." others are so egotistical that they refuse to suspect their wives of infidelity and are honestly trying to protect their wife's reputation when they make a jealous scene. this is frequently observed among the "after-me-who-has-a-chance?" type of husband. other egotists fear the ridicule that might follow upon exposure and which might destroy some of their self confidence. they would be too weak to bear up well under their friends' open or concealed sarcasm. the jealous scenes they make to their suspected wives are in the nature of a punishment which they inflict on the faithless one. other husbands, entangled in extramatrimonial affairs, are in no way desirous to create a scandal but work themselves into jealous moods to keep up a pretence of interest in their wives. others, very old fashioned, believe in a double standard and, while condoning their own weaknesses, condemn every appearance of evil in "their" wives. =very few men or women admit their jealousy.= most of them cover it with ethical veils of the most transparent type: "you neglect your household," "you are a poor mother (or father) to your children," "you are making yourself (or me) ridiculous," etc. some husbands deny they are jealous but declaim against low neck gowns, flesh-colored stockings, face powder, rouge, lip sticks to which they object on "moral grounds." the last two groups derive a great comfort from their assumed ethical and moral superiority which they use as a justification for their endless nagging. some jealous husbands force motherhood upon their wives year after year as a protection against unfaithfulness. a woman disabled by pregnancy and lactation is, of necessity, more faithful. attempts at freedom on the part of a woman burdened with a numerous progeny can easily be repressed by admonitions such as "remember the children," etc. =jealousy and impotence.= jealousy in a man is often caused by the fact that he has become impotent. unable to gratify his wife physically, he imagines that she seeks consolation elsewhere and in that way he "gets even" with her: "i am impotent but she is promiscuous," so runs the neurotic's logic. not infrequently a woman who has been brought up to consider physical relations as slightly shameful and something which a well brought up female submits to, but never "enjoys," may, if she is very erotic, develop terrible fits of jealousy. frink, mentioning one of those rather frequent cases, dissects the psychology of that type of jealous women as follows: "if her husband's caresses leave her unsatisfied, she is caught between the two horns of a dilemma. if she grants that this is enough to satisfy her husband's 'animal instincts' she must then admit that she is more erotic than he is, hence, more 'animal' than he. and such an admission is impossible to a woman of puritanical upbringing. hence 'logically' she concludes that he must be untrue to her." frink adds: "undue jealousy in a man usually means that he has, or thinks he has, some deficiency of sexual power. it means in a woman, not, as many seem to think, that she is unusually in love with her husband, but rather, that she is not perfectly satisfied with him, and often that she thinks that if he really knew her, he would not be satisfied with her. in most patients suffering from morbid jealousy there is an overaccentuation of the homosexual component of the libido." very often some unattractive individual feels jealous because he or she has ceased to attract sexually his or her life mate. a neurotic, whose face had been made hideous by a discoloration due to illness, was sure his wife must have a lover, because she no longer seemed to feel erotic in his company. his way of reasoning was as follows: "i cannot disgust her, hence some one else must attract her." =childish behavior.= some neurotics with a strong father or mother fixation become jealous of an otherwise perfectly faithful and devoted mate because they fail to receive from their husband or wife, the sort of attention and uncritical devotion they would expect from a parent. those people are still children who never admit the possibility of adult equality between them and their mate. the mate must be the strong father or the self-sacrificing mother. they themselves remain babies, constantly to be petted, admired and consoled. if their husband or wife fails to shower on them the thousand little attentions which a nursling requires, they fly into a petty and unjustified rage, suspecting that some one else has robbed them of their privileges. the don juan and the messalina are quite as jealous as faithful mates. men leading a double life may watch wife and mistress with equal suspicion. this is probably due to the fact that they feel unable to satisfy both women sexually. orientals with a harem are said to be infinitely more tigerish in their jealousy than western men of the most monogamous type. i have known several married women who, altho they had deceived their husbands on several occasions, were terribly upset when their husbands showed too much interest in some other woman. =the ego rampant.= the proprietor of a hotel in a western town, who lived a few blocks from his inn, was annoyed when his wife refused more and more frequently to come and keep him company at the hotel in the evenings. when a young lawyer took up his residence at the hotel, however, she never failed to put in an appearance, regardless of the weather or of her health, which she had used so often as excuses for staying at home. later on, detectives supplied him with enough grounds to secure a divorce. curiously enough, what brought forth the greatest display of anger on his part when he recalled the incident, was not the thought of the caresses which his wife and the other man may have exchanged. his humiliation was indescribable when he realised that the other man had wielded more influence upon his wife than he had himself. "one night," he said to me, "when she came down thru a heavy snowstorm, just to see him, i could have killed her." =sexless jealousy.= all the foregoing tends to show that jealousy has very little to do with sex. many domestic animals evince violent jealousy when their masters show attentions to strange animals. a feud may be precipitated among the household pets when the dog beholds his mistress petting the cat and conversely. fox terriers often attempt to bite people who shake hands with their master or, in friendly ways, lay hands on him. likewise, it was jealousy which drove cain to slay abel and which caused joseph to suffer many indignities at the hands of his brothers. a freudian might say that cain and joseph's brothers were seeking the father's (god's) homosexual love and begrudged whatever of it was lavished on their victims. adler would more plausibly suggest that the prestige and power wielded by joseph and abel were too much of an irritant for their inferior and greedy brothers. in other spheres than the sexual sphere, we notice that success won by undisputed superiors or absolute inferiors does not arouse our jealousy. a young pianist does not resent honors bestowed upon paderewksy, nor does paderewsky begrudge the stripling his early success. jealousy, on the other hand, rages among great artists of about the same rank. in the first case, superiority or inferiority is taken for granted. in the case of equals competing for the same laurels inferiority is "feared." =husbands and lovers.= many men feel no jealousy over the caresses their mistress may receive from her husband. the husband has been defeated by the lover, hence is "absolutely" inferior. the same, it goes without saying, applies to women in love with a married man. many men, in fact, prefer to have extramatrimonial affairs with married women and many women with married men. they no longer fear the husband or wife whom they have defeated in the struggle for his or her mate's favor. they consider him or her as a watchful guardian of their mistress's or their lover's sexual life, less formidable than an unknown man or woman might be, who had not been defeated yet. the suttee custom in india, the various wills left by western men or women, providing that the surviving spouse shall be disinherited if he or she marries again, shows that jealousy has little to do with love, sexual or affectionate. that posthumous jealousy is a distinct attempt at controlling one's "property" after one's death, whether the property be a woman or a certain sum of money. =cruelty.= adler has pointed out the cruel character of jealousy and the constant attempts made by jealous neurotics to disparage and belittle their love object. "the neurotic suffering from jealousy is insatiable in his search for ways to test his mate. this indicates his lack of self confidence, his lack of self esteem and his uncertainty. his jealous efforts are calculated to bring him more into notice, to attract more attention to himself and thus to increase his self-esteem. he revives upon every possible occasion the old feeling of being neglected and disregarded, and assumes anew the childish attitude of wishing to have everything, to obtain a proof of superiority upon his mate. "a glance, a word spoken in company, an acknowledgment of a favor, a show of interest for a painting, for an author, for a relative, even a protective attitude toward servants, may be taken as the cause of the operation. in certain cases the impression is distinctly given that the jealous individual cannot rest because he has no confidence in peaceful happiness or account of his misfortune. then a neurosis develops in which an effort is made to subdue the life mate by a system of attacks, to arouse his or her sympathy; or perhaps the attack is intended as a punishment. headaches, weeping fits, weakness, paralysis,[ ] attacks of anxiety and depression, silence, etc., have the same value as alcoholism, perversion or lewdness. the line of distrust and doubt, often about the legitimacy of the children, becomes more pronounced, outbreaks of wrath and scolding, mistrust of the entire opposite sex, are regular phenomena and reveal the other side of jealousy as a preparation for the disparagement of the life mate. "often pride prevents consciousness of jealousy but the behavior is the same. this situation is at times made worse by the fact that the suspected mate beholds the helplessness of the jealous one with unconscious satisfaction and fails to find the words or the tone that would hold jealousy within bounds." =making people jealous.= this is why the efforts made by certain men and women to arouse their sexual partner's jealousy are productive of rather baneful results. they do not bring out the love or affection of the person who is made jealous but his worst egotistical and sadistic traits. one of the strongest factors in love being the egotistical satisfaction we derive from the possession of the love object and the realisation of our influence over it, our love wanes rapidly when we see another person wielding much power over it. the stratagem has temporary effects which may deceive the person using them. the jealous lover, at first makes decided efforts to regain his position, but he soon feels swayed by egotistical considerations which lead him toward the line of least effort. slighted by one woman, he turns to another for consolation, and usually finds it. the man or woman who considers it shrewd to let his mate suspect that "there are others," for one thing encourages faithlessness by creating a precedent. it is especially when the other (or others) are distinctly inferior in appearance or position that this sort of game ends disastrously. the woman who likes to mention the attentions bestowed upon her by some inferior man and seems to enjoy them accomplishes two things. she makes herself appear inferior and "easy" and makes her lover feel that any inferior man could compete with him for her love and that, hence, he himself must be inferior. he may run away from her to escape that feeling of inferiority. if he does not leave her, he no longer feels compelled to make any effort to please her, since worthless homage seems so valuable to her. =jealousy is the hell of love= and no one should dare to open its gates lightheartedly. one should be the more careful in arousing jealousy as the "green eyed goddess" now and then is responsible for some killing. the sexually jealous husband may kill his wife's lover, the egotistically jealous husband may kill the unfaithful wife. the former removes temptation from her path, the latter avenges his wounded egotism. it is not always the sort of love that flares up frequently in jealous outburst, sexual or egotistical, which is the deepest. i know of a case in which a husband repressed entirely his anger and desire for vengeance when his wife left him to live with another man. a clever psychologist, he realized that lack of opposition to her plans would kill the romance of his wife's rash step. he also knew that any violence to which he might submit her lover would crown him with the halo of martyrdom. he wrote to her: "i shall not interfere with your adventure, for uninterrupted intimacy will soon cause you to tire of each other. nor will i shoot him for i would thereby transform him in your mind into a hero." eventually, the "erring" wife returned to her home. chapter xvi insane jealousy one form of jealousy which has absolutely nothing to do with love in the normal sense of the word, and one which not infrequently leads to acts of violence, to the "love tragedies" of newspaper headlines, is simply one of the first symptoms of paranoia. =in delusional jealousy=, the patient suffering repressed homosexual cravings, projects his own desires into the personality of his life mate. an unconsciously homosexual husband, attracted sexually by every man in his environment, assumes that his wife is also subject to the same attraction and suspects her of having sexual relations with every man who arouses him. an unconsciously homosexual wife imagines that her husband has a liaison with every woman who appeals to her perverse fancies. the paranoiac being at times very clever and convincing, that form of jealousy, insane as it may appear to the man or the woman who is the victim of it, may deceive the outsiders. in certain cases, the delusional character of it is obvious to everybody, including the jealous person. a paranoiac told me that every night he "saw" a man entering his wife's bedroom thru a window protected by solid iron bars so close to one another that a cat could have squeezed thru them only with difficulty. this was, of course, a case of hallucination, pure and simple. =homosexualism.= other cases are more complicated. dr. s. ferenczi, of budapest, reports two of them which illustrate well the mechanism of insane jealousy due to unconscious homosexualism. he had a housekeeper whose husband, a man of thirty-eight, also busied himself about the house in his spare time. he was constantly cleaning ferenczi's rooms, putting fresh polish on the doors and floors, pottering around, evidently anxious to show his good will and his devotion to his wife's employer. this man was very intemperate and beat his wife on several occasions. altho she was most unattractive, he constantly accused her of infidelity with ferenczi and every male patient treated by him. when the woman revealed those facts to ferenczi, he gave the couple notice but decided to have a serious talk with her husband. the man denied having beaten his wife, altho this had been confirmed by witnesses. he maintained that his wife was a real vampire, whose lust was sapping his life strength. during this explanation, he impulsively took ferenczi's hand and kissed it, saying that he had never met anyone dearer or kinder than the doctor. a talk with the woman revealed to ferenczi that the man had always been very distant in his attitude to his wife. he would often push her away brutally, calling her all sorts of opprobrious names. when he learnt that ferenczi had given her notice, the insane man abused and hit his wife, and threatened to throw her out on the street and to stab "her darling." ferenczi at first paid no attention to those threats for the man remained very devoted, respectful and well behaved. when he learnt, however, that the man was sleeping with a sharp kitchen knife under his pillow and when he woke up one night to find him standing in his bedroom, he notified the authorities and the maniac was committed to an insane asylum. "there is no doubt," ferenczi writes, "that this was a case of alcoholic delusion of jealousy. the conspicuous feature of his homosexual attachment to me, however, allows the interpretation that the jealousy he felt of every man, was only the projection of his own desires for the male sex. also, his lack of desire for his wife was not simply impotence but was determined by his unconscious homosexuality. "to him alcohol played the part of an inhibition-poison and brought to the surface his crude homosexual erotism, which, as it was intolerable to his consciousness, he imputed to his wife. "it was only subsequently that i found a complete confirmation of this. he had been married before, years ago. he lived only a short time in peace with his first wife, began to drink soon after the wedding and abused his wife, tormenting her with scenes of jealousy until she left him and secured a divorce. "in the interval between his two marriages, he was said to have been a temperate, reliable and steady man and to have taken to drink only after his second marriage. alcoholism was not the deeper cause of his paranoia; it was rather that, in the insoluble conflict between his conscious heterosexual and his unconscious homosexual desires, he took to alcohol, which brought the homosexual erotism to the surface, his consciousness getting rid of it by way of projection, of delusions of jealousy. he saddled his wife with his desires and by jealous scenes assured himself that he was in love with her." =a jealous wife.= the other case is that of a woman, still young, who after living in harmony with her husband for a number of years and bearing him daughters, began to suffer from violent fits of jealousy soon after the birth of another child, a boy. alcoholism played no part in this case. she suspected every move her husband made. she dismissed maid after maid and finally had only male servants in the house. curiously enough, her jealousy was directed against very young and very old, even very ugly women, while she was not jealous of her society friends or of the pretty women whom she and her husband occasionally met. her conduct at home became so unbearable and her threats so dangerous that she was taken to a sanatorium upon freud's advice. after which ferenczi proceeded to analyse her. she harbored many delusions of greatness and ideas of reference. she thought she found in the local paper veiled allusions to her depravity and to her ridiculous position as a betrayed wife. the highest personalities in the land were banded against her, etc. she had married her husband against her wishes and when she bore the first daughter and he manifested his disappointment, she began to feel that she had indeed married the wrong man. she then made the first scene of jealousy in connection with a little girl of thirteen who came to help the servant girls. while still in bed after her confinement, she made the little girl kneel and swear by her father's life that she was still pure. this oath calmed her at the time. after the birth of her son, she felt she had fulfilled her duty to her husband and was free. she flirted with every man but would not tolerate the slightest liberty from them. at the same time, she made her husband violent scenes of jealousy and tried to incapacitate him, thru her constant passionate advances, for relations with any other women. when taken to a sanatorium, she gave evidence, thru her behavior toward the other women inmates of strong homosexual leanings. she confessed to ferenczi that there had been homosexual experiences in her childhood. she then became more and more unmanageable and the analysis had to be abandoned. =a case of projection.= this is ferenczi's comment upon this example of insane jealousy: "this case of delusional jealousy becomes clear when we assume that it was a question of projection upon the husband of her desire for her own sex. a girl who had grown up in an exclusively feminine environment is suddenly forced into a marriage of convenience with a man she dislikes. she reconciles herself to it, however, and only shows indignation when her husband proves cruelly unkind (disappointment over the birth of a girl) by letting her desire turn toward her childhood ideal, the little girl of thirteen. the attempt fails, she cannot endure homosexuality any longer and has to project it upon her husband. "finally after the birth of her son, when her 'duty' is done, the homosexuality she had kept in bounds takes possession in a crude erotic way of all the objects that offer no possibility for sublimation (young girls, old women etc.), although all this erotism, (with the exception of cases when she can hide it under the mask of harmless flirtation), is imputed to the husband. in order to support herself in that lie, the patient is compelled to show increased coquetry toward the male sex, to whom she had become very indifferent and, indeed, to demean herself like a nymphomaniac." i have cited both cases at length for they confirm the statement i have made elsewhere in this book that very exaggerated feeling is usually a mask for the opposite feeling. ferenczi's two patients, in love with persons of their own sex, "simulated" neurotically a passionate attachment for their heterosexual mates, who, naturally could not attract them. =masked sadism.= their stormy jealousy was more akin to hatred than to love. there was no tenderness in it but a good deal of sadism, of cruelty, and they used it in order to torture their mates on whom, in the course of their jealous scenes, they could heap up abuse, which they would not, under any other circumstances, dare to voice as freely. many a husband would like to insult a wife he detests. neurotic jealousy supplies him with an excuse which he might not find elsewhere. after which, if the vocabulary he used on that occasion is especially vile, he has a good scapegoat at his disposal. "i was crazed by jealousy and did not realise what i was saying." chapter xvii homosexualism; its genesis love's normal goal is the union of the male and the female in a way which may insure the reproduction of the species. at times, however, we behold love deviating from the path that leads to that goal: a man may love another man as passionately as he would love a woman, a woman may be consumed with desire for another woman. certain parts of the ancient world looked with indifference upon such deviations from the normal. the poems of sappho, the dialogues of plato, to only mention the best known sources of information on the subject, prove that in classic greece homosexual unions were countenanced by public opinion. in the "banquet" young alkibiades describes, with a frankness reminiscent of eighteenth century novels, his attempts at "seducing" socrates. in the holy island of thera an inscription commemorates the "wedding" of two young men, erastos and klainos, which was celebrated with all sorts of ceremonies. a distinction was even drawn in those days between homosexual love which was purely sexual and the kind of love which was both sexual and intellectual. =groups of male lovers=, harmodios and aristogeiton, kratinos and aristodemos, etc., became famous and legendary owing to their unusual faithfulness and constancy. pederasty was countenanced by the very behavior of the greek gods, of zeus in particular. the various philosophers granted women the right to indulge in homosexual love if they wished, but, nevertheless, lesbian love, as it was called after sappho of lesbos, was rather considered as a freak of nature, if not a vice. the low social condition of hellenic women accounts for that illogical difference in treatment. =women were harem slaves= with little opportunity for intellectual development and their homosexualism could not drape itself in the mantle of intellectual pretence which it wore in the gymnasiums and schools frequented by men. greek mythology offers no example of love between goddesses. sappho and the lesbian poetesses gave female passion an eminent place in greek literature but the aeolian women did not found a tradition corresponding to that of the dorian men. we even find in lucian's works a passage indicating that some of the greeks felt at the thought of female homosexualism the repugnance which we feel at the thought of male homosexualism. =the tide turns.= about the third century and until the eighteenth, the tide turned, at least in the western world, and homosexualism found itself confronted by a barrier of penalties which in certain lands included capital punishment. after the french revolution such extreme penalties were abandoned in several european countries. at present, death is no longer the wages of the homosexual sin, but jail sentences and ostracism of the most severe sort punish the sinner when detected. legally, then, homosexualism is considered as a voluntary "perversion," to be punished, not as an abnormality, to be treated or accepted. this position is absolutely ridiculous and goes counter to every possible scientific view of homosexualism, its nature and its genesis. whether psychiatrists consider sexualism from a "purely physical" point of view or from a "purely psychic" point of view, they all consider it, not as a matter of free choice, but as a compulsion, an organic compulsion according to the first view, an unconscious mental compulsion according to the latter. opprobrium and punishment constitute no solution for any compulsion, be it physical or mental. =many theories= have been advanced as to the genesis of homosexualism and most of them are very unsatisfactory because every one of them generally excludes the others and because they attempt one thing which cannot be done: to found homosexualism either on a purely physical or on a purely mental basis. we can never understand homosexualism until we consider it from an organic point of view, according to which mental states are neither the cause nor the result of physical states, or vice versa, but mental and physical states are two aspects of the organism, of the personality. the first hypothesis i intend to review is that of the berlin sexologist magnus hirschfeld which has had more influence on modern thought than any other theory of homosexualism and which unfortunately has been accepted as gospel truth by many homosexuals. =the third sex.= hirschfeld reminds us in his book "intermediate sexual stages" that during the first eight weeks of its existence, the fetus is neither male nor female. it is only about the eighth week that a differentiation takes place and that the sex of the unborn can be determined. a thousand physical influences may be at work in fetal life which may cause underdevelopment of the male fetus' organs, which then may resemble a female's in many particulars, or the overdevelopment of a female's clitoris which may make it slightly similar to a man's penis. thousands of variations can be observed which, in certain cases, have caused the attending physician to declare the child's sex as "doubtful." according to the degree of development of their sexual organs, hirschfeld suggests a classification of the intermediates into hermaphrodites, androgynes, transvestites, homosexuals and metatropists. i shall not touch upon the first two classes, hermaphrodites and androgynes, which are obvious, gross, physical malformations of a congenital character. transvestism, homosexualism and metatropism, however, deserve careful consideration. =the transvestites= are men who experience a craving to go about dressed as women, women who are anxious to dress themselves as men. hirschfeld considers them as closely related to the male androgynes who crave to have breasts like women and are ashamed of facial or bodily hair, and to the female androgynes who are ashamed of their breasts and wish to have a beard and body hair. transvestites generally explain that they do not feel free except in the garb of the opposite sex. "in men's clothes," a male transvestite said, "i have the feeling of wearing a uniform." "in feminine clothes," a female transvestite said, "i feel inhibited and hampered. it is only when wearing masculine garments that i feel energetic and efficient." the late dr. mary walker, the french painter rosa bonheur, the french explorer madame dieulafoy, were characteristic examples of energetic women who felt compelled to abandon the garb of their sex and to dress themselves as men. =are transvestities homosexual?= dr. wilhelm stekel of vienna objects to drawing a line between transvestites and homosexuals. but we must make a distinction. hirschfeld is right in stating that there are no more homosexuals among transvestites than among normal individuals. he means, of course, _conscious_ homosexuals practicing their abnormal form of love. we know however, that there are thousands of men and women who, while _consciously_ experiencing the greatest disgust at the thought of homosexual practices are _unconscious_ homosexuals. their dreams leave no doubt as to the nature of their cravings. we may reconcile the stekel view with the hirschfeld view by saying that transvestites are in the majority of cases unconscious homosexuals. they may _consciously_ lead a most normal life: madame dieulafoy was married and apparently very devoted to her husband whom she followed on all his voyages of exploration. _unconsciously_, however, and for reasons which we shall examine later, transvestites crave a change of sex. =metatropism= is masculine behavior in women, feminine behavior in men. normal man is physiologically aggressive in love, normal woman is submissive. in cases of metatropism, those characteristics are reversed. =the metatropic man= prefers tall, strong, powerful women, often of a different nationality or race, at times, women with some physiological handicap, lameness or deformity (the french philosopher descartes was attracted to women suffering from strabism). he generally selects a woman older than himself, either very intellectual or very low ethically. in one case he is dominated by her mental superiority, in the other he feels that he is sacrificing his principles or his social standing. professional or business women appeal to him especially. he is often a shoe fetishist. clothing which denotes power, authority, impresses him. =the metatropic woman= seeks feminine, beardless men, with perhaps a good head of long hair (poets, artists). madame dudevant, the french novelist, adopted the masculine name george sand and had affairs with two sickly artists, musset, the poet, and chopin, the composer. the metatropic woman is often a professional or business woman who, in her love relation, assumes a very independent, dictatorial attitude to men. she favors young men whom she can dominate better. in what hirschfeld calls metatropists, we recognise parent-fixation men and women, obsessed by a conscious or unconscious incest fear, a complication which has been discussed in another chapter. krafft-ebing and albert eulenburg classify metatropic men with masochists (see chapter xx) and metatropic women with sadists (see chapter xix). =dr. steinach's experiments= show the close relationship between homosexualism and the secretions of the interstitial cells of the genital glands. after castrating young rats which, after the operation, remained in an infantile stage of development, steinach transplanted into their inguinal region male or female gonads. males into which female gonads had been implanted, developed all the physical characteristics and all the mannerisms of the female, paid no attention to females at mating time and, on the contrary, attracted the rutting males and were attracted to them. castrated females in whose body he implanted testicles, showed the hardier hair growth of males, tried to mate with females and remained indifferent to males. prof. brandes, director of the zoological garden in darmstadt, has repeated those experiments on deer with identical results. the female in which testicles were implanted behaved like a male and grew antlers. the male's mammary glands grew very fast after the implantation of female gonads. it is said that steinach has successfully transformed homosexuals into normal men but the last statement of his on the "histology of the gonads in homosexual men," (vol. , no. , archiv für entwickelungsmechanismus der organismen) contains no mention of such results. =perverse birds.= if we now turn to experiments reported by william craig in the _journal of animal behavior_, we see an apparently different process at work. young male birds kept for a year in a cage with females and away from all males, will at mating time ignore entirely the females, and offer themselves to males in the mating position of the female. the same process is observable in females brought up with males exclusively. imitation in this case seems to give exactly the same results which steinach obtained thru castration and transplantation of gonads. if we now leave the physiologists and consult the psychoanalysts, freud, ferenczi, stekel and adler will show us that homosexualism can be produced by "purely" psychic factors. =freud rejects the hypothesis of a third sex=: "homosexual men who have started in our times an energetic action against the legal limitations of the sexual activity," freud writes, "are fond of representing themselves, thru theoretical spokesmen, as evincing a sexual variation, which may be distinguished from the very beginning, as an intermediate stage or sex, a third sex. in other words, they maintain that they are men who are forced by organic determinants originating in the germ to find in a man the pleasure which they cannot find in a woman. as much as one would wish to subscribe to their demands, out of humane considerations, one must nevertheless exercise reserve regarding their theories which were formulated without regard for the psychic genesis of homosexuality. psychoanalysis offers the means to fill the gap and to put to test the assertions of the homosexuals. it is true that psychoanalysis has fulfilled that task in only a small number of people, but all the investigations thus far undertaken have brought the same surprising results. "in all our male homosexuals, there was a very intense erotic attachment to a feminine person, as a rule to the mother, which was manifested in the very first period of childhood and later entirely forgotten by the individual. this attachment was produced or favored by too much love from the mother herself, but was also furthered by the retirement or absence of the father during the childhood period. sadger emphasises the fact that the mothers of his homosexual patients were often masculine women, or women with energetic traits of character who were able to crowd out the father from the place allotted to him in the family. i have sometimes observed the same thing, but i was more impressed by those cases in which the father was absent from the beginning or disappeared early so that the boy was altogether under feminine influence." "it almost seems that the presence of a strong father would assure for the son the proper decision in the selection of his love object from the opposite sex. "following this primary stage, a transformation takes place whose mechanism we know but whose motive forces we have not yet grasped. the love of the mother cannot continue to develop consciously so that it merges into repression. the boy represses his love for the mother by putting himself into her place, by identifying himself with her, and by taking his own person as a model thru the similarity of which he is guided in the selection of his love object. he thus becomes homosexual; as a matter of fact, he returns to the stage of autoerotism, for the boys whom the growing adult now loves are only substitute persons or revivals of his own childish person, whom he loves in the same way as his mother loved him. we say that he finds his love object on the road to narcism, after the greek legend of narcissus to whom nothing was more pleasing than his own mirrored image. "deeper psychological discussions justify the assertion that the person who becomes homosexual in this manner remains fixed in his unconscious on the memory of his mother. by repressing the love for his mother, he conserves the same in his consciousness and henceforth remains faithful to her. when as a lover he seems to pursue boys, he really thus runs away from women who could cause him to be faithless to his mother." =active and passive types.= ferenczi draws a distinction between the active and the passive types of homosexuals, that is, between the man who, in love acts like a woman, in a submissive way, and the man who loves men as he would women, in an agressive way. "a man who in his love relations with men feels himself to be a woman," he writes, "is inverted in respect to his own ego (homo-erotism thru subject inversion, or, more shortly, subject-homo-erotism). he feels himself to be a woman, and this not only in the love relationship but in all relations of life. "it is quite otherwise with the true active homosexual. he feels himself a man in every respect, is as a rule very energetic and active, and there in nothing effeminate to be discovered in his bodily or mental organisation. the object of his inclination alone is exchanged, so that one might call him homo-erotic thru exchange of the love object, or more shortly, object-homo-erotic. "a further and striking difference between the subjective and the objective homo-erotic consists in the fact that the former (the invert) feels himself attracted by more mature, powerful men, and is on friendly terms, as a colleague, one might say, with women; the second type, on the contrary, is almost exclusively interested in young, delicate boys with an effeminate appearance, but meets a woman with pronounced antipathy, and not rarely with hatred which is badly or not at all concealed. the true invert is hardly ever impelled to seek medical advice, he feels at complete ease in the passive rôle and has no other wish than that people should put up with his peculiarity and not interfere with the kind of satisfaction that suits him. he is not very passionate and chiefly demands from his lover the recognition of his bodily and other merits. "the object-homo-erotic, on the other hand, is uncommonly tormented by the consciousness of his own abnormality; sexual intercourse never completely satisfies him; he is tortured by qualms of conscience and overestimates his sexual object to the uttermost. "the subject-homo-erotic is a member of the intermediate sex, in the sense of magnus hirschfeld and his followers. the object-homo-erotic, is the victim of an obsessional neurosis." the distinction between active and passive homosexuals is convenient but slightly arbitrary. certain homosexuals are at times passive and at times active. both types become at times the victims of obsessions and seek the help of psychotherapists. active as well as passive homosexuals may be married and heterosexually potent. =the homosexual neurosis.= dr. wilhelm stekel of vienna calls homosexualism the homosexual neurosis. he summarises the genesis of homosexualism as follows: "as a child the homosexual is very precocious sexually and can only repress his cravings by developing fear, hatred and disgust at the thought of heterosexual relations. the result of that repression is a flight from normal into abnormal forms of sexual gratification." =a safety device.= to adler, homosexualism is a detail of the neurotic picture, a compromise and a safety device. "every neurotic," he writes, "experiences at some time during his childhood doubts as to whether he will ever attain complete virility. giving up the hope of being a real man, is, for a child, synonymous with being a woman. this carries in its wake a whole cycle of childish valuations: aggression, activity, power, freedom, wealth, sadism are male attributes; inhibitions, cowardice, obedience, poverty are female attributes. "the child plays for a while a dual part, being submissive to his parents and teachers but indulging in dreams which express his craving for independence, freedom and importance. "this duality in the child's psyche, the forerunner of a split in his consciousness, can have varying results in later years. the individual will oscillate between the male and the female poles with a constant striving toward the unification of those two tendencies. "the masculine component prevents a complete assumption of the feminine rôle, the feminine component is an obstacle to complete virility. hence a compromise: feminine behavior thru masculine means: a timid submissive male, masculine masochism, homosexuality. or masculine behavior thru feminine devices." =above and below.= a series of comparisons has established itself in the human mind, owing to the enslavement of the female by the male, starting with the antithesis: male-female: good and bad, right and left, high, and low, above and below. in every female neurotic, according to adler, there is a refusal to be a female, that is, to be below (socially as well as sexually). the female who is inferior in looks or intelligence or position and cannot either compensate for that inferiority by displaying superiority in some other way (artistic or scientific accomplishment), or reconcile herself to her inferior position, wishes consciously and unconsciously to be a man. consciously she makes herself as masculine as possible. unconsciously, she dreams herself into a male personality, physically, mentally, socially and sexually. her wish to be above makes her play a man's part in love as well as in the world's life. =a way out.= homosexualism is, like every neurotic symptom, a way out of life's difficulties. a male homosexual i treated associated the idea of woman with "trouble, sickness, expense, lack of freedom." "every" woman was to him a "leg puller," a "gold digger," a liar, insatiable in her demands, spying on her husband, constantly suffering from "female trouble." this man had never been married and his only sexual experiences, which were of the most ephemeral type, had been gained in the few hours of his life which he spent with a woman much older than himself, a cabaret singer and a prostitute. yet, he was convinced that "women are too much trouble." an unconsciously homosexual male who is married, and quite potent and who consulted me after a serious "breakdown," had a dream in which he saw himself at the top of a mountain in africa (flight from reality and his present environment). six large negroes (powerful male sexuality) carried away his wife's coffin, (flight from the sexual partner). a long line of negroes then walked past him and he felt that as long as he would be on friendly terms with them, he would not want for anything (line of least effort). female homosexuals who had never had any normal heterosexual experience ranted along the same line of thought: "a husband is too much trouble." "the idea of submitting to a brute of a man," "i don't wish to be a slave to a man," etc. all this voices what adler terms the "masculine protest." =the escape from biological duties.= kempf also considers homosexualism as a compromise and a convenient escape from biological duties. "heterosexual potency," he writes "judging from the behavior of many psychopaths and normals of both sexes, varies in its vigor and is never quite secure from the possibility of disintegration in the face of depressing influences, such as disease, a frigid, unkind, terrifying, neurotic or disgusting mate, hopeless economic burdens, fear of pregnancy, or venereal diseases, social scandals, an inaccessible or unresponsive love-object, death of the mate or a too fixed mother-attachment. the intrigues and usurpations of power by the family of the mate, suppressing the idealised wishes of the individual, often cause the regression to the lower level of homo-sexuality, where, at least, parental sacrifices need not be made." chapter xviii homosexualism, a neurotic symptom the varying views as to the genesis of homosexualism, which i have attempted to summarise in the preceding chapter, can be easily reconciled. doubts as to one's "completeness" and a craving for safety may, even at an early age, cause the gonads to remain undeveloped or to develop in the wrong direction. craig's pigeons were as completely "perverted" by the wrong environment as steinach's rats by surgical operations. hirschfeld's intermediate sex, in its concealed forms, that is, when the individual, upon gross examination, appears normal, may well be produced by the environment. freud's oedipus situation is not incompatible with adler's theory of the neurotic constitution. gonads are not different from any other glands. thyroid involvement may produce fear or, at least, a picture of fear (exophthalmic goitre), but fear also produces many forms of thyroid involvement (goitre and exophthalmic goitre were alarmingly frequent in french towns submitted to bombardment during the world war). a study of psychic impotence in men and frigidity in women has proved that impotence was mainly a refusal to be a potent man, frigidity a refusal to be woman in intercourse. in certain cases, exaggerated cravings for impotence or frigidity may modify the gonads so completely that they present the condition hirschfeld has called typical of the intermediate sex. homosexualism can be best understood when viewed as a neurotic phenomenon, not as a neurosis in itself, but as a detail of the neurotic attitude to life outlined by adler. homosexualism is, in its last analysis, an organic striving away from life's normal goals. =a denial of life.= homosexualism cannot be understood unless we associate it with a denial of life and all its duties. nor could love be understood if we tried to dissociate it from its primary sexual goal which is the acceptance of life with its duties, symbolised by the procreation of life and the creation of new duties by the individual, duties which he considers as a source of joy. =homosexualism is love, negative love=, quite as involuntary and as obsessive as normal, heterosexual, positive love. a homosexual teacher wrote to plazek: "a glance at the literature and art produced by homosexuals as well as insight into actual conditions, reveals that abnormal love can conjure up the same emotional display as normal love. longing, faithfulness, devotion, self sacrifice, blossom forth in abnormal love as well as in normal love. "in both, complete communion may be the goal and climax of feelings which are perhaps among the deepest and finest which mankind can experience." =their love letters.= the absolute similarity of heterosexual and homosexual love in their written expression can be judged by perusing the sonnets which michael angelo wrote to young tommaso dei cavalieri and which could very well have been addressed to a woman. a sober scientist like winckelman was carried away by his homosexual love for frederick von berg to the point of writing the following epistle which might emanate from a lovelorn highschool boy: "all the names i might call you are not sweet enough and do not do justice to my love. all the things i might say to you sound too weak to give voice to my heart and my soul. i love you, my dearest, more than the whole world and neither time nor circumstances nor age could ever cause my love to diminish." =deeds of violence.= homosexual love has led to as many deeds of violence on the part of disappointed lovers as heterosexual love. the papers frequently publish without comments stories of the shooting of a woman by another woman, caused by the fact that the victim was "too attentive to another woman." psychiatrists who can read between the lines recognise in those murders the result of homosexual jealousy and infidelity. in that respect the behavior of the two sexes seems slightly different. "it is well known," remarks havelock ellis, "that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men. in the homosexual the conditions are to some extent reversed. inverted men, in whom a more or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide. inverted women, who may retain their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter the invert's life." =a homosexual tragedy.= in a recent case in chicago a homosexual woman shot her former roommate and then seriously wounded herself. they had roomed together and last fall the victim broke off the life together because the invert "was too affectionate." the victim went to her parents' house in the south to get rid of the invert. on her return to chicago two months later she was bothered by the invert who insisted that she room with her. on april d she received a letter from the invert containing a bullet and a threat. alarmed, she had the invert arrested, but the invert was discharged on promise she would not annoy the girl. the invert had a number of swagger sticks, one of which she carried each day. there is no account of her masculinity of attire. she wrote poems to her victim and made her presents including a diamond ring and a diamond studded watch, all of which were returned. there had been several threats of killing the victim, before the letter came, if she ended the friendship. =women more homosexual than men.= remembering how the mother's fetishes affect us in the choice of a sexual mate we may expect to find more homosexualism in woman than in man. the facts bear up our theory. while the gross forms of homosexualism are less frequent among women, a thousand mild forms of it are observable in the behavior of even apparently very normal women. the sentimental attachments of school girls for certain teachers, the pleasure which they derive from spending nights with some friend on whom they have a "crush," the thousand and one bodily caresses female friends shower on each other, the curiosity they manifest about each other's physical condition, their frequent bed room or bathroom conferences, are manifestations of a mild homosexualism, which, however, do not always lead to overt acts. =boastfulness.= many homosexuals compensate for the scorn meted out to them by normal individuals with a certain proud boastfulness. "we are supermen," one hears them say when they find a sympathetic listener, "we have reached beyond the usual, boresome, bourgeois form of gratification. our intellect is nauseated by woman's silliness." and the females say in their turn: "we are super-women, we have conquered the fear of man and we are tired of man's boorish ways." some of the male homosexuals who are bisexual, that is, can also be attracted by women, pride themselves over the mentality of the women they love. "men have accustomed us to a higher intellectual level and to a more intelligent form of conversation," a homosexual said to me. this is naturally a defence mechanism. by demanding extremely high qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for consorting with men exclusively. =famous homosexuals.= homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the greek philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, julius cæsar, alexander the great, michael angelo, leonardo da vinci, frederick of prussia, shakespeare, oscar wilde, nietzsche, etc. =the nietzsche-wagner feud= should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's point of view. wagner was to young nietzsche an attractive, heroic, father-image. the philosopher never had any real affair of the heart with a woman. he only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which, by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (dr. w. h. white of washington received the assurance while in europe that nietzsche died of syphilis.) nietzsche made himself obnoxious to wagner by trying to be his press agent. as wagner, however, a shrewd business man in his old days, objected to nietzsche's agnosticism and to his friendship with certain jews, nietzsche, disappointed in his love, abandoned wagner and hated him fiercely. he attacked him on every occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself considered himself as a greater composer, one line in nietzsche's letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings. wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him. =shall perverse love be recognized?= efforts are being made in various directions at the present day to have homosexual love legally recognised and given perfect equality with heterosexual love. in germany, a number of writers, von kupfer, friedlander and others have boldly championed that futile attempt. a cinema film was produced last year ( ) in berlin depicting the plight of the homosexual who is unable to control his cravings and falls a victim to the wiles of a blackmailer. dr. magnus hirschfeld agreed to impersonate in that production the scientist who attempts to enlighten the public as to the nature of homosexualism, so as to bring about a modification of the statute punishing perverts. =man's emancipation.= in , elizar von kupfer called upon the men to proclaim their "independence" from women. "the man who lives in bondage to women," he wrote, "and who humors her whims, has lost his manhood. since woman is emancipating herself, why should not men follow the same road?" illogically enough, von kupfer defends the mothers and wives, "flowers who should not be rooted out of the garden of love." in schopenhauer's silly outbursts against woman, however, von kupfer sees "a test of manhood revolting against man's humiliation" and he adds that "it is only from the closest relation of man to man, adolescent to man, and adolescent to adolescent, that government and civilisation will derive real power." blüher considers homosexualism as an "essential human trait which must be granted an outlet with certain restrictions (setting the age of consent at fourteen and forbidding the use of violence)." benedikt friedlander, in his "renaissance des eros uranios" suggests "bringing ancient and modern culture into harmony with each other by reviving the greek eros and overthrowing the monopoly which woman has, of being loved and beautiful." removing the legal penalties which punish overt homosexual acts is one thing. recognising homosexualism is an entirely different proposition. punishing a typhoid fever patient would be absurd, but typhoid fever sufferers should not be allowed to remain at large without treatment. homosexualism is a neurotic trait which should be eradicated, if possible, by analytic treatment. hopeless cases, on the other hand should be protected against their instincts by a form of confinement which would be neither punitive nor more humiliating than the confinement imposed upon sufferers from contagious diseases. =homosexualism and the war.= homosexualism has been on the increase since the war. stekel reports many gruesome cases of husbands who, until they went to the barracks and the trenches, where their unconscious homosexualism found an unusual stimulation, were normal in their attitude to their wives, and who returned after the armistice absolutely inverted and unable to give or receive normal gratification. the bobbed hair craze has many good excuses. bobbed hair is kept tidy more easily than long tresses and can be dried quicker after a shampoo. at the same time, when we consider that the boyish type of women became fashionable about the same time when short hair did, and that soon after the war, advertising boards were covered with the praise of devices enabling women to conceal their natural curves, we must consider both fashions as symptomatic of an increase in homosexualism. we might also mention another fashion detail: while dressmakers were trying their best to obliterate their customers breasts, they would bare entirely their backs. anyone familiar with the symbolism and dreams of homosexuals will understand the import of that style of dresses. =is homosexualism necessary?= dr. otto gross, without openly countenancing homosexualism, holds that a certain proportion of it is necessary in man's makeup for a mutual understanding of both sexes. "we can only understand," he writes, "what we have experienced. unless a man has a decided feminine trend, he is not likely to understand a woman, or to live with her harmoniously and vice versa." a consideration of the purely physical side of love lends a slight plausibility to that view. unless a man can clearly imagine love's pleasure as experienced by a woman, he may not be able to vouchsafe her complete gratification. the progress of civilisation certainly demands that men become less masculine (translate: boorish) and women less feminine (meaning: silly). we could not tolerate, however, what friedländer called a renaissance of eros uranios, leading to the conditions which obtained in greece where men, while consorting with other men, were also potent with women. no parallel can be drawn between greek culture and modern culture. hellenic culture was decidedly masculine, women being solely tools of lust, or beasts of burden, or means of proliferation. as i will show in another chapter, one really modern woman can give to the modern man what demosthenes sought in three kinds of women, a prostitute, a concubine and a wife, not to count a male mistress. =what is really needed= is a better understanding of homosexualism by the public and by the homosexuals. after which, homosexuals, no longer despised and punished for their obsessive cravings, and no longer proud of their condition, will be given sympathy and treatment, voluntary or compulsory. psychoanalysts will remove their complexes and lead them toward a positive goal; surgeons, performing on them some of steinach's operations, may raise their heterosexual potency to the point at which no doubt will obsess them any longer. those things will avail little, however, until parents watch their offspring carefully to discover in them the first symptoms of a homosexual trend and adopt ways and means to prevent the growth of the neurosis. we may for convenience quote hirschfeld's description of the homosexual child, a very superficial one, indeed, sufficient, however, to cause the average parent to seek psychological and medical advice before it is too late and before mental and physical habits have compromised, perhaps hopelessly, the love life of their children. "the homosexual boy prefers girls' games, shuns boys' games, is girlish in disposition and behavior, if not in appearance. people often say that he is like a girl. he is happy in the company of girls. he has a psychic fixation on his mother. he is reserved and embarrassed before other boys. he often becomes unduly attached to a male teacher or a schoolmate. "the homosexual girl prefers boys' games, does not care for sewing or other feminine occupations, is boyish in her disposition, her motions, often in her appearance. people call her a tomboy. she likes to romp with boys. she is overattached to her father. she shows embarrassment in the presence of other girls. she often falls madly in love with a female teacher or some older woman." chapter xix cruelty and love. sadism in normal individuals the idea of love is inseparably associated with tenderness, caressing gestures, words or glances, readiness on the part of either mate to go to extremes in order to enhance the loved one's enjoyment of the amorous relationship, or to protect him against all dangers or suffering. in normal individuals, love and suffering are antithetic terms, love meaning joy and pleasure, (sexual and egotistical), suffering being only conceivable when the craving for love is ungratified, when the lonely lovers are parted by life, when one of them has been robbed by death of his mate, etc. =algolagnists.= there are abnormal human beings, however, known technically as algolagnists (from algos, pain, and lagneia, enjoyment), who cannot imagine or enjoy love when it is entirely dissociated from some form of suffering. the active algolagnists must inflict some pain, physical or mental, upon their mate in order to enjoy the pleasures of love to their full extent. the passive algolagnists only attain the highest degree of amorous satisfaction when they are submitted by their mate to painful or humiliating treatment. active algolagnists are known more commonly as "sadists," an expression created by moreau de tours. krafft-ebing, the most famous writer on sexual perversions coined for passive algolagnists the expression "masochists." the word sadist is derived from the name of marquis de sade, a french pervert of the eighteenth century, whose life and writings well illustrate the form of love which is constantly associated with acts of cruelty. =donatien alphonse françois de sade= was born in paris, june , the offspring of an aristocratic family of provence. among his ancestors was the laura of petrarca's sonnets. at fourteen, he joined a cavalry regiment. he went thru the seven years war during which he witnessed the most ruthless atrocities. on his return, at the age of twenty-seven, he married, but soon after his marriage was arrested for some deed of cruelty committed in a house of prostitution. his father's death left him heir to an important government position but his life of excesses gave him little time to attend to his duties. at twenty-eight, he attracted much attention by a scandal in which he played a prominent part. he lured a shopkeeper's wife, rose keller to a house in the suburbs of the french capital where he used to hold revels. threatening the woman with a pistol, he bound her hands and feet and whipped her to the blood. the next morning, rose keller managed to free herself, jumped out of the window and summoned help. de sade was arrested but the affair was soon hushed up by powerful friends at the court of louis the fifteenth. that incident is characteristic of sadism in love's relations. his victim's sufferings supplied de sade with the artificial stimulation which normal desire would produce in a normal man. soon after this, de sade eloped to italy with his wife's sister. on his way to italy, he stopped in marseille and organized an orgy in the course of which he gorged his guests with candy containing some poisonous aphrodisiac drug. two of them died. this time, a court rendered a death sentence against the murderous pervert, who eluded the police for a time and was finally confined in the fortress of vincennes for thirteen years. it was said at the time that a woman had been found in a house where he indulged in all sorts of debauches, unconscious and bleeding from a hundred scalpel wounds which had severed many veins. de sade devoted his enforced leisure to writing. his published works fill up ten volumes. they contain a description of the most atrocious sexual cruelties. the author makes a childish attempt at establishing a "satanic" morality based on the fact that "virtue is always punished by the world and vice always rewarded." his atheism is no more than a satanic ritual. de sade's literary output, which is devoid of any artistic merit and is only of interest to the student of abnormal psychology, bears the stamp of hopeless intellectual inferiority trying to justify itself by representing the entire world as a combination of a brothel and a torture chamber and mankind as a herd of blood-thirsty and sex-crazed lunatics. a sinister autobiography and wish fulfilment. the revolutionists of who opened the doors of all jails and insane asylums gave de sade his freedom on july . he sided politically with his deliverers but after a while, became suspicious to them and again spent one year in prison ( - ). =what bonaparte thought of him.= de sade, who had been very liberal in presenting free copies of his obscene novels to men prominent in the days of the revolution and the terror, made the mistake of sending a set of his works to bonaparte. the corsican caused the entire edition to be suppressed and diagnosed the author very accurately as a murderous pervert, unfit to be at large. de sade was committed to an insane asylum where he remained until his death on december , . sadism is a morbid phenomenon which remained mysterious until recently, when the experimental work of physiologists like cannon, sherrington and others, revealed to us the close connection existing between mental states, muscular tensions and the secretions of ductless glands of the body. adler's "individual psychology" also has thrown much light upon many morbid actions which are simply attempts at compensation for a feeling of inferiority. the neurotic, briefly speaking, feels inferior, that is, afraid of some imaginary danger. he casts about for something which can be done quickly, simply, with the least effort, and which will restore his peace and safety by filling him, were it only temporarily, with a sense of actual or imaginary superiority. =glandular drunkenness.= wulffen suggests an interpretation of sadism which is ingenious but unconvincing. he considers every act of violence as provoked by the faulty functioning of some glands. he compares the effect of the gonadal hormones (one of the secretions of the sex glands issuing from the interstitial cells) with that of alcohol. alcohol destroys the inhibitions and allows unconscious cravings of an inacceptable sort to express themselves thru overt acts. the drunken man loses all shame and all fear, becomes boisterous and, at times, murderous. likewise, wulffen says, oversecretion of the gonadal hormones creates a sort of sexual drunkenness in the course of which the individual is forced into violent or cruel behavior. this would be acceptable if all the sadists were strong healthy specimens of manhood and womanhood. most of them, on the contrary, show plainly signs of glandular insufficiency. wulffen's thesis is not confirmed as some writers assume by a study of the mating habits of many animals. cocks during the act of mating peck cruelly the back of the hen's head. tomcats bite the necks of their mates. toads, at times, choke the female to death in their clinging embrace. in those acts of animal "cruelty" there is probably another element to be considered. the tomcat, digging his teeth into the female cat's neck, may not so much relieve his sadistic impulses as produce in his mate some welcome sensation of pleasurable pain. we know how willingly the most rebellious cats allow any one to grab them by the backs of their necks, making no effort at freeing themselves and apparently enjoying that partial strangulation. (remember the aphrodisiac influence of hanging.) =atavism.= eulenburg considers that sadism is an atavistic trait. "not only animals," he says, "but primitive races associate mating with violence." the caveman is supposed to have beaten the female he captured into insensibility before dragging her to his cave. we do not know, however, whether it was the caveman or some cavemen who indulged in that practice, the existence of which may be merely a subject for speculation. it goes without saying that whenever females were carried off by victorious tribes after armed conflicts the "wooing" of the captives must have been synonymous with violence and rape. old documents offer many examples of the combination of love and violence. there is the old legend of griseldis in which a sadistic man tested in the cruellest way the woman who was to be his life mate. the epic poem gudrun recites one of the prehistoric struggles between male and female. the unfortunate male in this case is overpowered by the nordic valkyrie who binds him with her girdle and keeps him lashed to the wall till morning. the modern honeymoon trip is undoubtedly a survival of the primeval habit of carrying off the bride. =primitive religions= constantly associate sadism with love. in fact the goddess of love, in the greek mythology, owed her existence to an act of sadism. kronos' male organ, cut off by his zeus, fell into the sea, fertilized it, and aphrodite was born. many primitive gods demanded the sacrifice of virgins, primitive goddesses decapitated or castrated men with whom at times they consorted. the priests and priestesses of certain religions could only please their gods by submitting to sexual indignities, the priestesses of cybelea prostituting themselves to every one, the priests castrating themselves. some of those acts of violence, however, must be considered from an entirely different point of view. =in primitive races= real achievement was always associated with violence. the "real man" was the victorious fighter and killer. even in roman days, gladiator duels terminated with the death of the defeated man, unless he were a popular ring idol whom the mob saved for further encounters. the robber, designated by more flattering names, of course, gained more glory by stealing goods or gold than the merchant who, in ways more socially acceptable, accumulated goods and gold. civilisation has changed those things. in neurotic states, however, we always observe a return to archaic modes of action which are more direct. we nowadays kill off a competitor thru advertising. instead of levying tribute on the defeated rival, we compel him to sell out to us at our price, etc. the neurotic kills or steals, as archaic heroes did. =animal love fights.= also, as far as animals are concerned, the more or less playful fights with which they prelude their mating is not, as wulffen suggests, due to gonadal drunkenness. on the contrary, it is meant to produce a stronger outpouring of gonadal secretions in both male and female, thereby increasing the energy of the male and assuring the pregnancy of the female. fights preceding animal mating increase, among other things, the secretions of the adrenal cortex which impart to all the muscles (among them the sexual muscles) a considerable tension. let us bear in mind that physiological detail while interpreting the fact that many neurotics are only potent sexually with women who resist them. we see how a certain amount of struggle, producing perhaps slight anger (and possibly leading to acts of violence), would strengthen the sexual faculties of the weak neurotic and enable him to possess his mate. from that type of neurotic, who requires glandular excitement of the adrenal type, to the sadist, typified by the famous marquis, and up to the ripper who disembowels his victims we see merely a series of gradations in glandular insufficiency, not as wulffen said, in glandular hyper-secretion. =a neurotic trait.= furthermore, sadism should not be considered as a phenomenon of purely sexual character. sadism is merely a detail of the neurotic make up. it is one of the neurotic short cuts whereby an inferior individual acquires a temporary superiority. the section foreman who takes pleasure in driving his men at a killing pace, the detective engaged daily in the task of man hunting, the so-called "strict" parent who beats his children, the surgeon who never tires of performing operations, the futile reformer who is constantly trying to deprive some one of some form of enjoyment, the jealous husband who deprives his wife of many pleasures, the jealous wife who relishes the thought that her husband is giving up his club or his former associates for her sake, are sadists, some of them partly normal and useful, some of them morbid or ridiculous. =the mob.= sadism is one of the great "mob characteristics." why do we run to fires and to the scene of an accident? to help? no. to enjoy the sight of some one's life or property being destroyed. if our impulses were humane or charitable we should be relieved, nay exultant, when we learn that the conflagration has only destroyed a curtain or a shade, when we see the man bowled over by a taxi getting up and walking away, little the worse for the experience. notice on the contrary the indignation of the average man when the fire "does not amount to anything", when the "victim" of an accident escapes unharmed. =is the male more cruel?= it has been said that sadism was a masculine trait, masochism a feminine characteristic. like the majority of generalisations on the subject of sex differences, it is inaccurate. man, the hunter, is more aggressive in love, but his aggressiveness need not include cruelty. his strength, in modern life, is put to quite a different use, to protect the weaker female, not to overwhelm her. woman is supposed to be more submissive but mythology, legend and history present to us thousands of cases in which the female of the human species betrayed many sadistic instincts, not infrequently associated with her love activities. even in the animal world, while we behold males apparently submitting the female to much suffering, we find not a few cases, for instance in the insect world, of females killing or even devouring their mate immediately after the love communion. chapter xx love that craves suffering. masochism the man whom krafft-ebing selected as the typical masochist, leopold von sacher-masoch, was born in lemberg, january , . he was extremely frail in infancy and childhood. he compensated for his physical inferiority thru unusual mental activity, for at the age of nineteen he won his degree of doctor of law. at twenty he was appointed instructor in german history at an university. at the age of twenty-five he was the author of several books of history. he then turned to fiction, first of the historical and then of the purely psychological type. a morbid tendency was observable in his very first books, a tendency which became more and more marked and which led him to write almost exclusively descriptions of perverse love entanglements. he showed a decided preference for delineating cruel, mannish types of women and incredibly weak types of men. as in the case of marquis de sade, we observe here a strange parallelism between the man's writings and his own biography. sacher-masoch's first love was a woman much older than himself, anna von kattowitz, who for four years humiliated, insulted and victimised him in every possible way, finally running away with a russian adventurer. then he met princess bogdanoff for whom he abandoned temporarily his professional and literary ambitions. she took him to italy where he was compelled to serve her as a secretary and valet. he enjoyed the relationship, but the princess soon tired of him. his next liaison was with baroness fanny pistor, with whom he had his picture taken once in the following position: she seated on a sofa and clad in furs, he kneeling at her feet on the floor. then came baroness reizenstein, whom he could not love very long for she refused to satisfy his morbid craving for physical torture and humiliating treatment and, besides, was homosexual. then he became engaged to a young artist, miss bauerfeld, of graz. soon after, however, he met an ugly, mannish hysterical person, vanda dunayef, who gratified better his perverse leanings and compelled him to break his engagement. a child was born of their union and in they were married. they traveled from town to town, apparently unable to find peace anywhere, and she finally left him to elope with a reporter from the paris figaro. sacher-masoch secured a divorce and married again, this time a motherly type of woman, hulda meister, retired with her to the small village of lindheim and died there on march , . a few incidents of his life describe well his perversion. =love of the whip.= once, according to havelock ellis, in the course of an innocent romp in which the whole household took part, sacher-masoch asked his wife to whip him. she refused. then he suggested the maid should do it. his wife did not take this seriously, but he had the servant whip him to his full enjoyment. when his wife urged that it would not be possible to keep the maid after this, sacher-masoch agreed and she was discharged. he constantly found pleasure in placing his wife in awkward or compromising circumstances, a pleasure she was too normal to share. this led to much domestic unhappiness. against her wish he persuaded her to whip him with whips to which nails were attached. this he claimed was a literary stimulus. dr. eulenburg tells of a young woman with whom sacher-masoch corresponded for a while and to whom he wrote that "his greatest joy would be to be whipped by a woman." later on, sacher-masoch met her in vienna and asked her to don a fur coat and to whip him. she however, pretended to treat the matter as a joke, and dismissed him. his numerous books of fiction present over and over again the same theme: the domineering woman, "clad in furs," who tortures a weak helpless man. we behold in sacher-masoch a clear case of physical weakness and glandular insufficiency. his endocrines, in particular his adrenals and gonads, required the actual stimulation of pain (whipping) before they could react properly to a sexual stimulus. it is a curious coincidence that among all forms of stimulation used to accelerate the gait of beasts of burden or draft horses, the whip is the most commonly used the world over and that, on the other hand, perverts of the masochist type have, the world over and at every age of history, more frequently resorted to the whip to torture themselves than to any other means of physical punishment. =the masochist is like a weak or tired horse.= why does whipping make a horse go faster? not merely on account of the fear or pain which the beast experiences, but because that fear and pain make him stronger. the adrenalin liberated by the fear-and-pain-producting stimulus stiffens every muscle in his body and his strength is doubled. this is why frightened animals or insane people in a panic can perform feats of strength of which they would be absolutely incapable in a normal state. masochism is much more, however, than an organic attempt at compensating for glandular inferiority and acquiring in a morbid way increased sexual potency. it is a neurotic expedient whereby an inferior man or woman compensates for his or her weakness thru more weakness. by belittling themselves, by disparaging their own ability, masochist lovers can take advantage of their mate, let him bear all responsibilities. =shoe fetishism.= we understand from that point of view the meaning of the shoe fetishism which krafft-ebing has noticed in male masochists. in fact hirschfeld states that every male shoe fetish is a masochist. to the masochist, the shoe, especially the high buttoned shoe, is symbolical of woman's power, of her ruthless cruelty. he sees himself trod on by that shoe, he imagines that shoe pressing on his neck, pinning his head to the ground. curiously enough, long gloves seem to arouse the same ideas in the mind of the male masochist. both shoes and gloves are found in the dreams or visions of neurotics, symbolizing the female organs. a masochist wrote once: "the gloved hand of a woman, altho like her foot, smaller and prettier than a man's, can wield the whip powerfully over her slave whose greatest joy consists then in kissing his mistress's shoes while submitting to that punishment." =craving for humiliation.= the masochist welcomes every form of humiliation and not infrequently derives great pride from his "patience," "tolerance," "self-sacrifice," "martyrlike resignation" etc. like sacher-masoch himself, some men, husbands or lovers, (pimps, cadets, etc.) have been known to enjoy the sight of their wife or mistress in another man's arms. hirschfeld was consulted by a woman whose husband compelled her at frequent intervals to have relations with a man in his own house. he would invite a business associate for dinner and then leave his wife to explain that he had been suddenly called out of town. the guest and his wife would dine together. wine would flow freely and she would coquettishly goad the man into making advances to her. concealed in the next room, the husband would watch thru a peep hole the proceedings which ended with a passionate scene. it was only after beholding that humiliating sight that the masochistic husband could enjoy his wife's embraces. a man who consulted me confessed to me that he was absolutely impotent with his own wife or with any unmarried woman. it was only with married women that he felt perfectly virile. the thought of his mistress in her husband's arms was the only thing that could arouse him physically. many neurotics of the masochistic type have dreams of being school children punished by a masculine female teacher. those dreams, be they night or day dreams, are always associated with erotic thoughts. remember jean jacques rousseau enjoying viciously the spankings which mademoiselle lambercier gave him when a child. masochists, male or female, are often very anxious to perform menial or disgusting tasks for the person they love, thus placing themselves in a subordinate, protected, position and at the same time, claiming a great deal of credit for their devotion. =masochistic fancies.= the male masochist, eager to place himself in the position of safety toward his mate, not infrequently imagines himself to be an animal and asks to be treated as such. greek antiquity has bequeathed to us the story of aristotle the philosopher, allowing a prostitute to ride on his back, whipping him like a horse, while he would crawl about on all fours. medical literature contains many descriptions of establishments where male masochists are submitted to voluntary torture thru various appliances. the ascetics who in the middle ages whipped themselves, wore hair cloth studded with sharp nails, etc., to manifest their love to god or the virgin, the russian skooptsy who mutilate themselves to please god, are religious examplaries of masochistic love. the christian ideal of suffering and renunciation as a means of conquering everlasting happiness is also purely masochistic. suffering, be it physical or mental (remorse), assures to them in the end, well-being (glandular well-being) and enables them to reach heaven (will-to-be-above). =are women masochistic?= i denied in the preceding chapter the frequently heard assertion that sadism in a typically masculine trait. i would deny quite as emphatically that masochism is peculiarly feminine, a view held by many sadists, as an attempted justification of their cruel perversion. oscar wilde, a bisexual, stated once that of all the masculine traits it was cruelty which women appreciated most. to his morbid mind cruelty meant power. it is power of course which woman, disabled several times in her life by pregnancy and lactation, seeks in the man with whom she mates. he must be a good fighter and a good hunter, not, however, merely to capture her and brutalise her, but on the contrary, to protect her and feed her. the sadist kurnberger in his novel, "the castle of horrors" also bids us believe that man's greatest victory, appreciated as such by woman, consists in making a woman suffer, in bringing tears to her eyes, in outtalking and outwitting her, "a victory compared to which," he says, "marengo and austerlitz look like thirty cents." and the sadistic nietzsche puts in the mouth of an old woman in his "zarathustra" the following statement: "when you go to women, don't forget to take your whip." other sadists remind us of the russian woman's wail that her husband's love must be cooling off, because he hasn't beaten her in an age. barring a number of exceptions, the fact remains that masochism in women is as abnormal as masochism in men, or sadism in men or women. =women who enjoy a beating.= there are women who enjoy unconsciously being beaten by their husbands, much as they may resent the outrage consciously. they are in every case hypothyroid and hypoadrenal types in whom the distribution of energy and the emergency production of energy are very subnormal. nothing but a violent stimulus, physical or mental, whipping or insult, can make them feel strong and active. the dreams of those women, like those of masochistic men, are often of the nightmarish type. they suffer in their night visions all sorts of torture. analysis brings out the fact that every detail of those dreams is associated with energy, achievement, etc. de sade's wife belonged evidently to the masochistic type. she remained faithful to him to the end in spite of his perverse life, his prison record and the fact that he deceived her with her own sister. her life of sorrow must have vouchsafed her, after all, a good many masochistic compensations of the neurotic variety. =famous women sadists.= as against the assumption that "all" women are masochists, we may mention many famous women sadists, several byzantine and roman empresses, frankish queens, two russian empresses, the treatment meted out by women to theroigne de méricourt, tortured publicly by the jacobine women in , not to mention legendary characters like the amazons and mythological goddesses who killed or tortured their lovers. sadism and masochism in love are pathological disturbances due to a neurotic attempt on the part of an inferior individual to dominate the sexual partner thru violence or weakness, and to assure himself against defeat in the sexual relationship. =the freudian suggestion= that the sadist identifies himself with the powerful and apparently, brutal father, the masochist identifying himself with the weaker and submissive mother, applies to a too restricted number of cases to be of positive help in understanding the nature of those two perversions. even when that explanation seems to fit the case, we must, nevertheless, fall back upon the adlerian view of the neurotic temperament in order to understand why a child decides to identify himself with one parent instead of the other. chapter xxi what love owes to sadists and masochists love that inflicts suffering and love which craves suffering are travesties on love, for normal love gives joy and craves joy. yet, it may be that a too perfect adaption, one vouchsafing constantly to the mates the security they seek in each other's arms would soon pall on them. they might not remain attached to each other any longer than the animals who, in the majority of species, part as soon as they have fulfilled their biological mission. a perfectly normal couple might die of boredom. what makes animals, when they have not been slightly perverted by contact with human beings, so uninteresting, is their absolute normality. a very slight touch of "perversion" in at least one of the mates, seems necessary if the novelty of the relationship is not to wear off too soon. maybe i should not say perversion, but perverseness. the normal husband who would die rather than hurt his life mate cannot compete with the romantic, lover, a little mysterious, unreliable, suspected of flirting with other women, who "keeps a woman guessing," pretends at times to be indifferent and has to be won over and over again. the normal husband whose affection is taken for granted and who always says the proper thing at the proper time, remembers all anniversaries and celebrates them officially, pales in comparison with a tender, masochistic lover, whom every unkind gesture seems to wound deeply, whose affection is tinged with a melancholy longing, who treasures little sentimental memories which his earnestness makes at times rather poignant. =the sadistic lover= carries a woman off her feet by the daredevil things he may indulge in when away from her. the masochist touches deeply the motherly chord in her by the acts of kindness and devotion he may perform for others, by his charitable or professional activities. =the vamp.= how much the world, especially the world of art, owes to the slightly sadistic, "vampish" woman, who, if she is endowed with much physical beauty sets, a little cruelly, all the males competing for her favors. how many flaming poems of passion, what priceless canvasses, statutes and monuments has she conjured up out of her admirers' minds. even the perverse female beasts of the italian renaissance made love infinitely romantic. on the other hand, what worshipful tenderness meets even the memory of the patient aude who silently closed her eyes and died when roland was brought home dead, of solvejg, waiting with saintly resignation for the return of the rover peer gynt. of course the sadistic braggart earns much hatred and the whimpering masochistic male much scorn. the sadistic vamp gets shot by jealous lovers and the clinging masochistic vine is called a pest. to the lovers who are not unbearably normal and whose slight pituitary instability causes them to do and say the unexpected, love owes its poetry, the love life its charm and its inspirational power. all other things being equal, when a slightly sadistic male, seeking as his mate the image of a pliant mother, meets a slightly masochistic female who seeks the image of the powerful, domineering father, there are many chances that the match will, for a long period of time, retain its original qualities. the sadistic female, on the other hand soon emasculates the masochistic male. sadistic mates and masochistic mates land in the divorce court, the former throwing at each other charges of cruelty, the latter, for unfaithfulness of one or both mates, who seek in adultery relief from the monotony of their too peaceful existence. chapter xxii love among the artists frequent are the divorces in the artistic world. platitudinous moralisers explain that fact with the stupid statement that the morals of the stage are "loose." like the freudians, they always seek in sex the origin of every disturbance in human life. sex in the life of an artist, however, plays an infinitely less important part than egotism, the desire to be above. the so-called normal man, who works, eats, sleeps, reproduces himself, and, at his death leaves the world exactly as he found it is probably subnormal. he differs very little from the animals who do exactly the same things in the same way and seem perfectly pleased with the endless repetition of an immutable life ritual. =dissatisfaction= is really the element which we must consider when we try to draw a line of cleavage between men and the animals. dissatisfaction breeds either neurosis or creation. the dissatisfied person, devoid of intellectual resources, either commits a crime or kills himself or goes off into another world thru the door that leads into insanity. the dissatisfied person gifted with powers of self-expression, makes the world in which he lives better, more beautiful or more comfortable. that sort of achievement presupposes a certain amount of healthy sadism, the courage to criticise, to offer suggestions, to force the products of one's mind upon the community, to say "look at me, i am perfect or, at least, better than you." every budding actor assumes unconsciously that he can delineate a rôle better than the other histrionic lights of his time; every new novelist must assume that he can tell a story more attractively than his readers could picture it to themselves, etc., etc. the artist who is willing to yield, soon relapses into the ranks of the business men. whoever panders to the popular taste of his time may derive therefrom financial advantages but very little egotistical gratification. the real artist must know that he is right and must not be, therefore, soft clay to be moulded by any one else's desires. how then could the artist obtain lasting happiness from any form of love relationship? =the male artist=, if married to a submissive, masochistic wife, may live happily with her for a time. egotists, male or female, however, need flattery. familiarity breeds contempt. flattery must come from a constantly changing source or lose its power, as drugs do when we grow accustomed to them. flattery coming from a pretty woman whose attraction has not been weakened by daily contact will soon lead the artist husband into forbidden paths. unless endowed with the wisdom of the musician's wife in "the concert," his wife will soon be granted a divorce on the ground of his too obvious infidelity. woe to the male artist who takes unto himself a female artist for his wife. as i said in the preceding chapter, sadist plus sadist equals divorce suit for cruelty alleged by both parties. in this type of matrimonial castastrophy, the fault lies more frequently with the wife than with the husband. =female artists= are more unbearable than male artists. they are more touchy, more easily offended and angered, more apt to suspect the people in their environment of harboring veiled hostility. the reason for that state of things is not far to seek. women require infinitely more flattery than men do. not that a craving for attention is by any means a typically feminine trait. that craving has been forced upon them by the masculine domination. we have made woman inferior to man politically, socially, economically, we have, as adler would word it, put her "below." until we allow her to rise to man's level, she will never feel safe and will constantly require assurances of her superiority, at least, from the men who fancy her looks and enjoy her company. =the woman who accomplishes things= in this world, who, in spite of woman's handicap in her dealings with the world, wins recognition as a painter, sculptor, writer, singer, etc., feels, and justly so, that she deserves more credit for her accomplishment than a man would. winning power in a man's world is for the woman who reaches that aim ethically, that is, without bartering her sexual favors for success, as difficult as it would be for a jew to arrive in a bigoted christian community, for a negro to establish his prestige in a white anglo-saxon environment. having reached the top after much fighting, she never feels as secure as a man would under similar circumstances. her ego is steadily on the defensive and whatever interferes with her ego maximation appears to her dangerous and hateful. the female artist who marries a male artist will soon become jealous of him. every bit of publicity he receives is something which he has stolen from her, which he should, she thinks, if he loved her enough, have renounced in her favor. the female artist who marries a man incapable of artistic achievement, may be violently attracted to him sexually. her egotism, on the other hand, prompts her to disparage him and to scorn his judgment of her. however much he may admire her, his praise lacks weight in her estimation. he is not a member of the enchanted circle. a word from "one in the know", insignificant as he may be, will bring a smile to her lips, a flash of pleasure in her eyes, which will cut her mate to the quick. i have observed many a time an angry tension in the face of the business husband of some actress or singer when she would visibly gloat over the not too disinterested praise of some trashy professional. =flattery.= the artist is at the mercy of the flattery lavished on him or her by a fellow artist and absolutely blind to the flatterer's ulterior motives. a great musician who died recently was an easy victim to every budding musician who would sycophantically sing his praises. the mere statement "if i could ever hope to sing a few notes like you" enabled any young exploiter who could approach him to negotiate a "loan." for the reasons i have mentioned in the preceding pages, the woman artist is even more easily victimised, financially or sentimentally than the male artist. sexual jealousy wrecks the unions of artists with non-professional mates. sexual jealousy and professional jealousy make the union of two artists a very problematical expedient for the attainment of happiness. fortunately, very few heartbreaks result from the steady grinding of the divorce mills in concert land, opera land or stageland. the egotistical artist loves himself more than he could ever love any other human being. separation from his life mate does not mean loneliness to him. he remains in his own company, to his mind, the best company on earth. and furthermore his egotism tells him, and rightly so in the majority of cases, that being as wonderful as he is, he cannot fail to meet soon "the great love" of his life. and he will probably embark upon another experiment with the same optimism and with the same results. chapter xxiii the personality behind the fetishes. glands a man selects a mate because he finds in her fetishes the assurance of safety which those fetishes portended when observed in the appearance of his affectionate, devoted, self-sacrificing mother, whose intelligence and wisdom he never doubted when he was, let us say, ten or fifteen and she was thirty or thirty-five. and likewise, a woman expects, consciously or unconsciously, that certain physical characteristics which once indicated, when observed in her father's appearance, power, protection, a gainful occupation, sympathy and understanding, etc., will mean exactly the same thing when she finds them reproduced totally or in part in a male human being of the marriageable age. =the parent-child relationship=, involving at first boundless devotion on the part of the strong parent to the helpless nursling, infant and child, and later, complete submission of the growing child and adolescent to the older and, supposedly world-wiser, parent, has very little, if anything, in common with the relationship of mate to mate. sex plays no conscious part in the parent-child relationship. it does not tinge every action and every thought of the two parties concerned. the secret cravings or the secret repulsion it may awaken never distort consciously the judgments passed by parents on their children, children on their parents. of neurotic unconscious distortions of judgment there is a plenty. never, however, does the strife narrow down to this: "he or she does not satisfy me sexually," "he or she humiliates me sexually by being attracted to others," "he or she is an obstacle to my complete sexual gratification with another," etc., sources of open hostility of the most painfully conscious kind between mates. the mother who satisfied our egotism became to us beautiful and perfect. the female who employs the same means our mother did, to win us, but who cannot arouse us sexually, never appears to us very attractive physically or mentally. on the other hand we are apt to disregard, temporarily at least, the mental deficiencies of the man or woman who gives us the most complete sexual gratification. from this it will be easily understood that choosing a mate _solely_ on the strength of his or her fetishes, is likely, unless the union be of the most ephemeral kind, to lead to profound disappointment. it behooves us then to determine accurately what every fetish means and what sort of personality is actually to be found associated with a certain set of physical characteristics. for i repeat, a man's or woman's personality is to be studied, not in their attitude to their offspring, (for the most savage beast is transformed by the paternal or maternal instinct into a marvel of tenderness, kindness and patience), but in their relation to the social herd and to their sexual mate. until the study of the ductless glands was given the importance we attach to it today, the word personality denoted a set of attitudes which many psychologists considered as mainly voluntary and amenable to "moral suasion" and other forms of pedagogical approach of the individual. when we read the works of freud, jung, adler, ferenczi and their disciples, we never receive an intimation of the rôle which the endocrines may play in moulding the human personality. =modern endocrinologists= on the other hand, seem as indifferent to psychology as the psychoanalysts of yesterday were to neurology and endocrinology. some of them assume that the personality is the glands and that our glands alone shape our thinking and our actions. both views are narrow and unsatisfactory. the personality is made up primarily of an _organism_ which outward influences can or cannot influence easily. pleasure and pain then shape that organism thru the memories which they leave in it in the form of infinitely small modifications of our autonomic nervous system. that system, in its turn, develops, thru constant stimulation, certain glands or allows them to remain undeveloped thru lack of stimulation or thru negative stimulation. some of those glands may, thru mere accident of growth, have been already overdeveloped or stunted at birth. individuals free from complexes, however, may easily reestablish the balance of cravings and social inhibitions which threatens at times to be upset by an overdeveloped or underdeveloped gland. complex-ridden individuals on the other hand, use their glandular inferiority unconsciously as a scapegoat for absurd or morbid behavior. =reciprocal influence.= we cannot say, therefore, that our behavior is _dictated_ by our glands, but it is influenced by them and reciprocally, our behavior influences our glands. as i said in a previous chapter, hyperthyroidism creates fear, but fear may also create hyperthyroidism. overdevelopment of the sexual apparatus creates a predisposition to sexual overactivity, but sexual thoughts also have a tendency to provoke unusual sexual activity. there is one thing, however, for which the secretions of our ductless glands are mainly responsible, and which is most important to consider in a study of fetishes. they determine the shape, color and consistency of many parts of our body, such as complexion, hair, teeth, skeletal frame and growth. a glance at a human body enables one to determine as accurately as an autopsy would, the size of a person's thyroid, adrenals, etc. as the development of those glands corresponds to the social and sexual behavior of the individual, a review of the various bodily fetishes from the endocrinological point of view will be helpful to the average reader. in order not to use too many technical terms we shall consider only four of the endocrine glands, the pituitary, the thyroid, the adrenals and the gonads. =the pituitary gland= is a small body, the size of a pea, located in the turkish saddle (sella turcica), at the base of the brain and closely behind the root of the nose. some have called it a brain within the brain with a miniature skull of its own within the skull. the pituitary regulates the rhythms of the body, from the bony growth of the skeleton to the rate of the heart and respiration, from the periods of sleep and waking time to the periods of menstruation. if a part of the pituitary of a dog is removed, the animal becomes sleepy, fat, perverse in its sex cravings; puppies cease to grow when submitted to such an operation; autopsy of many human dwarfs has shown that their pituitary was undeveloped. people whose pituitary is insufficient in its action have a tendency to lose their hair, have a very dry skin, a dull mentality, sometimes suffer from epilepsy and crave sugar in large quantities. they are generally obese, the fat accumulating on the lower abdomen and the feet and ankles. louis berman in his excellent book on the endocrines "glands regulating the personality," presents as a perfect likeness of the "hypopituitary type" the fat boy of the pickwick papers whose emloyment with mr. wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating. i will quote from berman's book a description of the opposite type, the individual in whom the pituitary gland is too active. "if the overaction begins in childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence.... if the overaction happens after puberty, when the long bones have set and can not grow longer, a peculiar, diffuse enlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his hands and feet and head. the nose, ears, lips and eyes get larger and coarser. all those people are rather big and tall to begin with, heavy jawed, burly, with overhanging eyebrows and an aggressive manner. rabelais' most famous character, gargantua, belongs to the group. we recruit more drum majors than prime ministers from among those people." the pituitary has a strong influence on sexual activities. young animals whose pituitary has been surgically damaged will not be able to reproduce themselves when reaching adulthood. feeding pituitary glands to hens on the other hand, causes them to lay thirty per cent more eggs than they would naturally. =the thyroid= is a transformer of energy. it is a large reddish mass located in front and on both sides of the trachea, consisting of two lobes connected by a bridge of the same tissue. the thyroid activates the fires of the body. an active thyroid means life at "concert pitch." a sluggish thyroid means a slow, negative existence. to a poor thyroid correspond a pasty complexion, watery eyes with heavy lids, a depressed pug nose, large ears, thin hair, scanty eyebrows and eyelashes, short, brittle nails, irregular, bad teeth, broad, pudgy hands and feet, generally cold. with an overactive thyroid we observe a high color, sleeplessness, restlessness, a tendency to lose weight, emotionalism, profuse perspiration, bright, large eyes, good white teeth. =the adrenal glands= are about the size of a bean and located on top of the kidneys. they secrete adrenin which, when poured into the blood, causes muscular tension, accelerates the heart beats and the breathing rate, dilates the pupil and produces fear or anger according to the relative size of the core (medulla) or envelop (cortex) of the adrenals. in timid animals (and women) the cortex is thin, in courageous animals (and men) the cortex is rather thick. according to the thickness of your cortex you shall, in an emergency, resort to either fight or flight. a man with a thin cortex looks feminine, a woman with a thick cortex looks mannish. the adrenals control the color of the skin, the growth of hair, the size of the canine teeth and the color of the teeth. to good adrenals correspond an olive complexion, much hair on the body, rather yellowish teeth and strong canines. the bearded lady of the circus is a woman with overdeveloped adrenals and a thick cortex. weak adrenals go with cold extremities, a hairless body, poor canines, lack of ambition, discouragement, fatigability, etc. =the gonads or sex glands=, testes in man, ovaries in woman, affect thru the secretions of their interstitial cells, the pitch of the voice, the growth of pubic hair, the size of the breasts, the distribution of fat. good gonads mean masculine looking men and feminine looking women. poor gonads mean feminine looking men, hairless and with overdeveloped breasts, talking in a high-pitched voice, with a tendency to obesity and laziness (eunuchs); scrawny looking women who may later in life grow abnormally fat, with, in their youth, flat chests, scanty menstruation, etc. healthy gonads also retard senility. gonads whose interstitial cells have been rehabilitated by the steinach operation bring a new youth to the organism, mentally and physically. other glands, the thymus, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal body also play an important part in shaping the human body and with it the personality. the limits of this book do not allow me, however, to discuss them even superficially. chapter xxiv glandular personalities i stated in the preceding chapter that to every degree of glandular development there corresponds a certain set of physical characteristics which, in the love life, may be transformed into fetishes, (beautiful features, laymen call them), which are necessary to arouse sexual desire in one's mate, but which are not necessarily attractive to any one else. those physical characteristics are, in turn, the tangible evidence of the presence of certain mental attitudes and predispositions. individuals seeking in the love union, not merely a passing gratification of their erotism, but a lifelong arrangement, gratifying both the physical and the mental aspects of the organism, should be trained to recognise the presence or absence of characteristics which would make such an arrangement a lasting pleasure or a lasting torture. for instance, the woman who falls in love with a man because her fetishism requires a short, round, plump, man, with a good head of hair but hairless limbs, must not expect him to ever grow into a fighter, a good provider or even a companion of placid moods. a man of that type is capricious, unstable, unresisting, and prefers the gentler arts to any form of competitive struggle. likewise a man who picks out a woman for his mate because she has pretty, doll-like features, is "cute" and slight, has a soft skin, white and pink, must not expect to live peacefully with her on a farm, or even on main street or in a distant suburb. that type of woman grows easily emotional, is constantly in search of new excitement and new pleasures. it is only at forty that she will become more settled (and rotund), retaining, however, a certain jollity of disposition. =the olive skinned dark haired type=, and the freckled, red haired are very much alike. both have a low forehead, hair is plentiful all over the body, thick and coarse. their canines are long and sharp. men and women of that type are good fighters, more easily angered than scared; they are generally successful, with a tendency to slave-driving. in the face of great difficulties, of painful disappointment, however, they are prone to turn embittered and cranky. people of this type who show large birth marks are likely to be imbalanced and irritable. they may at times give the impression of being weak and lazy, altho their minds may be extremely active. =the tall type=, with strong frame, firm muscles, generous hands and feet, a thick skin, oval face, head flattened at the sides, thick eyebrows, prominent eyes, placed rather wide apart, large nose, square chin, large upper middle incisors, heavy joints, hairy legs and arms, is characterised by intelligence and self-control. at times that type has a tendency to be a little calculating if not sordid. =the lean type= with clean-cut features, thick hair, thick, long eyebrows, big, keen eyes, sometimes slightly protruding, well developed white teeth and a very masculine or very feminine mouth, according to sex, is active, restless, a live wire, emotional and likely to be easily prostrated by an unexpected defeat. men and women of that type have a tendency to be sleepless and to do too much planning at night instead of resting peacefully. =the short, obese, sallow type=, with a high forehead, scanty eyebrows, deep set, narrow eyes, irregular teeth that decay early, with poor circulation, cold and blue hands and feet, is rather "animal" and lacks self-control. =the slender type=, with narrow waist line, rounded limbs, long chest, (which in women may carry poorly developed breasts), very white, hairless skin, delicate features, silky hair, childish teeth, flat feet, knock-knees, may be at times very brilliant, but is generally queer, eccentric, irresponsible, perverse, dishonest. that type is observed in many petty thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts, suicides. those are the most striking physical types. they present hundreds of shadings and combinations. =environment.= the last mentioned type, if reared and kept in a comfortable environment, among people of slightly lax behavior, of artistic inclinations, exposed to none of life's onslaughts, may do very well, and be considered by his associates as sensitive, gentle and likeable. it is the pressure of social and economic conditions which cause him to seek safety in theft (quick acquisition of wealth), drug stupor, (escape from reality, perversion, escape from biological duties connected with a normal sex life), or suicide, (return to the fetal stage and escape from life). those people are children who can only thrive in the nursery. even as infant mortality depends solely upon the family income, the death rate being five times as high in poor as in wealthy families, the stability and social charm of almost any glandular type depends upon the social pressure that type has to bear. almost any type is bearable, if not lovable, in a comfortable environment requiring little planning and no fighting. one of the details of the social pressure is, of course, the attempts at repression or modification to which a personality may be subjected by the life mate. the fault lies in this case, not so much with the type in itself, however inferior it may be, as with the incurable optimist who attempts the impossible task of changing a human personality. in other words, it might be said, that in an environment which exerts no pressure on the individual, that is, where there is abundance of wealth and comfort, one can select a mate with bad fetishes, that is, indicative of weakness, while those less favored financially must lay greater stress on fetishes denoting strength and fighting ability. =what teeth indicate.= fraenkel and kaplan have pointed to the teeth as indicators of the general glandular condition of the individual and of his probable mental and physical powers. good middle incisors indicate good thyroid and pituitary, hence strength and balance. good lateral incisors indicate sexual power; good canines indicate strong adrenals, hence good fighting ability. lack of any of those teeth, or their stunted growth, gives naturally, the contrary indication as to make up and character. one must not forget either that certain fetishes are superficial and likely to disappear early in life. blondes may turn into brunettes; sveltness may yield to invading obesity, altho this last change is to be blamed more on the individual's stupidity than upon his glandular condition; a white skin may become yellow, etc. preference should, therefore, be given, when in doubt, to more durable fetishes, stature, strength, general appearance, attitude, which are less likely to change with the years. =matrimonial engineers.= here is a new field for educators; there may grow from this very new knowledge a new profession, that of the matrimonial engineer, who will diagnose the chances of happiness two human beings may have, if they decide to associate their destinies. much has to be studied and experimented upon before any one can consider himself qualified to pass final judgments upon the decisions to which love leads couples. "however" as berman writes, "the fact remains that, though we are only upon the first rungs of the ladder, we are on the ladder. we possess a new way of looking upon humanity, a fresh transforming light upon these strange phenomena, ourselves. of the ugly achievements of that dreadful century, the nineteenth, the most illuminating was the discovery of itself as the ape-parvenu. yes, we are all animals now, it said to itself, and set its teeth in the cut-throat game of survival. but there was no understanding in that evil motto of a disillusioned heart. the ape-parvenu, desperately lonely and secretive, has still to understand itself.... "personality embraces much more than merely the psychic attributes. it is not the least important of the lessons of endocrine analysis that here is no soul, and no body either. rather a soul-body or body-soul, or the patterns of the living flame. the closer tracking of the internal secretions leads us into the secrets of the living flame, why it lives and how it lives, the strange diversities of its coloring and music and the odd variations in its energy, vitality and longevity. why it flickers, why it flares and glares, spurts, flutters, burns hard or soft, orange-blue or yellow." chapter xxv love and mother love is the perfect mother a perfect wife? is the perfect mother, in every case, the result of mental perfection and ethical superiority? or is there a hidden strife between love and motherhood? is mother love always the enchanting image presented to us by poets and intimidated sons? or is it an alloy of higher qualities, biological necessity and egotistical neurotic cravings? i do not intend to settle all those problems within the limits of a short chapter, but rather to point out some of the morbid components of mother love which a psychoanalyst detects in his women patients, and which, exaggerated in the neurotic, exist to a slight degree in every woman. =sex cravings and motherhood cravings= are so closely related that few psychologists have ever dreamt of dissociating them for the purpose of study. the average moralist, who prefers cheap popularity to scientific accuracy, excuses the existence of sex cravings only on one condition, that they become absolutely subservient to motherhood cravings. the birth control agitation which is making such rapid headway at the present day, on the other hand, means, in part, that while motherhood may be the consequence of unregulated sex activities, it is not, for all women, their conscious motive. why is it that some women with an erotic disposition and a voluptuous physique, fear pregnancy while other women, apparently indifferent to men, crave motherhood? physiology does not give us a very satisfactory answer to this question. endocrinologists tell us that sex cravings are determined by the ovaries and motherhood cravings by the posterior part of the pituitary gland, but this leaves us exactly where we were when we started out. =pregnancy and health.= all physiologists will agree with the statement that in a normal, complex free woman, a type which unfortunately, the complexity of our civilization does not allow us to behold very frequently, pregnancy is accompanied by an unusual activity of all the organism, imparting to the female a sense of great power and, consequently, of well-being, mental and physical. the adrenals work at high pressure to produce the muscular tone necessary in gestation. the thyroid is called upon to transform more and more of the electric current produced by the brain cells. new glands of a temporary nature develop in the woman's body, regulating her life functions more accurately and imparting to her a feeling of dreamy happiness and relaxation. after delivery, another part of her body enters into activity, her mammary glands, so closely related to the genitals that any stimulation of either region finds a strong echo in the other. many are the women in whom lactation produces intensely erotic feelings affording them at times full gratification. =fear of pregnancy.= unfortunately, civilisation has surrounded motherhood with so many complications, social, ethical, financial, sentimental, etc., that in very few women, indeed, is that biological process an unmixed pleasure, dissociated from all pain and anxiety. vomiting, which expresses the female's disgust for her condition, or her mate or the offspring; cramplike tensions, expressing her worries about her appearance, her anxious thought of financial or social consequences; anxiety states, affecting the adrenals, which discolor her face (pregnancy mask), make pregnancy hideous in many cases. even the process of parturition seems to have become more painful and dangerous with advancing civilisation. any one who has seen, for instance, mexican women barely interrupting their labor in the fields to give birth to a child, and resuming their tasks an hour later, must realise that autosuggestion has much to do with the physical disability of the civilised woman in child bed. in spite of the complexities of modern life, the female organism which is not affected by fear complexes, must expect a pleasure premium from pregnancy, lactation and other duties of motherhood. this would supply us with an organic basis for the mother's attachment to her offspring which is observable almost in every animal species. that a number of women may be found who hate their children owing to the suffering to which unwelcome motherhood and difficult parturition have subjected them, is easily understandable. in fact we face a vicious circle. the unwelcome pregnancy will be an unpleasant one, followed almost unavoidably by painful delivery, etc. =when mother love is lacking= or when a mother hates a very young child, the psychologist must look for morbid unconscious influences which analysis should remove as soon as possible. stekel, the viennese analyst, tells of a woman who was very fond of three of her daughters but, for some mysterious reason, detested the fourth one. analysis revealed that she imagined she saw every one of her husband's faults reproduced and magnified in the unfortunate child. she also imagined that she loved her husband very deeply. the year when the unloved child was conceived, however, she had fallen in love with another man, a young poet. she remained "technically faithful" to her husband, altho, when in his arms, it was always the poet to whom she was giving herself. she hoped sentimentally that the forthcoming child would look like her platonic lover but the little girl reproduced with striking faithfulness her father's features. unwilling to accept her dislike of her husband, the romantic mother had transferred it to the child who served as a scapegoat in various ways. =frigid wives.= we often observe a great craving for motherhood in frigid wives. let us not rehash on this occasion the poetical and silly statement that the frigid woman is one whose love has been spiritualised and can only find an outlet thru her children. the frigid woman is a cripple or a neurotic. either she was born with poorly developed genitals or she was made abnormal by the unconscious fear of yielding to man's domination, or by a morbid sense of sin due to asceticism, or by painful or humiliating sex experiences before or after marriage. her craving for motherhood is not infrequently the hypocritical expression of her desire for intercourse, which her puritan training would otherwise make lewd and sinful. it is, at times, a desire for the superiority which age and bodily size will give her over infants, helpless and inarticulate. this is why, in a good many cases, a perfect mother makes a detestable wife. unable to dominate her husband she craves children whom she can dominate with a minimum of bodily strength and mental effort, and she devotes all her time and care to them. when the children grow up and develop independent personalities, the neurotic mother often loses her interest in them. how many times have we heard women (and men) remark that children should remain "babies," that young children are far more lovable than adolescents, etc. =mother and father love= differ in several respects. fathers look upon their children, especially their sons, as a visible proof of their virile power. in their sons they see their own image, the more attractive to them as they are more egotistical. the weak, infirm or unsuccessful son, however, receives little love at the hands of his father. he is not a credit to his progenitor. no mother, on the other hand, seems to neglect a cripple or idiotic child. be it male or female, it is a human being which she can dominate easily. the more neurotic she is, the more she will idolise the ill-favored child. =mothers always adore their sons=, young and old, for they behold in them males whom they can easily dominate. and fathers love their daughters, young or old, for similar reasons. the relations of aging mothers and growing daughters, however, are almost invariably tinged with a certain hostility, overt or concealed, according to the women's habits, training, manners, etc. =girls at the flapper stage= who resent the attraction which their mothers still wield over younger men, constantly remind them of their age and bid them to behave in a way more in keeping with their mature years. the flapper's mother on the other hand, who sees her daughter gradually monopolising the attention of men callers, reminds the girl with monotonous regularity that she is only a child and bids her to behave as befits her tender years. the mother resents her daughter's fresh beauty, the daughter, her mother's experience in dealing with males. both watch each other closely, protecting each other's modesty and virtue and trying to make each other's life as uninteresting and uneventful as possible. the girl becomes an ethical critic on her mother's smoking or gowns. the mother blossoms into a puritan who allows her daughter no freedom and seems to have entirely forgotten her own girlhood years. the strife lasts until the daughter is old enough to have her own circle of friends and no longer needs a chaperone. after which mother and daughter, if matched intellectually, may once more become friends. =repressed hatred.= i have treated a number of neurotic mothers who seemed to be obsessed by their adoration of their children. that exaggerated tenderness was, as i mentioned in another chapter, a cover for death wishes directed toward those children. some never allowed knives to be left in evidence in the house, some did not dare to carry their children in their arms on the stairs, while boarding trains, or while near open windows. one never dared to administer a medicine to her little girl "for fear of making a mistake and poisoning her." one did not dare to bathe her child for fear of drowning him "accidentally" in the tub. neurotic women who do not wish to become mothers and rebel against motherhood, (which some of them consider as a symbol of woman's inferior role), often compensate for their lack of love by an almost criminal indulgence and weakness toward their children. unable to give them genuine love, they pretend to idolise them and are apparently unable to deny any of their wishes. this, in last analysis, is simply a total indifference to the little ones' welfare. that type of mother spoils her children and makes them unfit to face life and its emergencies. her extravagant adulation, her outbursts of artificial tenderness, however, do not always deceive the children themselves who feel automatically, thru nervous and muscular imitation, the tensions of their mother's body. the little son of the woman who was obsessed by the fear of drowning him (and who compensated for her murderous cravings by showering the wildest caresses upon him), could not be prevailed upon to ever go near the water until her obsessions, of which, he, of course, had no conscious knowledge, had been removed by psychoanalytic treatment. neurotic mother love trains children for a neurotic life. chapter xxvi should winter mate with spring? this is the poetical way in which many newspaper editors have been introducing to their readers accounts of two recent incidents which, at the time of writing (this chapter), keep headline writers busy. one of the news items is the idyll of an heiress, still in her teens, who has made up her mind to marry a man of fifty or thereabout. the other is the heartbreak of a seventy year old husband, deserted by his twenty year old wife. the mating of winter and spring is a daily occurrence, both seasons being divided up about equally between the two sexes. the two unnatural matches which i mentioned above, however, stand in a class by themselves. many a young idler, gifted with good looks, has managed to play on the erotic feelings of some woman in her dotage and to annex a goodly portion of her wealth. many an attractive girl, seeking the line of least effort, has been known to prefer a union with a silly old man to the daily struggle for existence. =disinterested brides.= in the two cases under discussion, on the other hand, no suspicion of sordidness could be cast on the bride-that-was or on the bride-to-be. both are wealthy, one of them immensely so. the bridegroom to be is, if not a poor man, at least in very modest circumstances. a genuine love match in both cases. but the genuineness of love did not prevent a catastrophe in one case and will probably bring about a catastrophe in the other case as well. in both cases, the men are probably normal and yielding to the very natural attraction of youth combined with beauty and refinement. both women, however, are abnormal, altho one of them, the runaway wife, may have regained her normality and awakened from her absurd dream. both are, or were, the victims of a fixation of the most acute type, on the father image indicating a morbid neurotic disposition. such unions can hardly ever hold out any promise of lasting happiness. =the case of wagner.= there is, of course, the famous example of wagner who, at fifty-seven carried off the beautiful wife of hans von bülow, almost thirty years his junior, and lived happily with her until his death. but wagner was at the time a marvelous example of physical and mental activity, energy and creative power. in no way, barring his facial appearance, could he suggest age or decay to his young wife. he remained to the last a romantic figure. the glamor, however, which may surround a successful composer with a picturesque past, is not likely to dazzle in any way the bride of a riding master or of a new england manufacturer. =a parent fixation=, as i explained in the chapters on the family romance and on incest, is the more acute as it drives its victim to seek a closer duplicate of the parent type. the man who seeks a woman for his mate because his mother was a woman is influenced by the most normal and biologically valuable of mother fixations. the race would come to an end but for that form of fixation. the son of a blonde mother who cannot love a woman unless she is also a blonde, is less normal and less free in his choice of a mate than the preceding type. he is inhibited by childhood memories, but then, education and civilisation are little more than inhibitions caused by childhood memories. that type simply marries in "his set" and can lead an otherwise very normal life. he, however, who is irresistibly attracted by a woman exactly like his mother, not only as far as appearance, but also as far as age goes, is a childish, regressive neurotic, seeking the safety of childhood conditions and obsessed at times by unconscious incestuous cravings. =the rock of physical incompatibility= is often one on which such adventures are shipwrecked. a very young woman, ignorant of the sex life and its problems, unable to realise its meaning before marriage, may develop immediately after her union to an elderly man a very passionate temperament. either she will repress her cravings for physical love, which her too mature mate is unable to gratify, and she will develop anxiety states or hysteria. or she will be too healthy to repress her desires, and her disappointment may change her love into scorn, especially when conversation with other women or a clever suitor opens her eyes to what is lacking in her life. a separation, sometimes complicated by the usual triangle situation, may become unavoidable. there are cases in which both mates are frankly neurotic and were drawn together as invalids and weak-minded often are, by the similarity of their predicament. =the plight of two neurotics.= both of them may, as i observed it once, seek safety in a mock-incestuous relationship, the older mate, seeking safety in a union with an immature human being, the younger mate in a union with the parent image. in one case which i have in mind, the husband, fifty-five years old, had been several times on the verge of exposure for unlawful "liberties" he took with very young girls. the wife, a few days after her father's death, married the old man who had been her father's associate and who had tried to seduce her when she was barely ten. she visited me when a new scandal in which her husband became implicated caused her to leave him. she was considerably "mixed up" for, while young men had begun to attract her, she felt extremely self-conscious in their presence and could only enjoy herself in the company of elderly men who, in turn, reminded her too much of the nightmare thru which she had lived for two years. a pious catholic, she solved the conflict prematurely, before i had time to bring insight into her mind, by fleeing from all sorts of men and into a convent. other cases have a less tragic history: a young woman of twenty-eight who had never been happy with her husband, (thirty), took advantage of the numberless opportunities war work and war drives gave to women, to become faithless to her husband. she had four short-lived affairs with men twice her age, then "broke down" when her husband secured a divorce for adultery. analysis gave her insight into her father fixation which was not very deep and might never have driven her into overt acts but for the unusual conditions in which she found herself. she is now happily remarried to a man of her age. =what the community says.= mates whose ages are out of proportion, are often thrown into deep discord by the pressure of the community's criticism. they might thrive on a desert island or on a farm or, as in the case of an explorer i knew, when surrounded almost continuously by an "inferior" race whose opinion they can easily disregard. the community's smiles or open disapproval, on the other hand, are a heavy burden, especially for the more neurotic mate, who is likely to feel very self-conscious in everything he or she does. the too young wife and the too young husband may at first smile when hotel clerks, shopkeepers, chauffeurs, etc., allude to their aged mate as "your father" or "your mother." after a while, a feeling of embarrassment will get the best of their sense of humor. shame and humiliation will soon set in when those mistakes are repeated frequently. when the ego is wounded by love complications, unless the individual is a pronounced masochist, love fares very badly. it turns into hatred for the mate causing the humiliating remarks, as unconscious incest ideas gradually break into consciousness and provoke protective measures, critical attitudes, disgust, etc. in one case which came under my observation, the community's criticisms worked as effectively as psychoanalytic treatment would have. =having her fixation-fling.= a young woman married to a man of her age, but discontented and frigid, had a passing liaison with an elderly man, which exposed her to many jeers on the part of her associates who suspected it. she was very intelligent and well acquainted with psychoanalytical literature and only consulted me to make sure of her correct diagnosis of her own case. she did the proper thing under the circumstances, confessed a part of the truth to her husband, went away with him for a while and has been happy with him ever since. she had had her "fixation fling" as she called it, had sown her neurotic wild oats and ridden herself of a morbid element which may never bother her again. this sort of solution, however, is one which is neither scientific nor safe, for the person affected by a fixation of that morbid sort is at the mercy of a recurrence of it, should life's problems compel him to seek once more the line of exaggerated safety and regression to the childish level of conduct. =physical results.= if matches between the young and old were successful physically and otherwise, they would be extremely beneficial to the older mate. normal sexual stimulation, far from driving the aged to an early grave, as old time puritans have taught us, is probably the most potent factor of rejuvenation. the steinach operation which enables the hormone-producing cells of the gonads to overdevelop at the expense of the seminiferous cells, seems, when successful, to confer new youth upon the entire organism. lorand, stekel, hufeland and others hold that sexual activity in the old, when it is possible, is conducive to longevity. lorand mentions many interesting cases in which remarriage at incredibly advanced ages seemed in no way to curtail one's life span. thomas parré, who died at , was arrested for assault at and married again at . the dane drackenberg, who died at , married at a woman of , became a widower at , and tried to woo a young peasant girl who, however, refused to accept him. peter albrecht, who died at , married again at and had seven children. gurgon duglas, who died at , married at and had children, the youngest one being born when the father was . baron baravicion dès capelles died at , having had four wives, the last one whom he married when . lorand adds that, according to his observations, old people with an erotic temperament have a better chance of survival than "cold blooded" ones. hufeland says that married people live much longer than the unmarried and that no bachelor was ever known to reach a ripe age. the sudden bloom and general appearance of rejuvenation of old maids finally finding a mate, of widows who remarry and of neglected wives who give themselves to a potent lover, is a good physiological argument why winter should try to seek the violent stimulation of a union with spring. =the fate of the younger mate.= the younger mate, however, can hardly hope to escape unscathed when going thru such an experience. the old are benefited because their muscles, nerves, glands, etc., imitate the attitudes and behavior of the younger mate's organs and become accordingly younger. the same process of imitation is at work in the younger mate and the damage done to him or her is naturally great, altho not always obvious at first. his or her younger organism, less experience-laden, and hence more elastic and more responsive, adapts itself more quickly to the ways of old age than old age adapts itself to the ways of youth. even in cases when the gratification seems to be mutual, the damage done to the younger mate reveals itself thru neurotic disturbances. a man of thirty-five consulted for anxiety states, nightmares, "nervous" gastric troubles, etc. he had been living since his twentieth year with a woman twenty years his senior, in fact, a friend and schoolmate of his mother's. he called her mama and she called him sonny. while, according to his statements, their sexual life was absolutely normal and satisfying, the repressed incest-fear lurking in his unconscious betrayed itself thru a nightmare which disturbed his sleep with alarming frequency: "i am at the foot of marble stairs. a female figure is standing at the top, a relative, perhaps my mother. she extends her hand to me to help me up the stairs, but that hand is so weak that it cannot hold me and then i am frightened by a powerful male figure, a man in authority, perhaps my father, coming toward me from the side." altho the man was physically satisfied, the split in his unconscious made him very irritable, restless and an unpleasant companion for his "mama" to whom he made endless scenes for trifling reasons. =king david.= in biblical days when king david grew old,[ ] his ministers besought themselves of the following remedy: they found a young virgin and "let her lie in his bosom" in the hope that the dying man might be revived by her contact. even that availed nothing. in our days, however, we have come to prize human life and happiness more highly and young virgins shall not be sacrificed, being the new generation and the future, to the welfare of some modern king david who is the past. the young women in our midst, virgins or others, whom a morbid obsession draws to the bosom of some king david must be saved from the winter chill that awaits them. modern psychology holds the key opening for them the door to freedom and normal love. chapter xxvii negative love the only form of love which is positive is complete love, which gratifies both the physical and the mental aspects of the organism and which, besides, is human and, hence, recognises and admits the relativity of all things human. any form of love which excludes either the physical or the mental relationship of male and female, is incomplete and, therefore, abnormal. all the puritanical rant to the contrary notwithstanding, platonic love and prostitution are on the same biological level, as morbid and unnatural one as the other. prostitution only gratifies the body more or less completely and starves the mind, causing the mental aspect of the love craving to become stunted or perverse. platonic love gratifies the intellect more or less completely, rather less than more, for it offers few egotistical rewards, but it starves the body and leads it into adopting morbid forms of craving gratification. =a clean life.= many a patient has declared proudly to me that he led a "clean life." a few days later, after losing his selfconsciousness in my presence, he would gradually confess to a terrible "struggle" against his "animal" instincts. which meant, that at irregular intervals, self-gratification would give him, in a morbid day dream, the woman whose love he craved; or a pollution dream would allow him, in the unconsciousness and ethical irresponsibility of sleep, to make up for his privations by indulging in imaginary promiscuous cohabitation. this is in too many cases, the seamy side of a platonic love affair, when one or both of the mates is not naturally unsexed but unsexes himself thru what he or she calls will-power and which analysis reveals to be conscious or unconscious fear. this is the meaning of love plus continence. in the majority of cases its damage stops there. in a few cases, however, especially when the sex cravings of one of the mates have been so successfully repressed that they are no longer experienced consciously, symbolical nightmares of the most exhausting kind, hysterical disturbances during the waking hours, compulsions and obsessions of all sorts, reveal to the psychoanalyst that lava is boiling under the apparently extinct cone of a safe volcano. the platonic individual, like the puritan, is either oversexed or undersexed. the oversexed must surround themselves with protective measures lest their violent cravings may lead them into socially punishable acts. the simplest neurotic expedient is to utter a complete denial, whenever possible a public one, of the existence of sexual cravings, and then to be forced by one's statements into living up to an absurd self-imposed standard. =utterances and conduct.= this at times results in most grotesque conflicts between utterance and conduct. we see for instance the much married mrs. eddy who as the witty theodore schroeder remarked, had many more husbands than children, stating that the pleasures of the flesh "are always wrong unless the physiologic factor can be excluded from consciousness" (a rather cryptic sentence) and also that "generation rests on no sexual basis." thy hysteric whose volcanic outbursts supply her with a morbid sexual relief for which she rejects all responsibility, for she is unconscious at the time is generally in her private and public life a woman of great repressions and perfect behavior, likely to sneer at every mention of a sex urge. in other cases, platonic love is an attempt at creating an artificial value thru destroying a natural, biological human function. =oracles and prophecies.= in ancient times it was observed that people deprived of any sexual gratification made at times mysterious utterances which were considered as an emanation of some divine intelligence. those utterances were nothing but hysterical ravings, accepted as oracles, prophecies, etc. our praise of continence, practiced even when it is unnecessary, (as in the case of lawfully married mates), is, after all, a survival of such superstitious beliefs based on misunderstood morbid phenomena. modern science, especially the new science of endocrinology, has shown that to every display of sexual activity corresponds an outpouring of hormonic secretions which benefits the entire system. =can we save our vital force?= once upon a time it was assumed that continence enabled people to save their "vital force," to preserve the "resources of their body." we know now that the gonads produce two secretions, one which would pass out of the body in any event, and one which flows directly in the blood and is the only one which can benefit the organism. the various puritanical theories as to the great value of continence had been shaken many times by evidence from the biography of all the great writers, artists, philosophers, inventors and other men and women who have left the world much enriched by their creative labor and at the same time indulged freely in the pleasures of the flesh. =sublimation.= endocrinology strikes now the last blow at those theories, one of which by the way, was freud's romantic hypothesis of the "sublimation." freud believed that sexual energy could be diverted towards social ends of greater value and non-sexual in character. this is scientifically absurd, as it disregards the dualism of glandular secretions. the outward secretions cannot be "saved" and the inner secretions which are beyond our control flow directly into the blood stream. i have shown in another book, "sex happiness" that the platonic man is either the victim of his ignorance of sex matters and of ascetic superstitions which modern physiology can no longer countenance, or a physiologically deficient individual. the heroes of beresford's "god's counterpoint" and of may sinclair's "the romantic" whom i analised in "sex happiness" correspond to the first and the second of those types, respectively. =the sexless.= there are men and women, of course, of the hypogonadal type, undersexed or sexless, who are capable of deep affection for a person of the opposite sex. that such an affection never culminates in complete physical communion is easily understood. sexual failures discourage the weaker friend from risking any more experiments likely to result in humiliation. the sexless man is practically a woman, and like certain homosexuals, treats women as members of his own sex. he may make a pleasant, delicate, safe companion, but no woman should allow herself to care for him. =frigid women= who never experience any thrill in their husband's embrace and hence consider the physical communion as an indecent act forgivable in a husband only, as it is a part of the marriage arrangement, may love a man very deeply and yet never feel the urge to surrender their body to him. here again we have to deal with ignorance or neurosis or both. the frigid woman, as i explained elsewhere is generally a neurotic, (perhaps made so by unpleasant first sexual experiences and her mate's failure to awaken her normal erotism), who is afraid of life, of its biological duties, of responsibility, of submission to a man's will, etc., and burdened with some unconscious incest fixation on her father, or homosexual fixation on her mother, etc. her platonic attitude in love is due to numberless unconscious fears which are a strong bulwark against temptation. =ideal love.= another form of negativism in love which receives no little amount of praise at the hands of the romantically silly and of the ill-informed, is the quest of the ideal love. we meet men and women, sometimes of mature years, who tell us with a great deal of pride that they never married because they could not find the "right mate." i will not deny that in rare cases this may be considered a perfectly valid reason, pointing to no morbid disposition on the part of the unwillingly single person. marriage might have implied mating with a member of an erotically indifferent race, african or asiatic; isolation in a remote farming community where a refined woman could only select a mate from among primitive laborers, or in mining regions like some alaska camps, where the only women available at times are prostitutes. barring such "legitimate" exceptions, which to my mind, imply however, a suspicious indifference to securing a mate, the seeker for an ideal mate is almost always neurotic. =protective measures.= by setting his goal very high, he is protected against the danger of finding a mate and assuming life's responsibilities, increased as they would be by normal sexual activities. this is done in various ways, thru exaggerated social expectations, or thru unreasonable economic demands, or through morbid criticism of the possible mate. a working girl may set her heart on marrying none but a prince charming who could by no chance whatsoever be attracted by her appearance or her manners, unless he himself were a neurotic seeking safety in a union with a socially inferior mate (students marrying waitresses, etc.). newspapers publish enough news of such matches to supply the neurotic woman with a reasonable rationalisation of her fear of matrimony. some poor, unattractive young man may likewise decide never to marry unless he may secure as his bride a woman whom her social position makes unattainable. here again, unions of heiresses with menials supply the rationalisation. some unattractive women may make such financial demands on the man seeking their affection that no one will have the courage to tempt them away from their single-blessedness. =lovers of the absolute.= there are individuals of a much more pathological type still, who refuse to recognise and accept the relativity of all things human, who seek absolute beauty, perfection, intelligence, understanding, sympathy in their future mate and who grow discouraged and depressed when they unavoidably discover flaws in every companion of the opposite sex. in certain cases that obsession of the perfect detail is a symptom of insanity. cartoonists have often amused themselves and us by representing famous men and women with their features so distorted that their distant likeness to some animal is emphasized. i have observed the same distortion in neurotics to whom that delusion brought no humorous enjoyment but on the contrary deep suffering. =a troublesome patient.= one of my patients a handsome young man of twenty-six, had had very ephemeral affairs with several women and left them abruptly when he suddenly discovered in their features a likeness to certain animals, pigs, dogs, monkeys, etc. after which he could never be prevailed upon to see them again. one morning he called on me, announcing coolly that he had decided to shoot me. i invited him to sit down and discuss his plans more fully before carrying them out, and also to mention some of his reasons for that somewhat radical decision. he explained to me, with his right hand annoyingly buried in his coat pocket, that he had been in love for a few weeks, with a very attractive girl. recently, he had noticed something in her profile which distantly resembled a pig's snout. the night before, while he was in her company, he suddenly saw her head transformed into a pig's head. he fled from her rooms in terror and disgust and, attributing his "clear insight into her true nature" to my psychoanalytic teachings, had decided to save others from my baneful influence by killing me. as is usually the case with maniacs, a quiet conversation cast doubts in his mind. i told him that i did not approve of his plans which might, however, be excellent, but that, as i was really a biased adviser in that matter, he should discuss them with an impartial third party. he then decided to call on dr. everett dean martin who advised him to take a rest cure and escorted him to bellevue hospital. the poor boy's transfer to the state asylum has put an end to his search for the ideal love. that search was a disguised flight from women and love, his delusion was an effective measure of protection against temptation. nothing but the absolute could satisfy him in a woman. relativity was abhorrent to him. every seeker for the ideal love has gone a few steps along the road which led my poor patient into the house of the living dead. =higher aspirations.= neurotics of that type are plausible for they compensate for their fear and their inferiority with a pride based upon "higher aspirations," "greater delicacy of feelings," "an aristocratic nature" or the tell-tale statement that "their mother's beautiful character," "their father's noble nature" makes every man or woman appear very inferior in their eyes. proud of certain characteristics of theirs which they cannot help having, they childishly display an egotism and selfishness which makes them at times very ridiculous, for it says indirectly: "nobody is quite good enough for me." when the search for ideal love results in nervous states due to egotistical starvation, psychoanalysis can help greatly by giving the neurotic insight into the fear of life or the parent-fixation which is at the bottom of his romantic aspirations. chapter xxviii the new woman and love how will love fare at the hands of the new woman? the old forms of love will naturally be as unbearable to her as the steel corsets of a forgotten generation. yet the problem is not so very pressing, for the truly new woman is still an almost insignificant factor, numerically speaking, in every community. even in the professions and trades of a distinctly masculine character which woman has recently invaded, we meet constantly the mock-modern person, who under a veneer of modernity, still harbors all the superstitions, and exhibits all the mannerisms of the "old fashioned" woman. being old-fashioned in love, as in every other activity of life, presents a great temptation to the lazy, the unintelligent, the neurotic. it is an excuse for all sorts of unethical forms of conduct, for failure or inactivity, and yet carries with itself a deceptive air of mock refinement and distinction. the woman who boasts of being old fashioned can misbehave and retain for years her husband's or her environment's confidence in her purity. being old fashioned, she is assumed by all to be a little "simple" and "silly" at times, but unlikely to ever cross certain boundaries. at the same time, she can pass cruel judgments on all the trangressors who have not been as shrewd or lucky as she. as a basis for a discussion of the extent to which love will affect the modern woman and modern woman affect love, i shall select the picture drawn by george bernard shaw in mccall's magazine for october of the woman of the new generation. "=what women had to do recently=," shaw writes, "was not to repudiate their femininity but to assert its social value, not to ape masculinity but to demonstrate its insufficiency. this was the point of my play candida in which it is made quite plain that the husband's masculine career would go to pieces without the wife's feminine activity. "as refinement was supposed to be proper to women and roughness proper to men fifty years ago, the great increase in companionship between men and women during that period was bound either to refine the men or roughen the women. it has done both. the feminine refinement which was only silliness disguised by affection has gone; and women are hardier and healthier, and the stock sizes of their clothes are larger in consequence. the masculine vigor that was only boorishness, slovenliness and neglect of person and clothes has fled before feminine criticism. "=but the generalisation that women are refined and men rough by nature= is a superficial one, holding good only when, as often happens, the man's occupation is rougher than the woman's. the natural woman cannot afford to be as fastidious as the natural man; if she shirked all the unpleasantness that he escapes, the race would perish. as a matter of fact, there are coarse women and coarse men, refined women and refined men; and there is no reason to suppose that the proportions differ in the two sexes. "=there is, however, a rebellion against nature= in the matter of the very unequal share of the burden of reproduction which falls to men and women in civilized communities. i say civilized communities advisedly, because the extremely artificial life of the modern lady has the effect of making her natural functions pathological. whether the rebellion has been going on ever since ladies were invented i do not know, because history is silent on the subject, as it is on so many specifically feminine subjects. but i can testify that among women brought up amid the feminist movement of the second half of the nineteenth century there was a revolt against maternity which went deeper than that revolt against excessive maternity which has led to birth control. these more thoroughgoing rebels objected to the whole process, from the occasional event itself to the more permanent conditions it imposes. it is easy to dismiss this as monstrous and silly, but the modern conception of creative evolution forbids us to dismiss any development as impossible if it becomes the subject of an aspiration. "there is no limit to the truth of the old saying that where there is a will there is a way, and though for the moment a refusal to accept the existing conditions of reproduction would mean race suicide, the rebels against nature may be the pioneers of evolutionary changes which may finally dispose of the less pleasant incidents of nutrition, and make reproduction a process external to the parents in its more burdensome phases, as it now is in many existent species." =the entrance of woman into commercial life= has trained her no longer to expect something for nothing (exchangeable) and to realize that a bargain, to be satisfactory, an agreement, to be lasting, must be based on mutual advantages to both parties. love, with the old fashioned, began with a struggle of wits between the sexes, the man trying to conquer without granting any advantages to the defeated, woman trying to wear out her opponent and make him yield more and more advantages before she finally "paid up." on one side, fear of financial burdens, at the other end, fear of desertion and pregnancy, suspicion and cruelty. the sex struggle with its disgusting features of hypocrisy, pretence, duplicity, misrepresentation, denial of biological facts, etc., has yielded to an agreement, much as the robber system of past ages has been replaced by commercial transactions which leave no hatred and no desire for vengeance in their wake. =was it a sacrifice?= the old-fashioned woman, wife or mistress, assuming the position of the conquered and defeated, claimed infinite privileges as an offset to what she has "given up," "sacrificed," "yielded." she humiliated her conqueror by pretending that his body or his caresses were not the equal of hers, and that she only submitted to his desire, without much pleasure, compelled by his "low instincts." the modern woman, conversant with the facts of sex, and no longer having to create an artificial value for her body based on disregard of biological facts, since her activities, mental and physical, now command a definite price on the market place, seeks a partner with whom she will exchange caresses leading, as she recognises without silly shame, to mutual gratification. =the pursuit.= the old-fashioned woman, who always assumed the passive role in life and who, supposedly indifferent to the pleasures of the flesh, ran away, actually or figuratively, from the brutal pursuer, played a preposterous dual part in the pre-love skirmishes. who has never encountered the woman who wears in a public place some dress which reveals a great deal of her bust, and yet who pretends to be offended if some man stares at what she has exposed in order to attract his stare? the modern woman whose worth is determined, not by the male's eroticism in her presence, but by her accomplishments, can afford to be frank, honest, if not, at times, aggressive, in the love search. =the passing of respectable prostitution.= the old-fashioned woman, having created the artificial value of womanhood as such, indulged in a mild, genteel form of prostitution, which, having no consequences likely to impose a burden on the community, (pregnancy, childbirth) never was criticised very severely. she sold her company for meals, theatre tickets, comfortable transportation, flowers, trinkets. now and then, developing a streak of fairness and honesty, she would grant the man she exploited small privileges of a superficial kind. but the real old-fashioned girl was of the absolutely sordid type, who could allow a more or less repellent suitor to spend considerable sums to amuse her but would express genuine indignation at the thought that the man could be as sordid as she was, and expect some caresses in return. the modern woman, made independent financially by her non-sexual activities, can remove from her love all taint of even mild commercialism, returning favors in kind, or accepting presents, no longer as a bribe, but as a token of affection on the part of a man she loves. =the abettor of ethical sins.= the old fashioned wife was in many more cases than superficial thinking would cause us to imagine, a more dangerous corrupter of public and private morality than the prostitute. numerically the wife predominates. the prostitute constitutes a very small minority of the population of large cities and does not thrive in small town, villages or farming communities. louis berman, who is generally very indifferent to psychology, makes a very valuable remark in his book on glands: "consider," he writes, "the unimportance of a collective purpose to the woman whose career is the mate and then the mate's career." which means that the woman who takes up wifehood as a profession has no social morality. her husband is her oyster and the world must in turn be her husband's oyster. she knows only one thing: that she must support her mate in anything he does so long as his activities, be they even immoral or criminal, provide food and shelter for her and her children. she cares not what he does as long as he "succeeds." she founds her estimate of success upon visible accomplishment. getting "theirs," to her is preferable to getting "there." she, in short, is a foe to the world, as the world is the foe her mate has set out to capture and rob. she willingly sells his ethics to buy success and, at the same time, is loud in her denunciation of public, self-confessed prostitutes. she would not prostitute herself but she lightheartedly prostitutes her mate. the modern woman can in an emergency help her husband financially and thus enable him to follow the dictates of social ethics. she will thereby earn deeper love and respect from him than by any willingness to stand by him in crooked deals. =health versus sickness.= to the old fashioned wife, weakness and sickness were invaluable assets. sickness excused laziness and capriciousness. sickness was a bait for petting and at the same time, a protection against unwelcome physical intimacies. her menstruation became a mysterious, offensive, painful process which debarred her from many careers she never thought of entering, saved her from duties she was only too glad to shirk. undismayed by the sight of professional women, singers, actresses, dancers, divers, etc., who not only never seemed disabled by the "dreaded" period but also held a distinct fascination to males "in spite" of their lack of neurotic femininity, she prided herself in living up to michelet's asinine description of woman, "an invalid twelve times unclean." the modern woman seeking accomplishment of the positive type, scorns the negative superiority which sickness and invalidism assure to neurotics. she has acquired a more scientific knowledge of sex matters and the superstitious fears surrounding menstruation no longer affect her. from my own clinical experience, i am compelled to agree heartily with dr. josephine a. jackson and helen m. salisbury, who in their very fine and practical book "outwitting our nerves" state that "ninety-five out of a hundred cases of painful menstruation are caused by fear and expectation of pain." =the passing of the doll.= the modern woman, active, self reliant, honest and healthy, will force out of existence a type which has lent much picturesque charm to social gatherings and to pictorial art, the doll type of woman, prettiness incarnate, of rose leaf charm, unfit for any biological function except the mild lovemaking, not so much of a husband, as of a lover. tuberculous poets and composers of the musset and chopin type, affected pictorial artists like helleu, will deplore her disappearance. man, put at his ease by the modern woman, who does not require constant protection, mental and physical, will find the doll "too much trouble." only the very stupid and unmanly man will cultivate her for she will not throw his physical shortcomings into too striking relief and it will not require any mental exertion on his part to converse with her. =the passing of the flirt.= the flirt is doomed. the flirt is a rather unintelligent woman with a mild prostitution complex. she has been trained from infancy to consider a woman's career as successful when the woman fastens to herself a breadwinner whom she holds by his physical desire of her body. having never acquired any market value outside of the sexual field, she must constantly test her powers and reassure herself by leading all sorts and conditions of men, for whom she may never experience even the slightest fancy, into consequential overt acts revealing that she has awakened their eroticism. anyone will do, provided she reads in his eyes the verdict: i am still attractive. the terror of growing old is not so overwhelming to the modern woman who has acquired a non-sexual market value. she tests herself thru positive accomplishment, leadership, principally, and does not need to keep her eye constantly on the sex thermometer. =modesty, old and new.= knowledge which dispels physical ghosts and a positive self-valuation based on accomplishment will cause the modern woman to discard the old fashioned modesty which was supposed to be her greatest attraction, and which husbands, while being obviously attracted by immodest women, encouraged in their wives as a bulwark against the advances of other men. havelock ellis in his "impressions and comments" contrasts cleverly thru two striking illustrations the old-fashioned type, worshipping at the altar of false modesty, and the modern type, who is no longer ashamed of her body or her sex: "in one of my books i had occasion to mention the case, communicated to me, of a woman in italy who preferred to perish in the flames, when the house was on fire, rather than shock her modesty by coming out of it without her clothes. so far as it has been within my power i have always sought to place bombs beneath the world in which that woman lived, so that it might altogether go up in flames. i read of a troop ship torpedoed in the mediterranean and almost immediately sunk within sight of land. a nurse was still on deck. she proceeded to strip, saying to the men about her: 'excuse me, boys, i must save the tommies.' she swam around and saved a dozen of them. that woman belongs to my world. now and again i have come across the like, sweet and feminine and daring women who have done things as brave as that, and even much braver because more complexly difficult and always i feel my heart swinging like a censer before them, going up in a perpetual fragrance of love and adoration. "i dream of a world in which the spirits of women are flames stronger than fire, a world in which modesty has become courage and yet remains modesty, a world in which women are as unlike men as ever they were in the world i sought to destroy, a world in which women shine with a loveliness of self-revelation as enchanting as ever the old legends told, and yet a world which would immeasurably transcend the old world in the self sacrificing passion of human service." thus far i have presented the silver lining of what some timid persons call the cloud of modernism in love. to be perfectly fair and honest, i must now mention the cloud itself, altho, like all clouds, it will soon blow away or resolve itself into a few drops of water, tears, perhaps, also of a temporary nature. =the unadapted woman.= the sudden rise of women in certain fields of activity has left quite a number of them unpleasantly unadapted. certain positions, well filled by women, and which pay rather high salaries, demand but a modicum of intellectual development, little culture or manners. the women who fill them, and who generally come from the working class, financially well off, accustomed to expensive clothes and to respectful treatment on the part of their coworkers or employers, are loath to enter a married relationship or even a liaison, with men of their social set, that is, having the same culture or lack of culture, for those men are financially lower and lack certain manners which they expect to find in their environment. a husband of the working class type could not, in case of pregnancy, give such a woman the comfort which she now craves. motherhood would deprive her, temporarily at least, from an income which nothing could replace. nor could she become subservient to a husband after being very independent and having become slightly snobbish on account of the attentions she has received from men financially superior to her. some of those women whom i have known, and whose profession i shall not mention to avoid references of an odious character, sought mates, legitimate or illegitimate, out of their class, taking for husbands or lovers unsuccessful professional men in need of help. the results of those matches were anything but encouraging. the male prostitutes who accepted such arrangements, either showed plainly their scorn of their unintellectual mate or left her as soon as success in their chosen field made them independent of their working class wife or mistress. =the proud husband.= many men drawing even small salaries, are absolutely unwilling to marry a woman engaged in a gainful occupation. this is due either to hidden jealousy, some men imagining that daily contact with other men is bound to jeopardise a woman's morals, or to silly pride and panicky fear of "what they will say." i have heard many donkeys telling me that they do not wish "people" to think that they cannot support their wives. the cloud hovering over the modern woman and which may, at times, cast a shadow on her love life, will be blown away as soon as culture spreads to all social classes of the population owing to the increase and systematisation of leisure, and as soon as the old fashioned male has been consigned to his last resting place or analised out of his foolish neurotic notions. chapter xxix birth control modern love, as i have endeavored to show in the preceding chapters is infinitely more complex than love was in the past. when woman was meant to obey and serve, when feudalism or any other rigid caste system set clear-cut boundaries to each individual's range of development, there was less unrest among women just as there was less unrest among slaves. and both the mediaeval slave and the mediaeval women were probably absolute bores. unrest is growth and complexity is the obvious evidence of growth. love stirrings among the amoebae are probably similar to those experienced by human beings. nature probably puts a premium of pleasure on the cleavage of the unicellular animal which reproduces itself by dividing itself in two, by issuing forth another cell, as it does on the human male when his gonads liberate spermatozoa. but the amoeba's love feelings are extremely simple and lead to no complication for they imply no enduring companionship, no responsibilities to a mate nor to the "offspring." =what we expect of the modern woman.= the modern woman who is expected to be, not merely a sexual mate but a social and intellectual mate as well, a companion in our athletic diversions, a comrade-at-arms in the world's battles, and many other things, can no longer allow chance to interrupt her developmental strivings, to handicap her in the friendly race she is running with the mate of her choice for intellectual accomplishment by unexpected, unwelcome, inconvenient pregnancy and child bearing. every child claims two years of its mother's life and it seems reasonable that the mother should have something to say as to what number that chapter will bear in her biography. as only the very weak-minded or very hypocritical offer as a remedy for frequent pregnancy male continence, we shall not even consider for one minute such an absurd, abnormal, biologically immoral solution. =the only solution.= the only other solution which has ever been proposed is a system of sexual enlightenment which will enable a woman to prevent pregnancy until such time when she feels that she can in justice to herself and to her offspring bear a child, and will, further, enable her to have an abortion performed when, in spite of all contraceptive measures, pregnancy has begun. this solution has been adopted by the entire civilised world, and in fact, i might say that the degree of civilisation of a race or nation can be accurately gauged by the number of individuals within that race or nation practicing birth control. with very few exceptions, a large family betokens stupidity, poverty and ignorance. it is the poor, the stupid and the ignorant who are burdened with children and, in turn, that burden keeps them stupid, poor and ignorant. a vicious circle which seems hard to break. =the human milch cow.= many a time when beholding some miserable female from the slums wrecked by repeated childbearing, dwarfed in mind, deformed in body, i have felt that sexual relations between her and her mate had probably reached the level at which they could only by an unusual stretch of one's imagination, be even distantly connected with love. to her and to her mate, every embrace, except after the onset of pregnancy, meant added suffering, added expense, further physical degradation and decay. since the "nice" people, however, know the remedy and apply it, why bother any longer? because, while normally intelligent men and women know how to avoid pregnancy and to whom to turn when an accident happens, the greatest uncertainty about contraception obsesses their minds and panicky fears bring about many catastrophes when the unwelcome fruit must be removed from the mother's body. thousands of men and woman, enlightened in the mysteries of contraception by some one who is little less ignorant than themselves, are chilled in their enjoyment of lawful love by the thought of possible danger. many women accept their husbands caresses in fear and trembling and many, imagining that there is a close connection between orgasm and pregnancy succeed in making themselves frigid, which leads to neurotic disturbances in the wife and unhappiness for both mates. many husbands never dare to "let themselves go" unless it be in the arms of a prostitute who is "wise" and can "take care of herself." many a woman has deceived her husband because a wise "man of the world" assured her that she ran no risk of pregnancy in his arms. =the nightmare of abortion.= and, if in spite of all, an "accident" happens, what is the mental state of the woman who calls at the "unethical" practitioner's office? while such an operation practiced with a modicum of skill may be harmless, the dread fear of possible consequences is quite able to kill the woman. fear may bring forth any morbid symptom, from an embolus to violent suppuration. fear, on the other hand, on which the advocates of suppressive measures rely, hardly ever leads anyone to continence or prevents any one from resorting to abortion. legal obstacles to contraceptive education attain only one result. they make married love risky and unpleasant, kill many a young woman and, in the case of neurotic mothers, allow one morbid generation to bring into this world another morbid generation. =the plight of the neurotic woman.= many neurotic women imagine that they hate their husbands and rationalise that hatred by bringing up many absurd, imaginary charges against them. to them their husbands symbolise pregnancy. many neurotic mothers, who did not wish to bear another child, often compensate for their lack of real love for the unwelcome child by an absurd, exaggerated tenderness which spoils the child or develops morbid fears (the fear they might hurt or kill the child, fear as to the child's health or welfare) which wreck the child's mental balance and not infrequently land the mother in a sanatarium. a neurotic woman i treated was obsessed by the fear that she might some day kill her husband and children. several years ago she had had an abortion performed by a midwife whom she did not trust. septic poisoning set in and she hovered between life and death for several months. a great fear of death drove her into reading many religious books. she came to the conclusion that she had committed a murder. but her husband, having impregnated her, was more guilty than she, for he was the cause of it all. hence, her insane logic added, he and she would be better off dead than leading a sinful life. she should, therefore, kill him and kill herself. furthermore, her children being the offspring of murderers, must be themselves tainted with criminal tendencies and should also be saved from a life of crime. when she was brought to me she had attempted to kill the entire family by turning on the gas faucets all over the house about two o'clock in the morning. the lawmakers who prevented that woman from having an operation performed legally, (which would remove the fear of crime) safely, by a reputable practitioner, (which would remove the fear of consequences), openly, (which would remove the fear of social ostracism), would have been responsible for the death of several people, had she not accidentally awakened her husband by upsetting a chair on her way back to her bed. there are thousands of neurotics, suffering from a feeling of inferiority, who are unfit to become mothers until their morbidity has been cured by psychotherapy, and who, if allowed to bear children, will train a new generation to behave in a negative, neurotic, socially baneful way. =the children of neurotic mothers=, in whom the fear and hatred of sex and love is rampant, will some day become prostitutes or puritans, both of them degrading love equally. i cannot follow freud when he states that every neurosis has its root in a failure of the love life, but some of the artificial obstacles created by a stupid puritanical civilisation between man and the full realisation of his sexual goal have not infrequently wrecked a life which, neurotically oriented as it was, might have gone on, in a socially tolerable way, for years and perhaps until the individual's death. difficulties due to the use of improper or misunderstood contraceptive appliances, the terrors of pregnancy, actual or expected, the fear of abortion, the sufferings following abortion in a complex-ridden organism, have too often upset a balance which at best was precarious. =birth control and indulgence.= certain critics of birth control attack it on the ground that it would lead to "overindulgence" of the sex relationship. those people are generally unprepossessing, worn, individuals who are trying to compensate for their sexual weakness by making a virtue out of an unavoidable inferiority. their opposition to what they call "overindulgence" (one thing which nature hardly ever allows, barring rare morbid cases of priapism) is grotesque in the case of married couples. more unions are wrecked by underindulgence due to fear, ignorance of the mates or inhibitions on the part of one or both, than to indulgence of the normal kind. anything which prevents or discourages the normal exchange of sexual caresses between those legally entitled to each others enjoyment is pernicious, antisocial and antibiological for, as grace potter writes: "mating has to do with other creation than that of new human beings. it has to do with every kind of creation--a new state, a poem, a picture, a great bridge, a happier world. mating is concerned with repeopling the world but also with regeneration of the individual, opening his capacities to growth. who shall say that the one is not as important as the other? if the second were not as important as the first there would have been hardly any advance in human culture. of all the errors incident to the development of human beings, in their struggle to attain a consciousness that makes them more than animals, none has had wider ill-effects than our misuse of love. "there are two equally unfortunate attitudes toward love which perhaps grow out of each other. the one is the puritan attitude and the other is the vulgar one. the puritan attitude is that sex impulses are somehow vile and so, altho they give pleasure, must be denied. the vulgar attitude takes it for granted that sex impulses are vile but as they are pleasant are to be accepted. the one tends to deny physical values to love. this is suppression. the other tends to deny tender values to love. that is suppression also. they have neither one known love. and finally the puritan becomes incapable of tenderness and the vulgar becomes equally incapable of physical expression. it is not a beautiful picture. "the healthy attitude is this: the sex impulse is not degrading any more than any other impulse is. it is a force as gravity is a force. those human beings achieve beauty and harmony who correlate sexual impulses harmoniously with all their other impulses."[ ] "in spite of the age-long teachings that sex life in itself is unclean," margaret sanger writes in "woman and the new race," the world has been moving to a realization that a great love between a man and a woman is a holy thing freighted with great responsibilities for spiritual growth. the fear of unwanted children removed, the assurance that she will have a sufficient amount of time in which to develop her love life to its greatest beauty, with its comradeship in many fields--these will lift woman by the very soaring quality of her innermost self to spiritual heights that few have attained. then the coming of the eagerly desired children will but enrich life in all its avenues, rather than enslave and impoverish it as do unwanted ones to-day. "what healthier grounds for the growth of sound morals could possibly exist than the ample spiritual life of the woman just depicted? free to follow the feminine spirit, which dwells in the sanctuary of her nature, she will, in her daily life, give expression to that high idealism which is the fruit of that spirit when it is unhampered and unviolated. "the love for her mate will flower in beauty of deeds that are pure because they are the natural expression of her physical, mental and spiritual being. the love for desired children will come to blossom in a spirituality that is high because it is free to reach the heights. "=the moral force of woman's nature will be unchained=, and of its own dynamic power will uplift her to a plane unimagined by those holding fast to the old standards of church morality. love is the greatest force of the universe; freed of its bonds of submission and unwanted progeny, it will formulate and compel of its own nature observance to standards of purity far beyond the highest conception of the average moralist." =the passing of the double standard.= "birth control in philosophy and practice," margaret sanger writes in "the pivot of civilization," is the destroyer of the dualism in the old sex code. it denies that the only purpose of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should be reduced to the level of sensual lust or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. in increasing and differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of individual and human expression. man will gain in this no less than woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved himself; and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will experience the joys of a newer and fuller freedom." chapter xxx the passing of husband worship while thousands of healthy people, men and women, rejoice over the fact that woman of the modern type is coming to the fore, there are many "calamity howlers," male and female, who bid us pause and consider the direful consequences which they fear (that is, hope), this new stage in the development of mankind will bring to the world. dr. arabella kenealy in "feminism and sex extinction" forebodes the passing of whatever is masculine in the male. her arguments are not very logical but they are interesting. she believes that "two fates await woman unless she rids herself of contempt for functions and duties purely hers, feminism and feministicism. she is handicapped every month for two or three days by weakness or pain. the craze to do men's work will result in man's emasculation. "the desire to figure in legislation far from stiffening the manly caliber of weak men will still further enervate them. members of either sex are not capable of doing their best work while in association. sex rivalries are excited. sex ascendency is created. man inherits from his mother some of woman's apprehension, foresight and altruism as required to present woman's bent and viewpoint. more of it would be superfluous. the numerical preponderance of women must ultimately swamp masculine initiative in state affairs unless the political functions of the sexes are separated." why the process should be more baneful for men than it has been for women who, for countless generations have been decidedly "swamped in state affairs" is not very evident. =is man's virility declining?= an editorial writer in the new york medical journal also foresees degeneration ahead unless the male retains his mastery: "the yielding by man to the other sex of masculine essential rights and obligations is a symptom of declining virility, physical and mental." another medical writer sounds a different alarm: "overworked woman may impair the constitutional vigor of man, while she works with him. she is kept up by nervous excitement, by strong tea or drugs. in short, woman is fussy. in a stress of work she will work on with crimson cheeks and growing irritation, while man will put on his hat and calmly resort to the nearest lunch room. women by their eternal high pressure as heads of departments are making nervous wrecks of themselves." finally there comes havelock ellis, usually less panicky, who thinks he has noticed a distinct degeneration in the young man of today. "these weak-chinned, neurotic young men are no match at all for the heavy-jawed resolute young women feminist methods are creating. the yielding to women of masculine rights is a symptom of declining virility. equality in all things yielded, pride in himself, in his work, gone, he will descend to the state of the decadent savage who keeps as many wives to work for him as their work for him enables him to keep." =there is undue pessimism in all those warnings.= woman has not become brutish as some writers claim, nor has man become effeminate. woman has simply gained a clearer knowledge of her latent powers and the war has provided her with a touchstone for her physical resistance and endurance. the work woman had to do during the war, which she had never suspected she could do, for until then it had been considered as man's work, has not "masculinised" her but it has rid many "delicate flowers" of their morbid belief in the fragile character of their constitution. male man is not in danger of passing out of existence but one variety of man is doomed, the type which has always wished to mate with the two types of women which, in the preceding chapter, i declared doomed, the doll and the flirt. =the wise husband.= that almost extinct species is the type of husband who speakes of his wife, who knows "women" and what is "good" for them, the home jehovah, all-knowing and all-powerful, who must be served and obeyed, who, on his return from work must find his wife ready to entertain him if so he wishes, or to plunge back into the depths of the kitchen if his mood so requires, the husband who knows that he is the aim and goal of his wife's existence. a ridiculous old man, abandoned by his too young wife, made to the reporters a statement betraying sadly the infinite conceit of that type: "she will return to me because i love her so." a most unprepossessing man was bewailing in my office the fact that his wife had grown sexually indifferent to him. i advised him not to compel her to have intercourse with him against her will, especially as he was diseased. he naïvely remarked: "but she is my wife." that type of husband, in other words, considers a wife as a chattel, to be submitted to any sort of legal indignity because she is "only a female." he may force motherhood upon her to demonstrate his doubtful virility or to protect his jealous egotism. he would accept with enthusiasm goldschmidt's theories which i presented for what they were worth in the chapter on virginity, and according to which, woman is soft wax and characterless, waiting to be shaped into a personality by her husband's caresses. scientific investigators of a more reliable type than goldschmidt and who avoid drawing "yellow" conclusions from their labors, have supplied the reading world with facts which should cause the jehovah husband to fear for his lofty position. =is the male indispensable?= jacques loeb and others have demonstrated that as far as the physical results of love, the continuance of the race, is concerned, the male may not be absolutely indispensable. loeb had shown that almost anything which causes the protoplasm of the egg to separate itself from its membrane is sufficient to introduce "life" into that curious organism which until then only holds possibilities of life. nature, in order to produce one individual demands two principles, one male and one female principle. she must have one egg which is modified by some product of the male organism, pollen or sperm. =modern scientists have beaten nature at her own game= of creation; they have taken one egg, the female principle and proceeded to fertilise that egg without any male product whatsoever. the experiment has only been made on low forms of animal life, sea urchins and the like, but the egg of the sea urchin is not different in any essential respect from the egg of the human species. by taking unfecundated eggs and placing them for two minutes in a mixture of sea water and acetic, or butyric, or valerianic acid, then placing them back in sea water and twenty minutes later, immersing them for about an hour in hypertonic sea water or sugar solution, and finally returning them to sea water, loeb was able to bring to life young larvæ. a french scientist, delage, repeating the same experiments managed to keep those larvæ alive until the time of their sexual maturity. loeb also succeeded in fertilising eggs by placing them in the blood serum of cows, sheep, pigs or rabbits. mathews has fertilised some by shaking them gently for a period of time. =twins to order.= loeb and others have gone further even than that and produced not only single individuals but twins, triplets, etc. the secrets of nature's laboratory are being revealed more and more clearly from day to day. the conceited fathers who imagine that the bringing into life of twins is a symptom of their powerful virility must learn that a mere chemical phenomenon called _osmosis_ is responsible for the over-fertility of some wives. remove from sea water sea urchin's eggs and place them for fifteen minutes or so in ordinary water. the density of water being lower than that of sea water, the eggs will absorb a great deal of water and burst open. a drop of protoplasm will come out at the break in the membrane. replace the exploded egg into sea water and two larvæ will hatch out of it. separate the two portions of the exploded egg and the twins will be as healthy as tho they had been allowed to grow for a while in siamese style. by repeating the experiment, loeb has produced not only twins but triplets and quadruplets, all normal and growing out of the same egg which was only meant originally to produce one urchin. one can understand how a variation in the pressure of the liquids surrounding the human egg may lead to the same result. while scientists have created living beings by using the female principles as a basis, they have not thus far attained any results by experimenting with the male principle alone. =the mother is the race= apparently and the stubbornness of man in claiming and fighting for the principle of masculine superiority is apparently due to his obscure feeling that after all he is not indispensable. the more vociferous the claim, the weaker generally the basis for that claim. in certain forms of insanity, the more the organism is destroyed by disease the more extravagant the statements are which the insane man makes about himself, claiming power, wealth, health, youth, beauty, etc. at least one animal species, the bees, have placed the male on that footing. the male bee represents a convenient and pleasant means of bringing about the fecundation of the eggs. after his chemical part has been played, however, no one takes him seriously and his official existence ends. certain spiders and other insects consider the male in the same light, some of them killing and eating the male as soon as his fecundating activities have come to an end. the feminine domination, if it should ever implant itself into our world would undoubtedly lead to the absurdities, the exaggerations and the repressions which are the result of our man made civilisation. =matriarchal communities of the past= in which the woman was the head of the family and probably of the state and matriarchial groups of tibet have not left visible tokens of their worth as a family system. as they preceded the present family system however, it may be that all traces of their achievements have been obliterated by time. the tibetan experiment may have been blighted by unfavorable geographical conditions and rendered as barren as the mongolian patriarchal experiments in a neighboring part of the world. man as a means of fecundation is not likely to be discarded by normal women but his prestige is likely to decrease as the secret of his mysterious power becomes better known. the passing of the smug, self satisfied jehovah husband, a neurotic in every case, is in sight and his passing will facilitate the adaptation of some of the inadapted women i mentioned in the preceding chapter, some of whom fail to find love, and some of whom do not dare to seek it. =the successful modern woman is rather conceited.= some of the things i said about female artists applies in a great measure to the woman who in business or in a profession has managed to make her mark. after struggling years for a certain object which she has at last attained, she is naturally loath to surrender her personality to the average husband of the self-styled masculine type. she at times resorts to homosexualism in an effort to retain her independence and yet satisfy her love cravings without submitting to a domination which she feels to be unjustified. =the terrors of the climateric.= the passing of the jehovah husband will also ease a process of woman's (and man's) life which has to this day held countless terrors to the uninitiated, the climacteric. to the old-fashioned and the gullible woman, the change of life meant the end of life as a female. the stupid man, who is constantly endeavoring to subdue his mate thru disparagement and kills speedily her youth, her enthusiasm and her hopes by repeating constantly the trashy "at your age, my dear," is in a great measure responsible for transforming that harmless phenomenon into a painful crisis, mental and physical. the crisis of the "dangerous age," to use karin michaelis's expression, is generally due to the clash of a weak masochistic female with a weak and sadistic male, a clash in which, owing to age and the staleness of the mates, affection has no redeeming, consoling physical features. =the masculine man is in no danger of passing away= and he will for ever be as attractive to woman as the feminine woman is to him. as shaw said, what has been killed in men by the growth of feminism is "not masculinity but boorishness," a characteristic, not of the strong but of the weak, who is trying to compensate for his weakness and to conceal it. what has been killed in woman is not feminine sweetness but overfeminine silliness which woman used as a deceptive weapon against the domineering male. in a world which grants equal opportunities to men and women, no husband will be able to justify or excuse his treatment of a woman by saying "she is my wife." he will have to remain her lover in order to hold her. no wife will be able to make the home hideous and, at the same time, brandish over her husband's head the certificate of enslavement called a marriage license. she will have, in order to compete with the free women whose personality will impose itself upon her environment, to remain his mistress. every step ahead which the world takes fortunately proves a new step which love takes in the direction of completeness and freedom from sordidness and ugliness. chapter xxxi perfect matrimonial adjustments while marriage, regardless of whatever form it may assume, has always been mentioned in this book as unavoidably related to love, we must not blink the fact that marriage and love are two absolutely different things forced into frequent association by social and economic necessity. love is an involuntary and compulsory craving which draws a male and a female into the closest possible union for the purpose of mutual sexual gratification, generally followed by conception and reproduction. =marriage a compromise.= marriage on the other hand is merely a compromise between the positive individual cravings which demand the most complete and frequent gratification of the love urge, regardless of its consequences, and the negative feeling which causes the community to shirk all possible responsibilities incurred by the individual, among others, the support of pregnant or lactating females and of helpless infants. unless the community owns mother and child and can exploit their labor or receive their cash value (slavery system), it demands that their owner, the impregnator of the woman and procreator of the child, supply food and shelter for both. marriage is also a compromise between two individual cravings which may not be synchronised, as the male's desire for the female may subside before her desire for him does, or reciprocally. through the institution of marriage the community protects itself against new burdens directly by penalties (sentences against wife deserters or those who abandon children) and indirectly by protecting the mates against their own cravings for whose duration they are not responsible (laws against bigamy or adultery, etc.). =considering the artificial character of the marriage union=, and at the same time the psychological importance of its durability as far as the mental health of the off-spring is concerned, one of the most pressing duties of the community (and one which it never performs), should be to devise all the possible ways and means whereby the sex cravings of both mates could be helped to retain their freshness and strength as long as possible. =attractiveness an asset.= the first thought which should be forced into the minds of modern men and women is that attractiveness is a positive asset not only to woman but to man. in classic greece, a man could not be merely good, he had to be beautiful too. by "good" the greek meant "fit" but in the compound word which implied both qualities, _kalos_, beauty came first. cravings being awakened and kept alive by certain fetishes, the individual should be trained to recognize his and his mate's fetishism and to make all possible efforts to retain, if necessary by artificial means, the fetishes which lead to the awakening of erotism between him and his mate. =the average man or woman of forty is a sorry sight.= yet a little intelligence would compel them to retain or regain the physical idiosyncrasies they exhibited at the time of their marriage. too many women consider it sinful to devote much time to their physical appearance and the care of their body. in a man, any attempt to make himself attractive is considered in stupid middle-class circles as a stigma of effeminacy. the "pretty" man has always been despised by men and women, and endocrinology has confirmed their judgment by revealing to us that he is a glandular weakling. between the pretty man and the attractive man, however, there is a far cry. while the american movies, generally speaking, are catering to the weak-minded and the unimaginative, they have, in their search for a bait where-with to catch audiences, rendered mankind a signal service by starring the kind of man which would have passed muster in ancient greece, beautiful and fit. =athletic, if not acrobatic, movie idols= present to the female part of the audience a complex of physical qualities which women will gradually demand from their mates. it is regrettable that women should not attend prize fights in large numbers, for the sight of the godlike participants in those affrays would force them to institute enlightening comparisons between professional fighters and the average male. besides retaining or regaining their fetishes, human beings should make a special effort not to let those fetishes lose their power. =the worst foe of married happiness.= balzac in his "physiology of marriage" says that the married have to wage a constant fight with a monster which devours everything: habit. every stimulus, as we know, pleasant or unpleasant, loses its power when applied continuously or too frequently. it is only for the first minute or so that the ice cold shower causes our naked skin to tingle with excitement. as soon as the reaction sets in and the capillaries fill with red blood, the pleasant sensation of the water needles becomes dulled. after holding our hand for a minute in hot water, we no longer realise the high temperature of the liquid and in order to continue to experience the feeling of heat we must continually raise the temperature of the water. and likewise we may grow so accustomed to one source of erotic stimulation that we become indifferent to it. =friendship may survive the death of sexual love=, provided the sex desire has died in both mates at the same time. when desire dies off in the wife first and is not replaced by aversion, the situation may be very simple for she can still satisfy her more ardent mate and derive some gratification therefrom. when the man's desire dies first, on the other hand, there may arise unpleasant complications. a man may be impotent with a woman whom he loves tenderly but no longer desires sexually and yet be potent with some other woman to whom he is not completely "accustomed." jealousy on the part of the wife may then prevent the advent of the platonic friendship which is not uncommon between old married mates, altho montaigne denies the possibility of its existence. modern mates, conscious of that danger, have now and then devised ways and means to combat balzac's monster. not so long ago a well-known woman writer announced that she was planning to marry a certain man with whom, however, she did not intend to live day after day. the experiment has many chances of success if jealousy does not complicate the situation. i suggested to reporters last summer, when two famous artists parted company, that their union might have been of longer duration if one of them had lived at the plaza while the other was stopping at the st. regis. =married people should separate for periods of variable duration= in order that a fresh stimulation may emanate from their fetishes when they meet again. by leading more individual lives and having separate sets of friends, they would, besides, bring to each other a new sort of mental pabulum and stimulation day after day. conversation becomes futile and unnecessary between a husband and wife who always pay and receive calls together, attend the same spectacles and hence always see the same side of life. now and then we read of couples who separate and a few years later remarry. those few years spent apart from each other mean for both new experiences which enrich their mind and their conversation and make them again interesting to each other. =the play function of love.= another factor which the monstrous hypocrisy of puritanism makes very difficult to discuss openly and honestly and which wrecks many promising unions is the ignorance, more common than we suspect among married couples, of what maurice parmelee in his "personality and behavior" has called the play function of love, a term which has been given a broader meaning by havelock ellis in an article for the _medical review of reviews_ for march . the average man or woman is tragically ignorant of the mission of sex. the average man, as ellis writes, has two aims: "to prove that he is a man and to relieve a sexual tension. "he too often considers himself, from traditional habits, as the active partner in love and his own pleasure as the prime motive of the sex communion. "his wife, naturally adopts the complementary attitude, regards herself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible. "she has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature remains ill-developed and unharmonized, and that she is incapable of bringing her personality (having indeed no achieved personality to bring) to bear effectively on the problems of society and the world around her." i have described in "sex happiness" the tragedies which result from that form of ignorance, especially the tragedy of the unsatisfied wife, her restlessness, her gradual dislike of her mate, her curiosity as to what feelings she might experience if married to another man, when some other man seems to awaken her erotism, and then the dilemma, repression leading to neurosis, or indulgence leading into the divorce court. =psychoanalysis to the rescue.= "in this matter," ellis writes, "we may learn a lesson from the psychoanalysts of today without any implication that psychoanalysis is necessarily a desirable or even possible way of attaining the revelation of love. the wiser psychoanalysts insist that the process of liberating the individual from outer and inner influences that repress or deform his energies and impulses is effected by removing the inhibitions on the free play of his nature. "it is a process of education in the true sense, not of the suppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of sound rules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of the leading out of the individual's special tendencies. "it removes inhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, or that he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the best moral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and more natively spontaneous morality to come into play. "it has this influence above all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been most powerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies have been most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificial stains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquated traditions. "thus the therapeutical experience of the psychoanalysts reinforce the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and the intimate experiences of life." =wounded egotism.= love in marriage is endangered from another quarter: the greatest foe of sexual desire, as i have stated several times in this book, is wounded egotism. a perfect matrimonial adjustment does not mean the modification of either mate's personality. we have seen in the chapters on glands that the normal personality is practically inadaptable, that is, nothing short of serious sickness or a surgical operation can transform an active person into a sluggish one and vice versa. it is only the neurotic personality which can be adapted by the removal of certain unconscious fears which prevent it from attaining social and biological balance and happiness. all psychoanalysis does in such cases is to teach the patient to accept everything which is biologically normal in his personality. we must then have an absolute respect for personality in ourselves and others. we must find a socially acceptable outlet for all our idiosyncrasies, a difficult, but never impossible task. lack of an outlet means a neurotic disturbance. the so-called adaptable people are those who succeed in repressing temporarily their cravings and denying their existence, a result which they attain at the cost of much suffering to themselves and, indirectly, to their environment. =democracy in the home= is the prerequisite of every perfect matrimonial adjustment. the autocratic government of the home by a male bully of a female nag leads to either a revolution (divorce) or to the destruction of human material after a bitter strife, (neurotic ailments). the bullied wife and the henpecked husband fill the offices of neurologists, gynaecologists, psychoanalysts and sexologists. this is the way in which the wounded ego of the defeated mate avenges itself. the defeated mate becomes sexually disabled. the results of maladjustment of the mates are strikingly summed up by kempf in his monumental work "psychopathology": "upon marriage a subtle if not overt struggle occurs between the mates for the dominant position in the contract. the big, aggressive wife and the timid, little husband attest to the importance of organic superiority in the adjustment, but the average marriage does not show such organic differences. the sadistic or masochistic husband and the masochistic or sadistic wife will certainly adjust to please their reciprocating cravings, no matter what influence this may have upon their children, and a sadistic wife and sadistic husband, although both are cruel in their pleasures, will divorce each other on the charge of the other being cruel; but it is the commonplace adjustment which interests us most, because it is most predominant. "nature places an unerring punishment upon the woman, who, by incessantly using every whim, scheme or artifice, finally succeeds in dominating her husband. by forcing him to submit to her thousand and one demands and coercions, within a few years, he unconsciously becomes a submissive type and loses his sexual potency with her as the love-object. if he does not have secret love interests which stimulate him to strive for power, he finally loses his initiative and sexual potency completely and must live always at a commonplace level, the servant of more virile men: the counterpart of the subdued impotent males of the animal herd. "his more aggressive, selfish mate, if periodically heterosexually erotic, will become neurotic if her moral restraints are insurpassable, or seek a new mate whom she will again attempt to subdue. never is she able to realise that her selfishness makes her sexually unattractive. the psychopathologist meets many such women whose husbands have evaded domination by secretly depending upon the affections of another more suitably adjusted woman." in "the new horizon in love and life," mrs. havelock ellis writes "it is more than probable that the evolved relationship of the future will be monogamy--but a monogamy wider and more beautiful than the present caricature of it, as the sea is wider and more delicious than a duck pond. "the lifelong, faithful love of one man for one woman is the exception and not the rule. the law of affinity being as subtle and as indefinable as the law of gravitation, we may, by and by, find it worth while to give it its complete opportunity in those realms where it can manifest itself most potently. we are on the wrong bridge if we imagine that laxity is the easiest way to freedom. the bridge which will bear us must be strong enough to support us while experiments are tried. "what is the gospel in this matter of sexual emancipation for men and women in the new world where love has actually come of age? it is surely the complete economic independence of women. while man is economically free and woman still a slave, either physically, financially or spiritually, mankind as a whole must act as if blindness, maimness and deafness constituted health. "the complete independence of husband and wife is the gospel of the new era of marriage. this is the actual matter which philosophers, parents, philanthropists and pioneers so often ignore when teaching the new ideals of morality. when a woman is kept by a man she is not a free individuality either as child, wife or mistress. imagine for a moment a man kept by a woman as women are kept by men and a sense of humor illuminates the absurdity of the situation between any class of evolved human beings." as a clever patient of mine whom i regret i cannot mention by name said one day: "married happiness, to be lasting, requires more than sexual cooperation of both mates, it must resolve itself into cooperative egotism." [footnote : see mary sinclair's "the life and death of harriet freau."] [footnote : kings. i, - .] [footnote : birth control review, april .] the end index abortion, active homosexuals, adler, , , , , , , , , , , , adrenals, adrenin, algolagnists, androgynes, animal love fights, "animal" types, antifetishes, , aphrodite, aristotle, atavism, attractiveness, auditory sensations, baby talk, balzac, basogas, bees in love, , beresford, berman, dr. louis, bernhardt, sarah, bloch, iwan, blood relations, bonaparte, bored wives, boredom, bottle-fed men, bovary, madame, brain, cells, function of the, operations on a dog's, breast-fed men, brothers and sisters, brutus, business women, cæsar, calf love, cannon, chicago vice report, childish behavior, choice, meaning of, , cigar smoking, clean lives, climacteric, community's criticism, contraception, conversation, cooperative egotism, copepods, behavior of, craig's birds, crile, cybela, dark types, darwin, death dreams, death wishes, , delage, deluded martyrs, delusional jealousy, democracy in the home, demosthenes, descartes, displacement upward, dissatisfied people, divorces in the art world, doll type, don juan, , , double standard, ductless glands, duncan, isadora, economic exhibitionism, eddy, mary baker, effeminacy, ego rampant, electrical exchanges, , ellis, havelock, , , , , ellis, mrs. havelock, endocrinologists, environment, erotropism, ethical prostitution, eulenburg, albert, , fatherhood cravings, fear of accidents, fear of woman, female artists, feminine refinement, ferenczi, sqq. fetishes, list of, , feminine, masculine, non-physical, , fiji islands, first night, the right of the, fixation, parent, , , sqq. flappers, , flattery, , , flirt, the, foot fetishism, , symbolism, forel frazer, freud, , , , , , , , , , , , , friedlander, benedikt, friendship, frigid wives, frink, galvanotropism, genesis, gerontophilia, getting even, glands, glandular drunkenness, glandular insufficiency, glove fetishism, goldschmidt, jules, gonads, greek gods, griseldis, gross, dr. otto, habit, hair fetishism, , , heart, physiology of the, heredity, hirschfeld, magnus, , hirth, george, , holding hands, homosexual tragedies, husbands and lovers, ideal love, identification mania, , imitation, immodest modesty, impotence, inbreeding, incest fear, independent women, infidelity, institution children, jack the ripper, jealousy and impotence, jesus, jung, , , kempf, , kenealy, dr. arabella, king david, kiss, , krafft-ebing, kronos, lean types, leonardo da vinci, lesbian love, loeb, jacques, sqq. lombroso, lorand, love, a compulsion, lover, the successful, the unsuccessful, lovers of the absolute, male artists, male lovers, male prostitutes, marriage, a compromise, masculine protest, masked sadism, masoch, leopold von sacher, sqq. masochistic husbands, matriarchal communities, matrimonial engineers, messalina, metatropism, michael angelo, michaelis, karin, michelet, milch cows, milk, mind, seat of the, , mobs, moreau de tours, movie idols, movies, naked male dancers, narcism, negative love, negro haters, nerve memory, nerves, neurotic frigidity, neurotic life plan, neurotic motherliness, neurotic mothers, , nietzsche, nurses, obscene talkers, obsessions, oedipus complex, old fashioned women, oracles, organism, unity of, , , paranoiacs, parent-child relationship, parmelee, maurice, passive homosexuals, perfect mothers, personality, personality, respect for the, perverse birds, phototropism, physical incompatibility, pimps, pituitary, plato, platonic love, play function of love, plural love, polyandry, potter, grace, preferences, pregnancy and health, priapism, primal horde, primitive races, prize fights, prohibition, projection, proud husbands, psychoanalysis, puritanical males, rebellion against nature, reformers, rousseau, jean-jacques, rules for husbands, sade, marquis de, sqq. sadistic lovers, sadistic mates, sadzer, safety devices, safety symbols, sallow type, sanger, margaret, sqq. sapho, savages, modesty among, schneider, kurt, schopenhauer, schroeder, theodore, sea urchins, self love, sensuality, sexless jealousy, sexless persons, sexual libido, shaw, g. b., sqq. shoe fetishism, , , symbolism, sight, sinclair, may, skooptsy, slender types, smell, social pressure, socrates, sour grapes, steinach, sqq. stekel, wilhelm, , , , sublimation, suggestive draperies, suttee custom, syphilophobiacs, tall types, taste, teeth, telegony, test of love, third sex, sqq. thyroid, touch, transvestites, triplets, twins, type, parent, ultrafeminine, unadapted women, uniform fetishism, vamps, varietism, vital force, vomiting, in pregnancy, von kupfer, , wagner, walker, dr. mary, war prisoners, whipping, wifehood, a profession, wilde, oscar, will-to-be-the-first, winckelman, wise husbands, women sadists, women who enjoy a beating, wounded egotism, wulffen, the god-idea of the ancients or sex in religion by eliza burt gamble author of "the evolution of woman" preface. much of the material for this volume was collected during the time that i was preparing for the press the evolution of woman, or while searching for data bearing on the subject of sex-specialization. while preparing that book for publication, it was my intention to include within it this branch of my investigation, but wishing to obtain certain facts relative to the foundations of religious belief and worship which were not accessible at that time, and knowing that considerable labor and patience would be required in securing these facts, i decided to publish the first part of the work, withholding for the time being that portion of it pertaining especially to the development of the god-idea. as mankind construct their own gods, or as the prevailing ideas of the unknowable reflect the inner consciousness of human beings, a trustworthy history of the growth of religions must correspond to the processes involved in the mental, moral, and social development of the individual and the nation. by means of data brought forward in these later times relative to the growth of the god-idea, it is observed that an independent chain of evidence has been produced in support of the facts recently set forth bearing upon the development of the two diverging lines of sexual demarcation. in other words, it has been found that sex is the fundamental fact not only in the operations of nature but in the construction of a god. in the evolution of woman it has been shown that the peculiar inheritance of the two sexes, female and male, is the result of the bias given to these separate lines of development during the earliest periods of sex-differentiation; and, as this division of labor was a necessary step in the evolutionary processes, the rate of progress depended largely on the subsequent adjustment of these two primary elements or forces. a comprehensive study of prehistoric records shows that in an earlier age of existence upon the earth, at a time when woman's influence was in the ascendancy over that of man, human energy was directed by the altruistic characters which originated in and have been transmitted through the female; but after the decline of woman's power, all human institutions, customs, forms, and habits of thought are seen to reflect the egoistic qualities acquired by the male. nowhere is the influence of sex more plainly manifested than in the formulation of religious conceptions and creeds. with the rise of male power and dominion, and the corresponding repression of the natural female instincts, the principles which originally constituted the god-idea gradually gave place to a deity better suited to the peculiar bias which had been given to the male organism. an anthropomorphic god like that of the jews--a god whose chief attributes are power and virile might--could have had its origin only under a system of masculine rule. religion is especially liable to reflect the vagaries and weaknesses of human nature; and, as the forms and habits of thought connected with worship take a firmer hold on the mental constitution than do those belonging to any other department of human experience, religious conceptions should be subjected to frequent and careful examination in order to perceive, if possible, the extent to which we are holding on to ideas which are unsuited to existing conditions. in an age when every branch of inquiry is being subjected to reasonable criticism, it would seem that the origin and growth of religion should be investigated from beneath the surface, and that all the facts bearing upon it should be brought forward as a contribution to our fund of general information. as well might we hope to gain a complete knowledge of human history by studying only the present aspect of society, as to expect to reach reasonable conclusions respecting the prevailing god-idea by investigating the various creeds and dogmas of existing faiths. the object of this volume is not only to furnish a brief outline of religious growth, but to show the effect which each of the two forces, female and male, has had on the development of our present god-idea, which investigation serves to accentuate the conclusions arrived at in the evolution of woman relative to the inheritance of each of the two lines of sexual demarcation. e.b.g. contents. introduction i.--sex the foundation of the god-idea ii.--tree, plant, and fruit worship iii.--sun worship--female and male energies in the sun iv.--the dual god of the ancients a trinity also v.--separation of the female and make elements in the deity vi.--civilization of an ancient race vii.--concealment of the early doctrines viii.--the original god-idea of the israelites ix.--the phoenician and hebrew god set or seth x.--ancient speculations concerning creation xi.--fire and phallic worship xii.--an attempt to purify the sensualized faiths xiii.--christianity a continuation of paganism xiv.--christianity a continuation of paganism--(continued) xv.--christianity in ireland xvi.--stones or columns as the deity xvii.--sacrifices xviii.--the cross and a dying savior the god-idea of the ancients. introduction. through a study of the primitive god-idea as manifested in monumental records in various parts of the world; through scientific investigation into the early religious conceptions of mankind as expressed by symbols which appear in the architecture and decorations of sacred edifices and shrines; by means of a careful examination of ancient holy objects and places still extant in every quarter of the globe, and through the study of antique art, it is not unlikely that a line of investigation has been marked out whereby a tolerably correct knowledge of the processes involved in our present religious systems may be obtained. the numberless figures and sacred emblems which appear carved in imperishable stone in the earliest cave temples; the huge towers, monoliths, and rocking stones found in nearly every country of the globe, and which are known to be closely connected with primitive belief and worship, and the records found on tablets which are being unearthed in various parts of the world, are, with the unravelling of extinct tongues, proving an almost inexhaustible source for obtaining information bearing upon the early history of the human race, and, together, furnish indisputable evidence of the origin, development, and unity of religious faiths. by comparing the languages used by the earlier races to express their religious conceptions; by observing the similarity in the mythoses and sacred appellations among all tribes and nations, and through the discovery of the fact that the legends extant in the various countries of the globe are identical, or have the same foundation, it is probable that a clue has already been obtained whereby an outline of the religious history of the human family from a period even as remote as the "first dispersion," or from a time when one race comprehended the entire population of the globe, maybe traced. humboldt in his researches observes: "in every part of the globe, on the ridge of the cordilleras as well as in the isle of samothrace, in the aegean sea, fragments of primitive languages are preserved in religious rites." regarding the identity of the fundamental ideas contained in the various systems of religion, both past and present, hargrave jennings, in referring to a parallel drawn by sir william jones, between the deities of meru and olympus, observes: "all our speculations tend to the same conclusions. one day it is a discovery of cinerary vases, the next, it is etymological research; yet again it is ethnological investigation, and the day after, it is the publication of unsuspected tales from the norse; but all go to heap up proof of our consanguinity with the peoples of history--and of an original general belief, we might add." that the religious systems of india and egypt were originally the same, there can be at the present time no reasonable doubt. the fact noted by various writers, of the british sepoys, who, on their overland route from india, upon beholding the ruins of dendera, prostrated themselves before the remains of the ancient temples and offered adoration to them, proves the identity of indian and egyptian deities. these foreign devotees, being asked to explain the reason of their strange conduct declared that they "saw sculptured before them the gods of their country." upon the subject of the identity of eastern religions, wilford remarks that one and the same code both of theology and of fabulous history, has been received through a range or belt about forty degrees broad across the old continent, in a southeast and northwest direction from the eastern shores of the malaga peninsula to the western extremity of the british isles, that, through this immense range the same religious notions reappear in various places under various modifications, as might be expected; and that there is not a greater difference between the tenets and worship of the hindoos and the greeks than exists between the churches of home and geneva. concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and opinions, faber, commenting upon the above statement of wilford, observes that, immense as is this territorial range, it is by far too limited to include the entire phenomenon, that the observation "applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable globe; for the arbitrary rites and opinions of every pagan nation bear so close a resemblance to each other, that such a coincidence can only have been produced by their having had a common origin. barbarism itself has not been able to efface the strong primeval impression. vestiges of the ancient general system may be traced in the recently discovered islands in the pacific ocean; and, when the american world was first opened to the hardy adventurers of europe, its inhabitants from north to south venerated, with kindred ceremonies and kindred notions, the gods of egypt and hindostan, of greece and italy, of phoenicia and britain."( ) ) pagan idolatry, book i., ch. i. "though each religion has its own peculiar growth, the seed from which they spring is everywhere the same."( ) ) max muller, origin and growth of religion, p. . the question as to whether the identity of conception and the similarity in detail observed in religious rites, ceremonies, and symbols in the various countries of the globe are due to the universal law of unity which governs human development, or whether, through the dispersion of one original people, the early conceptions of a deity were spread broadcast over the entire earth, is perhaps not settled; yet, from the facts which have been brought forward during the last century, the latter theory seems altogether probable, such divergence in religious ideas as is observed among the various peoples of the earth being attributable to variations in temperament caused by changed conditions of life. in other words, the divergence in the course of religious development has doubtless been due to environment. in an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the god-idea, the fact should be borne in mind that, from the earliest conception of a creative force in the animal and vegetable world to the latest development in theological speculation, there has never been what might consistently be termed a new religion. on the contrary, religion like everything else is subject to the law of growth; therefore the faiths of to-day are the legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea of a deity developed in accordance with the laws governing the peculiar instincts which have been in the ascendancy during the life of mankind on the earth. the erroneous impression which under a belief in the unknown has come to prevail, namely, that the moral law is the result of religion; or, in other words, that the human conscience is in some manner dependent on supernaturalism for its origin and maintenance, is, with a better and clearer understanding of the past history of the development of the human race, being gradually dispelled. on one point we may reasonably rest assured that the knowledge of right and wrong and our sense of justice and right-living have been developed quite independently of all religious beliefs. the moral law embodied in the golden rule is not an outgrowth of mysticism, or of man's notions of the unknowable; but, on the contrary, is the result of experience, and was formulated in response to a recognized law of human necessity,--a law which involves the fundamental principle of progress. the history of human development shows conclusively that mankind grew into the recognition of the moral law, that through sympathy, or a desire for the welfare of others,--a character which had its root in maternal affection,--conscience and the moral sense were evolved. while the moral law and the conscience may not be accounted as in any sense the result of man's ideas concerning the unknowable, neither can the errors and weaknesses developed in human nature be regarded as the result of religion. although the sexual excesses which during three or four thousand years were practiced as sacred rites, and treated as part and parcel of religion in various parts of the world, have had the effect to stimulate and strengthen the animal nature in man, yet these rites may not be accounted as the primary cause of the supremacy of the lower nature over the higher faculties. on the contrary, the impulse which has been termed religion, with all the vagaries which its history presents, is to be regarded more as an effect than as a cause. the stage of a nation's development regulates its religion. man creates his own gods; they are powerless to change him. as written history records only those events in human experience which belong to a comparatively recent period of man's existence, and as the primitive conceptions of a deity lie buried beneath ages of corruption, glimpses of the earlier faiths of mankind, as has already been stated, must be looked for in the traditions, monuments, and languages of extinct races. in reviewing this matter we shall doubtless observe the fact that if the stage of a nation's growth is indicated by its religious conceptions, and if remnants of religious beliefs are everywhere present in the languages, traditions, and monuments of the past through a careful study of these subjects we may expect to gain a tolerably correct understanding not alone of the growth of the god-idea but of the stage of development reached by the nations which existed prior to the beginning of the historic age. we shall be enabled also to perceive whether or not the course of human development during the intervening ages has been continuous, or whether, for some cause hitherto unexplained, true progress throughout a portion of this time has been arrested, thus producing a backward movement, or degeneracy. if we would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship. such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent denial of the existence of the religious nature in mankind, but is liable, also, to create an aversion for and a distrust of the entire subject of religious experience. in view of this fact it would appear to be not only useless but exceedingly unwise to spend one's time in attempting to gain a knowledge of this subject simply by studying the later developments in its history. if we are really desirous of obtaining information regarding present religious phenomena, it is plain that we should adopt the scientific method and turn our attention to the remote past, where, by careful and systematic investigation, we are enabled to perceive the earliest conception of a creative force and the fundamental basis of all religious systems, from which may be traced the gradual development of the god-idea. chapter i. sex the foundation of the god-idea. in the study of primitive religion, the analogy existing between the growth of the god-idea and the development of the human race, and especially of the two sex-principles, is everywhere clearly apparent. "religion is to be found alone with its justification and explanation in the relations of the sexes. there and therein only."( ) ) hargrave jennings, phallicism. as the conception of a deity originated in sex, or in the creative agencies female and male which animate nature, we may reasonably expect to find, in the history of the development of the two sex-principles and in the notions entertained concerning them throughout past ages, a tolerably correct account of the growth of the god-idea. we shall perceive that during an earlier age of human existence, not only were the reproductive powers throughout nature, and especially in human beings and in animals, venerated as the creator, but we shall find also that the prevailing ideas relative to the importance of either sex in the office of reproduction decided the sex of this universal creative force. we shall observe also that the ideas of a god have always corresponded with the current opinions regarding the importance of either sex in human society. in other words, so long as female power and influence were in the ascendency, the creative force was regarded as embodying the principles of the female nature; later, however, when woman's power waned, and the supremacy of man was gained, the god-idea began gradually to assume the male characters and attributes. through scientific research the fact has been observed that, for ages after life appeared on the earth, the male had no separate existence; that the two sex-principles, the sperm and the germ, were contained within one and the same individual. through the processes of differentiation, however, these elements became detached, and with the separation of the male from the female, the reproductive functions were henceforth confided to two separate individuals. as originally, throughout nature, the female was the visible organic unit within whom was contained the exclusive creative power, and as throughout the earlier ages of life on the earth she comprehended the male, it is not perhaps singular that, even after the appearance of mankind on the earth, the greater importance of the mother element in human society should have been recognized; nor, as the power to bring forth coupled with perceptive wisdom originally constituted the creator, that the god-idea should have been female instead of male. from the facts to be observed in relation to this subject, it is altogether probable that for ages the generating principle throughout nature was venerated as female; but with that increase of knowledge which was the result of observation and experience, juster or more correct ideas came to prevail, and subsequently the great fructifying energy throughout the universe came to be regarded as a dual indivisible force--female and male. this force, or agency, constituted one god, which, as woman's functions in those ages were accounted of more importance than those of man, was oftener worshipped under the form of a female figure. neith, minerva, athene, and cybele, the most important deities of their respective countries, were adored as perceptive wisdom, or light, while ceres and others represented fertility. with the incoming of male dominion and supremacy, however, we observe the desire to annul the importance of the female and to enthrone one all-powerful male god whose chief attributes were power and might. notwithstanding the efforts which during the historic period have been put forward to magnify the importance of the male both in human affairs and in the god-idea, still, no one, i think, can study the mythologies and traditions of the nations of antiquity without being impressed with the prominence given to the female element, and the deeper the study the stronger will this impression grow. during a certain stage of human development, religion was but a recognition of and a reliance upon the vivifying or fructifying forces throughout nature, and in the earlier ages of man's career, worship consisted for the most part in the celebration of festivals at stated seasons of the year, notably during seed-time and harvest, to commemorate the benefits derived from the grain field and vineyard. doubtless the first deified object was gaia, the earth. as within the bosom of the earth was supposed to reside the fructifying, life-giving power, and as from it were received all the bounties of life, it was female. it was the universal mother, and to her as to no other divinity worshipped by mankind, was offered a spontaneity of devotion and a willing acknowledgment of dependence. thus far in the history of mankind no temples dedicated to an undefined and undefinable god had been raised. the children of mother earth met in the open air, without the precincts of any man-made shrine, and under the aerial canopy of heaven, acknowledged the bounties of the great deity and their dependence upon her gifts. she was a beneficent and all-wise god, a tender and loving parent--a mother, who demanded no bleeding sacrifice to reconcile her to her children. the ceremonies observed at these festive seasons consisted for the most part in merry-making and in general thanksgiving, in which the gratitude of the worshippers found expression in song and dance, and in invocations to their deity for a return or continuance of her gifts. subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the mysteries involved in birth and life, the adoration of the creative principles in vegetable existence became supplemented by the worship of the creative functions in human beings and in animals. the earth, including the power inherent in it by which the continuity of existence is maintained, and by which new forms are continuously called into life, embodied the idea of god; and, as this inner force was regarded as inherent in matter, or as a manifestation of it, in process of time earth and the heavens, body and spirit, came to be worshipped under the form of a mother and her child, this figure being the highest expression of a creator which the human mind was able to conceive. not only did this emblem represent fertility, or the fecundating energies of nature, but with the power to create were combined or correlated all the mental qualities and attributes of the two sexes. in fact the whole universe was contained in the mother idea--the child, which was sometimes female, sometimes male, being a scion or offshoot from the eternal or universal unit. underlying all ancient mythologies may be observed the idea that the earth, from which all things proceed, is female. even in the mythology of the finns, lapps, and esths, mother earth is the divinity adored. tylor calls attention to the same idea in the mythology of england, "from the days when the anglo-saxon called upon the earth, 'hal wes thu folde fira modor' (hail, thou earth, men's mother), to the time when mediaeval englishmen made a riddle of her asking 'who is adam's mother?' and poetry continued what mythology was letting fall, when milton's archangel promised adam a life to last '... till like ripe fruit thou drop into thy mother's lap.' "( ) ) primitive culture, vol. i., p. . in the old religion the sky was the husband of the earth and the earth was mother of all the gods.( ) in the traditions of past ages the fact is clearly perceived that there was a time when the mother was not only the one recognized parent on earth, but that the female principle was worshipped as the more important creative force throughout nature. ) max muller, origin and growth of religion, p. . doubtless the worship of the female energy prevailed under the matriarchal system, and was practised at a time when women were the recognized heads of families and when they were regarded as the more important factors in human society. the fact has been shown in a previous work that after women began to leave their homes at marriage, and after property, especially land, had fallen under the supervision and control of men, the latter, as they manipulated all the necessaries of life and the means of supplying them, began to regard themselves as superior beings, and later, to claim that as a factor in reproduction, or creation, the male was the more important. with this change the ideas of a deity also began to undergo a modification. the dual principle necessary to creation, and which had hitherto been worshipped as an indivisible unity, began gradually to separate into its individual elements, the male representing spirit, the moving or forming force in the generative processes, the female being matter--the instrument through which spirit works. spirit which is eternal had produced matter which is destructible. the fact will be observed that this doctrine prevails to a greater or less extent in the theologies of the present time. a little observation and reflection will show us that during this change in the ideas relative to a creative principle, or god, descent and the rights of succession which had hitherto been reckoned through the mother were changed from the female to the male line, the father having in the meantime become the only recognized parent. in the eumenides of aeschylus, the plea of orestes in extenuation of his crime is that he is not of kin to his mother. euripides, also, puts into the mouth of apollo the same physiological notion, that she who bears the child is only its nurse. the hindoo code of menu, which, however, since its earliest conception, has undergone numberless mutilations to suit the purposes of the priests, declares that "the mother is but the field which brings forth the plant according to whatsoever seed is sown." although, through the accumulation of property in masses and the capture of women for wives, men had succeeded in gaining the ascendancy, and although the doctrine had been propounded that the father is the only parent, thereby reversing the established manner of reckoning descent, still, as we shall hereafter observe, thousands of years were required to eliminate the female element from the god-idea. we must not lose sight of the fact that human society was first organized and held together by means of the gens, at the head of which was a woman. the several members of this organization were but parts of one body cemented together by the pure principle of maternity, the chief duty of these members being to defend and protect each other if needs be with their life blood. the fact has been observed, in an earlier work, that only through the gens was the organization of society possible. without it mankind could have accomplished nothing toward its own advancement. thus, throughout the earlier ages of human existence, at a time when mankind lived nearer to nature and before individual wealth and the stimulation of evil passions had engendered superstition, selfishness, and distrust, the maternal element constituted not only the binding and preserving principle in human society, but, together with the power to bring forth, constituted also the god-idea, which idea, as has already been observed, at a certain stage in the history of the race was portrayed by a female figure with a child in her arms. from all sources of information at hand are to be derived evidences of the fact that the earliest religion of which we have any account was pure nature-worship, that whatever at any given time might have been the object adored, whether it were the earth, a tree, water, or the sun, it was simply as an emblem of the great energizing agency in nature. the moving or forming force in the universe constituted the god-idea. the figure of a mother with her child signified not only the power to bring forth, but perceptive wisdom, or light, as well. as through a study of comparative ethnology, or through an investigation into the customs, traditions, and mythoses of extant races in the various stages of development, have been discovered the beginnings of the religious idea and the mental qualities which among primitive races prompted worship, so, also, through extinct tongues and the symbolism used in religious rites and ceremonies, many of the processes have been unearthed whereby the original and beautiful conceptions of the deity, and the worship inspired by the operations of nature, and especially the creative functions in human beings gradually became obscured by the grossest ideas and the vilest practices. the symbols which appear in connection with early religious rites and ceremonies, and under which are veiled the conceptions of a still earlier and purer age, when compared with subsequently developed notions relative to the same objects, indicate plainly the change which has been wrought in the original ideas relative to the creative functions, and furnish an index to the direction which human development, or growth, has taken. as the human race constructs its own gods, and as by the conceptions involved in the deities worshipped at any given time in the history of mankind we are able to form a correct estimate of the character, temperament, and aspirations of the worshippers, so the history of the gods of the race, as revealed to us through the means of symbols, monumental records, and the investigation of extinct tongues, proves that from a stage of nature worship and a pure and rational conception of the creative forces in the universe, mankind, in course of time, degenerated into mere devotees of sensual pleasure. with the corruption of human nature and the decline of mental power which followed the supremacy of the animal instincts, the earlier abstract idea of god was gradually lost sight of, and man himself in the form of a potentate or ruler, together with the various emblems of virility, came to be worshipped as the creator. from adorers of an abstract creative principle, mankind had lapsed into worshippers of the symbols under which this principle had been veiled. although at certain stages in the history of the human race the evils, which as a result of the supremacy of the ruder elements developed in mankind had befallen the race were lamented and bewailed, they could not be suppressed. man had become a lost and ruined creature. the golden age had passed away. chapter ii. tree, plant, and fruit worship. when mankind first began to perceive the fact of an all-pervading agency throughout nature, by or through which everything is produced, and when they began to speculate on the origin of life and the final cause and destiny of things, it is not in the least remarkable that various objects and elements, such as fire, air, water, trees, etc., should in their turn have been venerated as in some special manner embodying the divine essence. neither is it surprising although this universal agency was regarded as one, or as a dual entity, they should have recognized its manifold expressions or manifestations. to primitive man, the visible sources whence proceeded his daily sustenance doubtless constituted the first objects of his regard and adoration. hence, in addition to the homage paid to the earth, in due course of time would be added the worship of trees, upon which the early race was directly dependent for food. at a time when the art of agriculture had not been attained, all such trees as yielded their fruit for the support of the human race, and which afforded to mankind pleasant beverages or cooling shade, would come to be regarded as embodying the universal beneficent principle--the great creating and preserving agency of nature, and therefore as proper objects of veneration. according to the phoenician theogony, "the first gods which were worshipped by oblations and sacrifices were the fruits of the earth, on which they and their descendants lived as their forefathers had done." although, after the art of agriculture had been developed, mankind was gradually relieved from its past dependence on the tree as a means of support, it nevertheless continued to be regarded with veneration as an emblem of creative power or of productive energy. among the traditions and monuments of nearly every country of the globe are to be found traces of a sacred tree--a tree of life. in various countries there appear two traditional trees, the one typical of the continuation of physical life, the other representing spiritual life, or the life of the soul. after the age of pure nature-worship had passed, however, and serpent, fire, and phallic faiths had been introduced, the original signification of the tree, like that of all other religious emblems, became considerably changed. through its energies, or life-giving properties, existence had long been maintained, and for this reason, as has already been observed, it became an object of veneration; but, after the reproductive power in man had risen to the dignity of a supreme god, the tree, to the masses of the people, became a symbol of the physical, life-giving energy in mortals and in animals. in other words, it became a phallic emblem representing the continuation of existence, or the power to reproduce or continue life on the earth. as a religious symbol it became the traditional tree of life. the tree, like nearly every other object in nature, was and still is, in various parts of the world, either female or male, and all ideas connected with it are sacred and closely interwoven with sex. the extent to which trees have been venerated in past ages seems to be little understood, and there are doubtless few persons, at the present time, who would willingly believe that all along the religious stream, from its source to its latest developed branches, are to be observed traces of this ancient worship, which, in its earliest stages, was simply a recognition of nature's bounties. barlow, in his work on symbolism, says that "the most generally received symbol of life is a tree--as also the most appropriate." again the same writer observes: "besides the monumental evidence thus furnished of a sacred tree, or tree of life, there is an historical and traditional evidence of the same thing, found in the early literature of various nations, in the customs, and popular usages."( ) as tree- and sun-worship, or the adoration of nature's processes, finally became interwoven with phallic faiths, its history can be understood only after these later developments in the religious stream have been examined, or after the true significance of the serpent as a religious emblem, and the various ideas connected with the traditional tree of life, have been exposed. ) essays on symbolism, p. . the palm, the pine, the oak, the banian, or bo, and many other species of trees, have, at different times, and by various nations, been invested with divine honors; but, in oriental countries, by far the most sacred among them is the ficus religiosa, or the holy bo tree of india. something of the true significance of the traditional tree of life may be observed in the ideas connected with the worship of this emblem. the fig, when planted with the palm, as it frequently is in the east, near temples and holy shrines, is regarded as a peculiarly sacred object. when entwining the palm, which is male, it is always female; from their embrace kalpia, or passion, is developed. this union causes the continuation of existence and the "revolutions of time." the whole constitutes the tree of life. in ceylon, there stands at the present time a tree which we are told is still worshipped by every follower of buddha. it is a sacred bo, or ficus religiosa, which stands adjacent to an ancient holy shrine known as the brazen monastery, now in ruins. of this tree forlong remarks: "though now amidst ruins and wild forests, and although having stood thus in solitary desolation for some years, yet there it still grows, and is worshipped and deeply revered by more millions of our race than any other god, prophet, or idol, which the world has ever seen."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . this tree is sacred to sakyu mooni, is years old, and is said to be a slip from a tree planted by bood gaya, one of the three former buddhas who, like sakyu mooni, visited ceylon. under the parent of this tree the great prophet reposed after he had attained perfect rest, or after he had overcome the flesh and become buddha. it was under a bo tree that mai, queen of heaven, brought him forth, and, in fact, very many of the most important incidents of his life are closely connected with this sacred emblem. in an allusion to the bo tree of ceylon, a slip of which is said to have been carried from india to that island by a certain priestess in the year b.c., forlong observes: "this wonderful idol has furnished shoots to half asia, and every shoot is trained as much as possible like the parent, and like it, also, enclosed and tended. men watch and listen for signs and sounds from this holy tree just as the priests of dodona did beneath their rustling oaks, and, as many people, even of these somewhat sceptical days, still do, beneath the pulpits of their pope, priest, or other oracle."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p, . the sacred ficus is worshipped in india and in many of the polynesian islands. regarding the palm, inman assures us that it is emblematical of the active male energy, or the continuation of existence.( ) ) ancient faiths embodied in ancient names, vol. ii., p. . within the legends underlying the jewish religion, it will be remembered that the tree appears mysteriously connected with the beginning of life and is interwoven with the first ideas of human action and experience. the literal sense, however, of the allegory in genesis concerning the woman, the tree, and the serpent, and its meaning as generally accepted by laymen and the uneducated among the priesthood, has little in common with its true significance as understood by the initiated. in vedic times, the home tree was worshipped as a god, and to the exhilarating properties in its juice was ascribed that subtle quality which was regarded as the life-giving, or creative, energy supposed to reside in heat, and which was closely connected with passion or procreative energy. this quality was their bacchus, dionysos, or god-idea--the creator not alone of physical existence, but of good and evil as well. it was the destroyer, yet the regenerator, of life. of the zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the persians was worshipped for thousands of years, layard remarks: "the plant or its product was called the mystical body of god, the living water or food of eternal life, when duly consecrated and administered according to zoroastrian rites." it has been suggested, and not without reason, that to this idea of the ancients, respecting the sacred character of the properties of the home juice, may be traced the "origin of the celebration of jewish holy or paschal suppers and other eucharistic rites." although by the ancients water was sometimes regarded as the original principle, later, wine, or the intoxicating quality within it, came to constitute the god-idea. it was spirit, while water was matter; hence, in the sacraments, water and wine were commingled, wine representing the essence or blood of god; water, at the same time, standing for the people. cyprian, the bishop martyr, while contending for the use of wine in the sacrament of the lord's supper, makes use of the following argument: "the holy spirit also is not silent in the psalms on the sacrament of this thing, when he makes mention of the lord's cup, and says 'thy intoxicating cup how excellent it is!' now the cup which intoxicates is assuredly mingled with wine, for water cannot intoxicate anybody. and the cup of the lord in such wise inebriates, as noe also was intoxicated drinking wine in genesis. ... for because christ bore us all, in that he also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of christ.... thus, therefore, in consecrating the cup of the lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as wine alone cannot be offered. for if anyone offer wine only, the blood of christ is dissociated from us; but if the water be alone, the people are dissociated from christ."( ) ) epistles of cyprian, vol. i., pp. - . the sacrament of the lord's supper, at which wine is mysteriously converted into the essence of deity, or into the blood of christ, is without doubt a relic of the idea once entertained regarding the homa tree. certain writers entertain the opinion that from the use of the sacred homa juice have arisen various religious practices and rites, such for instance as offering oblations to the gods, anointing holy stones, and pouring wine on sacred hills, also the custom of pledging oaths over glasses of wine. the may pole, a decidedly phallic emblem, whose festivals until a very recent time were celebrated in england by the old as well as the young, was usually if not always sprinkled with wine. from the accounts which we have of this sacred emblem and its festival, it seems that no royal edict nor priestly denunciation was sufficient to expel it from the country. according to dr. stevenson, the festival of holi or the worship of holika devata, in the island of ceylon, "has a close resemblance to the english festival of the may-pole, which originated in a religious ceremony or festival of the cushites (called phoenicians) who anciently occupied western europe."( ) ) quoted by baldwin, prehistoric nations, p. . the ash is the scandinavian tree of life, and, like the sacred trees of all nations, is emblematical of the continuation of existence. this tree has a triple root, which peculiarity doubtless accounts for its sacred character. it is both female and male, and is said to be regarded as a "sort of logos or wisdom." it is the first emanation from the deity, and yet a trinity in unity. to insult or injure this tree was sacrilege, to cut it down was an offense punishable with death. in the old egyptian and zoroastrian story, appear the descriptions of two trees of life, also a tree of knowledge. in the accounts given of these trees, the ficus, the female tree of life, represents the life of the soul, while the palm, the male tree of life, is that which gives physical life, which also is the true significance of the word "lord." when, however, either of these trees stood alone, or unaccompanied by its counterpart, by it both of the creative principles were understood. by these ideas is suggested the thought which among a certain school of psychologists of the present century seems to be gaining ground, namely: that man is a dual entity, or, in other words, that he has a subjective mind and an objective self, which so long as this life endures must co-operate or work together. in the following descriptions of egyptian emblems, will be perceived some of the changes which finally took place relative to the idea of sex in the god-idea. in the museum of egyptian antiquities in berlin is a sepulchral tablet representing the tree of life. this emblem figures the trunk of a tree, from the top of which emerges the bust of a woman--netpe. she is the goddess of heavenly existence, and is administering to the deceased the water and the bread of life, the latter of which is represented by a substance in the form of cakes or rolls. the time at which this tablet was found is not known, but it is supposed to belong to the period of the xixth dynasty, or about the time of rameses ii., years b.c. there is also in the berlin museum another representation of the egyptian tree of life, in which the trunk has given place to the entire body of a woman. this, also, is netpe, who is still spiritual wisdom or the maternal principle. we are informed by forlong that diana was worshipped by the amazons under a sacred tree.( ) from this symbol the tree, which grew first into the figure of a divine woman, and later assumed the form of a divine man, arose the emblem of the cross. ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . on the nineveh tablets is pictured a tree of life which is surrounded by winged spirits, bearing in their hands the pine cone, a symbol indicating life, and which is said to have the same significance as the crux-ansata, or cross, among the egyptians. in later ages, the tree of life, i. e., the divine man, or cross, or both together, furnish immortal food to those who lay hold upon them, exactly in the same manner as did netpe, the goddess of wisdom, or spiritual life, in former times. according to the testimony of barlow, this is the subject "most frequently symbolized on early christian sepulchral tablets and monuments."( ) christ's body was the "bread of life," and his blood was the "wine from the tree of life," of which to partake was life eternal. the cross, as in earlier religions, represented completeness of life. the jambu tree, the buddhist god-tree, is in the shape of a cross.( ) ) essays on symbolism, p. . ) wilford, asiatic researches. among the kelti a tall oak was not only a symbol of the deity, but it was jupiter himself, while the earth from which it sprang was the great mother. throughout europe, in all ages, the oak has received divine honors. the fact that under its branches jew, pagan, and christian alike swore their most solemn oaths, shows that its veneration was not confined to any particular nation or locality. the sacredness of the oak among the druids is well attested by all writers who have dealt with this interesting people. in rome its branches formed the badge of victory worn by conquering heroes, this emblem being the highest mark of distinction which could be conferred upon them. forlong assures us that the oak was even more worshipped at the west than was the sacred ficus at the east. like it, the wood of the oak must be used "to call down the sacred fire from heaven and gladden in the yule (suiel or seul) log of christmas-tide even christian fires, as well as annually renew with fire direct from ba-al, on beltine day, the sacred flame on every public and private hearth, and this from the temples of meroe on the nile, to the farthest icy forests and mountains of the sklavonian."( ) ) faiths of man in all lands, vol. i., p. . among the druids, the mistletoe was also sacred especially when entwining the oak. together they represented the tree of life, or the two generating agencies throughout nature. of the species of it which grows on the oak, borlaise says that they deified the mistletoe and were not to look upon it but in the most devout and reverential manner: "when the end of the year approached, they marched with great solemnity to gather the mistletoe of the oak in order to present it to jupiter, inviting all the world to assist in the ceremony."( ) ) borlaise. according to the latin writer pliny, the "druids have nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it be an oak." this plant, which is called all heal, although sought after with the greatest religious ardor, is seldom found, but should the people who go forth at christmas time in large numbers succeed in finding it they immediately set about preparing feasts under the tree upon which it grows; at the same time, in the most solemn manner, two white bulls are brought forth to be sacrificed. after the feast has been prepared and the sacrifice made ready, the priest ascends the tree and with a golden pruning-knife cuts the sacred branches of the mistletoe, dropping them into a white cloth prepared for the occasion. the bulls are then sacrificed and a prayer offered that "god would render his own gift prosperous to those on whom he has bestowed it." they believed that administered in a potion it would impart fecundity to any barren animal, and that it was a remedy against all kinds of poison. the branches of the mistletoe were then distributed among the faithful, each cherishing the token as the most sacred emblem of his faith. it is thought that the christmas tree is a remnant of this custom. although the christbaum of the germans, the yggdrasill of the scandinavians, and the christmas tree of the english speaking nations are still regarded as belonging exclusively to christianity, their birthplace was the far east, and their origin long anterior to our present era. this subject will be referred to later in these pages. the palm, which in course of time became the most sacred tree of egypt, is said to have put forth a shoot every month during the year. at christmas tide, or at the winter solstice, a branch from this tree was used as a symbol of the renewal of time or of the birth of the new year. on the zodiac of dendera, preserved in the national library at paris, are two trees, the one representing the east, or india and china, the other, the west, or egypt. the former of these trees is putting forth a pair of leaves and is topped by the emblems of siva, emblems which indicate the fructifying powers of nature, whilst the egyptian sacred tree, which is surmounted by the ostrich plume, the emblem of truth, is indicative of light, intelligence, or the life of the soul. in a discourse delivered by dr. stukeley in , attention was directed to the grove of abraham as "that famous oak grove of beersheba, planted by the illustrious prophet and first druid--abraham; and from whom our celebrated british druids came, who were of the same patriarchal reformed religion, and brought the use of sacred groves to britain."( ) ) barlow, symbolism, p. . the fact has been ascertained that in arabia, in very ancient times, there was a goddess named azra who was worshipped under the form of a tree called samurch, and that in yemen tree-worship still prevails. to the date is ascribed divine honors. this tree is said to have its regular priests, services, rites, and festivals, and is as zealously worshipped as are the gods of any other country. we are not informed as to whether the jewish tree of life was borrowed from the chaldeans or the egyptians, but, as the significance is the same in all countries, it is of little consequence which furnished a copy for the writer in genesis. in dr. inman's ancient faiths, is a drawing from the original, by colonel coombs, of the "temptation," or of the ancient tree-and-serpent myth in genesis. this drawing, in which it is observed that the jewish idea of woman as tempter is reversed, was copied from the inner walls of a cave in southern india. the picture is said to be a faithful representation of the version of the story as accepted in the east. of the myrtle, payne knight says that it "was a symbol both of venus and neptune, the male and female personifications of the productive powers of the waters, which appear to have been occasionally employed in the same sense as the fig and fig leaf." the same writer refers to the fact that instead of beads, wreaths of foliage, generally of laurel, olive, myrtle, ivy, or oak, appear upon coins; sometimes encircling the symbolical figures, and sometimes as chaplets on their heads. according to strabo, each of these is sacred to some particular personification of the deity, and "significant of some particular attribute, and in general, all evergreens were dionysiac plants, that is, symbols of the generative power, signifying perpetuity of youth and vigor." the crowns of laurel, olive, etc., with which the victors in the roman triumphs and grecian games were honored, were emblems of immortality, and not merely transitory marks of occasional distinction.( ) ) payne knight, symbolism of ancient art. we are informed that this book was never sold, but only given away. although a copy of it was formerly in the british museum, care was taken by the trustees to keep it out of the catalogues. the tree and serpent, according to ferguson, are symbolized in all religious systems which the world has ever known. the two together are typical of the processes of reproduction or generation. they also symbolize good and evil and the cause which underlies the decline of virtue. among the numberless fruits which from time to time have been regarded as divine emblems, the principal are perhaps the fig, the pomegranate, the mandrake, the almond, and the olive. the peculiarly sacred character which we find attached to the fig ceases to be a mystery so soon as we remember that the organs of generation, male and female, had, in process of time, come to be objects of worship and that the fig was the emblem of the latter. a basket of this fruit is said to have been the most acceptable offering to the god bacchus, and therefore, by his devotees, was regarded as the most sacred symbol. the favorite material for phallic devices was the wood of the sacred fig, for it was by rubbing together pieces of it that holy fire was supposed to be drawn from heaven. by holy fire, however, was meant not so much the natural visible element which was kindled, as that subtle substance contained in fire or heat which was supposed to contain the life principle, and which was sent in response to the cravings of pious devotees for procreative energy, which blessing, among various peoples, notably the jews, was indicative of special divine favor. by pagans, jews, and christians, the pomegranate has long been regarded as a sacred emblem. it is a symbol of reproductive energy. representations of it were embroidered on the ephod, and solomon's temple is reported as having been literally covered with decorations, in which, among the devices noticed, this particular fruit appears the most conspicuous. its significance, as revealed by inman and other writers, is too gross to be set forth in these pages. among the most sacred plants or flowers were the lotus and the fleur de lis, both of which were venerated because of some real or fancied organic sexual peculiarity. the lotus is adored as the female principle throughout nature, or as the "womb of all creation," and is sacred throughout oriental countries. it is said to be androgynous or hermaphrodite--hence its peculiarly sacred character. it has long been thought that this lily is produced without the aid of the male pollen, hence it would seem to be an appropriate emblem for that ancient sect which worshipped the female as the more important creative energy. of the lotus, inman remarks: "amongst fourteen kinds of food and flowers presented to the sanskrit god anata, the lotus only is indispensable." this emblem, as we have seen, was the symbol of the great mother, and we are assured that it was "little less sacred than the queen of heaven herself." regarding the lotus and its universal significance as a religious emblem, payne knight says: "the lotus is the nelumbo of linnaeus. this plant grows in the water, and amongst its broad leaves puts forth a flower, in the center of which is formed the seed vessel, shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and punctured on the top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds grow. the orifices of these cells being too small to let the seeds drop out when ripe, they shoot forth into new plants, in the places where they were formed, the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish them until they acquire such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open and release themselves, after which, like other aquatic weeds, they take root wherever the current deposits them. this plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the productive power of the waters, upon which the creative spirit of the creator operated in giving life and vegetation to matter. we accordingly find it employed in every part of the northern hemisphere, where the symbolical religion improperly called idolatry does or did prevail. the sacred images of the tartars, japanese, and indians are almost all placed upon it, of which numerous instances occur in the publication of kaempfer, sonnerat, etc: the brama of india is represented sitting upon a lotus throne, and the figures upon the isaic table hold the stem of this plant, surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the cross representing the male organs in the other: thus signifying the universal power, both active and passive, attributed to that goddess."( ) ) symbolism of ancient art. the lotus is the most sacred and the most significant symbol connected with the sacred mysteries of the east. upon this subject, maurice observes that there is no plant which has received such a degree of honor as has the lotus. it was the consecrated symbol of the great mother who had brought forth the fecundative energies, female and male. not only throughout the northern hemisphere was it everywhere held in profound veneration, but among the modern egyptians it is still worshipped as symbolical of the great first cause. the lotus was the emblem venerated in the solemn celebration of the mysteries of eleusis in greece and the phiditia in carthage. in referring to the degree of homage paid to the lotus by the ancients, higgins says: "and we shall find in the sequel that it still continues to receive the respect, if not the adoration, of a great part of the christian world, unconscious, perhaps, of the original reason of their conduct." it is a significant fact that in nearly all the sacred paintings of the christians in the galleries throughout europe, especially those of the annunciation, a lily is always to be observed. in later ages as the original significance of the lotus was lost, any lily came to be substituted. godfrey higgins is sure that although the priests of the romish church are at the present time ignorant of the true meaning of the lotus, or lily, "it is, like many other very odd things, probably understood at the vatican, or the crypt of st. peter's."( ) ) anacalypsis, book vii., ch. xi. of the lotus of the hindoos nimrod says: "the lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expanse calyx represents the ships of the gods floating on the surface of the water, and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof... but as the ship was isis or magna mater, the female principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of the flower came to have certain other significations, which seem to have been as well known at samosata as at benares."( ) ) quoted in anacalypsis. in other words it was a phallic emblem and represented the creative processes throughout nature. susa, the name of the capital of the cushites, or ancient ethiopians, meant "the city of lilies." in india the lotus frequently appears among phallic devices in place of the sacred yoni. from the foregoing pages the fact will be observed that the god of the ancients embodied the two creative agencies throughout the universe, but as nothing could exist without a mother, the great om who was the indivisible god and the creator of the sun was the mother of these two principles, while the tree of life was the original life-giving energy upon the earth, represented in the creation myths of the first man adam, and the first woman eve or adama. throughout the ages, this force, or creative agency has been symbolized in various ways, many of which have been noted in the foregoing pages. we have observed that notwithstanding the fact that the supremacy of the male had been established, the sacred yoni and the lotus were still reverenced as symbols of the most exalted god. finally, when the masculine energy began to be worshipped as the more important agency in reproduction, the female, although still necessary to complete the god-idea, was veiled. among the sect known as lingaites, those who adored the male creative power, man, phallus, and creator in religious symbolism signified one and the same thing in the minds of the people. each represented a tree of life, the beginning and end of all things. tree-worship was condemned by the councils of tours, nantes, and auxerre, and in the xith century it was forbidden in england by the laws of canute, but these edicts seem to have had little effect. in referring to this subject, barlow says: "in the xviiith century it existed in livonia, and traces of it may still be found in the british isles."( ) the vast area over which tree- and plant-worship once extended, and the tenacity with which it still clings to the human race, indicate the hold which, at an earlier age in the history of mankind, it had taken upon the religious feelings of mankind. ) essays on symbolism, p. . so closely has this worship become entwined with that of serpent and phallic faiths, that it is impossible to consider it, even in a brief manner, without anticipating these later developments; yet linked with earth- and sun-worship, it doubtless prevailed for many ages absolutely unconnected with the grosser ideas with which it subsequently became associated. chapter iii. sun-worship--female and male energies in the sun. "when we inquire into the worship of nations in the earliest periods to which we have access by writing or tradition, we find that the adoration of one god, without temples or images, universally prevailed."( ) ) godfrey higgins, celtic druids. underlying all the ancient religions of which we have any account, may be observed the great energizing force throughout nature recognized and reverenced as the deity. this force embraces not only the creative energies in human beings, in animals, and in plants, but in the earlier ages of human history it included also wisdom, or law--that "power by which all things are discriminated or defined and held in their proper places." the most renowned writers who have dealt with this subject agree in the conclusion that, during thousands of years among all the nations of the earth, only one god was worshipped. this god was light and life, both of which proceeded from the sun, or more properly speaking were symbolized by the sun. in egyptian hymns the creator is invoked as the being who "dwells concealed in the sun"; and greek writers speak of this luminary as the "generator and nourisher of all things, the ruler of the world." it is thought, however, that neither of these nations worshipped the corporeal sun. it was the "centre or body from which the pervading spirit, the original producer of order, fertility, and organization, continued to emanate to preserve the mighty structure which it had formed." it is evident that at an early age, both in egypt and in india, spiritualized conceptions of sun-worship had already been formed. we have seen that netpe, the goddess of light, or heavenly wisdom, conferred spiritual life on all who would accept it. the great mother of the gods in india was not only the source whence all blessings flow, but she was the beginning and the end of all things. of "aditi, the boundless, the yonder, the beyond all and everything," max muller says that in later times she "may have become identified with the sky, also with the earth, but originally she was far beyond the sky and the earth."( ) the same writer quotes the following, also from a hymn of the rig-veda: ) origin and growth of religion, p. . "o mitra and varuna, you mount your chariot which, at the dawning of the dawn is golden-colored and has iron poles at the setting of the sun; from thence you see aditi and diti--that is, what is yonder and what is here, what is infinite and what is finite, what is mortal and what is immortal."( ) ) ibid. aditi is the great she that is, the everlasting. muller refers to the fact that another hindoo poet "speaks of the dawn as the face of aditi; thus indicating that aditi is here not the dawn itself, but something beyond the dawn." this goddess, who is designated as the "oldest," is implored "not only to drive away darkness and enemies that lurk in the dark, but likewise to deliver man from any sin which he may have committed." "may aditi by day protect our cattle, may she, who never deceives, protect us from evil." in the egyptian as in the indian and hebrew religions, the two generating principles throughout nature represent the infinite, the holy of holies, the elohim or aleim--the ieue. within the records of the earliest religions of ethiopia or arabia, chaldea, assyria, and babylonia, is revealed the same monad principle in the deity. this monad conception, or dual unity, this god of light and life, or of wisdom and generative force, is the same source whence all mythologies have sprung, and, as has been stated, among all peoples the fact is observed that the religious idea has followed substantially the same course of development, or growth. within the sacred writings of the hindoos there is but one almighty power, usually denominated as brahm or brahme--om or aum. this word in india was regarded with the same degree of veneration as was the sacred ieue of the jews. in later ages, the fact is being proved that this god, into whom all the deities worshipped at a certain period in human history resolve themselves, is the sun, or if not the actual corporeal sun, then the supreme agency within it which was acknowledged as the great creative or life-force--that dual principle which by the early races was recognized as elohim, om, ormuzd, etc., and from which the productive power in human beings, in plants, and in animals was thought to emanate. prior to the development of either tree or phallic worship, the sun as an emblem of the deity had doubtless become the principal object of veneration. ages would probably elapse before primitive man would observe that all life is dependent on the warmth of the sun's rays, or before from experience he would perceive the fact that to its agency as well as to that of the earth he was indebted both for food and the power of motion. however, as soon as this knowledge had been gained, the great orb of day would assume the most prominent place among the objects of his regard and adoration. that such has been the case, that the sun, either as the actual creator, or as an emblem of the great energizing force in nature, has been worshipped by every nation of the globe, there is no lack of evidence to prove; neither do we lack proof to establish the fact that, since the adoption of the sun as a divine object, or perhaps i should say as the emblem of wisdom and creative power, it has never been wholly eliminated from the god-idea of mankind. bryant produces numberless etymological proofs to establish the fact that all the early names of the deity were derived or compounded from some word which originally meant the sun. max muller says that surya was the sun as shining in the sky. savitri was the sun as bringing light and life. vishnu was the sun as striding with three steps across the sky, etc. inman, whose etymological researches have given him considerable prominence as a sanskrit and hebrew scholar, says that ra, ilos, helos, bil, baal, al, allah, and elohim were names given to the sun as representative of the creator. we are assured by godfrey higgins that brahme is the sun the same as surya. brahma sprang from the navel of brahme. faber in his pagan idolatry says that all the gods of the ancients "melt insensibly into one, they are all equally the sun." the word apollo signifies the author or generator of light. in the rig veda, surya, the sun, is called aditya. "truly, surya, thou art great; truly aditya, thou art great." selden observes that whether the gods be called osiris, or omphis, or nilus, or any other name, they all center in the sun. according to diodorus siculus, it was the belief of the ancients that dionysos, osiris, serapis, pan, jupiter and pluto were all one. they were, the sun. max muller says that a very low race in india named the santhals call the sun chandro, which means "bright." these people declared to the missionaries who settled among them, that chandro had created the world; and when told that it would be absurd to say that the sun had created the world, they replied: "we do not mean the visible chandro, but an invisible one." not only did dionysos, and all the rest of the gods who in later ages came to be regarded as men, represent the sun, but after the separation of the male and female elements in the originally indivisible god, maut or minerva, demeter, ceres, isis, juno, and others less important in the pagan world were also the sun, or, in other words, they represented the female power throughout the universe which was supposed to reside in the sun. in most groups of babylonian and assyrian divine emblems, there occur two distinct representations of the sun, "one being figured with four rays or divisions within the orb, and the other, with eight." according to george rawlinson, these figures represent a distinction between the male and female powers residing within the sun, the quartered disk signifying the male energy, and the eight-rayed orb appearing as the emblem of the female!( ) ) essay x. during an earlier age of human history, prior to the dissensions which arose over the relative importance of the sexes in reproduction, and at a time when a mother and her child represented the deity, the sun was worshiped as the female jove. everything in the universe was a part of this great god. at that time there had been no division in the god-idea. the creator constituted a dual but indivisible unity. dionysos formerly represented this god, as did also om, jove, mithras, and others. jove was the "great virgin" whence everything proceeds. "jove first exists, whose thunders roll above, jove last, jove midmost, all proceeds from jove; female is jove, immortal jove is male; jove the broad earth, the heavens irradiate pale. jove is the boundless spirit, jove the fire, that warms the world with feeling and desire." in a former work the fact has been mentioned that the first clue obtained by herr bachofen, author of das mutterrecht, to a former condition of society under which gynaecocracy, or the social and political pre-eminence of women, prevailed, was the importance attached to the female principle in the deity in all ancient mythologies. according to the testimony of various writers, om, although comprehending both elements of the deity, was nevertheless female in signification. sir william jones observes that om means oracle--matrix or womb.( ) upon this subject godfrey higgins, quoting from drummond, remarks: ) see anacalypsis, book iii., ch. ii. "the word om or am in the hebrew not only signifies might, strength, power, firmness, solidity, truth, but it means also mother, as in genesis ii., , and love, whence the latin amo, mamma. if the word be taken to mean strength, then amon will mean (the first syllable being in regimine) the temple of the strength of the generative or creative power, or the temple of the mighty procreative power. if the word am means mother, then a still more recondite idea will be implied, viz.: the mother generative power, or the maternal generative power: perhaps the urania of persia or the venus aphrodite of crete and greece, or the jupiter genetrix of the masculine and feminine gender, or the brahme mai of india, or the alma venus of lucretius. and the city of on or heliopolis will be the city of the sun, or city of the procreative powers of nature of which the sun was always an emblem." according to prof. w. r. smith, om means uniting or binding, a fact which is explained by the early significance of the mother element in early society. the name of the great deity om or aum scarcely passes the lips of its worshippers, and when it is pronounced is always reverently whispered. regarding the mystic word om, we are told that it is the name given to delphi, and that "delphi has the meaning of the female organs of generation called in india the os minxoe." although the great god of india was female and male, yet we are assured by forlong that the female energy maya, queen of heaven, even at the present time is more heard of than the male principle. according to bryant, the worship of ham is the most ancient as well as the most universal of any in the world. this writer remarks that ham, instead of representing an individual, is but a greek corruption of om or aum, the great androgynous god of india, a god which is identical in significance with aleim, vesta, and all the other representatives of the early dual, universal power. "in the old language god was called al, ale, alue, and aleim, more frequently aleim than any other name." according to the testimony of higgins, aleim denotes the feminine plural. the heathen divinities ashtaroth and beelzebub were both called aleim, ashtaroth being simply astarte adorned with the horns of a ram. ishtar not unfrequently appears with the horns of a cow. we are informed by inman that whenever a goddess is observed with horns--emblems which by the way always indicate masculine power--it is to denote the fact that she is androgynous, or that within her is embodied the complete deity--the dual reproductive energy throughout nature. the "figure becomes the emblem of divinity and power."( ) ) ancient faiths embodied in ancient names, vol. i., p. . mithras--the savior, the great persian deity which was worshipped as the "preserver," was both female and male. among the representations of this divinity which appear in the townley collection in the british museum, is one in which it is figured in its female character, in the act of killing the bull. the divinity baal was both female and male. the god of the jews in an early stage of their career was called baal. the oriental ormuzd was also dual or androgynous. orpheus teaches that the divine nature is both female and male. according to proclus, jupiter was an immortal maid, "the queen of heaven, and mother of the gods." all things were contained within the womb of jupiter. this virgin within whom was embodied the male principle "gave light and life to eve." she was the life-giving, energizing power in nature, and was identical with aleim, om, astarte, and others. the goddess esta, or vesta, or hestia, whom plato calls the "soul of the body of the universe," is believed by beverly and others to be the self-existent, the great "she that is" of the hindoos, whose significance is identical with the cushite or phoenician deity, aleim. according to marco polo, the chinese had but one supreme god of whom they had no image, and to whom they prayed for only two things--"a sound mind in a sound body." they had, however, a lesser god--probably the same as the "lord" (masculine) of the jews, to whom they petitioned for rain, fair weather, and all the minor accessories of existence. upon the walls of the houses of the chinese is a tablet to which they pay their devotion. on this tablet is the name of the "high, celestial, and supreme god." the principal word which this tablet contains is "tien." of this chinese deity barlow says: "the chinese recognize in tienhow, the queen of heaven nursing her infant son." connected with this figure is a lotus bud, symbol of the new birth. originally in chaldea and in egypt, only one supreme god was worshipped. this deity was figured by a mother and her child, as was the great chinese god. it comprehended the universe and all the attributes of the deity. it was worshipped thousands of years prior to the birth of mary, the mother of christ, and representations of it are still extant, not only in oriental lands, but in many countries of europe. within the oldest temples of egypt are still to be observed sacred apartments which contain the "holy of holies," and to which, in past ages, none might gain access but priests and priestesses of the highest order. within these apartments are pictured the mysteries of birth, together with the symbols of generation emblems of procreation. on the banks of the river nile are observed the ruins of the temple of philae, which structure, it is said, represents the most ancient style of architecture. within these ruins is to be seen an inner chamber in which are depicted the birth scenes of the child god horus, and, indeed, everywhere among the monuments and ruins of egypt, is plainly visible the fact that the creative power and functions in human beings, in animals, and in vegetable life, together with wisdom, once constituted the god-idea. between the ruins of the palace of amunoph iii. and the nile are two colossal statues, each hewn from a single block of stone. these figures, although in a sitting posture, are sixty feet high. it is thought that they once formed the entrance to an avenue of similar figures leading up to the palace. it has been supposed that the most northern statue represents ammon, and that its companion piece is his mother. it is now believed by many writers, however, that these figures do not represent two persons at all, but that in a remote age of the world's history they were worshipped as the two great principles, female and male, which animate nature. the fact has been observed that am or om was originally a female deity, within whom was contained the male principle; when, however, through the changes wrought in the relative positions of the sexes, the male element in the divinity adored came to be represented as a man instead of as a child, he was ammon. he was the sun, yet notwithstanding the fact that he had drawn to himself the powers of the sun, he was still, himself, only a production of or emanation from the female deity om, mother of the gods and queen of heaven. she it was who had created or brought forth the sun. there is a tradition which asserts that every morning a melodious sound is emitted from the first named of these two colossal figures as he salutes his rosy-fingered mother whom he acknowledges as the source of all light and wisdom. the bodies are described as being "without motion, the faces without expression, the eyes looking straight forward, yet a certain grand simplicity occasions them to be universally admired." the goddess disa or isa of the north, as delineated on the sacred drums of the laplanders, was accompanied by a child similar to the horus of the egyptians.( ) it is observed also that the ancient muscovites worshipped a sacred group composed of a mother and her children, probably a representation of the egyptian isis and her offspring, or at least of the once universal idea of the deity. ) jennings, phallicism. the following is from payne knight: "a female pantheitic figure in silver, with the borders of the drapery plated with gold, and the whole finished in a manner surpassing almost anything extant, was among the things found at macon on the saone, in the year , and published by caylus. it represents cybele, the universal mother, with the mural crown on her head, and the wings of pervasion growing from her shoulders, mixing the productive elements of heat and moisture by making a libation upon the flames of an altar. on each side of her head is one of the discouri, signifying the alternate influence of the diurnal and nocturnal sun; and, upon a crescent supported by the tips of her wings, are the seven planets, each signified by a bust of its presiding deity resting upon a globe, and placed in the order of the days of the week named after them. "in her left hand she holds two cornucopiae, to signify the result of her operation on the two hemispheres of the earth; and upon them are the busts of apollo and diana, the presiding deities of these hemispheres, with a golden disk, intersected by two transverse lines, such as is observed on other pieces of ancient art, and such as the barbarians of the north employed to represent the solar year, divided into four parts, at the back of each."( ) ) symbolism of ancient art. it was doubtless at a time when woman constituted the head of the gens, and when the feminine element in the sun, in human beings, and in nature generally was regarded as the more important, that latona and her son apollo were worshipped together. latona, apollo, and diana constituted the triune god. the last two were the female and male energies, the former being the source whence they sprang. as soon as one is divested of a belief in the popular but erroneous opinion that the gods of the early egyptians and greeks were deified heroes of former ages, he is prepared to perceive the fact that, although to the uninitiated these gods appear numberless, in reality they all represent the same idea, namely: the dual, moving force in nature, together with light or wisdom. we have seen that when among the nations of antiquity civilization had reached its height, the god-idea was represented by the figure of a woman with her child; subsequently, however, as these nations began to decline, the creative energy comprehended simply physical life, or the power to reproduce, and was represented by various emblems which will be noticed farther on in this work. in still later ages, after male reproductive power had become god, and when, through superstition and sensuality, the masses of the people had descended to the rank of slaves, monarchs, representing themselves to their ignorant subjects as the source of all blessings, even of life itself, appropriated the titles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration which had formerly belonged to it. from this fact has doubtless arisen the opinion so tenaciously upheld in recent times, that the gods of the ancients were only deified heroes of former times. if, during the earlier ages of human existence, all the gods resolved themselves into the sun, and if light and life, or wisdom and the power to reproduce and sustain life, constituted the deity, then of course god or the sun would be female or male, or both, according to the prevailing belief in the comparative creative and sustaining forces of the sexes. from what appears in the foregoing pages the fact has doubtless been perceived that the worship of a virgin and child does not, as is usually supposed, belong exclusively to the romish christian church, but, on the contrary, that it constitutes the most remote idea of a creator extant. as has been hinted, there is little doubt that the earliest worship of the woman and child was much simpler than was that which came to prevail in later ages, at a time when every religious conception was closely veiled beneath a mixture of astrology and mythology. after the planets came to be regarded as active agencies in reproduction, and powerful in directing all mundane affairs, the virgin of the sphere while she represented nature was also the constellation which appeared above the horizon at the winter solstice, or at the time when the sun had reached its lowest point and had begun to return. at this time, the th of december, and just as the days began to lengthen, this virgin gave birth to the sun-god. it is said that he issued forth from her side, hence the legend that gotama buddha was produced from the side of maya, and also the story believed by the gnostics and other christian sects that jesus was taken from the side of mary.( ) ) the fact will doubtless be remembered that a similar belief was entertained concerning the birth of julius caesar. within the churches and in the streets of many cities of germany are to be observed figures of this traditional virgin. she is standing, one foot upon a crescent and the other on a serpent's head, in the mouth of which is the sprig of an apple tree on which is an apple. the tail of the serpent is wound about a globe which is partially enveloped in clouds. on one arm of the virgin is the child, and in the hand of the other arm she carries the sacred lotus. her head is encircled with a halo of light similar to the rays of the sun. one is frequently disposed to query: do the initiated in the romish church regard these images as legitimate representations of mary, the wife of joseph and mother of christ, or are they aware of their true significance? certainly the various accessories attached to this figure betray its ancient origin and reveal its identity with the egyptian, chaldean, and phoenician virgin of the sphere. the fact has already been observed that in the original representation of the "temptation" in the cave temple of india, it is not the woman but the man who is the tempter, and a singular peculiarity observed in connection with this ancient female deity is that it is she and not her seed who is trampling on the serpent, thus proving that originally woman and not man was worshipped as the savior. another significant feature noticed in connection with this subject is that the oldest figures which represent this goddess are black, thus proving that she must have belonged to a dark skinned race. this image, although black, or dark skinned, had long hair, hence not a negress. the most ancient statue of ceres was black, and pausanias says that at a place called melangea in arcadia there was a black venus. in the netherlands only a few years ago, was a church dedicated to a black goddess. the virgin of the sphere who treads on the head of the serpent represents universal womanhood. she is the virgin of the first book of genesis and mother of all the earth. she represents not only creative power but perceptive wisdom. although this goddess is usually seen with the lotus in her hand, she sometimes carries ripe corn or wheat. the mother of gotama buddha was called mai or maya, after the month in which the earth is arrayed in her most beautiful attire. maya is the parent of universal nature. according to davis, the mother of mercury "is the universal genius of nature which discriminated all things according to their various kinds of species," the same as was muth of egypt. mai is said to mean "one who begins to illuminate." she was in fact the mother of the sun whence everything proceeds. she was matter, within which was concealed spirit. in the representations of montfaucon appears the goddess isis sitting on the lotus. her head, upon which is a globe, is surrounded by a radiant circle which evidently represents the sun. on the reverse side is ieu, the word "which is the usual way of the ecclesiastical authors reading the hebrew word jehovah." referring to this from montfaucon, godfrey higgins observes: "here isis, whose veil no mortal shall ever draw aside, the celestial virgin of the sphere, is seated on the self-generating sacred lotus and is called ieu or jove."( ) she has also the mystic number which stands for the deity. her breasts show plainly that it is a female representation, although connected with the figure appears the male emblem to indicate that within her are contained both elements, or that the universe is embodied within the female. ) anacalypsis, book v., ch. iv. higgins thinks there is no subject on which more mistakes have been made than on that of the goddess isis, both by ancients and moderns. he calls attention to the inconsistency of calling her the moon when in many countries the moon is masculine. he is quite positive that if isis is the moon, ceres, proserpine, venus, and all the other female gods were the same, which in view of the facts everywhere at hand cannot be true. it is true, however, that "the planet called the moon was dedicated to her in judicial astrology, the same as a planet was dedicated to venus or mars. but venus and mars were not these planets themselves, though these planets were sacred to them."( ) higgins then calls attention to her temple at sais in egypt, and to the inscription which declares that "she comprehends all that is and was and is to be," that she is "parent of the sun," and he justly concludes that isis can not be the moon. ) anacalypsis, book vi., ch. ii. apuleius makes isis say: "i am the parent of all things, the sovereign of the elements, the primary progeny of time, the most exalted of the deities, the first of the heavenly gods and goddesses, whose single deity the whole world venerates in many forms, with various rites and various names. the egyptians worship me with proper ceremonies and call me by my true name, queen isis." isis, we are told, is called myrionymus, or goddess with , names. she is the persian mithra, which is the same as buddha, minerva, venus, and all the rest. faber admits that the female principle was formerly regarded as the soul of the world. he says: "isis was the same as neith or minerva; hence the inscription at sais was likewise applied to that goddess. athenagoras informs us that neith or the athene of the greeks was supposed to be wisdom passing and diffusing itself through all things. hence it is manifest that she was thought to be the soul of the world; for such is precisely the character sustained by that mythological personage."( ) ) pagan idolatry, book i., p. . the same writer says further: "ovid gives a similar character to venus. he represents her as moderating the whole world; as giving laws to heaven, earth, and ocean, as the common parent both of gods and men, and as the productive cause both of corn and trees. she is celebrated in the same manner by lucretius, who ascribes to her that identical attribute of universality which the hindoos give to their goddess isi or devi."( ) ) ibid. it seems to be the general belief of all writers whose object is to disclose rather than conceal the ancient mysteries, that until a comparatively recent time the moon was never worshipped as isis. until the origin and meaning of the ancient religion had been forgotten, and the ideas underlying the worship of nature had been lost, the moon was never regarded as representing the female principle. when man began to regard himself as the only important factor in procreation, and when the sun became masculine and heat or passion constituted the god-idea, the moon was called isis. the moon represented the absence of heat, it therefore contained little of the recognized god-element. it was, perhaps, under the circumstances, a fitting emblem for woman. in the sacred writings of the hindoos there is an account of the moon, soma, having been changed into a female called chandra, "the white or silvery one." while speaking of the moon, kalisch says: "the whole ritual of the phoenician goddess astarte with whom that queen of heaven is identical, and who was the goddess of fertility seems to have been transferred to her."( ) ) historical and critical commentary of the old testament. to such an extent, in the earlier ages of the world had the female been regarded as the creator, that in many countries where her worship subsequently became identified with that of the moon, luna was adored as the producer of the sun. according to the babylonian creation tablets, the moon was the most important heavenly body. in later ages, the gender of the sun and the moon seems to be exceedingly variable. the achts of vancouver's island worship sun and moon--the sun as female, the moon as male.( ) in some of the countries of africa the moon is adored as female and sun-worship is unknown. among various peoples the sun and the moon are regarded as husband and wife, and among others as brother and sister. in some countries, both are female. i can find no instance in which both are male. hindoos and aztecs alike, at one time, said that luna was male and often that the sun was female. ) tylor, primitive culture, vol. ii., p. . the fact that among the persians the moon as well as the sun was at a certain period regarded as a source of procreative energy and as influencing the generative processes, is shown by various passages in the avestas. in the khordah avesta, praise is offered to "the moon which contains the seed of cattle, to the only begotten bull, to the bull of many kinds." perhaps the most widely diffused and universally adored representation of the ancient female deity in egypt was the virgin neit or neith, the athene of the greeks and the minerva of the romans. her name signifies "i came from myself." this deity represents not only creative power, but abstract intelligence, wisdom or light. her temple at sais was the largest in egypt. it was open at the top and bore the following inscription: "i am all that was and is and is to be; no mortal has lifted up my veil, and the fruit which i brought forth was the sun." she was called also muth, the universal mother. kings were especially honored in the title "son of neith." to express the idea that the female energy in the deity comprehended not alone the power to bring forth, but that it involved all the natural powers, attributes, and possibilities of human nature, it was portrayed by a pure virgin who was also a mother. according to herodotus, the worship of minerva was indigenous in lybia, whence it travelled to egypt and was carried from thence to greece. among the remnants of egyptian mythology, the figure of a mother and child is everywhere observed. it is thought by various writers that the worship of the black virgin and child found its way to italy from egypt. the change noted in the growth of the religious idea by which the male principle assumes the more important position in the deity may, by a close investigation of the facts at hand, be easily traced, and, as has before been expressed, this change will be found to correspond with that which in an earlier age of the world took place in the relative positions of the sexes. in all the earliest representations of the deity, the fact is observed that within the mother element is contained the divinity adored, while the male appears as a child and dependent on the ministrations of the female for existence and support. gradually, however, as the importance of man begins to be recognized in human affairs, we find that the male energy in the deity, instead of appearing as a child in the arms of its mother, is represented as a man, and that he is of equal importance with the woman; later he is identical with the sun, the woman, although still a necessary factor in the god-idea, being concealed or absorbed within the male. it is no longer woman who is to bruise the serpent's head, but the seed of the woman, or the son. he is bacchus in greece, adonis in syria, christna in india. he is indeed the new sun which is born on the th of december, or at the time when the solar orb has reached its lowest position and begins to ascend. it is not perhaps necessary to add that he is also the christ of bethlehem, the son of the virgin. nowhere, perhaps, is the growing importance of the male in the god-idea more clearly traced than in the history of the arabians. among this people are still to be found certain remnants of the matriarchal age--an age in which women were the recognized heads of families and the eponymous leaders of the gentes or clans. concerning the worship of a man and woman as god by the early arabians, prof. robertson smith remarks: "except the comparatively modern isaf and naila in the sanctuary at mecca where there are traditions of syrian influence, i am not aware that the arabs had pairs of gods represented as man and wife. in the time of mohammed the female deities, such as al-lat, were regarded as daughters of the supreme male god. but the older conception as we see from a nabataean inscription in de vogue, page , is that al-lat is mother of the gods. at petra the mother-goddess and her son were worshipped together, and there are sufficient traces of the same thing elsewhere to lead us to regard this as having been the general rule when a god and goddess were worshipped in one sanctuary."( ) ) kinship and marriage in early arabia, ch. vi., p. . as the worship of the black virgin and child is connected with the earliest religion of which we may catch a glimpse, the exact locality in which it first appeared must be somewhat a matter of conjecture, but that this idea constituted the deity among the ethiopian or early cushite race, the people who doubtless carried civilization to egypt, india, and chaldea, is quite probable. if we bear in mind the fact that the gods of the ancients represented principles and powers, we shall not be surprised to find that muth, neith, or isis, who was creator of the sun, was also the first emanation from the sun. minerva is wisdom--the logos, the word. she is perception, light, etc. at a later stage in the history of religion, all emanations from the deity are males who are "saviors." that the office of the male as a creative agency is dependent on the female, is a fact so patent that for ages the mother principle could not be eliminated from the conception of a deity, and the homage paid to athene or minerva, even after women had become only sexual slaves and household tools, shows the extent to which the idea of female supremacy in nature and in the deity had taken root. notwithstanding the efforts which during numberless ages were made to dethrone the female principle in the god-idea, the great mother, under some one of her various appellations, continued, down to a late period in the history of the human race, to claim the homage and adoration of a large portion of the inhabitants of the globe. and so difficult was it, even after the male element had declared itself supreme, to conceive of a creative force independently of the female principle, that oftentimes, during the earlier ages of their attempted separation, great confusion and obscurity are observed in determining the positions of male deities. zeus who in later times came to be worshipped as male was formerly represented as "the great dyke, the terrible virgin who breathes out on crime, anger, and death." grote refers to numerous writers as authority for the statement that dionysos, who usually appears in greece as masculine, and who was doubtless the jehovah of the jews, was indigenous in thrace, phrygia, and lydia as the great mother cybele. he was identical with bacchus, who although represented on various coins as a "bearded venerable figure" appears with the limbs, features, and character of a beautiful young woman. sometimes this deity is portrayed with sprouting horns, and again with a crown of ivy. the phrygian attis and the syrian adonis, as represented in monuments of ancient art, are androgynous personifications of the same attributes. according to the testimony of the geographer dionysius, the worship of bacchus was formerly carried on in the british islands in exactly the same manner as it had been in an earlier age in thrace and on the banks of the ganges. in referring to the idean zeus in crete, to demeter at eleusis, to the cabairi in samothrace, and dionysos at delphi and thebes, grote observes: "that they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in which they necessarily run together and become confused in the minds of various authors." concerning sadi, sadim, or shaddai, higgins remarks: "parkhurst tells us it means all-bountiful--the pourer forth of blessings; among the heathen, the dea multimammia; in fact the diana of ephesus, the urania of persia, the jove of greece, called by orpheus the mother of the gods, each male as well as female--the venus aphrodite; in short, the genial powers of nature." to which higgins adds: "and i maintain that it means the figure which is often found in collections of ancient statues, most beautifully executed, and called the hermaphrodite." as in the old language there was no neuter gender, the gods must always appear either as female or male. for apparent reasons, in all the translations, through the pronouns and adjectives used, the more important ancient deities have all been made to appear as males. by at least two ancient writers jupiter is called the mother of the gods. in reference to a certain greek appellation, bryant observes that it is a masculine name for a feminine deity--a name which is said to be a corruption of mai, the hindoo queen of heaven. in process of time, as the world became more and more masculinized, so important did it become that the male should occupy the more exalted place in the deity, that even the great mother of the gods, as we have seen, is represented as male. the androgynous or plural form of the ancient phoenician god aleim, the creator referred to in the opening chapter of genesis, is clearly apparent. this god, speaking to his counterpart, wisdom, the female energy, says: "let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness," and accordingly males and females are produced. by those whose duty it has been in the past to prove that the deity here represented is composed only of the masculine attributes, we are given to understand that god was really "speaking to himself," and that in his divine cogitations excessive modesty dictated the "polite form of speech"; he did not, therefore, say exactly what he meant, or at least did not mean precisely what he said. we have to bear in mind, however, that as man had not at that time been created, if there were no female element present, this excess of politeness on the part of the "lord" was wholly lost. surely, in a matter involving such an enormous stretch of power as the creation of man independently of the female energy, we would scarcely expect to find the high and mighty male potentate which was subsequently worshipped as the lord of the israelites laying aside his usual "i the lord," simply out of deference to the animals. in christian countries, during the past eighteen hundred years, the greatest care has been exercised to conceal the fact that sun-worship underlies all forms of religion, and under protestant christianity no pains has been spared in eliminating the female element from the god-idea; hence the ignorance which prevails at the present time in relation to the fact that the creator once comprehended the forces of nature, which by an older race were worshipped as female. chapter iv. the dual god of the ancients a trinity also. although the god of the most ancient people was a dual unity, in later ages it came to be worshipped as a trinity. when mankind began to speculate on the origin of the life principle, they came to worship their deity in its three capacities as creator, preserver, and destroyer or regenerator, each of which was female and male. we have observed that, according to higgins, when this trinity was spoken of collectively, it was called after the feminine plural. by the various writers who have dealt with this subject during the last century, much surprise has been manifested over the fact that for untold ages the people of the earth have worshipped a trinity. forster, in his sketches of hindoo mythology, says: "one circumstance which forcibly struck my attention was the hindoo belief of a trinity." maurice, in his indian antiquities, observes that the idea of three persons in the deity was diffused amongst all the nations of the earth, in regions as distant as japan and peru, that it was memorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of egypt and india, "flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains of thibet, and the vast deserts of siberia." the idea of a trinity is supposed to have been first elaborated on the banks of the indus, whence it was carried to the greek and latin nations. astrologically the triune deity of the ancients portrayed the processes of nature. this recondite doctrine as understood by the very ancient people which originated it, involved a knowledge of nature far too deep to be appreciated or understood by their degenerate descendants, except perhaps by a few philosophers and scholars who imbibed it in a modified form from original sources in the far east. after the establishment of the trinity, the creative energy, which had formerly been represented by a mother and child, came to be figured by the mother, father, and the life derived therefrom. sometimes the trinity took the form of the two creative forces, female and male, and the great mother. whenever the two creative principles were considered separately, there always appeared stationed over or above them, as their creator, an indivisible unity. this creator was the "beyond," the "most high god"--om or aleim. it was the mother of the gods in whom were contained all the elements of the deity. among the representations of the god-idea which are to be observed on the monuments and in the temples of egypt appear triads, each of which is composed of a woman stationed between a male figure and that of a child. she is depicted as the light of the sun, or wisdom, while the male is manifested as the heat of the orb of day. she is crowned and always bears the male symbol of life--the crux-ansata. later, it is observed that the worship of light has in a measure given place to the adoration of heat, in other words light is no longer adored as essence of the deity, heat or passion having become the most important element in creative power. after the ancient worship of the virgin and child had become somewhat changed or modified so as to better accommodate itself to the growing importance of the male, the most exalted conception of the deity in egypt seems to have been that of a trinity composed of mout the mother, ammon the father, and chons the infant life derived from the other two. mout is identical with neith, but she has become the wife as well as the mother of ammon. directly below this conception of the deity is a triad representing less exalted attributes, or lower degrees of wisdom, under the appellations of sate, kneph, and the child anouk; and thus downward, through the varying spheres of celestial light and life involved in their theogony are observed the divine creative energies represented under the figures of mother, father, and the life proceeding therefrom, until, finally, when the earth is reached, isis, osiris, and horus appear as the representation of the creative forces in human beings, and therefore as the embodiment of the divine in the human. the deity invoked in all the earlier inscriptions is a triad, and we are assured that in babylonia, where beltis is associated with belus, "no god appears without a goddess." the supreme deity of assyria was asshur, who was worshipped sometimes as female, sometimes as male. this god doubtless represents the dual or triple creative principle observed in all the earlier forms of worship. asshur had no distinct temple, but as her position was at the head of the pantheon, all the shrines throughout assyria were supposed to have been open to her worship. according to bunsen, in the sidonian tyrian district, there were originally three great gods, at the head of which appears astarte--a woman who represents pure reason or intelligence; then follows zeus, demarius, and adorus. without doubt this triad represents a monad deity similar in character to the one observed in egypt and other countries. in the minds of all well-informed persons, there is no longer any doubt that in abraham's time the canaanites worshipped the same gods as did the persians and all the other nations about them--namely, elohim, the dual or triune creative force in nature. as the sun was the source whence proceeded all light and life as well as reproductive or generative power, it had become the object of adoration, and as the emblem of the deity, it was worshipped by all the nations of the earth in its three capacities as creator, preserver, and destroyer or regenerator each female and male. melchizedek, who was a priest of the most high god, blessed abraham, who was a worshipper of the same deity. on this subject dr. shuckford says: "it is evident that abraham and his descendants worshipped not only the true and living god, but they invoked him in the name of the lord, and they worshipped the lord whose name they invoked, so that two persons were the object of their worship, god and this lord: and the scriptures have distinguished these two persons from one another by this circumstance, that god no man hath seen at any time nor can see but the lord whom abraham and his descendants worshipped was the person who appeared to them." we are told that when chap. xxi., verse , of genesis is correctly translated, abraham is represented as having invoked jehovah, the everlasting god. in the hebrew name yod-he-vau (jehovah), was set forth the triune character of the creator; in other words, this name "comprehended the essential perfections of the great god," and was used in their scriptures as a "kind of summary or revelation of the attributes of the deity." although abraham, while in egypt, was the worshipper of idols, we are assured that "the peculiar privilege vouchsafed to him lay in the revelation of god's holy name, yod-he-vau." there is indeed much evidence going to prove that the people represented by abraham understood the earlier conception of a deity, and that while the great universal principle whose name it was sacrilege to pronounce was still acknowledged, there was another god (the lord), the same as in china, whose worship they were beginning to adopt. "and jacob vowed a vow, saying, if god will be with me, and will keep me in this way that i go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that i come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the lord be my god." he then declared that the pillar or stone which he had set up, and which was the emblem of male procreative energy, should be god's house. as at the time represented by jacob there was evidently little or no spirituality among the israelites, this lord whom they worshipped was simply a life-giver in the most material or practical sense. the reproductive energy in man had become deified. it had, in other words, come to possess all the attributes of a god, or of a powerful man, which in reality was the same thing. it is this god personified which is represented as appearing to abraham and talking with him face to face. with this same god jacob wrestled, while the real god--the dual or triune principle, the jehovah or iav, no man could behold and live. to conceal the fact that the god of abraham originally consisted of a dual or triple unity, and that the deity was identical in significance with that of contemporary peoples, the priests have, as usual, had recourse to a trick to deceive the ignorant or uninitiated. in reference to this subject godfrey higgins says: "in the second book of genesis the creation is described not to have been made by aleim, or the aleim, but by a god of a double name ieue aleim; which the priests have translated lord god. by using the word lord, their object evidently is to conceal from their readers several difficulties which afterward arise respecting the names of god and this word, and which show clearly that the books of the pentateuch are the writings of different persons."( ) ) anacalypsis, book ii., ch, i. upon this subject bishop colenso observes: "and it is especially to be noted that when the elohistic passages are all extracted and copied one after another, they form a complete, connected narrative; from which we infer that these must have composed the original story, and that the other passages were afterwards inserted by another writer, who wished to enlarge or supplement the primary record. and he seems to have used the compound jehovah aleim in the first portion of his work in order to impress upon the reader that jehovah, of whom he goes on to speak in the later portions, is the same great being who is called simply elohim by the older writer, and notably in the first account of the creation."( ) ) lectures on the pentateuch and the moabite stone, p. . we are informed by bunsen that el, or elohim, comprehends the true significance of the deity among all the aramaic or canaanitish races, el representing the abstract principle taken collectively, elohim pertaining to the separate elements as creator, preserver, and regenerator. each of these canaanitish races had inherited these ideas from their fathers, and, although they had become grossly idolatrous, "moses knew, and educated israelites remained a long time conscious, that they used them not merely in their real but in their most ancient sense."( ) maurice and other writers call attention to the fact that moses himself uses this word elohim with verbs and adjectives in the plural. that the god worshipped by the more ancient peoples, namely aleim, or elohim, the same who said, "let us make man in our image," was not the lord adored at a later age by the jews, is a fact which at the present time seems to be clearly proven; that it constituted, however, the dual or triune unity venerated by all the nations on the globe of which we have any record, appears to be well established. ) bunsen, history of egypt, vol. iv., p. . we have seen that although the two sex-principles which underlie nature constituted the creator, the ancients thought of it only as one and indivisible. this indivisible aspect was the sacred iav, the holy of holies. when it was contemplated in its individual aspect it was creator, preserver, and destroyer, each of which was female and male. the difficulty of the ancients in establishing a first cause seems to have been exactly the same as is ours at the present time. when we say there must have been a god who created all things, the question at once arises, who created god? according to their theories, nothing could be brought forth without the interaction of two creative principles, female and male; yet everything, even these principles, must proceed from an indivisible energy--an energy which, as the idea of the sex functions became more and more clearly defined, could not be contemplated except in its dual aspect. so soon, therefore, as the great first cause was separated into its elements, a still higher power was immediately stationed above it as its creator. this creator was designated as female. it was the mother idea even gods could not be produced without a mother. in referring to the doctrines contained in the geeta, one of the sacred writings of the hindoos, faber observes: "in the single character of brahm, all the three offices of brahma, vishnu, and siva are united. he is at once the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer. he is the primeval hermaphrodite, or the great father and the great mother blended together in one person." the fact that a trinity in unity, representing the female and male energies symbolized by the organs of generation, formerly constituted the deity throughout asia is acknowledged by all those who have examined either the literature or monumental records of oriental countries. the rev. mr. maurice bears testimony to the character of eastern religious ideas in the following language: "whoever will read the geeta with attention, will perceive in that small tract the outlines of all the various systems of theology in asia. the curious and ancient doctrine of the creator being both male and female, mentioned on a preceding page, to be designated in indian temples by a very indecent exhibition of the masculine and feminine organs of generation in union, occurs in the following passage: 'i am the father and mother of this world; i plant myself upon my own nature and create again and again this assemblage of beings; i am generation and dissolution, the place where all things are deposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all nature. i am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things.' "( ) ) maurice, indian antiquities, vol. iv., p. . according to sir w. jones, the brahme, vishnu, and siva coalesce to form the mystic om, which means the essence of life or divine fire. in the bhagavat geeta the supreme god speaks thus concerning itself: "i am the holy one worthy to be known"; and immediately adds: "i am the mystic (trilateral) figure om; the reig, the yagush, and the saman vedas." it is a unity and still a trinity. this om or aum stands for the creator, preserver, and destroyer or regenerator, and represents the threefold aspect of the force within the sun. the doctrine maintained throughout the geeta is not only that the great life-force represents a trinity in unity, but that it is both female and male. on this subject maurice, in his indian antiquities, says: "this notion of three persons in the deity was diffused amongst all the nations of the earth, established at once in regions so distant as japan and peru, immemorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of egypt and india, and flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains of thibet, and the vast deserts of siberia." we have observed that the idea of a trinity as conceived by the so-called ancients, although at all times founded on the same conception, viz., that of the reproductive powers of nature and especially of mankind, differed in expression according to its application. although in human beings this triune creative idea was expressed by the mother, father, and child, as set forth in the temples and on the monuments of egypt, when applied directly to the sun and the planets, it appears as the creator, preserver, and regenerator or destroyer. destruction, or the absence of the sun's heat, represented by winter, was necessary to life, and therefore the destroyer was also the regenerator and equally with the creator and preserver constituted a beneficent factor in the god-idea. in fact as this third element really embodied the substance of the other two, it finally became the supreme god, little afterward being heard about the creator and preserver. the regenerator or destroyer was of course the sun, which in winter died away and rose again in the spring-time as a beneficent savior or renewer of life. the principle involved in these processes represented fertility, life, reproductive energy. as applied to mortals, it comprehended the power to create combined with perceptive wisdom or knowledge. this idea, portrayed as it was by a mother and her child, linked woman with the stars. it produced the "virgin of the sphere," queen of heaven, "isiac controller of the zodiac," at the same time that it made her the mother of all mankind. every year this virgin of the sphere as she appeared above the horizon at the winter solstice gave birth to the sun. astronomically this new sun was the regenerator, by which all nature was renewed. mythologically, after the higher truths contained in these doctrines were lost, it came to be the savior, the son of the virgin, the seed of the woman, which was to bruise the serpent's head. that the religion of an ancient race comprehended a knowledge of the evolutionary processes of nature may not be doubted. the myths still extant, and even the oldest assyrian inscriptions which have been deciphered, reveal the fact that the seeds of the visible universe were hidden in the "great deep"--that animal creation sprang from the earth and the sea through the influence of the sun's rays. it is now known that the philosophy of an older race involved a belief in the eternity of matter. the abstruse doctrine of reincarnation and the renewal of worlds seems to have formed the basis of their philosophy. according to these speculations, a portion of the earth was destroyed or resolved into its primary elements every six hundred years, while at the end of each kalpia, or great cycle of several thousand years, the entire earth was renovated or absorbed into the two fecundating principles of the universe. these two indivisible forces represented by vishnu rested in the water, or brooded on the face of the deep. when stirred by love for each other they again became active, and from the germs of a former world, which had been absorbed by themselves, created again the earth and everything upon it. in other words, "the earth sprang from the navel of vishnu or brahme." according to the buddhists of ceylon, the universe has perished ten different times, and each time has been renewed by the operations of nature, or by the preservation of germs from a former world. in their mythology these germs are represented by a parent and a triplicated offspring. it is perhaps unnecessary to add that this monad trinity is the creator, preserver, and destroyer with their great parent, the mother of the gods, which in process of time came to be regarded as male. according to wilford, hindoo chronology presents fourteen different periods, six of which have already elapsed; we are in the seventh, which began with the flood. each of these periods is called a manwantara, the presiding genius or deity of which is a menu. at the close of each dynasty a total destruction of the world takes place, everything being destroyed except the ruler, or menu, who "escapes in a boat." each new world is an exact counterpart of the one destroyed, and each menu is a representation of all preceding ones. thus the history of one dynasty serves for all the rest. this doctrine of a triplicated deity appearing at the beginning of a new creation may be traced in nearly every country of the globe. among the buddhists of china, fo is mysteriously multiplied into three persons in the same manner as is fo-hi, who is evidently noah. among the hindoos is observed the triad brahma, vishnu, and siva springing from the monad brahm or brahme. this triad appears on the earth at the beginning of each manwantara in the human form of menu and his three sons. we are assured that among the tartars evident traces are found of a similar god, who is seated on the lotus. it is also figured on a siberian medal in the imperial collection at st. petersburg. the jakuthi tartars, who are said to be the most numerous people of siberia, worship a triplicated deity under the three denominations of artugon and schugo-tangon and tangara. faber tells us that this tartar god is the same even in appellation with the tanga-tanga of the peruvians, who, like other tribes of america, seem plainly to have crossed over from the north-eastern extremity of siberia. upon this subject the same writer remarks thus: "agreeably to the mystical notion so familiar to the hindoos, that the self-triplicated great father yet remained but one in essence, the peruvians supposed their tanga-tanga to be one in three, and three in one: and in consequence of the union of hero worship with the astronomical and material systems of idolatry they venerated the sun and the air, each under three images and three names. the same opinions equally prevailed throughout the nations which lie to the west of hindostan. thus the persians had their ormuzd, mithras, and ahriman: or, as the matter was sometimes represented, their self-triplicating mithras. the syrians had their monimus, aziz, and ares. the egyptians had their emeph, eicton, and phtha. the greeks and romans had their jupiter, neptune, and pluto; three in number, though one in essence, and all springing from cronus, a fourth, yet older god. the canaanites had their baal-spalisha or self-triplicated baal. the goths had their odin, vile, and ve, who are described as the three sons of bura, the offspring of the mysterious cow, and the celts had their three bulls, venerated as the living symbols of the triple hu or menu. to the same class we must ascribe the triads of the orphic and pythagorean and platonic schools; each of which must again be identified with the imperial triad of the old chaldaic or babylonian philosophy."( ) ) faber, pagan idolatry, book vi., ch. ii., p. . the history of the catastrophe known as the deluge, which, it is claimed, took place either in armenia, at cashgar, or at some other place in the east, is observed, in later ages, to furnish a covering beneath which have been veiled the mythical doctrines of the priests. of the catastrophes which from time to time have visited our planet, and of the belief which has come to be entertained by ecclesiastics that the earth will be destroyed by fire, celsus writes: "the belief has spread among them, from a misunderstanding of the accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations, and floods are wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in the time of deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give utterance to the erroneous opinion that god will descend, bringing fire like a torturer."( ) ) origen against celsus, book iv., ch. xi. the mythologies of all nations are largely founded upon the "religious history" of a flood. the doctrine of a triplicated god saved from destruction by a storm-tossed ark which rested on some local mountain answering to ararat, and which was filled with the natural elements of reproduction, is found amongst the traditions of every country of the globe. in egypt, the destructive agency drives the god into the ark--or into the fish's belly, where he is obliged to remain until the flood subsides. in other words, at the time of the destruction of the world, the creative agency is forced within the womb of nature, there to remain until it again comes forth to recreate the world; nor does the symbolism end here, for this god--the sun, or the reproductive power within it, which every year is put to death by the cold of winter, must for a season remain lifeless, but, at the proper time, will come forth with healing in his wings. this god must issue forth to life through female nature. the god-man, noah, who appears under one appellation or another in all extant mythologies, was slain, or shut up in a box, ark, or chest in which he or his seed was preserved from the ravages of a mighty flood, or from destruction by the calamity which had befallen the rest of mankind. in one sense he represents a savior, in another sense he is the saved, for he is the seed of a former world and is born again from a boat, a symbol which always represents the female energy. sometimes he is shut up in a wooden cow, from which he issues forth to new life. again this storm tossed mariner is born from a cave, or the door of a rocky cavern, within which he had been preserved from some terrible catastrophe, caused either by water or fire. sir w. jones, faber, higgins, and many others who have investigated this subject are confident that the noah of genesis is identical with menu, the law-giver of india, and that both are adam, a man who appears with his three sons at the end of each cycle, or six hundred years, to renovate the world. in the six hundred and first year of noah's life, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. the drying of the waters, and the beginning anew just at the close of the six hundred years, are thought to refer to the end of the cycle of the neros. a year of menu or buddha had expired and a new dynasty or mamwantara was to begin. regarding this trinity, faber remarks: "brahm then at the head of the indian triad is menu at the head of his three sons. but that by the first menu we are to understand adam, is evident, both from the remarkable circumstance of himself and his consort bearing the titles of adima and iva, and from the no less remarkable tradition that one of his three sons was murdered by his brother at a sacrifice. hence it will follow, that brahm at the head of the indian triad is adam at the head of his three sons, cain, abel, and seth. each menu with his triple offspring is only the reappearance of a former menu with his triple offspring; for, in every such manifestation at the commencement of each mamwantara, the hindoo trimurti, or triad, becomes incarnate, by transmigrating from the human bodies occupied during a former incarnation; brahm or the unity appearing as the paternal menu of a new age, while the triad, brahma, vishnu, and siva, is exhibited in the person of his three sons.... but the ark-preserved menu--satyavrata and his three sons are certainly noah and his three sons, shem, ham, and japhet." hesiod teaches that, after the flood, chaos, night, and black erebus first appeared.( ) at this time, when there was no earth, no heaven, and no air, an egg floated on the face of the deep, which, being parted, brought forth love, or cupid. out of chaos this god created or formed all things. now cupid is the same as the greek phanes, and phanes is noah, the egg being the ark or female principle from which he was produced. the greek god phanes is the same as the egyptian osiris, who was driven into the ark by the "wind that blasts," or by the evil principle. ) the theogony. "as cupid is indifferently said to have been produced from an egg at a time when the whole world was in disorder, and from the womb of the marine goddess venus, the egg and the womb of that goddess must denote the same thing. accordingly we shall find that, on the one hand, venus is immediately connected with the symbolical egg; and, on the other hand, that she is identical with derceto and isis, and is declared to be that general receptacle out of which all the hero-gods were produced. now there can be little doubt in what sense we are to understand this expression, when we are told that the peculiar symbol of isis was a ship; and when we learn that the form assumed at the period of the deluge, by the indian isi or bhavani, who is clearly the same as the egyptian isis, was the ship argha, in which her consort siva floated securely on the surface of the ocean. venus, therefore, or the great mother, the parent of cupid from whom all mankind descended, must be the ark: consequently, the egg, with which she is connected, must be the ark also. aristophanes informs us that the egg out of which love was born, was produced by night in the bosom of erebus. but the goddess night, as we learn from the orphic poet, was the very same person as venus; and he celebrates her as the parent of the universe, and as the general mother both of the hero-gods and of man. the egg therefore produced by night was produced by venus: but venus and the egg meant the same thing: even that vast floating machine, which was esteemed an epitome of the world, and from which was born that deity who is also literally said to have been set afloat in an ark. sometimes the order of production was inverted; and, instead of the egg being produced by night or venus, venus herself was fabled to have been produced from the egg. there is a remarkable legend of this sort which ascribes venus and her egg to the age of typhon and osiris, in other words, to the age in which noah was compelled by the deluge to enter into the ark."( ) ) origin of pagan idolatry, book i., ch. iv. the preserver of the persians, who is seated on a rainbow in front of their rock temples, is mithras, who is identical with noah. sometimes this ancient mariner is represented as riding on the back of a fish, and again as floating in a boat. the god of hindostan, like the classical dionysos, was enclosed in an ark and driven into the sea. according to the gothic traditions as recorded in the eddas, there once existed a beautiful world, which was destroyed by fire. another was created, which, with all its inhabitants save a giant and his three sons, who were saved in a ship, were destroyed by water. with this triad, which originally sprang from a mysterious cow, the new world began. this new world, which represents the present system, will in time be devoured by flames; but another earth will arise from the ocean,--an earth far more beautiful than this, upon which all kinds of grain and delicious fruits will grow without cultivation. veda and vile will be there, for the conflagration will have been powerless to destroy them. while the flames are devouring all things, two human beings, a female and a male, will be concealed under a hill, where they will feed upon dew, and will propagate so abundantly that the earth will soon be peopled with a new race of beings. during the catastrophe, the sun will be devoured by a wolf, but before her death she will give birth to a daughter as resplendent as herself, who will go in the same path formerly trodden by her mother. the doctrines of the gothic philosophers, as they appear in the eddas, concerning the eternity of matter, the renewal or succession of worlds, and reincarnation are the same as those taught by pythagoras, the stoics, and other greek schools of thought. brahme or vishnu, resting on the bottom of the sea--a goddess who was symbolized by the self-generating lotus--was in later ages the mysterious cow of the goths. after the natural truths concealed beneath their religious symbolism were wholly forgotten, and human nature through the over-stimulation of the animal instincts had become corrupted, adam and eve, names which doubtless for ages represented the two fecundating principles throughout nature, with their sons, cain, abel, and seth, comprehended the god-idea. the fact has been observed that just six hundred years from the creation of adam, or at the close of the cycle, noah appears with his three sons to save or perpetuate the race. it is now believed that this account of noah and his three sons is an allegory beneath which are concealed the religious doctrines, or perhaps i should say, the philosophical speculations of an older race. the god of the ancients was identified with the life of man individually and with that of mankind collectively. as men die each day, and as every day men are born, this deity is said to die and to be renewed each day; and as he is the sun, or the incarnation of the sun, the rising and setting of this luminary depict the constantly dying and regenerating god of nature, the same as do the changing seasons. a similar idea reappears in their system of the renewal of worlds and reincarnation. regarding the doctrine of the eternity of matter held by the ancients, origen mentions a belief of the egyptians that the "world or its substance was never produced, but that it has existed from all eternity. neither is there any such thing as death. those who perish about us every day are simply changed, either they take on other forms or are removed to some other place. god cannot be destroyed, and as all things are parts of the deity everything lives and has always lived, seeming death being simply change. remnants of these doctrines are found in every portion of the globe; among the mexicans of the west as well as among the rude mountaineers of the burman empire." while contemplating the philosophical speculations of an ancient race bailly gave expression to the belief, that a "profoundly learned race of people existed previous to the formation of any of our systems." the wiser among the greek philosophers, those who, it is believed, borrowed their philosophical doctrines from the east, declare that "there is no production of anything which was not before; no new substance made which did not really pre-exist." equally with matter was spirit indestructible. "our soul," says plato, "was somewhere, before it came to exist in this present form; whence it appears to be immortal.... who knows whether that which is demonstrated living, be not indeed rather dying, and whether that which is styled dying be not rather living?" to one who has given attention to the various legends relative to the destruction of the world by a flood, and a storm-tossed mariner saved in an ark or boat, it is plain that they all have the same significance, all are but different versions of the same myth, which in an early age was used to conceal the philosophical doctrines of an ancient people. that the early historic nations understood little concerning the origin and true meaning of the legends which they had inherited from an older race is quite evident. the ignorance of the greeks regarding the significance of these legends is shown by the following: when solon, wishing to acquaint himself with the history of the oldest times, inquired of an egyptian priest concerning the time of the flood, and the age of deucalion or phroneous or noah, this functionary replied: "o solon, solon, you greeks are always children, nor is there an old man among you! having no ancient traditions nor any acquaintance with chronology, you are as yet in a state of intellectual infancy. the true origin of such mutilated fables as you possess is this. there have been and shall again be in the course of many revolving ages, numerous destructions of the human race; the greatest of them by fire and water, but others in an almost endless succession of shorter intervals."( ) ) quoted by plato; also by clement of alexandria. we have observed that the symbol of the universe was an egg. the egg was also the symbol of the earth and of the ark, which meant universal womanhood. from the mundane egg the triplicated deity sprang. there can be little doubt at the present time that adam, noah, menu, osiris, and dionysos all represent the fructifying power of the sun. in process of time they each came to figure as male reproductive energy, and during certain periods of the earth's history they have each in turn been worshipped as the deity. that not only the ark was female, but that the god element or reproductive principle within the ark was both female and male, is a fact which has been lost sight of during the historic period, or during those ages of the world in which the attempt has been made to prove nature motherless. all the germs and living creatures which were within the ark, and which were to reanimate the earth, were in pairs, females and males; and, besides, the dove (female), the emblem of peace, was also present. even noah himself was produced from an egg, which, as we have seen, is the symbol of venus, or universal womanhood. in after ages the female principle was not mentioned, but, on the contrary, was concealed beneath convenient symbols; and as the philosophical ideas underlying natural religion were lost or forgotten, and mankind had become too ignorant to perceive that a dual force, female and male which was also a trinity, pervades nature, the notion came gradually to prevail that the creative agency, which is spirit, is altogether male. hence the formulation of the inconceivable doctrine of a trinity composed of a father, son, and holy ghost. chapter v. separation of the female and male elements in the deity. glimpses of antiquity as far back as human ken can reach reveal the fact that in early ages of human society the physiological question of sex was a theme of the utmost importance, while various proofs are at hand showing that throughout the past the question of the relative importance of the female and male elements in procreation has been a fruitful source of religious contention and strife. these struggles, which from time to time involved the entire habitable globe, were of long duration, subsiding only after the adherents of the one sex or the other had gained sufficient ascendancy over the opposite party to successfully erect its altars and compel the worship of its own peculiar gods, which worship usually included a large share of the temporal power. only since the male sex has gained sufficient influence to control not only human action, but human thought as well, have these contentions subsided.( ) ) at the present time, through causes which are not difficult to understand, the question of the relative importance of the two sexes is again assuming a degree of importance indicative of the changes which are taking place in human thought, and for the reason that we are just witnessing the dawn of an intellectual age, the problems to be solved will admit of no answers other than those based upon a scientific foundation. that religious wars have not been confined to more modern times, and that among an early race the attempt to exalt the male principle met with obstinate resistance which involved mankind in a conflict, the violence of which has never been exceeded, are facts which seem altogether probable. indeed, there is much evidence going to show that the cause of the original dispersion of a primitive race was the contention which arose respecting their religious faith or regarding the physiological question of the relative importance of the sexes in the function of reproduction; and that the general war indicated in the puranas, which began in india and extended over the entire habitable globe, and which was celebrated by the poets as "the basis of grecian mythology," originated in this conflict over the precedence of one or the other of the sex-principles contained in the deity. although there are no records of these wars in extant history, accounts of them are still preserved in the traditions and religious monuments of oriental countries. in egypt, in india, and to a greater or less extent in other eastern countries, these physiological contests have been disguised under a veil of allegory, the true significance of which it is no longer difficult to understand. with the light which more recent investigation has thrown upon the subject of the separation of the original sex-elements contained in the deity, the significance of the following legend in the servarasa is at once apparent. when parvati (devi) was united in marriage to mahadeva (siva), the divine pair had once a dispute on the comparative influence of the sexes in producing animated beings, and each resolved by mutual agreement to create a new race of men. the race produced by mahadeva were very numerous, and devoted themselves exclusively to the worship of the male deity, but their intellects were dull, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted, and their complexions of many different hues. parvati had at the same time created a multitude of human beings, who adored the female power only, and were well shaped, with sweet aspects and fine complexions. a furious contest ensued between the two nations, and the lingajas, or adorers of the male principle, were defeated in battle, but mahadeva, enraged against the yonigas (the worshippers of the female element), would have destroyed them with the fire of his eye if parvati had not interposed and appeased him, but he would spare them only on condition that they should instantly leave the country with a promise to see it no more, and from the yoni, which they adored as the sole cause of their existence, they were named yavanas. the fact has been noticed in a previous work( ) that, according to wilford, the greeks were the descendants of the yavanas of india, and that when the ionians emigrated they adopted the name to distinguish themselves as adorers of the female, in opposition to a strong sect of male worshippers which had been driven from the mother country. we are taught by the puranas that they settled partly on the borders of varaha-dwip, or europe, where they became the progenitors of the greeks; and partly in the two dwipas of cusha, asiatic and african. in the asiatic cusha-dwip they supported themselves by violence and rapine. parvati, however, or their tutelary goddess, yoni, always protected them; and at length, in the fine country which they occupied, they became a flourishing nation.( ) wilford relates that there is a sect of hindoos who, attempting to reconcile the two systems, declare in their allegorical style that "parvati and mahadeva found their concurrence essential to the perfection of their offspring, and that vishnu, at the request of the goddess, effected a reconciliation between them."( ) ) see the evolution of women, p. . ) asiatic researches, vol. iii., pp. - . ) asiatic researches, "egypt and the nile," vol. iii., pp. - . the people who were dominant in asia long before the rise of the late assyrian monarchy, are said to be those whom scriptural writers represent as cushim, and the hindoos as cushas. they were the descendants of cush, or cuth, and were believed to have been the architects of the tower of babel. epiphanius, eusebius, and others assert that at the time of the building of this tower there existed two rival beliefs, the one demonstrated as scuthism, the other as ionism, or hellenism, the latter of which embodied the worship of the great mother, or the female element, which was worshipped in the shape of the mystic "iona or dove." the scuths, on the other hand, believed in the pre-eminence of a great father, or, perhaps i should say, in a deity composed of a triad containing the elements of a male parent. upon this subject the learned faber remarks: "i am much mistaken if some dissension on these points did not prevail at babel itself; and i think there is reason for believing that the altercation between the rival sects aided the confusion of languages in producing the dispersion."( ) ) pagan idolatry, book vi., ch. ii. those who believed in the superiority of the male in the processes of reproduction, adored the male element in the deity, while those who held that the female is the more important, worshipped the female energy throughout nature under one or another of its symbols, sometimes as a woman with her child and sometimes as a dove, but oftener as an ark, box, or chest. it is evident from the sacred writings of the hindoos that in india, during a period of several thousand years, there existed various sects, those who worshipped the male as the only creative force, others who adored the female as the origin of life, and those who paid homage to both, as alike important in the office of reproduction. it would seem that the fierce wars which had devastated the land had ceased prior to the beginning of the tower of babel. according to the testimony of moses, the lord himself declared "behold the people is one." this unanimity of belief, as is plainly shown, was of short duration, for the tower arose "upright and defiant," not, however, as an emblem of the primeval dual or triune god in which the female energy was predominant, but as a symbol of male creative power. it was the type of virility which in the subsequent history of religion was to assume the position of the "one only and true god." it is not improbable that idolatry began with the tower of babel. indeed it has been confidently asserted by certain writers that the earliest idols set up as emblems of the deity, or as expressions of the peculiar worship of the lingajas, were obelisks, columns, or towers, the first of which we have any account being the tower of babel, erected probably at nipur in chaldea. until a comparatively recent time, the actual significance of this monument seems to have been little understood. later research, however, points to the fact that it was a phallic device erected in opposition to a religion which recognized the female element throughout nature as god. the length of time which the adherents of these two doctrines had contended for the mastery is not known, but through the deciphered monuments of ancient nations, by facts gathered from their sacred writings, and by the general voice of tradition, it has been ascertained with a considerable degree of certainty that this great upheaval of society was the culmination of a dispute which had long been waged between two contending powers, and which finally resulted in a separation of the people, and in the final success, for the time being, of the sect which refused longer to recognize the superior importance of the female in the god-idea. at what time in the history of mankind the tower of babel was erected has not been ascertained, but the great antiquity of chaldea is no longer questioned. sir henry rawlinson, in the royal geographical journal says: "when chaldea was first colonized, or at any rate when the seat of empire was first established there, the emporium of trade seems to have been at ur of the chaldees, which is now miles from the sea, the persian gulf having retired nearly that distance before the sediment brought down by the euphrates and tigris." to which baldwin adds: "a little reflection on the vast period of time required to effect geological changes so great as this will enable us to see to what a remote age in the deeps of antiquity we must go to find the beginning of civilization in the mesopotamian valley."( ) ) prehistoric nations, p. . although at the time of the building of the tower of babel the worship of a deity in which the male principle was pre-eminent had not become universal, still the facts seem to indicate that the doctrine of male superiority which for ages had been steadily advancing had at length gained the ascendancy over the older religion. the new faith and worship had corrupted the old, and through the conditions which had been imposed upon women, and the consequent stimulation of the lower nature in man, even the adherents of the older faith were losing sight of those higher principles which in preceding ages they had adored as god. we have seen that in every country upon the earth there is a tradition recounting the ravages of a flood. whether or not this legend is to be traced to an actual calamity by which a large portion of asia was inundated, is not for a certainty known; but the fact that there was a deluge of contention and strife, surpassing anything perhaps which the world has ever witnessed, seems altogether probable. not long after the catastrophe designated as the flood, emblems of the deity, representations of the male and female elements, appear in profusion. babylon, at which place was erected the tower of belus, and memphis, which contained the pyramids, were among the first cities which were built. as the tower typified the deity worshipped by those who claimed superiority for the male, so the pyramids symbolized the creative agency and peculiar qualities of the female, or of the dual deity which was worshipped as female. although the grosser elements in human nature were rapidly assuming a more intensely aggressive attitude, and although the higher principles involved in an earlier religion were in a measure forgotten, it is evident that at this time humanity had not become wholly sensualized, and that the lower propensities and appetites had not assumed dominion over the reasoning faculties. the great mother cybele, who is represented by the sphinx, had doubtless been adored as a pure abstraction, her worship being that of the universal female principle in nature. she is pictured as the "eldest daughter of the mythologies," and as "the great first cause." she represented the past and the future. she was the source whence all that was and is had proceeded. in its earliest representations, the sphinx is figured with the head of a woman and the body of a lion. by various writers it is stated that the sphinxes which were brought as spoils from asia, the very cradle of religion, were thus represented. the lion, which symbolizes royal power and intellectual strength, is always attached to the chariot of cybele. the sphinx is supposed to typify not only cybele, but the great androgynous god of africa as well. however, as cybele and muth portrayed the same idea, namely, female power and wisdom, we are not surprised that they should have been worshipped under the same emblem. neither is it remarkable, when we recall the fact that the female was supposed to comprehend both sexes, that in certain instances a beard appears as an accompanying feature of the sphinx. we are told that the fourth avatar of vishnu was a sphinx, but a further search into the history of this deity reveals the fact that her ninth avatar is brahm (masculine). the female principle has at length succumbed to the predominance of male power, and vishnu herself has become transformed into a male god. although the rites connected with the worship of cybele were phallic they were absolutely pure. in an allusion to this worship, hargrave jennings admits that the "spirituality to which women in that age of the world were observed to be more liable than men was peculiarly adverse to all sensual indulgence, and especially that of the sexes." although the creative principle was adored under its representatives, the yoni and the lingham, still the principal object seems to have been, when administering the rites pertaining to the worship of cybele, to ignore sex and the usual sex distinctions; hence we find that, in order to assume an androgynous appearance, the priestesses of this goddess officiated in the costumes of males, while priests appeared in the dress peculiar to females. however, that the sensuous element was to a certain extent already assuming dominion over the higher nature, and that priests were regarded as being incapable of self-control, is observed in the fact that in the later ages of female worship one of the principal requirements of a priest of cybele was castration. it is the opinion of grote that the story which appears in the hesiodic theogony, of the castration of saturn and uranus by their sons with sickles forged by the mother, was borrowed from the phrygians, or from the worship of the great mother. in india, the strictest chastity was prescribed to the priests of siva, a god which was worshipped as the destroyer or regenerator, and which in its earlier conception was the same as the great mother cybele. these priests were frequently obliged to officiate in a nude state, and during the ceremony should it appear that the symbols with which they came in contact had appealed to other than their highest emotions, they were immediately stoned by the people.( ) ) sonnerat, voyage aux indes, i., . the identity of the religions of india and egypt has been noted in an earlier portion of this work. wilford, in his dissertations upon egypt and the nile, says that in a conversation which he had with some learned brahmins, upon describing to them the form and peculiarities of the great pyramid, they told him that "it was a temple appropriated to the worship of padma devi." the true coptic name of these edifices is pire honc, which signifies a sunbeam. padma devi means the lotus, or the deity of generation. it is thought by many writers that these gigantic structures were erected by the cushite conquerors of egypt, who invaded and civilized the country, as emblems of the female deity whom they worshipped. certainly the magnitude of these monuments and the ingenuity displayed in their construction indicate the intelligence of their builders and the exalted character of the deity adored. the great pyramid is in the form of a square, each side of whose base is seven hundred and fifty-five feet, and covers an area of nearly fourteen acres. an able writer in describing the pyramids says that the first thing which impresses one is the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in their architecture. they all have their sides accurately adapted to the four cardinal points. "in six of them which have been opened, the principal passage preserves the same inclination of degrees to the horizon, being directed toward the polar star.... their obliquity being so adjusted as to make the north side coincide with the obliquity of the sun's rays at the summer's solstice, has, combined with the former particulars, led some to suppose they were solely intended for astronomical uses; and certainly, if not altogether true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate acquaintance with astronomical rules, as well as a due regard to the principles of geometry. others have fancied them intended for sepulchres; and as the egyptians, taught by their ancient chaldean victors, connected astronomy with their funereal and religious ceremonies, they seem in this to be not far astray, if we but extend the application to their sacred bulls and other animals, and not merely to their kings, as herodotus would have us suppose."( ) ) the round towers of ireland, p. . according to the testimony of inman, the pyramid is an emblem of the trinity--three in one. the triangle typifies the flame of sacred fire emerging from the holy lamp. with its base upwards it typifies the delta, or the door through which all come into the world. with its apex uppermost, it is an emblem of the phallic triad. the union of these triangles typifies the male and female principles uniting with each other, thus producing a new figure, a star, while each retains its own identity.( ) ) ancient faiths, vol. i., p. . thus the primary significance of the pyramid was religious, and in its peculiar architectural construction was manifested the prevailing conception of the deity worshipped; namely, the fructifying energies in the sun. we are informed that "all nations have at one time or another passed through violent stages of pyrolatry, a word which reminds us that fire and phallic cult flourished around the pyramids.... every town in greece had a pyrtano."( ) ) forlong, rivers of life, or faiths of man in all lands, vol. i., p. . as not alone the sun but the stars also had come to be venerated as agencies in reproduction, the worship of these objects was, as we have seen, closely interwoven with that of the generative processes throughout nature. the attempt to solve the great problem of the origin of life on the earth led these people to contemplate with the profoundest reverence all the visible objects which were believed to affect human destiny. hence both the pyramid and the tower served a double purpose, first, as emblems of the deity worshipped, and, second, as monuments for the study of the heavenly bodies with which their religious ideas were so intimately connected. while comparing the early emblems which prefigure the primitive elements in the god-idea, hargrave jennings observes: "in the conveyance of certain ideas to those who contemplate it, the pyramid boasts of prouder significance, and impresses with a hint of still more impenetrable mystery. we seem to gather dim supernatural ideas of the mighty mother of nature... that almost two-sexed entity, without a name--she of the veil which is never to be lifted, perhaps not even by the angels, for their knowledge is limited. in short, this tremendous abstraction, cybele, ideae, mater, isiac controller of the zodiacs, whatever she may be, has her representative in the half-buried sphinx even to our own day, watching the stars although nearly swallowed up in the engulphing sands."( ) ) phallicism, p. . from the time when the two religious elements began to separate in the minds of the people, the prophets, seers, and priestesses of the old religion, those who continued to worship the virgin and child, had prophesied that a mortal woman, a virgin, would, independently of the male principle, bring forth a child, the fulfilment of which prophecy would vindicate the ancient faith and forever settle the dispute relative to the superiority of the female in the office of reproduction. thus would the woman "bruise the serpent's head." in process of time not only yonigas, but lingajas as well, came to accept the doctrine of the incarnation of the sun in the bodies of earthly virgins. by lingaites, however, it was the seed of the woman and not the woman herself who was to conquer evil. finally, with the increasing importance of the male in human society, it is observed that a reconciliation has been effected between the female worshippers and those of the male. athene herself has acquiesced in the doctrine of male superiority. thalat, the great chaldean deity, who presided over chaos prior to the existence of organized matter, is finally transformed into a male god. the hindoo vishnu, who as she slept on the bottom of the sea brought forth all creation, has changed her sex. brahm, the creator, is male, and appears as a triplicated deity in the form of three sons within whom is contained the essence of a great father, the female creative principle being closely veiled. hence we see that the god of the ancients, the universal dual force which resides in the sun and which creates all things, is no longer worshipped under the figure of a mother and her child. although the female principle is still a necessary factor in the creative processes, and although it is capable of producing gods, the mother element possesses none of the essentials which constitute a deity. in other words, woman is not a creator. from the father is derived the soul of the child, while from the mother, or from matter, the body is formed. hence the prevalence at a certain stage of human history of divine fathers and earthly mothers; for instance, alexander of macedon, julius caesar, and later the mythical christ who superseded jesus, the judean philosopher and teacher of mankind. henceforth, caves, wells, cows, boxes and chests, arks, etc., stand for or symbolize the female power. we are given to understand, however, that for ages these symbols were as holy as the god himself, and among many peoples even more revered and worshipped. we have seen that the ancients knew that matter and force were alike indestructible. according to their doctrine all nature proceeded from the sun. hence the power back of the sun, which they worshipped as the destroyer or regenerator, or, in other words, as the mother of the sun, was the great aum or om, the aleim or elohim, who was the indivisible god. the creative agency which proceeded from the sun was both male and female, yet one in essence. later, the male appeared as spirit, the female as matter. spirit was something above and independent of nature. it had indeed created matter from nothing. the fact will be remembered that man claimed supremacy over woman on the ground that the male is spirit, while the female is only matter; in other words, that she was simply a covering for the soul, which is divine. thus was the god-idea divorced from nature, and a masculine principle, outside and independent of matter, set up as a personal potentate or ruler over the universe. the logic by which the great female principle in the deity has been eliminated, and the subterfuges which have been and still are employed to construct and sustain a creator who of himself is powerless to create, is as amusing as it is suggestive, and forcibly recalls to mind la couvade, in which, among certain tribes, the father, assuming all the duties of procreation, goes to bed when a child is born.( ) ) the evolution of woman, p. . all mythologies prove conclusively that ages elapsed before human beings were rash enough, or sufficiently blinded by falsehood and superstition, to attempt to construct a creative force unaided by the female principle. just here it may not be out of place to refer to the fact that in the attempt to divorce god from nature have arisen all the superstitions and senseless religious theories with which, since the earliest ages of metaphysical speculation, the human mind has been crowded. to this separation of the two original elements in the deity, and the consequent exaltation of one of the factors in the creative processes, is to be traced the beginning of our present false, unnatural, and unphilosophical masculine system of religion--a system under which a father appears as the sole parent of the universe. the fact is tolerably well understood that mysticism and the accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. when the agencies which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became inoperative--when man began to regard himself as a creator and therefore as the superior of woman--he had reached a point at which he was largely controlled by supernatural or mystical influences. the fact is observed that in course of time the governmental powers are no longer in the hands of the people; the masses have become enslaved. their rulers are priests--deified tyrants who are unable to maintain their authority except through the ignorance and credulity of the masses. hence one is not surprised to find that the change which took place at a certain stage of human growth in respect to the manner of reckoning descent was instigated and enforced by religion. apollo had declared that woman is but the nurse to her own offspring. neither is it remarkable at this stage in the human career, as women had lost their position as heads of families, and as they were no longer recognized as of kin to their children, that man should have attempted to lessen the importance of the female element in the god-idea. wherever in the history of the human race we observe a change in the relations of the sexes involving greater or more oppressive restrictions on the natural rights of women, such change, whether it assume a legal, social, or religious form, will, if traced to its source, always be found deeply rooted in the wiles of priestcraft. since the decay of the earliest form of religion, namely, nature-worship, the gods have never been found ranged on the side of women. later investigations are proving that the primitive idea of a deity had its foundation in actual physical facts and experiences; and, as the maternal principle constituted the most important as well as the most obvious of the facts which entered into the conception of a creator, and as it was the only natural bond capable of binding human society together, so long as reason was not wholly clouded by superstition and warped by sensuality, it could not be eliminated. in other words, a creator in which the more essential element of creative force was wanting, was contrary to all human experience and observation. indeed nothing could be plainer than that the deified male principle could of itself create nothing, and that it was dependent for its very existence on the female element. by this attempt to construct a masculine deity, absurdities were presented to the human judgment and understanding which for ages could not be overcome, and by it contradictions were necessitated which could not be reconciled with human reason and with the ideas of nature which had hitherto been held by mankind. it was not, therefore, until reason had been suspended in all matters pertaining to religion, and blind faith in the machinations of priestcraft had been established, that a male god was set up as the sole creator of the universe. when women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the capture of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or instruments for the gratification and pleasure of men, perceptive wisdom or light, and maternal affection the preserver of the race, gradually became eliminated from the god-idea of mankind. passion became god. it was the creator in the narrowest and most restricted sense. although in an age of pure nature-worship the ideas connected with reproduction, like those related to all other natural functions, were wholly unconnected with impurity either of thought or deed, still when an age arrived in which all checks to human passion had been withdrawn, and the lower propensities had gained dominion over the higher faculties, the influence of fertility or passion-worship on human development or growth may in a degree be imagined. the fact must be borne in mind that curing the later ages of passion-worship the creative processes and the reproductive organs were deified, not as an expression or symbol of the operations of nature, but as a means to the stimulation of the lower animal instincts in man. with religion bestialized and its management regulated wholly with an idea to the gratification of man's sensuous desires, religious temples, under the supervision of the priesthood, became brothels, in which were openly practiced as part and parcel of religious rites and ceremonies the most wanton profligacy and the most shameless self-abandonment. the worship of aphrodite or venus, and also that of bacchus, originally consisted in homage paid to the reproductive principles contained in the earth, water, and sun, but, as is well known, this pure and beautiful worship, in later times, and especially after it was carried to greece, became synonymous with the grossest practices and the most lawless disregard of human decency. with the light which in these later ages science and ethnological research are throwing upon the physiological and religious disputes of the ancients, the correctness of the primitive doctrines elaborated under purer conditions at an age when human beings lived nearer to nature is being proved--namely, that matter like spirit is eternal and indestructible, and therefore that the one is as difficult of comprehension as the other, and that nature, instead of being separated from spirit, is filled with it and can not be divorced from it; also that the female is the original organic unit of creation, without which nothing is or can be created. chapter vi. civilization of an ancient race. the profound doctrines of abstractions or emanations; of the absorption of the individual soul into the divine ether or essence; of the renewal of worlds and reincarnation, were doubtless elaborated after the separation, in the human mind, of spirit from matter, but before mankind had lost the power to reason abstractly. although pythagoras understood and believed these doctrines, he did not, as is well known, receive them from his degenerate countrymen, but, on the contrary, imbibed them from private sources among the orientals, where fragments of their remarkable learning were still extant. he said that religion consists in knowing the truth and doing good, and his ideas show the grandeur and beauty of the earlier conception of a deity. he declared that there is only one god who is not, "as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe," but that this great power is diffused throughout nature. it is "the reason, the life, and the motion of all things." plato believed that human beings are possessed of two souls, the one mortal, which perishes with the body, the other immortal, which continues to exist either in a state of happiness or misery; that the righteous soul, freed from the limitations of matter, returns at death to the source whence it came, and that the wicked, after having been detained for a while in a place prepared for their reception, are sent back to earth to reanimate other bodies. aristotle held the opinion that the souls of human beings are sparks from the divine flame, while zeno, the founder of the stoic philosophy, taught that spirit acting upon matter produced the elements and the earth. there is plenty of evidence going to show that the early fathers in the christian church believed in the doctrines of reincarnation and the renewal of worlds. neither is there any doubt but that this philosophy came from the east, where it originated. it is thought that the ancient philosophers who elaborated these doctrines were unable to account for the existence of evil without a belief in the immortality of the soul. spirit was eternal, as was also matter. a soul, upon leaving the body, in course of time found its way back to earth, surrounded by conditions suited to its stage of growth. here it must reap all the consequences of its former life. it must also during its stay on earth make the conditions for its next appearance upon an earthly plane. so soon as through a succession of births and deaths it had perfected itself, it entered into a state of nirvana. it was absorbed into the great universal soul. nothing is ever lost. "many a house of life hath held me--seeking ever him who wrought these prisons of the senses, sorrow fraught; sore was my ceaseless strife! but now, thou builder of this tabernacle--thou! i know thee. never shalt thou build again these walls of pain, nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay fresh rafters on the clay; broken thy house is, and the ridge-pole split! delusion fashioned it! safe pass i thence--deliverance to obtain."( ) ) edwin arnold, the light of asia. regarding the opinions of the ancients on the subject of the eternity of matter, higgins, in his learned work on celtic druids, says: "the eternity of matter is a well known tenet of the pythagoreans, and whether right or wrong there can be no doubt that it was the doctrine of the oriental school, whence pythagoras drew his learning. it was a principle taken or mistaken from, or found amongst, the debris of that mighty mass of learning and science of a former period, of which, on looking back as far as human ken can reach, the most learned men have thought that they could see a faint glimmering. indeed, i think i may say something more than a faint glimmering. for all the really valuable moral and philosophical doctrines we possess, dutens has shown to have existed there." from what is known relative to the speculations of an ancient race, the fact is observed that creation was but a re-formation of matter. wisdom, or minerva, formed the earth and the planets; she did not create the heavens and the earth, as did the later jewish god. of the seven principles of the universe, matter was the first, and of the seven principles of man, the physical body was the earliest. through evolutionary processes, or through cyclic periods involving millions of years, mind was developed, and in course of time spirit was finally manifested. mai, the mother of gotama buddha, was simply matter, or illusion, from which its higher manifestation, mind or spirit, was emerging. she was also the mother of mercury. a clearer knowledge of the philosophical doctrines which were elaborated at a time when nature-worship was beginning to decay, reveals the fact that the god-idea comprehended a profound knowledge of nature and her laws; that while this people did not pretend to account for the existence of matter, they recognized a force operating through it whose laws were unchanged and unchanging. with these facts relative to the intelligence of an older race before us, the question naturally arises: what was the degree of civilization attained at a time when the deity worshipped was an abstract principle involving the actual creative processes throughout nature? and, notwithstanding our prejudices, we are constrained to acknowledge that these earlier conceptions are scarcely compatible with the barbarism which we have been taught to regard as the condition of all the peoples which existed prior to the first greek olympiad. on the contrary, the origin of the philosophical opinions entertained by the most ancient oriental philosophers, and which must have arisen out of a profound knowledge or appreciation of nature and her operations, point to a race far superior to any of those peoples which appear in early historic times. regarding these opinions, godfrey higgins remarks: "from their philosophical truth and universal reception i am strongly inclined to refer them to the authors of the neros, or to that enlightened race, supposed by bailly to have formerly existed, and to have been saved from a great catastrophe on the himalaya mountains. this is confirmed by an observation which the reader will make in the sequel, that these doctrines have been, like all the other doctrines of antiquity, gradually corrupted--incarnated, if i may be permitted to compose a word for the occasion." of this cycle, bailly says: "no person could have invented the neros who had not arrived at much greater perfection in astronomy than we know was the state of the most ancient assyrians, egyptians, and greeks." toward the close of the eighteenth century the celebrated astronomer, bailly, published a work entitled the history of ancient astronomy, in which he endeavored to prove that a nation possessed of profound wisdom and great genius, and of an antiquity far superior to the hindoos or egyptians, "inhabited the country to the north of india, or about fifty degrees north latitude." this writer has shown that "the most celebrated astronomical observations and inventions, from their peculiar character, could have taken place only in these latitudes, and that arts and improvements gradually travelled thence to the equator." a colony of brahmins settled near the imans, and in northern thibet, where in ancient times they established celebrated colleges, particularly at nagraent and cashmere. in these institutions the treasures of sanskrit literature were supposed to be deposited. the rev. mr. maurice was informed that an immemorial tradition prevailed at benares that all the learning of india came from a country situated in forty degrees of northern latitude. other writers are of the opinion that civilization proceeded from arabia; that the old cushite race carried commerce, letters, and laws to all the nations of the east. which of these theories is true, if either, may not with certainty be proved at present; yet that in the far distant past a race of people existed whose achievements exceeded those of any of the historic nations may not be doubted. that the length of the year was calculated with greater exactness by an ancient and forgotten people than it was by early historic nations is proved by the cycle of the neros. this cycle, which was formed of , lunar revolutions of days, hours, minutes, and seconds, or , days and a half, was equal to solar years of days, hours, minutes, and seconds, which time varies less than three minutes from the present observations of the year's length. the length of the year as calculated by the egyptians and other early historic nations was days, which fact would seem to indicate that a science of astronomy had been developed in an earlier age which by the most ancient peoples of whom we have any historic records has been lost or forgotten. it has been said that if this cycle of the neros "were correct to the second, if on the first of january at noon a new moon took place, it would take place again in exactly years at the same moment of the day, and under all the same circumstances."( ) ) godfrey higgins, celtic druids, ch. ii., sec. . the varaha calpa has the famous cycle of , , , years for its duration. this system makes the cali yug begin years b.c. a dodecan consisted of days, and dodecans formed a natural year of days. according to the earlier calculations, solar diurnal revolutions constituted a natural year. the doctrine of the ancients concerning these cycles is thus set forth by godfrey higgins: "the sun, or rather that higher principle of which the sun was the emblem or the shekinah, was considered to be incarnated every six hundred years. whilst the sun was in taurus, the different incarnations, under whatever names they might go, were all considered but as incarnations of buddha or taurus. when he got into aries, they were in like manner considered but as incarnations of cristna or aries, and even buddha and cristna were originally considered the same, and had a thousand names in common, constantly repeated in their litanies--a striking proof of identity of origin. of these zodiacal divisions the hindoos formed another period, which consisted of ten ages or calpas or yugs, which they considered the duration of the world, at the end of which a general renovation of all things would take place. they also reckoned ten neroses to form a period, each of them keeping a certain relative location to the other, and together to form a cycle. to effect this they doubled the precessional period for one sign--viz: years--thus making , which was a tenth of , , a year of the sun, analogous to the natural days, and produced in the same manner, by multiplying the day of by the dodecans = , . they then formed another great year of , by again multiplying it by , which they called a cali yug, which was measurable both by the number , the years the equinox preceded in a sign, and by the number . they then had the following scheme: a cali yug, or (or a neros) , a dwapar, or duo-par age.... , a treta, or tree-par age... , , a satya, or satis age.... , , --------- , , altogether ages, making a maha yug or great age. these were all equimultiples of the cycle of the neros , and of , the twelfth part of the equinoctial precessional cycle, and in all formed ten ages of , years each."( ) ) anacalypsis, vol. i., p. . the two great religious festivals of the ancients occurred the one in the spring, at easter, when all nature was renewed, the other in the autumn, after the earth had yielded her bounties and the fruits were garnered in. it was at these gatherings that the great mother earth received the devout adoration of all her children. it is supposed that the neros, or cycle of , is closely connected with this worship, and that it was invented to regulate the season for these festivals. in process of time it was discovered that this cycle no longer answered, that the festival which had originally fallen on the first of may now occurred on the first of april. this, we are told, "led ultimately to the discovery that the equinox preceded about years in each sign or , years in the signs, and this induced them to try if they could not form a cycle of the two. on examination, they found that the would not commensurate the years in a sign, or any number of sums of less than ten, but that it would with ten, or that in ten times , or in , years, the two cycles would agree; yet this artificial cycle would not be enough to include the cycle of , . they, therefore, took two of the periods of , , or , ; and, multiplying both by ten--viz: x = , and , x = , --they formed a period with which the -year period and the -year period would terminate and form a cycle. every , years the three periods would commence anew; thus the three formed a year or cycle, times making , , and times making , ."( ) ) higgins, anacalypsis, p. . to form a great year, which would include all the cyclical motions of the sun and moon, and perhaps of the planets, they multiplied , by ten; thus they had ten periods answering to ten signs. concerning these cycles godfrey higgins observes: "persons of narrow minds will be astonished at such monstrous cycles; but it is very certain that no period could properly be called the great year unless it embraced in its cycle every periodical movement or apparent aberration. but their vulgar wonder will perhaps cease when they are told that la place has proved that, if the periodical aberrations of the moon be correctly calculated, the great year must be extended to a greater length even than , , years of the maha yug of the hindoos, and certainly no period can be called a year of our planetary system which does not take in all the periodical motions of the planetary bodies." it is thought that as soon as these ancient astronomers perceived that the equinoxes preceded, they would at once attempt to determine the rate of precession in a given time; the precession, however, in one year was so small that they were obliged to extend their observations over immense periods. jones informs us that the hindoos first supposed that the precession took place at the rate of years in a degree, or in a zodiacal sign, and of , in a revolution of the entire circle. they afterwards came to think that the precession was at the rate of years and a fraction of a year, and thus that the precession for a sign was in years, and for the circle in , years. subsequently they discovered, or thought they had discovered, the soli-lunar period of years, hence they attempted to make the two go together. both, however, proved to be erroneous. in referring to the fact that among the ancient romans existed the story of the twelve vultures and the twelve ages of years each, higgins remarks: "this arose from the following cause: they came from the east before the supposition that the precession took place a degree in about years, and years in a sign had been discovered to be erroneous; and as they supposed the neros made a correct cycle in years, and believed the precessional cycle to be completed in , , they of course made their ages into twelve. as both numbers were erroneous, they would not long answer their intended purpose, and their meaning was soon lost, though the sacred periods of twelve ages and of remained." according to hipparchus and ptolemy, the equinoxes preceded at the rate of a degree in years, or , hundred years in degrees. this constituted a great year, at the end of which the regeneration of all things takes place. this is thought to be a remnant of the most ancient hindoo speculations, and not the result of observation among the greeks. some time after the arrival of the sun in aries, "at the vernal equinox, the indians probably discovered their mistake, in giving about years to a degree; that they ought to give " to a year, about years to a degree, and about years to a sign; and that the luni-solar cycle, called the neros, did not require years, but years only, to complete its period. hence arose the more perfect neros." it is thought by various writers that the knowledge of the ancient hindoos regarding the movements of the sun and moon in their cycles of nineteen and six hundred years--the metonic cycle, and the neros--proves that long before the birth of hipparchus the length of the year was known with a degree of exactitude which that astronomer had not the means of determining. it is positively asserted by astronomers that at least twelve hundred years were required, "during which time the observations must have been taken with the greatest care and regularly recorded," to arrive at the knowledge necessary for the invention of the neros, and that such observations would have been impossible without the aid of the telescope. on the subject of the great learning of an ancient race, sir w. drummond says: "the fact, however, is certain, that at some remote period there were mathematicians and astronomers who knew that the sun is in the centre of the planetary system, and that the earth, itself a planet, revolves round the central fire;--who calculated, or like ourselves attempted to calculate, the return of comets, and who knew that these bodies move in elliptic orbits, immensely elongated, having the sun in one of their foci;--who indicated the number of the solar years contained in the great cycle, by multiplying a period (variously called in the zend, the sanscrit, and the chinese ven, van, and phen) of years by another period of years;--who reckoned the sun's distance from the earth at , , of olympic stadia; and who must, therefore, have taken the parallax of that luminary by a method, not only much more perfect than that said to be invented by hipparchus, but little inferior in exactness to that now in use among the moderns;--who could scarcely have made a mere guess when they fixed the moon's distance from its primary planet at fifty-nine semi-diameters of the earth;--who had measured the circumference of our globe with so much exactness that their calculation only differed by a few feet from that made by our modern geometricians;--who held that the moon and the other planets were worlds like our own, and that the moon was diversified by mountains and valleys and seas;--who asserted that there was yet a planet which revolved round the sun, beyond the orbit of saturn;--who reckoned the planets to be sixteen in number;--and who reckoned the length of the tropical year within three minutes of the true time; nor, indeed, were they wrong at all, if a tradition mentioned by plutarch be correct."( ) ) drummond, on the zodiacs, p. . bailly, sir w. jones, higgins, and ledwich, as well as many modern writers, agree in the conclusion that the indians, the egyptians, the assyrians, and the chinese were simply the depositaries, not the inventors, of science. the spirit of inquiry which in later times is directing attention to the almost buried past is revealing the fact that not merely the germs whence our present civilization has been developed descended to us from the dim ages of antiquity, but that a great number of the actual benefits which go to make up our present state of material progress have come to us from prehistoric times. the art of writing, of navigation (including the use of the compass), the working of metals, astronomy, the telescope, gunpowder, mathematics, democracy, building, weaving, dyeing, and many of the appliances of civilized life, have been appropriated by later ages with no acknowledgment of the source whence they were derived. when pythagoras exhibited to the greeks some beautiful specimens of ancient architecture which he had brought from egypt and babylon, they simply claimed them as their own, giving no credit to the people who originated them; and subsequent ages, copying their example, have refused to acknowledge that anything of value had been achieved prior to the first greek olympiad. when philip of macedon opened the gold mines of thrace, a country in which it will be remembered the worship of the great mother cybele was indigenous, he found that they had been previously worked "at great expense and with great ingenuity by a people well versed in mechanics, of whom no monuments whatever are extant." the decorations on the breasts of some of the oldest mummies show that the early egyptians understood the art of making glass. it is now known that the lens as a magnifying instrument was in use among them. attention has been drawn to the fact that the astronomical observations of the ancients would have been impossible without the aid of the telescope. diodorus siculus says there was an island west of the celtae in which the druids brought the sun and moon near them. an instrument has recently been found in the sands of the nile, the construction of which shows plainly that years ago the egyptians were acquainted with our modern ideas of the science of astronomy. william huntington, who has travelled widely in india, borneo, the malay peninsula, and egypt, says: "i think, on the whole, the most interesting experience i ever had was in an ancient city on the nile in egypt.... when i was there a year ago, and men were digging among the ruined temples, some curious things were brought to light, and these i regard as the strangest things seen in all my wanderings. in an old tomb was found a curious iron and glass object, which on investigation proved to be a photographic camera. it was not such a camera as is used now, or has been since our photography was invented, but something analogous to it, showing that the art which we thought we had discovered was really known years ago." the same writer states that a plow constructed on the modern plan was also found. "it was not of steel but of iron, and it had the same shape, the same form of point and bend of mold board as we have now." it is reported that the dark continent possesses means of communication entirely unknown to europe. upon this subject a correspondent to the new york tribune writes: "when khartoum fell in i was in egypt, and i well remember that the arabs settled in the neighborhood of the pyramids knew all about it, as well as about gen. gordon's death, days and days before the news reached cairo by telegraph from the soudanese frontier. yet khartoum is thousands of miles distant from cairo and the telegraph wires from the frontier were monopolized by the government." the same correspondent observes that these arabs told him, months previously, of the defeat of the egyptian army under baker pasha at tokar--that they not only gave him the news, but several particulars concerning the matter, two full days before intelligence was received from the red sea coast. in answer to the suggestion that such information might have been conveyed by means of signal fires, this writer says that such fires would have attracted the attention of the english and native scouts, and that the whole country is unpropitious to such methods; besides, no system of signal fires, no matter how elaborate, could have conveyed the news so quickly and in such detail. the whole matter is summed up as follows: "the arabs, therefore, have, manifestly, some other means of rapid communication at their command. one is inclined to the presumption that they, like the learned pundits of northern india, have a knowledge of the forces of nature that are yet hidden from our most eminent scientists." can it be that the arabs are acquainted with the very recently discovered scientific principle, that it is possible to transmit telegraphic communications without wires, and simply by means of magnetic currents in earth and water? nor is this remarkable skill confined to the "barbarians of the old world." a correspondent from the far west to the new york press wrote that long before the news of the custer massacre reached fort abraham lincoln the sioux had communicated it to their brethren. the scouts in crook's column to the south knew of it almost immediately, as did those with gibbon farther northwest. the same writer says that several years ago a naval lieutenant ran short of provisions. he pushed on to a settlement as rapidly as possible and upon arriving there found that the inhabitants had provided for his coming and had a bounteous store awaiting him. the people in the village were of a different tribe from those whose domain he had passed, and so far as could be learned were not in communication with them. the earliest accounts which we have of egypt and chaldea reveal the fact that at a very remote period they were old and powerful civilizations, that they had a settled government, a pure and philosophical religion, and a profound knowledge of science and art; yet, notwithstanding the great antiquity of these civilizations, that of the people which created them must have been infinitely more remote. the earliest historic nations recognized the greatness of these ancient people and the extent of their dominion. in the oldest geographical writings of the sanskrit people, the ancient ethiopia, or land of cush of greek and hebrew antiquity, is clearly described. stephanus of byzantium, who is said to represent the opinions of the most ancient greeks, says: "ethiopia was the first established country on the earth, and the ethiopians were the first who introduced the worship of the gods and who established laws."( ) ) quoted by john d. baldwin, prehistoric nations, p. . heeren in his researches says: "from the remotest times to the present, the ethiopians have been one of the most celebrated, and yet the most mysterious of nations. in the earliest traditions of nearly all the more civilized nations of antiquity, the name of this distant people is found. the annals of the egyptian priests are full of them, and the nations of inner asia, on the euphrates and tigris, have interwoven the fictions of the ethiopians with their traditions of the wars and conquests of their heroes; and, at a period equally remote, they glimmer in greek mythology. when the greeks scarcely knew italy and sicily by name, the ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets, and when the faint gleam of tradition and fable gives way to the clear light of history, the lustre of the ethiopians is not diminished." homer says of them that they were a "divided people dwelling at the ends of the earth toward the setting and the rising sun." although it is possible at the present time to discover very many of the facts bearing upon the civilization of this ancient people, it is impossible in the present condition of human knowledge to discover when civilized life began on the earth. whether the ancient arabians or ethiopians who belonged to the old cushite race, and who are believed by many to be the most ancient people of whom we have any trace, were the first colonizers, or whether they were preceded by a still older civilization, history and tradition are alike silent; yet the fact seems to be tolerably well authenticated that this enlightened race, now nearly extinct, carried civilization to chaldea more than seven thousand years b.c., that it colonized egypt, engrafted its own institutions in india, colonized phoenicia, and by its maritime and commercial enterprise, introduced civilized conditions into every quarter of the globe. even in peru, in mexico, in central america, and in the united states are evidences of the old cushite religion and enterprise. baldwin, commenting on the greatness of this remarkable people, says that early in the period of its colonizing enterprise, commercial greatness, and extensive empire, it established colonies in the valleys of the nile and the euphrates, which in later ages became barbary, egypt, and chaldea. the ancient cushite nation occupied arabia and other extensive regions of africa, india, and western asia to the mediterranean. while remarking upon the vastness and antiquity of this old cushite race, rawlinson says that they founded most of the towns of western asia. the vast commercial system which formed a connecting link between the various countries of the globe, was created by this people, the great manufacturing skill and unrivalled maritime activity of the phoenicians which extended down to the time of the hellenes and the romans having been a result of the irgenius. it was doubtless during the supremacy of the ancient cushite race that a knowledge of astronomy was developed and that the arts of life were carried to a high degree of perfection. however, through the peculiar influences which were brought to bear upon human experience, this knowledge, which was bequeathed to their descendants or to the nations which they had created, was subsequently lost or practically obscured, only fragments of it having been preserved from the general ruin. within these fragments have been preserved in india certain evidences of a profound knowledge of nature, or of the at present unknown forces in the universe, a demonstration of which, in our own time, would probably be looked upon as a miraculous interposition of supernatural agencies. regarding the refinements and luxuries of this ancient people, diodorus siculus declares that they flowed in streams of gold and silver, that "the porticoes of their temples were overlaid with gold, and that the adornments of their buildings were in some parts of silver and gold, and in others of ivory and precious stones, and other things of great value." from various observations, it is plain that the etrurians represented a stage of civilization far in advance of the pelasgians who founded rome--a race which, although superior in numbers, arms, and influence, were, when compared with this more ancient people, little better than barbarians.( ) ) it is thought that as early as the nineteenth century b.c. the pelasgians or pelargians went to aenonia, or ionia. it was a detachment of this people which, according to herodotus, captured a number of athenian women on the coast of africa, lived with them as wives, and raised families by them, but, "because they differed in manners from themselves," they murdered them, which act was attended by a "dreadful pestilence." it is the opinion of certain writers that these women were of a different religious faith from their captors, and that so intense and bitter was the feeling upon the comparative importance of the sex functions in pro-creation, that their husbands, unable to change their views, put an end to their existence. nothing, perhaps, proclaims the degree of civilization attained by the ancient etrurians more plainly than the exquisite perfection which is observed in the specimens of art found in their tumuli. within the tombs of etruscans buried long prior to the foundation of rome, or the birth of the fine arts in greece, have been found unmistakable evidence of the advanced condition of this people. the exquisite coloring and grouping of the figures on their elegant vases, one of which, on exhibition in the british museum, portrays the birth of minerva, or wisdom, show the delicacy of their taste, the purity of their conceptions, and their true artistic skill. among their mechanical arts, a few specimens of which have been preserved, is the potter's wheel, an invention which, so far as its utility is concerned, is declared to be absolutely perfect--the most complete of all the instruments of the world. "it never has been improved and admits of no improvement." in fact all that may be gathered concerning the ancient etrurians, a people who by the most able writers upon this subject is believed to have been one of the first to leave the asiatic hive, is in perfect accord with the facts already set forth regarding that mighty nation, perhaps of upper asia, who carried the study of astronomy to a degree of perfection never again reached until after the discovery of the copernican system, who invented the neros and the metonic cycle, who colonized egypt and chaldea, and who carried civilization to the remotest ends of the earth. the philosophy of the etrurians corresponds with that of the most ancient hindoo system, and displays a degree of wisdom unparalleled by any of the peoples belonging to the early historic ages. according to their cosmogony, the evolutionary or creative processes involved twelve vast periods of time. at the end of the first period appeared the planets and the earth, in the second the firmament was made, in the third the waters were brought forth, in the fourth the sun, moon, and stars were placed in the heavens, in the fifth living creatures appeared on the earth, and in the sixth man was produced. these six periods comprehended one-half the duration of the cycle. after six more periods had elapsed, or after the lapse of the entire cycle of twelve periods, all creation was dissolved or drawn to the source of all life. subsequently a new creation was brought forth under which the same order of events will take place. the involution of life, or its return to the great source whence it sprang, did not, however, involve the destruction of matter. the seeds of returning life were preserved in an ark or boat--the female principle, within which all things are contained. this indrawing of life constituted "the night of brahme." it was represented by vishnu sleeping on the bottom of the sea. from the facts adduced in relation to the etrurians we are not surprised to find that their religion was that of the ancient nature worshippers, and that a mother with her child stood for their god-idea. in referring to the religion of this people, and to the great antiquity of the worship of the virgin and child, higgins remarks: "amongst the gauls, more than a hundred years before the christian era, in the district of chartres, a festival was celebrated in honor of the virgin," and in the year , a mithraic monument was found "on which is exhibited a female nursing an infant--the goddess of the year nursing the god day." to which he adds: "the protestant ought to recollect that his mode of keeping christmas day is only a small part of the old festival as it yet exists amongst the followers of the romish church. theirs is the remnant of the old etruscan worship of the virgin and child." as a proof of the above, higgins cites gorius's tuscan antiquities, where may be seen the figure of an old goddess with her child in her arms, the inscription being in etruscan characters. "no doubt the romish church would have claimed her for a madonna, but most unluckily she has her name, nurtia, in etruscan letters, on her arm, after the etruscan practice." from the monuments of etruria the fact is observed that descent and the rights of succession were traced in the female line, a condition of society which indicates the high position which must have been occupied by the women of that country. in oman is said to exist a fragment of the government of the old ethiopian or cushite race. if this is true, then we may be able to perceive at the present time something of the character of the political institutions of this ancient nation. as no people remains stationary, and as degeneracy has been the rule with surrounding countries, we may not expect to find among the people of oman a true representation of ancient conditions, yet, as has been observed, we may still be able to note some of the facts relative to the organization of society and their governmental institutions. in a description furnished by palgrave, oman is termed a kingdom, yet it is plain from the observations of this writer that the existing form of government is that of a confederacy of nations under a democratical system, identical with that developed during the later status of barbarism. this writer himself admits that oman is less a kingdom than an aggregation of municipalities, and that each of these municipalities or towns has a separate existence and is controlled by its own local chief; but that all are joined together in one confederacy, and subjected to the leadership of a grand chief whom the writer is pleased to term "the crown," but why, as is evident from the description given, bears no resemblance to a modern monarch. the chiefs who direct the councils of the municipalities are limited in their powers by "the traditional immunities of the vassals," the decision of all criminal cases and the administration of justice being in the hands of the local judges. in the descriptions given of their governmental proceedings, it is stated that the whole course of law is considered apart from the jurisdiction of the sovereign, who has no power to either change or annul the enactments of the people. here, it is observed, exists almost the identical form of government which was in use among the early historic nations, before governments came to be founded on wealth, or on a territorial basis( ); or, in other words, before the monied and aristocratic classes had drawn to themselves all the powers which had formerly belonged to the people. ) see the evolution of woman, p. . we must bear in mind the fact that under these earlier democratical institutions, the term "people" included not only men but women, and as the grand chief, the local rulers, and the judges held their positions by virtue of their descent from, or relationship to, some real or traditional leader of the gens, who during all the earlier ages was a woman, we may believe that the power of women to depose their political leaders so soon as their conduct became obnoxious to them was absolute and unquestioned. doubtless, as we have seen, the government of oman has undergone a considerable degree of modification since the days of cushite splendor and supremacy; that, like all other nations which have come in contact with the aryan and semitic races, the tendency has been toward monarchial government; nevertheless, with its practically free institutions, representing as they do, in a measure, the political system of the grandest and oldest civilizations of which we have any knowledge, it furnishes an illustration of the degree of progress possible under gentile organization, at the same time that it points to the source whence has proceeded the fierce democratic spirit observed among succeeding nations, notably the greeks. modern writers agree in ascribing to the touaricks, a people inhabiting the desert of sahara, a considerable degree of civilization. we are informed that in the sahara, which, by the way, is far less a barren waste than we have been taught to suppose it, "the touaricks have towns, cities, and an excellent condition of agriculture"; that with them fruit is cultivated with great success and skill. their method of political organization is democratic and similar in construction and administration to the old cushite municipalities. baldwin, quoting from richardson, says: "ghat, like all the touarick countries, is a republic; all the people govern. the woman of the touaricks is not the woman of the moors and mussulmans generally. she has here great liberty, and takes an active part in the affairs and transactions of life."( ) ) prehistoric nations, p. . one who is disposed to search for it, will find no lack of evidence going to prove that in an earlier age of the world, prior to the written records of extant history, the human race had attained to a stage of civilization equal in all and superior in many respects to that of the present time. that this remarkable stage of progress, the actual extent of which has not yet been fully realized, was attained during a period of pure nature-worship, or while the earth and the sun were venerated as emblems of the great creative energy throughout the universe, is a proposition which, when viewed by the light of more recently acquired facts, is perfectly reasonable, and exactly what might be expected. that this high stage of civilization was reached while women were the recognized heads of families and of the gentes, and at a time when perceptive wisdom, or the female energy in the deity, was worshipped as the supreme god, is a fact which in time will be proved beyond a doubt. indeed, had not the judgment of man become warped by prejudice, and his reason clogged by superstition and sensuality, the fact so plainly apparent in all ancient mythologies, that in the early god-idea two principles were contained, the female being in the ascendancy, would long ere this have been acknowledged, and our present religious systems, which are but outgrowths from these mythologies, would, with the partial return of civilized conditions, have been so modified or changed as to embrace some of the fundamental truths which formed the basis of early religion. regarding the religion of the ancient race which we have been considering, we are told that they worshipped a dual deity, under the appellations of ashtaroth and baal, and that this god "comprehended the generative or reproductive powers in human beings and in the sun, together with wisdom or light." in other words, they adored the great moving force throughout nature, a force which they venerated as the great mother. before the zend and sanskrit branches of the aryan race had separated, their religion was doubtless that given them by their cushite civilizers. the worship of the sun and the planets, with which were inextricably interwoven the fructifying agencies in nature, explains their devotion to the study of the heavenly bodies and their advanced knowledge of astronomy. the types of regeneration or reproduction which they venerated were symbols of abstract principles, and, from facts connected with their religious ceremonies as practiced by their immediate successors, and from the pure significance attached to their emblems, we are justified in the conclusion before referred to, that the sensuous element, which became so prominent in later religious developments, constituted no part of their worship. the number of ages during which the most primitive religion, namely, that of pure nature-worship, prevailed among the inhabitants of the earth may not be conjectured, and the exact length of time during which earth and sun adoration unalloyed by serpent and phallic faiths remained is not known. it is probable, however, that its duration is to be measured by that of the supremacy of the altruistic or mother element in human affairs, and that the gradual engrafting of the later-developed sensuous faiths upon their earlier god-idea, marks the change from female to male supremacy. we have observed that whenever a remnant of the civilization of the ancient cushites appears, exactly as might be expected, women hold an exalted position in human affairs, at the same time that the female principle constitutes the essential element in the deity. of the ancient persians who received their religion and their civilization from this older race malcolm observes: "the great respect in which the female sex was held was, no doubt, the principal cause of the progress they made in civilization.... it would appear that in former days the women of persia had an assigned and honorable place in society; and we must conclude that an equal rank with the male creation, which is secured to them by the ordinances of zoroaster, existed long before the time of that reformer, who paid too great attention to the habits and prejudices of his countrymen to have made any serious alteration in so important an usage. we are told by quintus curtius, that alexander would not sit in the presence of sisygambis, till told to do so by that matron, because it is not the custom in persia for sons to sit in the presence of their mothers. there can be no stronger proof than this anecdote affords, of the great respect in which the female sex were held in that country, at the time of this invasion."( ) ) see history of persia. no one i think can study the sacred books of the persians without observing the emphasis which is there placed on purity of character and right living. indeed, within no extant writings is the antithesis between good and evil more strongly marked, at the same time that their hatred of idolatry is clearly apparent. the same is observed in the early writings of the hindoos. within the vedas, although they have been corrupted by later writers, may still be traced a purity of thought and life which is not apparent in the writings of later ages. not long ago i was informed by a learned native of india that the original writing of the vedas was largely the work of women. that the early conceptions of a deity in which women constituted the central and supreme figure were in egypt correlated with the exercise of great temporal power, may not, in view of the facts at hand, longer be doubted. by means of records revealed on ancient monuments, we are informed that in the age of amunoph i. a considerable degree of sovereign power in egypt was exercised by a woman, amesnofre-are, who had shared the throne with ames. she occupied it also with amunoph, and, notwithstanding the statement of herodotus, that women did not serve in the capacity of priests, this queen is represented as pouring out libations to amon, an office which was doubtless the highest connected with the priesthood. less than forty years later, it is observed that another woman, amun-nou-het, shared the throne with thotmes i. and ii. and that "she appears to have enjoyed far greater consideration than either of them." not alone are monuments raised in her name, but she appears dressed as a man, and "alone presenting offerings to the gods." so important a personage was she that she is believed by many to be the princess who conquered the country, perhaps even semiramis herself. her title was the "shining sun."( ) ) rawlinson, history of herodotus, app., book ii., ch. viii. as these women doubtless belonged to the old arabian, ethiopian, or cushite race, the people who had brought civilization to egypt, we are not surprised to find them holding positions which were connected with the highest civil and religious offices. the labyrinth, in the country of the nile, is described by ancient writers as containing three thousand chambers. strabo says of it that the enclosure contained as many palaces as there formerly were homes, and that there the priests and priestesses of each department were wont to congregate to discuss difficult and important questions of law. according to the greeks, the egyptian god osiris corresponds to their jupiter; and sate, the companion of kneph, is identical with juno. it is quite evident, however, that the greeks understood little of the true significance of the gods which they had borrowed, or which they had inherited from older nations. it would seem that as a people their conceit prevented them from acknowledging the dignity even of their gods, hence, they endowed them with the attributes best suited to their own depraved taste or pleasure, and then worshipped them as beings like themselves. it has been observed of the egyptians that they were wont to ridicule the greeks for regarding their gods as actual beings, while in reality "they were only the representations of the attributes and principles of nature." unlike the religions which succeeded it, egyptian mythology, as understood by the learned, was essentially philosophical, and dealt with abstractions and principles rather than with personalities. notwithstanding the importance which in process of time came to be claimed by males, and the consequent stimulation which was given to the animal tendencies, it is evident, from certain historical and undeniable proofs in connection with this subject, that although woman's power in egypt, as in all other countries, gradually became weakened, the effect of her influence on manners and social customs was never wholly extinguished. regarding the existence of polygamy, it has been said that the high position occupied in ancient egypt by the mother of the family, the mistress of the household, is absolutely irreconcilable with the existence of polygamy as a general practice, or of such an institution as the harem. although the plurality of wives does not appear to have been contrary to law, it "certainly was unusual," and although egyptian kings frequently had many wives, "they followed foreign rather than native custom."( ) ) renouf, religion of ancient egypt, p. . herodotus says of the women of egypt: "they attend the markets and trade while the men sit at home at the loom"( ); and diodorus informs us that in egypt "women control the men." ) book ii., ch. xxxv. were we in possession of no direct historical evidence to prove that down to a late period in the history of egypt women had not lost their prestige, sufficient evidence would be found in the fact that, notwithstanding the growing tendency of mankind in all the nations of the globe to suppress the female instincts and to reject, conceal, or belittle the woman element in the deity, still isis, the gracious mother, retained a prominent place in the god-idea of that country. i am not unmindful of the remarks which a reference to a past age of intellectual and moral greatness will call forth; indeed, i can almost hear some devotee of the present time remark: "so we are asked to regard as a sober fact the existence in the past of a golden age; also to believe that man was created pure and holy, and that he has since fallen from his high estate; in other words, we are to have faith in the ancient tradition of the 'fall of man.'" if by the fall of man we are to understand that a great and universal people, who in a remote age of the world's history had reached a high stage of civilization, gradually passed out of human existence, and that a lower race, which was incapable of attaining to their estate, and which, by the over-stimulation of the lower propensities, sank into a state of barbarism, in which the original sublime conceptions of a deity were obscured and the great learning of the past was lost, i can see no reason to disbelieve it, especially as all the facts, both of tradition and history, bearing upon this subject unite in proclaiming its truth. after stating that in chaldea has been found rather the debris of science than the elements of it, bailly asks: "when you see a house built of old capitals, columns, and other fragments of beautiful architecture, do you not conclude that a fine building has once existed?... if the human mind can ever flatter itself with having been successful in discovering the truth, it is when many facts, and these facts of different kinds, unite in producing the same results." that the descendants of a once mighty nation lapsed into barbarism, forgetting the profound knowledge of the sciences possessed by their ancestors, is a fact too well attested at the present time to be doubted by those who have taken the pains to acquaint themselves with the evidence at hand. regarding the manner in which this ancient civilization was reached, or concerning the way in which it was achieved, history and tradition are alike silent, although it is believed that the present methods of investigation will, at least in a measure, unravel the mystery. at present we only know that, as far in the remote past as human ken can reach, evidences of a high stage of civilization exist which it must have required thousands upon thousands of years to accomplish. chapter vii. concealment of the early doctrines. after the decline of nature-worship, and when through the constantly increasing power gained by the ruder elements in human society a knowledge of the scientific principles underlying ancient religion had been partially lost or forgotten, it became necessary for philosophers to conceal the original conception of the deity and to clothe their sacred writings in allegory. hence it is observed that every ancient form of religion has a cabala containing its secret doctrines--doctrines the inner meaning of which was known only to the few. in order that these truths might be preserved, they were inscribed on the leaves of trees in characters or symbols understood only by the initiated. the allegories beneath which these higher truths were concealed were handed down as traditions to succeeding generations--traditions in which history, astrology, and mythology are strangely combined. after long periods, through war, conquest, and the various changes incidental to shifting environment, these traditions were in the main forgotten. fragments of them, however, were from time to time gathered together, and, intermingled with later doctrines, were used by the priests as a means of increased self-aggrandizement and power. it is now thought that the iliad (rhapsodies) of homer is only a number of "detached songs" which perhaps for centuries were delivered orally, and that they contain the secret doctrines of the priests. porphyry says that "we ought not to doubt that homer has secretly represented the images of divine things under the concealment of fable." it has been said of plato that he banished the poems of homer from his imaginary republic for the reason that the people might not be able to distinguish what is from what is not allegorical. hippolytus informs us that the simonists declared that in helen resided the principle of intelligence; "and thus, when all the powers were for claiming her for themselves, sedition and war arose, during which this chief power was manifested to nations." these songs which were gathered together by pisistratus and revised by aristotle for the use of alexander, have generally been regarded merely as a bit of history recounting a severe and protracted struggle between the greeks and trojans. within the earliest historical accounts which we have of the egyptians, we observe that their ceremonies and symbols have already become multitudinous, the true meaning of the latter being concealed. the masses of the people, who had grown too sensualized and ignorant to receive the higher divine "mysteries," and too gross to be entrusted with their true significance, had become idolaters. not only the egyptian and chaldean priests, but moses and the jewish doctors were well versed in religious symbolism. the fact is observed, also, that as late as medieval christianity, the fathers in the church, the christian painters, sculptors, and architects, still employed signs and symbols to set forth their religious doctrines. even at the present time, many of the emblems representing certain ideas connected with the creative principles, and which were part and parcel of the pagan worship, are still in use. the masses of the people, however, are without a knowledge of their origin or early significance. everywhere, throughout the early historic nations, were worshipped symbols of the attributes or functions of the dual or triune god. each symbol represented a distinctive female or male quality. animals, trees, the sea, plants, the moon, and the heavens were, at a certain stage of religious development, symbolized as parts of the deity and worshipped as possessing certain female or male characteristics or attributes. it is plain that, with the decline of female power, and the consequent stimulation of the animal instincts in man, the pure creative principles involved in nature-worship gradually became unsuited to the sensualized capacities and tastes of the masses; but in addition to this were other reasons why the female principle in the deity should be concealed. women were already deposed from their former exalted position as heads of families and as leaders of consanguine communities. all their rightful prerogatives had been usurped. the highest development in nature had become the slave of man's appetites, and motherhood, which had hitherto been accepted as the most exalted function either in heaven or on the earth, trailed in the dust. under these conditions it is not perhaps singular that the capacity to bring forth, and the qualities and attributes of women which are correlated with it, namely, sympathy--a desire for the welfare of others outside of self, or altruism,--should no longer have been worshipped as divine, or that in their place should have been substituted the leading characters developed in man. from the facts at hand it is plain that at a certain stage of human growth physical might and male reproductive energy, or virility, became the recognized god. with passion as the highest ideal of a creator, the female element appeared only in a sensualized form and simply as an appendage to the god which was dependent upon her ministrations. under the above conditions it is not in the least remarkable that by the priests it should have been deemed necessary to conceal from women the facts bound up in their nature. woman's importance as a creative agency and as a prime and most essential factor in the universe must be concealed. "isis must be veiled." through the appropriation of the titles of the original dual god by reigning monarchs, is perceived at least one of the processes by which the great universal female deity of the ancients has been transformed into a male god. we are assured that the "redundant nomenclature of the deities of babylon renders an interpretation of them impossible. each divinity has many distinct names, by which he is indifferently designated." it is observed that each deity has as many as forty or fifty titles, each of which represents a certain attribute. since the invention of the cuneiform alphabet, by which pictures have been reduced to phonetic signs, the attempt has been made to arrange or classify these gods according to their proper order in the pantheon, but thus far much obscurity and doubt seem to pervade their history. in assyrian, babylonian, and egyptian mythologies are observed much confusion and no small degree of mystery surrounding the positions occupied by certain gods. "children not unfrequently change positions with parents," but more frequently, we are told, "women change places with men," or, more properly speaking, the titles, attributes, and qualities ascribed to the great universal female god are now transferred to the reigning monarch. thus not unfrequently a deity is observed which is composed of a male triad, the central figure of which is the king or military chieftain, and to which is usually appended a straggling fourth member, a female, who, shorn of her power, and with a doubtful and mysterious title, appears as wife or mistress to his greatness, while upon her is reflected, through him, a slight hint of that dignity and honor which was originally recognized as belonging exclusively to the recognized deity. the goddess vishnu, from whose navel as she slept on the bottom of the sea sprang all creation, after her transformation into a male god, is supplemented by a wife--lacksmir. lacksmir means wisdom; but she has become only an appendage to her "lord," upon whom is reflected all her former glory. so greedy did rulers become for the splendid titles belonging to the female divinities that we are told that "the name of the great goddess astarte not unfrequently appears as that of a man." although man had usurped the titles of the female god and had denied her recognition as an active creative agency, still, as nothing could be created without her, she was permitted, as we have seen, to remain as wife or mistress to the reigning monarch, in whom had come to reside infinite wisdom and power. her symbol was an ark, chest, boat, box, or cave. this woman, although dignified by the title "mother of the gods," and even by that of "queen of heaven," is utterly without power. not only is it plain that the titles and attributes of female gods have been appropriated by males, but it is also true that the more ancient deities, which are now known to have been female, have by later investigators been represented as male. the interpretations which have hitherto been put upon the babylonian and assyrian deities by many of those who have attempted to unravel the mysteries of an earlier stage of religious worship, is doubtless due to the fact that since the so-called historic period began, the qualities which have been considered godlike have all been masculine; it has therefore never occurred to the minds of these writers that the ancients may have entertained quite different notions from their own regarding the attributes of a deity; hence, whenever the sex of a god has appeared doubtful, especially if it be in the least degree powerful or important, it has at once been denominated as masculine, and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that such rendering has oftentimes involved inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities which it is impossible to reconcile either with established facts or with common sense. unless the symbols representing religious belief and worship are viewed in the light of later developed facts in mythology, archaeology, and philology, there occur many seeming absurdities and numberless facts which it is found difficult to reconcile with each other; especially is this true in regard to some of the symbols used to express the distinctive female and male qualities. the serpent, for instance, although a male symbol, in certain ages of the world's history appears as a beautiful woman. this is accounted for by the fact that a woman and a serpent once stood for the god-idea. together they constituted an indivisible entity--the creating power in the universe. they therefore became interchangeable terms. the woman when appearing alone represented both, as did also the serpent. "in most ancient languages, probably all, the name for the serpent signifies life, and the roots of these words generally also signify the male and female organs, and sometimes these conjoined. in low french the words for phallus and life have the same sound, though, as is sometimes the case, the spelling and gender differ"; but this fact is thought to be of no material importance, as "jove, jehova, sun, and moon have all been male and female by turn." no doubt many of the inconsistencies hitherto observed in the religion of the ancients will disappear so soon as we obtain a clearer knowledge of their chronology; and events which now seem contradictory will be satisfactorily explained when placed in their proper order with regard to date. religion, like everything else, is constantly shifting its position to accommodate itself to the changed mental conditions of its adherents; hence, ideas which at any given time in the past were perfectly suited to a people, would, in the course of five hundred or one thousand years, have become changed or greatly modified. during a certain stage in human history "all great women and mythical ladies were serpents"; but when monumentally or pictorially represented, they appeared "with the head of a woman, while the body was that of a reptile." this figure represented wisdom and passion, or the spiritual and material planes of human existence. the mythical woman whom hercules met in scythia, and who was doubtless the original eponymous leader of the scythian people, had the head of a woman and the body of a serpent.( ) even the mexicans declare that "he, the serpent, is the sun, tonakatl-koatl, who ever accompanies their first woman." their primitive mother, they said, was kihua-kohuatl, which signifies a serpent. in referring to this mexican tradition, forlong remarks: "so that the serpent here was represented as both adam and adama; and their eden, as in jewish story, was a garden of love and pleasure."( ) ) herodotus, book iv., . ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . the traditions extant among all peoples seem to connect the introduction of the serpent into religious symbolism, with a time in the history of mankind when they first began to recognize the fact, that through the abuse of the reproductive functions, evil, or human wretchedness, had gained the ascendency over the higher forces. the deity represented by a woman and a serpent involved the idea not alone of good, but of good and evil combined. together they prefigured not only wisdom and generative power, but evil as well. mythologically they represented the cold of winter and the heat of the sun's rays, both of which were necessary reproduction. from this conception sprang the ormuzd and ahryman of the persians, the story of adam, eve, and the serpent in genesis, and the legend of kihua-kohuatl and tonakatl-koatl in mexico. "the serpent remained in the memory and affections of most early people as wisdom, life, goodness, and the source of knowledge and science, under various names such as toth, hermes, themis, the kneph or sophia of egyptians and gnostics, and set, shet, or shem of the jews."( ) ) forlong, rivers of life, etc., vol. i., p. . the serpent goddess, although embracing evil as well as good, was still the "giver of life" and the "teacher of mankind." these were the titles which in later ages began to be coveted by monarchs, and then it was that the attributes belonging to this deity began to appear in connection with royalty. there is no ancient divinity about which there seems to be connected so much mystery as the assyrian hea. when referring to the "great obscurity" which surrounds this god we are assured that there is at present "no means of determining the precise meaning of the cuneiform hea, which is babylonian rather than assyrian," but that it is doubtless connected with the arabic hya, which is said to mean "life," or the female principle in creation. this deity is the god of "glory" and of "giving," titles which during the earlier ages of human existence belonged to the queen of heaven, the celestial mother. the representation of the god amun or amun-ra, which superseded the triune deity, kneph, sate, and anouk at thebes, and from which in assyria doubtless proceeded the trinity, amun, bel-nimrod, and hea, is supposed to be identical with the greek zeus, which means the sun. this god is represented by a female figure seated on a throne. it is crowned with two long feathers, and in the right hand is observed the cross, the emblem of life. manetho, the celebrated egyptian historian, declares that the name of this god signifies "concealed." there can be little doubt that the titles of the ancient deity--the destroyer or regenerator, or, in other words, those of the god of life which embraced the idea of the moving force throughout nature, were, in course of time, appropriated by the rulers of the people. it is stated that the name of a certain egyptian god appears first in connection with royalty, that "his name was substituted for some earlier divinity whose hieroglyphics were chiselled out of the monuments to make place for his." according to the testimony of rawlinson, the god hea is represented by the great serpent, which occupies a conspicuous position among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording babylonian benefactions. now these flat black stones are themselves said to symbolize the female element in the deity, in contradistinction to the obelisks, which prefigure the male, while the serpent, for reasons which have already been explained, appeared for ages in connection with the figure of a woman. in later inscriptions "king" is everywhere attached to the name of the god hea, which fact shows that the titles ascribed to her were those particularly coveted by royalty. hence we are not surprised to find that in an inscription of sardanapalus, in the british museum, there "occurs a remarkable phrase in which the king takes the titles of hea." among the assyrian inscriptions appear bel-nimrod, hea, and nin or bar. in view of the facts which have come to light regarding hea, it is altogether probable that the triad bel-nimrod, hea, and nin represent the trinity as figured by the father, mother, and child. that nin was the son or the child of bel-nimrod "is constantly asserted in the inscriptions." he appears also as the son of hea, yet the fact that hea should be represented as a woman, or as the mother of nin, and the central figure in the trinity, seems not to have been observed by those who thus far have been engaged in deciphering these inscriptions. by representing hea as male, nin is made to appear as the offspring of two fathers while he is left absolutely motherless. to obviate this difficulty an ingenious attempt has been made to account for his existence by substituting his own wife as the author of his being. although in the numerous accounts which i had read of hea, in my search for information concerning her, she had always been designated as male, still i was satisfied from the descriptions given that originally this deity was female. therefore upon receiving a copy of forlong's rivers of life and faiths of man in all lands, i was not surprised to find the following: "hoa or hea, the hu of our keltic ancestors, whose symbol was the shield and the serpent, was worshipped near rivers and lakes, and if possible on the sea-shore, where were offered to her such emblems as a golden vessel, boat, coffer, or fish, and she was then named belat ili (the mistress of the gods)."( ) ) vol. ii., p. . she was the goddess of water. of this forlong says: "water, perhaps more than fire, has always been used as a purifier... . christians have but imitated the ancients, in the use of lustral water--now-a-days called holy water, and into which salt should be freely put." according to francis vasques, the cibola tribes of new mexico pay no adoration to anything but water, believing it to be the chief support of all life. the hindoo faith and the greek christian church prescribe "adorations, sacrifices, and other water rites, and hence we find all orthodox clergy and devotees have much to do with rivers, seas, and wells, especially at certain annual solar periods." the extent to which these ancient rites are still practiced as part and parcel of modern religious observances is not realized by those who have given no special attention to the subject. as spring advances, all ranks of russians from the czar to the humblest peasant proceed with their clergy to the neva, where with solemn pomp the ice is broken and the water, which is held to be of virgin purity, is sprinkled upon the heads of czar, nobles, and other dignitaries. the following is an account given of the worship of hea not many years ago in the public press: "an imperial and arch-episcopal procession was formed, consisting of, first, the high priest of the empire in all his most gorgeous robes, the two masters of ceremonies walking backwards (probably because not of a holy enough order), long double files of white-and gold-robed bearers of sacred flambeaux or candles, for fire must enter into every ceremony, whether it is the male or female energy which is being worshipped. following these religieux came all the sacred relics and fetishes of the church, as maya's holy cup for water, all holy books, crosses, banners, with sacred emblems in their order, and finally the czar, humbly, and, like all his people, on foot, followed by courtly throngs. these all proceeded to a handsome pavilion or kiosk, erected close to the edge of the water, when the metropolitan of the church reverently made an incision in the ice, and took out a little water in a sacred golden cup bearing strange devices. the firing of guns accompanied these solemn acts in all their stages, and wherever the grave procession moved, it always did so with measured tread, chanting sacred verses to the old, old deity of our race, and surrounded with all the pomp of war; whilst at intervals, peals of christian bells and the booming of near and distant guns added to the solemnity of this water pageant. after the filling of the golden cup, which, of course, represents the earth and its fulness, and, at this season, the now expected increase, the high priest placed a golden crucifix on the virgin water and blessed its return from wintry death, invoking the precious fluid to vernal life and productiveness, when lo! a holy child suddenly appears upon the scene, reminding us that this is everywhere the outcome of the 'wafers of life' in all animal as well as vegetable production. boodha in the garden of loobim through which flowed a holy stream, and christ by the brook at bethlehem, nay, the first pair in the garden of the four rivers, are all the same idea--fertility and creation. the high russian pontiff now slowly and solemnly stooped, and taking up some of the holy water, proceeded to sprinkle the vernal child--jesus, whispered these crowds, but the ancients said horus. the sacred fluid was then sprinkled on the clergy, the czar, and all dignitaries, and finally on the sacred emblems, banners, guns, etc. men and women, aye, wise as well as foolish, of every rank, now crowded forward, and on bended knee besought their patriarch to sprinkle and to bless them. finally, the great czar put the cup to his lips, humbly and reverently, and then filled it to overflowing with a wealth of golden pieces, for it is the still living representative in the nineteenth century a.c. of 'the golden boat' of hea of the nineteenth century b.c."( ) ) forlong, rivers of life, vol. ii., p. . the symbol of neith or muth, athene or minerva, the great universal female principle of the egyptians, greeks, and romans, was the shield and serpent. in celtic druids i find that nath, the egyptian neith, the "goddess of wisdom and science whose symbol was the shield and serpent, was worshipped among the ancient irish." the male god associated with her was naith, and according to higgins represented "the opposite of neith." in rivers of life is observed a reference to the assyrian goddess hea by lucian. in a note forlong says that no doubt hea is the same as haiya or haya. in other words she represents the universal hermaphrodite--the creative principle throughout nature, which was originally worshipped as female. the actual signification of the word haya is "life." in ancient arabia it was applied to a group of kinsmen. the rev. mr. davis is of the opinion that noe or noah was the same as deon and that both were hu or hea the mighty, whose chariot was drawn by solar rays. this god was in fact the same as zeus, bacchus, and all the rest of the sun and water deities. it has been observed that, according to the ancient cosmogonies, within water was contained the life principle, and as a woman presided over it, or was the only being or entity present, she must have been the self-existent creator. from this woman sprang all creation. according to the account in genesis, the spirit of god moved on the face of the deep and creation began. by all nations water has been employed as a symbol of regeneration, and as it contained the beginning of things it was female. the hindoos regard it as sacred, and in one of their most solemn prayers it is thus invoked: waters, mothers of worlds, purify us!( ) ) quoted by inman from colbrook, vol. i., p. . doubtless it was from these ancient speculations regarding the beginnings of things that thales, the milesian philosopher, received his doctrine that water is the original principle. the ancient egyptians and the jewish people to this day have the custom of pouring out all the water contained in any vessel in a house where a death has taken place, because of the idea that as the living being comes from water, so does it make its exit through water. hence "to drink or to use in any way a fluid which contains the life of human beings would be a foul offense." the fact is noted by inman that in all assyrian mythology the water god hea is associated with life and with a serpent. although rawlinson declares that hea is babylonian rather than assyrian, may she not, in view of the facts concerning her, be not only babylonian, but egyptian, indian, phrygian, mexican, and all the rest? it would seem that in this deity, who is figured in connection with a shield and serpent, as is minerva, and who is worshipped near water--an emblem which is sacred to her,--and whose titles correspond exactly to those of neith or cybele, might be traced the remnants of a once universal worship--a worship in which the female energy constituted the creator. although it is declared that "great obscurity surrounds the god hea," no one, i think, whose mind is free from prejudice, and who understands the significance of the early god-idea, and the true meaning of the symbols used in later ages to express it, can study the myths connected with this deity without at once recognizing her identity with the great female god of nature who was once worshipped by every people on the globe, but whose worship had become sensualized to satisfy the corrupted taste of a more depraved age--an age in which passion constituted the highest idea of a god. although the serpent deity was originally portrayed with the head of a woman and the body of a serpent or fish, after the change of sex in the god-idea which has been noted in the foregoing pages had been completed, it is observed that this figure is represented by the head of a man and the body of a serpent. hea, the great goddess to whom water, the original principle, is sacred, and who is suspiciously connected with noah, the life-principle which appears at the close of a cycle, has changed her sex. this god is now the "ruler of the seas," "master of the life-boat" (the ark), and "lord of the earth." the earth is his and the fulness thereof. he is the "life giver," the "lord of hosts," who subsequently becomes the maker of heaven and earth. minerva, who had been the first emanation from the deity and the daughter of the great mother of the gods, now has a father but no mother. jove, who in course of time came to be represented as a male creator, brought her forth from his head. later, woman is produced from the side of man. the male principle, symbolized by a serpent, has become "the one only and true god." it is passion--the "healer of nations"--the great "i am." no unprejudiced individual who carefully follows the results of later investigation, and who attempts to unravel the mysteries surrounding the ancient gods and the significance of the symbols of worship belonging to the earliest historic times, will fail to note the attempt which has been made in later ages to conceal the fact that the deity worshipped in very ancient times was female. neither will he fail to observe the modus operandi by which the attributes and prerogatives of this deity have been shifted upon males--usually deified monarchs. after priestcraft and its counterpart, monarchial rule, had robbed the people of all their natural rights, kings assumed not alone the governing functions, but arrogated to themselves the symbols, titles, and attributes of the dual deity. the reigning monarch became not only the temporal ruler and priest, but was actually god himself, the female principle being concealed under convenient symbols. chapter viii. the original god-idea of the israelites. not only were religious doctrines veiled beneath allegories and convenient symbols, but names also had a religious significance. we are given to understand that in chaldea and assyria every child was named by the oracle or priest, and that no one thought of changing the appellation which had come to him through this heavenly source.( ) ) inman, ancient faiths, vol. i., p. . inman, in his ancient faiths, calls attention to the fact that in the old testament kings, priests, captains, and other great men have had names bestowed upon them, each of which has some religious signification; that this name was given the individual "at circumcision, or soon after birth." in the ancient names of what are designated as the shemitic races, children were called after the god alone, and sometimes in connection with an attribute. especially were these names applied to royalty or to persons of distinction; for instance, names were given signifying, god the good, god the just or the merciful, god the strong, the warrior god, etc. as the higher conception of a creator was forgotten, and as human beings, or perhaps i should say their power to control circumstances coupled with the ability to reproduce or create, had become god, they assumed the titles or names of the deity; hence, it is not perhaps singular that in later times kings and heroes were invested with all the attributes of the gods. we have seen that according to various writers om or amm was the holy one whose name in india it was sacrilege to pronounce. it was the eternal sun, or the great mother. as this word stands also for "tribe or people," it seems to mean, too, that which binds, holds, or endures. as om or amm signifies the great mother, so an or on means the great father. concerning the word am-mon, inman writes as follows: "the association of the words signifying mother and father indicates that it is to such conjunction we must refer creative power. with such an androgyne element the sun was associated by ancient mythologists. jupiter was himself sometimes represented as being female; and the word hermaphrodite is in itself a union between hermes and aphrodite, the male and female creative powers. we may fairly conclude, from the existence of names like the above, that there was at one time in western as there was in eastern asia a strong feud between the adorers of on and am, the lingacitas and the yonijas, and that they were at length partially united under ammon, as they were elsewhere under nebo or the nabhi of vishnu."( ) ) ancient faiths embodied in ancient names, vol. i., p. . inman relates that once when a friend of his was conversing with a very high-caste hindoo he casually uttered this word amm or om, whereupon the man was so awe struck that he could scarcely speak, and, in a voice almost of terror, asked where his friend had learned the word. of this word inman says: "to the hindoos it was that incommunicable name of the almighty, which no one ventured to pronounce except under the most religious solemnity. and here let me pause to remark that the jews were equally reverent with the name belonging to the most high; and that the third commandment was very literal in its signification." the same writer remarks that in thibet, too, where a worship very nearly identical in ceremony and doctrine with that of the roman papists exists amongst the lamas, the name of om is still sacred. the iav of the jews was equally revered, but in the later ages of their career they seem to have lost sight of its true meaning. according to inman's testimony and that of other etymological students, the true signification of the cognomen jacob is the female principle. it is believed by various writers that the story of jacob and esau as related in genesis has an esoteric as well as an exoteric meaning--that jacob has reference to the female creative energy throughout nature, or, rather, to the great mass of people who in an early age of the human race believed in the superior importance of the female in the office of reproduction, and that esau signifies the male. attention is called to the fact that esau is represented as a "hairy" man, rough-voiced and easily beguiled, while jacob, on the other hand, is smooth-faced, soft-voiced, and the favorite of his mother. there is indeed much in this myth which seems to indicate that it is an allegory beneath which are veiled certain facts connected with the struggle between two early contending sects regarding the relative importance of the sexes in reproduction. of this inman says: "my own impression is that esau, or edom, and jacob are mystic names for a man and a woman, and that round these, historians wove a web of fancy; that ultimately the cognomen jacob was recognized, and that to allow the jewish people to trace their descent from a male rather than a female, the appellation of israel was substituted in later productions."( ) ) ancient faiths, vol. i., p. . as most of the myths or allegories in genesis are now traced to a source far more remote than the beginning of legitimate jewish history, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this story, too, was copied by the jews from the traditions of earlier races; nor, when we remember the true meaning of the cognomen jacob, that the entire story should be regarded as an attempt to set forth certain facts connected with the great physiological or religious conflict between the sexes. the significance of the idols worshipped by jacob and his family is not for a certainty known, but it is believed by certain writers that the seraphim and teraphim were the usual images which were used to represent the male and female energies. "then jacob said unto his household and to all that were with him: put away the strange gods that are among you." in referring to this passage, inman, in a note, says: "the critic might fairly say, looking at genesis xxxv., , 'put away the strange gods that are among you,' that there were images of god which were not strange, and that in these early times there were orthodoxy and heterodoxy in images as there are now. in ancient times the emblem of life-giving energy was an orthodox emblem; it is now a horror and its place is taken by an image of death. we infer from the context that laban's gods were orthodox." so, also, must have been the stone pillar set up by jacob at bethel (place of the sun). from a study of similar stones, examples of which are to be found in nearly every country of the globe, it is known that they represent the male energy, and from all the facts connected with the story of laban's gods it is probable that they were emblems of this power. we may suppose then that the "strange gods," the unorthodox gods, which jacob ordered put away, were those representing the female energy. it seems strange that any person can study the history of the israelitish exodus by the light of later developments in biblical research without recognizing the fact that the "lord" which brought the children of israel out from the bondage of egypt was the male power, which by a certain sect had been proclaimed the only actual creative agency, and therefore the "only one and true god." although, at the time at which abraham is said to have lived, the knowledge of an abstract dual or triune god still remained, yet, during the five hundred years which elapsed until the time of moses, the grossest idolatry had come to prevail. notwithstanding the fact that moses had learned much from the egyptians, he seems not to have risen above a very gross conception of a deity. his god was by turns angry, jealous, revengeful, vacillating, and weak. he was in fact the embodiment of human passions and desires. we have seen that the third person in the ancient trinity had, in egypt, india, and persia, come to be recognized in place of the three principles originally worshipped--that, as it really embodied the essence of the other two, little was heard of the creator and preserver. doubtless this god was the one which moses intended the israelites to worship, but as they were unable to conceive of an abstract principle he invested it with a personality which, as we have seen, was burdened with the frailties and weaknesses common to themselves. as the regenerator or destroyer represented the processes of nature,--the dying away of the sun's rays at night only to reappear on the following day, and the withdrawal of its warmth in winter only to be renewed in the spring,--so this god portrayed also the beneficent creator and preserver of all things, at the same time that it was the destroyer. it embodied the fundamental idea in all religions, namely, life and fertility. so also did the "lord" of the israelites represent reproductive energy, but as man being spirit had come to be a creator of offspring, while woman being only matter furnished the body, this "lord" was male. connected with it was no hint of the female nature or principle, except the ark or chest in which it was carried about. to those who have acquainted themselves with the significance of ancient religious symbols, the fact is plain that the "lord" of the israelites, which in their journeyings toward canaan they carried in an ark or chest, and which was symbolized by an upright stone, was none other than a "life-giver" in the most practical sense. it was the emblem of virility, and from the facts at hand, at the present time, there is little doubt but that all the spirituality with which we find this "lord" invested was an after-thought and comprehended no part of the belief of the jews until after their contact with the persians during the babylonian captivity. doubtless the story in which their journeyings toward canaan are set forth contains an esoteric as well as an exoteric significance for ages known only to the priests, and that within it is embodied not alone something of the true history of this people, but an account also of their struggle against an older religion. at this time the israelites had practically commenced the elimination of the female principle from their god-idea, and had begun the worship of the male element, the female being represented by an ark, chest, or box. this ark, as the receptacle of the god, was still a holy thing. not only among the israelites, but among other nations of the east, we find the devotees of the male god beginning to assume a position quite independent of the beliefs of their fathers. at this time great towers or pillars begin to be erected in honor of this deity, which is figured as the "god of life," or as the "lord of hosts." notwithstanding the fact that the story of the exodus contains much historical truth, it is altogether probable that the priests have used it, as they did that of the flood, to conceal their religious doctrines. at the time of the exodus, the israelites were ignorant tribes without laws or letters, and while in egypt were menials of the lowest order. hence, the laws written on the two tables of stone, and which it is claimed were elaborated during their wanderings in the wilderness of sinai for the guidance of these unlettered slaves, show the desire of the priests of later times to invest the "chosen people" with the insignia of enlightenment. regarding the character of the god which they worshipped, we have ample proof in the old testament. it is plain that at the time of their bondage in egypt the jews had become the grossest phallic worshippers, adoring the emblems of generation, with no thought of their earlier significance as pure symbols of creative force in mortals. the fact will doubtless be remembered that, among the jews, to be barren was the greatest curse, and that the principal reward promised to the faithful was fruitfulness of body. the essence of this deity was heat or passion, and his emblem was the serpent or an upright stone. it has been observed that when this "lord" was invested with personality he was subject to all the frailties of his followers. his chief and most emphatic characteristic, however, was jealousy of other gods, and most of the imprecations thundered against the chosen people were directed against the worship of the gods of surrounding nations, those which the israelites had originally worshipped. that portion of the decalogue relating to a jealous god is seen to belong wholly to the jews, or to the israelites, who were descendants of jacob. the older nations, among which was the ancient family of the hebrews, knew nothing of a jealous god. notwithstanding the fact that the god of the jews appeared and talked face to face with moses, that he exhibited portions of his body to him, and that he thundered his law to this people from mt. sinai, still they were constantly lapsing into the worship of baal and ashtaroth, which fact shows how deeply rooted was the belief in a dual or triune god. it is plain that this "lord," the fierce anger of whom was kindled because of their digressions, was none other than the jealous male god which had but recently been elevated to the dignity of a supreme creator. although the angel of the lord when he came down from gilgal commanded his followers to "throw down the altars of the people of bochim," they nevertheless continued to do evil in the sight of the lord, and "followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bound themselves unto them and provoked the lord to anger. "and they forsook the lord, and served baal and ashtaroth. and the anger of the lord was hot against israel."( ) ) judges ii., , . "and samuel spake unto all the house of israel, saying, if ye do return unto the lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and ashtaroth from among you and prepare your hearts unto the lord, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the philistines. "then the children of israel did put away baalim and ashtaroth and served the lord only."( ) ) i samuel vii., , . the extreme hatred of the schismatic faction for the opposite worship, and the punishments which were meted out to those who should dare to rebel against the chosen faith, are indicated by the language which throughout the old testament is put into the mouth of their lord--a deity which rejoices in the title of a jealous god. "if thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known thou nor thy fathers: "namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; "thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: "but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. "and thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the lord thy god, which brought thee out of the land of egypt, from the house of bondage. "and all israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you."( ) ) deuteronomy xiii. the constantly recurring faithlessness of the jews, their restlessness and proneness to wander from their one-principled deity which had been set up by their priests for them to worship, was doubtless an unconscious effort on the part of the people to mitigate the outrage which had been committed against their creator. it was but a reaching out for that lost or unrecognized element which comprehends the more essential force both in human beings and in the conception of a deity. in other words, it was an attempt at recognition, in the objects worshipped, of that missing female element which had always been worshipped, and without which a creator becomes a misnomer--a meaningless, unexplained, and unexplainable monstrosity. when the jews first make their appearance in history, they are sun worshippers, as are all the nations by which they are surrounded. they are worshippers of seth the destroyer and regenerator; but when the philosophical truths underlying the ancient universal religion were forgotten, or when through ignorance the language setting forth these mysteries was taken literally, seth became identified with the destroyer, or the evil principle. in the meantime man had come to believe himself the sole creator of offspring. he is spirit, which is eternal; woman is matter, which is not only destructible but altogether evil. he is heat or passion--the principle through which life is produced. she represents the absence of heat. she is the simoom of the desert and the chilly blast which destroys. that it was no part of their plan to change their original form of worship for a spiritual conception of a creator is apparent from their history. on the contrary, it is plain that they desired simply to eliminate from the hitherto dual conception of a deity the female principle, which, in their arrogance, and because of the change which had been wrought in the relations of the sexes, they no longer acknowledged as important in the office of reproduction. it is quite true they would worship only one god--the "lord,"--but that lord was, as we have seen, a deity of physical strength and virile might, a "lord of hosts," a god which was to be worshipped under the symbol of an upright stone--an object which by every nation of the globe down to a comparatively recent time has typified male pro-creative energy. that the masses of the people, even as late as the time of jeremiah, had no higher conception of a god than that indicated by an upright stone, is shown by that prophet when he accuses the entire house of israel, "their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets," of "saying to a stock, thou art my father; and to a stone, thou hast brought me forth." that the people could not, or would not, be prevailed upon to renounce the queen of heaven, the celestial mother, is seen in jer. vii., , : "seest thou not what they do in the cities of judah and in the streets of jerusalem? the children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods." also in jeremiah xliv: "then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of egypt, in pathros, answered jeremiah, saying, as for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the lord, we will not hearken unto thee. "but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of judah, and in the streets of jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. "but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. "and when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men?" that the above represents a quarrel in which the women of judah openly rebelled against the worship of the "lord," at the same time declaring their allegiance to the female deity, the celestial mother, queen of heaven, is only too evident, the curse pronounced upon them by jeremiah, in the name of the lord, having little effect upon them to change their purpose. "therefore, hear ye the word of the lord, all judah that dwell in the land of egypt; behold, i have sworn by my great name, saith the lord, that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of judah in all the land of egypt, saying, the lord god liveth. "behold, i will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of judah that are in the land of egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them." chapter ix. the phoenician and hebrew god set or seth. the name of one of the oldest deities of which we have any record is set (phoenician) or seth (hebrew). traces of this god are found in all oriental countries; and in the most primitive religions, whose traditions are still extant, he (or she) appears as the supreme god. after the subjection of egypt by the stranger kings and the consequent introduction into the country of sabianism, the dual creative force residing in the sun is represented by seth. we are told that seth signifies "appointed or put in the place of the murdered abel." that there is some deep mystery connected with this subject none who has studied it carefully can help observing. according to the story of creation as set forth in the jehovistic account, on saturday night, after god had finished his work, and immediately after he had commanded adam to "be fruitful," he presents him with a staff, which we observe is handed down to enoch and all the patriarchs. here the mystery deepens, for it is declared that this staff was presented to seth, and that it was a branch of the tree of life. that beneath this allegory is veiled a contest, or perhaps a compromise, between the worshippers of two distinct sects, seems altogether probable. that the handing down of this branch of the tree of life, first to adam, or man, by aleim, and its subsequent transference to seth, the god of nature, the destroyer or regenerator, seems to indicate a victory for the adherents of a purer religion. the translator of kallimachus says: "it is well known to the learned reader that the descendants of cain are distinguished in scripture by the name of the sons of man or adam; those of seth by the name of the sons of god." gen. vi., .( ) it is stated in julius africanus that all the righteous men and patriarchs down to the saviour himself have sprung from seth and have been denominated as the sons of god in contradistinction to the sons of man. ) forlong, rivers of life, vol. i., p. . doubtless at the time indicated by the transference of the creative agency from aleim to adam, the worship of an abstract principle, or of a trinity composed of the powers of nature, was losing its hold on the minds of the people, and the creative power, or the reproductive energy in human beings, was rapidly taking the place of the older deity. these higher principles forgotten, adam, or man, had become the creator. it is not improbable that the terms adam, cain, abel, and seth have an esoteric meaning which for ages was known only to the priests. from various facts which in later times are being brought forward regarding the ancient myths of genesis, it is believed that these names originally stood for races of men, and that subsequently certain religious doctrines came to be attached to them. the offering of fruit by cain, the elder brother, who was a tiller of the ground, and that of flesh by abel, who was a keeper of sheep, indicates a quarrel which ended in the death of the latter. after the death of abel, or after one of these principles or sects was subdued, the older religion was revived, and seth, as the aleim, or as the creative power within the sun, was "appointed" or again worshipped. it would seem that seth was appointed to represent the third person in the ancient trinity--the destroyer or regenerator which had previously come to embody all the powers of the creator and preserver. the fact has been observed that the very ancient philosophers believed matter to be eternal, hence, seeming death, or destruction, was necessary to renewed life or regeneration. in other words, creation was but continuous change in the form of matter. of the doctrines of the sethians extant at the beginning of christianity, hippolytus says that their system "is made up of tenets from natural philosophers. these tenets embrace a belief in the eternal logos--darkness, mist, and tempest." these elements subsequently became identified with the evil principle, or the devil. the cold of winter, the darkness of night, and water, were finally set forth as the trinity. regarding cold, darkness, and water, or darkness, mist, and tempest, hippolytus observes: "these the sethian says are the three principles of our system; or when he states that three were born in paradise--adam, eve, the serpent; or when he speaks of three persons, namely, cain, abel, seth, and again of three others, shem, ham, japheth; or when he mentions three patriarchs--abraham, isaac, jacob; or when he speaks of three days before the sun, etc." the same writer says that their entire system is derived from the ancients; that, antecedent to the eleusinian mysteries, were enacted by them the ceremonies connected with the worship of the great mother.( ) ) hippolytus, refutation of all heresies, book v., ch. . we have observed that through some process not thoroughly understood at the present time, the adherents of the older faith had succeeded in reinstating their deity. the powers of nature had come to be represented by typhon seth. it was the god of death and of life, of destruction and regeneration. the simoom of the desert and the cold of winter were seth, as were also the genial powers of spring. we are informed by various writers that typhon seth was feminine. she was the early god of the jews. in other words, the jews were formerly worshippers of a female deity. jehovah, iav, was originally female. although the secret meaning of all the allegories contained in the old testament is not fully understood, still the belief that cain, abel, and seth represented the self-triplicated deity at a time when the idea of man as a creator had been accepted, or when his power to reproduce was becoming the highest idea of a creative force, is consistent with what is known of the cabala of the jews, or of the esoteric meaning of the jewish scriptures formerly known only to the priests. in other words, the ancient doctrines, the true meaning of which was no longer understood by them, were patched together as a basis for the later developments in jewish religious experience. we have seen that six hundred years after adam appears noah, another self-triplicated saviour or preserver of man, with his ark or seed vessel, beneath which is veiled the female element. afterward abraham becomes the great father or saviour, and later moses. that, in the time of the latter, the more ancient worship of a creative force in nature represented by the aleim, had, by the masses of the people, been wholly lost, is evident from the old testament writings. the worship of the father, the male power, in opposition to that of the mother, or the female power, constituted the religion of moses. in the religion of the jews, jehovah came to be regarded as wholly male and as spirit, while edam (translated "downward tending"), the female principle, was matter, or woman, which finally became identified with the devil. the philosophical doctrine that spirit is evolved through matter, or that matter must be raised to a certain dynamical power before spirit can manifest itself through it, was no longer understood; only the husks of this doctrine--the myths and symbols of nature-worship--remained; these were taken literally, and thus man's religion was made to conform to his lowered estate. when man had so far gained the ascendancy over woman as to assert that he is the sole creator of their joint offspring, he was no longer of the earth earthy, but at once became the child of heaven. he was, however, bound to earth through his association with matter, or with woman, from whom he was unable to free himself. the "sons of god" were united "to the daughters of man." jahvah, the "god of hosts," who was revengeful, weak, jealous, and cruel, was worshipped in the place of aleim the great dual force throughout nature. the ethereal, spiritual male essence resided somewhere in the heavens and created from afar, while the earth (female) furnished only the body or material substance. in the history of the god seth is to be found a clue to the way in which the sublime and philosophical doctrines of the ancients, after their true meaning was forgotten, were finally changed so as to conform to the enforced humiliation and degradation of women. seth or typhon was for ages worshipped throughout egypt, and as she comprehended the powers of nature, or the creative energy residing in the sun and earth, little is heard of any other god. strange it is, however, that seth is worshipped more in her capacity as destroyer than as regenerator. so soon as we understand the origin and character of the devil, and so soon as we divest ourselves of the false ideas which under a state of ignorance and gross sensuality came to prevail relative to the "powers of darkness," we shall perceive that his (or her) satanic majesty was once a very respectable personage and a powerful divinity--a divinity which was worshipped by a people whose superior intelligence can scarcely be questioned. regarding this subject higgins remarks: "persons who have not given much consideration to these subjects will be apt to wonder that any people should be found to offer adoration to the evil principle; but they do not consider that, in all these recondite systems, the evil principle, or the destroyer, or lord of death, was at the same time the regenerator. he could not destroy but to reproduce, and it was probably not till this principle began to be forgotten, that the evil being, per se, arose; for in some nations this effect seems to have taken place. thus baal-zebub is, in iberno celtic, baal lord, and zab death, lord of death; but he is also called aleim, the same as the god of the israelites; and this is right, because he was one of the trimurti or trinity. "if i be correct respecting the word aleim being feminine, we here see the lord of death of the feminine gender; but the goddess ashtaroth or astarte, the eoster of the germans, was also called aleim. here again aleim is feminine, which shows that i am right in making aleim the plural feminine. thus we have distinctly found aleim the creator (gen. i., ), aleim the preserver, and aleim the destroyer, and this not by inference, but literally expressed."( ) ) anacalypsis, ch. ii., p. . at one period of their history the hebrews worshipped ashtaroth and baal, they together representing the great aleim, the indivisible god, but after the israelites had chosen the worship of the male principle as an independent deity, or as the only important agency in the creative processes, as baal might not be represented aside from his counterpart ashtaroth, he was no longer adored but came to stand for something "approaching the devil." forlong has observed the fact that, although in hebrew baal is masculine, in the greek translations he is feminine both in the old and new testaments.( ) ) forlong, rivers of life, p. . jehovah was originally female, so, also, was netpe the holy spirit of the egyptian tree of life. we are given to understand that netpe was the same as rhea, the partner of sev or saturn, and that her hieroglyphic name was "abyss of heaven." osiris was the son of this goddess who was really a mai or mary, the celestial mother, he being the only god of the egyptians who was born upon this earth and lived among men. of this forlong remarks: "his birthplace was mount sinai; called by the egyptians nysa, hence his greek name dionysos." as the palm was the first offering of mother earth to her children, so osiris was the first offspring of the egyptian celestial virgin to mankind. he was the new sun which through the winter months had been "buried," but which in process of time arose to gladden all the earth. he was also the new sun of righteousness which was to renew the world, or redeem mankind from sin. the female principle for the time being cast out of the deity, osiris, the male element, now outwardly assumes the position of supreme god. it was, however, reserved for a later and more sensuous age to permanently adopt an absurdity so opposed to all established ideas relative to a creative force in nature and in man. seth, the destroyer, had been deposed, but, so deeply rooted in the human mind had become the idea of a female creator, that isis, the queen of heaven, a somewhat lower conception of muth, or of universal womanhood, soon assumed the place of seth beside osiris. later in the history of egypt, when the gods have become greatly multiplied, and the original significance of the deity obscured, horus, the child and the third member in the later egyptian triad, not unfrequently appears in her place as one of the eight great gods. the fact is observed that the history of osiris is not alone the "history of the circle of the year, or of the sun dying away and resuscitating itself again, but that it is also the history of the cycle of ." it has been said that of the component elements of his hieroglyphical name, isis is the first, and that the name osiris really signifies the "eye of isis." according to plutarch, isis and muth are identical, but from the evidence at hand it is plain that muth comprehends divine womanhood, or the female principle as it was regarded at an earlier stage of human growth. muth is not only the parent of the sun, or the force which produces the sun, but she is also wisdom, the first emanation from the deity, at the same time that she comprehends all the possibilities of nature. isis seems to represent the deity at a time when the higher truths known to a more ancient people were beginning to lose their hold upon the race. renouf informs us that the word maat, or muth, means law, "not in that forensic sense of command issued either by a human sovereign authority, or by a divine legislator, like the laws of the hebrews, but in the sense of that unerring order which governs the universe, whether in its physical or its moral aspect."( ) the same writer observes further that maat "is called mistress of heaven, ruler of earth, and president of the nether world," and in a further description of the conception embodied in this deity, refers to the fact that while she is the mother of the sun she is also the first emanation from god. ) the religion of ancient egypt, p. . although typhon seth was long worshipped as the sole deity in egypt, in later ages the god-idea came to be represented by seth and osiris. toward the close of typhon seth's reign, horus, the child, the young sun, was represented "as rising from his hiding-place, attracting beneficent vapors to return them back as dews, which the egyptians called the tears of isis." seth and osiris represent a division of the deity. osiris, as the sun, represents heat; as man, or as god, he stands for desire. seth or typhon stands for the cold of winter, the simoom of the desert, or the "wind that blasts." seth, osiris, and horus constitute a trinity of which muth is the great mother. finally, with the gradual ascendancy of male influence and power, it is observed that seth appears as the brother of osiris. it is the opinion of bunsen that the fundamental idea of osiris and set was "not merely the glorification of the sun, but was also the worship of the primitive creative power."( ) but, as in egypt the creative agency was regarded as both female and male, the former being in the ascendancy, this fact of itself would seem to determine the sex and position of seth. ) history of egypt, vol. iv., p. . in the ideas concerning seth and osiris may be observed something of the manner in which the fructifying agencies of the sun and the reproductive power in human beings were blended and together worshipped as the deity; while through the history of these gods are to be traced some of the processes by which the idea of the creator was changed from female to male. in all countries, at a certain stage in the history of religion, the transference of female deified power to mortal man may be observed. in the attempt to change seth or typhon into a male god may be noted perhaps the first effort in egypt to dethrone, or lessen the female power in the god-idea. the fact seems plain that the great typhon seth, or set, who conferred on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties of egypt "the symbols of life and power," was none other than the primitive regenerator or destroyer, who was for ages worshipped as the god of nature the aleim, or the life-giving energy throughout the universe. we have observed that when the profound principles underlying the most ancient doctrines had been lost or forgotten, and when through the decay of philosophy, and through the stimulation of the sensual in human nature, mankind had lost the power to reason abstractly, destruction, which was symbolized by darkness or the absence of the sun's rays, finally became the evil principle, or the devil. darkness and cold, which had formerly been worshipped as the powers which brought forth the sun, or as mother of the sun, in process of time became the agency which is ever warring with good and which is constantly destroying that which the latter brings forth. we are informed by forlong that "some derive our term devil from niphl or nevil, the wind that blasts or obstructs the growth of corn; and it used sometimes to be written th' evil, which is d'evil or devil." it was "this dualistic heresy which separated the zend or persian branch of the aryans from their vedic brethren, and compelled them to emigrate to the westward."( ) ) see rawlinson, notes on the early history of babylon. the ancient philosophical truth that matter is eternal, and that the destruction of vegetable life through the agency of cold was one of the necessary processes of re-generation, or the renewal of life, had evidently been lost sight of at the time when seth was dethroned in egypt. wilkinson informs us that "both seth and osiris were adored until a change took place respecting seth, brought about apparently by foreign influence." sethi or sethos, a ruler whose reign represents the augustan age of egyptian splendor, received his name from this deity. it is said that during the twentieth dynasty seth is suddenly portrayed as the principle of evil "with which is associated sin." consequently all the effigies of this great goddess were destroyed and all her names and inscriptions "which could be reached" were effaced. bunsen tells us that schelling, who has made a study of egyptian mythology, although totally ignorant of the later historical facts which by means of hieroglyphical monuments have been obtained, had arrived at the conclusion that seth had occupied an important position in the deity down to the fourteenth century b.c. "schelling had on mere speculative grounds been brought to lay down as a postulate that typhon, at some early period, had been considered by the egyptians as a beneficent and powerful god." wilkinson says that the character given to seth, who was called baal-seth and the god of the gentiles, "is explained by his being the cause of evil." we are assured that formerly "sin the great serpent," or apophis the giant, was distinct from seth who was a deity and a part of the divine system. but after the recondite principles underlying sun-worship were lost or forgotten; when cold and darkness, or the sinking away of the sun's rays, which are necessary to the reappearance of light and warmth, came to be regarded as the destructive element, or the evil principle, woman became identified with this principle. she was the producer of evil, and came to be represented in connection with a serpent as the cause of all earthly or material things. she is destruction, but not regeneration. she is in fact matter. the cold of winter and the darkness of night, which are necessary to the return of the sun's warmth and which were formerly set forth as a beneficent mother who brings forth the sun, became only the evil principle--that which obscures the light. in fact darkness or absence of the sun's heat has become the devil. it is the "cause of evil in the world." with woman blinded by superstition, with every instinct of the female nature outraged, and with her position as the central figure in the deity and in the family usurped, her temples were soon profaned, her images defiled, and the titles representing her former greatness transferred to males. there is no doubt but this doctrine was the legitimate outcome of the decay of female influence. through the further stimulation of the lower nature of man its absurdity gradually increased, until under the system calling itself christian it finally reached its height. this subject will be referred to later in these pages. when we remember that the original representation of the deity among the nations of the earth consisted of a female figure embracing a child, and when we observe that subsequently in the development of the god-idea woman appears associated with a serpent as the cause of evil in the world, the history of the god seth, who, as we have seen, represented the processes of nature, namely destruction and regeneration, seems quite significant as indicating some of the actual processes involved in this change. there can be little doubt that the facts relating to this deity indicate the source whence has sprung the great theological dogma underlying christianity, that woman is the cause of evil in the world. chapter x. ancient speculations concerning creation. "daughters of jove, all hail! but o inspire the lovely song! the sacred race proclaim of ever-living gods; who sprang from earth, from the starred heaven, and from the gloomy night, and whom the salt deep nourished into life. declare how first the gods and earth became; the rivers and th' immeasurable sea high-raging in its foam; the glittering stars, the wide impending heaven; and who from these of deities arose, dispensing good; say how their treasures, how their honors each allotted shar'd: how first they held abode on many-caved olympus:--this declare, ye muses! dwellers of the heavenly mount from the beginning; say, who first arose? first chaos was: next ample-bosomed earth, of deathless gods, who still the olympian heights snow-topt inhabit.... her first-born earth produced of like immensity, the starry heaven: that he might sheltering compass her around on every side, and be forevermore to the blest gods a mansion unremoved."( ) ) hesiod, the theogony. so long as human beings worshipped the abstract principle of creation, the manifestations of which proceed from the earth and sun, they doubtless reasoned little on the nature of its hitherto inseparable parts. they had not at that early period begun to look outside of nature for their god-idea, but when through the peculiar course of development which had been entered upon, the simple conception of a creative agency originally entertained became obscured, mankind began to speculate on the nature and attributes of the two principles by which everything is produced, and to dispute over their relative importance in the office of reproduction. much light has been thrown upon these speculations by the kosmogonies which have come down to us from the phoenicians, babylonians, and other peoples of past ages. in the phoenician kosmogony, according to the mokh doctrine as recorded by philo, out of the kosmic egg toleeleth (female) "sprang all the impregnation of creation and the beginning of the universe." in this exposition of the beginnings of things, it is distinctly stated that the spirit which in after ages came to be regarded as something outside or above nature, "had no consciousness of its own creation." commenting on the above, bunsen is constrained to admit that it is usually understood as being "decidedly pantheistic." he suggests, however, that the writer may have intended to say (the italics are mine) that "the spirit who was heretofore the creator was the unconscious spirit." berosus, the scholar of babylon, who, until a comparatively recent time has furnished all the information extant concerning babylonian antiquities, in his account of the creation of man and of the universe, says that in the beginning all was water and darkness; that in the water were the beginnings of life; but as yet there was no order. men were there with the wings of birds and even with the feet of beasts. there were also quadrupeds and men with fishes' tails, all of which had been produced by a twofold principle. over this incongruous mass a woman presided. this woman is called omoroka by the babylonians and by the chaldeans thalatth. the latter name, signifies, "bearing" or "egg producing." in the babylonian kosmogony, according to endemus, the pupil of aristotle, the beginning of the universe was called tauthe, which being interpreted means "mother of the gods." associated with her sometimes appears the male principle--apason. in the history of berosus, there is given an account of oaunes--a mythical teacher of babylon, who appeared with the head of a human being and the body of a fish or serpent. this personage brought to the babylonians all the knowledge which they possessed. oaunes wrote "concerning the generation of mankind, of their different ways of life, and of their civil polity." he it was who gave the above account of creation. he says that finally omoroka, or thalatth, the woman who existed before the creation, was divided, one half of her forming the heavens, "the other half the earth." "all this," berosus declares, "was an allegorical description of nature."( ) ) prof. smith, chaldean account of genesis, pp. , . in the following legend will be observed the groundwork for the story of the flood. xisuthrus was a king of chaldea. to him the deity, kronos, appeared in a vision and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month daesius there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. he therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, progress, and conclusion of all things down to the present time, and to bury it in sippara, the city of the sun. he was commanded also to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. having asked the deity whither he was to sail, he was answered: "to the gods"; upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. he then obeyed the divine admonition, and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth. into this he put everything which he had prepared, and last of all conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends. "after the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which not finding any food, nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him again. after an interval of some days, he sent them forth a second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. he made a trial a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from which he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. he therefore made an opening in the vessel, end upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain, upon which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and, having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared. him they saw no more, but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to the gods. he informed them that it was on account of his piety that he had been taken away to live with the gods, and that his wife and daughter had obtained the same honor." it is more than likely that this story, which as we have seen has extended to the remotest corners of the earth, has an esoteric meaning, and that it embodies the doctrines of the ancients relative to re-incarnation and the renewal of worlds. doubtless it portrays not only the end of a cycle, but that by it is prefigured the fortunes of a human soul, which in its ascent, is from time to time forced into a human body. all the early kosmogonies are intermingled with the history of a great flood, from the ravages of which an ark which contained a man was saved. the gothic story of creation indicates that the scythians belonged to the same race as the chaldeans. at the beginning of time when nothing had been formed, and before the earth, the sea, or the heavens appeared, muspelsheim existed. a breath of heat passing over the vapors, melted them into water, and from this water was formed a cow named aedumla, who was the progenitor of odin, vile, and ve, the trinity of the gothic nation. there is also another tradition, probably a later, which asserts that from the drops of water produced by the primeval breath of heat, a man, ymer, was brought forth. the son of ymer was preserved in a storm-tossed bark, his father being dragged into the middle of the abyss, where, from his body the earth was produced. the sea was made of his blood, the mountains of his bones, and the rocks of his teeth. as three of his descendants were walking on the shore one day, they found two pieces of wood which had been washed up by the waves. of these they made a man and a woman. the man they named aske and the woman emla. from this pair has descended the human race. the marked resemblance between the characters of the gothic ymer and the chaldean omoroka, from each of whose bodies the universe is created, has been observed by various writers. after referring to mallet's conclusions upon this subject, faber remarks: "they are indeed evidently the same person, not only in point of character, but, if i mistake not, in appellation: for ymer or umer is omer-oca expressed in a more simple form. the difference of sex does by no means invalidate this opinion, which rests upon the perfect identity of their characters: for the great mother, like the great father, was an hermaphrodite; or, rather, that person from whom all things were supposed to be produced, was the great father and the great mother united together in one compound being. ymer and omoroca are each the same as that hermaphrodite jupiter of the orphic theology." we have observed, however, that in all the older traditions this hermaphrodite conception is accounted as female, it is the great mother within whom is contained the male; in later ages, however, it is represented as male, the female being concealed beneath convenient symbols. the trinity of the goths was male; yet as odin could not create independently of the female energy he is provided with a wife, frigga, to whom "all fair things belonged, and who had priestesses among the early german tribes." frigga when worshipped alone was both female and male. according to one german tradition, tiw (zeus), which in its earliest conception was female, was the parent of the first man. this man begat three sons who became the fathers of the three deutsch tribes. ish (or ash) was the parent of the franks and allemans; ing was the progenitor of the swedes, angles, and saxons; and er, or erman, was the eponymous leader of the tribes called by the romans hermiones. the kosmogony of the chinese is similar in all respects to that of other countries. the first man, puoncu, was born from an egg. the chinese say that this egg-born puoncu, who is identical with brahm, noah, and adam, is not the great creator or god, but only the first man. their great god or tien is a unity which comprehends three, and their human triad--a triplicated being who is the parent of the human race--is a lower expression of the same power, and to him has finally been ascribed the office of creator. the kosmogony of the japanese begins with the opening of the sacred egg from which all things were produced. this egg is identical with the ark, and from it the diluvian patriarch was born. he was "baal-peor or the lord of opening; and, from an idea that the ark was an universal mother, he was considered as the masculine principle of generation, and was adored by his apostate descendants with all the abominations of phallic worship." in the theogony of hesiod, uranus is represented as being the parent of three sons, and the same legend repeated in the story of cronus portrays him also as a triplicated deity. according to the peruvian kosmogony all things sprang from viracocha who is said to be identical with the greek aphrodite. besides this superior god they venerated a triad which was closely connected with the sun. these gods were called chuquilla, catuilla, and intyllapa. they say that as their ancestors journeyed from a remote country to the northwest they bore the image of their god in a coifer or box made of reeds. to the four priests who had charge of this box or ark he communicated his oracles and directions. he not only gave them laws but taught them the ceremonies and sacrifices which they were to observe. "and even as the pillar of cloud and fire conducted the israelites in their passage through the wilderness, so this spanish devil gave them notice when to advance forward, and when to stay."( ) ) faber, pagan idolatry, book i., ch. v. according to marsden, the new zealanders believe that three gods created the first man, and that the first woman was made from one of his ribs. among the otaheitans and various tribes of indians, the belief prevails that all created things have proceeded from a triplicated deity who was saved from the ravages of a flood in an ark or ship. the fact is observed that the theogonies and kosmogonies of all peoples have reference to a flood or to the renewal of life after the destruction of the world, and that the great father who is preserved, and who comes forth from an ark or ship with the seeds of a former world, represents the beginning of a new era. adam with his three sons, cain, abel, and seth, noah with his triad, shem, ham, and japheth, menu and his triple offspring, and so on, all mean exactly the same thing, namely, the renewal of life at the close of a cycle, or manwantara. from the traditions extant in nearly every quarter of the globe, it would seem that, prior to the so-called flood in the time of noah, man, as a creator, had not to any extent been worshipped, but, on the contrary, that the great universal dual principle which pervades nature and which is back of matter and force, for instance tien among the chinese, iav among the hebrews, and aum among the hindoos, had been the deity adored; but with the decline of virtue and knowledge, this god was gradually abandoned for a lesser one, a deity better suited to the comprehension of "fallen" man. in the elohistic narrative of creation which appears in the first chapter of genesis, a dual or triune god, female and male, says, let us make man in our own image, and accordingly a male and a female are created. in the jehovistic account, however, in the second chapter of the same book, a document of much later date, man is made first and afterward woman. in fact, in the latter narrative she appears as an afterthought and is created simply for his use; she is taken from his side and is wholly dependent upon him for existence. this fact is recognized by bishop colenso in the following words: "thus in the second account of creation, the man is apparently created first, and the woman is certainly created the last, of all living creatures; whereas, in the older story the man and woman are created last of all, as the crowning work of elohim, and are created together--'and elohim created man in his own image, in the image of elohim created he him; male and female created he them.' this ancient elohistic narrative, then, the jehovist had before him; and he enlarged and enlivened it by introducing a number of passages recording additional incidents in the lives of the patriarchs before and after the flood, and especially by inserting the second account of the creation, ii., - ." colenso observes that verse four of chapter second belongs to the elohist, and that it was removed from its original position at the beginning of gen. i., in order to form the commencement of the jehovistic account of the creation.( ) ) lectures on the pentateuch, p. . quoting from bishop browne in the new bible commentary, the same writer remarks that in the elohistic account of the creation "we have that which was probably the ancient primeval record of the formation of the world."( ) ) ibid. p. . the oldest or elohistic portion of genesis is, at the present time, seen to conceal great wisdom and a knowledge of nature far surpassing that of later times. according to higgins, the first verse of the first chapter of genesis, if properly translated, would not declare that in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth, but that wisdom "formed" the earth and the planets. in none of the ancient kosmogonies can there be a word found regarding the creation of matter. from the facts which have come down to us respecting the speculations of the ancients, it is plain that the original conception was, that within the primeval beginnings described in their kosmogonies, in chaos or unorganized matter, was contained primeval force; no attempt, however, was made by them to account for the creation of either motion or matter. as soon as human beings began to speculate on the attributes of their deity; when the two principles composing it began to separate, and the idea was gaining ground that the male was the only important factor in reproduction, the sun became male, the earth and sea female. still, even then the doctrine seems not to have been questioned, that the creative agency had proceeded from matter, or that it was developed in and through it. the belief that something can be made from nothing was reserved for a later age. in the oldest semitic kosmogonies, we are assured that the self-conscious god who is manifested in the order of the universe, proceeded out of the great abyss, and out of unorganized, dark, primeval matter. during the earlier historic period, however, by both jew and gentile, the belief was entertained that spirit is material. it is the essence of fire--a substance akin to the galvanic or electric fluid. this masculine element, the manifestation of which is desire, or heat, and which was finally set up as an eternal, self-existent, creative force, or god, was originally regarded as a manifestation of matter, and as having no independent existence. in an earlier age, this so-called creative agency is associated with a force far superior to itself, namely, light or wisdom. minerva, who is the first emanation from the deity, "formed" all things. she it is who discriminates all things and gives laws to the universe. "she represented to the greeks that spiritual element which lifts knowledge into wisdom, and talent into genius."( ) but with the importance which began to be assumed by man when he began to regard himself as a creator, and when through ignorance and sensuality the principles of a more enlightened race were forgotten, desire, or heat, was separated from matter and came to be regarded as an independent entity, which itself had created matter out of nothing. thus is noticed the extent to which the god-idea has been developed in accordance with the relative positions of the sexes. ) l. t. ives, art words. according to the grecian mythology, much of which was a comparatively late development, mortal woman was the handiwork of vulcan the firegod, who, being commissioned by jove to execute "a snare for gods and man," moulded the beauteous form of woman. this is a worthy example of the contempt and scorn shown by the greeks for women during the later period of their career as a nation. that such contempt was a later development is shown in the fact that woman was originally the gift of pallas athene, or wisdom. when she first appeared on the scene she was crowned by the gods, in fact she was the first object honored with a crown. concerning the conceptions regarding women as held at an earlier age, and those which came to prevail after she had become "the cause of evil in the world," we have the following from tertullian: "if there was a pandora, whom hesiod mentions as the first woman, hers was the first head the graces crowned, for she received gifts from all the gods, whence she got her name pandora. but moses, a prophet, not a poet-shepherd, shows us the first woman eve having her loins more naturally girt about with leaves than her temples with flowers. pandora then is a myth."( ) ) tertullian, vol. i., p. . woman, who was originally the gift of wisdom, or minerva, and who when created was garlanded with flowers as the crown of creation, became, in course of time, an accursed and wicked thing who must henceforth cover herself with leaves to hide her shame. tertullian, who, with the rest of the early fathers in the christian church, had imbibed the latter doctrine concerning her, could not believe the tradition set forth by hesiod; therefore pandora was a myth, while the corrupted fable, that of eve as the tempter, was accepted as a natural representation of womanhood. when woman was created, "all the gods conferred a gifted grace." "round her fair brow the lovely-tressed hours a garland twined of spring's purpureal flowers: the whole attire minerva's graceful art disposed, adjusted, form'd to every part."( ) ) hesiod, works and days. later, however, pandora herself becomes the pourer forth of ills on the head of defenceless man. chapter xi. fire and phallic worship. "know, first a spirit with an active flame fills, feeds, and animates the mighty frame; runs through the watery worlds and fields of air, the ponderous earth and depths of heav'n and there burns in the sun and moon, and every brilliant star thus mingling in the mass, the general soul lives in its parts and agitates the whole." although earth, air, water, and the sun were long venerated as objects of worship, as containing the life principle, in process of time it is observed that fire attracted the highest regard of human beings, and on their altars the sacred flame, said to have been kindled from heaven, was kept burning uninterruptedly from year to year, and from age to age, by bands of priests "whose special duty it was to see that the sacred flame was never extinguished." the office of the vestal virgins in rome was to preserve the holy fire. the egyptians, and in fact all the earlier civilized nations, knew that force proceeds from the sun, hence the frequent appearance of this orb among their symbols of life. indeed there is not a country on the globe in which, at some time, divine honors have not been paid to fire and to light. the hindoos, "believing fire to be the essence of all active power in nature, kept perpetual lamps burning in the innermost recesses of their pagodas and temples, and in the sacred edifices of the greeks and barbarians fires were preserved for the same reason." the festival of lamps, which was once universal throughout egypt, still prevails in china. on the evening of the fifteenth day of the first month in the year, every person is compelled to place before his door a lantern or light, such lights differing in size and expense according to the degree of wealth or poverty of those to whom they belong. light was the symbol of muth (perceptive wisdom). among the persians, the egyptians, the mexicans, the jews, the etruscans, the greeks, and the romans, fire was venerated as the essence of the deity; and, at the present time, in thibet, in china, in japan, and in portions of africa, it still forms an important part of worship. the hebrew writings show conclusively that not only the jews but all the surrounding nations were fire-worshippers, and that their sacrifices were not infrequently to the god of fire. of this forlong says: "when rome was rearing temples to the fame and worship of fire, we find the prophets of israel occasionally denouncing the wickedness of its worship by their own and the nations around them; nevertheless, even to christ's time molok always had his offerings of children."( ) ) rivers of life and faiths of man in an lands, vol. i., p. . it is believed that abraham introduced fire-worship among the jews from ur in mesopotamia, a land in which lights are still venerated, and fire altars are worshipped as containing the deity. the real essence of fire which was identical with the life-principle was holy. the "lord" of the israelites was in the fire which descended on mt. sinai, exodus xix., . "the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed," exodus iii., . whether the signification of "bush" is the same as "grove," i know not, but josephus assures us that the bush was holy before the flame appeared in it. because of its sacred character, it became the receptacle for the burning "lord" of the jews. the ark, the religious emblem which moses bore aloft, was simply a fire altar on which the fire must continually burn. the fact will doubtless be observed that although the ark and the bush (female emblems) were invested with a certain degree of sanctity, they were nevertheless only receptacles for the substance within them. at the same time that the jews kept sacred or holy fires continually burning on their altars, they carried about a serpent on a pole representing it to be the "healer of nations." they also kept a phallic emblem in a box, chest, or ark which they worshipped as the "god of hosts," the "life giver," etc. it has been observed that although the jews frequently lost their ark, they were never without their serpent-pole. at a certain stage in the religious development of mankind all the temples in africa and western asia were dedicated to vulcan the fire god or the "lord of fire," to whom all furnaces were sacred. the principal festivals in honor of this deity took place in the spring, at the easter season, and on the d of august, when it is said that the licentiousness practiced in the temples compared with those of the "harvest homes" of europe when the sun was in libra and the harvest had been garnered in. vulcan was the "god of fornication" or of passion. these excesses, which remained unchecked down to the fourth century before christ, are said to have somewhat abated after the rise of the stoic philosophy. various philosophers of early historic times as well as many of the early fathers in the christian church believed that god was a corporeal substance which in some way is manifested through fire. in egypt, during the early ages of christianity, "a great dispute took place among the monks on the question, whether god is corporeal." tertullian declared that "god is fire"; origen, that "he is a subtle fire"; and various others that "he is body." there is little doubt that in early historic ages the persians, who had undertaken to purify their religion, were the strongest and purest sect of this cult; they were in fact the genuine worshippers of the pure creative principles which they believed resided in fire. we have observed that force or spirit was originally regarded as a part of nature, or in other words that it was a manifestation of, or an outflowing from matter, but so soon as it began to be considered as something apart from nature, there at once arose a desire for some corporeal object to represent this unseen and occult principle. during many of the ages of fire-worship, holy fire, although a material substance, seems to have been too subtle to clearly represent the god-idea, hence everywhere the worship of the serpent is found to be interwoven with it. in fact, so closely are serpent, fire, pillar, and other phallic faiths intermingled that it is impossible to separate them. the persians are by some writers said to have been the earliest fire-worshippers: by others the truth of this statement is denied, while many claim, and indeed the maji themselves declared, that they never worshipped fire at all in any other manner than as an emblem of the divine principle which they believed resided within it. it is probable, however, from the evidence at hand, that they, like all the other nations of the globe, prior to the reformation led by zarathustra and his daughter, had lost or nearly forgotten the profound ideas connected with the worship of nature. passion, symbolized by fire, is declared by various writers to have been the first idol, but later research has proved the falsity of this assumption. it is true that at an early age of human experience the creative processes were worshipped, but such worship involved scientific and, i might say, spiritualized conceptions of the operations of nature which in time were altogether lost sight of. gross phallicism is clearly the result of degeneration, and of a lapse into sensuality and superstition. i think no one can study the facts connected with fire and light as the deity in the various countries in which this worship prevailed, without perceiving the change it gradually underwent during later ages, and the grossness of the ideas which became connected with it as compared with an earlier age when mankind "had no temples, but worshipped in the open air, on the tops of mountains." in another portion of this work we have observed that in the rites connected with the worship of cybele (light or wisdom), although phallic symbols were in use, the ceremonies were absolutely pure, and that throughout all the earlier ages her worship remained free from the abominations which characterized the worship of later times. at what time in the history of the human race the organs of generation first began to appear as emblems of the deity is not known. within the earliest cave temples, those hewn from the solid rock, sculptured representations of these objects are still to be observed. although until a comparatively recent period their true significance has been unknown, there is little doubt at the present time that they were originally used as symbols of fertility, or as emblems typifying the processes of nature, and that at some remote period of the world's history they were worshipped as the creator, or, at least, as representations of the creative agencies in the universe. concerning the origin and character of the people who executed them there is scarcely a trace in written history. through the unravelling of extinct tongues, however, the monumental records of the ancient nations of the globe have been deciphered, and the system of religious symbolism in use among them is now understood. a small volume by various writers, printed in london some years ago, entitled a comparative view of the ancient monuments of india, says: "those who have penetrated into the abstruseness of indian mythology, find that in these temples was practiced a worship similar to that practiced by all the several nations of the world, in their earliest as well as their most enlightened periods. it was paid to the phallus by the asiatics, to priapus by the egyptians, greeks, and romans, to baal-peor by the canaanites and idolatrous jews. the figure is seen on the fascia which runs round the circus of nismes, and over the portal of the cathedral of toulouse, and several churches of bordeaux." of the lingham and yoni and their universal acceptance as religious emblems, barlow remarks that it was a "worship which would appear to have made the tour of the globe and to have left traces of its existence where we might least expect to find it." in referring to the "sculptured indecencies" connected with religious rites, which, being wrought in imperishable stone, have been preserved in india and other parts of the east, forlong says that when occurring in the temples or other sacred places they are at the present time evidently very puzzling to the pious indians, and in their attempts to explain them they say they are placed there "in fulfilment of vows," or that they have been wrought there "as punishments for sins of a sexual nature, committed by those who executed or paid for them." it is, however, the opinion of forlong that they are simply connected with an older and purer worship--a worship which involved the union of the sex principles as the foundation of their god-idea. regarding the cause for the "indecent" sculptures of the orissa temples, the same writer quotes the following from baboo ragendralala mitra, in his work on the antiquities of orissa. "a vitiated taste aided by general prevalence of immorality might at first sight appear to be the most likely one; but i can not believe that libidiousness, however depraved, would ever think of selecting fanes dedicated to the worship of god, as the most appropriate for its manifestations; for it is worthy of remark that they occur almost exclusively on temples and their attached porches, and never on enclosing walls, gateways, and other non-religious structures. our ideas of propriety, according to voltaire, lead us to suppose that a ceremony (like the worship of priapus) which appears to us infamous, could only be invented by licentiousness; but it is impossible to believe that depravity of manners would ever have led among any people to the establishment of religious ceremonies. it is probable, on the contrary, that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity--that the first thought was to honor the deity in the symbol of life which it has given us; such a ceremony may have excited licentiousness among youths, and have appeared ridiculous to men of education in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times, but it never had its origin in such feelings.... it is out of the question therefore to suppose that a general prevalence of vice would of itself, without the authority of priests and scriptures, suffice to lead to the defilement of holy temples."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . originally the ionians, as their name indicates, were yoni worshippers, i. e., they belonged to the sect which was driven out of india because of their stubborn refusal to worship the male energy as the creator. during the later ages of their history, at a time when their religion had degenerated into a licensed system of vice and corruption, and after their temples had become brothels in which, in the name of religion, were practiced the most debasing ceremonies, the greeks became ashamed of their ancient worship, and, like the jews, ashamed also of their name. it is believed that the greeks received from egypt, or the east, their first theological conceptions of god and religion. these ideas "were veiled in symbols, significant of a primitive monotheism; these, at a later period, being translated into symbolical or allegorical language, were by the poets transformed into epic or narrative myths, in which the original subject symbolized was almost effaced, whilst the allegorical expressions were received generally in a literal sense. hence, to the many, the meaning of the ancient doctrine was lost, and was communicated only to the few, under the strictest secrecy in the mysteries of eleusis and samothrace. thus there was a popular theology to suit the people, and a rational theology reserved for the educated, the symbolical language in both being the same, but the meaning of it being taken differently. in course of time, as knowledge makes its way among the people, and religious enlightenment with it, much of what had been received literally will relapse into its original figurative or symbolical meaning. reason will resume her supremacy, and stereotyped dogmas will fall like pagan idols before advancing truth."( ) ) barlow, essays on symbolism, p. . although, during the later ages of the human career, the higher truths taught by an earlier race were lost, still a slight hint of the beauty and purity of the more ancient worship may be traced through most of the ages of the history of religion. even among the profligate greeks, the mysteries of eleusis, celebrated in the temple of ceres, were always respected. care should be taken, however, not to confound these remnants of pure nature-worship with that of the courtesan venus, whose adoration, during the degenerate days of greece, represented only the lowest and most corrupt conception of the female energy. down to a late date in the annals of athens there was celebrated a religious festival called thesmophoria. the name of this festival is derived from one of the cognomens of ceres--the goddess "who first gave laws and made life orderly." ceres was the divinity adored by the amazons, and is essentially the same as the egyptian isis. she represents universal female nature. the thesmophorian rites, which are believed by most writers to have been introduced into greece directly from thrace, were performed by "virgins distinguished for probity in life, who carried about in procession sacred books upon their heads." inman, in his ancient faiths, quotes an oracle of apollo, from spencer, to the effect that "rhea the mother of the blessed, and the queen of the gods, loved assemblages of women." as this festival is in honor of female nature, the various female attributes are adored as deities, demeter being the first named by the worshippers. after a long season of fasting, and "after solemn reflection on the mysteries of life, women splendidly attired in white garments assemble and scatter flowers in honor of the great mother." the food partaken of by the devotees at these festivals was cakes, very similar in shape to those which were offered to the queen of heaven by the women of judah in the days of jeremiah, an offering which it will be remembered so displeased that prophet that a curse was pronounced upon the entire people. as the strictest secrecy prevailed among the initiated respecting these rites, the exact nature of the symbols employed at the thesmophorian festivals is not known; it is believed, however, that it was the female emblem of generation, and that this festival was held in honor of that event which from the earliest times had been prophesied by those who believed in the superior importance of the female, namely, that unaided by the male power, a woman would bring forth, and that this manifestation of female sufficiency would forever settle the question of the ascendancy of the female principle. through a return of the ancient ideas of purity and peace, mankind would be redeemed from the wretchedness and misery which had been the result of the decline of female power. the dual idea entertained in the thesmophorian worship is observed in the fact that although ceres, the great mother, was the principal deity honored, proserpine, the child, was also comprehended, and with its mother worshipped as part of the creator. thus we observe that down to a late date in the history of grecian mythology the idea of a holy mother with her child had not altogether disappeared as a representation of the god-idea. to prove the worthiness of the ideas connected with the eleusinian mysteries it is stated that "there is not an instance on record that the honor of initiation was ever obtained by a very bad man." in rome these mysteries took another name and were called "the rites of bona dea," which was but another name for ceres. as evidence of their purity we have the following: "all the distinguished roman authors speak of these rites and in terms of profound respect. horace denounces the wretch who should attempt to reveal the secrets of these rites; virgil mentions these mysteries with great respect; and cicero alludes to them with a greater reverence than either of the poets we have named. both the greeks and the romans punished any insult offered to these mysteries with the most persevering vindictiveness. alcibiades was charged with insulting these religious rites, and although the proof of his offense was quite doubtful, yet he suffered for it for years in exile and misery, and it must be allowed that he was the most popular man of his age."( ) ) chambers's edinburgh journal. in greece, the celebration of the eleusinian mysteries was in the hands of the emolpidae, one of the oldest and most respected families of antiquity. at carthage, there were celebrated the phiditia, religious solemnities similar to those already described in greece. during the two or three days upon which these festivals were celebrated, public feasts were prepared at which the youth were instructed by their elders in the state concerning the principles which were to govern their conduct in after life; truth, inward purity, and virtue being set forth as essentials to true manhood. in later times, after these festivals had found their way to rome, they gradually succumbed to the immorality which prevailed, and at last, when their former exalted significance had been forgotten, they were finally sunk into "the licentiousness of enjoyment, and the innocence of mirth was superseded by the uproar of riot and vice! such were the saturnalia." from the facts connected with the mysteries of eleusis and the thesmophorian rites, it is evident that in its earlier stages nature-worship was absolutely free from the impurities which came to be associated with it in later times. as the organs of generation had not originally been wholly disgraced and outraged, it is not unlikely that when the so-called "sculptured indecencies" appeared on the walls of the temples they were regarded as no more an offense against propriety and decency than was the reappearance of the cross, the emblem of life, in later times, among orthodox christians. neither is it probable, in an age in which nothing that is natural was considered indecent, and before the reproductive energies had become degraded, that these symbols were any more suggestive of impurity than are the easter offerings upon our church altars at the present time. whatever may now be the significance of these offerings to those who present them, sure it is that they once, together with other devices connected with nature-worship, were simply emblems of fertility--symbols of a risen and fructifying sun which by its gladdening rays re-creates and makes all things new again. if we carefully study the religion of past ages we will discover something more than a hint of an age when the generative functions were regarded as a sacred expression of creative power, and when the reproductive organs had not through over-stimulation and abuse been tabooed as objects altogether impure and unholy, and as things too disgraceful to be mentioned above a whisper. indeed there is much evidence going to show that in an earlier age of the world's history the degradation of mankind, through the abuse of the creative functions, had not been accomplished, and the ills of life resulting from such abuse were unknown. we may reasonably believe that those instincts in the female which are correlated with maternal affection and which were acquired by her as a protection to the germ, or, in other words, those characters which nature has developed in the female to insure the safety and well-being of offspring, and which in a purer and more natural stage of human existence acted as cheeks upon the energies of the male, were not easily or quickly subdued; but when through subjection to the animal nature of man these instincts or characters had been denied their natural expression, and woman had become simply the instrument of man's pleasure, the comparatively pure worship of the organs of generation as symbols of creative power began to give place to the deification of these members simply as emblems of desire, or as instruments for the stimulation of passion. we are assured that on the banks of the ganges, the very cradle of religion, are still to be found various remnants of the most ancient form of nature-worship--that there are still to be observed "certain high places sacred to more primitive ideas than those represented by vedic gods." here devout worshippers believe that the androgynous god of fertility, or nature, still manifests itself to the faithful. close beside these more ancient shrines are others representing a somewhat later development of religious faith--shrines, by means of which are indicated some of the processes involved in the earlier growth of the god-idea. not far removed from these are to be found, also, numerous temples or places of worship belonging to a still later faith--a faith in which are revealed the "awakening and stimulation of every sensuous feeling, and which has drowned in infamy every noble impulse developed in human nature." of the depravity of the jews and the immorality practiced in their religious rites, forlong says: "no one can study their history, liberated from the blindness which our christian up-bringing and associations cast over us, without seeing that the jews were probably the grossest worshippers among all those ophi--phallo--solar devotees who then covered every land and sea, from the sources of the nile and euphrates to all over the mediterranean coasts and isles. these impure faiths seem to have been very strictly maintained by jews up to hezekiah's days, and by none more so than by dissolute solomon and his cruel, lascivious bandit-father, the brazen-faced adulterer and murderer, who broke his freely volunteered oath, and sacrificed six innocent sons of his king to his javah." of solomon he says that he devoted his energies and some little wealth "to rearing phallic and solophallic shrines over all the high places around him, and especially in front of jerusalem, and on and around the mount of olives." on each side of the entrance to his celebrated temple, under the great phallic spire which formed the portico, were two handsome columns over fifty feet high, by the side of which were the sun god belus and his chariots. in a description of this temple it is represented as being one hundred and twenty feet long and forty feet broad, while the porch, a phallic emblem, "was a huge tower, forty feet long, twenty feet broad, and two hundred and forty feet high." we are assured by forlong that solomon's temple was like hundreds observed in the east, except that its walls were a little higher than those usually seen, and the phallic spire out of proportion to the size of the structure. "the jewish porch is but the obelisk which the egyptian placed beside his temple; the boodhist pillars which stood all around their dagobas; the pillars of hercules, which stood near the phoenician temple; and the spire which stands beside the christian church."( ) ) forlong, rivers of life, vol. i., p. . the rites and ceremonies observed in the worship of baal-peor are not of a character to be described in these pages: it is perhaps sufficient to state that by them the fact is clearly established that profligacy, regulated and controlled by the priestly order as part and parcel of religion, was not confined to the gentiles; but, on the contrary, that the religious observances of the jews prior to the babylonian captivity were even more gross than were those of the assyrians or the hindoos. these impure faiths arose at a time when man as the sole creator of offspring became god, when the natural instincts of woman were subdued, and when passion as the highest expression of the divine force came to be worshipped as the most important attribute of humanity. the extent to which these faiths have influenced later religious belief and observances is scarcely realized by those who have not given special attention to this subject. it has been stated that in the time of solon, law-giver of athens, there were twenty temples in the various cities of greece dedicated to venus the courtesan, within which were practiced, in the name of religion, the most infamous rites and the most shameless self-abandonment; and that throughout europe, down to a late period in the history of the race, religious festivals were celebrated at certain seasons of the year, at which the ceremonies performed in honor of the god of fornication were of the grossest nature, and at which the bacchanalian orgies were only equalled by those practiced in the religious temples of babylon. it is impossible longer to conceal the fact that passion, symbolized by a serpent, an upright stone, and by the male and female organs of generation, the male appearing as the "giver of life," the female as a necessary appendage to it, constituted the god-idea of mankind for at least four thousand years; and, instead of being confined to the earlier ages of that period, we shall presently see that phallic worship had not disappeared, under christianity, as late and even later than the sixteenth century. such has been the result of the ascendancy gained by the grosser elements in human nature: the highest idea of the infinite passion symbolized by the organs of generation, while the principal rites connected with its worship are scenes of debauchery and self-abasement. at the present time it is by no means difficult to trace the growth of the god-idea. first, as we have seen, a system of pure nature-worship appeared under the symbol of a mother and child. in process of time this particular form of worship was supplanted by a religion under which the male principle is seen to be in the ascendancy over the female. later a more complicated system of nature-worship is observed in which the underlying principles are concealed, or are understood only by the initiated. lastly, these philosophical and recondite principles are forgotten and the symbols themselves receive the adoration which once belonged to the creator. the change which the ideas concerning womanhood underwent from the time when the natural feminine characters and qualities were worshipped as god, to the days of solon the grecian law-giver, when women had become merely tools or slaves for the use and pleasure of men, is forcibly shown by a comparison of the character ascribed to the female deities at the two epochs mentioned. athene who in an earlier age had represented wisdom had in the age of solon degenerated into a patroness of heroes; but even as a goddess of war her patronage was as nought compared with that of the courtesan venus, at whose shrine "every man in greece worshipped." the extent to which women, in the name of religion, have been degraded, and the part which in the past they have been compelled to assume in the worship of passion may not at the present time be disguised, as facts concerning this subject are well authenticated. in a former work,( ) attention has been directed to the religious rites of babylon, the city in which it will be remembered the tower of belus was situated. here women of all conditions and ranks were obliged, once in their life, to prostitute themselves in the temple for hire to any stranger who might demand such service, which revenue was appropriated by the priests to be applied to sacred uses. this act it will be remembered was a religious obligation imposed by religious teachers and enforced by priestly rule. it was a sacrifice to the god of passion. a similar custom prevailed in cyprus. ) see evolution of woman, p. . most of the temples of the later hindoos had bands of consecrated women called the "women of the idol." these victims of the priests were selected in their infancy by brahmins for the beauty of their persons, and were trained to every elegant accomplishment that could render them attractive and which would insure success in the profession which they exercised at once for the pleasure and profit of the priesthood. they were never allowed to desert the temple; and the offspring of their promiscuous embraces were, if males, consecrated to the service of the deity in the ceremonies of this worship, and, if females, educated in the profession of their mothers.( ) ) maurice, indian antiquities, vol. i. that prostitution was a religious observance, which was practiced in eastern temples, cannot in the face of accessible facts be doubted. regarding this subject, inman says: "to us it is inconceivable, that the indulgence of passion could be associated with religion, but so it was. the words expressive of 'sanctuary,' 'consecrated,' and 'sodomites' are in the hebrew essentially the same. it is amongst the hindoos of to-day as it was in the greece and italy of classic times; and we find that 'holy woman' is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire, which goes to the service of the temple." the extent to which ages of corruption have vitiated the purer instincts of human nature, and the degree to which centuries of sensuality and superstition have degraded the nature of man, may be noticed at the present time in the admissions which are frequently made by male writers regarding the change which during the history of the race has taken place in the god-idea. none of the attributes of women, not even that holy instinct--maternal love, can by many of them be contemplated apart from the ideas of grossness which have attended the sex-functions during the ages since women first became enslaved. as an illustration of this we have the following from an eminent philologist of recent times, a writer whose able efforts in unravelling religious myths bear testimony to his mental strength and literary ability. "the chaldees believed in a celestial virgin who had purity of body, loveliness of person, and tenderness of affection, and she was one to whom the erring sinner could appeal with more chance of success than to a stern father. she was portrayed as a mother with a child in her arms, and every attribute ascribed to her showing that she was supposed to be as fond as any earthly female ever was."( ) ) inman, ancient faiths, vol. i., p. . after thus describing the early chaldean deity, who, although a pure and spotless virgin, was nevertheless worshipped as a mother, or as the embodiment of the altruistic principles developed in mankind, this writer goes on to say: "the worship of the woman by man naturally led to developments which our comparatively sensitive natures (the italics are mine) shun as being opposed to all religious feeling," which sentiment clearly reveals the inability of this writer to estimate womanhood, or even motherhood, apart from the sensualized ideas which during the ages in which passion has been the recognized god have gathered about it. the purity of life and the high stage of civilization reached by an ancient people, and the fact that these conditions were reached under pure nature-worship, or when the natural attributes of the female were regarded as the highest expression of the divine in the human, prove that it was neither the appreciation nor the deification of womanhood which "led to developments which sensitive natures shun as being opposed to all religious feeling," but, on the contrary, that it was the lack of such appreciation which stimulated the lower nature of man and encouraged every form of sensuality and superstition. in other words, it was the subjection of the natural female instincts and the deification of brute passion during the later ages of human history which have degraded religion and corrupted human nature. although at the present time it is quite impossible for scholars to veil the fact that the god-idea was originally worshipped as female, still, most modern writers who deal with this subject seem unable to understand the state of human society which must have existed when the instincts, qualities, and characters peculiar to the female constitution were worshipped as divine. so corrupt has human nature become through over-stimulation and indulgence of the lower propensities, that it seems impossible for those who have thus far dealt with this subject to perceive in the earlier conceptions of a deity any higher idea than that conveyed to their minds at the present time by the sexual attributes and physical functions of females--namely, their capacity to bring forth, coupled with the power to gratify the animal instincts of males, functions which women share with the lower orders of life. the fact that by an ancient race woman was regarded as the head or crown of creation, that she was the first emanation from the deity, or, more properly speaking, that she represented perceptive wisdom, seems at the present time not to be comprehended, or at least not acknowledged. the more recently developed idea, that she was designed as an appendage to man, and created specially for his use and pleasure,--a conception which is the direct result of the supremacy of the lower instincts over the higher faculties,--has for ages been taught as a religious doctrine which to doubt involves the rankest heresy. the androgynous venus of the earlier ages, a deity which although female was figured with a beard to denote that within her were embraced the masculine powers, embodied a conception of universal womanhood and the deity widely different from that entertained in the later ages of greece, at a time when venus the courtesan represented all the powers and capacities of woman considered worthy of deification. to such an extent, in later ages, have all our ideas of the infinite become masculinized that in extant history little except occasional hints is to be found of the fact that during numberless ages of human existence the supreme creator was worshipped as female. one has only to study the greek character to anticipate the manner in which any subject pertaining to women would be treated by that arrogant and conceited race; and, as until recently most of our information concerning the past has come through greek sources, the distorted and one-sided view taken of human events, and the contempt with which the feminine half of society has been regarded, are in no wise surprising. we must bear in mind the fact, however, that the greeks were but the degenerate descendants of the highly civilized peoples whom they were pleased to term "barbarians," and that they knew less of the origin and character of the gods which they worshipped, and which they had borrowed from other countries, than is known of them at the present time. about years b.c., we may believe that mankind had sunk to the lowest depth of human degradation, since which time humanity has been slowly retracting its course; not, however, with any degree of continuity or regularity, nor without lapses, during which for hundreds of years the current seemed to roll backward. indeed when we review the history of the intervening ages, and note the extent to which passion, prejudice, and superstition have been in the ascendancy over reason and judgment, we may truly say: "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth have been set on edge." chapter xii. an attempt to purify the sensualized faiths. it has been said of the persians that in their zeal to purify the sensualized faiths which everywhere prevailed they manifested a decided "repugnance to the worship of images, beasts, or symbols, while they sought to establish the worship of the only true creative force, or god--holy fire." from the facts to be gleaned concerning this people during the seventh and eighth centuries b.c., it is quite probable that they still had a faint knowledge of a former age of intellectual and moral greatness, and that it was their object, at that time, to return to the purer principles which characterized it. that their efforts were subsequently copied by surrounding nations is shown in the facts connected with their history. soon leading syrians and jews began to learn from their eastern neighbor that the worship of images could scarcely be acceptable to a god which they were beginning to invest with a certain degree of spirituality. there is little doubt, at the present time, that the attempt to spiritualize the religion of the jews was due to the influence of the persians. however, the length of time required to effect any appreciable improvement in an established form of worship is shown by the fact that, two hundred years later, little change for the better was observed in the temples, in which licentiousness had become a recognized religious rite. even at the present time, it is reported that in many places of worship in the east there still reside "holy women--god's women," who, like those in babylon, described by various writers, are devoted to the "god of fire." in a comparison made between the religion of persia and the doctrines said to have been taught by moses, inman remarks: "the religion of persia as reformed by zoroaster so closely resembles the mosaic, that it would be almost impossible to decide which has the precedence of the other, unless we knew how ancient was the teaching of zoroaster, and how very recent was that said to be from moses. be this as it may, we find the ancient persians resemble the jews in sacrificing upon high places, in paying divine honor to fire, in keeping up a sacred flame, in certain ceremonial cleansings, in possessing an hereditary priesthood who alone were allowed to offer sacrifices, and in making their summum bonum the possession of a numerous offspring."( ) ) ancient faiths, vol. ii., p. . it is quite plain that by both these nations the wisdom of an earlier race was nearly forgotten. seven hundred years b.c. the persians had doubtless already adopted the worship of "one god" who was the regenerator or destroyer, a deity which, as we have seen, originally comprehended the powers of nature--namely the sun's heat and the cold of winter. that at this time, however, they had lost the higher truths involved in the conception of this deity, is evident. they had become worshippers of fire, or of that subtle igneous fluid residing in fire which they believed to be creative force. although the persiaus like all the other nations of the globe had lost or forgotten the higher truths enunciated by an older race, there is no evidence going to show that they ever became gross phallic worshippers like the jews; that they were not such is shown in the fact that down to the time of alexander the women of persia still held a high and honorable position, and that the female attributes had not become wholly subject to male power. had we no other evidence of the comparatively exalted character of the religion of the persians than the history of the lives of such men as darius, cyrus, artaxerxes, and others, we should conclude, notwithstanding the similarity in the ceremonials of these two religions, that some influence had been at work to preserve them from the cruelty and licentiousness which prevailed among the jews. it is related of cyrus that he used to wish that he might live long enough to repay all the kindness which he had received. it is also stated that on account of the justice and equity shown in his character, a great number of persons were desirous of committing to his care and wisdom "the disposal of their property, their cities, and their own persons." in striking contrast to the mild and humane character of cyrus stands that of the licentious and revengeful david, a "man after god's own heart." "as for the heads of those that compass me about, let the mischief of their own lips cover them." "let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again."( ) "happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."( ) ) psalms cxl. ) ibid., cxxxvii. no one i think can read the avestas without being impressed by the prominence there given to the subjects of temperance and virtue. in their efforts to purify religion, and in the attempts to return to their more ancient faith, the disciples of zoroaster, as early as eight hundred years before christ, had adopted a highly spiritualized conception of the deity. they had taught in various portions of asia minor the doctrine of one god, a dual entity by means of which all things were created. they taught also the doctrine of a resurrection and that of the immortality of the soul. it was at this time that they originated, or at least propounded, the doctrine of hell and the devil, a belief exactly suited to the then weakened mental condition of mankind, and from which humanity has not yet gained sufficient intellectual and moral strength to free itself. this persian devil, which had become identified with winter or with the absence of the sun's rays, was now aryhman, or the "powers of darkness," and was doubtless the source whence sprang the personal devil elaborated at a later age by laotse in china. as the jews had no writings prior to the time of ezra or jeremiah, it is now believed that many of the doctrines incorporated in their sacred books were borrowed from persian, indian, and egyptian sources. resurrection from the dead, or the resurrection of the body, was for hundreds of years prior to the birth of christ an established article of egyptian and persian faith, while spiritual regeneration, symbolized by the outward typification of "being born again," was the beginning of a new life and an admission to the heavenly state. in the khordah avesta we have the following concerning the doctrine of the resurrection and that of future rewards and punishments. "i am wholly without doubt in the existence of the good mazdaycinian faith, in the coming of the resurrection and the later body, in the stepping over the bridge chinvat, in an invariable recompense of good deeds and their reward, and of bad deeds and their punishment." the zoroastrians, who led the way in the great intellectual and religious awakening which took place during the intervening years from b.c. to b.c., sought to purify all things by fire and water, the two principles which had come to be regarded as the original elements, from which, or by which, all things are produced. prior to this time, in persia, and long afterwards by various other nations, baptism, a rite performed at puberty, was connected only with the sexual obligations of the person receiving it, but in the age which we are considering it became especially a cleansing or regenerating process, and was the means by which the pious devotee became initiated into the mysteries of holy living, or by which she or he was "born again." as in their religious procedure every act was performed in connection with symbols, so in the matter of baptism they were not satisfied with the inner consciousness of regeneration, but must go through with certain processes which typified the new life upon which they had entered. according to wilford, the outward symbolization of the "new birth" in the east is manifested in the following manner: "for the purpose of regeneration it is directed to make an image of pure gold of the female power of nature, either in the shape of a woman or of a cow. in this statue, the person to be regenerated is inclosed, and dragged out through the natural channel. as a statue of pure gold and of proper dimensions would be too expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred yoni, through which the person to be regenerated is to pass." thus at the time nicodemus is said to have queried concerning the mysteries of the new birth, it is observed that the outward forms of regeneration had long been in use among the pagans. in passing themselves through these apertures, the applicant for regeneration was supposed to represent the condition of one "issuing from the womb to a new scope of life." according to the testimony of various writers upon this subject, there are still extant, not alone in oriental countries, but in ireland and scotland as well, numerous excavations or apertures in the rocks which by an early race were used for the same purpose. through the misconception, bigotry, and ignorance of the roman catholic missionaries in ireland, these openings were designated as the "devil's yonies." although these emblems typified the original conception of one of their most sacred beliefs, namely, the "new birth," still they were "heathen abominations" with which the devotees of the new (?) faith must not become defiled. the people who executed these imperishable designs, and who have left in the british isles innumerable evidences of their religious beliefs, are supposed by some writers to belong to a colony which, having been expelled from persia on account of their peculiar religious beliefs, settled in the "white island," the "island of the blessed." this subject will, however, be referred to later in this work. when we closely examine the facts connected with the evolution of religion, there can be little doubt that the persians laid the foundation for that great moral and intellectual awakening which a century or two later is represented by confucious, gotama buddha, and pythagoras. from the persians, doubtless jew and gentile alike received the little leaven of spirituality which in later ages crept into their gross conception of a deity. by the persians, the hindoos, and other nations of the east, it was believed that the end of each cycle of six hundred years, at which time a new sun or savior was to come, would mark a new era of religious development. at the close of each of these cycles it was devoutly expected that the "golden age" of the past would be restored, and that mankind would again be freed from the ills which had overtaken them. as many of these cycles had passed, numerous deliverers, saviors, or solar incarnations had appeared in india, gotama buddha having been the ninth. in the east, about six or seven hundred years before the birth of christ, not only one savior or prophet but three or four of them appeared. concerning the leader of the reform in persia there seem to be many conflicting accounts. the learned faber concludes that there were two zarathustras or zoroasters, the former being identical with menu, the law giver and triplicated deity of india, and who by various writers is recognized as the noah of the hebrews. according to pliny, the former lived thousands of years before christ. several writers concur in placing him five thousand years before the siege of troy. according to sir wm. jones, the latter zoroaster lived in the time of darius hystaspes. it is now claimed that in the dabistan, one of the sacred books of persia, thirteen zoroasters appear. the name of the last great leader, together with a few of his doctrines, and various scattered fragments in the gathas, are all that remain on record of a man whose personality stands connected with the earliest attempt to reform a degraded and sensualized religion. that this prophet was without honor in his own country is shown by the following lamentation: "to what country shall i go? where shall i take refuge? what country gives shelter to the master, zarathustra, and his companion? none of the servants pay reverence to me, nor do the wicked rulers of the country. how shall i worship thee further, living wise one? what help did zarathustra receive when he proclaimed the truths? what did he obtain through the good mind? ... why has the truthful one so few adherents, while all the mighty, who are unbelievers, follow the liar in great numbers?"( ) ) quoted by viscount amberley from haug's translations. although the prophet zarathustra and his companion were first rejected, the fact seems plain that the monotheistic doctrines which they set forth were subsequently accepted as the groundwork of the religion of persia. in the opening verses of the th gatha appears the following: "it is reported that zarathustra spitama possessed the best good, for ahura mazda granted him all that may be obtained by means of a sincere worship, forever, all that promotes the good life, and he gives the same to all who keep the words and perform the actions enjoined by the good religion.... "pourutschista, the hetchataspadin, the most holy one, the most distinguished of the daughters of zarathustra, formed this doctrine, as a reflection of the good mind, the true and wise one." the fact will doubtless be observed that pourutschista was not merely a disciple of zarathustra, but that she formed the doctrine which was accepted as a "reflection of the good mind." in the th gatha it is stated that among those who "know the right paths, the law which ahura gave to the profitable," is pourutschista the "holy worthy of adoration among the daughters of zarathustra.... wise female worker of wisdom."( ) ) spiegel's translation. ormuzd, or ahura mazda, which was the essence of heat or light, was the principle adored by the followers of the reformed religion in persia. throughout the avesta the most desirable possession, and that which is most praised, is purity of life. "we praise the pure man. "the best purity praise we. "the best wish praise we of the best purity. the best place of purity praise we, the shining, endued with all brightness."( ) "this earth, together with the women, we praise which bears us, which are the women, ahura mazda whose wishes arise from purity, these we praise-- fullness, readiness, questioning, wisdom."( ) ) vespered xxvi. spiegel's translation. ) yacna xxxviii. praise is offered to the "everlasting female companion, the instructing." the following is a part of the marriage ceremony of the persians as it is found in the khorda-avesta: "do you both accept the contract for life with honorable mind? in the name and friendship of ormuzd be ever shining, be very enlarged. be increasing. be victorious. learn purity. be worthy of good praise. may the mind think good thoughts, the words speak good, the works do good. may all wicked thoughts hasten away, all wicked words be diminished, all wicked works be burnt up.... win for thyself property by right-dealing. speak truth with the rulers and be obedient. be modest with friends, clever, and well wishing. be not cruel, be not covetous.... combat adversaries with right. before an assembly speak only pure words. in no wise displease thy mother. keep thine own body pure in justice." confucius, the great chinese teacher and philosopher, who lived probably in the sixth century b.c., may be said to have been a humanitarian or moralist instead of a mystic. although he believed in a great first principle, or cause, which he termed heaven, we are given to understand that in his philosophizing little mention was made of it. the system known as confucianism was not originated by confucius. in referring to this subject legge remarks: "he said of himself (analects, vii., i), that he was a transmitter and not a maker, one who believed in and loved the ancients; and hence it is said in the thirtieth chapter of the doctrine of the mean, ascribed to his grandson, that he handed down the doctrines of yao and shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed the regulations of wan and wu, taking them as his models."( ) ) legge, preface to vol. iii. of shu king. the ancient books which confucius interpreted or rewrote laid no claim to being sacred in the sense of being inspired; but, on the contrary, were works of wisdom put forth by historians, poets, and others "as they were moved in their own minds." the most ancient of these doctrines was the shu, a work which since the period of the han dynasty, years b.c., has been called the shu king. a number of documents contained in this work date back to the twenty-fourth century b.c., and as they are regarded as historical are considered to be of greater importance than are any others of their ancient writings. second in antiquity and importance is the shih or the book of poetry. this work contains the religious views of its writers, also an account of the manners, customs, and events of the times to which they belong. for years, in china, tien or ti has expressed the moving or creating force in the universe. in later ages it is observed that this name has been attached to royalty. hwang ti is the present title of the emperor of china. from some of the texts found in the shu king, it would seem that the chinese had in the remote past caught sight of the scientific fact that virtue is its own reward. "heaven graciously distinguishes the virtuous.... heaven punishes the guilty."( ) ) max muller, sacred books of the east, book iv. the principal object of confucius seems to have been to inculcate those doctrines of his ancestors which, taking root, would in time bring about a return to those principles of former virtue, a faint knowledge of which seems still to have survived in china. the following precepts are found among his teachings: "knowledge, magnanimity, and energy are the virtues universally binding. gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness constitute perfect virtue. sincerity is the very way to heaven. my doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity. the superior man is catholic and not partisan. the mean is partisan and not catholic. the superior man is affable but not adulatory, the mean is adulatory but not affable." when asked for a word which should serve as a rule of practice for all our life he replied: "is not reciprocity such a word? what you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." on one occasion the question was asked him: "what do you say concerning the principle that injury shall be recompensed with kindness?" to which he replied: "recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness."( ) ) lun yu, xiv., . it is recorded by his disciples that there are four things from which the master was entirely free. "he had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary predeterminations, no obstinacy, and no egoism." contrary to the rule of most reformers or leaders of opinion, he always regarded himself as a learner as well as teacher. it is related of confucius that he at one time desired a governmental position, thinking that through its occupancy he might the better disseminate the ancient doctrines of rectitude and virtue. offers of individual advantage could not swerve him from his well-grounded principles of honor. on one occasion one of the rulers of the country proposed to confer upon him a city and its revenues, but confucius replied: "a superior man will only receive reward for services which he has rendered. i have given advice to the duke-king, but he has not obeyed it, and now he would endow me with this place! very far is he from understanding me."( ) ) quoted by amberley, analysis of religious belief, vol. i., p. . the fact seems evident that confucius had not sufficient strength of character to attempt a change in the social conditions of his time. he had not that grandeur of soul which enabled him to strike the key-note of reform. monarchical institutions and social distinctions he did not rebuke. the brotherhood of man and the levelling processes in human society were probably never thought of by him; certainly they were never attempted. by certain writers confucius has been accused of insincerity in a few minor matters; still, the wisdom contained in his religious doctrines, the philosophical value of his teachings relative to the regulation of human conduct, and, above all, his purity of purpose, justly entitles his name to be enrolled among the great reformers of the world. the lasting influence which this man exerted upon the minds of his countrymen, and the appreciation in which his name and works are still held, are shown by the fact that his descendants constitute the only order of hereditary nobility in china. "he lived five hundred years before christ; and yet to this day, through all the changes and chances of time and of dynasties, the descendants of confucius remain the only hereditary noblemen and national pensioners in the empire. even the imperial blood becomes diluted, degraded, and absorbed into the body politic after the seventh generation; but the descendants of confucius remain separate, through all the mutations of time and of government."( ) ) thomas magee, in the forum, vol. x., p. . laotse, the founder of the smallest of the three sects in china, namely, confucianism, buddhism, and taoism, was an old man when confucius was in his prime. the word taou signifies reason, but the doctrines believed by the taoists prove their system to be the most irrational of all the religions of the east. in an article on the taouist religion, warren benton says: "the tendency in rationalism is toward the utter destruction of a belief in the existence of unseen spirits of evil. enlightened reason dethrones devils; but laotse created devils innumerable, and the chief concern of the taouist sect has always been to manipulate these emissaries of evil. modern rationalists deny the existence of devils, and relegate them to the category of myths and to personified ideas. not so the rationalist of the orient. he finds his greatest pleasure in contemplating the very atmosphere he breathes as filled with spirits constantly seeking his injury; and to outwit his satanic majesty is the chief end of life."( ) ) pop. science, jan. . at a time when a personal devil was gradually assuming shape, it would have been singular, indeed, if there had not arisen one who, by his peculiar temperament and natural disposition, was exactly suited to the task of elaborating this doctrine in all its grim seriousness. that such an one did arise in the person of laotse is evident from what is known regarding his history and teachings. the growth of religious faith had long tended in this direction. typhon, "the wind that blasts," "darkness," and the "cold of winter," constituted the foundation of a belief in a personal devil; and, when the time was ripe for the appearance of his satanic majesty, it required only a hypochondriac--a disordered mental organization--to formulate and project this gloomy and unwholesome doctrine. there is little known of the life and character of laotse except that he labored assiduously through a long life-time for the establishment of certain principles or tenets which he believed to be essential to the well-being of humanity. in the twentieth chapter of his work are found to be some hints of his personality and of the gloomy cast of his character. he complains that while other men are joyous and gay, he alone is despondent. he is "calm like a child that does not yet smile." he is "like a stupid fellow, so confused does he feel. ordinary men are enlightened; he is obscure and troubled in mind. like the sea, he is forgotten and driven about like one who has no certain resting place. all other men are of use; he alone is clownish like a peasant. he alone is unlike other men, but he honors the nursing mother." of all the various teachers which arose during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries b.c., none of them were able to rise to the position of moral grandeur occupied by gotama buddha. the efforts put forth by this great teacher seem to have been humane rather than religious. in his time, especially in india, society had become encysted beneath a crust of seemingly impenetrable conservatism, while religion, or priestcraft, riveted the chains by which the masses of the people were enslaved. the mission of buddha was to burst asunder the bonds of the oppressed and to abolish all distinctions of caste. this was to be accomplished through the awakening of the divine life in each individual. the leading processes by which the lines of caste were weakened were in direct opposition to the established order of society. it was a blow at the old brahminical social and religious code which had grown up under the reign of priest-craft. notwithstanding the sex prejudice which had come to prevail in india, it was directly stated by buddha that any man or woman who became his disciple, who renounced the world and by abstinence from the lower indulgences of sense proclaimed her or his adherence to the higher principles of life, "at once lost either the privilege of a high caste or the degradation of a low one." earthly distinctions were of no consequence. rank depended not on the outward circumstance of birth, but on the ability of the individual to resist evil, or, upon his capacity to receive the higher truths enunciated by the new sun or savior--buddha. in one of the canonical books he is represented as saying: "since the doctrine which i teach is completely pure, it makes no distinction between noble and common, between rich and poor. it is, for example, like water, which washes both noblemen and common people, both rich and poor, both good and bad, and purifies all without distinction. it may, to take another illustration, be compared to fire, which consumes mountains, rocks, and all great and small objects between heaven and earth. again, my doctrine is like heaven, inasmuch as there is room within it without exception, for whomsoever it may be; for men and women, for boys and girls, for rich and poor."( ) ) viscount amberley, analysis of religious belief, vol. i., p. . there is little doubt that the religion of buddha was an attempt to return to the almost forgotten principles of a past age of spiritual and moral greatness. according to this ancient wisdom, man is an immortal soul struggling for perfection. the growth of the real man is a natural unfolding of the divine principle within, such process of evolution being accomplished through the power of the will. as every individual must work out his own salvation, this will-force must ever be directed toward the complete mastery of the body, or the lower self. in other words, the development of the higher life depends upon the power of the individual to overcome or conquer evil. the effect of every thought, word, and deed is woven into the soul, and no one can evade the consequences of his own acts. all sin is the result of selfishness, so that only when one renounces self and begins to live for others does the soul-life begin. no one who has arrived at a state of soul-consciousness will lead a selfish or impure life. on the contrary, every impulse of the devout buddhist goes out toward humanity and god, of whom he is a conscious part. gotama buddha was not a "savior" in the sense of bloody sacrifice for the sins of the people. on the contrary, he was an example to mankind--a man who through moral purification and a life of self-abnegation had prepared himself for this holy office. mythologically, or astrologically, he was the new sun born at the close of the cycle. he was the great light which revealed the way to eternal repose--nirvana. the mythical buddha was the prototype of the mythical christ. his mother was mai or mary, queen of heaven, or the vernal spring. he was a new incarnation of the sun--the savior of the world. in process of time his many miracles were offered as proof of his divine character. although he taught the existence of a great and universal power, he made no attempt to explain the unknowable. the infinite is to be contemplated only through its manifestations. nirvana is not annihilation, as has been erroneously taught by christian missionaries. as explained by buddhists themselves, it comprehends a state of absolute rest from human strife and wretchedness. it is the absorption or relapsing into the great first principle, whence all life is derived--a state so pure that the human is lost in the divine. "lamp of the law! i take my refuge in thy name and thee! i take my refuge in thy law of good! i take my refuge in thy order! om! the dew is on the lotus!--rise, great sun! and lift my leaf and mix me with the wave. om mani padme hum, the sunrise comes! the dewdrop slips into the shining sea!"( ) ) arnold, light of asia. from the buddhist colleges at nolanda went forth teachers who, inspired with enthusiasm in the cause of human justice and individual liberty, endeavored to abolish the abominations which had grown up under brahminical rule. the masses of the people, however, were too deeply sunken in infamy, wretchedness, and ignorance to accept, or even understand, the pure doctrines of the great teacher, and, as might have been anticipated, priest-craft soon assumed its wonted arrogance, and eventually the whole paraphernalia of antiquated dogmas were tacked upon the new system. through the various efforts put forth for the elevation of mankind during the six or seven hundred years which preceded the advent of christianity, sufficient strength had been given to the moral impetus of humanity to create in many portions of the world a strong desire for a return to purer principles, and to make the appearance of a spiritual teacher like christ possible. the effects, however, of ages of moral and intellectual degradation, in which the lowest faculties have been stimulated to the highest degree, are not wiped out in a few centuries of struggle by the few among the people who desire reform. as true reform means growth, those who have reached a higher stage of development can only point the way to others--they are powerless to effect changes for which the masses are unprepared. although through a partial revival of the ideas entertained by an ancient people the attempt was made by zoroaster, confucius, gotama buddha, pythagoras, the stoics, and other schools of philosophy, to elevate the masses of the people, and, although the unadulterated teachings of the man called christ were doubtless an outgrowth of this movement, yet the human mind had not, even as late as the appearance of this last-named reformer, sufficiently recovered from its thraldom to enable the masses to grasp those higher truths which had been entertained by an earlier civilized people. while there are doubtless many points of similarity between the religious system elaborated by gotama buddha and that enunciated by christ, there is little likeness between the teachings of the former and those set forth by the romish church, or by paul. seven hundred years b.c., the persians had grasped the idea that virtue is its own reward, and that every soul is responsible for its own growth. the fundamental doctrine of the christian church to-day is that of a vicarious atonement--a belief which takes away man's responsibility for his own misdeeds. chapter xiii. christianity a continuation of paganism. by comparing the sacred writings of the persians with the history of the events connected with the conception and birth of the mythical christ as recorded in the new testament, the fact is observed that the latter appears to be closely connected with the central figure of persian mythology. it has been found that the visit of the magi, who, following a star, were guided to the spot where the young child lay, was the fulfilment of a persian prophecy, which is to be found in the life of zarathustra as recorded in the zendavesta, while the subsequent history of the same personage is seen to be almost identical with that of the hindoo sun-god chrishna. according to the sacred books of the persians, three sons of the great zarathustra were to appear at three successive periods of time. these sons were to be incarnations of the sun, and the result of immaculate conceptions. "the first is named oschederbami. he will appear in the last millennium of the world. he will stop the sun for ten days and ten nights, and the second part of the human race will embrace the law, of which he will bring the d portion. "the second posthumous son of zoroaster is oschedermah. he will appear four hundred years after oschederbami. he will stop the sun twenty days and twenty nights, and he will bring the d part of the law, and the third part of the world will be converted. "the third is named sosiosch. he will be born at the end of the ages. he will bring the th part of the law; he will stay the sun thirty days and thirty nights, and the whole earth will embrace the law of zoroaster. after him will be the resurrection."( ) this last named son was to be born of a pure and spotless virgin, whereupon a star would appear blazing even at noonday with undiminished lustre. ) quoted by waite, history of the christian religion, p. . "you, my sons," exclaimed the seer, "will perceive its rising before any other nation. as soon, therefore, as you shall behold the star, follow it, withersoever it shall lead you; and adore that mysterious child, offering your gifts to him, with profound humility. he is the almighty word, which created the heavens."( ) ) ibid., . waite notices the conclusion of faber that this prediction was long before the birth of christ, and states that one of the reasons for such a conclusion was, that in the old irish history a similar prophecy appears--a prophecy which was delivered by a "druid of bokhara." the identity of this irish prophecy with the one in the east ascribed to zarathustra or zoroaster, is so singular that faber thinks it can be accounted for only on the hypothesis "of an ancient emigration from persia to ireland by the northwest passage, which carried the legend with it." by those who have investigated the origin of the early gospels, it is stated that the story of the magi and the star appeared in the gospel of the infancy early in the second century, and was subsequently incorporated into the preparatory chapters of luke and matthew. according to waite, there was a sect of christians called prodiceans whose leader, prodicus, about a.d. , boasted that they had the sacred books of zoroaster. from an extant fragment of the chronography of africanus is the following: "christ first of all became known from persia. for nothing escapes the learned jurists of that country, who investigated all things with the utmost care. the facts, therefore, which are inscribed upon the golden plates, and laid up in the royal temples, i shall record; for it is from the temples there, and the priests connected with them, that the name of christ has been heard of. now, there is a temple there to juno, surpassing the royal palace, which temple cyrus, that prince instructed in all piety, built, and in which he dedicated, in honor of the gods, golden and silver statues, and adorned them with precious stones. ... now about that time (as the records on the plates testify), the king having entered the temple, with the view of getting an interpretation of certain dreams, was addressed by the priest prupupius thus: 'i congratulate thee, master: juno has conceived.' 'and the king, smiling, said to him: 'has she who is dead conceived?' and he said: 'yes, she who was dead has come to life again, and begets life.' and the king said: 'what is this? explain it to me.' and he replied: 'in truth, master, the time for these things is at hand. for during the whole night the images, both of gods and goddesses, continued beating the ground, saying to each other, come, let us congratulate juno. and they say to me, prophet, come forward, congratulate juno, for she has been embraced. and i said, how can she be embraced who no longer exists? to which they reply, she has come to life again, and is no longer called juno, but urama. for the mighty sol has embraced her.' "( ) ) hyppolytus, vol. ii., p. . there is a tradition which asserts that during the early part of the second century, st. thomas went as a missionary to parthia; that after he had visited the various countries of the parthian empire, tarrying for a time at balkh, the capital of bactria, and the ancient residence of the magi, he went to india. soon after the visit of thomas to persia and india, there appeared in palestine and the adjacent countries a gospel of thomas, in which were set forth various stories closely resembling the legends found in the hindoo sacred writings. after comparing various passages of the bhagavat purana with those of the infancy, and after furnishing conclusive evidence that the latter must have been copied from the former, waite says: "the conclusion must be, that while for some of the salient points of the gospels of the infancy, the authors were indebted to zoroaster, and the legends of persia, the outline of the story was largely filled up from the history of crishna, as sent back to palestine, by the apostle thomas, from the land of the brahmins." concerning the story of herod and his order to slay all the male infants, there has been discovered in a cavern at elephanta, in india, a sculptured representation of a huge and ferocious figure, bearing a drawn sword and surrounded by slaughtered children, while mothers appear weeping for their slain. this figure is said to be of great antiquity. mary, the mother of jesus, like mai, the mother of gatama buddha, was regarded by certain sects in the earlier ages of christianity as an immortal virgin whose birth had been announced by an angel.( ) she was in fact the ancient virgin of the sphere--the mother of the gods--the queen of heaven. ) see gospels of mary and the protovangelion. as soon as christ was born he conversed with mary, as did also crishna with his mother, informing her of his divine mission. crishna was cradled among shepherds, so was christ. cansa, fearing the loss of his kingdom, sought to destroy the life of the divine infant in the same manner as did herod in the case of christ. both children are carried away by night, after which an order is issued by the ruler of the country that all the young children throughout the kingdom be slaughtered. when joseph and mary arrived in egypt, they visited the temple of serapis, where "all the magistrates and priests of the idols were assembled." upon the image being interrogated concerning the "consternation and dread which had fallen upon all our country," it answered them as follows: "the unknown god has come hither, who is truly god; nor is there anyone besides him, who is worthy of divine worship; for he is truly the son of god." and at the same instant this idol fell down, and at his fall all the inhabitants of egypt, besides others, ran together.( ) a similar story is related of crishna. this indian god, the same as christ, cured a leper. a woman, after having poured a box of precious ointment on the head of crishna, was healed; so also a woman anointed the head of jesus. crishna when but a lad displayed remarkable mental powers and the most profound wisdom before the tutor who was sent to instruct him. christ astonished the school-master zaccheus with his great learning.( ) ) gospel of the infancy, ch. iv. ) gospel of the infancy, ch. xx. crishna had a terrible encounter with the serpent calinaga; the infant christ had also a dreadful adventure with a serpent. now this calinaga which crishna encountered was a serpent goddess who was worshipped by the sect in india which was opposed to the adoration of the male principle. the early christians, however, being ignorant of the allegorical meaning of the legend, transferred it to christ literally. the mother of crishna looked in his mouth and beheld all the nations of the earth. the same story is reported of christ and his mother. finally christ, like crishna, was crucified, and like him was buried. he descended into hell and on the third day arose and ascended into heaven.( ) ) it will doubtless be urged that i am quoting from the apocryphal gospels--that the genuine books of the new testament are silent concerning many of these eastern legends. we must bear in mind, however, that during the earlier ages of christianity, these finally rejected gospels were, equally with the canonical books, considered as the word of god. the infancy is thought to be one of the earliest gospels. justin martyr was acquainted with it, a.d. to . it is referred to by irenaeus, a.d. . in the poetical myths of the ancients the sun is yearly overpowered by cold or by the destructive agencies in nature. astronomically, or astrologically, it wanders in darkness and desolation during the winter months; in fact dies, and descends into hell in order that he may rise at the easter season to gladden and make all things new again. mythologically, this new sun becomes incarnate; enters again his mother's womb, and is born into the world in the form of a man whose mission is to renew human life. hence we have an explanation of the eastern buddhas and crishnas, all of which were born of virgins at the winter solstice. the new sun which at the close of each cycle was believed by the more ancient people of the globe to "issue forth from the womb of nature to renew the world," now that the truths underlying nature-worship were lost, became a redeemer or mediator between earth and heaven, or between spirit and matter. it is stated that at the time of the appearance of christ not alone the jews, but the persians, the romans, the ancient irish, and in fact all the nations of the globe, were anxiously awaiting the event of another incarnation of the solar deity; and that maidens of all classes and conditions were in a state of eager expectation, the more pious, or at least the more ambitious among them, being in almost constant attendance at the temples and sacred shrines, whither they went to pay homage to the male emblem of generation, thereby hoping to be honored as a mai or mary. on the wall of the temple at luxor are a series of sculptures, "in which the miraculous annunciation, conception, birth, and adoration of amunoph iii., the son of the virgin queen mautmes, is represented in a manner similar to what is described in st. luke's gospel (ch. and ) of jesus christ, the son of the virgin mary, and which is found also in the gospel of st. matthew (ch. ) as an addition not met with in the earliest manuscripts,"( ) which fact has caused sharpe, from whom the above is quoted, to suggest that both accounts may have been of egyptian origin. ) barlow, symbolism, p. . the titles "lamb," "anointed," etc., which were applied to christ, all appear attached to former incarnations of the sun, the first named standing for the sun in aries. the effigies of a crucified savior found in ireland and scotland in connection with the figure of a lamb, a bull, or an elephant, the latter of which is not a native of those countries, shows that they do not represent christ, but a crucified sun-god worshipped by the inhabitants of the british islands ages before the birth of the great judean philosopher and teacher. it is plain that crishna of india and the persian mithra furnished the copy for the jesus of the romish church, all of whom mean one and the same thing--the second person in the solar trinity. by the jews, who attempted to ignore the female principle, this god is called the "lord of hosts" and "god of sabaoth," which astronomically means god of the stars and constellations, and astrologically the creator or producer of the multitudes. of this god, ieue, i h s, the author of anacalypsis says that he was the son of the celestial virgin, which she carries in her arms; the horus, lux, of the egyptians, the lux of st. john. "it is from this infant that jesus took his origin; or at least it is from the ceremonies and worship of this infant that this religion came to be corrupted into what we have of it. this infant is the seed of the woman who, according to genesis, was to bruise the head of the serpent, which, in return, was to bruise his foot or heel, or the foot or heel of her seed as the figure of the hindoo crishna proves. from the traditionary stories of this god iao, which was figured annually to be born at the winter solstice, and to be put to death and raised to life on the third day at the vernal equinox, the roman searchers after the evangelion or gospel made out their jesus. the total destruction of everything at jerusalem and in judea--buildings, records, everything--prevented them from coming to any absolute certainty respecting this person who, they were told by tradition, had come to preach the gospel of peace, to be their savior, in fulfilment of the prophecy which their sect of israelites found in their writings, and who had been put to death by the jews. from all these circumstances he came to have applied to him the monogram of i h s.... and to him at last all the legendary stories related of the god iao were attributed."( ) ) godfrey higgins, anacalypsis, book vi., ch. iv., p. . according to faber, jesus was not originally called jesus christ, but jescua hammassiah--jescua meaning joshua, and jesus, savior. ham is the om of india, and messiah, the anointed. commenting on this higgins remarks: "it will then be, the savior om the anointed, precisely as isaiah had literally foretold; or reading in the hebrew made, the anointed om the savior. this was the name of jesus of bethlehem." we have observed the fact that at the time of the birth of christ the entire world was expecting a savior--a new incarnation of the sun. the end of a cycle had come and the entire earth was to undergo a process of renovation. in a poem by virgil, who was a druid, the birth of a wonderful child is celebrated, and the prophecy of a heathen sibyl is seen to be identical with that of isaiah. "the last period sung by the sibylline prophetess is now arrived; and the grand series of ages. that series which recurs again and again in the course of our mundane revolution begins afresh. now the virgin astrea returns from heaven; and the primeval reign of saturn recommences; now a new race descends from the celestial realms of holiness. do thou, lucina, smile propitious on the birth of a boy who will bring to a close the present age of iron and introduce throughout the whole world, a new age of gold. then shall the herds no longer dread the fury of the lion, nor shall the poison of the serpent any longer be formidable. every venomous animal and every deleterious plant shell perish together. the fields shall be yellow with corn, the grape shall hang its ruddy clusters from the bramble, and honey shall distil spontaneously from the rugged oak. the universal globe shall enjoy the blessings of peace, secure under the mild sway of its new and divine sovereign." there is no lack of evidence to prove that for several centuries great numbers of christians regarded christ as a solar incarnation similar to those which from time to time were born in the valleys of the nile and the ganges. by the fathers in the church jesus christ was named the new sun, and in the early days of christianity the egyptians struck a coin representing o. b. or the holy basilisk, with rays of light darting from his head, on the reverse side of which was figured "jesus christ as the new solar deity." the similarity if not the actual identity of the religion of christ and that of the pagans in the second century is shown by various writers. the emperor hadrian writing to his friend servianus says: "those who worship serapis are also christians; even those who style themselves the bishops of christ are devoted to serapis.. .. there is but one god for them all; him do the christians, him do the jews, him do all the gentiles also worship." it has been said that the head of serapis supplied the first idea of the portrait of christ. before the figure of serapis, in his temple, used to stand isis, the celestial virgin, with the inscription "immaculate is our lady isis." in her hand she bore a sheaf of grain. as serapis, or pan, finally became christ, so isis, or the queen of heaven, became his mother, and to the latter were transferred all the titles, ceremonies, festivals, and seasons which from the earliest time had belonged to the great goddess of nature. subsequently, probably about the close of the second century, christianity began slowly to emerge from the worship of mithras and serapis, "changing the names but not the substance." upon the coinage of constantine appears soli invicto comita--"to the invincible sun my companion or guardian," and when the greek and roman christians finally separated themselves from the great body of pagan worshippers they apologized for celebrating the birthday of their savior on the th of december, saying that "they could better perform their rites when the heathen were busy with theirs." we are assured that the early christians no less than the maji acknowledged mithras as the first emanation from ormuzd, or the god of light. he was the savior which in an earlier age had represented returning life--that which follows the cold of winter. it was doubtless while they worshipped the persian mithras that many of the so-called christians gathered their first ideas concerning the immortality of the soul and of future rewards and punishments. the analogy existing between the festivals, seasons, mythoses, etc., of the various incarnations of the sun which were worshipped by the early historic nations and those belonging to christianity is too striking to be the result of chance. buddha originally represented the sun in taurus. crishna was the sun in aries. the laborings and sufferings of hercules, a god who was an incarnation of the latter, portrays the history of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. all the principal events of christ's life correspond to certain solar phases; or, in other words, all ecclesiastical calendars are arranged with reference to the festivals which commemorate the important events of his life from his conception and birth to his ascension and reception in heaven. each and every one of the solar deities has been born at midnight, on the th of december, at the time when the sun has reached its lowest position and begins to ascend. macrobius, a learned roman writer, observes that the early historic nations "believed that the sun comes forth as a babe from its cradle at the winter solstice." neith is made to say, "the sun is the fruit of my womb." the th of august, assumption day, the time when mary, the mother of jesus, ascends to heaven is the day when the zodiacal constellation virgo, "the greek astrea, leaves the european horizon," and the " th of september, when virgo emerges from the sun's rays, is held sacred as the nativity of the queen of heaven." of the mid-winter festival, bede says: "the pagans of these isles began their year on the eighth of the kalends of january, which is now our christmas day. the night before that ( th dec. eve) was called by them the medre-nak, or night of mothers, because of the ceremonies which were performed on that night."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . among christians as among pagans the christmas season was in honor of "returning light," the vernal equinox of "growing light" and st. john's day of "perfected light." in england, among pagan saxons, the midwinter festival lasted twelve days, during which time light, fire, the sun, huge stones and other similar manifestations of the deity were adored. christian and pagan alike worshipped these objects. they called christmas "the birthday of the god who is light." the savior, or the new sun, was the true light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world. according to the testimony of various writers, the festival held by christians on christmas eve used to resemble the feast of lights, celebrated in egypt in honor of neith. the tokens distributed among friends were cakes made of paste in the form of babies. these cakes were called yuledows. dow means to "grow bigger," or, "to increase." the kalends of january at rome were sacred to janus and juno to whom sacrifices were offered. the etruscans also worshipped janus who was the god (or goddess) of the year. although this deity does not appear among the twelve gods it is said to be the parent of them all. it was represented as having two faces. upon one were the letters representing , and upon the other were the keys of life and death. according to bryant this deity was called junonius, from the goddess juno, whose name resolves itself into juneh, a dove. in the hebrew this name is identical with yoni or yuni--the female principle. on the coins of this god (which was subsequently regarded as male) is usually figured a boat, although a dove with an olive branch is sometimes observed.( ) ) see faber, pagan idolatry. juno is thought to be the same as jana, which came from jah of the hebrews. diana was diva jana or "dea jana who is the same as astarte or ashtaroth of the sidonians." regarding the transference of the mid-winter festival of the pagans to the christian calendar, forlong says: "the early christians undoubtedly selected this roman saturnalia as an important period in the life of christ, at first calling it the time of his conception, and later of his birth, this last best suiting the views and feelings of their solo-christian flocks. the jews called the day of the winter solstice the fast of tebet. the previous time was one of darkness, and on the th began their feast of lights."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . in france the ancient name for christmas is noel, a term which until recently has baffled all antiquarian research. it is now thought that it is formed from nuadh and vile which together mean all heal. although every possible effort has been put forward to give to this date (the th of december) the appearance of authenticity as the birth of christ, still, so far as i am able to find, no one accredited with any degree of trustworthiness has ever been rash enough to attempt its ratification as a matter of history. tylor calls attention to the fact that in the religious symbolism of the material and spiritual sun augustine and gregory of nyssa discourse on the "growing light and dwindling darkness that follow the nativity," and cites the instance of leo the great who, in a sermon, rebukes the "pestiferous persuasion, that this solemn day is to be honored not for the birth of christ, but for the rising of the new sun." on the authority of this same prelate it is found that in the fifth century, the faithful, before entering the basilica of st. peter, were wont to turn and salute the shining orb of day. the roman winter solstice which was connected with the worship of mithra, and which was named the "birthday of the unconquered om," was adopted by the western churches some time during the fourth century. from the west it passed to the eastern churches, where it finally became "the solemn anniversary of the birth of christ." in ireland the ceremonies attending the mid-winter festival were formerly regarded as exceedingly important. a short time before the approach of the winter solstice, voices were heard throughout the island proclaiming: "the new year is at hand! gather the mistletoe!" the mistletoe wreaths which formed the principal decorations of venus' temple were at first proscribed by the christian preachers, but, in process of time they not only found their way into the sanctuary, but were given a place over the altars, their final signification being "good will to men."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. i., p. . although the tokens of friendship which were distributed by the pagans at the season of the mid-winter festival differed somewhat from those which at the present time are exchanged among christians at the same season of the year, still, there can be no doubt that the christmas tree, loaded with gifts, is a remnant of that worship under which the sun was recognized as the source whence all blessings flow. down to a late date, fire was a conspicuous element at the festival of the winter solstice. as the yule-log blazed upon the hearth, our ancestors set up huge stones and danced round them, thus worshipping the god of fertility. on the th and st of march the sun illumines exactly half the earth. at this time the day has conquered the night. light has dethroned darkness, a complete victory has been gained over typhon and the new god comes forth "with healing in his wings." on lady's day, the th of march, the virgin conceives. in phoenicia numerous fetes were instituted to rejoice with astarte in her conception. during the months preceding the birth of the young sun-god the queen of heaven receives marked homage. in a former portion of this work we have observed that the festival which celebrated the return of spring was instituted by the inventors of the neros thousands of years prior to the beginning of the christian era, to celebrate the vernal equinox and to commemorate a return of nature's bounties; but, after male reproductive power began to be regarded as the creator, when passion came to be considered as the moving force in the universe, and when the operations of nature began to be typified by a dead man on a cross who was to rise again, easter was celebrated in commemoration of a risen savior or sun-god. the following is an account given in ramsay's travels of cyrus, concerning the vernal equinox festivals in the east. when cyrus entered the temples he found the public clad in mourning. in a cavern lay the image of a young man (the dying savior) on a bed of flowers and odoriferous herbs nine days were spent in fasting, prayers, and lamentations, after which the public sorrow ceased and was changed into gladness. songs of joy succeeded weeping (for tamuz), the whole assembly singing hymns: "adonis is returned to life, urania weeps no more, he has ascended to heaven, he will soon return to earth and banish hence all crimes and miseries forever." this scene, it will be remembered, was presented years prior to the birth of christ. in rome, throughout the months preceding the winter solstice, hilaria or ceres, was especially honored. apollo and diana rose on the th of the julian april and on the th their religious festivals began. on easter morn, during the earlier ages of the church, the observances of christians were exactly the same as were those of the so called pagans, all together hurried out long before the break of day that they might behold the sun ascend, or "dance" as they called it, for on this morning he was to "make the earth laugh and sing." pagan and christian alike greeted each other with the salutation "the lord is risen," and the reply was "the lord is risen indeed." on easter morning the peasants of saxony and brandenburg still climb to the hilltops "to see the sun give his three joyful leaps." in buckland's land and water it is stated that on the first of may all the choristers of magdalene college, oxford, still meet on the summit of their tower, feet high, and sing a latin hymn as the sun rises, during which time ten bells are rung "to welcome the gracious apollo." formerly, high mass was celebrated here and early mass for sol was held in the college chapel, but, as at the time of the reformation this service was forbidden, "it has since been performed on the top of the tower." after the hymn is sung "boys blow loud blasts to sol through bright new tin horns." perhaps none of the ideas which enter into present religious rites and ceremonies proclaims its eastern origin more forcibly than do those connected with the veneration of fire. the testimony of all writers upon this subject agrees that in europe, down to a late date in the christian era, fire was still adored, and in some mysterious manner was connected with the creator. upon the subject of the continuation of sun and fire worship to modern times, it is stated that the ancient bonfires with which the north german hills used to be ablaze mile after mile are not altogether given up by local custom. in ireland as late as the year , the ancient canaanitish and jewish rite of passing children through fire as a cleansing or regenerating process was still in operation. it is related that at stated seasons great fires were lighted in public places, on which occasions, fathers, taking their children in their arms, would leap and run through the flames. at the same time, two large fires were kindled a short distance from each other through which the cattle were driven. it was believed that by means of this ceremony, fecundity is imparted both to man and beast. may, the month in which all nature revives, and in which life starts anew, is the time selected for the lighting of those sacred fires. may is the month of the fires of baal. according to maurice in his work on the antiquities of india, the festival and the may-pole of great britain are the remnants of a religious ceremony once common in egypt, india, and phoenicia, which nations all worshipping the same deity, celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of taurus at the vernal equinox, but which in consequence of the precession of the equinoxes is removed far in the year from its original situation. this festival is thought to be coeval with a time when the equinox actually took place at that time. it was formerly in honor of the goddess bhavania, who, under various names, was once worshipped in every country of the globe. "she is identical with the dea syria of chaldea, and the venus urania of persia." at the present time there is direct and indisputable evidence that sacred fires once flamed over the whole of britain. a few days prior to bealtine season, every flame was ordered extinguished, to be relighted on the first of may by holy fire drawn directly from the sun. of fire-worship toland observes: "on may-day the druids made prodigious fires on these cairns, which being every one in sight of some other could not but afford a glorious show over a whole nation. these fires were in honor of beal, or bealan, latinized by the roman writers into belanus, by which name the gauls and their colonies understood the sun, and therefore, to this hour, the first of may is, by the aboriginal irish, called la bealtine, or the day of belan's fires. may-day is likewise called la bealtine by the highlanders of scotland, who are no contemptible part of the celtic offspring. so it is with the isle of man: and in armorica a priest is called belee, or the servant of bel, and the priesthood belegieth."( ) ) quoted by godfrey higgins, celtic druids, ch. v., p. . down to a comparatively recent time, in the british isles, the youth of both sexes used to arise long before daybreak on may-day, and in large companies set out for the woods, there to gather flowers, boughs, and branches, which, on returning at night, were used to decorate their homes. this festival is said to be the most ancient of any known, and during the earlier and purer ages of human faith was celebrated in honor of returning spring. in later ages, however, after passion had become the only recognized god, may-day was celebrated with "all manner of obscenity and lewdness." although the uneducated masses among the gauls worshipped apollo, mercury, and mars without understanding their true significance, the druids, who are thought to be pythagorians, invoked one great power, the animating force which pervades the universe, the essence of which they believed resides in fire. it is related that although after the introduction of romish christianity, may fires still continued to be lighted on bealtine day, the more impressive ceremonies took place on the d of june, on the eve of the nativity of st. john. the early preachers, wishing to defer to the prejudices and usages of the people, "yet not so as to interfere with the celebration of easter at the vernal equinox, retained the bealtine ceremonial, only transferring it to the saint's day." of these fire festivals and their adoption by the christian church tylor says: "the solar christmas festival has its pendant at mid-summer. the summer solstice was the great season of fire festivals throughout europe on the heights, of dancing round and leaping through the fires, of sending blazing fire-wheels to roll down from the hills into the valleys, in sign of the sun's descending course. these ancient rites attached themselves in christendom to st. john's eve. "it seems as though the same train of symbolism which had adapted the mid-winter festival to the nativity, may have suggested the dedication of the mid-summer festival to john the baptist, in clear allusion to his words 'he must increase but i must decrease.' "( ) ) tylor, primitive culture, vol. ii., p. . in a description recently given of the "moral, religious, and social disease" which broke out a.d. , in the lower rhine region, and which was denominated as the "greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of possession," andrew d. white says: "the immediate origin of these manifestations seems to have been the wild revels of st. john's day."( ) ) pop. science, vol. xxxv., p. . upon this subject toland observes that he has seen the people of ireland running and leaping through the st. john's fire proud of passing through it unsinged. although ignorant of the origin of this ceremony, they nevertheless regarded it as some kind of a lustration by means of which they were to be specially blessed. to every domestic hearth was carried the seed of bealtine, or st. john's fire, which during the year was not permitted to go out.( ) ) although the preservation of holy fire upon every hearth was clearly a religious observance, still, as in those days there were no matches, the material benefit to be derived from this precaution doubtless had a significance apart from that connected with worship. according to the testimony of tylor, the festival of john the baptist was celebrated in germany down to a late date. this writer quoting from a low german book of the year , refers to the "nod fire" which was sawed out of wood to light the st. john's bonfire "through which the people leapt and ran and drove their cattle." with regard to the worship of fire and light it is related that in jerusalem, at the present time, the easter service is performed by the bishop of the church emerging from a tomb with lighted tapers "from which all crave lights." on the authority of peter martyr, bishop of alexandria in the third century, we are informed that the place in egypt where christ was banished, which is called maturea, a lamp is kept constantly burning in remembrance of this event. although the story of this banishment is doubtless borrowed from the life of the hindoo god crishna, the fact is evident that those who appropriated it, and used it in furbishing the mythical history of christ, had no scruples against fire worship--a religion which we have been taught to regard as belonging exclusively to the pagans. in the ecclesiastical processions of the church of rome is frequently to be observed the figure of a dragon, in the mouth of which "holy and everlasting fire" is observed to be burning. a boy follows the procession with a lighted taper, so that in case the fire is extinguished it may be relighted. in referring to this subject the rev. j. b. deane says: "the whole ceremony may be considered as a lively representation of an ophite procession as it advanced through the sinuous paralleiths of karnak. so that no wonder the illiterate races were deceived into thinking that there was no harm in calling themselves christians, for all their dear old faiths are here--fire, arks, poles, and fire in an ark." almost innumerable instances are given by various writers upon this subject, showing that the sun worship of the ancients has been continued to the present time by the so called followers of christ, in the shrines of the east, with no change even of names to distinguish it from that of the christian faith. by those who have spent much time in investigating the holy land, it is related that nearly all the spots in and about jerusalem, sacred to greek and romish christians as connected with the life and death of their risen lord, are equally sacred to the pagans as commemorating the life and death of their savior--the new sun. even gethsemane is marked by characteristics which prove that it is no less interesting to pagans, or, more properly speaking, to the pagan followers of christ, than it is to those of the greek and romish churches. here is a holy tree, and not far distant is a cave of mithras. there is also to be seen a trinity of stones "those of janus (chemosh), petros and ion, all solar terms and connected with the sitting or sinking down to rest of the kuros." messrs. maundrell and sandys, who in visited all the holy places in and around jerusalem, state that the entire city, but especially the sites of moriah, zion, and suburbs were hotbeds of fire and phallic worship as usually developed still in the east. the topography of ancient delphi, on the site of which was built the village of kastri, and at which place excavations are now being made under the direction of the american school of archaeology, has ever been a place of peculiar interest to the mystic. here are to be found all the natural features and objects which gladden the heart and stimulate the imagination of a solo-phallic worshipper. the holy mt. parnassus, the fountain of kastali, the deep cave said to be pythian, and the remnants of huge sepulchres hewn in the rocks all conspire to make of this spot a perfect abode for the god, or goddess, of fertility. here, too, is a beautiful lake and near it a sacred fig-tree which has been struck by lightning, or, "touched by holy fire." of this sacred place forlong writes: "christianity has never neglected this so-called pagan shrine, nor yet misunderstood it, if we may judge by the saint she has located here, for mr. hobhouse found in the rocky chasm dipped in the dews of castaly, but safe in a rocky niche, a christian shrine; and close by a hut called the church of st. john; yea verily of ione, she who had once reigned here supreme; whilst on a green plot a few yards below the basin, in a little grove of olive trees, stood the monastery of panhagia or holy virgin, so that here we still have and beside her sacred form in the cleft, men who have consecrated their manhood to the old mother and queen of heaven, just as if she of syria had never been heard of. "doubtless they knew little of what civilized europe calls christianity, for i have spent many days conversing with such men, and seen little difference between them and those similarly placed in the far east--fervid christians though greeks and syrians are." perhaps nothing shows the extent to which the religion of the pagans has been retained by christianity more than does the worship of the serpent. it has been said that this reptile enters into every mythology extant. ferguson is authority for the statement that "he is to be found in the wilderness of sinai, the groves of epidaurus, and in samothracian huts." he constitutes a prominent factor in the religious worship of india, assyria, palestine, and egypt, and, notwithstanding the fact that he is not a native of ireland, in an earlier age representations of him appear in profusion among the symbols of that country. it has been said that there is scarcely an egyptian sculpture known in which this reptile does not figure. the serpent whenever it appears as a religious emblem always typifies desire--creative energy--which, proceeding from the sun, is manifested in man and in animals. whether it be a veritable snake in a box, a serpent connected with the figure of a woman, or as a carved representation on monuments or stones, or as chains or wreaths on columns, bas-reliefs or friezes, the signification is the same. the sacred character of this reptile among the gnostics is shown by the accounts given of their religious rites and ceremonies. by many of these sects this holy creature was kept in a box, ark, or chest, and when the eucharistic service was to be performed, he was enticed forth from his resting-place by a bit of bread. so soon as his holiness had wound himself about the offering, the sacrifice was complete and the service was concluded by "singing a hymn to almighty god, and praying for acceptance in and through the serpent." in later ages when the attempt was made to abolish serpent worship from the christian church, it was declared by the leaders in the movement that ophiolatry had been imported from persia--that it had been brought in by ignorant devotees who were too weak to renounce their former faith.( ) ) forlong, rivers of life. the extent to which the symbols representing serpent, sun, tree, and plant worship are still retained as part and parcel of the symbolism of christianity is shown by the following report regarding the adoption of a seal by the presbyterian church which appeared in the daily press only a few years ago. "after the assembly opened, the committee for the selection of a seal made a report recommending: that the general assembly hereby adopts as its official seal the device of a serpent suspended upon a cross, uplifted within a wilderness, in form as represented upon the official seal of the trustees of the general assembly, and displayed upon a circular field of the same proportions. in addition thereto the figure of a rising sun appearing above the margin of the wilderness, whose out-shooting beams shall occupy the centre of the field. further, the decoration of a demi-wreath of two palm branches (in the form of the wreath upon the seal of the westminster assembly of divines), placed around the margin of the upper hemisphere of the field; and on the lower hemisphere of the field a demi-wreath composed of a branch of oak united with an olive branch. further, that the words of the motto, 'christus exaltus salvatar,' shall be displayed in a semi-circle upon the upper part of the field, on either side of the standard of the cross, and, encompassing the whole in a bordure, the following words, in full or in proper abbreviation thereof, 'the seal of the general assembly of the presbyterian church in the united states of america.'" the origin of the rite of baptism as performed at the present time in christian churches, may be traced directly to the worship of the sun, within which were supposed to reside the reproductive powers of nature. all nations have had ceremonies corresponding to our baptism and confirmation rites, such baptism being either by fire or water. when we remember that for ages fertility, or the power to reproduce, constituted the idea of the deity, we are not surprised to find that the original signification of the rite of baptism had, and still has, in some of the oriental countries, special reference to the child's sexual obligations. in india, the religious rites performed upon the individual occur at birth or soon after; at betrothal, which takes place in childhood; at puberty; at marriage, and at death. the fact will be noticed that all sexual (spiritual) obligations and seasons fall within the domain of priestly supervision and surveillance. the child at baptism is dedicated to vesta, or hestia, the queen of hearths and homes, a divinity who is supposed to assist him in securing the special evidence of divine favor, namely, fruitfulness of body. among hindoos and jews, excessive reproduction was the lord's mark of favor. in india there has been a special hell provided for childless women, and with jewesses no curse was equal to barrenness. baptism, or the ceremony connected with the naming of children in christian countries, is seen to be identical with that performed in mexico among the aztecs. after the lips and bosom of the infant had been sprinkled with water, the lord was implored to "permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given to it before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be born anew." among the petitions which are offered to the deity is the following: "impart to us, out of thy great mercy, thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through our own merit." in their moral code appear these maxims: "keep peace with all; bear injuries with humility; god who sees, will avenge you." "he who looks too curiously on a woman, commits adultery with his eyes."( ) ) quoted by prescott from sahagun. conquest of mexico, book i., chap . chapter xiv. christianity a continuation of paganism--(continued). from the facts recorded in the foregoing pages, we have seen that true christianity was but a continuation of that great movement which was begun in persia seven or eight centuries before, and whose gathering strength had been emphasized by the humane doctrines set forth in the various schools of greek philosophy. in the first century of the christian era may be observed among various sects, notably the gnostics, a desire to popularize the teachings of an ancient race, and to accentuate those principles which had been taught by buddha, pythagoras, the stoic philosophers, the roman jurisconsults and others. in other words the object of the new religion was to stimulate the altruistic characters which had been developed during the evolutionary processes, and to strengthen and encourage the almost forgotten principles of justice and personal liberty upon which early society was founded, but which through ages of sensuality and selfishness had been denied expression. when we remember the tenacity with which the human mind clings to established beliefs and forms, it is not perhaps singular that in a comparatively short time these principles were lost sight of, and that the entire system of corrupt paganism, with christ as the new solar deity, was reinstated; neither is it remarkable, when we reflect upon the length of time required to bring about any appreciable change in human thought and action, that the principles which this great teacher enunciated are at the present time only just beginning to be understood. to one who carefully studies the history of christianity by the light of recently developed truths, the fact will doubtless be discovered that the fundamental difference existing between catholic and protestant sects is grounded in the old feud arising out of the relative importance of the sex-principles. from the days of zoroaster to the final establishment of christianity by paul, the tendency--although slight--had been toward the elevation of woman, and consequently toward a greater acknowledgment of the female element in the god-idea. considerable impetus was given to the cause of woman's advancement through the doctrines of the various schools of philosophy in greece, and subsequently by the efforts put forth by the roman lawyers to establish their equality with men before the law; hence, during the first hundred years of the christian era the "new religion" seems to have contained much of the spirit of the ancient philosophy. by several of the early christian sects, the second person in the trinity was female, as was also the holy ghost. in a "fragment of a gospel preserved by st. jerome, and believed to have been from the original aramaean gospel of st. matthew, with additions, the holy ghost (ruach), which in hebrew is feminine, is called by the infant savior, 'my mother, the holy ghost.' "( ) ) barlow, essays on symbolism, p. . the mission of christ was that of a regenerator of mankind, an office which had been symbolized by the powers of the sun. he was to restore that which was lost. he attempted to teach to the masses of the people the long neglected principles of purity and peace. he did not condemn woman. he was baptized by john (ion or yon) in water, the original symbol for the female element, and while in the water; the holy ghost in form of a dove (female) descended upon him. to those who have given attention to the symbolism of the pagan worship these facts are not without signification. because of the peculiar tendency of christ's teachings women soon became active factors in their promulgation. if there were no other evidence to show that they publicly taught the new doctrines, the injunction of st. paul, "i suffer not a woman to teach," would seem to imply that they were not silent. the doctrines of the gnostics were particularly favorable to women. marcellina, who belonged to this order, was the founder of a sect called marcelliens. of her works waite observes: "it would scarcely be expected that the heretical writings of a woman would be preserved amid such wholesale slaughter of the obnoxious works of the opposite sex. the writings of marcellina have perished."( ) not only did women teach publicly, and write, but according to bunsen they claimed the privilege of baptizing their own sex. the reason for this is evident. before baptism it was customary for the newly-made converts to strip and be anointed with oil. after the establishment of paul's doctrines, however, "the bishops and presbyters did not care to be relieved from the pleasant duty of baptizing the female converts."( ) ) history of the christian religion, p. . ) ibid., p. . although the utmost care has been exercised to conceal the fact that women equally with men, performed the offices connected with the early church, yet by those who have paid attention to the true history of this movement, there can be no doubt about the matter. notwithstanding the early tendencies of the "new religion" toward the recognition of women, and toward the restoration of the female principle in the deity, the policy to be pursued by the church was soon apparent, for paul, the real founder of the system calling itself christian, and a man imbued with asiatic prejudices concerning women, arrogantly declared that "man is the head of woman as christ is the head of the church." women were commanded to be under obedience. neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man; thus was re-established and emphasized the absurd doctrine of the lingaites, that the male is an independent entity, that he is spirit and superior to the female which is matter. after this indication of the policy to be pursued under the new regime, it would scarcely be expected that the efforts put forth by the various sects among the gnostics to reinstate the female element either on the earth or in heaven would be successful, and as might be anticipated from the facts already adduced, as early as the year , at the council of nice, a male trinity was formally established, and soon thereafter, the collylidians, a sect which rigorously persisted in the adoration of the female principle, were condemned. at the council of laodicea, a.d. , the th canon forbade the ordination of women for the ministry and the th canon prohibited them from entering the altar. the devotees of female worship, although for a time silenced, were evidently not convinced, and to force their understanding into conformity with the newly established order, the nestorians, in the year a. d., reopened the old dispute, and formally denied to mary the title of mother of god. their efforts, however, were of little avail, for in the year , at the council of ephesus, the third general council, the decision of the nestorians was reversed and the virgin mother reinstated. upon this subject barlow remarks: "well might those who made this symbolical doctrine what it now is, at length desire to do tardy justice to the female element, by promoting the mother to the place once occupied by the egyptian neith, and crowning her queen of heaven."( ) the fact will doubtless be observed, however, that by the romish church the idea of the god-mother differs widely from the queen of heaven--the original god of the ancients. mary the mother of jesus is not a creator, but simply a mediator between her son and his earthly devotees--a doctrine only a trifle less masculine in texture than that of an almighty father and his victimized son. the worship of mary was adopted by the so-called christians in response to a craving in the human heart for a recognition of those characters developed in mankind which may be said to contain the germ of the divine. the masculine god of the jews was feared not loved, and his son had already been invested with his attributes. he was all powerful, hence a mediator, a mother, was necessary to intercede in behalf of fallen man, and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that woman had become the "cause of evil in the world." ) essays on symbolism, p. . the great goddess of the ancients, perceptive wisdom, the deity of giving, she who represented the purely altruistic characters developed in mankind, and whose worship involved a scientific knowledge of the processes of nature, when engrafted upon the so-called christian system, although indicating an important step toward the recognition of the genuine creative principles, was not understood. although her effigies were brought from the east and made to do duty as representations of mary, the mother of christ, a knowledge of her true significance lay hurled beneath ages of sensuality and selfishness. by those who have made it their business to investigate this subject, it is observed that there is scarcely an old church in italy in which there is not to be found a remnant of a black virgin and child. in very many instances these black virgins have been replaced by white ones, the older figures having been retired to some secluded niche in the church where they are held especially sacred by the ignorant devotees who know absolutely nothing of their original significance. we are assured that many of these images have been painted over, ostensibly in imitation of bronze, but the whites of the eyes, the teeth, and colored lips reveal the fact that they are really not intended to represent bronze, but figures of a black virgin goddess and child whose worship has been imported into europe from the east. i had been told that one of the oldest of these images extant was to be found in augsburg; a thorough search, however, in all the churches and cathedrals of that city failed to reveal it, but in the museum at munich such a figure is to be seen. it is in a state of decay, one arm of the mother and a portion of the child's figure being worn away. upon this subject godfrey higgins remarks: "if the author had wished to invent a circumstance to corroborate the assertion that the romish christ of europe is the crishna of india, how could he have desired anything more striking than the fact of the black virgin and child being so common in the romish countries of europe? a black virgin and child among the white germans, swiss, french, and italians!!!"( ) ) anacalypsis, book iv., ch. i., p. . we have observed that during an earlier age in the history of religious worship, as the female was supposed to comprehend both the female and male elements in creation, a belief in the possible creative power of the female independently of the male was everywhere entertained, and that after the schismatic faction arose which endeavored to exalt the male, the production of a son by a woman unaided by man, was among the yonigas to be the sign which would forever settle the question of the superior importance of the female functions in the processes of reproduction, and consequently, also, her claim to the greater importance in the deity. the sacred books of india show that from a former belief in one or the other of the two creative principles throughout nature as god, the people had come to accept both female and male as necessary elements in reproduction, the latter being the more important. in course of time this change seems to have been universal and to have extended to all the countries of the globe. as the male could not create independently of the female, or, as spirit was dependent on matter for its manifestations, there arose a necessity for a savior to redeem man from the evil effects arising from his relations with woman who was regarded as matter, and who in course of time became the cause of evil. concerning the doctrines which prevailed in the earlier ages of christianity relative to the ancient dual principle in creation, and regarding the offices which were performed by the two elements, male and female, in the deity, we have the following from justinus, who is said to have been contemporary with peter and paul: "when elohim had prepared and created the world as a result from joint pleasure, he wished to ascend up to the elevated parts of heaven, and to see that not anything of what pertained to the creation laboured under deficiency. and he took his own angels with him, for his nature was to mount aloft, leaving edem below; for inasmuch as she was earth, she was not disposed to follow upward her spouse. elohim, then, coming to the highest part of heaven above and beholding a light superior to that which he himself had created, exclaimed: 'open me the gates, that entering in i may acknowledge the lord.'" as he enters the good one addresses him in the following manner: "sit thou on my right hand." then the soaring male principle says to the good one "permit me lord to overturn the world which i have made, for my spirit is bound to men." to which the good one replies: "no evil canst thou do while thou art with me, for both thou and edem made the world as a result of conjugal joy. permit edem then, to hold possession of the world as long as she wishes; but you remain with me." while the father is drawn away from earth to heaven, edem, in the meantime is bringing woes innumerable upon man. naas, who has received his evil nature from her, and who is a child of the devil, has debauched eve, "henceforward vice and virtue are prevalent among men." the father seeing these things dispatches baruch his third angel to moses, and through him spake to the children of israel, that they might be converted unto the good one. but the third angel, naas, by the soul of which came from edem upon moses, as also upon all men, observed the precepts of baruch, and caused his own peculiar injunctions to be hearkened unto. again, after these occurrences baruch, the angel of the good one, was sent to the prophets to warn them against the wiles of edem, but in the same manner nass, the devil, enticed them away, they being allured by him to their own destruction. again elohim selected hercules, an uncircumcised prophet, and sent him to quell the disturbance caused by naas or edem and to release the father from their power. "these are the twelve conflicts of hercules which he underwent, in order, from first to last, viz.: lion, and hydra, and boar, and the others successively. for they say that these are the names of them among the gentiles, and they have been derived, with altered denomination, from the energy of the maternal angels. when he seemed to have vanquished his antagonists, omphale (now she is venus) clings to him and entices away hercules, and divests him of his power, viz.: the commands of baruch which elohim issued. and in place of this power babel, or venus, envelops him in her own peculiar robe, that is, in the power of edem, who is the power below; and in this way the prophecy of hercules remained unfulfilled and his work." as men were still bound by the power of edem, or the devil, in the days of herod the king, baruch was again dispatched by elohim, and coming to nazareth delivered his message to jesus, son of joseph and mary. nass, who, as we have seen, was the evil spirit in edem, wished to entice away jesus also. he was not, however, disposed to listen but remained faithful to baruch. naas, overcome by anger at not being able to seduce him, caused him to be crucified. "he, leaving the body of edem on the accursed tree, ascended to the good one; saying to edem, 'woman, thou retainest thy son,' that is, the natural and the earthly man. but jesus himself commending his spirit into the hands of the father, ascended to the good one. now the good one is priapus, and he it is who antecedently caused the production of everything that exists. on this account he is styled priapus, because he previously fashioned all things according to his design. for this reason, he says, in every temple is preserved his statue, which is revered by every creature; and there are images of him in the highways carrying over his head ripened fruits, that is, the produce of the creation, of which he is the cause, having in the first instance formed, according to his design, the creation, when as yet it had no existence."( ) ) hippolytus, refutation of all heresies, book v., p. . thus the fact is observed not only that in the time of paul, phallic worship still existed, but by the writings of justinus and others is shown the manner in which the doctrine that woman is the cause of evil in the world became formulated and adopted as part and parcel of the christian belief. staniland wake, director of the anthropological society of london, when commenting on the obscene myths upon which the christian religion rests, remarks: "the fundamental basis of christianity is more purely phallic than that of any other religion now existing, and its emotional nature... shows how intimately it was related to the older faiths which had a phallic basis." after stating that the myth of creation and that of the flood have their exact counterpart in india, the rev. mr. faber remarks that "there is no rite or ceremony directed in the pentateuch of which there is not an exact copy in the rites of the pagans." the christian doctrines as established by paul, and afterwards formulated into a system by the romish church, were adopted by the ignorant multitude who, being incapable of understanding the higher principles involved, accepted the allegories beneath which were veiled the ancient mysteries literally, and as the highest expression of divine wisdom. hence the comparatively recent observation that the "new religion was eventually but the gathering in of the superstitions of paganism" is a matter of little surprise to those who have carefully examined the facts connected with the growth of religious faith. under the new regime christ became the new solar deity and round him were finally ranged all the myths of solo-phallic worship which had prevailed under the adoration of crishna at a time when the higher truths underlying pure nature-worship had been forgotten. chapter xv. christianity in ireland. according to the accounts in the new testament, the wise men of the east, meaning persia, had foretold the coming of christ. the fulfilment of the ancient persian prophecy as applied to jesus, together with the reference to the "star" which the maji saw, and which went before them till it came and stood over where the young child lay, furnishes a striking illustration of the manner in which eastern legends and ancient sacred writings are interwoven with the doctrines relating to christianity. in the sacred books of the east it is prophesied that "after three thousand and one hundred years of the caligula are elapsed, will appear king saca to remove wretchedness from the world." we have seen that at the birth of christ the time had arrived for a new solar incarnation. regarding the introduction of christianity into ireland it is claimed by certain writers that the irish did not receive the "new religion" from greek missionaries; but when at the close of the cycle, a new solar deity, an avatar of vishnu or crishna was announced, and when missionaries from the east proclaimed the glad tidings of a risen savior, the irish people gladly accepted their teachings, not, however, as a new system, but as the fulfilment to them of the prophecy of the most ancient seers of the east, and as part and parcel of the religion of their forefathers. therefore when the devotees of the romish faith, probably about the close of the fifth century of the christian era, attempted to "convert" ireland, they found a religion differing from their own only in the fact that it was not subject to rome, and was free from the many corruptions and superstitions which through the extreme ignorance and misapprehension of its western adherents had been engrafted upon it. concerning the form of religious worship in great britain, and the fact that phallic worship prevailed there, forlong writes: "the generality of our countrymen have no conception of the overruling prevalence of this faith, and the number of its lingham gods throughout our islands." these symbols were always in the form of an obelisk or tower, thereby indicating the worship of the male energy. although emblems of the female element in the deity were present, they were less pronounced and of far less importance than those of the male. these monuments were erected on knolls, at crossroads and centers of marts or villages, and were placed on platforms which were usually raised from five to seven steps. a few years ago the shires of gloucester, wilts, and somerset still claimed over two hundred of these crosses, though all of them were not at that time in a perfect state of preservation. it would seem that in britain and ireland the seed of the "new" doctrine, that which involved a recognition of the mother element in the god-idea, had fallen on more congenial soil, for within three centuries after the birth of christ, the various original monuments typifying the male principle had all been ornamented with the symbols representing the female in the deity. the ancient religious structures of the lingaites still continued as recognized faith shrines, changed only by the emblems of the new religion which had been engrafted upon them. the earliest greek and roman missionaries knew full well the significance of these symbols, and we are given to understand that "a few of the more spiritual of the christian sects made war upon them and all their ephemeral substitutes, such as maypoles, holy-trees, real crosses, etc." it is declared also that, as "later" christians were unacquainted with the significance of these emblems, "they adopted them as their own, employing them as the mystic signs of their own faith." although the earliest greek and roman missionaries understood the signification of these faith shrines, the complaints against them seem soon to have ceased, and the "fierce wars" waged over them appear to have left little trace of their ravages, except that the female emblems with which these monuments had been supplied by those who had received the new faith direct from the east, were all removed. as the male monuments and symbols were all permitted to remain undisturbed, this fact of itself would seem to indicate that the "pagan abominations" against which these pious devotees of a "spiritual religion" thundered their denunciations, included only the female emblems. the fact must be borne in mind that the western church, which was rapidly usurping the ecclesiastical authority of britain and ireland, had not itself at this time adopted the worship of the virgin mary. a set of iconoclastic monks whom the christian world is pleased to designate as st. patrick, and who probably early in the fifth century of our era amused themselves by chiseling from the irish monuments many of the symbols of the female power, removed also the figures of serpents which had for ages appeared in connection with the emblems of woman, and by this act won the plaudits of an admiring christian world; chiefly, however, for the skill manifested in "banishing snakes from ireland." in addition to this dignified amusement, we find that the same person or set of persons ordered to be burned hundreds of volumes of the choicest irish literature, volumes which contained the annals of the ancient irish nation, and in which, it is believed, was stored much actual information concerning the remote antiquity of the human race. the extent to which the worship of the male emblems of generation prevailed in the christian church even as late as the th century, proves that it was not the particular symbols connected with the worship of fertility upon which the western christian missionaries made war, but, on the contrary, that it was the recognition by them of that detested female element against which, even before the erection of the tower of babel, there had been almost a constant warfare. the rites of potin, or photin, bishop of lyons, who was honored in provence, languedoc and the lyonais as st. fontin, also the rites performed in many of the christian churches as late as the th century, prove that the devotees of the christian system were not at this time a whit behind their pagan predecessors in their zeal for "heathen abominations." the only difference being that the druids, a people who still retained a faint conception of ancient nature worship, had not become entirely divested of the purer ideas which in an earlier age of the race had constituted a creative force. that the war of the sexes was revived, and that for many centuries much strife was engendered over the exact importance which should be ascribed to the female element in the deity may not be doubted. an ancient homily on trinity sunday has the following: "at the deth of a manne, three bells should be ronge as his kuyl in worship of the trinitie, and for a woman, who was the second person of the trinitie two bells should be ronge." upon this subject hargrave jennings remarks: "here we have the source of the emblematic difficulty among the master masons who constructed the earlier cathedrals, as to the addition, and as to the precise value of the second (or feminine) tower of the western end or galilee of the church."( ) ) rosicrucians, vol. i., p. . the fact that the religion of the ancient irish, who, were phallic worshippers, was modified but not radically changed by the introduction of christianity, is believed by at least one of the irish historians of that country. he says: "the church festivals themselves, in our christian calendar, are but the direct transfers from the tuath-de-danaans' ritual. their very names in irish are identically the same as those by which they were distinguished by that early race. if, therefore, surprise has heretofore been excited at the conformity observable between our church institutions and those of the east, let it in future subside at the explicit announcement that christianity, with us, was the revival of a religion imported amongst us many ages before by the tuath-de-danaans from the east, and not from any chimerical inundation of greek missionaries--a revival upon which their hearts were lovingly riveted, and which fiech, the bishop of sletty, unconsciously registers in the following couplet, viz.: "the buddhists of irin prophesied that new times of peace would come."( ) ) the round towers of ireland, p. . the conditions surrounding the ancient inhabitants of the "white island," or ireland, a remnant of which people may be observed in the highlanders of scotland, furnish an example of the fact that a much higher standard of life had been preserved among them than is known to have prevailed either among the jews or the greeks. the comparatively advanced stage of progress which is now known to have existed in ireland at the beginning of the present era, which even the bigotry and falsehood of roman priestcraft have not been able wholly to conceal, is seen to have been a somewhat corrupted remnant of a civilization which followed closely on ancient nature worship.( ) ) it is thought by certain writers that when the tuath-de-danaans emigrated from persia to the "white island" they found it inhabited by the fir-bolgs, a colony of celts. after conquering the island they engrafted upon it the religion, laws, learning and culture of the mother country. in a later age the scythians, whose religion was similar to that of the fir-bolgs, united with them and succeeded in making themselves masters of the situation. hence the intermingling of races and tongues among the ancient irish. the druids adopted, or appropriated, the religion and culture of the tuath-de-danaans, who, it is claimed, were the real hibernians. the scythians changed the name of irin to scotia--the latter being retained until the th century. according to the annals of the ancient irish, scotland was formerly called scotia minor to distinguish it from scotia major, or ireland. because of their isolated position, or for some cause at present unknown, these people do not seem to have degenerated into a nation of sensualists. it is true they had departed a long distance from the early conditions of mankind under which altruism and the abstract principle of light or wisdom were worshipped under the form of a virgin mother and her child, but they never wholly rejected the female element in their god-idea, nor never, so far as known, attempted to degrade womanhood. women were numbered among their legislators, at the same time that they officiated as educators and priestesses. in fact wherever the druidical order prevailed women exerted a powerful influence in all departments of human activity. among the germans, valleda, a druidess, was for ages worshipped as a deity. it is recorded that st. bridget planted a monastery for women at kildare and entrusted to its inmates the keeping of the sacred fire, and that in later times the asiatic missionaries founded there a female monkish order. after the establishment of western christianity, however, no woman was permitted to enter into the monasteries, and we are assured that this ridiculous affectation of purity was extended even to the grave. during the earlier ages of christianity, in many portions of ireland there were cemeteries for men and women distinct from each other. "it had been a breach of chastity for monks and nuns to be interred within the same enclosure. they should fly from temptations which they could not resist." although volumes have been written to prove that christianity was carried to britain by paul, and although the energies of scores of romish writers have been employed in attempting to prove that ireland was in heathen darkness prior to its conversion by the priests of the romish church, yet these efforts so vigorously put forward seem only to strengthen the evidence going to show that the christianity of the british isles antedates that of either paul or rome. according to scripture, claudia, the wife of the senator pudens of britain, was a christian,( ) as was also graecina, the wife of plautus, who was governor of britain in the first century. the latter, it is related, was accused before the roman senate of "practicing some foreign superstition." although lingard, in his history and antiquities of the anglo-saxon church, has endeavored to annul the force of the evidence which places two christian women from britain in rome during the first century of our era, he is nevertheless constrained to use the following language: "we are, indeed, told that history has preserved the names of two british females, claudia and pomponia graecina, both of them christians, and both living in the first century of our era."( ) ) timothy, iv., . ) vol. i., p. . according to the romanists, between the years - of the christian era, a british king named lucius sent a messenger to the authorities at rome, with a request that he with his people be admitted into the bosom of the "holy catholic church." by those not prejudiced in favor of the romish hierarchy, this bit of amusing "evidence" shows the anxiety manifested lest the facts concerning the religious history of the british isles become known. regarding this embassy of king lucius there is an extant version which is far more in accordance with reason and with the known facts concerning this people. when we remember the advanced stage of civilization which existed in ireland prior to the christian era, and when we bear in mind the fact that, as in the case of abarras mentioned by various greek writers, the people of the british isles were wont to send emissaries abroad for the sole purpose of gathering information relative to foreign laws, customs, usages, manners, and modes of instruction, we are not surprised to learn that the message to rome sent by lucius, instead of containing a request for admission to a foreign church, embodied an enquiry into the fundamental principles underlying roman jurisprudence; and especially does this appear reasonable when we remember that the remodeling of the roman code on principles of equity and justice had for several centuries employed the energies of the best minds in rome. concerning the planting of christianity in ireland, we have the following from ledwich: "thus bishop lawrence in bede tells us pope gregory sent him and austin to preach the gospel in britain, as if it never before had been heard, whereas the latter met seven british bishops who nobly opposed him. in like manner pope adrian commissioned henry ii. to enlarge the bounds of the church, and plant the faith in ireland, when it had already been evangelized for eight hundred years. the faith to be planted was blind submission to rome and the annual payment of peter's pence."( ) ) antiquities of ireland, p. . of the exact time at which romish and greek missionaries first went to ireland we are not informed, but there is ample evidence going to prove that a regular hierarchy had been established in that island before the beginning of the fifth century, and that this religion which had been brought in through the efforts of missionaries from the east was, by the legendary writers of the later christian church, ascribed to romish monks. the jealousy of the romish priests, and the means employed by them to usurp the ecclesiastical authority of the irish people, is shown in the history of their councils. the th canon of the council of ceale-hythe requires "that none of irish extraction be permitted to usurp to himself the sacred ministry in any one's diocese, nor let it be allowed such an one to touch anything which belongs to those of the holy order....; neither must he administer the eucharist to the people because we are not certain how or by whom he was ordained." after quoting the above ledwich queries thus: if st. patrick had been a missionary of the romish church, would the anglo-saxon clergy have abjured the spiritual children of that see? in the year theodoret, archbishop of canterbury, decreed that they who were consecrated by irish or british bishops should be confirmed anew by catholic ones.( ) ) ledwich, antiquities of ireland, p. . it is observed that as early as the fourth century a.d. there were three hundred bishops in ireland, and to account for so large a number, it is declared that ignorant legendary writers had recourse to the fable of st. patrick. the remarkable "conversion" of the irish to romish christianity, which it is said took place in the latter part of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth, is to be explained by the fact that a number of romish priests or monks which in later ages came to be designated as st. patrick, claimed all the monasteries, bishops, and priests already there as a result of the remarkable power and pious zeal of this miracle-working saint. it is claimed that st. patrick founded over three thousand monasteries, consecrated three hundred bishops, and ordained three thousand priests. according to ledwich and other writers, this st. patrick was not heard of earlier than the ninth century a.d., and the legend concerning him "was not accepted until the twelfth century, at which time his miracles are set forth with great gusto." nothing, perhaps, which is recorded of this monk will go farther toward proving him a myth than the miracles ascribed to his saintship. while yet an infant he raised the dead, brought forth fire from ice, expelled a devil from a heifer, caused a new river to appear from the earth, and changed water into honey. "these were but the infant sports of this wonder-working saint. the miracles recorded in holy writ, even that of creation itself, are paralleled, and, if possible, surpassed by those of our spiritual hero."( ) ) ledwich, antiquities of ireland. concerning st. patrick, forlong writes: "various patricks followed from britain and armorika, but even the catholic priest, j. f. shearman, writes that he is forced to give up the idea that there ever was a real st. patrick. thus the name must be accepted only in its fatherly sense, and with the fall of the man patrick all the miraculous and sudden conversions of the kings, lords, and commons of ireland must vanish."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. ii., p. . the irish church bishoprics differed from the romish in that they were held by hereditary succession, after the custom of ancient nations. all bishops were married. prior to the introduction of the christian system in ireland the sabian ceremonial had been succeeded by the druidical, upon which had been engrafted that of the culdees, and notwithstanding the fact that the romish church gradually usurped the ecclesiastical functions in ireland, the last named people who for ages had been regarded as the depositaries of the ancient faith and the ancient system of laws, were highly respected by the people for their sanctity and learning. many of the greek and roman writers who have dealt with this subject agree in ascribing to the druids a high degree of scientific knowledge and mechanical skill. the principles of justice set forth in their judicial system, their love of learning, and the standard attained in the sciences and arts, prove the early people of ireland to have been equal if not superior to any of the early historic nations. in referring to the number and magnitude of the monumental remains in ireland, and while commenting on the mechanical skill of the druids, the rev. smedley says: "i was present at the erection of the luxor obelisk in paris, and yet i think that i would have felt greater emotion if i had witnessed the successful performance of the old celtic engineer who placed on its three pedestals of stone the enormous rock which constitutes the druidical altar here at castle may." it is believed that this people understood the art of mining and that they were acquainted with the use of iron. the following is an extract from one of hamilton's letters on the antrim coast: "about the year the miners, in pushing forward an adit toward the bed of coal, at an unexplored part of the ballycastle cliff, unexpectedly broke through the rock into a narrow passage, so much contracted and choked up with various drippings and deposits on its sides and bottom, as rendered it impossible for any of the workmen to force through, that they might examine it farther. two lads were, therefore, made to creep in with candles, for the purpose of exploring this subterranean avenue. they accordingly pressed forward for a considerable time, with much labor and difficulty, and at length entered into an extensive labyrinth branching off into numerous apartments, in the mazes and windings of which they were completely bewildered and lost. after various vain attempts to return, their lights were extinguished, their voices became hoarse, and, becoming wearied and spiritless, they sat down together, in utter despair of an escape from this miserable dungeon. in the meanwhile, the workmen in the adit became alarmed for their safety, fresh hands were incessantly employed, and, in the course of twenty-four hours, the passage was so open as to admit the most active among the miners... on examining this subterranean wonder, it was found to be a complete gallery, which had been driven forward many hundred yards to the bed of coal: that it branched off into numerous chambers, where miners had carried on their different works: that these chambers were dressed in a workmanlike manner: that pillars were left at proper intervals to support the roof. in short it was found to be an extensive mine, wrought by people at least as expert in the business as the present generation. some remains of the tools, and even of the baskets used in the works, were discovered, but in such a decayed state that, on being touched, they immediately crumbled to pieces. from the remains which were found, there is reason to believe that the people who wrought these collieries anciently, were acquainted with the use of iron, some small pieces of which were found; it appeared as if some of their instruments had been thinly shod with that metal." through various means the fact has been ascertained that although in the sixth century the buildings in ireland were mean and wholly without artistic merit or skilful design, in an earlier age they were magnificent. of the causes which produced the decay of architecture, the extinction of the arts and sciences, and the general degradation of the people of this island the devotees of st. paul and of the romish church are alike silent. for ages after the subjection of ireland, in open defiance of the english, the people continued to dispense justice, and to enforce the old brehon laws of the country. the lack of regard shown for english law in ireland, even as late as the sixteenth century, is set forth by baron fingles, who wrote in the time of henry viii. he says: "it is a great abuse and reproach that the laws and statutes made in this land are not observed nor kept after the making of them eight days, while diverse irishmen cloth abuse and keep such laws and statutes which they make upon hills in this country, firm and stable, without breaking them for any favor or reward." by a statute of parliament enacted at kilkenny, it was made high treason to administer or observe these old brehon laws. the two enactments especially obnoxious to the english were gahail cinne, and eiric. the former of these enactments was that which in opposition to the english law of primogeniture declared that the estate of a parent should descend in equal proportion to all members of the family. there was another law, or custom, among this people, which provided that the chief of the tribe or people should be elected by general suffrage. we have something more than a hint of the condition of ancient ireland and its people in a description given by the greeks of one of its inhabitants. abarras, who visited greece about six hundred years before christ, and who was called by the greeks a hyperborean, was a priest of the sun, who went abroad for the purpose of study and observation, and to renew by his presence and his gifts the old friendship which had long existed between the celts and the greeks. strabo remarks concerning abarras that he was much admired by the learned men of greece. himerius says of him that he came "not clad in skins like a scythian, but with a bow in his hand, and a quiver on his shoulders and a plaid wrapped about his body, a gilded belt encircled his loins, and trousers reaching from his waist downward to the soles of his feet. he was easy in his address, agreeable in conversation, active in dispatch and secret in the management of great affairs; quick in judging of present occurrences, and ready to take his part in any sudden emergency; provident, withal, in guarding against futurity; diligent in quest of wisdom, fond of friendship; trusting very little to fortune; yet having the entire confidence of others, and trusted with everything for his prudence. he spoke greek with so much fluency that you would have thought that he had been bred or brought up in the lyceum and had conversed all his life with the academy of athens. he had frequent intercourse with pythagoras whom he astonished by the variety and extent of his knowledge." from the descriptions given of the native country of abarras by the greeks, it is evident that it could have been none other than ireland. although at this time in their history, apollo the sun-god was the deity worshipped in greece and in ireland, still both nations honored latona his mother. the same as in the mother country (persia, or phoenicia), the oracles, or sybils of ireland, had prophesied a "savior," and three hundred years before greek emissaries visited that country, its people, through the preaching of eastern missionaries, had substituted for the worship of latona and apollo that of the new solar incarnation--the third son of zarathustra, whose appearance had been heralded by a star. the identity of the symbols used by the early people of ireland who were sun worshippers, and those employed in that country for ages after the romish church had usurped the ecclesiastical authority, has been a subject for much comment. after describing the peculiar form of the early christian churches and the attention paid to the placing of the windows which were to admit the sun's rays, smedley says: "it is possible, in an age of allegory and figures, this combination and variety expressed some sacred meaning with which we are unacquainted at present." the similarity observed in the sacred festivals and religious seasons of the ancient inhabitants of ireland and those of the early christians, the extent to which large stone crosses, lighted candles, the yule log and the various other symbols belonging to fertility, or sun worship, were retained by christianity, furnish strong evidence of the fact that the latter system is but part and parcel of the former. chapter xvi. stones or columns as the deity. "throughout all the world, the first object of idolatry seems to have been a plain unwrought stone, placed in the ground as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of nature."( ) ) celtic druids, ch. vi., p. . in the language of symbolism the upright stone prefigures either a man, reproductive energy, or a god, all of which at a certain stage in the human career had come to mean one and the same thing; namely, the creator. in the earlier ages of male worship, upright stones as emblems of the deity were plain unwrought shafts, but in process of time they began to be carved into the form of a man--a man who usually represented the ruler or chief of the people, and who, as he was the source of all power and wisdom, was supposed by the ignorant masses to be an incarnation of the sun. thus arose the spiritual power of monarchs, or the "divine right of kings." wherever obelisks, columns, pillars, attenuated spires, upright stones or crosses at the intersection of roads are found, they always appear as sacred monuments, or as symbols of the lingham god. the chaldean tower of which there are extant traditions in mexico and in the south sea islands; the round towers of ireland; the remarkable group of stones known as stonehenge, in england; the wonderful circle at abury through which the figure of a huge serpent was passed; the monuments which throughout the nations of the east were set up at the intersection of roads in the center of market-places, and the bowing stones employed as oracles in various portions of the world, have all the same signification, and proclaim the peculiar religion of the people who worshipped them. whether as among the jews in egypt, a pillar is set up as a "sign" and a "witness" to the lord, or whether as with the mohammedans these figures appear as minarets with egg shaped summits, or as among the irish they stand forth as stately towers defying time and the elements, or as among the christians they appear as the steeple which points towards heaven, the symbol remains, and the original significance is the same. the lord of the israelites who was wont to manifest himself to his chosen people in a "pillar of smoke by day" and a "pillar of fire by night" is said to be none other than a reproductive emblem, as was also the "lord" which "reposed in the ark of the covenant." monuments set up to symbolize the religion of the parsees or fire-worshippers after they had succumbed to the pressure brought to bear upon them by the adorers of the male principle were each and all of them, like their great prototype the tower of babel, typical of the universal creative power which was worshipped as male. notwithstanding the fact that the male energy had come to be recognized as the principal factor in reproduction, it is observed that wherever these monuments or other symbols of fertility appear, there is always to be found in close connection with them certain emblems symbolical of the female power; thus showing that although the people by whom they were erected had become worshippers of the masculine principle, and although they had persuaded themselves that it was the more important element in the deity, they had not become so regardless of the truths of nature as to attempt to construct a creator independently of its most essential factor. protestant christianity, probably the most intensely masculine of all religious schemes which have claimed the attention of man, has not wittingly retained any of the detested female emblems, yet so deeply has the older symbolism taken root, that even in the architecture of the modern protestant church with its ark-shaped nave and its window toward the rising sun, may be detected the remnants of that early worship which the devotees of this more recently developed form of religious faith so piously ignore. the large number of upright columns, circles of stone, cromlechs and cairns still extant in the british isles, bears testimony to the peculiar character of the religious worship which once prevailed in them. of these shrines perhaps none is more remarkable than that of stonehenge, in england. although during the numberless ages which have passed since this temple was erected many of the stones have fallen from their original places, still by the light of more recently established facts concerning religious symbolism, it has been possible, even under its present condition of decay, for scholars to unravel the hitherto mysterious significance of this remarkable structure. stonehenge is composed of four circles of mammoth upright shafts twenty feet high, the one circle within the other, with immense stones placed across them like architraves. in ancient symbolism the circle was the emblem of eternity, or of the eternal female principle. mountains were also sacred to the gods. it has been said that a ring of mountains gave rise to these circular temples. faber assures us that a circular stone temple was called the circle of the world or the circle of the ark, that it represented at once the inclosure of the noetic ship; the egg from which creation was produced; the earth, and the zodiacal circle of the universe in which the sun performs its annual revolutions through the signs. stonehenge is said to be the temple of the water god noah, who, as we have seen, was first worshipped as half woman and half fish or serpent, but who finally came to be regarded as a man serpent (or fish) deity. on approaching stonehenge from the northeast, the first object which engages the attention is a rude boulder, sixteen feet high, in a leaning posture. this stone has been named the friar's heel, but until recently its signification has been wholly unknown. regarding the upright shaft which stands sentinel over the mysterious circles of mammoth stones called stonehenge, forlong says that it is no friar's heel, but an emblem of fertility dedicated to the friday divinity. it is represented as the "genius of fire," not the genius of ordinary fire, "but of the super-sensual divinity, celestial fire." regarding these remarkable stones to which the lingham god is a mere introduction, forlong says: "no one who has studied phallic and solar worship in the east could make any mistake as to the purport of the shrine at stonehenge... yet the indelicacy of the whole subject often so shocks the ordinary reader, that, in spite of facts, he cannot grant what he thinks shows so much debasement of the religious mind; facts are facts, however, and it only remains for us to account for them. perhaps indeed in these later times an artificial and lower phase of sensuality has taken the place of the more natural indulgence of the passions, for procreative purposes, which principally engrossed the thoughts of early worshippers."( ) ) rivers of life, vol. ii., p. . higgins is of the opinion that stonehenge is the work of the same era with the caves of india, the pyramids of egypt, and the stupendous monument at carnac--a structure which, it is claimed, must have required for its construction an amount of labor equal to that of the pyramids. undoubtedly there has never been a religious shrine which has excited more curiosity than has abury, of which, unfortunately, nothing now remains, although in the early part of the eighteenth century enough had been preserved to prove the identity of its signification with other ancient religious monuments both in the british isles and in the countries of the east. perhaps there is no way by which this shrine can be better understood than by quoting the exact language of those who have written upon the subject. especially is this true concerning the testimony of those who, after personal investigation, have given to the public the results of their research. in the history of wiltshisre, published by sir r. colt hoare, bart., appears the following from dr. stukeley: "the situation of abury is finely chosen for the purpose it was destined to, being the more elevated part of a plain, from whence there is almost an imperceptible descent every way. but as the religious work in abury, though great in itself, is but a part of the whole (the avenues stretching above a mile from it each way), the situation of the whole design is projected with great judgment, in a kind of large, separate plain, four or five miles in diameter. into this you descend on all sides from higher ground. the whole temple of abury may be considered as a picture, and it really is so. therefore the founders wisely contrived that a spectator have an advantageous prospect of it as he appeared within view. when i frequented this place, which i did for some years together, to take an exact account of it, staying a fortnight at a time, i found out the entire work by degrees. the second time i was here, an avenue was a new amusement; the third year another. so that at length i discovered the mystery of it, properly speaking, which was, that the whole figure represented a snake transmitted through a circle. this is an hieroglyphic or symbol of highest note and antiquity. "in order to put this design in execution, the founders well studied their ground; and to make their representation more natural, they artfully carried it over a variety of elevations and depressions, which, with the curvature of the avenues, produces sufficiently the desired effect. to make it still more elegant and picture-like, the head of the snake is carried up the southern promontory of hackpen hill, toward the village of west kennet; nay, the very name of the hill is derived from the circumstance.... thus our antiquity divides itself into three great parts, which will be our rule in describing this work. the circle at abury, the forepart of the snake leading toward kennet, which i call kennet avenue; the hinder part of the snake leading toward beckhampton, which i call beckhampton avenue; for they may be well looked on as avenues to the great temple at abury, which part must be most eminently called the temple. "the plan on which abury was built, is that sacred hierogram of the egyptians and other ancient nations, the circle and snake. the whole figure is the circle, snake, and wings. by this they meant to picture out, as well as they could, the nature of the divinity." the temple which represents the body of the snake is formed by a circular agger of earth having its ditch withinside. as this is contrary to the mode adopted in works of defence, it is thought to prove the religious character of abury. in a description given of this shrine by higgins is the following: "these ramparts inclose an area of feet in diameter, which on the edge nearest the ditch was set round with a row of rough, unhewn stones, and in the center was ornamented with two circular temples, composed of the same native stones."( ) ) celtic druids. description of plates, p. xx. the space of ground included within the vellum has been estimated at twenty-two acres, and the outward circumvallation was computed at feet. the number of stones that formed this outer circle was originally one hundred, of which, in the year , there were eighteen standing, and twenty-seven thrown down. in the village of rudstone in yorkshire there stands a huge stone, the significance of which, at the present time, is by scholars clearly understood. its depth below the surface of the ground is said to be equal to its height above, which is twenty-four feet. it is five feet ten inches broad, and two feet thick, its weight being upwards of forty tons.( ) ) see rivers of life. the gigantic rocking stones found in nearly every quarter of the globe are now known to be religious monuments of remote antiquity. not long ago i saw a description of one of these oracles in buenos-ayres, south america, and a few months later there appeared the following account of a similar stone found in sullivan co., n. y.: "at first sight it would scarcely attract attention, but a closer observation reveals the remarkable position which it occupies. the total weight of the immense boulder has been variously estimated at from forty to fifty tons, and its bulk at from to cubic feet. it is almost perfectly round, much resembling a huge orange, and so nicely balanced on a table of stone as to be easily set in motion by a single man, providing the operator exerts his strength on the north or south sides. on either of the other sides the combined strength of forty elephants would not be sufficient to cause the least oscillation. although it is easily rocked, we are assured that as many men as could surround it would be unable to dislodge it from the pivot on which it rests."( ) ) the st. louis (mo.) republican. the writer of the above, who was evidently ignorant of the extent to which these monuments are scattered over the earth, seemed to regard it as a singular freak of nature with no significance other than that of a natural curiosity. the round towers of ireland, over the origin of which there has in the past been so much controversy, are now pretty generally admitted to be analogous in their use and design to stonehenge, abury, and other extant monolithic structures. many writers have endeavored to prove that these towers were belfries used in connection with christian churches; others that they were purgatorial columns or penitential heights, similar in design to the pillar of st. simeon stylites. others again have argued that they were used as beacons and others that they were intended simply as receptacles for the sacred fire known to have formerly been in use in the british isles. although numberless arguments have been brought forward to refute these theories, it is thought that the expensive architecture alone of the elegant and stately columns known as round towers contradicts all these "guesses," and that their grandeur and almost absolute indestructibility proclaim for them a different origin from that of the lowly and miserable huts which in a later age were erected beside them for purposes of worship by the romish christians. the same objection is made also against the theory that these monuments were erected in memory of the several defeats of the danes. as an answer to the argument that they were erected by the danes to celebrate their victories, it is declared that such is the character of the hieroglyphics upon them as to make this theory worthless. besides, throughout the country of the danes and ostmen, there is nowhere to be found an example of architectural splendor such as is displayed in the construction of these columns. in the north of scotland was one of these monuments upon which were depicted war-like scenes, horses and their riders, warriors brandishing their weapons, and troops shouting for victory, while on the other side was a sumptuous cross, beneath which were two figures, the one evidently female, the other male. in cordiner's antiquities of scotland is a description of an elaborately carved obelisk. on one side of this column appears a mammoth cross, and underneath it are figures of uncouth animals. among these carvings are to be seen the bulbul of iran, the boar of vishnu, the elk, the fox, the lamb, and a number of dancing human figures. in fact all the configurations are not only in their nature and import essentially eastern, but are actually the symbols of the various animal forms under which "the people of the east contemplated the properties of the godhead." carnac, in upper egypt, is a monolith of the same symbolic character. it is hewn from a solid block of black granite and is eighty feet high. henry o'brien, a cultured irishman, who when in london became, in his own line of investigation, one of the chief contributors to fraser's magazine while at its best, in response to a call by the royal irish academy for productions relating to the origin and use of the round towers, declared that they were erected by a colony of tuath-de-danaans, or lingham worshippers from persia, who had left their native land because of the victories gained over them by their rivals--the pish de-danaans--a sect of yoni worshippers; in other words, the sect which recognized the female element as the superior agency in reproduction, and who, therefore, worshipped it as divine. in the devastating wars which swept over persia and the other countries of antiquity prior to the age of the later zoroaster, the pish-de danaans were victorious, and, driving from the country the tuath-de danaans, or male worshippers, succeeded in re-establishing, and for a time maintaining, the old form of worship. o'brien claims that the tuath-de-danaans who were expelled from persia emigrated to ireland, and there continued or preserved their favorite form of worship, the round towers having been erected by them in conformity to their peculiar religious views. this writer assures us that the old irish tongue bears unmistakable evidence of the relation existing between these countries. in addition to the similarity of language which is found to exist between ancient ireland or iren, and persia or iran, the same writer observes that in all their customs, religious observances, and emblems, the resemblance is preserved. much regret has been expressed by all the writers who have dealt with this subject that at an earlier age when stonehenge, abury, and various other of the ancient monumental shrines of the british isles were in a better state of preservation, and before bigotry and religious hatred had been aroused against them, more minute observations of their character and of all the details surrounding them could not have been made; yet, notwithstanding the late date at which these investigations were begun, it is believed that a fair amount of success has crowned the efforts which have been put forth to unravel the mysteries bound up in them. when we remember that every detail connected with the sacred monuments of the ancients was full of significance that their religious ideas were all portrayed by means of symbols which appeared in connection with their sacred edifices--the extent to which a thorough understanding of these details would assist in revealing the mysteries involved in the universal religious conceptions may in a measure be realized. the identity of the symbols used to express religious ideas, and the extent to which the conceptions of a creative force have been connected in all portions of the globe, are set forth in the following from barlow: "a complete history of religious symbolism should embrace all the religions of antiquity no less than the christian, and it would require as thorough a knowledge of their tenets as of our own to explain satisfactorily its influence in regulating the practice of art."( ) ) symbolism, p. . chapter xvii. sacrifices. although the sun was formerly worshipped as the source of all good, at a certain stage in the human career it came to be regarded as the cause of all evil. when typhon seth comprehended the powers of nature, as the destroyer and regenerator she was the author of all good; but later, after the truths underlying nature worship were lost, typhon, the hot wind of the desert, was feared rather than worshipped. in the history of an earlier age of existence, there is not to be found the slightest trace of human sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people, or to appease the wrath of an offended god. on the contrary, throughout the traditions and monumental records of the most ancient nations, sacrifices to the deity--the god of nature--consisted simply in the acknowledgment of earth's benefits by means of a free-will offering of the bounties which she had brought forth. that the sacrifice either of human beings or of animals was not offered in an earlier age of religious faith is confidently asserted and, i think, proved by various writers. of this higgins says: "i think a time may be perceived when it did not exist even among the western nations." this writer states also that it was not always practiced at delphi. mention is made of the fact that among the buddhists, to whom belongs the first book of genesis, no bloody sacrifices were ever offered. it was doubtless under the worship of muth, neith, or minerva, the first emanation from the deity and the original buddha, that the first book of genesis or wisdom was written. in this book may be observed the fact that the slaughter of animals is forbidden. it is thought that with crishna, hercules, and the worshippers of the sun in aries, the sacrifice of human beings and animals began. in the second book of genesis, which is said to be a brahmin work, animals are first used for sacrifice, and in the third book, or the book of generations or re-generations of the race of man or the adam, which was written after the pure doctrines connected with the worship of wisdom had been corrupted, they are first allowed to be eaten as food. it is supposed that the practice of sacrificing human beings and animals took its rise in the western parts of the world after the sun entered aries, and that it subsequently extended even to the followers of the tauric worship, among whom it was carried to a frightful extent. it is also thought that the history of cain and abel is an allegory of the followers of crishna to justify their sacrifice of the yajna or lamb "in opposition to the buddhist offering of bread and wine, or water, made by cain and practiced by melchizedek."( ) ) anacalypsis, vol. i., p. . it is now positively known that all over the world, during a certain stage of religious belief, either human beings or animals were, at stated seasons, sacrificed to the deity. of the universality of this practice faber says: "throughout the whole world we find a notion prevalent that the gods could be appeased only by bloody sacrifices. now this idea is so thoroughly arbitrary, there being no obvious and necessary connection, in the way of cause and effect, between slaughtering a man or a beast, and recovering of the divine favor by the slaughterers, that its very universality involves the necessity of concluding that all nations have borrowed it from some common source."( ) ) the origin of pagan idolatry, vol. i., book , p. . dr. shuckford is constrained to admit that the sacrifices and ceremonies of purification practiced by abraham and his descendants and those of surrounding peoples, were identical, with only "such trifling changes as distance of countries and length of time might be expected to produce." the substitution of a lamb in the place of isaac would seem to indicate a change from child-slaughter to that of animals. sacrifices were offerings to the god of pro-creation. certain representatives of the life which he had bestowed must be returned to him as a free-will gift. in many countries, the victims offered to the deity were captives taken in war; but, as prisoners of war and slaves were not permitted to join in the battles of their captors, their lives were of little value; hence, later, it is observed that the sacrificial victim must be a prince or an individual whose life was of great importance to the tribe. as in all hot countries the heat of the sun is the most destructive agency against which mankind have to contend, it is not perhaps singular, at a time when superstition had usurped the functions of the reasoning powers, that the sun-god should have been invested with the attributes inspired by terror, and that so far as possible, mankind should have deemed it necessary to propitiate its wrath, and, by rendering to it suitable offerings and sacrifices, they should have hoped to avert the calamities incident to its displeasure. neither is it remarkable when we remember the peculiar circumstances surrounding the jews, and the fact that the offerings demanded by their god was the life which he had bestowed, that the sacrifices offered to moloch, the fire god, should have been the members of their own household--namely, their children. we must not forget that the reward promised this people by prophet, priest, and diviner for godliness was extreme fruitfulness of body. we have seen that to obtain this mark of godly favor, or, under pretense of serving their god, the form of worship prescribed by their priests, and adopted both in their households and in their temples was pre-eminently sensual, and calculated to stimulate and encourage to the highest extent their lower or animal nature. as the size of a man's family, or his power to reproduce, was an index to his favor with the almighty the pleasure of the "lord" in this matter being but the reflection of his own desires, the result as might reasonably be expected was overpopulation to such an extent that the means of subsistence within the small boundary of judea was inadequate to supply the demands of the swarming masses of "god's children"--children which had been created for his honor and glory. surely some plan must be devised whereby these difficulties might be adjusted, and that, too, to use a modern expression, without flying in the face of providence. as the lord had been honored and man blessed in the mere bringing forth of offspring, what better scheme, so soon as such blessings became too numerous, than to return a certain number of them to the giver, the god of moloch? it is true that by this process children were born only to be delivered over to the ravages of the fire-god, but by it, was not their deity both served and appeased at the same time that population was kept within the bounds of subsistence? that great numbers were thus sacrificed is only too apparent from the accounts in the jewish scriptures--abraham's acts and those of jephtha being examples of the manner in which this god was propitiated. in micah, vi. chap., th verse, occurs an interrogation which furnishes something more than a hint of the practice among the jews of child sacrifice. "shall i give my first born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" although there is sufficient evidence to prove the enormous extent to which the practice of child sacrifice prevailed among the jews, it is believed that much more proof would be found, had it not, in later times, with a view to concealing the extent of this practice, been expunged from their sacred writings. moloch was to the jews what siva came to be to the hindoos, namely, the terrible. it is plain, however, that siva was not formerly feared in india, but next to vishnu was the best beloved of all their gods. siva was originally the androgyne god who was not only the destroyer, but the beneficent regenerator and purifier. it was the cold of winter and the heat of the sun. it was a conception which was a direct outgrowth of nature worship or of that religious idea which was portrayed by a mother and her child. the conception involved in sacrifice seems to be that of a payment for services rendered, or desired. the amazulus, when going to battle, sacrifice to the manes of their ancestors, who, as older branches of the tree of life, appear to constitute their god-idea. this is done that their gods "may have no cause of complaint, because they have made amends to them and made them bright." on appearing before the enemy they say: "can it be, since we have made amends to the amadhlozi, that they will say we have wronged them by anything?"( ) ) viscount amberley, analysis of religious belief, vol. i., p. . at a certain stage in human history the various peoples of the globe depended upon excessive numbers for their prosperity, hence the most precious offering to the god of pro-creation was that of human victims. in india, when a new colony or city was founded, in order to insure its prosperity, large numbers of children were delivered over as a bribe or offering of reconciliation to the god of virility. the enormous extent to which human sacrifice has prevailed in india, in egypt, in mexico, among the carthaginians, the jews, the druids, and even among the greeks and romans, is well attested. from the records of extant history, it would seem that human sacrifice usually accompanies a certain stage of sun-worship. among the aztecs in mexico, a country in which the sun was a universal object of reverence and in which one of the prescribed duties of the boys trained in the temple was that of keeping alive the sacred fires, the immolation of victims became the most prominent feature of their public worship. we are distinctly told, however, that human sacrifice was not formerly practiced in mexico, but that finally here as elsewhere, the idea became prevalent that by sacrificing human victims to the god of destruction, his wrath might be appeased and the people saved from his vengeance. it is stated that human sacrifices were adopted by the aztecs early in the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the conquest. "rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination." notwithstanding these atrocities, in their conceptions of a future state of existence, and especially in their disposition of the unregenerate after death, are to be observed certain traces of human feeling and refined sensibility which are difficult to reconcile with the cruelty practiced in their religious rites, and which bear a striking contrast to the physical torture, to which after death the wicked are subjected not only in mexico, but in countries professing a high stage of civilization and culture. of their religious observances, those which had doubtless been inherited from an older civilization, prescott, quoting from torquemada and sahagun, says: "many of their ceremonies were of a light and cheerful complexion, consisting of the national songs and dances, in which both sexes joined. processions were made of women and children crowned with garlands and bearing offerings of fruits, the ripened maize, or the sweet incense of copal and other odoriferous gums, while the altars of the deity were stained with no blood save that of animals. these were the peaceful rites derived from their toltec predecessors."( ) ) see conquest of mexico, book i, chap. iii., p. . prior to the days of montezuma, the aztec priests had engrafted upon these simple ceremonies not only a burdensome ceremonial, and a polytheism similar to that of eastern nations, but, as we have seen, human sacrifices and even cannibalism had become prominent features in religious worship. throughout the entire ceremonial and religious conceptions of the aztecs may be observed a display of the savage and brutal elements in human nature, in close connection with unmistakable evidence of a once higher stage of culture and refinement. in the later ages of aztec history their most exalted deity was huitzilopotchi, the mexican moses, the god of war. his temples were the most costly and magnificent among the public edifices in the country, and his image bedecked with ornaments was an universal object of adoration. at the dedication of his temple in the year more than seventy thousand captives are said to have perished.( ) ) torquemada. a deity which occupied a conspicuous place in the mythology, and which was probably an inheritance from more ancient times, was quetzalcoatl, doubtless the same as the eastern goddess of nature, or wisdom. she was the "grain goddess," and "received offerings of fruit and flowers" at her two great festivals. she also took care of the growth of corn. she was doubtless the same as the earth mother of the finns and esths, she who "undertakes the task of bringing forth the fruits." she is evidently the demeter of the greeks, the ceres of the romans, etc. she is also the goddess of wisdom, for she had "instructed the nations in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the art of government." under this deity the "earth had teemed with fruits and flowers without the pains of culture. an ear of indian corn was as much as a single man could carry. the cotton, as it grew, took, of its own accord, the rich dies of human art. the air was filled with intoxicating perfumes and the sweet melody of birds. in short, these were the halcyon days, which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations throughout the world. it was the golden age of anuhuac." we are given to understand that for some cause not explained the beneficent god quetzalcoatl was banished, that he (or she) was deposed through the influence of some deity which had become more popular, or, at least, more powerful; but that when quetzalcoatl departed from the country "in a winged skiff made of serpent skins," it was with a promise to return to the faithful, which promise was sacredly cherished down to the time of the spanish invasion. the mexican mars, huitzilopotchi, was born of a virgin. his mother, a devout person, while at her devotions in the temple saw floating before her a bright colored feather ball, which she seized and placed in her bosom. she soon became pregnant, her offspring being a god, who like minerva appeared full armed with spear and helmet. although the exact manner in which the mexicans sacrificed to their deity to atone for the sins of the people differs somewhat from the modus operandi employed in the christian vicarious atonement, still the likeness existing between them is sufficient to indicate the fact of their common origin and the similar manner of their development. the mexicans were wont to select a young and handsome man from their midst, whom they invested with the dignity of a god. after having surrounded him with every luxury, and when they had showered upon him every attention, crowning him with flowers and worshipping him for a year or more as a savior, they killed him, offering him as an atonement or sacrifice, in order that the rest of the people might escape the vengeance of their great deity, who, it was claimed, is pleased with such offerings, and who demands sacrifices of this kind at the hands of his children. within blood was contained life, hence the offering of a bloody victim was but the returning to their god, as a free-will gift that which he had bestowed, such sacrifice being regarded as the only acceptable means of grace or reconciliation. that the offering of a victim to the jewish god was deemed necessary to the fulfilment of christian doctrine is a fact which is clearly shown by numerous passages in the new testament. "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of jesus christ once for all." "by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."( ) "christ was once offered to bear the sins of many."( ) ) hebrews, x., , . ) ibid., ix., . that the jewish paschal feasts and the eucharistic rites of christians had their counterpart among the mexicans is observed in the fact that shortly after the death of their god, cakes which had been prepared and blessed by the priests were offered by them to the people to be eaten as the veritable body of their sacrificed lord. the source whence the doctrine of an atonement--a bloody sacrifice which lies at the foundation of christian theology--has proceeded is not at the present time difficult to determine, for we shall presently see that it, like all the leading doctrines contained in this later system, and which are regarded as exclusively christian, had its origin in the religion of past ages, a religion which although originally pure, in course of time degenerated into the grossest phallicism and even into human sacrifice and cannibalism. although among the mexicans as among the jews, human sacrifices were offered to the deity, no hint of gross and sensual rites practiced in the temples of the latter is recorded. hence, as the mexicans had not arrived at that stage of religious progress (?) at which sensuality inculcated as a sacred duty, and at which moral and physical debasement was encouraged both in public and private life, we may reasonably conclude that their faith represents a somewhat earlier stage of development than does that of either jew or greek. in point of morality, as judged by the most ancient standards, or by the more modern, the mexicans compare favorably with either of these nationalities. indeed when we compare the social, religious, and civil conditions of mexico as we find them under montezuma with those of the jews under david or solomon, or with those of the greeks under solon, or even with those of the christians during the spanish inquisition when thousands upon thousands, not of captives taken in war, but of the noblest and best of the land, were yearly slaughtered for "the glory of god," there is quite as much to meet the approval of an enlightened conscience under the first named system as under that of any one of the other three. by priests the fact has long been understood that effects may be produced through appeals to the religious or emotional nature which under other circumstances would be impossible; and as, for thousands of years, it has been the special business of this class to formulate creeds for the ignorant masses, religious belief and the ceremonies connected with "sacred" worship, during certain periods of the world's history, have assumed a grotesqueness in design unsurpassed by the most fanciful fairy tales which the imagination has ever been able to create, at the same time that they have portrayed a depth of sensual degradation capable of being reached only by that order of creation which alone has been able to develop a religion. chapter xviii. the cross and a dying savior. in egypt, the cross when unaccompanied by any other symbol signified simply creative energy both female and male, but whenever a distinctively female emblem was present it denoted the male power alone. the ibis, which is represented with human hands and feet, bears the staff of isis in one hand and the cross in the other. there is scarcely an obelisk or monument in egypt upon which this figure does not appear. the symbol or monogram of venus was a circle and a cross, that of saturn was a cross and a ram's horn. plato declared that the son of god was expressed upon the universe in the form of the letter x, and that the second power of the supreme god was figured on the universe in the shape of a cross. there is little doubt that the early christians understood full well the true meaning of the cross, and that it was no new device. in later ages, however, every monument of antiquity marked with this symbol was claimed by the church and by it believed to be of christian origin. it is related that when the temple of serapis at alexandria was overthrown by one of the christian emperors, beneath its foundation was discovered the monogram of christ. the christians made use of this circumstance to prove the divine origin of their religion, "thereby making many converts." the pagans, on the contrary, were of the opinion that "it should forever silence the claim put forward by the devotees of christianity." it is plain, however, that the christians had the better of the argument for "the cross being uneasy under the weight of the temple overthrew it." on the coins of decius, the great persecutor of the christians, is to be observed the monogram of christ which is also the monogram of osiris and jupiter ammon. on a medal proved to be phoenician appear the cross, the rosary, and the lamb. there is another form of the same monogram which signifies dcviii. these devices although in use hundreds of years prior to the christian era are all said to be monograms of christ. at the present time they may be seen in almost every church in italy. in the cave of elephanta, in india, appears the cross in connection with the figure which represents male reproductive power. inman relates that a cross with a rosary attached has been found in use among the religious emblems of the japanese buddhists and the lamas of thibet, and that in one of the frescoes of pompeii, published at paris, , is to be seen, vol. v., plate , the representation of a phallic cross in connection with two small figures of hermes.( ) ) inman, ancient faiths embodied in ancient names, vol. i., p. . the rev. mr. maurice adds his testimony to that of other investigators to show the universality of this emblem. he says that the principal pagodas in india, viz., those of bernares and mathura, are built in the form of a cross. in the museum of the london university is a mummy upon whose breast is a cross "exactly in the shape of a cross upon calvary." the true significance of this emblem, and the reason for its adoration are not, at the present time, difficult to understand; but whence comes the symbol of a dead man on a cross, and what is its true meaning? perhaps there is no problem connected with ancient symbolism, or with mythical religion, which is more difficult to solve, than is the representation of a dying savior on a cross. it is stated by those who have investigated this subject, that although the sun, or the fructifying power within it, was adored by all the historic nations, no hint of a cross is to be found amongst the most ancient nature worshippers. we must then look for a solution of this problem to those ages in which the higher truths of an older race were partially forgotten, and to a time when phallic worship had supplanted the adoration of light or wisdom. the cross doubtless came into use as a religious emblem at a time when the sexes in union began to stand for the god-idea, the lower end of the upright shaft being transfixed to the horizontal bar. as soon as the male energy became god, the cross gradually grew into the figure of a man with arms extended. it became the original "life giver," it was adam, the creator of the race. doubtless for ages adam represented the god-man-phallus-tree of life, or cross idea. he was the progenitor of the race. from this same idea sprang ancestor worship, or the deification of the past vital spark. the adoration paid to the lares and penates, the household gods of the romans, on the first of may, is an example of this worship, as is also the homage paid by the chinese to their progenitors. of religious emblems r. p. knight says that one of the most remarkable among them is a cross in the form of the letter t which was used as an emblem of creation and generation before the church adopted it as a sign of salvation. to this representation of male reproductive power "was sometimes added a human head, which gives it the appearance of a crucifix, as it has on the medal of cyzicus." originally the figure of a dead man on a cross typified creation and destruction or the operations of the creative forces in nature. everything dies only to live again. although man dies, and although the individual man becomes but a dead branch on the tree of life, still the tree lives. through the cross-phallus idea, or through man's power to create, existence on the earth continues. although the sun dies in winter, in spring it revives again to quicken and enliven nature and make all things new. there is much evidence to show that a dying figure on a cross was no new conception at the advent of christianity. crishna, whose history as we have seen is almost identical with that of christ, and ballaji, from whom the thorn-crowned figures of jesus have doubtless been copied, are illustrations of this mythical figure of a crucified savior in india. it seems altogether probable from the facts at hand that the romans worshipped a cross with a dying figure of a man upon it. minucius felix, a christian father, in defense of his religion, has the following passage: "you certainly, who worship wooden gods, are the most likely people to adore wooden crosses, as being parts with the same substance as your deities. for what else are your ensigns, flags, and standards but crosses gilt and purified? your victorious trophies not only represent a simple cross, but a cross with a man upon it. when a pure worshipper adores the true god with hands extended, he makes the figure of a cross. thus you see that the sign of the cross has either some foundation in nature, or in your own religion, and therefore not to be objected against christians." higgins says that it is proved as completely as it is possible to prove a fact of this kind that the romans had a crucified object of adoration, and that this could be no other than an incarnation of the god sol, represented in some way to have been crucified. an ancient medal found in cyprus has upon one of its sides the figure of a crucified man with the chaplet or rosary, the same as those now in use by romanists. from the style of workmanship it is thought that this medal must have been anterior to the macedonian conquest. there is little doubt that the early fathers and the bishops in the christian church recognized in the cross the ancient emblem of fertility, but as the idea of a spiritual life had begun to take root, it was deemed proper to conceal its real significance; hence from a symbol representing the continuity of existence on the earth the cross now prefigured eternal life or existence after death. henceforward although man was dead in transgressions, through the cross, or through the crucified christ, he received eternal life. that the original signification of this symbol was understood by early christians is apparent from the fact that the emperor theodosius, between the years and , issued a decree prohibiting the sign of the cross being sculptured or painted on the pavements of churches. tertullian also, after declaring that the devil made the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the followers of the persian mithra, accused the christians of adoring the same emblem. in , a. c. porphyry, referring to crosses, asked why theologists give passions to the gods, erect phalli and use shameful language; to which the christian iamblichus in the year replied: "because phalli and crosses are signs of productive energy, and provocative to a continuance of the world." it was not until the second century, or until after the days of justin martyr, that the instrument upon which jesus was executed was called a cross. but whatever may have been its form, as soon as the myths of former religious worship began to attach themselves to his history, he became the symbolical dead man on a cross, the original sacrifice to mahadeva. he portrayed the same idea as did crishna, ballaji, the dying osiris, and all the other sun-gods. he, like each of these, represented a new sun at the beginning of a new cycle. he was a risen savior, and to him were finally transferred all the festivals, seasons, symbols, and monograms of former solar deities. that the figure of a dead man on a cross was a familiar emblem throughout asia and various portions of europe, and that numberless crucified gods--incarnations of the sun--have been worshipped throughout the east, is a fact which it has been the aim of the initiated among the christian clergy to conceal, but one which no one who has examined the evidence with a mind free from prejudice attempts to deny. in italy, on many of the earlier pictures of christ, may be observed the words deo soli, which inscription signifies either "to the only god," or "to the god sol." of the various so-called christian antiquities which cover the walls of the vatican, we are assured by those who have acquainted themselves with the signification of pagan symbolism that "they have no more reference to christianity than they have to the emperor of china." the same may be said with reference to the representations on the walls of the catacombs. crishna, who was the equinoctial sun in aries, appeared years after the first buddha, who was the equinoctial sun in taurus. according to plutarch they were both modern gods when compared with the deities which gave names to the planets. buddha, or the sun in taurus, was worshipped in the form of a bull. crishna, or the sun in aries, was adored under the figure of a ram with a man's head. the true significance of these figures was the fructifying sun or reproductive energy as manifested in animal life, and this meaning to those who worshipped them was identical with the carved figures on the caves of india, the lares and penates of the romans, and the stone pillars or crosses in the market-places and at the intersection of roads in brittany. eusebius says that at elephanta they adored a deity in the figure of a man in a sitting posture painted blue, having the head of a ram with the horns of a goat encircling a disk. the deity thus described is said to be of astronomical origin, denoting the power of the sun in aries. this figure, which was one of the representations of the sun-god crishna, was worshipped both in india and in egypt. in various of the manifestations of this deity he appears in the act of killing a serpent. he was the dead man on a cross and also the sun, which although continually dying is constantly being revived again. various incarnations of this god have appeared as crucified saviors. of the avatar of crishna known as ballaji or baal-jah little is positively known. indeed there seems to be some impenetrable mystery surrounding this figure, which makes it impossible for scholars to absolutely prove that which by means of the evidence at hand amounts almost to a certainty. a print by moore of this god represents him in the shape of a romish crucifix, but although there is a nail hole in his foot he is not transfixed to a wooden cross. instead of a crown of thorns a parthian coronet encircles his head. as all the avatars of crishna are represented with coronets, this fact has caused several writers to observe that the effigies of ballaji have furnished the copies for the thorn-crowned jesus. through the ignorance of the early christians who in the second century adopted the religion of crishna, the true significance of this coronet was not understood, hence the thorns upon the head of christ. in referring to the effigy of a crucified savior found in ireland the author of the round towers says that it was not intended for our savior for the reason that it wore the iranian regal crown, instead of the jewish crown of thorns.( ) ) the round towers of ireland, p. . regarding this effigy, higgins remarks that the crucified body without the cross reminds one that "some of the ancient sects of heretics held jesus to have been crucified in the clouds." moore, who has produced several prints of ballaji, says he is unable to account for the pierced foot of a crucified figure in india. he endeavors to prove, however, that this crucifix cannot be hindoo "because there are duplicates of it from the same model." as the mould is made of clay, he contends that only one cast may be made from it. this argument falls to the ground, however, so soon as it is found that duplicates, or copies of these brass idols which may not be distinguished from the originals, are seen in the museum at the india house, and also in that of the asiatic society. the admission of moore that "great influence was brought to bear upon him to induce him not to publish the prints of ballaji for fear of giving offense," serves as a hint in determining the cause for the lack of information respecting this god. it is believed that, were the development of truth upon this subject rather than its concealment the object of christian missionaries, the temples of ballaji would have furnished more important information to the christian world than would those of any other of the hindoo gods; but while numberless pilgrimages have been made to juggernaut and other shrines devoid of interest to the student, we have heard little concerning the shrines of this deity, although at the time moore wrote, terputty was in the possession of the english who made a profit of l , a year from the temple. on the brechin tower in ireland are two arches one within the other in relief. at the top of the arch is a crucifix, and about midway from top to bottom on either side are two figures which, according to romanist christians, represent the virgin mary and st. john. at the bottom of the outer arch are two couchant beasts, the one an elephant and the other a bull. the figure on the cross has a parthian coronet. the appearance of a crucifix on the towers of britain and ireland has in the past led many writers to ascribe to these singular structures a christian origin. to the critical observer, however, the first question which presents itself is whence comes the elephant--an animal not found within these countries?--and again why should these beasts have been placed here as christian emblems? the facts in the case as revealed by unprejudiced investigators are, that the towers in ireland are not christian monuments, and that the crucifix found on them is not that of christ but of ballaji, or of some one of the avatars of crishna. the fact that the figure of crishna as a crucified god was found in the ruins of a temple at thebes in egypt, is sufficient to prove his antiquity; still, as we have seen, he represents the god-idea at a much later date than did buddha. regarding the evidence furnished by the rev. mr. maurice of the ten avatars of the indian sun-god, higgins observes: "the only fact worthy of notice here is, that buddha was universally allowed to be the first of the incarnations; that crishna was of later date; that, at the era of the birth of christ, eight of them had appeared on the earth, and that the other two were expected to follow before the end of the caliyug, or of the present age." with reference to the fact that the hindoo god originally represented wisdom or the logos, the same writer says: "then here is divine wisdom incarnate, of whom the bull of the zodiac was the emblem. here he is the protagonos, or first begotten, the god or goddess mhtis of the greeks, being, perhaps, both male and female. buddha, or the wise, if the word were not merely the name of a doctrine, seems to have been an appellation taken by several persons, or one person incarnate at several periods, and from this circumstance much confusion has arisen."( ) ) anacalypsis, book v., p. . concerning the religion of an ancient race the following facts have been ascertained, namely: the first of the buddhas or incarnations of the deity was minerva, and her mother, who was the sun, was the mother of all the buddhas. she was mhtis, mubt or mai, "the universal genius of nature, who discriminated all things according to their various kinds of species." in the earliest ages she comprehended not only matter but the moving force in the universe. she was the deity which by a very ancient race was represented by the mother idea--perceptive wisdom. she was the sun and the first emanation from the sun. she was the divine word, the logos, the holy ghost which in the time of christ was again by various sects recognized as female. the allegory of the greeks concerning jupiter taking mhtis (wisdom) to wife and from this union with her producing minerva from his head, is seen to be closely connected with the doctrine of buddha (wisdom) or of the rasit of genesis. according to faber, the import of the greek word nous and of the sanscrit menu is precisely the same: each denotes mind or intelligence, and to the latter of them the latin mens is nearly allied. "mens, menu, and perhaps our english mind are fundamentally one and the same word." all these terms in an earlier age meant buddha, wisdom, or minerva. later, with the worship of the sun in aries, appeared a crucified savior. during the earlier ages of crishnaism, the ideas typified by a dying savior were still those pertaining to the processes of nature. matter was still believed to be indestructible and seeming death but a preparation for renewed life, or for birth into another state of existence subsequently this dying sun-god, which disappeared in winter only to return again to re-animate nature, became a veritable man--a man on a cross who must be sacrificed to mahadeva in order that humanity might be saved. here we have the origin of the doctrine of a vicarious atonement. later, under the system called christianity, woman, who had previously become identified with the evil principle, became the tempter. she was the cause of sin in the world and wholly responsible for the evil results arising from desire. indeed, according to the doctrines annunciated by the christian church, had woman, who was an after thought of the almighty, never been created, man would have lived forever in a state of purity and bliss, free alike from the toils, pains, and temptations of life, and from the crafts and assaults of the devil. through the over-stimulation of the animal instincts man had become wholly unable to overcome the evil in his constitution, hence the adoption of the doctrine of original sin and the necessity for an atonement, or for a crucified savior, who would take upon himself the sins of poor, weak human nature. by simply believing on this crucified redeemer, man would be saved, not from sin itself, but from the penalty of sin. to bolster up the belief in original sin and the necessity for an atonement, the allegory of the fruit tree and the serpent in genesis was taken literally. the more the religion of the past is studied the more plainly will the fact appear, that not only have the ceremonies, symbols, festivals, and seasons adopted by christianity been copied from india and persia, but also that all the leading doctrines of the so-called christian church originated in those countries. the belief in a trinity, the incarnation of the deity, a crucified savior, original sin and a vicarious atonement, the last three having been elaborated after the ancient natural truths underlying sun worship had been forgotten, are all to be found in the east. the doctrine of a trinity is supposed to have been received directly from the platonists, who had learned it from the persians; while that of a crucified savior, and also that of the seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head, belong, as we have seen, to the religion of crishna. concerning original sin, which is the foundation of the doctrine of the "atonement," it is plain that it was not known to the earlier followers of christ, but that it was subsequently copied from the corrupted religion of the hindoos. the symbolical meaning of the serpent and the tree of life was doubtless understood by the earliest adherents to the christian faith; it is not surprising, therefore, that by them there is no mention of the doctrine of original sin. their theory to account for evil in the world was the same as that of an ancient and almost forgotten race. the belief that the soul of man is a spark from, or a part of the universal soul, that at the death of the body it returns to its source, and in process of time appears as the animating principle in other bodies, was believed by pythagoras, aspasia, socrates, and plato and, in fact, for thousands of years it was entertained by the best and wisest of the human race. it was a part of the early christian doctrine and is still believed by the followers of buddha and by the theosophists of europe and america. doubtless the doctrines of re-incarnation and karma were set forth by those very ancient philosophers who were the near descendants of the inventors of the neros and the metonic cycle--those who believed in the indestructibility of matter, and that spirit proceeds from or is evolved through it. it was an effort on their part to solve the problem of the existence of evil, and was far more satisfactory to the reasoning mind than was the literal translation of the story of the woman, the forbidden apple, and the talking serpent in genesis. original sin of which woman is said to be the cause, and the necessity for a spiritual (male) savior to deliver man from the wretchedness which she had produced, are doctrines which took their rise in the grossest ignorance, and in an entire misconception of the natural truths which had previously been set forth by the figure of a dying sun-god. original sin and a vicarious atonement--doctrines by means of which man has attempted to evade moral responsibility and the legitimate results of evil-doing--have, by weakening his moral sense, and by shifting the responsibility of his deeds upon another, resulted in greatly lowering the standard of human conduct. science teaches that the penalty for sin is inherent in it, and that virtue is its own reward; the so-called christian doctrines assert that although a man's sins be as scarlet, they may, simply through a certain belief, become white as wool. it has been claimed that a belief in original sin caused all the human sacrifices in ancient times and that it "converted the jews into a nation of cannibals." that the system which has borne the name of christianity is an outgrowth of sun, serpent, and phallic faiths is so plainly proven by the facts brought out by later research as no longer to be a matter of reasonable doubt to those who have given any considerable degree of attention to this subject. the more exalted ideas which from the time of zoroaster to that of jesus had been struggling for existence, and which through various means had been gradually gaining a foothold, were, by the influx of crishnaism, soon choked out, and mythical christianity, which was but a gathering in of the grosser forms of the prevailing hindoo faith, mounted the throne of the roman empire. during the nineteen hundred years that have elapsed since the inauguration of this system, little has been understood concerning the real philosophy of christ--a philosophy which is seen to be simply a recognition of those higher scientific truths enunciated by an ancient race. the fact is observed in these later times that the altruistic principles involved in these teachings contain the highest wisdom--that they form the basis of a true social science, and that a high stage of civilization will never be reached until these principles are recognized as the foundation of human conduct. unselfishness, purity of life, and the brotherhood of man will never be realized so long as man shifts the responsibility of his wrong-doing upon another. quite recently the fact has been proved that the progressive principle originated in the female constitution; that in sympathy, a character which has its root in maternal affection, lies the key to human progress. conscience and the moral sense are outgrowths of sympathy; therefore, that which distinguishes man from the lower orders of life originated in and has been developed through the female organization. when these plain scientific truths, which are so simple as scarcely to need demonstration, become popularized, doubtless our present god-idea will undergo a process of reconstruction, and the later development will probably involve conceptions more in keeping with science and human reason. surely a scientific age will tolerate no religious conception whose principles are not founded on truth. the worship of a male god as the sole creator and sustainer of the universe is as unphilosophical as it is unreasonable and unscientific. as in many ways at the present time, mankind seems inclined to retrace its steps, and as upon its onward march humanity is beginning to manifest a willingness to return to truer and more primitive methods of thought and action, it is not impossible that in the not distant future, perceptive wisdom and the altruistic principles, together with the power to give life, may again be divinely enthroned in the place so long usurped by physical force and virile might. the birds and the bees by dave e. fisher _which goes to prove that, in some instances, being heroic is easy!_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, august . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] i was wandering among the tall grass of the slopes, listening to the soft whistling of the wind; allowing the grass to caress my toga and thighs. it was a day soft and clear; a day accepted by the young, cherished by we old. across the gently undulating hills stood the magnificent melopolis, encradling the oracle of delni. i do not, of course, believe in the gods per se; still there is a grandeur in the very stones that transcends their human sculptors, and it is no wonder to me that many cling tenaciously, and ignorantly, to the old religion. cling to the gods of old, who drew man upward from wherever he began. in whose names man killed and plundered, while struggling up. in whose names man finally left this earth, to seek his cousins among the stars. but of course there were no cousins. there was nothing. and man returned, and settled down to live. saddened, but resigned and content to live in peace with his knowledge and his power. gone now are all the ancient evils, wars, emergencies. "sias! sias--" and they were upon me. that is, xeon was upon me. but i knew that where xeon is, melia must soon appear. and indeed it was but a moment before melia slipped through the high grass to stand at his side. their youthful voices were babbling in excitement. melia was a she, with the swelling breasts that were, so tradition states, quite prevalent among members of the race long ago, and are seldom seen today. indeed, melia was on this account made the butt of many jokes and, i fear, would have had a lonely life of it had it not been for the friendship of xeon. "sias," they were saying, "the maternite's gone." i stared in amazement. "gone? it cannot be gone. it has always been--" "oh my gods!" xeon shouted. "i tell you it's gone! will you--" melia interrupted him quietly. "xeon, will you lose all respect for the elder?" then turned to me, and said calmly, "the watcher at the maternite machine, it appears, has been drunk. the heat rose above the warning, continued to rise, and then--poof. everything has evaporated in maternite. all the prelife is gone." "all of it?" i asked. "there is nothing left," melia insisted. "can more be made? and if not, what will happen with no more children?" "that is for the priests to say, not i," i replied. in moments of emergency, it is wise to speak with caution. that is, i suppose so. i have never before been in a real emergency. * * * * * a man my age does not hurry in the heat of the midday sun--maddugs nenglishmin go out in the midday sun, as the ancients say, although i often wonder why--but xeon and melia ran all the way down to the city. they are of an age to enter manhood, and have all the energy such young men do. as we entered the city, we were surrounded by confusion and consternation. and can the simple people be blamed? they were aware that they stood in the midst of an unprecedented happening; indeed, an emergency. for a machine had failed! not in the memory of the eldest among us has a machine failed. they were created so long ago, indeed, that the ignorant believe them to have been constructed by the gods themselves. and never, so far as i know, has one failed. small wonder that the watcher had been negligent. indeed, the watcher is more a tradition than a necessity. besides, had he been sober, he would not have known what to do. for who knows the mysterious workings of the machines? * * * * * i hastened to the city hall and found the conclave assembled, waiting for me to bring them to order. xeon and melia stopped as i mounted the steps, but i smiled and motioned them in. they accompanied me past the marble pillars into the cool recesses of the hall, then seated themselves on the floor as i took my place by the great table. well, you know how these things are. at such a time, many men feel impelled to make speeches, and one must not be disrespectful. prayers and supplications were offered to the gods, priests were sent to sacrifice, and finally, as the light of the sun was falling between the pillars, the high priest of the maternite machine was heard. he rambled through the customary opening remarks and then, continually smoothing his white beard--of which he is excessively proud--approached the crux of the matter and the conclave finally heard the facts it had assembled to hear. by this time, unfortunately, many of the conclave had departed for home and supper. yet perhaps it is for the best, for those left were the most earnest and intelligent. "i would not bore you," he said, "with details of which only the gods are sure. know, then, that once granted a few cells of prelife, it is an easy matter for the maternite machine to add more and more; thus assuring us, as has always been, a continuous source of prelife to be born by the generating machine as children. the machines bear the exact number of children each year to balance the number of us whom the gods claim. such it has always been from time immemorial." a murmur of assent and approval of these virtuous words whispered around the hall. "but now," he continued, however, with less assurance and indeed with even a stutter here and there, "an unprecedented situation has arisen. indeed, i might call it an emergency. for the m-maternite machine has actually failed." cries of "treason" sprang up, and i fear it might have gone hard for the priest had i not been able to insure order. "that is not the worst," he cried, as if in defiance. "all the prelife has been dried up. it will not function. there is no more. and there will be no more children!" at this i feared the conclave was about to riot. it is at such times that i most revere the wisdom of the ancients, who decreed seventy years the minimum age for a member of the conclave. they shouted and began to beat their fists, but for how long can a man of seventy years roar like a youngster? they quieted, breathing heavily, and i asked, "is there no way, then, to produce more prelife in order that the machines may produce more children for us? "as i have said," he replied, "give the machines but a bit of prelife and they will produce more. but take away that least bit, and they are helpless." such heresy could have brought a sad end to the priest had not the conclave been so exhausted by the events of the day. we leaned back to think. rocsates leaned forward and asked, "must there not--must there not have been a beginning to prelife? for the machine, it seems, cannot make it; and yet it came from somewhere." "riddles are not called for," i answered severely. "are not riddles often the beginning of knowledge?" he asked, in that irritating dumber-than-thou attitude of his. "must there not, long ago, have been a source of prelife: a source now forgotten? and may it not even now--should we discover it--be available to us? i am reminded of the story of the animals of old--" "i fear your mind is wandering, rocsates," i was forced to interrupt. "i know well the legend of the animals, but what does it have to do--" the heads of the conclave were turning to me, quizzically. i hastened to explain the legend of the animals. "it is said that many thousands of years ago, time without reckoning, there existed on the earth creatures who were alive like us, and yet not like us. it is said they had four legs or more, and no arms, were covered with hair, and although not mute, they could not speak." rocsates' voice made itself heard. "it is true. such creatures did indeed exist. it is recorded most scientifically in the films." "if it be so," i said, quieting the hub-bub that followed, "and i would not doubt your word, rocsates, for all know you are the wisest of men--if it were so, then, what of it?" "may it not be," rocsates put in, "that these animals had no machines to reproduce their kind? for surely the gods would not grant machines to such creatures. and indeed, if they had maternite machines, why then we would yet have these animals among us." "and how, then, did these animals reproduce?" i asked. "how, indeed? and is there not a legend--admitted only a legend--that says there was a time before the machines, and before the maternite machine, and that at such a time both the animals and men reproduced from within their own bodies?" at this two members of the conclave fell immediately into a faint, and i would gladly have joined them. i hoped that the youngsters, xeon and melia, had not heard, but as i turned they were listening most attentively to rocsates, who, amid cries of "heresy" and "treason", went on: "i should like to ask the conclave for permission to search the ancient records, in the hope of finding some such knowledge that would prove or disprove my words." "you wish to search the films--" i began. "not the films, sias, but the books." gods, this rocsates! the books, as well he knows, are so ancient, and so delicate, that they are kept in an air-tight tomb; lest, being handled, they be destroyed and all knowledge within them lost. therefore, they have not been read in the known history of our race. and rocsates has been anxious for an excuse-- "sias," he went on, "if there exists such knowledge as i seek, is it not indeed lost to the memory of man? and if so, are not the books the only place where it may be found?" rocsates, it is suspected, will never ask a question unless he knows the answer beforehand. and so i acquiesced, and agreed, and granted permission. and with much misgiving and foreboding of evil, the conclave adjourned. * * * * * several weeks elapsed before rocsates requested that the conclave meet. i called the meeting at dawn and so it was yet early in the afternoon when formalities were concluded and rocsates granted leave to speak. "some of those among you are she's," he began. "and you know you are different from the rest of us. to the advantage, your skin is fairer and your features more often handsomer than ours. to the disadvantage, your excretory system is not so mechanically dextrous as ours. and, you may say, why should this not be so? there is, indeed, no reason why we should all be identical. perforce you have the advantage, perforce we do. yet there is one other distinction. "some among you she's have the swelling of the breasts. and does there exist no reason for this? was there not, perhaps in ancient times, a cause for this? do you not wonder, she's, whence you come and for what reason?" "rocsates," i interrupted. "all this is fascinating, of course. but if you could be quick--" "of course," he replied. "in the course of my reading i have read many books, and while they are all vague on the subject, this i have discovered: "that there was indeed a time before the machines, in fact the books were created in that time, for not one of them mentions the machines. then reproduction was carried on by individuals, without help of the then nonexistent machines. the she's are not wanderers from another land, but they have lived with us for all time; they are not another race, but we are all types of one race. and the fact of reproduction is somehow intimately related to the physical distinctions of the she's!" these last sentences were shouted to be heard above the roar of the crowd. yet when rocsates stopped, so also did the noise, so shocked and amazed at his words were they. and i confess, myself also. "in fact," rocsates added, sitting down, "this process of reproduction seems to have been so simple that there was once a problem of over-population." order was lost among the conclave as each man turned to speak to his neighbor, and for some time i could not restore order. i realized that something had to be done to save rocsates before the outrage of the assembled overwhelmed him. "it seems," i shouted, "that there is a flaw in your logic." for if such there was, i was hopeful of dismissing the entire affair with no harm done. "for if people reproduced too often, why then this reproduction must have been a pleasant thing to do; otherwise they would not have done so to excess. and if it was a pleasant thing to do, where is the necessity for the machines, and why were they created?" rocsates seemed perplexed by this problem, whereupon xeon, who together with melia were at the conclave without permission, shouted, "perhaps the process of reproduction was of _such_ a pleasure that the conclave ruled it to be a sin? and therefore the machines were necessary!" at this impudence the conclave dissolved in an uproar, and i was beyond power to restrain them from placing xeon under arrest. privately, however, i had to admit that his supposition was a possibility, and thus i authorized rocsates to continue his search. * * * * * now indeed i was sorely worried concerning xeon, for he must languish in the dungeon until the conclave is satisfied to release him, and this they cannot do until they meet again. i needed a sufficient excuse to call a meeting of the conclave, whereupon i might argue for the lad. when i heard that rocsates again desired audience, i immediately proclaimed a meeting of the conclave to be held the next day at dawn, and so that night slept well. the conclave had come to order and formalities had been initiated when rocsates entered and took his place. he clutched under one shoulder a thin, rectangular object, but that is not what impressed me. his appearance--he looked as if he had not slept of late, nor eaten either. his eyes were sunken, and his features had doubled in age. he was bent and tired. but it was his eyes. there was a horror in them. i was shocked, and could not help staring at him. and then the formalities were over. i intended to speak for xeon, but rocsates was on his feet and i gave way. "i have indeed discovered the secret of reproduction," he began. "after many searchings, i came upon this--" and he held forth the object he had carried in. "it is a book. it is entitled, 'living a normal sex life.' it seems to be some sort of a do-it-yourself pamphlet." he dropped the book on the table and rubbed his hands over his eyes. there was something in the man's behavior that commanded everyone's attention. he went on, speaking low. "the word 'sex' is not defined, but it seems to mean...." his words trailed off. he was obviously unsure of how to continue. "i had better start at the beginning, i suppose," he said. "you see, once upon a time there were birds and bees...." * * * * * when he finished the conclave sat in horrified silence. his words, with all their horror, had the ring of truth and there were no cries of 'heresy'. there was only stunned disbelief and the beginnings of nausea. it is the mark of honor that a leader shall carry on when others fear to move. i cleared my throat. "shall not these organs which you mention have atrophied by now? with no use throughout all these generations, will they not have evolved into nothingness?" "i do not think so," rocsates replied after a while. "what to us is an eon, to evolution is but an instant. and then the swelling of the breasts, i believe, proves that there is still reproductive activity in some, at least, of the she's." we sat shaking our heads, bowed under terrible reality. "then we must experiment," i said. "but whom could we ask to submit to such horror?" "i have already taken the liberty of asking for volunteers," rocsates replied. "the she, of course, must be one with the swelling of the breasts. melia has volunteered, on condition that xeon be released from dungeon. are there any objections?" there were none, of course. who would refuse a boon to one who would undergo such an ordeal for the city? "and who will be the partner?" i asked. "in all honor, could xeon allow melia to surpass him in courage? it shall be he," rocsates said. and with his word the two entered the hall and stood, noble and naked. rocsates gestured to the table, and melia started to climb upon it, but xeon stepped forward. "my lords," he said, "would not better results be obtained were we to conduct the experiment in the fields before the oracle of delni, that the gods may help us?" his glance reached into my soul, and i was proud of xeon. a true friend, he thought even now of the comfort of melia. the marble table was indeed hard, and from rocsates' description it seemed that melia's position would be as uncomfortable as it would be undignified. the soft fields might be some slight help. i voiced my assent, and the entire conclave adjourned to the fields. * * * * * it was nearly dark when we walked home, rocsates and i, arm in arm. it had been a horrible day. the inhuman indignity, the cries-- we tarried before my home, leaned on the stone, stared at the first stars. "they seemed finally to accomplish all the book described," i muttered. "they may indeed have succeeded," rocsates replied. "there is mentioned a time lapse which is necessary. the child does not appear immediately." "it doesn't matter," i said disconsolately. "who could ask them to go through such an ordeal again?" and then i looked down to earth again, and saw them standing before me. melia cast her eyes down, and would not raise them. xeon held his arm about her shoulders, as if to protect her, but i know not from whom. "sias," he said. then stopped, embarrassed. i waited, and rocsates was silent, and he continued. "sias, we come to tell.... we will...." he raised his eyes to mine and said manfully, "we shall try again." i am afraid that tears came to my eyes. such sacrifice-- "we beg one favor," xeon went on. "we are agreed that--well, we should like to be left alone, in private, to try." "of course," i replied. anything they might want they could have. my relief and gratitude must have showed, for xeon took a deep breath and spoke again. "we do not deserve praise, sias," he said. "the truth is, we ... we sort of enjoy it." i watched them turn and wander off together under the stars. my heart has a warmth in it, and i no longer fear for the future of our race when our young people can show such nobility and sacrifice. essays in war-time further studies in the task of social hygiene by havelock ellis contents i. introduction ii. evolution and war iii. war and eugenics iv. morality in warfare v. is war diminishing vi. war and the birth-rate vii. war and democracy viii. feminism and masculinism ix. the mental differences of men and women x. the white slave crusade xi. the conquest of venereal disease xii. the nationalisation of health xiii. eugenics and genius xiv. the production of ability xv. marriage and divorce xvi. the meaning of the birth-rate xvii. civilisation and the birth-rate xviii. birth control index i introduction from the point of view of literature, the great war of to-day has brought us into a new and closer sympathy with the england of the past. dr. woods and mr. baltzly in their recent careful study of european warfare, _is war diminishing?_ come to the conclusion that england during the period of her great activity in the world has been "fighting about half the time." we had begun to look on war as belonging to the past and insensibly fallen into the view of buckle that in england "a love of war is, as a national taste, utterly extinct." now we have awakened to realise that we belong to a people who have been "fighting about half the time." thus it is, for instance, that we witness a revival of interest in wordsworth, not that wordsworth, the high-priest of nature among the solitary lakes, whom we have never forsaken, but the wordsworth who sang exultantly of carnage as god's daughter. to-day we turn to the war-like wordsworth, the stern patriot hurling defiance at the enemies who threatened our island fortress, as the authentic voice of england. but this new sense of community with the past comes to us again and again on every hand when to-day we look back to the records of the past. i chance to take down the _epistles_ of erasmus, and turn to the letters which the great humanist of rotterdam wrote from cambridge and london four hundred years ago when young henry viii had just suddenly (in ) plunged into war. one reads them to-day with vivid interest, for here in the supple and sensitive brain of the old scholar we see mirrored precisely the same thoughts and the same problems which exercise the more scholarly brains of to-day. erasmus, as his pan-german friends liked to remind him, was a sort of german, but he was, nevertheless, what we should now call a pacifist. he can see nothing good in war and he eloquently sets forth what he regards as its evils. it is interesting to observe, how, even in its small details as well as in its great calamities, war brought precisely the same experiences four centuries ago as to-day. prices are rising every day, erasmus declares, taxation has become so heavy that no one can afford to be liberal, imports are hampered and wine is scarce, it is difficult even to get one's foreign letters. in fact the preparations of war are rapidly changing "the genius of the island." thereupon erasmus launches into more general considerations on war. even animals, he points out, do not fight, save rarely, and then with only those of other species, and, moreover, not, like us, "with machines upon which we expend the ingenuity of devils." in every war also it is the non-combatants who suffer most, the people build cities and the folly of their rulers destroys them, the most righteous, the most victorious war brings more evil than good, and even when a real issue is in dispute, it could better have been settled by arbitration. the moral contagion of a war, moreover, lasts long after the war is over, and erasmus proceeds to express himself freely on the crimes of fighters and fighting. erasmus was a cosmopolitan scholar who habitually dwelt in the world of the spirit and in no wise expressed the general feelings either of his own time or ours. it is interesting to turn to a very ordinary, it may be typical, englishman who lived a century later, again in a period of war and also of quite ordinary and but moderately glorious war. john rous, a cambridge graduate of old suffolk family, was in appointed incumbent of santon downham, then called a town, though now it has dwindled away almost to nothing. here, or rather at weeting or at brandon where he lived, rous began two years later, on the accession of charles i, a private diary which was printed by the camden society sixty years ago, and has probably remained unread ever since, unless, as in the present case, by some person of antiquarian tastes interested in this remote corner of east anglia. but to-day one detects a new streak of interest in this ancient series of miscellaneous entries where we find that war brought to the front the very same problems which confront us to-day. santon downham lies in a remote and desolate and salubrious region, not without its attractions to-day, nor, for all its isolation, devoid of ancient and modern associations. for here in weeting parish we have the great prehistoric centre of the flint implement industry, still lingering on at brandon after untold ages, a shrine of the archaeologist. and here also, or at all events near by, at lackenheath, doubtless a shrine also for all men in khaki, the villager proudly points out the unpretentious little house which is the ancestral home of the kitcheners, who lie in orderly rank in the churchyard beside the old church notable for its rarely quaint mediaeval carvings. rous was an ordinary respectable type of country parson, a solid englishman, cautious and temperate in his opinions, even in the privacy of his diary, something of a country gentleman as well as a scholar, and interested in everything that went on, in the season's crops, in the rising price of produce, in the execution of a youth for burglary or the burning of a woman for murdering her husband. he frequently refers to the outbreak of plague in various parts of the country, and notes, for instance, that "cambridge is wondrously reformed since the plague there; scholars frequent not the streets and taverns as before; but," he adds later on better information, "do worse." and at the same time he is full of interest in the small incidents of nature around him, and notes, for instance, how a crow had built a nest and laid an egg in the poke of the topsail of the windmill. but rous's diary is not concerned only with matters of local interest. all the rumours of the world reached the vicar of downham and were by him faithfully set down from day to day. europe was seething with war; these were the days of that famous thirty years' war of which we have so often heard of late, and from time to time england was joining in the general disturbance, whether in france, spain, or the netherlands. as usual the english attack was mostly from the basis of the fleet, and never before, rous notes, had england possessed so great and powerful a fleet. soon after the diary begins the english expedition to rochelle took place, and a version of its history is here embodied. rous was kept in touch with the outside world not only by the proclamations constantly set up at thetford on the corner post of the bell inn--still the centre of that ancient town--but by as numerous and as varied a crop of reports as we find floating among us to-day, often indeed of very similar character. the vicar sets them down, not committing himself to belief but with a patient confidence that "time may tell us what we may safely think." in the meanwhile measures with which we are familiar to-day were actively in progress: recruits or "voluntaries" were being "gathered up by the drum," many soldiers, mostly irish, were billeted, sometimes not without friction, all over east anglia, the coasts were being fortified, the price of corn was rising, and even the problem of international exchange is discussed with precise data by rous. on one occasion, in , rous reports a discussion concerning the rochelle expedition which exactly counterparts our experience to-day. he was at brandon with two gentlemen named paine and howlet, when the former began to criticise the management of the expedition, disputing the possibility of its success and then "fell in general to speak distrustfully of the voyage, and then of our war with france, which he would make our king the cause of"; and so went on to topics of old popular discontent, of the great cost, the hazard to ships, etc. rous, like a good patriot, thought it "foul for any man to lay the blame upon our own king and state. i told them i would always speak the best of what our king and state did, and think the best too, till i had good grounds." and then in his diary he comments that he saw hereby, what he had often seen before, that men be disposed to speak the worst of state business, as though it were always being mismanaged, and so nourish a discontent which is itself a worse mischief and can only give joy to false hearts. that is a reflection which comes home to us to-day when we find the descendants of mr. paine following so vigorously the example which the parson of downham reprobated. that little incident at brandon, however, and indeed the whole picture of the ordinary english life of his time which rous sets forth, suggest a wider reflection. we realise what has always been the english temper. it is the temper of a vigorous, independent, opinionated, free-spoken yet sometimes suspicious people among whom every individual feels in himself the impulse to rule. it is also the temper of a people always prepared in the face of danger to subordinate these native impulses. the one tendency and the other opposing tendency are alike based on the history and traditions of the race. fifteen centuries ago, sidonius apollinaris gazed inquisitively at the saxon barbarians, most ferocious of all foes, who came to aquitania, with faces daubed with blue paint and hair pushed back over their foreheads; shy and awkward among the courtiers, free and turbulent when back again in their ships, they were all teaching and learning at once, and counted even shipwreck as good training. one would think, the bishop remarks, that each oarsman was himself the arch-pirate.[ ] these were the men who so largely went to the making of the "anglo-saxon," and sidonius might doubtless still utter the same comment could he observe their descendants in england to-day. every englishman believes in his heart, however modestly he may conceal the conviction, that he could himself organise as large an army as kitchener and organise it better. but there is not only the instinct to order and to teach but also to learn and to obey. for every englishman is the descendant of sailors, and even this island of britain seemed to men of old like a great ship anchored in the sea. nothing can overcome the impulse of the sailor to stand by his post at the moment of danger, and to play his sailorly part, whatever his individual convictions may be concerning the expedition to rochelle or the expedition to the dardanelles, or even concerning his right to play no part at all. that has ever been the englishman's impulse in the hour of peril of his island ship of state, as to-day we see illustrated in an almost miraculous degree. it is the saving grace of an obstinately independent and indisciplinable people. yet let us not forget that this same english temper is shown not only in warfare, not only in adventure in the physical world, but also in the greater, and--may we not say?--equally arduous tasks of peace. for to build up is even yet more difficult than to pull down, to create new life a still more difficult and complex task than to destroy it. our english habits of restless adventure, of latent revolt subdued to the ends of law and order, of uncontrollable freedom and independence, are even more fruitful here, in the organisation of the progressive tasks of life, than they are in the organisation of the tasks of war. that is the spirit in which these essays have been written by an englishman of english stock in the narrowest sense, whose national and family instincts of independence and warfare have been transmuted into a preoccupation with the more constructive tasks of life. it is a spirit which may give to these little essays--mostly produced while war was in progress--a certain unity which was not designed when i wrote them. [ ] o'dalton, _letters of sidonius_, vol. ii., p. . ii evolution and war the great war of to-day has rendered acute the question of the place of warfare in nature and the effect of war on the human race. these have long been debated problems concerning which there is no complete agreement. but until we make up our minds on these fundamental questions we can gain no solid ground from which to face serenely, or at all events firmly, the crisis through which mankind is now passing. it has been widely held that war has played an essential part in the evolutionary struggle for survival among our animal ancestors, that war has been a factor of the first importance in the social development of primitive human races, and that war always will be an essential method of preserving the human virtues even in the highest civilisation. it must be observed that these are three separate and quite distinct propositions. it is possible to accept one, or even two, of them without affirming them all. if we wish to clear our minds of confusion on this matter, so vital to our civilisation, we must face each of the questions by itself. it has sometimes been maintained--never more energetically than to-day, especially among the nations which most eagerly entered the present conflict--that war is a biological necessity. war, we are told, is a manifestation of the "struggle for life"; it is the inevitable application to mankind of the darwinian "law" of natural selection. there are, however, two capital and final objections to this view. on the one hand it is not supported by anything that darwin himself said, and on the other hand it is denied as a fact by those authorities on natural history who speak with most knowledge. that darwin regarded war as an insignificant or even non-existent part of natural selection must be clear to all who have read his books. he was careful to state that he used the term "struggle for existence" in a "metaphorical sense," and the dominant factors in the struggle for existence, as darwin understood it, were natural suitability to the organic and inorganic environment and the capacity for adaptation to circumstances; one species flourishes while a less efficient species living alongside it languishes, yet they may never come in actual contact and there is nothing in the least approaching human warfare. the conditions much more resemble what, among ourselves, we may see in business, where the better equipped species, that is to say, the big capitalist, flourishes, while the less well equipped species, the small capitalist, succumbs. mr. chalmers mitchell, secretary of the london zoological society and familiar with the habits of animals, has lately emphasised the contention of darwin and shown that even the most widely current notions of the extermination of one species by another have no foundation in fact.[ ] thus the thylacine or tasmanian wolf, the fiercest of the marsupials, has been entirely driven out of australia and its place taken by a later and higher animal, of the dog family, the dingo. but there is not the slightest reason to believe that the dingo ever made war on the thylacine. if there was any struggle at all it was a common struggle against the environment, in which the dingo, by superior intelligence in finding food and rearing young, and by greater resisting power to climate and disease, was able to succeed where the thylacine failed. again, the supposed war of extermination waged in europe by the brown rat against the black rat is (as chalmers mitchell points out) pure fiction. in england, where this war is said to have been ferociously waged, both rats exist and flourish, and under conditions which do not usually even bring them into competition with each other. the black rat (_mus rattus_) is smaller than the other, but more active and a better climber; he is the rat of the barn and the granary. the brown or norway rat (_mus decumanus_) is larger but less active, a burrower rather than a climber, and though both rats are omnivorous the brown rat is more especially a scavenger; he is the rat of sewers and drains. the black rat came to northern europe first--both of them probably being asiatic animals--and has no doubt been to some extent replaced by the brown rat, who has been specially favoured by the modern extension of drains and sewers, which exactly suit his peculiar tastes. but each flourishes in his own environment; neither of them is adapted to the other's environment; there is no war between them, nor any occasion for war, for they do not really come into competition with each other. the cockroaches, or "blackbeetles," furnish another example. these pests are comparatively modern and their great migrations in recent times are largely due to the activity of human commerce. there are three main species of cockroach--the oriental, the american, and the german (or croton bug)--and they flourish near together in many countries, though not with equal success, for while in england the oriental is most prosperous, in america the german cockroach is most abundant. they are seldom found in actual association, each is best adapted to a particular environment; there is no reason to suppose that they fight. it is so throughout nature. animals may utilise other species as food; but that is true of even, the most peaceable and civilised human races. the struggle for existence means that one species is more favoured by circumstances than another species; there is not the remotest resemblance anywhere to human warfare. we may pass on to the second claim for war: that it is an essential factor in the social development of primitive human races. war has no part, though competition has a very large part, in what we call "nature." but, when we come to primitive man the conditions are somewhat changed; men, unlike the lower animals, are able to form large communities--"tribes," as we call them--with common interests, and two primitive tribes can come into a competition which is acute to the point of warfare because being of the same, and not of two different, species, the conditions of life which they both demand are identical; they are impelled to fight for the possession of these conditions as animals of different species are not impelled to fight. we are often told that animals are more "moral" than human beings, and it is largely to the fact that, except under the immediate stress of hunger, they are better able to live in peace with each other, that the greater morality of animals is due. yet, we have to recognise, this mischievous tendency to warfare, so often (though by no means always, and in the earliest stages probably never) found in primitive man, was bound up with his superior and progressive qualities. his intelligence, his quickness of sense, his muscular skill, his courage and endurance, his aptitude for discipline and for organisation--all of them qualities on which civilisation is based--were fostered by warfare. with warfare in primitive life was closely associated the still more fundamental art, older than humanity, of dancing. the dance was the training school for all the activities which man developed in a supreme degree--for love, for religion, for art, for organised labour--and in primitive days dancing was the chief military school, a perpetual exercise in mimic warfare during times of peace, and in times of war the most powerful stimulus to military prowess by the excitement it aroused. not only was war a formative and developmental social force of the first importance among early men, but it was comparatively free from the disadvantages which warfare later on developed; the hardness of their life and the obtuseness of their sensibility reduced to a minimum the bad results of wounds and shocks, while their warfare, being free from the awful devices due to the devilry of modern man, was comparatively innocuous; even if very destructive, its destruction was necessarily limited by the fact that those accumulated treasures of the past which largely make civilisation had not come into existence. we may admire the beautiful humanity, the finely developed social organisation, and the skill in the arts attained by such people as the eskimo tribes, which know nothing of war, but we must also recognise that warfare among primitive peoples has often been a progressive and developmental force of the first importance, creating virtues apt for use in quite other than military spheres.[ ] the case is altered when we turn from savagery to civilisation. the new and more complex social order while, on the one hand, it presents substitutes for war in so far as war is a source of virtues, on the other hand, renders war a much more dangerous performance both to the individual and to the community, becoming indeed, progressively more dangerous to both, until it reaches such a climax of world-wide injury as we witness to-day. the claim made in primitive societies that warfare is necessary to the maintenance of virility and courage, a claim so fully admitted that only the youth furnished with trophies of heads or scalps can hope to become an accepted lover, is out of date in civilisation. for under civilised conditions there are hundreds of avocations which furnish exactly the same conditions as warfare for the cultivation of all the manly virtues of enterprise and courage and endurance, physical or moral. not only are these new avocations equally potent for the cultivation of virility, but far more useful for the social ends of civilisation. for these ends warfare is altogether less adapted than it is for the social ends of savagery. it is much less congenial to the tastes and aptitudes of the individual, while at the same time it is incomparably more injurious to society. in savagery little is risked by war, for the precious heirlooms of humanity have not yet been created, and war can destroy nothing which cannot easily be remade by the people who first made it. but civilisation possesses--and in that possession, indeed, civilisation largely consists--the precious traditions of past ages that can never live again, embodied in part in exquisite productions of varied beauty which are a continual joy and inspiration to mankind, and in part in slowly evolved habits and laws of social amenity, and reasonable freedom, and mutual independence, which under civilised conditions war, whether between nations or between classes, tends to destroy, and in so destroying to inflict a permanent loss in the material heirlooms of mankind and a serious injury to the spiritual traditions of civilisation. it is possible to go further and to declare that warfare is in contradiction with the whole of the influences which build up and organise civilisation. a tribe is a small but very closely knit unity, so closely knit that the individual is entirely subordinated to the whole and has little independence of action or even of thought. the tendency of civilisation is to create webs of social organisation which grow ever larger, but at the same time looser, so that the individual gains a continually growing freedom and independence. the tribe becomes merged in the nation, and beyond even this great unit, bonds of international relationship are progressively formed. war, which at first favoured this movement, becomes an ever greater impediment to its ultimate progress. this is recognised at the threshold of civilisation, and the large community, or nation, abolishes warfare between the units of which it is composed by the device of establishing law courts to dispense impartial justice. as soon as civilised society realised that it was necessary to forbid two persons to settle their disputes by individual fighting, or by initiating blood-feuds, or by arming friends and followers, setting up courts of justice for the peaceable settlement of disputes, the death-blow of all war was struck. for all the arguments that proved strong enough to condemn war between two individuals are infinitely stronger to condemn war between the populations of two-thirds of the earth. but, while it was a comparatively easy task for a state to abolish war and impose peace within its own boundaries--and nearly all over europe the process was begun and for the most part ended centuries ago--it is a vastly more difficult task to abolish war and impose peace between powerful states. yet at the point at which we stand to-day civilisation can make no further progress until this is done. solitary thinkers, like the abbé de saint-pierre, and even great practical statesmen like sully and penn, have from time to time realised this fact during the past four centuries, and attempted to convert it into actuality. but it cannot be done until the great democracies are won over to a conviction of its inevitable necessity. we need an international organisation of law courts which shall dispense justice as between nation and nation in the same way as the existing law courts of all civilised countries now dispense justice as between man and man; and we further need, behind this international organisation of justice, an international organisation of police strong enough to carry out the decisions of these courts, not to exercise tyranny but to ensure to every nation, even the smallest, that measure of reasonable freedom and security to go about its own business which every civilised nation now, in some small degree at all events, already ensures to the humblest of its individual citizens. the task may take centuries to complete, but there is no more urgent task before mankind to-day.[ ] these considerations are very elementary, and a year or two ago they might have seemed to many--though not to all of us--merely academic, chiefly suitable to put before schoolchildren. but now they have ceased to be merely academic; they have indeed acquired a vital actuality almost agonisingly intense. for one realises to-day that the considerations here set forth, widely accepted as they are, yet are not generally accepted by the rulers and leaders of the greatest and foremost nations of the world. thus germany, in its present prussianised state, through the mouths as well as through the actions of those rulers and leaders, denies most of the conclusions here set forth. in germany it is a commonplace to declare that war is the law of nature, that the "struggle for existence" means the arbitration of warfare, that it is by war that all evolution proceeds, that not only in savagery but in the highest civilisation the same rule holds good, that human war is the source of all virtues, the divinely inspired method of regenerating and purifying mankind, and every war may properly be regarded as a holy war. these beliefs have been implicit in the prussian spirit ever since the goths and vandals issued from the forests of the vistula in the dawn of european history. but they have now become a sort of religious dogma, preached from pulpits, taught in universities, acted out by statesmen. from this prussian point of view, whether right or wrong, civilisation, as it has hitherto been understood in the world, is of little consequence compared to german militaristic kultur. therefore the german quite logically regards the russians as barbarians, and the french as decadents, and the english as contemptibly negligible, although the russians, however yet dominated by a military bureaucracy (moulded by teutonic influences, as some maliciously point out), are the most humane people of europe, and the french the natural leaders of civilisation as commonly understood, and the english, however much they may rely on amateurish methods of organisation by emergency, have scattered the seeds of progress over a large part of the earth's surface. it is equally logical that the germans should feel peculiar admiration and sympathy for the turks, and find in turkey, a state founded on military ideals, their own ally in the present war. that war, from our present point of view, is a war of states which use military methods for special ends (often indeed ends that have been thoroughly evil) against a state which still cherishes the primitive ideal of warfare as an end in itself. and while such a state must enjoy immense advantages in the struggle, it is difficult, when we survey the whole course of human development, to believe that there can be any doubt about the final issue. for one who writes as an englishman, it may be necessary to point out clearly that that final issue by no means involves the destruction, or even the subjugation, of germany. it is indeed an almost pathetic fact that germany, which idealises warfare, stands to gain more than any country by an assured rule of international peace which would save her from warfare. placed in a position which renders militaristic organisation indispensable, the germans are more highly endowed than almost any people with the high qualities of intelligence, of receptiveness, of adaptability, of thoroughness, of capacity for organisation, which ensure success in the arts and sciences of peace, in the whole work of civilisation. this is amply demonstrated by the immense progress and the manifold achievements of germany during forty years of peace, which have enabled her to establish a prosperity and a good name in the world which are now both in peril. germany must be built up again, and the interests of civilisation itself, which germany has trampled under foot, demand that germany shall be built up again, under conditions, let us hope, which will render her old ideals useless and out of date. we shall then be able to assert as the mere truisms they are, and not as a defiance flung in the face of one of the world's greatest nations, the elementary propositions i have here set forth. war is not a permanent factor of national evolution, but for the most part has no place in nature at all; it has played a part in the early development of primitive human society, but, as savagery passes into civilisation, its beneficial effects are lost, and, on the highest stages of human progress, mankind once more tends to be enfolded, this time consciously and deliberately, in the general harmony of nature. [ ] p. chalmers mitchell, _evolution and the war_, . [ ] on the advantages of war in primitive society, see w. macdougal's _social psychology_, ch. xi. [ ] it is doubtless a task beset by difficulties, some of which are set forth, in no hostile spirit, by lord cromer, "thinking internationally," _nineteenth century_, july, ; but the statement of most of these difficulties is enough to suggest the solution. iii war and eugenics in dealing with war it is not enough to discuss the place of warfare in nature or its effects on primitive peoples. even if we decide that the general tendency of civilisation is unfavourable to war we have scarcely settled matters. it is necessary to push the question further home. primitive warfare among savages, when it fails to kill, may be a stimulating and invigorating exercise, simply a more dangerous form of dancing. but civilised warfare is a different kind of thing, to a very limited extent depending on, or encouraging, the prowess of the individual fighting men, and to be judged by other standards. _what precisely is the measurable effect of war, if any, on the civilised human breed?_ if we want to know what to do about war in the future, that is the question we have to answer. "wars are not paid for in war-time," said benjamin franklin, "the bill comes later." franklin, who was a pioneer in many so fields, seems to have been a pioneer in eugenics also by arguing that a standing army diminishes the size and breed of the human species. he had, however, no definite facts wherewith to demonstrate conclusively that proposition. even to-day, it cannot be said that there is complete agreement among biologists as to the effect of war on the race. thus we find a distinguished american zoologist, chancellor starr jordan, constantly proclaiming that the effect of war in reversing selection is a great overshadowing truth of history; warlike nations, he declares, become effeminate, while peaceful nations generate a fiercely militant spirit.[ ] another distinguished american scientist, professor ripley, in his great work, _the races of europe_, likewise concludes that "standing armies tend to overload succeeding generations with inferior types of men." a cautious english biologist, professor j. arthur thomson, is equally decided in this opinion, and in his recent galton lecture[ ] sets forth the view that the influence of war on the race, both directly and indirectly, is injurious; he admits that there may be beneficial as well as deteriorative influences, but the former merely affect the moral atmosphere, not the hereditary germ plasm; biologically, war means wastage and a reversal of rational selection, since it prunes off a disproportionally large number of those whom the race can least afford to lose. on the other hand, another biologist, dr. chalmers mitchell, equally opposed to war, cannot feel certain that the total effect of even a great modern war is to deteriorate the stock, while in germany, as we know, it is the generally current opinion, scientific and unscientific, equally among philosophers, militarists, and journalists, that not only is war "a biological necessity," but that it is peace, and not war, which effeminates and degenerates a nation. in germany, indeed, this doctrine is so generally accepted that it is not regarded as a scientific thesis to be proved, but as a religious dogma to be preached. it is evident that we cannot decide this question, so vital to human progress, except on a foundation of cold and hard fact. whatever may be the result of war on the quality of the breed, there can be little doubt of its temporary effect on the quantity. the reaction after war may create a stimulating influence on the birth-rate, leading to a more or less satisfactory recovery, but it seems clear that the drafting away of a large proportion of the manhood of a nation necessarily diminishes births. at the present time english schools are sending out an unusually small number of pupils into life, and this is directly due to the south-african war fifteen years ago. still more obvious is the direct effect of war, apart from diminishing the number of births, in actually pouring out the blood of the young manhood of the race. in the very earliest stage of primitive humanity it seems probable that man was as untouched by warfare as his animal ancestors, and it is satisfactory to think that war had no part in the first birth of man into the world. even the long early stone age has left no distinguishable sign of the existence of warfare.[ ] it was not until the transition to the late stone age, the age of polished flint implements, that we discern evidences of the homicidal attacks of man on man. even then we are concerned more with quarrels than with battles, for one of the earliest cases of wounding known in human records, is that of a pregnant young woman found in the cro-magnon cave whose skull had been cut open by a flint several weeks before death, an indication that she had been cared for and nursed. but, again at the beginning of the new stone age, in the caverns of the beaumes-chaudes people, who still used implements of the old stone type, we find skulls in which are weapons of the new stone type. evidently these people had come in contact with a more "civilised" race which had discovered war. yet the old pacific race still lingered on, as in the belgian people of the furfooz type who occupied themselves mainly with hunting and fishing, and have their modern representatives, if not their actual descendants, in the peaceful lapps and eskimo.[ ] it was thus at a late stage of human history, though still so primitive as to be prehistoric, that organised warfare developed. at the dawn of history war abounded. the earliest literature of the aryans--whether greeks, germans, or hindus--is nothing but a record of systematic massacres, and the early history of the hebrews, leaders in the world's religion and morality, is complacently bloodthirsty. lapouge considers that in modern times, though wars are fewer in number, the total number of victims is still about the same, so that the stream of bloodshed throughout the ages remains unaffected. he attempted to estimate the victims of war for each civilised country during half a century, and found that the total amounted to nine and a half millions, while, by including the napoleonic and other wars of the beginning of the nineteenth century, he considered that that total would be doubled. put in another form, lapouge says, the wars of a century spill , , gallons of blood, enough to fill three million forty-gallon casks, or to create a perpetual fountain sending up a jet of gallons per hour, a fountain which has been flowing unceasingly ever since the dawn of history. it is to be noted, also, that those slain on the battlefield by no means represent the total victims of a war, but only about half of them; more than half of those who, from one cause or another, perished in the franco-prussian war, it is said, were not belligerents. lapouge wrote some ten years ago and considered that the victims of war, though remaining about absolutely the same in number through the ages, were becoming relatively fewer. the great war of to-day would perhaps have disturbed his calculations, unless we may assume that it will be followed by a tremendous reaction against war. for when the war had lasted only nine months, it was estimated that if it should continue at the present rate (and as a matter of fact its scale has been much enlarged) for another twelve months, the total loss to europe in lives destroyed or maimed would be ten millions, about equal to five-sixths of the whole young manhood of the german empire, and nearly the same number of victims as lapouge reckoned as the normal war toll of a whole half-century of european "civilisation." it is scarcely necessary to add that all these bald estimates of the number of direct victims to war give no clue to the moral and material damage--apart from all question of injury to the race--done by the sudden or slow destruction of so large a proportion of the young manhood of the world, the ever widening circles of anguish and misery and destitution which every fatal bullet imposes on humanity, for it is probable that for every ten million soldiers who fall on the field, fifty million other persons at home are plunged into grief or poverty, or some form of life-diminishing trouble. the foregoing considerations have not, however, brought us strictly within the field of eugenics. they indicate the great extent to which war affects the human breed, but they do not show that war affects the quality of the breed, and until that is shown the eugenist remains undisturbed. there are various circumstances which, at the outset, and even in the absence of experimental verification, make it difficult, or impossible, that even the bare mortality of war (for the eugenical bearings of war are not confined to its mortality) should leave the eugenist indifferent. for war never hits men at random. it only hits a carefully selected percentage of "fit" men. it tends, in other words, to strike out, temporarily, or in a fatal event, permanently, from the class of fathers, precisely that percentage of the population which the eugenist wishes to see in that class. this is equally the case in countries with some form of compulsory service, and in countries which rely on a voluntary military system. for, however an army is recruited, it is only those men reaching a fairly high standard of fitness who are accepted, and these, even in times of peace are hampered in the task of carrying on the race, which the less fit and the unfit are free to do at their own good pleasure. nearly all the ways in which war and armies disturb the normal course of affairs seem likely to interfere with eugenical breeding, and none to favour it. thus at one time, in the napoleonic wars, the french age of conscription fell to eighteen, while marriage was a cause of exemption, with the result of a vast increase of hasty and ill-advised marriages among boys, certainly injurious to the race. armies, again, are highly favourable to the spread of racial poisons, especially of syphilis, the most dangerous of all, and this cannot fail to be, in a marked manner, dysgenic rather than eugenic. the napoleonic wars furnished the first opportunity of testing the truth of franklin's assertion concerning the disastrous effect of armies on the race, by the collection of actual and precise data. but the significance of the data proved unexpectedly difficult to unravel, and most writers on the subject have been largely occupied in correcting the mistakes of their predecessors. villermé in remarked that the long series of french wars up to must probably reduce the height of the french people, though he was unable to prove that this was so. dufau in was in a better position to judge, and he pointed out in his _traité de statistique_ that, comparing and , the number of young men exempted from the army had doubled in the interval, even though the regulation height had been lowered. this result, however, he held, was not so alarming as it might appear, and probably only temporary, for it was seemingly due to the fact that, in and the following years, the male population was called to arms in masses, even youths being accepted, so that a vast number of precocious marriages of often defective men took place. the result would only be terrible, dufau believed, if prolonged; his results, however, were not altogether reliable, for he failed to note the proportion of men exempted to those examined. the question was investigated more thoroughly by tschuriloff in .[ ] he came to the conclusion that the napoleonic wars had no great influence on stature, since the regulation height was lowered in , and abolished altogether for healthy men in , and any defect of height in the next generation is speedily repaired. tschuriloff agreed, however, that, though the influence of war in diminishing the height of the race is unimportant, the influence of war in increasing physical defects and infirmities in subsequent generations is a very different matter. he found that the physical deterioration of war manifested itself chiefly in the children born eight years afterwards, and therefore in the recruits twenty-eight years after the war. he regarded it as an undoubted fact that the french army of half a million men in increased by per cent. the proportion of hereditarily infirm persons. he found, moreover, that the new-born of , that is to say the military class of , showed that infirmities had risen from per cent. to . per cent., an increase of per cent. nor is the _status quo_ entirely brought back later on, for the bad heredity of the increased number of defectives tends to be still further propagated, even though in an attenuated form. as a matter of fact, tschuriloff found that the proportion of exemptions from the army for infirmity increased enormously from per cent. in - , to per cent. in - , declining later to per cent. in - , though he is careful to point out that this result must not be entirely ascribed to the reversed selection of wars. there could, however, be no doubt that most kinds of infirmities became more frequent as a result of military selection. lapouge's more recent investigation into the results of the franco-prussian war of were of similar character; when examining the recruits of - he found that these "children of the war" were inferior to those born earlier, and that there was probably an undue proportion of defective individuals among their fathers. it cannot be said that these investigations finally demonstrate the evil results of war on the race. the subject is complicated, and some authorities, like collignon in france and ammon in germany,--both, it may be well to note, army surgeons,--have sought to smooth down and explain away the dysgenic effects of war. but, on the whole, the facts seem to support those probabilities which the insight of franklin first clearly set forth. it is interesting in the light of these considerations on the eugenic bearings of warfare to turn for a moment to those who proclaim the high moral virtues of war as a national regenerator. it is chiefly in germany that, for more than a century past, this doctrine has been preached.[ ] "war invigorates humanity," said hegel, "as storms preserve the sea from putrescence." "war is an integral part of god's universe," said moltke, "developing man's noblest attributes." "the condemnation of war," said treitschke, "is not only absurd, it is immoral."[ ] these brave sayings scarcely bear calm and searching examination at the best, but, putting aside all loftier appeals to humanity or civilisation, a "national regenerator" which we have good reason to suppose enfeebles and deteriorates the race, cannot plausibly be put before us as a method of ennobling humanity or as a part of god's universe, only to be condemned on pain of seeing a company of german professors pointing the finger to our appalling "immorality," on their drill-sergeant's word of command. at the same time, this glorification of the regenerating powers of war quite overlooks the consideration that the fighting spirit tends to destroy itself, so that the best way to breed good fighters is not to preach war, but to cultivate peace, which is what the germans have, in actual practice, done for over forty years past. france, the most military, and the most gloriously military, nation of the napoleonic era, is now the leader in anti-militarism, altogether indifferent to the lure of military glory, though behind no nation in courage or skill. belgium has not fought for generations, and had only just introduced compulsory military service, yet the belgians, from their king and their cardinal-archbishop downwards, threw themselves into the war with a high spirit scarcely paralleled in the world's history, and belgian commercial travellers developed a rare military skill and audacity. all the world admires the bravery with which the germans face death and the elaborate detail with which they organise battle, yet for all their perpetual glorification of war there is no sign that they fight with any more spirit than their enemies. even if we were to feel ourselves bound to accept war as "an integral part of god's universe," we need not trouble ourselves to glorify war, for, when once war presents itself as a terrible necessity, even the most peaceable of men are equal to the task. this consideration brings us to those "moral equivalents of war" which william james was once concerned over, when he advocated, in place of military conscription, "a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against _nature_."[ ] such a method of formally organising in the cause of civilisation, instead of in the cause of savagery, the old military traditions of hardihood and discipline may well have its value. but the present war has shown us that in no case need we fear that these high qualities will perish in any vitally progressive civilisation. for they are qualities that lie in the heart of humanity itself. they are not created by the drill-sergeant; he merely utilises them for his own, as we may perhaps think, disastrous ends. this present war has shown us that on every hand, even in the unlikeliest places, all the virtues of war have been fostered by the cultivation of the arts and sciences of peace, ready to be transformed to warlike ends by men who never dreamed of war. in france we find many of the most promising young scientists, poets, and novelists cheerfully going forth to meet their death. on the other side, we find a kreisler, created to be the joy of the world, ready to be trampled to death beneath the hoofs of cossack horses. the friends of gordon mathison, the best student ever turned out from the medical faculty of the melbourne university and a distinguished young physiologist who seemed to be destined to become one of the first physicians of his time, viewed with foreboding his resolve to go to the front, for "wherever he was he had to be in the game," they said; and a few weeks later he was killed at gallipoli on the threshold of his career. the qualities that count in peace are the qualities that count in war, and the high-spirited man who throws himself bravely into the dangerous adventures of peace is fully the equal of the hero of the battlefield, and himself prepared to become that hero.[ ] it would seem, therefore, on the whole, that when the eugenist takes a wide survey of this question, he need not qualify his disapproval of war by any regrets over the loss of such virtues as warfare fosters. in every progressive civilisation the moral equivalents of war are already in full play. peace, as well as war, "develops the noblest attributes of man"; peace, rather than war, preserves the human sea from putrescence; it is the condemnation of peace, rather than the condemnation of war, which is not only absurd but immoral. we are not called upon to choose between the manly virtues of war and the effeminate degeneracy of peace. the great war of to-day may perhaps help us to realise that the choice placed before us is of another sort. the virtues of daring and endurance will never fail in any vitally progressive community of men, alike in the causes of war and of peace.[ ] but on the one hand we find those virtues at work in the service of humanity, creating ever new marvels of science and of art, adding to the store of the precious heirlooms of the race which are a joy to all mankind. on the other hand, we see these same virtues in the service of savagery, extinguishing those marvels, killing their creators, and destroying every precious treasure of mankind within reach. that--it seems to be one of the chief lessons of this war--is the choice placed before us who are to-day called upon to build the world of the future on a firmer foundation than our own world has been set. [ ] d.s. jordan, _war and the breed_, ; also articles on "war and manhood" in the _eugenics review_, july, , and on "the eugenics of war" in the same review for oct., . [ ] j. arthur thomson, "eugenics and war," _eugenics review_, april, . major leonard darwin (_journal royal statistical society_, march, ) sets forth a similar view. [ ] it is true that in the gourdon cavern, in the pyrenees, representing a very late and highly developed stage of magdalenian culture, there are indications that human brains were eaten (zaborowski, _l'homme préhistorique_, p. ). it is surmised that they were the brains of enemies killed in battle, but this remains a surmise. [ ] zaborowski, _l'homme préhistorique_, pp. , ; lapouge, _les sélections sociales_, p. . [ ] _revue d'anthropologie_, , pp. and . [ ] in france it is almost unknown except as preached by the syndicalist philosopher, georges sorel, who insists, quite in the german manner, on the purifying and invigorating effects of "a great foreign war," although, very unlike the german professors, he holds that "a great extension of proletarian violence" will do just as well as war. [ ] the recent expressions of the same doctrine in germany are far too numerous to deal with. i may, however, refer to professor fritz wilke's _ist der krieg sittlich berechtigt?_ ( ) as being the work of a theologian and biblical scholar of vienna who has written a book on the politics of isaiah and discussed the germs of historical veridity in the history of abraham. "a world-history without war," he declares, "would be a history of materialism and degeneration"; and again: "the solution is not 'weapons down!' but 'weapons up!' with pure hands and calm conscience let us grasp the sword." he dwells, of course, on the supposed purifying and ennobling effects of war and insists that, in spite of its horrors, and when necessary, "war is a divine institution and a work of love." the leaders of the world's peace movement are, thank god! not germans, but merely english and americans, and he sums up, with moltke, that war is a part of the moral order of the world. [ ] william james, _popular science monthly_, oct., . [ ] we still often fall into the fallacy of over-estimating the advantages of military training--with its fine air of set-up manliness and restrained yet vitalised discipline--because we are mostly compelled to compare such training with the lack of training fostered by that tame, dull sedentary routine of which there is far too much in our present phase of civilisation. the remedy lies in stimulating the heroic and strenuous sides of civilisation rather than in letting loose the ravages of war. as nietzsche long since pointed out (_human, all-too-human_, section ), the vaunted national armies of modern times are merely a method of squandering the most highly civilised men, whose delicately organised brains have been slowly produced through long generations; "in our day greater and higher tasks are assigned to men than _patria_ and _honor_, and the rough old roman patriotism has become dishonourable, at the best behind the times." [ ] the border of scotland and england was in ancient times, it has been said, "a very paradise for murderers and robbers." the war-like spirit was there very keen and deeds of daring were not too scrupulously effected, for the culprit knew that nothing was easier and safer than to become an outlaw on the other side of the border. yet these were the conditions that eventually made the border one of the great british centres of genius (the welsh border was another) and the home of a peculiarly capable and vigorous race. iv morality in warfare there are some idealistic persons who believe that morality and war are incompatible. war is bestial, they hold, war is devilish; in its presence it is absurd, almost farcical, to talk about morality. that would be so if morality meant the code, for ever unattained, of the sermon on the mount. but there is not only the morality of jesus, there is the morality of mumbo jumbo. in other words, and limiting ourselves to the narrower range of the civilised world, there is the morality of machiavelli and bismarck, and the morality of st. francis and tolstoy. the fact is, as we so often forget, and sometimes do not even know, morality is fundamentally custom, the _mores_, as it has been called, of a people. it is a body of conduct which is in constant motion, with an exalted advance-guard, which few can keep up with, and a debased rearguard, once called the black-guard, a name that has since acquired an appropriate significance. but in the substantial and central sense morality means the conduct of the main body of the community. thus understood, it is clear that in our time war still comes into contact with morality. the pioneers may be ahead; the main body is in the thick of it. that there really is a morality of war, and that the majority of civilised people have more or less in common a certain conventional code concerning the things which may or may not be done in war, has been very clearly seen during the present conflict. this moral code is often said to be based on international regulations and understandings. it certainly on the whole coincides with them. but it is the popular moral code which is fundamental, and international law is merely an attempt to enforce that morality. the use of expanding bullets and poison gases, the poisoning of wells, the abuse of the red cross and the white flag, the destruction of churches and works of art, the infliction of cruel penalties on civilians who have not taken up arms--all such methods of warfare as these shock popular morality. they are on each side usually attributed to the enemy, they are seldom avowed, and only adopted in imitation of the enemy, with hesitation and some offence to the popular conscience, as we see in the case of poison gas, which was only used by the english after long delay, while the french still hesitated. the general feeling about such methods, even when involving scientific skill, is that they are "barbarous." as a matter of fact, this charge of "barbarism" against those methods of warfare which shock our moral sense must not be taken too literally. the methods of real barbarians in war are not especially "barbarous." they have sometimes committed acts of cruelty which are revolting to us to-day, but for the most part the excesses of barbarous warfare have been looting and burning, together with more or less raping of women, and these excesses have been so frequent within the last century, and still to-day, that they may as well be called "civilised" as "barbarous." the sack of rome by the goths at the beginning of the fifth century made an immense impression on the ancient world, as an unparalleled outrage. st. augustine in his _city of god_, written shortly afterwards, eloquently described the horrors of that time. yet to-day, in the new light of our own knowledge of what war may involve, the ways of the ancient goths seem very innocent. we are expressly told that they spared the sacred christian places, and the chief offences brought against them seem to be looting and burning; yet the treasure they left untouched was vast and incalculable and we should be thankful indeed if any belligerent in the war of to-day inflicted as little injury on a conquered city as the goths on rome. the vague rhetoric which this invasion inspired scarcely seems to be supported by definitely recorded facts, and there can be very little doubt that the devastation wrought in many old wars exists chiefly in the writings of rhetorical chroniclers whose imaginations were excited, as we may so often see among the journalists of to-day, by the rumour of atrocities which have never been committed. this is not to say that no devastation and cruelty have been perpetrated in ancient wars. it seems to be generally agreed that in the famous thirty years' war, which the germans fought against each other, atrocities were the order of the day. we are constantly being told, in respect of some episode or other of the war of to-day, that "nothing like it has been seen since the thirty years' war." but the writers who make this statement, with an off-hand air of familiar scholarship, never by any chance bring forward the evidence for this greater atrociousness of the thirty years' war,[ ] and one is inclined to suspect that this oft-repeated allusion to the thirty years' war as the acme of military atrocity is merely a rhetorical flourish. in any case we know that, not so many years after the thirty years' war, frederick the great, who combined supreme military gifts with freedom from scruple in policy, and was at the same time a great representative german, declared that the ordinary citizen ought never to be aware that his country is at war.[ ] nothing could show more clearly the military ideal, however imperfectly it may sometimes have been attained, of the old european world. atrocities, whether regarded as permissible or as inevitable, certainly occurred. but for the most part wars were the concern of the privileged upper class; they were rendered necessary by the dynastic quarrels of monarchs and were carried out by a professional class with aristocratic traditions and a more or less scrupulous regard to ancient military etiquette. there are many stories of the sufferings of the soldiery in old times, in the midst of abundance, on account of military respect for civilian property. von der goltz remarks that "there was a time when the troops camped in the cornfields and yet starved," and states that in the prussian main army camped close to huge piles of wood and yet had no fires to warm themselves or cook their food.[ ] the legend, if legend it is, of the french officer who politely requested the english officer opposite him to "fire first" shows how something of the ancient spirit of chivalry was still regarded as the accompaniment of warfare. it was an occupation which only incidentally concerned the ordinary citizen. the english, especially, protected by the sea and always living in open undefended cities, have usually been able to preserve this indifference to the continental wars in which their kings have constantly been engaged, and, as we see, even in the most unprotected european countries, and the most profoundly warlike, the great frederick set forth precisely the same ideal of war. the fact seems to be that while war is nowadays less chronic than of old, less prolonged, and less easily provoked, it is a serious fallacy to suppose that it is also less barbarous. we imagine that it must be so simply because we believe, on more or less plausible grounds, that our life generally is growing less barbarous and more civilised. but war, by its very nature, always means a relapse from civilisation into barbarism, if not savagery.[ ] we may sympathise with the endeavour of the european soldiers of old to civilise warfare, and we may admire the remarkable extent to which they succeeded in doing so. but we cannot help feeling that their romantic and chivalrous notions of warfare were absurdly incongruous. the world in general might have been content with that incongruity. but germany, or more precisely prussia, with its ancient genius for warfare, has in the present war taken the decisive step in initiating the abolition of that incongruity by placing warfare definitely on the basis of scientific barbarism. to do this is, in a sense, we must remember, not a step backwards, but a step forward. it involved the recognition of the fact that war is not a game to be played for its own sake, by a professional caste, in accordance with fixed rules which it would be dishonourable to break, but a method, carried out by the whole organised manhood of the nation, of effectively attaining an end desired by the state, in accordance with the famous statement of clausewitz that war is state policy continued by a different method. if by the chivalrous method of old, which was indeed in large part still their own method in the previous franco-german war, the germans had resisted the temptation to violate the neutrality of luxemburg and belgium in order to rush behind the french defences, and had battered instead at the gap of belfort, they would have won the sympathy of the world, but they certainly would not have won the possession of the greater part of belgium and a third part of france. it has not alone been military instinct which has impelled germany on the new course thus inaugurated. we see here the final outcome of a reaction against ancient teutonic sentimentality which the insight of goldwin smith clearly discerned forty years ago.[ ] humane sentiments and civilised traditions, under the moulding hand of prussian leaders of kultur, have been slowly but firmly subordinated to a political realism which, in the military sphere, means a masterly efficiency in the aim of crushing the foe by overwhelming force combined with panic-striking "frightfulness." in this conception, that only is moral which served these ends. the horror which this "frightfulness" may be expected to arouse, even among neutral nations, is from the german point of view a tribute of homage. the military reputation of germany is so great in the world, and likely to remain so, whatever the issue of the present war, that we are here faced by a grave critical issue which concerns the future of the whole world. the conduct of wars has been transformed before our eyes. in any future war the example of germany will be held to consecrate the new methods, and the belligerents who are not inclined to accept the supreme authority of germany may yet be forced in their own interests to act in accordance with it. the mitigating influence of religion over warfare has long ceased to be exercised, for the international catholic church no longer possesses the power to exert such influence, while the national protestant churches are just as bellicose as their flacks. now we see the influence of morality over warfare similarly tending to disappear. henceforth, it seems, we have to reckon with a conception of war which accounts it a function of the supreme state, standing above morality and therefore able to wage war independently of morality. necessity--the necessity of scientific effectiveness--becomes the sole criterion of right and wrong. when we look back from the standpoint of knowledge which we have reached in the present war to the notions which prevailed in the past, they seem to us hollow and even childish. seventy years ago, buckle, in his _history of civilisation_, stated complacently that only ignorant and unintellectual nations any longer cherished ideals of war. his statement was part of the truth. it is true, for instance, that france is now the most anti-military of nations, though once the most military of all. but, we see, it is only part of the truth. the very fact, which buckle himself pointed out, that efficiency has in modern times taken the place of morality in the conduct of affairs, offers a new foundation for war when war is urged on scientific principle for the purpose of rendering effective the claims of state policy. to-day we see that it is not sufficient for a nation to cultivate knowledge and become intellectual, in the expectation that war will automatically go out of fashion. it is quite possible to become very scientific, most relentlessly intellectual, and on that foundation to build up ideals of warfare much more barbarous than those of assyria. the conclusion seems to be that we are to-day entering on an era in which war will not only flourish as vigorously as in the past, although not in so chronic a form, but with an altogether new ferocity and ruthlessness, with a vastly increased power of destruction, and on a scale of extent and intensity involving an injury to civilisation and humanity which no wars of the past ever perpetrated. moreover, this state of things imposes on the nations which have hitherto, by their temper, their position, or their small size, regarded themselves as nationally neutral, a new burden of armament in order to ensure that neutrality. it has been proclaimed on both sides that this war is a war to destroy militarism. but the disappearance of a militarism that is only destroyed by a greater militarism offers no guarantee at all for any triumph of civilisation or humanity. what then are we to do? it seems clear that we have to recognise that our intellectual leaders of old who declared that to ensure the disappearance of war we have but to sit still and fold our hands while we watch the beneficent growth of science and intellect were grievously mistaken. war is still one of the active factors of modern life, though by no means the only factor which it is in our power to grasp and direct. by our energetic effort the world can be moulded. it is the concern of all of us, and especially of those nations which are strong enough and enlightened enough to take a leading part in human affairs, to work towards the initiation and the organisation of this immense effort. in so far as the great war of to-day acts as a spur to such effort it will not have been an unmixed calamity. [ ] in so far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements involved a more thorough method of pillage, and to epidemics. [ ] treitschke, _history of germany_ (english translation by e. and c. paul), vol. i., p. . [ ] von der goltz, _the nation in arms_, pp. _et seq._ this attitude was a final echo of the ancient truce of god. that institution, which was first definitely formulated in the early eleventh century in roussillon and was soon confirmed by the pope in agreement with nobles and barons, was extended to the whole of christendom before the end of the century. it ordained peace for several days a week and on many festivals, and it guaranteed the rights and liberties of all those following peaceful avocations, at the same time protecting crops, live-stock, and farm implements. [ ] it is interesting to observe how st. augustine, who was as familiar with classic as with christian life and thought, perpetually dwells on the boundless misery of war and the supreme desirability of peace as a point at which pagan and christian are at one; "nihil gratius soleat audiri, nihil desiderabilius concupisci, nihil postremo possit melius inveniri ... sicut nemo est qui gaudere nolit, ita nemo est qui pacem habere nolit" (_city of god_, bk. xix., chs. - ). [ ] _contemporary review_, . v is war diminishing? the cheerful optimism of those pacifists who looked for the speedy extinction of war has lately aroused much scorn. there really seem to have been people who believed that new virtues of loving-kindness are springing up in the human breast to bring about the universal reign of peace spontaneously, while we all still continued to cultivate our old vices of international greed, suspicion, and jealousy. dr. frederick adams woods, in the challenging and stimulating study of the prevalence of war in europe from to the present day which he has lately written in conjunction with mr. alexander baltzly, easily throws contempt upon such pacifists. all their beautiful arguments, he tells us in effect, count for nothing. war is to-day raging more furiously than ever in the world, and it is even doubtful whether it is diminishing. that is the subject of the book dr. woods and mr. baltzly have written: _is war diminishing?_ the method adopted by these authors is to count up the years of war since for each of the eleven chief nations of europe possessing an ancient history, and to represent the results by the aid of charts. these charts show that certainly there has been a great falling off in war during the period in question. wars, as there presented to us, seem to have risen to a climax in the century - and to have been declining ever since. the authors, themselves, however, are not quite in sympathy with their own conclusion. "there is only," dr. woods declares, "a moderate amount of probability in favour of declining war." he insists on the fact that the period under investigation represents but a very small fraction of the life of man. he finds that if we take england several centuries further back, and compare its number of war-years during the last four centuries with those during the preceding four centuries, the first period shows years of war, the second shows years, a negligible difference, while for france the corresponding number of war-years are and , an actual and rather considerable increase. there is the further consideration that if we regard not frequency but intensity of war--if we could, for instance, measure a war by its total number of casualties--we should doubtless find that wars are showing a tendency to ever-increasing gravity. on the whole, dr. woods is clearly rather discontented with the tendency of his own and his collaborator's work to show a diminution of war, and modestly casts doubt on all those who believe that the tendency of the world's history is in the direction of such a diminution. an honest and careful record of facts, however, is always valuable. dr. woods' investigation will be found useful even by those who are by no means anxious to throw cold water over the too facile optimism of some pacifists, and this little book suggests lines of thought which may prove fruitful in various directions, not always foreseen by the authors. dr. woods emphasises the long period in the history of the human race during which war has flourished. he seems to suggest that war, after all, may be an essential and beneficial element in human affairs, destined to endure to the end, just as it has been present from the beginning. but has it been present from the beginning? even though war may have flourished for many thousands of years--and it was certainly flourishing at the dawn of history--we are still very far indeed from the dawn of human life or even of human civilisation, for the more our knowledge of the past grows the more remote that dawn is seen to be. it is not only seen to be very remote, it is seen to be very important. darwin said that it was during the first three years of life that a man learnt most. that saying is equally true of humanity as a whole, though here one must translate years into hundreds of thousands of years. but neither infant man nor infant mankind could establish themselves firmly on the path that leads so far if they had at the very outset, in accordance with dr. woods' formula for more recent ages, "fought about half the time." an activity of this kind which may be harmless, or even in some degree beneficial at a later stage, would be fatally disastrous at an early stage. war, as mankind understands war, seems to have no place among animals living in nature. it seems equally to have had no place, so far as investigation has yet been able to reveal, in the life of early man. men were far too busy in the great fight against nature to fight against each other, far too absorbed in the task of inventing methods of self-preservation to have much energy left for inventing methods of self-destruction. it was once supposed that the homeric stories of war presented a picture of life near the beginning of the world. the homeric picture in fact corresponds to a stage in human barbarism, certainly in its european manifestation, a stage also passed through in northern europe, where, nearly fifteen hundred years ago, the greek traveller, posidonius, found the celtic chieftains in britain living much like the people in homer. but we now know that homer, so far from bringing before us a primitive age, really represents the end of a long stage of human development, marked by a slow and steady growth in civilisation and a vast accumulation of luxury. war is a luxury, in other words a manifestation of superfluous energy, not possible in those early stages when all the energies of men are taken up in the primary business of preserving and maintaining life. so it was that war had a beginning in human history. is it unreasonable to suppose that it will also have an end? there is another way, besides that of counting the world's war-years, to determine the probability of the diminution and eventual disappearance of war. we may consider the causes of war, and the extent to which these causes are, or are not, ceasing to operate. dr. woods passingly realises the importance of this test and even enumerates what he considers to be the causes of war, without, however, following up his clue. as he reckons them, they are four in number: racial, economic, religious, and personal. there is frequently a considerable amount of doubt concerning the cause of a particular war, and no doubt the causes are usually mixed and slowly accumulative, just as in disease a number of factors may have gradually combined to bring on the sudden overthrow of health. there can be no doubt that the four causes enumerated have been very influential in producing war. there can, however, be equally little doubt that nearly all of them are diminishing in their war-producing power. religion, which after the reformation seemed to foment so many wars, is now practically almost extinct as a cause of war in europe. economic causes which were once regarded as good and sound motives for war have been discredited, though they cannot be said to be abolished; in the middle ages fighting was undoubtedly a most profitable business, not only by the booty which might thus be obtained, but by the high ransoms which even down to the seventeenth century might be legitimately demanded for prisoners. so that war with france was regarded as an english gentleman's best method of growing rich. later it was believed that a country could capture the "wealth" of another country by destroying that country's commerce, and in the eighteenth century that doctrine was openly asserted even by responsible statesmen; later, the growth of political economy made clear that every nation flourishes by the prosperity of other nations, and that by impoverishing the nation with which it traded a nation impoverishes itself, for a tradesman cannot grow rich by killing his customers. so it came about that, as mill put it, the commercial spirit, which during one period of european history was the principal cause of war, became one of its strongest obstacles, though, since mill wrote, the old fallacy that it is a legitimate and advantageous method to fight for markets, has frequently reappeared.[ ] again, the personal causes of war, although in a large measure incalculable, have much smaller scope under modern conditions than formerly. under ancient conditions, with power centred in despotic monarchs or autocratic ministers, the personal causes of war counted for much. in more recent times it has been said, truly or falsely, that the crimean war was due to the wounded feelings of a diplomatist. under modern conditions, however, the checks on individual initiative are so many that personal causes must play an ever-diminishing part in war. the same can scarcely be said as regards dr. woods' remaining cause of war. if by racialism we are to understand nationalism, this has of late been a serious and ever-growing provocative of war. internationalism of feeling is much less marked now than it was four centuries ago. nationalities have developed a new self-consciousness, a new impulse to regain their old territories or to acquire new territories. not only pan-germanism, pan-slavism, and british imperialism, like all other imperialisms, but even the national ambitions of some smaller powers have acquired a new and dangerous energy. they are not the less dangerous when, as is indeed most frequently the case, they merely represent the ambition, not of the people as a whole, but merely of a military or bureaucratic clique, of a small chauvinistic group, yet noisy and energetic enough to win over unscrupulous politicians. a german soldier, a young journalist of ability, recently wrote home from the trenches: "i have often dreamed of a new europe in which all the nations would be fraternally united and live together as one people; it was an end which democratic feeling seemed to be slowly preparing. now this terrible war has been unchained, fomented by a few men who are sending their subjects, their slaves rather, to the battlefield, to slay each other like wild beasts. i should like to go towards these men they call our enemies and say, 'brothers, let us fight together. the enemy is behind us.' yes, since i have been wearing this uniform i feel no hatred for those who are in front, but my hatred has grown for those in power who are behind." that is a sentiment which must grow mightily with the growth of democracy, and as it grows the danger of nationalism as a cause of war must necessarily decrease. there is, however, one group of causes of war, of the first importance, which dr. woods has surprisingly omitted, and that is the group of political causes. it is by overlooking the political aspects of war that dr. woods' discussion is most defective. supposed political necessity has been in modern times perhaps the very chief cause of war. that is to say that wars are largely waged for what has been supposed to be the protection, or the furtherance, of the civilised organisation which orders the temporal benefits of a nation. this is admirably illustrated by all three of the great european wars in which england has taken part during the past four centuries: the war against spain, the war against france, and the present war against germany. the fundamental motive of england's participation in all these wars has been what was conceived to be the need of england's safety, it was essentially political. a small island power, dependent on its fleet, and yet very closely adjoining the continental mainland, is vitally concerned in the naval developments of possibly hostile powers and in the military movements which affect the opposite coast. spain, france, and germany all successively threatened england by a formidable fleet, and they all sought to gain possession of the coast opposite england. to england, therefore, it seemed a measure of political self-defence to strike a blow as each fresh menace arose. in every case belgium has been the battlefield on land. the neutrality of belgium is felt to be politically vital to england. therefore, the invasion of belgium by a great power is to england an immediate signal of war. it is not only england's wars that have been mainly political; the same is true of germany's wars ever since prussia has had the leadership of germany. the political condition of a country without natural frontiers and surrounded by powerful neighbours is a perpetual source of wars which, in germany's case, have been, by deliberate policy, offensively defensive. when we realise the fundamental importance of the political causation of warfare, the whole problem of the ultimate fate of war becomes at once more hopeful. the orderly growth and stability of nations has in the past seemed to demand war. but war is not the only method of securing these ends, and to most people nowadays it scarcely seems the best method. england and france have fought against each other for many centuries. they are now convinced that they really have nothing to fight about, and that the growth and stability of each country are better ensured by friendship than by enmity. there cannot be a doubt of it. but where is the limit to the extension of that same principle? france and germany, england and germany, have just as much to lose by enmity, just as much to gain by friendship, and alike on both sides. the history of europe and the charts of mr. baltzly clearly show that this consideration has really been influential. we find that there is a progressive tendency for the nations of europe to abandon warfare. sweden, denmark, and holland, all vigorous and warlike peoples, have long ceased to fight. they have found their advantage in the abandonment of war, but that abandonment has been greatly stimulated by awe of their mightier neighbours. and therein, again, we have a clue to the probable course of the future. for when we realise that the fundamental political need of self-preservation and good order has been a main cause of warfare, and when we further realise that the same ends may be more satisfactorily attained without war under the influence of a sufficiently firm external pressure working in harmony with the growth of internal civilisation, we see that the problem of fighting among nations is the same as that of fighting among individuals. once upon a time good order and social stability were maintained in a community by the method of fighting among the individuals constituting the community. no doubt all sorts of precious virtues were thus generated, and no doubt in the general opinion no better method seemed possible or even conceivable. but, as we know, with the development of a strong central power, and with the growth of enlightenment, it was realised that political stability and good order were more satisfactorily maintained by a tribunal, having a strong police force behind it, than by the method of allowing the individuals concerned to fight out their quarrels between themselves. fighting between national groups of individuals stands on precisely the same footing as fighting between individuals. the political stability and good order of nations, it is beginning to be seen, can be more satisfactorily maintained by a tribunal, having a strong police force behind it, than by the method of allowing the individual nations concerned to fight out quarrels between themselves. the stronger nations have for a large part imposed this peace upon the smaller nations of europe to the great benefit of the latter. how can we impose a similar peace upon the stronger nations, for their own benefit and for the benefit of the whole world? to that task all our energies must be directed. a long series of eminent thinkers and investigators, from comte and buckle a century ago to dr. woods and mr. baltzly to-day, have assured us that war is diminishing and even that the war-like spirit is extinct. it is certainly not true that the war-like spirit is extinct, even in the most civilised and peaceful peoples, and we need not desire its extinction, for it is capable of transformation into shapes of the finest use for humanity. but the vast conflagration of to-day must not conceal from our eyes the great central fact that war is diminishing, and will one day disappear as completely as the mediaeval scourge of the black death. to reach this consummation all the best humanising and civilising energies of mankind will be needed. [ ] it has been argued (as by filippi carli, _la ricchezza e la guerra_, ) that the germans are especially unable to understand that the prosperity of other countries is beneficial to them, whether or not under german control, and that they differ from the english and french in believing that economic conquests should involve political conquests. vi war and the birth-rate during recent years the faith had grown among progressive persons in various countries, not excluding germany, that civilisation was building up almost impassable barriers against any great war. these barriers were thought to be of various kinds, even apart from the merely sentimental and humanitarian developments of pacific feeling. they were especially of an economic kind, and that on a double basis, that of capital and that of labour. it was believed, on the one hand, that the international ramifications of capital, and the complicated commercial and financial webs which bind nations together, would cause so vivid a realisation of the disasters of war as to erect a wholesomely steadying effect whenever the danger of war loomed in sight. on the other hand, it was felt that the international unity of interest among the workers, the growth of labour's favourite doctrine that there is no conflict between nations, but only between classes, and even the actual international organisation and bonds of the workers' associations, would interpose a serious menace to the plans of war-makers. these influences were real and important. but, as we know, when the decisive moment came, the diplomatists and the militarists were found to be at the helm, to steer the ship of state in each country concerned, and those on board had no voice in determining the course. in england only can there be said to have been any show of consulting parliament, but at that moment the situation had already so far developed that there was little left but to accept it. the great war of to-day has shown that such barriers against war as we at present possess may crumble away in a moment at the shock of the war-making machine. we are to-day forced to undertake a more searching inquiry into the forces which, in civilisation, operate against war. i wish to call attention here to one such influence of fundamental character, which has not been unrecognised, but possesses an importance we are often apt to overlook. "a french gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of his country," wrote thicknesse in ,[ ] "told me above eight years since that france increased so rapidly in peace that they must necessarily have a war every twelve or fourteen years to carry off the refuse of the people." recently a well-known german socialist, dr. eduard david, member of the reichstag and a student of the population question, setting forth the same great truth (in _die neue generation_ for november, ) states that it would have been impossible for germany to wage the present war if it had not been for the high german birth-rate during the past half-century. and the impossibility of this war would, for dr. david, have been indeed tragic. a more distinguished social hygienist, professor max gruber, of munich, who took a leading part in organising that marvellous exposition of hygiene at dresden which has been germany's greatest service to real civilisation in recent years, lately set forth an identical opinion. the war, he declares, was inevitable and unavoidable, and germany was responsible for it, not, he hastens to add, in any moral sense, but in a biological sense, because in forty-four years germans have increased in numbers from forty millions to eighty millions. the war was, therefore, a "biological necessity." if we survey the belligerent nations in the war we may say that those which took the initiative in drawing it on, or at all events were most prepared to welcome it, were russia, austria, germany, and serbia. we may also note that these include nearly all the nations in europe with a high birth-rate. we may further note that they are all nations which--putting aside their cultural summits and taking them in the mass--are among the most backward in europe; the fall in the birth-rate has not yet had time to permeate them. on the other hand, of the belligerent peoples of to-day, all indications point to the french as the people most intolerant, silently but deeply, of the war they are so ably and heroically waging. yet the france of the present, with the lowest birth-rate and the highest civilisation, was a century ago the france of a birth-rate higher than that of germany to-day, the most militarist and aggressive of nations, a perpetual menace to europe. for all those among us who have faith in civilisation and humanity, and are unable to believe that war can ever be a civilising or humanising method of progress, it must be a daily prayer that the fall of the birth-rate may be hastened. it seems too elementary a point to insist on, yet the mists of ignorance and prejudice are so dense, the cataract of false patriotism is so thick, that for many even the most elementary truths cannot be discerned. in most of the smaller nations, indeed, an intelligent view prevails. their smallness has, on the one hand, rendered them more open to international culture, and, on the other hand, enabled them to outgrow the illusions of militarism; there is a higher standard of education among them; their birth-rates are low and they accept that fact as a condition of progressive civilisation. that is the case in switzerland, as in norway, and notably in holland. it is not so in the larger nations. here we constantly find, even in those lands where the bulk of the population are civilised and reasonably level-headed, a small minority who publicly tear their hair and rage at the steady decline in the birth-rate. it is, of course, only the declining birth-rate of their own country that they have in view; for they are "patriots," which means that the fall of the birth-rate in all other countries but their own is a source of much gratification. "woe to us," they exclaim in effect, "if we follow the example of these wicked and degenerate peoples! our nation needs men. we have to populate the earth and to carry the blessings of our civilised culture all over the world. in executing that high mission we cannot have too much cannon-fodder in defending ourselves against the jealousy and aggression of other nations. let us promote parentage by law; let us repress by law every influence which may encourage a falling birth-rate; otherwise there is nothing left to us but speedy national disaster, complete and irremediable." this is not caricature,[ ] though these apostles of "race-suicide" may easily arouse a smile by the verbal ardour of their procreative energy. but we have to recognise that in germany for years past it has been difficult to take up a serious periodical without finding some anxiously statistical article about the falling birth-rate and some wild recommendations for its arrest, for it is the militaristic german who of all europeans is most worried by this fall; indeed germans often even refuse to recognise it. thus to-day we find professor gruber declaring that if the population of the german empire continues to grow at the rate of the first five years of the present century, at the end of the century it will have reached , , . by such a vast increase in population, the professor complacently concludes, "germany will be rendered invulnerable." we know what that means. the presence of an "invulnerable" nation among nations that are "vulnerable" means inevitable aggression and war, a perpetual menace to civilisation and humanity. it is not along that line that hope can be found for the world's future, or even germany's future, and gruber conveniently neglects to estimate what, on his basis, the population of russia will be at the end of the century. but gruber's estimate is altogether fallacious. german births have fallen, roughly speaking, about one per thousand of the population, every year since the beginning of the century, and it would be equally reasonable to estimate that if they continue to fall at the present rate (which we cannot, of course, anticipate) births will altogether have ceased in germany long before the end of the century. the german birth-rate reached its climax forty years ago ( - ) with . per , ; in it was per , ; in , per , ; in , per , ; in an almost measurable period of time, in all probability long before the end of the century, it will have reached the same low level as that of france, when there will be little difference between the "invulnerability" of france and of germany, a consummation which, for the world's sake, is far more devoutly to be wished than that anticipated by gruber. we have to remember, moreover, that this tendency is by no means, as we are sometimes tempted to suppose, a sign of degeneration or of decay; but, on the contrary, a sign of progress. when we survey broadly that course of zoological evolution of which we are pleased to regard man as the final outcome, we note that on the whole the mighty stream has become the less productive as it has advanced. we note the same of the various lines taken separately. we note, also, that intelligence and all the qualities we admire have usually been most marked in the less prolific species. progress, roughly speaking, has proved incompatible with high fertility. and the reason is not far to seek. if the creature produced is more evolved, it is more complex and more highly organised, and that means the need for much time and much energy. to attain this, the offspring must be few and widely spaced; it cannot be attained at all under conditions that are highly destructive. the humble herring, which evokes the despairing envy of our human apostles of fertility, is largely composed of spawn, and produces a vast number of offspring, of which few reach maturity. the higher mammals spend their lives in the production of a small number of offspring, most of whom survive. thus, even before man began, we see a fundamental principle established, and the relationship between the birth-rate and the death-rate in working order. all progressive evolution may be regarded as a mechanism for concentrating an ever greater amount of energy in the production of ever fewer and ever more splendid individuals. nature is perpetually striving to replace the crude ideal of quantity by the higher ideal of quality. in human history these same tendencies have continually been illustrated. the greeks, our pioneers in all insight and knowledge, grappled (as professor myres has lately set forth[ ]), and realised that they were grappling, with this same problem. even in the minoan age their population would appear to have been full to overflowing; "there were too many people in the world," and to the old greeks the trojan war was the earliest divinely-appointed remedy. wars, famines, pestilences, colonisation, wide-spread infanticide were the methods, voluntary and involuntary, by which this excessive birth-rate was combated, while the greatest of greek philosophers, a plato or an aristotle, clearly saw that a regulated and limited birth-rate, a eugenically improved race, is the road to higher civilisation. we may even see in greek antiquity how a sudden rise in industrialism leads to a crowded and fertile urban population, the extension of slavery, and all the resultant evils. it was a foretaste of what was seen during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a sudden industrial expansion led to an enormously high birth-rate, a servile urban proletariat (that very word indicates, as roscher has pointed out, that a large family means inferiority), and a consequent outburst of misery and degradation from which we are only now emerging. as we are now able to realise, the sudden expansion of the population accompanying the industrial revolution was an abnormal and, from the point of view of society, a morbid phenomenon. all the evidence goes to show that previously the population tended to increase very slowly, and social evolution was thus able to take place equably and harmoniously. it is only gradually that the birth-rate has begun to right itself again. the movement, as is well known, began in france, always the most advanced outpost of european civilisation. it has now spread to england, to germany, to all europe, to the whole world indeed, in so far as the world is in touch with european civilisation, and has long been well marked in the united states. when we realise this we are also enabled to realise how futile, how misplaced, and how mischievous it is to raise the cry of "race-suicide." it is futile because no outcry can affect a world-wide movement of civilisation. it is misplaced because the rise and fall of the population is not a matter of the birth-rate alone, but of the birth-rate combined with the death-rate, and while we cannot expect to touch the former we can influence the latter. it is mischievous because by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation and risk the misdirection of all our energies. how far this blindness may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with a phenomenon of world-wide extension. the whole tendency of civilisation is to reduce the birth-rate, as leroy-beaulieu concludes in his comprehensive work on the population question. we may go further, and assert with the distinguished german economist, roscher, that the chief cause of the superiority of a highly civilised state over lower stages of civilisation is precisely a greater degree of forethought and self-control in marriage and child-bearing.[ ] instead of talking about race-suicide, we should do well to observe at what an appalling rate, even yet, the population is increasing, and we should note that it is everywhere the poorest and most primitive countries, and in every country (as in germany) the poorest regions, which show the highest birth-rate. on every hand, however, are hopeful signs. thus, in russia, where a very high birth-rate is to some extent compensated by a very high death-rate--the highest infantile death-rate in europe--the birth-rate is falling, and we may anticipate that it will fall very rapidly with the extension of education and social enlightenment among the masses. driven out of europe, the alarmist falls back on the "yellow peril." but in japan we find amid confused variations of the birth-rate and the death-rate nothing to indicate any alarming expansion of the population, while as to china we are in the dark. we only know that in china there is a high birth-rate largely compensated by a very high death-rate. we also know, however, that as lowes dickinson has lately reminded us, "the fundamental attitude of the chinese towards life is that of the most modern west,"[ ] and we shall probably find that with the growth of enlightenment the chinese will deal with their high birth-rate in a far more radical and thorough manner than we have ever ventured on. one last resort the would-be patriotic alarmist seeks when all others fail. he is good enough to admit that a general decline in the birth-rate might be beneficial. but, he points out, it affects social classes unequally. it is initiated, not by the degenerate and the unfit, whom we could well dispense with, but by the very best classes in the community, the well-to-do and the educated. one is inclined to remark, at once, that a social change initiated by its best social classes is scarcely likely to be pernicious. where, it may be asked, if not among the most educated classes, is any process of amelioration to be initiated? we cannot make the world topsy-turvy to suit the convenience of topsy-turvy minds. all social movements tend to begin at the top and to permeate downwards. this has been the case with the decline in the birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives. the rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in favour of procreation--a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which we wish to sterilise--but by a wise policy of regulative eugenics. we have to create the motives, and it is not an impossible task, which will act even upon the weak-minded and reckless lowest social stratum. these facts have a significance which many of us have failed to realise. the great war has brought home the gravity of that significance. it has been the perpetual refrain of the pan-germanists for many years that the vast and sudden expansion of the german peoples makes necessary a new movement of the german nations into the world and a new enlargement of frontiers, in other words, war. it is not only among the germans, though among them it may have been more conscious, that a similar cause has led to the like result. it has ever been so. the expanding nation has always been a menace to the world and to itself. the arrest of the falling birth-rate, it cannot be too often repeated, would be the arrest of all civilisation and of all humanity. [ ] ralph thicknesse, _a year's journey through france and spain_, , p. . [ ] the last twelve words quoted are by miss ethel elderton in an otherwise sober memoir (_report on the english birth-rate_, , p. ) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes. [ ] j.l. myres, "the causes of rise and fall in the population of the ancient world," eugenics review, april, . [ ] roscher, _grundlagen der nationalÂ�konomie_, rd ed., , bk. vi. [ ] g. lowes dickinson, _the civilisation of india, china, and japan_, , p. . vii war and democracy when we read our newspapers to-day we are constantly met by ingenious plans for bringing to an end the activities of germany after the war. german military activity, it is universally agreed, must be brought to an end; germany will have no further need of a military system save on the most modest scale. germany must also be deprived of any colonial empire and shut out from eastward expansion. that being the case, germany no longer needs a fleet, and must be brought back to bismarck's naval attitude. moreover, the industrial activities of germany must also be destroyed; the allied opponents of germany will henceforth manufacture for themselves or for one another the goods they have hitherto been so foolish as to obtain from germany, and though this may mean cutting themselves aloof from the country which has hitherto been their own best customer, that is a sacrifice to be cheerfully borne for the sake of principle. it is further argued that the world has no need of german activities in science; they are, it appears, much less valuable than we had been led to believe, and in any case no self-respecting people would encourage a science tainted by kultur. the puzzled reader of these arguments, overlooking the fallacies they contain, may perhaps sometimes be tempted to ask: but what are germans to be allowed to do? the implied answer is clear: nothing. the writers who urge these arguments with such conviction may be supposed to have an elementary knowledge of the history of the germans. we are concerned, that is to say, with a people which has displayed an irrepressible energy, in one field or another, ever since the time, more than fifteen hundred years ago, when it excited the horror of the civilised world by sacking rome. the same energy was manifested, a thousand years later, when the germans again knocked at the door of rome and drew away half the world from its allegiance to the church. still more recently, in yet other fields of industry and commerce and colonisation, these same germans have displayed their energy by entering into more or less successful competition with that "modern rome," as some have termed it, which has its seat in the british islands. here is a people,--still youthful as we count age in our european world, for even the celts had preceded them by nearly a thousand years,--which has successfully displayed its explosive or methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious, economic. from henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible energies on just nothing. we know, of course, what would happen were it possible to subject germany to any such process of attempted repression. whenever an individual or a mass of individuals is bidden to do nothing, it merely comes about that the activities aimed at, far from being suppressed, are turned into precisely the direction most unpleasant for the would-be suppressors. when in the germans tried to "crush" france, the result was the reverse of that intended. the effects of "crushing" had been even more startingly reverse, on the other side--and this may furnish us with a precedent--when napoleon trampled down germany. two centuries ago, after the brilliant victories of marlborough, it was proposed to crush permanently the militarism of france. but, as swift wrote to archbishop king just before the peace of utrecht, "limiting france to a certain number of ships and troops was, i doubt, not to be compassed." in spite of the exhaustion of france it was not even attempted. in the present case, when the war is over it is probable that germany will still hold sufficiently great pledges to bargain with in safeguarding her own vital interests. if it were not so, if it were possible to inflict permanent injury on germany, that would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us; for it is clear that we should then be faced by a yet more united and yet more aggressively military germany than the world has seen.[ ] in germany itself there is no doubt on this point. germans are well aware that german activities cannot be brought to a sudden full stop, and they are also aware that even among germany's present enemies there are those who after the war will be glad to become her friends. any doubt or anxiety in the minds of thoughtful germans is not concerning the continued existence of german energy in the world, but concerning the directions in which that energy will be exerted. what is germany's greatest danger? that is the subject of a pamphlet by rudolf goldscheid, of vienna, now published in switzerland, with a preface by professor forel, as originally written a year earlier, because it is believed that in the interval its conclusions have been confirmed by events.[ ] goldscheid is an independent and penetrating thinker in the economic field, and the author of a book on the principles of social biology (_höherentwicklung und menschenökonomie_) which has been described by an english critic as the ablest defence of socialism yet written. by the nature of his studies he is concerned with problems of human rather than merely national development, but he ardently desires the welfare of germany, and is anxious that that welfare shall be on the soundest and most democratic basis. after the war, he says, there must necessarily be a tendency to approximate between the central powers and one or other of their present foes. it is clear (though this point is not discussed) that italy, whose presence in the triple alliance was artificial, will not return, while french resentment at german devastation is far too great to be appeased for a long period to come. there remain, therefore, russia and england. after the war german interests and german sympathies must gravitate either eastwards towards russia or westwards towards england. which is it to be? there are many reasons why germany should gravitate towards russia. such a movement was indeed already in active progress before the war, notwithstanding russia's alliance with france, and may easily become yet more active after the war, when it is likely that the bonds between russia and france may grow weaker, and when it is possible that the germans, with their immense industry, economy and recuperative power, may prove to be in the best position--unless america cuts in--to finance russia. industrially russia offers a vast field for german enterprise which no other country can well snatch away, and german is already to some extent the commercial language of russia.[ ] politically, moreover, a close understanding between the two supreme autocratic and anti-democratic powers of europe is of the greatest mutual benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either power is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[ ] it is this aspect of the approximation which arouses goldscheid's alarm. it is mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation between germany and england which would lay germany open to the west and serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. he admits that at some points the interests of germany and england run counter to each other, but at yet a greater number of points their interests are common. it is only by the development of these common interests, and the consequent permeation of germany by democratic english ideas, that goldscheid sees any salvation from czarism, for that is "germany's greatest danger," and at the same time the greatest danger to europe. that is goldscheid's point of view. our english point of view is necessarily somewhat different. with our politically democratic tendencies we see very little difference between russia and prussia. as they are at present constituted, we have no wish to be in very close political intimacy with either. it so happens, indeed, that, for the moment, the chances of fellowship in war have brought us into a condition of almost sentimental sympathy with the russian people, such as has never existed among us before. but this sympathy, amply justified, as all who know russia agree, is exclusively with the russian people. it leaves the russian government, the russian bureaucracy, the russian political system, all that goldscheid concentrates into the term "czarism," severely alone. our hostility to these may be for the moment latent, but it is as profound as it ever was. czarism is even more remote from our sympathies than kaiserism. all that has happened is that we cherish the pious hope that russia is becoming converted to our own ideas on these points, although there is not the smallest item of solid fact to support that hope. otherwise, russian oppression of the finns is just as odious to us as prussian oppression of the poles, and russian persecution of liberals as alien as german persecution of war-prisoners.[ ] our future policy, in the opinion of many, should, however, be to isolate germany as completely as possible from english influence and to cultivate closer relations with russia.[ ] such a policy, goldscheid argues, will defeat its own ends. the more stringently england holds aloof from germany the more anxiously will germany cultivate good relationships with russia. such relationships, as we know, are easy to cultivate, because they are much in the interests of both countries which possess so large an extent of common frontier and so admirably supply each other's needs; it may be added also that the russian commercial world is showing no keen desire to enter into close relations with england. moreover, after the war, we may expect a weakening of french influence in russia, for that influence was largely based on french gold, and a france no longer able or willing to finance russia would no longer possess a strong hold over russia. a russo-german understanding, difficult to prevent in any case, is inimical to the interests of england, but it would be rendered inevitable by an attempt on the part of england to isolate germany.[ ] such an attempt could not be carried out completely and would break down on its weakest side, which is the east. so that the way lies open to a league of the three kaisers, the dreikaiserbündnis which would form a great island fortress of militarism and reaction amid the surrounding sea of democracy, able to repress those immense possibilities of progress within its own walls which would have been liberated by contact with the vital currents outside. so long as the war lasts it is the interest of england to strike germany and to strike hard. that is here assumed as certain. but when the war is over, it will no longer be in the interests of england, it will indeed be directly contrary to those interests, to continue cultivating hostility, provided, that is, that no rankling wounds are left. the fatal mistake of bismarck in annexing alsace-lorraine introduced a poison into the european organism which is working still. but the russo-japanese war produced a more amicable understanding than had existed before, and the boer war led to still more intimate relationships between the belligerents. it may be thought that the impression in england of german "frightfulness," and in germany of english "treachery," may prove ineffaceable. but the germans have been considered atrocious and the english perfidious for a long time past, yet that has not prevented english and germans fighting side by side at waterloo and on many another field; nor has it stood in the way of german worship of the quintessential englishman, shakespeare, nor english homage to the quintessential german goethe. the question of the future relations of england and germany may, indeed, be said to lie on a higher plane than that of interest and policy, vitally urgent as their claims may be. it is the merit of goldscheid's little book that--with faith in a future united states of europe in which every country would develop its own peculiar aptitudes freely and harmoniously--he is able to look at the war from that european standpoint which is so rarely attained in england. he sees that more is at stake than a mere question of national rivalries; that democracy is at stake, and the whole future direction of civilisation. he looks beyond the enmities of the moment, and he knows that, unless we look beyond them, we not only condemn europe to the prospect of unending war, we do more: we ensure the triumph of reaction and the destruction of democracy. "war and reaction are brethren"; on that point goldscheid is very sure, and he foretells and laments the temporary "demolition of democracy" in england. we have only too much reason to believe his prophetic words, for since he wrote we have had a coalition government which is predominantly democratic, liberal and labour, and yet has been fatally impelled towards reaction and autocracy.[ ] that the impulse is really fatal and inevitable we cannot doubt, for we see exactly the same movement in france, and even in russia, where it might seem that reaction has so few triumphs to achieve. "the blood of the battlefield is the stream that drives the mills of reaction." the elementary and fundamental fact that in democracy the officers obey the men, while in militarism the men obey the officers, is the key to the whole situation. we see at once why all reactionaries are on the side of war and a military basis of society. the fate of democracy in europe hangs on this question of adequate pacification. "democratisation and pacification march side by side."[ ] unless we realise that fact we are not competent to decide on a sound european policy. for there is an intimate connection between a country's external policy and its internal policy. an internal reactionary policy means an external aggressive policy. to shut out english influence from germany, to fortify german junkerism and militarism, to drive germany into the arms of a yet more reactionary russia, is to create a perpetual menace, alike to peace and to democracy, which involves the arrest of civilisation. however magnanimous the task may seem to some, it is not only the interest of england, but england's duty to europe, to take the initiative in preparing the ground for a clear and good understanding with germany. it is, moreover, only through england that france can be brought into harmonious relations with germany, and when russia then approaches her neighbour it will be in sympathy with her more progressive western allies and not in reactionary response to a reactionary germany. it is along such lines as these that amid the confusion of the present we may catch a glimpse of the europe of the future. we have to remember that, as goldscheid reminds us, this war is making all of us into citizens of the world. a world-wide outlook can no longer be reserved merely for philosophers. some of the old bridges, it is true, have been washed away, but on every side walls are falling, and the petty fears and rivalries of european nations begin to look worse than trivial in the face of greater dangers. as our eyes begin to be opened we see europe lying between the nether millstone of asia and the upper millstone of america. it is not by constituting themselves a mutual suicide club that the nations of europe will avoid that peril.[ ] a wise and far-seeing world-policy can alone avail, and the enemies of to-day will see themselves compelled, even by the mere logic of events, to join hands to-morrow lest a worse fate befall them. in so doing they may not only escape possible destruction, but they will be taking the greatest step ever taken in the organisation of the world. which nation is to assume the initiative in such combined organisation? that remains the fateful question for democracy. [ ] treitschke in his _history_ (bk. i., ch. iii.) has well described "the elemental hatred which foreign injury pours into the veins of our good-natured people, for ever pursued by the question: 'art thou yet on thy feet, germania? is the day of thy revenge at hand!'" [ ] rudolf goldscheid, _deutschlands grösste gefahr_, institut orell füssli, zürich, . [ ] one may remark that up to the outbreak of war fifty per cent. of the import trade of russia has been with germany. to suppose that that immense volume of trade can suddenly be transferred after the war from a neighbouring country which has intelligently and systematically adapted itself to its requirements to a remote country which has never shown the slightest aptitude to meet those requirements argues a simplicity of mind which in itself may be charming, but when translated into practical affairs it is stupendous folly. [ ] sir valentine chirol remarks of bismarck, in an oxford pamphlet on "germany and the fear of russia":--"friendship with russia was one of the cardinal principles of his foreign policy, and one thing he always relied upon to make russia amenable to german influence was that she should never succeed in healing the polish sore." [ ] in making these observations on the russians and the prussians, i do not, of course, overlook the fact that all nations, like individuals, "compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to," and the english treatment of the conscientious objector in the great war has been just as odious as russian treatment of the finns or prussian treatment of war prisoners, and even more foolish, since it strikes at our own most cherished principles. [ ] there is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the british empire mutually self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one another's houses. [ ] even if partially successful, as has lately been pointed out, the greater the financial depression of germany the greater would be the advantage to russia of doing business with germany. [ ] it may be proper to point out that i by no means wish to imply that democracy is necessarily the ultimate and most desirable form of political society, but merely that it is a necessary stage for those peoples that have not yet reached it. even treitschke in his famous _history_, while idealising the prussian state, always assumes that movement towards democracy is beneficial progress. for the larger question of the comparative merits of the different forms of political society, see an admirable little book by c. delisle burns, _political ideals_ ( ). and see also the searching study, _political parties_ (english translation, ), by robert michels, who, while accepting democracy as the highest political form, argues that practically it always works out as oligarchy. [ ] professor d.s. jordan has quoted the letter of a german officer to a friend in roumania (published in the bucharest _adverul_, aug., ): "how difficult it was to convince our emperor that the moment had arrived for letting loose the war, otherwise pacifism, internationalism, anti-militarism, and so many other noxious weeds would have infected our stupid people. that would have been the end of our dazzling nobility. we have everything to gain by the war, and all the chimeras and stupidities of democracy will be chased from the world for an infinite time." [ ] "let us be patient," a japanese is reported to have said lately, "until europe has completed her _hara-kiri_." viii feminism and masculinism during more than a century we have seen the slow but steady growth of the great women's movement, of the movement of feminism in the wide sense of that term. the conquests of this movement have sometimes been described by rhetorical feminists as triumphs over "man." that is scarcely true. the champions of feminism have nearly as often been men as women, and the forces of anti-feminism have been the vague massive inert forces of an order which had indeed made the world in an undue degree "a man's world," but unconsciously and involuntarily, and by an instrumentation which was feminine as well as masculine. the advocates of woman's rights have seldom been met by the charge that they were unjustly encroaching on the rights of man. feminism has never encountered an aggressive and self-conscious masculinism. now, however, when the claims of feminism are becoming practically recognised in our social life, and some of its largest demands are being granted, it is interesting to observe the appearance of a new attitude. we are, for the first time, beginning to hear of "masculinism." just as feminism represents the affirmation of neglected rights and functions of womanhood, so masculinism represents the assertion of the rights and functions of manhood which, it is supposed, the rising tide of feminism threatens to submerge. those who proclaim the necessity of an assertion of the rights of masculinism usually hold up america as an awful example of the triumph of feminism. thus fritz voechting in a book published in germany, "on the american cult of woman," is appalled by what he sees in the united states. to him it is "the american danger," and he thinks it may be traced partly to the influence of the matriarchal system of the american indians on the early european invaders and partly to the effects of co-education in undermining the fundamental conceptions of feminine subordination. this state of things is so terrible to the german mind, which has a constitutional bias to masculinism, that to herr voechting america seems a land where all the privileges have been captured by woman and nothing is left to man, but, like a good little boy, to be seen and not heard. that is a slight exaggeration, as other germans, even since the war, have pointed out in german periodicals. even if it were true, however, as a german feminist has remarked, it would still be a pleasant variation from a rule we are so familiar with in the old world. that it should be put forward at all indicates the growing perception of a cleavage between the claims of masculinism and the claims of feminism. it is not altogether easy at present to ascertain whom we are to recognise as the champions and representatives of masculinism. various notable figures are mentioned, from nietzsche to mr. theodore dreiser. nietzsche, however, can scarcely be regarded as in all respects an opponent to feminism, and some prominent feminists even count themselves his disciples. one may also feel doubtful whether mr. dreiser feels himself called upon to put on the armour of masculinism and play the part assigned to him. another distinguished novelist, mr. robert herrick, whose name has been mentioned in this connection, is probably too well-balanced, too comprehensive in his outlook, to be fairly claimed as a banner-bearer of masculinism. the name of strindberg is most often mentioned, but surely very unfortunately. however great strindberg's genius, and however acute and virulent his analysis of woman, strindberg with his pronounced morbidity and sensitive fragility seems a very unhappy figure to put forward as the ideal representative of the virtues of masculinity. much the same may be said of weininger. the name of mr. belfort bax, once associated with william morris in the socialistic campaign, may fairly be mentioned as a pioneer in this field. for many years he has protested vigorously against the encroachment of feminism, and pointed out the various privileges, social and legal, which are possessed by women to the disadvantage of men. but although he is a distinguished student of philosophy, it can scarcely be said that mr. bax has clearly presented in any wide philosophic manner the demands of the masculinistic spirit or definitely grasped the contest between feminism and masculinism. the name of william morris would be an inspiring battle-cry if it could be fairly raised on the side of masculinism. unfortunately, however, the masculine figures scarcely seem eager to put on the armour of masculinism. they are far too sensitive to the charm of womanhood ever to rank themselves actively in any anti-feministic party. at the most they remain neutral. thus it is that the new movement cannot yet be regarded as organised. there is, however, a temptation for those among us who have all their lives been working in the cause of feminism to belittle the future possibilities of masculinism. there can be no doubt that all civilisation is now, and always has been to some extent, on the side of feminism. wherever a great development of civilisation has occurred--whether in ancient egypt, or in later rome, or in eighteenth-century france--there the influence of woman has prevailed, while laws and social institutions have taken on a character favourable to women. the whole current of civilisation tends to deprive men of the privileges which belong to brute force, and to confer on them the qualities which in ruder societies are especially associated with women. whenever, as in the present great european war, brute force becomes temporarily predominant, the causes associated with feminism are roughly pushed into the background. it is, indeed, the war which gives a new actuality to this question. war has always been regarded as the special and peculiar province of man, indeed, the sacred refuge of the masculine spirit and the ultimate appeal in human affairs. that is not the view of feminism, nor yet the standpoint of eugenics. yet, to-day, in spite of all our homage to feminism and eugenics, we witness the greatest war of the world. it is an instructive spectacle from our present point of view. we realise, for one thing, how futile it is for feminism to adopt the garb of masculine militancy. the militancy of the suffragettes, which looked so brave and imposing in times of peace, disappeared like child's play at the first touch of real militancy. that was patriotic of the suffragettes, no doubt; but it was also a necessary measure of self-preservation, for non-combatants who carry bombs about in time of war, when armed sentries are swarming everywhere, are not likely to have much time for hunger-striking. we witness another feature of war which has a bearing on eugenics. it is sometimes said that war is necessary for the preservation of heroic and virile qualities which, without war and the cultivation of military ideals, would be lost to the race, and that so the race would degenerate. to-day france, which is the chief seat of anti-militarism, and belgium, a land of peaceful industrialism which had no military service until a few years ago, and england, which has always been content to possess a contemptible little army, and russia whose popular ideals are humane and mystical, have sent to the front swarms of professional men and clerks and artisans and peasants who had never occupied themselves with war at all. yet these men have proved as heroic and even as skilful in the game of war as the men of germany, where war is idolised and where the practice of military virtues and military exercises is regarded as the highest function alike of the individual and of the state. we see that we need not any longer worry over the possible extinction of these heroic qualities. what we may more profitably worry over is the question whether there is not some higher and nobler way of employing them than in the destruction of the finest fruits of civilisation and the slaughter of those very stocks on which eugenics mainly relies for its materials. we can also realise to-day that war is not only an opportunity for the exercise of virtues. it is also an opportunity for the exercise of vices. "war is hell" said sherman, and that is the opinion of most great reflective soldiers. we see that there is nothing too brutal, too cruel, too cowardly, too mean, and too filthy for some, at all events, of modern civilised troops to commit, whether by, or against, the orders of their officers. in france, a few months before the present war, i found myself in a railway train at laon with two or three soldiers; a young woman came to the carriage door, but, seeing the soldiers, she passed on; they were decent, well-behaved men, and one of them remarked, with a smile, on the suspicion which the military costume arouses in women. perhaps, however, it is a suspicion that is firmly based on ancient traditions. there is the fatally seamy side of be-praised militarism, and there feminism has a triumphant argument. in this connection i may allude in passing to a little conflict between masculinism and feminism which has lately taken place in germany. germany, as we know, is the country where the claims of masculinism are most loudly asserted, and those of feminism treated with most contempt. it is the country where the ideals of men and of women are in sharpest conflict. there has been a great outcry among men in germany against the "treachery" and "unworthiness" of german women in bestowing chocolates and flowers on the prisoners, as well as doing other little services for them. the attitude towards prisoners approved by the men--one trusts it is not to be regarded as a characteristic outcome of masculinism--is that of petty insults, of spiteful cruelty, and mean deprivations. dr. helene stöcker, a prominent leader of the more advanced band of german feminists, has lately published a protest against this treatment of enemies who are helpless, unarmed, and often wounded--based, not on sentiment, but on the highest and most rational grounds--which is an honour to german women and to their feminist leaders.[ ] taken altogether, it seems probable that when this most stupendous of wars is ended, it will be felt--not only from the side of feminism, but even of masculinism,--that war is merely an eruption of ancient barbarism which in its present virulent forms would not have been tolerated even by savages. such methods are hopelessly out of date in days when wars may be engineered by a small clique of ambitious politicians and self-interested capitalists, while whole nations fight, with or without enthusiasm, merely because they have no choice in the matter. all the powers of civilisation are working towards the elimination of wars. in the future, it seems evident, militarism will not furnish the basis for the masculinistic spirit. it must seek other supports. that is what will probably happen. we must expect that the increasing power of women and of the feminine influence will be met by a more emphatic and a more rational assertion of the qualities of men and the masculine spirit in life. it was unjust and unreasonable to subject women to conditions that were primarily made by men and for men. it would be equally unjust and unreasonable to expect men to confine their activities within limits which are more and more becoming adjusted to feminine preferences and feminine capacities. we are now learning to realise that the _tertiary_ physical, and psychic sexual differences--those distinctions which are only found on the average, but on the average are constant[ ]--are very profound and very subtle. a man is a man throughout, a woman is a woman throughout, and that difference is manifest in all the energies of body and soul. the modern doctrine of the internal secretions--the hormones which are the intimate stimulants to physical and psychic activity in the organism--makes clear to us one of the deepest and most all-pervading sources of this difference between men and women. the hormonic balance in men and women is unlike; the generative ferments of the ductless glands work to different ends.[ ] masculine qualities and feminine qualities are fundamentally and eternally distinct and incommensurate. energy, struggle, daring, initiative, originality, and independence, even though sometimes combined with rashness, extravagance, and defect, seem likely to remain qualities in which men--_on the average_, it must be remembered--will be more conspicuous than women. their manifestation will resist the efforts put forth to constrain them by the feminising influences of life. such considerations have a real bearing on the problem of eugenics. as i view that problem, it is first of all concerned, in part with the acquisition of scientific knowledge concerning heredity and the influences which affect heredity; in part with the establishment of sound ideals of the types which the society of the future demands for its great tasks; and in part--perhaps even in chief part--with the acquisition of a sense of personal responsibility. eugenic legislation is a secondary matter which cannot come at the beginning. it cannot come before our knowledge is firmly based and widely diffused; it cannot come until we are clear as to the ideals which we wish to see embodied in human character and human action; it cannot come until the sense of personal responsibility towards the race is so widely spread throughout the community that its absence is universally felt to be either a crime or a disease. i fear that point of view is not always accepted in england and still less in america. it is widely held throughout the world that america is not only the land of feminism, but the land in which laws are passed on every possible subject, and with considerable indifference as to whether they are carried out, or even whether they could be carried out. this tendency is certainly well illustrated by eugenic legislation in the united states. in the single point of sterilisation for eugenic ends--and i select a point which is admirable in itself and for which legislation is perhaps desirable--at least twelve states have passed laws. yet most of these laws are a dead letter; every one of them is by the best experts considered at some point unwise; and the remarkable fact remains that the total number of eugenical sterilising operations performed in the states _without any law at all_ is greater than the total of those performed under the laws. so that the laws really seem to have themselves a sterilising effect on a most useful eugenic operation.[ ] i refrain from mentioning the muddles and undesigned evils produced by other legislation of a much less admirable nature.[ ] but i may perhaps be allowed to mention that it has seemed to some observers that there is a connection between the feminism of america and the american mania for hasty laws which will not, and often cannot, be carried out in practice. certainly there is no reason to suppose that women are firmly antagonistic to such legislation. nice, pretty, virtuous little laws, complete in every detail, seem to appeal irresistibly to the feminine mind. (and, of course, many men have feminine minds.) it is true that such laws are only meant for show. but then women are so accustomed to things that are only meant for show, and are well aware that if one attempted to use such things they would fall to pieces at once. however that may be, we shall probably find at last that we must fall back on the ancient truth that no external regulation, however pretty and plausible, will suffice to lead men and women to the goal of any higher social end. we must realise that there can be no sure guide to fine living save that which comes from within, and is supported by the firmly cultivated sense of personal responsibility. our prayer must still be the simple, old-fashioned prayer of the psalmist: "create in me a clean heart, o god"--and to hell with your laws! in other words, our aim must be to evolve a social order in which the sense of freedom and the sense of responsibility are both carried to the highest point, and that is impossible by the aid of measures which are only beneficial for the children of perdition. that there are such beings, incapable alike either of freedom or of responsibility, we have to recognise. it is our business to care for them--until with the help of eugenics we can in some degree extinguish their stocks--in such refuges and reformatories as may be found desirable. but it is not our business to treat the whole world as a refuge and a reformatory. that is fatal to human freedom and fatal to human responsibility. by all means provide the halt and the lame with crutches. but do not insist that the sound and the robust shall never stir abroad without crutches. the result will only be that we shall all become more or less halt and lame. it is only by such a method as this--by segregating the hopelessly feeble members of society and by allowing the others to take all the risks of their freedom and responsibility even though we strongly disapprove--that we can look for the coming of a better world. it is only by such a method as this that we can afford to give scope to all those varying and ever-contradictory activities which go to the making of any world worth living in. for conflict, even the conflict of ideals, is a part of all vital progress, and each party to the conflict needs free play if that conflict is to yield us any profit. that is why masculinists have no right to impede the play of feminism, and feminists no right to impede the play of masculinism. the fundamental qualities of man, equally with the fundamental qualities of woman, are for ever needed in any harmonious civilisation. there is a place for masculinism as well as a place for feminism. from the highest standpoint there is not really any conflict at all. they alike serve the large cause of humanity, which equally includes them both. [ ] "würdelose weiber," _die neue generation_, aug.-sept., . [ ] havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fifth ed., , p. . [ ] the conception of sexuality as dependent on the combined operation of various internal ductless glands, and not on the sexual glands proper alone, has been especially worked out by professor w. blair bell, _the sex complex_, . [ ] h.h. laughlin, _the legal, legislative, and administrative aspects of sterilisation_, eugenics record office bulletin, no. , ob, . [ ] i have discussed these already in a chapter of my book, _the task of social hygiene_. ix the mental differences of men and women the great war, which has changed so many things, has nowhere effected a greater change than in the sphere of women's activities. in all the belligerent countries women have been called upon to undertake work which they had never been offered before. europe has thus become a great experimental laboratory for testing the aptitudes of women. the results of these tests, as they are slowly realised, cannot fail to have permanent effects on the sexual division of labour. it is still too early to speak confidently as to what those effects will be. but we may be certain that, whatever they are, they can only spring from deep-lying natural distinctions. the differences between the minds of men and the minds of women are, indeed, presented to all of us every day. it should, therefore, we might imagine, be one of the easiest of tasks to ascertain what they are. and yet there are few matters on which such contradictory and often extravagant opinions are maintained. for many people the question has not arisen; there are no mental differences, they seem to take for granted, between men and women. for others the mental superiority of man at every point is an unquestionable article of faith, though they may not always go so far as to agree with the german doctor, mobius, who boldly wrote a book on "the physiological weak-mindedness of women." for others, again, the predominance of men is an accident, due to the influences of brute force; let the intelligence of women have freer play and the world generally will be straightened out. in these conflicting attitudes we may trace not only the confidence we are all apt to feel in our intimate knowledge of a familiar subject we have never studied, but also the inevitable influence of sexual bias. of such bias there is more than one kind. there is the egoistic bias by which we are led to regard our own sex as naturally better than any other could be, and there is the altruistic bias by which we are led to find a charming and mysterious superiority in the opposite sex. these different kinds of sexual bias act with varying force in particular cases; it is usually necessary to allow for them. notwithstanding the fantastic divergencies of opinion on this matter, it seems not impossible to place the question on a fairly sound and rational base. in so complex a question there must always be room for some variations of individual opinion, for no two persons can approach the consideration of it with quite the same prepossessions, or with quite the same experience. at the outset there is one great fundamental fact always to be borne in mind: the difference of the sexes in physical organisation. that we may term the _biological_ factor in determining the sexual mental differences. a strong body does not involve a strong brain nor a weak body a weak brain; but there is still an intimate connection between the organisation of the body generally and the organisation of the brain, which may be regarded as an executive assemblage of delegates from all parts of the body. fundamental differences in the organisation of the body cannot fail to involve differences in the nervous system generally, and especially in that supreme collection of nervous ganglia which we term the brain. in this way the special adaptation of woman's body to the exercise of maternity, with the presence of special organs and glands subservient to that object, and without any important equivalents in man's body, cannot fail to affect the brain. we now know that the organism is largely under the control of a number of internal secretions or hormones, which work together harmoniously in normal persons, influencing body and mind, but are liable to disturbance, and are differently balanced and with a different action in the two sexes.[ ] it is not, we must remember, by any means altogether the exercise of the maternal function which causes the difference; the organs and aptitudes are equally present even if the function is not exercised, so that a woman cannot make herself a man by refraining from childbearing. in another way this biological factor makes itself felt, and that is in the differences in the muscular systems of men and women. these we must also consider fundamental. although the extreme muscular weakness of average civilised women as compared to civilised men is certainly artificial and easily possible to remove by training, yet even in savages, among whom the women do most of the muscular work, they seldom equal or exceed the men in strength; any superiority, when it exists, being mainly shown in such passive forms of exertion as bearing burdens. in civilisation, even under the influence of careful athletic training, women are unable to compete muscularly with men; and it is a significant fact that on the variety stage there are very few "strong women." it would seem that the difficulty in developing great muscular strength in women is connected with the special adaptation of woman's form and organisation to the maternal function. but whatever the cause may be, the resulting difference is one which has a very real bearing on the mental distinctions of men and women. it is well ascertained that what we call "mental" fatigue expresses itself physiologically in the same bodily manifestation as muscular fatigue. the avocations which we commonly consider mental are at the same time muscular; and even the sensory organs, like the eye, are largely muscular. it is commonly found in various great business departments where men and women may be said to work more or less side by side that the work of women is less valuable, largely because they are not able to bear additional strain; under pressure of extra work they give in before men do. it is noteworthy that the claims for sick benefit made by women under the national insurance system in england have proved much greater (even three times greater) than the actuaries anticipated beforehand; while the sick insurance societies of germany, france, austria, and switzerland also report that women are ill oftener and for longer periods than men. largely, no doubt, that is due to the special strain and the rigid monotony of our modern industrial system, but not entirely. nearly two hundred years ago (in ) swift wrote of women to bolingbroke: "i protest i never knew a very deserving person of that sex who had not too much reason to complain of ill-health." the regulations of the world have been mainly made by men on the instinctive basis of their own needs, and until women have a large part in making them on the basis of their needs, women are not likely to be so healthy as men. this by no means necessarily implies any mental inferiority; it is much more the result of muscular inferiority. even in the arts muscular qualities count for much and are often essential, since a solid muscular system is needed even for very delicate actions; the arts of design demand muscular qualities; to play the violin is a muscular strain, and only a robust woman can become a famous singer. the greater precocity of girls is another aspect of the biological factor in sexual mental differences. it is a psychic as well as a physical fact. this has been shown conclusively by careful investigation in many parts of the civilised world and notably in america, where the school system renders such sexual comparison easy and reliable at all ages. there can now be no doubt that a girl at, let us say, the age of fourteen is on the average taller and heavier than a boy at the same age, though the degrees of this difference and the precise age at which it occurs vary with the individual and the race. corresponding to this is a mental difference; in many branches of study, though not all, the girl of fourteen is superior to the boy, quicker, more intelligent, gifted with a better memory. precocity, however, is a quality of dubious virtue. it is frequently found, indeed, in men of the highest genius; but, on the other hand, it is found among animals and among savages, and is here of no good augury. many observers of the lower races have noted how the child is highly intelligent and well disposed, but seems to degenerate as he grows older; in the comparison of girls and boys, both as regards physical and mental qualities, it is constantly found that while the girls hold their own, and in many respects more than hold their own, with boys up to the age of fifteen or sixteen, after that the girls remain almost or quite stationary, while in the boys the curve of progress is continued without interruption. some people have argued, hypothetically, that the greater precocity of girls is an artificial product of civilisation, due to the confined life of girls, produced, as it were, by the artificial overheating of the system in the hothouse of the home. this is a mistake. the same precocity of girls appears to exist even among the uncivilised, and independently of the special circumstances of life. it is even found among animals also, and is said to be notably obvious in giraffes. it will hardly be argued that the female giraffe leads a more confined and domestic life than her brother. yet another aspect of the biological factor is to be found in the bearing of heredity on this question. to judge by the statements that one sometimes sees, men and women might be two distinct species, separately propagated. the conviction of some men that women are not fitted to exercise various social and political duties, and the conviction of some women that men are a morally inferior sex, are both alike absurd, for they both rest on the assumption that women do not inherit from their fathers, nor men from their mothers. nothing is more certain than that--when, of course, we put aside the sexual characters and the special qualities associated with those characters--men and women, on the average, inherit equally from both of their parents, allowing for the fact that that heredity is controlled and modified by the special organisation of each sex. there are, indeed, various laws of heredity which qualify this statement, and notably the tendency whereby extremes of variation are more common in the male sex--so that genius and idiocy are alike more prevalent in men. but, on the whole, there can be no doubt that the qualities of a man or of a woman are a more or less varied mixture of those of both parents; and, even when there is no blending, both parents are almost equally likely to be influential in heredity. the good qualities of the one parent will therefore benefit the child of the opposite sex, and the bad qualities will equally be transmitted to the offspring of opposite sex. there is another element in the settlement of this question which may also be fairly called objective, and that is the _historical_ factor. we are prone to believe that the particular status of the sexes that prevails among ourselves corresponds to a universal and unchangeable order of things. in reality this is far from being the case. it may, indeed, be truly said that there is no kind of social position, no sort of avocation, public or domestic, among ourselves exclusively appertaining to one sex, which has not at some time or in some part of the world belonged to the opposite sex, and with the most excellent results. we regard it as alone right and proper for a man to take the initiative in courtship, yet among the papuans of new guinea a man would think it indecorous and ridiculous to court a girl; it was the girl's privilege to take the initiative in this matter, and she exercised it with delicacy and skill and the best moral results, until the shocked missionaries upset the native system and unintentionally introduced looser ways. there is, again, no implement which we regard as so peculiarly and exclusively feminine as the needle. yet in some parts of africa a woman never touches a needle; that is man's work, and a wife who can show a neglected rent in her petticoat is even considered to have a fair claim for a divorce. innumerable similar examples appear when we consider the human species in time and space. the historical aspect of this matter may thus be said in some degree to counterbalance the biological aspect. if the fundamental constitution of the sexes renders their mental characters necessarily different, the difference is still not so pronounced as to prevent one sex sometimes playing effectively the parts which are generally played by the other sex. it is not necessary to go outside the white european race to find evidences of the reality of this historical factor of the question before us. it would appear that at the dawn of european civilisation women were taking a leading part in the evolution of human progress. various survivals which are enshrined in the myths and legends of classic antiquity show us the most ancient deities as goddesses; and, moreover, we encounter the significant fact that at the origin nearly all the arts and industries were presided over by female, not by male, deities. in greece, as well as in asia minor, india, and egypt, as paul lafargue has pointed out, woman seems to have taken divine rank before men; all the first inventions of the more useful arts and crafts, except in metals, are ascribed to goddesses; the muses presided over poetry and music long before apollo; isis was "the lady of bread," and demeter taught men to sow barley and corn instead of eating each other. thus even among our own forefathers we may catch a glimpse of a state of things which, as various anthropologists have shown (notably otis mason in his _woman's share in primitive culture_), we may witness in the most widely separated parts of the world. thus among the xosa kaffirs, as well as other a-bantu stocks, fritsch states that "the man claims for himself war, hunting, occupation with cattle; all household cares, even the building of the house, as well as the cultivation of the ground, are woman's affair; hardly in the most laborious work will a man lend a hand."[ ] so that when to-day we see women entering the most various avocations, that is not a dangerous innovation, but perhaps merely a return to ancient and natural conditions. it is not until specialisation becomes necessary and until men are relieved from the constant burden of battle and the chase that the frequent superiority of woman is lost. the modern industrial activities are dangerous, when they are dangerous, not because the work is too hard--for the work of primitive women is harder--but because it is an unnaturally and artificially dreary and monotonous work which stifles the mind, depresses the spirits, and injures the body, so that, it is said, per cent. of married women who have been factory girls are treated for pelvic disorders before they are thirty. it is the conditions of women's work which need changing in order that they may become, like those of primitive women, so various that they develop the mind and fortify the body. this, however, is an evil which will be righted by the development of the mechanical side of industry, for machines tend constantly to become larger, heavier, speedier, more numerous and more automatic, requiring fewer workers to tend them, and these more frequently men.[ ] it may be added that the early predominance of woman in the work of civilisation is altogether independent of that conception of a primitive matriarchate, or government of women, which was set forth some fifty years ago by bachofen, and has since caused so much controversy. descent in the female line, not uncommonly found among primitive peoples, undoubtedly tended to place women in a position of great influence; but it by no means necessarily involved any gynecocracy, or rule of women, and such rule is merely a hypothesis which by some enthusiasts has been carried to absurd lengths. we see, therefore, that when we are approaching the question of the mental differences of the sexes among ourselves to-day, it is not impossible to find certain guiding clues which will save us from running into extravagance in either direction. without doubt the only way in which we can obtain a satisfactory answer to the numerous problems which meet us when we approach the question is by experiment. i have, indeed, insisted on the importance of these preliminary biological and historical considerations mainly because they indicate with what safety and freedom from risk we may trust to experiment. the sexes are far too securely poised by organic constitution and ancient tradition for any permanently injurious results to occur from the attempt to attain a better social readjustment in this matter. when the experiment fails, individuals may to some extent suffer, but social equilibrium swiftly and automatically rights itself. practically, however, nearly every social experiment of this kind means that certain restrictions limiting the duties or privileges of women are removed, and when artificial coercions are thus taken away it can merely happen, as mary wollstonecraft long ago put it, that by the common law of gravity the sexes fall into their proper places. that, we may be sure, will be the final result of the interesting experiments for which the laboratory to-day is furnished by all the belligerent countries. definitely formulated statistical data of these results are scarcely yet available. but we may study the action of this natural process on one great practical experiment in mental sexual differences which has been going on for some time past. at one time in the various administrations of the international postal union there was a sudden resolve to introduce female labour to a very large extent; it was thought that this would be cheaper than male labour and equally efficient. there was consequently a great outcry at the ousting of male labour, the introduction of the thin end of a wedge which would break up society. we can now see that that outcry was foolish. within recent years nearly all the countries which previously introduced women freely into their postal and telegraph services are now doing so only under certain conditions, and some are ceasing to admit them at all. this great practical experiment, carried out on an immense scale in thirty-five different countries, has, on the whole, shown that while women are not inferior to men, at all events within the ordinary range of work, the substitution of a female for a male staff always means a considerable increase of numbers, that women are less rapid than men, less able to undertake the higher grade work, less able to exert authority over others, more lacking both in initiative and in endurance, while they require more sick leave and lose interest and energy on marriage. the advantages of female labour are thus to some extent neutralised, and in the opinions of the administrations of some countries more than neutralised, by certain disadvantages. the general result is that men are found more fitted for some branches of work and women more fitted for other branches; the result is compensation without any tendency for one sex to oust the other. it may, indeed, be objected that in practical life no perfectly satisfactory experiments exist as to the respective mental qualities of men and women, since men and women are never found working under conditions that are exactly the same for both sexes. if, however, we turn to the psychological laboratory, where it is possible to carry on experiments under precisely identical conditions, the results are still the same. there are nearly always differences between men and women, but these differences are complex and manifold; they do not always agree; they never show any general piling up of the advantages on the side of one sex or of the other. in reaction-time, in delicacy of sensory perception, in accuracy of estimation and precision of movement, there are nearly always sexual differences, a few that are fairly constant, many that differ at different ages, in various countries, or even in different groups of individuals. we cannot usually explain these differences or attach any precise significance to them, any more than we can say why it is that (at all events in america) blue is most often the favourite colour of men and red of women. we may be sure that these things have a meaning, and often a really fundamental significance, but at present, for the most part, they remain mysterious to us. when we attempt to survey and sum up all the variegated facts which science and practical life are slowly accumulating with reference to the mental differences between men and women[ ] we reach two main conclusions. on the one hand there is a fundamental equality of the sexes. it would certainly appear that women vary within a narrower range than men--that is to say, that the two extremes of genius and of idiocy are both more likely to show themselves in men. this implies that the pioneers in progress are most likely to be men. that, indeed, may be said to be a biological fact. "in all that concerns the evolution of ornamental characters the male leads; in him we see the trend which evolution is taking; the female and young afford us the measure of their advance along the new line which has to be taken."[ ] in the human sphere of the arts and sciences, similarly, men, not women, take the lead. that men were the first decorative artists, rather than women, is indicated by the fact that the natural objects designed by early pre-historic artists were mainly women and wild beasts, that is to say, they were the work of masculine hunters, executed in idle intervals of the chase. but within the range in which nearly all of us move, there are always many men who in mental respects can do what most women can do, many women who can do what most men can do. we are not justified in excluding a whole sex absolutely from any field. in so doing we should certainly be depriving the world of some portion of its executive ability. the sexes may always safely be left to find their own levels. on the other hand, the mental diversity of men and women is equally fundamental. it is rooted in organisation. the well-intentioned efforts of many pioneers in women's movements to treat men and women as identical, and, as it were, to force women into masculine moulds, were both mischievous and useless. women will always be different from men, mentally as well as physically. it is well for both sexes that it should be so. it is owing to these differences that each sex can bring to the world's work various aptitudes that the other lacks. it is owing to these differences also that men and women have their undying charm for each other. we cannot change them, and we need not wish to. [ ] see, for instance, blair bell's _the sex complex_, , though the deductions drawn in this book must not always be accepted without qualifications. [ ] g. fritsch, _die eingeborene süd-afrikas_, , p. . [ ] d.r. malcolm keir, "women in industry," _popular science monthly_, october, . [ ] see, for many of the chief of these, havelock ellis, _man and woman_, th edition, . [ ] w.p. pycraft, _the courtship of animal_, p. . x the white slave crusade during recent years we have witnessed a remarkable attempt--more popular and more international in character than any before--to deal with that ancient sexual evil which has for some time been picturesquely described as the white slave traffic. less than forty years ago professor sheldon amos wrote that this subject can scarcely be touched upon by journalists, and "can never form a topic of common conversation." nowadays churches, societies, journalists, legislators have all joined the ranks of the agitators. not only has there been no voice on the opposite side, which was scarcely to be expected--for there has never been any anxiety to cry aloud the defence of "white slavery" from the house-tops--but there has been a new and noteworthy conquest over indifference and over that sacred silence which was supposed to encompass all sexual topics with suitable darkness. the banishment of that silence in the cause of social hygiene is, indeed, not the least significant feature of this agitation. it is inevitable, however, that these periodical fits of virtuous indignation by which society is overtaken should speedily be spent. the victim of the moral fever finds himself exhausted by the struggle, scarcely able to cope with the complications of the disease, and, at the best, only too anxious to forget what he has passed through. he has an uneasy feeling that in the course of his delirium he has said and done many foolish things which it would now be unpleasant to recall too precisely. there is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that this is what happened in the white slave traffic agitation. it became clear that we had been largely misled in regard to the evils to be combated, and that we were seduced into sanctioning various remedies for these evils which in cold blood it is impossible to approve of, even if we could believe them to be effective. it is not even clear that all those who have talked about the "white slave traffic" have been quite sure what they meant by the term. some people, indeed, have seemed to think that it meant prostitution in general. that is, of course, an absurd misapprehension. we are concerned with a trade which flourishes on prostitution, but that trade is not itself the trade or (as some prefer to call it) the profession of prostitutes. indeed, the prostitute, under ordinary conditions and unharassed by persecution, is in many respects anything but a slave. she is much less a slave than the ordinary married woman. she is not fettered in humble dependence on the will of a husband from whom it is the most difficult thing in the world to escape; she is bound to no man and free to make her own terms in life; while if she should have a child, that child is absolutely her own, and she is not liable to have it torn from her arms by the hands of the law. apart from arbitrary and accidental circumstances, due to the condition of social feeling, the prostitute enjoys a position of independence which the married woman is still struggling to obtain. the white slave traffic, therefore, is not prostitution; it is the _commercialised exploitation of prostitutes_. the independent prostitute, living alone, scarcely lends herself to the white slave trader. it is on houses of prostitution, where the less independent and usually weaker-minded prostitutes are segregated, that the traffic is based. such houses cannot even exist without such traffic. there is little inducement for a girl to enter such a house, in full knowledge of what it involves, on her own initiative. the proprietors of such houses must therefore give orders for the "goods" they desire, and it is the business of procurers, by persuasion, misrepresentation, deceit, intoxication, to supply them. "the white slave traffic," as kneeland states, "is thus not only a hideous reality, but a reality almost wholly dependent on the existence of houses of prostitution," and as the authors of _the social evil_ state, it is "the most shameful species of business enterprise in modern times."[ ] in this intimate dependence of the white slave traffic on houses of prostitution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future. we are concerned, for the most part, with the more coarse-grained part of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and weak-minded part of the army of prostitutes. although much has been said of the enormous extension of the white slave traffic during recent years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger countries. it is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude, youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often scarce.[ ] although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay of prostitution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prostitution. they offer no inducements to the more intelligent and independent prostitutes, and their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those whose demands are of the humblest character. there is, therefore, a tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of prostitution under modern civilised conditions; the prostitute and her clients alike shun such houses. along this line we may foresee the disappearance of the white slave traffic, apart altogether from any social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[ ] it is sometimes said that the relation of the isolated prostitute to her _souteneur_ constitutes a form of "white slavery." undoubtedly that may sometimes be the case. we are here in a confused field where the facts are complicated by a number of considerations, and where circumstances may very widely differ, for the "fancy boy"--selected from affection by the prostitute herself--may easily become the _souteneur_, or "cadet" as he is termed in new york, who seduces and trains to prostitution a large number of girls. the prostitute is so often a little weak in character and a little defective in intelligence; she is so often regarded as a legitimate prey by the world in which she moves, and a legitimate object of contempt and oppression by the social world above her and its legal officers, that she easily becomes abjectly dependent on the man who in some degree protects her from this extortion, contempt, and oppression, even though he sometimes trains her to his own ends and exploits her professional activities for his own advantage. these circumstances so often occur that some investigators consider that they represent the general rule. no doubt they are the most conspicuous cases. but they can scarcely be regarded as representing the normal relations of the prostitute to the man she is attracted to. she is earning her own living, and if she possesses a little modicum of character and intelligence, she knows that she can choose her own lover and dismiss him when she so pleases. he may beat her occasionally, but all over the world this is not always displeasing to the primitively feminine woman. "it is indeed true," as kneeland remarks, "that many prostitutes do not believe their lovers care for them unless they 'beat them up' occasionally." the woman in this position is not more of a "white slave" than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. and the _souteneur_, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less than the _souteneur_ in return. when, however, we put aside the complicated question of the prostitute's relationship to the man who is her lover, protector, and "bully," we have to recognise that there really is a "white slave traffic," carried on in a ruthlessly business-like manner and on an international scale, with watchful agents, men and women, ever ready to detect and lure the victims. but even this too amply demonstrated fact was not found sufficiently highly spiced by the white slave traffic agitators. it was necessary to excite the public mind by sensational incidents. everyone was told stories, as of incidents that had lately occurred in the next street, of innocent, refined, and well-bred girls who were snatched away by infamous brigands beneath the eyes of their friends, to be immured in dungeons of vice and never more heard of. such incidents, if they ever occurred, would be too bizarre to be justifiably taken into account in great social movements. but it is even doubtful whether they ever occur. the white slave traders are not heroes of romance, even of infamous romance; less so, indeed, than many more ordinary criminals; they are engaged in a very definite and very profitable business. they have no need to run serious risks. the world is full of girls who are over-worked, ill-paid, ignorant, weak, vain, greedy, lazy, or even only afflicted with a little innocent love of adventure, and it is among these that white slave traders may easily find what their business demands, while experience enables them to detect the most likely subjects. careful inquiry, even among those who have made it their special business to collect all the evidence that can be brought together to prove the infamous character of the white slave traffic, has apparently failed to furnish any reliable evidence of these sensational stories. it is easy to find prostitutes who are often dissatisfied with the life (in what occupation is it not easy?), but it is not easy to find prostitutes who cannot escape from that life when they sufficiently wish to do so, and are willing to face the difficulty of finding some other occupation. the very fact that the whole object of their exploitation is to bring them in contact with men belonging to the outside world is itself a guarantee that they are kept in touch with that world. mrs. billington-grieg, a well-known pioneer in social movements, has carefully investigated the alleged cases of forcible abduction which were so freely talked about when the white slave bill was passed into law in england, but even the vigilance societies actively engaged in advocating the bill could not enable her to discover a single case in which a girl had been entrapped against her will.[ ] no other result could reasonably have been expected. when so many girls are willing, and even eager, to be persuaded, there is little need for the risky adventure of capturing the unwilling. the uneasy realisation of these facts cannot fail to leave many honest vice-crusaders with unpleasant memories of their past. it is not only in regard to alleged facts, but also in regard to proposed remedies, that the white slave agitation may properly be criticised. in england it distinguished itself by the ferocity with which the lash was advocated, and finally legalised. benevolent bishops joined with genteel old maids in calling loudly for whips, and even in desiring to lay them personally on the backs of the offenders, notwithstanding that these crusaders were nominally christians, the followers of a master who conspicuously reserved his indignation, not for sinners and law-breakers, but for self-satisfied saints and scrupulous law-keepers--just the same kind of excellent people, in fact, who are most prone to become vice-crusaders. here again, it is probable, many unpleasant memories have been stored up. it is well recognised by criminologists that the lash is both a barbarous and an ineffective method of punishment. "the history of flagellation," as collas states in his great work on this subject, "is the history of a moral bankruptcy."[ ] the survival of barbarous punishments from barbarous days, when ferocious punishments were a matter of course and the death penalty was inflicted for horse-stealing without in the least diminishing that offence, may be intelligible. but the re-enactment of such measures in so-called civilised days is an everlasting discredit to those who advocate it, and a disgrace to the community which permits it. this was pointed out at the time by a large body of social reformers, and will no doubt be realised at leisure by the persons concerned in the agitation. apart altogether from its barbarity, the lash is peculiarly unsuited for use in the white slave trade, because it will never descend on the back of the real trader. the whip has no terrors for those engaged in illegitimate financial transactions, for in such transactions the principal can always afford to arrange that it shall fall on a subordinate who finds it worth while to run the risks. this method has long been practised by those who exploit prostitution for profit. to increase the risks merely means that the subordinate must be more heavily paid. that means that the whole business must be carried on more actively to cover the increased risks and expenses. it is a very ancient fact that moral legislation increases the evil it is designed to combat.[ ] it is necessary to point out some of the unhappy features of this agitation, not in order to minimise the evils it was directed against, nor to insinuate that they cannot be lessened, but as a warning against the reaction which follows such ill-considered efforts. the fiery zealot in a fury of blind rage strikes wildly at the evil he has just discovered, and then flings down his weapon, glad to forget all about his momentary rage and the errors it led him into. it is not so that ancient evils are destroyed, evils, it must be remembered, that derive their vitality in part from human nature and in part from the structure of our society. by ensuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not indeed have abolished prostitution, which is more than an economic phenomenon,[ ] but we shall more effectually check the white slave trader than by the most draconic legislation the most imaginative vice-crusader ever devised. and when we ensure that these same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous recreation, we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the white slave traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral supervision of the young. no doubt the element of human nature in the manifestations we are concerned with will still be at work, an obscure instinct often acting differently in each sex, but tending to drive both into the same risks. here we need even more fundamental social changes. it is sheer foolishness to suppose that when we raise our little dams in the path of a great stream of human impulse that stream will forthwith flow calmly back to its source. we must make our new channels concurrently with our dams. if we wish to influence prostitution we must re-make our marriage laws and modify our whole conception of the sexual relationships. in the meanwhile, we can at least begin to-day a task of education which must slowly though surely undermine the white slave trader's stronghold. such an education needs to be not merely instruction in the facts of sex and wise guidance concerning all the dangers and risks of the sexual life; it must also involve a training of the will, a development of the sense of responsibility, such as can never be secured by shutting our young people up in a hot-house, sheltered from every fortifying breath of the outside world. certainly there are many among us--and precisely the most hopeless persons from our present point of view--who can never grow into really responsible persons.[ ] neither should they ever have been born. it is our business to see that they are not born; and that, if they are, they are at least placed under due social guardianship, so that we may not be tempted to make laws for society in general which are only needed by this feeble and infirm folk. thus it is that when we seek to deal with the white slave trader and his victims and his patrons we have to realise that they are all very much, as we have made them, moulded by their parents before birth, nourished on their mothers' knees. the task of making them over again next time, and making them better, is a revolutionary task, but it begins at home, and there is no home in which some part of the task cannot be carried out. it is possible that at some period in the world's history, not only will the white slave traffic disappear, but even prostitution itself, and it is for us to work towards that day. but we may be quite sure that the social state which sees the last of the "social evil" will be a social state very unlike ours. [ ] the nature of prostitution and of the white slave traffic and their relation to each other may clearly be studied in such valuable first-hand investigations of the subject as _the social evil: with special reference to conditions existing in the city of new york_, nd edition, edited by e.r.a. seligman, putnam's, ; _commercialised prostitution in new york city_, by g.j. kneeland, new york century co., ; _prostitution in europe_, by abraham flexner, new york century co., ; _the social evil in chicago_, by the vice-commission of chicago, . as regards prostitution in england and its causes i should like to call attention to an admirable little book, _downward paths_, published by bell & sons, . the literature of the subject is, however, extensive, and a useful bibliography will be found in the first-named volume. [ ] this is especially true of many regions in america, both north and south, where a hideous mixture of disparate nationalities furnishes conditions peculiarly favourable to the "white slave traffic," when prosperity increases. see, for instance, the well-informed and temperately written book by miss jane addams, _a new conscience and an ancient evil_, . [ ] see havelock ellis: _sex in relation to society (studies in the psychology of sex)_, vol. vi., ch. vii. [ ] "the white slave traffic," _english review_, june, . it is just just the same in america. mr. brand-whitlock, when mayor of toledo, thoroughly investigated a sensational story of this kind brought to him in great detail by a social worker and found that it possessed not the slightest basis of truth. "it was," he remarks in an able paper on "the white slave" (_forum_, feb., ), "simply another variant of the story that had gone the rounds of the continents, a story which had been somehow psychologically timed to meet the hysteria which the pulpit, the press, and the legislature had displayed." [ ] g.f. collas, _geschichte des flagellantismus_, , vol. i., p. . [ ] i have brought together some of the evidence on this point in the chapter on "immorality and the law" in my book, _the task of social hygiene_. [ ] the idea is cherished by many, especially among socialists, that prostitution is mainly an economic question, and that to raise wages is to dry up the stream of prostitution. that is certainly a fallacy, unsupported by careful investigators, though all are agreed that the economic condition of the wage-earner is one factor in the problem. thus commissioner adelaide cox, at the head of the women's social wing of the salvation army, speaking from a very long and extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, while not denying that women are often "wickedly underpaid," finds that the cause of prostitution is "essentially a moral one, and cannot be successfully fought by other than moral weapons."--(_westminster gazette_, dec. nd, ). in a yet wider sense, it may be said that the question of the causes of prostitution is essentially social. [ ] this is a very important clue indeed in dealing with the problem of prostitution. "it is the weak-minded, unintelligent girl," goddard states in his valuable work on _feeblemindedness_, "who makes the white slave traffic possible." dr. hickson found that over per cent. of the women brought before the morals court in chicago were distinctly feeble-minded, and dr. olga bridgeman states that among the girls committed for sexual delinquency to the training school of geneva, illinois, per cent. were feeble-minded by the binet tests, and to be regarded as "helpless victims." (walter clarke, _social hygiene_, june, , and _journal of mental science_, jan., , p. .) there are fallacies in these figures, but it would appear that about half of the prostitutes in institutions are to be regarded as mentally defective. xi the conquest of venereal disease the final report of the royal commission on venereal diseases has brought to an end an important and laborious investigation at what many may regard as an unfavourable moment. perhaps, however, the moment is not so unfavourable as it seems. there is no period when venereal diseases flourish so exuberantly as in war time, and we shall have a sad harvest to gather here when the war is over.[ ] moreover, the war is teaching us to face the real facts of life more frankly and more courageously than ever before, and there is no field, scarcely even a battlefield, where a training in frankness and courage is so necessary as in this of venereal disease. it is difficult even to say that there is any larger field, for it has been found possible to doubt whether the great war of to-day, when all is summed up, will have produced more death, disease, and misery than is produced in the ordinary course of events, during a single generation, by venereal disease. there are, as every man and woman ought to know, two main and quite distinct diseases (any other being unimportant) poetically termed "venereal" because chiefly, though not by any means only, propagated in the intercourse over which the roman goddess venus once presided. these two diseases are syphilis and gonorrhoea. both these diseases are very serious, often terrible, in their effects on the individual attacked, and both liable to be poisonous to the race. there has long been a popular notion that, while syphilis is indeed an awful disease, gonorrhoea may be accepted with a light heart. that, we now know, is a grave mistake. gonorrhoea may seem trivial at the outset, but its results, especially for a woman and her children (when it allows her to have any), are anything but trivial; while its greater frequency, and the indifference with which it is regarded, still further increase its dangers. about the serious nature of syphilis there is no doubt. it is a comparatively modern disease, not clearly known in europe before the discovery of america at the end of the fifteenth century, and by some authorities[ ] to-day supposed to have been imported from america. but it soon ravaged the whole of our world, and has continued to do so ever since. during recent years it has perhaps shown a slight tendency to decrease, though nothing to what could be achieved by systematic methods; but its evils are still sufficiently alarming. exactly how common it is cannot be ascertained with certainty. at least per cent., probably more, of the population in our large cities have been infected by syphilis, some before birth. in for an average strength of , men in the english navy, nearly , days were lost as a result of venereal disease, while among , soldiers in the home army for the same year, an average of nearly men were constantly sick from the same cause. we may estimate from this small example how vast must be the total loss of working power due to venereal disease. moreover, in sir william osler's words, "of the killing diseases syphilis comes third or fourth." its prevalence varies in different regions and different social classes. the mortality rate from syphilis for males above fifteen is highest for unskilled labour, then for the group intermediate between unskilled and skilled labour, then for the upper and middle class, followed by the group intermediate between this class and skilled labour, while skilled labour, textile workers, and miners follow, and agricultural labourers come out most favourably of all. these differences do not represent any ascending grade in virtue or sexual abstinence, but are dependent upon differences in social condition; thus syphilis is comparatively rare among agricultural labourers because they associate only with women they know and are not exposed to the temptation of strange women, while it is high among the upper class because they are shut out from sexual intimacy with women of their own class and so resort to prostitutes. on the whole, however, it will be seen, the poison of syphilis is fairly diffused among all classes. this poison may work through many years or even the whole of life, and its early manifestations are the least important. it may begin before birth: thus, one recent investigation shows that in syphilitic families there were only seemingly healthy children to infant deaths, stillbirths, and miscarriages (as against in healthy families), the great majority of these failures being infant deaths and thus representing a large amount of wasted energy and expense.[ ] syphilis is, again, the most serious single cause of the most severe forms of brain disease and insanity, this often coming on many years after the infection, and when the early symptoms were but slight. blindness and deafness from the beginning of life are in a large proportion of cases due to syphilis. there is, indeed, no organ of the body which is not liable to break down, often with fatal results, through syphilis, so that it has been well said that a doctor who knows syphilis thoroughly is familiar with every branch of his profession. gonorrhoea is a still commoner disease than syphilis; how common it is very difficult to say. it is also an older disease, for the ancient egyptians knew it, and the biblical king esarhaddon of assyria, as the records of his court show, once caught it. it seems to some people no more serious than a common cold, yet it is able to inflict much prolonged misery on its victims, while on the race its influence in the long run is even more deadly than that of syphilis, for gonorrhoea is the chief cause of sterility in women, that is to say, in from to per cent. of such cases, while of cases of sterility in men (which form a quarter to a third of the whole) gonorrhoea is the cause in from to per cent. the inflammation of the eyes of the new-born leading to blindness is also in per cent. cases due to gonorrhoea in the mother, and this occurs in over six per , births. three years ago a royal commission was appointed to investigate the best methods of controlling venereal disease, as small-pox, typhus, and to a large extent typhoid, have already been controlled. the commission was well composed, not merely of officials and doctors, but of experienced men and women in various fields, and the final report is signed by all the members, any difference of opinion being confined to minor points (which it is unnecessary to touch on here) and to two members only. the recommendations are conceived in the most practical and broad-minded spirit. they are neither faddy nor goody-goody. some indeed may wish that they had gone further. the commission leave over for later consideration the question of notifying venereal disease as other infectious diseases are notified, and there is no recommendation for the provision of preventive methods against infection for use before intercourse, such as are officially favoured in germany. but at both these points the commissioners have been wise, for they are points to which sections of public opinion are still strongly hostile.[ ] as they stand, the recommendations should carry conviction to all serious and reasonable persons. already, indeed, the government, without opposition, has expressed its willingness to undertake the financial burden which the commission would impose on it. the main recommendations made by the commission, if we put aside the suggestions for obtaining a more exact statistical knowledge, may be placed under the heads of treatment and prevention. as regards the first, it is insisted that measures should be taken to render the best modern treatment, which should be free to all, readily available for the whole community, in such a way that those affected will have no hesitation in taking advantage of the facilities thus offered. the means of treatment should be organised by county councils and boroughs, under the local government board, which should have power to make independent arrangements when the local authorities fail in their duties. institutional treatment should be provided at all general hospitals, special arrangements made for the treatment of out-patients in the evenings, and no objection offered to patients seeking treatment outside their own neighbourhoods. the expenditure should be assisted by grants from imperial funds to the extent of per cent. it may be added that, however heavy such expenditure may be, an economy can scarcely fail to be effected. the financial cost of venereal disease to-day is so vast as to be beyond calculation. it enters into every field of life. it is enough merely to consider the significant little fact that the cost of educating a deaf child is ten times as great as that of educating an ordinary child. under the head of prevention we may place such a suggestion as that the existence of infective venereal disease should constitute legal incapacity for marriage, even when unknown, and be a sufficient cause for annulling the marriage at the discretion of the court. but by far the chief importance under this head is assigned by the commission to education and instruction. we see here the vindication of those who for years have been teaching that the first essential in dealing with venereal disease is popular enlightenment. there must be more careful instruction--"through all types and grades of education"--on the sexual relations in regard to conduct, while further instruction should be provided in evening continuation schools, as well as factories and works, with the aid of properly constituted voluntary associations. these are sound and practical recommendations which, as the government has realised, can be put in action at once. a few years ago any attempt to control venereal disease was considered by many to be almost impious. such disease was held to be the just visitation of god upon sin and to interfere would be wicked. we know better now. a large proportion of those who are most severely struck by venereal disease are new-born children and trustful wives, while a simple kiss or the use of towels and cups in common has constantly served to spread venereal disease in a family. even when we turn to the commonest method of infection, we have still to remember that we are dealing largely with inexperienced youths, with loving and trustful girls, who have yielded to the deepest and most volcanic impulse of their natures, and have not yet learnt that that impulse is a thing to be held sacred for their own sakes and the sake of the race. in so far as there is sin, it is sin which must be shared by those who have failed to train and enlighten the young. a pharisaic attitude is not only highly mischievous in its results, but is here altogether out of place. much harm has been done in the past by the action of benefit societies in withholding recognition and treatment from venereal disease. it is evident that this thought was at the back of the minds of those who framed these wise recommendations. we cannot expect to do away all at once with the feeling that venereal disease is "shameful." it may not even be desirable. but we can at least make clear that, in so far as there is any shame, it must be a question between the individual and his own conscience. from the point of view of science, syphilis and gonorrhoea are just diseases, like cancer and consumption, the only diseases with which they can be compared in the magnitude and extent of their results, and therefore it is best to speak of them by their scientific names, instead of trying to invent vague and awkward circumlocutions. from the point of view of society, any attitude of shame is unfortunate, because it is absolutely essential that these diseases should be met in the open and grappled with methodically and thoroughly. otherwise, as the commission recognises, the sufferer is apt to become the prey of ignorant quacks whose inefficient treatment is largely responsible for the development of the latest and worst afflictions these diseases produce when not effectually nipped in the bud. that they can be thus cut short--far more easily than consumption, to say nothing of cancer--is the fact which makes it possible to hope for a conquest over venereal disease. it is a conquest that would make the whole world more beautiful and deliver love from its ugliest shadow. but the victory cannot be won by science alone, not even in alliance with officialdom. it can only be won through the enlightened co-operation of the whole nation. [ ] the increase of venereal disease during the great war has been noted alike in germany, france, and england. thus, as regards france, gaucher has stated at the paris academy of medicine (_journal de medicine_, may th, ) that since mobilisation syphilis had increased by nearly one half, alike among soldiers and civilians; it had much increased in quite young people and in elderly men. in germany, neisser, a leading authority, states (_deutsche medizinische wochenschrift_, th jan., ) that the prevalence of venereal disease is much greater than in the war of , and that "every day many thousands, not to say tens of thousands, of otherwise able-bodied men are withdrawn from the service on this account." [ ] the chief is iwan bloch who, in his elaborate work, _der ursprung der syphilis_ ( vols., , ), has fully investigated the evidence. [ ] n. bishop harman, "the influence of syphilis on the chances of progeny," _british medical journal_, feb. th, . [ ] it is true that in my book, _sex in relation to society_ (ch. viii.) i have stated my belief that notification, as in the case of other serious infectious diseases, is the first step in the conquest of venereal disease. i still think it ought to be so. but a yet more preliminary step is popular enlightenment as to the need for such notification. the recommendations seem to me to go as far as it is possible to go at the moment in english-speaking countries without producing friction and opposition. in so far as they are carried out the recommendations will ensure the necessary popular enlightenment. xii the nationalisation of health it was inevitable that we should some day have to face the problem of medical reorganisation on a social basis. along many lines social progress has led to the initiation of movements for the improvement of public health. but they are still incomplete and imperfectly co-ordinated. we have never realised that the great questions of health cannot safely be left to municipal tinkering and the patronage of bumbledom. the result is chaos and a terrible waste, not only of what we call "hard cash," but also of sensitive flesh and blood. health, there cannot be the slightest doubt, is a vastly more fundamental and important matter than education, to say nothing of such minor matters as the post office or the telephone system. yet we have nationalised these before even giving a thought to the nationalisation of health. at the present day medicine is mainly in the hands, as it was two thousand years ago, of the "private practitioner." his mental status has, indeed, changed. to-day he is submitted to a long and arduous training in magnificently equipped institutions; all the laboriously acquired processes and results of modern medicine and hygiene are brought within the student's reach. and when he leaves the hospital, often with the largest and noblest conception of the physician's place in life, what do we do with him? he becomes a "private practitioner," which means, as duclaux, the late distinguished director of the pasteur institute, put it, that we place him on the level of a retail grocer who must patiently stand behind his counter (without the privilege of advertising himself) until the public are pleased to come and buy advice or drugs which are usually applied for too late to be of much use, and may be thrown away at the buyer's good pleasure, without the possibility of any protest by the seller. it is little wonder that in many cases the doctor's work and aims suffer under such conditions; his nature is subdued to what it works in; he clings convulsively to his counter and its retail methods. the fact is--and it is a fact that is slowly becoming apparent to all--that the private practice of medicine is out of date. it fails to answer the needs of our time. there are various reasons why this should be the case, but two are fundamental. in the first place, medicine has outgrown the capacity of any individual doctor; the only adequate private practitioner must have a sound general knowledge of medicine with an expert knowledge of a dozen specialties; that is to say, he must give place to a staff of doctors acting co-ordinately, for the present system, or lack of system, by which a patient wanders at random from private practitioner to specialist, from specialist to specialist _ad infinitum_, is altogether mischievous. moreover, not only is it impossible for the private practitioner to possess the knowledge required to treat his patients adequately: he cannot possess the scientific mechanical equipment nowadays required alike for diagnosis and treatment, and every day becoming more elaborate, more expensive, more difficult to manipulate. it is installed in our great hospitals for the benefit of the poorest patient; it could, perhaps, be set up in a millionaire's palace, but it is hopelessly beyond the private practitioner, though without it his work must remain unsatisfactory and inadequate.[ ] in the second place, the whole direction of modern medicine is being changed and to an end away from private practice; our thoughts are not now mainly bent on the cure of disease but on its prevention. medicine is becoming more and more transformed into hygiene, and in this transformation, though the tasks presented are larger and more systematic, they are also easier and more economical. these two fundamental tendencies of modern medicine--greater complexity of its methods and the predominantly preventive character of its aims--alone suffice to render the position of the private practitioner untenable. he cannot cope with the complexity of modern medicine; he has no authority to enforce its hygiene. the medical system of the future must be a national system co-ordinating all the conditions of health. at the centre we should expect to find a minister of health, and every doctor of the state would give his whole time to his work and be paid by salary which in the case of the higher posts would be equal to that now fixed for the higher legal offices, for the chief doctor in the state ought to be at least as important an official as the lord chancellor. hospitals and infirmaries would be alike nationalised, and, in place of the present antagonism between hospitals and the bulk of the medical profession, every doctor would be in touch with a hospital, thus having behind him a fully equipped and staffed institution for all purposes of diagnosis, consultation, treatment, and research, also serving for a centre of notification, registration, preventive and hygienic measures. in every district the citizen would have a certain amount of choice as regards the medical man to whom he may go for advice, but no one would be allowed to escape the medical supervision and registration of his district, for it is essential that the central health authority of every district should know the health conditions of all the inhabitants of the district. only by some such organised and co-ordinated system as this can the primary conditions of health, and preventive measures against disease, be genuinely socialised. these views were put forward by the present writer twenty years ago in a little book on _the nationalisation of health_, which, though it met with wide approval, was probably regarded by most people as utopian. since then the times have moved, a new generation has sprung up, and ideas which, twenty years ago, were brooded over by isolated thinkers are now seen to be in the direct line of progress; they have become the property of parties and matters of active propaganda. even before the introduction of state insurance professor benjamin moore, in his able book, _the dawn of the health age_, anticipating the actual march of events, formulated a state insurance scheme which would lead on, as he pointed out, to a genuinely national medical service, and later, dr. macilwaine, in a little book entitled _medical revolution_, again advocated the same changes: the establishment of a ministry of health, a medical service on a preventive basis, and the reform of the hospitals which must constitute the nucleus of such a service. it may be said that for medical men no longer engaged in private practice it is easy to view the disappearance of private practice with serenity; but it must be added that it is precisely that disinterested serenity which makes possible also a clear insight into the problems and a wider view of the new horizons of medicine. thus it is that to-day the dreamers of yesterday are justified. the great scheme of state insurance was certainly an important step towards the socialisation of medicine. it came short, indeed, of the complete nationalisation of health as an affair of state. but that could not possibly be introduced at one move. apart even from the difficulty of complete reorganisation, the two great vested interests of private medical practice on the one hand and friendly societies on the other would stand in the way. a complicated transitional period is necessary, during which those two interests are conciliated and gradually absorbed. it is this transitional period which state insurance has inaugurated. to compare small things to great--as we may, for the same laws run all through nature and society--this scheme corresponds to the ancient ptolomaean system of astronomy, with its painfully elaborate epicycles, which preceded and led on to the sublime simplicity of the copernican system. we need not anticipate that the transitional stage of national insurance will endure as long as the ancient astronomy. professor moore estimated that it would lead to a completely national medical service in twenty-five years, and since the introduction of that method he has, too optimistically, reduced the period to ten years. we cannot reach simplicity at a bound; we must first attempt to systematise the recognised and established activities and adjust them harmoniously. the organised refusal of the medical profession at the outset to carry on, under the conditions offered, the part assigned to it in the great national insurance scheme opened out prospects not clearly realised by the organisers. no doubt its immediate aspects were unfortunate. it not only threatened to impede the working of a very complex machine, but it dismayed many who were not prepared to see doctors apparently taking up the position of the syndicalists, and arguing that a profession which is essential to the national welfare need not be carried out on national lines, but can be run exclusively by itself in its own interests. such an attitude, however, usefully served to make clear how necessary it is becoming that the extension of medicine and hygiene in the national life should be accompanied by a corresponding extension in the national government. if we had had a council of national health, as well as of national defence, or a board of health as well as a board of trade, a minister of health with a seat in the cabinet, any scheme of insurance would have been framed from the outset in close consultation with the profession which would have the duty of carrying it out. no subsequent friction would have been possible. had the insurance scheme been so framed, it is perhaps doubtful whether it would have been so largely based on the old contract system. club medical practice has long been in discredit, alike from the point of view of patient and doctor. it furnishes the least satisfactory form of medical relief for the patient, less adequate than that he could obtain either as a private patient or as a hospital patient. the doctor, on his side, though he may find it a very welcome addition to his income, regards club practice as semi-charitable, and, moreover, a form of charity in which he is often imposed on; he seldom views his club patients with much satisfaction, and unless he is a self-sacrificing enthusiast, it is not to them that his best attention, his best time, his most expensive drugs, are devoted. to perpetuate and enlarge the club system of practice and to glorify it by affixing to it a national seal of approval, was, therefore, a somewhat risky experiment, not wisely to be attempted without careful consultation with those most concerned. another point might then also have become clear: the whole tendency of medicine is towards a recognition of the predominance of hygiene. the modern aim is to prevent disease. the whole national system of medicine is being slowly though steadily built up in recognition of the great fact that the interests of health come before the interests of disease. it has been an unfortunate flaw in the magnificent scheme of insurance that this vital fact was not allowed for, that the old-fashioned notion that treatment rather than prevention is the object of medicine was still perpetuated, and that nothing was done to co-ordinate the insurance scheme with the existing health services. it seems probable that in a service of state medical officers the solution may ultimately be found. such a solution would, indeed, immensely increase the value of the insurance scheme, and, in the end, confer far greater benefits than at present on the millions of people who would come under its operation. for there can be no doubt the club system is not only unscientific; it is also undemocratic. it perpetuates what was originally a semi-charitable and second-rate method of treatment of the poorer classes. a state medical officer, devoting his whole time and attention to his state patients, has no occasion to make invidious distinctions between public and private patients. a further advantage of a state medical service is that it will facilitate the inevitable task of nationalising the hospitals, whether charitable or poor-law. the insurance act, as it stands, opens no definite path in this direction. but nowadays, so vast and complicated has medicine become, even the most skilful doctor cannot adequately treat his patient unless he has a great hospital at his back, with a vast army of specialists and research-workers, and a manifold instrumental instalment. a third, and even more fundamental, advantage of a state medical service is that it would help to bring treatment into touch with prevention. the private practitioner, as such, inside or outside the insurance scheme, cannot conveniently go behind his patient's illness. but the state doctor would be entitled to ask: _why_ has this man broken down? the state's guardianship of the health of its citizens now begins at birth (is tending to be carried back before birth) and covers the school life. if a man falls ill, it is, nowadays, legitimate to inquire where the responsibility lies. it is all very well to patch up the diseased man with drugs or what not. but at best that is a makeshift method. the consumptive sanatoriums have aroused enthusiasm, and they also are all very well. but the charity organisation society has shown that only about per cent. of those who pass through such institutions become fit for work. it is not more treatment of disease that we want, it is less need for treatment. and a state medical service is the only method by which medicine can be brought into close touch with hygiene. the present attitude of the medical profession sometimes strikes people as narrow, unpatriotic, and merely self-interested. but the insurance act has brought a powerful ferment of intellectual activity into the medical profession which in the end will work to finer issues. a significant sign of the times is the establishment of the state medical service association, having for its aim the organisation of the medical profession as a state service, the nationalisation of hospitals, and the unification of preventive and curative medicine. to many in the medical profession such schemes still seem "utopian"; they are blind to a process which has been in ever increasing action for more than half a century and which they are themselves taking part in every day. [ ] the result sometimes is that the ambitious doctor seeks to become a specialist in at least one subject, and instals a single expensive method of treatment to which he enthusiastically subjects all his patients. this would be comic if it were not sometimes rather tragic. xiii eugenics and genius the cry is often heard to-day from those who watch with disapproval the efforts made to discourage the reckless procreation of the degenerate and the unfit: you are stamping out the germs of genius! it is widely held that genius is a kind of flower, unknown to the horticulturist, which only springs from diseased roots; make the plant healthily sound and your hope of blossoms is gone, you will see nothing but leaves. or, according to the happier metaphor of lombroso, the work of genius is an exquisite pearl, and pearls are the product of an obscure disease. to the medical mind, especially, it has sometimes been, naturally and properly no doubt, a source of satisfaction to imagine that the loveliest creations of human intellect may perhaps be employed to shed radiance on the shelves of the pathological museum. thus we find eminent physicians warning us against any effort to decrease the vigour of pathological processes, and influential medical journals making solemn statements in the same sense. "already," i read in a recent able and interesting editorial article in the _british medical journal_, "eugenists in their kind enthusiasm are threatening to stamp out the germs of possible genius." now it is quite easy to maintain that the health, happiness, and sanity of the whole community are more precious even than genius. it is so easy, indeed, that if the question of eugenics were submitted to the referendum on this sole ground there can be little doubt what the result would be. there are not many people, even in the most highly educated communities, who value the possibility of a new poem, symphony, or mathematical law so highly that they would sacrifice their own health, happiness, and sanity to retain that possibility for their offspring. of course we may declare that a majority which made such a decision must be composed of very low-minded uncultured people, altogether lacking in appreciation of pathology, and reflecting no credit on the eugenic cause they supported; but there can be little doubt that we should have to admit their existence. we need not hasten, however, to place the question on this ground. it is first necessary to ascertain what reason there is to suppose that a regard for eugenic considerations in mating would tend to stamp out the germs of genius. is there any reason at all? that is the question i am here concerned with. the anti-eugenic argument on this point, whenever any argument is brought forward, consists in pointing to all sorts of men of genius and of talent who, it is alleged, were poor citizens, physical degenerates the prey of all manner of constitutional diseases, sometimes candidates for the lunatic asylum which they occasionally reached. the miscellaneous data which may thus be piled up are seldom critically sifted, and often very questionable, for it is difficult enough to obtain any positive biological knowledge concerning great men who died yesterday, and practically impossible in most cases to reach an unquestionable conclusion as regards those who died a century or more ago. many of the most positive statements commonly made concerning the diseases even of modern genius are without any sure basis. the case of nietzsche, who was seen by some of the chief specialists of the day, is still really quite obscure. so is that of guy de maupassant. rousseau wrote the fullest and frankest account of his ailments, and the doctors made a _post-mortem_ examination. yet nearly all the medical experts--and they are many--who have investigated rousseau's case reach different conclusions. it would be easy to multiply indefinitely the instances of great men of the past concerning whose condition of health or disease we are in hopeless perplexity. this fact is, however, one that, as an argument, works both ways, and the important point is to make clear that it cannot concern us. no eugenic considerations can annihilate the man of genius when he is once born and bred. if eugenics is to stamp out the man of genius it must do so before he is born, by acting on his parents. nor is it possible to assume that if the man of genius, apart from his genius, is an unfit person to procreate the race, therefore his parents, not possessing any genius, were likewise unfit to propagate. it is easy to find persons of high ability who in other respects are unfit for the ends of life, ill-balanced in mental or physical development, neurasthenic, valetudinarian, the victims in varying degrees of all sorts of diseases. yet their parents, without any high ability, were, to all appearance, robust, healthy, hard-working, commonplace people who would easily pass any ordinary eugenic tests. we know nothing as to the action of two seemingly ordinary persons on each other in constituting heredity, how hypertrophied intellectual aptitude comes about, what accidents, normal or pathological, may occur to the germ before birth, nor even how strenuous intellectual activity may affect the organism generally. we cannot argue that since these persons, apart from their genius, were not seemingly the best people to carry on the race, therefore a like judgment should be passed on their parents and the germs of genius thus be stamped out. we only arrive at the crucial question when we ask: have the characters of the parents of men of genius been of such an obviously unfavourable kind that eugenically they would nowadays be dissuaded from propagation, or under a severe _régime_ of compulsory certificates (the desirability of which i am far indeed from assuming) be forbidden to marry? have the parents of genius belonged to the "unfit"? that is a question which must be answered in the affirmative if this objection to eugenics has any weight. yet so far as i know, none of those who have brought forward the objection have supported it by any evidence of the kind whatever. thirty years ago dr. maudsley dogmatically wrote: "there is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder of some form in his family." but he never brought forward any evidence in support of that pronouncement. nor has anyone else, if we put aside the efforts of more or less competent writers--like lombroso in his _man of genius_ and nisbet in his _insanity of genius_--to rake in statements from all quarters regarding the morbidities of genius, often without any attempt to authenticate, criticise, or sift them, and never with any effort to place them in due perspective.[ ] it so happens that, some years ago, with no relation to eugenic considerations, i devoted a considerable amount of attention to the biological characters of british men of genius, considered, so far as possible, on an objective and impartial basis.[ ] the selection, that is to say, was made, so far as possible, without regard to personal predilections, in accordance with certain rules, from the _dictionary of national biography_. in this way one thousand and thirty names were obtained of men and women who represent the flower of british genius during historical times, only excluding those persons who were alive at the end of the last century. what proportion of these were the offspring of parents who were insane or mentally defective to a serious extent? if the view of maudsley--that there is "hardly ever" a man of genius who is not the product of an insane or nervously-disordered stock--had a basis of truth, we should expect that in one or other parents of the man of genius actual insanity had occurred in a very large proportion of cases; per cent. would be a moderate estimate. but what do we find? in not per cent. can definite insanity be traced among the parents of british men and women of genius. no doubt this result is below the truth; the insanity of the parents must sometimes have escaped the biographer's notice. but even if we double the percentage to escape this source of error, the proportion still remains insignificant. there is more to be said. if the insanity of the parent occurred early in life, we should expect it to attract attention more easily than if it occurred late in life. those parents of men of genius falling into insanity late in life, the critic may argue, escape notice. but it is precisely to this group to which all the ascertainably insane parents of british men of genius belong. there is not a single recorded instance, so far as i have been able to ascertain, in which the parent had been definitely and recognisably insane before the birth of the distinguished child; so that any prohibition of the marriage of persons who had previously been insane would have left british genius untouched. in all cases the insanity came on late in life, and it was usually, without doubt, of the kind known as senile dementia. this was so in the case of the mother of bacon, the most distinguished person in the list of those with an insane parent. charles lamb's father, we are told, eventually became "imbecile." turner's mother became insane. the same is recorded of archbishop tillotson's mother and of archbishop leighton's father. this brief list includes all the parents of british men of genius who are recorded (and not then always very definitely) as having finally died insane. in the description given of others of the parents of our men of genius it is not, however, difficult to detect that, though they were not recognised as insane, their mental condition was so highly abnormal as to be not far removed from insanity. this was the case with gray's father and with the mothers of arthur young and andrew bell. even when we allow for all the doubtful cases, the proportion of persons of genius with an insane parent remains very low, less than per cent. senile dementia, though it is one of the least important and significant of the forms of insanity, and is entirely compatible with a long and useful life, must not, however, be regarded, when present in a marked degree, as the mere result of old age. entirely normal people of sound heredity do not tend to manifest signs of pronounced mental weakness or abnormality even in extreme old age. we are justified in suspecting a neurotic strain, though it may not be of severe degree. this is, indeed, illustrated by our records of british genius. some of the eminent men of genius on my list (at least twelve) suffered before death from insanity which may probably be described as senile dementia. but several of these were somewhat abnormal during earlier life (like swift) or had a child who became insane (like bishop marsh). in these and in other cases there has doubtless been some hereditary neurotic strain. it is clearly, however, not due to any intensity of this strain that we find the incidence of insanity in men of genius, as illustrated, for example, by senile dementia, so much more marked than its incidence on their parents. there is another factor to be invoked here: convergent morbid heredity. if a man and a woman, each with a slight tendency to nervous abnormality, marry each other, there is a much greater chance of the offspring manifesting a severe degree of nervous abnormality than if they had married entirely sound partners. now both among normal and abnormal people there is a tendency for like to mate with like. the attraction of the unlike for each other, which was once supposed to prevail, is not predominant, except within the sphere of the secondary sexual characters, where it clearly prevails, so that the ultra-masculine man is attracted to the ultra-feminine woman, and the feminine man to the boyish or mannish woman. apart from this, people tend to marry those who are both psychically and physically of the same type as themselves. it thus happens that nervously abnormal people become mated to the nervously abnormal. this is well illustrated by the british men of genius themselves. although insanity is more prevalent among them than among their parents, the same can scarcely be said of them in regard to their wives. it is notable that the insane wives of these men of genius are almost as numerous as the insane men of genius, though it rarely happens (as in the case of southey) that both husband and wife go out of their minds. but in all these cases there has probably been a mutual attraction of mentally abnormal people. it is to this tendency in the parents of men of genius, leading to a convergent heredity, that we must probably attribute the undue tendency of the men of genius themselves to manifest insanity. each of the parents separately may have displayed but a minor degree of neuropathic abnormality, but the two strains were fortified by union and the tendency to insanity became more manifest. this was, for instance, the case as regards charles lamb. the nervous abnormality of the parents in this case was less profound than that of the children, but it was present in both. under such circumstances what is called the law of anticipation comes into play; the neurotic tendency of the parents, increased by union, is also antedated, so that definite insanity occurs earlier in the life of the child than, if it had appeared at all, it occurred in the life of the parent. lamb's father only became weak-minded in old age, but since the mother also had a mentally abnormal strain, lamb himself had an attack of insanity early in life, and his sister was liable to recurrent insanity during a great part of her life. notwithstanding, however, the influence of this convergent heredity, it is found that the total insanity of british men and women of genius is not more, so far as can be ascertained--even when slight and dubious cases are included--than . per cent. that ascertainable proportion must be somewhat below the real proportion, but in any case it scarcely suggests that insanity is an essential factor of genius. let us, however, go beyond the limits of british genius, and consider the evidence more freely. there is, for instance, tasso, who was undoubtedly insane for a good part of his life, and has been much studied by the pathologists. de-gaudenzi, who has written one of the best psychopathological studies of tasso, shows clearly that his father, bernardo, was a man of high intelligence, of great emotional sensibility, with a tendency to melancholy as well as a mystical idealism, of somewhat weak character, and prone to invoke divine aid in the slightest difficulty. it was a temperament that might be considered a little morbid, outside a monastery, but it was not insane, nor is there any known insanity among his near relations. this man's wife, porzia, tasso's mother, arouses the enthusiasm of all who ever mention her, as a creature of angelic perfection. no insanity here either, but something of the same undue sensitiveness and melancholy as in the father, the same absence of the coarser and more robust virtues. moreover, she belonged to a family by no means so angelic as herself, not insane, but abnormal--malevolent, cruel, avaricious, almost criminal. the most scrupulous modern alienist would hesitate to deprive either bernardo or porzia of the right to parenthood. yet, as we know, the son born of this union was not only a world-famous poet, but an exceedingly unhappy, abnormal, and insane man. let us take the case of another still greater and more famous man, rousseau. it cannot reasonably be doubted that, at some moments in his life at all events, and perhaps during a considerable period, rousseau was definitely insane. we are intimately acquainted with the details of the life and character of his relations and of his ancestry. we not only possess the full account he set forth at the beginning of his _confessions_, but we know very much more than rousseau knew. geneva was paternal--paternal in the most severe sense--in scrutinising every unusual act of its children, and castigating every slightest deviation from the straight path. the whole life of the citizens of old geneva may be read in genevan archives, and not a scrap of information concerning the conduct of rousseau's ancestors and relatives as set down in these archives but has been brought to the light of day. if there is any great man of genius whom the activities of these fanatical eugenists would have rendered impossible, it must surely have been rousseau. let us briefly examine his parentage. rousseau's father was the outcome of a fine stock which for two generations had been losing something of its fine qualities, though without sinking anywhere near insanity, criminality, or pauperism. the rousseaus still exercised their craft with success; they were on the whole esteemed; jean-jacques's father was generally liked, but he was somewhat unstable, romantic, with no strong sense of duty, hot-tempered, easily taking offence. the mother, from a modern standpoint, was an attractive, highly accomplished, and admirable woman. in her neighbours' eyes she was not quite puritanical enough, high-spirited, independent, adventurous, fond of innocent gaiety, but a devoted wife when, at last, at the age of thirty, she married. more than once before marriage she was formally censured by the ecclesiastical authorities for her little insubordinations, and these may be seen to have a certain significance when we turn to her father; he was a thorough _mauvais sujet_, with an incorrigible love of pleasure, and constantly falling into well-deserved trouble for some escapade with the young women of geneva. thus on both sides there was a certain nervous instability, an uncontrollable wayward emotionality. but of actual insanity, of nervous disorder, of any decided abnormality or downright unfitness in either father or mother, not a sign. isaac rousseau and susanne bernard would have been passed by the most ferocious eugenist. it is again a case in which the chances of convergent heredity have produced a result which in its magnitude, in its heights and in its depths, none could foresee. it is one of the most famous and most accurately known examples of insane genius in history, and we see what amount of support it offers to the ponderous dictum concerning the insane heredity of genius. let us turn from insanity to grave nervous disease. epilepsy at once comes before us, all the more significantly since it has been considered, more especially by lombroso, to be the special disease through which genius peculiarly manifests itself. it is true that much importance here is attached to those minor forms of epilepsy which involve no gross and obvious convulsive fit. the existence of these minor attacks is, in the case of men of genius, usually difficult to disprove and equally difficult to prove. it certainly should not be so as regards the major form of epilepsy. yet among the thousand and thirty persons of british genius i was only able to find epilepsy mentioned twice, and in both cases incorrectly, for the national biographer had attributed it to lord herbert of cherbury through misreading a passage in herbert's _autobiography_, while the epileptic fits of sir w.r. hamilton in old age were most certainly not true epilepsy. without doubt, no eugenist could recommend an epileptic to become a parent. but if epilepsy has no existence in british men of genius it is improbable that it has often occurred among their parents. the loss to british genius through eugenic activity in this sphere would probably, therefore, have been _nil_. putting aside british genius, however, one finds that it has been almost a commonplace of alienists and neurologists, even up to the present day, to present glibly a formidable list of mighty men of genius as victims of epilepsy. thus i find a well-known american alienist lately making the unqualified and positive statement that "mahomet, napoleon, molière, handel, paganini, mozart, schiller, richelieu, newton and flaubert" were epileptics, while still more recently a distinguished english neurologist, declaring that "the world's history has been made by men who were either epileptics, insane, or of neuropathic stock," brings forward a similar and still larger list to illustrate that statement, with alexander the great, julius caesar, the apostle paul, luther, frederick the great and many others thrown in, though unfortunately he fails to tell us which members of the group he desires us to regard as epileptic. julius caesar was certainly one of them, but the statement of suetonius (not an unimpeachable authority in any case) that caesar had epileptic fits towards the close of his life is disproof rather than proof of true epilepsy. of mahomet, and st. paul also, epilepsy is alleged. as regards the first, the most competent authorities regard the convulsive seizures attributed to the prophet as perhaps merely a legendary attempt to increase the awe he inspired by unmistakable evidence of divine authority. the narrative of st. paul's experience on the road to damascus is very unsatisfactory evidence on which to base a medical diagnosis, and it may be mentioned that, in the course of a discussion in the columns of the _british medical journal_ during , as many as six different views were put forward as to the nature of the apostle's "thorn in the flesh." the evidence on which richelieu, who was undoubtedly a man of very fragile constitution is declared to be epileptic, is of the very slenderest character. for the statement that newton was epileptic there is absolutely no reliable evidence at all, and i am quite ignorant of the grounds on which mozart, handel and schiller are declared epileptics. the evidence for epilepsy in napoleon may seem to carry slightly more weight, for there is that in the moral character of napoleon which we might very well associate with the epileptic temperament. it seems clear that napoleon really had at times convulsive seizures which were at least epileptoid. thus talleyrand describes how one day, just after dinner (it may be recalled that napoleon was a copious and exceedingly rapid eater), passing for a few minutes into josephine's room, the emperor came out, took talleyrand into his own room, ordered the door to be closed, and then fell down in a fit. bourrienne, however, who was napoleon's private secretary for eleven years, knew nothing about any fits. it is not usual, in a true epileptic fit, to be able to control the circumstances of the seizure to this extent, and if napoleon, who lived so public a life, furnished so little evidence of epilepsy to his environment, it may be regarded as very doubtful whether any true epilepsy existed, and on other grounds it seems highly improbable.[ ] of all these distinguished persons in the list of alleged epileptics, it is naturally most profitable to investigate the case of the latest, flaubert, for here it is easiest to get at the facts. maxime du camp, a friend in early life, though later incompatibility of temperament led to estrangement, announced to the world in his _souvenirs_ that flaubert was an epileptic, and goncourt mentions in his _journal_ that he was in the habit of taking much bromide. but the "fits" never began until the age of twenty-eight, which alone should suggest to a neurologist that they are not likely to have been epileptic; they never occurred in public; he could feel the fit coming on and would go and lie down; he never lost consciousness; his intellect and moral character remained intact until death. it is quite clear that there was no true epilepsy here, nor anything like it.[ ] flaubert was of fairly sound nervous heredity on both sides, and his father, a distinguished surgeon, was a man of keen intellect and high character. the novelist, who was of robust physical and mental constitution, devoted himself strenuously and exclusively to intellectual work; it is not surprising that he was somewhat neurasthenic, if not hysterical, and dumesnil, who discusses this question in his book on flaubert, concludes that the "fits" may be called hysterical attacks of epileptoid form. it may well be that we have in flaubert's case a clue to the "epilepsy" of the other great men who in this matter are coupled with him. they were nearly all persons of immense intellectual force, highly charged with nervous energy; they passionately concentrated their energy on the achievement of life tasks of enormous magnitude, involving the highest tension of the organism. under such conditions, even in the absence of all bad heredity or of actual disease, convulsive discharges may occur. we may see even in healthy and sound women that occasionally some physiological and unrelieved overcharging of the organism with nervous energy may result in what is closely like a hysterical fit, while even a violent fit of crying is a minor manifestation of the same tendency. the feminine element in genius has often been emphasised, and it may well be that under the conditions of the genius-life when working at high pressure we have somewhat similar states of nervous overcharging, and that from time to time the tension is relieved, naturally and spontaneously, by a convulsive discharge. this, at all events, seems a possible explanation. it is rather strange that in these recklessly confident lists of eminent "epileptics" we fail to find the one man of distinguished genius whom perhaps we are justified in regarding as a true epileptic. dostoievsky appears to have been an epileptic from an early age; he remained liable to epileptic fits throughout life, and they plunged him into mental dejection and confusion. in many of his novels we find pictures of the epileptic temperament, evidently based on personal experience, showing the most exact knowledge and insight into all the phases of the disease. moreover, dostoievsky in his own person appears to have displayed the perversions and the tendency to mental deterioration which we should expect to find in a true epileptic. so far as our knowledge goes, he really seems to stand alone as a manifestation of supreme genius combined with epilepsy. yet, as dr. loygue remarks in his medico-psychological study of the great russian novelist, epilepsy only accounts for half of the man, and leaves unexplained his passion for work; "the dualism of epilepsy and genius is irreducible." there is one other still more recent man of true genius, though not of the highest rank, who may possibly be counted as epileptic: vincent van gogh, the painter.[ ] a brilliant and highly original artist, he was a definitely abnormal man who cannot be said to have escaped mental deterioration. simple and humble and suffering, recklessly sacrificing himself to help others, always in trouble, van gogh had many points of resemblance to dostoievsky. he has, indeed, been compared to the "idiot" immortalised by dostoievsky, in some aspects an imbecile, in some aspects a saint. yet epilepsy no more explains the genius of van gogh than it explains the genius of dostoievsky. thus the impression we gain when, laying aside prejudice, we take a fairly wide and impartial survey of the facts, or even when we investigate in detail the isolated facts to which significance is most often attached, by no means supports the notion that genius springs entirely, or even mainly, from insane and degenerate stocks. in some cases, undoubtedly, it is found in such stocks, but the ability displayed in these cases is rarely, perhaps never, of any degree near the highest. it is quite easy to point to persons of a certain significance, especially in literature and art, who, though themselves sane, possess many near relatives who are highly neurotic and sometimes insane. such cases, however, are far from justifying any confident generalisations concerning the intimate dependence of genius on insanity. we see, moreover, that to conclude that men of genius are rarely or never the offspring of a radically insane parentage is not to assume that the parents of men of genius are usually of average normal constitution. that would in any case be improbable. apart from the tendency to convergent heredity already emphasised, there is a wider tendency to slight abnormality, a minor degree of inaptness for ordinary life in the parentage of genius. i found that in per cent. cases (certainly much below the real mark) of the british people of genius, one parent, generally the father, had shown abnormality from a social or parental point of view. he had been idle, or extravagant, or restless, or cruel, or intemperate, or unbusinesslike, in the great majority of these cases "unsuccessful." the father of dickens (represented by his son in micawber), who was always vainly expecting something to turn up, is a good type of these fathers of genius. shakespeare's father may have been of much the same sort. george meredith's father, again, who was too superior a person for the outfitting business he inherited, but never succeeded in being anything else, is another example of this group of fathers of genius. the father in these cases is a link of transition between the normal stock and its brilliantly abnormal offshoot. in this transitional stage we see, as it were, the stock _reculer pour mieux sauter_, but it is in the son that the great leap is made manifest. this peculiarity will serve to indicate that in a large proportion of cases the parentage of genius is not entirely sound and normal. we must dismiss absolutely the notion that the parents of persons of genius tend to exhibit traits of a grossly insane or nervously degenerate character. the evidence for such a view is confined to a minute proportion of cases, and even then is usually doubtful. but it is another matter to assume that the parentage of genius is absolutely normal, and still less can we assert that genius always springs from entirely sound stocks. the statement is sometimes made that all families contain an insane element. that statement cannot be accepted. there are many people, including people of a high degree of ability, who can trace no gross mental or nervous disease in their families, unless remote branches are taken into account. not many statistics bearing on this point are yet available. but jenny roller, in a very thorough investigation, found at zurich in that "healthy" people had in per cent. cases directly, and in per cent. cases indirectly and altogether, a neuropathic heredity, while otto diem in found that the corresponding percentages were still higher-- and . it should not, therefore, be matter for surprise if careful investigation revealed a traceable neuropathic element at least as frequent as this in the families which produce a man of genius. it may further, i believe, be argued that the presence of a neuropathic element of this kind in the ancestry of genius is frequently not without a real significance. aristotle said in his _poetics_ that poetry demanded a man with "a touch of madness," though the ancients, who frequently made a similar statement to this, had not our modern ideas of neuropathic heredity in their minds, but merely meant that inspiration simulated insanity. yet "a touch of madness," a slight morbid strain, usually neurotic or gouty, in a preponderantly robust and energetic stock, seems to be often of some significance in the evolution of genius; it appears to act, one is inclined to think, as a kind of ferment, leading to a process out of all relation to its own magnitude. in the sphere of literary genius, milton, flaubert, and william morris may help to illustrate this precious fermentative influence of a minor morbid element in vitally powerful stocks. without some such ferment as this the energy of the stock, one may well suppose, might have been confined within normal limits; the rare and exquisite flower of genius, we know, required an abnormal stimulation; only in this sense is there any truth at all in lombroso's statement that the pearl of genius develops around a germ of disease. but this is the utmost length to which the facts allow us to go in assuming the presence of a morbid element as a frequent constituent of genius. even then we only have one of the factors of genius, to which, moreover, undue importance cannot be attached when we remember how often this ferment is present without any resultant process of genius. and we are in any case far removed from any of those gross nervous lesions which all careful guardianship of the race must tend to eliminate. thus we are brought back to the point from which we started. would eugenics stamp out genius? there is no need to minimise the fact that a certain small proportion of men of genius have displayed highly morbid characters, nor to deny that in a large proportion of cases a slightly morbid strain may with care be detected in the ancestry of genius. but the influence of eugenic considerations can properly be brought to bear only in the case of grossly degenerate stocks. here, so far as our knowledge extends, the parentage of genius nearly always escapes. the destruction of genius and its creation alike elude the eugenist. if there is a tendency in modern civilisation towards a diminution in the manifestations of genius--which may admit of question---it can scarcely be due to any threatened elimination of corrupt stocks. it may perhaps more reasonably be sought in the haste and superficiality which our present phase of urbanisation fosters, and only the most robust genius can adequately withstand. [ ] a danish alienist, lange, has, however, made an attempt on a statistical basis to show a connection between mental ability and mental degeneracy. (f. lange, _degeneration in families_, translated from the danish, ). he deals with families which have provided insane or neuropathic persons within a few generations, and during the same period a large number also of highly distinguished members, cabinet ministers, bishops, artists, poets, etc. but lange admits that the forms of insanity found in these families are of a slight and not severe character, while it is clear that the forms of ability are also in most cases equally slight; they are mostly "old" families, such as naturally produce highly-trained and highly placed individuals. moreover, lange's methods and style of writing are not scientifically exact, and he fails to define precisely what he means by a "family." his investigation indicates that there is a frequent tendency for men of ability to belong to families which are not entirely sound, and that is a conclusion which is not seriously disputed. [ ] havelock ellis, _a study of british genius_, . [ ] dr. cabanès (_indiscrétions de l'histoire_, rd series) similarly concludes that, while in temperament napoleon may be said to belong to the epileptic class, he was by no means an epileptic in the ordinary sense. kanngiesser (_prager medizinische wochenschrift_, , no. ) suggests that from his slow pulse ( to ) napoleon's attacks may have originated in the heart and vessels. [ ] genuine epilepsy usually comes on before the age of twenty-five; it very rarely begins after twenty-five, and never after thirty. (l.w. weber, _münchener medizinische wochenschrift_, july th and aug. th, .) in genuine epilepsy, also, loss of consciousness accompanies the fits; the exceptions to this rule are rare, though audenino, a pupil of lombroso, who sought to extend the sphere of epilepsy, believes that the exceptions are not so rare as is commonly supposed (_archivio di psichiatria_, fasc. vi., ). moreover, true epilepsy is accompanied by a progressive mental deterioration which terminates in dementia; in the craig colony for epileptics of new york, among , epileptics this progressive deterioration is very rarely absent (_lancet_, march st, ); but it is not found in the distinguished men of genius who are alleged to be epileptic. epileptic deterioration has been elaborately studied by maccurdy, _psychiatric bulletin_, new york, april, . [ ] see, _e.g._, elizabeth du quesne van gogh, _personal recollections of vincent van gogh_, p. . these epileptic attacks are, however, but vaguely mentioned, and it would seem that they only appeared during the last years of the artist's life. xiv the production of ability the growing interest in eugenics, and the world-wide decline in the birth-rate, have drawn attention to the study of the factors which determine the production of genius in particular and high ability in general. the interest in this question, thus freshly revived and made more acute by the results of the great war, is not indeed new. it is nearly half a century since galton wrote his famous book on the heredity of genius, or, as he might better have described the object of his investigation, the heredity of ability. at a later date my own _study of british genius_ collectively summarised all the biological data available concerning the parentage and birth of the most notable persons born in england, while numerous other studies might also be named. such investigations are to-day acquiring a fresh importance, because, while it is becoming realised that we are gaining a new control over the conditions of birth, the production of children has itself gained in importance. the world is no longer bombarded by an exuberant stream of babies, good, bad, and indifferent in quality, with mankind to look on calmly at the struggle for existence among them. whether we like it or not, the quantity is relatively diminishing, and the question of quality is beginning to assume a supreme significance. what are the conditions which assure the finest quality in our children? a german scientist, dr. vaerting, of berlin, published on the eve of the war a little book on the most favourable age in parents for the production of children of ability (_das günstigste elterliche zeugungsalter_).[ ] he approaches the question entirely in this new spirit, not as a merely academic topic of discussion, but as a practical matter of vital importance to the welfare of society. he starts with the assertion that "our century has been called the century of the child,"[ ] and for the child all manner of rights are now being claimed. but the prime right of all, the right of the child to the best ability that his parents are able to transmit to him, is never even so much as considered. yet this right is the root of all children's rights. and when the mysteries of procreation have been so far revealed as to enable this right to be won, we shall, at the same time, dr. vaerting adds, renew the spiritual aspect of the nations. the most easily ascertainable and measurable factor in the production of ability, and certainly a factor which cannot be without significance, is the age of the parents at the child's birth. it is this factor with which vaerting is mainly concerned, as illustrated by over one hundred german men of genius concerning whom he has been able to obtain the required data. later on, he proposes to extend the inquiry to other nations. vaerting finds--and this is probably the most original, though, as we shall see, not the most unquestionable of his findings--that the fathers who are themselves of no notable intellectual distinction have a decidedly more prolonged power of procreating distinguished children than is possessed by distinguished fathers. the former, that is to say, may become the fathers of eminent children from the period of sexual maturity up to the age of forty-three or beyond. when, however, the father is himself of high intellectual distinction, vaerting finds that he was nearly always under thirty, and usually under twenty-five years of age at his distinguished son's birth, although the proportion of youthful fathers in the general population is relatively small. the eleven youngest fathers on vaerting's list, from twenty-one to twenty-five years of age, were (with one exception) themselves more or less distinguished, while the fifteen oldest, from thirty-nine to sixty years of age, were all without exception undistinguished. among these sons are to be found much greater names (goethe, bach, kant, bismarck, wagner, etc.) than are to be found among the sons of young and more distinguished fathers, for here there is only one name (frederick the great) of the same calibre. the elderly fathers belonged to large cities and were mostly married to wives very much younger than themselves. vaerting notes that the most eminent geniuses have most frequently been the sons of fathers who were not engaged in intellectual avocations at all, but earned their livings as simple craftsmen. he draws the conclusion from these data that strenuous intellectual energy is much more unfavourable than hard physical labour to the production of ability in the offspring. intellectual workers, therefore, he argues, must have their children when young, and we must so modify our social ideals and economic conditions as to render this possible. that the mother should be equally young is not, he holds, necessary; he finds some superiority, indeed, provided the father is young, in somewhat elderly mothers, and there were no mothers under twenty-three. the rarity of genius among the offspring of distinguished parents is attributed to the unfortunate tendency to marry too late, and vaerting finds that the distinguished men who marry late rarely have any children at all. speaking generally, and apart from the production of genius, he holds that women have children too early, before their psychic development is completed, while men have children too late, when they have already "in the years of their highest psychic generative fitness planted their most precious seed in the mud of the street." the eldest child was found to have by far the best chance of turning out distinguished, and in this fact vaerting finds further proof of his argument. the third son has the next best chance, and then the second, the comparatively bad position of the second being attributed to the too brief interval which often follows the birth of the first child. he also notes that of all the professions the clergy come beyond comparison first as the parents of distinguished sons (who are, however, rarely of the highest degree of eminence), lawyers following, while officers in the army and physicians scarcely figure at all. vaerting is inclined to see in this order, especially in the predominance of the clergy, the favourable influence of an unexhausted reserve of energy and a habit of chastity on intellectual procreativeness. this is one of his main conclusions. it so happens that in my own _study of british genius_, with which dr. vaerting was unacquainted when he made his first investigation, i dealt on a larger scale, and perhaps with somewhat more precise method, with many of these same questions as they are illustrated by english genius. vaerting's results have induced me to re-examine and to some extent to manipulate afresh the english data. my results, like dr. vaerting's, showed a special tendency for genius to appear in the eldest child, though there was no indication of notably early marriage in the parents.[ ] i also found a similar predominance of the clergy among the fathers and a similar deficiency of army officers and physicians. the most frequent age of the father was thirty-two years, but the average age of the father at the distinguished child's birth was . years, and when the fathers were themselves distinguished their age was not, as vaerting found in germany, notably low at the birth of their distinguished sons, but higher than the general average, being . years. there have been fifteen distinguished english sons of distinguished fathers, but instead of being nearly always under thirty and usually under twenty-five, as vaerting found in germany, the english distinguished father has only five times been under thirty and among these five only twice under twenty-five. moreover, precisely the most distinguished of the sons (francis bacon and william pitt) had the oldest fathers and the least distinguished sons the youngest fathers. i made some attempt to ascertain whether different kinds of genius tend to be produced by fathers who were at different periods of life. i refrained from publishing the results as i doubted whether the numbers dealt with were sufficiently large to carry any weight. it may, however, be worth while to record them, as possibly they are significant. i made four classes of men of genius: ( ) men of religion, ( ) poets, ( ) practical men, and ( ) scientific men and sceptics. (it must not, of course, be supposed that in this last group all the scientific men were sceptics, or all the sceptics scientific.) the average age of the fathers at the distinguished son's birth was, in the first group, years, in the second and third groups years, and in the last group years. (it may be noted, however, that the youngest father of all in the history of british genius, aged sixteen, produced napier, who introduced logarithms.) it is difficult not to believe that as regards, at all events, the two most discrepant groups, the first and last, we here come on a significant indication. it is not unreasonable to suppose that in the production of men of religion, in whose activity emotion is so potent a factor, the youthful age of the father should prove favourable, while for the production of genius of a more coldly intellectual and analytic type more elderly fathers are demanded. if that should prove to be so, it would become a source of happiness to religious parents to have their children early, while irreligious persons should be advised to delay parentage. it is scarcely necessary to remark that the age of the mothers is probably quite as influential as that of the fathers. concerning the mothers, however, we always have less precise information. my records, so far as they go, agree with vaerting's for german genius, in indicating that an elderly mother is more likely to produce a child of genius than a very youthful mother. there were only fifteen mothers recorded under twenty-five years of age, while thirteen were over thirty-nine years; the most frequent age of the mothers was twenty-seven. on all these points we certainly need controlling evidence from other countries. thus, before we insist with vaerting that an elderly mother is a factor in the production of genius, we may recall that even in germany the mothers of goethe and nietzsche were both eighteen at their distinguished sons' birth. a rule which permits of such tremendous exceptions scarcely seems to bear the strain of emphasis. it must always be remembered that while the study of genius is highly interesting, and even, it is probable, not without significance for the general laws of heredity, we must not too hastily draw conclusions from it to bear on practical questions of eugenics. genius is rare and abnormal; laws meant to apply to the general population must be based on a study of the general population. vaerting, who is alive to the practical character which such problems are to-day assuming, realises how inadequate it is to confine our study to genius. marro, in his valuable book on puberty, some years ago brought forward interesting data showing the result of the age of the parents on the moral and intellectual characters of school-children in north italy. he found that children with fathers below twenty-six at their birth showed the maximum of bad conduct and the minimum of good; they also yielded the greatest proportion of children of irregular, troublesome, or lazy character, but not of really perverse children who were equally distributed among fathers of all ages. the largest number of cheerful children belonged to young fathers, while the children tended to become more melancholy with ascending age of the fathers. young fathers produced the largest proportion of intelligent, as well as of troublesome children, but when the very exceptionally intelligent children were considered separately they were found to be more usually the offspring of elderly fathers. as regards the mothers, marro found that the children of young mothers (under twenty-one) are superior, both as regards conduct and intelligence, though the more exceptionally intelligent children tended to belong to more mature mothers. when the parents were both in the same age-group the immature and the elderly groups tended to produce more children who were unsatisfactory, both as regards conduct and intelligence, than the intermediate group.[ ] but we need to have such inquiries made on a more wholesale and systematic scale. they are no longer of a merely speculative character. we no longer regard children as the "gifts of god," flung into our helpless hands; we are beginning to realise that the responsibility is ours to see that they come into the world under the best conditions, and at the moments when their parents are best fitted to produce them. vaerting proposes that it should be the business of all school authorities to register the ages of the pupils' parents. this is scarcely a provision to which even the most susceptible parent could reasonably object, though there is no cause to make the declaration compulsory where a "conscientious" objection existed, and in any case the declaration would not be public. it would be an advantage--though this might be more difficult to obtain--to have the date of the parents' marriage, and of the birth of previous children, as well as some record of the father's standing in his occupation. but even the ages of the parents alone would teach us much when correlated with the school position of the pupil in intelligence and in conduct. it is quite true that there are unavoidable fallacies. we are not, as in the case of genius, dealing with people whose life-work is complete and open to the whole world's examination. the good and clever child is not necessarily the forerunner of the first-class man or woman; and many capable and successful men have been careless in attendance at lectures and rebellious to discipline. moreover, the prejudice and limitations of the teachers have also to be recognised. yet when we are dealing with millions most of these fallacies would be smoothed out. we should be, once for all, in a position to determine authoritatively the exact bearing of one of the simplest and most vital factors of the betterment of the race. we should be in possession of a new clue to guide us in the creation of the man of the coming world. why not begin to-day? [ ] he has further discussed the subject in _die neue generation_, aug.-nov., , and in a more recent ( ) pamphlet which i have not seen. [ ] the reference is to _the century of the child_, by ellen key, who writes (english translation, p. ): "my conviction is that the transformation of human nature will take place, not when the whole of humanity becomes christian, but when the whole of humanity awakens to the consciousness of the 'holiness of generation.' this consciousness will make the central work of society the new race, its origin, its management, and its education; about these all morals, all laws, all social arrangements will be grouped." [ ] it is not only ability, but idiocy, criminality and many other abnormalities which specially tend to appear in the first-born. the eldest-born represents the point of greatest variation in the family, and the variation thus yielded may be in either direction, useful or useless, good or bad. see, _e.g._, havelock ellis, _a study of british genius_, pp. - . sören hansen, "the inferior quality of the first-born children," _eugenics review_, oct., . [ ] marro, _la pubertà_ (french translation _la puberté_), ch. xi. xv marriage and divorce we contemplate our marriage system with satisfaction. we remember the many unquestionable evidences in favour of it, and we marvel that it so often proves a failure. for while we remember the evidence in favour of it, we forget the evidence against it, and we overlook the important fact that our favourable evidence is largely based on the vision of an abstract or idealised monogamy which fails to correspond to the detailed and ever varying system which in practice we cherish. we point to the fact that monogamic marriage has probably flourished throughout the history of the world, that it exists among savages, even among animals, but we fail to observe how far that monogamy differs from ours, even assuming that our monogamy is a real monogamy and not a disguised polygamy, especially in the fact that it is a free union and only subject to the inherent penalties that follow its infraction, not to external penalties. ours is not free; our faith in its natural virtues is not quite so firm as we assert; we are always meddling with it and worrying over its health and anxiously trying to bolster it up. we are not by any means willing to let it rest on the sanction of its own natural or divine laws. our feeling is, as james hinton used ironically to express it: "poor god with no one to help him!" the fact is that when we compare our civilised marriage system with marriage as it exists in nature, we fail to realise a fundamental distinction. our marriage system is made up of two absolutely different elements which cannot blend. on the one hand, it is the manifestation of our deepest and most volcanic impulses. on the other hand, it is an elaborate web of regulations--legal, ecclesiastical, economic--which is to-day quite out of relation to our impulses. on the one hand, it is a force which springs from within; on the other hand, it is a force which presses on us from without.[ ] one says broadly that these two elements of marriage, as we understand it, are out of relation to each other. but there is an important saving qualification to be made. the inner impulse is not without law, and the external pressure is not without an ultimate basis of nature. that is to say, that under free and natural conditions the inner impulse tends to develop itself, not licentiously but with its own order and restraints, while, on the other hand, our inherited regulations are largely the tradition of ancient attempts to fix and register that natural order and restraint. the disharmony comes in with the fact that our regulations are traditional and ancient, not our own attempts to fix and register the natural order but inextricably mixed up with elements that are entirely alien to our civilised habits of life. whatever our attitude towards mediaeval canon law may be--whether reverence or indifference or disgust--it yet holds us and is ingrained into our marriage system to-day. canon law was a good and vital thing under the conditions which produced it. the survival of canon law to-day, with the antiquated and ascetic conception of the subordination of women associated with it, is the chief reason why we in the twentieth century have not yet progressed so far towards a reasonable system of marriage as the romans had reached on the basis of their law, nearly two thousand years ago.[ ] marriage is conditioned both by inner impulse and outward pressure. but a healthy impulse bears within it an order and restraint of its own, while a truly moral outward pressure is based, not on the demands of mediaeval days, but on the demands of our own day. how far this is from being the case yet we find well illustrated by our divorce methods. all our modern culture favour a sense of the sacredness of the sexual relations; we cherish a delicate reserve concerning all the intimacies of personal relationship. but when the magic word "divorce" is uttered we fling all our civilisation to the winds, and in the desecrated name of law we proceed to an inquisition which scarcely differs at all from those public tests of mediaeval law-courts which now we dare not venture even to put into words. it is true that we are not bound to be consistent when it is an advantage to be inconsistent. and if there were a method in our madness it would be justified. but there is no method. from first to last the history of divorce (read it, for instance, in howard's _matrimonial institutions_) is an ever shifting record of cruel blunders and ridiculous absurdities. divorce began in modern times in flagrant injustice to one of the two partners, the wife, and it has ended--if we may hope that the end is approaching--in imbecilities that to future ages will be incredible. for no legal jargon has ever been invented that will express the sympathies and the antipathies of human relationship; they even escape the subtlest expression. law-makers have tortured their brains to devise formulas which will cover the legitimate grounds for divorce. how vain their efforts are is sufficiently shown by the fact that by no chance can they ever agree on their formulas, and that they are changing them constantly with feverish haste, dimly realising that they are but the antiquated representatives of mediaevalism, and that soon their occupation will be gone for ever. the reasons for the making or the breaking of human relationships can never be formulated. the only result of such legal formulas is that they bring law into contempt because they have to be ingeniously and methodically cheated in order to adapt them in any degree to civilised human needs. thus such laws not only degrade the name of law, but they degrade the whole community which tolerates them. there is only one ultimate reason for either marriage or divorce, and that is that the two persons concerned consent to the marriage or consent to the divorce. why they consent is no concern of any third party, and, maybe, they cannot even put it into words. at the same time, let us not forget, marriage and divorce are a very real concern of the state, and law cannot ignore either. it is the business of the state to see to it that no interests are injured. the contract of marriage and the contract of divorce are private matters, but it is necessary to guard that no injury is thereby done to either of the contracting persons, or to third parties, or to the community as a whole. the state may have a right to say what persons are unfit for marriage, or at all events for procreation; the state must take care that the weaker party is not injured; the state is especially bound to watch over the interests of children, and this involves, in the best issue, that each child shall have two effective parents, whether or not those parents are living together. a large scope--we are beginning to recognise--must be left alike to freedom of marriage and freedom of divorce, but the state must mark out the limits within which that freedom is exercised. the loosening hold of the state on marriage is by no means connected with any growing sense of the value of divorce. at the best, it is probable that divorce is merely a necessary evil. one of the chief reasons why we should seek to promote education in relation to sexual relationships and to inculcate the responsibilities of such relationships, so making the approach to marriage more circumspect, is in order to obviate the need for divorce. for divorce is always a confession of failure. very often, indeed, it involves not only a confession of failure in one particular marriage but of failure for marriage generally. one notes how often the people who fail in a first marriage fail even more hopelessly in the second. they have chosen the wrong partners; but one suspects that for them all partners will prove the wrong partners. one sometimes hears nowadays that a succession of marriage relationships is desirable in order to develop character. but that depends on many things. it very much depends on what character there is to develop. a man may have relationships with a hundred women and develop much less character out of his experience, and even acquire a much less intimate knowledge of women, than the man who has spent his life in an endless series of adventures with one woman. it depends a good deal on the man and not a little on the woman. thus the work of marriage in the world must depend entirely on the nature of that world. a fine marriage system can only be produced by a fine civilisation of which it is the exquisite flower. laws cannot better marriage; even education, by itself, is powerless, necessary as it is in conjunction with other influences. the love-relationships of men and women must develop freely, and with due allowance for the variations which the complexities of civilisation demand. but these relationships touch the whole of life at so infinite a number of points that they cannot even develop at all save in a society that is itself developing graciously and harmoniously. do not expect to pluck figs from thistles. as a society is, so will its marriages be. [ ] it is this artificial and external pressure which often produces a revolt against marriage. the author of a remarkable paper entitled, "our incestuous marriage," in the _forum_ (dec., ), advocates a reform of social marriage customs "in conformance with the freedom-loving modern nature," and the introduction of "a fresh atmosphere for married life in which personality can be made to appear so sacred and free that marriage will be undertaken and borne as lightly and gracefully as a secret sin." [ ] see sir james donaldson, _woman: her position and influence in ancient greece and rome, _; also s.b. kitchin's excellent _history of divorce_, ; this author believes that the tendency in modern civilisation is to return to the simple principles of roman law involving divorce by consent. see also havelock ellis, _sex in relation to society_, ch. x. xvi the meaning of the birth-rate the history of educated opinion concerning the birth-rate and its interpretation during the past seventy years is full of interest. the actual operative factors--natural, pathological, economic, social, and educational--in raising or lowering the birth-rate, are numerous and complicated, and it is difficult to determine exactly how large a part each factor plays. but without determining that at all, it is still very instructive to observe the evolution of popular intelligent opinion concerning the significance of a high and a low birth-rate. popular opinion on this matter may be said to have passed through three stages. i am referring to western europe and more particularly to england and germany, for it must be remembered that, in this matter, england and germany are running a parallel course. england happens to be, on the whole, a little ahead, having reached its period of full expansion at a somewhat earlier period than germany, but each people is pursuing the same course. in the first stage--let us say about the middle of the last century and the succeeding thirty years--the popular attitude was one of jubilant satisfaction in a high and rising birth-rate. there had been an immense expansion of industry. the whole world seemed nothing but a great field for the energetic and industrial nations to exploit. workers were needed to keep up with the expansion and to keep down wages to a rate which would make industrial expansion easy; soldiers and armaments were needed to protect the movements of expansion. it seemed to the more exuberant spirits that a vast british empire, or a mighty pan-germany, might be expected to cover the whole world. france, with its low and falling birth-rate, was looked down at with contempt as a decadent country inhabited by a degenerate population. no attempts to analyse the birth-rate, to ascertain what are really the biological, social, and economic accompaniments of a high birth-rate, made any impression on the popular mind. they were drowned in the general shout of exultation. that era of optimism was followed by a swift reaction. towards the upward movement of the birth-rate began to be arrested; it soon began steadily to fall, as it is continuing to do to-day. in france it is falling slowly, in italy more rapidly, in england and prussia still more rapidly. as, however, the fall began earliest in france, the birth-rate is lower there than in the other countries named; for the same reason it is lower in england than in prussia, although england stands in this respect at almost exactly the same distance from prussia to-day as thirty years ago, the fall having occurred at the same rate in both countries. it is quite possible that in the future it may become more rapid in prussia than in england, for the birth-rate of berlin is lower than the birth-rate of london, and urbanisation is proceeding at a more rapid rate in germany than in england. the realisation of such facts as these produced a period of pessimism which marks the second stage in this evolution. the great movement of expansion, which seemed to promise so much to ambitious nations anxious for world-power, was being arrested. moreover, it began to be realised that the rapid growth of a community was accompanied by phenomena which had not been foreseen by the enthusiasts of the first period of optimism. they had argued--not indeed verbally but in effect--that the higher the birth-rate the cheaper labour and lives would become, and the cheaper labour and lives were, the easier it would be for a nation with its industrial armies and its military armies to get ahead of other rival nations. but they had not realised that, with the growth of popular education in modern democratic states, cheap labour is no longer willing to play without protest this humble and suffering part in national progress. the workers of the nations began to declare, clearly or obscurely, as they were able, that they no longer intended to sell their labour and their lives so cheaply. the rising birth-rate of the middle of the nineteenth century coincided with, and to a large extent doubtless produced, the organisation of labour, trades unions, the political activity of the working classes, socialism, as well as the extreme forms of anarchism and syndicalism. it was when these movements began to attain a high degree of organisation and power that the birth-rate began to decline. thus the pessimists of the second period were faced by horrors on both sides. on the one hand, they saw that the ever-increasing rate of human production which seemed to them the essential condition of national, social, even moral progress, had not only stopped but was steadily diminishing. on the other hand, they saw that, even in so far as it was maintained, it involved, under modern conditions, nothing but social commotion and economic disturbance. there are still many pessimists of this second period alive among us, and actively proclaiming their gospel of despair, alike in england and in germany. but a new generation is growing up, and this question is now entering a third period. the new generation rejects alike the passive optimism of the first period and the passive pessimism of the second period. its attitude is hopeful but it realises that mere hope is vain unless there is clear intellectual vision and unless there is individual and social action in accordance with that vision. it is to-day beginning to be seen that the old notion of progress by means of reckless multiplication is vain. it can only be effected at a ruinous cost of death, disease, poverty, and misery. we see this in the past history of western europe, as we still see it in the history of russia. any progress effected along that line--if "progress" it can be called--is now barred, for it is absolutely opposed to those democratic conceptions which are ever gaining greater influence among us. moreover, we are now better able to analyse demographic phenomena and we are no longer satisfied with any crude statements regarding the birth-rate. we realise that they need interpretation. they have to be considered in relation to the sex-constitution and the age-constitution of the population, and, above all, they must be viewed in relation to the infant mortality-rate. the bad aspect of the french birth-rate is not so much its lowness as that it is accompanied by a high infantile mortality. the fact that the german birth-rate is higher than the english ceases to be a matter of satisfaction when it is realised that german infantile mortality is vastly greater than english. a high birth-rate is no sign of a high civilisation. but we are beginning to feel that a high infantile death-rate is a sign of a very inferior civilisation. a low birth-rate with a low infant death-rate not only produces the same increase in the population as a high birth-rate with the high death-rate, which always accompanies it (for there are no examples of, a high birth-rate with a low death-rate), but it produces it in a way which is far more worthy of our admiration in this matter than the way of russia and china where opposite conditions prevail.[ ] it used to be thought that small families were immoral. we now begin to see that it was the large families of old which were immoral. the excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly stimulated by selfishness. there were no laws against child-labour; children were produced that they might be sent out, when little more than babies, to the factories and the mines to increase their parents' incomes. the diminished birth-rate has accompanied higher moral transformation. it has introduced a finer economy into life, diminished death, disease, and misery. it is indirectly, and even directly, improving the quality of the race. the very fact that children are born at longer intervals is not only beneficial to the mother's health, and therefore to the children's general welfare, but it has been proved to have a marked and prolonged influence on the physical development of children. social progress, and a higher civilisation, we thus see, involve a reduced birth-rate and a reduced death-rate; the fewer the children born, the fewer the risks of death, disease, and misery to the children that are born. the fact that civilisation involves small families is clearly shown by the tendency of the educated and upper social classes to have small families. as the proletariat class becomes educated and elevated, disciplined to refinement and to foresight--as it were aristocratised--it also has small families. civilisational progress is here in a line with biological progress. the lower organisms spawn their progeny in thousands, the higher mammals produce but one or two at a time. the higher the race the fewer the offspring. thus diminution in quantity is throughout associated with augmentation in quality. quality rather than quantity is the racial ideal now set before us, and it is an ideal which, as we are beginning to learn, it is possible to cultivate, both individually and socially. the day is coming, as engel remarks in his useful book on _the elements of child protection_, when fatherhood and motherhood will only be permitted to the strong. that is why the new science of eugenics or racial hygiene is acquiring so immense an importance. in the past racial selection has been carried out crudely by the destructive, wasteful, and expensive method of elimination, through death. in the future it will be carried out far more effectively by conscious and deliberate selection, exercised not merely before birth, but before conception and even before mating. it is idle to suppose that such a change can be exerted by mere legislation, for which, besides, our scientific knowledge is still inadequate. we cannot, indeed, desire any compulsory elimination of the unfit or any regulated breeding of the fit. such notions are idle. man can only be bred from within, through the medium of his intelligence and will, working together under the control of a high sense of responsibility. galton, who recognised the futility of mere legislation to elevate the race, believed that the hope of the future lay in eugenics becoming a part of religion. the good of the race lies, not in the production of a super-man, but of a super-humanity. this can only be attained through personal individual development, the increase of knowledge, the sense of responsibility towards the race, enabling men to act in accordance with responsibility. the leadership in civilisation belongs not to the nation with the highest birth-rate but to the nation which has thus learnt to produce the finest men and women. [ ] for a more detailed discussion of these points see the author's _task of social hygiene_. xvii civilisation and the birth-rate it was inevitable that the great war of to-day should lead to an outcry, in all the countries engaged, for more children and larger families. in germany and in austria, in france and in england, panic-stricken fanatics are found who preach to the people that the birth-rate is falling and the nation is decaying. no scheme is too wild for the supposed benefit of the country in a fierce coming fight for commercial supremacy, as well as with due regard to the requirements in cannon fodder of another great war twenty years hence. it may be well, however, to pause before we listen to these quixotic plans.[ ] we may then find reason to think, not only that any attempt to arrest the falling birth-rate is scarcely likely to be effective in view of the fact that it affects not one country only but all the countries that count, but that even if it could be successful it would be mischievous. whatever the results of the war may be, one result is fairly certain and that is that, under the most favourable circumstances, every country will emerge laden with misery and debt; whatever prosperity may follow, living will be expensive for a long time to come and the incomes of all classes heavily burdened. a bounty on babies would hardly make up for these difficulties. the happy family, under the conditions that seem to be immediately ahead of us, is likely to be the small family. the large family--as indeed has been the case in the past--is likely to be visited by disease and death. but there is more to be said than this. we must dismiss altogether the statement so often made that a falling birth-rate means "an old and dying community." the germans have for years been making this remark contemptuously regarding the french. but to-day they have to recognise a vitality in the french which they had not expected, while in recent years, also, their own birth-rate has been falling more rapidly than that of france. nor is it true that a falling birth-rate means a falling population; the french birth-rate has long been steadily falling, yet the french population has been steadily increasing all the time, though less rapidly than it would had not the death-rate been abnormally high. it is not the number of babies born that counts, but the net result in surviving children. an enormous number of babies are born in china; but an enormous number die while still babies. so that it is better to have a few babies of good quality than a large number of indifferent quality, for the falling birth-rate is more than compensated by the falling death-rate. that is what we are attaining in england, and, as we know, our steadily falling birth-rate results in a steadily growing population. there is still more to be said. small families and a falling birth-rate are not merely no evil, they are a positive good. they are a gain for humanity. they represent an evolutionary rise in nature and a higher stage in civilisation. we are here in the presence of great fundamental principles of progress which have been working through life from the beginning. at the beginning of life on the earth reproduction ran riot. of one minute organism it is estimated that, if its reproduction were not checked by death or destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a million times larger than the sun. the conger-eel lays fifteen million eggs, and if they all grew up, and reproduced themselves on the same scale, in two years the whole sea would become a wriggling mass of fish. as we approach the higher forms of life reproduction gradually dies down. the animals nearest to man produce few offspring, but they surround them with parental care, until they are able to lead independent lives with a fair chance of surviving. the whole process may be regarded as a mechanism for slowly subordinating quantity to quality, and so promoting the evolution of life to ever higher stages. this process, which is plain to see on the largest scale throughout living nature, may be more minutely studied, as it acts within a narrower range, in the human species. here we statistically formulate it in the terms of birth-rate and death-rate; by the mutual relationship of the two courses of the birth-rate and the death-rate we are able to estimate the evolutionary rank of a nation, and the degree in which it has succeeded in subordinating the primitive standard of quantity to the higher and later standard of quality. it is especially in europe that we can investigate this relationship by the help of statistics which in some cases extend for nearly a century back. we can trace the various phases through which each nation passes, the effects of prosperity, the influence of education and sanitary improvement, the general complex development of civilisation, in each case moving forward, though not regularly and steadily, to higher stages by means of a falling birth-rate, which is to some extent compensated by a falling death-rate, the two rates nearly always running parallel, so that a temporary rise in the birth-rate is usually accompanied by a rise in the death-rate, by a return, that is to say, towards the conditions which we find at the beginning of animal life, and a steady fall in the birth-rate is always accompanied by a fall in the death-rate. the modern phase of this movement, soon after which our precise knowledge begins, may be said to date from the industrial expansion, due to the introduction of machinery, which professor marshall places in england about the year . that represents the beginning of an era in which all civilised and semi-civilised countries are still living. for the earlier centuries we lack precise data, but we are able to form certain probable conclusions. the population of a country in those ages seems to have grown very slowly and sometimes even to have retrograded. at the end of the sixteenth century the population of england and wales is estimated at five millions and at the end of the seventeenth at six millions--only per cent. increase during the century--although during the nineteenth century the population nearly quadrupled. this very gradual increase of the population seems to have been by no means due to a very low birth-rate, but to a very high death-rate. throughout the middle ages a succession of virulent plagues and pestilences devastated europe. small-pox, which may be considered the latest of these, used to sweep off large masses of the youthful population in the eighteenth century. the result was a certain stability and a certain well-being in the population as a whole, these conditions being, however, maintained in a manner that was terribly wasteful and distressing. the industrial revolution introduced a new era which began to show its features clearly in the early nineteenth century. on the one hand, a new motive had arisen to favour a more rapid increase of population. small children could tend machinery and thereby earn wages to increase the family takings. this led to an immediate result in increased population and increased prosperity. but, on the other hand, the rapid increase of population always tended to outrun the rapid increase of prosperity, and the more so since the rise of sanitary science began to drive back the invasions of the grosser and more destructive infectious diseases which had hitherto kept the population down. the result was that new forms of disease, distress, and destitution arose; the old stability was lost, and the new prosperity produced unrest in place of well-being. the social consciousness was still too immature to deal collectively with the difficulties and frictions which the industrial era introduced, and the individualism which under former conditions had operated wholesomely now acted perniciously to crush the souls and bodies of the workers, whether men, women, or children. as we know, the increase of knowledge and the growth of the social consciousness have slowly acted wholesomely during the past century to remedy the first evil results of the industrial revolution. the artificial and abnormal increase of the population has been checked because it is no longer permissible in most countries to stunt the minds and bodies of small children by placing them in factories. an elaborate system of factory legislation was devised, and is still ever drawing fresh groups of workers within its protective meshes. sanitary science began to develop and to exert an enormous influence on the health of nations. at the same time the supreme importance of popular education was realised. the total result was that the nature of "prosperity" began to be transformed; instead of being, as it had been at the beginning of the industrial era, a direct appeal to the gratification of gross appetites and reckless lusts, it became an indirect stimulus to higher gratifications and more remote aspirations. foresight became a dominating motive even in the general population, and a man's anxiety for the welfare of his family was no longer forgotten in the pleasure of the moment. the social state again became more stable, and mere "prosperity" was transformed into civilisation. this is the state of things now in progress in all industrial countries, though it has reached varying levels of development among different peoples. it is thus clear that the birth-rate combined with the death-rate constitutes a delicate instrument for the measurement of civilisation, and that the record of their combined curves registers the upward or downward course of every nation. the curves, as we know, tend to be parallel, and when they are not parallel we are in the presence of a rare and abnormal state of things which is usually temporary or transitional. it is instructive from this point of view to study the various nations of europe, for here we find a large number of small nations, each with its own statistical system, confined within a small space and living under fairly uniform conditions. let us take the latest official figures (which are usually for ) and attempt to measure the civilisation of european countries on this basis. beginning with the lowest birth-rate, and therefore in gradually descending rank of superiority, we find that the european countries stand in the following order: france, belgium, ireland, sweden, the united kingdom, switzerland, norway, scotland, denmark, holland, the german empire, prussia, finland, spain, austria, italy, hungary, serbia, bulgaria, roumania, russia. if we take the death-rate similarly, beginning with the lowest rate and gradually proceeding to the highest, we find the following order: holland, denmark, norway, sweden, switzerland, the united kingdom, belgium, scotland, prussia, the german empire, finland, ireland, france, italy, austria, serbia, spain, bulgaria, hungary, roumania, russia. now we cannot accept the birth-rates and death-rates of the various countries exactly at their face value. temporary conditions, as well as the special composition of a population, not to mention peculiarities of registration, exert a disturbing effect. roughly and on the whole, however, the figures are acceptable. it is instructive to find how closely the two rates agree. the agreement is, indeed, greater at the bottom than at the top; the eight countries which constitute the lowest group as regards birth-rate are the identical eight countries which furnish the heaviest death-rates. that was to be expected; a very high birth-rate seems fatally to involve a very high death-rate. but a very low birth-rate (as we see in the cases of france and ireland) is not invariably associated with a very low death-rate, though it is never associated with a high death-rate. this seems to indicate that those qualities in a highly civilised nation which restrain the production of offspring do not always or at once produce the eugenic racial qualities possessed by hardier peoples living under simpler conditions. but with these reservations it is not difficult to combine the two lists in a fairly concordant order of descending rank. most readers will agree, that taking the european populations in bulk, without regard to the production of genius (for men of genius are always a very minute fraction of a nation), the european populations which they are accustomed to regard as standing at the head in the general diffusion of character, intelligence, education, and well-being, are all included in the first twelve or thirteen nations, which are the same in both lists though they do not follow the same order. these peoples, as peoples--that is, without regard to their size, their political importance, or their production of genius--represent the highest level of democratic civilisation in europe. it is scarcely necessary to add that various countries outside europe equal or excel them; the death-rate of the united states, so far as statistics show, is the same as that of sweden; that of ontario, still better, is the same as denmark; while the death-rate of the australian commonwealth, with a medium birth-rate, is lower than that of any european country, and new zealand holds the world's championship in this field with the lowest death-rate of all. on the other hand, some extra-european countries compare less favourably with europe; japan, with a rather high birth-rate, has the same high death-rate as spain, and chile, with a still higher birth-rate, has a higher death-rate than russia. so it is that among human peoples we find the same laws prevailing as among animals, and the higher nations of the world differ from those which are less highly evolved precisely as the elephant differs from the herring, though within a narrower range, that is to say, by producing fewer offspring and taking better care of them. the whole of this evolutionary process, we have to remember, is a natural process. it has been going on from the beginning of the living world. but at a certain stage in the higher development of man, without ceasing to be natural, it becomes conscious and deliberate. it is then that we have what may properly be termed _birth control_. that is to say, that a process which had before been working slowly through the ages, attaining every new forward step with waste and pain, is henceforth carried out voluntarily, in the light of the high human qualities of reason and foresight and self-restraint. the rise of birth control may be said to correspond with the rise of social and sanitary science in the first half of the nineteenth century, and to be indeed an essential part of that movement. it is firmly established in all the most progressive and enlightened countries of europe, notably in france and in england; in germany, where formerly the birth-rate was very high, birth control has developed with extraordinary rapidity during the present century. in holland its principle and practice are freely taught by physicians and nurses to the mothers of the people, with the result that there is in holland no longer any necessity for unwanted babies, and this small country possesses the proud privilege of the lowest death-rate in europe. in the free and enlightened democratic communities on the other side of the globe, in australia and new zealand, the same principles and practice are generally accepted, with the same beneficent results. on the other hand, in the more backward and ignorant countries of europe, birth control is still little known, and death and disease flourish. this is the case in those eight countries which come at the bottom of both our lists. even in the more progressive countries, however, birth control has not been established without a struggle, which has frequently ended in a hypocritical compromise, its principles being publicly ignored or denied and its practice privately accepted. for, at the great and vitally important point in human progress which birth control represents, we really see the conflict of two moralities. the morality of the ancient world is here confronted by the morality of the new world. the old morality, knowing nothing of science and the process of nature as worked out in the evolution of life, based itself on the early chapters of genesis, in which the children of noah are represented as entering an empty earth which it is their business to populate diligently. so it came about that for this morality, still innocent of eugenics, recklessness was almost a virtue. children were given by god; if they died or were afflicted by congenital disease, it was the dispensation of god, and, whatever imprudence the parents might commit, the pathetic faith still ruled that "god will provide." but in the new morality it is realised that in these matters divine action can only be made manifest in human action, that is to say through the operation of our own enlightened reason and resolved will. prudence, foresight, self-restraint--virtues which the old morality looked down on with benevolent contempt--assume a position of the first importance. in the eyes of the new morality the ideal woman is no longer the meek drudge condemned to endless and often ineffectual child-bearing, but the free and instructed woman, able to look before and after, trained in a sense of responsibility alike to herself and to the race, and determined to have no children but the best. such were the two moralities which came into conflict during the nineteenth century. they were irreconcilable and each firmly rooted, one in ancient religion and tradition, the other in progressive science and reason. nothing was possible in such a clash of opposing ideas but a feeble and confused compromise such as we still find prevailing in various countries of old europe. it was not a satisfactory solution, however inevitable, and especially unsatisfactory by the consequent obscurantism which placed difficulties in the way of spreading a knowledge of the methods of birth control among the masses of the population. for the result has been that while the more enlightened and educated have exercised a control over the size of their families, the poorer and more ignorant--who should have been offered every facility and encouragement to follow in the same path--have been left, through a conspiracy of secrecy, to carry on helplessly the bad customs of their forefathers. this social neglect has had the result that the superior family stocks have been hampered by the recklessness of the inferior stocks. we may see these two moralities in conflict to-day in america. up till recently america had meekly accepted at old europe's hands the traditional prescription of our mediterranean book of genesis, with its fascinating old-world fragrance of mount ararat. on the surface, the ancient morality had been complacently, almost unquestionably, accepted in america, even to the extent of permitting a vast extension of abortion--a criminal practice which ever flourishes where birth-control is neglected. but to-day we suddenly see a new movement in the united states. in a flash, america has awakened to the true significance of the issue. with that direct vision of hers, that swift practicality of action, and, above all, that sense of the democratic nature of all social progress, we see her resolutely beginning to face this great problem. in her own vigorous native tongue we hear her demanding: "what in the thunder is all the secrecy about, anyhow?" and we cannot doubt that america's own answer to that demand will be of immense significance to the whole world. thus it is that as we get to the root of the matter the whole question becomes clear. we see that there is really no standing ground in any country for the panic-monger who bemoans the fall of the birth-rate and storms against small families. the falling birth-rate is a world-wide phenomenon in all countries that are striving toward a higher civilisation along lines which nature laid down from the beginning. we cannot stop it if we would, and if we could we should merely be impeding civilisation. it is a movement that rights itself and tends to reach a just balance. it has not yet reached that balance with us in this country. that may be seen by anyone who has read the letters from mothers lately published under the title of _maternity_ by the women's co-operative guild; there is still far more misery caused by having too many babies than by having too few; a bonus on babies would be a misfortune, alike for the parents and the state--whether bestowed at birth as proposed in new zealand, or at the age of twelve months as proposed in france, or fourteen years as proposed in england--unless it were confined to children who were not merely alive at the appointed age, but able to pass examination as having reached a definitely high standard. the falling birth-rate, which, it must be remembered, is affecting all civilised countries, should be a matter for joy rather than for grief. but we need not therefore fold our hands and do nothing. there is still much to be effected for the protection of motherhood and the better care of children. we cannot, and should not, attempt to increase the number of children. but we may well attempt to work for their better quality. there we shall be on very safe ground. more knowledge is necessary so that all would-be parents may know how they may best become parents and how they may, if necessary, best avoid it. procreation by the unfit should be, if not prohibited by law, at all events so discouraged by public opinion that to attempt it would be counted disgraceful. much greater public provision is necessary for the care of mothers during the months before, as well as during the period after, the child's birth. the system of schools for mothers needs to be universalised and systematically carried out. along such lines as these we may hope to increase the happiness of the people and the strength of the state. we need not worry over the falling birth-rate. [ ] those who wish to study the latest restatements of opinions in england may be recommended to read the report of the commission of inquiry into great britain's falling birth-rate, appointed in by the national council of public morals, under the title of _the declining birth-rate: its causes and effects_, . xviii birth control i. reproduction and the birth-rate the study of the questions relating to sex, so actively carried on during recent years, has become more and more concentrated on to the practical problems of marriage and the family. that was inevitable. it is only reasonable that, with our growing scientific knowledge of the mysteries of sex, we should seek to apply that knowledge to those questions of life which we must ever regard as central. how can we add to the stability or to the flexibility of marriage? how can we most judiciously regulate the size of our families? at the outset, however, we cannot too deeply impress upon our minds the fact that these questions are not new in the world. if we try to find an answer to them by confining our attention to the phenomena presented by our own species, at our own particular moment of civilisation, it is very likely indeed that we may fall into crude, superficial, even mischievous conclusions. the fact is that these questions, which are agitating us to-day, have agitated the world ever since it has been a world of life at all. the difference is that whereas we seek to deal with them consciously, voluntarily, and deliberately, throughout by far the greater part of the world's life they have been dealt with unconsciously, by methods of trial and error, of perpetual experiment, which has often proved costly, but has all the more clearly brought out the real course of natural progress. we cannot solve problems so ancient and deeply rooted as those of sex by merely rational methods which are only of yesterday. to be of value our rational methods must be the revelation in deliberate consciousness of unconscious methods which go far back into the remote past. our conscious, deliberate, and purposive methods, carried out on the plane of reason, will not be sound unless they are a continuation of those methods which have already, in the slow evolution of life, been found sound and progressive on the plane of instinct. this must be borne in mind by those people--always to be found among us, though not always on the side of social advance--who desire their own line of conduct in matters of sex to be so closely in accord with natural and divine law that to question it would be impious. a medical friend of my own, when once in the dentist's chair under the influence of nitrous oxide anaesthesia (a condition, as william james showed, which frequently leads us to believe we are solving the problems of the universe), imagined himself facing the almighty and insistently demanding the real object of the existence of the world. and the almighty's answer came in one word: "reproduction." my friend is a man of philosophic mind, and the solution of the mystery of the world's purpose thus presented to him in vision may perhaps serve as a simple and ultimate statement of the object of life. from the very outset the great object of nature to our human eyes seems to be primarily reproduction, in the long run, indeed, an effort after economy of method in the attainment of an ever greater perfection, but primarily reproduction. this tendency to reproduction is indeed so fundamental, it is impressed on vital organisation with so great a violence of emphasis, that we may regard the course of evolution as much more an effort to slow down reproduction than to furnish it with any new facilities. we must remember that reproduction appears in the history of life before sex appears. the lower forms of animal and plant life often reproduce themselves without the aid of sex, and it has even been argued that reproduction and sex are directly antagonistic, that active propagation is always checked when sexual differentiation is established. "the impression one gains of sexuality," remarks professor coulter, foremost of american botanists, "is that it represents reproduction under peculiar difficulties."[ ] bacteria among primitive plants and protozoa among primitive animals are patterns of rapid and prolific reproduction, though sex begins to appear in a rudimentary form in very lowly forms of life, even among the protozoa, and is at first compatible with a high degree of reproduction. a single infusorian becomes in a week the ancestor of millions, that is to say, of far more individuals than could proceed under the most favourable conditions from a pair of elephants in five centuries, while huxley calculated that the progeny of a single parthenogenetic aphis, under favouring circumstances, would in a few months outweigh the whole population of china.[ ] that proviso--"under favouring conditions"--is of great importance, for it reveals the weak point in this early method of nature's for conducting evolution by enormously rapid multiplication. creatures so easily produced could be, and were, easily destroyed; no time had been spent on imparting to them the qualities that would enable them to lead, what we should call in our own case, long and useful lives. yet the method of rapid multiplication was not readily or speedily abandoned by nature. still speaking in our human way, we may say that she tried to give it every chance. among insects that have advanced so far as the white ants, we find that the queen lays eggs at an enormous rate during the whole of her active life, according to some estimates at the rate of , a day. even in the more primitive members of the great vertebrate group, to which we ourselves belong, reproduction is sometimes still on almost as vast a scale as among lower organisms. thus, among herrings, nearly , eggs have been found in a single female; but the herring, nevertheless, does not tend to increase in the seas, for it is everywhere preyed upon by whales and seals and sharks and birds, and, not least, by man. thus early we see the connection between a high death-rate and a high birth-rate. the evidence against reckless reproduction at last, however, proved overwhelming. with whatever hesitation, nature finally decided, once and for all, that it was better, from every point of view, to produce a few superior beings than a vast number of inferior beings. for while the primary end of nature may be said to be reproduction, there is a secondary end of scarcely less equal urgency, and that is evolution. in other words, while nature seems to our human eyes to be seeking after quantity, she is also seeking, and with ever greater eagerness, after quality. now the method of rapid and easy reproduction, it had become clear, not only failed of its own end, for the inferior creatures thus produced were unable to maintain their position in life, but it was distinctly unfavourable to any advance in quality. the method of sexual reproduction, which had existed in a germinal form more or less from the beginning, asserted itself ever more emphatically, and a method like that of parthenogenesis, or reproduction by the female unaided by the male (illustrated by the aphis), which had lingered on even beside sexual reproduction, absolutely died out in higher evolution. now the fertilisation involved by the existence of two sexes is, as weismann insisted, simply an arrangement which renders possible the intermingling of two different hereditary tendencies. the object of sex, that is to say, is by no means to aid reproduction, but rather to subordinate and check reproduction in order to evolve higher and more complex beings. here we come to the great principle, which herbert spencer developed at length in his _principles of biology_, that, as he put it, individuation and genesis vary inversely, whence it followed that advancing evolution must be accompanied by declining fertility. individuation, which means complexity of structure, has advanced, as genesis, the unrestricted tendency to mere multiplication, has receded. this involves a diminished number of offspring, but an increased amount of time and care in the creation and breeding of each; it involves also that the reproductive life of the organism is shortened and more or less confined to special periods; it begins much later, it usually ends earlier, and even in its period of activity it tends to fall into cycles. nature, we see, who, at the outset, had endowed her children so lavishly with the aptitude for multiplication, grown wiser now, expends her fertile imagination in devising preventive checks on reproduction for her children's use. the result is that, though reproduction is greatly slackened, evolution is greatly accelerated. the significance of sex, as coulter puts it, "lies in the fact that it makes organic evolution more rapid and far more varied." it is scarcely necessary to emphasise that a highly important, and, indeed, essential aspect of this greater individuation is a higher survival value. the more complex and better equipped creature can meet and subdue difficulties and dangers to which the more lowly organised creature that came before--produced wholesale in a way which nature seems now to look back on as cheap and nasty--succumbed helplessly without an effort. the idea of economy begins to assert itself in the world. it became clear in the course of evolution that it is better to produce really good and highly efficient organisms, at whatever cost, than to be content with cheap production on a wholesale scale. they allowed greater developmental progress to be made, and they lasted better. even before man began it was proved in the animal world that the death-rate falls as the birth-rate falls. if we wish to realise the vast progress in method which has been made, even within the limits of the vertebrates to which we ourselves belong, we have but to compare with the lowly herring, already cited, the highly evolved elephant. the herring multiplies with enormous rapidity and on a vast scale, and it possesses a very small brain, and is almost totally unequipped to grapple with the special difficulties of its life, to which it succumbs on a wholesale scale. a single elephant is carried for about two years in his mother's womb, and is carefully guarded by her for many years after birth; he possesses a large brain; his muscular system is as remarkable for its delicacy as for its power and is guided by the most sensitive perceptions. he is fully equipped for all the dangers of his life, save for those which have been introduced by the subtle devilry of modern man, and though a single pair of elephants produces so few offspring, yet their high cost is justified, for each of them has a reasonable chance of surviving to old age. the contrast from the point of view of reproduction of the herring and the elephant, the low vertebrate and the high vertebrate, well illustrates the tendency of evolution. it clearly brings before us the difference between nature's earlier and later methods, the ever growing preference for quality of offspring over quantity. it has been necessary to touch on the wider aspects of reproduction in nature, even when our main concern is with particular aspects of reproduction in man, for unless we understand the progressive tendency of reproduction in nature, we shall probably fail to understand it in man. with these preliminary observations, we may now take up the question as it affects man. it is not easy to ascertain the exact tendencies of reproduction in our own historical past or among the lower races of to-day. on the whole, it seems fairly clear that, under ordinary savage and barbarous conditions, rather more children are produced and rather more children die than among ourselves; there is, in other words, a higher birth-rate and a higher infantile death-rate.[ ] a high birth-rate with a low death-rate seems to have been even more exceptional than among ourselves, for under inelastic social conditions the community cannot adjust itself to the rapid expansion that would thus be rendered necessary. the community contracts, as it were, on this expanding portion and largely crushes it out of life by the forces of neglect, poverty, and disease.[ ] the only part of europe in which we can to-day see how this works out on a large scale is russia, for here we find in an exaggerated form conditions, which once tended to rule all over europe, side by side with the beginnings of better things, with scientific progress and statistical observation. yet in russia, up till recently, if not even still, there has only been about one doctor to every twelve thousand inhabitants, and the witch-doctor has flourished. small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid, and syphilis also flourish, and not only flourish, but show an enormously higher mortality than in other european countries. more significant still, famine and typhus, the special disease of filth and overcrowding and misery--both of them banished, save in the most abnormal times, from the rest of europe--have in modern times ravaged russia on a vast scale. ignorance, superstition, insanitation, filth, bad food, impure water, lead to a vast mortality among children which has sometimes destroyed more than half of them before they reach the age of five; so that, enormously high as the russian birth-rate is, the death-rate has sometimes exceeded it.[ ] nor is it found, as some would-be sagacious persons confidently assert, that the high birth-rate is justified by the better quality of the survivors. on the contrary, there is a very large proportion of chronic and incurable diseases among the survivors; blindness and other defects abound; and though there are many very large and fine people in russia, the average stature of the russians is lower than that of most european peoples.[ ] russia is in the era of expanding industrialism--a fateful period for any people, as we shall see directly--and the results resemble those which followed, and to some extent exist still, further west. the workers, whose hours often extended to twelve or fourteen, frequently had no homes but slept in the factory itself, in the midst of the machinery, or in a sort of dormitory above it, with a minimum of space and fresh air, men and women promiscuously, on wooden shelves, one above the other, under the eye of government inspectors whose protests were powerless to effect any change. this is, always and everywhere, even among so humane a people as the russians, the natural and inevitable result of a high birth-rate in an era of expanding industrialism. here is the goal of unrestricted reproduction, the same among men as among herrings. this is the ideal of those persons, whether they know it or not, who in their criminal rashness would dare to arrest that fall in the birth-rate which is now beginning to spread its beneficent influence in every civilised land. we have no means of ascertaining precisely the birth-rate in western europe before the nineteenth century, but the estimates of the population which have been made by the help of various data indicate that the increase during a century was very moderate. in england, for instance, families scarcely seem to have been very large, and, even apart from wars, many plagues and pestilences, during the eighteenth century more especially small-pox, constantly devastated the population, so that, with these checks on the results of reproduction, the population was able to adjust itself to its very gradual expansion. the mortality fell heavily on young children, as we observe in old family records, where we frequently find two or even three children of the same christian name, the first child having died and its name been given to a successor. during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a new phase of social life, profoundly affecting the reproductive habits of the community, made its appearance in western europe, at first in england. this was the new industrial era, due to the introduction of machinery. all the social methods of gradual though awkward adaptation to a slow expansion were dislocated. easy expansion of population became a possibility, for factories were constantly springing up, and "hands" were always in demand. moreover, these "hands" could be children for it was possible to tend machinery at a very early age. the richest family was the family with most children. the population began to expand rapidly. it was an era of prosperity. but when it began to be realised what this meant it was seen that such "prosperity" was far from an enviable condition. a community cannot suddenly adjust itself to a sudden expansion, still less can it adjust itself to a continuous rapid expansion. disease, misery, and poverty flourished in this prosperous new industrial era. filth and insanitation, immorality and crime, were fostered by overcrowding in ill-built urban areas. ignorance and stupidity abounded, for the child, placed in the monotonous routine of the factory when little more than an infant, was deprived alike of the education of the school and of the world. higher wages brought no higher refinement and were squandered on food and drink, on the lowest vulgar tastes. such "prosperity" was merely a brutalising influence; it meant nothing for the growth of civilisation and humanity. then a wholesome movement of reaction set in. the betterment of the environment--that was the great task that social pioneers and reformers saw before them. they courageously set about the herculean task of cleansing this augean stable of "prosperity." the era of sanitation began. the endless and highly beneficent course of factory legislature was inaugurated.[ ] that is the era which, in every progressive country of the world, we are living in still. the final tendency of it, however, was not foreseen by its great pioneers, or even its humble day-labourers of the present time. for they were not attacking reproduction; they were fighting against bad conditions, and may even have thought that they were enabling reproduction to expand more freely. they had not realised that to improve the environment is to check reproduction, being indeed the one and only way in which undue reproduction can be checked. that may be said to be an aspect of the opposition between genesis and individuation, on which herbert spencer insisted, for by improving the environment we necessarily improve the individual who is rooted in that environment. it is not, we must remember, a matter of conscious and voluntary action. that is clearly manifest by the fact that it occurs even among the most primitive micro-organisms; when placed under unfavourable conditions as to food and environment they tend to pass into a reproductive phase and by sporulation or otherwise begin to produce new individuals rapidly. it is the same in man. improve the environment and reproduction is checked.[ ] that is, as professor benjamin moore has said, "the simple biological reply to good economic conditions." it is only among the poor, the ignorant, and the wretched that reproduction flourishes. "the tendency of civilisation," as leroy-beaulieu concludes, "is to reduce the birth-rate." those who desire a high birth-rate are desiring, whether they know it or not, the increase of poverty, ignorance, and wretchedness. so far we have been dealing with fundamental laws and tendencies, which were established long before man appeared on the earth, although man has often illustrated, and still illustrates, their inevitable character. we have not been brought in contact with the influence of conscious design and deliberate intention. at this point we reach a totally new aspect of reproduction. ii. the origin and results of birth control in tracing the course of reproduction we have so far been concerned with what are commonly considered the blind operations of nature in the absence of conscious and deliberate volition. we have seen that while at the outset nature seems to have impressed an immense reproductive impetus on her creatures, all her energy since has been directed to the imposition of preventive checks on that reproductive impetus. the end attained by these checks has been an extreme diminution in the number of offspring, a prolongation of the time devoted to the breeding and care of each new member of the family, in harmony with its greatly prolonged life, a spacing out of the intervals between the offspring, and, as a result, a vastly greater development of each individual and an ever better equipment for the task of living. all this was slowly attained automatically, without any conscious volition on the part of the individuals, even when they were human beings, who were the agents. now occurred a change which we may regard as, in some respects, the most momentous sudden advance in the whole history of reproduction: the process of reproductive progress became conscious and deliberately volitional. we often fancy that when natural progress becomes manifested in the mind and will of man it is somehow unnatural. it is one of the wisest of shakespeare's utterances in one of the most mature of his plays that "nature is made better by no mean but nature makes that mean ... this is an art which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature." birth control, when it ceases to be automatic and becomes conscious, is an art. but it is an art directed precisely to the attainment of ends which nature has been struggling after for millions of years, and, being consciously and deliberately an art, it is enabled to avoid many of the pitfalls which the unconscious method falls into. it is an art, but "the art itself is nature." it is always possible for the narrow-eyed fanatic to object to the employment of birth control, precisely as he might object to the use of clothes, as "unnatural." but, if we look more deeply into the matter, we see that even clothes are not truly unnatural. a vast number of creatures may be said to be born in clothes, clothes so naturally such that, when stripped from the animals they belong to, we are proud to wear them ourselves. even our own ancestors were born in clothes, which they lost by the combined or separate action of natural selection, sexual selection, and the environment, which action, however, has not sufficed to abolish the desirability of clothes.[ ] so that the impulse by which we make for ourselves clothes is merely a conscious and volitional form of an impulse which, in the absence of consciousness and will, had acted automatically. it is just the same with the control and limitation of reproductive activity. it is an attempt by open-eyed intelligence and foresight to attain those ends which nature through untold generations has been painfully yet tirelessly struggling for. the deliberate co-operation of man in the natural task of birth-control represents an identification of the human will with what we may, if we choose, regard as the divinely appointed law of the world. we can well believe that the great pioneers who, a century ago, acted in the spirit of this faith may have echoed the thought of kepler when, on discovering his great planetary law, he exclaimed in rapture: "o god! i think thy thoughts after thee." as a matter of fact, however, it was in no such spirit of ecstasy that the pioneers of the movement for birth control acted. the divine command is less likely to be heard in the whirlwind than in the still small voice. these great pioneers were thoughtful, cautious, hard-headed men, who spoke scarcely above a whisper, and were far too modest to realise that a great forward movement in natural evolution had in them begun to be manifested. early man could not have taken this step because it is even doubtful whether he knew that the conjunction of the sexes had anything to do with the production of offspring, which he was inclined to attribute to magical causes. later, although intelligence grew, the uncontrolled rule of the sexual impulse obtained so firm a grip on men that they laughed at the idea that it was possible to exercise forethought and prudence in this sphere; at the same time religion and superstition came into action to preserve the established tradition and to persuade people that it would be wicked to do anything different from what they had always done. but a saner feeling was awakening here and there, in various parts of the world. at last, under the stress of the devastation and misery caused by the reproductive relapse of the industrial era, this feeling, voiced by a few distinguished men, began to take shape in action. the pioneers were english. among them malthus occupies the first place. that distinguished man, in his great and influential work, _the principle of population_, in , emphasised the immense importance of foresight and self-control in procreation, and the profound significance of birth limitation for human welfare. malthus relied, however, on ascetic self-restraint, a method which could only appeal to the few; he had nothing to say for the prevention of conception in intercourse. that was suggested, twenty years later, very cautiously by james mill, the father of john stuart mill, in the _encyclopedia britannica_. four years afterwards, mill's friend, the radical reformer, francis place, advocated this method more clearly. finally, in , robert dale owen, the son of the great robert owen, published his _moral physiology_, in which he set forth the ways of preventing conception; while a little later the drysdale brothers, ardent and unwearying philanthropists, devoted their energies to a propaganda which has been spreading ever since and has now conquered the whole civilised world. it was not, however, in england but in france, so often at the head of an advance in civilisation, that birth control first became firmly established, and that the extravagantly high birth-rate of earlier times began to fall; this happened in the first half of the nineteenth century, whether or not it was mainly due to voluntary control.[ ] in england the movement came later, and the steady decline in the english birth-rate, which is still proceeding, began in . in the previous year there had been a famous prosecution of bradlaugh and mrs. besant for disseminating pamphlets describing the methods of preventing conception; the charge was described by the lord chief justice, who tried the case, as one of the most ill-advised and injudicious ever made in a court of justice. but it served an undesigned end by giving enormous publicity to the subject and advertising the methods it sought to suppress. there can be no doubt, however, that even apart from this trial the movement would have proceeded on the same lines. the times were ripe, the great industrial expansion had passed its first feverish phase, social conditions were improving, education was spreading. the inevitable character of the movement is indicated by the fact that at the very same time it began to be manifested all over europe, indeed in every civilised country of the world. at the present time the birth-rate (as well as usually the death-rate) is falling in every country of the world sufficiently civilised to possess statistics of its own vital movement. the fall varies in rapidity. it has been considerable in the more progressive countries; it has lingered in the more backward countries. if we examine the latest statistics for europe (usually those for ) we find that every country, without exception, with a progressive and educated population, and a fairly high state of social well-being, presents a birth-rate below per , . we also find that every country in europe in which the mass of the people are primitive, ignorant, or in a socially unsatisfactory condition (even although the governing classes may be progressive or ambitious) shows a birth-rate above per , . france, great britain, belgium, holland, the scandinavian countries and switzerland are in the first group. russia, austro-hungary, italy, spain and the balkan countries are in the second group. the german empire was formerly in this second group but now comes within the first group, and has carried on the movement so energetically that the birth-rate of berlin is already below that of london, and that at the present rate of decline the birth-rate of the german empire will before long sink to that of france. outside europe, in the united states just as much as in australia and new zealand, the same great progressive movement is proceeding with equal activity. the wide survey of the question of birth limitation here taken may seem to some readers unnecessary. why not get at once to matters of practical detail? but, if we think of it, our wide survey has been of the greatest practical help to us. it has, for instance, settled the question of the desirability of the adoption of methods of preventing conception and finally silenced those who would waste our time with their fears lest it is not right to control conception. we know now on whose side are the laws of god and nature. we realise that in exercising control over the entrance gate of life we are not only performing, consciously and deliberately, a great human duty, but carrying on rationally a beneficial process which has, more blindly and wastefully, been carried on since the beginning of the world. there are still a few persons ignorant enough or foolish enough to fight against the advance of civilisation in this matter; we can well afford to leave them severely alone, knowing that in a few years all of them will have passed away. it is not our business to defend the control of birth, but simply to discuss how we may most wisely exercise that control. many ways of preventing conception have been devised since the method which is still the commonest was first introduced, so far as our certainly imperfect knowledge extends, by a clever jew, onan (_genesis_, chap. xxxviii), whose name has since been wrongly attached to another practice with which the mosaic record in no way associates him. there are now many contraceptive methods, some dependent on precautions adopted by the man, others dependent on the woman, others again which take the form of an operation permanently preventing conception, and, therefore, not to be adopted save by couples who already have as many children as they desire, or else who ought never to have children at all and thus wisely adopt a method of sterilisation. it is unnecessary here, even if it were otherwise desirable, to discuss these various methods in detail. it is even useless to do so, for we must bear in mind that no method can be absolutely approved or absolutely condemned. each may be suitable under certain conditions and for certain couples, and it is not easy to recommend any method indiscriminately. we need to know the intimate circumstances of individual cases. for the most part, experience is the final test. forel compared the use of contraceptive devices to the use of eyeglasses, and it is obvious that, without expert advice, the results in either case may sometimes be mischievous or at all events ineffective. personal advice and instruction are always desirable. in holland nurses are medically trained in a practical knowledge of contraceptive methods, and are thus enabled to enlighten the women of the community. this is an admirable plan. considering that the use of contraceptive measures is now almost universal, it is astonishing that there are yet so many so-called "civilised" countries in which this method of enlightenment is not everywhere adopted. until it is adopted, and a necessary knowledge of the most fundamental facts of the sexual life brought into every home, the physician must be regarded as the proper adviser. it is true that until recently he was generally in these matters a blind leader of the blind. nowadays it is beginning to be recognised that the physician has no more serious and responsible duty than that of giving help in the difficult path of the sexual life. very frequently, indeed, even yet, he has not risen to a sense of his responsibilities in this matter. it is as well to remember, however, that a physician who is unable or unwilling to give frank and sound advice in this most important department of life, is unlikely to be reliable in any other department. if he is not up to date here he is probably not up to date anywhere. whatever the method adopted, there are certain conditions which it must fulfil, even apart from its effectiveness as a contraceptive, in order to be satisfactory. most of these conditions may be summed up in one: the most satisfactory method is that which least interferes with the normal process of the act of intercourse. every sexual act is, or should be, a miniature courtship, however long marriage may have lasted.[ ] no outside mental tension or nervous apprehension must be allowed to intrude. any contraceptive proceeding which hastily enters the atmosphere of love immediately before or immediately after the moment of union is unsatisfactory and may be injurious. it even risks the total loss of the contraceptive result, for at such moments the intended method may be ineffectively carried out, or neglected altogether. no method can be regarded as desirable which interferes with the sense of satisfaction and relief which should follow the supreme act of loving union. no method which produces a nervous jar in one of the parties, even though it may be satisfactory to the other, should be tolerated. such considerations must for some couples rule out certain methods. we cannot, however, lay down absolute rules, because methods which some couples may find satisfactory prove unsatisfactory in other cases. experience, aided by expert advice, is the only final criterion. when a contraceptive method is adopted under satisfactory conditions, with a due regard to the requirements of the individual couple, there is little room to fear that any injurious results will be occasioned. it is quite true that many physicians speak emphatically concerning the injurious results to husband or to wife of contraceptive devices. although there has been exaggeration, and prejudice has often been imported into this question, and although most of the injurious results could have been avoided had trained medical help been at hand to advise better methods, there can be no doubt that much that has been said under this head is true. considering how widespread is the use of these methods, and how ignorantly they have often been carried out, it would be surprising indeed if it were not true. but even supposing that the nervously injurious effects which have been traced to contraceptive practices were a thousandfold greater than they have been reported to be--instead of, as we are justified in believing, considerably less than they are reported--shall we therefore condemn contraceptive methods? to do so would be to ignore all the vastly greater evils which have followed in the past from unchecked reproduction. it would be a condemnation which, if we exercised it consistently, would destroy the whole of civilisation and place us back in savagery. for what device of man, since man had any history at all, has not proved sometimes injurious? every one of even the most useful and beneficent of human inventions has either exercised subtle injuries or produced appalling catastrophes. this is not only true of man's devices, it is true of nature's in general. let us take, for instance, the elevation of man's ancestors from the quadrupedal to the bipedal position. the experiment of making a series of four-footed animals walk on their hind-legs was very revolutionary and risky; it was far, far more beset by dangers than is the introduction of contraceptives; we are still suffering all sorts of serious evils in consequence of nature's action in placing our remote ancestors in the erect position. yet we feel that it was worth while; even those physicians who most emphasise the evil results of the erect position do not advise that we should go on all-fours. it is just the same with a great human device, the introduction of clothes. they have led to all sorts of new susceptibilities to disease and even tendencies to direct injury of many kinds. yet no one advocates the complete disuse of all clothing on the ground that corsets have sometimes proved harmful. it would be just as absurd to advocate the complete abandonment of contraceptives on the ground that some of them have sometimes been misused. if it were not, indeed, that we are familiar with the lengths to which ignorance and prejudice may go we should question the sanity of anyone who put forward so foolish a proposition. every great step which nature and man have taken in the path of progress has been beset by dangers which are gladly risked because of the advantages involved. we have still to enumerate some of the immense advantages which man has gained in acquiring a conscious and deliberate control of reproduction. iii. birth control in relation to morality and eugenics anyone who has followed this discussion so far will not easily believe that a tendency so deeply rooted in nature as birth control can ever be in opposition to morality. it can only seem to be so when we confuse the eternal principles of morality, whatever they may be, with their temporary applications, which are always becoming modified in adaptation to changing circumstances. we are often in danger of doing injustice to the morality of the past, and it is important, even in order to understand the morality of the present, that we should be able to put ourselves in the place of those for whom birth control was immoral. to speak of birth control as having been immoral in the past is, indeed, to underestimate the case; it was not only immoral, it was unnatural, it was even irreligious, it was almost criminal. we must remember that throughout the christian world the divine command, "increase and multiply," has seemed to echo down the ages from the beginning of the world. it was the authoritative command of a tribal god who was, according to the scriptural narrative, addressing a world inhabited by eight people. from such a point of view a world's population of several thousand persons would have seemed inconceivably vast, though to-day by even the most austere advocate of birth limitation it would be allowed with a smile. but the old religious command has become a tradition which has survived amid conditions totally unlike those under which it arose. in comparatively modern times it has been reinforced from unexpected quarters, on the one hand by all the forces that are opposed to democracy and on the other by all the forces of would-be patriotic militarism, both alike clamouring for plentiful and cheap men. even science, under primitive conditions, was opposed to birth control. creation was regarded as a direct process in which man's will had no part, and knowledge of nature was still too imperfect for the recognition of the fact that the whole course of the world's natural history has been an erection of barriers against wholesale and indiscriminate reproduction. thus it came about that under the old dispensation, which is now for ever passing away, to have as many children as possible and to have them as often as possible--provided certain ritual prescriptions were fulfilled--seemed to be a religious, moral, natural, scientific, and patriotic duty. to-day the conditions have altogether altered, and even our own feelings have altered. we no longer feel with the ancient hebrew who has bequeathed his ideals though not his practices to christendom, that to have as many wives and concubines and as large a family as possible is both natural and virtuous, as well as profitable. we realise, moreover, that the divine commands, so far as we recognise any such commands, are not external to us, but are manifested in our own deliberate reason and will. we know that to primitive men, who lacked foresight and lived mainly in the present, only that divine command could be recognisable which sanctified the impulse of the moment, while to us, who live largely in the future, and have learnt foresight, the divine command involves restraint on the impulse of the moment. we no longer believe that we are divinely ordered to be reckless or that god commands us to have children who, as we ourselves know, are fatally condemned to disease or premature death. providence, which was once regarded as the attribute of god, we regard as the attribute of men; providence, prudence, self-restraint--these are to us the characteristics of moral men, and those persons who lack these characteristics are condemned by our social order to be reckoned among the dregs of mankind. it is a social order which in the sphere of procreation could not be reached or maintained except by the systematic control of offspring. we may realise the difference between the morality of to-day and the morality of the past when we come to details. we may consider, for instance, the question of the chastity of women. according to the ideas of the old morality, which placed the whole question of procreation under the authority (after god) of men, women were in subjection to men, and had no right to freedom, no right to responsibility, no right to knowledge, for, it was believed, if entrusted with any of these they would abuse them at once. that view prevails even to-day in some civilised countries, and middle-class italian parents, for instance, will not allow their daughter to be conducted by a man even to mass, for they believe that as soon as she is out of their sight she will be unchaste. that is their morality. our morality to-day, however, is inspired by different ideas, and aims at a different practice. we are by no means disposed to rate highly the morality of a girl who is only chaste so long as she is under her parents' eyes; for us, indeed, that is much more like immorality than morality. we are to-day vigorously pursuing a totally different line of action. we wish women to be reasonably free, we wish them to be trained in the sense of responsibility for their own actions, we wish them to possess knowledge, more especially in that sphere of sex, once theoretically closed to them, which we now recognise as peculiarly their own domain. nowadays, moreover, we are sufficiently well acquainted with human nature to know, not only that at best the "chastity" merely due to compulsion or to ignorance is a poor thing, but that at worst it is really the most degraded and injurious form of unchastity. for there are many ways of avoiding pregnancy besides the use of contraceptives, and such ways can often only be called vicious, destructive to purity, and harmful to health. our ideal woman to-day is not she who is deprived of freedom and knowledge in the cloister, even though only the cloister of her home, but the woman who, being instructed from early life in the facts of sexual physiology and sexual hygiene, is also trained in the exercise of freedom and self-responsibility, and able to be trusted to choose and to follow the path which seems to her right. that is the only kind of morality which seems to us real and worth while. and, in any case, we have now grown wise enough to know that no degree of compulsion and no depth of ignorance will suffice to make a girl good if she doesn't want to be good. so that, even as a matter of policy, it is better to put her in a position to know what is good and to act in accordance with that knowledge. the relation of birth control to morality is, however, by no means a question which concerns women alone. it equally concerns men. here we have to recognise, not only that the exercise of control over procreation enables a man to form a union of faithful devotion with the woman of his choice at an earlier age than would otherwise be possible, but it further enables him, throughout the whole of married life, to continue such relationship under circumstances which might otherwise render them injurious or else undesirable to his wife. that the influence thus exerted by preventive methods would suffice to abolish prostitution it would be foolish to maintain, for prostitution has other grounds of support. but even within the sphere of merely prostitutional relationships the use of contraceptives, and the precautions and cleanliness they involve, have an influence of their own in diminishing the risks of venereal disease, and while the interests of those who engage in prostitution are by some persons regarded as negligible, we must always remember that venereal disease spreads far beyond the patrons of prostitution and is a perpetual menace to others who may become altogether innocent victims. so that any influence which tends to diminish venereal disease increases the well-being of the whole community. apart from the relationship to morality, although the two are intimately combined, we are thus led to the relationship of birth control to eugenics, or to the sound breeding of the race. here we touch the highest ground, and are concerned with our best hopes for the future of the world. for there can be no doubt that birth control is not only a precious but an indispensable instrument in moulding the coming man to the measure of our developing ideals. without it we are powerless in the face of the awful evils which flow from random and reckless reproduction. with it we possess a power so great that some persons have professed to see in it a menace to the propagation of the race, amusing themselves with the idea that if people possess the means to prevent the conception of children they will never have children at all. it is not necessary to discuss such a grotesque notion seriously. the desire for children is far too deeply implanted in mankind and womankind alike ever to be rooted out. if there are to-day many parents whose lives are rendered wretched by large families and the miseries of excessive child-bearing, there are an equal number whose lives are wretched because they have no children at all, and who snatch eagerly at any straw which offers the smallest promise of relief to this craving. certainly there are people who desire marriage, but--some for very sound and estimable reasons and others for reasons which may less well bear examination--do not desire any children at all. so far as these are concerned, contraceptive methods, far from being a social evil, are a social blessing. for nothing is so certain as that it is an unmixed evil for a community to possess unwilling, undesirable, or incompetent parents. birth control would be an unmixed blessing if it merely enabled us to exclude such persons from the ranks of parenthood. we desire no parents who are not both competent and willing parents. only such parents are fit to father and to mother a future race worthy to rule the world. it is sometimes said that the control of conception, since it is frequently carried out immediately on marriage, will tend to delay parenthood until an unduly late age. birth control has, however, no necessary result of this kind, and might even act in the reverse direction. a chief cause of delay in marriage is the prospect of the burden and expense of an unrestricted flow of children into the family, and in great britain, since , with the extension of the use of contraceptives, there has been a slight but regular increase not only in the general marriage rate but in the proportion of early marriages, although the _general_ mean age at marriage has increased. the ability to control the number of children not only enables marriage to take place at an early age but also makes it possible for the couple to have at least one child soon after marriage. the total number of children are thus spaced out, instead of following in rapid succession. it is only of recent years that the eugenic importance of a considerable interval between births has been fully recognised, as regards not only the mother--this has long been realised--but also the children. the very high mortality of large families has long been known, and their association with degenerate conditions and with criminality. the children of small families in toronto, canada, are taller than those of larger families, as is also the case in oakland, california, where the average size of the family is smaller than in toronto.[ ] of recent years, moreover, evidence has been obtained that families in which the children are separated from each other by intervals of more than two years are both mentally and physically superior to those in which the interval is shorter. thus ewart found in a northern english manufacturing town that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child remain notably defective, even at the age of six, both as regards intelligence and physical development. when compared with children born at a longer interval and with first-born children, they are, on the average, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children.[ ] such observations need to be repeated in various countries, but if confirmed it is obvious that they represent a fact of the most vital significance. thus when we calmly survey, in however summary a manner, the great field of life affected by the establishment of voluntary human control over the production of the race, we can see no cause for anything but hope. it is satisfactory that it should be so, for there can be no doubt that we are here facing a great and permanent fact in civilised life. with every rise in civilisation, indeed with all evolutionary progress whatever, there is what seems to be an automatic fall in the birth-rate. that fall is always normally accompanied by a fall in the death-rate, so that a low birth-rate frequently means a high rate of natural increase, since most of the children born survive.[ ] thus in the civilised world of to-day, notwithstanding the low birth-rate which prevails as compared with earlier times, the rate of increase in the population is still, as leroy-beaulieu points out, appalling, nearly half a million a year in great britain, over half a million in austro-hungary, and three-quarters of a million in germany. when we examine this excess of births in detail we find among them a large proportion of undesired and undesirable children. there are two opposed alternative methods working to diminish this proportion: the method of preventing conception, with which we have here been concerned, and the method of preventing live birth by producing abortion. there can be no doubt about the enormous extension of this latter practice in all civilised countries, even although some of the estimates of its frequency in the united states, where it seems especially to flourish, may be extravagant. the burden of excessive children on the overworked underfed mothers of the working classes becomes at last so intolerable that anything seems better than another child. "i'd rather swallow the druggist's shop and the man in it than have another kid," as, miss elderton reports, a woman in yorkshire said.[ ] now there has of late years arisen a movement, especially among german women, for bringing abortion into honour and repute, so that it may be carried out openly and with the aid of the best physicians. this movement has been supported by lawyers and social reformers of high position. it may be admitted that women have an abstract right to abortion and that in exceptional cases that right should be exerted. yet there can be very little doubt to most people that abortion is a wasteful, injurious, and almost degrading method of dealing with the birth-rate, a feeble apology for recklessness and improvidence. a society in which abortion flourishes cannot be regarded as a healthy society. therefore, a community which takes upon itself to encourage abortion is incurring a heavy responsibility. i am referring more especially to the united states, where this condition of things is most marked. for, there cannot be any doubt about it, just as all those who work for birth control are diminishing the frequency of abortion, so _every attempt to discourage birth control promotes abortion_. we have to approach this problem calmly, in the light of nature and reason. we have each of us to decide on which side we shall range ourselves. for it is a vital social problem concerning which we cannot afford to be indifferent. there is here no desire to exaggerate the importance of birth control. it is not a royal road to the millennium, and, as i have already pointed out, like all other measures which the course of progress forces us to adopt, it has its disadvantages. yet at the present moment its real and vital significance is acutely brought home to us. flinders petrie, discussing those great migrations due to the unrestricted expansion of barbarous races which have devastated europe from the dawn of history, remarks: "we deal lightly and coldly with the abstract facts, but they represent the most terrible tragedies of all humanity--the wreck of the whole system of civilisation, protracted starvation, wholesale massacre. can it be avoided? that is the question, before all others, to the statesman who looks beyond the present time."[ ] since petrie wrote, only ten years ago, we have had occasion to realise that the vast expansions which he described are not confined to the remote past, but are at work and producing the same awful results, even at the very present hour. the great and only legitimate apology which has been put forward for the aggressive attitude of germany in the present war has been that it was the inevitable expansive outcome of the abnormally high birth-rate of germany in recent times; as dr. dernburg, not long ago, put it: "the expansion of the german nation has been so extraordinary during the last twenty-five years that the conditions existing before the war had become insupportable." in other words, there was no outlet but a devastating war. so we are called upon to repeat, with fresh emphasis, petrie's question: _can it be avoided_? all humanity, all civilisation, call upon us to take up our stand on this vital question of birth control. in so doing we shall each of us be contributing, however humbly, to "one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves." [ ] j.m. coulter, _the evolution of sex in plants_, ; geoffrey smith, "the biology of sex," _eugenics review_, april, . [ ] see, _e.g._, geddes and thomson, _the evolution of sex_, ch. xx.; and t.h. morgan, _heredity and sex_, ch. i. [ ] to quote one of the most careful investigators of this point, northcote thomas, among the edo-speaking people of nigeria, found that the average number of living children per husband was . ; including all children, alive and dead, the average number was per husband . , and per wife . . "infant mortality is heavy" (northcote thomas, _anthropological report of edo-speaking people of nigeria_, , part i., pp. , ). [ ] the same end has been rather more mercifully achieved in earlier periods by infanticide (see westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. i., ch. ). it must not be supposed that infanticide was opposed to tenderness to children. thus the australian dieyerie, who practised infanticide, were kind to children, and a mother found beating her child was herself beaten by her husband. [ ] see havelock ellis, _the nationalisation of health_. [ ] similar results appear to follow in china where also the birth-rate is very high and the mortality very great. it is stated that physical development is much inferior and pathological defects more numerous among chinese as compared with american students. (_new york medical journal_, nov. th, , p. .) the bad conditions which produce death in the weakest produce deterioration in the survivors. [ ] the law is thus laid down by p. leroy-beaulieu (_la question de la population_, , p. ): "the first degree of prosperity in a rude population with few needs develops prolificness; a later degree of prosperity, accompanied by all the feelings and ideas stimulated by the development of education and a democratic environment, leads to a gradual reduction of prolificness." [ ] this is too often forgotten. birth control is a natural process, and though in civilised men, endowed with high intelligence, it necessarily works in some measure voluntarily and deliberately, it is probable that it still also works, as in the evolution of the lower animals, to some extent automatically. sir shirley murphy (_lancet_, aug. th, ), while admitting that intentional restriction has been operative, remarks: "it does not appear to me that there is any more reason for ignoring the likelihood that nature has been largely concerned in the reduction of births than for ignoring the effects of nature in reducing the death-rate. the decline in both has points of resemblance. both have been widely manifest over europe, both have in the main declined in the period of - , and indeed both appear to be behaving in like manner." [ ] i do not overlook the fact that the artificial clothing of primitive man is in its origin mainly ornament, having myself insisted on that fact in discussing this point in "the evolution of modesty" (_studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. i.). it is to be remembered that, in animals--and very conspicuously, for instance, in birds--natural clothing is also largely ornament of secondary sexual significance. [ ] at the end of the eighteenth century there were in france four children on the average to a family; a movement of rapid increase in the population reached its climax in ; by the average number of children to a family had slowly fallen to but little over three. broca, writing in ("sur la prétendue dégénérescence de la population francaise"), mentioned that the slow fall in the birth-rate was only slightly due to prudent calculation and mainly to more general causes such as delay in marriage. [ ] havelock ellis, _studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. vi., "sex in relation to society," ch. xi., the art of love. [ ] the exact results are presented by f. boas (abstract of report on _changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants_, washington, , p. ), who concludes that "the physical development of children, as measured by stature, is the better the smaller the family." [ ] r.j. ewart, "the influence of parental age on offspring," _eugenics review_, oct., . [ ] in new zealand the birth-rate is very low; but the death-rate of children in the first year is only per thousand as against in england. [ ] e.m. elderton, _report on the english birth-rate_, part i., . see also the collection of narratives of their experiences by working-class mothers, published under the title of _maternity_ (women's co-operative guild, ). [ ] flinders petrie, _journal of the anthropological institute_, , p. . sex and society studies in the social psychology of sex by william i. thomas associate professor of sociology in the university of chicago the university of chicago press chicago, illinois fourth impression author's note these studies have been published in various journals at different times. they are reprinted together because there is some demand for them, and they are not easily accessible. in preparing them for publication in the present form, some of them have been expanded and all of them have been revised. while each study is complete in itself, the general thesis running through all of them is the same--that the differences in bodily habit between men and women, particularly the greater strength, restlessness, and motor aptitude of man, and the more stationary condition of woman, have had an important influence on social forms and activities, and on the character and mind of the two sexes. "organic differences in the sexes" appeared in the _american journal of sociology_, iii, ff., with the title, "on a difference in the metabolism of the sexes;" "sex and primitive social control," _ibid._, iii, ff.; "sex and primitive industry," _ibid._, iv, ff.; "sex and primitive morality," _ibid._, iv, ff.; "the psychology of modesty and clothing," _ibid._, v, ff.; "the adventitious character of woman," _ibid._, xii, ff.; "the mind of woman and the lower races," _ibid._, xii, ff.; "the psychology of exogamy," in the _zeitschrift für socialwissenschaft_, v, ff., with the title, "der ursprung der exogamie;" "sex and social feeling," in the _psychological review_, xi, ff., with the title, "the sexual element in sensibility." portions of a paper printed in the _forum_, xxxvi, ff., with the title, "is the human brain stationary?" are incorporated in the paper on "the mind of woman and the lower races," and portions of a paper printed in the _american journal of sociology_, ix, ff., with the title, "the psychology of race-prejudice," are incorporated in the paper on "sex and social feeling." i acknowledge the courtesy of the editors of these journals for permission to reprint. w.i.t. table of contents organic differences in the sexes sex and primitive social control sex and social feeling sex and primitive industry sex and primitive morality the psychology of exogamy the psychology of modesty and clothing the adventitious character of woman the mind of woman and the lower races index organic differences in the sexes a grand difference between plant and animal life lies in the fact that the plant is concerned chiefly with storing energy, and the animal with consuming it. the plant by a very slow process converts lifeless into living matter, expending little energy and living at a profit. the animal is unable to change lifeless into living matter, but has developed organs of locomotion, ingestion, and digestion which enable it to prey upon the plant world and upon other animal forms; and in contrast with plant life it lives at a loss of energy. expressed in biological formula, the habit of the plant is predominantly anabolic, that of the animal predominantly katabolic. certain biologists, limiting their attention in the main to the lower forms of life, have maintained very plausibly that males are more katabolic than females, and that maleness is the product of influences tending to produce a katabolic habit of body.[ ] if this assumption is correct, maleness and femaleness are merely a repetition of the contrast existing between the animal and the plant. the katabolic animal form, through its rapid destruction of energy, has been carried developmentally away from the anabolic plant form; and of the two sexes the male has been carried farther than the female from the plant process. the body of morphological, physiological, ethnological, and demographic data which follows becomes coherent, indeed, only on the assumption that woman stands nearer to the plant process than man, representing the constructive as opposed to the disruptive metabolic tendency.[ ] the researches of düsing,[ ] supplementing the antecedent observations of ploss,[ ] and further supplemented by the ethnological data collected by westermarck,[ ] seem to demonstrate a connection between an abundance of nutrition and females, and between scarcity and males, in relatively higher animal forms and in man. the main facts in support of the theory that such a connection exists are the following: furriers testify that rich regions yield more furs from females and poor regions more from males. in high altitudes, where nutrition is scant, the birthrate of boys is high as compared with lower altitudes in the same locality. ploss has pointed out, for instance, that in saxony from to the yield of rye fell, and the birth-rate of boys rose with the approach of high altitudes. more boys are born in the country than in cities, because city diet is richer, especially in meat; düsing shows that in prussia the numerical excess of boys is greatest in the country districts, less in the villages, still less in the cities, and least in berlin.[ ] in times of war, famine, and migration more boys are born, and more are born also in poor than in well-to-do families. european statistics show that when food-stuffs are high or scarce the number of marriages diminishes, and in consequence a diminished number of births follows, and a heightened percentage of boys; with the recurrence of prosperity and an increased number of marriages and births, the percentage of female births rises (though it never equals numerically that of the males).[ ] more children are born from warm-weather than from cold-weather conceptions,[ ] but relatively more boys are born from cold-weather conceptions. professor axel key has shown from statistics of , swedish school children that from the end of november and the beginning of december until the end of march or the middle of april, growth in children is feeble. from july-august to november-december their daily increase in weight is three times as great as during the winter months.[ ] this is evidence in confirmation of a connection between maleness, slow growth, and either poor nutrition or cold weather, or both. professor key's investigations[ ] have also confirmed the well-known fact that maturity is reached earlier in girls than in boys and have shown that in respect of growth the ill-nourished girls follow the law of growth of the boys. growth is a function of nutrition, and puberty is a sign that somatic growth is so far finished that the organism produces a surplus of nutrition to be used in reproduction. organically reproduction is also a function of nutrition, and, as spencer pointed out, is to be regarded as discontinuous growth. the fact than an anabolic surplus, preparatory to the katabolic process of reproduction, is stored at an earlier period in the female than in the male, and that this period is retarded in the ill-nourished female, is a confirmation of the view that femaleness is an expression of the tendency to store nutriment, and explains also the infantile somatic characters of woman. finally, the fact that polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries, coupled with the fact that ethnologists uniformly report a scarcity of women in those countries, permits us to attribute polyandry to a scarcity of women and scarcity of women to poor food conditions. this evidence should be considered in connection with the experiments of yung on tadpoles, of siebold on wasps, and of klebs on the modification of male and female organs in plants: according to yung, tadpoles pass through an hermaphroditic stage, in common, according to other authorities, with most animals.... when the tadpoles were left to themselves, the females were rather in the majority. in three lots the proportion of females to males was: - , - , - . the average number of females was thus about fifty-seven in the hundred. in the first brood, by feeding one set with beef, yung raised the percentage of females from to : in the second, with fish, the percentage rose from to ; while in the third set, when the especially nutritious flesh of frogs was supplied, the percentage rose from to . that is to say, in the last case the result of high feeding was that there were females and males.[ ] similarly, the experiments of siebold on wasps show that the percentage of females increases from spring to august, and then diminishes. we may conclude without scruple that the production of females from fertilized ova increases with the temperature and food supply, and decreases as these diminish.[ ] nor are there many facts more significant than the simple and well-known one that within the first eight days of larval life the addition of food will determine the striking and functional differences between worker and queen.[ ] it is certainly no mere chance, but agrees with other well-known facts, that for the generation of the female organ more favorable external circumstances must prevail, while the male organ may develop under very much more unfavorable conditions.[ ] these facts are not conclusive, but they all point in the same direction, and are probably sufficient to establish a connection between food conditions and the determination of sex. but behind the mere fact that a different attitude toward food determines difference of sex lies the more fundamental--indeed, the real--explanation of the fact, and this chemists and physiologists are not at present able to give us. researches must be carried farther on the effect of temperature, light, and water on variation, before we may hope to reach a positive conclusion. we can only assume that the chemical constitution of the organism at a given moment conditions the sex of the offspring, and is itself conditioned by various factors--light, heat, water, electricity, etc.--and that food is one of these variables.[ ] it is sufficient for our present purpose that sex is a constitutional matter, indirectly dependent upon food conditions; that the female is the result of a surplus of nutrition; and that the relation reported among the lower forms persists in the human species. in close connection with the foregoing we have the fact, reported by maupas,[ ] that certain infusorians are capable of reproducing asexually for a number of generations, but that, unless the individuals are sexually fertilized by crossing with unrelated forms of the same species, they finally exhibit all the signs of senile degeneration, ending in death.[ ] after sexual conjugation there was an access of vitality, and the asexual reproduction proceeded as before. "the evident result of these long and fatiguing experiments is that among the ciliates the life of the species is decomposed into evolutional cycles, each one having for its point of departure an individual regenerated and rejuvenated by sexual copulation."[ ] the results obtained by maupas receive striking confirmation in the universal experience of stock-breeders, that, in order to keep a breed in health, it is necessary to cross it occasionally with a distinct but allied variety. it appears, then, that a mixture of blood has a favorable effect on the metabolism of the organism, comparable to that of abundant nutrition, and that innutrition and in-and-in breeding are alike prejudicial. if this is true, and if heightened nutrition yields an increased proportion of females, we ought to find that breeding-out is favorable to the production of females, and breeding-in to the production of males; and a considerable body of evidence in favor of this assumption exists.[ ] observations of above , cases show that, among horses, the more the parent animals differ in color, the more the female foals outnumber the male. similarly, in-and-in-bred cattle give an excessively large number of bull calves. liaisons produce an abnormally large proportion of females;[ ] incestuous unions, of males.[ ] among the jews, who frequently marry cousins, the percentage of male births is very high. according to mr. jacobs' comprehensive manuscript collection of jewish statistics ... the average proportion of male and female jewish births registered in various countries is . males to females, whilst the average proportion among the non-jewish population of the corresponding countries is . males to females.... his collection includes details of mixed marriages; of these are sterile, and in the remainder there are female children and male--that is, . females to males.[ ] the testimony is also tolerably full that among _metis_ and among exogamous peoples the female birth-rate is often excessively high.[ ] viewed with reference to activity, the animal is an advance on the plant, from which it departs by morphological and physiological variations suited to a more energized form of life; and the female may be regarded as the animal norm from which the male departs by further morphological variations. it is now well known that variations are more frequent and marked in males than in females. among the lower forms, in which activity is more directly determined mechanically by the stimuli of heat, light, and chemical attraction, and where in general the food and light are evenly distributed through the medium in which life exists, and where the limits of variation are consequently small, the constitutional nutritive tendency of the female manifests itself in size. among many cephalopoda and cirripedia, and among certain of the articulata, the female is larger than the male. female spiders, bees, wasps, hornets, and butterflies are larger than the males, and the difference is noticeable even in the larval stage. so considerable is the difference in size between the male and female cocoons of the silk-moth that in france they are separated by a particular mode of weighing.[ ] the same superiority of the female is found among fishes and reptiles; and this relation, wherever it occurs, may be associated with a habit of life in which food conditions are simple and stimuli mandatory. as we rise in the scale toward backboned and warm-blooded animals, the males become larger in size; and this reversal of relation, like the development of offensive and defensive weapons, is due to the superior variational tendency of the male, resulting in characters which persist in the species wherever they prove of life-saving advantage.[ ] the superior activity and variability of the male among lower forms has been pointed out in great detail by darwin and confirmed by others. throughout the animal kingdom, when the sexes differ in external appearance, it is, with rare exceptions, the male which has been more modified; for, generally, the female retains a closer resemblance to the young of her own species, and to other adult members of the same group. the cause of this seems to lie in the males of almost all animals having stronger passions than the females.[ ] darwin explains the greater variability of the males--as shown in more brilliant colors, ornamental feathers, scent-pouches, the power of music, spurs, larger canines and claws, horns, antlers, tusks, dewlaps, manes, crests, beards, etc.--as due to the operation of sexual selection, meaning by this "the advantage which certain individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in respect of reproduction,"[ ] the female choosing to pair with the more attractive male, or the stronger male prevailing in a contest for the female. wallace[ ] advanced the opposite view, that the female owes her soberness to the fact that only inconspicuous females have in the struggle for existence escaped destruction during the breeding season. there are fatal objections to both these theories; and, taking his cue from tylor,[ ] wallace himself, in a later work, suggested what is probably the true explanation, namely, that the superior variability of the male is constitutional, and due to general laws of growth and development. "if ornament," he says, "is the natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor, then no other mode of selection is needed to account for the presence of such ornament."[ ] that a tendency to spend energy more rapidly should result in more striking morphological variation is to be expected; or, put otherwise, the fact of a greater variational tendency in the male is the outcome of a constitutional inclination to destructive metabolism. it is a general law in the courtship of the sexes that the male seeks the female. the secondary sexual characters of the male are developed with puberty, and in some cases these sexual distinctions come and go with the breeding season. what we know as physiological energy is the result of the dissociation of atoms in the organism; expressions of energy are the accompaniment of the katabolic or breaking-up process, and the brighter color of the male, especially at the breeding season, results from the fact that the waste products of the katabolism are deposited as pigments. when we compare the sexes of mankind morphologically, we find a greater tendency to variation in man:[ ] all the secondary sexual characters of man are highly variable, even within the limits of the same race; and they differ much in the several races.... numerous measurements carefully made of the stature, the circumference of the neck and chest, the length of the backbone and of the arms, in various races ... nearly all show that the males differ much more from one another than do the females. this fact indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged from their common stock.[ ] morphologically the development of man is more accentuated than that of woman. anthropologists, indeed, regard woman as intermediate in development between the child and the man. the outlines of the adult female cranium are intermediate between those of the child and the adult man; they are softer, more graceful and delicate, and the apophyses and ridges for the attachment of muscles are less pronounced,... the forehead is ... more perpendicular, to such a degree that in a group of skulls those of the two sexes have been mistaken for different types; the superciliary ridges and the glabella are less developed, often not at all; the crown is higher and more horizontal; the brain weight and cranial capacity are less; the mastoid apophyses, the inion, the styloid apophyses, and the condyles of the occipital are of less volume, the zygomatic and alveolar arches are more regular.[ ] wagner decided that the brain of a woman, taken as a whole, is uniformly in a more or less embryonic condition. huschke says that woman is always a growing child, and that her brain departs from the infantile type no more than the other portions of her body.[ ] weisbach[ ] pointed out that the limits of variation in the skull of man are greater than in that of woman. several observers have recorded the opinion that women of dolichocephalic races are more brachycephalic, and women of brachycephalic races more dolichocephalic, than the men of the same races. if this is true, it is a remarkable confirmation of the conservative tendency of woman. "i have thought for several years that woman was, in a general way, less dolichocephalic in dolichocephalic races, and less brachycephalic in brachycephalic races, and that she had a tendency to approach the typical median form of humanity."[ ] the skin of woman is without exception of a lighter shade than that of man, even among the dark races. this cannot be due to less exposure, since the women and men are equally exposed among the uncivilized races, but is due to the same causes as the more brilliant plumage of male birds. the form of woman is rounder and less variable than that of man, and art has been able to produce a more nearly ideal figure of woman than of man; at the same time, the bones of woman weigh less with reference to body weight than the bones of man, and both these facts indicate less variation and more constitutional passivity in woman. the trunk of woman is slightly longer than that of man,[ ] and her abdomen is relatively more prominent, and is so represented in art. in these respects she resembles the child and the lower races, i.e., the less developed forms.[ ] ranke states that the typical adult male form is characterized by a relatively shorter trunk, relatively longer arms, legs, hands, and feet, and relatively to the long upper arms and thighs by still longer forearms and lower legs, and relatively to the whole upper extremity by a still longer lower extremity; while the typical female form approaches the infantile condition in having a relatively longer trunk, shorter arms, legs, hands, and feet; relatively to short upper arms still shorter forearms, and relatively to short thighs still shorter lower legs, and relatively to the whole short upper extremity[ ] a still shorter lower extremity--a very striking evidence of the ineptitude of woman for the expenditure of physiological energy through motor action.[ ] the strength of woman, on the other hand, her capacity for motion, and her muscular mechanical aptitude are far inferior to that of man. tests of strength made on , students of yale university[ ] and on , women of oberlin college[ ] show the mean relation of the strength of the sexes, expressed in kilograms: back legs right forearm men . . . women . . . the average weight of the men was . kilograms, and of the women kilograms; and, making deduction for this, the strength of the men is still not less than twice as great as that of the women. the anthropometric committee reported to the british association in that women are little more than half as strong as men. the first field day of the vassar college athletic association was held november , , and a comparison of the records of some of the events with those of similar events at yale university in the corresponding year gives us a basis of comparison:[ ] yale vassar -yard dash - / sec. ¼ sec. running broad jump ft. ft. in. running high jump ft. in. ft. -yard dash - / sec. ¼ sec. miss thompson, whose results were obtained in a psychological laboratory, concludes that in reactions where strength is involved men are clearly superior to women, and this is the only respect in which she finds a marked difference: motor ability in most of its forms is better in men than in women. in strength, rapidity of movement, and rate of fatigue they have a very decided advantage. these three forms of superiority are probably all expressions of one and the same fact--the greater muscular strength of men. men are very slightly superior to women in precision of movement. this fact is probably also connected with their superior muscular force. in the formation of a new co-ordination women are superior. the superiority of men in muscular strength is so well known that it is a universally accepted fact. there has been more or less dispute as to which sex displayed greater manual dexterity. according to the present results, that depends on what is meant by manual dexterity. if it means the ability to make very delicate and minutely controlled movements, then it is slightly better in men. if it means ability to co-ordinate movements rapidly to unforeseen stimuli it is clearly better in women.[ ] we have no other than a utilitarian basis for judging some variations advantageous and others disadvantageous. we can estimate them only with reference to activity and the service or disservice to the individual and society implied in them, and a given variation must receive very different valuations at different historical periods in the development of the race. departures from the normal are simply nature's way of "trying conclusions." the variations which have proved of life-saving advantage have in the course of time become typical, while the individuals in which unfavorable variations, or defects, have occurred have not survived in the struggle for existence. morphologically men are the more unstable element of society, and this instability expresses itself in the two extremes of genius and idiocy. genius in general is correlated with an excessive development in brain-growth, stopping dangerously near the line of hypertrophy and insanity; while microcephaly is a variation in the opposite direction, in which idiocy results from arrested development of the brain, usually through premature closing of the sutures; and both these variations occur more frequently in men than in women. there is also evidence that defects in general are more frequent in men than in women. a committee reported to the british association for the advancement of science, in ,[ ] that of some , children ( , boys, and , girls) seen personally by dr. francis warner ( - ) , were found defective in some respect. of these, per cent. ( , ) were boys, and per cent. ( , ) were girls. an examination of , idiots and imbeciles in scotland by mitchell showed the following distribution of the sexes: male female male female idiots or to . imbeciles or to . showing that "the excess of males is much greater among idiots than among imbeciles; in other words, that the excess of males is most marked in the graver forms of the disease."[ ] a census of the insane in prussia in showed that , males and , females were born idiots. koch's statistics of insanity show that in idiots there is almost always a majority of males, in the insane, a majority of females. but the majority of male idiots is so much greater than the majority of female insane that when idiots and insane are classed together there remains a majority of males.[ ] insanity is, however, more frequently induced by external conditions, and less dependent on imperfect or arrested cerebral development. mayr has shown from statistics of bavaria that insanity is infrequent before the sixteenth year; and even before the twentieth year the number of insane is not considerable.[ ] in insanity the chances of recovery of the female are greater than those of the male, and mortality is higher among insane men than among insane women. there is practical agreement among pathologists on this point.[ ] campbell points out in detail[ ] that the male sex is more liable than the female to gross lesions of the nervous system--a fact which he attributes to the greater variability of the male. an excess of all other anatomical anomalies, except cleft palate, is reported among males. manley reports that of cases of harelip treated by him only were females.[ ] it appears also that supernumerary digits are more frequent in males. wilder[ ] has recorded cases of individuals with supernumerary digits, of whom were males, females, and of unknown sex. a similar relation, according to bruce, exists in regard to supernumerary nipples.[ ] muscular abnormalities, monstrosities, deaf-mutism, clubfoot, and transposition of viscera are also reported as of commoner occurrence in men than in women.[ ] lombroso states that congenital criminals are more frequently male than female.[ ] cunningham noted an eighth (true) rib in of subjects examined. it occurred times in males and times in females, but the number of females examined was twice as large as the number of males.[ ] the reports of the registrar-general show that for the years - , inclusive, the deaths from congenital defects (spina bifida, imperforate anus, cleft palate, harelip, etc.) were, taking the average of the five years, . per million of the persons living in england for the male sex, and . for the female.[ ] it has already been noted as a general rule throughout nature that the male seeks the female and physicians generally believe that men are sexually more active than women,[ ] though woman's need of reproduction is greater,[ ] and celibacy unquestionably impresses the character of women more deeply than that of man. additional evidence of the greater sexual activity of man is furnished by the overwhelmingly large proportion of the various forms of sexual perversion reported by psychiatrists in the male sex. pathological variations do not become fixed in the species, because of their disadvantageous nature, but their excess in the male is, as we have seen in the case of variations which have become fixed, an expression of the more energetic somatic habit of the male. a very noticeable expression of the anabolism of woman is her tendency to put on fat. "women, as a class, show a greater tendency to put on fat than men, and the tendency is particularly well marked at puberty, when some girls become phenomenally stout."[ ] the distinctive beauty of the female form is due to the storing of adipose tissue, and the form even of very slender women is gracefully rounded in comparison with that of man. bischoff found the following relation between muscle and fat in a man of , a woman of , and a boy of , all of whom died accidentally and in good physical condition: man woman boy muscle . . . fat . . . the steatopyga of the women of some races and the accumulation of adipose tissue late in life are quasi-pathological expressions of this tendency. in tracing the transition from lower to higher forms of life, we find a great change in the nature of the blood, or what answers to the blood, and the constitution of the blood is some index of the intensity of the metabolic processes going on within the organism. the sap of plants is thin and watery, corresponding with the preponderant anabolism of the plant. "blood is a peculiar kind of sap," and there is almost as much difference between this sap in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals as between the latter and plants. rich, red blood characterizes the forms of life fitted for activity and bursts of energy. in his exhaustive work on the blood hayem has given a summary of the results of the investigations of chemists and physiologists on the differences in the composition of the blood in the two sexes. contrary to the assertion of robin, hayem finds that the white blood-corpuscles are not more numerous in women than in men, and he also states that the number of hæmatoblasts is the same in the two sexes. all chemists are agreed, however, that the number of red corpuscles is greater in men than in women. nasse found in man . of iron to , and in woman only . . becquerel and rodier give . for man, . for woman, and schmidt, scherer, and others give similar results. welcker (using a chromometer) found between the corpuscles of man and woman the relation of to . , and hayem confirmed this by numeration. cadet found in woman on the average . million corpuscles per cubic millimeter, and in man . million. more recently korniloff, using still another method--the spectroscope of vierordt--has reached about the same result. the proportion of red blood-corpuscles varies according to individual constitution, race, and sex. in robust men lacanu found red corpuscles in , ; in weak men, only in , ; in robust women, only in , ; and in weak women, .[ ] professor jones has taken the specific gravity of the blood of above , individuals of all ages and of both sexes.[ ] an examination of his charts shows that the specific gravity of the male is higher than that of the female between the ages of and . between the ages of and the average specific gravity of the male is about , , and that of the female about , . . at years the specific gravity of the male begins to fall rapidly and that of the female to rise rapidly, and at they are almost equal; but the male remains slightly higher until years, when it falls below that of the female. the period of marked difference in the specific gravity of the blood is thus seen to be coincident with the period of menstruation in the female. a chart constructed by leichtenstern, based upon observations on individuals and showing variations in the amount of hæmoglobin with age, is also reproduced by professor jones, suggesting that the variations in specific gravity of the blood with age and sex are closely related to variations in the amount of hæmoglobin. leichtenstern states that the excess in men of hæmoglobin is per cent. until the tenth year, per cent. between and years, and per cent. after the fiftieth year.[ ] jones states further[ ] that the specific gravity is higher in persons of the upper classes and lower in the poorer classes. observations of boys who were inmates of workhouses gave a mean specific gravity of , . and on schoolboys a mean of , , while among the undergraduate students of cambridge university he found a mean of , . . several men of very high specific gravity in the last group had distinguished themselves in athletics. "workhouse boys are in most cases of poor physique, and one can hardly find a better antithesis than the general type of physique common among the athletic members of such a university as cambridge."[ ] there is no more conclusive evidence of an organic difference between man and woman than these tests of the blood. they permit us to associate a high specific gravity, red corpuscles, plentiful hæmoglobin, and a katabolic constitution. a comparison of the waste products of the body and of the quantity of materials consumed in the metabolic process indicates a relatively larger consumption of energy by man. it is stated that man produces more urine than woman in the following proportion: men, , to , grams daily; women, , to , grams. as age advances, the amount diminishes absolutely and relatively in proportion to the diminution of the energy of the metabolic process. a table prepared from adults of both sexes, twenty-five years of age, of the average weight of sixty kilograms, shows a larger proportion both of inorganic and organic substances in the urine of men.[ ] milne edwards has found that the bones of the male are slightly richer in inorganic substances than those of the female.[ ] the lung capacity of women is less, and they consume less oxygen and produce less carbonic acid than men of equal weight, although the number of respirations is slightly higher than in man. on this account women suffer deprivation of air more easily than men. they are not so easily suffocated, and are reported to endure charcoal fumes better, and live in high altitudes where men cannot endure the deprivation of oxygen.[ ] the number of deaths from chloroform is reckoned as from two to four times as great in males as in females, and this although chloroform is used in childbirth. children also bear chloroform well.[ ] women, like children, require more sleep normally than men, but "macfarlane states that they can better bear the loss of sleep, and most physicians will agree with him.... one of the greatest difficulties we have to contend with in nervous men is sleeplessness, a result, no doubt, of excessive katabolism."[ ] loss of sleep is a strain which, like gestation, women are able to meet because of their anabolic surplus. the fact that women undertake changes more reluctantly than men, but adjust themselves to changed fortunes more readily, is due to the same metabolic difference. man has, in short, become somatically a more specialized animal than woman, and feels more keenly any disturbance of normal conditions, while he has not the same physiological surplus as woman with which to meet the disturbance. lower forms of life have the remarkable quality of restoring a lost organ, and of living as separate individuals if divided. this power gradually diminishes as we ascend the scale of life, and is lost by the higher forms. it is a remarkable fact, however, that the lower human races, the lower classes of society, women and children, show something of the same quality in their superior tolerance of surgical disease. the indifference of savage races to wounds and loss of blood has everywhere been remarked by ethnologists. dr. bartels has formulated the law of resistance to surgical and traumatic treatment in the following sentence: "the higher the race, the less the tolerance, and the lower the culture-condition in a given race, the greater the tolerance."[ ] the greater disvulnerability of women is generally recognized by surgeons. the following figures from lawrie, malgaigne, and fenwick are representative:[ ] lawrie (glasgow) ============================================================== | men |deaths|| women |deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ pathological amputations...| cases| || cases| traumatic amputations......| " | || " | |---------+------++---------+------ total..................| cases| || cases| |----------------++---------------- |or, . deaths|| deaths | per || per -------------------------------------------------------------- a difference of . per cent. in favor of women. malgaigne (hospitals of paris) ============================================================== | men |deaths|| women |deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ major pathological amputa- | | || | tions................... | cases| || cases| minor pathological amputa- | | || | tions................... | cases| || cases| major traumatic amputations| " | || " | minor traumatic amputations| " | || " | |---------+------++--------+------ total..................| cases| || cases| |----------------++---------------- |or, . deaths|| . deaths | per || per -------------------------------------------------------------- a difference of . per cent. in favor of women. fenwick (newcastle, glasgow, edinburgh) ============================================================== | men |deaths|| women |deaths ---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------ amputations................| cases| || cases| |----------------++---------------- |or, . deaths|| deaths per | per || -------------------------------------------------------------- a difference of . per cent. in favor of women. total for the three series =============================================================== | men |deaths|| women |deaths ---------------------------+----------+------++---------+------ amputations................| cases| || cases| |-----------------++---------------- |or, . deaths || . deaths | per || per --------------------------------------------------------------- a difference of . per cent. in favor of women. legouest states in the same article that the lowest mortality of all is in children from to years of age. ellis quotes a passage from a paper read by lombroso at the international congress of experimental psychology held in london: billroth experimented on women when attempting a certain operation (excision of the pylorus) for the first time, judging that they were less sensitive and therefore more _disvulnerable_, i.e., better able to resist pain. carle assured me that women would let themselves be operated upon almost as though their flesh were an alien thing. giordano told me that even the pains of childbirth caused relatively little suffering to women, in spite of their apprehensions. dr. martini, one of the most distinguished dentists of turin, has informed me of the amazement he has felt at seeing women endure more easily and courageously than men every kind of dental operation. mela, too, has found that men will, under such circumstances, faint oftener than women.[ ] the same tolerance of pain and misery in women is shown by an examination of the number of male and female suicides from physical suffering. von oettingen states that in , cases the percentage of suicides from physical suffering was in men . , in women . ;[ ] and lombroso, following morselli, gives the following table representing the proportion out of a hundred suicides of each sex resulting from the same cause:[ ] ------------------------------------------------------ | men | women ----------------------------------+---------+---------- germany ( - ).................| . | . prussia ( - ).................| . | . saxony ( - )..................| . | . belgium...........................| . | . france ( - ) .................| . | . italy ( - )...................| . | . vienna ( - )..................| . | . vienna ( - )..................| . | . paris ( - )...................| . | . madrid ( ).....................| . | . ------------------------------------------------------ but these figures represent the numbers of suicides in each hundred of either sex, whereas suicide is three to four times as frequent among men as among women, and the absolute proportion of suicide among men from physical pain is, therefore, overwhelmingly great. still more significant is a table given by lombroso showing the percentage of suicides from want:[ ] ------------------------------------------------------ | men | women --------------------------------------+-------+------- germany ( - ).....................| . | . saxony ( - )......................| . | . belgium...............................| . | . italy ( - ).......................| . | . italy ( - ) (financial reverses)..| . | . norway ( - )......................| . | . vienna ( - )......................| . | . ------------------------------------------------------ but the excess of male suicides over females is so great that, reckoned absolutely, about one woman to seven or ten men is driven by want to take her life. physical suffering and want are among the motives which, constitutional differences aside, would appeal with about the same force to the two sexes. but the great excess both of suicide ( or men to woman) and of crime ( or men to woman) in men, while directly conditioned by a manner of life more subject to vicissitude and catastrophe, is still remotely due to the male, katabolic tendency which has historically eventuated in a life of this nature in the male. woman offers in general a greater resistance to disease than man. the following table from the registrar-general's report for [ ] gives the mortality in england per million inhabitants at all ages and for both sexes from to in a group of diseases chiefly affecting young children: ------------------------------------------------------ disease | year | male | female ----------------------------+---------+------+-------- smallpox....................| - | | measles.....................| - | | scarlet fever...............| - | | diphtheria..................| - | | croup.......................| - | | whooping-cough..............| - | | diarrhoea, dysentery........| - | | enteric fever...............| - | | ------------------------------------------------------ or, a total mortality of , per million for the males and , for the females. the greater fatality of diphtheria and whooping-cough in the female is attributed to the smaller larynx of girls, and to their habit of kissing. in diphtheria, indeed, the number of girls attacked is in excess of that of the boys, and it does not appear that their mortality is higher when this is considered.[ ] statistics based on nearly half a million deaths from scarlet fever in england and wales ( - ) show a mean annual in males of , and in females of , per million living.[ ] dr. farr reports on the mortality from cholera in the epidemic years of , , and , that the mean mortality from all causes in the three cholera years was, for males, . in excess, for females, . in excess of the average mortality to , living; so females suffered less than males.... the mortality is higher in boys than in girls at all ages under ; at the ages of reproduction, to , the mortality of women, many of them pregnant, exceeds the mortality of men; but at the ages after the mortality of men exceeds the mortality of women.[ ] statistics show that woman is more susceptible to many diseases, but in less danger than man when attacked, because of her anabolic surplus, and also that the greatest mortality in woman is during the period of reproduction, when the specific gravity of the blood is low and her anabolic surplus small. it is significant also that the point of highest mortality from disease and of the highest rate of suicide in the female, as compared with the male, falls at about years, and is to be associated with the rapid physiological changes preceding that time.[ ] the numerical relation of the sexes at birth seems to be more variable in those regions where economic conditions and social usages are least settled, but in civilized countries the relation is fairly constant, and statistics of countries and states between the years and show that to every girls boys are born, or including stillborn, girls to . boys.[ ] but the mortality of male children so much exceeds that of female that at the age of five the sexes are about in numerical equilibrium; and in the adult population of all european countries the average numerical relation of the sexes is reckoned as . women to men. von oettingen gives a representative table;[ ] compiled from statistics of eight european countries, showing that (omitting the stillborn) . boys to girls die before the end of the first year, and that between the years of and the proportion is . boys to girls; or, about per cent. excess of boys in the first year, and per cent. in the years between and . in the intra-uterine period and at the very threshold of life the mortality of males is still greater. the figures of wappaeus were stillborn girls to . boys; quetelet gave the proportion as : . ; and the statistics of fourteen european countries during the years - show that . boys were stillborn to every girls.[ ] so that, while more boys than girls are born living, still more are born dead. that this astonishingly high mortality is due in part to the somewhat larger size of boys at birth and the narrowness of the maternal pelvis is indicated by the statement of collins, of the rotunda lying-in hospital, dublin, that within half an hour after birth only female died to males; within the first hour females to males; and within the first hours, females to males.[ ] but that this explanation is not sufficient is shown by the fact that a high mortality of boys extends through the whole of the first year, and through five years, in a diminishing ratio, and also that the tenacity of woman on life, as will be shown immediately, is greater at every age than man's except during a period of about five years following puberty. "there must be," says ploss, "some cause which operates more energetically in the removal of male than of female children just before and after birth;"[ ] but, besides the more violent movement of boys and their greater size, no explanation of the cause has been advanced more acceptably than haushofer's teleological one, quoted by ploss, that nature wished to make a more perfect being of man and therefore threw more obstacles in his way. a satisfactory explanation is found if we regard the young female as more anabolic, and more quiescent, with a stored surplus of nutriment by which in the helpless and critical period of change from intra- to extra-uterine conditions it is able to get its adjustment to life. the constructive phase of metabolism has prevailed in them even during fetal life. that there is need of a surplus of nutrition in the child at birth, or that a surplus will stand it in good stead, is indicated by the results of the weighing of children communicated by winckel to the gynaecological society in berlin in . winckel weighed new-born children, boys and girls, showing that birth was uniformly followed by a loss of weight. the average diminution was about grams the first day, and but little less the second day. at the end of five days the loss was grams, six-sevenths of which occurred during the first two days.[ ] the tendency to decreased vitality in girls after maturity and before marriage, just referred to, must be associated with the katabolic changes implied in menstruation and the newness to the system of this destructive phase of metabolism. we should expect the death-rate of men to run high during the period of manhood, in consequence of their greater exposure to peril, hardship, and the storm and stress of life. but two tendencies operate to reduce the comparative mortality of men between the twentieth and about the fortieth year: the fact of the severe male mortality in infancy, which has removed the constitutionally weak contingent, and the fact that during this period women are subject to death in connection with childbirth. so that in the prime of life the mortality of males does not markedly exceed that of females. but the statistics of longevity show that with the approach of old age the number of women of a given age surviving is in excess of the men, and that their relative tenacity of life increases with increasing years. ornstein has shown, from the official statistics of greece from to , that in every period of five years between the ages of and years and upward a larger number of women survive than of men, and in the following proportion: ------------------------------------ years | men | women --------------------+-------+------- - | , | , - | | - | | - | | - | | and over | | ------------------------------------ of the centenarians were men and were women.[ ] in bavaria the women aged from to years alive in had lived in the aggregate more than seven million years, while the men of the same age had lived not so much as six and one-half million.[ ] turquan[ ] gives a table showing the death-rate of centenarians in all france during a period of twenty years ( - ). from this it appears that there died in these years an annual average of centenarians, of whom were men and women. in only one year of the twenty did the deaths of men exceed those of women. lombroso and ferrero have shown that between and the inhabitants of the prisons and convict establishments in italy who were over years of age showed a percentage of . among the women, and . among the men, although the number of men condemned to prison for long periods is far greater than among women. women are not only longer-lived than men, but have greater powers of resistance to misfortune and deep grief. this is a well-known law, which in the case of the female criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her longevity and the toughness with which she endures the hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... i know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the age of , having lived within those walls since they were without any grave injury to health.[ ] woman's resistance to death is thus more marked at the two extremes of life, infancy and old age, the periods in which her anabolism is uninterrupted. menstruation, reproduction, and lactation are at once the cause of an anabolic surplus and the means of getting rid of it. at the extremes of life no demand of this kind is made on woman, and her anabolic nature expresses itself at these times in greater resistance. dr. lloyd jones has determined that between and years of age the specific gravity of the blood of women is lower than that of men. in old women the specific gravity rises above that of old men, and he suggests that their greater longevity is due to this.[ ] no doubt the greater longevity of women is to be associated with the rise in specific gravity of their blood, but this rise in the specific gravity of women after years is consequent upon their anabolic constitution. high specific gravity in general is associated with abundant and rich nutrition; it falls in women during pregnancy, lactation, and menstruation, and when these functions cease it is natural that the constructive metabolic tendency on which they are dependent should show itself in a heightened specific gravity of the blood (i.e., greater richness), and in consequence greater longevity. some facts in the brain development of women point to the same conclusion. the growth of the brain is relatively more rapid in women than in men before the twentieth year. between and it has reached its maximum, and from that time there is a gradual decline in weight until about the fiftieth year, when there is an acceleration of growth, followed by a renewed diminution after the sixtieth year. the maximum of brain weight is almost reached by men at years, but there is a slow increase until or years. there is then a diminution until the fiftieth year, followed by an acceleration, and at years again a rapid diminution in weight; but the acceleration is more marked and the final diminution less marked in woman than in man.[ ] a table prepared by topinard shows that woman from to years of age has from to grams less brain weight than man, while her deficit from to years is from to grams.[ ] the only explanation at hand of this relative superiority of brain weight in old women is that with the close of the period of reproduction (the anabolic surplus being no longer consumed in the processes associated with reproduction) the constructive tendency still asserts itself, and a slight access of growth and vitality results to the organism. * * * * * it must be confessed that the testimony of anthropologists on the difference in variability of men and women is to be accepted with great caution. as a class they have gone on the assumption that woman is an inferior creation, and have almost totally neglected to distinguish between the congenital characters of woman and those acquired as the result of a totally different relation to society on the part of women and men. they have also failed to appreciate the fact that differences from man are not necessarily points of inferiority, but adaptations to different and specialized modes of functioning. but, whatever may be the final interpretation of details, i think the evidence is sufficient to establish the following main propositions: man consumes energy more rapidly; woman is more conservative of it. the structural variability of man is mainly toward motion; woman's variational tendency is not toward motion, but toward reproduction. man is fitted for feats of strength and bursts of energy; woman has more stability and endurance. while woman remains nearer to the infantile type, man approaches more to the senile. the extreme variational tendency of man expresses itself in a larger percentage of genius, insanity, and idiocy; woman remains more nearly normal. the fact that society is composed of two sexes, numerically almost equal, but differing in organic and social habits, is too significant to remain without influence on the structural and occupational sides of human life, and in the following chapters we shall note some of the influences of sex, and of the differences in bodily habit of men and women, on social forms and activities. sex and primitive social control the greater strength and restlessness of man and the more stationary condition of woman have a striking social expression in the fact that the earliest groupings of population were about the females rather than the males. while at a disadvantage in point of force when compared with the male, the female has enjoyed a negative superiority in the fact that her sexual appetite was not so sharp as that of the male. primitive man, when he desired a mate, sought her. the female was more passive and stationary. she exercised the right of choice, and had the power to transfer her choice more arbitrarily than has usually been recognized; but the need of protection and assistance in providing for offspring inclined her to a permanent union, and doubtless natural selection favored the groups in which parents co-operated in caring for the offspring. but assuming a relation permanent enough to be called marriage, the man was still, as compared with the woman, unsettled and unsocial. he secured food by violence or cunning, and hunting and fighting were fit expressions of his somatic habit. the woman was the social nucleus, the point to which he returned from his wanderings. in this primitive stage of society, however, the bond between woman and child was altogether more immediate and constraining than the bond between woman and man. the maternal instinct is reinforced by necessary and constant association with the child. we can hardly find a parallel for the intimacy of association between mother and child during the period of lactation; and, in the absence of domesticated animals or suitable foods, and also, apparently, from simple neglect formally to wean the child, this connection is greatly prolonged. the child is frequently suckled from four to five years, and occasionally from ten to twelve.[ ] in consequence we find society literally growing up about the woman. the mother and her children, and her children's children, and so on indefinitely in the female line, form a group. but the men were not so completely incorporated in this group as the women, not only because parentage was uncertain and naming of children consequently on the female side, but because the man was neither by necessity nor disposition so much a home-keeper as the women and their children. the tangential disposition of the male is expressed in the system of exogamy so characteristic of tribal life. the movement toward exogamy doubtless originates in the restlessness of the male, the tendency to make new co-ordinations, the stimulus to seek more unfamiliar women, and the emotional interest in making unfamiliar sexual alliances. but, quite aside from its origin, exogamy is an energetic expression of the male nature. natural selection favors the process by sparing the groups which by breeding out have heightened their physical vigor.[ ] there results from this a social condition which, from the standpoint of modern ideas, is very curious. the man makes, and, by force of convention, finally must make, his matrimonial alliances only with women of other groups; but the woman still remains in her own group, and the children are members of her group, while the husband remains a member of his own clan, and is received, or may be received, as a guest in the clan of his wife. upon his death his property is not shared by his children, nor by his wife, since these are not members of his clan; but it falls to the nearest of kin within his clan--usually to his sister's children. the maternal system of descent is found in all parts of the world where social advance stands at a certain level, and the evidence warrants the assumption that every group which advances to a culture state passes through this stage. morgan gives an account of this system among the iroquois: each household was made up on the principle of kin. the married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, were of the same gens or clan, the symbol or totem of which was often painted upon the house, while their husbands and the wives of their sons belonged to several other gentes. the children were of the gens of their mother. while husband and wife belonged to different gentes, the predominating number in each household would be of the same gens, namely, that of their mothers. as a rule the sons brought home their wives, and in some cases the husbands of the daughters were admitted to the maternal household. thus each household was composed of a mixture of persons of different gentes, but this would not prevent the numerical ascendency of the particular gens to whom the house belonged. in a village of one hundred and twenty houses, as the seneca village of tiotohatton described by mr. greenbalge in , there would be several houses belonging to each gens. it presented a general picture of the indian life in all parts of america at the epoch of european discovery.[ ] morgan also quotes rev. ashur wright, for many years a missionary among the senecas and familiar with their language and customs: as to their family system, when occupying the old log houses, it is probable that some one clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans, and sometimes for novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. the stores were in common, but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. no matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge, and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey; the house would become too hot for him, and, unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. the women were the great power among the clans as everywhere else. they did not hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns," so it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. the original nomination of the chiefs, also, always rested with them.[ ] traces of the maternal system are everywhere found on the american continent, and in some regions it is still in force. mcgee says of the seri stock of the southwest coast, now reduced to a single tribe, that the claims of a suitor are pressed by his female relatives, and, if the suit is favorably regarded by the mother and uncles of the girl, the suitor is provisionally installed in the house, without purchase price and presents. he is then expected to show his worthiness of a permanent relation by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and by showing himself an implacable foe to aliens. he must support all the female relatives of his bride's family by the products of his skill and industry in hunting and fishing for a year. he is the general protector of the girl's family, and especially of the girl, whose bower and pelican-skin couch he shares, "not as husband, but as continent companion," for a year. if all goes well, he is then permanently received as "consort-guest," and his children are added to the clan of his mother-in-law.[ ] with few exceptions, descent was formerly reckoned in australia in the female line, and the usage survives in some regions. howitt, in a letter to professor tylor, reports of the tribes near maryborough, queensland: when a man marries a woman from a distant locality, he goes to her tribelet and identifies himself with her people. this is a rule with very few exceptions. of course, i speak of them as they were in their wild state. he becomes a part of, and one of, the family. in the event of a war expedition, the daughter's husband acts as a blood-relation, and will fight and kill his own blood-relations, if blows are struck by his wife's relations. i have seen a father and son fighting under these circumstances, and the son would most certainly have killed the father, if others had not interfered.[ ] in australia there is also a very sharp social expression of the fact of sex in the division of the group into male and female classes in addition to the division into clans.[ ] in the malay archipelago the same system is found. among the padang malays the child always belongs to its mother's _suku_, and all blood-relationship is reckoned through the wife as the real transmitter of the family, the husband being only a stranger. for this reason his heirs are not his own children, but the children of his sister, his brothers, and other uterine relations; children are the natural heirs of their mother only.... we may assume that, wherever exogamy is now found coexisting with inheritance through the father (as among rejangs and bataks, the people of nias and timor, or the alfurs of ceram and buru), this was formerly through the mother; and that the other system has grown up out of dislike to the inconveniences arising from the insecure and dependent condition of the husband in the wife's family.[ ] in africa descent through females is the rule, with exceptions. the practice of the wamoima, where the son of the sister is preferred in legacies, because "a man's own son is only the son of his wife," is typical.[ ] battel reported that the state of loango was ruled by four princes, the sons of the former king's sister, since the own sons of the king never succeeded.[ ] traces of this system are found in china and japan, and it is still in full force in parts of india. among the kasias of northeast india the husband resides in the house of his wife, or visits her occasionally. laws of rank and property follow the strictest maternal type; when a couple separate, the children remain with the mother; the son does not succeed his father, but the raja's neglected offspring may become a common peasant or laborer; the sister's son succeeds to rank, and is heir to the property.[ ] male kinship prevails among the arabs, but professor robertson smith has discovered abundant evidence that the contrary practice prevailed in ancient arabia. the women of the jâhilîya, or some of them, had the right to dismiss their husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: if they lived in a tent, they turned it round, so that, if the door had faced east, it now faced west, and when the man saw this, he knew that he was dismissed, and did not enter.[ ] and after the establishment of the male system the women still held property--a survival from maternal times. a form of divorce pronounced by a husband was, "begone! for i will no longer drive thy flocks to the pasture."[ ] our evidence seems to show that, when something like regular marriage began, and a free tribeswoman had one husband or one definite group of husbands at a time, the husbands at first came to her and she did not go to them.[ ] numerous survivals of the older system are also found among the hebrews. the servant of abraham anticipated that the bride whom he was sent to bring for isaac might be unwilling to leave her home, and the presents which he carried went to rebekah's mother and brother.[ ] laban says to jacob, "these daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children;"[ ] the obligation to blood-vengeance rests apparently on the maternal kindred;[ ] samson's philistine wife remained among her people;[ ] and the injunction in gen. : , "therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive hebraic form of marriage.[ ] where the matriarchate prevails we naturally find no prejudice against marriage with a half-sister on the father's side, while union with a uterine sister is incestuous. sara was a half-sister of abraham on the father's side, and tamar could have married her half-brother amnon,[ ] though they were both children of david; and a similar condition prevailed in athens under the laws of solon.[ ] herodotus says of the lycians: ask a lycian who he is, and he will answer by giving his own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line. moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit all rights of citizenship.[ ] herodotus also relates that when darius gave to the wife of intaphernes permission to claim the life of a single man of her kindred, she chose her brother, saying that both husband and children could be replaced.[ ] the declaration of antigone in sophocles,[ ] that she would have performed for neither husband nor children the toil which she undertook for polynices, against the will of the citizens, indicates that the tie of a common womb was stronger than the social tie of marriage. the extraordinary honor, privilege, and proprietary rights enjoyed by ancient egyptian and babylonian wives[ ] are traceable to an earlier maternal organization. all ethnologists admit that descent through females has been very widespread, but some deny that this system has been universally prevalent at any stage of culture. those who have diminished its importance, however, have done so chiefly in reinforcement of their denials of the theory of promiscuity. it has been very generally assumed that maternal descent is due solely to uncertainty of paternity, and that an admission that the maternal system has been universal is practically an admission of promiscuity. opponents of this theory have consequently felt called upon to minimize the importance of maternal descent.[ ] but descent through females is not, in fact, fully explained by uncertainty of parentage on the male side. it is due to the larger social fact, including this biological one, that the bond between mother and child is the closest in nature, and that the group grew up about the more stationary female; and consequently the questions of maternal descent and promiscuity are by no means so inseparable as has commonly been assumed. we may accept sir henry maine's terse remark that "paternity is a matter of inference, as opposed to maternity, which is a matter of observation,"[ ] without concluding that society would have been first of all patriarchal in organization, even if paternity had been also a matter of observation. for the association of the woman with the child is immediate and perforce, but the immediate interest of the man is in the woman, through the power of her sexual attractiveness, and his interest in the child is secondary and mediated through her. this relation being a constant one, having its roots in the nature of sex rather than in the uncertainty of parentage, we may safely conclude that the so-called "mother-right" has everywhere preceded "father-right," and was the fund from which the latter was evolved. but while it is natural that the children and the group should grow up about the mother, it is not conceivable that woman should definitely or long control the activities of society, especially on their motor side. in view of his superior power of making movements and applying force, the male must inevitably assume control of the life direction of the group, no matter what the genesis of the group. it is not a difficult conclusion that, if woman's leaping, lifting, running, climbing, and slugging capacity is inferior to man's, by however slight a margin, her fighting capacity is less in the same degree; for battle is only an application of force, and there has never been a moment in the history of society when the law of might, tempered by sexual affinity, did not prevail. we must then, in fact, recognize a sharp distinction between the law of descent and the fact of authority. the male was everywhere present in primitive society, and everywhere made his force felt. we can see this illustrated most plainly in the animal group, where the male is the leader, by virtue of his strength. there is also a stage of human society which may be called the prematriarchal stage, from the fact that ideas of kinship are so feeble that no extensive social filiation is effected through this principle, in consequence of which the group has not reached the tribal stage of organization on the basis of kinship, but remains in the primitive biological relation of male, female, and offspring. the botocudos, fuegians, eskimos, west australians, bushmen, and veddahs represent this primitive stage more or less completely; they have apparently not reached the stage where the fact of kinship expresses itself in maternal organization. they live in scattered bands, held together loosely by convenience, safety, and inertia, and the male is the leader; but the leadership of the male in this case, as among animals, is very different from the organized and institutional expression of the male force in systems of political control growing out of achievement. this involves a social history through which these low tribes have not passed. organization cannot proceed very far in the absence of social mass, and the collection of social mass took place unconsciously about the female as a universal preliminary of the conscious synthetization of the mass through males. from the side of organization, the negative accretion of population about female centers and filiation through blood is very precious, since filiation based on relation to females prepares the way for organization based on motor activities.[ ] but in the prematernal stage, in the maternal stage, and in the patriarchal stage the male force was present and was the carrier of the social will. in the fully maternal system, indeed, the male authority is only thinly veiled, or not at all. filiation through female descent precedes filiation through achievement, because it is a function of somatic conditions, in the main, while filiation through achievement is a function of historical conditions. this advantage of maternal organization in point of time embarrasses and obscures the individual and collective expression of the male force, but under the veil of female nomenclature and in the midst of the female organization we can always detect the presence of the male authority. bachofen's conception of the maternal system as a political system was erroneous, as dargun and others have pointed out,[ ] though woman has been reinforced by the fact of descent, and has so figured somewhat in political systems. a most instructive example of the parallel existence of descent through females and of male authority is found in the wyandot tribe of indians, in which also the participation of woman in the regulative activities of society is, perhaps, more systematically developed than in any other single case among maternal peoples. major powell gives the following outline of the civil and military government of this tribe: the civil government inheres in a system of councils and chiefs. in each gens there is a council, composed of four women, called _yu-waí-yu-wá-na_. these four women councilors select a chief of the gens from its male members--that is, from their brothers and sons. this gentile chief is the head of the gentile council. the council of the tribe is composed of the aggregated gentile councils. the tribal council, therefore, is composed one-fifth of men and four-fifths of women. the sachem of the tribe, or tribal chief, is chosen by the chiefs of the gentes. there is sometimes a grand council of the gens, composed of the councilors of the gens proper and all the heads of households (women) and leading men--brothers and sons. there is also a grand council of the tribe, composed of the council of the tribe proper and the heads of households of the tribe, and all the leading men of the tribe.... the four women councilors of the gens are chosen by the heads of households, themselves being women. there is no formal election, but frequent discussion is had over the matter from time to time, in which a sentiment grows up within the gens and throughout the tribe that, in the event of the death of any councilor, a certain person will take her place. in this manner there are usually one, two, or more potential councilors in each gens, who are expected to attend all the meetings of the council, though they take no part in the deliberations and have no vote. when a woman is installed as a councilor, a feast is prepared by the gens to which she belongs, and to this feast all the members of the tribe are invited. the woman is painted and dressed in her best attire, and the sachem of the tribe places upon her head the gentile chaplet of feathers, and announces in a formal manner to the assembled guests that the woman has been chosen a councilor.... the gentile chief is chosen by the council women after consultation with the other women and men of the gens. often the gentile chief is a potential chief through a period of probation. during this time he attends the meetings of the council, but takes no part in the deliberations and has no vote. at his installation, the council women invest him with an elaborately ornamented tunic, place upon his head a chaplet of feathers, and paint the gentile totem upon his face.... the sachem of the tribe is selected by the men belonging to the council of the tribe. the management of military affairs inheres in the military council and chief. the military council is composed of all the able-bodied men of the tribe; the military chief is chosen by the council from the porcupine gens. each gentile chief is responsible for the military training of the youth under his authority. there are usually one or more potential military chiefs, who are the close companions and assistants of the chief in time of war and, in case of the death of the chief, take his place in the order of seniority.[ ] in this tribe the numerical recognition of women is striking, and indicates that they are the original core of society. they are still responsible for society, in a way, but all the offices involving motor activity are deputed to men. thus women, as heads of households, choose four women councilors of the clan (gens), and these choose the fifth member, who is a man and the head of the council and chief of the clan. the tribal chief is, however, chosen by males, and in the military organization, which represents the group capacity for violence, the women have not even a nominal recognition. the real authority rests with those who are most fit to exercise it. female influence persists as a matter of habit, until, under the pressure of social, particularly of military, activities, the breaking-up of the habit and a new accommodation follows the accumulation of a larger fund of social energy. the men of any group are at any time in possession of the force to change the habits of the group and push aside any existing system. but the savage is not revolutionary; his life and his social sanctions are habitual. he is averse to change as such, and retains form and rite after their meaning is lost. we consequently find an expression of social respect for woman under the maternal system suggestive of chivalry, and even a formal elevation of women to authority in groups where the actual control is in the hands of men. in the mariana islands the position of woman was distinctly superior; even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on marriage, the wife dictated everything and the man could undertake nothing without her approval; but, if the woman committed an offense, the man was held responsible and suffered the punishment. the women could speak in the assembly, they held property, and if a woman asked anything of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. if a wife was unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her property, and kill the adulterer; but if the man was guilty, or even suspected of the same offense, the women of the neighborhood destroyed his house and all his visible property, and the owner was fortunate if he escaped with a whole skin; and if a wife was not pleased with her husband, she withdrew, and a similar attack followed. on this account many men were not married, preferring to live with paid women. likewise, in the gilbert islands a man shows the same respect to a woman as to a chief, by stepping aside when he meets her. if a man strikes a woman, the other women drive him from the tribe. on lukunor the men used, in conversation with women, not the usual, but a deferential form of language.[ ] the discoverers of the friendly islands found there a king in authority over the people, and his wife in control of the king, receiving homage from him, but not ruling.[ ] in these and similar cases woman's early relation to the household is formally retained in the larger group and in the presence of an obviously masculine form of organization. but, in contrast with the survival in political systems of the primitive respect shown mothers, we find the assertion of individual male force within the very bosom of the maternal organization, in the person of the husband, brother, or uncle of the woman. among the caribs "the father or head of the household exerts unlimited authority over his wives and children, but this authority is not founded on legal rights, but upon his physical superiority."[ ] in spite of the maternal system in north america, the women were often roughly handled by their husbands. schoolcraft says of the kenistenos: "when a young man marries, he immediately goes to live with the father and mother of his wife, who treat him, nevertheless, as an entire stranger till after the birth of his first child." but it appears that chastity is considered by them as a virtue ... and it sometimes happens that the infidelity of a wife is punished by the husband with the loss of her hair, nose, or perhaps life. such severity proceeds, perhaps, less from rigidity of virtue than from its having been practiced without his permission; for a temporary interchange of wives is not uncommon, and the offer of their persons is considered as a necessary part of the hospitality due to strangers.[ ] schoolcraft also says of the women of the chippeways, among whom the maternal system had given way: they are very submissive to their husbands, who have however, their fits of jealousy; and for very trifling causes treat them with such cruelty as sometimes to occasion their death. they are frequently objects of traffic, and the father possesses the right of disposing of his daughter.[ ] indian fathers also frequently sold their children, without any show of right. "kane mentions that the shastas ... frequently sell their children as slaves to the chinooks."[ ] bancroft says of the columbians: "affection for children is by no means rare, but in few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell or gamble them away."[ ] descent through mothers is in force among the negroes of equatorial africa, the man's property passing to his sister's children; but the father is an unlimited despot, and no one dares to oppose him. so long as his relation with his wives continues, he is master of them and of their children. he can even sell the latter into slavery.[ ] in new britain maternal descent prevails, but wives are obtained by purchase or capture, and are practically slaves; they are cruelly treated, carry on agriculture, and bear burdens which make them prematurely stooped, and are likely, if their husbands are offended, to be killed and eaten.[ ] in many regions of australia women are treated with extreme brutality, when their work is not satisfactory, or the husband has any other cause for offense. in victoria the men often break their staves over the heads of the women, and skulls of women have been found in which knitted fractures indicated former ill-treatment. in cape york the women are beaten, and in the interior an angry native burned his wife alive. in the adelaide dialect the phrase "owner of a woman" means husband. when a man dies, his uterine brother inherits his wife and children.[ ] where under an exogamous system of marriage a man is forced to go outside his group to obtain a wife, he may do this either by going over to her group, by taking possession of her violently, or by offering her and the members of her group sufficient inducements to relinquish her; and the contrasted male and female disposition is expressed in all the forms of marriage incident to the exogamous system. every exogamous group is naturally reluctant to relinquish its women, both because it has in them laborers and potential mothers whose children will be added to the group, and because, in the event of their remaining in the group after marriage, their husbands become additional defenders and providers within the group. where the husband is to settle in the family of the wife, a test is consequently often made of his ability as a provider. among the zuni indians there is no purchase price, no general exchange of gifts; but as soon as the agreement is reached, the young man must undertake certain duties: he must work in the field of his prospective mother-in-law, that his strength and industry may be tested; he must collect fuel and deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase and slay the deer, and make from an entire buckskin a pair of moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting, skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and, finally, he must fabricate or obtain for the maiden's use a necklace of seashell or of silver, in order that his capacity for long journeys or successful barter may be established; but if circumstances prevent him from performing these duties actually, he may perform them symbolically, and such performance is usually acceptable to the elder people. after these preliminaries are completed, he is formally adopted by his wife's parents, yet remains merely a perpetual guest, subject to dislodgment at his wife's behest, though he cannot legally withdraw from the covenant; if dissatisfied, he can only so ill-treat his wife or children as to compel his expulsion.[ ] this practice is seen in a symbolical form where presents are required of the suitor before marriage and their equivalent returned later. by depositing goods accumulated through his activities he demonstrates his ability as a provider, without undergoing a formal test. this practice is reported of the indians of oregon: the suitor never, in person, asks the parents for their daughter; but he sends one or more friends, whom he pays for their services. the latter sometimes effect their purposes by feasts. the offer generally includes a statement of the property which will be given for the wife to the parents, consisting of horses, blankets, or buffalo robes. the wife's relations always raise as many horses (or other property) for her dower as the bridegroom has sent the parents, but scrupulously take care not to turn over the same horses or the same articles.... this is the custom alike of the walla-wallas, nez-percés, cayuse, waskows, flatheads, and spokanes.[ ] in patagonia the usual custom is for the bridegroom, after he has secured the consent of his damsel, to send either a brother or some intimate friend to the parents, offering so many mares, horses, or silver ornaments for the bride. if the parents consider the match desirable, as soon after as circumstances will permit, the bridegroom, dressed in his best, and mounted on his best horse, proceeds to the toldo of his intended, and hands over the gifts; the parents then return gifts of equivalent value, which, however, in the event of a separation are the property of the bride.[ ] marriage by capture is an immediate expression of male force. like marriage by settlement in the house of the wife, it is an expedient for obtaining a wife outside the group where marriage by purchase is not developed, or where the suitor cannot offer property for the bride. it is an unsocial procedure and does not persist in a growing society, for it involves retaliation and blood-feud. but it is a desperate means of avoiding the constraint and embarrassment of a residence in the family and among the relatives of the wife, where the power of the husband is hindered, and the male disposition is not satisfied in this matter short of personal ownership. the man also sometimes lives under the maternal system in regular marriage, but escapes its disadvantages by stealing a supplementary wife or purchasing a slave woman, over whom and whose children he has full authority. in the babar archipelago, where the maternal system persists, even in the presence of marriage by purchase (the man living in the house of the woman, and the children reckoned with the mother), it is considered highly honorable to steal an additional wife from another group, and in this case the children belong to the father.[ ] among the kinbundas of africa children belong to the maternal uncle, who has the right to sell them, while the father regards as his children in fact the offspring of a slave woman, and these he treats as his personal property. to the same effect, among the wanyamwesi, south of the victoria nyanza, the children of a slave wife inherit, to the exclusion of children born of a legal wife. and husbands among the fellatahs are in the habit of adopting children, though they may have sons or daughters of their own, and the adopted children inherit the property.[ ] in indonesia a man sometimes marries a woman and settles in her family, and the children belong to her. but he may later carry her forcibly to his own group, and the children then belong to him.[ ] bosman relates that in guinea religious symbolism was also introduced by the husband to reinforce and lend dignity to this action. the maternal system held with respect to the chief wife: it was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife a slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at pleasure, who had no kindred that could interfere for her, and to consecrate her to his bossum or god. the bossum wife, slave as she had been, ranked next to the chief wife, and was like her exceptionally treated. she alone was very jealously guarded, she alone was sacrificed at her husband's death. she was, in fact, wife in a peculiar sense. and having, by consecration, been made of the kindred and worship of her husband, her children would be born of his kindred and worship.[ ] altogether the most satisfactory means of removing a girl from her group is to purchase her. the use of property in the acquisition of women is not a particular expression of the male nature, since property is accumulated by females as well; but where this form of marriage exists it means practically that the male relatives of the girl are using her for profit, and that her suitor is seeking more complete control of her than he can gain in her group; and viewed in this light the purchase and sale of women is an expression of the dominant nature of the male. in consequence of purchase, woman became in barbarous society a chattel, and her socially constrained position in history and the present hindrances to the outflow of her activities are to be traced largely to the system of purchasing wives. the simplest form of purchase is to give a woman in exchange. "the australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or wives either as the survivor of a married elder brother or in exchange for his sisters, or, later in life, for his daughters."[ ] a wife is also often sold on credit, but kept at home until the price is paid. on the island of serang a youth belongs to the family of the girl, living according to her customs and religion until the bride-price is paid. he then takes both wife and children to his tribe. but in case he is very poor, he never pays the price, and remains perpetually in the tribe of his wife.[ ] among the kwakiutl indians of british columbia the maternal has only barely given way to the paternal system, and the form of marriage reflects both systems. the suitor sends a messenger with blankets, and the number sent is doubled within three months, making in all about one hundred and fifty. these are to be returned later. he is then allowed to live with the girl in her father's house. three months later the husband gives perhaps a hundred blankets more for permission to take his wife home.[ ] among the makassar and beginese stems of indionesia the purchase of a wife involves only a partial relinquishment of the claim of the maternal house on the girl; the purchase price is paid by instalments and all belongs to the mother's kindred in case full payment is not made. a compromise between the two systems is made on the molucca islands, where children born before the bride-price is paid belong to the mother's side, after that to the father's.[ ] so long as a wife remained in her group, she could rely upon her kindred for protection against ill-usage from her husband, but she forfeited this advantage when she passed to his group. an arabian girl replies to her father, when a chief seeks her in marriage: "no! i am not fair of face, and i have infirmities of temper, and i am not his _bint'amm_ (tribeswoman), so that he should respect my consanguinity with him, nor does he dwell in thy country, so that he should have regard for thee; i fear then that he may not care for me and may divorce me, and so i shall be in an evil case."[ ] the hassanyeh arabs of the white nile region in egypt afford a curious example of the conflict of male and female interests in connection with marriage, in which the female passes by contract for only a portion of her time under the authority of the male: when the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. the woman's mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into consideration, with a due regard for the feelings of the family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week. after a great deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part of the relatives of the man to pay more, it is arranged that the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz.: monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday; and, in compliance with old-established custom, the marriage rites during the three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by enjoying her freedom and independence from all observation of matrimonial obligations.[ ] we may understand also that the tolerance of loose conduct in girls before marriage--a tolerance which amounts in many tribes to approval--is due to the tribal recognition of the value of children, and children born out of marriage are added to the family of the mother. when, on the other hand, the conduct of the girl is strictly watched, this is from a consideration that virgins command a higher bride-price. child-marriages and long betrothals are means of guaranteeing the proper conduct of a girl to her husband, as they constitute a personal claim and afford him an opportunity to throw more restrictions about her. so that, in any case, the conduct of the girl is viewed with reference to her value to the tribe. a social grouping which is not the product of forces more active in their nature than the reproductive force may be expected to yield before male motor activities, when these are for any reason sufficiently formulated. the primitive warrior and hunter comes into honor and property through a series of movements involving judgments of time and space, and the successful direction of force, aided by mechanical appliances and mediated through the hand and the eye. whether directed against the human or the animal world, the principle is the same; success and honor and influence in tribal life depend on the application of violence at the proper time, in the right direction, and in sufficient measure; and this is pre-eminently the business of the male. the advantage of acting in concert in war and hunting, and under the leadership of those who have shown evidence of the best judgment in these matters, is felt in any body of men who are held together by any tie; and the first tie is the tie of blood, by which we should understand, not that primitive man has any sentimental feeling about kinship, but that he is psychologically inseparable from those among whom he was born and with whom he has to do. though the father's sense of kinship and interest in his children is originally feeble, it increases with the growth of consciousness in connection with various activities, and, at the point in race development when chieftainship is hereditary in the clan and personal property is recognized, the father realizes the awkwardness of a social system which reckons his children as members of another clan and forces him to bequeath his rank and possessions to his sister's children, or other members of his own group, rather than to his children. the navajoes[ ] and nairs,[ ] and ancient egyptians[ ] avoided this unpleasant condition by giving their property to their children during their own lifetime; and the shawnees, miamis, sauks, and foxes avoided it by naming the children into the clan of the father, giving a child a tribal name being equivalent to adoption.[ ] the cleverest bit of primitive politics of which we have record is the device employed in ancient peru, and surviving in historical times in egypt and elsewhere in the east, by which the ruler married his own sister, contrary to the exogamous practice of the common folk. the children might then be regularly reckoned as of the kin of the mother, indeed, but they were at the same time of and in the group of the father, and the king secured the succession of his own son by marrying the woman whose son would traditionally succeed. as we should expect, the desirability of modifying the system of descent and inheritance through females is felt first in connection with situations of honor and profit. at the time of the discovery of the hawaiian islands the government was a brutal despotism, presenting many of the features of feudalism; the people prostrated themselves before the king and before objects which he had touched, and a man suffered death whose shadow fell upon the king, or who went uncovered within the shadow of the king's house, or even looked upon the king by day.[ ] but descent was in the female line, with a tendency to transfer to the male line in case of the king, and among chiefs, priests, and nobility.[ ] this assertion of the male authority was sometimes resented, however, and was a source of frequent trouble. wilkes states that there was formerly no regularly established order of succession to the throne; the children of the chief wife had the best claim, but the king often named his own successor, and this gave rise to violent conflicts.[ ] blood-brotherhood, blood-vengeance, secret societies, tribal marks (totemism, circumcision, tattooing, scarification), and religious dedication are devices by which, consciously or unconsciously, the men escape from the tyranny of the maternal system. we cannot assume that these practices originate solely or largely in dissatisfaction, for the men would feel the advantage of a combination of interests whenever brought into association with one another; but these artificial bonds and their display to the eye are among the first attempts to synthetize the male forces of the group, and it is quite apparent that such unions are unfavorable to the continuance of the influence of women and of the system which they represent. in west africa and among some of the negro tribes the initiatory ceremony is apparently deliberately hostile to the maternal organization. the youth is taken from the family of his mother, symbolically killed and buried, resurrected by the priests into a male organization, and dedicated to his father's god.[ ] spatial conditions have played an important rôle also in the development of societies. through movements the individual or the group is able to pick and choose advantageous relations, and by changing its location adjust itself to changes in the food conditions. that the success of the group is definitely related to its motor capacity is revealed by the following law of population, worked out by statisticians for the three predominant races of modern europe: in countries inhabited jointly by these three races, the race possessing the smallest portion of wealth and the smallest representation among the more influential and educated classes constitutes also the least migratory element of the population, and tends in the least degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile regions of the country; and in countries inhabited jointly by the three races, the race possessing the largest portion of wealth and the largest representation among the more influential and educated classes is also the most migratory element of the population, and tends in the greatest degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile portions of the country.[ ] the primitive movements of population necessitated by climatic change, geological disturbances, the failure of water or exhaustion of the sources of food, were occasions for the expression of the superior motor disposition of the male and for the dislodgment of the female from her position of advantage. we know that the migrations of the natural races are necessary and frequent, and the movements of the culture races have been even more complex. the leadership of these mass-movements and spatial reaccommodations necessarily rests with the men, who, in their wanderings, have become acquainted with larger stretches of space; and whose specialty is motor co-ordination. the progressive races have managed the space problem best. at every favorable point they have pushed out their territorial boundaries or transferred their social activities to a region more favorable to their expansion. under male leadership, in consequence, territory has always become the prize in every conflict of races; the modern state is based not on blood but on territory, and territory is at present the reigning political ideal. in the process of coming into control of a larger environment through the motor activities of the male, the group comes into collision with other groups within which the same movement is going on, and it then becomes a question which group can apply force more destructively and remove or bring under control this human portion of its environment. military organization and battle afford the grand opportunity for the individual and mass expression of the superior force-capacity of the male. they also determine experimentally which groups and which individuals are superior in this respect, and despotism, caste, slavery, and the subjection of women are concrete expressions of the trial. the nominal headship of woman within the maternal group existed only in default of forms of activity fit to formulate headship among the men, and when chronic militancy developed an organization among the males, the political influence of the female was completely shattered. at a certain point in history women became an unfree class, precisely as slaves became an unfree class--because neither class showed a superior fitness on the motor side; and each class is regaining its freedom because the race is substituting other forms of decision for violence. sex and social feeling an examination of the early habits of man and an analysis of the instincts which persist in him show that he has been essentially a predaceous animal, fighting his way up at every step of the struggle for existence. it therefore becomes a point of considerable interest to determine what influences have contributed to soften his behavior and make it possible for him to dwell in harmony and co-operation with large groups of his fellows. we, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready to burst at any moment into flame, the smouldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.... if evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important of man's primitive functions, the fighting and the chasing instincts _must_ have become ingrained. certain perceptions _must_ immediately, and without the intervention of inferences and ideas, have prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both the latter must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and therefore when unchecked of an intensely pleasurable kind. it is just because bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a fight or a hunt is promised as a part of the fun.... no! those who try to account for this from above downwards, as if it resulted from the consequences of the victory being rapidly inferred, and from the agreeable sensations associated with them in the imagination, have missed the root of the matter. our ferocity is blind and can only be explained from _below_. could we trace it back through our lines of descent, we should see it taking more and more the form of a fatal reflex response, and at the same time becoming more and more the pure and direct emotion that it is.[ ] if we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of elation and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to instincts developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates. we can perhaps best get at the meaning of the conflict interest to the organism in terms of the significance to itself or the organism's own movements. locomotion, of whatever type, is primarily to enable the animal to reach and grasp food, and also to escape other animals bent on finding food. the structure of the organism has been built up gradually through the survival of the most efficient structures. corresponding with a structure mechanically adapted to successful movements, there is developed on the psychic side an interest in the conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the structure itself. the emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations for action, corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or retreat, and a connection has even been made out between pleasurable states and the extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor muscles. we can have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the experiments made in nature before the development of these types of structure and interest of the conflict pattern, but we know from the geological records that the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so sharp, that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life of conflict, competition, and rivalry. there could not have been developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or precarious situation. a type without this interest would have been defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development. there has been comparatively little change in human structure or human interest in historical times. it is a popular view that moral and cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts; but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed; and while objects of attention and interest in different historical periods are different, we shall never get far away from the original types of stimulus and reaction. it is, indeed, a condition of normal life that we should not get too far away from them. the fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations which arouse them most readily. war is simply an organized form of fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses the interests powerfully. with the accumulation of property, and the growth of sensibility and intelligence, it becomes apparent that war is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests lead us to avoid it as much as possible. but, however genuinely war may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. the rough riders in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the aristocracy of england, went to war from motives of patriotism, no doubt; but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a lifetime. and there is evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude of women toward war is no less intense. grey[ ] relates that half a dozen old women among the australians will drive the men to war with a neighboring tribe over a fancied injury. the jewish maidens went out with music and dancing, and sang that saul had slain his thousands, but david his ten thousands. two american women who passed through the horrors of the siege of pekin were, on their return, given a reception by their friends, and the daily press reported that they exhibited among other trophies "a boxer's sword with the blood still on the blade, which was taken from the body of a boxer killed by the legation guards; and a boxer spear with which a native christian girl was struck down in legation street." it is not necessary to regard as morbid or vulgar the action of these ladies in bringing home reminders of their peril. on the contrary, it is a sign of continued animal health and instinct in the race to feel deep interest in perilous situations and pleasure in their revival in consciousness. "unaccommodated man" was, to begin with, in relations more hostile than friendly. the struggle for food was so serious a fact, and predaceousness to such a degree the habit of life, that a suspicious, hostile, and hateful state of mind was the rule, with exceptions only in the cases where truce, association, and alliance had come about in the course of experience. this was still the state of affairs in so advanced a stage of development as the indian society of north america, where a tribe was in a state of war with every tribe with which it had not made a treaty of peace; and it is perhaps true, generally speaking, of men today, that they regard others with a degree of distrust and aversion until they have proved themselves good fellows. what, indeed, would be the fate of a man on the streets of a city if he did otherwise? there has, nevertheless, grown up an intimate relation between man and certain portions of his environment; and this includes, not only his wife and children, his dog and his blood-brother, but, with lessening intensity, the members of his clan, tribe, and nation. these become, psychologically speaking, a portion of himself, and stand with him against the world at large. from the standpoint here outlined, prejudice or its analogue is the starting-point, and our question becomes one of the determination of the steps of the process by which man mentally allied with himself certain portions of his environment to the exclusion of others. if we look for an explanation of the hostility which a group feels for another group, and of the sympathy which its members feel for one another, we may first of all inquire whether there are any conditions arising in the course of the biological development of a species which, aside from social activities, lead to a predilection for those of one's own kind and a prejudice against different groups. and we do, in fact, find such conditions. the earliest movements of animal life involve, in the rejection of stimulations vitally bad, an attitude which is the analogue of prejudice. on the principle of chemiotaxis, the micro-organism will approach a particle of food placed in the water and shun a particle of poison; and its movements are similarly controlled by heat, light, electricity, and other tropic forces.[ ] the development of animal life from this point upward consists in the growth of structure and organs of sense adapted to discriminate between different stimulations, to choose between the beneficial and prejudicial, and to obtain in this way a more complete control of the environment. passing over the lower forms of animal life, we find in the human type the power of attention, memory, and comparison highly developed, so that an estimate is put on stimulations and situations correspondent with the bearing of stimulations or situations of this type on welfare in the past. the choice and rejection involved in this process are accompanied by organic changes (felt as emotions) designed to assist in the action which follows a decision.[ ] both the judgment and the emotions are thus involved in the presentation to the senses of a situation or object involving possible advantage or hurt, pleasure or pain. it consequently transpires that the feelings called out on the presentation of disagreeable objects and their contrary are very different, and there arise in this connection fixed mental attitudes corresponding with fixed or habitually recurrent external situations--hate and love, prejudice and predilection--answering to situations which revive feelings of pain on the one hand, and feelings of pleasure on the other. and such is the working of suggestion that, not alone an object or situation may produce a given state of feeling, but a voice, an odor, a color, or any characteristic sign of an object may produce the same effect as the object itself. the sight or smell of blood is an excitant to a bull, because it revives a conflict state of feeling, and even the color of a red rag produces a similar effect. when we come to examine in detail the process by which an associational and sympathetic relation is set up between the individual and certain parts of the outside world to the exclusion of others, we find this at first, on a purely instinctive and reflex basis, originating in connection with food-getting and reproduction, and growing more conscious in the higher forms of life. one of the most important origins of association and prepossession is seen in the relation of parents, particularly of mothers, to children. this begins, of course, among the lower animals. the mammalian class, in particular, is distinguished by the strength and persistence of the devotion of parents to offspring. the advantage secured by the form of reproduction characteristic of man and the other mammals is that a closer connection is secured between the child and the mother. by the intra-uterine form of reproduction the association of mother and offspring is set up in an organic way before the birth of the latter, and is continued and put on a social basis during the period of lactation and the early helpless years of the child. by continuing the helpless period of the young for a period of years, nature has made provision on the time side for a complex physical and mental type, impossible in types thrown at birth on their own resources. along with the structural modification of the female on account of the intra-uterine form of reproduction and the effort of nature to secure a more complex type and a better chance of survival, there is a corresponding development of the sentiments, and maternal feeling, in particular, is developed as the subjective condition necessary to carrying out the plan of giving the infant a prolonged period of helplessness and play through which its faculties are developed.[ ] the scheme would not work if the mother were not more interested in the child than in anything else in the world. in the course of development every variational tendency in mothers to dote on their children was rewarded by the survival of these children, and the consequent survival of the stock, owing to better nutrition, protection, and training. of course, this inherited interest in children is shared by the males of the group also, though not in the same degree, and there is reason to believe also that the interest of the male parent in children is acquired in a great degree indirectly and socially through his more potent desire to associate with the mother. this interest and providence on the score of offspring has also a characteristic expression on the mental side. all sense-perceptions are colored and all judgments biased where the child is in question, and affection for it extends to the particular marks which distinguish it. not only its physical features, but its dress and little shoes, its toys and everything it has touched take on a peculiar aspect. on the organic side, therefore, there is developed a tendency, both in connection with reactions to stimulations in general and in connection with reproductive life in particular, to seize on particular aspects and to be obsessed by them to the exclusion or disparagement of other aspects. the feelings of love and hate, and the broader feelings of race-prejudice and patriotism are consequently based first of all in the instincts. perhaps the most particular and interesting expression of the general fact of susceptibility is seen in the sensitiveness of man to the opinion in which he is held by others. social life in every stage of society is characterized by an eagerness to make a striking effect. a bare reference to the ethnological facts in this connection will suffice: the kite indians have a society of young men so brave and so ostentatious of their bravery that they will not fight from cover nor turn aside to avoid running into an ambuscade or a hole in the ice. the african has the privilege of cutting a gash six inches long in his thigh for every man he has killed. the melanesian who is planning revenge sets up a stick or stone where it can be seen; he refuses to eat, and stays away from the dance; he sits silent in the council and answers questions by whistling and by other signs draws attention to himself and has it understood that he is a brave and dangerous man, and that he is biding his time.[ ] this bidding for the good opinion of others has plainly a connection with food-getting, and with the conflict side of life. high courage is praised and valued by society, and a man of courage is less imposed on by others, and comes in for substantial recognition and the favor of women. it is thus of advantage to act in such a way as to get public approval and some degree of appreciation; and a degree of sensibility on the score of the opinion of others, or at least a reckoning upon this, is involved in the process of personal adjustment. but the problem of personal adjustment at this point would seem to call for more of intelligence than emotion; and we find, on the contrary, an excess of sensibility and a mania for being well thought of hardly to be explained as originating in the exigencies of tribal organization, nor yet on the score of its service to the individual in getting his food and living out his life. why could not primitive man live in society, be of the war-parties, plan ambuscades, develop his fighting technique and gear, be a blood-brother to another man, show his trophies, set a high value on his personality, and insist on recognition and respect, without this almost pathological dependence on the praise and blame of others? or if we approach the question from another standpoint and inspect our states of consciousness, we find signs that we have a greater fund of sensibility than is justified in immediate activity. we have the same mania to be well thought of; we are unduly interested when we hear that others have been talking about us; we are annoyed, even furious, at a slight criticism, and are childishly delighted by a compliment (without regard to our deserts); and children and adults alike understand how to put themselves forward and get notice, and equally well how to get notice by withdrawing themselves and staying away or out of a game. we have a tendency to show off which is not apparently genetically connected with exploit or organization, and we recognize that this form of vanity is not consistent with the ordinary run of our activities when we argue with ourselves that the opinion of this or that person is of no consequence and attempt to think ourselves into a state of indifference. intellectually and deliberately our attitude toward criticism from others would often be, if we could choose, represented by tweed's query: "what are you going to do about it?" but actually it puts us to bed. all of this seems to indicate that there is an element in sensibility not accounted for on the exploit or food side, and this element is, i believe, genetically connected with sexual life. unlike the struggle for existence in the ordinary sense of the phrase, the courtship of the sexes presents a situation in which an appeal is made for the favor of another personality, and the success of this appeal has a survival value--not for the individual, but for the species through the individual. we have, in fact, a situation in which the good opinion of another is vitally important. on this account the means of attracting and interesting others are definitely and bountifully developed among all the higher species of animals. voice, plumage, color, odor, and movement are powerful excitants in wooing and aids both to the conquest of the female and the attraction of the male. in this connection we must also recognize the fact that reproductive life must be connected with violent stimulation, or it would be neglected and the species would become extinct; and, on the other hand, if the conquest of the female were too easy, sexual life would be in danger of becoming a play interest and a dissipation, destructive of energy and fatal to the species. working, we may assume, by a process of selection and survival, nature has both secured and safeguarded reproduction. the female will not submit to seizure except in a high state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a marvelous display of technique for this purpose. this is offset by the coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and fascinates the male and practices upon him to induce a corresponding state of nervous excitation.[ ] this is the only situation in the life of the lower animals, at any rate, where the choice of another is vitally important; and corresponding with the elaborate technique to secure this choice we have in wooing pleasure-pain reactions of a violent character. in a word, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of another answers on the subjective side to technique for the conquest of a member of the opposite sex. it seems, therefore, that we are justified in concluding that our vanity and susceptibility have their origin largely in sexual life, and that, in particular, our susceptibility to the opinion of others and our dependence on their good will are genetically referable to sexual life. this view would be completely substantiated if we could show that the qualities of vanity and susceptibility in question are present in any species where it is impossible to assume that they were developed in connection with the struggle for food and as the result of the survival of types showing a tendency to combine and co-operate in the effort to get food. and we do, in fact, have cases of this kind among some of the lower animals. it cannot be said that the dog, for instance, has survived in the struggle for existence because of his sensitiveness to public opinion in his species nor on account of an interest in being well thought of by the community of dogs at large which would lead him to behave in a public-spirited or moral manner. at the same time, the dog in his relation to man shows as keen a sensitiveness to man's opinion and treatment as does man himself. the attention which the master pays to one dog will almost break the heart of a dog not receiving it. a neglected dog plainly suffers as much in his way as the soldier who is sent to coventry by his messmates; and if neglected and jealous dogs do not commit suicide, as they are reported to do, they are evidently in a state of mind to do so. this means that the dog has highly developed susceptibility to the appreciation of others, and that the species which he represents has had no history except a sexual history capable of developing this mental attitude. in connection with courtship he developed a fund of organic susceptibility, and this condition is involved in his more general relation to man; the machinery set up in sexual relations is played on by stimuli in general. a condition favorable to stimuli of a particular kind is favorable to stimuli in general; and it seems likely that this not very prominent fact of a state of excitation in a sexual connection is an important factor in the formation of the mind and of society. there are also certain conditions in the development of the individual and of society where the sexual type of reaction is so near the surface that it shows through in connection with political, moral, and other essentially non-sexual activities. passing over the fact that the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of "susceptibility" and personal vanity, we may take as an example of the intrusion or persistence of the sexual element in conditions of a non-sexual kind the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement.[ ] the appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to overcome the hesitancy of the female. in each case the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic, and pleading kind. in the effort to make a moral adjustment, it consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual manifestations. the emotional forms used and the emotional states aroused are not entirely stripped of their sexual content. on the race side, also, there is a stage in development where the sexual pattern is transferred almost unmodified to public affairs. the following extracts from a lengthy description given by mr. bowdich of his reception by the king of ashanti, in the year , will illustrate sufficiently the employment of the turkey-cock pattern of activity in political relations: the sun was reflected with a glare scarcely more supportable than the heat from massive gold ornaments which glistened in every direction. more than a hundred bands burst at once on our arrival, with the peculiar airs of their several chiefs; the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for a while to the soft breathings of their long flutes.... at least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies, which could shelter thirty persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers with brilliant effect, being made of scarlet, yellow, and the most showy cloths and silks, and crowned on the top with crescents, pelicans, elephants, barrels, and arms and swords of gold.... the caboceers, as did their superior captains, and attendants, wore ashanti cloths of extravagant price, from the costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them in all the varieties of color as well as pattern: they were of incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder exactly like the roman toga; a small silk fillet generally encircled their temples, and many gold necklaces, intricately wrought, suspended moorish charms, dearly purchased, and enclosed in small square cases of gold, silver, and curious embroidery. some wore necklaces reaching to the waist, entirely of aggry beads; a band of gold and beads encircled the knee, from which several strings of the same depended; small circlets of gold, like guineas, rings, and casts of animals were strung round their ankles; their sandals were of green, red and delicate white leather; manillas, and rude lumps of rock gold hung from their left wrists, which were so heavily laden as to be supported on the head of one of their handsomest boys.... [the king] wore a fillet of aggry beads round his temples, a necklace of gold cockspur shells strung by their larger ends, and over his right shoulder a red silk cord, suspending three sapphires cased in gold; his bracelets were of the richest mixtures of beads and gold, and his fingers covered with rings; his cloth was of a dark green silk, a pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white on his forehead; also a pattern resembling an epaulette on each shoulder, and an ornament like a full blown rose, one leaf rising above another until it covered his whole breast.... the belts of the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and covered with small jaw-bones of the same metal; the elephants' tails, waving like a small cloud before him, were spangled with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished among them. his eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only one massive piece of gold about his neck; the royal stool, entirely cased in gold, was displayed under a splendid umbrella, with drums, sankos, horns, and various musical instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of cartridge paper; large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the swords of state;... hatchets of the same were intermixed with them; the breasts of the ochras and various attendants were adorned with large stars, stools, crescents, and gossamer wings of solid gold.[ ] it is not surprising that the characteristically sexual method of display and emotional appeal should be associated with the earlier efforts at adjustment, both in the individual and in the state. this method is based on the instincts, and just as inhibition and brain legislation follow the instincts in point of development, a rational mode of control, individual and public, is developed later than the emotional form, or, at any rate, is not at first independent of it. the origin of mental impressionability seems to lie then, not in one, but in the two general regions of activity--that connected with the struggle for food and that connected with reproduction. the strain on the attention in the food and conflict side of life involves the development of mental impressionability, particularly of an impressionability on the side of cognition. but in addition we have the impressionability growing out of sexual life which has been in question above, and which is more closely related to appreciation than to cognition. and of these two aspects of impressionability--the one growing out of conflict and the one growing out of reproduction--the latter has more social possibilities than the former, because it implies a sympathetic rather than an antagonistic organic attitude. it is certainly in virtue of susceptibility to the opinion of others that society works--through public opinion, fashion, tradition, reproof, encouragement, precept, and doctrine--to bring the individual under control and make him a member of society; and it is doubtful whether this could have been accomplished if a peculiar attitude of responsiveness to opinion had not arisen in sexual relations, reinforcing the more general and cognitive impressionability. without this capacity to be influenced the individual would be in the condition of the hardened criminal, and society would be impossible. this sex-susceptibility, which was originally developed as an accessory of reproduction and had no social meaning whatever, has thus, in the struggle of society to obtain a hold on the individual, become a social factor of great importance, and together with another product of sexual life--the love of offspring--it is, i suspect, the most immediate source of our sympathetic attitudes in general, and an important force in the development of the ideal, moral, and aesthetic sides of life. morality, sympathy, and altruism are of tribal origin, and have their roots in ( ) the love of offspring, ( ) the sensitivity connected with courtship, and ( ) the comradeship which arises among men in prosecuting vital interests in common. the history of society on the moral and aesthetic sides is in great part the history of the attempt to make the sympathetic attitude prevail over the more antagonistic. but how far we are still short of this, and how far our sympathy and morality are still tribal and even familial, is indicated by the persistence of race-prejudice and of that lust in man no charm can tame of loudly publishing our neighbor's shame. sex and primitive industry labor represents the expenditure of energy in securing food, and in making the food-process constant and sure; and we may well expect to find that the somatological differences shown to exist between man and woman will be found reflected in the labors of primitive society. an examination of the ethnological facts shows that among the primitive races men are engaged in activities requiring strength, violence, speed, and the craft and foresight which follow from the contacts and strains of their more motor life; and the slow, unspasmodic, routine, stationary occupations are the part of woman. animal life is itself motor, elusive, and violent, and both by disposition and of necessity man's attention and activities are devoted first of all to the animal process. it is the most stimulating and dangerous portion of his environment, and affords the most immediate and concrete reward. contrasted with this violent and intermittent activity of man, we find with equal uniformity that the attention of woman is directed principally to the vegetable environment. man's attention to hunting and fighting, and woman's attention to agriculture and attendant stationary industries, is so generally a practice of primitive society that we may well infer the habit is based on a physiological difference. an explanation of exceptions to the rule, and the departure from it in the later life of the race, we shall have to seek in changes in the social habits of the race. the old observation, that "woman was first a beast of burden, then a domestic animal, then a slave, then a servant, and last of all a minor," represents the usual view of the condition of woman taken by early missionaries and travelers. this view is, as we shall see, out of focus, but there is no doubt that the labors of early woman were exacting, incessant, varied, and hard, and that, if a catalogue of primitive forms of labor were made, woman would be found doing five things where man did one. an australian of the kurnai tribe once said to fison: "a man hunts, spears fish, fights, and sits about;"[ ] and this is a very good general statement of the male activities of primitive society the world over, if we add one other activity--the manufacture of weapons. on the other hand, bonwick's statement of the labors of tasmanian women is a typical one: in addition to the necessary duty of looking after the children, they had to provide all the food for the household excepting that derived from the chase of the kangaroo. they climbed up hills for the opossum, delved in the ground with their sticks for yams, native bread, and nutritive roots, groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea for oysters, and fished for the finny tribe. in addition to this, they carried, on their frequent tramps, the household stuff in native baskets of their own manufacture. their affectionate partners would even pile upon their burdens sundry spears and waddies not required for present service, and would command their help to rear the breakwind, and to raise the fire. they acted, moreover, as cooks to the establishment, and were occasionally regaled, at the termination of a feast, with the leavings of their gorged masters.[ ] among the andamanese, while the men go into the jungle to hunt pigs, the women fetch drinking water and firewood, catch shellfish, make fishing nets and baskets, spin thread, and cook the food ready for the return of the men.[ ] in new caledonia "girls work in the plantations, boys learn to fight."[ ] in africa the case is similar. among the bushmen (to take only one example from this continent) the woman "weaves the frail mats and rushes under which her family finds a little shelter from the wind and from the heat of the sun," constructs a fireplace of three round stones, fashions and bakes a few earthenware pots. when her household labors are done, she gathers roots, locusts, etc., from the fields. on the march she frequently carries a child, a mat, an earthen pot, some ostrich eggshells, and "a few ragged skins bundled on her head or shoulder," while the man carries only his spear, bow, and quiver.[ ] the conditions among the american indians were practically the same. cotton mather said of the indians of massachusetts: "the men are most abominably slothful, making their poor squaws or wives to plant, and dress, and barn, and beat their corn, and build their wigwams for them;"[ ] and jones, referring to the women of southern tribes, says: doomed to perpetual drudgery and to that subordinate position to which woman is always consigned where civilization and religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden, busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets, moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her own children, and at all times a servant to the commands and passions of the stronger sex.[ ] primitive woman was therefore undoubtedly very busy, but i have seen no reason to believe that she considered her condition unfortunate. our great-grandmothers were also very busy, but they were apparently not discontented. there was no reason why woman should not labor in primitive society. the forces which withdrew her from labor were expressions of later social conditions. speaking largely, these considerations were the desire of men to preserve the beauty of women, and their desire to withdraw them from association with other men. it is the connection in thought and fact between idle and beautiful women and wealth, indeed, which has frequently led to the keeping of a superfluous number of such women as a sign of wealth. the exemption of women from labor, in short, implied an economic surplus which early society did not possess. the lower classes of modern society do not possess it either, and there the women are still "drudges," if we want to use that word about a situation which is normal, in view of the economic condition of the men and women concerned. it was necessary that primitive society, in the absence of elaborate machinery for doing things, in unstable and precarious food conditions, and without resources accumulated from preceding generations, should utilize _all_ its forces. the struggle for existence, in its harshest sense, was but little mitigated, and no group could have spared at all the industry of women. even if primitive life had been as hard as hobbes would have it, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," mere negative, habitual hardness and miserableness of condition did not get the attention of primitive society particularly. their life was hard, as we look at it, not as they looked at it. they could not compare themselves with the future, and comparisons with the past were doubtless in their favor. the best returns from activity will of course follow when each individual is doing something he is specially well fitted to do, and natural selection seems to have seen to it that primitive society should so divide the labor as best to utilize social energy by assigning to men the tasks requiring violent exertion, and to women those requiring constant attention. but was not primitive man very lazy, and did he not do fewer things than he reasonably could have done? if we mean by lazy an aversion to certain types of action, primitive man was doubtless lazy; but if we mean an aversion to all kinds of exertion, he certainly was not lazy. he was so thoroughly aroused by certain stimulations and so exhausted by the expenditure of energy in reacting to these stimulations that periods of recuperation, or "sitting about," were necessary. heckenwelder's remarks on the labor of men and women among the indians of pennsylvania are very instructive, although they relate to tribes which had come under white influences to some extent: the work of the women is not hard or difficult. they are both able and willing to do it, and always perform it with cheerfulness. mothers teach their daughters those duties which common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up. within doors their labor is very trifling; there is seldom more than one pot or kettle to attend to. there is no scrubbing of the house, and but little to wash, and that not often. their principal occupations are to cut and fetch in the firewood, till the ground, sow and reap the grain, and pound the corn in mortars for their pottage, and to make bread which they bake in the ashes. when going on a journey or to hunting camps with their husbands, if they have no horses, they carry a pack on their backs which often appears heavier than it really is; it generally consists of a blanket, a dressed deer skin for moccasins, a few articles of kitchen furniture, as a kettle, bowl, or dish, with spoons, and some bread, corn, salt, etc., for their nourishment. i have never known an indian woman complain of the hardship of carrying this burden, which serves for their own comfort and support as well as of their husbands. the tilling of the ground at home, getting of firewood, and pounding of corn in mortars, is frequently done by female parties, much in the manner of those husking, quilting, and other _frolics_ (as they are called) in some parts of the united states.... [when accompanying her husband on the hunt the woman] takes pains to dry as much meat as she can, that none may be lost; she carefully puts the tallow up, assists in drying the skins, gathers as much wild hemp as possible for the purpose of making strings, carrying bands, bags, and other necessary articles; collects roots for dyeing; in short, does everything in her power to leave no care to her husband but the important one of providing meat for the family. after all, the fatigue of the women is by no means to be compared to that of the men. their hard and difficult employments are periodical and of short duration, while their husbands' labors are constant and severe in the extreme. were a man to take upon himself a part of his wife's duty, in addition to his own, he must necessarily sink under the load, and of course his family must suffer with him. on his exertions as a hunter their existence depends; in order to be able to follow that rough employment with success, he must keep his limbs as supple as he can, he must avoid hard labor as much as possible, that his joints may not become stiffened, and that he may preserve the necessary strength and agility of body to enable him to pursue the chase, and bear the unavoidable hardships attendant on it; for the fatigues of hunting wear out the body and constitution far more than manual labor. neither creeks nor rivers, whether shallow or deep, frozen or free from ice, must be an obstacle to the hunter when in pursuit of a wounded deer, bear, or other animal, as is often the case. nor has he then leisure to think on the state of his body, and to consider whether his blood is not too much heated to plunge without danger into the cold stream, since the game he is in pursuit of is running off from him with full speed. many dangerous accidents often befall him both as a hunter and a warrior (for he is both), and are seldom unattended with painful consequences, such as rheumatism or consumption of the lungs, for which the sweat-house, on which they so much depend, and to which they often resort for relief, especially after a fatiguing hunt or warlike excursion, is not always a sure preservative or effectual remedy.[ ] the male and female come together by sexual attraction, and the chances of life are increased through association which permits each to do that class of things which by reason of its somatic habit it can do most effectively. man's exploits were, however, of a more striking and sensational character, appealed to the emotions more, and secured the attention and the admiration of the public more, than the "drudgery" of the woman. the unusual esteem given by society to the destructive activities of the male can be very well understood in connection with a reference to the emotions. the emotions of anger, fear, and joy, to take only these examples, represent a physiological change in the organism in the presence of dangerous situations. anger is a physiological preparation to resist, to crush a dangerous object; fear is an organic expression of inadequacy to avert the danger; and joy, in one of its aspects, is an organic revulsion answering to the recognition of the fact that the danger is safely passed. the same type of situation incessantly recurring in the life of the race, and constantly met by the same organic changes, has resulted in a fixed relation of certain types of situation to certain types of emotion. the forms of activity recognized first of all in the consciousness of the race as virtuous are simply those which successfully avert danger and secure safety. courage, intrepidity, endurance, skill, sagacity, an indomitable spirit, and a willingness to die in fight, are virtues of the first importance, vitally indispensable to the society in conflict with man and beast, and they are virtues of which man is by his organic constitution, by the very fact of his capacity for the rapid destruction of energy, particularly capable. man's exploits, therefore, first of all had social attention. the occupations of women were not of an emotional type, and, apart from sexual life, they got their excitements as spectators and approvers of the motor activities of the men. the hebrew girls who went out with harps and timbrels to meet a victorious army, and sang that saul had slain his thousands, but david his ten thousands, represent the relation between mighty deeds and social attention and approval. thus the attention which the organism gives to situations of danger, through violent physiological readjustments fitted to meet the situation, has a parallel in the attention given by society to social means of meeting situations dangerous to the common life and welfare. we have a very plain continuance of the primitive appreciation of the virtues of violence in the worship of military men nowadays, and it is significant, also, that the appreciation of the fighting quality still reaches its most animated expression in women--the sex constitutionally most in need of social protection. it can hardly be denied, therefore, that man both enjoyed this exciting kind of performance more than the labors which women were connected with, and that the women justified him (if we assume that they passed any judgment on his conduct at all) in refraining from doing many things which he could have done perfectly well without constitutional hurt. the abundance of the labors of primitive woman seems to be accounted for further by the fact that a stationary life is the condition of a greater variety of industrial expressions than a life inclined to motor expressions. it is notorious that a wandering life is not favorable to the development of industries. industries, in their very nature, handle and shape stationary stuffs, for the most part, and woman developed the constructive or industrial activities as a simple consequence of her more stationary condition of life. the formation of habit is largely a matter of attention, and the attention of woman being limited by her bodily habit and the presence of children to objects lying closer at hand, her energies found expression in connection with these objects. first of all, the house was identified with woman. the home was, in its simplest terms, the place where the wandering male rejoined the female. it was a cave, or a hollow tree, or a frail structure. it was sought or made with reference to safety and comfort, particularly with reference to the comfort of the young. recognizing the greater interest of the woman in the child, it is evident that shelter was a more important consideration to her than to the man. the house is, indeed, a very fit accompaniment of the stationary habit of woman, and usually we find the most primitive tribes recognizing her greater interest in it. even when the houses are built by men, they are generally owned by the women. man as a solitary animal might, of course, make himself a shelter, but he had a particular interest in being about the shelter of woman, and it was under her shelter, after all, that children were born and that society accumulated numbers. this resulted in the maternal system and the recognition of woman as the head of the household, and the owner of the house. so, when the indian squaw carries the wigwam on the march, she is carrying her private property and one of her own particular appurtenances. contrary to the phrase which i quoted above, man is rather, in the sense in which i am now speaking, the domesticated animal. he has been inducted into the family. the estufas of the pueblo indians and the men's clubhouses in africa represent the failure of men to assimilate completely in a society which was essentially female in its genius, and the club still stands for a difference in interest between the male and the female. from the house, or shelter, as a base, woman got such connections with food as she might. for it is an error to suppose that she was in the most primitive times entirely dependent on man for food. she appears to have been quite as active in developing food surroundings in her way as man was in his. the plant world gave her the best returns for the effort which she could make. she beat out the seeds of plants, digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen to grub for most eagerly,[ ] strained the poisonous juices from the cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention that a southern grass was developed into what we know as indian corn. looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants, and we are likely to regard it as a more conscious process than it really was. it was the result of her conversion to her own uses of the most available portion of her environment. in view of her physiological habit, the animal environment was, for the most part, out of the question, and her attention was of necessity directed to the plant side. while less remunerative in its beginnings than the animal side of the process, it was, perhaps, at all times less precarious and uncertain, and we find in consequence that the economic dependence of man on woman is as evident as her dependence on him. a dinner of herbs is a humbler resort than a roast of antelope, but there was less doubt that it would be forthcoming, and primitive man was often, when in hard luck, dependent on the activities of his wife, or the females of the group. the domestication of animals appears similarly to be the following-up by man of his connections with animal life, when this life began to be less abundant. it is probable that the practice originated in the habit of taking the young of animals home as pets, and there is apparently a point of difference between the attention of the men and the women given to animals once taken into the household. the men were interested in these animals as reviving in memory the emotional situations of hunting life, and also in the clever and inimitable accuracy of co-ordination and superhuman development of sense-perceptions, while there was always in the attitude of woman toward these animals a touch of maternal feeling, such as is still expended on the "harmless, necessary cat." and, in a small way, woman also contributed to the domestication of animals by giving them suck, partly as an economic investment. in tahiti and new britain, for example, the women suckle the pigs, and the old women feed them.[ ] aside from this, the connections which primitive woman has with animal life is very slight. worms and insects, shellfish, and even fish she may capture, but but after this her relation to animal life is in caring for the flesh and skins turned over to her by the man. it was a very general early practice that, when man had killed his game and brought it home, he was not concerned in the further handling of it. he did not, indeed, in all cases bring it home, but sent his wife after it. the indians killed buffalo only as fast as the squaws could cut them up and care for the meat, and the men of the eskimos would not draw the seal from the water after spearing it. exhausted by extraordinary efforts, the man may well have left the dressing of the animal upon occasion to his wife, and, exhausted or not, he soon fell into the habit of doing so. it thus turns out that all labors relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilizations of the side-products of food stuffs, are apt to be found in the hands of the women. vessels are necessary in cooking, both to carry and hold water, and to store the surplus of food, both vegetable and animal, and the woman, feeling the need of these in connection with what she has set about doing, weaves baskets and makes pottery. fetching wood, grinding corn, tanning the hides, and in the main the preparation of clothing, follow rather necessarily from her relation to the raw products. spinning and weaving and dyeing are related closely to the vegetable world to begin with, and it is to be expected that they would be developed by the women. but man is very deeply interested in clothing on the ornamental side, and the farther back we go in society, the more this holds, and sometimes, particularly in africa, since the domestication of oxen there, the men prepare the leather and do the sewing, even for the women. there is, indeed, nothing in the nature of sewing to make it a woman's occupation. it involves a relation of the hand to the eye--similar to that which the man is always practicing and using, i.e., reaching a given point, perhaps with mechanical aids, through the mediation of these two organs. it is a motor matter, therefore, and one of the first industries undertaken by men. there are many exceptions to the general statement that early manufacture (weapons excepted) was in the hands of women, but the exceptions may be regarded as variations due to the fixation of habit through single and peculiar incidents, or they are the beginning of the later period when man begins to practice woman's activities. the primitive division of labor among the sexes was not in any sense an arrangement dictated by the men, but a habit into which both men and women fell, to begin with, through their difference of organization--a socially useful habit whose rightness no one questioned and whose origin no one thought of looking into. there is, moreover, a tendency in habits to become more fixed than is inherently necessary. the man who does any woman's work is held in contempt not only by men, but by women. as to the indian women, they are far from complaining of their lot. on the contrary, they would despise their husbands could they stoop to any menial office, and would think it conveyed an imputation upon their own conduct. it is the worst insult one virago can cast upon another in a moment of altercation. "infamous woman," will she cry, "i have seen your husband carrying wood into the lodge to make the fire. where was his squaw, that he should be obliged to make a woman of himself!"[ ] that men are similarly prejudiced against women's taking up male occupations we know from modern industrial history, without looking to ethnological evidence. habit was, however, in another regard favorable to woman, since what she was constantly associated with and expended her activities upon was looked upon as hers. through her identification with the industrial process she became, in fact, a property-owner. this result did not spring from the maternal system; but both this and the maternal system were the results of her bodily habit, and the social habits flowing from this. when the woman as cultivator was almost the sole creator of property in land, she held in respect of this also a position of advantage. in the transactions of north american tribes with the colonial governments many deeds of assignments bear female signatures, which doubtless must also be referred to inheritance through the mother.[ ] among the spokanes "all household goods are considered as the wife's property."[ ] the stores of roots and berries laid up by the salish women for a time of scarcity "are looked upon as belonging to them personally, and their husbands will not touch them without having previously obtained their permission."[ ] among the menomini a woman in good circumstances would possess as many as from , to , birch-bark vessels, and all of these would be in use during the season of sugar-making.[ ] in the new mexican pueblo, what comes from outside the house, as soon as it is inside is put under the immediate control of the woman. my host at cochiti, new mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a string of _chile_ without the consent of his thirteen-year-old daughter, ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father. in cholula district (and probably all over mexico) the man has acquired more power, and the storehouse is no longer controlled by the wife. but the kitchen remains her domain; and its aboriginal designation, _tezcalli_ (place, or house, of her who grinds), is still perfectly justified.[ ] a plurality of wives is required by a good hunter, since in the labors of the chase women are of great service to their husbands. an indian with one wife cannot amass property, as she is constantly occupied in household labors, and has not time for preparing skins for trading.[ ] the outcome of this closer attention of the woman to the industrial life is well seen among the ancient hebrews: a virtuous woman ... seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. she is like the merchant ships: she bringeth her food from afar. she riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and their task to her maidens. she considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.... she perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by night. she layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. she spreadeth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. she is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed with scarlet. she maketh for herself carpets of tapestry; her clothing is fine linen and purple. her husband is known in the gates, when linen garments and selleth them; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.[ ] there must come a time in the history of every group when wild game becomes scarce. this time is put off by successive migrations to wilder regions; but the rapid increase of population makes any continent inadequate to the supply of food through the chase indefinitely. morgan estimates that the state of new york, with its , square miles, never contained at any one time more than , indians.[ ] sooner or later the man must either fall back on the process represented by the women, taking up and developing her industries, or he must change his attitude toward animal life. in fact, he generally does both. he enters into a sort of alliance with animal life, or with certain of its forms, feeding them, and tending them, and breeding them; and he applies his katabolic energies to the pursuits of woman, organizing and advancing them. whether the animal or the plant life receives in the end more attention is a matter turning on environment and other circumstances. when the destructive male propensities have exhausted or diminished the food stores on the animal side, and man is forced to fall back on the constructive female process, we find that he brings greater and better organizing force to bear on the industries. male enterprises have demanded concerted action. in order to surround a buffalo herd, or to make a successful assault, or even to row a large boat, organization and leadership are necessary. to attack under leaders, give signal cries, station sentinels, punish offenders, is, indeed, a part of the discipline even of animal groups. the organizing capacity developed by the male in human society in connection with violent ways of life is transferred to labor. the preparation of land for agriculture was undertaken by the men on a large scale. the jungle was cleared, water courses were diverted and highways prepared for the transportation of the products of labor. but more than this, perhaps, man brought with him to the industrial occupations all the skill in fashioning force-appliances acquired through his intense, constant, and long-continued attention to the devising and manufacture of weapons. man is relatively a feeble animal, but he made various and ingenious cutting, jabbing, and bruising appliances to compensate. his life was a life of strains, both giving and taking, and under the stress he had developed offensive and defensive weapons. there is, however, no radical difference, simply a difference in object and intensity of stimulus, between handling and making weapons and handling and making tools. so, when man was obliged to turn his attention to the agriculture and industries practiced by primitive woman he brought all his technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear on the new problems. women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. when man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus creating the conditions of culture. the destructive habits of the male nature were thus converted under the stress of diminishing nutrition to the habits represented primarily by the constructive female nature, and the inventive faculty developed through attention to destructive mechanical aids was now applied equally to the invention of constructive mechanical aids. sex and primitive morality the function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated life so that all may have what we call fair play. it is impossible to think of morality aside from expressions of force, primarily physical force. "thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not remove the ancient landmark;" and all approvals and disapprovals imply that the act in question has affected or will affect the interest of others, or of society at large, for better or for worse. and since morality goes back so directly to forms of activity and their regulation, we may expect to find that the motor male and the more stationary female have had a different relation to the development of a moral code. as between nutrition and reproduction, in the struggle for life, nutrition plays a larger rôle--in volume, at any rate--in the life-history of the individual. a consideration of the causes of the modification of species in nature shows that the changes in morphology and habit of the animal which relate to food-getting are more fundamental and numerous than those which relate to wooing. in a moral code, likewise, whether in an animal or human society, the bulk of morality turns upon food rather than sex relations; and since the male is more active in both these relations, and since, further, morality is the mode of regulating activities in these relations, it is to be expected that morality, and immorality as well, will be found primarily to a greater degree functions of the motor male disposition. tribal safety and the preservation and extension of the territory furnishing food demand the organized attention of the group first of all; and the emotional demonstrations and social rewards following modes of behavior which have a protective or provident meaning for the group, and the public disapproval and disallowance of modes of behavior which impair the safety or force capacity, and consequent satisfactions of the group, become in the tribe the most powerful of all stimuli, and stimuli to which the male is peculiarly able to react. this is not like the case of hunger and other physiological stimuli which are conditioned from within. the individual acts for the advantage of the group rather than for his personal advantage, and the stimulus to this action must be furnished socially. group preservation being of first-rate importance, no group would survive in which the public showed apathy on this point. lewis and clarke say of the dakota indians: what struck us most was an institution peculiar to them and to the kite indians, further to the westward, from whom it is said to have been copied. it is an association of the most active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any danger, or to give way to their enemies. in war they go forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding their natural valor by any artifice.... these young men sit, and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years old; and such is the deference paid to courage that their seats in the council are superior to those of the chiefs, and their persons more respected.[ ] the consciousness of the value of male activity is here expressed in an exaggerated degree--in a degree bordering upon the pathological, since the reckless exposure of life to danger is not necessary to success at a given moment, and is unjustifiable from the standpoint of public safety, unless it be on the side of the suggestive effect of intrepid conduct in creating a general standard of intrepidity. similarly, the indians in general often failed to get the full benefit of a victory, because of their practice that the scalp of an enemy belonged to him who took it, and their pursuits after a rout were checked by the delay of each to scalp his own. the pedagogical attempts of primitive society, so far as they are applied to boys, have as an end the encouragement of morality of a motor, not a sentimental, type. the boys are taught war and the chase, and to despise the occupations of women. thompson says of the zulu boys: it is a melancholy fact that when they have arrived at a very early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such is the law that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill their mothers.[ ] ethnologists often make mention of the fact that the natural races do not generally punish children; and while this is due in part to a less definite sense of responsibility, as well as of less nervousness in parents, non-interference is a part of their system of training: instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to steal or secrete in joke some trifling article belonging to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment, the more they are praised as giving indication of a future enterprising and warlike disposition.[ ] theft is also encouraged among boys as a developer of their wits. the spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and diodorus relates that in egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to him all stolen articles. the citizens who were robbed went to the captain of thieves and recovered their property upon payment of one-fourth of its value.[ ] admiration of a lawless deed often foreruns censure of the deed in consciousness today: there are few men who do not admire a particularly daring and successful bank or diamond robbery, though they deprecate the social injury done. formally becoming a man is made so much of in early society, because it is on this occasion that fitness for activity is put to the test. initiatory ceremonies fall at the time of puberty in the candidate, and consist of instruction and trials of fortitude. a certain show of the proceeds of activity is also exacted of young men, especially in connection with marriage, and the youth is not permitted to marry until he has killed certain animals or acquired certain trophies. the attention given to manly practices in connection with marriage is seen in this example from the kukis: when a young man has fixed his affections upon a young woman, either of his own or some neighboring _parah_, his father visits her father and demands her in marriage for his son: her father, on this, inquires what are the merits of the young man to entitle him to her favor; and how many can he afford to entertain at the wedding feast; to which the father of the young man replies that his son is a brave warrior, a good hunter, and an expert thief; for that he can produce so many heads of the enemies he has slain and of the game he has killed; that in his house are such and such stolen goods; and that he can feast so many (mentioning the number) at his marriage.[ ] occasionally the ability to take punishment is even made a part of the marriage ceremony. at arab marriages there is much feasting, and the unfortunate bridegroom undergoes the ordeal of whipping by the relations of his bride, in order to test his courage. sometimes this punishment is exceedingly severe, being inflicted with the coorbatch, or whip of hippopotamus hide, which is cracked vigorously about his ribs and back. if the happy husband wishes to be considered a man worth having, he must receive the chastisement with an expression of enjoyment; in which case the crowds of women in admiration again raise their thrilling cry.[ ] a very simple record of successful activity is the bones of animals. mccosh says of the mishmis of india: nor are these hospitable rites allowed to be forgotten; the skull of every animal that has graced the board is hung up as a record in the hall of the entertainer; he who has the best-stocked golgotha is looked upon as the man of the greatest wealth and liberality, and when he dies the whole smoke-dried collection of many years is piled upon his grave as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth.[ ] and grange of the nagas: in front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up the bones of the animals with which they have feasted the villagers, whether tigers, elephants, cows, hogs, or monkeys, or aught else, for it signifies little what comes to their net.[ ] the head-hunting mania of borneo is also a pathological expression of the desire to get approval of destructive activity from both the living and the dead: the aged of the people were no longer safe among their kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the grizzly store. superstition soon added its ready impulse to the general movement. the aged warrior could not rest in his grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name; the maiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not yet stained with some cowardly murder.[ ] class distinctions and the attendant ceremonial observances go immediately back to an appreciation of successful motor activities. we need only observe the conduct of weaker animals in the presence of the stronger to appreciate the differences in behavior induced by the presence of superior motor ability. the recognition of this difference, as it is finally expressed in habitual forms of behavior, becomes a symbol of the difference, while the difference goes back, in reality, to a difference in capacity. this example from raffles illustrates the intensity of moral meaning which the appreciation of achievement may take on in the end: at the court of _súra-kérta_ i recollect that once, when holding a private conference with the _súsunan_ at the residency, it became necessary for the _rádan adipáti_ to be dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man was, as usual, squatting, and as the susunan happened to be seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts, could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach the latch without being seen by his royal master. the mission on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the susunan himself inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out of the _dódok_ posture. when it is necessary for an inferior to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's sight.[ ] drury says that a malagasy chief, on his return from war, had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in the same manner.[ ] an examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the representatives of conduct of this type. in the past, at any rate, there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like military adulation; and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in the individual ranks with the fighting quality.[ ] but checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct. approval is expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery, promotions, and other rewards; but in general the moral side of life gets no such definite notice as the immoral side. practices which are disliked by all may be forbidden, while there is no equally summary way of dealing with practices approved by all. in consequence, practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited, and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty, resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment. an analysis of the following crimes and punishments among the kafirs, for instance, indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of activity and punishments is present at a comparatively early period of development: theft: restitution and fine. injuring cattle: death or fine, according to the circumstances. causing cattle to abort: heavy fine. arson: fine. false witness: heavy fine. maiming: fine. adultery: fine, sometimes death. rape: fine, sometimes death. using love philters: death or fine, according to circumstances. poisoning, and practices with an evil intent (termed "witchcraft"): death and confiscation. murder: death or fine, according to circumstances.... treason, as contriving the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy: death and confiscation. desertion from the tribe: death and confiscation.[ ] similarly among the kukis: injuring the property of others, or taking it without payment; using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to the aged; marrying an elder brother's wife; putting your foot on, or walking over, a man's body; speaking profanely of religion--are acts of impiety.[ ] as the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male. the establishment of moral standards is mediated through the sense of strain--strain to the personal self, and strain to the social self. whether a man is injured by an assault upon his life or upon his property, he suffers violence, and the first resort of the injured individual or group is to similar violence; but this results in a vicious tit-for-tat reaction whereby the stimulus to violence is reinstated by every fresh act of violence. within the group this vicious action and reaction is broken up by the intervention of public opinion, either in an informal expression of disapproval, or through the headmen. the man who continues to kill may be killed in turn, but by order of the council of the tribe; and one of his kinsmen may be appointed to execute him, as under that condition no feud can follow. but there is always a reluctance to banish or take the life of the member of the group, both because no definite machinery is developed for accomplishing either, and because the loss of an able-bodied member of a group is a loss to the group itself. the group does not seek, therefore, immediately to be rid of an offensive member, but to modify his habits, to convert him. jones says of the ojibways that there were occasionally bad ones among them, "but the good council of the wise sachems and the mark of disgrace put upon unruly persons had a very desirable influence."[ ] the extreme form of punishment in the power of the folk-moot of the tuschinen is to be excluded from the public feasts, and to be made a spectator while stoned in effigy and cursed.[ ] sending a man to coventry is in vogue among the fejir beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never spoken to again, nor allowed to sit in the tent of any member of the tribe.[ ] the formulation of sentiment about an act depends also on the repetition of the act. the act is more irritating, and the irritation more widespread, with each repetition, and there is an increase of the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when frequently repeated: in the netherlands stealing of linen left in the fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket handkerchief. and with increasing definiteness of authority there follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its intrinsic import so much as to its conformity or nonconformity with a standard in the law: _summum jus, summa injuria_. morality, involving the modification of the conduct of the individual in view of the presence of others, is already highly developed in the tribal stage, since the exigencies of life have demanded the most rigorous regulation of behavior in order to secure the organization and the prowess essential to success against all comers. but the tribe is a unit in hostile coexistence with other similar units, and its morality stops within itself, and applies in no sense to strangers and outsiders. the north american indians were theoretically at war with all with whom they had not concluded a treaty of peace. in africa the traveler is safe and at an advantage if by a fiction (the rite of blood-brotherhood) he is made a member of the group; and similarly in arabia and elsewhere. the old epics and histories are full of the praises of the man who is gentle within the group and furious without it. the earliest commandments doubtless did not originally apply to mankind at large. they meant, "thou shalt not kill within the tribe," "thou shalt not commit adultery within the tribe," etc. cannibalism furnishes a most interesting example of the prohibition of a practice as applied to the members of the group, while extra-tribal cannibalism continued unabated. and within the tribe there is a continuance of this practice in the forms which do not interfere with the efficiency and cripple the activity of the group. that is, while cannibalism in general is prohibited, the eating of the decrepit, the aged, of invalids, of deformed children, and of malefactors is still practiced.[ ] but there gradually grew up a set of disapprovals of conduct as such, whether within or without the group. in the _odyssey_ pallas athene says that odysseus had come from ephyra from ilus, son of mermerus: "for even thither had odysseus gone on his swift ship to seek a deadly drug, that he might have wherewithal to smear his bronze-shod arrows: but ilus would in no wise give it to him, for he had in awe the everlasting gods."[ ] here is an extension to society in general of a principle which had been first worked out in the group; for poisoning without the group was long allowed after it was disallowed in the group. the case of poisoning is, indeed, a particularly good instance of an unsatisfaction felt in the substitution of clandestine methods for simple motor force in deciding a dispute, and affords a clear example of an important relation between moral feeling and physiological functioning. animal as well as human society has developed strategy alongside of direct motor expressions, but strategy is only an indirect application of the motor principle. co-ordination, associative memory, will, judgment, are involved in strategy; it is only a different mode of functioning. on the other hand, there is a peculiar abhorrence of murder by night, poisoning, drowning in a ship's hold, because, while all the physiological machinery for action is on hand, there is no chance to work it. it is a most exasperating thing to die without making a fight for it. the so-called american duel is an abhorrent thing, because life or death is decided by a turn of the dice, not on the racially developed principle of the battle to the strong. when, then, it is observed within the group that this, that, and the other man has died of poison, each interprets this in terms of himself, and no one feels safe. the use of poison is not only a means of checking activities and doing hurt socially, but this form is most foul and unnatural because it involves a death without the possibility of motor resistance (except the inadequate opportunity on the strategic side of taking precautionary measures against poison) and a victory and social reward without a struggle. the group, therefore, early adopts very severe methods in this regard. death is the usual penalty for the use of poison, and even the possession of poison, among tribes not employing it for poisoning weapons, is punished. among the karens of india, if a man is found with poison in his possession, he is bound and placed for three days in the hot sun, his poison is destroyed, and he is pledged not to obtain any more. if he is suspected of killing anyone, he is executed.[ ] particularly distressing modes of death, and other means of penalizing death by poison more severely than motor modes of killing, were adopted. the chinese punish the preparation of poisons or capture of poisonous animals with beheading, confiscation, and banishment of wife and children. in athens insanity caused by poison was punished with death. the _sachsenspiegel_ provides death by fire. in the lawbook of the tsar wachtang a double composition price was exacted for death by poison. and in ancient wales death and confiscation were the penalty for death by poison, and death or banishment the penalty of the manufacturer of poisons. the same quality of disapproval is expressed in early law of sorcery, and it is unnecessary to give details of this also. but, stated in emotional terms, both poison and sorcery, and other underhand practices arouse one of the most distressing of the emotions--the emotion of dread, if we understand by this term that form of fear which has no tangible or visible embodiment, which is apprehended but not located, and which in consequence cannot be resisted; the distress, in fact, lying in the inability to function. the organism which has developed structure and function through action is unsatisfied by an un-motor mode of decision. we thus detect in the love of fair play, in the golden rule, and in all moral practices a motor element; and with changing conditions there is progressively a tendency, mediated by natural selection and conscious choice, to select those modes of reaction in which the element of chance is as far as possible eliminated. this preference for functional over chance or quasi-chance forms of decision is expressed first within the group, but is slowly extended, along with increasing commercial communication, treaties of peace, and with supernatural assistance, to neighboring groups. the case of odysseus is an instance of a moment in the life of the race when a disapproval is becoming of general application. on our assumption that morality is dependent on strains, and that its development is due to the advantage of regulating these strains, we may readily understand why most of the canons of morality are functions of the katabolic male activity. theft, arson, rape, murder, burglary, highway robbery, treason, and the like, are natural accompaniments of the more aggressive male disposition; the male is _par excellence_ both the hero and the criminal. but on the side of the sex we might expect to find the female disposition setting the standards of morality, since reproduction is even a greater part of her nature than of man's. on the contrary, however, we find the male standpoint carried over and applied to the reproductive process, and the regulation of sex practices transpiring on the basis of force. in the earliest period of society, under the maternal system, the woman had her own will more with her person; but with the formulation of a system of control, based on male activities, the person of woman was made a point in the application of the male standpoint. "the wife, like any other of the husband's goods and chattels, might be sold or lent."[ ] "even when divorced she was by no means free, as the tribe exercised its jurisdiction in the woman's affairs and the disposal of her person."[ ] forsyth reports of the gonds that infidelity in the married state is ... said to be very rare; and, when it does occur, is one of the few occasions when the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion, frequently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off his wife's nose and knocking out the brains of her paramour with his ax.[ ] the sacrifice of wives in africa, india, fiji, madagascar, and elsewhere, upon the death of husbands, shows how completely the person of the female had been made a part of the male activity. where this practice obtained, the failure of the widow to acquiesce in the habit was highly immoral. williams says of the strangling of widows by the fijians: it has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are sacrificed at their own instance. there is truth in this statement, but unless other facts are taken into account it produces an untruthful impression. many are importunate to be killed, because they know that life would henceforth be to them prolonged insult, neglect, and want.... if the friends of the woman are not the most clamorous for her death, their indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late husband or his friends.[ ] child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her conduct from his own standpoint. girls were married or betrothed before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of age, and variously, often to an adult, and their husbands were thus able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their chastity. on the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl is not looked after until she is married; it becomes immoral only when disapproved by her husband. in the andaman islands, after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse ... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve.... if any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or going to another part of the circle, he considers himself insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound her.[ ] under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the act. hence a very general practice that the husbands prostituted their wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse: the chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much estimation. the husband will, for a trifling present, lend his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by increasing the value of the present. yet, strange as it may seem, notwithstanding this facility, any connection of this kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the same licentiousness in civilized societies.[ ] when woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and reflected naïvely the moral standards which were developed for the most part through male activities. any system of checks and approvals in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were safeguards of the group as a whole, and not of the men only. the person and presence of woman in society have stimulated and modified male behavior and male moral standards, and she has been a faithful follower, even a stickler for the prevalent moral standards (the very tenacity of her adhesion is often a sign that she is an imitator); but up to date the nature of her activities--the nature, in short, of the strains she has been put to--has not enabled her to set up independently standards of behavior either like or unlike those developed through the peculiar male activities. there is, indeed, a point of difference in the application of standards of morality to men and to women. morality as applied to man has a larger element of the contractual, representing the adjustment of his activities to those of society at large, or more particularly to the activities of the male members of society; while the morality which we think of in connection with woman shows less of the contractual and more of the personal, representing her adjustment to men, more particularly the adjustment of her person to men. the psychology of exogamy perhaps the most puzzling questions which meet the student of early society are connected with marriage and kinship; and among these questions the practice of exogamy has provoked a very large number of ingenious theories. these are, however, i believe, all unsatisfactory, either because they are too narrow to cover the facts completely, or because they assume in the situation conditions which do not exist.[ ] but quite aside from the facts and the interpretation of the facts, all theories in the field have failed to reckon sufficiently with the natural disposition and habits of man in early society, particularly with his attitude toward sexual matters; and it seems entirely feasible to get some light on the question why man went outside his immediate family and clan for women through an examination of the nature of his sexual consciousness, and of the operation of this in connection with the laws of habit and attention. first of all, it is evident to one who looks carefully into the question of early sex-habits that the lower races are intensely interested in sexual life. a large part of their thought, and even of their inventive ingenuity, is spent in this direction. the pleasures of life are few and gross, but are pursued with vigor; and, _mutatis mutandis_, love bears about the same relation to the activities of the australian aborigine as it bore to those of sir lancelot and the knights of olden time. a failure to perceive this is the great defect in westermarck's great work, where it is assumed that, if animals were monogamous, primitive man must have been much the more so. the fact is that in respect to memory, imagination, clothing, mode of association, and social restraint man differed radically from the animals, and precisely through these added qualities he took not only an instinctive, but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether this state was ever actually reached or not. the widespread and various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, phallic worship, erotic dances, and periodic orgies, of which the orient furnishes so many examples, are all found also among the natural races.[ ] again, the eagerness of men to obtain girl wives, and even a claim on infants, thus assuring virginity and marriage at the moment of sexual maturity;[ ] the habit of keeping girls in solitary confinement from a tender age until the consummation of marriage;[ ] and the african custom of infibulation,[ ] are classes of facts indicating that the sexual element occupied a large place in the consciousness of the natural races. we must also consider the fact that sexual life is organically a utilization of a surplus of nutriment, and that when food and leisure are abundant there is a tendency on the part of sexual activity to become a play activity, just as there is a tendency of activities in general to become play activities under the same conditions. and while there was no leisure class in early society, primitive man was a man of leisure in the sense that his work activities were intermittent; a successful hunt was followed by a period of rest, recuperation, and surplus energy, and a consequent turning of attention to sexual life, with the result that the sex interest appears as one of the main play interests among the natural races. under these conditions, and in the absence of any considerably developed social institutions or altruistic sentiments, we not unnaturally find that the older and stronger men have the better of it, both in regard to the food supply and the women, and the younger men are obstructed in their efforts to satisfy their desires in regard to both. the following passages from the ethnological literature of australia indicate the nature of the australian male in sexual life, and the nature of the obstructions encountered by the youth in the presence of the older men.[ ] it is noticeable, first of all, that among the australian tribes the older men have worked out or fallen into such habits regarding the females that the younger men obtain wives with great difficulty and usually not before waiting a long time. in fact, spencer and gillen, in their invaluable works on the central australian tribes state that usually a man is married to a woman of another generation than himself: the most usual method of obtaining a wife is that which is connected with the well-established custom in accordance with which every woman of the tribe is made _tualcha mura_ with some man. the arrangement, which is often a mutual one, is made between two men, and it will be seen that owing to a girl being made _tualcha mura_ to a boy of her own age the men very frequently have wives much younger than themselves, as the husband and the mother of the wife obtained in this way are usually approximately of the same age. when it has been agreed upon by two men that the relationship shall be established between their own children, one a boy and the other a girl, the two latter, who are generally of a tender age, are taken to the _erlukwirra_, or women's camp, and here each mother takes the other child and rubs it over with a mixture of fat and red ochre.... this relationship indicates that the man has the right to take as wife the daughter of the woman; she is in fact assigned to him, and this, as a rule, many years before she is born.[ ] it will be noticed that this is in reality a modification of the system of exchanging women, and has an advantage over capture, elopement, and charming (all of which are methods in practice among the same tribes) in the fact that it is of the nature of a business transaction or social agreement, and provokes no bad feeling or retaliation. it also shows considerable regard on the part of the elders for the young; but practically it is a reluctant admission of a youth to participation in sexual privileges, since marriage is delayed until a girl of his own age has been married and given birth to a girl who in turn has become marriageable. in the same connection we have the testimony of curr that the marriage customs of the blacks result in very ill-assorted unions as regards age; for it is usual to see old men with mere girls as wives, and men in the prime of life married to old widows. as a rule wives are not obtained by the men until they are at least thirty years of age. women have very frequently two husbands during their lifetime, the first older and the second younger than themselves. of course, as polygamy is the rule and the men of the tribe exceed the females in number besides, there are always many bachelors in every tribe; but i never heard of a female over sixteen years of age who, prior to the breakdown of aboriginal customs after the coming of the whites, had not a husband.[ ] and bonwick says: the old men, who get the best food and hold the franchise of the tribe in their hands, manage to secure an extra supply of the prettiest girls.[ ] a further evidence of the keen sexual interest of the male is furnished by the fact that even when the difficulties in the way of getting a wife are regularly overcome by the youth, the other men of the group, especially the older ones, reserve a temporary but prior claim on her.[ ] in addition to a lively sexual interest in the women of their own group, we find that even the lowest races have a well-developed appreciation of the property value of women. in the earliest times women were the sole creators of certain economic values, and since the women contributed as much or more to the support of the men as the men contributed to the support of the women, the men naturally got and kept as many women as possible.[ ] the condition prevailing in this regard in central australia is stated by howitt: it is an advantage to a man to have as many _piraurus_ as possible. he has then less work to do in hunting as his _piraurus_ when present supply him with a share of the food which they procure, their own _noas_ being absent. he also obtains great influence in the tribe by lending his _piraurus_ occasionally and receiving presents from young men to whom _piraurus_ have not yet been allotted, or who may not have _piraurus_ with them in the camp where they are. this is at all times carried on, and such a man accumulates a lot of property, weapons of all kinds, trinkets, etc., which he in turn gives away to prominent men, heads of totems, and such, and thus adds to his own influence. this is regarded by the dieri as in no way anything but quite right and proper.[ ] the following passages also from spencer and gillen's description of the marriage customs of these aborigines show both the nature of the sexual system of these tribes in general and the well-developed nature of both their sexual and their property interest in their women: the word _nupa_ is without any exception applied indiscriminately by men of a particular group to women of another group, and _vice versa_, and simply implies a member of a group of possible wives or husbands, as the case may be. while this is so it must be remembered that in actual practice each individual man has one or perhaps two of these _nupa_ women who are especially attached to himself, and live with him in his own camp. in addition to them, however, each man has certain _nupa_ women beyond the limited number just referred to, with whom he stands in the relation of _piraungaru_. to women who are the _piraungaru_ of a man (the term is a reciprocal one) the latter has access under certain conditions, so that they may be considered as accessory wives. the result is that in the urabunna tribe every woman is the especial _nupa_ of one particular man, but at the same time he has no exclusive right to her as she is the _piraungaru_ of certain other men who also have the right of access to her. looked at from the point of view of the man his _piraungaru_ are a limited number of the women who stand in the relation of _nupa_ to him. there is no such thing as one man having the exclusive right to one woman; the elder brothers, or _nuthie_, of the latter, in whose hands the matter lies, will give one man a preferential right, but at the same time they will give other men of the same group a secondary right to her. individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the urabunna tribe. the initiation in regard to establishing the relationship of _piraungaru_ between a man and a woman must be taken by the elder brothers, but the arrangement must receive the sanction of the old men of the group before it can take effect. as a matter of actual practice this relationship is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe are gathered together to perform important ceremonies, and when these and other important matters which require the consideration of the old men are discussed and settled. the number of a man's _piraungaru_ depends entirely upon the measure of his power and popularity; if he be what is called "urku," a word which implies much the same as our word "influential," he will have a considerable number; if he be insignificant or unpopular, then he will meet with scanty treatment. a woman may be _piraungaru_ to a number of men, and as a general rule the women and men who are _piraungaru_ to one another are to be found living grouped together. a man may always lend his wife, that is, the woman to whom he has the first right, to another man, provided always he be her _nupa_, without the relationship of _piraungaru_ existing between the two, but unless this relationship exists no man has any right of access to a woman. occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man attempts to prevent his wife's _piraungaru_ from having access to her, but this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked upon as churlish.[ ] the evidence up to this point is presented with a view to establishing the fact that the men in early society had the strongest interest, both on sexual and on property grounds, in retaining a hold on the women of their group; and as an extreme expression of this interest i wish to consider the system of elopement in early society. while there is no system of government by chiefs among the australian tribes which we have been considering, the influence of the old men is very powerful in all matters. the initiatory ceremonies, covering periods of months and occurring at intervals during a period of years, and involving great hardship to the young men, are calculated to inspire them with great respect for the old men and for the traditional practices of the tribe. one of the practical workings of this influence of the older men is to throw restraints about the young men and obstruct their activities. this obstruction is seen quite as clearly on the food side as on the side of sex, in the fact that the old men make certain foods which are not abundant (notably the kangaroo and the opossum) taboo to the young men and the women, and thus reserve these delicacies for themselves. we have already seen, however, that the tribe usually makes some kind of a tardy sexual provision for its male members, and we shall presently examine this question more in detail; but the fact remains that the desires of the young men are not adequately or promptly provided for. they may never get a wife in the usual course of things, or they may have to delay marriage for a period of twenty years beyond the point of maturity. under these conditions it is to be expected that the young men should sometimes attempt to obtain women in spite of existing obstructions; and this is the real significance of elopement. it is, of course, true that married men sometimes eloped with married women, as with us; but in some of the australian tribes the difficulties in the way of marriage were so great that elopement was recognized as the only way out: the young kurnai could, as a rule, acquire a wife in one way only. he must run away with her. native marriage might be brought about in various ways. if the young man was so fortunate as to have an unmarried sister and to have a friend who also had an unmarried sister they might arrange with the girls to run off together or he might make his arrangements with some eligible girl whom he fancied and who fancied him; or a girl, if she fancied some young man might send him a secret message asking, "will you find me some food?" and this was understood to be a proposal. but in every case it was essential for success that the parents of the bride should be utterly ignorant of what was about to transpire.[ ] fison[ ] is of the opinion that elopement in this case is caused by the monopoly of women in the tribe by the older men. even when the assent of the parents has been secured, or when the match has been arranged by the parents of the young people, it is in some cases necessary to elope because of the reluctance of the men in general to have a young woman appropriated: if the woman was caught her female relatives gave her a good beating. fights took place over these cases between the girl's relatives--both male and female--and those of the man. the women were generally the most excited; they would stir up the men and then assist with their yamsticks. if the girl was first caught by other than her own relatives, she would be abused by all the men; but this never occurred when her parents or brothers were present to protect her.[ ] when we consider the difficulties in the way of young men in getting wives at home, we should expect that they would make a practice of capturing women from other tribes; and, indeed, it is well known that marriage by capture has been assumed to be at the base of exogamy by both lubbock and spencer. but the importance which has been attached to this form of marriage in the literature of sociology is due to the fact that these eminent writers have constructed theories on the assumption that marriage by capture was widespread and important, more than to anything else. for, to say nothing of the fact that the theories of both these writers are too weak to stand even if capture were found to be very prevalent, the evidence from australia shows that capture was comparatively little practiced there, although that country affords most of the examples referred to by writers on this subject. spencer and gillen say in this connection: the method of capture which has so frequently been described as characteristic of australian tribes, is the very rarest way in which the central australian secures a wife. it does not often happen that a man forcibly takes a woman from someone else within his own group, but it does sometimes happen, and especially when the man from whom the woman is taken has not shown his respect for his actual or tribal _ikuntera_ (father-in-law) by cutting himself on the occasion of the death of one or the other of the latter's relations. in this case the aggressor will be aided by the members of his local group, but in other cases of capture he will have to fight for himself. at times, however, a woman may be captured from another group, though this again is of rare occurrence, and is usually associated with an avenging party, the women captured by which, who are almost sure to be the wives of men killed, are allotted to certain members of the avenging party.[ ] curr reports to the same effect: on rare occasions a wife is captured from a neighboring tribe and carried off.... at present, as the stealing of a woman from a neighboring tribe would involve the whole tribe in war for his sole benefit, and as the possession of the woman would lead to constant attacks, tribes set themselves generally against the practice.[ ] it is, of course, not to be denied that the sexual impulse of the male was sometimes strong enough to lead him to seize a woman wherever he found her, if he could not get a wife otherwise, but there is no evidence that capture ever formed a regular or important means of getting wives.[ ] on the contrary, the evidence points to the view that as soon as for any reason men ceased to marry with the women of their own blood and went outside of their immediate families for women, they ordinarily secured them in a social, not a hostile, way, and from a different branch of their own group, not, as a rule, from a strange group. in fact, the regular means of securing a wife other than a woman of one's own family seems to have been to exchange a woman of one's family for a woman of a different family. the australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or wives either as the survivor of a married brother, or in exchange for his sisters, or later on in life for his daughters. occasionally also an ancient widow, whom the rightful heir does not claim, is taken possession of by some bachelor but for the most part those who have no female relatives to give in exchange have to go without wives. girls become wives at from eight to fourteen years. males are free to possess wives after ... attaining the status of young man, which they do when about eighteen years of age. one often sees a child of eight the wife of a man of fifty. females until married are the property of their father or his heir, and afterwards of their husband, and have scarcely any rights. when a man dies his widows devolve on his oldest surviving brother of the same caste as himself--that is, full brother. should a man leave, say two widows, each of whom has a son who has attained the rank of a young man, then i believe each of the young men may dispose of his uterine sister and obtain a wife in exchange for her. but should the deceased father of the young men have already obtained wives on faith of giving these daughters in marriage when of suitable age, then the contract made must be kept. when the father is old and his sons young men, it happens sometimes that he barters females at his disposal for wives for them.[ ] roth also reports[ ] that exchange of sisters is one mode of negotiating marriage; and haddon says that in the region of torres straits marriage is proposed by the woman, but the man must either pay for her or furnish a woman in return. in tud, after the young people have come to an agreement, they both go home and tell their respective relatives. "for girl more big (i.e., of more consequence) than boy." if the girl has a brother, he takes the man's sister, and then all is settled. the fighting does not appear to be a very serious business.[ ] similarly in maibung: an exchange of presents and foods was made between the contracting parties, but the bridegroom's friends had to give the larger amount, and the bridegroom had to pay the parents for his wife, the usual price being a canoe or dugong harpoon, or shell armlet, or goods to equal value. the man might give his sister in exchange for a wife, and thus save the purchase price. a poor man who had no sister might perforce remain unmarried, unless an uncle took pity on him and gave him a cousin to exchange for a wife.[ ] fison and howitt[ ] give other examples of marriage by exchange, and i have already given a description of the custom of _tualcha mura_, the _regular_ method of obtaining a wife among the central australians, by means of which a man secures a wife for his son by making an arrangement with some other man with regard to the latter's daughter. from the evidence given first of all i think we must conclude that early man was inclined to appropriate whatever women came in his way. in this regard we have a condition resembling that among the higher animals, where the more vigorous males try to monopolize the females. we may assume also that the women first appropriated were those born in the group--that is, in the immediate family--as being more proximate and not already possessed by others. in this regard also the condition resembled that among the higher gregarious animals; and in so far as the control of the women by the men of the group is concerned the condition remains unchanged. but the men have ceased to marry the women of their immediate families, and the problem of exogamy is to determine why men living with women and controlling them should cease to marry them. in other papers i have pointed out that the interest of man is not held nor the emotions aroused when the objects of attention have grown so familiar in consciousness that the problematical and elusive elements disappear;[ ] and i have also alluded to the laws of sexual life, that an excited condition of the nervous system is a necessary preparation to pairing.[ ] and just here we must recognize the fact that monogamy is a habit acquired by the race, not because it has answered more completely to the organic interest of the individual, but because it has more completely served social needs, particularly by assuring to the woman and her children the undivided interest and providence of the man. but in early times the law of natural selection, not the law of choice, operated to preserve the groups in which a monogamous or quasi-monogamous tendency showed itself (since the children in these cases were better trained and nourished), and in historical times and among ourselves all of the machinery of church and state has been set in motion in favor of the system. in point of fact, the members of civilized societies at the present time have become so refined and have so far accepted ethical standards that monogamy is the system actually favored on sentimental grounds as well as on grounds of expediency by a large proportion of any civilized population. on the other hand, speaking from the biological standpoint, monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so familiar in consciousnes that the emotional reactions are qualified. this is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and women frequently become interested in others than their partners in matrimony. i may also just allude to the fact that the large body of the literature of intrigue, represented by the tales of boccaccio and margaret of navarre, is based on the interest in unfamiliar women. familiarity with women within the group and unfamiliarity with women without the group is the explanation of exogamy on the side of interest; and the system of exogamy is a result of exchanging familiar women for others. we have seen that capture was not an important means of securing wives outside the group, and that exogamy was fully developed before property and media of exchange were developed to any extent, and consequently before the purchase of women had become a system. we have seen also that the australian who wants a woman at the present time gets her by exchanging another woman for her. social groups were necessarily small in the beginning. before invention and co-operation have advanced far, the group must remain small in order to pick up enough food to sustain life on a given area. starting out with a single pair, when the family increases in size a separation is necessary; and clans are an outcome of the process of division and redivision, the bond between the clans and their union in a tribe resulting from their consciousness of kinship. now, it is a well-known condition of exogamy that, while a man must marry without his clan, he must not marry without his tribe, and for the most part, in fact, the clan into which he shall marry is designated. in other words, allied clans gave their women in exchange mutually. this was a natural arrangement, both because the two groups were neighbors and because they were friendly, and at the same time the psychological demand for newness was satisfied. when a family was divided into two branches, branch a had a property interest in its own women, but preferred the women of branch b because of their unfamiliarity. the exchange took place at first occasionally and not systematically, and the women parted with in each case were not, perhaps, in all cases the youngest, and we may assume that they had in all cases been married before they were given up. but gradually, and when the habit of exchange had been established, men came to look forward to the exchange and to desire to secure the girl at the earliest possible moment, until finally young women were exchanged at puberty, and virgins. when for any reason there is established in a group a tendency toward a practice, then the tendency is likely to become established as a habit, and regarded as right, binding, and inevitable: it is moral and its contrary is immoral. when we consider the binding nature of the food taboos, of the _couvade_, and of the regulation that a man shall not speak to or look at his mother-in-law or sister, we can understand how the habit of marrying out, introduced through the charm of unfamiliarity, becomes a binding habit. i think, therefore, we have every reason to conclude that exogamy is one expression of the more restless and energetic habit of the male. it is psychologically true that only the unfamiliar and not-completely-controlled is interesting. this is the secret of the interest of modern scientific pursuit and of games. states of high emotional tension are due to the presentation of the unfamiliar--that is, the unanalyzed, the uncontrolled--to the attention. and although the intimate association and daily familiarity of family life produce affection, they are not favorable to the genesis of romantic love. cognition is so complete that no place is left for emotional appreciation. our common expressions "falling in love" and "love at sight" imply, in fact, unfamiliarity; and there can be no question that men and women would prefer at present to get mates away from home, even if there were no traditional prejudice against the marriage of near kin. the psychology of modesty and clothing no altogether satisfactory theory of the origin of modesty has been advanced. the naïve assumption that men were ashamed because they were naked, and clothed themselves to hide their nakedness, is not tenable in face of the large mass of evidence that many of the natural races are naked, and not ashamed of their nakedness; and a much stronger case can be made out for the contrary view, that clothing was first worn as a mode of attraction, and modesty then attached to the act of removing the clothing; but this view in turn does not explain an equally large number of cases of modesty among races which wear no clothing at all. a third theory of modesty, the disgust theory, stated by professor james[ ] and developed somewhat by havelock ellis,[ ] makes modesty the outgrowth of our disapproval of immodesty in others--"the application in the second instance to ourselves of judgments primarily passed upon our mates."[ ] the sight of offensive behavior is no doubt a powerful deterrent from like behavior, but this seems to be a secondary manifestation in the case of modesty. the genesis of modesty is rather to be found in the activity in the midst of which it appears, and not in the inhibition of activity like the activity of others. it appears also that it has primarily no connection with clothing whatever.[ ] professor angell and miss thompson have made an investigation of the relation of circulation and respiration to attention, which advances considerably our knowledge of the nature of the emotions. they say: when the active process runs smoothly and uninterruptedly, these bodily activities [circulation and respiration] progress with rhythmic regularity. relatively tense, strained attention is generally characterized by more vigorous bodily accompaniments than is low-level, gentle, and relatively relaxed attention (drowsiness, for instance); but both agree, so long as their progress is free and unimpeded, in relative regularity of bodily functions. breaks, shocks, and mal-co-ordinations of attention are accompanied by sudden, spasmodic changes and irregularities in bodily processes, the amount and violence of such changes being roughly proportioned to the intensity of the experiences. now, emotions represent psychological conditions of great instability. especially is this true when the emotion is profound. the necessity is suddenly thrown upon the organism of reacting to a situation with which it is at the moment able to cope only imperfectly, if at all. the condition is one in which normal, uninterrupted, coordinated movements are for a time checked and thrown out of gear.[ ] and again, in concluding their admirable study: all the processes with which we have been dealing are cases of readjustment of an organism to its environment. attention is always occupied with the point in consciousness at which the readjustment is taking place. if the process of readjustment goes smoothly and evenly, we have a steady strain of attention--an equilibrated motion in one direction. the performance of mental calculation is a typical case of this sort of attention. but often the readjustment is more difficult. factors are introduced which at first refuse to be reconciled with the rest of the conscious content. the attentive equilibrium is upset, and there are violent shifts back and forth as it seeks to recover itself. these are the cases of violent emotion. between these two extremes comes every shade of difficulty in the readjustment, and of consequent intensity in emotional tone. we have attempted to show in the preceding paper that the readjustment of organism to environment involves a maintenance of the equilibrium of the bodily processes, which runs parallel with the maintenance of the attentive equilibrium, and is an essential part of the readjustment of the psycho-physical organism. the more motile organisms are constantly, by very reason of their motility, encountering situations which put a strain upon the attention. the quest for food leads to encounters with members of their own and of different species; the resulting fight, pursuit, and flight are accompanied by the powerful emotions of anger and fear. the emotion is, as darwin has pointed out, a part of the effort to reaccommodate, since it is a physiological preparation for action appropriate to the type of situation in question.[ ] the strain upon the attention, the affective bodily condition, and the motor activity appear usually in the same connection, and, from the standpoint of biological design, the action concluding the series of bodily activities is of advantage to the organism. in animal life the situation is simple. whether the animal decides to fight for it or to run for it, he has at any rate two plain courses before him, and the relation between his emotional states and the type of situation is rather definitely fixed racially, and relatively constant. even in the associated life of animals the type of reaction is not much changed, and is here also instinctively fixed. but in mankind the instinctive life is overshadowed or rivaled by the freedom of initiative secured through an extraordinary development of the power of inhibition and of associative memory, while, at the same time, this freedom of choice is hindered and checked by the presence of others. the social life of mankind brings out a thousand situations unprovided for in the instincts and unanticipated in consciousness. in the midst, then, of a situation relatively new in race experience, where advantage is still the all-important consideration, and where this can no longer be secured either by fighting or running, but by the good opinion of one's fellows as well, we may look for some new strains upon the attention and some emotions not common to animal life. i do not think we can entirely understand the nature of these emotional expressions in the race unless we realize that man is, in his savage as well as his civilized state, enormously sensitive to the opinion of others.[ ] the longing of the creek youth to "bring in hair" and be counted a man; the passion of the dyak of borneo for heads, and the recklessness of the modern soldier, "seeking the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth;" the alleged action of the young women of kansas in taking a vow to marry no man who had not been to the philippine war, and of the ladies of havana, during the rebellion against spain, in sending a chemise to a young man who stayed at home, with the suggestion that he wear it until he went to the field--all indicate that the opinion of one's fellows is at least as powerful a stimulus as any found in nature. to the student of ethnology no point in the character of primitive man is more interesting and surprising than his vanity. this unique susceptibility to social influence is, indeed, essential to the complex institutional and associational life of mankind. the transmission of language, tradition, morality, knowledge, and all race experience from the older to the younger, and from one generation to another, is accomplished through mental suggestibility, and the activity of the individual in associational life is mediated largely through it. now, taking them as we find them, we know that such emotions as modesty and shame are associated with actions which injure and shock others, and show us off in a bad light. they are violations of modes of behavior which have become habitual in one way and another. in an earlier paper[ ] have indicated some of the steps by which approvals and disapprovals were set up in the group. when once a habit is fixed, interference with its smooth running causes an emotion. the nature of the habit broken is of no importance. if it were habitual for _grandes dames_ to go barefoot on our boulevards or to wear sleeveless dresses at high noon, the contrary would be embarrassing. psychologically the important point is that, when the habit is set up, the attention is in equilibrium. when inadvertently or under a sufficiently powerful stimulus we break through a habit, the attention and associative memory are brought into play. we are conscious of a break, of what others will think; we anticipate a damaged or diminished personality; we are, in a word, upset. we may consequently expect to find that whatever brings the individual into conflict with the ordinary standards of life of the society in which he is living is the occasion of a strain on the attention and of an accompanying bodily change.[ ] a minimum expression of modesty, and one having an organic rather than a social basis, is seen in the coyness of the female among animals. in many species of animals the female does not submit at once to the solicitations of the male, but only after the most arduous wooing. the female cuckoo answers the call of her mate with an alluring laugh that excites him to the utmost, but it is long before she gives herself up to him. a mad chase through tree tops ensues, during which she constantly incites him with that mocking call, till the poor fellow is fairly driven crazy. the female kingfisher often torments her devoted lover for half a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. but she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as she flies, and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he suddenly gives up the pursuit.[ ] there is here a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached, which is not essentially different from the case, in human society, of that woman who, "whispering, 'i will ne'er consent,' consented." in either case, the minimum that it is necessary to assume is an organic hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even the greater rôle. pairing is in its nature a seizure, and the coquetry of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being seized. our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in totally contrary effects. a show of fight may produce either anger or fear; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us from another; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today and please us tomorrow. mere movement is, to take another instance, one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life; and, if we examine its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have different meanings in terms of sex. if the female runs, the movement attracts the notice of the male, and the movement is a sexual stimulus. or the movement may be a movement of avoidance--a running-away; and in this way the female may secure contrary desires by the same general type of activity. or, on the other hand, not-running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding the attention of the male. similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in sexual life. in appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. but we have seen in the case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch necessary for pairing. but without going farther into the question of the psychology of wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is necessary to be always attractive and never disgusting to the opposite sex, and even the most serious attention to this problem is not always successful.[ ] sexual association is a treacherous ground, because our likes and dislikes turn upon temperamental traits rather than on the judgment, or, at any rate, upon modes of judgment not clearly analyzable in consciousness. an openness of manner in the relations of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness, or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. a modest behavior is charming, but too much modesty is prudery. under these circumstances, when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is realized, but the effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and when, at the same time, the effect produced by the action is felt to be very important to happiness, it is to be expected that there should often be a conflict between the tendency to follow a stimulus and the tendency to inhibit it, a hovering between advance and retreat, assent and negation--a disturbed state of attention, and an organic hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the act is realized or thought as improper. but, however thin and movable the partitions between attraction and disgust, every person is aware of certain standards of behavior, derived either from the strain of personal relationship or by imitation of current modes of behavior. the girl of the unclothed races who takes in sitting a modest attitude is acting on the result of experience. she may have been often annoyed by the attentions of men at periods when their attention was not welcome, and in this case the action is one of shrinking and avoidance. she doubtless has in mind also that all females are not at all times attractive to all males, that female boldness sometimes excites disgust, and that the concealment of the person may be more attractive than its exposure. this more or less instinctive recognition of the suggestive power of her person and her corresponding attitude of modesty have been assisted also by her observation of the experiences of other women, and by the talk of the older women. i may add the following instances to make it plain that the sexual relation is the object of much attention from both sexes in primitive society, and furnishes occasion for the interruption of the smooth flow of the attention and the bodily activities. describing the use of magic by the male australians in obtaining wives, spencer and gillen add: in the case of charming, however, the initiative may be taken by the woman, who can, of course, imagine that she has been charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man, whose vanity is flattered by the response to the magic power which he can soon persuade himself that he did really exercise.[ ] if this attempt at suggestion failed, we should have a case of lively embarrassment in the woman, and her discomfiture would be heightened if the other women and men of the community were aware of her attempt. similarly on jervis island in torres straits, if an unmarried woman was interested in a man, she accosted him, but the man did not address the woman "for, if she refused him, he would feel ashamed, and maybe he would brain her with a stone club, and so 'he would kill her for nothing.'"[ ] a wholesale unsettling of habit is seen when a lower culture is impinged upon by a higher. the consciousness of other standards of behavior causes new forms of modesty in the lower race. haddon reports of the natives of torres straits: the men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but i gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. a man would never go nude before me--only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only when they were diving.... amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but i believe they are becoming more so.... i have not noticed any reticence in their speaking about sexual matters before the young, but missionary influence has modified this a great deal; formerly, i imagine, there was no restraint in speech, now there is a great deal of prudery;... and i had the greatest possible difficulty in getting the little information i did about the former relationships between the sexes. all this, i suspect, is not really due to a sense of decency _per se_, but rather to a desire on their part not to appear barbaric to strangers; in other words, the hesitancy is between them and the white man, not as between themselves.[ ] bonwick says also: i have repeatedly been amused at observing the australian natives prepare for their approach to the abode of civilization by wrapping their blankets more decently around them and putting on their ragged trousers or petticoats.[ ] there are numerous cases found among the lower races where the wearing of clothing and ornament are not associated with feelings of modesty. von den steinen reports that the women of brazil wore a small, delicately made and ornamented covering or _uluri_, which evidently had an attractive as well as protective value; but the women showed no embarrassment, but rather astonishment, when he asked them to remove them and give them to him. when they understood that he really wanted them, they removed them and gave them to him with a laugh.[ ] this is a case, in fact, of the beginning of clothing without a beginning of modesty. but while we find cases of modesty without clothing and of clothing without modesty the two are usually found together, because clothing and ornament are the most effective means of drawing the attention to the person, sometimes by concealing it and sometimes by emphasizing it. the original covering of the body was in the nature of ornament rather than clothing. the waist, the neck, the wrists, and the ankles are smaller than the portion of the body immediately below them, and are from this anatomical accident a suitable place to tie ornaments, and the ornamentation of the body results incidently in giving some degree of covering to the body. the most suggestive use of clothing is the use of just a sufficient amount to call attention to the person, without completely concealing it. i need not refer to the fact that in modern society this is accomplished by, or perhaps we should better say transpires in connection with, diaphanous fabrics and décolleté dresses; and the same effect was doubtless accomplished by a typical early form of female dress, of which i will give one instance in australia and one in america: among the arunta and luricha the women normally wear nothing, but amongst tribes farther north, especially the kaitish and warramunga, a small apron is made and worn, and this sometimes finds its way south into the arunta. close-set strands of fur-string hang vertically from a string waist-girdle. each strand is about eight or ten inches in length, and the breadth of the apron may reach the same size, though it is often not more than six inches wide.[ ] mr. powers says: a fashionable young wittun woman wears a girdle of deer skin, the lower edge of which is slit into a long fringe, with the polished pine-nut at the end of each strand, while the upper border and other portions are studded with brilliant bits of shell.[ ] if we recall the psychological standpoint that the emotions are an organic disturbance of equilibrium occurring when factors difficult of reconciliation are brought to the attention, and if we have in mind that the association of the sexes has furnished so powerful an emotional disturbance as jealousy, it seems a simple matter to explain the comparatively mild by-play of sexual modesty as a function of wooing, without bringing either clothing or ornament into the question. we saw a minimum expression of modesty in the courtship of animals, where the modesty of the female was a form of fear on the organic side, but the accompanying movements of avoidance were, at the same time, a powerful attraction to the male. and we have in this, as in all expressions of fear--shame, guilt, timidity, bashfulness--an affective bodily state growing out of the strain thrown upon the attention in the effort of the organism to accommodate itself to its environment. the essential nature of the reaction is already fixed in types of animal life where the operation of disgust is out of the question, and in relations which imply no attention to the conduct of others. if any separation between the bodily self and the environment is to be made at all, it is putting the cart before the horse to make out that modesty is derived from our repugnance at the conduct of others, more immediately than through attention to the meaning of our own activities. the fallacy of the disgust theory lies, in fact, in the attempt to separate the copies for imitation derived from our own activities from those derived from our observation of the activities of others. when habits are set up and are running smoothly, the attention is withdrawn; and nakedness was a habit in the unclothed societies, just as it may become a habit now in the artist's model. but when, for any of the reasons i have outlined, women or men began to cover the body, then putting off the covering became peculiarly suggestive, because the breaking-up of a habit brings an act clearly into attention. and when dress becomes habitual in a society whose sense of modesty has also developed to a high degree, the suggestive effect is so great that the bare thought of unclothing the person becomes painful, and we have the possibility of such a phenomenon as mock modesty. but, so far as sexual modesty is concerned, the clothing has only reinforced the already great suggestive power of the sexual characters. in animal society the coyness of the female is the analogue of modesty. the male is always aggressive, and in both animal and human society used ornament as a means of interesting and influencing the female. in the course of time, however, man's activities became his main dependence, and woman's person and personal behavior became more significant, especially in a state of society where she became dependent on man's activities, and both ornament and modesty were largely transferred to her. in speaking of the relation of sex to morality,[ ] i have already shown that the morality of man is peculiarly a morality of prowess and contract, while woman's morality is to a greater degree a morality of bodily habits, both because child-bearing, which is a large factor in determining sexual morality, is more closely connected with her person, and in consequence also of male jealousy. physiologically and socially reproduction is more identified with the person of woman than of man, and it has come about that her sexual behavior has been more closely looked after, not only by men, but by women--for it would not be difficult to show that women have been always, as they are still, peculiarly watchful of one another in this respect. in the course of history woman developed an excessive and scrupulous concern for the propriety of her behavior, especially in connection with her bodily habits; and this in turn became fixed and particularized by fashion, with the result that not only her physical life became circumscribed, but her attention and mental interests became limited largely to safeguarding and enhancing her person. the effect of this and of other similar restrictions of behavior on her character and mind is indicated in following chapters. the adventitious character of woman there is more than one bit of evidence that nature changed her plan with reference to some organism at the very last moment, and introduced a feature which was not contemplated at the outset. this change of plan is carried out through the specialization of some organ, sense, or habit, to such a degree as to make practically a new type of the organism. in the human species, for example, the atrophied organs distributed through the body are evidence that the physical make-up of the species was well-nigh definitely fixed before the advantage of free hands led to an erect posture, thereby throwing certain sets of muscles out of use; and the specialization of the voice as a means of communicating thought was, similarly, a device for relieving the hands of the burden of communication, and was not introduced systematically until a gesture language had been so well established that even now we fall back into it unconsciously, especially in moments of excitement, and attempt to talk with our hands and bodies. but perhaps the most interesting modification or reversal of plan to be noted in mankind is connected with the relation of the two sexes. as will presently be indicated, life itself was in the beginning female, so far as sex could be postulated of it at all, and the life-process was primarily a female process, assisted by the male. in humankind as well, nature obviously started out on the plan of having woman the dominant force, with man as an aid; but after a certain time there was a reversal of plan, and man became dominant, and woman dropped back into a somewhat unstable and adventitious relation to the social process. up to a certain point, in fact, in his physical and social evolution man shows an interesting structural and mental adaptation to woman, or to the reproductive process which she represents; while the later stages of history show, on the other hand, that the mental attitude of woman, and consequently her forms of behavior, have been profoundly modified, and even her physical life deeply affected, by her effort to adjust to man. the only attitude which nature can be said to show toward life is the design that the individual shall sustain its own life, and at death leave others of its kind--that it shall get food, avoid destruction, and reproduce. in pursuance of this policy it naturally turns out that those types showing greater morphological and functional complexity, along with freer movement and more mental ingenuity, come into the more perfect control and use of their environment, and consequently have greater likelihood of survival. failing of this greater complexity, their chance of life lies in occupying so obscure a position, so to speak, that they do not come into collision with more dominant forms, or in reproducing at such a rate as to survive in spite of this. the number of devices in the way of modification of form and habit to secure advantage is practically infinite, but all progressive species have utilized the principle of sex as an accessory of success. by this principle greater variability is secured, and among the larger number of variations there is always a chance of the appearance of one of superior fitness. the male in many of the lower forms is very insignificant in size, economically useless (as among the bees), often a parasite on the female, and, as many biologists hold, merely a secondary device or afterthought of nature, designed to secure greater variation than can be had by the asexual mode of reproduction. in other words, he is of use to the species by assisting the female to reproduce progressively fitter forms. when, in the course of time, sexual reproduction eventuated in a mammalian type, with greater intimacy between mother and offspring and a longer period of dependence of offspring on the mother, the function of the male in assisting the female became social as well as biological; and this was pre-eminently so in the case of man, because of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child.[ ] the characteristic helplessness of the child, which at first thought appears to be a disadvantage, is in fact the source of human superiority, since the design of nature in providing this condition of helplessness is to afford a lapse of time sufficient for the growth of the very complex mechanism, the human brain, which, along with free hands, is the medium through which man begins that reaction on his environment--inventing, exterminating, cultivating, domesticating, organizing--which ends in his supremacy. it is plain, therefore, that species in which growth is slow are at an advantage, if to the care and nourishment of the female are added the providence and protection of the male; and this is especially true in mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years. in this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater variability of the male. instead of an insignificant addendum to the reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful, jealous, a fighting specialization--still an attaché of the female, but now a defender and provider. this is the general condition among mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate association of the parents, which we denominate marriage. for westermarck is quite right in his view that children are not the result of marriage, but marriage is the result of children. from this point of view marriage is a union favored by the scheme of nature because it is favorable to the rearing and training of children, and the groups practicing marriage, or its animal analogue, have the best chance of survival. but the evolution of a courageous and offensive disposition naturally did not result in an eminently domestic disposition. man did the hunting and fighting. he was attached to the woman, but he was not steady. he did not stay at home. the woman and the child were the core of society, the fixed point, the point to which man came back. there consequently grew up a sort of dual society and dual activity. man represented the more violent and spasmodic activities, involving motion and skillful co-ordinations, as well as organization for hunting and fighting; while woman carried on the steady, settled life. she was not able to wander readily from a fixed point, on account of her children; and, indeed, her physical organization fitted her for endurance rather than movement. consequently her attention was turned to industries, since these were compatible with settled and stationary habits. agriculture, pottery, weaving, tanning, and all the industrial processes involved in working up the by-products of the chase, were developed by her. she domesticated man and assisted him in domesticating the animals. she built her house, and it was hers. she did not go to her husband's group after marriage. the child was hers, and remained a member of her group. the germ of social organization was, indeed, the woman and her children and her children's children. the old women were the heads of civil society, though the men had developed a fighting organization and technique which eventually swallowed them up. from the standpoint of physical force, man was the master, and was often brutal enough. but woman led an independent life, to some extent. she was, if not economically independent, at least economically creative, and she enjoyed the great advantage of being less definitely interested in man than he was in her. for while woman is more deeply involved physiologically in the reproductive life than man, she is apparently less involved from the standpoint of immediate stimulus, or her interest is less acute in consciousness. the excess activity which characterizes man in his relation to the general environment holds also for his attitude toward woman. not only is the male the wooer among the higher orders of animals and among men, but he has developed all the accessories for attracting attention--in the animals, plumage, color, voice, and graceful and surprising forms of motion; and in man, ornament and courageous action. for primitive man, like the male animal, was distinguished by ornament. up to this time the relation of man to woman was the natural development of a relation calculated to secure the best results for the species. his predacious disposition had been, in part at least, developed in the service of woman and her child, and he was emotionally dependent on her to such a degree that he used all the arts of attraction at his command to secure a relation with her. in the course of time, however, an important change took place in environmental conditions. while woman had been doing the general work and had developed the beginnings of many industries, man had become a specialist along another line. his occupation had been almost exclusively the pursuit of animals or conflict with his neighbors; and in this connection he had become the inventor of weapons and traps, and in addition had learned the value of acting in concert with his companions. but a hunting life cannot last forever; and when large game began to be exhausted, man found himself forced to abandon his destructive and predacious activities, and adopt the settled occupations of woman. to these he brought all the inventive technique and capacity for organized action which he had developed in his hunting and fighting life, with the result that he became the master of woman in a new sense. not suddenly, but in the course of time, he usurped her primacy in the industrial pursuits, and through his organization of industry and the application of invention to the industrial processes became a creator of wealth on a scale before unknown. gradually also he began to rely not altogether on ornament, exploits, and trophies to get the attention and favor of woman. when she was reduced to a condition of dependence on his activity, wooing became a less formidable matter; he purchased her from her male kindred, and took her to his own group, where she was easier to control. in unadvanced stages of society, where machinery and the division of labor and a high degree of organization in industry have not been introduced, and among even our own lower classes, woman still retains a relation to industrial activities and has a relatively independent status. among the indians of this country it was recognized that a man could not become wealthy except through the possession of a sufficient number of wives to work up for trade the products of the chase; and today the west african youth does not seek a young woman in marriage but an old one, preferably a widow, who knows all about the arts of preparing and adulterating rubber. among peasants, also, and plain people the proverb recognizes that the "gray mare is the better horse." the heavy, strong, enduring, patient, often dominant type, frequently seen among the lower classes, where alone woman is still economically functional, is probably a good representative of what the women of our race were before they were reduced by man to a condition of parasitism which, in our middle and so-called higher classes, has profoundly affected their physical, mental, and moral life. on the moral side, particularly, man's disposition to bend the situation to his pleasure placed woman in a hard position and resulted in the distortion of her nature, or rather in bringing to the front elemental traits which under our moral code are not reckoned the best. in the animal world the female is noted for her indirection. on account of the necessity of protecting her young, she is cautious and cunning, and, in contrast with the open and pugnacious methods of the more untrammeled male, she relies on sober colors, concealment, evasion, and deception of the senses. this quality of cunning is, of course, not immoral in its origin, being merely a protective instinct developed along with maternal feeling. in woman, also, this tendency to prevail by passive means rather than by assault is natural; and especially under a system of male control, where self-realization is secured either through the manipulation of man or not at all, a resort to trickery, indirection, and hypocrisy is not to be wondered at. man has, however, always insisted that woman shall be better than he is, and her immoralities are usually not such as he greatly disapproves. there has, in fact, been developed a peculiar code of morals to cover the peculiar case of woman. this may be called a morality of the person and of the bodily habits, as contrasted with the commercial and public morality of man. purity, constancy, reserve, and devotion are the qualities in woman which please and flatter the jealous male; and woman has responded to these demands both really and seemingly. without any consciousness of what she was doing (for all moral traditions fall in the general psychological region of habit), she acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing to men. and--always with the rather definite realization before her of what a dreadful thing it is to be an old maid--she has naïvely insisted that her sisters shall play well within the game, and has become herself the most strict censor of that morality which has become traditionally associated with woman. fearing the obloquy which the world attaches to a bad woman, she throws the first stone at any woman who bids for the favor of men by overstepping the modesty of nature. morality, in the most general sense, represents the code under which activities are best carried on, and is worked out in the school of experience. it is pre-eminently an adult and a male system, and men are intelligent enough to recognize that neither women nor children have passed through this school. it is on this account that, while man is merciless to woman from the standpoint of personal behavior, he exempts her from anything in the way of contractual morality, or views her defections in this regard with allowance and even with amusement. in the absence of any participation in commercial activity and with no capital but her personal charms and her wits, and with the possibility of realizing on these only through a successful appeal to man, woman naturally puts her best foot first. it was, of course, always one of the functions of the female to charm the male; but so long as woman maintained her position of economic usefulness and her quasi-independence she had no great problem, for there was never a chance in primitive society, any more than in animal society, that a woman would go unmated. but when through man's economic and social organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not married--especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had been one of man's accessories in courtship, but which he had dispensed with when the superiority acquired through occupational pursuits enabled him to do so. under a new stimulation to be attractive, and with the addition of ornament to the repertory of her charms, woman has assumed an almost aggressive attitude toward courtship. the means of attraction she employs are so highly elaborated, and her technique is so finished, that she is really more active in courtship than man. we speak of man as the wooer, but falling in love is really mediated by the woman. by dress, behavior, coquetry, modesty, reserve, and occasional boldness she gains the attention of man and infatuates him. he does the courting, but she controls the process. "er glaubt zu schieben, und er wird geschoben." the condition of limited stimulation, also, in which woman finds herself as a result of the control by man of wealth, of affairs, of the substantial interests of society, and even of her own personality, leads woman to devote herself to display as an interest in itself, regardless of its effect on men. in doing this she is really falling back on an instinct. one of the most powerful stimulations to either sex is glitter, in the most general sense, and the interest in showing off begins in the coloration and plumage of animals, and continues as ornament in the human species. it is true that the wooing connotation of ornament was originally its most important one, and that it was characteristic of man in particular; but woman has generalized it as an interest, and as a means of self-realization. she seeks it as a means of charming men, of outdoing other women, and as an artistic interest; and her attention often takes that direction to such a degree that its acquisition means satisfaction, and its lack discontent. sometimes, indeed, when a woman is married and knows that she is "sped," she drops the display pose altogether, tends to lose herself in household interests, and to become a slattern. on the other hand, she often makes marriage the occasion of display on a more elaborate scale, and is pitiless in her demands for the means to this. a glance at the windows of our great stores shows that men have organized their business in a full appreciation of these facts. dressing, indeed, becomes a competitive game with women, and since their opponents and severest critics are women, it turns out curiously enough that they dress even more with reference to the opinion of women than for men. the earth hath bubbles as the water has, and these are of them. it would, of course, be absurd to censure woman too greatly for these frailties, and it would be very unjust to imply that all women share them. some women, in adapting themselves to the situation, follow apparently, a bent acquired in connection with the maternal instinct, and become true and devoted and grand to a degree hardly known by man. others, following a bent gotten along with coquetry in connection with the wooing instinct, and having no activity through which their behavior is standardized, become difficile, unreal, inefficient, exacting, unsatisfied, absurd. and we have also the paradox that the same woman can be the two things at different times. there is therefore a basis of truth in pope's hard saying that "women have no characters at all." because their problem is not to accommodate to the solid realities of the world of experience and sense, but to adjust themselves to the personality of men, it is not surprising that they should assume protean shapes. moreover, man is so affected by the charms of woman, and offers so easy a mark for her machinations, as to invite exploitation. having been evolved largely through the stimulus of the female presence, he continues to be more profoundly affected by her presence and behavior than by any other stimulus whatever, unless it be the various forms of combat. from samson and odysseus down, history and story recognize the ease and frequency with which a woman makes a fool of a man. the male protective and sentimental attitude is indeed incompatible with resistance. to charm, pursue, court, and possess the female, involve a train of memories which color all after-relations with the whole sex. in both animals and men there is an instinctive disposition to take a great deal off the female. the male animal takes the assaults of the female complacently and shamefacedly, "just like folks." peasants laugh at the hysterical outbreaks of their women, and the "bold, bad man" is as likely to be henpecked as any other. woman is a disturbing element in business and in school to a degree not usually apprehended. in her presence a man instinctively assumes a different attitude. he is, in fact, so susceptible as seemingly, almost, to want to be victimized, and, as locke expressed the matter, "it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived." this disposition of man and the detached condition of woman have much to do with the emergence of the adventuress and the sporting-woman. human nature was made for action; and perhaps the most distressing and disconcerting situation which confronts it is to be played on by stimulations without the ability to function. the mere superinducing of passivity, as in the extreme case of solitary confinement, is sufficient to produce insanity; and the emotion of dread, or passive fear, is said to be the most painful of emotions, because there is no possibility of relief by action. modern woman is in a similar condition of constraint and unrest, which produces organic ravages for which no luxury can compensate. the general ill-health of girls of the better classes, and the equally general post-matrimonial breakdown, are probably due largely to the fact that the nervous organization demands more normal stimulations and reactions than are supplied. the american woman of the better classes has superior rights and no duties, and yet she is worrying herself to death--not over specific troubles, but because she has lost her connection with reality. many women, more intelligent and energetic than their husbands and brothers, have no more serious occupations than to play the house-cat, with or without ornament. it is a wonder that more of them do not lose their minds; and that more of them do not break with the system entirely is due solely to the inhibitive effects of early habit and suggestion. as long as woman is comfortably cared for by the men of her group or by marriage, she is not likely to do anything rash, especially if the moral standards in her family and community are severe. but an unattached woman has a tendency to become an adventuress--not so much on economic as on psychological grounds. life is rarely so hard that a young woman cannot earn her bread; but she cannot always live and have the stimulations she craves. as long, however, as she remains with her people and is known to the whole community, she realizes that any infraction of the habits of the group, any immodesty or immorality, will ruin her standing and her chance of marriage, and bring her into shame and confusion. consequently, good behavior is a protective measure--instinctive, of course; for it is not true that the ordinary girl has imagination enough to think out a general attitude toward life other than that which is habitual in her group. but when she becomes detached from home and group, and is removed not only from surveillance, but from the ordinary stimulation and interest afforded by social life and acquaintanceship, her inhibitions are likely to be relaxed. the girl coming from the country to the city affords one of the clearest cases of detachment. assuming that she comes to the city to earn her living, her work is not only irksome, but so unremunerative that she finds it impossible to obtain those accessories to her personality in the way of finery which would be sufficient to hold her attention and satisfy her if they were to be had in plenty. she is lost from the sight of everyone whose opinion has any meaning for her, while the separation from her home community renders her condition peculiarly flat and lonely; and she is prepared to accept any opportunity for stimulation offered her, unless she has been morally standardized before leaving home. to be completely lost sight of may, indeed, become an object under these circumstances--the only means by which she can without confusion accept unapproved stimulations--and to pass from a regular to an irregular life and back again before the fact has been noted is not an unusual course. the professionally irregular class of women represents an extreme and unfortunate result of an adventitious and not-completely-functional relation to society. they do not form a class in the psychological sense, but only a trade. there are many sorts of natural dispositions among them--as many perhaps as will be found in any other occupation. none of the reputable occupations are homogeneous from the standpoint of the natural dispositions of the men and women who compose them, and the same is true of the disreputable occupations. many women of fine natural character and disposition are drawn in a momentary and incidental way into an irregular life, and recover, settle down to regular modes of living, drift farther, are married, and make uncommonly good wives. in this respect the adventuress is more fortunate than the criminal (that other great adventitious product), because the criminal is labeled and his record follows him, making reformation difficult; while the in-and-out life of woman with reference to what we call virtue is not officially noted and does not bring consequences so inevitable. but "if you drive nature out at the door, she will come back through the window;" and this interest in greater stimulation is, i believe, the dominant force in determining the choice--or, rather, the drift--of the so-called sporting-woman. she is seeking what, from the psychological standpoint, may be called a normal life. the human mind was formed and fixed once for all in very early times, through a life of action and emergency, when the species was fighting, contriving, and inventing its way up from the sub-human condition; and the ground-patterns of interest have never been, and probably never will be, fundamentally changed. consequently, all pursuits are irksome unless they are able, so to speak, to assume the guise of this early conflict for life in connection with which interest and modes of attention were developed. as a matter of fact, however, anything in the nature of a problem or a pursuit stimulates the emotional centers, and is interesting, because it is of the same general pattern as these primitive pursuits and problems. scientific and artistic pursuits, business, and the various occupational callings are analogues of the hunting, flight, pursuit, courtship, and capture of early racial life, and the problems they present may, and do, become all-absorbing. the moral and educational problem of development has been, indeed, to substitute for the simple, co-ordinative killing, escaping, charming, deceiving activities of early life, analogues which are increasingly serviceable to society, and to expand into a general social feeling the affection developed first in connection with courtship, the rearing of children, and joint predatory and defensive enterprises. the gamester, adventuress, and criminal are not usually abnormal in a biological sense, but have failed, through defective manipulation of their attention, to get interested in the right kind of problems. their attention has not been diverted from interests of a primary type containing a maximum of the sensory, to interests of an analogous type containing more elements of reflection, and involving problems and processes of greater benefit to society. the remedy for the irregularity, pettiness, ill-health, and unserviceableness of modern woman seems to lie, therefore, along educational lines. not in a general and cultural education alone, but in a special and occupational interest and practice for women, married and unmarried. this should be preferably gainful, though not onerous nor incessant. it should, in fact, be a play-interest, in the sense that the interest of every artist and craftsman, who loves his work and functions through it, is a play-interest. normal life without normal stimulation is not possible, and the stimulations answering to the nature of the nervous organization seem best supplied by interesting forms of work. this reinstates racially developed stimulations better than anything except play; and interesting work is, psychologically speaking, play. some kind of practical activity for women would also relieve the strain on the matrimonial situation--a situation which at present is abnormal and almost impossible. the demands for attention from husbands on the part of wives are greater than is compatible with the absorbing general activities of the latter, and women are not only neglected by the husband in a manner which did not happen in the case of the lover, but they are jealous of men in a more general sense than men are jealous of women. in the absence of other interests they are so dependent on the personal interest that they unconsciously put a jealous construction, not only on personal behavior, but on the most general and indifferent actions of the men with whom their lives are bound up; and this process is so obscure in consciousness that it is usually impossible to determine what the matter really is. an examination, also, of so-called happy marriages shows very generally that they do not, except for the common interest of children, rest on the true comradeship of like minds, but represent an equilibrium reached through an extension of the maternal interest of the woman to the man, whereby she looks after his personal needs as she does after those of the children--cherishing him, in fact, as a child--or in an extension to woman on the part of the man of that nurture and affection which is in his nature to give to pets and all helpless (and preferably dumb) creatures. obviously a more solid basis of association is necessary than either of these two instinctively based compromises; and the practice of an occupational activity of her own choosing by woman, and a generous attitude toward this on the part of man, would contribute to relieve the strain and to make marriage more frequently successful. the mind of woman and the lower races i the mind is a very wonderful thing, but it is questionable whether it is more wonderful than some of the instinctive modes of behavior of lower forms of life. if mind is viewed as an adjustment to external conditions for the purpose of securing control, the human mind is no more wonderful in its way than the homing and migratory instincts of birds; the tropic quality of the male butterfly which leads it to the female though she is imprisoned in a cigar-box in a dark room; or the peculiar sensitivity of the bat which enables it, though blinded, to thread its way through a maze of obstructions hung about a room. the fact of sensitivity, in short, or the quality of response to stimulation, is more wonderful than its particular formulation in the human brain. mind simply represents a special development of the quality of sensitivity common to organic nature, and analogous to the sensitivity of the photographic plate. the brain receives impressions, records them, remembers them, compares new experiences with old, and modifies behavior, in the presence of a new or recurrent stimulation, in view of the pleasure-pain connotation of similar situations in the past. in very low forms of life, as is well known, there is no development of brain or special organs of sense; but the organism is pushed and pulled about by light, heat, gravity, and acid and other chemical forces, and is unable to decline to act on any stimulus reaching it. it reacts in certain characteristic, habitual, and adequate ways, because it responds uniformly to the same stimulation; but it has no choice, and is controlled by the environment. the object of brain development is to reverse these conditions and control the actions of the organism, and of the outside world as well, from within. with the development of the special organs of sense, memory, and consequent ability to compare present experiences with past, with inhibition or the ability to decline to act on a stimulus, and, finally, with abstraction or the power of separating general from particular aspects, we have a condition where the organism sits still, as it were, and picks and chooses its reactions to the outer world; and, by working in certain lines to the exclusion of others, it gains in its turn control of the environment, and begins to reshape it. all the higher animals possess in some degree the powers of memory, judgment, and choice; but in man nature followed the plan of developing enormously the memory, on which depend abstraction, or the power of general ideas, and the reason. in order to secure this result, the brain, or surface for recording experience, was developed out of all proportion with the body. in the average european the brain weighs about , grams, or per cent. of the body weight, while the average brain weight of some of the great anthropoid apes is only about grams, or, in the orangoutang, one-half of per cent. of the body weight. in point of fact, nature seems to have reached the limit of her materials in creating the human species. the development of hands freed from locomotion and a brain out of proportion to bodily weight are _tours de force_, and, so to speak, an afterthought, which put the heaviest strain possible on the materials employed, and even diverted some organs from their original design. a number of ailments like hernia, appendicitis, and uterine displacement, are due to the fact that the erect posture assumed when the hands were diverted from locomotion to prehensile uses put a strain not originally contemplated on certain tissues and organs. similarly, the proportion of idiocy and insanity in the human species shows that nature had reached the limit of elasticity in her materials and began to take great risks. the brain is a delicate and elaborate organ on the structural side, and in these cases it is not put together properly, or it gets hopelessly out of order. this strain on the materials is evident in all races and in both sexes, and indicates that the same general structural ground-pattern has been followed in all members of the species. viewed from the standpoint of brain weight, all races are, broadly speaking, in the same class. for while the relatively small series of brains from the black race examined by anthropologists shows a slight inferiority in weight--about grams in negroes--when compared with white brains, the yellow race shows more than a corresponding superiority to the white; in the chinese about grams. there is also apparently no superiority in brain weight in modern over ancient times. the cranial capacity of europeans between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, as shown by the cemeteries of paris, is not appreciably different from that of frenchmen of today, and the egyptian mummies show larger cranial capacity than the modern egyptians. furthermore, the limits of variation between individuals in the same race are wider than the average difference between races. in a series of white brains, the lowest and highest brains will differ, in fact, as much as grams in weight. there is also no ground for the assumption that the brain of woman is inferior to that of man; for, while the average brain of woman is smaller, the average body weight is also smaller, and it is open to question whether the average brain weight of woman is smaller in proportion to body weight.[ ] the importance of brain weight in relation to intelligence, moreover, has usually been much exaggerated by anthropologists; for intelligence depends on the rapidity and range of the acts of associative memory, and this in turn on the complexity of the neural processes. brains are, in fact, like timepieces in this respect, that the small ones work "excellent well" if they are good material and well put together. although brains occasionally run above , grams in weight (that of the russian novelist turgenieff weighed , ), the brains of many eminent men are not distinguished for their great size. that of the french statesman gambetta weighed only , grams. it must be borne in mind also that there are many individuals among the lower races and among women having brain weight much in excess of that of that of the average male white. of all the possible ways of treating the brain for the purpose of testing its intelligence, that of weighing is the least satisfactory, and has been most indefatigably practiced. a better method, that of counting the nerve cells, has been lately introduced, but to treat a single brain in this way is a work of years, and no series of results exists. in the meantime miss thompson, in co-operation with professor angell, has completed a study of the mental traits of men and women on what is perhaps the best available principle--that of a series of laboratory tests which eliminate or take into consideration differences due to the characteristic habits of the two sexes. her findings are probably the most important contribution in this field, and her general conclusion on differences of sex will, i think, hold also for differences of race: the point to be emphasized as the outcome of this study is that, according to our present light, the psychological differences of sex seem to be largely due, not to difference of average capacity, nor to difference in type of mental activity, but to differences in the social influences brought to bear on the developing individual from early infancy to adult years. the question of the future development of the intellectual life of women is one of social necessities and ideals rather than of the inborn psychological characteristics of sex.[ ] there is certainly great difference in the mental ability of individuals, and there are probably less marked differences in the average ability of different races; but difference in natural ability is, in the main, a characteristic of the individual, not of race or of sex. it is probable that brain efficiency (speaking from the biological standpoint) has been, on the average, approximately the same in all races and in both sexes since nature first made up a good working-model, and that differences in intellectual expression are mainly social rather than biological, dependent on the fact that different stages of culture present different experiences to the mind, and adventitious circumstances direct the attention to different fields of interest. ii in approaching the question of the parity or disparity of the mental ability of the white and the lower races, we bring to it a fixed and instinctive prejudice. no race views another race with that generosity with which it views itself. it may even be said that the existence of a social group depends on its taking an exaggerated view of its own importance; and in a state of nature, at least, the same is true of the individual. if self-preservation is the first law of nature, there must be on the mental side an acute consciousness of self, and a habit of regarding the self as of more importance than the world at large. the value of this standpoint lies in the fact that, while a wholesome fear of the enemy is important, a wholesome contempt is even more so. praising one's self and dispraising an antagonist creates a confidence and a mental superiority in the way of confidence. the vituperative recriminations of modern prize-fighters, the boastings of the homeric heroes, and the _bôgan_ of the old germans, like the back-talk of the small boy, were calculated to screw the courage up; and the indians of america usually gave a dance before going on the war-path, in which by pantomime and boasting they magnified themselves and their past, and so stimulated their self-esteem that they felt invincible. in race-prejudice we see the same tendency to exalt the self and the group at the expense of outsiders. the alien group is belittled by attaching contempt to its peculiarities and habits--its color, speech, dress, and all the signs of its personality. this is not a laudable attitude, but it has been valuable to the group, because a bitter and contemptuous feeling is an aid to good fighting. no race or nation has yet freed itself from this tendency to exalt and idealize itself. it is very difficult for a member of western civilization to understand that the orientals regard us with a contempt in comparison with which our contempt for them is feeble. our bloodiness, our newness, our lack of reverence, our land-greed, our break-neck speed and lack of appreciation of leisure make vandals of us. on the other hand, we are very stupid about recognizing the intelligence of orientals. we have been accustomed to think that there is a great gulf between ourselves and other races; and this persists in an undefinable way after scores of japanese have taken high rank in our schools, and after hindus have repeatedly been among the wranglers in mathematics at cambridge. it is only when one of the far eastern nations has come bodily to the front that we begin to ask ourselves whether there is not an error in our reckoning. the instinct to belittle outsiders is perhaps at the bottom of our delusion that the white race has one order of mind and the black and yellow races have another. but, while a prejudice--a matter of instinct and emotion--may well be at the beginning of an error of this kind, it could not sustain itself in the face of our logical habits unless reinforced by an error of the judgment. and this error is found in the fact that in a naïve way we assume that our steps in progress from time to time are due to our mental superiority as a race over other races, and to the mental superiority of one generation of ourselves over the preceding. in this we are confusing advance in culture with brain improvement. if we should assume a certain grade of intelligence, fixed and invariable in all individuals, races, and times--an unwarranted assumption, of course--progress would still be possible, provided we assumed a characteristically human grade of intelligence to begin with. with associative memory, abstraction, and speech men are able to compare the present with the past, to deliberate and discuss, to invent, to abandon old processes for new, to focus attention on special problems, to encourage specialization, and to transmit to the younger generation a more intelligent standpoint and a more advanced starting-point. culture is the accumulation of the results of activity, and culture could go on improving for a certain time even if there were a retrogression in intelligence. if all the chemists in class a should stop work tomorrow, the chemists in class b would still make discoveries. these would influence manufacture, and progress would result. if a worker in any specialty acquaints himself with the results of his predecessors and contemporaries and _works_, he will add some results to the sum of knowledge in his line. and if a race preserves by record or tradition the memory of what past generations have done, and adds a little, progress is secured whether the brain improves or stands still. in the same way, the fact that one race has advanced farther in culture than another does not necessarily imply a different order of brain, but may be due to the fact that in the one case social arrangements have not taken the shape affording the most favorable conditions for the operation of the mind. if, then, we make due allowance for our instinctive tendency as a white group to disparage outsiders, and, on the other hand, for our tendency to confuse progress in culture and general intelligence with biological modification of the brain, we shall have to reduce very much our usual estimate of the difference in mental capacity between ourselves and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether; and we shall perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there has been an increase in the mental capacity of the white race since prehistoric times. the first question arising in this connection is whether any of the characteristic faculties of the human mind--perception, memory, inhibition, abstraction--are absent or noticeably weak in the lower races. if this is found to be true, we have reason to attribute the superiority of the white race to biological causes; otherwise we shall have to seek an explanation of white superiority in causes lying outside the brain. in examining this question we need not dwell on the acuteness of the sense-perceptions, because these are not distinctively human. as a matter of fact, they are usually better developed in animals and in the lower races than in the civilized, because the lower mental life is more perceptive than ratiocinative. the memory of the lower races is also apparently quite as good as that of the higher. the memory of the australian native or the eskimo is quite as good as that of our "oldest inhabitant;" and probably no one would claim that the modern scientist has a better memory than the bard of the homeric period. there is, however, a prevalent view, for the popularization of which herbert spencer is largely responsible, that primitive man has feeble powers of inhibition. like the equally erroneous view that early man is a free and unfettered creature, it arises from our habit of assuming that, because his inhibitions and unfreedom do not correspond with our own restraints, they do not exist. sir john lubbock pointed out long ago that the savage is hedged about by conventions so minute and so mandatory that he is actually the least free person in the world. but, in spite of this, spencer and others have insisted that he is incapable of self-restraint, is carried away like a child by the impulse of the moment, and is incapable of rejecting an immediate gratification for a greater future one. cases like the one mentioned by darwin of the fuegian who struck and killed his little son when the latter dropped a basket of fish into the water are cited without regard to the fact that cases of sudden domestic violence and quick repentance are common in any city today; and the failure of the australian blacks to throw back the small fry when seining is referred to without pausing to consider that our practice of exterminating game and denuding our forests shows an amazing lack of individual self-restraint. the truth is that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and, if we have this in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of inhibition. it is doubtful if modern society affords anything more striking in the way of inhibition than is found in connection with taboo, fetish, totemism, and ceremonial among the lower races. in the great majority of the american indian and australian tribes a man is strictly forbidden to kill or eat the animals whose name his clan bears as a totem. the central australian may not, in addition, eat the flesh of any animal killed or even touched by persons standing in certain relations of kinship to him. at certain times also he is forbidden to eat the flesh of a number of animals and at all times he must share all food secured with the tribal elders and some others. a native of queensland will put his mark on an unripe zamia fruit, and may be sure that it will be untouched and that when it is ripe he has only to go and get it. the eskimos, though starving, will not molest the sacred seal basking before their huts. similarly in social intercourse the inhibitions are numerous. to some of his sisters, blood and tribal, the australian may not speak at all; to others only at certain distances, according to the degree of kinship. the west african fetish acts as a police, and property protected by it is safer than under civilized laws. food and palm wine are placed beside the path with a piece of fetish suspended near by, and no one will touch them without leaving the proper payment. the garden of a native may be a mile from the house, unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by the owner; but it is immune from depredations if protected by fetish. our proverb says, "a hungry belly has no ears," and it must be admitted that the inhibition of food impulses implies no small power of restraint. altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign of mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species. the well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing stimulations of the kitchen. and it is also true that one race, at least--the american indian--makes inhibition of the most conspicuous feature in its system of education. from the time the ice is broken to give him a cold plunge and begin the toughening process on the day of his birth, until he dies with out a groan under torture the indian is schooled in the restraint of his impulses. he does not, indeed, practice our identical restraints, because his traditions and the run of his attention are different; but he has a capacity for controlling impulse equal to our own. another serious charge against the intelligence of the lower races is lack of the power of abstraction. they certainly do not deal largely in abstraction, and their languages are poor in abstract terms. but there is a great difference between the habit of thinking in abstract terms and the ability to do so. the degree to which abstraction is employed in the activities of a group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the complexity of consciousness in the group. when science, philosophy, and logic, and systems of reckoning time, space, and number are taught in the schools; when the attention is not so much engaged in perceptual as in deliberate acts; and when thought is a profession, then abstract modes of thought are forced on the mind. this does not argue absence of the power of abstraction in the lower races, or even a low grade of ability, but lack of practice. to one skilled in any line an unpracticed person seems very stupid; and this is apparently the reason why travelers report that the black and yellow races have feeble powers of abstraction. it is generally admitted, however, that the use of speech involves the power of abstraction, so that all races have the power in some degree. when we come further to examine the degree in which they possess it, we find that they compare favorably with ourselves in any test which involves a fair comparison. the proverb is a form of abstraction practiced by all races, and is perhaps the best test of the natural bent of the mind in this direction, because, like ballad poetry, and slang, proverbial sayings do not originate with the educated class, but are of popular origin. at the same time, proverbs compare favorably with the _mots_ of literature, and many proverbs have, in fact, drifted into literature and become connected with the names of great writers. indeed, the saying that there is nothing new under the sun applies with such force and fidelity to literature that, if we should strip hesiod and homer and chaucer of such phrases as "the half is greater than the whole," "it is a wise son that knows his own father" (which shakespeare quotes the other end about), and "to make a virtue of necessity," and if we should further eliminate from literature the motives and sentiments also in ballad poetry and in popular thought, little would remain but form. if we assume, then, that the popular mind--let us say the peasant mind--in the white race is as capable of abstraction as the mind of the higher classes, but not so specialized in this direction--and no one can doubt this in view of the academic record of country-bred boys--the following comparison of our proverbs with those of the africans of the guinea coast (the latter reported by the late sir a.b. ellis[ ]) is significant: _african._ stone in the water-hole does not feel the cold. _english._ habit is second nature. _a._ one tree does not make a forest. _e._ one swallow does not make a summer. _a._ "i nearly killed the bird." no one can eat nearly in a stew. _e._ first catch your hare. _a._ full-belly child says to hungry-belly child, "keep good cheer." _e._ we can all endure the misfortunes of others. _a._ distant firewood is good firewood. _e._ distance lends enchantment to the view. _a._ ashes fly back in the face of him who throws them. _e._ curses come home to roost. _a._ if the boy says he wants to tie the water with a string, ask him whether he means the water in the pot or the water in the lagoon. _e._ answer a fool according to his folly. _a._ cowries are men. _e._ money makes the man. _a._ cocoanut is not good for bird to eat. _e._ sour grapes. _a._ he runs away from the sword and hides himself in the scabbard. _e._ out of the frying-pan into the fire. _a._ a fool of ika and an idiot of iluka meet together to make friends. _e._ birds of a feather flock together. _a._ the ground-pig [bandicoot] said: "i do not feel so angry with the man who killed me as with the man who dashed me on the ground afterward." _e._ adding insult to injury. _a._ quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman. _e._ married in haste we repent at leisure. _a._ three elders cannot all fail to pronounce the word _ekulu_ [an antelope]: one may say _ekúlu_, another _ekulú_, but the third will say _ekulu_. _e._ in a multitude of counselors there is safety. _a._ if the stomach is not strong, do not eat cockroaches. _e._ milk for babes. _a._ no one should draw water from the spring in order to supply the river. _e._ robbing peter to pay paul. _a._ the elephant makes a dust and the buffalo makes a dust, but the dust of the buffalo is lost in the dust of the elephant. _e._ _duo cum faciunt idem non est idem._ _a._ ear, hear the other before you decide. _e._ _audi alteram partem._ on the side of number we have another test of the power of abstraction; and while the lower races show lack of practice in this, they show no lack of power. it is true that tribes have been found with no names for numbers beyond two, three, or five; but these are isolated groups, like the veddahs and bushmen, who have no trade or commerce, and lead a miserable existence, with little or nothing to count. the directions of attention and the simplicity or complexity of mental processes depend on the character of the external situation which the mind has to manipulate. if the activities are simple, the mind is simple, and if the activities were nil, the mind would be nil. the mind is nothing but a means of manipulating the outside world. number, time, and space conceptions and systems become more complex and accurate, not as the human mind grows in capacity, but as activities become more varied and call for more extended and accurate systems of notation and measurement. trade and commerce, machinery and manufacture, and all the processes of civilization involve specialization in the apprehension of series as such. under these conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires time and instruction for its mastery. the advance which mathematics has made within a brief historical time is strikingly illustrated by the words with which the celebrated mathematician, sir henry savile, who died in , closed his career as a professor at oxford: by the grace of god, gentlemen hearers, i have performed my promise. i have redeemed my pledge. i have explained, according to my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms, and the first eight propositions of the _elements_ of euclid. here, sinking under the weight of years, i lay down my art and my instruments.[ ] from the standpoint of modern mathematics, sir henry savile and the bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of the science. in respect, then, to brain structure and the more important mental faculties we find that no race is radically unlike the others. still, it might happen that the mental activities and products of two groups were so different as to place them in different classes. but precisely the contrary is true. there is in force a principle called the law of parallelism in development, according to which any group takes much the same steps in development as any other. the group may be belated, indeed, and not reach certain stages, but the ground patterns of life are the same in the lower races and in the higher. mechanical inventions, textile industries, rude painting, poetry, sculpture, and song, marriage and family life, organization under leaders, belief in spirits, a mythology, and some form of church and state exist universally. at one time students of mankind, when they found a myth in hawaii corresponding to the greek story of orpheus and eurydice, or an aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge, were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from greek or elizabethan or hebraic sources, or whether they did not afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition. but this standpoint has been abandoned, and it is recognized that the human mind and the outside world are essentially alike the world over; that the mind everywhere acts on the same principles; and that, ignoring the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar laws of growth among all peoples. the number of things which can stimulate the human mind is somewhat definite and limited. among them, for example, is death. this happens everywhere, and the death of a dear one may cause the living to imagine ways of being reunited. the story of orpheus and eurydice may thus arise spontaneously and perpetually, wherever death and affection exist. or, there may be a separation from home and friends, and the mind runs back in distress and longing over the happy past, and the state of consciousness aroused is as definite a fact among savages as among the civilized. a beautiful passage in homer represents helen looking out on the greeks from the wall of troy and saying: and now behold i all the other glancing-eyed achaians, whom well i could discern and tell their names; but two captains of the host can i not see, even kastor tamer of horses and polydukes the skilful boxer, mine own brethren whom the same mother bare. either they came not in the company from lovely lakedaimon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.[ ] when this passage is thus stripped of its technical excellence by a prose translation, we may compare it with the following new zealand lament composed by a young woman who was captured on the island of tuhua and carried to a mountain from which she could see her home: my regret is not to be expressed. tears, like a spring, gush from my eyes. i wonder whatever is tu kainku [her lover] doing, he who deserted me. now i climb upon the ridge of mount parahaki, whence is clear the view of the island of tuhua. i see with regret the lofty tanmo where dwells [the chief] tangiteruru. if i were there, the shark's tooth would hang from my ear. how fine, how beautiful should i look!... but enough of this; i must return to my rags and to my nothing at all.[ ] the situation of the two women in this case is not identical, and it would be possible to claim that the greek and maori passages differ in tone and coloring; but it remains true that a captive woman of any race will feel much the same as a captive woman of any other race when her thoughts turn toward home, and that the poetry growing out of such a situation will be everywhere of the same general pattern. similarly, to take an illustration from morals, we find that widely different in complexion and detail as are the moral codes of lower and higher groups, say the hebrews and the african kafirs, yet the general patterns of morality are strikingly coincident. it is reported of the kafirs that "they possess laws which meet every crime which may be committed." theft is punished by restitution and fine; injuring cattle, by death or fine; false witness, by a heavy fine; adultery, by fine or death; rape, by fine or death; poisoning or witchcraft, by death and confiscation of property; murder, by death or fine; treason or desertion from the tribe, by death or confiscation.[ ] the kafirs and hebrews are not at the same level of culture, and we miss the more abstract and monotheistic admonitions of the higher religion--"thou shalt not covet; thou shalt worship no other gods before me"--but the intelligence shown by the social mind in adjusting the individual to society may fairly be called the same grade of intelligence in the two cases. when the environmental life of two groups is more alike and the general cultural conditions more correspondent, the parallelism of thought and practice becomes more striking. the recently discovered assyrian code of hammurabi (about b.c.) contains striking correspondences with the mosaic code; and while semitic scholars probably have good and sufficient reasons for holding that the mosaic code was strongly influenced by the assyrian, we may yet be very confident that the two codes would have been of the same general character if no influence whatever had passed from one to the other. the institutions and practices of a people are a product of the mind; and if the early and spontaneous products of mind are everywhere of the same general pattern as the later manifestations, only less developed, refined, and specialized, it may well be that failure to progress equally is not due to essential unlikeness of mind, but to conditions lying outside the mind. another test of mental ability which deserves special notice is mechanical ingenuity. our white pre-eminence owes much to this faculty, and the lower races are reckoned defective in it. but the lower races do invent, and it is doubtful whether one invention is ever much more difficult than another. on the psychological side, an invention means that the mind sees a roundabout way of reaching an end when it cannot be reached directly. it brings into play the associative memory, and involves the recognition of analogies. there is a certain likeness between the flying back of a bough in one's face and the rebound of a bow, between a serpent's tooth and a poisoned arrow, between floating timber and a raft or boat; and water, steam, and electricity are like a horse in one respect--they will all make wheels go around, and do work. now, the savage had this faculty of seeing analogies and doing things in indirect ways. with the club, knife, and sword he struck more effectively than with the fist; with hooks, traps, nets, and pitfalls he understood how to seize game more surely than with the hands; in the bow and arrow, spear, blow-gun, and spring-trap he devised motion swifter than that of his own body; he protected himself with armor imitated from the hides and scales of animals, and turned their venom back on themselves. that the savage should have originated the inventive process and carried it on systematically is, indeed, more wonderful than that his civilized successors should continue the process; for every beginning is difficult. when occupations become specialized and one set of men has continually to do with one and only one set of machinery and forces, the constant play of attention over the limited field naturally results in improvements and the introduction of new principles. modern inventions are magnificent and seem quite to overshadow the simpler devices of primitive times; but when we consider the precedents, copies, resources, and accumulated knowledge with which the modern investigator works, and, on the other hand, the resourcelessness of primitive man in materials, ideas, and in the inventive habit itself, i confess that the bow and arrow seems to me the most wonderful invention in the world. viewing the question from a different angle, we find another argument for the homogeneous character of the human mind in the fact that the patterns of interest of the civilized show no variation from those of the savage. not only the appetites and vanities remain essentially the same, but, on the side of intellectual interest, the type of mental reaction fixed in the savage by the food-quest has come down unaltered to the man of science as well as to the man of the street. in circumventing enemies and capturing game, both the attention and the organic processes worked together in primitive man under great stress and strain. whenever, indeed, a strain is thrown on the attention, the heart and organs of respiration are put under pressure also in their effort to assist the attention in manipulating the problem; and these organic fluctuations are felt as pleasure and pain. the strains thrown on the attention of primitive man were connected with his struggle for life; and not only in the actual encounter with men and animals did emotion run high, but the memory and anticipation of conflict reinstated the emotional conditions in those periods when he was meditating future conflicts and preparing his bows and arrows, traps and poisons. the problem of invention, the reflective and scientific side of his life, was suffused with interest, because the manufacture of the weapon was, psychologically speaking, a part of the fight. this type of interest, originating in the hunt, remains dominant in the mind down to the present time. once constructed to take an interest in the hunting problem, it takes an interest in any problem whatever. not only do hunting and fighting and all competitive games--which are of precisely the same psychological pattern as the hunt and fight--remain of perennial interest, but all the useful occupations are interesting in just the degree that this pattern is preserved. the man of science works at problems and uses his ingenuity in making an engine in the laboratory in the same way that primitive man used his mind in making a trap. so long as the problem is present, the interest is sustained; and the interest ceases when the problematical is removed. consequently, all modern occupations of the hunting pattern--scientific investigation, law, medicine, the organization of business, trade speculation, and the arts and crafts--are interesting as a game; while those occupations into which the division of labor enters to the degree that the workman is not attempting to control a problem, and in which the same acts are repeated an indefinite number of times, lose interest and become extremely irksome. this means that the brain acts pleasurably on the principle it was made up to act on in the most primitive times, and the rest is a burden. there is no brain change, but the social changes have been momentous; and the brain of each generation is brought into contact with new traditions, inhibitions, copies, obligations, problems, so that the run of attention and content of consciousness are different. social suggestion works marvels in the manipulation of the mind; but the change is not in the brain as an organ; it is rather in the character of the stimulations thrust on it by society. the child begins as a savage, and after we have brought to bear all the influence of home, school, and church to socialize him, we speak as though his nature had changed organically, and institute a parallelism between the child and the race, assuming that the child's brain passes in a recapitulatory way through phases of development corresponding to epochs in the history of the race. i have no doubt myself that this theory of recapitulation is largely a misapprehension. a stream of social influence is turned loose on the child; and if the attention to him is incessant and wise, and the copies he has are good and stimulating, he is molded nearer to the heart's desire. sometimes he escapes, and becomes a criminal, tramp, sport, or artist; and even if made into an impeccable and model citizen, he periodically breaks away from the network of social habit and goes a-fishing. the fundamental explanation of the difference in the mental life of two groups is not that the capacity of the brain to do work is different, but that the attention is not in the two cases stimulated and engaged along the same lines. wherever society furnishes copies and stimulations of a certain kind, a body of knowledge and a technique, practically all its members are able to work on the plan and scale in vogue there, and members of an alien race who become acquainted in a real sense with the system can work under it. but when society does not furnish the stimulations, or when it has preconceptions which tend to inhibit the run of attention in given lines, then the individual shows no intelligence in these lines. this may be illustrated in the fields of scientific and artistic interest. among the hebrews a religious inhibition--"thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"--was sufficient to prevent anything like the sculpture of the greeks; and the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in the early christian church, and the teaching that man was made in the image of god, formed an almost insuperable obstacle to the study of human anatomy. the mohammedan attitude toward scientific interest is represented by the following extracts from a letter from an oriental official to a western inquirer, printed by sir austen henry layard: _my illustrious friend and joy of my liver:_ the thing which you ask of me is both difficult and useless. although i have passed all my days in this place, i have neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. but above all, as to the previous history of this city, god only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of islam. it were unprofitable for us to inquire into it.... listen, o my son! there is no wisdom equal to the belief in god! he created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of his creation? shall we say, behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years? let it go! he from whose hand it came will guide and direct it.... thou art learned in the things i care not for, and as for that which thou hast seen, i spit upon it. will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou seek paradise with thine eyes?... the meek in spirit, imaum ali zadi.[ ] the works of sir henry maine, who gained by his long residence in india a profound insight into the oriental character, frequently point out that the eastern pride in conservatisms is quite as real as the western pride in progress: vast populations, some of them with a civilization considerable but peculiar, detest that which in the language of the west would be called reform. the entire mohammedan world detests it. the multitudes of colored men who swarm in the great continent of africa detest it, and it is detested by that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on one side as barbarous or savage. the millions upon millions of men who fill the chinese empire loathe it and (what is more) despise it.... there are few things more remarkable, and in their way more instructive, than the stubborn incredulity and disdain which a man belonging to the cultivated part of chinese society opposes to the vaunts of western civilization which he frequently hears.... there is in india a minority, educated at the feet of english politicians and in books saturated with english political ideas, which has learned to repeat their language; but it is doubtful whether even these, if they had a voice in the matter, would allow a finger to be laid on the very subjects with which european legislation is beginning to concern itself--social and religious usage. there is not, however, the shadow of a doubt that the enormous mass of the indian population hates and dreads change.[ ] to the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern. it is known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for a short period during a history of incalculable length.[ ] the oriental attitude does not argue a lack of brain power, but a prepossession hostile to scientific inquiry. the society represented does not interest its members in what, from the western standpoint, is knowledge. the chinese afford a fine example of a people of great natural ability letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of a scientific standpoint. as indicated above, they are not defective in brain weight, and their application to study is long continued and very severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint. they learn no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry of the t'ang dynasty, in order to learn the chinese characters, and in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern characters are not represented in this ancient poetry. their attention to chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past; but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction between fact and fiction. in general, they learn only rules and no principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own work: multitudes of chinese scholars know next to nothing about matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful. a venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming naïveté that he had never understood the allusions in the trimetrical classic (which stands at the very threshold of chinese study) until at the age of sixty he had an opportunity to read a universal history prepared by a missionary, in which for the first time chinese history was made accessible to him.[ ] add to this that the whole of their higher learning, corresponding to our university system, consists in writing essays and always more essays on the chinese classics, and "it is impossible," as mr. smith points out, "not to marvel at the measure of success which has attended the use of such materials in china."[ ] but when this people is in possession of the technique of the western world--a logic, general ideas, and experimentation--we cannot reasonably doubt that they will be able to work the western system as their cousins, the japanese, are doing, and perhaps they, too, may better the instruction. white effectiveness is probably due to a superior technique acting in connection with a superior body of knowledge and sentiment. of two groups having equal mental endowment, one may outstrip the other by the mere dominance of incident. it is a notorious fact that the course of human history has been largely without prevision or direction. things have drifted and forces have arisen. under these conditions an unusual incident--the emergence of a great mind or a forcible personality, or the operation of influences as subtle as those which determine fashions in dress--may establish social habits and duties which will give a distinct character to the modes of attention and mental life of the group. the most significant fact for aryan development is the emergence among the greeks of a number of eminent men who developed logic, the experimental method, and philosophic interest, and fixed in their group the habit of looking behind the incident for the general law. mediaeval attention was diverted from these lines by a religious movement, and the race lost for a time the key to progress and got clean away from the greek copies; but it found them again and took a fresh start with the revival of greek learning. it is quite possible to make a fetish of classical learning; but sir henry maine's remark, that nothing moves in the modern world that is not greek in its origin, is quite just. the real variable is the individual, not the race. in the beginning--perhaps as the result of a mutation or series of mutations--a type of brain developed which has remained relatively fixed in all times and among all races. this brain will never have any faculty in addition to what it now possesses, because as a type of structure it is as fixed as the species itself, and is indeed a mark of species. it is not apparent either that we are greatly in need of another faculty, or that we could make use of it even if by a chance mutation it should emerge, since with the power of abstraction we are able to do any class of work we know anything about. moreover, the brain is less likely to make a leap now than in earlier time, both because the conditions of nature are more fixed or more nearly controlled by man, and hence the urgency of adjustment to sharp variations in external conditions is removed, and because the struggle for existence has been mitigated so that the unfit survive along with the fit. indeed, the rapid increase in idiocy and insanity shown by statistics indicates that the brain is deteriorating slightly, _on the average_, as compared with earlier times.[ ] nature is not producing a better average brain than in the time of aristotle and the greeks. if we have more than the wisdom of our ancestors, our advantage lies in our specialization, our superior body of knowledge, and our superior technique for its transmission. at the same time, the individual brain is unstable, fluctuating in normal persons between , and , grams in weight, while the extremes of variation are represented, on the one side, by the imbecile with grams, and the man of genius with , on the other. it is therefore perfectly true that by artificial selection--mr. galton's "eugenism"--a larger average brain could be created, and also a higher average of natural intelligence, whether this be absolutely dependent on brain weight or not. but it is hardly to be expected that a stable brain above the capacity of those of the first rank now and in the past will result, since the mutations of nature are more radical than the breeding process of man, and she probably ran the whole gamut. "great men lived before agamemnon," and individual variations will continue to occur, but not on a different pattern; and what has been true in the past will happen again in the future, that the group which by hook or by crook comes into possession of the best technique and the best copies will make the best show of intelligence and march at the head of civilization. iii the foregoing examination of the relation of the mental faculty of the lower races to the higher places us in a position to examine to better advantage the other question of the relation of the intelligence of woman to that of man. the differences in mental expression between the lower and the higher races can be expressed for the most part in terms of attention and practice. the differences in run of attention and practice are in this case due to the development of different habits by groups occupying different habitats, and consequently having no copies in common. woman, on the other hand, exists in the white man's world of practical and scientific activity, but is excluded from full participation in it. certain organic conditions and historical incidents have, in fact, inclosed her in habits which she neither can nor will fracture, and have also set up in the mind of man an attitude toward her which renders her almost as alien to man's interests and practices as if she were spatially separated from them. one of the most important facts which stand out in a comparison of the physical traits of men and women is that man is a more specialized instrument for motion, quicker on his feet, with a longer reach, and fitted for bursts of energy; while woman has a greater fund of stored energy and is consequently more fitted for endurance. the development of intelligence and motion have gone along side by side in all animal forms. through motion chances and experiences are multiplied, the whole equilibrium characterizing the stationary form is upset, and the organs of sense and the intelligence are developed to take note of and manipulate the outside world. amid the recurrent dangers incident to a world peopled with moving and predacious forms, two attitudes may be assumed--that of fighting, and that of fleeing or hiding. as between the two, concealment and evasion became more characteristic of the female, especially among mammals, where the young are particularly helpless and need protection for a long period. she remained, therefore, more stationary, and at the same time acquired more cunning, than the male. in mankind especially, the fact that woman had to rely on cunning and the protection of man rather than on swift motion, while man had a freer range of motion and adopted a fighting technique, was the starting-point of a differentiation in the habits and interests, which had a profound effect on the consciousness of each. man's most immediate, most fascinating, and most remunerative occupation was the pursuit of animal life. the pursuit of this stimulated him to the invention of devices for killing and capture; and this aptitude for invention was later extended to the invention of tools and of mechanical devices in general, and finally developed into a settled habit of scientific interest. the scientific imagination which characterizes man in contrast with women is not a distinctive male trait, but represents a constructive habit of attention associated with freer movement and the pursuit of evasive animal forms. the problem of control was more difficult, and the means of securing it became more indirect, mediated, reflective, and inventive; that is, more intelligent. woman's activities, on the other hand, were largely limited to plant life, to her children, and to manufacture, and the stimulation to mental life and invention in connection with these was not so powerful as in the case of man. her inventions were largely processes of manufacture connected with her handling of the by-products of the chase. so simple a matter, therefore, as relatively unrestricted motion on the part of man and relatively restricted motion on the part of woman determined the occupations of each, and these occupations in turn created the characteristic mental life of each. in man this was constructive, answering to his varied experience and the need of controlling a moving environment; and in woman it was conservative, answering to her more stationary and monotonous condition. in early times man's superior physical force, the wider range of his experience, his mechanical inventions in connection with hunting and fighting, and his combination under leadership with his comrades to carry out their common enterprises, resulted in a contempt for the weakness of women and an almost complete separation in interest between himself and the women of the group. the men frequently formed clubs, and lived apart from the women; and even where this did not happen, the men and women had no mental life in common. to this contempt for women also was added a superstitious fear of them, growing out of the primitive belief that weakness or any other bad quality is infectious, and may be transferred by physical contact or association.[ ] from mr. crawley's excellent paper on "sexual taboo" i transcribe the following illustrations of this attitude: in new caledonia you rarely see men and women talking or sitting together. the women seem perfectly content with the company of their own sex. the men who loiter about with spears in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the opposite sex.... the ojebwey, peter jones, thus writes of his own people: "i have scarcely ever seen anything like social intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable that the women say little in the presence of the men." the zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. if a man were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in company. if he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. in senegambia the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands, and their sex is virtually a clique. in egypt a man never converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the same vault.[ ] amongst the dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her husband's sphere of action. the bechuanas never allow their women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow themselves.... in guiana no woman may go near the hut where _ourali_ is made. in the marquesas islands the use of canoes is prohibited to the female sex by _tabu_: the breaking of the rule is punished with death. conversely, amongst the same people _tapa_-making belongs exclusively to the women: when they are making it for their own headdresses it is _tabu_ for the men to touch it. in nicaragua all the marketing was done by the women. a man might not enter the market nor even see the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... in samoa where the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women, it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the process.... an eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an _umiak_, the large boat used by women. the different offices of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore, and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to interfere with what is the work of women. in british guiana cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one occasion when the men were compelled perforce to bake some bread they were only persuaded to do so with the utmost difficulty, and were ever after pointed at as old women.[ ] amongst the barea, man and wife seldom share the same bed; the reason they give is that the breath of the wife weakens the husband.... the khyoungthas have a legend of a man who reduced a king and his men to a condition of feebleness by persuading them to dress up as women and perform female duties. when they had thus been rendered effeminate they were attacked and defeated without a blow.... contempt for female timidity has caused a curious custom amongst the gallas: they amputate the mammae of the boys soon after birth, believing that no warrior can possibly be brave who possesses them, and that they should belong to women only.... amongst the lhoosais when a man is unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to associate and work with the women. amongst the pomo indians of california, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is made a menial and assists the squaws.... when the delawares were denationized by the iroquois and prohibited from going to war they were according to the indian notion "made women," and were henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits appropriate to women.[ ] women were still further degraded by the development of property and its control by man, together with the habit of treating her as a piece of property, whose value was enhanced if its purity was assured and demonstrable. as a result of this situation, man's chief concern in women became an interest in securing the finest specimens for his own use, in guarding them with jealous care from contact with other men, and in making them, together with the ornaments they wore, signs of his wealth and social standing. the instances below are extreme ones, taken from lower social stages than our own, but they differ only in degree from the chaperonage of modern europe: i heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here [new ireland], so i asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. the house was about twenty-five feet in length and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance of which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly _tabu_. inside the house there were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. these cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus tree, sewn quite close together so that no light, and little or no air could enter. on one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoanut tree and pandanus tree leaves. about three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. in each of these cages, we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years without ever being allowed to go outside the house. i could scarcely credit the story when i heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. i spoke to the chief and told him that i wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that i might make them a present of a few beads.... [a girl having been allowed to come out] i then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. it was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. there was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. they are never allowed to come out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to the cage. they say that they perspire profusely. they are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast prepared for them. one of them was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and the chief told me that she had been there for five years, but would soon be taken out now. the other two were about eight and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several years longer. i asked if they never died, but they said "no."[ ] they [the azande] are extremely jealous of their womenfolk, whom they do not permit to live in the same village with themselves. the women's village is generally in the bush, about yards or so distant from that of the chief. women are never seen in an azande village, the pathway to their own being kept secret from all outsiders. this system while being something like that observed by the arabs, has the important distinction that the women are not shut up. they are free to come and go and do what they like, except visit the men's village. in common with the entire native population of central africa, the custom among the zande is that the men do no work that is not connected with the chase or the manufacture of implements. all agriculture is carried on by the women.[ ] from the time of engagement until marriage a young lady is required to maintain the strictest seclusion. whenever friends call upon her parents she is expected to retire to the inner apartments, and in all her actions and words guard her conduct with careful solicitude. she must use a close sedan whenever she visits her relations, and in her intercourse with her brothers and the domestics in the household maintain great reserve. instead of having any opportunity to form those friendships and acquaintances with her own sex which among ourselves become a source of much pleasure at the time and advantage in after life, the chinese maiden is confined to the circle of her relations and her immediate neighbors. she has few of the pleasing remembrances and associations that are usually connected with school-day life, nor has she often the ability or opportunity to correspond by letter with girls of her own age. seclusion at this time of life, and the custom of crippling the feet, combine to confine women in the house almost as much as the strictest laws against their appearing abroad; for in girlhood, as they know only a few persons except relatives, and can make very few acquaintances after marriage their circle of friends contracts rather than enlarges as life goes on. this privacy impels girls to learn as much of the world as they can, and among the rich their curiosity is gratified through maid-servants, match-makers, peddlers, visitors, and others.[ ] the world of white civilization is intellectually rich because it has amassed a rich fund of general ideas, and has organized these into specialized bodies of knowledge, and has also developed a special technique for the presentation of this knowledge and standpoint to the young members of society, and for localizing their attention in special fields of interest. when for any reason a class of society is excluded from this process, as women have been historically, it must necessarily remain ignorant. but, while no one would make any question that women confined as these in new ireland and china, as shown above, must have an intelligence as restricted as their mode of life, we are apt to lose sight altogether of the fact that chivalry and chaperonage and modern convention are the persistence of the old race habit of contempt for women, and of their intellectual sequestration. men and women still form two distinct classes and are not in free communication with each other. not only are women unable and unwilling to be communicated with directly, unconventionally, and truly on many subjects, but men are unwilling to talk to them. i do not have in mind situations involving questions of propriety or delicacy alone, but a certain habit of restraint, originating doubtless in matters relating to sex, extends to all intercourse with women, with the result that they are not really admitted to the intellectual world of men; and there is not only a reluctance on the part of men to admit them, but a reluctance--or, rather, a real inability--on their part to enter. modesty with reference to personal habits has become so ingrained and habitual, and to do anything freely is so foreign to woman, that even free thought is almost of the nature of an immodesty in her. in connection also with the adventitious position of woman referred to in another paper,[ ] the feminine interests and habits are set so strongly toward dress and personal display that they are not readily diverted. women may and do protest against the triviality of their lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual ones, and human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuit voluntarily, but is forced into it in connection with the urgency of practical activities. the women who are obliged to work are of the poorer classes, and have not that leisure and opportunity preliminary to any specialized acquirement; while those who have leisure are supported in that position both by money and by precedent and habit, and have no immediate stimulation to lift them out of it. they sometimes entertain ideas of freedom and plan occupational interests, but they have usually become thoroughly habituated to their unfreedom, and continue to feed from the hand. custom lies upon them with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life. the usual reasoning as to the ability of women also overlooks the fact that many women are larger and stronger than many men, and some of them possessed of tremendous energy, will, wit, endurance, and sagacity. this type appears in all classes of society, but more frequently in the lower classes and among peasants, both because the natural qualities are less glozed over there by aristocratic custom, and because these classes are bred truer to nature. unfortunately, the attention of the women of these classes is limited to very immediate concerns; but, on the other hand, they present the true qualities of the female type, and few, i believe, will deny that the peasant woman described below would shine in intellectual walks if fate had called her there: mother was a large, stout, full-blooded woman of great strength. she could not read or write, and yet she was well thought of. there are all sorts of educations, and though reading and writing are very well in their way, they would not have done mother any good. she had the sort of education that was needed in her work. nobody knew more about raising vegetables, ducks, chickens and pigeons than she did. there were some among the neighbors who could read and write and so thought themselves above mother, but when they went to market they found their mistake. her peas, beans, cauliflower, cabbages, pumpkins, melons, potatoes, beets, and onions sold for the highest price of any, and that ought to show whose education was the best, because it is the highest education that produces the finest work. mother used to take me frequently to the market.... the market women were a big, rough, fat, jolly set, who did not know what sickness was, and it might have been well for me if i had stayed among them and grown up like mother. one time in the market-place i saw a totally different set of women. it was about o'clock in the morning, when some people began to shout: "here come the rich americans! now we will sell things!" we saw a large party of travelers coming through the crowd. they looked very queer. their clothes seemed queer, as they were so different from ours. they wore leather boots instead of wooden shoes, and they all looked weak and pale. the women were tall and thin, like beanpoles, and their shoulders were stooped and narrow; most of them wore glasses or spectacles, showing that their eyes were weak. the corners of their mouths were all pulled down, and their faces were crossed and crisscrossed with lines and wrinkles, as though they were carrying all the care of the world. our women all began to laugh and dance and shout at the strangers.... the sight of these people gave me my first idea of america. i heard that the women there never worked, laced themselves too tightly, and were always ill.[ ] the french dressmaker who wrote this passage has the true idea of education and of mind. the mind is an organ for controlling the environment, and it is a safe general principle that the mind which shows high power in the manipulation of a simple situation will show the same quality of efficiency in a more complex one. the savage, the peasant, the poor man, and woman are not what we call intellectual, because they are not taught to know and manipulate the materials of knowledge. the savage is outside the process from geographical reasons; the peasant is not in the center of interest; the poor man's needs are pressing, and do not permit of interests of a mediate character; and woman does not participate because it is neither necessary nor womanly. even the most serious women of the present day stand, in any work they undertake, in precisely the same relation to men that the amateur stands to the professional in games. they may be desperately interested and may work to the limit of endurance at times; but, like the amateur, they got into the game late, and have not had a life-time of practice, or they do not have the advantage of that pace gained only by competing incessantly with players of the very first rank. no one will contend that the amateur in billiards has a nervous organization less fitted to the game than the professional; it is admitted that the difference lies in the constant practice of the professional, the more exacting standards prevailing in the professional ranks, and constant play in "fast company." a group of women would make a sorry spectacle in competition with a set of men who made billiards their life-work. but how sad a spectacle the eminent philosophers of the world would make in the same competition! scientific pursuits and the allied intellectual occupations are a game which women have entered late, and their lack of practice is frequently mistaken for lack of natural ability. writing some years ago of the women in his classes at the university of zürich, professor carl vogt said: at lectures the young women are models of attention and application; perhaps they even make too great effort to carry home in black and white what they have heard. they generally sit in the front seats, because they register early, and, moreover, because they come early, long before the lecture begins. but it is noticeable that they give only a superficial glance at the preparations which the professor passes around. sometimes they pass them to their neighbor without even looking at them; a longer examination would prevent their taking notes. on examination the conduct of the young women is the same as during the lectures. they know better than the young men. to employ a classroom expression, they are enormously crammed. their memory is good, so that they know perfectly how to give the answer to the question which is put. but generally they stop there. an indirect question makes them lose the thread. as soon as the examiner appeals to individual reason, the examination is over; they do not answer. the examiner seeks to make the sense of the question clearer, and uses a word, perhaps, which is in the manuscript of the student, when, pop! the thing goes as if you had pressed the button of a telephone. if the examination consisted solely in written or oral replies to questions on subjects which have been treated in the lectures or which could be read up on in the manuals, the ladies would always secure brilliant results. but, alas! there are other practical tests in which the candidate finds herself face to face with reality, and that she cannot meet successfully unless she has done practical work in the laboratories, and it is there the shoe pinches. the respect in which laboratory work is particularly difficult to women--one would hardly believe it--is that they are often very awkward and clumsy with their hands. the assistants in the laboratories are unanimous in their complaint; they are pursued with questions about the most trifling things, and one woman gives them more trouble than three men. one would think the delicate fingers of these young women adapted especially to microscopic work, to the manipulation of small slides, to cutting thin sections, to making the most delicate preparations; the truth is quite the contrary. you can tell the table of a woman at a glance: from the fragments of glass, broken instruments, the broken scalpels, the spoiled preparations. there are doubtless exceptions, but they are exceptions.[ ] zürich was among the first of the european universities opening their doors to women, and it is particularly interesting to see their first efforts in connection with the higher learning. without a wide experience of life, and without practice in constructive thinking, they naturally fell back on the memory to retain a hold on results in a field with which they were not sufficiently trained to operate in it independently. it is frequently alleged, and is implied in professor vogt's report, that women are distinguished by good memories and poor powers of generalization. but this is to mistake the facts. a tenacious memory is characteristic of women and children, and of all persons unskilled in the manipulation of varied experiences in thought. but when the mind is able at any moment to construct a result from the raw materials of experience, the memory loses something of its tenacity and absoluteness. in this sense it may even be said that a good memory for details is a sign of an untrained or imitative mind. as the mind becomes more inventive, the memory is less concerned with the details of knowledge and more with the knowledge of places to find the details when they are needed in any special problem. the awkwardness in manual manipulation shown by these girls was also surely due to lack of practice. the fastest typewriter in the world is today a woman; the record for roping steers (a feat depending on manual dexterity rather than physical force) is held by a woman; and anyone who will watch girls making change before the pneumatic tubes in the great department stores about christmas time will experience the same wonder one feels on first seeing a professional gambler shuffling cards. in short, professor vogt's report on women students is just what was to be expected in germany forty years ago. the american woman, with the enjoyment of greater liberty, has made an approach toward the standards of professional scholarship, and some individuals stand at the very top in their university studies and examinations. the trouble with these cases is that they are either swept away and engulfed by the modern system of marriage, or find themselves excluded in some intangible way from association with men in the fullest sense, and no career open to their talents. the personal liberty of women is, comparatively speaking, so great in america, suggestion and copies for imitation are spread broadcast so copiously in the schools, newspapers, books, and lectures, and occupations and interests are becoming so varied, that a number of women of natural ability and character are realizing some definite aim in a perfect way. but these are sporadic cases, representing usually some definite interest rather than a full intellectual life, and resembling also in their nature and rarity the elevation of a peasant to a position of eminence in europe. nowhere in the world do women as a class lead a perfectly free intellectual life in common with the men of the group, unless it be in restricted and artificial groups like the modern revolutionary party in russia. even in america a number of the great schools are not coeducational, and in those which are so, many of the instructors claim that they do not find it possible to treat with the men and women on precisely the same basis, both because of their own mental attitude toward mixed classes and the inability of the women to receive such treatment. in the case of women also we can say what mr. smith says of the chinese and their system of education, that it is impossible not to marvel at the results they accomplish in view of the system under which they work. the mind and the personality are largely built up by suggestion from the outside, and if the suggestions are limited and particular, so will be the mind. the world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white man's world. few women and perhaps no blacks have ever entered this world in the fullest sense. to enter it in the fullest sense would be to be in it at every moment from the time of birth to the time of death, and to absorb it unconsciously and consciously, as the child absorbs language. when something like this happens, we shall be in a position to judge of the mental efficiency of woman and the lower races. at present we seem justified in inferring that the differences in mental expression between the higher and lower races and between men and women are no greater than they should be in view of the existing differences in opportunity. indeed, when we take into consideration the superior cunning as well as the superior endurance of women, we may even raise the question whether their capacity for intellectual work is not under equal conditions greater than in men. cunning is the analogue of constructive thought--an indirect, mediated, and intelligent approach to a problem--and characteristic of the female, in contrast with the more direct and open procedure of the male. owing to the limited and personal nature of the activities of woman, this trait has expressed itself historically in womankind as intrigue rather than invention, but that it is very deeply based in the instincts is shown by the important rôle it plays in the life of the female in animal life. endurance is also a factor of prime importance in intellectual performance, for here as in business life "it is doggedness as does it;" and if woman's endurance and natural ingenuity were combined in intellectual pursuits, it might prove that the gray mare is the better horse in this field as well as in peasant life. the most serious objection, also, to the view that woman is fitted to do continuous and hard work, arises from her relation to child-bearing; but this is at bottom trivial. the period of child-bearing is not only not continuous through life, but it is not serious from the standpoint of the time lost. no work is without interruption, and child-birth is an incident in the life of normal woman of no more significance, when viewed in the aggregate and from the standpoint of time, than the interruption of the work of men by their in-and out-of-door games. the important point in all work is not to be uninterrupted, but to begin again. whether the characteristic mental life of women and the lower races will prove to be identical with those of the white man or different in quality is a different question, and problematical. it is certain, at any rate, that our civilization is not of the highest type possible. in all our relations there is too much of primitive man's fighting instinct and technique; and it is not impossible that the participation of woman and the lower races will contribute new elements, change the stress of attention, disturb the equilibrium, and force a crisis which will result in the reconstruction of our habits on more sympathetic and equitable principles. certain it is that no civilization can remain the highest if another civilization adds to the intelligence of its men the intelligence of its women. [footnote : cf. geddes and thomson, _the evolution of sex_ _passim_.] [footnote : havelock ellis, _man and woman_, has brought together a mass of very valuable material on the question of the somatic and psychic differences of man and woman, and h. campbell, in a volume of much the same scope, _differences in the nervous organization of man and woman_, has given a résumé of the theory of geddes and thomson, and suggested its extension to the human species.] [footnote : c. düsing, ( ) _die regulirung des geschlechtsverhältnisses bei der vermehrung der menschen, thiere und pflanzen_. ( ) _das geschlechtsverhältniss der geburten in preussen_.] [footnote : h. ploss, "ueber die das geschlechtsverhältniss der kinder bedingenden ursachen," _monatsschrift für geburtskunde und frauenkrankheiten_, vol. xii, pp. - .] [footnote : e. westermarck, _the history of human marriage_, pp. - .] [footnote : düsing, _das geschlechtsverhältniss der geburten in preussen_, pp. - .] [footnote : düsing, _loc. cit._, pp. - .] [footnote : h. ploss, _das weib in der natur- und völkerkunde_, . aufl., vol. i, p. .] [footnote : axel key, "die pubertätsentwickelung und das verhältniss derselben zu den krankheitserscheinungen der schuljugend," _verhandlungen des x. internationalen medicinischen congresses_, , vol. i, p. .] [footnote : ibid., pp. - .] [footnote : geddes and thompson, _loc. cit._, book i, chap. .] [footnote : rolph, quoted by geddes and thompson, _loc. cit._, book i, chap. .] [footnote : geddes and thompson, _ibid._] [footnote : g. klebs, _ueber das verhältniss des männlichen und weiblichen geschlechts in der natur_, p. .] [footnote : food affords the basis for metabolic changes in the parent organism, but it is probable that food is less _directly_ related than heat and light to the determination of sex. sachs, whose experiments must be given the greatest possible weight, has determined that the ultra-violet rays of light are necessary to the chemical changes essential to the formation of the reproductive organs. (j. sachs, "ueber die wirkung der ultravioletten strahlen auf die blüthenbildung," _gesammelte abhandlungen über pflanzen-physiologie_, vol. i, pp. ff.) more recently, klebs has shown that by diminishing the intensity of light the development of female sex organs in ferns can be interrupted, so that, in spite of the presence of male organs, fertilization is impossible; at the same time, the prothallia are enabled in weak light to grow feebly and to put out small asexual processes, which in the presence of bright light become normal prothallia. similarly, the development of sexual organs in algae is dependent on a certain intensity of light, and the plant remains sterile if the light is diminished below a certain point. (g. klebs, _ueber einige probleme der physiologie der fortpflanzung_, pp. - .)] [footnote : e. maupas, "théorie de la sexualité des infusoires ciliés," _comptes rendus_, vol. cv, pp. ff.] [footnote : the extinction took place at about the th generation in _onychodromus grandis_, at about the th generation in _stylonichia mytilis_, at about the th generation in _leucophrys patula_, and at about the th generation in _oxytricha_ (indeterminate). (maupas, _loc. cit._, p. .)] [footnote : maupas, _loc. cit._, p. . later investigations have tended to discredit maupas' experiments as a whole by showing that the infusorians with which he experimented can be kept alive indefinitely by a change of diet, without the aid of sexual conjugation. this merely confirms the view, however, that abundant nutrition and crossing are alike favorable to health: "we must admire the skill of the investigator who was able to keep his colonies alive for months and years under such artificial conditions, but we may venture to doubt whether the fate of extinction which did ultimately overtake them was really due to the absence of conjugation, and not to the unnaturalness of the conditions." a. weismann, _the evolution of theory_, vol. i, p. . since the above was written, calkins has made a series of new experiments, the results of which differed in several respects from those yielded by maupas' experiments. when his infusorian cultures began to grow weaker, as happened frequently and at irregular intervals, he was always able to restore them to more vigorous life by a change of diet, and especially by substituting grated meat, liver, and the like for infusions of hay. certain salts too, had the same effect; the animals became perfectly vigorous again. calkins believes that chemical agents, and especially salts, must be supplied to the protoplasm from time to time. he reared generations of _paramoecium_ without conjugation. but the th was weakly and without energy. the addition of an extract of sheep's brains made them perfectly fresh and vigorous again. further experiments in this direction are to be desired, but, according to those of calkins, it is probable that infusorians can continue to live for an unlimited time even without conjugation. (ibid., note.)] [footnote : westermarck, _loc. cit._, pp. - , following a suggestion of düsing, has brought together much of the evidence on this point, but the application of the facts here made has not, i believe, been suggested.] [footnote : a. von oettingen, _die moralstatistik_, . aufl., p. .] [footnote : düsing, _die regulirung des geschlechtsverhältnisses_, p. .] [footnote : westermarck, _loc. cit._, pp. and n.] [footnote : cf. _ibid._, pp. - .] [footnote : g. delaunay, "de l'égalité et inégalité des deux sexes," _revue scientifique_, september , ; c. darwin, _descent of man_, chap. .] [footnote : a. weismann, _essays on heredity_, vol. i, "the duration of life," has shown that size and longevity are determined by natural selection.] [footnote : darwin, _descent of man_, chap. .] [footnote : ibid.] [footnote : a.r. wallace, _contributions to the theory of natural selection_, chap. .] [footnote : "if we take the highly decorated species--that is, animals marked by alternate dark or light bands or spots, such as the zebra, some deer, or the carnivora--we find, first, that the region of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe; secondly, that the regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that the flanks are striped or spotted along or between the regions of the lines of the ribs; fourthly, that the shoulder and hip regions are marked by curved lines; fifthly, that the pattern changes, and the direction of the lines or spots, at the head, neck, and every joint of the limbs; and, lastly, that the tips of the ears, nose, tail, and the feet and the eye are emphasized in color. in spotted animals the greatest length of the spot is generally in the direction of the largest development of the skeleton."--a. tylor, _coloration in animals and plants_, p. .] [footnote : a.r. wallace, _darwinism_, chap. .] [footnote : professor carl pearson, in a severe, not to say unmannerly, paper ("variation in man and woman," _the chances of death_, vol. i), has criticized some of the results of the physical anthropologists and attempted to show that the theory of the greater variability of man has no legs to stand on. his argument is mainly statistical, and affects, perhaps, some of the details of the theory, but not, i think, the theory as a whole.] [footnote : darwin, _loc. cit._, chap. .] [footnote : p. topinard, _Éléments d'anthropologie générale_, p. .] [footnote : delaunay, _loc. cit._] [footnote : weisbach, "der deutsche weiberschadel," _archiv für anthropologie_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : topinard, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : topinard, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : topinard's figures (_loc. cit._, p. ) show, however, that the eskimos and the tasmanians have a shorter trunk than the europeans.] [footnote : j. ranke, "beiträge zur physischen anthropologie der bayern," _beiträge zur anthropologie und urgeschichte bayerns_, vol. viii, p. .] [footnote : morphological differences are less in low than in high races, and the less civilized the race, the less is the physical difference of the sexes. in the higher races the men are both more unlike one another than in the lower races, and at the same time more unlike the women of their own race. but, while some of these differences may probably be justly set down as congenital, as representing varieties of the species which have passed through different variational experiences, they are doubtless mainly due to the fact that the activities of men and women are more unlike in the higher than in the lower races.] [footnote : j.w. seaver, _anthropometric table_, .] [footnote : delphine hanna, _anthropometric table_ .] [footnote : where a large body of men are intensely interested in a competition, as over against a small body of women not seriously interested, any comparison of results is almost out of the question. but the superior physical strength of man is, i believe, disputed in no quarter. the vassar records have been improved in succeeding years (the -yard dash was seconds in , the running high jump feet ½ inches in , the running broad jump feet ½ inches in ), but miss harriet isabel ballantine, director of the vassar college gymnasium, writes me: "i do not believe women can ever, no matter what the training, approach man in their physical achievements; and i see no reason why they should."] [footnote : helen b. thompson, _the mental traits of sex_, p. . "while it is improbable that _all_ the difference of the sexes with regard to physical strength can be attributed to persistent difference in training, it is certain that a large part of the difference is explicable on this ground. the great strength of savage women and the rapid increase in strength of civilized women wherever systematic physical training has been introduced both show the importance of this factor."--ibid., p. .] [footnote : "physical and mental deviations from the normal among children in public elementary and other schools," _report of the sixty-fourth meeting of the british association for the advancement of science_, . pp. ff.] [footnote : a. mitchell, "some statistics of idiocy," _edinburgh medical journal_, vol. xi, p. .] [footnote : "koch's statistics of insanity," _journal of mental science_, vol. xxvi, p. .] [footnote : mayr, _die verbreitung der blindheit, der taubstummheit, des blödsinns und des irrsinns in baiern_, p. .] [footnote : cf. campbell, _loc. cit._, pp. ff.] [footnote : ibid., pp. - .] [footnote : j.h. manley, "harelip," _international medical journal_, vol. ii, pp. ff.] [footnote : _communications of the massachusetts medical society_, vol. ii, no. , p. .] [footnote : of the , individuals examined, , were males, and of these ( . per cent.) presented supernumerary nipples. of the , individuals , were females, and of these ( . per cent.) presented supernumerary mammae or nipples. that is, this anomaly was found to occur more than four times as frequently in men as in women.--j. mitchell bruce, "on supernumerary nipples and mammae," _journal of anatomy and physiology_, vol. xiii, p. . leichtenstern, however, whose investigations were of earlier date than those of bruce, says that supernumerary mammae occur with about equal frequency in the two sexes.--leichtenstern, "ueber das vorkommen und die bedeutung supernumerärer brüste und brustwarzen," virchow's _archiv für pathologische anatomie_, vol. lxxiii, p. .] [footnote : ellis, _loc. cit._ ( th ed.), pp. ff.] [footnote : lombroso e ferrero, _la donna delinquente_, chap. .] [footnote : hyrtl, of vienna, however, examined thirty subjects, and found the anomaly in question only three times, and exclusively in females. he attributed it to tight lacing. d.j. cunningham, "the occasional eighth true rib in man," _journal of anatomy and physiology_, vol. xxiv, p. .] [footnote : h. campbell, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, p. ; campbell, _loc. cit._, pp. - ; ploss, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : a. hegar, _der geschlechtstrieb_, p. .] [footnote : h. campbell, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : j. hayem, _du sang et de ses alterations anatomiques_, pp. , .] [footnote : e. lloyd jones, "further observations on the specific gravity of the blood in health and disease", _journal of physiology_, vol. xii, pp. ff.] [footnote : o. leichtenstern, _untersuchungen über den hæmoglobulingehalt des blutes_, p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._, pp. ff.] [footnote : ibid., pp. ff.] [footnote : e. bourgoin, art. "urines", _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.] [footnote : delaunay, _loc. cit._] [footnote : delaunay, _loc. cit._; ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, pp. , ; ellis, _loc. cit._, pp. ff.] [footnote : ellis, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : campbell, _loc. cit._, pp. and .] [footnote : max bartels, "culturelle und rassenunterschiede in bezug auf die wundkrankheiten". _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, vol. xx, p. .] [footnote : legouest, art. "amputations", _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.] [footnote : ellis, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : a. von oettingen, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : lombroso e ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. .] [footnote : lombroso e ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. .] [footnote : p. xxi, table f, quoted by campbell, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : b.a. whitelegge, "milroy lectures on changes of type in epidemic diseases," _british medical journal_, march , .] [footnote : a. newsholme, _vital statistics_, d ed., p. .] [footnote : w. farr, _vital statistics_, p. .] [footnote : mortality from cancer is, however, much higher in women than in men. newsholme, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : von oettingen, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : ellis, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : depaul, art. "nouveau-né," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.] [footnote : b. ornstein, "makrobiotisches aus griechenland," _archiv für anthropologie_ vol. xvii, pp. ff.] [footnote : g. mayr, _die gesetzmässigkeit im gesellschaftsleben_ ( ), p. .] [footnote : v. turquan, "statistique des centénaires," _revue scientifique_ september , .] [footnote : lombroso e ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. .] [footnote : e. lloyd jones, "further observations on the specific gravity of the blood in health and disease," _journal of physiology_, vol. xii, p. .] [footnote : cf. topinard, _loc. cit._, pp. - , , .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : h. ploss, _das weib in der natur--und völkerkunde_, . aufl., vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : endogamous tribes have survived, in the main, in isolated regions where competition was not sufficiently sharp to set a premium on exogamy. it may be assumed that the history of exogamous groups has been more cataclysmical.] [footnote : l.h. morgan, _houses and house-life of the american aborigines_, p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._] [footnote : w.j. mcgee, "the beginning of marriage," _american anthropologist_, vol. ix, p. .] [footnote : e.b. tylor, "the matriarchal family system," _nineteenth century_, july, , p. .] [footnote : fison and howitt, _kamilaroi and kurnai_, pp. ff.] [footnote : f. ratzel, _history of mankind_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : j. lippert, _kulturgeschichte_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : lubbock, _origin of civilization_, p. .] [footnote : tylor, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : w. robertson smith, _kinship and marriage in early arabia_, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : gen. : , .] [footnote : gen. : .] [footnote : judg. : .] [footnote : judg. .] [footnote : cf. smith, _loc. cit._, .] [footnote : ii sam. : .] [footnote : g.a. wilken, _das matriarchat_, p. .] [footnote : herodotus (rawlinson), i, .] [footnote : ibid., iii, .] [footnote : lines ff.] [footnote : e.j. simcox, _primitive civilisations_, vol. i, pp. - , , _et passim_.] [footnote : notably, westermarck, _history of human marriage_, pp. ff.] [footnote : _dissertation on early law and custom_, p. .] [footnote : it prepares the way, however, only in the sense that it furnishes the mass out of which the organization arises. if there had been no social grouping through reproduction, there would yet have been ultimately filiation of men for the sake of mutually profitable enterprises. blood-brotherhood and the treaty are devices indicating that early man had sufficient inventive imagination to do this. the tribal group may, in fact, be described as a fighting male organization living in a group of females.] [footnote : see l. von dargun, _mutterrecht und vaterrecht_.] [footnote : j.w. powell, "wyandot government", _first annual report of the bureau of american ethnology_, - , pp. ff.] [footnote : waitz-gerland, _anthropologie der naturvölker_, vol. v, pp. ff.] [footnote : lippert, _kulturgeschichte_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : c.n. starcke, _the primitive family_, p. .] [footnote : h.r. schoolcraft, _history, condition, and prospects of the indian tribes of the united states_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : ibid., pp. - .] [footnote : bancroft, _native races of the pacific states_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : ibid., vol. i, p. .] [footnote : a. hovelaque, _les nègres_, p. .] [footnote : von dargun, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : waitz-gerland, _loc. cit._, vol. vi, pp. ff.] [footnote : mcgee, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : schoolcraft, _loc. cit._, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : lieutenant musters, "on the races of patagonia", _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : r. steinmetz, _ethnologische studien zur ersten entwickelung der strafe_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : a. giraud-teulon, _les origines du mariage el de la famille_, p. .] [footnote : von dargun, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : j.f. mclennan, _the patriarchal theory_, p. .] [footnote : e.m. curr, _the australian race_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : steinmetz, _loc. cit._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : f. boas, "on the indians of british columbia", _report of the british association for the advancement of science_, , p. .] [footnote : von dargun, _loc. cit._, - .] [footnote : smith, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : spencer, _descriptive sociology_, vol. v, p. , quoting petherick, _egypt, the soudan, and central africa_, pp. - .] [footnote : h.h. bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : simcox, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : ibid.] [footnote : morgan, _ancient society_, p. .] [footnote : waitz-gerland, _loc. cit._, vol. vi, p. .] [footnote : ellis, _tour through hawaii_, p. .] [footnote : waitz-gerland, _loc. cit._, vol. vi, pp. - .] [footnote : j. lippert, _kulturgeschichte_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : c.c. closson, "the hierarchy of european races." _american journal of sociology_, vol. iii, pp. ff.] [footnote : william james, _principles of psychology_, vol. ii, pp. ff.] [footnote : _journals of two expeditions_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : i have alluded in more than one paper to the theory of tropisms, but this does not imply an acceptance of this theory as stated by loeb (_der heliotropismus der thiere und seine uebereinstimmung mil dem heliotropismus der pflanzen_), vervorn (_das lebendige substanz_), and other representatives of the "mechanical" school of physiologists. the recent researches of jennings seem to establish the view that reactions of the lower organisms to stimulation are less mechanical than has been assumed by this school. the current theory holds that "the action of the stimulus is directly on the motor organs of that part of the organism upon which the stimulus impinges, thus giving rise to changes in the state of contraction, which produce orientation." jennings finds that "the responses to stimuli are usually reactions of the organisms as wholes, brought about by some physiological change produced by the stimulus.... the organism reacts as a unit, not as the sum of a number of independently reacting organs." h.s. jennings, "the theory of tropisms," _contributions to the study of the behavior of the lower organisms_ (publications of the carnegie institution, ), pp. , .] [footnote : cf. j.r. angell and helen b. thompson, "a study of the relations between certain organic processes and consciousness," _the university of chicago contributions to philosophy_, vol. ii, no. .] [footnote : cf. john fiske, _outlines of cosmic philosophy_, vol. ii, pp. ff.] [footnote : cf. r. steinmetz, _ethnologische studien zur ersten entwickelung der strafe_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : see groos, _the play of animals_, p. .] [footnote : see e.g., krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, . aufl., p. ; adams, "some phases of sexual morality and church discipline in colonial new england," _proceedings of the massachusetts historical society_, d series, , pp. - .] [footnote : a.b. ellis, _the tshi-speaking peoples of the gold coast_, pp. ff.] [footnote : fison and howitt, _kamilaroi and kurnai_, p. .] [footnote : bonwick, _daily life of the tasmanians_, p. .] [footnote : owen, _transactions of the ethnological society_, new series, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : turner, _nineteen years in polynesia_, p. .] [footnote : arbousset and daumas, _voyage and exploration_, p. ; maffat, _missionary labors and scenes in southern africa_, p. .] [footnote : schoolcraft, _history, condition, and prospects of the indian tribes of the united states_, part i, p. .] [footnote : jones, _antiquities of the southern indians_, p. .] [footnote : john hechenwelder, _history, manners, and customs of the indian nations_, pp. - .] [footnote : ratzel, _history of mankind_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : ratzel, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : irving, "astoria," _works_, vol. viii, p. .] [footnote : ratzel, _loc. cit._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : bancroft, _native races of the pacific states_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : featherman, _social history of mankind: aoneo-maranonians_, p. .] [footnote : w.j. hoffman, "the menomini indians," _fourteenth report of the bureau of american ethnology_, p. .] [footnote : a.f. bandelier, "report of an archaeological tour in mexico," _papers of the archaeological institute of america_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : dorsey, "siouxan sociology," _fifteenth report of the bureau of american ethnology_, p. .] [footnote : prov. : - .] [footnote : morgan, _ancient society_, p. .] [footnote : lewis and clarke, _travels to the source of the missouri_, ed. , vol. i, p. .] [footnote : g. thompson, _travels and adventures in southern africa_, appendix, p. .] [footnote : j.l. burckhardt, _notes on the bedouins and wahabys_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : post, _bausteine einer allgemeinen rechtswissenschaft_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : macrae, "account of the kookies and lunctas," _asiatic researches_, vol. vii, p. .] [footnote : s.w. baker, _the nile tributaries of abyssinia_, p. .] [footnote : _journal of the asiatic society of bengal_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : ibid., vol. viii, p. .] [footnote : f. boyle, _adventures among the dyaks of borneo_, p. ] [footnote : t.s. raffles, _history of java_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : r. drury, _madagascar_, p. .] [footnote : no notice is here taken of the moral content of forms of worship, since religious practices are to be regarded as reflections of social practices. morality springs from human activity, and religious belief consists in positing human traits in spirits; but it is impossible to find in religious practice an element which did not before exist in human practice. religion and art have a philosophical and an ideal side, and their representations may be regarded as more perfect and valid than the human models on which they are based, but the ground-patterns of both religion and art are those of human experience.] [footnote : j. shooter, _the kafirs of natal and the zulu country_, p. .] [footnote : major j. butler, _travels and adventures in assam_, p. .] [footnote : jones, _history of the ojibway indians_, p. .] [footnote : von seidlitz, "ethnographische rundschau," _internationales archiv für ethnographie_, , p. .] [footnote : doughty, _travels in arabia deserta_, p. .] [footnote : cf. r. steinmetz, "endokannibalismus," _mittheilungen der anthropologischen gesellschaft in wien_, vol. xxvi.] [footnote : _odyssey_ (translated by butcher and lang), i, .] [footnote : f. mason, "on the dwellings works of art, laws, etc., of the karens," _journal of the asiatic society of bengal_, , p. .] [footnote : bonwick, _daily life of the tasmanians_, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : _highlands of central india_, p. .] [footnote : t. williams, _fiji and the fijians_, p. .] [footnote : owen, _transactions of the ethnological society_, new series, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : lewis and clarke, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : the theories of lubbock, spencer, tylor, kohler, huth, and morgan are criticized by westermarck, _history of human marriage_, pp. - .] [footnote : cf. ploss, _das weib_, . aufl., vol. i, pp. ff.] [footnote : westermarck, _history of human marriage_, pp. ff.] [footnote : danks, "marriage customs of the new britain group," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xviii, p. .] [footnote : ploss, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : the evidence in this paper will bear chiefly on australia, both because the natives are in a very primitive condition, and because the customs of the aborigines have been very fully reported by a large number of competent observers.] [footnote : spencer and gillen, _the native tribes of central australia_, p. .] [footnote : _the australian race_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _daily life of the tasmanians_, p. .] [footnote : howitt, "the dieri and other kindred tribes of central australia," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xx, p. ; roth, _ethnological studies among the north-west-central queensland aborigines_, p. ; spencer and gillen, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : cf. pp. ff. of this volume.] [footnote : howitt, "the dieri and other kindred tribes of central australia," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xx, p. .] [footnote : spencer and gillen, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] [footnote : fison and howitt, _kamilaroi and kurnai_, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : fison and howitt, _loc. cit._, p. , quoting rev. john bulmer on the wa-imbio tribe.] [footnote : spencer and gillen, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. . at the same time, curr thinks that capture was formerly more frequent.] [footnote : misapprehension as to the prevalence of marriage by capture is due in the main to two causes: ( ) cases of elopement have been classed as cases of capture; ( ) the so-called survivals of marriage by capture in historical times, of which so much has been made, are merely systematized expressions of the coyness of the female, differing in no essential point from the coyness of the female among birds at the pairing season.] [footnote : curr, _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : haddon, "ethnography of the western tribes of torres straits," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xix, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : cf. "the gaming instinct," _american journal of sociology,_ vol. vi, pp. ff., _et passim_.] [footnote : cf. pp. ff. of this volume.] [footnote : william james, _principles of psychology_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : "the evolution of modesty," _psychological review_, vol. vi, pp. ff.] [footnote : james, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : darwin's explanation of shyness, modesty, shame, and blushing as due originally to "self-attention directed to personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others," appears to me to be a very good statement of some of the aspects of the process, but hardly an adequate explanation of the process as a whole. (darwin, _expression of the emotions in man and animals_, p. .)] [footnote : james r. angell and helen b. thompson, "a study of the relations between certain organic processes and consciousness," _university of chicago contributions to philosophy_, vol. ii, no. , pp. - .] [footnote : the paralysis of extreme fear seems to be a case of failure to accommodate when the equilibrium of attention is too violently disturbed. (see mosso, _la peur_, p. .)] [footnote : cf. pp. ff. of this volume.] [footnote : "sex and primitive morality," pp. ff.] [footnote : without making any attempt to classify the emotions, we may notice that they arise out of conditions connected with both the nutritive and reproductive activities of life; and it is possible to say that such emotions as anger, fear, and guilt show a more plain genetic connection with the conflict aspect of the food-process, while modesty is connected rather with sexual life and the attendant bodily habits.] [footnote : groos, _the play of animals_, p. . the utility of these antics is well explained by professor ziegler in a letter to professor groos: "among all animals a highly excited condition of the nervous system is necessary for the act of pairing, and consequently we find an exciting playful prelude is very generally indulged in" (groos, _loc. cit._, p. ); and professor groos thinks that the sexual hesitancy of the female is of advantage to the species, as preventing "too early and too frequent yielding to the sexual impulse" (_loc. cit._, p. ).] [footnote : old women among the natural races often lose their modesty because it is no longer of any use. bonwick says that the tasmanian women, though naked, were very modest, but that the old women were not so particular on this point. (bonwick, _the daily life of the tasmanians_, p. .)] [footnote : _native tribes of central australia_, p. .] [footnote : a.c. haddon, "the ethnography of the western tribes of torres straits," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xix, p. ; cf. also "the psychology of exogamy," pp. ff. of this volume.] [footnote : _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : bonwick, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : karl von den steinen, _unter den naturvölkern zentral-brasiliens_, p. .] [footnote : spencer and gillen, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : westermarck, _history of human marriage_, p. .] [footnote : pp. ff.] [footnote : see john fiske, _outlines of cosmic philosophy_, vol. ii, pp. ff.] [footnote : see, however, topinard, _Éléments d'anthropologie générale_, pp. ff.] [footnote : helen b. thompson, _the mental traits of sex_, p. .] [footnote : _the yoruba-speaking peoples of the slave coast of west africa_, pp. ff.] [footnote : whewell, _history of the inductive sciences_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _iliad_, iii, ; translation by lang, leaf, and myers.] [footnote : thomson, _new zealand_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : shooter, _the kafirs of natal and the zulu country_, p. .] [footnote : _fresh discoveries at nineveh and researches at babylon: supplement._] [footnote : maine, _popular government_, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : smith, _village life in china_, p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : on the increase of insanity and feeble-mindedness see r.r. rentoul, "proposed sterilization of certain mental degenerates," _american journal of sociology_, vol. xii, pp. ff.] [footnote : it is true that in many parts of the world, among the lower races, woman was treated by the men with a chivalrous respect, due to the prevalence of the maternal system and ideas of sympathetic magic; but she nevertheless did not participate in their activities and interests.] [footnote : a.e. crawley, "sexual taboo," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xxiv, p. .] [footnote : _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : ibid., pp. - .] [footnote : danks, "marriage customs of the new britain group," _journal of the anthropological institute_, vol. xvii, p. .] [footnote : burrows, "on the native races of the upper welle district of the belgian congo," _journal of the anthropological institute_, n.s. vol. i, p. .] [footnote : williams, _the middle kingdom_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : cf. pp. ff. of this volume.] [footnote : _the life stories of undistinguished americans_, (edited) by hamilton holt, pp. ff. this peasant woman represents the true female type, and the american women in the scene represent the adventitious type of woman. the frail and clinging type is an adjustment to the tastes of man, produced partly by custom and partly by breeding. but in so far as the selection of frail women by men of the upper classes has contributed to the production of a frail or so-called "feminine" type in these classes, this applies to the males as well as the females of these classes. and there is, in fact, a more or less marked tendency to "feminism" apparent among the men and women of the "better classes." if we want to breed for mind, we can do so, but we must breed on better principles than beauty and docility.] [footnote : ploss, _das weib_, auf., vol. i, p. .] index a abnormalities, . abstraction, in lower races, . adams, . adolescence, . adoption, , . adventuress, . aesthetic life and sex-susceptibility, . agriculture: and woman, ; as man's work, . altruism, . anabolism of female, , , , . anaesthetics, . angell, , . animal environment of man, ; more katabolic, . animals: domestication of, ; memory and judgment of, . anomalies, . aphrodisiacs, . appendicitis, . arbousset and daumas, . aristotle, . asexual reproduction, . associational and sympathetic relations, . athleticism in women, . attention, ; break in, , , . atrophied organs, . b bachhofen, . baker, . bancroft, , , . bandelier, . bartels, . battel, . becquerel, . behavior: regulation of, ; standards of, , , . billroth, . birthrate, , ; of jews, ; of metis, . blood, , . blood-brotherhood, . blood-vengeance, . blushing, . boas, . boccaccio, . bonwick, , , , , . bosman, . bowdich, . boyle, . boys, training of, . brain, , ; methods of studying, ; of apes, ; of chinese, ; of egyptians, ; of negro, ; relation of, to culture, ; relation of, to social condition, ; weight, . bride-price, , . brother-sister marriage, . bruce, , burckhardt, . burgoin, . burrows, . butler, . c cadet, . calkins, . campbell, , , , . cannibalism, . carle, . caste, . celibacy, . chastity, attitude toward, , . chemiotaxis, . child, helplessness of, ; parallelism between, and race, . child-bearing, . child-birth, . child-marriage, , , . children, punishment of, . chivalry, . choice and rejection, . circumcision, . civilization: nature of, ; ours not of highest order, . clan, . class distinctions, origin of, . closson, . clothing: as ornament, ; man's interest in, ; origin of, ; psychology of, - . clubfoot, . clubs, among primitive men, . coeducation, . collins, . comradeship, origin of, . conflict interest, , , , , , , . conservatism: among orientals, ; of woman, morphological and physiological, , , . control: based on male activity, ; by old men, ; in relation to sex, ; primitive social, - . courage, , , . courtship, , , , , , , . cousins, marriage of, . coyness of female, , . crawley, . criminal, . criminality, . crossing, , . cruelty to women, . culture, effect of higher on lower, . cunning: analogue of constructive thought, ; of woman, . cunningham, . curr, , , . d dances, erotic, . danks, , . dargun, , , . darwin, , , , . deafmutism, . defectives, . delaunay, , , , . depaul, . despotism, . development, problem of, . diodorus, . disreputable occupations, . disvulnerability, . divorce, . domestication of animals, . domestication of plants by women, . dorsey, . doughty, . dress, as play interest, . drudgery of primitive woman, , . drury, . düsing, , . e economic dependence of man on woman, . education for women, . ellis, a.b., , , . ellis, h., , , , , . elopement, . emotions, ; as organic preparations for activity, , ; complexity of, in man, , ; organic basis of, ; origin and classification of, . endogamy, , . environment and mind, . equality of women in unadvanced societies, . equilibrium of bodily processes, . eroticism, . eugenism, . exchange of women, , , , . exploitation of man by woman, . exogamy, , , , , - . f familiarity and sex interest, . farr, . fatness, . fear, paralysis of, . featherman, . female, anabolic, . fenwick, , . ferrero, . fiske, , . fison and howitt, , , , . forsyth, . g galton, . gambetta, brain of, . game: effect of scarcity of, ; preparation of, for food, . geddes and thomson, , . genius, , . giordano, . giraud-teulon, . grange, . grey, . groos, , , . group-marriage, . growth, law of, in boys and girls, . h habit, break in, , . haddon, , , . hammurabi, code of, . hanna, . haushofer, . hayem, , . head-form, . head-hunting, . heckenwelder, , . hegar, . herodotus, . hernia, . hobbes, . hoffman, . homer, , . house, owned by woman, . hovelaque, . howitt, , . hunting-pattern of interest, . huschke, . i idiocy, , , ; increase of, . ill-health in woman, . imbeciles, . incident, as social force, . industry: and sex, - ; organization of, by man, . infant mortality, . infibulation, . ingenuity in lower races, . inhibition: and art, ; in lower races, . initiation, , . insanity, , , ; increase of, . insomnia, . instincts, persistence of, . intelligence and culture, . interest, hunting-pattern of, . interests of savage and civilized, . invention: and labor, ; based on analogy, ; psychology of, . inventiveness of man, . irving, . j jacobs, . james, , . jealousy, . jennings, . jews, . jones, , , , , . judgment, . k kane, . katabolism of male, , , , . key, . kinship, bond of clans, . klebs, . koch, . korniloff, . krafft-ebing, , . l labor: and invention, ; division of, between sexes, , , ; of primitive woman, , , ; significance of, ; woman's exemption from, . lacanu, . lawlessness, admiration of, ; lawrie, , . layard, . laziness of primitive man, . legal authority, . legal standards, . legouest, , . leichtenstern, , , . lewis and clarke, , . liberty of woman in america, . life, primarily female, . lippert, , , . locke, . loeb, . lombroso, , , , . longevity, . love of offspring, . lubbock, , . lungs, . m mccosh, . macfarlane, . mcgee, , . mclennan, . macrae, . maine, , , , . male: activity, social value of, ; control in maternal organization, ; katabolism of , , , ; relation to nutrition, . malgaigne, , . man as a domesticated animal, manley, . manual dexterity, ; of woman, . manufacture, woman's relation to, . margaret of navarre, . marriage: by capture, , , ; by purchase, ; customs of, , ; definition of, ; modern problem of, ; of cousins among jews, . martini, . mason, . maternal instinct, , . maternal system, - , , , , . mather, . maupas, , . mayr, , . mela, . memory in woman, . metis, . migration, social significance of, . militancy, chronic, . military: glory, ; organization, . milne-edwards, . mind: formation of, ; ground-pattern of, ; nature of, ; of lower races, - ; of woman, - ; produces society, . mitchell, . modesty, psychology of, - , . moffat, . monogamy, ; acquired, ; basis of, ; from biological standpoint, , from social standpoint, . morality: contractual in man, imitational in woman, ; contractual in men, personal in women, , , ; definition of, ; dependence on food relations, ; extribal extension of, ; generalization of, ; in relation to sex, - ; male and female codes of, ; motor type of, , ; of woman, ; parallelism of development in, ; regulative function of, ; relation to religion, ; standards of, developed by men, ; tribal character of, , , . morgan, , , . morphological: conservatism in woman, , , ; instability in men, . morselli, . mortality, , , , . mosaic code, . mosso, . mother-right, priority of, . motion: appreciation of, ; capacity for, , ; in man, , , , , , , , , , , ; in woman, . murder, prohibition of, . muscular co-ordination, . musters, . n nasse, . newsholme, . number-sense in lower races, . nutrition and sex, , , . o occupational interest for women, . occupations: hunting-pattern of, ; stationary and motor, . odyssey, . oettingen, , . organization: man's capacity for, ; of industry by man, , . ornament: as basis of clothing, ; transference of, to woman, , . ornstein, , . owen, , . p parallelism: of development, ; in morality, ; in poetry, . parasitic condition of women of upper classes, . parental instinct, . paternal authority, , , , , , . pearson, . peasant woman, . phallic worship, . plant: anabolic, ; domestication of, . pleasure and pain, . ploss, , , , , , . poetry, parallelism of development in, . poison, restrictions in use of, . political organization, . polyandry, . polygamy, , , , , . pope, . post, . pottery, . powell, . powers, . prejudice, . pre-matriarchal stage, . primitive life, its character, . prohibitions, . promiscuity, , . property, , ; controlled by man, . proverb, as form of abstraction, . puberty in girls, . public opinion, . punishment, - . q quetelet, . r race-prejudice, , , . raffles, . ranke, . ratzel, , , , . recapitulation, theory of, . regeneration, . religion: and art, ; and sex, ; as reflection of social practices, . religious dedication, . rentoul, . reproduction, as discontinuous growth, . resistance to disease, . robin, . rodier, . rolph, . roth, . s sachs, . scherer, . schmidt, . schoolcraft, , , . science, oriental attitude toward, . seaver, . secret societies, . seidlitz, . sense-perception of lower races, . sensitiveness to opinion, , , , , , , . sensitivity, . sex: determination of, ; social significance of, , - ; susceptibility, . sexes, organic differences in, - . sexual: activity, ; characters, ; life as play-interest, ; life, primitive interest in, ; perversion, ; selection, . sewing, as man's work, . shame, , . shooter, . showing-off, , , . simcox, , . size, relation of, to sex, . slave-wife, . slavery, . smith, a.r., . smith, w.r., , . sophocles, . space problem in society, . spencer, . spencer and gillen, , , , , . sporting-woman, . starcke, . steatopyga, . steinen, . steinmetz, , , . stimulation, lack of in woman's life, , . stimulus, variable reaction to, . strategy, . strength, , , . suggestibility, cultural significance of, . suggestion, . suicide, . supplementary wife, . suttee, . sympathy, , ; tribal character of, . t taboo, authority of, . tattooing, . technological skill of man, , . territory, , . theft, encouragement of, . thompson, g., . thompson, h.b., , , , . thomson, . topinard, , , , , . totemism, . tribal marks, . trophies, , . tropisms, . turgenieff, brain of, . turkey-cock politics, . turner, . turquan, . tylor, a., . tylor, e.b., , . u unfamiliarity, and emotional tension, . urine, . uterine displacement, . v vanity, , . variability, , , , . variation, . vassar college athletic association, . vegetable environment of woman, . vervorn, . viscera, . vitality: decreased in girls at puberty, ; decreased in woman by reproductive processes, . vogt, . w wagner, . waitz-gerland, , , , . wallace, . wappaeus, . war, ; as sport, ; attitude of women toward, , , ; social significance of war, . warner, . wealth, . weaving, . weisbach, . weismann, . welcker, . westermarck, , , , , , , . whewell, . whitelegge, . widows, sacrifice of, . wilder, . wilkes, . williams, s.w., . williams, t., . winckel, . woman: adventitious character of, - , ; as creator of economic values, , ; as property, , , , ; as social nucleus, ; beauty of, ; capacity for intellectual work, ; character of, ; contempt for, ; endurance of, ; fear of, ; high position of, ; indirection of, ; labor of, , , ; liberty of, in america, ; not in white man's world, - ; occupations of, taken over by men, , , ; present unrest of, ; relation to occupations, ; stationary condition of, , , , , , ; subjection of, , , , ; withdrawal of, from labor, . work as play-interest, . wright, . studies in the psychology of sex, volume v erotic symbolism the mechanism of detumescence the psychic state in pregnancy by havelock ellis preface. in this volume the terminal phenomena of the sexual process are discussed, before an attempt is finally made, in the concluding volume, to consider the bearings of the psychology of sex on that part of morals which may be called "social hygiene." under "erotic symbolism" i include practically all the aberrations of the sexual instinct, although some of these have seemed of sufficient importance for separate discussion in previous volumes. it is highly probable that many readers will consider that the name scarcely suffices to cover manifestations so numerous and so varied. the term "sexual equivalents" will seem preferable to some. while, however, it may be fully admitted that these perversions are "sexual equivalents"--or at all events equivalents of the normal sexual impulse--that term is merely a descriptive label which tells us nothing of the phenomena. "sexual symbolism" gives us the key to the process, the key that makes all these perversions intelligible. in all of them--very clearly in some, as in shoe-fetichism; more obscurely in others, as in exhibitionism--it has come about by causes congenital, acquired, or both, that some object or class of objects, some act or group of acts, has acquired a dynamic power over the psycho-physical mechanism of the sexual process, deflecting it from its normal adjustment to the whole of a beloved person of the opposite sex. there has been a transmutation of values, and certain objects, certain acts, have acquired an emotional value which for the normal person they do not possess. such objects and acts are properly, it seems to me, termed symbols, and that term embodies the only justification that in most cases these manifestations can legitimately claim. "the mechanism of detumescence" brings us at last to the final climax for which the earlier and more prolonged stage of tumescence, which has occupied us so often in these _studies_, is the elaborate preliminary. "the art of love," a clever woman novelist has written, "is the art of preparation." that "preparation" is, on the physiological side, the production of tumescence, and all courtship is concerned in building up tumescence. but the final conjugation of two individuals in an explosion of detumescence, thus slowly brought about, though it is largely an involuntary act, is still not without its psychological implications and consequences; and it is therefore a matter for regret that so little is yet known about it. the one physiological act in which two individuals are lifted out of all ends that center in self and become the instrument of those higher forces which fashion the species, can never be an act to be slurred over as trivial or unworthy of study. in the brief study of "the psychic state in pregnancy" we at last touch the point at which the whole complex process of sex reaches its goal. a woman with a child in her womb is the everlasting miracle which all the romance of love, all the cunning devices of tumescence and detumescence, have been invented to make manifest. the psychic state of the woman who thus occupies the supreme position which life has to offer cannot fail to be of exceeding interest from many points of view, and not least because the maternal instinct is one of the elements even of love between the sexes. but the psychology of pregnancy is full of involved problems, and here again, as so often in the wide field we have traversed, we stand at the threshold of a door it is not yet given us to pass. havelock ellis. carbis water, lelant, cornwall. contents. erotic symbolism. i. the definition of erotic symbolism. symbolism of act and symbolism of object. erotic fetichism. wide extension of the symbols of sex. the immense variety of possible erotic fetiches. the normal foundations of erotic symbolism. classification of the phenomena. the tendency to idealize the defects of a beloved person. stendhal's "crystallization". ii. foot-fetichism and shoe-fetichism. wide prevalence and normal basis. restif de la bretonne. the foot a normal focus of sexual attraction among some peoples. the chinese, greeks, romans, spaniards, etc. the congenital predisposition in erotic symbolism. the influence of early association and emotional shock. shoe-fetichism in relation to masochism. the two phenomena independent though allied. the desire to be trodden on. the fascination of physical constraint. the symbolism of self-inflicted pain. the dynamic element in erotic symbolism. the symbolism of garments. iii. scatalogic symbolism. urolagnia. coprolagnia. the ascetic attitude towards the flesh. normal basis of scatalogic symbolism. scatalogic conceptions among primitive peoples. urine as a primitive holy water. sacredness of animal excreta. scatalogy in folk-lore. the obscene as derived from the mythological. the immature sexual impulse tends to manifest itself in scatalogic forms. the basis of physiological connection between the urinary and genital spheres. urinary fetichism sometimes normal in animals. the urolagnia of masochists. the scatalogy of saints. urolagnia more often a symbolism of act than a symbolism of object. only occasionally an olfactory fetichism. comparative rarity of coprolagnia. influence of nates fetichism as a transition to coprolagnia, ideal coprolagnia. olfactory coprolagnia. urolagnia and coprolagnia as symbols of coitus. iv. animals as sources of erotic symbolism. mixoscopic zoophilia. the stuff-fetichisms. hair-fetichism. the stuff-fetichisms mainly on a tactile base. erotic zoophilia. zooerastia. bestiality. the conditions that favor bestiality. its wide prevalence among primitive peoples and among peasants. the primitive conception of animals. the goat. the influence of familiarity with animals. congress between women and animals. the social reaction against bestiality. v. exhibitionism. illustrative cases. a symbolic perversion of courtship. the impulse to defile. the exhibitionist's psychic attitude. the sexual organs as fetiches. phallus worship. adolescent pride in sexual development. exhibitionism of the nates. the classification of the forms of exhibitionism. nature of the relationship of exhibitionism to epilepsy. vi. the forms of erotic symbolism are simulacra of coitus. wide extension of erotic symbolism. fetichism not covering the whole ground of sexual selection. it is based on the individual factor in selection. crystallization. the lover and the artist. the key to erotic symbolism is to be found in the emotional sphere. the passage to pathological extremes. the mechanism of detumescence. i. the psychological significance of detumescence. the testis and the ovary. sperm cell and germ cell. development of the embryo. the external sexual organs. their wide range of variation. their nervous supply. the penis. its racial variations. the influence of exercise. the scrotum and testicles. the mons veneris. the vulva. the labia majora and their varieties. the public hair and its characters. the clitoris and its functions. the anus as an erogenous zone. the nymphæ and their function. the vagina. the hymen. virginity. the biological significance of the hymen. ii. the object of detumescence. erogenous zones. the lips. the vascular characters of detumescence. erectile tissue. erection in woman. mucous emission in women. sexual connection. the human mode of intercourse. normal variations. the motor characters of detumescence. ejaculation. the virile reflex. the general phenomena of detumescence. the circulatory and respiratory phenomena. blood pressure. cardiac disturbance. glandular activity. distillatio. the essentially motor character of detumescence. involuntary muscular irradiation to bladder, etc. erotic intoxication. analogy of sexual detumescence and vesical tension. the specifically sexual movements of detumescence in man. in woman. the spontaneous movements of the genital canal in woman. their function in conception. part played by active movement of the spermatozoa. the artificial injection of semen. the facial expression during detumescence. the expression of joy. the occasional serious effects of coitus. iii. the constituents of semen. function of the prostate. the properties of semen. aphrodisiacs. alcohol, opium, etc. anaphrodisiacs. the stimulant influence of semen in coitus. the internal effects of testicular secretions. the influence of ovarian secretion. iv. the aptitude for detumescence. is there an erotic temperament? the available standards of comparison. characteristics of the castrated. characteristics of puberty. characteristics of the state of detumescence. shortness of stature. development of the secondary sexual characters. deep voice. bright eyes. glandular activity. everted lips. pigmentation. profuse hair. dubious significance of many of these characters. the psychic state in pregnancy. the relationship of maternal and sexual emotion. conception and loss of virginity. the anciently accepted signs of this condition. the pervading effects of pregnancy on the organism. pigmentation. the blood and circulation. the thyroid. changes in the nervous system. the vomiting of pregnancy. the longings of pregnant women. mental impressions. evidence for and against their validity. the question still open. imperfection of our knowledge. the significance of pregnancy. appendix. histories of sexual development. index of authors. index of subjects. erotic symbolism. i. the definition of erotic symbolism--symbolism of act and symbolism of object--erotic fetichism--wide extension of the symbols of sex--the immense variety of possible erotic fetiches--the normal foundations of erotic symbolism--classification of the phenomena--the tendency to idealize the defects of a beloved person--stendhal's "crystallization." by "erotic symbolism" i mean that tendency whereby the lover's attention is diverted from the central focus of sexual attraction to some object or process which is on the periphery of that focus, or is even outside of it altogether, though recalling it by association of contiguity or of similarity. it thus happens that tumescence, or even in extreme cases detumescence, may be provoked by the contemplation of acts or objects which are away from the end of sexual conjugation.[ ] in considering the phenomena of sexual selection in a previous volume,[ ] it was found that there are four or five main factors in the constitution of beauty in so far as beauty determines sexual selection. erotic symbolism is founded on the factor of individual taste in beauty; it arises as a specialized development of that factor, but it is, nevertheless, incorrect to merge it in sexual selection. the attractive characteristics of a beloved woman or man, from the point of view of sexual selection, are a complex but harmonious whole leading up to a desire for the complete possession of the person who displays them. there is no tendency to isolate and dissociate any single character from the individual and to concentrate attention upon that character at the expense of the attention bestowed upon the individual generally. as soon as such a tendency begins to show itself, even though only in a slight or temporary form, we may say that there is erotic symbolism. erotic symbolism is, however, by no means confined to the individualizing tendency to concentrate amorous attention upon some single characteristic of the adult woman or man who is normally the object of sexual love. the adult human being may not be concerned at all, the attractive object or act may not even be human, not even animal, and we may still be concerned with a symbol which has parasitically rooted itself on the fruitful site of sexual emotion and absorbed to itself the energy which normally goes into the channels of healthy human love having for its final end the procreation of the species. thus understood in its widest sense, it may be said that every sexual perversion, even homosexuality, is a form of erotic symbolism, for we shall find that in every case some object or act that for the normal human being has little or no erotic value, has assumed such value in a supreme degree; that is to say, it has become a symbol of the normal object of love. certain perversions are, however, of such great importance on account of their wide relationships, that they cannot be adequately discussed merely as forms of erotic symbolism. this is notably the case as regards homosexuality, auto-erotism, and algolagnia, all of which phenomena have therefore been separately discussed in previous studies. we are now mainly concerned with manifestations which are more narrowly and exclusively symbolical. a portion of the field of erotic symbolism is covered by what binet (followed by lombroso, krafft-ebing, and others) has termed "erotic fetichism," or the tendency whereby sexual attraction is unduly exerted by some special part or peculiarity of the body, or by some inanimate object which has become associated with it. such erotic symbolism of object cannot, however, be dissociated from the even more important erotic symbolism of process, and the two are so closely bound together that we cannot attain a truly scientific view of them until we regard them broadly as related parts of a common psychic tendency. if, as groos asserts,[ ] a symbol has two chief meanings, one in which it indicates a physical process which stands for a psychic process, and another in which it indicates a part which represents the whole, erotic symbolism of act corresponds to the first of these chief meanings, and erotic symbolism of object to the other. although it is not impossible to find some germs of erotic symbolism in animals, in its more pronounced manifestations it is only found in the human species. it could not be otherwise, for such symbolism involves not only the play of fancy and imagination, the idealizing aptitude, but also a certain amount of power of concentrating the attention on a point outside the natural path of instinct and the ability to form new mental constructions around that point. there are, indeed, as we shall see, elementary forms of erotic symbolism which are not uncommonly associated with feeble-mindedness, but even these are still peculiarly human, and in its less crude manifestations erotic symbolism easily lends itself to every degree of human refinement and intelligence. "it depends primarily upon an increase of the psychological process of representation," colin scott remarks of sexual symbolism generally, "involving greater powers of comparison and analysis as compared with the lower animals. the outer impressions come to be clearly distinguished as such, but at the same time are often treated as symbols of inner experiences, and a meaning read into them which they would not otherwise possess. symbolism or fetichism is, indeed, just the capacity to see meaning, to emphasize something for the sake of other things which do not appear. in brain terms it indicates an activity of the higher centers, a sort of side-tracking or long-circuiting of the primitive energy; ... rosetti's poem, 'the woodspurge,' gives a concrete example of the formation of such a symbol. here the otherwise insignificant presentation of the three-cupped woodspurge, representing originally a mere side-current of the stream of consciousness, becomes the intellectual symbol or fetich of the whole psychosis forever after. it seems, indeed, as if the stronger the emotion the more likely will become the formation of an overlying symbolism, which serves to focus and stand in the place of something greater than itself; nowhere at least is symbolism a more characteristic feature than as an expression of the sexual instinct. the passion of sex, with its immense hereditary background, in early man became centered often upon the most trivial and unimportant features.... this symbolism, now become fetichistic, or symbolic in a bad sense, is at least an exercise of the increasing representative power of man, upon which so much of his advancement has depended, while it also served to express and help to purify his most perennial emotion." (colin scott, "sex and art," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. , p. .) in the study of "love and pain" in a previous volume, the analysis of the large and complex mass of sexual phenomena which are associated with pain, gradually resolved them to a considerable extent into a special case of erotic symbolism; pain or restraint, whether inflicted on or by the loved person, becomes, by a psychic process that is usually unconscious, the symbol of the sexual mechanism, and hence arouses the same emotions as that mechanism normally arouses. we may now attempt to deal more broadly and comprehensively with the normal and abnormal aspects of erotic symbolism in some of their most typical and least mixed forms. "when our human imagination seeks to animate artificial things," huysmans writes in _là-bas_, "it is compelled to reproduce the movements of animals in the act of propagation. look at machines, at the play of pistons in the cylinders; they are romeos of steel in juliets of cast-iron." and not only in the work of man's hands but throughout nature we find sexual symbols which are the less deniable since, for the most part, they make not the slightest appeal to even the most morbid human imagination. language is full of metaphorical symbols of sex which constantly tend to lose their poetic symbolism and to become commonplace. semen is but seed, and for the latins especially the whole process of human sex, as well as the male and female organs, constantly presented itself in symbols derived from agricultural and horticultural life. the testicles were beans (_fabæ_) and fruit or apples (_poma_ and _mala_); the penis was a tree (_arbor_), or a stalk (_thyrsus_), or a root (_radix_), or a sickle (_falx_), or a ploughshare (_vomer_). the semen, again, was dew (_ros_). the labia majora or minora were wings (_alæ_); the vulva and vagina were a field (_ager_ and _campus_), or a ploughed furrow (_sulcus_), or a vineyard (_vinea_), or a fountain (_fons_), while the pudendal hair was herbage (_plantaria_).[ ] in other languages it is not difficult to trace similar and even identical imagery applied to sexual organs and sexual acts. thus it is noteworthy that shakespeare more than once applies the term "ploughed" to a woman who has had sexual intercourse. the talmud calls the labia minora the doors, the labia majora hinges, and the clitoris the key. the greeks appear not only to have found in the myrtle-berry, the fruit of a plant sacred to venus, the image of the clitoris, but also in the rose an image of the feminine labia; in the poetic literature of many countries, indeed, this imagery of the rose may be traced in a more or less veiled manner.[ ] the widespread symbolism of sex arose in the theories and conceptions of primitive peoples concerning the function of generation and its nearest analogies in nature; it was continued for the sake of the vigorous and expressive terminology which it furnished both for daily life and for literature; its final survivals were cultivated because they furnished a delicately æsthetic method of approaching matters which a growing refinement of sentiment made it difficult for lovers and poets to approach in a more crude and direct manner. its existence is of interest to us now because it shows the objective validity of the basis on which erotic symbolism, as we have here to understand it, develops. but from first to last it is a distinct phenomenon, having a more or less reasoned and intellectual basis, and it scarcely serves in any degree to feed the sexual impulse. erotic symbolism is not intellectual but emotional in its origin; it starts into being, obscurely, with but a dim consciousness or for the most part none at all, either suddenly from the shock of some usually youthful experience, or more gradually through an instinctive brooding on those things which are most intimately associated with a sexually desirable person. the kind of soil on which the germs of erotic symbolism may develop is well seen in cases of sexual hyperæsthesia. in such cases all the emotionally sexual analogies and resemblances, which in erotic symbolism are fixed and organized, may be traced in vague and passing forms, a single hyperæsthetic individual perhaps presenting a great variety of germinal symbolisms. thus it has been recorded of an italian nun (whose sister became a prostitute) that from the age of she had desire for coitus, from the age of masturbated, and later had homosexual feelings, that the same feelings and practices continued after she had taken the veil, though from time to time they assumed religious equivalents. the mere contact, indeed, of a priest's hand, the news of the presentation of an ecclesiastic she had known to a bishopric, the sight of an ape, the contemplation of the crucified christ, the figure of a toy, the picture of a demon, the act of defecation in the children entrusted to her care (whom, on this account, and against the regulations, she would accompany to the closets), especially the sight and the mere recollection of flies in sexual connection--all these things sufficed to produce in her a powerful orgasm. (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. ii-iii, p. .) a boy of (given to masturbation), studied by macdonald in america, was similarly hyperæsthetic to the symbols of sexual emotion. "i like amusing myself with my comrades," he told macdonald, "rolling ourselves into a ball, which gives one a funny kind of warmth. i have a special pleasure in talking about some things. it is the same when the governess kisses me on saying good night or when i lean against her breast. i have that sensation, too, when i see some of the pictures in the comic papers, but only in those representing a woman, as when a young man skating trips up a girl so that her clothes are raised a little. when i read how a man saved a young girl from drowning, so that they swam together, i had the same sensation. looking at the statues of women in the museum produces the same effect, or when i see naked babies, or when a mother suckles a child. i have often had that sensation when reading novels i ought not to read, or when looking at a new-born calf, or seeing dogs and cows and horses mounting on each other. when i see a girl flirting with a boy, or leaning on his shoulder or with his arm round her waist, i have an erection. it is the same when i see women and little girls in bathing costume, or when boys talk of what their fathers and mothers do together. in the natural history museum i often see things which give me that sensation. one day when i read how a man killed a young girl and carried her into a wood and undressed her i had a feeling of enjoyment. when i read of men who were bastards the idea of a woman having a child in that way gives me this sensation. some dances, and seeing young girls astride a horse, excited me, too, and so in a circus when a woman was shot out of a cannon and her skirts flew in the air. it has no effect on me when i see men naked. sometimes i enjoy seeing women's underclothes in a shop, or when i see a lady or a girl buying them, especially if they are drawers. when i saw a lady in a dress which buttoned from top to bottom it had more effect on me than seeing underclothes. seeing dogs coupling gives me more pleasure than looking at pretty women, but less than looking at pretty little girls." in order of increasing intensity he placed the phenomena that affected him thus: the coupling of flies, then of horses, then the sight of women's undergarments, then a boy and a girl flirting, then cows mounting on each other, the statues of women with naked breasts, then contact with the governess's body and breasts, finally coitus. (arthur macdonald, _le criminel-type_, pp. et seq.) it is worthy of remark that the instinct of nutrition, when restrained, may exhibit something of an analogous symbolism, though in a minor degree, to that of sex. the ways in which a hyperæsthetic hunger may seek its symbols are illustrated in the case of a young woman called nadia, who during several years was carefully studied by janet. it is a case of obsession ("maladie du scrupule"), simulating hysterical anorexia, in which the patient, for fear of getting fat, reduced her nourishment to the smallest possible amount. "nadia is generally hungry, even very hungry. one can tell this by her actions; from time to time she forgets herself to such an extent as to devour greedily anything she can put her hands on. at other times, when she cannot resist the desire to eat, she secretly takes a biscuit. she feels horrible remorse for the action, but, all the same, she does it again. her confidences are very curious. she recognizes that a great effort is needed to avoid eating, and considers she is a heroine to resist so long. 'sometimes i spent whole hours in thinking about food, i was so hungry; i swallowed my saliva, i bit my handkerchief, i rolled on the floor, i wanted to eat so badly. i would look in books for descriptions of meals and feasts, and tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that i was sharing all these good things,'" (p. janet, "la maladie du scrupule," _revue philosophique_, may, , p. .) the deviations of the instinct of nutrition are, however, confined within narrow limits, and, in the nature of things, hunger, unlike sexual desire, cannot easily accept a fetich. "there is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude, act," stanley hall declares, "or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not have to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power."[ ] even a mere shadow may become a fetich. goron tells of a merchant in paris--a man with a reputation for ability, happily married and the father of a family, altogether irreproachable in his private life--who was returning home one evening after a game of billiards with a friend, when, on chancing to raise his eyes, he saw against a lighted window the shadow of a woman changing her chemise. he fell in love with that shadow and returned to the spot every evening for many months to gaze at the window. yet--and herein lies the fetichism--he made no attempt to see the woman or to find out who she was; the shadow sufficed; he had no need of the realty.[ ] it is even possible to have a negative fetich, the absence of some character being alone demanded, and the case has been recorded in chicago of an american gentleman of average intelligence, education, and good habits who, having as a boy cherished a pure affection for a girl whose leg had been amputated, throughout life was relatively impotent with normal women, but experienced passion and affection for women who had lost a leg; he was found by his wife to be in extensive correspondence with one-legged women all over the country, expending no little money on the purchase of artificial legs for his various protegées.[ ] it is important to remember, however, that while erotic symbolism becomes fantastic and abnormal in its extreme manifestations, it is in its essence absolutely normal. it is only in the very grossest forms of sexual desire that it is altogether absent. stendhal described the mental side of the process of tumescence as a crystallization, a process whereby certain features of the beloved person present points around which the emotions held in solution in the lover's mind may concentrate and deposit themselves in dazzling brilliance. this process inevitably tends to take place around all those features and objects associated with the beloved person which have most deeply impressed the lover's mind, and the more sensitive and imaginative and emotional he is the more certainly will such features and objects crystallize into erotic symbols. "devotion and love," wrote mary wollstonecraft, "may be allowed to hallow the garments as well as the person, for the lover must want fancy who has not a sort of sacred respect for the glove or slipper of his mistress. he would not confound them with vulgar things of the same kind." and nearly two centuries earlier burton, who had gathered together so much of the ancient lore of love, clearly asserted the entirely normal character of erotic symbolism. "not one of a thousand falls in love," he declares, "but there is some peculiar part or other which pleaseth most, and inflames him above the rest.... if he gets any remnant of hers, a busk-point, a feather of her fan, a shoe-tie, a lace, a ring, a bracelet of hair, he wears it for a favor on his arm, in his hat, finger, or next his heart; as laodamia did by protesilaus, when he went to war, sit at home with his picture before her: a garter or a bracelet of hers is more precious than any saint's relique, he lays it up in his casket (o blessed relique) and every day will kiss it: if in her presence his eye is never off her, and drink he will where she drank, if it be possible, in that very place," etc.[ ] burton's accuracy in describing the ways of lovers in his century is shown by a passage in hamilton's _mémoires de gramont_. miss price, one of the beauties of charles ii's court, and dongan were tenderly attached to each other; when the latter died he left behind a casket full of all possible sorts of love-tokens pertaining to his mistress, including, among other things, "all kinds of hair." and as regards france, burton's contemporary, howell, wrote in in his _familiar letters_ concerning the repulse of the english at rhé: "a captain told me that when they were rifling the dead bodies of the french gentlemen after the first invasion they found that many of them had their mistresses' favors tied about their genitories." schurig (_spermatologia_, p. ) at the beginning of the eighteenth century knew a belgian lady who, when her dearly loved husband died, secretly cut off his penis and treasured it as a sacred relic in a silver casket. she eventually powdered it, he adds, and found it an efficacious medicine for herself and others. an earlier example, of a lady at the french court who embalmed and perfumed the genital organs of her dead husband, always preserving them in a gold casket, is mentioned by brantôme. mantegazza knew a man who kept for many years on his desk the skull of his dead mistress, making it his dearest companion. "some," he remarks, "have slept for months and years with a book, a garment, a trifle. i once had a friend who would spend long hours of joy and emotion kissing a thread of silk which _she_ had held between her fingers, now the only relic of love." (mantegazza, _fisiologia dell' amore_, cap. x.) in the same way i knew a lady who in old age still treasured in her desk, as the one relic of the only man she had ever been attracted to, a fragment of paper he had casually twisted up in a conversation with her half a century before. the tendency to treasure the relics of a beloved person, more especially the garments, is the simplest and commonest foundation of erotic symbolism. it is without doubt absolutely normal. it is inevitable that those objects which have been in close contact with the beloved person's body, and are intimately associated with that person in the lover's mind, should possess a little of the same virtue, the same emotional potency. it is a phenomenon closely analogous to that by which the relics of saints are held to possess a singular virtue. but it becomes somewhat less normal when the garment is regarded as essential even in the presence of the beloved person.[ ] while an extremely large number of objects and acts may be found to possess occasionally the value of erotic symbols, such symbols most frequently fall into certain well-defined groups. a vast number of isolated objects or acts may be exceptionally the focus of erotic contemplation, but the objects and acts which frequently become thus symbolic are comparatively few. it seems to me that the phenomena of erotic symbolism may be most conveniently grouped in three great classes, on the basis of the objects or acts which arouse them. i. parts of the body.--_a. normal:_ hand, foot, breasts, nates, hair, secretions and excretions, etc. _b. abnormal:_ lameness, squinting, pitting of smallpox, etc. paidophilia or the love of children, presbyophilia or the love of the aged, and necrophilia or the attraction for corpses, may be included under this head, as well as the excitement caused by various animals. ii. inanimate objects.[ ]--_a. garments:_ gloves, shoes and stockings and garters, caps, aprons, handkerchiefs, underlinen. _b. impersonal objects:_ here may be included all the various objects that may accidentally acquire the power of exciting sexual feeling in auto-erotism. pygmalionism may also be included. iii. acts and attitudes.--_a. active:_ whipping, cruelty, exhibitionism. _b. passive:_ being whipped, experiencing cruelty. personal odors and the sound of the voice may be included under this head. _c. mixoscopic:_ the vision of climbing, swinging, etc. the acts of urination and defecation. the coitus of animals. although the three main groups into which the phenomena of erotic symbolism are here divided may seem fairly distinct, they are yet very closely allied, and indeed overlap, so that it is possible, as we shall see, for a single complex symbol to fall into all three groups. a very complete kind of erotic symbolism is furnished by pygmalionism or the love of statues.[ ] it is exactly analogous to the child's love of a doll, which is also a form of sexual (though not erotic) symbolism. in a somewhat less abnormal form, erotic symbolism probably shows itself in its simplest shape in the tendency to idealize unbeautiful peculiarities in a beloved person, so that such peculiarities are ever afterward almost or quite essential in order to arouse sexual attraction. in this way men have become attracted to limping women. even the most normal man may idealize a trifling defect in a beloved woman. the attention is inevitably concentrated on any such slight deviation from regular beauty, and the natural result of such concentration is that a complexus of associated thoughts and emotions becomes attached to something that in itself is unbeautiful. a defect becomes an admired focus of attention, the embodied symbol of the lover's emotion. thus a mole is not in itself beautiful, but by the tendency to erotic symbolism it becomes so. persian poets especially have lavished the richest imagery on moles (_anis el-ochchâq_ in _bibliothèque des hautes etudes_, fasc, , ); the arabs, as lane remarks (_arabian society in the middle ages_, p. ), are equally extravagant in their admiration of a mole. stendhal long since well described the process by which a defect becomes a sexual symbol. "even little defects in a woman's face," he remarked, "such as a smallpox pit, may arouse the tenderness of a man who loves her, and throw him into deep reverie when he sees them in another woman. it is because he has experienced a thousand feelings in the presence of that smallpox mark, that these feelings have been for the most part delicious, all of the highest interest, and that, whatever they may have been, they are renewed with incredible vivacity on the sight of this sign, even when perceived on the face of another woman. if in such a case we come to prefer and love _ugliness_, it is only because in such a case ugliness is beauty. a man loved a woman who was very thin and marked by smallpox; he lost her by death. three years later, in rome, he became acquainted with two women, one very beautiful, the other thin and marked by smallpox, on that account, if you will, rather ugly. i saw him in love with this plain one at the end of a week, which he had employed in effacing her plainness by his memories." (_de l'amour_, chapter xvii.) in the tendency to idealize the unbeautiful features of a beloved person erotic symbolism shows itself in a simple and normal form. in a less simple and more morbid form it appears in persons in whom the normal paths of sexual gratification are for some reasons inhibited, and who are thus led to find the symbols of natural love in unnatural perversions. it is for this reason that so many erotic symbolisms take root in childhood and puberty, before the sexual instincts have reached full development. it is for the same reason also, that, at the other end of life, when the sexual energies are failing, erotic symbols sometimes tend to be substituted for the normal pleasures of sex. it is for this reason, again, that both men and women whose normal energies are inhibited sometimes find the symbols of sexual gratification in the caresses of children. the case of a schoolmistress recorded by penta instructively shows how an erotic symbolism of this last kind may develop by no means as a refinement of vice, but as the one form in which sexual gratification becomes possible when normal gratification has been pathologically inhibited. f.r., aged , schoolmistress; she was some years ago in an asylum with religious mania, but came out well in a few months. at the age of she had first experienced sexual excitement in a railway train from the jolting of the carriage. soon after she fell in love with a youth who represented her ideal and who returned her affection. when, however, she gave herself to him, great was her disillusion and surprise to find that the sexual act which she had looked forward to could not be accomplished, for at the first contact there was great pain and spasmodic resistance of the vagina. there was a condition of vaginismus. after repeated attempts on subsequent occasions her lover desisted. her desire for intercourse increased, however, rather than diminished, and at last she was able to tolerate coitus, but the pain was so great that she acquired a horror of the sexual embrace and no longer sought it. having much will power, she restrained all erotic impulses during many years. it was not until the period of the menopause that the long repressed desires broke out, and at last found a symbolical outlet that was no longer normal, but was felt to supply a complete gratification. she sought the close physical contact of the young children in her care. she would lie on her bed naked, with two or three naked children, make them suck her breasts and press them to every part of her body. her conduct was discovered by means of other children who peeped through the keyhole, and she was placed under penta for treatment. in this case the loss of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in those primitive contacts which are normally the beginning of love, and these, supported by the ideal image of the early lover, constituted a complete and adequate symbol of natural love in a morbidly perverted individual. (p. penta, _archivio delle psicopatie sessuali_, january, .) footnotes: [ ] the term "erotic symbolism" has already been employed by eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, , p. ). it must be borne in mind that this term, implying the specific emotion, is much narrower than the term "sexual symbolism," which may be used to designate a great variety of ritual and social practices which have played a part in the evolution of civilization. [ ] _sexual selection in man_, iv, "vision." [ ] k. groos, _der Æsthetische genuss_, p. . the psychology of the associations of contiguity and resemblance through which erotic symbolism operates its transference is briefly discussed by ribot in the _psychology of the emotions_, part , chapter xii; the early chapters of the same author's _logique des sentiments_ may also be said to deal with the emotional basis on which erotic symbolism arises. [ ] a number of synonyms for the female pudenda are brought together by schurig--cunnus, hortus, concha, navis, fovea, larva, canis, annulus, focus, cymba, antrum, delta, myrtus, etc.--and he discusses many of them. (_muliebria_, section i, cap. i.) [ ] kleinpaul, _sprache ohne worte_, pp. - ; cf. k. pearson, on the general and special words for sex, _chances of death_, vol. ii, pp. - ; a selection of the literature of the rose will be found in a volume of translations entitled _ros rosarum_. [ ] g.s. hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. . [ ] goron, _les parias de l'amour_, p. . [ ] a.r. reynolds, _medical standard_, vol. x, cited by kiernan, "responsibility in sexual perversion," _american journal of neurology and psychiatry_, . [ ] r. burton, _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section ii, mem. ii, subs. ii, and mem. iii, subs. i. [ ] numerous examples are given by moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. - . [ ] chevalier (_de l'inversion_, ; id., _l'inversion sexuelle_, , p. ), followed by e. laurent (_l'amour morbide_, , chapter x), separates this group from other fetichistic perversions, under the head of "azoöphilie." i see no adequate ground for this step. the various forms of fetichism are too intimately associated to permit of any group of them being violently separated from the others. [ ] this has already been considered as a perversion founded on vision, in discussing _sexual selection in man_. iv. ii. foot-fetichism and shoe-fetichism--wide prevalence and normal basis--restif de la bretonne--the foot a normal focus of sexual attraction among some peoples--the chinese, greeks, romans, spaniards, etc.--the congenital predisposition in erotic symbolism--the influence of early association and emotional shock--shoe-fetichism in relation to masochism--the two phenomena independent though allied--the desire to be trodden on--the fascination of physical constraint--the symbolism of self-inflicted pain--the dynamic element in erotic symbolism--the symbolism of garments. of all forms of erotic symbolism the most frequent is that which idealizes the foot and the shoe. the phenomena we here encounter are sometimes so complex and raise so many interesting questions that it is necessary to discuss them somewhat fully. it would seem that even for the normal lover the foot is one of the most attractive parts of the body. stanley hall found that among the parts specified as most admired in the other sex by young men and women who answered a _questionnaire_ the feet came fourth (after the eyes, hair, stature and size).[ ] casanova, an acute student and lover of women who was in no degree a foot fetichist, remarks that all men who share his interest in women are attracted by their feet; they offer the same interest, he considers, as the question of the particular edition offers to the book-lover.[ ] in a report of the results of a _questionnaire_ concerning children's sense of self, to which over replies were received, stanley hall thus summarizes the main facts ascertained with reference to the feet: "a special period of noticing the feet comes somewhat later than that in which the hands are discovered to consciousness. our records afford nearly twice as many cases for feet as for hands. the former are more remote from the primary psychic focus or position, and are also more often covered, so that the sight of them is a more marked and exceptional event. some children become greatly excited whenever their feet are exposed. some infants show signs of fear at the movement of their own knees and feet covered, and still more often fright is the first sensation which signalizes the child's discovery of its feet.... many are described as playing with them as if fascinated by strange, newly-discovered toys. they pick them up and try to throw them away, or out of the cradle, or bring them to the mouth, where all things tend to go.... children often handle their feet, pat and stroke them, offer them toys and the bottle, as if they, too, had an independent hunger to gratify, an _ego_ of their own.... children often develop [later] a special interest in the feet of others, and examine, feel them, etc., sometimes expressing surprise that the pinch of the mother's toe hurts her and not the child, or comparing their own and the feet of others point by point. curious, too, are the intensifications of foot-consciousness throughout the early years of childhood, whenever children have the exceptional privilege of going barefoot, or have new shoes. the feet are often apostrophized, punished, beaten sometimes to the point of pain for breaking things, throwing the child down, etc. several children have habits, which reach great intensity, and then vanish, of touching or tickling the feet, with gales of laughter, and a few are described as showing an almost morbid reluctance to wear anything upon the feet, or even to having them touched by others.... several almost fall in love with the great toe or the little one, especially admiring some crease or dimple in it, dressing it in some rag of silk or bit of ribbon, or cut-off glove fingers, winding it with string, prolonging it by tying on bits of wood. stroking the feet of others, especially if they are shapely, often becomes almost a passion with young children, and several adults confess a survival of the same impulse which it is an exquisite pleasure to gratify. the interest of some mothers in babies' toes, the expressions of which are ecstatic and almost incredible, is a factor of great importance." (g. stanley hall, "some aspects of the early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, april, .) in childhood, stanley hall remarks elsewhere (_adolescence_, vol. ii, p. ), "a form of courtship may consist solely in touching feet under the desk." it would seem that even animals have a certain amount of sexual consciousness in the feet; i have noticed a male donkey, just before coitus, bite the feet of his partner. at the same time it is scarcely usual for the normal lover, in most civilized countries to-day, to attach primary importance to the foot, such as he very frequently attaches to the eyes, though the feet play a very conspicuous part in the work of certain novelists.[ ] in a small but not inconsiderable minority of persons, however, the foot or the boot becomes the most attractive part of a woman, and in some morbid cases the woman herself is regarded as a comparatively unimportant appendage to her feet or her boots. the boots under civilized conditions much more frequently constitute the sexual symbol than do the feet themselves; this is not surprising since in ordinary life the feet are not often seen. it is usually only under exceptionally favoring conditions that foot-fetichism occurs, as in the case recorded by marandon de montyel of a doctor who had been brought up in the west indies. his mother had been insane and he himself was subject to obsessions, especially of being incapable of urinating; he had had nocturnal incontinence of urine in childhood. all the women of the people in the west indies go about with naked feet, which are often beautiful. his puberty evolved under this influence, and foot-fetichism developed. he especially admired large, fat, arched feet, with delicate skin and large, regular toes. he masturbated with images of feet. at he had relations with a colored chambermaid, but feared to mention his fetichism, though it was the touch of her feet that chiefly excited him. he now gave up masturbation, and had a succession of mistresses, but was always ashamed to confess his fancies until, at the age of , in paris, a very intelligent woman who had become his mistress discovered his mania and skillfully enabled him to yield to it without shock to his modesty. he was devoted to this mistress, who had very beautiful feet (he had been horrified by the feet of europeans generally), until she finally left him. (_archives de neurologie_, october, .) probably the first case of shoe-fetichism ever recorded in any detail is that of restif de la bretonne ( - ), publicist and novelist, one of the most remarkable literary figures of the later eighteenth century in france. restif was a neurotic subject, though not to an extreme degree, and his shoe-fetichism, though distinctly pronounced, was not pathological; that is to say, that the shoe was not itself an adequate gratification of the sexual impulse, but simply a highly important aid to tumescence, a prelude to the natural climax of detumescence; only occasionally, and _faute de mieux_, in the absence of the beloved person, was the shoe used as an adjunct to masturbation. in restif's stories and elsewhere the attraction of the shoe is frequently discussed or used as a motive. his first decided literary success, _le pied de fanchette_, was suggested by a vision of a girl with a charming foot, casually seen in the street. while all such passages in his books are really founded on his own personal feelings and experiences, in his elaborate autobiography, _monsieur nicolas_, he has frankly set forth the gradual evolution and cause of his idiosyncrasy. the first remembered trace dated from the age of , when he was able to recall having remarked the feet of a young girl in his native place. restif was a sexually precocious youth, and at the age of , though both delicate in health and shy in manners, his thoughts were already absorbed in the girls around him. "while little monsieur nicolas," he tells us, "passed for a narcissus, his thoughts, as soon as he was alone, by night or by day, had no other object than that sex he seemed to flee from. the girls most careful of their persons were naturally those who pleased him most, and as the part least easy to keep clean is that which touches the earth it was to the foot-gear that he mechanically gave his chief attention. agathe, reine, and especially madeleine, were the most elegant of the girls at that time; their carefully selected and kept shoes, instead of laces or buckles, which were not yet worn at sacy, had blue or rose ribbon, according to the color of the skirt. i thought of these girls with emotion; i desired--i knew not what; but i desired something, if it were only to subdue them." the origin restif here assigns to his shoe-fetichism may seem paradoxical; he admired the girls who were most clean and neat in their dress, he tells us, and, therefore, paid most attention to that part of their clothing which was least clean and neat. but, however paradoxical the remark may seem, it is psychologically sound. all fetichism is a kind of not necessarily morbid obsession, and as the careful work of janet and others in that field has shown, an obsession is a fascinated attraction to some object or idea which gives the subject a kind of emotional shock by its contrast to his habitual moods or ideas. the ordinary morbid obsession cannot usually be harmoniously co-ordinated with the other experiences of the subject's daily life, and shows, therefore, no tendency to become pleasurable. sexual fetichisms, on the other hand, have a reservoir of agreeable emotion to draw on, and are thus able to acquire both stability and harmony. it will also be seen that no element of masochism is involved in restif's fetichism, though the mistake has been frequently made of supposing that these two manifestations are usually or even necessarily allied. restif wishes to subject the girl who attracts him, he has no wish to be subjected by her. he was especially dazzled by a young girl from another town, whose shoes were of a fashionable cut, with buckles, "and who was a charming person besides." she was delicate as a fairy, and rendered his thoughts unfaithful to the robust beauties of his native sacy. "no doubt," he remarks, "because, being frail and weak myself, it seemed to me that it would be easier to subdue her." "this taste for the beauty of the feet," he continues, "was so powerful in me that it unfailingly aroused desire and would have made me overlook ugliness. it is excessive in all those who have it." he admired the foot as well as the shoe: "the factitious taste for the shoe is only a reflection of that for pretty feet. when i entered a house and saw the boots arranged in a row, as is the custom, i would tremble with pleasure; i blushed and lowered my eyes as if in the presence of the girls themselves. with this vivacity of feeling and a voluptuousness of ideas inconceivable at the age of i still fled, with an involuntary impulse of modesty, from the girls i adored." we may clearly see how this combination of sensitive and precocious sexual ardor with extreme shyness, furnished the soil on which the germ of shoe-fetichism was able to gain a firm root and persist in some degree throughout a long life very largely given up to a pursuit of women, abnormal rather by its excessiveness than its perversity. a few years later, he tells us, he happened to see a pretty pair of shoes in a bootmaker's shop, and on hearing that they belonged to a girl whom at that time he reverently adored at a distance he blushed and nearly fainted. in he was for a time attracted to a young woman very much older than himself; he secretly carried away one of her slippers and kept it for a day; a little later he again took away a shoe of the same woman which had fascinated him when on her foot, and, he seems to imply, he used it to masturbate with. perhaps the chief passion of restif's life was his love for colette parangon. he was still a boy ( ), she was the young and virtuous wife of the printer whose apprentice restif was and in whose house he lived. madame parangon, a charming woman, as she is described, was not happily married, and she evidently felt a tender affection for the boy whose excessive love and reverence for her were not always successfully concealed. "madonna parangon," he tells us, "possessed a charm which i could never resist, a pretty little foot; it is a charm which arouses more than tenderness. her shoes, made in paris, had that voluptuous elegance which seems to communicate soul and life. sometimes colette wore shoes of simple white drugget or with silver flowers; sometimes rose-colored slippers with green heels, or green with rose heels; her supple feet, far from deforming her shoes, increased their grace and rendered the form more exciting." one day, on entering the house, he saw madame parangon elegantly dressed and wearing rose-colored shoes with tongues, and with green heels and a pretty rosette. they were new and she took them off to put on green slippers with rose heels and borders which he thought equally exciting. as soon as she had left the room, he continues, "carried away by the most impetuous passion and idolizing colette, i seemed to see her and touch her in handling what she had just worn; my lips pressed one of these jewels, while the other, deceiving the sacred end of nature, from excess of exaltation replaced the object of sex (i cannot express myself more clearly). the warmth which she had communicated to the insensible object which had touched her still remained and gave a soul to it; a voluptuous cloud covered my eyes." he adds that he would kiss with rage and transport whatever had come in close contact with the woman he adored, and on one occasion eagerly pressed his lips to her cast-off underlinen, _vela secretiora penetralium_. at this period restif's foot-fetichism reached its highest point of development. it was the aberration of a highly sensitive and very precocious boy. while the preoccupation with feet and shoes persisted throughout life, it never became a complete perversion and never replaced the normal end of sexual desire. his love for madam parangon, one of the deepest emotions in his whole life, was also the climax of his shoe-fetichism. she represented his ideal woman, an ethereal sylph with wasp-waist and a child's feet; it was always his highest praise for a woman that she resembled madame parangon, and he desired that her slipper should be buried with him. (restif de la bretonne, _monsieur nicolas_, vols. i-iv, vol. xiii, p. ; id., _mes inscriptions_, pp. ci-cv.) shoe-fetichism, more especially if we include under this term all the cases of real or pseudo-masochism in which an attraction to the boots or slippers is the chief feature, is a not infrequent phenomenon, and is certainly the most frequently occurring form of fetichism. many cases are brought together by krafft-ebing in his _psychopathia sexualis_. every prostitute of any experience has known men who merely desire to gaze at her shoes, or possibly to lick them, and who are quite willing to pay for this privilege. in london such a person is known as a "bootman," in germany as a "stiefelfrier." the predominance of the foot as a focus of sexual attraction, while among us to-day it is a not uncommon phenomenon, is still not sufficiently common to be called normal; the majority of even ardent lovers do not experience this attraction in any marked degree. but these manifestations of foot-fetichism which with us to-day are abnormal, even when they are not so extreme as to be morbid, may perhaps become more intelligible to us when we realize that in earlier periods of civilization, and even to-day in some parts of the world, the foot is generally recognized as a focus of sexual attraction, so that some degree of foot-fetichism becomes a normal phenomenon. the most pronounced and the best known example of such normal foot-fetichism at the present day is certainly to be found among the southern chinese. for a chinese husband his wife's foot is more interesting than her face. a chinese woman is as shy of showing her feet to a man as a european woman her breasts; they are reserved for her husband's eyes alone, and to look at a woman's feet in the street is highly improper and indelicate. chinese foot-fetichism is connected with the custom of compressing the feet. this custom appears to rest on the fact that chinese women naturally possess a very small foot and is thus an example of the universal tendency in the search for beauty to accentuate, even by deformation, the racial characteristics. but there is more than this. beauty is largely a name for sexual attractiveness, and the energy expended in the effort to make the chinese woman's small foot still smaller is a measure of the sexual fascination which it exerts. the practice arose on the basis of the sexual attractiveness of the foot, though it has doubtless served to heighten that attractiveness, just as the small waist, which (if we may follow stratz) is a characteristic beauty of the european woman, becomes to the average european man still more attractive when accentuated, even to the extent of deformity, by the compression of the corset. referring to the sexual fascination exerted by the foot in china, matignon writes: "my attention has been drawn to this point by a large number of pornographic engravings, of which the chinese are very fond. in all these lascivious scenes we see the male voluptuously fondling the woman's foot. when a celestial takes into his hand a woman's foot, especially if it is very small, the effect upon him is precisely the same as is provoked in a european by the palpation of a young and firm bosom. all the celestials whom i have interrogated on this point have replied unanimously: 'oh, a little foot! you europeans cannot understand how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!' the contact of the genital organ with the little foot produces in the male an indescribable degree of voluptuous feeling, and women skilled in love know that to arouse the ardor of their lovers a better method than all chinese aphrodisiacs--including 'giusen' and swallows' nests--is to take the penis between their feet. it is not rare to find chinese christians accusing themselves at confession of having had 'evil thoughts on looking at a woman's foot.'" (dr. j. matignon, "a propos d'un pied de chinoise," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, .) it is said that a chinese empress, noted for her vice and having a congenital club foot, about the year b.c., desired all women to resemble her, and that the practice of compressing the foot thus arose. but this is only tradition, since, in b.c., chinese books were destroyed (morache, art. "chine," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_, p. ). it is also said that the practice owes its origin to the wish to keep women indoors. but women are not secluded in china, nor does foot compression usually render a woman unable to walk. many intelligent chinese are of opinion that its object is to promote the development of the sexual parts and of the thighs, and so to aid both intercourse and parturition. there is no ground for believing that it has any such influence, though morache found that the mons veneris and labia are largely developed in chinese women, and not in tartar women living in pekin (who do not compress the foot). if there is any correlation between the feet and the pelvic regions, it is more probably congenital than due to the artificial compression of the feet. the ancients seem to have believed that a small foot indicated a small vagina. restif de la bretonne, who had ample opportunities for forming an opinion on a matter in which he took so great an interest, believed that a small foot, round and short, indicated a large vagina (_monsieur nicolas_, vol. i, reprint of , p. ). even, however, if we admit that there is a real correlation between the foot and the vagina, that would by no means suffice to render the foot a focus of sexual attraction. it remains the most reasonable view that the foot bandage must be regarded as strictly analogous to the waist bandage or corset which also tends to produce deformity of the constricted region. stratz has ingeniously remarked (_frauenkleidung_, third edition, p. ) that the success of the chinese in dwarfing trees may have suggested a similar attempt in regard to women's feet, and adds that in any case both dwarfed trees and bound feet bear witness in the mongolian to the same love for small and elegant, not to say deformed, things. for a chinaman the deformed foot is a "golden water-lily." many facts (together with illustrations) bearing on chinese deformation of the foot will be found in ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, section iv. the significance of the sexual emotion aroused by the female foot in china and the origin of its compression begin to become clear when we realize that this foot-fetichism is merely an extreme development of a tendency which is fairly well marked among nearly all the peoples of yellow race. jacoby, who has brought together a number of interesting facts bearing on the sexual significance of the foot, states that a similar tendency is to be found among the mongol and turk peoples of siberia, and in the east and central parts of european russia, among the permiaks, the wotiaks, etc. here the woman, at all events when young, has always her feet, as well as head, covered, however little clothing she may otherwise wear. "on hot nights or on baking days," jacoby states, "you may see these women with uncovered breasts, or even entirely naked without embarrassment, but you will never see them with bare feet, and no male relations, except the husband, will ever see the feet and lower part of the legs of the women in the house. these women have their modesty in their feet, and also their coquetry; to unbind the feet of a woman is for a man a voluptuous act, and the touch of the bands produces the same effect as a corset still warm from a woman's body on a european man. a woman's beauty, that which attracts and excites a man, lies in her foot; in mordvin love poems celebrating the beauty of women there is much about her attire, especially her embroidered chemise, but as regards the charms of her person the poet is content to state that 'her feet are beautiful;' with that everything is said. the young peasant woman of the central provinces as part of her holiday raiment puts on great woolen stockings which come up to the groin and are then folded over to below the knee. to uncover the feet of a person of the opposite sex is a sexual act, and has thus become the symbol of sexual possession, so that the stocking or foot-gear became the emblem of marriage, as later the ring. (it was so among the jews, as we see in the book of _ruth_, chapter iii, v. , and chapter iv, vv. and ). st. vladimir the great asked in marriage the daughter of prince rogvold; as vladimir's mother had been a serf, the princess proudly replied that she 'would not uncover the feet of a slave.' at the present time in the east of russia when a young girl tries to find out by divination whom she will have as a husband the traditional formula is 'come and take my stockings off.' among the populations of the north and east, it is sometimes the bride who must do this for her husband on the wedding night, and sometimes the bridegroom for his wife, not as a token of love, but as a nuptial ceremony. among the professional classes and small nobility in russia parents place money in the stocking of their child at marriage as a present for the other partner, it being supposed that the couple mutually remove each other's foot raiment, as an act of sexual possession, the emblem of coitus." (paul jacoby, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, december, , p. .) the practice among ourselves of children hanging up their stockings at night for presents would seem to be a relic of the last-mentioned custom. while we may witness the sexual symbolism of the foot, with or without an associated foot-fetichism, most highly developed in asia and eastern europe, it has by no means been altogether unknown in some stages of western civilization, and traces of it may be found here and there even yet. schinz refers to the connection between the feet and sexual pleasure as existing not only among the egyptians and the arabs, but among the ancient germans and the modern spaniards,[ ] while jacoby points out that among the greeks, the romans, and especially the etruscans, it was usual to represent chaste and virgin goddesses with their feet covered, even though they might be otherwise nude. ovid, again, is never weary of dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot. he represents the chaste matron as wearing a weighted _stola_ which always fell so as to cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her feet.[ ] so grave a historian as strabo, as well as Ælian, refers to the story of the courtesan rhodope whose sandal was carried off by an eagle and dropped in the king of egypt's lap as he was administering justice, so that he could not rest until he had discovered to whom this delicately small sandal belonged, and finally made her his queen. kleinpaul, who repeats this story, has collected many european sayings and customs (including turkish), indicating that the slipper is a very ancient symbol of a woman's sexual parts.[ ] in rome, dufour remarks, "matrons having appropriated the use of the shoe (_soccus_) prostitutes were not allowed to use it, and were obliged to have their feet always naked in sandals or slippers (_crepida_ and _solea_), which they fastened over the instep with gilt bands. tibullus delights to describe his mistress's little foot, compressed by the band that imprisoned it: _ansaque compressos colligat arcta pedes_. nudity of the foot in woman was a sign of prostitution, and their brilliant whiteness acted afar as a pimp to attract looks and desires." (dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. ii., ch. xviii.) this feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and unconscious form in mediæval europe. "in the tenth century," according to dufour (_histoire de la prostitution_, vol. vi., p. ), "shoes _a la poulaine_, with a claw or beak, pursued for more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediæval casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty. at a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes--terminating in a lion's claw, an eagle's beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal appendage--should be so scandalous. the excommunication inflicted on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some libertine, who wore _poulaines_ in the shape of the phallus, a custom adopted also by women. this kind of _poulaine_ was denounced as _mandite de dicu_ (ducange's glossary, at the word poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of charles v., october, , regarding the garments of the women of montpellier). great lords and ladies continued, however, to wear _poulaines_." in louis xl's court they were still worn of a quarter of an ell in length. spain, ever tenacious of ancient ideas, appears to have preserved longer than other countries the ancient classic traditions in regard to the foot as a focus of modesty and an object of sexual attraction. in spanish religious pictures it was always necessary that the virgin's feet should be concealed, the clergy ordaining that her robe should be long and flowing, so that the feet might be covered with decent folds. pacheco, the master and father-in-law of velasquez, writes in in his _arte de la pintura_: "what can be more foreign from the respect which we owe to the purity of our lady the virgin than to paint her sitting down with one of her knees placed over the other, and often with her sacred feet uncovered and naked. let thanks be given to the holy inquisition which commands that this liberty should be corrected!" it was pacheco's duty in seville to see that these commands were obeyed. at the court of philip iv. at this time the princesses never showed their feet, as we may see in the pictures of velasquez. when a local manufacturer desired to present that monarch's second bride, mariana of austria, with some silk stockings the offer was indignantly rejected by the court chamberlain: "the queen of spain has no legs!" philip v.'s, queen was thrown from her horse and dragged by the feet; no one ventured to interfere until two gentlemen bravely rescued her and then fled, dreading punishment by the king: they were, however, graciously pardoned. reinach ("pieds pudiques," _cultes, mythes et religions_, pp. - ) brings together several passages from the countess d'aulnoy's account of the madrid court in the seventeenth century and from other sources, showing how careful spanish ladies were as regards their feet, and how jealous spanish husbands were in this matter. at this time, when spanish influence was considerable, the fashion of spain seems to have spread to other countries. one may note that in vandyck's pictures of english beauties the feet are not visible, though in the more characteristically english painters of a somewhat later age it became usual to display them conspicuously, while the french custom in this matter is the farthest removed from the spanish. at the present day a well-bred spanish woman shows as little as possible of her feet in walking, and even in some of the most characteristic spanish dances there is little or no kicking, and the feet may even be invisible throughout. it is noteworthy that in numerous figures of spanish women (probably artists' models) reproduced in ploss's _das weib_ the stockings are worn, although the women are otherwise, in most cases, quite naked. max dessoir mentions ("psychologie der vita sexualis," _zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , p. ) that in spanish pornographic photographs women always have their shoes on, and he considers this an indication of perversity. i have seen the statement (attributed to gautier's _voyage en espagne_, where, however, it does not occur) that spanish prostitutes uncover their feet in sign of assent, and madame d'aulnoy stated that in her time to show her lover her feet was a spanish woman's final favor. the tendency, which we thus find to be normal at some earlier periods of civilization, to insist on the sexual symbolism of the feminine foot or its coverings, and to regard them as a special sexual fascination, is not without significance for the interpretation of the sporadic manifestations of foot-fetichism among ourselves. eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young children to-day.[ ] the occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usually precocious organism to influences which, among the average and ordinary population of europe to-day, are either never felt, or quickly outgrown, or very strictly subordinated in the highly complex crystallizations which the course of love and the process of tumescence create within us. it may be added that this is by no means true of foot-fetichism only. in some other fetichisms a seemingly congenital predisposition is even more marked. this is not only the case as regards hair-fetichism and fur-fetichism (see, e.g., krafft-ebing, _psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth edition, pp. , , ). in many cases of fetichisms of all kinds not only is there no record of any commencement in a definite episode (an absence which may be accounted for by the supposition that the original incident has been forgotten), but it would seem in some cases that the fetichism developed very slowly. in this sense, it will be seen, although it is hazardous to speak of foot-fetichism as strictly an atavism, it may certainly be said to arise on a congenital basis. it represents the rare development of an inborn germ, usually latent among ourselves, which in earlier stages of civilization frequently reached a normal and general fruition. it is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism, because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks in early life. inversion is sometimes so fundamentally ingrained in the individual's constitution that it arises and develops in spite of the very strongest influence in a contrary direction. but a fetichism, while it tends to occur in sensitive, nervous, timid, precocious individuals--that is to say, individuals of more or less neuropathic heredity--can usually, though not always, be traced to a definite starting point in the shock of some sexually emotional episode in early life. a few examples of the influences of such association may here be given, referring miscellaneously to various forms of erotic symbolism. magnan has recorded the case of a hair-fetichist, living in a district where the women wore their hair done up, who at the age of experienced pleasurable feelings with erection at the sight of a village beauty combing her hair; from that time flowing hair became his fetich, and he could not resist the temptation to touch it and if possible sever it, thus becoming a hair-despoiler, for which he was arrested but not sentenced. (_archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, vol. v, no. .) i have elsewhere recorded the history of a boy of , having already had imperfect connection with a grown-up woman, who associated much with a young married lady; he had no sexual relations with her, but one day she urinated in his presence, and he saw that her mons veneris was covered by very thick hair; from that time he worshiped this woman in secret and acquired a life-long fetichistic attraction to women whose pubic hair was similarly abundant (_studies in the psychology of sex_, vol. iii, appendix b, history v). roubaud reported the case of a general's son, sexually initiated at the age of by a blonde young lady of who, in order to avoid detection, always retained her clothing: gaiters, a corset and a silk dress; when the boy's studies were completed and he was sent to a garrison where he could enjoy freedom he found that his sexual desires could only be aroused by blonde women dressed like the lady who had first aroused his sexual desires; consequently he gave up all thoughts of matrimony, as a woman in nightclothes produced impotence (_traité de l'impuissance_, p. ). krafft-ebing records the somewhat similar case of a nervous polish boy of old family seduced at the age of by a french governess, who during several months practiced mutual masturbation with him; in this way his attention became attracted by her very elegant boots, and in the end he became a confirmed boot-fetichist (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation, p. ). a boy of , of bad heredity, was taught to masturbate by a servant girl; on one occasion she practiced this on him with her foot without taking off her shoe; it was the first time the manoeuvre gave him any pleasure, and an association was thus established which led to shoe-fetichism (hammond, _sexual impotence_, p. ). a government official whose first coitus in youth took place on a staircase; the sound of his partner's creaking shoes against the stairs, produced by her efforts to accelerate orgasm, formed an association which developed into an auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled to follow ladies whose shoes creaked, ejaculation being thus produced, while to obtain complete satisfaction he would make a prostitute, otherwise naked, sit in front of him in her shoes, moving her feet so that the shoes creaked. (moraglia, _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xiii, p. .) bechterew, in st. petersburg, has recorded the case of a man who when a child used to fall asleep at the knees of his nurse with his head buried in the folds of her apron; in this position he first experienced erection and voluptuous sensations; when a youth he had no attraction to naked women, and in real life and in dreams was only excited sexually under conditions recalling his early experience; in his relations with women he preferred them dressed, and was excited by the rustling sound of their skirts; in this case there was no traceable neuropathic taint nor any other personal peculiarity. (summarized in _journal de psychologie normale et pathologique_, january-february, , p. .) in a curious case recorded in detail by moll, a philologist of sensitive temperament but sound heredity, who had always been fond of flowers, at the age of became engaged to a young lady who wore large roses fastened in her jacket; from this time roses became to him a sexual fetich, to kiss them caused erection, and his erotic dreams were accompanied by visions of roses and the hallucination of their odor; the engagement was finally broken off and the rose-fetichism disappeared (_untersuchungen über libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ). such associations may naturally occur in the early experiences of even the most normal persons. the degree to which they will influence the subsequent life and thought and feeling depends on the degree of the individual's morbid emotional receptivity, on the extent to which he is hereditarily susceptible of abnormal deviation. precocity is undoubtedly a condition which favors such deviation; a child who is precociously and abnormally sensitive to persons of the opposite sex before puberty has established the normal channels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to become the prey of a chance symbolism. all degrees of such symbolism are possible. while the average insensitive person may fail to perceive them at all, for the more alert and imaginative lover they are a fascinating part of the highly charged crystallization of passion. a more nervously exceptional person, when once such a symbolism has become firmly implanted, may find it an absolutely essential element in the charm of a beloved and charming person. finally, for the individual who is thoroughly unsound the symbol becomes generalized; a person is no longer desired at all, being merely regarded as an appendage of the symbol, or being dispensed with altogether; the symbol is alone desired, and is fully adequate to impart by itself complete sexual gratification. while it must be considered a morbid state to demand a symbol as an almost essential part of the charm of a desired person, it is only in the final condition, in which the symbol becomes all-sufficing, that we have a true and complete perversion. in the less complete forms of symbolism it is still the woman who is desired, and the ends of procreation may be served; when the woman is ignored and the mere symbol is an adequate and even preferred stimulus to detumescence the pathological condition becomes complete. krafft-ebing regarded shoe-fetichism as, in large measure, a more or less latent form of masochism, the foot or the shoe being the symbol of the subjection and humiliation which the masochist feels in the presence of the beloved object. moll is also inclined to accept such a connection. "the very numerous class of boot-and-shoe-fetichists," krafft-ebing wrote, "forms the transition to the manifestations of another independent perversion, i.e., fetichism itself; but it stands in closer relationship to the former.... it is highly probable, and shown by a correct classification of the observed cases, that the majority, and perhaps all of the cases of shoe-fetichism, rest upon a basis of more or less conscious masochistic desire for self-humiliation.... the majority or all may be looked upon as instances of latent masochism (the motive remaining unconscious) in which the _female foot or shoe, as the masochist's fetich_, has acquired an independent significance." (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth edition, pp. , et seq.) "though krafft-ebing may not have cleared up the whole matter," moll remarks, "i regard his deductions concerning the connection of foot-and-shoe fetichism to masochism as the most important progress that has been made in the theoretic study of sexual perversions.... in any case, the connection is very frequent." (_konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. .) it is quite easy to see that this supposed identity of masochism and foot-fetichism forms a seductive theory. it is also undoubtedly true that a masochist may very easily be inclined to find in his mistress's foot an aid to the ecstatic self-abnegation which he desires to attain.[ ] but only confusion is attained by any general attempt to amalgamate masochism and foot-fetichism. in the broad sense in which erotic symbolism is here understood, both masochism and foot-fetichism may be coördinated as symbolisms; for the masochist his self-humiliating impulses are the symbol of ecstatic adoration; for the foot-fetichist his mistress's foot or shoe is the concentrated symbol of all that is most beautiful and elegant and feminine in her personality. but if in this sense they are coördinated, they remain entirely distinct and have not even any necessary tendency to become merged. masochism merely simulates foot-fetichism; for the masochist the boot is not strictly a symbol, it is only an instrument which enables him to carry out his impulse; the true sexual symbol for him is not the boot, but the emotion of self-subjection. for the foot-fetichist, on the other hand, the foot or the shoe is not a mere instrument, but a true symbol; the focus of his worship, an idealized object which he is content to contemplate or reverently touch. he has no necessary impulse to any self-degrading action, nor any constant emotion of subjection. it may be noted that in the very typical case of foot-fetichism which is presented to us in the person of restif de la bretonne (_ante_, p. ), he repeatedly speaks of "subjecting" the woman for whom he feels this fetichistic adoration, and mentions that even when still a child he especially admired a delicate and fairy-like girl in this respect because she seemed to him easier to subjugate. throughout life restif's attitude toward women was active and masculine, without the slightest trace of masochism.[ ] to suppose that a fetichistic admiration of his mistress's foot is due to a lover's latent desire to be kicked, is as unreasonable as it would be to suppose that a fetichistic admiration for her hand indicated a latent desire to have his ears boxed. in determining whether we are concerned with a case of foot-fetichism or of masochism we must take into consideration the whole of the subject's mental and emotional attitude. an act, however definite, will not suffice as a criterion, for the same act in different persons may have altogether different implications. to amalgamate the two is the result of inadequate psychological analysis and only leads to confusion. it is, however, often very difficult to decide whether we are dealing with a case which is predominantly one of masochism or of foot-fetichism. the nature of the action desired, as we have seen, will not suffice to determine the psychological character of the perversion. krafft-ebing believed that the desire to be trodden on, very frequently experienced by masochists, is absolutely symptomatic of masochism.[ ] this is scarcely the case. the desire to be trodden on may be fundamentally an erotic symbolism, closely approaching foot-fetichism, and such slight indications of masochism as appear may be merely a parasitic growth on the symbolism, a growth perhaps more suggested by the circumstances involved in the gratification of the abnormal desire than inherent in the innate impulse of the subject. this may be illustrated by the interesting case of a very intelligent man with whom i am well acquainted. c.p., aged . heredity good. parents both healthy and normal. several children of the marriage, all sexually normal so far as is known. c.p. is the youngest of the family and separated from the others by an interval of many years. he was a seven-months' child. he has always enjoyed good health and is active and vigorous, both mentally and physically. from the age of or to he masturbated occasionally for the sake of physical relief, having discovered the act for himself. he was, however, quite innocent and knew nothing of sexual matters, never having been initiated either by servants or by other boys. "when i encounter a woman who very strongly attracts me and whom i very greatly admire," he writes, "my desire is never that i may have sexual connection with her in the ordinary sense, but that i may lie down upon the floor on my back and be trampled upon by her. this curious desire is seldom present unless the object of my admiration is really a lady, and of fine proportions. she must be richly dressed--preferably in an evening gown, and wear dainty high-heeled slippers, either quite open so as to show the curve of the instep, or with only one strap or 'bar' across. the skirts should be raised sufficiently to afford me the pleasure of seeing her feet and a liberal amount of ankle, but in no case above the knee, or the effect is greatly reduced. although i often greatly admire a woman's intellect and even person, sexually no other part of her has any serious attraction for me except the leg, from the knee downwards, and the foot, and these must be exquisitely clothed. given this condition, my desire amounts to a wish to gratify my sexual sense by contact with the (to me) attractive part of the woman. comparatively few women have a leg or foot sufficiently beautiful to my mind to excite any serious or compelling desire, but when this is so, or i suspect it, i am willing to spend any time or trouble to get her to tread upon me and am anxious to be trampled on with the greatest severity. "the treading should be inflicted for a few minutes all over the chest, abdomen and groin, and lastly on the penis, which is, of course, lying along the belly in a violent state of erection, and consequently too hard for the treading to damage it. i also enjoy being nearly strangled by a woman's foot. "if the lady finally stands facing my head and places her slipper upon my penis so that the high heel falls about where the penis leaves the scrotum, the sole covering most of the rest of it and with the other foot upon the abdomen, into which i can _see_ as well as feel it sink as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, orgasm takes place almost at once. emission under these conditions is to me an agony of delight, during which practically the lady's whole weight should rest upon the penis. "one reason for my special pleasure in this method seems to be that first the heel and afterwards the sole of the slipper as it treads upon the penis greatly check the passage of the semen and consequently the pleasure is considerably prolonged. there is also a curious mental side to the affair. i love to imagine that the lady who is treading upon me is my mistress and i her slave, and that she is doing it to punish me for some fault, or to give _herself_ (not me) pleasure. "it follows that the greater the contempt and severity with which i am 'punished,' the greater becomes my pleasure. the idea of 'punishment' or 'slavery' is seldom aroused except when i have great difficulty in accomplishing my desire and the treader is more than usually handsome and heavy and the trampling mercilessly inflicted. i have been trampled so long and so mercilessly several times, that i have flinched each time the slipper pressed its way into my aching body and have been black and blue for days afterwards. i take the greatest interest in leading ladies on to do this for me where i think i will not offend, and have been surprisingly successful. i must have lain beneath the feet of quite a hundred women, many of them of good social position, who would never dream of permitting any ordinary sexual intercourse, but who have been so interested or amused by the idea as to do it for me--many of them over and over again. it is perhaps needless to say that none of my own or the ladies' clothing is ever removed, or disarranged, for the accomplishment of orgasm in this manner. after a long and varied experience, i may say that my favorite weight is to stone, and that black, very high-heeled slippers, in combination with tan silk stockings, seem to give me the greatest pleasure and create in me the strongest desires. "boots, or outdoor shoes, do not attract me to anything like the same degree, although i have, upon several occasions, enjoyed myself fairly well by their use. nude women repel me, and i find no pleasure in seeing a woman in tights. i am not averse to normal sexual connection and occasionally employ it. to me, however, the pleasure is far inferior to that of being trampled upon. i also derive keen pleasure--and usually have a strong erection--from seeing a woman, dressed as i have described, tread upon anything which yields under her foot--such as the seat of a carriage, the cushions of a punt, a footstool, etc., and i enjoy seeing her crush flowers by treading upon them. i have often strolled along in the wake of some handsome lady at a picnic or garden party, for the pleasure of seeing the grass upon which she has trodden rise slowly again after her foot has pressed it. i delight also to see a carriage sway as a woman leaves or enters it--anything which needs the pressure of the foot. "to pass now to the origin of this direction of my feelings. "even in early childhood i admired pretty feminine foot-gear, and in the contemplation of it experienced vague sensations which i now recognize as sexual. when a lad of or so, i stayed a good deal at the house of some intimate friends of my parents, the daughter of the house--an only child--a beautiful and powerful girl, about six years my senior, being my special chum. this girl was always daintily dressed, and having most lovely feet and ankles not unnaturally knew it. whenever possible she dressed so as to show off their beauty to the best advantage--rather short skirts and usually little high-heeled slippers--and was not averse to showing them in a most distractingly coquettish manner. she seemed to have a passion for treading upon things which would scrunch or yield under her foot, such as flowers, little windfallen apples and pears, acorns, etc., or heaps of hay, straw or cut grass. as we wandered about the gardens--for we were left to do exactly as we liked--i got quite accustomed to seeing her hunt out and tread upon such things, and used to chaff her about it. at that time i was--as i am still--fond of lying at full length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. one evening as i was lying in this way and we were alone, a. crossed the room to reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. instead of reaching over me, she playfully stepped upon my body, saying that she would show me how the hay and straw felt. naturally i fell in with the joke and laughed. after standing upon me a few moments she raised her skirt slightly and, holding on to the mantelpiece for support, stretched out one dainty foot in its brown silk stocking and high-heeled slipper to the blaze to warm, while looking down and laughing at my scarlet, excited face. she was a perfectly frank and charming girl, and i feel pretty certain that, although she evidently enjoyed my excitement and the feeling of my body yielding under her feet, she did not on this first occasion clearly understand my condition; nor can i remember that, though the desire for sexual gratification drove me nearly mad, it appeared to awaken in her any reciprocal feeling. i took hold of her raised foot and, after kissing it, guided it by an absolutely irresistible impulse on to my penis, which was as hard as wood and seemed almost bursting. almost at the moment that her weight was thrown upon it, orgasm took place for the first time in my life thoroughly and effectively. no description can give any idea of what i felt--i only know that from that moment my distorted sexual focus was fixed forever. numberless times, after that evening, i felt the weight of her dainty slippers, and nothing will ever cause the memory of the pleasure she thus gave me to fade. i know that a. came to enjoy treading upon me, as much as i enjoyed having her do it. she had a liberal dress allowance and, seeing the pleasure they gave me, she was always buying pretty stockings and ravishing slippers with the highest and most slender louis heels she could find and would show them to me with the greatest glee, urging me to lie down that she might try them on me. she confessed that she loved to see and feel them sink into my body as she trod upon me and enjoyed the crunch of the muscles under her heel as she moved about. after some minutes of this, i always guided her slipper on to my penis, and she would tread carefully, but with her whole weight--probably about stone--and watch me with flashing eyes, flushed cheeks, and quivering lips, as she felt--as she must have done plainly--the throbbing and swelling of my penis under her foot as emission took place. i have not the smallest doubt that orgasm took place simultaneously with her, though we never at any time spoke openly of it. this went on for several years on almost every favorable opportunity we had, and after a month or two of separation sometimes four or five times during a single day. several times during a.'s absence i masturbated by getting her slipper and pressing it with all my strength against the penis while imagining that she was treading upon me. the pleasure was, of course, very inferior to her attentions. there was never at any time between us any question of normal sexual intercourse, and we were both well content to let things drift as they were. "a little after i went abroad, and on my return about three years later i found her married. although we met often, the subject was never alluded to, though we remained firm friends. i confess i often, when i could do so without being seen, looked longingly at her feet and would have gladly accepted the pleasure she could have given me by an occasional resumption of our strange practice--but it never came. "i went abroad again, and now neither she nor her husband are alive and leave no issue. from time to time i have had occasional relations with prostitutes, but always in this manner, though i much prefer to find some lady of or above my own social position who will do the treading for me. this is, however, interestingly difficult. "out of say a hundred women (which at home and abroad is what i should estimate must have stood upon my body) i should say quite or were _not_ prostitutes. certainly not more than to shared any _sexual_ excitement, but while they were evidently excited they were not gratified. a. alone, so far as i know, had complete sexual satisfaction of it. i have never asked a woman in so many words to tread upon me for the purpose of gratifying my sexual desires (prostitutes excepted), but have always tempted them to do it in a jocular or teasing manner, and it is very doubtful if more than a few (married) women really understood, even after they had given me the extreme pleasure, that they had done so, because any flushing and movement on my part under their feet was not unnaturally put down to the trampling to which they were subjecting me, and it was easy for me to guide the foot as often as was necessary on to the penis till orgasm took place, and even to keep it there by laying hold of the other one to kiss it or on some other pretext during emission. of course many understood after once doing it (most have done it only once) what i was at, and, although they did not ever discuss it nor did i, they were not unwilling to give me as many treadings as i cared to playfully suggest. i don't think they got any pleasure sexually out of it themselves, though they could see plainly that i did, and they did not object to give it me. i have spent as long as twelve months with some women working gradually nearer and nearer to my desire--often getting what i want in the end, but more often failing. i _never_ risk it till i am certain it would be safe to ask it, and have never had a serious rebuff. in very many cases i should say the doing of what i want has simply been regarded by the woman as gratifying a silly and perhaps amusing whim, in which, beyond the novelty of treading on a man's body, she has taken but little interest. "as in normal seduction, the endeavor to win the woman over to do what i want without arousing her antagonism is a great part of the charm to me, and naturally the better her social position the more difficult this becomes--and the more attractive. i have found that in three instances prostitutes have performed the same office for other men and knew all about it. it is not uninteresting to note that these three women were all of fine, massive build--one standing about feet inches and weighing nearly stone--but with comparatively uninteresting faces. the weight, build and clothing count for a good deal in exciting me. i find that a sudden check to a man at the supreme moment of sexual pleasure tends to heighten and prolong the pleasure. my physical satisfaction is due to the fact that by getting the lady to stand with all her weight upon my penis (as it lies between her foot and the soft bed of my own body into which it is deeply pressed) the act of emission is enormously prolonged, with corresponding enjoyment. for this reason also i prefer a very high-heeled slipper. the seminal fluid has to be forced past two separate obstacles--the pressure of the heel close at the root of the penis and afterwards the ball of the foot which compresses the outer half, leaving a free portion between them under the arched sole of the slipper. i may add that the pleasure is greatly increased by the retention of the urine, and i always try to retain as much water as i dare. i have an unconquerable aversion to red in slippers or stockings; it will even cause impotence. why, i know not. strange as it may seem, although pain and bruising are often inflicted by a severe treading, i have never been in any way injured by the practice, and my pleasure in it seems not to diminish by constant repetition. the comparative difficulty of obtaining the pleasure from just the woman i want has a never-ending, if inexplicable, charm for me." it will be observed that in this case special importance is attached to shoes with high heels, and the subject considers that the pressure of such shoes is for mechanical reasons most favorable for procuring ejaculation. nearly all heterosexual shoe-fetichists seem, however, to be equally attracted by high heels. restif de la bretonne frequently referred to this point, and he gave a number of reasons for the attractiveness of high heels: ( ) they are unlike men's boots and, therefore, have a sexual fascination; ( ) they make the leg and foot look more charming; ( ) they give a less bold and more sylph-like character to the walk; ( ) they keep the feet clean. (restif de la bretonne, _nuits de paris_, vol. v, quoted in preface to his _mes inscriptions_, p. ciii.) it is doubtless the first reason--the fact that high heels are a kind of secondary sexual character--which is most generally potent in this attraction. the foregoing history, while it very distinctly brings before us a case of erotic symbolism, is not strictly an example of shoe-fetichism. the symbolism is more complex. the focus of beauty in a desirable woman is transferred and concentrated in the region below the knee; in that sense we have foot-fetichism. but the act of coitus itself is also symbolically transferred. not only has the foot become the symbol of the vulva, but trampling has become the symbol of coitus; intercourse takes place symbolically _per pedem_. it is a result of this symbolization of the foot and of trampling that all acts of treading take on a new and symbolical sexual charm. the element of masochism--of pleasure in being a woman's slave--is a parasitic growth; that is to say, it is not founded in the subject's constitution, but chances to have found a favorable soil in the special circumstances under which his sexual life developed. it is not primary, but secondary, and remains an unimportant and merely occasional element. it may be instructive to bring forward for comparison a case in which also we have a symbolism involving boot-fetichism, but extending beyond it. in this case there is a basis of inversion (as is not infrequent in erotic symbolisms), but from the present point of view the psychological significance of the case remains the same. a.n., aged , unmarried, healthy, though not robust, and without any known hereditary taint. has followed various avocations without taking great interest in them, but has shown some literary ability. "i am an englishman," his own narrative runs, "the third of three children. at my birth my father was and my mother . my mother died of cancer when i was . my father is still alive, a reserved man, who still nurses his sorrow for his wife's death. i have no reason to believe my parents anything but normal and useful members of society. my sister is normal and happily married. my brother i have reason to believe to be an invert. "a horoscope cast for me describes me in a way i think correct, and so do my friends: 'a mild, obliging, gentle, amiable person, with many fine traits of character; timid in nature, fond of society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close friendships. there is much that is firm, steadfast and industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little that is subtle, or what is called finesse. you are reserved with those you dislike. there is a serious and sad side to your character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in these moods. but you are not pessimistic. you have superior abilities, for they are intuitively intellectual. there is a cold reticence which restrains generous impulses and which inclines to acquisitiveness; it will make you deliberate, inventive, adding self-esteem, some vanity.' "at an early age i was left much alone in the nursery and there contracted the habit of masturbation long before the age of puberty. i use the word 'masturbation' for want of a better, though it may not quite describe my case. i have never used my hand to the penis. as far back as i can remember i have had what a frenchman has described as 'le fetichisme de la chaussure,' and in those early days, before i was years old, i would put on my father's boots, taken from a cupboard at hand, and then tying or strapping my legs together would produce an erection, and all the pleasurable feelings experienced, i suppose, by means of masturbation. i always did this secretly, but couldn't tell why. i continued this practice on and off all my boyhood and youth. when i discovered the first emission i was much surprised. i always did this thing without loosening my trousers. as to how these feelings arose i am totally unable to say. i can't remember being without such feelings, and they seem to me perfectly normal. the sight, or even thought, of high boots, or leggings, especially if well polished or in patent leather, would set all my sexual passions aflame, and does yet. as a boy my great desire was to wear these things. a soldier in boots and spurs, a groom in tops, or even an errand-boy in patent leather leggings, fascinated me, and to this day, despite reason and everything else. the sight of such things produced an erection. an emission i could always produce by tightly tying my legs together, but only when wearing boots, and preferably leggings, which when i had pocket money i bought for this purpose. (at the present moment i have five pairs in the house and two pairs of high boots, quite unjustified by ordinary use.) this habit i lapse into yet at times. the smell of leather affects me, but i never know how far this may be due to association with boots; the smell suggests the image. restraint by a leather strap is more exciting than by cords. erotic dreams always take the form of restraint on the limbs when booted. "uniforms and liveries have a great temptation for me, but only when of a tight-fitting nature and smart, as soldiers', grooms', etc., but not sailors'; most powerfully when the person is in boots or leggings and breeches. "i was a quiet, sensitive boy, taking no part in games or sports. have always been indifferent to them. i made few friends, but didn't want them. the craving for friendship came much later, after i was . i was a day boy at a private school, and never had any conversation with any boy on sexual matters, though i was dimly aware of much 'nastiness' about the school. i knew nothing of sodomy. but all these things were repulsive to me, notwithstanding my secret practices. i was a 'good boy.' "up to the age of i was perfectly satisfied with my own society, something of a prig, fond of books and reading, etc. i was and ever have been absolutely insensible to the influence of the other sex. i am not a woman hater, and take intellectual pleasure in the society of certain ladies, but they are nearly all much older than myself. i have a strong repulsion from sexual relations with women. i should not mind being married for the sake of companionship and for the sake of having boys of my own. but the sexual act would frighten me. i could not in my present frame of mind go to bed with a woman. yet i feel an immense envy of my married friends in that they are able to give out, and find satisfaction for, their affection in a way that is quite impossible for me. i picture certain boys in the place of the wife. "i am now only happy in the society of men younger than myself, age to (say) or , youths with smooth faces, or first sign of hair on lip, well groomed, slightly effeminate in feature, of sympathetic, perhaps weak nature. i feel i want to help them, do something for them, devote myself entirely to their welfare. "with such there is no fixed line between friendship and love. i yearn for intimacy with particular friends, but never dare express it. i find so many people object to any strong expression of feeling that i dare not run the risk of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of these desired intimates. "i have no desire for _pædicatio_, but the idea itself does not repulse me or seem unnatural, though personally it repels me a little. but i think this to be mere prejudice on my part, which might be broken down if the loved person showed a willingness to act a passive part. i should never dare to make an advance, however. "i am restrained by moral and religious considerations from making my real feelings known, and i feel i should sink in my own estimation if i gave way, though my natural desire is to do so. in the face of opportunities (not i mean of _pædicatio_, but of expression of excessive affection, etc.), or what might be such, i always fail to speak lest i should forfeit the esteem of the other person. i have a feeling of surprise when any one i like evinces a liking for me. i feel that those i love are immeasurably my superiors, though my reason may tell me it is not so. i would grovel at their feet, do anything to win a smile from them, or to make them give me their company. "ordinary bodily contact with the boy i love gives me most exquisite pleasure, and i never lose an opportunity of bringing such contact about when it can be done naturally. i feel an immense desire to embrace, kiss, squeeze, etc., the person, to generally maul him, and say nice things--the kind of things a man usually says to a woman. a handshake, the mere presence of the person, makes me happy and content. "i can say with the albanian: 'if i find myself in the presence of the beloved, i rest absorbed in gazing on him. absent, i think of nought but him. if the beloved unexpectedly appears i fall into confusion. my heart beats faster. i have eyes and ears only for the beloved.' "i feel that my capacity of affection is finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different sexes. and so, while trying to fight my instincts by religion, i find my natural feeling to be part of my religion, and its highest expression. in this sense i can speak from experience in my own case, and more especially in that of my brother, that what you have said about philanthropic activity resulting from repressed homosexuality is very true indeed. i can say with one of your female cases: 'love is to me a religion. the very nature of my affection for my friends precludes the possibility of any element entering into it which is not absolutely pure and sacred.' i am, however, madly jealous. i want entire possession, and i can't bear for a moment that any one i do not care for should know the person i love. "i am never attracted by men older than myself. the youths who attract me may be of any class, though preferably, i think, of a class a little lower than myself. i am not quite sure of this, however, as circumstances may have contributed more than deliberate choice to bring certain youths under my notice. those who have exercised the most powerful influence on me have been an oxford undergraduate, a barber's assistant, and a plumber's apprentice. though naturally fond of intellectual society, i do not ask for intellect in those i love. it goes for nothing. i always prefer their company to that of the most educated persons. this preference has alienated me to some extent from more refined and educated circles that formerly i was intimate with. "i have been led entirely out of my old habits by association with younger friends, and now do things which before i should never have dreamed of doing. my thoughts now are always with certain youths, and if they speak of leaving the town, or in any way talk of a future that i cannot share, i suffer horrid sinkings of the heart and depression of spirits." this case, while it concerns a person of quite different temperament, with a more innate predisposition to specific perversions, is yet in many respects analogous to the previous case. there is boot-fetichism; nothing is felt to be so attractive as the foot-gear, and there is also at the same time more than this; there is the attraction of repression and constraint developed into a sexual symbol. in c.p.'s case that symbolism arises from the experience of an abnormal heterosexual relationship; in a.n.'s case it is founded on auto-erotic experiences associated with inversion; in both alike the entire symbolism has become diffused and generalized. in the two cases just brought forward we have an erotic symbolism of act founded on, and closely associated with, an erotic symbolism of object. it may be instructive to bring forward another case in which no fetichistic feeling toward an object can be traced, but an erotic symbolism still clearly exists. in this case pain, even when self-inflicted, has acquired a symbolic value as a stimulus to tumescence, without any element of masochism. such a case serves to indicate how the sexual attraction of pain is really a special case of the erotic symbolism with which we are here concerned. a.w., aged , a writer and lecturer, physically and mentally energetic and enjoying good health. he is, however, very emotional and of nervous temperament, but self-controlled. though physically well developed, the sexual organs are small. he is married to an attractive woman, to whom he is much attached, and has two healthy children. at or years of age he had a frequent desire to be whipped, his parents never having struck him, and on one occasion he asked a brother to go with him to the closet to get him to whip him on the posterior; but on arrival he was too shy to make the request. he did not recognize the cause of these desires, knowing nothing of such things except from the misinformation of his school-fellows' talk. as far as he can remember, he was an entirely normal, healthy boy up to the age of about , when his attention was arrested by an advertisement of a quack medicine for the results of "youthful excesses." being a city boy, he was unfamiliar with the coupling even of animals, had never had a conscious erection and did not know of frictional excitement. experiment, however, resulted in an orgasm, and, though believing that it was wicked or at least weak and degrading, he indulged in masturbation at intervals, usually about six times a month, and has continued even up to the present. he had an abnormally small opening in the prepuce, making the uncovering of the glans almost impossible. (at the age of about , he himself slit the prepuce by three or four cuts of a scissors at intervals of about ten days. this was followed by a marked decrease in desire, especially as he shortly afterwards learned the importance of local cleanliness.) while in college at about the age of he began to have nocturnal emissions occasionally and once or twice a week when at stool. alarmed by these, he consulted a physician, who warned him of the danger, gave him bromide and prescribed cold bathing of the parts, with a hard, cool bed. these stopped the emissions. he never had connection with women until the age of about , and then only three times until his marriage at years of age, being deterred partly by conscientious scruples, but more by shyness and convention, and deriving very little pleasure from these instances. even since marriage he has derived more pleasure from sexual excitement than from coitus, and can maintain erection for as long as two hours. he has always been accustomed to torture himself in various ingenious ways, nearly always connected with sex. he would burn his skin deeply with red hot wire in inconspicuous places. these and similar acts were generally followed by manual excitation nearly always brought to a climax. he considers that he is attracted to refined and intellectual women. but he is without very ardent desires, having several times gone to bed with attractive women who stripped themselves naked, but without attempting any sexual intercourse with them. he became interested in the "karezza" theory and has tried to practice it with his wife, but could never entirely control the emission. he has hired a masseur to whip him, as children are whipped, with a heavy dog whip, which caused pleasurable excitement. during this time he had relations with his wife generally about once a week without any great ecstasy. she was cold and sexually slow, owing to conventional sex repression and to an idea that the whole thing was "like animals" and to fear of child-bearing, usually necessitating the use of a cover or withdrawal. it was only eight years after their marriage that she desired and obtained a child. during these years he would often stick pins through his mammæ and tie them together by a string round the pins drawn so short as to cause great pain and then indulge himself in the sexual act. he used strong wooden clips with a tack fixed in them, so as to pierce and pinch the mammæ, and once he drove a pin entirely through the penis itself, then obtaining orgasm by friction. he was never able to get an automatic emission in this way, though he often tried, not even by walking briskly during an erection. in another class of cases a purely ideal symbolism may be present by means of a fetich which acts as a powerful stimulus without itself being felt to possess any attraction. a good illustration of this condition is furnished by a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in new zealand. "the patient went out to south africa as a trooper with the contingent from new zealand, throwing up a good position in an office to do so. he had never had any trouble as regards connection with women before going out to south africa. while in active service at the front he sustained a nasty fall from his horse, breaking his leg. he was unconscious for four days, and was then invalided down to cape town. here he rapidly got well, and his accustomed health returning to him he started having what he terms 'a good time.' he repeatedly went to brothels, but was unable to have more than a temporary erection, and no ejaculation would take place. in one of these places he was in company with a drunken trooper, who suggested that they should perform the sexual act with their boots and spurs (only) on. my patient, who was also drunk, readily assented, and to his surprise was enabled to perform the act of copulation without any difficulty at all. he has repeatedly tried since to perform the act without any spurs, but is quite unable to do so; with the spurs he has no difficulty at all in obtaining all the gratification he desires. his general health is good. his mother was an extremely nervous woman, and so is his sister. his father died when he was quite young. his only other relation in the colony is a married sister, who seems to enjoy vigorous health." the consideration of the cases here brought forward may suffice to show that beyond those fetichisms which find their satisfaction in the contemplation of a part of the body or a garment, there is a more subtle symbolism. the foot is a center of force, an agent for exerting pressure, and thus it furnishes a point of departure not alone for the merely static sexual fetich, but for a dynamic erotic symbolization. the energy of its movements becomes a substitute for the energy of the sexual organs themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. the young girl (page ) "who seemed to have a passion for treading upon things which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circumstances in which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method of sexual gratification.[ ] the youth who was her partner learned, in the same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight, the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the grass which they have pressed. here we have a symbolism which is altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object; it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure reactions of the sexual process. we may trace a very similar erotic symbolism in an absolutely normal form. the fascination of clothes in the lover's eyes is no doubt a complex phenomenon, but in part it rests on the aptitudes of a woman's garments to express vaguely a dynamic symbolism which must always remain indefinite and elusive, and on that account always possess fascination. no one has so acutely described this symbolism as herrick, often an admirable psychologist in matters of sexual attractiveness. especially instructive in this respect are his poems, "delight in disorder," "upon julia's clothes," and notably "julia's petticoat." "a sweet disorder in the dress," he tells us, "kindles in clothes a wantonness;" it is not on the garment itself, but on the character of its movement that he insists; on the "erring lace," the "winning wave" of the "tempestuous petticoat;" he speaks of the "liquefaction" of clothes, their "brave vibration each way free," and of julia's petticoat he remarks with a more specific symbolism still, "sometimes 'twould pant and sigh and heave, as if to stir it scarce had leave; but having got it, thereupon, 'twould make a brave expansion." in the play of the beloved woman's garment, he sees the whole process of the central act of sex, with its repressions and expansions, and at the sight is himself ready to "fall into a swoon." footnotes: [ ] g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. ii, p. . it will be noted that the hand does not appear among the parts of the body which are normally of supreme interest. an interest in the hand is by no means uncommon (it may be noted, for instance, in the course of history xii in appendix b to vol. iii of these _studies_), but the hand does not possess the mystery which envelops the foot, and hand-fetichism is very much less frequent than foot-fetichism, while glove-fetichism is remarkably rare. an interesting case of hand-fetichism, scarcely reaching morbid intensity, is recorded by binet, _etudes de psychologie expérimentale_, pp. - ; and see krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, pp. et seq. [ ] _mémoires_, vol. i, chapter vii. [ ] among leading english novelists hardy shows an unusual but by no means predominant interest in the feet and shoes of his heroines; see, e.g., the observations of the cobbler in _under the greenwood tree_, chapter iii. a chapter in goethe's _wahlverwandtschaften_ (part i, chapter ii) contains an episode involving the charm of the foot and the kissing of the beloved's shoe. [ ] schinz, "philosophie des conventions sociales," _revue philosophique_, june, , p. . mirabeau mentions in his _erotika biblion_ that modern greek women sometimes use their feet to provoke orgasm in their lovers. i may add that simultaneous mutual masturbation by means of the feet is not unknown to-day, and i have been told by an english shoe-fetichist that he at one time was accustomed to practice this with a married lady (brazilian)--she with slippers on and he without--who derived gratification equal to his own. [ ] jacoby (loc. cit. pp. - ) gives a large number of references to ovid's works bearing on this point. "in reading him," he remarks, "one is inclined to say that the psychology of the romans was closely allied to that of the chinese." [ ] r. kleinpaul, _sprache ohne worte_, p. . see also moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. - . bloch brings together many interesting references bearing on the ancient sexual and religious symbolism of the shoe, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, p. . [ ] jacoby (loc. cit. p. ) appears to regard shoe-fetichism as a true atavism: "the sexual adoration of feminine foot-gear," he concludes, "perhaps the most enigmatic and certainly the most singular of degenerative insanities, is thus merely a form of atavism, the return of the degenerate to the very ancient and primitive psychology which we no longer understand and are no longer capable of feeling." [ ] moll has reported in detail (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, teil ii, pp. - ) a case which both he and krafft-ebing regard as illustrative of the connection between boot-fetichism and masochism. it is essentially a case of masochism, though manifesting itself almost exclusively in the desire to perform humiliating acts in connection with the attractive person's boots. [ ] krafft-ebing goes so far as to assert (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation of tenth edition, p. ) that "when in cases of shoe-fetichism the female shoe appears alone as the excitant of sexual desire one is justified in presuming that masochistic motives have remained latent.... latent masochism may always be assumed as the unconscious motive." in this way he hopelessly misinterprets some of his own cases. [ ] krafft-ebing goes so far as to assert (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation, pp. and ). yet some of the cases he brings forward (e.g., coxe's as quoted by hammond) show no sign of masochism, since, according to krafft-ebing's own definition (p. ), the idea of subjugation by the opposite sex is of the essence of masochism. [ ] her actions suggest that there is often a latent sexual consciousness in regard to the feet in women, atavistic or pseudo-atavistic, and corresponding to the sexual attraction which the feet formerly aroused, almost normally, in men. this is also suggested by the case, referred to by shufeldt, of an unmarried woman, belonging to a family exhibiting in a high degree both erotic and neurotic traits, who had "a certain uncontrollable fascination for shoes. she delights in new shoes, and changes her shoes all day long at regular intervals of three hours each. she keeps this row of shoes out in plain sight in her apartment." (r.w. shufeldt, "on a case of female impotency," , p. .) iii. scatalogic symbolism--urolagnia--coprolagnia--the ascetic attitude towards the flesh--normal basis of scatalogic symbolism--scatalogic conceptions among primitive peoples--urine as a primitive holy water--sacredness of animal excreta--scatalogy in folk-lore--the obscene as derived from the mythological--the immature sexual impulse tends to manifest itself in scatalogic forms--the basis of physiological connection between the urinary and genital spheres--urinary fetichism sometimes normal in animals--the urolagnia of masochists--the scatalogy of saints--urolagnia more often a symbolism of act than a symbolism of object--only occasionally an olfactory fetichism--comparative rarity of coprolagnia--influence of nates fetichism as a transition to coprolagnia--ideal coprolagnia--olfactory coprolagnia--urolagnia and coprolagnia as symbols of coitus. we meet with another group of erotic symbolisms--alike symbolisms of object and of act--in connection with the two functions adjoining the anatomical sexual focus: the urinary and alvine excretory functions. these are sometimes termed the scatalogical group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and coprolagnia.[ ] _inter fæces et urinam nascimur_ is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man's life. "the stupid bungle of nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much of the disgust which those organs excite in some minds." at the same time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. from the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin. from the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for the excretory centers to take on some charm from the irradiating center of sex which they enclose. even normally such a process is traceable. the normal lover may not idealize the excretory functions of his mistress, but the fact that he finds no repulsion in the most intimate contacts and feels no disgust at the proximity of the excretory orifices or the existence of their functions, indicates that the idealization of love has exerted at all events a neutralizing influence; indeed, the presence of an acute sensibility to the disturbing influence of this proximity of the excretory orifices and their functions must be considered abnormal; swift's "strephon and chloe"--with the conviction underlying it that it is an easy matter for the excretory functions to drown the possibilities of love--could only have proceeded from a morbidly sensitive brain.[ ] a more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence of the sexual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of sexual attraction being over-passed, and even without the creation of an excretory fetichism. reflections of this attitude may be found in the poets. in the _song of songs_ the lover says of his mistress, "thy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting;" in his lyric "to dianeme," herrick says with clear reference to the mons veneris:-- "show me that hill where smiling love doth sit, having a living fountain under it;" and in the very numerous poems in various languages which have more or less obscurely dealt with the rose as the emblem of the feminine pudenda there are occasional references to the stream which guards or presides over the rose. it may, indeed, be recalled that even in the name _nymphæ_ anatomists commonly apply to the _labia minora_ there is generally believed to be a poetic allusion to the nymphs who presided over streams, since the _labia minora_ exert an influence on the direction of the urinary stream. in _wilhelm meister_ (part i, chapter xv), goethe, on the basis of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in the humble surroundings of marianne's little room as compared with the stateliness and order of his own home. "it seemed to him when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could seat himself, when she herself with unembarrassed frankness would make no attempt to conceal from him many natural acts which people are accustomed to hide from others out of decency--it seemed to him, i say, that he became bound to her by invisible bands." we are told of wordsworth (findlay's _recollections of de quincey_, p. ) that he read _wilhelm meister_ till "he came to the scene where the hero, in his mistress's bedroom, becomes sentimental over her dirty towels, etc., which struck him with such disgust that he flung the book out of his hand, would never look at it again, and declared that surely no english lady would ever read such a work." i have, however, heard a woman of high intellectual distinction refer to the peculiar truth and beauty of this very passage. in one of his latest novels, _les rencontres de m. de bréot_, henri de régnier, one of the most notable of recent french novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. a personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto during a night fête in a nobleman's park, when two ladies enter and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a natural necessity. the man in the background, suddenly overcome by a sexual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances. to m. de bréot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims, abashed at his own actions: "why did i not flee? but could i imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human nature?" m. de bréot, however, in proceeding to reproach his interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "what you tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. nature has placed very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. one may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is lowliest in their bodies." in harmony with this passage from régnier's novel are the remarks of a correspondent who writes to me of the function of urination that it "appeals sexually to most normal individuals. my own observations and inquiries prove this. women themselves instinctively feel it. the secrecy surrounding the matter lends, too, i think, a sexual interest." the fact that scatalogic processes may in some degree exert an attraction even in normal love has been especially emphasized by bloch (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. , et seq.): "the man whose intellect and æsthetic sense has been 'clouded by the sexual impulse' sees these things in an entirely different light from him who has not been overcome by the intoxication of love. for him they are idealized (sit venia verbo) since they are a part of the beloved person, and in consequence associated with love." bloch quotes the _memoiren einer sängerin_ (a book which is said to be, though this seems doubtful, genuinely autobiographical) in the same sense: "a man who falls in love with a girl is not dragged out of his poetic sphere by the thought that his beloved must relieve certain natural necessities every day. it seems, indeed, to him to be just the opposite. if one loves a person one finds nothing obscene or disgusting in the object that pleases me." the opposite attitude is probably in extreme cases due to the influence of a neurotic or morbidly sensitive temperament. swift possessed such a temperament. the possession of a similar temperament is doubtless responsible for the little prose poem, "l'extase," in which huysmans in his first book, _le drageloir á epices_, has written an attenuated version of "strephon and chloe" to express the disillusionment of love; the lover lies in a wood clasping the hand of the beloved with rapturous emotion; "suddenly she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the bushes, and i heard as it were the rustling of rain on the leaves." his dream has fled. in estimating the significance of the lover's attitude in this matter, it is important to realize the position which scatologic conceptions took in primitive belief. at certain stages of early culture, when all the emanations of the body are liable to possess mysterious magic properties and become apt for sacred uses, the excretions, and especially the urine, are found to form part of religious ritual and ceremonial function. even among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious symbols. urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many customs which still survive in italy and various parts of europe, involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (the greek water of aspersion, according to theocritus, was mixed with salt, as is sometimes the modern italian holy water. j.j. blunt, _vestiges of ancient manners and customs_, p. .) among the hottentots, as kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. mungo park mentions that in africa on one occasion a bride sent a bowl of her urine which was thrown over him as a special mark of honor to a distinguished guest. pennant remarked that the highlanders sprinkled their cattle with urine, as a kind of holy water, on the first monday in every quarter. (bourke, _scatalogic rites_, pp. , ; brand, _popular antiquities_, "bride-ales.") even the excreta of animals have sometimes been counted sacred. this is notably so in the case of the cow, of all animals the most venerated by primitive peoples, and especially in india. jules bois (_visions de l'inde_, p. ) describes the spectacle presented in the temple of the cows at benares: "i put my head into the opening of the holy stables. it was the largest of temples, a splendor of precious stones and marble, where the venerated heifers passed backwards and forwards. a whole people adored them. they take no notice, plunged in their divine and obscure unconsciousness. and they fulfil with serenity their animal functions; they chew the offerings, drink water from copper vessels, and when they are filled they relieve themselves. then a stercoraceous and religious insanity overcomes these starry-faced women and venerable men; they fall on their knees, prostrate themselves, eat the droppings, greedily drink the liquid, which for them is miraculous and sacred." (cf. bourke, _scatalogic rites_, chapter xvii.) among the chevsurs of the caucasus, perhaps an iranian people, a woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home. this mode of purification is recommended in the avesta, and is said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed. we have not only to take into account the frequency with which among primitive peoples the excretions possess a religious significance. it is further to be noted that in the folk-lore of modern europe we everywhere find plentiful evidence of the earlier prevalence of legends and practices of a scatalogical character. it is significant that in the majority of cases it is easy to see a sexual reference in these stories and customs. the legends have lost their earlier and often mythical significance, and frequently take on a suggestion of obscenity, while the scatalogical practices have become the magical devices of lovelorn maidens or forsaken wives practiced in secrecy. it has happened to scatalogical rites to be regarded as we may gather from the _clouds_ of aristophanes, that the sacred leathern phallus borne by the women in the bacchanalia was becoming in his time, an object to arouse the amusement of little boys. among many primitive peoples throughout the world, and among the lower social classes of civilized peoples, urine possesses magic properties, more especially, it would seem, the urine of women and that of people who stand, or wish to stand, in sexual relationship to each other. in a legend of the indians of the northwest coast of america, recorded by boas, a woman gives her lover some of her urine and says: "you can wake the dead if you drop some of my urine in their ears and nose." (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft iv, p. .) among the same indians there is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical solutions. at last she said to herself: "i will make water on them and then they will leave me alone." she did so, and henceforth the fish left her. but shortly after fire came from heaven and killed her. (ib., , heft v, p. .) among both christians and mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (b. stern, _medizin in der türkei_, vol. ii, p. .) this practice is world-wide; thus among the aborigines of brazil, according to martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent for aphrodisiacal objects. (bourke's _scatalogic rites of all nations_ contains many references to the folk-lore practices in this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of urine, published in bombay by professor eugen wilhelm in , i have not seen.) the legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the literature of all countries. among primitive peoples they often have a purely theological character, for in the popular mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from aristophanes, among the greeks) natural phenomena such as the rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene character. in the irish _book of leinster_ (written down somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in emain macha, the seat of the ulster kings, resolved to find out which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the best among them. none of them succeeded, and they sent for derbforgaill, who was in love with cuchullain, and she was able to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes. (zimmer, "keltische beiträge," _zeitschrift für deutsche alterthum_, vol. xxxii, heft ii, pp. - .) rhys considers that derbforgaill was really a goddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or tear. (j. rhys, _lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by celtic heathendom_, p. .) it is interesting to compare the legend of derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern picardy folk-lore _conte_ which is clearly analogous but no longer seems to show any mythologic element, "la princesse qui pisse par dessus les meules." this princess had a habit of urinating over hay-cocks; the king, her father, in order to break her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could make a hay-cock so high that she could not urinate over it. the young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once achieve the task. at last there came a young man who argued with himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she had lost her virginity. he therefore seduced her first and she then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. accordingly, she became his bride. (kryptadia, vol. i. p. .) such legends, which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have possessed and have become merely _contes_, are not uncommon in the folk-lore of many countries. but in their earlier more religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play in the primitive mind. it is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal association with the sexual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most frequent channels by which the sexual impulse first manifests itself in young boys and girls. stanley hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter, remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for a time than eating and drinking. ("early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, april, , p. .) "micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again, "which our returns show to be so common before adolescence, culminate at or , and seem to retreat into the background as sex phenomena appear." they are, he remarks, of two classes: "fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and importance." (g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. .) the nature of such scatalogical phenomena in childhood--which are often clearly the instinctive manifestations of an erotic symbolism--and their wide prevalence among both boys and girls, are very well illustrated in a narrative which i include in appendix b, history ii. in boys as they approach the age of puberty, this attraction to the scatalogic, when it exists, tends to die out, giving place to more normal sexual conceptions, or at all events it takes a subordinate and less serious place in the mind. in girls, on the other hand, it often tends to persist. edmond de goncourt, a minute observer of the feminine mind, refers in _chérie_ to "those innocent and triumphant gaieties which scatalogic stories have the privilege of arousing in women who have remained still children, even the most distinguished women." the extent to which innocent young women, who would frequently be uninterested or repelled in presence of the sexually obscene are sometimes attracted by the scatalogically obscene, becomes intelligible, however, if we realize that a symbolism comes here into play. in women the more specifically sexual knowledge and experience of life frequently develop much later than in men or even remains in abeyance, and the specifically sexual phenomena cannot therefore easily lend themselves to wit, or humor, or imagination. but the scatalogic sphere, by the very fact that in women it is a specially intimate and secret region which is yet always liable to be unexpectedly protruded into consciousness, furnishes an inexhaustible field for situations which have the same character as those furnished by the sexually obscene. it thus happens that the sexually obscene which in men tends to overshadow the scatalogically obscene, in women--partly from inexperience and partly, it is probable, from their almost physiological modesty--plays a part subordinate to the scatalogical. in a somewhat analogous way scatalogical wit and humor play a considerable part in the work of various eminent authors who were clergymen or priests. in addition to the anatomical and psychological associations which contribute to furnish a basis on which erotic symbolisms may spring up, there are also physiological connections between the genital and urinary spheres which directly favor such symbolisms. in discussing the analysis of the sexual impulse in a previous volume of these _studies_, i have pointed out the remarkable relationship--sometimes of transference, sometimes of compensation--which exists between genital tension and vesical tension, both in men and women. in the histories of normal sexual development brought together at the end of that and subsequent volumes the relationship may frequently be traced, as also in the case of c.p. in the present study (p. ). vesical power is also commonly believed to be in relation with sexual potency, and the inability to project the urinary stream in a normal manner is one of the accepted signs of sexual impotency.[ ] féré, again, has recorded the history of a man with periodic crises of sexual desire, and subsequently sexual obsession without desire, which were always accompanied by the impulse to urinate and by increased urination.[ ] in the case, recorded by pitres and régis, of a young girl who, having once at the sight of a young man she liked in a theater been overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by a strong desire to urinate, was afterward tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate at inconvenient times,[ ] we have an example of what may be called a physiological scatalogic symbolism of sex, an emotion which was primarily erotic becoming transferred to the bladder and then remaining persistent. from such a physiological symbolism it is but a step to the psychological symbolisms of scatalogic fetichism. it is worthy of note, as an indication that such phenomena are scarcely abnormal, that a urinary symbolism, and even a strictly sexual fetichism, are normal among many animals. the most familiar example of this kind is furnished by the dog, who is sexually excited in this manner by traces of the bitch and himself takes every opportunity of making his own path recognizable. "this custom," espinas remarks (_des sociétés animales_, p. ), "has no other aim than to spread along the road recognizable traces of their presence for the benefit of individuals of the other sex, the odor of these traces doubtless causing excitement." it is noteworthy, also, that in animals as well as in man, sexual excitement may manifest itself in the bladder. thus daumas states (_chevaux de sahara_, p. ) that if the mare urinates when she hears the stallion neigh it is a sign that she is ready for connection. it is in masochism, or passive algolagnia, that we may most frequently find scatalogic symbolism in its fully developed form. the man whose predominant impulse is to subjugate himself to his mistress and to receive at her hands the utmost humiliation, frequently finds the climax of his gratification in being urinated on by her, whether in actual fact or only in imagination. in many such cases, however, it is evident that we have a mixed phenomenon; the symbolism is double. the act becomes desirable because it is the outward and visible sign of an inwardly experienced abject slavery to an adored person. but it is also desirable because of intimately sexual associations in the act itself, as a symbolical detumescence, a simulacrum of the sexual act, and one which proceeds from the sexual focus itself. krafft-ebing records various cases of masochism in which the emission of urine on to the body or into the mouth formed the climax of sexual gratification, as, for instance (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation, p. ) in the case of a russian official who as a boy had fancies of being bound between the thighs of a woman, compelled to sleep beneath her nates and to drink her urine, and in later life experienced the greatest excitement when practicing the last part of this early imagination. in another case, recorded by krafft-ebing and by him termed "ideal masochism" (_op. cit._, pp. - ), the subject from childhood indulged in voluptuous day-dreams in which he was the slave of a beautiful mistress who would compel him to obey all her caprices, stand over him with one foot on his breast, sit on his face and body, make him wait on her in her bath, or when she urinated, and sometimes insist on doing this on his face; though a highly intellectual man, he was always too timid to attempt to carry any of his ideas into execution; he had been troubled by nocturnal enuresis up to the age of . neri, again (_archivio delle psicopatie sessuali_, vol. i, fasc. and , ), records the case of an italian masochist who experienced the greatest pleasure when both urination and defecation were practiced in this manner by the woman he was attached to. in a previous volume of these _studies_ ("sexual inversion," history xxvi) i have recorded the masochistic day-dreams of a boy whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries "the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if i were very fond of him, i let it be in my face." in actual life the act of urination casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the reality, of the central secret of sex: "i stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties.... i was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. even to-day i cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me." it is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic deviations of sexual idealization. in some cases extreme rapture has been experienced in licking sweating feet. there is, indeed, no excretion or product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from the ears. krafft-ebing very truly points out (_psychopathia sexualis_, english translation, p. ) that this sexual scatalogic symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic symbolism. in the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses of erotic enthusiasm. to mix excreta with the food, to lick up excrement, to suck festering sores--all these and the like are acts which holy and venerated women have performed. not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary to refer to the instance of the prophet ezekiel, who declared that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to the practices of medicine-men at torres straits, in whose training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part. (deities, notably baal-phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and representatives among men should do so. as regards baal-phegor, see dulaure, _des divinités génératrices_, chapter iv, and j.g. bourke, _scatalogic rites of all nations_, p. . see also ezekiel, chapter iv, v. , and _reports anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. .) it must be added, however, that while the masochist is overcome by sexual rapture, so that he sees nothing disgusting in his act, the medicine-man and the ascetic are not so invariably overcome by religious rapture, and several ascetic writers have referred to the horror and disgust they experienced, at all events at first, in accomplishing such acts, while the medicine-men when novices sometimes find the ordeal too severe and have to abandon their career. brénier de montmorand, while remarking, not without some exaggeration, that "the christian ascetics are almost all eaters of excrement" ("ascétisme et mysticisme," _revue philosophique_, march, , p. ), quotes the testimonies of marguerite-marie and madame guyon as to the extreme repugnance which they had to overcome. they were impelled by a merely intellectual symbolism of self-mortification rather than by the profoundly felt emotional symbolism which moves the masochist. coprophagic acts, whether under the influences of religious exaltation or of sexual rapture, inevitably excite our disgust. we regard them as almost insane, fortified in that belief by the undoubted fact that coprophagia is not uncommon among the insane. it may, therefore, be proper to point out that it is not so very long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. it was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. less than two centuries ago, schurig, who so admirably gathered together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed chapter, "de stercoris humani usu medico" (_chylologia_, , cap. xiii; in the paris _journal de médecine_ for february , , there appeared an article, which i have not seen, entitled "médicaments oubliées: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") the classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would seem to have been extremely various. it must not be supposed that it was usually ingested in the crude form. a common method was to take the fæces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey, and administer an electuary. (at an earlier period such drugs appear to have met with some opposition from the church, which seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus i note that in burchard's remarkable penitential of the fourteenth century, as reproduced by wasserschleben, days' penance is prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine. wasserschleben _die bussordnungen der abendländlichen kirche_, p. .) the urolagnia of masochism is not a simple phenomenon; it embodies a double symbolism: on the one hand a symbolism of self-abnegation, such as the ascetic feels, on the other hand a symbolism of transferred sexual emotion. krafft-ebing was disposed to regard all cases in which a scatalogical sexual attraction existed as due to "latent masochism." such a point of view is quite untenable. certainly the connection is common, but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no masochism is evident. and when we bear in mind the various considerations, already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism. there is ample evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a beloved person, is not extremely uncommon; it has been noted of men of high intellectual distinction; it occurs in women as well as men; when existing in only a slight degree, it must be regarded as within the normal limits of variation of sexual emotion. the occasional cases in which the urine is drunk may possibly suggest that the motive lies in the properties of the fluid acting on the system. support for this supposition might be found in the fact that urine actually does possess, apart altogether from its magic virtues embodied in folk-lore, the properties of a general stimulant. in composition (as masterman first pointed out) "beef-tea differs little from healthy urine," containing exactly the same constituents, except that in beef-tea there is less urea and uric acid. fresh urine--more especially that of children and young women--is taken as a medicine in nearly all parts of the world for various disorders, such as epistaxis, malaria and hysteria, with benefit, this benefit being almost certainly due to its qualities as a general stimulant and restorative. william salmon's _dispensatory_, (quoted in _british medical journal_, april , , p. ), shows that in the seventeenth century urine still occupied an important place as a medicine, and it frequently entered largely into the composition of aqua divina. its use has been known even in england in the nineteenth century. (masterman, _lancet_, october , ; r. neale, "urine as a medicine," _practitioner_, november, ; bourke brings together a great deal of evidence as to the therapeutic uses of urine in his _scatalogic rites_, especially pp. - ; lusini has shown that normal urine invariably increases the frequency of the heart beats, _archivio di farmacologia_, fascs. - , .) but it is an error to suppose that these facts account for the urolagnic drinking of urine. as in the gratification of a normal sexual impulse, the intense excitement of gratifying a scatalogic sexual impulse itself produces a degree of emotional stimulation far greater than the ingestion of a small amount of animal extractives would be adequate to effect. in such cases, as much as in normal sexuality, the stimulation is clearly psychic. when, as is most commonly the case, it is the process of urination and not the urine itself which is attractive, we are clearly concerned with a symbolism of act and not with the fetichistic attraction of an excretion. when the excretion, apart from the act, provides the attraction, we seem usually to be in the presence of an olfactory fetichism. these fetichisms connected with the excreta appear to be experienced chiefly by individuals who are somewhat weak-minded, which is not necessarily the case in regard to those persons for whom the act, rather than its product apart from the beloved person, is the attractive symbol. the sexually symbolic nature of the act of urination for many people is indicated by the existence, according to bloch, who enumerates various kinds of indecent photographs, of a group which he terms "the notorious _pisseuses_." it is further indicated by several of the reproductions in fuch's _erotsiche element in der karikatur_, such as delorme's "la necessitê n'a point de loi." (it should be added that such a scene by no means necessarily possesses any erotic symbolism, as we may see in rembrandt's etching commonly called "le femme qui pisse," in which the reflected lights on the partly shadowed stream furnish an artistic motive which is obviously free from any trace of obscenity.) in the case which krafft-ebing quotes from maschka of a young man who would induce young girls to dance naked in his room, to leap, and to urinate in his presence, whereupon seminal ejaculation would take place, we have a typical example of urolagnic symbolism in a form adequate to produce complete gratification. a case in which the urolagnic form of scatalogic symbolism reached its fullest development as a sexual perversion has been described in russia by sukhanoff (summarized in _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, november, , and _annales medico-psychologiques_, february, ), that of a young man of , of neuropathic temperament, who when he once chanced to witness a woman urinating experienced voluptuous sensations. from that moment he sought close contact with women urinating, the maximum of gratification being reached when he could place himself in such a position that a woman, in all innocence, would urinate into his mouth. all his amorous adventures were concerned with the search for opportunities for procuring this difficult gratification. closets in which he was able to hide, winter weather and dull days he found most favorable to success. (a somewhat similar case is recorded in the _archives de neurologie_, , p. .) in the case of a robust man of neuropathic heredity recorded by pelanda some light is shed on the psychic attitude in these manifestations; there was masturbation up to the age of , when he abandoned the practice, and up to the age of found complete satisfaction in drinking the still hot urine of women. when a lady or girl in the house went to her room to satisfy a need of this kind, she had hardly left it but he hastened in, overcome by extreme excitement, culminating in spontaneous ejaculation. the younger the woman the greater the transport he experienced. it is noteworthy that in this, as possibly in all similar cases, there was no sensory perversion and no morbid attraction of taste or smell; he stated that the action of his senses was suspended by his excitement, and that he was quite unable to perceive the odor or taste of the fluid. (pelanda, "pornopatice," _archivio di psichiatria_, facs. iii-iv, , p. .) it is in the emotional symbolism that the fascination lies and not in any sensory perversion. magnan records the spontaneous development of this sexual symbolism in a girl of , of good intellectual development but alcoholic heredity, who seduced a boy younger than herself to mutual masturbation, and on one occasion, lying on the ground and raising her clothes, asked him to urinate on her. (_international congress of criminal anthropology_, .) this case (except for the early age of the subject) illustrates sporadically occurring urolagnic symbolism in a woman, to whom such symbolism is fairly obvious on account of the close resemblance between the emission of urine and the ejaculation of semen in the man, and the fact that the same conduit serves for both fluids. (a urolagnic day-dream of this kind is recorded in the history of a lady contained in the third volume of these _studies_, appendix b, history viii.) the natural and inevitable character of this symbolism is shown by the fact that among primitive peoples urine is sometimes supposed to possess the fertilizing virtues of semen. j.g. frazer in his edition of pausanias (vol. iv, p. ) brings together various stories of women impregnated by urine. hartland also (_legend of perseus_, vol. i, pp. , ) records legends of women who were impregnated by accidentally or intentionally drinking urine. the symbolic sexual significance of urolagnia has hitherto usually been confused with the fetichistic and mainly olfactory perversion by which the excretion itself becomes a source of sexual excitement. long since tardieu referred, under the name of "renifleurs," to persons who were said to haunt the neighborhood of quiet passages, more especially in the neighborhood of theatres, and who when they perceived a woman emerge after urination, would hasten to excite themselves by the odor of the excretion. possibly a fetichism of this kind existed in a case recorded by belletrud and mercier (_annales d'hygiène publique_, june, , p. ). a weak-minded, timid youth, who was very sexual but not attractive to women, would watch for women who were about to urinate and immediately they had passed on would go and lick the spot they had moistened, at the same time masturbating. such a fetichistic perversion is strictly analogous to the fetichism by which women's handkerchiefs, aprons or underlinen become capable of affording sexual gratification. a very complete case of such urolagnic fetichism--complete because separated from association with the person accomplishing the act of urination--has been recorded by moraglia in a woman. it is the case of a beautiful and attractive young woman of , with thick black hair, and expressive vivacious eyes, but sallow complexion. married a year previously, but childless, she experienced a certain amount of pleasure in coitus, but she preferred masturbation, and frankly acknowledged that she was highly excited by the odor of fermented urine. so strong was this fetichism that when, for instance, she passed a street urinal she was often obliged to go aside and masturbate; once she went for this purpose into the urinal itself and was almost discovered in the act, and on another occasion into a church. her perversion caused her much worry because of the fear of detection. she preferred, when she could, to obtain a bottle of urine--which must be stale and a man's (this, she said, she could detect by the smell)--and to shut herself up in her own room, holding the bottle in one hand and repeatedly masturbating with the other. (moraglia, "psicopatie sessuali," _archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xiii, fasc. , p. , .) this case is of especial interest because of the great rarity of fully developed fetichism in women. in a slight and germinal degree i believe that cases of fetichism are not uncommon in women, but they are certainly rare in a well-marked form, and krafft-ebing declared, even in the late editions of his _psychopathia sexualis_, that he knew of no cases in women. so far we have been concerned with the urolagnic rather than the coprolagnic variety of scatalogical symbolism. although the two are sometimes associated there is no necessary connection, and most usually there is no tendency for the one to involve the other. urolagnia is certainly much the more frequently found; the act of urination is far more apt to suggest erotically symbolical ideas than the idea of defecation. it is not difficult to understand why this should be so. the act of urination lends itself more easily to sexual symbolism; it is more intimately associated with the genital function; its repetition is necessary at more frequent intervals so that it is more in evidence; moreover, its product, unlike that of the act of defecation, is not offensive to the senses. still coprolagnia occurs and not so very infrequently. burton remarked that even the normal lover is affected by this feeling: "immo nec ipsum amicæ stercus foctet."[ ] of caligula who, however, was scarcely sane, it was said "et quidem stercus uxoris degustavit."[ ] in parisian brothels (according to taxil and others) provision is made for those who are sexually excited by the spectacle of the act of defecation (without reference to contact or odor) by means of a "tabouret de verre," from under the glass floor of which the spectacle of the defecating women may be closely observed. it may be added that the erotic nature of such a spectacle is referred to in the marquis de sade's novels. there is one motive for the existence of coprolagnia which must not be passed over, because it has doubtless frequently served as a mode of transition to what, taken by itself, may well seem the least æsthetically attractive of erotic symbols. i refer to the tendency of the nates to become a sexual fetich. the nates have in all ages and in all parts of the world been frequently regarded as one of the most æsthetically beautiful parts of the feminine body.[ ] it is probable that on the basis of this entirely normal attraction more than one form of erotic symbolism is at all events in part supported. dühren and others have considered that the æsthetic charm of the nates is one of the motives which prompt the desire to inflict flagellation on women. in the same way--certainly in some and probably in many cases--the sexual charm of the nates progressively extends to the anal region, to the act of defecation, and finally to the feces. in a case of krafft-ebing's (_op. cit._, p. ) the subject, when a child of , accidentally placed his hand in contact with the nates of the little girl who sat next to him in school, and experienced so great a pleasure in this contact that he frequently repeated it; when he was a nursery governess, to gratify her own desires, placed his finger in her vagina; in adult life he developed urolagnic tendencies. in a case of moll's the development of a youthful admiration for the nates in a coprolagnic direction may be clearly traced. in this case a young man, a merchant, in a good position, sought to come in contact with women defecating; and with this object would seek to conceal himself in closets; the excretal odor was pleasurable to him, but was not essential to gratification, and the sight of the nates was also exciting and at the same time not essential to gratification; the act of defecation appears, however, to have been regarded as essential. he never sought to witness prostitutes in this situation; he was only attracted to young, pretty and innocent women. the coprolagnia here, however, had its source in a childish impression of admiration for the nates. when or years old he crawled under the clothes of a servant girl, his face coming in contact with her nates, an impression that remained associated in his mind with pleasure. three or four years later he used to experience much pleasure when a young girl cousin sat on his face; thus was strengthened an association which developed naturally into coprolagnia. (moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. .) it is scarcely necessary to remark that an admiration for the nates, even when reaching a fetichistic degree, by no means necessarily involves, even after many years, any attraction to the excreta. a correspondent for whom the nates have constituted a fetich for many years writes: "i find my craving for women with profuse pelvic or posterior development is growing and i wish to copulate from behind; but i would feel a sickening feeling if any part of my person came in contact with the female anus. it is more pleasing to me to see the nates than the mons, yet i loathe everything associated with the anal region." moll has recorded in detail a case of what may be described as "ideal coprolagnia"--that is to say, where the symbolism, though fully developed in imagination, was not carried into real life--which is of great interest because it shows how, in a very intelligent subject, the deviated symbolism may become highly developed and irradiate all the views of life in the same way as the normal impulse. (the subject's desires were also inverted, but from the present point of view the psychological interest of the case is not thereby impaired.) moll's case was one of symbolism of act, the excreta offering no attraction apart from the process of defecation. in a case which has been communicated to me there was, on the other hand, an olfactory fetichistic attraction to the excreta even in the absence of the person. in moll's case, the patient, x., years of age, belongs to a family which he himself describes as nervous. his mother, who is anæmic, has long suffered from almost periodical attacks of excitement, weakness, syncope and palpitation. a brother of the mother died in a lunatic asylum, and several other brothers complain much of their nerves. the mother's sisters are very good-natured, but liable to break out in furious passions; this they inherit from their father. there appears to be no nervous disease on the patient's father's side. x.'s sisters are also healthy. x. himself is of powerful undersized build and enjoys good health, injured by no excesses. he considers himself nervous. he worked hard at school and was always the first in his class; he adds, however, that this is due less to his own abilities than the laziness of his school-fellows. he is, as he remarks, very religious and prays frequently, but seldom goes to church. in regard to his psychic characters he says that he has no specially prominent talent, but is much interested in languages, mathematics, physics and philosophy, in fact, in abstract subjects generally. "while i take a lively interest in every kind of intellectual work," he says, "it is only recently that i have been attracted to real life and its requirements. i have never had much skill in physical exercises. for external things until recently i have only had contempt. i have a delicately constituted nature, loving solitude, and only associating with a few select persons. i have a decided taste for fiction, poetry and music; my temperament is idealistic and religious, with strict conceptions of duty and morality, and aspirations towards the good and beautiful. i detest all that is common and coarse, and yet i can think and act in the way you will learn from the following pages." regarding his sexual life, x. made the following communication: "during the last two years i have become convinced of the perversion of my sexual instinct. i had often previously thought that in me the impulse was not quite normal, but it is only lately that i have become convinced of my complete perversion. i have never read or heard of any case in which the sexual feelings were of the same kind. although i can feel a lively inclination towards superior representatives of the female sex, and have twice felt something like love, the sight or the recollection even of a beautiful woman have never caused sexual excitement." in the two exceptional instances mentioned it appears that x. had an inclination to kiss the women in question, but that the thought of coitus had no attraction. "in my voluptuous dreams, connected with the emission of semen, women in seductive situations have never appeared. i have never had any desire to visit a _puella publica_. the love-stories of my fellow-students seemed very silly, dances and balls were a horror to me, and only on very rare occasions could i be persuaded to go into society. it will be easy to guess the diagnosis in my case: i suffer from the sexual attraction of my own sex, i am a lover of boys. "you cannot imagine what a world of thoughts, wishes, feelings and impulses the words 'knabe,' 'pais,' 'garcon,' 'boy,' 'ragazzo' have for me; one of these words, even in an unmeaning clause of a translation-book, calls before me the whole sum of associations which in course of time have become bound up with this idea, and it is only with an effort that i can scare away the wild band. this group of thoughts shows a wonderful mixture of warm sensuality and ideal love, it unites my lowest and highest impulses, the strength and the weakness of my nature, my curse and my blessing. my inclination is especially towards boys of the age of to ; though they may be rather younger or older. that i should prefer beautiful and intelligent boys is comprehensible. i do not want a prostitute, but a friend or a son, whose soul i love, whom i can help to become a more perfect man, such as i myself would willingly be. "when i myself belonged to that happy age (i.e., below ) i had no dearer wish than to possess a friend of similar tastes. i have sought, hoped, waited, grieved, and been at last disillusioned, overcome by desire and despair, and have not found that friend. even later the hope often reappeared, but always in vain, and i cannot boast of that sure recognition which one reads of in the autobiographies of urnings. i do not know personally a single fellow-sufferer. it is also doubtful whether such an acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for i have a very peculiar conception of homosexuality. as you will see, i have little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual indifference to the female sex, and i often ask myself: 'does any other man in the whole world feel like you? are you alone in the earth with your morbid desires? are you a pariah of pariahs, or is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near you? how often in summer have i gone to the lakes and streams outside cities to seek boys bathing; but i always came back unsatisfied, whether i found any or not. and in winter i have been irresistibly impelled to return to the same spots, as if it were sanctified by the boys, but my darlings had vanished and cold winds blew over the icy floods, so that i would return feeling as though i had buried all my happiness. "it must be borne in mind, therefore, that what i have to say regarding my sexual impulses only refers to fancies and never to their practical realization. my sensual impulses are not connected with the sexual organs; all my voluptuous ideas are not in the least connected with these parts. for this reason i have never practiced onanism and _immissio membri in anum_ is as repulsive to me as to a normal man. even every imitation of coitus is, for me, without attraction. in a boy's body two things specially excite me: _his belly and his nates_, the first as containing the digestive tract, the second as holding the opening of the bowels. of the vegetable processes of life in the boy none interest me nearly so much as the progress of his digestion and the process of defecation. it is incredible to what an extent this part of physiology has occupied me from youth. if as a boy i wanted to read something of a piquantly exciting character i sought in my father's encyclopædia for articles like: obstruction, constipation, hæmorrhoids, fæces, etc. no function of the body seemed to be so significant as this, and i regarded its disturbances as the most important in the whole mechanism of life. the description of other disorders i could read in cold blood, but intussusception of the bowels makes me ill even to-day. i am always extremely pleased to hear that the digestion of the people around me is in good condition. a man who did not sufficiently watch over his digestion aroused distrust in me, and i imagined that wicked men must be horribly indifferent regarding this weighty matter. even more than in ordinary persons was i interested in the digestion of more mysterious beings, like magicians in legends, or men of other nations. i would willingly have made an anthropological study of my favorite subject, only to my annoyance books nearly always pass over the matter in silence. in history and fiction i regretted the absence of information concerning the state of my heroes' digestion when they languished in prison or in some unaccustomed or unhealthy spot. for this reason i held no book more precious than one which describes how a young man after being shipwrecked lived for a long time in a narrow snow-hut, and it was conscientiously stated that he became aware of digestive disturbances. no immorality angers me more than the foolish practice of ladies who in society neglect the satisfaction of their natural needs from misplaced motives of modesty. on a railway journey i suffer horribly from the thought that one of my fellow-travelers may be prevented from fulfilling some imperative natural necessity. "i naturally devote the greatest attention to my own digestion. with painful conscientiousness i go to stool every day at the same hour; if the operation does not come off to my satisfaction i feel not so much physical as mental discomfort. to this quite useful hygienic interest became associated at puberty a sensual interest. since my fourteenth year i have had no greater enjoyment than to defecate undressed (i do not do so now) after having first carefully examined the distension of my abdomen. in summer i would go into the woods, undress myself in a secluded spot and indulge in the voluptuous pleasures of defecation. i would sometimes combine with this a bath in a stream. i would exhaust my imagination in the effort to invent specially enjoyable variations, longed for a desert island where i could go about naked, fill my body with much nourishing food, hold in the excrement as long as possible and then discharge it in some subtly-thought-out spot. these practices and ideas often caused erections and later on emissions, but the genitals played no part in my conceptions; their movements were uncomfortable and gave no pleasure. "i soon longed to be associated in these orgies with some boy of the same age, but i wanted not only a companion in my passion, but also a real friend. since there could be no question of masturbation or pæderasty, our love would have been limited to kisses, embraces, and--as a compensation for coitus--defecation together. that would have been perfect bliss to me. i will spare you the unæsthetic contents of my voluptuous dreams. but i remained without a companion, and, therefore, without real enjoyment. [he has, however, on various occasions experienced erections, and even emissions, on seeing, by chance, men or boys defecate.] hinc illæ lacrimæ; the excitement over my own defecation only took place _faute de mieux_. "i knew very well that my thoughts and practices were impure and contemptible. ah! how often, when the intoxication was over, have i thrown myself remorsefully on my knees, praying to god for pardon! for some weeks i repressed my longing; but at last it was too strong for me, i tried to justify myself and fell into my vice anew. that i was guilty of licentiousness and loved boys sexually first became clear to me later on, when i knew the significance of erection as a sign of sexual excitement. "no one can imagine with what demoniacal joy i am possessed at the thought of a beautiful naked boy whose abdomen is filled as the result of long abstinence from stool. the thought powerfully excites me, a flood of passion goes through my blood and my limbs tremble. i would never grow tired of feeling that belly and looking at it. my passion would express itself in tempestuous caresses, and the boy would have to assume various positions in order to show off the beauty of his form, i.e., to bring the parts in question into better view. to observe defecation would still further increase this peculiar enjoyment. if the boy's bowels were not sufficiently filled i would feed him with all sorts of food which produces much excrement, such as potatoes, coarse bread, etc. if possible i would seek to delay defecation for two or three days, so that it might be as copious as possible. when at last it occurred it would be an unspeakable joy for me to watch the fæces--which would have to be fairly firm--emerging from the anus." x. would like to be a teacher and thinks he could exert a beneficial influence on boys. in spite of the pain he has suffered he does not think he would like to be cured of his perverse inclinations, for they have given him joy as well as pain, and the pain has chiefly been owing to the fact that he could not gratify his inclinations. x. smokes and drinks in moderation, and has no feminine habits. (the foregoing is a condensed summary of the case which is fully reported by moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. - .) the case of coprolagnia communicated to me is that of a married man, normal in all other respects, intellectually brilliant and filling successfully a very responsible position. when a child the women of his household were always indifferent as to his presence in their bedrooms, and would satisfy all natural calls without reserve before him. he would dream of this with erections. his sexual interests became slowly centered in the act of defecation, and this fetich throughout life never appealed to him so powerfully as when associated with the particular type of household furniture which was used for this purpose in his own house. the act of defecation in the opposite sex or anything pertaining to or suggesting the same caused uncontrollable sexual excitement; the nates also exerted a great attraction. the alvine excreta exerted this influence even in the absence of the woman; it was, however, necessary that she should be a sexually desirable person. the perversion in this case was not complete; that is to say, that the excitement produced by the act of defecation or the excretion itself was not actually preferred to coitus; the sexual idea was normal coitus in the normal manner, but preceded by the visual and olfactory enjoyment of the exciting fetich. when coitus was not possible the enjoyment of the fetich was accompanied by masturbation (as in the analogous case of urolagnia in a woman summarized on p. .) on one occasion he was discovered by a friend in a bedroom belonging to a woman, engaged in the act of masturbation over a vessel containing the desired fetich. in an agony of shame he begged the mercy of silence concerning this episode, at the same time revealing his life-history. he has constantly been haunted by the dread of detection, as well as by remorse and the consciousness of degradation, also by the fear that his unconquerable obsession may lead him to the asylum. the scatalogic groups of sexual perversions, urolagnia and coprolagnia, as may be sufficiently seen in this brief summary, are not merely olfactory fetiches. they are, in a larger proportion of cases, dynamic symbols, a preoccupation with physiological acts which, by associations of contiguity and still more of resemblance, have gained the virtue of stimulating in slight cases, and replacing in more extreme cases, the normal preoccupation with the central physiological act itself. we have seen that there are various considerations which amply suffice to furnish a basis for such associations. and when we reflect that in the popular mind, and to some extent in actual fact, the sexual act itself is, like urination and defecation, an excretory act, we can understand that the true excretory acts may easily become symbols of the pseudo-excretory act. it is, indeed, in the muscular release of accumulated pressures and tensions, involved by the act of liberating the stored-up excretion, that we have the closest simulacrum of the tumescence and detumescence of the sexual process.[ ] in this way the erotic symbolism of urolagnia and coprolagnia is completely analogous with that dynamic symbolism of the clinging and swinging garments which herrick has so accurately described, with the complex symbolism of flagellation and its play of the rod against the blushing and trembling nates, with the symbols of sexual strain and stress which are embodied in the foot and the act of treading. footnotes: [ ] fuchs (_das erotische element in der karikatur_, p. ), distinguishing sharply between the "erotic" and the "obscene," reserves the latter term exclusively for the representation of excretory organs and acts. he considers that this is etymologically the most exact usage. however that may be, it seems to me that, in any case, "obscene" has become so vague a term that it is now impracticable to give it a restricted and precise sense. [ ] in this connection we may profitably contemplate the hand and recall the vast gamut of functions, sacred and profane, which that organ exercises. many savages strictly reserve the left hand to the lowlier purposes of life; but in civilization that is not considered necessary, and it may be wholesome for some of us to meditate on the more humble uses of the same hand which is raised in the supreme gesture of benediction and which men have often counted it a privilege to kiss. [ ] see, e.g., morselli, _una causa di nullità del matrimonio_, , p. . [ ] féré, _comptes-rendus société de biologie_, july , . [ ] transactions of the international medical congress, moscow, vol. iv, p. . a similar symbolism may be traced in many of the cases in which the focus of modesty becomes in modest women centered in the excretory sphere and sometimes exaggerated to the extent of obsession. it must not be supposed, however, that every obsession in this sphere has a symbolical value of an erotic kind. in the case, for instance, which has been recorded by raymond and janet (_les obsessions_, vol. ii, p. ) of a woman who spent much of her time in the endeavor to urinate perfectly, always feeling that she failed in some respect, the obsession seems to have risen fortuitously on a somewhat neurotic basis without reference to the sexual life. [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section ii, mem. iii, subs. i. [ ] it may be remarked here that while the eating of excrement (apart from its former use as a magic charm and as a therapeutic agent) is in civilization now confined to sexual perverts and the insane, among some animals it is normal as a measure of hygiene in relation to their young. thus, as, e.g., the rev. arthur east writes, the mistle thrush swallows the droppings of its young. (_knowledge_, june , , p. .) in the dog i have observed that the bitch licks her puppies shortly after birth as they urinate, absorbing the fluid. [ ] see, e.g., the previous volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," pp. et seq., and dühren, _geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. ii, pp. , et seq. [ ] in the study of _love and pain_ in a previous volume (p. ) i have quoted the remarks of a lady who refers to the analogy between sexual tension and vesical tension--"cette volupté que ressentent les bords de la mer, d'être toujours pleins sans jamais déborder"--and its erotic significance. iv. animals as sources of erotic symbolism--mixoscopic zoophilia--the stuff-fetichisms--hair-fetichism--the stuff-fetichisms mainly on a tactile base--erotic zoophilia--zooerastia--bestiality--the conditions that favor bestiality--its wide prevalence among primitive peoples and among peasants--the primitive conception of animals--the goat--the influence of familiarity with animals--congress between women and animals--the social reaction against bestiality. the erotic symbols with which we have so far been concerned have in every case been portions of the body, or its physiological processes, or at least the garments which it has endowed with life. the association on which the symbol has arisen has in every case been in large measure, although not entirely, an association of contiguity. it is now necessary to touch on a group of sexual symbols in which the association of contiguity with the human body is absent: the various methods by which animals or animal products or the sight of animal copulation may arouse sexual desire in human persons. here we encounter a symbolism mainly founded on association by resemblance; the animal sexual act recalls the human sexual act; the animal becomes the symbol of the human being. the group of phenomena we are here concerned with includes several subdivisions. there is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating animals. this i would propose to call mixoscopic zoophilia; it falls within the range of normal variation. then we have the cases in which the contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by krafft-ebing termed _zoophilia erotica_. we have, further, the class of cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is desired. such cases are not regarded as fetichism by krafft-ebing,[ ] but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood. this class falls into two divisions: one in which the individual is fairly normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of degeneration. in the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality; in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term _zooerastia_, proposed by krafft-ebing.[ ] among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the copulation of animals is a mysteriously fascinating spectacle. it is inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed from them. it is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement.[ ] it would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. even in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same kind of emotion in the presence of such spectacles. one lady recalls, as a girl, that on several occasions an element of physical excitement entered into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats. another lady mentions that at the age of about , and when still quite ignorant of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the same time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual excitement. the coupling of the larger animals is often an impressive and splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction;[ ] but in young or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid. i have already referred to the curious case of a sexually hyperæsthetic nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to masturbate; this dated from childhood. after becoming a nun she recorded having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four hundred times.[ ] animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondent, a clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into a horse's rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with emissions. while the contemplation of animal coitus is an easily intelligible and in early life, perhaps, an almost normal symbol of sexual emotion, there is another subdivision of this group of animal fetichisms which forms a more natural transition from the fetichisms which have their center in the human body: the stuff-fetichisms, or the sexual attraction exerted by various tissues, perhaps always of animal origin. here we are in the presence of a somewhat complicated phenomenon. in part we have, in a considerable number of such cases, the sexual attraction of feminine garments, for all such tissues are liable to enter into the dress. in part, also, we have a sexual perversion of tactile sensibility, for in a considerable proportion of these cases it is the touch sensations which are potent in arousing the erotic sensations. but in part, also, it would seem, we have here the conscious or subconscious presence of an animal fetich, and it is notable that perhaps all these stuffs, and especially fur, which is by far the commonest of the groups, are distinctively animal products. we may perhaps regard the fetich of feminine hair--a much more important and common fetich, indeed, than any of the stuff fetichisms--as a link of transition. hair is at once an animal and a human product, while it may be separated from the body and possesses the qualities of a stuff. krafft-ebing remarks that the senses of touch, smell, and hearing, as well as sight, seem to enter into the attraction exerted by hair. the natural fascination of hair, on which hair-fetichism is founded, begins at a very early age. "the hair is a special object of interest with infants," stanley hall concludes, "which begins often in the latter part of the first year.... the hair, no doubt, gives quite unique tactile sensations, both in its own roots and to hands, and is plastic and yielding to the motor sense, so that the earliest interest may be akin to that in fur, which is a marked object in infant experience. some children develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in contact." (g. stanley hall, "the early sense of self," _american journal of psychology_, april, , p. .) it should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may be of repulsion. it happens here, as in the case of so many characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy that it attracts. féré records the instructive case of a child of , of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. one night his hand came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of the bed in terror. he became curious as to the cause of his terror and in time was able to observe "the animal," but the train of feelings which had been set up led to a life-long indifference to women and a tendency to homosexuality. it is noteworthy that he was attracted to men in whom the hair and other secondary sexual characters were well developed. (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, pp. - .) as a sexual fetich hair strictly belongs to the group of parts of the body; but since it can be removed from the body and is sexually effective as a fetich in the absence of the person to whom it belongs, it is on a level with the garments which may serve in a similar way, with shoes or handkerchiefs or gloves. psychologically, hair-fetichism presents no special problem, but the wide attraction of hair--it is sexually the most generally noted part of the feminine body after the eyes--and the peculiar facility with which when plaited it may be removed, render hair-fetichism a sexual perversion of specially great medico-legal interest. the frequency of hair-fetichism, as well as of the natural admiration on which it rests, is indicated by a case recorded by laurent. "a few years ago," he states, "one constantly saw at the bal bullier, in paris, a tall girl whose face was lean and bony, but whose black hair was of truly remarkable length. she wore it flowing down her shoulders and loins. men often followed her in the street to touch or kiss the hair. others would accompany her home and pay her for the mere pleasure of touching and kissing the long black tresses. one, in consideration of a relatively considerable sum, desired to pollute the silky hair. she was obliged to be always on her guard, and to take all sorts of precautions to prevent any one cutting off this ornament, which constituted her only beauty as well as her livelihood." (e. laurent, _l'amour morbide_, , p. ; also the same author's _fétichistes et erotomanes_, p. .) the hair despoiler (_coupeur des nattes_ or _zopfabschneider_) may be found in any civilized country, though the most carefully studied cases have occurred in paris. (several medico-legal histories of hair-despoilers are summarized by krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, pp. - ). such persons are usually of nervous temperament and bad heredity; the attraction to hair occasionally develops in early life; sometimes the morbid impulse only appears in later life after fever. the fetich may be either flowing hair or braided hair, but is usually one or the other, and not both. sexual excitement and ejaculation may be produced in the act of touching or cutting off the hair, which is subsequently, in many cases, used for masturbation. as a rule the hair-despoiler is a pure fetichist, no element of sadistic pleasure entering into his feelings. in the case of a "capillary kleptomaniac" in chicago--a highly intelligent and athletic married young man of good family--the impulse to cut off girls' braids appeared after recovery from a severe fever. he would gaze admiringly at the long tresses and then clip them off with great rapidity; he did this in some fifty cases before he was caught and imprisoned. he usually threw the braids away before he reached home. (_alienist and neurologist_, april, , p. .) in this case there is no history of sexual excitement, probably because no proper medico-legal examination was made. (it may be added that hair-despoilers have been specially studied by motet, "les coupeurs de nattes," _annales d'hygiène_, .) the stuff-fetiches are most usually fur and velvet; feathers, silk, and leathers also sometimes exert this influence; they are all, it will be noted, animal substances.[ ] the most interesting is probably fur, the attraction of which is not uncommon in association with passive algolagnia. as stanley hall has shown, the fear of fur, as well as the love of it, is by no means uncommon in childhood; it may appear even in infancy and in children who have never come in contact with animals.[ ] it is noteworthy that in most cases of uncomplicated stuff-fetichism the attraction apparently arises on a congenital basis, as it appears in persons of nervous or sensitive temperament at an early age and without being attached to any definite causative incident. the sexual excitation is nearly always produced by the touch rather than by the sight. as we found, when dealing with the sense of touch in the previous volume, the specific sexual sensations may be regarded as a special modification of ticklishness. the erotic symbolism in the case of these stuff-fetichisms would seem to be a more or less congenital perversion of ticklishness in relation to specific animal contacts. a further degree of perversion in this direction is reached in a case of erotic _zoophilia_, recorded by krafft-ebing.[ ] in this case a congenital neuropath, of good intelligence but delicate and anæmic, with feeble sexual powers, had a great love of domestic animals, especially dogs and cats, from an early age; when petting them he experienced sexual emotions, although he was innocent in sexual matters. at puberty he realized the nature of his feelings and tried to break himself of his habits. he succeeded, but then began erotic dreams accompanied by images of animals, and these led to masturbation associated with ideas of a similar kind. at the same time he had no wish for any sort of sexual intercourse with animals, and was indifferent as to the sex of the animals which attracted him; his sexual ideals were normal. such a case seems to be fundamentally one of fetichism on a tactile basis, and thus forms a transition between the stuff-fetichisms and the complete perversions of sexual attraction toward animals. in some cases sexually hyperæsthetic women have informed me that sexual feeling has been produced by casual contact with pet dogs and cats. in such cases there is usually no real perversion, but it seems probable that we may here have an occasional foundation for the somewhat morbid but scarcely vicious excesses of affection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs or cats. in most cases of this affection there is certainly no sexual element; in the case of childless women, it may rather be regarded as a maternal than as an erotic symbolism. (the excesses of this non-erotic zoophilia have been discussed by féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, pp. - .) krafft-ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction toward animals is radically distinct from erotic _zoophilia_. this view cannot be accepted. bestiality and _zooerastia_ merely present in a more marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same phenomenon which we meet with in erotic _zoophilia_; the difference is that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate persons. a fairly typical case of _zooerastia_ has been recorded in america by howard, of baltimore. this was the case of a boy of , precociously mature and fairly bright. he was, however, indifferent to the opposite sex, though he had ample opportunity for gratifying normal passions. his parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the country and was therefore sent to school in a village. on the second day after his arrival at school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted in an outhouse on the school grounds. this was the first of many similar incidents in which a sow always took part. so strong was his passion that on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was caressing. he did not masturbate, and even when restrained from approaching sows he had no sexual inclination for other animals. his nocturnal pollutions, which were frequent, were always accompanied by images of wallowing swine. notwithstanding careful treatment no cure was effected; mental and physical vigor failed, and he died at the age of .[ ] it is, however, somewhat doubtful whether we can always or even usually distinguish between zooerastia and bestiality. dr. g.f. lydston, of chicago, has communicated to me a case (in which he was consulted) which seems fairly typical and is instructive in this respect. the subject was a young man of , a farmer's son, not very bright intellectually, but very healthy and strong, of great assistance on the farm, very capable and industrious, such a good farm hand that his father was unwilling to send him away and to lose his services. there was no history of insanity or neurosis in the family, and no injury or illness in his own history. he had spells of moroseness and irritability, however, and had also been a masturbator. women had no attraction for him, but he would copulate with the mares upon his father's farm, and this without regard to time, place, or spectators. such a case would seem to stand midway between ordinary bestiality and pathological zooerastia as defined by krafft-ebing, yet it seems probable that in most cases of ordinary bestiality some slight traces of mental anomaly might be found, if such cases always were, as they should be, properly investigated.[ ] we have here reached the grossest and most frequent perversion in this group; bestiality, or the impulse to attain sexual gratification by intercourse, or other close contact, with animals. in seeking to comprehend this perversion it is necessary to divest ourselves of the attitude toward animals which is the inevitable outcome of refined civilization and urban life. most sexual perversions, if not in large measure the actual outcome of civilized life, easily adjust themselves to it. bestiality (except in one form to be noted later) is, on the other hand, the sexual perversion of dull, insensitive and unfastidious persons. it flourishes among primitive peoples and among peasants. it is the vice of the clodhopper, unattractive to women or inapt to court them. three conditions have favored the extreme prevalence of bestiality: ( ) primitive conceptions of life which built up no great barrier between man and the other animals; ( ) the extreme familiarity which necessarily exists between the peasant and his beasts, often combined with separation from women; ( ) various folk-lore beliefs such as the efficacy of intercourse with animals as a cure for venereal disease, etc.[ ] the beliefs and customs of primitive peoples, as well as their mythology and legends, bring before us a community of man and animals altogether unlike anything we know in civilization. men may become animals and animals may become men; animals and men may communicate with each other and live on terms of equality; animals may be the ancestors of human tribes; the sacred totems of savages are most usually animals. there is no shame or degradation in the notion of a sexual relationship between men and animals, because in primitive conceptions animals are not inferior beings separated from man by a great gulf. they are much more like men in disguise, and in some respects possess powers which make them superior to men. this is recognized in those plays, festivals, and religious dances, so common among primitive peoples, in which animal disguises are worn.[ ] when men admire and emulate the qualities of animals and are proud to believe that they descend from them, it is not surprising that they should sometimes see nothing derogatory in sexual intercourse with them.[ ] a significant relic of primitive conceptions in this matter may perhaps be found in the religious rites connected with the sacred goat of mendes described by herodotus. after telling how the mendesians reverence the goat, especially the he-goat, out of their veneration for pan, whom they represent as a goat ("the real motive which they assign for this custom i do not choose to relate"), he adds: "it happened in this country, and within my remembrance, and was indeed universally notorious, that a goat had indecent and public communication with a woman."[ ] the meaning of the passage evidently is that in the ordinary intercourse of women with the sacred goat, connection was only simulated or incomplete on account of the natural indifference of the goat to the human female, but that in rare cases the goat proved sexually excitable with the woman and capable of connection.[ ] the goat has always been a kind of sacred emblem of lust. in the middle ages it became associated with the devil as one of the favorite forms he assumed. it is significant of a primitively religious sexual association between men and animals, that witches constantly confessed, or were made to confess, that they had had intercourse with the devil in the shape of an animal, very frequently a dog. the figures of human beings and animals in conjunction carved on temples in india, also seem to indicate the religious significance which this phenomenon sometimes presents. there is, indeed, no need to go beyond europe even in her moments of highest culture to find a religious sanction for sexual union between human beings, or gods in human shape, and animals. the legends of io and the bull, of leda and the swan, are among the most familiar in greek mythology, and in a later pictorial form they constitute some of the most cherished works of the painters of the renaissance. as regards the prevalence of occasional sexual intercourse between men or women and animals among primitive peoples at the present time, it is possible to find many scattered references by travelers in all parts of the world. such references by no means indicate that such practices are, as a rule, common, but they usually show that they are accepted with a good-humored indifference.[ ] bestiality is very rarely found in towns. in the country this vice of the clodhopper is far from infrequent. for the peasant, whose sensibilities are uncultivated and who makes but the most elementary demands from a woman, the difference between an animal and a human being in this respect scarcely seems to be very great. "my wife was away too long," a german peasant explained to the magistrate, "and so i went with my sow." it is certainly an explanation that to the uncultivated peasant, ignorant of theological and juridical conceptions, must often seem natural and sufficient. bestiality thus resembles masturbation and other abnormal manifestations of the sexual impulse which may be practiced merely _faute de mieux_ and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. even necrophily may be thus practiced. a young man who when assisting the grave-digger conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has been recorded by belletrud and mercier, said: "i could find no young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why i have done this. i should have preferred to have relations with living persons. i found it quite natural to do what i did: i saw no harm in it, and i did not think that any one else could. as living women felt nothing but repulsion for me, it was quite natural i should turn to the dead, who have never repulsed me. i used to say tender things to them like 'my beautiful, my love, i love you.'" (belletrud and mercier "perversion de l'instinct genésique," _annales d'hygiène publique_, june, .) but when so highly abnormal an act is felt as natural we are dealing with a person who is congenitally defective so far as the finer developments of intelligence are concerned. it was so in this case of necrophily; he was the son of a weak-minded woman of unrestrainable sexual inclinations, and was himself somewhat feeble-minded; he was also, it is instructive to observe, anosmic. but it is by no means only their dulled sensibility or the absence of women, which accounts for the frequency of bestiality among peasants. a highly important factor is their constant familiarity with animals. the peasant lives with animals, tends them, learns to know all their individual characters; he understands them far better than he understands men and women; they are his constant companions, his friends. he knows, moreover, the details of their sexual lives, he witnesses the often highly impressive spectacle of their coupling. it is scarcely surprising that peasants should sometimes regard animals as being not only as near to them as their fellow human beings, but even nearer. the significance of the factor of familiarity is indicated by the great frequency of bestiality among shepherds, goatherds, and others whose occupation is exclusively the care of animals. mirabeau, in the eighteenth century, stated, on the evidence of basque priests, that all the shepherds in the pyrenees practice bestiality. it is apparently much the same in italy.[ ] in south italy and sicily, especially, bestiality among goatherds and peasants is said to be almost a national custom.[ ] in the extreme north of europe, it is reported, the reindeer, in this respect, takes the place of the goat. the importance of the same factor is also shown by the fact that when among women in civilization animal perversions appear, the animal is nearly always a pet dog. usually in these cases the animal is taught to give gratification by _cunnilinctus_. in some cases, however, there is really sexual intercourse between the animal and the woman. moll mentions that in a case of _cunnilinctus_ by a dog in germany there was a difficulty as to whether the matter should be considered an unnatural offence or simply an offence against decency; the lower court considered it in the former light, while the higher court took the more merciful view. (moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. .) in a case reported by pfaff and mentioned by moll, a country girl was accused of having sexual intercourse with a large dog. on examination pfaff found in the girl's thick pubic hair a loose hair which under the microscope proved to belong to the dog. (_loc. cit._, p. .) in such a case it must be noted that while this evidence may be held to show sexual contact with the dog, it scarcely suffices to show sexual intercourse. this has, however, undoubtedly occurred from time to time, even more or less openly. bloch (_op. cit._, pp. and ) remarks that this is not an infrequent exhibition given by prostitutes in certain brothels. maschka has referred to such an exhibition between a woman and a bull-dog, which was given to select circles in paris. rosse refers to a case in which a young unmarried woman in washington was surprised during intercourse with a large english mastiff, who in his efforts to get loose caused such severe injuries that the woman died from hæmorrhage in about an hour. rosse also mentions that some years ago a performance of this kind between a prostitute and a newfoundland dog could be witnessed in san francisco by paying a small sum; the woman declared that a woman who had once copulated with a dog would ever afterwards prefer this animal to a man. rosse adds that he was acquainted with a similar performance between a woman and a donkey, which used to take place in europe (irving rosse, "sexual hypochondriasis and perversion of the genesic instinct," _virginia medical monthly_, october, , p. ). juvenal mentions such relations between the donkey and woman (vi, ). krauss (quoted by bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, p. ) states that in bosnia women sometimes carry on these practices with dogs and also--as he would not have believed had he not on one occasion observed it--with cats. "it seems to me," writes dr. kiernan, of chicago, (private letter) "that what rosse says of the animal exhibitions in san francisco is true of all great cities. the animal employed in such exhibitions here has usually been a donkey, and in one instance death occurred from the animal trampling the girl partner. the practice described occurs in country regions quite frequently. thus in a case reported in the suburbs of omaha, nebraska, a sixteen-year-old boy engaged in rectal coitus with a large dog. in attempting to extricate his swollen penis from the boy's rectum the dog tore through the _sphincter ani_ an inch into the gluteus muscles. (_omaha clinic_, march, .) in a missouri case, which i verified, a smart, pretty, well-educated country girl was found with a profuse offensive vaginal discharge which had been present for about a week, coming on suddenly. after washing the external genitals and opening the labia three rents were discovered, one through the fourchette and two through the left nymphæ. the vagina was excessively congested and covered with points bleeding on the slightest irritation. the patient confessed that one day while playing with the genitals of a large dog she became excited and thought she would have slight coitus. after the dog had made an entrance she was unable to free herself from him, as he clasped her so firmly with his fore legs. the penis became so swollen that the dog could not free himself, although for more than an hour she made persistent efforts to do so. (_medical standard_, june, , p. ). in an indiana case, concerning which i was consulted, the girl was a hebephreniac who had resorted to this procedure with a newfoundland dog at the instance of another girl, seemingly normal as regards mentality, and had been badly injured; a discharge resulted which resembled gonorrhoea, but contained no gonococci. these cases are probably more frequent than is usually assumed." women are known to have had intercourse with various other animals, occasionally or habitually, in various parts of the world. monkeys have been mentioned in this connection. moll remarks that it seems to be an indication of an abnormal interest in monkeys that some women are observed by the attendants in the monkey-house of zoölogical gardens to be very frequent visitors. near the amazon the traveler castelnau saw an enormous coati monkey belonging to an indian woman and tried to purchase it; though he offered a large sum, the woman only laughed. "your efforts are useless," remarked an indian in the same cabin, "he is her husband." (so far as the early literature of this subject is concerned, a number of facts and fables regarding the congress of women with dogs, goats and other animals was brought together at the beginning of the eighteenth century by schurig in his _gynæcologia_, section ii, cap. vii; i have not drawn on this collection.) in some cases women, and also men, find gratification in the sexual manipulation of animals without any kind of congress. this may be illustrated by an observation communicated to me by a correspondent, a clergyman. "in ireland, my father's house adjoined the residence of an archdeacon of the established church. i was then about and was still kept in religious awe of evil ways. the archdeacon had two daughters, both of whom he brought up in great strictness, resolved that they should grow up examples of virtue and piety. our stables adjoined, and were separated only by a thin wall in which was a doorway closed up by some boards, as the two stables had formerly been one. one night i had occasion to go to our stable to search for a garden tool i had missed, and i heard a door open on the other side, and saw a light glimmer through the cracks of the boards. i looked through to ascertain who could be there at that late hour, and soon recognized the stately figure of one of the daughters, f.f. was tall, dark and handsome, but had never made any advances to me, nor had i to her. she was making love to her father's mare after a singular fashion. stripping her right arm, she formed her fingers into a cone, and pressed on the mare's vulva. i was astonished to see the beast stretching her hind legs as if to accommodate the hand of her mistress, which she pushed in gradually and with seeming ease to the elbow. at the same time she seemed to experience the most voluptuous sensation, crisis after crisis arriving." my correspondent adds that, being exceedingly curious in the matter, he tried a somewhat similar experiment himself with one of his father's mares and experienced what he describes as "a most powerful sexual battery" which produced very exciting and exhausting effects. näcke (_psychiatrische en neurologische bladen_, , no. ) refers to an idiot who thus manipulated the vulva of mares in his charge. the case has been recorded by guillereau (_journal de médicine véterinaire et de zootechnie_, january, ) of a youth who was accustomed to introduce his hand into the vulva of cows in order to obtain sexual excitement. the possibility of sexual excitement between women and animals involves a certain degree of sexual excitability in animals from contact with women. darwin stated that there could be no doubt that various quadrumanous animals could distinguish women from men--in the first place probably by smell and secondarily by sight--and be thus liable to sexual excitement. he quotes the opinions on this point of youatt, brehm, sir andrew smith and cuvier (_descent of man_, second edition, p. ). moll quotes the opinion of an experienced observer to the same effect (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ). hufeland reported the case of a little girl of three who was playing, seated on a stool, with a dog placed between her thighs and locked against her. seemingly excited by this contact the animal attempted a sort of copulation, causing the genital parts of the child to become inflamed. bloch (_op. cit._, p. , _et seq._) discusses the same point; he does not consider that animals will of their own motion sexually cohabit with women, but that they may be easily trained to it. there can be no doubt that dogs at all events are sometimes sexually excited by the presence of women, perhaps especially during menstruation, and many women are able to bear testimony to the embarrassing attentions they have sometimes received from strange dogs. there can be no difficulty in believing that, so far as _cunnilinctus_ is concerned dogs would require no training. in a case recorded by moll (_konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. ) a lady states that this was done to her when a child, as also to other children, by dogs who, she said, showed signs of sexual excitement. in this case there was also sexual excitement thus produced in the child, and after puberty mutual _cunnilinctus_ was practiced with girl friends. guttceit (_dreissig jahre praxis_, theil i, p. ) remarks that some russian officers who were in the turkish campaign of told him that from fear of veneral infection in wallachia they refrained from women and often used female asses which appeared to show signs of sexual pleasure. a very large number of animals have been recorded as having been employed in the gratification of sexual desire at some period or in some country, by men and sometimes by women. domestic animals are naturally those which most frequently come into question, and there are few if any of these which can altogether be excepted. the sow is one of the animals most frequently abused in this manner.[ ] cases in which mares, cows, and donkeys figure constantly occur, as well as goats and sheep. dogs, cats, and rabbits are heard of from time to time. hens, ducks, and, especially in china, geese, are not uncommonly employed. the roman ladies were said to have had an abnormal affection for snakes. the bear and even the crocodile are also mentioned.[ ] the social and legal attitude toward bestiality has reflected in part the frequency with which it has been practiced, and in part the disgust mixed with mystical and sacrilegious horror which it has aroused. it has sometimes been met merely by a fine, and sometimes the offender and his innocent partner have been burnt together. in the middle ages and later its frequency is attested by the fact that it formed a favorite topic with preachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. it is significant that in the penitentials,--which were criminal codes, half secular and half spiritual, in use before the thirteenth century, when penance was relegated to the judgment of the confessor,--it was thought necessary to fix the periods of penance which should be undergone respectively by bishops, priests and deacons who should be guilty of bestiality. in egbert's penitential, a document of the ninth and tenth centuries, we read (v. ): "item episcopus cum quadrupede fornicans vii annos, consuetudinem x, presbyter v, diaconus iii, clerus ii." there was a great range in the penances for bestiality, from ten years to (in the case of boys) one hundred days. the mare is specially mentioned (haddon and stubbs, _councils and ecclesiastical documents_, vol. iii, p. ). in theodore's penitential, another anglo-saxon document of about the same age, those who habitually fornicate with animals are adjudged ten years of penance. it would appear from the _penitentiale pseudo-romanum_ (which is earlier than the eleventh century) that one year's penance was adequate for fornication with a mare when committed by a layman (exactly the same as for simple fornication with a widow or virgin), and this was mercifully reduced to half a year if he had no wife. (wasserschleben, _die bussordnungen der abendländlichen kirche_, p. ). the _penitentiale hubertense_ (emanating from the monastery of st. hubert in the ardennes) fixes ten years' penance for sodomy, while fulbert's penitential (about the eleventh century) fixes seven years for either sodomy or bestiality. burchard's penitential, which is always detailed and precise, specially mentions the mare, the cow and the ass, and assigns forty days bread and water and seven years penance, raised to ten years in the case of married men. a woman having intercourse with a horse is assigned seven years penance in burchard's penitential. (wasserschleben, ib. pp. , .) the extreme severity which was frequently exercised toward those guilty of this offense, was doubtless in large measure due to the fact that bestiality was regarded as a kind of sodomy, an offense which was frequently viewed with a mystical horror apart altogether from any actual social or personal injury it caused. the jews seem to have felt this horror; it was ordered that the sinner and his victim should both be put to death (exodus, ch. , v. ; leviticus, ch. , v. ). in the middle ages, especially in france, the same rule often prevailed. men and sows, men and cows, men and donkeys were burnt together. at toulouse a woman was burnt for having intercourse with a dog. even in the seventeenth century a learned french lawyer, claude lebrun de la rochette, justified such sentences.[ ] it seems probable that even to-day, in the social and legal attitude toward bestiality, sufficient regard is not paid to the fact that this offense is usually committed either by persons who are morbidly abnormal or who are of so low a degree of intelligence that they border on feeble-mindedness. to what extent, and on what grounds, it ought to be punished is a question calling for serious reconsideration. footnotes: [ ] for krafft-ebing's discussion of the subject see _op. cit._, pp. - . [ ] in england it is not uncommon to use the term "unnatural offence;" this is an awkward and possibly misleading practice which should not be followed. in germany a similar confusion is caused by applying the term "sodomy" to these cases as well as to pederasty. krafft-ebing considers that this error is due to the jurists, while the theologians have always distinguished correctly. in this matter, he adds, science must be _ancilla theologiæ_ and return to the correct usage of words. [ ] this childish interest, with later abnormal developments, may be seen in history i of the appendix to this volume. [ ] the countess of pembroke, sir philip sidney's sister, appears to have found sexual enjoyment in the contemplation of the sexual prowess of stallions. aubrey writes that she "was very salacious and she had a contrivance that in the spring of the year ... the stallions ... were to be brought before such a part of the house where she had a vidette to look on them." (_short lives_, , vol. i, p. .) although the modern editor's modesty has caused the disappearance of several lines from this passage, the general sense is clear. in the same century burchard, the faithful secretary of pope alexander vi, describes in his invaluable diary how four race horses were brought to two mares in a court of the vatican, the horses clamorously fighting for the possession of the mares and eventually mounting them, while the pope and his daughter lucrezia looked on from a window "cum magno risu et delectatione." (_diarium_, ed thuasne, vol. iii, p. .) [ ] _archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. ii-iii, p. . in the case of pathological sexuality in a boy of , reported by a. macdonald, and already summarized, the sight of copulating flies is also mentioned among many other causes of sexual excitation. [ ] krafft-ebing presents or quotes typical cases of all these fetiches, _op. cit._, pp. - . [ ] g. stanley hall, "a study of fears," _american journal of psychology_, , pp. - . [ ] _op. cit._, p. . [ ] w. howard, "sexual perversion," _alienist and neurologist_, january, . krafft-ebing (op. cit., p. ) quotes from boeteau the somewhat similar case of a gardener's boy of --an illegitimate child of neuropathic heredity and markedly degenerate--who had a passion, of irresistible and impulsive character, for rabbits. he was declared irresponsible. moll (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, pp. - ) presents the case of a neurotic man who from the age of had been sexually excited by the sight of animals or by contact with them. he had repeatedly had connection with cows and mares; he was also sexually excited by sheep, donkeys, and dogs, whether female or male; the normal sexual instinct was weak and he experienced very slight attraction to women. [ ] moll also remarks ("perverse sexualempfindung," in senator's and kaminer's _krankheiten und ehe_) that in this matter it is often hardly possible to draw a sharp line between vice and disease. [ ] instances of this widespread belief--found among the tamils of ceylon as well as in europe--are quoted from various authors by bloch, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, p. , and moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. . on the frequency of bestiality, from one cause or another, in the east, see, e.g., stern, _medizin und geschlechtsleben in der türkei_, bd. ii, p. . [ ] sometimes (as among the aleuts) the animal pantomime dances of savages may represent the transformation of a captive bird into a lovely woman who falls exhausted into the arms of the hunter. (h.h. bancroft, _native races of the pacific_, vol. i, p. .) a system of beliefs which accepts the possibility that a human being may be latent in an animal obviously favors the practice of bestiality. [ ] for an example of the primitive confusion between the intercourse of women with animals and with men see, e.g., boas, "sagen aus british-columbia," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, heft v, p. . [ ] herodotus, book ii, chapter . [ ] dulare (_des divinités génératrices_, chapter ii) brings together the evidence showing that in egypt women had connection with the sacred goat, apparently in order to secure fertility. [ ] various facts and references bearing on this subject are brought together by blumenbach, _anthropological memoirs_, translated by bendyshe, p. ; block, _beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, teil ii, pp. - ; also ploss and bartels, _das weib_, seventh edition, p. . [ ] mantegazza mentions (_gli amori degli uomini_, cap v) that at rimini a young goatherd of the apennines, troubled with dyspepsia and nervous symptoms, told him this was due to excesses with the goats in his care. a finely executed marble group of a satyr having connection with a goat, found at herculaneum and now in the naples museum (reproduced in fuchs's _erotische element in der karikatur_), perhaps symbolizes a traditional and primitive practice of the goatherd. [ ] bayle (_dictionary_, art, bathyllus) quotes various authorities concerning the italian auxiliaries in the south of france in the sixteenth century and their custom of bringing and using goats for this purpose. warton in the eighteenth century was informed that in sicily priests in confession habitually inquired of herdsmen if they had anything to do with their sows. in normandy priests are advised to ask similar questions. [ ] it is worth noting that in greek the work choiros means both a sow and a woman's pudenda; in the _acharnians_ aristophanes plays on this association at some length. the romans also (as may be gathered from varro's _de re rustica_) called the feminine pudenda _porcus_. [ ] schurig, _gynæcologia_, pp. - ; bloch, op. cit., - . the arabs, according to kocher, chiefly practice bestiality with goats, sheep and mares. the annamites, according to mondière, commonly employ sows and (more especially the young women) dogs. among the tamils of ceylon bestiality with goats and cows is said to be very prevalent. [ ] mantegazza (_gli amori degli uomini_, cap. v) brings together some facts bearing on this matter. v. exhibitionism--illustrative cases--a symbolic perversion of courtship--the impulse to defile--the exhibitionist's psychic attitude--the sexual organs as fetichs--phallus worship--adolescent pride in sexual development--exhibitionism of the nates--the classification of the forms of exhibitionism--nature of the relationship of exhibitionism to epilepsy. there is a remarkable form of erotic symbolism--very definite and standing clearly apart from all other forms--in which sexual gratification is experienced in the simple act of exhibiting the sexual organ to persons of the opposite sex, usually by preference to young and presumably innocent persons, very often children. this is termed exhibitionism.[ ] it would appear to be a not very infrequent phenomenon, and most women, once or more in their lives, especially when young, have encountered a man who has thus deliberately exposed himself before them. the exhibitionist, though often a young and apparently vigorous man, is always satisfied with the mere act of self-exhibition and the emotional reaction which that act produces; he makes no demands on the woman to whom he exposes himself; he seldom speaks, he makes no effort to approach her; as a rule, he fails even to display the signs of sexual excitation. his desires are completely gratified by the act of exhibition and by the emotional reaction it arouses in the woman. he departs satisfied and relieved. a case recorded by schrenck-notzing very well represents both the nature of the impulse felt by the exhibitionist and the way in which it may originate. it is the case of a business man of , of neurotic heredity, an affectionate husband and father of a family, who, to his own grief and shame, is compelled from time to time to exhibit his sexual organs to women in the street. as a boy of a girl of tried to induce him to coitus; both had their sexual parts exposed. from that time sexual contacts, as of his own naked nates against those of a girl, became attractive, as well as games in which the boys and girls in turn marched before each other with their sexual parts exposed, and also imitation of the copulation of animals. coitus was first practiced about the age of , but sight and touch of the woman's sexual parts were always necessary to produce sexual excitement. it was also necessary--and this consideration is highly important as regards the development of the tendency to exhibition--that the woman should be excited by the sight of his organs. even when he saw or touched a woman's parts orgasm often occurred. it was the naked sexual organs in an otherwise clothed body which chiefly excited him. he was not possessed of a high degree of potency. girls between the ages of and chiefly excited him, and especially if he felt that they were quite ignorant of sexual matters. his self-exhibition was a sort of psychic defloration, and it was accompanied by the idea that other people felt as he did about the sexual effects of the naked organs, that he was shocking but at the same time sexually exciting a young girl. he was thus gratifying himself through the belief that he was causing sexual gratification to an innocent girl. this man was convicted several times, and was finally declared to be suffering from impulsive insanity. (schrenck-notzing, _kriminal-psychologische und psycho-pathologische studien_, , pp. - .) in another case of schrenck-notzing's, an actor and portrait painter, aged , in youth masturbated and was fond of contemplating the images of the sexual organs of both sexes, finding little pleasure in coitus. at the age of , at a bathing establishment, he happened to occupy a compartment next to that occupied by a lady, and when naked he became aware that his neighbor was watching him through a chink in the partition. this caused him powerful excitement and he was obliged to masturbate. ever since he has had an impulse to exhibit his organs and to masturbate in the presence of women. he believes that the sight of his organs excites the woman (ib., pp. - ). the presence of masturbation in this case renders it untypical as a case of exhibitionism. moll at one time went so far as to assert that when masturbation takes place we are not entitled to admit exhibitionism, (_untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ), but now accepts exhibitionism with masturbation ("perverse sexualempfindung," _krankheiten und ehe_). the act of exhibition itself gratifies the sexual impulse, and usually it suffices to replace both tumescence and detumescence. a fairly typical case, recorded by krafft-ebing, is that of a german factory worker of , a good, sober and intelligent workman. his parents were healthy, but one of his mother's and also one of his father's sisters were insane; some of his relatives are eccentric in religion. he has a languishing expression and a smile of self-complacency. he never had any severe illness, but has always been eccentric and imaginative, much absorbed in romances (such as dumas's novels) and fond of identifying himself with their heroes. no signs of epilepsy. in youth moderate masturbation, later moderate coitus. he lives a retired life, but is fond of elegant dress and of ornament. though not a drinker, he sometimes makes himself a kind of punch which has a sexually exciting effect on him. the impulse to exhibitionism has only developed in recent years. when the impulse is upon him he becomes hot, his heart beats violently, the blood rushes to his head, and he is oblivious of everything around him that is not connected with his own act. afterwards he regards himself as a fool and makes vain resolutions never to repeat the act. in exhibition the penis is only half erect and ejaculation never occurs. (he is only capable of coitus with a woman who shows great attraction to him.) he is satisfied with self-exhibition, and believes that he thus gives pleasure to the woman, since he himself receives pleasure in contemplating a woman's sexual parts. his erotic dreams are of self-exhibition to young and voluptuous women. he had been previously punished for an offense of this kind; medico-legal opinion now recognized the incriminated man's psychopathic condition. (krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, pp. - .) trochon has reported the case of a married man of , a worker in a factory, who for several years had exhibited himself at intervals to shop-girls, etc., in a state of erection, but without speaking or making other advances. he was a hard-working, honest, sober man of quiet habits, a good father to his family and happy at home. he showed not the slightest sign of insanity. but he was taciturn, melancholic and nervous; a sister was an idiot. he was arrested, but on the report of the experts that he committed these acts from a morbid impulse he could not control he was released. (trochon, _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, , p. .) in a case of freyer's (_zeitschrift für medizinalbeamte_, third year, no. ) the occasional connection of exhibitionism with epilepsy is well illustrated by a barber's assistant, aged , whose father suffered from chronic alcoholism and was also said to have committed the same kind of offense as his son. the mother and a sister suffered nervously. from ages of to the subject had epileptic convulsions. from to he indulged in normal sexual intercourse. at about that time he had often to pass a playground and at times would urinate there; it happened that the children watched him with curiosity. he noticed that when thus watched sexual excitement was caused, inducing erection and even ejaculation. he gradually found pleasure in this kind of sexual gratification; finally he became indifferent to coitus. his erotic dreams, though still usually about normal coitus, were now sometimes concerned with exhibition before little girls. when overcome by the impulse he could see and hear nothing around him, though he did not lose consciousness. after the act was over he was troubled by his deed. in all other respects he was entirely reasonable. he was imprisoned many times for exhibiting himself to young schoolgirls, sometimes vaunting the beauty of his organs and inviting inspection. on one occasion he underwent mental examination, but was considered to be mentally sound. he was finally held to be a hereditarily tainted individual with neuropathic constitution. the head was abnormally broad, penis small, patellar reflex absent, and there were many signs of neurasthenia. (krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, pp. - .) the prevalence of epilepsy among exhibitionists is shown by the observations of pelanda in verona. he has recorded six cases of this perversion, all of which eventually reached the asylum and were either epileptics or with epileptic relations. one had a brother who was also an exhibitionist. in some cases the penis was abnormally large, in others abnormally small. several had very weak sexual impulse; one, at the age of , had never effected coitus, and was proud of the fact that he was still a virgin, considering, he would say, the epoch of demoralization in which we live. (pelanda, "pornopatici," _archivio di psichiatria_, fasc. ii-iv, .) in a very typical case of exhibitionism which garnier has recorded, a certain x., a gentleman engaged in business in paris, had a predilection for exhibiting himself in churches, more especially in saint-roch. he was arrested several times for exposing his sexual organs here before ladies in prayer. in this way he finally ruined his commercial position in paris and was obliged to establish himself in a small provincial town. here again he soon exposed himself in a church and was again sent to prison, but on his liberation immediately performed the same act in the same church in what was described as a most imperturbable manner. compelled to leave the town, he returned to paris, and in a few weeks' time was again arrested for repeating his old offense in saint roch. when examined by garnier, the information he supplied was vague and incomplete, and he was very embarrassed in the attempt to explain himself. he was unable to say why he chose a church, but he felt that it was to a church that he must go. he had, however, no thought of profanation and no wish to give offense. "quite the contrary!" he declared. he had the sad and tired air of a man who is dominated by a force stronger than his will. "i know," he added, "what repulsion my conduct must inspire. why am i made thus? who will cure me?" (p. garnier, "perversions sexuelles," _comptes rendus_, international congress of medicine at paris in , _section de psychiatrie_, pp. - .) in some cases, it would appear, the impulse to exhibitionism may be overcome or may pass away. this result is the more likely to come about in those cases in which exhibitionism has been largely conditioned by chronic alcoholism or other influences tending to destroy the inhibiting and restraining action of the higher centers, which may be overcome by hygiene and treatment. in this connection i may bring forward a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in london. it is that of an actor, of high standing in his profession and extremely intelligent, years of age, married and father of a large family. he is sexually vigorous and of erotic temperament. his general health has always been good, but he is a high-strung, neurotic man, with quick mental reactions. his habits had for a long time been decidedly alcoholic, but two years ago, a small quantity of albumen being found in the urine, he was persuaded to leave off alcohol, and has since been a teetotaller. though ordinarily very reticent about sexual matters, he began four or five years ago to commit acts of exhibitionism, exposing himself to servants in the house and occasionally to women in the country. this continued after the alcohol had been abandoned and lasted for several years, though the attention of the police was never attracted to the matter, and so far as possible he was quietly supervised by his friends. nine months after, the acts of exhibitionism ceased, apparently in a spontaneous manner, and there has so far been no relapse. exhibitionism is an act which, on the face of it, seems nonsensical and meaningless, and as such, as an inexplicable act of madness, it has frequently been treated both by writers on insanity and on sexual perversion. "these acts are so lacking in common sense and intelligent reflection that no other reason than insanity can be offered for the patient," ball concluded.[ ] moll, also, who defines exhibitionism somewhat too narrowly as a condition in which "the charm of the exhibition lies for the subject in the display itself," not sufficiently taking into consideration the imagined effect on the spectator, concludes that "the psychological basis of exhibitionism is at present by no means cleared up."[ ] we may probably best approach exhibitionism by regarding it as fundamentally a symbolic act based on a perversion of courtship. the exhibitionist displays the organ of sex to a feminine witness, and in the shock of modest sexual shame by which she reacts to that spectacle, he finds a gratifying similitude of the normal emotions of coitus.[ ] he feels that he has effected a psychic defloration. exhibitionism is thus analogous, and, indeed, related, to the impulse felt by many persons to perform indecorous acts or tell indecent stories before young and innocent persons of the opposite sex. this is a kind of psychic exhibitionism, the gratification it causes lying exactly, as in physical exhibitionism, in the emotional confusion which it is felt to arouse. the two kinds of exhibitionism may be combined in the same person: thus, in a case reported by hoche (p. ), the exhibitionist an intellectual and highly educated man, with a doctor's degree, also found pleasure in sending indecent poems and pictures to women, whom, however, he made no attempt to seduce; he was content with the thought of the emotions he aroused or believed that he aroused. it is possible that within this group should come the agent in the following incident which was lately observed by a lady, a friend of my own. an elderly man in an overcoat was seen standing outside a large and well-known draper's shop in the outskirts of london; when able to attract the attention of any of the shop-girls or of any girl in the street he would fling back his coat and reveal that he was wearing over his own clothes a woman's chemise (or possibly bodice) and a woman's drawers; there was no exposure. the only intelligible explanation of this action would seem to be that pleasure was experienced in the mild shock of interested surprise and injured modesty which this vision was imagined to cause to a young girl. it would thus be a comparatively innocent form of psychic defloration. it is of interest to point out that the sexual symbolism of active flagellation is very closely analogous to this symbolism of exhibitionism. the flagellant approaches a woman with the rod (itself a symbol of the penis and in some countries bearing names which are also applied to that organ) and inflicts on an intimate part of her body the signs of blushing and the spasmodic movements which are associated with sexual excitement, while at the same time she feels, or the flagellant imagines that she feels, the corresponding emotions of delicious shame.[ ] this is an even closer mimicry of the sexual act than the exhibitionist attains, for the latter fails to secure the consent of the woman nor does he enjoy any intimate contact with her naked body. the difference is connected with the fact that the active flagellant is usually a more virile and normal person than the exhibitionist. in the majority of cases the exhibitionist's sexual impulse is very feeble, and as a rule he is either to some degree a degenerate, or else a person who is suffering from an early stage of general paralysis, dementia, or some other highly enfeebling cause of mental disorganization, such as chronic alcoholism. sexual feebleness is further indicated by the fact that the individuals selected as witnesses are frequently mere children. it seems probable that a form of erotic symbolism somewhat similar to exhibitionism is to be found in the rare cases in which sexual gratification is derived from throwing ink, acid or other defiling liquids on women's dresses. thoinot has recorded a case of this kind (_attentats aux moeurs_, , pp. , _et seq._). an instructive case has been presented by moll. in this case a young man of somewhat neuropathic heredity had as a youth of or , when romping with his young sister's playfellows, experienced sexual sensations on chancing to see their white underlinen. from that time white underlinen and white dresses became to him a fetich and he was only attracted to women so attired. one day, at the age of , when crossing the street in wet weather with a young lady in a white dress, a passing vehicle splashed the dress with mud. this incident caused him strong sexual excitement, and from that time he had the impulse to throw ink, perchloride of iron, etc., on to ladies' white dresses, and sometimes to cut and tear them, sexual excitement and ejaculation taking place every time he effected this. (moll, "gutachten über einem sexual perversen [besudelungstrieb]," _zeitschrift für medizinalbeamte_, heft xiii, ). such a case is of considerable psychological interest. thoinot considers that in these cases the fleck is a fetich. that is an incorrect account of the matter. in this case the white garments constituted the primary fetich, but that fetich becomes more acutely realized, and at the same time both parties are thrown into an emotional state which to the fetichist becomes a mimicry of coitus, by the act of defilement. we may perhaps connect with this phenomenon the attraction which muddy shoes often exert over the shoe-fetichist, and the curious way in which, as we have seen (p. ), restif de la bretonne associates his love of neatness in women with his attraction to the feet, the part, he remarks, least easy to keep clean. garnier applied the term _sadi-fetichism_ to active flagellation and many similar manifestations such as we are here concerned with, on the grounds that they are hybrids which combine the morbid adoration for a definite object with the impulse to exercise a more or less degree of violence. from the standpoint of the conception of erotic symbolism i have adopted there is no need for this term. there is here no hybrid combination of two unlike mental states. we are simply concerned with states of erotic symbolism, more or less complete, more or less complex. the conception of exhibitionism as a process of erotic symbolism, involves a conscious or unconscious attitude of attention in the exhibitionist's mind to the psychic reaction of the woman toward whom his display is directed. he seeks to cause an emotion which, probably in most cases, he desires should be pleasurable. but from one cause or another his finer sensibilities are always inhibited or in abeyance, and he is unable to estimate accurately either the impression he is likely to produce or the general results of his action, or else he is moved by a strong impulsive obsession which overpowers his judgment. in many cases he has good reason for believing that his act will be pleasurable, and frequently he finds complacent witnesses among the low-class servant girls, etc. it may be pointed out here that we are quite justified in speaking of a penis-fetichism and also of a vulva-fetichism. this might be questioned. we are obviously justified in recognizing a fetichism which attaches itself to the pubic hair, or, as in a case with which i am acquainted, to the clitoris, but it may seem that we cannot regard the central sexual organs as symbols of sex, symbols, as it were, of themselves. properly regarded, however, it is the sexual act rather than the sexual organ which is craved in normal sexual desire; the organ is regarded merely as the means and not as the end. regarded as a means the organ is indeed an object of desire, but it only becomes a fetich when it arrests and fixes the attention. an attention thus pleasurably fixed, a vulva-fetichism or a penis-fetichism, is within the normal range of sexual emotion (this point has been mentioned in the previous volume when discussing the part played by the primary sexual organs in sexual selection), and in coarse-grained natures of either sex it is a normal allurement in its generalized shape, apart from any attraction to the person to whom the organs belong. in some morbid cases, however, this penis-fetichism may become a fully developed sexual perversion. a typical case of this kind has been recorded by howard in the united states. mrs. w., aged , was married at to a strong, healthy man, but derived no pleasure from coitus, though she received great pleasure from masturbation practiced immediately after coitus, and nine years after marriage she ceased actual coitus, compelling her husband to adopt mutual masturbation. she would introduce men into the house at all times of the day or night, and after persuading them to expose their persons would retire to her room to masturbate. the same man never aroused desire more than once. this desire became so violent and persistent that she would seek out men in all sorts of public places and, having induced them to expose themselves, rapidly retreat to the nearest convenient spot for self-gratification. she once abstracted a pair of trousers she had seen a man wear and after fondling them experienced the orgasm. her husband finally left her, after vainly attempting to have her confined in an asylum. she was often arrested for her actions, but through the intervention of friends set free again. she was a highly intelligent woman, and apart from this perversion entirely normal. (w.l. howard, "sexual perversion," _alienist and neurologist_, january, .) it is on the existence of a more or less developed penis-fetichism of this kind that the exhibitionist, mostly by an ignorant instinct, relies for the effects he desires to produce. the exhibitionist is not usually content to produce a mere titillated amusement; he seeks to produce a more powerful effect which must be emotional whether or not it is pleasurable. a professional man in strassburg (in a case reported by hoche[ ]) would walk about in the evening in a long cloak, and when he met ladies would suddenly throw his cloak back under a street lamp, or igniting a red-fire match, and thus exhibit his organs. there was an evident effort--on the part of a weak, vain, and effeminate man--to produce a maximum of emotional effect. the attempt to heighten the emotional shock is also seen in the fact that the exhibitionist frequently chooses a church as the scene of his exploits, not during service, for he always avoids a concourse of people, but perhaps toward evening when there are only a few kneeling women scattered through the edifice. the church is chosen, often instinctively rather than deliberately, from no impulse to commit a sacrilegious outrage--which, as a rule, the exhibitionist does not feel his act to be--but because it really presents the conditions most favorable to the act and the effects desired. the exhibitionist's attitude of mind is well illustrated by one of garnier's patients who declared that he never wished to be seen by more than two women at once, "just what is necessary," he added, "for an exchange of impressions." after each exhibition he would ask himself anxiously: "did they see me? what are they thinking? what do they say to each other about me? oh! how i should like to know!" another patient of garnier's, who haunted churches for this purpose, made this very significant statement: "why do i like going to churches? i can scarcely say. _but i know that it is only there that my act has its full importance_. the woman is in a devout frame of mind, and she must see that such an act in such a place is not a joke in bad taste or a disgusting obscenity; _that if i go there it is not to amuse myself; it is more serious than that!_ i watch the effect produced on the faces of the ladies to whom i show my organs. i wish to see them express a profound joy. i wish, in fact, that they may be forced to say to themselves: _how impressive nature is when thus seen!_" here we trace the presence of a feeling which recalls the phenomena of the ancient and world-wide phallic worship, still liable to reappear sporadically. women sometimes took part in these rites, and the osculation of the male sexual organ or its emblematic representation by women is easily traceable in the phallic rites of india and many other lands, not excluding europe even in comparatively recent times. (dulaure in his _divinités génératices_ brings together much bearing on these points; cf.: ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter xvii, and bloch, _beiträge zur psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, pp. - . colin scott has some interesting remarks on phallic worship and the part it has played in aiding human evolution, "sex and art," _american journal of psychology_, vol. vii, no. , pp. - . irving rosse describes some modern phallic rites in which both men and women took part, similar to those practiced in vaudouism, "sexual hypochondriasis," _virginia medical monthly_, october, .) putting aside any question of phallic worship, a certain pride and more or less private feeling of ostentation in the new expansion and development of the organs of virility seems to be almost normal at adolescence. "we have much reason to assume," stanley hall remarks, "that in a state of nature there is a certain instinctive pride and ostentation that accompanies the new local development. i think it will be found that exhibitionists are usually those who have excessive growth here, and that much that modern society stigmatizes as obscene is at bottom more or less spontaneous and perhaps in some cases not abnormal. dr. seerley tells me he has never examined a young man largely developed who had the usual strong instinctive tendency of modesty to cover himself with his hands, but he finds this instinct general with those whose development is less than the average." (g. stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. ii, p. .) this instinct of ostentation, however, so far as it is normal, is held in check by other considerations, and is not, in the strict sense, exhibitionism. i have observed a full-grown telegraph boy walking across hampstead heath with his sexual organs exposed, but immediately he realized that he was seen he concealed them. the solemnity of exhibitionism at this age finds expression in the climax of the sonnet, "oraison du soir," written at by rimbaud, whose verse generally is a splendid and insolent manifestation of rank adolescence:-- "doux comme le seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes, je pisse vers les cieux bruns très haut et très loin, avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes." (j.a. rimbaud, _oeuvres_, p. .) in women, also, there would appear to be traceable a somewhat similar ostentation, though in them it is complicated and largely inhibited by modesty, and at the same time diffused over the body owing to the absence of external sexual organs. "primitive woman," remarks madame renooz, "proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. and in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when by a secret atavism she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. at this moment, wavering between the laws of nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. a sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch." (céline renooz, _psychologie comparée de l'homme et de la femme_, p. .) it may be added that among primitive peoples, and even among some remote european populations to-day, the exhibition of feminine nudity has sometimes been regarded as a spectacle with religious or magic operation. (ploss, _das weib_, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. - ; havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, p. .) it is stated by gopcevic that in the long struggle between the albanians and the montenegrians the women of the former people would stand in the front rank and expose themselves by raising their skirts, believing that they would thus insure victory. as, however, they were shot down, and as, moreover, victory usually fell to the montenegrians, this custom became discredited. (quoted by bloch, _op. cit._, teil ii, p. .) with regard to the association, suggested by stanley hall, between exhibitionism and an unusual degree of development of the sexual organs, it must be remarked that both extremes--a very large and a very small penis--are specially common in exhibitionists. the prevalence of the small organ is due to an association of exhibitionism with sexual feebleness. the prevalence of the large organ may be due to the cause suggested by hall. among mahommedans the sexual organs are sometimes habitually exposed by religious penitents, and i note that bernhard stern, in his book on the medical and sexual aspects of life in turkey, referring to a penitent of this sort whom he saw on the stamboul bridge at constantinople, remarks that the organ was very largely developed. it may well be in such a case that the penitent's religious attitude is reinforced by some lingering relic of a more fleshly ostentation. it is by a pseudo-atavism that this phallicism is evoked in the exhibitionist. there is no true emergence of an ancestrally inherited instinct, but by the paralysis or inhibition of the finer and higher feelings current in civilization, the exhibitionist is placed on the same mental level as the man of a more primitive age, and he thus presents the basis on which the impulses belonging to a higher culture may naturally take root and develop. reference may here be made to a form of primitive exhibitionism, almost confined to women, which, although certainly symbolic, is absolutely non-sexual, and must not, therefore, be confused with the phenomena we are here occupied with. i refer to the exhibition of the buttocks as a mark of contempt. in its most primitive form, no doubt, this exhibitionism is a kind of exorcism, a method of putting evil spirits, primarily, and secondarily evil-disposed persons, to flight. it is the most effective way for a woman to display sexual centers, and it shares in the magical virtues which all unveiling of the sexual centers is believed by primitive peoples to possess. it is recorded that the women of some peoples in the balkan peninsula formerly used this gesture against enemies in battle. in the sixteenth century so distinguished a theologian as luther when assailed by the evil one at night was able to put the adversary to flight by protruding his uncovered buttocks from the bed. but the spiritual significance of this attitude is lost with the decay of primitive beliefs. it survives, but merely as a gesture of insult. the symbolism comes to have reference to the nates as the excretory focus, the seat of the anus. in any case it ignores any sexual attractiveness in this part of the body. exhibitionism of this kind, therefore, can scarcely arise in persons of any sensitiveness or æsthetic perception, even putting aside the question of modesty, and there seems to be little trace of it in classic antiquity when the nates were regarded as objects of beauty. among the egyptians, however, we gather from herodotus (bk. ii, chapter lx) that at a certain popular religious festival men and women would go in boats on the nile, singing and playing, and when they approached a town the women on the boats would insult the women of the town by injurious language and by exposing themselves. among the arabs, however, the specific gesture we are concerned with is noted, and a man to whom vengeance is forbidden would express his feelings by exposing his posterior and strewing earth on his head (wellhausen, _rests arabischen heidentums_, , p. ). it is in europe and in mediæval and later times that this emphatic gesture seems to have flourished as a violent method of expressing contempt. it was by no means confined to the lower classes, and kleinpaul, in discussing this form of "speech without words," quotes examples of various noble persons, even princesses, who are recorded thus to have expressed their feelings. (kleinpaul, _sprache ohne worte_, pp. - .) in more recent times the gesture has become merely a rare and extreme expression of unrestrained feeling in coarse-grained peasants. zola, in the figure of mouquette in _germinal_, may be said to have given a kind of classic expression to the gesture. in the more remote parts of europe it appears to be still not altogether uncommon. this seems to be notably the case among the south slavs, and krauss states that "when a south slav woman wishes to express her deepest contempt for anyone she bends forward, with left hand raising her skirts, and with the right slapping her posterior, at the same time exclaiming: 'this for you!'" (kryptadia, vol. vi, p. .) a verbal survival of this gesture, consisting in the contemptuous invitation to kiss this region, still exists among us in remote parts of the country, especially as an insult offered by an angry woman who forgets herself. it is said to be commonly used in wales. ("welsh Ædoelogy," kryptadia, vol. ii, pp. , et seq.) in cornwall, when addressed by a woman to a man it is sometimes regarded as a deadly insult, even if the woman is young and attractive, and may cause a life-long enmity between related families. from this point of view the nates are a symbol of contempt, and any sexual significance is excluded. (the distinction is brought out by diderot in _le neveu de rameau:_ "_lui:_--il y a d'autres jours ou il ne m'en coûterait rien pour être vil tant qu'on voudrait; ces jours-là, pour un liard, je baiserais le cul à la petite hus. _moi:_--eh! mais, l'ami, elle est blanche, jolie, douce, potelée, et c'est un acte d'humilité auquel un plus delicat que vous pourrait quelquefois s'abaisser. _lui:_--entendons-nous; c'est qu'il y a baiser le cul au simple, et baiser le cul au figuré.") it must be added that a sexual form of exhibitionism of the nates must still be recognized. it occurs in masochism and expresses the desire for passive flagellation. rousseau, whose emotional life was profoundly affected by the castigations which as a child he received from mlle lambercier, has in his _confessions_ told us how, when a youth, he would sometimes expose himself in this way in the presence of young women. such masochistic exhibitionism seems, however, to be rare. while the manifestations of exhibitionism are substantially the same in all cases, there are many degrees and varieties of the condition. we may find among exhibitionists, as garnier remarks, dementia, states of unconsciousness, epilepsy, general paralysis, alcoholism, but the most typical cases, he adds, if not indeed the cases to which the term properly belongs, are those in which it is an impulsive obsession. krafft-ebing[ ] divides exhibitionists into four clinical groups: ( ) acquired states of mental weakness, with cerebral or spinal disease clouding consciousness and at the same time causing impotence; ( ) epileptics, in whom the act is an abnormal organic impulse performed in a state of imperfect consciousness; ( ) a somewhat allied group of neurasthenic cases; ( ) periodical impulsive cases with deep hereditary taint. this classification is not altogether satisfactory. garnier's classification, placing the group of obsessional cases in the foreground and leaving the other more vaguely defined groups in the background, is probably better. i am inclined to consider that most of the cases fall into one or other of two mixed groups. the first class includes cases in which there is more or less congenital abnormality, but otherwise a fair or even complete degree of mental integrity; they are usually young adults, they are more or less precisely conscious of the end they wish to attain, and it is often only with a severe struggle that they yield to their impulses. in the second class the beginnings of mental or nervous disease have diminished the sensibility of the higher centers; the subjects are usually old men whose lives have been absolutely correct; they are often only vaguely aware of the nature of the satisfaction they are seeking, and frequently no struggle precedes the manifestation; such was the case of the overworked clergyman described by hughes,[ ] who, after much study, became morose and absent-minded, and committed acts of exhibitionism which he could not explain but made no attempt to deny; with rest and restorative treatment his health improved and the acts ceased. it is in the first class of cases alone that there is a developed sexual perversion. in the cases of the second class there is a more or less definite sexual intention, but it is only just conscious, and the emergence of the impulse is due not to its strength but to the weakness, temporary or permanent, of the higher inhibiting centers. epileptic cases, with loss of consciousness during the act, can only be regarded as presenting a pseudo-exhibitionism. they should be excluded altogether. it is undoubtedly true that many cases of real or apparent exhibitionism occur in epileptics.[ ] we must not, however, too hastily conclude that because these acts occur in epileptics they are necessarily unconscious acts. epilepsy frequently occurs on a basis of hereditary degeneration, and the exhibitionism may be, and not infrequently is, a stigma of the degeneracy and not an indication of the occurrence of a minor epileptic fit. when the act of pseudo-exhibitionism is truly epileptic, it will usually have no psychic sexual content, and it will certainly be liable to occur under all sorts of circumstances, when the patient is alone or in a miscellaneous concourse of people. it will be on a level with the acts of the highly respectable young woman who, at the conclusion of an attack of _petit mal_, consisting chiefly of a sudden desire to pass urine, on one occasion lifted up her clothes and urinated at a public entertainment, so that it was with difficulty her friends prevented her from being handed over to the police.[ ] such an act is automatic, unconscious, and involuntary; the spectators are not even perceived; it cannot be an act of exhibitionism. whenever, on the other hand, the place and the time are evidently chosen deliberately,--a quiet spot, the presence of only one or two young women or children,--it is difficult to admit that we are in the presence of a fit of epileptic unconsciousness, even when the subject is known to be epileptic. even, however, when we exclude those epileptic pseudo-exhibitionists who, from the legal point of view, are clearly irresponsible, it must still be remembered that in every case of exhibitionism there is a high degree of either mental abnormality on a neuropathic basis, or else of actual disease. this is true to a greater extent in exhibitionism than in almost any other form of sexual perversion. no subject of exhibitionism should be sent to prison without expert medical examination. footnotes: [ ] lasège first drew attention to this sexual perversion and gave it its generally accepted name, "les exhibitionistes," _l'union médicale_, may, . magnan, on various occasions (for example, "les exhibitionistes," _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, vol. v, , p. ), has given further development and precision to the clinical picture of the exhibitionist. [ ] b. ball. _la folie erotique_, p. . [ ] moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. . [ ] "exhibitionism in its most typical form is," garnier truly says, "a _systematic act_, manifesting itself as the _strange equivalent of a sexual connection_, or its _substitution_." the brief account of exhibitionism (pp. - ) in garnier's discussion of "perversions sexuelles" at the international medical congress at paris in (_section de psychiatrie: comptes-rendus_) is the most satisfactory statement of the psychological aspects of this perversion with which i am acquainted. garnier's unrivalled clinical knowledge of these manifestations, due to his position during many years as physician at the depôt of the prefecture of police in paris, adds great weight to his conclusions. [ ] the symbolism of coitus involved in flagellation has been touched on by eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, p. ), and is more fully developed by dühren (_geschlechtsleben in england_, bd. ii, pp. , _et seq._). [ ] a. hoche, _neurologische centralblatt_, , no. . [ ] _op. cit._, pp. , et seq. [ ] c.h. hughes, "morbid exhibitionism," _alienist and neurologist_, august, . another somewhat similar american case, also preceded by overwork, and eventually adjudged insane by the courts, is recorded by d.s. booth, _alienist and neurologist_, february, . [ ] exhibitionism in epilepsy is briefly discussed by féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, pp. - . [ ] w.s. colman, "post-epileptic unconscious automatic actions," _lancet_, july , . vi. the forms of erotic symbolism are simulacra of coitus--wide extension of erotic symbolism--fetichism not covering the whole ground of sexual selection--it is based on the individual factor in selection--crystallization--the lover and the artist--the key to erotic symbolism to be found in the emotional sphere--the passage to pathological extremes. we have now examined several very various and yet very typical manifestations in all of which it is not difficult to see how, in some strange and eccentric form--on a basis of association through resemblance or contiguity or both combined--there arises a definite mimicry of the normal sexual act together with the normal emotions which accompany that act. it has become clear in what sense we are justified in recognizing erotic symbolism. the symbolic and, as it were, abstracted nature of these manifestations is shown by the remarkable way in which they are sometimes capable of transference from the object to the subject. that is to say that the fetichist may show a tendency to cultivate his fetich in his own person. a foot-fetichist may like to go barefoot himself; a man who admired lame women liked to halt himself; a man who was attracted by small waists in women found sexual gratification in tight-lacing himself; a man who was fascinated by fine white skin and wished to cut it found satisfaction in cutting his own skin; moll's coprolagnic fetichist found a voluptuous pleasure in his own acts of defecation. (see, e.g., krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, p. , , ; hammond, _sexual impotence_, p. ; cf. _ante_, p. .) such symbolic transference seems to have a profoundly natural basis, for we may see a somewhat similar phenomenon in the well-known tendency of cows to mount a cow in heat. this would appear to be, not so much a homosexual impulse, as the dynamic psychic action of an olfactory sexual symbol in a transformed form. we seem to have here a psychic process which is a curious reversal of that process of _einfühlung_--the projection of one's own activities into the object contemplated--which lipps has so fruitfully developed as the essence of every æsthetic condition. (t. lipps, _Æsthetik_, teil i, .) by _einfühlung_ our own interior activity becomes the activity of the object perceived, a thing being beautiful in proportion as it lends itself to our _einfühlung_. but by this action of erotic symbolism, on the other hand, we transfer the activity of the object into ourselves. when the idea of erotic symbolism as manifested in such definite and typical forms becomes realized, it further becomes clear that the vaguer manifestations of such symbolism are exceedingly widespread. when in a previous volume we were discussing and drawing together the various threads which unite "love and pain," it will now be understood that we were standing throughout on the threshold of erotic symbolism. pain itself, in the sense in which we slowly learned to define it in this relationship--as a state of intense emotional excitement--may, under a great variety of special circumstances, become an erotic symbol and afford the same relief as the emotions normally accompanying the sexual act. active algolagnia or sadism is thus a form of erotic symbolism; passive algolagnia or masochism is (in a man) an inverted form of erotic symbolism. active flagellation or passive flagellation are, in exactly the same way, manifestations of erotic symbolism, the imaginative mimicry of coitus. binet and also krafft-ebing[ ] have argued in effect that the whole of sexual selection is a matter of fetichism, that is to say, of erotic symbolism of object. "normal love," binet states, "appears as the result of a complicated fetichism." tarde also seems to have regarded love as normally a kind of fetichism. "we are a long time before we fall in love with a woman," he remarks; "we must wait to see the detail which strikes and delights us, and causes us to overlook what displeases us. only in normal love the details are many and always changing. constancy in love is rarely anything else but a voyage around the beloved person, a voyage of exploration and ever new discoveries. the most faithful lover does not love the same woman in the same way for two days in succession."[ ] from that point of view normal sexual love is the sway of a fetich--more or less arbitrary, more or less (as binet terms it) polytheistic--and it can have little objective basis. but, as we saw when considering "sexual selection in man" in the previous volume, more especially when analyzing the notion of beauty, we are justified in believing that beauty has to a large extent an objective basis, and that love by no means depends simply on the capricious selection of some individual fetich. the individual factor, as we saw, is but one of many factors which constitute beauty. in the study of sexual selection that individual factor was passed over very lightly. we now see that it is often a factor of great importance, for in it are rooted all these outgrowths--normal in their germs, highly abnormal in their more extreme developments--which make up erotic symbolism. erotic symbolism is therefore concerned with all that is least generic, least specific, all that is most intimately personal and individual, in sexual selection. it is the final point in which the decreasing circle of sexual attractiveness is fixed. in the widest and most abstract form sexual selection in man is merely human, and we are attracted to that which bears most fully the marks of humanity; in a less abstract form it is sexual, and we are attracted to that which most vigorously presents the secondary sexual characteristics; still narrowing, it is the type of our own nation and people that appeals most strongly to us in matters of love; and still further concentrating we are affected by the ideal--in civilization most often the somewhat exotic ideal--of our own day, the fashion of our own city. but the individual factor still remains, and amid the infinite possibilities of erotic symbolism the individual may evolve an ideal which is often, as far as he knows and perhaps in actuality, an absolutely unique event in the history of the human soul. erotic symbolism works in its finer manifestations by means of the idealizing aptitudes; it is the field of sexual psychology in which that faculty of crystallization, on which stendhal loved to dwell, achieves its most brilliant results. in the solitary passage in which we seem to see a smile on the face of the austere poet of the _de rerum naturâ_, lucretius tells us how every lover, however he may be amused by the amorous extravagances of other men, is himself blinded by passion: if his mistress is black she is a fascinating brunette, if she squints she is the rival of pallas, if too tall she is majestic, if too short she is one of the graces, _tota merum sal_; if too lean it is her delicate refinement, if too fat then a ceres, dirty and she disdains adornment, a chatterer and brilliantly vivacious, silent and it is her exquisite modesty.[ ] sixteen hundred years later robert burton, when describing the symptoms of love, made out a long and appalling list of the physical defects which the lover is prepared to admire.[ ] yet we must not be too certain that the lover is wrong in this matter. we too hastily assume that the casual and hasty judgment of the world is necessarily more reliable, more conformed to what we call "truth," than the judgment of the lover which is founded on absorbed and patient study. in some cases where there is lack of intelligence in the lover and dissimulation in the object of his love, it may be so. but even a poem or a picture will often not reveal its beauty except by the expenditure of time and study. it is foolish to expect that the secret beauty of a human person will reveal itself more easily. the lover is an artist, an artist who constructs an image, it is true, but only by patient and concentrated attention to nature; he knows the defects of his image, probably better than anyone, but he knows also that art lies, not in the avoidance of defects, but in the realization of those traits which swallow up defects and so render them non-existent. a great artist, rodin, after a life spent in the study of nature, has declared that for art there is no ugliness in nature. "i have arrived at this belief by the study of nature," he said; "i can only grasp the beauty of the soul by the beauty of the body, but some day one will come who will explain what i only catch a glimpse of and will declare how the whole earth is beautiful, and all human beings beautiful. i have never been able to say this in sculpture so well as i wish and as i feel it affirmed within me. for poets beauty has always been some particular landscape, some particular woman; but it should be all women, all landscapes. a negro or a mongol has his beauty, however remote from ours, and it must be the same with their characters. there is no ugliness. when i was young i made that mistake, as others do; i could not undertake a woman's bust unless i thought her pretty, according to my particular idea of beauty; to-day i should do the bust of any woman, and it would be just as beautiful. and however ugly a woman may look, when she is with her lover she becomes beautiful; there is beauty in her character, in her passions, and beauty exists as soon as character or passion becomes visible, for the body is a casting on which passions are imprinted. and even without that, there is always the blood that flows in the veins and the air that fills the lungs."[ ] the saint, also, is here at one with the lover and the artist. the man who has so profoundly realized the worth of his fellow men that he is ready even to die in order to save them, feels that he has discovered a great secret. cyples traces the "secret delights" that have thus risen in the hearts of holy men to the same source as the feelings generated between lovers, friends, parents, and children. "a few have at intervals walked in the world," he remarks, "who have, each in his own original way, found out this marvel.... straightway man in general has become to them so sweet a thing that the infatuation has seemed to the rest of their fellows to be a celestial madness. beggars' rags to their unhesitating lips grew fit for kissing, because humanity had touched the garb; there were no longer any menial acts, but only welcome services.... remember by how much man is the subtlest circumstance in the world; at how many points he can attach relationships; how manifold and perennial he is in his results. all other things are dull, meager, tame beside him."[ ] it may be added that even if we still believe that lover and artist and saint are drawing the main elements of their conceptions from the depths of their own consciousness, there is a sense in which they are coming nearer to the truth of things than those for whom their conceptions are mere illusions. the aptitude for realizing beauty has involved an adjustment of the nerves and the associated brain centers through countless ages that began before man was. when the vision of supreme beauty is slowly or suddenly realized by anyone, with a reverberation that extends throughout his organism, he has attained to something which for his species, and for far more than his species, is truth, and can only be illusion to one who has artificially placed himself outside the stream of life. in an essay on "the gods as apparitions of the race-life," edward carpenter, though in somewhat platonic phraseology, thus well states the matter: "the youth sees the girl; it may be a chance face, a chance outline, amid the most banal surroundings. but it gives the cue. there is a memory, a confused reminiscence. the mortal figure without penetrates to the immortal figure within, and there rises into consciousness a shining form, glorious, not belonging to this world, but vibrating with the agelong life of humanity, and the memory of a thousand love-dreams. the waking of this vision intoxicates the man; it glows and burns within him; a goddess (it may be venus herself) stands in the sacred place of his temple; a sense of awe-struck splendor fills him, and the world is changed." "he sees something" (the same writer continues in a subsequent essay, "beauty and duty") "which, in a sense, is more real than the figures in the street, for he sees something that has lived and moved for hundreds of years in the heart of the race; something which has been one of the great formative influences of his own life, and which has done as much to create those very figures in the street as qualities in the circulation of the blood may do to form a finger or other limb. he comes into touch with a very real presence or power--one of those organic centers of growth in the life of humanity--and feels this larger life within himself, subjective, if you like, and yet intensely objective. and more. for is it not also evident that the woman, the mortal woman who excites his vision, _has_ some closest relation to it, and is, indeed, far more than a mere mask or empty formula which reminds him of it? for she indeed has within her, just as much as the man has, deep subconscious powers working; and the ideal which has dawned so entrancingly on the man is in all probability closely related to that which has been working most powerfully in the heredity of the woman, and which has most contributed to mold _her_ form and outline. no wonder, then, that her form should remind him of it. indeed, when he looks into her eyes he sees _through_ to a far deeper life even than she herself may be aware of, and yet which is truly hers--a life perennial and wonderful. the more than mortal in him beholds the more than mortal in her; and the gods descend to meet." (edward carpenter, _the art of creation_, pp. , .) it is this mighty force which lies behind and beneath the aberrations we have been concerned with, a great reservoir from which they draw the life-blood that vivifies even their most fantastic shapes. fetichism and the other forms of erotic symbolism are but the development and the isolation of the crystallizations which normally arise on the basis of sexual selection. normal in their basis, in their extreme forms they present the utmost pathological aberrations of the sexual instinct which can be attained or conceived. in the intermediate space all degrees are possible. in the slightest degree the symbol is merely a specially fascinating and beloved feature in a person who is, in all other respects, felt to be lovable; as such its recognition is a legitimate part of courtship, an effective aid to tumescence. in a further degree the symbol is the one arresting and attracting character of a person who must, however, still be felt as a sexually attractive individual. in a still further degree of perversion the symbol is effective, even though the person with whom it is associated is altogether unattractive. in the final stage the person and even all association with a person disappear altogether from the field of sexual consciousness; the abstract symbol rules supreme. long, however, before the symbol has reached that final climax of morbid intensity we may be said to have passed beyond the sphere of sexual love. a person, not an abstracted quality, must be the goal of love. so long as the fetich is subordinated to the person it serves to heighten love. but love must be based on a complexus of attractive qualities, or it has no stability.[ ] as soon as the fetich becomes isolated and omnipotent, so that the person sinks into the background as an unimportant appendage of the fetich, all stability is lost. the fetichist now follows an impersonal and abstract symbol withersoever it may lead him. it has been seen that there are an extraordinary number of forms in which erotic symbolism may be felt. it must be remembered, and it cannot be too distinctly emphasized, that the links that bind together the forms of erotic symbolism are not to be found in objects or even in acts, but in the underlying emotion. a feeling is the first condition of the symbol, a feeling which recalls, by a subtle and unconscious automatic association of resemblance or of contiguity, some former feeling. it is the similarity of emotion, instinctively apprehended, which links on a symbol only partially sexual, or even apparently not sexual at all, to the great central focus of sexual emotion, the great dominating force which brings the symbol its life-blood.[ ] the cases of sexual hyperæsthesia, quoted at the beginning of this study, do but present in a morbidly comprehensive and sensitive form those possibilities of erotic symbolism which, in some degree, or at some period, are latent in most persons. they are genuinely instinctive and automatic, and have nothing in common with that fanciful and deliberate play of the intelligence around sexual imagery--not infrequently seen in abnormal and insane persons--which has no significance for sexual psychology. it is to the extreme individualization involved by the developments of erotic symbolism that the fetichist owes his morbid and perilous isolation. the lover who is influenced by all the elements of sexual selection is always supported by the fellow-feeling of a larger body of other human beings; he has behind him his species, his sex, his nation, or at the very least a fashion. even the inverted lover in most cases is soon able to create around him an atmosphere constituted by persons whose ideals resemble his own. but it is not so with the erotic symbolist. he is nearly always alone. he is predisposed to isolation from the outset, for it would seem to be on a basis of excessive shyness and timidity that the manifestations of erotic symbolism are most likely to develop. when at length the symbolist realizes his own aspirations--which seem to him for the most part an altogether new phenomenon in the world--and at the same time realizes the wide degree in which they deviate from those of the rest of mankind, his natural secretiveness is still further reinforced. he stands alone. his most sacred ideals are for all those around him a childish absurdity, or a disgusting obscenity, possibly a matter calling for the intervention of the policeman. we have forgotten that all these impulses which to us seem so unnatural--this adoration of the foot and other despised parts of the body, this reverence for the excretory acts and products, the acceptance of congress with animals, the solemnity of self-exhibition--were all beliefs and practices which, to our remote forefathers, were bound up with the highest conceptions of life and the deepest ardors of religion. a man cannot, however, deviate at once so widely and so spontaneously in his impulses from the rest of the world in which he himself lives without possessing an aboriginally abnormal temperament. at the very least he exhibits a neuropathic sensitiveness to abnormal impressions. not infrequently there is more than this, the distinct stigmata of degeneration, sometimes a certain degree of congenital feeble-mindedness or a tendency to insanity. yet, regarded as a whole, and notwithstanding the frequency with which they witness to congenital morbidity, the phenomena of erotic symbolism can scarcely fail to be profoundly impressive to the patient and impartial student of the human soul. they often seem absurd, sometimes disgusting, occasionally criminal; they are always, when carried to an extreme degree, abnormal. but of all the manifestations of sexual psychology, normal and abnormal, they are the most specifically human. more than any others they involve the potently plastic force of the imagination. they bring before us the individual man, not only apart from his fellows, but in opposition, himself creating his own paradise. they constitute the supreme triumph of human idealism. footnotes: [ ] binet, _etudes de psychologie expérimentale_, esp., p. ; krafft-ebing, _op. cit._, p. . [ ] g. tarde, "l'amour morbide," _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, , p. . [ ] lucretius, lib. iv, vv. - . [ ] burton, _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section ii, mem. iii, subs. i. [ ] judith cladel, _auguste rodin pris sur la vie_, , pp. - . some slight modifications have been made in the translation of this passage on account of the conversational form of the original. [ ] w. cyples, _the process of human experience_, p. . even if (as we have already seen, _ante_, p. ) the saint cannot always feel actual physical pleasure in the intimate contact of humanity, the ardor of devoted service which his vision of humanity arouses remains unaffected. [ ] "to love," as stendhal defined it (_de l'amour_, chapter ii), "is to have pleasure in seeing, touching, and feeling by all the senses, and as near as possible, a beloved object by whom one is oneself loved." [ ] pillon's study of "la mémoire affective" (_revue philosophique_, february, ) helps to explain the psychic mechanism of the process. the mechanism of detumescence. i. the psychological significance of detumescence--the testis and the ovary--sperm cell and germ cell--development of the embryo--the external sexual organs--their wide range of variation--their nervous supply--the penis--its racial variations--the influence of exercise--the scrotum and testicles--the mons veneris--the vulva--the labia majora and their varieties--the pubic hair and its characters--the clitoris and its functions--the anus as an erogenous zone--the nymphæ and their function--the vagina--the hymen--virginity--the biological significance of the hymen. in analyzing the sexual impulse we have seen that the process whereby the conjunction of the sexes is achieved falls naturally into two phases: the first phase, of tumescence, during which force is generated in the organism, and the second phase, of detumescence, in which that force is discharged during conjugation.[ ] hitherto we have been occupied mainly with the first phase, that of tumescence, and with its associated psychic phenomena. it was inevitable that this should be so, for it is during the slow process of tumescence that sexual selection is decided, the crystallizations of love elaborated, and, to a large extent, the individual erotic symbols determined. but we can by no means altogether pass over the final phase of detumescence. its consideration, it is true, brings us directly into the field of anatomy and physiology; while tumescence is largely under control of the will, when the moment of detumescence arrives the reins slip from the control of the will; the more fundamental and uncontrollable impulses of the organism gallop on unchecked; the chariot of phaëthon dashes blindly down into a sea of emotion. yet detumescence is the end and climax of the whole drama; it is an anatomico-physiological process, certainly, but one that inevitably touches psychology at every point.[ ] it is, indeed, the very key to the process of tumescence, and unless we understand and realize very precisely what it is that happens during detumescence, our psychological analysis of the sexual impulse must remain vague and inadequate. from the point of view we now occupy, a man and a woman are no longer two highly sensitive organisms vibrating, voluptuously it may indeed be, but vaguely and indefinitely, to all kinds of influences and with fluctuating impulses capable of being directed into any channel, even in the highest degree divergent from the proper ends of procreation. they are now two genital organisms who exist to propagate the race, and whatever else they may be, they must be adequately constituted to effect the act by which the future of the race is ensured. we have to consider what are the material conditions which ensure the most satisfactory and complete fulfillment of this act, and how those conditions may be correlated with other circumstances in the organism. in thus approaching the subject we shall find that we have not really abandoned the study of the psychic aspects of sex. the two most primary sexual organs are the testis and the ovary; it is the object of conjugation to bring into contact the sperm from the testis with the germ from the ovary. there is no reason to suppose that the germ-cell and the sperm-cell are essentially different from each other. sexual conjugation thus remains a process which is radically the same as the non-sexual mode of propagation which preceded it. the fusion of the nuclei of the two cells was regarded by van beneden, who in first accurately described it, as a process of conjugation comparable to that of the protozoa and the protophyta. boveri, who has further extended our knowledge of the process, considers that the spermatozoon removes an inhibitory influence preventing the commencement of development in the ovum; the spermatozoon replaces a portion of the ovum which has already undergone degeneration, so that the object of conjugation is chiefly to effect the union of the properties of two cells in one, sexual fertilization achieving a division of labor with reciprocal inhibition; the two cells have renounced their original faculty of separate development in order to attain a fusion of qualities and thus render possible that production of new forms and qualities which has involved the progress of the organized world.[ ] while in fishes this conjugation of the male and female elements is usually ensured by the female casting her spawn into an artificial nest outside the body, on to which the male sheds his milt, in all animals (and, to some extent, birds, who occupy an intermediate position) there is an organic nest, or incubation chamber as bland sutton terms it, the womb, in the female body, wherein the fertilized egg may develop to a high degree of maturity sheltered from those manifold risks of the external world which make it necessary for the spawn of fishes to be so enormous in amount. since, however, men and women have descended from remote ancestors who, in the manner of aquatic creatures, exercised functions of sperm-extrusion and germ-extrusion that were exactly analogous in the two sexes, without any specialized female uterine organization, the early stages of human male and female foetal development still display the comparatively undifferentiated sexual organization of those remote ancestors, and during the first months of foetal life it is practically impossible to tell by the inspection of the genital regions whether the embryo would have developed into a man or into a woman. if we examine the embryo at an early stage of development we see that the hind end is the body stalk, this stalk in later stages becoming part of the umbilical cord. the urogenital region, formed by the rapid extension of the hind end beyond its original limit, which corresponds to what is later the umbilicus, develops mainly by the gradual differentiation of structures (the wolffian and müllerian bodies) which originally exist identically in both sexes. this process of sexual differentiation is highly complex, so that it cannot yet be said that there is complete agreement among investigators as to its details. when some irregularity or arrest of development occurs in the process we have one or other of the numerous malformations which may affect this region. if the arrest occurs at a very early stage we may even find a condition of things which seems to approximate to that which normally exists in the adult reptilia.[ ] owing to the fact that both male and female organs develop from more primitive structures which were sexually undifferentiated, a fundamental analogy in the sexual organs of the sexes always remains; the developed organs of one sex exist as rudiments in the other sex; the testicles correspond to the ovaries; the female clitoris is the homologue of the male penis; the scrotum of one sex is the labia majora in the other sex, and so throughout, although it is not always possible at present to be quite certain in regard to these homologics. since the object to be attained by the sexual organs in the human species is identical with that which they subserve in their pre-human ancestors, it is not surprising to find that these structures have a clear resemblance to the corresponding structures in the apes, although on the whole there would appear to be in man a higher degree of sexual differentiation. thus the uterus of various species of _semnopithecus_ seems to show a noteworthy correspondence with the same organ in woman.[ ] the somewhat less degree of sexual differentiation is well shown in the gorilla; in the male the external organs are in the passive state covered by the wrinkled skin of the abdomen, while in the female, on the contrary, they are very apparent, and in sexual excitement the large clitoris and nymphæ become markedly prominent. the penis of the gorilla, however, more nearly resembles that of man, according to hartmann, than does that of the other anthropoid apes, which diverge from the human type in this respect more than do the cynocephalic apes and some species of baboon. from the psychological point of view we are less interested in the internal sexual organs, which are most fundamentally concerned with the production and reception of the sexual elements, than with the more external parts of the genital apparatus which serve as the instruments of sexual excitation, and the channels for the intromission and passage of the seminal fluid. it is these only which can play any part at all in sexual selection; they are the only part of the sexual apparatus which can enter into the formation of either normal or abnormal erotic conceptions; they are the organs most prominently concerned with detumescence; they alone enter normally into the conscious process of sex at any time. it seems desirable, therefore, to discuss them briefly at this point. our knowledge of the individual and racial variations of the external sexual organs is still extremely imperfect. a few monographs and collections of data on isolated points may be found in more or less inaccessible publications. as regards women, ploss and bartels have devoted a chapter to the sexual organs of women which extends to a hundred pages, but remains scanty and fragmentary. (_das weib_, vol. i, chapter vi.) the most systematic series of observations have been made in the case of the various kinds of degenerates--idiots, the insane, criminals, etc.--but it would be obviously unsafe to rely too absolutely on such investigations for our knowledge of the sexual organs of the ordinary population. there can be no doubt, however, that the external sexual organs in normal men and women exhibit a peculiarly wide range of variation. this is indicated not only by the unsystematic results attained by experienced observers, but also by more systematic studies. thus herman has shown by detailed measurements that there are great normal variations in the conformation of the parts that form the floor of the female pelvis. he found that the projection of the pelvic floor varied from nothing to as much as two inches, and that in healthy women who had borne no children the distance between the coccyx and anus, the length of the perineum, the distance between the fourchette and the symphysis pubis, and the length of the vagina are subject to wide variations. (_lancet_, october , .) even the female urethral opening varies very greatly, as has been shown by bergh, who investigated it in nearly women and reproduces the various shapes found; while most usually (in about a third of the cases observed), a longitudinal slit, it may be cross-shaped, star-shaped, crescentic, etc.; and while sometimes very small, in about per cent. of the cases it admitted the tip of the little finger. (bergh, _monatsheft für praktische dermatologie_, sept., .) as regards both sexes, stanley hall states that "dr. f.n. seerley, who has examined over normal young men as well as many young women, tells me that in his opinion individual variations in these parts are much greater even than those of face and form, and that the range of adult and apparently normal size and proportion, as well as function, and of both the age and order of development, not only of each of the several parts themselves, but of all their immediate annexes, and in females as well as males, is far greater than has been recognized by any writer. this fact is the basis of the anxieties and fears of morphological abnormality so frequent during adolescence." (g.s. hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. ). in accordance with the supreme importance of the part they play, and the intimately psychic nature of that part, the sexual organs, both internal and external, are very richly supplied with nerves. while the internal organs are very abundantly furnished with sympathetic nerves and ganglia, the external organs show the highest possible degree of specialization of the various peripheral nervous devices which the organism has developed for receiving, accumulating, and transmitting stimuli to the brain.[ ] "the number of conducting cords which attach the genitals to the nervous centers is simply enormous," writes bryan robinson; "the pudic nerve is composed of nearly all the third sacral and branches from the second and fourth sacral. as one examines this nerve he is forced to the conclusion that it is an enormous supply for a small organ. the periphery of the pudic nerve spreads itself like a fan over the genitals." the lesser sciatic nerve supplies only one muscle--the gluteus maximus--and then sends the large pudendal branch to the side of the penis, and hence the friction of coitus induces active contraction of the gluteus maximus, "the main muscle of coition." the large pudic and the pudendal constitute the main supply of the external genitals. in women the pudic nerve is equally large, but the pudendal much smaller, possibly, bryan robinson suggests, because women take a less active part in coitus. the nerve supply of the clitoris, however, is three or four times as large as that of the penis in proportion to size. (f.b. robinson, "the intimate nervous connection of the genito-urinary organs with the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems," _new york medical journal_, march , ; id., _the abdominal brain_, .) of all the sexual organs the penis is without doubt that which has most powerfully impressed the human imagination. it is the very emblem of generation, and everywhere men have contemplated it with a mixture of reverence and shuddering awe that has sometimes, even among civilized peoples, amounted to horror and disgust. its image is worn as an amulet to ward off evil and invoked as a charm to call forth blessing. the sexual organs were once the most sacred object on which a man could place his hands to swear an inviolate oath, just as now he takes up the testament. even in the traditions of the great classic civilization which we inherit the penis is _fascinus_, the symbol of all fascination. in the history of human culture it has had far more than a merely human significance; it has been the symbol of all the generative force of nature, the embodiment of creative energy in the animal and vegetable worlds alike, an image to be held aloft for worship, the sign of all unconscious ecstasy. as a symbol, the sacred phallus, it has been woven in and out of all the highest and deepest human conceptions, so intimately that it is possible to see it everywhere, that it is possible to fail to see it anywhere. in correspondence with the importance of the penis is the large number of names which men have everywhere bestowed upon it. in french literature many hundred synonyms may be found. they were also numerous in latin. in english the literary terms for the penis seem to be comparatively few, but a large number of non-literary synonyms exist in colloquial and perhaps merely local usage. the latin term penis, which has established itself among us as the most correct designation, is generally considered to be associated with _pendere_ and to be connected therefore with the usually pendent position of the organ. in the middle ages the general literary term throughout europe was _coles_ (or _colis_) from _caulis_, a stalk, and _virga_, a rod. the only serious english literary term, yard (exactly equivalent to _virga_), as used by chaucer--almost the last great english writer whose vocabulary was adequate to the central facts of life--has now fallen out of literary and even colloquial usage. pierer and chaulant, in their anatomical and physiological _real-lexicon_ (vol. vi, p. ), give nearly a hundred synonyms for the penis. hyrtl (_topographisches anatomie_, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. - ), adds others. schurig, in his _spermatologia_ ( , pp. - ), also presents a number of names for the penis; in chapter iii (pp. - ) of the same book he discusses the penis generally with more fullness than most authors. louis de landes, in his _glossaire erotique_ of the french language (pp. - ), enumerates several hundred literary synonyms for the penis, though many of them probably only occur once. there is no thorough and comprehensive modern study of the penis on an anthropological basis (though i should mention a valuable and fully illustrated study of anthropological and pathological variations of the penis in a series of articles by marandon de montyel, "des anomalies des organs génitaux externes chez les aliénées," etc., _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, ), and it would be out of place here to attempt to collect the scattered notices regarding racial and other variations. it may suffice to note some of the evidence showing that such variations seem to be numerous and important. the arab penis (according to kocher) is slender and long (a third longer than the average european penis) and with a club-shaped glans. it undergoes little change when it enters the erect state. the clothes leaves it quite free, and the arab practices manual excitement at an early age to favor its development. among the fuegians, also, according to hyades and deniker (_cap horn_, vol. vii, p. ), the average length of the penis is millimeters, which is longer than in europeans. in men of black race, also, the penis is decidedly large. thus sir h.h. johnston (_british central africa_, p. ) states this to be a universal rule. among the wankenda of northern nyassa, for instance, he remarks that, while the body is of medium size, the penis is generally large. he gives the usual length as about six inches, reaching nine or ten in erection. the prepuce, it is added, is often very long, and circumcision is practiced by many tribes. among the american negroes hrdlicka has found, also (_proceedings american association for the advancement of science_, vol. xlvii, p. ), that the penis in black boys is larger than in white boys. the passages cited above suggest the question whether the penis becomes larger by exercise of its generative functions. most old authors assert that frequent erection makes the penis large and long (schurig, _spermatologia_, p. ). galen noted that in singers and athletes, who were chaste in order to preserve their strength, the sexual parts were small and rugrose, like those of old men, and that exercise of the organs from youth develops them; roubaud, quoting this observation (_traité de l'impuissance_, p. ), agrees with the statement. it seems probable that there is an element of truth in this ancient belief. at the same time it must be remembered that the penis is only to small extent a muscular organ, and that the increase of size produced by frequent congestion of erectile tissues cannot be either rapid or pronounced. variations in the size of the sexual organs are probably on the whole mainly inherited, though it is impossible to speak decisively on this point until more systematic observations become customary. the scrotum has usually, in the human imagination, been regarded merely as an appendage of the penis, of secondary importance, although it is the garment of the primary and essential organs of sex, and the fact that it is not the seat of any voluptuous sensation has doubtless helped to confirm this position. even the name is merely a mediæval perversion of _scortum_, skin or hide. in classic times it was usually called the pouch or purse. the importance of the testicles has not, however, been altogether ignored, as the very word _testis_ itself shows, for the _testis_ is simply the _witness_ of virility.[ ] it is easy to understand why the penis should occupy this special place in man's thoughts as the supreme sexual organ. it is the one conspicuous and prominent portion of the sexual apparatus, while its aptitude for swelling and erecting itself involuntarily, under the influence of sexual emotion, gives it a peculiar and almost unique position in the body. at the same time it is the point at which, in the male body, all voluptuous sensation is concentrated, the only normal masculine center of sex.[ ] it is not easy to find any correspondingly conspicuous symbol of sex in the sexual region of women. in the normal position nothing is visible but the peculiarly human cushion of fat picturesquely termed the mons veneris (because, as palfyn said, all those who enroll themselves under the banner of venus must necessarily scale it), and even that is veiled from view in the adult by the more or less bushy plantation of hair which grows upon it. a triangle of varyingly precise definition is thus formed at the lower apex of the trunk, and this would sometimes appear to have been regarded as a feminine symbol.[ ] but the more usual and typical symbol of femininity is the idealized ring (by some savages drawn as a lozenge) of the vulvar opening--the _yoni_ corresponding to the masculine _lingam_--which is normally closed from view by the larger lips arising from beneath the shadow of the _mons_. it is a symbol that, like the masculine phallus, has a double meaning among primitive peoples and is sometimes used to call down a blessing and sometimes to invoke a curse.[ ] this external opening of the feminine genital passage with its two enclosing lips is now generally called the vulva. it would appear that originally (as by celsus and pliny) this term included the womb, also, but when the term "uterus" came into use "vulva" was confined (as its sense of folding doors suggests that it should be) to the external entrance. the classic term _cunnus_ for the external genitals was chiefly used by the poets; it has been the etymological source of various european names for this region, such as the old french _con_, which has now, however, disappeared from literature while even in popular usage it has given place to _lapin_ and similar terms. but there is always a tendency, marked in most parts of the world, for the names of the external female parts to become indecorous. even in classic antiquity this part was the _pudendum_, the part to be ashamed of, and among ourselves the mass of the population, still preserving the traditions of primitive times, continue to cherish the same notion. the anatomy, anthropology, folk-lore, and terminology of the external and to some extent the internal feminine sexual region may be studied in the following publications, among others: ploss, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter vi; hyrtl, _topographisches anatomie_, vol. ii, and other publications by the same scholarly anatomist; w.j. stewart mackay, _history of ancient gynæcology_, especially pp. - ; r. bergh, "symbolæ ad cognitionem genitalium externorum foeminearum" (in danish), _hospitalstidende_, august, ; and also in _monatshefte für praktische dermatologie_, . d.s. lamb, "the female external genital organs," _new york journal of gynæcology_, august, ; r.l. dickinson, "hypertrophies of the labia minora and their significance," _american gynecology_, september, ; kryptadia (in various languages), vol. viii, pp. - , - , and many other passages. several of schurig's works (especially _gynæcologia_, _muliebria_, and _parthenologia_) contain full summaries of the statements of the early writers. the external or larger lips, like the mons veneris, are specifically human in their full development, for in the anthropoid apes they are small as is the mons, and in the lower apes absent altogether; they are, moreover, larger in the white than in the other human races. thus in the negro, and to a less degree in the japanese (wernich) and the javanese (scherzer) they are less developed than in women of white race. the greater lips develop in the foetus later than the lesser lips, which are thus at first uncovered; this condition thus constitutes an infantile state which occasionally (in less than per cent. of cases, according to bergh) persists in the adult. their generally accepted name, labia majora, is comparatively modern.[ ] the outer sides of the labia majora are covered with hair, and on the inner sides, which are smooth and moist, but are not true mucous membrane, there are a few sweat glands and numerous large sebaceous glands. bergh considers that there is little or no hair on the inner sides of the labia majora, but lamb states that careful examination shows that from one- to two-thirds of the inner surface in adult women show hairs like those of the external surface. in brunettes and women of dark races this surface is pigmented; in dark races it is usually a slate gray. from an examination of young danish prostitutes bergh has found that there are two main varieties in the shape of the labia majora, with transitional forms. in the first and most frequent form the labia tend to be less marked and more effaced and separated at the upper and anterior part, often being lost in the sides of the mons and presenting a fissure which is broader in its upper part and showing the inner lips more or less bare. in the second form the labia are thicker and more outstanding and the inner edges lie in contact throughout their whole length, showing the _rima pudendi_ as a long narrow fissure. whatever the form, the labia close more tightly together in virgins and in young individuals generally than in the deflowered and the elderly. in children, as martineau pointed out, the vulva appears to look directly forward and the clitoris and urinary meatus easily appear, while in adult women, and especially after attempts at coitus have been made, the vulva appears directed more below and behind, and the clitoris and meatus more covered by the labia majora; so that the child urinates forward, while the adult woman is usually able to urinate almost directly downwards in the erect position, though in some cases (as may occasionally be observed in the street) she can only do so when bending slightly forwards. this difference in the direction of the stream formerly furnished one of the methods of diagnosing virginity, an uncertain one, since the difference is largely due to age and individual variation. the main factor in the position and aspect of the vulva is pelvic inclination. (see havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, p. ; stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, chapter xii.) in the european woman, according to stratz, a considerable degree of pelvic inclination is essential to beauty, concealing all but the anterior third of the vulva. in negresses and other women of lower race the vulva, however, usually lies further back, being more conspicuous from behind than in european women; in this respect lower races resemble the apes. those women of dark race, therefore, whose modesty is focused behind rather than in front thus have sound anatomical considerations on their side. as ploss and bartels remark, a very common variation among european women consists in an unusually posterior position of the vulva and vaginal entrance, so that unless a cushion is placed under the buttocks it is difficult for the man to effect coitus in the usual position without giving much pain to the woman. they add that another anomaly, less easy to remedy, consists in an abnormally anterior position of the vaginal entrance close beneath the pelvic bone, so that, although intromission is easy, the spasmodic contraction of the vagina at the culmination of orgasm presses the penis against the bone and causes intolerable pain to the man. the mons veneris and the labia majora are, after the age of puberty, always normally covered by a more or less profuse growth of hair. it is notable that the apes, notwithstanding their general tendency to hairiness, show no such special development of hair in this region. we thus see that all the external and more conspicuous portions of the sexual sphere in woman--the mons veneris, the labia majora, and the hair--represent not so much an animal inheritance, such as we commonly misrepresent them to be, but a higher and genuinely human development. as none of these structures subserve any clear practical use, it would appear that they must have developed by sexual selection to satisfy the æsthetic demands of the eye.[ ] the character and arrangement of the pubic hair, investigated by eschricht and voigt more than half a century ago, have been more recently studied by bergh. as these observers have pointed out, there are various converging hair streams from above and below, the clitoris seeming to be the center towards which they are directed. the hair-covering thus formed is usually ample and, as a rule, is more so in brunettes than in blondes. it is nearly always bent, curly and more or less spirally twisted.[ ] there are frequently one or two curls at the commencement of the fissure, rolled outwards, and occasionally a well marked tuft in the middle line. in abundance the pubic hair corresponds with the axillary hair; when one region is defective in hair the other is usually so also. strong eyebrows also usually indicate a strong development of pubic hair. but the hair of the head usually varies independently, and bergh found that of women with spare pubic hair had good and often profuse hair on the head. complete or almost complete absence of pubic hair is in bergh's experience only found in about per cent. of women; these were all young and blonde. rothe, in his investigation of the pubic hair of berlin women, found that no two women were really alike in this respect, but there was a tendency to two main types of arrangement, with minor subdivisions, according as the hair tended to grow chiefly in the middle line extending laterally from that line, or to grow equally over the whole extent of the pubic region; these two groups included half the cases investigated. in men the pubic hair normally ascends anteriorly in a faint line up to the navel, with tendency to form a triangle with the apex above, and posteriorly extends backwards to the anus. in women these anterior and posterior extensions are comparatively rare, or at all events are only represented by a few stray hairs. rothe found this variation in per cent. of north german women, though a triangle of hair was only found in per cent.; lombroso found it in per cent, of italian women; bergh found it in only . per cent. among danish prostitutes, all sixteen of whom with three exceptions were brunettes. in vienna, among women, coe found only per cent, with this distribution of hair, and states that they were women of decidedly masculine type, though ploss and bartels, as well as rothe, find, however, that heterogeny, as they term the masculine distribution, is more common in blondes. the anterior extension of hair is usually accompanied by the posterior extension around the anus, usually very slight, but occasionally as pronounce as in men. (according to rothe, however, anterior heterogeny comparatively rare.) these masculine variations in the extension of the pubic hair appear to be not uncommonly associated with other physical and psychic anomalies; it is on this account that they have sometimes been regarded as indications of a vicious or a criminal temperament; they are, however, found in quite normal women. the pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter than those of men, as pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually stronger than light. in both length and size the individual variations are considerable. the usual length is about inches, or - centimeters, occasionally reaching about inches, or - centimeters, in the larger curls. in a series of women attended during confinement in london and the north of england i have only once (in a rather blonde lancashire woman) found the hair on labia reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery. but jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that of her head, reaching below her knee; paulini also knew a woman whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make wigs; bartholin mentions a soldier's wife who plaited her pubic hair behind her back; while brantôme has several references to abnormally long hair in ladies of the french court during the sixteenth century. in cases out of bergh found the pubic hair forming a large curly wig extending to the iliac spines. the individual hairs have occasionally been found so stiff and brush-like as to render coitus difficult. in color the pubic hair, while generally approximating to that of the head, is sometimes (according to rothe, in germany, in one-third cases) lighter, and sometimes somewhat darker, as is found to be the case by coe, especially in brunettes, and also by bergh, in denmark. bergh remarks that it is generally intermediate in color between the eyebrows and the axillary hair, the latter being more or less decolorized by sweat, and that, owing to the influence of the urine and vaginal discharges, the labial hair is paler than that on the mons; blondes with dark eyebrows usually have dark hair on the mons. the hair on this spot, as aristotle observed, is usually the last to turn gray. the key to the genital apparatus in women from the psychic point of view, and, indeed, to some extent, its anatomical center, is to be found in the clitoris. anatomically and developmentally the clitoris is the rudimentary analogue of the masculine penis. functionally, however, its scope is very much smaller. while the penis both receives and imparts specific voluptuous sensations, and is at the same time both the intromittent organ for the semen and the conduit for the urine, the sole function of the clitoris is to enter into erection under the stress of sexual emotion and receive and transmit the stimulatory voluptuous sensations imparted to it by friction with the masculine genital apparatus. it is so insignificant an organ that it is only within recent times that its homology with the penis has been realized. in kobelt wrote in his important book, _die mannlichen und weiblichen wollust-organe_, that in his attempt to show that the female organs are exactly analogous to the male the reader will probably be unable to follow him, while even johannes müller, the father of scientific physiology, declared at about the same period that the clitoris is essentially different from the penis. it is indeed but three centuries since the clitoris was so little known that (in ) realdus columbus actually claimed the honor of discovering it. columbus was not its discoverer, for fallopius speedily showed that avicenna and albucasis had referred to it.[ ] the arabs appear to have been very familiar with it, and, from the various names they gave it, clearly understood the important part it plays in generating voluptuous emotion.[ ] but it was known in classic antiquity; the greeks called it myrton, the myrtle-berry; galen and soranus called it nymphê because it is covered as a bride is veiled, while the old latin name was _tentigo_, from its power of entering into erection, and _columella_, the little pillar, from its shape. the modern term, which is greek and refers to the sensitiveness of the part to voluptuous titillation, is said to have originated with suidas and pollux.[ ] it was mentioned, though not adopted, by rufus. "the clitoris," declared haller, "is a part extremely sensible and wonderfully prurient." it is certainly the chief though by no means the only point through which the immediate call to detumescence is conveyed to the female organism. it is, indeed, as bryan robinson remarks, "a veritable electrical bell button which, being pressed or irritated, rings up the whole nervous system." the nervous supply of this little organ is very large, and the dorsal nerve of the clitoris is relatively three or four times larger than that of the penis. yet the sensitive point of this organ is only to millimeters in extent. the length of the clitoris is usually rather over centimeters (or about an inch) and centimeters when erect; a length of centimeters or more was regarded by martineau as within the normal range of variation. it is not usual to find the clitoris longer than this in europe (for among some races like the negro the clitoris is generally large), but all degrees of magnitude may be found as rare exceptions. (see, e.g., sir j.y. simpson, "hermaphrodites," _obstetric memoirs and contributions_, vol. ii, pp. - ; also dickinson, loc. cit.) it was formerly thought that the clitoris is easily enlarged by masturbation, and martineau believed that in this way it might be doubled in length. it is probable that slight enlargement of the clitoris may be caused by very frequent masturbation, but only to an insignificant extent, and it is impossible to diagnose masturbation from the size of the clitoris. among the women of lake nyassa, as well as in the caroline islands, special methods are practiced for elongating the clitoris, but in europe, at all events, it is probable that the variations in the size of the organ are mainly congenital. it may well be that a congenitally large clitoris is associated with an abnormally developed excitability of the sexual apparatus. tilt stated (_on uterine and ovarian inflammation_, p. ) that in his experience there was a frequent though not invariable connection between a large clitoris and sexual proclivity. (schurig referred to a case of intense and life-long sexual obsession associated with an extremely large clitoris, _gynæcologia_, pp. - .) of recent years considerable importance has been attached by some gynecologists (e.g., r.t. morris, "is evolution trying to do away with the clitoris?" _transactions american association of obstetricians and gynecologists_, vol. v, ) to preputial adhesions around the clitoris as a source of nervous disturbance and invalidism in young women. while the clitoris is anatomically analogous to the penis, its actual mechanism under the stress of sexual excitement is somewhat different. as liétaud long since pointed out, it cannot rise freely in erection as the penis can; it is apparently bound down by its prepuce and its frenulum. waldeyer, in his book on the pelvis, states more precisely that, unlike the penis, when erect it retains its angle, only this becomes somewhat rounded so that the organ is to some slight extent lifted and protruded. waldeyer considered that the clitoris was thus perfectly fitted to fulfill its part as the recipient of erotic stimulation from friction by the penis. adler, however, has pointed out with considerable justice, that this is not altogether the case. the clitoris was developed in mammals who practiced the posterior mode of coitus; in this position the clitoris was beneath the penis, which was thus easily able in coitus to press it against the pubic bone close beneath which it is situated, and thus impart the compression and friction which the feminine organ craves. but in the human anterior mode of coitus it is not necessarily brought into close contact with the penis during the act of coitus, and thus fails to receive powerful stimulation. its restricted position, which is an advantage in posterior coitus, is a disadvantage in anterior coitus. adler observes that it thus comes about that the human method of coitus, while by bringing breast to breast and face to face it has added a new dignity and refinement, a fresh source of enjoyment, to the embrace of the sexes, has not been an unmixed advantage to woman, for while man has lost nothing by the change, woman has now to contend with an increased difficulty in attaining an adequate amount of pressure on that "electric button" which normally sets the whole mechanism in operation.[ ] we may well bring into connection with the changed conditions brought about by anterior coitus the interesting fact that while the clitoris remains the most exquisitely sensitive of the sexual centers in woman, voluptuous sensitivity is much more widely diffused in woman than in man. over the whole body, indeed, it is apt to be more distinctly marked than is usually the case in man. but even if we confine ourselves to the genital region, while in man that portion of the penis which enters the vagina, and especially the glans, is normally the only portion which, even during turgescence, is sensitive to voluptuous contacts, in woman the whole of the region comprised within the larger lips, including even the anus and internally the vagina and the vaginal portion of the womb,[ ] become sensitive to voluptuous contacts. deprived of the penis the ability of a man to experience specifically sexual sensations becomes very limited indeed. but the loss of the clitoris or of any other structure involves no correspondingly serious disability on women. ablation of the clitoris for sexual hyperæsthesia has for this reason been abandoned, except under special circumstances. the members of the russian skoptzy sect habitually amputate the clitoris, nymphæ, and breasts, yet many young skoptzy women told the russian physician, guttceit, that they were perfectly well able to enjoy coitus. freud believes that in very young girls the clitoris is the exclusive seat of sexual sensation, masturbation at this age being directed to the clitoris alone, and spontaneous sexual excitement being confined to twitchings and erection of this organ, so that young girls are able, from their own experience, to recognize without instruction the signs of sexual excitement in boys. at a later age sexual excitability spreads from the clitoris to other regions--just as the easy inflammability of wood sets light to coal--though in the male the penis remains from first to last normally the almost exclusive seat of specific excitability. (s. freud, _drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, p. .) the anus would, however, seem to be sometimes an erogenous zone even at an early age. titillation of the anus appears to be frequently pleasurable in women; and this is not surprising considering the high degree of erotic sensitivity which is easily developed at the body orifices where skin meets mucous membrane. (thus the meatus of the urethra is a highly erogenous zone, as is sufficiently shown by the frequency with which hair-pins and other articles used in masturbation find their way into the bladder.) it is in this germinal sensitivity, undoubtedly, that we find a chief key to the practice of _pedicatio_. freud attaches great importance to the anus as a sexually erogenous zone at a very early age, and considers that it very frequently makes its influence felt in this respect. he believes that intestinal catarrhs in very early life and hæmorrhoids later tend to develop sensibility in the anus. he finds an indication that the anus has become a sexually erogenous zone when children wish to allow the contents of the rectum to accumulate so that defecation may by its increased difficulty involve voluptuous sensations, and adds that masturbatory excitation of the anus with the fingers is by no means rare in older children. (s. freud, _op. cit._, pp. - .) a medical correspondent in india tells me of a european lady who derived, she said, "quite as much, indeed more," pleasure from digitally titillating her rectum as from vulvo-vaginal titillation; she had several times submitted to _pedicatio_ and enjoyed it, though it was painful during penetration. the anus may retain this erogenous irritability even in old age, and routh mentions the case of a lady of over , the reverse of lustful, who was so excited by the act of defecation that she was invariably compelled to masturbate, although this state of things was a source of great mental misery to her. (c.h.f. routh, _british gynæcological journal_, february, , p. .) bölsche has sought the explanation of the erogenous nature of the anus, and the key to _pedicatio_, in an atavistic return to the very remote amphibian days when the anus was combined with the sexual parts in a common cloaca. but it is unnecessary to invoke any vestigial inheritance from a vastly remote past when we bear in mind that the innervation of these two adjoining regions is inevitably very closely related. the presence of a body exit with its marked and special sensitivity at a point where it can scarcely fail to receive the nervous overflow from an immensely active center of nervous energy quite adequately accounts for the phenomenon in question. the inner lips, the nymphæ or labia minora, running parallel with the greater lips which enclose them, embrace the clitoris anteriorly and extend backward, enclosing the urethral exit between them as well as the vaginal entrance. they form little wings whence their old latin name, _alæ_, and from their resemblance to the cock's comb were by spigelius termed crista galli. the red and (especially in brunettes) dark appearance of the nymphæ suggests that they are mucous membrane and not integumentary; it is, however, now considered that even on the inner surface they are covered by skin and separated from the mucous membrane by a line.[ ] in structure, as described by waldeyer, they consist of fine connective tissue rich in elastic fibers as well as some muscular tissue, and full of large veins, so that they are capable of a considerable degree of turgescence resembling erection during sexual excitement, while ballantyne finds that the nymphæ are supplied to a notable extent with nervous end-organs. more than any other part of the sexual apparatus in either sex, the lesser lips, on account of their shape, their position, and their structure, are capable of acquired modifications, more especially hypertrophy and elongation. by stretching, it is stated, a labium can be doubled in its dimensions. the "hottentot apron," or elongated nymphæ, commonly found among some peoples in south africa, has long been a familiar phenomenon. in such cases a length or transverse diameter of to centimeters is commonly found. but such elongated nymphæ are by no means confined to one part of the world or to one race; they are quite common among women of european race, and reach a size equal to most of the more reliably recorded hottentot cases. dickinson, who has very carefully studied this question in new york, finds that in consecutive gynæcological cases the labia showed some form of hypertrophy in per cent., or more than in ; while among of these cases who were neurasthenic, the proportion reached per cent., even when minor or doubtful enlargements were disregarded. bergh, in about per cent. cases, found very enlarged nymphæ, the height reached in about per cent. of the cases of enlargement being nearly six centimeters. ploss and bartels, in a full discussion: of the "hottentot apron," come to the conclusion that this condition is perhaps in most cases artificially produced. it is known that among the basutos it is the custom for the elder girls to manipulate the nymphæ of younger children, when alone with them, almost from birth, and on account of the elastic nature of these structures such manipulation quite adequately accounts for the elongation. it is not necessary to suppose that the custom is practiced for the sake of producing sexual stimulation--though this may frequently occur--since there are numerous similar primitive customs involving deformation of the sexual organs without the production of sexual excitement. dickinson has come to a similar conclusion as regards the corresponding elongation of the nymphæ in civilized european women. in out of women of good social class he found elongation or thickening, often with a notable degree of wrinkling and pigmentation, and believes that this is always the result of frequently repeated masturbation practiced with the separation of the nymphæ; in per cent. of the cases admission of masturbation was made.[ ] while this conclusion is probably correct in the main, it requires some qualification. to assert that whenever in women who have not been pregnant the marked protrusion of the inner lips beyond the outer lips means that at some period manipulation has been practiced with or without the production of sexual excitement is to make too absolute a statement. it is highly probable that the nymphæ, like the clitoris, are congenitally more prominent in some of the lower human races, as they are also in the apes; among the fuegians, for instance, according to hyades and deniker, the labia minora descend lower than in europeans, although there is not the slightest reason to suppose that these women practice any manipulations. among european women, again, the nymphæ sometimes protrude very prominently beyond the labia majora in women who are organically of somewhat infantile type; this occurs in cases in which we may be convinced that no manipulations have ever been practiced.[ ] it is difficult to speak very decisively as to the function of the labia minora. they doubtless exert some amount of protective influence over the entrance to the vagina, and in this way correspond to the lips of the mouth after which they are called. they fulfill, however, one very definite though not obviously important function which is indicated by the mythologic name they have received. there is, indeed, some obscurity in the origin of this term, nymphæ, which has not, i believe, been satisfactorily cleared up. it has been stated that the greek name nymphê has been transferred from the clitoris to the labia minora. any such transfer could only have taken place when the meaning of the word had been forgotten, and nymphê had become the totally different word _nymphæ_, the goddesses who presided over streams. the old anatomists were much exercised in their minds as to the meaning of the name, but on the whole were inclined to believe that it referred to the action of the labia minora in directing the urinary stream. the term nymphæ was first applied in the modern sense, according to bergh, in , by pinæus, mainly from the influence of these structures on the urinary stream, and he dilated in his _de virginitate_ on the suitability of the term to designate so poetic a spot.[ ] in more modern times luschka and sir charles bell considered that it is one of the uses of the nymphæ to direct the stream of urine, and lamb from his own observation thinks the same conclusion probable. in reality there cannot be the slightest doubt about the function of the nymphæ, as, in hyrtl's phrase, "the naiads of the urinary source," and it can be demonstrated by the simplest experiment.[ ] the nymphæ form the intermediate portal of the vagina, as the canal which conducts to the womb was in anatomy first termed (according to hyrtl) by de graaf.[ ] it is a secreting, erectile, more or less sensitive canal lined by what is usually considered mucous membrane, though some have regarded it as integument of the same character as that of the external genitals; it certainly resembles such integument more than, for instance, the mucous membrane of the rectum. in the woman who has never had sexual intercourse and has been subjected to no manipulations or accidents affecting this region, the vagina is closed by a last and final gate of delicate membrane--scarcely admitting more than a slender finger--called the hymen. the poets called the hymen "fios virginitatis," the flower of virginity, whence the medico-legal term _defloratio_. notwithstanding the great significance which has long been attached to the phenomena connected with it, the hymen was not accurately known until vesalius, fallopius, and spigelius described and named it. it was, however, recognized by the arab authors, avicenna and averroes. the early literature concerning it is summarized by schurig, _muliebria_, , section ii, cap. v. the same author's _parthenologia_ is devoted to the various ancient problems connected with the question of virginity. to say that this delicate piece of membrane is from the non-physical point of view a more important structure than any other part of the body is to convey but a feeble idea of the immense importance of the hymen in the eyes of the men of many past ages and even of our own times and among our own people.[ ] for the uses of the feminine body, or for its beauty, there is no part which is more absolutely insignificant. but in human estimation it has acquired a spiritual value which has made it far more than a part of the body. it has taken the place of the soul, that whose presence gives all her worth and dignity, even her name, to the unmarried woman, her purity, her sexual desirability, her market value. without it--though in all physical and mental respects she might remain the same person--she has sometimes been a mark for contempt, a worthless outcast.[ ] so fragile a membrane scarcely possesses the reliability which should be possessed by a structure whose presence or absence has often meant so much. its absence by no means necessarily signifies that a woman has had intercourse with a man. its presence by no means signifies that she has never had such intercourse. there are many ways in which the hymen may be destroyed apart from coitus. among the chinese (and also, it would appear, in india and some other parts of the east) the female parts are from infancy kept so scrupulously clean by daily washing, the finger being introduced into the vagina, that the hymen rapidly disappears, and its existence is unknown even to chinese doctors. among some brazilian indians a similar practice exists among mothers as regards their young children, less, however, for the sake of cleanliness than in order to facilitate sexual intercourse in future years. (ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter vi.) the manipulations of vaginal masturbation will, of course, similarly destroy the hymen. it is also quite possible for the hymen to be ruptured by falls and other accidents. (see, e.g., a lengthy study by nina-rodrigues, "des ruptures de l'hymen dans les chutes," _annales d'hygiène publique_, september, .) on the other hand, integrity of the hymen is no proof of virginity, apart from the obvious fact that there may be intercourse without penetration. (the case has even been recorded of a prostitute with syphilitic condylomata, a somewhat masculine type of pubic arch, and vulva rather posteriorly placed, whose hymen had never been penetrated.) the hymen may be of a yielding or folding type, so that complete penetration may take place and yet the hymen be afterwards found unruptured. it occasionally happens that the hymen is found intact at the end of pregnancy. in some, though not all, of these cases there has been conception without intromission of the penis. this has occurred even when the entrance was very minute. the possibility of such conception has long been recognized, and schurig (_syllepsilogia_, , section i, cap. viii, p. ) quotes ancient authors who have recorded cases. for some typical modern cases see guérard (_centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , ), in one of whose cases the hymen of the pregnant woman scarcely admitted a hair; also braun (ib., no. , ). the hymen has played a very definite and pronounced part in the social and moral life of humanity. until recently it has been more difficult to decide what precise biological function it has exercised to ensure its development and preservation. sexual selection, no doubt, has worked in its favor, but that influence has been very limited and comparatively very recent. virginity is not usually of any value among peoples who are entirely primitive. indeed, even in the classic civilization which we inherit, it is easy to show that the virgin and the admiration for virginity are of late growth; the virgin goddesses were not originally virgins in our modern sense. diana was the many-breasted patroness of childbirth before she became the chaste and solitary huntress, for the earliest distinction would appear to have been simply between the woman who was attached to a man and the woman who followed an earlier rule of freedom and independence; it was a later notion to suppose that the latter woman was debarred from sexual intercourse. we certainly must not seek the origin of the hymen in sexual selection; we must find it in natural selection. and here it might seem at first sight that we come upon a contradiction in nature, for nature is always devising contrivances to secure the maximum amount of fertilization. "increase and multiply" is so obviously the command of nature that the hebrews, with their usual insight, unhesitatingly dared to place it in the mouth of jehovah. but the hymen is a barrier to fertilization. it has, however, always to be remembered that as we rise in the zoölogical scale, and as the period of gestation lengthens and the possible number of offspring is fewer, it becomes constantly more essential that fertilization shall be effective rather than easy; the fewer the progeny the more necessary it is that they shall be vigorous enough to survive. there can be little doubt that, as one or two writers have already suggested, the hymen owes its development to the fact that its influence is on the side of effective fertilization. it is an obstacle to the impregnation of the young female by immature, aged, or feeble males. the hymen is thus an anatomical expression of that admiration of force which marks the female in her choice of a mate. so regarded, it is an interesting example of the intimate manner in which sexual selection is really based on natural selection. sexual selection is but the translation into psychic terms of a process which has already found expression in the physical texture of the body. it may be added that this interpretation of the biological function of the hymen is supported by the facts of its evolution. it is unknown among the lower mammals, with whom fertilization is easy, gestation short and offspring numerous. it only begins to appear among the higher mammals in whom reproduction is already beginning to take on the characters which become fully developed in man. various authors have found traces of a rudimentary hymen, not only in apes, but in elephants, horses, donkeys, bitches, bears, pigs, hyenas, and giraffes. (hyrtl, _op. cit._, vol. ii, p. ; g. gellhoen, "anatomy and development of the hymen," _american journal obstetrics_, august, .) it is in the human species that the tendency to limitation of offspring is most marked, combined at the same time with a greater aptitude for impregnation than exists among any lower mammals. it is here, therefore, that a physical check is of most value, and accordingly we find that in woman alone, of all animals, is the hymen fully developed. footnotes: [ ] "analysis of the sexual impulse," in vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] "the accomplishment of no other function," hyrtl remarks, "is so intimately connected with the mind and yet so independent of it." [ ] the process is still, however, but imperfectly understood; see art. "fécondation," by ed. retterer, in richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_, vol. vi, . [ ] thus a male foetus showing reptilian characters in sexual ducts was exhibited by shattock at the pathological society of london, february , . [ ] j. kohlbrugge, "die umgestaltung des uterus der affen nach den geburt," _zeitschrift für morphologie_, bd. iv, p. , . [ ] there are, however, no special nerve endings (krause corpuscles), as was formerly supposed. the nerve endings in the genital region are the same as elsewhere. the difference lies in the abundance of superposed arboreal ramifications. see, e.g., ed. retterer, art. "ejaculation," richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_, vol. v. [ ] hyrtl, _op. cit._, vol. ii, p. . [ ] sensations of pleasure without those of touch appear to be normal at the tip of the penis, as pointed out by scripture, quoted in _alienist and neurologist_, january, . [ ] see the previous volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," p. . [ ] see, e.g., ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, beginning of chapter vi. [ ] hyrtl states that the name _labia_ was first used by haller in the middle of the eighteenth century in his _elements of physiology_, being adopted by him from the greek poet erotion, who gave these structures the very obvious name cheilea, lips. but this seems to be a mistake, for the seventeenth century anatomists certainly used the name "labia" for these parts. [ ] bergh tentatively suggests, as regards the pubic hair, that its appearance may be due to the upright walk in man and the human position during coitus, the hair preventing irritation of the genitals from the sweat pouring down from the body and protecting the skin from direct friction in coitus. (in both these suggestions he was, however, long previously anticipated by fabricius ab aquapendente.) the fanciful suggestion of louis robinson that the pubic hair has developed in order to enable the human infant to cling securely to his mother is very poorly supported by facts, and has not met with acceptance. it may be mentioned that (as stated by ploss and bartels) the women of the bismarck archipelago, whose pubic hair is very abundant, use it as a kind of handkerchief on which to clean their hands. [ ] routh and heywood smith have noted that the pubic hair tends to lose its curliness and become straight in women who masturbate. (_british gynæcological journal_, february, , p. .) [ ] schurig, _muliebria_, p. . plazzon in said that in italian it had a popular name, _il besneegio_. [ ] schurig brought together in his _gynæcologia_ (pp. - ) various early opinions concerning the clitoris as the seat of voluptuous feeling. [ ] hyrtl, _op. cit._, vol. ii, p. . [ ] adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, , pp. - . [ ] the voluptuous sensations caused by sexual contacts producing movements of the womb are probably normal and usual. they may even occur under circumstances unconnected with sexual emotion, and mundé (_international journal of surgery_, march, ) mentions incidentally that in one case while titillating the cervix with a sound the woman very plainly showed voluptuous manifestations. [ ] henle stated that fine hairs are frequently visible on the nymphæ; stieda (_zeitschrift für morphologie_, , p. ) remarks that he has never been able to see them with the naked eye. [ ] r.l. dickinson, "hypertrophies of the labia minora and their significance," _american gynæcologist_, september, . it is perhaps noteworthy that bergh found that in cases in which the nymphæ were of unequal length, in all but the left was longer. [ ] it may be remarked that bergh believes that the nymphæ, and indeed the external genitals generally, are congenitally more strongly developed in libidinous persons, and at the same time in brunettes, while in public prostitutes this is not usually the case, which confirms the belief that exalted sexual sensibility does not usually lead to prostitution. he adds that prostitution, unless carried on for many years, has little effect on the shape of the external genitals. [ ] schurig (_muliebria_, , section ii, cap. ii) gives numerous quotations on this point; thus de graaf wrote in his book on the sexual organs of women: "tales protuberantiæ nymphæ appellantur ea propter quod aquis e vesica prosilientibus proxime adstare reperiantur, quandoquidem inter illas, tanquam duos parietes, urina magno impetu cum sibilo sæpe et absque labiorum irrigatione erumpit, vel quod sint castitatis præsides, aut sponsam primo intromittant." [ ] havelock ellis, "the bladder as a dynamometer," _american journal of dermatology_, may, . if a woman who has never been pregnant, standing in the erect position before commencing the act of urination presses apart the labia minora with index and middle fingers the stream will be projected forward so as to fall usually at a considerable distance in front of a vertical line from the meatus; if when the act is half completed the fingers are removed, the labia close together and the stream, though maintained at a constant pressure, at once changes its character and direction. [ ] in poetry this term was employed by plautus, _pseudolus_, act iv, sc. . the greek aidoion sometimes meant vagina and sometimes the external sexual parts; kolpos was used for the vagina alone. [ ] it is curious, however, that the european physicians of the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries were doubtful of its value as a sign of virginity and considered it often absent. [ ] for a summary of the beliefs and practices of various peoples with regard to the hymen and virginity see ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter xvi. ii the object of detumescence--erogenous zones--the lips--the vascular characters of detumescence--erectile tissue--erection in woman--mucous emission in women--sexual connection--the human mode of intercourse--normal variations--the motor characters of detumescence--ejaculation--the virile reflex--the general phenomena of detumescence--the circulatory and respiratory phenomena--blood pressure--cardiac disturbance--glandular activity--distillatio--the essentially motor character of detumescence--involuntary muscular irradiation to bladder, etc.--erotic intoxication--analogy of sexual detumescence and vesical tension--the specifically sexual movements of detumescence in man--in woman--the spontaneous movements of the genital canal in woman--their function in conception--part played by active movement of the spermatozoa--the artificial injection of semen--the facial expression during detumescence--the expression of joy--the occasional serious effects of coitus. we have seen what the object of detumescence is, and we have briefly considered the organs and structures which are chiefly concerned in the process. we have now to inquire what are the actual phenomena which take place during the act of detumescence. detumescence is normally linked closely to tumescence. tumescence is the piling on of the fuel; detumescence is the leaping out of the devouring flame whence is lighted the torch of life to be handed on from generation to generation. the whole process is double and yet single; it is exactly analogous to that by which a pile is driven into the earth by the raising and then the letting go of a heavy weight which falls on to the head of the pile. in tumescence the organism is slowly wound up and force accumulated; in the act of detumescence the accumulated force is let go and by its liberation the sperm-bearing instrument is driven home. courtship, as we commonly term the process of tumescence which takes place when a woman is first sexually approached by a man, is usually a highly prolonged process. but it is always necessary to remember that every repetition of the act of coitus, to be normally and effectively carried out on both sides, demands a similar double process; detumescence must be preceded by an abbreviated courtship. this abbreviated courtship by which tumescence is secured or heightened in the repetition of acts of coitus which have become familiar, is mainly tactile.[ ] since the part of the man in coitus is more active and that of the woman more passive, the sexual sensitivity of the skin seems to be more pronounced in women. there are, moreover, regions of the surface of a woman's body where contact, when sympathetic, seems specially liable to arouse erotic excitement. such erogenous zones are often specially marked in the breasts, occasionally in the palm of the hand, the nape of the neck, the lobule of the ear, the little finger; there is, indeed, perhaps no part of the surface of the body which may not, in some individuals at some time, become normally an erogenous zone. in hysteria the erotic excitability of these zones is sometimes very intense. the lips are, however, without doubt, the most persistently and poignantly sensitive region of the whole body outside the sphere of the sexual organs themselves. hence the significance of the kiss as a preliminary of detumescence.[ ] the importance of the lips as a normal erogenous zone is shown by the experiments of gualino. he applied a thread, folded on itself several times, to the lips, thus stimulating them in a simple mechanical manner. of women, between the ages of and , only felt this as a merely mechanical operation, felt a vaguely erotic element in the proceeding, experienced a desire for coitus and in there was actual sexual excitement with emission of mucus. of men, between the ages of and , in all sexual feeling was absent, in erotic ideas were suggested with congestion of the sexual organs without erection, and in there was the beginning of erection. it should be added that both the women and the men in whom this sexual reflex was more especially marked were of somewhat nervous temperament; in such persons erotic reactions of all kinds generally occur most easily. (gualino, "il rifflesso sessuale nell' eccitamento alle labbre," _archivio di psichiatria_, , p. .) as tumescence, under the influence of sensory stimulation, proceeds toward the climax when it gives place to detumescence, the physical phenomena become more and more acutely localized in the sexual organs. the process which was at first predominantly nervous and psychic now becomes more prominently vascular. the ancient sexual relationship of the skin asserts itself; there is marked surface congestion showing itself in various ways. the face tends to become red, and exactly the same phenomenon is taking place in the genital organs; "an erection," it has been said, "is a blushing of the penis." the difference is that in the genital organs this heightened vascularity has a definite and specific function to accomplish--the erection of the male organ which fits it to enter the female parts--and that consequently there has been developed in the penis that special kind of vascular mechanism, consisting of veins in connective tissue with unstriped muscular fibers, termed erectile tissue.[ ] it is not only the man who is supplied with erectile tissue which in the process of tumescence becomes congested and swollen. the woman also, in the corresponding external genital region, is likewise supplied with erectile tissue now also charged with blood, and exhibits the same changes as have taken place in her partner, though less conspicuously visible. in the anthropoid apes, as the gorilla, the large clitoris and the nymphæ become prominent in sexual excitement, but the less development of the clitoris in women, together with the specifically human evolution of the mons veneris and larger lips, renders this sexual turgescence practically invisible, though it is perceptible to touch in an increased degree of spongy and elastic tension. the whole feminine genital canal, including the uterus, indeed, is richly supplied with blood-vessels, and is capable during sexual excitement of a very high degree of turgescence, a kind of erection. the process of erection in woman is accompanied by the pouring out of fluid which copiously bathes all parts of the vulva around the entrance to the vagina. this is a bland, more or less odorless mucus which, under ordinary circumstances, slowly and imperceptibly suffuses the parts. when, however, the entrance to the vagina is exposed and extended, as during a gynæcological examination which occasionally produces sexual excitement, there may be seen a real ejaculation of the fluid which, as usually described, comes largely from the glands of bartholin, situated at the mouth of the vagina. under these circumstances it is sometimes described as being emitted in a jet which is thrown to a distance.[ ] this mucous ejaculation was in former days regarded as analogous to the seminal ejaculation in man, and hence essential to conception. although this belief was erroneous the fluid poured out in this manner whenever a high degree of tumescence is attained, and before the onset of detumescence, certainly performs an important function in lubricating the entrance to the genital canal and so facilitating the intromission of the male organ.[ ] menstruation has a similar influence in facilitating coitus, as schurig long since pointed out.[ ] a like process takes place during parturition when the same parts are being lubricated and stretched in preparation for the protrusion of the foetal head. the occurrence of the mucous flow in tumescence always indicates that that process is actively affecting the central sexual organs, and that voluptuous emotions are present.[ ] the secretions of the genital canal and outlet in women are somewhat numerous. we have the odoriferous glands of sebaceous origin, and with them the prepuce of the clitoris which has been described as a kind of gigantic sebaceous follicle with the clitoris occupying its interior. (hyrtl.) there is the secretion from the glands of bartholin. there is again the vaginal secretion, opaque and albuminous, which appears to be alkaline when secreted, but becomes acid under the decomposing influence of bacteria, which are, however, harmless and not pathogenic. (gow, _obstetrical society of london_, january , .) there is, finally, the mucous uterine secretion, which is alkaline, and, being poured out during orgasm, is believed to protect the spermatozoa from destruction by the acid vaginal secretion. the belief that the mucus poured out in women during sexual excitement is feminine semen and therefore essential to conception had many remarkable consequences and was widespread until the seventeenth century. thus, in the chapter "de modo coeundi et de regimine eorum qui coeunt" of _de secretis mulierum_, there is insistence on the importance of the proper mixture of the male semen with the female semen and of arranging that it shall not escape from the vagina. the woman must lie quiet for several hours at least, not rising even to urinate, and when she gets up, be very temperate in eating and drinking, and not run or jump, pretending that she has a headache. it was the belief in feminine semen which led some theologians to lay down that a woman might masturbate if she had not experienced orgasm in coitus. schurig in his _muliebria_ ( , pp. , et seq.) discusses the opinions of old authors regarding the nature, source, and uses of the female genital secretions, and quotes authorities against the old view that it was female semen. in a subsequent work (_syllepsilogia_, , pp. , et seq.) he returns to the same question, quotes authors who accept a feminine semen, shows that harvey denied it any significance, and himself decides against it. it has not seriously been brought forward since. when erection is completed in both the man and the woman the conditions necessary for conjugation have at last been fulfilled. in all animals, even those most nearly allied to man, coitus is effected by the male approaching the female posteriorly. in man the normal method of male approach is anteriorly, face to face. leonardo da vinci, in a well-known drawing representing a sagittal section of a man and a woman connected in this position of so-called venus obversa; has shown how well adapted the position is to the normal position of the organs in the human species.[ ] among monkeys, it is stated, congress is sometimes performed when the female is on all fours; at other times the male brings the female between his thighs when he is sitting, holding her with his forepaws. froriep informed lawrence that the male sometimes supported his feet on the female's calves. (sir w. lawrence, _lectures on physiology_, , p. .) a summary of the methods of congress practiced by the various animals below mammals will be found in the article "copulation" by h. de varigny in richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_, vol. iv. the anterior position in coitus, with the female partner lying supine, is so widespread throughout the world that it may fairly be termed the most typically human attitude in sexual congress. it is found represented in egyptian graves at benihassan, belonging to the twelfth dynasty; it is regarded by mohammedans as the normal position, although other positions are permitted by the prophet: "your wives are your tillage: go in unto your tillage in what manner soever you will;" it is that adopted in malacca; it appears, from peruvian antiquities, to have been the position generally, though not exclusively, adopted in ancient peru; it is found in many parts of africa, and seems also to have been the most usual position among the american aborigines. various modifications of this position are, however, found. thus, in some parts of the world, as among the suahelis in zanzibar, the male partner adopts the supine position. in loango, according to pechuel-loesche, coitus is performed lying on the side. sometimes, as on the west coast of africa, the woman is supine and the man more or less erect; or, as among the queenslanders (as described by roth) the woman is supine and the man squats on his heels with her thighs clasping his flanks, while he raises her buttocks with his hands. the position of coitus in which the man is supine is without doubt a natural and frequent variation of the specifically human obverse method of coitus. it was evidently familiar to the romans. ovid mentions it (_ars amatoria_, iii, - ), recommending it to little women, and saying that andromache was too tall to practice it with hector. aristophanes refers to it, and there are greek epigrams in which women boast of their skill in riding their lovers. it has sometimes been viewed with a certain disfavor because it seems to confer a superiority on the woman. "cursed be he," according to a mohammedan saying, "who maketh woman heaven and man earth." of special interest is the wide prevalence of an attitude in coitus recalling that which prevails among quadrupeds. the frequency with which on the walls of pompeii coitus is represented with the woman bending forward and her partner approaching her posteriorly has led to the belief that this attitude was formerly very common in southern italy. however that may be, it is certainly normal at the present day among various more or less primitive peoples in whom the vulva is often placed somewhat posteriorly. it is thus among the soudanese, as also, in an altogether different part of the world, among the eskimo innuit and koniags. the new caledonians, according to foley, cohabit in the quadrupedal manner, and so also the papuans of new guinea (bongu), according to vahness. the same custom is also found in australia, where, however other postures are also adopted. in europe the quadrupedal posture would seem to prevail among some of the south slavs, notably the dalmatians. (the different methods of coitus practiced by the south slavs are described in kryptadia vol. vi, pp. , et seq.) this method of coitus was recommended by lucretius (lib. iv) and also advised by paulus Æginetus as favorable to conception. (the opinions of various early physicians are quoted by schurig, _spermatologia_, , pp. , et seq.). it seems to be a position that is not infrequently agreeable to women, a fact which may be brought into connection with the remarks of adler already quoted (p. ) concerning the comparative lack of adjustment of the feminine organs to the obverse position. it is noteworthy that in the days of witchcraft hysterical women constantly believed that they had had intercourse with the devil in this manner. this circumstance, indeed, probably aided in the very marked disfavor in which coitus _a posteriori_ fell after the decay of classic influences. the mediæval physicians described it as _mos diabolicus_ and mistakenly supposed that it produced abortion (hyrtl, op. cit., vol. ii, p. ). the theologians, needless to say, were opposed to the _mos diabolicus_, and already in the anglo-saxon penitential of theodore, at the end of the seventh century, days' penance is prescribed for this method of coitus. from the frequency with which they have been adopted by various peoples as national customs, most of the postures in coitus here referred to must be said to come within the normal range of variation. it is a mistake to regard them as vicious perversions. up to the point to which we have so far considered it, the process of detumescence has been mainly nervous and vascular in character; it has, in fact, been but the more acute stage of a process which has been going on throughout tumescence. but now we reach the point at which a new element comes in: muscular action. with the onset of muscular action, which is mainly involuntary, even when it affects the voluntary muscles, detumescence proper begins to take place. henceforward purposeful psychic action, except by an effort, is virtually abolished. the individual, as a separate person, tends to disappear. he has become one with another person, as nearly one as the conditions of existence ever permit; he and she are now merely an instrument in the hands of a higher power--by whatever name we may choose to call that power--which is using them for an end not themselves. the decisive moment in the production of the instinctive and involuntary orgasm occurs when, under the influence of the stimulus applied to the penis by friction with the vagina, the tension of the seminal fluid poured into the urethra arouses the ejaculatory center in the spinal cord and the bulbo-cavernosus muscle surrounding the urethra responsively contracts in rhythmic spasms. then it is that ejaculation occurs.[ ] "the circulation quickens, the arteries beat strongly," wrote roubaud in a description of the physical state during coitus which may almost be termed classic; "the venous blood, arrested by muscular contraction, increases the general heat, and this stagnation, more pronounced in the brain by the contraction of the muscles of the neck and the throwing of the head backward, causes a momentary cerebral congestion, during which intelligence is lost and the faculties abolished. the eyes, violently injected, become haggard, and the look uncertain, or, in the majority of cases, the eyes are closed spasmodically to avoid the contact of the light. the respiration is hurried, sometimes interrupted, and may be suspended by the spasmodic contraction of the larynx, and the air, for a time compressed, is at last emitted in broken and meaningless words. the congested nervous centers only communicate confused sensations and volitions; mobility and sensation show extreme disorder; the limbs are seized by convulsions and sometimes by cramps, or are thrown wildly about or become stiff like iron bars. the jaws, tightly pressed, grind the teeth, and in some persons the delirium is carried so far that they bite to bleeding the shoulders their companions have imprudently abandoned to them. this frantic state of epilepsy lasts but a short time, but it suffices to exhaust the forces of the organism, especially in man. it is, i believe, galen, who said: 'omne animal post coitum triste præter mulierem gallumque.'"[ ] most of the elements that make up this typical picture of the state of coitus are not absolutely essential to that state, but they all come within the normal range of variation. there can be no doubt that this range is considerable. there would appear to be not only individual, but also racial, differences; there is a remarkable passage in vatsyayana's _kama sutra_ describing the varying behavior of the women of different races in india under the stress of sexual excitement--dravidian women with difficulty attaining erethism, women of the punjaub fond of being caressed with the tongue, women of oude with impetuous desire and profuse flow of mucus, etc.--and it is highly probable, ploss and bartels remark, that these characterizations are founded on exact observations.[ ] the various phenomena included in roubaud's description of the condition during coitus may all be directly or indirectly reduced to two groups: the first circulatory and respiratory, the second motor. it is necessary to consider both these aspects of the process of detumescence in somewhat greater detail, although while it is most convenient to discuss them separately, it must be borne in mind that they are not really separable; the circulatory phenomena are in large measure a by-product of the involuntary motor process. with the approach of detumescence the respiration becomes shallow, rapid, and to some extent arrested. this characteristic of the breathing during sexual excitement is well recognized; so that in, for instance, the _arabian nights_, it is commonly noted of women when gazing at beautiful youths whose love they desired, that they ceased breathing.[ ] it may be added that exactly the same tendency to superficial and arrested respiration takes place whenever there is any intense mental concentration, as in severe intellectual work.[ ] the arrest of respiration tends to render the blood venous, and thus aids in stimulating the vasomotor centers, raising the blood-pressure in the body generally, and especially in the erectile tissues. high blood-pressure is one of the most marked features of the state of detumescence. the heart beats are stronger and quicker, the surface arteries are more visible, the conjunctivæ become red. the precise degree of blood-pressure attained during coitus has been most accurately ascertained in the dog. in bechterew's laboratory in st. petersburg a manometer was introduced into the central end of the carotid artery of a bitch; a male dog was then introduced, and during coitus observations were made on the blood-pressure at the peripheral and central ends of the artery. it was found that there was a great general elevation of blood-pressure, intense hyperæmia of the brain, rapid alternations, during the act, of vasoconstriction and vasodilatation of the brain, with increase and diminution of the general arterial tension in relation with the various phases of the act, the greatest cerebral vasodilatation and hyperæmia coinciding with the moment following the intromission of the penis; the end of the act is followed by a considerable fall in the blood-pressure.[ ] i am not acquainted with any precise observations on the blood-pressure in human subjects during detumescence, and there are obvious difficulties in the way of such observations. it is probable, however, that the conditions found would be substantially the same. this is indicated, so far as the very marked increase of blood-pressure is concerned, by some observations made by vaschide and vurpas with the sphygmanometer on a lady under the influence of sexual excitement. in this case there was a relationship of sympathy and friendly tenderness between the experimenter and the subject, madame x, aged . experimenter and subject talked sympathetically, and finally, we are told, while the latter still had her hands in the sphygmanometer, the former almost made a declaration of love. madame x was greatly impressed, and afterward admitted that her emotions had been genuine and strong. the blood-pressure, which was in this subject habitually millimeters, rose to and even , indicating a very high pressure, which rarely occurs; at the same time madame x looked very emotional and troubled.[ ] some authorities are of opinion that irregularities in the accomplishment of the sexual act are specially liable to cause disturbances in the circulation. thus kisch, of prague, refers to the case of a couple practising coitus interruptus--the husband withdrawing before ejaculation--in which the wife, a vigorous woman, became liable after some years to attacks termed by kisch _neurasthenia cordis vasomotoria_, in which there was at daily or longer intervals palpitation, with feelings of anxiety, headache, dizziness, muscular weakness and tendency to faint. he regards coitus as a cause of various heart troubles in women: ( ) attacks of tachycardia in very excitable and sexually inclined women; ( ) attacks of tachycardia with dyspnoea in young women, with vaginismus; ( ) cardiac symptoms with lowered vascular tone in women who for a long time have practised coitus interruptus without complete sexual gratification (kisch, "herzbeschwerden der frauen verursacht durch den cohabitationsact," _münchener medizinisches wochenschrift_, , p. ). in this connection, also, reference may probably be made to those attacks of anxiety which freud associates with psychic sexual lesions of an emotional character. associated with this vascular activity in detumescence we find a general tendency to glandular activity. various secretions are formed abundantly. perspiration is copious, and the ancient relationship between the cutaneous and sexual systems seems to evoke a general activity of the skin and its odoriferous secretions. salivation, which also occurs, is very conspicuous in many lower animals, as for instance in the donkey, notably the female, who just before coitus stands with mouth open, jaws moving, and saliva dribbling. in men, corresponding to the more copious secretion in women, there is, during the latter stages of tumescence, a slight secretion of mucus--fürbringer's _urethrorrhoea ex libidine_--which appears in drops at the urethral orifice. it comes from the small glands of littré and cowper which open into the urethra. this phenomenon was well known to the old theologians, who called it _distillatio_, and realized its significance as at once distinct from semen and an indication that the mind was dwelling on voluptuous images; it was also known in classic times[ ]; more recently it has often been confused with semen and has thus sometimes caused needless anxiety to nervous persons. there is also an increased secretion of urine, and it is probable that if the viscera were more accessible to observation we might be able to demonstrate that the glands throughout the body share in this increased activity. the phenomena of detumescence culminate, however, and have their most obvious manifestation in motor activity. the genital act, as vaschide and vurpas remark, consists essentially in "a more and more marked tension of the motor state which, reaching its maximum, presents a short tonic phase, followed by a clonic phase, and terminates in a period of adynamia and repose." this motor activity is of the essence of the impulse of detumescence, because without it the sperm cells could not be brought into the neighborhood of the germ cell and be propelled into the organic nest which is assigned for their conjunction and incubation. the motor activity is general as well as specifically sexual. there is a general tendency to more or less involuntary movement, without any increase of voluntary muscular power, which is, indeed, decreased, and vaschide and vurpas state that dynamometric results are somewhat lower than normal during sexual excitement, and the variations greater.[ ] the tendency to diffused activity of involuntary muscle is well illustrated by the contraction of the bladder associated with detumescence. while this occurs in both sexes, in men erection produces a mechanical impediment to any evacuation of the bladder. in women there is not only a desire to urinate but, occasionally, actual urination. many quite healthy and normal women have, as a rare accident supervening on the coincidence of an unusually full bladder with an unusual degree of sexual excitement, experienced a powerful and quite involuntary evacuation of the bladder at the moment of orgasm. in women with less normal nervous systems this has, more rarely, been almost habitual. brantôme has perhaps recorded the earliest case of this kind in referring to a lady he knew who "quand on lui faisait cela elle se compissait à bon escient."[ ] the tendency to trembling, constriction of throat, sneezing, emission of internal gas, and the other similar phenomena occasionally associated with detumescence, are likewise due to diffusion of the motor disturbance. even in infancy the motor signs of sexual excitement are the most obvious indications of orgasm; thus west, describing masturbation in a child of six or nine months who practiced thigh-rubbing, states that when sitting in her high chair she would grasp the handles, stiffen herself, and stare, rubbing her thighs quickly together several times, and then come to herself with a sigh, tired, relaxed, and sweating, these seizures, which lasted one or two minutes, being mistaken by the relations for epileptic fits.[ ] the essentially motor character of detumescence is well shown by the extreme forms of erotic intoxication which sometimes appear as the result of sexual excitement. féré, who has especially called attention to the various manifestations of this condition, presents an instructive case of a man of neurotic heredity and antecedents, in whom it occasionally happened that sexual excitement, instead of culminating in the normal orgasm, attained its climax in a fit of uncontrollable muscular excitement. he would then sing, dance, gesticulate, roughly treat his partner, break the objects around him, and finally sink down exhausted and stupefied. (féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, chapter x.) in such a case a diffused and general detumescence has taken the place of the normal detumescence which has its main focus in the sexual sphere. the same relationship is shown in a case of impotence accompanied by cramps in the calves and elsewhere, which has been recorded by brügelmann ("zur lehre vom perversen sexualismus," _zeitschrift für hypnotismus_, , heft i). these muscular conditions ceased for several days whenever coitus was effected. an instructive analogy to the motor irradiations preceding the moment of sexual detumescence may be found in the somewhat similar motor irradiations which follow the delayed expulsion of a highly distended bladder. these sometimes become very marked in a child or young woman unable to control the motor system absolutely. the legs are crossed, the foot swung, the thighs tightly pressed together, the toes curled. the fingers are flexed in rhythmic succession. the whole body slowly twists as though the seat had become uncomfortable. it is difficult to concentrate the mind; the same remark may be automatically repeated; the eyes search restlessly, and there is a tendency to count surrounding objects or patterns. when the extreme degree of tension is reached it is only by executing a kind of dance that the explosive contraction of the bladder is restrained. the picture of muscular irradiation presented under these circumstances differs but slightly from that of the onset of detumescence. in one case the explosion is sought, in the other case it is dreaded; but in both cases there is a retarded muscular tension,--in the one case involuntary, in the other case voluntary--maintained at a point of acute intensity, and in both cases the muscular irradiations of this tension spread over the whole body. the increased motor irritability of the state of detumescence somewhat resembles the conditions produced by a weak anæsthetic and there is some interest in noting the sexual excitement liable to occur in anæsthesia. i am indebted to dr. j.f.w. silk for some remarks on this point:-- "i. sexual emotions may apparently be aroused during the stage of excitement preceding or following the administration of any anæsthetic; these emotions may take the form of mere delirious utterances, or may be associated with what is apparently a sexual orgasm. or reflex phenomena connected with the sexual organs may occasionally be observed under special circumstances; or, to put it in another way, such reflex possibilities are not always abolished by the condition of narcosis or anæsthesia. "ii. of the particular anæsthetics employed i am inclined to think that the possibility of such conditions arising is inversely proportionate to their strength, e.g., they are more frequently observed with a weak anæsthetic like nitrous oxide than with chloroform. "iii. sexual emotions i believe to be rarely observable in men, and this is remarkable, or, i should say, particularly noticeable, for the presence of nurses, female students, etc., might almost have led one to expect that the contrary would have been the case. on the other hand, it is among men that i have frequently observed a reflex phenomenon which has usually taken the shape of an erection of the penis when the structures in the neighborhood of the spermatic cord have been handled. "iv. among females the emotional sexual phenomena most frequently obtrude themselves, and i believe that if it were possible to induce people to relate their dreams they would very often be found to be of a sexual character." much more important than the general motor phenomena, more purposive though involuntary, are the specifically sexual muscular movements. from the very beginning of detumescence, indeed, muscular activity makes itself felt, and the peripheral muscles of sex act, according to kobelt's expression, as a peripheral sexual heart. in the male these movements are fairly obvious and fairly simple. it is required that the semen should be expressed from the vesiculæ seminales, propelled along the urethra, in combination with the prostatic fluid which is equally essential, and finally ejected with a certain amount of force from the urethral orifice. under the influence of the stimulation furnished by the contact and friction of the vagina, this process is effectively carried out, mainly by the rhythmic contractions of the bulbo-cavernosus muscle, and the semen is emitted in a jet which may be ejaculated to a distance varying from a few centimeters to a meter or more. with regard to the details of the psychic sides of this process a correspondent, a psychologist, writes as follows:-- "i have never noticed in my reading any attempt to analyze the sensations which accompany the orgasm, and, as i have made a good many attempts to make such an analysis myself, i will append the results on the chance that they may be of some value. i have checked my results so far as possible by comparing them with the experience of such of my friends as had coitus frequently and were willing to tell me as much as they could of the psychology of the process. "the first fact that i hit upon was the importance of pressure. as one of my informants picturesquely phrases it--'the tighter the fit the greater the pleasure.' this agrees, too, with their unanimous testimony that the pleasurable sensations were much greater when the orgasm occurred simultaneously in the man and woman. their analysis seldom went further than this, but a few remarked that the distinctive sensations accompanying the orgasm seem to begin near the root of the penis or in the testes, and that they are qualitatively different from the tickling sensations which precede them. "these tickling sensations are caused, i think, by the friction of the glands against the vaginal walls, and are supplemented by other sensations from the urethra, whose nerves are stimulated by pressure of the vaginal walls and sphincter. the specific sensation of the orgasm begins, i believe, with a strong contraction of the muscles of the urethral walls along the entire length of the canal, and is felt as a peculiar ache starting from the base of the penis and quickly becoming diffused through the whole organ. this sensation reaches its climax with the expulsion of the semen into the urethra and the consequent feeling of distention, which is instantly followed by the rhythmic peristaltic contractions of the urethral muscles which mark the climax of the orgasm. "the most careful introspection possible under the circumstances seems to show that these sensations arise almost wholly from the urethra and in a far less degree from the corona. during periods of great sexual excitement the nerves of the urethra and corona seem to possess a peculiar sensitivity and are powerfully stimulated by the violent peristaltic contractions of the muscles in the urethral walls during ejaculation. it seems possible that the intensity and volume of sensation felt at the glans may be due in part to the greater area of sensitive surface presented in the fossa as well as to the sensitivity of the corona, and in part to the fact that during the orgasm the glans is more highly congested than at any other time, and the nerve endings thus subjected to additional pressure. "if the foregoing statements are true, it is easy to see why the pleasure of the man is much increased when the orgasm occurs at the same time in his partner and himself, for the contractions of the vagina upon the penis would increase the stimulation of all the nerve endings in that organ for which a mechanical stimulus is adequate, and the prominence of the corpus spongiosum and corona would ensure them the greatest stimulation. it seems not improbable that the specific sensation of orgasm rises from the stimulation of the peculiar form of nerve end-bulbs which krause found in the corpus spongiosum and in the glans. "the characteristic massiveness of the experience is probably due largely to the great number of sensations of strain and pressure caused by the powerful reflex contraction of so many of the voluntary muscles. "of course, the foregoing analysis is purely tentative, and i offer it only on the chance that it may suggest some line of inquiry which may lead to results of value to the student of sexual psychology." in man the whole process of detumescence, when it has once really begun, only occupies a few moments. it is so likewise in many animals; in the genera bos, ovis, etc., it is very short, almost instantaneous, and rather short also in the equidæ (in a vigorous stallion, according to colin, ten to twelve seconds). as disselhorst has pointed out, this is dependent on the fact that these animals, like man, possess a vas deferens which broadens into an ampulla serving as a receptacle which holds the semen ready for instant emission when required. on the other hand, in the dog, cat, boar, and the canidæ, felidæ, and suidæ generally, there is no receptacle of this kind, and coitus is slow, since a longer time is required for the peristaltic action of the vas to bring the semen to the urogenital sinus. (r. disselhorst, _die accessorischen geschlechtsdrusen der wirbelthiere_, , p. .) in man there can be little doubt that detumescence is more rapidly accomplished in the european than in the east, in india, among the yellow races, or in polynesia. this is probably in part due to a deliberate attempt to prolong the act in the east, and in part to a greater nervous erethism among westerns. in the woman the specifically sexual muscular process is less visible, more obscure, more complex, and uncertain. before detumescence actually begins there are at intervals involuntary rhythmic contractions of the walls of the vagina, seeming to have the object of at once stimulating and harmonizing with those that are about to begin in the male organ. it would appear that these rhythmic contractions are the exaggeration of a phenomenon which is normal, just as slight contraction is normal and constant in the bladder. jastreboff has shown, in the rabbit, that the vagina is in constant spontaneous rhythmic contraction from above downward, not peristaltic, but in segments, the intensity of the contractions increasing with age and especially with sexual development. this vaginal contraction which in women only becomes well marked just before detumescence, and is due mainly to the action of the sphincter cunni (analogous to the bulbo-cavernosus in the male), is only a part of the localized muscular process. at first there would appear to be a reflex peristaltic movement of the fallopian tubes and uterus. dembo observed that in animals stimulation of the upper anterior wall of the vagina caused gradual contraction of the uterus, which is erected by powerful contraction of its muscular fiber and round ligaments while at the same time it descends toward the vagina, its cavity becoming more and more diminished and mucus being forced out. in relaxing, aristotle long ago remarked, it aspirates the seminal fluid. although the active participation of the sexual organs in woman, to the end of directing the semen into the womb at the moment of detumescence, is thus a very ancient belief, and harmonizes with the greek view of the womb as an animal in the body endowed with a considerable amount of activity,[ ] precise observation in modern times has offered but little confirmation of the reality of this participation. such observations as have been made have usually been the accidental result of sexual excitement and orgasm occurring during a gynæcological examination. as, however, such a result is liable to occur in erotic subjects, a certain number of precise observations have accumulated during the past century. so far as the evidence goes, it would seem that in women, as in mares, bitches, and other animals, the uterus becomes shorter, broader, and softer during the orgasm, at the same time descending lower into the pelvis, with its mouth open intermittently, so that, as one writer remarks, spontaneously recurring to the simile which commended itself to the greeks, "the uterus might be likened to an animal gasping for breath."[ ] this sensitive, responsive mobility of the uterus is, indeed, not confined to the moment of detumescence, but may occur at other times under the influence of sexual emotion. it would seem probable that in this erection, contraction, and descent of the uterus, and its simultaneous expulsion of mucus, we have the decisive moment in the completion of detumescence in woman, and it is probable that the thick mucus, unlike the earlier more limpid secretion, which women are sometimes aware of after orgasm, is emitted from the womb at this time. this is, however, not absolutely certain. some authorities regard detumescence in women as accomplished in the pouring out of secretions, others in the rhythmic genital contractions; the sexual parts may, however, be copiously bathed in mucus for an indefinitely long period before the final stage of detumescence is achieved, and the rhythmic contractions are also taking place at a somewhat early period; in neither respect is there any obvious increase at the final moment of orgasm. in women this would seem to be more conspicuously a nervous manifestation than in men. on the subjective side it is very pronounced, with its feeling of relieved tension and agreeable repose--a moment when, as one woman expresses it, together with intense pleasure, there is, as it were, a floating up into a higher sphere, like the beginning of chloroform narcosis--but on the objective side this culminating moment is less easy to define. various observations and remarks made during the past two or three centuries by bond, valisneri, dionis, haller, günther, and bischoff, tending to show a sucking action of the uterus in both women and other female animals, have been brought together by litzmann in r. wagner's _handwörterbuch der physiologie_ ( , vol. iii, p. ). litzmann added an experience of his own: "i had an opportunity lately, while examining a young and very erethic woman, to observe how suddenly the uterus assumed a more erect position, and descended deeper in the pelvis; the lips of the womb became equal in length, the cervix rounded, softer, and more easily reached by the finger, and at the same time a high state of sexual excitement was revealed by the respiration and voice." the general belief still remained, however, that the woman's part in conjugation is passive, and that it is entirely by the energy of the male organ and of the male sexual elements, the spermatozoa, that conjunction with the germ cell is attained. according to this theory, it was believed that the spermatozoa were, as wilkinson expresses it, in a history of opinion on this question, "endowed with some sort of intuition or instinct; that they would turn in the direction of the os uteri, wading through the acid mucus of the vagina; travel patiently upward and around the vaginal portion of the uterus; enter the uterus and proceed onward in search of the waiting ovum." (a.d. wilkinson, "sterility in the female," _transactions of the lincoln medical society_, nebraska, .) about the year fichstedt seems to have done something to overthrow this theory by declaring his belief that the uterus was not, as commonly supposed, a passive organ in coitus, but was capable of sucking in the semen during the brief period of detumescence. various authorities then began to bring forward arguments and observations in the same sense. wernich, especially, directed attention to this point in in a paper on the erectile properties of the lower segment of the uterus ("die erectionsfahigkeit des untern uterus-abschnitts," _beiträge zur geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, vol. i, p. ). he made precise observations and came to the conclusion that owing to erectile properties in the neck of the uterus, this part of the womb elongates during congress and reaches down into the pelvis with an aspiratory movement, as if to meet the glans of the male. a little later, in a case of partial prolapse, beck, in ignorance of wernich's theory, was enabled to make a very precise observation of the action of the uterus during excitement. in this case the woman was sexually very excitable even under ordinary examination, and beck carefully noted the phenomena that took place during the orgasm. "the os and cervix uteri," he states, "had been about as firm as usual, moderately hard and, generally speaking, in a natural and normal condition, with the external os closed to such an extent as to admit of the uterine probe with difficulty; but the instant that the height of excitement was at hand, the os opened itself to the extent of fully an inch, as nearly as my eye can judge, made five or six successive gasps as if it were drawing the external os into the cervix, each time powerfully, and, it seemed to me, with a regular rhythmical action, at the same time losing its former density and hardness and becoming quite soft to the touch. upon the cessation of the action, as related, the os suddenly closed, the cervix again hardened itself, and the intense congestion was dissipated." (j.r. beck, "how do the spermatozoa enter the uterus?" _american journal of obstetrics_, .) it would appear that in the early part of this final process of detumescence the action of the uterus is mainly one of contraction and ejaculation of any mucus that may be contained; dr. paul mundé has described "the gushing, almost in jets," of this mucus which he has observed in an erotic woman under a rather long digital and specular examination. (_american journal of obstetrics_, .) it is during the latter part of detumescence, it would seem, and perhaps for a short time after the orgasm is over, that the action of the uterus is mainly aspiratory. while the active part played by the womb in detumescence can no longer be questioned, it need not too hastily be assumed that the belief in the active movements of the spermatozoa must therefore be denied. the vigorous motility of the tadpole-like organisms is obvious to anyone who has ever seen fresh semen under the microscope; and if it is correct, as clifton edgar states, that the spermatozoa may retain their full activity in the female organs for at least seventeen days, they have ample time to exert their energies. the fact that impregnation sometimes occurs without rupture of the hymen is not decisive evidence that there has been no penetration, as the hymen may dilate without rupturing; but there seems no reason to doubt that conception has sometimes taken place when ejaculation has occurred without penetration; this is indicated in a fairly objective manner when, as has been occasionally observed, conception has occurred in women whose vaginas were so narrow as scarcely to admit the entrance of a goose-quill; such was the condition in the case of a pregnant woman brought forward by roubaud. the stories, repeated in various books, of women who have conceived after homosexual relations with partners who had just left their husbands' beds are not therefore inherently impossible.[ ] janke quotes numerous cases in which there has been impregnation in virgins who have merely allowed the penis to be placed in contact with the vulva, the hymen remaining unruptured until delivery.[ ] it must be added, however, that even if the semen is effused merely at the mouth of the vagina, without actual penetration, the spermatozoa are still not entirely without any resource save their own motility in the task of reaching the ovum. as we have seen, it is not only the uterus which takes an active part in detumescence; the vagina also is in active movement, and it seems highly probable that, at all events in some women and under some circumstances, such movement favoring aspiration toward the womb may be communicated to the external mouth of the vagina. riolan (_anthropographia_, , p. ) referred to the constriction and dilation of the vulva under the influence of sexual excitement. it is said that in abyssinia women can, when adopting the straddling posture of coitus, by the movements of their own vaginal muscles alone, grasp the male organ and cause ejaculation, although the man remains passive. according to lorion the annamites, adopting the normal posture of coitus, introduce the penis when flaccid or only half erect, the contraction of the vaginal walls completing the process; the penis is very small in this people. it is recognized by gynæcologists that the condition of vaginismus, in which there is spasmodic contraction of the vagina, making intercourse painful or impossible, is but a morbid exaggeration of the normal contraction which occurs in sexual excitement. even in the absence of sexual excitement there is a vague affection, occurring in both married and unmarried women, and not, it would seem, necessarily hysterical, characterized by quivering or twitching of the vulva; i am told that this is popularly termed "flackering of the shape" in yorkshire and "taittering of the lips" in ireland. it may be added that quivering of the gluteal muscles also takes place during detumescence, and that in indian medicine this is likewise regarded as a sign of sexual desire in women, apart from coitus. a non-medical correspondent in australia, w.j. chidley, from whom i have received many communications on this subject, is strongly of opinion from his own observations that not only does the uterus take an active part in coitus, but that under natural conditions the vagina also plays an active part in the process. he was led to suspect such an action many years ago, as well by an experience of his own, as also by hearing from a young woman who met her lover after a long absence that by the excitement thus aroused a tape attached to the underclothes had been drawn into the vagina. since then the confidences of various friends, together with observations of animals, have confirmed him in the view that the general belief that coitus must be effected by forcible entry of the male organ into a passive vagina is incorrect. he considers that under normal circumstances coitus should take place but rarely, and then only under the most favorable circumstances, perhaps exclusively in spring, and, most especially, only when the woman is ready for it. then, when in the arms of the man she loves, the vagina, in sympathy with the active movements of the womb, becomes distended at the touch of the turgescent, but not fully erect, penis, "flashes open and draws in the male organ." "all animals," he adds, "have sexual intercourse by the male organ being _drawn_, not forced, into the female. i have been borne out in this by friends who have seen horses, camels, mules and other large animals in the coupling season. what is more absurd, for instance, than to say that an entire _penetrates_ the mare? his penis is a sensitive, beautiful piece of mechanism, which brings its light head here and there till it touches the right spot, when the mare, _if ready_, takes it in. an entire's penis could not penetrate anything; it is a curve, a beautiful curve which would easily bend. a bull's, again, is turned down at the end and, more palpably still, would fold on itself if pressed with force. the womb and vagina of a beautiful and healthy woman constitute a living, vital, moving organ, sensitive to a look, a word, a thought, a hand on the waist." a well-known american author thus writes in confirmation of the foregoing view: "in nature the woman wooes. when impassioned her vagina becomes erect and dilated, and so lubricated with abundant mucus to the lips that entrance is easy. this dilatation and erectile expansion of vagina withdraws the hymen so close to the walls that penetration need not tear it or cause pain. the more muscular, primitive and healthy the woman the tougher and less sensitive the hymen, and the less likely to break or bleed. i think one great function of the foreskin also is to moisten the glans, so that it can be lubricated for entrance, and then to retract, moist side out, to make entrance still easier. i think that in nature the glans penetrates within the labia, is withstood a moment, vibrating, and then all resistance is withdrawn by a sudden 'flashing open' of the gates, permitting easy entrance, and that the sudden giving up of resistance, and substitution of welcome, with its instantaneous deep entrance, causes an almost immediate male orgasm (the thrill being irresistibly exciting). certainly this is the process as observed in horses, cattle, goats, etc., and it seems likely something analogous is natural in man." while it is easily possible to carry to excess a view which would make the woman rather than the man the active agent in coitus (and it may be recalled that in the cebidæ the penis, as also the clitoris, is furnished with a bone), there is probably an element of truth in the belief that the vagina shares in the active part which, there can now be little doubt, is played by the uterus in detumescence. such a view certainly enables us to understand how it is that semen effused on the exterior sexual organs can be conveyed to the uterus. it was indeed the failure to understand the vital activity of the semen and the feminine genital canal, co-operating together towards the junction of sperm cell and germ cell, which for so long stood in the way of the proper understanding of conception. even the genius of harvey, which had grappled successfully with the problem of the circulation, failed in the attempt to comprehend the problem of generation. mainly on account of this difficulty, he was unable to see how the male element could possibly enter the uterus, although he devoted much observation and study to the question. writing of the uterus of the doe after copulation, he says: "i began to doubt, to ask myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility make its way by attraction or injection to the seat of conception, and repeated examination led me to the conclusion that none of the semen reached this seat." (_de-generatione animalium_, exercise lxvii.) "the woman," he finally concluded, "after contact with the spermatic fluid _in coitu_, seems to receive an influence and become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers." although the specifically sexual muscular process of detumescence in women--as distinguished from the general muscular phenomena of sexual excitement which may be fairly obvious--is thus seen to be somewhat complex and obscure, in women as well as in men detumescence is a convulsion which discharges a slowly accumulated store of nervous force. in women also, as in men, the motor discharge is directed to a specific end--the intromission of the semen in the one sex, its reception in the other. in both sexes the sexual orgasm and the pleasure and satisfaction associated with it, involve, as their most essential element, the motor activity of the sexual sphere.[ ] the active co-operation of the female organs in detumescence is probably indicated by the difficulty which is experienced in achieving conception by the artificial injection of semen. marion sims stated in , in _clinical notes on uterine surgery_, that in injections in six women he had only once been successful; he believed that that was the only case at that time on record. jacobi had, however, practiced artificial fecundation in animals (in ) and john hunter in man. see gould and pyle, _anomalies and curiosities of medicine_, p. ; also janke (_die willkürliche hervorbringen des geschlechts_, pp. et seq.) who discusses the question of artificial fecundation and brings together a mass of data. the facial expression when tumescence is completed is marked by a high degree of energy in men and of loveliness in women. at this moment, when the culminating act of life is about to be accomplished, the individual thus reaches his supreme state of radiant beauty. the color is heightened, the eyes are larger and brighter, the facial muscles are more tense, so that in mature individuals any wrinkles disappear and youthfulness returns. at the beginning of detumescence the features are frequently more discomposed. there is a general expression of eager receptivity to sensory impressions. the dilatation of the pupils, the expansion of the nostrils, the tendency to salivation and to movements of the tongue, all go to make up a picture which indicates an approaching gratification of sensory desires; it is significant that in some animals there is at this moment erection of the ears.[ ] there is sometimes a tendency to utter broken and meaningless words, and it is noted that sometimes women have called out on their mothers.[ ] the dilatation of the pupils produces photophobia, and in the course of detumescence the eyes are frequently closed from this cause. at the beginning of sexual excitement, vaschide and vurpas have observed, tonicity of the eye-muscles seems to increase; the elevators of the upper lids contract, so that the eyes look larger and their mobility and brightness are heightened; with the increase of muscular tonicity strabismus occurs, owing to the greater strength of the muscles that carry the eyes inward.[ ] the facial expression which marks the culmination of tumescence, and the approach of detumescence is that which is generally expressive of joy. in an interesting psycho-physical study of the emotion of joy, dearborn thus summarizes its characteristics: "the eyes are brighter and the upper eyelid elevated, as also are the brows, the skin over the glabella, the upper lip and the corners of the mouth, while the skin at the outer canthi of the eye is puckered. the nostrils are moderately dilated, the tongue slightly extended and the cheeks somewhat expanded, while in persons with largely developed pinnal muscles the ears tend somewhat to incline forwards. the whole arterial system is dilated, with consequent blushing from this effect on the dermal capillaries of the face, neck, scalp and hands, and sometimes more extensively even; from the same cause the eyes slightly bulge. the whole glandular system likewise is stimulated, causing the secretions,--gastric, salivary, lachrymal, sudoral, mammary, genital, etc.--to be increased, with the resulting rise of temperature and increase in the katobolism generally. volubility is almost regularly increased, and is, indeed, one of the most sensitive and constant of the correlations in emotional delight.... pleasantness is correlated in living organisms by vascular, muscular and glandular extension or expansion, both literal and figurative." (g. dearborn, "the emotion of joy," _psychological review monograph supplements_, vol. ii, no. , p. .) all these signs of joy appear to occur at some stage of the process of sexual excitement. in some monkeys it would seem that the muscular movement which in man has become the smile is the characteristic facial expression of sexual tumescence or courtship. discussing the facial expression of pleasure in children, s.s. buckman has the following remarks: "there is one point in such expression which has not received due consideration, namely, the raising of lumps of flesh each side of the nose as an indication of pleasure. accompanying this may be seen small furrows, both in children and adults, running from the eyes somewhat obliquely towards the nose. what these characters indicate may be learned from the male mandril, whose face, particularly in the breeding season, shows colored fleshy prominences each side of the nose, with conspicuous furrows and ridges. in the male mandril these characters have been developed because, being an unmistakable sign of sexual ardor, they gave the female particular evidence of sexual feelings. thus such characters would come to be recognized as habitually symptomatic of pleasurable feelings. finding similar features in human beings, and particularly in children, though not developed in the same degree, we may assume that in our monkey-like ancestors facial characters similar to those of the mandril were developed, though to a less extent, and that they were symptomatic of pleasure, because connected with the period of courtship. then they became conventionalized as pleasurable symptoms." (s.s. buckmann, "human babies: what they teach," _nature_, july , .) if this view is accepted, it may be said that the smile, having in man become a generalized sign of amiability, has no longer any special sexual significance. it is true that a faint and involuntary smile is often associated with the later stages of tumescence, but this is usually lost during detumescence, and may even give place to an expression of ferocity. when we have realized how profound is the organic convulsion involved by the process of detumescence, and how great the general motor excitement involved, we can understand how it is that very serious effects may follow coitus. even in animals this is sometimes the case. young bulls and stallions have fallen in a faint after the first congress; boars may be seriously affected in a similar way; mares have been known even to fall dead.[ ] in the human species, and especially in men--probably, as bryan robinson remarks, because women are protected by the greater slowness with which detumescence occurs in them--not only death itself, but innumerable disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular excitement involved by the processes of detumescence. fainting, vomiting, urination, defæcation have been noted as occurring in young men after a first coitus. epilepsy has been not infrequently recorded. lesions of various organs, even rupture of the spleen, have sometimes taken place. in men of mature age the arteries have at times been unable to resist the high blood-pressure, and cerebral hæmorrhage with paralysis has occurred. in elderly men the excitement of intercourse with strange women has sometimes caused death, and various cases are known of eminent persons who have thus died in the arms of young wives or of prostitutes.[ ] these morbid results, are, however, very exceptional. they usually occur in persons who are abnormally sensitive, or who have imprudently transgressed the obvious rules of sexual hygiene. detumescence is so profoundly natural a process; it is so deeply and intimately a function of the organism, that it is frequently harmless even when the bodily condition is far from absolutely sound. its usual results, under favorable circumstances, are entirely beneficial. in men there normally supervenes, together with the relief from the prolonged tension of tumescence, with the muscular repose and falling blood-pressure,[ ] a sense of profound satisfaction, a glow of diffused well-being,[ ] perhaps an agreeable lassitude, occasionally also a sense of mental liberation from an overmastering obsession. under reasonably happy circumstances there is no pain, or exhaustion, or sadness, or emotional revulsion. the happy lover's attitude toward his partner is not expressed by the well-known sonnet (cxxix) of shakespeare:-- "past reason hunted, and no sooner had past reason hated." he feels rather with boccaccio that the kissed mouth loses not its charm, "bocca baciata non perde ventura." in women the results of detumescence are the same, except that the tendency to lassitude is not marked unless the act has been several times repeated; there is a sensation of repose and self-assurance, and often an accession of free and joyous energy. after completely satisfactory detumescence she may experience a feeling as of intoxication, lasting for several hours, an intoxication that is followed by no evil reaction. such, so far as our present vague and imperfect knowledge extends, are the main features in the process of detumescence. in the future, without doubt, we shall learn to know more precisely a process which has been so supremely important in the life of man and of his ancestors. footnotes: [ ] the elements furnished by the sense of touch in sexual selection have been discussed in the first section of the previous volume of these _studies_. [ ] see appendix a. "the origins of the kiss," in the previous volume. [ ] see, e.g., art. "erection," by retterer, in richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_, vol. v. [ ] guibaut, _traité clinique des maladies des femmes_, p. . adler discusses the sexual secretions in women and their significance, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, pp. - . [ ] in some parts of the world this is further aided by artificial means. thus it is stated by riedel (as quoted by ploss and bartels) that in the gorong archipelago the bridegroom, before the first coitus, anoints the bride's pudenda with an ointment containing opium, musk, etc. i have been told of an english bride who was instructed by her mother to use a candle for the same purpose. [ ] _parthenologia_, pp. , et seq. [ ] the connection of this mucous flow with sexual emotion was discussed early in the eighteenth century by schurig in his _gynæcologia_, pp. - ; it is frequently passed over by more modern writers. [ ] the drawing is reproduced by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter xvii; many facts bearing on the ethnography of coitus are brought together in this chapter. [ ] onanoff (paris société de biologie, may , ) proposed the name of bulbo-cavernous reflex for the smart contraction of the ischio-and bulbo-cavernosus muscles (erector penis and accelerator urinæ) produced by mechanical excitation of the glans. this reflex is clinically elicited by placing the index-finger of the left hand on the region of the bulb while the right hand rapidly rubs the dorsal surface of the glands with the edge of a piece of paper or lightly pinches the mucous membrane; a twitching of the region of the bulb is then perceived. this reflex is always present in healthy adult subjects and indicates the integrity of the physical mechanism of detumescence. it has been described by hughes. (c.h. hughes, "the virile or bulbo-cavernous reflex," _alienist and neurologist_, january, .) [ ] roubaud, _traité de l'impuissance_, , p. . [ ] _das weib_, seventh edition, vol. i, p. . [ ] the influence of impeded respiration in exciting more or less perverted forms of sexual gratification has been discussed in a section of "love and pain" in the third volume of these _studies_. [ ] see, e.g., the experiments of obici on this point, _revista sperimentale di freniatria_, , pp. , et seq. [ ] summarized in _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, march, , p. . the tendency to closure of the eyes noted by roubaud, to avoid contact of the light, indicates dilatation of the pupils, for which we need not seek other explanation than the general tendency of all peripheral stimulation, according to schiff's law, to produce such dilatation. [ ] vaschide and vurpas, "du coefficient sexuel de l'impulsion musicale," _archives de neurologie_, may, . [ ] in the _priapeia_ is an inscription which has thus been translated:-- "you see this organ, after which i'm called and which is my certificate, is humid; this moisture is not dew nor drops of rain, it is the outcome of sweet memory, recalling thoughts of a complacent maid." the translator supposes that semen is referred to, but without doubt the allusion is to the theologians' _distillatio_. [ ] a woman of , normal and intelligent, after conversing on love and passion, and then listening to the music of grieg and schumann, felt real and strong sexual excitement, increased by memories recalled by the presence of a sympathetic person. when then tested by the dynamometer the average of ten efforts with the right hand was found to be . (her normal average being . ) and with the left hand . (the normal being . ). there was, however, great variability in the individual pressures which sometimes equaled and even exceeded the subject's normal efforts. the voluntary muscles are thus in harmony with the approaching general sexual avalanche. (vaschide and vurpas, "quelques données expérimentales sur l'influence de l'excitation sexuelle," _archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. v-vi.) [ ] cf. macgillicuddy, _functional disorders of the nervous system in women_, p. ; féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. ; id., "note sur une anomalie de l'instinct sexuel," _belgique médicale_, ; also "analysis of the sexual impulse," in an earlier volume of these _studies_. [ ] j.p. west, "masturbation in early childhood," _medical standard_, november, . [ ] cf. the discussion of hysteria in "auto-erotism," vol. i of these _studies_. [ ] hirst, _text-book of obstetrics_, , p. . [ ] the earliest story of the kind with which i am acquainted, that of a widow who was thus impregnated by a married friend, is quoted in schurig's _spermatologia_ (p. ) from amatus lusitanus, _curationum centuriæ septum_, . [ ] janke, _die willkürliche hervorbringen des geschlechts_, p. . [ ] cf. adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, pp. - . [ ] féré, _pathologie des emotions_, p. . [ ] this is an instinctive impulse under all strong emotion in primitive persons. "the australian dieri," says a.w. howitt (_journal anthropological institute_, august, ), "when in pain or grief cry out for their father or mother." [ ] vaschide and vurpas, _archives de neurologie_, may, . [ ] f.b. robinson, _new york medical journal_, march , . [ ] féré deals fully with the various morbid results which may follow coitus, _l' instinct sexuel_, chapter x; id., _pathologie des emotions_, p. . [ ] with regard to the relationship of detumescence to the blood-pressure haig remarks: "i think that as the sexual act produces low and falling blood-pressure, it will of necessity relieve conditions which are due to high and rising blood-pressure, such, for instance, as mental depression and bad temper; and, unless my observation deceives me, we have here a connection between conditions of high blood-pressure, with mental and bodily depression, and the act of masturbation, for this act will relieve those conditions, and will tend to be practiced for this purpose." (a. haig, _uric acid_, sixth edition, p. .) [ ] a medical correspondent speaks of subjective feelings of temperature coming over the body from to hours after congress, and marked by sensations of cooling of body and glow of cheeks. in another case, though lassitude appears on the second day after congress, the first day after is marked by a notable increase in mental and physical activity. iii. the constituents of semen--function of the prostate--the properties of semen--aphrodisiacs--alcohol, opium, etc.--anaphrodisiacs--the stimulant influence of semen in coitus--the internal effects of testicular secretions--the influence of ovarian secretion. the germ cell never comes into the sphere of consciousness and cannot therefore concern us in the psychological study of the phenomena of the sexual instinct. but it is otherwise with the sperm cell, and the seminal fluid has a relationship, both direct and indirect, to psychic phenomena which it is now necessary to discuss. while the spermatozoa are formed in the glandular tissue of the testes, the seminal fluid as finally emitted in detumescence is not a purely testicular product, but is formed by mixture with the fluids poured out at or before detumescence by various glands which open into the urethra, and notably the prostate.[ ] this is a purely sexual gland, which in animals only becomes large and active during the breeding season, and may even be hardly distinguishable at other times; moreover, if the testes are removed in infancy, the prostate remains rudimentary, so that during recent years removal of the testes has been widely advocated and practiced for that hypertrophy of the prostate which is sometimes a distressing ailment of old age. it is the prostatic fluid, according to fürbringer, which imparts its characteristic odor to semen. it appears, however, to be the main function of the prostatic fluid to arouse and maintain the motility of the spermatozoa; before meeting the prostatic fluid the spermatozoa are motionless; that fluid seems to furnish a thinner medium in which they for the first time gain their full vitality.[ ] when at length the semen is ejaculated, it contains various substances which may be separated from it,[ ] and possesses various qualities, some of which have only lately been investigated, while others have evidently been known to mankind from a very early period. "when held for some time in the mouth," remarked john hunter, "it produces a warmth similar to spices, which lasts some time."[ ] possibly this fact first suggested that semen might, when ingested, possess valuable stimulant qualities, a discovery which has been made by various savages, notably by the australian aborigines, who, in many parts of australia, administer a potion of semen to dying or feeble members of the tribe.[ ] it is perhaps noteworthy that in central africa the testes of the goat are consumed as an aphrodisiac.[ ] in eighteenth century europe, schurig, in his _spermatologia_, still found it necessary to discuss at considerable length the possible medical properties of human semen, giving many prescriptions which contained it.[ ] the stimulation produced by the ingestion of semen would appear to form in some cases a part of the attraction exerted by _fellatio_; de sade emphasized this point; and in a case recorded by howard semen appears to have acted as a stimulant for which the craving was as irresistible as is that for alcohol in dipsomania.[ ] it must be remembered that the early history of this subject is more or less inextricably commingled with folk-lore practices of magical origin, not necessarily founded on actual observation of the physiological effects of consuming the semen or testes. thus, according to w.h. pearse (_scalpel_, december, ), it is the custom in cornwall for country maids to eat the testicles of the young male lambs when they are castrated in the spring, the survival, probably, of a very ancient religious cult. (i have not myself been able to hear of this custom in cornwall.) in burchard's penitential (cap. cliv, wasserschleben, op. cit., p. ) seven years' penance is assigned to the woman who swallows her husband's semen to make him love her more. in the seventeenth century (as shown in william salmon's _london dispensatory_, ) semen was still considered to be good against witchcraft and also valuable as a love-philter, in which latter capacity its use still survives. (bourke, _scatalogic rites_, pp. , .) in an earlier age (picart, quoted by crawley, _the mystic rose_, p. ) the manichæans, it is said, sprinkled their eucharistic bread with human semen, a custom followed by the albigenses. the belief, perhaps founded in experience, that semen possesses medical and stimulant virtues was doubtless fortified by the ancient opinion that the spinal cord is the source of this fluid. this was not only held by the highest medical authorities in greece, but also in india and persia. the semen is thus a natural stimulant, a physiological aphrodisiac, the type of a class of drugs which have been known and cultivated in all parts of the world from time immemorial. (dufour has discussed the aphrodisiacs used in ancient rome, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. ii, ch. .) it would be vain to attempt to enumerate all the foods and medicaments to which has been ascribed an influence in heightening the sexual impulse. (thus, in the sixteenth century, aphrodisiacal virtues were attributed to an immense variety of foods by liébault in his _thresor des remèdes secrets pour les maladies des femmes_, , pp. , et seq.) a large number of them certainly have no such effect at all, but have obtained this credit either on some magical ground or from a mistaken association. thus the potato, when first introduced from america, had the reputation of being a powerful aphrodisiac, and the elizabethan dramatists contain many references to this supposed virtue. as we know, potatoes, even when taken in the largest doses, have not the slightest aphrodisiac effect, and the irish peasantry, whose diet consists very largely of potatoes, are even regarded as possessing an unusually small measure of sexual feeling. it is probable that the mistake arose from the fact that potatoes were originally a luxury, and luxuries frequently tend to be regarded as aphrodisiacs, since they are consumed under circumstances which tend to arouse the sexual desires. it is possible also that, as has been plausibly suggested, the misunderstanding may have been due to sailors--the first to be familiar with the potato--who attributed to this particular element of their diet ashore the generally stimulating qualities of their life in port. the eryngo (_eryngium maritimum_), or sea holly, which also had an erotic reputation in elizabethan times, may well have acquired it in the same way. many other vegetables have a similar reputation, which they still retain. thus onions are regarded as aphrodisiacal, and were so regarded by the greeks, as we learn from aristophanes. it is noteworthy that marro, a reliable observer, has found that in italy, both in prisons and asylums, lascivious people are fond of onions (_la pubertà_, p. ), and it may perhaps be worth while to recall the observation of sérieux that in a woman in whom the sexual instinct only awoke in middle age there was a horror of leeks. in some countries, and especially in belgium, celery is popularly looked upon as a sexual stimulant. various condiments, again, have the same reputation, perhaps because they are hot and because sexual desire is regarded, rightly enough, as a kind of heat. fish--skate, for instance, and notably oysters and other shellfish--are very widely regarded as aphrodisiacs, and kisch attributes this property to caviar. it is probable that all these and other foods which have obtained this reputation, in so far as they have any action whatever on the sexual appetite, only possess it by virtue of their generally nutritious and stimulating qualities, and not by the presence of any special principle having a selective action on the sexual sphere. a beefsteak is probably as powerful a sexual stimulant as any food; a nutritious food, however, which is at the same time easily digestible, and thus requiring less expenditure of energy for its absorption, may well exert a specially rapid and conspicuous stimulant effect. but it is not possible to draw a line, and, as aquinas long since said, if we wish to maintain ourselves in a state of purity we shall fear even an immoderate use of bread and water. more definitely aphrodisiacal effects are produced by drugs, and especially by drugs which in large doses are poisons. the aphrodisiac with the widest popular reputation is cantharides, but its sexually exciting effects are merely an accidental result of its action in causing inflammation of the genito-urinary passage, and it is both an uncertain and a dangerous result, except in skillful hands and when administered in small doses. nux vomica (with its alkaloid strychnia), by virtue of its special action on the spinal cord, has a notably pronounced effect in heightening the irritability of the spinal ejaculatory center, though it by no means necessarily exerts any strengthening influence. alcohol exerts a sexually exciting effect, but in a different manner; it produces little stimulation of the cord and, indeed, even paralyzes the lumbar sexual center in large doses, but it has an influence on the peripheral nerve-endings and on the skin, and also on the cerebral centers, tending to arouse desire and to diminish inhibition. in this latter way, as adler remarks, it may, in small doses, under some circumstances, be beneficial in men with an excessive nervousness or dread of coitus, and women, in whom orgasm has been difficult to reach, have frequently found this facilitated by some previous indulgence in alcohol. the aphrodisiac effect of alcohol seems specially marked on women. but against the use of alcohol as an aphrodisiac it must be remembered that it is far from being a tonic to detumescence, at all events in men, and that there is much evidence tending to show that not only chronic alcoholism, but even procreation during intoxication is perilous to the offspring (see, e.g., andriezen, _journal of mental science_, january, , and cf. w.c. sullivan, "alcoholism and suicidal impulses," ib., april, , p. ); it may be added that bunge has found a very high proportion of cases of immoderate use of alcohol in the fathers of women unable to suckle their infants (g. von bunge, _die zunehmende unfähigkeit der frauen ihre kinder zu stillen_, ) while even an approximation to the drunken state is far from being a desirable prelude to the creation of a new human being. it is obvious that those who wish, for any reason, to cultivate a strict chastity of thought and feeling would do well to avoid alcohol altogether, or only in its lightest forms and in moderation. the aphrodisiacal effects of wine have long been known; ovid refers to them (e.g., _ars am._, bk. iii, ). clement of alexandria, who was something of a man of science as well as a christian moralist, points out the influence of wine in producing lasciviousness and sexual precocity. (_pædagogus_, bk. ii, chapter ii). chaucer makes the wife of bath say in the wife of bath's prologue:-- "and, after wyn, on venus moste [needs] i thinke: for al so siken as cold engendreth hayl, a likerous mouth moste have a likerous tayl, in womman vinolent is no defense, this knowen lechours by experience." alcohol, as chaucer pointed out, comes to the aid of the man, who is unscrupulous in his efforts to overcome a woman, and this not merely by virtue of its aphrodisiacal effects, and the apparently special influence which it seems to exert on women, but also because it lulls the mental and emotional characteristics which are the guardians of personality. a correspondent who has questioned on this point a number of prostitutes he has known, writes: "their accounts of the first fall were nearly always the same. they got to know a 'gentleman,' and on one occasion they drank too much; before they quite realized what was happening they were no longer virgins." "in the mental areas, under the influence of alcohol," schmiedeberg remarks (in his _elements of pharmacology_), "the finer degrees of observation, judgment, and reflection are the first to disappear, while the remaining mental functions remain in a normal condition. the soldier acts more boldly because he notices dangers less and reflects over them less; the orator does not allow himself to be influenced by any disturbing side-considerations as to his audience, hence he speaks more freely and spiritedly; self-consciousness is lost to a very great extent, and many are astounded at the ease with which they can express their thoughts, and at the acuteness of their judgment in matters which, when they are perfectly sober, with difficulty reach their minds; and then afterwards they are ashamed at their mistakes." the action of opium in small doses is also to some extent aphrodisiacal; it slightly stimulates both the brain and the spinal cord, and has sensory effects on the skin like alcohol; these effects are favored by the state of agreeable dreaminess it produces. in the seventeenth century venette (_la génération de l'homme_, part ii, chapter v) strongly recommended small doses of opium, then little known, for this purpose; he had himself, he says, in illness experienced its joys, "a shadow of those of heaven." in india opium (as well as cannabis indica) has long been a not uncommon aphrodisiac; it is specially used to diminish local sensibility, delaying the orgasm and thus prolonging the sexual act. (w.d. sutherland, "de impotentia," _indian medical gazette_, january, ). its more direct and stimulating influence on the sexual emotions seems indicated by the statement that prostitutes are found standing outside the opium-smoking dens of bombay, but not outside the neighboring liquor shops. (g.c. lucas, _lancet_, february , .) like alcohol, opium seems to have a marked aphrodisiacal effect on women. the case is recorded of a mentally deranged girl, with no nymphomania though she masturbated, who on taking small doses of opium at once showed signs of nymphomania, following men about, etc. (_american journal obstetrics_, may, , p. .) it may well be believed that opium acts beneficially in men when the ejaculatory centers are weak but irritable; but its actions are too widespread over the organism to make it in any degree a valuable aphrodisiac. various other drugs have more or less reputation as aphrodisiacs; thus bromide of gold, a nervous and glandular stimulant, is said to have as one of its effects a heightening of sexual feeling. yohimbin, an alkaloid derived from the west african yohimbehe tree, has obtained considerable repute during recent years in the treatment of impotence; in some cases (see, e.g., toff's results, summarized in _british medical journal_, february , ) it has produced good results, apparently by increasing the blood supply to the sexual organs, but has not been successful in all cases or in all hands. it must always be remembered that in cases of psychical impotence suggestion necessarily exerts a beneficial influence, and this may work through any drug or merely with the aid of bread pills. all exercise, often even walking, may be a sexual stimulant, and it is scarcely necessary to add that powerful stimulation of the skin in the sexual sphere, and more especially of the nates, is often a more effective aphrodisiac than any drug, whether the irritation is purely mechanical, as by flogging, or mechanico-chemical, as by urtication or the application of nettles. among the malays (with whom both men and women often use a variety of plants as aphrodisiacs, according to vaughan stevens) breitenstein states (_ jahre in india_, theil i, p. ) that both massage and gymnastics are used to increase sexual powers. the local application of electricity is one of the most powerful of aphrodisiacs, and mcmordie found on applying one pole to a uterine sound in the uterus and the other to the abdominal wall that in the majority of healthy women the orgasm occurred. among anaphrodisiacs, or sexual sedatives, bromide of potassium, by virtue of its antidotal relationship to strychnia, is one of the drugs whose action is most definite, though, while it dulls sexual desire, it also dulls all the nervous and cerebral activities. camphor has an ancient reputation as an anaphrodisiac, and its use in this respect was known to the arabs (as may be seen by a reference to it in the _perfumed garden_), while, as hyrtl mentions (loc. cit. ii, p. ), rue (_ruta graveolens_) was considered a sexual sedative by the monks of old, who on this account assiduously cultivated it in their cloister gardens to make _vinum rutæ_. recently heroin in large doses (see, e.g., becker, _berliner klinische wochenschrift_, november , ) has been found to have a useful effect in this direction. it may be doubted, however, whether there is any satisfactory and reliable anaphrodisiac. charcot, indeed, it is said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had any confidence was that used by the uncle of heloïse in the case of abelard. "_cela_ (he would add with a grim smile) _tranche la difficulte_." if semen is a stimulant when ingested, it is easy to suppose that it may exert a similar action on the woman who receives it into the vagina in normal sexual congress. it is by no means improbable that, as mattei argued in , this is actually the case. it is known that the vagina possesses considerable absorptive power. thus coen and levi, among others, have shown that if a tampon soaked in a solution of iodine is introduced into the vagina, iodine will be found in the urine within an hour. and the same is true of various other substances.[ ] if the vagina absorbs drugs it probably absorbs semen. toff, of braila (roumania), who attaches much importance to such absorption, considers that it must be analogous to the ingestion of organic extractives. it is due to this influence, he believes, that weak and anæmic girls so often become full-blooded and robust after marriage, and lose their nervous tendencies and shyness.[ ] it is, however, most certainly a mistake to suppose that the beneficial influence of coitus on women is exclusively, or even mainly, dependent upon the absorption of semen. this is conclusively demonstrated by the fact that such beneficial influence is exerted, and in full measure, even when all precautions have been taken to avoid any contact with the semen. in so far as _coitus reservatus_ or _interruptus_ may lead to haste or discomfort which prevents satisfactory orgasm on the part of the woman, it is without doubt a cause of defective detumescence and incomplete satisfaction. but if orgasm is complete the beneficial effects of coitus follow even if there has been no possibility of the absorption of semen. even after _coitus interruptus_, if it can be prolonged for a period long enough for the woman to attain full and complete satisfaction, she is enabled to experience what she may describe as a feeling of intoxication, lasting for several hours. it is in the action of the orgasm itself, and the vascular, secretory, and metabolic activities set up by the psychic and nervous influence of coitus with a beloved person, that we must seek the chief key to the effects produced by coitus on women, however these effects may possibly be still further heightened by the actual absorption of semen.[ ] the positive action of semen, or rather of the testicular products, has been much investigated during recent years, and appears on the whole to be demonstrated. the notable discovery by brown-séquard, a quarter of a century ago, that the ingestion of the testicular juices in states of debility and senility acted as a beneficial stimulant and tonic, opened the way to a new field of therapeutics. many investigators in various countries have found that testicular extracts, and more especially the spermin as studied by poehl,[ ] and by him regarded as a positive katalysator or accelerator of metabolic processes, exert a real influence in giving tone to the heart and other muscles, and in improving the metabolism of the tissues even when all influences of mental suggestion have been excluded.[ ] as the ovaries are strictly analogous to the testes, it was surmised that ovarian extract might prove a drug equally valuable with testicular products. as a matter of fact, ovarian extract, in the form of ovarin, etc., would seem to have proved beneficial in various disorders, more especially in anæmia and in troubles due to the artificial menopause. in most conditions, however, in which it has been employed the results are doubtful or uncertain, and some authorities believe that the influence of suggestion plays a considerable part here. there is, however, another use which is subserved by the testicular products, a use which may indeed be said to be implied in those uses to which reference has already been made, but is yet historically the latest to be realized and studied. it was not until that brown-séquard first suggested that an important secretion was elaborated by the ductless glands and received into the circulation, but that suggestion proved to be epoch-making. if these glandular secretions are so valuable when administered as drugs to other persons, must they not be of far greater value when naturally secreted and poured out into the circulation in the living body? it is now generally believed, on the basis of a large and various body of evidence, that this is undoubtedly so. in a very crude form, indeed, this belief is by no means modern. in opposition to the old writers who were inclined to regard the semen as an excretion which it was beneficial to expel, there were other ancient authorities who argued that it was beneficial to retain it as being a vital fluid which, if reabsorbed, served to invigorate the body. the great physiologist, haller, in the middle of the eighteenth century, came very near to the modern doctrine when he stated in his _elements of physiology_ that the sperm accumulated in the seminical vesicles is pumped back into the blood, and thus produces the beard and the hair together with the other surprising changes of puberty which are absent in the eunuch. the reabsorption of semen can scarcely be said to be a part of the modern physiological doctrine, but it is at least now generally held that the testes secrete substances which pass into the circulation and are of immense importance in the development of the organism. the experiments of shattock and seligmann indicate that the semen and its reabsorption in the seminal vesicles, or the nervous reactions produced by its presence, can have no part in the formation of secondary sexual characters. these investigators occluded the vas deferens in sheep by ligature, at an early age, rendering them later sterile though not impotent. the secondary sexual characters appeared as in ordinary sheep. spermatogenesis, these inquirers conclude, may be the initial factor, but the results must be attributed to the elaboration by the testicles of an internal secretion and its absorption into the general circulation.[ ] when animals are castrated there is enlargement of the ductless glands in the body, notably the thyroid and the suprarenal capsules.[ ] it is evident, therefore, that the secretions of these ductless glands are in some degree compensatory to those of the testes. but this compensatory action is inadequate to produce any sexual development in the absence of the testes. we see, therefore, how extremely important is the function of the testis. its significance is not alone for the race, it is not simply concerned with the formation of the spermatozoa which share equally with the ova the honor of making the mankind of the future. it also has a separate and distinct function which has reference to the individual. it elaborates those internal secretions which stimulate and maintain the physical and mental characters, constituting all that is most masculine in the male animal, all that makes the man in distinction from the eunuch. among various primitive peoples, including those of the european race whence we ourselves spring, the most solemn form of oath was sworn by placing the hand on the testes, dimly recognized as the most sacred part of the body. a crude and passing phase of civilization has ignorantly cast ignominy upon the sexual organs; the more primitive belief is now justified by our advancing knowledge. in these as in other respects the ovaries are precisely analogous to the testes. they not only form the ova, but they elaborate for internal use a secretion which develops and maintains the special physical and mental qualities of womanhood, as the testicular secretion those of manhood. moreover, as cecca and zappi found, removal of the ovaries has exactly the same effect on the abnormal development of the other ductless glands as has removal of the testes. it is of interest to point out that the internal secretion of the ovaries and its important functions seem to have been suggested before any other secretion than the sperm was attributed to the testes. early in the nineteenth century cabanis argued ("de l'influence des sexes sur le caractère des idées et des affections morales," _rapport du physique et du moral de l'homme_, , vol. ii, p. ) that the ovaries are secreting glands, forming a "particular humor" which is reabsorbed into the blood and imparts excitations which are felt by the whole system and all its organs. footnotes: [ ] the composite character of the semen was recognized by various old authors, some of whom said, (e.g., wharton) that it had three constituents, which they usually considered to be: ( ) the noblest and most essential part, from the testicles; ( ) a watery element from the vesiculæ; ( ) an oily element from the prostate. schurig, _spermatologia_, , p. . [ ] see, e.g., c. mansell moulin, "a contribution to the morphology of the prostate," _journal of anatomy and physiology_, january, ; g. walker, "a contribution to the anatomy and physiology of the prostate gland, and a few observations on ejaculation," _johns hopkins hospital bulletin_, october, . [ ] for a study of the semen and its constituents, see florence, "du sperme," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, . [ ] j. hunter, _essays and observations_, vol. i, p. . [ ] as regards one part of australia, walter roth, _ethnological studies among the queensland aborigines_, p. . [ ] sir h.h. johnston, _british central africa_, p. . [ ] cap. vii, pp. - , "de spermaticis virilis usu medico," [ ] w.l. howard, "sexual perversion," _alienist and neurologist_, january, . [ ] _zentralblatt für gynäkologie_, , no. . [ ] e. toff, "uber imprägnierung," _zentralblatt für gynäkologie_, april, . in a similar but somewhat more precise manner dufougère has argued ("la chlorose, ses rapports avec le marriage, son traitement par le liquide orchitique," thèse de bordeaux, ) that semen when absorbed by the vagina stimulates the secretion of the ovaries and thus exerts an influence over the blood in anæmia; in this way he seeks to explain why it is that coitus is the best treatment for chlorosis. [ ] in this connection i may refer to an interesting and suggestive paper by harry campbell on "the craving for stimulants" (_lancet_, october , ). no reference is made to coitus, but the author discusses stimulants as normal and beneficial products of the organism, and deals with the nature of the "physiological intoxication" they produce. [ ] spermin was first discovered in the sperm by schreiner in ; it has also been found in the thyroid, ovaries and various other glands. "the spermin secreting and elaborating organs," howard kelly remarks (_british medical journal_, january , ), "may be called the apothecaries' of the body, secreting many important medicaments, much more active and more accurately representing its true wants than artificially administered drugs." [ ] see, e.g., a summary of buschan's comprehensive discussion of the subject of organotherapy (eulenburg's _real-encyclopædie der gesammten heilkunde_) in _journal of mental science_, april, , p. . [ ] "observations upon the acquirement of secondary sexual characters, indicating the formation of an internal secretion by the testicles," _proceedings royal society_, vol. lxxiii, p. . [ ] see, e.g., the experiments of cecca and zappi, summarized in _british medical journal_, july , . iv. the aptitude for detumescence--is there an erotic temperament?--the available standards of comparison--characteristics of the castrated--characteristics of puberty--characteristics of the state of detumescence--shortness of stature--development of the secondary sexual characters--deep voice--bright eyes--glandular activity--everted lips--pigmentation--profuse hair--dubious significance of many of these characters. what, if any, are the indications which the body generally may furnish as to the individual's aptitude and vigor for the orgasm of detumescence? is there an erotic temperament outwardly and visibly displayed? that is a question which has often occupied those who have sought to penetrate the more intimate mysteries of human nature, and since we are here concerned with human beings in their relationship to the process of detumescence, we cannot altogether pass over this question, difficult as it is to discuss it with precision. the old physiognomists showed much confidence in dealing with the matter. possibly they had more opportunities for observation than we have, since they often wrote in days when life was lived more nakedly than among ourselves, but their descriptions, while sometimes showing much insight, are inextricably mixed up with false science and superstition. in the _de secretis mulierum_, wrongly attributed to albertus magnus, we find a chapter entitled "signa mulieris calidæ naturæ et quæ coit libenter," which may be summarized here. "the signs," we are told, "of a woman of warm temperament, and one who willingly cohabits are these: youth, an age of over , or younger, if she has been seduced, small, high breasts, full and hard, hair in the usual positions; she is bold of speech, with a delicate and high voice, haughty and even cruel of disposition, of good complexion, lean rather than stout, inclined to like drinking. such a woman always desires coitus, and receives satisfaction in the act. the menstrual flow is not abundant nor always regular. if she becomes pregnant the milk is not abundant. her perspiration is less odorous than that of the woman of opposite temperament; she is fond of singing, and of moving about, and delights in adornments if she has any." polemon, in his _sulla physionomia_, has given among the signs of libidinous impulse: knees turned inwards, abundance of hairs on the legs, squint, bright eyes, a high and strident voice, and in women length of leg below the knee. aristotle had mentioned among the signs of wantonness: paleness, abundance of hair on the body, thick and black hair, hairs covering the temples, and thick eyelids. in the seventeenth century bouchet, in his _serées_ (troisième serée), gave as the signs of virility which indicated that a man could have children: a great voice, a thick rough black beard, a large thick nose. g. tourdes (art. "aphrodisie," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_) thus summarized the ancient beliefs on this subject: "the erotic temperament has been described as marked by a lean figure, white and well-ranged teeth, a developed hairy system, a characteristic voice, air, and expression, and even a special odor." in approaching the question of the general physical indications of a special aptitude to the manifestation of vigorous detumescence, the most obvious preliminary would seem to be a study of the castrated. if we know the special peculiarities of those who by removal of the sexual glands at a very early age have been deprived of all ability to present the manifestations of detumescence, we shall probably be in possession of a type which is the reverse of that which we may expect in persons of a vigorously erotic temperament. the most general characteristics of eunuchs would appear to be an unusual tendency to put on fat, a notably greater length of the legs, absence of hair in the sexual and secondary sexual regions, a less degree of pigmentation, as noted both in the castrated negro and the white man, a puerile larynx and puerile voice. in character they are usually described as gentle, conciliatory, and charitable. there can be little doubt that castration in man tends to lead to lengthening of the legs (tibia and fibula) at puberty, from delayed ossification of the epiphyses. the hands and feet are also frequently longer and sometimes the forearms. at the same time the bones are more slender. the pelvis also is narrower. the eunuchs of cairo are said to be easily seen in a crowd from their tall stature. (collineau, quoting lortet, _revue mensuelle de l'ecole d'anthropologie_, may, .) the castrated skoptzy show increased stature, and, it seems, large ears, with decreased chest and head (l. pittard, _revue scientifique_, june , .) féré shows that in most of these respects the eunuch resembles beardless and infantile subjects. ("les proportions des membres et les caractères sexuels," _journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie_, november-december, .) similar phenomena are found in animals generally. sellheim, carefully investigating castrated horses, swine, oxen and fowls, found retardation of ossification, long and slender extremities, long, broad, but low skull, relatively smaller pelvis and small thorax. ("zur lehre von den sekundären geschlechtscharakteren," _beiträge zur geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, , summarized in _centralblatt für anthropologie_, , heft iv.) as regards the mental qualities and moral character of the castrated, griffiths considers that there is an undue prejudice against eunuchs, and refers to narses, who was not only one of the first generals of the roman empire, but a man of highly estimable character. (_lancet_, march , .) matignon, who has carefully studied chinese eunuchs, points out that they occupy positions of much responsibility, and, though regarded in many respects as social outcasts, possess very excellent and amiable moral qualities (_archives cliniques de bordeaux_, may, .) in america everett flood finds that epileptics and feeble-minded boys are mentally and morally benefited by castration. ("notes on the castration of idiot children," _american journal of psychology_, january, .) it is often forgotten that the physical and psychic qualities associated with and largely dependent on the ability to experience the impulse of detumescence, while essential to the perfect man, involve many egoistic, aggressive and acquisitive characteristics which are of little intellectual value, and at the same time inimical to many moral virtues. we have a further standard--positive this time rather than negative--to aid us in determining the erotic temperament: the phenomena of puberty. the efflorescence of puberty is essentially the manifestation of the ability to experience detumescence. it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the individuals in whom the special phenomena of puberty develop most markedly are those in whom detumescence is likely to be most vigorous. if such is the case we should expect to find the erotic temperament marked by developed larynx and deep voice, a considerable degree of pigmentary development in hair and skin, and a marked tendency to hairiness; while in women there should be a pronounced growth of the breasts and pelvis.[ ] there is yet another standard by which we may measure the individual's aptitude for detumescence: the presence of those activities which are most prominently brought into play during the process of detumescence. the individual, that is to say, who is organically most apt to manifest the physiological activities which mainly make up the process of detumescence, is most likely to be of pronounced erotic temperament. "erotic persons are of motor type," remark vaschide and vurpas, "and we may say generally that nearly all persons of motor type are erotic." the state of detumescence is one of motor and muscular energy and of great vascular activity, so that habitual energy of motor response and an active circulation may reasonably be taken to indicate an aptitude for the manifestation of detumescence. these three types may be said, therefore, to furnish us valuable though somewhat general indications. the individual who is farthest removed from the castrated type, who presents in fullest degree the characters which begin to emerge at the period of puberty, and who reveals a physiological aptitude for the vigorous manifestation of those activities which are called into action during detumescence, is most likely to be of erotic temperament. the most cautious description of the characteristics of this temperament given by modern scientific writers, unlike the more detailed and hazardous descriptions of the early physiognomists, will be found to be fairly true to the standards thus presented to us. the man of sexual type, according to biérent (_la puberté_, p. ), is hairy, dark and deep-voiced. "the men most liable to satyriasis," bouchereau states (art. "satyriasis," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_), "are those with vigorous nervous system, developed muscles, abundant hair on body, dark complexion, and white teeth." mantegazza, in his _fisiologia del piacere_, thus describes the sexual temperament: "individuals of nervous temperament, those with fine and brown skins, rounded forms, large lips and very prominent larynx enjoy in general much more than those with opposite characteristics. a universal tradition," he adds, "describes as lascivious humpbacks, dwarfs, and in general persons of short stature and with long noses." in a case of nymphomania in a young woman, described by alibert (and quoted by laycock, _nervous diseases of women_, p. ) the hips, thighs and legs were remarkably plump, while the chest and arms were completely emaciated. in a somewhat similar case described by marc in his _de la folie_ a peasant woman, who from an early age had experienced sexual hyperæsthesia, so that she felt spasmodic voluptuous feelings at the sight of a man, and was thus the victim of solitary excesses and of spasmodic movements which she could not repress, the upper part of the body was very thin, the hips, legs and thighs highly developed. in his work on _uterine and ovarian inflammation_ ( , p. ) tilt observes: "the restless, bashful eye, and changing complexion, in presence of a person of the opposite sex, and a nervous restlessness of body, ever on the move, turning and twisting on sofa or chair, are the best indications of sexual temperament." an extremely sensual little girl of , who was constantly masturbating when not watched, although brought up by nuns, was described by busdraghi (_archivio di psichiatria_, fas. i, , p. ) as having chestnut hair, bright black eyes, an elevated nose, small mouth, pleasant round face, full colored cheeks, and plump and healthy aspect. a highly intelligent young italian woman with strong and somewhat perverted sexual impulses is described as of attractive appearance, with olive complexion, small black almond-shaped eyes, dilated pupils, oblique thin eyebrows, very thick black hair, rather prominent cheek-bones, largely developed jaw, and with abundant down on lower part of cheeks and on upper lip. (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. v-vi.) as the type of the sensual woman in word and act, led by her passions to commit various sexual offenses, ottolenghi describes (_archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xii, fasc. v-vi, p. ) a woman of who attempted to kill her lover. the daughter of parents who were neurotic and themselves very erotic, she was a highly intelligent and vivacious woman, with a pleasing and open face, very thick dark chestnut hair, large cheek-bones, adipose buttocks almost resembling those of a hottentot, and very thick pubic hair. she was very fond of salt things. sexual inclination began at the age of . adler and moll remark, very truly, that, so far at least as women are concerned, sexual anæsthesia or sexual proclivity cannot be unfailingly read on the features. every woman desires to please, and coquetry is the sign of a cold, rather than of an erotic temperament.[ ] it may be added that a considerable degree of congenital sexual anæsthesia by no means prevents a woman from being beautiful and attractive, though it must probably still always be said that, as roubaud points out,[ ] the woman of cold and intellectual temperament, the "femme de tête," however beautiful and skillful she may be, cannot compete in the struggle for love with the woman whose qualities are of the heart and of the emotions. but it seems sufficiently clear that the practical observations of skilled and experienced observers agree in attributing to persons of erotic type certain general characteristics which accord with those negative and positive standards we may frame on the basis of castration, of puberty, and of detumescence. it may be worth while to note a few of these characteristics briefly. the abnormal lengthening of the long bones at the age of puberty in the castrated is, as we have seen, very pronounced. there is little tendency to associate length of limb with an erotic temperament, and a certain amount of data as well as of more vague opinion points in the opposite direction. the arabs would appear to believe that it is short rather than tall people in whom the sexual instinct is strongly developed, and we read in the _perfumed garden_: "under all circumstances little women love coitus more and evince a stronger affection for the virile member than women of a large size." in his elaborate investigation of criminals marro found that prostitutes and women guilty of sexual offenses, as also male sexual offenders, tend to be short and thick set.[ ] in european folk-lore the thick, bull neck is regarded as a sign of strong sexuality.[ ] mantegazza refers to a strong sexual temperament as being associated with arrest or disorder of bony development, and marro suggests that the proverbial salacity of rachitic individuals may be due to an increased activity of the sexual organs.[ ] it may be added that acromegaly, with its excessive bony growths, tends to be associated with premature sexual involution. a further point which is frequently mentioned in the case of women is the development of the chief secondary sexual regions: the pelvis and the breasts. it is, indeed, almost inevitable that there should be some degree of correlation between the aptitude for bearing children and the aptitude for experiencing detumescence. the reality of such a connection is not only evidenced by medical observations, but receives further testimony in popular beliefs. in italy women with large buttocks are considered wanton, and among the south slavs they are regarded as especially fruitful.[ ] blumenbach asserted that precocious venery will enlarge the breasts, and believed that he had found evidence of this among young london prostitutes.[ ] the association of the aptitude for detumescence with a tendency to a deep rather than to a high voice, both in men and women, has frequently been noted and has seldom been denied. the onset of puberty always affects the voice; in general, biérent states, the more bass the voice is the more marked is the development of the sexual apparatus; "a very robust man, with very developed sexual organs, and very dark and abundant hairy system, a man of strong puberty in a word, is nearly always a bass."[ ] the influence of sexual excitement in deepening the voice is shown by the rules of sexual hygiene prescribed to tenors, while a bass has less need to observe similar precautions. in women every phase of sexual life--puberty, menstruation, coitus, pregnancy--tends to affect the voice and always by giving it a deeper character. the deepening of the voice by sexual intercourse was an ancient greek observation, and martial refers to a woman's good or bad singing as an index to her recent sexual habits. prostitutes tend to have a deep voice. venturi points out that married women preserve a fresh voice to a more advanced age than spinsters, this being due to the precocious senility in the latter of an unused function. such a phenomenon indicates that the relationship of detumescence to the deepening of the voice is not quite simple. this is further indicated by the fact that in robust men abstinence still further deepens the voice (the monk of melodrama always has a bass voice), while excessive or precocious sexual indulgence tends to be associated with the same kind of puerile voice as is found in those persons in whom pubertal development has not been carried very far, or who are of what griffiths terms eunuchoid type. idiot boys, who are often sexually undeveloped, tend to have a high voice, while idiot girls (who often manifest marked sexual proclivities) not infrequently have a deep voice.[ ] bright dilated eyes are among the phenomena of detumescence, and are very frequently noted in persons of a pronounced erotic temperament. this is, indeed, an ancient observation, and burton says of people with a black, lively, and sparkling eye, "without question they are most amorous," drawing his illustrations mostly from classic literature.[ ] tardieu described the erotic woman as having bright eyes, and heywood smith states that the eyes of lascivious women resemble, though in a less degree, those of the insane.[ ] sexual excitement is one among many causes--intellectual excitement, pain, a loud noise, even any sensory irritation--which produce dilatation of the pupils and enlargement of the palpebral fissure, with some protrusion of the eyeball. the influence of the sexual system upon the eye appears to be far less potent in men than in women.[ ] sexual desire is, however, by no means the only irritant within the sexual sphere which may thus influence the eye; morbid irritations may produce the same effect. milner fothergill, in his book on _indigestion_, vividly describes the appearance of the eyes sometimes seen in ovarian disorder: "the glittering flash which glances out from some female irides is the external indication of ovarian irritation, and 'the ovarian gleam' has features quite its own. the most marked instance which ever came under my notice was due to irritation in the ovaries, which had been forced down in front of the uterus and been fixed there by adhesions. here there was little sexual proclivity, but the eyes were very remarkable. they flashed and glittered unceasingly, and at times perfect lightning bolts shot from them. usually there is a bright glittering sheen in them which contrasts with the dead look in the irides of sexual excess or profuse uterine discharges." the activity of the glandular secretions, and especially those of the skin, during detumescence, would lead us to expect that such secretory activity is an index to an aptitude for detumescence. as a matter of fact it is occasionally, though not frequently, noted by medical observers. it is stated that the erotic temperament is characterized by a special odor.[ ] the activity of the sweat-glands is seldom referred to by medical observers in describing persons of erotic temperament, although the descriptions of novelists not infrequently contain allusions to this point, and the literature of an earlier age shows that the tendency to perspiration, especially the moist hand, was regarded as a sure sign of a sensual temperament. "the moist-handed madonna imperia, a most rare and divine creature," remarks lazarillo in middleton's comedy _blurt, master-constable_, to quote one of many allusions to this point in the elizabethan drama. the lips are sometimes noted as red and everted, perhaps thick[ ]; tardieu remarked that the typically erotic woman has thick red lips. this corresponds with the characteristic type of the satyr in classic statues as in later paintings; his lips are always thick and everted. fullness, redness, and eversion of the lips are correlated with good breathing, the absence of anæmia, laughter, a well-fleshed face. this kind of mouth indicates, perhaps, not so much a congenitally erotic temperament, as an abandonment to impulse. the opposite type of mouth--with inverted, thin, and retracted lips--would appear to be found with especial frequency in persons who habitually repress their impulses on moral grounds. any kind of effort to restrain involuntary muscular action may lead to retraction of the lips: the effort to overcome anger or fear, or even the resistance to a strong desire to urinate or defecate. in religious young men, however, it becomes habitual and fixed. i recall a small band of medical students, gathered together from a large medical school, who were accustomed to meet together for prayer and bible-reading; the majority showed this type of mouth to a very marked degree: pale faces, with drawn, retracted lips. it may be termed the christian or pious _facies_. it is much less frequently seen in religious women (unless of masculine type), doubtless because religion for women is in a much less degree than for men a moral discipline. it may be added that an interesting form of this contraction of the lips, and one that is not purely repressive, is that which indicates the state of muscular tension associated with the impulse to guard and protect. in this form the contracted mouth is the index of tenderness, and is characteristic of the mother who is watching over the infant she is suckling at her breast. i have observed precisely the same expression in the face of a boy of with a large congenital scrotal hernia; when the tumor was being examined his lower lip became retracted, well marked lines appearing from the angles downwards, though the upper lip retained its normal expression it was precisely the tender look we may see in the faces of mothers who are watching anxiously over their offspring, and the emotion is evidently the same in both cases: solicitude for a sensitive and tenderly guarded object. the degree of pigmentation is clearly correlated with sexual vigor. "in general," heusinger laid down, in , "the quantity of pigment is proportional to the functional effectiveness of the genital organs." this connection is so profound that it may be traced very widely throughout the organic world. the connection between pigmentation and sexual activity is very ancient. even leaving out of account the wedding apparel of animals, nearly always gorgeous in scales and plumage and hair, the sexual orifice shows a more or less marked tendency to pigmentation during the breeding season from fishes upward, while in mammals the darker pigmentation of this region is a constant phenomenon in sexually mature individuals.[ ] in the human species both the negative standard of castration and the positive standard of puberty alike indicate a correlation of this kind. those individuals in whom puberty never fully develops and who are consequently said to be affected by infantilism, reveal a relative absence of pigment in the sexual centers which are normally pigmented to a high degree.[ ] among those asiatic races who extirpate the ovaries in young girls the skin remains white in the perineum, round the anus, and in the armpits.[ ] even in mature women who undergo ovariotomy, as kepler found, the pigmentation of the nipples and areola disappears, as well as of the perineum and anus, the skin taking on a remarkable whiteness. normally the sexual centers, and in a high degree the genital orifice, represent the maximum of pigmentation, and under some circumstances this is clearly visible even in infancy. thus babies of mixed black and white blood may show no traces of negro ancestry at birth, but there will always be increased pigmentation about the external genitalia.[ ] the linea fusca, which reaches from the pubes to the navel and occasionally to the ensiform cartilage, is a line of sexual pigmentation sometimes regarded as characteristic of pregnancy, but as andersen, of copenhagen, has found by the examination of several hundred children of both sexes, it exists in a slight form in about per cent. of young girls, and in almost as large a proportion of boys. but there is no doubt that it tends to increase with age as well as to become marked at pregnancy. at puberty there is a general tendency to changes in pigmentation; thus godin found that in per cent, adolescent changes occurred in the eyes and hair at this period, the hair becoming darker, though the eyes sometimes become lighter. ammon, in his investigation of conscripts at the age of (_post_, p. ), discovered the significant fact that the eyes and hair darken _pari passu_ with sexual development. in women, during menstruation, there is a general tendency to pigmentation; this is especially obvious around the eyes, and in some cases black rings of true pigment form in this position. even the skin of the negro women of loango sometimes becomes a few shades darker during menstruation.[ ] during pregnancy this tendency to pigmentation reaches its climax. pregnancy constantly gives rise to pigmentation of the face, the neck, the nipples, the abdomen, and this is especially marked in brunettes. this association of pigmentation and sexual aptitudes has been recognized in the popular lore of some peoples. thus the sicilians, who admire brown skin and have no liking either for a fair skin or light hair, believe that a white woman is incapable of responding to love. it is the brown woman who feels love; as it is said in sicilian dialect: "fimmina scura, fimmina amurusa."[ ] the dependence of pigmentation upon the sexual system is shown by the fact that irritation of the genital organs by disease will frequently suffice to produce a high degree of pigmentation. this may the neck, the trunk, the hands. simpson long since noted that uterine irritation apart from pregnancy may produce pigmentation of the areolæ of the nipples (_obstetric works_, vol. i, p. ). engelmann discussed the subject and gave cases, "the hystero-neuroses," pp. - , in _gynæcological transactions_, vol. xii, ; and a summary of a memoir by fouquet on this subject in _la gynécologie_, february, , will be found in _british medical journal_, march , , of all physical traits vigor of the hairy system has most frequently perhaps been regarded as the index of vigorous sexuality. in this matter modern medical observations are at one with popular belief and ancient physiognomical assertions.[ ] the negative test of castration and the positive test of puberty point in the same direction. it is at puberty that all the hair on the body, except that on the head, begins to develop; indeed, the very word "puberty" has reference to this growth as the most obvious sign of the whole process. when castration takes place at an early age all this development of pubescent hair is arrested. when the primary sexual organs are undeveloped the sexual hair is also undeveloped, as in a case, recorded by plant,[ ] of a girl with rudimentary uterus and ovaries who had little or no axillary and pubic hair, although the hair of the head was long and strong.[ ] the pseudo-michael scot among the _signa mulieris calidæ naturæ et quæ coit libenter_ stated that her hair, both on the head and body, is thick and coarse and crisp, and della porta, the greatest of the physiognomists, said that thickness of hair in women meant wantonness. venette, in his _generation de l'homme_, remarked that men who have much hair on the body are most amorous. at a more recent period roubaud has said that pubic hair in its quantity, color and curliness is an index of genital energy. a poor pilous system, on the other hand, roubaud regarded as a probable though not an irrefragable proof of sexual frigidity in women. "in the cold woman the pilous system is remarkable for the languor of its vitality; the hairs are fair, delicate, scarce and smooth, while in ardent natures there are little curly tufts about the temples." (_traité de l'impuissance_, pp. , .) martineau declared (_leçons sur les déformations vulvaires_, p. ) that "the more developed the genital organs the more abundant the hair covering them; abundance of hair appears to be in relation to the perfect development of the organs." tardieu described the typically erotic woman as very hairy. bergh found that among young danish prostitutes those who showed an unusual extension and amount of pubic hair included several women who were believed to be libidinous in a very high degree. (bergh, "symbolæ," etc., _hospitalstidende_, august, .) moraglia, again, in italy, in describing various women, mostly prostitutes, of unusually strong sexual proclivities, repeatedly notes very thick hair, with down on the face. (_archivio di psichiatria_, vol. xvi, fasc. iv-v.) marro, also, in italy found that abundance of hair and down is especially marked in women who are guilty of infanticide (as also pasini has found), though criminal women generally, in his experience, tend to have abnormally abundant hair. (_caratteri del delinquenti_, cap. xxii.) lombroso finds that prostitutes generally tend to be hairy (_donna delinquente_, p. .) a lad of , guilty of numerous crimes of violence having a sexual source, is described by arthur macdonald in america as having hair on the chest as well as all over the pubes. (a. macdonald, _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, january, , p. .) the association of hairiness with abnormal sexuality in the weak-minded has been noted at bicêtre (_recherches cliniques sur l'epilepsie_, vol. xix, pp. , .) hypertrichosis universalis, a general hairiness of body, has been described by cascella in a woman with very strong sexual desires, who eventually became insane. (_revista mensile di psichiatria_, , p. .) bucknill and tuke give the case of a religiously minded girl, with very strong and repressed sexual desires, who became insane; the only abnormal feature in her physical development was the marked growth of hair over the body. brantôme refers to a great lady known to him whose body was very hairy, and quotes a saying to the effect that hairy people are either rich or wanton; the lady in question, he adds, was both. (brantôme, _vie des dames galantes_, discours ii.) de sade, whose writings are now regarded as a treasure house of true observations in the domain of sexual psychology, makes the rodin of _justine_ dark, with much hair and thick eyebrows, while his very sexual sister is described as dark, thin and very hairy. (dühren, _der marquis de sade_, third edition, p. .) a correspondent who has always taken a special interest in the condition as regards hairiness of the women to whom he has been attracted, has sent me notes concerning a series of women. it may be gathered from these notes that women were neither markedly sexual nor markedly hairy (either as regards head or pubes), cases both hairy and sexual, was sexual and not hairy, none were hairy and not sexual. my correspondent remarks: "there may be women with scanty pubic hair possessing very strong sexual emotions. my own experience is quite the opposite." he has also independently reached the conclusion, arrived at by many medical observers and clearly suggested by some of the facts here brought together, that profuse hair frequently denotes a neurotic temperament. it may be added that mirabeau, as we learn from an anecdote told by an eyewitness and recorded by legouvé, had a very hairy chest, while the same is recorded of restif de la bretonne. it is a very ancient and popular belief that if a hairy man is not sensual he is strong: _vir pilosus aut libidinosus aut fortis_. the greeks insisted on the hairy nates of hercules, and ninon de l'enclos, when the great condé shared her bed without touching her, remarked, on seeing his hairy body: "ah, monseigneur, que vous devez être fort!" it may be doubted whether there is any exact parallelism between muscular strength and hairiness, for strength is largely a matter of training, but there can be no doubt that hairiness really tends to be associated with a generally vigorous development of the body. although the observations concerning hairiness of body as an index of vigor, whether sexual or only generally physical, are so ancient, until recent years no attempts have been made to demonstrate on a large scale whether there is actually a correlation between hairiness and sexual or general development of the body. some importance, therefore, attaches to ammon's careful observations of many thousand conscripts in baden. these observations fully justify this ancient belief, since they show that on the one hand the size of the testicles, and on the other hand girth of chest and stature, are correlated with hairiness of body. ammon's observations were made on nearly conscripts of the age of . from the point of view of the hairy system he divided them, into four classes:-- i. to which . per cent, of the men belonged, with smooth bodies. ii. including . per cent., only slight hairiness. iii. . per cent., more developed hairy system, but belly, breast and back smooth. iv. . per cent., hair all over body. v. . per cent., extreme cases of hairiness. the beardless were . per cent., those with no axillary hair per cent., those with no hair on pubis . per cent. this corresponds with the fact that hair appears first on the pubis and last on the chin. in the first class per cent, were beardless, per cent, without any axillary hair and per cent, without pubic hair. in the second class per cent, were beardless, per cent, without axillary hair. in the third class per cent, were beardless and per cent without axillary hair. below puberty the diameter of testicles is below millimeters. there were conscripts having a testicular diameter of less than millimeters. these infantile individuals all belonged to the first three classes and mostly to the first. the average testicular diameter in the first class was nearly millimeters, and progressively rose in the succeeding classes to over millimeters in the fourth. while there was not much difference in height, the first class was the shortest, the fourth the tallest. the fourth class also showed the greatest chest perimeter. the cephalic index of all classes was . (o. ammon, "l'infantilisme et le feminisme au conseil de révision," _l'anthropologie_, may-june, .) we thus see that it is quite justifiable to admit a type of person who possesses a more than average aptitude for detumescence. such persons are more likely to be short than tall; they will show a full development of the secondary sexual characters; the voice will tend to be deep and the eyes bright; the glandular activity of the skin will probably be marked, the lips everted; there is a tendency to a more than average degree of pigmentation, and there is frequently an abnormal prevalence of hair on some parts of the body. while none of these signs, taken separately, can be said to have any necessary connection with the sexual impulse, taken altogether they indicate an organism that responds to the instinct of detumescence with special aptitude or with marked energy. in these respects observation, both scientific and popular, concords with the probabilities suggested by the three standards in this matter which have already been set forth. no generalization, however, can here be set down in an absolute and unqualified manner. there are definite reasons why this should be so. there is, for instance, the highly important consideration that the sexual impulse of the individual may be conspicuous in two quite distinct ways. it may assume prominence because the individual possesses a highly vigorous and well-nourished organism, or its prominence may be due to mental irritation in a very morbid individual. in the latter case--although occasionally the two sets of conditions are combined--most of the signs we might expect in the former case may be absent. indeed, the sexual impulses which proceed from a morbid psychic irritability do not in most cases indicate any special aptitude for detumescence at all; in that largely lies their morbid character. again, just in the same way that the exaggerated impulse itself may either be healthy or morbid, so the various characters which we have found to possess some value as signs of the impulse may themselves either be healthy or morbid. this is notably the case as regards an abnormal growth of hair on the body, more especially when it appears on regions where normally there is little or no hair. such hypertrichosis is frequently degenerative in character, though still often associated with the sexual system. when, however, it is thus a degenerative character of sexual nature, having its origin in some abnormal foetal condition or later atrophy of the ovaries, it is no necessary indication of any aptitude for detumescence. idiots, more especially it would seem idiot girls, tend to show a highly developed hairy system. thus voisin, when investigating idiot and imbecile girls, found the hair long and thick and tending to occupy a large surface; one girl had hair on the areolæ of the mamma. (j. voisin, "conformation des organes génitaux chez les idiots," _annales d'hygiène publique_, june, .) it should be said that in idiot boys puberty is late, and the sexual organs as well as the sexual instinct frequently undeveloped, while in idiot girls there is no delay in puberty, and the sexual organs and instinct are frequently fully and even abnormally developed. hegar has described an interesting case showing an association, of foetal origin, between sexual anomaly and abnormal hairness. in this case a girl of had a uterus duplex, an infantile pelvis, very slight menstruation and undeveloped breasts. she was very hairy on the face, the anterior aspects of the chest and abdomen, the sexual regions, and the thighs, but not specially so on the rest of the body. the hairs were of lanugo-like character, but dark in color. (a. hegar, _beiträge zur geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, vol. i, p. iii, .) sometimes hiruties of the face and abdomen begin to appear during pregnancy, apparently from disease or degeneration of the ovaries. (a case is noted in _british medical journal_, august and , pp. and , .) laycock many years ago referred to the popular belief that women who have hair on the upper lip seldom bear children, and regarded this opinion as "questionless founded on fact." (laycock, _nervous diseases of women_, p. .) when this is so, we may suppose that the abnormal hairy growth is associated with degeneration of the ovaries. there is another factor which enters into this question and renders the definition of a physical sexual type less precise than it would otherwise be. the sexual instinct is common to all persons, and while it seems probable that there is a type of person in whom sexual energies are predominant, it would also appear that the people who otherwise show a very high level of energy in life usually exhibit a more than average degree of energy in matters of love. the predominantly sexual type, as we have seen, tends to be associated with a high degree of pigmentation; the person specially apt for detumescence inclines to belong to the dark rather than to the purely fair group of the population. on the other hand, the active, energetic, practical man, the man who is most apt for the achievement of success in life, tends to belong to the fair rather than to the dark type.[ ] thus we have a certain conflict of tendencies, and it becomes possible to assert that while persons with pronounced aptitude for sexual detumescence tend to be dark, persons whose pronounced energy in sexual matters tends to ensure success are most likely to be fair. the tendency of the fair energetic type, the type of the northern european man, to sexuality may be connected with the fact that the violent and criminal man who commits sexual crimes tends to be fair even amid a dark population. criminals on the whole would appear to tend to be dark rather than fair; but marro found in italy that the group of sexual offenders differed from all other groups of criminals in that their hair was predominantly fair. (_caratteri del delinquenti_, p. .) ottolenghi, in the same way, in examining sexual offenders, found that they showed per cent., of fair hair, though criminals generally (on a basis of nearly ) showed only per cent., and normal persons (nearly ) per cent. similarly while the normal persons showed only per cent. of blue eyes and criminals generally per cent., the sexual offenders showed per cent. of blue eyes. (ottolenghi, _archivio di psichiatria_, fasc. vi, , p. .) burton remarked (_anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section ii, mem. ii, subs. ii) that in all ages most amorous young men have been yellow-haired, adding, "synesius holds every effeminate fellow or adulterer is fair-haired." in folk-lore, it has been noted (kryptadia, vol. ii, p. ), red or yellow hair is sometimes regarded as a mark of sexuality. in harmony with this fairness, sexual offenders would appear to be more dolichocephalic than other criminals. in italy marro found the foreheads of sexual offenders to be narrow, and in california drähms found that while murderers had an average cephalic index of . , and thieves of . , that of sexual offenders was . on the other hand, high cheek-bones and broad faces--a condition most usually found associated with brachycephaly--have sometimes been noted as associated with undue or violent sexuality. marro noted the excess of prominent cheek-bones in sexual offenders, and in america it has been found that unchaste girls tend to have broad faces. (_pedagogical seminary_, december, , pp. , .) it will be seen that, when we take a comprehensive view of the facts and considerations involved, it is possible to obtain a more definite and coherent picture of the physical signs of a marked aptitude for detumescence than has hitherto been usually supposed possible. but we also see that while the _ensemble_ of these signs is probably fairly reliable as an index of marked sexuality, the separate signs have no such definite significance, and under some circumstances their significance may even be reversed. footnotes: [ ] see biérent, _la puberté_; marro, _la pubertà_ (and enlarged french translation, _la puberté_), and portions of g.s. hall's _adolescence_; also havelock ellis, _man and woman_ (fourth edition, revised and enlarged). [ ] adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, p. ; moll, "perverse sexualempfindung, psychische impotenz und ehe" (section ii), in senator and kaminer, _krankheiten und ehe_. [ ] roubaud, _traité de l'impuissance_, p. . [ ] marro, _caratteri del delinquenti_, p. . [ ] kryptadia, vol. ii, p. . [ ] marro, _la pubertà_, p. . in italy, the sensuality of the lame is the subject of proverbs. [ ] _archivio di psichiatria_, , p. ; kryptadia, vol. vi, p. . [ ] blumenbach, _anthropological treatises_, p. . [ ] biérent, _la puberté_, p. . [ ] venturi, _degenerazioni psico-sessuali_, pp. - . [ ] _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, section ii, mem. ii, sub. ii. [ ] _british gynæcological journal_, february, , p. . [ ] power, _lancet_, november , . [ ] with regard to the sexual relationships of personal odor, see the previous volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," section on smell. [ ] in european folk-lore thick lips in a woman are sometimes regarded as a sign of sensuality, kryptadia, vol. ii, p, . [ ] the direct dependence of sexual pigmentation on the primary sexual glands is well illustrated by a true hermaphroditic adult finch exhibited at the academy of sciences of amsterdam (may , ); this bird had a testis on the right side and an ovary on the left, and on the right side its plumage was of the male's colors, on the left of the female's color. [ ] see. e.g., papillault, _bulletin société d'anthropologie_, , p. . [ ] guinard, art. "castration," richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_. [ ] j. whitridge williams, _obstetrics_, , p. . [ ] _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . [ ] c. pitre, _medicina populare siciliana_, p. . in england, from notes sent to me by one correspondent, it would appear that the proportion of dark and sexually apt women to fair and sexually apt women is as to . the experience of others would doubtless give varying results, and in any case the fallacies are numerous. see, in the previous volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," section iv. [ ] in japan the same belief would appear to be held. in a nude figure representing the typical voluptuous woman by the japanese painter marugama okio (reproduced in ploss's _das weib_) the pubic and axillary hair is profuse, though usually sparse in japan. [ ] _centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , . [ ] it is important to remember that there is little correlation in this matter between the hair of the head and the sexual hair, if not a certain opposition. (see _ante_, p. .) according to one of the aphorisms of hippocrates, repeated by buffon, eunuchs do not become bald, and aristotle seems to have believed that sexual intercourse is a cause of baldness in men. (laycock, _nervous diseases of women_, p. .) [ ] for some of the evidence on this point, see havelock ellis, "the comparative abilities of the fair and the dark," _monthly review_, august, ; cf. id., _a study of british genius_, chapter x. the psychic state in pregnancy. the relationship of maternal and sexual emotion--conception and loss of virginity--the anciently accepted signs of this condition--the pervading effects of pregnancy on the organism--pigmentation--the blood and circulation--the thyroid--changes in the nervous system--the vomiting of pregnancy--the longings of pregnant women--maternal impressions--evidence for and against their validity--the question still open--imperfection of our knowledge--the significance of pregnancy. in analyzing the sexual impulse i have so far deliberately kept out of view the maternal instinct. this is necessary, for the maternal instinct is specific and distinct; it is directed to an aim which, however intimately associated it may be with that of the sexual impulse proper, can by no means be confounded with it. yet the emotion of love, as it has finally developed in the world, is not purely of sexual origin; it is partly sexual, but it is also partly parental.[ ] in so far as it is parental it is certainly mainly maternal. there is a drawing by bronzino in the louvre of a woman's head gazing tenderly down at some invisible object; is it her child or her lover? doubtless her child, yet the expression is equally adequate to the emotion evoked by a lover. if we were here specifically dealing with the emotion of love as a complex whole, and not with the psychology of the sexual impulse, it would certainly be necessary to discuss the maternal instinct and its associated emotions. in any case it seems desirable to touch on the psychic state of pregnancy, for we are here concerned not only with emotions very closely connected with the sexual emotions in the narrower sense, but we here at last approach that state which it is the object of the whole sexual process to achieve. in civilized life a period of weeks, months, even years, may elapse between the establishment of sexual relations and the occurrence of conception. under primitive conditions the loss of the virginal condition practically involves the pregnant condition, so that under primitive conditions very little allowance is made for the state, so common among civilized peoples, of the woman who is no longer a virgin, yet not about to become a mother. there is some interest in noting the signs of loss of virginity chiefly relied upon by ancient authors. in doing this it is convenient to follow mainly the full summary of authorities given by schurig in his _barthenologia_ early in the eighteenth century. the ancient custom, known in classic times, of measuring the neck the day after marriage was frequently practiced to ascertain if a girl was or was not a virgin. there were various ways of doing this. one was to measure with a thread the circumference of the bride's neck before she went to bed on the bridal night. if in the morning the same thread would not go around her neck it was a sure sign that she had lost her virginity during the night; if not, she was still a virgin or had been deflowered at an earlier period. catullus alluded to this custom, which still exists, or existed until lately, in the south of france. it is perfectly sound, for it rests on the intimate response by congestion of the thyroid gland to sexual excitement. (_parthenologia_, p. ; biérent, _la puberté_, p. ; havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, p. .) some say, schurig tells us, that the voice, which in the virgin is shrill, becomes rougher and deeper after the first coitus. he quotes riolan's statement that it is certain that the voice of those who indulge in venery is changed. on that account the ancients bound down the penis of their singers, and martial said that those who wish to preserve their voices should avoid coitus. democritus who one day had greeted a girl as "maiden" on the following day addressed her as "woman," while in the same way it is said that albertus magnus, observing from his study a girl going for wine for her master, knew that she had had sexual intercourse by the way because on her return her voice had become deeper. here, again, the ancient belief has a solid basis, for the voice and the larynx are really affected by sexual conditions. (_parthenologia_, p. ; marro, _la puberté_, p. ; havelock ellis, op. cit., pp. , .) others, again, schurig proceeds, have judged that the goaty smell given out in the armpits during the venereal act is also no uncertain sign of defloration, such odor being perceptible in those who use much venery, and not seldom in harlots and the newly married, while, as hippocrates said, it is not perceived in boys and girls. (_parthenologia_, p. ; cf. the previous volume of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," p. .) in virgins, schurig remarks, the pubic hair is said to be long and not twisted, while in women accustomed to coitus it is crisper. but it is only after long and repeated coitus, some authors add, that the pubic hairs become crisp. some recent observers, it may be remarked, have noted a connection between sexual excitation and the condition of the pubic hair in women. (cf. the present volume, _ante_ p. .) a sign to which the old authors often attached much importance was furnished by the urinary stream. in the _de secretis mulierum_, wrongly attributed to albertus magnus, it is laid down that "the virgin urinates higher than the woman." riolan, in his _anthropographia_, discussing the ability of virgins to ejaculate urine to a height, states that scaliger had observed women who were virgins emit urine in a high jet against a wall, but that married women could seldom do this. bouaciolus also stated that the urine of virgins is emitted in a small stream to a distance with an acute hissing sound. (_parthenologia_, p. .) a folk-lore belief in the reality of this influence is evidenced by the picardy _conte_ referred to already (_ante_, p. ), "la princesse qui pisse au dessus les meules." there is no doubt a tendency for the various stresses of sexual life to produce an influence in this direction, though they act far too slowly and uncertainly to be a reliable index to the presence or the absence of virginity. another common ancient test of virginity by urination rests on a psychic basis, and appears in a variety of forms which are really all reducible to the same principle. thus we are told in _de secretis mulierum_ that to ascertain if a girl is seduced she should be given to eat of powdered crocus flowers, and if she has been seduced she immediately urinates. we are here concerned with auto-suggestion, and it may well be believed that with nervous and credulous girls this test often revealed the truth. a further test of virginity discussed by schurig is the presence of modesty of countenance. if a woman blushes her virtue is safe. in this way girls who have themselves had experience of the marriage bed are said to detect the virgin. the virgin's eyes are cast down and almost motionless, while she who has known a man has eyes that are bright and quick. but this sign is equivocal, says schurig, for girls are different, and can simulate the modesty they do not feel. yet this indication also rests on a fundamentally sound psychological basis. (see "the evolution of modesty," in the first volume of these _studies_.) in his _syllepsilogia_ (section v, cap. i-ii), published in , schurig discusses further the anciently recognized signs of pregnancy. the real or imaginary signs of pregnancy sought by various primitive peoples of the past and present are brought together by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, chapter xxvii. both physically and psychically the occurrence of pregnancy is, however, a distinct event. it marks the beginning of a continuous physical process, which cannot fail to manifest psychic reactions. a great center of vital activity--practically a new center, for only the germinal form of it in menstruation had previously existed--has appeared and affects the whole organism. "from the moment that the embryo takes possession of the woman," robert barnes puts it, "every drop of blood, every fiber, every organ, is affected."[ ] a woman artist once observed to dr. stratz, that as the final aim of a woman is to become a mother and pregnancy is thus her blossoming time, a beautiful woman ought to be most beautiful when she is pregnant. that is so, stratz replied, if her moment of greatest physical perfection corresponds with the early months of pregnancy, for with the beginning of pregnancy metabolism is increased, the color of the skin becomes more lively and delicate, the breasts firmer.[ ] pregnancy may, indeed, often become visible soon after conception by the brighter eye, the livelier glance, resulting from greater vascular activity, though later, with the increase of strain, the face may tend to become somewhat thin and distorted. the hair, barnes states, assumes a new vigor, even though it may have been falling out before. the temperature rises; the weight increases, even apart from the growth of the foetus. the efflorescence of pregnancy shows itself, as in the blossoming and fecundated flower, by increased pigmentation.[ ] the nipples with their areolæ, and the mid-line of the belly, become darker; brown flecks (lentigo) tend to appear on the forehead, neck, arms, and body; while striæ--at first blue-red, then a brilliant white--appear on the belly and thighs, though these are scarcely normal, for they are not seen in women with very elastic skins and are rare among peasants and savages.[ ] the whole carriage of the woman tends to become changed with the development of the mighty seed of man planted within her; it simulates the carriage of pride with the arched back and protruded abdomen.[ ] the pregnant woman has been lifted above the level of ordinary humanity to become the casket of an inestimable jewel. it is in the blood and the circulation that the earliest of the most prominent symptoms of pregnancy are to be found. the ever increasing development of this new focus of vascular activity involves an increased vascular activity in the whole organism. this activity is present almost from the first--a few days after the impregnation of the ovum--in the breasts, and quickly becomes obvious to inspection and palpation. before a quite passive organ, the breast now rapidly increases in activity of circulation and in size, while certain characteristic changes begin to take place around the nipples.[ ] as a result of the additional work imposed upon it the heart tends to become slightly hypertrophied in order to meet the additional strain; there may be some dilatation also.[ ] the recent investigations of stengel and stanton tend to show that the increase of the heart's work during pregnancy is less considerable than has generally been supposed, and that beyond some enlargement and dilatation of the right ventricle there is not usually any hypertrophy of the heart. the total quantity of blood is raised. while increased in quantity, the blood appears on the whole to be somewhat depreciated in quality, though on this point there are considerable differences of opinion. thus, as regards hæmoglobin, some investigators have found that the old idea as to the poverty of hæmoglobin in pregnancy is quite unfounded; a few have even found that the hæmoglobin is increased. most authorities have found the red cells diminished, though some only slightly, while the white cells, and also the fibrin, are increased. but toward the end of pregnancy there is a tendency, perhaps due to the establishment of compensation, for the blood to revert to the normal condition.[ ] it would appear probable, however, that the vascular phenomena of pregnancy are not altogether so simple as the above statement would imply. the activity of various glands at this time--well illustrated by the marked salivation which sometimes occurs--indicates that other modifying forces are at work, and it has been suggested that the changes in the maternal circulation during pregnancy may best be explained by the theory that there are two opposing kinds of secretion poured into the blood in unusual degree during pregnancy: one contracting the vessels, the other dilating them, one or the other sometimes gaining the upper hand. suprarenal extract, when administered, has a vaso-constricting influence, and thyroid extract a vasodilating influence; it may be surmised that within the body these glands perform similar functions.[ ] the important part played by the thyroid gland is indicated by its marked activity at the very beginning of pregnancy. we may probably associate the general tendency to vasodilatation during early pregnancy with the tendency to goitre; freund found an increase of the thyroid in per cent. of cases. the thyroid belongs to the same class of ductless glands as the ovary, and, as bland sutton and others have insisted, the analogies between the thyroid and the ovary are very numerous and significant. it may be added that in recent years armand gautier has noted the importance of the thyroid in elaborating nucleo-proteids containing arsenic and iodine, which are poured into the circulation during menstruation and pregnancy. the whole metabolism of the body is indeed affected, and during the latter part of pregnancy study of the ingesta and egesta has shown that a storage of nitrogen and even of water is taking place.[ ] the woman, as pinard puts it, forms the child out of her own flesh, not merely out of her food; the individual is being sacrificed to the species. the changes in the nervous system of the pregnant woman correspond to those in the vascular system. there is the same increase of activity, a heightening of tension. bruno wolff, from experiments on bitches, concluded that the central nervous system in women is probably more easily excited in the pregnant than in the non-pregnant state, though he was not prepared to call this cerebral excitability "specific."[ ] direct observations on pregnant women have shown, without doubt, a heightened nervous irritability. reflex action generally is increased. neumann investigated the knee-jerk in women during pregnancy, labor, and the puerperium, and in a large number found that there was a progressive exaggeration with the advance of pregnancy, little or no change being observed in the early months; sometimes when no change was observed during pregnancy the knee-jerk still increased during labor, reaching its maximum at the moment of the expulsion of the foetus; the return to the normal condition took place gradually during the puerperium. tridandani found in pregnant women that though the superficial reflexes, with the exception of the abdominal, were diminished, the deep and tendon reflexes were markedly increased, especially that of the knee, these changes being more marked in primiparæ than in multiparæ, and more pronounced as pregnancy advanced, the normal condition returning with ten days after labor. electrical excitability was sensibly diminished.[ ] one of the first signs of high nervous tension is vomiting. as is well known, this phenomenon commonly appears early in pregnancy, and it is by many considered entirely physiological. barnes regards it as a kind of safety valve, a regulating function, letting off excessive tension and maintaining equilibrium.[ ] vomiting is, however, a convulsion, and is thus the simplest form of a kind of manifestation--to which the heightened nervous tension of pregnancy easily lends itself--that finds its extreme pathological form in eclampsia. in this connection it is of interest to point out that the pregnant woman here manifests in the highest degree a tendency which is marked in women generally, for the female sex, apart altogether from pregnancy, is specially liable to convulsive phenomena.[ ] there is some slight difference of opinion among authorities as to the precise nature and causation of the sickness of pregnancy. barnes, horrocks and others regard it as physiological; but many consider it pathological; this is, for instance, the opinion of giles. graily hewitt attributed it to flexion of the gravid uterus, kaltenbach to hysteria, and zaborsky terms it a neurosis. whitridge williams considers that it may be ( ) reflex, or ( ) neurotic (when it is allied to hysteria and amenable to suggestion), or ( ) toxæmic. it really appears to lie on the borderland between healthy and diseased manifestations. it is said to be unknown to farmers and veterinary surgeons. it appears to be little known among savages; it is comparatively infrequent among women of the lower social classes, and, as giles has found, women who habitually menstruate in a painless and normal manner suffer comparatively little from the sickness of pregnancy. we owe a valuable study of the sickness of pregnancy to giles, who analyzed the records of cases. he concluded that about one-third of the pregnant women were free from sickness throughout pregnancy, per cent. were free during the first three months. when sickness occurred it began in per cent. of cases in the first month, and was most frequent during the second month. the duration varied from a few days to all through. between the ages of and sickness was least frequent, and there was less sickness in the third than in any other pregnancy. (this corresponds with the conclusion of matthews duncan that is the most favorable age for pregnancy.) to some extent in agreement with guéniot, giles believes that the vomiting of pregnancy is "one form of manifestation of the high nervous irritability of pregnancy." this high nervous tension may overflow into other channels, into the vascular and excretory system, causing eclampsia; into the muscular system, causing chorea, or, expending itself in the brain, give rise to hysteria when mild or insanity when severe. but the vagi form a very ready channel for such overflow, and hence the frequency of sickness in pregnancy. there are thus three main factors in the causation of this phenomenon: ( ) an increased nervous irritability; ( ) a local source of irritation; ( ) a ready efferent channel for nervous energy. (arthur giles, "observations on the etiology of the sickness of pregnancy," _transactions obstetrical society of london_, vol. xxv, .) martin, who regards the phenomenon as normal, points out that when nausea and vomiting are absent or suddenly cease there is often reason to suspect something wrong, especially the death of the embryo. he also remarks that women who suffer from large varicose veins are seldom troubled by the nausea of pregnancy. (j.m.h. martin, "the vomiting of pregnancy," _british medical journal_, december , .) these observations may be connected with those of evans (_american gynæcological and obstetrical journal_, january, ), who attributes primary importance to the undoubtedly active factor of the irritation set up by the uterus, more especially the rhythmic uterine contractions; stimulation of the breasts produces active uterine contractions, and evans found that examination of the breasts sufficed to bring on a severe attack of vomiting, while on another occasion this was produced by a vaginal examination. evans believes that the purpose of these contractions is to facilitate the circulation of the blood through the large venous sinuses, the surcharging of the relatively stagnant pools with effete blood producing the irritation which leads to rhythmic contractions. it is on the basis of the increased vascular and glandular activity and the heightened nervous tension that the special psychic phenomena of pregnancy develop. the best known, and perhaps the most characteristic of these manifestations, is that known as "longings." by this term is meant more or less irresistible desires for some special food or drink, which may be digestible or indigestible, sometimes a substance which the woman ordinarily likes, such as fruit, and occasionally one which, under ordinary circumstances, she dislikes, as in one case known to me of a young country woman who, when bearing her child, was always longing for tobacco and never happy except when she could get a pipe to smoke, although under ordinary circumstances, like other young women of her class, she was without any desire to smoke. occasionally the longings lead to actions which are more unscrupulous than is common in the case of the same person at other times; thus in one case known to me a young woman, pregnant with her first child, insisted to her sister's horror on entering a strawberry field and eating a quantity of fruit. these "longings" in their extreme form may properly be considered as neurasthenic obsessions, but in their simple and less pronounced forms they may well be normal and healthy. the old medical authors abound in narratives describing the longings of pregnant women for natural and unnatural foods. this affection was commonly called _pica_, sometimes _citra_ or _malatia_. schurig, whose works are a comprehensive treasure house of ancient medical lore, devotes a long chapter (cap. ii) of his _chylologia_, published in , to pica as manifested mainly, though not exclusively, in pregnant women. some women, he tells us, have been compelled to eat all sorts of earthy substances, of which sand seems the most common, and one italian woman when pregnant ate several pounds of sand with much satisfaction, following it up with a draught of her own urine. lime, mud, chalk, charcoal, cinders, pitch are also the desired substances in other cases detailed. one pregnant woman must eat bread fresh from the oven in very large quantities, and a certain noble matron ate sweet cakes in one day and night. wheat and various kinds of corn as well as of vegetables were the foods desired by many longing women. one woman was responsible for pounds of pepper, another ate ginger in large quantities, a third kept mace under her pillow; cinnamon, salt, emulsion of almonds, treacle, mushrooms were desired by others. cherries were longed for by one, and another ate or lemons in one night. various kinds of fish--mullet, oysters, crabs, live eels, etc.--are mentioned, while other women have found delectation in lizards, frogs, spiders and flies, even scorpions, lice and fleas. a pregnant woman, aged , of sanguine temperament, ate a live fowl completely with intense satisfaction. skin, wool, cotton, thread, linen, blotting paper have been desired, as well as more repulsive substances, such as nasal mucus and feces (eaten with bread). vinegar, ice, and snow occur in other cases. one woman stilled a desire for human flesh by biting the nates of children or the arms of men. metals are also swallowed, such as iron, silver, etc. one pregnant woman wished to throw eggs in her husband's face, and another to have her husband throw eggs in her face. in the next chapter of the same work schurig describes cases of acute antipathy which may arise under the same circumstances (cap. iii, "de nausea seu antipathia certorum ciborum"). the list includes bread, meat, fowls, fish, eels (a very common repulsion), crabs, milk, butter (very often), cheese (often), honey, sugar, salt, eggs, caviar, sulphur, apples (especially their odor), strawberries, mulberries, cinnamon, mace, capers, pepper, onions, mustard, beetroot, rice, mint, absinthe, roses (many pages are devoted to this antipathy), lilies, elder flowers, musk (which sometimes caused vomiting), amber, coffee, opiates, olive oil, vinegar, cats, frogs, spiders, wasps, swords. more recently gould and pyle (_anomalies and curiosities of medicine_, p. ) have briefly summarized some of the ancient and modern records concerning the longings of pregnant women. various theories are put forward concerning the causation of the longings of pregnant women, but none of these seems to furnish by itself a complete and adequate explanation of all cases. thus it is said that the craving is the expression of a natural instinct, the system of the pregnant woman really requiring the food she longs for. it is quite probable that this is so in many cases, but it is obviously not so in the majority of cases, even when we confine ourselves to the longings for fairly natural foods, while we know so little of the special needs of the organism during pregnancy that the theory in any case is insusceptible of clear demonstration. allied to this theory is the explanation that the longings are for things that counteract the tendency to nausea and sickness. giles, however, in his valuable statistical study of the longings of a series of pregnant women, has shown that the percentage of women with longings is exactly the same ( per cent.) among women who had suffered at some time during pregnancy from sickness as among the women who had not so suffered. moreover, giles found that the period of sickness frequently bore no relation to the time when there were cravings, and the patient often had cravings after the sickness had ceased. according to another theory these longings are mainly a matter of auto-suggestion. the pregnant woman has received the tradition of such longings, persuades herself that she has such a longing, and then becomes convinced that, according to a popular belief, it will be bad for the child if the longing is not gratified. giles considers that this process of auto-suggestion takes place "in a certain number, perhaps even in the majority of cases."[ ] the duchess d'abrantès, the wife of marshal junot, in her _mémoires_ gives an amusing account of how in her first pregnancy a longing was apparently imposed upon her by the anxious solicitude of her own and her husband's relations. though suffering from constant nausea and sickness, she had no longings. one day at dinner after the pregnancy had gone on for some months her mother suddenly put down her fork, exclaiming: "i have never asked you what longing you have!" she replied with truth that she had none, her days and her nights being occupied with suffering. "no _envie!_" said the mother, "such a thing was never heard of. i must speak to your mother-in-law." the two old ladies consulted anxiously and explained to the young mother how an unsatisfied longing might produce a monstrous child, and the husband also now began to ask her every day what she longed for. her sister-in-law, moreover, brought her all sorts of stories of children born with appalling mother's marks due to this cause. she became frightened and began to wonder what she most wanted, but could think of nothing. at last, when eating a pastille flavored with pineapple, it occurred to her that pineapple is an excellent fruit, and one, moreover, which she had never seen, for at that time it was extremely rare. thereupon she began to long for pineapple, and all the more when she was told that at that season they could not be obtained. she now began to feel that she must have pineapple or die, and her husband ran all over paris, vainly offering twenty louis for a pineapple. at last he succeeded in obtaining one through the kindness of mme. bonaparte, and drove home furiously just as his wife, always talking of pineapples, had gone to bed. he entered the room with the pineapple, to the great satisfaction of the duchess's mother. (in one of her own pregnancies, it appears, she longed in vain for cherries in january, and the child was born with a mark on her body resembling a cherry--in scientific terminology, a _nævus_.) the duchess effusively thanked her husband and wished to eat of the fruit immediately, but her husband stopped her and said that corvisart, the famous physician, had told him that she must on no account touch it at night, as it was extremely indigestible. she promised not to do so, and spent the night in caressing the pineapple. in the morning the husband came and cut up the fruit, presenting it to her in a porcelain bowl. suddenly, however, there was a revulsion of feeling; she felt that she could not possibly eat pineapple; persuasion was useless; the fruit had to be taken away and the windows opened, for the very smell of it had become odious. the duchess adds that henceforth, throughout her life, though still liking the flavor, she was only able to eat pineapple by doing a sort of violence to herself. (_mémories de la duchesse d'abrantès_, vol. iii, chapter viii.) it should be added that, in old age, the duchess d'abrantès appears to have become insane. the influence of suggestion must certainly be accepted as, at all events, increasing and emphasizing the tendency to longings. it can scarcely, however, be regarded as a radical and adequate explanation of the phenomenon generally. if it is a matter of auto-suggestion due to a tradition, then we should expect to find longings most frequent and most pronounced in multiparous women, who are best acquainted with the tradition and best able to experience all that is expected of a pregnant woman. but, as a matter of fact, the women who have borne most children are precisely those who are least likely to be affected by the longings which tradition demands they should manifest. giles has shown that longings occur much more frequently in the first than in any subsequent pregnancy; there is a regular decrease with the increase in number of pregnancies until in women with ten or more children the longings scarcely occur at all. we must probably regard longings as based on a physiological and psychic tendency which is of universal extension and almost or quite normal. they are known throughout europe and were known to the medical writers of antiquity. old indian as well as old jewish physicians recognized them. they have been noted among many savage races to-day: among the indians of north and south america, among the peoples of the nile and the soudan, in the malay archipelago.[ ] in europe they are most common among the women of the people, living simple and natural lives.[ ] the true normal relationship of the longings of pregnancy is with the impulsive and often irresistible longings for food delicacies which are apt to overcome children, and in girls often persist or revive through adolescence and even beyond. such sudden fits of greediness belong to those kind of normal psychic manifestations which are on the verge of the abnormal into which they occasionally pass. they may occur, however, in healthy, well-bred, and well-behaved children who, under the stress of the sudden craving, will, without compunction and apparently without reflection, steal the food they long for or even steal from their parents the money to buy it. the food thus seized by a well-nigh irresistible craving is nearly always a fruit. fruit is usually doled out to children in small quantities as a luxury, but we are descended from primitive human peoples and still more remote ape-like ancestors, by whom fruit was in its season eaten copiously, and it is not surprising that when that season comes round the child, more sensitive than the adult to primitive influences, should sometimes experience the impulse of its ancestors with overwhelming intensity, all the more so if, as is probable, the craving is to some extent the expression of a physiological need. sanford bell, who has investigated the food impulses of children in america, finds that girls have a greater number of likes and dislikes in foods than boys of the same age, though at the same time they have less dislikes to some foods than boys. the proclivity for sweets and fruits shows itself as soon as a child begins to eat solids. the chief fruits liked are oranges, bananas, apples, peaches, and pears. this strong preference for fruits lasts till the age of or , though relatively weaker from to . in girls, however, bell notes the significant fact from our present point of view that at mid-adolescence there is a revived taste for sweets and fruits. he believes that the growth of children in taste in foods recapitulates the experience of the race. (s. bell, "an introductory study of the psychology of foods." _pedagogical seminary_, march, .) the heightened nervous impressionability of pregnancy would appear to arouse into activity those primitive impulses which are liable to occur in childhood and in the unmarried girl continue to the nubile age. it is a significant fact that the longings of pregnant women are mainly for fruit, and notably for so wholesome a fruit as the apple, which may very well have a beneficial effect on the system of the pregnant woman. giles, in his tabulation of the foods longed for by pregnant women, found that the fruit group was by far the largest, furnishing cases; apples were far away at the head, occurring in cases out of the who had longings, while oranges followed at a distance (with cases), and in the vegetable group tomatoes came first (with cases). several women declared "i could have lived on apples," "i was eating apples all day," "i used to sit up in bed eating apples."[ ] pregnant women appear seldom to long for the possession of objects outside the edible class, and it seems doubtful whether they have any special tendency to kleptomania. pinard has pointed out that neither lasègue nor lunier, in their studies of kleptomania, have mentioned a single shop robbery committed by a pregnant woman.[ ] brouardel has indeed found such cases, but the object stolen was usually a food. a further significant fact connecting the longings of pregnant women with the longings of children is to be found in the fact that they occur mainly in young women. we have, indeed, no tabulation of the ages of pregnant women who have manifested longings, but giles has clearly shown that these chiefly occur in primiparæ, and steadily and rapidly decrease in each successive pregnancy. this fact, otherwise somewhat difficult of explanation, is natural if we look upon the longings of pregnancy as a revival of those of childhood. it certainly indicates also that we can by no means regard these longings as exclusively the expression of a physiological craving, for in that case they would be liable to occur in any pregnancy unless, indeed, it is argued that with each successive pregnancy the woman becomes less sensitive to her own physiological state. there has been a frequent tendency, more especially among primitive peoples, to regard a pregnant woman's longings as something sacred and to be indulged, all the more, no doubt, as they are usually of a simple and harmless character. in the black forest, according to ploss and bartels, a pregnant woman may go freely into other people's gardens and take fruit, provided she eats it on the spot, and very similar privileges are accorded to her elsewhere. old english opinion, as reflected, for instance, in ben jonson's plays (as dr. harriet c.b. alexander has pointed out), regards the pregnant woman as not responsible for her longings, and kiernan remarks ("kleptomania and collectivism," _alienist and neurologist_, november, ) that this is in "a most natural and just view." in france at the revolution a law of the th germinal, in the year iii, to some extent admitted the irresponsibility of the pregnant woman generally,--following the classic precedent, by which a woman could not be brought before a court of justice so long as she was pregnant,--but the napoleonic code, never tender to women, abrogated this. pinard does not consider that the longings of pregnant women are irresistible, and, consequently, regards the pregnant woman as responsible. this is probably the view most widely held. in any case these longings seldom come up for medico-legal consideration. the phenomena of the longings of pregnancy are linked to the much more obscure and dubious phenomena of the influence of maternal impressions on the child within the womb. it is true, indeed, that there is no real connection whatever between these two groups of manifestations, but they have been so widely and for so long closely associated in the popular mind that it is convenient to pass directly from one to the other. the same name is sometimes given to the two manifestations; thus in france a pregnant longing is an _envie_, while a mother's mark on the child is also called an _envie_, because it is supposed to be due to the mother's unsatisfied longing. the conception of a "maternal impression" (the german _versehen_) rests on the belief that a powerful mental influence working on the mother's mind may produce an impression, either general or definite, on the child she is carrying. it makes a great deal of difference whether the effect of the impression on the child is general, or definite and circumscribed. it is not difficult to believe that a general effect--even, as sir arthur mitchell first gave good reason for believing, idiocy--may be produced on the child by strong and prolonged emotional influence working on the mother, because such general influence may be transmitted through a deteriorated blood-stream. but it is impossible at present to understand how a definite and limited influence working on the mother could produce a definite and limited effect on the child, for there are no channels of nervous communications for the passage of such influences. our difficulty in conceiving of the process must, however, be put aside if the fact itself can be demonstrated by convincing evidence. in order to illustrate the nature of maternal impressions, i will summarize a few cases which i have collected from the best medical periodical literature during the past fifteen years. i have exercised no selection and in no way guarantee the authenticity of the alleged facts or the alleged explanation. they are merely examples to illustrate a class of cases published from time to time by medical observers in medical journals of high repute. early in pregnancy a woman found her pet rabbit killed by a cat which had gnawed off the two forepaws, leaving ragged stumps; she was for a long time constantly thinking of this. her child was born with deformed feet, one foot with only two toes, the other three, the os calcis in both feet being either absent or little developed. (g.b. beale, tottenham, _lancet_, may , ). three months and a half before birth of the child the father, a glazier, fell through the roof of a hothouse, severely cutting his right arm, so that he was lying in the infirmary for a long time, and it was doubtful whether the hand could be saved. the child was healthy, but on the flexor surface of the radial side of the right forearm just above the wrist--the same spot as the father's injury--there was a nævus the size of a sixpence. (w. russell, paisley, _lancet_, may , .) at the beginning of pregnancy a woman was greatly scared by being kicked over by a frightened cow she was milking; she hung on to the animal's teats, but thought she would be trampled to death, and was ill and nervous for weeks afterwards. the child was a monster, with a fleshy substance--seeming to be prolonged from the spinal cord and to represent the brain--projecting from the floor of the skull. both doctor and nurse were struck by the resemblance to a cow's teats before they knew the woman's story, and this was told by the woman immediately after delivery and before she knew to what she had given birth. (a. ross paterson, reversby, lincolnshire, _lancet_, september , .) during the second month of pregnancy the mother was terrified by a bullock as she was returning from market. the child reached full term and was a well-developed male, stillborn. its head "exactly resembled a miniature cow's head;" the occipital bone was absent, the parietals only slightly developed, the eyes were placed at the top of the frontal bone, which was quite flat, with each of its superior angles twisted into a rudimentary horn. (j.t. hislop, tavistock, devon, _lancet_, november , .) when four months pregnant the mother, a multipara of , was startled by a black and white collie dog suddenly pushing against her and rushing out when she opened the door. this preyed on her mind, and she felt sure her child would be marked. the whole of the child's right thigh was encircled by a shining black mole, studded with white hairs; there was another mole on the spine of the left scapula. (c.f. williamson, horley, surrey, _lancet_, october , .) a lady in comfortable circumstances, aged , not markedly emotional, with one child, in all respects healthy, early in her pregnancy saw a man begging whose arms and legs were "all doubled up." this gave her a shock, but she hoped no ill effects would follow. the child was an encephalous monster, with the extremities rigidly flexed and the fingers clenched, the feet almost sole to sole. in the next pregnancy she frequently passed a man who was a partial cripple, but she was not unduly depressed; the child was a counterpart of the last, except that the head was normal. the next child was strong and well formed. (c.w. chapman, london, _lancet_, october , .) when the pregnant mother was working in a hayfield her husband threw at her a young hare he had found in the hay; it struck her on the cheek and neck. her daughter has on the left cheek an oblong patch of soft dark hair, in color and character clearly resembling the fur of a very young hare. (a. mackay, port appin, n.b., _lancet_, december , . the writer records also four other cases which have happened in his experience.) when the mother was pregnant her husband had to attend to a sow who could not give birth to her pigs; he bled her freely, cutting a notch out of both ears. his wife insisted on seeing the sow. the helix of each ear of her child at birth was gone, for nearly or quite half an inch, as if cut purposely. (r.p. roons, _medical world_, .) a lady when pregnant was much interested in a story in which one of the characters had a supernumerary digit, and this often recurred to her mind. her baby had a supernumerary digit on one hand. (j. jenkyns, aberdeen, _british medical journal_, march , . the writer also records another case.) when pregnant the mother saw in the forest a new-born fawn which was a double monstrosity. her child was a similar double monstrosity (_cephalothora copagus_). (hartmann, _münchener medicinisches wochenschrift_, no. , .) a well developed woman of , who had ten children in twelve years, in the third month of her tenth pregnancy saw a child run over by a street car, which crushed the upper and back part of its head. her own child was anencephalic and acranial, with entire absence of vault of skull. (f.a. stahl, _american journal of obstetrics_, april, .) a healthy woman with no skin blemish had during her third pregnancy a violent appetite for sunfish. during or after the fourth month her husband, as a surprise, brought her some sunfish alive, placing them in a pail of water in the porch. she stumbled against the pail and the shock caused the fish to flap over the pail and come in violent contact with her leg. the cold wriggling fish produced a nervous shock, but she attached no importance to this. the child (a girl) had at birth a mark of bronze pigment resembling a fish with the head uppermost (photograph given) on the corresponding part of the same leg. daughter's health good; throughout life she has had a strong craving for sunfish, which she has sometimes eaten till she has vomited from repletion. (c.f. gardiner, colorado springs, _american journal obstetrics_, february, .) the next case occurred in a bitch. a thoroughbred fox terrier bitch strayed and was discovered a day or two later with her right foreleg broken. the limb was set under chloroform with the help of röntgen rays, and the dog made a good recovery. several weeks later she gave birth to a puppy with a right foreleg that was ill-developed and minus the paw. (j. booth, cork, _british medical journal_, september , .) four months before the birth of her child a woman with four healthy children and no history of deformity in the family fell and cut her left wrist severely against a broken bowl; she had a great fright and shock. her child, otherwise perfect, was born without left hand and wrist, the stump of arm terminating at lower end of radius and ulna. (g. ainslie johnston, ambleside, _british medical journal_, april , .) the belief in the reality of the transference of strong mental or physical impressions on the mother into physical changes in the child she is bearing is very ancient and widespread. most writers on the subject begin with the book of genesis and the astute device of jacob in influencing the color of his lambs by mental impressions on his ewes. but the belief exists among even more primitive people than the early hebrews, and in all parts of the world.[ ] among the greeks there is a trace of the belief in hippocrates, the first of the world's great physicians, while soranus, the most famous of ancient gynæcologists, states the matter in the most precise manner, with instances in proof. the belief continued to persist unquestioned throughout the middle ages. the first author who denied the influence of maternal impressions altogether appears to have been the famous anatomist, realdus columbus, who was a professor at padua, pisa, and rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. in the same century, however, another and not less famous neapolitan, della porta, for the first time formulated a definite theory of maternal impressions. a little later, early in the seventeenth century, a philosophic physician at padua, fortunatus licetus, took up an intermediate position which still finds, perhaps reasonably, a great many adherents. he recognized that a very frequent cause of malformation in the child is to be found in morbid antenatal conditions, but at the same time was not prepared to deny absolutely and in every case the influence of maternal impression on such conditions. malebranche, the platonic philosopher, allowed the greatest extension to the power of the maternal imagination. in the eighteenth century, however, the new spirit of free inquiry, of radical criticism, and unfettered logic, led to a sceptical attitude toward this ancient belief then flourishing vigorously.[ ] in , a few years after malebranche's death, james blondel, a physician of extreme acuteness, who had been born in paris, was educated at leyden, and practiced in london, published the first methodical and thorough attack on the doctrine of maternal impressions, _the strength of imagination of pregnant women examined_, and exercised his great ability in ridiculing it. haller, roederer, and sömmering followed in the steps of blondel, and were either sceptical or hostile to the ancient belief. blumenbach, however, admitted the influence of maternal impressions. erasmus darwin, as well as goethe in his _wahlverwandtschaften_, even accepted the influence of paternal impressions on the child. by the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of physicians were inclined to relegate maternal impressions to the region of superstition. yet the exceptions were of notable importance. burdach, when all deductions were made, still found it necessary to retain the belief in maternal impressions, and von baer, the founder of embryology, also accepted it, supported by a case, occurring in his own sister, which he was able to investigate before the child's birth. l.w.t. bischoff, also, while submitting the doctrine to acute criticism, found it impossible to reject maternal impressions absolutely, and he remarked that the number of adherents to the doctrine was showing a tendency to increase rather than diminish. johannes müller, the founder of modern physiology in germany, declared himself against it, and his influence long prevailed; valentin, rudolf wagner, and emil du bois-reymond were on the same side. on the other hand various eminent gynæcologists--litzmann, roth, hennig, etc.--have argued in favor of the reality of maternal impressions.[ ] the long conflict of opinion which has taken place over this opinion has still left the matter unsettled. the acutest critics of the ancient belief constantly conclude the discussion with an expression of doubt and uncertainty. even if the majority of authorities are inclined to reject maternal impressions, the scientific eminence of those who accept them makes a decisive opinion difficult. the arguments against such influence are perfectly sound: ( ) it is a primitive belief of unscientific origin; ( ) it is impossible to conceive how such influence can operate since there is no nervous connection between mother and child; ( ) comparatively few cases have been submitted to severe critical investigation; ( ) it is absurd to ascribe developmental defects to influences which arise long after the foetus had assumed its definite shape[ ]; ( ) in any case the phenomenon must be rare, for william hunter could not find a coincidence between maternal impressions and foetal marks through a period of several years, and bischoff found no case in , deliveries. these statements embody the whole of the argument against maternal impressions, yet it is clear that they do not settle the matter. edgar, in a manual of obstetrics which is widely regarded as a standard work, states that this is "yet a mooted question."[ ] ballantyne, again, in a discussion of this influence at the edinburgh obstetrical society, summarizing the result of a year's inquiry, concluded that it is still "_sub judice_."[ ] in a subsequent discussion of the question he has somewhat modified his opinion, and is inclined to deny that definite impressions on the pregnant woman's mind can cause similar defects in the foetus; they are "accidental coincidences," but he adds that a few of the cases are difficult to explain away. at the same time he fully believes that prolonged and strongly marked mental states of the mother may affect the development of the foetus in her uterus, causing vascular and nutritive disturbances, irregularities of development, and idiocy.[ ] whether and in how far mental impressions on the mother can produce definite mental and emotional disposition in the child is a special aspect of the question to which scarcely any inquiry has been devoted. so distinguished a biologist as mr. a.w. wallace has, however, called attention to this point, bringing forward evidence on the question and emphasizing the need of further investigation. "such transmission of mental influence," he remarks, "will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable," (a.w. wallace, "prenatal influences on character," _nature_, august , .) it has already been pointed out that a large number of cases of foetal deformities, supposed to be due to maternal impressions, cannot possibly be so caused because the impression took place at a period when the development of the foetus must already have been decided. in this connection, however, it must be noted that dabney has observed a relationship between the time of supposed mental impressions and the nature of the actual defect which is of considerable significance as an argument in favor of the influence of mental impressions. he tabulated carefully reported cases from recent medical literature, and found that of them were concerned with defects of structure of the lips and palate. in all but of these the defect was referred to an impression occurring within the first three months of pregnancy. this is an important point as showing that the assigned cause really falls within a period when a defect of development actually could produce the observed result, although the person reporting the cases was in many instances manifestly ignorant of the details of embryology and teratology. there was no such preponderance of early impressions among the defects of skin and hair which might well, so far as development is concerned, have been caused at a later period; here, in out of cases, it was distinctly stated that the impression was made later than the fourth month.[ ] it would seem, on the whole, that while the influence of maternal impressions in producing definite effects on the child within the womb has by no means been positively demonstrated, we are not entitled to reject it with any positive assurance. even if we accept it, however, it must remain, for the present, an inexplicable fact; the _modus operandi_ we can scarcely even guess at. general influences from the mother on the child we can easily conceive of as conveyed by the mother's blood; we can even suppose that the modified blood might act specifically on one particular kind of tissue. we can, again, as suggested by féré, very well believe that the maternal emotions act upon the womb and produce various kinds and degrees of pressure on the child within, so that the apparently active movements of the foetus may be really consecutive on unconscious maternal excitations.[ ] we may also believe that, as suggested by john thomson, there are slight incoördinations _in utero_, a kind of developmental neurosis, produced by some slight lack of harmony of whatever origin, and leading to the production of malformations.[ ] we know, finally, that, as féré and others have repeatedly demonstrated during recent years by experiments on chickens, etc., very subtle agents, even odors, may profoundly affect embryonic development and produce deformity. but how the mother's psychic disposition can, apart from heredity, affect specifically the physical conformation or even the psychic disposition of the child within her womb must remain for the present an insoluble mystery, even if we feel disposed to conclude that in some cases such action seems to be indicated. in comprehending such a connection, however at present undemonstrated, it may well be borne in mind that the relationship of the mother to the child within her womb is of a uniquely intimate character. it is of interest in this connection to quote some remarks by an able psychologist, dr. henry rutgers marshall; the remarks are not less interesting for being brought forward without any connection with the question of maternal impressions: "it is true that, so far as we know, the nervous system of the embryo never has a direct connection with the nervous system of the mother: nevertheless, as there is a reciprocity of reaction between the physical body of the mother and its embryonic parasite, the relation of the embryonic nervous system to the nervous system of the mother is not very far removed from the relation of the pre-eminent part of the nervous system of a man to some minor nervous system within his body which is to a marked extent dissociated from the whole neural mass. "correspondingly, then, and within the consciousness of the mother, there develops a new little minor consciousness which, although but lightly integrated with the mass of her consciousness, nevertheless has its part in her consciousness taken as a whole, much as the psychic correspondents of the action of the nerve which govern the secretions of the glands of the body have their part in her consciousness taken as a whole. "it is very much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the brain than existed at their first appearance. they would form a little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the brain system; and it would be difficult to deny them a consciousness of their own; which would indeed form part of the whole consciousness of the individual, but which would be in a manner self-dependent." it must, if this is so, be said that before birth, on the psychic side, the embryo's activities "form part of a complex consciousness which is that of the mother and embryo together." "without subscribing to the strange stories of telepathy, of the solemn apparition of a person somewhere at the moment of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet ghost haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and endeavors, one may ask" (with the author of the address in medicine at the leicester gathering of the british medical association, _british medical journal_, july , ) "whether two brains cannot be so tuned in sympathy as to transmit and receive a subtile transfusion of mind without mediation of sense. considering what is implied by the human brain with its countless millions of cells, its complexities of minute structure, its innumerable chemical compositions, and the condensed forces in its microscopic and ultramicroscopic elements--the whole a sort of microcosm of cosmic forces to which no conceivable compound of electric batteries is comparable; considering, again, that from an electric station waves of energy radiate through the viewless air to be caught up by a fit receiver a thousand miles distant, it is not inconceivable that the human brain may send off still more subtile waves to be accepted and interpreted by the fitly tuned receiving brain. is it, after all, mere fancy that a mental atmosphere or effluence emanates from one person to affect another, either soothing sympathetically or irritating antipathically?" these remarks (like dr. marshall's) were made without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the womb. on the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal, is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still imperfectly understood. even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. in cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by harry campbell, sexual feeling was decidedly increased in , in one case (of a woman aged who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy, when it was considerable; in only cases was there diminution or disappearance of sexual feeling.[ ] pregnancy may produce mental depression;[ ] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. some women indeed are only well during pregnancy. it is remarkable that some women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles--neuralgias, gastralgia, headache, insomnia--are only free from them at this moment. this "paradox of gestation," as vinay has termed it, is specially marked in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, vinay states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[ ] even a woman's intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and tarnier, as quoted by vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse, has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[ ] the pregnant woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[ ]; she has achieved that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages. and yet, as we have seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the occurrence of this supremely important event--even on the physical side--still remains profound. pregnancy, even for us, the critical and unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the children of more primitive ages, a mystery. conception itself is a mystery for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[ ] the pregnant woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up in a place apart.[ ] her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme potency; even in some parts of europe to-day, as in the walloon districts of belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[ ] the mystery has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. the future of the race is bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "the early days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the mother. on her manner of life--eating, drinking, sleeping, and thinking--what greatness may not hang?"[ ] schopenhauer observed, with misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than the state of pregnancy, while weininger exclaims: "never yet has a pregnant woman given expression in any form--poem, memoirs, or gynæcological monograph--to her sensations or feelings."[ ] yet when we contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial all such considerations become! we are here lifted into a region where our highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a process in which the operations of nature become one with the divine task of creation. footnotes: [ ] see, e.g., groos, _Æsthetische genuss_, p. . "we have to admit," groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. it is seemingly due to the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. in man 'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the emotion is not quite perfect. heine's expression, 'with my mantle i protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic." sometimes the sexual impulse may undergo a complete transformation in this direction. "i believe there is really a tendency in women," a lady writes in a letter, "to allow maternal feeling to take the place of sexual feeling. very often a woman's feeling for her husband becomes this (though he may be twenty years older than herself); sometimes it does not, remaining purely sex feeling. sometimes it is for some other man she has this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. it is not necessarily connected with sex intercourse. a prostitute, who has relations with dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes after other women. i once saw the change from sex feeling to mother feeling, as i call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had lived about four years with a man who was unfaithful to her. then, when all real sex feeling, the hatred of the woman he followed, the desire he should give her love and tenderness, had all gone, came the other feeling, and she said to me, 'you don't understand at all; he's only my little baby; nothing he does can make any difference to me now.' as i grow older and understand women's natures better, i can see almost at once which relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. it is this feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." not only is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse. freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its needs. it is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the sexual satisfaction of later life." the lips, moreover, are the earliest erogenous zone. "there will, perhaps, be some opposition," freud remarks (_drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, pp. , ), "to the identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for those who tend it with sexual love, but i believe that exact psychological analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. the relationship of the child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially since the fostering person--as a rule the mother--regards the child with emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual object." freud remarks that girls who retain the childish character of their love for their parents to adult age are apt to make cold wives and to be sexually anæsthetic. [ ] esbach (in his _thèse de paris_, published in ) showed that even the finger nails are affected in pregnancy and become measurably thinner. [ ] c.h. stratz, _die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_, chapter vi. [ ] iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during pregnancy, and wychgel has shown (_zeitschrift für geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, bd. xlvii, heft ii) that the pigment of pregnant women contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased. [ ] vinay, _maladies de la grossesse_, chapter viii; k. hennig, "exploratio externa," _comptes-rendus du xiie. congrès international de médècine_, vol. vi, section xiii, pp. - . a bibliography of the literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages, is appended by pinard to his article "grossesse," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_. [ ] stratz, op. cit., chapter xii. [ ] w.s.a. griffith, "the diagnosis of pregnancy," _british medical journal_, april , . [ ] j. mackenzie and h.o. nicholson, "the heart in pregnancy," _british medical journal_, october , ; stengel and stanton, "the condition of the heart in pregnancy," _medical record_, may , and _university pennsylvania medical bulletin_, sept., (summarized in _british medical journal_, august , , and sept. , .) [ ] j. henderson, "maternal blood at term," _journal of obstetrics and gynæcology_, february, ; c. douglas, "the blood in pregnant women," _british medical journal_, march , ; w.l. thompson, "the blood in pregnancy," _johns hopkins hospital bulletin_, june, . [ ] h.o. nicholson, "some remarks on the maternal circulation in pregnancy," _british medical journal_, october , . [ ] j. morris slemans, "metabolism during pregnancy," _johns hopkins hospital reports_, vol. xii, . [ ] b. wolff, _zentralblatt für gynäkologie_, , no. . [ ] tridandani, _annali di ostetrica_, march, . [ ] r. barnes, "the induction of labor," _british medical journal_, december , . [ ] see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, pp. , et seq. [ ] arthur giles, "the longings of pregnant women," _transactions obstetrical society of london_, vol. xxxv, . [ ] ploss and bartels, _das weib_, chapter xxx. [ ] thus, in cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym for pregnancy. [ ] the apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or magic fruit (as j.f. campbell shows, _popular tales of west highlands_, vol. i, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which tempted eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple. one may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at rome and elsewhere the testicles have been called apples. i may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old portuguese ballad, "donna guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but donna guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from the apples plucks a citron. [ ] a. pinard, art. "grossesse," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_, p. . on the subject of violent, criminal and abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see cumston, "pregnancy and crime," _american journal obstetrics_, december, . [ ] see especially ploss and bartels, _das weib_, vol. i, chapter xxxi. ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the foetus adds loango negroes, the eskimo and the ancient japanese. [ ] in schurig, in his _syllepsilogia_, devoted more than a hundred pages (cap. ix) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds. [ ] j.w. ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of maternal impressions, reprinted in his _manual of antenatal pathology: the embryo_, , chapter ix; he gives a bibliography of items. in germany the history of the question has been written by dr. iwan bloch (under the pseudonym of gerhard von welsenburg), _das versehen der frauen_, . cf., in french, g. variot, "origine des préjugés populaires sur les envies," _bulletin société d'anthropologie_, paris, june , . variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, bloch accepts it, ballantyne speaks cautiously. [ ] j.g. kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived by the failure to take this fact into consideration. (_journal of american medical association_, december , .) [ ] j. clifton edgar, _the practice of obstetrics_, second edition, , p. . in an important discussion of the question at the american gynæcological society in , introduced by fordyce barker, various eminent gynæcologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less cautiously. (_transactions of the american gynæcological society_, vol. xi, , pp. - .) gould and pyle, bringing forward some of the data on the question (_anomalies and curiosities of medicine_, pp. , _et seq._) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions seems fully established. on the other side, see g.w. cook, _american journal of obstetrics_, september, , and h.f. lewis, ib., july, . [ ] _transactions edinburgh obstetrical society_, vol. xvii, . [ ] j.w. ballantyne, _manual of antenatal pathology: the embryo_, p. . [ ] w.c. dabney, "maternal impressions," keating's _cyclopædia of diseases of children_, vol. i, , pp. - . [ ] féré, _sensation et mouvement_, chapter xiv, "sur la psychologie du foetus." [ ] j. thomson, "defective co-ordination in utero," _british medical journal_, september , . [ ] h. campbell, _nervous organization of man and woman_, p. ; cf. moll, _untersuchungen über die libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. . many authorities, from soranus of ephesus onward, consider, however, that sexual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the later months. cf. brénot, _de l'influence de la copulation pendant la grosseisse_, . [ ] bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of pregnancy. [ ] vinay, _traité des maladies de la grossesse_, , pp. , ; mongeri, "nervenkrankungen und schwangerschaft." _allegemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, bd. lviii, heft . haig remarks (_uric acid_, sixth edition, p. ) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma) are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded. [ ] founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a suggestion of engel's, donaldson observes: "it is impossible to escape the conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present recognized." h.h. donaldson, _the growth of the brain_, p. . [ ] the state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to that of pregnancy; see, e.g., edgar's _practice of obstetrics_, plates and , showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the breasts and the external sexual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, chapter xi, "the functional periodicity of woman." [ ] thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant, "she has smelt the moon-flower"--a flower believed to grow on the so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its smell. ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, chapter xxvii. [ ] this was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., pinard, _gazette des hôpitaux_, november , , and _annales de gynécologie_, august, . [ ] ploss and bartels, op. cit., chapter xxix; kryptadia, vol. viii, p. . [ ] griffith wilkin, _british medical journal_, april , . [ ] weininger, _geschlecht und charakter_, p. . i may remark that a recent book, ellis meredith's _heart of my heart_, is devoted to a seemingly autobiographical account of a pregnant woman's emotions and ideas. the relations of maternity to intellectual work have been carefully and impartially investigated by adele gerhard and helena simon, who seem to conclude that the conflict between the inevitable claims of maternity and the scarcely less inevitable claims of the intellectual life cannot be avoided. appendix. histories of sexual development. history i.--the following narrative has been written by a university man trained in psychology:-- so far as i have been able to learn, none of my ancestors for at least three generations have suffered from any nervous or mental disease; and of those more remote i can learn nothing at all. it appears probable, then, that any peculiarities of my own sexual development must be explained by reference to the somewhat peculiar environment. i was the first child and was, naturally, somewhat spoiled--a process which tended to increase my natural tendency to sentimentality. on the other hand, i was shy and undemonstrative with all except my nearest relatives, and with them as well after my seventh or eighth year. and here it may be well to describe my "mental type," as this is probably the most important factor in determining the direction of one's mental development. of mental types the "visual" is, of course, by far the most common, but in my own case visual imagery was never strong or vivid, and has constantly grown weaker. the dominant part has been played by tactual, muscular and organic sensations, placing me as one of the "tactual motor" type, with strong "verbal motor" and "organic" tendencies. in reading a novel i seldom have a mental picture of the character or situation, but easily imagine the sensations (except the visual) and feel something of the emotions described. when telling of any event i have a strong impulse to make the movements described and to gesticulate. i remember events in terms of movements and the words to be used in giving an account of them; and in thinking of any subject i can feel the movements of the larynx and, in a less degree, of the lips and tongue that would be involved in putting my thoughts into words. i am easily moved to emotion, even to sentimentality, but am seldom if ever deeply affected and am so averse to any display of my feelings that i have the reputation among my acquaintances of being cold, unfeeling and unemotional. i am naturally quiet and bashful to a degree, which has rendered all forms of social intercourse painful through much of my life, and this in spite of a real longing to associate with people on terms of intimacy. as a child i was sensitive and solitary; later i became morbid as well. in a character so constituted the feelings and impulses of the moment are likely to rule, and such has been my constant experience, though a large element of obstinacy in my character has kept me from appearing impulsive, and slight influences will bring about reactions which seem out of all proportion to their cause. for instance, i cannot, even now, read the more erotic of boccaccio's stories without a good deal of sexual excitement and restlessness, which can be relieved only by vigorous exercise or masturbation. the first ten years of my life were passed on a farm, most of the time without playmates or companions of my own age. as far back as i can remember i indulged in elaborate day-dreams in which i figured as the chief character along with a few others who were chiefly creatures of my imagination, but at times borrowed from reality. these others were always boys until i learned the proper function of the sexual organs, when girls usurped the whole stage in numbers beyond the limits of a turkish harem. even at school my day-dreams were scarcely interrupted, for my shyness and timidity made me very unpopular among my schoolmates, who tormented me after the fashion of small boys or neglected me, as the spirit moved them. to make matters worse, i was brought up under the "sheltered life system," kept carefully away from the "bad boys," which category included nearly all the youngsters of the community, and deluged with moral homilies and tirades on things religious until i was thoroughly convinced that goodness and discomfort, the right and the unpleasant, were strictly synonymous; and i was kept through much of the time facing the prospect of an early death, to be followed by the good old orthodox hell or the equal miseries of its gorgeous alternative. i may say in all seriousness that this is a conservative and unexaggerated account of one phase of my early life--the one, i think, that tended most strongly to make me introspective and morbid. later on, when i was trying to abandon the habit of masturbation, this early training greatly increased the despair i felt at each successive failure. the first traces of sexual excitement that i can now recall occurred when i was about years old. i had erections quite frequently and found a mild pleasure in fondling my genitals when these occurred, especially just after waking in the morning. i had no notion of an orgasm, and never succeeded in producing one until i was years of age. in the summer of my sixth year i experienced pleasurable sensations in daubing my genitals with oil and then fondling or rubbing them, but i abandoned this amusement after getting some irritating substance into the meatus. a year later my mother warned me that playing with my penis would "make me very sick," but since experience had taught me that this was not true, my conviction that what was forbidden must necessarily be pleasant, sent me directly to my favorite retreat in the barn loft to experiment. since, however, i failed, in spite of persistent effort, to produce any such pleasant results as i had expected, i soon gave up my attempts for other kinds of amusement. a few months after this, in midsummer, a very sensual servant girl began a series of attempts to satisfy herself sexually with my help. she came nearly every day into the loft where i was playing and did her best to initiate me into the mysteries of sexual relationships, but i proved a sorry pupil. she would rub my penis until it became erect and then, placing me upon her, would insert the penis in her vulva and make movements of her thighs and hips calculated to cause friction. at times she varied the program by lying upon me and embracing me passionately. i can remember distinctly her quick, gasping breath and convulsive movements. she generally ended the seance by persuading me to perform cunnilingus upon her. none of these performances were intelligible to me and i invariably protested against being compelled to leave my play to amuse her. even her fondling of my genitals annoyed me; and, stranger still, i preferred satisfying her by cunnilingus to the attempts at coitus. it was nearly a year later that i experienced the first unmistakable manifestations of the sexual impulse--erections accompanied by lustful feeling and vague desires of whose proper satisfaction i had no notion whatever. it never occurred to me to associate my experiences with the servant girl with these new sensations. the peculiar fact about them was that they were generally occasioned by the infliction of pain upon animals. i do not remember how i first discovered that they could be evoked in this way, but i can clearly recollect many of my efforts to arouse this pleasurable excitement by abusing the dog or the cats, or by prodding the calves with a nail set in the end of a broom handle. i seldom manipulated my genitals at this time, and when i did it was for the purpose of causing sexual excitement rather than allaying it. during this same year i got my first idea of sexual intercourse by watching animals copulate; but my powers of observation must have been limited, for i supposed that the penis of the male entered the anus of the female. in watching the coitus of animals i experienced lively sexual excitement and lustful sensations, located not only in the genitals, but apparently in the anus as well. i often excited, myself by imagining myself playing the part of the female animal--a peculiar combination of passive pederasty and bestiality. a servant girl put me to right on the error of observation just mentioned, but neglected to apply the principle to human animals, and i remained for another year in complete ignorance of the structure of woman's sexual organs and of the intercourse between man and woman. in the meantime i cultivated my fancies of intercourse with animals, often still perversely imagining myself taking the part of the female; and the notion of such relationships gradually became so familiar as to seem possible and desirable. this is especially significant in view of later developments. up to my eleventh or twelfth year the erotic element in my daydreaming varied with the seasons. in the summer it played a dominant part, while in the winter it was almost entirely absent, owing, it may be, to the fact that most of my time was spent indoors or on long, tiresome tramps to and from school, and the further fact that during the winter i saw but little of the animals which had acted as a stimulus to sexual excitement. so little was i troubled in winter and so ignorant was i of normal intercourse that sleeping with a cousin, a girl of about my own age ( or years), resulted in no addition to my knowledge of things sexual. it was early in my ninth year that i first learned something of the anatomical difference between man and woman and of the functions of the sexual organs in coitus. these were explained to me by a young male servant, who, however, told me nothing of conception or pregnancy. at first i was very little interested, as it did not immediately occur to me to associate my own erotic experiences with the matter of these revelations; but under the faithful tuition of my new instructor i soon began to desire normal coitus, and my interest in the sexual affairs of animals weakened accordingly. his teachings went still further, for he masturbated before me, then persuaded me to masturbate him, and finally practiced coitus inter femora upon me. he also tried to masturbate me, but was unable to produce an orgasm, though i found the experiment mildly pleasurable. early in my eleventh year we left the farm and lived in the city for several months. in the meantime there had been no developments in my sexual life beyond what has already been indicated. in the city i found so much to interest and amuse me that i almost entirely forgot my erotic day-dreams and desires. though my chief playmates were two girls of about my own age i never thought of attempting sexual intercourse with them, as i might easily have done, for they were much wiser and more experienced in these things than myself. shortly before the end of our stay in town an older schoolmate explained to me as much of the process of reproduction as is usually known by a precocious youngster of years, but i firmly refused to credit his statements. he adduced the fact of lactation in proof of the correctness of his views, but i had been too thoroughly steeped in supernaturalism to be very amenable to naturalistic evidence of this sort and remained obdurate. but the suggestion stayed with me and perplexed me not a little; when we returned to the farm i began to watch the reproductive process in animals. the following two years were decidedly unpleasant. i was growing rapidly and was sluggish, awkward and stupid. at school i was more unpopular than ever and seemed to have a positive genius for doing the wrong thing. on the rare occasions when my companions admitted me to their counsels i was a willing dupe and catspaw, with the result that i was much in trouble with my teachers. being morbidly sensitive i suffered keenly under these circumstances and, as my health was not at all good, i often made of my frequent headaches excuses to stay at home, where i would lie abed brooding over my small troubles or, more often, dreaming erotic day-dreams and making repeated attempts to produce an orgasm. but though these efforts were accompanied by the most lustful thoughts and my imagination created situations of oriental extravagance, i was years old when they first met with success. i remember the occasion very distinctly, the more so because i thought of it much and bitterly when shortly afterwards i tried to abandon a habit which the family "doctor book" assured me must result in every variety of damnation. at the moment, however, i was greatly surprised and gratified and tried at once to repeat the delightful sensation, but was unable to do so until the following day. from that time to the present i think i have masturbated an average of ten times per week, and this is certainly a very conservative estimate; for though up to my sixteenth year i could seldom produce an orgasm more than once a day i have often, during the last four or five years, produced it from four to seven times per day without difficulty and this for days and even weeks in succession. during these periods of excessive masturbation very little liquid was ejaculated and the pleasurable sensations were slight or entirely lacking. from the time when i began masturbating regularly practically my whole interest centered in things pertaining to sex. i read the chapters of the family "doctor book" which treated of sexual matters; my day-dreams were almost exclusively erotic; i sought opportunities to talk about sex-relationships with my schoolmates, with whom i was now slowly getting on better terms; i collected pictures of nude women, learned a great number of obscene stories, read such obscene books as i could obtain and even searched the dictionary for words having a sexual connotation. up to my fifteenth year, when ejaculation of semen began, there was a strong sadistic coloring to my day-dreams. through this period, too, my bashfulness in the presence of the opposite sex increased until it reached the point of absurdity. when fifteen years old i began to practice coitus inter femora on my brother and continued it intermittently for about two years. the experience was disappointing, for i had confidently expected a great increase of pleasure over masturbation in this act; and in casting about for some stronger stimulus i recurred to the forgotten idea of intercourse with animals. i promptly tried to put the idea to a test, but failed several times, and finally succeeded, only to find that the result fell far short of my expectations. nevertheless i continued the practice irregularly for about three years--or rather through that part of the three years that i spent at home, for while i was at school opportunity for such indulgence was lacking. long familiarity with the idea of intercourse with animals had made it impossible for me to feel the disgust with the practice which it inspires in most people; and even the perusal of exodus xxii: failed to make me abandon it. firmly as i believed in the mosaic law the supremacy of the sexual impulse was complete. as early as my sixteenth year i tried to abandon "self-abuse" in all its forms and have repeatedly made the same effort since that time but never with more than very partial success. on two or three occasions i have stopped for periods of several weeks, but only to begin again and indulge more recklessly than before. the deep depression which followed each failure, and often each act of masturbation, i attributed solely to the loss of semen, leaving out of account the fact that i expected to feel depressed and the utter discouragement and self-contempt which accompanied the sense of failure and weakness when, in the face of my resolution, i repeatedly gave way and yielded to the temptation to an act whose consequences i firmly believed must be ruinous. i am now convinced that by far the greater part of this depression was due to suggestion and the humiliating sense of defeat. and this feeling of moral impotence, this seeming helplessness against an overpowering impulse which, on the other hand, seemed so trivial when viewed without passion, eventually weakened my self-control to a degree guessed by no one but myself and sapped the foundations of my moral life in a way which i have constant occasion to deplore. the foregoing paragraphs give, i think, a fair idea of my condition when i left home for a boarding school at the beginning of my seventeenth year. from this time my experiences may be said to have run on in two distinct cycles--that of the summer months when i was at home, and that of the remainder of the year when i was at school. this fact will make some confusion and apparent inconsistency in the rest of this "history" unavoidable. when i left home i was shy, retiring, totally ignorant of social usage, without self-confidence, unambitious, dreamy, and subject to fits of melancholy. i masturbated at least once a day, though i was in almost constant rebellion against the habit. in my more idle moments i elaborated erotic day dreams in which there was a peculiar mixture of the purely sensual and the purely ideal element; which never fused in my experience, but held the field alternately or mingled somewhat in the manner of air and water. one person usually served as the object of my ideal attachment, another as the center round which i grouped my sensual dreams and desires. at school i found more congenial companions than i had fallen in with elsewhere, and the necessary contact with people of both sexes gradually wore off some of the rougher corners and brought a measure of self-confidence. i had two or three incipient love affairs which my backwardness kept from growing serious. out of this change of environment came a sense of expansion, of escape from self, which was distinctly pleasant. i still masturbated regularly, but no longer experienced the former depression except when at home during vacation. relatively to the past, life was now so varied and interesting that i had less and less time for melancholy; and the discovery that i could lead my classes and hold my own in athletic sports seemed to indicate that my past fears had been exaggerated. nevertheless i was never reconciled to the habit and often rebelled at the weakness that kept me its slave. when i entered the university the effects of my useless struggle with the practice of masturbation were pretty well developed. i could no longer fix my attention steadily upon my work and found that only by "cribbing" and "bluffing" could i keep my place at the head of my classes. i was troubled not a little by the shoddiness of my work, and tried again and again during the course of the two years spent at this college to shake off the habit. at the university i was introduced gradually to a wider social circle and so far outgrew my bashfulness that i began to seek the society of the opposite sex assiduously. as i gained self-confidence i became reckless, getting at one time into serious trouble with the authorities which came near resulting in my expulsion. i became one of the more popular members of the clique to which i belonged--much to my surprise and even more to that of my acquaintances. the physical culture craze attacked me at this time and my pet ambition was the attainment of strength and agility. my bump of vanity also grew apace, but an unmeasured hatred of all kinds of foppishness kept me on the safe side of moderation in my dress and behavior. during my second year of university life i had two love affairs in the course of which i found that my interest in any particular member of the fair sex disappeared as soon as it was returned. the pursuit was fascinating enough, but i cared nothing at all for the prize when once it was within reach. i may add that the interest i had in the girls was purely ideal. while at this school i do not think i masturbated half as often as while at the preparatory school. when i left this college for ---- university i took with me a formidable catalogue of good resolutions, first among which was the determination to abandon all kinds of "self-abuse." i think i kept this one about a month. as i had gone from a comparatively small school to one of the largest of american universities the change was great and the revelations it brought me frequently humiliating. i was lonesome, home-sick, and my bump of self-esteem was woefully bruised; and not unnaturally i soon began to seek a partial solace in day-dreams and masturbation. after i had become somewhat adapted to my new environment i indulged less frequently in either, and from that time to the present i have masturbated very irregularly, sometimes but little and again to excess. not long after i came to this place i met a young lady with whom i soon became quite intimate. for over a year our friendship was strictly platonic and then swung suddenly around to a sexual basis. we were ardent lovers for a few weeks, after which i tired of the game as i had before in other cases, and broke off all relations with her as abruptly as was possible. since then i have almost wholly withdrawn from the society and companionship of women and have almost entirely lost whatever tact and assurance i once possessed in their company. things pertaining to sexual life have interested me rather more than less, but have occupied my attention much less exclusively than before this episode. though i have never intended to marry, my breaking off relations with this girl affected me much. at any rate it marked an abrupt change in the character of my sexual experiences. the sexual impulse seems to have lost its power to rouse me to action. hitherto i had practiced masturbation always under protest, as it were--as the only available form of sexual satisfaction; while now i resigned myself to it as all that there was to hope for in that field. of course i knew that a little effort or a little money would procure natural satisfaction of my sexual needs, but i also knew that i would never, under any ordinary circumstances, put forth the necessary effort, and fear of venereal disease has been more than enough to keep me away from houses of prostitution. some months ago i refrained from masturbation for a period of about six weeks and watched carefully for any change in my health or spirits, but noticed none at all. the only impulse to masturbate was occasioned by fits of restlessness accompanied by erections and a mildly pleasurable feeling of fullness in the penis and scrotum. i think that over per cent, of my acts of masturbation are provoked by these fits of restlessness and are unaccompanied by fancy images, erotic thoughts, lustful desires, or marked pleasure. at other times the act is occasioned by erotic thoughts and images, and is accompanied by a considerable degree of lustful pleasure which, however, is never so intense as in my earlier experiences and has steadily decreased from the first. usually the orgasm is accompanied by a strong contraction of all the voluntary muscles, particularly the extensors, followed by a slight giddiness and slight feeling of exhaustion. if repeated several times in the course of a single day the acts are followed by dullness and lassitude; otherwise the feeling of exhaustion passes away quickly and a sense of relief and quiet takes its place. so natural or rather habitual has this resort to masturbation as a means of relief from nervousness and restlessness become that the act is almost instinctive in its unconsciousness. i am extremely sensitive to all kinds of sexual influences, and have an insatiable curiosity regarding everything that pertains to the sexual life of men or women. i am not, however, excited sexually by conversation about sexual facts and relationships, no matter what its nature, though in reading erotic literature my excitement is often intense. the tendency to day dream has never left me, but there are no longer any elaborate scenes or long-continued "stories," these having been replaced by vaguely imagined incidents which are usually broken off before they reach a satisfactory climax. they are always interrupted by the intrusion of other matters, usually of more practical interest; and the long-continued habit of satisfying myself by masturbation has made erotic dreams rather tantalizing than pleasurable. i dream very seldom at night--at least i can scarcely ever remember any dreams upon waking--and practically never of sexual relations. i have not had a nocturnal emission for over three years, and probably not more than twenty-five in my life. in my "love passages" with girls there has been no serious thought of coitus on my part, and i have never had intercourse with a woman--unless my early experiences with the servant girl be called such. like all masturbators i always idealized "love" to the utter exclusion of all sensual cravings; and the notion that the physical act of coitus was something degrading and destructive of real love rather than its consummation was, of all prejudices i have ever formed, the most difficult to escape--a circumstance due, i suppose, to the fact that all i had ever been taught on the subject tended to the complete divorce of what was called "love" from what was stigmatized as a "base sensual desire." judging from my own experience and observation i should say that "ideal love" is a mere surface feeling, bound to disappear as soon as it has gained its object by arousing a reciprocal interest on the part of the one to whom it is directed. so little did i "materialize" the objects of my "love" that i have never cared for kissing or the warm embraces in which lovers usually indulge. i have never kissed but one girl, and her with far too little enthusiasm to satisfy her. my last sweetheart was a very passionate girl, the warmth of whose embraces was somewhat torrid and, to me, both puzzling and annoying. the intensity of feeling which demanded such strenuous expression was beyond my knowledge of human nature. a somewhat peculiar circumstance in connection with these experiences is the fact that i often found myself trying to analyze my emotions with a purely psychological interest while playing the part of the intoxicated lover in his mistress's arms. there is but little left to say on the subject of my sexual development. during the last two or three years my knowledge of the facts of the sexual life has been very greatly increased, and i have become acquainted with phases of human nature which were wholly unknown to me before. the part played by things sexual in my life is still, i suppose, abnormally large; it is undoubtedly the largest single interest, though my outer life is determined almost wholly by other considerations. of course i know nothing of the effect which long-continued masturbation may have had on my ability to perform normal coitus. i do not think i am subject to any kind of sexual perversion, for all my indulgence has been _faute de mieux_ and, at least since i began masturbation, all my desires and erotic day-dreams have had to do only with normal coitus. the mystery which surrounds the sexual act seems at times to be regaining its former influence and power of fascination. i have no doubt, however, but that i should be greatly disillusioned should i ever perform coitus; and i greatly regret that i have not been able to test this conviction and so round out and complete this "history." it may be worth while to say a word about my religious experiences, as, in many cases, they are closely bound up with the sexual impulse. i was never "converted," but on a dozen or more occasions approached the crisis more or less closely. the dominant emotion in these experiences was always fear, sometimes with anger and despair intermixed in varying proportions. a complete analysis of these experiences is, of course, impossible, but the various pleasurable feelings of which converts spoke in the revivals which i attended were a closed book to me. following my revival-meeting experiences came a few days spent in a sort of moral exaltation during which i eschewed all my habits of which conventional morality disapproved, save masturbation, and felt no small satisfaction with my moral conditions. i became a first-rate pharisee. toward the women who had figured in my day dreams i suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them, and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion--sunday-school garden-of-eden pictures with a mediæval, romantic coloring. these day-dreams were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity and monumental silliness. masturbation was always continued and usually with increased frequency. the end of these periods was always abrupt and much like awaking from a dream in which the dreamer has been behaving in a manner to arouse his own disgust. they were followed by feelings of sheepishness and self-contempt mingled with anger and a dislike of all things having to do with religion. my inability to pass the conversion crisis and a growing contempt for empty enthusiasm finally led me to a saner attitude toward religion, from which i passed easily into religious scepticism; and later the study of philosophy and science, and particularly of psychology, banished the last lingering remnant of faith in a supernatural agency and led me to the passion for facts and indifference to values which have caused me to be often called "dead to all morality." history ii.--c.a., aged , unmarried; tutor, preparing to take holy orders:-- my paternal ancestry (which is largely huguenot) is noteworthy for its patriotism and its large families. my father, who died when i was a year old, is remembered for the singular uprightness and purity of his life from his earliest childhood. the photograph which i have shows him as possessed of a rare classic beauty of features. he was an ideal husband and father. at the time of his death he was a master of arts and a school principal. my mother is an extraordinarily neurotic woman, yet famed among her friends for her great domesticity, attachment to her husbands, and an almost abnormal love of babies. she has nobly borne the ill-treatment of her second husband, who for several years has been in a state of melancholia. my mother has been "highly-wrought" all her life, and has suffered intensely from fears of all kinds. as a young girl she was somnambulistic, and once fell down a stairhead during sleep. in spite of her bodily sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she retains her youthfulness. she has slight powers of reasoning. she has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, i have never heard any mention of epilepsy. she has a horror of showing prudishness in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is always praising examples of what she terms "a natural woman." i have heard that during my first year my mother detected my nurse in the act of putting a morphine powder on my tongue for the purpose of keeping me quiet. i was subject to convulsions at this period, and narrowly escaped a permanent hernia. my family tell me that from the beginning i was a well-developed and boyish boy, full of mischief, impulsive, good to look upon, unusually affectionate, beloved by all. in my third year i took pleasure in crawling under the bed with my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. i do not remember which of us first thought of this pastime. at the age of i gave myself a treat by gazing upward through a cellar window at the nates of a woman who was defecating from several feet above into a cesspool that lay beneath. it was during this summer also that i frightened myself by pulling back my prepuce far enough to disclose the purple glans, which i had never seen before. but this act gave me no desire to masturbate. when years old, and living in a great city, i drew indecent pictures in company with a little girl and her younger brother. these pictures represented men in the act of urinating. the penes were drawn large, and the streams of urine plainly indicated. one afternoon i induced the boy to go to the bath-room, lie on his back, and allow me to perform _fellatio_ on him. i did not ask him to return the favor. i remember the curious tar-like smell of his clothing and the region about his genitals. it is possible that i gained my knowledge of _fellatio_ from an unknown boy of , who had induced me, during the preceding summer to enter a sandy lot with him, watch him urinate, and then, kneeling before him, commit _fellatio_. a year later, as i was walking home in the rain to our summer cottage, with an open umbrella over my shoulder, a boy of , who was leaning against our fence, exhibited a large, erect penis, and when i had passed him urinated upon me and my umbrella. i never saw the boy again. i felt peculiarly insulted by his act. back of the house there lived a -year-old boy who invited me to watch him defecate in the outdoor privy, and during the act told me a number of indecent stories and words which i cannot remember. about this time i fell in love with a little jewish boy next door. often i cried myself to sleep over the thought that perhaps he was lying on a sofa alone and crying with a stomach-ache. i longed to embrace him; and yet i saw little of him, and made little of him when i was with him. living in a western city a few months later, some girls of and led me to their barn, where they dressed themselves in boys' clothing and made believe that they were cowboys. one of them told me to "shut my eyes, open my mouth, and get a surprise." when i opened my eyes once more a piece of hen-dung lay in my mouth. i have a vague remembrance of one of the girls asking me to enter a water-closet with her. she uttered some indelicate phrase, but i performed no act with her. in the house where i lived i once entered the bedroom of a half-grown girl while she was dressing. she knelt to kiss me innocently enough, and i, by a sudden impulse, ran my hand between her bare neck and her corset as far as i could reach. apparently she took no notice of my movement. although i did not masturbate, yet during this winter i experienced a tickling sensation about my genitals when i placed my hand beneath them as i lay on my stomach in bed. one evening i pulled up my night-dress and, holding my penis in my hand, i danced to and fro on the carpet. i imagined that i was one of a line of naked men and women who were advancing toward another similar line that faced them. i imagined myself as pleasurably coming in contact with my female partner who possessed male genitals. the following summer i lived in the woods. my next-door playmate was a little girl of my own age-- years. she sat down before me in the barn and exposed her genitals. this was the first time i had seen female organs, or had thought for a moment that they differed from my own. in great perplexity i asked the little girl: "has it been cut off?" she and i defecated in peach baskets that we found in the upper part of the barn. when i was years old and back in the eastern city i lived in the house of a physician. alone with his -year-old daughter one day, i showed her my erect organ, and felt a delicious gratification when she stroked it with the words: "nice! nice!" i confessed my fault to my guardian that night after i had said my prayers. i had complained to my mother a year before of the inconvenience i found in my penis being "so long sometimes." she said that she would "see about having the end taken off." but i was never circumcised. her words gave me the doubly unpleasant impression that my _glans_ was to be cut off. there came occasionally to the kitchen of dr. w.'s house a foul-mouthed irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. i loathed the woman, and yet one night i dreamed that i was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight of female genitals a few months before, i thought of her as having organs of my own kind and size. at my first school i watched a red-haired boy of expose the penis of a -year-old boy as he lay on his back in the bath-room. i do not remember that the sight gave me sexual pleasure. i spent the summer before i was in a double house. the adopted daughter of our neighbor (a neurotic, retired physician) was a girl of who had been taken from a poor laboring family. she got me to show her my parts, touched them, and asked whether i urinated from my scrotum. she also induced me to play with her genitals as we sat on a sofa in the twilight, and to spank her naked nates with the back of a hair-brush as she lay on a bed; but from none of these performances did i derive physical satisfaction. the girl e. and i took delight in "talking dirty secrets," as she expressed it. her young cousin h. (nephew of her adopted mother) never heard me use the word "thing" without suggestively smiling. e. recalled the pleasant hours that she had spent with her cousin when they were in their night-gowns. she did not particularize these sexual relations. under the board-walk the boy h. and i once defecated in bottles. some little girls who lived opposite us pulled up their dresses one night and "dared" each other to dance out beyond the end of the house, in full view of the road. we boys merely looked on. i now fell passionately in love with a remarkably handsome little boy of my own age. i longed to kiss and hug him, but i did not dare to do so, for he was haughty and intolerant of my attentions. i even allowed him to stand with one foot on me and remark in a loud tone: "i am conqueror!" i endured no end of petty insults and much ill-treatment from this boy. i reached the height of my passion on the night that he appeared at our cottage in a tight-fitting suit of pepper-and-salt. i gloried in his perfect legs and besought my guardian that she would buy me a similar suit of clothes. for the summer after i was years old i lived in a cottage in a country town. the servant maid m. was a young girl of who listened eagerly to my accounts of the "secrets" and actions in which the girl e. and i had taken delight a year before. i think that m. arranged a meeting between a little black-haired girl and me in order that we might take a walk and play sexually with each other. just as we were starting on our walk one of my relatives said that i must not leave the yard. the little girl and i had see-sawed together and i had been interested in her legs as she rose in the air. (when i was years old and see-sawing at a picnic with a stout girl, the motion of the board and the sight of her straddled form filled me with longing to embrace her sexually.) one afternoon m. took me to the house of an acquaintance of hers. m's brother was in the room and made a number of unremembered remarks which struck me as being rather "free," and m. told me later that she and the girl once dressed as ballet dancers and danced before m.'s brother. i felt that he was lascivious. i was always remarkably intuitive. i fell in love with a handsome, stout, black-haired boy who lived on a farm; but he was not a "farmer's son" in the common sense of the word. i visited him for two or three days, and we slept with each other, to my boundless joy. for his freckled girl cousin i did not care the turn of my wrist, although she was a nice enough little thing. one night when we three lay on a bed in the dark, and neither of us boys had eyes or words for her, she silently left us. he and i never committed the slightest sexual fault. i left him with tears at the summer-end, and i often kissed his photograph during the following winter. in the flat-house where i began to live when i was years old, i once practiced mutual tickling of a very slight character with a boy of my own age. we sat on chairs placed opposite to each other and we inserted our fingers through the openings in our trousers. just as we were beginning to enjoy the titillation we were interrupted by the approach of one of my family who, however, was not quick enough to discover us. down cellar i often saw the genitals of the janitor's little girls--they were fond of lifting their skirts and they did not wear drawers--but i had no desire to attempt conjunction. i once caught an older friend of mine (he was ) in the act of leaving one of the girls. the pair had been in a coal-compartment. the boy was buttoning his trousers and i guessed what he had been doing. when i began to sleep alone in my tenth year i had no desire to masturbate, and was loath to do so by reason of ample warnings given me by my guardian and by the family physician. one afternoon a stunted friend of mine sat down in the back yard and astonished me by tying a piece of string to his penis. at a large private school which i now attended i made the acquaintance of the principal's son, and wondered why he had such a fancy for dressing his -year-old sister in boy's clothes. he closed the door on me while he was thus engaged. at my house we went to the bath-room together, and he showed me his circumcised and much-ridged penis. neither of us made any mention of masturbating. at this period i fell slightly in love with a -year-old boy with intensely black eyes. i would kiss him whenever we were alone, but i had no wish to seduce him. i was always interested in watching the urination of younger children. when i was years old i went on my knees to a strange little boy in order to whisper in his ear an inquiry as to whether he wanted to urinate. i experienced a pleasurable thrill when i was years old in leading a small girl cousin to the outdoor privy, in helping her on and off the open seat, in buttoning and unbuttoning her drawers, and in gazing at her vulva. the summer before i was i lived a wild life in the mountains. my companions were a negro girl, the two daughters of a clergyman, the two sons of a questionable woman hotel-keeper, and the daughter of the irish scavenger. all of these children were extraordinarily sensual. their leading pastime, from morning until night, was varying forms of indecency, with the supreme caress--which they termed "raising dickie"--as the most frequent enjoyment. the -year-old daughter of the scavenger explained to us how she had seen her father approaching her stout mother with an erect penis, the pair standing up before the lamplight during the act. this curly-headed, rosy-cheeked child handled her genitals so much that they were inflamed. i once saw her sitting in the road and rubbing dust against her vulva. i saw little of the elder daughter of the minister (she was years old). she persuaded me to expose myself before her in the cellar of a partially-built house. in return for my favor she allowed me to look at her genitals. she did not ask for _conjunctio_. the two younger daughters were my intimates. with the middle one i was forever performing a weak conjunction that consisted in the laying of my member against her vulva. notwithstanding all the entreaties of my little friend, i could not be persuaded to protrude my penis against her vagina; and not on one occasion can i remember obtaining an erection or extreme pleasure. up in the garret she straddled slanting beams with her genitals exposed, and i followed her example. the negro girl and my little friend both urinated on a tent floor at my request. i did not fancy the odor of a girl's genitals, nor the appearance of the vulva when the labia were held apart. the following summer, when i was almost , i took a long walk one day with my old friend, the girl e. we entered a patch of woods and ate our lunch, but no sense of sexual drawing toward the girl came over me and she did not offer to entice me. i slept with her boy-cousin one night, and her neuropathic aunt, a retired lady physician, bothered us by repeatedly creeping into our room. i felt intuitively that she was watching to see whether we would commit mutual masturbation--which we had no thought of doing. three years before i had opened the door of her bedroom suddenly and saw e.'s naked form. the physician had been examining her, e. told me later. my guardian also annoyed me by repeated warnings not to play with myself. just before i turned i was sent to a small and so-called "home" boarding-school. eight of us lived in the smaller dormitory. the matron roomed downstairs. there was no resident master--a serious error. we small boys were told to strip one evening. we were then tied neck-to-neck and made to dance a "slave-dance," which was marked by no sexuality. a boy of , r., one afternoon gave me the astonishing information that my father had taken a part in my procreation. up to this moment i had known only of the maternal offices, information of which had been beautifully supplied to me by my guardian when i was years old. at that time i talked freely about the coming of a baby brother in a distant city; i watched the construction of baby clothes; i named the newcomer, and i was momentarily disappointed when he proved to be a girl. this same r., a strong boy with a large penis, got into the custom of lying in bed with me just before lights were put out. he would read to himself and occasionally pause to pump his penis and make with his lips the sound of a laboring locomotive. i felt impelled to handle his organ, for i was fascinated by its size, and stiffness, and warmth. rarely he would titillate my then small and unerect penis. r. never ejaculated when he was with me; hence not until my third year was i acquainted with the appearance of a flow of semen. sometimes r. would stop during his dressing to manipulate his penis, but was such a picture of rosy health that i doubt whether he brought himself often to ejaculation. r. told me that he had been to a brothel where his genitals were examined to determine whether they were large enough and not diseased. he also related how he "played cow" with a girl of his own age, she consenting to perform _fellatio_ upon him. a dark-skinned, unwashed, pimpled but fairly vigorous boy of , with an irritable domineering manner, told me the delights of coitus with a girl in a bath-house, and i overheard his conversation with another "old" boy concerning the purchase of a girl in a big city for the sum of five dollars. no details were given. i will now pass to my third year, when i was years old. a large, well-set-up boy of , a., became my idol. his toleration of my presence in his room filled me with endless love. when i lied about a matter in which he was concerned, his denunciation of me brought me to a state of shuddering and weeping unspeakable. when our relations were established again a. allowed me to creep into his bed after the lights were out, and there i passionately embraced him, but without performing any definite act. when i turned over on my side with my back to him he drew my prepuce back and forth until i experienced orgasm, but not ejaculation. i would return his favor by pumping his erect penis, but with no ejaculation on his part. he did not propose _fellatio_, and i did not think of it. one night when he was in my bed i began to masturbate very slightly, whereupon he laughed, saying: "so that is the way you amuse yourself!" as a matter of fact the habit was not fastened upon me. he always laughed when the rubbing of his finger on my exposed glans caused me to shrink. another boy, h., now began to show me his erect penis and we practiced mutual manipulations. a. laughingly told me how me had caught h. in the act of masturbating as he stood in the bath-tub. a. told me a number of sexual stories--how he enjoyed coitus in the bushes with a girl on the way home from entertainments; how half a dozen boys and girls stripped in the basement of a church and performed coitus on the velvet chairs which stood behind the pulpit; and how he and a younger boy, who camped out together, played with each other's genitals. f., a boy of , was highly nervous, subject to timidity and tears on the slightest provocation, often morose, and under treatment for kidney trouble. his penis was erect whenever i saw him undress. he told me that a partially idiotic man taught f. and his companion how to masturbate. the man invited the boys to his tent and there pumped his organ until "some white stuff came out of it." f. also told me that an indian princess in his part of the country would permit coitus for fifty cents. a. sometimes slept with f., and i could imagine their embraces. s., a secretive, handsome boy of , wetted his bed with urine every night. the only sign that he gave of an interest in sexuality was his laughing remark concerning the coupling of rose-bugs. of his chum, my beloved c., i will speak later. my small room-mate handled himself only slightly. i never had a desire to lie with him, since i disliked him, nor with my first room-mate, a "chunky," fiery boy of , whose penis interested me merely because it was circumcised and almost always erect. his masturbation was also so slight as not to attract any particular attention. a lusty german boy, b., showed no signs of sexuality until his third year, when he laughed about his newly-appearing pubic hair, and told several of us openly of how he enjoyed to play "a drum-beat" on his penis before going to sleep. "i don't do it too much, though," he explained. he showed a mild curiosity when i gave him the resumé of a book on cohabitation which contained illustrations of the erect penis and the female organs. i had found this book in the woods and i read it eagerly during my third year. i came to the point of agreeing with a., who said: "everyone is smutty." indeed i lived in a lustful world, and yet my mind was bent also on books, and writing, and the outdoor world. i was overgrown and splendidly developed, with a medium-sized penis and a scant growth of pubic hair. my face wore a somewhat infantile expression. my mouth was a perfect "cupid's bow," my hair thin and light. i was troubled about my snub-nose, which gave the boys a great deal of amusement. as a matter of fact i exaggerated its upward tendency out of my morbid self-consciousness and cowardice. my imagination was extraordinarily intense, as it had always been. i was sensitive to smells and sounds and colors and personalities, and to the subtle influence of the night. i was timid and easily moved to tears, but not from any physical weakness until after. at the lower house there was the boy z., famed for his large penis; and the older g., a boy of , who was the leader in sexuality at his dormitory. z. showed me his penis and exposed his glans often enough, but we did not manipulate each other. g. told us to notice how large a space his penis occupied in his trousers, and laughed over z.'s custom of masturbating by means of a narrow vase. g.'s special lover was a nervous boy of ten. it is remarkable that none of us mentioned _fellatio_ or _pædicatio_. these acts may have occurred at school, but not to my knowledge. we did not have much to say sexually about the girls. we heard rumors of a -year-old, v., who had been sent away from school for coitus; and my first room-mate was said to have obtained _conjunctio_ with a girl under cover of the chapel shed. once a. and i pointed a telescope at the open windows of the girls' dormitory, but we saw nothing to interest us. a day-scholar, j., a pale, nervous, bright boy of , took me into the study of his uncle-physician and together we gloated over pictures of the sexual organs. a. was with us on one occasion. j. told me how he liked to roll over and over in bed with his hand placed under his scrotum. this act, he said, made him imagine that he was obtaining coitus. he advised me to slide my penis back and forth in the vagina whenever i should actually obtain coitus. in my room at school j. once drew an imaginary map of a bagnio, in which the water-closet was carefully displayed _en suite_ with the bedrooms. j. and i never masturbated together. indeed, i cannot remember seeing his organ. a hulking boy of , who lived opposite the school-grounds, became intimate with j., and we three went on a walk up the railroad track. the big boy, w., tried to inflame my passions by telling me how he and j. had had coitus with a handsome black-haired widow in town, but i remained cold. during this year i fell in love with c., a popular, talkative, witty boy of my own age, or perhaps a year younger. he fancied me and we slept together one night under the most innocent circumstances. i never dreamed of having sexual relations with him, and yet i fairly burned with love for him. my stay at his beautiful home over sunday while his parents were away was one long delight. we slept in each other's arms, but there was no sexuality. en route to c.'s home he pointed with a glove to a little working-girl, saying he would like to have intercourse with her, but this was the only remark of the kind that ever passed his lips in my presence. when undressed save for his undershirt, he laughingly held his unerect organ in his hand and made the motions of obtaining conjunction with an imaginary partner. once we spoke of masturbation (i could recite the information of my good physician with a marvelous show of virtue), and c. remarked: "yes, doing that makes boys crazy." c. finally grew tired of my deceptive, babyish nature and ultra-interest in books and puzzles, but i cherished an undiminished affection for him, and when he was detained at home for a fortnight with a broken arm, i wrote him a passionate letter, which i sobbed over and actually wetted with my tears. but the fervor of my passion died at the close of the year. i consider this unsullied friendship to be the only redeeming feature of my sensual days at school. versed as i was in the warnings against masturbation, i found pleasure one afternoon when i was alone in slipping my penis through the open handle of a pair of scissors and in violently flapping my partially erect organ until a strange, sweet thrill crept over me from top to toe and a drop of clear liquid oozed from my member. but i gave up the manipulation with scissors, finding a greater satisfaction in masturbating while i was defecating or just after it. i either pumped my organ by slipping the prepuce back and forth, or i grasped the organ at its root and violently jerked it back and forth. i soon began to masturbate not only every time that i defecated, but also at night just before i went to sleep, and sometimes early in the morning. on the whole i preferred the jerking just described. i always brought about ejaculation after perhaps five minutes of violent exertion. my penis became chafed at the root, but i did not especially care. i remember the afternoon that i masturbated for the first time while i was defecating in the school water-closet. i cannot recall that at first i thought of coitus while i masturbated. on one occasion i masturbated over the _vase de nuit_ after a delightful afternoon of tobogganing exploration up and down the mountain. during this first year of abuse, i felt no ill effects whatsoever, although i realized, in an unthinking way, that i was doing wrong. but sexuality had assumed the proportion of a regular feature of our school life. it was difficult for me to place a "universal" view in its true perspective. i used to smile at the glazed, dull morning eye of poor h., who was a stunted boy of , and thus could not endure his losses so well as i could endure them. the qualms of conscience which i suffered were lost in my delight in my dawning sexual life. sometimes i lay on my stomach in bed, and by placing my hand under my scrotum, according to the directions of j., brought up a pretty girl to mind. just before sunday school g., our chief reprobate, and the rest of us would hunt out what we considered to be nasty texts of scripture. the chapter concerning the whoredoms of aholah and aholibah gave me an especial pleasure. t. mentioned the giggling that occurred at prayers in the lower dormitory when the details of esau's birth were read out. a few days before g. was expelled--for exactly what cause i do not know--he told me of how greatly he enjoyed coitus on his grandmother's sofa with a girl of fifteen. when i went home on the boat for holidays i noted the large, black-haired penis of the strong boy of our school. he occupied a state-room with me, but made no sexual overtures. since my twelfth year i had been wrapped up all summer long in a boy who was six months my senior. we slept together constantly, but not once did we think of obtaining mutual gratification. on the contrary, we held up high ideals to each other and frowned on masturbation. i took delight in saying that i never had handled myself, and never would do so. even at the height of my "auto-erotic" period, i skillfully concealed my habits from all my boy friends. a neurotic solo choir boy friend once spoke of obtaining ejaculation, whereupon i expressed utter ignorance of such an act, little hypocrite that i was. this boy told how the house servants joked with him about coitus and made laughing lunges at his organs. but much as i loved my chum, my most passionate regard went out in my thirteenth year to n., a chubby, blue-eyed, choir-boy of . he was a pretty boy to any eye. he was not gifted, except in water-sports, and anything but popular either with girls or with boys; yet i grew warm at the mention of his name. he did not care a fig for me. from first to last i had no consciousness of the sexual nature of my passion, and the thought of doing more than embrace and kiss him in an innocent manner never crossed my mind. for two summers i had nights of tossing on my bed (although i almost never was sleepless for any cause) when i would see his dear face and form, in and out of the swimming pool, or engaged perhaps in singing or in showing his beautiful teeth. i seldom was smitten with little girls, and i found myself embarrassed in their company after my ninth year; yet i thought well enough of their looks and ways to enjoy their company at dances. the girls liked me in a platonic way, for i was accounted a good, big, kind, blundering boy with a helping hand for the smallest fry. during the summer after i was , i imagined myself in the early morning, when i was half awake, as persuading my wife to have coitus with me. in the course of my spoken words i kept my hand under my scrotum. a plump girl-cousin of my own age was visiting at my uncle's during the summer after i was . with her i greatly desired to satisfy myself, but i could not be sure that my boy cousin ( years old) might not find us out, even though she should consent. once when we three were in the hay-loft a wave of lust rolled over me, but i made no proposal. night and gaslight greatly increased my _libido_. on one occasion my aunt had gone to the village for ice-cream, and l. and i were left alone in the dining-room. i took her on my lap and had a powerful erection. i almost asked her to play sexually with me in the barn, but instead i spoke of an imaginary girl, the first letters of whose successive names spelled an indecent word for coitus--a word known to almost every anglo-saxon child, i fear. l. laughed, but gave no sign of assent. for a neighboring girl of i felt such a drawing that early in the morning i would roll on the floor with my erect organ in my hand in riotous imagining of coitus with her. i walked with her in the woods and sat at her feet, but although i felt instinctively that she would satisfy me without much persuasion, yet i _could not_ ask her. one night i started to church in order to walk home with her, and lead her (if possible) to a field where we might gratify ourselves (i picked out the exact grassy spot where we might lie); but when i was almost at the church door my "moral sense" (if that is what it was) rose and dragged me home again. during the swimming hour i watched the genitals of the boys, comparing them carefully in the most minute details. circumcised organs affected me as being disagreeable, and men's hairy, coarse genitals i abhorred. when i became acquainted with the new mail-boy at the inn. he was a city "street-boy," and got me into smoking cigarettes occasionally. i did not definitely take up smoking until i was . he told me that a mason once offered him ten cents if he would masturbate the man in a cellar. the boy said that he refused. i slept a few times with an ill-favored boy of fine parentage. he was of my own age, and i had played with him in a natural way for several years, but my increasing sexual desires led me to mutually masturbate with him, and even unsuccessfully to attempt with him mutual pædicatio. on the morning after our nights of sensuality i felt "gone" and miserable, but not repentant. by afternoon i was myself again. my relations with g. were purely animal, for i disliked his jealous disposition, his horse-laugh, his features, his form, his withdrawn scrotum and his undersized penis. at home in the evening i often found myself inflamed with a mental picture of active _fellatio_ with him, but i never performed this act, so far as i remember. one of my great sexual desires was to walk along a fence on which a girl was seated. in order that i might feast my eyes on her pudenda she must not wear drawers. when i turned i had been, from my unusual size, in long trousers for several months. i entered a private day-school and progressed brilliantly in my studies. i kept up masturbation almost daily, sometimes twice a day, both in the water closet and in bed. i can remember ejaculating before urination in the school _cabinet_. at night i often found myself longing for the return of my sister, seven years my junior, in order that i might embrace her in bed and fondle her genitals. i had done these things during my christmas vacation of the year before. i mildly reproached myself for such incestuous desires, but they recurred continually. i dreamed little. and i cannot remember the character of my dreams. my waking _libido_ spent itself mostly in longings to embrace (without lustful acts) the forms of little boys of exquisite blonde beauty and thick hair. narcissism may have been present, for in my twelfth year i had been told that at the age of and i was an extraordinarily beautiful little creature with long, lint-white hair. the preferable age was from to . my eye was alert on the streets for boys answering to this description, and a street boy with long, white hair so won my passion that i followed him to his home and asked his mother if he might call on me and "play some games." as i did not even know the boy's name and had never seen him before, i was wonderingly refused. i sought in vain to find the whereabouts of another long-haired street boy whom i burned to embrace and load with benefits. i had a boundless desire for such a boy as this to idolize me--to look into my face out of big eyes and lose himself in love for me--to call me by endearing pet names--of his own accord to throw his arms around my neck. this second actual boy disappeared from my horizon by presumably moving away from the vast city neighborhood. i took a fancy to a small boy at school, who possessed the requisite delicacy, timidity, and sweetness, if not the physical requisites, of my beau ideal. i walked with him in the park and planned to have him at the house; but the matter was not arranged. at boarding-school i had associated much with younger and weaker boys, and had been ridiculed much for my cowardice in sports, but at the city school i moved with my equals and won their recognition. our gymnasium director was middle-aged and of an indolent disposition. he liked to recall his youthful erections and to answer my sexual queries too fully, and cheerfully volunteered information on brothels. yet i doubt whether he had an evil purpose in conversing with me. i thought i should never dare or want to enter one. i always conjured up the picture of a row of naked women from whom i could take my pick, and the smell of the women i imagined to be identical with the smell of my big friend a. at boarding-school. when i was traveling down town on an elevated train one afternoon the brakeman asked me whether i had ever been in a brothel, and told me that disorderly houses abounded in my neighborhood. "i have had connection with women," said this red-haired young man, waving his hand in greeting to a woman who nodded at him from a window, "since i was years old. not long ago a fine-looking, young woman in black offered to pay all my expenses if i would live with her and connect with her." when a girl of perhaps , a distant cousin of mine, visited us for a few days, i gratified my lust by placing my hand under her genitals and swinging her to and fro. she giggled with pleasure. that summer i began to experience the evil effects of the masturbation which i had practiced daily for a year and a half. pimples began to break out on my chin (my complexion up to this time had been white and delicate). the family ascribed my condition to digestive difficulties. in playing with the boys and girls i found myself seized with a terrible shyness and a tendency to look down and weep. i had lost all the courage i had--it had never been great--in the presence of a crowd of children. i was fairly at ease with a single companion. my self-consciousness was something more painful to me than i can convey in words. at home i wept in my room and cursed myself for a baby. i little realized the cause of my nervous collapse. yet i had too robust a frame not to be able to sleep and to play hard. the sympathetic pleasure which i had found in swinging my girl-cousin to and fro i now doubled by letting a -year-old boy ride cock-horse on my feet. i experienced an erection during the process, and i almost induced ejaculation when i tickled the boy with my feet in the region of his genitals. to see his shrinking, giggling joy gave me an exquisite sexual thrill. i longed to sleep with the boy, but i was afraid of causing comment. at the new and large boarding school which i entered in the fall my most lustful dreams and ejaculations were concerned with standing this little boy on the footboard of a bed, taking down his knickerbockers, and performing _fellatio_ on him. but i dreamed also of natural coitus. i fell in love with the handsome, -year-old son of the aged headmaster. the boy, o., sat next me at the table, and i never tired of gazing at him. it gave me a special sense of pleasure to look at him when he wore a certain flowing, scarlet, four-in-hand necktie. but o. was not attracted to me--for one thing i was in a disagreeably pimpled condition--and i could not induce him to linger in my room nor to sleep with me. my passion for o. did not diminish, and it rose to its supremacy on the evening when he appeared in our hallway (he roomed on the girls' side of the house and hinted at the sexual sights that he saw) in a costume of white satin, lace, and wings. he was ready for a costume party. i now masturbated less frequently, for i was beginning to appreciate the horrible consequences of my indulgence. i had frequent pollutions, with dreams. my day was one long agony of fear. how i dreaded to go to sleep in the same bed with my older chum, who never made any advances beyond embracing me passively _cum erectione_ while he was asleep. my day was one long agony of fear. at meal time my feet constantly writhed in agony for fear that the headmaster's grown up young ladies should make fun of me, or that my lack of facial composure and my inability to look people in the eye might be commented upon. i tingled with apprehension, especially in the region of my stomach. every nerve was taut in the effort i made to appear composed. i masturbated with erections over nothing. greek recitations were for me an _auto da fe_. my heart beat like a trip-hammer at the thought of getting up to recite, and once on my feet my voice shook and my mind wandered. i hated the thought of people behind me looking at me. i rarely summoned the courage to turn my head either one way or the other. i vastly admired the "bravery" of the small, -year-old boy who recited so calmly and so well. i was too cowardly to play foot-ball and base-ball, and i dreaded even my favorite tennis because the spectators put me in a state of scared self-consciousness. knowing my own condition, i was yet so blind to it most of the time, and such a jekyll-and-hyde, that i actually pitied a boy of who was an eccentric and a scared victim of masturbation. but in spite of my neuropathic condition i developed intellectually. i do not touch upon this aspect of my life, however, because i am trying to limit myself strictly to sexual manifestations. at the present time i have not the courage to continue the narrative. history iii.--the following narrative is written by a clergyman, age , unmarried:-- my childhood and early boyhood were unmarked by sexual phenomena, beyond occasional erections, which commenced when about years of age, without any exciting causes. these were accompanied by some degree of excitement, of the same nature as that which i experienced in later years. i was absolutely ignorant of sexual matters, but always had an idea that the essential difference between man and woman was to be found in the genital organs. this was sometimes a matter for thought and curiosity. being for many years an only child i saw little of other children, and formed the habit of amusing myself with making things--boats, houses, etc.--and acquired a taste for science. when i could read i preferred biography, history, and poetry to anything else. when i was years old and at a large school i heard for the first time of coitus, but very imperfectly. for a few days it filled my thoughts and mind, but feeling it was too engrossing a subject and one which took me off better things, i put it out of my mind. later, another boy gave me a fuller description of the matter, and i began to have a great desire to know more and to be old enough to practice it. i also discovered that boys masturbated, and about a year after tried the experiment for myself. this vice was largely indulged in by my school-fellows. it never occurred to me that it was sinful, until i was nearly , when i came across a passage in kenns's _manual of schoolboys_, in which it was hinted such things were wrong morally and spiritually. previously i had felt it was an indelicate and shameful thing, and bad for health. this last idea was held as a solemn fact by all my boy friends. gradually religion began to exert an influence over my sexual nature, obtaining as years passed a greater and greater restraining power. it is simply impossible for me to write a history of my sexual development without also describing the action which christianity has had in determining its growth. the two have been so intimately bound together that my life history would not be a faithful record of facts if i left religion out of it. at school i took part, with great keenness, in cricket and foot-ball, and was very ambitious to excel in everything in which i took an interest, but i always had other tastes as well, which were more precious to me, for example, the love for science, history, and poetry. until i was past years my desire was simply for coitus, girls and women attracted me only as affording the means of gratifying this desire; but when i was nearly i began to regard girls as beautiful objects, apart from this, and to desire their love and companionship. at the same time it dawned upon me that life held much of joy in the love of women and in domestic life--so henceforth i regarded them in a higher and purer light, and apart from sexual gratification. in fact, from this period till i was over , this idea so dominated my whole being that the lower side of my nature was entirely held in subjection and abeyance by it. it was rather repulsive to think of girls as objects of lust. this state of mind was not brought about by any romantic attachment or through any acquaintance or through circumstances. i was living in great seclusion and had no girl friends. after this period the lower side of my nature woke up as a giant refreshed with wine, and i underwent for many years a constant struggle with my nature, in which religion always triumphed in the end. i never fell into fornication, though sometimes into the vice of masturbation. these outbursts of desire were periodic, about ten or fourteen days apart, and would last several days. i must record also the fact that from the time this awakening took place my ideal views of woman no longer seemed incompatible with sexual relations. i noticed that at about there was a lessening of the desire, but that may have been due to overwork and consequent nervous exhaustion. i had a good deal of worry and studied daily for about eight hours. in any case the impulse was strongest during the years above mentioned. a little later in life, for a time, i became attached to a girl, and eventually engaged. i then observed, greatly to my sorrow and annoyance, that whenever i met this lady, or even thought of her, erections took place. this was particularly painful to me, as my thoughts were not of a lustful or impure character. sometimes sitting by her at a religious service this would occur, when certainly my mind was far away from anything of the kind. that was the first woman ever kissed by me, except of course members of my immediate family circle. later on my thoughts turned to marriage, and there was a great longing at times for this event to take place. however, as this attachment afterward became the great sorrow of my life for years, it needs no more comment. this closes one chapter of my history, and at present i do not propose to add another, as in a great measure it is only partly written. it may be well here to state that there has never been in me the slightest homosexual desire; in fact it has always appeared as a thing utterly inconceivable and disgustingly loathsome. i am fond of the society of both men and women, but on the whole prefer the latter. i have had several warm and intimate though platonic friendships, and get on exceedingly well with the other sex, although not a good-looking man. i have always been attracted to women by their spiritual or mental qualities, rather than by physical beauty, and feel strongly that the latter alone would never cause me to desire coitus. unless there was an attraction other than that of the flesh, i should feel that i was following simply a brute instinct, and it would jar with my higher nature and cause revulsion. this was not the case in my earlier years to the same extent. i have often wondered whether the sexual impulse was strong in me or not, but if not, there is nothing in my physical state or family history to account for it. i am fairly cognizant with the lives of my ancestors, being descended from two old families. the sexual instinct was certainly not weak or abnormal in them. personally, i am tall and healthy, well built, but sensitive and highly strung. smell has never played any part in my life as a stimulant of sexual desire, and the mere thought of body odors would have a very decided effect in the opposite direction. touch and sight appeal to me strongly, and of the two the former most. i am convinced, after many years careful thought, that sexual vice and perversion could be greatly reduced if the young were instructed in the elements of physiology as they bear on this question. personally, had i been thus enlightened much sin would have been avoided in my schoolboy days, and a perverted view of sexual matters would never have arisen in my mind. it took years to overcome the feeling that all such things were unclean and defiling. eventually light came to me through reading a passage in a tractate on the creed by rufinus. he was defending the doctrine, of the incarnation against the pagan objection that it was an unclean and disgusting idea that god should enter the world through the womb of the blessed virgin mary, and he meets it by showing that god created the sexual organs, therefore the objection is invalid--otherwise god would not be clean or pure, having himself designed them and their functions. this passage is slight in itself, but gave birth to a line of thought which has influenced me profoundly. i no longer regard sexual matters as disgusting and unholy, but as intensely sacred, being the outcome of the divine mind. further, the incarnation of the saviour has not only sanctioned motherhood and all that is implied by it, but has eternally sanctified it as the means chosen for the manifestation of god to the world. i should not obtrude my theological conceptions, but for the fact that they have determined my life-history in that aspect. history iv.--when i was years old a boy at the preparatory school, which i attended, showed me the act of masturbation, which he said he had practiced for a long time, and which he urged me to imitate, if i wished to become a father when i grew up, and married! boy-like i believed him and tried, but the sensation obtained was not a pleasant one (i suppose that i was too rough with myself) and i desisted. when i was about years old, a schoolfellow told me that he had seen his nurse copulating with the groom, and he and i used to haunt the woods in the hope that we might see an amorous couple so engaged, but without success. we often talked of the act, as to how it was done. neither he nor i had any clear ideas on the subject, save as to the organs involved. i was about when a maidservant of the house in which i was a boarder, came to my bedroom one night and taught me how to masturbate her. she said that this was a good thing for me to do, and warned me never to "play with myself" as it would kill me, or drive me mad. i told her that i had tried it, but could not bring on a pleasurable feeling, so she did it to me, and although i did not have an emission, i derived great pleasure from the act. she told me that it never did a boy any harm to let a girl play with his parts, and promised that if i would keep the secret, she would often do this for me. naturally i promised to say nothing, and she often came up to my room. later on she used to insert my penis into her vulva, while she was rubbing it, at the same time giving me a pigeon kiss. this _modus operandi_ was much appreciated by me. one night, after we had been together thus, i dreamt of her and her maneuvers and had my first emission. i was very proud of this, as i considered that i had at last attained to man's estate, and told her of it. she never allowed me to insert my penis into her vulva after that, alleging that she did not want to have a baby. i was about ½ years old when i had my first real coitus, my partner in the act being a girl some two years older than i, who lived near us. i enjoyed the act very much, as she permitted, nay insisted on, emission _intra vaginam_, and told her that this was much nicer than my amours with the maidservant which of course i had confided to her. she laughed, and said: "of course." we often copulated, as long as i was at home, and then i lost sight of her. of all the women with whom i have had to do, save one, she had the most copious secretion of mucus, which in those days i believed was the woman's semen. her thighs used to be wet with it. at the university i had regular relations with women of all sorts, rarely missing a week. two of them were married women, one the wife of a solicitor, the other of a doctor. how proud i felt of my first intrigue with a married woman! i felt that i was really a man of the world now! but though my friends used to tell me all about their love affairs, and i longed to confide in them, i did not do so. this was because when i went up to the university, my uncle said that he would give me a word of advice and hoped that i would follow it--never to give away a woman, and never to refuse to respond to a woman's advances, whoever she were. to neglect this advice would, he said, be foolish, and to break the rules "damned ungentlemanly." i wish i had always followed advice proffered, as closely as i have followed this. one night, when i was somewhat disguised in liquor, as our grandfathers would have put it, i picked up a girl, who was a private prostitute, if the phrase be permissible. she declined copulation, and proposed other means of satisfaction. i insisted, being stubborn in my cups. had i been sober i should have done as she suggested, for i have always made it a point to allow the woman to choose the method of gratification, and not to demand, or even suggest, anything myself. i like to please women, and i have always been curious as to their wants and desires, as revealed, without outside influence, by themselves. the result of my refusing all methods of gratification save the most ordinary was that the girl, who must have known that she was not all right, but shrank from saying so in so many words, gave me a gonorrhoea, which lasted nine weeks and much interfered with my amours, as i naturally declined to run the risk of infecting my partner, a risk which to my certain knowledge many a young fellow has run, with disastrous consequence to the confiding woman. as it was due to my tipsy obstinacy, i could not blame the girl, but resolved never to drink too much again, a resolve which i have kept, save once, unbroken. in those days we youngsters thought that it was manly to be able to carry one's liquor well, and did all in our power to attain to the seasoned head; but i considered that the risks entailed were too serious to be neglected. i was well on in my th year when i met a widow with whom i fell in love, with the result that i married her. she is a most sensible woman, and it was her intellectual gifts which were the attraction to me. in my amours intellect has never played a part. she has all along been cognizant of, and lenient to, my polygamous tendencies; for she recognizes the fact that whatever _fredaine_ i may have on hand makes not the slightest difference in my love and respect for her. were she a more sensual woman, perhaps things would be different. in all i have had to do with other women, of whose special characteristics i kept a careful note at the time. twenty-six were normal women with whom my _liasons_ have lasted long, so i know more about them than i do about the other fifty-five, who were prostitutes, and with some of whom my dealings were but for an afternoon. the races represented have been these, for i have seen a bit of the world: english, scotch, irish, welsh, french, german, italian, greek, danish, hungarian, roumanian, indian, and japanese. taking them all round, the only difference that i found between old and young women is that the older ones are less selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one's being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from time to time i have been unable to "come up to the scratch" after a heavy night's labor, or when i was afraid of being caught in the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men. of all the women with whom i have had to do the nicest in every way have been the french women. the english women of the town drink too much, and are far too keen on getting as much money as they can for as little as they can, to please me. were the london girls to recognize that men do not like a tipsy woman, and that where there is so much competition the person who is most skillful and most polite gets the most custom, the alien invasion in regent street would soon come to an end. of the fifty-five prostitutes: eighteen informed me that they were in the habit of masturbating; eight of their own free will, without asking for reward, did _fellatio_; six asked me to do _cunnilingus_, which i naturally declined to do; three proposed anal coitus. of those who did _fellatio_, two (one french and one german) told me that they had taken to it because they had heard that human semen was an excellent remedy against consumption, which disease had carried off some of their relatives, and that they had gradually come to like doing it. all who told me that they masturbated, asked me whether i did so too, and two desired me to show them the act, one alleging that she liked to see a man do it; she had been married late in life, after a "stormy youth" and had had, she said, a large experience of the male sex. they all seemed to think that however much the practice of self-excitement might hurt a man, and all thought that it would hurt him, a woman might masturbate as often as she liked, failing better means of satisfaction, as she had no such loss of substance as a man. of the twenty-six normal women, whom i knew more intimately than i did the fifty-five prostitutes, thirteen, without being questioned by me, blurted out the fact that they were habitual masturbators, apparently all required to think of the loved person to obtain full satisfaction. _fellatio_ was proposed, and fully performed, by nine, of whom three experienced the orgasm as soon as they perceived that i had attained to it. all were more or less excited while doing it. one proposed anal coitus, "just to see what it was like;" and three proposed _cunnilingus_, one having been initiated by a girl friend, and one by her husband. the third had, i believe, evolved the act out of her own inner consciousness in her desire to experience pleasure with me. my relations with one of the twenty-six were confined to my masturbation of her, the while she did _fellatio_, as she said that she "had no feeling inside down there." with two exceptions my partings from these normal women have not been tragic and all whom i have met in after life (seven) have been very ready to resume relations with me, four of them having made the proposal themselves. one thing has struck me, and that is the, often great, difference that exists between what a woman's looks lead one to think she is, and what she is when one becomes her lover; the most sensual woman that i have met might have sat for her portrait as the madonna, and she was the only one who took pleasure in hearing and relating "smoking-room stories," a form of amusement which, perhaps from their want of appreciation of humor and wit, women do not indulge in--at least in my experience. history v.--(a continuation of history iii in appendix b to the previous volume.) as i became better i commenced to dream of true love. i wondered, too, if my horrible past really could be lived down and a young woman come to love _me_. i took pleasure in reading love poems, especially browning's, and illustrated some with little water-colors.... i was sitting in the stalls one night seeing a performance by a company of english actors when one of them played so badly that i thought to myself: "why, hang it, i could play it better myself!" the next minute another thought followed: "why not try?" i came out of the stalls the proverbial stage-struck youth. i was sitting in the same place another night when the young man next to me entered into conversation. by a strange coincidence he knew a few young men, amateurs, who were going to form a company, give up their situations and travel, if they could induce a few more to join them and put a little money in. i made an appointment for the following evening.... there were lots of meetings in bedrooms and rehearsals between the beds, but ultimately i was told a school-room had been engaged and a professional actress, a.f. i went to the school-room and found all the boys there, and a young woman with a pale, rice-powder complexion. on introduction she gazed at me as if struck dumb. if she had been better-looking (i thought her vulgar and puffy) i would have been flattered. i was disappointed, but rather frightened (she had a stage presence) of her professional ability, especially when we commenced to rehearse. i had to make love to her, too, which embarrassed me. she had a good profile, i noticed, and would have been better looking, i thought, if she were in better condition, for she was young, about my own age, twenty-three or four. we were all young--enjoyed our rehearsals, and had lots of fun--but i did not respond to the advances a. was evidently making to me. finally we started on our tour. as the weeks went on a.f., like the others, improved wonderfully in health and appearance. if we had had anything like houses it would have been a pleasant trip. my strangeness did not escape the notice of the boys altogether, for i was still a bit strange in mind and nerves--and deeply religious, bowing my head before each meal and reading my little bible and prayer-book at odd times. i drank no alcohol. i spent a good deal of time by myself of with my faithful companion a., who was nearly always at my side, she and her appealing eyes. i was surprised to see how quickly she had improved; she looked quite attractive and ladylike some evenings at meals, but i only tolerated her. i was selfish and conceited. things had been going on like this for a week--always playing to empty houses and our money lower and lower--when a. said to our other lady, mrs. t., on a train in my presence: "i shall have to give him up, i suppose; he will have nothing to do with me." mrs. t. said: "you give him up, do you?" and looked at me as if she were going to try her hand. a. said "yes," and looked at me, smiling sadly. i don't know what motive prompted me--whether my vanity was alarmed at her threatened desertion or that she had really made some impression on me by her love, probably a little of both--but i said: "no, don't; come and sit down here," making way for her, and she joyfully came and nestled against me. from that time i ceased to treat her with ridicule, and kissed her at other times than when on the stage. i was subject still to black moods, and would not speak to her for hours sometimes, but she seemed content to walk with me and was infinitely patient. i had heard she was living with--if not married to--an actor. i asked her about him once, and she said she did not love him; she loved me and had never loved before. her face had a touching sadness; her life had been unhappy and stormy, with no love and little rest in it. her face, when she had lost her dissipated look and unhealthy pallor, was exquisite, delicate as a cameo. love had improved her manners, too; she was more gentle and refined. i let things drift without thinking of the future, when one night after the performance--i was lying on the sofa and a. was sitting at my side, as usual--i suddenly thought, with the brutality that characterized me in these matters--"i will ask her to let me sleep with her." i still fought against any premonitory thought of self-abuse, but here, i thought to myself, is a chance of something better that will do me no harm and perhaps good. when she understood me she turned very red and walked away, shaking her head. but i let her understand that was the only way of retaining me, and finally, when they had all gone to bed, she gave herself to me, reluctantly and sadly; for she, too, had been drifting on without thinking of anything of this sort (she hated it at this time), but just living for her love of me, her first true love. before this occurred, i must tell you, i had been so much better that i sometimes felt capable of doing anything, a sense of power and grasp of intellect which was combined with delicacy of feeling and sensitiveness to beauty, to skies and clouds and flowers. i seemed to be awakening to true manhood, to my true self. and at meals, it is worth recording, i commenced to have a distaste for meat. these glimpses of a better state of things left me on cohabiting with a., and for a time my gloom and black religious mania came on me once more. i now thought of my promise at confirmation, and it seemed to me i had offended beyond pardon. when we came to the next town, however, i openly slept with a. all night, leaving my own bed untouched. when we returned to adelaide one of our party remarked: "the only man who had any success with the women on the tour was a bible-reading, praying, and good, pious, confirmed christian." a.'s nascent beauty and delicacy and improvement were gradually impaired, too. my own conduct became so morose at times that, besides increasing her misery, i offended the others, and bickerings ensued. i heard the other actress say "he's mad; that what's the matter." and i was so wrapped up in myself and my religious mania that i did not mind their thinking so. after the tour was over a. asked me to come and see her at her home, and as i missed her very much i went one night to tea. she had a room in her father's house to herself. a. was dressed in her best and we had an affectionate meeting. after tea i asked her if she were married to e. she said "no." then i said: "who are you married to?" she commenced to cry then, and told me something of her life, the saddest i ever heard. when only she had been courted by a young man she did not care for, but who prevailed on her parents by pretending he had seduced her, but wished to marry her. strange as it may seem, a. did not know what marriage meant, her mother being one of those silly women who don't like talking of these things and let their daughters grow up in ignorance, expecting they will learn from some one. in nine cases out of ten this happens, but a. was an exception. it was this, and the fact that she had not a particle of love for her husband, that gave her such a hatred of coition. when her mother saw the sheets the morning after the marriage she burst out crying; she did not like the young man and saw she had been deceived. a.'s husband soon showed his true character; he was in reality a gaol-bird. he beat her, drank, and even wanted her to go on the streets to earn money for him. she left him and went home; it was then she began her theatrical career by entering the ballet. at intervals her husband, drunk and desperate, would waylay and threaten her in the street. one day after a rehearsal he attempted to stab her. she got on in spite of all, being a born actress, and played small parts in traveling companies. then e., who had also gone on the stage, courted her and she listened to him, not because she cared for him, but he protected her and offered her a home. she joined him; but his drunkenness and sensuality were so gross that he ruined his health and he attempted to maltreat a. in a nameless way. and whenever she was in the family way he would leave her alone and half-conscious in the cellar for days. to add to her misery she had epileptic fits. then sometimes they would be out of an engagement and starving. they had been so hungry as to steal raw potatoes out of a sack and eat them thus, having no fire. she would often have had engagements, but e. was jealous and would not let her act without him. and he beat her as her husband had done, and her health became undermined. it was just after one of the forced miscarriages that she joined our traveling company, and that accounted for her yellow and puffy appearance. e. was now away up-country with a circus, but was expected down any time. a. told me a good deal of all this, between her tears, while sitting at my feet, and her tone carried conviction. when i ought to have gone home i persuaded her to let me stay all night. we had been in bed some time when her mother knocked at the door and wanted to come in for something in a chest of drawers there. "why don't you open the door, a.? who have you got there? hasn't that fellow gone?" a. was confused and told me to get under the bed, but i refused, and she covered me up with the bed clothes as well as she could and opened the door. she had hid my clothes, but missed one of my shoes, and her mother saw it. "oh, a.," was all she said; "you've got that fellow in bed," and went out crying. "well, fred" (my stage name), "you've got me into a nice row," a. said. she gave me my breakfast in the morning and i walked out of the front door without being molested. another night i entered her window by a ladder and stayed all night. in the middle of the night e. came home drunk. she would not let him in and told him she would have nothing more to do with him. he attempted to break in the door, when a. called to me, and hearing a man in the room he went away, saying, as he went downstairs: "oh, a.! oh, a.!" as if he thought she would not have done such a thing. he never molested us after that night. i think it was my intention, at first, to break off with a. gradually. i found, however, i could not keep away from her, and it commenced to be evident to me that a bachelor's life in lodgings again would be dreary and lonely. and all this time the fear that i had offended god troubled me more than i have said, and it occurred to me (there may have been a touch of sophistry in this, or not) that if i were a true husband to her for the future--stuck to her and worked for her for the rest of my days--perhaps it would find favor in god's sight and be an atonement for my sin. had she been free i would have married her, i believe. but she began to be harassed by her mother and bothered about my incessantly coming there and staying all night. it ended in my telling her i would be a husband to her, and she came and lived with me at my lodgings. we had one room and our meals cost us sixpence each. cheap as it was, it was a struggle for me to earn money at all. i remember feeling ill and anxious once, and sustaining myself by the thought of my father wheeling the heavy truck up the street when he married my mother. and i decided to wheel my truck, too. a. seemed happy and her love increased, if possible; at first, though, she must have found me a trying lover, for i made her kneel and pray with me two or three times a day, which she did with such a queer expression of face. sometimes her feelings got the better of her, and she would say: "oh, damn it, fred, you are always praying." and then i would be shocked and she would be sorry.... coitus was frequent; she commenced to like it now.... a. was not looking well one evening when she came in, and lay down on the bed. presently she commenced to make a strange noise, and i saw her eyes were closed and her hands clenched. "ah," said the landlady, who came in to help me; "she has epileptic fits." when her convulsions were over she looked blankly at us, knitting her brows and evidently puzzling her poor brain to remember who we were. for many years it was my fate to see her looking at me thus, at first stony and estranged, like a dweller in another star, then half-recalling with extended hand, then forgetting again with hand to mouth, then the gradual dawn of memory and love, and final full recognition. "it's fred, my fred!" i never got used to it; it always moved me to tears.... it was not to be thought that we had no quarrels. i still had fits of bad temper, and sometimes they came into collision with a.'s temper. it hurt my vanity considerably to see how soon she relinquished the respectful, patient, spaniel-bearing she had when we were traveling. i said some cruel things to her and she retorted. one would have thought, to hear us, that all affection was over. but when the mood of rage wore itself out we would both be sorry and make it up with tears, and be very happy in spite of our poverty. i think it was lust that prevented me from striving to fulfill my ambitions. a. let me do anything i liked, at all times of day or night, although she seemed surprised at my proceedings sometimes, for it was becoming a fever of lubricity with me. she still thought only of her love. i remember her coming in one day, tired, pale, perspiring, and worried--we had hardly anything in the house and she had been to the theater ineffectually--and when her eyes lighted on me the whole expression of her face changed, softened and brightened at once, and she came and kissed me and said: "it is so strange, i was thinking all sorts of nasty things coming along, but as soon as i see my pet's face i feel happy--i don't care for anything--i would sooner share a crust with him than have all the money in the world!" i commenced to feel libidinous curiosity to examine her--this was mostly on sundays--and she let me, blushing at first, but laughing. then i would try new positions in coitus i had heard of. still she did not enter into my mood. she was engaged at this time to play in a pantomime and i commenced to lead a miserable, jealous existence. i heard scandal about her, baseless enough, but in the diseased, nervous, anxious state i had brought myself to it nearly drove me mad. i would go with her sometimes to visit her mother, whom i began to like. her brother i still saluted coldly. it caused me horror and jealousy to see a. kissing him and letting him tickle her. in my rage, when we came home, i even said that perhaps she would let him do something else, naming it brutally and coarsely. i remember her shame, astonishment, indignation and tears. if ever a man tried a woman's love i did. but she forgave me, even that. we went to live in a little cottage. it was in this cottage that a. first showed signs of lust, and in the diseased state of my mind, instead of regretting it, i encouraged her. she told me one day that the orgasm very often did not occur at the same time with her as with me, and that it would not unless i put my little finger into the anus. this her husband taught her, and she would rather have died than confess it to me when we first met. we would often devote our sundays to having a picnic as we termed our lustful bouts, stimulating ourselves with wine. her temper was not improved thereby (though her fits entirely stopped for a twelvemonth)--we had wordy warfares, but we made it up again always with tears. nor did i allow myself to deteriorate without reactions and excursions into better things. i was always reading emerson; it was he who rescued me from orthodox christianity and taught me to trust in myself and in nature. i have never ceased this struggle towards better things to this day. there, in a nutshell, is my life; i have always been defeated when temptation came, but i have never ceased to struggle. i determined to be more abstemious in sexual indulgence and asked her to help me. she agreed willingly, for she was easily led. whenever we fell back again into excess it was my fault. at a theatrical performance we first met a miss t., a young german who sang. she was about , with modest, quiet and engaging manners. a. and she became very friendly. i liked her; she was tall, dark and lithe, but had bad teeth. i had been ill and at this time a. and i had a quarrel, my temper suddenly breaking out in murderous frenzy. i called her names and finally put her outside the house, telling her to go to her mother. i suffered a very hell of remorse and misery. everything in the quiet, lonely house reminded me of her, seemed fragrant of her; my anguish became so keen i could not stop in the house, though i was just as wretched walking about. i kept this up for two days, when i met her coming to look for me. one look was enough--"a.!" "pet!" in broken sobs--and in tears we kissed and made it up. miss t. was with her, and i greeted her, too, with happy tears in my eyes. another time, when a. was giving way to _her_ temper, and one would have thought all love was dead, i said "don't you love me then?" and the word alone was a talisman, her face changed, she held out her arms and began to sob quietly.... she accepted an offer to travel with a small theatrical company who were going up-country. she was not looking well when i left and after a time i received a telegram telling me to come to her at once as she was ill. dreading all sorts of things i borrowed my fare and went to her. i knew nothing of women, of their point of view and different code of honor, and was very far from the attitude of guy de maupassant who said he liked women all the better for their charmingly deceitful ways. a. wanted to see me and had taken the surest means to ensure my coming. i was angry at first, but she looked so well and was so loving that i could not be angry long. one day when i was working the landlady came in and began talking about a. and her conduct before i came. she had gone into the actors' rooms at all hours, the woman said, and drank and been as bad as the rest in her conversation. it was the second time a married woman had run her down to me, and i commenced to think there might be something in it, and suffered all my mad jealousy over again. not knowing the freedom actors and actresses allow themselves on tour, without there being necessarily anything in it, i worried till i thought i had nothing to do but die. and then one of the great struggles of my life occurred. walking the country roads, i asked myself: "if it _is_ true, if she has been unfaithful, will you forgive her and help her to arrive at her best?" for a long time the answer was "no!" but perhaps my striving for unity with myself had done some good, and the final resolution was for forgiveness. i felt more peace of mind then, and when i told a dying consumptive lodger in the house what the landlady had said, he replied, "don't you believe a word of it. i know she loves you!".... after an absence i found myself one evening in a town where a. was performing. i went round to the back and they told me she had gone to a room in the hotel to change for another part. i followed and entered the room, with a glass of spirits i found that an effeminate young actor was bringing to her. she was half undressed, her beautiful arms and shoulders bare. my arrival was unexpected and she looked at me surprised, i thought coldly, as i reproached her for not keeping a promise she had made to me to touch no alcohol during the tour, but soon her arms were round my neck. she cried like a child. she was bigger and handsomer and healthier. there was not only an increased strength and size, but an increased delicacy and sweetness; her eyes and brows were lovely; there was an indescribable bloom and fragrance on her, such as the sun leaves on a peach; the traveling, country air, and freedom from coitus (had i known it) had enabled her to arrive at her true self, not only a beautiful woman, but a woman of fascination, of wit, vivacity and universal _camaraderie_. her face was like the dawn; all my fears and jealousy left me like a cloud that melts before the sun. i remember the look on her face as she embraced me in bed that night. it had just the very smallest touch of sensuality, but was more like some beautiful child's who is being caressed by one she loves; this divine, drowsy-eyed, adorable look i had never seen on her face before--nor have i since. we fell back into our old lustful ways. later on a. became ill and the black devil of epilepsy returned. i became gloomy.... a restlessness and selfish brutality came over me; our love and peace were gone. i persuaded a. to go to melbourne and look out for an engagement. the day before she was to sail we went to glenelg for a trip. the sea air, as often happened, precipitated a.'s fits. we had gone down to the pier and a. said she felt bad. i just managed to support her to the hotel before she became stiff, and i made some impatient remark (for she nearly dragged me down) which she heard, not being quite unconscious and said half incoherently and very pitiably: "be kind, oh, be kind!" repeating it after consciousness left her. her heart had been breaking all day at the prospect of parting, and also, i expect, because i was so ready to part with her. that moment was a crisis in my life. i was in a murderous humor, but she looked so unutterably wretched that it seemed impossible to be anything but kind. i made myself speak lovingly to her, in moments of partial consciousness, hired a room, carried her up, and nursed her and petted her all night. the act of self-control, and forcing myself to be kind whatever i felt, became a habit in time, a sort of second nature. in a few days she sailed. when she had gone i was remorseful and mad with myself. how could i let her go by herself? i resolved to follow her as speedily as possible, and did so. if i remember rightly i came to the conclusion about this time that we ought not to have coition unless we felt great love for each other. it seemed to corroborate this to a certain extent that a. always seemed more electric and pleasant to the touch when we had connection for love and not for lust. leave it to nature, i would say to myself. i began to feel how much my struggles, efforts and temperate living had improved me. i had more self-respect, though something of the old self-consciousness was still left. i did not get better continuously, but in an up-and-down zigzag. i still had moods of rage approaching madness and periods of neurotic depression. long walks decidedly helped to cure me, and the sea, sun, wind, clouds and trees colored my dreams at night very sweetly. i frequently dreamed i was walking in orchards or forests, and a deeper, slightly melancholy but potent savor, as of a diviner destiny, was on my soul. after a long absence, during which she had frequently been ill, a. joined me. i could see she was recovering from fits, which i began to realize that she had more frequently in absence from me, and also from drinking, perhaps. she was small and thin, but fresh and sweet as honey, and all signs of fits and tempers passed away from her face, so wonderful in its changes. i had become so healthy through my abstinence, temperance and long walks that our meeting was a new revelation to me of how delicate, fragrant and divine a convalescent woman may be. she was glad and surprised to see me looking so well, and if she put her hand on my arm i felt a joyous thrill. i was certainly a better man for abstaining and she a better woman and i determined not to have connection unless we were carried away by our love. as a matter of fact we did not give way to excess, though we were very loving. i tried to persuade myself that we had not gone back to our old ways, but i could not do so long. miss t. put in an appearance every day. she did not look so innocent, but as it was no business of mine i did not trouble. she seemed more attached to a. than ever.... a. was still very loving with me, but it was an effort to me to keep up to her pitch, and when a. proposed to go to melbourne with miss t, to sell off the furniture before settling in adelaide, i was rather glad of the opportunity of abstaining from coitus and of watching myself to see if i again improved. when a. and miss t. came to see me before going down to the steamer, a. was nearly crying and miss t., changed from the old welcome friend, was not only pale and anxious, but looked guilty as if she had some treachery in her mind; she could not meet my eye. i thought less of it then than afterwards. and once more i took long walks at night and rose early to catch the freshness of the mornings. some time before this i had read a book advocating a vegetarian diet, and at this time i chanced to read pater's beautiful "denys l'auxerrois," the imaginary portrait of a young vine-dresser, who was attractive beyond ordinary mortals and lived, until his fall and deterioration, on fruit and water. the words, "a natural simplicity in living" remained in my memory. i resolved to read more carefully the book on scientific diet. who can say, i thought, what changes for the better may come to me if i live on a strictly scientific and natural diet? i fasted one whole day, and then had a breakfast of cherries, in the middle of the day a meal of fruit, and walking in the afternoon--a gray, rainy day--i felt so light, so different, and the gray sky looked so sweet and familiar, that i was reminded of the luminous visions of my boyhood. it was a distinct revelation. this pan-like, almost bacchic feeling, did not last, however, nor was i always able to maintain my new method of diet, though i tried to do so. i made the attempt, however, but i imagine i was more than usually run down. i would walk miles in the hope of feeling less restless. one holiday i walked down to glenelg, having only had grapes for my dinner, and lying on the beach i looked through a strong binocular glass i had borrowed at the girls bathing. and the beauty of their faces in their frames of hair, of their arms, of their figures, seen through their wet clinging dresses, satisfied me and filled me with joy, gave me for a short time that peace and content--in harmony with the strong sunlight on the waves and the rhythmic surf on the shore--i was seeking. the summer evenings on the pier or along the beach had a peculiar savor; one felt the youth and beauty there even on dark nights, the air was fragrant with them, white dresses and summer hats disappearing down the beach or over the sand hills. it was easy--doubtless justifiable sometimes--to put a lewd construction on these disappearances; but i felt it need not have been so; that it was not necessary that youth and beauty, even the sexual act itself if led up to by love, should be a subject of giggling and sniggering. i always left the beach and its flitting summer dresses with a sigh. a., after writing once, ceased writing at all and once more her mother and i were left in a state of anxiety and suspense. at last i determined to go to melbourne to look for her, the only clue i had being a remark in her letter that a certain actor was giving her an engagement. in melbourne i could not find any traces of her for some days and what traces i did find of her were not calculated to allay my anxious fears. one hotel-keeper told me that some one of a's name had stayed there with another hussy (giving miss t's stage name): "there were nice carryings on with the pair of them." i thought of miss t's strange looks, but could not imagine what hold she had on a., for a. loved me, i knew. i seemed to be in an inextricable maze. i could settle to nothing and was thinking of applying to the police when i heard that the actor a. had mentioned had taken his company to the gippsland lakes. i followed to sale, found the actor and was told that a. was not there. "she slipped me at the last moment," he said, "and remained in melbourne." i returned to my lodgings, with my anxiety and nervous restlessness increased tenfold. but suddenly my fear and restlessness left me like a cloud. i felt quiet, young, peaceful, able to enjoy the country, a. was doubtless all right and would be able to explain her silence. i undressed leisurely and happily, thinking of the stars. the next day, sunday, i awoke refreshed and still at peace. after breakfast, hearing children's voices, i went out into the garden and there was a collision of souls who somehow were affinities. a young girl about twelve or younger with a fine presence and handsome face fixed her eyes on me for half a minute and then came and sat on my knee. she was one of those children i am accustomed to call "love-children," because they are so much brighter, healthier, larger and more loving than others. i always imagine more love went to their making. we fell in love and she said, stroking my beard, "oh, you are pretty!" and i said, "and so are you!" we were so affectionate that the servant called the child away and i went for a walk, finding my little sweetheart waiting for me on my return. the touch of her hand was electric and her voice fresh and musical. i kissed her, but had become more self-conscious since the morning and wondered if her mother or the servant were looking, or even of they would appear. i was not so frank and natural as my little chum. i have often thought of her since. she had the breadth of forehead, the strength and yet lightness of limb, together with the hands and feet, not too small, that i always imagine the dwellers in paradise will have. i returned to melbourne and continued trying to find a. at the same time i commenced in earnest to live on fruit and brown bread only, and enjoyed better tone and health every day, so that it was a joy to walk down the street in the sun and exchange glances with passengers à la old walt. one day in the botanical gardens veils seemed to be lifted off my eyes. i could look straight at the sun and taking my note of color from that golden light i turned my eyes on the flowers, the mown grass, the trees, and for the first time perceived what a heavenly color green is, what divine companions flowers are, and what a blue sky really means. for half an hour i was in paradise, and to complete my joy nature revealed to me a new and unexpected secret. i was lying on a bench, basking, and my silk shirt coming open the strong sun made its way to my breast and presently i felt a totally new sensation there. i had discovered the last joy of the skin. my skin, fed by healthy fruit-made blood, must have functioned normally under the excitation of the sun just then (for a brief space only, alas!). i cannot describe the joy, any more than i could describe the taste of a peach to one who has only eaten apples: it was satisfying, divine. i opened my shirt wider, but the feeling only spread faintly, and indeed this halcyon sunny hour terminated in a restlessness that sent me walking into town to look for a. at last i heard, not of a., but of miss t. she was in a ballet. i went round during rehearsal and while waiting entered into conversation with a little chorus girl with a good face, who was sewing. on my telling her whom i was seeking she stopped sewing and looked at me quickly: "oh, are you her husband? i know her. _i have seen them together_." she looked as if she were going to tell me something, but merely shook her old-fashioned head in a mournful, indescribable way, saying "why don't you keep your wife with you?" i went to the door and presently saw miss t. she tried to avoid me, i thought, and looked more vicious than ever, but after a minute's thought reluctantly told me where she and a. were staying. to hide my fears and suspicions i had assumed a careless demeanor, but i think i should have strangled her had she refused to tell me. i hastily went to the place indicated and going up the stairs (to the astonishment of the people) opened the door and found myself face to face with a.--but how changed! she had the hard, harlot, loveless look i detested. i felt for a few minutes that i did not love her, and she regarded me coldly too, but presently old habits reinstated themselves. she put out her hands, very pitiably, and then was sobbing in my arms. i could get nothing out of her but sobs, and to this day do not know where she spent all these weeks nor why she did not write. miss t. came in after rehearsal, pale and hard-faced. i greeted her politely, but was watching her, trying to puzzle out why a. did not look as she usually did after long absence from coition. miss t. took another room in the same house and was soon joined by another ballet girl, young and very pretty, who soon began to have fits. a. was always crying until miss t. went away with her pretty friend. i knew nothing, could hardly be said to suspect anything definite, and yet i pitied that pretty girl whose eyes looked so helpless and appealing. i set to work again. but i continued to live on fruit and bread, and taking off my clothes i would stand up at the window in the sun. a lot of prostitutes, however, who lived at the back saw me and were scandalized or shocked or thought me mad. the landlady heard of it and spoke to a. so i had to desist from my glorious sun-baths. we slept on a single bed, and though i did my best to avoid coitus (i wanted to wait and think out some theory of it), a., who knew nothing of this, wanted to resume our old habits, and finally i surrendered. but my sufferings next day were intense, and i had the sense of having fallen from some high estate. my thoughts were divided between two theories: one that our misery was caused by our diet, more or less; the other that we had fallen into some error as regards coitus, and this was becoming almost a certainty with me. there is one incident i think worthy of note which happened before the "fall" just mentioned and when i was living on fruit and in splendid health. at a performance i saw a girl on the stage with handsome legs in tights, and once as she straightened her leg the knee-cap going into position gave me such a strange and keen joy--of that quality i call divine or musical--that i was like one suddenly awakened to the divinity and beauty of the female form. the joy was so keen and yet peaceful, familiar, and subjective that i could not help comparing it to a happy chemical change in the tissues of my own brain. like the unexpected functioning of my skin in the sun it was a sign of a partial return to a normal condition, another glimpse of paradise. i stuck to my new diet and gained a fresh elation and joy in life. gradually clothes became insupportable, and i went down to the beach as often as possible to take them off, and at nights, beside the patient and astonished a., i would lie naked. one evening, passing some grass, i looked over the fence like a gipsy and felt a longing to take off my clothes and sleep in the grass all night. it was of course impossible. and a. looked unhappily in my face; she began to think her mother, who now thought i was mad, must be right. that night i woke up and found myself having coition. i was angry and felt i had been put back in my progress, but a fever of lust now came over me. i would sit under the tap and let the cold water run over me to conquer the fever, but at the end of a week my hopes were frustrated and i even turned against my natural diet, on which i had made flesh. a., as i expected, went through her usual fits, and slowly recovered. (if we had connection only once she in about three weeks had a mild attack of fits; if we had coition more than once the fits were more severe.) i relapsed more than once and as a means of impressing my resolution for future abstinence i would walk for miles in the middle of pitch-black nights.... miss t. came over to adelaide and as i knew nothing definite against her and heard that she was engaged, i thought perhaps my suspicions were unfounded and was friendly. but one day in town i saw her and a. on a tram going out to our cottage. even then my suspicions might not have been awakened, but i saw miss t. say something rapidly to a., and a. called out to me, "will you be coming home soon?" and i answered "no." when the tram had gone on i found myself vaguely wondering what miss t. wanted to know that for, for my perceptions were becoming acute enough to understand women's ways. in another minute i was walking rapidly home. when i came to the door it was locked. i knocked and knocked and no one came. i called out and threatened to kick in the door. still no one came. mad with rage i commenced to put my threat into execution, when the door was opened by miss t., half-naked, in her petticoats, and pale as death, but no longer defiant. "so i've caught you, have i?" i _looked_, but could not trust myself to speak. wondering why a. did not appear i went into the bedroom. she was lying on the bed, just as miss t. had left her, on the verge of a fit, and on seeing me she held out her hands piteously, and when i stooped over her she whispered, "send her away, send her away." then she became unconscious and going into the next room i ordered miss t. (who had managed to scramble on her dress) out of the house. i spoke scornfully as if addressing a dog, and she slinked out with a malignant but cowed look i hope never to see on a woman's face again. what they had been doing with their clothes off i do not know; women will rather die than confess. when a. had recovered from her fit she denied that there had been anything between them, and stuck to it doggedly, but with such a forlorn look i had not the heart to prosecute my inquiries. for my part, all the efforts i had been making for so long seemed for a time to be in vain; for some weeks i sank into a sort of satyriasis, and even my anger against miss t. turned to a prurient curiosity. at the same time i was not always able to adhere to my diet. but both as regards coition and diet i was still fighting, and on the whole successfully. my fits of temper, however, were excessive and my ennui became gloomy despair. one day i blasphemed on crossing the park and spoke contemptuously of "god and his twopenny ha'penny revolving balls," referring to the planetary system. but for long walks i should have gone mad. a. was drinking in the intervals of her fits. i found half-empty bottles of wine hidden away. this did not improve my temper, and one day--this was when she was well and up--i struck her a heavy blow on the face, and she aimed a glass decanter at me. she went home to her mother and i lived alone in the cottage. i heard soon afterwards that her husband had come back and that they had made it up. our parting was not, however, destined to be final. even out of that month's sufferings i made capital. i was better after my tendency to lubricity, my gloom, rage, restlessness and degradation. they had been but the irritations of convalescence. index of authors. abrantès, duchesse d' adler albucasis alexander, h.c.b. amatus lusitanus ammon andersen andriezen aquinas aristophanes aristotle averroes avicenna aubrey aulnoy, madame d' baer ball ballantyne, j.w. bancroft, h.h. barker, fordyce barnes, r. bartholin bayle beale, g.b. bechterew beck, j.r. becker bell, sir c. bell, sanford belletrud beneden bergh bianchi biérent binet bischoff, t.l.w. bloch, j. blondel blumenbach blunt, j.j. boas boccaccio boeteau bois, j. bois-reymond, e. du bölsche booth, d.s. booth, j. bouchereau bouchet bourke, j.g. boveri brand braun brantôme brehm breitenstein brénier de montmorand brénot brouardel brown-séquard brügelmann buckman, s.s. bucknill bunge burchard burdach burton, robert buschan busdraghi cabanis campbell, j.f. campbell, h. carpenter, e. casanova cascella castelnau catullus cecca celsus chapman, c.w. charcot chaucer chaulant chevalier chidley, w. cladel, j. clement, of alexandria coe coen collineau colman, w.s. columbus, r. cook, g.w. crawley cumston cuvier cyples dabney darwin, c. darwin, e. daumas dearborn, g. dembo deniker dessoir, max dickinson, r.l. diderot disselhorst donaldson, h.h. douglas, c. drähms dühren, e. dufougère dufour dulaure duncan, matthews east, a. edgar, clifton ellis, havelock engelmann erotion esbach eschricht espinas eulenburg evans ezekiel fabricius fallopius féré fichstedt flood, e. florence fothergill, milner frazer, j.g. freud freyer froriep fuchs fürbringer galen gardiner, c.f. garnier gautier, a. gautier, t. gellhoen gerhard, a. giles, a. godin goethe goncourt, e. de gopcevic goron gould gow graaf, de griffiths groos, k. gualino guéniot guibaut guillereau guinard guttceit hack haddon haig hall, g. stanley haller hamilton, a. hammond hardy, thomas hartland, e.s. harvey hegar henderson, j. henle hennig herman herodotus herrick heusinger hewitt, graily hippocrates hirst hislop, j.t. hoche horrocks howard, w.l. howell howitt, a.w. hrdlicka hughes, c.h. hunter, john hunter, william huysmans hyades hyrtl jacobi jacoby, p. jahn janet janke jastreboff jenkyns, j. johnston, g.a. johnston, sir h.h. jonson, ben juvenal kaltenbach kelly, h. kepler kiernan, j.g. kisch kleinpaul kobelt kocher kohlbrugge kolbein krafft-ebing krauss lamb, d.s. landes, l. de lane lasègue laurent, e. lawrence, sir w. laycock levi licetus liébault liétaud lipps litzmann lombroso lorion lortet lucas, j.c. lucretius lunier luschka lusini lydston macdonald, a. macgillicuddy mckay, a. mackay, w.j.s. mackenzie, j. magnan malebranche mantegazza marandon de montyel marc marro marshall, h.r. martial martin, j.m.h. martineau maschka masterman matignon mattel mcmordie mercier meredith, ellis middleton, t. mirabeau mitchell, sir a. moll mongeri morache moraglia morris, r.t. morselli motet moulin, j. mansell müller, j. mundé, p. näcke neale, r. neri nicholson, h.o. nina rodrigues obici onanoff ottolenghi ovid pacheco palfyn park, mungo papillault pasini paterson, a.r. paulini paulus Æginetus pearse, w.h. pearson, karl pechuel-loesche pelanda pennant penta pfaff pierer pillon pinæus pinard pitre, c. pitres pittard plant plautus pliny ploss poehl polemon pollux porta, della power pyle raymond régis régnier, h. de reinach, s. renooz, céline restif de la bretonne retterer, e. reynolds, a.r. rhys, j. ribot riedel rimbaud riolan robinson, bryan robinson, louis rodin roederer roons, r.p. rosse, irving roth, w. rothe roubaud rousseau routh, c.h.f. rufus russell, w. sade, de salmon, w. scherzer schinz schmiedeberg schreiner schrenck-notzing schurig scott, colin scripture, e.w. seerley seligmann sellheim shakespeare shattock shufeldt silk, j.f.w. simon, h. simpson, sir j. sims, marion smith, sir a. smith, haywood sömmering soranus spigelius stahl, f.a. stanton stendhal stengel stern, b. stevens, vaughan stieda stratz stubbs suidas sukhanoff sullivan, w.c. sutherland, w.d. sutton, bland swift tarde tardieu tarnier taxil theocritus thoinot thompson, w.l. thomson, j. tilt toff tourdes, g. tridandani trochon vahness valentin varigny, h de variot, g. varro vaschide vatsyayana venette venturi vesalius vinay vinci, l. da voigt voisin, j. vurpas wagner, r. waldeyer walker, g. wallace, a.w. warton wasserschleben weininger, o. wellhausen werner wernich west, j.p. wharton wilhelm, eugen wilkin, g. wilkinson, a.d. williams, j.w. whitridge williamson, c.f. wolff, b. wollstonecraft, mary wordsworth wychgel youatt zaborsky zoppi zimmer zola index of subjects. abyssinians, coitus among acquired element in erotic symbolism acromegaly and sexual development alcohol, aphrodisiac effects of algolagnia, in relation to scatologic symbolism as a form of erotic symbolism anæsthesia, sexual anæsthetics in relation to sexual excitement anaphrodisiacs animal copulation, attraction of animals, detumescence in annamites, coitus among antipathies of pregnant women anus in relation to pubic hair as an erogenous zone apes, sexual organs of sexual congress in aphrodisiacs apples, longings of women for arabs, penis in artist, compared to lover associations of contiguity and resemblance in erotic symbolism australian method of sexual congress auto-suggestions, longings of pregnancy as bartholin, glands of beard in relation to sexual development beauty, the objective element in bestiality bladder in relation to sexual excitement blood during pregnancy blood-pressure during detumescence breasts, and erotic temperament during pregnancy bromide as an anaphrodisiac bulbo-cavernous reflex camphor as an anaphrodisiac cantharides, effects of castration, results of celery as an aphrodisiac children, attracted to foot to scatology to copulation of animals to hair food impulses of chinese, foot-fetichism of circulatory conditions during coitus during pregnancy clitoris clothes, erotic fascination of coitus, the phenomena of the methods of ethnic variations in methods of respiratory and circulatory conditions during interruptus as a cause of vasomotor disturbance glandular activity during motor activity during psychic state during serious effects of congenital element in erotic symbolism contiguity in erotic symbolism, associations of coprolagnia coprophagia, religious and sexual courtship crystallization, stendhal's defile, the impulse to distillatio dog, human sexual intercourse with dynamometric experiments during sexual excitement ejaculation, the mechanism of embryo epilepsy and exhibitionism compared to coitus as a result of coitus erectility during coitus erogenous zone, anus as lips as erotic intoxication erotic temperament eryngo as an aphrodisiac ethnic variations in coitus etruscans, sexual significance of foot among eunuchs, characteristics of exercise on sexual organs, influence of exhibitionism eyes during detumescence in relation to erotic temperament darker at puberty face during detumescence, expression of fæces as a drug fecundation, the phenomena of artificial feet as a sexual symbol, uncovering fellatio fetichism, erotic flagellation foot-fetichism, _see_ shoe-fetichism. fuegians, penis in fur as a fetich garments as fetiches genital organs as fetiches goat as a human sexual fetich greeks, sexual significance of foot among hair as a fetich despoilers of pubic darkens at puberty in relation to erotic temperament in pregnancy hand as fetich heart during pregnancy homosexuality as a form of erotic symbolism hottentot apron hymen hyperæsthesia, sexual hypertrichosis universalis hysteria ideal coprolagnia idiocy as result of maternal impressions idiots, sexual development of impregnation without rupture of hymen without conjunctions artificial impressions, maternal intellectual work, relation of pregnancy to intoxication, erotic japanese, labia majora in joy, the expression of kiss, the kleptomania and pregnancy knee-jerk in pregnancy labia majora labia minora larynx in relation to sexual state linea fusca lips, as an erogenous zone in relation to erotic temperament longings of pregnancy theories of as auto-suggestions physiological basis of relation to the longings of childhood masochism, in relation to shoe-fetichism in relation to scatalogic symbolism in relation to exhibitionism of nates as a form of erotic symbolism masturbation and pubic hair hypertrophy of clitoris ascribed to part played by clitoris in why some theologians permitted phenomena during maternal element in sexual love maternal impressions menstruation in relation to coitus metabolism during in relation to sickness of pregnancy compared to pregnancy mental state during pregnancy metabolism during pregnancy mixoscopic zoophilia modesty a supposed sign of virginity mohammedan method of sexual congress mole as a fetich mongol peoples, foot fetichism among various mons veneris mordvins, foot-fetichism among motor activity during coitus mouth in relation to erotic temperament muscular movements during coitus nates in relation to coprolagnia in relation to exhibitionism in relation to erotic temperament necrophilia negative fetich negro, penis in labia majora in clitoris in labia minora in method of sexual congress among nervous system during pregnancy neurasthenia cordis vasomotoria nipples, pigmentation of nudity, religious nutrition, symbolism of nymphæ nymphomania obsessions of scruple longings of pregnancy as obsessional exhibitionism odor an alleged sign of defloration onion as an aphrodisiac opium as an aphrodisiac organs, sexual ova and spermatozoa, union of ovarian extract, effects of ovaries, function of analogy of with thyroid paidophilia pain and erotic symbolism pedicatio pelvic development and erotic temperament pelvic floor, variability of pelvic inclination penis penis-fetichism phallic worship physiognomists and the erotic temperament pica pigmentation in relation to erotic temperament in pregnancy potatoes, the supposed aphrodisiac effects of precocity, influence of pregnancy and pigmentation psychic state in sexual desire during relation of to intellectual work presbyophilia prostate prostitutes, external genitals of stature of psychic exhibitionism psychic condition during coitus puberty, the phenomena of pigmentary changes at pubic hair puericulture pygmalionism quadrupedal method of coitus in man rachitic, sexual tendencies of the reflex, bulbo-cavernous reflexes during pregnancy religious scatalogic symbolism resemblance in erotic symbolism, associations of respiration during coitus responsibility of pregnant women restif de la bretonne's shoe-fetichism romans, sexual significance of foot among methods of coitus among rousseau rue as an anaphrodisiac sadism saint compared to lover salivation during coitus satyriasis scatalogic symbolism scrotum scruple, obsessions of secretions of genital canal semen, alleged female in coitus in female genital canal vital activity of artificial injection of constituents of as a stimulant sexual anæsthesia sexual conjugation sexual desire during pregnancy sexual organs sexual selection in relation to erotic symbolism in relation to external sexual organs the probable cause of the hymen shadow as a fetich shoe, sexual significance of shoe-fetichism frequency of normal basis of illustrated by restif de la bretonne prevalence of among chinese, etc. former prevalence in europe congenital basis of acquired element in favored by precocity relation to masochism illustrative cases of dynamic element in sickness of pregnancy skin, sexual significance of condition of during coitus in relation to erotic temperament sexual pigmentation of slipper as a sexual symbol smile, origin of the sodomy, the term spain, sexual attractiveness of foot in spermatozoa reach ova, how the spermin sphygmanometer experiments during sexual excitement stature and erotic temperament stimulants stuff-fetichisms strychnine, aphrodisiac effects of suggestion in relation to longings of pregnancy symbols, nature of of sex in language temperament, alleged erotic testicular juices, effects of testes thyroid, condition during sexual excitement during pregnancy ticklishness in relation to stuff-fetichisms tumescence in relation to detumescence unnatural offence, the term urethra, variability of female an erogenous zone urethrorrhoea ex libidine urinary stream, in relation to nymphæ an alleged index to virginity urine in religious rites possesses magical virtues in legends in medicine during coitus urolagnia uterus vagina vaginismus vasomotor conditions during coitus vaudonism virginity, ancient diagnosis of virile reflex voice, in relation to erotic temperament in relation to virginity vomiting of pregnancy vulva vulva-fetichism waist, origin of admiration for small yohimbin as an aphrodisiac zooerastia zoophilia erotica zoophilia non-erotic studies in the psychology of sex, volume vi sex in relation to society by havelock ellis preface. in the previous five volumes of these _studies_, i have dealt mainly with the sexual impulse in relation to its object, leaving out of account the external persons and the environmental influences which yet may powerfully affect that impulse and its gratification. we cannot afford, however, to pass unnoticed this relationship of the sexual impulse to third persons and to the community at large with all its anciently established traditions. we have to consider sex in relation to society. in so doing, it will be possible to discuss more summarily than in preceding volumes the manifold and important problems that are presented to us. in considering the more special questions of sexual psychology we entered a neglected field and it was necessary to expend an analytic care and precision which at many points had never been expended before on these questions. but when we reach the relationships of sex to society we have for the most part no such neglect to encounter. the subject of every chapter in the present volume could easily form, and often has formed, the topic of a volume, and the literature of many of these subjects is already extremely voluminous. it must therefore be our main object here not to accumulate details but to place each subject by turn, as clearly and succinctly as may be, in relation to those fundamental principles of sexual psychology which--so far as the data at present admit--have been set forth in the preceding volumes. it may seem to some, indeed, that in this exposition i should have confined myself to the present, and not included so wide a sweep of the course of human history and the traditions of the race. it may especially seem that i have laid too great a stress on the influence of christianity in moulding sexual ideals and establishing sexual institutions. that, i am convinced, is an error. it is because it is so frequently made that the movements of progress among us--movements that can never at any period of social history cease--are by many so seriously misunderstood. we cannot escape from our traditions. there never has been, and never can be, any "age of reason." the most ardent co-called "free-thinker," who casts aside as he imagines the authority of the christian past, is still held by that past. if its traditions are not absolutely in his blood, they are ingrained in the texture of all the social institutions into which he was born and they affect even his modes of thinking. the latest modifications of our institutions are inevitably influenced by the past form of those institutions. we cannot realize where we are, nor whither we are moving, unless we know whence we came. we cannot understand the significance of the changes around us, nor face them with cheerful confidence, unless we are acquainted with the drift of the great movements that stir all civilization in never-ending cycles. in discussing sexual questions which are very largely matters of social hygiene we shall thus still be preserving the psychological point of view. such a point of view in relation to these matters is not only legitimate but necessary. discussions of social hygiene that are purely medical or purely juridical or purely moral or purely theological not only lead to conclusions that are often entirely opposed to each other but they obviously fail to possess complete applicability to the complex human personality. the main task before us must be to ascertain what best expresses, and what best satisfies, the totality of the impulses and ideas of civilized men and women. so that while we must constantly bear in mind medical, legal, and moral demands--which all correspond in some respects to some individual or social need--the main thing is to satisfy the demands of the whole human person. it is necessary to emphasize this point of view because it would seem that no error is more common among writers on the hygienic and moral problems of sex than the neglect of the psychological standpoint. they may take, for instance, the side of sexual restraint, or the side of sexual unrestraint, but they fail to realize that so narrow a basis is inadequate for the needs of complex human beings. from the wider psychological standpoint we recognize that we have to conciliate opposing impulses that are both alike founded on the human psychic organism. in the preceding volumes of these _studies_ i have sought to refrain from the expression of any personal opinion and to maintain, so far as possible, a strictly objective attitude. in this endeavor, i trust, i have been successful if i may judge from the fact that i have received the sympathy and approval of all kinds of people, not less of the rationalistic free-thinker than of the orthodox believer, of those who accept, as well as of those who reject, our most current standards of morality. this is as it should be, for whatever our criteria of the worth of feelings and of conduct, it must always be of use to us to know what exactly are the feelings of people and how those feelings tend to affect their conduct. in the present volume, however, where social traditions necessarily come in for consideration and where we have to discuss the growth of those traditions in the past and their probable evolution in the future, i am not sanguine that the objectivity of my attitude will be equally clear to the reader. i have here to set down not only what people actually feel and do but what i think they are tending to feel and do. that is a matter of estimation only, however widely and however cautiously it is approached; it cannot be a matter of absolute demonstration. i trust that those who have followed me in the past will bear with me still, even if it is impossible for them always to accept the conclusions i have myself reached. havelock ellis. carbis bay, cornwall, england. contents. chapter i. the mother and her child. the child's right to choose its ancestry--how this is effected--the mother the child's supreme parent--motherhood and the woman movement--the immense importance of motherhood--infant mortality and its causes--the chief cause in the mother--the need of rest during pregnancy--frequency of premature birth--the function of the state--recent advance in puericulture--the question of coitus during pregnancy--the need of rest during lactation--the mother's duty to suckle her child--the economic question--the duty of the state--recent progress in the protection of the mother--the fallacy of state nurseries. chapter ii. sexual education. nurture necessary as well as breed--precocious manifestations of the sexual impulse--are they to be regarded as normal?--the sexual play of children--the emotion of love in childhood--are town children more precocious sexually than country children?--children's ideas concerning the origin of babies--need for beginning the sexual education of children in early years--the importance of early training in responsibility--evil of the old doctrine of silence in matters of sex--the evil magnified when applied to girls--the mother the natural and best teacher--the morbid influence of artificial mystery in sex matters--books on sexual enlightenment of the young--nature of the mother's task--sexual education in the school--the value of botany--zoölogy--sexual education after puberty--the necessity of counteracting quack literature--danger of neglecting to prepare for the first onset of menstruation--the right attitude towards woman's sexual life--the vital necessity of the hygiene of menstruation during adolescence--such hygiene compatible with the educational and social equality of the sexes--the invalidism of women mainly due to hygienic neglect--good influence of physical training on women and bad influence of athletics--the evils of emotional suppression--need of teaching the dignity of sex--influence of these factors on a woman's fate in marriage--lectures and addresses on sexual hygiene--the doctor's part in sexual education--pubertal initiation into the ideal world--the place of the religious and ethical teacher--the initiation rites of savages into manhood and womanhood--the sexual influence of literature--the sexual influence of art. chapter iii. sexual education and nakedness. the greek attitude towards nakedness--how the romans modified that attitude--the influence of christianity--nakedness in mediæval times--evolution of the horror of nakedness--concomitant change in the conception of nakedness--prudery--the romantic movement--rise of a new feeling in regard to nakedness--the hygienic aspect of nakedness--how children may be accustomed to nakedness--nakedness not inimical to modesty--the instinct of physical pride--the value of nakedness in education--the Æsthetic value of nakedness--the human body as one of the prime tonics of life--how nakedness may be cultivated--the moral value of nakedness. chapter iv. the valuation of sexual love. the conception of sexual love--the attitude of mediæval asceticism--st. bernard and st. odo of cluny--the ascetic insistence on the proximity of the sexual and excretory centres--love as a sacrament of nature--the idea of the impurity of sex in primitive religions generally--theories of the origin of this idea--the anti-ascetic element in the bible and early christianity--clement of alexandria--st. augustine's attitude--the recognition of the sacredness of the body by tertullian, rufinus and athanasius--the reformation--the sexual instinct regarded as beastly--the human sexual instinct not animal-like--lust and love--the definition of love--love and names for love unknown in some parts of the world--romantic love of late development in the white race--the mystery of sexual desire--whether love is a delusion--the spiritual as well as the physical structure of the world in part built up on sexual love the testimony of men of intellect to the supremacy of love. chapter v. the function of chastity. chastity essential to the dignity of love--the eighteenth century revolt against the ideal of chastity--unnatural forms of chastity--the psychological basis of asceticism--asceticism and chastity as savage virtues--the significance of tahiti--chastity among barbarous peoples--chastity among the early christians--struggles of the saints with the flesh--the romance of christian chastity--its decay in mediæval times--_aucassin et nicolette_ and the new romance of chaste love--the unchastity of the northern barbarians--the penitentials--influence of the renaissance and the reformation--the revolt against virginity as a virtue--the modern conception of chastity as a virtue--the influences that favor the virtue of chastity--chastity as a discipline--the value of chastity for the artist--potency and impotence in popular estimation--the correct definitions of asceticism and chastity. chapter vi. the problem of sexual abstinence. the influence of tradition--the theological conception of lust--tendency of these influences to degrade sexual morality--their result in creating the problem of sexual abstinence--the protests against sexual abstinence--sexual abstinence and genius--sexual abstinence in women--the advocates of sexual abstinence--intermediate attitude--unsatisfactory nature of the whole discussion--criticism of the conception of sexual abstinence--sexual abstinence as compared to abstinence from food--no complete analogy--the morality of sexual abstinence entirely negative--is it the physician's duty to advise extra-conjugal sexual intercourse?--opinions of those who affirm or deny this duty--the conclusion against such advice--the physician bound by the social and moral ideas of his age--the physician as reformer--sexual abstinence and sexual hygiene--alcohol--the influence of physical and mental exercise--the inadequacy of sexual hygiene in this field--the unreal nature of the conception of sexual abstinence--the necessity of replacing it by a more positive ideal. chapter vii. prostitution. i. _the orgy:_--the religious origin of the orgy--the feast of fools--recognition of the orgy by the greeks and romans--the orgy among savages--the drama--the object subserved by the orgy. ii. _the origin and development of prostitution:_--the definition of prostitution--prostitution among savages--the conditions under which professional prostitution arises--sacred prostitution--the rite of mylitta--the practice of prostitution to obtain a marriage portion--the rise of secular prostitution in greece--prostitution in the east--india, china, japan, etc.--prostitution in rome--the influence of christianity on prostitution--the effort to combat prostitution--the mediæval brothel--the appearance of the courtesan--tullia d'aragona--veronica franco--ninon de lenclos--later attempts to eradicate prostitution--the regulation of prostitution--its futility becoming recognized. iii. _the causes of prostitution:_--prostitution as a part of the marriage system--the complex causation of prostitution--the motives assigned by prostitutes--( ) economic factor of prostitution--poverty seldom the chief motive for prostitution--but economic pressure exerts a real influence--the large proportion of prostitutes recruited from domestic service--significance of this fact--( ) the biological factor of prostitution--the so-called born-prostitute--alleged identity with the born-criminal--the sexual instinct in prostitutes--the physical and psychic characters of prostitutes--( ) moral necessity as a factor in the existence of prostitution--the moral advocates of prostitution--the moral attitude of christianity towards prostitution--the attitude of protestantism--recent advocates of the moral necessity of prostitution--( ) civilizational value as a factor of prostitution--the influence of urban life--the craving for excitement--why servant-girls so often turn to prostitution--the small part played by seduction--prostitutes come largely from the country--the appeal of civilization attracts women to prostitution--the corresponding attraction felt by men--the prostitute as artist and leader of fashion--the charm of vulgarity. iv. _the present social attitude towards prostitution:_--the decay of the brothel--the tendency to the humanization of prostitution--the monetary aspects of prostitution--the geisha--the hetaira--the moral revolt against prostitution--squalid vice based on luxurious virtue--the ordinary attitude towards prostitutes--its cruelty absurd--the need of reforming prostitution--the need of reforming marriage--these two needs closely correlated--the dynamic relationships involved. chapter viii. the conquest of the venereal diseases. the significance of the venereal diseases--the history of syphilis--the problem of its origin--the social gravity of syphilis--the social dangers of gonorrhoea--the modern change in the methods of combating venereal diseases--causes of the decay of the system of police regulation--necessity of facing the facts--the innocent victims of venereal diseases--diseases not crimes--the principle of notification--the scandinavian system--gratuitous treatment--punishment for transmitting venereal diseases--sexual education in relation to venereal diseases--lectures, etc.--discussion in novels and on the stage--the "disgusting" not the "immoral". chapter ix. sexual morality. prostitution in relation to our marriage system--marriage and morality--the definition of the term "morality"--theoretical morality--its division into traditional morality and ideal morality--practical morality--practical morality based on custom--the only subject of scientific ethics--the reaction between theoretical and practical morality--sexual morality in the past an application of economic morality--the combined rigidity and laxity of this morality--the growth of a specific sexual morality and the evolution of moral ideals--manifestations of sexual morality--disregard of the forms of marriage--trial marriage--marriage after conception of child--phenomena in germany, anglo-saxon countries, russia, etc.--the status of woman--the historical tendency favoring moral equality of women with men--the theory of the matriarchate--mother-descent--women in babylonia--egypt--rome--the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--the historical tendency favoring moral inequality of woman--the ambiguous influence of christianity--influence of teutonic custom and feudalism--chivalry--woman in england--the sale of wives--the vanishing subjection of woman--inaptitude of the modern man to domineer--the growth of moral responsibility in women--the concomitant development of economic independence--the increase of women who work--invasion of the modern industrial field by women--in how far this is socially justifiable--the sexual responsibility of women and its consequences--the alleged moral inferiority of women--the "self-sacrifice" of women--society not concerned with sexual relationships--procreation the sole sexual concern of the state--the supreme importance of maternity. chapter x. marriage. the definition of marriage--marriage among animals--the predominance of monogamy--the question of group marriage--monogamy a natural fact, not based on human law--the tendency to place the form of marriage above the fact of marriage--the history of marriage--marriage in ancient rome--germanic influence on marriage--bride-sale--the ring--the influence of christianity on marriage--the great extent of this influence--the sacrament of matrimony--origin and growth of the sacramental conception--the church made marriage a public act--canon law--its sound core--its development--its confusions and absurdities--peculiarities of english marriage law--influence of the reformation on marriage--the protestant conception of marriage as a secular contract--the puritan reform of marriage--milton as the pioneer of marriage reform--his views on divorce--the backward position of england in marriage reform--criticism of the english divorce law--traditions of the canon law still persistent--the question of damages for adultery--collusion as a bar to divorce--divorce in france, germany, austria, russia, etc.--the united states--impossibility of deciding by statute the causes for divorce--divorce by mutual consent--its origin and development--impeded by the traditions of canon law--wilhelm von humboldt--modern pioneer advocates of divorce by mutual consent--the arguments against facility of divorce--the interests of the children--the protection of women--the present tendency of the divorce movement--marriage not a contract--the proposal of marriage for a term of years--legal disabilities and disadvantages in the position of the husband and the wife--marriage not a contract but a fact--only the non-essentials of marriage, not the essentials, a proper matter for contract--the legal recognition of marriage as a fact without any ceremony--contracts of the person opposed to modern tendencies--the factor of moral responsibility--marriage as an ethical sacrament--personal responsibility involves freedom--freedom the best guarantee of stability--false ideas of individualism--modern tendency of marriage--with the birth of a child marriage ceases to be a private concern--every child must have a legal father and mother--how this can be effected--the firm basis of monogamy--the question of marriage variations--such variations not inimical to monogamy--the most common variations--the flexibility of marriage holds variations in check--marriage variations _versus_ prostitution--marriage on a reasonable and humane basis--summary and conclusion. chapter xi. the art of love. marriage not only for procreation--theologians on the _sacramentum solationis_--importance of the _art of love_--the basis of stability in marriage and the condition for right procreation--the art of love the bulwark against divorce--the unity of love and marriage a principle of modern morality--christianity and the art of love--ovid--the art of love among primitive peoples--sexual initiation in africa and elsewhere--the tendency to spontaneous development of the art of love in early life--flirtation--sexual ignorance in women--the husband's place in sexual initiation--sexual ignorance in men--the husband's education for marriage--the injury done by the ignorance of husbands--the physical and mental results of unskilful coitus--women understand the art of love better than men--ancient and modern opinions concerning frequency of coitus--variation in sexual capacity--the sexual appetite--the art of love based on the biological facts of courtship--the art of pleasing women--the lover compared to the musician--the proposal as a part of courtship--divination in the art of love--the importance of the preliminaries in courtship--the unskilful husband frequently the cause of the frigid wife--the difficulty of courtship--simultaneous orgasm--the evils of incomplete gratification in women--coitus interruptus--coitus reservatus--the human method of coitus--variations in coitus--posture in coitus--the best time for coitus--the influence of coitus in marriage--the advantages of absence in marriage--the risks of absence--jealousy--the primitive function of jealousy--its predominance among animals, savages, etc, and in pathological states--an anti-social emotion--jealousy incompatible with the progress of civilization--the possibility of loving more than one person at a time--platonic friendship--the conditions which make it possible--the maternal element in woman's love--the final development of conjugal love--the problem of love one of the greatest of social questions. chapter xii. the science of procreation. the relationship of the science of procreation to the art of love--sexual desire and sexual pleasure as the conditions of conception--reproduction formerly left to caprice and lust--the question of procreation as a religious question--the creed of eugenics--ellen key and sir francis galton--our debt to posterity--the problem of replacing natural selection--the origin and development of eugenics--the general acceptance of eugenical principles to-day--the two channels by which eugenical principles are becoming embodied in practice--the sense of sexual responsibility in women--the rejection of compulsory motherhood--the privilege of voluntary motherhood--causes of the degradation of motherhood--the control of conception--now practiced by the majority of the population in civilized countries--the fallacy of "racial suicide"--are large families a stigma of degeneration?--procreative control the outcome of natural and civilized progress--the growth of neo-malthusian beliefs and practices--facultative sterility as distinct from neo-malthusianism--the medical and hygienic necessity of control of conception--preventive methods--abortion--the new doctrine of the duty to practice abortion--how far is this justifiable?--castration as a method of controlling procreation--negative eugenics and positive eugenics--the question of certificates for marriage--the inadequacy of eugenics by act of parliament--the quickening of the social conscience in regard to heredity--limitations to the endowment of motherhood--the conditions favorable to procreation--sterility--the question of artificial fecundation--the best age of procreation--the question of early motherhood--the best time for procreation--the completion of the divine cycle of life. chapter i. the mother and her child. the child's right to choose its ancestry--how this is effected--the mother the child's supreme parent--motherhood and the woman movement--the immense importance of motherhood--infant mortality and its causes--the chief cause in the mother--the need of rest during pregnancy--frequency of premature birth--the function of the state--recent advance in puericulture--the question of coitus during pregnancy--the need of rest during lactation--the mother's duty to suckle her child--the economic question--the duty of the state--recent progress in the protection of the mother--the fallacy of state nurseries. a man's sexual nature, like all else that is most essential in him, is rooted in a soil that was formed very long before his birth. in this, as in every other respect, he draws the elements of his life from his ancestors, however new the recombination may be and however greatly it may be modified by subsequent conditions. a man's destiny stands not in the future but in the past. that, rightly considered, is the most vital of all vital facts. every child thus has a right to choose his own ancestors. naturally he can only do this vicariously, through his parents. it is the most serious and sacred duty of the future father to choose one half of the ancestral and hereditary character of his future child; it is the most serious and sacred duty of the future mother to make a similar choice.[ ] in choosing each other they have between them chosen the whole ancestry of their child. they have determined the stars that will rule his fate. in the past that fateful determination has usually been made helplessly, ignorantly, almost unconsciously. it has either been guided by an instinct which, on the whole, has worked out fairly well, or controlled by economic interests of the results of which so much cannot be said, or left to the risks of lower than bestial chances which can produce nothing but evil. in the future we cannot but have faith--for all the hope of humanity must rest on that faith--that a new guiding impulse, reinforcing natural instinct and becoming in time an inseparable accompaniment of it, will lead civilized man on his racial course. just as in the past the race has, on the whole, been moulded by a natural, and in part sexual, selection, that was unconscious of itself and ignorant of the ends it made towards, so in the future the race will be moulded by deliberate selection, the creative energy of nature becoming self-conscious in the civilized brain of man. this is not a faith which has its source in a vague hope. the problems of the individual life are linked on to the fate of the racial life, and again and again we shall find as we ponder the individual questions we are here concerned with, that at all points they ultimately converge towards this same racial end. since we have here, therefore, to follow out the sexual relationships of the individual as they bear on society, it will be convenient at this point to put aside the questions of ancestry and to accept the individual as, with hereditary constitution already determined, he lies in his mother's womb. it is the mother who is the child's supreme parent. at various points in zoölogical evolution it has seemed possible that the functions that we now know as those of maternity would be largely and even equally shared by the male parent. nature has tried various experiments in this direction, among the fishes, for instance, and even among birds. but reasonable and excellent as these experiments were, and though they were sufficiently sound to secure their perpetuation unto this day, it remains true that it was not along these lines that man was destined to emerge. among all the mammal predecessors of man, the male is an imposing and important figure in the early days of courtship, but after conception has once been secured the mother plays the chief part in the racial life. the male must be content to forage abroad and stand on guard when at home in the ante-chamber of the family. when she has once been impregnated the female animal angrily rejects the caresses she had welcomed so coquettishly before, and even in man the place of the father at the birth of his child is not a notably dignified or comfortable one. nature accords the male but a secondary and comparatively humble place in the home, the breeding-place of the race; he may compensate himself if he will, by seeking adventure and renown in the world outside. the mother is the child's supreme parent, and during the period from conception to birth the hygiene of the future man can only be affected by influences which work through her. fundamental and elementary as is the fact of the predominant position of the mother in relation to the life of the race, incontestable as it must seem to all those who have traversed the volumes of these _studies_ up to the present point, it must be admitted that it has sometimes been forgotten or ignored. in the great ages of humanity it has indeed been accepted as a central and sacred fact. in classic rome at one period the house of the pregnant woman was adorned with garlands, and in athens it was an inviolable sanctuary where even the criminal might find shelter. even amid the mixed influences of the exuberantly vital times which preceded the outburst of the renaissance, the ideally beautiful woman, as pictures still show, was the pregnant woman. but it has not always been so. at the present time, for instance, there can be no doubt that we are but beginning to emerge from a period during which this fact was often disputed and denied, both in theory and in practice, even by women themselves. this was notably the case both in england and america, and it is probably owing in large part to the unfortunate infatuation which led women in these lands to follow after masculine ideals that at the present moment the inspirations of progress in women's movements come mainly to-day from the women of other lands. motherhood and the future of the race were systematically belittled. paternity is but a mere incident, it was argued, in man's life: why should maternity be more than a mere incident in woman's life? in england, by a curiously perverted form of sexual attraction, women were so fascinated by the glamour that surrounded men that they desired to suppress or forget all the facts of organic constitution which made them unlike men, counting their glory as their shame, and sought the same education as men, the same occupations as men, even the same sports. as we know, there was at the origin an element of rightness in this impulse.[ ] it was absolutely right in so far as it was a claim for freedom from artificial restriction, and a demand for economic independence. but it became mischievous and absurd when it developed into a passion for doing, in all respects, the same things as men do; how mischievous and how absurd we may realize if we imagine men developing a passion to imitate the ways and avocations of women. freedom is only good when it is a freedom to follow the laws of one's own nature; it ceases to be freedom when it becomes a slavish attempt to imitate others, and would be disastrous if it could be successful.[ ] at the present day this movement on the theoretical side has ceased to possess any representatives who exert serious influence. yet its practical results are still prominently exhibited in england and the other countries in which it has been felt. infantile mortality is enormous, and in england at all events is only beginning to show a tendency to diminish; motherhood is without dignity, and the vitality of mothers is speedily crushed, so that often they cannot so much as suckle their infants; ignorant girl-mothers give their infants potatoes and gin; on every hand we are told of the evidence of degeneracy in the race, or if not in the race, at all events, in the young individuals of to-day. it would be out of place, and would lead us too far, to discuss here these various practical outcomes of the foolish attempt to belittle the immense racial importance of motherhood. it is enough here to touch on the one point of the excess of infantile mortality. in england--which is not from the social point of view in a very much worse condition than most countries, for in austria and russia the infant mortality is higher still, though in australia and new zealand much lower, but still excessive--more than one-fourth of the total number of deaths every year is of infants under one year of age. in the opinion of medical officers of health who are in the best position to form an opinion, about one-half of this mortality, roughly speaking, is absolutely preventable. moreover, it is doubtful whether there is any real movement of decrease in this mortality; during the past half century it has sometimes slightly risen and sometimes slightly fallen, and though during the past few years the general movement of mortality for children under five in england and wales has shown a tendency to decrease, in london (according to j.f.j. sykes, although sir shirley murphy has attempted to minimize the significance of these figures) the infantile mortality rate for the first three months of life actually rose from per , in the period - to per , in the period - . (this refers, it must be remembered, to the period before the introduction of the notification of births act.) in any case, although the general mortality shows a marked tendency to improvement there is certainly no adequately corresponding improvement in the infantile mortality. this is scarcely surprising, when we realize that there has been no change for the better, but rather for the worse, in the conditions under which our infants are born and reared. thus william hall, who has had an intimate knowledge extending over fifty-six years of the slums of leeds, and has weighed and measured many thousands of slum children, besides examining over , boys and girls as to their fitness for factory labor, states (_british medical journal_, october , ) that "fifty years ago the slum mother was much more sober, cleanly, domestic, and motherly than she is to-day; she was herself better nourished and she almost always suckled her children, and after weaning they received more nutritious bone-making food, and she was able to prepare more wholesome food at home." the system of compulsory education has had an unfortunate influence in exerting a strain on the parents and worsening the conditions of the home. for, excellent as education is in itself, it is not the primary need of life, and has been made compulsory before the more essential things of life have been made equally compulsory. how absolutely unnecessary this great mortality is may be shown, without evoking the good example of australia and new zealand, by merely comparing small english towns; thus while in guildford the infantile death rate is per thousand, in burslem it is per thousand. it is sometimes said that infantile mortality is an economic question, and that with improvement in wages it would cease. this is only true to a limited extent and under certain conditions. in australia there is no grinding poverty, but the deaths of infants under one year of age are still between and per thousand, and one-third of this mortality, according to hooper (_british medical journal_, , vol. ii, p. ), being due to the ignorance of mothers and the dislike to suckling, is easily preventable. the employment of married women greatly diminishes the poverty of a family, but nothing can be worse for the welfare of the woman as mother, or for the welfare of her child. reid, the medical officer of health for staffordshire, where there are two large centres of artisan population with identical health conditions, has shown that in the northern centre, where a very large number of women are engaged in factories, still-births are three times as frequent as in the southern centre, where there are practically no trade employments for women; the frequency of abnormalities is also in the same ratio. the superiority of jewish over christian children, again, and their lower infantile mortality, seem to be entirely due to the fact that jewesses are better mothers. "the jewish children in the slums," says william hall (_british medical journal_, october , ), speaking from wide and accurate knowledge, "were superior in weight, in teeth, and in general bodily development, and they seemed less susceptible to infectious disease. yet these jews were overcrowded, they took little exercise, and their unsanitary environment was obvious. the fact was, their children were much better nourished. the pregnant jewess was more cared for, and no doubt supplied better nutriment to the foetus. after the children were born per cent. received breast-milk, and during later childhood they were abundantly fed on bone-making material; eggs and oil, fish, fresh vegetables, and fruit entered largely into their diet." g. newman, in his important and comprehensive book on _infant mortality_, emphasizes the conclusion that "first of all we need a higher standard of physical motherhood." the problem of infantile mortality, he declares (page ), is not one of sanitation alone, or housing, or indeed of poverty as such, "_but is mainly a question of motherhood_." the fundamental need of the pregnant woman is _rest_. without a large degree of maternal rest there can be no puericulture.[ ] the task of creating a man needs the whole of a woman's best energies, more especially during the three months before birth. it cannot be subordinated to the tax on strength involved by manual or mental labor, or even strenuous social duties and amusements. the numerous experiments and observations which have been made during recent years in maternity hospitals, more especially in france, have shown conclusively that not only the present and future well-being of the mother and the ease of her confinement, but the fate of the child, are immensely influenced by rest during the last month of pregnancy. "every working woman is entitled to rest during the last three months of her pregnancy." this formula was adopted by the international congress of hygiene in , but it cannot be practically carried out except by the coöperation of the whole community. for it is not enough to say that a woman ought to rest during pregnancy; it is the business of the community to ensure that that rest is duly secured. the woman herself, and her employer, we may be certain, will do their best to cheat the community, but it is the community which suffers, both economically and morally, when a woman casts her inferior children into the world, and in its own interests the community is forced to control both employer and employed. we can no longer allow it to be said, in bouchacourt's words, that "to-day the dregs of the human species--the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the nervous, the vicious, the idiotic, the imbecile, the cretins and epileptics--are better protected than pregnant women."[ ] pinard, who must always be honored as one of the founders of eugenics, has, together with his pupils, done much to prepare the way for the acceptance of this simple but important principle by making clear the grounds on which it is based. from prolonged observations on the pregnant women of all classes pinard has shown conclusively that women who rest during pregnancy have finer children than women who do not rest. apart from the more general evils of work during pregnancy, pinard found that during the later months it had a tendency to press the uterus down into the pelvis, and so cause the premature birth of undeveloped children, while labor was rendered more difficult and dangerous (see, e.g., pinard, _gazette des hôpitaux_, nov. , , id., _annales de gynécologie_, aug., ). letourneux has studied the question whether repose during pregnancy is necessary for women whose professional work is only slightly fatiguing. he investigated successive confinements at the clinique baudelocque in paris. he found that women engaged in fatiguing occupations (servants, cooks, etc.) and not resting during pregnancy, produced children with an average weight of , grammes; women engaged in only slightly fatiguing occupations (dressmakers, milliners, etc.) and also not resting during pregnancy, had children with an average weight of , grammes, a slight but significant difference, in view of the fact that the women of the first group were large and robust, while those of the second group were of slight and elegant build. again, comparing groups of women who rested during pregnancy, it was found that the women accustomed to fatiguing work had children with an average weight of , grammes, while those accustomed to less fatiguing work had children with an average weight of , grammes. the difference between repose and non-repose is thus considerable, while it also enables robust women exercising a fatiguing occupation to catch up, though not to surpass, the frailer women exercising a less fatiguing occupation. we see, too, that even in the comparatively unfatiguing occupations of milliners, etc., rest during pregnancy still remains important, and cannot safely be dispensed with. "society," letourneux concludes, "must guarantee rest to women not well off during a part of pregnancy. it will be repaid the cost of doing so by the increased vigor of the children thus produced" (letourneux, _de l'influence de la profession de la mère sur le poids de l'enfant_, thèse de paris, ). dr. dweira-bernson (_revue pratique d'obstétrique et de pédiatrie_, , p. ), compared four groups of pregnant women (servants with light work, servants with heavy work, farm girls, dressmakers) who rested for three months before confinement with four groups similarly composed who took no rest before confinement. in every group he found that the difference in the average weight of the child was markedly in favor of the women who rested, and it was notable that the greatest difference was found in the case of the farm girls who were probably the most robust and also the hardest worked. the usual time of gestation ranges between and days (or to days from the last menstrual period), and occasionally a few days longer, though there is dispute as to the length of the extreme limit, which some authorities would extend to days, or even to days (pinard, in richet's _dictionnaire de physiologie_, vol. vii, pp. - ; taylor, _medical jurisprudence_, fifth edition, pp. , et seq.; l.m. allen, "prolonged gestation," _american journal obstetrics_, april, ). it is possible, as müller suggested in in a thèse de nancy, that civilization tends to shorten the period of gestation, and that in earlier ages it was longer than it is now. such a tendency to premature birth under the exciting nervous influences of civilization would thus correspond, as bouchacourt has pointed out (_la grossesse_, p. ), to the similar effect of domestication in animals. the robust countrywoman becomes transformed into the more graceful, but also more fragile, town woman who needs a degree of care and hygiene which the countrywoman with her more resistant nervous system can to some extent dispense with, although even she, as we see, suffers in the person of her child, and probably in her own person, from the effects of work during pregnancy. the serious nature of this civilized tendency to premature birth--of which lack of rest in pregnancy is, however, only one of several important causes--is shown by the fact that séropian (_fréquence comparée des causes de l'accouchement prémature_, thèse de paris, ) found that about one-third of french births ( . per cent.) are to a greater or less extent premature. pregnancy is not a morbid condition; on the contrary, a pregnant woman is at the climax of her most normal physiological life, but owing to the tension thus involved she is specially liable to suffer from any slight shock or strain. it must be remarked that the increased tendency to premature birth, while in part it may be due to general tendencies of civilization, is also in part due to very definite and preventable causes. syphilis, alcoholism, and attempts to produce abortion are among the not uncommon causes of premature birth (see, e.g., g.f. mccleary, "the influence of antenatal conditions on infantile mortality," _british medical journal_, aug. , ). premature birth ought to be avoided, because the child born too early is insufficiently equipped for the task before him. astengo, dealing with nearly , cases at the lariboisière hospital in paris and the maternité, found, that reckoning from the date of the last menstruation, there is a direct relation between the weight of the infant at birth and the length of the pregnancy. the longer the pregnancy, the finer the child (astengo, _rapport du poids des enfants à la durée de la grossesse_, thèse de paris, ). the frequency of premature birth is probably as great in england as in france. ballantyne states (_manual of antenatal pathology; the foetus_, p. ) that for practical purposes the frequency of premature labors in maternity hospitals may be put at per cent., but that if all infants weighing less than , grammes are to be regarded as premature, it rises to . per cent. that premature birth is increasing in england seems to be indicated by the fact that during the past twenty-five years there has been a steady rise in the mortality rate from premature birth. mccleary, who discusses this point and considers the increase real, concludes that "it would appear that there has been a diminution in the quality as well as in the quantity of our output of babies" (see also a discussion, introduced by dawson williams, on "physical deterioration," _british medical journal_, oct. , ). it need scarcely be pointed out that not only is immaturity a cause of deterioration in the infants that survive, but that it alone serves enormously to decrease the number of infants that are able to survive. thus g. newman states (loc. cit.) that in most large english urban districts immaturity is the chief cause of infant mortality, furnishing about per cent. of the infant deaths; even in london (islington) alfred harris (_british medical journal_, dec. , ) finds that it is responsible for nearly per cent. of the infantile deaths. it is estimated by newman that about half of the mothers of infants dying of immaturity suffer from marked ill-health and poor physique; they are not, therefore, fitted to be mothers. rest during pregnancy is a very powerful agent in preventing premature birth. thus dr. sarraute-lourié has compared , pregnant women at the asile michelet who rested before confinement with , women confined at the hôpital lariboisière who had enjoyed no such period of rest. she found that the average duration of pregnancy was at least twenty days shorter in the latter group (mme. sarraute-lourié, _de l'influence du repos sur la durée de la gestation_, thèse de paris, ). leyboff has insisted on the absolute necessity of rest during pregnancy, as well for the sake of the woman herself as the burden she carries, and shows the evil results which follow when rest is neglected. railway traveling, horse-riding, bicycling, and sea-voyages are also, leyboff believes, liable to be injurious to the course of pregnancy. leyboff recognizes the difficulties which procreating women are placed under by present industrial conditions, and concludes that "it is urgently necessary to prevent women, by law, from working during the last three months of pregnancy; that in every district there should be a maternity fund; that during this enforced rest a woman should receive the same salary as during work." he adds that the children of unmarried mothers should be cared for by the state, that there should be an eight-hours' day for all workers, and that no children under sixteen should be allowed to work (e. leyboff, _l'hygiène de la grossesse_, thèse de paris, ). perruc states that at least two months' rest before confinement should be made compulsory, and that during this period the woman should receive an indemnity regulated by the state. he is of opinion that it should take the form of compulsory assurance, to which the worker, the employer, and the state alike contributed (perruc, _assistance aux femmes enceintes_, thèse de paris, ). it is probable that during the earlier months of pregnancy, work, if not excessively heavy and exhausting, has little or no bad effect; thus bacchimont (_documents pour servir a l'histoire de la puériculture intra-utérine_, thèse de paris, ) found that, while there was a great gain in the weight of children of mothers who had rested for three months, there was no corresponding gain in the children of those mothers who had rested for longer periods. it is during the last three months that freedom, repose, the cessation of the obligatory routine of employment become necessary. this is the opinion of pinard, the chief authority on this matter. many, however, fearing that economic and industrial conditions render so long a period of rest too difficult of practical attainment, are, with clappier and g. newman, content to demand two months as a minimum; salvat only asks for one month's rest before confinement, the woman, whether married or not, receiving a pecuniary indemnity during this period, with medical care and drugs free. ballantyne (_manual of antenatal pathology: the foetus_, p. ), as well as niven, also asks only for one month's compulsory rest during pregnancy, with indemnity. arthur helme, however, taking a more comprehensive view of all the factors involved, concludes in a valuable paper on "the unborn child: its care and its rights" (_british medical journal_, aug. , ), "the important thing would be to prohibit pregnant women from going to work at all, and it is as important from the standpoint of the child that this prohibition should include the early as the late months of pregnancy." in england little progress has yet been made as regards this question of rest during pregnancy, even as regards the education of public opinion. sir william sinclair, professor of obstetrics at the victoria university of manchester, has published ( ) _a plea for establishing municipal maternity homes_. ballantyne, a great british authority on the embryology of the child, has published a "plea for a pre-maternity hospital" (_british medical journal_, april , ), has since given an important lecture on the subject (_british medical journal_, jan. , ), and has further discussed the matter in his _manual of ante-natal pathology: the foetus_ (ch. xxvii); he is, however, more interested in the establishment of hospitals for the diseases of pregnancy than in the wider and more fundamental question of rest for all pregnant women. in england there are, indeed, a few institutions which receive unmarried women, with a record of good conduct, who are pregnant for the first time, for, as bouchacourt remarks, ancient british prejudices are opposed to any mercy being shown to women who are recidivists in committing the crime of conception. at present, indeed, it is only in france that the urgent need of rest during the latter months of pregnancy has been clearly realized, and any serious and official attempts made to provide for it. in an interesting paris thesis (_de la puériculture avant le naissance_, ) clappier has brought together much information bearing on the efforts now being made to deal practically with this question. there are many _asiles_ in paris for pregnant women. one of the best is the asile michelet, founded in by the assistance publique de paris. this is a sanatorium for pregnant women who have reached a period of seven and a half months. it is nominally restricted to the admission of french women who have been domiciled for a year in paris, but, in practice, it appears that women from all parts of france are received. they are employed in light and occasional work for the institution, being paid for this work, and are also occupied in making clothes for the expected baby. married and unmarried women are admitted alike, all women being equal from the point of view of motherhood, and indeed the majority of the women who come to the asile michelet are unmarried, some being girls who have even trudged on foot from brittany and other remote parts of france, to seek concealment from their friends in the hospitable seclusion of these refuges in the great city. it is not the least advantage of these institutions that they shield unmarried mothers and their offspring from the manifold evils to which they are exposed, and thus tend to decrease crime and suffering. in addition to the maternity refuges, there are institutions in france for assisting with help and advice those pregnant women who prefer to remain at home, but are thus enabled to avoid the necessity for undue domestic labor. there ought to be no manner of doubt that when, as is the case to-day in our own and some other supposedly civilized countries, motherhood outside marriage is accounted as almost a crime, there is the very greatest need for adequate provision for unmarried women who are about to become mothers, enabling them to receive shelter and care in secrecy, and to preserve their self-respect and social position. this is necessary not only in the interests of humanity and public economy, but also, as is too often forgotten, in the interests of morality, for it is certain that by the neglect to furnish adequate provision of this nature women are driven to infanticide and prostitution. in earlier, more humane days, the general provision for the secret reception and care of illegitimate infants was undoubtedly most beneficial. the suppression of the mediæval method, which in france took place gradually between and , led to a great increase in infanticide and abortion, and was a direct encouragement to crime and immorality. in the conseil général of the seine sought to replace the prevailing neglect of this matter by the adoption of more enlightened ideas and founded a _bureau secret d'admission_ for pregnant women. since then both the abandonment of infants and infanticide have greatly diminished, though they are increasing in those parts of france which possess no facilities of this kind. it is widely held that the state should unify the arrangements for assuring secret maternity, and should, in its own interests, undertake the expense. in french law ensured the protection of unmarried mothers by guaranteeing their secret, but it failed to organize the general establishment of secret maternities, and has left to doctors the pioneering part in this great and humane public work (a. maillard-brune, _refuges, maternités, bureaux d'admission secrets, comme moyens préservatives des infanticide_, thèse de paris, ). it is not among the least benefits of the falling birth rate that it has helped to stimulate this beneficent movement. the development of an industrial system which subordinates the human body and the human soul to the thirst for gold, has, for a time, dismissed from social consideration the interests of the race and even of the individual, but it must be remembered that this has not been always and everywhere so. although in some parts of the world the women of savage peoples work up to the time of confinement, it must be remarked that the conditions of work in savage life do not resemble the strenuous and continuous labor of modern factories. in many parts of the world, however, women are not allowed to work hard during pregnancy and every consideration is shown to them. this is so, for instance, among the pueblo indians, and among the indians of mexico. similar care is taken in the carolines and the gilbert islands and in many other regions all over the world. in some places, women are secluded during pregnancy, and in others are compelled to observe many more or less excellent rules. it is true that the assigned cause for these rules is frequently the fear of evil spirits, but they nevertheless often preserve a hygienic value. in many parts of the world the discovery of pregnancy is the sign for a festival of more or less ritual character, and much good advice is given to the expectant mother. the modern musselmans are careful to guard the health of their women when pregnant, and so are the chinese.[ ] even in europe, in the thirteenth century, as clappier notes, industrial corporations sometimes had regard to this matter, and would not allow women to work during pregnancy. in iceland, where much of the primitive life of scandinavian europe is still preserved, great precautions are taken with pregnant women. they must lead a quiet life, avoid tight garments, be moderate in eating and drinking, take no alcohol, be safeguarded from all shocks, while their husbands and all others who surround them must treat them with consideration, save them from worry and always bear with them patiently.[ ] it is necessary to emphasize this point because we have to realize that the modern movement for surrounding the pregnant woman with tenderness and care, so far from being the mere outcome of civilized softness and degeneracy, is, in all probability, the return on a higher plane to the sane practice of those races which laid the foundations of human greatness. while rest is the cardinal virtue imposed on a woman during the later months of pregnancy, there are other points in her regimen that are far from unimportant in their bearing on the fate of the child. one of these is the question of the mother's use of alcohol. undoubtedly alcohol has been a cause of much fanaticism. but the declamatory extravagance of anti-alcoholists must not blind us to the fact that the evils of alcohol are real. on the reproductive process especially, on the mammary glands, and on the child, alcohol has an arresting and degenerative influence without any compensatory advantages. it has been proved by experiments on animals and observations on the human subject that alcohol taken by the pregnant woman passes freely from the maternal circulation to the foetal circulation. féré has further shown that, by injecting alcohol and aldehydes into hen's eggs during incubation, it is possible to cause arrest of development and malformation in the chick.[ ] the woman who is bearing her child in her womb or suckling it at her breast would do well to remember that the alcohol which may be harmless to herself is little better than poison to the immature being who derives nourishment from her blood. she should confine herself to the very lightest of alcoholic beverages in very moderate amounts and would do better still to abandon these entirely and drink milk instead. she is now the sole source of the child's life and she cannot be too scrupulous in creating around it an atmosphere of purity and health. no after-influence can ever compensate for mistakes made at this time.[ ] what is true of alcohol is equally true of other potent drugs and poisons, which should all be avoided so far as possible during pregnancy because of the harmful influence they may directly exert on the embryo. hygiene is better than drugs, and care should be exercised in diet, which should by no means be excessive. it is a mistake to suppose that the pregnant woman needs considerably more food than usual, and there is much reason to believe not only that a rich meat diet tends to cause sterility but that it is also unfavorable to the development of the child in the womb.[ ] how far, if at all, it is often asked, should sexual intercourse be continued after fecundation has been clearly ascertained? this has not always been found an easy question to answer, for in the human couple many considerations combine to complicate the answer. even the catholic theologians have not been entirely in agreement on this point. clement of alexandria said that when the seed had been sown the field must be left till harvest. but it may be concluded that, as a rule, the church was inclined to regard intercourse during pregnancy as at most a venial sin, provided there was no danger of abortion. augustine, gregory the great, aquinas, dens, for instance, seem to be of this mind; for a few, indeed, it is no sin at all.[ ] among animals the rule is simple and uniform; as soon as the female is impregnated at the period of oestrus she absolutely rejects all advance of the male until, after birth and lactation are over, another period of oestrus occurs. among savages the tendency is less uniform, and sexual abstinence, when it occurs during pregnancy, tends to become less a natural instinct than a ritual observance, or a custom now chiefly supported by superstitions. among many primitive peoples abstinence during the whole of pregnancy is enjoined because it is believed that the semen would kill the foetus.[ ] the talmud is unfavorable to coitus during pregnancy, and the koran prohibits it during the whole of the period, as well as during suckling. among the hindus, on the other hand, intercourse is continued up to the last fortnight of pregnancy, and it is even believed that the injected semen helps to nourish the embryo (w.d. sutherland, "ueber das alltagsleben und die volksmedizin unter den bauern britischostindiens," _münchener medizinische wochenschrift_, nos. and , ). the great indian physician susruta, however, was opposed to coitus during pregnancy, and the chinese are emphatically on the same side. as men have emerged from barbarism in the direction of civilization, the animal instinct of refusal after impregnation has been completely lost in women, while at the same time both sexes tend to become indifferent to those ritual restraints which at an earlier period were almost as binding as instinct. sexual intercourse thus came to be practiced after impregnation, much the same as before, as part of ordinary "marital rights," though sometimes there has remained a faint suspicion, reflected in the hesitating attitude of the catholic church already alluded to, that such intercourse may be a sinful indulgence. morality is, however, called in to fortify this indulgence. if the husband is shut out from marital intercourse at this time, it is argued, he will seek extra-marital intercourse, as indeed in some parts of the world it is recognized that he legitimately may; therefore the interests of the wife, anxious to retain her husband's fidelity, and the interests of christian morality, anxious to uphold the institution of monogamy, combine to permit the continuation of coitus during pregnancy. the custom has been furthered by the fact that, in civilized women at all events, coitus during pregnancy is usually not less agreeable than at other times and by some women is felt indeed to be even more agreeable.[ ] there is also the further consideration, for those couples who have sought to prevent conception, that now intercourse may be enjoyed with impunity. from a higher point of view such intercourse may also be justified, for if, as all the finer moralists of the sexual impulse now believe, love has its value not only in so far as it induces procreation but also in so far as it aids individual development and the mutual good and harmony of the united couple, it becomes morally right during pregnancy. from an early period, however, great authorities have declared themselves in opposition to the custom of practicing coitus during pregnancy. at the end of the first century, soranus, the first of great gynæcologists, stated, in his treatise on the diseases of women, that sexual intercourse is injurious throughout pregnancy, because of the movement imparted to the uterus, and especially injurious during the latter months. for more than sixteen hundred years the question, having fallen into the hands of the theologians, seems to have been neglected on the medical side until in a distinguished french obstetrician, mauriceau, stated that no pregnant woman should have intercourse during the last two months and that no woman subject to miscarriage should have intercourse at all during pregnancy. for more than a century, however, mauriceau remained a pioneer with few or no followers. it would be inconvenient, the opinion went, even if it were necessary, to forbid intercourse during pregnancy.[ ] during recent years, nevertheless, there has been an increasingly strong tendency among obstetricians to speak decisively concerning intercourse during pregnancy, either by condemning it altogether or by enjoining great prudence. it is highly probable that, in accordance with the classical experiments of dareste on chicken embryos, shocks and disturbances to the human embryo may also produce injurious effects on growth. the disturbance due to coitus in the early stages of pregnancy may thus tend to produce malformation. when such conditions are found in the children of perfectly healthy, vigorous, and generally temperate parents who have indulged recklessly in coitus during the early stages of pregnancy it is possible that such coitus has acted on the embryo in the same way as shocks and intoxications are known to act on the embryo of lower organisms. however this may be, it is quite certain that in predisposed women, coitus during pregnancy causes premature birth; it sometimes happens that labor pains begin a few minutes after the act.[ ] the natural instinct of animals refuses to allow intercourse during pregnancy; the ritual observance of primitive peoples very frequently points in the same direction; the voice of medical science, so far as it speaks at all, is beginning to utter the same warning, and before long will probably be in a position to do so on the basis of more solid and coherent evidence. pinard, the greatest of authorities on puericulture, asserts that there must be complete cessation of sexual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, and in his consulting room at the clinique baudelocque he has placed a large placard with an "important notice" to this effect. féré was strongly of opinion that sexual relations during pregnancy, especially when recklessly carried out, play an important part in the causation of nervous troubles in children who are of sound heredity and otherwise free from all morbid infection during gestation and development; he recorded in detail a case which he considered conclusive ("l'influence de l'incontinence sexuelle pendant la gestation sur la descendance," _archives de neurologie_, april, ). bouchacourt discusses the subject fully (_la grossesse_, pp. - ), and thinks that sexual intercourse during pregnancy should be avoided as much as possible. fürbringer (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ) recommends abstinence from the sixth or seventh month, and throughout the whole of pregnancy where there is any tendency to miscarriage, while in all cases much care and gentleness should be exercised. the whole subject has been investigated in a paris thesis by h. brénot (_de l'influence de la copulation pendant la grossesse_, ); he concludes that sexual relations are dangerous throughout pregnancy, frequently provoking premature confinement or abortion, and that they are more dangerous in primiparæ than in multiparæ. nearly everything that has been said of the hygiene of pregnancy, and the need for rest, applies also to the period immediately following the birth of the child. rest and hygiene on the mother's part continue to be necessary alike in her own interests and in the child's. this need has indeed been more generally and more practically recognized than the need for rest during pregnancy. the laws of several countries make compulsory a period of rest from employment after confinement, and in some countries they seek to provide for the remuneration of the mother during this enforced rest. in no country, indeed, is the principle carried out so thoroughly and for so long a period as is desirable. but it is the right principle, and embodies the germ which, in the future, will be developed. there can be little doubt that whatever are the matters, and they are certainly many, which may be safely left to the discretion of the individual, the care of the mother and her child is not among them. that is a matter which, more than any other, concerns the community as a whole, and the community cannot afford to be slack in asserting its authority over it. the state needs healthy men and women, and by any negligence in attending to this need it inflicts serious charges of all sorts upon itself, and at the same time dangerously impairs its efficiency in the world. nations have begun to recognize the desirability of education, but they have scarcely yet begun to realize that the nationalization of health is even more important than the nationalization of education. if it were necessary to choose between the task of getting children educated and the task of getting them well-born and healthy it would be better to abandon education. there have been many great peoples who never dreamed of national systems of education; there has been no great people without the art of producing healthy and vigorous children. this matter becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states like england, the united states, and germany, because in such states a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate national ends to individual ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race. in england, for instance, this tendency has become peculiarly well marked with disastrous results. the interest of the employed woman tends to become one with that of her employer; between them they combine to crush the interests of the child who represents the race, and to defeat the laws made in the interests of the race which are those of the community as a whole. the employed woman wishes to earn as much wages as she can and with as little interruption as she can; in gratifying that wish she is, at the same time, acting in the interests of the employer, who carefully avoids thwarting her. this impulse on the employed woman's part is by no means always and entirely the result of poverty, and would not, therefore, be removed by raising her wages. long before marriage, when little more than a child, she has usually gone out to work, and work has become a second nature. she has mastered her work, she enjoys a certain position and what to her are high wages; she is among her friends and companions; the noise and bustle and excitement of the work-room or the factory have become an agreeable stimulant which she can no longer do without. on the other hand, her home means nothing to her; she only returns there to sleep, leaving it next morning at day-break or earlier; she is ignorant even of the simplest domestic arts; she moves about in her own home like a strange and awkward child. the mere act of marriage cannot change this state of things; however willing she may be at marriage to become a domesticated wife, she is destitute alike of the inclination or the skill for domesticity. even in spite of herself she is driven back to the work-shop, to the one place where she feels really at home. in germany women are not allowed to work for four weeks after confinement, nor during the following two weeks except by medical certificate. the obligatory insurance against disease which covers women at confinement assures them an indemnity at this time equivalent to a large part of their wages. married and unmarried mothers benefit alike. the austrian law is founded on the same model. this measure has led to a very great decrease in infantile mortality, and, therefore, a great increase in health among those who survive. it is, however, regarded as very inadequate, and there is a movement in germany for extending the time, for applying the system to a larger number of women, and for making it still more definitely compulsory. in switzerland it has been illegal since for any woman to be received into a factory after confinement, unless she has rested in all for eight weeks, six weeks at least of this period being after confinement. since swiss working women have been protected by law from exercising hard work during pregnancy, and from various other influences likely to be injurious. but this law is evaded in practice, because it provides no compensatory indemnity for the woman. an attempt, in , to amend the law by providing for such indemnity was rejected by the people. in belgium and holland there are laws against women working immediately after confinement, but no indemnity is provided, so that employers and employed combine to evade the law. in france there is no such law, although its necessity has often been emphatically asserted (see, e.g., salvat, _la dépopulation de la france_, thèse de lyon, ). in england it is illegal to employ a woman "knowingly" in a work-shop within four weeks of the birth of her child, but no provision is made by the law for the compensation of the woman who is thus required to sacrifice herself to the interests of the state. the woman evades the law in tacit collusion with her employers, who can always avoid "knowing" that a birth has taken place, and so escape all responsibility for the mother's employment. thus the factory inspectors are unable to take action, and the law becomes a dead letter; in only one prosecution for this offense could be brought into court. by the insertion of this "knowingly" a premium is placed on ignorance. the unwisdom of thus beforehand placing a premium on ignorance has always been more or less clearly recognized by the framers of legal codes even as far back as the days of the ten commandments and the laws of hamurabi. it is the business of the court, of those who administer the law, to make allowance for ignorance where such allowance is fairly called for; it is not for the law-maker to make smooth the path of the law-breaker. there are evidently law-makers nowadays so scrupulous, or so simple-minded, that they would be prepared to exact that no pickpocket should be prosecuted if he was able to declare on oath that he had no "knowledge" that the purse he had taken belonged to the person he extracted it from. the annual reports of the english factory inspectors serve to bring ridicule on this law, which looks so wisely humane and yet means nothing, but have so far been powerless to effect any change. these reports show, moreover, that the difficulty is increasing in magnitude. thus miss martindale, a factory inspector, states that in all the towns she visits, from a quiet cathedral city to a large manufacturing town, the employment of married women is rapidly increasing; they have worked in mills or factories all their lives and are quite unaccustomed to cooking, housework and the rearing of children, so that after marriage, even when not compelled by poverty, they prefer to go on working as before. miss vines, another factory inspector, repeats the remark of a woman worker in a factory. "i do not need to work, but i do not like staying at home," while another woman said, "i would rather be at work a hundred times than at home. i get lost at home" (_annual report chief inspector of factories and workshops for _, pp. , etc.). it may be added that not only is the english law enjoining four weeks' rest on the mother after childbirth practically inoperative, but the period itself is absurdly inadequate. as a rest for the mother it is indeed sufficient, but the state is still more interested in the child than in its mother, and the child needs the mother's chief care for a much longer period than four weeks. helme advocates the state prohibition of women's work for at least six months after confinement. where nurseries are attached to factories, enabling the mother to suckle her infant in intervals of work, the period may doubtless be shortened. it is important to remember that it is by no means only the women in factories who are induced to work as usual during the whole period of pregnancy, and to return to work immediately after the brief rest of confinement. the research committee of the christian social union (london branch) undertook, in , an inquiry into the employment of women after childbirth. women in factories and workshops were excluded from the inquiry which only had reference to women engaged in household duties, in home industries, and in casual work. it was found that the majority carry on their employment right up to the time of confinement and resume it from ten to fourteen days later. the infantile death rate for the children of women engaged only in household duties was greatly lower than that for the children of the other women, while, as ever, the hand-fed infants had a vastly higher death rate than the breast-fed infants (_british medical journal_, oct. , , p. ). in the great french gun and armour-plate works at creuzot (saône et loire) the salaries of expectant mothers among the employees are raised; arrangements are made for giving them proper advice and medical attendance; they are not allowed to work after the middle of pregnancy or to return to work after confinement without a medical certificate of fitness. the results are said to be excellent, not only on the health of the mothers, but in the diminution of premature births, the decrease of infantile deaths, and the general prevalence of breast-feeding. it would probably be hopeless to expect many employers in anglo-saxon lands to adopt this policy. they are too "practical," they know how small is the money-value of human lives. with us it is necessary for the state to intervene. there can be no doubt that, on the whole, modern civilized communities are beginning to realize that under the social and economic conditions now tending more and more to prevail, they must in their own interests insure that the mother's best energy and vitality are devoted to the child, both before and after its birth. they are also realizing that they cannot carry out their duty in this respect unless they make adequate provision for the mothers who are thus compelled to renounce their employment in order to devote themselves to their children. we here reach a point at which individualism is at one with socialism. the individualist cannot fail to see that it is at all cost necessary to remove social conditions which crush out all individuality; the socialist cannot fail to see that a society which neglects to introduce order at this central and vital point, the production of the individual, must speedily perish. it is involved in the proper fulfilment of a mother's relationship to her infant child that, provided she is healthy, she should suckle it. of recent years this question has become a matter of serious gravity. in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the upper-class women of france had grown disinclined to suckle their own children, rousseau raised so loud and eloquent a protest that it became once more the fashion for a woman to fulfil her natural duties. at the present time, when the same evil is found once more, and in a far more serious form, for now it is not the small upper-class but the great lower-class that is concerned, the eloquence of a rousseau would be powerless, for it is not fashion so much as convenience, and especially an intractable economic factor, that is chiefly concerned. not the least urgent reason for putting women, and especially mothers, upon a sounder economic basis, is the necessity of enabling them to suckle their children. no woman is sound, healthy, and complete unless she possesses breasts that are beautiful enough to hold the promise of being functional when the time for their exercise arrives, and nipples that can give suck. the gravity of this question to-day is shown by the frequency with which women are lacking in this essential element of womanhood, and the young man of to-day, it has been said, often in taking a wife, "actually marries but part of a woman, the other part being exhibited in the chemist's shop window, in the shape of a glass feeding-bottle." blacker found among a thousand patients from the maternity department of university college hospital that thirty-nine had never suckled at all, seven hundred and forty-seven had suckled all their children, and two hundred and fourteen had suckled only some. the chief reason given for not suckling was absence or insufficiency of milk; other reasons being inability or disinclination to suckle, and refusal of the child to take the breast (blacker, _medical chronicle_, feb., ). these results among the london poor are certainly very much better than could be found in many manufacturing towns where women work after marriage. in the other large countries of europe equally unsatisfactory results are found. in paris madame dluska has shown that of women who came for their confinement to the clinique baudelocque, only suckled their children; of the who did not suckle, were prevented by pathological causes or absence of milk, by the necessities of their work. even those who suckled could seldom continue more than seven months on account of the physiological strain of work (dluska, _contribution à l'etude de l'allaitement maternel_, thèse de paris, ). many statistics have been gathered in the german countries. thus wiedow (_centralblatt für gynäkologie_, no. , ) found that of women at the freiburg maternity only half could suckle thoroughly during the first two weeks; imperfect nipples were noted in cases, and it was found that the development of the nipple bore a direct relation to the value of the breast as a secretory organ. at munich escherich and büller found that nearly per cent. of women of the lower class were unable to suckle their children, and at stuttgart three-quarters of the child-bearing women were in this condition. the reasons why children should be suckled at their mothers' breasts are larger than some may be inclined to believe. in the first place the psychological reason is one of no mean importance. the breast with its exquisitely sensitive nipple, vibrating in harmony with the sexual organs, furnishes the normal mechanism by which maternal love is developed. no doubt the woman who never suckles her child may love it, but such love is liable to remain defective on the fundamental and instinctive side. in some women, indeed, whom we may hesitate to call abnormal, maternal love fails to awaken at all until brought into action through this mechanism by the act of suckling. a more generally recognized and certainly fundamental reason for suckling the child is that the milk of the mother, provided she is reasonably healthy, is the infant's only ideally fit food. there are some people whose confidence in science leads them to believe that it is possible to manufacture foods that are as good or better than mother's milk; they fancy that the milk which is best for the calf is equally best for so different an animal as the baby. these are delusions. the infant's best food is that elaborated in his own mother's body. all other foods are more or less possible substitutes, which require trouble to prepare properly and are, moreover, exposed to various risks from which the mother's milk is free. a further reason, especially among the poor, against the use of any artificial foods is that it accustoms those around the child to try experiments with its feeding and to fancy that any kind of food they eat themselves may be good for the infant. it thus happens that bread and potatoes, brandy and gin, are thrust into infants' mouths. with the infant that is given the breast it is easier to make plain that, except by the doctor's orders, nothing else must be given. an additional reason why the mother should suckle her child is the close and frequent association with the child thus involved. not only is the child better cared for in all respects, but the mother is not deprived of the discipline of such care, and is also enabled from the outset to learn and to understand the child's nature. the inability to suckle acquires great significance if we realize that it is associated, probably in a large measure as a direct cause, with infantile mortality. the mortality of artificially-fed infants during the first year of life is seldom less than double that of the breast-fed, sometimes it is as much as three times that of the breast-fed, or even more; thus at derby . per cent. of hand-fed infants die under the age of twelve months, but only . per cent. of breast-fed infants. those who survive are by no means free from suffering. at the end of the first year they are found to weigh about per cent. less than the breast-fed, and to be much shorter; they are more liable to tuberculosis and rickets, with all the evil results that flow from these diseases; and there is some reason to believe that the development of their teeth is injuriously affected. the degenerate character of the artificially-fed is well indicated by the fact that of , children who were brought for treatment to the children's hospital in munich, per cent. had been brought up by hand, and the few who had been suckled had usually only had the breast for a short time. the evil influence persists even up to adult life. in some parts of france where the wet-nurse industry flourishes so greatly that nearly all the children are brought up by hand, it has been found that the percentage of rejected conscripts is nearly double that for france generally. corresponding results have been found by friedjung in a large german athletic association. among members, per cent. were found on inquiry to have been breast-fed as infants (for an average of six months); but among the best athletes the percentage of breast-fed rose to per cent. (for an average period of nine or ten months), while for the group of who stood lowest in athletic power the percentage of breast-fed fell to (for an average of only three months). the advantages for an infant of being suckled by its mother are greater than can be accounted for by the mere fact of being suckled rather than hand-fed. this has been shown by vitrey (_de la mortalité infantile_, thèse de lyon, ), who found from the statistics of the hôtel-dieu at lyons, that infants suckled by their mothers have a mortality of only per cent., but if suckled by strangers, the mortality rises to per cent. it may be added that, while suckling is essential to the complete well-being of the child, it is highly desirable for the sake of the mother's health also. (some important statistics are summarized in a paper on "infantile mortality" in _british medical journal_, nov. , ), while the various aspects of suckling have been thoroughly discussed by bollinger, "ueber säuglings-sterblichkeit und die erbliche functionelle atrophie der menschlichen milchdrüse" (_correspondenzblatt deutschen gesellschaft anthropologie_, oct., ). it appears that in sweden, in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was a punishable offense for a woman to give her baby the bottle when she was able to suckle it. in recent years prof. anton von menger, of vienna, has argued (in his _burgerliche recht und die besitzlosen klassen_) that the future generation has the right to make this claim, and he proposes that every mother shall be legally bound to suckle her child unless her inability to do so has been certified by a physician. e.a. schroeder (_das recht in der geschlechtlichen ordnung_, , p. ) also argued that a mother should be legally bound to suckle her infant for at least nine months, unless solid grounds could be shown to the contrary, and this demand, which seems reasonable and natural, since it is a mother's privilege as well as her duty to suckle her infant when able to do so, has been insistently made by others also. it has been supported from the legal side by weinberg (_mutterschutz_, sept., ). in france the loi roussel forbids a woman to act as a wet-nurse until her child is seven months old, and this has had an excellent effect in lowering infantile mortality (a. allée, _puériculture et la loi roussel_, thèse de paris, ). in some parts of germany manufacturers are compelled to set up a suckling-room in the factory, where mothers can give the breast to the child in the intervals of work. the control and upkeep of these rooms, with provision of doctors and nurses, is undertaken by the municipality (_sexual-probleme_, sept., , p. ). as things are to-day in modern industrial countries the righting of these wrongs cannot be left to nature, that is, to the ignorant and untrained impulses of persons who live in a whirl of artificial life where the voice of instinct is drowned. the mother, we are accustomed to think, may be trusted to see to the welfare of her child, and it is unnecessary, or even "immoral," to come to her assistance. yet there are few things, i think, more pathetic than the sight of a young lancashire mother who works in the mills, when she has to stay at home to nurse her sick child. she is used to rise before day-break to go to the mill; she has scarcely seen her child by the light of the sun, she knows nothing of its necessities, the hands that are so skilful to catch the loom cannot soothe the child. the mother gazes down at it in vague, awkward, speechless misery. it is not a sight one can ever forget. it is france that is taking the lead in the initiation of the scientific and practical movements for the care of the young child before and after birth, and it is in france that we may find the germs of nearly all the methods now becoming adopted for arresting infantile mortality. the village system of villiers-le-duc, near dijon in the côte d'or, has proved a germ of this fruitful kind. here every pregnant woman not able to secure the right conditions for her own life and that of the child she is bearing, is able to claim the assistance of the village authorities; she is entitled, without payment, to the attendance of a doctor and midwife and to one franc a day during her confinement. the measures adopted in this village have practically abolished both maternal and infantile mortality. a few years ago dr. samson moore, the medical officer of health for huddersfield, heard of this village, and mr. benjamin broadbent, the mayor of huddersfield, visited villiers-le-duc. it was resolved to initiate in huddersfield a movement for combating infant mortality. henceforth arose what is known as the huddersfield scheme, a scheme which has been fruitful in splendid results. the points of the huddersfield scheme are: ( ) compulsory notification of births within forty-eight hours; ( ) the appointment of lady assistant medical officers of help to visit the home, inquire, advise, and assist; ( ) the organized aid of voluntary lady workers in subordination to the municipal part of the scheme; ( ) appeal to the medical officer of help when the baby, not being under medical care, fails to thrive. the infantile mortality of huddersfield has been very greatly reduced by this scheme.[ ] the huddersfield scheme may be said to be the origin of the english notification of births act, which came into operation in . this act represents, in england, the national inauguration of a scheme for the betterment of the race, the ultimate results of which it is impossible to foresee. when this act comes into universal action every baby of the land will be entitled--legally and not by individual caprice or philanthropic condescension--to medical attention from the day of birth, and every mother will have at hand the counsel of an educated woman in touch with the municipal authorities. there could be no greater triumph for medical science, for national efficiency, and the cause of humanity generally. even on the lower financial plane, it is easy to see that an enormous saving of public and private money will thus be effected. the act is adoptive, and not compulsory. this was a wise precaution, for an act of this kind cannot be effectual unless it is carried out thoroughly by the community adopting it, and it will not be adopted until a community has clearly realized its advantages and the methods of attaining them. an important adjunct of this organization is the school for mothers. such schools, which are now beginning to spring up everywhere, may be said to have their origins in the _consultations de nourrissons_ (with their offshoot the _goutte de lait_), established by professor budin in , which have spread all over france and been widely influential for good. at the _consultations_ infants are examined and weighed weekly, and the mothers advised and encouraged to suckle their children. the _gouttes_ are practically milk dispensaries where infants for whom breast-feeding is impossible are fed with milk under medical supervision. schools for mothers represent an enlargement of the same scheme, covering a variety of subjects which it is necessary for a mother to know. some of the first of these schools were established at bonn, at the bavarian town of weissenberg, and in ghent. at some of the schools for mothers, and notably at ghent (described by mrs. bertrand russell in the _nineteenth century_, ), the important step has been taken of giving training to young girls from fourteen to eighteen; they receive instruction in infant anatomy and physiology, in the preparation of sterilized milk, in weighing children, in taking temperatures and making charts, in managing crêches, and after two years are able to earn a salary. in various parts of england, schools for young mothers and girls on these lines are now being established, first in london, under the auspices of dr. f.j. sykes, medical officer of health for st. pancreas (see, e.g., _a school for mothers_, , describing an establishment of this kind at somers town, with a preface by sir thomas barlow; an account of recent attempts to improve the care of infants in london will also be found in the _lancet_, sept. , ). it may be added that some english municipalities have established depôts for supplying mothers cheaply with good milk. such depôts are, however, likely to be more mischievous than beneficial if they promote the substitution of hand-feeding for suckling. they should never be established except in connection with schools for mothers, where an educational influence may be exerted, and no mother should be supplied with milk unless she presents a medical certificate showing that she is unable to nourish her child (byers, "medical women and public health questions," _british medical journal_, oct. , ). it is noteworthy that in england the local authorities will shortly be empowered by law to establish schools for mothers. the great benefits produced by these institutions in france, both in diminishing the infant mortality and in promoting the education of mothers and their pride and interest in their children, have been set forth in two paris theses by g. chaignon (_organisation des consultations de nourrissons à la campagne_, ), and alcide alexandre (_consultation de nourrissons et goutte de lait d'arques_, ). the movement is now spreading throughout europe, and an international union has been formed, including all the institutions specially founded for the protection of child life and the promotion of puericulture. the permanent committee is in brussels, and a congress of infant protection (_goutte de lait_) is held every two years. it will be seen that all the movements now being set in action for the improvement of the race through the child and the child's mother, recognize the intimacy of the relation between the mother and her child and are designed to aid her, even if necessary by the exercise of some pressure, in performing her natural functions in relation to her child. to the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on paper, nothing seems simpler than to cure the present evils of child-rearing by setting up state nurseries which are at once to relieve mothers of everything connected with the production of the men of the future beyond the pleasure--if such it happens to be--of conceiving them and the trouble of bearing them, and at the same time to rear them up independently of the home, in a wholesome, economical, and scientific manner.[ ] nothing seems simpler, but from the fundamental psychological standpoint nothing is falser. the idea of a state which is outside the community is but a survival in another form of that antiquated notion which compelled louis xiv to declare "l'etat c'est moi!" a state which admits that the individuals composing it are incompetent to perform their own most sacred and intimate functions, and takes upon itself to perform them instead, attempts a task which would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement. it must always be remembered that a state which proposes to relieve its constituent members of their natural functions and responsibilities attempts something quite different from the state which seeks to aid its members to fulfil their own biological and social functions more adequately. a state which enables its mothers to rest when they are child-bearing is engaged in a reasonable task; a state which takes over its mothers' children is reducing philanthropy to absurdity. it is easy to realize this if we consider the inevitable course of circumstances under a system of "state-nurseries." the child would be removed from its natural mother at the earliest age, but some one has to perform the mother's duties; the substitute must therefore be properly trained for such duties; and in exercising them under favorable circumstances a maternal relationship is developed between the child and the "mother," who doubtless possesses natural maternal instincts but has no natural maternal bond to the child she is mothering. such a relationship tends to become on both sides practically and emotionally the real relationship. we very often have opportunity of seeing how unsatisfactory such a relationship becomes. the artificial mother is deprived of a child she had begun to feel her own; the child's emotional relationships are upset, split and distorted; the real mother has the bitterness of feeling that for her child she is not the real mother. would it not have been much better for all if the state had encouraged the vast army of women it had trained for the position of mothering other women's children, to have, instead, children of their own? the women who are incapable of mothering their own children could then be trained to refrain from bearing them. ellen key (in her _century of the child_, and elsewhere) has advocated for all young women a year of compulsory "service," analogous to the compulsory military service imposed in most countries on young men. during this period the girl would be trained in rational housekeeping, in the principles of hygiene, in the care of the sick, and especially in the care of infants and all that concerns the physical and psychic development of children. the principle of this proposal has since been widely accepted. marie von schmid (in her _mutterdienst_, ) goes so far as to advocate a general training of young women in such duties, carried on in a kind of enlarged and improved midwifery school. the service would last a year, and the young woman would then be for three years in the reserves, and liable to be called up for duty. there is certainly much to be said for such a proposal, considerably more than is to be said for compulsory military service. for while it is very doubtful whether a man will ever be called on to fight, most women are liable to be called on to exercise household duties or to look after children, whether for themselves or for other people. footnotes: [ ] it is not, of course, always literally true that each parent supplies exactly half the heredity, for, as we see among animals generally, the offspring may sometimes approach more nearly to one parent, sometimes to the other, while among plants, as de vries and others have shown, the heredity may be still more unequally divided. [ ] it should scarcely be necessary to say that to assert that motherhood is a woman's supreme function is by no means to assert that her activities should be confined to the home. that is an opinion which may now be regarded as almost extinct even among those who most glorify the function of woman as mother. as friedrich naumann and others have very truly pointed out, a woman is not adequately equipped to fulfil her functions as mother and trainer of children unless she has lived in the world and exercised a vocation. [ ] "were the capacities of the brain and the heart equal in the sexes," lily braun (_die frauenfrage_, page ) well says, "the entry of women into public life would be of no value to humanity, and would even lead to a still wilder competition. only the recognition that the entire nature of woman is different from that of man, that it signifies a new vivifying principle in human life, makes the women's movement, in spite of the misconception of its enemies and its friends, a social revolution" (see also havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, , especially ch. xviii). [ ] the word "puericulture" was invented by dr. caron in to signify the culture of children after birth. it was pinard, the distinguished french obstetrician, who, in , gave it a larger and truer significance by applying it to include the culture of children before birth. it is now defined as "the science which has for its end the search for the knowledge relative to the reproduction, the preservation, and the amelioration of the human race" (péchin, _la puériculture avant la naissance_, thèse de paris, ). [ ] in _la grossesse_ (pp. et seq.) bouchacourt has discussed the problems of puericulture at some length. [ ] the importance of antenatal puericulture was fully recognized in china a thousand years ago. thus madame cheng wrote at that time concerning the education of the child: "even before birth his education may begin; and, therefore, the prospective mother of old, when lying down, lay straight; when sitting down, sat upright; and when standing, stood erect. she would not taste strange flavors, nor have anything to do with spiritualism; if her food were not cut straight she would not eat it, and if her mat were not set straight, she would not sit upon it. she would not look at any objectionable sight, nor listen to any objectionable sound, nor utter any rude word, nor handle any impure thing. at night she studied some canonical work, by day she occupied herself with ceremonies and music. therefore, her sons were upright and eminent for their talents and virtues; such was the result of antenatal training" (h.a. giles, "woman in chinese literature," _nineteenth century_, nov., ). [ ] max bartels, "isländischer brauch," etc., _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , p. . a summary of the customs of various peoples in regard to pregnancy is given by ploss and bartels, _das weib_, sect. xxix. [ ] on the influence of alcohol during pregnancy on the embryo, see, e.g., g. newman, _infant mortality_, pp. - . w.c. sullivan (_alcoholism_, , ch. xi), summarizes the evidence showing that alcohol is a factor in human degeneration. [ ] there is even reason to believe that the alcoholism of the mother's father may impair her ability as a mother. bunge (_die zunehmende unfähigkeit der frauen ihre kinder zu stillen_, fifth edition, ), from an investigation extending over , families, finds that chronic alcoholic poisoning in the father is the chief cause of the daughter's inability to suckle, this inability not usually being recovered in subsequent generations. bunge has, however, been opposed by dr. agnes bluhm, "die stillungsnot," _zeitschrift für soziale medizin_, (fully summarized by herself in _sexual-probleme_, jan., ). [ ] see, e.g., t. arthur helme, "the unborn child," _british medical journal_, aug. , . nutrition should, of course, be adequate. noel paton has shown (_lancet_, july , ) that defective nutrition of the pregnant woman diminishes the weight of the offspring. [ ] debreyne, _moechialogie_, p. . and from the protestant side see northcote (_christianity and sex problems_, ch. ix), who permits sexual intercourse during pregnancy. [ ] see appendix a to the third volume of these _studies_; also ploss and bartels, loc. cit. [ ] thus one lady writes: "i have only had one child, but i may say that during pregnancy the desire for union was much stronger, for the whole time, than at any other period." bouchacourt (_la grossesse_, pp. - ) states that, as a rule, sexual desire is not diminished by pregnancy, and is occasionally increased. [ ] this "inconvenience" remains to-day a stumbling-block with many excellent authorities. "except when there is a tendency to miscarriage," says kossmann (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ), "we must be very guarded in ordering abstinence from intercourse during pregnancy," and ballantyne (_the foetus_, p. ) cautiously remarks that the question is difficult to decide. forel also (_die sexuelle frage_, fourth edition, p. ), who is not prepared to advocate complete sexual abstinence during a normal pregnancy, admits that it is a rather difficult question. [ ] this point is discussed, for instance, by séropian in a paris thesis (_fréquence comparée des causes de l'accouchement prémature_, ); he concludes that coitus during pregnancy is a more frequent cause of premature confinement than is commonly supposed, especially in primiparæ, and markedly so by the ninth month. [ ] "infantile mortality: the huddersfield scheme," _british medical journal_, dec., ; samson moore, "infant mortality," ib., august , . [ ] ellen key has admirably dealt with proposals of this kind (as put forth by c.p. stetson) in her essays "on love and marriage." in opposition to such proposals ellen key suggests that such women as have been properly trained for maternal duties and are unable entirely to support themselves while exercising them should be subsidized by the state during the child's first three years of life. it may be added that in leipzig the plan of subsidizing mothers who (under proper medical and other supervision) suckle their infants has already been introduced. chapter ii. sexual education. nurture necessary as well as breed--precocious manifestations of the sexual impulse--are they to be regarded as normal?--the sexual play of children--the emotion of love in childhood--are town children more precocious sexually than country children?--children's ideas concerning the origin of babies--need for beginning the sexual education of children in early years--the importance of early training in responsibility--evil of the old doctrine of silence in matters of sex--the evil magnified when applied to girls--the mother the natural and best teacher--the morbid influence of artificial mystery in sex matters--books on sexual enlightenment of the young--nature of the mother's task--sexual education in the school--the value of botany--zoölogy--sexual education after puberty--the necessity of counteracting quack literature--danger of neglecting to prepare for the first onset of menstruation--the right attitude towards woman's sexual life--the vital necessity of the hygiene of menstruation during adolescence--such hygiene compatible with the educational and social equality of the sexes--the invalidism of women mainly due to hygienic neglect--good influence of physical training on women and bad influence of athletics--the evils of emotional suppression--need of teaching the dignity of sex--influence of these factors on a woman's fate in marriage--lectures and addresses on sexual hygiene--the doctor's part in sexual education--pubertal initiation into the ideal world--the place of the religious and ethical teacher--the initiation rites of savages into manhood and womanhood--the sexual influence of literature--the sexual influence of art. it may seem to some that in attaching weight to the ancestry, the parentage, the conception, the gestation, even the first infancy, of the child we are wandering away from the sphere of the psychology of sex. that is far from being the case. we are, on the contrary, going to the root of sex. all our growing knowledge tends to show that, equally with his physical nature, the child's psychic nature is based on breed and nurture, on the quality of the stocks he belongs to, and on the care taken at the early moments when care counts for most, to preserve the fine quality of those stocks. it must, of course, be remembered that the influences of both breed and nurture are alike influential on the fate of the individual. the influence of nurture is so obvious that few are likely to under-rate it. the influence of breed, however, is less obvious, and we may still meet with persons so ill informed, and perhaps so prejudiced, as to deny it altogether. the growth of our knowledge in this matter, by showing how subtle and penetrative is the influence of heredity, cannot fail to dispel this mischievous notion. no sound civilization is possible except in a community which in the mass is not only well-nurtured but well-bred. and in no part of life so much as in the sexual relationships is the influence of good breeding more decisive. an instructive illustration may be gleaned from the minute and precise history of his early life furnished to me by a highly cultured russian gentleman. he was brought up in childhood with his own brothers and sisters and a little girl of the same age who had been adopted from infancy, the child of a prostitute who had died soon after the infant's birth. the adopted child was treated as one of the family, and all the children supposed that she was a real sister. yet from early years she developed instincts unlike those of the children with whom she was nurtured; she lied, she was cruel, she loved to make mischief, and she developed precociously vicious sexual impulses; though carefully educated, she adopted the occupation of her mother, and at the age of twenty-two was exiled to siberia for robbery and attempt to murder. the child of a chance father and a prostitute mother is not fatally devoted to ruin; but such a child is ill-bred, and that fact, in some cases, may neutralize all the influences of good nurture. when we reach the period of infancy we have already passed beyond the foundations and potentialities of the sexual life; we are in some cases witnessing its actual beginnings. it is a well-established fact that auto-erotic manifestations may sometimes be observed even in infants of less than twelve months. we are not now called upon to discuss the disputable point as to how far such manifestations at this age can be called normal.[ ] a slight degree of menstrual and mammary activity sometimes occurs at birth.[ ] it seems clear that nervous and psychic sexual activity has its first springs at this early period, and as the years go by an increasing number of individuals join the stream until at puberty practically all are carried along in the great current. while, therefore, it is possibly, even probably, true that the soundest and healthiest individuals show no definite signs of nervous and psychic sexuality in childhood, such manifestations are still sufficiently frequent to make it impossible to say that sexual hygiene may be completely ignored until puberty is approaching. precocious physical development occurs as a somewhat rare variation. w. roger williams ("precocious sexual development with abstracts of over one hundred cases," _british gynæcological journal_, may, ) has furnished an important contribution to the knowledge of this anomaly which is much commoner in girls than in boys. roger williams's cases include only twenty boys to eighty girls, and precocity is not only more frequent but more pronounced in girls, who have been known to conceive at eight, while thirteen is stated to be the earliest age at which boys have proved able to beget children. this, it may be remarked, is also the earliest age at which spermatozoa are found in the seminal fluid of boys; before that age the ejaculations contain no spermatozoa, and, as fürbringer and moll have found, they may even be absent at sixteen, or later. in female children precocious sexual development is less commonly associated with general increase of bodily development than in boys. (an individual case of early sexual development in a girl of five has been completely described and figured in the _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. .) precocious sexual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and more or less innocent. a case of rare and pronounced character, in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been sexually attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and actions to sexual attempts on them, has been described by herbert rich, of detroit (_alienist and neurologist_, nov., ). general evidence from the literature of the subject as to sexual precocity, its frequency and significance, has been brought together by l.m. terman ("a study in precocity," _american journal psychology_, april, ). the erections that are liable to occur in male infants have usually no sexual significance, though, as moll remarks, they may acquire it by attracting the child's attention; they are merely reflex. it is believed by some, however, and notably by freud, that certain manifestations of infant activity, especially thumb-sucking, are of sexual causation, and that the sexual impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age. the belief that the sexual instinct is absent in childhood, freud regards as a serious error, so easy to correct by observation that he wonders how it can have arisen. "in reality," he remarks, "the new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the world, sexual sensations accompany it through the days of lactation and childhood, and very few children can fail to experience sexual activities and feelings before the period of puberty" (freud, "zur sexuellen aufklärung der kinder," _soziale medizin und hygiene_, bd. ii, ; cf., for details, the same author's _drei abhandlungen zur sexualtheorie_, ). moll, on the other hand, considers that freud's views on sexuality in infancy are exaggerations which must be decisively rejected, though he admits that it is difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the feelings in childhood (moll, _das sexualleben des kindes_, p. ). moll believes also that psycho-sexual manifestations appearing after the age of eight are not pathological; children who are weakly or of bad heredity are not seldom sexually precocious, but, on the other hand, moll has known children of eight or nine with strongly developed sexual impulses, who yet become finely developed men. rudimentary sexual activities in childhood, accompanied by sexual feelings, must indeed--when they are not too pronounced or too premature--be regarded as coming within the normal sphere, though when they occur in children of bad heredity they are not without serious risks. but in healthy children, after the age of seven or eight, they tend to produce no evil results, and are strictly of the nature of play. play, both in animals and men, as groos has shown with marvelous wealth of illustration, is a beneficent process of education; the young creature is thereby preparing itself for the exercise of those functions which in later life it must carry out more completely and more seriously. in his _spiele der menschen_, groos applies this idea to the sexual play of children, and brings forward quotations from literature in evidence. keller, in his "romeo und juliet auf dem dorfe," has given an admirably truthful picture of these childish love-relationships. emil schultze-malkowsky (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, p. ) reproduces some scenes from the life of a little girl of seven clearly illustrating the exact nature of the sexual manifestation at this age. a kind of rudimentary sexual intercourse between children, as bloch has remarked (_beiträge_, etc., bd. ii, p. ), occurs in many parts of the world, and is recognized by their elders as play. this is, for instance, the case among the bawenda of the transvaal (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ), and among the papuans of kaiser-wilhelms-land, with the approval of the parents, although much reticence is observed (id., , heft , p. ). godard (_egypte et palestine_, , p. ) noted the sexual play of the boys and girls in cairo. in new mexico w.a. hammond (_sexual impotence_, p. ) has seen boys and girls attempting a playful sexual conjunction with the encouragement of men and women, and in new york he has seen boys and girls of three and four doing the same in the presence of their parents, with only a laughing rebuke. "playing at pa and ma" is indeed extremely common among children in genuine innocence, and with a complete absence of viciousness; and is by no means confined to children of low social class. moll remarks on its frequency (_libido sexualis_, bd. i, p. ), and the committee of evangelical pastors, in their investigation of german rural morality (_die geschlechtliche-sittliche verhältnisse_, bd. i, p. ) found that children who are not yet of school age make attempts at coitus. the sexual play of children is by no means confined to father and mother games; frequently there are games of school with the climax in exposure and smackings, and occasionally there are games of being doctors and making examinations. thus a young english woman says: "of course, when we were at school [at the age of twelve and earlier] we used to play with one another, several of us girls; we used to go into a field and pretend we were doctors and had to examine one another, and then we used to pull up one another's clothes and feel each other." these games do not necessarily involve the coöperation of the sexual impulse, and still less have they any element of love. but emotions of love, scarcely if at all distinguishable from adult sexual love, frequently appear at equally early ages. they are of the nature of play, in so far as play is a preparation for the activities of later life, though, unlike the games, they are not felt as play. ramdohr, more than a century ago (_venus urania_, ), referred to the frequent love of little boys for women. more usually the love is felt towards individuals of the opposite or the same sex who are not widely different in age, though usually older. the most comprehensive study of the matter has been made by sanford bell in america on a basis of as many as , cases (s. bell, "a preliminary study of the emotion of love between the sexes," _american journal psychology_, july, ). bell finds that the presence of the emotion between three and eight years of age is shown by such actions as hugging, kissing, lifting each other, scuffling, sitting close to each other, confessions to each other and to others, talking about each other when apart, seeking each other and excluding the rest, grief at separation, giving gifts, showing special courtesies to each other, making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. the girls are, on the whole, more aggressive than the boys, and less anxious to keep the matter secret. after the age of eight, the girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more secretive. the physical sensations are not usually located in the sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperæmia of the female sexual parts bell regards as marking undue precocity. but there is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of exaltation comparable, though not equal, to that experienced in adolescent and adult age. on the whole, as bell soundly concludes, "love between children of opposite sex bears much the same relation to that between adults as the flower does to the fruit, and has about as little of physical sexuality in it as an apple-blossom has of the apple that develops from it." moll also (op. cit. p. ) considers that kissing and other similar superficial contacts, which he denominates the phenomena of contrectation, constitute most frequently the first and sole manifestation of the sexual impulse in childhood. it is often stated that it is easier for children to preserve their sexual innocence in the country than in the town, and that only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous. this is by no means true, and in some respects it is the reverse of the truth. certainly, hard work, a natural and simple life, and a lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the rural lad chaste in thought and act until the period of adolescence is completed. ammon, for instance, states, though without giving definite evidence, that this is common among the baden conscripts. certainly, also, all the multiple sensory excitements of urban life tend to arouse the nervous and cerebral excitability of the young at a comparatively early age in the sexual as in other fields, and promote premature desires and curiosities. but, on the other hand, urban life offers the young no gratification for their desires and curiosities. the publicity of a city, the universal surveillance, the studied decorum of a population conscious that it is continually exposed to the gaze of strangers, combine to spread a veil over the esoteric side of life, which, even when at last it fails to conceal from the young the urban stimuli of that life, effectually conceals, for the most part, the gratifications of those stimuli. in the country, however, these restraints do not exist in any corresponding degree; animals render the elemental facts of sexual life clear to all; there is less need or regard for decorum; speech is plainer; supervision is impossible, and the amplest opportunities for sexual intimacy are at hand. if the city may perhaps be said to favor unchastity of thought in the young, the country may certainly be said to favor unchastity of act. the elaborate investigations of the committee of lutheran pastors into sexual morality (_die geschlechtich-sittliche verhältnisse im deutschen reiche_), published a few years ago, demonstrate amply the sexual freedom in rural germany, and moll, who is decidedly of opinion that the country enjoys no relative freedom from sexuality, states (op. cit., pp. - , ) that even the circulation of obscene books and pictures among school-children seems to be more frequent in small towns and the country than in large cities. in russia, where it might be thought that urban and rural conditions offered less contrast than in many countries, the same difference has been observed. "i do not know," a russian correspondent writes, "whether zola in _la terre_ correctly describes the life of french villages. but the ways of a russian village, where i passed part of my childhood, fairly resemble those described by zola. in the life of the rural population into which i was plunged everything was impregnated with erotism. one was surrounded by animal lubricity in all its immodesty. contrary to the generally received opinion, i believe that a child may preserve his sexual innocence more easily in a town than in the country. there are, no doubt, many exceptions to this rule. but the functions of the sexual life are generally more concealed in the towns than in the fields. modesty (whether or not of the merely superficial and exterior kind) is more developed among urban populations. in speaking of sexual things in the towns people veil their thought more; even the lower class in towns employ more restraint, more euphemisms, than peasants. thus in the towns a child may easily fail to comprehend when risky subjects are talked of in his presence. it may be said that the corruption of towns, though more concealed, is all the deeper. maybe, but that concealment preserves children from it. the town child sees prostitutes in the street every day without distinguishing them from other people. in the country he would every day hear it stated in the crudest terms that such and such a girl has been found at night in a barn or a ditch making love with such and such a youth, or that the servant girl slips every night into the coachman's bed, the facts of sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth being spoken of in the plainest terms. in towns the child's attention is solicited by a thousand different objects; in the country, except fieldwork, which fails to interest him, he hears only of the reproduction of animals and the erotic exploits of girls and youths. when we say that the urban environment is more exciting we are thinking of adults, but the things which excite the adult have usually no erotic effect on the child, who cannot, however, long remain asexual when he sees the great peasant girls, as ardent as mares in heat, abandoning themselves to the arms of robust youths. he cannot fail to remark these frank manifestations of sexuality, though the subtle and perverse refinements of the town would escape his notice. i know that in the countries of exaggerated prudery there is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes inclined to think, than in less hypocritical countries. but i believe that that is a false impression, and am persuaded that precisely because of all these little concealments which excite the malicious amusement of foreigners, there are really many more young people in england who remain chaste than in the countries which treat sexual relations more frankly. at all events, if i have known englishmen who were very debauched and very refined in vice, i have also known young men of the same nation, over twenty, who were as innocent as children, but never a young frenchman, italian, or spaniard of whom this could be said." there is undoubtedly truth in this statement, though it must be remembered that, excellent as chastity is, if it is based on mere ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible dangers. the question of sexual hygiene, more especially in its special aspect of sexual enlightenment, is not, however, dependent on the fact that in some children the psychic and nervous manifestation of sex appears at an earlier age than in others. it rests upon the larger general fact that in all children the activity of intelligence begins to work at a very early age, and that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive desire to know many elementary facts of life which are really dependent on sex. the primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know where children come from. no question could be more natural; the question of origins is necessarily a fundamental one in childish philosophies as, in more ultimate shapes, it is in adult philosophies. most children, either guided by the statements, usually the misstatements, of their elders, or by their own intelligence working amid such indications as are open to them, are in possession of a theory of the origin of babies. stanley hall ("contents of children's minds on entering school," _pedagogical seminary_, june, ) has collected some of the beliefs of young children as to the origin of babies. "god makes babies in heaven, though the holy mother and even santa claus make some. he lets them down and drops them, and the women or doctors catch them, or he leaves them on the sidewalk, or brings them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up again, or mamma or the doctor or the nurse go up and fetch them, sometimes in a balloon, or they fly down and lose off their wings in some place or other and forget it, and jump down to jesus, who gives them around. they were also often said to be found in flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long, you know, or they grew in cabbages, or god puts them in water, perhaps in the sewer, and the doctor gets them out and takes them to sick folks that want them, or the milkman brings them early in the morning; they are dug out of the ground, or bought at the baby store." in england and america the inquisitive child is often told that the baby was found in the garden, under a gooseberry bush or elsewhere; or more commonly it is said, with what is doubtless felt to be a nearer approach to the truth, that the doctor brought it. in germany the common story told to children is that the stork brings the baby. various theories, mostly based on folk-lore, have been put forward to explain this story, but none of them seem quite convincing (see, e.g., g. herman, "sexual-mythen," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. i, heft , , p. , and p. näcke, _neurologische centralblatt_, no. , ). näcke thinks there is some plausibility in professor petermann's suggestion that a frog writhing in a stork's bill resembles a tiny human creature. in iceland, according to max bartels ("isländischer brauch und volksglaube," etc., _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft and ) we find a transition between the natural and the fanciful in the stories told to children of the origin of babies (the stork is here precluded, for it only extends to the southern border of scandinavian lands). in north iceland it is said that god made the baby and the mother bore it, and on that account is now ill. in the northwest it is said that god made the baby and gave it to the mother. elsewhere it is said that god sent the baby and the midwife brought it, the mother only being in bed to be near the baby (which is seldom placed in a cradle). it is also sometimes said that a lamb or a bird brought the baby. again it is said to have entered during the night through the window. sometimes, however, the child is told that the baby came out of the mother's breasts, or from below her breasts, and that is why she is not well. even when children learn that babies come out of the mother's body this knowledge often remains very vague and inaccurate. it very commonly happens, for instance, in all civilized countries that the navel is regarded as the baby's point of exit from the body. this is a natural conclusion, since the navel is seemingly a channel into the body, and a channel for which there is no obvious use, while the pudendal cleft would not suggest itself to girls (and still less to boys) as the gate of birth, since it already appears to be monopolized by the urinary excretion. this belief concerning the navel is sometimes preserved through the whole period of adolescence, especially in girls of the so-called educated class, who are too well-bred to discuss the matter with their married friends, and believe indeed that they are already sufficiently well informed. at this age the belief may not be altogether harmless, in so far as it leads to the real gate of sex being left unguarded. in elsass where girls commonly believe, and are taught, that babies come through the navel, popular folk-tales are current (_anthropophyteia_, vol. iii, p. ) which represent the mistakes resulting from this belief as leading to the loss of virginity. freud, who believes that children give little credit to the stork fable and similar stories invented for their mystification, has made an interesting psychological investigation into the real theories which children themselves, as the result of observation and thought, reach concerning the sexual facts of life (s. freud, "ueber infantile sexualtheorien," _sexual-probleme_, dec., ). such theories, he remarks, correspond to the brilliant, but defective hypotheses which primitive peoples arrive at concerning the nature and origin of the world. there are three theories, which, as freud quite truly concludes, are very commonly formed by children. the first, and the most widely disseminated, is that there is no real anatomical difference between boys and girls; if the boy notices that his little sister has no obvious penis he even concludes that it is because she is too young, and the little girl herself takes the same view. the fact that in early life the clitoris is relatively larger and more penis-like helps to confirm this view which freud connects with the tendency in later life to erotic dream of women furnished with a penis. this theory, as freud also remarks, favors the growth of homosexuality when its germs are present. the second theory is the fæcal theory of the origin of babies. the child, who perhaps thinks his mother has a penis, and is in any case ignorant of the vagina, concludes that the baby is brought into the world by an action analogous to the action of the bowels. the third theory, which is perhaps less prevalent than the others, freud terms the sadistic theory of coitus. the child realizes that his father must have taken some sort of part in his production. the theory that sexual intercourse consists in violence has in it a trace of truth, but seems to be arrived at rather obscurely. the child's own sexual feelings are often aroused for the first time when wrestling or struggling with a companion; he may see his mother, also, resisting more or less playfully a sudden caress from his father, and if a real quarrel takes place, the impression may be fortified. as to what the state of marriage consists in, freud finds that it is usually regarded as a state which abolishes modesty; the most prevalent theory being that marriage means that people can make water before each other, while another common childish theory is that marriage is when people can show each other their private parts. thus it is that at a very early stage of the child's life we are brought face to face with the question how we may most wisely begin his initiation into the knowledge of the great central facts of sex. it is perhaps a little late in the day to regard it as a question, but so it is among us, although three thousand five hundred years ago, the egyptian father spoke to his child: "i have given you a mother who has carried you within her, a heavy burden, for your sake, and without resting on me. when at last you were born, she indeed submitted herself to the yoke, for during three years were her nipples in your mouth. your excrements never turned her stomach, nor made her say, 'what am i doing?' when you were sent to school she went regularly every day to carry the household bread and beer to your master. when in your turn you marry and have a child, bring up your child as your mother brought you up."[ ] i take it for granted, however, that--whatever doubt there may be as to the how or the when--no doubt is any longer possible as to the absolute necessity of taking deliberate and active part in this sexual initiation, instead of leaving it to the chance revelation of ignorant and perhaps vicious companions or servants. it is becoming more and more widely felt that the risks of ignorant innocence are too great. "all the love and solicitude parental yearning can bestow," writes dr. g.f. butler, of chicago (_love and its affinities_, , p. ), "all that the most refined religious influence can offer, all that the most cultivated associations can accomplish, in one fatal moment may be obliterated. there is no room for ethical reasoning, indeed oftentimes no consciousness of wrong, but only margaret's 'es war so süss'." the same writer adds (as had been previously remarked by mrs. craik and others) that among church members it is the finer and more sensitive organizations that are the most susceptible to sexual emotions. so far as boys are concerned, we leave instruction in matters of sex, the most sacred and central fact in the world, as canon lyttelton remarks, to "dirty-minded school-boys, grooms, garden-boys, anyone, in short, who at an early age may be sufficiently defiled and sufficiently reckless to talk of them." and, so far as girls are concerned, as balzac long ago remarked, "a mother may bring up her daughter severely, and cover her beneath her wings for seventeen years; but a servant-girl can destroy that long work by a word, even by a gesture." the great part played by servant-girls of the lower class in the sexual initiation of the children of the middle class has been illustrated in dealing with "the sexual impulse in women" in vol. iii, of these _studies_, and need not now be further discussed. i would only here say a word, in passing, on the other side. often as servant-girls take this part, we must not go so far as to say that it is the case with the majority. as regards germany, dr. alfred kind has lately put on record his experience: "i have _never_, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on sex-relationships from a servant-girl, although servant-girls followed one another in our house like sunshine and showers in april, and there was always a relation of comradeship between us children and the servants." as regards england, i can add that my own youthful experiences correspond to dr. kind's. this is not surprising, for one may say that in the ordinary well-conditioned girl, though her virtue may not be developed to heroic proportions, there is yet usually a natural respect for the innocence of children, a natural sexual indifference to them, and a natural expectation that the male should take the active part when a sexual situation arises. it is also beginning to be felt that, especially as regards women, ignorant innocence is not merely too fragile a possession to be worth preservation, but that it is positively mischievous, since it involves the lack of necessary knowledge. "it is little short of criminal," writes dr. f.m. goodchild,[ ] "to send our young people into the midst of the excitements and temptations of a great city with no more preparation than if they were going to live in paradise." in the case of women, ignorance has the further disadvantage that it deprives them of the knowledge necessary for intelligent sympathy with other women. the unsympathetic attitude of women towards women is often largely due to sheer ignorance of the facts of life. "why," writes in a private letter a married lady who keenly realizes this, "are women brought up with such a profound ignorance of their own and especially other women's natures? they do not know half as much about other women as a man of the most average capacity learns in his day's march." we try to make up for our failure to educate women in the essential matters of sex by imposing upon the police and other guardians of public order the duty of protecting women and morals. but, as moll insists, the real problem of chastity lies, not in the multiplication of laws and policemen, but largely in women's knowledge of the dangers of sex and in the cultivation of their sense of responsibility.[ ] we are always making laws for the protection of children and setting the police on guard. but laws and the police, whether their activities are good or bad, are in either case alike ineffectual. they can for the most part only be invoked when the damage is already done. we have to learn to go to the root of the matter. we have to teach children to be a law to themselves. we have to give them that knowledge which will enable them to guard their own personalities.[ ] there is an authentic story of a lady who had learned to swim, much to the horror of her clergyman, who thought that swimming was unfeminine. "but," she said, "suppose i was drowning." "in that case," he replied, "you ought to wait until a man comes along and saves you." there we have the two methods of salvation which have been preached to women, the old method and the new. in no sea have women been more often in danger of drowning than that of sex. there ought to be no question as to which is the better method of salvation. it is difficult nowadays to find any serious arguments against the desirability of early sexual enlightenment, and it is almost with amusement that we read how the novelist alphonse daudet, when asked his opinion of such enlightenment, protested--in a spirit certainly common among the men of his time--that it was unnecessary, because boys could learn everything from the streets and the newspapers, while "as to young girls--no! i would teach them none of the truths of physiology. i can only see disadvantages in such a proceeding. these truths are ugly, disillusioning, sure to shock, to frighten, to disgust the mind, the nature, of a girl." it is as much as to say that there is no need to supply sources of pure water when there are puddles in the street that anyone can drink of. a contemporary of daudet's, who possessed a far finer spiritual insight, coventry patmore, the poet, in the essay on "ancient and modern ideas of purity" in his beautiful book, _religio poetæ_, had already finely protested against that "disease of impurity" which comes of "our modern undivine silences" for which daudet pleaded. and metchnikoff, more recently, from the scientific side, speaking especially as regards women, declares that knowledge is so indispensable for moral conduct that "ignorance must be counted the most immoral of acts" (_essais optimistes_, p. ). the distinguished belgian novelist, camille lemonnier, in his _l'homme en amour_, deals with the question of the sexual education of the young by presenting the history of a young man, brought up under the influence of the conventional and hypocritical views which teach that nudity and sex are shameful and disgusting things. in this way he passes by the opportunities of innocent and natural love, to become hopelessly enslaved at last to a sensual woman who treats him merely as the instrument of her pleasure, the last of a long succession of lovers. the book is a powerful plea for a sane, wholesome, and natural education in matters of sex. it was, however, prosecuted at bruges, in , though the trial finally ended in acquittal. such a verdict is in harmony with the general tendency of feeling at the present time. the old ideas, expressed by daudet, that the facts of sex are ugly and disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. as canon lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "the way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. people sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. but i venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first to set before them the true meaning of life and birth and the mystery of their own being. not only do we fail to build up sound knowledge in them, but we put away from ourselves the chance of learning something that must be divine." in the same way, edward carpenter, stating that it is easy and natural for the child to learn from the first its physical relation to its mother, remarks (_love's coming of age_, p. ): "a child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional and serene appreciation of what _sex_ means (generally more so as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian); and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame--that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth." how widespread, even some years ago, had become the conviction that the sexual facts of life should be taught to girls as well as boys, was shown when the opinions of a very miscellaneous assortment of more or less prominent persons were sought on the question ("the tree of knowledge," _new review_, june, ). a small minority of two only (rabbi adler and mrs. lynn lynton) were against such knowledge, while among the majority in favor of it were mme. adam, thomas hardy, sir walter besant, björnson, hall caine, sarah grand, nordau, lady henry somerset, baroness von suttner, and miss willard. the leaders of the woman's movement are, of course, in favor of such knowledge. thus a meeting of the bund für mutterschutz at berlin, in , almost unanimously passed a resolution declaring that the early sexual enlightenment of children in the facts of the sexual life is urgently necessary (_mutterschutz_, , heft , p. ). it may be added that medical opinion has long approved of this enlightenment. thus in england it was editorially stated in the _british medical journal_ some years ago (june , ): "most medical men of an age to beget confidence in such affairs will be able to recall instances in which an ignorance, which would have been ludicrous if it had not been so sad, has been displayed on matters regarding which every woman entering on married life ought to have been accurately informed. there can, we think, be little doubt that much unhappiness and a great deal of illness would be prevented if young people of both sexes possessed a little accurate knowledge regarding the sexual relations, and were well impressed with the profound importance of selecting healthy mates. knowledge need not necessarily be nasty, but even if it were, it certainly is not comparable in that respect with the imaginings of ignorance." in america, also, where at an annual meeting of the american medical association, dr. denslow lewis, of chicago, eloquently urged the need of teaching sexual hygiene to youths and girls, all the subsequent nine speakers, some of them physicians of worldwide fame, expressed their essential agreement (_medico-legal journal_, june-sept., ). howard, again, at the end of his elaborate _history of matrimonial institutions_ (vol. iii, p. ) asserts the necessity for education in matters of sex, as going to the root of the marriage problem. "in the future educational programme," he remarks, "sex questions must hold an honorable place." while, however, it is now widely recognized that children are entitled to sexual enlightenment, it cannot be said that this belief is widely put into practice. many persons, who are fully persuaded that children should sooner or later be enlightened concerning the sexual sources of life, are somewhat nervously anxious as to the precise age at which this enlightenment should begin. their latent feeling seems to be that sex is an evil, and enlightenment concerning sex also an evil, however necessary, and that the chief point is to ascertain the latest moment to which we can safely postpone this necessary evil. such an attitude is, however, altogether wrong-headed. the child's desire for knowledge concerning the origin of himself is a perfectly natural, honest, and harmless desire, so long as it is not perverted by being thwarted. a child of four may ask questions on this matter, simply and spontaneously. as soon as the questions are put, certainly as soon as they become at all insistent, they should be answered, in the same simple and spontaneous spirit, truthfully, though according to the measure of the child's intelligence and his capacity and desire for knowledge. this period should not, and, if these indications are followed, naturally would not, in any case, be delayed beyond the sixth year. after that age even the most carefully guarded child is liable to contaminating communications from outside. moll points out that the sexual enlightenment of girls in its various stages ought to be always a little ahead of that of boys, and as the development of girls up to the pubertal age is more precocious than that of boys, this demand is reasonable. if the elements of sexual education are to be imparted in early childhood, it is quite clear who ought to be the teacher. there should be no question that this privilege belongs by every right to the mother. except where a child is artificially separated from his chief parent it is indeed only the mother who has any natural opportunity of receiving and responding to these questions. it is unnecessary for her to take any initiative in the matter. the inevitable awakening of the child's intelligence and the evolution of his boundless curiosity furnish her love and skill with all opportunities for guiding her child's thoughts and knowledge. nor is it necessary for her to possess the slightest technical information at this stage. it is only essential that she should have the most absolute faith in the purity and dignity of her physical relationship to her child, and be able to speak of it with frankness and tenderness. when that essential condition is fulfilled every mother has all the knowledge that her young child needs. among the best authorities, both men and women, in all the countries where this matter is attracting attention, there seems now to be unanimity of opinion in favor of the elementary facts of the baby's relationship to its mother being explained to the child by the mother as soon as the child begins to ask questions. thus in germany moll has repeatedly argued in this sense; he insists that sexual enlightenment should be mainly a private and individual matter; that in schools there should be no general and personal warnings about masturbation, etc. (though at a later age he approves of instruction in regard to venereal diseases), but that the mother is the proper person to impart intimate knowledge to the child, and that any age is suitable for the commencement of such enlightenment, provided it is put into a form fitted for the age (moll, op. cit., p. ). at the mannheim meeting of the congress of the german society for combating venereal disease, when the question of sexual enlightenment formed the sole subject of discussion, the opinion in favor of early teaching by the mother prevailed. "it is the mother who must, in the first place, be made responsible for the child's clear understanding of sexual things, so often lacking," said frau krukenberg ("die aufgabe der mutter," _sexualpädagogik_, p. ), while max enderlin, a teacher, said on the same occasion ("die sexuelle frage in die volksschule," id., p. ): "it is the mother who has to give the child his first explanations, for it is to his mother that he first naturally comes with his questions." in england, canon lyttelton, who is distinguished among the heads of public schools not least by his clear and admirable statements on these questions, states (_mothers and sons_, p. ) that the mother's part in the sexual enlightenment and sexual guardianship of her son is of paramount importance, and should begin at the earliest years. j.h. badley, another schoolmaster ("the sex difficulty," _broad views_, june, ), also states that the mother's part comes first. northcote (_christianity and sex problems_, p. ) believes that the duty of the parents is primary in this matter, the family doctor and the schoolmaster coming in at a later stage. in america, dr. mary wood allen, who occupies a prominent and influential position in women's social movements, urges (in _child-confidence rewarded_, and other pamphlets) that a mother should begin to tell her child these things as soon as he begins to ask questions, the age of four not being too young, and explains how this may be done, giving examples of its happy results in promoting a sweet confidence between the child and his mother. if, as a few believe should be the case, the first initiation is delayed to the tenth year or even later, there is the difficulty that it is no longer so easy to talk simply and naturally about such things; the mother is beginning to feel too shy to speak for the first time about these difficult subjects to a son or a daughter who is nearly as big as herself. she feels that she can only do it awkwardly and ineffectively, and she probably decides not to do it at all. thus an atmosphere of mystery is created with all the embarrassing and perverting influences which mystery encourages. there can be no doubt that, more especially in highly intelligent children with vague and unspecialized yet insistent sexual impulses, the artificial mystery with which sex is too often clothed not only accentuates the natural curiosity but also tends to favor the morbid intensity and even prurience of the sexual impulse. this has long been recognized. dr. beddoes wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: "it is in vain that we dissemble to ourselves the eagerness with which children of either sex seek to satisfy themselves concerning the conformation of the other. no degree of reserve in the heads of families, no contrivances, no care to put books of one description out of sight and to garble others, has perhaps, with any one set of children, succeeded in preventing or stifling this kind of curiosity. no part of the history of human thought would perhaps be more singular than the stratagems devised by young people in different situations to make themselves masters or witnesses of the secret. and every discovery, due to their own inquiries, can but be so much oil poured upon an imagination in flames" (t. beddoes, _hygeia_, , vol. iii, p. ). kaan, again, in one of the earliest books on morbid sexuality, sets down mystery as one of the causes of _psychopathia sexualis_. marro (_la pubertà_, p. ) points out how the veil of mystery thrown over sexual matters merely serves to concentrate attention on them. the distinguished dutch writer multatuli, in one of his letters (quoted with approval by freud), remarks on the dangers of hiding things from boys and girls in a veil of mystery, pointing out that this must only heighten the curiosity of children, and so far from keeping them pure, which mere ignorance can never do, heats and perverts their imaginations. mrs. mary wood allen, also, warns the mother (op. cit., p. ) against the danger of allowing any air of embarrassing mystery to creep over these things. "if the instructor feels any embarrassment in answering the queries of the child, he is not fitted to be the teacher, for the feeling of embarrassment will, in some subtle way, communicate itself to the child, and he will experience an indefinable sense of offended delicacy which is both unnecessary and undesirable. purification of one's own thought is, then, the first step towards teaching the truth purely. why," she adds, "is death, the gateway out of life, any more dignified or pathetic than birth, the gateway into life? or why is the taking of earthly life a more awful fact than the giving of life?" mrs. ennis richmond, in a book of advice to mothers which contains many wise and true things, says: "i want to insist, more strongly than upon anything else, that it is the _secrecy_ that surrounds certain parts of the body and their functions that gives them their danger in the child's thought. little children, from earliest years, are taught to think of these parts of their body as mysterious, and not only so, but that they are mysterious because they are unclean. children have not even a name for them. if you have to speak to your child, you allude to them mysteriously and in a half-whisper as 'that little part of you that you don't speak of,' or words to that effect. before everything it is important that your child should have a good working name for these parts of his body, and for their functions, and that he should be taught to use and to hear the names, and that as naturally and openly as though he or you were speaking of his head or his foot. convention has, for various reasons, made it impossible to speak in this way in public. but you can, at any rate, break through this in the nursery. there this rule of convention has no advantage, and many a serious disadvantage. it is easy to say to a child, the first time he makes an 'awkward' remark in public: 'look here, laddie, you may say what you like to me or to daddy, but, for some reason or other, one does not talk about these' (only say _what_ things) 'in public.' only let your child make the remark in public _before_ you speak (never mind the shock to your caller's feelings), don't warn him against doing so" (ennis richmond, _boyhood_, p. ). sex must always be a mystery, but, as mrs. richmond rightly says, "the real and true mysteries of generation and birth are very different from the vulgar secretiveness with which custom surrounds them." the question as to the precise names to be given to the more private bodily parts and functions is sometimes a little difficult to solve. every mother will naturally follow her own instincts, and probably her own traditions, in this matter. i have elsewhere pointed out (in the study of "the evolution of modesty") how widespread and instinctive is the tendency to adopt constantly new euphemisms in this field. the ancient and simple words, which in england a great poet like chaucer could still use rightly and naturally, are so often dropped in the mud by the vulgar that there is an instinctive hesitation nowadays in applying them to beautiful uses. they are, however, unquestionably the best, and, in their origin, the most dignified and expressive words. many persons are of opinion that on this account they should be rescued from the mud, and their sacredness taught to children. a medical friend writes that he always taught his son that the vulgar sex names are really beautiful words of ancient origin, and that when we understand them aright we cannot possibly see in them any motive for low jesting. they are simple, serious and solemn words, connoting the most central facts of life, and only to ignorant and plebeian vulgarity can they cause obscene mirth. an american man of science, who has privately and anonymously printed some pamphlets on sex questions, also takes this view, and consistently and methodically uses the ancient and simple words. i am of opinion that this is the ideal to be sought, but that there are obvious difficulties at present in the way of attaining it. in any case, however, the mother should be in possession of a very precise vocabulary for all the bodily parts and acts which it concerns her children to know. it is sometimes said that at this early age children should not be told, even in a simple and elementary form, the real facts of their origin but should, instead, hear a fairy-tale having in it perhaps some kind of symbolic truth. this contention may be absolutely rejected, without thereby, in any degree, denying the important place which fairy-tales hold in the imagination of young children. fairy-tales have a real value to the child; they are a mental food he needs, if he is not to be spiritually starved; to deprive him of fairy-tales at this age is to do him a wrong which can never be made up at any subsequent age. but not only are sex matters too vital even in childhood to be safely made matter for a fairy-tale, but the real facts are themselves as wonderful as any fairy-tale, and appeal to the child's imagination with as much force as a fairy-tale. even, however, if there were no other reasons against telling children fairy-tales of sex instead of the real facts, there is one reason which ought to be decisive with every mother who values her influence over her child. he will very quickly discover, either by information from others or by his own natural intelligence, that the fairy-tale, that was told him in reply to a question about a simple matter of fact, was a lie. with that discovery his mother's influence over him in all such matters vanishes for ever, for not only has a child a horror of being duped, but he is extremely sensitive about any rebuff of this kind, and never repeats what he has been made to feel was a mistake to be ashamed of. he will not trouble his mother with any more questions on this matter; he will not confide in her; he will himself learn the art of telling "fairy-tales" about sex matters. he had turned to his mother in trust; she had not responded with equal trust, and she must suffer the punishment, as henriette fürth puts it, of seeing "the love and trust of her son stolen from her by the first boy he makes friends with in the street." when, as sometimes happens (moll mentions a case), a mother goes on repeating these silly stories to a girl or boy of seven who is secretly well-informed, she only degrades herself in her child's eyes. it is this fatal mistake, so often made by mothers, which at first leads them to imagine that their children are so innocent, and in later years causes them many hours of bitterness because they realize they do not possess their children's trust. in the matter of trust it is for the mother to take the first step; the children who do not trust their mothers are, for the most part, merely remembering the lesson they learned at their mother's knee. the number of little books and pamphlets dealing with the question of the sexual enlightenment of the young--whether intended to be read by the young or offering guidance to mothers and teachers in the task of imparting knowledge--has become very large indeed during recent years in america, england, and especially germany, where there has been of late an enormous production of such literature. the late ben elmy, writing under the pseudonym of "ellis ethelmer," published two booklets, _baby buds_, and _the human flower_ (issued by mrs. wolstenholme elmy, buxton house, congleton), which state the facts in a simple and delicate manner, though the author was not a notably reliable guide on the scientific aspects of these questions. a charming conversation between a mother and child, from a french source, is reprinted by edward carpenter at the end of his _love's coming of age. how we are born_, by mrs. n.j. (apparently a russian lady writing in english), prefaced by j.h. badley, is satisfactory. mention may also be made of _the wonder of life_, by mary tudor pole. margaret morley's _song of life_, an american book, which i have not seen, has been highly praised. most of these books are intended for quite young children, and while they explain more or less clearly the origin of babies, nearly always starting with the facts of plant life, they touch very slightly, if at all, on the relations of the sexes. mrs. ennis richmond's books, largely addressed to mothers, deal with these questions in a very sane, direct, and admirable manner, and canon lyttelton's books, discussing such questions generally, are also excellent. most of the books now to be mentioned are intended to be read by boys and girls who have reached the age of puberty. they refer more or less precisely to sexual relationships, and they usually touch on masturbation. _the story of life_, written by a very accomplished woman, the late ellice hopkins, is somewhat vague, and introduces too many exalted religious ideas. arthur trewby's _healthy boyhood_ is a little book of wholesome tendency; it deals specially with masturbation. _a talk with boys about themselves_ and _a talk with girls about themselves_, both by edward bruce kirk (the latter book written in conjunction with a lady) deal with general as well as sexual hygiene. there could be no better book to put into the hands of a boy or girl at puberty than m.a. warren's _almost fourteen_, written by an american school teacher in . it was a most charming and delicately written book, which could not have offended the innocence of the most sensitive maiden. nothing, however, is sacred to prurience, and it was easy for the prurient to capture the law and obtain (in ) legal condemnation of this book as "obscene." anything which sexually excites a prurient mind is, it is true, "obscene" for that mind, for, as mr. theodore schroeder remarks, obscenity is "the contribution of the reading mind," but we need such books as this in order to diminish the number of prurient minds, and the condemnation of so entirely admirable a book makes, not for morality, but for immorality. i am told that the book was subsequently issued anew with most of its best portions omitted, and it is stated by schroeder (_liberty of speech and press essential to purity propaganda_, p. ) that the author was compelled to resign his position as a public school principal. maria lischnewska's _geschlechtliche belehrung der kinder_ (reprinted from _mutterschutz_, , heft and ) is a most admirable and thorough discussion of the whole question of sexual education, though the writer is more interested in the teacher's share in this question than in the mother's. suggestions to mothers are contained in hugo salus, _wo kommen die kinder her?_, e. stiehl, _eine mutterpflicht_, and many other books. dr. alfred kind strongly recommends ludwig gurlitt's _der verkehr mit meinem kindern_, more especially in its combination of sexual education with artistic education. many similar books are referred to by bloch, in his _sexual life of our time_, ch. xxvi. i have enumerated the names of these little books because they are frequently issued in a semi-private manner, and are seldom easy to procure or to hear of. the propagation of such books seems to be felt to be almost a disgraceful action, only to be performed by stealth. and such a feeling seems not unnatural when we see, as in the case of the author of _almost fourteen_, that a nominally civilized country, instead of loading with honors a man who has worked for its moral and physical welfare, seeks so far as it can to ruin him. i may add that while it would usually be very helpful to a mother to be acquainted with a few of the booklets i have named, she would do well, in actually talking to her children, to rely mainly on her own knowledge and inspiration. the sexual education which it is the mother's duty and privilege to initiate during her child's early years cannot and ought not to be technical. it is not of the nature of formal instruction but is a private and intimate initiation. no doubt the mother must herself be taught.[ ] but the education she needs is mainly an education in love and insight. the actual facts which she requires to use at this early stage are very simple. her main task is to make clear the child's own intimate relations to herself and to show that all young things have a similar intimate relation to their mothers; in generalizing on this point the egg is the simplest and most fundamental type to explain the origin of the individual life, for the idea of the egg--in its widest sense as the seed--not only has its truth for the human creature but may be applied throughout the animal and vegetable world. in this explanation the child's physical relationship to his father is not necessarily at first involved; it may be left to a further stage or until the child's questions lead up to it. apart from his interest in his origin, the child is also interested in his sexual, or as they seem to him exclusively, his excretory organs, and in those of other people, his sisters and parents. on these points, at this age, his mother may simply and naturally satisfy his simple and natural curiosity, calling things by precise names, whether the names used are common or uncommon being a matter in regard to which she may exercise her judgment and taste. in this manner the mother will, indirectly, be able to safeguard her child at the outset against the prudish and prurient notions alike which he will encounter later. she will also without unnatural stress be able to lead the child into a reverential attitude towards his own organs and so exert an influence against any undesirable tampering with them. in talking with him about the origin of life and about his own body and functions, in however elementary a fashion, she will have initiated him both in sexual knowledge and in sexual hygiene. the mother who establishes a relationship of confidence with her child during these first years will probably, if she possesses any measure of wisdom and tact, be able to preserve it even after the epoch of puberty into the difficult years of adolescence. but as an educator in the narrower sense her functions will, in most cases, end at or before puberty. a somewhat more technical and completely impersonal acquaintance with the essential facts of sex then becomes desirable, and this would usually be supplied by the school. the great though capricious educator, basedow, to some extent a pupil of rousseau, was an early pioneer in both the theory and the practice of giving school children instruction in the facts of the sexual life, from the age of ten onwards. he insists much on this subject in his great treatise, the _elementarwerk_ ( - ). the questions of children are to be answered truthfully, he states, and they must be taught never to jest at anything so sacred and serious as the sexual relations. they are to be shown pictures of childbirth, and the dangers of sexual irregularities are to be clearly expounded to them at the outset. boys are to be taken to hospitals to see the results of venereal disease. basedow is aware that many parents and teachers will be shocked at his insistence on these things in his books and in his practical pedagogic work, but such people, he declares, ought to be shocked at the bible (see, e.g., pinloche, _la rèforme de l'education en allemagne au dixhuitième siècle: basedow et le philanthropinisme_, pp. , , , ). basedow was too far ahead of his own time, and even of ours, to exert much influence in this matter, and he had few immediate imitators. somewhat later than basedow, a distinguished english physician, thomas beddoes, worked on somewhat the same lines, seeking to promote sexual knowledge by lectures and demonstrations. in his remarkable book, _hygeia_, published in (vol. i, essay iv) he sets forth the absurdity of the conventional requirement that "discretion and ignorance should lodge in the same bosom," and deals at length with the question of masturbation and the need of sexual education. he insists on the great importance of lectures on natural history which, he had found, could be given with perfect propriety to a mixed audience. his experiences had shown that botany, the amphibia, the hen and her eggs, human anatomy, even disease and sometimes the sight of it, are salutary from this point of view. he thinks it is a happy thing for a child to gain his first knowledge of sexual difference from anatomical subjects, the dignity of death being a noble prelude to the knowledge of sex and depriving it forever of morbid prurience. it is scarcely necessary to remark that this method of teaching children the elements of sexual anatomy in the _post-mortem_ room has not found many advocates or followers; it is undesirable, for it fails to take into account the sensitiveness of children to such impressions, and it is unnecessary, for it is just as easy to teach the dignity of life as the dignity of death. the duty of the school to impart education in matters of sex to children has in recent years been vigorously and ably advocated by maria lischnewska (op. cit.), who speaks with thirty years' experience as a teacher and an intimate acquaintance with children and their home life. she argues that among the mass of the population to-day, while in the home-life there is every opportunity for coarse familiarity with sexual matters, there is no opportunity for a pure and enlightened introduction to them, parents being for the most part both morally and intellectually incapable of aiding their children here. that the school should assume the leading part in this task is, she believes, in accordance with the whole tendency of modern civilized life. she would have the instruction graduated in such a manner that during the fifth or sixth year of school life the pupil would receive instruction, with the aid of diagrams, concerning the sexual organs and functions of the higher mammals, the bull and cow being selected by preference. the facts of gestation would of course be included. when this stage was reached it would be easy to pass on to the human species with the statement: "just in the same way as the calf develops in the cow so the child develops in the mother's body." it is difficult not to recognize the force of maria lischnewska's argument, and it seems highly probable that, as she asserts, the instruction proposed lies in the course of our present path of progress. such instruction would be formal, unemotional, and impersonal; it would be given not as specific instruction in matters of sex, but simply as a part of natural history. it would supplement, so far as mere knowledge is concerned, the information the child had already received from its mother. but it would by no means supplant or replace the personal and intimate relationship of confidence between mother and child. that is always to be aimed at, and though it may not be possible among the ill-educated masses of to-day, nothing else will adequately take its place. there can be no doubt, however, that while in the future the school will most probably be regarded as the proper place in which to teach the elements of physiology--and not as at present a merely emasculated and effeminated physiology--the introduction of such reformed teaching is as yet impracticable in many communities. a coarse and ill-bred community moves in a vicious circle. its members are brought up to believe that sex matters are filthy, and when they become adults they protest violently against their children being taught this filthy knowledge. the teacher's task is thus rendered at the best difficult, and under democratic conditions impossible. we cannot, therefore, hope for any immediate introduction of sexual physiology into schools, even in the unobtrusive form in which alone it could properly be introduced, that is to say as a natural and inevitable part of general physiology. this objection to animal physiology by no means applies, however, to botany. there can be little doubt that botany is of all the natural sciences that which best admits of this incidental instruction in the fundamental facts of sex, when we are concerned with children below the age of puberty. there are at least two reasons why this should be so. in the first place botany really presents the beginnings of sex, in their most naked and essential forms; it makes clear the nature, origin, and significance of sex. in the second place, in dealing with plants the facts of sex can be stated to children of either sex or any age quite plainly and nakedly without any reserve, for no one nowadays regards the botanical facts of sex as in any way offensive. the expounder of sex in plants also has on his side the advantage of being able to assert, without question, the entire beauty of the sexual process. he is not confronted by the ignorance, bad education, and false associations which have made it so difficult either to see or to show the beauty of sex in animals. from the sex-life of plants to the sex-life of the lower animals there is, however, but a step which the teacher, according to his discretion, may take. an early educational authority, salzmann, in advocated the sexual enlightenment of children by first teaching them botany, to be followed by zoölogy. in modern times the method of imparting sex knowledge to children by means, in the first place, of botany, has been generally advocated, and from the most various quarters. thus marro (_la pubertà_, p. ) recommends this plan. j. hudrey-menos ("la question du sexe dans l'education," _revue socialiste_, june, ), gives the same advice. rudolf sommer, in a paper entitled "mädchenerziehung oder menschenbildung?" (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang i, heft ) recommends that the first introduction of sex knowledge to children should be made by talking to them on simple natural history subjects; "there are endless opportunities," he remarks, "over a fairy-tale, or a walk, or a fruit, or an egg, the sowing of seed or the nest-building of birds." canon lyttelton (_training of the young in laws of sex_, pp. et seq.) advises a somewhat similar method, though laying chief stress on personal confidence between the child and his mother; "reference is made to the animal world just so far as the child's knowledge extends, so as to prevent the new facts from being viewed in isolation, but the main emphasis is laid on his feeling for his mother and the instinct which exists in nearly all children of reverence due to the maternal relation;" he adds that, however difficult the subject may seem, the essential facts of paternity must also be explained to boys and girls alike. keyes, again (_new york medical journal_, feb. , ), advocates teaching children from an early age the sexual facts of plant life and also concerning insects and other lower animals, and so gradually leading up to human beings, the matter being thus robbed of its unwholesome mystery. mrs. ennis richmond (_boyhood_, p. ) recommends that children should be sent to spend some of their time upon a farm, so that they may not only become acquainted with the general facts of the natural world, but also with the sexual lives of animals, learning things which it is difficult to teach verbally. karina karin ("wie erzieht man ein kind zür wissenden keuschheit?" _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang i, heft ), reproducing some of her talks with her nine-year old son, from the time that he first asked her where children came from, shows how she began with telling him about flowers, to pass on to fish and birds, and finally to the facts of human pregnancy, showing him pictures from an obstetrical manual of the child in its mother's body. it may be added that the advisability of beginning the sex teaching of children with the facts of botany was repeatedly emphasized by various speakers at the special meeting of the german congress for combating venereal disease devoted to the subject of sexual instruction (_sexualpädagogik_, especially pp. , , ). the transition from botany to the elementary zoölogy of the lower animals, to human anatomy and physiology, and to the science of anthropology based on these, is simple and natural. it is not likely to be taken in detail until the age of puberty. sex enters into all these subjects and should not be artificially excluded from them in the education of either boys or girls. the text-books from which the sexual system is entirely omitted ought no longer to be tolerated. the nature and secretion of the testicles, the meaning of the ovaries and of menstruation, as well as the significance of metabolism and the urinary excretion, should be clear in their main lines to all boys and girls who have reached the age of puberty. at puberty there arises a new and powerful reason why boys and girls should receive definite instruction in matters of sex. before that age it is possible for the foolish parent to imagine that a child may be preserved in ignorant innocence.[ ] at puberty that belief is obviously no longer possible. the efflorescence of puberty with the development of the sexual organs, the appearance of hair in unfamiliar places, the general related organic changes, the spontaneous and perhaps alarming occurrence in boys of seminal emissions, and in girls of menstruation, the unaccustomed and sometimes acute recognition of sexual desire accompanied by new sensations in the sexual organs and leading perhaps to masturbation; all these arouse, as we cannot fail to realize, a new anxiety in the boy's or girl's mind, and a new curiosity, all the more acute in many cases because it is carefully concealed as too private, and even too shameful, to speak of to anyone. in boys, especially if of sensitive temperament, the suffering thus caused may be keen and prolonged. a doctor of philosophy, prominent in his profession, wrote to stanley hall (_adolescence_, vol. i, p. ): "my entire youth, from six to eighteen, was made miserable from lack of knowledge that any one who knew anything of the nature of puberty might have given; this long sense of defect, dread of operation, shame and worry, has left an indelible mark." there are certainly many men who could say the same. lancaster ("psychology and pedagogy of adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, july, , pp. - ) speaks strongly regarding the evils of ignorance of sexual hygiene, and the terrible fact that millions of youths are always in the hands of quacks who dupe them into the belief that they are on the road to an awful destiny merely because they have occasional emissions during sleep. "this is not a light matter," lancaster declares. "it strikes at the very foundation of our inmost life. it deals with the reproductory part of our natures, and must have a deep hereditary influence. it is a natural result of the foolish false modesty shown regarding all sex instruction. every boy should be taught the simple physiological facts before his life is forever blighted by this cause." lancaster has had in his hands one thousand letters, mostly written by young people, who were usually normal, and addressed to quacks who were duping them. from time to time the suicides of youths from this cause are reported, and in many mysterious suicides this has undoubtedly been the real cause. "week after week," writes the _british medical journal_ in an editorial ("dangerous quack literature: the moral of a recent suicide," oct. , ), "we receive despairing letters from those victims of foul birds of prey who have obtained their first hold on those they rob, torture and often ruin, by advertisements inserted by newspapers of a respectable, nay, even of a valuable and respected, character." it is added that the wealthy proprietors of such newspapers, often enjoying a reputation for benevolence, even when the matter is brought before them, refuse to interfere as they would thereby lose a source of income, and a censorship of advertisements is proposed. this, however, is difficult, and would be quite unnecessary if youths received proper enlightenment from their natural guardians. masturbation, and the fear that by an occasional and perhaps outgrown practice of masturbation they have sometimes done themselves irreparable injury, is a common source of anxiety to boys. it has long been a question whether a boy should be warned against masturbation. at a meeting of the section of psychology of the british medical association some years ago, four speakers, including the president (dr. blandford), were decidedly in favor of parents warning their children against masturbation, while three speakers were decidedly against that course, mainly on the ground that it was possible to pass through even a public school life without hearing of masturbation, and also that the warning against masturbation might encourage the practice. it is, however, becoming more and more clearly realized that ignorance, even if it can be maintained, is a perilous possession, while the teaching that consists, as it should, in a loving mother's counsel to the child from his earliest years to treat his sexual parts with care and respect, can only lead to masturbation in the child who is already irresistibly impelled to it. most of the sex manuals for boys touch on masturbation, sometimes exaggerating its dangers; such exaggeration should be avoided, for it leads to far worse evils than those it attempts to prevent. it seems undesirable that any warnings about masturbation should form part of school instruction, unless under very special circumstances. the sexual instruction imparted in the school on sexual as on other subjects should be absolutely impersonal and objective. at this point we approach one of the difficulties in the way of sexual enlightenment: the ignorance or unwisdom of the would-be teachers. this difficulty at present exists both in the home and the school, while it destroys the value of many manuals written for the sexual instruction of the young. the mother, who ought to be the child's confidant and guide in matters of sexual education, and could naturally be so if left to her own healthy instincts, has usually been brought up in false traditions which it requires a high degree of intelligence and character to escape from; the school-teacher, even if only called upon to give instruction in natural history, is oppressed by the same traditions, and by false shame concerning the whole subject of sex; the writer of manuals on sex has often only freed himself from these bonds in order to advocate dogmatic, unscientific, and sometimes mischievous opinions which have been evolved in entire ignorance of the real facts. as moll says (das _sexualleben des kindes_, p. ), necessary as sexual enlightenment is, we cannot help feeling a little skeptical as to its results so long as those who ought to enlighten are themselves often in need of enlightenment. he refers also to the fact that even among competent authorities there is difference of opinion concerning important matters, as, for instance, whether masturbation is physiological at the first development of the sexual impulse and how far sexual abstinence is beneficial. but it is evident that the difficulties due to false tradition and ignorance will diminish as sound traditions and better knowledge become more widely diffused. the girl at puberty is usually less keenly and definitely conscious of her sexual nature than the boy. but the risks she runs from sexual ignorance, though for the most part different, are more subtle and less easy to repair. she is often extremely inquisitive concerning these matters; the thoughts of adolescent girls, and often their conversation among themselves, revolve much around sexual and allied mysteries. even in the matter of conscious sexual impulse the girl is often not so widely different from her brother, nor so much less likely to escape the contamination of evil communications, so that the scruples of foolish and ignorant persons who dread to "sully her purity" by proper instruction are exceedingly misplaced. conversations dealing with the important mysteries of human nature, obici and marchesini were told by ladies who had formerly been pupils in italian normal schools, are the order of the day in schools and colleges, and specially circle around procreation, the most difficult mystery of all. in england, even in the best and most modern colleges, in which games and physical exercise are much cultivated, i am told that "the majority of the girls are entirely ignorant of all sexual matters, and understand nothing whatever about them. but they do wonder about them, and talk about them constantly" (see appendix d, "the school friendships of girls," in the second volume of these _studies_). "the restricted life and fettered mind of girls," wrote a well-known physician some years ago (j. milner fothergill, _adolescence_, , pp. , ) "leave them with less to actively occupy their thoughts than is the case with boys. they are studiously taught concealment, and a girl may be a perfect model of outward decorum and yet have a very filthy mind. the prudishness with which she is brought up leaves her no alternative but to view her passions from the nasty side of human nature. all healthy thought on the subject is vigorously repressed. everything is done to darken her mind and foul her imagination by throwing her back on her own thoughts and a literature with which she is ashamed to own acquaintance. it is opposed to a girl's best interests to prevent her from having fair and just conceptions about herself and her nature. many a fair young girl is irredeemably ruined on the very threshold of life, herself and her family disgraced, from ignorance as much as from vice. when the moment of temptation comes she falls without any palpable resistance; she has no trained educated power of resistance within herself; her whole future hangs, not upon herself, but upon the perfection of the social safeguards by which she is hedged and surrounded." under the free social order of america to-day much the same results are found. in an instructive article ("why girls go wrong," _ladies' home journal_, jan., ) b.b. lindsey, who, as judge of the juvenile court of denver, is able to speak with authority, brings forward ample evidence on this head. both girls and boys, he has found, sometimes possess manuscript books in which they had written down the crudest sexual things. these children were often sweet-faced, pleasant, refined and intelligent, and they had respectable parents; but no one had ever spoken to them of sex matters, except the worst of their school-fellows or some coarse-minded and reckless adult. by careful inquiry lindsey found that only in one in twenty cases had the parents ever spoken to the children of sexual subjects. in nearly every case the children acknowledged that it was not from their parents, but in the street or from older companions, that they learnt the facts of sex. the parents usually imagined that their children were absolutely ignorant of these matters, and were astonished to realize their mistake; "parents do not know their children, nor have they the least idea of what their children know, or what their children talk about and do when away from them." the parents guilty of this neglect to instruct their children, are, lindsey declares, traitors to their children. from his own experience he judges that nine-tenths of the girls who "go wrong," whether or not they sink in the world, do so owing to the inattention of their parents, and that in the case of most prostitutes the mischief is really done before the age of twelve; "every wayward girl i have talked to has assured me of this truth." he considers that nine-tenths of school-boys and school-girls, in town or country, are very inquisitive regarding matters of sex, and, to his own amazement, he has found that in the girls this is as marked as in the boys. it is the business of the girl's mother, at least as much as of the boy's, to watch over her child from the earliest years and to win her confidence in all the intimate and personal matters of sex. with these aspects the school cannot properly meddle. but in matters of physical sexual hygiene, notably menstruation, in regard to which all girls stand on the same level, it is certainly the duty of the teacher to take an actively watchful part, and, moreover, to direct the general work of education accordingly, and to ensure that the pupil shall rest whenever that may seem to be desirable. this is part of the very elements of the education of girls. to disregard it should disqualify a teacher from taking further share in educational work. yet it is constantly and persistently neglected. a large number of girls have not even been prepared by their mothers or teachers for the first onset of the menstrual flow, sometimes with disastrous results both to their bodily and mental health.[ ] "i know of no large girl's school," wrote a distinguished gynæcologist, sir w.s. playfair ("education and training of girls at puberty," _british medical journal_, dec. , ), "in which the absolute distinction which exists between boys and girls as regards the dominant menstrual function is systematically cared for and attended to. indeed, the feeling of all schoolmistresses is distinctly antagonistic to such an admission. the contention is that there is no real difference between an adolescent male and female, that what is good for one is good for the other, and that such as there is is due to the evil customs of the past which have denied to women the ambitions and advantages open to men, and that this will disappear when a happier era is inaugurated. if this be so, how comes it that while every practical physician of experience has seen many cases of anæmia and chlorosis in girls, accompanied by amenorrhæa or menorrhagia, headaches, palpitations, emaciation, and all the familiar accompaniments of breakdown, an analogous condition in a school-boy is so rare that it may well be doubted if it is ever seen at all?" it is, however, only the excuses for this almost criminal negligence, as it ought to be considered, which are new; the negligence itself is ancient. half a century earlier, before the new era of feminine education, another distinguished gynæcologist, tilt (_elements of health and principles of female hygiene_, , p. ) stated that from a statistical inquiry regarding the onset of menstruation in nearly one thousand women he found that " per cent. were totally unprepared for its appearance; that thirteen out of the twenty-five were much frightened, screamed, or went into hysterical fits; and that six out of the thirteen thought themselves wounded and washed with cold water. of those frightened ... the general health was seriously impaired." engelmann, after stating that his experience in america was similar to tilt's in england, continues ("the health of the american girl," _transactions of the southern surgical and gynæcological society_, ): "to innumerable women has fright, nervous and emotional excitement, exposure to cold, brought injury at puberty. what more natural than that the anxious girl, surprised by the sudden and unexpected loss of the precious life-fluid, should seek to check the bleeding wound--as she supposes? for this purpose the use of cold washes and applications is common, some even seek to stop the flow by a cold bath, as was done by a now careful mother, who long lay at the point of death from the result of such indiscretion, and but slowly, by years of care, regained her health. the terrible warning has not been lost, and mindful of her own experience she has taught her children a lesson which but few are fortunate enough to learn--the individual care during periods of functional activity which is needful for the preservation of woman's health." in a study of one hundred and twenty-five american high school girls dr. helen kennedy refers to the "modesty" which makes it impossible even for mothers and daughters to speak to each other concerning the menstrual functions. "thirty-six girls in this high school passed into womanhood with no knowledge whatever, from a proper source, of all that makes them women. thirty-nine were probably not much wiser, for they stated that they had received some instruction, but had not talked freely on the matter. from the fact that the curious girl did not talk freely on what naturally interested her, it is possible she was put off with a few words as to personal care, and a reprimand for her curiosity. less than half of the girls felt free to talk with their mothers of this most important matter!" (helen kennedy, "effects of high school work upon girls during adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, june, .) the same state of things probably also prevails in other countries. thus, as regards france, edmond de goncourt in _chérie_ (pp. - ) described the terror of his young heroine at the appearance of the first menstrual period for which she had never been prepared. he adds: "it is very seldom, indeed, that women speak of this eventuality. mothers fear to warn their daughters, elder sisters dislike confidences with their younger sisters, governesses are generally mute with girls who have no mothers or sisters." sometimes this leads to suicide or to attempts at suicide. thus a few years ago the case was reported in the french newspapers of a young girl of fifteen, who threw herself into the seine at saint-ouen. she was rescued, and on being brought before the police commissioner said that she had been attacked by an "unknown disease" which had driven her to despair. discreet inquiry revealed that the mysterious malady was one common to all women, and the girl was restored to her insufficiently punished parents. half a century ago the sexual life of girls was ignored by their parents and teachers from reasons of prudishness; at the present time, when quite different ideas prevail regarding feminine education, it is ignored on the ground that girls should be as independent of their physiological sexual life as boys are. the fact that this mischievous neglect has prevailed equally under such different conditions indicates clearly that the varying reasons assigned for it are merely the cloaks of ignorance. with the growth of knowledge we may reasonably hope that one of the chief evils which at present undermine in early life not only healthy motherhood but healthy womanhood generally, may be gradually eliminated. the data now being accumulated show not only the extreme prevalence of painful, disordered, and absent menstruation in adolescent girls and young women, but also the great and sometimes permanent evils inflicted upon even healthy girls when at the beginning of sexual life they are subjected to severe strain of any kind. medical authorities, whichever sex they belong to, may now be said to be almost or quite unanimous on this point. some years ago, indeed, dr. mary putnam jacobi, in a very able book, _the question of rest for women_, concluded that "ordinarily healthy" women may disregard the menstrual period, but she admitted that forty-six per cent, of women are not "ordinarily healthy," and a minority which comes so near to being a majority can by no means be dismissed as a negligible quantity. girls themselves, indeed, carried away by the ardor of their pursuit of work or amusement, are usually recklessly and ignorantly indifferent to the serious risks they run. but the opinions of teachers are now tending to agree with medical opinion in recognizing the importance of care and rest during the years of adolescence, and teachers are even prepared to admit that a year's rest from hard work during the period that a girl's sexual life is becoming established, while it may ensure her health and vigor, is not even a disadvantage from the educational point of view. with the growth of knowledge and the decay of ancient prejudices, we may reasonably hope that women will be emancipated from the traditions of a false civilization, which have forced her to regard her glory as her shame,--though it has never been so among robust primitive peoples,--and it is encouraging to find that so distinguished an educator as principal stanley hall looks forward with confidence to such a time. in his exhaustive work on _adolescence_ he writes: "instead of shame of this function girls should be taught the greatest reverence for it, and should help it to normality by regularly stepping aside at stated times for a few years till it is well established and normal. to higher beings that looked down upon human life as we do upon flowers, these would be the most interesting and beautiful hours of blossoming. with more self-knowledge women will have more self-respect at this time. savagery reveres this state and it gives to women a mystic awe. the time may come when we must even change the divisions of the year for women, leaving to man his week and giving to her the same number of sabbaths per year, but in groups of four successive days per month. when woman asserts her true physiological rights she will begin here, and will glory in what, in an age of ignorance, man made her think to be her shame. the pathos about the leaders of woman's so-called emancipation, is that they, even more than those they would persuade, accept man's estimate of this state."[ ] these wise words cannot be too deeply pondered. the pathos of the situation has indeed been--at all events in the past for to-day a more enlightened generation is growing up--that the very leaders of the woman's movement have often betrayed the cause of women. they have adopted the ideals of men, they have urged women to become second-rate men, they have declared that the healthy natural woman disregards the presence of her menstrual functions. this is the very reverse of the truth. "they claim," remarks engelmann, "that woman in her natural state is the physical equal of man, and constantly point to the primitive woman, the female of savage peoples, as an example of this supposed axiom. do they know how well this same savage is aware of the weakness of woman and her susceptibility at certain periods of her life? and with what care he protects her from harm at these periods? i believe not. the importance of surrounding women with certain precautions during the height of these great functional waves of her existence was appreciated by all peoples living in an approximately natural state, by all races at all times; and among their comparatively few religious customs this one, affording rest to women, was most persistently adhered to." it is among the white races alone that the sexual invalidism of women prevails, and it is the white races alone, which, outgrowing the religious ideas with which the menstrual seclusion of women was associated, have flung away that beneficent seclusion itself, throwing away the baby with the bath in an almost literal sense.[ ] in germany tobler has investigated the menstrual histories of over one thousand women (_monatsschrift für geburtshülfe und gynäkologie_, july, ). he finds that in the great majority of women at the present day menstruation is associated with distinct deterioration of the general health, and diminution of functional energy. in per cent. local pain, general malaise, and mental and nervous anomalies coexisted; in larger proportion come the cases in which local pain, general weak health or psychic abnormality was experienced alone at this period. in per cent. only none of these symptoms were experienced. in a very small separate group the physical and mental functions were stronger during this period, but in half of these cases there was distinct disturbance during the intermenstrual period. tobler concludes that, while menstruation itself is physiological, all these disturbances are pathological. as far as england is concerned, at a discussion of normal and painful menstruation at a meeting of the british association of registered medical women on the th of july, , it was stated by miss bentham that per cent. of girls in good position suffered from painful menstruation. mrs. dunnett said it usually occurred between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, being frequently due to neglect to rest during menstruation in the earlier years, and mrs. grainger evans had found that this condition was very common among elementary school teachers who had worked hard for examinations during early girlhood. in america various investigations have been carried out, showing the prevalence of disturbance in the sexual health of school girls and young women. thus dr. helen p. kennedy obtained elaborate data concerning the menstrual life of one hundred and twenty-five high school girls of the average age of eighteen ("effect of high school work upon girls during adolescence," _pedagogical seminary_, june, ). only twenty-eight felt no pain during the period; half the total number experienced disagreeable symptoms before the period (such as headache, malaise, irritability of temper), while forty-four complained of other symptoms besides pain during the period (especially headache and great weakness). jane kelley sabine (quoted in _boston medical and surgical journal_, sept. , ) found in new england schools among two thousand girls that per cent. had menstrual troubles, per cent. had leucorrhoea and ovarian neuralgia, and per cent. had to give up work for two days during each month. these results seem more than usually unfavorable, but are significant, as they cover a large number of cases. the conditions in the pacific states are not much better. dr. mary ritter (in a paper read before the california state medical society in ) stated that of freshmen girls at the university of california, per cent. were subject to menstrual disorders, per cent. to headaches, per cent. to backaches, per cent. were habitually constipated, per cent. had abnormal heart sounds; only per cent. were free from functional disturbances. dr. helen macmurchey, in an interesting paper on "physiological phenomena preceding or accompanying menstruation" (_lancet_, oct. , ), by inquiries among one hundred medical women, nurses, and women teachers in toronto concerning the presence or absence of twenty-one different abnormal menstrual phenomena, found that between and per cent. admitted that they were liable at this time to disturbed sleep, to headache, to mental depression, to digestive disturbance, or to disturbance of the special senses, while about to per cent. were liable to neuralgia, to vertigo, to excessive nervous energy, to defective nervous and muscular power, to cutaneous hyperæsthesia, to vasomotor disturbances, to constipation, to diarrhoea, to increased urination, to cutaneous eruption, to increased liability to take cold, or to irritating watery discharges before or after the menstrual discharge. this inquiry is of much interest, because it clearly brings out the marked prevalence at menstruation of conditions which, though not necessarily of any gravity, yet definitely indicate decreased power of resistance to morbid influences and diminished efficiency for work. how serious an impediment menstrual troubles are to a woman is indicated by the fact that the women who achieve success and fame seem seldom to be greatly affected by them. to that we may, in part, attribute the frequency with which leaders of the women's movement have treated menstruation as a thing of no importance in a woman's life. adele gerhard, and helene simon, also, in their valuable and impartial work, _mutterschaft und geistige arbeit_ (p. ), failed to find, in their inquiries among women of distinguished ability, that menstruation was regarded as seriously disturbing to work. of late the suggestion that adolescent girls shall not only rest from work during two days of the menstrual period, but have an entire holiday from school during the first year of sexual life, has frequently been put forward, both from the medical and the educational side. at the meeting of the association of registered medical women, already referred to, miss sturge spoke of the good results obtained in a school where, during the first two years after puberty, the girls were kept in bed for the first two days of each menstrual period. some years ago dr. g.w. cook ("some disorders of menstruation," _american journal of obstetrics_, april, ), after giving cases in point, wrote: "it is my deliberate conviction that no girl should be confined at study during the year of her puberty, but she should live an outdoor life." in an article on "alumna's children," by "an alumna" (_popular science monthly_, may, ), dealing with the sexual invalidism of american women and the severe strain of motherhood upon them, the author, though she is by no means hostile to education, which is not, she declares, at fault, pleads for rest for the pubertal girl. "if the brain claims her whole vitality, how can there be any proper development? just as very young children should give all their strength for some years solely to physical growth before the brain is allowed to make any considerable demands, so at this critical period in the life of the woman nothing should obstruct the right of way of this important system. a year at the least should be made especially easy for her, with neither mental nor nervous strain; and throughout the rest of her school days she should have her periodical day of rest, free from any study or overexertion." in another article on the same subject in the same journal ("the health of american girls," sept., ), nellie comins whitaker advocates a similar course. "i am coming to be convinced, somewhat against my wish, that there are many cases when the girl ought to be taken out of school entirely for some months or for a year _at the period of puberty_." she adds that the chief obstacle in the way is the girl's own likes and dislikes, and the ignorance of her mother who has been accustomed to think that pain is a woman's natural lot. such a period of rest from mental strain, while it would fortify the organism in its resistance to any reasonable strain later, need by no means be lost for education in the wider sense of the word, for the education required in classrooms is but a small part of the education required for life. nor should it by any means be reserved merely for the sickly and delicate girl. the tragic part of the present neglect to give girls a really sound and fitting education is that the best and finest girls are thereby so often ruined. even the english policeman, who admittedly belongs in physical vigor and nervous balance to the flower of the population, is unable to bear the strain of his life, and is said to be worn out in twenty-five years. it is equally foolish to submit the finest flowers of girlhood to a strain which is admittedly too severe. it seems to be clear that the main factor in the common sexual and general invalidism of girls and young women is bad hygiene, in the first place consisting in neglect of the menstrual functions and in the second place in faulty habits generally. in all the more essential matters that concern the hygiene of the body the traditions of girls--and this seems to be more especially the case in the anglo-saxon countries--are inferior to those of youths. women are much more inclined than men to subordinate these things to what seems to them some more urgent interest or fancy of the moment; they are trained to wear awkward and constricting garments, they are indifferent to regular and substantial meals, preferring innutritious and indigestible foods and drinks; they are apt to disregard the demands of the bowels and the bladder out of laziness or modesty; they are even indifferent to physical cleanliness.[ ] in a great number of minor ways, which separately may seem to be of little importance, they play into the hands of an environment which, not always having been adequately adjusted to their special needs, would exert a considerable stress and strain even if they carefully sought to guard themselves against it. it has been found in an american women's college in which about half the scholars wore corsets and half not, that nearly all the honors and prizes went to the non-corset-wearers. mcbride, in bringing forward this fact, pertinently remarks, "if the wearing of a single style of dress will make this difference in the lives of young women, and that, too, in their most vigorous and resistive period, how much difference will a score of unhealthy habits make, if persisted in for a life-time?"[ ] "it seems evident," a.e. giles concludes ("some points of preventive treatment in the diseases of women," _the hospital_, april , ) "that dysmenorrhoea might be to a large extent prevented by attention to general health and education. short hours of work, especially of standing; plenty of outdoor exercise--tennis, boating, cycling, gymnastics, and walking for those who cannot afford these; regularity of meals and food of the proper quality--not the incessant tea and bread and butter with variation of pastry; the avoidance of overexertion and prolonged fatigue; these are some of the principal things which require attention. let girls pursue their study, but more leisurely; they will arrive at the same goal, but a little later." the benefit of allowing free movement and exercise to the whole body is undoubtedly very great, both as regards the sexual and general physical health and the mental balance; in order to insure this it is necessary to avoid heavy and constricting garments, more especially around the chest, for it is in respiratory power and chest expansion more than in any other respect that girls fall behind boys (see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, ch. ix). in old days the great obstacle to the free exercise of girls lay in an ideal of feminine behavior which involved a prim restraint on every natural movement of the body. at the present day that ideal is not so fervently preached as of old, but its traditional influence still to some extent persists, while there is the further difficulty that adequate time and opportunity and encouragement are by no means generally afforded to girls for the cultivation and training of the romping instincts which are really a serious part of education, for it is by such free exercise of the whole body that the neuro-muscular system, the basis of all vital activity, is built up. the neglect of such education is to-day clearly visible in the structure of our women. dr. f. may dickinson berry, medical examiner to the technical education board of the london county council, found (_british medical journal_, may , ) among over , girls, who represent the flower of the schools, since they had obtained scholarships enabling them to proceed to higher grade schools, that per cent, presented some degree, not always pronounced, of lateral curvature of the spine, though such cases were very rare among the boys. in the same way among a very similar class of select girls at the chicago normal school, miss lura sanborn (_doctors' magazine_, dec., ) found per cent, with spinal curvature, in some cases of a very pronounced degree. there is no reason why a girl should not have as straight a back as a boy, and the cause can only lie in the defective muscular development which was found in most of the cases, sometimes accompanied by anæmia. here and there nowadays, among the better social classes, there is ample provision for the development of muscular power in girls, but in any generalized way there is no adequate opportunity for such exercise, and among the working class, above all, in the section of it which touches the lower middle class, although their lives are destined to be filled with a constant strain on the neuro-muscular system from work at home or in shops, etc., there is usually a minimum of healthy exercise and physical development. dr. w.a.b. sellman, of baltimore ("causes of painful menstruation in unmarried women," _american journal obstetrics_, nov., ), emphasizes the admirable results obtained by moderate physical exercise for young women, and in training them to care for their bodies and to rest their nervous systems, while dr. charlotte brown, of san francisco, rightly insists on the establishment in all towns and villages alike of outdoor gymnastic fields for women and girls, and of a building, in connection with every large school, for training in physical, manual, and domestic science. the provision of special playgrounds is necessary where the exercising of girls is so unfamiliar as to cause an embarrassing amount of attention from the opposite sex, though when it is an immemorial custom it can be carried out on the village green without attracting the slightest attention, as i have seen in spain, where one cannot fail to connect it with the physical vigor of the women. in boys' schools games are not only encouraged, but made compulsory; but this is by no means a universal rule in girls' schools. it is not necessary, and is indeed highly undesirable, that the games adopted should be those of boys. in england especially, where the movements of women are so often marked by awkwardness, angularity and lack of grace, it is essential that nothing should be done to emphasize these characteristics, for where vigor involves violence we are in the presence of a lack of due neuro-muscular coördination. swimming, when possible, and especially some forms of dancing, are admirably adapted to develop the bodily movements of women both vigorously and harmoniously (see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, ch. vii). at the international congress of school hygiene in (see, e.g., _british medical journal_, aug. , ) dr. l.h. gulick, formerly director of physical training in the public schools of new york city, stated that after many experiments it had been found in the new york elementary and high schools that folk-dancing constituted the very best exercise for girls. "the dances selected involved many contractions of the large muscular masses of the body and had therefore a great effect on respiration, circulation and nutrition. such movements, moreover, when done as dances, could be carried on three or four times as long without producing fatigue as formal gymnastics. many folk-dances were imitative, sowing and reaping dance, dances expressing trade movements (the shoemaker's dance), others illustrating attack and defense, or the pursuit of game. such neuro-muscular movements were racially old and fitted in with man's expressive life, and if it were accepted that the folk-dances really expressed an epitome of man's neuro-muscular history, as distinguished from mere permutation of movements, the folk-dance combinations should be preferred on these biological grounds to the unselected, or even the physiologically selected. from the æsthetic point of view the sense of beauty as shown in dancing was far commoner than the power to sing, paint or model." it must always be remembered that in realizing the especial demands of woman's nature, we do not commit ourselves to the belief that higher education is unfitted for a woman. that question may now be regarded as settled. there is therefore no longer any need for the feverish anxiety of the early leaders of feminine education to prove that girls can be educated exactly as if they were boys, and yield at least as good educational results. at the present time, indeed, that anxiety is not only unnecessary but mischievous. it is now more necessary to show that women have special needs just as men have special needs, and that it is as bad for women, and therefore, for the world, to force them to accept the special laws and limitations of men as it would be bad for men, and therefore, for the world, to force men to accept the special laws and limitations of women. each sex must seek to reach the goal by following the laws of its own nature, even although it remains desirable that, both in the school and in the world, they should work so far as possible side by side. the great fact to be remembered always is that, not only are women, in physical size and physical texture, slighter and finer than men, but that to an extent altogether unknown among men, their centre of gravity is apt to be deflected by the series of rhythmic sexual curves on which they are always living. they are thus more delicately poised and any kind of stress or strain--cerebral, nervous, or muscular--is more likely to produce serious disturbance and requires an accurate adjustment to their special needs. the fact that it is stress and strain in general, and not necessarily educational studies, that are injurious to adolescent women, is sufficiently proved, if proof is necessary, by the fact that sexual arrest, and physical or nervous breakdown, occur with extreme frequency in girls who work in shops or mills, even in girls who have never been to school at all. even excesses in athletics--which now not infrequently occur as a reaction against woman's indifference to physical exercise--are bad. cycling is beneficial for women who can ride without pain or discomfort, and, according to watkins, it is even beneficial in many diseased and disordered pelvic conditions, but excessive cycling is evil in its results on women, more especially by inducing rigidity of the perineum to an extent which may even prevent childbirth and necessitate operation. i may add that the same objection applies to much horse-riding. in the same way everything which causes shocks to the body is apt to be dangerous to women, since in the womb they possess a delicately poised organ which varies in weight at different times, and it would, for instance, be impossible to commend football as a game for girls. "i do not believe," wrote miss h. ballantine, director of vassar college gymnasium, to prof. w. thomas (_sex and society_, p. ) "women can ever, no matter what the training, approach men in their physical achievements; and," she wisely adds, "i see no reason why they should." there seem, indeed, as has already been indicated, to be reasons why they should not, especially if they look forward to becoming mothers. i have noticed that women who have lived a very robust and athletic outdoor life, so far from always having the easy confinements which we might anticipate, sometimes have very seriously difficult times, imperilling the life of the child. on making this observation to a distinguished obstetrician, the late dr. engelmann, who was an ardent advocate of physical exercise for women (in e.g. his presidential address, "the health of the american girl," _transactions southern surgical and gynæcological association_, ), he replied that he had himself made the same observation, and that instructors in physical training, both in america and england, had also told him of such cases among their pupils. "i hold," he wrote, "precisely the opinion you express [as to the unfavorable influence of muscular development in women]. _athletics_, i.e., overdone physical training, causes the girl's system to approximate to the masculine; this is so whether due to sport or necessity. the woman who indulges in it approximates to the male in her attributes; this is marked in diminished sexual intensity, and in increased difficulty of childbirth, with, in time, lessened fecundity. healthy habits improve, but masculine muscular development diminishes, womanly qualities, although it is true that the peasant and the laboring woman have easy labor. i have never advocated muscular development for girls, only physical training, but have perhaps said too much for it and praised it too unguardedly. in schools and colleges, so far, however, it is insufficient rather than too much; only the wealthy have too much golf and athletic sports. i am collecting new material, but from what i already have seen i am impressed with the truth of what you say. i am studying the point, and shall elaborate the explanation." any publication on this subject was, however, prevented by engelmann's death a few years later. a proper recognition of the special nature of woman, of her peculiar needs and her dignity, has a significance beyond its importance in education and hygiene. the traditions and training to which she is subjected in this matter have a subtle and far-reaching significance, according as they are good or evil. if she is taught, implicitly or explicitly, contempt for the characteristics of her own sex, she naturally develops masculine ideals which may permanently discolor her vision of life and distort her practical activities; it has been found that as many as fifty per cent. of american school girls have masculine ideals, while fifteen per cent. american and no fewer than thirty-four per cent. english school girls wished to be men, though scarcely any boys wished to be women.[ ] with the same tendency may be connected that neglect to cultivate the emotions, which, by a mischievously extravagant but inevitable reaction from the opposite extreme, has sometimes marked the modern training of women. in the finely developed woman, intelligence is interpenetrated with emotion. if there is an exaggerated and isolated culture of intelligence a tendency shows itself to disharmony which breaks up the character or impairs its completeness. in this connection reibmayr has remarked that the american woman may serve as a warning.[ ] within the emotional sphere itself, it may be added, there is a tendency to disharmony in women owing to the contradictory nature of the feelings which are traditionally impressed upon her, a contradiction which dates back indeed to the identification of sacredness and impurity at the dawn of civilization. "every girl and woman," wrote hellmann, in a pioneering book which pushed a sound principle to eccentric extremes, "is taught to regard her sexual parts as a precious and sacred spot, only to be approached by a husband or in special circumstances a doctor. she is, at the same time, taught to regard this spot as a kind of water-closet which she ought to be extremely ashamed to possess, and the mere mention of which should cause a painful blush."[ ] the average unthinking woman accepts the incongruity of this opposition without question, and grows accustomed to adapt herself to each of the incompatibles according to circumstances. the more thoughtful woman works out a private theory of her own. but in very many cases this mischievous opposition exerts a subtly perverting influence on the whole outlook towards nature and life. in a few cases, also, in women of sensitive temperament, it even undermines and ruins the psychic personality. thus boris sidis has recorded a case illustrating the disastrous results of inculcating on a morbidly sensitive girl the doctrine of the impurity of women. she was educated in a convent. "while there she was impressed with the belief that woman is a vessel of vice and impurity. this seemed to have been imbued in her by one of the nuns who was very holy and practiced self-mortification. with the onset of her periods, and with the observation of the same in the other girls, this doctrine of female impurity was all the stronger impressed on her sensitive mind." it lapsed, however, from conscious memory and only came to the foreground in subsequent years with the exhaustion and fatigue of prolonged office work. then she married. now "she has an extreme abhorrence of women. woman, to the patient, is impurity, filth, the very incarnation of degradation and vice. the house wash must not be given to a laundry where women work. nothing must be picked up in the street, not even the most valuable object, perchance it might have been dropped by a woman" (boris sidis, "studies in psychopathology," _boston medical and surgical journal_, april , ). that is the logical outcome of much of the traditional teaching which is given to girls. fortunately, the healthy mind offers a natural resistance to its complete acceptation, yet it usually, in some degree, persists and exerts a mischievous influence. it is, however, not only in her relations to herself and to her sex that a girl's thoughts and feelings tend to be distorted by the ignorance or the false traditions by which she is so often carefully surrounded. her happiness in marriage, her whole future career, is put in peril. the innocent young woman must always risk much in entering the door of indissoluble marriage; she knows nothing truly of her husband, she knows nothing of the great laws of love, she knows nothing of her own possibilities, and, worse still, she is even ignorant of her ignorance. she runs the risk of losing the game while she is still only beginning to learn it. to some extent that is quite inevitable if we are to insist that a woman should bind herself to marry a man before she has experienced the nature of the forces that marriage may unloose in her. a young girl believes she possesses a certain character; she arranges her future in accordance with that character; she marries. then, in a considerable proportion of cases (five out of six, according to the novelist bourget), within a year or even a week, she finds she was completely mistaken in herself and in the man she has married; she discovers within her another self, and that self detests the man to whom she is bound. that is a possible fate against which only the woman who has already been aroused to love is entitled to regard herself as fairly protected. there is, however, a certain kind of protection which it is possible to afford the bride, even without departing from our most conventional conceptions of marriage. we can at least insist that she shall be accurately informed as to the exact nature of her physical relations to her future husband and be safeguarded from the shocks or the disillusions which marriage might otherwise bring. notwithstanding the decay of prejudices, it is probable that even to-day the majority of women of the so-called educated class marry with only the vaguest and most inaccurate notions, picked up more or less clandestinely, concerning the nature of the sexual relationships. so highly intelligent a woman as madame adam has stated that she believed herself bound to marry a man who had kissed her on the mouth, imagining that to be the supreme act of sexual union,[ ] and it has frequently happened that women have married sexually inverted persons of their own sex, not always knowingly, but believing them to be men, and never discovering their mistake; it is not long indeed since in america three women were thus successively married to the same woman, none of them apparently ever finding out the real sex of the "husband." "the civilized girl," as edward carpenter remarks, "is led to the 'altar' often in uttermost ignorance and misunderstanding of the sacrificial rites about to be consummated." certainly more rapes have been effected in marriage than outside it.[ ] the girl is full of vague and romantic faith in the promises of love, often heightened by the ecstasies depicted in sentimental novels from which every touch of wholesome reality has been carefully omitted. "all the candor of faith is there," as sénancour puts it in his book _de l'amour_, "the desires of inexperience, the needs of a new life, the hopes of an upright heart. she has all the faculties of love, she must love; she has all the means of pleasure, she must be loved. everything expresses love and demands love: this hand formed for sweet caresses, an eye whose resources are unknown if it must not say that it consents to be loved, a bosom which is motionless and useless without love, and will fade without having been worshipped; these feelings that are so vast, so tender, so voluptuous, the ambition of the heart, the heroism of passion! she needs must follow the delicious rule which the law of the world has dictated. that intoxicating part, which she knows so well, which everything recalls, which the day inspires and the night commands, what young, sensitive, loving woman can imagine that she shall not play it?" but when the actual drama of love begins to unroll before her, and she realizes the true nature of the "intoxicating part" she has to play, then, it has often happened, the case is altered; she finds herself altogether unprepared, and is overcome with terror and alarm. all the felicity of her married life may then hang on a few chances, her husband's skill and consideration, her own presence of mind. hirschfeld records the case of an innocent young girl of seventeen--in this case, it eventually proved, an invert--who was persuaded to marry but on discovering what marriage meant energetically resisted her husband's sexual approaches. he appealed to her mother to explain to her daughter the nature of "wifely duties." but the young wife replied to her mother's expostulations, "if that is my wifely duty then it was your parental duty to have told me beforehand, for, if i had known, i should never have married." the husband in this case, much in love with his wife, sought for eight years to over-persuade her, but in vain, and a separation finally took place.[ ] that, no doubt, is an extreme case, but how many innocent young inverted girls never realize their true nature until after marriage, and how many perfectly normal girls are so shocked by the too sudden initiation of marriage that their beautiful early dreams of love never develop slowly and wholesomely into the acceptance of its still more beautiful realities? before the age of puberty it would seem that the sexual initiation of the child--apart from such scientific information as would form part of school courses in botany and zoölogy--should be the exclusive privilege of the mother, or whomever it may be to whom the mother's duties are delegated. at puberty more authoritative and precise advice is desirable than the mother may be able or willing to give. it is at this age that she should put into her son's or daughter's hands some one or other of the very numerous manuals to which reference has already been made (page ), expounding the physical and moral aspects of the sexual life and the principles of sexual hygiene. the boy or girl is already, we may take it, acquainted with the facts of motherhood, and the origin of babies, as well as, more or less precisely, with the father's part in their procreation. whatever manual is now placed in his or her hands should at least deal summarily, but definitely, with the sexual relationship, and should also comment, warningly but in no alarmist spirit, with the chief auto-erotic phenomena, and by no means exclusively with masturbation. nothing but good can come of the use of such a manual, if it has been wisely selected; it will supplant what the mother has already done, what the teacher may still be doing, and what later may be done by private interview with a doctor. it has indeed been argued that the boy or girl to whom such literature is presented will merely make it an opportunity for morbid revelry and sensual enjoyment. it can well be believed that this may sometimes happen with boys or girls from whom all sexual facts have always been mysteriously veiled, and that when at last they find the opportunity of gratifying their long-repressed and perfectly natural curiosity they are overcome by the excitement of the event. it could not happen to children who have been naturally and wholesomely brought up. at a later age, during adolescence, there is doubtless great advantage in the plan, now frequently adopted, especially in germany, of giving lectures, addresses, or quiet talks to young people of each sex separately. the speaker is usually a specially selected teacher, a doctor or other qualified person who may be brought in for this special purpose. stanley hall, after remarking that sexual education should be chiefly from fathers to sons and from mothers to daughters, adds: "it may be that in the future this kind of initiation will again become an art, and experts will tell us with more confidence how to do our duty to the manifold exigencies, types and stages of youth, and instead of feeling baffled and defeated, we shall see that this age and theme is the supreme opening for the highest pedagogy to do its best and most transforming work, as well as being the greatest of all opportunities for the teacher of religion" (stanley hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. ). "at williams college, harvard, johns hopkins and clark," the same distinguished teacher observes (ib., p. ), "i have made it a duty in my departmental teaching to speak very briefly, but plainly to young men under my instruction, personally if i deemed it wise, and often, though here only in general terms, before student bodies, and i believe i have nowhere done more good, but it is a painful duty. it requires tact and some degree of hard and strenuous common sense rather than technical knowledge." it is scarcely necessary to say that the ordinary teacher of either sex is quite incompetent to speak of sexual hygiene. it is a task to which all, or some, teachers must be trained. a beginning in this direction has been made in germany by the delivery to teachers of courses of lectures on sexual hygiene in education. in prussia the first attempt was made in breslau when the central school authorities requested dr. martin chotzen to deliver such a course to one hundred and fifty teachers who took the greatest interest in the lectures, which covered the anatomy of the sexual organs, the development of the sexual instinct, its chief perversions, venereal diseases, and the importance of the cultivation of self-control. in _geschlecht und gesellschaft_ (bd. i, heft ) dr. fritz reuther gives the substance of lectures which he has delivered to a class of young teachers; they cover much the same ground as chotzen's. there is no evidence that in england the minister of education has yet taken any steps to insure the delivery of lectures on sexual hygiene to the pupils who are about to leave school. in prussia, however, the ministry of education has taken an active interest in this matter, and such lectures are beginning to be commonly delivered, though attendance at them is not usually obligatory. some years ago (in ), when it was proposed to deliver a series of lectures on sexual hygiene to the advanced pupils in berlin schools, under the auspices of a society for the improvement of morals, the municipal authorities withdrew their permission to use the classrooms, on the ground that "such lectures would be extremely dangerous to the moral sense of an audience of the young." the same objection has been made by municipal officials in france. in germany, at all events, however, opinion is rapidly growing more enlightened. in england little or no progress has yet been made, but in america steps are being taken in this direction, as by the chicago society for social hygiene. it must, indeed, be said that those who oppose the sexual enlightenment of youth in large cities are directly allying themselves, whether or not they know it, with the influences that make for vice and immorality. such lectures are also given to girls on leaving school, not only girls of the well-to-do, but also those of the poor class, who need them fully as much, and in some respects more. thus dr. a. heidenhain has published a lecture (_sexuelle belehrung der aus den volksschule entlassenen mädchen_, ), accompanied by anatomical tables, which he has delivered to girls about to leave school, and which is intended to be put into their hands at this time. salvat, in a lyons thesis (_la dépopulation de la france_, ), insists that the hygiene of pregnancy and the care of infants should form part of the subject of such lectures. these subjects might well be left, however, to a somewhat later period. something is clearly needed beyond lectures on these matters. it should be the business of the parents or other guardians of every adolescent youth and girl to arrange that, once at least at this period of life, there should be a private, personal interview with a medical man to afford an opportunity for a friendly and confidential talk concerning the main points of sexual hygiene. the family doctor would be the best for this duty because he would be familiar with the personal temperament of the youth and the family tendencies.[ ] in the case of girls a woman doctor would often be preferred. sex is properly a mystery; and to the unspoilt youth, it is instinctively so; except in an abstract and technical form it cannot properly form the subject of lectures. in a private and individualized conversation between the novice in life and the expert, it is possible to say many necessary things that could not be said in public, and it is possible, moreover, for the youth to ask questions which shyness and reserve make it impossible to put to parents, while the convenient opportunity of putting them naturally to the expert otherwise seldom or never occurs. most youths have their own special ignorances, their own special difficulties, difficulties and ignorances that could sometimes be resolved by a word. yet it by no means infrequently happens that they carry them far on into adult life because they have lacked the opportunity, or the skill and assurance to create the opportunity, of obtaining enlightenment. it must be clearly understood that these talks are of medical, hygienic, and physiological character; they are not to be used for retailing moral platitudes. to make them that would be a fatal mistake. the young are often very hostile to merely conventional moral maxims, and suspect their hollowness, not always without reason. the end to be aimed at here is enlightenment. certainly knowledge can never be immoral, but nothing is gained by jumbling up knowledge and morality together. in emphasizing the nature of the physician's task in this matter as purely and simply that of wise practical enlightenment, nothing is implied against the advantages, and indeed the immense value in sexual hygiene, of the moral, religious, ideal elements of life. it is not the primary business of the physician to inspire these, but they have a very intimate relation with the sexual life, and every boy and girl at puberty, and never before puberty, should be granted the privilege--and not the duty or the task--of initiation into those elements of the world's life which are, at the same time, natural functions of the adolescent soul. here, however, is the sphere of the religious or ethical teacher. at puberty he has his great opportunity, the greatest he can ever obtain. the flower of sex that blossoms in the body at puberty has its spiritual counterpart which at the same moment blossoms in the soul. the churches from of old have recognized the religious significance of this moment, for it is this period of life that they have appointed as the time of confirmation and similar rites. with the progress of the ages, it is true, such rites become merely formal and apparently meaningless fossils. but they have a meaning nevertheless, and are capable of being again vitalized. nor in their spirit and essence should they be confined to those who accept supernaturally revealed religion. they concern all ethical teachers, who must realize that it is at puberty that they are called upon to inspire or to fortify the great ideal aspirations which at this period tend spontaneously to arise in the youth's or maiden's soul.[ ] the age of puberty, i have said, marks the period at which this new kind of sexual initiation is called for. before puberty, although the psychic emotion of love frequently develops, as well as sometimes physical sexual emotions that are mostly vague and diffused, definite and localized sexual sensations are rare. for the normal boy or girl love is usually an unspecialized emotion; it is in guyau's words "a state in which the body has but the smallest place." at the first rising of the sun of sex the boy or girl sees, as blake said he saw at sunrise, not a round yellow body emerging above the horizon, or any other physical manifestation, but a great company of singing angels. with the definite eruption of physical sexual manifestation and desire, whether at puberty or later in adolescence, a new turbulent disturbing influence appears. against the force of this influence, mere intellectual enlightenment, or even loving maternal counsel--the agencies we have so far been concerned with--may be powerless. in gaining control of it we must find our auxiliary in the fact that puberty is the efflorescence not only of a new physical but a new psychic force. the ideal world naturally unfolds itself to the boy or girl at puberty. the magic of beauty, the instinct of modesty, the naturalness of self-restraint, the idea of unselfish love, the meaning of duty, the feeling for art and poetry, the craving for religious conceptions and emotions--all these things awake spontaneously in the unspoiled boy or girl at puberty. i say "unspoiled," for if these things have been thrust on the child before puberty when they have yet no meaning for him--as is unfortunately far too often done, more especially as regards religious notions--then it is but too likely that he will fail to react properly at that moment of his development when he would otherwise naturally respond to them. under natural conditions this is the period for spiritual initiation. now, and not before, is the time for the religious or ethical teacher as the case may be--for all religions and ethical systems may equally adapt themselves to this task--to take the boy or girl in hand, not with any special and obtrusive reference to the sexual impulses but for the purpose of assisting the development and manifestation of this psychic puberty, of indirectly aiding the young soul to escape from sexual dangers by harnessing his chariot to a star that may help to save it from sticking fast in any miry ruts of the flesh. such an initiation, it is important to remark, is more than an introduction to the sphere of religious sentiment. it is an initiation into manhood, it must involve a recognition of the masculine even more than of the feminine virtues. this has been well understood by the finest primitive races. they constantly give their boys and girls an initiation at puberty; it is an initiation that involves not merely education in the ordinary sense, but a stern discipline of the character, feats of endurance, the trial of character, the testing of the muscles of the soul as much as of the body. ceremonies of initiation into manhood at puberty--involving physical and mental discipline, as well as instruction, lasting for weeks or months, and never identical for both sexes--are common among savages in all parts of the world. they nearly always involve the endurance of a certain amount of pain and hardship, a wise measure of training which the softness of civilization has too foolishly allowed to drop, for the ability to endure hardness is an essential condition of all real manhood. it is as a corrective to this tendency to flabbiness in modern education that the teaching of nietzsche is so invaluable. the initiation of boys among the natives of torres straits has been elaborately described by a.c. haddon (_reports anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, chs. vii and xii). it lasts a month, involves much severe training and power of endurance, and includes admirable moral instruction. haddon remarks that it formed "a very good discipline," and adds, "it is not easy to conceive of a more effectual means for a rapid training." among the aborigines of victoria, australia, the initiatory ceremonies, as described by r.h. mathews ("some initiation ceremonies," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft ), last for seven months, and constitute an admirable discipline. the boys are taken away by the elders of the tribe, subjected to many trials of patience and endurance of pain and discomfort, sometimes involving even the swallowing of urine and excrement, brought into contact with strange tribes, taught the laws and folk-lore, and at the end meetings are held at which betrothals are arranged. among the northern tribes of central australia the initiation ceremonies involve circumcision and urethral subincision, as well as hard manual labor and hardships. the initiation of girls into womanhood is accompanied by cutting open of the vagina. these ceremonies have been described by spencer and gillen (_northern tribes of central australia_, ch. xi). among various peoples in british east africa (including the masai) pubertal initiation is a great ceremonial event extending over a period of many months, and it includes circumcision in boys, and in girls clitoridectomy, as well as, among some tribes, removal of the nymphæ. a girl who winces or cries out during the operation is disgraced among the women and expelled from the settlement. when the ceremony has been satisfactorily completed the boy or girl is marriageable (c. marsh beadnell, "circumcision and clitoridectomy as practiced by the natives of british east africa," _british medical journal_, april , ). initiation among the african bawenda, as described by a missionary, is in three stages: ( ) a stage of instruction and discipline during which the traditions and sacred things of the tribe are revealed, the art of warfare taught, self-restraint and endurance borne; then the youths are counted as full-grown. ( ) in the next stage the art of dancing is practiced, by each sex separately, during the day. ( ) in the final stage, which is that of complete sexual initiation, the two sexes dance together by night; the scene, in the opinion of the good missionary, "does not bear description;" the initiated are now complete adults, with all the privileges and responsibilities of adults (rev. e. gottschling, "the bawenda," _journal anthropological institution_, july to dec., , p. . cf., an interesting account of the bawenda tondo schools by another missionary, wessmann, _the bawenda_, pp. et seq.). the initiation of girls in azimba land, central africa, has been fully and interestingly described by h. crawford angus ("the chensamwali' or initiation ceremony of girls," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft ). at the first sign of menstruation the girl is taken by her mother out of the village to a grass hut prepared for her where only the women are allowed to visit her. at the end of menstruation she is taken to a secluded spot and the women dance round her, no men being present. it was only with much difficulty that angus was enabled to witness the ceremony. the girl is then informed in regard to the hygiene of menstruation. "many songs about the relations between men and women are sung, and the girl is instructed as to all her duties when she becomes a wife.... the girl is taught to be faithful to her husband, and to try and bear children. the whole matter is looked upon as a matter of course, and not as a thing to be ashamed of or to hide, and being thus openly treated of and no secrecy made about it, you find in this tribe that the women are very virtuous, because the subject of married life has no glamour for them. when a woman is pregnant she is again danced; this time all the dancers are naked, and she is taught how to behave and what to do when the time of her delivery arrives." among the yuman indians of california, as described by horatio rust ("a puberty ceremony of the mission indians," _american anthropologist_, jan. to march, , p. ) the girls are at puberty prepared for marriage by a ceremony. they are wrapped in blankets and placed in a warm pit, where they lie looking very happy as they peer out through their covers. for four days and nights they lie here (occasionally going away for food), while the old women of the tribe dance and sing round the pit constantly. at times the old women throw silver coins among the crowd to teach the girls to be generous. they also give away cloth and wheat, to teach them to be kind to the old and needy; and they sow wild seeds broadcast over the girls to cause them to be prolific. finally, all strangers are ordered away, garlands are placed on the girls' heads, and they are led to a hillside and shown the large and sacred stone, symbolical of the female organs of generation and resembling them, which is said to protect women. then grain is thrown over all present, and the ceremony is over. the thlinkeet eskimo women were long noted for their fine qualities. at puberty they were secluded, sometimes for a whole year, being kept in darkness, suffering, and filth. yet defective and unsatisfactory as this initiation was, "langsdorf suggests," says bancroft (_native races of pacific_, vol. i, p. ), referring to the virtues of the thlinkeet woman, "that it may be during this period of confinement that the foundation of her influence is laid; that in modest reserve and meditation her character is strengthened, and she comes forth cleansed in mind as well as body." we have lost these ancient and invaluable rites of initiation into manhood and womanhood, with their inestimable moral benefits; at the most we have merely preserved the shells of initiation in which the core has decayed. in time, we cannot doubt, they will be revived in modern forms. at present the spiritual initiation of youths and maidens is left to the chances of some happy accident, and usually it is of a purely cerebral character which cannot be perfectly wholesome, and is at the best absurdly incomplete. this cerebral initiation commonly occurs to the youth through the medium of literature. the influence of literature in sexual education thus extends, in an incalculable degree, beyond the narrow sphere of manuals on sexual hygiene, however admirable and desirable these may be. the greater part of literature is more or less distinctly penetrated by erotic and auto-erotic conceptions and impulses; nearly all imaginative literature proceeds from the root of sex to flower in visions of beauty and ecstasy. the divine comedy of dante is herein the immortal type of the poet's evolution. the youth becomes acquainted with the imaginative representations of love before he becomes acquainted with the reality of love, so that, as leo berg puts it, "the way to love among civilized peoples passes through imagination." all literature is thus, to the adolescent soul, a part of sexual education.[ ] it depends, to some extent, though fortunately not entirely, on the judgment of those in authority over the young soul whether the literature to which the youth or girl is admitted is or is not of the large and humanizing order. all great literature touches nakedly and sanely on the central facts of sex. it is always consoling to remember this in an age of petty pruderies. and it is a satisfaction to know that it would not be possible to emasculate the literature of the great ages, however desirable it might seem to the men of more degenerate ages, or to close the avenues to that literature against the young. all our religious and literary traditions serve to fortify the position of the bible and of shakespeare. "so many men and women," writes a correspondent, a literary man, "gain sexual ideas in childhood from reading the old testament, that the bible may be called an erotic text-book. most persons of either sex with whom i have conversed on the subject, say that the books of moses, and the stories of amnon and tamar, lot and his daughters, potiphar's wife and joseph, etc., caused speculation and curiosity, and gave them information of the sexual relationship. a boy and girl of fifteen, both friends of the writer, and now over thirty years of age, used to find out erotic passages in the bible on sunday mornings, while in a dissenting chapel, and pass their bibles to one another, with their fingers on the portions that interested them." in the same way many a young woman has borrowed shakespeare in order to read the glowing erotic poetry of _venus and adonis_, which her friends have told her about. the bible, it may be remarked, is not in every respect, a model introduction for the young mind to the questions of sex. but even its frank acceptance, as of divine origin, of sexual rules so unlike those that are nominally our own, such as polygamy and concubinage, helps to enlarge the vision of the youthful mind by showing that the rules surrounding the child are not those everywhere and always valid, while the nakedness and realism of the bible cannot but be a wholesome and tonic corrective to conventional pruderies. we must, indeed, always protest against the absurd confusion whereby nakedness of speech is regarded as equivalent to immorality, and not the less because it is often adopted even in what are regarded as intellectual quarters. when in the house of lords, in the last century, the question of the exclusion of byron's statue from westminster abbey was under discussion, lord brougham "denied that shakespeare was more moral than byron. he could, on the contrary, point out in a single page of shakespeare more grossness than was to be found in all lord byron's works." the conclusion brougham thus reached, that byron is an incomparably more moral writer than shakespeare, ought to have been a sufficient _reductio ad absurdum_ of his argument, but it does not appear that anyone pointed out the vulgar confusion into which he had fallen. it may be said that the special attractiveness which the nakedness of great literature sometimes possesses for young minds is unwholesome. but it must be remembered that the peculiar interest of this element is merely due to the fact that elsewhere there is an inveterate and abnormal concealment. it must also be said that the statements of the great writers about natural things are never degrading, nor even erotically exciting to the young, and what emilia pardo bazan tells of herself and her delight when a child in the historical books of the old testament, that the crude passages in them failed to send the faintest cloud of trouble across her young imagination, is equally true of most children. it is necessary, indeed, that these naked and serious things should be left standing, even if only to counterbalance the lewdly comic efforts to besmirch love and sex, which are visible to all in every low-class bookseller's shop window. this point of view was vigorously championed by the speakers on sexual education at the third congress of the german gesellschaft zur bekämpfung der geschlechtskrankheiten in . thus enderlin, speaking as a headmaster, protested against the custom of bowdlerizing poems and folk-songs for the use of children, and thus robbing them of the finest introduction to purified sexual impulses and the highest sphere of emotion, while at the same time they are recklessly exposed to the "psychic infection" of the vulgar comic papers everywhere exposed for sale. "so long as children are too young to respond to erotic poetry it cannot hurt them; when they are old enough to respond it can only benefit them by opening to them the highest and purest channels of human emotion" (_sexualpädagogik_, p. ). professor schäfenacker (id., p. ) expresses himself in the same sense, and remarks that "the method of removing from school-books all those passages which, in the opinion of short-sighted and narrow-hearted schoolmasters, are unsuited for youth, must be decisively condemned." every healthy boy and girl who has reached the age of puberty may be safely allowed to ramble in any good library, however varied its contents. so far from needing guidance they will usually show a much more refined taste than their elders. at this age, when the emotions are still virginal and sensitive, the things that are realistic, ugly, or morbid, jar on the young spirit and are cast aside, though in adult life, with the coarsening of mental texture which comes of years and experience, this repugnance, doubtless by an equally sound and natural instinct, may become much less acute. ellen key in ch. vi of her _century of the child_ well summarizes the reasons against the practice of selecting for children books that are "suitable" for them, a practice which she considers one of the follies of modern education. the child should be free to read all great literature, and will himself instinctively put aside the things he is not yet ripe for. his cooler senses are undisturbed by scenes that his elders find too exciting, while even at a later stage it is not the nakedness of great literature, but much more the method of the modern novel, which is likely to stain the imagination, falsify reality and injure taste. it is concealment which misleads and coarsens, producing a state of mind in which even the bible becomes a stimulus to the senses. the writings of the great masters yield the imaginative food which the child craves, and the erotic moment in them is too brief to be overheating. it is the more necessary, ellen key remarks, for children to be introduced to great literature, since they often have little opportunity to occupy themselves with it in later life. many years earlier ruskin, in _sesame and lilies_, had eloquently urged that even young girls should be allowed to range freely in libraries. what has been said about literature applies equally to art. art, as well as literature, and in the same indirect way, can be made a valuable aid in the task of sexual enlightenment and sexual hygiene. modern art may, indeed, for the most part, be ignored from this point of view, but children cannot be too early familiarized with the representations of the nude in ancient sculpture and in the paintings of the old masters of the italian school. in this way they may be immunized, as enderlin expresses it, against those representations of the nude which make an appeal to the baser instincts. early familiarity with nudity in art is at the same time an aid to the attainment of a proper attitude towards purity in nature. "he who has once learnt," as höller remarks, "to enjoy peacefully nakedness in art, will be able to look on nakedness in nature as on a work of art." casts of classic nude statues and reproductions of the pictures of the old venetian and other italian masters may fittingly be used to adorn schoolrooms, not so much as objects of instruction as things of beauty with which the child cannot too early become familiarized. in italy it is said to be usual for school classes to be taken by their teachers to the art museums with good results; such visits form part of the official scheme of education. there can be no doubt that such early familiarity with the beauty of nudity in classic art is widely needed among all social classes and in many countries. it is to this defect of our education that we must attribute the occasional, and indeed in america and england frequent, occurrence of such incidents as petitions and protests against the exhibition of nude statuary in art museums, the display of pictures so inoffensive as leighton's "bath of psyche" in shop windows, and the demand for the draping of the naked personifications of abstract virtues in architectural street decoration. so imperfect is still the education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. such a state of things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. even from the religious point of view, prurient prudery is not justifiable. northcote has very temperately and sensibly discussed the question of the nude in art from the standpoint of christian morality. he points out that not only is the nude in art not to be condemned without qualification, and that the nude is by no means necessarily the erotic, but he also adds that even erotic art, in its best and purest manifestations, only arouses emotions that are the legitimate object of man's aspirations. it would be impossible even to represent biblical stories adequately on canvas or in marble if erotic art were to be tabooed (rev. h. northcote, _christianity and sex problems_, ch. xiv). early familiarity with the nude in classic and early italian art should be combined at puberty with an equal familiarity with photographs of beautiful and naturally developed nude models. in former years books containing such pictures in a suitable and attractive manner to place before the young were difficult to procure. now this difficulty no longer exists. dr. c.h. stratz, of the hague, has been the pioneer in this matter, and in a series of beautiful books (notably in _der körper des kindes, die schönheit des weiblichen körpers_ and _die rassenschönheit des weibes_, all published by enke in stuttgart), he has brought together a large number of admirably selected photographs of nude but entirely chaste figures. more recently dr. shufeldt, of washington (who dedicates his work to stratz), has published his _studies of the human form_ in which, in the same spirit, he has brought together the results of his own studies of the naked human form during many years. it is necessary to correct the impressions received from classic sources by good photographic illustrations on account of the false conventions prevailing in classic works, though those conventions were not necessarily false for the artists who originated them. the omission of the pudendal hair, in representations of the nude was, for instance, quite natural for the people of countries still under oriental influence are accustomed to remove the hair from the body. if, however, under quite different conditions, we perpetuate that artistic convention to-day, we put ourselves into a perverse relation to nature. there is ample evidence of this. "there is one convention so ancient, so necessary, so universal," writes mr. frederic harrison (_nineteenth century and after_, aug., ), "that its deliberate defiance to-day may arouse the bile of the least squeamish of men and should make women withdraw at once." if boys and girls were brought up at their mother's knees in familiarity with pictures of beautiful and natural nakedness, it would be impossible for anyone to write such silly and shameful words as these. there can be no doubt that among ourselves the simple and direct attitude of the child towards nakedness is so early crushed out of him that intelligent education is necessary in order that he may be enabled to discern what is and what is not obscene. to the plough-boy and the country servant-girl all nakedness, including that of greek statuary, is alike shameful or lustful. "i have a picture of women like that," said a countryman with a grin, as he pointed to a photograph of one of tintoret's most beautiful groups, "smoking cigarettes." and the mass of people in most northern countries have still passed little beyond this stage of discernment; in ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the obscene they are still on the level of the plough-boy and the servant-girl. footnotes: [ ] these manifestations have been dealt with in the study of autoerotism in vol. i of the present _studies_. it may be added that the sexual life of the child has been exhaustively investigated by moll, _das sexualleben des kindes_, . [ ] this genital efflorescence in the sexual glands and breasts at birth or in early infancy has been discussed in a paris thesis, by camille renouf (_la crise génital et les manifestations connexes chez le foetus et le nouveau-né_, ); he is unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of these phenomena. [ ] amélineau, _la morale des egyptiens_, p. . [ ] "the social evil in philadelphia," _arena_, march, . [ ] moll, _konträre sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. . [ ] this powerlessness of the law and the police is well recognized by lawyers familiar with the matter. thus f. werthauer (_sittlichkeitsdelikte der grosstadt_, ) insists throughout on the importance of parents and teachers imparting to children from their early years a progressively increasing knowledge of sexual matters. [ ] "parents must be taught how to impart information," remarks e.l. keyes ("education upon sexual matters," _new york medical journal_, feb. , ), "and this teaching of the parent should begin when he is himself a child." [ ] moll (op. cit., p. ) argues well how impossible it is to preserve children from sights and influence connected with the sexual life. [ ] girls are not even prepared, in many cases, for the appearance of the pubic hair. this unexpected growth of hair frequently causes young girls much secret worry, and often they carefully cut it off. [ ] g.s. hall, _adolescence_, vol. i, p. . many years ago, in , the late dr. clarke, in his _sex in education_, advised menstrual rest for girls, and thereby aroused a violent opposition which would certainly not be found nowadays, when the special risks of womanhood are becoming more clearly understood. [ ] for a summary of the physical and mental phenomena of the menstrual period, see havelock ellis: _man and woman_, ch. xi. the primitive conception of menstruation is briefly discussed in appendix a to the first volume of these _studies_, and more elaborately by j.g. frazer in _the golden bough_. a large collection of facts with regard to the menstrual seclusion of women throughout the world will be found in ploss and bartels, _das weib_. the pubertal seclusion of girls at torres straits has been especially studied by seligmann, _reports anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, ch. vi. [ ] thus miss lura sanborn, director of physical training at the chicago normal school, found that a bath once a fortnight was not unusual. at the menstrual period especially there is still a superstitious dread of water. girls should always be taught that at this period, above all, cleanliness is imperatively necessary. there should be a tepid hip bath night and morning, and a vaginal douche (which should never be cold) is always advantageous, both for comfort as well as cleanliness. there is not the slightest reason to dread water during menstruation. this point was discussed a few years ago in the _british medical journal_ with complete unanimity of opinion. a distinguished american obstetrician, also, dr. j. clifton edgar, after a careful study of opinion and practice in this matter ("bathing during the menstrual period," _american journal obstetrics_, sept., ), concludes that it is possible and beneficial to take cold baths (though not sea-baths) during the period, provided due precautions are observed, and that there are no sudden changes of habits. such a course should not be indiscriminately adopted, but there can be no doubt that in sturdy peasant women who are inured to it early in life even prolonged immersion in the sea in fishing has no evil results, and is even beneficial. houzel (_annales de gynécologie_, dec., ) has published statistics of the menstrual life of fisherwomen on the french coast. they were accustomed to shrimp for hours at a time in the sea, often to above the waist, and then walk about in their wet clothes selling the shrimps. they all insisted that their menstruation was easier when they were actively at work. their periods are notably regular, and their fertility is high. [ ] j.h. mcbride, "the life and health of our girls in relation to their future," _alienist and neurologist_, feb., . [ ] w.g. chambers, "the evolution of ideals," _pedagogical seminary_, march, ; catherine dodd, "school children's ideals," _national review_, feb. and dec., , and june, . no german girls acknowledged a wish to be men; they said it would be wicked. among flemish girls, however, varendonck found at ghent (_archives de psychologie_, july, ) that per cent. had men as their ideals. [ ] a. reibmayr, _die entwicklungsgeschichte des talentes und genies_, , bd. i, p. . [ ] r. hellmann, _ueber geschlechtsfreiheit_, p. . [ ] this belief seems frequent among young girls in continental europe. it forms the subject of one of marcel prevost's _lettres de femmes_. in austria, according to freud, it is not uncommon, exclusively among girls. [ ] yet, according to english law, rape is a crime which it is impossible for a husband to commit on his wife (see, e.g., nevill geary, _the law of marriage_, ch. xv, sect. v). the performance of the marriage ceremony, however, even if it necessarily involved a clear explanation of marital privileges, cannot be regarded as adequate justification for an act of sexual intercourse performed with violence or without the wife's consent. [ ] hirschfeld, _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, , p. . it may be added that a horror of coitus is not necessarily due to bad education, and may also occur in hereditarily degenerate women, whose ancestors have shown similar or allied mental peculiarities. a case of such "functional impotence" has been reported in a young italian wife of twenty-one, who was otherwise healthy, and strongly attached to her husband. the marriage was annulled on the ground that "rudimentary sexual or emotional paranoia, which renders a wife invincibly refractory to sexual union, notwithstanding the integrity of the sexual organs, constitutes psychic functional impotence" (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. vi, p. ). [ ] the reasonableness of this step is so obvious that it should scarcely need insistence. "the instruction of school-boys and school-girls is most adequately effected by an elderly doctor," näcke remarks, "sometimes perhaps the school-doctor." "i strongly advocate," says clouston (_the hygiene of mind_, p. ), "that the family doctor, guided by the parent and the teacher, is by far the best instructor and monitor." moll is of the same opinion. [ ] i have further developed this argument in "religion and the child," _nineteenth century and after_, . [ ] the intimate relation of art and poetry to the sexual impulse has been realized in a fragmentary way by many who have not attained to any wide vision of auto-erotic activity in life. "poetry is necessarily related to the sexual function," says metchnikoff (_essais optimistes_, p. ), who also quotes with approval the statement of möbius (previously made by ferrero and many others) that "artistic aptitudes must probably be considered as secondary sexual characters." chapter iii. sexual education and nakedness. the greek attitude towards nakedness--how the romans modified that attitude--the influence of christianity--nakedness in mediæval times--evolution of the horror of nakedness--concomitant change in the conception of nakedness--prudery--the romantic movement--rise of a new feeling in regard to nakedness--the hygienic aspect of nakedness--how children may be accustomed to nakedness--nakedness not inimical to modesty--the instinct of physical pride--the value of nakedness in education--the Æsthetic value of nakedness--the human body as one of the prime tonics of life--how nakedness may be cultivated--the moral value of nakedness. the discussion of the value of nakedness in art leads us on to the allied question of nakedness in nature. what is the psychological influence of familiarity with nakedness? how far should children be made familiar with the naked body? this is a question in regard to which different opinions have been held in different ages, and during recent years a remarkable change has begun to come over the minds of practical educationalists in regard to it. in sparta, in chios, and elsewhere in greece, women at one time practiced gymnastic feats and dances in nakedness, together with the men, or in their presence.[ ] plato in his _republic_ approved of such customs and said that the ridicule of those who laughed at them was but "unripe fruit plucked from the tree of knowledge." on many questions plato's opinions changed, but not on this. in the _laws_, which are the last outcome of his philosophic reflection in old age, he still advocates (bk. viii) a similar co-education of the sexes and their coöperation in all the works of life, in part with a view to blunt the over-keen edge of sexual appetite; with the same object he advocated the association together of youths and girls without constraint in costumes which offered no concealment to the form. it is noteworthy that the romans, a coarser-grained people than the greeks and in our narrow modern sense more "moral," showed no perception of the moralizing and refining influence of nakedness. nudity to them was merely a licentious indulgence, to be treated with contempt even when it was enjoyed. it was confined to the stage, and clamored for by the populace. in the floralia, especially, the crowd seem to have claimed it as their right that the actors should play naked, probably, it has been thought, as a survival of a folk-ritual. but the romans, though they were eager to run to the theatre, felt nothing but disdain for the performers. "flagitii principium est, nudare inter cives corpora." so thought old ennius, as reported by cicero, and that remained the genuine roman feeling to the last. "quanta perversitas!" as tertullian exclaimed. "artem magnificant, artificem notant."[ ] in this matter the romans, although they aroused the horror of the christians, were yet in reality laying the foundation of christian morality. christianity, which found so many of plato's opinions congenial, would have nothing to do with his view of nakedness and failed to recognize its psychological correctness. the reason was simple, and indeed simple-minded. the church was passionately eager to fight against what it called "the flesh," and thus fell into the error of confusing the subjective question of sexual desire with the objective spectacle of the naked form. "the flesh" is evil; therefore, "the flesh" must be hidden. and they hid it, without understanding that in so doing they had not suppressed the craving for the human form, but, on the contrary, had heightened it by imparting to it the additional fascination of a forbidden mystery. burton, in his _anatomy of melancholy_ (part iii, sect ii, mem. ii, subs. iv), referring to the recommendations of plato, adds: "but _eusebius_ and _theodoret_ worthily lash him for it; and well they might: for as one saith, the very sight of naked parts, _causeth enormous, exceeding concupiscences, and stirs up both men and women to burning lust_." yet, as burton himself adds further on in the same section of his work (mem. v, subs. iii), without protest, "some are of opinion, that to see a woman naked, is able of itself to alter his affection; and it is worthy of consideration, saith _montaigne_, the frenchman, in his essays, that the skilfullest masters of amorous dalliance appoint for a remedy of venereous passions, a full survey of the body." there ought to be no question regarding the fact that it is the adorned, the partially concealed body, and not the absolutely naked body, which acts as a sexual excitant. i have brought together some evidence on this point in the study of "the evolution of modesty." "in madagascar, west africa, and the cape," says g.f. scott elliot (_a naturalist in mid-africa_, p. ), "i have always found the same rule. chastity varies inversely as the amount of clothing." it is now indeed generally held that one of the chief primary objects of ornament and clothing was the stimulation of sexual desire, and artists' models are well aware that when they are completely unclothed, they are most safe from undesired masculine advances. "a favorite model of mine told me," remarks dr. shufeldt (_medical brief_, oct., ), the distinguished author of _studies of the human form_, "that it was her practice to disrobe as soon after entering the artist's studio as possible, for, as men are not always responsible for their emotions, she felt that she was far less likely to arouse or excite them when entirely nude than when only semi-draped." this fact is, indeed, quite familiar to artists' models. if the conquest of sexual desire were the first and last consideration of life it would be more reasonable to prohibit clothing than to prohibit nakedness. when christianity absorbed the whole of the european world this strict avoidance of even the sight of "the flesh," although nominally accepted by all as the desirable ideal, could only be carried out, thoroughly and completely, in the cloister. in the practice of the world outside, although the original christian ideals remained influential, various pagan and primitive traditions in favor of nakedness still persisted, and were, to some extent, allowed to manifest themselves, alike in ordinary custom and on special occasions. how widespread is the occasional or habitual practice of nakedness in the world generally, and how entirely concordant it is with even a most sensitive modesty, has been set forth in "the evolution of modesty," in vol. i of these _studies_. even during the christian era the impulse to adopt nudity, often with the feeling that it was an especially sacred practice, has persisted. the adamites of the second century, who read and prayed naked, and celebrated the sacrament naked, according to the statement quoted by st. augustine, seem to have caused little scandal so long as they only practiced nudity in their sacred ceremonies. the german brethren of the free spirit, in the thirteenth century, combined so much chastity with promiscuous nakedness that orthodox catholics believed they were assisted by the devil. the french picards, at a much later date, insisted on public nakedness, believing that god had sent their leader into the world as a new adam to reestablish the law of nature; they were persecuted and were finally exterminated by the hussites. in daily life, however, a considerable degree of nakedness was tolerated during mediæval times. this was notably so in the public baths, frequented by men and women together. thus alwin schultz remarks (in his _höfische leben zur zeit der minnesänger_), that the women of the aristocratic classes, though not the men, were often naked in these baths except for a hat and a necklace. it is sometimes stated that in the mediæval religious plays adam and eve were absolutely naked. chambers doubts this, and thinks they wore flesh-colored tights, or were, as in a later play of this kind, "apparelled in white leather" (e.k. chambers, _the mediæval stage_, vol. i, p. ). it may be so, but the public exposure even of the sexual organs was permitted, and that in aristocratic houses, for john of salisbury (in a passage quoted by buckle, _commonplace book_, ) protests against this custom. the women of the feminist sixteenth century in france, as r. de maulde la clavière remarks (_revue de l'art_, jan., ), had no scruple in recompensing their adorers by admitting them to their toilette, or even their bath. late in the century they became still less prudish, and many well-known ladies allowed themselves to be painted naked down to the waist, as we see in the portrait of "gabrielle d'estrées au bain" at chantilly. many of these pictures, however, are certainly not real portraits. even in the middle of the seventeenth century in england nakedness was not prohibited in public, for pepys tells us that on july , , a quaker came into westminster hall, crying, "repent! repent!" being in a state of nakedness, except that he was "very civilly tied about the privities to avoid scandal." (this was doubtless solomon eccles, who was accustomed to go about in this costume, both before and after the restoration. he had been a distinguished musician, and, though eccentric, was apparently not insane.) in a chapter, "de la nudité," and in the appendices of his book, _de l'amour_ (vol. i, p. ), sénancour gives instances of the occasional practice of nudity in europe, and adds some interesting remarks of his own; so, also, dulaure (_des divinités génératrices_, ch. xv). it would appear, as a rule, that though complete nudity was allowed in other respects, it was usual to cover the sexual parts. the movement of revolt against nakedness never became completely victorious until the nineteenth century. that century represented the triumph of all the forces that banned public nakedness everywhere and altogether. if, as pudor insists, nakedness is aristocratic and the slavery of clothes a plebeian characteristic imposed on the lower classes by an upper class who reserved to themselves the privilege of physical culture, we may perhaps connect this with the outburst of democratic plebeianism which, as nietzsche pointed out, reached its climax in the nineteenth century. it is in any case certainly interesting to observe that by this time the movement had entirely changed its character. it had become general, but at the same time its foundation had been undermined. it had largely lost its religious and moral character, and instead was regarded as a matter of convention. the nineteenth century man who encountered the spectacle of white limbs flashing in the sunlight no longer felt like the mediæval ascetic that he was risking the salvation of his immortal soul or even courting the depravation of his morals; he merely felt that it was "indecent" or, in extreme cases, "disgusting." that is to say he regarded the matter as simply a question of conventional etiquette, at the worst, of taste, of æsthetics. in thus bringing down his repugnance to nakedness to so low a plane he had indeed rendered it generally acceptable, but at the same time he had deprived it of high sanction. his profound horror of nakedness was out of relation to the frivolous grounds on which he based it. we must not, however, under-rate the tenacity with which this horror of nakedness was held. nothing illustrates more vividly the deeply ingrained hatred which the nineteenth century felt of nakedness than the ferocity--there is no other word for it--with which christian missionaries to savages all over the world, even in the tropics, insisted on their converts adopting the conventional clothing of northern europe. travellers' narratives abound in references to the emphasis placed by missionaries on this change of custom, which was both injurious to the health of the people and degrading to their dignity. it is sufficient to quote one authoritative witness, lord stanmore, formerly governor of fiji, who read a long paper to the anglican missionary conference in on the subject of "undue introduction of western ways." "in the centre of the village," he remarked in quoting a typical case (and referring not to fiji but to tonga), "is the church, a wooden barn-like building. if the day be sunday, we shall find the native minister arrayed in a greenish-black swallow-tail coat, a neckcloth, once white, and a pair of spectacles, which he probably does not need, preaching to a congregation, the male portion of which is dressed in much the same manner as himself, while the women are dizened out in old battered hats or bonnets, and shapeless gowns like bathing dresses, or it may be in crinolines of an early type. chiefs of influence and women of high birth, who in their native dress would look, and do look, the ladies and gentlemen they are, are, by their sunday finery, given the appearance of attendants upon jack-in-the-green. if a visit be paid to the houses of the town, after the morning's work of the people is over, the family will be found sitting on chairs, listless and uncomfortable, in a room full of litter. in the houses of the superior native clergy there will be a yet greater aping of the manners of the west. there will be chairs covered with hideous antimacassars, tasteless round worsted-work mats for absent flower jars, and a lot of ugly cheap and vulgar china chimney ornaments, which, there being no fireplace, and consequently no chimney-piece, are set out in order on a rickety deal table. the whole life of these village folk is one piece of unreal acting. they are continually asking themselves whether they are incurring any of the penalties entailed by infraction of the long table of prohibitions, and whether they are living up to the foreign garments they wear. their faces have, for the most part, an expression of sullen discontent, they move about silently and joylessly, rebels in heart to the restrictive code on them, but which they fear to cast off, partly from a vague apprehension of possible secular results, and partly because they suppose they will cease to be good christians if they do so. they have good ground for their dissatisfaction. at the time when i visited the villages i have specially in my eye, it was punishable by fine and imprisonment to wear native clothing, punishable by fine and imprisonment to wear long hair or a garland of flowers; punishable by fine or imprisonment to wrestle or to play at ball; punishable by fine and imprisonment to build a native-fashioned house; punishable not to wear shirt and trousers, and in certain localities coat and shoes also; and, in addition to laws enforcing a strictly puritanical observation of the sabbath, it was punishable by fine and imprisonment to bathe on sundays. in some other places bathing on sunday was punishable by flogging; and to my knowledge women have been flogged for no other offense. men in such circumstances are ripe for revolt, and sometimes the revolt comes." an obvious result of reducing the feeling about nakedness to an unreasoning but imperative convention is the tendency to prudishness. this, as we know, is a form of pseudo-modesty which, being a convention, and not a natural feeling, is capable of unlimited extension. it is by no means confined to modern times or to christian europe. the ancient hebrews were not entirely free from prudishness, and we find in the old testament that by a curious euphemism the sexual organs are sometimes referred to as "the feet." the turks are capable of prudishness. so, indeed, were even the ancient greeks. "dion the philosopher tells us," remarks clement of alexandria (_stromates_, bk. iv, ch. xix) "that a certain woman, lysidica, through excess of modesty, bathed in her clothes, and that philotera, when she was to enter the bath, gradually drew back her tunic as the water covered her naked parts; and then rising by degrees, put it on." mincing prudes were found among the early christians, and their ways are graphically described by st. jerome in one of his letters to eustochium: "these women," he says, "speak between their teeth or with the edge of the lips, and with a lisping tongue, only half pronouncing their words, because they regard as gross whatever is natural. such as these," declares jerome, the scholar in him overcoming the ascetic, "corrupt even language." whenever a new and artificial "modesty" is imposed upon savages prudery tends to arise. haddon describes this among the natives of torres straits, where even the children now suffer from exaggerated prudishness, though formerly absolutely naked and unashamed (_cambridge anthropological expedition to torres straits_, vol. v, p. ). the nineteenth century, which witnessed the triumph of timidity and prudery in this matter, also produced the first fruitful germ of new conceptions of nakedness. to some extent these were embodied in the great romantic movement. rousseau, indeed, had placed no special insistence on nakedness as an element of the return to nature which he preached so influentially. a new feeling in this matter emerged, however, with characteristic extravagance, in some of the episodes of the revolution, while in germany in the pioneering _lucinde_ of friedrich schlegel, a characteristic figure in the romantic movement, a still unfamiliar conception of the body was set forth in a serious and earnest spirit. in england, blake with his strange and flaming genius, proclaimed a mystical gospel which involved the spiritual glorification of the body and contempt for the civilized worship of clothes ("as to a modern man," he wrote, "stripped from his load of clothing he is like a dead corpse"); while, later, in america, thoreau and whitman and burroughs asserted, still more definitely, a not dissimilar message concerning the need of returning to nature. we find the importance of the sight of the body--though very narrowly, for the avoidance of fraud in the preliminaries of marriage--set forth as early as the sixteenth century by sir thomas more in his _utopia_, which is so rich in new and fruitful ideas. in utopia, according to sir thomas more, before marriage, a staid and honest matron "showeth the woman, be she maid or widow, naked to the wooer. and likewise a sage and discreet man exhibiteth the wooer naked to the woman. at this custom we laughed and disallowed it as foolish. but they, on their part, do greatly wonder at the folly of all other nations which, in buying a colt where a little money is in hazard, be so chary and circumspect that though he be almost all bare, yet they will not buy him unless the saddle and all the harness be taken off, lest under these coverings be hid some gall or sore. and yet, in choosing a wife, which shall be either pleasure or displeasure to them all their life after, they be so reckless that all the residue of the woman's body being covered with clothes, they estimate her scarcely by one handsbreadth (for they can see no more but her face) and so join her to them, not without great jeopardy of evil agreeing together, if anything in her body afterward should chance to offend or mislike them. verily, so foul deformity may be hid under these coverings that it may quite alienate and take away the man's mind from his wife, when it shall not be lawful for their bodies to be separate again. if such deformity happen by any chance after the marriage is consummate and finished, well, there is no remedy but patience. but it were well done that a law were made whereby all such deceits were eschewed and avoided beforehand." the clear conception of what may be called the spiritual value of nakedness--by no means from more's point of view, but as a part of natural hygiene in the widest sense, and as a high and special aspect of the purifying and ennobling function of beauty--is of much later date. it is not clearly expressed until the time of the romantic movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century. we have it admirably set forth in sénancour's _de l'amour_ (first edition, ; fourth and enlarged edition, ), which still remains one of the best books on the morality of love. after remarking that nakedness by no means abolishes modesty, he proceeds to advocate occasional partial or complete nudity. "let us suppose," he remarks, somewhat in the spirit of plato, "a country in which at certain general festivals the women should be absolutely free to be nearly or even quite naked. swimming, waltzing, walking, those who thought good to do so might remain unclothed in the presence of men. no doubt the illusions of love would be little known, and passion would see a diminution of its transports. but is it passion that in general ennobles human affairs? we need honest attachments and delicate delights, and all these we may obtain while still preserving our common-sense.... such nakedness would demand corresponding institutions, strong and simple, and a great respect for those conventions which belong to all times" (sénancour, _de l'amour_, vol. i, p. ). from that time onwards references to the value and desirability of nakedness become more and more frequent in all civilized countries, sometimes mingled with sarcastic allusions to the false conventions we have inherited in this matter. thus thoreau writes in his journal on june , , as he looks at boys bathing in the river: "the color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing. i hear the sound of their sport borne over the water. as yet we have not man in nature. what a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties." iwan bloch, in chapter vii of his _sexual life of our time_, discusses this question of nakedness from the modern point of view, and concludes: "a natural conception of nakedness: that is the watchword of the future. all the hygienic, æsthetic, and moral efforts of our time are pointing in that direction." stratz, as befits one who has worked so strenuously in the cause of human health and beauty, admirably sets forth the stage which we have now attained in this matter. after pointing out (_die frauenkleidung_, third edition, , p. ) that, in opposition to the pagan world which worshipped naked gods, christianity developed the idea that nakedness was merely sexual, and therefore immoral, he proceeds: "but over all glimmered on the heavenly heights of the cross, the naked body of the saviour. under that protection there has gradually disengaged itself from the confusion of ideas a new transfigured form of nakedness made free after long struggle. i would call this _artistic nakedness_, for as it was immortalized by the old greeks through art, so also among us it has been awakened to new life by art. artistic nakedness is, in its nature, much higher than either the natural or the sensual conception of nakedness. the simple child of nature sees in nakedness nothing at all; the clothed man sees in the uncovered body only a sensual irritation. but at the highest standpoint man consciously returns to nature, and recognizes that under the manifold coverings of human fabrication there is hidden the most splendid creature that god has created. one may stand in silent, worshipping wonder before the sight; another may be impelled to imitate and show to his fellow-man what in that holy moment he has seen. but both enjoy the spectacle of human beauty with full consciousness and enlightened purity of thought." it was not, however, so much on these more spiritual sides, but on the side of hygiene, that the nineteenth century furnished its chief practical contribution to the new attitude towards nakedness. lord monboddo, the scotch judge, who was a pioneer in regard to many modern ideas, had already in the eighteenth century realized the hygienic value of "air-baths," and he invented that now familiar name. "lord monboddo," says boswell, in (_life of johnson_, edited by hill, vol. iii, p. ) "told me that he awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking _an air-bath_." it is said also, i know not on what authority, that he made his beautiful daughters take an air-bath naked on the terrace every morning. another distinguished man of the same century, benjamin franklin, used sometimes to work naked in his study on hygienic grounds, and, it is recorded, once affrighted a servant-girl by opening the door in an absent-minded moment, thus unattired. rikli seems to have been the apostle of air-baths and sun-baths regarded as a systematic method. he established light-and air-baths over half a century ago at trieste and elsewhere in austria. his motto was: "light, truth, and freedom are the motive forces towards the highest development of physical and moral health." man is not a fish, he declared; light and air are the first conditions of a highly organized life. solaria for the treatment of a number of different disordered conditions are now commonly established, and most systems of natural therapeutics attach prime importance to light and air, while in medicine generally it is beginning to be recognized that such influences can by no means be neglected. dr. fernand sandoz, in his _introduction à la thérapeutique naturiste par les agents physiques et dietétiques_ ( ) sets forth such methods comprehensively. in germany sun-baths have become widely common; thus lenkei (in a paper summarized in _british medical journal_, oct. , ) prescribes them with much benefit in tuberculosis, rheumatic conditions, obesity, anæmia, neurasthenia, etc. he considers that their peculiar value lies in the action of light. professor j.n. hyde, of chicago, even believes ("light-hunger in the production of psoriasis," _british medical journal_, oct. , ), that psoriasis is caused by deficiency of sunlight, and is best cured by the application of light. this belief, which has not, however, been generally accepted in its unqualified form, he ingeniously supports by the fact that psoriasis tends to appear on the most exposed parts of the body, which may be held to naturally receive and require the maximum of light, and by the absence of the disease in hot countries and among negroes. the hygienic value of nakedness is indicated by the robust health of the savages throughout the world who go naked. the vigor of the irish, also, has been connected with the fact that (as fynes moryson's _itinerary_ shows) both sexes, even among persons of high social class, were accustomed to go naked except for a mantle, especially in more remote parts of the country, as late as the seventeenth century. where-ever primitive races abandon nakedness for clothing, at once the tendency to disease, mortality, and degeneracy notably increases, though it must be remembered that the use of clothing is commonly accompanied by the introduction of other bad habits. "nakedness is the only condition universal among vigorous and healthy savages; at every other point perhaps they differ," remarks frederick boyle in a paper ("savages and clothes," _monthly review_, sept., ) in which he brings together much evidence concerning the hygienic advantages of the natural human state in which man is "all face." it is in germany that a return towards nakedness has been most ably and thoroughly advocated, notably by dr. h. pudor in his _nackt-cultur_, and by r. ungewitter in _die nacktheit_ (first published in ), a book which has had a very large circulation in many editions. these writers enthusiastically advocate nakedness, not only on hygienic, but on moral and artistic grounds. pudor insists more especially that "nakedness, both in gymnastics and in sport, is a method of cure and a method of regeneration;" he advocates co-education in this culture of nakedness. although he makes large claims for nakedness--believing that all the nations which have disregarded these claims have rapidly become decadent--pudor is less hopeful than ungewitter of any speedy victory over the prejudices opposed to the culture of nakedness. he considers that the immediate task is education, and that a practical commencement may best be made with the foot which is specially in need of hygiene and exercise; a large part of the first volume of his book is devoted to the foot. as the matter is to-day viewed by those educationalists who are equally alive to sanitary and sexual considerations, the claims of nakedness, so far as concerns the young, are regarded as part alike of physical and moral hygiene. the free contact of the naked body with air and water and light makes for the health of the body; familiarity with the sight of the body abolishes petty pruriencies, trains the sense of beauty, and makes for the health of the soul. this double aspect of the matter has undoubtedly weighed greatly with those teachers who now approve of customs which, a few years ago, would have been hastily dismissed as "indecent." there is still a wide difference of opinion as to the limits to which the practice of nakedness may be carried, and also as to the age when it should begin to be restricted. the fact that the adult generation of to-day grew up under the influence of the old horror of nakedness is an inevitable check on any revolutionary changes in these matters. maria lischnewska, one of the ablest advocates of the methodical enlightenment of children in matters of sex (op. cit.), clearly realizes that a sane attitude towards the body lies at the root of a sound education for life. she finds that the chief objection encountered in such education, as applied in the higher classes of schools, is "the horror of the civilized man at his own body." she shows that there can be no doubt that those who are engaged in the difficult task of working towards the abolition of that superstitious horror have taken up a moral task of the first importance. walter gerhard, in a thoughtful and sensible paper on the educational question ("ein kapitel zur erziehungsfrage," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. i, heft ), points out that it is the adult who needs education in this matter--as in so many other matters of sexual enlightenment--considerably more than the child. parents educate their children from the earliest years in prudery, and vainly flatter themselves that they have thereby promoted their modesty and morality. he records his own early life in a tropical land and accustomed to nakedness from the first. "it was not till i came to germany when nearly twenty that i learnt that the human body is indecent, and that it must not be shown because that 'would arouse bad impulses.' it was not till the human body was entirely withdrawn from my sight and after i was constantly told that there was something improper behind clothes, that i was able to understand this.... until then i had not known that a naked body, by the mere fact of being naked, could arouse erotic feelings. i had known erotic feelings, but they had not arisen from the sight of the naked body, but gradually blossomed from the union of our souls." and he draws the final moral that, if only for the sake of our children, we must learn to educate ourselves. forel (_die sexuelle frage_, p. ), speaking in entirely the same sense as gerhard, remarks that prudery may be either caused or cured in children. it may be caused by undue anxiety in covering their bodies and hiding from them the bodies of others. it may be cured by making them realize that there is nothing in the body that is unnatural and that we need be ashamed of, and by encouraging bathing of the sexes in common. he points out (p. ) the advantages of allowing children to be acquainted with the adult forms which they will themselves some day assume, and condemns the conduct of those foolish persons who assume that children already possess the adult's erotic feelings about the body. that is so far from being the case that children are frequently unable to distinguish the sex of other children apart from their clothes. at the mannheim congress of the german society for combating venereal diseases, specially devoted to sexual hygiene, the speakers constantly referred to the necessity of promoting familiarity with the naked body. thus eulenburg and julian marcuse (_sexualpädagogik_, p. ) emphasize the importance of air-baths, not only for the sake of the physical health of the young, but in the interests of rational sexual training. höller, a teacher, speaking at the same congress (op. cit., p. ), after insisting on familiarity with the nude in art and literature, and protesting against the bowdlerising of poems for the young, continues: "by bathing-drawers ordinances no soul was ever yet saved from moral ruin. one who has learnt to enjoy peacefully the naked in art is only stirred by the naked in nature as by a work of art." enderlin, another teacher, speaking in the same sense (p. ), points out that nakedness cannot act sexually or immorally on the child, since the sexual impulse has not yet become pronounced, and the earlier he is introduced to the naked in nature and in art, as a matter of course, the less likely are the sexual feelings to be developed precociously. the child thus, indeed, becomes immune to impure influences, so that later, when representations of the nude are brought before him for the object of provoking his wantonness, they are powerless to injure him. it is important, enderlin adds, for familiarity with the nude in art to be learnt at school, for most of us, as siebert remarks, have to learn purity through art. nakedness in bathing, remarks bölsche in his _liebesleben in der natur_ (vol. iii, pp. et seq.), we already in some measure possess; we need it in physical exercises, at first for the sexes separately; then, when we have grown accustomed to the idea, occasionally for both sexes together. we need to acquire the capacity to see the bodies of individuals of the other sex with such self-control and such natural instinct that they become non-erotic to us and can be gazed at without erotic feeling. art, he says, shows that this is possible in civilization. science, he adds, comes to the aid of the same view. ungewitter (_die nacktheit_, p. ) also advocates boys and girls engaging in play and gymnastics together, entirely naked in air-baths. "in this way," he believes, "the gymnasium would become a school of morality, in which young growing things would be able to retain their purity as long as possible through becoming naturally accustomed to each other. at the same time their bodies would be hardened and developed, and the perception of beautiful and natural forms awakened." to those who have any "moral" doubts on the matter, he mentions the custom in remote country districts of boys and girls bathing together quite naked and without any sexual consciousness. rudolf sommer, similarly, in an excellent article entitled "mädchenerziehung oder menschenbildung?" (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. i, heft ) advises that children should be made accustomed to each other's nakedness from an early age in the family life of the house or the garden, in games, and especially in bathing; he remarks that parents having children of only one sex should cultivate for their children's sake intimate relations with a family having children of like age of the opposite sex, so that they may grow up together. it is scarcely necessary to add that the cultivation of nakedness must always be conciliated with respect for the natural instincts of modesty. if the practice of nakedness led the young to experience a diminished reverence for their own or others' personalities the advantages of it would be too dearly bought. this is, in part, a matter of wholesome instinct, in part of wise training. we now know that the absence of clothes has little relation with the absence of modesty, such relation as there is being of the inverse order, for the savage races which go naked are usually more modest than those which wear clothes. the saying quoted by herodotus in the early greek world that "a woman takes off her modesty with her shift" was a favorite text of the christian fathers. but plutarch, who was also a moralist, had already protested against it at the close of the greek world: "by no means," he declared, "she who is modest clothes herself with modesty when she lays aside her tunic." "a woman may be naked," as mrs. bishop, the traveller, remarked to dr. baelz, in japan, "and yet behave like a lady."[ ] the question is complicated among ourselves because established traditions of rigid concealment have fostered a pruriency which is an offensive insult to naked modesty. in many lands the women who are accustomed to be almost or quite naked in the presence of their own people cover themselves as soon as they become conscious of the lustful inquisitive eyes of europeans. stratz refers to the prevalence of this impulse of offended modesty in japan, and mentions that he himself failed to arouse it simply because he was a physician, and, moreover, had long lived in another land (java) where also the custom of nakedness prevails.[ ] so long as this unnatural prurience exists a free unqualified nakedness is rendered difficult. modesty is not, however, the only natural impulse which has to be considered in relation to the custom of nakedness. it seems probable that in cultivating the practice of nakedness we are not merely carrying out a moral and hygienic prescription but allowing legitimate scope to an instinct which at some periods of life, especially in adolescence, is spontaneous and natural, even, it may be, wholesomely based in the traditions of the race in sexual selection. our rigid conventions make it impossible for us to discover the laws of nature in this matter by stifling them at the outset. it may well be that there is a rhythmic harmony and concordance between impulses of modesty and impulses of ostentation, though we have done our best to disguise the natural law by our stupid and perverse by-laws. stanley hall, who emphasizes the importance of nakedness, remarks that at puberty we have much reason to assume that in a state of nature there is a certain instinctive pride and ostentation that accompanies the new local development, and quotes the observation of dr. seerley that the impulse to conceal the sexual organs is especially marked in young men who are underdeveloped, but not evident in those who are developed beyond the average. stanley hall (_adolescence_, vol. ii, p. ), also refers to the frequency with which not only "virtuous young men, but even women, rather glory in occasions when they can display the beauty of their forms without reserve, not only to themselves and to loved ones, but even to others with proper pretexts." many have doubtless noted this tendency, especially in women, and chiefly in those who are conscious of beautiful physical development. madame céline renooz believes that the tendency corresponds to a really deep-rooted instinct in women, little or not at all manifested in men who have consequently sought to impose artificially on women their own masculine conceptions of modesty. "in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. at this moment, wavering between the laws of nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should, or should not, affright her. a sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch" (céline renooz, _psychologie comparée de l'homme et de la femme_, pp. - ). perhaps this was obscurely felt by the german girl (mentioned in kalbeck's _life of brahms_), who said: "one enjoys music twice as much _décolletée_." from the point of view with which we are here essentially concerned there are three ways in which the cultivation of nakedness--so far as it is permitted by the slow education of public opinion--tends to exert an influence: ( ) it is an important element in the sexual hygiene of the young, introducing a wholesome knowledge and incuriosity into a sphere once given up to prudery and pruriency. ( ) the effect of nakedness is beneficial on those of more mature age, also, in so far as it tends to cultivate the sense of beauty and to furnish the tonic and consoling influences of natural vigor and grace. ( ) the custom of nakedness, in its inception at all events, has a dynamic psychological influence also on morals, an influence exerted in the substitution of a strenuous and positive morality for the merely negative and timid morality which has ruled in this sphere. perhaps there are not many adults who realize the intense and secret absorption of thought in the minds of many boys and some girls concerning the problem of the physical conformation of the other sex, and the time, patience, and intellectual energy which they are willing to expend on the solution of this problem. this is mostly effected in secret, but not seldom the secret impulse manifests itself with a sudden violence which in the blind eyes of the law is reckoned as crime. a german lawyer, dr. werthauer, has lately stated that if there were a due degree of familiarity with the natural organs and functions of the opposite sex ninety per cent. of the indecent acts of youths with girl children would disappear, for in most cases these are not assaults but merely the innocent, though uncontrollable, outcome of a repressed natural curiosity. it is quite true that not a few children boldly enlist each others' coöperation in the settlement of the question and resolve it to their mutual satisfaction. but even this is not altogether satisfactory, for the end is not attained openly and wholesomely, with a due subordination of the specifically sexual, but with a consciousness of wrong-doing and an exclusive attentiveness to the merely physical fact which tend directly to develop sexual excitement. when familiarity with the naked body of the other sex is gained openly and with no consciousness of indecorum, in the course of work and of play, in exercise or gymnastics, in running or in bathing, from a child's earliest years, no unwholesome results accompany the knowledge of the essential facts of physical conformation thus naturally acquired. the prurience and prudery which have poisoned sexual life in the past are alike rendered impossible. nakedness has, however, a hygienic value, as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young or acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. it is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. the vision of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the world, with its vigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of the prime tonics of life. "the power of a woman's body," said james hinton, "is no more bodily than the power of music is a power of atmospheric vibrations." it is more than all the beautiful and stimulating things of the world, than flowers or stars or the sea. history and legend and myth reveal to us the sacred and awful influence of nakedness, for, as stanley hall says, nakedness has always been "a talisman of wondrous power with gods and men." how sorely men crave for the spectacle of the human body--even to-day after generations have inculcated the notion that it is an indecorous and even disgusting spectacle--is witnessed by the eagerness with which they seek after the spectacle of even its imperfect and meretricious forms, although these certainly possess a heady and stimulating quality which can never be found in the pathetic simplicity of naked beauty. it was another spectacle when the queens of ancient madagascar at the annual fandroon, or feast of the bath, laid aside their royal robes and while their subjects crowded the palace courtyard, descended the marble steps to the bath in complete nakedness. when we make our conventions of clothing rigid we at once spread a feast for lust and deny ourselves one of the prime tonics of life. "i was feeling in despair and walking despondently along a melbourne street," writes the australian author of a yet unpublished autobiography, "when three children came running out of a lane and crossed the road in full daylight. the beauty and texture of their legs in the open air filled me with joy, so that i forgot all my troubles whilst looking at them. it was a bright revelation, an unexpected glimpse of paradise, and i have never ceased to thank the happy combination of shape, pure blood, and fine skin of these poverty-stricken children, for the wind seemed to quicken their golden beauty, and i retained the rosy vision of their natural young limbs, so much more divine than those always under cover. another occasion when naked young limbs made me forget all my gloom and despondency was on my first visit to adelaide. i came on a naked boy leaning on the railing near the baths, and the beauty of his face, torso, fair young limbs and exquisite feet filled me with joy and renewed hope. the tears came to my eyes, and i said to myself, 'while there is beauty in the world i will continue to struggle,'" we must, as bölsche declares (loc. cit.), accustom ourselves to gaze on the naked human body exactly as we gaze at a beautiful flower, not merely with the pity with which the doctor looks at the body, but with joy in its strength and health and beauty. for a flower, as bölsche truly adds, is not merely "naked body," it is the most sacred region of the body, the sexual organs of the plant. "for girls to dance naked," said hinton, "is the only truly pure form of dancing, and in due time it must therefore come about. this is certain: girls will dance naked and men will be pure enough to gaze on them." it has already been so in greece, he elsewhere remarks, as it is to-day in japan (as more recently described by stratz). it is nearly forty years since these prophetic words were written, but hinton himself would probably have been surprised at the progress which has already been made slowly (for all true progress must be slow) towards this goal. even on the stage new and more natural traditions are beginning to prevail in europe. it is not many years since an english actress regarded as a calumny the statement that she appeared on the stage bare-foot, and brought an action for libel, winning substantial damages. such a result would scarcely be possible to-day. the movement in which isadora duncan was a pioneer has led to a partial disuse among dancers of the offensive device of tights, and it is no longer considered indecorous to show many parts of the body which it was formerly usual to cover. it should, however, be added at the same time that, while dancers, in so far as they are genuine artists, are entitled to determine the conditions most favorable to their art, nothing whatever is gained for the cause of a wholesome culture of nakedness by the "living statues" and "living pictures" which have obtained an international vogue during recent years. these may be legitimate as variety performances, but they have nothing whatever to do with either nature or art. dr. pudor, writing as one of the earliest apostles of the culture of nakedness, has energetically protested against these performances (_sexual-probleme_, dec., , p. ). he rightly points out that nakedness, to be wholesome, requires the open air, the meadows, the sunlight, and that nakedness at night, in a music hall, by artificial light, in the presence of spectators who are themselves clothed, has no element of morality about it. attempts have here and there been quietly made to cultivate a certain amount of mutual nakedness as between the sexes on remote country excursions. it is significant to find a record of such an experiment in ungewitter's _die nacktheit_. in this case a party of people, men and women, would regularly every sunday seek remote spots in woods or meadows where they would settle down, picnic, and enjoy games. "they made themselves as comfortable as possible, the men laying aside their coats, waistcoats, boots and socks; the women their blouses, skirts, shoes and stockings. gradually, as the moral conception of nakedness developed in their minds, more and more clothing fell away, until the men wore nothing but bathing-drawers and the women only their chemises. in this 'costume' games were carried out in common, and a regular camp-life led. the ladies (some of whom were unmarried) would then lie in hammocks and we men on the grass, and the intercourse was delightful. we felt as members of one family, and behaved accordingly. in an entirely natural and unembarrassed way we gave ourselves up entirely to the liberating feelings aroused by this light- and air-bath, and passed these splendid hours in joyous singing and dancing, in wantonly childish fashion, freed from the burden of a false civilization. it was, of course, necessary to seek spots as remote as possible from high-roads, for fear of being disturbed. at the same time we by no means failed in natural modesty and consideration towards one another. children, who can be entirely naked, may be allowed to take part in such meetings of adults, and will thus be brought up free from morbid prudery" (r. ungewitter, _die nacktheit_, p. ). no doubt it may be said that the ideal in this matter is the possibility of permitting complete nakedness. this may be admitted, and it is undoubtedly true that our rigid police regulations do much to artificially foster a concealment in this matter which is not based on any natural instinct. dr. shufeldt narrates in his _studies of the human form_ that once in the course of a photographic expedition in the woods he came upon two boys, naked except for bathing-drawers, engaged in getting water lilies from a pond. he found them a good subject for his camera, but they could not be induced to remove their drawers, by no means out of either modesty or mock-modesty, but simply because they feared they might possibly be caught and arrested. we have to recognize that at the present day the general popular sentiment is not yet sufficiently educated to allow of public disregard for the convention of covering the sexual centres, and all attempts to extend the bounds of nakedness must show a due regard for this requirement. as concerns women, valentin lehr, of freiburg, in breisgau, has invented a costume (figured in ungewitter's _die nacktheit_) which is suitable for either public water-baths or air-baths, because it meets the demand of those whose minimum requirement is that the chief sexual centres of the body should be covered in public, while it is otherwise fairly unobjectionable. it consists of two pieces, made of porous material, one covering the breasts with a band over the shoulders, and the other covering the abdomen below the navel and drawn between the legs. this minimal costume, while neither ideal nor æsthetic, adequately covers the sexual regions of the body, while leaving the arms, waist, hips, and legs entirely free. there finally remains the moral aspect of nakedness. although this has been emphasized by many during the past half century it is still unfamiliar to the majority. the human body can never be a little thing. the wise educator may see to it that boys and girls are brought up in a natural and wholesome familiarity with each other, but a certain terror and beauty must always attach to the spectacle of the body, a mixed attraction and repulsion. because it has this force it naturally calls out the virtue of those who take part in the spectacle, and makes impossible any soft compliance to emotion. even if we admit that the spectacle of nakedness is a challenge to passion it is still a challenge that calls out the ennobling qualities of self-control. it is but a poor sort of virtue that lies in fleeing into the desert from things that we fear may have in them a temptation. we have to learn that it is even worse to attempt to create a desert around us in the midst of civilization. we cannot dispense with passions if we would; reason, as holbach said, is the art of choosing the right passions, and education the art of sowing and cultivating them in human hearts. the spectacle of nakedness has its moral value in teaching us to learn to enjoy what we do not possess, a lesson which is an essential part of the training for any kind of fine social life. the child has to learn to look at flowers and not pluck them; the man has to learn to look at a woman's beauty and not desire to possess it. the joyous conquest over that "erotic kleptomania," as ellen key has well said, reveals the blossoming of a fine civilization. we fancy the conquest is difficult, even impossibly difficult. but it is not so. this impulse, like other human impulses, tends under natural conditions to develop temperately and wholesomely. we artificially press a stupid and brutal hand on it, and it is driven into the two unnatural extremes of repression and license, one extreme as foul as the other. to those who have been bred under bad conditions, it may indeed seem hopeless to attempt to rise to the level of the greeks and the other finer tempered peoples of antiquity in realizing the moral, as well as the pedagogic, hygienic, and æsthetic advantages[ ] of admitting into life the spectacle of the naked human body. but unless we do we hopelessly fetter ourselves in our march along the road of civilization, we deprive ourselves at once of a source of moral strength and of joyous inspiration. just as wesley once asked why the devil should have all the best tunes, so to-day men are beginning to ask why the human body, the most divine melody at its finest moments that creation has yielded, should be allowed to become the perquisite of those who lust for the obscene. and some are, further, convinced that by enlisting it on the side of purity and strength they are raising the most powerful of all bulwarks against the invasion of a vicious conception of life and the consequent degradation of sex. these are considerations which we cannot longer afford to neglect, however great the opposition they arouse among the unthinking. "folk are afraid of such things rousing the passions," edward carpenter remarks. "no doubt the things may act that way. but why, we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing passions which, after all, are the great driving forces of human life?" it is true, the same writer continues, our conventional moral formulæ are no longer strong enough to control passion adequately, and that we are generating steam in a boiler that is cankered with rust. "the cure is not to cut off the passions, or to be weakly afraid of them, but to find a new, sound, healthy engine of general morality and common sense within which they will work" (edward carpenter, _albany review_, sept., ). so far as i am aware, however, it was james hinton who chiefly sought to make clear the possibility of a positive morality on the basis of nakedness, beauty, and sexual influence, regarded as dynamic forces which, when suppressed, make for corruption and when wisely used serve to inspire and ennoble life. he worked out his thoughts on this matter in mss., written from about to his death two years later, which, never having been prepared for publication, remain in a fragmentary state and have not been published. i quote a few brief characteristic passages: "is not," he wrote, "the hindu refusal to see a woman eating strangely like ours to see one naked? the real sensuality of the thought is visibly identical.... suppose, because they are delicious to eat, pineapples were forbidden to be seen, except in pictures, and about that there was something dubious. suppose no one might have sight of a pineapple unless he were rich enough to purchase one for his particular eating, the sight and the eating being so indissolubly joined. what lustfulness would surround them, what constant pruriency, what stealing!... miss ---- told us of her syrian adventures, and how she went into a wood-carver's shop and he would not look at her; and how she took up a tool and worked, till at last he looked, and they both burst out laughing. will it not be even so with our looking at women altogether? there will come a _work_--and at last we shall look up and both burst out laughing.... when men see truly what is amiss, and act with reason and forethought in respect to the sexual relations, will they not insist on the enjoyment of women's beauty by youths, and from the earliest age, that the first feeling may be of beauty? will they not say, 'we must not allow the false purity, we must have the true.' the false has been tried, and it is not good enough; the power purely to enjoy beauty must be gained; attempting to do with less is fatal. every instructor of youth shall say: 'this beauty of woman, god's chief work of beauty, it is good you see it; it is a pleasure that serves good; all beauty serves it, and above all this, for its office is to make you pure. come to it as you come to daily bread, or pure air, or the cleansing bath: this is pure to you if you be pure, it will aid you in your effort to be so. but if any of you are impure, and make of it the feeder of impurity, then you should be ashamed and pray; it is not for you our life can be ordered; it is for men and not for beasts.' this must come when men open their eyes, and act coolly and with reason and forethought, and not in mere panic in respect to the sexual passion in its moral relations." footnotes: [ ] thus athenæus (bk. xiii, ch. xx) says: "in the island of chios it is a beautiful sight to go to the gymnasia and the race-courses, and to see the young men wrestling naked with the maidens who are also naked." [ ] augustine (_de civitate dei_, lib. ii, cap. xiii) refers to the same point, contrasting the romans with the greeks who honored their actors. [ ] see "the evolution of modesty" in the first volume of these _studies_, where this question of the relationship of nakedness to modesty is fully discussed. [ ] c.h. stratz, _die körperformen in kunst und leben der japaner_, second edition, ch. iii; id., _frauenkleidung_, third edition, pp. , . [ ] i have not considered it in place here to emphasize the æsthetic influence of familiarity with nakedness. the most æsthetic nations (notably the greeks and the japanese) have been those that preserved a certain degree of familiarity with the naked body. "in all arts," maeterlinck remarks, "civilized peoples have approached or departed from pure beauty according as they approached or departed from the habit of nakedness." ungewitter insists on the advantage to the artist of being able to study the naked body in movement, and it may be worth mentioning that fidus (hugo höppener), the german artist of to-day who has exerted great influence by his fresh, powerful and yet reverent delineation of the naked human form in all its varying aspects, attributes his inspiration and vision to the fact that, as a pupil of diefenbach, he was accustomed with his companions to work naked in the solitudes outside munich which they frequented (f. enzensberger, "fidus," _deutsche kultur_, aug., ). chapter iv. the valuation of sexual love. the conception of sexual love--the attitude of mediæval asceticism--st. bernard and st. odo of cluny--the ascetic insistence on the proximity of the sexual and excretory centres--love as a sacrament of nature--the idea of the impurity of sex in primitive religions generally--theories of the origin of this idea--the anti-ascetic element in the bible and early christianity--clement of alexandria--st. augustine's attitude--the recognition of the sacredness of the body by tertullian, rufinus and athanasius--the reformation--the sexual instinct regarded as beastly--the human sexual instinct not animal-like--lust and love--the definition of love--love and names for love unknown in some parts of the world--romantic love of late development in the white race--the mystery of sexual desire--whether love is a delusion--the spiritual as well as the physical structure of the world in part built up on sexual love--the testimony of men of intellect to the supremacy of love. it will be seen that the preceding discussion of nakedness has a significance beyond what it appeared to possess at the outset. the hygienic value, physically and mentally, of familiarity with nakedness during the early years of life, however considerable it may be, is not the only value which such familiarity possesses. beyond its æsthetic value, also, there lies in it a moral value, a source of dynamic energy. and now, taking a still further step, we may say that it has a spiritual value in relation to our whole conception of the sexual impulse. our attitude towards the naked human body is the test of our attitude towards the instinct of sex. if our own and our fellows' bodies seem to us intrinsically shameful or disgusting, nothing will ever really ennoble or purify our conceptions of sexual love. love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover must be shameful. "se la cosa amata è vile," as leonardo da vinci profoundly said, "l'amante se fa vile." however illogical it may have been, there really was a justification for the old christian identification of the flesh with the sexual instinct. they stand or fall together; we cannot degrade the one and exalt the other. as our feelings towards nakedness are, so will be our feelings towards love. "man is nothing else than fetid sperm, a sack of dung, the food of worms.... you have never seen a viler dung-hill." such was the outcome of st. bernard's cloistered _meditationes piissimæ_.[ ] sometimes, indeed, these mediæval monks would admit that the skin possessed a certain superficial beauty, but they only made that admission in order to emphasize the hideousness of the body when deprived of this film of loveliness, and strained all their perverse intellectual acumen, and their ferocious irony, as they eagerly pointed the finger of mockery at every detail of what seemed to them the pitiful figure of man. st. odo of cluny--charming saint as he was and a pioneer in his appreciation of the wild beauty of the alps he had often traversed--was yet an adept in this art of reviling the beauty of the human body. that beauty only lies in the skin, he insists; if we could see beneath the skin women would arouse nothing but nausea. their adornments are but blood and mucus and bile. if we refuse to touch dung and phlegm even with a fingertip, how can we desire to embrace a sack of dung?[ ] the mediæval monks of the more contemplative order, indeed, often found here a delectable field of meditation, and the christian world generally was content to accept their opinions in more or less diluted versions, or at all events never made any definite protest against them. even men of science accepted these conceptions and are, indeed, only now beginning to emancipate themselves from such ancient superstitions. r. de graef in the preface to his famous treatise on the generative organs of women, _de mulierum organis generatione inservientibus_, dedicated to cosmo iii de medici in , considered it necessary to apologize for the subject of his work. even a century later, linnæus in his great work, _the system of nature_, dismissed as "abominable" the exact study of the female genitals, although he admitted the scientific interest of such investigations. and if men of science have found it difficult to attain an objective vision of women we cannot be surprised that medieval and still more ancient conceptions have often been subtly mingled with the views of philosophical and semi-philosophical writers.[ ] we may regard as a special variety of the ascetic view of sex,--for the ascetics, as we see, freely but not quite legitimately, based their asceticism largely on æsthetic considerations,--that insistence on the proximity of the sexual to the excretory centres which found expression in the early church in augustine's depreciatory assertion: "inter fæces et urinam nascimur," and still persists among many who by no means always associate it with religious asceticism.[ ] "as a result of what ridiculous economy, and of what mephistophilian irony," asks tarde,[ ] "has nature imagined that a function so lofty, so worthy of the poetic and philosophical hymns which have celebrated it, only deserved to have its exclusive organ shared with that of the vilest corporal functions?" it may, however, be pointed out that this view of the matter, however unconsciously, is itself the outcome of the ascetic depreciation of the body. from a scientific point of view, the metabolic processes of the body from one end to the other, whether regarded chemically or psychologically, are all interwoven and all of equal dignity. we cannot separate out any particular chemical or biological process and declare: this is vile. even what we call excrement still stores up the stuff of our lives. eating has to some persons seemed a disgusting process. but yet it has been possible to say, with thoreau, that "the gods have really intended that men should feed divinely, as themselves, on their own nectar and ambrosia.... i have felt that eating became a sacrament, a method of communion, an ecstatic exercise, and a sitting at the communion table of the world." the sacraments of nature are in this way everywhere woven into the texture of men's and women's bodies. lips good to kiss with are indeed first of all chiefly good to eat and drink with. so accumulated and overlapped have the centres of force become in the long course of development, that the mucous membranes of the natural orifices, through the sensitiveness gained in their own offices, all become agents to thrill the soul in the contact of love; it is idle to discriminate high or low, pure or impure; all alike are sanctified already by the extreme unction of nature. the nose receives the breath of life; the vagina receives the water of life. ultimately the worth and loveliness of life must be measured by the worth and loveliness for us of the instruments of life. the swelling breasts are such divinely gracious insignia of womanhood because of the potential child that hangs at them and sucks; the large curves of the hips are so voluptuous because of the potential child they clasp within them; there can be no division here, we cannot cut the roots from the tree. the supreme function of manhood--the handing on of the lamp of life to future races--is carried on, it is true, by the same instrument that is the daily conduit of the bladder. it has been said in scorn that we are born between urine and excrement; it may be said, in reverence, that the passage through this channel of birth is a sacrament of nature's more sacred and significant than men could ever invent. these relationships have been sometimes perceived and their meaning realized by a sort of mystical intuition. we catch glimpses of such an insight now and again, first among the poets and later among the physicians of the renaissance. in rolfincius, in his _ordo et methods generationi partium etc._, at the outset of the second part devoted to the sexual organs of women, sets forth what ancient writers have said of the eleusinian and other mysteries and the devotion and purity demanded of those who approached these sacred rites. it is so also with us, he continues, in the rites of scientific investigation. "we also operate with sacred things. the organs of sex are to be held among sacred things. they who approach these altars must come with devout minds. let the profane stand without, and the doors be closed." in those days, even for science, faith and intuition were alone possible. it is only of recent years that the histologist's microscope and the physiological chemist's test-tube have furnished them with a rational basis. it is no longer possible to cut nature in two and assert that here she is pure and there impure.[ ] there thus appears to be no adequate ground for agreeing with those who consider that the proximity of the generative and excretory centres is "a stupid bungle of nature's." an association which is so ancient and primitive in nature can only seem repulsive to those whose feelings have become morbidly unnatural. it may further be remarked that the anus, which is the more æsthetically unattractive of the excretory centres, is comparatively remote from the sexual centre, and that, as r. hellmann remarked many years ago in discussing this question (_ueber geschlechtsfreiheit_, p. ): "in the first place, freshly voided urine has nothing specially unpleasant about it, and in the second place, even if it had, we might reflect that a rosy mouth by no means loses its charm merely because it fails to invite a kiss at the moment when its possessor is vomiting." a clergyman writes suggesting that we may go further and find a positive advantage in this proximity: "i am glad that you do not agree with the man who considered that nature had bungled by using the genitals for urinary purposes; apart from teleological or theological grounds i could not follow that line of reasoning. i think there is no need for disgust concerning the urinary organs, though i feel that the anus can never be attractive to the normal mind; but the anus is quite separate from the genitals. i would suggest that the proximity serves a good end in making the organs more or less secret except at times of sexual emotion or to those in love. the result is some degree of repulsion at ordinary times and a strong attraction at times of sexual activity. hence, the ordinary guarding of the parts, from fear of creating disgust, greatly increases their attractiveness at other times when sexual emotion is paramount. further, the feeling of disgust itself is merely the result of habit and sentiment, however useful it may be, and according to scripture everything is clean and good. the ascetic feeling of repulsion, if we go back to origin, is due to other than christian influence. christianity came out of judaism which had no sense of the impurity of marriage, for 'unclean' in the old testament simply means 'sacred.' the ascetic side of the religion of christianity is no part of the religion of christ as it came from the hands of its founder, and the modern feeling on this matter is a lingering remnant of the heresy of the manichæans." i may add, however, that, as northcote points out (_christianity and sex problems_, p. ), side by side in the old testament with the frank recognition of sexuality, there is a circle of ideas revealing the feeling of impurity in sex and of shame in connection with it. christianity inherited this mixed feeling. it has really been a widespread and almost universal feeling among the ancient and primitive peoples that there is something impure and sinful in the things of sex, so that those who would lead a religious life must avoid sexual relationships; even in india celibacy has commanded respect (see, e.g., westermarck, _marriage_, pp. et seq.). as to the original foundation of this notion--which it is unnecessary to discuss more fully here--many theories have been put forward; st. augustine, in his _de civitate dei_, sets forth the ingenious idea that the penis, being liable to spontaneous movements and erections that are not under the control of the will, is a shameful organ and involves the whole sphere of sex in its shame. westermarck argues that among nearly all peoples there is a feeling against sexual relationship with members of the same family or household, and as sex was thus banished from the sphere of domestic life a notion of its general impurity arose; northcote points out that from the first it has been necessary to seek concealment for sexual intercourse, because at that moment the couple would be a prey to hostile attacks, and that it was by an easy transition that sex came to be regarded as a thing that ought to be concealed, and, therefore, a sinful thing. (diderot, in his _supplément au voyage de bougainville_, had already referred to this motive for seclusion as "the only natural element in modesty.") crawley has devoted a large part of his suggestive work, _the mystic rose_, to showing that, to savage man, sex is a perilous, dangerous, and enfeebling element in life, and, therefore, sinful. it would, however, be a mistake to think that such men as st. bernard and st. odo of cluny, admirably as they represented the ascetic and even the general christian views of their own time, are to be regarded as altogether typical exponents of the genuine and primitive christian view. so far as i have been able to discover, during the first thousand years of christianity we do not find this concentrated intellectual and emotional ferocity of attack on the body; it only developed at the moment when, with pope gregory vii, mediæval christianity reached the climax of its conquest over the souls of european men, in the establishment of the celibacy of the secular clergy, and the growth of the great cloistered communities of monks in severely regulated and secluded orders.[ ] before that the teachers of asceticism were more concerned to exhort to chastity and modesty than to direct a deliberate and systematic attack on the whole body; they concentrated their attention rather on spiritual virtues than on physical imperfections. and if we go back to the gospels we find little of the mediæval ascetic spirit in the reported sayings and doings of jesus, which may rather indeed be said to reveal, on the whole, notwithstanding their underlying asceticism, a certain tenderness and indulgence to the body, while even paul, though not tender towards the body, exhorts to reverence towards it as a temple of the holy spirit. we cannot expect to find the fathers of the church sympathetic towards the spectacle of the naked human body, for their position was based on a revolt against paganism, and paganism had cultivated the body. nakedness had been more especially associated with the public bath, the gymnasium, and the theatre; in profoundly disapproving of these pagan institutions christianity discouraged nakedness. the fact that familiarity with nakedness was favorable, rather than opposed, to the chastity to which it attached so much importance, the church--though indeed at one moment it accepted nakedness in the rite of baptism--was for the most part unable to see if it was indeed a fact which the special conditions of decadent classic life had tended to disguise. but in their decided preference for the dressed over the naked human body the early christians frequently hesitated to take the further step of asserting that the body is a focus of impurity and that the physical organs of sex are a device of the devil. on the contrary, indeed, some of the most distinguished of the fathers, especially those of the eastern church who had felt the vivifying breath of greek thought, occasionally expressed themselves on the subject of nature, sex, and the body in a spirit which would have won the approval of goethe or whitman. clement of alexandria, with all the eccentricities of his over-subtle intellect, was yet the most genuinely greek of all the fathers, and it is not surprising that the dying ray of classic light reflected from his mind shed some illumination over this question of sex. he protested, for instance, against that prudery which, as the sun of the classic world set, had begun to overshadow life. "we should not be ashamed to name," he declared, "what god has not been ashamed to create."[ ] it was a memorable declaration because, while it accepted the old classic feeling of no shame in the presence of nature, it put that feeling on a new and religious basis harmonious to christianity. throughout, though not always quite consistently, clement defends the body and the functions of sex against those who treated them with contempt. and as the cause of sex is the cause of women he always strongly asserts the dignity of women, and also proclaims the holiness of marriage, a state which he sometimes places above that of virginity.[ ] unfortunately, it must be said, st. augustine--another north african, but of roman carthage and not of greek alexandria--thought that he had a convincing answer to the kind of argument which clement presented, and so great was the force of his passionate and potent genius that he was able in the end to make his answer prevail. for augustine sin was hereditary, and sin had its special seat and symbol in the sexual organs; the fact of sin has modified the original divine act of creation, and we cannot treat sex and its organs as though there had been no inherited sin. our sexual organs, he declares, have become shameful because, through sin, they are now moved by lust. at the same time augustine by no means takes up the mediæval ascetic position of contemptuous hatred towards the body. nothing can be further from odo of cluny than augustine's enthusiasm about the body, even about the exquisite harmony of the parts beneath the skin. "i believe it may be concluded," he even says, "that in the creation of the human body beauty was more regarded than necessity. in truth, necessity is a transitory thing, and the time is coming when we shall be able to enjoy one another's beauty without any lust."[ ] even in the sphere of sex he would be willing to admit purity and beauty, apart from the inherited influence of adam's sin. in paradise, he says, had paradise continued, the act of generation would have been as simple and free from shame as the act of the hand in scattering seed on to the earth. "sexual conjugation would have been under the control of the will without any sexual desire. the semen would be injected into the vagina in as simple a manner as the menstrual fluid is now ejected. there would not have been any words which could be called obscene, but all that might be said of these members would have been as pure as what is said of the other parts of the body."[ ] that, however, for augustine, is what might have been in paradise where, as he believed, sexual desire had no existence. as things are, he held, we are right to be ashamed, we do well to blush. and it was natural that, as clement of alexandria mentions, many heretics should have gone further on this road and believed that while god made man down to the navel, the rest was made by another power; such heretics have their descendants among us even to-day. alike in the eastern and western churches, however, both before and after augustine, though not so often after, great fathers and teachers have uttered opinions which recall those of clement rather than of augustine. we cannot lay very much weight on the utterance of the extravagant and often contradictory tertullian, but it is worth noting that, while he declared that woman is the gate of hell, he also said that we must approach nature with reverence and not with blushes. "natura veneranda est, non erubescenda." "no christian author," it has indeed been said, "has so energetically spoken against the heretical contempt of the body as tertullian. soul and body, according to tertullian, are in the closest association. the soul is the life-principle of the body, but there is no activity of the soul which is not manifested and conditioned by the flesh."[ ] more weight attaches to rufinus tyrannius, the friend and fellow-student of st. jerome, in the fourth century, who wrote a commentary on the apostles' creed, which was greatly esteemed by the early and mediæval church, and is indeed still valued even to-day. here, in answer to those who declared that there was obscenity in the fact of christ's birth through the sexual organs of a woman, rufinus replies that god created the sexual organs, and that "it is not nature but merely human opinion which teaches that these parts are obscene. for the rest, all the parts of the body are made from the same clay, whatever differences there may be in their uses and functions."[ ] he looks at the matter, we see, piously indeed, but naturally and simply, like clement, and not, like augustine, through the distorting medium of a theological system. athanasius, in the eastern church, spoke in the same sense as rufinus in the western church. a certain monk named amun had been much grieved by the occurrence of seminal emissions during sleep, and he wrote to athanasius to inquire if such emissions are a sin. in the letter he wrote in reply, athanasius seeks to reassure amun. "all things," he tells him, "are pure to the pure. for what, i ask, dear and pious friend, can there be sinful or naturally impure in excrement? man is the handwork of god. there is certainly nothing in us that is impure."[ ] we feel as we read these utterances that the seeds of prudery and pruriency are already alive in the popular mind, but yet we see also that some of the most distinguished thinkers of the early christian church, in striking contrast to the more morbid and narrow-minded mediæval ascetics, clearly stood aside from the popular movement. on the whole, they were submerged because christianity, like buddhism, had in it from the first a germ that lent itself to ascetic renunciation, and the sexual life is always the first impulse to be sacrificed to the passion for renunciation. but there were other germs also in christianity, and luther, who in his own plebeian way asserted the rights of the body, although he broke with mediæval asceticism, by no means thereby cast himself off from the traditions of the early christian church. i have thought it worth while to bring forward this evidence, although i am perfectly well aware that the facts of nature gain no additional support from the authority of the fathers or even of the bible. nature and humanity existed before the bible and would continue to exist although the bible should be forgotten. but the attitude of christianity on this point has so often been unreservedly condemned that it seems as well to point out that at its finest moments, when it was a young and growing power in the world, the utterances of christianity were often at one with those of nature and reason. there are many, it may be added, who find it a matter of consolation that in following the natural and rational path in this matter they are not thereby altogether breaking with the religious traditions of their race. it is scarcely necessary to remark that when we turn from christianity to the other great world-religions, we do not usually meet with so ambiguous an attitude towards sex. the mahommedans were as emphatic in asserting the sanctity of sex as they were in asserting physical cleanliness; they were prepared to carry the functions of sex into the future life, and were never worried, as luther and so many other christians have been, concerning the lack of occupation in heaven. in india, although india is the home of the most extreme forms of religious asceticism, sexual love has been sanctified and divinized to a greater extent than in any other part of the world. "it seems never to have entered into the heads of the hindu legislators," said sir william jones long since (_works_, vol. ii, p. ), "that anything natural could be offensively obscene, a singularity which pervades all their writings, but is no proof of the depravity of their morals." the sexual act has often had a religious significance in india, and the minutest details of the sexual life and its variations are discussed in indian erotic treatises in a spirit of gravity, while nowhere else have the anatomical and physiological sexual characters of women been studied with such minute and adoring reverence. "love in india, both as regards theory and practice," remarks richard schmidt (_beiträge zur indischen erotik_, p. ) "possesses an importance which it is impossible for us even to conceive." in protestant countries the influence of the reformation, by rehabilitating sex as natural, indirectly tended to substitute in popular feeling towards sex the opprobrium of sinfulness by the opprobrium of animality. henceforth the sexual impulse must be disguised or adorned to become respectably human. this may be illustrated by a passage in pepys's _diary_ in the seventeenth century. on the morning after the wedding day it was customary to call up new married couples by music; the absence of this music on one occasion (in ) seemed to pepys "as if they had married like dog and bitch." we no longer insist on the music, but the same feeling still exists in the craving for other disguises and adornments for the sexual impulse. we do not always realize that love brings its own sanctity with it. nowadays indeed, whenever the repugnance to the sexual side of life manifests itself, the assertion nearly always made is not so much that it is "sinful" as that it is "beastly." it is regarded as that part of man which most closely allies him to the lower animals. it should scarcely be necessary to point out that this is a mistake. on whichever side, indeed, we approach it, the implication that sex in man and animals is identical cannot be borne out. from the point of view of those who accept this identity it would be much more correct to say that men are inferior, rather than on a level with animals, for in animals under natural conditions the sexual instinct is strictly subordinated to reproduction and very little susceptible to deviation, so that from the standpoint of those who wish to minimize sex, animals are nearer to the ideal, and such persons must say with woods hutchinson: "take it altogether, our animal ancestors have quite as good reason to be ashamed of us as we of them." but if we look at the matter from a wider biological standpoint of development, our conclusion must be very different. so far from being animal-like, the human impulses of sex are among the least animal-like acquisitions of man. the human sphere of sex differs from the animal sphere of sex to a singularly great extent.[ ] breathing is an animal function and here we cannot compete with birds; locomotion is an animal function and here we cannot equal quadrupeds; we have made no notable advance in our circulatory, digestive, renal, or hepatic functions. even as regards vision and hearing, there are many animals that are more keen-sighted than man, and many that are capable of hearing sounds that to him are inaudible. but there are no animals in whom the sexual instinct is so sensitive, so highly developed, so varied in its manifestations, so constantly alert, so capable of irradiating the highest and remotest parts of the organism. the sexual activities of man and woman belong not to that lower part of our nature which degrades us to the level of the "brute," but to the higher part which raises us towards all the finest activities and ideals we are capable of. it is true that it is chiefly in the mouths of a few ignorant and ill-bred women that we find sex referred to as "bestial" or "the animal part of our nature."[ ] but since women are the mothers and teachers of the human race this is a piece of ignorance and ill-breeding which cannot be too swiftly eradicated. there are some who seem to think that they have held the balance evenly, and finally stated the matter, if they admit that sexual love may be either beautiful or disgusting, and that either view is equally normal and legitimate. "listen in turn," tarde remarks, "to two men who, one cold, the other ardent, one chaste, the other in love, both equally educated and large-minded, are estimating the same thing: one judges as disgusting, odious, revolting, and bestial what the other judges to be delicious, exquisite, ineffable, divine. what, for one, is in christian phraseology, an unforgivable sin, is, for the other, the state of true grace. acts that for one seem a sad and occasional necessity, stains that must be carefully effaced by long intervals of continence, are for the other the golden nails from which all the rest of conduct and existence is suspended, the things that alone give human life its value."[ ] yet we may well doubt whether both these persons are "equally well-educated and broad-minded." the savage feels that sex is perilous, and he is right. but the person who feels that the sexual impulse is bad, or even low and vulgar, is an absurdity in the universe, an anomaly. he is like those persons in our insane asylums, who feel that the instinct of nutrition is evil and so proceed to starve themselves. they are alike spiritual outcasts in the universe whose children they are. it is another matter when a man declares that, personally, in his own case, he cherishes an ascetic ideal which leads him to restrain, so far as possible, either or both impulses. the man, who is sanely ascetic seeks a discipline which aids the ideal he has personally set before himself. he may still remain theoretically in harmony with the universe to which he belongs. but to pour contempt on the sexual life, to throw the veil of "impurity" over it, is, as nietzsche declared, the unpardonable sin against the holy ghost of life. there are many who seek to conciliate prejudice and reason in their valuation of sex by drawing a sharp distinction between "lust" and "love," rejecting the one and accepting the other. it is quite proper to make such a distinction, but the manner in which it is made will by no means usually bear examination. we have to define what we mean by "lust" and what we mean by "love," and this is not easy if they are regarded as mutually exclusive. it is sometimes said that "lust" must be understood as meaning a reckless indulgence of the sexual impulse without regard to other considerations. so understood, we are quite safe in rejecting it. but that is an entirely arbitrary definition of the word. "lust" is really a very ambiguous term; it is a good word that has changed its moral values, and therefore we need to define it very carefully before we venture to use it. properly speaking, "lust" is an entirely colorless word[ ] and merely means desire in general and sexual desire in particular; it corresponds to "hunger" or "thirst"; to use it in an offensive sense is much the same as though we should always assume that the word "hungry" had the offensive meaning of "greedy." the result has been that sensitive minds indignantly reject the term "lust" in connection with love.[ ] in the early use of our language, "lust," "lusty," and "lustful" conveyed the sense of wholesome and normal sexual vigor; now, with the partial exception of "lusty," they have been so completely degraded to a lower sense that although it would be very convenient to restore them to their original and proper place, which still remains vacant, the attempt at such a restoration scarcely seems a hopeful task. we have so deeply poisoned the springs of feeling in these matters with mediæval ascetic crudities that all our words of sex tend soon to become bespattered with filth; we may pick them up from the mud into which they have fallen and seek to purify them, but to many eyes they will still seem dirty. one result of this tendency is that we have no simple, precise, natural word for the love of the sexes, and are compelled to fall back on the general term, which is so extensive in its range that in english and french and most of the other leading languages of europe, it is equally correct to "love" god or to "love" eating. love, in the sexual sense, is, summarily considered, a synthesis of lust (in the primitive and uncolored sense of sexual emotion) and friendship. it is incorrect to apply the term "love" in the sexual sense to elementary and uncomplicated sexual desire; it is equally incorrect to apply it to any variety or combination of varieties of friendship. there can be no sexual love without lust; but, on the other hand, until the currents of lust in the organism have been so irradiated as to affect other parts of the psychic organism--at the least the affections and the social feelings--it is not yet sexual love. lust, the specific sexual impulse, is indeed the primary and essential element in this synthesis, for it alone is adequate to the end of reproduction, not only in animals but in men. but it is not until lust is expanded and irradiated that it develops into the exquisite and enthralling flower of love. we may call to mind what happens among plants: on the one hand we have the lower organisms in which sex is carried on summarily and cryptogamically, never shedding any shower of gorgeous blossoms on the world, and on the other hand the higher plants among whom sex has become phanersgamous and expanded enormously into form and color and fragrance. while "lust" is, of course, known all over the world, and there are everywhere words to designate it, "love" is not universally known, and in many languages there are no words for "love." the failures to find love are often remarkable and unexpected. we may find it where we least expect it. sexual desire became idealized (as sergi has pointed out) even by some animals, especially birds, for when a bird pines to death for the loss of its mate this cannot be due to the uncomplicated instinct of sex, but must involve the interweaving of that instinct with the other elements of life to a degree which is rare even among the most civilized men. some savage races seem to have no fundamental notion of love, and (like the american nahuas) no primary word for it, while, on the other hand, in quichua, the language of the ancient peruvians, there are nearly six hundred combinations of the verb _munay_, to love. among some peoples love seems to be confined to the women. letourneau (_l'evolution littéraire_, p. ) points out that in various parts of the world women have taken a leading part in creating erotic poetry. it may be mentioned in this connection that suicide from erotic motives among primitive peoples occurs chiefly among women (_zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaft_, , p. ). not a few savages possess love-poems, as, for instance, the suahali (velten, in his _prosa und poesie der suahali_, devotes a section to love-poems reproduced in the suahali language). d.g. brinton, in an interesting paper on "the conception of love in some american languages" (_proceedings american philosophical society_, vol. xxiii, p. , ) states that the words for love in these languages reveal four main ways of expressing the conception: ( ) inarticulate cries of emotion; ( ) assertions of sameness or similarity; ( ) assertions of conjunction or union; ( ) assertions of a wish, desire, a longing. brinton adds that "these same notions are those which underlie the majority of the words of love in the great aryan family of languages." the remarkable fact emerges, however, that the peoples of aryan tongue were slow in developing their conception of sexual love. brinton remarks that the american mayas must be placed above the peoples of early aryan culture, in that they possessed a radical word for the joy of love which was in significance purely psychical, referring strictly to a mental state, and neither to similarity nor desire. even the greeks were late in developing any ideal of sexual love. this has been well brought out by e.f.m. benecke in his _antimachus of colophon and the position of women in greek poetry_, a book which contains some hazardous assertions, but is highly instructive from the present point of view. the greek lyric poets wrote practically no love poems at all to women before anacreon, and his were only written in old age. true love for the greeks was nearly always homosexual. the ionian lyric poets of early greece regarded woman as only an instrument of pleasure and the founder of the family. theognis compares marriage to cattle-breeding; alcman, when he wishes to be complimentary to the spartan girls, speaks of them as his "female boy-friends." Æschylus makes even a father assume that his daughters will misbehave if left to themselves. there is no sexual love in sophocles, and in euripides it is only the women who fall in love. benecke concludes (p. ) that in greece sexual love, down to a comparatively later period, was looked down on, and held to be unworthy of public discussion and representation. it was in magna græcia rather than in greece itself that men took interest in women, and it was not until the alexandrian period, and notably in asclepiades, benecke maintains, that the love of women was regarded as a matter of life and death. thereafter the conception of sexual love, in its romantic aspects, appears in european life. with the celtic story of tristram, as gaston paris remarks, it finally appears in the christian european world of poetry as the chief point in human life, the great motive force of conduct. romantic love failed, however, to penetrate the masses in europe. in the sixteenth century, or whenever it was that the ballad of "glasgerion" was written, we see it is assumed that a churl's relation to his mistress is confined to the mere act of sexual intercourse; he fails to kiss her on arriving or departing; it is only the knight, the man of upper class, who would think of offering that tender civility. and at the present day in, for instance, the region between east friesland and the alps, bloch states (_sexualleben unserer zeit_, p. ), following e.h. meyer, that the word "love" is unknown among the masses, and only its coarse counterpart recognized. on the other side of the world, in japan, sexual love seems to be in as great disrepute as it was in ancient greece; thus miss tsuda, a japanese head-mistress, and herself a christian, remarks (as quoted by mrs. eraser in _world's work and play_, dec., ): "that word 'love' has been hitherto a word unknown among our girls, in the foreign sense. duty, submission, kindness--these were the sentiments which a girl was expected to bring to the husband who had been chosen for her--and many happy, harmonious marriages were the result. now, your dear sentimental foreign women say to our girls: 'it is wicked to marry without love; the obedience to parents in such a case is an outrage against nature and christianity. if you love a man you must sacrifice everything to marry him.'" when, however, love is fully developed it becomes an enormously extended, highly complex emotion, and lust, even in the best sense of that word, becomes merely a coördinated element among many other elements. herbert spencer, in an interesting passage of his _principles of psychology_ (part iv, ch. viii), has analyzed love into as many as nine distinct and important elements: ( ) the physical impulse of sex; ( ) the feeling for beauty; ( ) affection; ( ) admiration and respect; ( ) love of approbation; ( ) self-esteem; ( ) proprietary feeling; ( ) extended liberty of action from the absence of personal barriers; ( ) exaltation of the sympathies. "this passion," he concludes, "fuses into one immense aggregate most of the elementary excitations of which we are capable." it is scarcely necessary to say that to define sexual love, or even to analyze its components, is by no means to explain its mystery. we seek to satisfy our intelligence by means of a coherent picture of love, but the gulf between that picture and the emotional reality must always be incommensurable and impassable. "there is no word more often pronounced than that of love," wrote bonstetten many years ago, "yet there is no subject more mysterious. of that which touches us most nearly we know least. we measure the march of the stars and we do not know how we love." and however expert we have become in detecting and analyzing the causes, the concomitants, and the results of love, we must still make the same confession to-day. we may, as some have done, attempt to explain love as a form of hunger and thirst, or as a force analogous to electricity, or as a kind of magnetism, or as a variety of chemical affinity, or as a vital tropism, but these explanations are nothing more than ways of expressing to ourselves the magnitude of the phenomenon we are in the presence of. what has always baffled men in the contemplation of sexual love is the seeming inadequacy of its cause, the immense discrepancy between the necessarily circumscribed region of mucous membrane which is the final goal of such love and the sea of world-embracing emotions to which it seems as the door, so that, as remy de gourmont has said, "the mucous membranes, by an ineffable mystery, enclose in their obscure folds all the riches of the infinite." it is a mystery before which the thinker and the artist are alike overcome. donnay, in his play _l'escalade_, makes a cold and stern man of science, who regards love as a mere mental disorder which can be cured like other disorders, at last fall desperately in love himself. he forces his way into the girl's room, by a ladder, at dead of night, and breaks into a long and passionate speech: "everything that touches you becomes to me mysterious and sacred. ah! to think that a thing so well known as a woman's body, which sculptors have modelled, which poets have sung of, which men of science like myself have dissected, that such a thing should suddenly become an unknown mystery and an infinite joy merely because it is the body of one particular woman--what insanity! and yet that is what i feel."[ ] that love is a natural insanity, a temporary delusion which the individual is compelled to suffer for the sake of the race, is indeed an explanation that has suggested itself to many who have been baffled by this mystery. that, as we know, was the explanation offered by schopenhauer. when a youth and a girl fall into each other's arms in the ecstacy of love they imagine that they are seeking their own happiness. but it is not so, said schopenhauer; they are deluded by the genius of the race into the belief that they are seeking a personal end in order that they may be induced to effect a far greater impersonal end: the creation of the future race. the intensity of their passion is not the measure of the personal happiness they will secure but the measure of their aptitude for producing offspring. in accepting passion and renouncing the counsels of cautious prudence the youth and the girl are really sacrificing their chances of selfish happiness and fulfilling the larger ends of nature. as schopenhauer saw the matter, there was here no vulgar illusion. the lovers thought that they were reaching towards a boundlessly immense personal happiness; they were probably deceived. but they were deceived not because the reality was less than their imagination, but because it was more; instead of pursuing, as they thought, a merely personal end they were carrying on the creative work of the world, a task better left undone, as schopenhauer viewed it, but a task whose magnitude he fully recognized.[ ] it must be remembered that in the lower sense of deception, love may be, and frequently is, a delusion. a man may deceive himself, or be deceived by the object of his attraction, concerning the qualities that she possesses or fails to possess. in first love, occurring in youth, such deception is perhaps entirely normal, and in certain suggestible and inflammable types of people it is peculiarly apt to occur. this kind of deception, although far more frequent and conspicuous in matters of love--and more serious because of the tightness of the marriage bond--is liable to occur in any relation of life. for most people, however, and those not the least sane or the least wise, the memory of the exaltation of love, even when the period of that exaltation is over, still remains as, at the least, the memory of one of the most real and essential facts of life.[ ] some writers seem to confuse the liability in matters of love to deception or disappointment with the larger question of a metaphysical illusion in schopenhauer's sense. to some extent this confusion perhaps exists in the discussion of love by renouvier and prat in _la nouvelle monadologie_ (pp. _et seq._). in considering whether love is or is not a delusion, they answer that it is or is not according as we are, or are not, dominated by selfishness and injustice. "it was not an essential error which presided over the creation of the _idol_, for the idol is only what in all things the _ideal_ is. but to realize the ideal in love two persons are needed, and therein is the great difficulty. we are never justified," they conclude, "in casting contempt on our love, or even on its object, for if it is true that we have not gained possession of the sovereign beauty of the world it is equally true that we have not attained a degree of perfection that would have entitled us justly to claim so great a prize." and perhaps most of us, it may be added, must admit in the end, if we are honest with ourselves, that the prizes of love we have gained in the world, whatever their flaws, are far greater than we deserved. we may well agree that in a certain sense not love alone but all the passions and desires of men are illusions. in that sense the gospel of buddha is justified, and we may recognize the inspiration of shakespeare (in the _tempest_) and of calderon (in _la vida es sueño_), who felt that ultimately the whole world is an insubstantial dream. but short of that large and ultimate vision we cannot accept illusion; we cannot admit that love is a delusion in some special and peculiar sense that men's other cravings and aspirations escape. on the contrary, it is the most solid of realities. all the progressive forms of life are built up on the attraction of sex. if we admit the action of sexual selection--as we can scarcely fail to do if we purge it from its unessential accretions[ ]--love has moulded the precise shape and color, the essential beauty, alike of animal and human life. if we further reflect that, as many investigators believe, not only the physical structure of life but also its spiritual structure--our social feelings, our morality, our religion, our poetry and art--are, in some degree at least, also built up on the impulse of sex, and would have been, if not non-existent, certainly altogether different had other than sexual methods of propagation prevailed in the world, we may easily realize that we can only fall into confusion by dismissing love as a delusion. the whole edifice of life topples down, for as the idealist schiller long since said, it is entirely built up on hunger and on love. to look upon love as in any special sense a delusion is merely to fall into the trap of a shallow cynicism. love is only a delusion in so far as the whole of life is a delusion, and if we accept the fact of life it is unphilosophical to refuse to accept the fact of love. it is unnecessary here to magnify the functions of love in the world; it is sufficient to investigate its workings in its own proper sphere. it may, however, be worth while to quote a few expressions of thinkers, belonging to various schools, who have pointed out what seemed to them the far-ranging significance of the sexual emotions for the moral life. "the passions are the heavenly fire which gives life to the moral world," wrote helvétius long since in _de l'esprit_. "the activity of the mind depends on the activity of the passions, and it is at the period of the passions, from the age of twenty-five to thirty-five or forty that men are capable of the greatest efforts of virtue or of genius." "what touches sex," wrote zola, "touches the centre of social life." even our regard for the praise and blame of others has a sexual origin, professor thomas argues (_psychological review_, jan., , pp. - ), and it is love which is the source of susceptibility generally and of the altruistic side of life. "the appearance of sex," professor woods hutchinson attempts to show ("love as a factor in evolution," _monist_, ), "the development of maleness and femaleness, was not only the birthplace of affection, the well-spring of all morality, but an enormous economic advantage to the race and an absolute necessity of progress. in it first we find any conscious longing for or active impulse toward a fellow creature." "were man robbed of the instinct of procreation, and of all that spiritually springs therefrom," exclaimed maudsley in his _physiology of mind_, "that moment would all poetry, and perhaps also his whole moral sense, be obliterated from his life." "one seems to oneself transfigured, stronger, richer, more complete; one _is_ more complete," says nietzsche (_der wille zur macht_, p. ), "we find here art as an organic function: we find it inlaid in the most angelic instinct of 'love:' we find it as the greatest stimulant of life.... it is not merely that it changes the feeling of values: the lover _is_ worth more, is stronger. in animals this condition produces new weapons, pigments, colors, and forms, above all new movements, new rhythms, a new seductive music. it is not otherwise in man.... even in art the door is opened to him. if we subtract from lyrical work in words and sounds the suggestions of that intestinal fever, what is left over in poetry and music? _l'art pour l'art_ perhaps, the quacking virtuosity of cold frogs who perish in their marsh. all the rest is created by love." it would be easy to multiply citations tending to show how many diverse thinkers have come to the conclusion that sexual love (including therewith parental and especially maternal love) is the source of the chief manifestations of life. how far they are justified in that conclusion, it is not our business now to inquire. it is undoubtedly true that, as we have seen when discussing the erratic and imperfect distribution of the conception of love, and even of words for love, over the world, by no means all people are equally apt for experiencing, even at any time in their lives, the emotions of sexual exaltation. the difference between the knight and the churl still subsists, and both may sometimes be found in all social strata. even the refinements of sexual enjoyment, it is unnecessary to insist, quite commonly remain on a merely physical basis, and have little effect on the intellectual and emotional nature.[ ] but this is not the case with the people who have most powerfully influenced the course of the world's thought and feeling. the personal reality of love, its importance for the individual life, are facts that have been testified to by some of the greatest thinkers, after lives devoted to the attainment of intellectual labor. the experience of renan, who toward the end of his life set down in his remarkable drama _l'abbesse de jouarre_, his conviction that, even from the point of view of chastity, love is, after all, the supreme thing in the world, is far from standing alone. "love has always appeared as an inferior mode of human music, ambition as the superior mode," wrote tarde, the distinguished sociologist, at the end of his life. "but will it always be thus? are there not reasons for thinking that the future perhaps reserves for us the ineffable surprise of an inversion of that secular order?" laplace, half an hour before his death, took up a volume of his own _mécanique celeste_, and said: "all that is only trifles, there is nothing true but love." comte, who had spent his life in building up a positive philosophy which should be absolutely real, found (as indeed it may be said the great english positivist mill also found) the culmination of all his ideals in a woman, who was, he said, egeria and beatrice and laura in one, and he wrote: "there is nothing real in the world but love. one grows tired of thinking, and even of acting; one never grows tired of loving, nor of saying so. in the worst tortures of affection i have never ceased to feel that the essential of happiness is that the heart should be worthily filled--even with pain, yes, even with pain, the bitterest pain." and sophie kowalewsky, after intellectual achievements which have placed her among the most distinguished of her sex, pathetically wrote: "why can no one love me? i could give more than most women, and yet the most insignificant women are loved and i am not." love, they all seem to say, is the one thing that is supremely worth while. the greatest and most brilliant of the world's intellectual giants, in their moments of final insight, thus reach the habitual level of the humble and almost anonymous persons, cloistered from the world, who wrote _the imitation of christ_ or _the letters of a portuguese nun_. and how many others! footnotes: [ ] _meditationes piissimæ de cognitione humanæ conditionis_, migne's _patrologia_, vol. clxxiv, p. , cap. iii, "de dignitate animæ et vilitate corporis." it may be worth while to quote more at length the vigorous language of the original. "si diligenter consideres quid per os et nares cæterosque corporis meatus egrediatur, vilius sterquilinum numquam vidisti.... attende, homo, quid fuisti ante ortum, et quid es ab ortu usque ad occasum, atque quid eris post hanc vitam. profecto fuit quand non eras: postea de vili materia factus, et vilissimo panno involutus, menstruali sanguine in utero materno fuisti nutritus, et tunica tua fuit pellis secundina. nihil aliud est homo quam sperma fetidum, saccus stercorum, cibus vermium.... quid superbis, pulvis et cinis, cujus conceptus cula, nasci miseria, vivere poena, mori angustia?" [ ] see (in mignes' edition) _s. odonis abbatis cluniacensis collationes_, lib. ii, cap. ix. [ ] dühren (_neue forshungen über die marquis de sade_, pp. et seq.) shows how the ascetic view of woman's body persisted, for instance, in schopenhauer and de sade. [ ] in "the evolution of modesty," in the first volume of these _studies_, and again in the fifth volume in discussing urolagnia in the study of "erotic symbolism," the mutual reactions of the sexual and excretory centres were fully dealt with. [ ] "la morale sexuelle," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., . [ ] the above passage, now slightly modified, originally formed an unpublished part of an essay on walt whitman in _the new spirit_, first issued in . [ ] even in the ninth century, however, when the monastic movement was rapidly developing, there were some who withstood the tendencies of the new ascetics. thus, in , ratramnus, the monk of corbie, wrote a treatise (_liber de eo quod christus ex virgine natus est_) to prove that mary really gave birth to jesus through her sexual organs, and not, as some high-strung persons were beginning to think could alone be possible, through the more conventionally decent breasts. the sexual organs were sanctified. "spiritus sanctus ... et thalamum tanto dignum sponso sanctificavit et portam" (achery, _spicilegium_, vol. i, p. ). [ ] _pædagogus_, lib. ii, cap. x. elsewhere (id., lib. ii, ch. vi) he makes a more detailed statement to the same effect. [ ] see, e.g., wilhelm capitaine, _die moral des clemens von alexandrien_, pp. et seq. [ ] _de civitate dei_, lib. xxii, cap. xxiv. "there is no need," he says again (id., lib. xiv, cap. v) "that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good." [ ] st. augustine, _de civitate dei_, lib. xiv, cap. xxiii-xxvi. chrysostom and gregory, of nyssa, thought that in paradise human beings would have multiplied by special creation, but such is not the accepted catholic doctrine. [ ] w. capitaine, _die moral des clemens von alexandrien_, pp. et seq. without the body, tertullian declared, there could be no virginity and no salvation. the soul itself is corporeal. he carries, indeed, his idea of the omnipresence of the body to the absurd. [ ] rufinus, _commentarius in symbolum apostolorum_, cap. xii. [ ] migne, _patrologia græca_, vol. xxvi, pp. et seq. [ ] even in physical conformation the human sexual organs, when compared with those of the lower animals, show marked differences (see "the mechanism of detumescence," in the fifth volume of these _studies_). [ ] it may perhaps be as well to point out, with forel (_die sexuelle frage_, p. ), that the word "bestial" is generally used quite incorrectly in this connection. indeed, not only for the higher, but also for the lower manifestation of the sexual impulse, it would usually be more correct to use instead the qualification "human." [ ] _loc. cit._, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., . [ ] it has, however, become colored and suspect from an early period in the history of christianity. st. augustine (_de civitate dei_, lib. xiv, cap. xv), while admitting that libido or lust is merely the generic name for all desire, adds that, as specially applied to the sexual appetite, it is justly and properly mixed up with ideas of shame. [ ] hinton well illustrates this feeling. "we call by the name of lust," he declares in his mss., "the most simple and natural desires. we might as well term hunger and thirst 'lust' as so call sex-passion, when expressing simply nature's prompting. we miscall it 'lust,' cruelly libelling those to whom we ascribe it, and introduce absolute disorder. for, by foolishly confounding nature's demands with lust, we insist upon restraint upon her." [ ] several centuries earlier another french writer, the distinguished physician, a. laurentius (des laurens) in his _historia anatomica humani corporis_ (lib. viii, quæstio vii) had likewise puzzled over "the incredible desire of coitus," and asked how it was that "that divine animal, full of reason and judgment, which we call man, should be attracted to those obscene parts of women, soiled with filth, which are placed, like a sewer, in the lowest part of the body." it is noteworthy that, from the first, and equally among men of religion, men of science, and men of letters, the mystery of this problem has peculiarly appealed to the french mind. [ ] schopenhauer, _die welt als wille und vorstellung_, vol. ii, pp. et seq. [ ] "perhaps there is scarcely a man," wrote malthus, a clergyman as well as one of the profoundest thinkers of his day (_essay on the principle of population_, , ch. xi), "who has once experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasures may have been, that does not look back to the period as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves to bask, which he recollects and contemplates with the fondest regrets, and which he would most wish to live over again. the superiority of intellectual to sexual pleasures consists rather in their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less liable to satiate, than in their being more real and essential." [ ] the whole argument of the fourth volume of these _studies_, on "sexual selection in man," points in this direction. [ ] "perhaps most average men," forel remarks (_die sexuelle frage_, p. ), "are but slightly receptive to the intoxication of love; they are at most on the level of the _gourmet_, which is by no means necessarily an immoral plane, but is certainly not that of poetry." chapter v. the function of chastity. chastity essential to the dignity of love--the eighteenth century revolt against the ideal of chastity--unnatural forms of chastity--the psychological basis of asceticism--asceticism and chastity as savage virtues--the significance of tahiti--chastity among barbarous peoples--chastity among the early christians--struggles of the saints with the flesh--the romance of christian chastity--its decay in mediæval times--_aucassin et nicolette_ and the new romance of chaste love--the unchastity of the northern barbarians--the penitentials--influence of the renaissance and the reformation--the revolt against virginity as a virtue--the modern conception of chastity as a virtue--the influences that favor the virtue of chastity--chastity as a discipline--the value of chastity for the artist--potency and impotence in popular estimation--the correct definitions of asceticism and chastity. the supreme importance of chastity, and even of asceticism, has never at any time, or in any greatly vital human society, altogether failed of recognition. sometimes chastity has been exalted in human estimation, sometimes it has been debased; it has frequently changed the nature of its manifestations; but it has always been there. it is even a part of the beautiful vision of all nature. "the glory of the world is seen only by a chaste mind," said thoreau with his fine extravagance. "to whomsoever this fact is not an awful but beautiful mystery there are no flowers in nature." without chastity it is impossible to maintain the dignity of sexual love. the society in which its estimation sinks to a minimum is in the last stages of degeneration. chastity has for sexual love an importance which it can never lose, least of all to-day. it is quite true that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many men of high moral and intellectual distinction pronounced very decidedly their condemnation of the ideal of chastity. the great buffon refused to recognize chastity as an ideal and referred scornfully to "that kind of insanity which has turned a girl's virginity into a thing with a real existence," while william morris, in his downright manner, once declared at a meeting of the fellowship of the new life, that asceticism is "the most disgusting vice that afflicted human nature." blake, though he seems always to have been a strictly moral man in the most conventional sense, felt nothing but contempt for chastity, and sometimes confers a kind of religious solemnity on the idea of unchastity. shelley, who may have been unwise in sexual matters but can scarcely be called unchaste, also often seems to associate religion and morality, not with chastity, but with unchastity, and much the same may be said of james hinton.[ ] but all these men--with other men of high character who have pronounced similar opinions--were reacting against false, decayed, and conventional forms of chastity. they were not rebelling against an ideal; they were seeking to set up an ideal in a place where they realized that a mischievous pretense was masquerading as a moral reality. we cannot accept an ideal of chastity unless we ruthlessly cast aside all the unnatural and empty forms of chastity. if chastity is merely a fatiguing effort to emulate in the sexual sphere the exploits of professional fasting men, an effort using up all the energies of the organism and resulting in no achievement greater than the abstinence it involves, then it is surely an unworthy ideal. if it is a feeble submission to an external conventional law which there is no courage to break, then it is not an ideal at all. if it is a rule of morality imposed by one sex on the opposite sex, then it is an injustice and provocative of revolt. if it is an abstinence from the usual forms of sexuality, replaced by more abnormal or more secret forms, then it is simply an unreality based on misconception. and if it is merely an external acceptance of conventions without any further acceptance, even in act, then it is a contemptible farce. these are the forms of chastity which during the past two centuries many fine-souled men have vigorously rejected. the fact that chastity, or asceticism, is a real virtue, with fine uses, becomes evident when we realize that it has flourished at all times, in connection with all kinds of religions and the most various moral codes. we find it pronounced among savages, and the special virtues of savagery--hardness, endurance, and bravery--are intimately connected with the cultivation of chastity and asceticism.[ ] it is true that savages seldom have any ideal of chastity in the degraded modern sense, as a state of permanent abstinence from sexual relationships having a merit of its own apart from any use. they esteem chastity for its values, magical or real, as a method of self-control which contributes towards the attainment of important ends. the ability to bear pain and restraint is nearly always a main element in the initiation of youths at puberty. the custom of refraining from sexual intercourse before expeditions of war and hunting, and other serious concerns involving great muscular and mental strain, whatever the motives assigned, is a sagacious method of economizing energy. the extremely widespread habit of avoiding intercourse during pregnancy and suckling, again, is an admirable precaution in sexual hygiene which it is extremely difficult to obtain the observance of in civilization. savages, also, are perfectly well aware how valuable sexual continence is, in combination with fasting and solitude, to acquire the aptitude for abnormal spiritual powers. thus c. hill tout (_journal anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , pp. - ) gives an interesting account of the self-discipline undergone by those among the salish indians of british columbia, who seek to acquire shamanistic powers. the psychic effects of such training on these men, says hill tout, is undoubted. "it enables them to undertake and accomplish feats of abnormal strength, agility, and endurance; and gives them at times, besides a general exaltation of the senses, undoubted clairvoyant and other supernormal mental and bodily powers." at the other end of the world, as shown by the _reports of the anthropological expedition to torres straits_ (vol. v, p. ), closely analogous methods of obtaining supernatural powers are also customary. there are fundamental psychological reasons for the wide prevalence of asceticism and for the remarkable manner in which it involves self-mortification, even acute physical suffering. such pain is an actual psychic stimulant, more especially in slightly neurotic persons. this is well illustrated by a young woman, a patient of janet's, who suffered from mental depression and was accustomed to find relief by slightly burning her hands and feet. she herself clearly understood the nature of her actions. "i feel," she said, "that i make an effort when i hold my hands on the stove, or when i pour boiling water on my feet; it is a violent act and it awakens me: i feel that it is really done by myself and not by another.... to make a mental effort by itself is too difficult for me; i have to supplement it by physical efforts. i have not succeeded in any other way; that is all: when i brace myself up to burn myself i make my mind freer, lighter and more active for several days. why do you speak of my desire for mortification? my parents believe that, but it is absurd. it would be a mortification if it brought any suffering, but i enjoy this suffering, it gives me back my mind; it prevents my thoughts from stopping: what would one not do to attain such happiness?" (p. janet, "the pathogenesis of some impulsions," _journal of abnormal psychology_, april, .) if we understand this psychological process we may realize how it is that even in the higher religions, however else they may differ, the practical value of asceticism and mortification as the necessary door to the most exalted religious state is almost universally recognized, and with complete cheerfulness. "asceticism and ecstacy are inseparable," as probst-biraben remarks at the outset of an interesting paper on mahommedan mysticism ("l'extase dans le mysticisme musulman," _revue philosophique_, nov., ). asceticism is the necessary ante-chamber to spiritual perfection. it thus happens that savage peoples largely base their often admirable enforcement of asceticism not on the practical grounds that would justify it, but on religious grounds that with the growth of intelligence fall into discredit.[ ] even, however, when the scrupulous observances of savages, whether in sexual or in non-sexual matters, are without any obviously sound basis it cannot be said that they are entirely useless if they tend to encourage self-control and the sense of reverence.[ ] the would-be intelligent and practical peoples who cast aside primitive observances because they seem baseless or even ridiculous, need a still finer practical sense and still greater intelligence in order to realize that, though the reasons for the observances have been wrong, yet the observances themselves may have been necessary methods of attaining personal and social efficiency. it constantly happens in the course of civilization that we have to revive old observances and furnish them with new reasons. in considering the moral quality of chastity among savages, we must carefully separate that chastity which among semi-primitive peoples is exclusively imposed upon women. this has no moral quality whatever, for it is not exercised as a useful discipline, but merely enforced in order to heighten the economic and erotic value of the women. many authorities believe that the regard for women as property furnishes the true reason for the widespread insistence on virginity in brides. thus a.b. ellis, speaking of the west coast of africa (_yoruba-speaking peoples_, pp. _et seq._), says that girls of good class are betrothed as mere children, and are carefully guarded from men, while girls of lower class are seldom betrothed, and may lead any life they choose. "in this custom of infant or child betrothals we probably find the key to that curious regard for ante-nuptial chastity found not only among the tribes of the gold and slave coasts, but also among many other uncivilized peoples in different parts of the world." in a very different part of the world, in northern siberia, "the yakuts," sieroshevski states (_journal anthropological institute_, jan.-june, , p. ), "see nothing immoral in illicit love, providing only that nobody suffers material loss by it. it is true that parents will scold a daughter if her conduct threatens to deprive them of their gain from the bride-price; but if once they have lost hope of marrying her off, or if the bride-price has been spent, they manifest complete indifference to her conduct. maidens who no longer expect marriage are not restrained at all, if they observe decorum it is only out of respect to custom." westermarck (_history of human marriage_, pp. et seq.) also shows the connection between the high estimates of virginity and the conception of woman as property, and returning to the question in his later work, _the origin and development of the moral ideas_ (vol. ii, ch. xlii), after pointing out that "marriage by purchase has thus raised the standard of female chastity," he refers (p. ) to the significant fact that the seduction of an unmarried girl "is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offense against the parents or family of the girl," and there is no indication that it is ever held by savages that any wrong has been done to the woman herself. westermarck recognizes at the same time that the preference given to virgins has also a biological basis in the instinctive masculine feeling of jealousy in regard to women who have had intercourse with other men, and especially in the erotic charm for men of the emotional state of shyness which accompanies virginity. (this point has been dealt with in the discussion of modesty in vol. i of these _studies_.) it is scarcely necessary to add that the insistence on the virginity of brides is by no means confined, as a.b. ellis seems to imply, to uncivilized peoples, nor is it necessary that wife-purchase should always accompany it. the preference still persists, not only by virtue of its natural biological basis, but as a refinement and extension of the idea of woman as property, among those civilized peoples who, like ourselves, inherit a form of marriage to some extent based on wife-purchase. under such conditions a woman's chastity has an important social function to perform, being, as mrs. mona caird has put it (_the morality of marriage_, , p. ), the watch-dog of man's property. the fact that no element of ideal morality enters into the question is shown by the usual absence of any demand for ante-nuptial chastity in the husband. it must not be supposed that when, as is most usually the case, there is no complete and permanent prohibition of extra-nuptial intercourse, mere unrestrained license prevails. that has probably never happened anywhere among uncontaminated savages. the rule probably is that, as among the tribes at torres straits (_reports cambridge anthropological expedition_, vol. v, p. ), there is no complete continence before marriage, but neither is there any unbridled license. the example of tahiti is instructive as regards the prevalence of chastity among peoples of what we generally consider low grades of civilization. tahiti, according to all who have visited it, from the earliest explorers down to that distinguished american surgeon, the late dr. nicholas senn, is an island possessing qualities of natural beauty and climatic excellence, which it is impossible to rate too highly. "i seemed to be transported into the garden of eden," said bougainville in . but, mainly under the influence of the early english missionaries who held ideas of theoretical morality totally alien to those of the inhabitants of the islands, the tahitians have become the stock example of a population given over to licentiousness and all its awful results. thus, in his valuable _polynesian researches_ (second edition, , vol. i, ch. ix) william ellis says that the tahitians practiced "the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty," though not specifying them. when, however, we carefully examine the narratives of the early visitors to tahiti, before the population became contaminated by contact with europeans, it becomes clear that this view needs serious modification. "the great plenty of good and nourishing food," wrote an early explorer, j.r. forster (_observations made on a voyage round the world_, , pp. , , ), "together with the fine climate, the beauty and unreserved behavior of their females, invite them powerfully to the enjoyments and pleasures of love. they begin very early to abandon themselves to the most libidinous scenes. their songs, their dances, and dramatic performances, breathe a spirit of luxury." yet he is over and over again impelled to set down facts which bear testimony to the virtues of these people. though rather effeminate in build, they are athletic, he says. moreover, in their wars they fight with great bravery and valor. they are, for the rest, hospitable. he remarks that they treat their married women with great respect, and that women generally are nearly the equals of men, both in intelligence and in social position; he gives a charming description of the women. "in short, their character," forster concludes, "is as amiable as that of any nation that ever came unimproved out of the hands of nature," and he remarks that, as was felt by the south sea peoples generally, "whenever we came to this happy island we could evidently perceive the opulence and happiness of its inhabitants." it is noteworthy also, that, notwithstanding the high importance which the tahitians attached to the erotic side of life, they were not deficient in regard for chastity. when cook, who visited tahiti many times, was among "this benevolent humane" people, he noted their esteem for chastity, and found that not only were betrothed girls strictly guarded before marriage, but that men also who had refrained from sexual intercourse for some time before marriage were believed to pass at death immediately into the abode of the blessed. "their behavior, on all occasions, seems to indicate a great openness and generosity of disposition. i never saw them, in any misfortune, labor under the appearance of anxiety, after the critical moment was past. neither does care ever seem to wrinkle their brow. on the contrary, even the approach of death does not appear to alter their usual vivacity" (_third voyage of discovery_, - ). turnbull visited tahiti at a later period (_a voyage round the world in _, etc., pp. - ), but while finding all sorts of vices among them, he is yet compelled to admit their virtues: "their manner of addressing strangers, from the king to the meanest subject, is courteous and affable in the extreme.... they certainly live amongst each other in more harmony than is usual amongst europeans. during the whole time i was amongst them i never saw such a thing as a battle.... i never remember to have seen an otaheitean out of temper. they jest upon each other with greater freedom than the europeans, but these jests are never taken in ill part.... with regard to food, it is, i believe, an invariable law in otaheite that whatever is possessed by one is common to all." thus we see that even among a people who are commonly referred to as the supreme example of a nation given up to uncontrolled licentiousness, the claims of chastity were admitted, and many other virtues vigorously flourished. the tahitians were brave, hospitable, self-controlled, courteous, considerate to the needs of others, chivalrous to women, even appreciative of the advantages of sexual restraint, to an extent which has rarely, if ever, been known among those christian nations which have looked down upon them as abandoned to unspeakable vices. as we turn from savages towards peoples in the barbarous and civilized stages we find a general tendency for chastity, in so far as it is a common possession of the common people, to be less regarded, or to be retained only as a traditional convention no longer strictly observed. the old grounds for chastity in primitive religions and _tabu_ have decayed and no new grounds have been generally established. "although the progress of civilization," wrote gibbon long ago, "has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favorable to the virtue of chastity," and westermarck concludes that "irregular connections between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization." the main difference in the social function of chastity as we pass from savagery to higher stages of culture seems to be that it ceases to exist as a general hygienic measure or a general ceremonial observance, and, for the most part, becomes confined to special philosophic or religious sects which cultivate it to an extreme degree in a more or less professional way. this state of things is well illustrated by the roman empire during the early centuries of the christian era.[ ] christianity itself was at first one of these sects enamored of the ideal of chastity; but by its superior vitality it replaced all the others and finally imposed its ideals, though by no means its primitive practices, on european society generally. chastity manifested itself in primitive christianity in two different though not necessarily opposed ways. on the one hand it took a stern and practical form in vigorous men and women who, after being brought up in a society permitting a high degree of sexual indulgence, suddenly found themselves convinced of the sin of such indulgence. the battle with the society they had been born into, and with their own old impulses and habits, became so severe that they often found themselves compelled to retire from the world altogether. thus it was that the parched solitudes of egypt were peopled with hermits largely occupied with the problem of subduing their own flesh. their pre-occupation, and indeed the pre-occupation of much early christian literature, with sexual matters, may be said to be vastly greater than was the case with the pagan society they had left. paganism accepted sexual indulgence and was then able to dismiss it, so that in classic literature we find very little insistence on sexual details except in writers like martial, juvenal and petronius who introduce them mainly for satirical ends. but the christians could not thus escape from the obsession of sex; it was ever with them. we catch interesting glimpses of their struggles, for the most part barren struggles, in the epistles of st. jerome, who had himself been an athlete in these ascetic contests. "oh, how many times," wrote st. jerome to eustochium, the virgin to whom he addressed one of the longest and most interesting of his letters, "when in the desert, in that vast solitude which, burnt up by the heart of the sun, offers but a horrible dwelling to monks, i imagined myself among the delights of rome! i was alone, for my soul was full of bitterness. my limbs were covered by a wretched sack and my skin was as black as an ethiopian's. every day i wept and groaned, and if i was unwillingly overcome by sleep my lean body lay on the bare earth. i say nothing of my food and drink, for in the desert even invalids have no drink but cold water, and cooked food is regarded as a luxury. well, i, who, out of fear of hell, had condemned myself to this prison, companion of scorpions and wild beasts, often seemed in imagination among bands of girls. my face was pale with fasting and my mind within my frigid body was burning with desire; the fires of lust would still flare up in a body that already seemed to be dead. then, deprived of all help, i threw myself at the feet of jesus, washing them with my tears and drying them with my hair, subjugating my rebellious flesh by long fasts. i remember that more than once i passed the night uttering cries and striking my breast until god sent me peace." "our century," wrote st. chrysostom in his _discourse to those who keep virgins in their houses_, "has seen many men who have bound their bodies with chains, clothed themselves in sacks, retired to the summits of mountains where they have lived in constant vigil and fasting, giving the example of the most austere discipline and forbidding all women to cross the thresholds of their humble dwellings; and yet, in spite of all the severities they have exercised on themselves, it was with difficulty they could repress the fury of their passions." hilarion, says jerome, saw visions of naked women when he lay down on his solitary couch and delicious meats when he sat down to his frugal table. such experiences rendered the early saints very scrupulous. "they used to say," we are told in an interesting history of the egyptian anchorites, palladius's _paradise of the holy fathers_, belonging to the fourth century (a.w. budge, _the paradise_, vol. ii, p. ), "that abbâ isaac went out and found the footprint of a woman on the road, and he thought about it in his mind and destroyed it saying, 'if a brother seeth it he may fall.'" similarly, according to the rules of st. cæsarius of aries for nuns, no male clothing was to be taken into the convent for the purpose of washing or mending. even in old age, a certain anxiety about chastity still remained. one of the brothers, we are told in _the paradise_ (p. ) said to abbâ zeno, "behold thou hast grown old, how is the matter of fornication?" the venerable saint replied, "it knocketh, but it passeth on." as the centuries went by the same strenuous anxiety to guard chastity still remained, and the old struggle constantly reappeared (see, e.g., migne's _dictionnaire d'ascétisme_, art. "démon, tentation du"). some saints, it is true, like luigi di gonzaga, were so angelically natured that they never felt the sting of sexual desire. these seem to have been the exception. st. benedict and st. francis experienced the difficulty of subduing the flesh. st. magdalena de pozzi, in order to dispel sexual desires, would roll on thorny bushes till the blood came. some saints kept a special cask of cold water in their cells to stand in (lea, _sacerdotal celibacy_, vol. i, p. ). on the other hand, the blessed angela de fulginio tells us in her _visiones_ (cap. xix) that, until forbidden by her confessor, she would place hot coals in her secret parts, hoping by material fire to extinguish the fire of concupiscence. st. aldhelm, the holy bishop of sherborne, in the eighth century, also adopted a homeopathic method of treatment, though of a more literal kind, for william of malmsbury states that when tempted by the flesh he would have women to sit and lie by him until he grew calm again; the method proved very successful, for the reason, it was thought, that the devil felt he had been made a fool of. in time the catholic practice and theory of asceticism became more formalized and elaborated, and its beneficial effects were held to extend beyond the individual himself. "asceticism from the christian point of view," writes brénier de montmorand in an interesting study ("ascétisme et mysticisme," _revue philosophique_, march, ) "is nothing else than all the therapeutic measures making for moral purification. the christian ascetic is an athlete struggling to transform his corrupt nature and make a road to god through the obstacles due to his passions and the world. he is not working in his own interests alone, but--by virtue of the reversibility of merit which compensates that of solidarity in error--for the good and for the salvation of the whole of society." this is the aspect of early christian asceticism most often emphasized. but there is another aspect which may be less familiar, but has been by no means less important. primitive christian chastity was on one side a strenuous discipline. on another side it was a romance, and this indeed was its most specifically christian side, for athletic asceticism has been associated with the most various religious and philosophic beliefs. if, indeed, it had not possessed the charm of a new sensation, of a delicious freedom, of an unknown adventure, it would never have conquered the european world. there are only a few in that world who have in them the stuff of moral athletes; there are many who respond to the attraction of romance. the christians rejected the grosser forms of sexual indulgence, but in doing so they entered with a more delicate ardor into the more refined forms of sexual intimacy. they cultivated a relationship of brothers and sisters to each other, they kissed one another; at one time, in the spiritual orgy of baptism, they were not ashamed to adopt complete nakedness.[ ] a very instructive picture of the forms which chastity assumed among the early christians is given us in the treatise of chrysostom _against those who keep virgins in their houses_. our fathers, chrysostom begins, only knew two forms of sexual intimacy, marriage and fornication. now a third form has appeared: men introduce young girls into their houses and keep them there permanently, respecting their virginity. "what," chrysostom asks, "is the reason? it seems to me that life in common with a woman is sweet, even outside conjugal union and fleshly commerce. that is my feeling; and perhaps it is not my feeling alone; it may also be that of these men. they would not hold their honor so cheap nor give rise to such scandals if this pleasure were not violent and tyrannical.... that there should really be a pleasure in this which produces a love more ardent than conjugal union may surprise you at first. but when i give you the proofs you will agree that it is so." the absence of restraint to desire in marriage, he continues, often leads to speedy disgust, and even apart from this, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, delivery, lactation, the bringing up of children, and all the pains and anxieties that accompany these things soon destroy youth and dull the point of pleasure. the virgin is free from these burdens. she retains her vigor and youthfulness, and even at the age of forty may rival the young nubile girl. "a double ardor thus burns in the heart of him who lives with her, and the gratification of desire never extinguishes the bright flame which ever continues to increase in strength." chrysostom describes minutely all the little cares and attentions which the modern girls of his time required, and which these men delighted to expend on their virginal sweethearts whether in public or in private. he cannot help thinking, however, that the man who lavishes kisses and caresses on a woman whose virginity he retains is putting himself somewhat in the position of tantalus. but this new refinement of tender chastity, which came as a delicious discovery to the early christians who had resolutely thrust away the licentiousness of the pagan world, was deeply rooted, as we discover from the frequency with which the grave fathers of the church, apprehensive of scandal, felt called upon to reprove it, though their condemnation is sometimes not without a trace of secret sympathy.[ ] there was one form in which the new christian chastity flourished exuberantly and unchecked: it conquered literature. the most charming, and, we may be sure, the most popular literature of the early church lay in the innumerable romances of erotic chastity--to some extent, it may well be, founded on fact--which are embodied to-day in the _acta sanctorum_. we can see in even the most simple and non-miraculous early christian records of the martyrdom of women that the writers were fully aware of the delicate charm of the heroine who, like perpetua at carthage, tossed by wild cattle in the arena, rises to gather her torn garment around her and to put up her disheveled hair.[ ] it was an easy step to the stories of romantic adventure. among these delightful stories i may refer especially to the legend of thekla, which has been placed, incorrectly it may be, as early as the first century, "the bride and bridegroom of india" in _judas thomas's acts_, "the virgin of antioch" as narrated by st. ambrose, the history of "achilleus and nereus," "mygdonia and karish," and "two lovers of auvergne" as told by gregory of tours. early christian literature abounds in the stories of lovers who had indeed preserved their chastity, and had yet discovered the most exquisite secrets of love. thekla's day is the twenty-third of september. there is a very good syriac version (by lipsius and others regarded as more primitive than the greek version) of the _acts of paul and thekla_ (see, e.g., wright's _apocryphal acts_). these _acts_ belong to the latter part of the second century. the story is that thekla, refusing to yield to the passion of the high priest of syria, was put, naked but for a girdle (_subligaculum_) into the arena on the back of a lioness, which licked her feet and fought for her against the other beasts, dying in her defense. the other beasts, however, did her no harm, and she was finally released. a queen loaded her with money, she modified her dress to look like a man, travelled to meet paul, and lived to old age. sir w.m. ramsay has written an interesting study of these _acts_ (_the church in the roman empire_, ch. xvi). he is of opinion that the _acts_ are based on a first century document, and is able to disentangle many elements of truth from the story. he states that it is the only evidence we possess of the ideas and actions of women during the first century in asia minor, where their position was so high and their influence so great. thekla represents the assertion of woman's rights, and she administered the rite of baptism, though in the existing versions of the _acts_ these features are toned down or eliminated. some of the most typical of these early christian romances are described as gnostical in origin, with something of the germs of manichæan dualism which were held in the rich and complex matrix of gnosticism, while the spirit of these romances is also largely montanist, with the combined chastity and ardor, the pronounced feminine tone due to its origin in asia minor, which marked montanism. it cannot be denied, however, that they largely passed into the main stream of christian tradition, and form an essential and important part of that tradition. (renan, in his _marc-aurèle_, chs. ix and xv, insists on the immense debt of christianity to gnostic and montanist contributions). a characteristic example is the story of "the betrothed of india" in _judas thomas's acts_ (wright's _apocryphal acts_). judas thomas was sold by his master jesus to an indian merchant who required a carpenter to go with him to india. on disembarking at the city of sandaruk they heard the sounds of music and singing, and learnt that it was the wedding-feast of the king's daughter, which all must attend, rich and poor, slaves and freemen, strangers and citizens. judas thomas went, with his new master, to the banquet and reclined with a garland of myrtle placed on his head. when a hebrew flute-player came and stood over him and played, he sang the songs of christ, and it was seen that he was more beautiful than all that were there and the king sent for him to bless the young couple in the bridal chamber. and when all were gone out and the door of the bridal chamber closed, the bridegroom approached the bride, and saw, as it were, judas thomas still talking with her. but it was our lord who said to him, "i am not judas, but his brother." and our lord sat down on the bed beside the young people and began to say to them: "remember, my children, what my brother spake with you, and know to whom he committed you, and know that if ye preserve yourselves from this filthy intercourse ye become pure temples, and are saved from afflictions manifest and hidden, and from the heavy care of children, the end whereof is bitter sorrow. for their sakes ye will become oppressors and robbers, and ye will be grievously tortured for their injuries. for children are the cause of many pains; either the king falls upon them or a demon lays hold of them, or paralysis befalls them. and if they be healthy they come to ill, either by adultery, or theft, or fornication, or covetousness, or vain-glory. but if ye will be persuaded by me, and keep yourselves purely unto god, ye shall have living children to whom not one of these blemishes and hurts cometh nigh; and ye shall be without care and without grief and without sorrow, and ye shall hope for the time when ye shall see the true wedding-feast." the young couple were persuaded, and refrained from lust, and our lord vanished. and in the morning, when it was dawn, the king had the table furnished early and brought in before the bridegroom and bride. and he found them sitting the one opposite the other, and the face of the bride was uncovered and the bridegroom was very cheerful. the mother of the bride saith to her: "why art thou sitting thus, and art not ashamed, but art as if, lo, thou wert married a long time, and for many a day?" and her father, too, said; "is it thy great love for thy husband that prevents thee from even veiling thyself?" and the bride answered and said: "truly, my father, i am in great love, and am praying to my lord that i may continue in this love which i have experienced this night. i am not veiled, because the veil of corruption is taken from me, and i am not ashamed, because the deed of shame has been removed far from me, and i am cheerful and gay, and despise this deed of corruption and the joys of this wedding-feast, because i am invited to the true wedding-feast. i have not had intercourse with a husband, the end whereof is bitter repentance, because i am betrothed to the true husband." the bridegroom answered also in the same spirit, very naturally to the dismay of the king, who sent for the sorcerer whom he had asked to bless his unlucky daughter. but judas thomas had already left the city and at his inn the king's stewards found only the flute-player, sitting and weeping because he had not taken her with him. she was glad, however, when she heard what had happened, and hastened to the young couple, and lived with them ever afterwards. the king also was finally reconciled, and all ended chastely, but happily. in these same _judas thomas's acts_, which are not later than the fourth century, we find (eighth act) the story of mygdonia and karish. mygdonia, the wife of karish, is converted by thomas and flees from her husband, naked save for the curtain of the chamber door which she has wrapped around her, to her old nurse. with the nurse she goes to thomas, who pours holy oil over her head, bidding the nurse to anoint her all over with it; then a cloth is put round her loins and he baptizes her; then she is clothed and he gives her the sacrament. the young rapture of chastity grows lyrical at times, and judas thomas breaks out: "purity is the athlete who is not overcome. purity is the truth that blencheth not. purity is worthy before god of being to him a familiar handmaiden. purity is the messenger of concord which bringeth the tidings of peace." another romance of chastity is furnished by the episode of drusiana in _the history of the apostles_ traditionally attributed to abdias, bishop of babylon (bk. v, ch. iv, _et seq._). drusiana is the wife of andronicus, and is so pious that she will not have intercourse with him. the youth callimachus falls madly in love with her, and his amorous attempts involve many exciting adventures, but the chastity of drusiana is finally triumphant. a characteristic example of the literature we are here concerned with is st. ambrose's story of "the virgin in the brothel" (narrated in his _de virginibus_, migne's edition of ambrose's works, vols. iii-iv, p. ). a certain virgin, st. ambrose tells us, who lately lived at antioch, was condemned either to sacrifice to the gods or to go to the brothel. she chose the latter alternative. but the first man who came in to her was a christian soldier who called her "sister," and bade her have no fear. he proposed that they should exchange clothes. this was done and she escaped, while the soldier was led away to death. at the place of execution, however, she ran up and exclaimed that it was not death she feared but shame. he, however, maintained that he had been condemned to death in her place. finally the crown of martyrdom for which they contended was adjudged to both. we constantly observe in the early documents of this romantic literature of chastity that chastity is insisted on by no means chiefly because of its rewards after death, nor even because the virgin who devotes herself to it secures in christ an ever-young lover whose golden-haired beauty is sometimes emphasized. its chief charm is represented as lying in its own joy and freedom and the security it involves from all the troubles, inconveniences and bondages of matrimony. this early christian movement of romantic chastity was clearly, in large measure, a revolt of women against men and marriage. this is well brought out in the instructive story, supposed to be of third century origin, of the eunuchs achilleus and nereus, as narrated in the _acta sanctorum_, may th. achilleus and nereus were christian eunuchs of the bedchamber to domitia, a virgin of noble birth, related to the emperor domitian and betrothed to aurelian, son of a consul. one day, as their mistress was putting on her jewels and her purple garments embroidered with gold, they began in turn to talk to her about all the joys and advantages of virginity, as compared to marriage with a mere man. the conversation is developed at great length and with much eloquence. domitia was finally persuaded. she suffered much from aurelian in consequence, and when he obtained her banishment to an island she went thither with achilleus and nereus, who were put to death. incidentally, the death of felicula, another heroine of chastity, is described. when elevated on the rack because she would not marry, she constantly refused to deny jesus, whom she called her lover. "ego non nego amatorem meum!" a special department of this literature is concerned with stories of the conversions or the penitence of courtesans. st. martinianus, for instance (feb. ), was tempted by the courtesan zoe, but converted her. the story of st. margaret of cortona (feb. ), a penitent courtesan, is late, for she belongs to the thirteenth century. the most delightful document in this literature is probably the latest, the fourteenth century italian devotional romance called _the life of saint mary magdalen_, commonly associated with the name of frate domenico cavalca. (it has been translated into english). it is the delicately and deliciously told romance of the chaste and passionate love of the sweet sinner, mary magdalene, for her beloved master. as time went on the insistence on the joys of chastity in this life became less marked, and chastity is more and more regarded as a state only to be fully rewarded in a future life. even, however, in gregory of tours's charming story of "the two lovers of auvergne," in which this attitude is clear, the pleasures of chaste love in this life are brought out as clearly as in any of the early romances (_historia francorum_, lib. i, cap. xlii). two senators of auvergne each had an only child, and they betrothed them to each other. when the wedding day came and the young couple were placed in bed, the bride turned to the wall and wept bitterly. the bridegroom implored her to tell him what was the matter, and, turning towards him, she said that if she were to weep all her days she could never wash away her grief for she had resolved to give her little body immaculate to christ, untouched by men, and now instead of immortal roses she had only had on her brow faded roses, which deformed rather than adorned it, and instead of the dowry of paradise which christ had promised her she had become the consort of a merely mortal man. she deplored her sad fate at considerable length and with much gentle eloquence. at length the bridegroom, overcome by her sweet words, felt that eternal life had shone before him like a great light, and declared that if she wished to abstain from carnal desires he was of the same mind. she was grateful, and with clasped hands they fell asleep. for many years they thus lived together, chastely sharing the same bed. at length she died and was buried, her lover restoring her immaculate to the hands of christ. soon afterwards he died also, and was placed in a separate tomb. then a miracle happened which made manifest the magnitude of this chaste love, for the two bodies were found mysteriously placed together. to this day, gregory concludes (writing in the sixth century), the people of the place call them "the two lovers." although renan (_marc-aurèle_, ch. xv) briefly called attention to the existence of this copious early christian literature setting forth the romance of chastity, it seems as yet to have received little or no study. it is, however, of considerable importance, not merely for its own sake, but on account of its psychological significance in making clear the nature of the motive forces which made chastity easy and charming to the people of the early christian world, even when it involved complete abstinence from sexual intercourse. the early church anathematized the eroticism of the pagan world, and exorcized it in the most effectual way by setting up a new and more exquisite eroticism of its own. during the middle ages the primitive freshness of christian chastity began to lose its charm. no more romances of chastity were written, and in actual life men no longer sought daring adventures in the field of chastity. so far as the old ideals survived at all it was in the secular field of chivalry. the last notable figure to emulate the achievements of the early christians was robert of arbrissel in normandy. robert of arbrissel, who founded, in the eleventh century, the famous and distinguished order of fontevrault for women, was a breton. this celtic origin is doubtless significant, for it may explain his unfailing ardor and gaiety, and his enthusiastic veneration for womanhood. even those of his friends who deprecated what they considered his scandalous conduct bear testimony to his unfailing and cheerful temperament, his alertness in action, his readiness for any deed of humanity, and his entire freedom from severity. he attracted immense crowds of people of all conditions, especially women, including prostitutes, and his influence over women was great. once he went into a brothel to warm his feet, and, incidentally, converted all the women there. "who are you?" asked one of them, "i have been here twenty-five years and nobody has ever come here to talk about god." robert's relation with his nuns at fontevrault was very intimate, and he would often sleep with them. this is set forth precisely in letters written by friends of his, bishops and abbots, one of whom remarks that robert had "discovered a new but fruitless form of martyrdom." a royal abbess of fontevrault in the seventeenth century, pretending that the venerated founder of the order could not possibly have been guilty of such scandalous conduct, and that the letters must therefore be spurious, had the originals destroyed, so far as possible. the bollandists, in an unscholarly and incomplete account of the matter (_acta sanctorum_, feb. ), adopted this view. j. von walter, however, in a recent and thorough study of robert of arbrissel (_die ersten wanderprediger frankreichs_, theil i), shows that there is no reason whatever to doubt the authentic and reliable character of the impugned letters. the early christian legends of chastity had, however, their successors. _aucassin et nicolette_, which was probably written in northern france towards the end of the twelfth century, is above all the descendant of the stories in the _acta sanctorum_ and elsewhere. it embodied their spirit and carried it forward, uniting their delicate feeling for chastity and purity with the ideal of monogamic love. _aucassin et nicolette_ was the death-knell of the primitive christian romance of chastity. it was the discovery that the chaste refinements of delicacy and devotion were possible within the strictly normal sphere of sexual love. there were at least two causes which tended to extinguish the primitive christian attraction to chastity, even apart from the influence of the church authorities in repressing its romantic manifestations. in the first place, the submergence of the old pagan world, with its practice and, to some extent, ideal of sexual indulgence, removed the foil which had given grace and delicacy to the tender freedom of the young christians. in the second place, the austerities which the early christians had gladly practised for the sake of their soul's health, were robbed of their charm and spontaneity by being made a formal part of codes of punishment for sin, first in the penitentials and afterwards at the discretion of confessors. this, it may be added, was rendered the more necessary because the ideal of christian chastity was no longer largely the possession of refined people who had been rendered immune to pagan license by being brought up in its midst, and even themselves steeped in it. it was clearly from the first a serious matter for the violent north africans to maintain the ideal of chastity, and when christianity spread to northern europe it seemed almost a hopeless task to acclimatize its ideals among the wild germans. hereafter it became necessary for celibacy to be imposed on the regular clergy by the stern force of ecclesiastical authority, while voluntary celibacy was only kept alive by a succession of religious enthusiasts perpetually founding new orders. an asceticism thus enforced could not always be accompanied by the ardent exaltation necessary to maintain it, and in its artificial efforts at self-preservation it frequently fell from its insecure heights to the depths of unrestrained license.[ ] this fatality of all hazardous efforts to overpass humanity's normal limits begun to be realized after the middle ages were over by clear-sighted thinkers. "qui veut faire l'ange," said pascal, pungently summing up this view of the matter, "fait la bête." that had often been illustrated in the history of the church. the penitentials began to come into use in the seventh century, and became of wide prevalence and authority during the ninth and tenth centuries. they were bodies of law, partly spiritual and partly secular, and were thrown into the form of catalogues of offences with the exact measure of penance prescribed for each offence. they represented the introduction of social order among untamed barbarians, and were codes of criminal law much more than part of a system of sacramental confession and penance. in france and spain, where order on a christian basis already existed, they were little needed. they had their origin in ireland and england, and especially flourished in germany; charlemagne supported them (see, e.g., lea, _history of auricular confession_, vol. ii, p. , also ch. xvii; hugh williams, edition of gildas, part ii, appendix ; the chief penitentials are reproduced in wasserschleben's _bussordnungen_). in the lateran council, under innocent iii, made confession obligatory. the priestly prerogative of regulating the amount of penance according to circumstances, with greater flexibility than the rigid penitentials admitted, was first absolutely asserted by peter of poitiers. then alain de lille threw aside the penitentials as obsolete, and declared that the priest himself must inquire into the circumstances of each sin and weigh precisely its guilt (lea, op. cit., vol. ii, p. ). long before this period, however, the ideals of chastity, so far as they involved any considerable degree of continence, although they had become firmly hardened into the conventional traditions and ideals of the christian church, had ceased to have any great charm or force for the people living in christendom. among the northern barbarians, with different traditions of a more vigorous and natural order behind them, the demands of sex were often frankly exhibited. the monk ordericus vitalis, in the eleventh century, notes what he calls the "lasciviousness" of the wives of the norman conquerors of england who, when left alone at home, sent messages that if their husbands failed to return speedily they would take new ones. the celibacy of the clergy was only established with the very greatest difficulty, and when it was established, priests became unchaste. archbishop odo of rouen, in the thirteenth century, recorded in the diary of his diocesan visitations that there was one unchaste priest in every five parishes, and even as regards the italy of the same period the friar salimbene in his remarkable autobiography shows how little chastity was regarded in the religious life. chastity could now only be maintained by force, usually the moral force of ecclesiastical authority, which was itself undermined by unchastity, but sometimes even physical force. it was in the thirteenth century, in the opinion of some, that the girdle of chastity (_cingula castitatis_) first begins to appear, but the chief authority, caufeynon (_la ceinture de chasteté_, ) believes it only dates from the renaissance (schultz, _das höfische leben zur zeit der minnesänger_, vol. i, p. ; dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. v, p. ; krauss, _anthropophyteia_, vol. iii, p. ). in the sixteenth century convents were liable to become almost brothels, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of burchard, a pope's secretary, in his _diarium_, edited by thuasne who brings together additional authorities for this statement in a footnote (vol. ii, p. ); that they remained so in the eighteenth century we see clearly in the pages of casanova's _mémoires_, and in many other documents of the period. the renaissance and the rise of humanism undoubtedly affected the feeling towards asceticism and chastity. on the one hand a new and ancient sanction was found for the disregard of virtues which men began to look upon as merely monkish, and on the other hand the finer spirits affected by the new movement began to realize that chastity might be better cultivated and observed by those who were free to do as they would than by those who were under the compulsion of priestly authority. that is the feeling that prevails in montaigne, and that is the idea of rabelais when he made it the only rule of his abbey of thelème: "fay ce que vouldras." a little later this doctrine was repeated in varying tones by many writers more or less tinged by the culture brought into fashion by the renaissance. "as long as danae was free," remarks ferrand in his sixteenth century treatise, _de la maladie d'amour_, "she was chaste." and sir kenelm digby, the latest representative of the renaissance spirit, insists in his _private memoirs_ that the liberty which lycurgus, "the wisest human law-maker that ever was," gave to women to communicate their bodies to men to whom they were drawn by noble affection, and the hope of generous offspring, was the true cause why "real chastity flourished in sparta more than in any other part of the world." in protestant countries the ascetic ideal of chastity was still further discredited by the reformation movement which was in considerable part a revolt against compulsory celibacy. religion was thus no longer placed on the side of chastity. in the eighteenth century, if not earlier, the authority of nature also was commonly invoked against chastity. it has thus happened that during the past two centuries serious opinion concerning chastity has only been partially favorable to it. it began to be felt that an unhappy and injurious mistake had been perpetrated by attempting to maintain a lofty ideal which encouraged hypocrisy. "the human race would gain much," as sénancour wrote early in the nineteenth century in his remarkable book on love, "if virtue were made less laborious. the merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[ ] there can be no doubt that the undue discredit into which the idea of chastity began to fall from the eighteenth century onwards was largely due to the existence of that merely external and conventional physical chastity which was arbitrarily enforced so far as it could be enforced,--and is indeed in some degree still enforced, nominally or really,--upon all respectable women outside marriage. the conception of the physical virtue of virginity had degraded the conception of the spiritual virtue of chastity. a mere routine, it was felt, prescribed to a whole sex, whether they would or not, could never possess the beauty and charm of a virtue. at the same time it began to be realized that, as a matter of fact, the state of compulsory virginity is not only not a state especially favorable to the cultivation of real virtues, but that it is bound up with qualities which are no longer regarded as of high value.[ ] "how arbitrary, artificial, contrary to nature, is the life now imposed upon women in this matter of chastity!" wrote james hinton forty years ago. "think of that line: 'a woman who deliberates is lost.' we _make_ danger, making all womanhood hang upon a point like this, and surrounding it with unnatural and preternatural dangers. there is a wanton unreason embodied in the life of woman now; the present 'virtue' is a morbid unhealthy plant. nature and god never poised the life of a woman upon such a needle's point. the whole modern idea of chastity has in it sensual exaggeration, surely, in part, remaining to us from other times, with what was good in it in great part gone." "the whole grace of virginity," wrote another philosopher, guyau, "is ignorance. virginity, like certain fruits, can only be preserved by a process of desiccation." mérimée pointed out the same desiccating influence of virginity. in a letter dated he wrote: "i think that nowadays people attach far too much importance to chastity. not that i deny that chastity is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as there are in vices. it seems to be absurd that a woman should be banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. the morality of this age is assuredly not that which is taught in the gospel. in my opinion it is better to love too much than not enough. nowadays dry hearts are stuck up on a pinnacle" (_revue des deux mondes_, april, ). dr. h. paul has developed an allied point. she writes: "there are girls who, even as children, have prostituted themselves by masturbation and lascivious thoughts. the purity of their souls has long been lost and nothing remains unknown to them, but--they have preserved their hymens! that is for the sake of the future husband. let no one dare to doubt their innocence with that unimpeachable evidence! and if another girl, who has passed her childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even only in passion, they all stand up and scream that she is 'dishonored!' and, not least, the prostituted girl with the hymen. it is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the biggest stones. yet the 'dishonored' woman, who is sound and wholesome, need not fear to tell what she has done to the man who desires her in marriage, speaking as one human being to another. she has no need to blush, she has exercised her human rights, and no reasonable man will on that account esteem her the less" (dr. h. paul, "die ueberschätzung der jungfernschaft," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, p. , ). in a similar spirit writes f. erhard (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. i, p. ): "virginity in one sense has its worth, but in the ordinary sense it is greatly overestimated. apart from the fact that a girl who possesses it may yet be thoroughly perverted, this over-estimation of virginity leads to the girl who is without it being despised, and has further resulted in the development of a special industry for the preparation, by means of a prudishly cloistral education, of girls who will bring to their husbands the peculiar dainty of a bride who knows nothing about anything. naturally, this can only be achieved at the expense of any rational education. what the undeveloped little goose may turn into, no man can foresee." freud (_sexual-probleme_, march, ) also points out the evil results of the education for marriage which is given to girls on the basis of this ideal of virginity. "education undertakes the task of repressing the girl's sensuality until the time of betrothal. it not only forbids sexual relations and sets a high premium on innocence, but it also withdraws the ripening womanly individuality from temptation, maintaining a state of ignorance concerning the practical side of the part she is intended to play in life, and enduring no stirring of love which cannot lead to marriage. the result is that when she is suddenly permitted to fall in love by the authority of her elders, the girl cannot bring her psychic disposition to bear, and goes into marriage uncertain of her own feelings. as a consequence of this artificial retardation of the function of love she brings nothing but deception to the husband who has set all his desires upon her, and manifests frigidity in her physical relations with him." sénancour (_de l'amour_, vol. i, p. ) even believes that, when it is possible to leave out of consideration the question of offspring, not only will the law of chastity become equal for the two sexes, but there will be a tendency for the situation of the sexes to be, to some extent, changed. "continence becomes a counsel rather than a precept, and it is in women that the voluptuous inclination will be regarded with most indulgence. man is made for work; he only meets pleasure in passing; he must be content that women should occupy themselves with it more than he. it is men whom it exhausts, and men must always, in part, restrain their desires." as, however, we liberate ourselves from the bondage of a compulsory physical chastity, it becomes possible to rehabilitate chastity as a virtue. at the present day it can no longer be said that there is on the part of thinkers and moralists any active hostility to the idea of chastity; there is, on the contrary, a tendency to recognize the value of chastity. but this recognition has been accompanied by a return to the older and sounder conception of chastity. the preservation of a rigid sexual abstinence, an empty virginity, can only be regarded as a pseudo-chastity. the only positive virtue which aristotle could have recognized in this field was a temperance involving restraint of the lower impulses, a wise exercise and not a non-exercise.[ ] the best thinkers of the christian church adopted the same conception; st. basil in his important monastic rules laid no weight on self-discipline as an end in itself, but regarded it as an instrument for enabling the spirit to gain power over the flesh. st. augustine declared that continence is only excellent when practised in the faith of the highest good,[ ] and he regarded chastity as "an orderly movement of the soul subordinating lower things to higher things, and specially to be manifested in conjugal relationships"; thomas aquinas, defining chastity in much the same way, defined impurity as the enjoyment of sexual pleasure not according to right reason, whether as regards the object or the conditions.[ ] but for a time the voices of the great moralists were unheard. the virtue of chastity was swamped in the popular christian passion for the annihilation of the flesh, and that view was, in the sixteenth century, finally consecrated by the council of trent, which formally pronounced an anathema upon anyone who should declare that the state of virginity and celibacy was not better than the state of matrimony. nowadays the pseudo-chastity that was of value on the simple ground that any kind of continence is of higher spiritual worth than any kind of sexual relationship belongs to the past, except for those who adhere to ancient ascetic creeds. the mystic value of virginity has gone; it seems only to arouse in the modern man's mind the idea of a piquancy craved by the hardened rake;[ ] it is men who have themselves long passed the age of innocence who attach so much importance to the innocence of their brides. the conception of life-long continence as an ideal has also gone; at the best it is regarded as a mere matter of personal preference. and the conventional simulation of universal chastity, at the bidding of respectability, is coming to be regarded as a hindrance rather than a help to the cultivation of any real chastity.[ ] the chastity that is regarded by the moralist of to-day as a virtue has its worth by no means in its abstinence. it is not, in st. theresa's words, the virtue of the tortoise which withdraws its limbs under its carapace. it is a virtue because it is a discipline in self-control, because it helps to fortify the character and will, and because it is directly favorable to the cultivation of the most beautiful, exalted, and effective sexual life. so viewed, chastity may be opposed to the demands of debased mediæval catholicism, but it is in harmony with the demands of our civilized life to-day, and by no means at variance with the requirements of nature. there is always an analogy between the instinct of reproduction and the instinct of nutrition. in the matter of eating it is the influence of science, of physiology, which has finally put aside an exaggerated asceticism, and made eating "pure." the same process, as james hinton well pointed out, has been made possible in the sexual relationships; "science has in its hands the key to purity."[ ] many influences have, however, worked together to favor an insistence on chastity. there has, in the first place, been an inevitable reaction against the sexual facility which had come to be regarded as natural. such facility was found to have no moral value, for it tended to relaxation of moral fibre and was unfavorable to the finest sexual satisfaction. it could not even claim to be natural in any broad sense of the word, for, in nature generally, sexual gratification tends to be rare and difficult.[ ] courtship is arduous and long, the season of love is strictly delimited, pregnancy interrupts sexual relationships. even among savages, so long as they have been untainted by civilization, virility is usually maintained by a fine asceticism; the endurance of hardship, self-control and restraint, tempered by rare orgies, constitute a discipline which covers the sexual as well as every other department of savage life. to preserve the same virility in civilized life, it may well be felt, we must deliberately cultivate a virtue which under savage conditions of life is natural.[ ] the influence of nietzsche, direct and indirect, has been on the side of the virtue of chastity in its modern sense. the command: "be hard," as nietzsche used it, was not so much an injunction to an unfeeling indifference towards others as an appeal for a more strenuous attitude towards one's self, the cultivation of a self-control able to gather up and hold in the forces of the soul for expenditure on deliberately accepted ends. "a relative chastity," he wrote, "a fundamental and wise foresight in the face of erotic things, even in thought, is part of a fine reasonableness in life, even in richly endowed and complete natures."[ ] in this matter nietzsche is a typical representative of the modern movement for the restoration of chastity to its proper place as a real and beneficial virtue, and not a mere empty convention. such a movement could not fail to make itself felt, for all that favors facility and luxurious softness in sexual matters is quickly felt to degrade character as well as to diminish the finest erotic satisfaction. for erotic satisfaction, in its highest planes, is only possible when we have secured for the sexual impulse a high degree of what colin scott calls "irradiation," that is to say a wide diffusion through the whole of the psychic organism. and that can only be attained by placing impediments in the way of the swift and direct gratification of sexual desire, by compelling it to increase its force, to take long circuits, to charge the whole organism so highly that the final climax of gratified love is not the trivial detumescence of a petty desire but the immense consummation of a longing in which the whole soul as well as the whole body has its part. "only the chaste can be really obscene," said huysmans. and on a higher plane, only the chaste can really love. "physical purity," remarks hans menjago ("die ueberschätzung der physischen reinheit," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. ii, part viii) "was originally valued as a sign of greater strength of will and firmness of character, and it marked a rise above primitive conditions. this purity was difficult to preserve in those unsure days; it was rare and unusual. from this rarity rose the superstition of supernatural power residing in the virgin. but this has no meaning as soon as such purity becomes general and a specially conspicuous degree of firmness of character is no longer needed to maintain it.... physical purity can only possess value when it is the result of individual strength of character, and not when it is the result of compulsory rules of morality." konrad höller, who has given special attention to the sexual question in schools, remarks in relation to physical exercise: "the greatest advantage of physical exercises, however, is not the development of the active and passive strength of the body and its skill, but the establishment and fortification of the authority of the will over the body and its needs, so much given up to indolence. he who has learnt to endure and overcome, for the sake of a definite aim, hunger and thirst and fatigue, will be the better able to withstand sexual impulses and the temptation to gratify them, when better insight and æsthetic feeling have made clear to him, as one used to maintain authority over his body, that to yield would be injurious or disgraceful" (k. höller, "die aufgabe der volksschule," _sexualpädagogik_, p. ). professor schäfenacker (id., p. ), who also emphasizes the importance of self-control and self-restraint, thinks a youth must bear in mind his future mission, as citizen and father of a family. a subtle and penetrative thinker of to-day, jules de gaultier, writing on morals without reference to this specific question, has discussed what new internal inhibitory motives we can appeal to in replacing the old external inhibition of authority and belief which is now decayed. he answers that the state of feeling on which old faiths were based still persists. "may not," he asks, "the desire for a thing that we love and wish for beneficently replace the belief that a thing is by divine will, or in the nature of things? will not the presence of a bridle on the frenzy of instinct reveal itself as a useful attitude adopted by instinct itself for its own conservation, as a symptom of the force and health of instinct? is not empire over oneself, the power of regulating one's acts, a mark of superiority and a motive for self-esteem? will not this joy of pride have the same authority in preserving the instincts as was once possessed by religious fear and the pretended imperatives of reason?" (jules de gaultier, _la dépendance de la morale et l'indépendance des moeurs_, p. .) h.g. wells (in _a modern utopia_), pointing out the importance of chastity, though rejecting celibacy, invokes, like jules de gaultier, the motive of pride. "civilization has developed far more rapidly than man has modified. under the unnatural perfection of security, liberty, and abundance our civilization has attained, the normal untrained human being is disposed to excess in almost every direction; he tends to eat too much and too elaborately, to drink too much, to become lazy faster than his work can be reduced, to waste his interest upon displays, and to make love too much and too elaborately. he gets out of training, and concentrates upon egoistic or erotic broodings. our founders organized motives from all sorts of sources, but i think the chief force to give men self-control is pride. pride may not be the noblest thing in the soul, but it is the best king there, for all that. they looked to it to keep a man clean and sound and sane. in this matter, as in all matters of natural desire, they held no appetite must be glutted, no appetite must have artificial whets, and also and equally that no appetite should be starved. a man must come from the table satisfied, but not replete. and, in the matter of love, a straight and clean desire for a clean and straight fellow-creature was our founders' ideal. they enjoined marriage between equals as the duty to the race, and they framed directions of the precisest sort to prevent that uxorious inseparableness, that connubiality, that sometimes reduces a couple of people to something jointly less than either." with regard to chastity as an element of erotic satisfaction, edward carpenter writes (_love's coming of age_, p. ): "there is a kind of illusion about physical desire similar to that which a child suffers from when, seeing a beautiful flower, it instantly snatches the same, and destroys in a few moments the form and fragrance which attracted it. he only gets the full glory who holds himself back a little, and truly possesses, who is willing, if need be, not to possess. he is indeed a master of life who, accepting the grosser desires as they come to his body, and not refusing them, knows how to transform them at will into the most rare and fragrant flowers of human emotion." beyond its functions in building up character, in heightening and ennobling the erotic life, and in subserving the adequate fulfilment of family and social duties, chastity has a more special value for those who cultivate the arts. we may not always be inclined to believe the writers who have declared that their verse alone is wanton, but their lives chaste. it is certainly true, however, that a relationship of this kind tends to occur. the stuff of the sexual life, as nietzsche says, is the stuff of art; if it is expended in one channel it is lost for the other. the masters of all the more intensely emotional arts have frequently cultivated a high degree of chastity. this is notably the case as regards music; one thinks of mozart,[ ] of beethoven, of schubert, and many lesser men. in the case of poets and novelists chastity may usually seem to be less prevalent but it is frequently well-marked, and is not seldom disguised by the resounding reverberations which even the slightest love-episode often exerts on the poetic organism. goethe's life seems, at a first glance, to be a long series of continuous love-episodes. yet when we remember that it was the very long life of a man whose vigor remained until the end, that his attachments long and profoundly affected his emotional life and his work, and that with most of the women he has immortalized he never had actual sexual relationships at all, and when we realize, moreover, that, throughout, he accomplished an almost inconceivably vast amount of work, we shall probably conclude that sexual indulgence had a very much smaller part in goethe's life than in that of many an average man on whom it leaves no obvious emotional or intellectual trace whatever. sterne, again, declared that he must always have a dulcinea dancing in his head, yet the amount of his intimate relations with women appears to have been small. balzac spent his life toiling at his desk and carrying on during many years a love correspondence with a woman he scarcely ever saw and at the end only spent a few months of married life with. the like experience has befallen many artistic creators. for, in the words of landor, "absence is the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal beauty." we do well to remember that, while the auto-erotic manifestations through the brain are of infinite variety and importance, the brain and the sexual organs are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and that there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigor and extreme sexual vigor, even although they may sometimes both appear at different periods in the same individual.[ ] in this sense there is no paradox in the saying of ramon correa that potency is impotence and impotence potency, for a high degree of energy, whether in athletics or in intellect or in sexual activity, is unfavorable to the display of energy in other directions. every high degree of potency has its related impotencies. it may be added that we may find a curiously inconsistent proof of the excessive importance attached to sexual function by a society which systematically tries to depreciate sex, in the disgrace which is attributed to the lack of "virile" potency. although civilized life offers immense scope for the activities of sexually impotent persons, the impotent man is made to feel that, while he need not be greatly concerned if he suffers from nervous disturbances of digestion, if he should suffer just as innocently from nervous disturbances of the sexual impulse, it is almost a crime. a striking example of this was shown, a few years ago, when it was plausibly suggested that carlyle's relations with his wife might best be explained by supposing that he suffered from some trouble of sexual potency. at once admirers rushed forward to "defend" carlyle from this "disgraceful" charge; they were more shocked than if it had been alleged that he was a syphilitic. yet impotence is, at the most, an infirmity, whether due to some congenital anatomical defect or to a disturbance of nervous balance in the delicate sexual mechanism, such as is apt to occur in men of abnormally sensitive temperament. it is no more disgraceful to suffer from it than from dyspepsia, with which, indeed, it may be associated. many men of genius and high moral character have been sexually deformed. this was the case with cowper (though this significant fact is suppressed by his biographers); ruskin was divorced for a reason of this kind; and j.s. mill, it is said, was sexually of little more than infantile development. up to this point i have been considering the quality of chastity and the quality of asceticism in their most general sense and without any attempt at precise differentiation.[ ] but if we are to accept these as modern virtues, valid to-day, it is necessary that we should be somewhat more precise in defining them. it seems most convenient, and most strictly accordant also with etymology, if we agree to mean by asceticism or _ascesis_, the athlete quality of self-discipline, controlling, by no means necessarily for indefinitely prolonged periods, the gratification of the sexual impulse. by chastity, which is primarily the quality of purity, and secondarily that of holiness, rather than of abstinence, we may best understand a due proportion between erotic claims and the other claims of life. "chastity," as ellen key well says, "is harmony between body and soul in relation to love." thus comprehended, asceticism is the virtue of control that leads up to erotic gratification, and chastity is the virtue which exerts its harmonizing influence in the erotic life itself. it will be seen that asceticism by no means necessarily involves perpetual continence. properly understood, asceticism is a discipline, a training, which has reference to an end not itself. if it is compulsorily perpetual, whether at the dictates of a religious dogma, or as a mere fetish, it is no longer on a natural basis, and it is no longer moral, for the restraint of a man who has spent his whole life in a prison is of no value for life. if it is to be natural and to be moral asceticism must have an end outside itself, it must subserve the ends of vital activity, which cannot be subserved by a person who is engaged in a perpetual struggle with his own natural instincts. a man may, indeed, as a matter of taste or preference, live his whole life in sexual abstinence, freely and easily, but in that case he is not an ascetic, and his abstinence is neither a subject for applause nor for criticism. in the same way chastity, far from involving sexual abstinence, only has its value when it is brought within the erotic sphere. a purity that is ignorance, when the age of childish innocence is once passed, is mere stupidity; it is nearer to vice than to virtue. nor is purity consonant with effort and struggle; in that respect it differs from asceticism. "we conquer the bondage of sex," rosa mayreder says, "by acceptance, not by denials, and men can only do this with the help of women." the would-be chastity of cold calculation is equally unbeautiful and unreal, and without any sort of value. a true and worthy chastity can only be supported by an ardent ideal, whether, as among the early christians, this is the erotic ideal of a new romance, or, as among ourselves, a more humanly erotic ideal. "only erotic idealism," says ellen key, "can arouse enthusiasm for chastity." chastity in a healthily developed person can thus be beautifully exercised only in the actual erotic life; in part it is the natural instinct of dignity and temperance; in part it is the art of touching the things of sex with hands that remember their aptness for all the fine ends of life. upon the doorway of entrance to the inmost sanctuary of love there is thus the same inscription as on the doorway to the epidaurian sanctuary of aesculapius: "none but the pure shall enter here." it will be seen that the definition of chastity remains somewhat lacking in precision. that is inevitable. we cannot grasp purity tightly, for, like snow, it will merely melt in our hands. "purity itself forbids too minute a system of rules for the observance of purity," well says sidgwick (_methods of ethics_, bk. iii, ch. ix). elsewhere (op. cit., bk. iii, ch. xi) he attempts to answer the question: what sexual relations are essentially impure? and concludes that no answer is possible. "there appears to be no distinct principle, having any claim to self-evidence, upon which the question can be answered so as to command general assent." even what is called "free love," he adds, "in so far as it is earnestly advocated as a means to a completer harmony of sentiment between men and women, cannot be condemned as impure, for it seems paradoxical to distinguish purity from impurity merely by less rapidity of transition." moll, from the standpoint of medical psychology, reaches the same conclusion as sidgwick from that of ethics. in a report on the "value of chastity for men," published as an appendix to the third edition ( ) of his _konträre sexualempfindung_, the distinguished berlin physician discusses the matter with much vigorous common sense, insisting that "chaste and unchaste are _relative ideas_." we must not, he states, as is so often done, identify "chaste" with "sexually abstinent." he adds that we are not justified in describing all extra-marital sexual intercourse as unchaste, for, if we do so, we shall be compelled to regard nearly all men, and some very estimable women, as unchaste. he rightly insists that in this matter we must apply the same rule to women as to men, and he points out that even when it involves what may be technically adultery sexual intercourse is not necessarily unchaste. he takes the case of a girl who, at eighteen, when still mentally immature, is married to a man with whom she finds it impossible to live and a separation consequently occurs, although a divorce may be impossible to obtain. if she now falls passionately in love with a man her love may be entirely chaste, though it involves what is technically adultery. in thus understanding asceticism and chastity, and their beneficial functions in life, we see that they occupy a place midway between the artificially exaggerated position they once held and that to which they were degraded by the inevitable reaction of total indifference or actual hostility which followed. asceticism and chastity are not rigid categorical imperatives; they are useful means to desirable ends; they are wise and beautiful arts. they demand our estimation, but not our over-estimation. for in over-estimating them, it is too often forgotten, we over-estimate the sexual instinct. the instinct of sex is indeed extremely important. yet it has not that all-embracing and supereminent importance which some, even of those who fight against it, are accustomed to believe. that artificially magnified conception of the sexual impulse is fortified by the artificial emphasis placed upon asceticism. we may learn the real place of the sexual impulse in learning how we may reasonably and naturally view the restraints on that impulse. footnotes: [ ] for blake and for shelley, as well as, it may be added, for hinton, chastity, as todhunter remarks in his _study of shelley_, is "a type of submission to the actual, a renunciation of the infinite, and is therefore hated by them. the chaste man, i.e., the man of prudence and self-control, is the man who has lost the nakedness of his primitive innocence." [ ] for evidence of the practices of savages in this matter, see appendix _a_ to the third volume of these _studies_, "the sexual instinct in savages." cf. also chs. iv and vii of westermarck's _history of human marriage_, and also chs. xxxviii and xli of the same author's _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii; frazer's _golden bough_ contains much bearing on this subject, as also crawley's _mystic rose_. [ ] see, e.g., westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, pp. et seq. [ ] thus an old maori declared, a few years ago, that the decline of his race has been entirely due to the loss of the ancient religious faith in the _tabu_. "for," said he (i quote from an auckland newspaper), "in the olden-time our _tapu_ ramified the whole social system. the head, the hair, spots where apparitions appeared, places which the _tohungas_ proclaimed as sacred, we have forgotten and disregarded. who nowadays thinks of the sacredness of the head? see when the kettle boils, the young man jumps up, whips the cap off his head, and uses it for a kettle-holder. who nowadays but looks on with indifference when the barber of the village, if he be near the fire, shakes the loose hair off his cloth into it, and the joke and the laughter goes on as if no sacred operation had just been concluded. food is consumed on places which, in bygone days, it dared not even be carried over." [ ] thus, long before christian monks arose, the ascetic life of the cloister on very similar lines existed in egypt in the worship of serapis (dill, _roman society_, p. ). [ ] at night, in the baptistry, with lamps dimly burning, the women were stripped even of their tunics, plunged three times in the pool, then anointed, dressed in white, and kissed. [ ] thus jerome, in his letter to eustochium, refers to those couples who "share the same room, often even the same bed, and call us suspicious if we draw any conclusions," while cyprian (_epistola_, ) is unable to approve of those men he hears of, one a deacon, who live in familiar intercourse with virgins, even sleeping in the same bed with them, for, he declares, the feminine sex is weak and youth is wanton. [ ] perpetua (_acta sanctorum_, march ) is termed by hort and mayor "that fairest flower in the garden of post-apostolic christendom." she was not, however, a virgin, but a young mother with a baby at her breast. [ ] the strength of early christian asceticism lay in its spontaneous and voluntary character. when, in the ninth century, the carlovingians attempted to enforce monastic and clerical celibacy, the result was a great outburst of unchastity and crime; nunneries became brothels, nuns were frequently guilty of infanticide, monks committed unspeakable abominations, the regular clergy formed incestuous relations with their nearest female relatives (lea, _history of sacerdotal celibacy_, vol. i, pp, et seq.). [ ] sénancour, _de l'amour_, vol. ii, p. . islam has placed much less stress on chastity than christianity, but practically, it would appear, there is often more regard for chastity under mohammedan rule than under christian rule. thus it is stated by "viator" (_fortnightly review_, dec., ) that formerly, under turkish moslem rule, it was impossible to buy the virtue of women in bosnia, but that now, under the christian rule of austria, it is everywhere possible to buy women near the austrian frontier. [ ] the basis of this feeling was strengthened when it was shown by scholars that the physical virtue of "virginity" had been masquerading under a false name. to remain a virgin seems to have meant at the first, among peoples of early aryan culture, by no means to take a vow of chastity, but to refuse to submit to the yoke of patriarchal marriage. the women who preferred to stand outside marriage were "virgins," even though mothers of large families, and Æschylus speaks of the amazons as "virgins," while in greek the child of an unmarried girl was always "the virgin's son." the history of artemis, the most primitive of greek deities, is instructive from this point of view. she was originally only virginal in the sense that she rejected marriage, being the goddess of a nomadic and matriarchal hunting people who had not yet adopted marriage, and she was the goddess of childbirth, worshipped with orgiastic dances and phallic emblems. it was by a late transformation that artemis became the goddess of chastity (farnell, _cults of the greek states_, vol. ii, pp. et seq.; sir w.m. ramsay, _cities of phrygia_, vol. i, p. ; paul lafargue, "les mythes historiques," _revue des idées_, dec., ). [ ] see, e.g., nicomachean ethics, bk. iii, ch. xiii. [ ] _de civitate dei_, lib. xv, cap. xx. a little further on (lib. xvi, cap. xxv) he refers to abraham as a man able to use women as a man should, his wife temperately, his concubine compliantly, neither immoderately. [ ] _summa_, migne's edition, vol. iii, qu. , art. i. [ ] see the study of modesty in the first volume of these _studies_. [ ] the majority of chaste youths, remarks an acute critic of modern life (hellpach, _nervosität und kultur_, p. ), are merely actuated by traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal infections, lack of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any consideration for a future wife, and that indeed would be a tragi-comic error, for a woman lays no importance on intact masculinity. moreover, he adds, the chaste man is unable to choose a wife wisely, and it is among teachers and clergymen--the chastest class--that most unhappy marriages are made. milton had already made this fact an argument for facility of divorce. [ ] "in eating," said hinton, "we have achieved the task of combining pleasure with an absence of 'lust.' the problem for man and woman is so to use and possess the sexual passion as to make it the minister to higher things, with no restraint on it but that. it is essentially connected with things of the spiritual order, and would naturally revolve round them. to think of it as merely bodily is a mistake." [ ] see "analysis of the sexual impulse," and appendix, "the sexual instinct in savages," in vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] i have elsewhere discussed more at length the need in modern civilized life of a natural and sincere asceticism (see _affirmations_, ) "st. francis and others." [ ] _der wille zur macht_, p. . [ ] at the age of twenty-five, when he had already produced much fine work, mozart wrote in his letters that he had never touched a woman, though he longed for love and marriage. he could not afford to marry, he would not seduce an innocent girl, a venial relation was repulsive to him. [ ] reibmayr, _die entwicklungsgeschichte des talentes und genies._, bd. i, p. . [ ] we may exclude altogether, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the quality of virginity--that is to say, the possession of an intact hymen--since this is a merely physical quality with no necessary ethical relationships. the demand for virginity in women is, for the most part, either the demand for a better marketable article, or for a more powerful stimulant to masculine desire. virginity involves no moral qualities in its possessor. chastity and asceticism, on the other hand, are meaningless terms, except as demands made by the spirit on itself or on the body it controls. chapter vi. the problem of sexual abstinence. the influence of tradition--the theological conception of lust--tendency of these influences to degrade sexual morality--their result in creating the problem of sexual abstinence--the protests against sexual abstinence--sexual abstinence and genius--sexual abstinence in women--the advocates of sexual abstinence--intermediate attitude--unsatisfactory nature of the whole discussion--criticism of the conception of sexual abstinence--sexual abstinence as compared to abstinence from food--no complete analogy--the morality of sexual abstinence entirely negative--is it the physician's duty to advise extra-conjugal sexual intercourse?--opinions of those who affirm or deny this duty--the conclusion against such advice--the physician bound by the social and moral ideas of his age--the physician as reformer--sexual abstinence and sexual hygiene--alcohol--the influence of physical and mental exercise--the inadequacy of sexual hygiene in this field--the unreal nature of the conception of sexual abstinence--the necessity of replacing it by a more positive ideal. when we look at the matter from a purely abstract or even purely biological point of view, it might seem that in deciding that asceticism and chastity are of high value for the personal life we have said all that is necessary to say. that, however, is very far from being the case. we soon realize here, as at every point in the practical application of sexual psychology, that it is not sufficient to determine the abstractly right course along biological lines. we have to harmonize our biological demands with social demands. we are ruled not only by natural instincts but by inherited traditions, that in the far past were solidly based on intelligible grounds, and that even still, by the mere fact of their existence, exert a force which we cannot and ought not to ignore. in discussing the valuation of the sexual impulse we found that we had good ground for making a very high estimate of love. in discussing chastity and asceticism we found that they also are highly to be valued. and we found that, so far from any contradiction being here involved, love and chastity are intertwined in all their finest developments, and that there is thus a perfect harmony in apparent opposition. but when we come to consider the matter in detail, in its particular personal applications, we find that a new factor asserts itself. we find that our inherited social and religious traditions exert a pressure, all on one side, which makes it impossible to place the relations of love and chastity simply on the basis of biology and reason. we are confronted at the outset by our traditions. on the one side these traditions have weighted the word "lust"--considered as expressing all the manifestations of the sexual impulse which are outside marriage or which fail to have marriage as their direct and ostentatious end--with deprecatory and sinister meanings. and on the other side these traditions have created the problem of "sexual abstinence," which has nothing to do with either asceticism or chastity as these have been defined in the previous chapter, but merely with the purely negative pressure on the sexual impulse, exerted, independently of the individual's wishes, by his religious and social environment. the theological conception of "lust," or "libido," as sin, followed logically the early christian conception of "the flesh," and became inevitable as soon as that conception was firmly established. not only, indeed, had early christian ideals a degrading influence on the estimation of sexual desire _per se_, but they tended to depreciate generally the dignity of the sexual relationship. if a man made sexual advances to a woman outside marriage, and thus brought her within the despised circle of "lust," he was injuring her because he was impairing her religious and moral value.[ ] the only way he could repair the damage done was by paying her money or by entering into a forced and therefore probably unfortunate marriage with her. that is to say that sexual relationships were, by the ecclesiastical traditions, placed on a pecuniary basis, on the same level as prostitution. by its well-meant intentions to support the theological morality which had developed on an ascetic basis, the church was thus really undermining even that form of sexual relationship which it sanctified. gregory the great ordered that the seducer of a virgin shall marry her, or, in case of refusal, be severely punished corporally and shut up in a monastery to perform penance. according to other ecclesiastical rules, the seducer of a virgin, though held to no responsibility by the civil forum, was required to marry her, or to find a husband and furnish a dowry for her. such rules had their good side, and were especially equitable when seduction had been accomplished by deceit. but they largely tended in practice to subordinate all questions of sexual morality to a money question. the reparation to the woman, also, largely became necessary because the ecclesiastical conception of lust caused her value to be depreciated by contact with lust, and the reparation might be said to constitute a part of penance. aquinas held that lust, in however slight a degree, is a mortal sin, and most of the more influential theologians took a view nearly or quite as rigid. some, however, held that a certain degree of delectation is possible in these matters without mortal sin, or asserted, for instance, that to feel the touch of a soft and warm hand is not mortal sin so long as no sexual feeling is thereby aroused. others, however, held that such distinctions are impossible, and that all pleasures of this kind are sinful. tomás sanchez endeavored at much length to establish rules for the complicated problems of delectation that thus arose, but he was constrained to admit that no rules are really possible, and that such matters must be left to the judgment of a prudent man. at that point casuistry dissolves and the modern point of view emerges (see, e.g., lea, _history of auricular confession_, vol. ii, pp. , , , etc.). even to-day the influence of the old traditions of the church still unconsciously survives among us. that is inevitable as regards religious teachers, but it is found also in men of science, even in protestant countries. the result is that quite contradictory dogmas are found side by side, even in the same writer. on the one hand, the manifestations of the sexual impulse are emphatically condemned as both unnecessary and evil; on the other hand, marriage, which is fundamentally (whatever else it may also be) a manifestation of the sexual impulse, receives equally emphatic approval as the only proper and moral form of living.[ ] there can be no reasonable doubt whatever that it is to the surviving and pervading influence of the ancient traditional theological conception of _libido_ that we must largely attribute the sharp difference of opinions among physicians on the question of sexual abstinence and the otherwise unnecessary acrimony with which these opinions have sometimes been stated. on the one side, we find the emphatic statement that sexual intercourse is necessary and that health cannot be maintained unless the sexual activities are regularly exercised. "all parts of the body which are developed for a definite use are kept in health, and in the enjoyment of fair growth and of long youth, by the fulfilment of that use, and by their appropriate exercise in the employment to which they are accustomed." in that statement, which occurs in the great hippocratic treatise "on the joints," we have the classic expression of the doctrine which in ever varying forms has been taught by all those who have protested against sexual abstinence. when we come down to the sixteenth century outbreak of protestantism we find that luther's revolt against catholicism was in part a protest against the teaching of sexual abstinence. "he to whom the gift of continence is not given," he said in his _table talk_, "will not become chaste by fasting and vigils. for my own part i was not excessively tormented [though elsewhere he speaks of the great fires of lust by which he had been troubled], but all the same the more i macerated myself the more i burnt." and three hundred years later, bebel, the would-be nineteenth century luther of a different protestantism, took the same attitude towards sexual abstinence, while hinton the physician and philosopher, living in a land of rigid sexual conventionalism and prudery, and moved by keen sympathy for the sufferings he saw around him, would break into passionate sarcasm when confronted by the doctrine of sexual abstinence. "there are innumerable ills--terrible destructions, madness even, the ruin of lives--for which the embrace of man and woman would be a remedy. no one thinks of questioning it. terrible evils and a remedy in a delight and joy! and man has chosen so to muddle his life that he must say: 'there, that would be a remedy, but i cannot use it. i _must be virtuous!_'" if we confine ourselves to modern times and to fairly precise medical statements, we find in schurig's _spermatologia_ ( , pp. et seq.), not only a discussion of the advantages of moderate sexual intercourse in a number of disorders, as witnessed by famous authorities, but also a list of results--including anorexia, insanity, impotence, epilepsy, even death--which were believed to have been due to sexual abstinence. this extreme view of the possible evils of sexual abstinence seems to have been part of the renaissance traditions of medicine stiffened by a certain opposition between religion and science. it was still rigorously stated by lallemand early in the nineteenth century. subsequently, the medical statements of the evil results of sexual abstinence became more temperate and measured, though still often pronounced. thus gyurkovechky believes that these results may be as serious as those of sexual excess. krafft-ebing showed that sexual abstinence could produce a state of general nervous excitement (_jahrbuch für psychiatrie_, bd. viii, heft and ). schrenck-notzing regards sexual abstinence as a cause of extreme sexual hyperæsthesia and of various perversions (in a chapter on sexual abstinence in his _kriminalpsychologische und psychopathologische studien_, , pp. - ). he records in illustration the case of a man of thirty-six who had masturbated in moderation as a boy, but abandoned the practice entirely, on moral grounds, twenty years ago, and has never had sexual intercourse, feeling proud to enter marriage a chaste man, but now for years has suffered greatly from extreme sexual hyperæsthesia and concentration of thought on sexual subjects, notwithstanding a strong will and the resolve not to masturbate or indulge in illicit intercourse. in another case a vigorous and healthy man, not inverted, and with strong sexual desires, who remained abstinent up to marriage, suffers from psychic impotence, and his wife remains a virgin notwithstanding all her affection and caresses. ord considered that sexual abstinence might produce many minor evils. "most of us," he wrote (_british medical journal_, aug. , ) "have, no doubt, been consulted by men, chaste in act, who are tormented by sexual excitement. they tell one stories of long-continued local excitement, followed by intense muscular weariness, or by severe aching pain in the back and legs. in some i have had complaints of swelling and stiffness in the legs, and of pains in the joints, particularly in the knees;" he gives the case of a man who suffered after prolonged chastity from inflammatory conditions of knees and was only cured by marriage. pearce gould, it may be added, finds that "excessive ungratified sexual desire" is one of the causes of acute orchitis. remondino ("some observations on continence as a factor in health and disease," _pacific medical journal_, jan., ) records the case of a gentleman of nearly seventy who, during the prolonged illness of his wife, suffered from frequent and extreme priapism, causing insomnia. he was very certain that his troubles were not due to his continence, but all treatment failed and there were no spontaneous emissions. at last remondino advised him to, as he expresses it, "imitate solomon." he did so, and all the symptoms at once disappeared. this case is of special interest, because the symptoms were not accompanied by any conscious sexual desire. it is no longer generally believed that sexual abstinence tends to produce insanity, and the occasional cases in which prolonged and intense sexual desire in young women is followed by insanity will usually be found to occur on a basis of hereditary degeneration. it is held by many authorities, however, that minor mental troubles, of a more or less vague character, as well as neurasthenia and hysteria, are by no means infrequently due to sexual abstinence. thus freud, who has carefully studied angstneurosis, the obsession of anxiety, finds that it is a result of sexual abstinence, and may indeed be considered as a vicarious form of such abstinence (freud, _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, , pp. et seq.). the whole subject of sexual abstinence has been discussed at length by nyström, of stockholm, in _das geschlechtsleben und seine gesetze_, ch. iii. he concludes that it is desirable that continence should be preserved as long as possible in order to strengthen the physical health and to develop the intelligence and character. the doctrine of permanent sexual abstinence, however, he regards as entirely false, except in the case of a small number of religious or philosophic persons. "complete abstinence during a long period of years cannot be borne without producing serious results both on the body and the mind.... certainly, a young man should repress his sexual impulses as long as possible and avoid everything that may artificially act as a sexual stimulant. if, however, he has done so, and still suffers from unsatisfied normal sexual desires, and if he sees no possibility of marriage within a reasonable time, no one should dare to say that he is committing a sin if, with mutual understanding, he enters into sexual relations with a woman friend, or forms temporary sexual relationships, provided, that is, that he takes the honorable precaution of begetting no children, unless his partner is entirely willing to become a mother, and he is prepared to accept all the responsibilities of fatherhood." in an article of later date ("die einwirkung der sexuellen abstinenz auf die gesundheit," _sexual-probleme_, july, ) nyström vigorously sums up his views. he includes among the results of sexual abstinence orchitis, frequent involuntary seminal emissions, impotence, neurasthenia, depression, and a great variety of nervous disturbances of vaguer character, involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, nervousness, and pre-occupation with sexual desires and imaginations. more especially there is heightened sexual irritability with erections, or even seminal emissions on the slightest occasion, as on gazing at an attractive woman or in social intercourse with her, or in the presence of works of art representing naked figures. nyström has had the opportunity of investigating and recording ninety cases of persons who have presented these and similar symptoms as the result, he believes, of sexual abstinence. he has published some of these cases (_zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, oct., ), but it may be added that rohleder ("die abstinentia sexualis," ib., nov., ) has criticized these cases, and doubts whether any of them are conclusive. rohleder believes that the bad results of sexual abstinence are never permanent, and also that no anatomically pathological states (such as orchitis) can be thereby produced. but he considers, nevertheless, that even incomplete and temporary sexual abstinence may produce fairly serious results, and especially neurasthenic disturbances of various kinds, such as nervous irritability, anxiety, depression, disinclination for work; also diurnal emissions, premature ejaculations, and even a state approaching satyriasis; and in women hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, and nymphomaniacal manifestations; all these symptoms may, however, he believes, be cured when the abstinence ceases. many advocates of sexual abstinence have attached importance to the fact that men of great genius have apparently been completely continent throughout life. this is certainly true (see _ante_, p. ). but this fact can scarcely be invoked as an argument in favor of the advantages of sexual abstinence among the ordinary population. j.f. scott selects jesus, newton, beethoven, and kant as "men of vigor and mental acumen who have lived chastely as bachelors." it cannot, however, be said that dr. scott has been happy in the four figures whom he has been able to select from the whole history of human genius as examples of life-long sexual abstinence. we know little with absolute certainty of jesus, and even if we reject the diagnosis which professor binet-sanglé (in his _folie de jesus_) has built up from a minute study of the gospels, there are many reasons why we should refrain from emphasizing the example of his sexual abstinence; newton, apart from his stupendous genius in a special field, was an incomplete and unsatisfactory human being who ultimately reached a condition very like insanity; beethoven was a thoroughly morbid and diseased man, who led an intensely unhappy existence; kant, from first to last, was a feeble valetudinarian. it would probably be difficult to find a healthy normal man who would voluntarily accept the life led by any of these four, even as the price of their fame. j.a. godfrey (_science of sex_, pp. - ) discusses at length the question whether sexual abstinence is favorable to ordinary intellectual vigor, deciding that it is not, and that we cannot argue from the occasional sexual abstinence of men of genius, who are often abnormally constituted, and physically below the average, to the normally developed man. sexual abstinence, it may be added, is by no means always a favorable sign, even in men who stand intellectually above the average. "i have not obtained the impression," remarks freud (_sexual-probleme_, march, ), "that sexual abstinence is helpful to energetic and independent men of action or original thinkers, to courageous liberators or reformers. the sexual conduct of a man is often symbolic of his whole method of reaction in the world. the man who energetically grasps the object of his sexual desire may be trusted to show a similarly relentless energy in the pursuit of other aims." many, though not all, who deny that prolonged sexual abstinence is harmless, include women in this statement. there are some authorities indeed who believe that, whether or not any conscious sexual desire is present, sexual abstinence is less easily tolerated by women than by men.[ ] cabanis, in his famous and pioneering work, _rapports du physique et du moral_, said in , that women not only bear sexual excess more easily than men, but sexual privations with more difficulty, and a cautious and experienced observer of to-day, löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, , p. ), while not considering that normal women bear sexual abstinence less easily than men, adds that this is not the case with women of neuropathic disposition, who suffer much more from this cause, and either masturbate when sexual intercourse is impossible or fall into hystero-neurasthenic states. busch stated (_das geschlechtsleben des weibes_, , vol. i, pp. , ) that not only is the working of the sexual functions in the organism stronger in women than in men, but that the bad results of sexual abstinence are more marked in women. sir benjamin brodie said long ago that the evils of continence to women are perhaps greater than those of incontinence, and to-day hammer (_die gesundheitlichen gefahren der geschlechtlichen enthaltsamkeit_, ) states that, so far as reasons of health are concerned, sexual abstinence is no more to be recommended to women than to men. nyström is of the same opinion, though he thinks that women bear sexual abstinence better than men, and has discussed this special question at length in a section of his _geschlechtsleben und seine gesetze_. he agrees with the experienced erb that a large number of completely chaste women of high character, and possessing distinguished qualities of mind and heart, are more or less disordered through their sexual abstinence; this is specially often the case with women married to impotent men, though it is frequently not until they approach the age of thirty, nyström remarks, that women definitely realize their sexual needs. a great many women who are healthy, chaste, and modest, feel at times such powerful sexual desire that they can scarcely resist the temptation to go into the street and solicit the first man they meet. not a few such women, often of good breeding, do actually offer themselves to men with whom they may have perhaps only the slightest acquaintance. routh records such cases (_british gynæcological journal_, feb., ), and most men have met with them at some time. when a woman of high moral character and strong passions is subjected for a very long period to the perpetual strain of such sexual craving, especially if combined with love for a definite individual, a chain of evil results, physical and moral, may be set up, and numerous distinguished physicians have recorded such cases, which terminated at once in complete recovery as soon as the passion was gratified. lauvergne long since described a case. a fairly typical case of this kind was reported in detail by brachet (_de l'hypochondrie_, p. ) and embodied by griesinger in his classic work on "mental pathology." it concerned a healthy married lady, twenty-six years old, having three children. a visiting acquaintance completely gained her affections, but she strenuously resisted the seducing influence, and concealed the violent passion that he had aroused in her. various serious symptoms, physical and mental, slowly began to appear, and she developed what seemed to be signs of consumption. six months' stay in the south of france produced no improvement, either in the bodily or mental symptoms. on returning home she became still worse. then she again met the object of her passion, succumbed, abandoned her husband and children, and fled with him. six months later she was scarcely recognizable; beauty, freshness and plumpness had taken the place of emaciation; while the symptoms of consumption and all other troubles had entirely disappeared. a somewhat similar case is recorded by camill lederer, of vienna (_monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten und sexuelle hygiene_, , heft ). a widow, a few months after her husband's death, began to cough, with symptoms of bronchial catarrh, but no definite signs of lung disease. treatment and change of climate proved entirely unavailing to effect a cure. two years later, as no signs of disease had appeared in the lungs, though the symptoms continued, she married again. within a very few weeks all symptoms had disappeared, and she was entirely fresh and well. numerous distinguished gynæcologists have recorded their belief that sexual excitement is a remedy for various disorders of the sexual system in women, and that abstinence is a cause of such disorders. matthews duncan said that sexual excitement is the only remedy for amenorrhoea; "the only emmenagogue medicine that i know of," he wrote (_medical times_, feb. , ), "is not to be found in the pharmacopoeia: it is erotic excitement. of the value of erotic excitement there is no doubt." anstie, in his work on _neuralgia_, refers to the beneficial effect of sexual intercourse on dysmenorrhoea, remarking that the necessity of the full natural exercise of the sexual function is shown by the great improvement in such cases after marriage, and especially after childbirth. (it may be remarked that not all authorities find dysmenorrhoea benefited by marriage, and some consider that the disease is often thereby aggravated; see, e.g., wythe cook, _american journal obstetrics_, dec., .) the distinguished gynæcologist, tilt, at a somewhat earlier date (_on uterine and ovarian inflammation_, , p. ), insisted on the evil results of sexual abstinence in producing ovarian irritation, and perhaps subacute ovaritis, remarking that this was specially pronounced in young widows, and in prostitutes placed in penitentiaries. intense desire, he pointed out, determines organic movements resembling those required for the gratification of the desire. these burning desires, which can only be quenched by their legitimate satisfaction, are still further heightened by the erotic influence of thoughts, books, pictures, music, which are often even more sexually stimulating than social intercourse with men, but the excitement thus produced is not relieved by that natural collapse which should follow a state of vital turgescence. after referring to the biological facts which show the effect of psychic influences on the formative powers of the ovario-uterine organs in animals, tilt continues: "i may fairly infer that similar incitements on the mind of females may have a stimulating effect on the organs of ovulation. i have frequently known menstruation to be irregular, profuse, or abnormal in type during courtship in women in whom nothing similar had previously occurred, and that this protracted the treatment of chronic ovaritis and of uterine inflammation." bonnifield, of cincinnati (_medical standard_, dec., ), considers that unsatisfied sexual desire is an important cause of catarrhal endometritis. it is well known that uterine fibroids bear a definite relation to organic sexual activity, and that sexual abstinence, more especially the long-continued deprivation of pregnancy, is a very important cause of the disease. this is well shown by an analysis by a.e. giles (_lancet_, march , ) of one hundred and fifty cases. as many as fifty-six of these cases, more than a third, were unmarried women, though nearly all were over thirty years of age. of the ninety-four married women, thirty-four had never been pregnant; of those who had been pregnant, thirty-six had not been so for at least ten years. thus eighty-four per cent, had either not been pregnant at all, or had had no pregnancy for at least ten years. it is, therefore, evident that deprivation of sexual function, whether or not involving abstinence from sexual intercourse, is an important cause of uterine fibroid tumors. balls-headley, of victoria (_evolution of the diseases of women_, , and "etiology of diseases of female genital organs," allbutt and playfair, _system of gynæcology_,) believes that unsatisfied sexual desire is a factor in very many disorders of the sexual organs in women. "my views," he writes in a private letter, "are founded on a really special gynæcological practice of twenty years, during which i have myself taken about seven thousand most careful records. the normal woman is sexually well-formed and her sexual feelings require satisfaction in the direction of the production of the next generation, but under the restrictive and now especially abnormal conditions of civilization some women undergo hereditary atrophy, and the uterus and sexual feelings are feeble; in others of good average local development the feeling is in restraint; in others the feelings, as well as the organs, are strong, and if normal use be withheld evils ensue. bearing in mind these varieties of congenital development in relation to the respective condition of virginity, or sterile or parous married life, the mode of occurrence and of progress of disease grows on the physician's mind, and there is no more occasion for bewilderment than to the mathematician studying conic sections, when his knowledge has grown from the basis of the science. the problem is suggested: has a crowd of unassociated diseases fallen as through a sieve on woman, or have these affections almost necessarily ensued from the circumstances of her unnatural environment?" it may be added that kisch (_sexual life of woman_), while protesting against any exaggerated estimate of the effects of sexual abstinence, considers that in women it may result, not only in numerous local disorders, but also in nervous disturbance, hysteria, and even insanity, while in neurasthenic women "regulated sexual intercourse has an actively beneficial effect which is often striking." it is important to remark that the evil results of sexual abstinence in women, in the opinion of many of those who insist upon their importance, are by no means merely due to unsatisfied sexual desire. they may be pronounced even when the woman herself has not the slightest consciousness of sexual needs. this was clearly pointed out forty years ago by the sagacious anstie (_op. cit._) in women, especially, he remarks, "a certain restless hyperactivity of mind, and perhaps of body also, seems to be the expression of nature's unconscious resentment of the _neglect of sexual functions_." such women, he adds, have kept themselves free from masturbation "at the expense of a perpetual and almost fierce activity of mind and muscle." anstie had found that some of the worst cases of the form of nervosity and neurasthenia which he termed "spinal irritation," often accompanied by irritable stomach and anæmia, get well on marriage. "there can be no question," he continues, "that a very large proportion of these cases in single women (who form by far the greater number of subjects of spinal irritation) are due to this conscious or unconscious irritation kept up by an unsatisfied sexual want. it is certain that very many young persons (women more especially) are tormented by the irritability of the sexual organs without having the least consciousness of sexual desire, and present the sad spectacle of a _vie manquée_ without ever knowing the true source of the misery which incapacitates them for all the active duties of life. it is a singular fact that in occasional instances one may even see two sisters, inheriting the same kind of nervous organization, both tormented with the symptoms of spinal irritation and both probably suffering from repressed sexual functions, but of whom one shall be pure-minded and entirely unconscious of the real source of her troubles, while the other is a victim to conscious and fruitless sexual irritation." in this matter anstie may be regarded as a forerunner of freud, who has developed with great subtlety and analytic power the doctrine of the transformation of repressed sexual instinct in women into morbid forms. he considers that the nervosity of to-day is largely due to the injurious action on the sexual life of that repression of natural instincts on which our civilization is built up. (perhaps the clearest brief statement of freud's views on the matter is to be found in a very suggestive article, "die 'kulturelle' sexualmoral und die moderne nervosität," in _sexual-probleme_, march, , reprinted in the second series of freud's _sammlung kleiner schriften zur neurosenlehre_, ). we possess the aptitude, he says, of sublimating and transforming our sexual activities into other activities of a psychically related character, but non-sexual. this process cannot, however, be carried out to an unlimited extent any more than can the conversion of heat into mechanical work in our machines. a certain amount of direct sexual satisfaction is for most organizations indispensable, and the renunciation of this individually varying amount is punished by manifestations which we are compelled to regard as morbid. the process of sublimation, under the influence of civilization, leads both to sexual perversions and to psycho-neuroses. these two conditions are closely related, as freud views the process of their development; they stand to each other as positive and negative, sexual perversions being the positive pole and psycho-neuroses the negative. it often happens, he remarks, that a brother may be sexually perverse, while his sister, with a weaker sexual temperament, is a neurotic whose symptoms are a transformation of her brother's perversion; while in many families the men are immoral, the women pure and refined but highly nervous. in the case of women who have no defect of sexual impulse there is yet the same pressure of civilized morality pushing them into neurotic states. it is a terribly serious injustice, freud remarks, that the civilized standard of sexual life is the same for all persons, because though some, by their organization, may easily accept it, for others it involves the most difficult psychic sacrifices. the unmarried girl, who has become nervously weak, cannot be advised to seek relief in marriage, for she must be strong in order to "bear" marriage, while we urge a man on no account to marry a girl who is not strong. the married woman who has experienced the deceptions of marriage has usually no way of relief left but by abandoning her virtue. "the more strenuously she has been educated, and the more completely she has been subjected to the demands of civilization, the more she fears this way of escape, and in the conflict between her desires and her sense of duty, she also seeks refuge--in neurosis. nothing protects her virtue so surely as disease." taking a still wider view of the influence of the narrow "civilized" conception of sexual morality on women, freud finds that it is not limited to the production of neurotic conditions; it affects the whole intellectual aptitude of women. their education denies them any occupation with sexual problems, although such problems are so full of interest to them, for it inculcates the ancient prejudice that any curiosity in such matters is unwomanly and a proof of wicked inclinations. they are thus terrified from thinking, and knowledge is deprived of worth. the prohibition to think extends, automatically and inevitably, far beyond the sexual sphere. "i do not believe," freud concludes, "that there is any opposition between intellectual work and sexual activity such as was supposed by möbius. i am of opinion that the unquestionable fact of the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual repression." it is only of recent years that this problem has been realized and faced, though solitary thinkers, like hinton, have been keenly conscious of its existence; for "sorrowing virtue," as mrs. ella wheeler wilcox puts it, "is more ashamed of its woes than unhappy sin, because the world has tears for the latter and only ridicule for the former." "it is an almost cynical trait of our age," hellpach wrote a few years ago, "that it is constantly discussing the theme of prostitution, of police control, of the age of consent, of the 'white slavery,' and passes over the moral struggle of woman's soul without an attempt to answer her burning questions." on the other hand we find medical writers not only asserting with much moral fervor that sexual intercourse outside marriage is always and altogether unnecessary, but declaring, moreover, the harmlessness or even the advantages of sexual abstinence. ribbing, the swedish professor, in his _hygiène sexuelle_, advocates sexual abstinence outside marriage, and asserts its harmlessness. gilles de la tourette, féré, and augagneur in france agree. in germany fürbringer (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ) asserts that continence is possible and necessary, though admitting that it may, however, mean serious mischief in exceptional cases. eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, p. ) doubts whether anyone, who otherwise lived a reasonable life, ever became ill, or more precisely neurasthenic, through sexual abstinence. hegar, replying to the arguments of bebel in his well-known book on women, denies that sexual abstinence can ever produce satyriasis or nymphomania. näcke, who has frequently discussed the problem of sexual abstinence (e.g., _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, , heft , and _sexual-probleme_, june, ), maintains that sexual abstinence can, at most, produce rare and slight unfavorable results, and that it is no more likely to produce insanity, even in predisposed individuals, than are the opposite extremes of sexual excess and masturbation. he adds that, so far as his own observations are concerned, the patients in asylums suffer scarcely at all from their compulsory sexual abstinence. it is in england, however, that the virtues of sexual abstinence have been most loudly and emphatically proclaimed, sometimes indeed with considerable lack of cautious qualification. acton, in his _reproductive organs_, sets forth the traditional english view, as well as beale in his _morality and the moral question_. a more distinguished representative of the same view was paget, who, in his lecture on "sexual hypochondriasis," coupled sexual intercourse with "theft or lying." sir william gowers (_syphilis and the nervous system_, , p. ) also proclaims the advantages of "unbroken chastity," more especially as a method of avoiding syphilis. he is not hopeful, however, even as regards his own remedy, for he adds: "we can trace small ground for hope that the disease will thus be materially reduced." he would still, however, preach chastity to the individual, and he does so with all the ascetic ardor of a mediæval monk. "with all the force that any knowledge i possess, and any authority i have, can give, i assert that no man ever yet was in the slightest degree or way the worse for continence or better for incontinence. from the latter all are worse morally; a clear majority are worse physically; and in no small number the result is, and ever will be, utter physical shipwreck on one of the many rocks, sharp, jagged-edged, which beset the way, or on one of the many beds of festering slime which no care can possibly avoid." in america the same view widely prevails, and dr. j.f. scott, in his _sexual-instinct_ (second edition, , ch. iii), argues very vigorously and at great length in favor of sexual abstinence. he will not even admit that there are two sides to the question, though if that were the case, the length and the energy of his arguments would be unnecessary. among medical authorities who have discussed the question of sexual abstinence at length it is not, indeed, usually possible to find such unqualified opinions in its favor as those i have quoted. there can be no doubt, however, that a large proportion of physicians, not excluding prominent and distinguished authorities, when casually confronted with the question whether sexual abstinence is harmless, will at once adopt the obvious path of least resistance and reply: yes. in only a few cases will they even make any qualification of this affirmative answer. this tendency is very well illustrated by an inquiry made by dr. ludwig jacobsohn, of st. petersburgh ("die sexuelle enthaltsamkeit im lichte der medizin," _st. petersburger medicinische wochenschrift_, march , ). he wrote to over two hundred distinguished russian and german professors of physiology, neurology, psychiatry, etc., asking them if they regarded sexual abstinence as harmless. the majority returned no answer; eleven russian and twenty-eight germans replied, but four of them merely said that "they had no personal experience," etc.; there thus remained thirty-five. of these e. pflüger, of bonn, was skeptical of the advantage of any propaganda of abstinence: "if all the authorities in the world declared the harmlessness of abstinence that would have no influence on youth. forces are here in play that break through all obstacles." the harmlessness of abstinence was affirmed by kräpelin, cramer, gärtner, tuczek, schottelius, gaffky, finkler, selenew, lassar, seifert, gruber; the last, however, added that he knew very few abstinent young men, and himself only considered abstinence good before full development, and intercourse not dangerous in moderation even before then. brieger knew cases of abstinence without harmful results, but himself thought that no general opinion could be given. jürgensen said that abstinence _in itself_ is not harmful, but that in some cases intercourse exerts a more beneficial influence. hoffmann said that abstinence is harmless, adding that though it certainly leads to masturbation, that is better than gonorrhoea, to say nothing of syphilis, and is easily kept within bounds. strümpell replied that sexual abstinence is harmless, and indirectly useful as preserving from the risk of venereal disease, but that sexual intercourse, being normal, is always more desirable. hensen said that abstinence is not to be unconditionally approved. rumpf replied that abstinence was not harmful for most before the age of thirty, but after that age there was a tendency to mental obsessions, and marriage should take place at twenty-five. leyden also considered abstinence harmless until towards thirty, when it leads to psychic anomalies, especially states of anxiety, and a certain affectation. hein replied that abstinence is harmless for most, but in some leads to hysterical manifestations and indirectly to bad results from masturbation, while for the normal man abstinence cannot be directly beneficial, since intercourse is natural. grützner thought that abstinence is almost never harmful. nescheda said it is harmless in itself, but harmful in so far as it leads to unnatural modes of gratification. neisser believes that more prolonged abstinence than is now usual would be beneficial, but admitted the sexual excitations of our civilization; he added that of course he saw no harm for healthy men in intercourse. hoche replied that abstinence is quite harmless in normal persons, but not always so in abnormal persons. weber thought it had a useful influence in increasing will-power. tarnowsky said it is good in early manhood, but likely to be unfavorable after twenty-five. orlow replied that, especially in youth, it is harmless, and a man should be as chaste as his wife. popow said that abstinence is good at all ages and preserves the energy. blumenau said that in adult age abstinence is neither normal nor beneficial, and generally leads to masturbation, though not generally to nervous disorders; but that even masturbation is better than syphilis. tschiriew saw no harm in abstinence up to thirty, and thought sexual weakness more likely to follow excess than abstinence. tschish regarded abstinence as beneficial rather than harmful up to twenty-five or twenty-eight, but thought it difficult to decide after that age when nervous alterations seem to be caused. darkschewitcz regarded abstinence as harmless up to twenty-five. fränkel said it was harmless for most, but that for a considerable proportion of people intercourse is a necessity. erb's opinion is regarded by jacobsohn as standing alone; he placed the age below which abstinence is harmless at twenty; after that age he regarded it as injurious to health, seriously impeding work and capacity, while in neurotic persons it leads to still more serious results. jacobsohn concludes that the general opinion of those answering the inquiry may thus be expressed: "youth should be abstinent. abstinence can in no way injure them; on the contrary, it is beneficial. if our young people will remain abstinent and avoid extra-conjugal intercourse they will maintain a high ideal of love and preserve themselves from venereal diseases." the harmlessness of sexual abstinence was likewise affirmed in america in a resolution passed by the american medical association in . the proposition thus formally accepted was thus worded: "continence is not incompatible with health." it ought to be generally realized that abstract propositions of this kind are worthless, because they mean nothing. every sane person, when confronted by the demand to boldly affirm or deny the proposition, "continence is not incompatible with health," is bound to affirm it. he might firmly believe that continence is incompatible with the health of most people, and that prolonged continence is incompatible with anyone's health, and yet, if he is to be honest in the use of language, it would be impossible for him to deny the vague and abstract proposition that "continence is not incompatible with health." such propositions are therefore not only without value, but actually misleading. it is obvious that the more extreme and unqualified opinions in favor of sexual abstinence are based not on medical, but on what the writers regard as moral considerations. moreover, as the same writers are usually equally emphatic in regard to the advantages of sexual intercourse in marriage, it is clear that they have committed themselves to a contradiction. the same act, as näcke rightly points out, cannot become good or bad according as it is performed in or out of marriage. there is no magic efficacy in a few words pronounced by a priest or a government official. remondino (loc. cit.) remarks that the authorities who have committed themselves to declarations in favor of the unconditional advantages of sexual abstinence tend to fall into three errors: ( ) they generalize unduly, instead of considering each case individually, on its own merits; ( ) they fail to realize that human nature is influenced by highly mixed and complex motives and cannot be assumed to be amenable only to motives of abstract morality; ( ) they ignore the great army of masturbators and sexual perverts who make no complaint of sexual suffering, but by maintaining a rigid sexual abstinence, so far as normal relationships are concerned, gradually drift into currents whence there is no return. between those who unconditionally affirm or deny the harmlessness of sexual abstinence we find an intermediate party of authorities whose opinions are more qualified. many of those who occupy this more guarded position are men whose opinions carry much weight, and it is probable that with them rather than with the more extreme advocates on either side the greater measure of reason lies. so complex a question as this cannot be adequately investigated merely in the abstract, and settled by an unqualified negative or affirmative. it is a matter in which every case requires its own special and personal consideration. "where there is such a marked opposition of opinion truth is not exclusively on one side," remarks löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, second edition, p. ). sexual abstinence is certainly often injurious to neuropathic persons. (this is now believed by a large number of authorities, and was perhaps first decisively stated by krafft-ebing, "ueber neurosen durch abstinenz," _jahrbuch für psychiatrie_, , p. ). löwenfeld finds no special proclivity to neurasthenia among the catholic clergy, and when it does occur, there is no reason to suppose a sexual causation. "in healthy and not hereditarily neuropathic men complete abstinence is possible without injury to the nervous system." injurious effects, he continues, when they appear, seldom occur until between twenty-four and thirty-six years of age, and even then are not usually serious enough to lead to a visit to a doctor, consisting mainly in frequency of nocturnal emissions, pain in testes or rectum, hyperæsthesia in the presence of women or of sexual ideas. if, however, conditions arise which specially stimulate the sexual emotions, neurasthenia may be produced. löwenfeld agrees with freud and gattel that the neurosis of anxiety tends to occur in the abstinent, careful examination showing that the abstinence is a factor in its production in both sexes. it is common among young women married to much older men, often appearing during the first years of marriage. under special circumstances, therefore, abstinence can be injurious, but on the whole the difficulties due to such abstinence are not severe, and they only exceptionally call forth actual disturbance in the nervous or psychic spheres. moll takes a similar temperate and discriminating view. he regards sexual abstinence before marriage as the ideal, but points out that we must avoid any doctrinal extremes in preaching sexual abstinence, for such preaching will merely lead to hypocrisy. intercourse with prostitutes, and the tendency to change a woman like a garment, induce loss of sensitiveness to the spiritual and personal element in woman, while the dangers of sexual abstinence must no more be exaggerated than the dangers of sexual intercourse (moll, _libido sexualis_, , vol. i, p. ; id., _konträre sexualempfindung_, , p. ). bloch also (in a chapter on the question of sexual abstinence in his _sexualleben unserer zeit_, ) takes a similar standpoint. he advocates abstention during early life and temporary abstention in adult life, such abstention being valuable, not only for the conservation and transformation of energy, but also to emphasize the fact that life contains other matters to strive for beyond the ends of sex. redlich (_medizinische klinik_, , no. ) also, in a careful study of the medical aspects of the question, takes an intermediate standpoint in relation to the relative advantages and disadvantages of sexual abstinence. "we may say that sexual abstinence is not a condition which must, under all circumstances and at any price, be avoided, though it is true that for the majority of healthy adult persons regular sexual intercourse is advantageous, and sometimes is even to be recommended." it may be added that from the standpoint of christian religious morality this same attitude, between the extremes of either party, recognizing the advantages of sexual abstinence, but not insisting that they shall be purchased at any price, has also found representation. thus, in england, an anglican clergyman, the rev. h. northcote (_christianity and sex problems_, pp. , ) deals temperately and sympathetically with the difficulties of sexual abstinence, and is by no means convinced that such abstinence is always an unmixed advantage; while in germany a catholic priest, karl jentsch (_sexualethik, sexualjustiz, sexualpolizei_, ) sets himself to oppose the rigorous and unqualified assertions of ribbing in favor of sexual abstinence. jentsch thus expresses what he conceives ought to be the attitude of fathers, of public opinion, of the state and the church towards the young man in this matter: "endeavor to be abstinent until marriage. many succeed in this. if you can succeed, it is good. but, if you cannot succeed, it is unnecessary to cast reproaches on yourself and to regard yourself as a scoundrel or a lost sinner. provided that you do not abandon yourself to mere enjoyment or wantonness, but are content with what is necessary to restore your peace of mind, self-possession, and cheerful capacity for work, and also that you observe the precautions which physicians or experienced friends impress upon you." when we thus analyze and investigate the the three main streams of expert opinions in regard to this question of sexual abstinence--the opinions in favor of it, the opinions in opposition to it, and the opinions which take an intermediate course--we can scarcely fail to conclude how unsatisfactory the whole discussion is. the state of "sexual abstinence" is a completely vague and indefinite state. the indefinite and even meaningless character of the expression "sexual abstinence" is shown by the frequency with which those who argue about it assume that it can, may, or even must, involve masturbation. that fact alone largely deprives it of value as morality and altogether as abstinence. at this point, indeed, we reach the most fundamental criticism to which the conception of "sexual abstinence" lies open. rohleder, an experienced physician and a recognized authority on questions of sexual pathology, has submitted the current views on "sexual abstinence" to a searching criticism in a lengthy and important paper.[ ] he denies altogether that strict sexual abstinence exists at all. "sexual abstinence," he points out, in any strict scenes of the term, must involve abstinence not merely from sexual intercourse but from auto-erotic manifestations, from masturbation, from homosexual acts, from all sexually perverse practices. it must further involve a permanent abstention from indulgence in erotic imaginations and voluptuous reverie. when, however, it is possible thus to render the whole psychic field a _tabula rasa_ so far as sexual activity is concerned--and if it fails to be so constantly and consistently there is no strict sexual abstinence--then, rohleder points out, we have to consider whether we are not in presence of a case of sexual anæsthesia, of _anaphrodisia sexualis_. that is a question which is rarely, if ever, faced by those who discuss sexual abstinence. it is, however, an extremely pertinent question, because, as rohleder insists, if sexual anæsthesia exists the question of sexual abstinence falls to the ground, for we can only "abstain" from actions that are in our power. complete sexual anæsthesia is, however, so rare a state that it may be practically left out of consideration, and as the sexual impulse, if it exists, must by physiological necessity sometimes become active in some shape--even if only, according to freud's view, by transformation into some morbid neurotic condition--we reach the conclusion that "sexual abstinence" is strictly impossible. rohleder has met with a few cases in which there seemed to him no escape from the conclusion that sexual abstinence existed, but in all of these he subsequently found that he was mistaken, usually owing to the practice of masturbation, which he believes to be extremely common and very frequently accompanied by a persistent attempt to deceive the physician concerning its existence. the only kind of "sexual abstinence" that exists is a partial and temporary abstinence. instead of saying, as some say, "permanent abstinence is unnatural and cannot exist without physical and mental injury," we ought to say, rohleder believes, "permanent abstinence is unnatural and has never existed." it is impossible not to feel as we contemplate this chaotic mass of opinions, that the whole discussion is revolving round a purely negative idea, and that fundamental fact is responsible for what at first seem to be startling conflicts of statement. if indeed we were to eliminate what is commonly regarded as the religious and moral aspect of the matter--an aspect, be it remembered, which has no bearing on the essential natural facts of the question--we cannot fail to perceive that these ostentatious differences of conviction would be reduced within very narrow and trifling limits. we cannot strictly coordinate the impulse of reproduction with the impulse of nutrition. there are very important differences between them, more especially the fundamental difference that while the satisfaction of the one impulse is absolutely necessary both to the life of the individual and of the race, the satisfaction of the other is absolutely necessary only to the life of the race. but when we reduce this question to one of "sexual abstinence" we are obviously placing it on the same basis as that of abstinence from food, that is to say at the very opposite pole to which we place it when (as in the previous chapter) we consider it from the point of view of asceticism and chastity. it thus comes about that on this negative basis there really is an interesting analogy between nutritive abstinence, though necessarily only maintained incompletely and for a short time, and sexual abstinence, maintained more completely and for a longer time. a patient of janet's seems to bring out clearly this resemblance. nadia, whom janet was able to study during five years, was a young woman of twenty-seven, healthy and intelligent, not suffering from hysteria nor from anorexia, for she had a normal appetite. but she had an idea; she was anxious to be slim and to attain this end she cut down her meals to the smallest size, merely a little soup and a few eggs. she suffered much from the abstinence she thus imposed on herself, and was always hungry, though sometimes her hunger was masked by the inevitable stomach trouble caused by so long a persistence in this _régime_. at times, indeed, she had been so hungry that she had devoured greedily whatever she could lay her hands on, and not infrequently she could not resist the temptation to eat a few biscuits in secret. such actions caused her horrible remorse, but, all the same, she would be guilty of them again. she realized the great efforts demanded by her way of life, and indeed looked upon herself as a heroine for resisting so long. "sometimes," she told janet, "i passed whole hours in thinking about food, i was so hungry. i swallowed my saliva, i bit my handkerchief, i rolled on the ground, i wanted to eat so badly. i searched books for descriptions of meals and feasts, i tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that i too was enjoying all these good things. i was really famished, and in spite of a few weaknesses for biscuits i know that i showed much courage."[ ] nadia's motive idea, that she wished to be slim, corresponds to the abstinent man's idea that he wishes to be "moral," and only differs from it by having the advantage of being somewhat more positive and personal, for the idea of the person who wishes to avoid sexual indulgence because it is "not right" is often not merely negative but impersonal and imposed by the social and religious environment. nadia's occasional outbursts of reckless greediness correspond to the sudden impulses to resort to prostitution, and her secret weaknesses for biscuits, followed by keen remorse, to lapses into the habit of masturbation. her fits of struggling and rolling on the ground are precisely like the outbursts of futile desire which occasionally occur to young abstinent men and women in health and strength. the absorption in thoughts about meals and in literary descriptions of meals is clearly analogous to the abstinent man's absorption in wanton thoughts and erotic books. finally, nadia's conviction that she is a heroine corresponds exactly to the attitude of self-righteousness which often marks the sexually abstinent. if we turn to freud's penetrating and suggestive study of the problem of sexual abstinence in relation to "civilized" sexual morality, we find that, though he makes no reference to the analogy with abstinence from food, his words would for the most part have an equal application to both cases. "the task of subduing so powerful an instinct as the sexual impulse, otherwise than by giving it satisfaction," he writes, "is one which may employ the whole strength of a man. subjugation through sublimation, by guiding the sexual forces into higher civilizational paths, may succeed with a minority, and even with these only for a time, least easily during the years of ardent youthful energy. most others become neurotic or otherwise come to grief. experience shows that the majority of people constituting our society are constitutionally unequal to the task of abstinence. we say, indeed, that the struggle with this powerful impulse and the emphasis the struggle involves on the ethical and æsthetic forces in the soul's life 'steels' the character, and for a few favorably organized natures this is true; it must also be acknowledged that the differentiation of individual character so marked in our time only becomes possible through sexual limitations. but in by far the majority of cases the struggle with sensuality uses up the available energy of character, and this at the very time when the young man needs all his strength in order to win his place in the world."[ ] when we have put the problem on this negative basis of abstinence it is difficult to see how we can dispute the justice of freud's conclusions. they hold good equally for abstinence from food and abstinence from sexual love. when we have placed the problem on a more positive basis, and are able to invoke the more active and fruitful motives of asceticism and chastity this unfortunate fight against a natural impulse is abolished. if chastity is an ideal of the harmonious play of all the organic impulses of the soul and body, if asceticism, properly understood, is the athletic striving for a worthy object which causes, for the time, an indifference to the gratification of sexual impulses, we are on wholesome and natural ground, and there is no waste of energy in fruitless striving for a negative end, whether imposed artificially from without, as it usually is, or voluntarily chosen by the individual himself. for there is really no complete analogy between sexual desire and hunger, between abstinence from sexual relations and abstinence from food. when we put them both on the basis of abstinence we put them on a basis which covers the impulse for food but only half covers the impulse for sexual love. we confer no pleasure and no service on our food when we eat it. but the half of sexual love, perhaps the most important and ennobling half, lies in what we give and not in what we take. to reduce this question to the low level of abstinence, is not only to centre it in a merely negative denial but to make it a solely self-regarding question. instead of asking: how can i bring joy and strength to another? we only ask: how can i preserve my empty virtue? therefore it is that from whatever aspect we consider the question,--whether in view of the flagrant contradiction between the authorities who have discussed this question, or of the illegitimate mingling here of moral and physiological considerations, or of the merely negative and indeed unnatural character of the "virtue" thus set up, or of the failure involved to grasp the ennoblingly altruistic and mutual side of sexual love,--from whatever aspect we approach the problem of "sexual abstinence" we ought only to agree to do so under protest. if we thus decide to approach it, and if we have reached the conviction--which, in view of all the evidence we can scarcely escape--that, while sexual abstinence in so far as it may be recognized as possible is not incompatible with health, there are yet many adults for whom it is harmful, and a very much larger number for whom when prolonged it is undesirable, we encounter a serious problem. it is a problem which confronts any person, and especially the physician, who may be called upon to give professional advice to his fellows on this matter. if sexual relationships are sometimes desirable for unmarried persons, or for married persons who, for any reason, are debarred from conjugal union, is a physician justified in recommending such sexual relationships to his patient? this is a question that has frequently been debated and decided in opposing senses. various distinguished physicians, especially in germany, have proclaimed the duty of the doctor to recommend sexual intercourse to his patient whenever he considers it desirable. gyurkovechky, for instance, has fully discussed this question, and answered it in the affirmative. nyström (_sexual-probleme_, july, , p. ) states that it is the physician's duty, in some cases of sexual weakness, when all other methods of treatment have failed, to recommend sexual intercourse as the best remedy. dr. max marcuse stands out as a conspicuous advocate of the unconditional duty of the physician to advocate sexual intercourse in some cases, both to men and to women, and has on many occasions argued in this sense (e.g., _darf der arzt zum ausserehelichen geschlechtsverkehr raten?_ ). marcuse is strongly of opinion that a physician who, allowing himself to be influenced by moral, sociological, or other considerations, neglects to recommend sexual intercourse when he considers it desirable for the patient's health, is unworthy of his profession, and should either give up medicine or send his patients to other doctors. this attitude, though not usually so emphatically stated, seems to be widely accepted. lederer goes even further when he states (_monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten und sexuelle hygiene_, , heft ) that it is the physician's duty in the case of a woman who is suffering from her husband's impotence, to advise her to have intercourse with another man, adding that "whether she does so with her husband's consent is no affair of the physician's, for he is not the guardian of morality, but the guardian of health." the physicians who publicly take this attitude are, however, a small minority. in england, so far as i am aware, no physician of eminence has openly proclaimed the duty of the doctor to advise sexual intercourse outside marriage, although, it is scarcely necessary to add, in england, as elsewhere, it happens that doctors, including women doctors, from time to time privately point out to their unmarried and even married patients, that sexual intercourse would probably be beneficial. the duty of the physician to recommend sexual intercourse has been denied as emphatically as it has been affirmed. thus eulenburg (_sexuale neuropathie_, p. ), would by no means advise extra-conjugal relations to his patient; "such advice is quite outside the physician's competence." it is, of course, denied by those who regard sexual abstinence as always harmless, if not beneficial. but it is also denied by many who consider that, under some circumstances, sexual intercourse would do good. moll has especially, and on many occasions, discussed the duty of the physician in relation to the question of advising sexual intercourse outside marriage (e.g., in his comprehensive work, _aerztliche ethik_, ; also _zeitschrift für aerztliche fortbildung_, , nos. - ; _mutterschutz_, , heft ; _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. ii, heft ). at the outset moll had been disposed to assert the right of the physician to recommend sexual intercourse under some circumstances; "so long as marriage is unduly delayed and sexual intercourse outside marriage exists," he wrote (_die conträre sexualempfindung_, second edition, p. ), "so long, i think, we may use such intercourse therapeutically, provided that the rights of no third person (husband or wife) are injured." in all his later writings, however, moll ranges himself clearly and decisively on the opposite side. he considers that the physician has no right to overlook the possible results of his advice in inflicting venereal disease, or, in the case of a woman, pregnancy, on his patient, and he believes that these serious results are far more likely to happen than is always admitted by those who defend the legitimacy of such advice. nor will moll admit that the physician is entitled to overlook the moral aspects of the question. a physician may know that a poor man could obtain many things good for his health by stealing, but he cannot advise him to steal. moll takes the case of a catholic priest who is suffering from neurasthenia due to sexual abstinence. even although the physician feels certain that the priest may be able to avoid all the risks of disease as well as of publicity, he is not entitled to urge him to sexual intercourse. he has to remember that in thus causing a priest to break his vows of chastity he may induce a mental conflict and a bitter remorse which may lead to the worst results, even on his patient's physical health. similar results, moll remarks, may follow such advice when given to a married man or woman, to say nothing of possible divorce proceedings and accompanying evils. rohleder (_vorlesungen über geschlechtstrieb und gesamtes geschlechtsleben der menschen_) adopts a somewhat qualified attitude in this matter. as a general rule he is decidedly against recommending sexual intercourse outside marriage to those who are suffering from partial or temporary abstinence (the only form of abstinence he recognizes), partly on the ground that the evils of abstinence are not serious or permanent, and partly because the patient is fairly certain to exercise his own judgment in the matter. but in some classes of cases he recommends such intercourse, and notably to bisexual persons, on the ground that he is thus preserving his patient from the criminal risks of homosexual practices. it seems to me that there should be no doubt whatever as to the correct professional attitude of the physician in relation to this question of advice concerning sexual intercourse. the physician is never entitled to advise his patient to adopt sexual intercourse outside marriage nor any method of relief which is commonly regarded as illegitimate. it is said that the physician has nothing to do with considerations of conventional morality. if he considers that champagne would be good for a poor patient he ought to recommend him to take champagne; he is not called upon to consider whether the patient will beg, borrow, or steal the champagne. but, after all, even if that be admitted, it must still be said that the physician knows that the champagne, however obtained, is not likely to be poisonous. when, however, he prescribes sexual intercourse, with the same lofty indifference to practical considerations, he has no such knowledge. in giving such a prescription the physician has in fact not the slightest knowledge of what he may be prescribing. he may be giving his patient a venereal disease; he may be giving the anxieties and responsibilities of an illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark. he is in the same position as if he had prescribed a quack medicine of which the composition was unknown to him, with the added disadvantage that the medicine may turn out to be far more potently explosive than is the case with the usually innocuous patent medicine. the utmost that a physician can properly permit himself to do is to put the case impartially before his patient and to present to him all the risks. the solution must be for the patient himself to work out, as best he can, for it involves social and other considerations which, while they are indeed by no means outside the sphere of medicine, are certainly entirely outside the control of the individual private practitioner of medicine. moll also is of opinion that this impartial presentation of the case for and against sexual intercourse corresponds to the physician's duty in the matter. it is, indeed, a duty which can scarcely be escaped by the physician in many cases. moll points out that it can by no means be assimilated, as some have supposed, with the recommendation of sexual intercourse. it is, on the contrary, he remarks, much more analogous to the physician's duty in reference to operations. he puts before the patient the nature of the operation, its advantages and its risks, but he leaves it to the patient's judgment to accept or reject the operation. lewitt also (_geschlechtliche enthaltsamkeit und gesundheitsstörungen_, ), after discussing the various opinions on this question, comes to the conclusion that the physician, if he thinks that intercourse outside marriage might be beneficial, should explain the difficulties and leave the patient himself to decide. there is another reason why, having regard to the prevailing moral opinions at all events among the middle classes, a physician should refrain from advising extra-conjugal intercourse: he places himself in a false relation to his social environment. he is recommending a remedy the nature of which he could not publicly avow, and so destroying the public confidence in himself. the only physician who is morally entitled to advise his patients to enter into extra-conjugal relationships is one who openly acknowledges that he is prepared to give such advice. the doctor who is openly working for social reform has perhaps won the moral right to give advice in accordance with the tendency of his public activity, but even then his advice may be very dubiously judicious, and he would be better advised to confine his efforts at social reform to his public activities. the voice of the physician, as professor max flesch of frankfort observes, is more and more heard in the development and new growth of social institutions; he is a natural leaders in such movements, and proposals for reform properly come from him. "but," as flesch continues, "publicly to accept the excellence of existing institutions and in the privacy of the consulting-room to give advice which assumes the imperfection of those institutions is illogical and confusing. it is the physician's business to give advice which is in accordance with the interests of the community as a whole, and those interests require that sexual relationships should be entered into between healthy men and women who are able and willing to accept the results of their union. that should be the physician's rule of conduct. only so can he become, what to-day he is often proclaimed to be, the leader of the nation."[ ] this view is not, as we see, entirely in accord with that which assumes that the physician's duty is solely and entirely to his patient, without regard to the bearing of his advice on social conduct. the patient's interests are primary, but they are not entitled to be placed in antagonism to the interests of society. the advice given by the wise physician must always be in harmony with the social and moral tone of his age. thus it is that the tendency among the younger generation of physicians to-day to take an active interest in raising that tone and in promoting social reform--a tendency which exists not only in germany where such interests have long been acute, but also in so conservative a land as england--is full of promise for the future. the physician is usually content to consider his duty to his patient in relationship to sexual abstinence as sufficiently fulfilled when he attempts to allay sexual hyperæsthesia by medical or hygienic treatment. it can scarcely be claimed, however, that the results of such treatment are usually satisfactory, and sometimes indeed the treatment has a result which is the reverse of that intended. the difficulty generally is that in order to be efficacious the treatment must be carried to an extreme which exhausts or inhibits not only the genital activities alone but the activities of the whole organism, and short of that it may prove a stimulant rather than a sedative. it is difficult and usually impossible to separate out a man's sexual activities and bring influence to bear on these activities alone. sexual activity is so closely intertwined with the other organic activities, erotic exuberance is so much a flower which is rooted in the whole organism, that the blow which crushes it may strike down the whole man. the bromides are universally recognized as powerful sexual sedatives, but their influence in this respect only makes itself felt when they have dulled all the finest energies of the organism. physical exercise is universally recommended to sexually hyperæsthetic patients. yet most people, men and women, find that physical exercise is a positive stimulus to sexual activity. this is notably so as regards walking, and exuberantly energetic young women who are troubled by the irritant activity of their healthy sexual emotions sometimes spend a large part of their time in the vain attempt to lull their activity by long walks. physical exercise only proves efficacious in this respect when it is carried to an extent which produces general exhaustion. then indeed the sexual activity is lulled; but so are all the mental and physical activities. it is undoubtedly true that exercises and games of all sorts for young people of both sexes have a sexually hygienic as well as a generally hygienic influence which is undoubtedly beneficial. they are, on all grounds, to be preferred to prolonged sedentary occupations. but it is idle to suppose that games and exercises will suppress the sexual impulses, for in so far as they favor health, they favor all the impulses that are the result of health. the most that can be expected is that they may tend to restrain the manifestations of sex by dispersing the energy they generate. there are many physical rules and precautions which are advocated, not without reason, as tending to inhibit or diminish sexual activity. the avoidance of heat and the cultivation of cold is one of the most important of these. hot climates, a close atmosphere, heavy bed-clothing, hot baths, all tend powerfully to excite the sexual system, for that system is a peripheral sensory organ, and whatever stimulates the skin generally, stimulates the sexual system.[ ] cold, which contracts the skin, also deadens the sexual feelings, a fact which the ascetics of old knew and acted upon. the garments and the posture of the body are not without influence. constriction or pressure in the neighborhood of the sexual region, even tight corsets, as well as internal pressure, as from a distended bladder, are sources of sexual irritation. sleeping on the back, which congests the spinal centres, also acts in the same way, as has long been known by those who attend to sexual hygiene; thus it is stated that in the franciscan order it is prohibited to lie on the back. food and drink are, further, powerful sexual stimulants. this is true even of the simplest and most wholesome nourishment, but it is more especially true of flesh meat, and, above all, of alcohol in its stronger forms such as spirits, liqueurs, sparkling and heavy wines, and even many english beers. this has always been clearly realized by those who cultivate asceticism, and it is one of the powerful reasons why alcohol should not be given in early youth. as st. jerome wrote, when telling eustochium that she must avoid wine like poison, "wine and youth are the two fires of lust. why add oil to the flame?"[ ] idleness, again, especially when combined with rich living, promotes sexual activity, as burton sets forth at length in his _anatomy of melancholy_, and constant occupation, on the other hand, concentrates the wandering activities. mental exercise, like physical exercise, has sometimes been advocated as a method of calming sexual excitement, but it seems to be equally equivocal in its action. if it is profoundly interesting and exciting it may stir up rather than lull the sexual emotions. if it arouses little interest it is unable to exert any kind of influence. this is true even of mathematical occupations which have been advocated by various authorities, including broussais, as aids to sexual hygiene.[ ] "i have tried mechanical mental work," a lady writes, "such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems, but it does no good; in fact it seems only to increase the excitement." "i studied and especially turned my attention to mathematics," a clergyman writes, "with a view to check my sexual tendencies. to a certain extent i was successful. but at the approach of an old friend, a voice or a touch, these tendencies came back again with renewed strength. i found mathematics, however, the best thing on the whole to take off my attention from women, better than religious exercises which i tried when younger (twenty-two to thirty)." at the best, however, such devices are of merely temporary efficacy. it is easier to avoid arousing the sexual impulses than to impose silence on them by hygienic measures when once they are aroused. it is, therefore, in childhood and youth that all these measures may be most reasonably observed in order to avoid any premature sexual excitement. in one group of stolidly normal children influences that might be expected to act sexually pass away unperceived. at the other extreme, another group of children are so neurotically and precociously sensitive that no precautions will preserve them from such influences. but between these groups there is another, probably much the largest, who resist slight sexual suggestions but may succumb to stronger or longer influences, and on these the cares of sexual hygiene may profitably be bestowed.[ ] after puberty, when the spontaneous and inner voice of sex may at any moment suddenly make itself heard, all hygienic precautions are liable to be flung to the winds, and even the youth or maiden most anxious to retain the ideals of chastity can often do little but wait till the storm has passed. it sometimes happens that a prolonged period of sexual storm and stress occurs soon after puberty, and then dies away although there has been little or no sexual gratification, to be succeeded by a period of comparative calm. it must be remembered that in many, and perhaps most, individuals, men and women, the sexual appetite, unlike hunger or thirst, can after a prolonged struggle, be reduced to a more or less quiescent state which, far from injuring, may even benefit the physical and psychic vigor generally. this may happen whether or not sexual gratification has been obtained. if there has never been any such gratification, the struggle is less severe and sooner over, unless the individual is of highly erotic temperament. if there has been gratification, if the mind is filled not merely with desires but with joyous experience to which the body also has grown accustomed, then the struggle is longer and more painfully absorbing. the succeeding relief, however, if it comes, is sometimes more complete and is more likely to be associated with a state of psychic health. for the fundamental experiences of life, under normal conditions, bring not only intellectual sanity, but emotional pacification. a conquest of the sexual appetites which has never at any period involved a gratification of these appetites seldom produces results that commend themselves as rich and beautiful. in these combats there are, however, no permanent conquests. for a very large number of people, indeed, though there may be emotional changes and fluctuations dependent on a variety of circumstances, there can scarcely be said to be any conquest at all. they are either always yielding to the impulses that assail them, or always resisting those impulses, in the first case with remorse, in the second with dissatisfaction. in either case much of their lives, at the time when life is most vigorous, is wasted. with women, if they happen to be of strong passions and reckless impulses to abandonment, the results may be highly enervating, if not disastrous to the general psychic life. it is to this cause, indeed, that some have been inclined to attribute the frequent mediocrity of women's work in artistic and intellectual fields. women of intellectual force are frequently if not generally women of strong passions, and if they resist the tendency to merge themselves in the duties of maternity their lives are often wasted in emotional conflict and their psychic natures impoverished.[ ] the extent to which sexual abstinence and the struggles it involves may hamper and absorb the individual throughout life is well illustrated in the following case. a lady, vigorous, robust, and generally healthy, of great intelligence and high character, has reached middle life without marrying, or ever having sexual relationships. she was an only child, and when between three and four years of age, a playmate some six years older, initiated her into the habit of playing with her sexual parts. she was, however, at this age quite devoid of sexual feelings, and the habit dropped naturally, without any bad effects, as soon as she left the neighborhood of this girl a year or so later. her health was good and even brilliant, and she developed vigorously at puberty. at the age of sixteen, however, a mental shock caused menstruation to diminish in amount during some years, and simultaneously with this diminution persistent sexual excitement appeared spontaneously, for the first time. she regarded such feelings as abnormal and unhealthy, and exerted all her powers of self-control in resisting them. but will power had no effect in diminishing the feelings. there was constant and imperious excitement, with the sense of vibration, tension, pressure, dilatation and tickling, accompanied, it may be, by some ovarian congestion, for she felt that on the left side there was a network of sexual nerves, and retroversion of the uterus was detected some years later. her life was strenuous with many duties, but no occupation could be pursued without this undercurrent of sexual hyperæsthesia involving perpetual self-control. this continued more or less acutely for many years, when menstruation suddenly stopped altogether, much before the usual period of the climacteric. at the same time the sexual excitement ceased, and she became calm, peaceful, and happy. diminished menstruation was associated with sexual excitement, but abundant menstruation and its complete absence were both accompanied by the relief of excitement. this lasted for two years. then, for the treatment of a trifling degree of anæmia, she was subjected to a long, and, in her case, injudicious course of hypodermic injections of strychnia. from that time, five years ago, up to the present, there has been constant sexual excitement, and she has always to be on guard lest she should be overtaken by a sexual spasm. her torture is increased by the fact that her traditions make it impossible for her (except under very exceptional circumstances) to allude to the cause of her sufferings. "a woman is handicapped," she writes. "she may never speak to anyone on such a subject. she must live her tragedy alone, smiling as much as she can under the strain of her terrible burden." to add to her trouble, two years ago, she felt impelled to resort to masturbation, and has done so about once a month since; this not only brings no real relief, and leaves irritability, wakefulness, and dark marks under the eyes, but is a cause of remorse to her, for she regards masturbation as entirely abnormal and unnatural. she has tried to gain benefit, not merely by the usual methods of physical hygiene, but by suggestion, christian science, etc., but all in vain. "i may say," she writes, "that it is the most passionate desire of my heart to be freed from this bondage, that i may relax the terrible years-long tension of resistance, and be happy in my own way. if i had this affliction once a month, once a week, even twice a week, to stand against it would be child's play. i should scorn to resort to unnatural means, however moderately. but self-control itself has its revenges, and i sometimes feel as if it is no longer to be borne." thus while it is an immense benefit in physical and psychic development if the eruption of the disturbing sexual emotions can be delayed until puberty or adolescence, and while it is a very great advantage, after that eruption has occurred, to be able to gain control of these emotions, to crush altogether the sexual nature would be a barren, if not, indeed, a perilous victory, bringing with it no satisfaction. "if i had only had three weeks' happiness," said a woman, "i would not quarrel with fate, but to have one's whole life so absolutely empty is horrible." if such vacuous self-restraint may, by courtesy, be termed a virtue, it is but a negative virtue. the persons who achieve it, as the result of congenitally feeble sexual aptitudes, merely (as gyurkovechky, fürbringer, and löwenfeld have all alike remarked) made a virtue of their weakness. many others, whose instincts were less weak, when they disdainfully put to flight the desires of sex in early life, have found that in later life that foe returns in tenfold force and perhaps in unnatural shapes.[ ] the conception of "sexual abstinence" is, we see, an entirely false and artificial conception. it is not only ill-adjusted to the hygienic facts of the case but it fails even to invoke any genuinely moral motive, for it is exclusively self-regarding and self-centred. it only becomes genuinely moral, and truly inspiring, when we transform it into the altruistic virtue of self-sacrifice. when we have done so we see that the element of abstinence in it ceases to be essential, "self-sacrifice," writes the author of a thoughtful book on the sexual life, "is acknowledged to be the basis of virtue; the noblest instances of self-sacrifice are those dictated by sexual affection. sympathy is the secret of altruism; nowhere is sympathy more real and complete than in love. courage, both moral and physical, the love of truth and honor, the spirit of enterprise, and the admiration of moral worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in human nature. celibacy denies itself that inspiration or restricts its influence, according to the measure of its denial of sexual intimacy. thus the deliberate adoption of a consistently celibate life implies the narrowing down of emotional and moral experience to a degree which is, from the broad scientific standpoint, unjustified by any of the advantages piously supposed to accrue from it."[ ] in a sane natural order all the impulses are centred in the fulfilment of needs and not in their denial. moreover, in this special matter of sex, it is inevitable that the needs of others, and not merely the needs of the individual himself, should determine action. it is more especially the needs of the female which are the determining factor; for those needs are more various, complex and elusive, and in his attentiveness to their gratification the male finds a source of endless erotic satisfaction. it might be thought that the introduction of an altruistic motive here is merely the claim of theoretical morality insisting that there shall be a firm curb on animal instinct. but, as we have again and again seen throughout the long course of these _studies_, it is not so. the animal instinct itself makes this demand. it is a biological law that rules throughout the zoölogical world and has involved the universality of courtship. in man it is only modified because in man sexual needs are not entirely concentrated in reproduction, but more or less penetrate the whole of life. while from the point of view of society, as from that of nature, the end and object of the sexual impulse is procreation, and nothing beyond procreation, that is by no means true for the individual, whose main object it must be to fulfil himself harmoniously with that due regard for others which the art of living demands. even if sexual relationships had no connection with procreation whatever--as some central australian tribes believe--they would still be justifiable, and are, indeed, an indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual, for it is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest graces and aptitudes of life have full scope. even the saints cannot forego the sexual side of life. the best and most accomplished saints from jerome to tolstoy--even the exquisite francis of assisi--had stored up in their past all the experiences that go to the complete realization of life, and if it were not so they would have been the less saints. the element of positive virtue thus only enters when the control of the sexual impulse has passed beyond the stage of rigid and sterile abstinence and has become not merely a deliberate refusal of what is evil in sex, but a deliberate acceptance of what is good. it is only at that moment that such control becomes a real part of the great art of living. for the art of living, like any other art, is not compatible with rigidity, but lies in the weaving of a perpetual harmony between refusing and accepting, between giving and taking.[ ] the future, it is clear, belongs ultimately to those who are slowly building up sounder traditions into the structure of life. the "problem of sexual abstinence" will more and more sink into insignificance. there remain the great solid fact of love, the great solid fact of chastity. those are eternal. between them there is nothing but harmony. the development of one involves the development of the other. it has been necessary to treat seriously this problem of "sexual abstinence" because we have behind us the traditions of two thousand years based on certain ideals of sexual law and sexual license, together with the long effort to build up practices more or less conditioned by those ideals. we cannot immediately escape from these traditions even when we question their validity for ourselves. we have not only to recognize their existence, but also to accept the fact that for some time to come they must still to a considerable extent control the thoughts and even in some degree the actions of existing communities. it is undoubtedly deplorable. it involves the introduction of an artificiality into a real natural order. love is real and positive; chastity is real and positive. but sexual abstinence is unreal and negative, in the strict sense perhaps impossible. the underlying feelings of all those who have emphasized its importance is that a physiological process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried out under certain arbitrary external conditions, which render it licit or illicit. an act of sexual intercourse under the name of "marriage" is beneficial; the very same act, under the name of "incontinence," is pernicious. no physiological process, and still less any spiritual process, can bear such restriction. it is as much as to say that a meal becomes good or bad, digestible or indigestible, according as a grace is or is not pronounced before the eating of it. it is deplorable because, such a conception being essentially unreal, an element of unreality is thus introduced into a matter of the gravest concern alike to the individual and to society. artificial disputes have been introduced where no matter of real dispute need exist. a contest has been carried on marked by all the ferocity which marks contests about metaphysical or pseudo-metaphysical differences having no concrete basis in the actual world. as will happen in such cases, there has, after all, been no real difference between the disputants because the point they quarreled over was unreal. in truth each side was right and each side was wrong. it is necessary, we see, that the balance should be held even. an absolute license is bad; an absolute abstinence--even though some by nature or circumstances are urgently called to adopt it--is also bad. they are both alike away from the gracious equilibrium of nature. and the force, we see, which naturally holds this balance even is the biological fact that the act of sexual union is the satisfaction of the erotic needs, not of one person, but of two persons. footnotes: [ ] this view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally prevalent, as westermarck has shown, among primitive peoples, that the sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured party. [ ] this implicit contradiction has been acutely pointed out from the religious side by the rev. h. northcote, _christianity and sex problems_, p. . [ ] it has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "the sexual impulse in women," vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] "die abstinentia sexualis," _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, nov., . [ ] p. janet, "la maladie du scrupule," _revue philosophique_, may, . [ ] s. freud, _sexual-probleme_, march, . as adele schreiber also points out (_mutterschutz_, jan., , p. ), it is not enough to prove that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember that the spiritual and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty instinct often reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and faded shadow. similarly, helene stöcker (_die liebe und die frauen_, p. ) says: "the question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the truth, a ridiculous question. one needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the healthy life, and its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe psychic depression, even if no direct physiological disturbances can be demonstrated." [ ] max flesch, "ehe, hygine und sexuelle moral," _mutterschutz_, , heft . [ ] see the section on touch in the fourth volume of these _studies_. [ ] "i have had two years' close experience and connexion with the trappists," wrote dr. butterfield, of natal (_british medical journal_, sept. , , p. ), "both as medical attendant and as being a catholic in creed myself. i have studied them and investigated their life, habits and diet, and though i should be very backward in adopting it myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing, capable of vast work, mental and physical. their life is very simple and very regular. a healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper--this latter i lay great stress on--it would be difficult to find. health beams in their eyes and countenance and actions. only in sickness or prolonged journeys are they allowed any strong foods--meats, eggs, etc.--or any alcohol." [ ] féré, _l'instinct sexuel_, second edition, p. . [ ] rural life, as we have seen when discussing its relation to sexual precocity, _is_ on one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual influences. but, on the other hand, in so far as it involves hard work and simple living under conditions that are not nervously stimulating, it is favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a relative continence. ammon, in the course of his anthropological investigations of baden conscripts, found that sexual intercourse was rare in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare before nineteen or twenty. it is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a girl. no doubt this is often preliminary to much license later. [ ] the numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now gained in the american school system has caused much misgiving among many sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on the pupils of both sexes. a distinguished authority, professor mckeen cattell ("the school and the family," _popular science monthly_, jan., ), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a question whether it would not be an advantage to the country if the whole school plant could be scrapped." [ ] corre (_les criminels_, p. ) mentions that of thirteen priests convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had committed similar offenses. this was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions have greatly diminished this class of offense among them. without going so far as crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and others, who have led severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual impulses, normal or abnormal. in women such manifestations are apt to take the form of obsessional thoughts of sexual character, as e.g., the case (_comptes-rendus congrès international de médecine_, moscow, , vol. iv, p. ) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at the sexual organs of men. [ ] j.a. godfrey, _the science of sex_, p. . [ ] see, e.g., havelock ellis, "st. francis and others," _affirmations_. chapter vii. prostitution. i. _the orgy:_--the religious origin of the orgy--the feast of fools--recognition of the orgy by the greeks and romans--the orgy among savages--the drama--the object subserved by the orgy. ii. _the origin and development of prostitution:_--the definition of prostitution--prostitution among savages--the conditions under which professional prostitution arises--sacred prostitution--the rite of mylitta--the practice of prostitution to obtain a marriage portion--the rise of secular prostitution in greece--prostitution in the east--india, china, japan, etc.--prostitution in rome--the influence of christianity on prostitution--the effort to combat prostitution--the mediæval brothel--the appearance of the courtesan--tullia d'aragona--veronica franco--ninon de lenclos--later attempts to eradicate prostitution--the regulation of prostitution--its futility becoming recognized. iii. _the causes of prostitution:_--prostitution as a part of the marriage system--the complex causation of prostitution--the motives assigned by prostitutes--( ) economic factor of prostitution--poverty seldom the chief motive for prostitution--but economic pressure exerts a real influence--the large proportion of prostitutes recruited from domestic service--significance of this fact--( ) the biological factor of prostitution--the so-called born-prostitute--alleged identity with the born-criminal--the sexual instinct in prostitutes--the physical and psychic characters of prostitutes--( ) moral necessity as a factor in the existence of prostitution--the moral advocates of prostitution--the moral attitude of christianity towards prostitution--the attitude of protestantism--recent advocates of the moral necessity of prostitution--( ) civilizational value as a factor of prostitution--the influence of urban life--the craving for excitement--why servant-girls so often turn to prostitution--the small part played by seduction--prostitutes come largely from the country--the appeal of civilization attracts women to prostitution--the corresponding attraction felt by men--the prostitute as artist and leader of fashion--the charm of vulgarity. iv. _the present social attitude towards prostitution:_--the decay of the brothel--the tendency to the humanization of prostitution--the monetary aspects of prostitution--the geisha--the hetaira--the moral revolt against prostitution--squalid vice based on luxurious virtue--the ordinary attitude towards prostitutes--its cruelty absurd--the need of reforming prostitution--the need of reforming marriage--these these two needs closely correlated--the dynamic relationships involved. _i. the orgy_. traditional morality, religion, and established convention combine to promote not only the extreme of rigid abstinence but also that of reckless license. they preach and idealize the one extreme; they drive those who cannot accept it to adopt the opposite extreme. in the great ages of religion it even happens that the severity of the rule of abstinence is more or less deliberately tempered by the permission for occasional outbursts of license. we thus have the orgy, which flourished in mediæval days and is, indeed, in its largest sense, a universal manifestation, having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization, built up on natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable restraints. the consideration of the orgy, it may be said, lifts us beyond the merely sexual sphere, into a higher and wider region which belongs to religion. the greek _orgeia_ referred originally to ritual things done with a religious purpose, though later, when dances of bacchanals and the like lost their sacred and inspiring character, the idea was fostered by christianity that such things were immoral.[ ] yet christianity was itself in its origin an orgy of the higher spiritual activities released from the uncongenial servitude of classic civilization, a great festival of the poor and the humble, of the slave and the sinner. and when, with the necessity for orderly social organization, christianity had ceased to be this it still recognized, as paganism had done, the need for an occasional orgy. it appears that in at a synod held in hainault reference was made to the february debauch (_de spurcalibus in februario_) as a pagan practice; yet it was precisely this pagan festival which was embodied in the accepted customs of the christian church as the chief orgy of the ecclesiastical year, the great carnival prefixed to the long fast of lent. the celebration on shrove tuesday and the previous sunday constituted a christian bacchanalian festival in which all classes joined. the greatest freedom and activity of physical movement was encouraged; "some go about naked without shame, some crawl on all fours, some on stilts, some imitate animals."[ ] as time went on the carnival lost its most strongly marked bacchanalian features, but it still retains its essential character as a permitted and temporary relaxation of the tension of customary restraints and conventions. the mediæval feast of fools--a new year's revel well established by the twelfth century, mainly in france--presented an expressive picture of a christian orgy in its extreme form, for here the most sacred ceremonies of the church became the subject of fantastic parody. the church, according to nietzsche's saying, like all wise legislators, recognized that where great impulses and habits have to be cultivated, intercalary days must be appointed in which these impulses and habits may be denied, and so learn to hunger anew.[ ] the clergy took the leading part in these folk-festivals, for to the men of that age, as méray remarks, "the temple offered the complete notes of the human gamut; they found there the teaching of all duties, the consolation of all sorrows, the satisfaction of all joys. the sacred festivals of mediæval christianity were not a survival from roman times; they leapt from the very heart of christian society."[ ] but, as méray admits, all great and vigorous peoples, of the east and the west, have found it necessary sometimes to play with their sacred things. among the greeks and romans this need is everywhere visible, not only in their comedy and their literature generally, but in everyday life. as nietzsche truly remarks (in his _geburt der tragödie_) the greeks recognized all natural impulses, even those that are seemingly unworthy, and safeguarded them from working mischief by providing channels into which, on special days and in special rites, the surplus of wild energy might harmlessly flow. plutarch, the last and most influential of the greek moralists, well says, when advocating festivals (in his essay "on the training of children"), that "even in bows and harps we loosen their strings that we may bend and wind them up again." seneca, perhaps the most influential of roman if not of european moralists, even recommended occasional drunkenness. "sometimes," he wrote in his _de tranquillilate_, "we ought to come even to the point of intoxication, not for the purpose of drowning ourselves but of sinking ourselves deep in wine. for it washes away cares and raises our spirits from the lowest depths. the inventor of wine is called _liber_ because he frees the soul from the servitude of care, releases it from slavery, quickens it, and makes it bolder for all undertakings." the romans were a sterner and more serious people than the greeks, but on that very account they recognized the necessity of occasionally relaxing their moral fibres in order to preserve their tone, and encouraged the prevalence of festivals which were marked by much more abandonment than those of greece. when these festivals began to lose their moral sanction and to fall into decay the decadence of rome had begun. all over the world, and not excepting the most primitive savages--for even savage life is built up on systematic constraints which sometimes need relaxation--the principle of the orgy is recognized and accepted. thus spencer and gillen describe[ ] the nathagura or fire-ceremony of the warramunga tribe of central australia, a festival taken part in by both sexes, in which all the ordinary rules of social life are broken, a kind of saturnalia in which, however, there is no sexual license, for sexual license is, it need scarcely be said, no essential part of the orgy, even when the orgy lightens the burden of sexual constraints. in a widely different part of the world, in british columbia, the salish indians, according to hill tout,[ ] believed that, long before the whites came, their ancestors observed a sabbath or seventh day ceremony for dancing and praying, assembling at sunrise and dancing till noon. the sabbath, or periodically recurring orgy,--not a day of tension and constraint but a festival of joy, a rest from all the duties of everyday life,--has, as we know, formed an essential part of many of the orderly ancient civilizations on which our own has been built;[ ] it is highly probable that the stability of these ancient civilizations was intimately associated with their recognition of the need of a sabbath orgy. such festivals are, indeed, as crawley observes, processes of purification and reinvigoration, the effort to put off "the old man" and put on "the new man," to enter with fresh energy on the path of everyday life.[ ] the orgy is an institution which by no means has its significance only for the past. on the contrary, the high tension, the rigid routine, the gray monotony of modern life insistently call for moments of organic relief, though the precise form that that orgiastic relief takes must necessarily change with other social changes. as wilhelm von humboldt said, "just as men need suffering in order to become strong so they need joy in order to become good." charles wagner, insisting more recently (in his _jeunesse_) on the same need of joy in our modern life, regrets that dancing in the old, free, and natural manner has gone out of fashion or become unwholesome. dancing is indeed the most fundamental and primitive form of the orgy, and that which most completely and healthfully fulfils its object. for while it is undoubtedly, as we see even among animals, a process by which sexual tumescence is accomplished,[ ] it by no means necessarily becomes focused in sexual detumescence but it may itself become a detumescent discharge of accumulated energy. it was on this account that, at all events in former days, the clergy in spain, on moral grounds, openly encouraged the national passion for dancing. among cultured people in modern times, the orgy tends to take on a purely cerebral form, which is less wholesome because it fails to lead to harmonious discharge along motor channels. in these comparatively passive forms, however, the orgy tends to become more and more pronounced under the conditions of civilization. aristotle's famous statement concerning the function of tragedy as "purgation" seems to be a recognition of the beneficial effects of the orgy.[ ] wagner's music-dramas appeal powerfully to this need; the theatre, now as ever, fulfils a great function of the same kind, inherited from the ancient days when it was the ordered expression of a sexual festival.[ ] the theatre, indeed, tends at the present time to assume a larger importance and to approximate to the more serious dramatic performances of classic days by being transferred to the day-time and the open-air. france has especially taken the initiative in these performances, analogous to the dionysiac festivals of antiquity and the mysteries and moralities of the middle ages. the movement began some years ago at orange. in there were, in france, as many as thirty open-air theatres ("théâtres de la nature," "théâtres du soleil," etc.,) while it is in marseilles that the first formal open-air theatre has been erected since classic days.[ ] in england, likewise, there has been a great extension of popular interest in dramatic performances, and the newly instituted pageants, carried out and taken part in by the population of the region commemorated in the pageant, are festivals of the same character. in england, however, at the present time, the real popular orgiastic festivals are the bank holidays, with which may be associated the more occasional celebrations, "maffekings," etc., often called out by comparatively insignificant national events but still adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity, though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. it is easy indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. in every age of dull and monotonous routine--and all civilization involves such routine--many natural impulses and functions tend to become suppressed, atrophied, or perverted. they need these moments of joyous exercise and expression, moments in which they may not necessarily attain their full activity but in which they will at all events be able, as cyples expresses it, to rehearse their great possibilities.[ ] _ii. the origin and development of prostitution_. the more refined forms of the orgy flourish in civilization, although on account of their mainly cerebral character they are not the most beneficent or the most effective. the more primitive and muscular forms of the orgy tend, on the other hand, under the influence of civilization, to fall into discredit and to be so far as possible suppressed altogether. it is partly in this way that civilization encourages prostitution. for the orgy in its primitive forms, forbidden to show itself openly and reputably, seeks the darkness, and allying itself with a fundamental instinct to which civilized society offers no complete legitimate satisfaction, it firmly entrenches itself in the very centre of civilized life, and thereby constitutes a problem of immense difficulty and importance.[ ] it is commonly said that prostitution has existed always and everywhere. that statement is far from correct. a kind of amateur prostitution is occasionally found among savages, but usually it is only when barbarism is fully developed and is already approaching the stage of civilization that well developed prostitution is found. it exists in a systematic form in every civilization. what is prostitution? there has been considerable discussion as to the correct definition of prostitution.[ ] the roman ulpian said that a prostitute was one who openly abandons her body to a number of men without choice, for money.[ ] not all modern definitions have been so satisfactory. it is sometimes said a prostitute is a woman who gives herself to numerous men. to be sound, however, a definition must be applicable to both sexes alike and we should certainly hesitate to describe a man who had sexual intercourse with many women as a prostitute. the idea of venality, the intention to sell the favors of the body, is essential to the conception of prostitution. thus guyot defines a prostitute as "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated to gain."[ ] it is not, however, adequate to define a prostitute simply as a woman who sells her body. that is done every day by women who become wives in order to gain a home and a livelihood, yet, immoral as this conduct may be from any high ethical standpoint, it would be inconvenient and even misleading to call it prostitution.[ ] it is better, therefore, to define a prostitute as a woman who temporarily sells her sexual favors to various persons. thus, according to wharton's _law-lexicon_ a prostitute is "a woman who indiscriminately consorts with men for hire"; bonger states that "those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of sexual acts and make of this a profession";[ ] richard again states that "a prostitute is a woman who publicly gives herself to the first comer in return for a pecuniary remuneration."[ ] as, finally, the prevalence of homosexuality has led to the existence of male prostitutes, the definition must be put in a form irrespective of sex, and we may, therefore, say that a prostitute is a person who makes it a profession to gratify the lust of various persons of the opposite sex or the same sex. it is essential that the act of prostitution should be habitually performed with "various persons." a woman who gains her living by being mistress to a man, to whom she is faithful, is not a prostitute, although she often becomes one afterwards, and may have been one before. the exact point at which a woman begins to be a prostitute is a question of considerable importance in countries in which prostitutes are subject to registration. thus in berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents in money. this somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and she was arrested and sentenced to one day's imprisonment as an unregistered prostitute. on appeal, however, the sentence was annulled. liszt, in his _strafrecht_, lays it down that a girl who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed relationships" is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense of the german law (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang , heft , p. ). it is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized professional prostitution with the existence of which we are familiar in civilization. the amateur kind of prostitution which has sometimes been noted among primitive peoples--the fact, that is, that a man may give a woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have intercourse with her--is really not prostitution as we understand it. the present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a temporary relationship. the woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her. when cook came to new zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us," and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." the consent of the woman's friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries were settled it was also necessary to treat this "juliet of a night" with "the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated was sure to be disappointed."[ ] in some of the melanesian islands, it is said that women would sometimes become prostitutes, or on account of their bad conduct be forced to become prostitutes for a time; they were not, however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way accumulated a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would not be proper to refer to their former career.[ ] when prostitution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes happens that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the presence of virginity. schurtz quotes from the old arabic geographer al-bekri some interesting remarks about the slavs: "the women of the slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands. if, however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and satisfies her passion. and if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he says to her: 'if you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity.' then he drives her away and renounces her." it is a feeling of this kind which, among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage, knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened. even among the southern slavs of modern europe, who have preserved much of the primitive sexual freedom, this freedom, as krauss, who has minutely studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[ ] prostitution tends to arise, as schurtz has pointed out, in every society in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is socially disapproved. "venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free sexual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary consequences being impeded by unusually early marriages."[ ] the repression of sexual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon of civilization, but it is not itself by any means a measure of a people's general level, and may, therefore, begin to appear at an early period. but it is important to remember that the primitive and rudimentary forms of prostitution, when they occur, are merely temporary, and frequently--though not invariably--involve no degrading influence on the woman in public estimation, sometimes indeed increasing her value as a wife. the woman who sells herself for money purely as a professional matter, without any thought of love or passion, and who, by virtue of her profession, belongs to a pariah class definitely and rigidly excluded from the main body of her sex, is a phenomenon which can seldom be found except in developed civilization. it is altogether incorrect to speak of prostitutes as a mere survival from primitive times. on the whole, while among savages sexual relationships are sometimes free before marriage, as well as on the occasion of special festivals, they are rarely truly promiscuous and still more rarely venal. when savage women nowadays sell themselves, or are sold by their husbands, it has usually been found that we are concerned with the contamination of european civilization. the definite ways in which professional prostitution may arise are no doubt many.[ ] we may assent to the general principle, laid down by schurtz, that whenever the free union of young people is impeded under conditions in which early marriage is also difficult prostitution must certainly arise. there are, however, different ways in which this principle may take shape. so far as our western civilization is concerned--the civilization, that is to say, which has its cradle in the mediterranean basin--it would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social traditions, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that was passing out of general social life.[ ] the typical example is that recorded by herodotus, in the fifth century before christ, at the temple of mylitta, the babylonian venus, where every woman once in her life had to come and give herself to the first stranger who threw a coin in her lap, in worship of the goddess. the money could not be refused, however small the amount, but it was given as an offertory to the temple, and the woman, having followed the man and thus made oblation to mylitta, returned home and lived chastely ever afterwards.[ ] very similar customs existed in other parts of western asia, in north africa, in cyprus and other islands of the eastern mediterranean, and also in greece, where the temple of aphrodite on the fort at corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess, from time to time, as strabo states, by those who desired to make thank-offering for mercies vouchsafed to them. pindar refers to the hospitable young corinthian women ministrants whose thoughts often turn towards ourania aphrodite[ ] in whose temple they burned incense; and athenæus mentions the importance that was attached to the prayers of the corinthian prostitutes in any national calamity.[ ] we seem here to be in the presence, not merely of a religiously preserved survival of a greater sexual freedom formerly existing,[ ] but of a specialized and ritualized development of that primitive cult of the generative forces of nature which involves the belief that all natural fruitfulness is associated with, and promoted by, acts of human sexual intercourse which thus acquire a religious significance. at a later stage acts of sexual intercourse having a religious significance become specialized and localized in temples, and by a rational transition of ideas it becomes believed that such acts of sexual intercourse in the service of the god, or with persons devoted to the god's service, brought benefits to the individual who performed them, more especially, if a woman, by insuring her fertility. among primitive peoples generally this conception is embodied mainly in seasonal festivals, but among the peoples of western asia who had ceased to be primitive, and among whom traditional priestly and hieratic influences had acquired very great influence, the earlier generative cult had thus, it seems probable, naturally changed its form in becoming attached to the temples.[ ] the theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of nature generally seems to have been first set forth by mannhardt in his _antike wald- und feldkulte_ (pp. et seq.). it is supported by dr. f.s. krauss ("beischlafausübung als kulthandlung," _anthropophyteia_, vol. iii, p. ), who refers to the significant fact that in baruch's time, at a period long anterior to herodotus, sacred prostitution took place under the trees. dr. j.g. frazer has more especially developed this conception of the origin of sacred prostitution in his _adonis, attis, osiris_. he thus summarizes his lengthy discussion: "we may conclude that a great mother goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of western asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast. in course of time, as the institution of individual marriage grew in favor, and the old communism fell more and more into discredit, the revival of the ancient practice, even for a single occasion in a woman's life, became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of the people, and accordingly they resorted to various expedients for evading in practice the obligation which they still acknowledged in theory.... but while the majority of women thus contrived to observe the form of religion without sacrificing their virtue, it was still thought necessary to the general welfare that a certain number of them should discharge the old obligation in the old way. these became prostitutes, either for life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacred character, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their creator in a different way by renouncing the natural functions of their sex and the tenderest relations of humanity" (j.g. frazer, _adonis, attis, osiris_, , pp. et seq.). it is difficult to resist the conclusion that this theory represents the central and primitive idea which led to the development of sacred prostitution. it seems equally clear, however, that as time went on, and especially as temple cults developed and priestly influence increased, this fundamental and primitive idea tended to become modified, and even transformed. the primitive conception became specialized in the belief that religious benefits, and especially the gift of fruitfulness, were gained _by the worshipper_, who thus sought the goddess's favor by an act of unchastity which might be presumed to be agreeable to an unchaste deity. the rite of mylitta, as described by herodotus, was a late development of this kind in an ancient civilization, and the benefit sought was evidently for the worshipper herself. this has been pointed out by dr. westermarck, who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as he gives her the coin--"may the goddess be auspicious to thee!"--themselves indicate that the object of the act was to insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their benefits a specially efficacious character (westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, p. ). it may be added that the rite of mylitta thus became analogous with another mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse with the representative of a god, or his image, ensured a woman's fertility. this is the rite practiced by the egyptians of mendes, in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative of a deity of pan-like character (herodotus, bk. ii, ch. xlvi; and see dulaure, _des divinités génératrices_, ch. ii; cf. vol. v of these _studies_, "erotic symbolism," sect. iv). this rite was maintained by roman women, in connection with the statues of priapus, to a very much later date, and st. augustine mentions how roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of priapus (_de civitate dei_, bk. iii, ch. ix). the idea evidently running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity, or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able, through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity. at a later period, in corinth, prostitutes were still the priestesses of venus, more or less loosely attached to her temples, and so long as that was the case they enjoyed a considerable degree of esteem. at this stage, however, we realize that religious prostitution was developing a utilitarian side. these temples flourished chiefly in sea-coast towns, in islands, in large cities to which many strangers and sailors came. the priestesses of cyprus burnt incense on her altars and invoked her sacred aid, but at the same time pindar addresses them as "young girls who welcome all strangers and give them hospitality." side by side with the religious significance of the act of generation the needs of men far from home were already beginning to be definitely recognized. the babylonian woman had gone to the temple of mylitta to fulfil a personal religious duty; the corinthian priestess had begun to act as an avowed minister to the sexual needs of men in strange cities. the custom which herodotus noted in lydia of young girls prostituting themselves in order to acquire a marriage portion which they may dispose of as they think fit (bk. i, ch. ) may very well have developed (as frazer also believes) out of religious prostitution; we can indeed trace its evolution in cyprus where eventually, at the period when justinian visited the island, the money given by strangers to the women was no longer placed on the altar but put into a chest to form marriage-portions for them. it is a custom to be found in japan and various other parts of the world, notably among the ouled-nail of algeria,[ ] and is not necessarily always based on religious prostitution; but it obviously cannot exist except among peoples who see nothing very derogatory in free sexual intercourse for the purpose of obtaining money, so that the custom of mylitta furnished a natural basis for it.[ ] as a more spiritual conception of religion developed, and as the growth of civilization tended to deprive sexual intercourse of its sacred halo, religious prostitution in greece was slowly abolished, though on the coasts of asia minor both religious prostitution and prostitution for the purpose of obtaining a marriage portion persisted to the time of constantine, who put an end to these ancient customs.[ ] superstition was on the side of the old religious prostitution; it was believed that women who had never sacrificed to aphrodite became consumed by lust, and according to the legend recorded by ovid--a legend which seems to point to a certain antagonism between sacred and secular prostitution--this was the case with the women who first became public prostitutes. the decay of religious prostitution, doubtless combined with the cravings always born of the growth of civilization, led up to the first establishment, attributed by legend to solon, of a public brothel, a purely secular establishment for a purely secular end: the safeguarding of the virtue of the general population and the increase of the public revenue. with that institution the evolution of prostitution, and of the modern marriage system of which it forms part, was completed. the athenian _dikterion_ is the modern brothel; the _dikteriade_ is the modern state-regulated prostitute. the free _hetairæ_, indeed, subsequently arose, educated women having no taint of the _dikterion_, but they likewise had no official part in public worship.[ ] the primitive conception of the sanctity of sexual intercourse in the divine service had been utterly lost. a fairly typical example of the conditions existing among savages is to be found in the south sea island of rotuma, where "prostitution for money or gifts was quite unknown." adultery after marriage was also unknown. but there was great freedom in the formation of sexual relationships before marriage (j. stanley gardiner, _journal anthropological institute_, february, , p. ). much the same is said of the bantu ba mbola of africa (_op. cit._, july-december, , p. ). among the early cymri of wales, representing a more advanced social stage, prostitution appears to have been not absolutely unknown, but public prostitution was punished by loss of valuable privileges (r.b. holt, "marriage laws and customs of the cymri," _journal anthropological institute_, august-november, , pp. - ). prostitution was practically unknown in burmah, and regarded as shameful before the coming of the english and the example of the modern hindus. the missionaries have unintentionally, but inevitably, favored the growth of prostitution by condemning free unions (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, november, , p. ). the english brought prostitution to india. "that was not specially the fault of the english," said a brahmin to jules bois, "it is the crime of your civilization. we have never had prostitutes. i mean by that horrible word the brutalized servants of the gross desire of the passerby. we had, and we have, castes of singers and dancers who are married to trees--yes, to trees--by touching ceremonies which date from vedic times; our priests bless them and receive much money from them. they do not refuse themselves to those who love them and please them. kings have made them rich. they represent all the arts; they are the visible beauty of the universe" (jules bois, _visions de l'inde_, p. ). religious prostitutes, it may be added, "the servants of the god," are connected with temples in southern india and the deccan. they are devoted to their sacred calling from their earliest years, and it is their chief business to dance before the image of the god, to whom they are married (though in upper india professional dancing girls are married to inanimate objects), but they are also trained in arousing and assuaging the desires of devotees who come on pilgrimage to the shrine. for the betrothal rites by which, in india, sacred prostitutes are consecrated, see, e.g., a. van gennep, _rites de passage_, p. . in many parts of western asia, where barbarism had reached a high stage of development, prostitution was not unknown, though usually disapproved. the hebrews knew it, and the historical biblical references to prostitutes imply little reprobation. jephtha was the son of a prostitute, brought up with the legitimate children, and the story of tamar is instructive. but the legal codes were extremely severe on jewish maidens who became prostitutes (the offense was quite tolerable in strange women), while hebrew moralists exercised their invectives against prostitution; it is sufficient to refer to a well-known passage in the book of proverbs (see art. "harlot," by cheyne, in the _encyclopædia biblica_). mahomed also severely condemned prostitution, though somewhat more tolerant to it in slave women; according to haleby, however, prostitution was practically unknown in islam during the first centuries after the prophet's time. the persian adherents of the somewhat ascetic _zendavesta_ also knew prostitution, and regarded it with repulsion: "it is the gahi [the courtesan, as an incarnation of the female demon, gahi], o spitama zarathustra! who mixes in her the seed of the faithful and the unfaithful, of the worshipper of mazda and the worshipper of the dævas, of the wicked and the righteous. her look dries up one-third of the mighty floods that run from the mountains, o zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the beautiful, golden-hued, growing plants, o zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the strength of spenta armaiti [the earth]; and her touch withers in the faithful one-third of his good thoughts, of his good words, of his good deeds, one-third of his strength, of his victorious power, of his holiness. verily i say unto thee, o spitama zarathustra! such creatures ought to be killed even more than gliding snakes, than howling wolves, than the she-wolf that falls upon the fold, or than the she-frog that falls upon the waters with her thousandfold brood" (_zend-avesta, the vendidad_, translated by james darmesteter, farfad xviii). in practice, however, prostitution is well established in the modern east. thus in the tartar-turcoman region houses of prostitution lying outside the paths frequented by christians have been described by a writer who appears to be well informed ("orientalische prostitution," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, , bd. ii, heft ). these houses are not regarded as immoral or forbidden, but as places in which the visitor will find a woman who gives him for a few hours the illusion of being in his own home, with the pleasure of enjoying her songs, dances, and recitations, and finally her body. payment is made at the door, and no subsequent question of money arises; the visitor is henceforth among friends, almost as if in his own family. he treats the prostitute almost as if she were his wife, and no indecorum or coarseness of speech occurs. "there is no obscenity in the oriental brothel." at the same time there is no artificial pretence of innocence. in eastern asia, among the peoples of mongolian stock, especially in china, we find prostitution firmly established and organized on a practical business basis. prostitution is here accepted and viewed with no serious disfavor, but the prostitute herself is, nevertheless, treated with contempt. young children are frequently sold to be trained to a life of prostitution, educated accordingly, and kept shut up from the world. young widows (remarriage being disapproved) frequently also slide into a life of prostitution. chinese prostitutes often end through opium and the ravages of syphilis (see, e.g., coltman's _the chinese_, , ch. vii). in ancient china, it is said prostitutes were a superior class and occupied a position somewhat similar to that of the _hetairæ_ in greece. even in modern china, however, where they are very numerous, and the flower boats, in which in towns by the sea they usually live, very luxurious, it is chiefly for entertainment, according to some writers, that they are resorted to. tschang ki tong, military attaché in paris (as quoted by ploss and bartels), describes the flower boat as less analogous to a european brothel than to a _café chantant_; the young chinaman comes here for music, for tea, for agreeable conversation with the flower-maidens, who are by no means necessarily called upon to minister to the lust of their visitors. in japan, the prostitute's lot is not so degraded as in china. the greater refinement of japanese civilization allows the prostitute to retain a higher degree of self-respect. she is sometimes regarded with pity, but less often with contempt. she may associate openly with men, ultimately be married, even to men of good social class, and rank as a respectable woman. "in riding from tokio to yokohama, the past winter," coltman observes (_op. cit._, p. ), "i saw a party of four young men and three quite pretty and gaily-painted prostitutes, in the same car, who were having a glorious time. they had two or three bottles of various liquors, oranges, and fancy cakes, and they ate, drank and sang, besides playing jokes on each other and frolicking like so many kittens. you may travel the whole length of the chinese empire and never witness such a scene." yet the history of japanese prostitutes (which has been written in an interesting and well-informed book, _the nightless city_, by an english student of sociology who remains anonymous) shows that prostitution in japan has not only been severely regulated, but very widely looked down upon, and that japanese prostitutes have often had to suffer greatly; they were at one time practically slaves and often treated with much hardship. they are free now, and any condition approaching slavery is strictly prohibited and guarded against. it would seem, however, that the palmiest days of japanese prostitution lay some centuries back. up to the middle of the eighteenth century japanese prostitutes were highly accomplished in singing, dancing, music, etc. towards this period, however, they seem to have declined in social consideration and to have ceased to be well educated. yet even to-day, says matignon ("la prostitution au japon," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, october, ), less infamy attaches to prostitution in japan than in europe, while at the same time there is less immorality in japan than in europe. though prostitution is organized like the postal or telegraph service, there is also much clandestine prostitution. the prostitution quarters are clean, beautiful and well-kept, but the japanese prostitutes have lost much of their native good taste in costume by trying to imitate european fashions. it was when prostitution began to decline two centuries ago, that the geishas first appeared and were organized in such a way that they should not, if possible, compete as prostitutes with the recognized and licensed inhabitants of the yoshiwara, as the quarter is called to which prostitutes are confined. the geishas, of course, are not prostitutes, though their virtue may not always be impregnable, and in social position they correspond to actresses in europe. in korea, at all events before korea fell into the hands of the japanese, it would seem that there was no distinction between the class of dancing girls and prostitutes. "among the courtesans," angus hamilton states, "the mental abilities are trained and developed with a view to making them brilliant and entertaining companions. these 'leaves of sunlight' are called _gisaing_, and correspond to the geishas of japan. officially, they are attached to a department of government, and are controlled by a bureau of their own, in common with the court musicians. they are supported from the national treasury, and they are in evidence at official dinners and all palace entertainments. they read and recite; they dance and sing; they become accomplished artists and musicians. they dress with exceptional taste; they move with exceeding grace; they are delicate in appearance, very frail and very human, very tender, sympathetic, and imaginative." but though they are certainly the prettiest women in korea, move in the highest society, and might become concubines of the emperor, they are not allowed to marry men of good class (angus hamilton, _korea_, p. ). the history of european prostitution, as of so many other modern institutions, may properly be said to begin in rome. here at the outset we already find that inconsistently mixed attitude towards prostitution which to-day is still preserved. in greece it was in many respects different. greece was nearer to the days of religious prostitution, and the sincerity and refinement of greek civilization made it possible for the better kind of prostitute to exert, and often be worthy to exert, an influence in all departments of life which she has never been able to exercise since, except perhaps occasionally, in a much slighter degree, in france. the course, vigorous, practical roman was quite ready to tolerate the prostitute, but he was not prepared to carry that toleration to its logical results; he never felt bound to harmonize inconsistent facts of life. cicero, a moralist of no mean order, without expressing approval of prostitution, yet could not understand how anyone should wish to prohibit youths from commerce with prostitutes, such severity being out of harmony with all the customs of the past or the present.[ ] but the superior class of roman prostitutes, the _bonæ mulieres_, had no such dignified position as the greek _hetairæ_. their influence was indeed immense, but it was confined, as it is in the case of their european successors to-day, to fashions, customs, and arts. there was always a certain moral rigidity in the roman which prevented him from yielding far in this direction. he encouraged brothels, but he only entered them with covered head and face concealed in his cloak. in the same way, while he tolerated the prostitute, beyond a certain point he sharply curtailed her privileges. not only was she deprived of all influence in the higher concerns of life, but she might not even wear the _vitta_ or the _stola_; she could indeed go almost naked if she pleased, but she must not ape the emblems of the respectable roman matron.[ ] the rise of christianity to political power produced on the whole less change of policy than might have been anticipated. the christian rulers had to deal practically as best they might with a very mixed, turbulent, and semi-pagan world. the leading fathers of the church were inclined to tolerate prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils, and christian emperors, like their pagan predecessors, were willing to derive a tax from prostitution. the right of prostitution to exist was, however, no longer so unquestionably recognized as in pagan days, and from time to time some vigorous ruler sought to repress prostitution by severe enactments. the younger theodosius and valentinian definitely ordained that there should be no more brothels and that anyone giving shelter to a prostitute should be punished. justinian confirmed that measure and ordered that all panders were to be exiled on pain of death. these enactments were quite vain. but during a thousand years they were repeated again and again in various parts of europe, and invariably with the same fruitless or worse than fruitless results. theodoric, king of the visigoths, punished with death those who promoted prostitution, and recared, a catholic king of the same people in the sixth century, prohibited prostitution altogether and ordered that a prostitute, when found, should receive three hundred strokes of the whip and be driven out of the city. charlemagne, as well as genserich in carthage, and later frederick barbarossa in germany, made severe laws against prostitution which were all of no effect, for even if they seemed to be effective for the time the reaction was all the greater afterwards.[ ] it is in france that the most persistent efforts have been made to combat prostitution. most notable of all were the efforts of the king and saint, louis ix. in st. louis ordained that prostitutes should be driven out altogether and deprived of all their money and goods, even to their mantles and gowns. in he repeated this ordinance and in , before setting out for the crusades, he ordered the destruction of all places of prostitution. the repetition of those decrees shows how ineffectual they were. they even made matters worse, for prostitutes were forced to mingle with the general population and their influence was thus extended. st. louis was unable to put down prostitution even in his own camp in the east, and it existed outside his own tent. his legislation, however, was frequently imitated by subsequent rulers of france, even to the middle of the seventeenth century, always with the same ineffectual and worse results. in an edict of charles ix abolished brothels, but the number of prostitutes was thereby increased rather than diminished, while many new kinds of brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes and were more dangerous than the more recognized brothels which had been suppressed.[ ] in spite of all such legislation, or because of it, there has been no country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous part.[ ] at mantua, so great was the repulsion aroused by prostitutes that they were compelled to buy in the markets any fruit or bread that had been soiled by the mere touch of their hands. it was so also in avignon in . in catalonia they could not sit at the same table as a lady or a knight or kiss any honorable person.[ ] even in venice, the paradise of prostitution, numerous and severe regulations were passed against it, and it was long before the venetian rulers resigned themselves to its toleration and regulation.[ ] the last vigorous attempt to uproot prostitution in europe was that of maria theresa at vienna in the middle of the eighteenth century. although of such recent date it may be mentioned here because it was mediæval alike in its conception and methods. its object indeed, was to suppress not only prostitution, but fornication generally, and the means adopted were fines, imprisonment, whipping and torture. the supposed causes of fornication were also dealt with severely; short dresses were prohibited; billiard rooms and cafés were inspected; no waitresses were allowed, and when discovered, a waitress was liable to be handcuffed and carried off by the police. the chastity commission, under which these measures were rigorously carried out, was, apparently, established in and was quietly abolished by the emperor joseph ii, in the early years of his reign. it was the general opinion that this severe legislation was really ineffective, and that it caused much more serious evils than it cured.[ ] it is certain in any case that, for a long time past, illegitimacy has been more prevalent in vienna than in any other great european capital. yet the attitude towards prostitutes was always mixed and inconsistent at different places or different times, or even at the same time and place. dufour has aptly compared their position to that of the mediæval jews; they were continually persecuted, ecclesiastically, civilly, and socially, yet all classes were glad to have recourse to them and it was impossible to do without them. in some countries, including england in the fourteenth century, a special costume was imposed on prostitutes as a mark of infamy.[ ] yet in many respects no infamy whatever attached to prostitution. high placed officials could claim payment of their expenses incurred in visiting prostitutes when traveling on public business. prostitution sometimes played an official part in festivities and receptions accorded by great cities to royal guests, and the brothel might form an important part of the city's hospitality. when the emperor sigismund came to ulm in the streets were illuminated at such times as he or his suite desired to visit the common brothel. brothels under municipal protection are found in the thirteenth century in augsburg, in vienna, in hamburg.[ ] in france the best known _abbayes_ of prostitutes were those of toulouse and montpellier.[ ] durkheim is of opinion that in the early middle ages, before this period, free love and marriage were less severely differentiated. it was the rise of the middle class, he considers, anxious to protect their wives and daughters, which led to a regulated and publicly recognized attempt to direct debauchery into a separate channel, brought under control.[ ] these brothels constituted a kind of public service, the directors of them being regarded almost as public officials, bound to keep a certain number of prostitutes, to charge according to a fixed tariff, and not to receive into their houses girls belonging to the neighborhood. the institutions of this kind lasted for three centuries. it was, in part, perhaps, the impetus of the new protestant movement, but mainly the terrible devastation produced by the introduction of syphilis from america at the end of the fifteenth century which, as burckhardt and others have pointed out, led to the decline of the mediæval brothels.[ ] the superior modern prostitute, the "courtesan" who had no connection with the brothel, seems to have been the outcome of the renaissance and made her appearance in italy at the end of the fifteenth century. "courtesan" or "cortegiana" meant a lady following the court, and the term began at this time to be applied to a superior prostitute observing a certain degree of decorum and restraint.[ ] in the papal court of alexander borgia the courtesan flourished even when her conduct was not altogether dignified. burchard, the faithful and unimpeachable chronicler of this court, describes in his diary how, one evening, in october, , the pope sent for fifty courtesans to be brought to his chamber; after supper, in the presence of cæsar borgia and his young sister lucrezia, they danced with the servitors and others who were present, at first clothed, afterwards naked. the candlesticks with lighted candles were then placed upon the floor and chestnuts thrown among them, to be gathered by the women crawling between the candlesticks on their hands and feet. finally a number of prizes were brought forth to be awarded to those men "qui pluries dictos meretrices carnaliter agnoscerent," the victor in the contest being decided according to the judgment of the spectators.[ ] this scene, enacted publicly in the apostolic palace and serenely set forth by the impartial secretary, is at once a notable episode in the history of modern prostitution and one of the most illuminating illustrations we possess of the paganism of the renaissance. before the term "courtesan" came into repute, prostitutes were even in italy commonly called "sinners," _peccatrice_. the change, graf remarks in a very interesting study of the renaissance prostitute ("una cortigiana fra mille," _attraverso il cinquecento_, pp. - ), "reveals a profound alteration in ideas and in life;" a term that suggested infamy gave place to one that suggested approval, and even honor, for the courts of the renaissance period represented the finest culture of the time. the best of these courtesans seem to have been not altogether unworthy of the honor they received. we can detect this in their letters. there is a chapter on the letters of renaissance prostitutes, especially those of camilla de pisa which are marked by genuine passion, in lothar schmidt's _frauenbriefe der renaissance_. the famous imperia, called by a pope in the early years of the sixteenth century "nobilissimum romæ scortum," knew latin and could write italian verse. other courtesans knew italian and latin poetry by heart, while they were accomplished in music, dancing, and speech. we are reminded of ancient greece, and graf, discussing how far the renaissance courtesans resembled the hetairæ, finds a very considerable likeness, especially in culture and influence, though with some differences due to the antagonism between religion and prostitution at the later period. the most distinguished figure in every respect among the courtesans of that time was certainly tullia d'aragona. she was probably the daughter of cardinal d'aragona (an illegitimate scion of the spanish royal family) by a ferrarese courtesan who became his mistress. tullia has gained a high reputation by her verse. her best sonnet is addressed to a youth of twenty, whom she passionately loved, but who did not return her love. her _guerrino meschino_, a translation from the spanish, is a very pure and chaste work. she was a woman of refined instincts and aspirations, and once at least she abandoned her life of prostitution. she was held in high esteem and respect. when, in , cosimo, duke of florence, ordered all prostitutes to wear a yellow veil or handkerchief as a public badge of their profession, tullia appealed to the duchess, a spanish lady of high character, and received permission to dispense with this badge on account of her "rara scienzia di poesia et filosofia." she dedicated her _rime_ to the duchess. tullia d'aragona was very beautiful, with yellow hair, and remarkably large and bright eyes, which dominated those who came near her. she was of proud bearing and inspired unusual respect (g. biagi, "un' etera romana," _nuova antologia_, vol. iv, , pp. - ; s. bongi, _rivista critica della letteratura italiana_, , iv, p. ). tullia d'aragona was clearly not a courtesan at heart. perhaps the most typical example of the renaissance courtesan at her best is furnished by veronica franco, born in at venice, of middle class family and in early life married to a doctor. of her also it has been said that, while by profession a prostitute, she was by inclination a poet. but she appears to have been well content with her profession, and never ashamed of it. her life and character have been studied by arturo graf, and more slightly in a little book by tassini. she was highly cultured, and knew several languages; she also sang well and played on many instruments. in one of her letters she advises a youth who was madly in love with her that if he wishes to obtain her favors he must leave off importuning her and devote himself tranquilly to study. "you know well," she adds, "that all those who claim to be able to gain my love, and who are extremely dear to me, are strenuous in studious discipline.... if my fortune allowed it i would spend all my time quietly in the academies of virtuous men." the diotimas and aspasias of antiquity, as graf comments, would not have demanded so much of their lovers. in her poems it is possible to trace some of her love histories, and she often shows herself torn by jealousy at the thought that perhaps another woman may approach her beloved. once she fell in love with an ecclesiastic, possibly a bishop, with whom she had no relationships, and after a long absence, which healed her love, she and he became sincere friends. once she was visited by henry iii of france, who took away her portrait, while on her part she promised to dedicate a book to him; she so far fulfilled this as to address some sonnets to him and a letter; "neither did the king feel ashamed of his intimacy with the courtesan," remarks graf, "nor did she suspect that he would feel ashamed of it." when montaigne passed through venice she sent him a little book of hers, as we learn from his _journal_, though they do not appear to have met. tintoret was one of her many distinguished friends, and she was a strenuous advocate of the high qualities of modern, as compared with ancient, art. her friendships were affectionate, and she even seems to have had various grand ladies among her friends. she was, however, so far from being ashamed of her profession of courtesan that in one of her poems she affirms she has been taught by apollo other arts besides those he is usually regarded as teaching: "cosi dolce e gustevole divento, quando mi trovo con persona in letto da cui amata e gradita mi sento." in a certain _catalogo_ of the prices of venetian courtesans veronica is assigned only scudi for her favors, while the courtesan to whom the catalogue is dedicated is set down at scudi. graf thinks there may be some mistake or malice here, and an italian gentleman of the time states that she required not less than scudi from those to whom she was willing to accord what montaigne called the "negotiation entière." in regard to this matter it may be mentioned that, as stated by bandello, it was the custom for a venetian prostitute to have six or seven gentlemen at a time as her lovers. each was entitled to come to sup and sleep with her on one night of the week, leaving her days free. they paid her so much per month, but she always definitely reserved the right to receive a stranger passing through venice, if she wished, changing the time of her appointment with her lover for the night. the high and special prices which we find recorded are, of course, those demanded from the casual distinguished stranger who came to venice as, once in the sixteenth century, montaigne came. in (when not more than thirty-four) veronica confessed to the holy office that she had had six children. in the same year she formed the design of founding a home, which should not be a monastery, where prostitutes who wished to abandon their mode of life could find a refuge with their children, if they had any. this seems to have led to the establishment of a casa del soccorso. in she died of fever, reconciled with god and blessed by many unfortunates. she had a good heart and a sound intellect, and was the last of the great renaissance courtesans who revived greek hetairism (graf, _attraverso il cinquecento_, pp. - ). even in sixteenth century venice, however, it will be seen, veronica franco seems to have been not altogether at peace in the career of a courtesan. she was clearly not adapted for ordinary marriage, yet under the most favorable conditions that the modern world has ever offered it may still be doubted whether a prostitute's career can offer complete satisfaction to a woman of large heart and brain. ninon de lenclos, who is frequently called "the last of the great courtesans," may seem an exception to the general rule as to the inability of a woman of good heart, high character, and fine intelligence to find satisfaction in a prostitute's life. but it is a total misconception alike of ninon de lenclos's temperament and her career to regard her as in any true sense a prostitute at all. a knowledge of even the barest outlines of her life ought to prevent such a mistake. born early in the seventeenth century, she was of good family on both sides; her mother was a woman of severe life, but her father, a gentleman of touraine, inspired her with his own epicurean philosophy as well as his love of music. she was extremely well educated. at the age of sixteen or seventeen she had her first lover, the noble and valiant gaspard de coligny; he was followed for half a century by a long succession of other lovers, sometimes more than one at a time; three years was the longest period during which she was faithful to one lover. her attractions lasted so long that, it is said, three generations of sévignés were among her lovers. tallemant des réaux enables us to study in detail her _liaisons_. it is not, however, the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a prostitute, but the nature of her relationships with them. sainte-beuve, in an otherwise admirable study of ninon de lenclos (_causeries du lundi_, vol. iv), seems to reckon her among the courtesans. but no woman is a prostitute unless she uses men as a source of pecuniary gain. not only is there no evidence that this was the case with ninon, but all the evidence excludes such a relationship. "it required much skill," said voltaire, "and a great deal of love on her part, to induce her to accept presents." tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing beyond what is contained in voltaire's remark, and, in any case, tallemant's gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always reliable. all are agreed as to her extreme disinterestedness. when we hear precisely of ninon de lenclos in connection with money, it is not as receiving a gift, but only as repaying a debt to an old lover, or restoring a large sum left with her for safe keeping when the owner was exiled. such incidents are far from suggesting the professional prostitute of any age; they are rather the relationships which might exist between men friends. ninon de lenclos's character was in many respects far from perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly feminine; she hated hypocrisy, and she was never influenced by pecuniary considerations. she was, moreover, never reckless, but always retained a certain self-restraint and temperance, even in eating and drinking, and, we are told, she never drank wine. she was, as sainte-beuve has remarked, the first to realize that there must be the same virtues for men and for women, and that it is absurd to reduce all feminine virtues to one. "our sex has been burdened with all the frivolities," she wrote, "and men have reserved to themselves the essential qualities: i have made myself a man." she sometimes dressed as a man when riding (see, e.g., _correspondence authentique_ of ninon de lenclos, with a good introduction by emile colombey). consciously or not, she represented a new feminine idea at a period when--as we may see in many forgotten novels written by the women of that time--ideas were beginning to emerge in the feminine sphere. she was the first, and doubtless, from one point of view, the most extreme representative of a small and distinguished group of french women among whom georges sand is the finest personality. thus it is idle to attempt to adorn the history of prostitution with the name of ninon de lenclos. a debauched old prostitute would never, like ninon towards the end of her long life, have been able to retain or to conquer the affection and the esteem of many of the best men and women of her time; even to the austere saint-simon it seemed that there reigned in her little court a decorum which the greatest princesses cannot achieve. she was not a prostitute, but a woman of unique personality with a little streak of genius in it. that she was inimitable we need not perhaps greatly regret. in her old age, in , her old friend and former lover, saint-evremond, wrote to her, with only a little exaggeration, that there were few princesses and few saints who would not leave their courts and their cloisters to change places with her. "if i had known beforehand what my life would be i would have hanged myself," was her oft-quoted answer. it is, indeed, a solitary phrase that slips in, perhaps as the expression of a momentary mood; one may make too much of it. more truly characteristic is the fine saying in which her epicurean philosophy seems to stretch out towards nietzsche: "la joie de l'esprit en marque la force." the frank acceptance of prostitution by the spiritual or even the temporal power has since the renaissance become more and more exceptional. the opposite extreme of attempting to uproot prostitution has also in practice been altogether abandoned. sporadic attempts have indeed been made, here and there, to put down prostitution with a strong hand even in quite modern times. it is now, however, realized that in such a case the remedy is worse than the disease. in a mayor of portsmouth felt it his duty to attempt to suppress prostitution. "in the early part of his mayoralty," according to a witness before the select committee on the contagious diseases acts (p. ), "there was an order passed that every beerhouse-keeper and licensed victualer in the borough known to harbor these women would be dealt with, and probably lose his license. on a given day about three hundred or four hundred of these forlorn outcasts were bundled wholesale into the streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. they marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... these women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the remedy was very much worse than the disease, and the women were allowed to go back to their former places." similar experiments have been made even more recently in america. "in pittsburg, pennsylvania, in , the houses of prostitutes were closed, the inmates turned out upon the streets, and were refused lodging and even food by the citizens of that place. a wave of popular remonstrance, all over the country, at the outrage on humanity, created a reaction which resulted in a last condition by no means better than the first." in the same year also a similar incident occurred in new york with the same unfortunate results (isidore dyer, "the municipal control of prostitution in the united states," report presented to the brussels international conference in ). there grew up instead the tendency to regulate prostitution, to give it a semi-official toleration which enabled the authorities to exercise a control over it, and to guard as far as possible against its evil by medical and police inspection. the new brothel system differed from the ancient mediæval houses of prostitution in important respects; it involved a routine of medical inspection and it endeavored to suppress any rivalry by unlicensed prostitutes outside. bernard mandeville, the author of the _fable of the bees_, and an acute thinker, was a pioneer in the advocacy of this system. in , in his _modest defense of publick stews_, he argues that "the encouraging of public whoring will not only prevent most of the mischievous effects of this vice, but even lessen the quantity of whoring in general, and reduce it to the narrowest bounds which it can possibly be contained in." he proposed to discourage private prostitution by giving special privileges and immunities to brothels by act of parliament. his scheme involved the erection of one hundred brothels in a special quarter of the city, to contain two thousand prostitutes and one hundred matrons of ability and experience with physicians and surgeons, as well as commissioners to oversee the whole. mandeville was regarded merely as a cynic or worse, and his scheme was ignored or treated with contempt. it was left to the genius of napoleon, eighty years later, to establish the system of "maisons de tolérance," which had so great an influence over modern european practice during a large part of the last century and even still in its numerous survivals forms the subject of widely divergent opinions. on the whole, however, it must be said that the system of registering, examining, and regularizing prostitutes now belongs to the past. many great battles have been fought over this question; the most important is that which raged for many years in england over the contagious diseases acts, and is embodied in the pages of a report by a select committee on these acts issued in . the majority of the members of the committee reported favorably to the acts which were, notwithstanding, repealed in , since which date no serious attempt has been made in england to establish them again. at the present time, although the old system still stands in many countries with the inert stolidity of established institutions, it no longer commands general approval. as paul and victor margueritte have truly stated, in the course of an acute examination of the phenomena of state-regulated prostitution as found in paris, the system is "barbarous to start with and almost inefficacious as well." the expert is every day more clearly demonstrating its inefficacy while the psychologist and the sociologist are constantly becoming more convinced that it is barbarous. it can indeed by no means be said that any unanimity has been attained. it is obviously so urgently necessary to combat the flood of disease and misery which proceeds directly from the spread of syphilis and gonorrhoea, and indirectly from the prostitution which is the chief propagator of these diseases, that we cannot be surprised that many should eagerly catch at any system which seems to promise a palliation of the evils. at the present time, however, it is those best acquainted with the operation of the system of control who have most clearly realized that the supposed palliation is for the most part illusory,[ ] and in any case attained at the cost of the artificial production of other evils. in france, where the system of the registration and control of prostitutes has been established for over a century,[ ] and where consequently its advantages, if such there are, should be clearly realized, it meets with almost impassioned opposition from able men belonging to every section of the community. in germany the opposition to regularized control has long been led by well-equipped experts, headed by blaschko of berlin. precisely the same conclusions are being reached in america. gottheil, of new york, finds that the municipal control of prostitution is "neither successful nor desirable." heidingsfeld concludes that the regulation and control system in force in cincinnati has done little good and much harm; under the system among the private patients in his own clinic the proportion of cases of both syphilis and gonorrhoea has increased; "suppression of prostitutes is impossible and control is impracticable."[ ] it is in germany that the attempt to regulate prostitution still remains most persistent, with results that in germany itself are regarded as unfortunate. thus the german law inflicts a penalty on householders who permit illegitimate sexual intercourse in their houses. this is meant to strike the unlicensed prostitute, but it really encourages prostitution, for a decent youth and girl who decide to form a relationship which later may develop into marriage, and which is not illegal (for extra-marital sexual intercourse _per se_ is not in germany, as it is by the antiquated laws of several american states, a punishable offense), are subjected to so much trouble and annoyance by the suspicious police that it is much easier for the girl to become a prostitute and put herself under the protection of the police. the law was largely directed against those who live on the profits of prostitution. but in practice it works out differently. the prostitute simply has to pay extravagantly high rents, so that her landlord really lives on the fruits of her trade, while she has to carry on her business with increased activity and on a larger scale in order to cover her heavy expenses (p. hausmeister, "zur analyse der prostitution," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, vol. ii, , p. ). in italy, opinion on this matter is much divided. the regulation of prostitution has been successively adopted, abandoned, and readopted. in switzerland, the land of governmental experiments, various plans are tried in different cantons. in some there is no attempt to interfere with prostitution, except under special circumstances; in others all prostitution, and even fornication generally, is punishable; in geneva only native prostitutes are permitted to practice; in zurich, since , prostitution is prohibited, but care is taken to put no difficulties in the path of free sexual relationships which are not for gain. with these different regulations, morals in switzerland generally are said to be much on the same level as elsewhere (moreau-christophe, _du problème de la misère_, vol. iii, p. ). the same conclusion holds good of london. a disinterested observer, félix remo (_la vie galante en angleterre_, , p. ), concluded that, notwithstanding its free trade in prostitution, its alcoholic excesses, its vices of all kinds, "london is one of the most moral capitals in europe." the movement towards freedom in this matter has been evidenced in recent years by the abandonment of the system of regulation by denmark in . even the most ardent advocates of the registration of prostitutes recognize that not only is the tendency of civilization opposed rather than favorable to the system, but that in the numerous countries where the system persists registered prostitutes are losing ground in the struggle against clandestine prostitutes. even in france, the classic land of police-controlled prostitutes, the "maisons de tolérance" have long been steadily decreasing in number, by no means because prostitution is decreasing but because low-class _brasseries_ and small _cafés-chantants_, which are really unlicensed brothels, are taking their place.[ ] the wholesale regularization of prostitution in civilized centres is nowadays, indeed, advocated by few, if any, of the authorities who belong to the newer school. it is at most claimed as desirable in certain places under special circumstances.[ ] even those who would still be glad to see prostitution thoroughly in the control of the police now recognize that experience shows this to be impossible. as many girls begin their career as prostitutes at a very early age, a sound system of regulation should be prepared to enroll as permanent prostitutes even girls who are little more than children. that, however, is a logical conclusion against which the moral sense, and even the common sense, of a community instinctively revolts. in paris girls may not be inscribed as prostitutes until they have reached the age of sixteen and some consider even that age too low.[ ] moreover, whenever she becomes diseased, or grows tired of her position, the registered woman may always slip out of the hands of the police and establish herself elsewhere as a clandestine prostitute. every rigid attempt to keep prostitution within the police ring leads to offensive interference with the actions and the freedom of respectable women which cannot fail to be intolerable in any free community. even in a city like london, where prostitution is relatively free, the supervision of the police has led to scandalous police charges against women who have done nothing whatever which should legitimately arouse suspicion of their behavior. the escape of the infected woman from the police cordon has, it is obvious, an effect in raising the apparent level of health of registered women, and the police statistics are still further fallaciously improved by the fact that the inmates of brothels are older on the average than clandestine prostitutes and have become immune to disease.[ ] these facts are now becoming fairly obvious and well recognized. the state regulation of prostitution is undesirable, on moral grounds for the oft-emphasized reason that it is only applied to one sex, and on practical grounds because it is ineffective. society allows the police to harass the prostitute with petty persecutions under the guise of charges of "solicitation," "disorderly conduct," etc., but it is no longer convinced that she ought to be under the absolute control of the police. the problem of prostitution, when we look at it narrowly, seems to be in the same position to-day as at any time in the course of the past three thousand years. in order, however, to comprehend the real significance of prostitution, and to attain a reasonable attitude towards it, we must look at it from a broader point of view; we must consider not only its evolution and history, but its causes and its relation to the wider aspects of modern social life. when we thus view the problem from a broader standpoint we shall find that there is no conflict between the claims of ethics and those of social hygiene, and that the coördinated activity of both is involved in the progressive refinement and purification of civilized sexual relationships. _iii. the causes of prostitution._ the history of the rise and development of prostitution enables us to see that prostitution is not an accident of our marriage system, but an essential constituent which appears concurrently with its other essential constituents. the gradual development of the family on a patriarchal and largely monogamic basis rendered it more and more difficult for a woman to dispose of her own person. she belongs in the first place to her father, whose interest it was to guard her carefully until a husband appeared who could afford to purchase her. in the enhancement of her value the new idea of the market value of virginity gradually developed, and where a "virgin" had previously meant a woman who was free to do as she would with her own body its meaning was now reversed and it came to mean a woman who was precluded from having intercourse with men. when she was transferred from her father to a husband, she was still guarded with the same care; husband and father alike found their interest in preserving their women from unmarried men. the situation thus produced resulted in the existence of a large body of young men who were not yet rich enough to obtain wives, and a large number of young women, not yet chosen as wives, and many of whom could never expect to become wives. at such a point in social evolution prostitution is clearly inevitable; it is not so much the indispensable concomitant of marriage as an essential part of the whole system. some of the superfluous or neglected women, utilizing their money value and perhaps at the same time reviving traditions of an earlier freedom, find their social function in selling their favors to gratify the temporary desires of the men who have not yet been able to acquire wives. thus every link in the chain of the marriage system is firmly welded and the complete circle formed. but while the history of the rise and development of prostitution shows us how indestructible and essential an element prostitution is of the marriage system which has long prevailed in europe--under very varied racial, political, social, and religious conditions--it yet fails to supply us in every respect with the data necessary to reach a definite attitude towards prostitution to-day. in order to understand the place of prostitution in our existing system, it is necessary that we should analyze the chief factors of prostitution. we may most conveniently learn to understand these if we consider prostitution, in order, under four aspects. these are: ( ) _economic_ necessity; ( ) _biological_ predisposition; ( ) _moral_ advantages; and ( ) what may be called its _civilizational_ value. while these four factors of prostitution seem to me those that here chiefly concern us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that many other causes contribute to produce and modify prostitution. prostitutes themselves often seek to lead other girls to adopt the same paths; recruits must be found for brothels, whence we have the "white slave trade," which is now being energetically combated in many parts of the world; while all the forms of seduction towards this life are favored and often predisposed to by alcoholism. it will generally be found that several causes have combined to push a girl into the career of prostitution. the ways in which various factors of environment and suggestion unite to lead a girl into the paths of prostitution are indicated in the following statement in which a correspondent has set forth his own conclusions on this matter as a man of the world: "i have had a somewhat varied experience among loose women, and can say, without hesitation, that not more than per cent, of the women i have known could be regarded as educated. this indicates that almost invariably they are of humble origin, and the terrible cases of overcrowding that are daily brought to light suggest that at very early ages the sense of modesty becomes extinct, and long before puberty a familiarity with things sexual takes place. as soon as they are old enough these girls are seduced by their sweethearts; the familiarity with which they regard sexual matters removes the restraint which surrounds a girl whose early life has been spent in decent surroundings. later they go to work in factories and shops; if pretty and attractive, they consort with managers and foremen. then the love of finery, which forms so large a part of the feminine character, tempts the girl to become the 'kept' woman of some man of means. a remarkable thing in this connection is the fact that they rarely enjoy excitement with their protectors, preferring rather the coarser embraces of some man nearer their own station in life, very often a soldier. i have not known many women who were seduced and deserted, though this is a fiction much affected by prostitutes. barmaids supply a considerable number to the ranks of prostitution, largely on account of their addiction to drink; drunkenness invariably leads to laxness of moral restraint in women. another potent factor in the production of prostitutes lies in the flare of finery flaunted by some friend who has adopted the life. a girl, working hard to live, sees some friend, perhaps making a call in the street where the hard-working girl lives, clothed in finery, while she herself can hardly get enough to eat. she has a conversation with her finely-clad friend who tells her how easily she can earn money, explaining what a vital asset the sexual organs are, and soon another one is added to the ranks." there is some interest in considering the reasons assigned for prostitutes entering their career. in some countries this has been estimated by those who come closely into official or other contact with prostitutes. in other countries, it is the rule for girls, before they are registered as prostitutes, to state the reasons for which they desire to enter the career. parent-duchâtelet, whose work on prostitutes in paris is still an authority, presented the first estimate of this kind. he found that of over five thousand prostitutes, were influenced by poverty, by seduction of lovers who had abandoned them, by the loss of parents from death or other cause. by such an estimate, nearly the whole number are accounted for by wretchedness, that is by economic causes, alone (parent-duchâtelet, _de la prostitution_, , vol. i, p. ). in brussels during a period of twenty years ( - ) women were inscribed as prostitutes. the causes they assigned for desiring to take to this career present a different picture from that shown by parent-duchâtelet, but perhaps a more reliable one, although there are some marked and curious discrepancies. out of the , explained that extreme poverty was the cause of their degradation; frankly confessed that their sexual passions were the cause; attributed their fall to evil company; said they were disgusted and weary of their work, because the toil was so arduous and the pay so small; had been abandoned by their lovers; had quarrelled with their parents; were abandoned by their husbands; did not agree with their guardians; had family quarrels; were compelled to prostitute themselves by their husbands, and by her parents (_lancet_, june , , p. ). in london, merrick found that of , prostitutes who passed through his hands during the years he was chaplain at millbank prison, voluntarily left home or situation for "a life of pleasure;" assigned poverty as the cause; were "seduced" and drifted on to the street; were betrayed by promises of marriage and abandoned by lover and relations. on the whole, merrick states, , or nearly one-third of the whole number, may be said to owe the adoption of their career directly to men, , to other causes. he adds that of those pleading poverty a large number were indolent and incapable (g.p. merrick, _work among the fallen_, p. ). logan, an english city missionary with an extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, divided them into the following groups: ( ) one-fourth of the girls are servants, especially in public houses, beer shops, etc., and thus led into the life; ( ) one-fourth come from factories, etc.; ( ) nearly one-fourth are recruited by procuresses who visit country towns, markets, etc.; ( ) a final group includes, on the one hand, those who are induced to become prostitutes by destitution, or indolence, or a bad temper, which unfits them for ordinary avocations, and, on the other hand, those who have been seduced by a false promise of marriage (w. logan, _the great social evil_, , p. ). in america sanger has reported the results of inquiries made of two thousand new york prostitutes as to the causes which induced them to take up their avocation: destitution inclination seduced and abandoned drink and desire for drink ill-treatment by parents, relations, or husbands as an easy life bad company persuaded by prostitutes too idle to work violated seduced on emigrant ship seduced in emigrant boarding homes ----- , (sanger, _history of prostitution_, p. .) in america, again, more recently, professor woods hutchinson put himself into communication with some thirty representative men in various great metropolitan centres, and thus summarizes the answers as regards the etiology of prostitution: per cent. love of display, luxury and idleness . bad family surroundings . seduction in which they were innocent victims . lack of employment . heredity . primary sexual appetite . (woods hutchinson, "the economics of prostitution," _american gynæcologic and obstetric journal_, september, ; _id., the gospel according to darwin_, p. .) in italy, in , among , inscribed prostitutes from the age of seventeen upwards, the causes of prostitution were classified as follows: vice and depravity , death of parents, husband, etc. , seduction by lover , seduction by employer abandoned by parents, husband, etc. love of luxury incitement by lover or other persons outside family incitement by parents or husband to support parents or children (ferriani, _minorenni delinquenti_, p. .) the reasons assigned by russian prostitutes for taking up their career are (according to federow) as follows: . per cent. insufficient wages. . per cent. desire for amusement. . per cent. loss of place. . per cent. persuasion by women friends. . per cent. loss of habit of work. . per cent. chagrin, and to punish lover. . per cent. drunkenness. (summarized in _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, nov. , .) . _the economic causation of prostitution_.--writers on prostitution frequently assert that economic conditions lie at the root of prostitution and that its chief cause is poverty, while prostitutes themselves often declare that the difficulty of earning a livelihood in other ways was a main cause in inducing them to adopt this career. "of all the causes of prostitution," parent-duchâtelet wrote a century ago, "particularly in paris, and probably in all large cities, none is more active than lack of work and the misery which is the inevitable result of insufficient wages." in england, also, to a large extent, sherwell states, "morals fluctuate with trade."[ ] it is equally so in berlin where the number of registered prostitutes increases during bad years.[ ] it is so also in america. it is the same in japan; "the cause of causes is poverty."[ ] thus the broad and general statement that prostitution is largely or mainly an economic phenomenon, due to the low wages of women or to sudden depressions in trade, is everywhere made by investigators. it must, however, be added that these general statements are considerably qualified in the light of the detailed investigations made by careful inquirers. thus ströhmberg, who minutely investigated prostitutes, found that only one assigned destitution as the reason for adopting her career, and on investigation this was found to be an impudent lie.[ ] hammer found that of ninety registered german prostitutes not one had entered on the career out of want or to support a child, while some went on the street while in the possession of money, or without wishing to be paid.[ ] pastor buschmann, of the teltow magdalene home in berlin, finds that it is not want but indifference to moral considerations which leads girls to become prostitutes. in germany, before a girl is put on the police register, due care is always taken to give her a chance of entering a home and getting work; in berlin, in the course of ten years, only two girls--out of thousands--were willing to take advantage of this opportunity. the difficulty experienced by english rescue homes in finding girls who are willing to be "rescued" is notorious. the same difficulty is found in other cities, even where entirely different conditions prevail; thus it is found in madrid, according to bernaldo de quirós and llanas aguilaniedo, that the prostitutes who enter the homes, notwithstanding all the devotion of the nuns, on leaving at once return to their old life. while the economic factor in prostitution undoubtedly exists, the undue frequency and emphasis with which it is put forward and accepted is clearly due, in part to ignorance of the real facts, in part to the fact that such an assumption appeals to those whose weakness it is to explain all social phenomena by economic causes, and in part to its obvious plausibility.[ ] prostitutes are mainly recruited from the ranks of factory girls, domestic servants, shop girls, and waitresses. in some of these occupations it is difficult to obtain employment all the year round. in this way many milliners, dressmakers and tailoresses become prostitutes when business is slack, and return to business when the season begins. sometimes the regular work of the day is supplemented concurrently by prostitution in the street in the evening. it is said, possibly with some truth, that amateur prostitution of this kind is extremely prevalent in england, as it is not checked by the precautions which, in countries where prostitution is regulated, the clandestine prostitute must adopt in order to avoid registration. certain public lavatories and dressing-rooms in central london are said to be used by the girls for putting on, and finally washing off before going home, the customary paint.[ ] it is certain that in england a large proportion of parents belonging to the working and even lower middle class ranks are unacquainted with the nature of the lives led by their own daughters. it must be added, also, that occasionally this conduct of the daughter is winked at or encouraged by the parents; thus a correspondent writes that he "knows some towns in england where prostitution is not regarded as anything disgraceful, and can remember many cases where the mother's house has been used by the daughter with the mother's knowledge." acton, in a well-informed book on london prostitution, written in the middle of the last century, said that prostitution is "a transitory stage, through which an untold number of british women are ever on their passage."[ ] this statement was strenuously denied at the time by many earnest moralists who refused to admit that it was possible for a woman who had sunk into so deep a pit of degradation ever to climb out again, respectably safe and sound. yet it is certainly true as regards a considerable proportion of women, not only in england, but in other countries also. thus parent-duchâtelet, the greatest authority on french prostitution, stated that "prostitution is for the majority only a transitory stage; it is quitted usually during the first year; very few prostitutes continue until extinction." it is difficult, however, to ascertain precisely of how large a proportion this is true; there are no data which would serve as a basis for exact estimation,[ ] and it is impossible to expect that respectable married women would admit that they had ever been "on the streets"; they would not, perhaps, always admit it even to themselves. the following case, though noted down over twenty years ago, is fairly typical of a certain class, among the lower ranks of prostitution, in which the economic factor counts for much, but in which we ought not too hastily to assume that it is the sole factor. widow, aged thirty, with two children. works in an umbrella manufactory in the east end of london, earning eighteen shillings a week by hard work, and increasing her income by occasionally going out on the streets in the evenings. she haunts a quiet side street which is one of the approaches to a large city railway terminus. she is a comfortable, almost matronly-looking woman, quietly dressed in a way that is only noticeable from the skirts being rather short. if spoken to she may remark that she is "waiting for a lady friend," talks in an affected way about the weather, and parenthetically introduces her offers. she will either lead a man into one of the silent neighboring lanes filled with warehouses, or will take him home with her. she is willing to accept any sum the man may be willing or able to give; occasionally it is a sovereign, sometimes it is only a sixpence; on an average she earns a few shillings in an evening. she had only been in london for ten months; before that she lived in newcastle. she did not go on the streets there; "circumstances alter cases," she sagely remarks. though not speaking well of the police, she says they do not interfere with her as they do with some of the girls. she never gives them money, but hints that it is sometimes necessary to gratify their desires in order to keep on good terms with them. it must always be remembered, for it is sometimes forgotten by socialists and social reformers, that while the pressure of poverty exerts a markedly modifying influence on prostitution, in that it increases the ranks of the women who thereby seek a livelihood and may thus be properly regarded as a factor of prostitution, no practicable raising of the rate of women's wages could possibly serve, directly and alone, to abolish prostitution. de molinari, an economist, after remarking that "prostitution is an industry" and that if other competing industries can offer women sufficiently high pecuniary inducements they will not be so frequently attracted to prostitution, proceeds to point out that that by no means settles the question. "like every other industry prostitution is governed by the demand of the need to which it responds. as long as that need and that demand persist, they will provoke an offer. it is the need and the demand that we must act on, and perhaps science will furnish us the means to do so."[ ] in what way molinari expects science to diminish the demand for prostitutes, however, is not clearly brought out. not only have we to admit that no practicable rise in the rate of wages paid to women in ordinary industries can possibly compete with the wages which fairly attractive women of quite ordinary ability can earn by prostitution,[ ] but we have also to realize that a rise in general prosperity--which alone can render a rise of women's wages healthy and normal--involves a rise in the wages of prostitution, and an increase in the number of prostitutes. so that if good wages is to be regarded as the antagonist of prostitution, we can only say that it more than gives back with one hand what it takes with the other. to so marked a degree is this the case that després in a detailed moral and demographic study of the distribution of prostitution in france comes to the conclusion that we must reverse the ancient doctrine that "poverty engenders prostitution" since prostitution regularly increases with wealth,[ ] and as a département rises in wealth and prosperity, so the number both of its inscribed and its free prostitutes rises also. there is indeed a fallacy here, for while it is true, as després argues, that wealth demands prostitution, it is also true that a wealthy community involves the extreme of poverty as well as of riches and that it is among the poorer elements that prostitution chiefly finds its recruits. the ancient dictum that "poverty engenders prostitution" still stands, but it is complicated and qualified by the complex conditions of civilization. bonger, in his able discussion of the economic side of the question, has realized the wide and deep basis of prostitution when he reaches the conclusion that it is "on the one hand the inevitable complement of the existing legal monogamy, and on the other hand the result of the bad conditions in which many young girls grow up, the result of the physical and psychical wretchedness in which the women of the people live, and the consequence also of the inferior position of women in our actual society."[ ] a narrowly economic consideration of prostitution can by no means bring us to the root of the matter. one circumstance alone should have sufficed to indicate that the inability of many women to secure "a living wage," is far from being the most fundamental cause of prostitution: a large proportion of prostitutes come from the ranks of domestic service. of all the great groups of female workers, domestic servants are the freest from economic anxieties; they do not pay for food or for lodging; they often live as well as their mistresses, and in a large proportion of cases they have fewer money anxieties than their mistresses. moreover, they supply an almost universal demand, so that there is never any need for even very moderately competent servants to be in want of work. they constitute, it is true, a very large body which could not fail to supply a certain contingent of recruits to prostitution. but when we see that domestic service is the chief reservoir from which prostitutes are drawn, it should be clear that the craving for food and shelter is by no means the chief cause of prostitution. it may be added that, although the significance of this predominance of servants among prostitutes is seldom realized by those who fancy that to remove poverty is to abolish prostitution, it has not been ignored by the more thoughtful students of social questions. thus sherwell, while pointing out truly that, to a large extent, "morals fluctuate with trade," adds that, against the importance of the economic factor, it is a suggestive and in every way impressive fact that the majority of the girls who frequent the west end of london ( per cent., according to the salvation army's registers) are drawn from domestic service where the economic struggle is not severely felt (arthur sherwell, _life in west london_, ch. v, "prostitution"). it is at the same time worthy of note that by the conditions of their lives servants, more than any other class, resemble prostitutes (bernaldo de quirós and llanas aguilaniedo have pointed this out in _la mala vida en madrid_, p. ). like prostitutes, they are a class of women apart; they are not entitled to the considerations and the little courtesies usually paid to other women; in some countries they are even registered, like prostitutes; it is scarcely surprising that when they suffer from so many of the disadvantages of the prostitute, they should sometimes desire to possess also some of her advantages. lily braun (_frauenfrage_, pp. et seq.) has set forth in detail these unfavorable conditions of domestic labor as they bear on the tendency of servant-girls to become prostitutes. r. de ryckère, in his important work, _la servante criminelle_ ( , pp. et seq.; cf., the same author's article, "la criminalité ancillaire," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, july and december, ), has studied the psychology of the servant-girl. he finds that she is specially marked by lack of foresight, vanity, lack of invention, tendency to imitation, and mobility of mind. these are characters which ally her to the prostitute. de ryckère estimates the proportion of former servants among prostitutes generally as fifty per cent., and adds that what is called the "white slavery" here finds its most complacent and docile victims. he remarks, however, that the servant prostitute is, on the whole, not so much immoral as non-moral. in paris parent-duchâtelet found that, in proportion to their number, servants furnished the largest contingent to prostitution, and his editors also found that they head the list (parent-duchâtelet, edition , vol. i, p. ). among clandestine prostitutes at paris, commenge has more recently found that former servants constitute forty per cent. in bordeaux jeannel (_de le prostitution publique_, p. ) also found that in forty per cent, of prostitutes had been servants, seamstresses coming next with thirty-seven per cent. in germany and austria it has long been recognized that domestic service furnishes the chief number of recruits to prostitution. lippert, in germany, and gross-hoffinger, in austria, pointed out this predominance of maid-servants and its significance before the middle of the nineteenth century, and more recently blaschko has stated ("hygiene der syphilis" in weyl's _handbuch der hygiene_, bd. ii, p. ) that among berlin prostitutes in maid-servants stand at the head with fifty-one per cent. baumgarten has stated that in vienna the proportion of servants is fifty-eight per cent. in england, according to the report of a select committee of the lords on the laws for the protection of children, sixty per cent, of prostitutes have been servants. f. remo, in his _vie galante en angleterre_, states the proportion as eighty per cent. it would appear to be even higher as regards the west end of london. taking london as a whole the extensive statistics of merrick (_work among the fallen_), chaplain of the millbank prison, showed that out of , prostitutes, , or about forty per cent., had previously been servants, laundresses coming next, and then dressmakers; classifying his data somewhat more summarily and roughly, merrick found that the proportion of servants was fifty-three per cent. in america, among two thousand prostitutes, sanger states that forty-three per cent, had been servants, dressmakers coming next, but at a long interval, with six per cent. (sanger, _history of prostitution_, p. ). among philadelphia prostitutes, goodchild states that "domestics are probably in largest proportion," although some recruits may be found from almost any occupation. it is the same in other countries. in italy, according to tammeo (_la prostituzione_, p. ), servants come first among prostitutes with a proportion of twenty-eight per cent., followed by the group of dressmakers, tailoresses and milliners, seventeen per cent. in sardinia, a mantegazza states, most prostitutes are servants from the country. in russia, according to fiaux, the proportion is forty-five per cent. in madrid, according to eslava (as quoted by bernaldo de quirós and llanas aguilaniedo (_la mala vida, en madrid_, p. )), servants come at the head of registered prostitutes with twenty-seven per cent.--almost the same proportion as in italy--and are followed by dressmakers. in sweden, according to welander (_monatshefte für praktische dermatologie_, , p. ) among inscribed prostitutes, (or sixty-two per cent.) were domestic servants; at a long interval followed seamstresses, then factory workers, etc. . _the biological factor of prostitution_.--economic considerations, as we see, have a highly important modificatory influence on prostitution, although it is by no means correct to assert that they form its main cause. there is another question which has exercised many investigators: to what extent are prostitutes predestined to this career by organic constitution? it is generally admitted that economic and other conditions are an exciting cause of prostitution; in how far are those who succumb predisposed by the possession of abnormal personal characteristics? some inquirers have argued that this predisposition is so marked that prostitution may fairly be regarded as a feminine equivalent for criminality, and that in a family in which the men instinctively turn to crime, the women instinctively turn to prostitution. others have as strenuously denied this conclusion. lombroso has more especially advocated the doctrine that prostitution is the vicarious equivalent of criminality. in this he was developing the results reached, in the important study of the jukes family, by dugdale, who found that "there where the brothers commit crime, the sisters adopt prostitution;" the fines and imprisonments of the women of the family were not for violations of the right of property, but mainly for offences against public decency. "the psychological as well as anatomical identity of the criminal and the born prostitute," lombroso and ferrero concluded, "could not be more complete: both are identical with the moral insane, and therefore, according to the axiom, equal to each other. there is the same lack of moral sense, the same hardness of heart, the same precocious taste for evil, the same indifference to social infamy, the same volatility, love of idleness, and lack of foresight, the same taste for facile pleasures, for the orgy and for alcohol, the same, or almost the same, vanity. prostitution is only the feminine side of criminality. and so true is it that prostitution and criminality are two analogous, or, so to say, parallel, phenomena, that at their extremes they meet. the prostitute is, therefore, psychologically a criminal: if she commits no offenses it is because her physical weakness, her small intelligence, the facility of acquiring what she wants by more easy methods, dispenses her from the necessity of crime, and on these very grounds prostitution represents the specific form of feminine criminality." the authors add that "prostitution is, in a certain sense, socially useful as an outlet for masculine sexuality and a preventive of crime" (lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente_, , p. ). those who have opposed this view have taken various grounds, and by no means always understood the position they are attacking. thus w. fischer (in _die prostitution_) vigorously argues that prostitution is not an inoffensive equivalent of criminality, but a factor of criminality. féré, again (in _dégénérescence et criminalité_), asserts that criminality and prostitution are not equivalent, but identical. "prostitutes and criminals," he holds, "have as a common character their unproductiveness, and consequently they are both anti-social. prostitution thus constitutes a form of criminality." the essential character of criminals is not, however, their unproductiveness, for that they share with a considerable proportion of the wealthiest of the upper classes; it must be added, also, that the prostitute, unlike the criminal, is exercising an activity for which there is a demand, for which she is willingly paid, and for which she has to work (it has sometimes been noted that the prostitute looks down on the thief, who "does not work"); she is carrying on a profession, and is neither more nor less productive than those who carry on many more reputable professions. aschaffenburg, also believing himself in opposition to lombroso, argues, somewhat differently from féré, that prostitution is not indeed, as féré said, a form of criminality, but that it is too frequently united with criminality to be regarded as an equivalent. mönkemöller has more recently supported the same view. here, however, as usual, there is a wide difference of opinion as to the proportion of prostitutes of whom this is true. it is recognized by all investigators to be true of a certain number, but while baumgarten, from an examination of eight thousand prostitutes, only found a minute proportion who were criminals, ströhmberg found that among prostitutes there were as many as thieves. from another side, morasso (as quoted in _archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. i), on the strength of his own investigations, is more clearly in opposition to lombroso, since he protests altogether against any purely degenerative view of prostitutes which would in any way assimilate them with criminals. the question of the sexuality of prostitutes, which has a certain bearing on the question of their tendency to degeneration, has been settled by different writers in different senses. while some, like morasso, assert that sexual impulse is a main cause inducing women to adopt a prostitute's career, others assert that prostitutes are usually almost devoid of sexual impulse. lombroso refers to the prevalence of sexual frigidity among prostitutes.[ ] in london, merrick, speaking from a knowledge of over , prostitutes, states that he has met with "only a very few cases" in which gross sexual desire has been the motive to adopt a life of prostitution. in paris, raciborski had stated at a much earlier period that "among prostitutes one finds very few who are prompted to libertinage by sexual ardor."[ ] commenge, again, a careful student of the parisian prostitute, cannot admit that sexual desire is to be classed among the serious causes of prostitution. "i have made inquiries of thousands of women on this point," he states, "and only a very small number have told me that they were driven to prostitution for the satisfaction of sexual needs. although girls who give themselves to prostitution are often lacking in frankness, on this point, i believe, they have no wish to deceive. when they have sexual needs they do not conceal them, but, on the contrary, show a certain _amour-propre_ in acknowledging them, as a sufficient sort of justification for their life; so that if only a very small minority avow this motive the reason is that for the great majority it has no existence." there can be no doubt that the statements made regarding the sexual frigidity of prostitutes are often much too unqualified. this is in part certainly due to the fact that they are usually made by those who speak from a knowledge of old prostitutes whose habitual familiarity with normal sexual intercourse in its least attractive aspects has resulted in complete indifference to such intercourse, so far as their clients are concerned.[ ] it may be stated with truth that to the woman of deep passions the ephemeral and superficial relationships of prostitution can offer no temptation. and it may be added that the majority of prostitutes begin their career at a very early age, long before the somewhat late period at which in women the tendency for passion to become strong, has yet arrived.[ ] it may also be said that an indifference to sexual relationships, a tendency to attach no personal value to them, is often a predisposing cause in the adoption of a prostitute's career; the general mental shallowness of prostitutes may well be accompanied by shallowness of physical emotion. on the other hand, many prostitutes, at all events early in their careers, appear to show a marked degree of sensuality, and to women of coarse sexual fibre the career of prostitution has not been without attractions from this point of view; the gratification of physical desire is known to act as a motive in some cases and is clearly indicated in others.[ ] this is scarcely surprising when we remember that prostitutes are in a very large proportion of cases remarkably robust and healthy persons in general respects.[ ] they withstand without difficulty the risks of their profession, and though under its influence the manifestations of sexual feeling can scarcely fail to become modified or perverted in course of time, that is no proof of the original absence of sexual sensibility. it is not even a proof of its loss, for the real sexual nature of the normal prostitute, and her possibilities of sexual ardor, are chiefly manifested, not in her professional relations with her clients, but in her relations with her "fancy boy" or "bully."[ ] it is quite true that the conditions of her life often make it practically advantageous to the prostitute to have attached to her a man who is devoted to her interests and will defend them if necessary, but that is only a secondary, occasional, and subsidiary advantage of the "fancy boy," so far as prostitutes generally are concerned. she is attracted to him primarily because he appeals to her personally and she wants him for herself. the motive of her attachment is, above all, erotic, in the full sense, involving not merely sexual relations but possession and common interests, a permanent and intimate life led together. "you know that what one does in the way of business cannot fill one's heart," said a german prostitute; "why should we not have a husband like other women? i, too, need love. if that were not so we should not want a bully." and he, on his part, reciprocates this feeling and is by no means merely moved by self-interest.[ ] one of my correspondents, who has had much experience of prostitutes, not only in britain, but also in germany, france, belgium and holland, has found that the normal manifestations of sexual feeling are much more common in british than in continental prostitutes. "i should say," he writes, "that in normal coitus foreign women are generally unconscious of sexual excitement. i don't think i have ever known a foreign woman who had any semblance of orgasm. british women, on the other hand, if a man is moderately kind, and shows that he has some feelings beyond mere sensual gratification, often abandon themselves to the wildest delights of sexual excitement. of course in this life, as in others, there is keen competition, and a woman, to vie with her competitors, must please her gentlemen friends; but a man of the world can always distinguish between real and simulated passion." (it is possible, however, that he may be most successful in arousing the feelings of his own fellow-country women.) on the other hand, this writer finds that the foreign women are more anxious to provide for the enjoyment of their temporary consorts and to ascertain what pleases them. "the foreigner seems to make it the business of her life to discover some abnormal mode of sexual gratification for her consort." for their own pleasure also foreign prostitutes frequently ask for _cunnilinctus_, in preference to normal coitus, while anal coitus is also common. the difference evidently is that the british women, when they seek gratification, find it in normal coitus, while the foreign women prefer more abnormal methods. there is, however, one class of british prostitutes which this correspondent finds to be an exception to the general rule: the class of those who are recruited from the lower walks of the stage. "such women are generally more licentious--that is to say, more acquainted with the bizarre in sexualism--than girls who come from shops or bars; they show a knowledge of _fellatio_, and even anal coitus, and during menstruation frequently suggest inter-mammary coitus." on the whole it would appear that prostitutes, though not usually impelled to their life by motives of sensuality, on entering and during the early part of their career possess a fairly average amount of sexual impulse, with variations in both directions of excess and deficiency as well as of perversion. at a somewhat later period it is useless to attempt to measure the sexual impulse of prostitutes by the amount of pleasure they take in the professional performance of sexual intercourse. it is necessary to ascertain whether they possess sexual instincts which are gratified in other ways. in a large proportion of cases this is found to be so. masturbation, especially, is extremely common among prostitutes everywhere; however prevalent it may be among women who have no other means of obtaining sexual gratification it is admitted by all to be still more prevalent among prostitutes, indeed almost universal.[ ] homosexuality, though not so common as masturbation, is very frequently found among prostitutes--in france, it would seem, more frequently than in england--and it may indeed be said that it occurs more often among prostitutes than among any other class of women. it is favored by the acquired distaste for normal coitus due to professional intercourse with men, which leads homosexual relationships to be regarded as pure and ideal by comparison. it would appear also that in a considerable proportion of cases prostitutes present a congenital condition of sexual inversion, such a condition, with an accompanying indifference to intercourse with men, being a predisposing cause of the adoption of a prostitute's career. kurella even regards prostitutes as constituting a sub-variety of congenital inverts. anna rüling in germany states that about twenty per cent. prostitutes are homosexual; when asked what induced them to become prostitutes, more than one inverted woman of the street has replied to her that it was purely a matter of business, sexual feeling not coming into the question except with a friend of the same sex.[ ] the occurrence of congenital inversion among prostitutes--although we need not regard prostitutes as necessarily degenerate as a class--suggests the question whether we are likely to find an unusually large number of physical and other anomalies among them. it cannot be said that there is unanimity of opinion on this point. for some authorities prostitutes are merely normal ordinary women of low social rank, if indeed their instincts are not even a little superior to those of the class in which they were born. other investigators find among them so large a proportion of individuals deviating from the normal that they are inclined to place prostitutes generally among one or other of the abnormal classes.[ ] baumgarten, in vienna, from a knowledge of over prostitutes, concluded that only a very minute proportion are either criminal or psychopathic in temperament or organization (_archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, vol. xi, ). it is not clear, however, that baumgarten carried out any detailed and precise investigations. mr. lane, a london police magistrate, has stated as the result of his own observation, that prostitution is "at once a symptom and outcome of the same deteriorated physique and decadent moral fibre which determine the manufacture of male tramps, petty thieves, and professional beggars, of whom the prostitute is in general the female analogue" (_ethnological journal_, april, , p. ). this estimate is doubtless correct as regards a considerable proportion of the women, often enfeebled by drink, who pass through the police courts, but it could scarcely be applied without qualification to prostitutes generally. morasso (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. i) has protested against a purely degenerative view of prostitutes on the strength of his own observations. there is, he states, a category of prostitutes, unknown to scientific inquirers, which he calls that of the _prostitute di alto bordo_. among these the signs of degeneration, physical or moral, are not to be found in greater number than among women who do not belong to prostitution. they reveal all sorts of characters, some of them showing great refinement, and are chiefly marked off by the possession of an unusual degree of sexual appetite. even among the more degraded group of the _bassa prostituzione_, he asserts, we find a predominance of sexual, as well as professional, characters, rather than the signs of degeneration. it is sufficient to quote one more testimony, as set down many years ago by a woman of high intelligence and character, mrs. craik, the novelist: "the women who fall are by no means the worst of their station," she wrote. "i have heard it affirmed by more than one lady--by one in particular whose experience was as large as her benevolence--that many of them are of the very best, refined, intelligent, truthful, and affectionate. 'i don't know how it is,' she would say, 'whether their very superiority makes them dissatisfied with their own rank--such brutes or clowns as laboring men often are!--so that they fall easier victims to the rank above them; or whether, though this theory will shock many people, other virtues can exist and flourish entirely distinct from, and after the loss of, that which we are accustomed to believe the indispensable prime virtue of our sex--chastity. i cannot explain it; i can only say that it is so, that some of my most promising village girls have been the first to come to harm; and some of the best and most faithful servants i ever had, have been girls who have fallen into shame, and who, had i not gone to the rescue and put them in the way to do well, would infallibly have become "lost women"'" (_a woman's thoughts about women_, , p. ). various writers have insisted on the good moral qualities of prostitutes. thus in france, despine first enumerates their vices as ( ) greediness and love of drink, ( ) lying, ( ) anger, ( ) want of order and untidiness, ( ) mobility of character, ( ) need of movement, ( ) tendency to homosexuality; and then proceeds to detail their good qualities: their maternal and filial affection, their charity to each other; and their refusal to denounce each other; while they are frequently religious, sometimes modest, and generally very honest (despine, _psychologie naturelle_, vol. iii, pp. et seq.; as regards sicilian prostitutes, cf. callari, _archivio di psichiatria_, fasc. iv, ). the charity towards each other, often manifested in distress, is largely neutralized by a tendency to professional suspicion and jealousy of each other. lombroso believes that the basis of prostitution must be found in moral idiocy. if by moral idiocy we are to understand a condition at all closely allied with insanity, this assertion is dubious. there seems no clear relationship between prostitution and insanity, and tammeo has shown (_la prostituzione_, p. ) that the frequency of prostitutes in the various italian provinces is in inverse ratio to the frequency of insane persons; as insanity increases, prostitution decreases. but if we mean a minor degree of moral imbecility--that is to say, a bluntness of perception for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which, while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital predisposition--there can be no doubt that moral imbecility of slight degree is very frequently found among prostitutes. it would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an imbecile. if she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst, made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may at any time make. but if she deliberately proposes to sell herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, the case is altered. the experiences of commenge in paris are instructive on this point. "for many young girls," he writes, "modesty has no existence, they experience no emotion in showing themselves completely undressed, they abandon themselves to any chance individual whom they will never see again. they attach no importance to their virginity; they are deflowered under the strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about the act they are accomplishing. no sentiment, no calculation, pushes them into a man's arms. they let themselves go without reflexion and without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference and without pleasure." he was acquainted with forty-five girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by chance strangers whom they never met again; they lost their virginity, in dumas's phrase, as they lost their milk-teeth, and could give no plausible account of the loss. a girl of fifteen, mentioned by commenge, living with her parents who supplied all her wants, lost her virginity by casually meeting a man who offered her two francs if she would go with him; she did so without demur and soon begun to accost men on her own account. a girl of fourteen, also living comfortably with her parents, sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a glass of beer, and henceforth begun to associate with prostitutes. another girl of the same age, at a local fête, wishing to go round on the hobby horse, spontaneously offered herself to the man directing the machinery for the pleasure of a ride. yet another girl, of fifteen, at another fête, offered her virginity in return for the same momentary joy (commenge, _prostitution clandestine_, , pp. et seq.). in the united states, dr. w. travis gibb, examining physician to the new york society for the prevention of cruelty to children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in a fairly large proportion of "rape" cases the child is the willing victim. "it is horribly pathetic," he says (_medical record_, april , ), "to learn how far a nickel or a quarter will go towards purchasing the virtue of these children." in estimating the tendency of prostitutes to display congenital physical anomalies, the crudest and most obvious test, though not a precise or satisfactory one, is the general impression produced by the face. in france, when nearly prostitutes were divided into five groups from the point of view of their looks, only from seven to fourteen per cent, were found to belong to the first group, or that of those who could be said to possess youth and beauty (jeannel, _de la prostitution publique_, , p. ). woods hutchinson, again, judging from an extensive acquaintance with london, paris, vienna, new york, philadelphia, and chicago, asserts that a handsome or even attractive-looking prostitute, is rare, and that the general average of beauty is lower than in any other class of women. "whatever other evils," he remarks, "the fatal power of beauty may be responsible for, it has nothing to do with prostitution" (woods hutchinson, "the economics of prostitution," _american gynæcological and obstetric journal_, september, ). it must, of course, be borne in mind that these estimates are liable to be vitiated through being based chiefly on the inspection of women who most obviously belong to the class of prostitutes and have already been coarsened by their profession. if we may conclude--and the fact is probably undisputed--that beautiful, agreeable, and harmoniously formed faces are rare rather than common among prostitutes, we may certainly say that minute examination will reveal a large number of physical abnormalities. one of the earliest important physical investigations of prostitutes was that of dr. pauline tarnowsky in russia (first published in the _vratch_ in , and afterwards as _etudes anthropométriques sur les prostituées et les voleuses_). she examined fifty st. petersburg prostitutes who had been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years, and also fifty peasant women of, so far as possible, the same age and mental development. she found that ( ) the prostitute showed shorter anterior-posterior and transverse diameters of skull; ( ) a proportion equal to eighty-four per cent. showed various signs of physical degeneration (irregular skull, asymmetry of face, anomalies of hard palate, teeth, ears, etc.). this tendency to anomaly among the prostitutes was to some extent explained when it was found that about four-fifths of them had parents who were habitual drunkards, and nearly one-fifth were the last survivors of large families; such families have been often produced by degenerate parents. the frequency of hereditary degeneration has been noted by bonhoeffer among german prostitutes. he investigated breslau prostitutes in prison, and therefore of a more abnormal class than ordinary prostitutes, and found that were hereditarily degenerate, and mostly with one or both parents who were drunkards; also showed feeble-mindedness (_zeitschrift für die gesamte strafwissenschaft_, bd. xxiii, p. ). the most detailed examinations of ordinary non-criminal prostitutes, both anthropometrically and as regards the prevalence of anomalies, have been made in italy, though not on a sufficiently large number of subjects to yield absolutely decisive results. thus fornasari made a detailed examination of sixty prostitutes belonging chiefly to emilia and venice, and also of twenty-seven others belonging to bologna, the latter group being compared with a third group of twenty normal women belonging to bologna (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. vi). the prostitutes were found to be of lower type than the normal individuals, having smaller heads and larger faces. as the author himself points out, his subjects were not sufficiently numerous to justify far-reaching generalizations, but it may be worth while to summarize some of his results. at equal heights the prostitutes showed greater weight; at equal ages they were of shorter stature than other women, not only of well-to-do, but of the poor class: height of face, bi-zygomatic diameter (though not the distance between zygomas), the distance from chin to external auditory meatus, and the size of the jaw were all greater in the prostitutes; the hands were longer and broader, compared to the palm, than in ordinary women; the foot also was longer in prostitutes, and the thigh, as compared to the calf, was larger. it is noteworthy that in most particulars, and especially in regard to head measurements, the variations were much greater among the prostitutes than among the other women examined; this is to some extent, though not entirely, to be accounted for by the slightly greater number of the former. ardu (in the same number of the _archivio_) gave the result of observations (undertaken at lombroso's suggestion) as to the frequency of abnormalities among prostitutes. the subjects were seventy-four in number and belonged to professor giovannini's _clinica sifilopatica_ at turin. the abnormalities investigated were virile distribution of hair on pubes, chest, and limbs, hypertrichosis on forehead, left-handedness, atrophy of nipple, and tattooing (which was only found once). combining ardu's observations with another series of observations on fifty-five prostitutes examined by lombroso, it is found that virile disposition of hair is found in fifteen per cent. as against six per cent. in normal women; some degree of hypertrichosis in eighteen per cent.; left-handedness in eleven per cent. (but in normal women as high as twelve per cent. according to gallia); and atrophy of nipple in twelve per cent. giuffrida-ruggeri, again (_atti della, società romana di antropologia_, , p. ), on examining eighty-two prostitutes found anomalies in the following order of decreasing frequency: tendency of eyebrows to meet, lack of cranial symmetry, depression at root of nose, defective development of calves, hypertrichosis and other anomalies of hair, adherent or absent lobule, prominent zigoma, prominent forehead or frontal bones, bad implantation of teeth, darwinian tubercle of ear, thin vertical lips. these signs are separately of little or no importance, though together not without significance as an indication of general anomaly. more recently ascarilla, in an elaborate study (_archivio di psichiatria_, , fasc. vi, p. ) of the finger prints of prostitutes, comes to the conclusion that even in this respect prostitutes tend to form a class showing morphological inferiority to normal women. the patterns tend to show unusual simplicity and uniformity, and the significance of this is indicated by the fact that a similar uniformity is shown by the finger prints of the insane and deaf-mutes (de sanctis and toscano, _atti società romana antropologia_, vol. viii, , fasc. ii). in chicago dr. harriet alexander, in conjunction with dr. e.s. talbot and dr. j.g. kiernan, examined thirty prostitutes in the bridewell, or house of correction; only the "obtuse" class of professional prostitutes reach this institution, and it is not therefore surprising that they were found to exhibit very marked stigmata of degeneracy. in race nearly half of those examined were celtic irish. in sixteen the zygomatic processes were unequal and very prominent. other facial asymmetries were common. in three cases the heads were of mongoloid type; sixteen were epignathic, and eleven prognathic; five showed arrest of development of face. brachycephaly predominated (seventeen cases); the rest were mesaticephalic; there were no dolichocephals. abnormalities in shape of the skull were numerous, and twenty-nine had defective ears. four were demonstrably insane, and one was an epileptic (h.c.b. alexander, "physical abnormalities in prostitutes," chicago academy of medicine, april, ; e.s. talbot, _degeneracy_, p. ; _id., irregularities of the teeth_, fourth edition, p. ). it would seem, on the whole, so far as the evidence at present goes, that prostitutes are not quite normal representatives of the ranks into which they were born. there has been a process of selection of individuals who slightly deviate congenitally from the normal average and are, correspondingly, slightly inapt for normal life.[ ] the psychic characteristics which accompany such deviation are not always necessarily of an obviously unfavorable nature; the slightly neurotic girl of low class birth--disinclined for hard work, through defective energy, and perhaps greedy and selfish--may even seem to possess a refinement superior to her station. while, however, there is a tendency to anomaly among prostitutes, it must be clearly recognized that that tendency remains slight so long as we consider impartially the whole class of prostitutes. those investigators who have reached the conclusion that prostitutes are a highly degenerate and abnormal class have only observed special groups of prostitutes, more especially those who are frequently found in prison. it is not possible to form a just conception of prostitutes by studying them only in prison, any more than it would be possible to form a just conception of clergymen, doctors, or lawyers by studying them exclusively in prison, and this remains true even although a much larger proportion of prostitutes than of members of the more reputable professions pass through prisons; that fact no doubt partly indicates the greater abnormality of prostitutes. it has, of course, to be remembered that the special conditions of the lives of prostitutes tend to cause in them the appearance of certain professional characteristics which are entirely acquired and not congenital. in that way we may account for the gradual modification of the feminine secondary and tertiary sexual characters, and the appearance of masculine characters, such as the frequent deep voice, etc.[ ] but with all due allowance for these acquired characters, it remains true that such comparative investigations as have so far been made, although inconclusive, seem to indicate that, even apart from the prevalence of acquired anomalies, the professional selection of their avocation tends to separate out from the general population of the same social class, individuals who possess anthropometrical characters varying in a definite direction. the observations thus made seem, in this way, to indicate that prostitutes tend to be in weight over the average, though not in stature, that in length of arm they are inferior though the hands are longer (this has been found alike in italy and russia); they have smaller ankles and larger calves, and still larger thighs in proportion to their large calves. the estimated skull capacity and the skull circumference and diameters are somewhat below the normal, not only when compared with respectable women but also with thieves; there is a tendency to brachycephaly (both in italy and russia); the cheek-bones are usually prominent and the jaws developed; the hair is darker than in respectable women though less so than in thieves; it is also unusually abundant, not only on the head but also on the pudenda and elsewhere; the eyes have been found to be decidedly darker than those of either respectable women or criminals.[ ] so far as the evidence goes it serves to indicate that prostitutes tend to approximate to the type which, as was shown in the previous volume, there is reason to regard as specially indicative of developed sexuality. it is, however, unnecessary to discuss this question until our anthropometrical knowledge of prostitutes is more extended and precise. . _the moral justification of prostitution_.--there are and always have been moralists--many of them people whose opinions are deserving of the most serious respect--who consider that, allowing for the need of improved hygienic conditions, the existence of prostitution presents no serious problem for solution. it is, at most, they say, a necessary evil, and, at best, a beneficent institution, the bulwark of the home, the inevitable reverse of which monogamy is the obverse. "the immoral guardian of public morality," is the definition of prostitutes given by one writer, who takes the humble view of the matter, and another, taking the loftier ground, writes: "the prostitute fulfils a social mission. she is the guardian of virginal modesty, the channel to carry off adulterous desire, the protector of matrons who fear late maternity; it is her part to act as the shield of the family." "female decii," said balzac in his _physiologie du mariage_ of prostitutes, "they sacrifice themselves for the republic and make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable families." in the same way schopenhauer called prostitutes "human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy." lecky, again, in an oft-quoted passage of rhetoric,[ ] may be said to combine both the higher and the lower view of the prostitute's mission in human society, to which he even seeks to give a hieratic character. "the supreme type of vice," he declared, "she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. but for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. on that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. she remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."[ ] i am not aware that the greeks were greatly concerned with the moral justification of prostitution. they had not allowed it to assume very offensive forms and for the most part they were content to accept it. the romans usually accepted it, too, but, we gather, not quite so easily. there was an austerely serious, almost puritanic, spirit in the romans of the old stock and they seem sometimes to have felt the need to assure themselves that prostitution really was morally justifiable. it is significant to note that they were accustomed to remember that cato was said to have expressed satisfaction on seeing a man emerge from a brothel, for otherwise he might have gone to lie with his neighbor's wife.[ ] the social necessity of prostitution is the most ancient of all the arguments of moralists in favor of the toleration of prostitutes; and if we accept the eternal validity of the marriage system with which prostitution developed, and of the theoretical morality based on that system, this is an exceedingly forcible, if not an unanswerable, argument. the advent of christianity, with its special attitude towards the "flesh," necessarily caused an enormous increase of attention to the moral aspects of prostitution. when prostitution was not morally denounced, it became clearly necessary to morally justify it; it was impossible for a church, whose ideals were more or less ascetic, to be benevolently indifferent in such a matter. as a rule we seem to find throughout that while the more independent and irresponsible divines take the side of denunciation, those theologians who have had thrust upon them the grave responsibilities of ecclesiastical statesmanship have rather tended towards the reluctant moral justification of prostitution. of this we have an example of the first importance in st. augustine, after st. paul the chief builder of the christian church. in a treatise written in to justify the divine regulation of the world, we find him declaring that just as the executioner, however repulsive he may be, occupies a necessary place in society, so the prostitute and her like, however sordid and ugly and wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prostitutes from human affairs and you would pollute the world with lust: "aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus."[ ] aquinas, the only theological thinker of christendom who can be named with augustine, was of the same mind with him on this question of prostitution. he maintained the sinfulness of fornication but he accepted the necessity of prostitution as a beneficial part of the social structure, comparing it to the sewers which keep a palace pure.[ ] "prostitution in towns is like the sewer in a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and stinking place." liguori, the most influential theologian of more modern times, was of the like opinion. this wavering and semi-indulgent attitude towards prostitution was indeed generally maintained by theologians. some, following augustine and aquinas, would permit prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils; others were altogether opposed to it; others, again, would allow it in towns but nowhere else. it was, however, universally held by theologians that the prostitute has a right to her wages, and is not obliged to make restitution.[ ] the earlier christian moralists found no difficulty in maintaining that there is no sin in renting a house to a prostitute for the purposes of her trade; absolution was always granted for this and abstention not required.[ ] fornication, however, always remained a sin, and from the twelfth century onwards the church made a series of organized attempts to reclaim prostitutes. all catholic theologians hold that a prostitute is bound to confess the sin of prostitution, and most, though not all, theologians have believed that a man also must confess intercourse with a prostitute. at the same time, while there was a certain indulgence to the prostitute herself, the church was always very severe on those who lived on the profits of promoting prostitution, on the _lenones_. thus the council of elvira, which was ready to receive without penance the prostitute who married, refused reconciliation, even at death, to persons who had been guilty of _lenocinium_.[ ] protestantism, in this as in many other matters of sexual morality, having abandoned the confessional, was usually able to escape the necessity for any definite and responsible utterances concerning the moral status of prostitution. when it expressed any opinion, or sought to initiate any practical action, it naturally founded itself on the biblical injunctions against fornication, as expressed by st. paul, and showed no mercy for prostitutes and no toleration for prostitution. this attitude, which was that of the puritans, was the more easy since in protestant countries, with the exception of special districts at special periods--such as geneva and new england in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--theologians have in these matters been called upon to furnish religious exhortation rather than to carry out practical policies. the latter task they have left to others, and a certain confusion and uncertainty has thus often arisen in the lay protestant mind. this attitude in a thoughtful and serious writer, is well illustrated in england by burton, writing a century after the reformation. he refers with mitigated approval to "our pseudo-catholics," who are severe with adultery but indulgent to fornication, being perhaps of cato's mind that it should be encouraged to avoid worse mischiefs at home, and who holds brothels "as necessary as churches" and "have whole colleges of courtesans in their towns and cities." "they hold it impossible," he continues, "for idle persons, young, rich and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest, too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, and most unfit to suffer poor men, younger brothers and soldiers at all to marry, as also diseased persons, votaries, priests, servants. therefore as well to keep and ease the one as the other, they tolerate and wink at these kind of brothel-houses and stews. many probable arguments they have to prove the lawfulness, the necessity, and a toleration of them, as of usery; and without question in policy they are not to be contradicted, but altogether in religion."[ ] it was not until the beginning of the following century that the ancient argument of st. augustine for the moral justification of prostitution was boldly and decisively stated in protestant england, by bernard mandeville in his _fable of the bees_, and at its first promulgation it seemed so offensive to the public mind that the book was suppressed. "if courtesans and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigor as some silly people would have it," mandeville wrote, "what locks or bars would be sufficient to preserve the honor of our wives and daughters?... it is manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing one part of womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a filthiness of a more heinous nature. from whence i think i may justly conclude that chastity may be supported by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst of vices."[ ] after mandeville's time this view of prostitution began to become common in protestant as well as in other countries, though it was not usually so clearly expressed. it may be of interest to gather together a few more modern examples of statements brought forward for the moral justification of prostitution. thus in france meusnier de querlon, in his story of _psaphion_, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, puts into the mouth of a greek courtesan many interesting reflections concerning the life and position of the prostitute. she defends her profession with much skill, and argues that while men imagine that prostitutes are merely the despised victims of their pleasures, these would-be tyrants are really dupes who are ministering to the needs of the women they trample beneath their feet, and themselves equally deserve the contempt they bestow. "we return disgust for disgust, as they must surely perceive. we often abandon to them merely a statue, and while inflamed by their own desires they consume themselves on insensible charms, our tranquil coldness leisurely enjoys their sensibility. then it is we resume all our rights. a little hot blood has brought these proud creatures to our feet, and rendered us mistresses of their fate. on which side, i ask, is the advantage?" but all men, she adds, are not so unjust towards the prostitute, and she proceeds to pronounce a eulogy, not without a slight touch of irony in it, of the utility, facility, and convenience of the brothel. a large number of the modern writers on prostitution insist on its socially beneficial character. thus charles richard concludes his book on the subject with the words: "the conduct of society with regard to prostitution must proceed from the principle of gratitude without false shame for its utility, and compassion for the poor creatures at whose expense this is attained" (_la prostitution devant le philosophe_, , p. ). "to make marriage permanent is to make it difficult," an american medical writer observes; "to make it difficult is to defer it; to defer it is to maintain in the community an increasing number of sexually perfect individuals, with normal, or, in cases where repression is prolonged, excessive sexual appetites. the social evil is the natural outcome of the physical nature of man, his inherited impulses, and the artificial conditions under which he is compelled to live" ("the social evil," _medicine_, august and september, ). woods hutchinson, while speaking with strong disapproval of prostitution and regarding prostitutes as "the worst specimens of the sex," yet regards prostitution as a social agency of the highest value. "from a medico-economic point of view i venture to claim it as one of the grand selective and eliminative agencies of nature, and of highest value to the community. it may be roughly characterized as a safety valve for the institution of marriage" (_the gospel according to darwin_, p. ; cf. the same author's article on "the economics of prostitution," summarized in _boston medical and surgical journal_, november , ). adolf gerson, in a somewhat similar spirit, argues ("die ursache der prostitution," _sexual-probleme_, september, ) that "prostitution is one of the means used by nature to limit the procreative activity of men, and especially to postpone the period of sexual maturity." molinari considers that the social benefits of prostitution have been manifested in various ways from the first; by sterilizing, for instance, the more excessive manifestations of the sexual impulse prostitution suppressed the necessity for the infanticide of superfluous children, and led to the prohibition of that primitive method of limiting the population (g. de molinari, _la viriculture_, p. ). in quite another way than that mentioned by molinari, prostitution has even in very recent times led to the abandonment of infanticide. in the chinese province of ping-yang, matignon states, it was usual not many years ago for poor parents to kill forty per cent. of the girl children, or even all of them, at birth, for they were too expensive to rear and brought nothing in, since men who wished to marry could easily obtain a wife in the neighboring province of wenchu, where women were very easy to obtain. now, however, the line of steamships along the coast makes it very easy for girls to reach the brothels of shang-hai, where they can earn money for their families; the custom of killing them has therefore died out (matignon, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, , p. ). "under present conditions," writes dr. f. erhard ("auch ein wort zur ehereform," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang i, heft ), "prostitution (in the broadest sense, including free relationships) is necessary in order that young men may, in some degree, learn to know women, for conventional conversation cannot suffice for this; an exact knowledge of feminine thought and action is, however, necessary for a proper choice, since it is seldom possible to rely on the certainty of instinct. it is good also that men should wear off their horns before marriage, for the polygamous tendency will break through somewhere. prostitution will only spoil those men in whom there is not much to spoil, and if the desire for marriage is thus lost, the man's unbegotten children may have cause to thank him." neisser, näcke, and many others, have pleaded for prostitution, and even for brothels, as "necessary evils." it is scarcely necessary to add that many, among even the strongest upholders of the moral advantages of prostitution, believe that some improvement in method is still desirable. thus bérault looks forward to a time when regulated brothels will become less contemptible. various improvements may, he thinks, in the near future, "deprive them of the barbarous attributes which mark them out for the opprobrium of the skeptical or ignorant multitude, while their recognizable advantages will put an end to the contempt aroused by their cynical aspect" (_la maison de tolérance_, thèse de paris, ). . _the civilizational value of prostitution._--the moral argument for prostitution is based on the belief that our marriage system is so infinitely precious that an institution which serves as its buttress must be kept in existence, however ugly or otherwise objectionable it may in itself be. there is, however, another argument in support of prostitution which scarcely receives the emphasis it deserves. i refer to its influence in adding an element, in some form or another necessary, of gaiety and variety to the ordered complexity of modern life, a relief from the monotony of its mechanical routine, a distraction from its dull and respectable monotony. this is distinct from the more specific function of prostitution as an outlet for superfluous sexual energy, and may even affect those who have little or no commerce with prostitutes. this element may be said to constitute the civilizational value of prostitution. it is not merely the general conditions of civilization, but more specifically the conditions of urban life, which make this factor insistent. urban life imposes by the stress of competition a very severe and exacting routine of dull work. at the same time it makes men and women more sensitive to new impressions, more enamored of excitement and change. it multiplies the opportunities of social intercourse; it decreases the chances of detection of illegitimate intercourse while at the same time it makes marriage more difficult, for, by heightening social ambitions and increasing the expenses of living, it postpones the time when a home can be created. urban life delays marriage and yet renders the substitutes for marriage more imperative.[ ] there cannot be the slightest doubt that it is this motive--the effort to supplement the imperfect opportunities for self-development offered by our restrained, mechanical, and laborious civilization--which plays one of the chief parts in inducing women to adopt, temporarily or permanently, a prostitute's life. we have seen that the economic factor is not, as was once supposed, by any means predominant in this choice. nor, again, is there any reason to suppose that an over-mastering sexual impulse is a leading factor. but a large number of young women turn instinctively to a life of prostitution because they are moved by an obscure impulse which they can scarcely define to themselves or express, and are often ashamed to confess. it is, therefore, surprising that this motive should find so large a place even in the formal statistics of the factors of prostitution. merrick, in london, found that , or nearly a third, of the prostitutes he investigated, voluntarily gave up home or situation "for a life of pleasure," and he puts this at the head of the causes of prostitution.[ ] in america sanger found that "inclination" came almost at the head of the causes of prostitution, while woods hutchinson found "love of display, luxury and idleness" by far at the head. "disgusted and wearied with work" is the reason assigned by a large number of belgian girls when stating to the police their wish to be enrolled as prostitutes. in italy a similar motive is estimated to play an important part. in russia "desire for amusement" comes second among the causes of prostitution. there can, i think, be little doubt that, as a thoughtful student of london life has concluded, the problem of prostitution is "at bottom a mad and irresistible craving for excitement, a serious and wilful revolt against the monotony of commonplace ideals, and the uninspired drudgery of everyday life."[ ] it is this factor of prostitution, we may reasonably conclude, which is mainly responsible for the fact, pointed out by f. schiller,[ ] that with the development of civilization the supply of prostitutes tends to outgrow the demand. charles booth seems to be of the same opinion, and quotes (_life and labor of the people_, third series, vol. vii, p. ) from a rescue committee report: "the popular idea is, that these women are eager to leave a life of sin. the plain and simple truth is that, for the most part, they have no desire at all to be rescued. so many of these women do not, and will not, regard prostitution as a sin. 'i am taken out to dinner and to some place of amusement every night; why should i give it up?'" merrick, who found that five per cent. of , prostitutes who passed through millbank prison, were accustomed to combine religious observance with the practice of their profession, also remarks in regard to their feelings about morality: "i am convinced that there are many poor men and women who do not in the least understand what is implied in the term 'immorality.' out of courtesy to you, they may assent to what you say, but they do not comprehend your meaning when you talk of virtue or purity; you are simply talking over their heads" (merrick, op. cit., p. ). the same attitude may be found among prostitutes everywhere. in italy ferriani mentions a girl of fifteen who, when accused of indecency with a man in a public garden, denied with tears and much indignation. he finally induced her to confess, and then asked her: "why did you try to make me believe you were a good girl?" she hesitated, smiled, and said: "because _they say_ girls ought not to do what i do, but ought to work. but i am what i am, and it is no concern of theirs." this attitude is often more than an instinctive feeling; in intelligent prostitutes it frequently becomes a reasoned conviction. "i can bear everything, if so it must be," wrote the author of the _tagebuch einer verlorenen_ (p. ), "even serious and honorable contempt, but i cannot bear scorn. contempt--yes, if it is justified. if a poor and pretty girl with sick and bitter heart stands alone in life, cast off, with temptations and seductions offering on every side, and, in spite of that, out of inner conviction she chooses the grey and monotonous path of renunciation and middle-class morality, i recognize in that girl a personality, who has a certain justification in looking down with contemptuous pity on weaker girls. but those geese who, under the eyes of their shepherds and life-long owners, have always been pastured in smooth green fields, have certainly no right to laugh scornfully at others who have not been so fortunate." nor must it be supposed that there is necessarily any sophistry in the prostitute's justification of herself. some of our best thinkers and observers have reached a conclusion that is not dissimilar. "the actual conditions of society are opposed to any high moral feeling in women," marro observes (_la pubertà_, p. ), "for between those who sell themselves to prostitution and those who sell themselves to marriage, the only difference is in price and duration of the contract." we have already seen how very large a part in prostitution is furnished by those who have left domestic service to adopt this life (_ante_ p. ). it is not difficult to find in this fact evidence of the kind of impulse which impels a woman to adopt the career of prostitution. "the servant, in our society of equality," wrote goncourt, recalling somewhat earlier days when she was often admitted to a place in the family life, "has become nothing but a paid pariah, a machine for doing household work, and is no longer allowed to share the employer's human life."[ ] and in england, even half a century ago, we already find the same statements concerning the servant's position: "domestic service is a complete slavery," with early hours and late hours, and constant running up and down stairs till her legs are swollen; "an amount of ingenuity appears too often to be exercised, worthy of a better cause, in obtaining the largest possible amount of labor out of the domestic machine"; in addition she is "a kind of lightning conductor," to receive the ill-temper and morbid feelings of her mistress and the young ladies; so that, as some have said, "i felt so miserable i did not care what became of me, i wished i was dead."[ ] the servant is deprived of all human relationships; she must not betray the existence of any simple impulse, or natural need. at the same time she lives on the fringe of luxury; she is surrounded by the tantalizing visions of pleasure and amusement for which her fresh young nature craves.[ ] it is not surprising that, repelled by unrelieved drudgery and attracted by idle luxury, she should take the plunge which will alone enable her to enjoy the glittering aspects of civilization which seem so desirable to her.[ ] it is sometimes stated that the prevalence of prostitution among girls who were formerly servants is due to the immense numbers of servants who are seduced by their masters or the young men of the family, and are thus forced on to the streets. undoubtedly in a certain proportion of cases, perhaps sometimes a fairly considerable proportion, this is a decisive factor in the matter, but it scarcely seems to be the chief factor. the existence of relationships between servants and masters, it must be remembered, by no means necessarily implies seduction. in a large number of cases the servant in a household is, in sexual matters, the teacher rather than the pupil. (in "the sexual impulse in women," in the third volume of these _studies_, i have discussed the part played by servants as sexual initiators of the young boys in the households in which they are placed.) the more precise statistics of the causes of prostitution seldom assign seduction as the main determining factor in more than about twenty per cent. of cases, though this is obviously one of the most easily avowable motives (see _ante_, p. ). seduction by any kind of employer constitutes only a proportion (usually less than half) even of these cases. the special case of seduction of servants by masters can thus play no very considerable part as a factor of prostitution. the statistics of the parentage of illegitimate children have some bearing on this question. in a series of unmarried mothers assisted by the berlin bund für mutterschutz, particulars are given of the occupations both of the mothers, and, as far as possible, of the fathers. the former were one-third servant-girls, and the great majority of the remainder assistants in trades or girls carrying on work at home. at the head of the fathers (among cases) came artisans ( ), followed by tradespeople ( ); only a small proportion ( to ) could be described as "gentlemen," and even this proportion loses some of its significance when it is pointed out that some of the girls were also of the middle-class; in nineteen cases the fathers were married men (_mutterschutz_, january, , p. ). most authorities in most countries are of opinion that girls who eventually (usually between the ages of fifteen and twenty) become prostitutes have lost their virginity at an early age, and in the great majority of cases through men of their own class. "the girl of the people falls by the people," stated reuss in france (_la prostitution_, p. ). "it is her like, workers like herself, who have the first fruits of her beauty and virginity. the man of the world who covers her with gold and jewels only has their leavings." martineau, again (_de la prostitution clandestine_, ), showed that prostitutes are usually deflowered by men of their own class. and jeannel, in bordeaux, found reason for believing that it is not chiefly their masters who lead servants astray; they often go into service because they have been seduced in the country, while lazy, greedy, and unintelligent girls are sent from the country into the town to service. in edinburgh, w. tait (_magdalenism_, ) found that soldiers more than any other class in the community are the seducers of women, the highlanders being especially notorious in this respect. soldiers have this reputation everywhere, and in germany especially it is constantly found that the presence of the soldiery in a country district, as at the annual manoeuvres, is the cause of unchastity and illegitimate births; it is so also in austria, where, long ago, gross-hoffinger stated that soldiers were responsible for at least a third of all illegitimate births, a share out of all proportion to their numbers. in italy, marro, investigating the occasion of the loss of virginity in twenty-two prostitutes, found that ten gave themselves more or less spontaneously to lovers or masters, ten yielded in the expectation of marriage, and two were outraged (_la pubertà_, p. ). the loss of virginity, marro adds, though it may not be the direct cause of prostitution, often leads on to it. "when a door has once been broken in," a prostitute said to him, "it is difficult to keep it closed." in sardinia, as a. mantegazza and ciuffo found, prostitutes are very largely servants from the country who have already been deflowered by men of their own class. this civilizational factor of prostitution, the influence of luxury and excitement and refinement in attracting the girl of the people, as the flame attracts the moth, is indicated by the fact that it is the country-dwellers who chiefly succumb to the fascination. the girls whose adolescent explosive and orgiastic impulses, sometimes increased by a slight congenital lack of nervous balance, have been latent in the dull monotony of country life and heightened by the spectacle of luxury acting on the unrelieved drudgery of town life, find at last their complete gratification in the career of a prostitute. to the town girl, born and bred in the town, this career has not usually much attraction, unless she has been brought up from the first in an environment that predisposes her to adopt it. she is familiar from childhood with the excitements of urban civilization and they do not intoxicate her; she is, moreover, more shrewd to take care of herself than the country girl, and too well acquainted with the real facts of the prostitute's life to be very anxious to adopt her career. beyond this, also, it is probable that the stocks she belongs to possess a native or acquired power of resistance to unbalancing influences which has enabled them to survive in urban life. she has become immune to the poisons of that life.[ ] in all great cities a large proportion, if not the majority, of the inhabitants have usually been born outside the city (in london only about fifty per cent. of heads of households are definitely reported as born in london); and it is not therefore surprising that prostitutes also should often be outsiders. still it remains a significant fact that so typically urban a phenomenon as prostitution should be so largely recruited from the country. this is everywhere the case. merrick enumerates the regions from which came some , prostitutes who passed through millbank prison. middlesex, kent, surrey, essex and devon are the counties that stand at the head, and merrick estimates that the contingent of london from the four counties which make up london was , or one-half of the whole; military towns like colchester and naval ports like plymouth supply many prostitutes to london; ireland furnished many more than scotland, and germany far more than any other european country, france being scarcely represented at all (merrick, _work among the fallen_, , pp. - ). it is, of course, possible that the proportions among those who pass through a prison do not accurately represent the proportions among prostitutes generally. the registers of the london salvation army rescue home show that sixty per cent. of the girls and women come from the provinces (a. sherwell, _life in west london_, ch. v). this is exactly the same proportion as tait found among prostitutes generally, half a century earlier, in edinburgh. sanger found that of prostitutes in new york as many as were born abroad ( in ireland), while of the remaining only half were born in the state of new york, and clearly (though the exact figures are not given) a still smaller proportion in new york city. prostitutes come from the north--where the climate is uncongenial, and manufacturing and sedentary occupations prevail--much more than from the south; thus maine, a cold bleak maritime state, sent twenty-four of these prostitutes to new york, while equidistant virginia, which at the same rate should have sent seventy-two, only sent nine; there was a similar difference between rhode island and maryland (sanger, _history of prostitution_, p. ). it is instructive to see here the influence of a dreary climate and monotonous labor in stimulating the appetite for a "life of pleasure." in france, as shown by a map in parent-duchâtelet's work (vol. i, pp. - , ), if the country is divided into five zones, on the whole running east and west, there is a steady and progressive decrease in the number of prostitutes each zone sends to paris, as we descend southwards. little more than a third seem to belong to paris, and, as in america, it is the serious and hard-working north, with its relatively cold climate, which furnishes the largest contingent; even in old france, dufour remarks (_op. cit._, vol. iv, ch. xv), prostitution, as the _fabliaux_ and _romans_ show, was less infamous in the _langue d'oil_ than in the _langue d'oc_, so that they were doubtless rare in the south. at a later period reuss states (_la prostitution_, p. ) that "nearly all the prostitutes of paris come from the provinces." jeannel found that of one thousand bordeaux prostitutes only forty-six belonged to the city itself, and potton (appendix to parent-duchâtelet, vol. ii, p. ) states that of nearly four thousand lyons prostitutes only belonged to lyons. in vienna, in , schrank remarks that of over prostitutes only were born in vienna. the general rule, it will be seen, though the variations are wide, is that little more than a third of a city's prostitutes are children of the city. it is interesting to note that this tendency of the prostitute to reach cities from afar, this migratory tendency--which they nowadays share with waiters--is no merely modern phenomenon. "there are few cities in lombardy, or france, or gaul," wrote st. boniface nearly twelve centuries ago, "in which there is not an adulteress or prostitute of the english nation," and the saint attributes this to the custom of going on pilgrimage to foreign shrines. at the present time there is no marked english element among continental prostitutes. thus in paris, according to reuss (_la prostitution_, p. ), the foreign prostitutes in decreasing order are belgian, german (alsace-lorraine), swiss (especially geneva), italian, spanish, and only then english. connoisseurs in this matter say, indeed, that the english prostitute, as compared with her continental (and especially french) sister, fails to show to advantage, being usually grasping as regards money and deficient in charm. it is the appeal of civilization, though not of what is finest and best in civilization, which more than any other motive, calls women to the career of a prostitute. it is now necessary to point out that for the man also, the same appeal makes itself felt in the person of the prostitute. the common and ignorant assumption that prostitution exists to satisfy the gross sensuality of the young unmarried man, and that if he is taught to bridle gross sexual impulse or induced to marry early the prostitute must be idle, is altogether incorrect. if all men married when quite young, not only would the remedy be worse than the disease--a point which it would be out of place to discuss here--but the remedy would not cure the disease. the prostitute is something more than a channel to drain off superfluous sexual energy, and her attraction by no means ceases when men are married, for a large number of the men who visit prostitutes, if not the majority, are married. and alike whether they are married or unmarried the motive is not one of uncomplicated lust. in england, a well-informed writer remarks that "the value of marriage as a moral agent is evidenced by the fact that all the better-class prostitutes in london are almost entirely supported by married men," while in germany, as stated in the interesting series of reminiscences by a former prostitute, hedwig hard's _beichte einer gefallenen_, (p. ), the majority of the men who visit prostitutes are married. the estimate is probably excessive. neisser states that only twenty-five per cent. of cases of gonorrhoea occur in married men. this indication is probably misleading in the opposite direction, as the married would be less reckless than the young and unmarried. as regards the motives which lead married men to prostitutes, hedwig hard narrates from her own experiences an incident which is instructive and no doubt typical. in the town in which she lived quietly as a prostitute a man of the best social class was introduced by a friend, and visited her habitually. she had often seen and admired his wife, who was one of the beauties of the place, and had two charming children; husband and wife seemed devoted to each other, and every one envied their happiness. he was a man of intellect and culture who encouraged hedwig's love of books; she became greatly attached to him, and one day ventured to ask him how he could leave his lovely and charming wife to come to one who was not worthy to tie her shoe-lace. "yes, my child," he answered, "but all her beauty and culture brings nothing to my heart. she is cold, cold as ice, proper, and, above all, phlegmatic. pampered and spoilt, she lives only for herself; we are two good comrades, and nothing more. if, for instance, i come back from the club in the evening and go to her bed, perhaps a little excited, she becomes nervous and she thinks it improper to wake her. if i kiss her she defends herself, and tells me that i smell horribly of cigars and wine. and if perhaps i attempt more, she jumps out of bed, bristles up as though i were assaulting her, and threatens to throw herself out of the window if i touch her. so, for the sake of peace, i leave her alone and come to you." there can be no doubt whatever that this is the experience of many married men who would be well content to find the sweetheart as well as the friend in their wives. but the wives, from a variety of causes, have proved incapable of becoming the sexual mates of their husbands. and the husbands, without being carried away by any impulse of strong passion or any desire for infidelity, seek abroad what they cannot find at home. this is not the only reason why married men visit prostitutes. even men who are happily married to women in all chief respects fitted to them, are apt to find, after some years of married life, a mysterious craving for variety. they are not tired of their wives, they have not the least wish or intention to abandon them, they will not, if they can help it, give them the slightest pain. but from time to time they are led by an almost irresistible and involuntary impulse to seek a temporary intimacy with women to whom nothing would persuade them to join themselves permanently. pepys, whose _diary_, in addition to its other claims upon us, is a psychological document of unique importance, furnishes a very characteristic example of this kind of impulse. he had married a young and charming wife, to whom he is greatly attached, and he lives happily with her, save for a few occasional domestic quarrels soon healed by kisses; his love is witnessed by his jealousy, a jealousy which, as he admits, is quite unreasonable, for she is a faithful and devoted wife. yet a few years after marriage, and in the midst of a life of strenuous official activity, pepys cannot resist the temptation to seek the temporary favors of other women, seldom prostitutes, but nearly always women of low social class--shop women, workmen's wives, superior servant-girls. often he is content to invite them to a quiet ale-house, and to take a few trivial liberties. sometimes they absolutely refuse to allow more than this; when that happens he frequently thanks almighty god (as he makes his entry in his _diary_ at night) that he has been saved from temptation and from loss of time and money; in any case, he is apt to vow that it shall never occur again. it always does occur again. pepys is quite sincere with himself; he makes no attempt at justification or excuse; he knows that he has yielded to a temptation; it is an impulse that comes over him at intervals, an impulse that he seems unable long to resist. throughout it all he remains an estimable and diligent official, and in most respects a tolerably virtuous man, with a genuine dislike of loose people and loose talk. the attitude of pepys is brought out with incomparable simplicity and sincerity because he is setting down these things for his own eyes only, but his case is substantially that of a vast number of other men, perhaps indeed of the typical _homme moyen sensuel_ (see pepys, _diary_, ed. wheatley; e.g., vol. iv, passim). there is a third class of married men, less considerable in number but not unimportant, who are impelled to visit prostitutes: the class of sexually perverted men. there are a great many reasons why such men may desire to be married, and in some cases they marry women with whom they find it possible to obtain the particular form of sexual gratification they crave. but in a large proportion of cases this is not possible. the conventionally bred woman often cannot bring herself to humor even some quite innocent fetishistic whim of her husband's, for it is too alien to her feelings and too incomprehensible to her ideas, even though she may be genuinely in love with him; in many cases the husband would not venture to ask, and scarcely even wish, that his wife should lend herself to play the fantastic or possibly degrading part his desires demand. in such a case he turns naturally to the prostitute, the only woman whose business it is to fulfil his peculiar needs. marriage has brought no relief to these men, and they constitute a noteworthy proportion of a prostitute's clients in every great city. the most ordinary prostitute of any experience can supply cases from among her own visitors to illustrate a treatise of psychopathic sexuality. it may suffice here to quote a passage from the confessions of a young london (strand) prostitute as written down from her lips by a friend to whom i am indebted for the document; i have merely turned a few colloquial terms into more technical forms. after describing how, when she was still a child of thirteen in the country, a rich old gentleman would frequently come and exhibit himself before her and other girls, and was eventually arrested and imprisoned, she spoke of the perversities she had met with since she had become a prostitute. she knew a young man, about twenty-five, generally dressed in a sporting style, who always came with a pair of live pigeons, which he brought in a basket. she and the girl with whom she lived had to undress and take the pigeons and wring their necks; he would stand in front of them, and as the necks were wrung orgasm occurred. once a man met her in the street and asked her if he might come with her and lick her boots. she agreed, and he took her to a hotel, paid half a guinea for a room, and, when she sat down, got under the table and licked her boots, which were covered with mud; he did nothing more. then there were some things, she said, that were too dirty to repeat; well, one man came home with her and her friend and made them urinate into his mouth. she also had stories of flagellation, generally of men who whipped the girls, more rarely of men who liked to be whipped by them. one man, who brought a new birch every time, liked to whip her friend until he drew blood. she knew another man who would do nothing but smack her nates violently. now all these things, which come into the ordinary day's work of the prostitute, are rooted in deep and almost irresistible impulses (as will be clear to any reader of the discussion of erotic symbolism in the previous volume of these _studies_). they must find some outlet. but it is only the prostitute who can be relied upon, through her interests and training, to overcome the natural repulsion to such actions, and gratify desires which, without gratification, might take on other and more dangerous forms. although woods hutchinson quotes with approval the declaration of a friend, "out of thousands i have never seen one with good table manners," there is still a real sense in which the prostitute represents, however inadequately, the attraction of civilization. "there was no house in which i could habitually see a lady's face and hear a lady's voice," wrote the novelist anthony trollope in his _autobiography_, concerning his early life in london. "no allurement to decent respectability came in my way. it seems to me that in such circumstances the temptations of loose life will almost certainly prevail with a young man. the temptation at any rate prevailed with me." in every great city, it has been said, there are thousands of men who have no right to call any woman but a barmaid by her christian name.[ ] all the brilliant fever of civilization pulses round them in the streets but their lips never touch it. it is the prostitute who incarnates this fascination of the city, far better than the virginal woman, even if intimacy with her were within reach. the prostitute represents it because she herself feels it, because she has even sacrificed her woman's honor in the effort to identify herself with it. she has unbridled feminine instincts, she is a mistress of the feminine arts of adornment, she can speak to him concerning the mysteries of womanhood and the luxuries of sex with an immediate freedom and knowledge the innocent maiden cloistered in her home would be incapable of. she appeals to him by no means only because she can gratify the lower desires of sex, but also because she is, in her way, an artist, an expert in the art of feminine exploitation, a leader of feminine fashions. for she is this, and there are, as simmel has stated in his _philosophie der mode_, good psychological reasons why she always should be this. her uncertain social position makes all that is conventional and established hateful to her, while her temperament makes perpetual novelty delightful. in new fashions she finds "an æsthetic form of that instinct of destruction which seems peculiar to all pariah existences, in so far as they are not completely enslaved in spirit." "however surprising it may seem to some," a modern writer remarks, "prostitutes must be put on the same level as artists. both use their gifts and talents for the joy and pleasure of others, and, as a rule, for payment. what is the essential difference between a singer who gives pleasure to hearers by her throat and a prostitute who gives pleasure to those who seek her by another part of her body? all art works on the senses." he refers to the significant fact that actors, and especially actresses, were formerly regarded much as prostitutes are now (r. hellmann, _ueber geschlechtsfreiheit_, pp. - ). bernaldo de quirós and llanas aguilaniedo (_la mala vida en madrid_, p. ) trace the same influence still lower in the social scale. they are describing the more squalid kind of _café chantant_, in which, in spain and elsewhere, the most vicious and degenerate feminine creatures become waitresses (and occasionally singers and dancers), playing the part of amiable and distinguished _hetairæ_ to the public of carmen and shop-boys who frequent these resorts. "dressed with what seems to the youth irreproachable taste, with hair elaborately prepared, and clean face adorned with flowers or trinkets, affable and at times haughty, superior in charm and in finery to the other women he is able to know, the waitresses become the most elevated example of the _femme galante_ whom he is able to contemplate and talk to, the courtesan of his sphere." but while to the simple, ignorant, and hungry youth the prostitute appeals as the embodiment of many of the refinements and perversities of civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an attraction of an almost reverse kind. she appeals by her fresh and natural coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. they feel in the words which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used in explaining her incomprehensible influence over him: "she is so splendidly vulgar!" in illustration of this aspect of the appeal of prostitution, i may quote a passage in which the novelist, hermant, in his _confession d'un enfant d'hier_ (lettre vii), has set down the reasons which may lead the super-refined child of a cultured age, yet by no means radically or completely vicious, to find satisfaction in commerce with prostitutes: "as long as my heart was not touched the object of my satisfaction was completely indifferent to me. i was, moreover, a great lover of absolute liberty, which is only possible in the circle of these anonymous creatures and in their reserved dwelling. there everything became permissible. with other women, however low we may seek them, certain convenances must be observed, a kind of protocol. to these one can say everything: one is protected by incognito and assured that nothing will be divulged. i profited by this freedom, which suited my age, but with a perverse fancy which was not characteristic of my years. i scarcely know where i found what i said to them, for it was the opposite of my tastes, which were simple, and, if i may venture to say so, classic. it is true that, in matters of love, unrestrained naturalism always tends to perversion, a fact that can only seem paradoxical at first sight. primitive peoples have many traits in common with degenerates. it was, however, only in words that i was unbridled; and that was the only occasion on which i can recollect seriously lying. but that necessity, which i then experienced, of expelling a lower depth of ignoble instincts, seems to me characteristic and humiliating. i may add that even in the midst of these dissipations i retained a certain reserve. the contacts to which i exposed myself failed to soil me; nothing was left when i had crossed the threshold. i have always retained, from that forcible and indifferent commerce, the habit of attributing no consequence to the action of the flesh. the amorous function, which religion and morality have surrounded with mystery or seasoned with sin, seems to me a function like any other, a little vile, but agreeable, and one to which the usual epilogue is too long.... this kind of companionship only lasted for a short time." this analysis of the attitude of a certain common type of civilized modern man seems to be just, but it may perhaps occur to some readers that a commerce which led to "the action of the flesh" being regarded as of no consequence can scarcely be said to have left no taint. in a somewhat similar manner, henri de régnier, in his novel, _les rencontres de monsieur bréot_ (p. ), represents bercaillé as deliberately preferring to take his pleasures with servant-girls rather than with ladies, for pleasure was, to his mind, a kind of service, which could well be accommodated with the services they are accustomed to give; and then they are robust and agreeable, they possess the _naïveté_ which is always charming in the common people, and they are not apt to be repelled by those little accidents which might offend the fastidious sensibilities of delicately bred ladies. bloch, who has especially emphasized this side of the appeal of prostitution (_das sexualleben unserer zeit_, pp. - ), refers to the delicate and sensitive young danish writer, j.p. jakobsen, who seems to have acutely felt the contrast between the higher and more habitual impulses, and the occasional outburst of what he felt to be lower instincts; in his _niels lyhne_ he describes the kind of double life in which a man is true for a fortnight to the god he worships, and is then overcome by other powers which madly bear him in their grip towards what he feels to be humiliating, perverse, and filthy. "at such moments," bloch remarks, "the man is another being. the 'two souls' in the breast become a reality. is that the famous scholar, the lofty idealist, the fine-souled æsthetician, the artist who has given us so many splendid and pure works in poetry and painting? we no longer recognize him, for at such moments another being has come to the surface, another nature is moving within him, and with the power of an elementary force is impelling him towards things at which his 'upper consciousness,' the civilized man within him, would shudder." bloch believes that we are here concerned with a kind of normal masculine masochism, which prostitution serves to gratify. _iv. the present social attitude towards prostitution._ we have now surveyed the complex fact of prostitution in some of its most various and typical aspects, seeking to realise, intelligently and sympathetically, the fundamental part it plays as an elementary constituent of our marriage system. finally we have to consider the grounds on which prostitution now appears to a large and growing number of persons not only an unsatisfactory method of sexual gratification but a radically bad method. the movement of antagonism towards prostitution manifests itself most conspicuously, as might beforehand have been anticipated, by a feeling of repugnance towards the most ancient and typical, once the most credited and best established prostitutional manifestation, the brothel. the growth of this repugnance is not confined to one or two countries but is international, and may thus be regarded as corresponding to a real tendency in our civilization. it is equally pronounced in prostitutes themselves and in the people who are their clients. the distaste on the one side increases the distaste on the other. since only the most helpless or the most stupid prostitutes are nowadays willing to accept the servitude of the brothel, the brothel-keeper is forced to resort to extraordinary methods for entrapping victims, and even to take part in that cosmopolitan trade in "white slaves" which exists solely to feed brothels.[ ] this state of things has a natural reaction in prejudicing the clients of prostitution against an institution which is going out of fashion and out of credit. an even more fundamental antipathy is engendered by the fact that the brothel fails to respond to the high degree of personal freedom and variety which civilization produces, and always demands even when it fails to produce. on one side the prostitute is disinclined to enter into a slavery which usually fails even to bring her any reward; on the other side her client feels it as part of the fascination of prostitution under civilized conditions that he shall enjoy a freedom and choice the brothel cannot provide.[ ] thus it comes about that brothels which once contained nearly all the women who made it a business to minister to the sexual needs of men, now contain only a decreasing minority, and that the transformation of cloistered prostitution into free prostitution is approved by many social reformers as a gain to the cause of morality.[ ] the decay of brothels, whether as cause or as effect, has been associated with a vast increase of prostitution outside brothels. but the repugnance to brothels in many essential respects also applies to prostitution generally, and, as we shall see, it is exerting a profoundly modifying influence on that prostitution. the changing feeling in regard to prostitution seems to express itself mainly in two ways. on the one hand there are those who, without desiring to abolish prostitution, resent the abnegation which accompanies it, and are disgusted by its sordid aspects. they may have no moral scruples against prostitution, and they know no reason why a woman should not freely do as she will with her own person. but they believe that, if prostitution is necessary, the relationships of men with prostitutes should be humane and agreeable to each party, and not degrading to either. it must be remembered that under the conditions of civilized urban life, the discipline of work is often too severe, and the excitements of urban existence too constant, to render an abandonment to orgy a desirable recreation. the gross form of orgy appeals, not to the town-dweller but to the peasant, and to the sailor or soldier who reaches the town after long periods of dreary routine and emotional abstinence. it is a mistake, even, to suppose that the attraction of prostitution is inevitably associated with the fulfilment of the sexual act. so far is this from being the case that the most attractive prostitute may be a woman who, possessing few sexual needs of her own, desires to please by the charm of her personality; these are among those who most often find good husbands. there are many men who are even well content merely to have a few hours' free intimacy with an agreeable woman, without any further favor, although that may be open to them. for a very large number of men under urban conditions of existence the prostitute is ceasing to be the degraded instrument of a moment's lustful desire; they seek an agreeable human person with whom they may find relaxation from the daily stress or routine of life. when an act of prostitution is thus put on a humane basis, although it by no means thereby becomes conducive to the best development of either party, it at least ceases to be hopelessly degrading. otherwise it would not have been possible for religious prostitution to flourish for so long in ancient days among honorable women of good birth on the shores of the mediterranean, even in regions like lydia, where the position of women was peculiarly high.[ ] it is true that the monetary side of prostitution would still exist. but it is possible to exaggerate its importance. it must be pointed out that, though it is usual to speak of the prostitute as a woman who "sells herself," this is rather a crude and inexact way of expressing, in its typical form, the relationship of a prostitute to her client. a prostitute is not a commodity with a market-price, like a loaf or a leg of mutton. she is much more on a level with people belonging to the professional classes, who accept fees in return for services rendered; the amount of the fee varies, on the one hand in accordance with professional standing, on the other hand in accordance with the client's means, and under special circumstances may be graciously dispensed with altogether. prostitution places on a venal basis intimate relationships which ought to spring up from natural love, and in so doing degrades them. but strictly speaking there is in such a case no "sale." to speak of a prostitute "selling herself" is scarcely even a pardonable rhetorical exaggeration; it is both inexact and unjust.[ ] this tendency in an advanced civilization towards the humanization of prostitution is the reverse process, we may note, to that which takes place at an earlier stage of civilization when the ancient conception of the religious dignity of prostitution begins to fall into disrepute. when men cease to reverence women who are prostitutes in the service of a goddess they set up in their place prostitutes who are merely abject slaves, flattering themselves that they are thereby working in the cause of "progress" and "morality." on the shores of the mediterranean this process took place more than two thousand years ago, and is associated with the name of solon. to-day we may see the same process going on in india. in some parts of india (as at jejuri, near poonah) first born girls are dedicated to khandoba or other gods; they are married to the god and termed _muralis_. they serve in the temple, sweep it, and wash the holy vessels, also they dance, sing and prostitute themselves. they are forbidden to marry, and they live in the homes of their parents, brothers, or sisters; being consecrated to religious service, they are untouched by degradation. nowadays, however, indian "reformers," in the name of "civilization and science," seek to persuade the _muralis_ that they are "plunged in a career of degradation." no doubt in time the would-be moralists will drive the _muralis_ out of their temples and their homes, deprive them of all self-respect, and convert them into wretched outcasts, all in the cause of "science and civilization" (see, e.g., an article by mrs. kashibai deodhar, _the new reformer_, october, ). so it is that early reformers create for the reformers of a later day the task of humanizing prostitution afresh. there can be no doubt that this more humane conception of prostitution is to-day beginning to be realized in the actual civilized life of europe. thus in writing of prostitution in paris, dr. robert michels ("erotische streifzüge," _mutterschutz_, , heft , p. ) remarks: "while in germany the prostitute is generally considered as an 'outcast' creature, and treated accordingly, an instrument of masculine lust to be used and thrown away, and whom one would under no circumstances recognize in public, in france the prostitute plays in many respects the part which once give significance and fame to the _hetairæ_ of athens." and after describing the consideration and respect which the parisian prostitute is often able to require of her friends, and the non-sexual relation of comradeship which she can enter into with other men, the writer continues: "a girl who certainly yields herself for money, but by no means for the first comer's money, and who, in addition to her 'business friends,' feels the need of, so to say, non-sexual companions with whom she can associate in a free comrade-like way, and by whom she is treated and valued as a free human being, is not wholly lost for the moral worth of humanity." all prostitution is bad, michels concludes, but we should have reason to congratulate ourselves if love-relationships of this parisian species represented the lowest known form of extra-conjugal sexuality. (as bearing on the relative consideration accorded to prostitutes i may mention that a paris prostitute remarked to a friend of mine that englishmen would ask her questions which no frenchman would venture to ask.) it is not, however, only in paris, although here more markedly and prominently, that this humanizing change in prostitution is beginning to make itself felt. it is manifested, for instance, in the greater openness of a man's sexual life. "while he formerly slinked into a brothel in a remote street," dr. willy hellpach remarks (_nervosität und kultur_, p. ), "he now walks abroad with his 'liaison,' visiting the theatres and cafés, without indeed any anxiety to meet his acquaintances, but with no embarrassment on that point. the thing is becoming more commonplace, more--natural." it is also, hellpach proceeds to point out, thus becoming more moral also, and much unwholesome prudery and pruriency is being done away with. in england, where change is slow, this tendency to the humanization of prostitution may be less pronounced. but it certainly exists. in the middle of the last century lecky wrote (_history of european morals_, vol. ii, p. ) that habitual prostitution "is in no other european country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable." that statement, which was also made by parent-duchâtelet and other foreign observers, is fully confirmed by the evidence on record. but it is a statement which would hardly be made to-day, except perhaps, in reference to special confined areas of our cities. it is the same in america, and we may doubtless find this tendency reflected in the report on _the social evil_ ( ), drawn up by a committee in new york, who gave it (p. ) as one of their chief recommendations that prostitution should no longer be regarded as a crime, in which light, one gathers, it had formerly been regarded in new york. that may seem but a small step in the path of humanization, but it is in the right direction. it is by no means only in lands of european civilization that we may trace with developing culture the refinement and humanization of the slighter bonds of relationship with women. in japan exactly the same demands led, several centuries ago, to the appearance of the geisha. in the course of an interesting and precise study of the geisha mr. r.t. farrer remarks (_nineteenth century_, april, ): "the geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan. she is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of japanese literature; practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine. from her earliest youth she is broken into an inviolable charm of manner incomprehensible to the finest european, yet she is almost invariably a blossom of the lower classes, with dumpy claws, and squat, ugly nails. her education, physical and moral, is far harder than that of the _ballerina_, and her success is achieved only after years of struggle and a bitter agony of torture.... and the geisha's social position may be compared with that of the european actress. the geisha-house offers prizes as desirable as any of the western stage. a great geisha with twenty nobles sitting round her, contending for her laughter, and kept in constant check by the flashing bodkin of her wit, holds a position no less high and famous than that of sarah bernhardt in her prime. she is equally sought, equally flattered, quite as madly adored, that quiet little elderly plain girl in dull blue. but she is prized thus primarily for her tongue, whose power only ripens fully as her physical charms decline. she demands vast sums for her owners, and even so often appears and dances only at her own pleasure. few, if any, westerners ever see a really famous geisha. she is too great to come before a european, except for an august or imperial command. finally she may, and frequently does, marry into exalted places. in all this there is not the slightest necessity for any illicit relation." in some respects the position of the ancient greek _hetaira_ was more analogous to that of the japanese _geisha_ than to that of the prostitute in the strict sense. for the greeks, indeed, the _hetaira_, was not strictly a _porne_ or prostitute at all. the name meant friend or companion, and the woman to whom the name was applied held an honorable position, which could not be accorded to the mere prostitute. athenæus (bk. xiii, chs. xxviii-xxx) brings together passages showing that the _hetaira_ could be regarded as an independent citizen, pure, simple, and virtuous, altogether distinct from the common crew of prostitutes, though these might ape her name. the _hetairæ_ "were almost the only greek women," says donaldson (_woman_, p. ), "who exhibited what was best and noblest in women's nature." this fact renders it more intelligible why a woman of such intellectual distinction as aspasia should have been a _hetaira_. there seems little doubt as to her intellectual distinction. "Æschines, in his dialogue entitled 'aspasia,'" writes gomperz, the historian of greek philosophy (_greek thinkers_, vol. iii, pp. and ), "puts in the mouth of that distinguished woman an incisive criticism of the mode of life traditional for her sex. it would be exceedingly strange," gomperz adds, in arguing that an inference may thus be drawn concerning the historical aspasia, "if three authors--plato, xenophon and Æschines--had agreed in fictitiously enduing the companion of pericles with what we might very reasonably have expected her to possess--a highly cultivated mind and intellectual influence." it is even possible that the movement for woman's right which, as we dimly divine through the pages of aristophanes, took place in athens in the fourth century b.c., was led by _hetairæ_. according to ivo bruns (_frauenemancipation in athen_, , p. ) "the most certain information which we possess concerning aspasia bears a strong resemblance to the picture which euripides and aristophanes present to us of the leaders of the woman movement." it was the existence of this movement which made plato's ideas on the community of women appear far less absurd than they do to us. it may perhaps be thought by some that this movement represented on a higher plane that love of distruction, or, as we should better say, that spirit of revolt and aspiration, which simmel finds to mark the intellectual and artistic activity of those who are unclassed or dubiously classed in the social hierarchy. ninon de lenclos, as we have seen, was not strictly a courtesan, but she was a pioneer in the assertion of woman's rights. aphra behn who, a little later in england, occupied a similarly dubious social position, was likewise a pioneer in generous humanitarian aspirations, which have since been adopted in the world at large. these refinements of prostitution may be said to be chiefly the outcome of the late and more developed stages in civilization. as schurtz has put it (_altersklassen und männerbünde_, p. ): "the cheerful, skilful and artistically accomplished _hetaira_ frequently stands as an ideal figure in opposition to the intellectually uncultivated wife banished to the interior of the house. the courtesan of the italian renaissance, japanese geishas, chinese flower-girls, and indian bayaderas, all show some not unnoble features, the breath of a free artistic existence. they have achieved--with, it is true, the sacrifice of their highest worth--an independence from the oppressive rule of man and of household duties, and a part of the feminine endowment which is so often crippled comes in them to brilliant development. prostitution in its best form may thus offer a path by which these feminine characteristics may exert a certain influence on the development of civilization. we may also believe that the artistic activity of women is in some measure able to offer a counterpoise to the otherwise less pleasant results of sexual abandonment, preventing the coarsening and destruction of the emotional life; in his _magda_ sudermann has described a type of woman who, from the standpoint of strict morality, is open to condemnation, but in her art finds a foothold, the strength of which even ill-will must unwillingly recognize." in his _sex and character_, weininger has developed in a more extreme and extravagant manner the conception of the prostitute as a fundamental and essential part of life, a permanent feminine type. there are others, apparently in increasing numbers, who approach the problem of prostitution not from an æsthetic standpoint but from a moral standpoint. this moral attitude is not, however, that conventionalized morality of cato and st. augustine and lecky, set forth in previous pages, according to which the prostitute in the street must be accepted as the guardian of the wife in the home. these moralists reject indeed the claim of that belief to be considered moral at all. they hold that it is not morally possible that the honor of some women shall be purchaseable at the price of the dishonor of other women, because at such a price virtue loses all moral worth. when they read that, as goncourt stated, "the most luxurious articles of women's _trousseaux_, the bridal chemises of girls with dowries of six hundred thousand francs, are made in the prison of clairvaux,"[ ] they see the symbol of the intimate dependence of our luxurious virtue on our squalid vice. and while they accept the historical and sociological evidence which shows that prostitution is an inevitable part of the marriage system which still survives among us, they ask whether it is not possible so to modify our marriage system that it shall not be necessary to divide feminine humanity into "disreputable" women, who make sacrifices which it is dishonorable to make, and "respectable" women, who take sacrifices which it cannot be less dishonorable to accept. prostitutes, a distinguished man of science has said (duclaux, _l'hygiène sociale_, p. ), "have become things which the public uses when it wants them, and throws on the dungheap when it has made them vile. in its pharisaism it even has the insolence to treat their trade as shameful, as though it were not just as shameful to buy as to sell in this market." bloch (_sexualleben unserer zeit_, ch. xv) insists that prostitution must be ennobled, and that only so can it be even diminished. isidore dyer, of new orleans, also argues that we cannot check prostitution unless we create "in the minds of men and women a spirit of tolerance instead of intolerance of fallen women." this point may be illustrated by a remark by the prostitute author of the _tagebuch einer verlorenen_. "if the profession of yielding the body ceased to be a shameful one," she wrote, "the army of 'unfortunates' would diminish by four-fifths--i will even say nine-tenths. myself, for example! how gladly would i take a situation as companion or governess!" "one of two things," wrote the eminent sociologist tarde ("la morale sexuelle," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, january, ), "either prostitution will disappear through continuing to be dishonorable and will be replaced by some other institution which will better remedy the defects of monogamous marriage, or it will survive by becoming respectable, that is to say, by making itself respected, whether liked or disliked." tarde thought this might perhaps come about by a better organization of prostitutes, a more careful selection among those who desired admission to their ranks and the cultivation of professional virtues which would raise their moral level. "if courtesans fulfil a need," balzac had already said in his _physiologie du mariage_, "they must become an institution." this moral attitude is supported and enforced by the inevitable democratic tendency of civilization which, although it by no means destroys the idea of class, undermines that idea as the mark of fundamental human distinctions and renders it superficial. prostitution no longer makes a woman a slave; it ought not to make her even a pariah: "my body is my own," said the young german prostitute of to-day, "and what i do with it is nobody else's concern." when the prostitute was literally a slave moral duty towards her was by no means necessarily identical with moral duty towards the free woman. but when, even in the same family, the prostitute may be separated by a great and impassable social gulf from her married sister, it becomes possible to see, and in the opinion of many imperatively necessary to see, that a readjustment of moral values is required. for thousands of years prostitution has been defended on the ground that the prostitute is necessary to ensure the "purity of women." in a democratic age it begins to be realized that prostitutes also are women. the developing sense of a fundamental human equality underlying the surface divisions of class tends to make the usual attitude towards the prostitute, the attitude of her clients even more than that of society generally, seem painfully cruel. the callous and coarsely frivolous tone of so many young men about prostitutes, it has been said, is "simply cruelty of a peculiarly brutal kind," not to be discerned in any other relation of life.[ ] and if this attitude is cruel even in speech it is still more cruel in action, whatever attempts may be made to disguise its cruelty. canon lyttelton's remarks may be taken to refer chiefly to young men of the upper middle class. concerning what is perhaps the usual attitude of lower middle class people towards prostitution, i may quote from a remarkable communication which has reached me from australia: "what are the views of a young man brought up in a middle-class christian english family on prostitutes? take my father, for instance. he first mentioned prostitutes to me, if i remember rightly, when speaking of his life before marriage. and he spoke of them as he would speak of a horse he had hired, paid for, and dismissed from his mind when it had rendered him service. although my mother was so kind and good she spoke of abandoned women with disgust and scorn as of some unclean animal. as it flatters vanity and pride to be able with good countenance and universal consent to look down on something, i soon grasped the situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that of most middle-class christian englishmen towards prostitutes. but as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with the wish to make use of this scum, these moral lepers. the ordinary young man, who likes a spice of immorality and has it when in town, and thinks it is not likely to come to his mother's or sisters' ears, does not get over his arrogance and disgust or abate them in the least. he takes them with him, more or less disguised, to the brothel, and they color his thoughts and actions all the time he is sleeping with prostitutes, or kissing them, or passing his hands over them, as he would over a mare, getting as much as he can for his money. to tell the truth, on the whole, that was my attitude too. but if anyone had asked me for the smallest reason for this attitude, for this feeling of superiority, pride, _hauteur_, and prejudice, i should, like any other 'respectable' young man, have been entirely at a loss, and could only have gaped foolishly." from the modern moral standpoint which now concerns us, not only is the cruelty involved in the dishonor of the prostitute absurd, but not less absurd, and often not less cruel, seems the honor bestowed on the respectable women on the other side of the social gulf. it is well recognized that men sometimes go to prostitutes to gratify the excitement aroused by fondling their betrothed.[ ] as the emotional and physical results of ungratified excitement are not infrequently more serious in women than in men, the betrothed women in these cases are equally justified in seeking relief from other men, and the vicious circle of absurdity might thus be completed. from the point of view of the modern moralist there is another consideration which was altogether overlooked in the conventional and traditional morality we have inherited, and was indeed practically non-existent in the ancient days when that morality was still a living reality. women are no longer divided only into the two groups of wives who are to be honored, and prostitutes who are the dishonored guardians of that honor; there is a large third class of women who are neither wives nor prostitutes. for this group of the unmarried virtuous the traditional morality had no place at all; it simply ignored them. but the new moralist, who is learning to recognize both the claims of the individual and the claims of society, begins to ask whether on the one hand these women are not entitled to the satisfaction of their affectional and emotional impulses if they so desire, and on the other hand whether, since a high civilization involves a diminished birthrate, the community is not entitled to encourage every healthy and able-bodied woman to contribute to maintain the birthrate when she so desires. all the considerations briefly indicated in the preceding pages--the fundamental sense of human equality generated by our civilization, the repugnance to cruelty which accompanies the refinement of urban life, the ugly contrast of extremes which shock our developing democratic tendencies, the growing sense of the rights of the individual to authority over his own person, the no less strongly emphasized right of the community to the best that the individual can yield--all these considerations are every day more strongly influencing the modern moralist to assume towards the prostitute an attitude altogether different from that of the morality which we derived from cato and augustine. he sees the question in a larger and more dynamic manner. instead of declaring that it is well worth while to tolerate and at the same time to condemn the prostitute, in order to preserve the sanctity of the wife in her home, he is not only more inclined to regard each as the proper guardian of her own moral freedom, but he is less certain about the time-honored position of the prostitute, and moreover, by no means sure that the wife in the home may not be fully as much in need of rescuing as the prostitute in the street; he is prepared to consider whether reform in this matter is not most likely to take place in the shape of a fairer apportionment of sexual privileges and sexual duties to women generally, with an inevitably resultant elevation in the sexual lives of men also. the revolt of many serious reformers against the injustice and degradation now involved by our system of prostitution is so profound that some have declared themselves ready to accept any revolution of ideas which would bring about a more wholesome transmutation of moral values. "better indeed were a saturnalia of _free_ men and women," exclaims edward carpenter (_love's coming of age_, p. ), "than the spectacle which, as it is, our great cities present at night." even those who would be quite content with as conservative a treatment as possible of social institutions still cannot fail to realize that prostitution is unsatisfactory, unless we are content to make very humble claims of the sexual act. "the act of prostitution," godfrey declares (_the science of sex_, p. ), "may be physiologically complete, but it is complete in no other sense. all the moral and intellectual factors which combine with physical desire to form the perfect sexual attraction are absent. all the higher elements of love--admiration, respect, honor, and self-sacrificing devotion--are as foreign to prostitution as to the egoistic act of masturbation. the principal drawbacks to the morality of the act lie in its associations more than in the act itself. any affectional quality which a more or less promiscuous connection might possess is at once destroyed by the intrusion of the monetary element. in the resulting degradation the woman has the largest share, since it makes her a pariah and involves her in all the hardening and depraving influences of social ostracism. but her degradation only serves to render her influence on her partners more demoralizing. prostitution," he concludes, "has a strong tendency towards emphasizing the naturally selfish attitude of men towards women, and encouraging them in the delusion, born of unregulated passions, that the sexual act itself is the aim and end of the sex life. prostitution can therefore make no claim to afford even a temporary solution to the sex problem. it fulfils only that mission which has made it a 'necessary evil'--the mission of palliative to the physical rigors of celibacy and monogamy. it does so at the cost of a considerable amount of physical and moral deterioration, much of which is undoubtedly due to the action of society in completing the degradation of the prostitute by persistent ostracism. prostitution was not so great an evil when it was not thought so great, yet even at its best it was a real evil, a melancholy and sordid travesty of sincere and natural passional relations. it is an evil which we are bound to have with us so long as celibacy is a custom and monogamy a law." it is the wife as well as the prostitute who is degraded by a system which makes venal love possible. "the time has gone past," the same writer remarks elsewhere (p. ) "when a mere ceremony can really sanctify what is base and transform lust and greed into the sincerity of sexual affection. if, to enter into sexual connections with a man for a solely material end is a disgrace to humanity, it is a disgrace under the marriage bond just as much as apart from the hypocritical blessing of the church or the law. if the public prostitute is a being who deserves to be treated as a pariah, it is hopelessly irrational to withhold every sort of moral opprobrium from the woman who leads a similar life under a different set of external circumstances. either the prostitute wife must come under the moral ban, or there must be an end to the complete ostracism under which the prostitute labors." the thinker who more clearly and fundamentally than others, and first of all, realized the dynamical relationships of prostitution, as dependent upon a change in the other social relationships of life, was james hinton. more than thirty years ago, in fragmentary writings that still remain unpublished, since he never worked them into an orderly form, hinton gave vigorous and often passionate expression to this fundamental idea. it may be worth while to quote a few brief passages from hinton's mss.: "i feel that the laws of force should hold also amid the waves of human passion, that the relations of mechanics are true, and will rule also in human life.... there is a tension, a crushing of the soul, by our modern life, and it is ready for a sudden spring to a different order in which the forces shall rearrange themselves. it is a dynamical question presented in moral terms.... keeping a portion of the woman population without prospect of marriage means having prostitutes, that is women as instruments of man's mere sensuality, and this means the killing, in many of them, of all pure love or capacity of it. this is the fact we have to face.... to-day i saw a young woman whose life was being consumed by her want of love, a case of threatened utter misery: now see the price at which we purchase her ill-health; for her ill-health we pay the crushing of another girl into hell. we give that for it; her wretchedness of soul and body are bought by prostitution; we have prostitutes made for that.... we devote some women recklessly to perdition to make a hothouse heaven for the rest.... one wears herself out in vainly trying to endure pleasures she is not strong enough to enjoy, while other women are perishing for lack of these very pleasures. if marriage is this, is it not embodied lust? the happy christian homes are the true dark places of the earth.... prostitution for man, restraint for woman--they are two sides of the same thing, and both are denials of love, like luxury and asceticism. the mountains of restraint must be used to fill up the abysses of luxury." some of hinton's views were set forth by a writer intimately acquainted with him in a pamphlet entitled _the future of marriage: an eirenicon for a question of to-day_, by a respectable woman ( ). "when once the conviction is forced home upon the 'good' women," the writer remarks, "that their place of honor and privilege rests upon the degradation of others as its basis, they will never rest till they have either abandoned it or sought for it some other pedestal. if our inflexible marriage system has for its essential condition the existence side by side with it of prostitution, then one of two things follows: either prostitution must be shown to be compatible with the well-being, moral and physical, of the women who practice it, or our marriage system must be condemned. if it was clearly put before anyone, he could not seriously assert that to be 'virtue' which could only be practiced at the expense of another's vice.... whilst the laws of physics are becoming so universally recognized that no one dreams of attempting to annihilate a particle of matter, or of force, yet we do not instinctively apply the same conception to moral forces, but think and act as if we could simply do away with an evil, while leaving unchanged that which gives it its strength. this is the only view of the social problem which can give us hope. that prostitution should simply cease, leaving everything else as it is, would be disastrous if it were possible. but it is not possible. the weakness of all existing efforts to put down prostitution is that they are directed against it as an isolated thing, whereas it is only one of the symptoms proceeding from a common disease." ellen key, who during recent years has been the chief apostle of a gospel of sexual morality based on the needs of women as the mothers of the race, has, in a somewhat similar spirit, denounced alike prostitution and rigid marriage, declaring (in her _essays on love and marriage_) that "the development of erotic personal consciousness is as much hindered by socially regulated 'morality' as by socially regulated 'immorality,'" and that "the two lowest and socially sanctioned expressions of sexual dualism, rigid marriage and prostitution, will gradually become impossible, because with the conquest of the idea of erotic unity they will no longer correspond to human needs." we may sum up the present situation as regards prostitution by saying that on the one hand there is a tendency for its elevation, in association with the growing humanity and refinement of civilization, characteristics which must inevitably tend to mark more and more both those women who become prostitutes and those men who seek them; on the other hand, but perhaps through the same dynamic force, there is a tendency towards the slow elimination of prostitution by the successful competition of higher and purer methods of sexual relationship freed from pecuniary considerations. this refinement and humanization, this competition by better forms of sexual love, are indeed an essential part of progress as civilization becomes more truly sound, wholesome, and sincere. this moral change cannot, it seems probable, fail to be accompanied by the realization that the facts of human life are more important than the forms. for all changes from lower to higher social forms, from savagery to civilization, are accompanied--in so far as they are vital changes--by a slow and painful groping towards the truth that it is only in natural relations that sanity and sanctity can be found, for, as nietzsche said, the "return" to nature should rather be called the "ascent." only so can we achieve the final elimination from our hearts of that clinging tradition that there is any impurity or dishonor in acts of love for which the reasonable, and not merely the conventional, conditions have been fulfilled. for it is vain to attempt to cleanse our laws, or even our by-laws, until we have first cleansed our hearts. it would be out of place here to push further the statement of the moral question as it is to-day beginning to shape itself in the sphere of sex. in a psychological discussion we are only concerned to set down the actual attitude of the moralist, and of civilization. the practical outcome of that attitude must be left to moralists and sociologists and the community generally to work out. our inquiry has also, it may be hoped, incidentally tended to show that in practically dealing with the question of prostitution it is pre-eminently necessary to remember the warning which, as regards many other social problems, has been embodied by herbert spencer in his famous illustration of the bent iron plate. in trying to make the bent plate smooth, it is useless, spencer pointed out, to hammer directly on the buckled up part; if we do so we merely find that we have made matters worse; our hammering, to be effective, must be around, and not directly on, the offensive elevation we wish to reduce; only so can the iron plate be hammered smooth.[ ] but this elementary law has not been understood by moralists. the plain, practical, common-sense reformer, as he fancied himself to be--from the time of charlemagne onwards--has over and over again brought his heavy fist directly down on to the evil of prostitution and has always made matters worse. it is only by wisely working outside and around the evil that we can hope to lessen it effectually. by aiming to develop and raise the relationships of men to women, and of women to women, by modifying our notions of sexual relationships, and by introducing a saner and truer conception of womanhood and of the responsibilities of women as well as of men, by attaining, socially as well as economically, a higher level of human living--it is only by such methods as these that we can reasonably expect to see any diminution and alleviation of the evil of prostitution. so long as we are incapable of such methods we must be content with the prostitution we deserve, learning to treat it with the pity, and the respect, which so intimate a failure of our civilization is entitled to. footnotes: [ ] see, e.g., cheetham's hulsean lectures, _the mysteries, pagan and christian_, pp. , . [ ] hormayr's _taschenbuch_, , p. . hagelstange, in a chapter on mediæval festivals in his _süddeutsches bauernleben im mittelalter_, shows how, in these christian orgies which were really of pagan origin, the german people reacted with tremendous and boisterous energy against the laborious and monotonous existence of everyday life. [ ] this was clearly realized by the more intelligent upholders of the feast of fools. austere persons wished to abolish this feast, and in a remarkable petition sent up to the theological faculty of paris (and quoted by flogel, _geschichte des grotesk-komischen_, fourth edition, p. ) the case for the feast is thus presented: "we do this according to ancient custom, in order that folly, which is second nature to man and seems to be inborn, may at least once a year have free outlet. wine casks would burst if we failed sometimes to remove the bung and let in air. now we are all ill-bound casks and barrels which would let out the wine of wisdom if by constant devotion and fear of god we allowed it to ferment. we must let in air so that it may not be spoilt. thus on some days we give ourselves up to sport, so that with the greater zeal we may afterwards return to the worship of god." the feast of fools was not suppressed until the middle of the sixteenth century, and relics of it persisted (as at aix) till near the end of the eighteenth century. [ ] a méray, _la vie au temps des libres prêcheurs_, vol. ii, ch. x. a good and scholarly account of the feast of fools is given by e.k. chambers, _the mediæval stage_, ch. xiii. it is true that the church and the early fathers often anathematized the theatre. but gregory of nazianzen wished to found a christian theatre; the mediæval mysteries were certainly under the protection of the clergy; and st. thomas aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen, only condemns the theatre with cautious qualifications. [ ] spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, ch. xii. [ ] _journal anthropological institute_, july-dec., , p. . [ ] westermarck (_origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, pp. - ) shows how widespread is the custom of setting apart a periodical rest day. [ ] a.e. crawley, _the mystic rose_, pp. et seq., crawley brings into association with this function of great festivals the custom, found in some parts of the world, of exchanging wives at these times. "it has nothing whatever to do with the marriage system, except as breaking it for a season, women of forbidden degree being lent, on the same grounds as conventions and ordinary relations are broken at festivals of the saturnalia type, the object being to change life and start afresh, by exchanging every thing one can, while the very act of exchange coincides with the other desire, to weld the community together" (ib., p. ). [ ] see "the analysis of the sexual impulse" in vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] g. murray, _ancient greek literature_, p. . [ ] the greek drama probably arose out of a folk-festival of more or less sexual character, and it is even possible that the mediæval drama had a somewhat similar origin (see donaldson, _the greek theatre_; gilbert murray, loc. cit.; karl pearson, _the chances of death_, vol. ii, pp. - , et seq.). [ ] r. canudo, "les chorèges français," _mercure de france_, may , , p. . [ ] "this is, in fact," cyples declares (_the process of human experience_, p. ), "art's great function--to rehearse within us greater egoistic possibilities, to habituate us to larger actualizations of personality in a rudimentary manner," and so to arouse, "aimlessly but splendidly, the sheer as yet unfulfilled possibilities within us." [ ] even when monotonous labor is intellectual, it is not thereby protected against degrading orgiastic reactions. prof. l. gurlitt shows (_die neue generation_, january, , pp. - ) how the strenuous, unremitting intellectual work of prussian seminaries leads among both teachers and scholars to the worst forms of the orgy. [ ] rabutaux discusses various definitions of prostitution, _de la prostitution en europe_, pp. et seq. for the origin of the names to designate the prostitute, see schrader, _reallexicon_, art. "beischläferin." [ ] _digest_, lib. xxiii, tit. ii, p. . if she only gave herself to one or two persons, though for money, it was not prostitution. [ ] guyot, _la prostitution_, p. . the element of venality is essential, and religious writers (like robert wardlaw, d.d., of edinburgh, in his _lectures on female prostitution_, , p. ) who define prostitution as "the illicit intercourse of the sexes," and synonymous with theological "fornication," fall into an absurd confusion. [ ] "such marriages are sometimes stigmatized as 'legalized prostitution,'" remarks sidgwick (_methods of ethics_, bk. iii, ch. xi), "but the phrase is felt to be extravagant and paradoxical." [ ] bonger, _criminalité et conditions economiques_, p. . bonger believes that the act of prostitution is "intrinsically equal to that of a man or woman who contracts a marriage for economical reasons." [ ] e. richard, _la prostitution à paris_, , p. . it may be questioned whether publicity or notoriety should form an essential part of the definition; it seems, however, to be involved, or the prostitute cannot obtain clients. reuss states that she must, in addition, be absolutely without means of subsistence; that is certainly not essential. nor is it necessary, as the _digest_ insisted, that the act should be performed "without pleasure;" that may be as it will, without affecting the prostitutional nature of the act. [ ] hawkesworth, _account of the voyages_, etc., , vol. ii, p. . [ ] r.w. codrington, _the melanesians_, p. . [ ] f.s. krauss, _romanische forschungen_, , p. . [ ] h. schurtz, _altersklassen und männerbünde_, , p. . in this work schurtz brings together (pp. - ) some examples of the germs of prostitution among primitive peoples. many facts and references are given by westermarck (_history of human marriage_, pp. et seq., and _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._). [ ] bachofen (more especially in his _mutterrecht_ and _sage von tanaquil_) argued that even religious prostitution sprang from the resistance of primitive instincts to the individualization of love. cf. robertson smith, _religion of semites_, second edition, p. . [ ] whatever the reason may be, there can be no doubt that there is a widespread tendency for religion and prostitution to be associated; it is possibly to some extent a special case of that general connection between the religious and sexual impulses which has been discussed elsewhere (appendix c to vol. i of these _studies_). thus a.b. ellis, in his book on _the ewe-speaking peoples of west africa_ (pp. , ) states that here women dedicated to a god become promiscuous prostitutes. w.g. sumner (_folkways_, ch. xvi) brings together many facts concerning the wide distribution of religious prostitution. [ ] herodotus, bk. i, ch. cxcix; baruch, ch. vi, p. . modern scholars confirm the statements of herodotus from the study of babylonian literature, though inclined to deny that religious prostitution occupied so large a place as he gives it. a tablet of the gilgamash epic, according to morris jastrow, refers to prostitutes as attendants of the goddess ishtar in the city uruk (or erech), which was thus a centre, and perhaps the chief centre, of the rites described by herodotus (morris jastrow, _the religion of babylonia and assyria_, , p. ). ishtar was the goddess of fertility, the great mother goddess, and the prostitutes were priestesses, attached to her worship, who took part in ceremonies intended to symbolize fertility. these priestesses of ishtar were known by the general name kadishtu, "the holy ones" (op. cit., pp. , ). [ ] it is usual among modern writers to associate aphrodite pandemos, rather than ourania, with venal or promiscuous sexuality, but this is a complete mistake, for the aphrodite pandemos was purely political and had no sexual significance. the mistake was introduced, perhaps intentionally, by plato. it has been suggested that that arch-juggler, who disliked democratic ideas, purposely sought to pervert and vulgarize the conception of aphrodite pandemos (farnell, _cults of greek states_, vol. ii, p. ). [ ] athenæus, bk. xiii, cap. xxxii. it appears that the only other hellenic community where the temple cult involved unchastity was a city of the locri epizephyrii (farnell, op. cit., vol. ii, p. ). [ ] i do not say an earlier "promiscuity," for the theory of a primitive sexual promiscuity is now widely discredited, though there can be no reasonable doubt that the early prevalence of mother-right was more favorable to the sexual freedom of women than the later patriarchal system. thus in very early egyptian days a woman could give her favors to any man she chose by sending him her garment, even if she were married. in time the growth of the rights of men led to this being regarded as criminal, but the priestesses of amen retained the privilege to the last, as being under divine protection (flinders petrie, _egyptian tales_, pp. , ). [ ] it should be added that farnell ("the position of women in ancient religion," _archiv für religionswissenschaft_, , p. ) seeks to explain the religious prostitution of babylonia as a special religious modification of the custom of destroying virginity before marriage in order to safeguard the husband from the mystic dangers of defloration. e.s. hartland, also ("concerning the rite at the temple of mylitta," _anthropological essays presented to e.b. tyler_, p. ), suggests that this was a puberty rite connected with ceremonial defloration. this theory is not, however, generally accepted by semitic scholars. [ ] the girls of this tribe, who are remarkably pretty, after spending two or three years in thus amassing a little dowry, return home to marry, and are said to make model wives and mothers. they are described by bertherand in parent-duchâtelet, _la prostitution à paris_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] in abyssinia (according to fiaschi, _british medical journal_, march , ), where prostitution has always been held in high esteem, the prostitutes, who are now subject to medical examination twice a week, still attach no disgrace to their profession, and easily find husbands afterwards. potter (_sohrab and rustem_, pp. et seq.) gives references as regards peoples, widely dispersed in the old world and the new, among whom the young women have practiced prostitution to obtain a dowry. [ ] at tralles, in lydia, even in the second century a.d., as sir w.m. ramsay notes (_cities of phrygia_, vol. i, pp. , ), sacred prostitution was still an honorable practice for women of good birth who "felt themselves called upon to live the divine life under the influence of divine inspiration." [ ] the gradual secularization of prostitution from its earlier religious form has been traced by various writers (see, e.g., dupouey, _la prostitution dans l'antiquité_). the earliest complimentary reference to the _hetaira_ in literature is to be found, according to benecke (_antimachus of colophon_, p. ), in bacchylides. [ ] cicero, _oratio prô coelio_, cap. xx. [ ] pierre dufour, _histoire de la prostitution_, vol. ii, chs. xix-xx. the real author of this well-known history of prostitution, which, though not scholarly in its methods, brings together a great mass of interesting information, is said to be paul lacroix. [ ] rabutaux, in his _histoire de la prostitution en europe_, describes many attempts to suppress prostitution; cf. dufour, _op. cit._, vol. iii. [ ] dufour, op. cit., vol. vi, ch. xli. it was in the reign of the homosexual henry iii that the tolerance of brothels was established. [ ] in the eighteenth century, especially, houses of prostitution in paris attained to an astonishing degree of elaboration and prosperity. owing to the constant watchful attention of the police a vast amount of detailed information concerning these establishments was accumulated, and during recent years much of it has been published. a summary of this literature will be found in dühren's _neue forshungen über den marquis de sade und seine zeit_, , pp. et seq. [ ] rabutaux, op. cit., p. . [ ] calza has written the history of venetian prostitution; and some of the documents he found have been reproduced by mantegazza, _gli amori degli uomimi_, cap. xiv. at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a comparatively late period, coryat visited venice, and in his _crudities_ gives a full and interesting account of its courtesans, who then numbered, he says, at least , ; the revenue they brought into the state maintained a dozen galleys. [ ] j. schrank, _die prostitution in wien_, bd. i, pp. - . [ ] u. robert, _les signes d'infamie au moyen age_, ch. iv. [ ] rudeck (_geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit in deutschland_, pp. - ) gives many details concerning the important part played by prostitutes and brothels in mediæval german life. [ ] they are described by rabutaux, op. cit., pp. _et seq._ [ ] _l'année sociologique_, seventh year, , p. . [ ] bloch, _der ursprung der syphilis_. as regards the german "frauenhausen" see max bauer, _das geschlechtsleben in der deutschen vergangenheit_, pp. - . in paris, dufour states (op. cit., vol. v, ch. xxxiv), brothels under the ordinances of st. louis had many rights which they lost at last in , when they became merely tolerated houses, without statutes, special costumes, or confinement to special streets. [ ] "cortegiana, hoc est meretrix honesta," wrote burchard, the pope's secretary, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, _diarium_, ed. thuasne, vol. ii, p. ; other authorities are quoted by thuasne in a note. [ ] burchard, _diarium_, vol. iii, p. . thuasne quotes other authorities in confirmation. [ ] the example of holland, where some large cities have adopted the regulation of prostitution and others have not, is instructive as regards the illusory nature of the advantages of regulation. in dr. després brought forward figures, supplied by dutch officials, showing that in rotterdam, where prostitution was regulated, both prostitution and venereal diseases were more prevalent than in amsterdam, a city without regulation (a. després, _la prostitution en france_, p. ). [ ] it was in that the medical inspection of prostitutes in paris brothels was introduced, though not until fully established and made general. [ ] m.l. heidingsfeld, "the control of prostitution," _journal american medical association_, january , . [ ] see, e.g., g. bérault, _la maison de tolérance_, thèse de paris, . [ ] thus the circumstances of the english army in india are of a special character. a number of statements (from the reports of committees, official publications, etc.) regarding the good influence of regulation in reducing venereal diseases in india are brought together by surgeon-colonel f.h. welch, "the prevention of syphilis," _lancet_, august , . the system has been abolished, but only as the result of a popular outcry and not on the question of its merits. [ ] thus richard, who accepts regulation and was instructed to report on it for the paris municipal council, would not have girls inscribed as professional prostitutes until they are of age and able to realize what they are binding themselves to (e. richard, _la prostitution à paris_, p. ). but at that age a large proportion of prostitutes have been practicing their profession for years. [ ] in germany, where the cure of infected prostitutes under regulation is nearly everywhere compulsory, usually at the cost of the community, it is found that is the average age at which they are affected by syphilis; the average age of prostitutes in brothels is higher than that of those outside, and a much larger proportion have therefore become immune to disease (blaschko, "hygiene der syphilis," in weyl's _handbuch der hygiene_, bd. ii, p. , ). [ ] a. sherwell, _life in west london_, , ch. v. [ ] bonger brings together statistics illustrating this point, op. cit., pp. - . [ ] _the nightless city_, p. . [ ] ströhmberg, as quoted by aschaffenburg, _das verbrechen_, , p. . [ ] _monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten und sexuelle hygiene_, . heft , p. . but this cause is undoubtedly effective in some cases of unmarried women in germany unable to get work (see article by sister henrietta arendt, police-assistant at stuttgart, _sexual-probleme_, december, ). [ ] thus, for instance, we find irma von troll-borostyáni saying in her book, _im freien reich_ (p. ): "go and ask these unfortunate creatures if they willingly and freely devoted themselves to vice. and nearly all of them will tell you a story of need and destitution, of hunger and lack of work, which compelled them to it, or else of love and seduction and the fear of the discovery of their false step which drove them out of their homes, helpless and forsaken, into the pool of vice from which there is hardly any salvation." it is, of course, quite true that the prostitute is frequently ready to tell such stories to philanthropic persons who expect to hear them, and sometimes even put the words into her mouth. [ ] c. booth, _life and labour_, final volume, p. . similarly in sweden, kullberg states that girls of thirteen to seventeen, living at home with their parents in comfortable circumstances, have often been found on the streets. [ ] w. acton, _prostitution_, , pp. , . [ ] in lyons, according to potton, of prostitutes, abandoned, or apparently abandoned, their profession; in paris a very large number became servants, dressmakers, or tailoresses, occupations which, in many cases, doubtless, they had exercised before (parent-duchâtelet, _de la prostitution_, , vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. ). sloggett (quoted by acton) stated that at davenport, of the prostitutes there married. it is well known that prostitutes occasionally marry extremely well. it was remarked nearly a century ago that marriages of prostitutes to rich men were especially frequent in england, and usually turned out well; the same seems to be true still. in their own social rank they not infrequently marry cabmen and policemen, the two classes of men with whom they are brought most closely in contact in the streets. as regards germany, c.k. schneider (_die prostituirte und die gesellschaft_), states that young prostitutes take up all sorts of occupations and situations, sometimes, if they have saved a little money, establishing a business, while old prostitutes become procuresses, brothel-keepers, lavatory women, and so on. not a few prostitutes marry, he adds, but the proportion among inscribed german prostitutes is very small, less than per cent. [ ] g. de molinari, _la viriculture_, , p. . [ ] reuss and other writers have reproduced typical extracts from the private account books of prostitutes, showing the high rate of their earnings. even in the common brothels, in philadelphia (according to goodchild, "the social evil in philadelphia," _arena_, march, ), girls earn twenty dollars or more a week, which is far more than they could earn in any other occupation open to them. [ ] a. després, _la prostitution en france_, . [ ] bonger, _criminalité et conditions economiques_, , pp. - . [ ] _la donna delinquente_, p. . [ ] raciborski, _traité de l'impuissance_, p. . it may be added that bergh, a leading authority on the anatomical peculiarities of the external female sexual organs, who believe that strong development of the external genital organs accompanies libidinous tendencies, has not found such development to be common among prostitutes. [ ] hammer, who has had much opportunity of studying the psychology of prostitutes, remarks that he has seen no reason to suspect sexual coldness (_monatsschrift für harnkrankheiten und sexuelle hygiene_, , heft , p. ), although, as he has elsewhere stated, he is of opinion that indolence, rather than excess of sensuality, is the chief cause of prostitution. [ ] see "the sexual impulse in women," in the third volume of these _studies_. [ ] tait stated that in edinburgh many married women living with their husbands in comfortable circumstances, and having children, were found to be acting as prostitutes, that is, in the regular habit of making assignations with strangers (w. tait, _magdalenism in edinburgh_, , p. ). [ ] janke brings together opinions to this effect, _die willkürliche hervorbringen des geschlechts_, p. . "if we compare a prostitute of thirty-five with her respectable sister," acton remarked (_prostitution_, , p. ), "we seldom find that the constitutional ravages often thought to be necessary consequences of prostitution exceed those attributable to the cares of a family and the heart-wearing struggles of virtuous labor." [ ] hirschfeld states (_wesen der liebe_, p. ) that the desire for intercourse with a sympathetic person is heightened, and not decreased, by a professional act of coitus. [ ] this has been clearly shown by hans ostwald (from whom i take the above-quoted observation of a prostitute), one of the best authorities on prostitute life and character; see, e.g., his article, "die erotischen beziehungen zwischen dirne und zuhälter," _sexual-probleme_, june, . in the subsequent number of the same periodical (july, , p. ) dr. max marcuse supports ostwald's experiences, and says that the letters of prostitutes and their bullies are love-letters exactly like those of respectable people of the same class, and with the same elements of love and jealousy; these relationships, he remarks, often prove very enduring. the prostitute author of the _tagebuch einer verlorenen_ (p. ) also has some remarks on the prostitute's relations to her bully, stating that it is simply the natural relationship of a girl to her lover. [ ] thus moraglia found that among prostitutes in north italian brothels, and among elegant italian and foreign cocottes, every one admitted that she masturbated, preferably by friction of the clitoris; of them, the majority, declared that they preferred solitary or mutual masturbation to normal coitus. hammer states (_zehn lebensläufe berliner kontrollmädchen_ in ostwald's series of "grosstadt dokumente," ) that when in hospital all but three or four of sixty prostitutes masturbate, and those who do not are laughed at by the rest. [ ] _jahrbuch für sexuelle zwischenstufen_, jahrgang vii, , p. ; "sexual inversion," vol. ii of these _studies_, ch. iv. hammer found that of twenty-five prostitutes in a reformatory as many as twenty-three were homosexual, or, on good grounds, suspected to be such. hirschfeld (_berlins drittes geschlecht_, p. ) mentions that prostitutes sometimes accost better-class women who, from their man-like air, they take to be homosexual; from persons of their own sex prostitutes will accept a smaller remuneration, and sometimes refuse payment altogether. [ ] with prostitution, as with criminality, it is of course difficult to disentangle the element of heredity from that of environment, even when we have good grounds for believing that the factor of heredity here, as throughout the whole of life, cannot fail to carry much weight. it is certain, in any case, that prostitution frequently runs in families. "it has often been my experience," writes a former prostitute (hedwig hard, _beichte einer gefallenen_, p. ) "that when in a family a girl enters this path, her sister soon afterwards follows her: i have met with innumerable cases; sometimes three sisters will all be on the register, and i knew a case of four sisters, whose mother, a midwife, had been in prison, and the father drank. in this case, all four sisters, who were very beautiful, married, one at least very happily, to a rich doctor who took her out of the brothel at sixteen and educated her." [ ] this fact is not contradicted by the undoubted fact that prostitutes are by no means always contented with the life they choose. [ ] this point has been discussed by bloch, _sexualleben unserer zeit_, ch. xiii. [ ] various series of observations are summarized by lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente_, , part iii, cap. iv. [ ] _history of european morals_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] similarly lord morley has written (_diderot_, vol. ii, p. ): "the purity of the family, so lovely and dear as it is, has still only been secured hitherto by retaining a vast and dolorous host of female outcasts ... upon whose heads, as upon the scapegoat of the hebrew ordinance, we put all the iniquities of the children of the house, and all their transgressions in all their sins, and then banish them with maledictions into the foul outer wilderness and the land not inhabited." [ ] horace, _satires_, lib. i, . [ ] augustine, _de ordine_, bk. ii, ch. iv. [ ] _de regimine principum_ (_opuscula xx_), lib. iv, cap. xiv. i am indebted to the rev. h. northcote for the reference to the precise place where this statement occurs; it is usually quoted more vaguely. [ ] lea, _history of auricular confession_, vol. ii, p. . there was even, it seems, an eccentric decision of the salamanca theologians that a nun might so receive money, "licite et valide." [ ] lea, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. , . [ ] rabutaux, _de la prostitution en europe_, pp. et seq. [ ] burton, _anatomy of melancholy_, part iii, sect. iii, mem. iv, subs. ii. [ ] b. mandeville, _remarks to fable of the bees_, , pp. - ; cf. p. sakmann, _bernard de mandeville_, pp. - . [ ] these conditions favor temporary free unions, but they also favor prostitution. the reason is, according to adolf gerson (_sexual-probleme_, september, ), that the woman of good class will not have free unions. partly moved by moral traditions, and partly by the feeling that a man should be legally her property, she will not give herself out of love to a man; and he therefore turns to the lower-class woman who gives herself for money. [ ] many girls, said ellice hopkins, get into mischief merely because they have in them an element of the "black kitten," which must frolic and play, but has no desire to get into danger. "do you not think it a little hard," she added, "that men should have dug by the side of her foolish dancing feet a bottomless pit, and that she cannot have her jump and fun in safety, and put on her fine feathers like the silly bird-witted thing she is, without a single false step dashing her over the brink, and leaving her with the very womanhood dashed out of her?" [ ] a. sherwell, _life in west london_, , ch. v. [ ] as quoted by bloch, _sexualleben unserer zeit_, p. . in berlin during recent years the number of prostitutes has increased at nearly double the rate at which the general population has increased. it is no doubt probable that the supply tends to increase the demand. [ ] goncourt, _journal_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] vanderkiste, _the dens of london_, , p. . [ ] bonger (_criminalité et conditions economiques_, p. ) refers to the prevalence of prostitution among dressmakers and milliners, as well as among servants, as showing the influence of contact with luxury, and adds that the rich women, who look down on prostitution, do not always realize that they are themselves an important factor of prostitution, both by their luxury and their idleness; while they do not seem to be aware that they would themselves act in the same way if placed under the same conditions. [ ] h. lippert, in his book on prostitution in hamburg, laid much stress on the craving for dress and adornment as a factor of prostitution, and bloch (_das sexualleben unsurer zeit_, p. ) considers that this factor is usually underestimated, and that it exerts an especially powerful influence on servants. [ ] since this was written the influence of several generations of town-life in immunizing a stock to the evils of that life (though without reference to prostitution) has been set forth by reibmayr, _die entwicklungsgeschichte des talentes und genies_, , vol. ii, pp. _et seq._ [ ] in france this intimacy is embodied in the delicious privilege of _tutoiement_. "the mystery of _tutoiement!_" exclaims ernest la jennesse in _l'holocauste:_ "barriers broken down, veils drawn away, and the ease of existence! at a time when i was very lonely, and trying to grow accustomed to paris and to misfortune, i would go miles--on foot, naturally--to see a girl cousin and an aunt, merely to have something to _tutoyer_. sometimes they were not at home, and i had to come back with my _tu_, my thirst for confidence and familiarity and brotherliness." [ ] for some facts and references to the extensive literature concerning this trade, see, e.g., bloch, _das sexualleben unserer zeit_, pp. - ; also k.m. baer, _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, sept., ; paulucci de calboli, _nuova antologia_, april, . [ ] these considerations do not, it is true, apply to many kinds of sexual perverts who form an important proportion of the clients of brothels. these can frequently find what they crave inside a brothel much more easily than outside. [ ] thus charles booth, in his great work on _life and labor in london_, final volume (p. ), recommends that "houses of accommodation," instead of being hunted out, should be tolerated as a step towards the suppression of brothels. [ ] "towns like woolwich, aldershot, portsmouth, plymouth," it has been said, "abound with wretched, filthy monsters that bear no resemblance to women; but it is drink, scorn, brutality and disease which have reduced them to this state, not the mere fact of associating with men." [ ] "the contract of prostitution in the opinion of prostitutes themselves," bernaldo de quirós and llanas aguilaniedo remark (_la mala vida en madrid_, p. ), "cannot be assimilated to a sale, nor to a contract of work, nor to any other form of barter recognized by the civil law. they consider that in these pacts there always enters an element which makes it much more like a gift in a matter in which no payment could be adequate. 'a woman's body is without price' is an axiom of prostitution. the money placed in the hands of her who procures the satisfaction of sexual desire is not the price of the act, but an offering which the priestess of venus applies to her maintenance." to the spaniard, it is true, every transaction which resembles trade is repugnant, but the principle underlying this feeling holds good of prostitution generally. [ ] _journal des goncourt_, vol. iii; this was in . [ ] rev. the hon. c. lyttelton, _training of the young in laws of sex_, p. . [ ] see, e.g., r.w. taylor, _treatise on sexual disorders_, , pp. - . georg hirth (_wege zur heimat_, , p. ) narrates the case of a young officer who, being excited by the caresses of his betrothed and having too much respect for her to go further than this, and too much respect for himself to resort to masturbation, knew nothing better than to go to a prostitute. syphilis developed a few days after the wedding. hirth adds, briefly, that the results were terrible. [ ] it is an oft-quoted passage, but can scarcely be quoted too often: "you see that this wrought-iron plate is not quite flat: it sticks up a little, here towards the left--'cockles,' as we say. how shall we flatten it? obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. well, here is a hammer, and i give the plate a blow as you advise. harder, you say. still no effect. another stroke? well, there is one, and another, and another. the prominence remains, you see: the evil is as great as ever--greater, indeed. but that is not all. look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. where it was flat before it is now curved. a pretty bungle we have made of it. instead of curing the original defect we have produced a second. had we asked an artisan practiced in 'planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. he would have taught us how to give variously-directed and specially-adjusted blows with a hammer elsewhere: so attacking the evil, not by direct, but by indirect actions. the required process is less simple than you thought. even a sheet of metal is not to be successfully dealt with after those common-sense methods in which you have so much confidence. what, then, shall we say about a society?... is humanity more readily straightened than an iron plate?" (_the study of sociology_, p. .) chapter viii. the conquest of the venereal diseases. the significance of the venereal diseases--the history of syphilis--the problem of its origin--the social gravity of syphilis--the social dangers of gonorrhoea--the modern change in the methods of combating venereal diseases--causes of the decay of the system of police regulation--necessity of facing the facts--the innocent victims of venereal diseases--diseases not crimes--the principle of notification--the scandinavian system--gratuitous treatment--punishment for transmitting venereal diseases--sexual education in relation to venereal diseases--lectures, etc.--discussion in novels and on the stage--the "disgusting" not the "immoral." it may, perhaps, excite surprise that in the preceding discussion of prostitution scarcely a word has been said of venereal diseases. in the eyes of many people, the question of prostitution is simply the question of syphilis. but from the psychological point of view with which we are directly concerned, as from the moral point of view with which we cannot fail to be indirectly concerned, the question of the diseases which may be, and so frequently are, associated with prostitution cannot be placed in the first line of significance. the two questions, however intimately they may be mingled, are fundamentally distinct. not only would venereal diseases still persist even though prostitution had absolutely ceased, but, on the other hand, when we have brought syphilis under the same control as we have brought the somewhat analogous disease of leprosy, the problem of prostitution would still remain. yet, even from the standpoint which we here occupy, it is scarcely possible to ignore the question of venereal disease, for the psychological and moral aspects of prostitution, and even the whole question of the sexual relationships, are, to some extent, affected by the existence of the serious diseases which are specially liable to be propagated by sexual intercourse. fournier, one of the leading authorities on this subject, has well said that syphilis, alcoholism, and tuberculosis are the three modern plagues. at a much earlier period ( ) schopenhauer in _parerga und paralipomena_ had expressed the opinion that the two things which mark modern social life, in distinction from that of antiquity, and to the advantage of the latter, are the knightly principle of honor and venereal disease; together, he added, they have poisoned life, and introduced a hostile and even diabolical element into the relations of the sexes, which has indirectly affected all other social relationships.[ ] it is like a merchandise, says havelburg, of syphilis, which civilization has everywhere carried, so that only a very few remote districts of the globe (as in central africa and central brazil) are to-day free from it.[ ] it is undoubtedly true that in the older civilized countries the manifestations of syphilis, though still severe and a cause of physical deterioration in the individual and the race, are less severe than they were even a generation ago.[ ] this is partly the result of earlier and better treatment, partly, it is possible, the result also of the syphilization of the race, some degree of immunity having now become an inherited possession, although it must be remembered that an attack of syphilis does not necessarily confer immunity from the actual attack of the disease even in the same individual. but it must be added that, even though it has become less severe, syphilis, in the opinion of many, is nevertheless still spreading, even in the chief centres of civilization; this has been noted alike in paris and in london.[ ] according to the belief which is now tending to prevail, syphilis was brought to europe at the end of the fifteenth century by the first discoverers of america. in seville, the chief european port for america, it was known as the indian disease, but when charles viii and his army first brought it to italy in , although this connection with the french was only accidental, it was called the gallic disease, "a monstrous disease," said cataneus, "never seen in previous centuries and altogether unknown in the world." the synonyms of syphilis were at first almost innumerable. it was in his latin poem _syphilis sive morbus gallicus_, written before and published at verona in , that fracastorus finally gave the disease its now universally accepted name, inventing a romantic myth to account for its origin. although the weight of authoritative opinion now seems to incline towards the belief that syphilis was brought to europe from america, on the discovery of the new world, it is only within quite recent years that that belief has gained ground, and it scarcely even yet seems certain that what the spaniards brought back from america was really a disease absolutely new to the old world, and not a more virulent form of an old disease of which the manifestations had become benign. buret, for instance (_le syphilis aujourd'hui et chez les anciens_, ), who some years ago reached "the deep conviction that syphilis dates from the creation of man," and believed, from a minute study of classic authors, that syphilis existed in rome under the cæsars, was of opinion that it has broken out at different places and at different times, in epidemic bursts exhibiting different combinations of its manifold symptoms, so that it passed unnoticed at ordinary times, and at the times of its more intense manifestation was looked upon as a hitherto unknown disease. it was thus regarded in classic times, he considers, as coming from egypt, though he looked upon its real home as asia. leopold glück has likewise quoted (_archiv für dermatologie und syphilis_, january, ) passages from the medical epigrams of a sixteenth century physician, gabriel ayala, declaring that syphilis is not really a new disease, though popularly supposed to be so, but an old disease which has broken out with hitherto unknown violence. there is, however, no conclusive reason for believing that syphilis was known at all in classic antiquity. a.v. notthaft ("die legende von der althertums-syphilis," in the rindfleisch _festschrift_, , pp. - ) has critically investigated the passages in classic authors which were supposed by rosenbaum, buret, proksch and others to refer to syphilis. it is quite true, notthaft admits, that many of these passages might possibly refer to syphilis, and one or two would even better fit syphilis than any other disease. but, on the whole, they furnish no proof at all, and no syphilologist, he concludes, has ever succeeded in demonstrating that syphilis was known in antiquity. that belief is a legend. the most damning argument against it, notthaft points out, is the fact that, although in antiquity there were great physicians who were keen observers, not one of them gives any description of the primary, secondary, tertiary, and congenital forms of this disease. china is frequently mentioned as the original home of syphilis, but this belief is also quite without basis, and the japanese physician, okamura, has shown (_monatsschrift für praktische dermatologie_, vol. xxviii, pp. et seq.) that chinese records reveal nothing relating to syphilis earlier than the sixteenth century. at the paris academy of medicine in photographs from egypt were exhibited by fouquet of human remains which date from b.c. , showing bone lesions which seemed to be clearly syphilitic; fournier, however, one of the greatest of authorities, considered that the diagnosis of syphilis could not be maintained until other conditions liable to produce somewhat similar bone lesions had been eliminated (_british medical journal_, september , , p. ). in florida and various regions of central america, in undoubtedly pre-columbian burial places, diseased bones have been found which good authorities have declared could not be anything else than syphilitic (e.g., _british medical journal_, november , , p. ), though it may be noted that so recently as the cautious virchow stated that pre-columbian syphilis in america was still for him an open question (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, heft and , , p. ). from another side, seler, the distinguished authority on mexican antiquity, shows (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ) that the ancient mexicans were acquainted with a disease which, as they described it, might well have been syphilis. it is obvious, however, that while the difficulty of demonstrating syphilitic diseased bones in america is as great as in europe, the demonstration, however complete, would not suffice to show that the disease had not already an existence also in the old world. the plausible theory of ayala that fifteenth century syphilis was a virulent recrudescence of an ancient disease has frequently been revived in more modern times. thus j. knott ("the origin of syphilis," _new york medical journal_, october , ) suggests that though not new in fifteenth century europe, it was then imported afresh in a form rendered more aggravated by coming from an exotic race, as is believed often to be the case. it was in the eighteenth century that jean astruc began the rehabilitation of the belief that syphilis is really a comparatively modern disease of american origin, and since then various authorities of weight have given their adherence to this view. it is to the energy and learning of dr. iwan bloch, of berlin (the first volume of whose important work, _der ursprung der syphilis_, was published in ) that we owe the fullest statement of the evidence in favor of the american origin of syphilis. bloch regards ruy diaz de isla, a distinguished spanish physician, as the weightiest witness for the indian origin of the disease, and concludes that it was brought to europe by columbus's men from central america, more precisely from the island of haiti, to spain in and , and immediately afterwards was spread by the armies of charles viii in an epidemic fashion over italy and the other countries of europe. it may be added that even if we have to accept the theory that the central regions of america constitute the place of origin of european syphilis, we still have to recognize that syphilis has spread in the north american continent very much more slowly and partially than it has in europe, and even at the present day there are american indian tribes among whom it is unknown. holder, on the basis of his own experiences among indian tribes, as well as of wide inquiries among agency physicians, prepared a table showing that among some thirty tribes and groups of tribes, eighteen were almost or entirely free from venereal disease, while among thirteen it was very prevalent. almost without exception, the tribes where syphilis is rare or unknown refuse sexual intercourse with strangers, while those among whom such disease is prevalent are morally lax. it is the whites who are the source of infection among these tribes (a.b. holder, "gynecic notes among the american indians," _american journal of obstetrics_, , no. ). syphilis is only one, certainly the most important, of a group of three entirely distinct "venereal diseases" which have only been distinguished in recent times, and so far as their precise nature and causation are concerned, are indeed only to-day beginning to be understood, although two of them were certainly known in antiquity. it is but seventy years ago since ricord, the great french syphilologist, following bassereau, first taught the complete independence of syphilis both from gonorrhoea and soft chancre, at the same time expounding clearly the three stages, primary, secondary and tertiary, through which syphilitic manifestations tend to pass, while the full extent of tertiary syphilitic symptoms is scarcely yet grasped, and it is only to-day beginning to be generally realized that two of the most prevalent and serious diseases of the brain and nervous system--general paralysis and tabes dorsalis or locomotor ataxia--have their predominant though not sole and exclusive cause in the invasion of the syphilitic poison many years before. in a new stage of more precise knowledge of the venereal diseases began with neisser's discovery of the gonococcus which is the specific cause of gonorrhoea. this was followed a few years later by the discovery by ducrey and unna of the bacillus of soft chancre, the least important of the venereal diseases because exclusively local in its effects. finally, in --after metchnikoff had prepared the way by succeeding in carrying syphilis from man to monkey, and lassar, by inoculation, from monkey to monkey--fritz schaudinn made his great discovery of the protozoal _spirochoeta pallida_ (since sometimes called _treponema pallidum_), which is now generally regarded as the cause of syphilis, and thus revealed the final hiding place of one of the most dangerous and insidious foes of humanity.[ ] there is no more subtle poison than that of syphilis. it is not, like smallpox or typhoid, a disease which produces a brief and sudden storm, a violent struggle with the forces of life, in which it tends, even without treatment, provided the organism is healthy, to succumb, leaving little or no traces of its ravages behind. it penetrates ever deeper and deeper into the organism, with the passage of time leading to ever new manifestations, and no tissue is safe from its attack. and so subtle is this all-pervading poison that though its outward manifestations are amenable to prolonged treatment, it is often difficult to say that the poison has been finally killed out.[ ] the immense importance of syphilis, and the chief reason why it is necessary to consider it here, lies in the fact that its results are not confined to the individual himself, nor even to the persons to whom he may impart it by the contagion due to contact in or out of sexual relationships: it affects the offspring, and it affects the power to produce offspring. it attacks men and women at the centre of life, as the progenitors of the coming race, inflicting either sterility or the tendency to aborted and diseased products of conception. the father alone can perhaps transmit syphilis to his child, even though the mother escapes infection, and the child born of syphilitic parents may come into the world apparently healthy only to reveal its syphilitic origin after a period of months or even years. thus syphilis is probably a main cause of the enfeeblement of the race.[ ] alike in the individual and in his offspring syphilis shows its deteriorating effects on all the structures of the body, but especially on the brain and nervous system. there are, as has been pointed out by mott, a leading authority in this matter,[ ] five ways in which syphilis affects the brain and nervous system: ( ) by moral shock; ( ) by the effects of the poison in producing anæmia and impaired general nutrition; ( ) by causing inflammation of the membranes and tissues of the brain; ( ) by producing arterial degeneration, leading on to brain-softening, paralysis, and dementia; ( ) as a main cause of the para-syphilitic affections of general paralysis and tabes dorsalis. it is only within recent years that medical men have recognized the preponderant part played by acquired or inherited syphilis in producing general paralysis, which so largely helps to fill lunatic asylums, and tabes dorsalis which is the most important disease of the spinal cord. even to-day it can scarcely be said that there is complete agreement as to the supreme importance of the factor of syphilis in these diseases. there can, however, be little doubt that in about ninety-five per cent. at least of cases of general paralysis syphilis is present.[ ] syphilis is not indeed by itself an adequate cause of general paralysis for among many savage peoples syphilis is very common while general paralysis is very rare. it is, as krafft-ebing was accustomed to say, syphilization and civilization working together which produce general paralysis, perhaps in many cases, there is reason for thinking, on a nervous soil that is hereditarily degenerated to some extent; this is shown by the abnormal prevalence of congenital stigmata of degeneration found in general paralytics by näcke and others. "paralyticus nascitur atque fit," according to the dictum of obersteiner. once undermined by syphilis, the deteriorated brain is unable to resist the jars and strains of civilized life, and the result is general paralysis, truly described as "one of the most terrible scourges of modern times." in the psychological section of the british medical association, embodying the most competent english authority on this question, unanimously passed a resolution recommending that the attention of the legislature and other public bodies should be called to the necessity for immediate action in view of the fact that "general paralysis, a very grave and frequent form of brain disease, together with other varieties of insanity, is largely due to syphilis, and is therefore preventable." yet not a single step has yet been taken in this direction. the dangers of syphilis lie not alone in its potency and its persistence but also in its prevalence. it is difficult to state the exact incidence of syphilis, but a great many partial investigations have been made in various countries, and it would appear that from five to twenty per cent. of the population in european countries is syphilitic, while about fifteen per cent. of the syphilitic cases die from causes directly or indirectly due to the disease.[ ] in france generally, fournier estimates that seventeen per cent. of the whole population have had syphilis, and at toulouse, audry considers that eighteen per cent. of all his patients are syphilitic. in copenhagen, where notification is obligatory, over four per cent. of the population are said to be syphilitic. in america a committee of the medical society of new york, appointed to investigate the question, reported as the result of exhaustive inquiry that in the city of new york not less than a quarter of a million of cases of venereal disease occurred every year, and a leading new york dermatologist has stated that among the better class families he knows intimately at least one-third of the sons have had syphilis. in germany eight hundred thousand cases of venereal disease are by one authority estimated to occur yearly, and in the larger universities twenty-five per cent. of the students are infected every term, venereal disease being, however, specially common among students. the yearly number of men invalided in the german army by venereal diseases equals a third of the total number wounded in the franco-prussian war. yet the german army stands fairly high as regards freedom from venereal disease when compared with the british army which is more syphilized than any other european army.[ ] the british army, however, being professional and not national, is less representative of the people than is the case in countries where some form of conscription prevails. at one london hospital it could be ascertained that ten per cent. of the patients had had syphilis; this probably means a real proportion of about fifteen per cent., a high though not extremely high ratio. yet it is obvious that even if the ratio is really lower than this the national loss in life and health, in defective procreation and racial deterioration, must be enormous and practically incalculable. even in cash the venereal budget is comparable in amount to the general budget of a great nation. stritch estimates that the cost to the british nation of venereal diseases in the army, navy and government departments alone, amounts annually to £ , , , and when allowance is made for superannuations and sick-leave indirectly occasioned through these diseases, though not appearing in the returns as such, the more accurate estimate of the cost to the nation is stated to be £ , , . the adoption of simple hygienic measures for the prevention and the speedy cure of venereal diseases will be not only indirectly but even directly a source of immense wealth to the nation. syphilis is the most obviously and conspicuously appalling of the venereal diseases. yet it is less frequent and in some respects less dangerously insidious than the other chief venereal disease, gonorrhoea.[ ] at one time the serious nature of gonorrhoea, especially in women, was little realized. men accepted it with a light heart as a trivial accident; women ignored it. this failure to realize the gravity of gonorrhoea, even sometimes on the part of the medical profession--so that it has been popularly looked upon, in grandin's words, as of little more significance than a cold in the nose--has led to a reaction on the part of some towards an opposite extreme, and the risks and dangers of gonorrhoea have been even unduly magnified. this is notably the case as regards sterility. the inflammatory results of gonorrhoea are indubitably a potent cause of sterility in both sexes; some authorities have stated that not only eighty per cent. of the deaths from inflammatory diseases of the pelvic organs and the majority of the cases of chronic invalidism in women, but ninety per cent. of involuntary sterile marriages, are due to gonorrhoea. neisser, a great authority, ascribes to this disease without doubt fifty per cent, of such marriages. even this estimate is in the experience of some observers excessive. it is fully proved that the great majority of men who have had gonorrhoea, even if they marry within two years of being infected, fail to convey the disease to their wives, and even of the women infected by their husbands more than half have children. this is, for instance, the result of erb's experience, and kisch speaks still more strongly in the same sense. bumm, again, although regarding gonorrhoea as one of the two chief causes of sterility in women, finds that it is not the most frequent cause, being only responsible for about one-third of the cases; the other two-thirds are due to developmental faults in the genital organs. dunning in america has reached results which are fairly concordant with bumm's. with regard to another of the terrible results of gonorrhoea, the part it plays in producing life-long blindness from infection of the eyes at birth, there has long been no sort of doubt. the committee of the ophthalmological society in , reported that thirty to forty-one per cent. of the inmates of four asylums for the blind in england owed their blindness to this cause.[ ] in german asylums reinhard found that thirty per cent. lost their sight from the same cause. the total number of persons blind from gonorrhoeal infection from their mothers at birth is enormous. the british royal commission on the condition of the blind estimated there were about seven thousand persons in the united kingdom alone (or twenty-two per cent. of the blind persons in the country) who became blind as the result of this disease, and mookerji stated in his address on ophthalmalogy at the indian medical congress of that in bengal alone there were six hundred thousand totally blind beggars, forty per cent. of whom lost their sight at birth through maternal gonorrhoea; and this refers to the beggar class alone. although gonorrhoea is liable to produce many and various calamities,[ ] there can be no doubt that the majority of gonorrhoeal persons escape either suffering or inflicting any very serious injury. the special reason why gonorrhoea has become so peculiarly serious a scourge is its extreme prevalence. it is difficult to estimate the proportion of men and women in the general population who have had gonorrhoea, and the estimates vary within wide limits. they are often set too high. erb, of heidelberg, anxious to disprove exaggerated estimates of the prevalence of gonorrhoea, went over the records of two thousand two hundred patients in his private practice (excluding all hospital patients) and found the proportion of those who had suffered from gonorrhoea was . per cent. among the working classes the disease is much less prevalent than among higher-class people. in a berlin industrial sick club, per , men and per , women had gonorrhoea in a year; taking a series of years the club showed a steady increase in the number of men, and decrease in the number of women, with venereal infection; this seems to indicate that the laboring classes are beginning to have intercourse more with prostitutes and less with respectable girls.[ ] in america wood ruggles has given (as had noggerath previously, for new york), the prevalence of gonorrhoea among adult males as from to per cent.; tenney places it much lower, per cent. for males and per cent. for females. in england, a writer in the _lancet_, some years ago,[ ] found as the result of experience and inquiries that per cent. adult males have had gonorrhoea once, per cent. twice, per cent. three or more times. according to dulberg about twenty per cent. of new cases occur in married men of good social class, the disease being comparatively rare among married men of the working class in england. gonorrhoea in its prevalence is thus only second to measles and in the gravity of its results scarcely second to tuberculosis. "and yet," as grandin remarks in comparing gonorrhoea to tuberculosis, "witness the activity of the crusade against the latter and the criminal apathy displayed when the former is concerned."[ ] the public must learn to understand, another writer remarks, that "gonorrhoea is a pest that concerns its highest interests and most sacred relations as much as do smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, or tuberculosis."[ ] it cannot fairly be said that no attempts have been made to beat back the flood of venereal disease. on the contrary, such attempts have been made from the first. but they have never been effectual;[ ] they have never been modified to changed condition; at the present day they are hopelessly unscientific and entirely opposed alike to the social and the individual demands of modern peoples. at the various conferences on this question which have been held during recent years the only generally accepted conclusion which has emerged is that all the existing systems of interference or non-interference with prostitution are unsatisfactory.[ ] the character of prostitution has changed and the methods of dealing with it must change. brothels, and the systems of official regulation which grew up with special reference to brothels, are alike out of date; they have about them a mediæval atmosphere, an antiquated spirit, which now render them unattractive and suspected. the conspicuously distinctive brothel is falling into disrepute; the liveried prostitute absolutely under municipal control can scarcely be said to exist. prostitution tends to become more diffused, more intimately mingled with social life generally, less easily distinguished as a definitely separable part of life. we can nowadays only influence it by methods of permeation which bear upon the whole of our social life. the objection to the regulation of prostitution is still of slow growth, but it is steadily developing everywhere, and may be traced equally in scientific opinion and in popular feeling. in france the municipalities of some of the largest cities have either suppressed the system of regulation entirely or shown their disapproval of it, while an inquiry among several hundred medical men showed that less than one-third were in favor of maintaining regulation (_die neue generation_, june, , p. ). in germany, where there is in some respects more patient endurance of interference with the liberty of the individual than in france, england, or america, various elaborate systems for organizing prostitution and dealing with venereal disease continue to be maintained, but they cannot be completely carried out, and it is generally admitted that in any case they could not accomplish the objects sought. thus in saxony no brothels are officially tolerated, though as a matter of fact they nevertheless exist. here, as in many other parts of germany, most minute and extensive regulations are framed for the use of prostitutes. thus at leipzig they must not sit on the benches in public promenades, nor go to picture galleries, or theatres, or concerts, or restaurants, nor look out of their windows, nor stare about them in the street, nor smile, nor wink, etc., etc. in fact, a german prostitute who possesses the heroic self-control to carry out conscientiously all the self-denying ordinances officially decreed for her guidance would seem to be entitled to a government pension for life. two methods of dealing with prostitution prevail in germany. in some cities public houses of prostitution are tolerated (though not licensed); in other cities prostitution is "free," though "secret." hamburg is the most important city where houses of prostitution are tolerated and segregated. but, it is stated, "everywhere, by far the larger proportion of the prostitutes belong to the so-called 'secret' class." in hamburg, alone, are suspected men, when accused of infecting women, officially examined; men of every social class must obey a summons of this kind, which is issued secretly, and if diseased, they are bound to go under treatment, if necessary under compulsory treatment in the city hospital, until no longer dangerous to the community. in germany it is only when a woman has been repeatedly observed to act suspiciously in the streets that she is quietly warned; if the warning is disregarded she is invited to give her name and address to the police, and interviewed. it is not until these methods fail that she is officially inscribed as a prostitute. the inscribed women, in some cities at all events, contribute to a sick benefit fund which pays their expenses when in hospital. the hesitation of the police to inscribe a woman on the official list is legitimate and inevitable, for no other course would be tolerated; yet the majority of prostitutes begin their careers very young, and as they tend to become infected very early after their careers begin, it is obvious that this delay contributes to render the system of regulation ineffective. in berlin, where there are no officially recognized brothels, there are some six thousand inscribed prostitutes, but it is estimated that there are over sixty thousand prostitutes who are not inscribed. (the foregoing facts are taken from a series of papers describing personal investigations in germany made by dr. f. bierhoff, of new york, "police methods for the sanitary control of prostitution," _new york medical journal_, august, .) the estimation of the amount of clandestine prostitution can indeed never be much more than guesswork; exactly the same figure of sixty thousand is commonly brought forward as the probable number of prostitutes not only in berlin, but also in london and in new york. it is absolutely impossible to say whether it is under or over the real number, for secret prostitution is quite intangible. even if the facts were miraculously revealed there would still remain the difficulty of deciding what is and what is not prostitution. the avowed and public prostitute is linked by various gradations on the one side to the respectable girl living at home who seeks some little relief from the oppression of her respectability, and on the other hand to the married woman who has married for the sake of a home. in any case, however, it is very certain that public prostitutes living entirely on the earnings of prostitution form but a small proportion of the vast army of women who may be said, in a wide sense of the word, to be prostitutes, i.e., who use their attractiveness to obtain from men not love alone, but money or goods. "the struggle against syphilis is only possible if we agree to regard its victims as unfortunate and not as guilty.... we must give up the prejudice which has led to the creation of the term 'shameful diseases,' and which commands silence concerning this scourge of the family and of humanity." in these words of duclaux, the distinguished successor of pasteur at the pasteur institute, in his noble and admirable work _l'hygiène sociale_, we have indicated to us, i am convinced, the only road by which we can approach the rational and successful treatment of the great social problem of venereal disease. the supreme importance of this key to the solution of a problem which has often seemed insoluble is to-day beginning to become recognized in all quarters, and in every country. thus a distinguished german authority, professor finger (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. i, heft ) declares that venereal disease must not be regarded as the well-merited punishment for a debauched life, but as an unhappy accident. it seems to be in france, however, that this truth has been proclaimed with most courage and humanity, and not alone by the followers of science and medicine, but by many who might well be excused from interfering with so difficult and ungrateful a task. thus the brothers, paul and victor margueritte, who occupy a brilliant and honorable place in contemporary french letters, have distinguished themselves by advocating a more humane attitude towards prostitutes, and a more modern method of dealing with the question of venereal disease. "the true method of prevention is that which makes it clear to all that syphilis is not a mysterious and terrible thing, the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shameful evil branded by catholic malediction, but an ordinary disease which may be treated and cured." it may be remarked that the aversion to acknowledge venereal disease is at least as marked in france as in any other country; "maladies honteuses" is a consecrated french term, just as "loathsome disease" is in english; "in the hospital," says landret, "it requires much trouble to obtain an avowal of gonorrhoea, and we may esteem ourselves happy if the patient acknowledges the fact of having had syphilis." no evils can be combated until they are recognized, simply and frankly, and honestly discussed. it is a significant and even symbolic fact that the bacteria of disease rarely flourish when they are open to the free currents of pure air. obscurity, disguise, concealment furnish the best conditions for their vigor and diffusion, and these favoring conditions we have for centuries past accorded to venereal diseases. it was not always so, as indeed the survival of the word 'venereal' itself in this connection, with its reference to a goddess, alone suffices to show. even the name "syphilis" itself, taken from a romantic poem in which fracastorus sought a mythological origin for the disease, bears witness to the same fact. the romantic attitude is indeed as much out of date as that of hypocritical and shamefaced obscurantism. we need to face these diseases in the same simple, direct, and courageous way which has already been adopted successfully in the ease of smallpox, a disease which, of old, men thought analogous to syphilis and which was indeed once almost as terrible in its ravages. at this point, however, we encounter those who say that it is unnecessary to show any sort of recognition of venereal diseases, and immoral to do anything that might seem to involve indulgence to those who suffer from such diseases; they have got what they deserve and may well be left to perish. those who take this attitude place themselves so far outside the pale of civilization--to say nothing of morality or religion--that they might well be disregarded. the progress of the race, the development of humanity, in fact and in feeling, has consisted in the elimination of an attitude which it is an insult to primitive peoples to term savage. yet it is an attitude which should not be ignored for it still carries weight with many who are too weak to withstand those who juggle with fine moral phrases. i have even seen in a medical quarter the statement that venereal disease cannot be put on the same level with other infectious diseases because it is "the result of voluntary action." but all the diseases, indeed all the accidents and misfortunes of suffering human beings, are equally the involuntary results of voluntary actions. the man who is run over in crossing the street, the family poisoned by unwholesome food, the mother who catches the disease of the child she is nursing, all these suffer as the involuntary result of the voluntary act of gratifying some fundamental human instinct--the instinct of activity, the instinct of nutrition, the instinct of affection. the instinct of sex is as fundamental as any of these, and the involuntary evils which may follow the voluntary act of gratifying it stand on exactly the same level. this is the essential fact: a human being in following the human instincts implanted within him has stumbled and fallen. any person who sees, not this essential fact but merely some subsidiary aspect of it, reveals a mind that is twisted and perverted; he has no claim to arrest our attention. but even if we were to adopt the standpoint of the would-be moralist, and to agree that everyone must be left to suffer his deserts, it is far indeed from being the fact that all those who contract venereal diseases are in any sense receiving their deserts. in a large number of cases the disease has been inflicted on them in the most absolutely involuntary manner. this is, of course, true in the case of the vast number of infants who are infected at conception or at birth. but it is also true in a scarcely less absolute manner of a large proportion of persons infected in later life. _syphilis insontium_, or syphilis of the innocent, as it is commonly called, may be said to fall into five groups: ( ) the vast army of congenitally syphilitic infants who inherit the disease from father or mother; ( ) the constantly occurring cases of syphilis contracted, in the course of their professional duties, by doctors, midwives and wet-nurses; ( ) infection as a result of affection, as in simple kissing; ( ) accidental infection from casual contacts and from using in common the objects and utensils of daily life, such as cups, towels, razors, knives (as in ritual circumcision), etc; ( ) the infection of wives by their husbands.[ ] hereditary congenital syphilis belongs to the ordinary pathology of the disease and is a chief element in its social danger since it is responsible for an enormous infantile mortality.[ ] the risks of extragenital infection in the professional activity of doctors, midwives and wet-nurses is also universally recognized. in the case of wet-nurses infected by their employers' syphilitic infants at their breast, the penalty inflicted on the innocent is peculiarly harsh and unnecessary. the influence of infected low-class midwives is notably dangerous, for they may inflict widespread injury in ignorance; thus the case has been recorded of a midwife, whose finger became infected in the course of her duties, and directly or indirectly contaminated one hundred persons. kissing is an extremely common source of syphilitic infection, and of all extragenital regions the mouth is by far the most frequent seat of primary syphilitic sores. in some cases, it is true, especially in prostitutes, this is the result of abnormal sexual contacts. but in the majority of cases it is the result of ordinary and slight kisses as between young children, between parents and children, between lovers and friends and acquaintances. fairly typical examples, which have been reported, are those of a child, kissed by a prostitute, who became infected and subsequently infected its mother and grandmother; of a young french bride contaminated on her wedding-day by one of the guests who, according to french custom, kissed her on the cheek after the ceremony; of an american girl who, returning from a ball, kissed, at parting, the young man who had accompanied her home, thus acquiring the disease which she not long afterwards imparted in the same way to her mother and three sisters. the ignorant and unthinking are apt to ridicule those who point out the serious risks of miscellaneous kissing. but it remains nevertheless true that people who are not intimate enough to know the state of each other's health are not intimate enough to kiss each other. infection by the use of domestic utensils, linen, etc., while comparatively rare among the better social classes, is extremely common among the lower classes and among the less civilized nations; in russia, according to tarnowsky, the chief authority, seventy per cent. of all cases of syphilis in the rural districts are due to this cause and to ordinary kissing, and a special conference in st. petersburg in , for the consideration of the methods of dealing with venereal disease, recorded its opinion to the same effect; much the same seems to be true regarding bosnia and various parts of the balkan peninsula where syphilis is extremely prevalent among the peasantry. as regards the last group, according to bulkley in america, fifty per cent. of women generally contract syphilis innocently, chiefly from their husbands, while fournier states that in france seventy-five per cent. of married women with syphilis have been infected by their husbands, most frequently (seventy per cent.) by husbands who were themselves infected before marriage and supposed that they were cured. among men the proportion of syphilitics who have been accidentally infected, though less than among women, is still very considerable; it is stated to be at least ten per cent., and possibly it is a much larger proportion of cases. the scrupulous moralist who is anxious that all should have their deserts cannot fail to be still more anxious to prevent the innocent from suffering in place of the guilty. but it is absolutely impossible for him to combine these two aims; syphilis cannot be at the same time perpetuated for the guilty and abolished for the innocent. i have been taking only syphilis into account, but nearly all that is said of the accidental infection of syphilis applies with equal or greater force to gonorrhoea, for though gonorrhoea does not enter into the system by so many channels as syphilis, it is a more common as well as a more subtle and elusive disease. the literature of syphilis insontium is extremely extensive. there is a bibliography at the end of duncan bulkley's _syphilis in the innocent_, and a comprehensive summary of the question in a leipzig inaugural dissertation by f. moses, _zur kasuistik der extragenitalen syphilis-infektion_, . even, however, when we have put aside the vast number of venereally infected people who may be said to be, in the narrowest and most conventionally moral sense, "innocent" victims of the diseases they have contracted, there is still much to be said on this question. it must be remembered that the majority of those who contract venereal diseases by illegitimate sexual intercourse are young. they are youths, ignorant of life, scarcely yet escaped from home, still undeveloped, incompletely educated, and easily duped by women; in many cases they have met, as they thought, a "nice" girl, not indeed strictly virtuous but, it seemed to them, above all suspicion of disease, though in reality she was a clandestine prostitute. or they are young girls who have indeed ceased to be absolutely chaste, but have not yet lost all their innocence, and who do not consider themselves, and are not by others considered, prostitutes; that indeed, is one of the rocks on which the system of police regulation of prostitution comes to grief, for the police cannot catch the prostitute at a sufficiently early stage. of women who become syphilitic, according to fournier, twenty per cent. are infected before they are nineteen; in hospitals the proportion is as high as forty per cent.; and of men fifteen per cent. cases occur between eleven and twenty-one years of age. the age of maximum frequency of infection is for women twenty years (in the rural population eighteen), and for men twenty-three years. in germany erb finds that as many as eighty-five per cent men with gonorrhoea contracted the disease between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, a very small percentage being infected after thirty. these young things for the most part fell into a trap which nature had baited with her most fascinating lure; they were usually ignorant; not seldom they were deceived by an attractive personality; often they were overcome by passion; frequently all prudence and reserve had been lost in the fumes of wine. from a truly moral point of view they were scarcely less innocent than children. "i ask," says duclaux, "whether when a young man, or a young girl, abandon themselves to a dangerous caress society has done what it can to warn them. perhaps its intentions were good, but when the need came for precise knowledge a silly prudery has held it back, and it has left its children without _viaticum_.... i will go further, and proclaim that in a large number of cases the husbands who contaminate their wives are innocent. no one is responsible for the evil which he commits without knowing it and without willing it." i may recall the suggestive fact, already referred to, that the majority of husbands who infect their wives contracted the disease before marriage. they entered on marriage believing that their disease was cured, and that they had broken with their past. doctors have sometimes (and quacks frequently) contributed to this result by too sanguine an estimate of the period necessary to destroy the poison. so great an authority as fournier formerly believed that the syphilitic could safely be allowed to marry three or four years after the date of infection, but now, with increased experience, he extends the period to four or five years. it is undoubtedly true that, especially when treatment has been thorough and prompt, the diseased constitution, in a majority of cases, can be brought under complete control in a shorter period than this, but there is always a certain proportion of cases in which the powers of infection persist for many years, and even when the syphilitic husband is no longer capable of infecting his wife he may still perhaps be in a condition to effect a disastrous influence on the offspring. in nearly all these cases there was more or less ignorance--which is but another word for innocence as we commonly understand innocence--and when at last, after the event, the facts are more or less bluntly explained to the victim he frequently exclaims: "nobody told me!" it is this fact which condemns the pseudo-moralist. if he had seen to it that mothers began to explain the facts of sex to their little boys and girls from childhood, if he had (as dr. joseph price urges) taught the risks of venereal disease in the sunday-school, if he had plainly preached on the relations of the sexes from the pulpit, if he had seen to it that every youth at the beginning of adolescence received some simple technical instruction from his family doctor concerning sexual health and sexual disease--then, though there would still remain the need of pity for those who strayed from a path that must always be difficult to walk in, the would-be moralist at all events would in some measure be exculpated. but he has seldom indeed lifted a finger to do any of these things. even those who may be unwilling to abandon an attitude of private moral intolerance towards the victims of venereal diseases may still do well to remember that since the public manifestation of their intolerance is mischievous, and at the best useless, it is necessary for them to restrain it in the interests of society. they would not be the less free to order their own personal conduct in the strictest accordance with their superior moral rigidity; and that after all is for them the main thing. but for the sake of society it is necessary for them to adopt what they may consider the convention of a purely hygienic attitude towards these diseases. the erring are inevitably frightened by an attitude of moral reprobation into methods of concealment, and these produce an endless chain of social evils which can only be dissipated by openness. as duclaux has so earnestly insisted, it is impossible to grapple successfully with venereal disease unless we consent not to introduce our prejudices, or even our morals and religion, into the question, but treat it purely and simply as a sanitary question. and if the pseudo-moralist still has difficulty in coöperating towards the healing of this social sore he may be reminded that he himself--like every one of us little though we may know it--has certainly had a great army of syphilitic and gonorrhoeal persons among his own ancestors during the past four centuries. we are all bound together, and it is absurd, even when it is not inhuman, to cast contempt on our own flesh and blood. i have discussed rather fully the attitude of those who plead morality as a reason for ignoring the social necessity of combating venereal disease, because although there may not be many who seriously and understandingly adopt so anti-social and inhuman an attitude there are certainly many who are glad at need of the existence of so fine an excuse for their moral indifference or their mental indolence.[ ] when they are confronted by this great and difficult problem they find it easy to offer the remedy of conventional morality, although they are well aware that on a large scale that remedy has long been proved to be ineffectual. they ostentatiously affect to proffer the useless thick end of the wedge at a point where it is only possible with much skill and prudence to insinuate the thin working end. the general acceptance of the fact that syphilis and gonorrhoea are diseases, and not necessarily crimes or sins, is the condition for any practical attempt to deal with this question from the sanitary point of view which is now taking the place of the antiquated and ineffective police point of view. the scandinavian countries of europe have been the pioneers in practical modern hygienic methods of dealing with venereal disease. there are several reasons why this has come about. all the problems of sex--of sexual love as well as of sexual disease--have long been prominent in these countries, and an impatience with prudish hypocrisy seems here to have been more pronounced than elsewhere; we see this spirit, for instance, emphatically embodied in the plays of ibsen, and to some extent in björnson's works. the fearless and energetic temper of the people impels them to deal practically with sexual difficulties, while their strong instincts of independence render them averse to the bureaucratic police methods which have flourished in germany and france. the scandinavians have thus been the natural pioneers of the methods of combating venereal diseases which are now becoming generally recognized to be the methods of the future, and they have fully organized the system of putting venereal diseases under the ordinary law and dealing with them as with other contagious diseases. the first step in dealing with a contagious disease is to apply to it the recognized principles of notification. every new application of the principle, it is true, meets with opposition. it is without practical result, it is an unwarranted inquisition into the affairs of the individual, it is a new tax on the busy medical practitioner, etc. certainly notification by itself will not arrest the progress of any infectious disease. but it is an essential element in every attempt to deal with the prevention of disease. unless we know precisely the exact incidence, local variations, and temporary fluctuations of a disease we are entirely in the dark and can only beat about at random. all progress in public hygiene has been accompanied by the increased notification of disease, and most authorities are agreed that such notification must be still further extended, any slight inconvenience thus caused to individuals being of trifling importance compared to the great public interests at stake. it is true that so great an authority as neisser has expressed doubt concerning the extension of notification to gonorrhoea; the diagnosis cannot be infallible, and the patients often give false names. these objections, however, seem trivial; diagnosis can very seldom be infallible (though in this field no one has done so much for exact diagnosis as neisser himself), and names are not necessary for notification, and are not indeed required in the form of compulsory notification of venereal disease which existed a few years ago in norway. the principle of the compulsory notification of venereal diseases seems to have been first established in prussia, where it dates from . the system here, however, is only partial, not being obligatory in all cases but only when in the doctor's opinion secrecy might be harmful to the patient himself or to the community; it is only obligatory when the patient is a soldier. this method of notification is indeed on a wrong basis, it is not part of a comprehensive sanitary system but merely an auxiliary to police methods of dealing with prostitution. according to the scandinavian system, notification, though not an essential part of this system, rests on an entirely different basis. the scandinavian plan in a modified form has lately been established in denmark. this little country, so closely adjoining germany, for some time followed in this matter the example of its great neighbor and adopted the police regulation of prostitution and venereal disease. the more fundamental scandinavian affinities of denmark were, however, eventually asserted, and in , the system of regulation was entirely abandoned and denmark resolved to rely on thorough and systematic application of the sanitary principle already accepted in the country, although something of german influence still persists in the strict regulation of the streets and the penalties imposed upon brothel-keepers, leaving prostitution itself free. the decisive feature of the present system is, however, that the sanitary authorities are now exclusively medical. everyone, whatever his social or financial position, is entitled to the free treatment of venereal disease. whether he avails himself of it or not, he is in any case bound to undergo treatment. every diseased person is thus, so far as it can be achieved, in a doctor's hands. all doctors have their instructions in regard to such cases, they have not only to inform their patients that they cannot marry so long as risks of infection are estimated to be present, but that they are liable for the expenses of treatment, as well as the dangers suffered, by any persons whom they may infect. although it has not been possible to make the system at every point thoroughly operative, its general success is indicated by the entire reliance now placed on it, and the abandonment of the police regulation of prostitution. a system very similar to that of denmark was established some years previously in norway. the principle of the treatment of venereal disease at the public expense exists also in sweden as well as in finland, where treatment is compulsory.[ ] it can scarcely be said that the principle of notification has yet been properly applied on a large scale to venereal diseases. but it is constantly becoming more widely advocated, more especially in england and the united states,[ ] where national temperament and political traditions render the system of the police regulation of prostitution impossible--even if it were more effective than it practically is--and where the system of dealing with venereal disease on the basis of public health has to be recognized as not only the best but the only possible system.[ ] in association with this, it is necessary, as is also becoming ever more widely recognized, that there should be the most ample facilities for the gratuitous treatment of venereal diseases; the general establishment of free dispensaries, open in the evenings, is especially necessary, for many can only seek advice and help at this time. it is largely to the systematic introduction of facilities for gratuitous treatment that the enormous reduction in venereal disease in sweden, norway, and bosnia is attributed. it is the absence of the facilities for treatment, the implied feeling that the victims of venereal disease are not sufferers but merely offenders not entitled to care, that has in the past operated so disastrously in artificially promoting the dissemination of preventable diseases which might be brought under control. if we dispense with the paternal methods of police regulation, if we rely on the general principles of medical hygiene, and for the rest allow the responsibility for his own good or bad actions to rest on the individual himself, there is a further step, already fully recognized in principle, which we cannot neglect to take: we must look on every person as accountable for the venereal diseases he transmits. so long as we refuse to recognize venereal diseases as on the same level as other infectious diseases, and so long as we offer no full and fair facilities for their treatment, it is unjust to bring the individual to account for spreading them. but if we publicly recognize the danger of infectious venereal diseases, and if we leave freedom to the individual, we must inevitably declare, with duclaux, that every man or woman must be held responsible for the diseases he or she communicates. according to the oldenburg code of it was a punishable offence for a venereally diseased person to have sexual intercourse with a healthy person, whether or not infection resulted. in germany to-day, however, there is no law of this kind, although eminent german legal authorities, notably von liszt, are of opinion that a paragraph should be added to the code declaring that sexual intercourse on the part of a person who knows that he is diseased should be punishable by imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years, the law not to be applied as between married couples except on the application of one of the parties. at the present time in germany the transmission of venereal disease is only punishable as a special case of the infliction of bodily injury.[ ] in this matter germany is behind most of the scandinavian countries where individual responsibility for venereal infection is well recognized and actively enforced. in france, though the law is not definite and satisfactory, actions for the transmission of syphilis are successfully brought before the courts. opinion seems to be more decisively in favor of punishment for this offense than it is in germany. in després discussed the matter and considered the objections. few may avail themselves of the law, he remarks, but all would be rendered more cautious by the fear of infringing it; while the difficulties of tracing and proving infection are not greater, he points out, than those of tracing and proving paternity in the case of illegitimate children. després would punish with imprisonment for not more than two years any person, knowing himself to be diseased, who transmitted a venereal disease, and would merely fine those who communicated the contagion by imprudence, not realizing that they were diseased.[ ] the question has more recently been discussed by aurientis in a paris thesis. he states that the present french law as regards the transmission of sexual diseases is not clearly established and is difficult to act upon, but it is certainly just that those who have been contaminated and injured in this way should easily be able to obtain reparation. although it is admitted in principle that the communication of syphilis is an offence even under common law he is in agreement with those who would treat it as a special offence, making a new and more practical law.[ ] heavy damages are even at the present time obtained in the french courts from men who have infected young women in sexual intercourse, and also from the doctors as well as the mothers of syphilitic infants who have infected the foster-mothers they were entrusted to. although the french penal code forbids in general the disclosure of professional secrets, it is the duty of the medical practitioner to warn the foster-mother in such a case of the danger she is incurring, but without naming the disease; if he neglects to give this warning he may be held liable. in england, as well as in the united states, the law is more unsatisfactory and more helpless, in relation to this class of offences, than it is in france. the mischievous and barbarous notion, already dealt with, according to which venereal disease is the result of illicit intercourse and should be tolerated as a just visitation of god, seems still to flourish in these countries with fatal persistency. in england the communication of venereal disease by illicit intercourse is not an actionable wrong if the act of intercourse has been voluntary, even although there has been wilful and intentional concealment of the disease. _ex turpi causâ non oritur actio_, it is sententiously said; for there is much dormitative virtue in a latin maxim. no legal offence has still been committed if a husband contaminates his wife, or a wife her husband.[ ] the "freedom" enjoyed in this matter by england and the united states is well illustrated by an american case quoted by dr. isidore dyer, of new orleans, in his report to the brussels conference on the prevention of venereal diseases, in : "a patient with primary syphilis refused even charitable treatment and carried a book wherein she kept the number of men she had inoculated. when i first saw her she declared the number had reached two hundred and nineteen and that she would not be treated until she had had revenge on five hundred men." in a community where the most elementary rules of justice prevailed facilities would exist to enable this woman to obtain damages from the man who had injured her or even to secure his conviction to a term of imprisonment. in obtaining some indemnity for the wrong done her, and securing the "revenge" she craved, she would at the same time have conferred a benefit on society. she is shut out from any action against the one person who injured her; but as a sort of compensation she is allowed to become a radiating focus of disease, to shorten many lives, to cause many deaths, to pile up incalculable damages; and in so doing she is to-day perfectly within her legal rights. a community which encourages this state of things is not only immoral but stupid. there seems, however, to be a growing body of influential opinion, both in england and in the united states, in favor of making the transmission of venereal disease an offence punishable by heavy fine or by imprisonment.[ ] in any enactment no stress should be put on the infection being conveyed "knowingly." any formal limitation of this kind is unnecessary, as in such a case the court always takes into account the offender's ignorance or mere negligence, and it is mischievous because it tends to render an enactment ineffective and to put a premium on ignorance; the husbands who infect their wives with gonorrhoea immediately after marriage have usually done so from ignorance, and it should be at least necessary for them to prove that they have been fortified in their ignorance by medical advice. it is sometimes said that the existing law could be utilized for bringing actions of this kind, and that no greater facilities should be offered for fear of increasing attempts at blackmail. the inutility of the law at present for this purpose is shown by the fact that it seldom or never happens that any attempt is made to utilize it, while not only are there a number of existing punishable offences which form the subject of attempts at blackmail, but blackmail can still be demanded even in regard to disreputable actions that are not legally punishable at all. moreover, the attempt to levy blackmail is itself an offence always sternly dealt with in the courts. it is possible to trace the beginning of a recognition that the transmission of a venereal disease is a matter of which legal cognizance may be taken in the english law courts. it is now well settled that the infection of a wife by her husband may be held to constitute the legal cruelty which, according to the present law, must be proved, in addition to adultery, before a wife can obtain divorce from her husband. in restif de la bretonne proposed in his _gynographes_ that the communication of a venereal disease should itself be an adequate ground for divorce; this, however, is not at present generally accepted.[ ] it is sometimes said that it is very well to make the individual legally responsible for the venereal disease he communicates, but that the difficulties of bringing that responsibility home would still remain. and those who admit these difficulties frequently reply that at the worst we should have in our hands a means of educating responsibility; the man who deliberately ran the risk of transmitting such infection would be made to feel that he was no longer fairly within his legal rights but had done a bad action. we are thus led on finally to what is now becoming generally recognized as the chief and central method of combating venereal disease, if we are to accept the principle of individual responsibility as ruling in this sphere of life. organized sanitary and medical precautions, and proper legal protection for those who have been injured, are inoperative without the educative influence of elementary hygienic instruction placed in the possession of every young man and woman. in a sphere that is necessarily so intimate medical organization and legal resort can never be all-sufficing; knowledge is needed at every step in every individual to guide and even to awaken that sense of personal moral responsibility which must here always rule. wherever the importance of these questions is becoming acutely realized--and notably at the congresses of the german society for combating venereal disease--the problem is resolving itself mainly into one of education.[ ] and although opinion and practice in this matter are to-day more advanced in germany than elsewhere the conviction of this necessity is becoming scarcely less pronounced in all other civilized countries, in england and america as much as in france and the scandinavian lands. a knowledge of the risks of disease by sexual intercourse, both in and out of marriage,--and indeed, apart from sexual intercourse altogether,--is a further stage of that sexual education which, as we have already seen, must begin, so far as the elements are concerned, at a very early age. youths and girls should be taught, as the distinguished austrian economist, anton von menger wrote, shortly before his death, in his excellent little book, _neue sittenlehre_, that the production of children is a crime when the parents are syphilitic or otherwise incompetent through transmissible chronic diseases. information about venereal disease should not indeed be given until after puberty is well established. it is unnecessary and undesirable to impart medical knowledge to young boys and girls and to warn them against risks they are yet little liable to be exposed to. it is when the age of strong sexual instinct, actual or potential, begins that the risks, under some circumstances, of yielding to it, need to be clearly present to the mind. no one who reflects on the actual facts of life ought to doubt that it is in the highest degree desirable that every adolescent youth and girl ought to receive some elementary instruction in the general facts of venereal disease, tuberculosis, and alcoholism. these three "plagues of civilization" are so widespread, so subtle and manifold in their operation, that everyone comes in contact with them during life, and that everyone is liable to suffer, even before he is aware, perhaps hopelessly and forever, from the results of that contact. vague declamation about immorality and vaguer warnings against it have no effect and possess no meaning, while rhetorical exaggeration is unnecessary. a very simple and concise statement of the actual facts concerning the evils that beset life is quite sufficient and adequate, and quite essential. to ignore this need is only possible to those who take a dangerously frivolous view of life. it is the young woman as much as the youth who needs this enlightenment. there are still some persons so ill-informed as to believe that though it may be necessary to instruct the youth it is best to leave his sister unsullied, as they consider it, by a knowledge of the facts of life. this is the very reverse of the truth. it is desirable indeed that all should be acquainted with facts so vital to humanity, even although not themselves personally concerned. but the girl is even more concerned than the youth. a man has the matter more within his own grasp, and if he so chooses he may avoid all the grosser risks of contact with venereal disease. but it is not so with the woman. whatever her own purity, she cannot be sure that she may not have to guard against the possibility of disease in her future husband as well as in those to whom she may entrust her child. it is a possibility which the educated woman, so far from being dispensed from, is more liable to encounter than is the working-class woman, for venereal disease is less prevalent among the poor than the rich.[ ] the careful physician, even when his patient is a minister of religion, considers it his duty to inquire if he has had syphilis, and the clergyman of most severely correct life recognizes the need of such inquiry and may perhaps smile, but seldom feels himself insulted. the relationship between husband and wife is even much more intimate and important than that between doctor and patient, and a woman is not dispensed from the necessity of such inquiry concerning her future husband by the conviction that the reply must surely be satisfactory. moreover, it may well be in some cases that, if she is adequately enlightened, she may be the means of saving him, before it is too late, from the guilt of premature marriage and its fateful consequences, so deserving to earn his everlasting gratitude. even if she fails in winning that, she still has her duty to herself and to the future race which her children will help to form. in most countries there is a growing feeling in favor of the enlightenment of young women equally with young men as regards venereal diseases. thus in germany max flesch, in his _prostitution und frauenkrankheiten_, considers that at the end of their school days all girls should receive instruction concerning the grave physical and social dangers to which women are exposed in life. in france duclaux (in his _l'hygiène sociale_) is emphatic that women must be taught. "already," he states, "doctors who by custom have been made, in spite of themselves, the husband's accomplices, will tell you of the ironical gaze they sometimes encounter when they seek to lead a wife astray concerning the causes of her ills. the day is approaching of a revolt against the social lie which has made so many victims, and you will be obliged to teach women what they need to know in order to guard themselves against you." it is the same in america. reform in this field, isidore dyer declares, must emblazon on its flag the motto, "knowledge is health," as well of mind as of body, for women as well as for men. in a discussion introduced by denslow lewis at the annual meeting of the american medical association in on the limitation of venereal diseases (_medico-legal journal_, june and september, ), there was a fairly general agreement among all the speakers that almost or quite the chief method of prevention lay in education, the education of women as much as of men. "education lies at the bottom of the whole thing," declared one speaker (seneca egbert, of philadelphia), "and we will never gain much headway until every young man, and every young woman, even before she falls in love and becomes engaged, knows what these diseases are, and what it will mean if she marries a man who has contracted them." "educate father and mother, and they will educate their sons and daughters," exclaims egbert grandin, more especially in regard to gonorrhoea (_medical record_, may , ); "i lay stress on the daughter because she becomes the chief sufferer from inoculation, and it is her right to know that she should protect herself against the gonorrhoeic as well as against the alcoholic." we must fully face the fact that it is the woman herself who must be accounted responsible, as much as a man, for securing the right conditions of a marriage she proposes to enter into. in practice, at the outset, that responsibility may no doubt be in part delegated to parents or guardians. it is unreasonable that any false delicacy should be felt about this matter on either side. questions of money and of income are discussed before marriage, and as public opinion grows sounder none will question the necessity of discussing the still more serious question of health, alike that of the prospective bridegroom and of the bride. an incalculable amount of disease and marital unhappiness would be prevented if before an engagement was finally concluded each party placed himself or herself in the hands of a physician and authorized him to report to the other party. such a report would extend far beyond venereal disease. if its necessity became generally recognized it would put an end to much fraud which now takes place when entering the marriage bond. it constantly happens at present that one party or the other conceals the existence of some serious disease or disability which is speedily discovered after marriage, sometimes with a painful and alarming shock--as when a man discovers his wife in an epileptic fit on the wedding night--and always with the bitter and abiding sense of having been duped. there can be no reasonable doubt that such concealment is an adequate cause of divorce. sir thomas more doubtless sought to guard against such frauds when he ordained in his _utopia_ that each party should before marriage be shown naked to the other. the quaint ceremony he describes was based on a reasonable idea, for it is ludicrous, if it were not often tragic in its results, that any person should be asked to undertake to embrace for life a person whom he or she has not so much as seen. it may be necessary to point out that every movement in this direction must be the spontaneous action of individuals directing their own lives according to the rules of an enlightened conscience, and cannot be initiated by the dictation of the community as a whole enforcing its commands by law. in these matters law can only come in at the end, not at the beginning. in the essential matters of marriage and procreation laws are primarily made in the brains and consciences of individuals for their own guidance. unless such laws are already embodied in the actual practice of the great majority of the community it is useless for parliaments to enact them by statute. they will be ineffective or else they will be worse than ineffective by producing undesigned mischiefs. we can only go to the root of the matter by insisting on education in moral responsibility and instruction, in matters of fact. the question arises as to the best person to impart this instruction. as we have seen there can be little doubt that before puberty the parents, and especially the mother, are the proper instructors of their children in esoteric knowledge. but after puberty the case is altered. the boy and the girl are becoming less amenable to parental influence, there is greater shyness on both sides, and the parents rarely possess the more technical knowledge that is now required. at this stage it seems that the assistance of the physician, of the family doctor if he has the proper qualities for the task, should be called in. the plan usually adopted, and now widely carried out, is that of lectures setting forth the main facts concerning venereal diseases, their dangers, and allied topics.[ ] this method is quite excellent. such lectures should be delivered at intervals by medical lecturers at all urban, educational, manufacturing, military, and naval centres, wherever indeed a large number of young persons are gathered together. it should be the business of the central educational authority either to carry them out or to enforce on those controlling or employing young persons the duty of providing such lectures. the lectures should be free to all who have attained the age of sixteen. in germany the principle of instruction by lectures concerning venereal diseases seems to have become established, at all events so far as young men are concerned, and such lectures are constantly becoming more usual. in the minister of education established courses of lectures by doctors on sexual hygiene and venereal diseases for higher schools and educational institutions, though attendance was not made compulsory. the courses now frequently given by medical men to the higher classes in german secondary schools on the general principles of sexual anatomy and physiology nearly always include sexual hygiene with special reference to venereal diseases (see, e.g., _sexualpädagogik_, pp. - ). in austria, also, lectures on personal hygiene and the dangers of venereal disease are delivered to students about to leave the gymnasium for the university; and the working men's clubs have instituted regular courses of lectures on the same subjects delivered by physicians. in france many distinguished men, both inside and outside the medical profession, are working for the cause of the instruction of the young in sexual hygiene, though they have to contend against a more obstinate degree of prejudice and prudery on the part of the middle class than is to be found in the germanic lands. the commission extraparlementaire du régime des moeurs, with the conjunction of augagneur, alfred fournier, yves guyot, gide, and other distinguished professors, teachers, etc., has lately pronounced in favor of the official establishment of instruction in sexual hygiene, to be given in the highest classes at the lycées, or in the earliest class at higher educational colleges; such instruction, it is argued, would not only furnish needed enlightenment, but also educate the sense of moral responsibility. there is in france, also, an active and distinguished though unofficial société française de prophylaxie sanitaire et morale, which delivers public lectures on sexual hygiene. fournier, pinard, burlureaux and other eminent physicians have written pamphlets on this subject for popular distribution (see, e.g., _le progrès médical_ of september, ). in england and the united states very little has yet been done in this direction, but in the united states, at all events, opinion in favor of action is rapidly growing (see, e.g., w.a. funk, "the venereal peril," _medical record_, april , ). the american society of sanitary and moral prophylaxis (based on the parent society founded in paris in by fournier) was established in new york in . there are similar societies in chicago and philadelphia. the main object is to study venereal diseases and to work toward their social control. doctors, laymen, and women are members. lectures and short talks are now given under the auspices of these societies to small groups of young women in social settlements, and in other ways, with encouraging success; it is found to be an excellent method of reaching the young women of the working classes. both men and women physicians take part in the lectures (clement cleveland, presidential address on "prophylaxis of venereal diseases," _transactions american gynecological society_, philadelphia, vol. xxxii, ). an important auxiliary method of carrying out the task of sexual hygiene, and at the same time of spreading useful enlightenment, is furnished by the method of giving to every syphilitic patient in clinics where such cases are treated a card of instruction for his guidance in hygienic matters, together with a warning of the risks of marriage within four or five years after infection, and in no case without medical advice. such printed instruction, in clear, simple, and incisive language, should be put into the hands of every syphilitic patient as a matter of routine, and it might be as well to have a corresponding card for gonorrhoeal patients. this plan has already been introduced at some hospitals, and it is so simple and unobjectionable a precaution that it will, no doubt, be generally adopted. in some countries this measure is carried out on a wider scale. thus in austria, as the result of a movement in which several university professors have taken an active part, leaflets and circulars, explaining briefly the chief symptoms of venereal diseases and warning against quacks and secret remedies, are circulated among young laborers and factory hands, matriculating students, and scholars who are leaving trade schools. in france, where great social questions are sometimes faced with a more chivalrous daring than elsewhere, the dangers of syphilis, and the social position of the prostitute, have alike been dealt with by distinguished novelists and dramatists. huysmans inaugurated this movement with his first novel, _marthe_, which was immediately suppressed by the police. shortly afterwards edmond de goncourt published _la fille elisa_, the first notable novel of the kind by a distinguished author. it was written with much reticence, and was not indeed a work of high artistic value, but it boldly faced a great social problem and clearly set forth the evils of the common attitude towards prostitution. it was dramatized and played by antoine at the théâtre libre, but when, in , antoine wished to produce it at the porte-saint-martin theatre, the censor interfered and prohibited the play on account of its "contexture générale." the minister of education defended this decision on the ground that there was much in the play that might arouse repugnance and disgust. "repugnance here is more moral than attraction," exclaimed m. paul déroulède, and the newspapers criticized a censure which permitted on the stage all the trivial indecencies which favor prostitution, but cannot tolerate any attack on prostitution. in more recent years the brothers margueritte, both in novels and in journalism, have largely devoted their distinguished abilities and high literary skill to the courageous and enlightened advocacy of many social reforms. victor margueritte, in his _prostituée_ ( )--a novel which has attracted wide attention and been translated into various languages--has sought to represent the condition of women in our actual society, and more especially the condition of the prostitute under what he regards as the odious and iniquitous system still prevailing. the book is a faithful picture of the real facts, thanks to the assistance the author received from the paris préfecture of police, and largely for that reason is not altogether a satisfactory work of art, but it vividly and poignantly represents the cruelty, indifference, and hypocrisy so often shown by men towards women, and is a book which, on that account, cannot be too widely read. one of the most notable of modern plays is brieux's _les avariés_ ( ). this distinguished dramatist, himself a medical man, dedicates his play to fournier, the greatest of syphilographers. "i think with you," he writes here, "that syphilis will lose much of its danger when it is possible to speak openly of an evil which is neither a shame nor a punishment, and when those who suffer from it, knowing what evils they may propagate, will better understand their duties towards others and towards themselves." the story developed in the drama is the old and typical story of the young man who has spent his bachelor days in what he considers a discrete and regular manner, having only had two mistresses, neither of them prostitutes, but at the end of this period, at a gay supper at which he bids farewell to his bachelor life, he commits a fatal indiscretion and becomes infected by syphilis; his marriage is approaching and he goes to a distinguished specialist who warns him that treatment takes time, and that marriage is impossible for several years; he finds a quack, however, who undertakes to cure him in six months; at the end of the time he marries; a syphilitic child is born; the wife discovers the state of things and forsakes her home to return to her parents; her indignant father, a deputy in parliament, arrives in paris; the last word is with the great specialist who brings finally some degree of peace and hope into the family. the chief morals brieux points out are that it is the duty of the bride's parents before marriage to ascertain the bridegroom's health; that the bridegroom should have a doctor's certificate; that at every marriage the part of the doctors is at least as important as that of the lawyers. even if it were a less accomplished work of art than it is, _les avariés_ is a play which, from the social and educative point of view alone, all who have reached the age of adolescence should be compelled to see. another aspect of the same problem has been presented in _plus fort que le mal_, a book written in dramatic form (though not as a properly constituted play intended for the stage) by a distinguished french medical author who here adopts the name of espy de metz. the author (who is not, however, pleading _pro domo_) calls for a more sympathetic attitude towards those who suffer from syphilis, and though he writes with much less dramatic skill than brieux, and scarcely presents his moral in so unequivocal a form, his work is a notable contribution to the dramatic literature of syphilis. it will probably be some time before these questions, poignant as they are from the dramatic point of view, and vitally important from the social point of view, are introduced on the english or the american stage. it is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the puritanic elements which still exist in anglo-saxon thought and feeling generally, the puritanic aspect of life has never received embodiment in the english or american drama. on the english stage it is never permitted to hint at the tragic side of wantonness; vice must always be made seductive, even though a _deus ex machina_ causes it to collapse at the end of the performance. as mr. bernard shaw has said, the english theatrical method by no means banishes vice; it merely consents that it shall be made attractive; its charms are advertised and its penalties suppressed. "now, it is futile to plead that the stage is not the proper place for the representation and discussion of illegal operations, incest, and venereal disease. if the stage is the proper place for the exhibition and discussion of seduction, adultery, promiscuity, and prostitution, it must be thrown open to all the consequences of these things, or it will demoralize the nation." the impulse to insist that vice shall always be made attractive is not really, notwithstanding appearances, a vicious impulse. it arises from a mental confusion, a common psychic tendency, which is by no means confined to anglo-saxon lands, and is even more well marked among the better educated in the merely literary sense, than among the worse educated people. the æsthetic is confused with the moral, and what arouses disgust is thus regarded as immoral. in france the novels of zola, the most pedestrianally moralistic of writers, were for a long time supposed to be immoral because they were often disgusting. the same feeling is still more widespread in england. if a prostitute is brought on the stage, and she is pretty, well-dressed, seductive, she may gaily sail through the play and every one is satisfied. but if she were not particularly pretty, well-dressed, or seductive, if it were made plain that she was diseased and was reckless in infecting others with that disease, if it were hinted that she could on occasion be foul-mouthed, if, in short, a picture were shown from life--then we should hear that the unfortunate dramatist had committed something that was "disgusting" and "immoral." disgusting it might be, but, on that very account, it would be moral. there is a distinction here that the psychologist cannot too often point out or the moralist too often emphasize. it is not for the physician to complicate and confuse his own task as teacher by mixing it up with considerations which belong to the spiritual sphere. but in carrying out impartially his own special work of enlightenment he will always do well to remember that there is in the adolescent mind, as it has been necessary to point out in a previous chapter, a spontaneous force working on the side of sexual hygiene. those who believe that the adolescent mind is merely bent on sensual indulgence are not less false and mischievous in their influence than are those who think it possible and desirable for adolescents to be preserved in sheer sexual ignorance. however concealed, suppressed, or deformed--usually by the misplaced and premature zeal of foolish parents and teachers--there arise at puberty ideal impulses which, even though they may be rooted in sex, yet in their scope transcend sex. these are capable of becoming far more potent guides of the physical sex impulse than are merely material or even hygienic considerations. it is time to summarize and conclude this discussion of the prevention of venereal disease, which, though it may seem to the superficial observer to be merely a medical and sanitary question outside the psychologist's sphere, is yet seen on closer view to be intimately related even to the most spiritual conception of the sexual relationships. not only are venereal diseases the foes to the finer development of the race, but we cannot attain to any wholesome and beautiful vision of the relationships of sex so long as such relationships are liable at every moment to be corrupted and undermined at their source. we cannot yet precisely measure the interval which must elapse before, so far as europe at least is concerned, syphilis and gonorrhoea are sent to that limbo of monstrous old dead diseases to which plague and leprosy have gone and smallpox is already drawing near. but society is beginning to realize that into this field also must be brought the weapons of light and air, the sword and the breastplate with which all diseases can alone be attacked. as we have seen, there are four methods by which in the more enlightened countries venereal disease is now beginning to be combated.[ ] ( ) by proclaiming openly that the venereal diseases are diseases like any other disease, although more subtle and terrible than most, which may attack anyone from the unborn baby to its grandmother, and that they are not, more than other diseases, the shameful penalties of sin, from which relief is only to be sought, if at all, by stealth, but human calamities; ( ) by adopting methods of securing official information concerning the extent, distribution, and variation of venereal disease, through the already recognized plan of notification and otherwise, and by providing such facilities for treatment, especially for free treatment, as may be found necessary; ( ) by training the individual sense of moral responsibility, so that every member of the community may realize that to inflict a serious disease on another person, even only as a result of reckless negligence, is a more serious offence than if he or she had used the knife or the gun or poison as the method of attack, and that it is necessary to introduce special legal provision in every country to assist the recovery of damages for such injuries and to inflict penalties by loss of liberty or otherwise; ( ) by the spread of hygienic knowledge, so that all adolescents, youths and girls alike, may be furnished at the outset of adult life with an equipment of information which will assist them to avoid the grosser risks of contamination and enable them to recognize and avoid danger at the earliest stages. a few years ago, when no method of combating venereal disease was known except that system of police regulation which is now in its decadence, it would have been impossible to bring forward such considerations as these; they would have seemed utopian. to-day they are not only recognizable as practical, but they are being actually put into practice, although, it is true, with very varying energy and insight in different countries. yet it is certain that in the competition of nationalities, as max von niessen has well said, "that country will best take a leading place in the march of civilization which has the foresight and courage to introduce and carry through those practical movements of sexual hygiene which have so wide and significant a bearing on its own future, and that of the human race generally."[ ] footnotes: [ ] it is probable that schopenhauer felt a more than merely speculative interest in this matter. bloch has shown good reason for believing that schopenhauer himself contracted syphilis in , and that this was a factor in constituting his conception of the world and in confirming his constitutional pessimism (_medizinische klinik_, nos. and , ). [ ] havelburg, in senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] this is the very definite opinion of lowndes after an experience of fifty-four years in the treatment of venereal diseases in liverpool (_british medical journal_, feb. , , p. ). it is further indicated by the fact (if it is a real fact) that since there has been a decline of both the infantile and general mortality from syphilis in england. [ ] "there is no doubt whatever that syphilis is on the increase in london, judging from hospital work alone," says pernet (_british medical journal_, march , ). syphilis was evidently very prevalent, however, a century or two ago, and there is no ground for asserting positively that it is more prevalent to-day. [ ] see, e.g., a. neisser, _die experimentelle syphilisforschung_, , and e. hoffmann (who was associated with schaudinn's discovery), _die aetiologie der syphilis_, ; d'arcy power, _a system of syphilis_, , etc.; f.w. mott, "pathology of syphilis in the light of modern research," _british medical journal_, february , ; also, _archives of neurology and psychiatry_, vol. iv, . [ ] there is some difference of opinion on this point, and though it seems probable that early and thorough treatment usually cures the disease in a few years and renders further complications highly improbable, it is not possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to speak with absolute certainty as to the future. [ ] "that syphilis has been, and is, one of the chief causes of physical degeneration in england cannot be denied, and it is a fact that is acknowledged on all sides," writes lieutenant-colonel lambkin, the medical officer in command of the london military hospital for venereal diseases. "to grapple with the treatment of syphilis among the civil population of england ought to be the chief object of those interested in that most burning question, the physical degeneration of our race" (_british medical journal_, august , ). [ ] f.w. mott, "syphilis as a cause of insanity," _british medical journal_, october , . [ ] it can seldom be proved in more than eighty per cent. of cases, but in twenty per cent. of old syphilitic cases it is commonly impossible to find traces of the disease or to obtain a history of it. crocker found that it was only in eighty per cent. of cases of absolutely certain syphilitic skin diseases that he could obtain a history of syphilitic infection, and mott found exactly the same percentage in absolutely certain syphilitic lesions of the brain; mott believes (e.g., "syphilis in relation to the nervous system," _british medical journal_, january , ) that syphilis is the essential cause of general paralysis and tabes. [ ] audry. _la semaine médicale_, june , . when europeans carry syphilis to lands inhabited by people of lower race, the results are often very much worse than this. thus lambkin, as a result of a special mission to investigate syphilis in uganda, found that in some districts as many as ninety per cent, of the people suffer from syphilis, and fifty to sixty per cent, of the infant mortality is due to this cause. these people are baganda, a highly intelligent, powerful, and well-organized tribe before they received, in the gift of syphilis, the full benefit of civilization and christianity, which (lambkin points out) has been largely the cause of the spread of the disease by breaking down social customs and emancipating the women. christianity is powerful enough to break down the old morality, but not powerful enough to build up a new morality (_british medical journal_, october , , p. ). [ ] even within the limits of the english army it is found in india (h.c. french, _syphilis in the army_, ) that venereal disease is ten times more frequent among british troops than among native troops. outside of national armies it is found, by admission to hospital and death rates, that the united states stands far away at the head for frequency of venereal disease, being followed by great britain, then france and austria-hungary, russia, and germany. [ ] there is no dispute concerning the antiquity of gonorrhoea in the old world as there is regarding syphilis. the disease was certainly known at a very remote period. even esarhaddon, the famous king of assyria, referred to in the old testament, was treated by the priests for a disorder which, as described in the cuneiform documents of the time, could only have been gonorrhoea. the disease was also well known to the ancient egyptians, and evidently common, for they recorded many prescriptions for its treatment (oefele, "gonorrhoe vor christi geburt," _monatshefte für praktische dermatologie_, , p. ). [ ] cf. memorandum by sydney stephenson, report of ophthalmia neonatorum committee, _british medical journal_, may , . [ ] the extent of these evils is set forth, e.g., in a comprehensive essay by taylor, _american journal obstetrics_, january, . [ ] neisser brings together figures bearing on the prevalence of gonorrhoea in germany, senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] _lancet_, september , . as regards women, dr. frances ivens (_british medical journal_, june , ) has found at liverpool that per cent. of gynæcological cases revealed the presence of gonorrhoea. they were mostly poor respectable married women. this is probably a high proportion, as liverpool is a busy seaport, but it is less than sänger's estimate of per cent. [ ] e.h. grandin, _medical record_, may , . [ ] e.w. cushing, "sociological aspects of gonorrhoea," _transactions american gynecological society_, vol. xxii, . [ ] it is only in very small communities ruled by an autocratic power with absolute authority to control conditions and to examine persons of both sexes that reglementation becomes in any degree effectual. this is well shown by dr. w.e. harwood, who describes the system he organized in the mines of the minnesota iron company (_journal american medical association_, december , ). the women in the brothels on the company's estate were of the lowest class, and disease was very prevalent. careful examination of the women was established, and control of the men, who, immediately on becoming diseased, were bound to declare by what woman they had been infected. the woman was responsible for the medical bill of the man she infected, and even for his board, if incapacitated, and the women were compelled to maintain a fund for their own hospital expenses when required. in this way venereal disease, though not entirely uprooted, was very greatly diminished. [ ] a clear and comprehensive statement of the present position of the question is given by iwan bloch, _das sexualleben unserer zeit_, chs. xiii-xv. how ineffectual the system of police regulation is, even in germany, where police interference is tolerated to so marked a degree, may be illustrated by the case of mannheim. here the regulation of prostitution is very severe and thorough, yet a careful inquiry in among the doctors of mannheim (ninety-two of whom sent in detailed returns) showed that of six hundred cases of venereal disease in men, nearly half had been contracted from prostitutes. about half the remaining cases (nearly a quarter of the whole) were due to waitresses and bar-maids; then followed servant-girls (lion and loeb, in _sexualpädagogik_, the proceedings of the third german congress for combating venereal diseases, , p. ). [ ] a sixth less numerous class might be added of the young girls, often no more than children, who have been practically raped by men who believe that intercourse with a virgin is a cure for obstinate venereal disease. in america this belief is frequently held by italians, chinese, negroes, etc. w. travis gibb, examining physician of the new york society for the prevention of cruelty to children, has examined over raped children (only a small proportion, he states, of the cases actually occurring), and finds that thirteen per cent have venereal diseases. a fairly large proportion of these cases, among girls from twelve to sixteen, are, he states, willing victims. dr. flora pollack, also, of the johns hopkins hospital dispensary, estimates that in baltimore alone from to , children between the ages of one and fifteen are venereally infected every year. the largest number, she finds, is at the age of six, and the chief cause appears to be, not lust, but superstition. [ ] for a discussion of inherited syphilis, see, e.g., clement lucas, _lancet_, february , . [ ] much harm has been done in some countries by the foolish and mischievous practice of friendly societies and sick clubs of ignoring venereal diseases, and not according free medical aid or sick pay to those members who suffer from them. this practice prevailed, for instance, in vienna until , when a more humane and enlightened policy was inaugurated, venereal diseases being placed on the same level as other diseases. [ ] active measures against venereal disease were introduced in sweden early in the last century, and compulsory and gratuitous treatment established. compulsory notification was introduced many years ago in norway, and by there was a great diminution in the prevalence of venereal diseases; there is compulsory treatment. [ ] see, e.g., morrow, _social diseases and marriage_, ch. xxxvii. [ ] a committee of the medical society of new york, appointed in to consider this question, reported in favor of notification without giving names and addresses, and dr. c.r. drysdale, who took an active part in the brussels international conference of , advocated a similar plan in england, _british medical journal_, february , . [ ] thus in munich, in , a man who had given gonorrhoea to a servant-girl was sent to prison for ten months on this ground. the state of german opinion to-day on this subject is summarized by bloch, _sexualleben unserer zeit_, p. . [ ] a. després, _la prostitution à paris_, p. . [ ] f. aurientis, _etude medico-légale sur la jurisprudence actuelle à propos de la transmission des maladies venériennes_, thèse de paris, . [ ] in england at present "a husband knowingly and wilfully infecting his wife with the venereal disease, cannot be convicted criminally, either under a charge of assault or of inflicting grievous bodily harm" (n. geary, _the law of marriage_, p. ). this was decided in in the case of _r. v. clarence_ by nine judges to four judges in the court for the consideration of crown cases reserved. [ ] modern democratic sentiment is opposed to the sequestration of a prostitute merely because she is diseased. but there can be no reasonable doubt whatever that if a diseased prostitute infects another person, and is unable to pay the very heavy damages which should be demanded in such a case, she ought to be secluded and subjected to treatment. that is necessary in the interests of the community. but it is also necessary, to avoid placing a premium on the commission of an offence which would ensure gratuitous treatment and provision for a prostitute without means, that she should be furnished with facilities for treatment in any case. [ ] it has, however, been decided by the paris court of appeal that for a husband to marry when knowingly suffering from a venereal disease and to communicate that disease to his wife is a sufficient cause for divorce (_semaine médicale_, may, ). [ ] the large volume, entitled _sexualpädagogik_, containing the proceedings of the third of these congresses, almost ignores the special subject of venereal disease, and is devoted to the questions involved by the general sexual education of the young, which, as many of the speakers maintained, must begin with the child at his mother's knee. [ ] "workmen, soldiers, and so on," neisser remarks (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. ii, p. ), "can more easily find non-prostitute girls of their own class willing to enter into amorous relations with them which result in sexual intercourse, and they are therefore less exposed to the danger of infection than those men who have recourse almost exclusively to prostitutes" (see also bloch, _sexualleben unserer zeit_, p. ). [ ] the character and extent of such lectures are fully discussed in the proceedings of the third congress of the german society for combating venereal diseases, _sexualpädagogik_, . [ ] i leave out of account, as beyond the scope of the present work, the auxiliary aids to the suppression of venereal diseases furnished by the promising new methods, only now beginning to be understood, of treating or even aborting such diseases (see, e.g., metchnikoff, _the new hygiene_, ). [ ] max von niessen, "herr doktor, darf ich heiraten?" _mutterschutz_, , p. . chapter ix. sexual morality. prostitution in relation to our marriage system--marriage and morality--the definition of the term "morality"--theoretical morality--its division into traditional morality and ideal morality--practical morality--practical morality based on custom--the only subject of scientific ethics--the reaction between theoretical and practical morality--sexual morality in the past an application of economic morality--the combined rigidity and laxity of this morality--the growth of a specific sexual morality and the evolution of moral ideals--manifestations of sexual morality--disregard of the forms of marriage--trial marriage--marriage after conception of child--phenomena in germany, anglo-saxon countries, russia, etc.--the status of woman--the historical tendency favoring moral equality of women with men--the theory of the matriarchate--mother-descent--women in babylonia--egypt--rome--the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--the historical tendency favoring moral inequality of woman--the ambiguous influence of christianity--influence of teutonic custom and feudalism--chivalry--woman in england--the sale of wives--the vanishing subjection of woman--inaptitude of the modern man to domineer--the growth of moral responsibility in women--the concomitant development of economic independence--the increase of women who work--invasion of the modern industrial field by women--in how far this is socially justifiable--the sexual responsibility of women and its consequences--the alleged moral inferiority of women--the "self-sacrifice" of women--society not concerned with sexual relationships--procreation the sole sexual concern of the state--the supreme importance of maternity. it has been necessary to deal fully with the phenomena of prostitution because, however aloof we may personally choose to hold ourselves from those phenomena, they really bring us to the heart of the sexual question in so far as it constitutes a social problem. if we look at prostitution from the outside, as an objective phenomenon, as a question of social dynamics, it is seen to be not a merely accidental and eliminable incident of our present marriage system but an integral part of it, without which it would fall to pieces. this will probably be fairly clear to all who have followed the preceding exposition of prostitutional phenomena. there is, however, more than this to be said. not only is prostitution to-day, as it has been for more than two thousand years, the buttress of our marriage system, but if we look at marriage, not from the outside as a formal institution, but from the inside with relation to the motives that constitute it, we find that marriage in a large proportion of cases is itself in certain respects a form of prostitution. this has been emphasized so often and from so many widely different standpoints that it may seem hardly necessary to labor the point here. but the point is one of extreme importance in relation to the question of sexual morality. our social conditions are unfavorable to the development of a high moral feeling in woman. the difference between the woman who sells herself in prostitution and the woman who sells herself in marriage, according to the saying of marro already quoted, "is only a difference in price and duration of the contract." or, as forel puts it, marriage is "a more fashionable form of prostitution," that is to say, a mode of obtaining, or disposing of, for monetary considerations, a sexual commodity. marriage is, indeed, not merely a more fashionable form of prostitution, it is a form sanctified by law and religion, and the question of morality is not allowed to intrude. morality may be outraged with impunity provided that law and religion have been invoked. the essential principle of prostitution is thus legalized and sanctified among us. that is why it is so difficult to arouse any serious indignation, or to maintain any reasoned objections, against our prostitution considered by itself. the most plausible ground is that of those[ ] who, bringing marriage down to the level of prostitution, maintain that the prostitute is a "blackleg" who is accepting less than the "market rate of wages," i.e., marriage, for the sexual services she renders. but even this low ground is quite unsafe. the prostitute is really paid extremely well considering how little she gives in return; the wife is really paid extremely badly considering how much she often gives, and how much she necessarily gives up. for the sake of the advantage of economic dependence on her husband, she must give up, as ellen key observes, those rights over her children, her property, her work, and her own person which she enjoys as an unmarried woman, even, it may be added, as a prostitute. the prostitute never signs away the right over her own person, as the wife is compelled to do; the prostitute, unlike the wife, retains her freedom and her personal rights, although these may not often be of much worth. it is the wife rather than the prostitute who is the "blackleg." it is by no means only during recent years that our marriage system has been arraigned before the bar of morals. forty years ago james hinton exhausted the vocabulary of denunciation in describing the immorality and selfish licentiousness which our marriage system covers with the cloak of legality and sanctity. "there is an unsoundness in our marriage relations," hinton wrote. "not only practically are they dreadful, but they do not answer to feelings and convictions far too widespread to be wisely ignored. take the case of women of marked eminence consenting to be a married man's mistress; of pure and simple girls saying they cannot see why they should have a marriage by law; of a lady saying that if she were in love she would not have any legal tie; of its being necessary--or thought so by good and wise men--to keep one sex in bitter and often fatal ignorance. these things (and how many more) show some deep unsoundness in the marriage relations. this must be probed and searched to the bottom." at an earlier date, in , gross-hoffinger, in his _die schicksale der frauen und die prostitution_--a remarkable book which bloch, with little exaggeration, describes as possessing an epoch-marking significance--vigorously showed that the problem of prostitution is in reality the problem of marriage, and that we can only reform away prostitution by reforming marriage, regarded as a compulsory institution resting on an antiquated economic basis. gross-hoffinger was a pioneering precursor of ellen key. more than a century and a half earlier a man of very different type scathingly analyzed the morality of his time, with a brutal frankness, indeed, that seemed to his contemporaries a revoltingly cynical attitude towards their sacred institutions, and they felt that nothing was left to them save to burn his books. describing modern marriage in his _fable of the bees_ ( , p. ), and what that marriage might legally cover, mandeville wrote: "the fine gentleman i spoke of need not practice any greater self-denial than the savage, and the latter acted more according to the laws of nature and sincerity than the first. the man that gratifies his appetite after the manner the custom of the country allows of, has no censure to fear. if he is hotter than goats or bulls, as soon as the ceremony is over, let him sate and fatigue himself with joy and ecstasies of pleasure, raise and indulge his appetite by turns, as extravagantly as his strength and manhood will give him leave. he may, with safety, laugh at the wise men that should reprove him: all the women and above nine in ten of the men are of his side; nay, he has the liberty of valuing himself upon the fury of his unbridled passions, and the more he wallows in lust and strains every faculty to be abandonedly voluptuous, the sooner he shall have the good-will and gain the affection of the women, not the young, vain, and lascivious only, but the prudent, grave, and most sober matrons." thus the charge brought against our marriage system from the point of view of morality is that it subordinates the sexual relationship to considerations of money and of lust. that is precisely the essence of prostitution. the only legitimately moral end of marriage--whether we regard it from the wider biological standpoint or from the narrower standpoint of human society--is as a sexual selection, effected in accordance with the laws of sexual selection, and having as its direct object a united life of complete mutual love and as its indirect object the procreation of the race. unless procreation forms part of the object of marriage, society has nothing whatever to do with it and has no right to make its voice heard. but if procreation is one of the ends of marriage, then it is imperative from the biological and social points of view that no influences outside the proper natural influence of sexual selection should be permitted to affect the choice of conjugal partners, for in so far as wholesome sexual selection is interfered with the offspring is likely to be injured and the interests of the race affected. it must, of course, be clearly understood that the idea of marriage as a form of sexual union based not on biological but on economic considerations, is very ancient, and is sometimes found in societies that are almost primitive. whenever, however, marriage on a purely property basis, and without due regard to sexual selection, has occurred among comparatively primitive and vigorous peoples, it has been largely deprived of its evil results by the recognition of its merely economic character, and by the absence of any desire to suppress, even nominally, other sexual relationships on a more natural basis which were outside this artificial form of marriage. polygamy especially tended to conciliate unions on an economic basis with unions on a natural sexual basis. our modern marriage system has, however, acquired an artificial rigidity which excludes the possibility of this natural safeguard and compensation. whatever its real moral content may be, a modern marriage is always "legal" and "sacred." we are indeed so accustomed to economic forms of marriage that, as sidgwick truly observed (_method of ethics_, bk. ii, ch. xi), when they are spoken of as "legalized prostitution" it constantly happens that "the phrase is felt to be extravagant and paradoxical." a man who marries for money or for ambition is departing from the biological and moral ends of marriage. a woman who sells herself for life is morally on the same level as one who sells herself for a night. the fact that the payment seems larger, that in return for rendering certain domestic services and certain personal complacencies--services and complacencies in which she may be quite inexpert--she will secure an almshouse in which she will be fed and clothed and sheltered for life makes no difference in the moral aspect of her case. the moral responsibility is, it need scarcely be said, at least as much the man's as the woman's. it is largely due to the ignorance and even the indifference of men, who often know little or nothing of the nature of women and the art of love. the unintelligence with which even men who might, one thinks, be not without experience, select as a mate, a woman who, however fine and charming she may be, possesses none of the qualities which her wooer really craves, is a perpetual marvel. to refrain from testing and proving the temper and quality of the woman he desires for a mate is no doubt an amiable trait of humility on a man's part. but it is certain that a man should never be content with less than the best of what a woman's soul and body have to give, however unworthy he may feel himself of such a possession. this demand, it must be remarked, is in the highest interests of the woman herself. a woman can offer to a man what is a part at all events of the secret of the universe. the woman degrades herself who sinks to the level of a candidate for an asylum for the destitute. our discussion of the psychic facts of sex has thus, it will be seen, brought us up to the question of morality. over and over again, in setting forth the phenomena of prostitution, it has been necessary to use the word "moral." that word, however, is vague and even, it may be, misleading because it has several senses. so far, it has been left to the intelligent reader, as he will not fail to perceive, to decide from the context in what sense the word was used. but at the present point, before we proceed to discuss sexual psychology in relation to marriage, it is necessary, in order to avoid ambiguity, to remind the reader what precisely are the chief main senses in which the word "morality" is commonly used. the morality with which ethical treatises are concerned is _theoretical morality_. it is concerned with what people "ought"--or what is "right" for them--to do. socrates in the platonic dialogues was concerned with such theoretical morality: what "ought" people to seek in their actions? the great bulk of ethical literature, until recent times one may say the whole of it, is concerned with that question. such theoretical morality is, as sidgwick said, a study rather than a science, for science can only be based on what is, not on what ought to be. even within the sphere of theoretical morality there are two very different kinds of morality, so different indeed that sometimes each regards the other as even inimical or at best only by courtesy, with yet a shade of contempt, "moral." these two kinds of theoretical morality are _traditional morality_ and _ideal morality_. traditional morality is founded on the long established practices of a community and possesses the stability of all theoretical ideas based in the past social life and surrounding every individual born into the community from his earliest years. it becomes the voice of conscience which speaks automatically in favor of all the rules that are thus firmly fixed, even when the individual himself no longer accepts them. many persons, for example, who were brought up in childhood to the puritanical observance of sunday, will recall how, long after they had ceased to believe that such observances were "right," they yet in the violation of them heard the protest of the automatically aroused voice of "conscience," that is to say the expression within the individual of customary rules which have indeed now ceased to be his own but were those of the community in which he was brought up. ideal morality, on the other hand, refers not to the past of the community but to its future. it is based not on the old social actions that are becoming antiquated, and perhaps even anti-social in their tendency, but on new social actions that are as yet only practiced by a small though growing minority of the community. nietzsche in modern times has been a conspicuous champion of ideal morality, the heroic morality of the pioneer, of the individual of the coming community, against traditional morality, or, as he called it, herd-morality, the morality of the crowd. these two moralities are necessarily opposed to each other, but, we have to remember, they are both equally sound and equally indispensable, not only to those who accept them but to the community which they both contribute to hold in vital theoretical balance. we have seen them both, for instance, applied to the question of prostitution; traditional morality defends prostitution, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the marriage system which it regards as sufficiently precious to be worth a sacrifice, while ideal morality refuses to accept the necessity of prostitution, and looks forward to progressive changes in the marriage system which will modify and diminish prostitution. but altogether outside theoretical morality, or the question of what people "ought" to do, there remains _practical morality_, or the question of what, as a matter of fact, people actually do. this is the really fundamental and essential morality. latin _mores_ and greek aethos both refer to _custom_, to the things that are, and not to the things that "ought" to be, except in the indirect and secondary sense that whatever the members of the community, in the mass, actually do, is the thing that they feel they ought to do. in the first place, however, a moral act was not done because it was felt that it ought to be done, but for reasons of a much deeper and more instinctive character.[ ] it was not first done because it was felt it ought to be done, but it was felt it "ought" to be done because it had actually become the custom to do it. the actions of a community are determined by the vital needs of a community under the special circumstances of its culture, time, and land. when it is the general custom for children to kill their aged parents that custom is always found to be the best not only for the community but even for the old people themselves, who desire it; the action is both practically moral and theoretically moral.[ ] and when, as among ourselves, the aged are kept alive, that action is also both practically and theoretically moral; it is in no wise dependent on any law or rule opposed to the taking of life, for we glory in the taking of life under the patriotic name of "war," and are fairly indifferent to it when involved by the demands of our industrial system; but the killing of the aged no longer subserves any social need and their preservation ministers to our civilized emotional needs. the killing of a man is indeed notoriously an act which differs widely in its moral value at different periods and in different countries. it was quite moral in england two centuries ago and less, to kill a man for trifling offences against property, for such punishment commended itself as desirable to the general sense of the educated community. to-day it would be regarded as highly immoral. we are even yet only beginning to doubt the morality of condemning to death and imprisoning for life an unmarried girl who destroyed her infant at birth, solely actuated, against all her natural impulses, by the primitive instinct of self-defense. it cannot be said that we have yet begun to doubt the morality of killing men in war, though we no longer approve of killing women and children, or even non-combatants generally. every age or land has its own morality. "custom, in the strict sense of the word," well says westermarck, "involves a moral rule.... society is the school in which men learn to distinguish between right and wrong. the headmaster is custom."[ ] custom is not only the basis of morality but also of law. "custom is law."[ ] the field of theoretical morality has been found so fascinating a playground for clever philosophers that there has sometimes been a danger of forgetting that, after all, it is not theoretical morality but practical morality, the question of what men in the mass of a community actually do, which constitutes the real stuff of morals.[ ] if we define more precisely what we mean by morals, on the practical side, we may say that it is constituted by those customs which the great majority of the members of a community regard as conducive to the welfare of the community at some particular time and place. it is for this reason--i.e., because it is a question of what is and not of merely what some think ought to be--that practical morals form the proper subject of science. "if the word 'ethics' is to be used as the name for a science," westermarck says, "the object of that science can only be to study the moral consciousness as a fact."[ ] lecky's _history of european morals_ is a study in practical rather than in theoretical morals. dr. westermarck's great work, _the origin and development of the moral ideas_, is a more modern example of the objectively scientific discussion of morals, although this is not perhaps clearly brought out by the title. it is essentially a description of the actual historical facts of what has been, and not of what "ought" to be. mr. l.t. hobhouse's _morals in evolution_, published almost at the same time, is similarly a work which, while professedly dealing with ideas, i.e., with rules and regulations, and indeed disclaiming the task of being "the history of conduct," yet limits itself to those rules which are "in fact, the normal conduct of the average man" (vol. i, p. ). in other words, it is essentially a history of practical morality, and not of theoretical morality. one of the most subtle and suggestive of living thinkers, m. jules de gaultier, in several of his books, and notably in _la dépendance de la morale et l'indépendance des moeurs_ ( ), has analyzed the conception of morals in a somewhat similar sense. "phenomena relative to conduct," as he puts it (op. cit., p. ), "are given in experience like other phenomena, so that morality, or the totality of the laws which at any given moment of historic evolution are applied to human practice, is dependent on customs." i may also refer to the masterly exposition of this aspect of morality in lévy-bruhl's _la morale et la science des moeurs_ (there is an english translation). practical morality is thus the solid natural fact which forms the biological basis of theoretical morality, whether traditional or ideal. the excessive fear, so widespread among us, lest we should injure morality is misplaced. we cannot hurt morals though we can hurt ourselves. morals is based on nature and can at the most only be modified. as crawley rightly insists,[ ] even the categorical imperatives of our moral traditions, so far from being, as is often popularly supposed, attempts to suppress nature, arise in the desire to assist nature; they are simply an attempt at the rigid formulation of natural impulses. the evil of them only lies in the fact that, like all things that become rigid and dead, they tend to persist beyond the period when they were a beneficial vital reaction to the environment. they thus provoke new forms of ideal morality; and practical morals develops new structures, in accordance with new vital relationships, to replace older and desiccated traditions. there is clearly an intimate relationship between theoretical morals and practical morals or morality proper. for not only is theoretical morality the outcome in consciousness of realized practices embodied in the general life of the community, but, having thus become conscious, it reacts on those practices and tends to support them or, by its own spontaneous growth, to modify them. this action is diverse, according as we are dealing with one or the other of the strongly marked divisions of theoretical morality: traditional and posterior morality, retarding the vital growth of moral practice, or ideal and anterior morality, stimulating the vital growth of moral practice. practical morality, or morals proper, may be said to stand between these two divisions of theoretical morality. practice is perpetually following after anterior theoretical morality, in so far of course as ideal morality really is anterior and not, as so often happens, astray up a blind alley. posterior or traditional morality always follows after practice. the result is that while the actual morality, in practice at any time or place, is always closely related to theoretical morality, it can never exactly correspond to either of its forms. it always fails to catch up with ideal morality; it is always outgrowing traditional morality. it has been necessary at this point to formulate definitely the three chief forms in which the word "moral" is used, although under one shape or another they cannot but be familiar to the reader. in the discussion of prostitution it has indeed been easily possible to follow the usual custom of allowing the special sense in which the word was used to be determined by the context. but now, when we are, for the moment, directly concerned with the specific question of the evolution of sexual morality, it is necessary to be more precise in formulating the terms we use. in this chapter, except when it is otherwise stated, we are concerned primarily with morals proper, with actual conduct as it develops among the masses of a community, and only secondarily with anterior morality or with posterior morality. sexual morality, like all other kinds of morality, is necessarily constituted by inherited traditions modified by new adaptations to the changing social environment. if the influence of tradition becomes unduly pronounced the moral life tends to decay and lose its vital adaptability. if adaptability becomes too facile the moral life tends to become unstable and to lose authority. it is only by a reasonable synthesis of structure and function--of what is called the traditional with what is called the ideal--that the moral life can retain its authority without losing its reality. many, even among those who call themselves moralists, have found this hard to understand. in a vain desire for an impossible logicality they have over-emphasized either the ideal influence on practical morals or, still more frequently, the traditional influence, which has appealed to them because of the impressive authority its _dicta_ seem to convey. the results in the sphere we are here concerned with have often been unfortunate, for no social impulse is so rebellious to decayed traditions, so volcanically eruptive, as that of sex. we are accustomed to identify our present marriage system with "morality" in the abstract, and for many people, perhaps for most, it is difficult to realize that the slow and insensible movement which is always affecting social life at the present time, as at every other time, is profoundly affecting our sexual morality. a transference of values is constantly taking place; what was once the very standard of morality becomes immoral, what was once without question immoral becomes a new standard. such a process is almost as bewildering as for the european world two thousand years ago was the great struggle between the roman city and the christian church, when it became necessary to realize that what marcus aurelius, the great pattern of morality, had sought to crush as without question immoral,[ ] was becoming regarded as the supreme standard of morality. the classic world considered love and pity and self-sacrifice as little better than weakness and sometimes worse; the christian world not only regarded them as moralities but incarnated them in a god. our sexual morality has likewise disregarded natural human emotions, and is incapable of understanding those who declare that to retain unduly traditional laws that are opposed to the vital needs of human societies is not a morality but an immorality. the reason why the gradual evolution of moral ideals, which is always taking place, tends in the sexual sphere, at all events among ourselves, to reach a stage in which there seems to be an opposition between different standards lies in the fact that as yet we really have no specific sexual morality at all.[ ] that may seem surprising at first to one who reflects on the immense weight which is usually attached to "sexual morality." and it is undoubtedly true that we have a morality which we apply to the sphere of sex. but that morality is one which belongs mainly to the sphere of property and was very largely developed on a property basis. all the historians of morals in general, and of marriage in particular, have set forth this fact, and illustrated it with a wealth of historical material. we have as yet no generally recognized sexual morality which has been based on the specific sexual facts of life. that becomes clear at once when we realize the central fact that the sexual relationship is based on love, at the very least on sexual desire, and that that basis is so deep as to be even physiological, for in the absence of such sexual desire it is physiologically impossible for a man to effect intercourse with a woman. any specific sexual morality must be based on that fact. but our so-called "sexual morality," so far from being based on that fact, attempts to ignore it altogether. it makes contracts, it arranges sexual relationships beforehand, it offers to guarantee permanency of sexual inclinations. it introduces, that is, considerations of a kind that is perfectly sound in the economic sphere to which such considerations rightly belong, but ridiculously incongruous in the sphere of sex to which they have solemnly been applied. the economic relationships of life, in the large sense, are, as we shall see, extremely important in the evolution of any sound sexual morality, but they belong to the conditions of its development and do not constitute its basis.[ ] the fact that, from the legal point of view, marriage is primarily an arrangement for securing the rights of property and inheritance is well illustrated by the english divorce law to-day. according to this law, if a woman has sexual intercourse with any man beside her husband, he is entitled to divorce her; if, however, the husband has intercourse with another woman beside his wife, she is not entitled to a divorce; that is only accorded if, in addition, he has also been cruel to her, or deserted her, and from any standpoint of ideal morality such a law is obviously unjust, and it has now been discarded in nearly all civilized lands except england. but from the standpoint of property and inheritance it is quite intelligible, and on that ground it is still supported by the majority of englishmen. if the wife has intercourse with other men there is a risk that the husband's property will be inherited by a child who is not his own. but the sexual intercourse of the husband with other women is followed by no such risk. the infidelity of the wife is a serious offence against property; the infidelity of the husband is no offence against property, and cannot possibly, therefore, be regarded as a ground for divorce from our legal point of view. the fact that his adultery complicated by cruelty is such a ground, is simply a concession to modern feeling. yet, as helena stöcker truly points out ("verschiedenheit im liebesleben des weibes und des mannes," _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, dec., ), a married man who has an unacknowledged child with a woman outside of marriage, has committed an act as seriously anti-social as a married woman who has a child without acknowledging that the father is not her husband. in the first case, the husband, and in the second case, the wife, have placed an undue amount of responsibility on another person. (the same point is brought forward by the author of _the question of english divorce_, p. .) i insist here on the economic element in our sexual morality, because that is the element which has given it a kind of stability and become established in law. but if we take a wider view of our sexual morality, we cannot ignore the ancient element of asceticism, which has given religious passion and sanction to it. our sexual morality is thus, in reality, a bastard born of the union of property-morality with primitive ascetic morality, neither in true relationship to the vital facts of the sexual life. it is, indeed, the property element which, with a few inconsistencies, has become finally the main concern of our law, but the ascetic element (with, in the past, a wavering relationship to law) has had an important part in moulding popular sentiment and in creating an attitude of reprobation towards sexual intercourse _per se_, although such intercourse is regarded as an essential part of the property-based and religiously sanctified institution of legal marriage. the glorification of virginity led by imperceptible stages to the formulation of "fornication" as a deadly sin, and finally as an actual secular "crime." it is sometimes stated that it was not until the council of trent that the church formally anathematized those who held that the state of marriage was higher than that of virginity, but the opinion had been more or less formally held from almost the earliest ages of christianity, and is clear in the epistles of paul. all the theologians agree that fornication is a mortal sin. caramuel, indeed, the distinguished spanish theologian, who made unusual concessions to the demands of reason and nature, held that fornication is only evil because it is forbidden, but innocent xi formally condemned that proposition. fornication as a mortal sin became gradually secularized into fornication as a crime. fornication was a crime in france even as late as the eighteenth century, as tarde found in his historical investigations of criminal procedure in périgord; adultery was also a crime and severely punished quite independently of any complaint from either of the parties (tarde, "archéologie criminelle en périgord," _archives de l'anthropologie criminelle_, nov. , ). the puritans of the commonwealth days in england (like the puritans of geneva) followed the catholic example and adopted ecclesiastical offences against chastity into the secular law. by an act passed in fornication became punishable by three months' imprisonment inflicted on both parties. by the same act the adultery of a wife (nothing is said of a husband) was made felony, both for her and her partner in guilt, and therefore punishable by death (scobell, _acts and ordinances_, p. ). the action of a pseudo-morality, such as our sexual morality has been, is double-edged. on the one side it induces a secret and shamefaced laxity, on the other it upholds a rigid and uninspiring theoretical code which so few can consistently follow that theoretical morality is thereby degraded into a more or less empty form. "the human race would gain much," said the wise sénancour, "if virtue were made less laborious. the merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[ ] at present, as a more recent moralist, ellen key, puts it, we only have an immorality which favors vice and makes virtue irrealizable, and, as she exclaims with pardonable extravagance, to preach a sounder morality to the young, without at the same time condemning the society which encourages the prevailing immorality, is "worse than folly, it is crime." it is on the lines along which sénancour a century ago and ellen key to-day are great pioneers that the new forms of anterior or ideal theoretical morality are now moving, in advance, according to the general tendency in morals, of traditional morality and even of practice. there is one great modern movement of a definite kind which will serve to show how clearly sexual morality is to-day moving towards a new standpoint. this is the changing attitude of the bulk of the community towards both state marriage and religious marriage, and the growing tendency to disallow state interference with sexual relationships, apart from the production of children. there has no doubt always been a tendency among the masses of the population in europe to dispense with the official sanction of sexual relationships until such relationships have been well established and the hope of offspring has become justifiable. this tendency has been crystallized into recognized customs among numberless rural communities little touched either by the disturbing influences of the outside world or the controlling influences of theological christian conceptions. but at the present day this tendency is not confined to the more primitive and isolated communities of europe among whom, on the contrary, it has tended to die out. it is an unquestionable fact, says professor bruno meyer, that far more than the half of sexual intercourse now takes place outside legal marriage.[ ] it is among the intelligent classes and in prosperous and progressive communities that this movement is chiefly marked. we see throughout the world the practical common sense of the people shaping itself in the direction which has been pioneered by the ideal moralists who invariably precede the new growth of practical morality. the voluntary childless marriages of to-day have served to show the possibility of such unions outside legal marriage, and such free unions are becoming, as mrs. parsons points out, "a progressive substitute for marriage."[ ] the gradual but steady rise in the age for entering on legal marriage also points in the same direction, though it indicates not merely an increase of free unions but an increase of all forms of normal and abnormal sexuality outside marriage. thus in england and wales, in , only per , husbands and per , wives were under age, while the average age for husbands was . years and for wives . years. for men the age has gone up some eight months during the past forty years, for women more than this. in the large cities, like london, where the possibilities of extra-matrimonial relationships are greater, the age for legal marriage is higher than in the country. if we are to regard the age of legal marriage as, on the whole, the age at which the population enters into sexual unions, it is undoubtedly too late. beyer, a leading german neurologist, finds that there are evils alike in early and in late marriage, and comes to the conclusion that in temperate zones the best age for women to marry is the twenty-first year, and for men the twenty-fifth year. yet, under bad economic conditions and with a rigid marriage law, early marriages are in every respect disastrous. they are among the poor a sign of destitution. the very poorest marry first, and they do so through the feeling that their condition cannot be worse. (dr. michael ryan brought together much interesting evidence concerning the causes of early marriage in ireland in his _philosophy of marriage_, , pp. - ). among the poor, therefore, early marriage is always a misfortune. "many good people," says mr. thomas holmes, secretary of the howard association and missionary at police courts (in an interview, _daily chronicle_, sept. , ), "advise boys and girls to get married in order to prevent what they call a 'disgrace.' this i consider to be absolutely wicked, and it leads to far greater evils than it can possibly avert." early marriages are one of the commonest causes both of prostitution and divorce. they lead to prostitution in innumerable cases, even when no outward separation takes place. the fact that they lead to divorce is shown by the significant circumstance that in england, although only per , women are under twenty-one at marriage, of the wives concerned in divorce cases, per , were under twenty-one at marriage, and this discrepancy is even greater than it appears, for in the well-to-do class, which can alone afford the luxury of divorce, the normal age at marriage is much higher than for the population generally. inexperience, as was long ago pointed out by milton (who had learnt this lesson to his cost), leads to shipwreck in marriage. "they who have lived most loosely," he wrote, "prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been so many divorces to teach them experience." miss clapperton, referring to the educated classes, advocates very early marriage, even during student life, which might then be to some extent carried on side by side (_scientific meliorism_, ch. xvii). ellen key, also, advocates early marriage. but she wisely adds that it involves the necessity for easy divorce. that, indeed, is the only condition which can render early marriage generally desirable. young people--unless they possess very simple and inert natures--can neither foretell the course of their own development and their own strongest needs, nor estimate accurately the nature and quality of another personality. a marriage formed at an early age very speedily ceases to be a marriage in anything but name. sometimes a young girl applies for a separation from her husband even on the very day after marriage. the more or less permanent free unions formed among us in europe are usually to be regarded merely as trial-marriages. that is to say they are a precaution rendered desirable both by uncertainty as to either the harmony or the fruitfulness of union until actual experiment has been made, and by the practical impossibility of otherwise rectifying any mistake in consequence of the antiquated rigidity of most european divorce laws. such trial marriages are therefore demanded by prudence and caution, and as foresight increases with the development of civilization, and constantly grows among us, we may expect that there will be a parallel development in the frequency of trial marriage and in the social attitude towards such unions. the only alternative--that a radical reform in european marriage laws should render the divorce of a legal marriage as economical and as convenient as the divorce of a free marriage--cannot yet be expected, for law always lags behind public opinion and public practice. if, however, we take a wider historical view, we find that we are in presence of a phenomenon which, though favored by modern conditions, is very ancient and widespread, dating, so far as europe is concerned, from the time when the church first sought to impose ecclesiastical marriage, so that it is practically a continuation of the ancient european custom of private marriage. trial-marriages pass by imperceptible gradations into the group of courtship customs which, while allowing the young couple to spend the night together, in a position of more or less intimacy, exclude, as a rule, actual sexual intercourse. night-courtship flourishes in stable and well-knit european communities not liable to disorganization by contact with strangers. it seems to be specially common in teutonic and celtic lands, and is known by various names, as _probenächte, fensterln, kiltgang, hand-fasting, bundling, sitting-up, courting on the bed, etc_. it is well known in wales; it is found in various english counties as in cheshire; it existed in eighteenth century ireland (according to richard twiss's _travels_); in new england it was known as _tarrying_; in holland it is called _questing_. in norway, where it is called _night-running_, on account of the long distance between the homesteads, i am told that it is generally practiced, though the clergy preach against it; the young girl puts on several extra skirts and goes to bed, and the young man enters by door or window and goes to bed with her; they talk all night, and are not bound to marry unless it should happen that the girl becomes pregnant. rhys and brynmor-jones (_welsh people_, pp. - ) have an interesting passage on this night-courtship with numerous references. as regards germany see, e.g., rudeck, _geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit_, pp. - . with reference to trial-marriage generally many facts and references are given by m.a. potter (_sohrab and rustem_, pp. - ). the custom of free marriage unions, usually rendered legal before or after the birth of children, seems to be fairly common in many, or perhaps all, rural parts of england. the union is made legal, if found satisfactory, even when there is no prospect of children. in some counties it is said to be almost a universal practice for the women to have sexual relationships before legal marriage; sometimes she marries the first man whom she tries; sometimes she tries several before finding the man who suits her. such marriages necessarily, on the whole, turn out better than marriages in which the woman, knowing nothing of what awaits her and having no other experiences for comparison, is liable to be disillusioned or to feel that she "might have done better." even when legal recognition is not sought until after the birth of children, it by no means follows that any moral deterioration is involved. thus in some parts of staffordshire where it is the custom of the women to have a child before marriage, notwithstanding this "corruption," we are told (burton, _city of the saints_, appendix iv), the women are "very good neighbors, excellent, hard-working, and affectionate wives and mothers." "the lower social classes, especially peasants," remarks dr. ehrhard ("auch ein wort zur ehereform," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang i, heft ), "know better than we that the marriage bed is the foundation of marriage. on that account they have retained the primitive custom of trial-marriage which, in the middle ages, was still practiced even in the best circles. it has the further advantage that the marriage is not concluded until it has shown itself to be fruitful. trial-marriage assumes, of course, that virginity is not valued beyond its true worth." with regard to this point it may be mentioned that in many parts of the world a woman is more highly esteemed if she has had intercourse before marriage (see, e.g., potter, op. cit., pp. et seq.). while virginity is one of the sexual attractions a woman may possess, an attraction that is based on a natural instinct (see "the evolution of modesty," in vol. i of these _studies_), yet an exaggerated attention to virginity can only be regarded as a sexual perversion, allied to _paidophilia_, the sexual attraction to children. in very small coördinated communities the primitive custom of trial-marriage tends to decay when there is a great invasion of strangers who have not been brought up to the custom (which seems to them indistinguishable from the license of prostitution), and who fail to undertake the obligations which trial-marriage involves. this is what happened in the case of the so-called "island custom" of portland, which lasted well on into the nineteenth century; according to this custom a woman before marriage lived with her lover until pregnant and then married him; she was always strictly faithful to him while living with him, but if no pregnancy occurred the couple might decide that they were not meant for each other, and break off relations. the result was that for a long period of years no illegitimate children were born, and few marriages were childless. but when the portland stone trade was developed, the workmen imported from london took advantage of the "island custom," but refused to fulfil the obligation of marriage when pregnancy occurred. the custom consequently fell into disuse (see, e.g., translator's note to bloch's _sexual life of our time_, p. , and the quotation there given from hutchins, _history and antiquities of dorset_, vol. ii, p. ). it is, however, by no means only in rural districts, but in great cities also that marriages are at the outset free unions. thus in paris després stated more than thirty years ago (_la prostitution à paris_, p. ) that in an average arrondissement nine out of ten legal marriages are the consolidation of a free union; though, while that was an average, in a few arrondissements it was only three out of ten. much the same conditions prevail in paris to-day; at least half the marriages, it is stated, are of this kind. in teutonic lands the custom of free unions is very ancient and well-established. thus in sweden, ellen key states (_liebe und ehe_, p. ), the majority of the population begin married life in this way. the arrangement is found to be beneficial, and "marital fidelity is as great as pre-marital freedom is unbounded." in denmark, also, a large number of children are conceived before the unions of the parents are legalized (rubin and westergaard, quoted by gaedeken, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, feb. , ). in germany not only is the proportion of illegitimate births very high, since in berlin it is per cent., and in some towns very much higher, but ante-nuptial conceptions take place in nearly half the marriages, and sometimes in the majority. thus in berlin more than per cent, of all legitimate firstborn children are conceived before marriage, while in some rural provinces (where the proportion of illegitimate births is lower) the percentage of marriages following ante-nuptial conceptions is much higher than in berlin. the conditions in rural germany have been especially investigated by a committee of lutheran pastors, and were set forth a few years ago in two volumes, _die geschlecht-sittlich verhältnisse im deutschen reiche_, which are full of instruction concerning german sexual morality. in hanover, it is said in this work, the majority of authorities state that intercourse before marriage is the rule. at the very least, a _probe_, or trial, is regarded as a matter-of-course preliminary to a marriage, since no one wishes "to buy a pig in a poke." in saxony, likewise, we are told, it is seldom that a girl fails to have intercourse before marriage, or that her first child is not born, or at all events conceived, outside marriage. this is justified as a proper proving of a bride before taking her for good. "one does not buy even a penny pipe without trying it," a german pastor was informed. around stettin, in twelve districts (nearly half the whole), sexual intercourse before marriage is a recognized custom, and in the remainder, if not exactly a custom, it is very common, and is not severely or even at all condemned by public opinion. in some districts marriage immediately follows pregnancy. in the dantzig neighborhood, again, according to the lutheran committee, intercourse before marriage occurs in more than half the cases, but marriage by no means always follows pregnancy. nearly all the girls who go as servants have lovers, and country people in engaging servants sometimes tell them that at evening and night they may do as they like. this state of things is found to be favorable to conjugal fidelity. the german peasant girl, as another authority remarks (e.h. meyer, _deutsche volkskunde_, , pp. , ), has her own room; she may receive her lover; it is no great shame if she gives herself to him. the number of women who enter legal marriage still virgins is not large (this refers more especially to baden), but public opinion protects them, and such opinion is unfavorable to the disregard of the responsibilities involved by sexual relationships. the german woman is less chaste before marriage than her french or italian sister. but, meyer adds, she is probably more faithful after marriage than they are. it is assumed by many that this state of german morality as it exists to-day is a new phenomenon, and the sign of a rapid national degeneration. that is by no means the case. in this connection we may accept the evidence of catholic priests, who, by the experience of the confessional, are enabled to speak with authority. an old bavarian priest thus writes (_geschlecht und gesellschaft_, , bd. ii, heft i): "at moral congresses we hear laudation of 'the good old times' when, faith and morality prevailed among the people. whether that is correct is another question. as a young priest i heard of as many and as serious sins as i now hear of as an old man. the morality of the people is not greater nor is it less. the error is the belief that immorality goes out of the towns and poisons the country. people talk as though the country were a pure paradise of innocence. i will by no means call our country people immoral, but from an experience of many years i can say that in sexual respects there is no difference between town and country. i have learnt to know more than a hundred different parishes, and in the most various localities, in the mountain and in the plain, on poor land and on rich land. but everywhere i find the same morals and lack of morals. there are everywhere the same men, though in the country there are often better christians than in the towns." if, however, we go much farther back than the memories of a living man it seems highly probable that the sexual customs of the german people of the present day are not substantially different--though it may well be that at different periods different circumstances have accentuated them--from what they were in the dawn of teutonic history. this is the opinion of one of the profoundest students of indo-germanic origins. in his _reallexicon_ (art. "keuschheit") o. schrader points out that the oft-quoted tacitus, strictly considered, can only be taken to prove that women were chaste after marriage, and that no prostitution existed. there can be no doubt, he adds, and the earliest historical evidence shows, that women in ancient germany were not chaste before marriage. this fact has been disguised by the tendency of the old classic writers to idealize the northern peoples. thus we have to realize that the conception of "german virtue," which has been rendered so familiar to the world by a long succession of german writers, by no means involves any special devotion to the virtue of chastity. tacitus, indeed, in the passage more often quoted in germany than any other passage in classic literature, while correctly emphasizing the late puberty of the germans and their brutal punishment of conjugal infidelity on the part of the wife, seemed to imply that they were also chaste. but we have always to remark that tacitus wrote as a satirizing moralist as well as a historian, and that, as he declaimed concerning the virtues of the german barbarians, he had one eye on the roman gallery whose vices he desired to lash. much the same perplexing confusion has been created by gildas, who, in describing the results of the saxon conquest of britain, wrote as a preacher as well as a historian, and the same moral purpose (as dill has pointed out) distorts salvian's picture of the vices of fifth century gaul. (i may add that some of the evidence in favor of the sexual freedom involved by early teutonic faiths and customs is brought together in the study of "sexual periodicity" in the first volume of these _studies_; cf. also, rudeck, _geschichte der öffentlichen sittlichkeit in deutschland_, , pp. et seq.). the freedom and tolerance of russian sexual customs is fairly well-known. as a russian correspondent writes to me, "the liberalism of russian manners enables youths and girls to enjoy complete independence. they visit each other alone, they walk out alone, and they return home at any hour they please. they have a liberty of movement as complete as that of grown-up persons; some avail themselves of it to discuss politics and others to make love. they are able also to procure any books they please; thus on the table of a college girl i knew i saw the _elements of social science_, then prohibited in russia; this girl lived with her aunt, but she had her own room, which only her friends were allowed to enter: her aunt or other relations never entered it. naturally, she went out and came back at what hours she pleased. many other college girls enjoy the same freedom in their families. it is very different in italy, where girls have no freedom of movement, and can neither go out alone nor receive gentlemen alone, and where, unlike russia, a girl who has sexual intercourse outside marriage is really 'lost' and 'dishonored'" (cf. _sexual-probleme_, aug., , p. ). it would appear that freedom of sexual relationships in russia--apart from the influence of ancient custom--has largely been rendered necessary by the difficulty of divorce. married couples, who were unable to secure divorce, separated and found new partners without legal marriage. in , however, an attempt was made to remedy this defect in the law; a liberal divorce law has been introduced, mutual consent with separation for a period of over a year being recognized as adequate ground for divorce (beiblatt to _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, heft , p. ). during recent years there has developed among educated young men and women in russia a movement of sexual license, which, though it is doubtless supported by the old traditions of sexual freedom, must by no means be confused with that freedom, since it is directly due to causes of an entirely different order. the strenuous revolutionary efforts made during the last years of the past century to attain political freedom absorbed the younger and more energetic section of the educated classes, involved a high degree of mental tension, and were accompanied by a tendency to asceticism. the prospect of death was constantly before their eyes, and any pre-occupation with sexual matters would have been felt as out of harmony with the spirit of revolution. but during the present century revolutionary activity has largely ceased. it has been, to a considerable extent, replaced by a movement of interest in sexual problems and of indulgence in sexual unrestraint, often taking on a somewhat licentious and sensual character. "free love" unions have been formed by the students of both sexes for the cultivation of these tendencies. a novel, artzibascheff's _ssanin_, has had great influence in promoting these tendencies. it is not likely that this movement, in its more extravagant forms, will be of long duration. (for some account of this movement, see, e.g., werner daya, "die sexuelle bewegung in russland," _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, aug., ; also, "les associations erotiques en russe," _journal du droit international privé_, jan., , fully summarized in _revue des idées_, feb., .) the movement of sexual freedom in russia lies much deeper, however, than this fashion of sensual license; it is found in remote and uncontaminated parts of the country, and is connected with very ancient customs. there is considerable interest in realizing the existence of long-continued sexual freedom--by some incorrectly termed "immorality," for what is in accordance with the customs or _mores_ of a people cannot be immoral--among peoples so virile and robust, so eminently capable of splendid achievements, as the germans and the russians. there is, however, a perhaps even greater interest in tracing the development of the same tendency among new prosperous and highly progressive communities who have either not inherited the custom of sexual freedom or are now only reviving it. we may, for instance, take the case of australia and new zealand. this development may not, indeed, be altogether recent. the frankness of sexual freedom in australia and the tolerance in regard to it were conspicuous thirty years ago to those who came from england to live in the southern continent, and were doubtless equally visible at an earlier date. it seems, however, to have developed with the increase of self-conscious civilization. "after careful inquiry," says the rev. h. northcote, who has lived for many years in the southern hemisphere (_christianity and sex problems_, ch. viii), "the writer finds sufficient evidence that of recent years intercourse out of wedlock has tended towards an actual increase in parts of australia." coghlan, the chief authority on australian statistics, states more precisely in his _childbirth in new south wales_, published a few years ago: "the prevalence of births of ante-nuptial conception--a matter hitherto little understood--has now been completely investigated. in new south wales, during six years, there were , marriages, in respect of which there was ante-nuptial conception, and, as the total number of marriages was , , at least twenty-seven marriages in a hundred followed conception. during the same period the illegitimate births numbered , ; there were, therefore, , cases of conception amongst unmarried women; in , instances marriage preceded the birth of the child, so that the children were legitimatized in rather more than forty-seven cases out of one hundred. a study of the figures of births of ante-nuptial conception makes it obvious that in a very large number of instances pre-marital intercourse is not an anticipation of marriage already arranged, but that the marriages are forced upon the parties, and would not be entered into were it not for the condition of the woman" (cf. powys, _biometrika_, vol. i, - , p. ). that marriage should be, as coghlan puts it, "forced upon the parties," is not, of course, desirable in the general moral interests, and it is also a sign of imperfect moral responsibility in the parties themselves. the existence of such a state of things, in a young country belonging to a part of the world where the general level of prosperity, intelligence, morality and social responsibility may perhaps be said to be higher than in any other region inhabited by people of white race, is a fact of the very first significance when we are attempting to forecast the direction in which civilized morality is moving. it is sometimes said, or at least implied, that in this movement women are taking only a passive part, and that the initiative lies with men who are probably animated by a desire to escape the responsibilities of marriage. this is very far from being the case. the active part taken by german girls in sexual matters is referred to again and again by the lutheran pastors in their elaborate and detailed report. of the dantzig district it is said "the young girls give themselves to the youths, or even seduce them." the military manoeuvres are frequently a source of unchastity in rural districts. "the fault is not merely with the soldiers, but chiefly with the girls, who become half mad as soon as they see a soldier," it is reported from the dresden district. and in summarizing conditions in east germany the report states: "in sexual wantonness girls are not behind the young men; they allow themselves to be seduced only too willingly; even grown-up girls often go with half-grown youths, and girls frequently give themselves to several men, one after the other. it is by no means always the youth who effects the seduction, it is very frequently the girls who entice the youth to sexual intercourse; they do not always wait till the men come to their rooms, but will go to the men's rooms and await them in their beds. with this inclination to sexual intercourse, it is not surprising that many believe that after sixteen no girl is a virgin. unchastity among the rural laboring classes is universal, and equally pronounced in both sexes" (op. cit., vol. i, ). among women of the educated classes the conditions are somewhat different. restraints, both internal and external, are very much greater. virginity, at all events in its physical fact, is retained, for the most part, till long past girlhood, and when it is lost that loss is concealed with a scrupulous care and prudence unknown to the working-classes. yet the fundamental tendencies remain the same. so far as england is concerned, geoffrey mortimer quite truly writes (_chapters on human love_, , p. ) that the two groups of ( ) women who live in constant secret association with a single lover, and ( ) women who give themselves to men, without fear, from the force of their passions, are "much larger than is generally supposed. in all classes of society there are women who are only virgins by repute. many have borne children without being even suspected of cohabitation; but the majority adopt methods of preventing conception. a doctor in a small provincial town declared to me that such irregular intimacies were the rule, and not by any means the exception in his district." as regards germany, a lady doctor, frau adams-lehmann, states in a volume of the transactions of the german society for combating venereal disease (_sexualpädagogik_, p. ): "i can say that during consultation hours i see very few virgins over thirty. these women," she adds, "are sensible, courageous and natural, often the best of their sex; and we ought to give them our moral support. they are working towards a new age." it is frequently stated that the pronounced tendency witnessed at the present time to dispense as long as possible with the formal ceremony of binding marriage is unfortunate because it places women in a disadvantageous position. in so far as the social environment in which she lives views with disapproval sexual relationship without formal marriage, the statement is obviously to that extent true, though it must be remarked, on the other hand, that when social opinion strongly favors legal marriage it acts as a compelling force in the direction of legitimating free unions. but if the absence of the formal marriage bond constituted a real and intrinsic disadvantage to women in sexual relations they would not show themselves so increasingly ready to dispense with it. and, as a matter of fact, those who are intimately acquainted with the facts declare that the absence of formal marriage tends to give increased consideration to women and is even favorable to fidelity and to the prolongation of the union. this seems to be true as regards people of the most different social classes and even of different races. it is probably based on fundamental psychological facts, for the sense of compulsion always tends to produce a movement of exasperation and revolt. we are not here concerned with the question as to how far formal marriage also is based on natural facts; that is a question which will come up for discussion at a later stage. the advantage for women of free sexual unions over compulsory marriage is well recognized in the case of the working classes of london, among whom sexual relationships before marriage are not unusual, and are indulgently regarded. it is, for instance, clearly asserted in the monumental work of c. booth, _life and labour of the people_. "it is even said of rough laborers," we read, for instance, in the final volume of this work (p. ), "that they behave best if not married to the woman with whom they live." the evidence on this point is often the more impressive because brought forward by people who are very far indeed from being anxious to base any general conclusions on it. thus in the same volume a clergyman is quoted as saying: "these people manage to live together fairly peaceably so long as they are not married, but if they marry it always seems to lead to blows and rows." it may be said that in such a case we witness not so much the operation of a natural law as the influences of a great centre of civilization exerting its moralizing effects even on those who stand outside the legally recognized institution of marriage. that contention may, however, be thrust aside. we find exactly the same tendency in jamaica where the population is largely colored, and the stress of a high civilization can scarcely be said to exist. legal marriage is here discarded to an even greater extent than in london, for little care is taken to legitimate children by marriage. it was found by a committee appointed to inquire into the marriage laws of jamaica, that three out of every five births are illegitimate, that is to say that legal illegitimacy has ceased to be immoral, having become the recognized custom of the majority of the inhabitants. there is no social feeling against illegitimacy. the men approve of the decay of legal marriage, because they say the women work better in the house when they are not married; the women approve of it, because they say that men are more faithful when not bound by legal marriage. this has been well brought out by w.p. livingstone in his interesting book, _black jamaica_ ( ). the people recognize, he tells us (p. ), that "faithful living together constitutes marriage;" they say that they are "married but not parsoned." one reason against legal marriage is that they are disinclined to incur the expense of the official sanction. (in venezuela, it may be added, where also the majority of births take place outside official marriage, the chief reason is stated to be, not moral laxity, but the same disinclination to pay the expenses of legal weddings.) frequently in later life, sometimes when they have grown up sons and daughters, couples go through the official ceremony. (in abyssinia, also, it is stated by hugues le roux, where the people are christian and marriage is indissoluble and the ceremony expensive, it is not usual for married couples to make their unions legal until old age is coming on, _sexual-probleme_, april, , p. .) it is significant that this condition of things in jamaica, as elsewhere, is associated with the superiority of women. "the women of the peasant class," remarks livingstone (p. ), "are still practically independent of the men, and are frequently their superiors, both in physical and mental capacity." they refuse to bind themselves to a man who may turn out to be good for nothing, a burden instead of a help and protection. so long as the unions are free they are likely to be permanent. if made legal, the risk is that they will become intolerable, and cease by one of the parties leaving the other. "the necessity for mutual kindness and forbearance establishes a condition that is the best guarantee of permanency" (p. ). it is said, however, that under the influence of religious and social pressure the people are becoming more anxious to adopt "respectable" ideas of sexual relationships, though it seems evident, in view of livingstone's statement, that such respectability is likely to involve a decrease of real morality. livingstone points out, however, one serious defect in the present conditions which makes it easy for immoral men to escape paternal responsibilities, and this is the absence of legal provision for the registration of the father's name on birth certificates (p. ). in every country where the majority of births are illegitimate it is an obvious social necessity that the names of both parents should be duly registered on all birth certificates. it has been an unpardonable failure on the part of the jamaican government to neglect the simple measure needed to give "each child born in the country a legal father" (p. ). we thus see that we have to-day reached a position in which--partly owing to economic causes and partly to causes which are more deeply rooted in the tendencies involved by civilization--women are more often detached than of old from legal sexual relationship with men and both sexes are less inclined than in earlier stages of civilization to sacrifice their own independence even when they form such relationships. "i never heard of a woman over sixteen years of age who, prior to the breakdown of aboriginal customs after the coming of the whites, had not a husband," wrote curr of the australian blacks.[ ] even as regards some parts of europe, it is still possible to-day to make almost the same statement. but in all the richer, more energetic, and progressive countries very different conditions prevail. marriage is late and a certain proportion of men, and a still larger proportion of women (who exceed the men in the general population) never marry at all.[ ] before we consider the fateful significance of this fact of the growing proportion of adult unmarried women whose sexual relationships are unrecognized by the state and largely unrecognized altogether, it may be well to glance summarily at the two historical streams of tendency, both still in action among us, which affect the status of women, the one favoring the social equality of the sexes, the other favoring the social subjection of women. it is not difficult to trace these two streams both in conduct and opinion, in practical morality and in theoretical morality. at one time it was widely held that in early states of society, before the establishment of the patriarchal stage which places women under the protection of men, a matriarchal stage prevailed in which women possessed supreme power.[ ] bachofen, half a century ago, was the great champion of this view. he found a typical example of a matriarchal state among the ancient lycians of asia minor with whom, herodotus stated, the child takes the name of the mother, and follows her status, not that of the father.[ ] such peoples, bachofen believed, were gynæcocratic; power was in the hands of women. it can no longer be said that this opinion, in the form held by bachofen, meets with any considerable support. as to the widespread prevalence of descent through the mother, there is no doubt whatever that it has prevailed very widely. but such descent through the mother, it has become recognized, by no means necessarily involves the power of the mother, and mother-descent may even be combined with a patriarchal system.[ ] there has even been a tendency to run to the opposite extreme from bachofen and to deny that mother-descent conferred any special claim for consideration on women. that, however, seems scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. it would seem that we may fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that based on the _ambil anak_ marriage of sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife's family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate position. the example of the lycians is here in point, for although, as reported by herodotus, there is nothing to show that there was anything of the nature of a gynæcocracy in lycia, we know that women in all these regions of asia minor enjoyed high consideration and influence, traces of which may be detected in the early literature and history of christianity. a decisive and better known example of the favorable influence of mother-descent on the status of woman is afforded by the _beena_ marriage of early arabia. under such a system the wife is not only preserved from the subjection involved by purchase, which always casts upon her some shadow of the inferiority belonging to property, but she herself is the owner of the tent and the household property, and enjoys the dignity always involved by the possession of property and the ability to free herself from her husband.[ ] it is also impossible to avoid connecting the primitive tendency to mother-descent, and the emphasis it involved on maternal rather than paternal generative energy, with the tendency to place the goddess rather than the god in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the sex to which the supreme deity belongs, and which may be connected with the large part which primitive women often play in the functions of religion. thus, according to traditions common to all the central tribes of australia, the woman formerly took a much greater share in the performance of sacred ceremonies which are now regarded as coming almost exclusively within the masculine province, and in at least one tribe which seems to retain ancient practices the women still actually take part in these ceremonies.[ ] it seems to have been much the same in europe. we observe, too, both in the celtic pantheon and among mediterranean peoples, that while all the ancient divinities have receded into the dim background yet the goddesses loom larger than the gods.[ ] in ireland, where ancient custom and tradition have always been very tenaciously preserved, women retained a very high position, and much freedom both before and after marriage. "every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and after marriage she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the christian church or the english common law.[ ] there is less difficulty in recognizing that mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high status of women when we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist successfully the attempts to tyrannize over them.[ ] if we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity we find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women tend to occupy a favorable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of predominating military organization on a patriarchal basis, women occupy a less favorable position. this cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural law of the development of great social groups. it was apparently well marked in the very stable and orderly growth of babylonia. in the earliest times a babylonian woman had complete independence and equal rights with her brothers and her husband; later (as shown by the code of hamurabi) a woman's rights, though not her duties, were more circumscribed; in the still later neo-babylonian periods, she again acquired equal rights with her husband.[ ] in egypt the position of women stood highest at the end, but it seems to have been high throughout the whole of the long course of egyptian history, and continuously improving, while the fact that little regard was paid to prenuptial chastity and that marriage contracts placed no stress on virginity indicate the absence of the conception of women as property. more than three thousand five hundred years ago men and women were recognized as equal in egypt. the high position of the egyptian woman is significantly indicated by the fact that her child was never illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognized even in the case of a slave woman's child.[ ] "it is the glory of egyptian morality," says amélineau, "to have been the first to express the dignity of woman."[ ] the idea of marital authority was altogether unknown in egypt. there can be no doubt that the high status of woman in two civilizations so stable, so vital, so long-lived, and so influential on human culture as babylonia and egypt, is a fact of much significance. among the jews there seems to have been no intermediate stage of subordination of women, but instead a gradual progress throughout from complete subjection of the woman as wife to ever greater freedom. at first the husband could repudiate his wife at will without cause. (this was not an extension of patriarchal authority, but a purely marital authority.) the restrictions on this authority gradually increased, and begin to be observable already in the book of deuteronomy. the mishnah went further and forbade divorce whenever the wife's condition inspired pity (as in insanity, captivity, etc.). by a.d. , divorce was no longer possible except for legitimate reasons or by the wife's consent. at the same time, the wife also began to acquire the right of divorce in the form of compelling the husband to repudiate her on penalty of punishment in case of refusal. on divorce the wife became an independent woman in her own right, and was permitted to carry off the dowry which her husband gave her on marriage. thus, notwithstanding jewish respect for the letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the rabbis, in harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an ever-growing measure of sexual justice and equality to women (d.w. amram, _the jewish law of divorce_). among the arabs the tendency of progress has also been favorable to women in many respects, especially as regards inheritance. before mahommed, in accordance with the system prevailing at medina, women had little or no right of inheritance. the legislation of the koran modified this rule, without entirely abolishing it, and placed women in a much better position. this is attributed largely to the fact that mahommed belonged not to medina, but to mecca, where traces of matriarchal custom still survived (w. marçais, _des parents et des alliés successibles en droit musulman_). it may be pointed out--for it is not always realized--that even that stage of civilization--when it occurs--which involves the subordination and subjection of woman and her rights really has its origin in the need for the protection of women, and is sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new privileges by women. they are, as it were, locked up, not in order to deprive them of their rights, but in order to guard those rights. in the later more stable phase of civilization, when women are no longer exposed to the same dangers, this motive is forgotten and the guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and indeed has really become, a hardship rather than an advantage. of the status of women at rome in the earliest periods we know little or nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly established when roman history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband. but nothing is more certain than that the status of women in rome rose with the rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in babylonia and in egypt. in the case of rome, however, the growing refinement of civilization, and the expansion of the empire, were associated with the magnificent development of the system of roman law, which in its final forms consecrated the position of women. in the last days of the republic women already began to attain the same legal level as men, and later the great antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law, reached the conception of the equality of the sexes as a principle of the code of equity. the patriarchal subordination of women fell into complete discredit, and this continued until, in the days of justinian, under the influence of christianity, the position of women began to suffer.[ ] in the best days the older forms of roman marriage gave place to a form (apparently old but not hitherto considered reputable) which amounted in law to a temporary deposit of the woman by her family. she was independent of her husband (more especially as she came to him with her own dowry) and only nominally dependent on her family. marriage was a private contract, accompanied by a religious ceremony if desired, and being a contract it could be dissolved, for any reason, in the presence of competent witnesses and with due legal forms, after the advice of the family council had been taken. consent was the essence of this marriage and no shame, therefore, attached to its dissolution. nor had it any evil effect either on the happiness or the morals of roman women.[ ] such a system is obviously more in harmony with modern civilized feeling than any system that has ever been set up in christendom. in rome, also, it is clear that this system was not a mere legal invention but the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling in favor of the equality of men and women, often even in the field of sexual morality. plautus, who makes the old slave syra ask why there is not the same law in this respect for the husband as for the wife,[ ] had preceded the legist ulpian who wrote: "it seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity of his wife while he himself shows no example of it."[ ] such demands lie deeper than social legislation, but the fact that these questions presented themselves to typical roman men indicates the general attitude towards women. in the final stage of roman society the bond of the patriarchal system so far as women were concerned dwindled to a mere thread binding them to their fathers and leaving them quite free face to face with their husbands. "the roman matron of the empire," says hobhouse, "was more fully her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier civilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of egyptian history, and, it must be added, than the wife of any later civilization down to our own generation."[ ] on the strength of the statements of two satirical writers, juvenal and tacitus, it has been supposed by many that roman women of the late period were given up to license. it is, however, idle to seek in satirists any balanced picture of a great civilization. hobhouse (loc. cit., p. ) concludes that on the whole, roman women worthily retained the position of their husbands' companions, counsellors and friends which they had held when an austere system placed them legally in his power. most authorities seem now to be of this opinion, though at an earlier period friedländer expressed himself more dubiously. thus dill, in his judicious _roman society_ (p. ), states that the roman woman's position, both in law and in fact, rose during the empire; without being less virtuous or respected, she became far more accomplished and attractive; with fewer restraints she had greater charm and influence, even in public affairs, and was more and more the equal of her husband. "in the last age of the western empire there is no deterioration in the position and influence of women." principal donaldson, also, in his valuable historical sketch, _woman_, considers (p. ) that there was no degradation of morals in the roman empire; "the licentiousness of pagan rome is nothing to the licentiousness of christian africa, rome, and gaul, if we can put any reliance on the description of salvian." salvian's description of christendom is probably exaggerated and one-sided, but exactly the same may be said in an even greater degree of the descriptions of ancient rome left by clever pagan satirists and ascetic christian preachers. it thus becomes necessary to leap over considerably more than a thousand years before we reach a stage of civilization in any degree approaching in height the final stage of roman society. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at first in france, then in england, we find once more the moral and legal movement tending towards the equalization of women with men. we find also a long series of pioneers of that movement foreshadowing its developments: mary astor, "sophia, a lady of quality," ségur, mrs. wheeler, and very notably mary wollstonecraft in _a vindication of the rights of woman_, and john stuart mill in _the subjection of women_.[ ] the main european stream of influences in this matter within historical times has involved, we can scarcely doubt when we take into consideration its complex phenomena as a whole, the maintenance of an inequality to the disadvantage of women. the fine legacy of roman law to europe was indeed favorable to women, but that legacy was dispersed and for the most part lost in the more predominating influence of tenacious teutonic custom associated with the vigorously organized christian church. notwithstanding that the facts do not all point in the same direction, and that there is consequently some difference of opinion, it seems evident that on the whole both teutonic custom and christian religion were unfavorable to the equality of women with men. teutonic custom in this matter was determined by two decisive factors: ( ) the existence of marriage by purchase which although, as crawley has pointed out, it by no means necessarily involves the degradation of women, certainly tends to place them in an inferior position, and ( ) pre-occupation with war which is always accompanied by a depreciation of peaceful and feminine occupations and an indifference to love. christianity was at its origin favorable to women because it liberated and glorified the most essentially feminine emotions, but when it became an established and organized religion with definitely ascetic ideals, its whole emotional tone grew unfavorable to women. it had from the first excluded them from any priestly function. it now regarded them as the special representatives of the despised element of sex in life.[ ] the eccentric tertullian had once declared that woman was _janua diaboli_; nearly seven hundred years later, even the gentle and philosophic anselm wrote: _femina fax est satanæ_.[ ] thus among the franks, with whom the practice of monogamy prevailed, a woman was never free; she could not buy or sell or inherit without the permission of those to whom she belonged. she passed into the possession of her husband by acquisition, and when he fixed the wedding day he gave her parents coins of small money as _arrha_, and the day after the wedding she received from him a present, the _morgengabe_. a widow belonged to her parents again (bedollière, _histoire de moeurs des français_, vol. i, p. ). it is true that the salic law ordained a pecuniary fine for touching a woman, even for squeezing her finger, but it is clear that the offence thus committed was an offence against property, and by no means against the sanctity of a woman's personality. the primitive german husband could sell his children, and sometimes his wife, even into slavery. in the eleventh century cases of wife-selling are still heard of, though no longer recognized by law. the traditions of christianity were more favorable to sexual equality than were teutonic customs, but in becoming amalgamated with those customs they added their own special contribution as to woman's impurity. this spiritual inferiority of woman was significantly shown by the restrictions sometimes placed on women in church, and even in the right to enter a church; in some places they were compelled to remain in the narthex, even in non-monastic churches (see for these rules, smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_, art. "sexes, separation of"). by attempting to desexualize the idea of man and to oversexualize the idea of woman, christianity necessarily degraded the position of woman and the conception of womanhood. as donaldson well remarks, in pointing this out (op. cit., p. ), "i may define man as a male human being and woman as a female human being.... what the early christians did was to strike the 'male' out of the definition of man, and 'human being' out of the definition of woman." religion generally appears to be a powerfully depressing influence on the position of woman notwithstanding the appeal which it makes to woman. westermarck considers, indeed (_origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. i, p. ), that religion "has probably been the most persistent cause of the wife's subjection to her husband's rule." it is sometimes said that the christian tendency to place women in an inferior spiritual position went so far that a church council formally denied that women have souls. this foolish story has indeed been repeated in a parrot-like fashion by a number of writers. the source of the story is probably to be found in the fact, recorded by gregory of tours, in his history (lib. viii, cap. xx), that at the council of mâcon, in , a bishop was in doubt as to whether the term "man" included woman, but was convinced by the other members of the council that it did. the same difficulty has presented itself to lawyers in more modern times, and has not always been resolved so favorably to woman as by the christian council of mâcon. the low estimate of women that prevailed even in the early church is admitted by christian scholars. "we cannot but notice," writes meyrick (art. "marriage," smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_), "even in the greatest of the christian fathers a lamentably low estimate of woman, and consequently of the marriage relationship. even st. augustine can see no justification for marriage, except in a grave desire deliberately adopted of having children; and in accordance with this view, all married intercourse, except for this single purpose, is harshly condemned. if marriage is sought after for the sake of children, it is justifiable; if entered into as a _remedium_ to avoid worse evils, it is pardonable; the idea of the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity, hardly existed, and could hardly yet exist." from the woman's point of view, lily braun, in her important work on the woman question (_die frauenfrage_, , pp. et seq.) concludes that, in so far as christianity was favorable to women, we must see that favorable influence in the placing of women on the same moral level as men, as illustrated in the saying of jesus, "let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone," implying that each sex owes the same fidelity. it reached, she adds, no further than this. "christianity, which women accepted as a deliverance with so much enthusiasm, and died for as martyrs, has not fulfilled their hopes." even as regards the moral equality of the sexes in marriage, the position of christian authorities was sometimes equivocal. one of the greatest of the fathers, st. basil, in the latter half of the fourth century, distinguished between adultery and fornication as committed by a married man; if with a married woman, it was adultery; if with an unmarried woman, it was merely fornication. in the former case, a wife should not receive her husband back; in the latter case, she should (art. "adultery," smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_). such a decision, by attaching supreme importance to a distinction which could make no difference to the wife, involved a failure to recognize her moral personality. many of the fathers in the western church, however, like jerome, augustine, and ambrose, could see no reason why the moral law should not be the same for the husband as for the wife, but as late roman feeling both on the legal and popular side was already approximating to that view, the influence of christianity was scarcely required to attain it. it ultimately received formal sanction in the roman canon law, which decreed that adultery is equally committed by either conjugal party in two degrees: ( ) _simplex_, of the married with the unmarried, and ( ) _duplex_, of the married with the married. it can scarcely be said, however, that christianity succeeded in attaining the inclusion of this view of the moral equality of the sexes into actual practical morality. it was accepted in theory; it was not followed in practice. w.g. sumner, discussing this question (_folkways_, pp. - ), concludes: "why are these views not in the _mores?_ undoubtedly it is because they are dogmatic in form, invented or imposed by theological authority or philosophical speculation. they do not grow out of the experience of life, and cannot be verified by it. the reasons are in ultimate physiological facts, by virtue of which one is a woman and the other is a man." there is, however, more to be said on this point later. it was probably, however, not so much the church as teutonic customs and the development of the feudal system, with the masculine and military ideals it fostered, that was chiefly decisive in fixing the inferior position of women in the mediæval world. even the ideas of chivalry, which have often been supposed to be peculiarly favorable to women, so far as they affected women seem to have been of little practical significance. in his great work on chivalry gautier brings forward much evidence to show that the feudal spirit, like the military spirit always and everywhere, on the whole involved at bottom a disdain for women, even though it occasionally idealized them. "go into your painted and gilded rooms," we read in _renaus de montauban_, "sit in the shade, make yourselves comfortable, drink, eat, work tapestry, dye silk, but remember that you must not occupy yourselves with our affairs. our business is to strike with the steel sword. silence!" and if the woman insists she is struck on the face till the blood comes. the husband had a legal right to beat his wife, not only for adultery, but even for contradicting him. women were not, however, entirely without power, and in a thirteenth century collection of _coutumes_, it is set down that a husband must only beat his wife reasonably, _resnablement_. (as regards the husband's right to chastise his wife, see also hobhouse, _morals in evolution_, vol. i, p. . in england it was not until the reign of charles ii, from which so many modern movements date, that the husband was deprived of this legal right.) in the eyes of a feudal knight, it may be added, the beauty of a horse competed, often successfully, with the beauty of a woman. in _girbers de metz_, two knights, garin and his cousin girbert, ride by a window at which sits a beautiful girl with the face of a rose and the white flesh of a lily. "look, cousin girbert, look! by saint mary, a beautiful woman!" "ah," girbert replies, "a beautiful beast is my horse!" "i have never seen anything so charming as that young girl with her fresh color and her dark eyes," says garin. "i know no steed to compare with mine," retorts girbert. when the men were thus absorbed in the things that pertain to war, it is not surprising that amorous advances were left to young girls to make. "in all the _chansons de geste_," gautier remarks, "it is the young girls who make the advances, often with effrontery," though, he adds, wives are represented as more virtuous (l. gautier, _la chevalerie_, pp. - , - ). in england pollock and maitland (_history of english law_, vol. ii, p. ) do not believe that a life-long tutela of women ever existed as among other teutonic peoples. "from the conquest onwards," hobhouse states (op. cit., vol. i, p. ), "the unmarried english woman, on attaining her majority, becomes fully equipped with all legal and civil rights, as much a legal personality as the babylonian woman had been three thousand years before." but the developed english law more than made up for any privileges thus accorded to the unmarried by the inconsistent manner in which it swathed up the wife in endless folds of irresponsibility, except when she committed the supreme offence of injuring her lord and master. the english wife, as hobhouse continues (loc. cit.) was, if not her husband's slave, at any rate his liege subject; if she killed him it was "petty treason," the revolt of a subject against a sovereign in a miniature kingdom, and a more serious offence than murder. murder she could not commit in his presence, for her personality was merged in him; he was responsible for most of her crimes and offences (it was that fact which gave him the right to chastise her), and he could not even enter into a contract with her, for that would be entering into a contract with himself. "the very being and legal existence of a woman is suspended during marriage," said blackstone, "or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband, under whose wing, protection and cover she performs everything. so great a favorite," he added, "is the female sex of the laws of england." "the strength of woman," says hobhouse, interpreting the sense of the english law, "was her weakness. she conquered by yielding. her gentleness had to be guarded from the turmoil of the world, her fragrance to be kept sweet and fresh, away from the dust and the smoke of battle. hence her need of a champion and guardian." in france the wife of the mediæval and renaissance periods occupied much the same position in her husband's house. he was her absolute master and lord, the head and soul of "the feminine and feeble creature" who owed to him "perfect love and obedience." she was his chief servant, the eldest of his children, his wife and subject; she signed herself "your humble obedient daughter and friend," when she wrote to him. the historian, de maulde la clavière, who has brought together evidence on this point in his _femmes de la renaissance_, remarks that even though the husband enjoyed this lofty and superior position in marriage, it was still generally he, and not the wife, who complained of the hardships of marriage. law and custom assumed that a woman should be more or less under the protection of a man, and even the ideals of fine womanhood which arose in this society, during feudal and later times, were necessarily tinged by the same conception. it involved the inequality of women as compared with men, but under the social conditions of a feudal society such inequality was to woman's advantage. masculine force was the determining factor in life and it was necessary that every woman should have a portion of this force on her side. this sound and reasonable idea naturally tended to persist even after the growth of civilization rendered force a much less decisive factor in social life. in england in queen elizabeth's time no woman must be masterless, although the feminine subjects of queen elizabeth had in their sovereign the object lesson of a woman who could play a very brilliant and effective part in life and yet remain absolutely masterless. still later, in the eighteenth century, even so fine a moralist as shaftesbury, in his _characteristics_, refers to lovers of married women as invaders of property. if such conceptions still ruled even in the best minds, it is not surprising that in the same century, even in the following century, they were carried out into practice by less educated people who frankly bought and sold women. schrader, in his _reallexicon_ (art. "brautkauf"), points out that, originally, the purchase of a wife was the purchase of her person, and not merely of the right of protecting her. the original conception probably persisted long in great britain on account of its remoteness from the centres of civilization. in the eleventh century gregory vii desired lanfranc to stop the sale of wives in scotland and elsewhere in the island of the english (pike, _history of crime in england_, vol. i, p. ). the practice never quite died out, however, in remote country districts. such transactions have taken place even in london. thus in the _annual register_ for (p. ) we read: "about three weeks ago a bricklayer's laborer at marylebone sold a woman, whom he had cohabited with for several years, to a fellow-workman for a quarter guinea and a gallon of beer. the workman went off with the purchase, and she has since had the good fortune to have a legacy of £ , and some plate, left her by a deceased uncle in devonshire. the parties were married last friday." the rev. j. edward vaux (_church folk-lore_, second edition, p. ) narrates two authentic cases in which women had been bought by their husbands in open market in the nineteenth century. in one case the wife, with her own full consent, was brought to market with a halter round her neck, sold for half a crown, and led to her new home, twelve miles off by the new husband who had purchased her; in the other case a publican bought another man's wife for a two-gallon jar of gin. it is the same conception of woman as property which, even to the present, has caused the retention in many legal codes of clauses rendering a man liable to pay pecuniary damages to a woman, previously a virgin, whom he has intercourse with and subsequently forsakes (natalie fuchs, "die jungfernschaft im recht und sitte," _sexual-probleme_, feb., ). the woman is "dishonored" by sexual intercourse, depreciated in her market value, exactly as a new garment becomes "second-hand," even if it has but once been worn. a man, on the other hand, would disdain the idea that his personal value could be diminished by any number of acts of sexual intercourse. this fact has even led some to advocate the "abolition of physical virginity." thus the german authoress of _una poenitentium_ ( ), considering that the protection of a woman is by no means so well secured by a little piece of membrane as by the presence of a true and watchful soul inside, advocates the operation of removal of the hymen in childhood. it is undoubtedly true that the undue importance attached to the hymen has led to a false conception of feminine "honor," and to an unwholesome conception of feminine purity. custom and law are slowly changing in harmony with changed social conditions which no longer demand the subjection of women either in their own interests or in the interests of the community. concomitantly with these changes a different ideal of womanly personality is developing. it is true that the ancient ideal of the lordship of the husband over the wife is still more or less consciously affirmed around us. the husband frequently dictates to the wife what avocations she may not pursue, what places she may not visit, what people she may not know, what books she may not read. he assumes to control her, even in personal matters having no direct concern with himself, by virtue of the old masculine prerogative of force which placed a woman under the hand, as the ancient patriarchal legists termed it, of a man. it is, however, becoming more and more widely recognized that such a part is not suited to the modern man. the modern man, as rosa mayreder has pointed out in a thoughtful essay,[ ] is no longer equipped to play this domineering part in relation to his wife. the "noble savage," leading a wild life on mountain and in forest, hunting dangerous beasts and scalping enemies when necessary, may occasionally bring his club gently and effectively on to the head of his wife, even, it may be, with grateful appreciation on her part.[ ] but the modern man, who for the most part spends his days tamely at a desk, who has been trained to endure silently the insults and humiliations which superior officials or patronizing clients may inflict upon him, this typical modern man is no longer able to assume effectually the part of the "noble savage" when he returns to his home. he is indeed so unfitted for the part that his wife resents his attempts to play it. he is gradually recognizing this, even apart from any consciousness of the general trend of civilization. the modern man of ideas recognizes that, as a matter of principle, his wife is entitled to equality with himself; the modern man of the world feels that it would be both ridiculous and inconvenient not to accord his wife much the same kind of freedom which he himself possesses. and, moreover, while the modern man has to some extent acquired feminine qualities, the modern woman has to a corresponding extent acquired masculine qualities. brief and summary as the preceding discussion has necessarily been, it will have served to bring us face to face with the central fact in the sexual morality which the growth of civilization has at the present day rendered inevitable: personal responsibility. "the responsible human being, man or woman, is the centre of modern ethics as of modern law;" that is the conclusion reached by hobhouse in his discussion of the evolution of human morality.[ ] the movement which is taking place among us to liberate sexual relationships from an excessive bondage to fixed and arbitrary regulations would have been impossible and mischievous but for the concomitant growth of a sense of personal responsibility in the members of the community. it could not indeed have subsisted for a single year without degenerating into license and disorder. freedom in sexual relations involves mutual trust and that can only rest on a basis of personal responsibility. where there can be no reliance on personal responsibility there can be no freedom. in most fields of moral action this sense of personal responsibility is acquired at a fairly early stage of social progress. sexual morality is the last field of morality to be brought within the sphere of personal responsibility. the community imposes the most varied, complicated, and artificial codes of sexual morality on its members, especially its feminine members, and, naturally enough, it is always very suspicious of their ability to observe these codes, and is careful to allow them, so far as possible, no personal responsibility in the matter. but a training in restraint, when carried through a long series of generations, is the best preparation for freedom. the law laid on the earlier generations, as old theology stated the matter, has been the schoolmaster to bring the later generations to christ; or, as new science expresses exactly the same idea, the later generations have become immunized and have finally acquired a certain degree of protection against the virus which would have destroyed the earlier generations. the process by which a people acquires the sense of personal responsibility is slow, and perhaps it cannot be adequately acquired at all by races lacking a high grade of nervous organization. this is especially the case as regards sexual morality, and has often been illustrated on the contact of a higher with a lower civilization. it has constantly happened that missionaries--entirely against their own wishes, it need not be said--by overthrowing the strict moral system they have found established, and by substituting the freedom of european customs among people entirely unprepared for such freedom, have exerted the most disastrous effects on morality. this has been the case among the formerly well-organized and highly moral baganda of central africa, as recorded in an official report by colonel lambkin (_british medical journal_, oct. , ). as regards polynesia, also, r.l. stevenson, in his interesting book, _in the south seas_ (ch. v), pointed out that, while before the coming of the whites the polynesians were, on the whole, chaste, and the young carefully watched, now it is far otherwise. even in fiji, where, according to lord stanmore--who was high commissioner of the pacific, and an independent critic--missionary effort has been "wonderfully successful," where all own at least nominal allegiance to christianity, which has much modified life and character, yet chastity has suffered. this was shown by a royal commission on the condition of the native races in fiji. mr. fitchett, commenting on this report (australasian _review of reviews_, oct., ) remarks: "not a few witnesses examined by the commission declare that the moral advance in fiji is of a curiously patchy type. the abolition of polygamy, for example, they say, has not told at every point in favor of women. the woman is the toiler in fiji; and when the support of the husband was distributed over four wives, the burden on each wife was less than it is now, when it has to be carried by one. in heathen times female chastity was guarded by the club; a faithless wife, an unmarried mother, was summarily put to death. christianity has abolished club-law, and purely moral restraints, or the terror of the penalties of the next world, do not, to the limited imagination of the fijian, quite take its place. so the standard of fijian chastity is distressingly low." it must always be remembered that when the highly organized primitive system of mixed spiritual and physical restraints is removed, chastity becomes more delicately and unstably poised. the controlling power of personal responsibility, valuable and essential as it is, cannot permanently and unremittingly restrain the volcanic forces of the passion of love even in high civilizations. "no perfection of moral constitution in a woman," hinlon has well said, "no power of will, no wish and resolution to be 'good,' no force of religion or control of custom, can secure what is called the virtue of woman. the emotion of absolute devotion with which some man may inspire her will sweep them all away. society, in choosing to erect itself on that basis, chooses inevitable disorder, and so long as it continues to choose it will continue to have that result." it is necessary to insist for a while on this personal responsibility in matters of sexual morality, in the form in which it is making itself felt among us, and to search out its implications. the most important of these is undoubtedly economic independence. that is indeed so important that moral responsibility in any fine sense can scarcely be said to have any existence in its absence. moral responsibility and economic independence are indeed really identical; they are but two sides of the same social fact. the responsible person is the person who is able to answer for his actions and, if need be, to pay for them. the economically dependent person can accept a criminal responsibility; he can, with an empty purse, go to prison or to death. but in the ordinary sphere of everyday morality that large penalty is not required of him; if he goes against the wishes of his family or his friends or his parish, they may turn their backs on him but they cannot usually demand against him the last penalties of the law. he can exert his own personal responsibility, he can freely choose to go his own way and to maintain himself in it before his fellowmen on one condition, that he is able to pay for it. his personal responsibility has little or no meaning except in so far as it is also economic independence. in civilized societies as they attain maturity, the women tend to acquire a greater and greater degree alike of moral responsibility and economic independence. any freedom and seeming equality of women, even when it actually assumes the air of superiority, which is not so based, is unreal. it is only on sufferance; it is the freedom accorded to the child, because it asks for it so prettily or may scream if it is refused. this is merely parasitism.[ ] the basis of economic independence ensures a more real freedom. even in societies which by law and custom hold women in strict subordination, the woman who happens to be placed in possession of property enjoys a high degree alike of independence and of responsibility.[ ] the growth of a high civilization seems indeed to be so closely identified with the economic freedom and independence of women that it is difficult to say which is cause and which effect. herodotus, in his fascinating account of egypt, a land which he regarded as admirable beyond all other lands, noted with surprise that, totally unlike the fashion of greece, women left the men at home to the management of the loom and went to market to transact the business of commerce.[ ] it is the economic factor in social life which secures the moral responsibility of women and which chiefly determines the position of the wife in relation to her husband.[ ] in this respect in its late stages civilization returns to the same point it had occupied at the beginning, when, as has already been noted, we find greater equality with men and at the same time greater economic independence.[ ] in all the leading modern civilized countries, for a century past, custom and law have combined to give an ever greater economic independence to women. in some respects england took the lead by inaugurating the great industrial movement which slowly swept women into its ranks,[ ] and made inevitable the legal changes which, by , insured to a married woman the possession of her own earnings. the same movement, with its same consequences, is going on elsewhere. in the united states, just as in england, there is a vast army of five million women, rapidly increasing, who earn their own living, and their position in relation to men workers is even better than in england. in france from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent. of the workers in most of the chief industries--the liberal professions, commerce, agriculture, factory industries--are women, and in some of the very largest, such as home industries and textile industries, more women are employed than men. in japan, it is said, three-fifths of the factory workers are women, and all the textile industries are in the hands of women.[ ] this movement is the outward expression of the modern conception of personal rights, personal moral worth, and personal responsibility, which, as hobhouse has remarked, has compelled women to take their lives into their own hands, and has at the same time rendered the ancient marriage laws an anachronism, and the ancient ideals of feminine innocence shrouded from the world a mere piece of false sentiment.[ ] there can be no doubt that the entrance of women into the field of industrial work, in rivalry with men and under somewhat the same conditions as men, raises serious questions of another order. the general tendency of civilization towards the economic independence and the moral responsibility of women is unquestionable. but it is by no means absolutely clear that it is best for women, and, therefore, for the community, that women should exercise all the ordinary avocations and professions of men on the same level as men. not only have the conditions of the avocations and professions developed in accordance with the special aptitudes of men, but the fact that the sexual processes by which the race is propagated demand an incomparably greater expenditure of time and energy on the part of women than of men, precludes women in the mass from devoting themselves so exclusively as men to industrial work. for some biologists, indeed, it seems clear that outside the home and the school women should not work at all. "any nation that works its women is damned," says woods hutchinson (_the gospel according to darwin_, p. ). that view is extreme. yet from the economic side, also, hobson, in summing up this question, regards the tendency of machine-industry to drive women away from the home as "a tendency antagonistic to civilization." the neglect of the home, he states, is, "on the whole, the worst injury modern industry has inflicted on our lives, and it is difficult to see how it can be compensated by any increase of material products. factory life for women, save in extremely rare cases, saps the physical and moral health of the family. the exigencies of factory life are inconsistent with the position of a good mother, a good wife, or the maker of a home. save in extreme circumstances, no increase of the family wage can balance these losses, whose values stand upon a higher qualitative level" (j.a. hobson, _evolution of modern capitalism_, ch. xii; cf. what has been said in ch. i of the present volume). it is now beginning to be recognized that the early pioneers of the "woman's movement" in working to remove the "subjection of woman" were still dominated by the old ideals of that subjection, according to which the masculine is in all main respects the superior sex. whatever was good for man, they thought, must be equally good for woman. that has been the source of all that was unbalanced and unstable, sometimes both a little pathetic and a little absurd, in the old "woman's movement." there was a failure to perceive that, first of all, women must claim their right to their own womanhood as mothers of the race, and thereby the supreme law-givers in the sphere of sex and the large part of life dependent on sex. this special position of woman seems likely to require a readjustment of economic conditions to their needs, though it is not likely that such readjustment would be permitted to affect their independence or their responsibility. we have had, as madame juliette adam has put it, the rights of men sacrificing women, followed by the rights of women sacrificing the child; that must be followed by the rights of the child reconstituting the family. it has already been necessary to touch on this point in the first chapter of this volume, and it will again be necessary in the last chapter. the question as to the method by which the economic independence of women will be completely insured, and the part which the community may be expected to take in insuring it, on the ground of woman's special child-bearing functions, is from the present point of view subsidiary. there can be no doubt, however, as to the reality of the movement in that direction, whatever doubt there may be as to the final adjustment of the details. it is only necessary in this place to touch on some of the general and more obvious respects in which the growth of woman's responsibility is affecting sexual morality. the first and most obvious way in which the sense of moral responsibility works is in an insistence on reality in the relationships of sex. moral irresponsibility has too often combined with economic dependence to induce a woman to treat the sexual event in her life which is biologically of most fateful gravity as a merely gay and trivial event, at the most an event which has given her a triumph over her rivals and over the superior male, who, on his part, willingly condescends, for the moment, to assume the part of the vanquished. "gallantry to the ladies," we are told of the hero of the greatest and most typical of english novels, "was among his principles of honor, and he held it as much incumbent on him to accept a challenge to love as if it had been a challenge to fight;" he heroically goes home for the night with a lady of title he meets at a masquerade, though at the time very much in love with the girl whom he eventually marries.[ ] the woman whose power lies only in her charms, and who is free to allow the burden of responsibility to fall on a man's shoulder,[ ] could lightly play the seducing part, and thereby exert independence and authority in the only shapes open to her. the man on his part, introducing the misplaced idea of "honor" into the field from which the natural idea of responsibility has been banished, is prepared to descend at the lady's bidding into the arena, according to the old legend, and rescue the glove, even though he afterwards flings it contemptuously in her face. the ancient conception of gallantry, which tom jones so well embodies, is the direct outcome of a system involving the moral irresponsibility and economic dependence of women, and is as opposed to the conceptions, prevailing in the earlier and later civilized stages, of approximate sexual equality as it is to the biological traditions of natural courtship in the world generally. in controlling her own sexual life, and in realizing that her responsibility for such control can no longer be shifted on to the shoulders of the other sex, women will also indirectly affect the sexual lives of men, much as men already affect the sexual lives of women. in what ways that influence will in the main be exerted it is still premature to say. according to some, just as formerly men bought their wives and demanded prenuptial virginity in the article thus purchased, so nowadays, among the better classes, women are able to buy their husbands, and in their turn are disposed to demand continence.[ ] that, however, is too simple-minded a way of viewing the question. it is enough to refer to the fact that women are not attracted to virginal innocence in men and that they frequently have good ground for viewing such innocence with suspicion.[ ] yet it may well be believed that women will more and more prefer to exert a certain discrimination in the approval of their husbands' past lives. however instinctively a woman may desire that her husband shall be initiated in the art of making love to her, she may often well doubt whether the finest initiation is to be secured from the average prostitute. prostitution, as we have seen, is ultimately as incompatible with complete sexual responsibility as is the patriarchal marriage system with which it has been so closely associated. it is an arrangement mainly determined by the demands of men, to whatever extent it may have incidentally subserved various needs of women. men arranged that one group of women should be set apart to minister exclusively to their sexual necessities, while another group should be brought up in asceticism as candidates for the privilege of ministering to their household and family necessities. that this has been in many respects a most excellent arrangement is sufficiently proved by the fact that it has nourished for so long a period, notwithstanding the influences that are antagonistic to it. but it is obviously only possible during a certain stage of civilization and in association with a certain social organization. it is not completely congruous with a democratic stage of civilization involving the economic independence and the sexual responsibility of both sexes alike in all social classes. it is possible that women may begin to realize this fact earlier than men. it is also believed by many that women will realize that a high degree of moral responsibility is not easily compatible with the practice of dissimulation and that economic independence will deprive deceit--which is always the resort of the weak--of whatever moral justification it may possess. here, however, it is necessary to speak with caution or we may be unjust to women. it must be remarked that in the sphere of sex men also are often the weak, and are therefore apt to resort to the refuge of the weak. with the recognition of that fact we may also recognize that deception in women has been the cause of much of the age-long blunders of the masculine mind in the contemplation of feminine ways. men have constantly committed the double error of overlooking the dissimulation of women and of over-estimating it. this fact has always served to render more difficult still the inevitably difficult course of women through the devious path of sexual behavior. pepys, who represents so vividly and so frankly the vices and virtues of the ordinary masculine mind, tells how one day when he called to see mrs. martin her sister doll went out for a bottle of wine and came back indignant because a dutchman had pulled her into a stable and tumbled and tossed her. pepys having been himself often permitted to take liberties with her, it seemed to him that her indignation with the dutchman was "the best instance of woman's falseness in the world."[ ] he assumes without question that a woman who has accorded the privilege of familiarity to a man she knows and, one hopes, respects, would be prepared to accept complacently the brutal attentions of the first drunken stranger she meets in the street. it was the assumption of woman's falseness which led the ultra-masculine pepys into a sufficiently absurd error. at this point, indeed, we encounter what has seemed to some a serious obstacle to the full moral responsibility of women. dissimulation, lombroso and ferrero argue, is in woman "almost physiological," and they give various grounds for this conclusion.[ ] the theologians, on their side, have reached a similar conclusion. "a confessor must not immediately believe a woman's words," says father gury, "for women are habitually inclined to lie."[ ] this tendency, which seems to be commonly believed to affect women as a sex, however free from it a vast number of individual women are, may be said, and with truth, to be largely the result of the subjection of women and therefore likely to disappear as that subjection disappears. in so far, however, as it is "almost physiological," and based on radical feminine characters, such as modesty, affectability, and sympathy, which have an organic basis in the feminine constitution and can therefore never altogether be changed, feminine dissimulation seems scarcely likely to disappear. the utmost that can be expected is that it should be held in check by the developed sense of moral responsibility, and, being reduced to its simply natural proportions, become recognizably intelligible. it is unnecessary to remark that there can be no question here as to any inherent moral superiority of one sex over the other. the answer to that question was well stated many years ago by one of the most subtle moralists of love. "taken altogether," concluded sénancour (_de l'amour_, vol. ii, p. ), "we have no reason to assert the moral superiority of either sex. both sexes, with their errors and their good intentions, very equally fulfil the ends of nature. we may well believe that in either of the two divisions of the human species the sum of evil and that of good are about equal. if, for instance, as regards love, we oppose the visibly licentious conduct of men to the apparent reserve of women, it would be a vain valuation, for the number of faults committed by women with men is necessarily the same as that of men with women. there exist among us fewer scrupulous men than perfectly honest women, but it is easy to see how the balance is restored. if this question of the moral preëminence of one sex over the other were not insoluble it would still remain very complicated with reference to the whole of the species, or even the whole of a nation, and any dispute here seems idle." this conclusion is in accordance with the general compensatory and complementary relationship of women to men (see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, especially pp. et seq.). in a recent symposium on the question whether women are morally inferior to men, with special reference to aptitude for loyalty (_la revue_, jan. , ), to which various distinguished french men and women contributed their opinions, some declared that women are usually superior; others regarded it as a question of difference rather than of superiority or inferiority; all were agreed that when they enjoy the same independence as men, women are quite as loyal as men. it is undoubtedly true that--partly as a result of ancient traditions and education, partly of genuine feminine characteristics--many women are diffident as to their right to moral responsibility and unwilling to assume it. and an attempt is made to justify their attitude by asserting that woman's part in life is naturally that of self-sacrifice, or, to put the statement in a somewhat more technical form, that women are naturally masochistic; and that there is, as krafft-ebing argues, a natural "sexual subjection" of woman. it is by no means clear that this statement is absolutely true, and if it were true it would not serve to abolish the moral responsibility of women. bloch (_beiträge zur Ætiologie der psychopathia sexualis_, part ii, p. ), in agreement with eulenburg, energetically denies that there is any such natural "sexual subjection" of women, regarding it as artificially produced, the result of the socially inferior position of women, and arguing that such subjection is in much higher degree a physiological characteristic of men than of women. (it has been necessary to discuss this question in dealing with "love and pain" in the third volume of these _studies_.) it seems certainly clear that the notion that women are especially prone to self-sacrifice has little biological validity. self-sacrifice by compulsion, whether physical or moral compulsion, is not worthy of the name; when it is deliberate it is simply the sacrifice of a lesser good for the sake of a greater good. doubtless a man who eats a good dinner may be said to "sacrifice" his hunger. even within the sphere of traditional morality a woman who sacrifices her "honor" for the sake of her love to a man has, by her "sacrifice," gained something that she values more. "what a triumph it is to a woman," a woman has said, "to give pleasure to a man she loves!" and in a morality on a sound biological basis no "sacrifice" is here called for. it may rather be said that the biological laws of courtship fundamentally demand self-sacrifice of the male rather than of the female. thus the lioness, according to gérard the lion-hunter, gives herself to the most vigorous of her lion wooers; she encourages them to fight among themselves for superiority, lying on her belly to gaze at the combat and lashing her tail with delight. every female is wooed by many males, but she only accepts one; it is not the female who is called upon for erotic self-sacrifice, but the male. that is indeed part of the divine compensation of nature, for since the heavier part of the burden of sex rests on the female, it is fitting that she should be less called upon for renunciation. it thus seems probable that the increase of moral responsibility may tend to make a woman's conduct more intelligible to others;[ ] it will in any case certainly tend to make it less the concern of others. this is emphatically the case as regards the relations of sex. in the past men have been invited to excel in many forms of virtue; only one virtue has been open to women. that is no longer possible. to place upon a woman the main responsibility for her own sexual conduct is to deprive that conduct of its conspicuously public character as a virtue or a vice. sexual union, for a woman as much as for a man, is a physiological fact; it may also be a spiritual fact; but it is not a social act. it is, on the contrary, an act which, beyond all other acts, demands retirement and mystery for its accomplishment. that indeed is a general human, almost zoölogical, fact. moreover, this demand of mystery is more especially made by woman in virtue of her greater modesty which, we have found reason to believe, has a biological basis. it is not until a child is born or conceived that the community has any right to interest itself in the sexual acts of its members. the sexual act is of no more concern to the community than any other private physiological act. it is an impertinence, if not an outrage, to seek to inquire into it. but the birth of a child is a social act. not what goes into the womb but what comes out of it concerns society. the community is invited to receive a new citizen. it is entitled to demand that that citizen shall be worthy of a place in its midst and that he shall be properly introduced by a responsible father and a responsible mother. the whole of sexual morality, as ellen key has said, revolves round the child. at this final point in our discussion of sexual morality we may perhaps be able to realize the immensity of the change which has been involved by the development in women of moral responsibility. so long as responsibility was denied to women, so long as a father or a husband, backed up by the community, held himself responsible for a woman's sexual behavior, for her "virtue," it was necessary that the whole of sexual morality should revolve around the entrance to the vagina. it became absolutely essential to the maintenance of morality that all eyes in the community should be constantly directed on to that point, and the whole marriage law had to be adjusted accordingly. that is no longer possible. when a woman assumes her own moral responsibility, in sexual as in other matters, it becomes not only intolerable but meaningless for the community to pry into her most intimate physiological or spiritual acts. she is herself directly responsible to society as soon as she performs a social act, and not before. in relation to the fact of maternity the realization of all that is involved in the new moral responsibility of women is especially significant. under a system of morality by which a man is left free to accept the responsibility for his sexual acts while a woman is not equally free to do the like, a premium is placed on sexual acts which have no end in procreation, and a penalty is placed on the acts which lead to procreation. the reason is that it is the former class of acts in which men find chief gratification; it is the latter class in which women find chief gratification. for the tragic part of the old sexual morality in its bearing on women was that while it made men alone morally responsible for sexual acts in which both a man and a woman took part, women were rendered both socially and legally incapable of availing themselves of the fact of masculine responsibility unless they had fulfilled conditions which men had laid down for them, and yet refrained from imposing upon themselves. the act of sexual intercourse, being the sexual act in which men found chief pleasure, was under all circumstances an act of little social gravity; the act of bringing a child into the world, which is for women the most massively gratifying of all sexual acts, was counted a crime unless the mother had before fulfilled the conditions demanded by man. that was perhaps the most unfortunate and certainly the most unnatural of the results of the patriarchal regulation of society. it has never existed in any great state where women have possessed some degree of regulative power. it has, of course, been said by abstract theorists that women have the matter in their own hands. they must never love a man until they have safely locked him up in the legal bonds of matrimony. such an argument is absolutely futile, for it ignores the fact that, while love and even monogamy are natural, legal marriage is merely an external form, with a very feeble power of subjugating natural impulses, except when those impulses are weak, and no power at all of subjugating them permanently. civilization involves the growth of foresight, and of self-control in both sexes; but it is foolish to attempt to place on these fine and ultimate outgrowths of civilization a strain which they could never bear. how foolish it is has been shown, once and for all, by lea in his admirable _history of sacerdotal celibacy_. moreover, when we compare the respective aptitudes of men and women in this particular region, it must be remembered that men possess a greater power of forethought and self-control than women, notwithstanding the modesty and reserve of women. the sexual sphere is immensely larger in women, so that when its activity is once aroused it is much more difficult to master or control. (the reasons were set out in detail in the discussion of "the sexual impulse in women" in volume iii of these _studies_.) it is, therefore, unfair to women, and unduly favors men, when too heavy a premium is placed on forethought and self-restraint in sexual matters. since women play the predominant part in the sexual field their natural demands, rather than those of men, must furnish the standard. with the realization of the moral responsibility of women the natural relations of life spring back to their due biological adjustment. motherhood is restored to its natural sacredness. it becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of society nor of any individual, to determine the conditions under which the child shall be conceived. society is entitled to require that the father shall in every case acknowledge the fact of his paternity, but it must leave the chief responsibility for all the circumstances of child-production to the mother. that is the point of view which is now gaining ground in all civilized lands both in theory and in practice.[ ] footnotes: [ ] e.g., e. belfort bax, _outspoken essays_, p. . [ ] such reasons are connected with communal welfare. "all immoral acts result in communal unhappiness, all moral acts in communal happiness," as prof. a. mathews remarks, "science and morality," _popular science monthly_, march, . [ ] see westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. i, pp. - , . [ ] westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, pp. , ; also the whole of ch. vii. actions that are in accordance with custom call forth public approval, actions that are opposed to custom call forth public resentment, and westermarck powerfully argues that such approval and such resentment are the foundation of moral judgments. [ ] this is well recognized by legal writers (e.g., e.a. schroeder, _das recht in der geschlechtlichen ordnung_, p. ). [ ] w.g. sumner (_folkways_, p. ) even considers it desirable to change the form of the word in order to emphasize the real and fundamental meaning of morals, and proposes the word _mores_ to indicate "popular usages and traditions conducive to societal reform." "'immoral,'" he points out, "never means anything but contrary to the _mores_ of the time and place." there is, however, no need whatever to abolish or to supplement the good old ancient word "morality," so long as we clearly realize that, on the practical side, it means essentially custom. [ ] westermarck, op. cit., vol. i, p. . [ ] see, e.g., "exogamy and the mating of cousins," in _essays presented to e.b. tylor_, , p. . "in many departments of primitive life we find a naïve desire to, as it were, assist nature, to affirm what is normal, and later to confirm it by the categorical imperative of custom and law. this tendency still flourishes in our civilized communities, and, as the worship of the normal, is often a deadly foe to the abnormal and eccentric, and too often paralyzes originality." [ ] the spirit of christianity, as illustrated by paulinus, in his _epistle xxv_, was from the roman point of view, as dill remarks (_roman society_, p. ), "a renunciation, not only of citizenship, but of all the hard-won fruits of civilization and social life." [ ] it thus happens that, as lecky said in his _history of european morals_, "of all the departments of ethics the questions concerning the relations of the sexes and the proper position of woman are those upon the future of which there rests the greatest uncertainty." some progress has perhaps been made since these words were written, but they still hold true for the majority of people. [ ] concerning economic marriage as a vestigial survival, see, e.g., bloch, _the sexual life of our time_, p. . [ ] sénancour, _de l'amour_, vol. ii, p. . the author of _the question of english divorce_ attributes the absence of any widespread feeling against sexual license to the absurd rigidity of the law. [ ] bruno meyer, "etwas von positiver sexualreform," _sexual-probleme_, nov., . [ ] elsie clews parsons, _the family_, p. . dr. parsons rightly thinks such unions a social evil when they check the development of personality. [ ] for evidence regarding the general absence of celibacy among both savage and barbarous peoples, see, e.g., westermarck, _history of human marriage_, ch. vii. [ ] there are, for instance, two millions of unmarried women in france, while in belgium per cent, of the women, and in germany sometimes even per cent, are unmarried. [ ] such a position would not be biologically unreasonable, in view of the greatly preponderant part played by the female in the sexual process which insures the conservation of the race. "if the sexual instinct is regarded solely from the physical side," says d.w.h. busch (_das geschlechtsleben des weibes_, , vol. i, p. ), "the woman cannot be regarded as the property of the man, but with equal and greater reason the man may be regarded as the property of the woman." [ ] herodotus, bk. i, ch. clxxiii. [ ] that power and relationship are entirely distinct was pointed out many years ago by l. von dargun, _mutterrecht und vaterrecht_, . westermarck (_origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. i, p. ), who is inclined to think that steinmetz has not proved conclusively that mother-descent involves less authority of husband over wife, makes the important qualification that the husband's authority is impaired when he lives among his wife's kinsfolk. [ ] robertson smith, _kinship and marriage in early arabia_; j.g. frazer has pointed out (_academy_, march , ) that the partially semitic peoples on the north frontier of abyssinia, not subjected to the revolutionary processes of islam, preserve a system closely resembling _beena_ marriage, as well as some traces of the opposite system, by robertson smith called _ba'al_ marriage, in which the wife is acquired by purchase and becomes a piece of property. [ ] spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. . [ ] rhys and brynmor-jones, _the welsh people_, pp. - ; cf. rhys, _celtic heathendom_, p. . [ ] rhys and brynmor-jones, op. cit., p. . [ ] crawley (_the mystic rose_, p. et seq.) gives numerous instances. [ ] revillout, "la femme dans l'antiquité," _journal asiatique_, , vol. vii, p. . see, also, victor marx, _beiträge zur assyriologie_, , bd. iv, heft . [ ] donaldson, _woman_, pp. , et seq. nietzold, (_die ehe in_ "_agypten_," p. ), thinks the statement of diodorus that no children were illegitimate, needs qualification, but that certainly the illegitimate child in egypt was at no social disadvantage. [ ] amélineau, _la morale egyptienne_, p. ; hobhouse, _morals in evolution_, vol. i, p. ; flinders petrie, _religion and conscience in ancient egypt_, pp. et seq. [ ] maine, _ancient law_, ch. v. [ ] donaldson, _woman_, pp. , . [ ] _mercator_, iv, . [ ] digest xlviii, , . [ ] hobhouse, _morals in evolution_, vol. i, p. . [ ] for an account of the work of some of the less known of these pioneers, see a series of articles by harriet mcilquham in the _westminster review_, especially nov., , and nov., . [ ] the influence of christianity on the position of women has been well discussed by lecky, _history of european morals_, vol. ii, pp. et seq., and more recently by donaldson, _woman_, bk. iii. [ ] migne, _patrologia_, vol. clviii, p. . [ ] rosa mayreder, "einiges über die starke faust," _zur kritik der weiblichkeit_, . [ ] rasmussen (_people of the polar north_, p. ), describes a ferocious quarrel between husband and wife, who each in turn knocked the other down. "somewhat later, when i peeped in, they were lying affectionately asleep, with their arms around each other." [ ] hobhouse, _morals in evolution_, vol. ii, p. . dr. stöcker, in _die liebe und die frauen_, also insists on the significance of this factor of personal responsibility. [ ] olive schreiner has especially emphasized the evils of parasitism for women. "the increased wealth of the male," she remarks ("the woman's movement of our day," _harper's bazaar_, jan., ), "no more of necessity benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits, mentally or physically, a poodle, because she can then give him a down cushion in place of one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef." olive schreiner believes that feminine parasitism is a danger which really threatens society at the present time, and that if not averted "the whole body of females in civilized societies must sink into a state of more or less absolute dependence." [ ] in rome and in japan, hobhouse notes (op. cit., vol. i, pp. , ), the patriarchal system reached its fullest extension, yet the laws of both these countries placed the husband in a position of practical subjugation to a rich wife. [ ] herodotus, bk. ii, ch. xxxv. herodotus noted that it was the woman and not the man on whom the responsibility for supporting aged parents rested. that alone involved a very high economic position of women. it is not surprising that to some observers, as to diodorus siculus, it seemed that the egyptian woman was mistress over her husband. [ ] hobhouse (loc. cit.), hale, and also grosse, believe that good economic position of a people involves high position of women. westermarck (_moral ideas_, vol. i, p. ), here in agreement with olive schreiner, thinks this statement cannot be accepted without modification, though agreeing that agricultural life has a good effect on woman's position, because they themselves become actively engaged in it. a good economic position has no real effect in raising woman's position, unless women themselves take a real and not merely parasitic part in it. [ ] westermarck (_moral ideas_, vol. i, ch. xxvi, vol. ii, p. ) gives numerous references with regard to the considerable proprietary and other privileges of women among savages which tend to be lost at a somewhat higher stage of culture. [ ] the steady rise in the proportion of women among english workers in machine industries began in . there are now, it is estimated, three and a half million women employed in industrial occupations, beside a million and a half domestic servants. (see for details, james haslam, in a series of papers in the _englishwoman_ .) [ ] see, e.g., j.a. hobson, _the evolution of modern capitalism_, second edition, , ch. xii, "women in modern industry." [ ] hobhouse, op. cit., vol. i, p. . [ ] fielding, _tom jones_, bk. iii, ch. vii. [ ] even the church to some extent adopted this allotment of the responsibility, and "solicitation," i.e., the sin of a confessor in seducing his female penitent, is constantly treated as exclusively the confessor's sin. [ ] adolf gerson, _sexual-probleme_, sept., , p. . [ ] it has already been necessary to refer to the unfortunate results which may follow the ignorance of husbands (see, e.g., "the sexual impulse in women," vol. iii of these _studies_), and will be necessary again in ch. xi of the present volume. [ ] pepys, _diary_, ed. wheatley, vol. vii, p. . [ ] lombroso and ferrero, _la donna delinquente_; cf. havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, p. . [ ] gury, _théologie morale_, art. . [ ] "men will not learn what women are," remarks rosa mayreder (_zur kritik der weiblichkeit_, p. ), "until they have left off prescribing what they ought to be." [ ] it has been set out, for instance, by professor wahrmund in _ehe und eherecht_, . i need scarcely refer again to the writings of ellen key, which may be said to be almost epoch-making in their significance, especially (in german translation) _ueber liebe und ehe_ (also french translation), and (in english translation, putnam, ), the valuable, though less important work, _the century of the child_. see also edward carpenter, _love's coming of age_; forel, _die sexuelle frage_ (english translation, abridged, _the sexual question_, rebman, ); bloch, _sexualleben unsere zeit_ (english translation, _the sexual life of our time_, rebman, ); helene stöcker, _die liebe und die frauen_, ; and paul lapie, _la femme dans la famille_, . chapter x. marriage. the definition of marriage--marriage among animals--the predominance of monogamy--the question of group marriage--monogamy a natural fact, not based on human law--the tendency to place the form of marriage above the fact of marriage--the history of marriage--marriage in ancient rome--germanic influence on marriage--bride-sale--the ring--the influence of christianity on marriage--the great extent of this influence--the sacrament of matrimony--origin and growth of the sacramental conception--the church made marriage a public act--canon law--its sound core--its development--its confusions and absurdities--peculiarities of english marriage law--influence of the reformation on marriage--the protestant conception of marriage as a secular contract--the puritan reform of marriage--milton as the pioneer of marriage reform--his views on divorce--the backward position of england in marriage reform--criticism of the english divorce law--traditions of the canon law still persistent--the question of damages for adultery--collusion as a bar to divorce--divorce in france, germany, austria, russia, etc.--the united states--impossibility of deciding by statute the causes for divorce--divorce by mutual consent--its origin and development--impeded by the traditions of canon law--wilhelm von humboldt--modern pioneer advocates of divorce by mutual consent--the arguments against facility of divorce--the interests of the children--the protection of women--the present tendency of the divorce movement--marriage not a contract--the proposal of marriage for a term of years--legal disabilities and disadvantages in the position of the husband and the wife--marriage not a contract but a fact--only the non-essentials of marriage, not the essentials, a proper matter for contract--the legal recognition of marriage as a fact without any ceremony--contracts of the person opposed to modern tendencies--the factor of moral responsibility--marriage as an ethical sacrament--personal responsibility involves freedom--freedom the best guarantee of stability--false ideas of individualism--modern tendency of marriage--with the birth of a child marriage ceases to be a private concern--every child must have a legal father and mother--how this can be effected--the firm basis of monogamy--the question of marriage variations--such variations not inimical to monogamy--the most common variations--the flexibility of marriage holds variations in check--marriage variations _versus_ prostitution--marriage on a reasonable and humane basis--summary and conclusion. the discussion in the previous chapter of the nature of sexual morality, with the brief sketch it involved of the direction in which that morality is moving, has necessarily left many points vague. it may still be asked what definite and precise forms sexual unions are tending to take among us, and what relation these unions bear to the religious, social, and legal traditions we have inherited. these are matters about which a very considerable amount of uncertainty seems to prevail, for it is not unusual to hear revolutionary or eccentric opinions concerning them. sexual union, involving the cohabitation, temporary or permanent, of two or more persons, and having for one of its chief ends the production and care of offspring, is commonly termed marriage. the group so constituted forms a family. this is the sense in which the words "marriage" and the "family" are most properly used, whether we speak of animals or of man. there is thus seen to be room for variation as regards both the time during which the union lasts, and the number of individuals who form it, the chief factor in the determination of these points being the interests of the offspring. in actual practice, however, sexual unions, not only in man but among the higher animals, tend to last beyond the needs of the offspring of a single season, while the fact that in most species the numbers of males and females are approximately equal makes it inevitable that both among animals and in man the family is produced by a single sexual couple, that is to say that monogamy is, with however many exceptions, necessarily the fundamental rule. it will thus be seen that marriage centres in the child, and has at the outset no reason for existence apart from the welfare of the offspring. among those animals of lowly organization which are able to provide for themselves from the beginning of existence there is no family and no need for marriage. among human races, when sexual unions are not followed by offspring, there may be other reasons for the continuance of the union but they are not reasons in which either nature or society is in the slightest degree directly concerned. the marriage which grew up among animals by heredity on the basis of natural selection, and which has been continued by the lower human races through custom and tradition, by the more civilized races through the superimposed regulative influence of legal institutions, has been marriage for the sake of the offspring.[ ] even in civilized races among whom the proportion of sterile marriages is large, marriage tends to be so constituted as always to assume the procreation of children and to involve the permanence required by such procreation. among birds, which from the point of view of erotic development stand at the head of the animal world, monogamy frequently prevails (according to some estimates among per cent.), and unions tend to be permanent; there is an approximation to the same condition among some of the higher mammals, especially the anthropoid apes; thus among gorillas and oran-utans permanent monogamic marriages take place, the young sometimes remaining with the parents to the age of six, while any approach to loose behavior on the part of the wife is severely punished by the husband. the variations that occur are often simply matters of adaptation to circumstances; thus, according to j.g. millais (_natural history of british ducks_, pp. , ), the shoveler duck, though normally monogamic, will become polyandric when males are in excess, the two males being in constant and amicable attendance on the female without signs of jealousy; among the monogamic mallards, similarly, polygyny and polyandry may also occur. see also r.w. shufeldt, "mating among birds," _american naturalist_, march, ; for mammal marriages, a valuable paper by robert müller, "säugethierehen," _sexual-probleme_, jan., , and as regards the general prevalence of monogamy, woods hutchinson, "animal marriage," _contemporary review_, oct., , and sept., . there has long been a dispute among the historians of marriage as to the first form of human marriage. some assume a primitive promiscuity gradually modified in the direction of monogamy; others argue that man began where the anthropoid apes left off, and that monogamy has prevailed, on the whole, throughout. both these opposed views, in an extreme form, seem untenable, and the truth appears to lie midway. it has been shown by various writers, and notably westermarck (_history of human marriage_, chs. iv-vi), that there is no sound evidence in favor of primitive promiscuity, and that at the present day there are few, if any, savage peoples living in genuine unrestricted sexual promiscuity. this theory of a primitive promiscuity seems to have been suggested, as j.a. godfrey has pointed out (_science of sex_, p. ), by the existence in civilized societies of promiscuous prostitution, though this kind of promiscuity was really the result, rather than the origin, of marriage. on the other hand, it can scarcely be said that there is any convincing evidence of primitive strict monogamy beyond the assumption that early man continued the sexual habits of the anthropoid apes. it would seem probable, however, that the great forward step involved in passing from ape to man was associated with a change in sexual habits involving the temporary adoption of a more complex system than monogamy. it is difficult to see in what other social field than that of sex primitive man could find exercise for the developing intellectual and moral aptitudes, the subtle distinctions and moral restraints, which the strict monogamy practiced by animals could afford no scope for. it is also equally difficult to see on what basis other than that of a more closely associated sexual system the combined and harmonious efforts needed for social progress could have developed. it is probable that at least one of the motives for exogamy, or marriage outside the group, is (as was probably first pointed out by st. augustine in his _de civitate dei_) the need of creating a larger social circle, and so facilitating social activities and progress. exactly the same end is effected by a complex marriage system binding a large number of people together by common interests. the strictly small and confined monogamic family, however excellently it subserved the interests of the offspring, contained no promise of a wider social progress. we see this among both ants and bees, who of all animals, have attained the highest social organization; their progress was only possible through a profound modification of the systems of sexual relationship. as espinas said many years ago (in his suggestive work, _des sociétés animales_): "the cohesion of the family and the probabilities for the birth of societies are inverse." or, as schurtz more recently pointed out, although individual marriage has prevailed more or less from the first, early social institutions, early ideas and early religion involved sexual customs which modified a strict monogamy. the most primitive form of complex human marriage which has yet been demonstrated as still in existence is what is called group-marriage, in which all the women of one class are regarded as the actual, or at all events potential, wives of all the men in another class. this has been observed among some central australian tribes, a people as primitive and as secluded from external influence as could well be found, and there is evidence to show that it was formerly more widespread among them. "in the urabunna tribe, for example," say spencer and gillen, "a group of men actually do have, continually and as a normal condition, marital relations with a group of women. this state of affairs has nothing whatever to do with polygamy any more than it has with polyandry. it is simply a question of a group of men and a group of women who may lawfully have what we call marital relations. there is nothing whatever abnormal about it, and, in all probability, this system of what has been called group marriage, serving as it does to bind more or less closely together groups of individuals who are mutually interested in one another's welfare, has been one of the most powerful agents in the early stages of the upward development of the human race" (spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. ; cf. a.w. howitt, _the native tribes of south-east australia_). group-marriage, with female descent, as found in australia, tends to become transformed by various stages of progress into individual marriage with descent in the male line, a survival of group-marriage perhaps persisting in the much-discussed _jus primæ noctis_. (it should be added that mr. n.w. thomas, in his book on _kinship and marriage in australia_, , concludes that group-marriage in australia has not been demonstrated, and that professor westermarck, in his _origin and development of the moral ideas_, as in his previous _history of human marriage_, maintains a skeptical opinion in regard to group-marriage generally; he thinks the urabunna custom may have developed out of ordinary individual marriage, and regards the group-marriage theory as "the residuary legatee of the old theory of promiscuity." durkheim also believes that the australian marriage system is not primitive, "organisation matrimoniale australienne," _l'année sociologique_, eighth year, ). with the attainment of a certain level of social progress it is easy to see that a wide and complicated system of sexual relationships ceases to have its value, and a more or less qualified monogamy tends to prevail as more in harmony with the claims of social stability and executive masculine energy. the best historical discussion of marriage is still probably westermarck's _history of human marriage_, though at some points it now needs to be corrected or supplemented; among more recent books dealing with primitive sexual conceptions may be specially mentioned crawley's _mystic rose_, while the facts concerning the transformation of marriage among the higher human races are set forth in g.e. howard's _history of matrimonial institutions_ ( vols.), which contains copious bibliographical references. there is an admirably compact, but clear and comprehensive, sketch of the development of modern marriage in pollock and maitland, _history of english law_, vol. ii. it is necessary to make allowance for variations, thereby shunning the extreme theorists who insist on moulding all facts to their theories, but we may conclude that--as the approximately equal number of the sexes indicates--in the human species, as among many of the higher animals, a more or less permanent monogamy has on the whole tended to prevail. that is a fact of great significance in its implications. for we have to realize that we are here in the presence of a natural fact. sexual relationships, in human as in animal societies, follow a natural law, oscillating on each side of the norm, and there is no place for the theory that that law was imposed artificially. if all artificial "laws" could be abolished the natural order of the sexual relationships would continue to subsist substantially as at present. virtue, said cicero, is but nature carried out to the utmost. or, as holbach put it, arguing that our institutions tend whither nature tends, "art is only nature acting by the help of the instruments she has herself made." shakespeare had already seen much the same truth when he said that the art which adds to nature "is an art that nature makes." law and religion have buttressed monogamy; it is not based on them but on the needs and customs of mankind, and these constitute its completely adequate sanctions.[ ] or, as cope put it, marriage is not the creation of law but the law is its creation.[ ] crawley, again, throughout his study of primitive sex relationships, emphasizes the fact that our formal marriage system is not, as so many religious and moral writers once supposed, a forcible repression of natural impulses, but merely the rigid crystallization of those natural impulses, which in a more fluid form have been in human nature from the first. our conventional forms, we must believe, have not introduced any elements of value, while in some respects they have been mischievous. it is necessary to bear in mind that the conclusion that monogamic marriage is natural, and represents an order which is in harmony with the instincts of the majority of people, by no means involves agreement with the details of any particular legal system of monogamy. monogamic marriage is a natural biological fact, alike in many animals and in man. but no system of legal regulation is a natural biological fact. when a highly esteemed alienist, dr. clouston, writes (_the hygiene of mind_, p. ) "there is only one natural mode of gratifying sexual _nisus_ and reproductive instinct, that of marriage," the statement requires considerable exegesis before it can be accepted, or even receive an intelligible meaning, and if we are to understand by "marriage" the particular form and implications of the english marriage law, or even of the somewhat more enlightened scotch law, the statement is absolutely false. there is a world of difference, as j.a. godfrey remarks (_the science of sex_, , p. ), between natural monogamous marriage and our legal system; "the former is the outward expression of the best that lies in the sexuality of man; the latter is a creation in which religious and moral superstitions have played a most important part, not always to the benefit of individual and social health." we must, therefore, guard against the tendency to think that there is anything rigid or formal in the natural order of monogamy. some sociologists would even limit the naturalness of monogamy still further. thus tarde ("la morale sexuelle," _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., ), while accepting as natural under present conditions the tendency for monogamy, mitigated by more or less clandestine concubinage, to prevail over all other forms of marriage, considers that this is not due to any irresistible influence, but merely to the fact that this kind of marriage is practiced by the majority of people, including the most civilized. with the acceptance of the tendency to monogamy we are not at the end of sexual morality, but only at the beginning. it is not monogamy that is the main thing, but the kind of lives that people lead in monogamy. the mere acceptance of a monogamic rule carries us but a little way. that is a fact which cannot fail to impress itself on those who approach the questions of sex from the psychological side. if monogamy is thus firmly based it is unreasonable to fear, or to hope for, any radical modification in the institution of marriage, regarded, not under its temporary religious and legal aspects but as an order which appeared on the earth even earlier than man. monogamy is the most natural expression of an impulse which cannot, as a rule, be so adequately realized in full fruition under conditions involving a less prolonged period of mutual communion and intimacy. variations, regarded as inevitable oscillations around the norm, are also natural, but union in couples must always be the rule because the numbers of the sexes are always approximately equal, while the needs of the emotional life, even apart from the needs of offspring, demand that such unions based on mutual attraction should be so far as possible permanent. it must here again be repeated that it is the reality, and not the form or the permanence of the marriage union, which is its essential and valuable part. it is not the legal or religious formality which sanctifies marriage, it is the reality of the marriage which sanctifies the form. fielding has satirized in nightingale, tom jones's friend, the shallow-brained view of connubial society which degrades the reality of marriage to exalt the form. nightingale has the greatest difficulty in marrying a girl with whom he has already had sexual relations, although he is the only man who has had relations with her. to jones's arguments he replies: "common-sense warrants all you say, but yet you well know that the opinion of the world is so contrary to it, that were i to marry a whore, though my own, i should be ashamed of ever showing my face again." it cannot be said that fielding's satire is even yet out of date. thus in prussia, according to adele schreiber ("heirathsbeschränkungen," _die neue generation_, feb., ), it seems to be still practically impossible for a military officer to marry the mother of his own illegitimate child. the glorification of the form at the expense of the reality of marriage has even been attempted in poetry by tennyson in the least inspired of his works, _the idylls of the king_. in "lancelot and elaine" and "guinevere" (as julia magruder points out, _north american review_, april, ) guinevere is married to king arthur, whom she has never seen, when already in love with lancelot, so that the "marriage" was merely a ceremony, and not a real marriage (cf., may child, "the weird of sir lancelot," _north american review_, dec., ). it may seem to some that so conservative an estimate of the tendencies of civilization in matters of sexual love is due to a timid adherence to mere tradition. that is not the case. we have to recognize that marriage is firmly held in position by the pressure of two opposing forces. there are two currents in the stream of our civilization: one that moves towards an ever greater social order and cohesion, the other that moves towards an ever greater individual freedom. there is real harmony underlying the apparent opposition of these two tendencies, and each is indeed the indispensable complement of the other. there can be no real freedom for the individual in the things that concern that individual alone unless there is a coherent order in the things that concern him as a social unit. marriage in one of its aspects only concerns the two individuals involved; in another of its aspects it chiefly concerns society. the two forces cannot combine to act destructively on marriage, for the one counteracts the other. they combine to support monogamy, in all essentials, on its immemorial basis. it must be added that in the circumstances of monogamy that are not essential there always has been, and always must be, perpetual transformation. all traditional institutions, however firmly founded on natural impulses, are always growing dead and rigid at some points and putting forth vitally new growths at other points. it is the effort to maintain their vitality, and to preserve their elastic adjustment to the environment, which involves this process of transformation in non-essentials. the only way in which we can fruitfully approach the question of the value of the transformations now taking place in our marriage-system is by considering the history of that system in the past. in that way we learn the real significance of the marriage-system, and we understand what transformations are, or are not, associated with a fine civilization. when we are acquainted with the changes of the past we are enabled to face more confidently the changes of the present. the history of the marriage-system of modern civilized peoples begins in the later days of the roman empire at the time when the foundations were being laid of that roman law which has exerted so large an influence in christendom. reference has already been made[ ] to the significant fact that in late rome women had acquired a position of nearly complete independence in relation to their husbands, while the patriarchal authority still exerted over them by their fathers had become, for the most part, almost nominal. this high status of women was associated, as it naturally tends to be, with a high degree of freedom in the marriage system. roman law had no power of intervening in the formation of marriages and there were no legal forms of marriage. the romans recognized that marriage is a fact and not a mere legal form; in marriage by _usus_ there was no ceremony at all; it was constituted by the mere fact of living together for a whole year; yet such marriage was regarded as just as legal and complete as if it had been inaugurated by the sacred rite of _confarreatio_. marriage was a matter of simple private agreement in which the man and the woman approached each other on a footing of equality. the wife retained full control of her own property; the barbarity of admitting an action for restitution of conjugal rights was impossible, divorce was a private transaction to which the wife was as fully entitled as the husband, and it required no inquisitorial intervention of magistrate or court; augustus ordained, indeed, that a public declaration was necessary, but the divorce itself was a private legal act of the two persons concerned.[ ] it is interesting to note this enlightened conception of marriage prevailing in the greatest and most masterful empire which has ever dominated the world, at the period not indeed of its greatest force,--for the maximum of force and the maximum of expansion, the bud and the full flower, are necessarily incompatible,--but at the period of its fullest development. in the chaos that followed the dissolution of the empire roman law remained as a precious legacy to the new developing nations, but its influence was inextricably mingled with that of christianity, which, though not at the first anxious to set up marriage laws of its own, gradually revealed a growing ascetic feeling hostile alike to the dignity of the married woman and the freedom of marriage and divorce.[ ] with that influence was combined the influence, introduced through the bible, of the barbaric jewish marriage-system conferring on the husband rights in marriage and divorce which were totally denied to the wife; this was an influence which gained still greater force at the reformation when the authority once accorded to the church was largely transformed to the bible. finally, there was in a great part of europe, including the most energetic and expansive parts, the influence of the germans, an influence still more primitive than that of the jews, involving the conception of the wife as almost her husband's chattel, and marriage as a purchase. all these influences clashed and often appeared side by side, though they could not be harmonized. the result was that the fifteen hundred years that followed the complete conquest of christianity represent on the whole the most degraded condition to which the marriage system has ever been known to fall for so long a period during the whole course of human history. at first indeed the beneficent influence of rome continued in some degree to prevail and even exhibited new developments. in the time of the christian emperors freedom of divorce by mutual consent was alternately maintained, and abolished.[ ] we even find the wise and far-seeing provision of the law enacting that a contract of the two parties never to separate could have no legal validity. justinian's prohibition of divorce by consent led to much domestic unhappiness, and even crime, which appears to be the reason why it was immediately abrogated by his successor, theodosius, still maintaining the late roman tradition of the moral equality of the sexes, allowed the wife equally with the husband to obtain a divorce for adultery; that is a point we have not yet attained in england to-day. it seems to be admitted on all sides that it was largely the fatal influence of the irruption of the barbarous germans which degraded, when it failed to sweep away, the noble conception of the equality of women with men, and the dignity and freedom of marriage, slowly moulded by the organizing genius of the roman into a great tradition which still retains a supreme value. the influence of christianity had at the first no degrading influence of this kind; for the ascetic ideal was not yet predominant, priests married as a matter of course, and there was no difficulty in accepting the marriage order established in the secular world; it was even possible to add to it a new vitality and freedom. but the germans, with all the primitively acquisitive and combative instincts of untamed savages, went far beyond even the early romans in the subjection of their wives; they allowed indeed to their unmarried girls a large measure of indulgence and even sexual freedom,--just as the christians also reverenced their virgins,[ ]--but the german marriage system placed the wife, as compared to the wife of the roman empire, in a condition little better than that of a domestic slave. in one form or another, under one disguise or another, the system of wife-purchase prevailed among the germans, and, whenever that system is influential, even when the wife is honored her privileges are diminished.[ ] among the teutonic peoples generally, as among the early english, marriage was indeed a private transaction but it took the form of a sale of the bride by the father, or other legal guardian, to the bridegroom. the _beweddung_ was a real contract of sale.[ ] "sale-marriage" was the most usual form of marriage. the ring, indeed, probably was not in origin, as some have supposed, a mark of servitude, but rather a form of bride-price, or _arrha_, that is to say, earnest money on the contract of marriage and so the symbol of it.[ ] at first a sign of the bride's purchase, it was not till later that the ring acquired the significance of subjection to the bridegroom, and that significance, later in the middle ages, was further emphasized by other ceremonies. thus in england the york and sarum manuals in some of their forms direct the bride, after the delivery of the ring, to fall at her husband's feet, and sometimes to kiss his right foot. in russia, also, the bride kissed her husband's feet. at a later period, in france, this custom was attenuated, and it became customary for the bride to let the ring fall in front of the altar and then stoop at her husband's feet to pick it up.[ ] feudalism carried on, and by its military character exaggerated, these teutonic influences. a fief was land held on condition of military service, and the nature of its influence on marriage is implied in that fact. the woman was given with the fief and her own will counted for nothing.[ ] the christian church in the beginning accepted the forms of marriage already existing in those countries in which it found itself, the roman forms in the lands of latin tradition and the german forms in teutonic lands. it merely demanded (as it also demanded for other civil contracts, such as an ordinary sale) that they should be hallowed by priestly benediction. but the marriage was recognized by the church even in the absence of such benediction. there was no special religious marriage service, either in the east or the west, earlier than the sixth century. it was simply the custom for the married couple, after the secular ceremonies were completed, to attend the church, listen to the ordinary service and take the sacrament. a special marriage service was developed slowly, and it was no part of the real marriage. during the tenth century (at all events in italy and france) it was beginning to become customary to celebrate the first part of the real nuptials, still a purely temporal act, outside the church door. soon this was followed by the regular bride-mass, directly applicable to the occasion, inside the church. by the twelfth century the priest directed the ceremony, now involving an imposing ritual, which began outside the church and ended with the bridal mass inside. by the thirteenth century, the priest, superseding the guardians of the young couple, himself officiated through the whole ceremony. up to that time marriage had been a purely private business transaction. thus, after more than a millennium of christianity, not by law but by the slow growth of custom, ecclesiastical marriage was established.[ ] it was undoubtedly an event of very great importance not merely for the church but for the whole history of european marriage even down to to-day. the whole of our public method of celebrating marriage to-day is based on that of the catholic church as established in the twelfth century and formulated in the canon law. even the publication of banns has its origin here, and the fact that in our modern civil marriage the public ceremony takes place in an office and not in a church may disguise but cannot alter the fact that it is the direct and unquestionable descendant of the public ecclesiastical ceremony which embodied the slow and subtle triumph--so slow and subtle that its history is difficult to trace--of christian priests over the private affairs of men and women. before they set themselves to this task marriage everywhere was the private business of the persons concerned; when they had completed their task,--and it was not absolutely complete until the council of trent,--a private marriage had become a sin and almost a crime.[ ] it may seem a matter for surprise that the church which, as we know, had shown an ever greater tendency to reverence virginity and to cast contumely on the sexual relationship, should yet, parallel with that movement and with the growing influence of asceticism, have shown so great an anxiety to capture marriage and to confer on it a public, dignified, and religious character. there was, however, no contradiction. the factors that were constituting european marriage, taken as a whole, were indeed of very diverse characters and often involved unreconciled contradictions. but so far as the central efforts of the ecclesiastical legislators were concerned, there was a definite and intelligible point of view. the very depreciation of the sexual instinct involved the necessity, since the instinct could not be uprooted, of constituting for it a legitimate channel, so that ecclesiastical matrimony was, it has been said, "analogous to a license to sell intoxicating liquors."[ ] moreover, matrimony exhibited the power of the church to confer on the license a dignity and distinction which would clearly separate it from the general stream of lust. sexual enjoyment is impure, the faithful cannot partake of it until it has been purified by the ministrations of the church. the solemnization of marriage was the necessary result of the sanctification of virginity. it became necessary to sanctify marriage also, and hence was developed the indissoluble sacrament of matrimony. the conception of marriage as a religious sacrament, a conception of far-reaching influence, is the great contribution of the catholic church to the history of marriage. it is important to remember that, while christianity brought the idea of marriage as a sacrament into the main stream of the institutional history of europe, that idea was merely developed, not invented, by the church. it is an ancient and even primitive idea. the jews believed that marriage is a magico-religious bond, having in it something mystical resembling a sacrament, and that idea, says durkheim (_l'année sociologique_, eighth year, , p. ), is perhaps very archaic, and hangs on to the generally magic character of sex relations. "the mere act of union," crawley remarks (_the mystic rose_, p. ) concerning savages, "is potentially a marriage ceremony of the sacramental kind.... one may even credit the earliest animistic men with some such vague conception before any ceremony became crystallized." the essence of a marriage ceremony, the same writer continues, "is the 'joining together' of a man and a woman; in the words of our english service, 'for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.' at the other side of the world, amongst the orang benuas, these words are pronounced by an elder, when a marriage is solemnized: 'listen all ye that are present; those that were distant are now brought together; those that were separated are now united.' marriage ceremonies in all stages of culture may be called religious with as much propriety as any ceremony whatever. those who were separated are now joined together, those who were mutually taboo now break the taboo." thus marriage ceremonies prevent sin and neutralize danger. the catholic conception of marriage was, it is clear, in essentials precisely the primitive conception. christianity drew the sacramental idea from the archaic traditions in popular consciousness, and its own ecclesiastical contribution lay in slowly giving that idea a formal and rigid shape, and in declaring it indissoluble. as among savages, it was in the act of consent that the essence of the sacrament lay; the intervention of the priest was not, in principle, necessary to give marriage its religiously binding character. the essence of the sacrament was mutual acceptance of each other by the man and the woman, as husband and wife, and technically the priest who presided at the ceremony was simply a witness of the sacrament. the essential fact being thus the mental act of consent, the sacrament of matrimony had the peculiar character of being without any outward and visible sign. perhaps it was this fact, instinctively felt as a weakness, which led to the immense emphasis on the indissolubility of the sacrament of matrimony, already established by st. augustine. the canonists brought forward various arguments to account for that indissolubility, and a frequent argument has always been the scriptural application of the term "one flesh" to married couples; but the favorite argument of the canonists was that matrimony represents the union of christ with the church; that is indissoluble, and therefore its image must be indissoluble (esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. ). in part, also, one may well believe, the idea of the indissolubility of marriage suggested itself to the ecclesiastical mind by a natural association of ideas: the vow of virginity in monasticism was indissoluble; ought not the vow of sexual relationship in matrimony to be similarly indissoluble? it appears that it was not until , in peter lombard's _sentences_, that clear and formal recognition is found of matrimony as one of the seven sacraments (howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. ). the church, however, had not only made marriage a religious act; it had also made it a public act. the officiating priest, who had now become the arbiter of marriage, was bound by all the injunctions and prohibitions of the church, and he could not allow himself to bend to the inclinations and interests of individual couples or their guardians. it was inevitable that in this matter, as in other similar matters, a code of ecclesiastical regulations should be gradually developed for his guidance. this need of the church, due to its growing control of the world's affairs, was the origin of canon law. with the development of canon law the whole field of the regulation of the sexual relationships, and the control of its aberrations, became an exclusively ecclesiastical matter. the secular law could take no more direct cognizance of adultery than of fornication or masturbation; bigamy, incest, and sodomy were not temporal crimes; the church was supreme in the whole sphere of sex. it was during the twelfth century that canon law developed, and gratian was the master mind who first moulded it. he belonged to the bolognese school of jurisprudence which had inherited the sane traditions of roman law. the canons which gratian compiled were, however, no more the mere result of legal traditions than they were the outcome of cloistered theological speculation. they were the result of a response to the practical needs of the day before those needs had had time to form a foundation for fine-spun subtleties. at a somewhat later period, before the close of the century, the italian jurists were vanquished by the gallic theologians of paris as represented by peter lombard. the result was the introduction of mischievous complexities which went far to rob canon law alike of its certainty and its adaptation to human necessities. notwithstanding, however, all the parasitic accretions which swiftly began to form around the canon law and to entangle its practical activity, that legislation embodied--predominantly at the outset and more obscurely throughout its whole period of vital activity--a sound core of real value. the canon law recognized at the outset that the essential fact of marriage is the actual sexual union, accomplished with the intention of inaugurating a permanent relationship. the _copula carnalis_, the making of two "one flesh," according to the scriptural phrase, a mystic symbol of the union of the church to christ, was the essence of marriage, and the mutual consent of the couple alone sufficed to constitute marriage, even without any religious benediction, or without any ceremony at all. the formless and unblessed union was still a real and binding marriage if the two parties had willed it so to be.[ ] whatever hard things may be said about the canon law, it must never be forgotten that it carried through the middle ages until the middle of the sixteenth century the great truth that the essence of marriage lies not in rites and forms, but in the mutual consent of the two persons who marry each other. when the catholic church, in its growing rigidity, lost that conception, it was taken up by the protestants and puritans in their first stage of ardent vital activity, though it was more or less dropped as they fell back into a state of subservience to forms. it continued to be maintained by moralists and poets. thus george chapman, the dramatist, who was both moralist and poet, in _the gentleman usher_ ( ), represents the riteless marriage of his hero and heroine, which the latter thus introduces:-- "may not we now our contract make and marry before heaven? are not the laws of god and nature more than formal laws of men? are outward rites more virtuous than the very substance is of holy nuptials solemnized within? .... the eternal acts of our pure souls knit us with god, the soul of all the world, he shall be priest to us; and with such rites as we can here devise we will express and strongly ratify our hearts' true vows, which no external violence shall dissolve." and to-day, ellen key, the distinguished prophet of marriage reform, declares at the end of her _liebe und ehe_ that the true marriage law contains only the paragraph: "they who love each other are husband and wife." the establishment of marriage on this sound and naturalistic basis had the further excellent result that it placed the man and the woman, who could thus constitute marriage by their consent in entire disregard of the wishes of their parents or families, on the same moral level. here the church was following alike the later romans and the early christians like lactantius and jerome who had declared that what was licit for a man was licit for a woman. the penitentials also attempted to set up this same moral law for both sexes. the canonists finally allowed a certain supremacy to the husband, though, on the other hand, they sometimes seemed to assign even the chief part in marriage to the wife, and the attempt was made to derive the word _matrimonium_ from _matris munium_, thereby declaring the maternal function to be the essential fact of marriage.[ ] the sound elements in the canon law conception of marriage were, however, from a very early period largely if not altogether neutralized by the verbal subtleties by which they were overlaid, and even by its own fundamental original defects. even in the thirteenth century it began to be possible to attach a superior force to marriage verbally formed _per verba de præsenti_ than to one constituted by sexual union, while so many impediments to marriage were set up that it became difficult to know what marriages were valid, an important point since a marriage even innocently contracted within the prohibited degrees was only a putative marriage. the most serious and the most profoundly unnatural feature of this ecclesiastical conception of marriage was the flagrant contradiction between the extreme facility with which the gate of marriage was flung open to the young couple, even if they were little more than children, and the extreme rigor with which it was locked and bolted when they were inside. that is still the defect of the marriage system we have inherited from the church, but in the hands of the canonists it was emphasized both on the side of its facility for entrance and of its difficulty for exit.[ ] alike from the standpoint of reason and of humanity the gate that is easy of ingress must be easy of egress; or if the exit is necessarily difficult then extreme care must be taken in admission. but neither of these necessary precautions was possible to the canonists. matrimony was a sacrament and all must be welcome to a sacrament, the more so since otherwise they may be thrust into the mortal sin of fornication. on the other side, since matrimony was a sacrament, when once truly formed, beyond the permissible power of verbal quibbles to invalidate, it could never be abrogated. the very institution that, in the view of the church, had been set up as a bulwark against license became itself an instrument for artificially creating license. so that the net result of the canon law in the long run was the production of a state of things which--in the eyes of a large part of christendom--more than neutralized the soundness of its original conception.[ ] in england, where from the ninth century, marriage was generally accepted by the ecclesiastical and temporal powers as indissoluble, canon law was, in the main, established as in the rest of christendom. there were, however, certain points in which canon law was not accepted by the law of england. by english law a ceremony before a priest was necessary to the validity of a marriage, though in scotland the canon law doctrine was accepted that simple consent of the parties, even exchanged secretly, sufficed to constitute marriage. again, the issue of a void marriage contracted in innocence, and the issue of persons who subsequently marry each other, are legitimate by canon law, but not by the common law of england (geary, _marriage and family relations_, p. ; pollock and maitland, loc. cit.). the canonists regarded the disabilities attaching to bastardy as a punishment inflicted on the offending parents, and considered, therefore, that no burden should fall on the children when there had been a ceremony in good faith on the part of one at least of the parents. in this respect the english law is less reasonable and humane. it was at the council of merton, in , that the barons of england rejected the proposal to make the laws of england harmonize with the canon law, that is, with the ecclesiastical law of christendom generally, in allowing children born before wedlock to be legitimated by subsequent marriage. grosseteste poured forth his eloquence and his arguments in favor of the change, but in vain, and the law of england has ever since stood alone in this respect (freeman, "merton priory," _english towns and districts_). the proposal was rejected in the famous formula, "nolumus leges angliæ mutare," a formula which merely stood for an unreasonable and inhumane obstinacy. in the united states, while by common law subsequent marriage fails to legitimate children born before marriage, in many of the states the subsequent marriage of the parents effects by statute the legitimacy of the child, sometimes (as in maine) automatically, more usually (as in massachusetts) through special acknowledgment by the father. the appearance of luther and the reformation involved the decay of the canon law system so far as europe as a whole was concerned. it was for many reasons impossible for the protestant reformers to retain formally either the catholic conception of matrimony or the precariously elaborate legal structure which the church had built up on that conception. it can scarcely be said, indeed, that the protestant attitude towards the catholic idea of matrimony was altogether a clear, logical, or consistent attitude. it was a revolt, an emotional impulse, rather than a matter of reasoned principle. in its inevitable necessity, under the circumstances of the rise of protestantism, lies its justification, and, on the whole, its wholesome soundness. it took the form, which may seem strange in a religious movement, of proclaiming that marriage is not a religious but a secular matter. marriage is, said luther, "a worldly thing," and calvin put it on the same level as house-building, farming, or shoe-making. but while this secularization of marriage represents the general and final drift of protestantism, the leaders of protestantism were themselves not altogether confident and clear-sighted in the matter. even luther was a little confused on this point; sometimes he seems to call marriage "a sacrament," sometimes "a temporal business," to be left to the state.[ ] it was the latter view which tended to prevail. but at first there was a period of confusion, if not of chaos, in the minds of the reformers; not only were they not always convinced in their own minds; they were at variance with each other, especially on the very practical question of divorce. luther on the whole belonged to the more rigid party, including calvin and beza, which would grant divorce only for adultery and malicious desertion; some, including many of the early english protestants, were in favor of allowing the husband to divorce for adultery but not the wife. another party, including zwingli, were influenced by erasmus in a more liberal direction, and--moving towards the standpoint of roman imperial legislation--admitted various causes of divorce. some, like bucer, anticipating milton, would even allow divorce when the husband was unable to love his wife. at the beginning some of the reformers adopted the principle of self-divorce, as it prevailed among the jews and was accepted by some early church councils. in this way luther held that the cause for the divorce itself effected the divorce without any judicial decree, though a magisterial permission was needed for remarriage. this question of remarriage, and the treatment of the adulterer, were also matters of dispute. the remarriage of the innocent party was generally accepted; in england it began in the middle of the sixteenth century, was pronounced valid by the archbishop of canterbury, and confirmed by parliament. many reformers were opposed, however, to the remarriage of the adulterous party. beust, beza, and melancthon would have him hanged and so settle the question of remarriage; luther and calvin would like to kill him, but since the civil rulers were slack in adopting that measure they allowed him to remarry, if possible in some other part of the country.[ ] the final outcome was that protestantism framed a conception of marriage mainly on the legal and economic factor--a factor not ignored but strictly subordinated by the canonists--and regarded it as essentially a contract. in so doing they were on the negative side effecting a real progress, for they broke the power of an antiquated and artificial system, but on the positive side they were merely returning to a conception which prevails in barbarous societies, and is most pronounced when marriage is most assimilable to purchase. the steps taken by protestantism involved a considerable change in the nature of marriage, but not necessarily any great changes in its form. marriage was no longer a sacrament, but it was still a public and not a private function and was still, however inconsistently, solemnized in church. and as protestantism had no rival code to set up, both in germany and england it fell back on the general principles of canon law, modifying them to suit its own special attitude and needs.[ ] it was the later puritanic movement, first in the netherlands ( ), then in england ( ), and afterwards in new england, which introduced a serious and coherent conception of protestant marriage, and began to establish it on a civil base. the english reformers under edward vi and his enlightened advisers, including archbishop cranmer, took liberal views of marriage, and were prepared to carry through many admirable reforms. the early death of that king exerted a profound influence on the legal history of english marriage. the catholic reaction under queen mary killed off the more radical reformers, while the subsequent accession of queen elizabeth, whose attitude towards marriage was grudging, illiberal, and old-fashioned, approximating to that of her father, henry viii (as witnessed, for instance, in her decided opposition to the marriage of the clergy), permanently affected english marriage law. it became less liberal than that of other protestant countries, and closer to that of catholic countries. the reform of marriage attempted by the puritans began in england in , when an act was passed asserting "marriage to be no sacrament, nor peculiar to the church of god, but common to mankind and of public interest to every commonwealth." the act added, notwithstanding, that it was expedient marriage should be solemnized by "a lawful minister of the word." the more radical act of swept away this provision, and made marriage purely secular. the banns were to be published (by registrars specially appointed) in the church, or (if the parties desired) the market-place. the marriage was to be performed by a justice of the peace; the age of consent to marriage for a man was made sixteen, for a woman fourteen (scobell's _acts and ordinances_, pp. , ). the restoration abolished this sensible act, and reintroduced canon-law traditions, but the puritan conception of marriage was carried over to america, where it took root and flourished. it was out of puritanism, moreover, as represented by milton, that the first genuinely modern though as yet still imperfect conception of the marriage relationship was destined to emerge. the early reformers in this matter acted mainly from an obscure instinct of natural revolt in an environment of plebeian materialism. the puritans were moved by their feeling for simplicity and civil order as the conditions for religious freedom. milton, in his _doctrine and discipline of divorce_, published in , when he was thirty-five years of age, proclaimed the supremacy of the substance of marriage over the form of it, and the spiritual autonomy of the individual in the regulation of that form. he had grasped the meaning of that conception of personal responsibility which is the foundation of sexual relationships as they are beginning to appear to men to-day. if milton had left behind him only his writings on marriage and divorce they would have sufficed to stamp him with the seal of genius. christendom had to wait a century and a half before another man of genius of the first rank, wilhelm von humboldt, spoke out with equal authority and clearness in favor of free marriage and free divorce. it is to the honor of milton, and one of his chief claims on our gratitude, that he is the first great protagonist in christendom of the doctrine that marriage is a private matter, and that, therefore, it should be freely dissoluble by mutual consent, or even at the desire of one of the parties. we owe to him, says howard, "the boldest defence of the liberty of divorce which had yet appeared. if taken in the abstract, and applied to both sexes alike, it is perhaps the strongest defence which can be made through an appeal to mere authority;" though his arguments, being based on reason and experience, are often ill sustained by his authority; he is really speaking the language of the modern social reformer, and milton's writings on this subject are now sometimes ranked in importance above all his other work (masson, _life of milton_, vol. iii; howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. , vol. iii, p. ; c.b. wheeler, "milton's doctrine and discipline of divorce," _nineteenth century_, jan., ). marriage, said milton, "is not a mere carnal coition, but a human society; where that cannot be had there can be no true marriage" (_doctrine of divorce_, bk. i, ch. xiii); it is "a covenant, the very being whereof consists not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace" (ib., ch. vi). any marriage that is less than this is "an idol, nothing in the world." the weak point in milton's presentation of the matter is that he never explicitly accords to the wife the same power of initiative in marriage and divorce as to the husband. there is, however, nothing in his argument to prevent its equal application to the wife, an application which, while never asserting he never denies; and it has been pointed out that he assumes that women are the equals of men and demands from them intellectual and spiritual companionship; however ready milton may have been to grant complete equality of divorce to the wife, it would have been impossible for a seventeenth century puritan to have obtained any hearing for such a doctrine; his arguments would have been received with, if that were possible, even more neglect than they actually met. (milton's scornful sonnet concerning the reception of his book is well known.) milton insists that in the conventional christian marriage exclusive importance is attached to carnal connection. so long as that connection is possible, no matter what antipathy may exist between the couple, no matter how mistaken they may have been "through any error, concealment, or misadventure," no matter if it is impossible for them to "live in any union or contentment all their days," yet the marriage still holds good, the two must "fadge together" (op. cit., bk. i). it is the canon law, he says, which is at fault, "doubtless by the policy of the devil," for the canon law leads to licentiousness (op. cit.). it is, he argues, the absence of reasonable liberty which causes license, and it is the men who desire to retain the privileges of license who oppose the introduction of reasonable liberty. the just ground for divorce is "indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace." without the "deep and serious verity" of mutual love, wedlock is "nothing but the empty husks of a mere outside matrimony," a mere hypocrisy, and must be dissolved (op. cit.). milton goes beyond the usual puritan standpoint, and not only rejects courts and magistrates, but approves of self-divorce; for divorce cannot rightly belong to any civil or earthly power, since "ofttimes the causes of seeking divorce reside so deeply in the radical and innocent affections of nature, as is not within the diocese of law to tamper with." he adds that, for the prevention of injustice, special points may be referred to the magistrate, who should not, however, in any case, be able to forbid divorce (op. cit., bk. ii, ch. xxi). speaking from a standpoint which we have not even yet attained, he protests against the absurdity of "authorizing a judicial court to toss about and divulge the unaccountable and secret reason of disaffection between man and wife." in modern times hinton was accustomed to compare the marriage law to the law of the sabbath as broken by jesus. we find exactly the same comparison in milton. the sabbath, he believes, was made for god. "yet when the good of man comes into the scales, we have that voice of infinite goodness and benignity, that 'sabbath was made for man and not man for sabbath.' what thing ever was made more for man alone, and less for god, than marriage?" (_op. cit._, bk. i, ch. xi). "if man be lord of the sabbath, can he be less than lord of marriage?" milton, in this matter as in others, stood outside the currents of his age. his conception of marriage made no more impression on contemporary life than his _paradise lost_. even his own puritan party who had passed the act of had strangely failed to transfer divorce and nullity cases to the temporal courts, which would at least have been a step on the right road. the puritan influence was transferred to america and constituted the leaven which still works in producing the liberal though too minutely detailed divorce laws of many states. the american secular marriage procedure followed that set up by the english commonwealth, and the dictum of the great quaker, george fox, "we marry none, but are witnesses of it,"[ ] (which was really the sound kernel in the canon law) is regarded as the spirit of the marriage law of the conservative but liberal state of pennsylvania, where, as recently as , a statute was passed expressly authorizing a man and woman to solemnize their own marriage.[ ] in england itself the reforms in marriage law effected by the puritans were at the restoration largely submerged. for two and a half centuries longer the english spiritual courts administered what was substantially the old canon law. divorce had, indeed, become more difficult than before the reformation, and the married woman's lot was in consequence harder. from the sixteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth, english marriage law was peculiarly harsh and rigid, much less liberal than that of any other protestant country. divorce was unknown to the ordinary english law, and a special act of parliament, at enormous expense, was necessary to procure it in individual cases.[ ] there was even an attitude of self-righteousness in the maintenance of this system. it was regarded as moral. there was complete failure to realize that nothing is more immoral than the existence of unreal sexual unions, not only from the point of view of theoretical but also of practical morality, for no community could tolerate a majority of such unions.[ ] in an act for reforming the system was at last passed with great difficulty. it was a somewhat incoherent and make-shift measure, and was avowedly put forward only as a step towards further reform; but it still substantially governs english procedure, and in the eyes of many has set a permanent standard of morality. the spirit of blind conservatism,--_nolumus leges angliæ mutare_,--which in this sphere had reasserted itself after the vital movement of reform and puritanism, still persists. in questions of marriage and divorce english legislation and english public feeling are behind alike both the latin land of france and the puritanically moulded land of the united states. the author of an able and temperate essay on _the question of english divorce_, summing up the characteristics of the english divorce law, concludes that it is: ( ) unequal, ( ) immoral, ( ) contradictory, ( ) illogical, ( ) uncertain, and ( ) unsuited to present requirements. it was only grudgingly introduced in a bill, presented to parliament in , which was stubbornly resisted during a whole session, not only on religious grounds by the opponents of divorce, but also by the friends of divorce, who desired a more liberal measure. it dealt with the sexes unequally, granting the husband but not the wife divorce for adultery alone. in introducing the bill the attorney-general apologized for this defect, stating that the measure was not intended to be final, but merely as a step towards further legislation. that was more than half a century ago, but the further step has not yet been taken. incomplete and unsatisfactory as the measure was, it seems to have been regarded by many as revolutionary and dangerous in the highest degree. the author of an article on "modern divorce" in the _universal review_ for july, , while approving in principle of the establishment of a special divorce court, yet declared that the new court was "tending to destroy marriage as a social institution and to sap female chastity," and that "everyone now is a husband and wife at will." "no one," he adds, "can now justly quibble at a deficiency of matrimonial vomitories." yet, according to this law, it is not even possible for a wife to obtain a divorce for her husband's adultery, unless he is also cruel or deserts her. at first "cruelty" meant physical cruelty and of a serious kind. but in course of time the meaning of the word was extended to pain inflicted on the mind, and now coldness and neglect may almost of themselves constitute cruelty, though the english court has sometimes had the greatest hesitation in accepting the most atrocious forms of refined cruelty, because it involved no "physical" element. "the time may very reasonably be looked forward to, however," a legal writer has stated (montmorency, "the changing status of a married woman," _law quarterly review_, april, ), "when almost any act of misconduct will, in itself, be considered to convey such mental agony to the innocent party as to constitute the cruelty requisite under the act of ." (the question of cruelty is fully discussed in j.r. bishop's _commentaries on marriage, divorce and separation_, , vol. i, ch. xlix; cf. howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. ). there can be little doubt, however, that cruelty alone is a reasonable cause for divorce. in many american states, where the facilities for divorce are much greater than in england, cruelty is recognized as itself sufficient cause, whether the wife or the husband is the complainant. the acts of cruelty alleged have sometimes been seemingly very trivial. thus divorces have been pronounced in america on the ground of the "cruel and inhuman conduct" of a wife who failed to sew her husband's buttons on, or because a wife "struck plaintiff a violent blow with her bustle," or because a husband does not cut his toe-nails, or because "during our whole married life my husband has never offered to take me out riding. this has been a source of great mental suffering and injury." in many other cases, it must be added, the cruelty inflicted by the husband, even by the wife--for though usually, it is not always, the husband who is the brute--is of an atrocious and heart-rending character (_report on marriage and divorce in the united states_, issued by hon. carroll d. wright, commissioner of labor, ). but even in many of the apparently trivial cases--as of a husband who will not wash, and a wife who is constantly evincing a hasty temper--it must be admitted that circumstances which, in the more ordinary relationships of life may be tolerated, become intolerable in the intimate relationship of sexual union. as a matter of fact, it has been found by careful investigation that the american courts weigh well the cases that come before them, and are not careless in the granting of decrees of divorce. in an exaggerated importance was attached to the gross reasons for divorce, to the neglect of subtle but equally fatal impediments to the continuance of marriage. this was pointed out by gladstone, who was opposed to making adultery a cause of divorce at all. "we have many causes," he said, "more fatal to the great obligation of marriage, as disease, idiocy, crime involving punishment for life." nowadays we are beginning to recognize not only such causes as these, but others of a far more intimate character which, as milton long ago realized, cannot be embodied in statutes, or pleaded in law courts. the matrimonial bond is not merely a physical union, and we have to learn that, as the author of _the question of english divorce_ (p. ) remarks, "other than physical divergencies are, in fact, by far the most important of the originating causes of matrimonial disaster." in england and wales more husbands than wives petition for divorce, the wives who petition being about per cent, of the whole. divorces are increasing, though the number is not large, in about , , of whom less than half remarried. the inadequacy of the divorce law is shown by the fact that during the same year about , orders for judicial separation were issued by magistrates. these separation orders not only do not give the right to remarry, but they make it impossible to obtain divorce. they are, in effect, an official permission to form relationships outside state marriage. in the united states during the years - nearly per cent, of the divorces granted were for "desertion," which is variously interpreted in different states, and must often mean a separation by mutual consent. of the remainder, per cent, were for unfaithfulness, and the same proportion for cruelty; but while the divorces granted to husbands for the infidelity of their wives are nearly three times as great proportionately as those granted to wives for their husband's adultery, with regard to cruelty it is the reverse, wives obtaining per cent, of their divorces on that ground and husbands only per cent. in prussia divorce is increasing. in there were eight thousand divorces, the cause in half the cases being adultery, and in about a thousand cases malicious desertion. in cases of desertion the husbands were the guilty parties nearly twice as often as the wives, in cases of adultery only a fifth to an eighth part. there cannot be the slightest doubt that the difficulty, the confusion, the inconsistency, and the flagrant indecency which surround divorce and the methods of securing it are due solely and entirely to the subtle persistence of traditions based, on the one hand, on the canon law doctrines of the indissolubility of marriage and the sin of sexual intercourse outside marriage, and, on the other hand, on the primitive idea of marriage as a contract which economically subordinates the wife to the husband and renders her person, or at all events her guardianship, his property. it is only when we realize how deeply these traditions have become embedded in the religious, legal, social and sentimental life of europe that we can understand how it is that barbaric notions of marriage and divorce can to-day subsist in a stage of civilization which has, in many respects, advanced beyond such notions. the canon law conception of the abstract religious sanctity of matrimony, when transferred to the moral sphere, makes a breach of the marriage relationship seem a public wrong; the conception of the contractive subordination of the wife makes such a breach on her part, and even, by transference of ideas, on his part, seem a private wrong. these two ideas of wrong incoherently flourish side by side in the vulgar mind, even to-day. the economic subordination of the wife as a species of property significantly comes into view when we find that a husband can claim, and often secure, large sums of money from the man who sexually approaches his property, by such trespass damaging it in its master's eyes.[ ] to a psychologist it would be obvious that a husband who has lacked the skill so to gain and to hold his wife's love and respect that it is not perfectly easy and natural to her to reject the advances of any other man owes at least as much damages to her as she or her partner owes to him; while if the failure is really on her side, if she is so incapable of responding to love and trust and so easy a prey to an outsider, then surely the husband, far from wishing for any money compensation, should consider himself more than fully compensated by being delivered from the necessity of supporting such a woman. in the absence of any false traditions that would be obvious. it might not, indeed, be unreasonable that a husband should pay heavily in order to free himself from a wife whom, evidently, he has made a serious mistake in choosing. but to ordain that a man should actually be indemnified because he has shown himself incapable of winning a woman's love is an idea that could not occur in a civilized society that was not twisted by inherited prejudice.[ ] yet as matters are to-day there are civilized countries in which it is legally possible for a husband to enter a prayer for damages against his wife's paramour in combination with either a petition for judicial separation or for dissolution of wedlock. in this way adultery is not a crime but a private injury.[ ] at the same time, however, the influence of canon law comes inconsistently to the surface and asserts that a breach of matrimony is a public wrong, a sin transformed by the state into something almost or quite like a crime. this is clearly indicated by the fact that in some countries the adulterer is liable to imprisonment, a liability scarcely nowadays carried into practice. but exactly the same idea is beautifully illustrated by the doctrine of "collusion," which, in theory, is still strictly observed in many countries. according to the doctrine of "collusion" the conditions necessary to make the divorce possible must on no account be secured by mutual agreement. in practice it is impossible to prevent more or less collusion, but if proved in court it constitutes an absolute impediment to the granting of a divorce, however just and imperative the demand for divorce may be. the english divorce act of refused divorce when there was collusion, as well as when there was any countercharge against the petitioner, and the matrimonial causes act of provided the machinery for guaranteeing these bars to divorce. this question of collusion is discussed by g.p. bishop (op. cit., vol. ii, ch. ix). "however just a cause may be," bishop remarks, "if parties collude in its management, so that in real fact both parties are plaintiffs, while by the record the one appears as plaintiff and the other as defendant, it cannot go forward. all conduct of this sort, disturbing to the course of justice, falls within the general idea of fraud on the court. such is the doctrine in principle everywhere." it is quite evident that from the social or the moral point of view, it is best that when a husband and wife can no longer live together, they should part amicably, and in harmonious agreement effect all the arrangements rendered necessary by their separation. the law ridiculously forbids them to do so, and declares that they must not part at all unless they are willing to part as enemies. in order to reach a still lower depth of absurdity and immorality the law goes on to say that if as a matter of fact they have succeeded in becoming enemies to each other to such an extent that each has wrongs to plead against the other party they cannot be divorced at all![ ] that is to say that when a married couple have reached a degree of separation which makes it imperatively necessary, not merely in their own interests but in the moral interests of society, that they should be separated and their relations to other parties concerned regularized, then they must on no account be separated. it is clear how these provisions of the law are totally opposed to the demands of reason and morality. yet at the same time it is equally clear how no efforts of the lawyers, however skilful or humane those efforts may be, can bring the present law into harmony with the demands of modern civilization. it is not the lawyers who are at fault; they have done their best, and, in england, it is entirely owing to the skilful and cautious way in which the judges have so far as possible pressed the law into harmony with modern needs, that our antiquated divorce laws have survived at all. it is the system which is wrong. that system is the illegitimate outgrowth of the canon law which grew up around conceptions long since dead. it involves the placing of the person who imperils the theoretical indissolubility of the matrimonial bond in the position of a criminal, now that he can no longer be publicly condemned as a sinner. to aid and abet that criminal is itself an offence, and the aider and abettor of the criminal must, therefore, be inconsequently punished by the curious method of refraining from punishing the criminal. we do not openly assert that the defendant in a divorce case is a criminal; that would be to render the absurdity of it too obvious, and, moreover, would be hardly consistent with the permission to claim damages which is based on a different idea. we hover uncertainly between two conceptions of divorce, both of them bad, each inconsistent with the other, and neither of them capable of being pushed to its logical conclusions. the result is that if a perfectly virtuous married couple comes forward to claim divorce, they are told that it is out of the question, for in such a case there must be a "defendant." they are to be punished for their virtue. if each commits adultery and they again come forward to claim divorce, they are told that it is still out of the question, for there must be a "plaintiff." before they were punished for their virtue; now they are to be punished in exactly the same way for their lack of it. the couple must humor the law by adopting a course of action which may be utterly repugnant to both. if only the wife alone will commit adultery, if only the husband will commit adultery and also inflict some act of cruelty upon his wife, if the innocent party will descend to the degradation of employing detectives and hunting up witnesses, the law is at their feet and hastens to accord to both parties the permission to remarry. provided, of course, that the parties have arranged this without "collusion." that is to say that our law, with its ecclesiastical traditions behind it, says to the wife: be a sinner, or to the husband: be a sinner and a criminal--then we will do all you wish. the law puts a premium on sin and on crime. in order to pile absurdity on absurdity it claims that this is done in the cause of "public morality." to those who accept this point of view it seems that the sweeping away of divorce laws would undermine the bases of morality. yet there can be little doubt that the sooner such "morality" is undermined, and indeed utterly destroyed, the better it will be for true morality. there is an influential movement in england for the reform of divorce, on the grounds that the present law is unjust, illogical, and immoral, represented by the divorce law reform union. even the former president of the divorce court, lord gorell, declared from the bench in that the english law produces deplorable results, and is "full of inconsistencies, anomalies and inequalities, amounting almost to absurdities." the points in the law which have aroused most protest, as being most behind the law of other nations, are the great expense of divorce, the inequality of the sexes, the failure to grant divorces for desertion and in cases of hopeless insanity, and the failure of separation orders to enable the separated parties to marry again. separation orders are granted by magistrates for cruelty, adultery, and desertion. this "separation" is really the direct descendant of the canon law divorce _a mensa et thoro_, and the inability to marry which it involves is merely a survival of the canon law tradition. at the present time magistrates--exercising their discretion, it is admitted, in a careful and prudent manner--issue some , separation orders annually, so that every year the population is increased by , individuals mostly in the age of sexual vigor, and some little more than children, who are forbidden by law to form legal marriages. they contribute powerfully to the great forward movement which, as was shown in the previous chapter, marks the morality of our age. but it is highly undesirable that free marriages should be formed, helplessly, by couples who have no choice in the matter, for it is unlikely that under such circumstances any high level of personal responsibility can be reached. the matter could be easily remedied by dropping altogether a canon law tradition which no longer has any vitality or meaning, and giving to the magistrate's separation order the force of a decree of divorce. new zealand and the australian colonies, led by victoria in , have passed divorce laws which, while more or less framed on the english model, represent a distinct advance. thus in new zealand the grounds for divorce are adultery on either side, wilful desertion, habitual drunkenness, and conviction to imprisonment for a term of years. it is natural that an englishman should feel acutely sensitive to this blot in the law of england and desire the speedy disappearance of a system so open to scathing sarcasm. it is natural that every humane person should grow impatient of the spectacle of so many blighted lives, of so much misery inflicted on innocent persons--and on persons who even when technically guilty are often the victims of unnatural circumstances--by the persistence of a mediæval system of ecclesiastical tyranny and inquisitorial insolence into an age when sexual relationships are becoming regarded as the sacred secret of the persons intimately concerned, and when more and more we rely on the responsibility of the individual in making and maintaining such relationships. when, however, we refrain from concentrating our attention on particular countries and embrace the general movement of civilization in the matter of divorce during recent times, there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the direction of that movement. england was a pioneer in the movement half a century ago, and to-day every civilized country is moving in the same direction. france broke with the old ecclesiastical tradition of the indissolubility of matrimony in by a divorce law in some respects very reasonable. the wife may obtain a divorce on an equality with the husband (though she is liable to imprisonment for adultery), the co-respondent occupies a very subordinate position in adultery charges, and facility is offered for divorce on the ground of simple _injures graves_ (excluding as far as possible mere incompatibility of temper), while the judge has the power, which he often successfully exerts, to effect a reconciliation in private or to grant a decree without public trial. the influence of france has doubtless been influential in moulding the divorce laws of the other latin countries. in prussia an enlightened divorce law formerly prevailed by which it was possible for a couple to separate without scandal when it was clearly shown that they could not live together in agreement. but the german code of introduced provisions as regards divorce which--while in some respects more liberal than those of the english law, especially by permitting divorce for desertion and insanity--are, on the whole, retrograde as compared with the earlier prussian law and place the matter on a cruder and more brutal basis. for two years after the code came into operations the number of divorces sank; after that the public and the courts adapted themselves to the new provisions (more especially one which allowed divorce for serious neglect of conjugal duties) and the number of divorces began to increase with great rapidity. "but," remarks hirschfeld, "how painful it has now become to read divorce cases! one side abuses the other, makes accusations of the grossest character, employs detectives to obtain the necessary proofs of 'dishonorable and immoral conduct,' whereas, before, both parties realized that they had been deceived in each other, that they failed to suit each other, and that they could no longer live together. thus we see that the narrowing of individual responsibility in sexual matters has not only had no practical effect, but leads to injurious results of a serious kind."[ ] in england a similar state of things has prevailed ever since divorce was established, but it seems to have become too familiar to excite either pain or disgust. yet, as adner has pointed out,[ ] it has moved in a direction contrary to the general tendency of civilization, not only by increasing the inquisitorial authority of public courts but by emphasizing merely external causes of divorce and abolishing the more subtle internal causes which constantly grow in importance with the refinement of civilization. in austria until recent years, canon law ruled absolutely, and matrimony was indissoluble, as it still remains for the catholic population. the results as regards matrimonial happiness were in the highest degree deplorable. half a century ago gross-hoffinger investigated the marital happiness of viennese couples of all social classes, without choice of cases, and presented the results in detail. he found that couples were positively unhappy, only were undoubtedly happy, and even among these there was only one case in which happiness resulted from mutual faithfulness, happiness in the other cases being only attained by setting aside the question of fidelity.[ ] this picture, it is to be hoped, no longer remains true. there is an influential austrian marriage reform association, publishing a journal called _die fessel_, or the fetter. "one was chained to another," we are told. "in certain circumstances this must have been the worst and most torturing penalty of all. the most bizarre and repulsive couplings took place. there were, it is true, many affectionate companionships of the chain. but there were many more which inflicted an eternity of suffering upon one of the pair." this quotation, it must be added, has nothing to do with what the canonists, borrowing the technical term for a prisoner's shackles, suggestively termed the _vinculum matrimonii_; it was written many years ago concerning the galleys of the old french convict system. it is, however, recalled to one's mind by the title which the austrian marriage reform association has given to its official organ. russia, where the marriage laws are arranged by the holy synod aided by jurists, stands almost alone among the great countries in the reasonable simplicity of its divorce provisions. before divorce was very difficult to obtain in russia, but in that year it became possible for a married couple to separate by mutual consent and after living apart for a year to become thereby entitled to a divorce enabling them to remarry. this provision is in accordance with the humane conception of the sexual relationship which has always tended to prevail in russia, whither, it must be remembered, the stern and unnatural ideals of compulsory celibacy cherished by the western church never completely penetrated; the clergy of the eastern church are married, though the marriage must take place before they enter the priesthood, and they could not sympathize with the anti-sexual tone of the marriage regulations laid down by the celibate clergy of the west. switzerland, again, which has been regarded as the political laboratory of europe, also stands apart in the liberality of its divorce legislation. a renewable divorce for two years may be obtained in switzerland when there are "circumstances which seriously affect the maintenance of the conjugal tie." to the grand duchy of luxembourg, finally, belongs the honor of having firmly maintained throughout the great principle of divorce by mutual consent under legal conditions, as established by napoleon in his code of . the smaller countries generally are in advance of the large in matters of divorce law. the norwegian law is liberal. the new roumanian code permits divorce by mutual consent, provided both parents grant equal shares of their property to the children. the little principality of monaco has recently introduced the reasonable provision of granting divorce for, among other causes, alcoholism, syphilis, and epilepsy, so protecting the future race. outside europe the most instructive example of the tendency of divorce is undoubtedly furnished by the united states of america. the divorce laws of the states are mainly on a puritanic basis, and they retain not only the puritanic love of individual freedom but the puritanic precisianism.[ ] in some states, notably iowa, the statute-makers have been constantly engaged in adopting, changing, abrogating and re-enacting the provisions of their divorce laws, and howard has shown how much confusion and awkwardness arise by such perpetual legislative fiddling over small details. this restless precisianism has somewhat disguised the generally broad and liberal tendency of marriage law in america, and has encouraged foreign criticism of american social institutions. as a matter of fact the prevalence of divorce in america is enormously exaggerated. the proportion of divorced persons in the population appears to be less than one per cent., and, contrary to a frequent assertion, it is by no means the rule for divorced persons to remarry immediately. taking into account the special conditions of life in the united states the prevalence of divorce is small and its character by no means reveals a low grade morality. an impartial and competent critic of the american people, professor münsterberg, remarks that the real ground which mainly leads to divorce in the united states--not the mere legal pretexts made compulsory by the precisianism of the law--is the highly ethical objection to continuing externally in a marriage which has ceased to be spiritually congenial. "it is the women especially," he says, "and generally the very best women, who prefer to take the step, with all the hardships which it involves, to prolonging a marriage which is spiritually hypocritical and immoral."[ ] the people of the united states, above all others, cherish ideals of individualism; they are also the people among whom, above all others, there is the greatest amount of what reibmayr calls "blood-chaos." under such circumstances the difficulties of conjugal life are necessarily at a maximum, and marriage union is liable to subtle impediments which must forever elude the statute-book.[ ] there can be little doubt that the practical sagacity of the american people will enable them sooner or later to recognize this fact, and that finally fulfilling the puritanic drift of their divorce legislation--as foreshadowed in its outcome by milton--they will agree to trust their own citizens with the responsibility of deciding so private a matter as their conjugal relationships, with, of course, authority in the courts to see that no injustice is committed. it is, indeed, surprising that the american people, usually intolerant of state interference, should in this matter so long have tolerated such interference in so private a matter. the movement of divorce is not confined to christendom; it is a mark of modern civilization. in japan the proportion of divorces is higher than in any other country, not excluding the united states.[ ] the most vigorous and progressive countries are those that insist most firmly on the purity of sexual unions. in the united states it was pointed out many years ago that divorce is most prevalent where the standard of education and morality is highest. it was the new england states, with strong puritanic traditions of moral freedom, which took the lead in granting facility to divorce. the divorce movement is not, as some have foolishly supposed, a movement making for immorality.[ ] immorality is the inevitable accompaniment of indissoluble marriage; the emphasis on the sanctity of a merely formal union discourages the growth of moral responsibility as regards the hypothetically unholy unions which grow up beneath its shadow. to insist, on the other hand, by establishing facility of divorce, that sexual unions shall be real, is to work in the cause of morality. the lands in which divorce by mutual consent has prevailed longest are probably among the most, and not the least, moral of lands. surprise has been expressed that although divorce by mutual consent commended itself as an obviously just and reasonable measure two thousand years ago to the legally-minded romans that solution has even yet been so rarely attained by modern states.[ ] wherever society is established on a solidly organized basis and the claims of reason and humanity receive due consideration--even when the general level of civilization is not in every respect high--there we find a tendency to divorce by mutual consent. in japan, according to the new civil code, much as in ancient rome, marriage is effected by giving notice of the fact to the registrar in the presence of two witnesses, and with the consent (in the case of young couples) of the heads of their families. there may be a ceremony, but it is not demanded by the law. divorce is effected in exactly the same way, by simply having the registration cancelled, provided both husband and wife are over twenty-five years of age. for younger couples unhappily married, and for cases in which mutual consent cannot be obtained, judicial divorce exists. this is granted for various specific causes, of which the most important is "grave insult, such as to render living together unbearable" (ernest w. clement, "the new woman in japan," _american journal sociology_, march, ). such a system, like so much else achieved by japanese organization, seems reasonable, guarded, and effective. in the very different and far more ancient marriage system of china, divorce by mutual consent is equally well-established. such divorce by mutual consent takes place for incompatibility of temperament, or when both husband and wife desire it. there are, however, various antiquated and peculiar provisions in the chinese marriage laws, and divorce is compulsory for the wife's adultery or serious physical injuries inflicted by either party on the other. (the marriage laws of china are fully set forth by paul d'enjoy, _la revue_, sept. , .) among the eskimo (who, as readers of nansen's fascinating books on their morals will know, are in some respects a highly socialized people) the sexes are absolutely equal, marriages are perfectly free, and separation is equally free. the result is that there are no uncongenial unions, and that no unpleasant word is heard between man and wife (stefánsson, _harper's magazine_, nov., ). among the ancient welsh, women, both before and after marriage, enjoyed great freedom, far more than was afforded either by christianity or the english common law. "practically either husband or wife could separate when either one or both chose" (rhys and brynmor-jones, _the welsh people_, p. ). it was so also in ancient ireland. women held a very high position, and the marriage tie was very free, so as to be practically, it would appear, dissoluble by mutual consent. so far as the brehon laws show, says ginnell (_the brehon laws_, p. ), "the marriage relation was extremely loose, and divorce was as easy, and could be obtained on as slight ground, as is now the case in some of the states of the american union. it appears to have been obtained more easily by the wife than by the husband. when obtained on her petition, she took away with her all the property she had brought her husband, all her husband had settled upon her on their marriage, and in addition so much of her husband's property as her industry appeared to have entitled her to." even in early french history we find that divorce by mutual consent was very common. it was sufficient to prepare in duplicate a formal document to this effect: "since between n. and his wife there is discord instead of charity according to god, and that in consequence it is impossible for them to live together, it has pleased both to separate, and they have accordingly done so." each of the parties was thus free either to retire into a cloister or to contract another union (e. de la bedollière, _histoire des moeurs des français_, vol. i, p. ). such a practice, however it might accord with the germinal principle of consent embodied in the canon law, was far too opposed to the ecclesiastical doctrine of the sacramental indissolubility of matrimony to be permanently allowed, and it was completely crushed out. the fact that we so rarely find divorce by mutual consent in christendom until the beginning of the nineteenth century, that then it required a man of stupendous and revolutionary genius like napoleon to reintroduce it, and that even he was unable to do so effectually, is clearly due to the immense victory which the ascetic spirit of christianity, as firmly embodied in the canon law, had gained over the souls and bodies of men. so subjugated were european traditions and institutions by this spirit that even the volcanic emotional uprising of the reformation, as we have seen, could not shake it off. when protestant states naturally resumed the control of secular affairs which had been absorbed by the church, and rescued from ecclesiastical hands those things which belonged to the sphere of the individual conscience, it might have seemed that marriage and divorce would have been among the first concerns to be thus transferred. yet, as we know, england was about as much enslaved to the spirit and even the letter of canon law in the nineteenth as in the fourteenth century, and even to-day english law, though no longer supported by the feeling of the masses, clings to the same traditions. there seems to be little doubt, however, that the modern movement for divorce must inevitably tend to reach the goal of separation by the will of both parties, or, under proper conditions and restrictions, by the will of one party. it now requires the will of two persons to form a marriage; law insists on that condition.[ ] it is logical as well as just that law should take the next step involved by the historical evolution of marriage, and equally insist that it requires the will of two persons to maintain a marriage. this solution is, without doubt, the only way of deliverance from the crudities, the indecencies, the inextricable complexities which are introduced into law by the vain attempt to foresee in detail all the possibilities of conjugal disharmony which may arise under the conditions of modern civilization. it is, moreover, we may rest assured, the only solution which the growing modern sense of personal responsibility in sexual matters traced in the previous chapter--the responsibility of women as well as of men--will be content to accept. the subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a high civilization and the unhappy results of their state regulation were well expressed by wilhelm von humboldt in his _ideen zu einen versuch die grenzen der wirksamkeit des staates zu bestimmen_, so long ago as . "a union so closely allied with the very nature of the respective individuals must be attended with the most hurtful consequences when the state attempts to regulate it by law, or, through the force of its institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple inclination. when we remember, moreover, that the state can only contemplate the final results of such regulations on the race, we shall be still more ready to admit the justice of this conclusion. it may reasonably be argued that a solicitude for the race only conducts to the same results as the highest solicitude for the most beautiful development of the inner man. for, after careful observation, it has been found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman is most beneficial to the race, and it is likewise undeniable that no other union springs from true, natural, harmonious love. and further, it may be observed, that such love leads to the same results as those very relations which law and custom tend to establish. the radical error seems to be that the law commands; whereas such a relation cannot mould itself according to external arrangements, but depends wholly on inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into collision with inclination, they divert it still farther from the proper path. wherefore it appears to me that the state should not only loosen the bonds in this instance and leave ampler freedom to the citizen, but that it should entirely withdraw its active solicitude from the institution of marriage, and, both generally and in its particular modifications, should rather leave it wholly to the free choice of the individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect to it. i should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by the fear that all family relations might be disturbed, for, although such a fear might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry into the nature of men and states in general. for experience frequently convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign to an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an inward sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do not at all correspond to the intentions in which they originate." a long succession of distinguished thinkers--moralists, sociologists, political reformers--have maintained the social advantages of divorce by mutual consent, or, under guarded circumstances, at the wish of one party. mutual consent was the corner-stone of milton's conception of marriage. montesquieu said that true divorce must be the result of mutual consent and based on the impossibility of living together. sénancour seems to agree with montesquieu. lord morley (_diderot_, vol. ii, ch. i), echoing and approving the conclusions of diderot's _supplément au voyage de bougainville_ ( ), adds that the separation of husband and wife is "a transaction in itself perfectly natural and blameless, and often not only laudable, but a duty." bloch (_sexual life of our time_, p. ), with many other writers, emphasizes the truth of shelley's saying, that the freedom of marriage is the guarantee of its durability. (that the facts of life point in the same direction has been shown in the previous chapter.) the learned caspari (_die soziale frage über die freiheit der ehe_), while disclaiming any prevision of the future, declares that if sexual relationships are to remain or to become moral, there must be an easier dissolution of marriage. howard, at the conclusion of his exhaustive history of matrimonial institutions (vol. iii p. ), though he himself believes that marriage is peculiarly in need of regulation by law, is yet constrained to admit that it is perfectly clear to the student of history that the modern divorce movement is "but a part of the mighty movement for social liberation which has been gaining in volume and strength since the reformation." similarly the cautious and judicial westermarck concludes the chapter on marriage of his _origin and development of the moral ideas_ (vol. ii, p. ) with the statement that "when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the state has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that, for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree." in france the leaders of the movement of social reform seem to be almost, or quite, unanimous in believing that the next step in regard to divorce is the establishment of divorce by mutual consent. this was, for instance, the result reached in a symposium to which thirty-one distinguished men and women contributed. all were in favor of divorce by mutual consent; the only exception was madame adam, who said she had reached a state of skepticism with regard to political and social forms, but admitted that for nearly half a century she had been a strong advocate of divorce. a large number of the contributors were in favor of divorce at the desire of one party only (_la revue_, march , ). in other countries, also, there is a growing recognition that this solution of the question, with due precautions to avoid any abuses to which it might otherwise be liable, is the proper and inevitable solution. as to the exact method by which divorce by mutual consent should be effected, opinions differ, and the matter is likely to be differently arranged in different countries. the japanese plan seems simple and judicious (see _ante_, p. ). paul and victor margueritte (_quelques idées_, pp. et seq.), while realizing that the conflict of feeling in the matter of personal associations involves decisions which are entirely outside the competence of legal tribunals, recognize that such tribunals are necessary in order to deal with the property of divorced persons, and also, in the last resort, with the question of the care of the children. they should not act in public. these writers propose that each party should choose a representative, and that these two should choose a third; and that this tribunal should privately investigate, and if they agreed should register the divorce, which should take place six or twelve months later, or three years later, if only desired by one of the parties. dr. shufeldt ("psychopathia sexualis and divorce") proposes that a divorce-court judge should conduct, alone, the hearing of any cases of marital discord, the husband and wife appearing directly before him, without counsel, though with their witnesses, if necessary; should medical experts be required the judge alone would be empowered to call them. when we realize that the long delay in the acceptance of so just and natural a basis of divorce is due to an artificial tension created by the pressure of the dead hand of canon law--a tension confined exclusively to christendom--we may also realize that with the final disappearance of that tension the just and natural order in this relationship will spring back the more swiftly because that relief has been so long delayed. "nature abhors a vacuum nowhere more than in a marriage," ellen key remarks in the language of antiquated physical metaphor; the vacuum will somehow be filled, and if it cannot be filled in a natural and orderly manner it will be filled in an unnatural and disorderly manner. it is the business of society to see that no laws stand in the way of the establishment of natural order. reform upon a reasonable basis has been made difficult by the unfortunate retention of the idea of delinquency. with the traditions of the canonists at the back of our heads we have somehow persuaded ourselves that there cannot be a divorce unless there is a delinquent, a real serious delinquent who, if he had his deserts, would be imprisoned and consigned to infamy. but in the marriage relationship, as in all other relationships, it is only in a very small number of cases that one party stands towards the other as a criminal, even a defendant. this is often obvious in the early stages of conjugal alienation. but it remains true in the end. the wife commits adultery and the husband as a matter of course assumes the position of plaintiff. but we do not inquire how it is that he has not so won her love that her adultery is out of the question; such inquiry might lead to the conclusion that the real defendant is the husband. and similarly when the husband is accused of brutal cruelty the law takes no heed to inquire whether in the infliction of less brutal but not less poignant wounds, the wife also should not be made defendant. there are a few cases, but only a few, in which the relationship of plaintiff and defendant is not a totally false and artificial relationship, an immoral legal fiction. in most cases, if the truth were fully known, husband and wife should come side by side to the divorce court and declare: "we are both in the wrong: we have not been able to fulfil our engagements to each other; we have erred in choosing each other." the long reports of the case in open court, the mutual recriminations, the detectives, the servant girls and other witnesses, the infamous inquisition into intimate secrets--all these things, which no necessity could ever justify, are altogether unnecessary. it is said by some that if there were no impediments to divorce a man might be married in succession to half a dozen women. these simple-minded or ignorant persons do not seem to be aware that even when marriage is absolutely indissoluble a man can, and frequently does, carry on sexual relationships not merely successively, but, if he chooses, even simultaneously, with half a dozen women. there is, however, this important difference that, in the one case, the man is encouraged by the law to believe that he need only treat at most one of the six women with anything approaching to justice and humanity; in the other case the law insists that he shall fairly and openly fulfil his obligations towards all the six women. it is a very important difference, and there ought to be no question as to which state of things is moral and which immoral. it is no concern of the state to inquire into the number of persons with whom a man or a woman chooses to have sexual relationships; it is a private matter which may indeed affect their own finer spiritual development but which it is impertinent for the state to pry into. it is, however, the concern of the state, in its own collective interest and that of its members, to see that no injustice is done. but what about the children? that is necessarily a very important question. the question of the arrangements made for the children in cases of divorce is always one to which the state must give its regulative attention, for it is only when there are children that the state has any real concern in the matter. at one time it was even supposed by some that the existence of children was a serious argument against facility of divorce. a more reasonable view is now generally taken. it is, in the first place, recognized that a very large proportion of couples seeking divorce have no children. in england the proportion is about forty per cent.; in some other countries it is doubtless larger still. but even when there are children no one who realizes what the conditions are in families where the parents ought to be but are not divorced can have any doubt that usually those conditions are extremely bad for the children. the tension between the parents absorbs energy which should be devoted to the children. the spectacle of the grievances or quarrels of their parents is demoralizing for the children, and usually fatal to any respect towards them. at the best it is injuriously distressing to the children. one effective parent, there cannot be the slightest doubt, is far better for a child than two ineffective parents. there is a further point, often overlooked, for consideration here. two people when living together at variance--one of them perhaps, it is not rarely the case, nervously abnormal or diseased--are not fitted to become parents, nor in the best condition for procreation. it is, therefore, not merely an act of justice to the individual, but a measure called for in the interests of the state, that new citizens should not be brought into the community through such defective channels.[ ] from this point of view all the interests of the state are on the side of facility of divorce. there is a final argument which is often brought forward against facility of divorce. marriage, it is said, is for the protection of women; facilitate divorce and women are robbed of that protection. it is obvious that this argument has little application as against divorce by mutual consent. certainly it is necessary that divorce should only be arranged under conditions which in each individual case have received the approval of the law as just. but it must always be remembered that the essential fact of marriage is not naturally, and should never artificially be made, an economic question. it is possible--that is a question which society will have to consider--that a woman should be paid for being a mother on the ground that she is rearing new citizens for the state. but neither the state nor her husband nor anyone else ought to pay her for exercising conjugal rights. the fact that such an argument can be brought forward shows how far we are from the sound biological attitude towards sexual relationships. equally unsound is the notion that the virgin bride brings her husband at marriage an important capital which is consumed in the first act of intercourse and can never be recovered. that is a notion which has survived into civilization, but it belongs to barbarism and not to civilization. so far as it has any validity it lies within a sphere of erotic perversity which cannot be taken into consideration in an estimation of moral values. for most men, however, in any case, whether they realize it or not, the woman who has been initiated into the mysteries of love has a higher erotic value than the virgin, and there need be no anxiety on this ground concerning the wife who has lost her virginity. it is probably a significant fact that this anxiety for the protection of women by the limitation of divorce is chiefly brought forward by men and not by women themselves. a woman at marriage is deprived by society and the law of her own name. she has been deprived until recently of the right to her own earnings. she is deprived of the most intimate rights in her own person. she is deprived under some circumstances of her own child, against whom she may have committed no offence whatever. it is perhaps scarcely surprising that she is not greatly appreciative of the protection afforded her by the withholding of the right to divorce her husband. "ah, no, no protection!" a brilliant french woman has written. "we have been protected long enough. the only protection to grant women is to cease protecting them."[ ] as a matter of fact the divorce movement appears to develop, on the whole, with that development of woman's moral responsibility traced in the previous chapter, and where divorce is freest women occupy the highest position. we cannot fail to realize as we grasp the nature and direction of the modern movement of divorce that the final tendency of that movement is to efface itself. necessary as the divorce court has been as the inevitable corollary of an impossible ecclesiastical conception of marriage, no institution is now more hideous, more alien to the instinctive feelings generated by a fine civilization, and more opposed to the dignity of womanhood.[ ] its disappearance and its substitution by private arrangements, effected on their contractive sides, especially if there are children to provide for, under legal and if necessary judicial supervision, is, and always has been, the natural result of the attainment of a reasonably high stage of civilization. the divorce court has merely been a phase in the history of modern marriage, and a phase that has really been repugnant to all concerned in it. there is no need to view the project of its ultimate disappearance with anything but satisfaction. it was merely the outcome of an artificial conception of marriage. it is time to return to the consideration of that conception. we have seen that when the catholic development of the archaic conception of marriage as a sacrament, slowly elaborated and fossilized by the ingenuity of the canonists, was at last nominally dethroned, though not destroyed, by the movement associated with the reformation, it was replaced by the conception of marriage as a contract. this conception of marriage as a contract still enjoys a considerable amount of credit amongst us. there must always be contractive elements, implicit or explicit, in a marriage; that was well recognized even by the canonists. but when we treat marriage as all contract, and nothing but contract, we have to realize that we have set up a very peculiar form of contract, not voidable, like other contracts, by the agreement of the parties to it, but dissoluble as a sort of punishment of delinquency rather than by the voluntary annulment of a bond.[ ] when the protestant reformers seized on the idea of marriage as a contract they were not influenced by any reasoned analysis of the special characteristics of a contract; they were merely anxious to secure a plausible ground, already admitted even by the canonists to cover certain aspects of the matrimonial union, on which they could declare that marriage is a secular and not an ecclesiastical matter, a civil bond and not a sacramental process.[ ] like so much else in the protestant revolt, the strength of this attitude lay in the fact that it was a protest, based on its negative side on reasonable and natural grounds. but while protestantism was right in its attempt--for it was only an attempt--to deny the authority of canon law, that attempt was altogether unsatisfactory on the positive side. as a matter of fact marriage is not a true contract and no attempt has ever been made to convert it into a true contract. various writers have treated marriage as an actual contract or argued that it ought to be converted into a true contract. mrs. mona caird, for instance ("the morality of marriage," _fortnightly review_, ), believes that when marriage becomes really a contract "a couple would draw up their agreement, or depute the task to their friends, as is now generally done as regards marriage settlements. they agree to live together on such and such terms, making certain stipulations within the limits of the code." the state, she holds, should, however, demand an interval of time between notice of divorce and the divorce itself, if still desired when that interval has passed. similarly, in the united states dr. shufeldt ("needed revision of the laws of marriage and divorce," _medico-legal journal_, dec., ) insists that marriage must be entirely put into the hands of the legal profession and "made a civil contract, explicit in detail, and defining terms of divorce, in the event that a dissolution of the contract is subsequently desired." he adds that medical certificates of freedom from hereditary and acquired disease should be required, and properly regulated probationary marriages also be instituted. in france, a deputy of the chamber was, in , so convinced that marriage is a contract, like any other contract, that he declared that "to perform music at the celebration of a marriage is as ridiculous as it would be to send for a tenor to a notary's to celebrate a sale of timber." he was of quite different mind from pepys, who, a couple of centuries earlier, had been equally indignant at the absence of music from a wedding, which, he said, made it like a coupling of dog and bitch. a frequent demand of those who insist that marriage must be regarded as a contract is marriage contracted for a term of years. marriages could be contracted for a term of five years or less in old japan, and it is said that they were rarely or never dissolved at the end of the term. goethe, in his _wahlverwandtschaften_ (part i, ch. x) incidentally introduced a proposal for marriages for a term of five years and attached much moral significance to the prolongation of the marriage beyond that term without external compulsion. (bloch considers that goethe had probably heard of the japanese custom, _sexual life of our time_, p. .) professor e.d. cope ("the marriage problem," _open court_, nov. and , ), likewise, in order to remove matrimony from the domain of caprice and to permit full and fair trial, advocated "a system of civil marriage contracts which shall run for a definite time. these contracts should be of the same value and effect as the existing marriage contract. the time limits should be increased rapidly, so as to prevent women of mature years being deprived of support. the first contract ought not to run for less than five years, so as to give ample opportunity for acquaintance, and for the recovery from temporary disagreements." this first contract, cope held, should be terminable at the wish of either party; the second contract, for ten or fifteen years, should only be terminable at the wish of both parties, and the third should be permanent and indissoluble. george meredith, the distinguished novelist, also, more recently, threw out the suggestion that marriages should be contracted for a term of years. it can scarcely be said that marriages for a term of years constitute a very satisfactory solution of the difficulties at present encountered. they would not commend themselves to young lovers, who believe that their love is eternal, nor, so long as the union proves satisfactory, is there any need to introduce the disturbing idea of a legal termination of the contract. on the other hand, if the union proves unhappy, it is not reasonable to insist on the continuation for ten or even five years of an empty form which corresponds to no real marriage union. even if marriage is placed on the most prosaic contractive basis it is a mistake, and indeed an impossibility, to pre-ordain the length of its duration. the system of fixing the duration of marriage beforehand for a term of years involves exactly the same principle as the system of fixing it beforehand for life. it is open to the same objection that it is incompatible with any vital relationship. as the demand for vital reality and effectiveness in social relationships grows, this fact is increasingly felt. we see exactly the same change among us in regard to the system of inflicting fixed sentences of imprisonment on criminals. to send a man to prison for five years or for life, without any regard to the unknown problem of the vital reaction of imprisonment on the man--a reaction which will be different in every individual case--is slowly coming to be regarded as an absurdity. if marriage were really placed on the basis of a contract, not only would that contract be voidable at the will of the two parties concerned, without any question of delinquency coming into the question, but those parties would at the outset themselves determine the conditions regulating the contract. but nothing could be more unlike our actual marriage. the two parties are bidden to accept each other as husband and wife; they are not invited to make a contract; they are not even told that, little as they may know it, they have in fact made a very complicated and elaborate contract that was framed on lines laid down, for a large part, thousands of years before they were born. unless they have studied law they are totally ignorant, also, that this contract contains clauses which under some circumstances may be fatal to either of them. all that happens is that a young couple, perhaps little more than children, momentarily dazed by emotion, are hurried before the clergyman or the civil registrar of marriages, to bind themselves together for life, knowing nothing of the world and scarcely more of each other, knowing nothing also of the marriage laws, not even perhaps so much as that there are any marriage laws, never realizing that--as has been truly said--from the place they are entering beneath a garland of flowers there is, on this side of death, no exit except through the trapdoor of a sewer.[ ] when a woman marries she gives up the right to her own person. thus, according to the law of england, a man "cannot be guilty of a rape upon his lawful wife." stephen, who, in the first edition of his _digest of criminal law_, thought that under some circumstances a man might be indicted for rape upon his wife, in the last edition withdrew that opinion. a man may rape a prostitute, but he cannot rape his wife. having once given her consent to sexual intercourse by the act of marrying a man, she has given it forever, whatever new circumstances may arise, and he has no need to ask her consent to sexual intercourse, not even if he is knowingly suffering at the time from a venereal disease (see, e.g., an article on "sex bias," _westminster review_, march, ). the duty of the wife to allow "conjugal rights" to her husband is another aspect of her legal subjection to him. even in the nineteenth century a suffolk lady of good family was imprisoned in ipswich goal for many years and fed on bread and water, though suffering from various diseases, till she died, simply because she continued to disregard the decree requiring her to render conjugal rights to her husband. this state of things was partly reformed by the matrimonial causes bill of , and that bill was passed, not to protect women, but men, against punishment for refusal to restore conjugal rights. undoubtedly, the modern tendency, although it has progressed very slowly, is against applying compulsion to either husband or wife to yield "conjugal rights;" and since the jackson case it is not possible in england for a husband to use force in attempting to compel his wife to live with him. this tendency is still more marked in the united states; thus the iowa supreme court, a few years ago, decided that excessive demands for coitus constituted cruelty of a degree justifying divorce (j.g. kiernan, _alienist and neurologist_, nov. , p. ). the slender tenure of the wife over her person is not confined to the sexual sphere, but even extends to her right to life. in england, if a wife kills her husband, it was formerly the very serious offence of "petit treason," and it is still murder. but, if a husband kills his wife and is able to plead her adultery and his jealousy, it is only manslaughter. (in france, where jealousy is regarded with extreme indulgence, even a wife who kills her husband is often acquitted.) it must not, however, be supposed that all the legal inequalities involved by marriage are in favor of the husband. a large number of injustices are also inflicted on the husband. the husband, for instance, is legally responsible for the libels uttered by his wife, and he is equally responsible civilly for the frauds she commits, even if she is living apart from him. (this was, for instance, held by an english judge in ; "he could only say he regretted it, for it seems a hard case. but it was the law.") belfort bax has, in recent years, especially insisted on the hardships inflicted by english law in such ways as these. there can be no doubt that marriage, as at present constituted, inflicts serious wrongs on the husband as well as on the wife. marriage is, therefore, not only not a contract in the true sense,[ ] but in the only sense in which it is a contract it is a contract of an exceedingly bad kind. when the canonists superseded the old conception of marriage as a contract of purchase by their sacramental marriage, they were in many respects effecting a real progress, and the return to the idea of a contract, as soon as its temporary value as a protest has ceased, proves altogether out of harmony with any advanced stage of civilization. it was revived in days before the revolt against slavery had been inaugurated. personal contracts are out of harmony with our modern civilization and our ideas of individual liberty. a man can no longer contract himself as a slave nor sell his wife. yet marriage, regarded as a contract, is of precisely the same class as those transactions.[ ] in every high stage of civilization this fact is clearly recognized, and young couples are not even allowed to contract themselves out in marriage unconditionally. we see this, for instance, in the wise legislation of the romans. even under the christian emperors that sound principle was maintained and the lawyer paulus wrote:[ ] "marriage was so free, according to ancient opinion, that even agreements between the parties not to separate from one another could have no validity." in so far as the essence and not any accidental circumstance of the marital relationships is made a contract, it is a contract of a nature which the two parties concerned are not competent to make. biologically and psychologically it cannot be valid, and with the growth of a humane civilization it is explicitly declared to be legally invalid. for, there can be no doubt about it, the intimate and essential fact of marriage--the relationship of sexual intercourse--is not and cannot be a contract. it is not a contract but a fact; it cannot be effected by any mere act of will on the part of the parties concerned; it cannot be maintained by any mere act of will. to will such a contract is merely to perform a worse than indecorous farce. certainly many of the circumstances of marriage are properly the subject of contract, to be voluntarily and deliberately made by the parties to the contract. but the essential fact of marriage--a love strong enough to render the most intimate of relationships possible and desirable through an indefinite number of years--cannot be made a matter for contract. alike from the physical point of view, and the psychical point of view, no binding contract--and a contract is worthless if it is not binding--can possibly be made. and the making of such pseudo-contracts concerning the future of a marriage, before it has even been ascertained that the marriage can ever become a fact at all, is not only impossible but absurd. it is of course true that this impossibility, this absurdity, are never visible to the contracting parties. they have applied to the question all the very restricted tests that are conventionally permitted to them, and the satisfactory results of these tests, together with the consciousness of possessing an immense and apparently inexhaustible fund of loving emotion, seem to them adequate to the fulfilment of the contract throughout life, if not indeed eternity. as a child of seven i chanced to be in a semi-tropical island of the pacific supplied with fruit, especially grapes, from the mainland, and a dusky market woman always presented a large bunch of grapes to the little english stranger. but a day came when the proffered bunch was firmly refused; the superabundance of grapes had produced a reaction of disgust. a space of nearly forty years was needed to overcome the repugnance to grapes thus acquired. yet there can be no doubt that if at the age of six that little boy had been asked to sign a contract binding him to accept grapes every day, to keep them always near him, to eat them and to enjoy them every day, he would have signed that contract as joyously as any radiant bridegroom or demure bride signs the register in the vestry. but is a complex man or woman, with unknown capacities for changing or deteriorating, and with incalculable aptitudes for inflicting torture and arousing loathing, is such a creature more easy to be bound to than an exquisite fruit? all the countries of the world in which the subtle influence of the canon law of christendom still makes itself felt, have not yet grasped a general truth which is well within the practical experience of a child of seven.[ ] the notion that such a relationship as that of marriage can rest on so fragile a basis as a pre-ordained contract has naturally never prevailed widely in its extreme form, and has been unknown altogether in many parts of the world. the romans, as we know, explicitly rejected it, and even at a comparatively early period recognized the legality of marriage by _usus_, thus declaring in effect that marriage must be a fact, and not a mere undertaking. there has been a widespread legal tendency, especially where the traditions of roman law have retained any influence, to regard the cohabitation of marriage as the essential fact of the relationship. it was an old rule even under the catholic church that marriage may be presumed from cohabitation (see, e.g., zacchia, _questionum medico-legalium opus_, edition of , vol. iii, p. ). even in england cohabitation is already one of the presumptions in favor of the existence of marriage (though not necessarily by itself regarded as sufficient), provided the woman is of unblemished character, and does not appear to be a common prostitute (nevill geary, _the law of marriage_, ch. iii). if, however, according to lord watson's judicial statement in the dysart peerage case, a man takes his mistress to a hotel or goes with her to a baby-linen shop and speaks of her as his wife, it is to be presumed that he is acting for the sake of decency, and this furnishes no evidence of marriage. in scotland the presumption of marriage arises on much slighter grounds than in england. this may be connected with the ancient and deep-rooted custom in scotland of marriage by exchange of consent (geary, op. cit. ch. xviii; cf., howard, _matrimonial institutions_, vol. i, p. ). in the bredalbane case (campbell _v._ campbell, ), which was of great importance because it involved the succession to the vast estates of the marquis of bredalbane, the house of lords decided than even an adulterous connection may, on ceasing to be adulterous, become matrimonial by the simple consent of the parties, as evidenced by habit and repute, without any need for the matrimonial character of the connection to be indicated by any public act, nor any necessity to prove the specific period when the consent was interchanged. this decision has been confirmed in the dysart case (geary, loc. cit.; cf. c.g. garrison, "limits of divorce," _contemporary review_, feb., ). similarly, as decided by justice kekewich in the wagstaff case in , if a man leaves money to his "widow," on condition that she never marries again, although he has never been married to her, and though she has been legally married to another man, the testator's intentions must be upheld. garrison, in his valuable discussion of this aspect of legal marriage (_loc. cit._), forcibly insists that by english law marriage is a fact and not a contract, and that where "conduct characterized by connubial purpose and constancy" exists, there marriage legally exists, marriage being simply "a name for an existing fact." in the united states, marriage "by habit and repute" similarly exists, and in some states has even been confirmed and extended by statute (j.p. bishop, _commentaries_, vol. i, ch. xv). "whatever the form of the ceremony, and even if all ceremony was dispensed with," said judge cooley, of michigan, in (in an opinion accepted as authoritative by the federal courts), "if the parties agreed presently to take each other for husband and wife, and from that time lived together professedly in that relation, proof of these facts would be sufficient.... this has been the settled doctrine of the american courts." (howard, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. et seq. twenty-three states sanction common-law marriage, while eighteen repudiate, or are inclined to repudiate, any informal agreement.) this legal recognition by the highest judicial authorities, alike in great britain and the united states, that marriage is essentially a fact, and that no evidence of any form or ceremony of marriage is required for the most complete legal recognition of marriage, undoubtedly carries with it highly important implications. it became clear that the reform of marriage is possible even without change in the law, and that honorable sexual relationships, even when entered into without any legal forms, are already entitled to full legal recognition and protection. there are, however, it need scarcely be added here, other considerations which render reform along these lines incomplete. it thus tends to come about that with the growth of civilization the conception of marriage as a contract falls more and more into discredit. it is realized, on the one hand, that personal contracts are out of harmony with our general and social attitude, for if we reject the idea of a human being contracting himself as a slave, how much more we should reject the idea of entering by contract into the still more intimate relationship of a husband or a wife; on the other hand it is felt that the idea of pre-ordained contracts on a matter over which the individual himself has no control is quite unreal and when any strict rules of equity prevail, necessarily invalid. it is true that we still constantly find writers sententiously asserting their notions of the duties or the privileges involved by the "contract" of marriage, with no more attempt to analyze the meaning of the term "contract" in this connection than the protestant reformers made, but it can scarcely be said that these writers have yet reached the alphabet of the subject they dogmatize about. the transference of marriage from the church to the state which, in the lands where it first occurred, we owe to protestantism and, in the english-speaking lands, especially to puritanism, while a necessary stage, had the unfortunate result of secularizing the sexual relationships. that is to say, it ignored the transcendent element in love which is really the essential part of such relationships, and it concentrated attention on those formal and accidental parts of marriage which can alone be dealt with in a rigid and precise manner, and can alone properly form the subject of contracts. the canon law, fantastic and impossible as it became in many of its developments, at least insisted on the natural and actual fact of marriage as, above all, a bodily union, while, at the same time, it regarded that union as no mere secular business contract but a sacred and exalted function, a divine fact, and the symbol of the most divine fact in the world. we are returning to-day to the canonist's conception of marriage on a higher and freer plane, bringing back the exalted conception of the canon law, yet retaining the individualism which the puritan wrongly thought he could secure on the basis of mere secularization, while, further, we recognize that the whole process belongs to the private sphere of moral responsibility. as hobhouse has well said, in tracing the evolutionary history of the modern conception of marriage, the sacramental idea of marriage has again emerged but on a higher plane; "from being a sacrament in the magical, it has become one in the ethical, sense." we are thus tending towards, though we have not yet legally achieved, marriage made and maintained by consent, "a union between two free and responsible persons in which the equal rights of both are maintained."[ ] it is supposed by some that to look upon sexual union as a sacrament is necessarily to accept the ancient catholic view, embodied in the canon law, that matrimony is indissoluble. that is, however, a mistake. even the canonists themselves were never able to put forward any coherent and consistent ground for the indissolubility of matrimony which could commend itself rationally, while luther and milton and wilhelm von humboldt, who maintained the religious and sacred nature of sexual union--though they were cautious about using the term sacrament on account of its ecclesiastical implications--so far from believing that its sanctity involved indissolubility, argued in the reverse sense. this point of view may be defended even from a strictly protestant standpoint. "i take it," mr. g.c. maberly says, "that the prayer book definition of a sacrament, 'the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,' is generally accepted. in marriage the legal and physical unions are the outward and visible signs, while the inward and spiritual grace is the god-given love that makes the union of heart and soul: and it is precisely because i take this view of marriage that i consider the legal and physical union should be dissolved whenever the spiritual union of unselfish, divine love and affection has ceased. it seems to me that the sacramental view of marriage compels us to say that those who continue the legal or physical union when the spiritual union has ceased, are--to quote again from the prayer book words applied to those who take the outward sign of another sacrament when the inward and spiritual grace is not present--'eating and drinking their own damnation.'" if from the point we have now reached we look back at the question of divorce we see that, as the modern aspects of the marriage relationship becomes more clearly realized by the community, that question will be immensely simplified. since marriage is not a mere contract but a fact of conduct, and even a sacred fact, the free participation of both parties is needed to maintain it. to introduce the idea of delinquency and punishment into divorce, to foster mutual recrimination, to publish to the world the secrets of the heart or the senses, is not only immoral, it is altogether out of place. in the question as to when a marriage has ceased to be a marriage the two parties concerned can alone be the supreme judges; the state, if the state is called in, can but register the sentence they pronounce, merely seeing to it that no injustice is involved in the carrying out of that sentence.[ ] in discussing in the previous chapter the direction in which sexual morality tends to develop with the development of civilization we came to the conclusion that in its main lines it involved, above all, personal responsibility. a relationship fixed among savage peoples by social custom which none dare break, and in a higher stage of culture by formal laws which must be observed in the letter even if broken in the spirit, becomes gradually transferred to the sphere of individual moral responsibility. such a transference is necessarily meaningless, and indeed impossible, unless the increasing stringency of the moral bond is accompanied by the decreasing stringency of the formal bond. it is only by the process of loosening the artificial restraints that the natural restraints can exert their full control. that process takes place in two ways, in part on the basis of the indifference to formal marriage which has marked the masses of the population everywhere and doubtless stretches back to the tenth century before the domination of ecclesiastical matrimony began, and partly by the progressive modification of marriage laws which were made necessary by the needs of the propertied classes anxious to secure the state recognition of their unions. the whole process is necessarily a gradual and indeed imperceptible process. it is impossible to fix definitely the dates of the stages by which the church effected the immense revolution by which it grasped, and eventually transferred to the state, the complete control of marriage, for that revolution was effected without the intervention of any law. it will be equally difficult to perceive the transference of the control of marriage from the state to the individuals concerned, and the more difficult because, as we shall see, although the essential and intimately personal fact of marriage is not a proper matter for state control, there are certain aspects of marriage which touch the interests of the community so closely that the state is bound to insist on their registration and to take an interest in their settlement. the result of dissolving the formal stringency of the marriage relationship, it is sometimes said, would be a tendency to an immoral laxity. those who make this statement overlook the fact that laxity tends to reach a maximum as a result of stringency, and that where the merely external authority of a rigid marriage law prevails, there the extreme excesses of license most flourish. it is also undoubtedly true, and for the same reason, that any sudden removal of restraints necessarily involves a reaction to the opposite extreme of license; a slave is not changed at a stroke into an autonomous freeman. yet we have to remember that the marriage order existed for millenniums before any attempt was made to mould it into arbitrary shapes by human legislation. such legislation, we have seen, was indeed the effort of the human spirit to affirm more emphatically the demands of its own instincts.[ ] but its final result is to choke and impede rather than to further the instincts which inspired it. its gradual disappearance allows the natural order free and proper scope. the great truth that compulsion is not really a force on the side of virtue, but on the side of vice, had been clearly realized by the genius of rabelais, when he said of his ideal social state, the abbey of thelema, that there was but one clause in its rule: fay ce que vouldras. "because," said rabelais (bk. i, ch. vii), "men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompts them unto virtuous actions and withdraws them from vice. these same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they freely were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude." so that when a man and a woman who had lived under the rule of thelema married each other, rabelais tells us, their mutual love lasted undiminished to the day of their death. when the loss of autonomous freedom fails to lead to licentious rebellion it incurs the opposite risk and tends to become a flabby reliance on an external support. the artificial support of marriage by state regulation then resembles the artificial support of the body furnished by corset-wearing. the reasons for and against adopting artificial support are the same in one case as the other. corsets really give a feeling of support; they really furnish without trouble a fairly satisfactory appearance of decorum; they are a real protection against various accidents. but the price at which they furnish these advantages is serious, and the advantages themselves only exist under unnatural conditions. the corset cramps the form and the healthy development of the organs; it enfeebles the voluntary muscular system; it is incompatible with perfect grace and beauty; it diminishes the sum of active energy. it exerts, in short, the same kind of influence on physical responsibility as formal marriage on moral responsibility. it is too often forgotten, and must therefore be repeated, that married people do not remain together because of any religious or legal tie; that tie is merely the historical outcome of their natural tendency to remain together, a tendency which is itself far older than history. "love would exist in the world to-day, just as pure and just as enduring," says shufeldt (_medico-legal journal_, dec., ), "had man never invented 'marriage.' truly affined mates would have remained faithful to each other as long as life lasted. it is only when men attempt to improve upon nature that crime, disease, and unhappiness step in." "the abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote godwin more than a century ago (_political justice_, second edition, , vol. i, p. ), "will be attended with no evils. we are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. but it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." and professor lester ward, in insisting on the strength of the monogamic sentiment in modern society, truly remarks (_international journal of ethics_, oct., ) that the rebellion against rigid marriage bonds "is, in reality, due to the very strengthening of the true bonds of conjugal affection, coupled with a rational and altogether proper determination on the part of individuals to accept, in so important a matter, nothing less than the genuine article." "if by a single stroke," says professor woods hutchinson (_contemporary review_, sept., ), "all marriage ties now in existence were struck off or declared illegal, eight-tenths of all couples would be remarried within forty eight hours, and seven-tenths could not be kept asunder with bayonets." an experiment of this kind on a small scale was witnessed in in an english village in buckinghamshire. it was found that the parish church had never been licensed for marriages, and that in consequence all the people who had gone through the ceremony of marriage in that church during the previous half century had never been legally married. yet, so far as could be ascertained, not a single couple thus released from the legal compulsion of marriage took advantage of the freedom bestowed. in the face of such a fact it is obviously impossible to attach any moral value to the form of marriage. it is certainly inevitable that during a period of transition the natural order is to some extent disturbed by the persistence, even though in a weakened form, of external bonds which are beginning to be consciously realized as inimical to the authoritative control of individual moral responsibility. we can clearly trace this at the present time. a sensitive anxiety to escape from external constraint induces an under-valuation of the significance of personal constraint in the relationship of marriage. everyone is probably familiar with cases in which a couple will live together through long years without entering the legal bond of marriage, notwithstanding difficulties in their mutual relationship which would have long since caused a separation or a divorce had they been legally married. when the inherent difficulties of the marital relationship are complicated by the difficulties due to external constraint, the development of individual moral responsibility cuts two ways, and leads to results that are not entirely satisfactory. this has been seen in the united states of america and attention has often been called to it by thoughtful american observers. it is, naturally, noted especially in women because it is in women that the new growth of personal freedom and moral responsibility has chiefly made itself felt. the first stirring of these new impulses, especially when associated, as it often is, with inexperience and ignorance, leads to impatience with the natural order, to a demand for impossible conditions of existence, and to an inaptitude not only for the arbitrary bondage of law but even for the wholesome and necessary bonds of human social life. it is always a hard lesson for the young and idealistic that in order to command nature we must obey her; it can only be learnt through contact with life and by the attainment of full human growth. dr. felix adler (in an address before the society of ethical culture of new york, nov. , ) called attention to what he regarded as the most deep-rooted cause of an undue prevalence of divorce in america. "the false idea of individual liberty is largely held in america," and when applied to family life it often leads to an impatience with these duties which the individual is either born into or has voluntarily accepted. "i am constrained to think that the prevalence of divorce is to be ascribed in no small degree to the influence of democratic ideas--that is, of false democratic ideas--and our hope lies in advancing towards a higher and truer democracy." a more recent american writer, this time a woman, anna a. rogers ("why american marriages fail," _atlantic monthly_, sept., ) speaks in the same sense, though perhaps in too unqualified a manner. she states that the frequency of divorce in america is due to three causes: ( ) woman's failure to realize that marriage is her work in the world; ( ) her growing individualism; ( ) her lost art of giving, replaced by a highly developed receptive faculty. the american woman, this writer states, in discovering her own individuality has not yet learnt how to manage it; it is still "largely a useless, uneasy factor, vouchsafing her very little more peace than it does those in her immediate surcharged vicinity." her circumstances tend to make of her "a curious anomalous hybrid; a cross between a magnificent, rather unmannerly boy, and a spoiled, exacting _demi-mondaine_, who sincerely loves in this world herself alone." she has not yet learnt that woman's supreme work in the world can only be attained through the voluntary acceptance of the restraints of marriage. the same writer points out that the fault is not alone with american women, but also with american men. their idolatry of their women is largely responsible for that intolerance and selfishness which causes so many divorces; "american women are, as a whole, pampered and worshipped out of all reason." but the men, who lend themselves to this, do not feel that they can treat their wives with the same comradeship as the french treat their wives, nor seek their advice with the same reliance; the american woman is placed on an unreal pedestal. yet another american writer, rafford pyke ("husbands and wives," _cosmopolitan_, ), points out that only a small proportion of american marriages are really unhappy, these being chiefly among the more cultured classes, in which the movement of expansion in women's interests and lives is taking place; it is more often the wife than the husband who is disappointed in marriage, and this is largely due to her inability to merge, not necessarily subordinate, her individuality in an equal union with his. "marriage to-day is becoming more and more dependent for its success upon the adjustment of conditions that are psychical. whereas in former generations it was sufficient that the union should involve physical reciprocity, in this age of ours the union must involve a psychic reciprocity as well. and whereas, heretofore, the community of interest was attained with ease, it is now becoming far more difficult because of the tendency to discourage a woman who marries from merging her separate individuality in her husband's. yet, unless she does this, how can she have a complete and perfect interest in the life together, and, for that matter, how can he have such an interest either?" professor münsterberg, the distinguished psychologist, in his frank but appreciative study of american institutions, _the americans_, taking a broader outlook, points out that the influence of women on morals in america has not been in every respect satisfactory, in so far as it has tended to encourage shallowness and superficiality. "the american woman who has scarcely a shred of education," he remarks (p. ), "looks in vain for any subject on which she has not firm convictions already at hand.... the arrogance of this feminine lack of knowledge is the symptom of a profound trait in the feminine soul, and points to dangers springing from the domination of women in the intellectual life.... and in no other civilized land are ethical conceptions so worm-eaten by superstitions." we have seen that the modern tendency as regards marriage is towards its recognition as a voluntary union entered into by two free, equal, and morally responsible persons, and that that union is rather of the nature of an ethical sacrament than of a contract, so that in its essence as a physical and spiritual bond it is outside the sphere of the state's action. it has been necessary to labor that point before we approach what may seem to many not only a different but even a totally opposed aspect of marriage. if the marriage union itself cannot be a matter for contract, it naturally leads to a fact which must necessarily be a matter for implicit or explicit contract, a matter, moreover, in which the community at large has a real and proper interest: that is the fact of procreation.[ ] the ancient egyptians--among whom matrimonial institutions were so elastic and the position of woman so high--recognized a provisional and slight marriage bond for the purpose of testing fecundity.[ ] among ourselves the law makes no such paternal provision, leaving to young couples themselves the responsibility of making any tests, a permission, we know, they largely avail themselves of, usually entering the legal bonds of marriage, however, before the birth of their child. that legal bond is a recognition that the introduction of a new individual into the community is not, like sexual union, a mere personal fact, but a social fact, a fact in which the state cannot fail to be concerned. and the more we investigate the tendency of the modern marriage movement the more we shall realize that its attitude of freedom, of individual moral responsibility, in the formation of sexual relationships, is compensated by an attitude of stringency, of strict social oversight, in the matter of procreation. two people who form an erotic relationship are bound, when they reach the conviction that their relationship is a real marriage, having its natural end in procreation, to subscribe to a contract which, though it may leave themselves personally free, must yet bind them both to their duties towards their children.[ ] the necessity for such an undertaking is double, even apart from the fact that it is in the highest interests of the parents themselves. it is required in the interests of the child. it is required in the interests of the state. a child can be bred, and well-bred, by one effective parent. but to equip a child adequately for its entrance into life both parents are usually needed. the state on its side--that is to say, the community of which parents and child alike form part--is bound to know who these persons are who have become sponsors for a new individual now introduced into its midst. the most individualistic state, the most socialistic state, are alike bound, if faithful to the interests, both biological and economic, of their constituent members generally, to insist on the full legal and recognized parentage of the father and mother of every child. that is clearly demanded in the interests of the child; it is clearly demanded also in the interests of the state. the barrier which in christendom has opposed itself to the natural recognition of this fact, so injuring alike the child and the state, has clearly been the rigidity of the marriage system, more especially as moulded by the canon law. the canonists attributed a truly immense importance to the _copula carnalis_, as they technically termed it. they centred marriage strictly in the vagina; they were not greatly concerned about either the presence or the absence of the child. the vagina, as we know, has not always proved a very firm centre for the support of marriage, and that centre is now being gradually transferred to the child. if we turn from the canonists to the writings of a modern like ellen key, who so accurately represents much that is most characteristic and essential in the late tendencies of marriage development, we seem to have entered a new world, even a newly illuminated world. for "in the new sexual morality, as in corregio's _notte_, the light emanates from the child."[ ] no doubt this change is largely a matter of sentiment, of, as we sometimes say, mere sentiment, although there is nothing so powerful in human affairs as sentiment, and the revolution effected by jesus, the later revolution effected by rousseau, were mainly revolutions in sentiment. but the change is also a matter of the growing recognition of interests and rights, and as such it manifests itself in law. we can scarcely doubt that we are approaching a time when it will be generally understood that the entrance into the world of every child, without exception, should be preceded by the formation of a marriage contract which, while in no way binding the father and mother to any duties, or any privileges, towards each other, binds them both towards their child and at the same time ensures their responsibility towards the state. it is impossible for the state to obtain more than this, but it should be impossible for it to demand less. a contract of such a kind "marries" the father and mother so far as the parentage of the individual child is concerned, and in no other respect; it is a contract which leaves entirely unaffected their past, present, or future relations towards other persons, otherwise it would be impossible to enforce it. in all parts of the world this elementary demand of social morality is slowly beginning to be recognized, and as it affects hundreds of thousands of infants[ ] who are yearly branded as "illegitimate" through no act of their own, no one can say that the recognition has come too soon. as yet, indeed, it seems nowhere to be complete. most attempts or proposals for the avoidance of illegitimate births are concerned with the legalizing of unions of a less binding degree than the present legal marriage. such unions would serve to counteract other evils. thus an english writer, who has devoted much study to sex questions, writes in a private letter: "the best remedy for the licentiousness of celibate men and the mental and physical troubles of continence in woman would be found in a recognized honorable system of free unions and trial-marriages, in which preventive intercourse is practiced until the lovers were old enough to become parents, and possessed of sufficient means to support a family. the prospect of a loveless existence for young men and women of ardent natures is intolerable and as terrible as the prospect of painful illness and death. but i think the old order must change ere long." in teutonic countries there is a strongly marked current of feeling in the direction of establishing legal unions of a lower degree than marriage. they exist in sweden, as also in norway where by a recent law the illegitimate child is entitled to the same rights in relation to both parents as the legitimate child, bearing the father's name and inheriting his property (_die neue generation_, july, , p. ). in france the well-known judge, magnard, so honorably distinguished for his attitude towards cases of infanticide by young mothers, has said: "i heartily wish that alongside the institution of marriage as it now exists we had a free union constituted by simple declaration before a magistrate and conferring almost the same family rights as ordinary marriage." this wish has been widely echoed. in china, although polygamy in the strict sense cannot properly be said to exist, the interests of the child, the woman, and the state are alike safeguarded by enabling a man to enter into a kind of secondary marriage with the mother of his child. "thanks to this system," paul d'enjoy states (_la revue_, sept., ), "which allows the husband to marry the woman he desires, without being prevented by previous and undissolved unions, it is only right to remark that there are no seduced and abandoned girls, except such as no law could save from what is really innate depravity; and that there are no illegitimate children except those whose mothers are unhappily nearer to animals by their senses than to human beings by their reason and dignity." the new civil code of japan, which is in many respects so advanced, allows an illegitimate child to be "recognized" by giving notice to the registrar; when a married man so recognizes a child, it appears, the child may be adopted by the wife as her own, though not actually rendered legitimate. this state of things represents a transition stage; it can scarcely be said to recognize the rights of the "recognized" child's mother. japan, it may be added, has adopted the principle of the automatic legitimation by marriage of the children born to the couple before marriage. in australia, where women possess a larger share than elsewhere in making and administering the laws, some attention is beginning to be given to the rights of illegitimate children. thus in south australia, paternity may be proved before birth, and the father (by magistrate's order) provides lodging for one month before and after birth, as well as nurse, doctor, and clothing, furnishing security that he will do so; after birth, at the magistrate's decision, he pays a weekly sum for the child's maintenance. an "illegitimate" mother may also be kept in a public institution at the public expense for six months to enable her to become attached to her child. such provisions are developed from the widely recognized right of the unmarried woman to claim support for her child from its father. in france, indeed, and in the legal codes which follow the french example, it is not legally permitted to inquire into the paternity of an illegitimate child. such a law is, needless to say, alike unjust to the mother, to the child, and to the state. in austria, the law goes to the opposite, though certainly more reasonable, extreme, and permits even the mother who has had several lovers to select for herself which she chooses to make responsible for her child. the german code adopts an intermediate course, and comes only to the aid of the unmarried mother who has one lover. in all such cases, however, the aid given is pecuniary only; it insures the mother no recognition or respect, and (as wahrmund has truly said in his _ehe und eherecht_) it is still necessary to insist on "the unconditional sanctity of motherhood, which is entitled, under whatever circumstances it arises, to the respect and protection of society." it must be added that, from the social point of view, it is not the sexual union which requires legal recognition, but the child which is the product of that union. it would, moreover, be hopeless to attempt to legalize all sexual connection, but it is comparatively easy to legalize all children. there has been much discussion in the past concerning the particular form which marriage ought to take. many theorists have exercised their ingenuity in inventing and preaching new and unusual marriage-arrangements as panaceas for social ills; while others have exerted even greater energy in denouncing all such proposals as subversive of the foundations of human society. we may regard all such discussions, on the one side or the other, as idle. in the first place marriage customs are far too fundamental, far too intimately blended with the primary substance of human and indeed animal society, to be in the slightest degree shaken by the theories or the practices of mere individuals, or even groups of individuals. monogamy--the more or less prolonged cohabitation of two individuals of opposite sex--has been the prevailing type of sexual relationship among the higher vertebrates and through the greater part of human history. this is admitted even by those who believe (without any sound evidence) that man has passed through a stage of sexual promiscuity. there have been tendencies to variation in one direction or another, but at the lowest stages and the highest stages, so far as can be seen, monogamy represents the prevailing rule. it must be said also, in the second place, that the natural prevalence of monogamy as the normal type of sexual relationship by no means excludes variations. indeed it assumes them. "there is nothing precise in nature," according to diderot's saying. the line of nature is a curve that oscillates from side to side of the norm. such oscillations inevitably occur in harmony with changes in environmental conditions, and, no doubt, with peculiarities of personal disposition. so long as no arbitrary and merely external attempt is made to force nature, the vital order is harmoniously maintained. among certain species of ducks when males are in excess polyandric families are constituted, the two males attending their female partner without jealousy, but when the sexes again become equal in number the monogamic order is restored. the natural human deviations from the monogamic order seem to be generally of this character, and largely conditioned by the social and economic environment. the most common variation, and that which most clearly possesses a biological foundation, is the tendency to polygyny, which is found at all stages of culture, even, in an unrecognized and more or less promiscuous shape, in the highest civilization.[ ] it must be remembered, however, that recognized polygyny is not the rule even where it prevails; it is merely permissive; there is never a sufficient excess of women to allow more than a few of the richer and more influential persons to have more than one wife.[ ] it has further to be borne in mind that a certain elasticity of the formal side of marriage while, on the one side, it permits variations from the general monogamic order, where such are healthful or needed to restore a balance in natural conditions, on the other hand restrains such variations in so far as they are due to the disturbing influence of artificial constraint. much of the polygyny, and polyandry also, which prevails among us to-day is an altogether artificial and unnatural form of polygamy. marriages which on a more natural basis would be dissolved cannot legally be dissolved, and consequently the parties to them, instead of changing their partners and so preserving the natural monogamic order, take on other additional partners and so introduce an unnatural polygamy. there will always be variations from the monogamic order and civilization is certainly not hostile to sexual variation. whether we reckon these variations as legitimate or illegitimate, they will still take place; of that we may be certain. the path of social wisdom seems to lie on the one hand in making the marriage relationship flexible enough to reduce to a minimum these deviations--not because such deviations are intrinsically bad but because they ought not to be forced into existence--and on the other hand in according to these deviations when they occur such a measure of recognition as will deprive them of injurious influence and enable justice to be done to all the parties concerned. we too often forget that our failure to recognize such variations merely means that we accord in such cases an illegitimate permission to perpetrate injustice. in those parts of the world in which polygyny is recognized as a permissible variation a man is legally held to his natural obligations towards all his sexual mates and towards the children he has by those mates. in no part of the world is polygyny so prevalent as in christendom; in no part of the world is it so easy for a man to escape the obligations incurred by polygyny. we imagine that if we refuse to recognize the fact of polygyny, we may refuse to recognize any obligations incurred by polygyny. by enabling a man to escape so easily from the obligations of his polygamous relationships we encourage him, if he is unscrupulous, to enter into them; we place a premium on the immorality we loftily condemn.[ ] our polygyny has no legal existence, and therefore its obligations can have no legal existence. the ostrich, it was once imagined, hides its head in the sand and attempts to annihilate facts by refusing to look at them; but there is only one known animal which adopts this course of action, and it is called man. monogamy, in the fundamental biological sense, represents the natural order into which the majority of sexual facts will always naturally fall because it is the relationship which most adequately corresponds to all the physical and spiritual facts involved. but if we realize that sexual relationships primarily concern only the persons who enter into those relationships, and if we further realize that the interest of society in such relationships is confined to the children which they produce, we shall also realize that to fix by law the number of women with whom a man shall have sexual relationships, and the number of men with whom a woman shall unite herself, is more unreasonable than it would be to fix by law the number of children they shall produce. the state has a right to declare whether it needs few citizens or many; but in attempting to regulate the sexual relationships of its members the state attempts an impossible task and is at the same time guilty of an impertinence. there is always a tendency, at certain stages of civilization, to insist on a merely formal and external uniformity, and a corresponding failure to see not only that such uniformity is unreal, but also that it has an injurious effect, in so far as it checks beneficial variations. the tendency is by no means confined to the sexual sphere. in england there is, for instance, a tendency to make building laws which enjoin, in regard to places of human habitation, all sorts of provisions that on the whole are fairly beneficial, but which in practice act injuriously, because they render many simple and excellent human habitations absolutely illegal, merely because such habitations fail to conform to regulations which, under some circumstances, are not only unnecessary, but mischievous. variation is a fact that will exist whether we will or no; it can only become healthful if we recognize and allow for it. we may even have to recognize that it is a more marked tendency in civilization than in more primitive social stages. thus gerson argues (_sexual-probleme_, sept., , p. ) that just as the civilized man cannot be content with the coarse and monotonous food which satisfies the peasant, so it is in sexual matters; the peasant youth and girl in their sexual relationships are nearly always monogamous, but civilized people, with their more versatile and sensitive tastes, are apt to crave for variety. sénancour (_de l'amour_, vol. ii, "du partage," p. ) seems to admit the possibility of marriage variations, as of sharing a wife, provided nothing is done to cause rivalry, or to impair the soul's candor. lecky, near the end of his _history of european morals_, declared his belief that, while the permanent union of two persons is the normal and prevailing type of marriage, it by no means follows that, in the interests of society, it should be the only form. remy de gourmont similarly (_physique de l'amour_, p. ), while stating that the couple is the natural form of marriage and its prolonged continuance a condition of human superiority, adds that the permanence of the union can only be achieved with difficulty. so, also, professor w. thomas (_sex and society_, , p. ), while regarding monogamy as subserving social needs, adds: "speaking from the biological standpoint monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so familiar in consciousness that the emotional reactions are qualified. this is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and women frequently become interested in others than their partners in matrimony." pepys, whose unconscious self-dissection admirably illustrates so many psychological tendencies, clearly shows how--by a logic of feeling deeper than any intellectual logic--the devotion to monogamy subsists side by side with an irresistible passion for sexual variety. with his constantly recurring wayward attraction to a long series of women he retains throughout a deep and unchanging affection for his charming young wife. in the privacy of his _diary_ he frequently refers to her in terms of endearment which cannot be feigned; he enjoys her society; he is very particular about her dress; he delights in her progress in music, and spends much money on her training; he is absurdly jealous when he finds her in the society of a man. his subsidiary relationships with other women recur irresistibly, but he has no wish either to make them very permanent or to allow them to engross him unduly. pepys represents a common type of civilized "monogamist" who is perfectly sincere and extremely convinced in his advocacy of monogamy, as he understands it, but at the same time believes and acts on the belief that monogamy by no means excludes the need for sexual variation. lord morley's statement (_diderot_, vol. ii, p. ) that "man is instinctively polygamous," can by no means be accepted, but if we interpret it as meaning that man is an instinctively monogamous animal with a concomitant desire for sexual variation, there is much evidence in its favor. women must be as free as men to mould their own amatory life. many consider, however, that such freedom on the part of women will be, and ought to be, exercised within narrower limits (see, e.g., bloch, _sexual life of our time_, ch. x). in part this limitation is considered due to the greater absorption of a woman in the task of breeding and rearing her child, and in part to a less range of psychic activities. a man, as g. hirth puts it, expressing this view of the matter (_wege zur liebe_, p. ), "has not only room in his intellectual horizon for very various interests, but his power of erotic expansion is much greater and more differentiated than that of women, although he may lack the intimacy and depth of a woman's devotion." it may be argued that, since variations in the sexual order will inevitably take place, whether or not they are recognized or authorized, no harm is likely to be done by using the weight of social and legal authority on the side of that form which is generally regarded as the best, and, so far as possible, covering the other forms with infamy. there are many obvious defects in such an attitude, apart from the supremely important fact that to cast infamy on sexual relationships is to exert a despicable cruelty on women, who are inevitably the chief sufferers. not the least is the injustice and the hampering of vital energy which it inflicts on the better and more scrupulous people to the advantage of the worse and less scrupulous. this always happens when authority exerts its power in favor of a form. when, in the thirteenth century, alexander iii--one of the greatest and most effective potentates who ever ruled christendom--was consulted by the bishop of exeter concerning subdeacons who persisted in marrying, the pope directed him to inquire into the lives and characters of the offenders; if they were of regular habits and staid morality, they were to be forcibly separated and the wives driven out; if they were men of notoriously disorderly character, they were to be permitted to retain their wives, if they so desired (lea, _history of sacerdotal celibacy_, third edition, vol. i, p. ). it was an astute policy, and was carried out by the same pope elsewhere, but it is easy to see that it was altogether opposed to morality in every sense of the term. it destroyed the happiness and the efficiency of the best men; it left the worst men absolutely free. to-day we are quite willing to recognize the evil result of this policy; it was dictated by a pope and carried out seven hundred years ago. yet in england we carry out exactly the same policy to-day by means of our separation orders, which are scattered broadcast among the population. none of the couples thus separated--and never disciplined to celibacy as are the catholic clergy of to-day--may marry again; we, in effect, bid the more scrupulous among them to become celibates, and to the less scrupulous we grant permission to do as they like. this process is carried on by virtue of the collective inertia of the community, and when it is supported by arguments, if that ever happens, they are of an antiquarian character which can only call forth a pitying smile. it may be added that there is a further reason why the custom of branding sexual variations from the norm as "immoral" is not so harmless as some affect to believe: such variations appear to be not uncommon among men and women of superlative ability whose powers are needed unimpeded in the service of mankind. to attempt to fit such persons into the narrow moulds which suit the majority is not only an injustice to them as individuals, but it is an offence against society, which may fairly claim that its best members shall not be hampered in its service. the notion that the person whose sexual needs differ from those of the average is necessarily a socially bad person, is a notion unsupported by facts. every case must be judged on its own merits. undoubtedly the most common variation from normal monogamy has in all stages of human culture been polygyny or the sexual union of one man with more than one woman. it has sometimes been socially and legally recognized, and sometimes unrecognized, but in either case it has not failed to occur. polyandry, or the union of a woman with more than one man, has been comparatively rare and for intelligible reasons: men have most usually been in a better position, economically and legally, to organize a household with themselves as the centre; a woman is, unlike a man, by nature and often by custom unfitted for intercourse for considerable periods at a time; a woman, moreover, has her thoughts and affections more concentrated on her children. apart from this the biological masculine traditions point to polygyny much more than the feminine traditions point to polyandry. although it is true that a woman can undergo a much greater amount of sexual intercourse than a man, it also remains true that the phenomena of courtship in nature have made it the duty of the male to be alert in offering his sexual attention to the female, whose part it has been to suspend her choice coyly until she is sure of her preference. polygynic conditions have also proved advantageous, as they have permitted the most vigorous and successful members of a community to have the largest number of mates and so to transmit their own superior qualities. "polygamy," writes woods hutchinson (_contemporary review_, oct., ), though he recognizes the advantages of monogamy, "as a racial institution, among animals as among men, has many solid and weighty considerations in its favor, and has resulted in both human and pre-human times, in the production of a very high type of both individual and social development." he points out that it promotes intelligence, coöperation, and division of labor, while the keen competition for women weeds out the weaker and less attractive males. among our european ancestors, alike among germans and celts, polygyny and other sexual forms existed as occasional variations. tacitus noted polygyny in germany, and cæsar found in britain that brothers would hold their wives in common, the children being reckoned to the man to whom the woman had been first given in marriage (see, e.g., traill's _social england_, vol. i, p. , for a discussion of this point). the husband's assistant, also, who might be called in to impregnate the wife when the husband was impotent, existed in germany, and was indeed a general indo-germanic institution (schrader, _reallexicon_, art. "zeugungshelfer"). the corresponding institution of the concubine has been still more deeply rooted and widespread. up to comparatively modern times, indeed, in accordance with the traditions of roman law, the concubine held a recognized and honorable position, below that of a wife but with definite legal rights, though it was not always, or indeed usually, legal for a married man to have a concubine. in ancient wales, as well as in rome, the concubine was accepted and never despised (r.b. holt, "marriage laws of the cymri," _journal anthropological institute_, aug. and nov., , p. ). the fact that when a concubine entered the house of a married man her dignity and legal position were less than those of the wife preserved domestic peace and safeguarded the wife's interests. (a korean husband cannot take a concubine under his roof without his wife's permission, but she rarely objects, and seems to enjoy the companionship, says louise jordan miln, _quaint korea_, , p. .) in old europe, we must remember, as dufour points out in speaking of the time of charlemagne (_histoire de la prostitution_, vol. iii, p. ), "concubine" was an honorable term; the concubine was by no means a mistress, and she could be accused of adultery just the same as a wife. in england, late in the thirteenth century, bracton speaks of the _concubina legitima_ as entitled to certain rights and considerations, and it was the same in other parts of europe, sometimes for several centuries later (see lea, _history of sacerdotal celibacy_, vol. i, p. ). the early christian church was frequently inclined to recognize the concubine, at all events if attached to an unmarried man, for we may trace in the church "the wish to look upon every permanent union of man or woman as possessing the character of a marriage in the eyes of god, and, therefore, in the judgment of the church" (art. "concubinage," smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_). this was the feeling of st. augustine (who had himself, before his conversion, had a concubine who was apparently a christian), and the council of toledo admitted an unmarried man who was faithful to a concubine. as the law of the catholic church grew more and more rigid, it necessarily lost touch with human needs. it was not so in the early church during the great ages of its vital growth. in those ages even the strenuous general rule of monogamy was relaxed when such relaxation seemed reasonable. this was so, for instance, in the case of sexual impotency. thus early in the eighth century gregory ii, writing to boniface, the apostle of germany, in answer to a question by the latter, replies that when a wife is incapable from physical infirmity from fulfilling her marital duties it is permissible for the husband to take a second wife, though he must not withdraw maintenance from the first. a little later archbishop egbert of york, in his _dialogus de institutione ecclesiastica_, though more cautiously, admits that when one of two married persons is infirm the other, with the permission of the infirm one, may marry again, but the infirm one is not allowed to marry again during the other's life. impotency at the time of marriage, of course, made the marriage void without the intervention of any ecclesiastical law. but aquinas, and later theologians, allow that an excessive disgust for a wife justifies a man in regarding himself as impotent in relation to her. these rules are, of course, quite distinct from the permissions to break the marriage laws granted to kings and princes; such permissions do not count as evidence of the church's rules, for, as the council of constantinople prudently decided in , "divine law can do nothing against kings" (art. "bigamy," _dictionary of christian antiquities_). the law of monogamy was also relaxed in cases of enforced or voluntary desertion. thus the council of vermerie ( ) enacted that if a wife will not accompany her husband when he is compelled to follow his lord into another land, he may marry again, provided he sees no hope of returning. theodore of canterbury ( ), again, pronounces that if a wife is carried away by the enemy and her husband cannot redeem her, he may marry again after an interval of a year, or, if there is a chance of redeeming her, after an interval of five years; the wife may do the same. such rules, though not general, show, as meyrick points out (art. "marriage," _dictionary of christian antiquities_), a willingness "to meet particular cases as they arise." as the canon law grew rigid and the catholic church lost its vital adaptibility, sexual variations ceased to be recognized within its sphere. we have to wait for the reformation for any further movement. many of the early protestant reformers, especially in germany, were prepared to admit a considerable degree of vital flexibility in sexual relationships. thus luther advised married women with impotent husbands, in cases where there was no wish or opportunity for divorce, to have sexual relations with another man, by preference the husband's brother; the children were to be reckoned to the husband ("die sexuelle frage bei luther," _mutterschutz_, sept., ). in england the puritan spirit, which so largely occupied itself with the reform of marriage, could not fail to be concerned with the question of sexual variations, and from time to time we find the proposal to legalize polygyny. thus, in , "a person of quality" published in london a small pamphlet dedicated to the lord protector, entitled _a remedy for uncleanness_. it was in the form of a number of queries, asking why we should not admit polygamy for the avoidance of adultery and infanticide. the writer inquires whether it may not "stand with a gracious spirit, and be every way consistent with the principles of a man fearing god and loving holiness, to have more women than one to his proper use.... he that takes another man's ox or ass is doubtless a transgressor; but he that puts himself out of the occasion of that temptation by keeping of his own seems to be a right honest and well-meaning man." more than a century later ( ), an able, learned, and distinguished london clergyman of high character (who had been a lawyer before entering the church), the rev. martin madan, also advocated polygamy in a book called _thelyphthora; or, a treatise on female ruin_. madan had been brought into close contact with prostitution through a chaplaincy at the lock hospital, and, like the puritan advocate of polygamy, he came to the conclusion that only by the reform of marriage is it possible to work against prostitution and the evils of sexual intercourse outside marriage. his remarkable book aroused much controversy and strong feeling against the author, so that he found it desirable to leave london and settle in the country. projects of marriage reform have never since come from the church, but from philosophers and moralists, though not rarely from writers of definitely religious character. sénancour, who was so delicate and sensitive a moralist in the sexual sphere, introduced a temperate discussion of polygamy into his _de l'amour_ (vol. ii, pp. - ). it seemed to him to be neither positively contrary nor positively conformed to the general tendency of our present conventions, and he concluded that "the method of conciliation, in part, would be no longer to require that the union of a man and a woman should only cease with the death of one of them." cope, the biologist, expressed a somewhat more decided opinion. under some circumstances, if all three parties agreed, he saw no objection to polygyny or polyandry. "there are some cases of hardship," he said, "which such permission would remedy. such, for instance, would be the case where the man or woman had become the victim of a chronic disease; or, when either party should be childless, and in other contingencies that could be imagined." there would be no compulsion in any direction, and full responsibility as at present. such cases could only arise exceptionally, and would not call for social antagonism. for the most part, cope remarks, "the best way to deal with polygamy is to let it alone" (e.d. cope, "the marriage problem," _open court_, nov. and , ). in england, dr. john chapman, the editor of the _westminster review_, and a close associate of the leaders of the radical movement in the victorian period, was opposed to state dictation as regards the form of marriage, and believed that a certain amount of sexual variation would be socially beneficial. thus he wrote in (in a private letter): "i think that as human beings become less selfish polygamy [i.e., polygyny], and even polyandry, in an ennobled form, will become increasingly frequent." james hinton, who, a few years earlier, had devoted much thought and attention to the sexual question, and regarded it as indeed the greatest of moral problems, was strongly in favor of a more vital flexibility of marriage regulations, an adaptation to human needs such as the early christian church admitted. marriage, he declared, must be "subordinated to service," since marriage, like the sabbath, is made for man and not man for marriage. thus in case of one partner becoming insane he would permit the other partner to marry again, the claim of the insane partner, in case of recovery, still remaining valid. that would be a form of polygamy, but hinton was careful to point out that by "polygamy" he meant "less a particular marriage-order than such an order as best serves good, and which therefore must be essentially variable. monogamy may be good, even the only good order, if of free choice; but a _law_ for it is another thing. the sexual relationship must be a _natural_ thing. the true social life will not be any fixed and definite relationship, as of monogamy, polygamy, or anything else, but a perfect subordination of every sexual relationship whatever to reason and human good." ellen key, who is an enthusiastic advocate of monogamy, and who believes that the civilized development of personal love removes all danger of the growth of polygamy, still admits the existence of variations. she has in mind such solutions of difficult problems as goethe had before him when he proposed at first in his _stella_ to represent the force of affection and tender memories as too strong to admit of the rupture of an old bond in the presence of a new bond. the problem of sexual variation, she remarks, however (_liebe und ethik_, p. ), has changed its form under modern conditions; it is no longer a struggle between the demand of society for a rigid marriage-order and the demand of the individual for sexual satisfaction, but it has become the problem of harmonizing the ennoblement of the race with heightened requirements of erotic happiness. she also points out that the existence of a partner who requires the other partner's care as a nurse or as an intellectual companion by no means deprives that other partner of the right to fatherhood or motherhood, and that such rights must be safeguarded (ellen key, _ueber liebe und ehe_, pp. - ). a prominent and extreme advocate of polygyny, not as a simple rare variation, but as a marriage order superior to monogamy, is to be found at the present day in professor christian von ehrenfels of prague (see, e.g., his _sexualethik_, ; "die postulate des lebens," _sexual-probleme_, oct., ; and letter to ellen key in her _ueber liebe und ehe_, p. ). ehrenfels believes that the number of men inapt for satisfactory reproduction is much larger than that of women, and that therefore when these are left out of account, a polygynic marriage order becomes necessary. he calls this "reproduction-marriage" (zeugungsehe), and considers that it will entirely replace the present marriage order, to which it is morally superior. it would be based on private contracts. ehrenfels holds that women would offer no objection, as a woman, he believes, attaches less importance to a man as a wooer than as the father of her child. ehrenfels's doctrine has been seriously attacked from many sides, and his proposals are not in the line of our progress. any radical modification of the existing monogamic order is not to be expected, even if it were generally recognized, which cannot be said to be the case, that it is desirable. the question of sexual variations, it must be remembered, is not a question of introducing an entirely new form of marriage, but only of recognizing the rights of individuals, in exceptional cases, to adopt such aberrant forms, and of recognizing the corresponding duties of such individuals to accept the responsibilities of any aberrant marriage forms they may find it best to adopt. so far as the question of sexual variations is more than this, it is, as hinton argued, a dynamical method of working towards the abolition of the perilous and dangerous promiscuity of prostitution. a rigid marriage order involves prostitution; a flexible marriage order largely--though not, it may be, entirely--renders prostitution unnecessary. the democratic morality of the present day, so far as the indications at present go, is opposed to the encouragement of a _quasi_-slave class, with diminished social rights, such as prostitutes always constitute in a more or less marked degree. it is fairly evident, also, that the rapidly growing influence of medical hygiene is on the same side. we may, therefore, reasonably expect in the future a slow though steady increase in the recognition, and even the extension, of those variations of the monogamic order which have, in reality, never ceased to exist. it is lamentable that at this period of the world's history, nearly two thousand years after the wise legislators of rome had completed their work, it should still be necessary to conclude that we are to-day only beginning to place marriage on a reasonable and humane basis. i have repeatedly pointed out how largely the canon law has been responsible for this arrest of development. one may say, indeed, that the whole attitude of the church, after it had once acquired complete worldly dominance, must be held responsible. in the earlier centuries the attitude of christianity was, on the whole, admirable. it held aloft great ideals but it refrained from enforcing those ideals at all costs; thus its ideals remained genuine and could not degenerate into mere hypocritical empty forms; much flexibility was allowed when it seemed to be for human good and made for the avoidance of evil and injustice. but when the church attained temporal power, and when that power was concentrated in the hands of popes who subordinated moral and religious interests to political interests, all the claims of reason and humanity were flung to the winds. the ideal was no more a fact than it was before, but it was now treated as a fact. human relationships remained what they were before, as complicated and as various, but henceforth one rigid pattern, admirable as an ideal but worse than empty as a form, was arbitrarily set up, and all deviations from it treated either as non-existent or damnable. the vitality was crushed out of the most central human institutions, and they are only to-day beginning to lift their heads afresh. if--to sum up--we consider the course which the regulation of marriage has run during the christian era, the only period which immediately concerns us, it is not difficult to trace the main outlines. marriage began as a private arrangement, which the church, without being able to control, was willing to bless, as it also blessed many other secular affairs of men, making no undue attempt to limit its natural flexibility to human needs. gradually and imperceptibly, however, without the medium of any law, christianity gained the complete control of marriage, coördinated it with its already evolved conceptions of the evil of lust, of the virtue of chastity, of the mortal sin of fornication, and, having through the influence of these dominating conceptions limited the flexibility of marriage in every possible direction, it placed it on a lofty but narrow pedestal as the sacrament of matrimony. for reasons which by no means lay in the nature of the sexual relationships, but which probably seemed cogent to sacerdotal legislators who assimilated it to ordination, matrimony was declared indissoluble. nothing was so easy to enter as the gate of matrimony, but, after the manner of a mouse-trap, it opened inwards and not outwards; once in there was no way out alive. the church's regulation of marriage while, like the celibacy of the clergy, it was a success from the point of view of ecclesiastical politics, and even at first from the point of view of civilization, for it at least introduced order into a chaotic society, was in the long run a failure from the point of view of society and morals. on the one hand it drifted into absurd subtleties and quibbles; on the other, not being based on either reason or humanity, it had none of that vital adaptability to the needs of life, which early christianity, while holding aloft austere ideals, still largely retained. on the side of tradition this code of marriage law became awkward and impracticable; on the biological side it was hopelessly false. the way was thus prepared for the protestant reintroduction of the conception of marriage as a contract, that conception being, however, brought forward less on its merits than as a protest against the difficulties and absurdities of the catholic canon law. the contractive view, which still largely persists even to-day, speedily took over much of the canon law doctrines of marriage, becoming in practice a kind of reformed and secularized canon law. it was somewhat more adapted to modern needs, but it retained much of the rigidity of the catholic marriage without its sacramental character, and it never made any attempt to become more than nominally contractive. it has been of the nature of an incongruous compromise and has represented a transitional phase towards free private marriage. we can recognize that phase in the tendency, well marked in all civilized lands, to an ever increasing flexibility of marriage. the idea, and even the fact, of marriage by consent and divorce by failure of that consent, which we are now approaching, has never indeed been quite extinct. in the latin countries it has survived with the tradition of roman law; in the english-speaking countries it is bound up with the spirit of puritanism which insists that in the things that concern the individual alone the individual himself shall be the supreme judge. that doctrine as applied to marriage was in england magnificently asserted by the genius of milton, and in america it has been a leaven which is still working in marriage legislation towards an inevitable goal which is scarcely yet in sight. the marriage system of the future, as it moves along its present course, will resemble the old christian system in that it will recognize the sacred and sacramental character of the sexual relationship, and it will resemble the civil conception in that it will insist that marriage, so far as it involves procreation, shall be publicly registered by the state. but in opposition to the church it will recognize that marriage, in so far as it is purely a sexual relationship, is a private matter the conditions of which must be left to the persons who alone are concerned in it; and in opposition to the civil theory it will recognize that marriage is in its essence a fact and not a contract, though it may give rise to contracts, so long as such contracts do not touch that essential fact. and in one respect it will go beyond either the ecclesiastical conception or the civil conception. man has in recent times gained control of his own procreative powers, and that control involves a shifting of the centre of gravity of marriage, in so far as marriage is an affair of the state, from the vagina to the child which is the fruit of the womb. marriage as a state institution will centre, not around the sexual relationship, but around the child which is the outcome of that relationship. in so far as marriage is an inviolable public contract it will be of such a nature that it will be capable of automatically covering with its protection every child that is born into the world, so that every child may possess a legal mother and a legal father. on the one side, therefore, marriage is tending to become less stringent; on the other side it is tending to become more stringent. on the personal side it is a sacred and intimate relationship with which the state has no concern; on the social side it is the assumption of the responsible public sponsorship of a new member of the state. some among us are working to further one of these aspects of marriage, some to further the other aspect. both are indispensable to establish a perfect harmony. it is necessary to hold the two aspects of marriage apart, in order to do equal justice to the individual and to society, but in so far as marriage approaches its ideal state those two aspects become one. we have now completed the discussion of marriage as it presents itself to the modern man born in what in mediæval days was called christendom. it is not an easy subject to discuss. it is indeed a very difficult subject, and only after many years is it possible to detect the main drift of its apparently opposing and confused currents when one is oneself in the midst of them. to an englishman it is, perhaps, peculiarly difficult, for the englishman is nothing if not insular; in that fact lie whatever virtues he possesses, as well as their reverse sides.[ ] yet it is worth while to attempt to climb to a height from which we can view the stream of social tendency in its true proportions and estimate its direction. it is necessary to do so if we value our mental peace in an age when men's minds are agitated by many petty movements which have nothing to do with their great temporal interests, to say nothing of their eternal interests. when we have attained a wide vision of the solid biological facts of life, when we have grasped the great historical streams of tradition,--which together make up the map of human affairs,--we can face serenely the little social transitions which take place in our own age, as they have taken place in every age. footnotes: [ ] rosenthal, of breslau, from the legal side, goes so far as to argue ("grundfragen des eheproblems," _die neue generation_, dec., ), that the intention of procreation is essential to the conception of legal marriage. [ ] j.a. godfrey, _science of sex_, p. . [ ] e.d. cope, "the marriage problem," _open court_, nov., . [ ] see _ante_, p. . [ ] wächter, _eheschiedungen_, pp. et seq.; esmein, _marriage en droit canonique_, vol. i, p. ; howard, _history of matrimonial institutions_, vol. ii, p. . howard (in agreement with lecky) considers that the freedom of divorce was only abused by a small section of the roman population, and that such abuse, so far as it existed, was not the cause of any decline of roman morals. [ ] the opinions of the christian fathers were very varied, and they were sometimes doubtful about them; see, e.g., the opinions collected by cranmer and enumerated by burnet, _history of reformation_ (ed. nares), vol. ii, p. . [ ] constantine, the first christian emperor, enacted a strict and peculiar divorce law (allowing a wife to divorce her husband only when he was a homicide, a poisoner, or a violator of sepulchres), which could not be maintained. in , therefore, anastasius decreed divorce by mutual consent. this was abolished by justinian, who only allowed divorce for various specified causes, among them, however, including the husband's adultery. these restrictions proved unworkable, and justinian's successor and nephew, justin, restored divorce by mutual consent. finally, in , leo the philosopher returned to justinian's enactment (see, e.g., smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_, arts. "adultery" and "marriage"). [ ] the element of reverence in the early german attitude towards women and the privileges which even the married woman enjoyed, so far as tacitus can be considered a reliable guide, seem to have been the surviving vestiges of an earlier social state on a more matriarchal basis. they are most distinct at the dawn of german history. from the first, however, though divorce by mutual consent seems to have been possible, german custom was pitiless to the married woman who was unfaithful, sterile, or otherwise offended, though for some time after the introduction of christianity it was no offence for the german husband to commit adultery (westermarck, _origin of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, p. ). [ ] "this form of marriage," says hobhouse (op. cit., vol. i, p. ), "is intimately associated with the extension of marital power." cf. howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. . the very subordinate position of the mediæval german woman is set forth by hagelstange, _süddeutsches bauernleben in mittelalter_, , pp. et seq. [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. ; smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_, art. _arrhæ_. it would appear, however, that the "bride-sale," of which tacitus speaks, was not strictly the sale of a chattel nor of a slave-girl, but the sale of the _mund_ or protectorship over the girl. it is true the distinction may not always have been clear to those who took part in the transaction. similarly the anglo-saxon betrothal was not so much a payment of the bride's price to her kinsmen, although as a matter of fact, they might make a profit out of the transaction, as a covenant stipulating for the bride's honorable treatment as wife and widow. reminiscences of this, remark pollock and maitland (op. cit., vol. ii, p. ), may be found in "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual of the english church." [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. - , . the _arrha_ crept into roman and byzantine law during the sixth century. [ ] j. wickham legg, _ecclesiological essays_, p. . it may be added that the idea of the subordination of the wife to the husband appeared in the christian church at a somewhat early period, and no doubt independently of germanic influences; st. augustine said (sermo xxxvii, cap. vi) that a good _materfamilias_ must not be ashamed to call herself her husband's servant (_ancilla_). [ ] see, e.g., l. gautier, _la chevalerie_, ch. ix. [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. et seq.; esmein, _op. cit._, vol. i, pp. et seq.; smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_ art. "contract of marriage." [ ] any later changes in catholic canon law have merely been in the direction of making matrimony still narrower and still more remote from the practice of the world. by a papal decree of , civil marriages and marriages in non-catholic places of worship are declared to be not only sinful and unlawful (which they were before), but actually null and void. [ ] e.s.p. haynes, _our divorce law_, p. . [ ] it was the council of trent, in the sixteenth century, which made ecclesiastical rites essential to binding marriage; but even then fifty-six prelates voted against that decision. [ ] esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. . [ ] it is sometimes said that the catholic church is able to diminish the evils of its doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage by the number of impediments to marriage it admits, thus affording free scope for dispensations from marriage. this scarcely seems to be the case. dr. p.j. hayes, who speaks with authority as chancellor of the catholic archdiocese of new york, states ("impediments to marriage in the catholic church," _north american review_, may, ) that even in so modern and so mixed a community as this there are few applications for dispensations on account of impediments; there are , catholic marriages per annum in new york city, but scarcely five per annum are questioned as to validity, and these chiefly on the ground of bigamy. [ ] the canonists, say pollock and maitland (loc. cit.), "made a capricious mess of the marriage law." "seldom," says howard (_op. cit._, vol i, p. ), "have mere theory and subtle quibbling had more disastrous consequences in practical life than in the case of the distinction between _sponsalia de præsenti_ and _de futuro_." [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. et seq. on the whole, however, luther's opinion was that marriage, though a sacred and mysterious thing, is not a sacrament; his various statements on the matter are brought together by strampff, _luther über die ehe_, pp. - . [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. et seq. [ ] probably as a result of the somewhat confused and incoherent attitude of the reformers, the canon law of marriage, in a modified form, really persisted in protestant countries to a greater extent than in catholic countries; in france, especially, it has been much more profoundly modified (esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. ). [ ] the quaker conception of marriage is still vitally influential. "why," says mrs. besant (_marriage_, p. ), "should not we take a leaf out of the quaker's book, and substitute for the present legal forms of marriage a simple declaration publicly made?" [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. . the actual practice in pennsylvania appears, however, to differ little from that usual in the other states. [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. . "it is, indeed, wonderful," howard remarks, "that a great nation, priding herself on a love of equity and social liberty, should thus for five generations tolerate an invidious indulgence, rather than frankly and courageously to free herself from the shackles of an ecclesiastical tradition." [ ] "the enforced continuance of an unsuccessful union is perhaps the most immoral thing which a civilized society ever countenanced, far less encouraged," says godfrey (_science of sex_, p. ). "the morality of a union is dependent upon mutual desire, and a union dictated by any other cause is outside the moral pale, however custom may sanction it, or religion and law condone it." [ ] adultery in most savage and barbarous societies is regarded, in the words of westermarck, as "an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an offence against property;" the seducer is, therefore, punished as a thief, by fine, mutilation, even death (_origin of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, pp. et seq.; id., _history of human marriage_, p. ). among some peoples it is the seducer who alone suffers, and not the wife. [ ] it is sometimes said in defence of the claim for damages for seducing a wife that women are often weak and unable to resist masculine advances, so that the law ought to press heavily on the man who takes advantage of that weakness. this argument seems a little antiquated. the law is beginning to accept the responsibility even of married women in other respects, and can scarcely refuse to accept it for the control of her own person. moreover, if it is so natural for the woman to yield, it is scarcely legitimate to punish the man with whom she has performed that natural act. it must further be said that if a wife's adultery is only an irresponsible feminine weakness, a most undue brutality is inflicted on her by publicly demanding her pecuniary price from her lover. if, indeed, we accept this argument, we ought to reintroduce the mediæval girdle of chastity. [ ] howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. . [ ] this rule is, in england, by no means a dead letter. thus, in , a wife who had left her home, leaving a letter stating that her husband was not the father of her child, subsequently brought an action for divorce, which, as the husband made no defence, she obtained. but, the king's proctor having learnt the facts, the decree was rescinded. then the husband brought an action for divorce, but could not obtain it, having already admitted his own adultery by leaving the previous case undefended. he took the matter up to the court of appeal, but his petition was dismissed, the court being of opinion that "to grant relief in such a case was not in the interest of public morality." the safest way in england to render what is legally termed marriage absolutely indissoluble is for both parties to commit adultery. [ ] magnus hirschfeld, _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, oct., . [ ] h. adner, "die richterliche beurteilung der 'zerrütteten' ehe," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, teil . [ ] gross-hoffinger, _die schichsale der frauen und die prostitution_, ; bloch presents a full summary of the results of this inquiry in an _appendix_ to ch. x of his _sexual life of our times_. [ ] divorce in the united states is fully discussed by howard, op. cit., vol. iii. [ ] h. münsterberg, _the americans_, p. . similarly, dr. felix adler, in a study of "the ethics of divorce" (_the ethical record_, , p. ), although not himself an admirer of divorce, believes that the first cause of the frequency of divorce in the united states is the high position of women. [ ] in an important article, with illustrative cases, on "the neuro-psychical element in conjugal aversion" (_journal of nervous and mental diseases_, sept., ) smith baker refers to the cases in which "a man may find himself progressively becoming antipathetic, through recognition of the comparatively less developed personality of the one to whom he happens to be married. marrying, perhaps, before he has learned to accurately judge of character and its tendencies, he awakens to the fact that he is honorably bound to live all his physiological life with, not a real companion, but a mere counterfeit." the cases are still more numerous, the same writer observes, in which the sexual appetite of the wife fails to reveal itself except as the result of education and practice. "this sort of natural-unnatural condition is the source of much disappointment, and of intense suffering on the part of the woman as well as of family dissatisfaction." yet such causes for divorce are far too complex to be stated in statute-books, and far too intimate to be pleaded in courts of justice. [ ] ten years ago, if not still, the united states came fourth in order of frequency of divorce, after japan, denmark, and switzerland. [ ] lecky, the historian of european morals, has pointed out (_democracy and liberty_, vol. ii, p. ) the close connection generally between facility of divorce and a high standard of sexual morality. [ ] so, e.g., hobhouse, _morals in evolution_, vol. i, p. . [ ] in england this step was taken in the reign of henry vii, when the forcible marriage of women against their will was forbidden by statute ( henry vii, c. ). even in the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the question of forcible marriage had again to be dealt with (_inderwick_, interregnum, pp. et seq.). [ ] woods hutchinson (_contemporary review_, sept., ) argues that when there is epilepsy, insanity, moral perversion, habitual drunkenness, or criminal conduct of any kind, divorce, for the sake of the next generation, should be not permissive but compulsory. mere divorce, however, would not suffice to attain the ends desired. [ ] similarly in germany, wanda von sacher-masoch, who had suffered much from marriage, whatever her own defects of character may have been, writes at the end of _meine lebensbeichte_ that "as long as women have not the courage to regulate, without state-interference or church-interference, relationships which concern themselves alone, they will not be free." in place of this old decayed system of marriage so opposed to our modern thoughts and feelings, she would have private contracts made by a lawyer. in england, at a much earlier period, charles kingsley, who was an ardent friend to women's movements, and whose feeling for womanhood amounted almost to worship, wrote to j.s. mill: "there will never be a good world for women until the last remnant of the canon law is civilized off the earth." [ ] "no fouler institution was ever invented," declared auberon herbert many years ago, expressing, before its time, a feeling which has since become more common; "and its existence drags on, to our deep shame, because we have not the courage frankly to say that the sexual relations of husband and wife, or those who live together, concern their own selves, and do not concern the prying, gloating, self-righteous, and intensely untruthful world outside." [ ] hobhouse, op. cit. vol. i, p. . [ ] the same conception of marriage as a contract still persists to some extent also in the united states, whither it was carried by the early protestants and puritans. no definition of marriage is indeed usually laid down by the states, but, howard says (op. cit., vol. ii, p. ), "in effect matrimony is treated as a relation partaking of the nature of both status and contract." [ ] this point of view has been vigorously set forth by paul and victor margueritte, _quelques idées_. [ ] i may remark that this was pointed out, and its consequences vigorously argued, many years ago by c.g. garrison, "limits of divorce," _contemporary review_, feb., . "it may safely be asserted," he concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy, procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of that division of the rights of persons." marriage is not contract, but conduct. [ ] see, e.g., p. and v. margueritte, op. cit. [ ] as quoted by howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. . [ ] ellen key similarly (_ueber liebe und ehe_, p. ) remarks that to talk of "the duty of life-long fidelity" is much the same as to talk of "the duty of life-long health." a man may promise, she adds, to do his best to preserve his life, or his love; he cannot unconditionally undertake to preserve them. [ ] hobhouse, op. cit., vol. , pp. , - ; cf. p. and v. margueritte, _quelques idées_. [ ] "divorce," as garrison puts it ("limits of divorce," _contemporary review_, feb., ), "is the judicial announcement that conduct once connubial in character and purpose, has lost these qualities.... divorce is a question of fact, and not a license to break a promise." [ ] see, _ante_, p. . [ ] it has been necessary to discuss reproduction in the first chapter of the present volume, and it will again be necessary in the concluding chapter. here we are only concerned with procreation as an element of marriage. [ ] nietzold, _die ehe in Ægypten zur ptolemäisch-römischen zeit_, , p. . this bond also accorded rights to any children that might be born during its existence. [ ] see, e.g., ellen key, _mutter und kind_, p. . the necessity for the combination of greater freedom of sexual relationships with greater stringency of parental relationships was clearly realized at an earlier period by another able woman writer, miss j.h. clapperton, in her notable book, _scientific meliorism_, published in . "legal changes," she wrote (p. ), "are required in two directions, viz., towards greater freedom as to marriage and greater strictness as to parentage. the marriage union is essentially a private matter with which society has no call and no right to interfere. childbirth, on the contrary, is a public event. it touches the interests of the whole nation." [ ] ellen key, _liebe und ehe_, p. ; cf. the same author's _century of the child_. [ ] in germany alone , "illegitimate" children are born every year, and the number is rapidly increasing; in england it is only , per annum, the strong feeling which often exists against such births in england (as also in france) leading to the wide adoption of methods for preventing conception. [ ] "where are real monogamists to be found?" asked schopenhauer in his essay, "ueber die weibe." and james hinton was wont to ask: "what is the meaning of maintaining monogamy? is there any chance of getting it, i should like to know? do you call english life monogamous?" [ ] "almost everywhere," says westermarck of polygyny (which he discusses fully in chs. xx-xxii of his _history of human marriage_) "it is confined to the smaller part of the people, the vast majority being monogamous." maurice gregory (_contemporary review_, sept., ) gives statistics showing that nearly everywhere the tendency is towards equality in number of the sexes. [ ] in a polygamous land a man is of course as much bound by his obligations to his second wife as to his first. among ourselves the man's "second wife" is degraded with the name of "mistress," and the worse he treats her and her children the more his "morality" is approved, just as the catholic church, when struggling to establish sacerdotal celibacy, approved more highly the priest who had illegitimate relations with women than the priest who decently and openly married. if his neglect induces a married man's mistress to make known her relationship to him the man is justified in prosecuting her, and his counsel, assured of general sympathy, will state in court that "this woman has even been so wicked as to write to the prosecutor's wife!" [ ] howard, in his judicial _history of matrimonial institutions_ (vol. ii. pp. et seq.), cannot refrain from drawing attention to the almost insanely wild character of the language used in england not so many years ago by those who opposed marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and he contrasts it with the much more reasonable attitude of the catholic church. "pictures have been drawn," he remarks, "of the moral anarchy such marriages must produce, which are read by american, colonial, and continental observers with a bewilderment that is not unmixed with disgust, and are, indeed, a curious illustration of the extreme insularity of the english mind." so recently as a.d. a bill was brought into the british house of lords proposing that desertion without cause for two years shall be a ground for divorce, a reasonable and humane measure which is law in most parts of the civilized world. the lord chancellor (lord loreburn), a liberal, and in the sphere of politics an enlightened and sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was "absolutely impossible." the house rejected the proposal by votes to . even the marriage decrees of the council of trent were not affirmed by such an overwhelming majority. in matters of marriage legislation england has scarcely yet emerged from the middle ages. chapter xi. the art of love. marriage not only for procreation--theologians on the _sacramentum solationis_--importance of the _art of love_--the basis of stability in marriage and the condition for right procreation--the art of love the bulwark against divorce--the unity of love and marriage a principle of modern morality--christianity and the art of love--ovid--the art of love among primitive peoples--sexual initiation in africa and elsewhere--the tendency to spontaneous development of the art of love in early life--flirtation--sexual ignorance in women--the husband's place in sexual initiation--sexual ignorance in men--the husband's education for marriage--the injury done by the ignorance of husbands--the physical and mental results of unskilful coitus--women understand the art of love better than men--ancient and modern opinions concerning frequency of coitus--variation in sexual capacity--the sexual appetite--the art of love based on the biological facts of courtship--the art of pleasing women--the lover compared to the musician--the proposal as a part of courtship--divination in the art of love--the importance of the preliminaries in courtship--the unskilful husband frequently the cause of the frigid wife--the difficulty of courtship--simultaneous orgasm--the evils of incomplete gratification in women--coitus interruptus--coitus reservatus--the human method of coitus--variations in coitus--posture in coitus--the best time for coitus--the influence of coitus in marriage--the advantages of absence in marriage--the risks of absence--jealousy--the primitive function of jealousy--its predominance among animals, savages, etc., and in pathological states--an anti-social emotion--jealousy incompatible with the progress of civilization--the possibility of loving more than one person at a time--platonic friendship--the conditions which make it possible--the maternal element in woman's love--the final development of conjugal love--the problem of love one of the greatest of social questions. it will be clear from the preceding discussion that there are two elements in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete. on the one hand marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only sustainable as a reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the cultivation of such love. on the other hand marriage is a method for propagating the race and having its end in offspring. in the first aspect its aim is erotic, in the second parental. both these ends have long been generally recognized. we find them set forth, for instance, in the marriage service of the church of england, where it is stated that marriage exists both for "the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other," and also for "the procreation of children." without the factor of mutual love the proper conditions for procreation cannot exist; without the factor of procreation the sexual union, however beautiful and sacred a relationship it may in itself be, remains, in essence, a private relationship, incomplete as a marriage and without public significance. it becomes necessary, therefore, to supplement the preceding discussion of marriage in its general outlines by a final and more intimate consideration of marriage in its essence, as embracing the art of love and the science of procreation. there has already been occasion from time to time to refer to those who, starting from various points of view, have sought to limit the scope of marriage and to suppress one or other of its elements. (see e.g., _ante_, p. .) in modern times the tendency has been to exclude the factor of procreation, and to regard the relationship of marriage as exclusively lying in the relationship of the two parties to each other. apart from the fact, which it is unnecessary again to call attention to, that, from the public and social point of view, a marriage without children, however important to the two persons concerned, is a relationship without any public significance, it must further be said that, in the absence of children, even the personal erotic life itself is apt to suffer, for in the normal erotic life, especially in women, sexual love tends to grow into parental love. moreover, the full development of mutual love and dependence is with difficulty attained, and there is absence of that closest of bonds, the mutual coöperation of two persons in producing a new person. the perfect and complete marriage in its full development is a trinity. those who seek to eliminate the erotic factor from marriage as unessential, or at all events as only permissible when strictly subordinated to the end of procreation, have made themselves heard from time to time at various periods. even the ancients, greeks and romans alike, in their more severe moments advocated the elimination of the erotic element from marriage, and its confinement to extra-marital relationships, that is so far as men were concerned; for the erotic needs of married women they had no provision to make. montaigne, soaked in classic traditions, has admirably set forth the reasons for eliminating the erotic interest from marriage: "one does not marry for oneself, whatever may be said; a man marries as much, or more, for his posterity, for his family; the usage and interest of marriage touch our race beyond ourselves.... thus it is a kind of incest to employ, in this venerable and sacred parentage, the efforts and the extravagances of amorous license" (_essais_, bk. i, ch. xxix; bk. iii, ch. v). this point of view easily commended itself to the early christians, who, however, deliberately overlooked its reverse side, the establishment of erotic interests outside marriage. "to have intercourse except for procreation," said clement of alexandria (_pædagogus_, bk. ii, ch. x), "is to do injury to nature." while, however, that statement is quite true of the lower animals, it is not true of man, and especially not true of civilized man, whose erotic needs are far more developed, and far more intimately associated with the finest and highest part of the organism, than is the case among animals generally. for the animal, sexual desire, except when called forth by the conditions involved by procreative necessities, has no existence. it is far otherwise in man, for whom, even when the question of procreation is altogether excluded, sexual love is still an insistent need, and even a condition of the finest spiritual development. the catholic church, therefore, while regarding with admiration a continence in marriage which excluded sexual relations except for the end of procreation, has followed st. augustine in treating intercourse apart from procreation with considerable indulgence, as only a venial sin. here, however, the church was inclined to draw the line, and it appears that in innocent xi condemned the proposition that "the conjugal act, practiced for pleasure alone, is exempt even from venial sin." protestant theologians have been inclined to go further, and therein they found some authority even in catholic writers. john à lasco, the catholic bishop who became a protestant and settled in england during edward vi's reign, was following many mediæval theologians when he recognized the _sacramentum solationis_, in addition to _proles_, as an element of marriage. cranmer, in his marriage service of , stated that "mutual help and comfort," as well as procreation, enter into the object of marriage (wickham legg, _ecclesiological essays_, p. ; howard, _matrimonial institutions_, vol. i, p. ). modern theologians speak still more distinctly. "the sexual act," says northcote (_christianity and sex problems_, p. ), "is a love act. duly regulated, it conduces to the ethical welfare of the individual and promotes his efficiency as a social unit. the act itself and its surrounding emotions stimulate within the organism the powerful movements of a vast psychic life." at an earlier period also, schleiermacher, in his _letters on lucinde_, had pointed out the great significance of love for the spiritual development of the individual. edward carpenter truly remarks, in _love's coming of age_, that sexual love is not only needed for physical creation, but also for spiritual creation. bloch, again, in discussing this question (_the sexual life of our time_, ch. vi) concludes that "love and the sexual embrace have not only an end in procreation, they constitute an end in themselves, and are necessary for the life, development, and inner growth of the individual himself." it is argued by some, who admit mutual love as a constituent part of marriage, that such love, once recognized at the outset, may be taken for granted, and requires no further discussion; there is, they believe, no art of love to be either learnt or taught; it comes by nature. nothing could be further from the truth, most of all as regards civilized man. even the elementary fact of coitus needs to be taught. no one could take a more austerely puritanic view of sexual affairs than sir james paget, and yet paget (in his lecture on "sexual hypochondriasis") declared that "ignorance about sexual affairs seems to be a notable characteristic of the more civilized part of the human race. among ourselves it is certain that the method of copulating needs to be taught, and that they to whom it is not taught remain quite ignorant about it." gallard, again, remarks similarly (in his _clinique des maladies des femmes_) that young people, like daphnis in longus's pastoral, need a beautiful lycenion to give them a solid education, practical as well as theoretical, in these matters, and he considers that mothers should instruct their daughters at marriage, and fathers their sons. philosophers have from time to time recognized the gravity of these questions and have discoursed concerning them; thus epicurus, as plutarch tells us,[ ] would discuss with his disciples various sexual matters, such as the proper time for coitus; but then, as now, there were obscurantists who would leave even the central facts of life to the hazards of chance or ignorance, and these presumed to blame the philosopher. there is, however, much more to be learnt in these matters than the mere elementary facts of sexual intercourse. the art of love certainly includes such primary facts of sexual hygiene, but it involves also the whole erotic discipline of marriage, and that is why its significance is so great, for the welfare and happiness of the individual, for the stability of sexual unions, and indirectly for the race, since the art of love is ultimately the art of attaining the right conditions for procreation. "it seems extremely probable," wrote professor e.d. cope,[ ] "that if this subject could be properly understood, and become, in the details of its practical conduct, a part of a written social science, the monogamic marriage might attain a far more general success than is often found in actual life." there can be no doubt whatever that this is the case. in the great majority of marriages success depends exclusively upon the knowledge of the art of love possessed by the two persons who enter into it. a life-long monogamic union may, indeed, persist in the absence of the slightest inborn or acquired art of love, out of religious resignation or sheer stupidity. but that attitude is now becoming less common. as we have seen in the previous chapter, divorces are becoming more frequent and more easily obtainable in every civilized country. this is a tendency of civilization; it is the result of a demand that marriage should be a real relationship, and that when it ceases to be real as a relationship it should also cease as a form. that is an inevitable tendency, involved in our growing democratization, for the democracy seems to care more for realities than for forms, however venerable. we cannot fight against it; and we should be wrong to fight against it even if we could. yet while we are bound to aid the tendency to divorce, and to insist that a valid marriage needs the wills of two persons to maintain it, it is difficult for anyone to argue that divorce is in itself desirable. it is always a confession of failure. two persons, who, if they have been moved in the slightest degree by the normal and regular impulse of sexual selection, at the outset regarded each other as lovable, have, on one side or the other or on both, proved not lovable. there has been a failure in the fundamental art of love. if we are to counterbalance facility of divorce our only sound course is to increase the stability of marriage, and that is only possible by cultivating the art of love, the primal foundation of marriage. it is by no means unnecessary to emphasize this point. there are still many persons who have failed to realize it. there are even people who seem to imagine that it is unimportant whether or not pleasure is present in the sexual act. "i do not believe mutual pleasure in the sexual act has any particular bearing on the happiness of life," once remarked dr. howard a. kelly.[ ] such a statement means--if indeed it means anything--that the marriage tie has no "particular bearing" on human happiness; it means that the way must be freely opened to adultery and divorce. even the most perverse ascetic of the middle ages scarcely ventured to make a statement so flagrantly opposed to the experiences of humanity, and the fact that a distinguished gynecologist of the twentieth century can make it, with almost the air of stating a truism, is ample justification for the emphasis which it has nowadays become necessary to place on the art of love. "uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis," was indeed an ancient pagan dictum. but it is not in harmony with modern ideas. it was not even altogether in harmony with christianity. for our modern morality, as ellen key well says, the unity of love and marriage is a fundamental principle.[ ] the neglect of the art of love has not been a universal phenomenon; it is more especially characteristic of christendom. the spirit of ancient rome undoubtedly predisposed europe to such a neglect, for with their rough cultivation of the military virtues and their inaptitude for the finer aspects of civilization the romans were willing to regard love as a permissible indulgence, but they were not, as a people, prepared to cultivate it as an art. their poets do not, in this matter, represent the moral feeling of their best people. it is indeed a highly significant fact that ovid, the most distinguished latin poet who concerned himself much with the art of love, associated that art not so much with morality as with immorality. as he viewed it, the art of love was less the art of retaining a woman in her home than the art of winning her away from it; it was the adulterer's art rather than the husband's art. such a conception would be impossible out of europe, but it proved very favorable to the growth of the christian attitude towards the art of love. love as an art, as well as a passion, seems to have received considerable study in antiquity, though the results of that study have perished. cadmus milesius, says suidas, wrote fourteen great volumes on the passion of love, but they are not now to be found. rohde (_das griechische roman_, p. ) has a brief section on the greek philosophic writers on love. bloch (_beiträge zur psychopathia sexualis_, teil i, p. ) enumerates the ancient women writers who dealt with the art of love. montaigne (_essais_, liv. ii, ch. v) gives a list of ancient classical lost books on love. burton (_anatomy of melancholy_, bell's edition, vol. iii, p. ) also gives a list of lost books on love. burton himself dealt at length with the manifold signs of love and its grievous symptoms. boissier de sauvages, early in the eighteenth century, published a latin thesis, _de amore_, discussing love somewhat in the same spirit as burton, as a psychic disease to be treated and cured. the breath of christian asceticism had passed over love; it was no longer, as in classic days, an art to be cultivated, but only a malady to be cured. the true inheritor of the classic spirit in this, as in many other matters, was not the christian world, but the world of islam. _the perfumed garden_ of the sheik nefzaoui was probably written in the city of tunis early in the sixteenth century by an author who belonged to the south of tunis. its opening invocation clearly indicates that it departs widely from the conception of love as a disease: "praise be to god who has placed man's greatest pleasures in the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest enjoyments to woman." the arabic book, _el ktab_, or "the secret laws of love," is a modern work, by omer haleby abu othmân, who was born in algiers of a moorish mother and a turkish father. for christianity the permission to yield to the sexual impulse at all was merely a concession to human weakness, an indulgence only possible when it was carefully hedged and guarded on every side. almost from the first the christians began to cultivate the art of virginity, and they could not so dislocate their point of view as to approve of the art of love. all their passionate adoration in the sphere of sex went out towards chastity. possessed by such ideals, they could only tolerate human love at all by giving to one special form of it a religious sacramental character, and even that sacramental halo imparted to love a quasi-ascetic character which precluded the idea of regarding love as an art.[ ] love gained a religious element but it lost a moral element, since, outside christianity, the art of love is part of the foundation of sexual morality, wherever such morality in any degree exists. in christendom love in marriage was left to shift for itself as best it might; the art of love was a dubious art which was held to indicate a certain commerce with immorality and even indeed to be itself immoral. that feeling was doubtless strengthened by the fact that ovid was the most conspicuous master in literature of the art of love. his literary reputation--far greater than it now seems to us[ ]--gave distinction to his position as the author of the chief extant text-book of the art of love. with humanism and the renaissance and the consequent realization that christianity had overlooked one side of life, ovid's _ars amatoria_ was placed on a pedestal it had not occupied before or since. it represented a step forward in civilization; it revealed love not as a mere animal instinct or a mere pledged duty, but as a complex, humane, and refined relationship which demanded cultivation; "_arte regendus amor_." boccaccio made a wise teacher put ovid's _ars amatoria_ into the hands of the young. in an age still oppressed by the mediæval spirit, it was a much needed text-book, but it possessed the fatal defect, as a text-book, of presenting the erotic claims of the individual as divorced from the claims of good social order. it never succeeded in establishing itself as a generally accepted manual of love, and in the eyes of many it served to stamp the subject it dealt with as one that lies outside the limits of good morals. when, however, we take a wider survey, and inquire into the discipline for life that is imparted to the young in many parts of the world, we shall frequently find that the art of love, understood in varying ways, is an essential part of that discipline. summary, though generally adequate, as are the educational methods of primitive peoples, they not seldom include a training in those arts which render a woman agreeable to a man and a man agreeable to a woman in the relationship of marriage, and it is often more or less dimly realized that courtship is not a mere preliminary to marriage, but a biologically essential part of the marriage relationship throughout. sexual initiation is carried out very thoroughly in azimba land, central africa. h. crawford angus, the first european to visit the azimba people, lived among them for a year, and has described the chensamwali, or initiation ceremony, of girls. "at the first sign of menstruation in a young girl, she is taught the mysteries of womanhood, and is shown the different positions for sexual intercourse. the vagina is handled freely, and if not previously enlarged (which may have taken place at the harvest festival when a boy and girl are allowed to 'keep house' during the day-time by themselves, and when quasi-intercourse takes place) it is now enlarged by means of a horn or corn-cob, which is inserted and secured in place by bands of bark cloth. when all signs [of menstruation] have passed, a public announcement of a dance is given to the women in the village. at this dance no men are allowed to be present, and it was only with a great deal of trouble that i managed to witness it. the girl to be 'danced' is led back from the bush to her mother's hut where she is kept in solitude to the morning of the dance. on that morning she is placed on the ground in a sitting position, while the dancers form a ring around her. several songs are then sung with reference to the genital organs. the girl is then stripped and made to go through the mimic performance of sexual intercourse, and if the movements are not enacted properly, as is often the case when the girl is timid and bashful, one of the older women will take her place and show her how she is to perform. many songs about the relation between men and women are sung, and the girl is instructed as to all her duties when she becomes a wife. she is also instructed that during the time of her menstruation she is unclean, and that during her monthly period she must close her vulva with a pad of fibre used for the purpose. the object of the dance is to inculcate to the girl the knowledge of married life. the girl is taught to be faithful to her husband and to try to bear children, and she is also taught the various arts and methods of making herself seductive and pleasing to her husband, and of thus retaining him in her power." (h. crawford angus, "the chensamwali," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ). in abyssinia, as well as on the zanzibar coast, according to stecker (quoted by ploss-bartels, _das weib_, section ) young girls are educated in buttock movements which increase their charm in coitus. these movements, of a rotatory character, are called duk-duk. to be ignorant of duk-duk is a great disgrace to a girl. among the swahili women of zanzibar, indeed, a complete artistic system of hip-movements is cultivated, to be displayed in coitus. it prevails more especially on the coast, and a swahili woman is not counted a "lady" (bibi) unless she is acquainted with this art. from sixty to eighty young women practice this buttock dance together for some eight hours a day, laying aside all clothing, and singing the while. the public are not admitted. the dance, which is a kind of imitation of coitus, has been described by zache ("sitten und gebräuche der suaheli," _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft - , p. ). the more accomplished dancers excite general admiration. during the latter part of this initiation various feats are imposed, to test the girl's skill and self-control. for instance, she must dance up to a fire and remove from the midst of the fire a vessel full of water to the brim, without spilling it. at the end of three months the training is over, and the girl goes home in festival attire. she is now eligible for marriage. similar customs are said to prevail in the dutch east indies and elsewhere. the hebrews had erotic dances, which were doubtless related to the art of love in marriage, and among the greeks, and their disciples the romans, the conception of love as an art which needs training, skill, and cultivation, was still extant. that conception was crushed by christianity which, although it sanctified the institution of matrimony, degraded that sexual love which is normally the content of marriage. in the question was brought before a court of love by a baron and lady of champagne, whether love is compatible with marriage. "no," said the baron, "i admire and respect the sweet intimacy of married couples, but i cannot call it love. love desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. now husbands and wives boldly avow their relationship; they possess each other without contradiction and without reserve. it cannot then be love that they experience." and after mature deliberation the ladies of the court of love adopted the baron's conclusions (e. de la bedollière, _histoire des moeurs des français_, vol. iii, p. ). there was undoubtedly an element of truth in the baron's arguments. yet it may well be doubted whether in any non-christian country it would ever have been possible to obtain acceptance for the doctrine that love and marriage are incompatible. this doctrine was, however, as ribot points out in his _logique des sentiments_, inevitable, when, as among the medieval nobility, marriage was merely a political or domestic treaty and could not, therefore, be a method of moral elevation. "why is it," asked rétif de la bretonne, towards the end of the eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more seductive and more loveable than honest women? it is because, like the greek courtesans to whom grace and voluptuousness were taught, they have studied the art of pleasing. among the foolish detractors of my _contemporaines_, not one guessed the philosophic aim of nearly everyone of these tales, which is to suggest to honest women the ways of making themselves loved. i should like to see the institution of initiations, such as those of the ancients.... to-day the happiness of the human species is abandoned to chance; all the experience of women is individual, like that of animals; it is lost with those women who, being naturally amiable, might have taught others to become so. prostitutes alone make a superficial study of it, and the lessons they receive are, for the most part, as harmful as those of respectable greek and roman matrons were holy and honorable, only tending to wantonness, to the exhaustion alike of the purse and of the physical faculties, while the aim of the ancient matrons was the union of husband and wife and their mutual attachment through pleasure. the christian religion annihilated the mysteries as infamous, but we may regard that annihilation as one of the wrongs done by christianity to humanity, as the work of men with little enlightenment and bitter zeal, dangerous puritans who were the natural enemies of marriage" (rétif de la bretonne, _monsieur nicolas_, reprint of , vol. x, pp. - ). it may be added that dühren (dr. iwan bloch) regards rétif as "a master in the _ars amandi_," and discusses him from this point of view in his _rétif de la bretonne_ (pp. - ). whether or not christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be doubted that throughout christendom there has been a lamentable failure to recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically but morally, of the art of love. even in the great revival of sexual enlightenment now taking place around us there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. for the most part, sexual instruction as at present understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-shalt-nots. if that failure were due to the conscious and deliberate recognition that while the art of love must be based on physiological and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle, too complex, too personal, to be formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and sound. but it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse. love-making is indeed, like other arts, an art that is partly natural--"an art that nature makes"--and therefore it is a natural subject for learning and exercising in play. children left to themselves tend, both playfully and seriously, to practice love, alike on the physical and the psychic sides.[ ] but this play is on its physical side sternly repressed by their elders, when discovered, and on its psychic side laughed at. among the well-bred classes it is usually starved out at an early age. after puberty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of love is largely experimented and practised, especially in england and america, the form of flirtation. in its elementary manifestations flirting is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage when courtship may yet, if desired, be broken off. under modern civilized conditions, however, flirtation is often more than this. these conditions make marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a matter to be entered on lightly; they make actual sexual intercourse dangerous as well as disreputable. flirtation adapts itself to these conditions. instead of being merely the preliminary stage of normal courtship, it is developed into a form of sexual gratification as complete as due observation of the conditions already mentioned will allow. in germany, and especially in france where it is held in great abhorrence, this is the only form of flirtation known; it is regarded as an exportation from the united states and is denominated "flirtage." its practical outcome is held to be the "demi-vierge," who knows and has experienced the joys of sex while yet retaining her hymen intact. this degenerate form of flirtation, cultivated not as a part of courtship, but for its own sake, has been well described by forel (_die sexuelle frage_, pp. - ). he defines it as including "all those expressions of the sexual instinct of one individual towards another individual which excite the other's sexual instinct, coitus being always excepted." in the beginning it may be merely a provocative look or a simple apparently unintentional touch or contact; and by slight gradations it may pass on to caresses, kisses, embraces, and even extend to pressure or friction of the sexual parts, sometimes leading to orgasm. thus, forel mentions, a sensuous woman by the pressure of her garments in dancing can produce ejaculation in her partner. most usually the process is that voluptuous contact and revery which, in english slang, is called "spooning." from first to last there need not be any explicit explanations, proposals, or declarations on either side, and neither party is committed to any relationship with the other beyond the period devoted to flirtage. in one form, however, flirtage consists entirely in the excitement of a conversation devoted to erotic and indecorous topics. either the man or the woman may take the active part in flirtage, but in a woman more refinement and skill is required to play the active part without repelling the man or injuring her reputation. indeed, much the same is true of men also, for women, while they often like flirting, usually prefer its more refined forms. there are infinite forms of flirtage, and while as a preliminary part of courtship, it has its normal place and justification, forel concludes that "as an end in itself, and never passing beyond itself, it is a phenomenon of degeneration." from the french point of view, flirtage and flirtation generally have been discussed by madame bentzon ("family life in america," _forum_, march, ) who, however, fails to realize the natural basis of flirtation in courtship. she regards it as a sin against the law "thou shalt not play with love," for it ought to have the excuse of an irresistible passion, but she thinks it is comparatively inoffensive in america (though still a deteriorating influence on the women) on account of the temperament, education, and habits of the people. it must, however, be remembered that play has a proper relationship to all vital activities, and that a reasonable criticism of flirtation is concerned rather with its normal limitations than with its right to exist (see the observations on the natural basis of coquetry and the ends it subserves in "the evolution of modesty" in volume i of these _studies_). while flirtation in its natural form--though not in the perverted form of "flirtage"--has sound justification, alike as a method of testing a lover and of acquiring some small part of the art of love, it remains an altogether inadequate preparation for love. this is sufficiently shown by the frequent inaptitude for the art of love, and even for the mere physical act of love, so frequently manifested both by men and women in the very countries where flirtation most flourishes. this ignorance, not merely of the art of love but even of the physical facts of sexual love, is marked not only in women, especially women of the middle class, but also in men, for the civilized man, as fritsch long ago remarked, often knows less of the facts of the sexual life than a milkmaid. it shows itself differently, however, in the two sexes. among women sexual ignorance ranges from complete innocence of the fact that it involves any intimate bodily relationship at all to misapprehensions of the most various kind; some think that the relationship consists in lying side by side, many that intercourse takes place at the navel, not a few that the act occupies the whole night. it has been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the general evils of sexual ignorance; it is here necessary to refer to its more special evils as regards the relationship of marriage. girls are educated with the vague idea that they will marry,--quite correctly, for the majority of them do marry,--but the idea that they must be educated for the career that will naturally fall to their lot is an idea which as yet has never seemed to occur to the teachers of girls. their heads are crammed to stupidity with the knowledge of facts which it is no one's concern to know, but the supremely important training for life they are totally unable to teach. women are trained for nearly every avocation under the sun; for the supreme avocation of wifehood and motherhood they are never trained at all! it may be said, and with truth, that the present incompetent training of girls is likely to continue so long as the mothers of girls are content to demand nothing better. it may also be said, with even greater truth, that there is much that concerns the knowledge of sexual relationships which the mother herself may most properly impart to her daughter. it may further be asserted, most unanswerably, that the art of love, with which we are here more especially concerned, can only be learnt by actual experience, an experience which our social traditions make it difficult for a virtuous girl to acquire with credit. without here attempting to apportion the share of blame which falls to each cause, it remains unfortunate that a woman should so often enter marriage with the worst possible equipment of prejudices and misapprehensions, even when she believes, as often happens, that she knows all about it. even with the best equipment, a woman, under present conditions, enters marriage at a disadvantage. she awakes to the full realization of love more slowly than a man, and, on the average, at a later age, so that her experiences of the life of sex before marriage have usually been of a much more restricted kind than her husband's.[ ] so that even with the best preparation, it often happens that it is not until several years after marriage that a woman clearly realizes her own sexual needs and adequately estimates her husband's ability to satisfy those needs. we cannot over-estimate the personal and social importance of a complete preparation for marriage, and the greater the difficulties placed in the way of divorce the more weight necessarily attaches to that preparation.[ ] everyone is probably acquainted with many cases of the extreme ignorance of women on entering marriage. the following case concerning a woman of twenty-seven, who had been asked in marriage, is somewhat extreme, but not very exceptional. "she did not feel sure of her affection and she asked a woman cousin concerning the meaning of love. this cousin lent her ellis ethelmer's pamphlet, _the human flower_. she learnt from this that men desired the body of a woman, and this so appalled her that she was quite ill for several days. the next time her lover attempted a caress she told him that it was 'lust.' since then she has read george moore's _sister teresa_, and the knowledge that 'women can be as bad as men' has made her sad." the "histories" contained in the appendices to previous volumes of these _studies_ reveal numerous instances of the deplorable ignorance of young girls concerning the most central facts of the sexual life. it is not surprising, under such circumstances, that marriage leads to disillusionment or repulsion. it is commonly said that the duty of initiating the wife into the privileges and obligations of marriage properly belongs to the husband. apart, however, altogether from the fact that it is unjust to a woman to compel her to bind herself in marriage before she has fully realized what marriage means, it must also be said that there are many things necessary for women to know that it is unreasonable to expect a husband to explain. this is, for instance, notably the case as regards the more fatiguing and exhausting effects of coitus on a man as compared with a woman. the inexperienced bride cannot know beforehand that the frequently repeated orgasms which render her vigorous and radiant exert a depressing effect on her husband, and his masculine pride induces him to attempt to conceal that fact. the bride, in her innocence, is unconscious that her pleasure is bought at her husband's expense, and that what is not excess to her, may be a serious excess to him. the woman who knows (notably, for instance, a widow who remarries) is careful to guard her husband's health in this respect, by restraining her own ardor, for she realizes that a man is not willing to admit that he is incapable of satisfying his wife's desires. (g. hirth has also pointed out how important it is that women should know before marriage the natural limits of masculine potency, _wege zur liebe_, p. .) the ignorance of women of all that concerns the art of love, and their total lack of preparation for the natural facts of the sexual life, would perhaps be of less evil augury for marriage if it were always compensated by the knowledge, skill, and considerateness of the husband. but that is by no means always the case. within the ordinary range we find, at all events in england, the large group of men whose knowledge of women before marriage has been mainly confined to prostitutes, and the important and not inconsiderable group of men who have had no intimate intercourse with women, their sexual experiences having been confined to masturbation or other auto-erotic manifestations, and to flirtation. certainly the man of sensitive and intelligent temperament, whatever his training or lack of training, may succeed with patience and consideration in overcoming all the difficulties placed in the way of love by the mixture of ignorances and prejudices which so often in woman takes the place of an education for the erotic part of her life. but it cannot be said that either of these two groups of men has been well equipped for the task. the training and experience which a man receives from a prostitute, even under fairly favorable conditions, scarcely form the right preparation for approaching a woman of his own class who has no intimate erotic experiences.[ ] the frequent result is that he is liable to waver between two opposite courses of action, both of them mistaken. on the one hand, he may treat his bride as a prostitute, or as a novice to be speedily moulded into the sexual shape he is most accustomed to, thus running the risk either of perverting or of disgusting her. on the other hand, realizing that the purity and dignity of his bride place her in an altogether different class from the women he has previously known, he may go to the opposite extreme of treating her with an exaggerated respect, and so fail either to arouse or to gratify her erotic needs. it is difficult to say which of these two courses of action is the more unfortunate; the result of both, however, is frequently found to be that a nominal marriage never becomes a real marriage.[ ] yet there can be no doubt whatever that the other group of men, the men who enter marriage without any erotic experiences, run even greater risks. these are often the best of men, both as regards personal character and mental power. it is indeed astonishing to find how ignorant, both practically and theoretically, very able and highly educated men may be concerning sexual matters. "complete abstinence during youth," says freud (_sexual-probleme_, march, ), "is not the best preparation for marriage in a young man. women divine this and prefer those of their wooers who have already proved themselves to be men with other women." ellen key, referring to the demand sometimes made by women for purity in men (_ueber liebe und ehe_, p. ), asks whether women realize the effect of their admiration of the experienced and confident man who knows women, on the shy and hesitating youth, "who perhaps has been struggling hard for his erotic purity, in the hope that a woman's happy smile will be the reward of his conquest, and who is condemned to see how that woman looks down on him with lofty compassion and gazes with admiration at the leopard's spots." when the lover, in laura marholm's _was war es_? says to the heroine, "i have never yet touched a woman," the girl "turns from him with horror, and it seemed to her that a cold shudder went through her, a chilling deception." the same feeling is manifested in an exaggerated form in the passion often experienced by vigorous girls of eighteen to twenty-four for old roués. (this has been discussed by forel, _die sexuelle frage_, pp. et seq.) other factors may enter in a woman's preference for the man who has conquered other women. even the most religious and moral young woman, valera remarks (_doña luz_, p. ), likes to marry a man who has loved many women; it gives a greater value to his choice of her; it also offers her an opportunity of converting him to higher ideals. no doubt when the inexperienced man meets in marriage the equally inexperienced woman they often succeed in adapting themselves to each other and a permanent _modus vivendi_ is constituted. but it is by no means so always. if the wife is taught by instinct or experience she is apt to resent the awkwardness and helplessness of her husband in the art of love. even if she is ignorant she may be permanently alienated and become chronically frigid, through the brutal inconsiderateness of her ignorant husband in carrying out what he conceives to be his marital duties. (it has already been necessary to touch on this point in discussing "the sexual impulse in women" in vol. iii of these _studies_.) sometimes, indeed, serious physical injury has been inflicted on the bride owing to this ignorance of the husband. "i take it that most men have had pre-matrimonial sex-relationships," a correspondent writes. "but i have known one man at least who, up till the age of twenty, had not even a rudimentary idea of sex matters. at twenty-nine, a few months before marriage, he came to ask me how coitus was performed, and displayed an ignorance that i could not believe to exist in the mind of an otherwise intelligent man. he had evidently no instinct to guide him, as the brutes have, and his reason was unable to supply the necessary knowledge. it is very curious that man should lose this instinctive knowledge. i have known another man almost equally ignorant. he also came to me for advice in marital duties. both of these men masturbated, and they were normally passionate." such cases are not so very rare. usually, however, a certain amount of information has been acquired from some for the most part unsatisfactory source, and the ignorance is only partial, though not on that account less dangerous. balzac has compared the average husband to an orang-utan trying to play the violin. "love, as we instinctively feel, is the most melodious of harmonies. woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings, study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering. how many orangs--men, i mean, marry without knowing what a woman is!... nearly all men marry in the most profound ignorance of women and of love" (balzac, _physiologie du mariage_, meditation vii). neugebauer (_monatsschrift für geburtshülfe_, , bk. ix, pp. et seq.) has collected over one hundred and fifty cases of injury to women in coitus inflicted by the penis. the causes were brutality, drunkenness of one or both parties, unusual position in coitus, disproportion of the organs, pathological conditions of the woman's organs (cf. r.w. taylor, _practical treatise on sexual disorders_, ch. xxxv). blumreich also discusses the injuries produced by violent coitus (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. ii, pp. - ). c.m. green (_boston medical and surgical journal_, ap., ) records two cases of rupture of vagina by sexual intercourse in newly-married ladies, without evidence of any great violence. mylott (_british medical journal_, sept. , ) records a similar case occurring on the wedding night. the amount of force sometimes exerted in coitus is evidenced by the cases, occurring from time to time, in which intercourse takes place by the urethra. eulenburg finds (_sexuale neuropathie_, p. ) that vaginismus, a condition of spasmodic contraction of the vulva and exaggerated sensibility on the attempt to effect coitus, is due to forcible and unskilful attempts at the first coitus. adler (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, p. ) also believes that the scarred remains of the hymen, together with painful memories of a violent first coitus, are the most frequent cause of vaginismus. the occasional cases, however, of physical injury or of pathological condition produced by violent coitus at the beginning of marriage constitute but a very small portion of the evidence which witnesses to the evil results of the prevalent ignorance regarding the art of love. as regards germany, fürbringer writes (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ): "i am perfectly satisfied that the number of young married women who have a lasting painful recollection of their first sexual intercourse exceeds by far the number of those who venture to consult a doctor." as regards england, the following experience is instructive: a lady asked six married women in succession, privately, on the same day concerning their bridal experiences. to all, sexual intercourse had come as a shock; two had been absolutely ignorant about sexual matters; the others had thought they knew what coitus was, but were none the less shocked. these women were of the middle class, perhaps above the average in intelligence; one was a doctor. breuer and freud, in their _studien über hysterie_ (p. ), pointed out that the bridal night is practically often a rape, and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is not cured until satisfying sexual relationships are established. even when there is no violence, kisch (_sexual life of woman_, part ii) regards awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to incomplete excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or absence of sexual gratification, although gross disproportion in the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either party, may lead to the same result. dyspareunia, kisch adds, is astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is absence of ejaculation on the woman's part. kisch also observes that wedding night deflorations are often really rapes. one young bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical side of love, and so overwhelmed by her husband's first attempt at intercourse, that she fled from the house in the night, and nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband. (it is worth noting that by canon law, under such circumstances, the church might hold the marriage invalid. see thomas slater's _moral theology_, vol. ii, p. , and a case in point, both quoted by rev. c.j. shebbeare, "marriage law in the church of england," _nineteenth century_, aug., , p. .) kisch considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake; since the fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-seeing, false modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to affect the bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious illness. this is undoubtedly the case. the extreme psychic importance of the manner in which the act of defloration is accomplished is strongly emphasized by adler. he regards it as a frequent cause of permanent sexual anæsthesia. "this first moment in which the man's individuality attains its full rights often decides the whole of life. the unskilled, over-excited husband can then implant the seed of feminine insensibility, and by continued awkwardness and coarseness develop it into permanent anæsthesia. the man who takes possession of his rights with reckless brutal masculine force merely causes his wife anxiety and pain, and with every repetition of the act increases her repulsion.... a large proportion of cold-natured women represent a sacrifice by men, due either to unconscious awkwardness, or, occasionally, to conscious brutality towards the tender plant which should have been cherished with peculiar art and love, but has been robbed of the splendor of its development. all her life long, a wistful and trembling woman will preserve the recollection of a brutal wedding night, and, often enough, it remains a perpetual source of inhibition every time that the husband seeks anew to gratify his desires without adapting himself to his wife's desires for love" (o. adler, _die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, pp. et seq., et seq.). "i have seen an honest woman shudder with horror at her husband's approach," wrote diderot long ago in his essay "sur les femmes"; "i have seen her plunge in the bath and feel herself never sufficiently washed from the stain of duty." the same may still be said of a vast army of women, victims of a pernicious system of morality which has taught them false ideas of "conjugal duty" and has failed to teach their husbands the art of love. women, when their fine natural instincts have not been hopelessly perverted by the pruderies and prejudices which are so diligently instilled into them, understand the art of love more readily than men. even when little more than children they can often completely take the cue that is given to them. much more than is the case with men, at all events under civilized conditions, the art of love is with them an art that nature makes. they always know more of love, as montaigne long since said, than men can teach them, for it is a discipline that is born in their blood.[ ] the extensive inquiries of sanford bell (loc. cit.) show that the emotions of sex-love may appear as early as the third year. it must also be remembered that, both physically and psychically, girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys (see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, fourth edition, pp. _et seq._, , etc.). thus, by the time she has reached the age of puberty a girl has had time to become an accomplished mistress of the minor arts of love. that the age of puberty is for girls the age of love seems to be widely recognized by the popular mind. thus in a popular song of bresse a girl sings:-- "j'ai calculé mon âge, j'ai quatorze à quinze ans. ne suis-je pas dans l'âge d'y avoir un amant?" this matter of the sexual precocity of girls has an important bearing on the question of the "age of consent," or the age at which it should be legal for a girl to consent to sexual intercourse. until within the last twenty-five years there has been a tendency to set a very low age (even as low as ten) as the age above which a man commits no offence in having sexual intercourse with a girl. in recent years there has been a tendency to run to the opposite and equally unfortunate extreme of raising it to a very late age. in england, by the criminal law amendment act of , the age of consent was raised to sixteen (this clause of the bill being carried in the house of commons by a majority of ). this seems to be the reasonable age at which the limit should be set and its extreme high limit in temperate climates. it is the age recognized by the italian criminal code, and in many other parts of the civilized world. gladstone, however, was in favor of raising it to eighteen, and howard, in discussing this question as regards the united states (_matrimonial institutions_, vol. iii, pp. - ), thinks it ought everywhere to be raised to twenty-one, so coinciding with the age of legal majority at which a woman can enter into business or political relations. there has been, during recent years, a wide limit of variation in the legislation of the different american states on this point, the differences of the two limits being as much as eight years, and in some important states the act of intercourse with a girl under eighteen is declared to be "rape," and punishable with imprisonment for life. such enactments as these, however, it must be recognized, are arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. they do not rest on a sound biological basis, and cannot be enforced by the common sense of the community. there is no proper analogy between the age of legal majority which is fixed, approximately, with reference to the ability to comprehend abstract matters of intelligence, and the age of sexual maturity which occurs much earlier, both physically and psychically, and is determined in women by a very precise biological event: the completion of puberty in the onset of menstruation. among peoples living under natural conditions in all parts of the world it is recognized that a girl becomes sexually a woman at puberty; at that epoch she receives her initiation into adult life and becomes a wife and a mother. to declare that the act of intercourse with a woman who, by the natural instinct of mankind generally, is regarded as old enough for all the duties of womanhood, is a criminal act of rape, punishable by imprisonment for life, can only be considered an abuse of language, and, what is worse, an abuse of law, even if we leave all psychological and moral considerations out of the question, for it deprives the conception of rape of all that renders it naturally and properly revolting. the sound view in this question is clearly the view that it is the girl's puberty which constitutes the criterion of the man's criminality in sexually approaching her. in the temperate regions of europe and north america the average age of the appearance of menstruation, the critical moment in the establishment of complete puberty, is fifteen (see, e.g., havelock ellis, _man and woman_, ch. xi; the facts are set forth at length in kisch's _sexual life of woman_, ). therefore it is reasonable that the act of an adult man in having sexual connection with a girl under sixteen, with or without her consent, should properly be a criminal act, severely punishable. in those lands where the average age of puberty is higher or lower, the age of consent should be raised or lowered accordingly. (bruno meyer, arguing against any attempt to raise the age of consent above sixteen, considers that the proper age of consent is generally fourteen, for, as he rightly insists, the line of division is between the ripe and the unripe personality, and while the latter should be strictly preserved from the sphere of sexuality, only voluntary, not compulsory, influence should be brought to bear on the former. _sexual-probleme_, ap., .) if we take into our view the wider considerations of psychology, morality, and law, we shall find ample justification for this point of view. we have to remember that a girl, during all the years of ordinary school life, is always more advanced, both physically and psychically, than a boy of the same age, and we have to recognize that this precocity covers her sexual development; for even though it is true, on the average, that active sexual desire is not usually aroused in women until a somewhat later age, there is also truth in the observation of mr. thomas hardy (_new review_, june, ): "it has never struck me that the spider is invariably male and the fly invariably female." even, therefore, when sexual intercourse takes place between a girl and a youth somewhat older than herself, she is likely to be the more mature, the more self-possessed, and the more responsible of the two, and often the one who has taken the more active part in initiating the act. (this point has been discussed in "the sexual impulse in women" in vol. iii of these _studies_.) it must also be remembered that when a girl has once reached the age of puberty, and put on all the manner and habits as well as the physical development of a woman, it is no longer possible for a man always to estimate her age. it is easy to see that a girl has not yet reached the age of puberty; it is impossible to tell whether a mature woman is under or over eighteen; it is therefore, to say the least, unjust to make her male partner's fate for life depend on the recognition of a distinction which has no basis in nature. such considerations are, indeed, so obvious that there is no chance of carrying out thoroughly in practice the doctrine that a man should be imprisoned for life for having intercourse with a girl who is over the age of sixteen. it is better, from the legal point of view, to cast the net less widely and to be quite sure that it is adapted to catch the real and conscious offender, who may be punished without offending the common sense of the community. (cf. bloch, _the sexual life of our time_, ch. xxiv; he considers that the "age of consent" should begin with the completion of the sixteenth year.) it may be necessary to add that the establishment of the "age of consent" on this basis by no means implies that intercourse with girls but little over sixteen should be encouraged, or even socially and morally tolerated. here, however, we are not in the sphere of law. it is the natural tendency of the well-born and well-nurtured girl under civilized conditions to hold herself in reserve, and the pressure whereby that tendency is maintained and furthered must be supplied by the whole of her environment, primarily by the intelligent reflection of the girl herself when she has reached the age of adolescence. to foster in a young woman who has long passed the epoch of puberty the notion that she has no responsibility in the guardianship of her own body and soul is out of harmony with modern feeling, as well as unfavorable to the training of women for the world. the states which have been induced to adopt the high limit of the age of consent have, indeed, thereby made an abject confession of their inability to maintain a decent moral level by more legitimate means; they may profitably serve as a warning rather than as an example. the knowledge of women cannot, however, replace, the ignorance of men, but, on the contrary, merely serves to reveal it. for in the art of love the man must necessarily take the initiative. it is he who must first unseal the mystery of the intimacies and audacities which the woman's heart may hold. the risk of meeting with even the shadow of contempt or disgust is too serious to allow a woman, even a wife, to reveal the secrets of love to a man who has not shown himself to be an initiate.[ ] numberless are the jovial and contented husbands who have never suspected, and will never know, that their wives carry about with them, sometimes with silent resentment, the ache of mysterious _tabus_. the feeling that there are delicious privacies and privileges which she has never been asked to take, or forced to accept, often erotically divorces a wife from a husband who never realizes what he has missed.[ ] the case of such husbands is all the harder because, for the most part, all that they have done is the result of the morality that has been preached to them. they have been taught from boyhood to be strenuous and manly and clean-minded, to seek by all means to put out of their minds the thought of women or the longing for sensuous indulgence. they have been told on all sides that only in marriage is it right or even safe to approach women. they have acquired the notion that sexual indulgence and all that appertains to it is something low and degrading, at the worst a mere natural necessity, at the best a duty to be accomplished in a direct, honorable and straight-forward manner. no one seems to have told them that love is an art, and that to gain real possession of a woman's soul and body is a task that requires the whole of a man's best skill and insight. it may well be that when a man learns his lesson too late he is inclined to turn ferociously on the society that by its conspiracy of pseudo-morality has done its best to ruin his life, and that of his wife. in some of these cases husband or wife or both are finally attracted to a third person, and a divorce enables them to start afresh with better experience under happier auspices. but as things are at present that is a sad and serious process, for many impossible. they are happier, as milton pointed out, whose trials of love before marriage "have been so many divorces to teach them experience." the general ignorance concerning the art of love may be gauged by the fact that perhaps the question in this matter most frequently asked is the crude question how often sexual intercourse should take place. that is a question, indeed, which has occupied the founders of religion, the law-givers, and the philosophers of mankind, from the earliest times.[ ] zoroaster said it should be once in every nine days. the laws of manes allowed intercourse during fourteen days of the month, but a famous ancient hindu physician, susruta, prescribed it six times a month, except during the heat of summer when it should be once a month, while other hindu authorities say three or four times a month. solon's requirement of the citizen that intercourse should take place three times a month fairly agrees with zoroaster's. mohammed, in the koran, decrees intercourse once a week. the jewish talmud is more discriminating, and distinguishes between different classes of people; on the vigorous and healthy young man, not compelled to work hard, once a day is imposed, on the ordinary working man twice a week, on learned men once a week. luther considered twice a week the proper frequency of intercourse. it will be observed that, as we might expect, these estimates tend to allow a greater interval in the earlier ages when erotic stimulation was probably less and erotic erethism probably rare, and to involve an increased frequency as we approach modern civilization. it will also be observed that variation occurs within fairly narrow limits. this is probably due to the fact that these law-givers were in all cases men. women law-givers would certainly have shown a much greater tendency to variation, since the variations of the sexual impulse are greater in women.[ ] thus zenobia required the approach of her husband once a month, provided that impregnation had not taken place the previous month, while another queen went very far to the other extreme, for we are told that the queen of aragon, after mature deliberation, ordained six times a day as the proper rule in a legitimate marriage.[ ] it may be remarked, in passing, that the estimates of the proper frequency of sexual intercourse may always be taken to assume that there is a cessation during the menstrual period. this is especially the case as regards early periods of culture when intercourse at this time is usually regarded as either dangerous or sinful, or both. (this point has been discussed in the "phenomena of periodicity" in volume i of these _studies_.) under civilized conditions the inhibition is due to æsthetic reasons, the wife, even if she desires intercourse, feeling a repugnance to be approached at a time when she regards herself as "disgusting," and the husband easily sharing this attitude. it may, however, be pointed out that the æsthetic objection is very largely the result of the superstitious horror of water which is still widely felt at this time, and would, to some extent, disappear if a more scrupulous cleanliness were observed. it remains a good general rule to abstain from sexual intercourse during the menstrual period, but in some cases there may be adequate reason for breaking it. this is so when desire is specially strong at this time, or when intercourse is physically difficult at other times but easier during the relaxation of the parts caused by menstruation. it must be remembered also that the time when the menstrual flow is beginning to cease is probably, more than any other period of the month, the biologically proper time for sexual intercourse, since not only is intercourse easiest then, and also most gratifying to the female, but it affords the most favorable opportunity for securing fertilization. schurig long since brought together evidence (_parthenologia_, pp. et seq.) showing that coitus is most easy during menstruation. some of the catholic theologians (like sanchez, and later, liguori), going against the popular opinion, have distinctly permitted intercourse during menstruation, though many earlier theologians regarded it as a mortal sin. from the medical side, kossmann (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ) advocates coitus not only at the end of menstruation, but even during the latter part of the period, as being the time when women most usually need it, the marked disagreeableness of temper often shown by women at this time, he says, being connected with the suppression, demanded by custom, of a natural desire. "it is almost always during menstruation that the first clouds appear on the matrimonial horizon." in modern times the physiologists and physicians who have expressed any opinion on this subject have usually come very near to luther's dictum. haller said that intercourse should not be much more frequent than twice a week.[ ] acton said once a week, and so also hammond, even for healthy men between the ages of twenty-five and forty.[ ] fürbringer only slightly exceeds this estimate by advocating from fifty to one hundred single acts in the year.[ ] forel advises two or three times a week for a man in the prime of manhood, but he adds that for some healthy and vigorous men once a month appears to be excess.[ ] mantegazza, in his _hygiene of love_, also states that, for a man between twenty and thirty, two or three times a week represents the proper amount of intercourse, and between the ages of thirty and forty-five, twice a week. guyot recommends every three days.[ ] it seems, however, quite unnecessary to lay down any general rules regarding the frequency of coitus. individual desire and individual aptitude, even within the limits of health, vary enormously. moreover, if we recognize that the restraint of desire is sometimes desirable, and often necessary for prolonged periods, it is as well to refrain from any appearance of asserting the necessity of sexual intercourse at frequent and regular intervals. the question is chiefly of importance in order to guard against excess, or even against the attempt to live habitually close to the threshold of excess. many authorities are, therefore, careful to point out that it is inadvisable to be too definite. thus erb, while remarking that, for some, luther's dictum represents the extreme maximum, adds that others can go far beyond that amount with impunity, and he considers that such variations are congenital.[ ] ribbing, again, while expressing general agreement with luther's rule, protests against any attempt to lay down laws for everyone, and is inclined to say that as often as one likes is a safe rule, so long as there are no bad after-effects.[ ] it seems to be generally agreed that bad effects from excess in coitus, when they do occur, are rare in women (see, e.g., hammond, _sexual impotence_, p. ). occasionally, however, evil effects occur in women. (the case, possibly to be mentioned in this connection, has been recorded of a man whose three wives all became insane after marriage, _journal of mental science_, jan., , p. .) in cases of sexual excess great physical exhaustion, with suspicion and delusions, is often observed. hutchinson has recorded three cases of temporary blindness, all in men, the result of sexual excess after marriage (_archives of surgery_, jan., ). the old medical authors attributed many evil results to excess in coitus. thus schurig (_spermatologia_, , pp. et seq.) brings together cases of insanity, apoplexy, syncope, epilepsy, loss of memory, blindness, baldness, unilateral perspiration, gout, and death attributed to this cause; of death many cases are given, some in women, but one may easily perceive that _post_ was often mistaken for _propter_. there is, however, another consideration which can scarcely escape the reader of the present work. nearly all the estimates of the desirable frequence of coitus are framed to suit the supposed physiological needs of the husband,[ ] and they appear usually to be framed in the same spirit of exclusive attention to those needs as though the physiological needs of the evacuation of the bowels or the bladder were in question. but sexual needs are the needs of two persons, of the husband and of the wife. it is not enough to ascertain the needs of the husband; it is also necessary to ascertain the needs of the wife. the resultant must be a harmonious adjustment of these two groups of needs. that consideration alone, in conjunction with the wide variations of individual needs, suffices to render any definite rules of very trifling value. it is important to remember the wide limits of variation in sexual capacity, as well as the fact that such variations in either direction may be healthy and normal, though undoubtedly when they become extreme variations may have a pathological significance. in one case, for instance, a man has intercourse once a month and finds this sufficient; he has no nocturnal emissions nor any strong desires in the interval; yet he leads an idle and luxurious life and is not restrained by any moral or religious scruples; if he much exceeds the frequency which suits him he suffers from ill-health, though otherwise quite healthy except for a weak digestion. at the other extreme, a happily married couple, between forty-five and fifty, much attached to each other, had engaged in sexual intercourse every night for twenty years, except during the menstrual period and advanced pregnancy, which had only occurred once; they are hearty, full-blooded, intellectual people, fond of good living, and they attribute their affection and constancy to this frequent indulgence in coitus; the only child, a girl, is not strong, though fairly healthy. the cases are numerous in which, on special occasions, it is possible for people who are passionately attached to each other to repeat the act of coitus, or at all events the orgasm, an inordinate number of times within a few hours. this usually occurs at the beginning of an intimacy or after a long separation. thus in one case a newly-married woman experienced the orgasm fourteen times in one night, her husband in the same period experiencing it seven times. in another case a woman who had lived a chaste life, when sexual relationships finally began, once experienced orgasm fourteen or fifteen times to her partner's three times. in a case which, i have been assured may be accepted as authentic, a young wife of highly erotic, very erethic, slightly abnormal temperament, after a month's absence from her husband, was excited twenty-six times within an hour and a quarter; her husband, a much older man, having two orgasms during this period; the wife admitted that she felt a "complete wreck" after this, but it is evident that if this case may be regarded as authentic the orgasms were of extremely slight intensity. a young woman, newly married to a physically robust man, once had intercourse with him eight times in two hours, orgasm occurring each time in both parties. guttceit (_dreissig jahre praxis_, vol. ii. p. ), in russia, knew many cases in which young men of twenty-two to twenty-eight had intercourse more than ten times in one night, though after the fourth time there is seldom any semen. he had known some men who had masturbated in early boyhood, and began to consort with women at fifteen, yet remained sexually vigorous in old age, while he knew others who began intercourse late and were losing force at forty. mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in one day, remarks that the stories of the old italian novelists show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception. burchard, alexander vi's secretary, states that the florentine ambassador's son, in rome in , "knew a girl seven times in one hour" (j. burchard, _diarium_, ed. thuasne, vol. i, p. ). olivier, charlemagne's knight, boasted, according to legend, that he could show his virile power one hundred times in one night, if allowed to sleep with the emperor of constantinople's daughter; he was allowed to try, it is said, and succeeded thirty times (schultz, _das höfische leben_, vol. i, p. ). it will be seen that whenever the sexual act is repeated frequently within a short time it is very rarely indeed that the husband can keep pace with the wife. it is true that the woman's sexual energy is aroused more slowly and with more difficulty than the man's, but as it becomes aroused its momentum increases. the man, whose energy is easily aroused, is easily exhausted; the woman has often scarcely attained her energy until after the first orgasm is over. it is sometimes a surprise to a young husband, happily married, to find that the act of sexual intercourse which completely satisfies him has only served to arouse his wife's ardor. very many women feel that the repetition of the act several times in succession is needed to, as they may express it, "clear the system," and, far from producing sleepiness and fatigue, it renders them bright and lively. the young and vigorous woman, who has lived a chaste life, sometimes feels when she commences sexual relationships as though she really required several husbands, and needed intercourse at least once a day, though later when she becomes adjusted to married life she reaches the conclusion that her desires are not abnormally excessive. the husband has to adjust himself to his wife's needs, through his sexual force when he possesses it, and, if not, through his skill and consideration. the rare men who possess a genital potency which they can exert to the gratification of women without injury to themselves have been, by professor benedikt, termed "sexual athletes," and he remarks that such men easily dominate women. he rightly regards casanova as the type of the sexual athlete (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, jan., ). näcke reports the case of a man whom he regards as a sexual athlete, who throughout his life had intercourse once or twice daily with his wife, or if she was unwilling, with another woman, until he became insane at the age of seventy-five (_zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, aug., , p. ). this should probably, however, be regarded rather as a case of morbid hyperæsthesia than of sexual athleticism. at this stage we reach the fundamental elements of the art of love. we have seen that many moral practices and moral theories which have been widely current in christendom have developed traditions, still by no means extinct among us, which were profoundly antagonistic to the art of love. the idea grew up of "marital duties," of "conjugal rights."[ ] the husband had the right and the duty to perform sexual intercourse with his wife, whatever her wishes in the matter might be, while the wife had the duty and the right (the duty in her case being usually put first) to submit to such intercourse, which she was frequently taught to regard as something low and merely physical, an unpleasant and almost degrading necessity which she would do well to put out of her thoughts as speedily as possible. it is not surprising that such an attitude towards marriage has been highly favorable to conjugal unhappiness, more especially that of the wife,[ ] and it has tended to promote adultery and divorce. we might have been more surprised had it been otherwise. the art of love is based on the fundamental natural fact of courtship; and courtship is the effort of the male to make himself acceptable to the female.[ ] "the art of love," said vatsyayana, one of the greatest of authorities, "is the art of pleasing women." "a man must never permit himself a pleasure with his wife," said balzac in his _physiologie du mariage_, "which he has not the skill first to make her desire." the whole art of love is there. women, naturally and instinctively, seek to make themselves desirable to men, even to men whom they are supremely indifferent to, and the woman who is in love with a man, by an equally natural instinct, seeks to shape herself to the measure which individually pleases him. this tendency is not really modified by the fundamental fact that in these matters it is only the arts that nature makes which are truly effective. it is finally by what he is that a man arouses a woman's deepest emotions of sympathy or of antipathy, and he is often pleasing her more by displaying his fitness to play a great part in the world outside than by any acquired accomplishments in the arts of courtship. when, however, the serious and intimate play of physical love begins, the woman's part is, even biologically, on the surface the more passive part.[ ] she is, on the physical side, inevitably the instrument in love; it must be his hand and his bow which evoke the music. in speaking of the art of love, however, it is impossible to disentangle completely the spiritual from the physical. the very attempt to do so is, indeed, a fatal mistake. the man who can only perceive the physical side of the sexual relationship is, as hinton was accustomed to say, on a level with the man who, in listening to a sonata of beethoven on the violin, is only conscious of the physical fact that a horse's tail is being scraped against a sheep's entrails. the image of the musical instrument constantly recurs to those who write of the art of love. balzac's comparison of the unskilful husband to the orang-utan attempting to play the violin has already been quoted. dr. jules guyot, in his serious and admirable little book, _bréviaire de l'amour expérimental_, falls on to the same comparison: "there are an immense number of ignorant, selfish, and brutal men who give themselves no trouble to study the instrument which god has confided to them, and do not so much as suspect that it is necessary to study it in order to draw out its slightest chords.... every direct contact, even with the clitoris, every attempt at coitus [when the feminine organism is not aroused], exercises a painful sensation, an instinctive repulsion, a feeling of disgust and aversion. any man, any husband, who is ignorant of this fact, is ridiculous and contemptible. any man, any husband, who, knowing it, dares to disregard it, has committed an outrage.... in the final combination of man and woman, the positive element, the husband, has the initiative and the responsibility for the conjugal life. he is the minstrel who will produce harmony or cacophony by his hand and his bow. the wife, from this point of view, is really the many-stringed instrument who will give out harmonious or discordant sounds, according as she is well or ill handled" (guyot, _bréviaire_, pp. , , ). that such love corresponds to the woman's need there cannot be any doubt. all developed women desire to be loved, says ellen key, not "en mâle" but "en artiste" (_liebe und ehe_, p. ). "only a man of whom she feels that he has also the artist's joy in her, and who shows this joy through his timid and delicate touch on her soul as on her body, can keep the woman of to-day. she will only belong to a man who continues to long for her even when he holds her locked in his arms. and when such a woman breaks out: 'you want me, but you cannot caress me, you cannot tell what i want,' then that man is judged." love is indeed, as remy de gourmont remarks, a delicate art, for which, as for painting or music, only some are apt. it must not be supposed that the demand on the lover and husband to approach a woman in the same spirit, with the same consideration and skilful touch, as a musician takes up his instrument is merely a demand made by modern women who are probably neurotic or hysterical. no reader of these _studies_ who has followed the discussions of courtship and of sexual selection in previous volumes can fail to realize that--although we have sought to befool ourselves by giving an illegitimate connotation to the word "brutal"--consideration and respect for the female is all but universal in the sexual relationships of the animals below man; it is only at the furthest remove from the "brutes," among civilized men, that sexual "brutality" is at all common, and even there it is chiefly the result of ignorance. if we go as low as the insects, who have been disciplined by no family life, and are generally counted as careless and wanton, we may sometimes find this attitude towards the female fully developed, and the extreme consideration of the male for the female whom yet he holds firmly beneath him, the tender preliminaries, the extremely gradual approach to the supreme sexual act, may well furnish an admirable lesson. this greater difficulty and delay on the part of women in responding to the erotic excitation of courtship is really very fundamental and--as has so often been necessary to point out in previous volumes of these _studies_--it covers the whole of woman's erotic life, from the earliest age when coyness and modesty develop. a woman's love develops much more slowly than a man's for a much longer period. there is real psychological significance in the fact that a man's desire for a woman tends to arise spontaneously, while a woman's desire for a man tends only to be aroused gradually, in the measure of her complexly developing relationship to him. hence her sexual emotion is often less abstract, more intimately associated with the individual lover in whom it is centred. "the way to my senses is through my heart," wrote mary wollstonecraft to her lover imlay, "but, forgive me! i think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours." she spoke for the best, if not for the largest part, of her sex. a man often reaches the full limit of his physical capacity for love at a single step, and it would appear that his psychic limits are often not more difficult to reach. this is the solid fact underlying the more hazardous statement, so often made, that woman is monogamic and man polygamic. on the more physical side, guttceit states that a month after marriage not more than two women out of ten have experienced the full pleasure of sexual intercourse, and it may not be for six months, a year, or even till after the birth of several children, that a woman experiences the full enjoyment of the physical relationship, and even then only with a man she completely loves, so that the conditions of sexual gratification are much more complex in women than in men. similarly, on the psychic side, ellen key remarks (_ueber liebe und ehe_, p. ): "it is certainly true that a woman desires sexual gratification from a man. but while in her this desire not seldom only appears after she has begun to love a man enough to give her life for him, a man often desires to possess a woman physically before he loves her enough to give even his little finger for her. the fact that love in a woman mostly goes from the soul to the senses and often fails to reach them, and that in a man it mostly goes from the senses to the soul and frequently never reaches that goal--this is of all the existing differences between men and women that which causes most torture to both." it will, of course, be apparent to the reader of the fourth volume of these _studies_ on "sexual selection in man" that the method of stating the difference which has commended itself to mary wollstonecraft, ellen key, and others, is not strictly correct, and the chastest woman, after, for example, taking too hot a bath, may find that her heart is not the only path through which her senses may be affected. the senses are the only channels to the external world which we possess, and love must come through these channels or not at all. the difference, however, seems to be a real one, if we translate it to mean that, as we have seen reason to believe in previous volumes of these _studies_, there are in women ( ) preferential sensory paths of sexual stimuli, such as, apparently, a predominence of tactile and auditory paths as compared with men; ( ) a more massive, complex, and delicately poised sexual mechanism; and, as a result of this, ( ) eventually a greater amount of nervous and cerebral sexual irradiation. it must be remembered, at the same time, that while this distinction represents a real tendency in sexual differentiation, with an organic and not merely traditional basis, it has about it nothing whatever that is absolute. there are a vast number of women whose sexual facility, again by natural tendency and not merely by acquired habits, is as marked as that of any man, if not more so. in the sexual field, as we have seen in a previous volume (_analysis of the sexual impulse_), the range of variability is greater in women than in men. the fact that love is an art, a method of drawing music from an instrument, and not the mere commission of an act by mutual consent, makes any verbal agreement to love of little moment. if love were a matter of contract, of simple intellectual consent, of question and answer, it would never have come into the world at all. love appeared as art from the first, and the subsequent developments of the summary methods of reason and speech cannot abolish that fundamental fact. this is scarcely realized by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in courtship--and perhaps even the whole of courtship--is for a man to ask a woman to be his wife. that is so far from being the case that it constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at once and for ever damns all the wooer's chances. it is lamentable, no doubt, that so grave and fateful a matter as that of marriage should so often be decided without calm deliberation and reasonable forethought. but sexual relationships can never, and should never, be merely a matter of cold calculation. when a woman is suddenly confronted by the demand that she should yield herself up as a wife to a man who has not yet succeeded in gaining her affections she will not fail to find--provided she is lifted above the cold-hearted motives of self-interest--that there are many sound reasons why she should not do so. and having thus squarely faced the question in cool blood and decided it, she will henceforth, probably, meet that wooer with a tunic of steel enclosing her breast. "love must be _revealed_ by acts and not _betrayed_ by words. i regard as abnormal the extraordinary method of a hasty avowal beforehand; for that represents not the direct but the reflex path of transmission. however sweet and normal the avowal may be when once reciprocity has been realized, as a method of conquest i consider it dangerous and likely to produce the reverse of the result desired." i take these wise words from a thoughtful "essai sur l'amour" (_archives de psychologie_, ) by a non-psychological swiss writer who is recording his own experiences, and who insists much on the predominance of the spiritual and mental element in love. it is worthy of note that this recognition that direct speech is out of place in courtship must not be regarded as a refinement of civilization. among primitive peoples everywhere it is perfectly well recognized that the offer of love, and its acceptance or its refusal, must be made by actions symbolically, and not by the crude method of question and answer. among the indians of paraguay, who allow much sexual freedom to their women, but never buy or sell love, mantegazza states (_rio de la plata e tenerife_, , p. ) that a girl of the people will come to your door or window and timidly, with a confused air, ask you, in the guarani tongue, for a drink of water. but she will smile if you innocently offer her water. among the tarahumari indians of mexico, with whom the initiative in courting belongs to the women, the girl takes the first step through her parents, then she throws small pebbles at the young man; if he throws them back the matter is concluded (carl lumholtz, _scribner's magazine_, sept., , p. ). in many parts of the world it is the woman who chooses her husband (see, e.g., m.a. potter, _sohrab and rustem_, pp. et seq.), and she very frequently adopts a symbolical method of proposal. except when the commercial element predominates in marriage, a similar method is frequently adopted by men also in making proposals of marriage. it is not only at the beginning of courtship that the act of love has little room for formal declarations, for the demands and the avowals that can be clearly defined in speech. the same rule holds even in the most intimate relationships of old lovers, throughout the married life. the permanent element in modesty, which survives every sexual initiation to become intertwined with all the exquisite impudicities of love, combines with a true erotic instinct to rebel against formal demands, against verbal affirmations or denials. love's requests cannot be made in words, nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as long as love lasts. the fact that the needs of love cannot be expressed but must be divined has long been recognized by those who have written of the art of love, alike by writers within and without the european christian traditions. thus zacchia, in his great medico-legal treatise, points out that a husband must be attentive to the signs of sexual desire in his wife. "women," he says, "when sexual desire arises within them are accustomed to ask their husbands questions on matters of love; they flatter and caress them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by accident; their breasts appear to swell; they show unusual alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, and are scarcely mistress of themselves. at the same time their private parts become hot and swell. all these signs should convince a husband, however inattentive he may be, that his wife craves for satisfaction" (_zacchiæ quæstionum medico-legalium opus_, lib. vii, tit. iii, quæst. i; vol. ii, p. in ed. of ). the old hindu erotic writers attributed great importance alike to the man's attentiveness to the woman's erotic needs, and to his skill and consideration in all the preliminaries of the sexual act. he must do all that he can to procure her pleasure, says vatsyayana. when she is on her bed and perhaps absorbed in conversation, he gently unfastens the knot of her lower garment. if she protests he closes her mouth with kisses. some authors, vatsyayana remarks, hold that the lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her breasts. when erection occurs he touches her with his hands, softly caressing the various parts of her body. he should always press those parts of her body towards which she turns her eyes. if she is shy, and it is the first time, he will place his hands between her thighs which she will instinctively press together. if she is young he will put his hands on her breasts, and she will no doubt cover them with her own. if she is mature he will do all that may seem fitting and agreeable to both parties. then he will take her hair and her chin between his fingers and kiss them. if she is very young she will blush and close her eyes. by the way in which she receives his caresses he will divine what pleases her most in union. the signs of her enjoyment are that her body becomes limp, her eyes close, she loses all timidity, and takes part in the movements which bring her most closely to him. if, on the other hand, she feels no pleasure, she strikes the bed with her hands, will not allow the man to continue, is sullen, even bites or kicks, and continues the movements of coitus when the man has finished. in such cases, vatsyayana adds, it is his duty to rub the vulva with his hand before union until it is moist, and he should perform the same movements afterwards if his own orgasm has occurred first. with regard to indian erotic art generally, and more especially vatsyayana, who appears to have lived some sixteen hundred years ago, information will be found in valentino, "l'hygiène conjugale chez les hindous," _archives générales de médecine_, ap. , ; iwan bloch, "indische medizin," puschmann's _handbuch der geschichte der medizin_, vol. i; heimann and stephan, "beiträge zur ehehygiene nach der lehren des kamasutram," _zeitschaft für sexualwissenschaft_, sept., ; also a review of richard schmidt's german translation of the _kamashastra_ of vatsyayana in _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft . there has long existed an english translation of this work. in the lengthy preface to the french translation lamairesse points out the superiority of indian erotic art to that of the latin poets by its loftier spirit, and greater purity and idealism. it is throughout marked by respect for women, and its spirit is expressed in the well-known proverb: "thou shalt not strike a woman even with a flower." see also margaret noble's _web of indian life_, especially ch. iii, "on the hindu woman as wife," and ch. iv, "love strong as death." the advice given to husbands by guyot (_bréviaire de l'amour expérimental_, p. ) closely conforms to that given, under very different social conditions, by zacchia and vatsyayana. "in a state of sexual need and desire the woman's lips are firm and vibrant, the breasts are swollen, and the nipples erect. the intelligent husband cannot be deceived by these signs. if they do not exist, it is his part to provoke them by his kisses and caresses, and if, in spite of his tender and delicate excitations, the lips show no heat and the breasts no swelling, and especially if the nipples are disagreeably irritated by slight suction, he must arrest his transports and abstain from all contact with the organs of generation, for he would certainly find them in a state of exhaustion and disposed to repulsion. if, on the contrary, the accessory organs are animated, or become animated beneath his caresses, he must extend them to the generative organs, and especially to the clitoris, which beneath his touch will become full of appetite and ardor." the importance of the preliminary titillation of the sexual organs has been emphasized by a long succession alike of erotic writers and physicians, from ovid (_ars amatoria_ end of bk. ii) onwards. eulenburg (_die sexuale neuropathie_, p. ) considers that titillation is sometimes necessary, and adler, likewise insisting on the preliminaries of psychic and physical courtship (_die mangelhafte geschlechtsempfindung des weibes_, p. ), observes that the man who is gifted with insight and skill in these matters possesses a charm which will draw sparks of sensibility from the coldest feminine heart. the advice of the physician is at one in this matter with the maxims of the erotic artist and with the needs of the loving woman. in making love there must be no haste, wrote ovid:-- "crede mihi, non est veneris properanda voluptas, sed sensim tarda prolicienda mora." "husbands, like spoiled children," a woman has written, "too often miss the pleasure which might otherwise be theirs, by clamoring for it at the wrong time. the man who thinks this prolonged courtship previous to the act of sex union wearisome, has never given it a trial. it is the approach to the marital embrace, as well as the embrace itself, which constitutes the charm of the relation between the sexes." it not seldom happens, remarks adler (op. cit., p. ), that the insensibility of the wife must be treated--in the husband. and guyot, bringing forward the same point, writes (op. cit., p. ): "if by a delay of tender study the husband has understood his young bride, if he is able to realize for her the ineffable happiness and dreams of youth, he will be beloved forever; he will be her master and sovereign lord. if he has failed to understand her he will fatigue and exhaust himself in vain efforts, and finally class her among the indifferent and cold women. she will be his wife by duty, the mother of his children. he will take his pleasure elsewhere, for man is ever in pursuit of the woman who experiences the genesic spasm. thus the vague and unintelligent search for a half who can unite in that delirious finale is the chief cause of all conjugal dissolutions. in such a case a man resembles a bad musician who changes his violin in the hope that a new instrument will bring the melody he is unable to play." the fact that there is thus an art in love, and that sexual intercourse is not a mere physical act to be executed by force of muscles, may help to explain why it is that in so many parts of the world defloration is not immediately effected on marriage.[ ] no doubt religious or magic reasons may also intervene here, but, as so often happens, they harmonize with the biological process. this is the case even among uncivilized peoples who marry early. the need for delay and considerate skill is far greater when, as among ourselves, a woman's marriage is delayed long past the establishment of puberty to a period when it is more difficult to break down the psychic and perhaps even physical barriers of personality. it has to be added that the art of love in the act of courtship is not confined to the preliminaries to the single act of coitus. in a sense the life of love is a continuous courtship with a constant progression. the establishment of physical intercourse is but the beginning of it. this is especially true of women. "the consummation of love," says sénancour,[ ] "which is often the end of love with man is only the beginning of love with woman, a test of trust, a gage of future pleasure, a sort of engagement for an intimacy to come." "a woman's soul and body," says another writer,[ ] "are not given at one stroke at a given moment; but only slowly, little by little, through many stages, are both delivered to the beloved. instead of abandoning the young woman to the bridegroom on the wedding night, as an entrapped mouse is flung to the cat to be devoured, it would be better to let the young bridal couple live side by side, like two friends and comrades, until they gradually learn how to develop and use their sexual consciousness." the conventional wedding is out of place as a preliminary to the consummation of marriage, if only on the ground that it is impossible to say at what stage in the endless process of courtship it ought to take place. a woman, unlike a man, is prepared by nature, to play a skilful part in the art of love. the man's part in courtship, which is that of the male throughout the zoölogical series, may be difficult and hazardous, but it is in a straight line, fairly simple and direct. the woman's part, having to follow at the same moment two quite different impulses, is necessarily always in a zigzag or a curve. that is to say that at every erotic moment her action is the resultant of the combined force of her desire (conscious or unconscious) and her modesty. she must sail through a tortuous channel with scylla on the one side and charybdis on the other, and to avoid either danger too anxiously may mean risking shipwreck on the other side. she must be impenetrable to all the world, but it must be an impenetrability not too obscure for the divination of the right man. her speech must be honest, but yet on no account tell everything; her actions must be the outcome of her impulses, and on that very account be capable of two interpretations. it is only in the last resort of complete intimacy that she can become the perfect woman, "whose speech truth knows not from her thought, nor love her body from her soul." for many a woman the conditions for that final erotic avatar--"that splendid shamelessness which," as rafford pyke says, "is the finest thing in perfect love"--never present themselves at all. she is compelled to be to the end of her erotic life, what she must always be at the beginning, a complex and duplex personality, naturally artful. therewith she is better prepared than man to play her part in the art of love. the man's part in the art of love is, however, by no means easy. that is not always realized by the women who complain of his lack of skill in playing it. although a man has not to cultivate the same natural duplicity as a woman, it is necessary that he should possess a considerable power of divination. he is not well prepared for that, because the traditional masculine virtue is force rather than insight. the male's work in the world, we are told, is domination, and it is by such domination that the female is attracted. there is an element of truth in that doctrine, an element of truth which may well lead astray the man who too exclusively relies upon it in the art of love. violence is bad in every art, and in the erotic art the female desires to be won to love and not to be ordered to love. that is fundamental. we sometimes see the matter so stated as if the objection to force and domination in love constituted some quite new and revolutionary demand of the "modern woman." that is, it need scarcely be said, the result of ignorance. the art of love, being an art that nature makes, is the same now as in essentials it has always been,[ ] and it was well established before woman came into existence. that it has not always been very skilfully played is another matter. and, so far as the man is concerned, it is this very tradition of masculine predominance which has contributed to the difficulty of playing it skilfully. the woman admires the male's force; she even wishes herself to be forced to the things that she altogether desires; and yet she revolts from any exertion of force outside that narrow circle, either before the boundary of it is reached or after the boundary is passed. thus the man's position is really more difficult than the women who complain of his awkwardness in love are always ready to admit. he must cultivate force, not only in the world but even for display in the erotic field; he must be able to divine the moments when, in love, force is no longer force because his own will is his partner's will; he must, at the same time, hold himself in complete restraint lest he should fall into the fatal error of yielding to his own impulse of domination; and all this at the very moment when his emotions are least under control. we need scarcely be surprised that of the myriads who embark on the sea of love, so few women, so very few men, come safely into port. it may still seem to some that in dwelling on the laws that guide the erotic life, if that life is to be healthy and complete, we have wandered away from the consideration of the sexual instinct in its relationship to society. it may therefore be desirable to return to first principles and to point out that we are still clinging to the fundamental facts of the personal and social life. marriage, as we have seen reason to believe, is a great social institution; procreation, which is, on the public side, its supreme function, is a great social end. but marriage and procreation are both based on the erotic life. if the erotic life is not sound, then marriage is broken up, practically if not always formally, and the process of procreation is carried out under unfavorable conditions or not at all. this social and personal importance of the erotic life, though, under the influence of a false morality and an equally false modesty, it has sometimes been allowed to fall into the background in stages of artificial civilization, has always been clearly realized by those peoples who have vitally grasped the relationships of life. among most uncivilized races there appear to be few or no "sexually frigid" women. it is little to the credit of our own "civilization" that it should be possible for physicians to-day to assert, even with the faintest plausibility, that there are some per cent. of women who may thus be described. the whole sexual structure of the world is built up on the general fact that the intimate contact of the male and female who have chosen each other is mutually pleasurable. below this general fact is the more specific fact that in the normal accomplishment of the act of sexual consummation the two partners experience the acute gratification of simultaneous orgasm. herein, it has been said, lies the secret of love. it is the very basis of love, the condition of the healthy exercise of the sexual functions, and, in many cases, it seems probable, the condition also of fertilization. even savages in a very low degree of culture are sometimes patient and considerate in evoking and waiting for the signs of sexual desire in their females. (i may refer to the significant case of the caroline islanders, as described by kubary in his ethnographic study of that people and quoted in volume iv of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," sect. iii.) in catholic days theological influence worked wholesomely in the same direction, although the theologians were so keen to detect the mortal sin of lust. it is true that the catholic insistence on the desirability of simultaneous orgasm was largely due to the mistaken notion that to secure conception it was necessary that there should be "insemination" on the part of the wife as well as of the husband, but that was not the sole source of the theological view. thus zacchia discusses whether a man ought to continue with his wife until she has the orgasm and feels satisfied, and he decides that that is the husband's duty; otherwise the wife falls into danger either of experiencing the orgasm during sleep, or, more probably, by self-excitation, "for many women, when their desires have not been satisfied by coitus, place one thigh on the other, pressing and rubbing them together until the orgasm occurs, in the belief that if they abstain from using the hands they have committed no sin." some theologians, he adds, favor that belief, notably hurtado de mendoza and sanchez, and he further quotes the opinion of the latter that women who have not been satisfied in coitus are liable to become hysterical or melancholic (_zacchiæ quæstionum medico-legalium opus_, lib. vii, tit. iii, quæst. vi). in the same spirit some theologians seem to have permitted _irrumatio_ (without ejaculation), so long as it is only the preliminary to the normal sexual act. nowadays physicians have fully confirmed the belief of sanchez. it is well recognized that women in whom, from whatever cause, acute sexual excitement occurs with frequency without being followed by the due natural relief of orgasm are liable to various nervous and congestive symptoms which diminish their vital effectiveness, and very possibly lead to a breakdown in health. kisch has described, as a cardiac neurosis of sexual origin, a pathological tachycardia which is an exaggeration of the physiological quick heart of sexual excitement. j. inglis parsons (_british medical journal_, oct. , , p. ) refers to the ovarian pain produced by strong unsatisfied sexual excitement, often in vigorous unmarried women, and sometimes a cause of great distress. an experienced austrian gynæcologist told hirth (_wege zur heimat_, p. ) that of every hundred women who come to him with uterine troubles seventy suffered from congestion of the womb, which he regarded as due to incomplete coitus. it is frequently stated that the evil of incomplete gratification and absence of orgasm in women is chiefly due to male withdrawal, that is to say _coitus interruptus_, in which the penis is hastily withdrawn as soon as involuntary ejaculation is impending; and it is sometimes said that the same widely prevalent practice is also productive of slight or serious results in the male (see, e.g., l.b. bangs, _transactions new york academy of medicine_, vol. ix, ; d.s. booth, "coitus interruptus and coitus reservatus as causes of profound neurosis and psychosis," _alienist and neurologist_, nov., ; also, _alienist and neurologist_, oct., , p. ). it is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the stage of sexual excitation which his partner may have reached, cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains ejaculation, is little or none. but the practice is so widespread that it cannot be regarded as necessarily involving this evil result. there can, i am assured, be no doubt whatever that blumreich is justified in his statement (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. ii, p. ) that "interrupted coitus is injurious to the genital system of those women only who are disturbed in their sensation of delight by this form of cohabitation, in whom the orgasm is not produced, and who continue for hours subsequently to be tormented by feelings of an unsatisfied desire." equally injurious effects follow in normal coitus when the man's orgasm occurs too soon. "these phenomena, therefore," he concludes, "are not characteristic of interrupted coitus, but consequences of an imperfectly concluded sexual cohabitation as such." kisch, likewise, in his elaborate and authoritative work on _the sexual life of woman_, also states that the question of the evil results of _coitus interruptus_ in women is simply a question of whether or not they receive sexual satisfaction. (cf. also fürbringer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._) this is clearly the most reasonable view to take concerning what is the simplest, the most widespread, and certainly the most ancient of the methods of preventing conception. in the book of genesis we find it practiced by onan, and to come down to modern times, in the sixteenth century it seems to have been familiar to french ladies, who, according to brantôme, enjoined it on their lovers. coitus reservatus,--in which intercourse is maintained even for very long periods, during which the woman may have orgasm several times while the man succeeds in holding back orgasm,--so far from being injurious to the woman, is probably the form of coitus which gives her the maximum of gratification and relief. for most men, however, it seems probable that this self-control over the processes leading to the involuntary act of detumescence is difficult to acquire, while in weak, nervous, and erethic persons it is impossible. it is, however, a desirable condition for completely adequate coitus, and in the east this is fully recognized, and the aptitude carefully cultivated. thus w.d. sutherland states ("einiges über das alltagsleben und die volksmedizin unter den bauern britischostindiens," _münchener medizinische wochenschrift_, no. , ) that the hindu smokes and talks during intercourse in order to delay orgasm, and sometimes applies an opium paste to the glans of the penis for the same purpose. (see also vol. iii of these _studies_, "the sexual impulse in women.") some authorities have, indeed, stated that the prolongation of the act of coitus is injurious in its effect on the male. thus r.w. taylor (_practical treatise on sexual disorders_, third ed., p. ) states that it tends to cause atonic impotence, and löwenfeld (_sexualleben und nervenleiden_, p. ) thinks that the swift and unimpeded culmination of the sexual act is necessary in order to preserve the vigor of the reflex reactions. this is probably true of extreme and often repeated cases of indefinite prolongation of pronounced erection without detumescence, but it is not true within fairly wide limits in the case of healthy persons. prolonged _coitus reservatus_ was a practice of the complex marriage system of the oneida community, and i was assured by the late noyes miller, who had spent the greater part of his life in the community, that the practice had no sort of evil result. _coitus reservatus_ was erected into a principle in the oneida community. every man in the community was theoretically the husband of every woman, but every man was not free to have children with every woman. sexual initiation took place soon after puberty in the case of boys, some years later in the case of girls, by a much older person of the opposite sex. in intercourse the male inserted his penis into the vagina and retained it there for even an hour without emission, though orgasm took place in the woman. there was usually no emission in the case of the man, even after withdrawal, and he felt no need of emission. the social feeling of the community was a force on the side of this practice, the careless, unskilful men being avoided by women, while the general romantic sentiment of affection for all the women in the community was also a force. masturbation was unknown, and no irregular relations took place with persons outside the community. the practice was maintained for thirty years, and was finally abandoned, not on its demerits, but in deference to the opinions of the outside world. mr. miller admitted that the practice became more difficult in ordinary marriage, which favors a more mechanical habit of intercourse. the information received from mr. miller is supplemented in a pamphlet entitled _male continence_ (the name given to _coitus reservatus_ in the community), written in by the founder, john humphrey noyes. the practice is based, he says, on the fact that sexual intercourse consists of two acts, a social and a propagative, and that if propagation is to be scientific there must be no confusion of these two acts, and procreation must never be involuntary. it was in , he states, that this idea occurred to him as a result of a resolve to abstain from sexual intercourse in consequence of his wife's delicate health and inability to bear healthy children, and in his own case he found the practice "a great deliverance. it made a happy household." he points out that the chief members of the oneida community "belonged to the most respectable families in vermont, had been educated in the best schools of new england morality and refinement, and were, by the ordinary standards, irreproachable in their conduct so far as sexual matters are concerned, till they deliberately commenced, in , the experiment of a new state of society, on principles which they had been long maturing and were prepared to defend before the world." in relation to male continence, therefore, noyes thought the community might fairly be considered "the committee of providence to test its value in actual life." he states that a careful medical comparison of the statistics of the community had shown that the rate of nervous disease in the community was considerably below the average outside, and that only two cases of nervous disorder had occurred which could be traced with any probability to a misuse of male continence. this has been confirmed by van de warker, who studied forty-two women of the community without finding any undue prevalence of reproductive diseases, nor could he find any diseased condition attributable to the sexual habits of the community (cf. c. reed, _text-book of gynecology_, , p. ). noyes believed that "male continence" had never previously been a definitely recognized practice based on theory, though there might have been occasional approximation to it. this is probably true if the coitus is _reservatus_ in the full sense, with complete absence of emission. prolonged coitus, however, permitting the woman to have orgasm more than once, while the man has none, has long been recognized. thus in the seventeenth century zacchia discussed whether such a practice is legitimate (_zacchiæ quæstionum opus_, ed. of , lib. vii, tit. iii, quæst. vi). in modern times it is occasionally practiced, without any theory, and is always appreciated by the woman, while it appears to have no bad effect on the man. in such a case it will happen that the act of coitus may last for an hour and a quarter or even longer, the maximum of the woman's pleasure not being reached until three-quarters of an hour have passed; during this period the woman will experience orgasm some four or five times, the man only at the end. it may occasionally happen that a little later the woman again experiences desire, and intercourse begins afresh in the same way. but after that she is satisfied, and there is no recurrence of desire. it may be desirable at this point to refer briefly to the chief variations in the method of effecting coitus in their relationship to the art of love and the attainment of adequate and satisfying detumescence. the primary and essential characteristic of the specifically human method of coitus is the fact that it takes place face to face. the fact that in what is usually considered the typically normal method of coitus the woman lies supine and the man above her is secondary. psychically, this front-to-front attitude represents a great advance over the quadrupedal method. the two partners reveal to each other the most important, the most beautiful, the most expressive sides of themselves, and thus multiply the mutual pleasure and harmony of the intimate act of union. moreover, this face-to-face attitude possesses a great significance, in the fact that it is the outward sign that the human couple has outgrown the animal sexual attitude of the hunter seizing his prey in the act of flight, and content to enjoy it in that attitude, from behind. the human male may be said to retain the same attitude, but the female has turned round; she has faced her partner and approached him, and so symbolizes her deliberate consent to the act of union. the human variations in the exercise of coitus, both individual and national, are, however, extremely numerous. "to be quite frank," says fürbringer (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ), "i can hardly think of any combination which does not figure among my case-notes as having been practiced by my patients." we must not too hastily conclude that such variations are due to vicious training. that is far from being the case. they often occur naturally and spontaneously. freud has properly pointed out (in the second series of his _beiträge zur neurosenlehre_, "bruchstück" etc.) that we must not be too shocked even when the idea of _fellatio_ spontaneously presents itself to a woman, for that idea has a harmless origin in the resemblance between the penis and the nipple. similarly, it may be added, the desire for _cunnilinctus_, which seems to be much more often latently present in women than is the desire for its performance in men, has a natural analogy in the pleasure of suckling, a pleasure which is itself indeed often erotically tinged (see vol. iv of these _studies_, "sexual selection in man," touch, sect. iii). every variation in this matter, remarks remy de gourmont (_physique de l'amour_, p. ) partakes of the sin of luxury, and some of the theologians have indeed considered any position in coitus but that which is usually called normal in europe as a mortal sin. other theologians, however, regarded such variations as only venial sins, provided ejaculation took place in the vagina, just as some theologians would permit _irrumatio_ as a preliminary to coitus, provided there was no ejaculation. aquinas took a serious view of the deviations from normal intercourse; sanchez was more indulgent, especially in view of his doctrine, derived from the greek and arabic natural philosophers, that the womb can attract the sperm, so that the natural end may be attained even in unusual positions. whatever difference of opinion there may have been among ancient theologians, it is well recognized by modern physicians that variations from the ordinary method of coitus are desirable in special cases. thus kisch points out (_sterilität des weibes_, p. ) that in some cases it is only possible for the woman to experience sexual excitement when coitus takes place in the lateral position, or in the _a posteriori_ position, or when the usual position is reversed; and in his _sexual life of woman_, also, kisch recommends several variations of position for coitus. adler points out (op. cit., pp. , ) the value of the same positions in some cases, and remarks that such variations often call forth latent sexual feelings as by a charm. such cases are indeed, by no means infrequent, the advantage of the unusual position being due either to physical or psychic causes, and the discovery of the right variation is sometimes found in a merely playful attempt. it has occasionally happened, also, that when intercourse has habitually taken place in an abnormal position, no satisfaction is experienced by the woman until the normal position is adopted. the only fairly common variation of coitus which meets with unqualified disapproval is that in the erect posture. (see e.g., hammond, op. cit. pp. et seq.) lucretius specially recommended the quadrupedal variation of coitus (bk. iv, ), and ovid describes (end of bk. iii of the _ars amatoria_) what he regards as agreeable variations, giving the preference, as the easiest and simplest method, to that in which the woman lies half supine on her side. perhaps, however, the variation which is nearest to the normal attitude and which has most often and most completely commended itself is that apparently known to arabic erotic writers as _dok el arz_, in which the man is seated and his partner is astride his thighs, embracing his body with her legs and his neck with her arms, while he embraces her waist; this is stated in the arabic _perfumed garden_ to be the method preferred by most women. the other most usual variation is the inverse normal position in which the man is supine, and the woman adapts herself to this position, which permits of several modifications obviously advantageous, especially when the man is much larger than his partner. the christian as well as the mahommedan theologians appear, indeed, to have been generally opposed to this superior position of the female, apparently, it would seem, because they regarded the literal subjection of the male which it involves as symbolic of a moral subjection. the testimony of many people to-day, however, is decidedly in favor of this position, more especially as regards the woman, since it enables her to obtain a better adjustment and greater control of the process, and so frequently to secure sexual satisfaction which she may find difficult or impossible in the normal position. the theologians seem to have been less unfavorably disposed to the position normal among quadrupeds, _a posteriori_, though the old penitentials were inclined to treat it severely, the penitential of angers prescribing forty days penance, and egbert's three years, if practiced habitually. (it is discussed by j. petermann, "venus aversa," _sexual-probleme_, feb., ). there are good reasons why in many cases this position should be desirable, more especially from the point of view of women, who indeed not infrequently prefer it. it must be always remembered, as has already been pointed out, that in the progress from anthropoid to man it is the female, not the male, whose method of coitus has been revolutionized. while, however, the obverse human position represents a psychic advance, there has never been a complete physical readjustment of the female organs to the obverse method. more especially, in adler's opinion (op. cit., pp. - ), the position of the clitoris is such that, as a rule, it is more easily excited by coitus from behind than from in front. a more recent writer, klotz, in his book, _der mensch ein vierfüssler_ ( ), even takes the too extreme position that the quadrupedal method of coitus, being the only method that insures due contact with the clitoris, is the natural human method. it must, however, be admitted that the posterior mode of coitus is not only a widespread, but a very important variation, in either of its two most important forms: the pompeiian method, in which the woman bends forwards and the man approaches behind, or the method described by boccaccio, in which the man is supine and the woman astride. _fellatio_ and _cunnilinctus_, while they are not strictly methods of coitus, in so far as they do not involve the penetration of the penis into the vagina, are very widespread as preliminaries, or as vicarious forms of coitus, alike among civilized and uncivilized peoples. thus, in india, i am told that _fellatio_ is almost universal in households, and regarded as a natural duty towards the paterfamilias. as regards _cunnilinctus_ max dessoir has stated (_allgemeine zeitschrift für psychiatrie_, , heft ) that the superior berlin prostitutes say that about a quarter of their clients desire to exercise this, and that in france and italy the proportion is higher; the number of women who find _cunnilinctus_ agreeable is without doubt much greater. intercourse _per anum_ must also be regarded as a vicarious form of coitus. it appears to be not uncommon, especially among the lower social classes, and while most often due to the wish to avoid conception, it is also sometimes practiced as a sexual aberration, at the wish either of the man or the woman, the anus being to some extent an erogenous zone. the ethnic variations in method of coitus were briefly discussed in volume v of these _studies_, "the mechanism of detumescence," section ii. in all civilized countries, from the earliest times, writers on the erotic art have formally and systematically set forth the different positions for coitus. the earliest writing of this kind now extant seems to be an egyptian papyrus preserved at turin of the date b.c. ; in this, fourteen different positions are represented. the indians, according to iwan bloch, recognize altogether forty-eight different positions; the _ananga ranga_ describes thirty-two main forms. the mohammedan _perfumed garden_ describes forty forms, as well as six different kinds of movement during coitus. the eastern books of this kind are, on the whole, superior to those that have been produced by the western world, not only by their greater thoroughness, but by the higher spirit by which they have often been inspired. the ancient greek erotic writings, now all lost, in which the modes of coitus were described, were nearly all attributed to women. according to a legend recorded by suidas, the earliest writer of this kind was astyanassa, the maid of helen of troy. elephantis, the poetess, is supposed to have enumerated nine different postures. numerous women of later date wrote on these subjects, and one book is attributed to polycrates, the sophist. aretino--who wrote after the influence of christianity had degraded erotic matters perilously near to that region of pornography from which they are only to-day beginning to be rescued--in his _sonnetti lussuriosi_ described twenty-six different methods of coitus, each one accompanied by an illustrative design by giulio romano, the chief among raphael's pupils. veniero, in his _puttana errante_, described thirty-two positions. more recently forberg, the chief modern authority, has enumerated ninety positions, but, it is said, only forty-eight can, even on the most liberal estimate, be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation. the disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and rendered it a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible for the fact that the chief time for its consummation among modern civilized peoples is the darkness of the early night in stuffy bedrooms when the fatigue of the day's labors is struggling with the artificial stimulation produced by heavy meals and alcoholic drinks. this habit is partly responsible for the indifference or even disgust with which women sometimes view coitus. many more primitive peoples are wiser. the new guinea papuans of astrolabe bay, according to vahness (_zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , heft , p. ), though it must be remembered that the association of the sexual act with darkness is much older than christianity, and connected with early religious notions (cf. hesiod, _works and days_, bk. ii), always have sexual intercourse in the open air. the hard-working women of the gebvuka and buru islands, again, are too tired for coitus at night; it is carried out in the day time under the trees, and the serang islanders also have coitus in the woods (ploss and bartels, das _weib_, bk. i, ch. xvii). it is obviously impracticable to follow these examples in modern cities, even if avocation and climate permitted. it is also agreed that sexual intercourse should be followed by repose. there seems to be little doubt, however, that the early morning and the daylight are a more favorable time than the early night. conception should take place in the light, said michelet (_l'amour_, p. ); sexual intercourse in the darkness of night is an act committed with a mere female animal; in the day-time it is union with a loving and beloved individual person. this has been widely recognized. the greeks, as we gather from aristophanes in the _archarnians_, regarded sunrise as the appropriate time for coitus. the south slavs also say that dawn is the time for coitus. many modern authorities have urged the advantages of early morning coitus. morning, said roubaud (_traité de l'impuissance_, pp. - ) is the time for coitus, and even if desire is greater in the evening, pleasure is greater in the morning. osiander also advised early morning coitus, and venette, in an earlier century, discussing "at what hour a man should amorously embrace his wife" (_la génération de l'homme_, part ii, ch. v), while thinking it is best to follow inclination, remarks that "a beautiful woman looks better by sunlight than by candlelight." a few authorities, like burdach, have been content to accept the custom of night coitus, and busch (_das geschlechtsleben des weibes_, vol. i, p. ) was inclined to think the darkness of night the most "natural" time, while fürbringer (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ) thinks that early morning is "occasionally" the best time. to some, on the other hand, the exercise of sexual intercourse in the sunlight and the open air seems so important that they are inclined to elevate it to the rank of a religious exercise. i quote from a communication on this point received from australia: "this shameful thing that must not be spoken of or done (except in the dark) will some day, i believe, become the one religious ceremony of the human race, in the spring. (oh, what springs!) people will have become very sane, well-bred, aristocratic (all of them aristocrats), and on the whole opposed to rites and superstitions, for they will have a perfect knowledge of the past. the coition of lovers in the springtime will be the one religious ceremony they will allow themselves. i have a vision sometimes of the holy scene, but i am afraid it is too beautiful to describe. 'the intercourse of the sexes, i have dreamed, is ineffably beautiful, too fair to be remembered,' wrote the chaste thoreau. verily human beauty, joy, and love will reach their divinest height during those inaugural days of springtide coupling. when the world is one paradise, the consummation of the lovers, the youngest and most beautiful, will take place in certain sacred valleys in sight of thousands assembled to witness it. for days it will take place in these valleys where the sun will rise on a dream of passionate voices, of clinging human forms, of flowers and waters, and the purple and gold of the sunrise are reflected on hills illumined with pansies. [i know not if the writer recalled george chapman's "enamelled pansies used at nuptials still"], and repeated on golden human flesh and human hair. in these sacred valleys the subtle perfume of the pansies will mingle with the divine fragrance of healthy naked young women and men in the spring coupling. you and i shall not see that, but we may help to make it possible." this rhapsody (an unconscious repetition of saint-lambert's at mlle. quinault's table in the eighteenth century) serves to illustrate the revolt which tends to take place against the unnatural and artificial degradation of the sexual act. in some parts of the world it has seemed perfectly natural and reasonable that so great and significant an act as that of coitus should be consecrated to the divinity, and hence arose the custom of prayer before sexual intercourse. thus zoroaster ordained that a married couple should pray before coitus, and after the act they should say together: "o, sapondomad, i trust this seed to thee, preserve it for me, for it is a man." in the gorong archipelago it is customary also for husband and wife to pray together before the sexual act (ploss and bartels, _das weib_, bd. i, ch. xvii). the civilized man, however, has come to regard his stomach as the most important of his organs, and he utters his conventional grace, not before love, but only before food. even the degraded ritual vestiges of the religious recognition of coitus are difficult to find in europe. we may perhaps detect it among the spaniards, with their tenacious instinct for ritual, in the solemn etiquette with which, in the seventeenth century, it was customary, according to madame d'aulnoy, for the king to enter the bedchamber of the queen: "he has on his slippers, his black mantle over his shoulder, his shield on one arm, a bottle hanging by a cord over the other arm (this bottle is not to drink from, but for a quite opposite purpose, which you will guess). with all this the king must also have his great sword in one hand and a dark lantern in the other. in this way he must enter, alone, the queen's chamber" (madame d'aulnoy, _relation du voyage d'espagne_, , vol. iii, p. ). in discussing the art of love it is necessary to give a primary place to the central fact of coitus, on account of the ignorance that widely prevails concerning it, and the unfortunate prejudices which in their fungous broods flourish in the noisome obscurity around it. the traditions of the christian church, which overspread the whole of europe, and set up for worship a divine virgin and her divine son, both of whom it elaborately disengaged from personal contact with sexuality effectually crushed any attempt to find a sacred and avowable ideal in married love. even the church's own efforts to elevate matrimony were negatived by its own ideals. that influence depresses our civilization even to-day. when walt whitman wrote his "children of adam" he was giving imperfect expression to conceptions of the religious nature of sexual love which have existed wholesomely and naturally in all parts of the world, but had not yet penetrated the darkness of christendom where they still seemed strange and new, if not terrible. and the refusal to recognize the solemnity of sex had involved the placing of a pall of blackness and disrepute on the supreme sexual act itself. it was shut out from the sunshine and excluded from the sphere of worship. the sexual act is important from the point of view of erotic art, not only from the ignorance and prejudices which surround it, but also because it has a real value even in regard to the psychic side of married life. "these organs," according to the oft-quoted saying of the old french physician, ambrose paré, "make peace in the household." how this comes about we see illustrated from time to time in pepys's diary. at the same time, it is scarcely necessary to say, after all that has gone before, that this ancient source of domestic peace tends to be indefinitely complicated by the infinite variety in erotic needs, which become ever more pronounced with the growth of civilization.[ ] the art of love is, indeed, only beginning with the establishment of sexual intercourse. in the adjustment of that relationship all the forces of nature are so strongly engaged that under completely favorable conditions--which indeed very rarely occur in our civilization--the knowledge of the art and a possible skill in its exercise come almost of themselves. the real test of the artist in love is in the skill to carry it beyond the period when the interests of nature, having been really or seemingly secured, begin to slacken. the whole art of love, it has been well said, lies in forever finding something new in the same person. the art of love is even more the art of retaining love than of arousing it. otherwise it tends to degenerate towards the shakespearian lust, "past reason hunted, and no sooner had, past reason hated," though it must be remembered that even from the most strictly natural point of view the transitions of passion are not normally towards repulsion but towards affection.[ ] the young man and woman who are brought into the complete unrestraint of marriage after a prolonged and unnatural separation, during which desire and the satisfactions of desire have been artificially disconnected, are certainly not under the best conditions for learning the art of love. they are tempted by reckless and promiscuous indulgence in the intimacies of marriage to fling carelessly aside all the reasons that make that art worth learning. "there are married people," as ellen key remarks, "who might have loved each other all their lives if they had not been compelled, every day and all the year, to direct their habits, wills, and inclinations towards each other." all the tendencies of our civilized life are, in personal matters, towards individualism; they involve the specialization, and they ensure the sacredness, of personal habits and even peculiarities. this individualism cannot be broken down suddenly at the arbitrary dictation of a tradition, or even by the force of passion from which the restraints have been removed. out of deference to the conventions and prejudices of their friends, or out of the reckless abandonment of young love, or merely out of a fear of hurting each other's feelings, young couples have often plunged prematurely into an unbroken intimacy which is even more disastrous to the permanency of marriage than the failure ever to reach a complete intimacy at all. that is one of the chief reasons why most writers on the moral hygiene of marriage nowadays recommend separate beds for the married couple, if possible separate bedrooms, and even sometimes, with ellen key, see no objection to their living in separate houses. certainly the happiest marriages have often involved the closest and most unbroken intimacy, in persons peculiarly fitted for such intimacy. it is far from true that, as bloch has affirmed, familiarity is fatal to love. it is deadly to a love that has no roots, but it is the nourishment of the deeply-rooted love. yet it remains true that absence is needed to maintain the keen freshness and fine idealism of love. "absence," as landor said, "is the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal beauty." the married lovers who are only able to meet for comparatively brief periods between long absences have often experienced in these meetings a life-long succession of honeymoons.[ ] there can be no question that as presence has its risks for love, so also has absence. absence like presence, in the end, if too prolonged, effaces the memory of love, and absence, further, by the multiplied points of contact with the world which it frequently involves, introduces the problem of jealousy, although, it must be added, it is difficult indeed to secure a degree of association which excludes jealousy or even the opportunities for motives of jealousy. the problem of jealousy is so fundamental in the art of love that it is necessary at this point to devote to it a brief discussion. jealousy is based on fundamental instincts which are visible at the beginning of animal life. descartes defined jealousy as "a kind of fear related to a desire to preserve a possession." every impulse of acquisition in the animal world is stimulated into greater activity by the presence of a rival who may snatch beforehand the coveted object. this seems to be a fundamental fact in the animal world; it has been a life-conserving tendency, for, it has been said, an animal that stood aside while its fellows were gorging themselves with food, and experienced nothing but pure satisfaction in the spectacle, would speedily perish. but in this fact we have the natural basis of jealousy.[ ] it is in reference to food that this impulse appears first and most conspicuously among animals. it is a well-known fact that association with other animals induces an animal to eat much more than when kept by himself. he ceases to eat from hunger but eats, as it has been put, in order to preserve his food from rivals in the only strong box he knows. the same feeling is transferred among animals to the field of sex. and further in the relations of dogs and other domesticated animals to their masters the emotion of jealousy is often very keenly marked.[ ] jealousy is an emotion which is at its maximum among animals, among savages,[ ] among children,[ ] in the senile, in the degenerate, and very specially in chronic alcoholics.[ ] it is worthy of note that the supreme artists and masters of the human heart who have most consummately represented the tragedy of jealousy clearly recognized that it is either atavistic or pathological; shakespeare made his othello a barbarian, and tolstoy made the pozdnischeff of his _kreutzer sonata_ a lunatic. it is an anti-social emotion, though it has been maintained by some that it has been the cause of chastity and fidelity. gesell, for instance, while admitting its anti-social character and accumulating quotations in evidence of the torture and disaster it occasions, seems to think that it still ought to be encouraged in order to foster sexual virtues. very decided opinions have been expressed in the opposite sense. jealousy, like other shadows, says ellen key, belongs only to the dawn and the setting of love, and a man should feel that it is a miracle, and not his right, if the sun stands still at the zenith.[ ] even therefore if jealousy has been a beneficial influence at the beginning of civilization, as well as among animals,--as may probably be admitted, though on the whole it seems rather to be the by-product of a beneficial influence than such an influence itself,--it is still by no means clear that it therefore becomes a desirable emotion in more advanced stages of civilization. there are many primitive emotions, like anger and fear, which we do not think it desirable to encourage in complex civilized societies but rather seek to restrain and control, and even if we are inclined to attribute an original value to jealousy, it seems to be among these emotions that it ought to be placed. miss clapperton, in discussing this problem (_scientific meliorism_, pp. - ), follows darwin (_descent of man_, part i, ch. iv) in thinking that jealousy led to "the inculcation of female virtue," but she adds that it has also been a cause of woman's subjection, and now needs to be eliminated. "to rid ourselves as rapidly as may be of jealousy is essential; otherwise the great movement in favor of equality of sex will necessarily meet with checks and grave obstruction." ribot (_la logique des sentiments_, pp. et seq.; _essai sur les passions_, pp. , ), while stating that subjectively the estimate of jealousy must differ in accordance with the ideal of life held, considers that objectively we must incline to an unfavorable estimate "even a brief passion is a rupture in the normal life; it is an abnormal, if not a pathological state, an excrescence, a parasitism." forel (_die sexuelle frage_, ch. v) speaks very strongly in the same sense, and considers that it is necessary to eliminate jealousy by non-procreation of the jealous. jealousy is, he declares, "the worst and unfortunately the most deeply-rooted of the 'irradiations,' or, better, the 'contrast-reactions,' of sexual love inherited from our animal ancestors. an old german saying, 'eifersucht ist eine leidenschaft die mit eifer sucht was leider schafft,' says by no means too much.... jealousy is a heritage of animality and barbarism; i would recall this to those who, under the name of 'injured honor,' attempt to justify it and place it on a high pedestal. an unfaithful husband is ten times more to be wished for a woman than a jealous husband.... we often hear of 'justifiable jealousy.' i believe, however, that there is no justifiable jealousy; it is always atavistic or else pathological; at the best it is nothing more than a brutal animal stupidity. a man who, by nature, that is by his hereditary constitution, is jealous is certain to poison his own life and that of his wife. such men ought on no account to marry. both education and selection should work together to eliminate jealousy as far as possible from the human brain." eric gillard in an article on "jealousy" (_free review_, sept., ), in opposition to those who believe that jealousy "makes the home," declares that, on the contrary, it is the chief force that unmakes the home. "so long as egotism waters it with the tears of sentiment and shields it from the cold blasts of scientific inquiry, so long will it thrive. but the time will come when it will be burned in the garden of love as a noxious weed. its mephitic influence in society is too palpable to be overlooked. it turns homes that might be sanctuaries of love into hells of discord and hate; it causes suicides, and it drives thousands to drink, reckless excesses, and madness. makes the home! one of your married men friends sees a probable seducer in every man who smiles at his wife; another is jealous of his wife's women acquaintances; a third is wounded because his wife shows so much attention to the children. some of the women you know display jealousy of every other woman, of their husband's acquaintances, and some, of his very dog. you must be completely monopolized or you do not thoroughly love. you must admire no one but the person with whom you have immured yourself for life. old friendships must be dissolved, new friendships must not be formed, for fear of invoking the beautiful emotion that 'makes the home.'" even if jealousy in matters of sex could be admitted to be an emotion working on the side of civilized progress, it must still be pointed out that it merely acts externally; it can have little or no real influence; the jealous person seldom makes himself more lovable by his jealousy and frequently much less lovable. the main effect of his jealousy is to increase, and not seldom to excite, the causes for jealousy, and at the same time to encourage hypocrisy. all the circumstances, accompaniments, and results of domestic jealousy in their completely typical form, are well illustrated by a very serious episode in the history of the pepys household, and have been fully and faithfully set down by the great diarist. the offence--an embrace of his wife's lady-help, as she might now be termed--was a slight one, but, as pepys himself admits, quite inexcusable. he is writing, being in his thirty-sixth year, on the th of oct., (lord's day). "after supper, to have my hair combed by deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever i knew in this world, for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl.... i was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girl also, and i endeavored to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry.... heartily afflicted for this folly of mine.... so ends this month," he writes a few days later, "with some quiet to my mind, though not perfect, after the greatest falling out with my poor wife, and through my folly with the girl, that ever i had, and i have reason to be sorry and ashamed of it, and more to be troubled for the poor girl's sake. sixth november. up, and presently my wife up with me, which she professedly now do every day to dress me, that i may not see willet [deb], and do eye me, whether i cast my eye upon her, or no, and do keep me from going into the room where she is. ninth november. up, and i did, by a little note which i flung to deb, advise her that i did continue to deny that ever i kissed her, and so she might govern herself. the truth is that i did adventure upon god's pardoning me this lie, knowing how heavy a thing it would be for me, to the ruin of the poor girl, and next knowing that if my wife should know all it would be impossible for her ever to be at peace with me again, and so our whole lives would be uncomfortable. the girl read, and as i bid her returned me the note, flinging it to me in passing by." next day, however, he is "mightily troubled," for his wife has obtained a confession from the girl of the kissing. for some nights mr. and mrs. pepys are both sleepless, with much weeping on either side. deb gets another place, leaving on the th of november, and pepys is never able to see her before she leaves the house, his wife keeping him always under her eye. it is evident that pepys now feels strongly attracted to deb, though there is no evidence of this before she became the subject of the quarrel. on the th of november, hearing she was to leave next day, he writes: "the truth is i have a good mind to have the maidenhead of this girl." he was, however, the "more troubled to see how my wife is by this means likely forever to have her hand over me, and that i shall forever be a slave to her--that is to say, only in matters of pleasure." at the same time his love for his wife was by no means diminished, nor hers for him. "i must here remark," he says, "that i have lain with my moher [i.e., _muger_, wife] as a husband more times since this falling out than in, i believe, twelve months before. and with more pleasure to her than in all the time of our marriage before." the next day was sunday. on monday pepys at once begins to make inquiries which will put him on the track of deb. on the th he finds her. she gets up into the coach with him, and he kisses her and takes liberties with her, at the same time advising her "to have a care of her honor and to fear god," allowing no one else to do what he has done; he also tells her how she can find him if she desires. pepys now feels that everything is settled satisfactorily, and his heart is full of joy. but his joy is short-lived, for mrs. pepys discovers this interview with deb on the following day. pepys denies it at first, then confesses, and there is a more furious scene than ever. pepys is now really alarmed, for his wife threatens to leave him; he definitely abandons deb, and with prayers to god resolves never to do the like again. mrs. pepys is not satisfied, however, till she makes her husband write a letter to deb, telling her that she is little better than a whore, and that he hates her, though deb is spared this, not by any stratagem of pepys, but by the considerateness of the friend to whom the letter was entrusted for delivery. moreover, mrs. pepys arranges with her husband that, in future, whenever he goes abroad he shall be accompanied everywhere by his clerk. we see that mrs. pepys plays with what appears to be triumphant skill and success the part of the jealous and avenging wife, and digs her little french heels remorselessly into her prostrate husband and her rival. unfortunately, we do not know what the final outcome was, for a little later, owing to trouble with his eyesight, pepys was compelled to bring his diary to an end. it is evident, however, when we survey the whole of this perhaps typical episode, that neither husband nor wife were in the slightest degree prepared for the commonplace position into which they were thrown; that each of them appears in a painful, undignified, and humiliating light; that as a result of it the husband acquires almost a genuine and strong affection for the girl who is the cause of the quarrel; and finally that, even though he is compelled, for the time at all events, to yield to his wife, he remains at the end exactly what he was at the beginning. nor had husband or wife the very slightest wish to leave each other; the bond of marriage remained firm, but it had been degraded by insincerity on one side and the jealous endeavor on the other to secure fidelity by compulsion. apart altogether, however, from the question of its effectiveness, or even of the misery that it causes to all concerned, it is evident that jealousy is incompatible with all the tendencies of civilization. we have seen that a certain degree of variation is involved in the sexual relationship, as in all other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate many evils and injustices, that fact has to be faced and recognized. we have also seen that the line of our advance involves a constant increase in moral responsibility and self-government, and that, in its turn, implies not only a high degree of sincerity but also the recognition that no person has any right, or indeed any power, to control the emotions and actions of another person. if our sun of love stands still at midday, according to ellen key's phrase, that is a miracle to be greeted with awe and gratitude, and by no means a right to be demanded. the claim of jealousy falls with the claim of conjugal rights. it is quite possible, bloch remarks (_the sexual life of our time_, ch. x), to love more than one person at the same time, with nearly equal tenderness, and to be honestly able to assure each of the passion felt for her or him. bloch adds that the vast psychic differentiation involved by modern civilization increases the possibility of this double love, for it is difficult for anyone to find his complement in a single person, and that this applies to women as well as to men. georg hirth likewise points out (_wege zur heimat_, pp. - ) that it is important to remember that women, as well as men, can love two persons at the same time. men flatter themselves, he remarks, with the prejudice that the female heart, or rather brain, can only hold one man at a time, and that if there is a second man it is by a kind of prostitution. nearly all erotic writers, poets, and novelists, even physicians and psychologists, belong to this class, he says; they look on a woman as property, and of course two men cannot "possess" a woman. (regarding novelists, however, the remark may be interpolated that there are many exceptions, and thomas hardy, for instance, frequently represents a woman as more or less in love with two men at the same time.) as against this desire to depreciate women's psychic capacity, hirth maintains that a woman is not necessarily obliged to be untrue to one man because she has conceived a passion for another man. "today," hirth truly declares, "only love and justice can count as honorable motives in marriage. the modern man accords to the beloved wife and life-companion the same freedom which he himself took before marriage, and perhaps still takes in marriage. if she makes no use of it, as is to be hoped--so much the better! but let there be no lies, no deception; the indispensable foundation of modern marriage is boundless sincerity and friendship, the deepest trust, affectionate devotion, and consideration. this is the best safeguard against adultery.... let him, however, who is, nevertheless, overtaken by the outbreak of it console himself with the undoubted fact that of two real lovers the most noble-minded and deep-seeing _friend_ will always have the preference." these wise words cannot be too deeply meditated. the policy of jealousy is only successful--when it is successful--in the hands of the man who counts the external husk of love more precious than the kernel. it seems to some that the recognition of variations in sexual relationships, of the tendency of the monogamic to overpass its self-imposed bounds, is at best a sad necessity, and a lamentable fall from a high ideal. that, however, is the reverse of the truth. the great evil of monogamy, and its most seriously weak point, is its tendency to self-concentration at the expense of the outer world. the devil always comes to a man in the shape of his wife and children, said hinton. the family is a great social influence in so far as it is the best instrument for creating children who will make the future citizens; but in a certain sense the family is an anti-social influence, for it tends to absorb unduly the energy that is needed for the invigoration of society. it is possible, indeed, that that fact led to the modification of the monogamic system in early developing periods of human history, when social expansion and cohesion were the primary necessities. the family too often tends to resemble, as someone has said, the secluded collection of grubs sometimes revealed in their narrow home when we casually raise a flat stone in our gardens. great as are the problems of love, and great as should be our attention to them, it must always be remembered that love is not a little circle that is complete in itself. it is the nature of love to irradiate. just as family life exists mainly for the social end of breeding the future race, so family love has its social ends in the extension of sympathy and affection to those outside it, and even in ends that go beyond love altogether.[ ] the question is debated from time to time as to how far it is possible for men and women to have intimate friendships with each other outside the erotic sphere.[ ] there can be no doubt whatever that it is perfectly possible for a man and a woman to experience for each other a friendship which never intrudes into the sexual sphere. as a rule, however, this only happens under special conditions, and those are generally conditions which exclude the closest and most intimate friendship. if, as we have seen, love may be defined as a synthesis of lust and friendship, friendship inevitably enters into the erotic sphere. just as sexual emotion tends to merge into friendship, so friendship between persons of opposite sex, if young, healthy, and attractive, tends to involve sexual emotion. the two feelings are too closely allied for an artificial barrier to be permanently placed between them without protest. men who offer a woman friendship usually find that it is not received with much satisfaction except as the first installment of a warmer emotion, and women who offer friendship to a man usually find that he responds with an offer of love; very often the "friendship" is from the first simply love or flirtation masquerading under another name. "in the long run," a woman writes (in a letter published in _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. i, heft ), "the senses become discontented at their complete exclusion. and i believe that a man can only come into the closest mutual association with a woman by whom, consciously or unconsciously, he is physically attracted. he cannot enter into the closest psychic intercourse with a woman with whom he could not imagine himself in physical intercourse. his prevailing wish is for the possession of a woman, of the whole woman, her soul as well as her body. and a woman also cannot imagine an intimate relation to a man in which the heart and the body, as well as the mind, are not involved. (naturally i am thinking of people with sound nerves and healthy blood.) can a woman carry on a platonic relation with a man from year to year without the thought sometimes coming to her: 'why does he never kiss me? have i no charm for him?' and in the most concealed corner of her heart will it not happen that she uses that word 'kiss' in the more comprehensive sense in which the french sometimes employ it?" there is undoubtedly an element of truth in this statement. the frontier between erotic love and friendship is vague, and an intimate psychic intercourse that is sternly debarred from ever manifesting itself in a caress, or other physical manifestation of tender intimacy, tends to be constrained, and arouses unspoken and unspeakable thoughts and desires which are fatal to any complete friendship. undoubtedly the only perfect "platonic friendships" are those which have been reached through the portal of a preliminary erotic intimacy. in such a case bad lovers, when they have resolutely traversed the erotic stage, may become exceedingly good friends. a satisfactory friendship is possible between brother and sister because they have been physically intimate in childhood, and all erotic curiosities are absent. the most admirable "platonic friendship" may often be attained by husband and wife in whom sympathy and affection and common interests have outlived passion. in nearly all the most famous friendships of distinguished men and women--as we know in some cases and divine in others--an hour's passion, in sainte-beuve's words, has served as the golden key to unlock the most precious and intimate secrets of friendship.[ ] the friendships that have been entered through the erotic portal possess an intimacy and retain a spiritually erotic character which could not be attained on the basis of a normal friendship between persons of the same sex. this is true in a far higher degree of the ultimate relationship, under fortunate circumstances, of husband and wife in the years after passion has become impossible. they have ceased to be passionate lovers but they have not become mere friends and comrades. more especially their relationship takes on elements borrowed from the attitude of child to parent, of parent to child. everyone from his first years retains something of the child which cannot be revealed to all the world; everyone acquires something of the guardian paternal or maternal spirit. husband and wife are each child to the other, and are indeed parent and child by turn. and here still the woman retains a certain erotic supremacy, for she is to the last more of a child than it is ever easy for the man to be, and much more essentially a mother than he is a father. groos (_der Æsthetische genuss_, p. ) has pointed out that "love" is really made up of both sexual instinct and parental instinct. "so-called happy marriages," says professor w. thomas (_sex and society_, p. ), "represent an equilibrium reached through an extension of the maternal interest of the woman to the man, whereby she looks after his personal needs as she does after those of the children--cherishing him, in fact, as a child--or in an extension to woman on the part of man of the nurture and affection which is in his nature to give to pets and all helpless (and preferably dumb) creatures." "when the devotion in the tie between mother and son," a woman writes, "is added to the relation of husband and wife, the union of marriage is raised to the high and beautiful dignity it deserves, and can attain in this world. it comprehends sympathy, love, and perfect understanding, even of the faults and weaknesses of both sides." "the foundation of every true woman's love," another woman writes, "is a mother's tenderness. he whom she loves is a child of larger growth, although she may at the same time have a deep respect for him." (see also, for similar opinion of another woman of distinguished intellectual ability, footnote at beginning of "the psychic state in pregnancy" in volume v of these _studies_.) it is on the basis of these elemental human facts that the permanently seductive and inspiring relationships of sex are developed, and not by the emergence of personalities who combine impossibly exalted characteristics. "the task is extremely difficult," says kisch in his _sexual life of woman_, "but a clever and virtuous modern wife must endeavor to combine in her single personality the sensuous attractiveness of an aspasia, the chastity of a lucrece, and the intellectual greatness of a cornelia." and in an earlier century we are told in the novel of _la tia fingida_, which has sometimes been attributed to cervantes, that "a woman should be an angel in the street, a saint in church, beautiful at the window, honest in the house, and a demon in bed." the demands made of men by women, on the other hand, have been almost too lofty to bear definite formulation at all. "ninety-nine out of a hundred loving women," says helene stöcker, "certainly believe that if a thousand other men have behaved ignobly, and forsaken, ill-used, and deceived the woman they love, the man they love is an exception, marked out from all other men; that is the reason they love him." it may be doubted, however, if the great lovers have ever stood very far above the ordinary level of humanity by their possession of perfection. they have been human, and their art of love has not always excluded the possession of human frailties; perfection, indeed, even if it could be found, would furnish a bad soil for love to strike deep roots in. it is only when we realize the highly complex nature of the elements which make up erotic love that we can understand how it is that that love can constitute so tremendous a revelation and exert so profound an influence even in men of the greatest genius and intellect and in the sphere of their most spiritual activity. it is not merely passion, nor any conscious skill in the erotic art,--important as these may be,--that would serve to account for goethe's relationship to frau von stein, or wagner's to mathilde wesendonck, or that of robert and elizabeth browning to each other.[ ] it may now be clear to the reader why it has been necessary in a discussion of the sexual impulse in its relationship to society to deal with the art of love. it is true that there is nothing so intimately private and personal as the erotic affairs of the individual. yet it is equally true that these affairs lie at the basis of the social life, and furnish the conditions--good or bad as the case may be--of that procreative act which is a supreme concern of the state. it is because the question of love is of such purely private interest that it tends to be submerged in the question of breed. we have to realize, not only that the question of love subserves the question of breed, but also that love has a proper, a necessary, even a socially wholesome claim, to stand by itself and to be regarded for its own worth. in the profoundly suggestive study of love which the distinguished sociologist tarde left behind at his death (_archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, loc. cit.), there are some interesting remarks on this point: "society," he says, "has been far more, and more intelligently, preoccupied with the problem of answering the 'question of breed' than the 'question of love.' the first problem fills all our civil and commercial codes. the second problem has never been clearly stated, or looked in the face, not even in antiquity, still less since the coming of christianity, for merely to offer the solutions of marriage and prostitution is manifestly inadequate. statesmen have only seen the side on which it touches population. hence the marriage laws. sterile love they profess to disdain. yet it is evident that, though born as the serf of generation, love tends by civilization to be freed from it. in place of a simple method of procreation it has become an end, it has created itself a title, a royal title. our gardens cultivate flowers that are all the more charming because they are sterile; why is the double corolla of love held more infamous than the sterilized flowers of our gardens?" tarde replies that the reason is that our politicians are merely ambitious persons thirsting for power and wealth, and even when they are lovers they are don juans rather than virgils. "the future," he continues, "is to the virgilians, because if the ambition of power, the regal wealth of american or european millionarism, once seemed nobler, love now more and more attracts to itself the best and highest parts of the soul, where lies the hidden ferment of all that is greatest in science and art, and more and more those studious and artist souls multiply who, intent on their peaceful activities, hold in horror the business men and the politicians, and will one day succeed in driving them back. that assuredly will be the great and capital revolution of humanity, an active psychological revolution: the recognized preponderance of the meditative and contemplative, the lover's side of the human soul, over the feverish, expansive, rapacious, and ambitious side. and then it will be understood that one of the greatest of social problems, perhaps the most arduous of all, has been the problem of love." footnotes: [ ] _quæstionum convivalium_, lib. iii, quæstio . [ ] e.d. cope, "the marriage problem," _open court_, nov. . [ ] columbus meeting of the american medical association, . [ ] ellen key, _ueber liebe und ehe_, p. . [ ] in an admirable article on friedrich schlegel's _lucinde_ (_mutterschutz_, , heft ), heinrich meyer-benfey, in pointing out that the catholic sacramental conception of marriage licensed love, but failed to elevate it, regards _lucinde_, with all its defects, as the first expression of the unity of the senses and the soul, and, as such, the basis of the new ethics of love. it must, however, be said that four hundred years earlier pontano had expressed this same erotic unity far more robustly and wholesomely than schlegel, though the latin verse in which he wrote, fresh and vital as it is, remained without influence. pontano's _carmina_, including the "de amore conjugali," have at length been reprinted in a scholarly edition by soldati. [ ] from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries ovid was, in reality, the most popular and influential classic poet. his works played a large part in moulding renaissance literature, not least in england, where marlowe translated his _amores_, and shakespeare, during the early years of his literary activity, was greatly indebted to him (see, e.g., sidney lee, "ovid and shakespeare's sonnets," _quarterly review_, ap., ). [ ] this has already been discussed in chapter ii. [ ] by the age of twenty-five, as g. hirth remarks (_wege zur heimat_, p. ), an energetic and sexually disposed man in a large city has, for the most part, already had relations with some twenty-five women, perhaps even as many as fifty, while a well-bred and cultivated woman at that age is still only beginning to realize the slowly summating excitations of sex. [ ] in his study of "conjugal aversion" (_journal nervous and mental disease_, sept., ) smith baker points out the value of adequate sexual knowledge before marriage in lessening the risks of such aversion. [ ] "it may be said to the honor of men," adler truly remarks (op. cit., p. ), "that it is perhaps not often their conscious brutality that is at fault in this matter, but merely lack of skill and lack of understanding. the husband who is not specially endowed by nature and experience for psychic intercourse with women, is not likely, through his earlier intercourse with venus vulgivaga, to bring into marriage any useful knowledge, psychic or physical." [ ] "the first night," writes a correspondent concerning his marriage, "she found the act very painful and was frightened and surprised at the size of my penis, and at my suddenly getting on her. we had talked very openly about sex things before marriage, and it never occurred to me that she was ignorant of the details of the act. i imagined it would disgust her to talk about these things; but i now see i should have explained things to her. before marrying i had come to the conclusion that the respect owed to one's wife was incompatible with any talk that might seem indecent, and also i had made a resolve not to subject her to what i thought then were dirty tricks, even to be naked and to have her naked. in fact, i was the victim of mock modesty; it was an artificial reaction from the life i had been living before marriage. now it seems to me to be natural, if you love a woman, to do whatever occurs to you and to her. if i had not felt it wrong to encourage such acts between us, there might have been established a sexual sympathy which would have bound me more closely to her." [ ] montaigne, _essais_, bk. iii, ch. v. it is a significant fact that, even in the matter of information, women, notwithstanding much ignorance and inexperience, are often better equipped for marriage than men. as fürbringer remarks (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ), although the wife is usually more chaste at marriage than the husband, yet "she is generally the better informed partner in matters pertaining to the married state, in spite of occasional astonishing confessions." [ ] "she never loses her self-respect nor my respect for her," a man writes in a letter, "simply because we are desperately in love with one another, and everything we do--some of which the lowest prostitute might refuse to do--seems but one attempt after another to translate our passion into action. i never realized before, not that to the pure all things are pure, indeed, but that to the lover nothing is indecent. yes, i have always felt it, to love her is a liberal education." it is obviously only the existence of such an attitude as this that can enable a pure woman to be passionate. [ ] "to be really understood," as rafford pyke well says, "to say what she likes, to utter her innermost thoughts in her own way, to cast aside the traditional conventions that gall her and repress her, to have someone near her with whom she can be quite frank, and yet to know that not a syllable of what she says will be misinterpreted or mistaken, but rather felt just as she feels it all--how wonderfully sweet is this to every woman, and how few men are there who can give it to her!" [ ] in more recent times it has been discussed in relation to the frequency of spontaneous nocturnal emissions. see "the phenomena of sexual periodicity," sect. ii, in volume i of these _studies_, and cf. mr. perry-coste's remarks on "the annual rhythm," in appendix b of the same volume. [ ] see "the sexual impulse in women," vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] zenobia's practice is referred to by gibbon, _decline and fall_, ed. bury, vol. i, p. . the queen of aragon's decision is recorded by the montpellier jurist, nicolas bohier (boerius) in his _decisiones_, etc., ed. of , p. ; it is referred to by montaigne, _essais_, bk. iii, ch. v. [ ] haller, _elementa physiologiæ_, , vol. vii, p. . [ ] hammond, _sexual impotence_, p. . [ ] fürbringer, senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. . [ ] forel, _die sexuelle frage_, p. . [ ] guyot, _bréviaire de l'amour expérimental_, p. . [ ] erb, ziemssen's _handbuch_, bd. xi, ii, p. . guttceit also considered that the very wide variations found are congenital and natural. it may be added that some believe that there are racial variations. thus it has been stated that the genital force of the englishman is low, and that of the frenchman (especially provençal, languedocian, and gascon) high, while löwenfeld believes that the germanic race excels the french in aptitude to repeat the sex act frequently. it is probable that little weight attaches to these opinions, and that the chief differences are individual rather than racial. [ ] ribbing, _l'hygiène sexualle_, p. . kisch, in his _sexual life of woman_, expresses the same opinion. [ ] mohammed, who often displayed a consideration for women very rare in the founders of religions, is an exception. his prescription of once a week represented the right of the wife, quite independently of the number of wives a man might possess. [ ] how fragile the claim of "conjugal rights" is, may be sufficiently proved by the fact that it is now considered by many that the very term "conjugal rights" arose merely by a mistake for "conjugal rites." before , when legal proceedings were in latin, the term used was _obsequies_, and "rights," instead of "rites," seems to have been merely a typesetter's error (see _notes and queries_, may , ; may , ). this explanation, it should be added, only applies to the consecrated term, for there can be no doubt that the underlying idea has an existence quite independent of the term. [ ] "in most marriages that are not happy," it is said in rafford pyke's thoughtful paper on "husbands and wives" (_cosmopolitan_, ), "it is the wife rather than the husband who is oftenest disappointed." [ ] see "analysis of the sexual impulse," in vol. iii of these _studies_. [ ] it is well recognized by erotic writers, however, that women may sometimes take a comparatively active part. thus vatsyayana says that sometimes the woman may take the man's position, and with flowers in her hair and smiles mixed with sighs and bent head, caressing him and pressing her breasts against him, say: "you have been my conqueror; it is my turn to make you cry for mercy." [ ] thus among the swahili it is on the third day after marriage that the bridegroom is allowed, by custom, to complete defloration, according to zache, _zeitschrift für ethnologie_, , ii-iii, p. . [ ] _de l'amour_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] robert michels, "brautstandsmoral," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, jahrgang i, heft . [ ] i may refer once more to the facts brought together in volume iii of these _studies_, "the analysis of the sexual impulse." [ ] this has been pointed out, for instance, by rutgers, "sexuelle differenzierung," _die neue generation_, dec., . [ ] thus, among the eskimo, who practice temporary wife-exchange, rasmussen states that "a man generally discovers that his own wife is, in spite of all, the best." [ ] "i have always held with the late professor laycock," remarks clouston (_hygiene of mind_, p. ), "who was a very subtle student of human nature, that a married couple need not be always together to be happy, and that in fact reasonable absences and partings tend towards ultimate and closer union." that the prolongation of passion is only compatible with absence scarcely needs pointing out; as mary wollstonecraft long since said (_rights of woman_, original ed., p. ), it is only in absence or in misfortune that passion is durable. it may be added, however, that in her love-letters to imlay she wrote: "i have ever declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long separated." [ ] "viewed broadly," says arnold l. gesell, in his interesting study of "jealousy" (_american journal of psychology_, oct., ), "jealousy seems such a necessary psychological accompaniment to biological behavior, amidst competitive struggle, that one is tempted to consider it genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger. in fact, jealousy readily passes into anger, and is itself a brand of fear.... in sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in zoölogical economy: viz., to conserve the individual as against the group. it is nature's great corrective for the purely social emotions." [ ] many illustrations are brought together in gesell's study of "jealousy." [ ] jealousy among lower races may be disguised or modified by tribal customs. thus rasmussen (_people of the polar north_, p. ) says in reference to the eskimo custom of wife-exchange: "a man once told me that he only beat his wife when she would not receive other men. she would have nothing to do with anyone but him--and that was her only failing!" rasmussen elsewhere shows that the eskimo are capable of extreme jealousy. [ ] see, e.g., moll, _sexualleben des kindes_, p. ; cf., gesell's "study of jealousy." [ ] jealousy is notoriously common among drunkards. as k. birnbaum points out ("das sexualleben der alkokolisten," _sexual-probleme_, jan., ), this jealousy is, in most cases, more or less well-founded, for the wife, disgusted with her husband, naturally seeks sympathy and companionship elsewhere. alcoholic jealousy, however, goes far beyond its basis of support in fact, and is entangled with delusions and hallucinations. (see e.g., g. dumas, "la logique d'un dément," _revue philosophique_, feb., ; also stefanowski, "morbid jealousy," _alienist and neurologist_, july, .) [ ] ellen key, _ueber liebe und ehe_, p. . [ ] schrempf points out ("von stella zu klärchen," _mutterschutz_, , heft , p. ) that goethe strove to show in _egmont_ that a woman is repelled by the love of a man who knows nothing beyond his love to her, and that it is easy for her to devote herself to the man whose aims lie in the larger world beyond herself. there is profound truth in this view. [ ] a discussion on "platonic friendship" of this kind by several writers, mostly women, whose opinions were nearly equally divided, may be found, for instance, in the _lady's realm_, march, . [ ] there are no doubt important exceptions. thus mérimée's famous friendship with mlle. jenny dacquin, enshrined in the _lettres à une inconnue_, was perhaps platonic throughout on mérimée's side, mlle. dacquin adapting herself to his attitude. cf. a. lefebvre, _la célèbre inconnue de mérimée_, . [ ] the love-letters of all these distinguished persons have been published. rosa mayreder (_zur kritik der weiblichkeit_, pp. _et seq._) discusses the question of the humble and absolute manner in which even men of the most masculine and impetuous genius abandon themselves to the inspiration of the beloved woman. the case of the brownings, who have been termed "the hero and heroine of the most wonderful love-story that the world knows of," is specially notable; (ellen key has written of the brownings from this point of view in _menschen_, and reference may be made to an article on the brownings' love-letters in the _edinburgh review_, april, ). it is scarcely necessary to add that an erotic relationship may mean very much to persons of high intellectual ability, even when its issue is not happy; of mary wollstonecraft, one of the most intellectually distinguished of women, it may be said that the letters which enshrine her love to the worthless imlay are among the most passionate and pathetic love-letters in english. chapter xii. the science of procreation. the relationship of the science of procreation to the art of love--sexual desire and sexual pleasure as the conditions of conception--reproduction formerly left to caprice and lust--the question of procreation as a religious question--the creed of eugenics--ellen key and sir francis galton--our debt to posterity--the problem of replacing natural selection--the origin and development of eugenics--the general acceptance of eugenical principles to-day--the two channels by which eugenical principles are becoming embodied in practice--the sense of sexual responsibility in women--the rejection of compulsory motherhood--the privilege of voluntary motherhood--causes of the degradation of motherhood--the control of conception--now practiced by the majority of the population in civilized countries--the fallacy of "racial suicide"--are large families a stigma of degeneration?--procreative control the outcome of natural and civilized progress--the growth of neo-malthusian beliefs and practices--facultative sterility as distinct from neo-malthusianism--the medical and hygienic necessity of control of conception--preventive methods--abortion--the new doctrine of the duty to practice abortion--how far is this justifiable?--castration as a method of controlling procreation--negative eugenics and positive eugenics--the question of certificates for marriage--the inadequacy of eugenics by act of parliament--the quickening of the social conscience in regard to heredity--limitations to the endowment of motherhood--the conditions favorable to procreation--sterility--the question of artificial fecundation--the best age of procreation--the question of early motherhood--the best time for procreation--the completion of the divine cycle of life. we have seen that the art of love has an independent and amply justifiable right to existence apart, altogether, from procreation. even if we still believed--as all men must once have believed and some central australians yet believe[ ]--that sexual intercourse has no essential connection with the propagation of the race it would have full right to existence. in its finer manifestations as an art it is required in civilization for the full development of the individual, and it is equally required for that stability of relationships which is nearly everywhere regarded as a demand of social morality. when we now turn to the second great constitutional factor of marriage, procreation, the first point we encounter is that the art of love here also has its place. in ancient times the sexual congruence of any man with any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration. the propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as perfunctorily, as the early christian fathers imagined it had been performed in paradise. that view is no longer acceptable. it fails to commend itself to men, and still less to women. we know that in civilization at all events--and it is often indeed the same among savages--erethism is not always easy between two persons selected at random, nor even when they are more specially selected. and we also know, on the authority of very distinguished gynæcologists, that it is not in very many cases sufficient even to effect coitus, it is also necessary to excite orgasm, if conception is to be achieved. many primitive peoples, as well as the theologians of the middle ages, have believed that sexual excitement on the woman's part is necessary to conception, though they have sometimes mixed up that belief with false science and mere superstition. the belief itself is supported by some of the most cautious and experienced modern gynæcologists. thus, matthews duncan (in his lectures on _sterility in women_) argued that the absence of sexual desire in women, and the absence of pleasure in the sexual act, are powerful influences making for sterility. he brought forward a table based on his case-books, showing that of nearly four hundred sterile women, only about one-fourth experienced sexual desire, while less than half experienced pleasure in the sexual act. in the absence, however, of a corresponding table concerning fertile women, nothing is hereby absolutely proved, and, at most, only a probability established. kisch, more recently (in his _sexual life of woman_), has dealt fully with this question, and reaches the conclusion that it is "extremely probable" that the active erotic participation of the woman in coitus is an important link in the chain of conditions producing conception. it acts, he remarks, in either or both of two ways, by causing reflex changes in the cervical secretions, and so facilitating the passage of the spermatozoa, and by causing reflex erectile changes in the cervix itself, with slight descent of the uterus, so rendering the entrance of the semen easier. kisch refers to the analogous fact that the first occurrence of menstruation is favored by sexual excitement. some authorities go so far as to assert that, until voluptuous excitement occurs in women, no impregnation is possible. this statement seems too extreme. it is true that the occurrence of impregnation during sleep, or in anæsthesia, cannot be opposed to it, for we know that the unconsciousness of these states by no means prevents the occurrence of complete sexual excitement. we cannot fail, however, to connect the fact that impregnation frequently fails to occur for months and even years after marriage, with the fact that sexual pleasure in coitus on the wife's part also frequently fails to occur for a similar period. "of all human instincts," pinard has said,[ ] "that of reproduction is the only one which remains in the primitive condition and has received no education. we procreate to-day as they procreated in the stone age. the most important act in the life of man, the sublimest of all acts since it is that of his reproduction, man accomplishes to-day with as much carelessness as in the age of the cave-man." and though pinard himself, as the founder of puericulture, has greatly contributed to call attention to the vast destinies that hang on the act of procreation, there still remains a lamentable amount of truth in this statement. "future generations," writes westermarck in his great history of moral ideas,[ ] "will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust." we are told in his _table talk_, that the great luther was accustomed to say that god's way of making man was very foolish ("sehr närrisch"), and that if god had deigned to take him into his counsel he would have strongly advised him to make the whole human race, as he made adam, "out of earth." and certainly if applied to the careless and reckless manner in which procreation in luther's day, as still for the most part in our own, was usually carried out there was sound common sense in the reformer's remarks. if that is the way procreation is to be carried on, it would be better to create and mould every human being afresh out of the earth; in that way we could at all events eliminate evil heredity. it was, however, unjust to place the responsibility on god. it is men and women who breed the people that make the world good or bad. they seek to put the evils of society on to something outside themselves. they see how large a proportion of human beings are defective, ill-conditioned, anti-social, incapable of leading a whole and beautiful human life. in old theological language it was often said that such were "children of the devil," and luther himself was often ready enough to attribute the evil of the world to the direct interposition of the devil. yet these ill-conditioned people who clog the wheels of society are, after all, in reality the children of man. the only devil whom we can justly invoke in this matter is man. the command "be fruitful and multiply," which the ancient hebrews put into the mouth of their tribal god, was, as crackanthorpe points out,[ ] a command supposed to have been uttered when there were only eight persons in the world. if the time should ever again occur when the inhabitants of the world could be counted on one's fingers, such an injunction, as crackanthorpe truly observes, would again be reasonable. but we have to remember that to-day humanity has spawned itself over the world in hundreds and even thousands of millions of creatures, a large proportion of whom, as is but too obvious, ought never to have been born at all, and the voice of jehovah is now making itself heard through the leaders of mankind in a very different sense. it is not surprising that as this fact tends to become generally recognized, the question of the procreation of the race should gain a new significance, and even tend to take on the character of a new religious movement. mere morality can never lead us to concern ourselves with the future of the race, and in the days of old, men used to protest against the tendency to subordinate the interests of religion to the claims of "mere morality." there was a sound natural instinct underlying that protest, so often and so vigorously made by christianity, and again revived to-day in a more intelligent form. the claim of the race is the claim of religion. we have to beware lest we subordinate that claim to our moralities. moralities are, indeed, an inevitable part of our social order from which we cannot escape; every community must have its _mores_. but we are not entitled to make a fetich of our morality, sacrificing to it the highest interests entrusted to us. the nations which have done so have already signed their own death-warrant.[ ] from this point of view, the whole of christianity, rightly considered, with its profound conviction of the necessity for forethought and preparation for the life hereafter, has been a preparation for eugenics, a schoolmaster to discipline within us a higher ideal than itself taught, and we cannot therefore be surprised at the solidity of the basis on which eugenical conceptions of life are developing. the most distinguished pioneers of the new movement of devotion to the creation of the race seem independently to have realized its religious character. this attitude is equally marked in ellen key and francis galton. in her _century of the child_ (english translation, ), ellen key entirely identifies herself with the eugenic movement. "it is only a question of time," she elsewhere writes (_ueber liebe und ehe_, p. ), "when the attitude of society towards a sexual union will depend not on the form of the union, but on the value of the children created. men and women will then devote the same religious earnestness to the psychic and physical perfectioning of this sexual task as christians have devoted to the salvation of their souls." sir francis galton, writing a few years later, but without doubt independently, in , on "restrictions in marriage," and "eugenics as a factor in religion" (_sociological papers_ of the sociological society, vol. ii, pp. , ), remarks: "religious precepts, founded on the ethics and practice of older days, require to be reinterpreted, to make them conform to the needs of progressive nations. ours are already so far behind modern requirements that much of our practice and our profession cannot be reconciled without illegitimate casuistry. it seems to me that few things are more needed by us in england than a revision of our religion, to adapt it to the intelligence and needs of this present time.... evolution is a grand phantasmagoria, but it assumes an infinitely more interesting aspect under the knowledge that the intelligent action of the human will is, in some small measure, capable of guiding its course. man has the power of doing this largely, so far as the evolution of humanity is concerned; he has already affected the quality and distribution of organic life so widely that the changes on the surface of the earth, merely through his disforestings and agriculture, would be recognizable from a distance as great as that of the moon. eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to many of the noblest feelings of our nature." as will always happen in every great movement, a few fanatics have carried into absurdity the belief in the supreme religious importance of procreation. love, apart from procreation, writes one of these fanatics, vacher de lapouge, in the spirit of some of the early christian fathers (see _ante_ p. ), is an aberration comparable to sadism and sodomy. procreation is the only thing that matters, and it must become "a legally prescribed social duty" only to be exercised by carefully selected persons, and forbidden to others, who must, by necessity, be deprived of the power of procreation, while abortion and infanticide must, under some circumstances, become compulsory. romantic love will disappear by a process of selection, as also will all religion except a new form of phallic worship (g. vacher de lapouge, "die crisis der sexuellen moral," _politisch anthropologische revue_, no. , ). it is sufficient to point out that love is, and always must be, the natural portal to generation. such excesses of procreative fanaticism cannot fail to occur, and they render the more necessary the emphasis which has here been placed on the art of love. "what has posterity done for me that i should do anything for posterity?" a cynic is said to have asked. the answer is very simple. the human race has done everything for him. all that he is, and can be, is its creation; all that he can do is the result of its laboriously accumulated traditions. it is only by working towards the creation of a still better posterity, that he can repay the good gifts which the human race has brought him.[ ] just as, within the limits of this present life, many who have received benefits and kindnesses they can never repay to the actual givers, find a pleasure in vicariously repaying the like to others, so the heritage we have received from our ascendents we can never repay, save by handing it on in a better form to our descendants. it is undoubtedly true that the growth of eugenical ideals has not been, for the most part, due to religious feeling. it has been chiefly the outcome of a very gradual, but very comprehensive, movement towards social amelioration, which has been going on for more than a century, and which has involved a progressive effort towards the betterment of all the conditions of life. the ideals of this movement were proclaimed in the eighteenth century, they began to find expression early in the nineteenth century, in the initiation of the modern system of sanitation, in the growth of factory legislation, in all the movements which have been borne onwards by socialism hand in hand with individualism. the inevitable tendency has been slowly towards the root of the matter; it began to be seen that comparatively little can be effected by improving the conditions of life of adults; attention began to be concentrated on the child, on the infant, on the embryo in its mother's womb, and this resulted in the fruitful movement of puericulture inspired by pinard, and finally the problem is brought to its source at the point of procreation, and the regulation of sexual selection between stocks and between individuals as the prime condition of life. here we have the science of eugenics which sir francis galton has done so much to make a definite, vital, and practical study, and which in its wider bearings he defines as "the science which deals with those social eugenics that influence, mentally or physically, the racial qualities of future generations." in its largest aspect, eugenics is, as galton has elsewhere said, man's attempt "to replace natural selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective." in the last chapter of his _memories of my life_ ( ), on "race improvement," sir francis galton sets forth the origin and development of his conception of the science of eugenics. the term, "eugenics," he first used in , in his _human faculty_, but the conception dates from , and even earlier. galton has more recently discussed the problems of eugenics in papers read before the sociological society (_sociological papers_, vols. i and ii, ), in the herbert spencer lecture on "probability the foundation of eugenics," ( ), and elsewhere. galton's numerous memoirs on this subject have now been published in a collected form by the eugenics education society, which was established in , to further and to popularize the eugenical attitude towards social questions; _the eugenics review_ is published by this society. on the more strictly scientific side, eugenic studies are carried on in the eugenics laboratory of the university of london, established by sir francis galton, and now working in connection with professor karl pearson's biometric laboratory, in university college. much of professor pearson's statistical work in this and allied directions, is the elaboration of ideas and suggestions thrown out by galton. see, e.g., karl pearson's robert boyle lecture, "the scope and importance to the state of the science of national eugenics" ( ). _biometrika_, edited by karl pearson in association with other workers, contains numerous statistical memoirs on eugenics. in germany, the _archiv für rassen und gesellschafts-biologie_, and the _politisch-anthropologische revue_, are largely occupied with various aspects of such subjects, and in america, _the popular science monthly_ from time to time, publishes articles which have a bearing on eugenics. at one time there was a tendency to scoff, or to laugh, at the eugenic movement. it was regarded as an attempt to breed men as men breed animals, and it was thought a sufficiently easy task to sweep away this new movement with the remark that love laughs at bolts and bars. it is now beginning to be better understood. none but fanatics dream of abolishing love in order to effect pairing by rule. it is merely a question of limiting the possible number of mates from whom each may select a partner, and that, we must remember, has always been done even by savages, for, as it has been said, "eugenics is the oldest of the sciences." the question has merely been transformed. instead of being limited mechanically by caste, we begin to see that the choice of sexual mates must be limited intelligently by actual fitness. promiscuous marriages have never been the rule; the possibility of choice has always been narrow, and the most primitive peoples have exerted the most marked self-restraint. it is not so merely among remote races but among our own european ancestors. throughout the whole period of catholic supremacy the canon law multiplied the impediments to matrimony, as by ordaining that consanguinity to the fourth degree (third cousins), as well as spiritual relationship, is an impediment, and by such arbitrary prohibitions limited the range of possible mates at least as much as it would be limited by the more reasonable dictates of eugenic considerations. at the present day it may be said that the principle of the voluntary control of procreation, not for the selfish ends of the individual, but in order to extinguish disease, to limit human misery, and to raise the general level of humanity by substituting the ideal of quality for the vulgar ideal of mere quantity, is now generally accepted, alike by medical pathologists, embryologists and neurologists, and by sociologists and moralists. it would be easy to multiply quotations from distinguished authorities on this point. thus, metchnikoff points out (_essais optimistes_, p. ) that orthobiosis seems to involve the limitation of offspring in the fight against disease. ballantyne concludes his great treatise on _antenanal pathology_ with the statement that "eugenics" or well-begetting, is one of the world's most pressing problems. dr. louise robinovitch, the editor of the _journal of mental pathology_, in a brilliant and thoughtful paper, read before the rome congress of psychology in , well spoke in the same sense: "nations have not yet elevated the energy of genesic function to the dignity of an energy. other energies known to us, even of the meanest grade, have long since been wisely utilized, and their activities based on the principle of the strictest possible economy. this economic utilization has been brought about, not through any enforcement of legislative restrictions, but through steadily progressive human intelligence. economic handling of genesic function will, like the economic function of other energies, come about through a steady and progressive intellectual development of nations." "there are circumstances," says c.h. hughes, ("restricted procreation," _alienist and neurologist_, may, ), "under which the propagation of a human life may be as gravely criminal as the taking of a life already begun." from the general biological, as well as from the sociological side, the acceptance of the same standpoint is constantly becoming more general, for it is recognized as the inevitable outcome of movements which have long been in progress. "already," wrote haycraft (_darwinism and race progress_, p. ), referring to the law for the prevention of cruelty to children, "public opinion has expressed itself in the public rule that a man and woman, in begetting a child, must take upon themselves the obligation and responsibility of seeing that that child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship. it is but one step more to say that a man and a woman shall be under obligation not to produce children, when it is certain that, from their want of physique, they will have to undergo suffering, and will keep up but an unequal struggle with their fellows." professor j. arthur thomson, in his volume on _heredity_ ( ), vigorously and temperately pleads (p. ) for rational methods of eugenics, as specially demanded in an age like our own, when the unfit have been given a better chance of reproduction than they have ever been given in any other age. bateson, again, referring to the growing knowledge of heredity, remarks (_mendel's principles of heredity_, , p. ): "genetic knowledge must certainly lead to new conceptions of justice, and it is by no means impossible that, in the light of such knowledge, public opinion will welcome measures likely to do more for the extinction of the criminal and the degenerate than has been accomplished by ages of penal enactment." adolescent youths and girls, said anton von menger, in his last book, the pregnant _neue sittenlehre_ ( ), must be taught that the production of children, under certain circumstances, is a crime; they must also be taught the voluntary restraint of conception, even in health; such teaching, menger rightly added, is a necessary preliminary to any legislation in this direction. of recent years, many books and articles have been devoted to the advocacy of eugenic methods. mention may be made, for instance, of _population and progress_ ( ), by montague crackanthorpe, president of the eugenics education society. see also, havelock ellis, "eugenics and st. valentine," _nineteenth century and after_, may, . it may be mentioned that nearly thirty years ago, miss j.h. clapperton, in her _scientific meliorism_ ( , ch. xvii), pointed out that the voluntary restraint of procreation by neo-malthusian methods, apart from merely prudential motives, there clearly recognized, is "a new key to the social position," and a necessary condition for "national regeneration." professor karl pearson's _groundwork of eugenics_, ( ) is, perhaps, the best brief introduction to the subject. mention may also be made of dr. saleeby's _parenthood and race culture_ ( ), written in a popular and enthusiastic manner. how widely the general principles of eugenics are now accepted as the sound method of raising the level of the human race, was well shown at a meeting of the sociological society, in , when, after sir francis galton had read papers on the question, the meeting heard the opinions of numerous sociologists, economists, biologists, and well-known thinkers in various lands, who were present, or who had sent communications. some twenty-one expressed more or less unqualified approval, and only three or four had objections to offer, mostly on matters of detail (_sociological papers_, published by the sociological society, vol. ii, ). if we ask by what channels this impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is expressing itself in practical life, we shall scarcely fail to find that there are at least two such channels: ( ) the growing sense of sexual responsibility among women as well as men, and ( ) the conquest of procreative control which has been achieved in recent years, by the general adoption of methods for the prevention of conception. it has already been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the far-reaching significance of woman's personal responsibility as an element in the modification of the sexual life of modern communities. here it need only be pointed out that the autonomous authority of a woman over her own person, in the sexual sphere, involves on her part a consent to the act of procreation which must be deliberate. we are apt to think that this is a new and almost revolutionary demand; it is, however, undoubtedly a natural, ancient, and recognized privilege of women that they should not be mothers without their own consent. even in the islamic world of the _arabian nights_, we find that high praise is accorded to the "virtue and courage" of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this involuntary union, "not wishing," she said, "to take the responsibility before allah of a child that had been born without my consent."[ ] the approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the public of islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not have a child, except by her own deliberate will. we have been accustomed to say in later days that the state needs children, and that it is the business and the duty of women to supply them. but the state has no more right than the individual to ravish a woman against her will. we are beginning to realize that if the state wants children it must make it agreeable to women to produce them, as under natural and equitable conditions it cannot fail to be. "the women will solve the question of mankind," said ibsen in one of his rare and pregnant private utterances, "and they will do it as mothers." but it is unthinkable that any question should ever be solved by a helpless, unwilling, and involuntary act which has not even attained to the dignity of animal joy. it is sometimes supposed, and even assumed, that the demand of women that motherhood must never be compulsory, means that they are unwilling to be mothers on any terms. in a few cases that may be so, but it is certainly not the case as regards the majority of sane and healthy women in any country. on the contrary, this demand is usually associated with the desire to glorify motherhood, if not, indeed, even with the thought of extending motherhood to many who are to-day shut out from it. "it seems to me," wrote lady henry somerset, some years ago ("the welcome child," _arena_, april, ), "that life will be dearer and nobler the more we recognize that there is no indelicacy in the climax and crown of creative power, but, rather, that it is the highest glory of the race. but if voluntary motherhood is the crown of the race, involuntary compulsory motherhood is the very opposite.... only when both man and woman have learned that the most sacred of all functions given to women must be exercised by the free will alone, can children be born into the world who have in them the joyous desire to live, who claim that sweetest privilege of childhood, the certainty that they can expand in the sunshine of the love which is their due." ellen key, similarly, while pointing out (_ueber liebe und ehe_, pp. , ) that the tyranny of the old protestant religious spirit which enjoined on women unlimited submission to joyless motherhood within "the whited sepulchre of marriage" is now being broken, exalts the privileges of voluntary motherhood, while admitting that there may be a few exceptional cases in which women may withdraw themselves from motherhood for the sake of the other demands of their personality, though, "as a general rule, the woman who refuses motherhood in order to serve humanity, is like a soldier who prepares himself on the eve of battle for the forthcoming struggle by opening his veins." helene stöcker, likewise, reckons motherhood as one of the demands, one of the growing demands indeed, which women now make. "if, to-day," she says (in the preface to _liebe und die frauen_, ), "all the good things of life are claimed even for women--intellectual training, pecuniary independence, a happy vocation in life, a respected social position--and at the same time, as equally matter-of-course, and equally necessary, marriage and child, that demand no longer sounds, as it sounded a few years ago, the voice of a preacher in the wilderness." the degradation to which motherhood has, in the eyes of many, fallen, is due partly to the tendency to deprive women of any voice in the question, and partly to what h.g. wells calls (_socialism and the family_, ) "the monstrous absurdity of women discharging their supreme social function, bearing and rearing children, in their spare time, as it were, while they 'earn their living' by contributing some half mechanical element to some trivial industrial product." it would be impracticable, and even undesirable, to insist that married women should not be allowed to work, for a work in the world is good for all. it is estimated that over thirty per cent. of the women workers in england are married or widows (james haslam, _englishwoman_, june, ), and in lancashire factories alone, in , there were , married women employed. but it would be easily possible for the state to arrange, in its own interests, that a woman's work at a trade should always give way to her work as a mother. it is the more undesirable that married women should be prohibited from working at a profession, since there are some professions for which a married woman, or, rather, a mother, is better equipped than an unmarried woman. this is notably the case as regards teaching, and it would be a good policy to allow married women teachers special privileges in the shape of increased free time and leave of absence. while in many fields of knowledge an unmarried woman may be a most excellent teacher, it is highly undesirable that children, and especially girls, should be brought exclusively under the educational influence of unmarried teachers. the second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated classes of all countries--and it must be remembered that, in this matter at all events, all classes are gradually beginning to become educated--of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired. it is no longer permissible to discuss the validity of this control, for it is an accomplished fact and has become a part of our modern morality. "if a course of conduct is habitually and deliberately pursued by vast multitudes of otherwise well-conducted people, forming probably a majority of the whole educated class of the nation," as sidney webb rightly puts it, "we must assume that it does not conflict with their actual code of morality."[ ] there cannot be any doubt that, so far as england is concerned, the prevention of conception is practiced, from prudential or other motives, by the vast majority of the educated classes. this fact is well within the knowledge of all who are intimately acquainted with the facts of english family life. thus, dr. a.w. thomas writes (_british medical journal_, oct. , , p. ): "from my experience as a general practitioner, i have no hesitation in saying that ninety per cent. of young married couples of the comfortably-off classes use preventives." as a matter of fact, this rough estimate appears to be rather under than over the mark. in the very able paper already quoted, in which sidney webb shows that "the decline in the birthrate appears to be much greater in those sections of the population which give proofs of thrift and foresight," that this decline is "principally, if not entirely, the result of deliberate volition," and that "a volitional regulation of the marriage state is now ubiquitous throughout england and wales, among, apparently, a large majority of the population," the results are brought forward of a detailed inquiry carried out by the fabian society. this inquiry covered families, selected at random from all parts of great britain, and belonging to all sections of the middle class. the results are carefully analyzed, and it is found that seventy-four families were unlimited, and two hundred and forty-two voluntarily limited. when, however, the decade - is taken by itself as the typical period, it is found that of marriages, were limited, and only thirteen unlimited, while of these thirteen, five were childless at the date of the return. in this decade, therefore, only seven unlimited fertile marriages are reported, out of a total of . what is true of great britain is true of all other civilized countries, in the highest degree true of the most civilized countries, and it finds expression in the well-known phenomenon of the decline of the birthrate. in modern times, this movement of decline began in france, producing a slow but steady diminution in the annual number of births, and in france the movement seems now to be almost, or quite, arrested. but it has since taken place in all other progressive countries, notably in the united states, in canada, in australia, and in new zealand, as well as in germany, austro-hungary, italy, spain, switzerland, belgium, holland, denmark, sweden, and norway. in england, it has been continuous since . of the great countries, russia is the only one in which it has not yet taken place, and among the masses of the russian population we find less education, more poverty, a higher deathrate, and a greater amount of disease, than in any other great, or even small, civilized country. it is sometimes said, indeed, that the decline of the birthrate is not entirely due to the voluntary control of procreation. it is undoubtedly true that certain other elements, common under civilized conditions, such as the postponement of marriage in women to a comparatively late age, tend to diminish the size of the family. but when all such allowances have been made, the decline is still found to be real and large. this has been shown, for instance, by the statistical analyses made by arthur newsholme and t.h.c. stevenson, and by g. yule, both published in _journal royal statistical society_, april, . some have supposed that, since the catholic church forbids incomplete sexual intercourse, this movement for the control of procreation will involve a relatively much greater increase among catholic than among non-catholic populations. this, however, is only correct under certain conditions. it is quite true that in ireland there has been no fall in the birthrate, and that the fall is but little marked in those lancashire towns which possess a large irish element. but in belgium, italy, spain, and other mainly catholic countries, the decline in the birthrate is duly taking place. what has happened is that the church--always alive to sexual questions--has realized the importance of the modern movement, and has adapted herself to it, by proclaiming to her more ignorant and uneducated children that incomplete intercourse is a deadly sin, while at the same time refraining from making inquiries into this matter among her more educated members. the question was definitely brought up for papal judgment, in , by bishop bouvier of le mans, who stated the matter very clearly, representing to the pope (gregory xvi) that the prevention of conception was becoming very common, and that to treat it as a deadly sin merely resulted in driving the penitent away from confession. after mature consideration, the curia sacra poenitentiaria replied by pointing out, as regards the common method of withdrawal before emission, that since it was due to the wrong act of the man, the woman who has been forced by her husband to consent to it, has committed no sin. further, the bishop was reminded of the wise dictum of liguori, "the most learned and experienced man in these matters," that the confessor is not usually called upon to make inquiry upon so delicate a matter as the _debitum conjugale_, and, if his opinion is not asked, he should be silent (bouvier, _dissertatio in sextum decalogi præceptum; supplementum ad tractatum de matrimonio_. , pp. - ; quoted by hans ferdy, _sexual-probleme_, aug., , p. ). we see, therefore, that, among catholic as well as among non-catholic populations, the adoption of preventive methods of conception follows progress and civilization, and that the general practice of such methods by catholics (with the tacit consent of the church) is merely a matter of time. from time to time many energetic persons have noisily demanded that a stop should be put to the decline of the birthrate, for, they argue, it means "race suicide." it is now beginning to be realized, however, that this outcry was a foolish and mischievous mistake. it is impossible to walk through the streets of any great city, full of vast numbers of persons who, obviously, ought never to have been born, without recognizing that the birthrate is as yet very far above its normal and healthy limit. the greatest states have often been the smallest so far as mere number of citizens is concerned, for it is quality not quantity that counts. and while it is true that the increase of the best types of citizens can only enrich a state, it is now becoming intolerable that a nation should increase by the mere dumping down of procreative refuse in its midst. it is beginning to be realized that this process not only depreciates the quality of a people but imposes on a state an inordinate financial burden. it is now well recognized that large families are associated with degeneracy, and, in the widest sense, with abnormality of every kind. thus, it is undoubtedly true that men of genius tend to belong to very large families, though it may be pointed out to those who fear an alarming decrease of genius from the tendency to the limitation of the family, that the position in the family most often occupied by the child of genius is the firstborn. (see havelock ellis, _a study of british genius_, pp. - ). the insane, the idiotic, imbecile, and weak-minded, the criminal, the epileptic, the hysterical, the neurasthenic, the tubercular, all, it would appear, tend to belong to large families (see e.g., havelock ellis, op. cit., p. ; toulouse, _les causes de la folie_, p. ; harriet alexander, "malthusianism and degeneracy," _alienist and neurologist_, jan., ). it has, indeed, been shown by heron, pearson, and goring, that not only the eldest-born, but also the second-born, are specially liable to suffer from pathological defect (insanity, criminality, tuberculosis). there is, however, it would seem, a fallacy in the common interpretation of this fact. according to van den velden (as quoted in _sexual-probleme_, may, , p. ), this tendency is fully counterbalanced by the rising mortality of children from the firstborn onward. the greater pathological tendency of the earlier children is thus simply the result of a less stringent selection by death. so far as they show any really greater pathological tendency, apart from this fallacy, it is perhaps due to premature marriage. there is another fallacy in the frequent statement that the children in small families are more feeble than those in large families. we have to distinguish between a naturally small family, and an artificially small family. a family which is small merely as the result of the feeble procreative energy of the parents, is likely to be a feeble family; a family which is small as the result of the deliberate control of the parents, shows, of course, no such tendency. these considerations, it will be seen, do not modify the tendency of the large family to be degenerate. we may connect this phenomenon with the disposition, often shown by nervously unsound and abnormal persons, to believe that they have a special aptitude to procreate fine children. "i believe that everyone has a special vocation," said a man to marro (_la pubertà_, p. ); "i find that it is my vocation to beget superior children." he begat four,--an epileptic, a lunatic, a dipsomaniac, and a valetudinarian,--and himself died insane. most people have come across somewhat similar, though perhaps less marked, cases of this delusion. in a matter of such fateful gravity to other human beings, no one can safely rely on his own unsupported impressions. the demand of national efficiency thus corresponds with the demand of developing humanitarianism, which, having begun by attempting to ameliorate the conditions of life, has gradually begun to realize that it is necessary to go deeper and to ameliorate life itself. for while it is undoubtedly true that much may be done by acting systematically on the conditions of life, the more searching analysis of evil environmental conditions only serves to show that in large parts they are based in the human organism itself and were not only pre-natal, but pre-conceptional, being involved in the quality of the parental or ancestral organisms. putting aside, however, all humanitarian considerations, the serious error of attempting to stem the progress of civilization in the direction of procreative control could never have occurred if the general tendencies of zoölogical evolution had been understood, even in their elements. all zoölogical progress is from the more prolific to the less prolific; the higher the species the less fruitful are its individual members. the same tendency is found within the limits of the human species, though not in an invariable straight line; the growth of civilization involves a diminution in fertility. this is by no means a new phenomenon; ancient rome and later geneva, "the protestant rome," bear witness to it; no doubt it has occurred in every high centre of moral and intellectual culture, although the data for measuring the tendency no longer exist. when we take a sufficiently wide and intelligent survey, we realize that the tendency of a community to slacken its natural rate of increase is an essential phenomenon of all advanced civilization. the more intelligent nations have manifested the tendency first, and in each nation the more educated classes have taken the lead, but it is only a matter of time to bring all civilized nations, and all social classes in each nation, into line.[ ] this movement, we have to remember--in opposition to the ignorant outcry of certain would-be moralists and politicians--is a beneficent movement. it means a greater regard to the quality than to the quantity of the increase; it involves the possibility of combating successfully the evils of high mortality, disease, overcrowding, and all the manifold misfortunes which inevitably accompany a too exuberant birthrate. for it is only in a community which increases slowly that it is possible to secure the adequate economic adjustment and environmental modifications necessary for a sane and wholesome civic and personal life.[ ] if those persons who raise the cry of "race suicide" in face of the decline of the birthrate really had the knowledge and intelligence to realize the manifold evils which they are invoking they would deserve to be treated as criminals. on the practical side a knowledge of the possibility of preventing conception has, doubtless, never been quite extinct in civilization and even in lower stages of culture, though it has mostly been utilized for ends of personal convenience or practiced in obedience to conventional social rules which demanded chastity, and has only of recent times been made subservient to the larger interests of society and the elevation of the race. the theoretical basis of the control of procreation, on its social and economic, as distinct from its eugenic, aspects, may be said to date from malthus's famous _essay on population_, first published in , an epoch-marking book,--though its central thesis is not susceptible of actual demonstration,--since it not only served as the starting-point of the modern humanitarian movement for the control of procreation, but also furnished to darwin (and independently to wallace also) the fruitful idea which was finally developed into the great evolutionary theory of natural selection. malthus, however, was very far from suggesting that the control of procreation, which he advocated for the benefit of mankind, should be exercised by the introduction of preventive methods into sexual intercourse. he believed that civilization involved an increased power of self-control, which would make it possible to refrain altogether from sexual intercourse, when such self-restraint was demanded in the interests of humanity. later thinkers realized, however, that, while it is undoubtedly true that civilization involves greater forethought and greater self-control, we cannot anticipate that those qualities should be developed to the extent demanded by malthus, especially when the impulse to be controlled is of so powerful and explosive a nature. james mill was the pioneer in advocating neo-malthusian methods, though he spoke cautiously. in , in the article "colony" in the supplement to the _encyclopædia britannica_, after remarking that the means of checking the unrestricted increase of the population constitutes "the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied," he continued: "if the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found." four years later, james mill's friend, the radical reformer, francis place, more distinctly expressed the thought that was evidently in mill's mind. after enumerating the facts concerning the necessity of self-control in procreation and the evils of early marriage, which he thinks ought to be clearly taught, place continues: "if a hundredth, perhaps a thousandth part of the pains were taken to teach these truths, that are taken to teach dogmas, a great change for the better might, in no considerable space of time, be expected to take place in the appearance and the habits of the people. if, above all, it were once clearly understood that it was not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent, might be removed from society, and the object of mr. malthus, mr. godwin, and of every philanthropic person, be promoted, by the increase of comfort, of intelligence, and of moral conduct, in the mass of the population. the course recommended will, i am fully persuaded, at some period be pursued by the people even if left to themselves."[ ] it was not long before place's prophetic words began to be realized, and in another half century the movement was affecting the birthrate of all civilized lands, though it can scarcely yet be said that justice has been done to the pioneers who promoted it in the face of much persecution from the ignorant and superstitious public whom they sought to benefit. in , robert dale owen, the son of robert owen, published his _moral physiology_, setting forth the methods of preventing conception. a little later the brothers george and charles drysdale (born and ), two ardent and unwearying philanthropists, devoted much of their energy to the propagation of neo-malthusian principles. george drysdale, in , published his _elements of social science_, which during many years had an enormous circulation all over europe in eight different languages. it was by no means in every respect a scientific or sound work, but it certainly had great influence, and it came into the hands of many who never saw any other work on sexual topics. although the neo-malthusian propagandists of those days often met with much obloquy, their cause was triumphantly vindicated in , when charles bradlaugh and mrs. besant, having been prosecuted for disseminating neo-malthusian pamphlets, the charge was dismissed, the lord chief justice declaring that so ill-advised and injudicious a charge had probably never before been made in a court of justice. this trial, even by its mere publicity and apart from its issue, gave an enormous impetus to the neo-malthusian movement. it is well known that the steady decline in the english birthrate begun in , the year following the trial. there could be no more brilliant illustration of the fact, that what used to be called "the instruments of providence" are indeed unconscious instruments in bringing about great ends which they themselves were far from either intending or desiring. in , dr. c.r. drysdale founded the malthusian league, and edited a periodical, _the malthusian_, aided throughout by his wife, dr. alice drysdale vickery. he died in . (the noble and pioneering work of the drysdales has not yet been adequately recognized in their own country; an appreciative and well-informed article by dr. hermann rohleder, "dr. c.r. drysdale, der hauptvortreter der neumalthusianische lehre," appeared in the _zeitschrift für sexualwissenschaft_, march, ). there are now societies and periodicals in all civilized countries for the propagation of neo-malthusian principles, as they are still commonly called, though it would be desirable to avoid the use of malthus's name in this connection. in the medical profession, the advocacy of preventive methods of sexual intercourse, not on social, but on medical and hygienic grounds, began same thirty years ago, though in france, at an earlier date, raciborski advocated the method of avoiding the neighborhood of menstruation. in germany, dr. mensinga, the gynæcologist, is the most prominent advocate, on medical and hygienic grounds, of what he terms "facultative sterility," which he first put forward about . in russia, about the same time, artificial sterility was first openly advocated by the distinguished gynæcologist, professor ott, at the st. petersburg obstetric and gynæcological society. such medical recommendations, in particular cases, are now becoming common. there are certain cases in which a person ought not to marry at all; this is so, for instance, when there has been an attack of insanity; it can never be said with certainty that a person who has had one attack of insanity will not have another, and persons who have had such attacks ought not, as blandford says (lumleian lectures on insanity, _british medical journal_, april , ), "to inflict on their partner for life, the anxiety, and even danger, of another attack." there are other and numerous cases in which marriage may be permitted, or may have already taken place, under more favorable circumstances, but where it is, or has become, highly desirable that there should be no children. this is the case when a first attack of insanity occurs after marriage, the more urgently if the affected party is the wife, and especially if the disease takes the form of puerperal mania. "what can be more lamentable," asks blandford (loc. cit.), "than to see a woman break down in childbed, recover, break down again with the next child, and so on, for six, seven, or eight children, the recovery between each being less and less, until she is almost a chronic maniac?" it has been found, moreover, by tredgold (_lancet_, may , ), that among children born to insane mothers, the mortality is twice as great as the ordinary infantile mortality, in even the poorest districts. in cases of unions between persons with tuberculous antecedents, also, it is held by many (e.g., by massalongo, in discussing tuberculosis and marriage at the tuberculosis congress, at naples, in ) that every precaution should be taken to make the marriage childless. in a third class of cases, it is necessary to limit the children to one or two; this happens in some forms of heart disease, in which pregnancy has a progressively deteriorating effect on the heart (kisch, _therapeutische monatsheft_, feb., , and _sexual life of woman_; vinay, _lyon medical_, jan. , ); in some cases of heart disease, however, it is possible that, though there is no reason for prohibiting marriage, it is desirable for a woman not to have any children (j.f. blacker, "heart disease in relation to pregnancy," _british medical journal_, may , ). in all such cases, the recommendation of preventive methods of intercourse is obviously an indispensable aid to the physician in emphasizing the supremacy of hygienic precautions. in the absence of such methods, he can never be sure that his warnings will be heard, and even the observance of his advice would be attended with various undesirable results. it sometimes happens that a married couple agree, even before marriage, to live together without sexual relations, but, for various reasons, it is seldom found possible or convenient to maintain this resolution for a long period. it is the recognition of these and similar considerations which has led--though only within recent years--on the one hand, as we have seen, to the embodiment of the control of procreation into the practical morality of all civilized nations, and, on the other hand, to the assertion, now perhaps without exception, by all medical authorities on matters of sex that the use of the methods of preventing conception is under certain circumstances urgently necessary and quite harmless.[ ] it arouses a smile to-day when we find that less than a century ago it was possible for an able and esteemed medical author to declare that the use of "various abominable means" to prevent conception is "based upon a most presumptuous doubt in the conservative power of the creator."[ ] the adaptation of theory to practice is not yet complete, and we could not expect that it should be so, for, as we have seen, there is always an antagonism between practical morality and traditional morality. from time to time flagrant illustrations of this antagonism occur.[ ] even in england, which played a pioneering part in the control of procreation, attempts are still made--sometimes in quarters where we have a right to expect a better knowledge--to cast discredit on a movement which, since it has conquered alike scientific approval and popular practice, it is now idle to call in question. it would be out of place to discuss here the various methods which are used for the control of procreation, or their respective merits and defects. it is sufficient to say that the condom or protective sheath, which seems to be the most ancient of all methods of preventing conception, after withdrawal, is now regarded by nearly all authorities as, when properly used, the safest, the most convenient, and the most harmless method.[ ] this is the opinion of krafft-ebing, of moll, of schrenck-notzing, of löwenfeld, of forel, of kisch, of fürbringer, to mention only a few of the most distinguished medical authorities.[ ] there is some interest in attempting to trace the origin and history of the condom, though it seems impossible to do so with any precision. it is probable that, in a rudimentary form, such an appliance is of great antiquity. in china and japan, it would appear, rounds of oiled silk paper are used to cover the mouth of the womb, at all events, by prostitutes. this seems the simplest and most obvious mechanical method of preventing conception, and may have suggested the application of a sheath to the penis as a more effectual method. in europe, it is in the middle of the sixteenth century, in italy, that we first seem to hear of such appliances, in the shape of linen sheaths, adapted to the shape of the penis; fallopius recommended the use of such an appliance. improvements in the manufacture were gradually devised; the cæcum of the lamb was employed, and afterwards, isinglass. it appears that a considerable improvement in the manufacture took place in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and this improvement was generally associated with england. the appliance thus became known as the english cape or mantle, the "capote anglaise," or the "redingote anglaise," and, under the latter name, is referred to by casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth century (casanova, _mémoires_, ed. garnier, vol. iv, p. ); casanova never seems, however, to have used these redingotes himself, not caring, he said, "to shut myself up in a piece of dead skin in order to prove that i am perfectly alive." these capotes--then made of goldbeaters' skin--were, also, it appears, known at an earlier period to mme. de sévigné, who did not regard them with favor, for, in one of her letters, she refers to them as "cuirasses contre la volupté et toiles d'arraignée contre le mal." the name, "condom," dates from the eighteenth century, first appearing in france, and is generally considered to be that of an english physician, or surgeon, who invented, or, rather, improved the appliance. condom is not, however, an english name, but there is an english name, condon, of which "condom" may well be a corruption. this supposition is strengthened by the fact that the word sometimes actually was written "condon." thus, in lines quoted by bachaumont, in his _diary_ (dec. , ), and supposed to be addressed to a former ballet dancer who had become a prostitute, i find:-- "du _condon_ cependant, vous connaissez l'usage, * * * * * "le _condon_, c'est la loi, ma fille, et les prophètes!" the difficulty remains, however, of discovering any englishman of the name of condon, who can plausibly be associated with the condom; doubtless he took no care to put the matter on record, never suspecting the fame that would accrue to his invention, or the immortality that awaited his name. i find no mention of any condon in the records of the college of physicians, and at the college of surgeons, also, where, indeed, the old lists are very imperfect, mr. victor plarr, the librarian, after kindly making a search, has assured me that there is no record of the name. other varying explanations of the name have been offered, with more or less assurance, though usually without any proofs. thus, hyrtl (_handbuch der topographischen anatomic_, th ed., vol. ii, p. ) states that the condom was originally called gondom, from the name of the english discoverer, a cavalier of charles ii's court, who first prepared it from the amnion of the sheep; gondom is, however, no more an english name than condom. there happens to be a french town, in gascony, called condom, and bloch suggests, without any evidence, that this furnished the name; if so, however, it is improbable that it would have been unknown in france. finally, hans ferdy considers that it is derived from "condus"--that which preserves--and, in accordance with his theory, he terms the condom a condus. the early history of the condom is briefly discussed by various writers, as by proksch, _die vorbauung der venerischen krankheiten_, p. ; bloch, _sexual life of our time_, chs. xv and xxviii; cabanès, _indiscretions de l'histoire_, p. , etc. the control of procreation by the prevention of conception has, we have seen, become a part of the morality of civilized peoples. there is another method, not indeed for preventing conception, but for limiting offspring, which is of much more ancient appearance in the world, though it has at different times been very differently viewed and still arouses widely opposing opinions. this is the method of abortion. while the practice of abortion has by no means, like the practice of preventing conception, become accepted in civilization, it scarcely appears to excite profound repulsion in a large proportion of the population of civilized countries. the majority of women, not excluding educated and highly moral women, who become pregnant against their wish contemplate the possibility of procuring abortion without the slightest twinge of conscience, and often are not even aware of the usual professional attitude of the church, the law, and medicine regarding abortion. probably all doctors have encountered this fact, and even so distinguished and correct a medico-legist as brouardel stated[ ] that he had been not infrequently solicited to procure abortion, for themselves or their wet-nurses, by ladies who looked on it as a perfectly natural thing, and had not the least suspicion that the law regarded the deed as a crime. it is not, therefore, surprising that abortion is exceedingly common in all civilized and progressive countries. it cannot, indeed, unfortunately, be said that abortion has been conducted in accordance with eugenic considerations, nor has it often been so much as advocated from the eugenic standpoint. but in numerous classes of cases of undesired pregnancy, occurring in women of character and energy, not accustomed to submit tamely to conditions they may not have sought, and in any case consider undesirable, abortion is frequently resorted to. it is usual to regard the united states as a land in which the practice especially flourishes, and certainly a land in which the ideal of chastity for unmarried women, of freedom for married women, of independence for all, is actively followed cannot fail to be favorable to the practice of abortion. but the way in which the prevalence of abortion is proclaimed in the united states is probably in large part due to the honesty of the americans in setting forth, and endeavoring to correct, what, rightly or wrongly, they regard as social defects, and may not indicate any real pre-eminence in the practice. comparative statistics are difficult, and it is certainly true that abortion is extremely common in england, in france, and in germany. it is probable that any national differences may be accounted for by differences in general social habits and ideals. thus in germany, where considerable sexual freedom is permitted to unmarried women and married women are very domesticated, abortion may be less frequent than in france where purity is stringently demanded from the young girl, while the married woman demands freedom for work and for pleasure. but such national differences, if they exist, are tending to be levelled down, and charges of criminal abortion are constantly becoming more common in germany; though this increase, again, may be merely due to greater zeal in pursuing the offence. brouardel (op. cit., p. ) quotes the opinion that, in new york, only one in every thousand abortions is discovered. dr. j.f. scott (_the sexual instinct_, ch. viii), who is himself strongly opposed to the practice, considers that in america, the custom of procuring abortion has to-day reached "such vast proportions as to be almost beyond belief," while "countless thousands" of cases are never reported. "it has increased so rapidly in our day and generation," scott states, "that it has created surprise and alarm in the minds of all conscientious persons who are informed of the extent to which it is carried." (the assumption that those who approve of abortion are necessarily not "conscientious persons" is, as we shall see, mistaken.) the change has taken place since . the michigan special committee on criminal abortion reported in that, from correspondence with nearly one hundred physicians, it appeared that there came to the knowledge of the profession seventeen abortions to every one hundred pregnancies; to these, the committee believe, may be added as many more that never came to the physician's knowledge. the committee further quoted, though without endorsement, the opinion of a physician who believed that a change is now coming over public feeling in regard to the abortionist, who is beginning to be regarded in america as a useful member of society, and even a benefactor. in england, also, there appears to have been a marked increase of abortion during recent years, perhaps specially marked among the poor and hard-working classes. a writer in the _british medical journal_ (april , , p. ) finds that abortion is "wholesale and systematic," and gives four cases occurring in his practice during four months, in which women either attempted to produce abortion, or requested him to do so; they were married women, usually with large families, and in delicate health, and were willing to endure any suffering, if they might be saved from further child-bearing. abortion is frequently effected, or attempted, by taking "female pills," which contain small portions of lead, and are thus liable to produce very serious symptoms, whether or not they induce abortion. professor arthur hall, of sheffield, who has especially studied this use of lead ("the increasing use of lead as an abortifacient," _british medical journal_, march , ), finds that the practice has lately become very common in the english midlands, and is gradually, it appears, widening its circle. it occurs chiefly among married women with families, belonging to the working class, and it tends to become specially prevalent during periods of trade depression (cf. g. newman, _infant mortality_, p. ). women of better social class resort to professional abortionists, and sometimes go over to paris. in france, also, and especially in paris, there has been a great increase during recent years in the practice of abortion. (see e.g., a discussion at the paris société de médecine légale, _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, may, .) doléris has shown (_bulletin de la société d'obstétrique_, feb., ) that in the paris maternités the percentage of abortions in pregnancies doubled between and , and doléris estimates that about half of these abortions were artificially induced. in france, abortion is mainly carried on by professional abortionists. one of these, mme. thomas, who was condemned to penal servitude, in , acknowledged performing , abortions during eight years; her charge for the operation was two francs and upwards. she was a peasant's daughter, brought up in the home of her uncle, a doctor, whose medical and obstetrical books she had devoured (a. hamon, _la france en _, pp. - ). french public opinion is lenient to abortion, especially to women who perform the operation on themselves; not many cases are brought into court, and of these, forty per cent. are acquitted (eugène bausset, _l'avortement criminel_, thèse de paris, ). the professional abortionist is, however, usually sent to prison. in germany, also, abortion appears to have greatly increased during recent years, and the yearly number of cases of criminal abortion brought into the courts was, in , more than double as many as in . (see, also, elisabeth zanzinger, _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, heft ; and _sexual-probleme_, jan., , p. .) in view of these facts it is not surprising that the induction of abortion has been permitted and even encouraged in many civilizations. its unqualified condemnation is only found in christendom, and is due to theoretical notions. in turkey, under ordinary circumstances, there is no punishment for abortion. in the classic civilization of greece and rome, likewise, abortion was permitted though with certain qualifications and conditions. plato admitted the mother's right to decide on abortion but said that the question should be settled as early as possible in pregnancy. aristotle, who approved of abortion, was of the same opinion. zeno and the stoics regarded the foetus as the fruit of the womb, the soul being acquired at birth; this was in accordance with roman law which decreed that the foetus only became a human being at birth.[ ] among the romans abortion became very common, but, in accordance with the patriarchal basis of early roman institutions, it was the father, not the mother, who had the right to exercise it. christianity introduced a new circle of ideas based on the importance of the soul, on its immortality, and the necessity of baptism as a method of salvation from the results of inherited sin. we already see this new attitude in st. augustine who, discussing whether embryos that died in the womb will rise at the resurrection, says "i make bold neither to affirm nor to deny, although i fail to see why, if they are not excluded from the number of the dead, they should not attain to the resurrection of the dead."[ ] the criminality of abortion was, however, speedily established, and the early christian emperors, in agreement with the church, edicted many fantastic and extreme penalties against abortion. this tendency continued under ecclesiastical influence, unrestrained, until the humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century, when beccaria, voltaire, rousseau and other great reformers succeeded in turning the tide of public opinion against the barbarity of the laws, and the penalty of death for abortion was finally abolished.[ ] medical science and practice at the present day--although it can scarcely be said that it speaks with an absolutely unanimous voice--on the whole occupies a position midway between that of the classic lawyers and that of the later christian ecclesiastics. it is, on the whole, in favor of sacrificing the foetus whenever the interests of the mother demand such a sacrifice. general medical opinion is not, however, prepared at present to go further, and is distinctly disinclined to aid the parents in exerting an unqualified control over the foetus in the womb, nor is it yet disposed to practice abortion on eugenic grounds. it is obvious, indeed, that medicine cannot in this matter take the initiative, for it is the primary duty of medicine to save life. society itself must assume the responsibility of protecting the race. dr. s. macvie ("mother _versus_ child," _transactions edinburgh obstetrical society_, vol. xxiv, ) elaborately discusses the respective values of the foetus and the adult on the basis of life-expectancy, and concludes that the foetus is merely "a parasite performing no function whatever," and that "unless the life-expectancy of the child covers the years in which its potentiality is converted into actuality, the relative values of the maternal and foetal life will be that of actual as against potential." this statement seems fairly sound. ballantyne (_manual of antenatal pathology: the foetus_, p. ) endeavors to make the statement more precise by saying that "the mother's life has a value, because she is what she is, while the foetus only has a possible value, on account of what it may become." durlacher, among others, has discussed, in careful and cautious detail, the various conditions in which the physician should, or should not, induce abortion in the interests of the mother ("der künstliche abort," _wiener klinik_, aug. and sept., ); so also, eugen wilhelm ("die abtreibung und das recht des arztes zur vernichtung der leibesfrucht," _sexual-probleme_, may and june, ). wilhelm further discusses whether it is desirable to alter the laws in order to give the physician greater freedom in deciding on abortion. he concludes that this is not necessary, and might even act injuriously, by unduly hampering medical freedom. any change in the law should merely be, he considers, in the direction of asserting that the destruction of the foetus is not abortion in the legal sense, provided it is indicated by the rules of medical science. with reference to the timidity of some medical men in inducing abortion, wilhelm remarks that, even in the present state of the law, the physician who conscientiously effects abortion, in accordance with his best knowledge, even if mistakenly, may consider himself safe from all legal penalties, and that he is much more likely to come in conflict with the law if it can be proved that death followed as a result of his neglect to induce abortion. pinard, who has discussed the right to control the foetal life (_annales de gynécologie_, vols. lii and liii, and ), inspired by his enthusiastic propaganda for the salvation of infant life, is led to the unwarranted conclusion that no one has the rights of life and death over the foetus; "the infant's right to his life is an imprescriptible and sacred right, which no power can take from him." there is a mistake here, unless pinard deliberately desires to place himself, like tolstoy, in opposition to current civilized morality. so far from the infant having any "imprescriptible right to life," even the adult has, in human societies, no such inalienable right, and very much less the foetus, which is not strictly a human being at all. we assume the right of terminating the lives of those individuals whose anti-social conduct makes them dangerous, and, in war, we deliberately terminate, amid general applause and enthusiasm, the lives of men who have been specially selected for this purpose on account of their physical and general efficiency. it would be absurdly inconsistent to say that we have no rights over the lives of creatures that have, as yet, no part in human society at all, and are not so much as born. we are here in presence of a vestige of ancient theological dogma, and there can be little doubt that, on the theoretical side at all events, the "imprescriptible right" of the embryo will go the same way as the "imprescriptible right" of the spermatozöon. both rights are indeed "imprescriptible." of recent years a new, and, it must be admitted, somewhat unexpected, aspect of this question of abortion has been revealed. hitherto it has been a question entirely in the hands of men, first, following the roman traditions, in the hands of christian ecclesiastics, and later, in those of the professional castes. yet the question is in reality very largely, and indeed mainly, a woman's question, and now, more especially in germany, it has been actively taken up by women. the gräfin gisela streitberg occupies the pioneering place in this movement with her book _das recht zur beiseitigung keimenden lebens_, and was speedily followed, from onwards, by a number of distinguished women who occupy a prominent place in the german woman's movement, among others helene stöcker, oda olberg, elisabeth zanzinger, camilla jellinek. all these writers insist that the foetus is not yet an independent human being, and that every woman, by virtue of the right over her own body, is entitled to decide whether it shall become an independent human being. at the woman's congress held in the autumn of , a resolution was passed demanding that abortion should only be punishable when effected by another person against the wish of the pregnant women herself.[ ] the acceptance of this resolution by a representative assembly is interesting proof of the interest now taken by women in the question, and of the strenuous attitude they are tending to assume. elisabeth zanzinger ("verbrechen gegen die leibesfrucht," _geschlecht und gesellschaft_, bd. ii, heft , ) ably and energetically condemns the law which makes abortion a crime. "a woman herself is the only legitimate possessor of her own body and her own health.... just as it is a woman's private right, and most intimate concern, to present her virginity as her best gift to the chosen of her heart, so it is certainly a pregnant woman's own private concern if, for reasons which seem good to her, she decides to destroy the results of her action." a woman who destroys the embryo which might become a burden to the community, or is likely to be an inferior member of society, this writer urges, is doing a service to the community, which ought to reward her, perhaps by granting her special privileges as regards the upbringing of her other children. oda olberg, in a thoughtful paper ("ueber den juristischen schutz des keimenden lebens," _die neue generation_, june, ), endeavors to make clear all that is involved in the effort to protect the developing embryo against the organism that carries it, to protect a creature, that is, against itself and its own instincts. she considers that most of the women who terminate their pregnancies artificially would only have produced undesirables, for the normal, healthy, robust woman has no desire to effect abortion. "there are women who are psychically sterile, without being physically so, and who possess nothing of motherhood but the ability to bring forth. these, when they abort, are simply correcting a failure of nature." some of them, she remarks, by going on to term, become guilty of the far worse offence of infanticide. as for the women who desire abortion merely from motives of vanity, or convenience, oda olberg points out that the circles in which these motives rule are quite able to limit their children without having to resort to abortion. she concludes that society must protect the young life in every way, by social hygiene, by laws for the protection of the workers, by spreading a new morality on the basis of the laws of heredity. but we need no law to protect the young creature against its own mother, for a thousand natural forces are urging the mother to protect her own child, and we may be sure that she will not disobey these forces without very good reasons. camilla jellinek, again (_die strafrechtsreform_, etc., heidelberg, ), in a powerful and well-informed address before the associated german frauenvereine, at breslau, argues in the same sense. the lawyers very speedily came to the assistance of the women in this matter, the more readily, no doubt, since the traditions of the greatest and most influential body of law already pointed, on one side at all events, in the same direction. it may, indeed, be claimed that it was from the side of law--and in italy, the classic land of legal reform--that this new movement first begun. in , balestrini published, at turin, his _aborto, infanticidio ed esposizione d'infante_, in which he argued that the penalty should be removed from abortion. it was a very able and learned book, inspired by large ideas and a humanitarian spirit, but though its importance is now recognized, it cannot be said that it attracted much attention on publication. it is especially in germany that, during recent years, lawyers have followed women reformers, by advocating, more or less completely, the abolition of the punishment for abortion. so distinguished an authority as von liszt, in a private letter to camilla jellinek (op. cit.), states that he regards the punishment of abortion as "very doubtful," though he considers its complete abolition impracticable; he thinks abortion might be permitted during the early months of pregnancy, thus bringing about a return of the old view. hans gross states his opinion (_archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, bd. xii, p. ) that the time is not far distant when abortion will no longer be punished. radbruch and von lilienthal speak in the same sense. weinberg has advocated a change in the law (_mutterschutz_, , heft ), and kurt hiller (_die neue generation_, april, ), also from the legal side, argues that abortion should only be punishable when effected by a married woman, without the knowledge and consent of her husband. the medical profession, which took the first step in modern times in the authorization of abortion, has not at present taken any further step. it has been content to lay down the principle that when the interests of the mother are opposed to those of the foetus, it is the latter which must be sacrificed. it has hesitated to take the further step of placing abortion on the eugenic basis, and of claiming the right to insist on abortion whenever the medical and hygienic interests of society demand such a step. this attitude is perfectly intelligible. medicine has in the past been chiefly identified with the saving of lives, even of worthless and worse than worthless lives; "keep everything alive! keep everything alive!" nervously cried sir james paget. medicine has confined itself to the humble task of attempting to cure evils, and is only to-day beginning to undertake the larger and nobler task of preventing them. "the step from killing the child in the womb to murdering a person when out of the womb, is a dangerously narrow one," sagely remarks a recent medical author, probably speaking for many others, who somehow succeed in blinding themselves to the fact that this "dangerously narrow step" has been taken by mankind, only too freely, for thousands of years past, long before abortion was known in the world. here and there, however, medical authors of repute have advocated the further extension of abortion, with precautions, and under proper supervision, as an aid to eugenic progress. thus, professor max flesch (_die neue generation_, april, ) is in favor of a change in the law permitting abortion (provided it is carried out by the physician) in special cases, as when the mother's pregnancy has been due to force, when she has been abandoned, or when, in the interests of the community, it is desirable to prevent the propagation of insane, criminal, alcoholic, or tuberculous persons. in france, a medical man, dr. jean darricarrère, has written a remarkable novel, _le droit d'avortement_ ( ), which advocates the thesis that a woman always possesses a complete right to abortion, and is the supreme judge as to whether she will or not undergo the pain and risks of childbirth. the question is, here, however, obviously placed not on medical, but on humanitarian and feminist grounds. we have seen that, alike on the side of practice and of theory, a great change has taken place during recent years in the attitude towards abortion. it must, however, clearly be recognized that, unlike the control of procreation by methods for preventing conception, facultative abortion has not yet been embodied in our current social morality. if it is permissible to interpolate a personal opinion, i may say that to me it seems that our morality is here fairly reasonable.[ ] i am decidedly of opinion that an unrestricted permission for women to practice abortion in their own interests, or even for communities to practice it in the interests of the race, would be to reach beyond the stage of civilization we have at present attained. as ellen key very forcibly argues, a civilization which permits, without protest, the barbarous slaughter of its carefully selected adults in war has not yet won the right to destroy deliberately even its most inferior vital products in the womb. a civilization guilty of so reckless a waste of life cannot safely be entrusted with this judicial function. the blind and aimless anxiety to cherish the most hopeless and degraded forms of life, even of unborn life, may well be a weakness, and since it often leads to incalculable suffering, even a crime. but as yet there is an impenetrable barrier against progress in this direction. before we are entitled to take life deliberately for the sake of purifying life, we must learn how to preserve it by abolishing such destructive influences--war, disease, bad industrial conditions--as are easily within our social power as civilized nations.[ ] there is, further, another consideration which seems to me to carry weight. the progress of civilization is in the direction of greater foresight, of greater prevention, of a diminished need for struggling with the reckless lack of prevision. the necessity for abortion is precisely one of those results of reckless action which civilization tends to diminish. while we may admit that in a sounder state of civilization a few cases might still occur when the induction of abortion would be desirable, it seems probable that the number of such cases will decrease rather than increase. in order to do away with the need for abortion, and to counteract the propaganda in its favor, our main reliance must be placed, on the one hand, on increased foresight in the determination of conception and increased knowledge of the means for preventing conception,[ ] and on the other hand, on a better provision by the state for the care of pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, and a practical recognition of the qualified mother's claim on society.[ ] there can be little doubt that, in many a charge of criminal abortion, the real offence lies at the door of those who have failed to exercise their social and professional duty of making known the more natural and harmless methods for preventing conception, or else by their social attitude have made the pregnant woman's position intolerable. by active social reform in these two directions, the new movement in favor of abortion may be kept in check, and it may even be found that by stimulating such reform that movement has been beneficial. we have seen that the deliberate restraint of conception has become a part of our civilized morality, and that the practice and theory of facultative abortion has gained a footing among us. there remains a third and yet more radical method of controlling procreation, the method of preventing the possibility of procreation altogether by the performance of castration or other slighter operation having a like inhibitory effect on reproduction. the other two methods only effect a single act of union or its results, but castration affects all subsequent acts of sexual union and usually destroys the procreative power permanently. castration for various social and other purposes is an ancient and widespread practice, carried out on men and on animals. there has, however, been on the whole a certain prejudice against it when applied to men. many peoples have attached a very sacred value to the integrity of the sexual organs. among some primitive peoples the removal of these organs has been regarded as a peculiarly ferocious insult, only to be carried out in moments of great excitement, as after a battle. medicine has been opposed to any interference with the sexual organs. the oath taken by the greek physicians appears to prohibit castration: "i will not cut."[ ] in modern times a great change has taken place, the castration of both men and women is commonly performed in diseased conditions; the same operation is sometimes advocated and occasionally performed in the hope that it may remove strong and abnormal sexual impulses. and during recent years castration has been invoked in the cause of negative eugenics, to a greater extent, indeed, on account of its more radical character, than either the prevention of conception or abortion. the movement in favor of castration appears to have begun in the united states, where various experiments have been made in embodying it in law. it was first advocated merely as a punishment for criminals, and especially sexual offenders, by hammond, everts, lydston and others. from this point of view, however, it seems to be unsatisfactory and perhaps illegitimate. in many cases castration is no punishment at all, and indeed a positive benefit. in other cases, when inflicted against the subject's will, it may produce very disturbing mental effects, leading in already degenerate or unbalanced persons to insanity, criminality, and anti-social tendencies generally, much more dangerous than the original state. eugenic considerations, which were later brought forward, constitute a much sounder argument for castration; in this case the castration is carried out, by no means in order to inflict a barbarous and degrading punishment, but, with the subject's consent, in order to protect the community from the risk of useless or mischievous members. the fact that castration can no longer be properly considered a punishment, is shown by the possibility of deliberately seeking the operation simply for the sake of convenience, as a preferable and most effective substitute for the adoption of preventive methods in sexual intercourse. i am only at present acquainted with one case in which this course has been adopted. this subject is a medical man (of puritan new england ancestry) with whose sexual history, which is quite normal, i have been acquainted for a long time past. his present age is thirty-nine. a few years since, having a sufficiently large family, he adopted preventive methods of intercourse. the subsequent events i narrate in his own words: "the trouble, forethought, etc., rendered necessary by preventive measures, grew more and more irksome to me as the years passed by, and finally, i laid the matter before another physician, and on his assurances, and after mature deliberation with my wife, was operated on some time since, and rendered sterile by having the vas deferens on each side exposed through a slit in the scrotum, then tied in two places with silk and severed between the ligatures. this was done under cocaine infiltrative anæsthesia, and was not so extremely painful, though what pain there was (dragging the cord out through the slit, etc.) seemed very hard to endure. i was not out of my office a single day, nor seriously disturbed in any way. in six days all stitches in the scrotum were removed, and in three weeks i abandoned the suspensory bandage that had been rendered necessary by the extreme sensitiveness of the testicles and cord. "the operation has proved a most complete success in every way. sexual functions are _absolutely unaffected in any way whatsoever_. there is no sense of discomfort or uneasiness in the sexual tract, and what seems strangest of all to me, is the fact that the semen, so far as one can judge by ordinary means of observation, is undiminished in quantity and unchanged in character. (of course, the microscope would reveal its fatal lack.) "my wife is delighted at having fear banished from our love, and, taken all in all, it certainly seems as if life would mean more to us both. incidentally, the health of both of us seems better than usual, particularly so in my wife's case, and this she attributes to a soothing influence that is attained by allowing the seminal fluid to be deposited in a perfectly normal manner, and remain in contact with the vaginal secretions until it naturally passes off. "this operation being comparatively new, and, as yet, not often done on others than the insane, criminal, etc., i thought it might be of interest to you. if i shed even the faintest ray of light on this greatest of all human problems ... i shall be glad indeed." such a case, with its so far satisfactory issue, certainly deserves to be placed on record, though it may well be that at present it will not be widely imitated. the earliest advocacy of castration, which i have met with as a part of negative eugenics, for the specific "purpose of prophylaxis as applied to race improvement and the protection of society," is by dr. f.e. daniel, of texas, and dates from .[ ] daniel mixed up, however, somewhat inextricably, castration as a method of purifying the race, a method which can be carried out with the concurrence of the individual operated on, with castration as a punishment, to be inflicted for rape, sodomy, bestiality, pederasty and even habitual masturbation, the method of its performance, moreover, to be the extremely barbarous and primitive method of total ablation of the sexual organs. in more recent years somewhat more equitable, practical, and scientific methods of castration have been advocated, not involving the removal of the sexual glands or organs, and not as a punishment, but simply for the sake of protecting the community and the race from the burden of probably unproductive and possibly dangerous members. näcke has, from onwards, repeatedly urged the social advantages of this measure.[ ] the propagation of the inferior elements of society, näcke insists, brings unhappiness into the family and is a source of great expense to the state. he regards castration as the only effective method of prevention, and concludes that it is, therefore, our duty to adopt it, just as we have adopted vaccination, taking care to secure the consent of the subject himself or his guardian, of the civil authorities, and, if necessary, of a committee of experts. professor angelo zuccarelli of naples has also, from onwards, emphasized the importance of castration in the sterilization of the epileptic, the insane of various classes, the alcoholic, the tuberculous, and instinctive criminals, the choice of cases for operation to be made by a commission of experts who would examine school-children, candidates for public employments, or persons about to marry.[ ] this movement rapidly gained ground, and in at the annual meeting of swiss alienists it was unanimously agreed that the sterilization of the insane is desirable, and that it is necessary that the question should be legally regulated. it is in switzerland, indeed, that the first steps have been taken in europe to carry out castration as a measure of social prophylaxis. the sixteenth yearly report ( ) of the cantonal asylum at wil describes four cases of castration, two in men and two in women, performed--with the permission of the patients and the civil authorities--for social reasons; both women had previously had illegitimate children who were a burden on the community, and all four patients were sexually abnormal; the operation enabled the patients to be liberated and to work, and the results were considered in every respect satisfactory to all concerned.[ ] the introduction of castration as a method of negative eugenics has been facilitated by the use of new methods of performing it without risk, and without actual removal of the testes or ovaries. for men, there is the simple method of vasectomy, as recommended by näcke and many others. for women, there is the corresponding, and almost equally simple and harmless method of kehrer, by section and ligation of the fallopian tubes through the vagina, as recommended by kisch, or rose's very similar procedure, easily carried out in a few minutes by an experienced hand, as recommended by zuccarelli. it has been found that repeated exposure to the x-rays produces sterility in both sexes, alike in animals and men, and x-ray workers have to adopt various precautions to avoid suffering from this effect. it has been suggested that the application of the x-rays would be a good substitute for castration; it appears that the effects of the application are only likely to last a few years, which, in some doubtful cases, might be an advantage. (see _british medical journal_, aug. , ; ib., march , ; ib., july , .) it is scarcely possible, it seems to me, to view castration as a method of negative eugenics with great enthusiasm. the recklessness, moreover, with which it is sometimes proposed to apply it by law--owing no doubt to the fact that it is not so obviously repulsive as the less radical procedure of abortion--ought to render us very cautious. we must, too, dismiss the idea of castration as a punishment; as such it is not merely barbarous but degrading and is unlikely to have a beneficial effect. as a method of negative eugenics it should never be carried out except with the subject's consent. the fact that in some cases it might be necessary to enforce seclusion in the absence of castration would doubtless be a fact exerting influence in favor of such consent; but the consent is essential if the subject of the operation is to be safeguarded from degradation. a man who has been degraded and embittered by an enforced castration might not be dangerous to posterity, but might very easily become a dangerous member of the society in which he actually lived. with due precautions and safeguards, castration may doubtless play a certain part in the elevation and improvement of the race.[ ] the methods we have been considering, in so far as they limit the procreative powers of the less healthy and efficient stocks in a community, are methods of eugenics. it must not, however, be supposed that they are the whole of eugenics, or indeed that they are in any way essential to a eugenic scheme. eugenics is concerned with the whole of the agencies which elevate and improve the human breed; abortion and castration are methods which may be used to this end, but they are not methods of which everyone approves, nor is it always clear that the ends they effect would not better be attained by other methods; in any case they are methods of negative eugenics. there remains the field of positive eugenics, which is concerned, not with the elimination of the inferior stocks but with ascertaining which are the superior stocks and with furthering their procreative power. while the necessity of refraining from procreation is no longer a bar to marriage, the question of whether two persons ought to marry each other still remains in the majority of cases a serious question from the standpoint of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for the normal marriage cannot fail to involve children, as, indeed, its chief and most desirable end. we have to consider not merely what are the stocks or the individuals that are unfit to breed, but also what are these stocks or individuals that are most fit to breed, and under what conditions procreation may best be effected. the present imperfection of our knowledge on these questions emphasizes the need for care and caution in approaching their consideration. it may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of the oneida community in establishing a system of scientific propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be adequately recognized. john humphrey noyes was too far ahead of his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect, and his attempts to apply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a premature end. his aim and principle are set forth in an _essay on scientific propagation_, printed some forty years ago, which discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the attention of the practical man, as within the range of social politics. when noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the conventional customs of their time. the experiment of noyes, at oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment--and a first experiment cannot well be final--with noyes the questions of eugenics passed beyond the purely academic stage in which, from the time of plato, they had peacefully reposed. "it is becoming clear," noyes states at the outset, "that the foundations of scientific society are to be laid in the scientific propagation of human beings." in doing this, we must attend to two things: blood (or heredity) and training; and he puts blood first. in that, he was at one with the most recent biometrical eugenists of to-day ("the nation has for years been putting its money on 'environment,' when 'heredity' wins in a canter," as karl pearson prefers to put it), and at the same time revealed the breadth of his vision in comparison with the ordinary social reformer, who, in that day, was usually a fanatical believer in the influence of training and surroundings. noyes sets forth the position of darwin on the principles of breeding, and the step beyond darwin, which had been taken by galton. he then remarks that, when galton comes to the point where it is necessary to advance from theory to the duties the theory suggests, he "subsides into the meekest conservatism." (it must be remembered that this was written at an early stage in galton's work.) this conclusion was entirely opposed to noyes' practical and religious temperament. "duty is plain; we say we ought to do it--we want to do it; but we cannot. the law of god urges us on; but the law of society holds us back. the boldest course is the safest. let us take an honest and steady look at the law. it is only in the timidity of ignorance that the duty seems impracticable." noyes anticipated galton in regarding eugenics as a matter of religion. noyes proposed to term the work of modern science in propagation "stirpiculture," in which he has sometimes been followed by others. he considered that it is the business of the stirpiculturist to keep in view both quantity and quality of stocks, and he held that, without diminishing quantity, it was possible to raise the quality by exercising a very stringent discrimination in selecting males. at this point, noyes has been supported in recent years by karl pearson and others, who have shown that only a relatively small portion of a population is needed to produce the next generation, and that, in fact, twelve per cent. of one generation in man produces fifty per cent. of the next generation. what we need to ensure is that this small reproducing section of the population shall be the best adapted for the purpose. "the _quantity_ of production will be in direct proportion to the number of fertile females," as noyes saw the question, "and the _value_ produced, so far as it depends on selection, will be nearly in inverse proportion to the number of fertilizing males." in this matter, noyes anticipated ehrenfels. the two principles to be held in mind were, "breed from the best," and "breed in-and-in," with a cautious and occasional introduction of new strains. (it may be noted that reibmayr, in his recent _entwicklungsgeschichte des genics und talentes_, argues that the superior races, and superior individuals, in the human species, have been produced by an unconscious adherence to exactly these principles.) "by segregating superior families, and by breeding these in-and-in, superior varieties of human beings might be produced, which would be comparable to the thoroughbreds in all the domestic races." he illustrates this by the early history of the jews. noyes finally criticises the present method, or lack of method, in matters of propagation. our marriage system, he states, "leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble." by ignoring, also, the great difference between the sexes in reproductive power, it "restricts each man, whatever may be his potency and his value, to the amount of production of which one woman, chosen blindly, may be capable." moreover, he continues, "practically it discriminates against the best, and in favor of the worst; for, while the good man will be limited by his conscience to what the law allows, the bad man, free from moral check, will distribute his seed beyond the legal limits, as widely as he dares." "we are safe every way in saying that there is no possibility of carrying the two precepts of scientific propagation into an institution which pretends to no discrimination, allows no suppression, gives no more liberty to the best than to the worst, and which, in fact, must inevitably discriminate the wrong way, so long as the inferior classes are most prolific and least amenable to the admonitions of science and morality." in modifying our sexual institutions, noyes insists there are two essential points to remember: the preservation of liberty, and the preservation of the home. there must be no compulsion about human scientific propagation; it must be autonomous, directed by self-government, "by the free choice of those who love science well enough to 'make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.'" the home, also, must be preserved, since "marriage is the best thing for man as he is;" but it is necessary to enlarge the home, for, "if all could learn to love other children than their own, there would be nothing to hinder scientific propagation in the midst of homes far better than any that now exist." this memorable pamphlet contains no exposition of the precise measures adopted by the oneida community to carry out these principles. the two essential points were, as we know, "male continence" (see _ante_ p. ), and the enlarged family, in which all the men were the actual or potential mates of all the women, but no union for propagation took place, except as the result of reason and deliberate resolve. "the community," says h.j. seymour, one of the original members (_the oneida community_, , p. ), "was a _family_, as distinctly separated from surrounding society as ordinary households. the tie that bound it together was as permanent, and at least as sacred, as that of marriage. every man's care, and the whole of the common property, was pledged for the maintenance and protection of the women, and the support and education of the children." it is not probable that the oneida community presented in detail the model to which human society generally will conform. but even at the lowest estimate, its success showed, as lord morely has pointed out (_diderot_, vol. ii, p. ), "how modifiable are some of these facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed to be ultimate and ineradicable," and that "the discipline of the appetites and affections of sex," on which the future of civilization largely rests, is very far from an impossibility. in many respects, the oneida community was ahead of its time,--and even of ours,--but it is interesting to note that, in the matter of the control of conception, our marriage system has come into line with the theory and practice of oneida; it cannot, indeed, be said that we always control conception in accordance with eugenic principles, but the fact that such control has now become a generally accepted habit of civilization, to some extent deprives noyes' criticism of our marriage system of the force it possessed half a century ago. another change in our customs--the advocacy, and even the practice, of abortion and castration--would not have met with his approval; he was strongly opposed to both, and with the high moral level that ruled his community, neither was necessary to the maintenance of the stirpiculture that prevailed. the oneida community endured for the space of one generation, and came to an end in , by no means through a recognition of failure, but by a wise deference to external pressure. its members, many of them highly educated, continued to cherish the memory of the practices and ideals of the community. noyes miller (the author of _the strike of a sex_, and _zugassant's discovery_) to the last, looked with quiet confidence to the time when, as he anticipated, the great discovery of noyes would be accepted and adopted by the world at large. another member of the community (henry j. seymour) wrote of the community long afterwards that "it was an anticipation and imperfect miniature of the kingdom of heaven on earth." perhaps the commonest type of proposal or attempt to improve the biological level of the race is by the exclusion of certain classes of degenerates from marriage, or by the encouragement of better classes of the community to marry. this seems to be, at present, the most popular form of eugenics, and in so far as it is not effected by compulsion but is the outcome of a voluntary resolve to treat the question of the creation of the race with the jealous care and guardianship which so tremendously serious, so godlike, a task involves, it has much to be said in its favor and nothing against it. but it is quite another matter when the attempt is made to regulate such an institution as marriage by law. in the first place we do not yet know enough about the principles of heredity and the transmissibility of pathological states to enable us to formulate sound legislative proposals on this basis. even so comparatively simple a matter as the relationship of tuberculosis to heredity can scarcely be said to be a matter of common agreement, even if it can yet be claimed that we possess adequate material on which to attain a common agreement. supposing, moreover, that our knowledge on all these questions were far more advanced than it is, we still should not have attained a position in which we could lay down general propositions regarding the desirability or the undesirability of certain classes of persons procreating. the question is necessarily an individual question, and it can only be decided when all the circumstances of the individual case have been fairly passed in review. the objection to any legislative and compulsory regulation of the right to marry is, however, much more fundamental than the consideration that our knowledge is at present inadequate. it lies in the extraordinary confusion, in the minds of those who advocate such legislation, between legal marriage and procreation. the persons who fall into such confusion have not yet learnt the alphabet of the subject they presume to dictate about, and are no more competent to legislate than a child who cannot tell a from b is competent to read. marriage, in so far as it is the partnership for mutual help and consolation of two people who in such partnership are free, if they please, to exercise sexual union, is an elementary right of every person who is able to reason, who is guilty of no fraud or concealment, and who is not likely to injure the partner selected, for in that case society is entitled to interfere by virtue of its duty to protect its members. but the right to marry, thus understood, in no way involves the right to procreate. for while marriage _per se_ only affects the two individuals concerned, and in no way affects the state, procreation, on the other hand, primarily affects the community which is ultimately made up of procreated persons, and only secondarily affects the two individuals who are the instruments of procreation. so that just as the individual couple has the first right in the question of marriage, the state has the first right in the question of procreation. the state is just as incompetent to lay down the law about marriage as the individual is to lay down the law about procreation. that, however, is only one-half of the folly committed by those who would select the candidates for matrimony by statute. let us suppose--as is not indeed easy to suppose--that a community will meekly accept the abstract prohibitions of the statute book and quietly go home again when the registrar of marriages informs them that they are shut out from legal matrimony by the new table of prohibited degrees. an explicit prohibition to procreate within marriage is an implicit permission to procreate outside marriage. thus the undesirable procreation, instead of being carried out under the least dangerous conditions, is carried out under the most dangerous conditions, and the net result to the community is not a gain but a loss. what seems usually to happen, in the presence of a formal legislative prohibition against the marriage of a particular class, is a combination of various evils. in part the law becomes a dead letter, in part it is evaded by skill and fraud, in part it is obeyed to give rise to worse evils. this happened, for instance, in the terek district of the caucasus where, on the demand of a medical committee, priests were prohibited from marrying persons among whose relatives or ancestry any cases of leprosy had occurred. so much and such various mischief was caused by this order that it was speedily withdrawn.[ ] if we remember that the catholic church was occupied for more than a thousand years in the attempt to impose the prohibition of marriage on its priesthood,--an educated and trained body of men, who had every spiritual and worldly motive to accept the prohibition, and were, moreover, brought up to regard asceticism as the best ideal in life,[ ]--we may realize how absurd it is to attempt to gain the same end by mere casual prohibitions issued to untrained people with no motives to obey such prohibitions, and no ideals of celibacy. the hopelessness and even absurdity of effecting the eugenic improvement of the race by merely placing on the statute book prohibitions to certain classes of people to enter the legal bonds of matrimony as at present constituted, reveals the weakness of those who undervalue the eugenic importance of environment. those who affirm that heredity is everything and environment nothing seem strangely to forget that it is precisely the lower classes--those who are most subjected to the influence of bad environment--who procreate most copiously, most recklessly, and most disastrously. the restraint of procreation, and a concomitant regard for heredity, increase _pari passu_ with improvement of the environment and rise in social well-being. if even already it can be said that probably fifty per cent. of sexual intercourse--perhaps the most procreatively productive moiety--takes place outside legal marriage, it becomes obvious that statutory prohibition to the unfit classes to refrain from legal marriage merely involves their joining the procreating classes outside legal matrimony. it is also clear that if we are to neglect the factor of environment, and leave the lower social classes to the ignorance and recklessness which are the result of such environment, the only practical method of eugenics left open is that by castration and abortion. but this method--if applied on a wholesale scale as it would need to be[ ] and without reference to the consent of the individual--is entirely opposed to modern democratic feeling. thus those short-sighted eugenists who overlook the importance of environment are overlooking the only practical channel through which their aims can be realized. attention to procreation and attention to environment are not, as some have supposed, antagonistic, but they play harmoniously into each other's hands. the care for environment leads to a restraint on reckless procreation, and the restraint of procreation leads to improved environment. legislation on marriage, to be effectual, must be enacted in the home, in the school, in the doctor's consulting room. force is helpless here; it is education that is needed, not merely instruction, but the education of the conscience and will, and the training of the emotions. legal action may come in to further this process of education, though it cannot replace it. thus it is very desirable that when there has been a concealment of serious disease by a party to a marriage such concealment should be a ground for divorce. epilepsy may be taken as typical of the diseases which should be a bar to procreation, and their concealment equivalent to an annulment of marriage.[ ] in the united states the supreme court of errors of connecticut laid it down in that the superior court has the power to pass a decree of divorce when one of the parties has concealed the existence of epilepsy. this weighty deliverence, it has been well said,[ ] marks a forward step in human progress. there are many other seriously pathological conditions in which divorce should be pronounced, or indeed, occur automatically, except when procreation has been renounced, for in that case the state is no longer concerned in the relationship, except to punish any fraud committed by concealment. the demand that a medical certificate of health should be compulsory on marriage, has been especially made in france. in , diday, of lyons, proposed, indeed, that all persons, without exception, should be compelled to possess a certificate of health and disease, a kind of sanitary passport. in , bertillon (art. "demographic," _dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales_) advocated the registration, at marriage, of the chief anthropological and pathological traits of the contracting parties (height, weight, color of hair and eyes, muscular force, size of head, condition of vision, hearing, etc., deformities and defects, etc.), not so much, however, for the end of preventing undesirable marriages, as to facilitate the study and comparison of human groups at particular periods. subsequent demands, of a more limited and partial character, for legal medical certificates as a condition of marriage, have been made by fournier (_syphilis et mariage_, ), cazalis (_le science et le mariage_, ), and jullien (_blenorrhagie et mariage_, ). in austria, haskovec, of prague ("contrat matrimonial et l'hygiène publique," _comptes-rendus congrès international de médecine_, lisbon, , section vii, p. ), argues that, on marriage, a medical certificate should be presented, showing that the subject is exempt from tuberculosis, alcoholism, syphilis, gonorrhoea, severe mental, or nervous, or other degenerative state, likely to be injurious to the other partner, or to the offspring. in america, rosenberg and aronstam argue that every candidate for marriage, male or female, should undergo a strict examination by a competent board of medical examiners, concerning ( ) family and past history (syphilis, consumption, alcoholism, nervous, and mental diseases), and ( ) status presens (thorough examination of all the organs); if satisfactory, a certificate of matrimonial eligibility would then be granted. it is pointed out that a measure of this kind would render unnecessary the acts passed by some states for the punishment by fine, or imprisonment, of the concealment of disease. ellen key also considers (_liebe und ehe_, p. ) that each party at marriage should produce a certificate of health. "it seems to me just as necessary," she remarks, elsewhere (_century of the child_, ch. i), "to demand medical testimony concerning capacity for marriage, as concerning capacity for military service. in the one case, it is a matter of giving life; in the other, of taking it, although certainly the latter occasion has hitherto been considered as much the more serious." the certificate, as usually advocated, would be a private but necessary legitimation of the marriage in the eyes of the civil and religious authorities. such a step, being required for the protection alike of the conjugal partner and of posterity, would involve a new legal organization of the matrimonial contract. that such demands are so frequently made, is a significant sign of the growth of moral consciousness in the community, and it is good that the public should be made acquainted with the urgent need for them. but it is highly undesirable that they should, at present, or, perhaps, ever, be embodied in legal codes. what is needed is the cultivation of the feeling of individual responsibility, and the development of social antagonism towards those individuals who fail to recognize their responsibility. it is the reality of marriage, and not its mere legal forms, that it is necessary to act upon. the voluntary method is the only sound way of approach in this matter. duclaux considered that the candidate for marriage should possess a certificate of health in much the same way as the candidate for life assurance, the question of professional secrecy, as well as that of compulsion, no more coming into one question than into the other. there is no reason why such certificates, of an entirely voluntary character, should not become customary among those persons who are sufficiently enlightened to realize all the grave personal, family, and social issues involved in marriage. the system of eugenic certification, as originated and developed by galton, will constitute a valuable instrument for raising the moral consciousness in this matter. galton's eugenic certificates would deal mainly with the natural virtues of superior hereditary breed--"the public recognition of a natural nobility"--but they would include the question of personal health and personal aptitude.[ ] to demand compulsory certificates of health at marriage is indeed to begin at the wrong end. it would not only lead to evasions and antagonisms but would probably call forth a reaction. it is first necessary to create an enthusiasm for health, a moral conscience in matters of procreation, together with, on the scientific side, a general habit of registering the anthropological, psychological, and pathological data concerning the individual, from birth onwards, altogether apart from marriage. the earlier demands of diday and bertillon were thus not only on a sounder but also a more practicable basis. if such records were kept from birth for every child, there would be no need for special examination at marriage, and many incidental ends would be gained. there is difficulty at present in obtaining such records from the moment of birth, and, so far as i am aware, no attempts have yet been made to establish their systematic registration. but it is quite possible to begin at the beginning of school life, and this is now done at many schools and colleges in england, america, and elsewhere, more especially as regards anthropological, physiological, and psychological data, each child being submitted to a thorough and searching anthropometric examination, and thus furnished with a systematic statement of his physical condition.[ ] this examination needs to be standardized and generalized, and repeated at fixed intervals. "every individual child," as is truly stated by dr. dukes, the physician to rugby school, "on his entrance to a public school should be as carefully and as thoroughly examined as if it were for life insurance." if this procedure were general from an early age, there would be no hardship in the production of the record at marriage, and no opportunity for fraud. the _dossier_ of each person might well be registered by the state, as wills already are, and, as in the case of wills, become freely open to students when a century had elapsed. until this has been done during several centuries our knowledge of eugenics will remain rudimentary. there can be little doubt that the eugenic attitude towards marriage, and the responsibility of the individual for the future of the race, is becoming more recognized. it is constantly happening that persons, about to marry, approach the physician in a state of serious anxiety on this point. urquhart, indeed (_journal of mental science_, april, , p. ), believes that marriages are seldom broken off on this ground; this seems, however, too pessimistic a view, and even when the marriage is not broken off the resolve is often made to avoid procreation. clouston, who emphasizes (_hygiene of the mind_, p. ) the importance of "inquiries by each of the parties to the life-contract, by their parents and their doctors, as to heredity, temperament, and health," is more hopeful of the results than urquhart. "i have been very much impressed, of late years," he writes (_journal of mental science_, oct., , p. ), "with the way in which this subject is taking possession of intelligent people, by the number of times one is consulted by young men and young women, proposing to marry, or by their fathers or mothers. i used to have the feeling in the back of my mind, when i was consulted, that it did not matter what i said, it would not make any difference. but it is making a difference; and i, and others, could tell of scores of marriages which were put off in consequence of psychiatric medical advice." ellen key, also, refers to the growing tendency among both men and women, to be influenced by eugenic consideration in forming partnerships for life (_century of the child_, ch. i). the recognition of the eugenic attitude towards marriage, the quickening of the social and individual conscience in matters of heredity, as also the systematic introduction of certification and registration, will be furthered by the growing tendency to the socialization of medicine, and, indeed, in its absence would be impossible. (see e.g., havelock ellis, _the nationalization of health_.) the growth of the state medical organization of health is steady and continuous, and is constantly covering a larger field. the day of the private practitioner of medicine--who was treated, as duclaux (_l'hygiène sociale_, p. ) put it, "like a grocer, whose shop the customer may enter and leave as he pleases, and when he pleases"--will, doubtless, soon be over. it is now beginning to be felt that health is far too serious a matter, not only from the individual but also from the social point of view, to be left to private caprice. there is, indeed, a tendency, in some quarters, to fear that some day society may rush to the opposite extreme, and bow before medicine with the same unreasoning deference that it once bowed before theology. that danger is still very remote, nor is it likely, indeed, that medicine will ever claim any authority of this kind. the spirit of medicine has, notoriously, been rather towards the assertion of scepticism than of dogma, and the fanatics in this field will always be in a hopelessly small minority. the general introduction of authentic personal records covering all essential data--hereditary, anthropometric and pathological--cannot fail to be a force on the side of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for it would tend to promote the procreation of the fit as well as restrict that of the unfit, without any legislative compulsion. with the growth of education a regard for such records as a preliminary to marriage would become as much a matter of course as once was the regard to the restrictions imposed by canon law, and as still is a regard to money or to caste. a woman can usually refrain from marrying a man with no money and no prospects; a man may be passionately in love with a woman of lower class than himself but he seldom marries her. it needs but a clear general perception of all that is involved in heredity and health to make eugenic considerations equally influential. a discriminating regard to the quality of offspring will act beneficially on the side of positive eugenics by substituting the pernicious tendency to put a premium on excess of childbirth by the more rational method of putting a premium on the quality of the child. it has been one of the most unfortunate results of the mania for protesting against that decline of the birthrate which is always and everywhere the result of civilization, that there has been a tendency to offer special social or pecuniary advantages to the parents of large families. since large families tend to be degenerate, and to become a tax on the community, since rapid pregnancies in succession are not only a serious drain on the strength of the mother but are now known to depreciate seriously the quality of the offspring, and since, moreover, it is in large families that disease and mortality chiefly prevail, all the interests of the community are against the placing of any premium on large families, even in the case of parents of good stock. the interests of the state are bound up not with the quantity but with the quality of its citizens, and the premium should be placed not on the families that reach a certain size but on the individual children that reach a certain standard; the attainment of this standard could well be based on observations made from birth to the fifth year. a premium on this basis would be as beneficial to a state as that on the merely numerical basis is pernicious. this consideration applies with still greater force to the proposals for the "systematic endowment of motherhood" of which we hear more and more. so moderate and judicious a social reformer as mr. sidney webb writes: "we shall have to face the problem of the systematic endowment of motherhood, and place this most indispensable of all professions upon an honorable economic basis. at present it is ignored as an occupation, unremunerated, and in no way honored by the state."[ ] true as this statement is, it must always be remembered that an indispensable preliminary to any proposal for the endowment of motherhood by the state is a clear conception of the kind of motherhood which the state requires. to endow the reckless and indiscriminate motherhood which we see around us, to encourage, that is, by state aid, the production of citizens a large proportion of whom the state, if it dared, would like to destroy as unfit, is too ridiculous a proposal to deserve discussion.[ ] the only sound reason, indeed, for the endowment of motherhood is that it would enable the state, in its own interests, to further the natural selection of the fit. as to the positive qualities which the state is entitled to endow in its encouragement of motherhood, it is still too early to speak with complete assurance. negative eugenics tends to be ahead of positive eugenics; it is easier to detect bad stocks than to be quite sure of good stocks. both on the scientific side and on the social side, however, we are beginning to attain a clearer realization of the end to be attained and a more precise knowledge of the methods of attaining it.[ ] even when we have gained a fairly clear conception of the stocks and the individuals which we are justified in encouraging to undertake the task of producing fit citizens for the state, the problems of procreation are by no means at an end. before we can so much as inquire what are the conditions under which selected individuals may best procreate, there is still the initial question to be decided whether those individuals are both fertile and potent, for this is not guaranteed by the fact that they belong to good stocks, nor is even the fact that a man and a woman are fertile with other persons any positive proof that they will be fertile with each other. among the large masses of the population who do not seek to make their unions legal until those unions have proved fertile, this difficulty is settled in a simple and practical manner. the question is, however, a serious and hazardous one, in the present state of the marriage law in most countries, for those classes which are accustomed to bind themselves in legal marriage without any knowledge of their potency and fertility with each other. the matter is mostly left to chance, and as legal marriage cannot usually be dissolved on the ground that there are no offspring, even although procreation is commonly declared to be the chief end of marriage, the question assumes much gravity. the ordinary range of sterility is from seven to fifteen per cent. of all marriages, and in a very large proportion of these it is a source of great concern. this could be avoided, in some measure, by examination before marriage, and almost altogether by ordaining that, as it is only through offspring that a marriage has any concern for the state, a legal marriage could be dissolved, after a certain period, at the will of either of the parties, in the absence of such offspring. it was formerly supposed that when a union proved infertile, it was the wife who was at fault. that belief is long since exploded, but, even yet, a man is generally far more concerned about his potency, that is, his ability to perform the mechanical act of coitus, than about his fertility, that is, his ability to produce living spermatozoa, though the latter condition is a much more common source of sterility. "any man," says arthur cooper (_british medical journal_, may , ), "who has any sexual defect or malformation, or who has suffered from any disease or injury of the genito-urinary organs, even though comparatively trivial or one-sided, and although his copulative power may be unimpaired, should be looked upon as possibly sterile, until some sort of evidence to the contrary has been obtained." in case of a sterile marriage, the possible cause should first be investigated in the husband, for it is comparatively easy to examine the semen, and to ascertain if it contains active spermatozoa. prinzing, in a comprehensive study of sterile marriages ("die sterilen ehen," _zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaft_, , heft and ), states that in two-fifths of sterile marriages the man is at fault; one-third of such marriages are the result of venereal diseases in the husband himself, or transmitted to the wife. gonorrhoea is not now considered so important a cause of sterility as it was a few years ago; schenk makes it responsible for only about thirteen per cent. sterile marriages (cf. kisch, _the sexual life of woman_). pinkus (_archiv für gynäkologie_, ) found that of nearly five hundred cases in which he examined both partners, in . per cent. cases, the sterility was directly due to the husband, and in . per cent. cases, indirectly due, because caused by gonorrhoea with which he had infected his wife. when sterility is due to a defect in the husband's spermatozoa, and is not discovered, as it usually might be, before marriage, the question of impregnating the wife by other methods has occasionally arisen. divorce on the ground of sterility is not possible, and, even if it were, the couple, although they wish to have a child, have not usually any wish to separate. under these circumstances, in order to secure the desired end, without departing from widely accepted rules of morality, the attempt is occasionally made to effect artificial fecundation by injecting the semen from a healthy male. attempts have been made to effect artificial fecundation by various distinguished men, from john hunter to schwalbe, but it is nearly always very difficult to effect, and often impossible. this is easy to account for, if we recall what has already been pointed out (_ante_ p. ) concerning the influence of erotic excitement in the woman in securing conception; it is obviously a serious task for even the most susceptible woman to evoke erotic enthusiasm _à propos_ of a medical syringe. schwalbe, for instance, records a case (_deutsche medizinisches wochenschrift_, aug., , p. ) in which,--in consequence of the husband's sterility and the wife's anxiety, with her husband's consent, to be impregnated by the semen of another man,--he made repeated careful attempts to effect artificial fecundation; these attempts were, however, fruitless, and the three parties concerned finally resigned themselves to the natural method of intercourse, which was successful. in another case, recorded by schwalbe, in which the husband was impotent but not sterile, six attempts were made to effect artificial fecundation, and further efforts abandoned on account of the disgust of all concerned. opinion, on the whole, has been opposed to the practice of artificial fecundation, even apart from the question of the probabilities of success. thus, in france, where there is a considerable literature on the subject, the paris medical faculty, in , after some hesitation, refused gérard's thesis on the history of artificial fecundation, afterwards published independently. in , the bordeaux legal tribunal declared that artificial fecundation was illegitimate, and a social danger. in , the holy see also pronounced that the practice is unlawful ("artificial fecundation before the inquisition," _british medical journal_, march , ). apart, altogether, from this attitude of medicine, law, and church, it would certainly seem that those who desire offspring would do well, as a rule, to adopt the natural method, which is also the best, or else to abandon to others the task of procreation, for which they are not adequately equipped. when we have ascertained that two individuals both belong to sound and healthy stocks, and, further, that they are themselves both apt for procreation, it still remains to consider the conditions under which they may best effect procreation.[ ] there arises, for instance, the question, often asked, what is the best age for procreation? the considerations which weigh in answering this question are of two different orders, physiological, and social or moral. that is to say, that it is necessary, on the one hand, that physical maturity should have been fully attained, and the sexual cells completely developed; while, on the other hand, it is necessary that the man shall have become able to support a family, and that both partners shall have received a training in life adequate to undertake the responsibilities and anxieties involved in the rearing of children. while there have been variations at different times, it scarcely appears that, on the whole, the general opinion as to the best age for procreation has greatly varied in europe during many centuries. hesiod indeed said that a woman should marry about fifteen and a man about thirty,[ ] but obstetricians have usually concluded that, in the interests alike of the parents and their offspring, the procreative life should not begin in women before twenty and in men before twenty-five.[ ] after thirty in women and after thirty-five or forty in men it seems probable that the best conditions for procreation begin to decline.[ ] at the present time, in england and several other civilized countries, the tendency has been for the age of marriage to fall at an increasingly late age, on the average some years later than that usually fixed as the most favorable age for the commencement of the procreative life. but, on the whole, the average seldom departs widely from the accepted standard, and there seems no good reason why we should desire to modify this general tendency. at the same time, it by no means follows that wide variations, under special circumstances, may not only be permissible, but desirable. the male is capable of procreating, in some cases, from about the age of thirteen until far beyond eighty, and at this advanced age, the offspring, even if not notable for great physical robustness, may possess high intellectual qualities. (see e.g., havelock ellis, _a study of british genius_, pp. et seq.) the range of the procreative age in women begins earlier (sometimes at eight), though it usually ceases by fifty, or earlier, in only rare cases continuing to sixty or beyond. cases have been reported of pregnancy, or childbirth, at the age of fifty-nine (e.g., _lancet_, aug. , , p. ). lepage (_comptes-rendus société d'obstétrique de paris_, oct., ) reports a case of a primipara of fifty-seven; the child was stillborn. kisch (_sexual life of woman_, part ii) refers to cases of pregnancy in elderly women, and various references are given in _british medical journal_, aug. , , p. . of more importance is the question of early pregnancy. several investigators have devoted their attention to this question. thus, spitta (in a marburg inaugural dissertation, ) reviewed the clinical history of labors in primiparæ of and under, as observed at the marburg maternity. he found that the general health during pregnancy was not below the average of pregnant women, while the mortality of the child at birth and during the following weeks was not high, and the mortality of the mother was by no means high. picard (in a paris thesis, ) has studied childbirth in thirty-eight mothers below the age of sixteen. he found that, although the pelvis is certainly not yet fully developed in very young girls, the joints and bones are much more yielding than in the adult, so that parturition, far from being more difficult, is usually rapid and easy. the process of labor itself, is essentially normal in these cases, and, even when abnormalities occur (low insertion of the placenta is a common anomaly) it is remarkable that the patients do not suffer from them in the way common among older women. the average weight of the child was three kilogrammes, or about pounds, ounces; it sometimes required special care during the first few days after birth, perhaps because labor in these cases is sometimes slow. the recovery of the mother was, in every case, absolutely normal, and the fact that these young mothers become pregnant again more readily than primiparæ of a more mature age, further contributes to show that childbirth below the age of sixteen is in no way injurious to the mother. gache (_annales de gynécologie et d'obstétrique_, dec., ) has attended ninety-one labors of mothers under seventeen, in the rawson hospital, buenos ayres; they were of so-called latin race, mostly spanish or italian. gache found that these young mothers were by no means more exposed than others to abortion or to other complications of pregnancy. except in four cases of slightly contracted pelvis, delivery was normal, though rather longer than in older primiparæ. damage to the soft parts was, however, rare, and, when it occurred, in every case rapidly healed. the average weight of the child was , grammes, or nearly ¾ pounds. it may be noted that most observers find that very early pregnancies occur in women who begin to menstruate at an unusually early age, that is, some years before the early pregnancy occurs. it is clear, however, that young mothers do remarkably well, while there is no doubt whatever that they bear unusually fine infants. kleinwächter, indeed, found that the younger the mother, the bigger the child. it is not only physically that the children of young mothers are superior. marro has found (_pubertà_, p. ) that the children of mothers under are superior to those of older mothers both in conduct and intelligence, provided the fathers are not too old or too young. the detailed records of individual cases confirm these results, both as regards mother and child. thus, milner (_lancet_, june , ) records a case of pregnancy in a girl of fourteen; the labor pains were very mild, and delivery was easy. e.b. wales, of new jersey, has recorded the history (reproduced in _medical reprints_, sept. , ) of a colored girl who became pregnant at the age of eleven. she was of medium size, rather tall and slender, but well developed, and began to menstruate at the age of ten. she was in good health and spirits during pregnancy, and able to work. delivery was easy and natural, not notably prolonged, and apparently not unduly painful, for there were no moans or agitation. the child was a fine, healthy boy, weighing not less than eleven pounds. mother and child both did well, and there was a great flow of milk. whiteside robertson (_british medical journal_, jan. , ) has recorded a case of pregnancy at the age of thirteen, in a colonial girl of british origin in cape colony, which is notable from other points of view. during pregnancy, she was anæmic, and appeared to be of poor development and doubtfully normal pelvic conformation. yet delivery took place naturally, at full term, without difficulty or injury, and the lying-in period was in every way satisfactory. the baby was well-proportioned, and weighed ½ pounds. "i have rarely seen a primipara enjoy easier labor," concluded robertson, "and i have never seen one look forward to the happy realization of motherhood with greater satisfaction." the facts brought forward by obstetricians concerning the good results of early pregnancy, as regards both mother and child, have not yet received the attention they deserve. they are, however, confirmed by many general tendencies which are now fairly well recognized. the significant fact is known, for instance, that in mothers over thirty, the proportion of abortions and miscarriages is twice as great as in mothers between the ages of fifteen and twenty, who also are superior in this respect to mothers between the ages of twenty and thirty (_statistischer jahrbuch_, budapest, ). it was, again, proved by matthews duncan, in his goulstonian lecture, that the chances of sterility in a woman increase with increase of age. it has, further, been shown (kisch, _sexual life of woman_, part ii) that the older a woman at marriage, the greater the average interval before the first delivery, a tendency which seems to indicate that it is the very young woman who is in the condition most apt for procreation; kisch is not, indeed, inclined to think that this applies to women below twenty, but the fact, observed by other obstetricians, that mothers under eighteen tend to become pregnant again at an unusually short interval, goes far to neutralize the exception made by kisch. it may also be pointed out that, among children of very young mothers, the sexes are more nearly equal in number than is the case with older mothers. this would seem to indicate that we are here in presence of a normal equilibrium which will decrease as the age of the mother is progressively disturbed in an abnormal direction. the facility of parturition at an early age, it may be noted, corresponds to an equal facility in physical sexual intercourse, a fact that is often overlooked. in russia, where marriage still takes place early, it was formerly common when the woman was only twelve or thirteen, and guttceit (_dreissig jahre praxis_, vol. i, p. ) says that he was assured by women who married at this age that the first coitus presented no especial difficulties. there is undoubtedly, at the present time, a considerable amount of prejudice against early motherhood. in part, this is due to a failure to realize that women are sexually much more precocious than men, physically as well as psychically (see _ante_ p. ). the difference is about five years. this difference has been virtually recognized for thousands of years, in the ancient belief that the age of election for procreation is about twenty, or less, for women, but about twenty-five for men; and it has more lately been affirmed by the discovery that, while the male is never capable of generation before thirteen, the female may, in occasional instances, become pregnant at eight. (some of the recorded examples are quoted by kisch.) in part, also, there is an objection to the assumption of responsibilities so serious as those of motherhood by a young girl, and there is the very reasonable feeling that the obligations of a permanent marriage tie ought not to be undertaken at an early age. on the other hand, apart from the physical advantages, as regards both mother and infant, on the side of early pregnancies, it is an advantage for the child to have a young mother, who can devote herself sympathetically and unreservedly to its interests, instead of presenting the pathetic spectacle we so often witness in the middle-aged woman who turns to motherhood when her youth and mental flexibility are gone, and her habits and tastes have settled into other grooves; it has sometimes been a great blessing even to the very greatest men, like goethe, to have had a youthful mother. it would also, in many cases, be a great advantage for the woman herself if she could bring her procreative life to an end well before the age of twenty-five, so that she could then, unhampered by child-bearing and mature in experience, be free to enter on such wider activities in the world as she might be fitted for. such an arrangement of the procreative life of women would, obviously, only be a variation, and would probably be unsuited for the majority. every case must be judged on its own merits. the best age for procreation will probably continue to be regarded as being, for most women, around the age of twenty. but at a time like the present, when there is an unfortunate tendency for motherhood to be unduly delayed, it becomes necessary to insist on the advantages, in many cases, of early motherhood. there are other conditions favorable or unfavorable to procreation which it is now unnecessary to discuss in detail, since they have already been incidentally dealt with in previous volumes of these _studies_. there is, for instance, the question of the time of year and the time of the menstrual cycle which may most properly be selected for procreation.[ ] the best period is probably that when sexual desire is strongest, which is the period when conception would appear, as a matter of fact, most often to occur. this would be in spring or early summer,[ ] and immediately after (or shortly before) the menstrual period. the chinese have observed that the last day of menstruation and the two following days--corresponding to the period of oestrus--constitute the most favorable time for fecundation, and bossi, of genoa, has found that the great majority of successes in both natural and artificial fecundation occur at this period.[ ] soranus, as well as the talmud, assigned the period about menstruation as the best for impregnation, and susruta, the indian physician, said that at this time pregnancy most readily occurs because then the mouth of the womb is open, like the flower of the water-lily to the sunshine. we have now at last reached the point from which we started, the moment of conception, and the child again lies in its mother's womb. there remains no more to be said. the divine cycle of life is completed. footnotes: [ ] spencer and gillen, _northern tribes of central australia_, p. . [ ] academy of medicine of paris, march , . [ ] _the origin and development of the moral ideas_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _population and progress_, p. . [ ] cf. reibmayr, _entwicklungsgeschichte des talentes und genics_, bd. ii, p. . [ ] "the debt that we owe to those who have gone before us," says haycraft (_darwinism and race progress_, p. ), "we can only repay to those who come after us." [ ] mardrus, _les mille nuits_, vol. xvi, p. . [ ] sidney webb, _popular science monthly_, , p. (previously published in the _london times_, oct. , , ). in ch. ix of the present volume it has already been necessary to discuss the meaning of the term, "morality." [ ] thus, in paris, in , in the rich quarters, the birthrate per , inhabitants was . ; in well-to-do quarters, . ; and in poor quarters, . . here we see that, while the birthrate falls and rises with social class, even among the poor and least restrained class the birthrate is still but little above the general average for england, where prevention is widespread, and very considerably lower than the average (now rapidly falling) in germany. it is evident that even among the poor class there is a process of leveling up to the higher classes in this matter. [ ] i have developed these points more in detail in two articles in the _independent review_, november, , and april, . see also, bushee, "the declining birthrate and its causes," _popular science monthly_, aug., . [ ] francis place, _illustrations and proofs of the principle of population_, , p. . [ ] see, e.g., a weighty chapter in the _sexualleben und nervenleiden_ of löwenfeld, one of the most judicious authorities on sexual pathology. twenty-five years ago, as many will remember, the medical student was usually taught that preventive methods of intercourse led to all sorts of serious results. at that time, however, reckless and undesirable methods of prevention seem to have been more prevalent than now. [ ] michael ryan, _philosophy of marriage_, p. . to enable "the conservative power of the creator" to exert itself on the myriads of germinal human beings secreted during his life-time by even one man, would require a world full of women, while the corresponding problem as regards a woman is altogether too difficult to cope with. the process by which life has been built up, far from being a process of universal conservation, has been a process of stringent selection and vast destruction; the progress effected by civilization merely lies in making this blind process intelligent. [ ] thus, in belgium, in (_sexual-probleme_, feb., , p. ), a physician (dr. mascaux) who had been prominent in promoting a knowledge of preventive methods of conception, was condemned to three months imprisonment for "offense against morality!" in such a case, dr. helene stöcker comments (_die neue generation_, jan., , p. ), "morality" is another name for ignorance, timidity, hypocrisy, prudery, coarseness, and lack of conscience. it must be remembered, however, in explanation of this iniquitous judgment, that for some years past the clerical party has been politically predominant in belgium. [ ] it has been objected that the condom cannot be used by the very poorest, on account of its cost, but hans ferdy, in a detailed paper (_sexual-probleme_, dec., ), shows that the use of the condom can be brought within the means of the very poorest, if care is taken to preserve it under water when not in use. nyström (_sexual probleme_, nov., , p. ) has issued a leaflet for the benefit of his patients and others, recommending the condom, and explaining its use. [ ] thus, kisch, in his _sexual life of woman_, after discussing fully the various methods of prevention, decides in favor of the condom. fürbringer similarly (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, pp. et seq.) concludes that the condom is "relatively the most perfect anti-conceptual remedy." forel (_die sexuelle frage_, pp. et seq.) also discusses the question at length; any æsthetic objection to the condom, forel adds (p. ), is due to the fact that we are not accustomed to it; "eye-glasses are not specially æsthetic, but the poetry of life does not suffer excessively from their use, which, in many cases, cannot be dispensed with." [ ] _l'avortement_, p. . [ ] there are some disputed points in roman law and practice concerning abortion; they are discussed in balestrini's valuable book, _aborto_, pp. et seq. [ ] augustine, _de civitate dei_, bk. xxii, ch. xiii. [ ] the development of opinion and law concerning abortion has been traced by eugène bausset, _l'avortement criminel_, thèse de paris, . for a summary of the practices of different peoples regarding abortion, see w.g. sumner, _folkways_, ch. viii. [ ] _die neue generation_, may, , p. . it may be added that in england the attachment of any penalty at all to abortion, practiced in the early months of pregnancy (before "quickening" has taken place), is merely a modern innovation. [ ] even balestrini, who is opposed to the punishment of abortion, is no advocate of it. "whenever abortion becomes a social custom," he remarks (op. cit., p. ), "it is the external manifestation of a people's decadence, and far too deeply rooted to be cured by the mere attempt to suppress the external manifestation." [ ] cf. ellen key, _century of the child_, ch. i. hirth (_wege zur heimat_, p. ) is likewise opposed to the encouragement of abortion, though he would not actually punish the pregnant woman who induces abortion. i would especially call attention to an able and cogent article by anna pappritz ("die vernichtung des keimenden lebens," _sexual-probleme_, july, ) who argues that the woman is not the sole guardian of the embryo she bears, and that it is not in the interests of society, nor even in her own interests, that she should be free to destroy it at will. anna pappritz admits that the present barbarous laws in regard to abortion must be modified, but maintains that they should not be abolished. she proposes ( ) a greatly reduced punishment for abortion; ( ) this punishment to be extended to the father, whether married or unmarried (a provision already carried out in norway, both for abortion and infanticide); ( ) permission to the physician to effect abortion when there is good reason to suspect hereditary degeneration, as well as when the woman has been impregnated by force. [ ] cf. dr. max hirsch, _sexual-probleme_, jan., , p. . [ ] bausset (op. cit.) sets forth various social measures for the care of pregnant and child-bearing women, which would tend to lessen criminal abortion. [ ] gomperz, _greek thinkers_, vol. i, p. . [ ] f.e. daniel, president of the state medical association of texas, "should insane criminals or sexual perverts be allowed to procreate?" _medico-legal journal_, dec., ; id., "the cause and prevention of rape," _texas medical journal_, may, . [ ] p. näcke, "die kastration bei gewissen klassen von degenerirten als ein wirksamer socialer schutz," _archiv für kriminal-anthropologie_, bd. iii, , p. ; id. "kastration in gewissen fällen von geisteskrankheit," _psychiatrisch-neurologische wochenschrift_, , no. . [ ] angelo zuccarelli, "asessualizzazione o sterilizzazione dei degenerati," _l'anomalo_, - , no. ; id., "sur la nécessité et sur les moyens d'empêcher la réproduction des hommes les plus dégénérés," international congress criminal anthropology, amsterdam, . [ ] näcke, _neurologisches centralblatt_, march , . the original account of these operations is reproduced in the _psychiatrisch-neurologische wochenschrift_, no. , , with an approving comment by the editor, dr. bresler. as regards castration in america, see flood, "castration of idiot children," _american journal psychology_, jan., ; also, _alienist and neurologist_, aug., , p. . [ ] it is probable that castration may prove especially advantageous in the case of the feeble-minded. "in somersetshire," says tredgold ("the feeble-mind as a social danger," _eugenics review_, july, ), "i found that out of a total number of feeble-minded women, nearly two-fifths ( ) had given birth to children, for the most part illegitimate. moreover, it is not uncommon, but, rather the rule, for these poor girls to be admitted into the workhouse maternity wards again and again, and the average number of offspring to each one of them is probably three or four, although even six is not uncommon." in his work on _mental deficiency_ (pp. - ) the same author shows that propagation by the mentally deficient is, in england, "both a terrible and extensive evil." [ ] this example is brought forward by ledermann, "skin diseases and marriage," in senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_. [ ] i may here again refer to lea's instructive _history of sacerdotal celibacy_. [ ] in england, , applicants for admission to the navy are annually rejected, and although the physical requirements for enlistment in the army are nowadays extremely moderate, it is estimated by general maurice that at least sixty per cent. of recruits and would-be recruits are dismissed as unfit. (see e.g., william coates, "the duty of the medical profession in the prevention of national deterioration," _british medical journal_, may , .) it can scarcely be claimed that men who are not good enough for the army are good enough for the great task of creating the future race. [ ] the recognition of epilepsy as a bar to procreation is not recent. there is said to be a record in the archives of the town of luçon in which epilepsy was adjudged to be a valid reason for the cancellation of a betrothal (_british medical journal_, feb. , , p. ). [ ] _british medical journal_, april , . in california and some other states, it appears that deceit regarding health is a ground for the annulment of marriage. [ ] sir f. galton, _inquiries into human faculty_, everyman's library edition, pp. et seq.; cf. galton's collected _essays in eugenics_, recently published by the eugenics education society. [ ] for some account of the methods and results of the work in schools, see bertram c.a. windle, "anthropometric work in schools," _medical magazine_, feb., . [ ] the most notable steps in this direction have been taken in germany. for an account of the experiment at karlsruhe, see _die neue generation_, dec., . [ ] wiethknudsen (as quoted in _sexual-probleme_, dec., , p. ) speaks strongly, but not too strongly, concerning the folly of any indiscriminate endowment of procreation. [ ] on the scientific side, in addition to the fruitful methods of statistical biometrics, which have already been mentioned, much promise attaches to work along the lines initiated by mendel; see w. bateson, _mendel's principles of heredity_, ; also, w.h. lock, _recent progress in the study of variation, heredity, and evolution_, and r.c. punnett, _mendelism_, (american edition, with interesting preface by gaylord wilshire, from the socialistic point of view, ). [ ] the study of the right conditions for procreation is very ancient. in modern times we find that even the very first french medical book in the vulgar tongue, the _régime du corps_, written by alebrand of florence (who was physician to the king of france), in , is largely devoted to this matter, concerning which it gives much sound advice. see j.b. soalhat, _les idées de maistre alebrand de florence sur la puériculture_, thèse de paris, . [ ] hesiod, _works and days_, ii, - . [ ] this has long been the accepted opinion of medical authorities, as may be judged by the statements brought together two centuries ago by schurig, _parthenologia_, pp. - . [ ] the statement that, on the average, the best age for procreation in men is before, rather than after, forty, by no means assumes the existence of any "critical" age in men analogous to the menopause in women. this is sometimes asserted, but there is no agreement in regard to it. restif de la bretonne (_monsieur nicolas_, vol. x, p. ) said that at the age of forty delicacy of sentiment begins to go. fürbringer believes (senator and kaminer, _health and disease in relation to marriage_, vol. i, p. ) that there is a decisive turn in a man's life in the sixth decade, or the middle of the fifth, when desire and potency diminish. j.f. sutherland also states (_comptes-rendus congrès international de médecine_, , section de psychiatrie, p. ) that there is, in men, about the fifty-fifth year, a change analogous to the menopause in women, but only in a certain proportion of men. it would appear that in most men the decline of sexual feeling and potency is very gradual, and at first manifests itself in increased power of control. [ ] see, in vol. i, the study of "the phenomena of sexual periodicity." [ ] among animals, also, spring litters are often said to be the best. [ ] bossi's results are summarized in _archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, sept., . alebrand of florence, the french king's physician in the thirteenth century, also advised intercourse a day after the end of menstruation. postscript. "the work that i was born to do is done," a great poet wrote when at last he had completed his task. and although i am not entitled to sing any _nunc dimittis_, i am well aware that the task that has occupied the best part of my life can have left few years and little strength for any work that comes after. it is more than thirty years ago since the first resolve to write the work now here concluded began to shape itself, still dimly though insistently; the period of study and preparation occupied over fifteen years, ending with the publication of _man and woman_, put forward as a prolegomenon to the main work which, in the writing and publication, has occupied the fifteen subsequent years. it was perhaps fortunate for my peace that i failed at the outset to foresee all the perils that beset my path. i knew indeed that those who investigate severely and intimately any subject which men are accustomed to pass by on the other side lay themselves open to misunderstanding and even obloquy. but i supposed that a secluded student who approached vital social problems with precaution, making no direct appeal to the general public, but only to the public's teachers, and who wrapped up the results of his inquiries in technically written volumes open to few, i supposed that such a student was at all events secure from any gross form of attack on the part of the police or the government under whose protection he imagined that he lived. that proved to be a mistake. when only one volume of these _studies_ had been written and published in england, a prosecution, instigated by the government, put an end to the sale of that volume in england, and led me to resolve that the subsequent volumes should not be published in my own country. i do not complain. i am grateful for the early and generous sympathy with which my work was received in germany and the united states, and i recognize that it has had a wider circulation, both in english and the other chief languages of the world, than would have been possible by the modest method of issue which the government of my own country induced me to abandon. nor has the effort to crush my work resulted in any change in that work by so much as a single word. with help, or without it, i have followed my own path to the end. for it so happens that i come on both sides of my house from stocks of englishmen who, nearly three hundred years ago, had encountered just these same difficulties and dangers before. in the seventeenth century, indeed, the battle was around the problem of religion, as to-day it is around the problem of sex. since i have of late years realized this analogy i have often thought of certain admirable and obscure men who were driven out, robbed, and persecuted, some by the church because the spirit of puritanism moved within them, some by the puritans because they clung to the ideals of the church, yet both alike quiet and unflinching, both alike fighting for causes of freedom or of order in a field which has now for ever been won. that victory has often seemed of good augury to the perhaps degenerate child of these men who has to-day sought to maintain the causes of freedom and of order in another field. it sometimes seems, indeed, a hopeless task to move the pressure of inert prejudices which are at no point so obstinate as this of sex. it may help to restore the serenity of our optimism if we would more clearly realize that in a very few generations all these prejudices will have perished and be forgotten. he who follows in the steps of nature after a law that was not made by man, and is above and beyond man, has time as well as eternity on his side, and can afford to be both patient and fearless. men die, but the ideas they seek to kill live. our books may be thrown to the flames, but in the next generation those flames become human souls. the transformation is effected by the doctor in his consulting room, by the teacher in the school, the preacher in the pulpit, the journalist in the press. it is a transformation that is going on, slowly but surely, around us. i am well aware that many will not feel able to accept the estimate of the sexual situation as here set forth, more especially in the final volume. some will consider that estimate too conservative, others too revolutionary. for there are always some who passionately seek to hold fast to the past; there are always others who passionately seek to snatch at what they imagine to be the future. but the wise man, standing midway between both parties and sympathizing with each, knows that we are ever in the stage of transition. the present is in every age merely the shifting point at which past and future meet, and we can have no quarrel with either. there can be no world without traditions; neither can there be any life without movement. as heracleitus knew at the outset of modern philosophy, we cannot bathe twice in the same stream, though, as we know to-day, the stream still flows in an unending circle. there is never a moment when the new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a moment when the sunset ceases to die. it is well to greet serenely even the first glimmer of the dawn when we see it, not hastening towards it with undue speed, nor leaving the sunset without gratitude for the dying light that once was dawn. in the moral world we are ourselves the light-bearers, and the cosmic process is in us made flesh. for a brief space it is granted to us, if we will, to enlighten the darkness that surrounds our path. as in the ancient torch-race, which seemed to lucretius to be the symbol of all life, we press forward torch in hand along the course. soon from behind comes the runner who will outpace us. all our skill lies in giving into his hand the living torch, bright and unflickering, as we ourselves disappear in the darkness. havelock ellis. index of authors. abdias achery acton adam, mme. adler, felix adler, o. adner aguilaniedo alebrand alexander, dr. h. alexandre, alcide allée, a. allen, l.m. allen, mary w. ambrose, st. amélineau ammon amram, d.w. angela de fulginio angus, h.c. anstie aquinas ardu arendt, henrietta aretino aristotle aronstam ascarilla aschaffenburg astengo astor, mary astruc athanasius athenæus audry augagneur augustine, st. aurientis ayala bacchimont bachaumont badley, j.h. baelz baer, k.m. baker, smith balestrini ballantyne, dr. ballantyne, miss h. balls-headley balzac bangs, l.b. bartels, max basedow basil, st. bateson baumgarten bausset bax, belfort bazan, emilia pardo beadnell, c.m. beddoes bedollière bell, sanford benecke benedikt bentzon, mme. bérault, g. berg, leo bernard, st. berry, f. bertherand bertillon besant, mrs. beza bierhoff birnbaum bishop, g.p. bishop, mrs. blacker blake, william blandford blaschko bloch, iwan bluhm, agnes blumreich boccaccio bohier bois, jules boissier, de sauvages bollinger bölsche bonger bongi, s. bonhoeffer boniface, st. bonnifield bonstetten booth, c. booth, d.s. bossi bouchacourt bougainville bourget bouvier boyle, f. brachet braun, lily brénier de montmorand brénot, h. breuer brieux brinton brouardel brougham lord brown, dr. charlotte bruns, ivo brynmor-jones bucer budge, a.w. buffon bulkley, d. büller bumm bunge burchard burdach buret burnet burton, sir r. burton, robert busch bushee butler, g. butterfield byers cabanis caird, mona callari calvin calza canudo capitaine caron carpenter, edward casanova caspari cataneus cattell, j. mckeen caufeynon cazalis chaignon chambers, e.k. chambers, w.g. chapman, g. chapman, j. cheetham cheng, mme. cheyne child, may chotzen, m. chrysostom cicero ciuffo clapperton, miss clappier clarke clement of alexandria clement e. cleveland, c. clouston coates, w. codrington, r.w. coghlan colombey coltman commenge cook, g.w. cook, capt. j. cooper, a. cope, e.d. correa, roman coryat crackanthorpe cranmer crawley, a.e. crocker curr gushing, w. cyples daniel, f.e. dareste dargun darmesteter, j. darricarrère darwin daudet, a. d'aulnoy, mme. daya, w. debreyne d'enjoy, paul dens deodhar, mrs. kashibai descartes despine després dessoir, max diaz de isla diday diderot digby, sir k. dill dluska, mme. dodd, catherine doléris donaldson, principal donnay drysdale, c.r. drysdale, g. duclaux dühren, _see_ bloch, iwan. dufour, p. dukes dulaure dulberg dumas, g. duncan, matthews dunnett dunning dupouey durkheim durlacher dyer, i. edgar, j. clifton egbert, s. ehrenfels, c. von elliot, g.f.s. ellis, sir a.b. ellis, havelock ellis, william elmy, ben., _see_ ethelmer, ellis. enderlin, max engelmann ennius enzensberger erb erhard, f. escherich esmein espy de metz ethelmer, ellis eulenburg evans, mrs. grainger farnell farrer, r.t. federow ferdy, h. féré ferrand ferrero, g. ferriani fiaschi fiaux fielding finger fischer, w. fitchett flesch, max flogel flood forberg forel fornasari fothergill, j.m. fouquet fournier fox, g. fracastorus fraser, mrs. frazer, j.g. freeman french, h.c. freud friedjung friedländer fuchs, n. funk, w. fürbringer fürth, henriette gache gaedeken gallard galton, sir f. gardiner, j.s. garrison, c.g. gaultier, j. de gautier, l. geary, n. gennep, a. van gérard gerhard, adele gerhard, w. gerson, a. gesell gibb, w.t. gibbon giles, a.e. giles, h.a. gillard, e. gillen gilles de la tourette ginnell giuffrida-ruggeri glück, l. godard godfrey, j.a. godwin, w. goethe gomperz goncourt goodchild, f.m. goring gottheil gottschling gourmont, remy de graef, r. de graf, a. grandin green, c.m. gregory the great gregory of nazianzen gregory of nyssa gregory of tours gregory m. griesinger gross gross, h. grosse gulick, l.h. gurlitt, l. gury guttceit guyau guyot gyurkovechky haddon, a.c. hagelstange hale hall, a. hall, stanley hall, w. haller hamilton, a. hammer hammond, w.a. hamon, a. hard, hedwig hardy, thomas harris, a. harrison, f. hartland, e.s. harwood, w.l. haskovec haslam, j. hausmeister, p. havelburg hawkesworth haycraft hayes, p.j. haynes, e.s.p. hegar heidenhain, a. heidingsfeld heimann hellmann hellpach helme, t.a. helvétius herbert, auberon herman, g. hermant, a. herodotus heron hesiod hiller hinton hirsch, max hirschfeld, magnus hirth, g. hobhouse, l.t. hobson, j.a. hoffmann, e. holbach holder, a.b. holmes, t. holt, r.b. hopkins, ellice hort houzel howard, g.b. howitt, a.w. hudrey-menos, j. hughes, c.h. humboldt, w. von hutchinson, sir j. hutchinson, woods hyde, j.n. hyrtl inderwick ivens, f. jacobi, mary p. jacobsohn, l. janet janke jastrow, m. jeannel jellinek, c. jentsch, k. jerome, h. john of salisbury jones, sir w. jullien kaan kalbeck karin, karina keller, g. kelly, h.a. kennedy, helen key, ellen keyes, e.l. kiernan kind, a. kingsley, c. kirk, e.b. kisch klotz knott, j. kossmann kowalewsky, sophie krafft-ebing krauss, f.s. krukenberg, frau kubary kullberg kurella lacroix, p. lafargue, paul la jeunesse, e. lallemand lambkin lancaster landor landret langsdorf lapie laplace lasco, john à lauvergne laycock lea lecky lederer ledermann lee, sidney lefebvre, a. legg, j.w. lemonnier, c. lenkei lepage letourneux lévy-bruhl lewis, denslow lewitt leyboff lilienthal lindsey, b.b. lippert lischnewska, maria liszt livingstone, w.p. lock, w.h. logan lombroso löwenfeld lowndes lucas, clement lucretius lumholtz luther lydston lyttelton, e. maberly, g.c. macmurchy, dr. helen macvie madam, m. maeterlinck magruder, j. maillard-brune maine maitland malthus mandeville, b. mannhardt mantegazza, a. mantegazza, p. marçais marchesini marcuse, j. marcuse, m. margueritte, p. margueritte, v. marholm, l. marro martindale, miss martineau marx, v. massalongo masson mathews, a. mathews, r.h. matignon maudsley maurice, general mayor mayreder, rosa mcbride, g.h. mccleary, g.f. mcilquham melancthon menger, a. von menjago mensinga meredith, g. mérimée merrick metchnikoff meyer-benfey, h. meyer, bruno meyer, e.h. meyrick michelet michels, r. migne mill, j. mill, j.s. millais, j.g. miller, noyes miln, l.j. milner milton möbius molinari, g. de moll mönkemöller montaigne montesquieu montmorency mookerji moore, samson morasso more, sir t. moreau, christophe morley, lord morley, margaret morris, william morrow mortimer, g. moryson, fynes mott, f.w. multatuli münsterberg murray, gilbert mylott näcke naumann, f. nefzaoui neisser neugebauer newman, g. newsholme, a. niessen, max von nietzold nietzsche niven noble, m. noggerath northcote, rev. h. notthaft noyes, j.h. nyström obersteiner obici odo of cluny oefele okamura olberg, oda omer, haleby ostwald, h. ott ovid owen, r.d. paget, sir j. palladius pappritz, anna parent-duchâtelet paré parsons, e.c. parsons, j. patmore, c. paton, noel paul, dr. h. paulucci de calboli paulus pearson, k. péchin pepys pernet perruc perry-coste petermann, j. petrie, flinders picard pike pinard pinkus pinloche place, francis plato plarr, v. plautus playfair, sir w.s. ploss plutarch pole, m.t. pollack, flora pollock, sir f. potter, m.a. potton power, d'arcy powys prat price, j. prevost, m. prinzing probst-biraben proksch pudor punnett pyke, rafford querlon, meusnier de quirós, c. bernaldo de rabelais rabutaux raciborski radbruch ramdohr ramsay, sir w.m. rasmussen ratramnus redlich reed, c. régnier, h. de reibmayr reinhard remo, p. remondino renan renooz, céline renouf, c. renouvier restif de la bretonne reuss reuther, f. revillout rhys, sir j. ribbing ribot rich, h. richard, c. richard, e. richmond, mrs. ennis ritter, dr. mary robert, u. robertson, w. robinovitch, l. rogers, anna rohde rohleder rolfincius rosenberg rosenthal rousseau routh rudeck rufinus tyrannius ruggles, w. rüling, anna ruskin russell, mrs. bertrand rust, h. rutgers ryan, m. ryckère, e. de sabine, j.k. sacher-masoch, wanda von sainte-beuve saleeby salimbene salvat sanborn, lura sanchez, t. sandoz, f. sanger sarraute-lourié, mme. schäfenacker schaudinn schlegel, f. schmid, marie von schmidt, r. schneider, c.k. schopenhauer schrader, o. schrank schreiber, adele schreiner, olive schrempf schrenck-notzing schroeder, e.a. schroeder, t. schultz, alwyn schultze-malkowsky, e. schurig schurtz, h. schwalbe scott, colin scott, j.f. ségur seligmann sellman, w.a.b. sénancour seneca séropian sévigné, mme. de seymour, h.j. shakespeare shaw, g.b. shebbeare, rev. c.j. shelley sherwell shufeldt sidgwick, h. sidis, boris sieroshevski simmel simon, helene sinclair, sir w. smith, robertson soalhat somerset, lady henry sommer, r. soranus spencer, baldwin spencer, herbert spitta stanmore, lord stefanowski stefánsson stevenson, r.l. stevenson, t.h.c. stöcker, helene strampff stratz, c.h. streitberg, gräfin ströhmberg sturge, miss suidas sullivan, w.c. sumner, w.g. susruta sutherland, j.f. sutherland, w.d. sykes, j.f.j. tait, w. talbot, e.s. tammeo tarde tarnowsky, pauline taylor, r.w. tenney tennyson terman, l.m. tertullian theresa, w. thomas, a.w. thomas, n.w. thomas, prof. w. thomson, j.a. thoreau thuasne tilt tobler todhunter tolstoy tout, c. hill traill tredgold trewby troll-borostyáni i. von trollope, a. turnbull ulpian ungewitter unna urquhart vacher de lapouge valentino valera vanderkiste varendonck vatsyayana vaux, rev. j.e. velden, van den velten venette veniero vickery, a. drysdale vinay vinci, l. de vines, miss virchow vitrey voltaire vries, de wächter wagner, c. wahrmund wales, e.b. walter, j. von ward, lester wardlaw, r. warker, van de warren, m.a. wasserschleben watkins webb, sidney weinberg weininger welander welch, f.h. wells, h.g. werthauer wessmann westermarck wharton wheeler, c.b. wheeler, mrs. whitaker, nellie c. whitman, walt wiedow wilcox, ella w. wilhelm william of malmsbury williams, dawson williams, hugh williams, w. roger windle, c.a. wollstonecraft, m. yule, g. adney zacchia zache zanzinger, e. zeno zoroaster zuccarelli index of subjects. abortion, arguments against modern advocates of the practice of abstinence, alleged evil results of alleged good results of as a preparation for marriage criticism of conception of intermediate views of moral results of sexual, in relation to chastity the problems of abyssinia, prostitution in sexual initiation in achilleus and nereus, legend of adultery africa, chastity on west coast of alcohol, as a sexual stimulant in pregnancy in relation to the orgy alexander vi and courtesans ambil anak marriage america, divorce in marriage in prostitution in american indians, appreciate asceticism sexual initiation among their sabbath orgies words for love among aphrodite pandemos art in relation to sexual impulse asceticism among early christians appreciated by savages definition of in religion later degeneracy of value of ascetics, attitude towards sex of mediæval aspasia athletics for women aucassin et nicolette australia, marriage system in saturnalian festivals in sexual initiation in auvergne, story of the two lovers of azimba land, sexual initiation in babies, children's theories on the origin of babylonia, high status of women in religious prostitution in bawenda, sexual initiation among beena marriage beethoven behn, aphra belgium, prostitution in bestial, human sexual impulse not bible in relation to sexual education biometrics birth, civilized tendency to premature birthrate, decline of blindness in relation to gonorrhoea botany in sexual education bredalbane case breed _versus_ nurture bride-price brothel, decay of in ancient rome in the east mediæval modern defence of modern regulation of origin of bundling burmah, prostitution in canon law, defects of its importance origin of persistence of its traditions sound kernel of carlyle carnival, origin of castration, modern developments of the practice of chastity among early christians definition of girdle of in modern fiji in what sense a virtue modern attitude towards protestant attitude towards romantic literature of the function of child, as foundation of marriage characteristics of eldest born its need of two parents childhood, sexual activity in sexual teaching in china, divorce in prostitution in chivalry on position of women, influence of christianity, attitude towards chastity attitude towards lust attitude towards nakedness failed to recognize importance of art of love its influence on position of women on marriage mixed attitude towards sexual impulse towards prostitution towards seduction civilization and prostitution and the sexual impulse coitus, _a posteriori_ best time for during pregnancy ethnic variations in excess in injuries due to unskilful _interruptus_ morbid horror of needs to be taught prayer before proper frequency of religious significance of _reservatus_ collusion, doctrine of conception, conditions of prevention of concubine condom conjugal rights or rites consent, age of consultation de nourrisson contract, marriage as a corinth, prostitution at country life and sexuality courtesan, origin of term courtship, the art of criminality in relation to prostitution cyprus, prostitution at dancing, hygienic value of as an orgy d'aragona, tullia divorce, by mutual consent causes for in ancient rome in ancient wales in china in england in france in germany in japan in russia in switzerland in united states milton's views on modern tendency of protestant attitude towards question of damages for reform of tendency of legislation regarding transmission of venereal disease as a cause for drama, modern function of the dysmenorrhoea economic factor, of marriage of prostitution education in matters of sex for women egypt, high status of women in eldest born child, characteristics of england, marriage in prostitution in erotic element in marriage eskimo, divorce among sexual initiation among eugenics false ideas of foundation by galton importance of environment in relation to in relation to castration noyes a pioneer in positive wide acceptance of principle of excretory centers as affecting estimate of sexual impulse exogamy, origin of families and degeneracy, large father in relation to family fecundation, artificial festivals, seasonal fidus fiji, chastity in flirtation fools, feast of fornication, theological doctrine of france, divorce in prostitution in franco, veronica gallantry, the ancient conception of geisha, the general paralysis and syphilis genius, in relation to chastity in relation to love germany, divorce in marriage in prostitution in gestation, length of girdle of chastity girls, interest in sex matters masculine ideals of girls, sex education of their need of sexual knowledge gnostic elements in early christian literature goddesses in forefront of primitive pantheons gonorrhoea, nature and results of _and see_ venereal diseases. goutte de lait greeks, origin of their drama prudery among rarity of ideal sexual love among their attitude towards nakedness their conception of the orgy their erotic writings group-marriage gynæcocracy, alleged primitive hetairæ hindu attitude towards sex holland, prostitution in homosexuality among prostitutes huddersfield scheme hysteria ideals of girls, masculine illegitimacy in germany imperia impotency in popular estimation impurity, disastrous results of teaching feminine early christian views of india, story of the betrothed of sacred prostitution in individualism and socialism infantile mortality in relation to suckling by mother in relation to syphilis infantile sexuality insanity and prostitution intellectual work in relation to sexual activity in men in women ireland, divorce in high status of women in ancient italy, prostitution in jamaica, results of free sexual unions in japan, attitude towards love in automatic legitimation of children in divorce in prostitution in jealousy jesus jews, as parents prostitution among ancient status of women among judas thomas's acts kadishtu kant korea, prostitution in lactation lectures on sexual hygiene lenclos, ninon de love an essential part of marriage art of definition of difficulties of art of for more than one person future development of how far an illusion in childhood in relation to chastity inevitable mystery of its value for life testimonies to immense importance of lust, in relation to love theological conception of lydian prostitution mahommedanism and prostitution and sanctity of sex its regard for chastity male continence malthus mammary activity in infancy manuals of sexual hygiene maoris, results of loss of old faith among marriage, advantages of early ambil anak and prostitution as a contract as a fact as a sacrament as an ethical sacrament beena by capture certificates for criticism of evolution of for a term of years from legal point of view in early christian times in old english law in relation to eugenics in relation to morals in rome independent of forms inferior forms of love as a factor of modern tendencies in regard to objections to early objects of procreation as a factor of protestant attitude towards trial variations in order of masturbation among prostitutes anxiety of boys about in relation to sexual abstinence matriarchy, alleged primitive matrilineal descent mendelism mendes, the rite at menstruation, brought on by sexual excitement coitus during hygiene of instruction regarding missionaries' attempt to impose european customs modesty consistent with nakedness monogamy montanist element in early christian literature morality, meaning of the term motherhood, early age of endowment of mothers, duty to instruct daughters duty to suckle infant responsibility for their own procreative acts schools for the sexual teachers of children mylitta, prostitution at temple of mystery in matters of sex, evil of nakedness, an alleged sexual stimulant as a prime tonic of life consistent with modesty educational value of hygienic value of in literature and art in mediæval europe in relation to sexual education its moral value its spiritual value modern attitude towards neo-malthusianism neurasthenia, sexual newton new zealand, result of decay of _tapu_ in sexual freedom in ancient night-courtship customs notification of births act venereal diseases nurture _versus_ breed nutrition compared to reproduction obscenity, early christian views of orgy, among savages in classic times in mediæval christianity its religious origin modern need of oneida community ouled-nail prostitution ovarian irritation ovid penitentials, the physician, alleged duty to prescribe sexual intercourse as a social reformer his place in sexual hygiene platonic friendship poetry in relation to sexual impulse polygamy precocity, sexual pregnancy, among primitive peoples coitus during early hygiene of premature birth procreation, best age for best season for control of its place in marriage methods of control of the science of promiscuity, theory of primitive prostitutes, as artists as guardians of the home at the renaissance attitudes towards bully in austria in classic times in france in italy injustice of social attitude towards number of servants who become psychic and physical characteristics tendency to homosexuality their motives for adopting avocation their sexual temperament under christianity prostitution, among savages as affected by christianity as an equivalent of criminality causes of civilizational value of decay of state regulation of definition of economic factor of essentially unsatisfactory nature of in modern times in relation to marriage in the east moral justification of need for humanizing on the stage origin and development of present social attitude towards regulation of religious rise of secular to acquire marriage portion protestantism, attitude towards prostitution prudery in ancient times puberty, initiation at, among savages sexual education at sexual hygiene at puericulture puritans, attitude towards unchastity towards marriage quaker conception of marriage rape, cannot be committed by husband on wife wedding night often a religious prostitution renaissance, prostitutes at the reproduction compared to nutrition responsibility in matters of sex, personal rest, during pregnancy, importance of during menstruation ring, origin of wedding robert of arbrissel romantic literature of chastity love, late origin of rome, attitude towards nakedness in ancient conception of the orgy in marriage in prostitution in status of women in russia, divorce in sexual freedom in sabbath orgy sacrament, marriage as a sacred prostitution sale-marriage savages, prostitution among rarity of love among sexual education among scandinavian method of dealing with venereal diseases school, its place in sexual education schools for mothers seduction, early church's attitude towards servants frequently become prostitutes sexual abstinence sexual anæsthesia, a cause of sexual education among savages and coitus and nakedness sexual hygiene and art and literature and religion at puberty at school in childhood in relation to sexual abstinence sexual innocence, value of sexual morality sexual neurasthenia sexual physiology in education sexual precocity shakespeare in relation to sexual education slavs, sexual freedom among socialism and individualism spain, prostitution in stage, prostitution on the state, its interest in children nurseries sterility in relation to gonorrhoea stirpiculture causes of stork legend of origin of babies suckling in relation to puericulture swahili, sexual education among switzerland, divorce in prostitution in syphilis, its prevalence nature and results of of the innocent questions of the origin of _and see_ venereal diseases. tahiti, chastity and unchastity in old teachers and sexual hygiene teutonic custom, influence on position of women influence on marriage theatre, as a beneficial form of the orgy early christian attitude towards thekla, legend of town life and sexuality trappists, régime of trent, council of trial-marriage urban life and sexuality uterine fibroids vaginismus vasectomy venereal diseases, conquest of the free treatment of need of enlightenment concerning notification of personal responsibility for punishment for transmission of venice, prostitution in virgin, intercourse with as a cure for syphilis original meaning of the term virginity, why valued wagner's music dramas wales, divorce in ancient white slavery wife-purchase among ancient germans in modern times woman movement women, alleged tendency to dissimulation among the jews and sexual abstinence erotic characteristics of ignorance of art of love in arabia in babylonia in egypt in modern europe in relation to divorce in relation to free sexual unions in rome inequality before the law moral equality with men must not be compulsory mothers not attracted to innocent men position as affected by teutonic custom procreative age of their high status in ancient ireland their need of economic independence their need of personal responsibility their need of sexual knowledge understand love better than men yakuts, attitude towards virginity yuman indians, sexual initiation among zoölogy and sexual education note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document have been preserved. there are many uncommon | | words in this text. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. | | for a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | | bold face is indicated when text is enclosed by equal | | signs (example: =bold=) | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ woman her sex and love life by william j. robinson, m.d. chief of the department of genito-urinary diseases and dermatology, bronx hospital dispensary editor of the american journal of urology and sexology; editor of the critic and guide; author of treatment of sexual impotence and other sexual disorders in men and women; treatment of gonorrhea in men and women; limitation of offspring by the prevention of conception; sex knowledge for girls and women; sexual problems of today; never-told tales; eugenics and marriage, etc. fellow of the new york academy of medicine, of the american medical editors' association, american medical association, new york state medical society, internationale gesellschaft für sexualforschung, american genetic association, american association for the advancement of science, american urological association, etc., etc. illustrated twenty-first edition eugenics publishing company new york copyright, , by eugenics publishing company press of j.j. little & ives co. new york the creation of woman this old oriental legend is so exquisitely charming, so superior to the biblical narrative of the creation of woman, that it deserves to be reproduced in woman: her sex and love life. there are several variants of this legend, but i reproduce it as it appeared in the first issue of the critic and guide, january, . at the beginning of time, twashtri--the vulcan of hindu mythology--created the world. but when he wished to create a woman, he found that he had employed all his materials in the creation of man. there did not remain one solid element. then twashtri, perplexed, fell into a profound meditation from which he aroused himself and proceeded as follows: he took the roundness of the moon, the undulations of the serpent, the entwinement of clinging plants, the trembling of the grass, the slenderness of the rose-vine and the velvet of the flower, the lightness of the leaf and the glance of the fawn, the gaiety of the sun's rays and tears of the mist, the inconstancy of the wind and the timidity of the hare, the vanity of the peacock and the softness of the down on the throat of the swallow, the hardness of the diamond, the sweet flavor of honey and the cruelty of the tiger, the warmth of fire, the chill of snow, the chatter of the jay and the cooing of the turtle dove. he combined all these and formed a woman. then he made a present of her to man. eight days later the man came to twashtri, and said: "my lord, the creature you gave me poisons my existence. she chatters without rest, she takes all my time, she laments for nothing at all, and is always ill; take her back;" and twashtri took the woman back. but eight days later the man came again to the god and said: "my lord, my life is very solitary since i returned this creature. i remember she danced before me, singing. i recall how she glanced at me from the corner of her eye, how she played with me, clung to me. give her back to me," and twashtri returned the woman to him. three days only passed and twashtri saw the man coming to him again. "my lord," said he, "i do not understand exactly how it is, but i am sure that the woman causes me more annoyance than pleasure. i beg you to relieve me of her." but twashtri cried: "go your way and do the best you can." and the man cried: "i cannot live with her!" "neither can you live without her!" replied twashtri. and the man went away sorrowful, murmuring: "woe is me, i can neither live with nor without her." preface in the first chapter of this book i have shown, i believe convincingly, why sex knowledge is even more important for women than it is for men. i have examined carefully the books that have been written for girls and women, and i know that it is not bias, nor carping criticism, but strict honesty that forces me to say that i have not found one satisfactory girl's or woman's sex book. there are some excellent books for girls and women on general hygiene; but on sex hygiene, on the general manifestations of the sex instinct, on sex ethics--none. i have attempted to write such a book. whether i have succeeded--fully, partially or not at all--is not for me to say, though i have my suspicions. but this i know: in writing this book i have been strictly honest with myself, from first page to last. whether everything i have written is the truth, i do not know. but at least i believe that it is--or i would not have written it. and i can solemnly say that the book is free from any cant, hypocrisy, falsehood, exaggeration or compromise, nor has any attempt been made in any chapter to conciliate the stupid, the ignorant, the pervert, or the sexless. as in all my other books i have used plain, honest english. not any plainer than necessary, but plain enough to avoid obscurity and misconception. science and art are both necessary to human happiness. this is not the place to discuss the relative importance of the two. and, while i have no patience with art-for-art's-sake, i recognize that the scientist can not be put into a narrow channel and ordered to go into a certain definite direction. scientific investigations which seemed aimless and useless have sometimes led to highly important results, and i would not disparage science for its own sake. it has its uses. nevertheless i personally have no use for it. to me everything must have a direct human purpose, a definite human application. when the cup of human life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression. one can have all the self-expression one wants while doing useful work. and working for humanity does not exclude a healthy hedonism; not the narrow cyrenaic, but an enlightened altruistic hedonism. and in writing this book i have kept the human problem constantly before my eyes. it was not my ambition merely to impart interesting facts: my concern was the practical application of these facts, their relation to human happiness. if this book should be instrumental, as i confidently trust it will, in destroying some medieval superstitions, in dissipating some hampering and cramping errors, in instilling some hope in the hearts of the hopeless, in bringing a little joy into the homes of the joyless, in increasing in however slight a degree the sum total of human happiness, its mission shall have been gloriously fulfilled. for this is the mission of the book: to increase the sum total of human happiness. w.j.r. mount morris park w., new york city. jan. , . contents chapter page i. the paramount need of sex knowledge for girls and women why sex knowledge is of paramount importance to girls and women--reasons why a misstep in a girl has more serious consequences than a misstep in a boy--the place love occupies in woman's life--woman's physical disabilities. ii. the female sex organs; their anatomy the internal sex organs--the ovaries--the fallopian tubes--the uterus--the divisions of the uterus--anteversion, anteflexion, retroversion, retroflexion, of the uterus--endometritis--the vagina--the hymen--imperforate hymen--the external genitals--the vulva, labia majora, labia minora, the mons veneris, the clitoris, the urethra--the breasts--the pelvis--the difference between the male and female pelvis. iii. the physiology of the female sex organs function of the ovaries--internal secretion of the ovaries-- function of the internal secretion--number of ova in the ovaries--the graafian follicles--ovulation--corpora lutea--function of the fallopian tubes--function of the vagina--functions of the vulva, clitoris and mons veneris-- function of the breasts--besides secreting milk breast has sexual function--the orgasm--pollutions in women--secondary sex characters--differences between woman and man. iv. the sex instinct universality of the sex instinct--not responsible for our thoughts and feelings. v. puberty physical changes in puberty--physical changes in the genital organs and in the rest of the body--psychic changes--puberty and adolescence--nubility. vi. menstruation definition of menstruation--where menstrual blood comes from--age of menstruation--age of cessation of menstruation--duration--amount--regularity and irregularity. vii. abnormalities of menstruation disorders of menstruation--menorrhagia--metrorrhagia-- amenorrhea--vicarious menstruation--dysmenorrhea of organic and of nervous origin. viii. the hygiene of menstruation lack of cleanliness during menstrual period--superstitious beliefs--hygiene of menstruation. ix. fecundation or fertilization fecundation or fertilization--process of fecundation--when the ovum matures--fate of ovum when no intercourse has taken place--entrance of spermatozoa as result of intercourse--the spermatozoa in search of the ovum--rapidity of movements of spermatozoa--absorption of spermatozoön by ovum--activity of impregnated ovum in finding place to develop--pregnancy in the fallopian tube and its dangers--twin pregnancy--passivity of ovum and activity of spermatozoön foretell the contrasting rôles of the man and the woman throughout life. x. pregnancy period of pregnancy in human female--physiologic process of pregnancy--growth of embryo from moment of conception-- pregnant woman provides nourishment for two--her excreting organs must work for two. xi. the disorders of pregnancy smooth course of pregnancy in some women--pregnancy and parturition may be made normal processes through education in true hygiene--morning sickness and its treatment--necessity for medical advice in pernicious vomiting--anorexia--bulimia-- aversion towards certain foods--peculiar cravings--tendency to constipation aggravated by pregnancy--dietary measures in constipation--rectal injections in constipation--laxatives-- cause of frequent desire to urinate during first two or three and last months of pregnancy--treatment of frequent urination-- cause of piles during pregnancy and their treatment--cause of itching of external genitals during pregnancy and treatment-- cause of varicose veins and treatment--liver spots. xii. when to engage a physician necessity for the pregnant woman immediately placing herself under care of physician and remaining under his care during entire period. xiii. the size of the fetus approximately correct measurements and weight of fetus at end of each month of pregnancy. xiv. the afterbirth (placenta) and cord how the afterbirth develops--bag of waters--umbilical cord--the navel--fetus nourished by absorption--fetus breathes by aid of placenta--no nervous connection between mother and child. xv. lactation or nursing no perfect substitute for mother's milk--when nursing is injurious to mother and child--modified milk--artificial foods--care essential in selecting wet nurse--suckling child benefits mother--reciprocal affection strengthened by nursing--sexual feelings while nursing--alcoholics are injurious--attention to condition of nipples during pregnancy essential--treatment of sunken nipples--treatment of tender nipples--treatment of cracked nipples--how to stop the secretion of milk when necessary--menstruation while nursing--pregnancy in the nursing woman. xvi. abortion and miscarriage definition of word abortion--definition of word miscarriage-- spontaneous abortion--induced abortion--therapeutic abortion-- criminal abortion--missed abortion--habitual abortion-- syphilis as cause of abortion and miscarriage--dangers of abortion--abortion an evil. xvii. prenatal care meaning of the term--misleading information by quasi-scientists--exaggerated ideas regarding prenatal care--nervous connection between mother and child--cases under author's observation--effects on offspring--advice to pregnant women--germ-plasm of chronic alcoholic--a glass of wine and the spermatozoa--false statements--cases of violence and accidents during pregnancy. xviii. the menopause, or change of life time of menopause--cause of suffering during menopause-- reproductive function and sexual function not synonymous-- increased libido during menopause--change of life in men. xix. the habit of masturbation definition of masturbation--its injurious effects in girls as compared with boys--married life of the girl masturbator-- necessity for change in injurious attitude of parents who discover the habit--common-sense treatment of the habit-- how to prevent formation of habit--parents' advice to children--hot baths as factor in masturbation--other physical factors--mental masturbation and its effects. xx. leucorrhea--the whites misconception regarding the meaning of the term "leucorrhea"--a common complaint--severe cases--reasons for resistance to treatment--proper local treatment of the disorder--sterility due to leucorrhea--causes of leucorrhea--tonic medicines--local treatment--formulæ for douching. xxi. the venereal diseases derivation of word "venereal"--three venereal diseases-- innocent contraction of syphilis through various objects-- the hygienic elimination of common sources of venereal infection--measures for prevention after sexual relations. xxii. the extent of venereal disease former ban on discussion of venereal disease and its evil results--present reprehensible exaggerations of extent of venereal disease--erroneous and ridiculous statements of "reformers"--senseless fear of marriage in girls due to lurid exaggerations--study by woman psychologist reveals harmful results of exaggerated statements--truth in regard to percentage of men afflicted with venereal disease. xxiii. gonorrhea source of gonorrhea--mucous membrane of genital organs and of eye principal seats of disease--symptoms in men and in women--vagina seldom attacked in adults--nobody inherits gonorrhea--ophthalmia neonatorum--differences of course of disease in men and women--gonorrhea less painful in women--symptoms not suspected by woman--necessity for the woman consulting a physician--self-treatment when woman cannot consult physician--formulæ for injections. xxiv. vulvovaginitis in little girls former causes of vulvovaginitis in little girls--discharge chief symptom--evil results of vulvovaginitis--psychic results of treatment--effects in hastening sexual maturity--vulvovaginitis a cause of permanent sterility--measures to prevent the disease--toilet seats and vulvovaginitis. xxv. syphilis syphilis due to germ--syphilis a constitutional disease-- primary lesion--incubation period--roseola--primary stage--secondary stage--mucous patches--tertiary stage--gumma--hereditary nature of syphilis--milder course in women than in men--obscure symptoms in syphilis-- necessity for examination by physician--locomotor ataxia-- softening of the brain--chancroids. xxvi. the curability of venereal disease gonorrhea may be practically cured in every case in man--extensive gonorrheal infection in woman difficult to cure--positive cure in syphilis impossible to guarantee. xxvii. venereal prophylaxis necessity for douching before and after suspicious intercourse--formulæ for douches--precautions against non-venereal sources of infection--syphilis transmitted by dentist's instruments--manicurists and syphilis--promiscuous kissing a source of syphilitic infection. xxiii. alcohol, sex and venereal disease alcoholic indulgence and venereal disease--a champagne dinner and syphilis--percentage of cases of venereal infection due to alcohol--artificial stimulation of sex instinct in man and in woman--reckless sexual indulgence due to alcohol--alcohol as an aid to seduction. xxix. marriage and gonorrhea decision of physician regarding marriage of patients infected with gonorrhea or syphilis--advisability of certificate of freedom from transmissible disease--premarital examination as a universal custom--when a man who had gonorrhea may be allowed to marry--when a woman who had gonorrhea may be allowed to marry--antisepsis before coitus--question of sterility in the man who has had gonorrhea easily answered--impossibility of determining whether the woman is fertile or not. xxx. marriage and syphilis rules for permitting a syphilitic patient to marry--rules more severe in cases where children are desired--where both partners are syphilitic--danger of paresis in some syphilitic patients--a case in the author's practice. xxxi. who may and who may not marry the physician often consulted as to advisability of marriage-- _venereal disease_ the most common question--_tuberculosis_-- sexual appetite of tubercular patients--effect of pregnancy contraceptive knowledge for tubercular wife--_heart disease_-- serious bar to marriage--influence of sexual intercourse-- _cancer_--fear of hereditary transmission--_exophthalmic goiter_--most frequent in women--simple goiter--exceptions to rule--_obesity_--family history--obesity and stoutness not synonymous--_arteriosclerosis_--danger in sexual act--_gout_-- real causes of gout--_mumps_--parotid glands and sex organs-- mumps and sterility--oöphoritis due to mumps--_hemophilia_-- hemophilic sons may marry--hemophilic daughters may not marry--_anemia_--_chlorosis_--_epilepsy_--hysteria--symptoms of hysteria--marriage of hysterical women--_alcoholism_-- effect on offspring--alcoholics and impotence-- _feeblemindedness_--evil effects on offspring--sterilization of feebleminded only preventive--_insanity_--functional insanity--organic insanity--hereditary transmissibility of insanity--fear resulting in insanity--environment versus heredity in insanity--_neurosis_--_neurasthenia_-- _psychasthenia_--_neuropathy_--_psychopathy_--nervous conditions and genius--sexual impotence and genius--_drug addiction_--external causes--_consanguineous marriages_--when consanguineous marriages are advisable--offspring of consanguineous marriages--homosexuality--homosexuals often ignorant of their condition--sexual repression and homosexuality--sadism and divorce--masochism--sexual impotence and marriage--effect upon the wife--frigidity--marital relations and frigid woman--excessive libido and marriage--excessive demands upon wife--satyriasis--the excessively libidinous wife--nymphomania--treatment--harelip--myopia--astigmatism-- premature baldness--criminality--crime as result of environment--legal and moral crime--ancestral criminality and marriage--rules of heredity--pauperism--difference between pauperism and poverty. xxxii. birth control or the limitation of offspring knowledge of prevention of conception essential--misapprehensions concerning birth-control propaganda--modern contraceptives not injurious to health--imperfection of contraceptive measures due to secrecy--prevention of conception and abortion radically different--more marriages consummated if birth-control information were legally obtainable--demand for prostitution would be curtailed--venereal disease due to lack of knowledge--another phase of the birth-control problem--knowledge of contraceptive methods where there was a taint of insanity, and the happy results. xxxiii. advice to girls approaching the threshold of womanhood the irresistible attraction of the young girl for the male--the unprotected girl's temptations--some men who will pester the young girl--risk of venereal infection--danger of impregnation--use of contraceptives by the unmarried woman may not always be relied upon--nature of men who seduce girls--exceptions--illegitimate motherhood--difficulties in the way of illegitimate mother who must earn her living--the child of the foundling asylum--social attitude towards illegitimacy responsible for abortion evil--dangers of abortion--the girl who has lost her virginity. xxxiv. advice to parents of unfortunate girls attitude of parents towards unfortunate girl--the case of edith and what her father did--the pitiful cases of mary b. and bridget c. xxxv. sexual relations during menstruation heightened sexual appetite of many women during menstruation-- sexual intercourse during menstrual period--when intercourse may be permitted--injection before coitus during menstruation--fallacy of ancient idea of injuriousness. xxxvi. sexual intercourse during pregnancy complete abstinence during pregnancy--bad results of complete abstinence--intensity of relations during first four months-- intercourse during fifth, sixth and seventh months-- intercourse during eighth and ninth months--abstinence after birth of child. xxxvii. sexual intercourse for propagation only belief in sexual intercourse for propagation only--what such practice would lead to--nature and the sex-fanatics--sexual desire in woman after menopause--sex instinct of sterile men and women--sex instinct has other high purposes. xxxviii. vaginismus vaginismus--dyspareunia--difference between vaginismus and dyspareunia--adherent clitoris a cause of masturbation and convulsions. xxxix. sterility definition of sterility--husband should first be examined-- one-child sterility--the fertile woman--salpingitis as a cause of sterility--leucorrhea and sterility--displacement of uterus and sterility--closure of neck of womb and sterility--sterility and constitutional disease--treatment of sterility. xl. the hymen difference between chastity and virginity--worship of intact hymen--sacrificing hymen sometimes essential for health of the girl--certificate from physician who has ruptured hymen. xli. is the orgasm necessary for impregnation? suppression of orgasm by woman to prevent impregnation--bad results of suppression by the woman--orgasm: relation of to impregnation--a hypothesis--a fanciful hypothesis--why passionate women frequently fail to become mothers--advice to passionate women who desire to conceive. xlii. frigidity in women meaning of term frigidity--types of frigidity--large percentage of frigid women--repression of sexual manifestations and frigidity--frigidity and masturbation--frigidity and sexual weakness of husband--frigidity and dislike of husband--organic causes of frigidity--a frigid woman may become passionate-- treatment of frigidity. xliii. advice to frigid women, particularly wives advice to frigid women--attitude of different men towards frigid wives--orgasm a subjective feeling--a justifiable innocent deception--the case of a demi-mondaine. xliv. rape definition of rape--age of consent--unanimous opinion of experts--exceptional cases--false accusation of rape due to perversion--erotic dreams under anesthesia causing accusations against doctors and dentists. xlv. the single standard of sexual morality chastity--double standard of morality--attempt to abolish double standard--late marriages and chastity in men--harmful advice given to young women--chastity in men not always due to moral principles--chaste men and satisfactory husbands--a statement by professor freud--a statement by professor michels--what a girl has a right to demand of her future husband--three cases showing disastrous effects of wrong teachings. xlvi. difference between man's and woman's sex and love life seemingly contradictory statements--faulty interpretations of words sexual instinct and love--difference in manifestations of male and female sexual instincts--man's sex instinct grosser than woman's--awakening of sexual desire in the boy and in the girl--woman's desire for caresses--man's main desire for sexual relations--normal sex relations as means of holding a man--a physiological reason why man is held--man and physical love--woman and spiritual love--preliminaries of sexual intercourse in men and women--physical attributes-- mental and spiritual qualities--difference between love and "being in love"--love as a stimulus to man--when the man loves--when the woman loves--man's more engrossing interests--lovemaking irksome to man--man's polygamous tendencies--woman single-affectioned in her sex and love life--man and woman biologically different. xlvii. maternal impressions wide-spread belief in maternal impressions--no single well-authenticated case of maternal impression--birth of monstrosities--ridiculous examples given by physicians-- so-called shock often a product of mother's imagination-- four cases of alleged maternal impressions--mother's health during pregnancy may have effect upon child's general health. xlviii. advice to the married and those about to be marriage as an ideal institution--monogamic marriage--some reasons for husbands' deviations--importance of first few weeks of married life--necessity for understanding at beginning--preventing and breaking habits--the wife's individuality--husbands who are childish, not vicious-- wife's interest in husband's affairs--the "slob" husband-- the well-groomed husband--bad odor from the mouth--odors from other parts of the body--treatment for bad odor from perspiration--a beneficial powder--advice regarding flirting--dainty underwear--fine external clothes and cheap and soiled underwear--delicate adjustments of sex act required with some men--wife who discusses her husband's foibles--a professional secret--a case of temporary impotence--the wife's indiscretion--the disastrous result--a big stomach--the wife's attitude towards the marital relation--behavior preliminary to and during the act-- congenital frigidity--prudish and vicious ideas about the sex act--sexual intercourse for procreative purposes only--fear of pregnancy on the part of the wife--the remedy--other causes--wife who makes too frequent demands-- sacrificing the future to the present--esthetic considerations. xlxix. a rational divorce system a rational divorce system--storms and squalls--two sides of the divorce question--outside help and marital tangles--a husband who was a paragon of virtue--the case of the sweet wife--the proper untangling of domestic tangles. l. what is love? is love definable?--raising a corner of the veil--two opinions of love--the first opinion: sexual intercourse and love--the second opinion--the grain of truth in each--the truth concerning love--foundation of love--sexual attraction and love--the frigid woman and her husband--puzzling cases of love--the paradox--blindness of love and the penetrating vision of love--limits of homeliness--physical aversion and genesis of love--mating in the animal kingdom--mating in low races--love in people of high culture--difference in love of savage and man of culture--distinctions between loves--varieties of love and varieties of men--"love" without sexual desire--refraining and wanting--cause of love at first sight--"magnetic forces" and love at first sight--the pathological side--differentiation of phases of love--infatuation--difference between "infatuation" and "being in love"--sexual satisfaction and infatuation--sexual satisfaction and love--infatuation mistaken for love--love the most mysterious of human emotions--great love and supreme happiness. li. jealousy and how to combat it jealousy the most painful of human emotions--impairment of health--mental havoc--jealousy as a primitive emotion-- jealousy in the advanced thinker and in the savage--jealousy in the child--feelings and environmental factors--essential factors--vanity--anger--pain--envy--the impotent husband's jealousy--anti-social qualities--the jealous and the unfaithful husband--means of eradicating the evil--iwan bloch on the question--prof. robert michels' statement-- remark of prof. von ehrenfels--havelock ellis on variation in sexual relationships--advanced ideas--woman as man's chattel--the change and the changer--teaching the children-- casting epithets at jealousy--free unions and jealousy-- feelings, actions and public opinion--the adulterous wife of the present day--jealousy defeating its own object--jealousy of inanimate objects. lii. remedies for jealousy prevention and cure--prophylaxis of jealousy--fitting remedy to circumstances--the neglectful and flirtatious husband--no question of love--advice to the wife of the flirtatious man--an efficient though vulgar remedy--jealousy must be experienced to be understood--necessity for freedom of association--lines of conduct for the wife--contempt for a certain type of wife and husband--the abandoned lover--the effects of unrequited love--sublimated sexual desire-- replacing unrequited love--the attitude of goethe-- simultaneous loves possible--successive loves possible-- eternal loves--when sex relationships may be beneficial-- purchasable sex relations and their value--the broken engagement--the terrible effects on the young man--the young streetwalker--sex relations with fiancé--inundating sense of shame--collapse--attempts at suicide--an active sex life--the results--the prevention of jealousy. liii. concluding words woman: her sex and love life chapter one the paramount need of sex knowledge for girls and women why sex knowledge is of paramount importance to girls and women--reasons why a misstep in a girl has more serious consequences than a misstep in a boy--the place love occupies in woman's life--woman's physical disabilities. all are agreed--i mean all who are capable of thinking and have given the subject some thought--that for the welfare of the race and for his own physical and mental welfare it is important that the boy be given some sex instruction. all are not agreed as to the character of the instruction, its extent, the age at which it should be begun and as to who the teacher should be--the father, the family physician, the school teacher or a specially prepared book--but as to the necessity of sex knowledge for the boy there is now substantial agreement--among the conservatives as well as among the radicals. no such agreement exists concerning sex knowledge for the girl. many still are the men and women--and not among the conservatives only--who are strongly opposed to girls receiving any instruction in sex matters. some say that such instruction--except a few hygienic rules about menstruation--is unnecessary, because the sex instinct awakens in girls comparatively late, and it is time enough for them to learn about such matters after they are married. others fear that sex knowledge would destroy the mystery and romance of sex, and would rob our maidens of their greatest charms--modesty and innocence. still others fear that sex instruction would tend to awaken the sex instinct in our girls prematurely; would direct their thoughts to matters about which they would not think otherwise; and they argue that the warnings about venereal disease, prostitution, etc., which are an integral part of sex instruction, tend to create a cynical, inimical attitude towards the male sex, which may even result in hypochondriac ideas and antagonism to marriage. i do not deny that there is a grain of truth in all the above objections. sex instruction does cause _some_ girls to think of sex matters earlier than they otherwise would, and some girls have been made bitter and hypochondriac, and disgusted with the male sex. but it would not be difficult to demonstrate that it was not sex instruction _per se_ that was responsible for these deplorable results; it was the _wrong_ kind of instruction that was to blame--it was the wrong emphasis, the lurid exaggerations that caused the mischief, and not the truth. in other words, it is not sex information, it is sex misinformation, that is pernicious. and, of course, to this everybody will agree: rather than false information, better no information at all. but if the information to be imparted be sane, honest and truthful, without exaggerating the evils and without laying undue emphasis on the dark shadows of our sex life, then the results can be only beneficent. and the task i have put before myself in this book is to give our girls and women sane, square and honest information about their sex organs and sex nature, information absolutely free from luridness, on the one hand, and maudlin sentimentality, on the other. the female sex is in need of such information, much more so than is the male sex. yes, if boys, as is now universally agreed, are in need of sex instruction, then girls are much more in need of it. why? for several important reasons. the first reason why sex instruction is even more important for girls than it is for boys is because a misstep in a girl has much more disastrous consequences than it has in a boy. the disastrous results of a misstep in a boy are only physical in character; the results of the _same_ misstep in a girl may be physical, moral, social and economic. to speak more plainly. if a boy, through ignorance, rashly indulges in illicit sexual relations, the worst consequence to him may be infection with a venereal disease. but he is not considered immoral, he is not despised, he is not ostracized, he does not lose his social standing in the slightest degree, and when he is cured of his venereal disease he has no difficulty in getting married. he does not even have to conceal his past sexual history from his wife. but if a girl makes a misstep the consequences to her are terrible indeed; it may not only cost her her health and social standing, she may have to pay with her very life. she runs the risk of venereal infection the same as the boy does, but in addition she runs the risk of becoming pregnant, which in our present social system is a catastrophe indeed. to save herself from the disgrace of an illegitimate child she may have an abortion produced; the abortion may have no bad results, but it may, if performed bunglingly, leave her an invalid for life, or it may kill her outright. if she is so unfortunate as to be unable to get anybody to produce an abortion, she gives birth to an illegitimate child, which she is forced in most cases to put away in an institution of some sort where she hopes and prays it may die soon--and, in general, it does. if it does not die, she has for the rest of her life a damocles' sword hanging over her head, and she is in constant terror lest her sin be found out. she does not permit herself to look for a mate, but if she does get married, the specter of her antematrimonial experience is constantly before her eyes. after years and years of married life, the husband may divorce her if he finds out that she had "sinned" before she knew him. and unless the husband is a broad-minded man and loves her truly and unless she made a clean breast of everything to him before marriage, her life is continuous torture. but even if the girl escaped pregnancy, the mere finding out that she had an illicit experience deprives her of social standing, or makes her a social outcast and entirely destroys or greatly minimizes her chances of ever marrying and establishing a home of her own. she must remain a lonely wanderer to the end of her days. the enormous difference in the results of a misstep in a boy and a girl is clearly seen, and for this reason alone, if for no other, sex instruction is of more importance to the girl than it is to the boy. but there are other important reasons, and one of them is beautifully and truthfully expressed by byron in his two well-known lines. man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence. yes, love is a woman's whole life. some modern women might object to this. they might say that this was true of the woman of the past, who was excluded from all other avenues of human activity. the woman of the present day has other interests besides those of love. but i claim that this is true of only a small percentage of women; and in even this small minority of women, social, scientific and artistic activities cannot take the place of love; no matter how busy and successful these women may be, they will tell you if you enjoy their confidence that they are unhappy, if their love life is unsatisfactory. nothing, nothing can fill the void made by the lack of love. the various activities may help to cover up the void, to protect it from strange eyes, they cannot fill it. for essentially woman is made for love. not exclusively, but essentially, and a woman who has had no love in her life has been a failure. the few exceptions that may be mentioned only emphasize the rule. but not only psychically is a woman's love and sex life more important than a man's, physically she is also much more cognizant of her sex and much more hampered by the manifestation of her sex nature than man is. to take but one function, menstruation. from the age or to the age of forty-five or fifty it is a monthly reminder to woman that she is a woman, that she is a creature of sex; and, while to many women this periodically recurring function is only a source of some annoyance or discomfort, to a great number it is a cause of pain, headache, suffering, or complete disability. man has no such phenomenon to annoy him practically his whole life. but more important are the results of love-union, of sex relations. a man after a sexual relation is just as free as he was before. a woman, if the relation has resulted in a pregnancy, which is generally the case, unless special pains are taken it should not so result, has nine troublesome months before her, months of discomfort if not of actual suffering; she then has an extremely trying and painful ordeal, that of childbirth, and then there is another trying period, the period of lactation or of nursing and of bringing up the baby. the penalty seems almost too great. and when the woman is on the point of ceasing to menstruate she does not do so smoothly and comfortably. she has to go through a period called the menopause, which may last one or two years and which may bring discomforts and dangers of its own. man does not have to go through such a distinct period of demarcation separating his sexual from his non-sexual life. altogether it cannot be denied that woman is much more a slave of her sex nature than man is of his. yes, nature has handicapped woman much more heavily than she has man. in short, both in view of the fact that sexual ignorance with its possible missteps has much more disastrous consequences for the girl than it has for the boy, and in view of the fact that the sex instinct and its physical and psychic manifestations occupy a much more important part in woman's life than they do in the life of man, we consider the necessity of sex instruction much greater in the case of woman than in the case of man. i do not wish to be misunderstood as underestimating the need of sex instruction for the male--only i consider the need even greater in the case of the female. chapter two the female sex organs: their anatomy the internal sex organs--the ovaries--the fallopian tubes--the uterus--the divisions of the uterus--anteversion, anteflexion, retroversion, retroflexion, of the uterus--endometritis--the vagina--the hymen--imperforate hymen--the external genitals--the vulva, labia majora, labia minora, the mons veneris, the clitoris, the urethra--the breasts--the pelvis--the difference between the male and female pelvis. the organs which primarily distinguish one sex from the other are the sex organs. it is by the aid of the sex organs that children are begotten and brought into the world, that the race is _reproduced_ and perpetuated. it is for this reason that the sex organs are also called the reproductive organs. the first thing we must do is to become familiar with the _structure_ and _location_ of the sex organs; in other words, we must get a fair idea of their _anatomy_. the female sex organs, also called the reproductive or generative organs, are divided into internal and external. the internal are the most important and consist of: the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus or womb, and vagina. the external sex organs of the female are: the vulva, hymen, and clitoris. among the external organs are also generally included the mons veneris and the breasts or mammary glands. subchapter a the internal sex organs [illustration: ovary.] =the ovaries.= the ovaries are the essential organs of reproduction. for it is they that generate the eggs, or _ova_, or _ovules_, which, after becoming _fertilized_ or _fecundated_ by the spermatozoa of the male, develop into children. without the ovaries of the female, the same as without the testicles of the male (to which they correspond), no children could be begotten, and the entire human race would quickly disappear from our planet. the ovaries are two in number; they are embedded in the _broad ligaments_ which support the womb in the pelvis, one on each side of the womb. they are of a grayish or whitish pink color, and are about an inch and a half long, three-quarters of an inch wide, and one-third of an inch thick. they weigh from one-eighth to one-quarter of an ounce. their surface is either smooth or rough and puckered. think of a large blanched almond and you will have a pretty fair idea of the size and shape of an ovary. =the fallopian tubes.= the fallopian tubes (so called from fallopius, a great anatomist, who discovered them; also called oviducts: egg conductors, because they conduct the eggs from the ovary into the uterus) are two very thin tubes, extending one from each upper angle of the womb to the ovaries; but at their ovarian end they expand into a fringed and trumpet-shaped extremity. the fringes are referred to as _fimbria_. they are about five inches long and only about one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter; the function of the tubes is to catch the ova as they burst forth from the ovaries and to convey them to the uterus. taking into consideration the very narrow _lumen_, or _caliber_, of the fallopian tubes, it is easy to understand why even a very slight inflammation is apt to clog them up, to seal their mouths or openings, thus rendering the woman _sterile_, or incapable of having children. for, if the fallopian tubes are "clogged" up, the eggs, or ova, have no way of reaching the uterus. the greek name for the fallopian tube is salpinx (salpinx in greek means tube). an inflammation of the fallopian tube is therefore called salpingitis. (a salpingitis has the same effect in causing sterility in the female as has an epididymitis in the male.) salpingectomy is the cutting away of the whole or of a piece of the fallopian tube (corresponds to vasectomy in the male). =the uterus.= the uterus or womb is the organ in which the fertilized ovum, or egg, grows and develops into a child. it is a hollow muscular organ, about the size of a pear, with thick walls, capable under the influence of pregnancy of great expansion and growth. the broad part of the pear is called the _body_ of the uterus; the lower narrow part is called the _neck_ of the uterus, or _cervix_. the uterus in the adult girl or woman is about three inches long, two inches broad in its upper part and nearly an inch thick. it weighs from an ounce to an ounce and a half. when the uterus is in a pregnant condition, it increases enormously, both in size and in weight, as we will see in a future chapter. the cavity of the uterus is somewhat triangular in shape; at each upper angle is the small opening communicating with the fallopian tube; the upper portion of the uterus is called the fundus; the external opening of the womb, situated in the center of the cervix, is called the mouth of the womb, or the _os_, or external os. [illustration: . openings into the fallopian tubes. . mouth of the womb.] the uterus is situated in the center of the pelvis, between the bladder and the rectum. it is supported by certain ligaments, the chief of which are the broad ligaments; but, on account of general weakness, too hard physical labor, or lifting heavy weights, the ligaments may stretch, and the uterus may sink down low in the vagina, and we then have the condition known as prolapse of the womb. or, the womb may turn forward, when we have a condition of _anteversion_. if the womb is _bent_ (or _flexed_) forward on itself the condition is called _anteflexion_. if the womb is turned backwards, the condition is called _retroversion_; if it is bent or flexed backward upon itself the condition is called _retroflexion_. an extreme degree of anteversion or anteflexion, or retroversion or retroflexion, may interfere with impregnation, as the spermatozoa may find it difficult or impossible to reach the opening of the womb--the external os. [illustration: (female reproductive organs)] the entire cavity of the uterus is lined by a mucous membrane;[ ] this mucous membrane is called the endometrium (endo--within; metra--uterus). an inflammation of the endometrium is called _endometritis_. it is the endometrium that is principally concerned in menstruation--that is, it is from it that the monthly discharge of blood comes. =the vagina= [vagina in latin--a sheath]. the vagina is the tube or canal which serves as a passage-way between the uterus and the outside of the body. it extends from the external genitals or vulva to the neck of the womb, embracing the latter for some distance. it is a strong, fibromuscular canal, lined with mucous membrane. it is not smooth inside, but arranged in folds, or _rugæ_, so that when necessary, as during childbirth, it can stretch enormously and permit the passage of a child's head. the length of the vaginal canal is between three and five inches, but it is in general much more capacious in women that have borne one or more children than in those who have not borne any. near the vaginal entrance are situated two small glands; they are about the size of a pea, and secrete mucus. they are called bartholin's glands; occasionally they become inflamed and give a good deal of trouble. [illustration: anteversion of the uterus.] [illustration: anteflexion of the uterus.] [illustration: retroversion of the uterus.] [illustration: retroflexion of the uterus.] =the hymen= [hymen in greek--a membrane]. the external opening of the vagina, in virgins, that is, in girls or women who have not had sexual intercourse, is almost entirely closed by a membrane called the hymen. the vulgar name for hymen is "maidenhead." the hymen may be of various shapes, and of different consistency. in some girls it is a very thin membrane, which tears very readily; in others it is quite tough. on the upper margin or in the center of the hymen there is an opening which permits any secretion from the vagina and the blood from the uterus to come through. in rare cases there is no opening in the hymen, that is, the vagina is entirely closed. such a hymen is called _imperforate_ (not perforated). when the girl begins to menstruate, the blood cannot come out and it accumulates in the vagina. in such cases the hymen must be opened or slit by a doctor. in some cases the hymen is congenitally absent; that is, the girl is born without any hymen. while the hymen is usually ruptured during the first intercourse, it, in some cases, being elastic and stretchable, persists untorn after sexual intercourse. it will therefore be seen that just as the presence of the hymen is no absolute proof of virginity, so is the absence of the hymen no absolute proof that the girl has had sexual relations, she might have been born without any hymen, or it might have been ruptured by vaginal examination, by a vaginal douche, by scratching to relieve itching, or by some accident. the remains of the hymen after it is ruptured shrink and form little elevations which can be easily felt; they are known as caruncles. [in latin, _carunculæ myrtiformes_, which means in english myrtleberry-shaped caruncles; caruncle is a small fleshy elevation; derived from _caro_, which in latin means flesh.] subchapter b the external genitals =the vulva.= the external genitals of the female are called the _vulva_. the vulva consists of the labia majora (meaning the larger lips), which are on the outside and which in the grown-up girl are covered with hair, and the labia minora (the smaller lips), which are on the inside and which are usually only seen when the labia majora are taken apart. [vulva in latin means folding-door. the ancients were fond of giving fancy names to things.] =the mons veneris.= the elevation above the vulva, which during puberty becomes covered with hair, is called by the fanciful name, _mons veneris_, or venus' mountain. it is usually well padded with fatty tissue. =the clitoris.= the clitoris is a small body about an inch in length, situated beneath the mons veneris and partly or entirely covered by the upper borders of the labia minora. =the urethra.= between the clitoris above and the opening of the vagina below is situated the opening of the _urethra_, or the urinary meatus, through which the urine passes. many women are so ignorant, or, let us say innocent, that they think the urine passes out through the vagina. this is not so. the vagina has nothing to do with the process of urination. again enumerating the female sex organs, but in the reverse order, from before backward, or from out inward, we have: the mons veneris and the labia majora, or the external lips of the vulva; these are the plainly visible parts of the female genital organs. when the labia majora are taken apart we see the labia minora; when the labia majora and minora are taken apart we can see or feel the clitoris and the hymen, or the remains of the hymen. we then have the vagina, a large, stretchable musculo-membranous canal, in the upper portion of which the neck of the womb, or the cervix, can be seen (when a speculum is used), or felt by the finger. only the cervix, or neck of the womb, can be seen, but the rest of the womb, the broader portion, can be easily felt and examined by one hand in the vagina and the other hand over the abdomen. continuous with the uterus are the fallopian tubes, and below the trumpet-shaped ends of the fallopian tubes are the ovaries, embedded in the broad ligaments, one on each side. =the breasts.= the breasts, also called mammary glands, or mammæ [mamma in latin, breast], may be considered as accessory organs of reproduction. they are of no importance in the male, in whom they are usually rudimentary, but they are of great importance in the female. they manufacture milk, which is necessary for the proper nutrition of the infant, and they add a great deal to the beauty and attractiveness of the woman. they are thus a help to the woman in getting a mate or a husband. the projecting elevation of the breast, which the child takes in his mouth when nursing, is called the nipple; the darker colored area surrounding the nipple is called the areola. [illustration: the pelvis of the male.] [illustration: the pelvis of the female.] subchapter c the pelvis the internal sex organs are situated in the lower part of the abdominal cavity, the part that is called the _pelvis_, or pelvic cavity. the meaning of the word pelvis in latin is basin. the pelvis, also referred to as the pelvic girdle or pelvic arch, forms a bony basin, and is composed of three powerful bones: the sacrum, consisting of five vertebræ fused together and constituting the solid part of the spine, or vertebral column, in the back, and the two hipbones, one on each side. the two hipbones meet in front, forming the _pubic arch_. the hipbones are called in latin the ossa innominata (nameless bones) and each hipbone is composed of three bones: the ilium, the ischium, and the os pubis. the thighs are attached to the hipbones, and to the hipbones are also attached the large _gluteal_ muscles, which form the buttocks, or the "seat." the pelvis of the female differs considerably from the pelvis of the male. the female pelvis is shallower and wider, less massive, the margins of the bones are more widely separated, thus giving greater prominence to the hips; the sacrum is shorter and less curved, and the pubic arch is wider and more rounded. all this is necessary in order to permit the child's head to pass through. if the female pelvis were exactly like the male pelvis, a full-term living child could never pass through it. the two illustrations show the differences between the male and female pelvis very clearly. note particularly the differences in the pubic arches: in the male pelvis it is really more of an angle than an arch. also note how much longer and more solid the sacrum (with its attached bone, called the coccyx[ ]) is in the male pelvis. the differences in the pelves (the plural of pelvis is pelves) of the male and female become fully marked at puberty, but they are present as early as the fourth month of intra-uterine life. footnotes: [ ] mucous membrane--briefly a membrane which secretes mucus or some other fluid. [ ] the coccyx consists of three rudimentary vertebræ; it is the vestige of an organ which we once possessed in common with many other animals, namely--a tail. chapter three the physiology of the female sex organs function of the ovaries--internal secretion of the ovaries--function of the internal secretion--number of ova in the ovaries--the graafian follicles--ovulation--corpora lutea--function of the fallopian tubes--function of the vagina--functions of the vulva, clitoris and mons veneris--function of the breasts--besides secreting milk breast has sexual function--the orgasm--pollutions in women--secondary sex characters--differences between woman and man. the importance of an organ depends upon its _function_, upon what it does, and not so much upon what it is. it is important to know the size, structure and location of an organ, but it is still more important to know its function; in other words, for our purpose it is more important to know the _physiology_ than the anatomy of the sex organs. subchapter a function of the ovaries like the testicles in man, so the ovaries in woman are the essential sexual organs. they are the fundamental organs, without which the other sexual organs are useless. also like the testicles in man, the ovaries have two distinct functions, manufacturing two distinct substances. one function is to manufacture eggs; this, called the oögenetic or egg-producing function, is its _racial_ function; without it the race could not perpetuate itself. but the ovary has also an _individual_ function. besides the ova, the ovary manufactures what we call an _internal_ secretion which is absorbed by the blood, and which is of the greatest importance to the woman herself. while the manufacture of ova begins only at puberty, with menstruation, and closes at the menopause, the manufacture of the internal secretion lasts throughout the woman's entire life. this secretion, which consists of various chemical substances, has a tremendous influence not only on the development of the woman's body, but also on her feelings. first of all it is necessary for the development of the woman's special characteristics, or _secondary sexual characters_. without that internal secretion of the ovaries, a woman would look more or less like a man; she would not develop her beautiful rounded form, her pretty long hair, her breasts, her broad pelvis, her feminine voice, etc. _second_, the secretion is necessary to the proper development of her other sexual organs; if the ovaries are cut out, then the uterus and the vagina and even the vulva shrivel up. _third_, it is that internal secretion that excites in woman sexual desire and makes her enjoy relations with the male sex. if the ovaries are cut away, particularly if it is done early in life, the woman has no sexual desire and no enjoyment. _fourth_, it contributes to the general health, wellbeing, energy, and mental alertness of the woman. you see the importance of the internal ovarian secretion, and you will readily understand why, when the ovaries are removed by operation, the woman, particularly if she is young, undergoes such marked changes. it is because we recognize now the great importance of the ovaries that we always, when operating on diseased ovaries leave at least a small piece of ovary, if at all possible. =number of ova.= when the female infant is born, her ovaries contain as many ova or eggs as they ever will contain. in fact, they contain more than they will at puberty. for it is estimated that at birth each ovary contains about , ova; the majority of these, however, disappear so that at the age of puberty each ovary contains only about , ova. as only one ovum ripens each month from the time of puberty to the time of the menopause (i.e., about to ova at the utmost during a lifetime), and as only a dozen or two ova would be necessary for the propagation of the race, it seems a superabundance of ova, an unnecessary lavishness. but nature _is_ lavish where the propagation of the species is concerned. a portion of an ovary or of both ovaries might become diseased, and thousands of ova might become unfit for fertilization; nature therefore puts in an extra reserve supply. we see a still more striking example of this extreme extravagant lavishness in man; only one spermatozoön is necessary to impregnate the ovum, and only one spermatozoön can penetrate the ovum; nevertheless each normal ejaculation of semen contains between a quarter and half a million spermatozoa. =the graafian follicles.= each primitive or primordial ovum[ ] is imbedded in a little vesicle or follicle, which is generally known as _graafian follicle_, and there are as many graafian follicles as there are ova. (the graafian follicles were first described about years ago--in --by a delft physician named de graaf, hence the name.) until puberty, that is the commencement of menstruation, the graafian follicles with the oöcytes or primitive ova are in a more or less dormant condition. but with the onset of puberty there commences a period of intense activity in the ovaries. this period of activity is repeated regularly once a month, and it constitutes the process of _ovulation_ and _menstruation_. the two processes are closely though not causally connected. ovulation consists in the monthly maturation and extrusion of a ripe ovum; menstruation, which will be further discussed in a separate chapter, consists in the monthly discharge of blood, mixed with mucus from the inside lining of the uterus. every twenty-eight days, from the time of puberty to the time of the menopause, a graafian follicle bursts and an ovum is extruded from the ovary. before the follicle bursts, it swells and enlarges and reaches the surface of the ovary; the whole follicle is congested with blood, but at one point near the surface of the ovary it is pale and thin, and here the rupture takes place. [illustration: section of ovary. . graafian follicle in the earliest stage. , , . follicles in more advanced stages. , . almost mature follicle. . follicle from which the ovum has escaped. . corpus luteum.] =corpora lutea.= after the graafian follicle has burst and the ovum has been pushed out, the cavity that is left does not remain empty and functionless; there is a further process going on there; there is a growth of cells, of a yellowish color, and the follicle becomes filled with a yellowish body, which on account of its color is called the _corpus luteum_ (plural--corpora lutea; luteum in latin--yellow, corpus--body). this corpus luteum grows in size until it sometimes occupies as much as one-third of the ovary. but there is considerable difference between the corpora lutea of non-pregnant and pregnant women. up to the end of about a month the corpora lutea are the same, but after that the corpus luteum of the non-pregnant woman begins to get smaller, to shrink, so that at the end of two or three months it is reduced to a small scar and later cannot be noticed at all. the corpus luteum of the pregnant woman keeps on increasing until the end of the second month, remains about the same size until the end of the sixth month, and only then begins gradually to diminish. the corpus luteum of the non-pregnant woman, that is, the one following menstruation, is called false corpus luteum; the corpus luteum following pregnancy is called a true corpus luteum. the corpus luteum acts like a gland and elaborates a secretion which has an influence on the circulation in the uterus and on menstruation. it probably possesses other properties, with which we are not yet quite familiar. the corpora lutea of various animals are now prepared in powder or tablet form and used in medicine in the treatment of certain diseases of women. subchapter b function of the other genital organs =function of the fallopian tubes.= the function of the fallopian tubes or oviducts as they are sometimes called is to catch the ovum as it bursts through the ovary and to conduct it from the ovary into the uterus. it is while the ovum is in the narrow lumen of the tube that the spermatozoön which has travelled up from the uterus usually finds it, and it is in the tube, near its entrance to the womb, that impregnation usually takes place. after the ovum is impregnated or fecundated, it slowly moves down to the uterus, where it attaches itself and remains and grows for nine months, until it is ready to come out and start an independent life. the uterus or womb is the house of the embryo almost from the moment of conception to the moment of birth. within the thick warm sheltered walls of the uterus the child grows, develops, eats and breathes, until all its organs and functions have reached such a stage of perfection that it can live by itself and for itself. and this may be said to be the sole function of the uterus, or at least its sole useful function. for the other function of the uterus, menstruation, cannot be said to be a necessary or a useful function. it is a normal function because it occurs regularly in every healthy woman during her child-bearing period, but not every normal function is a necessary or useful function. not everything that is is right or useful. =function of the vagina.= the vagina is the canal in which sexual intercourse takes place. it receives the male organ (penis) during the sexual act, and serves as a temporary repository for the male semen. after the spermatozoa have reached the uterus, the vagina has no further function to perform. =functions of the vulva, clitoris=, and =mons veneris.= the vulva and the clitoris have no special functions to perform; but in them, in the clitoris particularly, but also in the labia minora, resides the feeling of voluptuousness, the pleasurable sensation experienced during the sexual act. another seat of voluptuousness in the woman is located in the cervix of the uterus. the mons veneris has no special physiological function to perform, but it as well as the vulva serve as strong points of attraction for the male sex. while the entire female body is attractive to the male, and vice versa, there are certain zones which are especially attractive or exciting. such zones or areas are called _erogenous zones_--the word erogenous means love-generating. the vulva and the mons veneris are the strongest erogenous zones; other erogenous zones are the lips, the breasts, etc. =function of the breasts.= the function of the breasts is to nurse or suckle the young on the mother's milk until they are able to live on other food. the other name for breasts is mammary gland (in latin, mamma--breast), and all animals who suckle their young are called mammals or mammalia. besides its milk secreting function, the breasts constitute a strong erogenous zone; they are a point of strong attraction for the male sex, many men being more attracted by well-developed breasts than by a pretty face. there is a good biological reason for this. well developed breasts indicate that the other sexual organs are well developed and that the woman will make a satisfactory wife and satisfactory mother. considering then the importance of the breasts in attracting a husband and their function in nursing the young, also their erogenous properties, it is perfectly proper to class them among the reproductive organs. subchapter c the orgasm the culmination of the act of sexual intercourse is called the orgasm. it is the moment at which the pleasurable sensation is at its highest point, the body experiences a thrill, there is a spasmodic contraction in the genital organs, and there is a secretion of fluid from the genital glands and mucous membranes. this fluid in women is not a vital fluid like the semen in man; it is merely mucus, and in some women it is very slight in amount or altogether absent. adult women who live without sexual relations occasionally have sexual or erotic dreams; that is, they dream that they are in the company of men, playing or having relations with them. such dreams are usually accompanied by an orgasm or an orgastic feeling, and by a discharge of mucus, the same as in sexual intercourse. such a discharge of mucus during sleep is called an emission or pollution. in the male sex pollutions play an important rôle (see the author's "sex knowledge for men"), because the semen is a vital fluid, and if it is lost too frequently the system is put under a heavy drain. in boys and men the pollutions or night losses may occur several times a week or even every night, or several times a night. when they occur with such frequency the man may become a wreck. not so with women. first, pollutions or night dreams in women are much more rare than they are in men; and second, as just mentioned, the fluid secreted by woman during intercourse or during an erotic dream is not of a vital character, as the semen is in man; it is mucus, and the secretion of a mucous fluid, even if somewhat excessive, does not constitute a drain on the system. for this reason women can stand frequently repeated sex relations and emissions or pollutions much better than men can. subchapter d the secondary sex characters the sex organs constitute the primary sex characters. it is they that distinguish primarily one sex from another. but there are numerous other sex characters or sex differences which while not so important serve to differentiate the sexes, at the same time forming points of attraction between one sex and another. for instance, the beard and mustache are a distinct male characteristic and constitute one of the secondary male sex characters. the secondary sex characters are very numerous; one might say that each one of the billions of cells in the body bears the impress of the sex to which it belongs. first, the skeleton. the entire female skeleton differs from the male skeleton; all the bones are smaller and more gracile; the pelvis, as we have seen before, is shallower and wider. then the muscles are smaller and more rounded. the entire contour of the body is rounded rather than angular as in man. the skin is finer, softer, more delicate. the hair on the head is longer and of a finer texture, while over the body the hair is also finer and less abundant. the voice is finer, more pleasant, and of a higher pitch (soprano). the breasts are well developed, and serve an important purpose, while in men they are rudimentary. the breathing is also different; woman breathes principally with the upper part of the chest, man with the lower. the brain is smaller and its convolutions somewhat less complex in woman. woman differs considerably from man not only physically, as we have seen, but also mentally and emotionally. but into this phase of the subject we will not enter, except to remark that it is foolish to speak of the superiority or inferiority of one sex to another. in some respects man is greatly superior to woman, in others he is inferior; on the whole the sexes balance one another pretty well, and while the sexes are not and never will be exactly alike, we have no right to speak of the inferiority of one sex to another. we recognize that the sexes are different, but they complement one another, and the claim of the reactionary and of the woman-hater that woman is an inferior creature is just as senseless as is the claim made by some ultra-militant feminists that woman is the superior and man the inferior. footnotes: [ ] the ovum is really the fully mature egg ready for fecundation; before maturity it should not be called ovum but oöcyte; and in advanced treatises it is so referred to. but here ovum will do for both the unripe and ripe egg. chapter four the sex instinct universality of the sex instinct--not responsible for our thoughts and feelings. the sex instinct, which runs all through nature from the lowest animal to the highest, is the inborn impulse, craving or desire which one sex has for the other: the male for the female and the female for the male. this instinct, this desire for the opposite sex, which is born with us and which manifests itself at a very early age, is not anything to be ashamed of. there is nothing disgraceful, nothing sinful in it. it is a normal, natural, healthy instinct, implanted in us by nature for various reasons, and absolutely indispensable for the perpetuation of the race. if there were anything to be ashamed of, it would be the lack of this sex instinct, for without it the race would quickly die out. =not responsible for thoughts and feelings.= it is necessary to impress this point, because many girls and women, whose minds have been perverted by a vicious so-called morality, worry themselves to illness, brood and become hypochondriac because they think they have committed a grievous sin in experiencing a desire for sexual relations or for the embrace of a certain man. altogether it is necessary to impress upon the growing girl, when the occasion presents itself, that a thought or a feeling can never be sinful. an action may be, but a thought or a feeling cannot. why? because we are not responsible for our thoughts and feelings; they are not under our control. though it does not mean that when they do arise we are to give them full sway. we should attempt to combat them and drive them away, but there is nothing to be ashamed of, because for their origin we are not responsible. =responsible for actions.= our actions are under our control, to a certain extent at least, and if we do a bad or injurious act, we have committed a sin and are morally responsible. the _desire_ for the sexual act is no more sinful than the desire for food is when one is hungry. but the performance of the act may, under certain circumstances, be as sinful as the eating of food which the hungry man obtained by robbing another fellow-being, just as poor as himself. i am not preaching to you. but i am not an extremist nor a hypocrite. i am advocating neither asceticism nor licentiousness. one is as bad, or almost as bad, as the other. what i am trying to do is to inculcate in your minds, if possible, a sane, well-balanced view of all things sexual. for i believe that wrong, perverted views of the physiology and hygiene of the sex act and of sex morality, that is, the proper relationship of the sexes, are responsible for untold misery, for incalculable suffering. both sexes suffer, but the female sex suffers more. the woman always pays more. this is due to her natural disabilities (menstruation, pregnancy, lactation), to her age-long repression, to the fact that she must be sought but never seek, and to her economic dependence. for the above reasons, sex instruction is a matter of double importance to woman--this fact has been emphasized in the first chapter. but woman's disabilities impose upon us another duty: _because_ she carries the heaviest burden, _because_ she always pays more dearly than the man, it becomes incumbent upon man to treat her with special consideration, with genuine kindness and chivalry. chapter five puberty physical changes in puberty--physical changes in the genital organs and in the rest of the body--psychic changes--puberty and adolescence--nubility. puberty is the most wonderful, the most significant period in a girl's life. important as it is in a boy's life and development, it is still more so in a girl's. at this period there are often laid the foundations which either make or mar the girl's future life. the meaning of the word puberty is maturity. it is the period at which the girl and the boy reach sexual maturity; in other words, the period at which the sex glands of the boy begin to generate spermatozoa, and the sex glands of the girl begin to mature and expel eggs or ova; with the girl puberty is marked by an additional phenomenon, which has no analogue in the boy, namely, menstruation. =physical changes.= the word puberty is derived from the word _puber_, which in latin means mature, ripe. but the word puber is itself derived from the word _pubes_, which in latin means fine hair or down. for at this period of maturity all mammals (that is animals which have breasts and nurse their young) begin to develop a growth of hair. you know that our entire body, with the exception of the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, is covered with innumerable hair follicles, and from our birth our entire body, with the exception named, is covered with fine hair. the hair may be too delicate to be seen, but it is there, and with a magnifying glass you can see it without any trouble. but at puberty the hair increases in thickness and in quantity, and becomes abundant in places where it was hardly noticeable before--the upper lip and face in boys, and the armpits and lower part of the abdomen in both boys and girls. and so the first apparent physical sign of puberty in a girl is the gradual appearance of hair in the armpits, on the mons veneris and the labia majora. but all the genital organs are undergoing rapid development; the vulva, the vagina, the uterus and the ovaries become larger, and the ovaries which up to that time were elaborating an internal secretion only, now also begin to manufacture ova; in other words, the monthly process of ovulation is begun. synchronously with the process of ovulation, there commences the monthly function of menstruation. the breasts also increase in size, assume the characteristic contour, develop their glandular substance, and become capable of secreting milk for the use of any possible offspring. during this period of development they are often very sensitive to the touch or feel painful without being touched. but not only the genital organs undergo growth and development--the entire body participates in the process. the growth in height is the most rapid at this period; the greatest growth takes place in the limbs--legs and arms. the pelvis becomes broader, and the chest or thorax also becomes broader and larger. the muscles become larger and rounder and finally give the girl the beautiful womanly form. =psychic changes.= but the changes are not only physical; the changes that take place in the girl's psychic sphere during the pubertal years are also highly important. that is the period of the development of the emotions; she is overflowing with emotion; she becomes sensitive; in her relations with boys and men she becomes self-conscious. distinct sexual desire fortunately does not make its appearance in the girl at this period, as it does in the boy, but she becomes filled with vague undefined and undefinable longings. it is the period of "crushes" when the girl is apt to bestow her overflowing emotion on a girl friend. there is nothing reprehensible in these crushes--they act as a safety valve--and only in rare cases are they apt to lead to abnormal development. this is also the period of day-dreaming and of romancing; the girl likes to read love-stories and novels in which she identifies herself with the heroine. and it makes quite some difference as to what the girl reads during this period, for literature has a strong influence on the young in the most plastic period of their lives; and it is important that older persons see to it that those in their care spend their time on books of noble ideals and high artistic value. girls of a highly sensitive or so-called "nervous" temperament, especially if there is "nervousness" in the family, must be particularly looked after. for it is during the years of puberty and adolescence that any neurotic traits are apt to develop and become emphasized. it is also the period when bad sexual habits (masturbation) are apt to develop, and the careful mother will devote special attention to her girls in their years of puberty, and guard them as much as possible against physical and emotional shocks. the age of puberty in girls is by many writers considered as synonymous or synchronous with the onset of menstruation, which in this country in the majority of cases occurs between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. the year of gradual development before the onset of menstruation is by some referred to as the pre-pubertal year; and the first year after the onset of menstruation is the post-pubertal year. the period from puberty to full sexual maturity is called adolescence, and this term is applied generally to the period between thirteen and eighteen. for at eighteen the boy and the girl have reached full maturity. mentally we acquire things as long as we live, and even physically the body gets larger for some years after eighteen. but sexually both boys and girls are fully mature at eighteen, though in order to become parents it is best, for various reasons, to wait to the ages of twenty or twenty-five. =nubility.= nubility is the age or state when a boy or a girl is "fit" for marriage. this is a vague and unsatisfactory term. at the age of thirteen to fifteen boys and girls are physically "fit" for marriage, that is at that age a boy is capable of begetting and a girl of having children. but it does not mean that it would be advisable for them to marry at such an early age. neither their bodies nor their minds are fully developed, and children begotten of such young parents are apt to be weaklings, both mentally and physically. the youngest age for girls to marry should be eighteen, and for boys twenty; but the youngest age for becoming parents should be twenty to twenty-two for the mother and twenty-three to twenty-five for the father. chapter six menstruation definition of menstruation--where menstrual blood comes from--age of menstruation--age of cessation of menstruation--duration--amount--regularity and irregularity. the first function with which the girl will be confronted, which will impress upon her that she is a creature of sex, that she is decidedly different from the boy, is _menstruation_. and this function we will now proceed to study. what is menstruation? menstruation is a monthly discharge of blood. the word is derived from the latin word mensis, which means a month; and menstruation is also frequently spoken of as _the menses_. it is also called the catamenia or catamenia-flow (greek, kata--by, men--a month). other terms are: the periods, courses, monthlies, turns, monthly changes, monthly sickness, sickness, flowers, to be unwell, to be regular. "not to see anything" is a common term for having missed the menses. this flow of blood recurs in most cases with remarkable regularity once a month; not a calendar month, but once a lunar month, i.e., once every twenty-eight days. and as there are thirteen lunar months a year, a woman menstruates not twelve but thirteen times a year. where does the menstrual blood come from? the menstrual blood comes from the inside of the womb. every month, for a few days prior to menstruation, the inside lining of the womb (what we call the mucous membrane or endometrium) becomes congested and its bloodvessels become distended with blood. if the woman has sexual intercourse and pregnancy happens to take place, then this extra blood is used to nourish and develop the new child; but if no pregnancy takes place, that extra blood exudes from the bloodvessels (some of the bloodvessels rupture) and is discharged from the uterus into the vagina, and from there to the outside, where it is caught on cotton, sanitary napkins or some other pad. =at what age does menstruation begin?= the usual age at which menstruation begins in this country is thirteen or fourteen; in some it may occur as early as twelve, in others as late as fifteen, sixteen or even seventeen. for menstruation to begin earlier than twelve or later than seventeen is in this country a rare exception. but in cold northern climates the age of eighteen is not rare, and in the hot southern climates menstruation often starts at the ages of ten or eleven. change of climate or of country will often have an influence on the menses. in the early years of his medical practice, the author had many finnish girls as patients. it was a very common occurrence for them to stop menstruating for the first few months or even for the first year of their residence in this country. =at what age does menstruation cease?= the age at which menstruation ceases is called the _menopause_ or _climacteric_. it usually takes place at the age of forty-eight or fifty. in some cases it does not take place until the age of fifty-two, in others it takes place as early as forty-five or forty-four. in general, it may be said that the woman's menstruating period, during which she is able to have children, lasts about thirty-five years. and if no restraint be taken, and if no precautions be taken against conception, a woman could have twenty or thirty children during her childbearing period. =how many days does a woman menstruate?= the usual number of days is from three to five; in some cases menstruation lasts only two days, in others as long as seven. as a rule, the greatest amount of blood passed is during the first two days. =the amount of blood.= it is hard to estimate the exact amount of blood passed by a woman during her menses, but it reaches about an ounce and a half to three ounces. in some women the amount may reach as much as four or five ounces and in exceptional cases as much as eight ounces. where it exceeds this amount, it is an abnormal condition, requiring treatment. the usual statement that a normally menstruating woman should not have to use more than three napkins during the twenty-four hours is correct. _the periodical regularity_ with which menstruation recurs in many women is remarkable. i know a woman who has not missed her menses in twenty years; during those twenty years the menses have started every fourth friday, almost always at the same hour. i know another one who has her menses every fourth wednesday, about seven in the morning. she skipped her periods during her two pregnancies, then they were irregular for a while, then they came back to wednesday. other women have their menses on a certain day of the month, say the first or the fifth, regardless of the number of days in the month (such cases are, however, exceptional). and in some women the menses are irregular: every three weeks, every five or six weeks, every six or seven weeks, etc. some women never know when they may expect their menses, so irregular they are. chapter seven abnormalities of menstruation disorders of menstruation--menorrhagia--metrorrhagia--amenorrhea-- vicarious menstruation--dysmenorrhea of organic and of nervous origin. in many girls and women menstruation is a perfectly normal, physiological process. they suffer no discomfort whatever from it. they suffer no pains, no headache, no irritability, they have no admonition of its onset, until they feel the blood oozing or trickling out. but, unfortunately, this is true only of a small percentage. the majority of women have some unpleasant symptoms. some have a headache for a day or two, some complain of a dragging down sensation, some are irritable, feel depressed or quarrelsome; some have no appetite, no ambition, no desire for work or company, while some girls have such severe pains and cramps that they are obliged to go to bed for a day or two and call in medical aid. when the menstruation is very profuse, resembling more a hemorrhage than normal menstruation, it is called _menorrhagia_; if the hemorrhage from the uterus occurs out of the regular menstrual periods, it is called _metrorrhagia_. when the menses are skipped, or when they are so scanty that you can hardly notice any blood, we use the term _amenorrhea_. in a few rare cases the menstruation instead of coming normally from the uterus, comes from some other part of the body, for instance, the nose. some women have a hemorrhage from the nose every month. in some a bloody discharge may come from the breasts. to such a substitute menstruation we apply the term _vicarious menstruation_. such cases, however, are rare, and are mere curiosities. =dysmenorrhea.= i mentioned before that in some girls and women the menses are accompanied by pains and cramps. this affliction, which is the lot of millions of women, and from which men are entirely free, is called _dysmenorrhea_. dysmenorrhea means painful and difficult menstruation. a slight pain or at least a feeling of discomfort is present in most cases of menstruation. but in many cases the pain is so severe, so _excruciating_, that the sufferer, girl or woman, is incapacitated for any work, and must go to bed for a day or two. in some cases the pain is so severe as to necessitate the use of morphine, and as it is a very bad thing to have to give morphine every three or four weeks, every endeavor should be made to find out the cause of the trouble and to remove it. it is a mistake, however, to think that all or even most cases of dysmenorrhea are due to some local trouble, that is, to an inflammation of the ovaries, or a displacement of the womb. many cases of dysmenorrhea are of _nervous_ origin; the cause resides in the central nervous system, and not in the genital organs themselves. it is, therefore, not advisable to undertake any local treatment, unless a competent physician has made a thorough examination and has decided that local treatment is advisable. as to the percentage of dysmenorrhea, a recent statistical examination of , women showed that dysmenorrhea of some degree was present in over one-half, namely, per cent. chapter eight the hygiene of menstruation lack of cleanliness during menstrual period--superstitious beliefs--hygiene of menstruation. the hygiene of menstruation can be expressed in two words: cleanliness and rest. common sense would suggest these two measures, and as far as rest is concerned, many women do rest or take it easy while they are unwell. some are forced to do it, because, if they don't, their dysmenorrhea is worse and the amount of blood they lose is considerably increased. the same cannot be said of cleanliness. due undoubtedly to the superstitious opinions about menstruation, which came over to us from the ages-of-long-ago, menstruation is still considered a _noli-me-tangere_, and women are afraid to bathe, to douche or even to wash during the periods. and if there is any period when a woman needs a douche it is during menstruation. any leucorrhea that a woman may be suffering from becomes aggravated around the periods; the menstrual blood of some women has a decided odor, and if no cleansing douche is taken during four or five days, some of the blood decomposes and acquires a decidedly offensive odor, which can be noticed at some distance and to which some men and women are very susceptible. there are some women who never take a vaginal douche. some consider it a useless and unnecessary luxury; while some orthodox puritanical women consider it an ungodly procedure (forgetting that cleanliness is next to godliness) fit only for women of gay and questionable character. if these orthodox women knew what was good for them--and for their health--they would take a douche at least during menstruation, if at no other time. =cleanliness.= when the girl reaches the age of twelve or thirteen the mother should explain to her the phenomenon of menstruation and the likelihood of its making its appearance in a short time. of course she should be told that there is nothing shameful in it, that when it makes its appearance she should at once tell her mother, who will instruct her what to do. she should be shown the use of sanitary napkins. rags, unless recently washed and kept wrapped up and protected from dust, should not be used. unclean rags may lead to infection. i have no doubt that many cases of leucorrhea date back their origin to unwashed rags. every morning and every evening the girl should wash the external genitals with warm water, or plain soap and water. married women should also take a douche once a day--the douche may consist of two quarts of water in which has been dissolved a teaspoonful of common table salt, or a tablespoonful of borax or boric acid. such things like alum, potassium permanganate, carbolic acid, lactic acid, or tincture of iodine should only be used when there is leucorrhea present and generally only under a physician's directions. bathing is permissible, but it is safe to use only a lukewarm bath. cold tub baths, cold shower baths, as well as ocean and river bathing are best avoided during the period; at least during the first two days. i do not give this as an absolute rule; i know women who bathe and swim in the ocean during their menstrual periods without any injury to themselves, but they are exceptionally robust women; advice in books is for the average person, and it is always best to be on the safe side. =rest.= rest is just as important during menstruation as cleanliness, if not more so. some women as mentioned before feel during their menses just as well as they do at other times, and do not need any special hygiene. but these are in the minority. most girls and women do feel somewhat below par during that period, and it is very important that they take it easy, particularly during the first two days. it is an outrage that many delicate, weak girls and women must stay on their feet all day or work on a machine when they should be at home in bed or lying down on a couch. the womb is congested during the period, is larger and heavier than normal, and it is then that there is often laid the foundation for some future uterine disease, the well-known "womb trouble," or "female disease." it is not necessary that work be given up altogether, but there certainly should be less of it and there should be as much rest as possible. for delicate and sensitive girls it is always best to stay away from school during the first and second days. speaking again of the average and not the exception, it is best that dancing, bicycle riding, horseback riding, rowing, and other athletic exercises be given up altogether during the menses. automobile riding and railroad and carriage travelling prove injurious in some instances, greatly increasing the flow of blood. but these are the exceptions at the other extreme. chapter nine fecundation or fertilization fecundation or fertilization--process of fecundation--when the ovum matures--fate of ovum when no intercourse has taken place--entrance of spermatozoa as result of intercourse--the spermatozoa in search of the ovum--rapidity of movements of spermatozoa--absorption of spermatozoön by ovum--activity of impregnated ovum in finding place to develop--pregnancy in the fallopian tube and its dangers--twin pregnancy--passivity of ovum and activity of spermatozoön foretell the contrasting rôles of the man and the woman throughout life. fecundation and fertilization are important terms to remember. they stand for the most important phenomenon in the living world. without it there would be no plants and no animals, excepting a few very low forms of no importance, and of course no human beings. =fecundation= or fertilization is the process of union of the female germ cell with the male germ cell; speaking of animals, it is the process of union of the egg or ovum of the female with the spermatozoön of the male. when a successful union of these two cells takes place a new being is started. the process of fertilization or fecundation is also known as impregnation and conception. we say, to fertilize (chiefly, however, when speaking of plants) or to fecundate an ovum, or to impregnate a female or woman, and to conceive a child. we say the woman has become impregnated or has conceived. _the process._ the process of fecundation is briefly as follows. an ovum becomes mature, breaks through its graafian follicle in the ovary and is set free. it is caught by the fimbriated or trumpet-shaped extremity of the fallopian tube and, moved by the wave-like motion of the cilia[ ] of the lining of the tube, it begins its travel towards the uterus. if no sexual intercourse has taken place nothing happens. the ovum dries up, or "dies," and either remains somewhere in the tube or womb or is removed from the latter with the menstruation, or mucous discharge. but if intercourse has taken place, thousands and thousands of the male germ cells or spermatozoa enter the uterus through its opening or external os, and begin to travel upward in search of the ovum. the spermatozoa are capable of independent motion, and they travel pretty fast. it is claimed that they can travel an inch in seven minutes, which is pretty fast when you take into consideration that a spermatozoön is only / of an inch long. many of the spermatozoa, weaker than the others, perish on the way, and only a few continue the journey up through the uterus to the tube. when near the little ovum, which remains passive, their movements become more and more rapid, they seem to be attracted to it as if by a magnet, and finally one spermatozoön--just one--the one that happens to be the strongest or the nearest, makes a mad rush at it with its head, perforates it, and is completely swallowed up by it. as soon as the spermatozoön has been absorbed by the ovum, the opening through which it got in becomes tightly sealed up--a coagulation takes place near it--so that no other spermatozoa can enter the ovum. for if two or more spermatozoa got into the same ovum a monstrosity would be apt to be the result. [illustration: spermatozoÖn penetrating the ovum.] what becomes of all the other spermatozoa? they perish. only one is needed. but in the ovum that has been impregnated, and which is now called an embryo, a feverish activity commences. first of all it looks for a fixed place of abode. if the ovum happened to be in the uterus when the spermatozoön met and entered it, it remains there. it becomes attached to some spot in the lining of the womb and there it grows and develops, until at the end of nine months it has reached its full growth, and the womb opens and it comes out into the outside world. if the ovum is in the fallopian tube when the spermatozoön meets it, as is usually the case, it travels down to the uterus, and fixes itself there. =extra-uterine pregnancy.= the tube is a bad place for the ovum to grow and develop, because the tube cannot stretch to such an extent as the uterus can, nor can it furnish the embryo such good nourishment as the uterus can. occasionally, however, it happens that the impregnated ovum remains in the tube and develops there; we then have a case of what we call _extra-uterine_ (outside-of-the-uterus) or _tubal_ pregnancy. extra-uterine pregnancy is also called _ectopic_ pregnancy, or ectopic gestation. unless diagnosed early and operated upon, the woman may be in great danger, for after a few weeks or months the tube generally ruptures. from the moment the spermatozoön has entered the ovum, a process of _division_ or _segmentation_ commences. the ovum, which consists of one cell, divides into two, the two into four, the four into eight, the eight into sixteen, these into thirty-two, these into sixty-four, , , , , , until they can no longer be counted. this mulberry mass of cells arranges itself into two layers, with a cavity in between. and from these layers of cells there develop gradually all organs and tissues, until a fully formed and perfect child is the result. if two ova are impregnated at the same time by two spermatozoa, the result is twins.[ ] i might mention here that the moment the ovum is impregnated, i.e., joined by a spermatozoön, it is called technically a zygote; it is also called embryo, and this name is applied to it until the age of five or six weeks. some use the term embryo up to two or three months. after that, until it is born, it is called fetus. a study of the development of the embryo and the formation of the various organs from one single cell, the ovum, vitalized or fecundated by another single cell, the spermatozoön, is the most wonderful and most fascinating of all studies. but that belongs to the domain of embryology, which is a separate science. what we see in the process of fecundation is a foreshadowing of the future man and woman. the ovum has no motion of its own, it is moved along by the wave-like motions of the lining cells of the fallopian tube, and throughout the entire act it remains passive. the spermatozoön, on the other hand, is in a state of continuous activity from the moment it has been ejaculated by the male until it has reached its goal--the ovum. and as the spermatozoa carry in them the entire impress of the man, and the ova of the woman, they foretell us the fates of the future boy and girl. the woman's rôle throughout life is a passive and the man's an active one. and in choosing a mate the man will always be the active factor or pursuer. so biology seems to tell us. whether education--using the word in its broadest sense--will effect a radical change in the relation of man and woman remains to be seen. a change putting the man and the woman on a footing of _equality_ would be desirable; but whether biological differences having their roots in the remotest antiquity can be obliterated, is a question the answer of which lies in the distant future. as geddes and thomson so well said: the differences [between the sexes] may be exaggerated or lessened, but to obliterate them it would be necessary to have all the evolution over again on a new basis. what was decided among the prehistoric protozoa cannot be annulled by act of parliament. footnotes: [ ] hair-like appendages. [ ] each ovum has one germinal vesicle; occasionally one ovum may contain two germinal vesicles; and from the impregnation of such an ovum a twin pregnancy may result. chapter ten pregnancy period of pregnancy in human female--physiologic process of pregnancy--growth of embryo from moment of conception--pregnant woman provides nourishment for two--her excreting organs must work for two. from the moment the ovum has been fertilized or fecundated by the spermatozoön, the woman is said to be pregnant (or in french _enceinte_. this term was used very frequently and is still used by prudes, who seem to consider the word pregnant vulgar and disgraceful). pregnancy, or the period of gestation, lasts from the moment of conception to the moment that the fetus or child is expelled from the uterus. the period of pregnancy differs very widely in different animals,[ ] but in the human female it lasts nine calendar months or ten lunar months--from about to days. we usually count days from the _first_ day of the _last_ menstruation. a pregnant woman generally wants to know the day of the expected confinement--for this purpose a table is appended to this chapter. if you know the first day of your last menstruation, you will see at a glance when the confinement may be expected. there may be a difference of a few days--either before or after the expected date--but for practical approximate purposes the tables serve very well. a simple way is to count back three months and add seven days. for instance, a woman's last menstruation occurred on april th; counting back three months gives you january th; add seven days and you get january th, the probable date of delivery. the first day of the last menstruation was december th; counting back three months gives you september th; add seven days and you get october th, the probable date of delivery. the presence of a short month like february may be disregarded, as the calculation is not absolutely, but only approximately correct. the period at which the child's movements begin to be felt by the mother is termed quickening. it usually occurs at the middle of the pregnancy, between the th and th week. pregnancy is a normal physiological process; but every active physiological process is apt to be accompanied by disturbances, and there is certainly no process in the animal body in which greater activity, greater changes, go on than during the process of pregnancy. just see what occurs in nine months. the uterus, at first the size of a small pear, reaches a size larger than that of the head of a big man; it does not merely stretch, as some think, but it actually grows enormously in size, the muscular walls of a pregnant uterus being many times thicker than those of a non-pregnant one. they have to be or they would not have the strength to expel the child, when the proper time comes. it is to be borne in mind that the child does not slip out by itself; it is the powerful muscular contractions of the uterus that push it out. if the uterus should refuse to work, if its walls were too thin or too weak, the child could not come out, but would have to be taken out with forceps. still greater changes than in the uterus take place in the child itself. at the moment of conception it is the size of _the head of a pin_; at the moment of birth it weighs from seven to ten pounds; at the moment of conception it is a minute, undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, just a single fertilized cell; at the moment of birth it consists of millions and millions of cells, which have become differentiated into numerous harmoniously working organs, and different tissues, such as brain and nerve tissue, muscular tissue, connective tissue, bone, cartilage, etc., etc. a truly wonderful process. and in the meantime this child, which is biologically a parasite (though it is not a nice name to call it by) draws its sustenance from the mother's blood, and the mother has to provide nourishment for two. and, besides providing nourishment, her excreting organs, her kidneys, must work for two, because her system has also to get rid of the child's excretions. no wonder that the pregnant woman, particularly under an artificial unhealthy mode of living, is subject to many troubles and disturbances. dr. ely's table for calculating the date of confinement ---------+----------------------------------------------- january | october | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |nov. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- february | november | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |dec. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- march | december | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |jan. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- april | january | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |feb. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- may | february | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |mar. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- june | march | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |april ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- july | april | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |may ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- august | may | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |jun. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- september| june | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |july ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- october | july | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |aug. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- november | august | ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |sept. ----------------------------------------------+----- ---------+----------------------------------------------- december | september| ---------+----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------+----- | |oct. ----------------------------------------------+----- explanation.--find in top line the date of menstruation, the figure below will indicate the date when confinement may be expected, _i.e._, if date of menstruation is june st, confinement may be expected on march th, or one day earlier if leap year. footnotes: [ ] for instance, in rabbits one month, in dogs two months, in sheep five months, in cows nine months, in horses eleven months. chapter eleven the disorders of pregnancy smooth course of pregnancy in some women--pregnancy and parturition may be made normal processes through education in true hygiene--morning sickness and its treatment--necessity for medical advice in pernicious vomiting--anorexia--bulimia--aversion towards certain foods--peculiar cravings--tendency to constipation aggravated by pregnancy--dietary measures in constipation--rectal injections in constipation--laxatives--cause of frequent desire to urinate during first two or three and last months of pregnancy-- treatment of frequent urination--cause of piles during pregnancy and their treatment--cause of itching of external genitals during pregnancy and treatment--cause of varicose veins and treatment-- liver spots. we saw that in some women menstruation runs a perfectly smooth course, free from any disagreeable symptoms. the same is true of pregnancy. it is remarkable how smooth and easy the entire course is with some women. many women know that they are pregnant only because of the non-appearance of the monthly periods; and even in the later months they feel no discomfort, attending to all their work and pleasures as usual; and even childbirth is a trifling matter with them. unfortunately the number of such women is not very large, and, because of our confined, unnatural, often exhausting way of living, is becoming smaller and smaller. there is no question that the civilized, refined woman has a harder ordeal in pregnancy and childbirth than has her primitive sister. we confidently hope that this will not be so in the future; we expect the time to come when true hygiene will be an integral part of the education and the life of every girl, and then pregnancy and parturition may become even easier processes than they are in the primitive races. but the time is not yet; and in the meantime our young women have a good deal to go through. =morning sickness.= one of the commonest disorders of pregnancy is the so-called morning sickness. this consists in a feeling of nausea and vomiting, which comes on soon after getting up. the morning sickness makes its first appearance in the third, fourth or fifth week of pregnancy and lasts usually until the end of the third or fourth month. in some women, however, the morning sickness comes on in a few days after impregnation has taken place, and those women diagnose their condition unmistakably by the feeling of slight nausea which they experience on getting up. medicines are as a rule of little use in treating morning sickness. the "disease" can be relieved but not cured. the patient should stay in bed later than usual, should have her breakfast in bed, and then not get up for about half an hour afterward. if the patient is anemic, a good iron preparation may prove useful. =pernicious vomiting.= the vomiting of pregnancy sometimes becomes so severe and uncontrollable that it has been given the name pernicious. the patient is unable to retain any kind of food, not even liquids, vomits almost incessantly, and may become very much run down and exhausted. the vomited matter may contain blood. for this condition a competent physician must be consulted, for in some cases the patient's life may be in danger and an abortion has to be performed. =capricious appetite.= a capricious appetite is very common in pregnancy. the capriciousness may express itself in four different directions: ( ) the patient may lose her appetite, almost altogether, partaking only of very little food, and that with effort. this condition of loss of appetite is called anorexia. ( ) the patient may develop an enormous appetite--what we call bulimia--eating several times as much as she does ordinarily. ( ) she may develop an aversion towards certain articles of food. thus many women develop an aversion towards meat, the mere sight of or talk about meat causing in them a sensation of nausea. ( ) she may show a craving for the most peculiar articles of food and for articles which are not food at all. the craving for sour pickles or sour cabbage is well-known; but some women will eat chalk, sand, and even more peculiar things (for the chalk there may be a reason: the system needs an extra amount of lime and chalk is carbonate of lime). =constipation.= constipation is very common among women in the non-pregnant condition; but in the pregnant it is much more common and much more aggravated. constipation must be guarded against, but the measures must be of a mild nature. if we can relieve the constipation by dietary measures alone, so much the better. the dietary measures should consist in eating plenty of fruit--prunes, apples, figs, dates, etc., and coarse bread and bran. constipating articles, such as cheese or coffee, should be eliminated. where dietary measures alone are insufficient, the patient should take an enema--a rectal injection--twice or three times a week. the enema should consist of about ounces (half a pint) of cold or lukewarm water containing a pinch of salt, and should be retained about ten minutes. instead of water, we may advise an occasional enema of two to four drams of glycerin. or instead of a glycerin enema, a glycerin suppository may be used. if internal laxatives are to be used, only the mildest and non-griping preparations should be employed the best are: a good mineral oil--one or two tablespoonfuls on going to bed, or fluid extract of cascara sagrada, one-half to one teaspoonful on going to bed. it is very important, whatever we use, _not_ to use the same thing for a long time. if the same drug or measure is used without any change, the bowels get used to it and cease to respond and we have to use larger and larger doses. in fighting constipation we must therefore constantly change our weapons: one night we use mineral oil, the next night cascara sagrada, the third night an enema, the fourth night a glycerin injection or suppository, the fifth night perhaps nothing at all, the sixth night a blue mass pill, the seventh morning a seidlitz powder, then a rest for a day or two, then a repetition of the same measures. but always remember: first try to get along without any drugs at all. many cases can get relieved of their constipation by a proper change in diet alone. and where this is impossible, then use mild laxatives and use them interchangeably. =toothache= is not uncommon in pregnancy, and a pregnant woman should have her teeth put in first-class condition. =difficulty in urination.= pregnant women often suffer with frequency and urgency of urination. some have to urinate, while they are on their feet, every few minutes. this is due to the fact that during the first two or three months of pregnancy the uterus is not only enlarged but is also _anteverted_, that is _turned forward_ and _presses down_ upon the bladder. when the woman is lying down the pressure on the bladder is relieved, and she does not have to urinate frequently. this pressure lasts only the first two or three months, because after that the growing womb lifts itself out of the pelvis, rising into the abdominal cavity; it is no longer anteverted and the pressure on the bladder is relieved. during the last months of the pregnancy there is again frequent urination, because then the heavy uterus sinks again into the pelvic cavity and presses upon the bladder. the treatment for this frequent urination consists in wearing a well fitting abdominal belt or corset, which raises the uterus and prevents pressure on the bladder. sometimes a pessary which prevents the anteversion is efficient. in all cases lying down and resting is useful. in short, keeping off one's feet is the most efficient remedy for the treatment of frequent urination in pregnant women. =hemorrhoids= (piles). on account of the pressure of the womb on the rectum, and also on account of the constipation which is so frequent during pregnancy, hemorrhoids or piles are quite frequent among pregnant women. the treatment of hemorrhoids consists in removing the cause: wearing a well-fitting abdominal belt, and relieving the constipation. injecting into the rectum about half a pint of cold water three times a day is very useful. for the intolerable itching sometimes present in hemorrhoids the following ointment will be found very grateful: menthol, grains; calomel, grains; bismuth subnitrate, grains; resorcin, grains; oil of cade, grains; cold cream, one ounce. the piles (the hemorrhoids) are to be well cleansed with hot water, and this ointment is to be well smeared over; a little is pushed into the rectum, and a piece of cotton is put over the anus. this protects the clothes from soiling and keeps the medicine in place for a longer time. instead of ointment a cocoa butter suppository may be used. a suppository of the following composition is good: powdered nutgalls, grains; oil of cade, drops; resorcin, grain; bismuth subnitrate, grains; cocoa butter, grains. one such suppository to be inserted three times a day. the ointment and the suppository given above, if used in conjunction with the proper regulation of the bowels, will not only relieve but will cure most cases of hemorrhoids caused by pregnancy. =itching of the vulva. pruritus vulvæ.= itching of the external genitals during pregnancy is not uncommon. this may be due to the fact that the vulva is generally congested and swollen during pregnancy or it may be caused by an increased leucorrheal discharge. the itching is sometimes very severe, and if the patient scratches with her nails and produces bleeding, she may cause an infection of the parts. the patient should be cautioned against scratching; she should try simple measures to relieve the itching. a small towel or gauze compress wrung out of boiling water and applied to the vulva several times a day, followed by a free application of stearate of zinc powder is often efficient. if it is not, the following salve may be tried: carbolic acid, grains; menthol, grains; resorcin, grains; zinc oxide, dram; and white vaseline, one ounce. in very severe cases the vulva should be painted with a solution of silver nitrate, grains to ounce of distilled water. =varicose veins.= in most women during pregnancy the veins in the legs become somewhat enlarged. this is due to the pressure of the womb, which interferes with the circulation. if the veins become very prominent, swollen and tortuous, they are called varicose. this condition should be prevented, because it often and to some degree always persists permanently even after the pregnancy is over. the best precautionary measure is for the woman to wear a well-fitting abdominal belt or maternity corset, which supports the womb and does not permit it to sink too low into the pelvis. if varicose veins have been permitted to develop, the woman should wear well-fitting rubber stockings, or at least have the legs bandaged with woven elastic bandages. the bandage must be applied by a competent person, uniformly and not too tightly. constipation has also a bad effect in making varicose veins worse; the bowels should therefore also be looked after. in some severe cases all measures are of little value unless the patient at the same time stays in bed or on a couch for a few days, with the legs elevated. swelling of the feet should be at once attended to. it may be a trifling matter due only to pressure of the womb; then again it may be due to some kidney trouble. the physician will determine the true cause and prescribe the appropriate treatment. =liver spots. chloasma.= in some cases irregular brownish patches or splotches develop on the skin around the breasts, on the sides, or on the face. these patches are known popularly as liver spots or in medical language as _chloasma_. nothing can be done for them, but they generally disappear after the pregnancy is over. a few patches here and there may remain permanently. chapter twelve when to engage a physician necessity for the pregnant woman immediately placing herself under care of physician and remaining under his care during entire period. the disorders and disturbances described above are, with the exception of pernicious vomiting, of a minor nature. they are annoying, may cause considerable discomfort and suffering, but they do not endanger the life of the woman or of the child. occasionally, however, fortunately not very often, the kidneys become affected, and for this condition treatment by a physician is absolutely necessary. in fact, the correct and safe thing for a woman to do is to consult a physician as soon as she knows she is pregnant, and have him take care of her during the entire pregnancy. some women engage a physician during the eighth or ninth month and this is decidedly wrong, because it may then be too late to correct certain troubles which if taken at the outset could have been easily cured; while many troubles in the hands of a competent physician can be prevented altogether. i must therefore reiterate: every woman should engage a physician from the beginning of her pregnancy, or at least during the third or fourth and certainly not later than the fifth month. he will examine the urine every month and make sure that the kidneys are in order, he will make sure that the child is in a normal position, and will prevent a host of other ills. [illustration: position of the child in the womb.] this is not a special treatise on the management of pregnancy, and therefore minute details are out of place. besides, to the details the physician will attend. but some hints regarding diet and general hygiene will prove useful. if everything is satisfactory, if there is no severe vomiting, kidney trouble, etc., the usual mixed diet may continue. the only changes i would make are the following: drink plenty of hot water during entire course of pregnancy: a glass or two in the morning, two or three glasses in the afternoon, the same at night. from six to twelve glasses may be consumed. also plenty of milk, buttermilk and fermented milk. plenty of fruit and vegetables. meat only once a day. for the tendency to constipation, whole wheat bread, rye bread, bread baked of bran or bran with cream. as to exercise, either extreme must be avoided. some women think that as soon as they become pregnant, they must not move a muscle; they are to be put in a glass case, and kept there to the day of delivery. other women, on the other hand, of the ultramodern type, indulge in strenuous exercise and go out on long fatiguing walks up to the last day. either extreme is injurious. the right way is moderate exercise, and short, non-fatiguing walks. bathing may be kept up to the day of delivery. but warm baths, particularly during the last two or three months, are preferable to cold baths. chapter thirteen the size of the fetus approximately correct measurements and weight of fetus at end of each month of pregnancy. men and women are always interested to know how large the fetus is and how far it is developed during the various months of pregnancy. absolutely exact measurements cannot be given, but the following approximate measurements are correct: [illustration: . embryo between one and two weeks old. . embryo about four weeks old. . embryo about six weeks old. (illustrations are double the actual size.)] at the end of the first month (lunar) it is about the size of a hazelnut. weighs about grains. at the end of the second month it is the size of a small hen's egg. the internal organs are partially formed, it begins to assume a human shape, but the sex cannot yet be differentiated. up to the fifth or sixth week it does not differ much in appearance from the embryos of other animals. at the end of the third month it is the size of a large goose egg; it is about two to three and a half inches long. weighs about one ounce. at the end of the fourth month the fetus is between six and seven inches long and weighs about five ounces. at the end of the fifth month the fetus is between seven and eleven inches long, and weighs eight to ten ounces. at the end of the sixth month it is eleven to thirteen inches long and weighs one and one-half to two pounds. if born, is capable of living a few minutes, and it is reported that some six months' children have been incubated. at the end of the seventh month the fetus is from thirteen to fifteen or sixteen inches long and weighs about three pounds. is capable of independent life, but must be brought up with great care, usually in an incubator. at the end of the eighth month the length is from fifteen to seventeen inches, and weight from three to five pounds. at the end of the ninth month the length of the fetus is from sixteen to seventeen and one-half inches, and weight from five to seven pounds. at the end of the tenth lunar month (at birth) the length of the child is from seventeen to nineteen inches and the weight from six to twelve pounds; the average is seven and a quarter, but there are full term children weighing less than six pounds and more than twelve; but these are exceptions. chapter fourteen the afterbirth (placenta) and cord how the afterbirth develops--bag of waters--umbilical cord--the navel--fetus nourished by absorption--fetus breathes by aid of placenta--no nervous connection between mother and child. whatever part of the womb the ovum attaches itself to is stimulated to intense activity, to growth. numerous bloodvessels begin to grow and that part of the lining membrane with its numerous bloodvessels constitute the placenta, or as it is commonly called _afterbirth_, because it comes out _after_ the _birth_ of the child. from the placenta there is also reflected a membrane over the ovum, so as to give it additional protection. that membrane forms a complete bag over the fetus; this bag becomes filled with liquid, so that the fetus floats freely in a bag of waters; this bag bursts only during childbirth. the fetus is not attached close to the placenta, but is, so to say, suspended from it by a _cord_, which is called the _umbilical cord_. when the child is born, the umbilical cord is cut, and the scar or depression in the abdomen where the umbilical cord was attached constitutes the navel or umbilicus (in slang language--button or belly button). the umbilical cord consists of two arteries and one vein embedded in a gelatin like substance and enveloped by a membrane, and it is through the umbilical cord that the blood from the placenta is brought to and carried from the fetus. the blood of the fetus and the blood of the mother do not mix; the bloodvessels are separated by thin walls, and it is through these thin walls that the fetal blood receives the ingredients it needs from the mother's blood. in other words, it receives its nourishment from the mother by _absorption_ or _osmosis_. the blood from the placenta also furnishes the fetal blood with oxygen, so that the fetus breathes by the aid of the placenta, and not through its own lungs. it is well to remember that there is absolutely no nervous connection between mother and child. there are no nerves whatever in the umbilical cord, so that the nervous systems of the fetus and of the mother are entirely distinct and separate. and this will explain why certain nervous impressions and shocks received by the mother are not readily transmitted to the child. it is only through changes in the mother's blood that the fetus can be influenced. as will be seen in a later chapter we are skeptical about "maternal impressions." chapter fifteen lactation or nursing no perfect substitute for mother's milk--when nursing is injurious to mother and child--modified milk--artificial foods--care essential in selecting wet nurse--suckling child benefits mother--reciprocal affection strengthened by nursing--sexual feelings while nursing--alcoholics are injurious--attention to condition of nipples during pregnancy essential--treatment of sunken nipples--treatment of tender nipples--treatment of cracked nipples--how to stop the secretion of milk when necessary-- menstruation while nursing--pregnancy in the nursing woman. every mother should nurse her child--if she can. there is no perfect substitute for mother's milk. there is only one excuse for a mother not nursing--that is when she has no milk, or when the quality of the milk is so poor that the child does not thrive on it, or when the mother is run down, is threatened with or is suffering with tuberculosis, etc. in such cases the nursing would prove injurious to both mother and child. when the mother cannot nurse the child, it should be brought up artificially on modified cow's milk. formulas for modified milk have been worked out for every month of the child's life, and if the formulas are carefully followed, and the bottle and nipples are properly sterilized, the child should have no trouble, but should thrive and grow like on good mother's milk. if the child is sickly or delicate and does not thrive on modified cow's milk or on the other artificial foods, such as horlick's malted milk, or nestlé's food, then a wet nurse may become necessary. but before engaging a wet nurse great care should be taken to make sure that she is healthy, that the age of her child is approximately the same as the age of the child which she is about to nurse, and particularly that she is free from any syphilitic taint. one, two or more wassermann tests should be made to settle the question definitely. mothers should bear in mind that suckling the child is good not only for the child, but for the mother as well. lactation helps the _involution_ of the uterus: the uterus of a nursing mother returns more quickly and more perfectly to its normal ante-pregnant condition than the uterus of the mother who cannot or will not nurse her child. it is asserted that the reciprocal affection between mother and child is greater in cases in which the child suckled its mother's breast. this is quite likely. it is also asserted that the nursing mother transmits certain traits to its child, which the non-nursing mother cannot. this is merely a hypothesis without any scientific proof. on the other hand, the statement that many women experience decidedly pleasurable sexual feelings while nursing seems to be well substantiated. that the mother who nurses her child should partake of sufficient nourishment goes without saying. but the advice often given to nursing mothers to partake of beer, ale or wine is a bad one. it is a question if a mother partaking of considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages may not transmit the taste for alcohol to her children. no, alcoholics should be left alone, but milk, eggs, meat, fruit and vegetables should be partaken of in abundance. =preparing the nipples.= for the infant to be able to nurse properly the nipples of the breast must be in good condition. if the nipples are sunken, depressed, it is torture for the child to nurse. it uses up a lot of energy uselessly, becomes exhausted, and gets very little milk; while if the nipples be tender or cracked the process of nursing is a torture for the mother. it is therefore necessary to attend to the nipples in due time--to begin at the fifth or sixth month is not too early. if the nipples are sufficiently prominent, little need be done for them except to wash them with a little boric acid solution (one teaspoonful of boric acid to a glass of water) occasionally, and now and then to rub in a little petrolatum, plain or borated. but if the nipples are sunken so that they are below the surface of the breast, or if they are only slightly above the surface of the breast, they must be treated. gentle traction must be made on them with the fingers three or four times a day. there are only a few cases where persistent manipulation will not develop the nipple and make it stand out prominently. if the nipple is tender it should be washed two or three times a day with a mixture of alcohol and water; one part of alcohol to three parts of water is sufficient. in washing the nipple with this diluted alcohol it should be dried and a little petrolatum or vaseline rubbed in. this done two or three times a day during the last month or two of the pregnancy will generally produce a good healthy nipple. =the treatment of cracked nipples.= if the care of the nipple has been neglected, and it develops cracks or fissures so that the nursing of the child causes the mother severe pain, the nursing should be done through a nipple shield, and in the meantime between the nursings the nipple should be rubbed with the following preparation, which is excellent and which i can fully recommend: thymol iodide, ½ dram; olive oil, ½ ounce. this should be applied every hour to the nipple and covered with a little cotton; before each nursing, however, it must be well washed off with warm water or warm boric acid solution. when the nipples are cracked, the infant's lips should also before nursing be carefully wiped out with boric acid solution. for the baby's mouth contains bacteria which while harmless in themselves may if they get into the cracks of the nipple set up an inflammation of the breast or "mastitis" and cause an abscess. if the cracks are excruciatingly painful, as they sometimes are, it is necessary to give the one breast a rest for twenty-four hours and have the child nurse at the other until the cracks have partially healed. =when it is necessary to dry up the breasts.= in case of the death of the child, or if the mother for some other reason finds herself unable to nurse, such as in cases where there is absolutely no nipple, instead of the prominence of the nipple there being a deep depression, it becomes necessary to stop the secretion of the milk, or as it is said in common parlance, "to dry up the breasts." in former days, not so very long ago, and the practice is still common enough to call attention to it and to condemn it, the breasts used to be tightly bandaged, or they used to be pumped every few hours. the first causes unnecessary pain and trouble, while the second procedure, the pumping, does exactly the reverse to what it is intended to do. instead of drying up the breasts it keeps up the secretion. the best thing to do in a case like that is to leave the breasts alone, not to pump them, but just gently support them with a bandage and then in three or four days the secretion of the milk will gradually disappear. there is some discomfort the first twenty-four or forty-eight hours, but if left alone the discomfort is less than if the breasts are manipulated, bandaged or pumped. =menstruation or pregnancy while nursing.= many women do not menstruate and do not become pregnant while they are nursing. some women will not conceive, no matter how long they may nurse the child--a year or two or longer. and some women take advantage of this fact, and in order to avoid another child they will keep up the nursing as long as possible. in egypt and other oriental countries where our means for the prevention of conception are unknown, it is no rare sight to see a child three or four years old interrupting his work or his play and running up to suckle his mother's breast. but not all women have this good luck. some women (about fifty per cent.) begin to menstruate in the sixth month of lactation, while some become pregnant even before they begin to menstruate. it only too often happens that a woman considering lactation her safeguard omits to use any precautions and finds herself, to her great discomfiture, in a pregnant condition. when a nursing woman discovers that she is pregnant she should give up nursing at once. the milk is apt to become of poor quality, but even where this is not the case, it is too much for a woman to feed one child in the uterus and one at the breast. chapter sixteen abortion and miscarriage definition of word abortion--definition of word miscarriage-- spontaneous abortion--induced abortion--therapeutic abortion-- criminal abortion--missed abortion--habitual abortion--syphilis as cause of abortion and miscarriage--dangers of abortion-- abortion an evil. the word abortion, used somewhat loosely, signifies the premature expulsion of the fetus; the expulsion of the fetus from the womb before it is viable, i.e., before it is capable of living independently. used in a stricter sense, the word abortion is applied to the expulsion of the fetus up to the end of the th week; to the expulsion of the fetus between the th and the th week the term miscarriage is applied; and when the expulsion of the fetus takes place after the th week, but before full term, we use the term premature labor. the laity does not like the term abortion, as it is under the impression that the term always signifies criminal abortion; it therefore prefers to use the term miscarriage ("miss"), regardless of the time at which the expulsion of the fetus takes place. when an abortion (or miscarriage) takes place by itself, without any outside aid, we call it _spontaneous abortion_. when it is brought on by artificial means, whether by the woman herself or by somebody else, we call it _induced_ abortion. when an abortion is induced for the purpose of saving the woman's life, we call it _therapeutic_ abortion; this is considered perfectly legal and proper. but where an abortion is induced merely to save an unmarried mother's reputation, or because the married mother is too poor or too weak to have any more children, or is reluctant to have any (or any more) for any other reason, it is called _criminal_ or _illegal_ abortion, and, if discovered, subjects the mother and the person who produced the abortion to severe punishment. when the fetus for some reason dies in its mother's womb, it is generally expelled within a few hours or days. sometimes this is not the case, and the dead fetus is retained for several weeks, or months or even years; to such a phenomenon we apply the term _missed_ abortion. some women suffer from what might be called the abortion habit; they can hardly ever carry a child to full term, but lose it in the same month or even in the same week of gestation during each pregnancy; we call this habitual abortion. and this habitual abortion may be independent of disease, such, for instance, as syphilis. the terms _threatened_, _imminent_ and _inevitable_ abortion require no further explanation. =the causes of abortion.= outside of the abortion habit, which may be due partly to heredity or be caused by a diseased condition of the lining membrane of the uterus, the principal cause of abortion and miscarriage is syphilis. and when a woman has had two or three or four or more miscarriages in succession we generally assume the cause to be syphilis, and in most cases the assumption will be correct. when an abortion is performed by an experienced physician, with the observance of the utmost cleanliness (asepsis and antisepsis), then the abortion is accompanied with very little or no danger; but when performed carelessly, by incompetent, non-conscientious physicians and midwives, the operation is fraught with great danger to the patient's health or to her very life. and abortion is a great cause of premature death and chronic invalidism among women. and as long as the people will remain ignorant of the proper means of regulating their offspring, so long will abortion thrive. while i recognize that there are cases in which the performance of an abortion is perfectly justifiable from a moral standpoint, for instance in cases of rape or where the mother is unmarried, nevertheless abortion must be recognized as an evil, a necessary evil now and then, but an evil, nevertheless. it is never to be undertaken lightly, or to be considered in a frivolous spirit; and it is the duty of all serious-minded and humanitarian men and women to do everything in their power to remove those conditions which make abortion necessary and unavoidable. chapter seventeen prenatal care meaning of the term--misleading information by quasi-scientists-- exaggerated ideas regarding prenatal care--nervous connection between mother and child--cases under author's observation--effects on offspring--advice to pregnant women--germ-plasm of chronic alcoholic--a glass of wine and the spermatozoa--false statements-- cases of violence and accidents during pregnancy. by prenatal care we understand the care taken during pregnancy before the child is born. used in a wider sense the term includes the care which both parents should take of themselves even before the child is conceived. of course the father and the mother should be in the best possible physical and mental condition during the time of conception and even before conception, and the mother should take the very best care of herself--she should be in good health and as calm a spirit as possible during the entire period of gestation. for the general health and condition of the mother does influence the child. and still i feel impelled to say something which may meet with violent opposition in some quarters. the trouble is, there are too many half-baked scientists in our midst. they spread misleading information and the public at large is too apt to take every statement that has a quasi-scientific seal for something absolute, for something positive, for something that admits of no exceptions. i have seen so much misery caused by wrong prenatal care teaching and by the foolish, exaggerated ideas on the subject, that i consider it my duty to say something in order to counteract those erroneous notions. i consider it my special mission to destroy error, mysticism and superstition. and the prenatal care teaching as imparted by some unfortunately partakes of all three of the above. of course, i repeat, the mother should try to be in the best possible condition while she is carrying the child. nevertheless, it is foolish to imagine if the mother is not quite well, or is worried about something, or has a fit of anger, that it is invariably going to be reflected on the child. the child, as we know, has no nervous connection whatever with the mother, and it is only very violent or prolonged shocks that are apt to have an injurious influence. i know of children that were carried by their mothers in anger and in anguish from the day of conception to the day of delivery. and still they were born perfectly normal. i know of a child whose mother was suffering the most hellish tortures of jealousy during the entire period of pregnancy, and still the child was born perfectly healthy, perfectly normal, and is now a splendid specimen of manhood. i know children whose mothers went through severe attacks of pneumonia, typhoid fever, etc., and still they were born perfectly healthy and perfectly normal. i know children whose mothers were using every means to abort them, took all kinds of internal medicines until they were deathly sick, and still they were born perfectly healthy and normal. i know children whose mothers tried to abort them by mechanical means, who went to abortionists who made one or more attempts to induce the abortion--i know even cases where the mothers bled as a result of such attempts--and nevertheless, the children were born perfectly healthy, developed normally physically and mentally. of course these are not things that i would advise women to do or to undergo. i would not advise pregnant women to worry, to be sick, to take poisonous medicines or to make attempts at abortion, but i merely bring up these points to emphasize to my readers not to take the necessity of prenatal care in too absolute a sense, and not to worry themselves unnecessarily if the conditions during their pregnancy are not all that could be desired. the child is not necessarily going to be affected. the condition of the germ-plasms, i.e., the condition of the ovum and the spermatozoa at the time of conception is more important than all subsequent care during gestation. as there are foolish people who possess a peculiar knack of misinterpreting and misunderstanding everything, i wish to emphasize that hygiene during pregnancy should not be neglected. everything possible should be done to put the mother in the best possible physical and mental condition. all i want to say is that it is bad to be insane on the subject, that it is bad to take things in an absolute sense, and that it is bad to exaggerate. you will often hear it said that a child that was conceived when the father was in an exhilarated condition is apt to be epileptic, or nervous, or insane, and what not. this is also to be taken with a grain of salt. a chronic alcoholic has a defective germ-plasm, and his children are apt to be defective. but a glass of wine at a wedding banquet cannot affect the previously formed spermatozoa. and the statements about children being born defective or developing defectively because their fathers took an occasional glass of wine are unworthy of serious consideration; are unworthy of any consideration. in connection with the above the reports of some cases of _violence_ and _accidents_ during pregnancy which, in spite of their severity, did not affect the children, will prove of interest. a delicate little woman missed her periods. she was sure she couldn't be more than two weeks over-due. and this is what she did. for five nights in succession she took hot mustard baths and she took them so hot that each time she nearly fainted and came out from them like a broiled lobster. no effect. she then took a box of pills which cost her two dollars. no effect except causing diarrhea. she then took two boxes of capsules which upset her stomach and made her fearfully nauseous. no other effect. she then ate one-half a colocynth, which made her terribly sick, causing a bloody diarrhea. she had to stay in bed for three or four days. she then took burning vaginal injections with some ipecac in them. no effect except making her feel raw so that she needed large amounts of cold cream. she then took secale cornutum and radix gossypii. no effect except giving her a headache, making her sick to her stomach and completely destroying her appetite, so that within a very short time she lost nearly ten pounds. she was then told that long walks might be efficient. she took walks of six and seven miles at a time, coming home more dead than alive. no effect. she then heard that jumping off a table is a very efficient means. she did it a dozen times in succession so that she was completely fagged out and out of breath. eight and a half months later she gave birth to a perfectly healthy, well-formed boy weighing eight pounds. the following case was reported by brillaud-laujardiere. a farmer who was responsible for the condition of a servant of his household conceived the idea of riding horseback with her in order to bring about an abortion, and pushing her off when the horse was running at great speed. this he repeated several times. the woman gave birth to a perfectly normal infant at full term. hofmann reports that another farmer, under similar circumstances, brutally kicked the woman in the abdomen repeatedly until she lost consciousness. the pregnancy continued to full term notwithstanding. in another case of hofmann's, a woman allowed a heavy door to fall upon her, but the pregnancy was not affected. dr. guibout relates that a german woman, living with her husband in california, being pregnant, wished to return to munich, her home-town, to be delivered. the train in which she travelled through panama collided with another train. threatened abortion required her to take a rest. she took a steamer and after a very rough passage reached portsmouth. from there she went to paris. here she fell down a flight of stairs in the hotel where she was stopping. again she was threatened with abortion, but after a rest was in good condition and continued her journey. she finally reached home, and was delivered at full term of a normal infant. vibert reports the case of a woman who was in a train accident which injured her severely, killed two of her children, but did not affect her pregnancy. she was delivered at the proper time of a normal baby. chapter eighteen the menopause or change of life time of menopause--cause of suffering during menopause-- reproductive function and sexual function not synonymous-- increased libido during menopause--change of life in men. in the chapter on menstruation i referred briefly to the menopause. i will consider it here somewhat more in detail. the menopause, also called the climacteric, and in common language "change of life," is the period at which woman ceases to menstruate. the average age at which this occurs is about forty-eight. but while some women continue to menstruate up to the age of fifty, fifty-two, and even fifty-five, others cease to menstruate at the age of forty-five or even forty-two. between forty-four and fifty-two are the normal limits. anything before or beyond that is exceptional. just as the beginning of menstruation may set in without any trouble of any kind, and just as some women have not the slightest unpleasant symptoms during the entire period of their menstrual life, so the menopause occurs in some women without any trouble, physical or psychic. the periods between the menses become perhaps a little longer, or a little irregular, the menstrual flow becomes more and more scanty, then one or several periods may be skipped altogether, and the menopause is permanently established. many women, however, the majority probably, suffer considerably during the transitional year or years of the menopause. symptoms are both of a physical and of a psychic character, but the psychic symptoms predominate. there may be headache, capricious appetite, or complete loss of appetite, considerable loss of flesh, or on the contrary very sudden and rapid putting on of fat, great irritability, insomnia, profuse perspiration; hot flashes throughout the body, and particularly in the face, which make the face "blushing" and congested, are particularly frequent. then the woman's character may be completely changed. from gentle and submissive she may become pugnacious and quarrelsome. jealousy without any grounds for it may be one of the disagreeable symptoms, making both the wife and the husband very unhappy. in some exceptional cases a genuine neurosis or psychosis may develop. =cause of suffering during menopause.= it is my conviction, and i have had this conviction for many years, that many, if not most, of the distressing symptoms of the menopause are due, not to the menopause itself, but to the wrong ideas about this period that have prevailed for so many centuries. we know the influence of the mind over the body, and the pernicious effect which wrong ideas may exercise over our feelings. the generally prevalent opinion among women, and men for that matter, and not only of the laity but unfortunately of the medical profession as well, is that the menopause is the end of woman's sexual life. every woman is laboring under the erroneous impression that with the establishment of the menopause, with the cessation of the menses, she ceases to be a woman, and as she does not become a man, she becomes something of a neuter being, neither woman nor man. and she has the idea that after the menopause she can have no further attraction for her husband or for other men. naturally such an idea has a very depressing effect on any human being. any human being fights to the last to retain all its human functions, especially the function which is considered as important as is the sexual function. =reproductive function and sexual function not synonymous.= of course with the permanent cessation of the menses the woman's _reproductive_ function is at an end. but the reproductive function is _not_ synonymous with the sexual function, i must insist again and again, and naturally until this erroneous idea is dispelled much unnecessary misery will be the lot of our women. if women in general will learn that with the establishment of the menopause they do _not_ cease to be women, if they will learn that the sexual desire in women lasts long beyond the cessation of the menopause, many women being as passionate at sixty as at thirty, if they will learn that their attractiveness or non-attractiveness to the male sex does not depend upon the menopause, but upon their general condition, if they will learn that many women at fifty and sixty are much more attractive than some women at half that age, they will not take the onset of the menopause so tragically and they will thereby avoid the greater part of their mental and emotional suffering. the actual atrophy of the ovaries, uterus, external genitals and the breasts can, of course, not be prevented, but that atrophy is a slow and gradual process, and is not in itself the cause of the various distressing symptoms that we have enumerated. the treatment of the menopause, if the symptoms are at all disagreeable, or distressing, should be in the hands of a competent physician. a little wholesome advice may be more efficient than gallons of medicine and bushels of pills. in general the woman should try to lead as calm and peaceful a life as possible. warm baths daily are beneficial, constipation should be guarded against, hot vaginal douches are often efficient against the disagreeable flushes, and last, but not least, the husband should during this critical period be doubly kind and doubly considerate of his wife. it is during the years between forty-five and fifty-five that the wife is most in need of her husband's sympathy and support. =increased libido during menopause.= there is one rather delicate symptom which i must not pass unmentioned. some women during the years while the menopause is being established, and for some years after the menopause, experience a greatly heightened sexual desire. in some cases this increased libido is normal, that is, no other pathologic symptoms or local conditions can be discovered. in some cases the increased libido is distinctly due to local congestion, congestion of the ovaries, the uterus, etc. in some cases, i can distinctly testify, it is psychic or autosuggestive. because the woman thinks, and believes that other people think, that she is soon going to lose all her sexuality, she unconsciously works herself up into a sexual passion which sometimes may be of long duration and may even lead to disastrous results. what to do in such cases? where the woman's libido is normal or near normal, then naturally it should be normally gratified. but if the libido seems to be abnormally strong and the demands for sexual gratification are too frequent, then the woman should be treated and sexual gratification should not be indulged in, because in such cases, as a rule, sexual gratification only adds fuel to the fire, and the woman's demands may become more and more frequent, more and more insistent. in exceptional cases it may even reach the intensity of nymphomania. in such cases the aid of a tactful physician is indispensable. change of life in men to people not familiar with the subject it sounds rather strange to speak of "change of life" in men. man, possessing no menstrual function, cannot have any menopause, but still sexologists and psychologists who have studied the subject carefully are convinced that between the ages of forty-five and fifty-five men also undergo a certain change which may be spoken of as the change of life or the male climacteric. they become irritable, capricious, very susceptible to feminine charms, are apt to fall in love, and in many the sexual instinct is greatly increased. as in women, this increase of the sexual desire is sometimes due to pathologic causes, such as an inflamed prostate gland--in other cases it is of psychic origin. just as a man should be particularly kind and considerate to his wife during her menopause, so the wife, understanding that her husband is going through a critical period, will also increase her tact, patience and consideration. chapter nineteen the habit of masturbation definition of masturbation--its injurious effects in girls as compared with boys--married life of the girl masturbator-- necessity for change in injurious attitude of parents who discover the habit--common-sense treatment of the habit--how to prevent formation of habit--parents' advice to children--hot baths as factor in masturbation--other physical factors--mental masturbation and its effects. masturbation or self-abuse is a term applied to a bad habit which consists in handling and rubbing the genitals. it is a bad habit because it is apt to injure the health and future development of the girl. the more frequently it is practiced, the more injurious it is. it is more injurious than when practiced by boys, because the effects are usually more permanent. girls who indulge in the habit of masturbation to excess not only weaken themselves, become anemic and get a dingy, pimply complexion, but they lose their desire for normal sexual relations when they grow up, and are unable to derive any pleasure from the sexual act when they get married. in fact, many girls who masturbated excessively get a strong aversion to the normal sexual act, and their married life is an unhappy one. their husbands often have to ask for a divorce. fortunately, the habit is much less widespread among girls than it is among boys. while about ninety per cent. of all boys--nine out of every ten--masturbate more or less, only about ten or at most twenty per cent. of girls are addicted to this habit. but whatever the percentage may be, the habit is an injurious one, and if you value your health, your beauty and proper growth and mental development, you should not indulge in it. if you are already indulging, if you are used to handling your genitals, if a bad companion has initiated you into the habit, you should give it up. and mothers should watch their children, guard them against developing the habit, and do everything possible to cure them of it, if prevention comes too late. but while as you see i do not deny the evil effects of masturbation, it is necessary to state that a great change has taken place in our opinions on the subject, and it is but right that parents should know of this change of opinion among the medical profession, particularly among those who specialize in sexology. =wrong behavior of parents.= when parents make the "awful" discovery that their child is fondling its genitals or is indulging in masturbation, they feel as if a great calamity had befallen them. they could not feel worse if they learned that the child was a thief or a pyromaniac. imbued with the medieval idea of the "sinfulness" of the habit, as well as its injuriousness, they begin to scold the child, to frighten it, to make it believe that it is doing something terrible, that it has disgraced them and itself; and they try to persuade it that, unless it stops immediately, the most direful consequences are awaiting it. the results of this mode of procedure are disastrous--much more so than is the masturbation itself. often the scolding and the exposure of the child are done in the presence of others. this implants in the poor girl a sullen resentment that only makes it more difficult for it to break the habit. when the child is brought to the physician, you can see by its behavior, by its downcast looks, by its sulkiness, by its attempt to refrain from tears, and other signs, that it regards the physician in exactly the same light as a youthful criminal regards the judge before whom he has been brought for trial. it is time, high time, that this silly and injurious attitude toward a practice, which is very common, be radically changed. it is time that parents and physicians learn that the injuriousness of the habit has been greatly, grossly exaggerated. it is time that they know that the vast majority of boys and girls get over the habit without being much, or any, the worse for it. the knowledge of this fact will not only save them and the children much needless anguish and suffering, but will make it much easier to deal with the latter, make it much easier to get them divorced from the habit. if we look at the matter in a sensible, common-sense way, and do not tell the child caught in the practice that it has done something disgracefully vicious and criminal, but speak to it kindly and tell it that it is doing something that may injure it greatly, that may interfere with its future mental and physical health and development, then we shall have far greater success in our endeavors to break the boy or the girl of the habit of masturbation. as i have said in another place: "in my opinion, stigmatizing even the most moderate indulgence in masturbation as a vice has a deleterious effect upon the people who so indulge and makes it harder for them to break off the habit. every thinking physician and sexologist can tell you that picturing the masturbatory habit in too lurid colors and stigmatizing it with too strong epithets has, as a rule, the contrary effect to the one expected. the victims of the habit consider themselves degraded, irretrievably lost. they lose their self-respect, and it is, on account of that, harder for them to break themselves of the habit." we shall accomplish a good deal more with our youthful and older patients if we leave alone, altogether, the moral side of the question--if there be any moral side to it--and emphasize the physical injuriousness of the habit. we do not want to diminish the self-respect of our boys and girls, we want to increase it; and we can not do this if we make them believe that a masturbator is a vicious criminal. inspire your patients with confidence, tell them that indulgence in the habit jeopardizes their future growth, both physical and mental, their health and happiness, and you will find them easier to control. i am not trying to minimize the danger of masturbation, for, if indulged in from an early age and to great excess, the results _may_ be disastrous. but, even if i were to minimize the evil consequences, that would be less of a sin than to exaggerate them the way it has been done for so many years, by so many people in the profession and out of it. the evil results of exaggerating the influence of masturbation have been so great in the past that, if now the pendulum were to swing to the other extreme, i am sure it would not be a bad thing at all. to deal with the subject of the _treatment_ of masturbation belongs to a medical treatise. but, a few remarks on how to prevent children from acquiring the habit of masturbation will not be out of place. =prevention of the habit of masturbation.= the keynote of preventing the habit is, carefully to watch the child from its earliest infancy. we know that not infrequently stupid or vicious nursemaids, wet-nurses, and even governesses ignorantly or deliberately induce the habit in children under their charge. this, of course, must be prevented. even children of the age of nine, ten, eleven years should not be left alone, but always be under supervision. too close friendship between boys or girls, particularly of different ages, should be looked upon with suspicion. a number of girls never should sleep in the same room without supervision by an older person. the sleeping together of two in the same bed, whether it be two children or a grown person and a child, should not be permitted under any circumstances. i admit of no exceptions to this demand. it makes no difference whether the other person is a mother, a father, a brother or a sister. leaving out of the question any _deliberate_ element, the thing is dangerous; for, very often, unintentionally, unwittingly, masturbation is initiated by this intimate contact. the child--boy or girl--should sleep alone, on a rather hard mattress. the covering should be light. a coverlet may be put over the feet. the child always should sleep with the arms out upon the cover or blanket, never _under_ the same. if this is done from childhood on, it is very easy to get used to this way of sleeping, and many a case of masturbation will thus be obviated. the child should not be permitted to loll in bed: it must be taught to get up as soon as it awakes in the morning. the general bringing-up must be of a strengthening, hardening character; and this applies both to the body and the will. when the children reach the age of nine, ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen years (we must use discrimination and judgment, for, some children of nine are as developed as are others of thirteen), we must tell them that it is bad and injurious to handle one's genitals, and we must warn them to shun any companions who wish to initiate them into any manipulations of these parts or who show an inclination to talk about the sexual organs and sex matters. hot baths are very injurious for young children in their influence in this direction. there is no question that a hot bath has a very decided stimulating effect upon the sexual desire of adults as well as of children, both male and female; in fact, i have had several patients of either sex tell me that their first masturbatory act was committed while they were in a hot bath. of course, the sensation having been pleasurable, they kept on repeating the experience. every factor liable to give rise to the habit should be removed. thus, for instance, eczema about the genitals, strongly acid urine, seatworms, and the like, should be treated until cured. that anything having a tendency prematurely to awaken the sexual instinct should be rigorously avoided, goes without saying. =mental or psychic masturbation.= some girls and women will abstain from handling themselves with their hands (manual masturbation), but will practice what we call mental masturbation. that is, they will concentrate their minds on the opposite sex, will picture to themselves various lascivious scenes, until they feel "satisfied." this method is extremely injurious and exhausting and is very likely to lead to neurasthenia and a nervous breakdown. you should break yourself of it, by all means, if you can. for it is even more injurious than the regular habit. chapter twenty leucorrhea--the whites misconception regarding the meaning of the term "leucorrhea"--a common complaint--severe cases--reasons for resistance to treatment--proper local treatment of the disorder--sterility due to leucorrhea--causes of leucorrhea--tonic medicines--local treatment--formulæ for douching. leucorrhea means literally a "white running," and is applied by the laity to any whitish discharge coming from the vagina. this is wrong, because some white discharges may be of little importance; others may be of a serious character, and not be leucorrhea at all. leucorrhea is one of the banes of the modern girl and woman. it is very frequent. probably at least twenty-five per cent, (some say fifty or seventy-five per cent.) of all women suffer with it in a greater or lesser degree. in some cases it is only an annoyance, necessitating the frequent changing of napkins, but in others it causes a great deal of weakness, backache, erosions, itching and burning. it is very resistant to treatment, particularly in girls. the reason it is so resistant to treatment is because the discharge, while coming from the vagina, _does not usually originate_ in the vagina; it originates in the neck of the womb, and the hundreds and hundreds of injections that women take for their leucorrhea only reach the vagina; they cannot penetrate into the womb. and it is only by treating the cavity of the cervix, which can only be done by a physician, through a speculum, that the root of the trouble can be reached. and, if any erosion or ulcer is noticed, it can be directly touched up with the necessary application. and it is for this reason that in girls leucorrhea is so much more difficult to treat. for fear of having the hymen ruptured the girl objects to a thorough examination and to local treatment, and the leucorrhea is permitted to proceed until perhaps a chronic inflammation of the womb and the fallopian tubes is established. there is no doubt that many cases of sterility or childlessness in women are due to long-neglected leucorrhea in girlhood. =what is the cause of leucorrhea?= we can answer simply: the cause of leucorrhea is catarrh in any part of the female genital tract. but this is no real answer. what are the causes of the catarrh? the causes of catarrh are many: the most common cause is a cold. wetting the feet and getting chilled, particularly during the menses, may set up a catarrh in the cervix. long standing on one's feet, lifting and carrying heavy bundles, dancing in overheated rooms and then going out scantily clad in the chill night air, prolonged ungratified sexual excitement, lack of cleanliness in the external genitals--all these are factors in setting up a catarrh of the cervix with a resultant leucorrhea. a general rundown condition, worry, overwork, too hard study, lack of fresh air, and a general scrofulous condition also favor the development of catarrh of the womb and leucorrhea. it will therefore be seen that the treatment of leucorrhea to be successful must be general and local. =general treatment.= the general treatment consists in general hygienic measures and in common sense. the patient should not be on her feet more than she can help, and she should not walk until exhausted or fatigued. it is better to take several short walks than one long one. the corset she wears, if she wears any at all, should be of the modern kind: not one that presses the womb and the other abdominal organs down, but one that supports the abdominal walls, and rather raises the abdominal organs up. the lacing or buttoning must be from below up, and not from above down. that it should not in any way interfere with the freedom of respiration goes without saying. constipation if any, to be treated, must be treated intelligently, by mild measures (see constipation, in the chapter on pregnancy), and care must be taken that the bowels move at regular hours. where the leucorrhea is due to or is aggravated by anemia and general weakness, a good iron preparation, such as one blaud's five-grain pill three times a day, or a tonic of iron, quinine and strychnine, will do good. a daily cold bath or cold sponge, followed by a brisk dry rubbing with a rough towel, is also useful. =local treatment.= local measures consist of painting or swabbing the vagina and cervix with various solutions, of tampons, suppositories and douches. local application to the vagina and uterus can be done satisfactorily by the physician or nurse only. the insertion of a suppository or douching can be easily done by the patient herself. while it is always best and safest to consult a physician, and, while self-medication is generally inadvisable, there are occasions when a physician is not available; in some small places a woman may, _for various reasons_, have a strong objection to gynecological examination and treatment; and some women may be too poor to pay the doctor. in such circumstances self-treatment is justified and there can be no objection to it if the remedies are harmless and are sure to do some good; that is, to improve the condition where they do not effect a complete cure. one of the simplest things is an alum tampon. you take a piece of absorbent cotton, about the size of a fist, spread it out, put about a tablespoonful of powdered alum on it, fold it up, tie a string around the center, insert it in the vagina as far as it will go, and leave it in for twenty-four hours. then pull it gently by the string and syringe yourself with a quart or two quarts of warm water. such a tampon may be inserted every other day or every third day, and i have known many cases where this simple treatment alone produced a cure. in some cases, however, douches work better and the two best things for douching are: tincture of iodine and lactic acid. buy, say, four ounces of tincture of iodine, and use two teaspoonfuls in two quarts of hot water in a douche bag. this injection should be used twice a day, morning and night. of the lactic acid you buy, say, a pint, and use two tablespoonfuls to two quarts of water. the lactic acid has the advantage over the tincture of iodine that it is colorless, while the iodine is dark and stains whatever it comes in contact with. sometimes i order the use of the tincture of iodine and the lactic acid alternately: for one douche the tincture of iodine, for the next the lactic acid, and so on. when the condition improves, it is sufficient to use one teaspoonful of the tincture of iodine and one tablespoonful of the lactic acid to two quarts of water. these injections are quite efficient and have the advantage of being perfectly harmless. one point about the injections: they should be taken not in the standing or squatting position (in which position the fluid comes right out), but while lying down, over a douche pan. the douche bag should be only about a foot above the bed, so that the irrigating fluid may come out slowly; the patient, after each injection taken in the daytime, should remain at least half an hour in bed (in the night time she stays all night in bed). this gives the injection a better chance to come in contact with all the parts of the vagina, and a portion of it comes in contact with the cervix, where it exerts a healing effect. avoid the use of patent medicines. chapter twenty-one the venereal diseases derivation of word "venereal"--three venereal diseases--innocent contraction of syphilis through various objects--the hygienic elimination of common sources of venereal infection--measures for prevention after sexual relations. the word "venereal" means pertaining to sexual intercourse: venereal excess--excess in sexual intercourse; venereal disease--a disease acquired from sexual intercourse with an infected person. the word is derived from venus (genitive--veneris), the roman goddess of spring, flowers and love. there are three venereal diseases: gonorrhea, syphilis and chancroid. of these, gonorrhea is the most widespread, syphilis the most serious. chancroid is of comparatively little importance. while by far the greatest amount of venereal diseases--probably ninety per cent, of the total--is contracted from illicit[ ] intercourse, it is well to bear in mind that some of it is contracted innocently, either from a kiss, or from using a sponge or a towel which has been used by an infected person, etc. while the gonorrheal germ is generally transmitted directly, the syphilitic poison may be transmitted through various objects. syphilis contracted not during intercourse, but in an innocent manner, from a kiss, a towel, a toothbrush, a razor, etc., is called syphilis of the innocent, or syphilis insontium. in former years doctors would not very rarely contract syphilis from examining syphilitic women with their bare fingers. now since gloves have come into use for examining purposes, the number of infections has considerably diminished. and no doubt that as the people become more familiar with the danger of venereal infection from non-venereal sources, the number of innocent infections will greatly diminish. the dangerous roller towel and the no less dangerous common drinking cup are being gradually eliminated as factors of _non-venereal_ infection; and we may confidently expect that in a decade or two the amount of venereal disease from _venereal_ infection will be greatly lessened in all civilized countries. the general increase in cleanliness in all strata of society and the universal use of antiseptics after suspicious sexual relations will constitute the chief factors in this diminution of venereal disease. footnotes: [ ] illicit--illegal, non-permissible, outside of marriage. chapter twenty-two the extent of venereal disease former ban on discussion of venereal disease and its evil results--present reprehensible exaggerations of extent of venereal disease--erroneous and ridiculous statements of "reformers"--senseless fear of marriage in girls due to lurid exaggerations--study by woman psychologist reveals harmful results of exaggerated statements--truth in regard to percentage of men afflicted with venereal disease. =former silence.= only a very few years ago respectable women, by which i mean all women outside of the women called "fallen," did not know of the existence of venereal disease. it was considered a prohibited, disgraceful subject, not to be mentioned or even hinted at in conversation, in books or magazines, in lectures, or on the stage. when i say that they did not know of the _existence_ of such a thing as venereal disease, that the very words gonorrhea and syphilis were unknown to them, i use these expressions not as figures of speech, but in their literal meaning. all avenues of acquiring such knowledge being closed to them--lay people don't usually now and they surely didn't then purchase and read strictly medical works--where could they obtain the information? the result was that when a woman was so unfortunate as to contract a venereal disease from her husband, she did not understand its character and did not suspect its source. which was a rather good thing--for the husband. family peace was more secure. =present exaggerations.= now a change has taken place in this respect, and, as is often the case with recent changes, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. the silence of former days has given place to shouting from the housetops. the last phrase is also used almost in its literal sense. many men and women, deeply stirred by the venereal peril, and sincerely anxious to guard boys and girls from venereal infection, have been indulging in very reprehensible exaggerations. particularly lurid have been the exaggerations as to the prevalence of the disease in the male sex, with its consequent disastrous effects on married women. a statement made by a dr. noeggerath (a german physician who practiced at the time in new york), nearly half a century ago, to the effect that per cent, of all men have gonorrhea and that per cent. of these remain uncured and infect or are apt to infect their wives, has been shown to be a ridiculously absurd exaggeration. if it had been true, the race would now be at the point of dying out. nevertheless, this statement is copied from book to book, as if it were gospel truth, as if it were a scientifically and statistically established fact instead of a wild, sensational guess. an esteemed new york physician, dr. prince a. morrow, did excellent pioneer work in calling attention to the dangers of venereal disease. but, as is the case with so many "reformers," he permitted his zeal to run away with him occasionally, and he made statements which caused and are still causing the judicious to grieve. the statement, for instance, that there is more venereal disease among innocent, virtuous wives than among prostitutes is one to cause the real honest investigator to weep (over the human tendency to exaggeration), or to burst out in uproarious laughter. the ridiculousness of this statement becomes especially evident when we recollect that the same gentleman made the statement that every prostitute, without exception, was diseased at one time or another. if venereal disease exists among prostitutes to the extent of per cent., then how can it exist to a greater extent among innocent, virtuous wives? and to still further emphasize the absurdity of the above statement, i will tell you that the extent of venereal disease among married women is believed by careful non-sensational venereologists not to exceed five per cent.! yes, the silence of former years has given place to the lurid exaggeration of the present day. while on the whole the former was worse than the latter, the latter is bad enough, because it makes many girls unhappy, sowing in them the seeds of suspicion and cynicism, tends to make them antagonistic to the entire male sex, and inoculates them with a senseless fear of marriage. a study made by miriam c. gould, of the department of psychology and philosophy in the university of pittsburg (_social hygiene_, april, ), corroborates our remarks in a striking manner. she has had confidential chats with young girls, with whom she has had some acquaintance; of these , were college students and were not. she asked them a number of questions, the purpose of which was to find out what psychologic effect, if any, their knowledge of prostitution and of venereal disease has had on them. she states in her conclusions that "the histories reveal a large percentage of harmful results, such as conditions bordering upon neurasthenia, melancholia, pessimism and _sex antagonism_ (italics mine), directly traceable to this knowledge. eleven of the girls interviewed developed a pronounced repulsion for men, although prior to their 'knowledge' they had enjoyed men's company. they now avoid association with them, and six have declared that they have totally lost faith in the moral cleanness of men. eight have already refused to marry, or intend to do so, because of their belief that the risk of infection was too great. if it were not for the existence of these diseases, they say they would be glad to marry. all of these say their decision has rendered them more or less unhappy." in the laudable desire to keep our young women pure and to protect them from infection, in the endeavor to make them demand one moral standard for both sexes, our exaggerating reformers are condemning them to lifelong celibacy, which in the case of women often means lifelong neurasthenia and hypochondria. =the truth of the matter.= here is the truth about venereal disease--the truth as i know it, without concealment on the one hand and without exaggeration on the other. exact figures are, of course, unobtainable anywhere; but results obtained from unbiased investigations of _different_ classes of society, from hospital reports, from questionnaires among students, etc., tell us that probably about twenty per cent. of the adult male population are the victims of gonorrhea at one time or another; that probably eight or ten per cent. are not entirely cured when they enter matrimony; and four or five per cent. (some would say two per cent.) of wives become infected with gonorrhea. this, i say, is terrible enough, and makes the greatest care and caution imperative; for, if you should be one of the victims of the two or five per cent., it would be little consolation to you that the other ninety-eight or ninety-five per cent. of wives have escaped. of course the percentage of venereal disease among young men, and afterwards among their wives, will vary greatly with the stratum of society. among the "lower" strata you may find fifty per cent. of infection, with a very large percentage of those uncured. not because they are of a lower morality than the higher classes, but because the cheap class of prostitutes that they are obliged to patronize are frequently diseased and because they cannot afford expert treatment, or any treatment at all. among these classes you will naturally find a much larger percentage of diseased wives. but then to counteract this we must bear in mind that there are large classes of men in whom gonorrhea exists only to the extent of five or ten per cent., and we have large classes of wives among whom the victims of gonorrhea will come up only to a fraction of one per cent. the above figures, you see, differ materially from the statements found in so many sex books that " per cent. of all married men in new york have gonorrhea," and that "at least three out of every five [ per cent.!] married women in new york have gonorrhea." whenever you read or hear such a statement treat it with a smile--or with contempt, as all false statements should be treated. as to syphilis, the extent of the prevalence may be given as between two and five per cent. which percentage differs considerable from the , or per cent. given us by some sex lecturers, but which is terrible enough as it is, without any exaggerations. chapter twenty-three gonorrhea source of gonorrhea--mucous membrane of genital organs and of eye principal seats of disease--symptoms in men and in women--vagina seldom attacked in adults--nobody inherits gonorrhea--ophthalmia neonatorum--differences of course of disease in men and women-- gonorrhea less painful in women--symptoms not suspected by woman-- necessity for the woman consulting a physician--self-treatment when woman cannot consult physician--formulæ for injections. the subject of gonorrhea and syphilis is treated pretty fully, from a layman's point of view, in the author's _sex knowledge for men_. i do not intend to devote much space to a discussion of the details of these two diseases here, because the subject is not of such direct interest to women. respectable girls and women do not indulge in illicit relations the same as respectable men and boys do, and their danger of contracting a venereal disease is insignificant as compared with men's liability. i will, therefore, touch upon only a few points, particularly insofar as the diseases differ in their course from the course pursued in men. those, however, who are interested may read the chapters on the subject in the author's _sex knowledge for men_, and if they want still fuller details, they may study the author's _treatment of gonorrhea and its complications in men and women_. [illustration: gonorrheal germs.] =gonorrhea= is an inflammation caused by a germ called the gonococcus, discovered by dr. a. neisser, of breslau, germany, in . any mucous membrane may be the seat of gonorrhea, but it attacks by preference the mucous membrane of the genital organs, and of one other organ--the eye. its principal symptoms are: inflammation, pain, burning and discharge. in men, it attacks the urethra; in women it attacks the cervix--the neck of the womb--the urethra, and the vulva. the vagina is seldom attacked in adult women, because the mucous membrane of the adult vagina is rather tough and does not offer a good soil for the development of the gonococcus germ. the discharge that a woman has when she has gonorrhea comes principally or exclusively from the neck of the womb. in little girls, however, in whom the lining of the vagina is tender, gonorrhea of the vagina and the vulva is common. (see chapter vulvovaginitis in little girls.) gonorrhea is a local disease. while in some cases, after the disease has lasted for some time, a certain poison is generated by the germs which circulates in the blood, and while the germs may occasionally wander into distant organs, still in per cent. of all cases gonorrhea is a local disease, and if taken in time is cured without leaving any traces on the general organism. =gonorrhea not hereditary.= then, gonorrhea is not a hereditary disease. nobody ever _inherits_ gonorrhea. a child may be born with a gonorrheal inflammation of the eyes (ophthalmia neonatorum), but this inflammation is not inherited; it can only be acquired if the mother is suffering with gonorrhea while the child is being born: some of the pus in the mother's birth canal gets into the child's eyes while it passes through the uterus and vagina. this is not heredity; this is simple infection, and can be avoided by keeping the mother's birth canal clean by antiseptic douches before childbirth. in short, i repeat gonorrhea is essentially a local and not a constitutional disease, and is not hereditary. in which two respects it differs from syphilis, which is the most constitutional and most hereditary of all diseases. =course of gonorrhea in men and women.= gonorrhea runs an entirely different course in women than it does in men. when a man has gonorrhea he knows it immediately; first, because the discharge tells him that there is something the matter with him, for a man is not used to having any discharge from the urethra unless there is something the matter with him. second, the urine becomes at once burning and painful. in women the urethra is a separate canal from the vagina, and the urethra is very frequently not affected in gonorrhea. the infection generally starts in the cervix, and the disease may last for considerable time before the woman becomes aware of it. in general, gonorrhea is a less painful disease in woman, and this is a bad thing, because she thus neglects treatment and loses valuable time, permitting the disease to develop. even when the urethra is affected in women, it does not give as severe symptoms as inflammation of the urethra in men. if the woman does have pains she often pays no attention to them, because woman is used to pains; as we have seen before, fifty per cent. of all women suffer more or less with dysmenorrhea. many of them have a leucorrheal discharge of greater or lesser degree, and therefore if there is an increase in the pains, or an increase in the discharge, little attention is paid to the matter. in fact, a woman may have a chronic gonorrhea for months or years without being aware that there is anything the matter with her. it is important to teach women to seek medical aid as soon as they notice any increase in the amount of the discharge, or change in color, particularly if it becomes greenish, or if the odor becomes offensive, or if there is chafing, burning, or irritation around the genitals, and particularly if there is an increase in the frequency or urgency of urination, or if there is a burning, scalding, or cutting sensation during the act of urination. also whenever the sexual act becomes painful. if women consulted a physician as soon as they noticed any of the symptoms referred to above, they would save months and years of suffering and expense, because the disease would often be taken in hand while still limited to the cervix, and not, as is now often the case, after the inflammation has extended into the uterus and fallopian tubes. =self-treatment.= i do not believe in self-treatment because it is generally unsatisfactory and may often even become dangerous, and i decidedly advise every woman who suspects that she has contracted gonorrhea to apply at once to a competent physician. but it happens not infrequently that a woman is so situated that she cannot consult a physician. and in the meantime there is danger of the gonorrhea spreading further and further. in such cases it is advisable for the woman to use an injection until such time when she can consult a physician. the injection i am going to advise may in itself produce a cure; and, if it does not produce a complete cure, it at any rate improves the condition, prevents the extension of the disease, makes subsequent treatment easier, and besides is perfectly harmless. the best injection for self use in gonorrhea is tincture of iodine; the proportion is two teaspoonfuls to a quart or two quarts of water. if the case is very bad, such an injection may be taken twice a day. if the case is not very bad, once a day is sufficient. after using the tincture of iodine for five days to a week, it is good to change off to lactic acid. buy a pint or so of lactic acid in a drug store, and use one tablespoonful to a quart of water. it is preferable to have the water hot, about deg., but where this is inconvenient it may be used lukewarm. the lactic acid injection is used for three days, then the iodine injection is resumed, then again the lactic acid, and so on. i know of many cases that were cured by this treatment alone. and i might mention that these injections are generally also very efficient in leucorrhea, as stated in the chapter on leucorrhea. chapter twenty-four vulvovaginitis in little girls former causes of vulvovaginitis in little girls--discharge chief symptom--evil results of vulvovaginitis--psychic results of treatment--effects in hastening sexual maturity--vulvovaginitis a cause of permanent sterility--measures to prevent the disease--toilet seats and vulvovaginitis. the mucous membrane, or the lining of the vulva and vagina, in little girls is very tender, and therefore very readily subject to infection. an infection of the vulva and vagina due to the gonococcus or to some other germ is very common in little girls. at least it used to be, particularly among children of the poor, in institutions and hospitals. the very dangerous infective character of vulvovaginitis was not known, and the infection was therefore easily transferred by towels, linen, toilet seats, bedpans, syringe nozzles, thermometers, the nurses' hands, and in various other ways. now great care is being taken and in most hospitals no children are admitted in the general wards unless it is determined that they are free from vulvovaginitis. generally speaking, vulvovaginitis in children is a mild infection. a child may have it for several weeks or months without being aware of it, without saying anything about it, the diagnosis often being made by the mother, who begins to notice the creamy discharge on the girl's linen or underwear. and this is the principal symptom in little girls thus afflicted--the discharge. this discharge may be very profuse, covering the vulva, vagina, and cervix. in severe cases, there is also an infection of the urethra, and the child may complain of burning at urination, itching and pain around the vulva and anus, and slight pain in the abdomen. there may be a moderate rise in temperature, up to deg. f., and in some instances the attack is sufficiently acute to give rise to a chill and fever. a mild inflammation of the joints may set in within the first weeks of the infection, although as a usual thing it comes later on. =evil sequelæ of vulvovaginitis.= while, as stated, vulvovaginitis is a comparatively mild infection as far as its symptoms are concerned, it nevertheless has a very bad effect on the child who is unfortunate enough to become a victim of the disease. first of all, it is an extremely long drawn, persistent disease. it usually takes months, and these months may run into years, before a complete cure, is effected. second, relapses are quite common. third, the treatment is a disagreeable one for the child, and is occasionally painful. fourth, it has a disastrous effect on the child's _morale_; most parents, though they may love the child most affectionately, look somewhat askance at it; and continuous vaginal treatment somehow or other has a humiliating effect on the child, which begins to consider itself as an outcast, as something apart from other children. fifth, the child's education is very frequently seriously and permanently interfered with, because it must often be taken out of school, whether public or private, and private tutoring is of course feasible only for the few. sixth, and this is a point not sufficiently appreciated by the profession and the laity, but it is an important point, nevertheless: vulvovaginitis in children has unfortunately a disastrous effect in _hastening the sexual maturity of the child_. whether this is due to the congestion of the organs produced by the inflammation, or to the speculum examinations, paintings, douches, applications, tampons, suppositories, etc., the fact remains that girls who suffer from vulvovaginitis in childhood become sexually mature considerably earlier than normal girls of the same class, stratum and climate, and their demand for sexual satisfaction is much more insistent. seventh, a mild vulvovaginitis may be the cause of permanent _sterility_. it will therefore be seen that vulvovaginitis is a calamity, and everything possible should be done to guard female children from contracting it. _all_ children should _always_ sleep alone. under no circumstances should a child sleep with anybody else, be it a sister, a mother, a friend, a governess, or a servant girl. people should be very careful in sending their children to spend a night or two with some friends. the friends may be all right, but still a friend of the friends or a relative of the friends may not be. i have known several cases where the origin of the vulvovaginitis could be traced to little girls spending a week at the house of some friends where a boarder or relative was infected with gonorrhea. that children should be kept away from associating or playing with adults or other children who are known to have gonorrheal infection goes without saying. the child's genitals should be frequently inspected by the mother, and scrupulous cleanliness by frequent bathing, sponging with warm solutions and powdering, should be maintained. the toilet seats in school should receive special attention. the wooden seat is a menace because it often harbors gonorrheal pus from either the female or male genitals, while the only proper seat is one of the so-called u-shaped style, that is, one in which the front is entirely open, like the letter u. chapter twenty-five syphilis syphilis due to germ--syphilis a constitutional disease--primary lesion--incubation period--roseola--primary stage--secondary stage--mucous patches--tertiary stage--gumma--hereditary nature of syphilis--milder course in women than in men--obscure symptoms in syphilis--necessity for examination by physician--locomotor ataxia--softening of the brain--chancroids. syphilis is a disease caused by a germ called spirocheta; the full name is spirocheta pallida--a pale, spiral-shaped germ. though the disease has been ravaging europe and america for centuries, the germ of it has been discovered only a few years ago, namely, in , and, like the gonococcus, also by a german scientist, fritz schaudinn. syphilis is a constitutional disease. in ten days to three weeks after a person has contracted syphilis, he (or she) develops a sore (at the spot where the germs got in). this sore is called _chancre_ or _primary lesion_. but when this sore makes its appearance the spirochetæ and the poison which they elaborate are already circulating in the blood, all over the system. the disease is already systemic, or constitutional, and the chancre is the local expression of a constitutional disease. cutting out the chancre will not cure the disease, because, as stated, the germs are already in the system. the time between the contraction of the disease (the infectious intercourse) and the appearance of the chancre is called the _incubation period_. the time between the appearance of the chancre and the appearance of the rash on the body (the rash looks like a measles rash and is called roseola, which means a rose-colored rash) is called the _primary stage_. it lasts about six weeks. with the appearance of the rash commences the _secondary stage_. this stage is characterized by all sorts of _eruptions_, mild and severe, by white little patches (called mucous patches) in the throat, mouth, tonsils, vagina, by falling out of the hair, etc. the length of this secondary stage depends a good deal upon the sort of treatment the patient gets. improperly treated, or not treated at all, it may last two or three years or more. properly treated, it may be cut short at once, in a few days, so that the patient may never again in his or her life get an eruption. the third or _tertiary stage_ is characterized by _ulcerations_ in various parts of the body and by _swellings_ or tumors. the name of a syphilitic swelling or tumor is gumma (plural, gummata). the tertiary stage is the most terrible stage and it used to be the terror of syphilitic patients. but at the present time, under our modern methods of treatment, patients, if properly treated, _never have a tertiary stage_. we have seen many patients who considered syphilis a trifling disease, because all they knew of their disease was the chancre and the first eruption, i.e., the roseola, and perhaps a slight falling out of the hair. they then put themselves under energetic treatment, the _activity_ of the disease was checked, and they never had another symptom afterwards, though a wassermann test showed that the disease was not entirely eradicated. it was merely held in check--which is the second best thing. [illustration: spirocheta pallida, or treponema pallidum, the germ of syphilis as seen under the microscope.] as stated before, syphilis is the most hereditary of all diseases. fortunately, if the disease is still very active in the parents, particularly in the mother, the child is generally aborted. some syphilitic mothers will have half a dozen or more miscarriages in succession. when the disease has become "attenuated," either by treatment or by itself--many diseases lose their virulence in time--the child may be carried to term. it then may be born dead, or it may be born strongly syphilitic, and die in a few days or weeks, or it may be born without any signs of syphilis and be apparently healthy and then develop the disease at the age of ten, twelve, fourteen, or later, or it may be born healthy and remain healthy. but no woman who had syphilis, or whose husband had syphilis, should _dare_ to conceive or to give birth to a child unless she has been given permission by a competent physician. i mean just what i say. it is not a personal matter. a woman has a right to marry a syphilitic husband if she wants to and run the risk of contracting syphilis. her body is her own, and if she does it with her eyes open it is her affair. but a woman has no right to bring into the world syphilitic or syphilitically tainted children. here society has a right to interfere. syphilis runs a milder course in women than it does in men. but this milder course is not an unmixed blessing; it may be considered a misfortune, because, the same as gonorrhea in women, syphilis is often present for months and years until it has made such inroads that it is but little amenable to treatment. in many women the disease runs such a mild course, as far as definite symptoms are concerned, that they are sure they never had anything the matter with them, and they are perfectly sincere in their denial of ever having had any infection. often it is only when they complain of obscure symptoms, for which we can find no explanation, and then take a wassermann test, that we discover what the real trouble is. and then the internal organs are sometimes found so deeply affected that it is hard to do anything. so it is seen that the mildness of the course of the disease, while a good thing in itself, is bad in that respect that it prevents timely treatment. it is therefore important that whenever a woman is in any way suspicious that she may have the disease that she have herself examined; and if she has reasons to suspect that her husband or partner has the disease, she should persuade him to have himself examined. locomotor ataxia, one of the most terrible sequelæ of syphilis, is much more rare in women than it is in men. so is general paresis, also called general paralysis of the insane, or softening of the brain. =chancroids= there is one other minor disease belonging to the venereal diseases; that is chancroids. chancroids are little ulcers on the genitals; they are purely local and do not affect the system. they are due largely to uncleanliness, and are found only among the poorer classes of prostitutes and therefore among the poorer classes of men. one sees them now and then in public dispensaries, but in private practice they are now quite rare. they used to be quite common, which shows that the general level of cleanliness has been raised considerably among all classes of people. at any rate, chancroids are of little significance, as compared with syphilis and gonorrhea, and when speaking of the venereal peril, these are the two diseases we have in mind. chapter twenty-six the curability of venereal disease gonorrhea may be practically cured in every case in man--extensive gonorrheal infection in woman difficult to cure--positive cure in syphilis impossible to guarantee. just as the usual statements in regard to the extent of venereal disease have been found untrue or greatly exaggerated, so do the statements regarding the curability or rather incurability of venereal disease need careful revision. the picture usually painted of the hopelessness of gonorrhea and syphilis is too sombre, too black, and, contrary to the assertions made by laymen and laywomen and physicians who do not specialize in the treatment of venereal disease, i wish to make the statement that every case of gonorrhea in man, without any exception, if properly treated, can be perfectly cured, _as far as practical purposes are concerned_. i add the last phrase because the cure may not be perfect in the scientific sense of the word; that is, the man may not be brought back into the condition in which he was before he got the disease. but, for all practical purposes, as far as he himself is concerned, as far as his wife is concerned, and as far as the future children are concerned, every case may be cured, without any doubt. and i say this, basing myself upon a varied professional experience extending over nearly a quarter of a century. as to gonorrhea in women, that depends to a great extent upon the virulence of the disease and the promptness with which treatment is instituted. if the gonorrhea is limited only to the cervix, the vulva and the urethra, then prompt treatment will usually bring about a cure in a comparatively short time. but if the gonorrheal inflammation has extended to the body of the uterus, or still worse, to the tubes, then the treatment may become a very tedious one, and some cases may not be curable without an operation. with syphilis the matter is different. since the introduction by ehrlich of the various arsenic preparations, we have much better success in the treatment of syphilis, and we can positively render every case non-infectious to the partner. but, as to guaranteeing a positive cure, that is, guaranteeing that the patient will never have an outbreak or relapse of his disease in the future, and that the children will be perfectly free from any taint, this we can do no more now than we could before the modern treatment of syphilis was introduced. the decision, therefore, as to whether we may or may not permit a once syphilitic patient to marry will depend a great deal upon whether or no the husband or the wife or both desire to have children. if this is the case, we must often withhold our permission; but if the man and woman agree to get married and to get along without children, we will grant permission to the marriage in the vast majority of cases. the subject of venereal disease and marriage will be further discussed in separate chapters. venereal disease, i have to repeat, is terrible enough in itself, without any exaggeration, without picturing it in too black colors. and it is necessary that people should not have too black an idea of it. it is necessary that they know that there are thousands and tens of thousands of patients who suffered with gonorrhea or syphilis and who were perfectly cured, who married, and whose wives remained perfectly well, and who gave birth to perfectly healthy untainted children. chapter twenty-seven venereal prophylaxis necessity for douching before and after suspicious intercourse-- formulæ for douches--precautions against non-venereal sources of infection--syphilis transmitted by dentist's instruments-- manicurists and syphilis--promiscuous kissing a source of syphilitic infection. in his book, _sex knowledge for men_, the author treated the subject of prevention of venereal disease very thoroughly. men need this knowledge. as men _will_ indulge in illicit relations, we must teach them to guard themselves against venereal infection. we must do it not only for their own sake, but for the sake of their wives and children. for, infection in the man may mean infection in his wife and children. but as women readers of this book are not likely to indulge in promiscuous relations with strangers, a detailed discussion of the subject would be out of place. i will merely say, that where the woman has a suspicion that her husband is in an infectious state, she should abstain from relations with him until she is sure that he is safe. but where for some reason a suspicions intercourse is indulged in, the woman should use an antiseptic douche _before_ and _after_ intercourse. where it is inconvenient to use a douche both before and after, a douche after will have to suffice, but it is much safer and surer to use the douche both before and after. when you use a douche there is always some of the solution left in the vagina and that destroys wholly or in part the infective germs. the following makes an effective douche: dissolve a tablet of bichloride (they come on the market of the weight of about ½ grains) in two quarts of water--hot, lukewarm or cold. use before intercourse a small amount--about a pint or half a pint, and use the balance after intercourse. instead of the bichloride you may use a tablespoonful of carbolic acid, or two tablets of chinosol, or a tablespoonful of lysol, or two tablespoonfuls of boric acid. instead of the douche an antiseptic jelly in a collapsible tin tube with a long nozzle may be used. but besides the venereal sources of infection the woman must guard against the non-venereal sources. do not ever, if you can avoid it, use a public toilet. if you are forced to use it, protect yourself by putting some paper over the seat. do not use a public drinking cup. if you have to use one, keep your lips away from the rim. one can learn to drink without touching the rim of the glass or cup with the lips. do not under any circumstances use a public towel. the roller towel is a menace to health and should be forbidden in every part of the country. if you have to sleep in a hotel or in a strange bed, make sure that the linen is clean and fresh. never sleep on bed linen which has been used by a stranger. never use a public brush or comb. be sure that your dentist is a careful, up-to-date man, and sterilizes his instruments carefully. many a case of syphilis has been transmitted by a dentist's instrument. a syphilitic who goes to a dentist to be treated generally conceals his disease, and if the dentist is not in the habit of sterilizing his instruments after each patient, disaster may result. be sure that your manicurist is not syphilitic, or at least that her hands are healthy, clean and free from any eruption. and, last but not least, do not indulge in promiscuous kissing. this is a particularly important injunction for young girls. this is a real peril and there are thousands of cases of syphilis that are known to have been contracted directly from kissing. people suffering with syphilis often have little white sores (mucous patches) on their lips, tongue and inside of cheeks. these sores are very infectious, and by kissing the disease is readily transmitted. kissing games have been responsible in more than one case for the spread of syphilis to many persons. i have now under treatment a girl of nineteen who contracted syphilis on her summer vacation from having kissed a man once. avoid promiscuous kissing! it is a bad practice for more than one reason. chapter twenty-eight alcohol, sex and venereal disease alcoholic indulgence and venereal disease--a champagne dinner and syphilis--percentage of cases of venereal infection due to alcohol--artificial stimulation of sex instinct in man and in woman--reckless sexual indulgence due to alcohol--alcohol as an aid to seduction. that bacchus, the god of wine, is the strongest ally of venus, the goddess of love, using love in its physical sense, as the french use the word _amour_, has been well known to the ancient greeks and romans, as it is well known to-day to every saloon-keeper and every keeper of a disreputable house. and all measures to combat venereal disease and to prevent girls from making a false step will be only partially successful if we do not at the same time carry on a strong educational campaign against alcoholic indulgence. of what use to young men is the knowledge of the venereal peril and familiarity with the use of venereal prophylactics, when under the influence of alcohol the mind is befuddled, they forget everything and do things that they never would do in the sober state? of what use are warnings to a girl, when under the influence of a heavy dinner and a bottle of champagne, to which she is unaccustomed, her passion is aroused to a degree she has never experienced before, her will is paralyzed and she yields, though deep down in her consciousness something tells her she shouldn't? yields, becomes pregnant, and is in the deepest agony for several months, and has a wound which will probably never heal for the rest of her life? of what use have all the lectures, books and maternal injunctions been to her? or this case. here is a young lawyer, twenty-eight years of age, engaged to a fine girl, and with everything to look forward to. he always was very moderate and circumspect in his sexual indulgence, and, though careful in choosing his partners, he never failed to use a venereal prophylactic after intercourse. there was too much at stake for him, and he did not care to take any chances, even if the chances were one in a thousand. for a period of one year during which he had been engaged he abstained from sexual intercourse altogether, though it cost him a great deal of effort to do so. he was to be married very shortly. but ill-luck made him accept an invitation to a bachelor dinner, where champagne and smutty stories were flowing freely, too freely. he left about midnight, and as the night was beautiful he decided to walk home. he met a siren, who invited him to accompany her. under other circumstances he would have sent her on her way, or at least he would have stepped into a drugstore for a prophylactic. but, excited by the wine, the smutty stories and the year's abstinence, he went along like a sheep, as a matter of course, without trying to reason or interposing any objections. he remembers distinctly his feelings and the state of his mind. he was not drunk, only exhilarated, but nevertheless the whole thing seemed to him so normal, so natural, so expected, so matter-of-course, that he couldn't think of acting otherwise than accept her invitation. and he stayed two or three hours; and he used no prophylactic. and as a result--three weeks later he had a typical primary syphilitic lesion. how he felt and what it all meant to him the reader can imagine. this is far from being an isolated, an exceptional case. from my own practice i could cite a number of cases of venereal infection in which alcohol was the direct, primary factor. how many such cases there are altogether in the period of a year nobody can say, but that they constitute a considerable percentage of the total venereal morbidity every investigating sexologist will testify. forel claims that per cent. of all venereal infection takes place under the influence of alcohol; notthaft is more moderate, more discriminating in his statistics and his claims are-- per cent. an analysis of , cases of venereal infection, just published by dr. hugo hecht (_venerische infektion und alkohol, z.b.g._, vol. xvi, no. ) gives over per cent. and the saddest part of it is that among the infected were married men (the author thinks there were more, but only confessed to being married), and of these, , equivalent to per cent., were under the influence of alcohol when they contracted their venereal disease (extra-matrimonially, of course). alcoholic indulgence contributes to the spread of venereal disease directly and indirectly. first and foremost it increases enormously the amount of intercourse indulged in. i certainly do not belong to those who believe that the sex instinct is merely a vicious appetite, like the appetite for alcohol or drugs, which can easily and completely be suppressed by the exertion of will-power. i believe that the sex instinct can be suppressed only within reasonable limits; if an attempt is made to exceed these limits dire results are apt to follow. but i also believe that the sex instinct can be stimulated artificially beyond the natural needs, and among the artificial stimulants of the sex instinct alcohol occupies first place. and bear in mind that alcohol produces even a stronger effect on women, in exciting the sexual passion, than it does on men. women are more easily upset by stimulants and narcotics, and that is the reason why it is more dangerous for women to drink than it is for men. so this, then, is count number one: the man and the woman who in a sober condition would easily abstain, with their libido stimulated and their will-power paralyzed by alcohol, indulge unnecessarily, with the risk of venereal infection to the man and the double risk of venereal infection and pregnancy to the woman. count two: the man who in the sober condition would use care and discrimination, under the influence of alcohol soon loses all his judgment and sees an angel and a helen of troy in the worst and most impudent harlot; with the result that the chances of venereal infection are greatly increased. count three: where under ordinary circumstances the man would stay a few minutes to half an hour, under the influence of alcohol he stays several hours, or all night, thus increasing his chances of infection a hundredfold. count four: alcohol increases the congestion in the genital organs of both man and woman and renders them much more _susceptible_ to infection. all other factors being equal, a connection which will under strict sobriety remain without bad results, may when one or both partners are under the influence of alcohol be followed by infection. count five: the man who is in the habit of using venereal prophylactics under the influence of alcohol becomes both careless and reckless; he looks with contempt at preventive measures and the result is--venereal disease. it is impossible to give statistics and exact or even approximate figures. but there is no question in my mind, in the mind of any careful investigator, that if alcoholic beverages could be eliminated, the number of cases of venereal infection would be diminished by about one-half. and what is true of venereal disease is also true of seduction of young girls. alcohol is the most efficient weapon that either the refined don juan or the vulgar pimp has in his possession. you cannot hope for complete success in eliminating venereal disease and seduction unless you also eliminate alcoholism. for bacchus is the ally not only of venus aphrodite but also of venus vulgivaga. chapter twenty-nine marriage and gonorrhea decision of physician regarding marriage of patients infected with gonorrhea or syphilis--advisability of certificate of freedom from transmissible disease--premarital examination as a universal custom--when a man who had gonorrhea may be allowed to marry-- when a woman who had gonorrhea may be allowed to marry--antisepsis before coitus--question of sterility in the man who has had gonorrhea easily answered--impossibility of determining whether the woman is fertile or not. for a man or a woman who has once suffered from gonorrhea or syphilis to enter matrimony without having secured a competent physician's opinion is a great responsibility. and a great responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the physician who is called upon to give such an opinion. for, a wrong decision--a wrong decision either way--that is, permission to marry when permission should not have been granted or refusal to give permission when permission should have been granted--may be responsible for much future unhappiness and much disease: disease of the mother and of the offspring. it may even be responsible for death. there is no easy, short road to a positive opinion. it requires a thorough, painstaking examination at the hands of an experienced physician, one thoroughly familiar with all the modern tests, to tell whether it is safe for a man who once suffered from venereal disease to enter the bonds of matrimony. sometimes one examination is not sufficient, and several examinations may be necessary; but, the opinion of a conscientious, experienced physician may be relied upon, and, if all men and women who once suffered from venereal disease would seek for, and be guided by, such an opinion, there would be no cases of marital infection, there would be no children afflicted with gonorrheal ophthalmia, there would be no cases of hereditary syphilis. i firmly believe that a time will come when all venereal disease will have disappeared from the face of the earth. but, until that time comes, it would be for the benefit of the race and of posterity if people had to present a certificate of freedom from transmissible venereal disease as a prerequisite to a marriage license. custom is often more efficient than law, and, if a premarital examination should become a universal custom (and there are indications in this direction), no law would be needed. =when may a man who had gonorrhea get married?= for a man who once suffered from gonorrhea to be pronounced cured and a safe candidate for marriage, the following conditions must be present: . there must be no discharge. . the urine must be perfectly clear and free from shreds. . the secretion from the prostate gland, as obtained by prostatic massage, and from the seminal vesicles, as obtained by "milking," or "stripping," the vesicles, must be free from pus and gonococci. to make sure, it is best to repeat such examination at three different times. . there must be neither stricture nor patches in the urethra. . what we call the complement-fixation test, which is a blood test for gonorrhea similar to the wassermann blood-test for syphilis, must be negative. referring to conditions and , it sometimes happens that the patient has a minute amount of discharge or a few shreds in the urine, and i still permit him to marry; but this is done only after the discharge and shreds have been repeatedly examined and have been found to be catarrhal in character and absolutely free from any gonococci or other germs. it sometimes happens that a patient comes to me for an examination a few days before the date set for the wedding. i examine him and find that he is not in a safe condition to marry, and so advise him to delay the wedding. sometimes he follows the advice, but in some cases he is unable to do so. he claims the wedding has been arranged, the invitation-cards have been sent out, and to delay the wedding would lead to endless trouble and perhaps scandal. in such cases i, of course, assume no responsibility; however, i do advise the man to use an antiseptic suppository or some other method that will protect the bride from infection for the time being, while he, the husband, has an opportunity to take treatment until cured. of the many cases in which i advised this method, i do not know of one in which infection has taken place. =when may a woman who once had gonorrhea be permitted to marry?= in the case of a woman, the decision may be harder to reach than in that of a man. of course, the urine must be clear and the urethra must be normal; however, we cannot insist that there must be no discharge. this, because practically every woman has some slight discharge; even, if not all the time, then at least immediately prior and subsequent to menstruation. of course, the discharge must be free from gonococci and pus. also the complement-fixation tests must be negative. but, even so, we cannot be absolutely sure, because gonococci may be hidden in the uterus or in the fallopian tubes. here, we have to go a good deal by the history given us. if the woman, during the course of the gonorrhea, had salpingitis, that is, an inflammation of the fallopian tubes, then we can never say positively that she is cured; all we can say, at best, is: presumably cured. and, further, if she has no pains in the uterine appendages, either spontaneous or on examination, and, if several examinations made within a day or two following menstruation are negative, then we may assume that she is cured. it is important, though, that this examination be made on the last day of menstruation or on the first or second day following; for there are many cases in which no pus and no gonococci will show in the inter-menstrual period, but will appear on those particular days, because, if the gonococci are hidden high up, they are likely to come down with the menstrual blood and portions of mucous membrane that are shed during menstruation. at best, it is a delicate problem, so that whenever there has been the least suspicion that the woman may harbor gonococci i have always advised (as is my custom, to be on the safe side) and directed the woman to use either an antiseptic suppository or an antiseptic douche before coitus. with these precautions adopted, i have never had an accident happen. =the question of probable sterility.= thus far i have considered the problem of marriage from the standpoint of infectivity. but, we know that, besides the effect on the individual, gonorrhea has also a far-reaching influence on the race; in other words, that it is prone to make the subjects--both men and women--sterile. and a candidate for marriage may, and often does, want to know whether, besides being noninfective, he or she is capable of begetting or having children. in the case of man, the problem is, fortunately, a very simple one. we can easily obtain a specimen of the man's semen and determine, by means of the microscope, whether it contains spermatozoa or not. if it does contain a normal number of lively, rapidly moving spermatozoa, the man is fertile, regardless of whether he ever had epididymitis or not. if the semen contains no spermatozoa, or only a few deformed or lazily moving ones, then he is sterile. in the case of woman, it is _absolutely_ impossible to determine whether the gonorrhea has made her sterile or not; because there is no way of expressing an ovum from the ovary. the woman may not have had any pain or inflammation in the fallopian tubes, and yet there may have been sufficient inflammation to close up the orifices of the tubes. on the other hand, she may have had a severe salpingitis on _both sides and still be fertile_. nor is there any way of telling whether the ovaries were so involved in the process as to become incapable of generating healthy ova, or any ova at all. in short, there is absolutely no way of telling whether a woman is sterile or fertile--we can only surmise. and our surmise in this respect is liable to be wrong just as often as right. the only way the question can be decided is by experience. if the prospective husband is willing to take a chance, well and good. while just as many girls marry as do young men, still, in practice, we always shall have to examine an incomparably larger number of male than of female candidates. this is due, not only to the fact that an incomparably larger number of men suffer from venereal disease, but also because very few women will confess to their fiancés that they ever entertained antematrimonial relations and--what is still worse--were infected with venereal disease. this, of course, is owing to our double standard of morality, which looks upon as a trivial or no offense in the man what it condemns as a heinous crime in the woman. i have known hundreds of men who confessed freely to their fiancées that they had had gonorrhea, but i have known only two girls who made a confession of the fact to their future husbands. they got married, however, and lived happily with their husbands ever after. chapter thirty marriage and syphilis rules for permitting a syphilitic patient to marry--rules more severe in cases where children are desired--where both partners are syphilitic--danger of paresis in some syphilitic patients--a case in the author's practice. the problem of the syphilitic differs from the problem of the exgonorrheal patient. when a gonorrheal patient is cured, so far as infectivity is concerned, and is not sterile, there is no apprehension as to the offspring. gonorrhea is not hereditary, and the child of a gonorrheal patient does not differ from the child of a nongonorrheal person. in the case of syphilis, it is different. the patient may be safe so far as infecting the partner is concerned, but yet there may be danger for the offspring. the rules for permitting a man or a woman who once had syphilis to marry, therefore, are different from those applied to the gonorrheal patient. here are the rules: . i would make it an invariable rule that no syphilitic patient should marry or should be permitted to marry before _five_ years have elapsed from the day of infection. but the period of time alone is not sufficient; other conditions must be met before we may give a syphilitic patient permission to marry. . the man or the woman must have received thorough systematic treatment for at least three years, either constantly or off and on, according to the physician's judgment. . for at least one year before the intended marriage, the person must have been absolutely free from any manifestations of syphilis; that is, from any eruptions on the skin, from any mucous patches, swelling in the bones, ulcerations, and so on. . four wassermann tests, taken at intervals of three months and at a time _when the patient was receiving no specific treatment_, must be absolutely negative. if these four conditions are fully met, then the patient may be permitted to marry. it is important, however, to state that, in permitting or refusing syphilitic persons to marry, we are guided to a great extent by the fact as to whether they _expect to have children soon or not_. in the case of a couple who are anxious to have children soon after their marriage, the conditions for our permission must be more severe than when the couple are willing or anxious to use contraceptive measures for the first years of their married life. for, if a man is free from any skin lesions and from any mucous patches, his wife is safe from infection _as long as she does not become pregnant_. but, if she does get pregnant, she may become infected through the fetus; and, of course, the child also is liable to be syphilitic. hence, much stricter requirements for syphilitics who expect to become parents are necessary than for those who do not. in case both the man and the woman are or have been syphilitic, permission to marry may be granted without hesitation, as the danger of infection is absent, but permission to have children must be refused _absolutely_ and _unequivocally_. regardless of the time that may have elapsed from the period of infection, regardless of treatment, regardless of wassermann tests, the danger to the child is too great if both parents have the syphilitic taint in them. a healthy child _may_ be born from two syphilitic parents who have undergone energetic treatment, but we have no right to take the chance. i, at least, never wanted to, nor ever will want to, take such a responsibility. =the danger of locomotor ataxia or paresis.= there is still one more point to consider in dealing with a syphilitic patient. in patients who did not receive energetic treatment from the very beginning of the disease as also in patients whose treatment was only desultory and irregular, we never can guarantee, in spite of lack of external symptoms, in spite of a negative wassermann reaction, that some trouble may not develop later in life. what shall we do in such cases and what particularly shall we do if, from a general examination of the patient, we carry away the impression that, while free from the danger of infection, the man is not a good risk? under these circumstances, we must refuse all personal responsibility, leaving the assumption of the responsibility to the prospective wife. here is a case in point. about five years ago a man came to me for examination; he came with his fiancée. he had contracted syphilis ten years previously, received irregular treatment by mouth, off and on. for five years, he had had no symptoms of any kind. he _considered_ himself cured, but wanted to know, and his fiancée wanted to know, whether he really was cured. there were no symptoms of any kind and the wassermann test was negative. nevertheless, i could not give him a clean bill of health. i noticed what seemed to me a slowness in thinking and just the least bit of hesitation in his speech. i told the girl (the man was thirty-five, she was thirty-two) that i could not render a definite decision in the matter, that everything might be all right, and then again it might not; but, that the question about children she would have to decide definitely, once for all, namely, that she was not to have any children. she was fully satisfied so far as that part was concerned; she said she herself objected to children and did not intend to have any and knew how to take care of herself. all she wanted to know was, whether she was in danger of being infected. i told her no, but that in my opinion there was some danger of her husband developing general paresis or locomotor ataxia. the girl had been a teacher for about twelve years, and she was so sick at heart of the work, was so anxious for a home of her own, that she decided to take the risk. and they got married. the marriage remained childless. the man developed general paresis (softening of the brain) three years later and died about a year afterward. the woman, now a widow, i understand, is not sorry for the step she had taken. this shows what things our social-economic conditions and our moral code are responsible for. chapter thirty-one who may and who may not marry the physician often consulted as to advisability of marriage--_venereal disease_ the most common question-- _tuberculosis_--sexual appetite of tubercular patients--effect of pregnancy contraceptive knowledge for tubercular wife-- _heart disease_--serious bar to marriage--influence of sexual intercourse--_cancer_--fear of hereditary transmission-- _exophthalmic goiter_--most frequent in women--simple goiter-- exceptions to rule--_obesity_--family history--obesity and stoutness not synonymous--_arteriosclerosis_--danger in sexual act--_gout_--real causes of gout--_mumps_--parotid glands and sex organs--mumps and sterility--oöphoritis due to mumps-- _hemophilia_--hemophilic sons may marry--hemophilic daughters may not marry--_anemia_--_chlorosis_--_epilepsy_--hysteria--symptoms of hysteria--marriage of hysterical women--_alcoholism_--effect on offspring--alcoholics and impotence--_feeblemindedness_--evil effects on offspring--sterilization of feebleminded only preventive--_insanity_--functional insanity--organic insanity-- hereditary transmissibility of insanity--fear resulting in insanity--environment versus heredity in insanity--_neurosis_-- _neurasthenia_--_psychasthenia_--_neuropathy_--_psychopathy_--nervous conditions and genius--sexual impotence and genius--_drug addiction_--external causes--_consanguineous marriages_--when consanguineous marriages are advisable--offspring of consanguineous marriages--homosexuality--homosexuals often ignorant of their condition--sexual repression and homosexuality--sadism and divorce--masochism--sexual impotence and marriage--effect upon the wife--frigidity--marital relations and frigid woman--excessive libido and marriage--excessive demands upon wife--satyriasis-- the excessively libidinous wife--nymphomania--treatment--harelip-- myopia--astigmatism--premature baldness--criminality--crime as result of environment--legal and moral crime--ancestral criminality and marriage--rules of heredity--pauperism--difference between pauperism and poverty. in former years, nobody thought of asking a physician for permission to get married. he was not consulted in the matter at all. the parents would investigate the young man's social standing, his ability to make a living, his habits perhaps, whether he was a drinking man or not, but to ask the physician's expert advice--why, as said, nobody thought of it. and how much sorrow and unhappiness, how many tragedies the doctor could have averted, if he had been asked in time! fortunately, in the last few years, a great change has taken place in this respect. it is now a very common occurrence for the intelligent layman and laywoman, imbued with a sense of responsibility for the welfare of their presumptive future offspring and actuated, perhaps, also by some fear of infection, to consult a physician as to the advisability of the marriage, leaving it to him to make the decision and they abiding by that decision. as a matter of fact, as often is the case, the pendulum now is in danger of swinging to the other extreme; for, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the tendency of the layman is to exaggerate matters and to take things in an absolute instead of in a relative manner. as a result, many laymen and laywomen nowadays insist upon a thorough examination of their own person and the person of their future partner, when there is nothing the matter with either. still, this is a minor evil, and it is better to be too careful than not careful enough. i am frequently consulted as to the advisability or nonadvisability of a certain marriage taking place. i, therefore, thought it desirable to discuss in a separate chapter the various factors, physical and mental, personal and ancestral, likely to exert an influence upon the marital partner and on the expected offspring, and to state as briefly as possible and so far as our present state of knowledge permits which factors may be considered eugenic, or favorable to the offspring, and dysgenic, or unfavorable to the offspring. the questions concerning the advisability of marriage which the layman as well as the physician have most often to deal with are questions concerning venereal disease. on account of the importance of the subject, these have been discussed rather in detail under the headings "gonorrhea and marriage" and "syphilis and marriage." other factors affecting marriage, either in the eugenic or dysgenic sense, will be discussed more briefly in the present chapter, and more or less in the order of their importance. =tuberculosis= tuberculosis, which carries off such a large part of humanity every year, is caused by the well-known bacillus tuberculosis, discovered by koch. the germ is generally inhaled through the respiratory tract, and most frequently settles in the lungs, giving rise to what is known as pulmonary consumption. however, many other organs and tissues may be affected by tuberculosis. tuberculosis used to be considered the hereditary disease _par excellence_. entire families were carried off by it, and, seeing a tuberculous father or mother and then tuberculous children, it was assumed that the infection had been transmitted to the children by heredity. as a matter of fact, the disease was spread by infection. in former years, little care was exercised about destroying the sputum; the patients would spit indiscriminately on the floor, and the sputum, drying up, would be mixed with the dust and inhaled. often the children crawling on the floor would introduce the infective material directly, by putting their little fingers in their mouths. it is now known that tuberculosis is not a hereditary disease, that is, that the germs are not transmitted by heredity. _the weak constitution_, however, which favors the development of tuberculosis, is inherited. and children of tuberculous parents, therefore, must not only be guarded against infection, but must be brought up with special care, so as to strengthen their resistance and overcome the weakened constitution which they inherited. that a person with an active tuberculous lesion should not get married goes without saying. but, it is a good rule to follow for a tuberculous person not to marry for two or three years, until all tuberculous lesions have been declared healed by a competent physician. as a rule, a tuberculous patient is a poor provider, and that also counts in the advice against marriage. then sexual intercourse has, as a rule, a strong influence on the development of the disease. unfortunately the sexual appetite of tuberculous patients is not diminished, but, rather, very frequently heightened; and frequent sexual relations weaken them and hasten the progress of the disease. as to pregnancy, that has an extremely pernicious effect on the course of tuberculosis, and no tuberculous woman should ever marry. if such a one does marry or if the disease develops after her getting married, means should be given her to prevent her from having children. during the pregnancy, the disease may not seem to be making any progress--occasionally the patient may even seem to improve--but after childbirth the disease makes very rapid strides and the patient may quickly succumb. in the early days of my practice i saw a number of such cases. if precautions are taken against pregnancy, then permission to indulge in sexual relations may be given, provided it is done rarely and moderately. if a patient who has tuberculosis conceals the fact from the future partner, a fraud is committed, and the marriage is morally annullable. it has been declared legally annullable by a recent decision of a new york judge. =heart disease= heart disease also is no longer considered hereditary. nevertheless, heart disease, if at all serious, is a contraindication to marriage. first, because the patient's life may be cut off at any time. second, sexual intercourse is injurious for people having heart disease; it may aggravate the disease or even cause sudden death. it is more injurious even than it is in tuberculosis. third--and this concerns the woman only--pregnancy has a _very_ detrimental effect upon a diseased heart. a heart that, with proper care, might be able to do its work for years, often is suddenly snapped by the extra work put upon it by pregnancy and childbirth. sometimes a woman with a diseased heart will keep up to the last minute of the delivery of the child and then suddenly will gasp and expire. in the first year of my practice i saw such a case, and i never have wanted to see another. women suffering from heart disease of any serious character should not, under any circumstance, be permitted to become pregnant. =cancer= no man will knowingly marry a woman, and no woman will marry a man, afflicted with cancer. however, this question often comes up in cases where the matrimonial candidates are free from cancer, but where there has been cancer in the family. cancer is not a hereditary disease, contrary to the opinions that have prevailed, and, if the matrimonial candidate otherwise is healthy, no hesitation need be felt on the score of heredity. the fear of hereditary transmission of the disease has caused a great deal of mischief and unnecessary anxiety to people. scientifically conducted investigations and carefully prepared statistics have shown that many diseases formerly considered hereditary are not hereditary in the least degree. should it, however, be shown that in one family there were _many_ members who died of cancer, it would indicate that there is some disease or dyscrasia in that family, and the contracting of a marriage with any member of that family would be inadvisable. =exophthalmic goiter= (=basedow's disease=) exophthalmic goiter is a disease characterised by enlargement of the thyroid gland, protrusion of the eyeballs, and rapid beating of the heart. the disease is confined almost entirely, though not exclusively, to women, and i should not advise any exophthalmic woman to marry; neither should i advise a man to marry an exophthalmic goiter woman. it is a very annoying disease, while sexual intercourse aggravates all the symptoms, particularly the palpitation of the heart. the children, if not affected by exophthalmic goiter, are liable to be very neurotic. _simple goiter_, that is, enlargement of the thyroid gland (chiefly occurring in certain high mountainous localities, such as switzerland), is not so strongly dysgenic as is exophthalmic goiter. still, goiter patients are not good matrimonial risks. of course, there are always exceptions. i know an exophthalmic goiter woman who brought up four children, and very good, healthy children they are. but in writing we can only speak of the average and not of exceptions. =obesity= obesity, or excessive stoutness, is an undue development of fat throughout the body. that it is hereditary, that it runs in families, there is no question whatsoever. and, while with great care as to the diet and by proper exercise, obesity may, as a rule, be avoided in those predisposed, it none the less often will develop in spite of all measures taken against it. some very obese people eat only one-half or less of what many thin people do; but in the former, everything seems to run to fat. obesity must be considered a dysgenic factor. the obese are subject to heart disease, asthma, apoplexy, gallstones, gout, diabetes, constipation; they withstand pneumonia and acute infectious diseases poorly, and they are bad risks when they have to undergo major surgical operations. they also, as a rule, are readily fatigued by physical and mental work. (as to the latter, there are remarkable exceptions. some very obese people can turn out a great amount of work, and are almost indefatigable in their constant activity.) each case should be considered individually, and with reference to the respective family history. if the obese person comes from a healthy, long lived family and shows no circulatory disturbances, no strong objections can be raised to him or to her. but, as a general proposition, it must be laid down that obesity is a dysgenic factor. but bear in mind that obesity and stoutness are not synonymous terms. =arteriosclerosis= arteriosclerosis means hardening of the arteries. all men over fifty are beginning to develop some degree of arteriosclerosis; but, if the process is very gradual, it may be considered normal and is not a danger to life; when, however, it develops rapidly and the blood pressure is of a high degree, there is danger of apoplexy. consequently, arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure must be considered decided bars to marriage. it must be borne in mind that the sexual act is, in itself, a danger to arteriosclerotics and people with high blood pressure, because it may bring about rupture of a blood-vessel. there are many cases of sudden death from this cause of which the public naturally never learns. married persons who find that they have arteriosclerosis or high blood pressure should abstain from sexual relations altogether or indulge only at rare intervals and moderately. =gout= a consideration of gout in connection with the question of heredity will show how near-sighted people can be, how they can go on believing a certain thing for centuries without analyzing, until somebody suddenly shows them the absurdity of the thing. gout was always considered a typical hereditary disease; for it was seen in the grandfathers, fathers, children, grandchildren, and so on. so, certainly, it must be hereditary! it did not come to our doctors' minds to think that perhaps, after all, it was not heredity that was to blame, but simply that _the same conditions_ that produced gout in the ancestors likewise produced it in their descendants. we know now that gout is caused by excessive eating, excessive drinking, lack of exercise, and faulty elimination. and, since, as a general thing, children lead the same lives that their fathers did, they are likely to develop the same diseases as their fathers did. a poor man who leads an abstemious life doesn't develop gout, and if his children lead the same abstemious lives they do not develop gout. (there are some cases of gout among the poor, but they are very rare.) but if they should begin to gorge and live an improper life they would be prone to develop the disease. the disease, therefore, cannot in any way be considered hereditary. in matrimony, gout in either of the couple is not a desirable quality, but it is not a bar to marriage; and, if the candidate individually is healthy and free from gout, the fact that there was gout in the ancestry should play no rôle. =mumps= mumps is the common name for what is technically called parotitis (or parotiditis). parotitis is an inflammation of the parotid glands. the parotid glands are situated, one on each side, immediately in front and below the external ear, and they are between one-half and one ounce in weight. they belong to the salivary glands; that is, they manufacture saliva, and each parotid gland has a duct through which it pours the saliva into the mouth. these ducts open opposite the second upper molar teeth. we might be surprised to be told that these parotid glands can have anything to do with the sex organs, but there is no other remote organ that has such a close and rather mysterious relationship with the sex-glands as have the parotids. when the parotid glands, either one or both, are inflamed, the testicles or ovaries are also liable to be attacked by inflammation. the inflammation of the testicles may be so severe as to cause them to shrivel and dry up; or, even when no shrivelling, no atrophy of the testicles occurs, they may be so affected as to become incapable of producing spermatozoa. moreover, in cases where the testicles of a mumps patient seemingly were not attacked--that is, where the patient was not aware of any inflammation, having no pain and no other symptoms--the testicles may have become incapable of generating spermatozoa. besides the testicles, the prostate gland, the secretion of which is necessary to the fertility of the spermatozoa, may also become affected and _atrophied_. it is, therefore, a very common thing for men who had the mumps in their childhood to be found sterile. as to the sexual power of mumps patients, that differs. some patients lose their virility entirely; others remain potent, but become sterile. the same thing happens to girls attacked by mumps. they may have a severe inflammation of the ovaries (ovaritis or oöphoritis) or the inflammation may be so mild as to escape notice. in either case, the girl when grown to womanhood may find herself sterile. a man who never had any venereal disease, but who has had mumps, should have himself examined for sterility before he gets married. as explained in the chapter "marriage and gonorrhea," we can, in the case of a man, easily find out whether he is fertile or sterile. but, in the case of a woman, we can not. time, necessarily, has to answer that question. in all cases, mumps reduces the chances of fertility, and no man or woman who once had mumps should get married without informing the respective partner of the fact. there should be no concealment before marriage. when the partners to the marriage contract know of the facts, they can then decide as to whether or not the marriage is desirable to them. =hemophilia, or bleeders' disease= hemophilia is a peculiar disease, consisting in frequent and often uncontrollable hemorrhages. the least cut or the pulling of a tooth may cause a severe or even dangerous hemorrhage. the slightest blow, squeeze or hurt will cause _ecchymoses_, or discolorations of the skin. the peculiarity of this hereditary disease is, that it attacks almost exclusively the males, but is transmitted almost exclusively through the female members. for instance, miss a., herself _not_ a bleeder, comes from a bleeder-family. she marries and has three boys and three girls; the three boys will be bleeders, the three girls will not; the three boys marry and have children; their children will _not_ be bleeders; the three girls marry, and _their male_ children will be bleeders. what is the lesson? the lesson is, that boys who are bleeders may marry, because they will most likely _not_ transmit the disease; but girls who come from a hemophilic family, irrespective of whether they themselves are hemophilics or not, must not marry, because most likely they _will_ transmit the disease. =anemia= anemia is a poor condition of the blood. the blood may contain an insufficient number of red blood cells or an insufficient percentage of the coloring matter of the blood, that is, hemoglobin. a special kind of anemia affecting young girls is called chlorosis. anemia and chlorosis cannot be considered contra-indications to marriage, because they are usually amenable to treatment. in fact, some cases of anemia and chlorosis are due to the lack of normal sexual relations, and the subjects get well very soon after marriage. but it is best and safest to subject anemic patients to a course of treatment and to improve their condition before they marry. =epilepsy= while epilepsy--known commonly as fits or falling sickness--is not as hereditary as it was one time thought to be, its hereditary character being ascertainable in only about per cent. of cases, nevertheless, it is a decidedly dysgenic agent, and marriage with an epileptic is distinctly advised against. where both parents are epileptics, the children are almost sure to be epileptic, and such a marriage should be prohibited by law. under no circumstances should parents who are both epileptic bring children into the world. it should be the duty of the state to instruct them in methods of preventing conception. =hysteria= hysteria is a disease the chief characteristics of which are a _lack of control_ over one's emotions and acts, the _imitation_ of the symptoms of various diseases, and an _exaggerated_ self-consciousness. the patient may have extreme pain in the region of the head, ovaries, spine; in some parts of the skin there is extreme hypersensitiveness (hyperesthesia), so that the least touch causes great pain; in others, there is complete anesthesia--that is, absence of sensation--so that when you stick the patient with a needle she will not feel it. a very frequent symptom is a choking sensation, as if a ball came up the throat and stuck there (globus hystericus). then there may be spasms, convulsions, retention of urine, paralysis, aphonia (loss of voice), blindness, and a lot more. there is hardly a functional or organic nervous disorder that hysteria may not simulate. of late years our ideas about hysteria have undergone a radical change, and we now know that most, if not all, cases of hysteria are due to a repression or non-satisfaction of the sexual instinct or to some shock of a sexual character in childhood. only too often a girl who was very hysterical before marriage loses her hysteria as if by magic upon contracting a _satisfactory_ marriage. on the other hand, a healthy girl can become quickly hysterical if she marries a man who is sexually impotent or who is disagreeable to her and incapable of satisfying her sexually. while hysteria, in itself, is not hereditary, it, nevertheless, is a question whether a strongly hysterical woman would make a satisfactory mother. the entire family history should be investigated. if the hysteria is found to be an isolated instance in the given girl, it may be disregarded, if not extreme; but if the entire family or several members of it are neuropathic, the condition is a dysgenic one. marriage may be contracted, provided no children are brought into the world until several years have elapsed and the mother's organization seems to have become more stable. in some cases, a child acts as a good medicine against hysteria. in short, every case must be examined individually on its merits, and the counsel of a good psychologist or psychoanalyst may prove very valuable. =alcoholism= a good deal depends upon what we understand by alcoholism. the fanatics consider a person an alcoholic who drinks a glass of beer or wine with his meals. this is nonsense. this is not alcoholism, and cannot be considered a dysgenic factor. but, where there is a distinct habit, so that the individual _must_ have his alcohol daily, or if he goes on an occasional drunken "spree," marriage must be advised against. and where the man (or woman) is what we call a real drunkard, marriage not only should be advised against, but most decidedly should be prohibited by law. alcoholism, as a habit, is one of the worst dysgenic factors to reckon with. first, the offspring is liable to be affected, which is sufficient in itself to condemn marriage with an alcoholic. second, the earning powers of an alcoholic are generally diminished, and are likely gradually to diminish more and more. third, an alcoholic is irritable, quarrelsome, and is liable to do bodily injury to his wife. fourth an alcoholic often develops sexual weakness or complete sexual impotence. fifth, alcoholics are likely to develop extreme jealousy, which may become pathological, even to the extent of a psychosis. if both the husband and wife are alcoholics, then marriage between them which results in children is not merely a sin, but a crime. we do not now come across cases so often as we used to of women marrying drunkards in the hope or with the hope of reforming them. but such cases still happen. this is a very foolish procedure. let the man reform first, let him stay reformed for two or three years, and then the woman may take the chance, if she wants to. =feeblemindedness= feeblemindedness, in all its gradations--including idiocy, imbecility, moronism, and so on--is strongly hereditary and is one of the most dysgenic factors we have to deal with. it is the most dysgenic of all factors. it is more dysgenic than insanity. marriage with a feebleminded person not only should be advised against, but should be prohibited by law. a feebleminded man has much fewer chances for marriage than has a feebleminded woman. feebleminded girls, even to the extent of being morons, if pretty (as they often are) have very good chances of getting married, not infrequently getting for husbands young men of good families who themselves of course are not very strong mentally, but still are far from being considered feebleminded. there are many cases of brilliant men--more than the public has any idea of--who married pretty, shy, demure, but withal feebleminded, girls, and the result has been in the largest percentage of cases very disastrous. in many cases all the children are feebleminded, or if not feebleminded, so weak mentally that it is impossible to make them go through any college or school. all the private tutoring is often in vain. and the brilliant father's heart breaks. it must be borne in mind that feeblemindedness or weak mentality is much more difficult to detect in a woman than it is in a man. weakmindedness in a woman often passes for "cuteness," and as among the conservatives a woman is not expected to be able to discuss current topics, her intellectual caliber is often not discovered by the blinded husband until some weeks after the marriage ceremony. as any instruction in the use of contraceptives would be wasted on the feebleminded, the only way to guard the race against pollution with feebleminded stock is either to segregate or to sterilize them. society could have no objection against the feebleminded marrying or indulging in sexual relations, provided it could be assured that they will not bring any feebleminded stock into the world. after the man and the woman have been sterilized there is no objection to their getting married. where a normal, able or brilliant husband finds out too late that his wife's mentality is of rather a low order he is certainly justified in using contraceptives; and if he is determined to have children he will be obliged to divorce his wife. of course this applies also to the wife of a weak minded husband. =insanity= insanity may be briefly defined as a disease of the mind. we will not here go into a discussion as to what constitutes real insanity, as to what is understood by insanity in the legal sense of the term, and so on, except to note that we have two divisions. one is functional insanity. this may be temporary, or periodical, and is due to some external cause, is curable, and is not hereditary. for instance, a person may get insane from a severe shock, from trouble, from anxiety, from a severe accident (such as a shipwreck), from a sudden and total loss of his fortune, of his wife and children (by fire, earthquake, shipwreck or railroad accident). such insanities are curable and are not transmissible. another example is what is known as puerperal insanity. some women during childbirth, due probably to some toxic infection, become insane. this insanity may be extreme and maniacal in character. still, it often passes away in a few days _without leaving any trace_ and may never return again, or, if it does return, it may return only during another childbirth. this kind of insanity is not transmissible. the second division is what we call organic insanity. this expresses itself in mania and melancholy, so-called manic-depressive insanity. this is due to a degeneration of the brain-and nerve-tissue and is hereditary. but, our entire conception as to the hereditary transmissibility of insanity has undergone a radical change. there is hardly another disease the fear of whose hereditary character is responsible for so much anguish and torture. in former years, when there was an insane uncle or aunt or grandparent that fact weighed like a veritable incubus on the entire family. every member of the family was tortured by the secret anguish that maybe he or she would be next to be affected by this most horrible of all diseases--disease of the mind. if an ancestral member of the family became insane at a certain age, every member of that family was living in fear and trembling until several years had passed _after_ that critical age, and only then would they begin to breathe freely. indeed, many people became insane from the very fear of becoming insane. it cannot be subject to any doubt that many people do become mentally unbalanced from the fear that they will become unbalanced. fear has a tremendous influence on the purely bodily functions, but its influence on the mental functions is incomparably greater, and a person will often get that which he fears he is going to get. now the hereditary character of insanity is not taken in the same absolute sense in which it was formerly. while we still consider it a dysgenic factor, yet we recognize the paramount importance of environment; and we know that by proper bringing-up, using the expression bringing-up in its broadest sense--including a proper mental and physical discipline--any hereditary taint can be counteracted. in connection with this subject, the following very recent statistics will prove of interest. the families of insane persons cared for in the london county asylums were investigated, and, according to reports received from the educational authorities, only of these (less than per cent) had mentally defective children. as to the time of the birth of the children, whether before or after the attack of the insanity, we find the following figures: out of parents had children after their first attack of insanity, and children were born after the onset of insanity in the parent; while the remaining children were born before the parent became insane. altogether, as will be seen from a discussion of the various factors rendering marriage permissible or nonpermissible, i am inclined to consider environment a more important factor than heredity. the purely physical characteristics bear the indelible impress of heredity. but the moral and cultural characteristics, which in the modern civilized man are much more important than the physical, are almost exclusively the results of environment. =neuroses--neurasthenia--psychasthenia--neuropathy--psychopathy= i will not attempt either exhaustive or concise definitions of the terms named in the caption, for the simple reason that it is impossible to give satisfactory definitions of them. the conditions which these terms designate do not constitute definite disease-entities, and many different things are understood by different people when these terms are mentioned. only brief indications of the meaning will be given. neurosis is a functional disease of the nervous system. neurasthenia is a condition of nervous exhaustion, brought about by various causes, such as overwork, worry, fright, sexual excesses, sexual abstinence, and so on. the basis of neurasthenia, however, is often or even generally a hereditary taint, a nervous weakness inherited from the parents. psychasthenia is a neurosis or psychoneurosis similar to neurasthenia, characterized by an exhaustion of the nervous system, also by weakness of the will, overscrupulousness, fear, and a feeling of the _unreality_ of things. neuropathy is a disease or disorder of the nervous system. psychopathy is a disease or disorder of the mind. of late years we often hear people referred to as neurotics, neurasthenics, psychasthenics, neuropaths or psychopaths. these are undoubtedly abnormal conditions, and, taken as a general thing, they are dysgenic factors. but a dysgenic factor in an animal _is_ a dysgenic factor, and that is all there is to it. there are no two sides to the question. but if anything goes to show the difference between animals and human beings, and to demonstrate why principles of eugenics, as derived from a study of animals, can never be _fully_ applicable to human beings, it is these considerations which we now have under discussion. to repeat, neuroses, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, and the various forms of neuropathy and psychopathy are dysgenic factors. but people suffering from these conditions often are among _the world's greatest geniuses_, have done some of the world's greatest work, and, if we prevented or discouraged marriage among people who are somewhat "abnormal" or "queer," we should deprive the world of some of its greatest men and women. for insanity is allied to genius, and if we were to exterminate all mentally or nervously abnormal people we should at the same time exterminate some of the men and women that have made life worth living. and what is true of mentally abnormal is also true of physically inferior people. an inferior horse or dog _is_ inferior. there is no compensation for the inferiority. but a man may be physically inferior, he may be, for instance, a consumptive, but still he may have given to the world some of the sweetest and most wonderful poems. a man may be lame, or deaf, or strabismic, he may be a hunchback or a cripple and altogether physically repulsive, and yet he may be one of the world's greatest philosophers or mathematicians. a man may be sexually impotent and absolutely useless for race purposes, yet may be one of the world's greatest singers or greatest discoverers. in short, the eugenic problem in the human is not, and never will be, as simple as it is in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. if we want to strive after healthy, normal mediocrity, then the principles of animal eugenics become applicable to the human race. if, on the other hand, we want talent, if we want genius, if we want benefactors of the human race, then we must go very slow with our eugenic applications. =drug addiction or narcotism= addiction to drugs, whether it be opium, morphine, heroin or cocaine, is a strongly dysgenic factor. the addiction to the drug is of itself not transmissible, but the weakened constitution or degeneracy which is generally responsible for the development of the drug addiction is inheritable. a few cases of drug addiction are external; that is, the patient may have a good healthy constitution, no hereditary taint, and still because during some sickness he was given morphine a number of times he may have developed an addiction to the drug. but those cases are rare. and such cases, if they are cured and if the addiction is completely overcome, may marry. but in most cases it isn't the drug addiction that causes the degeneracy; it is the degeneracy or the neuropathic or psychopathic constitution that causes the drug addiction. and such cases are bad matrimonial risks. and it is a very risky thing for a woman to marry an addict with the idea of reforming him. as i said about the alcoholic: let him reform first, let him stay reformed for a few years, and then the rest is not so great. =consanguineous marriages= consanguinity means blood relationship, and consanguineous marriages are marriages between near blood relatives. the physician is frequently consulted as to the permissibility or danger of marriages between near relations. the question generally concerns first cousins, second cousins, uncle and niece, and nephew and aunt. the popular idea is that consanguineous marriages are bad _per se_. the children of near relatives, such as first cousins, are apt to be defective, deaf and dumb, blind, or feebleminded, and what not. this popular idea, as so many popular ideas are, is wrong. and still there is of course, as there always is, some foundation for it. the matter, however, is quite simple. we know that many traits, good and bad, are transmitted by heredity. and naturally when traits are possessed by both father and mother they stand a much greater chance of being transmitted to the offspring than if possessed by one of the parents alone. now then, if a certain bad trait, such as epilepsy or insanity, is present in a family that trait is present in both cousins, and the likelihood of children from such a marriage inheriting that trait is much greater than when the parents are strangers, the taint being present in the family of only one of the parents. but if there be no hereditary taint in the cousins' family, and, still more, if the family is an intelligent one, if there are geniuses in the family, then there cannot be the slightest objection to marriage between cousins, and the children of such marriages are apt to inherit in a strong degree the talents or genius of their ancestors. in short, if the family is a bad one, one below par, then marriage between cousins or between uncle and niece should be forbidden. if the family is a good one, above par, then marriage between relatives of that family should be encouraged. the idea that the children from consanguineous marriages are apt to be deaf and dumb has no foundation in fact. recent statistics from various asylums in germany, for instance, have shown that only about five per cent. of the deaf and dumb children were the offspring of consanguineous marriages. if per cent, of the deaf and dumb had _non_-consanguineous parents, how could one say that even in the other five per cent, the consanguinity was the cause? if it were the other way around, then of course we could blame consanguinity. as it is, we can assume even in this five per cent, a mere coincidence, and we have no right to say that consanguinity and deaf and dumbness stand in the relation to each other of cause and effect. it is interesting to know that among the egyptians, persians, and incas of peru close consanguineous marriages were very common. the egyptian kings generally married their sisters. this was common custom and if the children born of such unions were defectives or monstrosities the fact would have become quickly apparent and the custom would have been abolished. evidently the offspring of very close consanguinity was normal, or even above normal, or the practice would not have been continued such a long time. it is perhaps worth while noting that one of the world's greatest scientists, charles darwin, was the child of parents who were first cousins. =homosexuality= homosexuality (homos--the same) is a perversion in which a person is attracted not to persons of the opposite but to persons of the same sex. thus a homosexual man does not care for women, but is attracted to men. a homosexual woman is not attracted to men; she only cares for women and may even loathe men. a homosexual, man or woman, has no right to marry. the wrong committed by a homosexual marrying is a double one: it is wrong to the partner, wrong to the children. the normal partner is bound to discover the abnormality, and if he (or she) does, then the married life is a very unhappy one. even if the abnormal partner uses the utmost efforts to conceal the abnormality, he cannot afford any pleasure to the normal partner, because the sexual act committed under loathing cannot be satisfactory. the other wrong is committed on the offspring. homosexuality is hereditary, and nobody has a right to bring homosexuals into the world, for there is no unhappier being than a homosexual. i know a homosexual woman, who, knowing her abnormality, married for the sake of a comfortable home. she has been successful in hiding from her husband her abnormality, he simply considering her frigid. but each sexual act costs her tortures. so far she has succeeded in avoiding pregnancy. i also know a highly refined and educated homosexual gentleman, who married before understanding his condition. many homosexuals, not knowing that such a thing as homosexuality even exists, do not understand their own condition; they feel a little strange, a little puzzled, but they don't know that they ought not to marry. soon after marrying his condition became clear to him, but in the meantime his wife conceived, and he is now the father of a healthy, good-looking boy. it is possible that with proper bringing up the development of any homosexual traits will be prevented. it should be borne in mind that long sexual repression is favorable to the development of homosexuality. but to emphasize: homosexuality is a dysgenic factor, and no homosexual should marry. =sadism= sadism is a sexual perversion in which the person derives pleasure only when beating, biting, striking, or otherwise inflicting pain on the person of the opposite sex. the degree of cruelty varies, but all sadists should be shunned. unfortunately the fact that a man is a sadist is often not found out until after marriage, but as soon as the wife has found it out she should leave the man and demand a divorce. sadism is a sufficient ground for a separation or divorce. no person with any moral feeling in him or her should be responsible for bringing children into the world with a possible sadistic heredity. sadistic cruelty is often of the gross, brutal, repulsive kind, but sometimes the sadist inflicts on his "beloved" object refined tortures of which only a cunning "demon" is capable. the sufferings which the wives of some sadists have to undergo are known only to themselves and to a few--very few--physicians. =masochism= masochism is a sexual perversion in which the person, man or woman, _likes_ to suffer pain, beatings, insults and other cruelties at the hands of the beloved object. it is a dysgenic factor but much less important than sadism. =sexual impotence= sexual impotence is not hereditary, but impotence in the male either so complete that he cannot perform the act or consisting only in premature ejaculations (relative impotence or sexual insufficiency) should constitute a bar to marriage. this impotence may not interfere with impregnation; the wife may have children and the children will not be in any way defective, but the wife herself, unless she is completely frigid, will suffer the tortures of hell, and may quickly become a sexual neurasthenic, a nervous wreck, or she may even develop a psychosis. any man suffering with impotence should have himself treated before marriage until he is cured; if his impotence is incurable, then for his own sake and for the sake of the girl or woman he is supposed to love he should give up the idea of marriage. the only permissible exception is in cases in which the prospective wife knows the nature of her prospective husband's trouble, and claims that she does not care for gross sexual relations and therefore does not mind the impotence. in case the wife is absolutely _frigid_, the marriage may turn out satisfactory. but i would always have my misgivings, and should the wife's apparently absent but in reality only dormant libido suddenly awaken there would be trouble for both husband and wife. it is therefore necessary to emphasize: in all cases of impotence--caution! =frigidity= frigidity, as we have explained in a previous chapter, is a term applied to lack of sexual desire or sexual enjoyment in women. of course many women before marriage are themselves ignorant of their sexual condition. having learned to restrain their impulses, to repress any sexual stir, they themselves are often unable to say whether they have a strong or weak libido, or any at all. and whether or no a given woman would derive any pleasure from the sexual act can only be found out after marriage. many girls, however, know very well whether they are "passionate" or not, but they wouldn't tell. they are afraid to confess to a complete lack of passion--they fear they might lose a husband. frigidity as an agent in marriage may be considered from two points of view: the offspring and the husband. the offspring is not affected by the mother's frigidity. a very frigid woman, if the frigidity is not due to serious organic causes, may have very healthy children and make an excellent mother. as far as the husband is concerned, it will depend a good deal on the degree of frigidity. if the woman is merely cold, and, while herself not enjoying the act, raises no objection to it, then it cannot be considered a bar to marriage. in fact many men, themselves not overstrong sexually, are praying for somewhat frigid wives. (it must be stated, however, that to some husbands relations with frigid and non-participating wives are extremely distasteful.) but when the frigidity is of such a degree that it amounts to a strong physical aversion to the act, it should be considered a bar to marriage. such frigidity is often the cause of a disrupted home, often leads to divorce and is legally considered a sufficient cause for divorce or for the annulment of marriage, the same as impotence in the man is. =excessive libido in men= we have seen that sexual impotence is a dysgenic factor and if complete and incurable should constitute a barrier to marriage. the opposite condition is that of excessive libido. libido is the desire for the opposite sex. a proper amount of libido is normal and desirable. a lack of libido is abnormal. and an excess of libido is also abnormal. but a good many men are possessed of an excess of libido; it is either congenital or _acquired_. some men torture their wives "to death," not literally but figuratively. harboring the prevailing idea that a wife has no rights in this respect, that her body is not her own, that she must always hold herself ready to satisfy his abnormal desires, such a husband exercises his marital rights without consideration for the physical condition or the mental feelings of his partner. some husbands demand that their wives satisfy them _daily_ from one to five or more times a day. some wives who happen to be possessed of an equally strong libido do not mind these excessive demands (though in time they are almost sure to feel the evil effects), but if the wife possesses only a moderate amount of sexuality and if she is too weak in body and in will-power to resist her lord and master's demands, her health is often ruined and she becomes a wreck. (complete abstinence and excessive indulgence often have the same evil end-results.) some men "kill" four or five women before the fury of their libido is at last moderated. of course, it is hard to find out a man's libido beforehand. but if a delicate girl or a woman of moderate sexuality has reasons to suspect that a man is possessed of an abnormally excessive libido, she would do well to think twice before taking the often irretrievable step. i have spoken so far of excessive libido in normal men, that is, in men who are otherwise normal, sane and can _whenever necessary_ control their desires. there is a form of excessive libido in men called satyriasis, which reaches such a degree that the men are often not able to control their desires, and they will satisfy their passion even if they know that the result is sure to be a venereal infection or several years in prison. of course, satyriasis is a dysgenic factor; those suffering with that disorder are not normal; they are on the borderland of insanity, and not only should they not be permitted to marry, but they should be confined to institutions where they can be subjected to the proper treatment. =excessive libido in women= just as we have impotent and excessively libidinous men, so we have frigid and excessively libidinous women. a wife possessed of excessive libido is a terrible calamity for a husband of a normal or moderate sexuality. many a libidinous wife has driven her husband, especially if she is young and he is old, to a premature grave. and "grave" is used in the literal, not figurative, sense of the word. it would be a good thing if a man could find out the character of his future wife's libido before marriage. unfortunately, it is impossible. at best, it can only be guessed at. but a really excessive libido on the part of either husband or wife should constitute a valid ground for divorce. when the libido in woman is so excessive that she _cannot_ control her passion, and forgetting religion, morality, modesty, custom and possible social consequences, she offers herself to every man she meets, we use the term nymphomania. it is a disease which corresponds to satyriasis in men, and what i said of satyriasis applies with equal force to nymphomania. nymphomaniac women should not be permitted to marry or to run around loose, but should be confined to institutions in which they can be subjected to proper treatment. =harelip= this is a congenital defect consisting in a notch or split in the upper lip. it is due to defective development of the embryo and is as a rule found in association with cleft palate. probably hereditary, but is not common and is not of much importance. =myopia= myopia means nearsightedness. this defect is undoubtedly hereditary to a certain degree, but it is doubtful if, other conditions being favorable, any man would give up a girl because she is myopic or vice versa. still, if the condition is extreme, as it sometimes is, it should be taken into consideration. and where both the man and the woman are strongly myopic some hesitation should be felt in contracting a marriage. if the husband alone is myopic, then the defect may be transmitted to the sons but not to the daughters, and these daughters may in their turn transmit the defect to their sons but not to their daughters. in other words, the defect is more or less _sex-limited_. =astigmatism= this is a defect of the eye, depending upon some irregularity of the cornea or the lens, in which light rays in different meridians are not brought to the same focus. it is to a certain extent hereditary, but plays an insignificant rôle. it is an undesirable trait, but cannot be considered a dysgenic factor. =baldness= premature baldness is a decidedly inheritable trait. and so is premature grayness of the hair. but it is doubtful if any woman would permit these factors to play any rôle in her choice of a husband. =criminality= almost a complete change has taken place in our ideas of criminality, and there are but very few criminologists now who believe in the lombrosian nonsense of most criminality being inherited and being accompanied by physical stigmata of degeneration. the idea that the criminal is born and not made is now held only by an insignificant number of thinkers. we know now that by far the greatest percentage of crime is the result of environment, of poverty, with all that that word implies, of bad bringing up, of bad companions. we know that the child of the criminal, properly brought up, will develop into a model citizen, and vice versa, the child of the saint, brought into the slums, might develop into a criminal. then we must remember that there are many crimes which are not crimes, per se, but which are merely infractions of man-made laws, or representing rebellious acts against an unjust and cruel social order. thus, for instance, a man or a woman who defying the law, would give information about birth control, and be convicted for the offence, would be legally a criminal. morally he or she would be a high-minded humanitarian. a man who would throw a bomb at the russian czar or at a murderous pogrom-inciting russian governor would be considered an assassin, and if caught would be hanged; and in making up the pedigree of such a family, a narrow-minded eugenist would be apt to say that there was criminality in that family. but as a matter of fact, that "assassin" may have belonged to the noblest-minded heroes in history. the eugenists will therefore pay little attention to criminality in the ancestry as a dysgenic factor. as long as the matrimonial candidate himself is not a criminal, the ancestral criminality should constitute no bar to the marriage. it is not likely to show itself atavistically in the children. altogether a good deal of nonsense has been written about atavism. and people forget that the same rules of heredity that are applied to physical conditions cannot be applied to spiritual and moral qualities, the latter being much more dependent upon environment than the former. of course the various circumstances must be taken into consideration, and each case must be decided upon its merits. no generalizations can be permitted. the _kind_ of crime must always be considered. and, furthermore, it should be borne in mind that not only is a criminal ancestry _per se_ no bar to marriage, the marriage candidate himself may be an ex-criminal, may have served time in prison, and still be a very desirable father or mother from the eugenic viewpoint. a man who in a fit of passion or during a quarrel, perhaps under the slight influence of liquor, struck or killed a man is not, therefore, a real criminal. after serving his time in prison he may never again commit the slightest antisocial act, may make a moral citizen and an ideal husband and father. this is not a plea for the under dog. for in this case, where the future of the race is at stake, all other considerations must be put into the background. i simply plead for an intelligent consideration of the subject. many honored citizens are worse criminals and worse fathers than many people who have served prison sentences. =pauperism= it may seem strange to discuss pauperism in relation to marriage and to speak of it as a hereditary factor, but it is necessary to discuss it, because considerable ignorance prevails on the subject, it being generally confused with poverty. there is a radical difference between pauperism and poverty. people may be poor for generations and generations, even very poor, and still not be considered or classed with paupers. pauperism generally implies a lack of physical and mental stamina, loss of _self-respect_ and unconquerable laziness. of course we know now that laziness often rests upon a physical basis, being due to imperfect working of the internal glands. but whatever the cause of the laziness may be, the fact is that it is one of the characteristics of the pauper. and while we cannot speak of pauperism being hereditary, the qualities that go to make up the pauper are transmissible. no normal woman would marry a pauper, and the woman who would marry a pauper is not amenable to any advice or to any book knowledge. but men are sometimes tempted to marry daughters of paupers if they happen to be pretty. they should consider the matter very carefully, for some of the ancestral traits may become manifest in the children. chapter thirty-two birth control or the limitation of offspring knowledge of prevention of conception essential--misapprehensions concerning birth-control propaganda--modern contraceptives not injurious to health--imperfection of contraceptive measures due to secrecy--prevention of conception and abortion radically different--more marriages consummated if birth-control information were legally obtainable--demand for prostitution would be curtailed--venereal disease due to lack of knowledge--another phase of the birth-control problem--knowledge of contraceptive methods where there was a taint of insanity, and the happy results. no girl, and no man for that matter, should enter the bonds of matrimony without learning the latest means of preventing conception, of regulating the number of offspring. with people who consider any attempt at regulating the number of children a sin, we have nothing to argue, though we believe that there are very few people except among the lowest dregs of society who do not use some measures of regulation. otherwise we would see most families with ten to twenty children instead of two or three. nor do i intend to devote this chapter to a detailed presentation of the arguments in favor of the rational regulation of offspring. it would have to be merely a repetition of the arguments that i have presented elsewhere.[ ] but a few points may well be touched upon here. in spite of the fact that the subject of birth control is much better known now than it was when we first started to propagate it, still it cannot be mentioned too often, for the misapprehensions concerning it almost keep pace with the propaganda. first, there is a foolish notion that we would try to regulate the number of children forcibly, that we would compel people to have a small number of children. nothing could apparently be more absurd, and still many people sincerely believe it. nothing is further from the truth. on the contrary, much as we are in favor of birth control, we advise limitation of offspring only to those who for various reasons, financial, hereditary or hygienic, are unable to have many children. we emphatically believe that couples who are in excellent health, who are of untainted heredity, who are fit to bring up children, and have the means to do so, should have at least half a dozen children. if they should have one dozen, they would deserve the thanks of the community. all we claim is that in such an important matter as bringing children into the world, the parents who have to carry the full burden of bringing up these children should have the right to decide. they should have the means of control. they should be able to say whether they will have two or six or one dozen children. =contraceptive measures= and the argument that contraceptives are injurious to the health of the woman, of the man, or of both, may be curtly dismissed. it is not true of any of the modern contraceptives. but even if it were true, the amount of injury that can be done by contraceptives would be like a drop of water in comparison with the injuries resulting from excessive pregnancies and childbirths. some of the contraceptive measures require some trouble to use, some are unesthetic, but these are trifles and constitute a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to regulate the number of one's offspring according to one's intelligent desires. the commonest argument now made against contraceptives is that they are not absolutely safe, that is, absolutely to be relied upon, that they will not prevent in absolutely every case. this is true; but there are three answers which render this objection invalid. first, many of the cases of failure are to be ascribed not to the contraceptives themselves, but to their improper, careless and unintelligent use. the best methods in the world will fail if used improperly. second, if the measures are efficient in or per cent, and fail in one or two per cent., then they are a blessing. some women would be the happiest women in the world if they could render per cent. of their conjugal relations unfruitful. third, the imperfections of our contraceptive measures are due to the secrecy with which the entire subject must necessarily be surrounded. if the subject of birth control could be fully discussed in medical books there is no doubt that in a short time we would have measures that would be absolutely certain and would leave nothing to be desired. but even such as they are, the measures are better than none, and as said in the beginning of this chapter, it is the duty of every young woman to acquire as one of the items of her sex education the knowledge of how to avoid too frequent pregnancies. in fact, i consider this the most important item in a woman's sex education, and if she has learned nothing else she should learn this. for this information is _absolutely_ necessary to her future health and happiness. =a few everyday cases= in my twenty years' work for the cause of rational birth control i have come in contact with thousands and thousands of cases which demonstrate in the most convincing manner possible the tragic results of forced or undesired motherhood, and of the fear of forced or undesired motherhood. some of the cases were in my own practice, some were related to me by brother physicians, some were described to me by the victims living in all parts of this vast country. were i to collect and report all the cases that came to my notice during those twenty years, they would without exaggeration make a volume the size of the latest edition of the standard dictionary, printed in the same small type. some of them are positively heartbreaking. they make you sick at the stupidity of the human race, at the stupidity and brutality of the lawgivers. but i do not wish to appeal to your emotions. i do not wish to take extreme and unique cases. i will therefore briefly relate a few everyday cases, which will demonstrate to you the beneficence of contraceptive knowledge and the tragedy and misery caused by the lack of such knowledge. _case ._ this class of case is so common that i almost feel like apologizing for referring to it. she, whom i will call by the forbearing name of mrs. smith, had been married a little over nine years, and had given birth to five children. she was an excellent mother, nursed them herself, took good care of them, and all the five were living and healthy. but in caring for them and for the household all alone, for they could not afford a servant or a nurse-girl, all her vitality had been sapped, all her originally superb energy had dwindled down to nothing; her nerves were worn to a frazzle and she became but a shadow of her former self. and the fear of another pregnancy became an obsession with her. she dreamed of it at night, and it poisoned her waking hours in the day. she felt that she simply could not go through another pregnancy, another childbirth, with its sleepless nights and its weary toilsome days. she asked her doctor who brought her children into the world to give her some preventive, but he laughed the matter off. "just be careful," was all the advice she got from him. and when in spite of being careful, she, horror of horrors, became pregnant again, she gathered up courage, went to the same doctor, and asked him to perform an abortion on her. but he was a highly respectable physician, a christian gentleman, and he became highly indignant at her impudence in coming to him and asking him to commit "murder." her tears and pleadings were in vain. he remained adamant. whether he would have remained as adamant if instead of mrs. smith, who could only pay twenty-five dollars for the abortion, the patient had been one of his society clientele, who could pay two hundred and fifty dollars, is a question which i will not answer in the affirmative or negative. i will leave it open. i will merely remark that in the question of abortion in certain specific cases the moral indignation of some physicians is in inverse proportion to the size of the fee expected. a doctor who will become terribly insulted when a poor woman who can only pay ten or fifteen dollars asks to be relieved of the fruit of her womb, will usually discover that the woman who can afford to pay one hundred dollars is badly in need of a curettement. oh, no. he does not perform an abortion. he merely curets the uterus. but to come back to mrs. smith. she went away from the indignant adamant doctor. but she was determined not to give birth to another child. she confided her trouble to a neighbor, who sent her to a midwife. the midwife was neither very expert, nor very clean. mrs. smith had to go to her two or three times. after bleeding for about ten days she developed blood poisoning, from which she died a few days later, at the early age of twenty-nine, leaving a disconsolate father, who in time to come will probably find consolation with another woman, and five motherless children, who will never find consolation. one may find a substitute for a wife, there is no substitute for a mother. and such tragedies are of daily occurrence. may the lord have mercy on the souls of those who are responsible for them. before i proceed further i wish to say that it is the terrible prevalence of the abortion evil, with its concomitant evils of infection, ill health, chronic invalidism and death, that more than any other single factor urges us in our birth control propaganda. and those who want to forbid the dissemination of any information about the prevention of conception are playing directly into the hands of the professional abortionists. they could not act any more zealously if they were in league with the latter and were paid by them. and having mentioned the subject of abortion, i wish to utter a note of warning. in our birth control propaganda, we must be very careful to keep the question of the prevention of conception and of abortion separate and apart. the stupid law puts the two in the same paragraph, some ignorant laymen and equally ignorant physicians treat the two as if they were the same thing, but we, in our speeches and our writings, must keep the two separate, we must show the people the essential difference between prevention and abortion, between refraining from creating life and destroying life already created; we must show the viciousness of meting out the same punishment for two things which are fundamentally different, different not only in degree but in kind--and it is only by thus keeping the two things apart, by showing that we stand for one thing--prevention--and not for the other--abortion, that we can ever gain the general sympathy of the public and the co-operation of the legislators. i do not say that there are not many cases in which the induction of abortion is not only justifiable, but imperative; but that is a different question, and the two issues must not be confused. and we would and should resent any attempt on the part of either enemy or friend to so confuse them. _case ._ mr. a. and miss b. are in love with each other. but they cannot get married, for his salary is too small. they might risk getting married, if the specter of an indefinite number of children did not stretch out its restraining hand. she comes from a good family, she was brought up, if not in the lap of luxury, in the lap of comfort and coziness, and it is the ambition of every good american to furnish his wife at least as good a home as her father gave her. her father, by the way, died prematurely from overwork in trying to give all possible comforts and advantages to a bevy of six unmarried and marriageable daughters. as i said, the fear of children kept them back. each year the hope revived that in another year their union in matrimony would be consummated. but the years passed. mr. a.'s hair became thin and grayish, miss b began to look haggard and pinched--and still the marriage could not take place. miss b was very religious and very proper, and would not do anything that was improper. a was not quite so proper; he paid occasional visits elsewhere, and as instruction in venereal prophylaxis was not included in his college course, he acquired a gonorrhea, which it took him about six months to get rid of. to shorten the story, a was thirty-nine and miss b was thirty-five when the many times postponed marriage was consummated, but cupid seemed to be busy elsewhere when the ceremony took place, and there is very little romance in their married life. the marriage has remained childless, as i told mr. a it would be. i consider this a ruined life--and all for the lack of a little knowledge. if the anti-preventionists, those who are opposed to any information about the prevention of conception, were not so hopelessly stupid, they would see that from their own point of view it would be better if such information were legally obtainable. for it would be instrumental in causing more marriages which otherwise remain unconsummated, and by favoring early marriages, it would be instrumental in curtailing the demand for prostitution, in diminishing venereal disease. and as is well known, venereal disease is one of the great factors in race suicide. _case ._ a young woman was married to a man who besides being a brutal drunkard was subject to periodic fits of insanity. every year or two he would be taken to the lunatic asylum for a few weeks or months, and then discharged. and every time on his discharge he would celebrate his liberty by impregnating his wife. she hated and loathed him, but could not protect herself against his "embraces." and she had to see herself giving birth to one abnormal child after another. she begged her doctor to give her some means of prevention, but that boob claimed ignorance, and the illegality of the thing. the woman finally committed suicide, but not before she had given birth to six abnormal children, who will probably grow up drunkards, criminals or insane. and because we object to such kind of breeding, we are accused of being enemies of the human race, of advocating race suicide, of violating the laws of god and man. oh, for a mighty sampson to strike the imbeciles with the jaw of an ass, for a mental hercules to loosen the fontanelles of their petrified skulls and put some sense into them! _case ._ this observation concerns a couple both of whom had a very bad heredity. the blood of each was badly tainted. the doctor who had treated the husband cautioned them and told them that they had no right to have children. but here the tables were turned. the doctor wanted to give them the means for prevention, but the husband and wife, pious roman catholics, would not go against their religion and god (as if god wanted a world full of imbeciles), and refused to employ any precautions. they have had four children so far. one of them seems fairly normal, except that he is silly, in which respect he is merely like his parents; two are deaf and blind in one eye; the fourth is a cretin, practically an idiot. this case brings us face to face with another phase of the problem. what should we do when the parents, stupid and ignorant, refuse to stop breeding worthless material? eugenic agitation, education, will bring about such a strong public opinion that none but idiots, who will be vasectomized or segregated, will dare to bring into the world children that are physically and mentally handicapped. _case ._ this couple had been married eight years, and had five children and the wife said she could not stand it any more. another child--no, she preferred death. they practiced coitus interruptus for a while, with mutual disgust, but when the wife was caught again, she said: "no more!" and she would not let her husband come near her. he could do what he pleased--she did not care. after a few months he began to go elsewhere--contracted syphilis, had to give up his position, the home was broken up, the wife went out to work, the children are scattered--in short, a home, which we are told is the foundation of our society, is broken up, and there is misery and wretchedness all around--and all for the lack of a little timely information. _case ._ mr. a and miss b, twenty-eight and twenty-five years old respectively, have known one another for several years, and in spite of their occupation, which is supposed to make people blasé and cynical--he being a reporter and she a special story writer--are quite in love with each other. but their occupation and income are such that they cannot possibly afford to have and to bring up any children. they would love to get married, but the specter of a child--or rather of children--frightens them; and they remain single, to the great physical and mental injury of both. accidentally they learn of appropriate means of regulating conception, get married and live happily--ever after, that is, until they find themselves in a position to have children and to bring them up properly. in what way was society injured by this young couple acquiring contraceptive information? _case ._ mr. c and miss d are in love with each other. unfortunately there is a strong hereditary taint of insanity on both sides. they are too high-minded to think of giving birth to children. they might be all right, but with insanity one does not take any chances. the thing is too terrible. they are condemned to a life of celibacy, which to them means a life of loneliness and misery. but like an angel from heaven comes to them the knowledge that one can live a love-life without any penalties attached to it. they get married and there is not a happier couple living. in what way has society been injured by this couple obtaining the contraceptive knowledge? _case ._ mr. and mrs. e have been married five years. they have a child four years old which shows unmistakable symptoms of epilepsy. they are horrified and an investigation discloses the fact that on her side in the preceding generation there was a good deal of epilepsy. of course, the next child may not be epileptic. but then again it may. no parents with any sense of responsibility would take such chances. they decide to give up conjugal relations. they keep it up for about thirteen or fourteen months; then one night an accident happens and very soon she finds herself pregnant. she declares she would rather die than to give birth to and have to take care of another epileptic child. she goes to a friendly physician who performs an abortion on her, and now the couple, not secure against future accidents, if they live together, decide to separate, and a tragedy is in sight. fortunately they learn that conception can be prevented, and they continue to live together with benefit to themselves and harm to none. in what way has society been injured by those people acquiring contraceptive information? _case ._ mr. and mrs. f have been married six years, and in these six years they have been blessed with four children. when he married he was getting twenty-two dollars a week, and that is exactly what he is getting now. in the meantime the cost of living has gone up twenty-five per cent., and there are four extra mouths to feed and four extra bodies to clothe. what difference this has made in that little household can better be imagined than stated. the little mother has aged sixteen years in those six years, and there is not a trace left of her girlishness and youthfulness. she loves her children, and does not want to get rid of them. she would not take a million dollars for one of them, but she would not give five cents for another. but this is just what terrifies them; the possibility of another. and that possibility makes her irritable, makes her repel her husband's slightest advances, makes her move his bed to another room. she even tells him to satisfy his sexual desires elsewhere--and at the same time she is in fear and trembling that he might follow her advice. in short, a nice young home is about to be disrupted. fortunately he reads somewhere an article on the subject of voluntary limitation of offspring, he begins to investigate; his physician pleads ignorance, but he is persistent, the physician investigates and obtains the desired information, which he shares with the patient. harmony is restored and a happy home is re-established. who was injured by the couple obtaining this information? and if nobody was injured, and everybody concerned was benefited, then why should the imparting of such information be considered a felony, punishable like the most atrocious of crimes? _case ._ mr. and mrs. g have been married fifteen years. they were the parents of seven children, a large enough number for any family. those seven children were born during the first eleven years of their married life. during the past five years, afraid of having any more, they first abstained and then adopted a method which every modern sexologist knows is injurious to the nervous system of both the man and the woman. the man became a wreck; first neurasthenic, then impotent, cranky and grouchy, unable to get along in the office, constantly squabbling with his wife, who became just as bad a wreck. their economic condition plus too many small children prevented the parents' separation. they remained living together, but they lived like a cat and a dog tied in a bag. each silently prayed to be rid of the other. but a conversation overheard at a turkish baths establishment put him on the right trail, and one year later we find the couple reconciled, both in good health and living a peaceful and fairly harmonious life. and those who have benefited most by the change are the children. in what way was society injured? and still if the doctor who gave mr. g the information should have been caught and convicted, he would have been sent to prison for a year or two or five. would he have deserved it? here we have several plain, simple, unvarnished and unembellished cases which are typical of millions of similar cases and which prove conclusively that the law against imparting information about preventing conception is brutal, vicious, antisocial. should not such a law be repealed, wiped off the statute books? footnotes: [ ] the limitation of offspring by the prevention of conception. chapter thirty-three advice to girls approaching the threshold of womanhood the irresistible attraction of the young girl for the male--the unprotected girl's temptations--some men who will pester the young girl--risk of venereal infection--danger of impregnation--use of contraceptives by the unmarried woman may not always be relied upon--nature of men who seduce girls--exceptions--illegitimate motherhood--difficulties in the way of illegitimate mother who must earn her living--the child of the foundling asylum--social attitude towards illegitimacy responsible for abortion evil--dangers of abortion--the girl who has lost her virginity. when a girl has passed the transition period of puberty and is entering upon young womanhood she exerts an irresistible attraction on the male sex. whether she give the impression of a luscious red rose or of a delicate white lily, the charms of a beautiful, healthy, bright girl of seventeen or eighteen are undeniable and their appeal to the esthetic and sexual sense of every normal male is a normal, _natural_ phenomenon. whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that it is so, we will not stop to discuss here. but it is a natural phenomenon, a natural law, if you will, and one does not quarrel with natural phenomena. it is useless. but the attraction which the girl exercises on the male is fraught with danger to her, and therefore a few words of advice and of warning are not out of place. * * * * * =temptations.= fortunate are you, my young girl friend, if you come from a well-sheltered home, if you have been properly brought up, if you have a good and wise mother who knows how to take care of you. a mother's wise counsel given at the proper time, and her comradeship all the time, are more invulnerable than an armor of bronze and more secure than locked doors and barred windows. but if you have lost your mother at an early age, or if your mother is not of the right sort--it is no use hiding the fact that some mothers are not what they should be--if you have to shift for yourself, if you have to work in a shop, in an office, and particularly if you live alone and not with your parents, then temptations in the shape of men, young and old, will encounter you at every step; they will swarm about you like flies about a lump of sugar; they will stick to you like bees to a bunch of honeysuckle. i do not want you to get the false idea that all men or most men are bad and mean, and are constantly on the lookout to ruin young girls. no. most men are good and honorable and too conscientious to ruin a young life. but there are some men, young and old, who are devoid of any conscience, who are so egotistic that their personal pleasure is their only guide of conduct. they will pester you. some will lyingly claim that they are in love with you; some perhaps will sincerely believe that they are in love with you, mistaking a temporary passion for the sacred feeling of love. some will even promise to marry you--some making the promise in sincerity, others with the deliberate intent to deceive. still others will try to convince you that chastity is an old superstition, and that there is nothing wrong in sexual relations. in short, all ways and means will be employed by those men to induce you to enter into sexual relations with them. _don't you do it!_ i am not preaching or sermonizing to you. i am not appealing to your religion or your morals. for if you have strong religious or moral ideas against illicit sexual relations, you are not in need of mine or anybody else's advice. but i assume that you are a more or less modern girl, with little or no religious bringing-up, or perhaps a radical girl, who has shaken off the shackles of religion and tradition. and to you i say: _don't you do it_. why? because your welfare, your future happiness, is at stake. i am speaking from the point of view of your own good, and from that point of view i say: resist all attempts which men make exclusively for the purpose of satisfying their sexual desire, their lust. you will ask again, why? for several reasons. first, you run the risk of venereal infection. the danger is not so great now as in former times, but is great enough. there are still plenty of men dishonest enough to indulge in sexual relations with a woman when they know they are not radically cured. the same man who will not get married unless he is sure that he is perfectly cured will not hesitate to subject a transient girl or woman to the risk of venereal infection. i know personally, because i have treated them; yes, i treated several intelligent and radical young men who infected young girls. and some of these girls in their turn, through ignorance and innocence, infected other men. so then, the first danger is the danger of venereal infection. the second danger, still greater and more certain than the first, is the danger of impregnation. and pregnancy for a girl under our present moral and social-economic conditions is a terrible calamity. she is ostracized everywhere, and it means, if discovered, her social death. but you will say: "aren't there any remedies that can be used to prevent conception? aren't you yourself among the world's chief birth-controllers; one of the world's chief advocates of the use of contraceptives?" yes, my dear young lady, but i never made the claim that the contraceptives were _absolutely_ infallible, i never claimed that they were _ per cent._ effective in _ per cent._ of _all_ cases. but if they are effective times or even times in every they are a blessing. and thousands of families so consider them. and if a married woman gets caught once in a while, the misfortune is not so great. but if the accident happens to a non-married woman, the misfortune _is_ great. then again, you want to bear in mind that accidents are less likely to happen to married than to non-married women. the married woman has no fear, needs no secrecy, and she can go about the method of preparation carefully, with deliberation. the unmarried girl, _as a rule_, has not the proper conveniences, more or less secrecy must be maintained, hurry is not infrequently necessary, and that is why accidents are more apt to occur in spite of the use of contraceptives. so then, the second danger, even more sinister than the first, is the danger of pregnancy. "but if a misfortune happens, can i not have an abortion produced?" no, not always. physicians willing to induce an abortion are not found on every corner. but this is not the principal point. what i have to say on the subject, i will say later on in this chapter. then it is well for you to bear in mind that those very men who use their utmost efforts, who strain every fibre and every nerve to get you, will despise you and detest you as soon as they have succeeded in making you yield to their wishes. this is one of the worst blots on the male man's character, a blot from which the female character is entirely free. and some men--fortunately their number is not very large--are such moral skunks that they take morbid pleasure in boasting publicly of their sexual conquests, and unscrupulously peddle about the name of the girl whom, by cunning false promises or other means, they succeeded in seducing. and of course such a girl finds it difficult or impossible to get married, and must end her days in solitude, without the hope of a home of her own. for the above reasons i advise you earnestly and sincerely not to yield to the solicitations of thoughtless or unscrupulous men, who think of nothing but their coarse sensual pleasures. it is advice dictated by common sense, by your own deeper interest, aside from any religious or moral considerations. the above advice, or call it sermon if you will, is meant principally for young girls, girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. if a girl has reached the age of twenty-eight or thirty and is willing to enter upon illicit sexual relations with her eyes open, with a full knowledge of the possible consequences, then it is her affair, and nobody shall say her nay. nobody has a right to interfere. nor should my advice be understood as directed to cases where there is sincere reciprocal affection and a mutual understanding. this is an entirely different matter, and has nothing to do with cases where the man is the pursuer or seducer and the woman an unwilling or reluctant victim. but whatever the relations between the man and the girl may be, whether she yielded in a fit of passion, or was seduced by false promises, by "moral" suasion, by hypnotic influence or by the vulgar method of being made drunk, what is she to do if she finds herself, to her horror, in a pregnant condition? there are two ways open to her: either let the pregnancy go to term or to have an abortion brought on. if she lets the pregnancy go to term she has the alternative of bringing up the child herself openly or of placing it secretly in a foundling asylum. in the first case, the necessity of publicly acknowledging illegitimate motherhood requires so much moral courage that not one woman in a thousand is equal to it. it is not moral courage alone that is required; the social ostracism could be borne with stoicism and even with equanimity, if with it were not frequently associated the fear or the real danger of starvation. for under our present system the illegitimate mother finds many avenues of activity closed to her. a school teacher would lose her position instantly, and so would a woman in any public position. it is feared that her example might have a contaminating influence on the children or on her fellow workers. nor could she be a social worker--i know of more than one woman who lost her position with social or philanthropic institutions as soon as it was discovered that she did not live up strictly to the conventional code of sex morality. nor could she be a private governess. it is thus seen that to acknowledge one's self an illegitimate mother requires so much courage, so much sacrifice, that very, very few mothers are now found that are equal to the task. especially so when it is taken into consideration that the humiliations and indignities to which the child is subjected and the later reproaches of the child itself make the mother's life a veritable hell. so this alternative is generally out of the question. to give the child to a foundling asylum or to a "baby farm" means generally to condemn it to a slow death--and not such a slow one, either. for as statistics show about ninety to ninety-five per cent. of all babies in those institutions die within a few months. and the very few who survive and grow up have not a happy life. life is hard enough for anybody; for children who come into the world handicapped by the disgrace of illegitimacy, life is torture indeed. it is with a breaking heart generally and because there is no other way out of the dilemma that a mother puts her baby away in a foundling asylum. she hopes and prays for its speedy death. taking into consideration the pitifully unhappy lot of the illegitimate mother and illegitimate child, it is no wonder that every unmarried woman, as soon as she finds herself pregnant, is frantically determined to get rid of the child in the womb as soon as possible. and abortion thrives in every civilized country. thousands and thousands of doctors and semi-doctors and midwives are making a rich living in this country from practicing abortion. the greater the disgrace with which illegitimacy is considered in a country, the stricter the prohibition against the use of measures for the prevention of conception, the greater the number of abortions in that country. but abortion is not a trifle, to be undertaken with a light heart. it is true that if performed by a thoroughly competent physician, with all aseptic precautions, it is practically free from danger. but when performed by a careless physician or an ignorant midwife, trouble is apt to happen. blood poisoning may set in, and the patient may be very sick for a time, and may on recovery from the acute illness remain a chronic invalid for life. and occasionally the patient dies. whether or not abortion is justifiable under special circumstances is a separate question, which i have discussed in another place. but leaving aside the ethics of the question, if you have determined to have an abortion produced, be sure to go to a conscientious physician, and avoid the quacks and midwives. an unexpected and undesired pregnancy is punishment enough and there is no reason why you should be further punished by becoming a chronic invalid or by paying with your life. there is no sense in it. nobody will profit by your invalidism or your death. i do not wish to leave this topic without re-emphasizing the fact that abortion is not a trifle, to be undertaken or even to be spoken of lightly. too many women, not only in the radical ranks, but in the conservative ranks as well, are in the habit of considering abortion as a joke, a trifling annoyance, something like a cold in the head, which, while disagreeable, is sure to pass away in a day or two. they know mrs. a and mrs. b and perhaps miss c who had abortions produced on them and in two or three days they were as good as ever. yes. but they do not know miss d who is resting in her grave, nor do they know why miss e and mrs. f are invalids for life. the women who get over their abortion experiences easily are apt to talk of their good luck; the women who have become chronic invalids or who are resting in their graves as a result of an abortion are not apt to talk of the matter. and therefore, once more, remember, an abortion is no trifling matter. one other piece of advice and i am through. some men of a low moral and mental caliber are under the influence of the pernicious idea that if a girl has lost her virginity--no matter under what circumstances--she no longer amounts to much and is free prey for everybody who may want her. and, like beasts of prey, these wretched specimens of humanity pester such a girl with much more impudence, more brazenness than they dare to employ in the case of a girl who is still considered a virgin. and, what is more, the girls themselves become poisoned with this pernicious idea and dare not offer the same resistance that the virgin does. and they often yield with resignation, though against their will, and though they may experience a feeling of disgust against the man. now again, _don't you do it_. do not nurse the medieval idea that because you are not a virgin in the physical sense, you are "ruined," "no good," and an outcast. you are nothing of the kind. if through some cause or other you are no longer in possession of an intact hymen, it is your affair or misfortune, and nobody else's. do not on that account cast your eyes down and avoid meeting people. carry your head high, do not fear to meet people, and treat with contempt the jeers of the stupid and ignorant. a person's entire character does not depend upon the presence or absence of the hymen, and one misstep should not ruin a person's whole life. a boy is not "ruined," is not an outcast, because he has had sexual relations before marriage, and while the boy's and girl's cases are not exactly identical, still the poor girl should not be made to expiate one error all her life long. it isn't fair. chapter thirty-four advice to parents of unfortunate girls attitude of parents towards unfortunate girl--the case of edith and what her father did--the pitiful cases of mary b. and bridget c. suppose you are the parents of a girl to whom a misfortune has happened. i admit it is a misfortune, a catastrophe. probably the greatest catastrophe that, under our present social system, can happen to an unmarried young woman. what are you going to do? are you going to disgrace her--incidentally disgracing yourselves--are you going to kick her out of the house, condemning her to a suicide's grave, or to a life that is often worse than death? or are you going to stand by her in her dark hours, to shield her, to surround her with a wall of protection against a cruel and wantonly inquisitive world, and thus earn her eternal gratitude, and put her on the path of self-improvement and useful social work? which shall it be? but before you decide, kindly bear in mind that your girl is not entirely to blame; that some of the blame lies with you. if she had been _properly_ brought up, this would not have happened. i know such a thing could never have happened in my household. but i know how i would have acted if such a thing had happened. and i will tell you how one father and mother did act under the circumstances. they were far from rich; just fairly comfortable; they had a well-paying store. edith was their treasure, because she was so pretty and so full of life. unfortunately, she was too pretty and too full of life. she was only seventeen, but was fully developed, and had many empty-headed young admirers, who showered upon her silly compliments and cloying sweets. she became frivolous and flirtatious and was beginning to do poorly in high school. she failed in her last year, and refused to take the year over again. now, all the time being her own, and having nobody to give any account to, she began to go out a good deal, and more than ever indulged in flirtations. one night she stayed out later than usual, her parents were worried, and when she came home about two in the morning there was a quarrel, and the father, who was a strict, impulsive man, gave her a pretty good beating. after that she went out very little, kept to herself, became rather melancholy, lost her appetite, and did not sleep well. to all inquiries she answered that there was nothing the matter with her, that she just felt a little indisposed. four or five months thus passed. but finally the condition could no longer be concealed. the mother was the first one to discover it. when the fact dawned upon her consciousness that her beautiful, not quite eighteen-year-old edith was pregnant she promptly fell in a faint and it took edith and the maid quite some time to restore her to consciousness. she became distracted. she floundered about pitifully, not knowing what to do, what decision to reach. she tried to conceal the matter from the father, but he saw that there was something wrong and it didn't take him long to worm the truth out of her. as the mother on learning the tragic truth had taken refuge in a dead faint, so he took refuge in a berserker rage. he fumed and stormed and was in danger of an apoplectic stroke. he wanted to strike the daughter, but the mother interfered. he then ordered edith to get out of the house and never to cross his threshold again. edith looked at him to see if he meant it; the mother tried to intercede; but he was inflexible, and demanded that she leave at once. edith began to gather a few of her belongings, the tears silently rolling down her face. and here a sudden change came over the father. some men (and women) are crushed by small misfortunes; real catastrophes awaken their finer qualities, which lay dormant within them and which might have remained dormant within them forever. in these few minutes he seems to have undergone a complete metamorphosis. he went up to edith, took her in his arms, kissed her, told her to stay, to calm down and they would see what could be done. in a few days she was taken over to a physician who performed an abortion. she was a pretty sick girl for about six weeks, and at one time there was danger of blood poisoning setting in. but she recovered. and she was a different girl. she had shed her frivolity and lightheartedness like an old garment. she took her last year in high school over again, entered barnard, from which she was graduated among the very first, and soon began to teach in that very high school in which she had been a pupil. one of the teachers fell in love with her and she fell in love with him. he asked her to marry him. she wanted no skeleton from the past coming down rattling its bones and marring their married life, and she told him of the unfortunate incident. a good test, by the way, to find out a man's real love and breadth of character. fortunately the man's love was a true love, not merely passion, and he was truly broadminded, which is not a very common thing among school-teachers. their married life is an uncloudedly happy one. and the relation between the daughter and the parents is one of sincere love and deep mutual respect. isn't it better so? didn't edith's parents act more decently, more kindly, more humanely, more wisely than the parents, say, of mary b, who, when they found out her condition, put her out of the house, into which she was brought back two days later a corpse, fished out from the east river? didn't edith's father act more nobly, more wisely even from a purely selfish point of view than the father of bridget c, who kicked his daughter out penniless into the street, where he had to see her afterwards powdered and painted soliciting men and boys? the mother died of a broken heart, and the father, unable to bear the constant, daily repeated disgrace, became an incorrigible drunkard. fathers and mothers! so bring up your daughters, so guard them and protect them, that the misfortune of an illegitimate pregnancy may not befall them. but if the misfortune has befallen them, then stand by them! do not desert them then in these dark hours, the darkest hours in a girl's life. do not kick them--they are down enough. stand by them, and they will become good women and you will have their eternal gratitude. if you do not stand by them, you are worse than the beasts of the jungle and deserve their eternal curse. you are unworthy to be, or to be called, parents, for you are devoid of the least spark of that sacred feeling called parental love, a feeling which unfortunately in only too many parents is replaced by nothing but the most sordid, most brutal egotism. chapter thirty-five sexual relations during menstruation heightened sexual appetite of many women during menstruation--sexual intercourse during menstrual period--when intercourse may be permitted--injection before coitus during menstruation--fallacy of ancient idea of injuriousness. this may seem to some a strange and superfluous question, a question which would never present itself. still the laity would be surprised if it learned how frequently nowadays that question is presented to the physician who specializes in sex matters. some husbands come to the physician complaining that the menses are the only period during which their wives demand sex relations, and ask if something cannot be done to cure them of what they consider an abnormal desire. biologically considered, the desire on the woman's part for sex relations during the menses should not seem strange or abnormal, for we must bear in mind that menstruation bears a certain analogy to the rut in animals. and animals permit intercourse at no time except during the rut. recent investigations have disclosed to fact that the number of women whose sexual appetite is _heightened_ during the time immediately preceding, during, and following the menses, is quite considerable. and there is also a smaller percentage of women who experience the desire _at no other time except_ during the menses. speaking generally, relations during the menses should be discouraged. there are several reasons for it. the first reason, which need not be gone into in detail, is an esthetic one. the second reason is that intercourse during menstruation may in some cases lead to congestion of the uterus and ovaries. third, the menstrual discharge, which as we know does not consist of pure blood but is a mixture of blood, mucus, and degenerated lining membrane of the uterus, may give rise to a catarrh of the urethra in the man. fourth, and this is a point to be borne in mind, any discharge that a woman may be suffering from is always aggravated during menstruation. for these reasons relations during the menses are undesirable. but where the woman has strong libido during that time and has no libido at any other time, relations may be indulged in during the last day or two of the menses. any unpleasantness may be obviated and any discharge may be removed by the woman taking a mild, warm, antiseptic injection before coitus. the ancient idea of the injuriousness of the relations during menstruation and the disastrous results likely to follow them have only a very slender foundation. they rest on no scientific basis and though it may be sad to state facts, there are many couples who do indulge in such relations as a regular thing and without any injury to either husband or wife. chapter thirty-six sexual intercourse during pregnancy complete abstinence during-pregnancy--bad results of complete abstinence--intensity of relations during first four months--intercourse during fifth, sixth and seventh months--intercourse during eighth and ninth months--abstinence after birth of child. the question whether sexual intercourse is permissible during pregnancy is often put to the physician. some extremists and theorists demand complete abstinence during the entire duration of pregnancy. such abstinence is not only not feasible, but is unnecessary and may prove a disrupting factor; it may create not only dissension, it may wreck the love-life of husband and wife. i know of cases where the wife, influenced by the wrong teachings about the necessity of complete abstinence during pregnancy, about the possible injury to the child from intercourse, persisted in keeping the husband away; and the result was that the husband began to go to other women, and he got in the habit to such an extent that he refused to give up entirely, even after the child was born. it cannot be expected from a married man, who is used to more or less regular sexual relations, to abstain entirely for nine or ten months. such a demand is unreasonable and uncalled for. all claims about the injurious effects of intercourse on the mother and child lack proof and foundation. during the first four months of pregnancy no change need be made in the usual sex relations. their "intensity" should be moderated, their frequency need not. during the fifth, sixth and seventh months intercourse should be indulged in at rarer intervals--once in two or three weeks--the act should be performed without any violence or intensity, and the usual position should be reversed or changed to a lateral one. during the eighth and ninth months relations had best be given up altogether. and this abstinence should last until about six weeks after the birth of the child. during this period the uterus undergoes what we call involution; that is, it goes back to the size and shape it had before pregnancy, and it is best not to disturb this process by sexual excitement, which causes engorgement and congestion. chapter thirty-seven sexual intercourse for propagation only belief in sexual intercourse for propagation only--what such practice would lead to--nature and the sex-fanatics--sexual desire in woman after menopause--sex instinct of sterile men and women--sex instinct has other high purposes. some people sincerely believe that the sexual instinct is for reproductive purposes only; they claim we should never indulge in sexual intercourse unless it be for the purpose of bringing a child into the world. the act performed without such aim in view is stigmatized by them as carnal lust, as a sin. some even say that such an act is equivalent to an act of prostitution. to _argue_ the question with such people would be a waste of time. it is not fair to impugn the good faith, the sincerity of your opponents, because i have convinced myself that the most insane, most bizarre notions may be held by otherwise sane people in perfect sincerity. but we cannot help questioning the reasoning faculties of people holding such beliefs. let us see where the belief of "sex relations for procreation only" would lead us to. in a normal healthy couple impregnation follows one connection. so if a couple wanted to limit themselves to three or four or six children, they would be entitled to have relations only three, four or six times in their lives. for it must be remembered that during pregnancy sexual relations would be prohibited, as during pregnancy no further impregnation can take place, and no intercourse must take place which has not for its purpose the conception of a new human being. if the people were believers in big families, and agreed to have twelve children--no anti-malthusian would expect more than that--they would be entitled to twelve relations during their marital life. assuming that not every act is followed by pregnancy, but that it takes on the average three or four times to bring about the desired result, we will have it that during the wife's childbearing period the couple may indulge in sex relations from once in three or four years to once or twice a year. can a sane person knowing anything about the sexual instinct make any such demands from married people living in the same house and perhaps occupying the same bed? it must be borne in mind that as soon as the wife has reached the menopause all relations must cease, because she can no longer become pregnant, and intercourse without a probable or possible pregnancy is a sin. also remember that no matter how beautiful, young and passionate the wife may be, if she has some little trouble which makes pregnancy impossible, sex relations must be absolutely abstained from. and of course if the husband or wife is sterile, all relations must be renounced forever, no matter how strong the libido may be in one or both. it is strange that nature did not act according to the formula of our sex fanatics; no pregnancy, no intercourse. if she had meant it to be that way, she would have abolished sexual desire in woman immediately after the menopause. unfortunately this is not the case. for we know that the sexual libido in women after the menopause is often and for several years stronger than before. why? nor has nature abolished the sexual instinct and the passionate desire for sex relations in all those men and women who are for some reason or other sterile, or otherwise so defective that no child can result from the union. as i stated at the beginning, it is a waste of time to _argue_ the matter. those who believe that sex relations are for racial purposes only, are welcome to their belief, and are welcome to live up to it. (how few of them do, though, honestly and consistently?) we must reiterate our opinion that the sex instinct has other high purposes besides that of perpetuating the race, and sex relations may and should be indulged in as often as they are conducive to man's and woman's physical, mental and spiritual health. no iron-clad rules can be laid down as to the frequency. for some people three times a year may be sufficient, others may require relations three times a month (the best for the average) and still others may not be satisfied with less than three times a week. the human _libido sexualis_ cannot be put into an iron mould, and you should pay no attention to religious fanatics who are ignorant of physiology and psychology and who can only blunder and bungle up things. chapter thirty-eight vaginismus vaginismus--dyspareunia--difference between vaginismus and dyspareunia--adherent clitoris a cause of masturbation and convulsions. by the term vaginismus we understand a painful spasm or contraction of the vaginal orifice which makes intercourse very difficult, or impossible. certain cases of vaginismus, or rather false vaginismus, may be due to laceration or inflammation of the vaginal orifice, but in genuine cases of vaginismus no local disease can be found, because genuine vaginismus is of nervous origin. _dyspareunia_ means painful or difficult intercourse, from whatever cause. it differs from vaginismus in that the cause is generally a local one, that is, it may be inflammation, laceration as after a confinement, small size or atresia of the vagina, etc. when vaginismus is present, it is present in reference to all men, in fact the mere touch of the finger or an instrument may call forth a painful spasm; while dyspareunia may show itself with one man and be absent with another. the origin of the word dyspareunia shows that this may be the case, for _dyspareunos_ in greek means badly mated. dyspareunia must not be confused with true vaginismus. in dyspareunia the sexual act can be freely indulged in, only the act is painful or disagreeable. in vaginismus intercourse is _impossible_. in exceptional cases where the husband attempts to use brute force, the wife may faint away, she may get a convulsion or become wildly hysterical. if the husband insists in attempting relations, the wife may run away, or in exceptional cases even attempt suicide. adherent clitoris or phimosis the word phimosis means "muzzling," and it is a term applied to a constriction or narrowing of the foreskin, so that the glands of the clitoris cannot be freely uncovered. this condition may give rise to an accumulation of smegma or secretion which may cause inflammation, itching, and nervous irritation. this in its turn may be the cause of masturbation. it is claimed by some that an adherent clitoris may even be the cause of convulsions resembling epilepsy. in some cases it leads to an irritable bladder, inability to retain the urine, and nocturnal bed-wetting. in all girls, big or little, that show a tendency to masturbate or simply to handle the genitals, or that complain of itching, the clitoris should be examined and if adhesions are found they should be separated. this can easily be done under a local anesthetic. chapter thirty-nine sterility definition of sterility--husband should first be examined-- one-child sterility--the fertile woman--salpingitis as a cause of sterility--leucorrhea and sterility--displacement of uterus and sterility--closure of neck of womb and sterility-- sterility and constitutional disease--treatment of sterility. sterility or barrenness is a condition of inability to have children. in former years the opinion prevailed generally, whenever a couple was childless, that the fault was exclusively the woman's. it wasn't even thought that the man could be to blame. we now know that in at least _fifty per cent._ of cases of sterility, or childless marriages, the fault is not the woman's but the man's. it is therefore very unwise in conditions of sterility to subject the wife to treatment without first examining the husband. nevertheless, this is still often the case, particularly among the lower classes or among the ignorant. there are cases where the woman goes from one doctor to another for years and is subjected to all kinds of treatment, when a simple examination of the husband would show that the fault lies with him. some women have one child and are unable afterwards to give birth to any more. such a condition is called one-child-sterility. it is generally due to an inflammation of the fallopian tubes which closes up the openings of the tubes into the womb, so that no more ova can pass _from_ the ovaries _through_ the tubes _into_ the womb. this inflammation may be the result of childbirth, for childbirth alone may set up an inflammation, or it may be due to an infection contracted from the husband. in order to be fertile, that is, to be able to conceive and give birth to a living child, the woman's external and internal genital organs must be normal, her ovaries must produce healthy ova, and there must be no obstruction on the way, so that the ova and the spermatozoa can meet. the mucous membrane of the womb must also be healthy, so that when the impregnated ovum gets attached to the womb it may develop there without any trouble, and not become diseased or poorly nourished and cast off. we must always remember that the woman's share in bringing forth children and perpetuating the race is much more important than the man's. when a man has discharged his spermatozoa his work is done--the woman's only commences. the conditions which cause sterility in women are many, but the most common cause is a salpingitis or an inflammation of the fallopian tubes, which may be caused by gonorrhea or any other inflammation. a severe leucorrhea may also be the cause of sterility, because the leucorrheal discharge may be fatal to the spermatozoa. another cause is a severe bending or turning of the uterus either forwards or backwards. the opening of the neck of the womb, the os, may also be closed, or practically so, from ulceration, from strong applications, etc. in some cases sterility may be due to severe constitutional disease, when the person is very much run down and so anemic that menstruation stops. unfortunately this is not always the case, for women even in the last stages of consumption may, and often do, become pregnant. syphilis unfortunately does not cause sterility; it only causes miscarriages until controlled by treatment. the treatment of sterility can be successfully carried out only by a competent physician, particularly by one who is devoting himself specially to this kind of work. but i want once more to impress upon every woman who is sterile, and who wants to have a child, not to have herself treated or even examined until her husband has been subjected to an examination. chapter forty the hymen difference between chastity and virginity--worship of intact hymen--sacrificing hymen sometimes essential for health of the girl--certificate from physician who has ruptured hymen. i have mentioned in a previous chapter that the absence of the hymen was no proof of unchastity, just as the presence of the hymen was no proof of perfect chastity. chastity and virginity are not synonymous, and a girl may possess physical virginity, that is, an intact hymen, and still be morally unchaste. she may be in the habit of indulging in unnatural sexual practices. but the laity does not know these facts or does not want to know them, and the intact hymen is still worshipped like a fetish. this would be of little consequence, if it did not often result in unnecessary suffering to the female child or girl. much disease and a good deal of sterility result from the fear of tampering with the hymen. when a boy gets some trouble with his genital organs, such as phimosis, or balanitis or whatever it may be, he is at once taken to a physician, who institutes the necessary treatment. when a little girl complains of itching around the genitals or of some discharge, the mother will hesitate long before taking her to a doctor. she will be afraid he will do something to the hymen. and so she will temporize, using salves and washes, and the disease will in the meantime be making progress, that is, getting worse. when she does take her to a physician, and he says that in order to treat the case thoroughly the hymen has to be stretched or opened, the mother will withhold her consent, and the disease will be allowed to progress. i know of many such cases. this is wrong. when the health of the girl demands and her future child-bearing power is at stake, no hesitation should be felt in sacrificing the hymen. though in the future the fuss which is now made about the hymen, the excessive veneration in which it is held, will appear ridiculous, and though i consider it foolish and rather humiliating to the girl, nevertheless, now, when the average husband does lay so much stress on the presence of an unruptured hymen, a physician who in the course of an operation or treatment has occasion to cut or rupture the hymen, will do well to give the patient a certificate to that effect. in case any question regarding the girl's chastity comes up in the future, she can prove by the doctor's certificate that her loss of virginity was not due to sexual relations. of course the relations between husband and wife, or between prospective husband and wife, should be such that no "certificate" should be necessary; but reality differs from the ideal, and in some cases that we know the husband's suspicions were allayed by the doctor's oral or written statement. this is as good a place as any to emphasize, that if the bride has a very strong, tough and resistant hymen, the new husband should not use brute force in rupturing it. first, because the pain may be too excruciating and this may create in the wife an aversion to intercourse which may last for many months or years--in some cases forever. second, a severe hemorrhage may result, which may require the aid of a physician to stop. wherever a case of very resistant hymen is encountered, the husband should make several attempts; gradual and gentle dilatation, with the aid of a little vaseline and not forcible rupture should be the aim; the result will usually be satisfactory. in exceptional cases, a physician may have to be called in. the operation of cutting the hymen is a trifling one. it is also interesting to know that some wives have sex relations for months and years, and the hymen remains unruptured. pregnancy may also result with an intact hymen. chapter forty-one is the orgasm necessary for impregnation? suppression of orgasm by woman to prevent impregnation--bad results of suppression by the woman--orgasm: relation of to impregnation--a hypothesis--a fanciful hypothesis--why passionate women frequently fail to become mothers--advice to passionate women who desire to conceive. among the laity the opinion is quite prevalent that in order for a woman to conceive she must experience an orgasm, she must have had a pleasurable voluptuous sensation during the act. if she has no orgasm, impregnation cannot take place. so sure are some women that this is so that when they want to avoid conception they repress any orgastic feeling; as they say, they don't let themselves go. which, i will say, by the way, is one of the causes of female frigidity. if you don't habitually permit a certain feeling to develop, if you repeatedly repress it at the very beginning, at its first manifestation, it is apt to atrophy altogether, to become permanently suppressed, or the suppression develops into a nervous disorder. among the medical profession no perfect unanimity has been reached as to the rôle of the orgasm in impregnation. some sexologists like kisch and vaerting believe it does play an important rôle; others, like forel, believe it plays none. that the orgasm is not _necessary_ for impregnation admits of no discussion. women who suffer from frigidity in an extreme degree, women who never experienced an orgasm, women who repress their orgasm, women in sleep or under narcosis, women who have been raped, women who loathe their husbands, become pregnant frequently and readily. but does it play any rôle at all? does it facilitate impregnation? other things being equal, will intercourse accompanied by an orgasm be more likely to prove fruitful than one in which the orgasm was entirely absent? this question i am forced to answer in the affirmative. because from the various investigations i have made it can hardly be subject to doubt that the uterus during an orgasm exerts a certain amount of suction; and that impregnation is _more likely_ to follow when the spermatozoa are sucked up into the uterus than when left to make their own way by their own power of motion, stands to reason and goes without saying. in the former instance it takes less time for the spermatozoa to reach the ovum, and there is less chance for them to perish on the way--from malnutrition or from coming in contact with secretions of an acid reaction. there is another point. i do not bring it forth as a proved fact or as a fact susceptible to proof. it is a mere hypothesis, but in my opinion it is a correct and plausible hypothesis. i believe that the strong spasmodic contractions that take place during the orgasm have an influence not only in accelerating the bursting of a graafian follicle and the extrusion of an ovum, but they are instrumental in aiding the fallopian tube to grasp the ovum and helping it along on the road towards the uterus. it is therefore not at all inconceivable that conception may take place during or within a very short time after an act which is accompanied by a proper orgasm. many women claim to experience peculiar unmistakable sensations as soon as conception has taken place, and by calculating the day of probable delivery we know that they are right. taking therefore all the various data into consideration we are fully justified in saying that while an orgasm or a voluptuous sensation during the act is not at all _necessary_ to impregnation, it is in many cases a helpful factor. it is claimed by some that the offspring resulting from an orgastic act is apt to be healthier and better developed than offspring resulting from sexual intercourse in which the parties experience no orgasm. the reason given being that conception in the first instance taking place quickly, the spermatozoa are better nourished and more vigorous. in my opinion this is merely a fanciful hypothesis which needn't be taken seriously. it will be found rather frequently that women of strong passionate natures, with strong orgastic feelings, and normal in every way, fail to become mothers. a careful investigation of their menstrual discharge will show that _it is not because they failed to conceive_, but because the impregnated ovum is expelled each time; in other words, they have each month a miniature miscarriage. and these miscarriages, or rather abortions, are due to the spasmodic contractions of the uterus and its adnexae which accompany the orgasm. in such cases i have advised the woman to try to remain passive during the act, to repress the orgasm, and the results have in some instances shown the wisdom of my advice. after conception has taken place, after one period has been missed, the woman should abstain from intercourse altogether or at least for two or three months until the fetus is securely attached to, or ensconced in, the uterus. chapter forty-two frigidity in women meaning of term frigidity--types of frigidity--large percentage of frigid women--repression of sexual manifestations and frigidity-- frigidity and masturbation--frigidity and sexual weakness of husband--frigidity and dislike of husband--organic causes of frigidity--a frigid woman may become passionate--treatment of frigidity. the word frigidity means coldness, and when a woman has no desire for sexual relations or experiences no pleasure when she has sexual relations, she is said to be frigid. some cases suffer only from lack of desire, others only from lack of pleasure, and still others from both. in some cases the frigidity is congenital, that is, the lack of desire with inability to experience pleasure during the act is inborn. in most cases, however, it is acquired, or is only temporary, and is due to various causes. frigidity is much more widespread among women than it is among men. some physicians claim it is present in fifty per cent. of all women. this may be an exaggeration, but if we put the number at twenty-five per cent. we will be quite near the truth. the causes of frigidity in women are many, but here are the most important ones: first and foremost is the repression of all sexual manifestations which the unmarried woman has to practice, and has had to practice for many centuries. so that a part of the frigidity is hereditary. you cannot entirely eradicate a natural instinct, but that by continually repressing it, by giving it no chance to assert itself, you may weaken it--about this there can be no question. the second cause is masturbation. cases that have been addicted to excessive masturbation are very apt to develop not only frigidity, but complete aversion to the sexual act, and inability to experience any pleasure or orgasm. such cases we come across every day. a third very important cause is sexual weakness in the husband. when the husband is sexually weak (suffering with premature ejaculations) he either fails to awaken the sexual instinct in the woman, or if it has been awakened it is apt to turn not only into frigidity but into aversion to the act. the fourth cause is often merely dislike towards the husband. the last two causes, weakness of the husband and dislike towards him, are unfortunately very frequent, and a wife who was frigid with one husband may show herself very passionate on marrying another man. the fifth cause is fear of pregnancy. the above are the five principal causes. other causes may be disease of the uterus, laceration of the cervix, inflammation of the ovaries, vaginismus, disease of the thyroid gland, etc. it is an unfortunate fact that women who were frigid up to the age of forty or so may become very passionate after that age. as to the treatment of frigidity, little or nothing can be done for frigidity that is congenital. most of the other kinds of frigidity, however, can be cured. chapter forty-three advice to frigid women, particularly wives advice to frigid women--attitude of different men towards frigid wives--orgasm a subjective feeling--a justifiable innocent deception--the case of a demi-mondaine. i wish to give you a piece of advice which is of extremely great importance to you. i hesitated somewhat before writing this chapter, but the welfare of so many women depends upon following this advice, and i have seen the lives of so many wives spoiled on account of not having followed it, that i decided to devote a few words to the subject. as you know, about one-third or one-quarter of all women (in other words, one out of every three or four) are sexually frigid. they either have little or no sexual desire, or if they do have, they experience no voluptuous sensation during the act, and never have an orgasm. if you are unmarried, well and good. but if you are married and happen to belong to the frigid type, then _don't inform your husband of the fact_. it may lead to great and permanent trouble. some husbands don't care. some are even glad if their wives are frigid. they can then consult their own wishes in the matter, they can have intercourse whenever they want and _the way they want_. they do not have to accommodate themselves to their wives' ways, they do not have to prolong the act until she gets the orgasm, etc. in short, some husbands consider a frigid wife a blessing, a god-sent treasure. but, as i mentioned several times before, in sexual matters every man is a law unto himself, and some men feel extremely bad and displeased when they find out that their wives have "no feeling." some become furious, some become disgusted. some lose all pleasure in intercourse, and some claim to be unable to have intercourse with any woman who is not properly responsive. some begin to go to other women, while some threaten or demand a divorce (of course, such men cannot really love their wives; they may use their wives' frigidity as an _excuse_ to get rid of them). now, a man has no way of knowing whether a woman has a feeling during the act or not, whether or no she enjoys it, whether or no she has an orgasm. these are subjective feelings, and the man cannot know them unless you tell him. if you belong to the independent kind, if you scorn simulation and deceit, if, as the price of being perfectly truthful, you are willing if necessary to part with your husband or give him a divorce, well and good. you are a free human being, and nobody has a right to tell you what to do with your body. but if you care for your husband, if you care for your home and perhaps children, and do not want any disruption, then the only thing for you to do is not to apprise your husband of your frigid condition. and it won't hurt you to simulate a feeling which you do not experience, and even to imitate the orgasm. he won't be any the wiser, he will enjoy you more, and nobody will be injured by your little deception, which is after all a species of white lie, and is nobody's business but your own. an innocent deception which hurts nobody, but, on the contrary, benefits all concerned, is perfectly permissible. it may seem rather strange publicly to give advice to deceive and to simulate. and it is undoubtedly the first time that this advice has been given in print. but as i have only one religion--the greatest happiness of the greatest number--i repeat that i can see nothing wrong in advising something which benefits everybody (concerned) and hurts nobody. more than one household which was threatened with disruption was preserved safe and sound by a little simple advice which i gave to the wife, without the husband's knowledge. he was satisfied, and things after that ran smoothly. some women are afraid to simulate a voluptuous or orgastic feeling, because they think the husband can discover whether their feeling is genuine or they are only simulating. (women, and men too, have funny ideas on sexual subjects). this is not so. a notorious demi-mondaine, who was greatly sought because she was known to be so "passionate," confessed that not once in her life did she enjoy intercourse or experience an orgasm. but her mother, who also suffered with absolute frigidity, taught her to simulate passion, telling her that in that way she could make barrels of money; which she did. it is deplorable that wives--or husbands--should ever be obliged to have recourse to deception or simulation; perfect frankness should be the ideal to be striven after. but under our present social conditions and with the present moral code, an occasional white lie is the lesser of two evils; it may be the least of a dozen evils. chapter forty-four rape definition of rape--age of consent--unanimous opinion of experts--exceptional cases--false accusation of rape due to perversion--erotic dreams under anesthesia causing accusations against doctors and dentists. having intercourse with a woman by force, without her consent, is called rape. when the woman is not in a condition to give consent, as when she is insane, feebleminded, unconscious or drunk, or when she is not of the age at which she can legally give consent, it also constitutes rape, and the punishment is the same. the age of consent differs in different countries and in different states, but as a rule is between sixteen and eighteen years. that is, if a girl under the legal age of consent should give her consent or even if she should urge the man to have intercourse with her the man would be punished just as if he had committed rape. the punishment for rape is very severe in all civilized countries and ranges from ten years' imprisonment to life imprisonment, while in some states in this union the punishment is death. it is not my intention to go into an exhaustive discussion of this painful subject. in this brief chapter i merely wish to bring out two facts. first, that it is the almost unanimous opinion of all experts that it is practically impossible for a man to commit rape on a normal adult girl or woman if she really offers all the resistance of which she is capable. of course, if the man knocks the woman down with a blow, rendering her unconscious, that is a different matter. but where no brutality is used by the man, and the woman offers all the resistance she is capable of, rape is practically impossible. it is, however, possible that in some cases the girl may be so paralyzed by fear as to be incapable of offering any resistance. when the man threatens her with death or severe bodily injury, then it is rape even if she offers no resistance. the second point is that it has been established that of the many accusations of rape brought before the courts _most_ are false. out of a hundred cases only about ten are true. the rest are false. this false accusation of rape is due to a peculiar perversion with which some women suffer. some of the cases are due to hysteria, to imagination, the women really believing that rape or an attempt at rape was committed on them, while investigation shows the accusation to be entirely false. many accusations of rape are due to a desire for revenge or merely to motives of blackmail. careful doctors and dentists will refuse to give laughing gas or another anesthetic to women except in the presence of others, because, as is well known, an anesthetic often causes in women erotic dreams and sensations and makes them believe that the doctor was committing or about to commit an indecent assault on them, and when they come out of the anesthetic they may be so sure of the reality of their dream that they will bring a complaint against the doctor. many men have suffered disgrace and imprisonment and have had their lives ruined or even paid the death penalty on account of false accusations against them by either pervert, hysterical, revengeful or blackmailing women. chapter forty-five the single standard of sexual morality chastity--double standard of morality--attempt to abolish double standard--late marriages and chastity in men--harmful advice given to young women--chastity in men not always due to moral principles--chaste men and satisfactory husbands--a statement by professor freud--a statement by professor michels--what a girl has a right to demand of her future husband--three cases showing disastrous effects of wrong teachings. when a man marries a girl he expects her to be chaste, that is, a virgin, without any sexual experiences. of men, the same chastity is not expected as a general thing. as long as a man is healthy, free from venereal disease, his previous sexual experiences do not constitute a barrier to his marriage. this is what is known as the double or duplex standard of sex morality. during the past few years a number of high-minded and well-meaning men and women have been trying to abolish this double standard and to introduce a single standard of morality. that is, they are demanding that the man going to the marriage bed should be just as chaste, just as virginal as his wife is. whether or no the efforts of these good men and women will ever be crowned with success we will leave open. whether or no it is even desirable that their efforts _should_ be crowned with success we will also leave open. a complete discussion of these questions belongs to a more advanced book on sexual ethics. here i will merely say that, taking into consideration the fact that the sexual instinct in boys awakens fully at the age of fifteen or sixteen, and that marriage at the present time, particularly among the professional classes, is an impossibility before the age of twenty-eight, thirty, or thirty-five, it seems to be impossible and undesirable to expect that men should live a perfectly chaste life until they enter matrimony, no matter how late that event may take place. those who have made a study of the sex instinct in the male seem to think that chastity in normal, healthy men up to the age of thirty or thereabouts is an impossibility, and where it is accomplished it is accomplished at the expense of the physical, mental, and sexual health of the individual. but be it as it may, and leaving disputed questions out of discussion, the fact remains that the vast majority of men of the present day do indulge in sex relations before marriage. and people that are urging upon our young women to refuse to marry men who have not been perfectly chaste are doing our womanhood a very poor service. as it is now, with all mandom to choose from, there are many, too many, old maids. with only ten per cent. to choose from (because it is admitted that at least per cent. of all men have ante-matrimonial relations), what would our women do? they would practically all have to give up any hopes of being married and becoming mothers. and if these ten per cent., who have remained chaste to their married day, were at least a superior class of men in every instance, there would be some compensation in that. unfortunately, this is far from being the case, because, as all advanced sexologists will tell you, there is generally something wrong with a man who remains absolutely chaste until the age of thirty, thirty-five or forty. it isn't moral principles in all cases; it is mostly cowardice, or sexual weakness. and sad as it may be to state, these perfectly good, chaste men do not generally make satisfactory husbands, and their wives are not apt to be the happiest ones. i fully agree with professor freud in his statement "that sexual abstinence does not help to build up energetic, independent men of action, original thinkers, bold advocates of freedom and reform, but rather goody-goody weaklings." and still more to the purpose is the statement of professor michels, who says: "the desire that one's daughter may marry a man who, like herself, and on an equal footing, will gain in marriage his first experience of the most sacred mysteries of the sexual life, is one which _may lead to profound disillusionments_. even if to-day the demand for chaste young men is extremely restricted, the supply is yet more so, and the article _is of such an inferior quality_ that in actual practice the attempt to satisfy this desire is likely to lead to results which will fail altogether to correspond to the hopes inspired by a contemplation of the abstract idea of purity. many physically intact individuals of both sexes _are far more contaminated_ than those who have had actual sexual experience. others again, superior in the abstract, and from the physically sexual aspect, are _ethically inferior to the unchaste_, so that the union with these latter would be more likely to prove happy than a union with those who are nominally pure." and further, "careful fathers of marriageable daughters, who seek this virginity in their sons-in-law, will, if they find it, seldom find it a guarantee for the simultaneous possession of solid moral qualities." all a girl has a right to demand is that her future husband be in good health, physically and sexually, and that he be free from venereal disease. his previous sexual life, provided he is a man of fine moral character in general, is no concern of hers. even if the man was unfortunate enough to have contracted gonorrhea, that fact should constitute no bar to marriage, provided he is completely cured of it. the only exception is that of syphilis. the girl has a right to refuse absolutely to enter into union with any man who has been infected with syphilis unless she is willing, and does it with her eyes open, to live her life without any children. in syphilis we can never give an _absolute guarantee_ of cure and we have no right to subject a woman to any danger of infection with syphilis, be the danger ever so slight, without her knowledge and consent. =disastrous effects of wrong teachings= what disastrous effects wrong teaching which inoculates the minds of our women with wrong ideas may have, the following three cases reported briefly in _the critic and guide_, will show: =case one= was a girl of twenty-four, of well-to-do parents, a college graduate. she was engaged to a really very nice, sympathetic young man, who undoubtedly would have made her an excellent husband. but during her last two years in college she became imbued with the single standard stupidity, and "chastity for men, votes for women" became her slogan. she asked her fiancé if he had been absolutely chaste before he met her. he did not want to play the hypocrite, and he told her the truth that he had not. but he assured her that he had never been infected and that his general and sexual health was in excellent condition. being then in an exalted mood, she impulsively broke the engagement, declaring that her husband will have to be as "pure" as she was. she soon regretted her step, because she loved the man; but pride did not let her take the initiative towards a reconciliation, and in the meantime her former fiancé fell in love with and married another girl. after four years had passed, and she was in danger of becoming an old maid, she married a man considerably beneath her socially and intellectually, and in every way inferior to her former fiancé. her marriage is not a happy one. =case two= is similar to case one, except that the young lady in question--now not so very young--is still living in single blessedness, and the chances of her ever being a wife or even somebody's sweetheart are rapidly vanishing. i might add that her fiancé whom she discarded because of his lack of virginity was a very bright young physician, who is now very successful and very happily married. she i hear is a very unhappy person, in danger of sinking into a permanent state of melancholia. and she had been of a very jolly disposition. =case three= is peculiar in that the fiancé _was_ absolutely chaste. she asked him, and he told her that he had never had any relations with anybody and he never had a trace or suspicion of any venereal disease. the young lady was not satisfied. she wanted her fiancé to bring her a certificate from a specialist testifying to that effect. the young man told her that it was foolish, that he would not subject himself to the expense and annoyance of a number of tests when he _knew_ that not only did he not have any venereal disease, but that there was no possibility of his getting any. no, that did not satisfy her. she became suspicious. "if you have nothing to fear, why do you object to bringing a certificate?" "i have nothing to fear, but i demand that you respect me and trust me sufficiently to believe that i am telling the truth when i declare a thing with such positiveness. if you do not have that much confidence in me now, our future life does not hold much promise of success." one word led to another, and then he broke the engagement, as any self-respecting man under the circumstances would. he is married, and she is not and probably never will be. three young lives ruined by perverse teachings. chapter forty-six difference between man's and woman's sex and love life seemingly contradictory statements--faulty interpretations of words sexual instinct and love--difference in manifestations of male and female sexual instincts--man's sex instinct grosser than woman's--awakening of sexual desire in the boy and in the girl--woman's desire for caresses--man's main desire for sexual relations--normal sex relations as means of holding a man--a physiological reason why man is held--man and physical love--woman and spiritual love--preliminaries of sexual intercourse in men and women--physical attributes--mental and spiritual qualities--difference between love and "being in love"--love as a stimulus to man--when the man loves--when the woman loves--man's more engrossing interests--lovemaking irksome to man--man's polygamous tendencies--woman single-affectioned in her sex and love life--man and woman biologically different. in reading books or listening to lectures on sex, you will meet with statements which will seem to you contradictory. one time you will read or hear that the sex instinct is much more powerfully developed in man than it is in woman; next time you will come across the statement that sex plays a much more important rôle in women than it does in men. one time you will hear that men are oversexed, that they are by nature polygamous and promiscuous, while woman is monogamous and as a rule sexually frigid; the next time you will be assured that without love a woman's life is nothing, and you will be confronted with byron's well-known and oft quoted two lines: man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence. these contradictions are only apparent and result from two facts: first, that the words sex or sexual instinct and love are used indiscriminately and interchangeably as if they were synonymous terms, which they are not; second, there is failure to bear in mind the essential differences in the natures and manifestations of the sexual instincts in the male and the female. if these differences are made clear, the apparent contradictions will disappear. the outstanding fact to bear in mind is that in man the sex instinct bears a more sensual, a more physical, a coarser and grosser character, if you have no objection to these adjectives, than it does in woman. in women it is finer, more spiritual, more platonic, to use this stereotyped and incorrect term. in men the sex manifestations are more centralized, more local, more concentrated in the sex organs; in women they are more diffused throughout the body. in a boy of fifteen the libido sexualis may be fully developed, he may have powerful erections and a strong desire for normal sexual relations; in a girl of fifteen there may not be a trace of any purely sexual desire; and this _lack_ of desire for _physical_ sex relations may manifest itself in women up to the age of twenty or twenty-five (something that we never see in normal men); in fact, women of twenty-five and even older, who have not been stimulated and whose curiosity has not been aroused by novels, pictures, and tales of their married companions, may not experience any sexual desire until several months after marriage. but while their desire for actual sexual relations awakens much later than it does in men, their desire for love, for caresses, for hugging, for close friendship, for love letters, awakens much earlier than in men, and occupies a greater part in their life; they think of love more during their waking hours, and they dream of it more than men do. a man--always bear in mind that when speaking of men and women i always speak of the average; exceptions in either direction will be found in both sexes--a man, i say, will generally tire of paying attentions to a woman if he feels that they will not eventually lead to the biologic goal--sexual relations. a woman can keep up with a man for years without any sexual intercourse, being fully satisfied or more or less satisfied with the sexual substitutes--embraces and kisses. and here is as good a place as any to refer to the notion so assiduously inculcated in the minds of young women, that a persistent refusal of man's demands is a sure way of keeping a man's affections; that as soon as man has satisfied his desires, he has no further use for the girl. this may be the case with the lowest dregs--morally--of the male sex; it is the opposite of true of the male sex as a whole. and i believe that marcel prevost was the first one to point it out (in his _le jardin secret_). nothing will hold a man's affections so surely as normal sex relations. and the cause of this is not, as might be surmised, merely a moral one, the man considering himself in honor and duty bound to stick to the woman whose body he possessed. no, there is a much stronger and surer reason: the reason is of a physiological character. there is born a strong physical attraction which in the man's subconsciousness plays a stronger rôle than honor and duty. excesses of course must be avoided, for excesses lead to satiety, and satiety is just as inimical to love as is excitement without any satisfaction. =choice between physical and spiritual love= but to return to our thesis: the difference between man's and woman's sex and love life. if a man had to make his _choice_ between physical love, i.e., actual sex relations and spiritual love, i.e., love making, kisses, love letters, etc., he would generally choose the former. if a woman had to _choose_, she would generally choose the latter. the man and the woman would prefer both at the same time: physical and spiritual love. but that is not the question. the question is: if it came to a _choice_; and then the results would be as i have just indicated. the correctness of my statements will be corroborated by anybody having some knowledge of human sexuality. a man can fully enjoy sexual intercourse without any preliminaries; with a woman the preliminaries are of the utmost importance, and when these are lacking she is often incapable of experiencing any pleasure. nay, the feeling of pleasure is not infrequently replaced by a feeling of dissatisfaction and even disgust. a man cares more for the physical and less for the mental and spiritual attributes of his sexual partner; with the woman just the opposite is the case. i am leaving out of consideration sexual impotence, because this is a real disability, and a man suffering with it only irritates the woman without satisfying her. for this she will not stand. but where the man is sexually potent--he may be aged and homely--his other physical attributes play but a small rôle with woman; his mental and spiritual qualities count with her for a good deal more. while a woman may be able to give a man perfect sexual satisfaction, and she may have an angelic character, if her body is not all that could be desired, the man will be dissatisfied and unhappy. =love in man occupies subordinate place= try as we may, we cannot get away from the fact that in man's life love occupies a subordinate place. i am speaking now of love, and not of "being in love." being in love, as pointed out in another place, is a distinctly pathological phenomenon, akin to insanity, and when a man is in love it may engross every fiber of him, it may preoccupy every minute of his waking hours, he may neglect all his work and shirk all his duties, in fact he is apt to make a much bigger fool of himself than a woman is under similar circumstances. he is less patient, he has less control over himself, he is less able to suffer, he is less capable of self-sacrifice. but this, as i said, all refers to "being in love," which is an entirely different thing from loving. a man may love ever so deeply, and if his love is reciprocated he will go on with his work in a smooth, unruffled manner. he will do better work for it--love is a wonderful stimulus--but he will be perfectly satisfied if he sees his love for an hour or two every day, or even once or twice a week. and if he has important and interesting work to do, he can part with his love for three months or six months without his heart breaking. not so with woman. a woman who loves considers every day on which she does not see her lover a day lost. and she is apt to be unhappy and inefficient in her work on such days, and she bears separation with much greater difficulty than does man. i do not think that this is due to the fact that a woman's love is always more intense than a man's; no. but he usually has other interests which occupy his thoughts and his emotions, while most women's thoughts and emotions are centered on the man they love. when a woman loves, she could and would spend all her time with the man she loves. she would never tire of love making (i am not referring here to sex relations), or merely of being in the man's proximity. to woman love is a cloyless thing. man distinctly does tire. no matter how much he may love a woman, too much lovemaking becomes cloying to him, and he wants to get away. even mere proximity, if too prolonged, becomes irksome to him, and he begins to fret and fidget, and pull at his chains, even if the chains are but of gossamer. woman should know these facts and act accordingly. =polygamous tendencies in man= we now come to the last point in our discussion: the polygamous or varietist tendencies in the male versus the monogamous tendencies in the female. no matter what our moralists, who try to fit the facts to their theories instead of fitting their theories to the facts, may say, the fact remains that man is a strongly polygamous or varietist animal. that many men live through their lives without having had relations with any women except their wives is cheerfully admitted. i assert this in spite of the incredulous smiles of all the cynics and roués in the world. i have known personally a great number of such men. but that they do it without any struggle, and in some cases a very severe struggle, is emphatically denied. and that hundreds of thousands of men are unequal to the struggle--or do not care to engage in any struggle--and live a sexually promiscuous life--anybody who knows anything about life as it is will testify. and his testimony will be corroborated by the reports of the vice commissions and the statements of disreputable-house keepers. to a great percentage of men a strictly monogamous life is either irksome, painful, disagreeable or an utter impossibility. while the number of women who are not satisfied with one mate is exceedingly small. a man may love a woman deeply and sincerely and at the same time make love to another woman, or have sexual relations with her or even with prostitutes. it is quite a _common_ thing with men. it is quite a rare thing with women, though it may happen. as iterated and reiterated time and again, there are always exceptional cases, but we are speaking of the average and not of the exception. the _rule_ is that in her sex and love life woman is much more loyal, much more faithful, much more single-affectioned than is her lord and master--man. is she on account of it better than, superior to, man? it is futile to speak of better or worse, of superior or inferior. this is the way they are. this is the way man and woman have been made by nature, by a thousand centuries of heredity, by a thousand centuries of environment. the differences lie in biological roots, and it is futile to fight and rail against nature and biology. the proper thing to do is to recognize the facts and make the best of them. to act the part of the ostrich, deliberately to ignore facts which are not pleasant, may be easy, but is it wise? chapter forty-seven maternal impressions wide-spread belief in maternal impressions--no single well-authenticated case of maternal impression--birth of monstrosities--ridiculous examples given by physicians--so-called shock often a product of mother's imagination--four cases of alleged maternal impressions--mother's health during pregnancy may have effect upon child's general health. it is believed by many people that strong impressions made upon the mother during pregnancy may produce marks or defects in the child. this belief dates from earliest antiquity, and is widespread among all races. the belief particularly refers to the emotions of fright or sudden surprise; thus it is believed that if a woman during pregnancy should be frightened by some animal, the child might carry the mark of the animal upon its body, or it might even be born in the shape of the animal. thousands of such _alleged_ cases are given in proof. there is hardly a layman, or, particularly, a laywoman, who does not claim to know of authentic cases of maternal impressions. it is a thankless task to try to shatter well-established beliefs, and i do not hope to succeed in persuading all my readers that all the stories and examples of maternal impressions are untrue and lack scientific foundation. but i consider it my duty to state my belief, whether you accept it or not. in my opinion there is not a single _well-authenticated_ case of maternal impression. there is hardly a case of defect or monstrosity where the cause is supposed to be due to maternal impression, which cannot be explained in some natural way, or simply by accident. thousands of women are frightened or shocked by disagreeable sights, by crippled men, by animals, and still their children are born perfectly normal. on the other hand, many marked, or defective, or monstrous children are born in which no maternal impressions can be given as the cause. so why can it not happen when the mother was frightened by something during her pregnancy, and the child was born with some mark or defect, that the latter was simply an accident and not the _result_ of the impression? because a thing _follows_ another thing it does not mean that it was _caused_ by that other thing. many of the cases given as examples, and by physicians too, are so ridiculous that no scientific man can give them the slightest credence for one moment. when a physician (dr. thomas j. savage) tells us that he attended a lady who had been frightened by a large green frog at or about the middle of pregnancy, and that she gave birth to a monstrosity, the head of which was that of a large frog in shape, with the eyes and mouth and even the coloring of a frog, then he is either telling an untruth, or he shows himself as ignorant and credulous as any illiterate old woman can be. the doctor should know that at the middle of pregnancy the child is _fully formed_ and that there is no possibility of an already formed human being changing its shape into that of an animal. another example given by the same doctor, and showing the calibre of his mentality, is that of a child which, when an infant, not old enough to walk, "would crawl over the floor and pick up little objects such as pins, tacks, small beads, without the slightest difficulty or fumbling." the reason for this "remarkable" skill the good doctor ascribes to the fact that four months before the birth of this child the mother had an outing in the woods and had derived great enjoyment from gathering hickory nuts which she found scattered among the leaves with which the ground was thickly covered! very often the so-called shock or fright which the mother experiences during gestation is simply a product of her imagination. we know of many cases where the mothers never mentioned that anything happened to them, and only after the child was born with some kind of mark or defect they began to hunt for causes and claimed that such and such a thing happened to them while they were pregnant, but on close investigation the alleged event was found to have originated in the mother's brain. in short, while the subject of maternal impressions is an interesting one and demands further investigation, there is at the present time no scientific justification for the belief in maternal impressions. particularly must we scout any stories of maternal impressions during the latter part of pregnancy, during the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, or ninth month. because after the child is fully formed no mental or psychic impressions can make birthmarks on it, amputate its limbs, or convert it into any sort of monstrosity. after the above was written and ready for the printer i came across four cases of alleged maternal impressions in a book by laura a. calhoun ("sex determination and its practical application"). the first three cases the author relates without any comment, taking them evidently for pure coin. the fourth case the lady investigated, and she is frank to say that what seemed at first as a clear case of maternal impression was nothing of the kind but merely a case of heredity. in order to break the monotony for a little while i will reproduce here the four cases in the lady's own words. the first was that of "a mother who, during pregnancy, was obliged for a certain continuous time to eat sheep's flesh. she took such a sudden abhorrence and distaste of the meat that she only ate it rather than go meat hungry. after the birth of her baby she recovered from this spasmodic distaste of this particular meat. but the child from its first meat-eating days could not endure the smell or the taste of the sheep's flesh. whenever the child attempted to eat that meat, the result was always the same--indigestion and want of assimilation, and usually attended with acute indigestion cramps." in the second case "another pregnant mother's particular 'longing' was for mackerel. her baby was born with what seemed to be the outlines, in a brownish color, of a mackerel on its side, and which design never faded in after years, and the child's ability to eat and digest mackerel was more than normal." the third case: "the 'longing' of another pregnant mother was for brains to eat. this was provided for her. but as she was slowly approaching the dish of deliciously prepared food, quivering with delight and with the eagerness of a child to be eating it, a cat sprang to the plate and before she could prevent it ate the brains and licked the plate clean. she wept as a child might have done, and was as unhappy and brokenhearted over this fate of the brains food for which she had waited with such keen anticipation of satisfaction as a little child might have been. shortly after that the little baby was born, and upon one of its shoulder-blades was a representation of the mess of brains, designed in brownish outlines, and which did not fade as the child grew up." the fourth case: "there lived in a little house in the midst of a flower garden, that in its turn gave into a wide-spreading orchard, a loving and loyal husband and wife with their firstborn child. the wife was now in the first months of pregnancy with her second child. their nearest neighbor was a mexican family, among the members of which was a dashing young man of about twenty-two. he and his sister and mother were frequent visitors to this little household of three. but the young mexican was the most frequent, and the husband's being home or not did not disconcert him. men of affairs must need spend morning hours, and sometimes afternoon hours, too, inside of offices, but wealthy and aristocratic young mexicans ride horses all day, decked out with silver, leather, and velvet trappings, both horse and rider. it was this lady's custom to walk among her flowers and fruit trees. and it became the custom of this young caballero to suddenly appear before her during these promenades. her startled eyes would no sooner perceive the vision of his blazing, dark eyes fastened upon her, than by one pretext and another she made him understand that he was dismissed, and would herself retire into the house. when she would be about to open a gate, suddenly and unexpectedly the young mexican would appear on the other side and with gracious suavity open the gate, always his passionate, dark eyes upon her, though his words were reserved and polite. if the husband were present, it was still the same. by every means possible he would prolong his stay. one summer day this lady was lying on her couch on the veranda, sleeping, her eyes covered over. at that time she was having an eye malady that was epidemic in that part of the country. she heard footsteps approaching, but did not disturb herself, as she supposed it was her husband. after some time she suddenly threw off the covering from her face, and there to her astonished eyes stood the young mexican, intensely looking down upon her with deep concern. at that moment the husband arrived, and the young man told him of a weed growing in that locality that he said would cure the eye malady. when the leaves of this plant were crushed there oozed a yellowish milk; with about a half-dozen applications of this milk to the sore eyes they were healed. after that the young caballero would ride up and down, mexican fashion, in front of the house, drawing rein whenever he could get a glimpse of the lady or a word with her. this never failed to annoy her, and also to strike a sudden, sharp terror into her heart. always his appearance was most unexpected, and always accompanied by the rapt, passionate, dark gaze. though he was a most clean-souled young man. afterward, when the baby was born, one of the child's eyes was marked by the color and fire of the dashing spaniard's eyes, while its other eye was a calmish blue-gray eye. this was all the more remarkable as neither of the parents of the child had such eyes. was it a case of maternal impression? upon investigation i found that the grandparents of the baby's mother had just such eyes as the baby. the grandfather's were big, dark, flashing eyes, and the grandmother's the mild, blue-gray eyes. so 'bang!' went the theory of mental impression, and in its place came the physical law of reversion." i do not wish to be misunderstood as claiming that a mother's condition during pregnancy has no effect on the child, and that she need therefore take no precautions and pay no particular attention to her health and her feelings. this is not so. but what i do want to convey is this: that if a mother's health during pregnancy is bad, if she is a prey to worry and anxiety, if she was subjected to great fright or to a shock, then the child's general health may suffer. it may be stillborn, or the mother may have a miscarriage. but it will not produce those specific marks, deformities and monstrosities which are commonly supposed to be the results of maternal impressions. if i lay somewhat special stress upon the subject of maternal impressions, it is because i pity the poor mothers and want to spare them as much as possible unnecessary worry and anxiety. besides i want them to believe in the truth and not in error. chapter forty-eight advice to the married and those about to be marriage as an ideal institution--monogamic marriage--some reasons for husbands' deviations--importance of first few weeks of married life--necessity for understanding at beginning-- preventing and breaking habits--the wife's individuality-- husbands who are childish, not vicious--wife's interest in husband's affairs--the "slob" husband--the well-groomed husband-- bad odor from the mouth--odors from other parts of the body-- treatment for bad odor from perspiration--a beneficial powder-- advice regarding flirting--dainty underwear--fine external clothes and cheap and soiled underwear--delicate adjustments of sex act required with some men--wife who discusses her husband's foibles-- a professional secret--a case of temporary impotence--the wife's indiscretion--the disastrous result--a big stomach--the wife's attitude towards the marital relation--behavior preliminary to and during the act--congenital frigidity--prudish and vicious ideas about the sex act--sexual intercourse for procreative purposes only--fear of pregnancy on the part of the wife--the remedy--other causes--wife who makes too frequent demands-- sacrificing the future to the present--esthetic considerations. whether marriage in its present form is an ideal institution destined to endure forever, whether it is in need of radical reforms before it can be considered ideal, or whether it has fundamental irremediable defects, are questions which we are not going to discuss here. the fact is that at the present time the greatest part of the adult population of the world is married; and the part that isn't would like to be. and the greater part of civilized humanity living in a state of monogamic marriage, it behooves us to make the best of it, to get out of it the greatest amount of happiness that we can, obviate as much unhappiness as possible, and to do everything in our power to make it permanent. separation or divorce are remedies of last resort, and people have recourse to them when they are at the end of their tether. but the proper thing to do is to avoid the necessity of having to have recourse to them. and i believe that a careful, thoughtful perusal of this chapter will help husband and wife to get along better, to avoid unnecessary friction and to retain the mutual physical and spiritual attraction which we call love for a longer period than might otherwise be the case. i have the confidence and listen to the intimate confessions of more men and woman probably than any other physician in america, or perhaps in the world. for reasons easily understood they tell me things which they would not think of telling to their regular physician. i have learned of many of the reasons, which in many families led first to a coolness, then to an estrangement, or to quarrels, to separation and divorce. i know the first steps which in many instances draw the husband to another woman. and i wish to tell you, that while i firmly believe in the polygamous or rather varietist tendencies of the average man, nevertheless i am convinced that one of the great reasons why so many married men patronize prostitutes, or have mistresses or lady friends, is to be found in the wives themselves. many wives _drive_ their husbands to other women, and are alone responsible for their suffering, for the cooling of their husbands' affections, and perhaps even desertion. and in the following pages i will endeavor, as stated before, to point out some of the rocks and shoals on which the matrimonial bark is so often shattered, and to offer the wives some suggestions which will help them to retain their husbands' affections and perhaps even also their fidelity. while the advice is intended primarily for wives, there will be found here and there a salutary piece of advice for husbands. some of the advice is applicable to both partners, and as to those suggestions which concern the husband only--it will be a good thing for the wives to call their husbands' attention to them. the first few weeks or the first few months are the most important in the life of a married couple. the stability of the marriage, the future happiness, often depend upon the things which are done or left undone during the initial weeks of married life. a certain understanding must be reached from the very beginning. if your husband does certain things which displease you and which you know should not be done, it is best to say so at the very start. it is easier to prevent the establishment of a habit than to break a habit after it has been established. =retain your individuality.= the first piece of advice i have to give you is: _retain your individuality_. it is a trite but perfectly true observation that altogether too many men who during courtship were chivalry personified assume a dictatorial tone as soon as the knot has been tied. they think that the wife has actually ceased to exist as a separate human being, that she has been absorbed, and with the loss of her name she has lost all right to have her own opinions, her own tastes, and, of course, her own friends. friends who are obnoxious to one of the marital partners one must give up sometimes; but do not permit your entire personality to be obscured. explain to your husband that you are still an independent living human being. i do not say, you should at once start a fight. nothing is more offensive to me than the militant, pugnacious woman, who wears a chip on the shoulder and is continually ready to insist on her "rights." but with gentleness and firmness much can be accomplished. and you want to remember that many husbands act the way they do, not because they are vicious, but because they are stupid or childish. sometimes it is mere thoughtlessness. they have been brought up wrongly, and some of them sincerely imagine that by repressing the wife's personality, by blotting it out, they are acting in her interest. "it is for her own good." a serious talk with a husband will sometimes have a wonderful effect. it may sometimes change entirely the current of his thoughts. of course if the husband is a cad, a conceited fool, or a brute, you can do nothing with him; but fortunately not all husbands belong to those categories. =interest in husband's affairs.= be interested in your husband's affairs. no matter what your husband's occupation may be, you should possess enough intelligence to be able to understand what he is doing. it is almost unbelievable how little some wives know about their husband's profession or work. it is a bad thing when strange women understand your husband's work better than you do, and when he finds in them more intelligent and more sympathetic listeners. he may go to them for sympathy. if your husband is a scientist or a research worker or a professional man it is not necessary that you be familiar with all the details of his work, but with the general character you should be. and if you can be of assistance to him in his work, if it be only looking up references, compiling tables and statistics or merely typewriting, it will be appreciated by him, and will sometimes help to knit the bonds a bit closer. there is another important reason for being interested in and understanding your husband's business. when the husband dies--and a man is not infrequently snatched away in the prime of youth and vigor--the wife is often left to the mercies of the cold world, without money and without a profession. if she understands the husband's business she can continue it and remain economically independent. this has reference not only to ordinary business, like stores or agencies, but to more or less specialized occupations, such for instance as publishing. we know the cases of two widows of publishers of medical journals. when their husbands died everybody was commiserating with them: what will they make a living from? but they understood the details of their husbands' business, and they kept right on. and now those journals are financially more successful than they were when the husbands were at the helm. =wife's behavior toward sexual relations.= i am now coming to a delicate subject. but, delicate though it is, it must be dealt with unflinchingly, because it is probably responsible for more male infidelity than all other causes combined. i speak of the relation of the wife to her marital duties, in other words, to sexual relations. too many women regard the sexual act as a nuisance, as an ordeal, as something disagreeable to get through with as quickly as possible; they regard the husband's demands in this line as an imposition, as unfair or even as brutal; and their behavior preliminary to and during the act is such as to cool the ardor of any refined and sensitive man. the reasons for this behavior on the part of many wives are manifold; this is not the place to consider them in detail. i will allude to them briefly. one great cause is congenital frigidity. the woman is cold, frigid, has no desire for sex relations and experiences no pleasure, no sensation from them. such women are not to blame; they are to be pitied. but even they can behave so as not to repel their husbands. (see chapter xliii). another great cause is the vicious, prudish bringing up, by which the sex act is regarded as something unclean, indecent, animal-like, brutal. such women need a good "talking-to," and if they are only not natural born fools, one good explanation often fixes matters. on a par with this general prudishness is the infamous idea promulgated by a few semi-insane, mentally decrepit men and women, that sexual intercourse is for the purpose of propagation only. that only when a child is wanted is the relation permissible; at all other times it is a sin, an "act of prostitution," an offense in the eyes of god, etc., etc. of course if the wife has such ideas the husband deserves little sympathy. a man should know what ideas the woman entertains whom he is going to make his wife and the mother of his children. but, unfortunately, this, the most important subject of sex and sexuality, is never touched upon by the engaged couple (it would be so indelicate!), and after they are married they often find themselves at opposite poles. here also a good heart-to-heart talk will do a world of good. i have had several such cases where a little conversation or even a letter saved the couple from disruption. in many cases the cause of refusal is fear of pregnancy. in this case the wife is right. but the remedy is simple: give her full instruction in the use of contraceptive measures. other causes are: excessive masturbation, vaginismus, local malformation, inflammation, etc. but whatever the causes of the wife's "bad behavior" may be, they are all amenable to treatment. some need medical treatment, some psychic treatment, and some nothing but just a common-sense, heart-to-heart talk. and i would emphasize: do not repel your husbands when they ask for sexual favors--at least do not repel them too often. households in which relations are had rather frequently and in which the wives lend their full and eager participation are happier households than those in which the sexual act is indulged in rarely, and with grumbling and side-remarks on the part of the wife. but of course you should not go to the other extreme either. you should not make too frequent demands upon your husband. with a man the act means a good deal more than it does with a woman; it entails a great deal more of physical and mental exhaustion, and a wife who is unreasonable in this respect is sowing the seeds of discord and unhappiness. she is sacrificing the future to the present. the husband is apt to become afflicted with satiety or impotence--and the wife may have to lead a life of continence for much longer than she would have had to if she had been moderate. in no department of life is moderation so important as in sex life. non-use, insufficient use and excessive use are all bad. a mutually joyful, eager and moderately frequent participation in the sexual act will contribute most to a happy and long life. =dainty underwear.= this may be considered too delicate or too trifling a subject to discuss in an important sex book. but nothing is too delicate or too trifling that concerns human happiness, and you will believe me if i tell you that nice underwear or dainty lingerie plays a very important rôle in marital life. and every married woman should have as fine and as dainty underwear as she can possibly afford. a fine or elaborate nightgown may be more important than an expensive skirt or hat. unfortunately too many women ignore this fact. externally they will be well dressed, while their petticoats, drawers and undershirts will be of the commonest quality and of questionable freshness and immaculateness. and if anything in a woman's toilet should be immaculately fresh and clean it is, i emphasize, her underwear. silk and lace and delicate batiste should be preferred, if they can be afforded, and attention should be paid to the color. as a rule, a delicate pink is the color that most men prefer. the sex act with some men requires the most delicate adjustments, and the condition of the underwear may determine the man's desire and ability or inability to accomplish the act. i therefore repeat: whether you are newly married or have been married a quarter of a century, be sure that your underwear is the very best that your means will allow you, and that it is always sweet, fresh and dainty. it will help you to retain the affection of your husband. i know that some allegedly wise ones will scoff at this statement. they may say that an affection that may be influenced by the kind and condition of underwear is not worth having or retaining. but what do these wise ones know! what do they know of the numerous subtle influences which gradually either strengthen or undermine our affections? follow this advice and you will be grateful. =do not offend against esthetics.= some women think that because they are married to their husbands they owe the latter no esthetic consideration. things that they would be horrified to let a stranger see they do before their husband's eyes without hesitation. for instance, not to beat about the bush, though the subject is not a pleasant one, they will urinate in their husbands' presence, or they will let him see their soiled menstrual napkins, etc. some husbands may not mind it; but some men are very sensitive--men on the whole are more esthetic than women--and an indifference towards the wife may have its origin in some vulgar or unesthetic procedure on the wife's part. the sexual act, as mentioned before, is a very delicate mechanism, and it is very easy to disarrange it. the act of micturition before the man is known in many instances to have instantly abolished the man's sexual desire which was present before. and a man told me that because he noticed in a closet a lot of rags soiled with menstrual blood he was unable to enjoy relations with his wife for several months. you may think that these are all small things, but life is made up of little things, and many a married life went smash on account of disregarding the little things. =a high stomach.= avoid if you possibly can a high stomach, or a big stomach, or what we call in technical language a pendulous abdomen. nothing is more fatal to woman's beauty--and to man's love--than a big stomach, and particularly a hang-down stomach. it at once takes away her youthfulness and makes her matronly--and matronliness is fatal to romance. it is not so much general stoutness that is objected to--some men, as is well known, prefer plump, stout women. and there are some savage tribes in which the preference is given to obese women with enormous abdomens, but this is not the case with the caucasian race--not in civilized countries, at any rate, and surely not in the united states. first, reduce your carbohydrates, use massage and hydrotherapy, walk for hours at a time, but reduce your big abdomen--or, still better, don't let it get big. prevention here, as elsewhere, is much better than cure. =bad odor from the mouth.= i know of no other physical ailment which is so dangerous, so fatal to the permanency of the love relation as is a strong, offensive odor from the mouth. as a noxious gas blights a delicate plant, so will a strong bad odor blight the delicate plant of love. yes, a strong malodorous whiff will cool the most ardent passion. the public would be astounded if it knew how many cases of separation and divorce are due to nothing else but a bad odor from the mouth. therefore, if you happen to suffer from this unfortunate ailment, lose no time in applying to a competent physician, and do not tire of treating yourself, no matter how irksome and time-consuming the treatment may be, until you are completely cured. it is important to your happiness. =odors from other parts of body.= odors from other parts of the body should be conspicuous by their absence. normally no artificial aids are needed. frequent bathing and general cleanliness are alone sufficient. the natural feminine odor--_odor feminae_--is pleasant, attractive and needs no disguise. but where an unpleasant odor from the genitals, feet or armpits is present the proper treatment should be applied, and in such cases the use of a delicate perfume, sachet or scented talcum powder, is quite permissible. not only permissible but advisable. a very good treatment for perspiration and bad odor from the feet is the following: bathe the feet night and morning in a basin of water to which has been added an ounce (two tablespoonfuls) of formaldehyde solution. dry carefully, and then rub in well the following powder. it is simple, cheap and efficient: salicylic acid one dram boric acid one ounce dried alum two ounces talcum four ounces a little of the powder should be shaken into the stockings every morning, and the stockings should be changed very frequently, once or twice a day. this powder is also efficient against perspiration and bad odor from the armpits. i am not giving any treatment for bad odor from the mouth, for this condition may be due to a great variety of causes. the cause may reside in the nose; it may reside in the mouth, decaying teeth, throat, tonsils. it may be due to a bad stomach, to some disease of the lungs, etc. sometimes it is due to overeating. what would be of value in one condition might be useless in another. the right thing, therefore, is to go to a competent physician, have him find the cause of your trouble and outline the proper treatment. leucorrhea. some men find themselves _entirely unable_ to have sexual relations with a woman whom they know is suffering with leucorrhea. the mere knowledge of the fact takes away their _ability_ to perform the act. it renders them impotent. it disgusts them, and disgust is fatal to sexual power. only to-day i saw in my office a woman who anxiously begged for advice and treatment. she had been married five years. she has always had leucorrhea, from her fifteenth year as far as she remembers. otherwise she did not suffer. for the first three years or so her married life has been a happy one. then in an unfortunate moment she told her husband about her profuse leucorrhea, and instantly she noticed a change in him. he could not fully hide the expression on his face. and since then he ceased to have intercourse with her. he made a few attempts, but they turned out unsatisfactory to both, and she noticed that he was forcing himself, doing it against his will. she took some patent medicines and went to one doctor, but without any results. now, unless she could be cured, she feared her husband would demand a separation or a divorce. if you have leucorrhea treat it. and remember you need not initiate your husband in all your unesthetic ailments. loyalty. loyalty on the part of the wife is almost as important as fidelity. and it is in the highest degree disloyal for a wife to talk to her female or male friends about her husband's peculiarities, foibles or weaknesses. the husband's--as well, of course, as the wife's--peculiarities should be what we call a professional secret. just as a physician is forbidden to talk to outsiders about his patient's troubles, so should a wife not talk about her husband, nor a husband about his wife. i know of a case in which a newly married husband was temporarily impotent (and it was the wife's fault, too). she spoke about it in the deepest confidence to a close girl friend of hers. the friend told it in deep confidence to another friend. and so it went around until it reached the husband's ears. from that moment he made no further attempt to have relations with his wife; a coolness resulted, which led to a separation, which still persists. the wife begged forgiveness, but he was unable to grant it--he felt so deeply hurt. flirting. do not flirt. men are apt to misunderstand you, and you are apt to get the reputation of a loose woman without in any way having deserved it. i do not say that you should always wear a forbidding expression, and should scowl at people who dare to smile at you or otherwise pay homage to your feminine charms. but there is a difference between a friendly expression and flirting. however, when your husband begins to neglect you, then a mild flirtation may be justifiable. it will _always_ do your husband good to know that there are other males in the world beside him, and that some of these males find interest in the female whom he considers his permanent and exclusive property. =slovenly husbands.= don't let your husband become a slob. that is just what i mean. it is no use mincing words. some husbands have never acquired the habit--or if they have acquired it they quickly lost it--of regarding their wives as ladies. "she is not a lady, she is only my wife," is a well-known joke, but some men take it not as a jest. some men think that before their wives they can be as slovenly and unclean as they please. give your husband to understand that cleanliness and freshness is not a "sex-limited" attribute, and just as a husband wants his wife to be clean and dainty and well-groomed, so a wife may enjoy the same qualities in her husband. some women are very fastidious, and while they may say nothing to their husbands for fear of irritating them, they may think a good deal. =carrying life insurance.= every husband should carry some life insurance--as much as he conveniently can. this should be the husband's most pleasant duty, particularly so when the wife has no profession of her own and there are small children to bring up. the lack of consideration, the thoughtlessness--i would call it dishonesty--on the part of many husbands who claim to love their wives is simply heart-breaking. who of us does not know of cases of refined wives with children left absolutely penniless and forced into wage slavery or even into menial service by the negligence of their husbands? such things happened even to wives whose husbands were making from three to ten thousand a year. thoughtlessness, carelessness, procrastination--and then it was too late. there is not a man who makes as little as twenty dollars a week who cannot carry some insurance. i was once poor, very poor. and the terrifying thought, what would happen to my wife and two children if i should be taken off suddenly? gave me many a troubled and sleepless night. and when i took out a thousand dollars insurance i felt some relief. but i felt it was inadequate. i therefore made a supreme effort and soon took an additional ten thousand dollars. and i assure you that the annual premium of two hundred and eighty-six dollars was a terrible burden on me. there were times when i felt as if i had to give it up. but i deprived myself of many necessities (there was no question of luxuries) and i paid my premiums regularly. but in compensation i had restful nights. it was soothing to know that if i should be taken away in my earliest youth my equally young wife and two little babies would not be left penniless. i verily believe that an adequate life insurance prolongs a person's life, because it removes the worry about the future of the wife and children. i repeat, every husband should carry some life insurance. and the habit of the bridegroom presenting the bride with a substantial life insurance policy is a very good one. it is not only a financial protection to the wife; it is also more or less a guarantee of the husband's fair health. =making a will.= another point. every husband should make a will. this is a delicate point about which most wives would hesitate to speak to their husbands, but the husband should attend to the matter himself. a will doesn't shorten anybody's life, but is very convenient in case of a sudden taking off. this is, of course, particularly important if there is some property. if the husband dies without a will, there is endless trouble and red tape for the wife. an executor has to be appointed, she has to give bonds, etc., etc. if the husband leaves a will making his wife sole executrix, without a bond, all trouble is avoided. i assume, of course, that the husband has perfect confidence in his wife's wisdom and integrity. if he has not and there are children, it is just as well to designate some outside executor or executors. but whichever may be the case, it is a good and sensible thing always to have a will properly made out and witnessed. chapter forty-nine a rational divorce system a rational divorce system--storms and squalls--two sides of the divorce question--outside help and marital tangles--a husband who was a paragon of virtue--the case of the sweet wife--the proper untangling of domestic tangles. of course, i am in favor of a rational divorce system. the difficulties, the obstacles, the expense, with which divorce is now surrounded in most civilized countries is simply disgraceful. make marriage harder and divorce easier, has always been my motto. when life together becomes unbearable then it is better for both husband and wife to cut the tie and to get divorced. divorce is preferable to separation, because both spouses may be able to lead a new and happier life. where there are no children to be taken care of a simple declaration of husband and wife repeated perhaps after a lapse of three or six months should be quite sufficient for the granting of a divorce. where there are children the state should make sure that they will be properly taken care of before a divorce is granted. where only one party demands a divorce the case should be carefully studied by a commission which should include in its personnel physicians and psychologists; and adultery should most certainly not be the only cause for divorce. yes, i am for a sensible, rational and easy system of divorce. but i would always recommend care and caution. "go slow" should be the guiding motto of husband and wife in such cases. there are periods in a married couple's life when further living together seems unthinkable; and still a month or two or a year passes and the husband and wife live happily together and cannot believe that there was ever any friction between them. the couples are very few, indeed, who never went through any squalls or storms, whose lives were not darkened by disagreements, quarrels and apparently irreconcilable antagonisms. but after the storm the sun shone brightly again, and the quarrels were followed by harmony and peace. after that love was intensified. were divorce a simple matter, a mere matter of declaration, many couples who live now in harmony would have been divorced--to their great regret perhaps. yes, there are two sides to the divorce question. but i would summarize it as follows: where there is a real incompatibility of characters, where there is no love and no respect, then the sooner the couple is divorced the better, and not only for them but for the children also, if there are any. an atmosphere of hatred and mutual contempt is not a healthy atmosphere for the growing children. but where there is merely irritability, outbreaks of temper, or disagreements which if analyzed can be seen to be due to temporary and remediable causes, then "go slow," "don't hurry," should be your motto. there will always be time to get a divorce. while if a divorce has been obtained, even if you regret it, you will most likely stay divorced. many divorced couples, i imagine, would remarry, if they were not ashamed. they fear it would make them ridiculous--and it would--in their friends' eyes. =outsiders in domestic tangles= if you have a disagreement with your husband, try to straighten out the tangle yourself. don't call in outside help. you will regret it. a stranger's paws are too coarse and too unsympathetic to meddle with the delicate adjustments which constitute marital life, and after you have gotten over your disagreement and are again living harmoniously you will be ashamed to look that third party in the face, and you will probably bear a grudge against him--or her. altogether outsiders are not fit to mix in the internal differences between husband and wife. it is absolutely impossible for a stranger to know just where the trouble is and who the guilty party is. sometimes there is no guilty party. both husband and wife may be right; they may both be lovely people and still together they may form an incompatible, explosive mixture. and then again the party that to outsiders may seem the angelic one may in reality be the devilish one. it is a well-known fact that people who to the outside world may seem the personification of honor and good nature may be very devils at home. i have long ago given up not only meddling in, but even judging, domestic disharmonies. for it is almost impossible for an outsider to judge justly. i knew a husband who was considered a paragon of virtue. and when a clash came between him and his wife everybody was inclined to blame the wife. but it came out later that the husband had certain ways about him which made the wife's life a very torture. and vice versa. i know of another case where the wife was considered the sweetest thing in the world. she had nice ways about her, but she disliked her husband and made his life a hell. with genuine chivalry he bore everything, believing that it was a man's duty to bear his cross. she was unfaithful to him, but she was so clever and cunning that neither he nor anybody else suspected it. the fact became painfully patent to him, when on one of the rare occasions that they came together she infected him with a venereal disease, which incapacitated him for a long time. nobody knew why he insisted upon a separation, and everybody, with the exception of his physician and perhaps one or two others, was blaming him for an unfeeling brute. i will therefore repeat that as a general thing domestic tangles should be untangled by the tanglers themselves. it is not safe to call in outsiders--relatives or friends; they are apt to make the tangle more tangled, and, what is more, they are quite likely to put the blame on the innocent party, and bestow upon the guilty party the montyon prize for virtue and gentleness. chapter fifty what is love? is love definable?--raising a corner of the veil--two opinions of love--the first opinion: sexual intercourse and love--the second opinion--the grain of truth in each--the truth concerning love--foundation of love--sexual attraction and love--the frigid woman and her husband--puzzling cases of love--the paradox--blindness of love and the penetrating vision of love--limits of homeliness--physical aversion and genesis of love--mating in the animal kingdom--mating in low races--love in people of high culture--difference in love of savage and man of culture--distinctions between loves--varieties of love and varieties of men--"love" without sexual desire--refraining and wanting--cause of love at first sight--"magnetic forces" and love at first sight--the pathological side--differentiation of phases of love--infatuation--difference between "infatuation" and "being in love"--sexual satisfaction and infatuation--sexual satisfaction and love--infatuation mistaken for love--love the most mysterious of human emotions--great love and supreme happiness. i shall not attempt to give a definition, either brief or extensive, of love. many have tried and failed, and i shall not attempt the impossible. nor shall i attempt to discuss love in all its innumerable details.[ ] to do so would alone require a book many times more voluminous than the one you have before you. i shall, however, endeavor to raise a corner of the veil which surrounds this most mysterious, most baffling and most complex of all human emotions, so that you may get a glimpse into its intricate mechanism and perhaps understand what love is in its essence at least. =sexual and platonic love.= there are two widely different, in fact diametrically opposite, opinions as to what constitutes love. one opinion is that love is sexual love, sexual attraction, sexual desire. to people holding this opinion love and sexual desire or "lust" are synonymous. and they laugh and sneer at any attempt to idealize love, to present it as something finer and subtler, let alone nobler, than mere sex attraction. the writer has heard one cynical woman--and more than one man--say: love? there is no such a thing. sexual intercourse is love, and that's all there is to it. the other opinion is that love, true love, ideal love, or, as it is sometimes called, sentimental love, or platonic love, has nothing to do with sexual desire, with sexual attraction. indeed, people holding this opinion consider love and sexual attraction--or lust as they like to call the latter--as antithetical conceptions, as mutually antagonistic and exclusive. both opinions, as is often the case with extreme and one-sided opinions, are wrong. both opinions have a reason for their existence, because there is a grain of truth in both of them. but a grain of truth is not the whole truth, and if an opinion contains ninety-nine parts of untruth to one part of truth, then the effect of the opinion is practically the same as if it were all false. here is the truth, or at least what i think is the truth, as it appears to me after many years of thinking and many years of observing. =foundation of love.= the _foundation_, the _basis_ of all love is sexual attraction. without sexual attraction, in greater or lesser degree, there can be no love. where the former is entirely lacking the latter can have no existence. this you may take as an axiom. some may call it love, but on analyzing it you will find that it is no such thing. it may be friendship, it may be gratitude, it may be respect, it may be pity, it may be habit, it may even be a _desire_ or a _readiness_ to love or to be loved, but it is not love. experience has proved it in thousands and thousands of sad cases. and the girl who marries a man who is physically repulsive to her, who possesses _no_ physical sexual attraction for her, though she may experience for him all of the feelings mentioned above, namely, friendship, gratitude, respect and pity, is preparing for herself a joyless couch to sleep on. unless, indeed, she happens to belong to the class of women whom we call frigid, that is, if she is herself devoid of any sexual desire and feels no need of any sexual relations. such a woman may be fairly or even quite happy with a husband who repels her physically, but whom she likes or respects. and what i said about the wife applies with still greater force to the husband. a man who marries a woman who is physically antipathetic to him is a criminal fool. i repeat, sexual, physical attraction is the _basis_, the foundation of love. it is true we see certain cases of love which puzzle us. we cannot understand what "he" has seen in "her" or what "she" has seen in "him." but let us remember this paradox, which paradoxical though it be, is true nevertheless: love is blind, but love also sees acutely and penetratingly; it sees things which we who are indifferent cannot see. the blindness of love helps her not to see certain defects which are clearly seen to everybody else; but, on the other hand, her penetrating vision helps her to see good qualities which are invisible to others. and a homely person may possess certain compensating _physical_ qualities--such as passionate ardor or strong sexual power--which, render him or her irresistible to a member of the opposite sex. but homeliness, ugliness or deformity have their limits, and i challenge anybody to bring forth an authenticated case in which a man fell in love with a woman--or vice versa--who had an enormous tumor on one side of the face, which made her look like a monstrosity, or whose nose was sunk in as a result of lupus or syphilis, or whose cheek was eaten away by cancer. love under such circumstances is an absolute impossibility, because there is physical aversion here, and physical aversion is fatal to the _genesis_ of love. a man who loved a woman may continue to love her after she has become disfigured by disease, but he cannot fall in love with such a woman. i will repeat, then, and i trust you will agree with me on this point: sexual attraction is the foundation of all love between the opposite sexes. where sexual attraction is lacking you can give the feeling any other name you choose: it will not be love. =other requisites.= but a foundation is not a whole structure. to insure the stability of a high intricate building we must give it a good solid foundation; but the foundation does not make the building. that still remains to be built. so sexual attraction is the foundation of all love, but it does _not_ constitute love. many more factors, many more wonderful stones are needed before the wonderful structure called love is brought into existence. this wonderful structure sometimes goes up in the twinkling of an eye, as if by the touch of a magic wand--who has not seen or heard of instances of "love at first sight!"--but the rapidity of the growth of the structure called love does not militate against our assertion that many stones, much variegated material, and a strong cement are needed for its completion. fairies sometimes work very quickly. a little thought will show clearly that love is not merely sexual love, not merely a desire to gratify the sexual instinct. if love were merely sexual desire, then one member of the opposite sex, or at least one attractive member, would be as good as any other. and indeed in animals and in the lower races, where love as we understand it does not exist, this is the case. to a male dog any female dog is as good as another, and vice versa. cats are not particular in the choice of their mates, nor are cows, horses, etc. and the same is true of the primitive savage races, and even among the lower uneducated classes of so-called civilized races. to the hottentot, to the australian bushman or to the russian peasant one woman is as good as another. if the male of a low race has some preference, it will be in favor of the woman who happens to have a little property. in fact i make the assertion that real love, true love, is a new feeling, a comparatively modern feeling, absent in the lower races and reaching its highest development only in people of high civilization, culture and education. the platitudinous objection might be raised that "human nature is human nature," that all our feelings are born with us, and as such are inherited, that they have been with us for millions of years and that we cannot possibly _originate_ any entirely new feeling. true from a certain viewpoint. we cannot originate intellect either. the germ of intellect with all its potential possibilities was present in our most primitive tree-climbing ancestors. but as much difference as there is between the intellect of an australian bushman and the intellect of a spinoza, a shakespeare, a darwin, a victor hugo, a goethe or a gauss, so much difference is there between the love of a primitive savage and the love of the highly cultured modern man. the love or so-called love of the primitive or ignorant man (and woman) is a simple matter and is practically equivalent to a desire for sexual gratification. the love of the truly cultured and highly civilized man and woman, while still _based_ on sexual attraction, is so complex and so dominating a feeling that it completely defies all analysis, all attempts at dissection, as it defies all attempts at synthesis, at artificial building up. as previously stated, some writers attempt to make a clear distinction between sensual and sentimental love; many reams of paper have been used up in an endeavor to differentiate between one and the other; the first is called animal love or lust; the second pure love or ideal love; the first variety of love is said to be selfish, egotistic, the other--self-sacrificing, altruistic. these distinctions read very nicely, but they mean very little. there is no distinct line of demarkation between the two varieties of love, and one merges imperceptibly into the other. most, if not all, of our apparently altruistic actions and feelings have an egotistic substratum; and the quality of the love depends upon the lover. in other words, there are not two separate, distinct varieties of love, but there are separate, distinct varieties of men. a fine and noble man will love finely and nobly; a coarse and brutal man will love coarsely and brutally. a man who is fine and noble may not love at all, but he cannot love coarsely and selfishly; and a coarse and brutal man can never love nobly and unselfishly. which once more means: the difference is not inherent in the love, but in the lover. but to say that a man may deeply love a woman and not have any sexual desire for her is nonsense. a man who loves a woman and does not want to possess her (to use the ugly ancient verb) does not love her--or he is completely impotent. whatever the feeling may be for her--it is not love. he may abstain from having sex relations with her if the circumstances are such that sex relations may lead to her unhappiness and suffering, but to refrain from doing a thing, when reason and judgment lead us to refrain, does not mean not to want the thing. =love at first sight.= nothing is more firmly established than the fact that a person may fall passionately and incurably in love with a person of the opposite sex at the very first sight, in the twinkling of an eye, in the literal sense of the word. one glance may be sufficient. and such a love may exist to the end of life, and may, if reciprocated, lead to supreme happiness, or if unreciprocated to the deepest unhappiness. what it is that causes love at first sight is unknown. some have suggested that the beloved object sets in motion or fermentation certain internal secretions (hormones) in the lover which cannot become "satisfied" or "neutralized" except by that person; and the possession of the beloved object becomes a physical necessity. this explanation really means nothing. it is a hypothesis unsusceptible of proof. but whatever the cause of love at first sight, it is so mysterious a phenomenon that it gives the mystics and metaphysicians some justification for their talk about "electric currents" and "magnetic forces." these phrases also mean nothing, but are an attempt at explaining the suddenness and irresistibleness of the attack. so powerful is the attraction of love at first sight that people have been known to cross continents and oceans merely to get a glimpse of the beloved object; and people have been known to sacrifice _everything_--their career, their material possessions, their social standing, their honor, and even their wife and children, in order to gain their object. and a mother may give up her children whom she loves dearer than life, may risk ostracism and disgrace, only in order to be with the object of her love. this shows that love, then, becomes pathological, because any feeling which so completely masters an individual that he is willing to sacrifice everything he has in the world is pathological. =infatuation and being in love.= while, as said, the feeling of love does not readily lend itself to dissection, to analysis, still we can differentiate some phases of it. we can differentiate between "being in love," "infatuation," and "love." being in love is, as just indicated, a pathological, morbid phenomenon. the person who is in love is not in a normal condition. he can see nothing, he cannot be argued with, as far as his love is concerned. she is the acme of perfection, physical, mental, and spiritual; nobody can be compared with her. and, of course, the man is anxiously eager to marry the object of his love--unless insuperable obstacles are in the way; for instance, if the man happens to be married. infatuation may be as strong as any "being in love" feeling. but with this difference. in infatuation the man may know that the object of infatuation is an unworthy one, he may despise her, he may hate her, he may pray for her death, he may do his utmost to overcome the infatuation. in short, infatuation is a feeling, chiefly physical, which the man can analyze, the unworthiness and absurdity of which he may acknowledge, but which he is unable to resist or overcome. he feels himself bewitched; he feels himself caught in a net, he is anxious to tear asunder the meshes of the net, but is not strong enough to do it. and this is a pretty good way to differentiate between being in love and being infatuated. if in love the man does not want to be free from his chains; he does not want to cease to love or to be in love. when infatuated the man often uses his utmost will-power to break his shackles. sexual satisfaction is often sufficient to shatter an infatuation; it is not sufficient to destroy love--it often strengthens and eternalizes it. neither being in love nor infatuation can last "forever"; they are acute maladies of high tension and relatively short duration. infatuation may change into indifference or disgust; "being in love" may change into indifference, hatred, or into real love--a steady, durable love. this will answer the often asked question: how do marriages turn out which are the result of a sudden, violent passion, or of love at first sight? no ironclad rules suitable for all cases can be given. some turn out very unhappily, the couple gradually finding out that they are altogether unsuited to each other, that their temperaments are incompatible, that their views, ideas, likes and dislikes are different. in some cases what was supposed to be a great love is soon seen to have been merely an infatuation. and satiety and disgust follow. but in other cases, as mentioned, the sudden consuming passion turns into a warm, life-long love and the people live happily ever after. dr. nyström relates the case of a prominent physician of france, of high social and scientific standing, who beheld a young girl accidentally in the street. he did not have the slightest idea who she was. he was irresistibly attracted to her. he followed her, boarded the same omnibus and went to the house which she entered, rang the bell, introduced himself, begging pardon for his intrusion, but was dismissed. he returned and explained to her his ardent passion and asked permission to visit her parents, well-to-do people in the country, and the climax was a mutual love and a happy marriage. many of us know of similar cases. but as a rule the slow developing love is more reliable than the suddenly bursting out flame. * * * * * love is the most complex, the most mysterious, the most unanalyzable of human emotions. it is based upon the difference in sex--upon the attraction of one sex for another. it is fostered by physical beauty, by daintiness, by a normal sexuality, by a fine character, by high aspirations, by culture and education, by common interests, by kindness and consideration, by pity, by habit and by a thousand other subtle feelings, qualities and actions, which are difficult of classification or enumeration. a great love, greatly reciprocated, is in itself capable of rendering a human being supremely happy. _nothing else is._ other things, such as wealth, power, fame, success, great discoveries, may give supreme satisfaction, great contentment, but supreme, buoyant happiness is the gift of a great love only. such loves are rare, and the mortals that achieve it are the envy of the gods. but a great love, unreciprocated, especially when admixed to it is the feeling of jealousy, is the most frightful of tortures; it will crush a man like nothing else will, and the victims of this emotional catastrophe are pitied by the inmates of the lowest inferno. footnotes: [ ] to avoid confusion, i will state here that i am discussing love between the opposite sexes, and not maternal love, homosexual love, love for one's country, etc. chapter fifty-one jealousy and how to combat it jealousy the most painful of human emotions--impairment of health--mental havoc--jealousy as a primitive emotion--jealousy in the advanced thinker and in the savage--jealousy in the child--feelings and environmental factors--essential factors-- vanity--anger--pain--envy--the impotent husband's jealousy-- anti-social qualities--the jealous and the unfaithful husband-- means of eradicating the evil--iwan bloch on the question--prof. robert michels' statement--remark of prof. von ehrenfels--havelock ellis on variation in sexual relationships--advanced ideas--woman as man's chattel--the change and the changer--teaching the children--casting epithets at jealousy--free unions and jealousy-- feelings, actions and public opinion--the adulterous wife of the present day--jealousy defeating its own object--jealousy of inanimate objects. he or she who has been so unfortunate as to experience the pangs--or fangs--of jealousy will readily admit that it is one of the most painful, if indeed _not_ the most painful, of all human emotions. the suffering that it metes out to its victims is indescribable. no other single human emotion so affects the body, so upsets the mind, so deranges every function, as does jealousy. the torture that it causes makes the sufferer a truly pitiable object: the complete loss of sleep and complete loss of appetite may result in a serious impairment of the sufferer's health, while the rage it often gives rise to may lead to actual insanity, or at least to great mental disturbance. with good reason has popular fancy pictured this cursed emotion as a green-eyed monster. jealousy is a primitive emotion. it is present not only in the primitive races, but even in animals. and being a primitive emotion, we can hardly hope to succeed in eradicating it entirely. not in the immediate future, at any rate. but we can modify it. the statement frequently heard that "human nature is human nature" is only a platitudinous half-truth. the fundamental part of human nature--the desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering--cannot be changed, nor would we want to change it if we could. it would mean the disappearance of the human race. but that many of our primitive emotions can be greatly modified by culture, by new standards, by new ideals of morality, about this there can be no question. just as love in modern man is an entirely different feeling from what it was in primitive man, so jealousy in the advanced thinker is a different feeling from what it was in the savage; and by education and true culture it can be modified still further. we hope that in time to come--i will not venture to say how soon that time will be here--this injurious, degrading, anti-social feeling may be entirely or almost entirely eradicated from the human breast. the primitive desire--and this primitive desire of the race is still fully exhibited by children--is to take possession of everything nice or useful that somebody else has and which we have not. but our education and our cultural standards, including fear of punishment, have so repressed this desire, have put it so deeply in the background, that normal human beings hardly feel it at all. it is only improperly brought up people, mental defectives and those unable to adjust themselves to their environment who still have this primitive feeling of taking or stealing. and so with many other feelings and emotions; and so with jealousy. if we, at the very first notice of a manifestation of jealousy by a child, should frown upon it, if we should explain to the child or adolescent that jealousy is a mean, degrading feeling, that it is a feeling to be ashamed of, a feeling to hide and not to show off or even be proud of--as some are now--then jealousy would manifest itself in a much smaller number of individuals, and those unfortunate enough to be attacked by it would try to repress it, to hide it, to overcome it, so that it would eventually become paler and less acute and its consequences would be less significant, less disastrous for both the victim and for the persons concerned. feelings, let us bear in mind, are not spontaneous things uninfluenced by any environmental factors. feelings are like plants; under one environment you may foster their growth and make them develop luxuriantly; under another environment you may dwarf their growth and strangle them. in order to enable us to inhibit the growth of the demon of jealousy, we must learn what its essence is and what factors are favorable to its development. =causes of jealousy= the essential factor in jealousy is _fear_. fear of losing the beloved object, fear of losing the person who provides you with sexual satisfaction, or the mere economic fear of losing a material provider. the latter kind of fear is, of course, more often manifested--even though unconsciously--in women. women who have no love for their husbands are nevertheless often fiercely jealous, because consciously or unconsciously they are afraid that their husbands may desert them for other women, and that they may thus find themselves in a precarious economic condition. another factor in jealousy is wounded _vanity_. we do not like to feel that somebody is considered superior to us. this feeling of wounded vanity is present in other varieties of envy or rivalry. a person who loses in a race or gets a lower mark in his examination than his rival may be filled with a feeling of envy and hatred almost equal in intensity to, though never as painful as, sexual jealousy. another factor in jealousy is _anger_ over loss of what we consider our property. in our present social order the man considers his wife his absolute property, and so does the wife consider her husband. and there is anger that a stranger should dare to rob us or make use of our property, just as there would be anger if a thief came and robbed us of a valuable material possession. this anger or rage part of jealousy is not a sign of love. it is very far from being so. because it manifests itself also in men and women who have not a particle of love for their spouses; it manifests itself in spouses who have nothing but hatred and loathing for their partners. another important factor is _pain_, pain that the person we love has ceased to love us. when we love a person and our love is not reciprocated, we feel pain which may rise to the degree of agony, even when there is no rival in the field. but when a person who loved us has ceased to love us--or we imagine so--and has transferred the love to another person that pain is so much the greater. i will digress here for a moment to state that the fear that a person has ceased to love us because he loves somebody else is often groundless. it is based upon the erroneous and vicious idea that a man cannot possibly love two women at the same time, or that a woman cannot love two men at the same time. psychologists, particularly those who have made a special study of sexual psychology, know that this idea is false. they know that love may be directed at the same time towards two or three individuals. they know that a second love not only does not necessarily destroy or diminish a first love, but may deepen and strengthen the latter. another element is pure _envy_. just mean envy that somebody should have what we haven't, or what we have but are in danger of losing. just as we envy others an automobile, a fine house, a high social position, etc., when we have not got them or have been deprived of them. a point that i would like to mention is, that if husbands who have become impotent--having lost either the desire or the power, but particularly the latter--become jealous, their jealousy knows no bounds. no strongly potent man ever reaches the same intensity in jealousy as is reached by a sexually weak or impotent man. the knowledge that another man has displaced him and that he himself could not replace that other man _even if he were permitted to_ fills him with impotent rage; and, as is well known, impotent rage is always more intense than rage that is potent. women are free from this kind of rage, because women are never impotent in this sense. (they may be frigid, but they are never devoid of the _potentia coeundi_, except in extremely rare cases of _atresia vaginae_ or the absence of the external genitals.) there are a number of other components which go to make up this "queen of torments" or "king of torturers" jealousy, but those i have enumerated are the essential ones. what are they? fear, vanity, anger, envy and pain. none of them admirable qualities, none of them, with the exception of the first and the last, even deserving our compassion. all of them anti-social and anti-individual qualities. should not everything be done to eradicate such a rank weed, which draws its sustenance from roots each one of which is dipped in poison? we are told that in our primitive state jealousy was a social instinct; that by killing and keeping away rivals it helped to found and cement the family and to keep it pure. i do not care to enter here into a discussion of this point. but whatever useful rôle jealousy may have played in the remote ages (i doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. it is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. and everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely from human life. yes, i find no compensation whatever for jealousy; i find no place for it in our modern life and i am in complete agreement with forel, who calls jealousy "a heritage of animals and barbarians." "that is what i would say," he says, "to all those who, in the name of offended honor, would grant it rights and even place it on a pedestal. it is ten times better for a woman to marry an unfaithful than a jealous husband.... jealousy transforms marriage into a hell.... even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. we often hear of justified jealousy. i maintain that _jealousy is never justifiable_; it is always a stupid, atavistic inheritance, or else a pathological symptom." but can anything be done to eradicate this agonizing, tormenting emotion? i believe it can, and the ways and means to the eradication of this evil will be found on analyzing its components. we may not be able to destroy all the components; if we destroy the greater part of them much will have been accomplished. the underlying factors of jealousy are: the primitive instinct, also present in many animals, our ethical and religious ideas and our economic system. the primitive instinct we can repress and modify; we can hardly hope to eradicate it entirely. but our ideas and economic system we can change. it is easier to change ideas than it is a system, and it is with our ideas we should commence. the first idea we must endeavor to destroy is that it is impossible for a human being to love more than one other human being at the same time. we must show that the love of the modern educated and esthetic man and woman is an exceedingly complex feeling, and that a man may deeply and sincerely love one woman for certain qualities and just as deeply and sincerely love another woman for certain other qualities. of course, love cannot be measured by the yard or bushel, nor can it be weighed on the most delicate chemical balance. and it may be impossible to determine whether he loves both women exactly alike or he loves one woman more than the other. but that one love does not exclude another, that it may even intensify the other love, that is certain, and is the opinion of every advanced sexologist. max nordau, a man of high and austere ideals, a man whom nobody will accuse of a tendency to licentiousness, says in his conventional lies: "it may sound very shocking, yet i must say it: we can even love _several_ individuals at the same time, with nearly equal tenderness, and we do not necessarily lie when we assure each one of our passion. no matter how deeply we may be in love with a certain individual, we _do not cease_ to be susceptible to the influence of the entire sex." and iwan bloch, than whom no greater investigator in the field of sexology ever lived, asks the question: "is it possible for any one to be _simultaneously_ in love with several individuals?" and he immediately says: "i answer this question with an unconditional 'yes.'" and he says further: "it is precisely the extraordinary manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied coloring. it is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual." prof. robert michels says: "it is nature's will that the normal male should feel a continuous and powerful sexual attraction towards a considerable number of women.... in the male the stimuli capable of arousing sexual excitement (this term is not to be understood here in the grossly physical sense) are so extraordinarily manifold, so widely differentiated that it is quite impossible for one single woman to possess them all." prof. von ehrenfels wittily remarks that if it were a moral precept that a man should never have intercourse _more them once in his life_ with any particular woman, this would correspond far better with the nature of the normal male and would cost him far less will-power than is needed by him in order to live up to the conventional demands of monogamy. and havelock ellis cautiously says: "a certain degree of variation is involved in the sexual relationships, as in all other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate _many evils and injustices_, that fact has to be faced and recognized." i have devoted considerable space to this topic, and i have, contrary to my custom, quoted "authorities," because i consider this point of the utmost importance; it is the first step in combating the demon of jealousy. if our wives, fiancées and sweethearts could be convinced of the truth that a man's interest in or even affection towards another member of the female sex does not mean the death of love, or even diminished love, half of the battle would be won. half of the misery, half of the quarrels, half of the self-torture, half of the disrupted homes, in short, half of the tyrannical reign of the demon of jealousy, would be gone. we must teach our women and men this truth, teach it from puberty on. we must show them that not every woman can necessarily fill out a man's entire life, that not every woman can necessarily occupy every nook and corner of a man's mind and heart, and that there is nothing humiliating to the woman in such an idea (and _vice versa_). she should be taught to find nothing shameful, painful or degrading in such a thought. i know that these ideas are somewhat in advance of the times, but if nobody ever brought forward any advanced ideas because they were advanced there would never be any advance. then we must teach our men that when they marry a woman she does not become their chattel, their piece of property, which nobody may touch, nobody may look at or smile at. a woman may be a very good, faithful wife and still enjoy the companionship of other men, the pressure of another man's hand or--_horribile dictu_--even an occasional kiss. then we must teach our men _and_ women that there is essentially nothing shameful or humiliating in being displaced by a rival. the change may be a disgrace for the changer and not for the changed one. it does not at all mean that the change has been made because the rival is superior; it is a well-known fact that the rival often _is_ inferior. the change is often made, not because the changer has gone upward, but because he has gone downward, has deteriorated. and the changer often knows it himself. inculcating those ideas would do away with the feeling of wounded vanity which is such an important component in the feeling of jealousy. further, we must teach our children from the earliest age that jealousy is "not nice," that it is a mean feeling, that it is a sign of weakness, that it is degrading to the person who entertains it, particularly to the person who exhibits it. ideas inculcated from childhood have a powerful influence, and the various ideas exposed above _would_ have an undoubted influence in minimizing the mephitic, destructive effects of the feeling of jealousy. people properly brought up will always succeed in controlling or suppressing certain non-vital instincts or emotions on which society puts its stamp of disapproval, which it considers "not nice" or disgraceful. i am, therefore, an optimist in relation to the eventual uprooting of the greater number of components of the anti-social feeling of jealousy. and when woman reaches economic independence, then another component of the instinct of jealousy--the terror at losing a provider and being left in poverty--will disappear. =jealousy not toward rivals.= jealousy need not express itself toward a sexual rival only. a person may be jealous of people who can never be sexual rivals; the jealousy need not even be of people; it may be of inanimate objects, of a person's work, profession or hobby. thus a wife may be intensely jealous of her husband's mother, towards whom he is very affectionate or simply kind and considerate. she may be jealous of her own children if she notices or imagines that the father loves them intensely, or if he spends a good deal of time with them. she may be jealous of his male friends, and many a husband had to give up, not only his female acquaintances, but his life-long male friends--in order to preserve peace in the family. a wife may be fiercely jealous of her husband's success and reputation, and cases are not unknown where the wife put every possible obstacle in her husband's way, in order to make him fail in his work, to make him turn out mediocre work, all from fear that his success would gain him admirers, which might perhaps take him away from her. wives have been known to do everything in their power to _exhaust_ and weaken their husbands, to make them physically unattractive, only to keep them. and so powerful is this primitive, childish, savage feeling, this desire for exclusive monopoly, that there is _nothing_ a jealous wife, sweetheart or mistress may not do in order to retain the man, in order to regain him, or, having lost him irretrievably, in order to revenge herself. and what is said about the woman is applicable with equal force to man. it is a huge mistake to assume that jealousy is woman's prerogative, her particular characteristic, or even that it is stronger in her than in man. a man can be as savagely jealous as any woman and suffer the same tortures of hell. =jealousy defeats its object.= one of the worst features about jealousy is that it defeats its own object. we have been told, as stated before, that jealousy was once upon a time a racial instinct, that by frightening away rivals it helped to found the family and to keep it chaste and pure. quite the contrary is true now. more than one man has, by accusing his innocent wife of infidelity and by torturing her with baseless suspicions, driven her into the arms of a lover. we are all more or less susceptible to suggestion, and by continually suspecting a wife of a love affair or illicit relation a man may implant the seed of suggestion so strongly that it may grow luxuriantly and the wife may be unable to resist the suggested temptation. and very often the very lover is suggested by the husband. "yes, don't attempt to deny it. it is useless. i know you have relations with x. i know you are his mistress." he kept on repeating it so often to his absolutely blameless, innocent young wife and he made her so wretched by his rudeness and brutality that one day she did go over to x's rooms and did become his mistress. and after that she could stand her husband's outbursts with equanimity. "if i have the name i might as well have the game," is a good bit of psychologic wisdom. and a husband should be very careful about even suspecting a wife unjustly, and thus make the first step towards rendering his baseless suspicions a reality, his unjust accusations justified. and, of course, what is true of the husband is also true of the wife. many a wife has driven her indolent husband into the hands of prostitutes or mistresses by her incessant nagging, false accusations and vicious epithets applied to all his female friends and acquaintances. yes, from whatever angle you consider it, jealousy is a mean, nasty, miserable feeling. because it is a more or less universal feeling, because "we cannot help it," does not render it less mean, less nasty, less miserable. i do not for a moment imagine that characterizing jealousy the way it deserves to be characterized, calling it a shameful, savage, primitive feeling, etc., is at once going to banish it from the breasts of men and women in which it has found an abiding place; throwing epithets at it will not cause it to unfasten its talons. unfortunately, i know only too well that our emotions are stronger than our reason; the man or woman at whose poor heart jealousy is gnawing day and night is not amenable to reason, is not curable by arguments; all we can do is to sympathize with such a person and ask the lord to pity him or her. i have known a man who lived with his wife in free union, i.e., he was not married to her. he did not believe in marriage. love was the only bond that should bind people together; as soon as love was no more the people should separate in a friendly, comradely manner. if the wife or the mistress wants another lover, she should be free to take one; she is a free human being and not her husband's chattel slave, etc., etc., etc., to the same effect. thus the man talked. and he was sincere in his talk--or he thought he was. but one night on unexpectedly returning home he found another man; he promptly fired several shots at the man, which fortunately for both did not prove fatal, and then he beat and choked his wife--who wasn't even his wife legally--within an inch of her life. _and then he married her_ and gave up his free love talk. and i know of any number of men who could philosophize for hours about the disgrace and humiliation of being jealous, but who, as soon as there was a justifiable cause for jealousy, became as unreasonable as a child and as jealous as any unlettered sicilian woman ever was. so you see, i am not deluding myself with extravagant hopes. but, nevertheless, this argumentation, this talk, is not entirely useless. a beginning must be made. this essay may not perhaps help--except for the suggestions that will be made towards the end--those who are already victims of the demon of jealousy, but it may help some people to keep out of his clutches (or should i say: her clutches? i really don't know whether the demon of jealousy is a male or a female.) feelings are stronger than reason; but that does not mean that feelings cannot be influenced by reason; they decidedly can be and are so influenced, and their _manifestations_ are modified by this influence; and the more cultured, the more educated a person is (i trust you will know that i use these terms in their true and not their vulgar, misused meaning), the more will his feelings, or at least actions, be influenced by his reason. i am particularly a believer in the effect on our feelings and actions of public opinion, of ideas universally or generally entertained. let me give one example which is pertinent to the subject. in former days it was universally held, and in many places it is still held, that when a wife sinned she committed the most unpardonable crime that a human being could be guilty of and that she thereby _dishonored_ her husband. and the only right thing for him to do was to shoot the rival and cast out the wife; or at least to cast her out. this was a _conditio sine qua non_. to take her back to his home was a disgrace, a sign of unpardonable weakness, of degeneracy. our ideas on the subject have changed a bit. a husband is no longer considered any more dishonored--in some strata of society at least--because his wife sinned than a wife is considered dishonored because her husband sinned; and adultery in the wife is now, by most rational people, considered only different in degree, but not in kind, from adultery in the husband. these humane ideas have gained vogue only within a comparatively very recent period; but their effect has already manifested itself in a great number of instances. forgiving the erring wife is becoming quite common. a number of cases have reached the newspapers. recently a wife was implicated in a nasty scrape; her sin was not only unquestionable, but notorious; it was public property. and nevertheless the husband stood by her and took her back into his home and arms. and the number of such cases which do not reach the newspapers is very, very much larger than the public has any conception of, larger than it would be safe to estimate. and in a large percentage of these cases the husband begins to treat his wife with more love, more consideration, and the tie between them becomes more firm, more permanent. chapter fifty-two remedies for jealousy prevention and cure--prophylaxis of jealousy--fitting remedy to circumstances--the neglectful and flirtatious husband--no question of love--advice to the wife of the flirtatious man--an efficient though vulgar remedy--jealousy must be experienced to be understood--necessity for freedom of association--lines of conduct for the wife--contempt for a certain type of wife and husband--the abandoned lover--the effects of unrequited love--sublimated sexual desire--replacing unrequited love--the attitude of goethe--simultaneous loves possible--successive loves possible--eternal loves--when sex relationships may be beneficial--purchasable sex relations and their value--the broken engagement--the terrible effects on the young man--the young streetwalker--sex relations with fiancé--inundating sense of shame--collapse--attempts at suicide--an active sex life--the results--the prevention of jealousy. we are all agreed that prevention is more important than cure. but when a patient comes with a fully developed disease it is futile to speak to him of prevention. it is too late to sermonize. what he wants and what he needs is a cure, if such can be had. what has preceded has reference chiefly to the prophylaxis of jealousy, to the prevention of the development of this disease in the future. the question is: is there a _remedy_ for this malady? is there a _cure_ for this horrible disease of jealousy? the conditions are extremely complex, and the remedy must be fitted to the circumstances. let us assume that the husband neglects his wife and causes her to be jealous, not because he is in love with another woman, but because he is flirtatious, light-headed, feather-brained and inconsiderate. such cases are in the great majority. many husbands who like or love their wives and who believe themselves secure in their love think it is quite proper for them to hunt for new conquests and to carry on petty love affairs with as many girls or women as they comfortably can. there is no question here about love--it is just flirtation or sexual relations. when this is the case the wife should have a frank and firm talk with her husband; she should tell him that she does not like his behavior and that it makes her unhappy. in many instances this alone will suffice to effect a change in the husband's conduct. where this does not suffice, where the husband is too egotistic and does not want to give up his little pleasures, then it is left for the wife to adopt the old and rather vulgar remedy. it is old and, as said, rather vulgar, but it has the merit of efficiency: it very often works. let the wife adopt similar tactics, let her also flirt, let her go out and come back at uncertain hours, let her keep the husband guessing as to where and with whom she is. and nine times out of ten this, under the circumstances, fully justifiable conduct on the part of the wife will effect a quick and radical change in the conduct of the husband. he will be only too glad to cry quits. some people are utterly devoid of imagination. they lack the ability of putting themselves in another person's place. jealousy particularly is not a feeling which any one can understand without having experienced it, unless he is endowed with the imagination of a great poet. and as few husbands have a great poetic imagination, it is only after they have felt the claws of the monster tearing at their own hearts that they can understand their wives' feelings, and are willing to act so as to save them--and themselves, of course--the cruel tortures. many wives and many husbands have talked to me and written to me on the subject, and, as stated before, in nine times out of ten the remedy worked. but how about the tenth case? how about the cases where the husband is unable or unwilling to give up his outside flirtations and relations? we, advanced sexologists, know that not all men, no more than all women, are made in the same mould, and what is possible or even easy for nine men may be very difficult or absolutely impossible for the tenth. we know that there are some men to whom an ironclad monogamic relation is an absolute impossibility. the stimulation of other women--either the purely mental, spiritual stimulation or the stimulation of physical relations--is to them like breath in the nostrils. in fact, there are some men whose very possibility of loving their wives depends upon this freedom of association with other women. they can be extremely kind to and love their wives tenderly, if they can at the same time associate--spiritually or physically--with other women. if they are entirely cut off from any association with any other woman they begin to feel irritable, bored, may become ill, and their feeling towards their wives may become one of resentment, ill-will, or even one of hatred. this is not the place to talk of the wickedness of such men--thus they are made and with this fact we have to deal. what is the wife of such a man to do? two lines of conduct are open to her--two avenues of exit. the line of conduct will depend upon her temper and upon her ideas of sex morality. but she ought to select the line of conduct which will cause the least pain, the least unhappiness. if she is a woman of a proud, independent temper, particularly if she belongs to the militant type, she will leave her husband in a huff, regardless of consequences. but if she is a woman of the gentler, more pliable, more supple (and i may also say more subtle) type, and if she really loves her husband, she will overlook his little foibles, peccadilloes and transgressions--and she may live quite happily. and the time will come when the husband himself will give up his peccadilloes and transgressions and will cleave powerfully to his wife, will be bound to her by bonds never to be torn asunder. _i know of several such cases._ and i will take this opportunity to say that i have the deepest contempt for the wife who, on finding out that her husband had committed a transgression or that he has a love affair, leaves him in a huff, or makes a public scandal, or sues for divorce. such a wife _never_ loved her husband, and he is well rid of her. and what i said about the wife applies with _almost_ equal force to the husband. =the abandoned lover.= but what shall the abandoned lover do? let us take the case of a and b, and let a stand for any man and b for any woman; or, _vice versa_, let a be the woman and b the man, for in jealousy and love what applies to one sex is applicable with practically the same force to the opposite sex. suppose a is intensely jealous of and deeply, passionately in love with b; but b is utterly indifferent and does not care what a may feel or do. a and b may be married or not; this does not alter the case materially. suppose b, if unmarried to a, goes off and marries another man, or, if married to a, goes off and leaves him; or suppose b does not love anybody else, but just remains indifferent to a's advances or repels him because she cannot reciprocate his love. unrequited love alone can cause almost as fierce tortures as the most intense jealousy. and a suffers tortures. what shall he do? what shall he do to save himself--to save his health, his mind, his life? for he is unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to work, and he feels that he is going to pieces. he has lost his position and is in danger of losing his reason. what shall he do to escape insanity or a suicide's grave? there is but one remedy. let him use all his energies to find a _substitute_. i mean a living substitute. mere sexual desire may be sublimated, to a certain extent, into other channels, may be replaced by work, study, a hobby or some engrossing interest. a great unrequited love, with the element of jealousy present or absent, cannot be replaced by anything else except by another love. and where as great a love is impossible let it be a minor love or a series of minor loves. when goethe, one of the world's great lovers, was unable to walk in the broad avenue of a great love he would walk in the by-paths of a number of little loves. the common talk about a person being unable to love more than once in his or her life is silly nonsense. a man or a woman is able to love, and love very deeply, a number of times; and love simultaneously or successively. it is often a mere matter of opportunity. i know that there _are_ loves that are eternal; that there are loves for which no substitute can be found. but these supreme, divine loves are so rare that among ordinary mortals they may be left out of account. they are the portion of supermen and superwomen. ordinarily a substitute may be found. the substitute love may never reach the intensity of the original love, it may never give full or even half-full satisfaction; but it will help to dull the sharp cutting edge, it will act as a partial hemostatic to the bleeding heart, it will soothe and anesthetize the wound even if it cannot completely heal it. and this is a valuable aid while the sufferer is coming to himself or herself, while the gathered fragments of a broken life are being cemented and while the cement is hardening. yes, the man or woman who is in inferno on account of an unreciprocated or a betrayed love should lose no time in searching for a substitute love. i do not believe in people losing their health and their minds on account of suffering which does nobody any good. but i will go still further. where a substitute love--great or minor--cannot be found, then mere sex relations may help to diminish the suffering, to quiet the turbulent heart, to relieve the aching brain. as everything connected with sex, so our ideas about illicit sex relations that are not connected with love, are honeycombed with hypocrisy and false to the core. while purchasable, loveless sex relations can, of course, not be compared to love relations, still under our present social, economic and moral code they are the only relations that thousands of men and women can enjoy, and they are better than none; and in quite a considerable percentage of cases an element of romance and greater or lesser permanency do become attached to them, and they act as a more or less satisfactory substitute for genuine love relations. i am not spinning theoretical gossamer webs. i am speaking from experience--the experience of patients and confiding friends. i could relate many interesting cases. and i may, in a more appropriate volume. here one or two will have to suffice. he was twenty-six years old and a senior student in the college of physicians and surgeons, columbia university, new york. he had been in love with and had considered himself engaged for four or five years to a young lady two years his junior. she was, of course, the most wonderful young lady in the world, the whole world; in fact, there was not another one to compare her to. she was unique; she stood all alone. but for a year or so she was getting rather cool towards him; which fanned his flame all the more. and suddenly he received a note asking him not to call any more, nor to try to communicate in any other way. he did write, but his letters were returned unopened. and soon after he read of her engagement to a prominent young banker. he nearly went insane, and this is used not in any figurative sense. his insomnia was _complete_, and resisted all treatment. when his pulse became very rapid and his eyes acquired the wild look that they do after many sleepless nights an attempt was made to administer hypnotics, but they had practically no effect. chloral, veronal, etc., only made him "dopy," irritable and depressed, but did not give him one hour of sound sleep. his appetite was gone, now and then his limbs would twitch, and he would sit and stare into space for hours at a time. to study or attend the clinics was out of the question, and he did not even attempt to take the final examinations. the parents felt distressed, but were unable to do anything for him. the least attempt at interference on their part, any attempt to console him, to induce him to pull himself together, made him more irritable, more morose; so that they finally left him alone. he was practically a total abstainer, but one evening he went out and came home drunk; and after that he drank frequently and heavily. his parents could do nothing with him. one evening on broadway he was accosted by a young street-walker. she had a pleasant, sympathetic face, and he went with her. _that was his first sex experience._ up to that time he was chaste. he met her again the following evening. gradually a sort of friendship grew up between them. she found out the cause of his grief, and with maternal solicitude she tried everything in her power to console him, and he began to look forward to the nightly meeting with her. his grief became gradually less acute, he gave up drinking, which he disliked, and which he had taken up only to deaden his pain; he began to pull himself together, and in six or eight months he took over his last year in columbia and was properly graduated. he kept up the friendship with the girl for over two years, when she died of pneumonia. he did not love her, but he liked to be with her, as her presence gave him physical and mental comfort. it is possible that she loved him genuinely, but there was never any sentimental talk between them, and there was never any question between them of the permanency of the relationship. they both knew that it was temporary. but he is absolutely certain that but for one of the representatives of the class that is despised, driven about and persecuted by brutal policemen and ignorant judges, he would have become a bum, or, most likely, he would have committed suicide--at the point of which he was several times; only pity for his mother and sisters restrained him. and here is another case. a girl about twenty-eight years of age fell in love with a man four or five years her senior. the love seemed to be reciprocated, and they soon became engaged to be married. he asked that the engagement, on account of certain business reasons, be kept secret. she did not know the man well; she had met him at several entertainments and church affairs and he seemed very nice. he always found some excuses for delaying the marriage, and after they had been engaged about a year he began to insist on sex relations. though of a refined and noble character, she was of a passionate nature and she did not offer much resistance. many girls who would under no circumstance indulge in illicit relations, considering it a great sin, have no compunctions about having relations with their fiancés. they lived together for about a year. they were together almost daily, except now and then, when he would go away for a week or two on business. once he went away--and never came back. he wrote to her that their relations were at an end; that he was a married man and a father of children; he had hoped he might get a divorce, but that now he had changed his mind and that she must forget him, etc. everything was black before her. it cost her a supreme effort not to faint, and she was supported in this effort by the fact that when the letter came she was in the presence of friends; a terrible, overpowering, all-inundating sense of shame gave her the strength not to betray her condition and her story before the world at large. but as soon as she was alone she collapsed completely. there was the most absolute insomnia imaginable, complete anorexia, but the most distressing features were frequent fainting spells, severe palpitation of the heart and tremors. she had no love for the man--so she said. her love had turned to hatred and contempt--but the jealousy was all-consuming. like a fire it was burning in her, searing her brain and her soul day and night. she felt that she was not strong enough to stand this physical and mental torture, and so she decided to commit suicide. as the means she selected gas. fortunately, the smell became perceptible before the injury was irreparable. she was saved. but she felt that she could not stand the torture very long--and more than anything was she afraid that her mind would give way. she had a special horror of insanity. and so she decided to make another attempt this time with bichloride. again she was saved. a friend of hers then got an inkling of the events that were transpiring, and she introduced her to some gentlemen friends. they were nice people and more or less radical on the sex question. in order to drown her pain she began to go out very frequently with that crowd, and to her surprise and delight she found that she soon began to think less and less about her contemptible seducer, and, what was more important to her, she was soon able to sleep. for about six months she led an extremely active, almost promiscuous sex life. but then she gave it up, as she felt herself normal and no longer in need of it. she is now happily married. i am through with this rather lengthy essay on one of the most painful manifestations of human emotional life. i repeat that i am aware that feelings are often stronger than reason; but saying this does not mean asserting that feelings cannot be modified and held in check by reason. and i feel confident that a careful, open-minded reading of these pages and an acceptance of the ideas therein promulgated would aid in _preventing_ a good deal of the misery of jealousy and in curing a certain proportion of it after it has found lodgment in the hearts of unhappy men and women. there are one or two more points that might be touched upon, but with the freedom of press in reference to sex matters as it exists in this country to-day, i have said all that i could say. chapter fifty-three concluding words it is my sincere belief--and i cherish the belief in spite of this horrible, wretched war which seems to be shattering the very foundations of everything that we hold dear, destroying all the humane and moral achievements that have been laboriously built up in the course of many centuries--that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. almost all disease will be conquered, accidents will be rare, the fear of starvation or poverty or unemployment will no longer haunt men and women, every infant born will be well-born and welcome, and the numerous anxieties and ambitions that now disturb the lives of so many of the earth's inhabitants will no longer plague us. they will be the dead memories of a dead and forgotten past. yes, i believe that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. but there is one exception. i do not believe that we will ever be able entirely to eliminate the _tragedies of the heart_. for our physical ills, which will be few in number, there will be a socialized medical profession; everywhere there will be free hospitals and convalescent homes. the unemployment problem will be dealt with by the state, and dealt with so that there will be no unemployment problem. there will be work for everybody and everybody will do the work which he finds most congenial. but the state, i fear, will be able to do nothing in affairs of the heart. when john loves mary with every fiber of his soul, and mary remains completely indifferent, then no state physician and no government official will be able to offer any balm or consolation to poor john. and if mary loves robert, and robert behaves so that he breaks mary's heart, then no official glue will put it together and no convalescent home will make it whole. yes, i believe that love pangs and tragedies of the heart will cause mortal men and women suffering even under the most perfect social regime. but i also believe that these pangs will be less acute, that the suffering will be less cruel than it is now. proper ideas about love, freer intercourse between the sexes, a normal and regular sex life, a saner attitude towards many things which are now unjustly considered shameful or criminal will, to a large degree, prevent the heart tragedies and facilitate their cure where they cannot be prevented. and it is the duty of everybody who loves mankind to study the various phases of human sexuality and help to spread sane and humane ideas on the subject of sex and love. the author trusts that woman: her sex and love life will help, in some slight degree, in spreading healthy, sane and honest ideas about sex among the men and women of america. the end sexual truths versus sexual lies, misconceptions and exaggerations by william j. robinson, m.d. this book effectually demolishes the numerous lies and senseless exaggerations which dabblers in sexology, either through ignorance or design, are offering to the public, and which are responsible for so much physical misery and mental agony. in dr. robinson's best vein: clear, concise and incisive. with each sledge-hammer blow of his logic a lie is demolished, with each turn of the rays of reason a dark place is illumined, with each dialectic pull a century-old superstition is uprooted. contains several important articles from the pens of the world's greatest sexologists. price, $ . sex morality, past, present and future a frank and open discussion of sex morality as it was, as it is, and most important, as it is likely to be in the near and in the distant future.--price, $ . . stekel's essays on sex and psychoanalysis while we are far from agreeing with everything this author has written, this book contains some of his most interesting, most important and most thought-provoking essays.--price, $ . . eugenics publishing co., w. th street, new york sexual problems of today by william j. robinson, m.d. dr. robinson's work deals with many phases of the sex question, both in their individual and social aspects. in this book the scientific knowledge of a physician, eminent as a specialist in everything pertaining to the physiological and medical side of these topics, is combined with the vigorous social views of a thinker who has radical ideas and is not afraid to give them outspoken expression. a few of the subjects which the author discusses in trenchant fashion are: the relations between the sexes and man's inhumanity to woman.--the influence of abstinence on man's sexual health and sexual power.--the double standard of morality and the effect of continence on each sex.--the limitation of offspring: the most important immediate step for the betterment of the human race, from an economic and eugenic standpoint.--what to do with the prostitute and how to abolish venereal disease.--the question of abortion considered in its ethical and social aspects.--torturing the wife when the husband is at fault.--influence of the prostate on man's mental condition.--the most efficient venereal prophylactics, etc., etc. "sexual problems of to-day" will give most of its readers information they never possessed before and ideas they never had before--or if they had, never heard them publicly expressed before. _cloth-bound, pages, $ postpaid_ eugenics publishing company w. th street new york eleventh edition--just off the press sexual impotence a practical treatise on the causes, symptoms and treatment of sexual impotence and other sexual disorders in men and women by william j. robinson, m.d. chief of the department of genito-urinary diseases and dermatology, bronx hospital and dispensary; editor of "the critic and guide"; editor of "the journal of sexology"; author of "the treatment of gonorrhea", "woman: her sex and love life", etc.; fellow of the new york academy of medicine; member of the american urological association, etc. eleventh edition, revised and enlarged, pages. illustrated. price, $ . . the eleventh edition has just come off the press. dr. robinson has taken advantage of the opportunity to subject the entire book to a thorough revision, and has added a number of chapters dealing with gland transplantation, endocrinology, the steinach operation, and containing additional case reports, comments and explanations. those who know the book consider it the best of its kind in any language. its outstanding features are its "practicalness", and its bright, easy, vivacious style. every chapter is full of practical points, of easily applicable advice; it is entirely free from any fads and mysterious methods of treatment, any hints at hocus-pocus. it is a sane, rational, common-sense book. every physician who will make a study of this book will become a better physician in general, and will certainly be able to treat his sexual cases with better success. eugenics publishing co., w. th street, new york _i consider myself extremely fortunate in having been instrumental in making this remarkable book accessible to the english reading public. it is a great book well worth a careful perusal._ from dr. william j. robinson's introduction. the sexual crisis a critique of our sex life a psychologic and sociologic study by grete meisel-hess authorized translation by eden and cedar paul _edited, with an introduction_ by william j. robinson, m.d. one of the greatest of all books on the sex question that have appeared in the twentieth century. it is a book that no educated man or woman, lay or professional, interested in sexual ethics, in our marriage system, in free motherhood, in trial marriages, in the question of sexual abstinence, etc., etc., can afford to leave unread. nobody who discusses, writes or lectures on any phases of the sex question, has a right to overlook this remarkable volume. written with a wonderfully keen analysis of the conditions which are bringing about a sexual crisis, the book abounds in gems of thought and in pearls of style on every page. it must be read to be appreciated. _a complete synopsis of contents will be sent on request_ pages. price $ . eugenics publishing company w. th street new york * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : formulae replaced with formulæ | | page : formulae replaced with formulæ | | page : spirtual replaced with spiritual | | page : fallopion replaced with fallopian | | page : vertebae replaced with vertebræ | | page : spermatozoon replaced with spermatozoön | | page : sixy-four replaced with sixty-four | | page : formulae replaced with formulæ | | page : consideraations replaced with considerations | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ [illustration: the sanitarium at battle creek, mich.] [frontispiece: yours truly, j. h. kellogg] plain facts for old and young. by j. h. kellogg, m.d., member american public health association, american society for the advancement of science, american society of microscopy, member mich. state board of health, medical superintendent of the battle creek sanitarium, author of numerous works on health, etc. published by segner & condit, burlington, iowa. . entered, according to act of congress, in the year , by j. h. kellogg, m.d., in the office of the librarian of congress at washington, d.c. all rights reserved. preface. the publishers of this work offer no apology for presenting it to the reading public, since the wide prevalence of the evils which it exposes is sufficient warrant for its publication. the subjects with which it deals are of vital consequence to the human race; and it is of the utmost importance that every effort should be made to dispel the gross ignorance which almost universally prevails, by the wide diffusion, in a proper manner, of information of the character contained in this volume. this book has been written not for the young only, nor for any single class of persons, but for all who are old enough to be capable of understanding and appreciating it. the prime object of its preparation has been to call attention to the great prevalence of sexual excesses of all kinds, and the heinous crimes resulting from some forms of sexual transgression, and to point out the terrible results which inevitably follow the violation of sexual law. in order to make more clear and comprehensible the teachings of nature respecting the laws regulating the sexual function, and the evils resulting from their violation, it has seemed necessary to preface the practical part of the subject by a concise description of the anatomy of reproduction. in this portion of the work especial pains has been taken to avoid anything like indelicacy of expression, yet it has not been deemed advisable to sacrifice perspicuity of ideas to any prudish notions of modesty. it is hoped that the reader will bear in mind that the language of science is always chaste in itself, and that it is only through a corrupt imagination that it becomes invested with impurity. the author has constantly endeavored to impart information in the most straightforward, simple, and concise manner. the work should be judiciously circulated, and to secure this the publishers will take care to place it in the hands of agents competent to introduce it with discretion; yet it may be read without injury by any one who is sufficiently mature to understand it. great care has been taken to exclude from its pages those accounts of the habits of vicious persons, and descriptions of the mechanical accessories of vice, with which many works upon sexual subjects abound. the first editions of the work were issued with no little anxiety on the part of both author and publishers as to how it would be received by the reading public. it was anticipated that no little adverse criticism, and perhaps severe condemnation, would be pronounced by many whose education and general mode of thought had been such as to unfit them to appreciate it; but it was hoped that persons of more thoughtful and unbiased minds would receive the work kindly, and would readily co-operate with the publishers in its circulation. this anticipation has been more than realized. wherever the book has been introduced, it has met with a warm reception; and of the several thousand persons into whose hands the work has been placed, hundreds have gratefully acknowledged the benefit which they have received from its perusal, and it is hoped that a large proportion have been greatly benefited. the cordial reception which the work has met from the press everywhere has undoubtedly contributed in great measure to its popularity. the demand for the work has exhausted several editions in rapid succession, and has seemed to require its preparation in the greatly enlarged and in every way improved form in which it now appears. the addition of two whole chapters for the purpose of bringing the subject directly before the minds of boys and girls in a proper manner, adds greatly to the interest and value of the work, as there seemed to be a slight deficiency in this particular in the former editions. j. h. k. battle creek, mich., _october, _. contents. page. introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _sex in living forms_. living beings--animals and vegetables--life force--reproduction-- spontaneous generation--simplest form of generation--hermaphrodism-- sex in plants--sex in animals--other sexual differences--men and women differ in form--modern mania for female pedestrianism-- , quarter miles in , quarter hours--a female walking-match--the male and female brain--vital organs of man and woman--woman less muscular, more enduring--a pathological difference--why a woman does not breathe like a man--the reproductive elements--sexual organs of plants-- polygamous flowers--the female organ of flowers--sexual organs of animals--the spermatozoon--the ovum--fecundation--fecundation in flowers--union of the ovum and zoosperm--curious modes of reproduction--human beings are developed buds--fecundation in hermaphrodites--development--unprotected development--partial protection of the ovum--development in the higher animals and in man-- the uterus--uterine gestation--the primitive trace--curious relations to lower animals--simplicity of early structures--the stages of growth-- duration of gestation--uterine life--how the unborn infant breathes-- parturition--changes in the child at birth--nursing--anatomy of the reproductive organs--male organs--the prostate gland--female organs-- puberty--influence of diet on puberty--brunettes naturally precocious-- remarkable precocity--premature development occasions early decay-- early puberty a cause for anxiety--changes which occur at puberty-- menstruation--nature of menstruation--a critical period--important hints--menorrhagia--dysmenorrhoea--amenorrhoea and chlorosis-- hysteria--prevention better than cure--extra-uterine pregnancy--twins-- monsters--hybrids--law of sex--heredity--ante-natal influences--law universal--a source of crime--circumcision--castration . . . . . . . _the sexual relations_. sexual precocity--astonishing ignorance--inherited passion--various causes of sexual precocity--senile sexuality--marriage--time to marry--application of the law of heredity--early marriage--mutual adaptation--disparity of age--courtship--long courtships-- flirtation--youthful flirtations--polygamy--polyandry--divorce-- who may not marry--do not be in a hurry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _chastity_. mental unchastity--amativeness--unchaste conversation--causes of unchastity--early causes--diet vs. chastity--clerical lapses--tobacco and vice--bad books--idleness--dress and sensuality--how young women fall--fashion and vice--reform in dress needed--round dances--physical causes of unchastity--constipation--intestinal worms--local uncleanness--irritation of the bladder--modern modes of life . . . . _continence_. continence not injurious--does not produce impotence--difficulty of continence--helps to continence--the will--diet--exercise--bathing-- religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _marital excesses_. object of the reproductive functions--results of excesses--effects upon husbands--testimony of a french physician--continence of trainers--a cause of throat disease--a cause of consumption--effects on wives--the greatest cause of uterine disease--legalized murder-- indulgence during menstruation--effects upon offspring--indulgence during pregnancy--effect upon the character--a selfish objection-- brutes and savages more considerate--what may be done--early moderation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _prevention of conception_: its evils and dangers. conjugal onanism--"male continence"--shaker views--moral bearings of the question--unconsidered murders--the charge disputed--difficulties-- woman's rights--what to do--a compromise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _infanticide and abortion_. not a modern crime--causes of the crime--the nature of the crime-- instruments of crime--results of this unnatural crime--an unwelcome child--the remedy--murder by proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _the social evil_. unchastity of the ancients--causes of the "social evil"--libidinous blood--gluttony--precocious sexuality--man's lewdness--fashion--lack of early training--sentimental literature--poverty--ignorance--disease-- results of licentiousness--thousands of victims--effects of vice ineradicable--the only hope--hereditary effects of venereal disease-- man the only transgressor--origin of the foul disease--cure of the "social evil"--prevention the only cure--early training--teach self-control--mental culture--early associations . . . . . . . . . . _solitary vice_. alarming prevalence of the vice--testimony of eminent authors--not a modern vice--victims of all ages--unsuspected rottenness--causes of the habit--evil associations--corruption in schools--wicked nurses--not an uncommon case--the instructor in vice--local disease--an illustrative case--other physical causes--influence of stimulants-- signs of self-abuse--suspicious signs--general debility--early symptoms of consumption--premature and defective development--sudden change in disposition--lassitude--sleeplessness--failure of mental capacity-- fickleness--untrustworthiness--love of solitude--bashfulness--unnatural boldness--mock piety--confusion of ideas--round shoulders--weak backs-- pains in the limbs--stiffness of the joints--paralysis--gait--bad positions--lack of development of the breasts--capricious appetite-- eating clay--the use of tobacco--unnatural paleness--acne--biting the finger nails--palpitation of the heart--hysteria--chlorosis--epileptic fits--wetting the bed--unchastity of speech--positive signs--results of secret vice--effects in males--local effects--urethral irritation-- stricture--enlarged prostate--urinary diseases--priapism--piles-- prolapsus of rectum--extension of irritation--atrophy--varicocele-- nocturnal emissions--exciting causes--are occasional emissions necessary or harmless?--emissions not necessary to health--eminent testimony--diurnal emissions--cause of diurnal emissions--internal emissions--an important caution--impotence--general effects--general debility--consumption--dyspepsia--heart-disease--throat affections-- nervous diseases--epilepsy--failure of special senses--spinal irritation--insanity--a victim's mental condition pictured--effects in females--local effects--leucorrhoea--uterine disease--cancer of the womb--sterility--atrophy of mammae--pruritis--general effects--a common cause of hysteria--effects upon offspring--treatment of self-abuse and its effects--prevention of secret vice--cultivate chastity--timely warning--curative treatment of the effects of self-abuse--cure of the habit--how may a person help himself?--hopeful courage--general regimen and treatment--mental and moral treatment-- exercise--never overeat--eat but twice a day--discard all stimulating food--stimulating drinks--sleeping--dreams--can dreams be controlled?-- bathing--improvement of general health--prostitution as a remedy-- marriage--local treatment--cool sitz bath--ascending douche--abdominal bandage--wet compress--hot and cold applications to the spine--local fomentations--local cold bathing--enemata--electricity--internal applications--use of electricity--circumcision--impotence--varicocele-- drugs--rings--quacks--closing advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _a chapter for boys_. who are boys?--what are boys for?--boys the hope of the world--man the masterpiece--how a noble character is ruined--the marvelous human machine--the two objects of human existence--the nutritive apparatus-- the moving apparatus--the thinking and feeling apparatus--the purifying apparatus--the reproductive apparatus--how a noble character and a sound body must be formed--the downhill road--self-abuse--a dreadful sin-- self-murderers--what makes boys dwarfs--scrawny and hollow-eyed boys-- old boys--what makes idiots--young dyspeptics--the race ruined by boys-- cases illustrating the effects of self-abuse--two young wrecks--a prodigal youth--barely escaped--a lost soul--the results of one transgression--a hospital case--an old offender--the sad end of a young victim--from bad to worse--an indignant father--disgusted with life--bad company--bad language--bad books--vile pictures--evil thoughts-- influence of other bad habits--closing advice to boys and young men. _a chapter for girls_. girlhood--how to develop beauty and loveliness--the human form divine--a wonderful process--human buds--how beauty is marred--a beauty-destroying vice--terrible effects of secret vice--remote effects--causes which lead girls astray--vicious companions--whom to avoid--sentimental books-- various causes--modesty woman's safeguard--a few sad cases--a pitiful case--a mind dethroned--a penitent victim--a ruined girl--the danger of boarding-schools--a desperate case--a last word--a few words to boys and girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . introduction. books almost without number have been written upon the subject treated in this work. unfortunately, most of these works are utterly unreliable, being filled with gross misrepresentations and exaggerations, and being designed as advertising mediums for ignorant and unscrupulous charlatans, or worse than worthless patent nostrums. to add to their power for evil, many of them abound with pictorial illustrations which are in no way conducive to virtue or morality, but rather stimulate the animal propensities and excite lewd imaginations. books of this character are usually widely circulated; and their pernicious influence is fully as great as that of works of a more grossly obscene character. in most of the few instances in which the evident motive of the author is not of an unworthy character, the manner of presenting the subject is unfortunately such that it more frequently than otherwise has a strong tendency in a direction exactly the opposite of that intended and desired. the writer of this work has endeavored to avoid the latter evil by adopting a style of presentation quite different from that generally pursued. instead of restricting the reader's attention rigidly to the sexual function in man, his mind is diverted by frequent references to corresponding functions in lower animals and in the vegetable kingdom. by this means, not only is an additional fund of information imparted, but the sexual function in man is divested of its sensuality. it is viewed as a fact of natural history, and is associated with the innocence of animal life and the chaste loveliness of flowers. thus the subject comes to be regarded from a purely physiological standpoint, and is liberated from the gross animal instinct which is the active cause of sensuality. there are so many well-meaning individuals who object to the agitation of this subject in any manner whatever, that it may be profitable to consider in this connection some of the principal objections which are urged against imparting information on sexual subjects, especially against giving knowledge to the young. i. _sexual matters improper to be spoken of to the young._ this objection is often raised, it being urged that these matters are _too delicate_ to be even suggested to children; that they ought to be kept in total ignorance of all sexual matters and relations until nature indicates that they are fit to receive them. it is doubtless true that children raised in a perfectly natural way would have no sexual thoughts until puberty, at least, and it would be better if it might be so; but from facts pointed out in succeeding portions of this work, it is certain that at the present time children nearly always do have some vague ideas of sexual relations long before puberty, and often at a very early age. it is thus apparent that by speaking to children of sexual matters in a proper manner, a new subject is not introduced to them, but it is merely presenting to them in a true light a subject of which they already have vague ideas; and thus, by satisfying a natural curiosity, they are saved from supplying by their imaginations distorted images and exaggerated conceptions, and from seeking to obtain the desired information from evil sources whence they would derive untold injury. what reason is there that the subject of the sexual functions should be treated with such maudlin secrecy? why should the function of generation be regarded as something low and beastly, unfit to be spoken of by decent people on decent occasions? we can conceive of no answer except the worse than beastly use to which the function has been so generally put by man. there is nothing about the sexual organism which makes it less pure than the lungs or the stomach. "unto the pure all things are pure," may have been written especially for our times, when there is such a vast amount of mock modesty; when so much pretense of virtue covers such a world of iniquity and vice. the young lady who goes into a spasm of virtuous hysterics upon hearing the word "leg," is perhaps just the one who at home riots her imagination in voluptuous french novels, if she commits no grosser breach of chastity. the parents who are the most opposed to imparting information to the young are often those who have themselves indulged in sexual excesses. in the minds of such persons the sexual organs and functions, and everything even remotely connected with them, are associated only with ideas of lust and gross sensuality. no wonder that they wish to keep such topics in the dark. with such thoughts they cannot well bear the scrutiny of virtue. sexual subjects are not, of course, proper subjects for conversation at all times, or at any time in a spirit of levity and flippancy. ii. _knowledge is dangerous._ very true, knowledge is dangerous, but ignorance is more dangerous still; or, rather, partial knowledge is more dangerous than a more complete understanding of facts. children, young people, will not grow up in innocent ignorance. if, in obedience to custom, they are not encouraged to inquire of their parents about the mysteries of life, they will seek to satisfy their curiosity by appealing to older or better informed companions. they will eagerly read any book which promises any hint on the mysterious subject, and will embrace every opportunity, proper or improper--and most likely to be the latter--of obtaining the coveted information. knowledge obtained in this uncertain and irregular way must of necessity be very unreliable. many times--generally, in fact--it is of a most corrupting character, and the clandestine manner in which it is obtained is itself corrupting and demoralizing. a child ought to be taught to expect all such information from its parents, and it ought not to be disappointed. again, while it is true that knowledge is dangerous, it is equally true that this dangerous knowledge will be gained sometime, at any rate; and as it must come, better let it be imparted by the parent, who can administer proper warnings and cautions along with it, than by any other individual. thus may the child be shielded from injury to which he would otherwise be certainly exposed. iii. _young people should be left to find out these things for themselves._ if human beings received much of their knowledge through instinct, as animals do, this might be a proper course; but man gets his knowledge largely by instruction. young people will get their first knowledge of sexual matters mostly by instruction from some source. how much better, then, as we have already shown, to let them obtain this knowledge from the most natural and most reliable source! the following paragraph from dr. ware is to the point:-- "but putting aside the question whether we ought to hide this subject wholly from the young if we could, the truth, it is to be feared, is that we cannot if we would. admitting it to be desirable, every man of experience in life will pronounce it to be impracticable. if, then, we cannot prevent the minds of children from being engaged in some way on this subject, may it not be better to forestall evil impressions by implanting good ones, or at least to mingle such good ones with the evil as the nature of the case admits? let us be at least as wise as the crafty enemy of man, and cast in a little wheat with his tares; and among the most effectual methods of doing this is to impart to the young just and religious views of the nature and purposes of the relation which the creator has established between the two sexes." _when shall information be given?_--it is a matter of some difficulty to decide the exact age at which information on sexual subjects should be given to the young. it may be adopted as a safe rule, however, that a certain amount of knowledge should be imparted as soon as there is manifested a curiosity in this direction. if there is reason to believe that the mind of the child is exercised in this direction, even though he may have made no particular inquiries, information should not be withheld. _how to impart proper knowledge._--no little skill may be displayed in introducing these subjects to the mind of the young person in such a way as to avoid arousing his passions and creating sexual excitement. perhaps the general plan followed in the first portion of this work will be found a very pleasant and successful method if studied thoroughly and well executed. all information should not be given at once. first obtain the child's confidence, and assure him by candor and unreserve that you will give him all needed information; then, as he encounters difficulties, he will resort for explanation where he knows he will receive satisfaction. when the little one questions, answer truthfully and carefully. the following paragraph by dr. wilkinson is suggestive:-- "when we are little boys and girls, our first inquiries about our _whence_ are answered by the authoritative dogma of the 'silver spade;' we were dug up with that implement. by degrees the fact comes forth. the public, however, remains for ages in the silver-spade condition of mind with regard to the science of the fact; and the doctors foster it by telling us that the whole subject is a medical property.... there is nothing wrong in the knowing; and, though the passions might be stimulated in the first moments by such information, yet in the second instance they will be calmed by it; and, ceasing to be inflamed by the additional goad of curiosity and imagination, they will cool down under the hydropathic influences of science. well-stated knowledge did never yet contribute to human inflammation; and we much question whether the whole theory of the silver spade be not a mistake; and whether children should not be told the truth from the first; that before desire and imagination are born, the young mind may receive, in its cool innocency, a knowledge of the future objects of powers and faculties which are to be subject afterward to such strong excitements." the experience of hundreds in the circulation of this work has proven beyond all chance for question the truth of the foregoing remarks, and often in a most striking manner. scores of persons have written us, "i would give all i possess in this world could i have had a copy of 'plain facts' placed in my hands when i was a lad," or, "words cannot express the gratitude i would now feel had some kind friend imparted to me the invaluable information which this book contains; it would have saved me a life of wretchedness." we have had the satisfaction of knowing in numerous instances that the virtue and happiness of whole families have been secured by the timely warnings of danger which parents have obtained from this work. we are glad to be able to feel that it is now thoroughly demonstrated that intelligent persons who have given this subject thought universally approve of the objects of the work and the manner of presenting the subject adopted in it. those who at first question the propriety of discussing the subject so freely and thoroughly as is here done, lose their prejudice entirely upon giving the work a careful perusal. in numerous instances it has occurred that those who were most decided in their denunciations have become the most zealous and efficient agents in its circulation after becoming more fully acquainted with it. sex in living forms. life, in its great diversity of forms, has ever been a subject of the deepest interest to rational beings. poets have sung of its joys and sorrows, its brilliant phantasies and harsh realities. philosophers have spent their lives in vain attempts to solve its mysteries; and some have held and thought that life was nothing more than a stupendous farce, a delusion of the senses. moralists have sought to impress mankind with the truth that "life is real," and teeming with grave responsibilities. physiologists have busied themselves in observing the phenomena of life, and learning, therefrom, its laws. the subject is certainly an interesting one, and none could be more worthy of the most careful attention. living beings.--man possesses life in common with other beings almost infinite in number and variety. the hugest beast that roams the forest or plows the main is no more a living creature than the smallest insect or microscopic animalculum. the "big tree" of california and the tiny blade of grass which waves at its foot are alike imbued with life. all nature teems with life. the practiced eye detects multitudes of living forms at every glance. the universe of life presents the most marvelous manifestations of the infinite power and wisdom of the creator to be found in all his works. the student of biology sees life in myriad forms which are unnoticed by the casual observer. the microscope reveals whole worlds of life that were unknown before the discovery of this wonderful aid to human vision,--whole tribes of living organisms, each of which, though insignificant in size, possesses organs as perfect and as useful to it in its sphere as do animals of greater magnitude. under a powerful magnifying glass, a drop of water from a stagnant pool is found to be peopled with curious animated forms; slime from a damp rock, or a speck of green scum from the surface of a pond, presents a museum of living wonders. through this instrument the student of nature learns that life in its lowest form is represented by a mere atom of living matter, an insignificant speck of trembling jelly, transparent and structureless, having no organs of locomotion, yet able to move in any direction; no nerves or organs of sense, yet possessing a high degree of sensibility; no mouth, teeth, nor organs of digestion, yet capable of taking food, growing, developing, producing other individuals like itself, becoming aged, infirm, and dying,--such is the life history of a living creature at the lower extreme of the scale of animated being. as we rise higher in the scale, we find similar little atoms of life associated together in a single individual, each doing its proper share of the work necessary to maintain the life of the individual as a whole, yet retaining at the same time its own individual life. as we ascend to still higher forms, we find this association of minute living creatures resulting in the production of forms of increasing complicity. as the structure of the individual becomes more complex and its functions more varied, the greater is the number of separate, yet associated, organisms to do the work. in man, at the very summit of the scale of animate existence, we find the most delicate and wonderfully intricate living mechanism of all. in him, as in lower, intermediate forms of life, the life of the individual is but a summary of the lives of all numberless minute organisms of which his body is composed. the individual life is but the aggregate life of all the millions of distinct individuals which are associated together in the human organism. animals and vegetables.--the first classification of living creatures separates them into two great kingdoms, animals and vegetables. although it is very easy to define the general characteristics of each of these classes, it is impossible to fix upon any single peculiarity which will be applicable in every case. most vegetable organisms remain stationary, while some possess organs of locomotion, and swim about in the water in a manner much resembling the movements of certain animals. most vegetables obtain their nutriment from the earth and the air, while animals subsist on living matter. a few plants seem to take organic matter for food, some even catching and killing small insects. it is found impossible to draw the precise line between animals and vegetables, for the reason just mentioned. the two kingdoms blend so intimately that in some cases it is impossible to tell whether a certain microscopic speck of life is an animal or a vegetable. but since these doubtful creatures are usually so minute that several millions of them can exist in a single drop of water, it is usually of no practical importance whether they are animal or vegetable, or sometimes one and sometimes the other, as they have been supposed to be by some biologists. all living creatures are _organized_ beings. most possess a structure and an organism more or less complicated; but some of the lowest forms are merely little masses of a transparent, homogeneous jelly, known as protoplasm. some of the smallest of these are so minute that one hundred millions of them could occupy the space of a cube one-thousandth of an inch on each side; yet each one runs its course of life as regularly as man himself, performing its proper functions even more perfectly, perhaps. life force.--to every thinking mind the question often recurs, what makes the fragrant flower so different from the dead soil from which it grows? the trilling bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? what subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? to explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. this supposition does nothing more than furnish a name for a thing unknown, and the very existence of which may fairly be doubted. in fact, any attempt to find a place for such a force, to understand its origin, or harmonize its existence with that of other well-known forces, is unsuccessful; and the theory of a peculiar vital force, a presiding entity present in every living thing, vanishes into thin air to give place to the more rational view of the most advanced modern scientists, that vital force, so-called, is only a manifestation of the ordinary forces of nature acting through a peculiar arrangement of matter. in other words, life depends, not upon a peculiar force, but upon a peculiar arrangement of matter, or organization. it is simply a peculiar manifestation of the force possessed by atoms exhibited through a peculiar arrangement of atoms and molecules. this arrangement is what is known as organization; and bodies which possess it are known as organized or living bodies. the term life may be understood as referring to the phenomena which result from organization. that life results from organization, not organization from life, is more consonant with the accepted and established facts of science than the contrary view. we might adduce numerous facts and arguments in support of this view of the nature of life, but will not do so here, as we have considered the subject at some length elsewhere.[ ] [footnote : see "science and the bible," pp. - .] _nutrition_ and _reproduction_ are the two great functions of life, being common not only to all animals, but to both animals and plants, to all classes of living creatures. the object of the first, is the development and maintenance of the individual existence; the second has for its end the production of new individuals, or the preservation of the race. nutrition is a purely selfish process; reproduction is purely unselfish in its object; though the human species--unlike the lower animals, which, while less intelligent, are far more true to nature--too often pervert its functions to the most grossly selfish ends. the subject of nutrition is an important one, and well worthy the attention of every person who values life. the general disregard of this subject is undoubtedly the cause of a very large share of the ills to which human flesh is heir; but our limited space forbids its consideration here, and we shall confine our attention to reproduction. reproduction. as before remarked, reproduction is a function common to all animals and to all plants. every organized being has the power to reproduce itself, or to produce, or aid in producing, other individuals like itself. it is by means of this function that plants and animals increase or multiply. when we consider the great diversity of characters illustrated in animal and vegetable life, and the infinite variety of conditions and circumstances under which organized creatures exist, it is not surprising that modes of reproduction should also present great diversity both in general character and in detail. we shall find it both interesting and instructive to consider some of the many different modes of reproduction, or generation, observed in different classes of living beings, previous to entering upon the specific study of reproduction in man. before doing thus, however, let us give brief attention to a theoretical form of generation, which cannot be called reproduction, known as spontaneous generation.--by this term is meant the supposed formation of living creatures directly from dead matter without the intervention of other living organisms. the theory is, in substance, an old one. the ancients supposed that the frogs and other small reptiles so abundant in the vicinity of slimy pools and stagnant marshes, were generated spontaneously from the mud and slime in which they lived. this theory was, of course, abandoned when the natural history of reptiles became known. for several thousand years the belief was still held that maggots found in decaying meat were produced spontaneously; but it was discovered, centuries ago, that maggots are not formed if the flesh is protected from flies, since they are the larvae, or young, of a species of this insect. a relic of the ancient belief in spontaneous generation is still found in the supposition that horse-hair snakes, so-called, are really formed from the hairs of horses. this belief is quite common, but science long ago exposed its falsity. when the microscope was discovered it revealed a whole new world of infinitesimal beings which were at first supposed to be of spontaneous origin; but careful scientific investigation has shown that even these mere specks of life are not independent of parentage. m. pasteur and, more recently, prof. tyndall, with many other distinguished scientists, have demonstrated this fact beyond all reasonable chance for question. it is, then, an established law that _every living organism originates with some previously existing living being or beings_. it may be queried, if it be true that life is but a manifestation of the ordinary forces of matter,--which are common to both dead and living matter,--being dependent upon arrangement, then why may it not be that dead matter may, through the action of molecular laws, and without the intervention of any living existence, assume those peculiar forms of arrangement necessary to constitute life, as supposed by the advocates of the theory in question? it is true that some who recognize the fact that life is the result of organization maintain the doctrine of _spontaneous generation_; that is, the production of life without any agency other than the recognized forces of nature being brought about simply by a fortuitous combination of atoms. although this doctrine cannot be said to be inconsistent with the theory of life presented, yet it is by no means a legitimate or necessary result of it; and observation proves its falsity. the testimony of all nature, as almost universally admitted by scientific men, is that life originated through a creative act by the first great cause, who gave to certain bodies the requisite arrangement or organization to enable them to perform certain functions, and delegated to them the power to transmit the same to other matter, and thus to perpetuate life. the creator alone has the power to originate life. man, with all his wisdom and attainments, cannot discover the secret of organization. he may become familiar with its phenomena, but he cannot unravel, further, the mystery of life. the power of organizing is possessed only by the lower class of living or organized bodies, those known as vegetable organisms or plants. a grain of wheat, a kernel of corn, a potato, when placed under favorable conditions, takes the inert, lifeless particles of matter which lie about it in the earth and air, and organizes them into living substances like itself. to man and animals the creator delegated the power to form their own peculiar structures from the vitalized tissues of plants. thus, both animal and vegetable life is preserved without the necessity of continued acts of creative power, each plant and each animal possessing the power not only to preserve its own life, but also to aid, at least, in the perpetuation of the species. the record of creation in genesis harmonizes perfectly with this view, it being represented that god formed (organized or arranged) man, animals, and vegetable productions from the earth. simplest form of generation.--deep down beneath the waters of the ocean, covering its bottom in certain localities, is found a curious slime, which, under the microscope, is seen to be composed of minute rounded masses of gelatinous matter, or protoplasm. by watching these little bodies intently for a few minutes, the observer will discover that each is a living creature capable of moving, growing, and assuming a variety of shapes. continued observation will reveal the fact that these little creatures multiply; and a more careful scrutiny will enable him to see _how_ they increase. each divides into two equal parts so nearly alike that they cannot be distinguished apart. in this case the process of generation is simply the production of two similar individuals from one. a small quantity of slime taken from the surface of a stone near the bottom of an old well, or on the seaside, when placed under the microscope, will sometimes be found to contain large numbers of small, round, living bodies. careful watching will show that they also multiply by division; but before the division occurs, two cells unite to form one by a process called _conjugation_. then, by the division of this cell, instead of only two cells, a large number of small cells are formed, each of which may be considered as a bud formed upon the body of the parent cell and then separated from it to become by growth an individual like its parent, and, like it, to produce its kind. in this case, we have new individuals formed by the union of two individuals which are to all appearance entirely similar in every particular. sex.--rising higher in the scale of being, we find that, with rare exceptions, reproduction is the result of the union of two dissimilar elements. these elements do not, in higher organisms, as in lower forms of life, constitute the individuals, but are produced by them; and being unlike, they are produced by special organs, each adapted to the formation of one kind of elements. the two classes of organs usually exist in separate individuals, thus giving rise to distinctions of _sex_; an individual possessing organs which form one kind of elements being called a male, and one possessing organs for the formation of the other kind of elements, a female. the sexual differences between individuals of the same species are not, however, confined to the sexual organs. in most classes of plants and animals, other sexual differences are very great. in some of the lower orders of animals, and in many species of plants, the male and female individuals are so much unlike that for a long time after they were well known, no sexual relation was discovered. hermaphrodism.--an individual possessing both male and female organs of reproduction is called an _hermaphrodite_. such a combination is very rare among higher animals; but it is by no means uncommon among plants and the lower forms of animal life. the snail, the oyster, the earth-worm, and the common tape-worm, are examples of true hermaphrodites. so-called human hermaphrodites are usually individuals in whom the sexual organs are abnormally developed so that they resemble those of the opposite sex, though they really have but one sex, which can usually be determined with certainty. only a very few cases have been observed in which both male and female organs were present. there is now living in germany an individual who bears the name of a woman; but learned physicians have decided that the person is as much man as woman, having the organs of both sexes. what is still more curious, this person has the feelings of both sexes, having loved at first a man, and afterward a woman. there have been observed, also, a very few instances of individuals in whom the sexual organs of neither sex were present. it thus appears that a person may be of both sexes or of no sex at all. sex in plants.--to one unacquainted with the mysteries of plant life and growth, the idea of attaching sexuality to plants seems very extraordinary; but the botanist recognizes the fact that the distinctions of sex are as clearly maintained in the vegetable as in the animal kingdom. the sexual organs of the higher orders of plants are flowers. that part of the flower which produces seeds answers to the female; another part, which is incapable of forming seeds, answers to the male. the fertile and sterile flowers are sometimes produced on separate plants. very frequently, they are produced upon separate parts of the same plant, as in the oak, walnut, and many other forest trees, and indian corn. in the latter plant, so familiar to every one, the "tassel" contains the male flowers, and the part known as the "silk," with the portion to which it is attached--which becomes the ear--the female or fertile flowers. in a large number of species, the male and female organs are combined in a single flower, making a true hermaphrodite. sex in animals.--as previously remarked, individuals of opposite sex usually differ much more than in the character of their sexual organs only. among higher animals, the male is usually larger, stronger, and of coarser structure than the female. the same contrast is observed in their mental characters. with lower animals, especially insects, the opposite is often observed. the female spider is many times larger than the male. the male ant is small in size when compared with the female. nevertheless, in all classes of animals the difference in the structure and the functions of the sexual organs is the chief distinguishing character. these differences are not so great, however, as they might at first appear. the male and female organs of reproduction in man and other animals, which seem so dissimilar, when studied in the light shed upon this subject by the science of embryology, are found to be wonderfully alike in structure, differing far more in appearance than in reality, and being little more than modifications of one general plan. every organ to be found in the one sex has an analogue in the other which is complete in every particular, corresponding in function, in structure, and usually in position. other sexual differences.--in this country there is between five and six inches difference in height and about twenty pounds difference in weight between the average man and the average woman, the average man being about five feet, eight inches in height, and weighing one hundred and forty-five pounds; while the average woman is five feet, two or two and one-half inches in height, and weighs one hundred and twenty-five pounds. the relation of the sexes in height and weight varies in degree in different countries, but is never changed. the average height and weight of american men and women is considerably above that of the average human being. men and women differ in form.--the differences in form are so marked that it is possible for the skilled anatomist to determine the sex of a human being who has been dead for ages, by an examination of the skeleton alone. in man, the shoulders are broad, the hips narrow, and the limbs nearly straight with the body. in woman, the shoulders are narrow and usually rounded, and set farther back, the collar-bone being longer and less curved, giving the chest greater prominence; while the hips are broad. the consequence of these differences is that woman is generally less graceful and naturally less skillful in the use of the extremities than man, and hence less fitted for athletic sports and feats requiring great dexterity. a girl throws a stone awkwardly, less from want of practice than from a natural peculiarity of physical structure. a woman walks less gracefully than a man, owing to the greater relative breadth of her hips, requiring a motion of the body together with that of the limbs. in consequence of this peculiarity, a woman is less fitted for walking long distances. modern mania for female pedestrianism.--nothing could be much more inhuman than the exhibitions made in satisfying the mania for female pedestrianism which has recently arisen. not long since, in walking down one of the principal streets of boston, we passed, in going a distance of thirty rods, three illuminated placards announcing to the public that in as many different public halls four female pedestrians were exhibiting their walking talents for the gratification of the crowds of bawdy loafers and jockeys who congregated to criticize their several "points," and bet on their walking capacity, as though they were horses on a race-course or hounds on a fox hunt. , quarter miles in , quarter hours.--we visited the halls and ascertained that two of these misguided women were attempting the feat of walking respectively , and , quarter miles in an equal number of successive quarter hours. this would require almost incessant exertion for nearly twenty-eight days in one case, and for more than thirty-one days in the other, without at any time a period of unbroken rest longer than ten minutes. such a procedure, in the light of physiology, is a greater inhumanity than the most merciless boston teamster would inflict upon his dumb brutes. why does not mr. bergh exercise his function in such cases? we did not wonder that the poor women looked pale and suffering, and trudged along with a limping gait. a female walking match.--at another hall we found two women engaged in a "walking match." the hall was so crowded with spectators--with very few exceptions of the male sex--that it was with difficulty the narrow track could be kept clear. the sixty hours for which the walk was to be continued had nearly expired, and the excitement grew more intense each moment. one of the walkers, who was a few miles in advance, strode on at a pace almost marvelous, constantly stimulated to greater efforts by the coarse shouts of the masculine audience, who evidently took the same sort of interest in the proceeding that they would in a dog race or a cock fight. the other was pale and spiritless, and it seemed with difficulty that she dragged herself along to keep upon the track until the last. at times she seemed to be almost fainting, as the result of the long-continued excitement and fatigue; but she managed to keep going until nine minutes before the slow moving clock had measured off the sixty hours, when she became too ill to be longer able to stand, and was carried off the track. the cheers for the winner were as vigorous as though a rebel fort had been captured, a million people emancipated from slavery, or some great and noble deed of honor or daring had been done; but no one thought of the injury which had been done the contestant. we turned away in disgust. the ancient greeks and romans amused themselves with witnessing the gladiatorial contests of their male slaves; but it was left for civilized america to introduce woman into the "ring" and make her show her paces on the race-course. an ungraceful figure she cuts, and a repulsive spectacle she presents; and worst of all is the havoc which she makes with her health. at the very time that these four female pedestrians were making their disgraceful exhibit in boston, in another part of the same city lay a helpless invalid who was once as noted a "female walkist" as any of them, made hopelessly ill by the same disregard of the plainest laws of nature. the male and the female brain.--but there are other important physical differences to which we must call attention. man possesses a larger brain than woman, but she makes up the deficiency in size by superior fineness in quality. the female brain differs from the masculine organ of mentality in other particulars so marked that one who has given the subject attention can determine with perfect ease the probable sex of the owner of almost any skull which might be presented to him. this difference in the conformation of the skull is undoubtedly due to a difference in mental character, which, in turn, depends upon a difference in cerebral development. faculties which are generally largely developed in one are usually smaller in the other, and the reverse. vital organs of man and woman.--the anatomist also observes an interesting difference in the size of the various vital organs. for example, while a woman has a heart proportionally smaller than the same organ in man, she has a larger liver. thus, while less well fitted for severe physical exertion by less circulatory power, she has superior excretory powers. woman less muscular, more enduring.--this peculiarity of structure is perfectly harmonious with the fact which experience has established so often as to make the matter no longer a question, that woman is less fitted for severe muscular exertion than man, but possesses in a superior degree the quality known as endurance. with a less robust frame, a more delicately organized constitution, she will endure for months what would kill a robust man in as many weeks. more perfect elimination of the wastes of the body secures a higher grade of vitality. on no other hypothesis could we account for the marvelous endurance of the feminine part of the civilized portion of the human race, ground down under the heel of fashion for ages, "stayed," "corseted," "laced," and thereby distorted and deformed in a manner that would be fatal to almost any member of the masculine sex. a pathological difference.--most physiologists mention another particular in which woman differs materially from man; viz, in naturally employing, in respiration, chiefly the upper part of the lungs, while man breathes chiefly with the lower part of the lungs. for several years we have carefully studied this question, and we have been unable to find any physiological or anatomical reason sufficient to account for this fact, if it be such. why a woman does not breathe like a man.--it is undoubtedly true that most women do breathe almost exclusively with the upper part of the chest; but whether this is a _natural_ peculiarity, or an acquired, unnatural, and depraved one, is a question which we are decidedly inclined to answer in harmony with the latter supposition, basing our conclusion on the following undeniable facts:-- . in childhood, and until about the age of puberty, respiration in the boy and the girl is exactly the same. . although there is a change in the mode of respiration in most females, usually soon after the period of puberty, marked by increased intercostal respiration and diminished abdominal or deep respiration, this change can be accounted for on other than physiological grounds. . we believe the cause of this modification of respiration is the change in dress which is usually made about that time. the young girl is now becoming a woman, and must acquire the art of lacing, wearing a corset, "stays," and sundry other contrivances by means of which to produce a "fine form" by distorting and destroying all natural grace and beauty in the "form divine." . we have met a number of ladies whose good fortune and good sense had delivered them from the distorting influence of corset-wearing and tight-lacing, and we have invariably observed that they are as capable of deep respiration as men, and practice it as naturally. we are thoroughly convinced that this so-called physiological difference between man and woman is really a pathological rather than a natural difference, and is due to the evils of fashionable dress, which we have exposed at some length in another work exclusively devoted to that subject.[ ] in short, we believe that the only reason why women do not, under ordinary circumstances, breathe as do men, is simply _because they can not_ breathe naturally. [footnote : "evils of fashionable dress, and how to dress healthfully."] the reproductive elements.--as has been previously observed, in all except the very lowest forms of life, two elements are necessary to the production of a new individual, or a reproduction of the species--a male element and a female element. the special organs by means of which these elements are produced, brought together, and developed into the new individual in a more or less perfect state, are termed _sexual organs_, as we have already seen. as an introduction to the specific study of the sexual organs in the human species, let us briefly consider the sexual organs of plants.--as already remarked, flowers are the sexual organs of plants. nothing is more interesting in the natural world than the wonderful beauty, diversity, and perfect adaptability to various conditions and functions, which we see in the sexual parts of plants. an exceedingly interesting line of study, which has occupied the attention of many naturalists, is the wonderful perfection displayed in the adaptability of the male and female parts of plants to each other. without burdening the reader with unnecessary technicalities of detail, we will briefly notice the principal parts of vegetable sexual organs as illustrated in flowers. complete flowers are made up of four parts, two of which, the _stamen_ and _pistil_, are essential, while the other two, the calyx and corolla, are accessory. the _calyx_ is that part which surrounds the flower at its outer and lower part. it varies greatly in form and color, but is most frequently of a green or greenish color. just within the calyx is the _corolla_, which usually forms the most attractive, showy, and beautiful part of the flower. the beautifully colored petals of the rose, geranium, dahlia, and other similar flowers, form their corollas. vegetable husbands.--within the cup formed by the calyx and corolla are placed the _stamens_ and _pistils_ of the flower, the first being the male organs proper, and the second the female organs of the flower. the stamen is composed of a stem or filament, at the summit of which are placed two little sacks called the _anther_, which contain a fine, microscopic dust, the _pollen_, which contains the male reproductive element of the flower. this part of the plant corresponds to the male organ of reproduction in animals. a stamen has been called, not inaptly, a vegetable husband. some flowers have many stamens, or vegetable husbands, which reminds us of the custom in thibet and some other eastern countries which allows a woman to have several husbands. polygamous flowers.--the great naturalist, linnaeus, whose name was immortalized by his careful study and classification of organized life, made the number of stamens possessed by various flowers the basis of a systematic classification. for example, a flower having but one stamen was classed as _monandria_, which means, literally, one husband; one having two stamens was classified as _diandria_; flowers having a large number of male organs were termed _polyandria_, or many husbands. the female organ of flowers.--the _pistil_ occupies the very center of the flower. it produces and contains in a cell, the female element, termed the _ovule_. it is surmounted by the _style_ and the _stigma_. a series of plants in which the sexual organs are not visible to the eye are termed _cryptogamia_, which means literally, hidden marriages. as we proceed to study the anatomy of the human sexual apparatus we shall be constantly struck with the remarkable correspondence between animals and vegetables in the structure and functions of the sexual apparatus. sexual organs of animals.--the male reproductive element is called a _spermatozoon_ or _zoosperm_. the female element is called an _ovum_, literally, an egg. the spermatozoon.--the male reproductive element of animals is formed by an organ called the _testis_, or _testicle_, of which each male possesses two. they are elastic, glandular bodies, and are formed within the cavity of the abdomen, near the kidneys, but usually pass out of the abdominal cavity and descend to their permanent position before birth. the opening in the abdominal wall is usually completely closed in a short time; but occasionally it remains open, giving rise to congenital hernia, an accident in which a loop of intestine follows the testicle down into the scrotum, either completely or partially. in a few animals, as in the porcupine, the opening is never fully closed, and the testis remains in the cavity of the body most of the time, passing out only at certain periods. we also occasionally meet cases of human beings in which the testes have never descended from their place in the abdominal cavity, giving the individuals the appearance of eunuchs. this condition, however, though an abnormal one, does not in any way interfere with the function of the organs, as those who happen to possess it often imagine. we have also met with cases in which the organs were movable, and could readily be pressed up into the abdominal cavity, through the unclosed inguinal cavity, which afforded them a passage downward in the process of development. as before remarked, these peculiarities do not affect the functions of the organs in any appreciable degree, although they not infrequently give rise to some apprehension on the part of those subject to them. the left testicle is sometimes a little smaller than the right, another fact which is seized upon by quacks as a means of exciting the fears of young men who have been addicted to bad habits, although the peculiarity is generally without important significance. the testicles are connected with the urinary passage by means of two ducts which terminate near the base of the bladder, at which point they connect with the urethra. we need not dwell at further length upon the structure of the testicles, as this subject receives fuller attention elsewhere. human spermatozoa are about / of an inch in length. those of reptiles are very much larger. one of the remarkable features of these minute elements is their peculiar movements. while alive, the filamentous tail is in constant action in a manner strongly resembling the movements of the caudal appendage of a tadpole. this wonderful property led the earlier observers to believe that they were true animalcula. but they are not to be regarded as such, though one can scarcely make himself believe otherwise while watching their lively evolutions, and apparent volitionary movement from one point to another. spermatozoa originate in the testis as cells, which are filled with granules. after a time, each granule acquires a long appendage, and then the cell has become converted into a bundle of small zoosperms. development still continues, until finally the thin pellicle on the outside of the bundle is ruptured, thus liberating the young spermatozoa, which speedily complete their full development. the spermatozoon is pure protoplasm, which is the basis of all life, and its power of spontaneous motion is due to this fact. in man, the formation of spermatozoa continues with greater or less rapidity from puberty to old age, though at the two extremes of existence they are imperfectly developed. when not discharged from the body, they are said to be absorbed. some physiologists claim that they are composed of a substance identical with nerve tissue, and that by absorption they play a very important part in the development and maintenance of the nervous system. it is asserted by good authorities that the reproductive element in man is not so well developed as to be really fit for the reproduction of the species before the age of twenty-four or twenty-five. after the age of forty-five or fifty, the reproductive elements deteriorate in quality, and become again unfitted for vigorous procreation. the fully developed zoosperms are suspended in a transparent, gelatinous fluid, which, mingled with the secretion of the prostate gland and other fluids which it meets during its expulsion from the body, constitutes the _semen_. the ovum.--the female element of generation, the ovum, is produced by an organ called the _ovary_, of which there are two in each individual. in size and form, the ovary closely resembles the testicle. like the latter organ, also, it is formed within the body early in the process of development; but instead of passing outward and downward, as does the testicle, it remains within the abdominal cavity, suspended in place by ligaments. it is connected with a duct which receives the ovum as it is discharged, and conveys it to the uterus. the human ovum varies in size from / to / of an inch in diameter, and consists of a single cell. ova are not formed in such large numbers as zoosperms. as a general rule, in the human female, a single ovum is developed and discharged once in about four weeks, during the period of sexual activity. fecundation.--it is often asked, and the question has elicited some discussion, which is the principal reproductive element; the zoosperm, or the ovum? the ancients supposed the male element to be the essential element, being simply nourished and developed by the female; but modern research in biological science does not sustain this view. probably neither one enjoys especial preeminence; for neither can undergo complete development without the other. in very rare cases, the ovum has been observed to undergo a certain amount of development of itself; but a perfect individual can be produced only by the union of the two kinds of elements, which process is known as _fecundation_. the instant this union occurs, the life of a new individual begins. all the changes which result between that moment and the birth of the individual are those of development only. indeed, the same existence continues from the instant of the union of the two elements, not only until birth, but through growth, the attainment of maturity, the decline of life, and even until death. it is interesting to observe the different methods by which fecundation is effected, both in plants and animals, for this is a process common to both. fecundation in flowers.--the great naturalist, linnaeus, was the first to explain the reproductive process in plants. he tells us that "the flower forms the theater of their amours; the calyx is to be considered as the nuptial bed; the corolla constitutes the curtains; the anthers are the testes; the pollen, the fecundating fluid; the stigma of the pistil, the external genital aperture; the style, the vagina, or the conductor of the prolific seed; the ovary of the plant, the womb; the reciprocal action of the stamens on the pistil, the accessory process of fecundation." thus marvelous is the analogy between the reproductive organs and their functions in plants and animals. through this one vital process we may trace a close relation between all the forms of life, from the humblest plant, or even the mere specks of life which form the green scum upon a stagnant pool, to man, the masterpiece of creation, the highest of all animated creatures. in all the realm of nature there can be found no more remarkable evidences of the infinite skill and wisdom of the creator of all things. in many instances the action of plants seems almost to be prompted by intelligence. at the proper moment, the corolla contracts in such a way as to bring the stamens nearer to the stigma, or in contact with it, so as to insure fecundation. in some aquatic plants the flowers elevate themselves above the surface of water while the process of fecundation is effected; submerging themselves again immediately afterward. other very curious changes occur in flowers of different species during the reproductive act. the stigma is observed to become moistened, and even to become distinctly odorous. often, too, it becomes intensely congested with the juices of the plant, and sometimes even acquires an uncommon and most remarkable degree of contractility. this is the case with the stigma of the tulip and one variety of sensitive plant, and is in these plants observed to occur not only after the application of the pollen to the stigma, but when excited by any other means of stimulation. the flowers of some plants, during and after fecundation, also show an increase of heat, in some cases so marked as to be readily detected with the thermometer. this is said to be the case with the _arum_ of italy. in some plants in which the pistil is longer than the stamens, thus elevating the stigma above the anthers, the female organ is often observed to bend over and depress itself so as to come within reach of the anthers. in most instances the fecundation of flowers is chiefly effected through a purely mechanical process, though in these cases also we see a wonderful adaptation of parts to conditions. when the male and female parts of flowers are situated on different plants, as is the case in the willow, the poplar, the melon vine, and many other species, the pollen of the male flower is wafted by the wind or gentle breeze to the stigma of the female flower, which will usually be found at no very great distance, although fertilization may take place in this way at very considerable distances. bees, moths, and many other species of insects, serve a very important purpose in this work, transporting the fertilizing dust upon their wings, antennae, sucking-tubes, and feet. small birds, and even the humble snail, which would scarcely be credited with any useful function, are also very serviceable in the same direction. the part performed by insects in the reproductive process of many plants is so great that they have been very poetically termed "the marriage priests of flowers." nature provides for thorough fecundation in these cases by placing the plants which bear the male and the female flowers near each other. this fact accounts for the unproductiveness of certain varieties of strawberries unless mixed with plants of some other variety, it being well known to nursery-men that some varieties produce only the female parts of flowers. modes of fecundation in animals.--the modes by which fecundation is effected in animals are still more various and wonderful than in plants. in some of the lower animals, as in most fish and reptiles, both elements are discharged from the bodies of the parents before coming in contact, there being no contact of the two individuals. in this class of animals the process is almost wholly analogous to fecundation in those plants in which the male and female flowers are on different plants or different parts of the same plant. in the female fish, a large number of ova are developed at a certain season of the year known as the spawning season. sometimes the number reaches many thousands. at the same time, the testicles of the male fish, which are contained within the abdominal cavity, become distended with developed zoosperms. when the female seeks a place to deposit her eggs, the male closely follows; and as she drops them upon the gravelly bottom, he discharges upon them the zoosperms by which they are fecundated. the process is analogous to some species of frogs. when the female is about to deposit her eggs, the male mounts upon her back and rides about until the eggs are all deposited, discharging upon them the fertilizing spermatozoa as they are laid by the female. in higher orders of animals, fecundation takes place within the generative organs of the female by contact between the male and the female organs. to effect this, there are necessitated certain accessory organs, the _penis_ in the male and the _vagina_ in the female. nothing in all the range of nature is more remarkable than the adaptation of the two varieties of sexual organs in each species. this necessary provision is both a powerful means of securing the perpetuation of the species, and an almost impassable barrier against amalgamation. the act of union, or sexual congress, is called _coitus_ or _copulation_. it is accompanied by a peculiar nervous spasm due to excitement of special nerves principally located in the _penis_ in the male, and in an extremely sensitive organ, the _clitoris_, in the female. the nervous action referred to is more exhausting to the system than any other to which it is subject. union of the ovum and zoosperm.--the zoosperms not only come in contact with the ovum, but penetrate the thin membrane which incloses its contents, and enter its interior, where they disappear, becoming united with its substance. in the ova of certain fishes, small openings have been observed through which the spermatozoa find entrance. whether such openings exist in human ova is an undecided question; but it is probable that they do. curious modes of reproduction.--a peculiar kind of reproduction is observed in a variety of polyp, a curious animal which very much resembles a shrub in appearance. it attaches itself to some solid object, and then, as it grows, sends out little protuberances resembling buds. some of these separate and fall off, swimming about as separate animals. these never become like the parent polyp; but they lay eggs, which hatch, and become stationary polyps like their grandparent, and in their turn throw off buds to form swimming polyps. in this case we have two kinds of generation combined, alternating with each other. plant-lice afford a curious illustration of a similar generation. males and females unite and produce eggs. the creatures produced by the hatching of eggs are neither males nor perfect females. they are _imperfect females_. they are all alike, so that no sexual union occurs. instead of laying eggs, they produce live young like themselves, which appear to be developed from internal buds similar to the external buds of the polyp. after this method of reproduction has continued for eight or ten generations, a few perfect individuals appear, and the first process is repeated. the common honey-bee affords another illustration like the last. a virgin queen sometimes lays eggs, which always produce males, or drones. after union with a male, she lays eggs in the royal cells which become perfect females like herself. she also seems to have the power to lay, at will, unfecundated eggs, from which drones are produced. human beings are developed buds.--it has been very aptly suggested by an eminent physiologist that the ovum and zoosperm may be correctly considered as internal buds. thus it would appear that generation is universally a process of budding. a child is but a compound bud, an offshoot from its parents. this idea is not a mere fancy, but has a scientific basis. as all the exquisite details of the most beautiful flower are in essence contained within the tiny bud which first makes its appearance, so is the developed human being, the full-grown man or woman, virtually contained within the tiny cell called the ovum after it has been impregnated or fecundated by the zoosperms. in short, men and women are blossoms in a strictly scientific sense. fecundation in hermaphrodites.--the process of fecundation in hermaphrodite animals is very peculiar. in some cases, as in the snail, the union of two individuals is usually necessary, though each possesses both kinds of organs. in other cases, as in the tape-worm, the oyster, and numerous other mollusks, a single individual has the power to fertilize its own ova, thus being wholly independent. human hermaphrodites are usually so deformed that fecundation is not effected, which is a fortunate safeguard against the multiplication of such monstrosities. development.--after the union of the two elements, known as fecundation or _conception_, if the conditions are favorable, development occurs, and the little germ is in due process of time developed into an individual which is an exact counterpart of its parents. during this developmental process, the embryonic being is variously treated by different classes of animals. unprotected development.--most fishes and reptiles discharge their ova before fecundation, or soon after, and pay no further attention to them. the fish deposits its eggs in a little hollow scooped out in the gravelly bed of a stream, or sows them broadcast upon the waters. the turtle buries its eggs in the sand, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun. the ostrich disposes of her eggs in the same way. many other species of animals pay no regard to the protection of the germs which are destined, if placed under favorable conditions, to become individuals like themselves. partial protection of the ovum.--there are some exceptions, however, to this general rule among fishes and reptiles. even fishes manifest a degree of parental solicitude in certain cases. the male of a species of south american fish gathers up the eggs after fecundation has taken place, and carries them in his mouth until they are hatched. another male fish carries the eggs of his mate in a little pouch upon the lower and posterior part of his body. certain species of frogs carry their eggs wound about their legs; others suspend them from the abdomen. another variety carries its young upon its back. prof. wyman describes a "swamp toad" which patiently takes the eggs of his mate, one by one, and fastens them upon her back, observing great regularity in arrangement. these several devices are evidently for the purpose of protecting, in some degree, the young individual during the helpless stage of its existence. development in the higher animals and man.--higher animals are less prolific, and their development is a more complicated process; hence, their young need greater protection, and, for this reason, the ova, instead of being discharged from the body of the female after fecundation, are retained.[ ] as we have seen that a suitable receptacle is sometimes provided outside of the body, so now a receptacle is needed, and is provided in the interior of the body of the female. this receptacle is called [footnote : curious examples of internal development sometimes occur in animals which usually deposit eggs. snakes have been known to produce both eggs and living young at the same time. at the annual meeting of the american society for the advancement of science, at detroit, mich., in august, , we had the pleasure of examining a specimen, exhibited by prof. wilder, of a chick which had undergone a considerable degree of development within the ovary of the hen. it had a head, a rudimentary brain, and internal viscera, but no feathers nor limbs. it was, in fact, an egg hatched before it had been laid. the anomaly excited much interest at that time and since among biologists.] the uterus.--this is a hollow, pear-shaped organ, located in the median line, just behind the bladder, between it and the rectum. it is supported in place by various ligaments and by the juxtaposition of other organs. its larger end is directed upward, and communicates upon each side with a very narrow tube which is prolonged outward on either side until it nearly touches the ovary of the same side. its lower and smaller end fills the internal extremity of the passage previously described as the vagina. when an ovum is matured, it escapes from the ovary into the narrow tube referred to, called the _fallopian tube_, and passes down into the cavity of the uterus. if fecundation does not occur, it is expelled or absorbed after six to twelve or fourteen days. if copulation occurs, however, zoosperms are brought into the cavity of the uterus, and, coming in contact with the ovum, fecundate it. this is _conception_. when the natural process is allowed to proceed, development occurs. uterine gestation.--this is the term applied to the process last referred to. we shall not attempt to describe in detail this most wonderful and intricate of all living processes; but will sketch only the chief points, leaving the reader who would obtain a more complete knowledge of the subject to consult any one of the numerous physiological and obstetrical works which deal with it in a very exhaustive manner. as soon as the ovum is impregnated by the male element, it begins a process of symmetrical division. the first division produces two cells out of the single one which first existed. by the next division, four segments are produced; then eight, sixteen, etc. while this process is going on, the ovum becomes adherent to the internal wall of the uterus, and is soon enveloped by its mucous membrane, which grows up about and incloses it. the primitive trace.--when the process of segmentation has advanced to a certain point, the cells are aggregated together in a compact layer at the surface. soon a straight line appears upon this layer, which is called the _primitive trace_. this delicate line becomes the basis for the spinal column; and upon and about it the whole individual is developed by an intricate process of folding, dividing, and reduplication of the layer of cells. one end of the line becomes the head, and the other becomes the tail. even man has a caudal appendage at an early stage of his existence. after a further lapse of time, little excrescences, buds, or "pads," appear in the proper positions to represent the arms and legs. after further development the ends split up into fingers and toes, and by the continued development of the parts, perfect arms and legs are formed. curious relation to lower animals.--it is a very remarkable fact that in the lower animals we have numerous examples in which the permanent condition of the individual is the same as some one of the stages through which man passes in the process of development. the same author previously quoted makes the following interesting statements:-- "the webbed feet of the seal and ornithorhynchus typify the period when the hands and feet of the human embryo are as yet only partly subdivided into fingers and toes. indeed, it is not uncommon for the 'web' to persist to some extent between the toes of adults; and occasionally children are born with two or more fingers or toes united to their tips. "with the seal and the walrus, the limbs are protruded but little beyond the wrist and ankle. with the ordinary quadrupeds, the knee and elbow are visible. the cats, the lemurs, and the monkeys form a series in which the limbs are successively freed from the trunk, and in the highest apes they are capable of nearly the same movements as the human arm and leg, which, in their development, passed through all these stages." simplicity of early structures.--the first structures formed are exceedingly simple in form. it is only by slow degrees that the great complicity which characterizes many organs is finally attained. for example, the heart is at first only a straight tube. by enlargement and the formation of longitudinal and transverse partitions, the fully developed organ is finally produced. the stomach and intestines are also at first but a simple straight tube. the stomach and large intestine are formed by dilatation; and by a growth of the tube in length while the ends are confined, the small intestines are formed. the other internal organs are successively developed by similar processes. the stages of growth.--at first insignificant in size--a simple cell, the embryonic human being steadily increases in size, gradually approximating more and more closely to the human form, until, at the end of about nine calendar months or ten lunar months, the new individual is prepared to enter the world and begin a more independent course of life. the following condensation of a summary quoted by dr. austin flint, jr., will give an idea of the size of the developing being at different periods, and the rate of progress:-- at the end of the third week, the embryon is a little less than one-fourth of an inch in length. at the end of the seventh week, it is three-fourths of an inch long. the liver, lungs, and other internal organs are partially formed. at the eighth week, it is about one inch in length. it begins to look some like a human being, but it is impossible to determine the sex. at the third month, the embryon has attained the length of two to two and one-half inches. its weight is about one ounce. at the end of the fourth month, the embryon is called a fetus. it is from four to five inches long, and weighs five ounces. at the fifth month, the fetus is nearly a foot long, and weighs about half a pound. at the sixth month, the average length of the fetus is about thirteen inches, and its weight one and a half to two pounds. if born, life could continue a few minutes. at the seventh month, the fetus is from fourteen to fifteen inches long, and weighs two to three pounds. it is now viable (may live if born). at the eighth month, the length of the fetus is from fifteen to sixteen inches, and its weight from three to four pounds. at the ninth month, the fetus is about seventeen inches long, and weighs from five to six pounds. at birth, the infant weighs a little more than seven pounds, the usual range being from four to ten pounds, though these limits are sometimes exceeded. duration of gestation.--the length of time required for the development of a human being is usually reckoned as about forty weeks. a more precise statement places it at about two hundred and seventy-eight days. this limit is often varied from. cases have occurred in which a much longer time has been required, and numberless cases have occurred in which human beings have been born several weeks before the expiration of the usual time, as stated. there is some uncertainty respecting the exact length of the period of gestation, which grows out of the difficulty of determining, in many cases, the exact time when conception takes place. uterine life.--the uterine life of the new individual begins with the impregnation of the ovum, which occurs the instant it is brought in contact with the zoosperms of the male. while in the uterus, the young life is supported wholly by the mother. she is obliged to provide not only for her own sustenance, but for the maintenance of her child. and she must not only eat for it, but breathe for it as well, since it requires a constant and adequate supply of oxygen before birth as much as afterward. how the unborn infant breathes.--oxygen and nutriment are both supplied to it through the medium of an organ called the _placenta_, which is a spongy growth composed almost entirely of blood-vessels, and is developed upon the inner wall of the uterus, at the point at which the ovum attaches itself after fecundation. the growing fetus is connected with this vascular organ by means of a sort of cable, called the _umbilical cord_. the cord is almost entirely composed of blood-vessels which convey the blood of the fetus to the placenta and return it again. the fetal blood does not mix with that of the mother, but receives oxygen and nourishment from it by absorption through the thin walls which alone separate it from the mother's blood. the umbilical cord contains no nerves, as there is no nervous connection between the mother and the child. the only way in which the child can be influenced by the mother is through the medium of the blood, to changes in which it is very susceptible, as we shall see more clearly hereafter. the cord is attached to the body of the child at the point called the _navel_, being cut off at birth by the _accoucheur_. with the placenta, it is expelled soon after the birth of the child, and constitutes the shapeless mass familiarly known as the _after-birth_, by the retention of which the most serious trouble is occasionally caused. parturition.--at the end of the period of development, the young being is forcibly expelled from the laboratory of nature in which it has been formed. in other words, it is born; and this process is termed _parturition_. though, at first thought, such an act would seem an utter impossibility, yet it is a very admirable illustration of nature's adaptation of means to ends. during the months of gestation, while the uterus has been enlarging to accommodate its daily increasing contents, the generative passages have also been increasing in size and becoming soft and distensible, so that a seeming impossibility is in due time accomplished without physical damage, though possibly not without intense suffering. however, it is a most gratifying fact that modern medical science may do much to mitigate the pains of childbirth. it is possible, by a proper course of preparation for the expected event, to greatly lessen the suffering usually undergone; and some ladies assert that they have thus avoided real pain altogether. although the curse pronounced upon the feminine part of the race, in consequence of the sin of eve, implies suffering in the parturient act, yet there is no doubt that the greater share of the daughters of eve are, through the perverting and degenerating influences of wrong habits and especially of modern civilization, compelled to suffer many times more than their maternal ancestor. we have sufficient evidence of this in the fact that among barbarian women, who are generally less perverted physically than civilized women, childbirth is regarded with very little apprehension, since it occasions little pain or inconvenience. the same is true of many women among the lower laboring classes. in short, while it is true that more or less suffering must always accompany the parturient act, yet the excessive pain usually attendant upon the process is the result of causes which can in many cases be removed by proper management beforehand and at the time of confinement. after being relieved of its contents, the uterus and other organs rapidly return to nearly their original size. changes in the child at birth.--in the system of the child a wonderful change occurs at the moment of its expulsion into the outer world. for the first time, its lungs are filled with air. for the first time they receive the full tide of blood. the whole course of the circulation is changed, and an entirely new process begins. it is surprising in how short a space of time changes so marvelous can be wrought. nursing.--the process of development is not fully complete at birth. the young life is not yet prepared to support itself; hence, still further provision is necessary for it. it requires prepared food suited to its condition. this is provided by the _mammae_, or breasts, of the female, which are glands for secreting milk. the fully developed gland is peculiar to the female; but a few instances have been known in which it has been sufficiently developed to become functionally active in men, as well as in young girls, though it is usually inactive even in women until near the close of gestation. it is a curious fact that the breasts of a new-born child occasionally contain milk. the first product of the mammae is not the proper milk secretion, but is a yellowish fluid called _colostrum _. the true milk secretion begins two or three days after delivery. the lacteal secretion is influenced in a very remarkable manner by the mental conditions of the mother. by sudden emotions of grief or anger, it has been known to undergo such changes as to produce in the child a fit of indigestion, vomiting, diarrhea, and even convulsions and death. any medicine taken by the mother finds its way into the milk, and often affects the delicate system of the infant more than herself. this fact should be a warning to those nursing mothers who use stimulants. cases are not uncommon in which delicate infants are kept in a state of intoxication for weeks by the use of alcoholic drinks by the mother. the popular notion that lager-beer, ale, wine, or alcohol in any other form, is in any degree necessary or beneficial to a nursing woman is a great error which cannot be too often noticed and condemned. not only is the mother injured, instead of being benefited by such a practice, but great injury, sometimes life-long in its consequences, is inflicted upon the babe at her breast who takes the intoxicating poison at second hand, and is influenced in a fourfold degree from its feebleness and great susceptibility. anatomy of the reproductive organs. having now considered the functions and somewhat of the structures of the principal organs of reproduction, we may obtain a more definite idea of the relation of the several organs of each class by a connected review of the anatomy of the parts. male organs.--as previously stated, the external organs of generation in the male are the _penis_ and the _testicles_, the latter being contained in a pouch called the _scrotum_. the penis is the organ of urination as well as copulation. its structure is cellular, and it contains a vast number of minute coils of blood-vessels which become turgid with blood under the influence of sexual excitement, producing distention and erection of the organ. a canal passes through its entire length, called the _urethra_, which conveys both the urine and the seminal fluid. the organ is protected by a loose covering of integument which folds over the end. this fold is called the _foreskin_ or _prepuce_. the fluid formed by each testicle is conveyed by the _vas deferens_, a curved tube about two feet in length, to the base of the bladder. here the vas deferens joins with another duct which communicates with an elongated pouch, the _vesicula seminalis_, which lies close upon the under side of the bladder. the single tube thus formed, the _ejaculatory duct_, conveys the seminal fluid to the urethra, from which it is discharged. as the production of seminal fluid is more or less constant in man and some animals, while its discharge is intermittent, the vesiculae seminales serve as reservoirs for the fluid, preserving it until required, or allowing it to undergo absorption. some claim that the zoosperms are matured in these organs. they always contain seminal fluid after the age of puberty. during coition, their contents are forcibly expelled by a spasmodic contraction of the muscles which surround them and the ducts leading from them. the prostate gland.--surrounding the ejaculatory ducts and their openings into the urethra at the base of the bladder is the _prostate gland_, which produces a peculiar secretion which forms a considerable portion of the seminal fluid, being mingled with the secretion of the testes during its ejaculation. this gland sometimes becomes the seat of somewhat serious disease. in old age it usually becomes somewhat indurated, and often to such an extent as to seriously affect the health and comfort of the individual by interference with urination and by occasioning pain. anterior to this organ, in the urethra, is a curious little pouch, the _utriculus_, which corresponds to the vagina and uterus in the female. just in front of the prostate gland are two small bodies known as cowper's glands. they secrete a fluid which combines with the seminal secretion. female organs.--the _ovaries_, _uterus_, or _womb_, _fallopian tubes_, and _vagina_ have already been described in part. the external organs of the female are included in the term _vulva_ or _pudenda_. the most superficial parts are the _labia_, two thick folds of integument. just within these are two thinner folds, the _labia minora_ or _nymphae_. these, together with the _clitoris_, situated just above, are extremely sensitive organs, being the chief seat of sexual sense in the female. at the lower part is the opening to the vagina, which in the virgin is usually partially guarded by a thin membrane, the _hymen_. this is not always a reliable test of virginity, however, as commonly regarded, since it may be destroyed by disease or accident, and may exist even after the occurrence of pregnancy. the vagina extends from the vulva to the lower end of the uterus, which it incloses, passing between the bladder and the rectum. the lower extremity of the uterus presents a small opening which leads into its interior. upon either side, at its upper and larger end, is a minute opening, the mouth of the fallopian tube. the latter organs extend from the uterus outward nearly to the ovaries, toward which they present a number of small filaments, one of which is in contact with each ovary. these filaments, together with the interior of the tubes, are covered with a peculiar kind of cells, upon which are minute cilia, or hairs, in constant motion. very curiously, they all move in the same direction, toward the cavity of the uterus. when an ovum escapes from the ovary in connection with menstruation, it is by these delicate hairs propelled along a filament of tissue to the fallopian tube, and thence by the same means is conveyed to the uterus. it may come in contact with the zoosperms at any point between the ovary and the lower orifice of the uterus, and thus undergo fecundation. puberty.--for a certain period after birth, the sexual organs remain in a partially developed condition. this period varies in duration with different animals; in some cases being very brief, in others, comprising several years. upon the attainment of a certain age, the individual becomes sexually perfect, and is then capable of the generative act. this period is called puberty. in man, puberty commonly occurs between the ages of ten and fifteen years, varying considerably in different climates. in this country, and in other countries of about the same latitude, puberty usually occurs at the age of fourteen or fourteen and one-half years in females, and a few months later in males. in cooler climates, as in norway and siberia, the change is delayed to the age of eighteen or nineteen years. in tropical climates it is hastened, occurring as early as nine or ten years. in warm climates it is no uncommon thing for a girl to be a mother at twelve; and it is stated that one of the wives of mahomet was a mother at ten. other causes besides climate tend to hasten the occurrence of this change, as habits, temperament, constitutional tendency, education, and idiosyncrasy. habits of vigorous physical exercise tend to delay the access of puberty. for this reason, together with others, country boys and girls generally mature later than those living in the city by several months, and even a year or two. anything that tends to excite the emotions hastens puberty. the excitements of city life, parties, balls, theaters, even the competition of students in school, and the various causes of excitement to the nervous system which occur in city life, have a tendency to hasten the occurrence of the change which awakens the sexual activities of the system into life. hence, these influences cannot but be considered prejudicial to the best interests of the individual, mentally, morally, and physically, since it is in every way desirable that a change which arouses the passions and gives to them greater intensity should be delayed rather than hastened. influence of diet on puberty.--the dietary has a not unimportant influence in this respect. stimulating food, such as pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, and condiments generally, together with tea and coffee, and an excess of animal food, have a clearly appreciable influence in inducing the premature occurrence of puberty. on this account, if on no other, should these articles be prohibited to children and youth, or used very sparingly. those who advocate the large use of meat by children and youth have not studied this matter closely in all its bearings. while it is true that children and growing youth require an abundance of the nitrogenous elements of food which are found abundantly in beefsteak, mutton, fish, and other varieties of animal food, it is also true that in taking those articles of food they take along with the nutrient elements properties of a stimulating character, which exert a decidedly detrimental influence upon the susceptible systems of children and youth. at the same time, it is possible to obtain the same desirable nitrogenous elements in oatmeal, unbolted wheat flour, peas, beans, and other vegetable productions, which are wholly free from injurious properties. we are positive from numerous observations on this subject, that a cool, unstimulating, vegetable or farinaceous diet would deter the development of the sexual organism for several months, and perhaps for a year or two. while it might not be in all cases desirable to do this, it would at least be wise to adopt such measures in cases in which the child is unavoidably exposed to influences which have a tendency to hasten the change. it is important to add in this connection a word of caution against the adoption of a dietary too abstemious in character. it is necessary that an abundance of good, wholesome food, rich in the elements of nutrition, should be taken regularly. there is no doubt that many young ladies have induced conditions of serious disease by actual starvation of the system. a young woman who attempts to live on strong tea or coffee, fine-flour bread, and sweet cake, is as certainly starving herself as though she were purposely attempting to commit suicide by means of starvation, and with as much certainty of the same result. brunettes naturally precocious.--it has been observed that in girls the occurrence of puberty is earlier in brunettes than in blondes; and in general it makes its appearance earlier in persons of a nervous or nervo-bilious temperament than in persons of a lymphatic temperament or phlegmatic nature. certain nationalities and families are marked by the earlier occurrence of puberty than in others. in jews, the change is commonly a year or two in advance of other nationalities in this country. it also occurs somewhat sooner in negroes and creoles than in white persons, the african race seeming to retain something of the precocity occasioned by the tropical influence of its native clime. remarkable precocity.--cases occasionally occur in which puberty makes its appearance at the age of three or four years. indeed, a case has been reported in this country in which a female child possessed all the characteristics which are usually developed at puberty, from birth. in this case the regular periodical changes began at birth. premature development occasions early decay.--a fact which is of too great importance to allow to pass unnoticed, is that whatever occasions early or premature sexual development, also occasions premature decay. females in whom puberty occurs at the age of ten or twelve, by the time their age is doubled, are shriveled and wrinkled with age. at the time when they should be in their prime of health and beauty, they are prematurely old and broken. those women who mature late retain their beauty and their strength many years after their precocious sisters have become old, decrepit, and broken down. thus, the matrons of thirty and forty years in colder climates are much more attractive in appearance than the maidens of sixteen; while quite the reverse is true in this and other countries where sexual development is unduly hastened. early puberty a cause for anxiety.--the unnaturally early appearance of puberty is a just cause for apprehension, since it usually indicates an inherent weakness of the constitution. when there are reasons for fearing its occurrence, active measures should be taken to occasion delay if possible. we call especial attention to this point, since there are many who erroneously suppose the early occurrence of puberty to be a sign of superior vigor. changes which occur at puberty.--the changes which occur in the two sexes at this period have been thus described:-- "in both sexes, hair grows on the skin covering the _symphysis pubis_, around the sexual organs, and in the axillae (armpits). in man, the chest and shoulders broaden, the larynx enlarges, and the voice becomes lower in pitch from the elongation of the vocal cords; hair grows upon the chin, upper lip, and cheeks, and often exists upon the general surface of the body more abundantly than in woman." the sexual organs undergo enlargement, and are more frequently excited. the testicles first begin the secretion of the seminal fluid. "in woman, the pelvis and abdomen enlarge, but the whole frame remains more slender, the muscles and joints less prominent, the limbs more rounded and tapering [than in the male]. locally, both external and internal organs undergo a considerable and rapid enlargement. the mammae enlarge, the ovarian vesicles become dilated, and there is established a periodical discharge of one or more ova, accompanied, in most cases, by a sanguineous fluid from the cavity of the uterus." these changes, so varied and extraordinary, often occur within a very short space of time; and as they are liable to serious derangement, especially in the female, great care should be taken to secure for the individual the most favorable conditions until they are successfully effected. it is, however, a fact deserving of mention, that many of the ills which are developed at this particular period are quite as much the result of previous indiscretions and mismanagement as of any immediate cause. a few suggestions with regard to the proper treatment of individuals at this age may be in place. . do not allow the boy or girl to be overworked, either mentally or physically. great and important changes are occurring within the body, and nature should not be overtaxed. . keep the mind occupied. while excessive labor should be avoided, idleness should be as carefully shunned. some light, useful employment or harmless amusement--better some kind of work--should keep the mind fully occupied with wholesome subjects. . abundant exercise out-of-doors is essential for both sexes. sunshine and fresh air are as necessary to the development of a human being as for the expanding of a flower bud. . watch carefully the associations of the youth. this should be done at all times, but especially just at the critical period in question, when the general physical disturbances occurring in the system react upon the mind and make it peculiarly susceptible to influences, especially those of an evil character. . none too much care can be exercised at this important epoch of human life, provided it is properly applied; but nothing could be more disastrous in its consequences than a weak solicitude which panders to every whim and gratifies every perverted appetite. _such_ care is a fatal error. menstruation.--the functional changes which occur in the female are much more marked than those of the male. as already intimated, the periodical development and discharge of an ovum by the female, which occurs after puberty, is accompanied by the discharge of a bloody fluid, which is known as the _flowers_, _menses_, or _catamenia_. the accompanying symptoms together are termed the process of _menstruation_, or _being unwell_. this usually occurs, in the human female, once in about four weeks. in special cases, the interval may be a week less or a week longer; or the variation may be even greater. dalton describes the process as follows:-- "when the expected period is about to come on, the female is affected by a certain degree of discomfort and lassitude, a sense of weight in the pelvis, and more or less disinclination to society. these symptoms are in some cases slightly pronounced, in others more troublesome. an unusual discharge of vaginal mucus then begins to take place, which soon becomes yellowish or rusty brown in color, from the admixture of a certain proportion of blood; and by the second or third day, the discharge has the appearance of nearly pure blood. the unpleasant sensations which were at first manifest, then usually subside; and the discharge, after continuing for a certain period, begins to grow more scanty. its color changes from a pure red to a brownish or rusty tinge, until it finally disappears altogether, and the female returns to her ordinary condition." the menstrual function continues active from puberty to about the forty-fifth year, or during the period of fertility. when it finally disappears, the woman is no longer capable of bearing children. the time of disappearance is termed the "change of life," or _menopause_. exceptional cases occur in which this period is greatly hastened, arriving as early as the thirty-fifth year, or even earlier. instances have also been observed in which menstruation continued as late as the sixtieth year, and even later; but such cases are very rare; and if procreation occurs, the progeny is feeble and senile. with rare exceptions, the function is suspended during pregnancy, and usually, also, during the period of nursing. nature of menstruation.--there has been a great amount of speculation concerning the cause and nature of the menstrual process. no entirely satisfactory conclusions have been reached, however, except that it is usually accompanied by the maturation and expulsion from the ovary of an ovum, which is termed ovulation. but menstruation may occur without ovulation, and, _vice versa_. menstruation is not peculiar to the human female, being represented in the higher animals by what is familiarly termed the "rut." this is not usually a bloody discharge, however, as in the human female, though such a discharge has been observed in the monkey. it has been quite satisfactorily settled that the discharge of the ovum from the ovary generally takes place about the time of the cessation of the flow. immediately after the discharge, the sexual desires of the female are more intense than at other times. this fact is particularly manifest in lower animals. the following remark by prof. dalton is especially significant to those who care to appreciate its bearing:-- "it is a remarkable fact, in this connection, that the female of these [domestic] animals will allow the approaches of the male only during and immediately after the oestrual period [rut]; that is, just when the egg is recently discharged, and ready for impregnation. at other times, when sexual intercourse would be necessarily fruitless, the instinct of the animal leads her to avoid it; and the concourse of the sexes is accordingly made to correspond in time with the maturity of the egg and its aptitude for fecundation." the amount of fluid lost during the menstrual flow varies greatly with different individuals. it is estimated at from three ounces to half a pint. in cases of deranged function, it may be much greater than this. it is not all blood, however, a considerable portion being mucus. it is rather difficult to understand why the discharge of so considerable a quantity of blood is required. there is no benefit derived from a very copious discharge, as some suppose. facts seem to indicate that in general those enjoy the best health who lose but small quantities of blood in this manner. a critical period.--as the first occurrence of menstruation is a very critical period in the life of a female, and as each recurrence of the function renders her especially susceptible to morbid influences, and liable to serious derangements, a few hints respecting the proper care of an individual at these periods may be acceptable. important hints.-- . avoid taking cold. to do this, it is necessary to avoid exposure; not that a person must be constantly confined in a warm room, for such a course would be the surest way in which to increase the susceptibility to cold. nothing will disturb the menstrual process more quickly than a sudden chilling of the body when in a state of perspiration, or after confinement in a warm room, by exposure, without sufficient protection, to cold air. a daily bath and daily exercise in the open air are the best known means of preventing colds. . intense mental excitement, as well as severe physical labor, is to be sedulously avoided during this period. at the time of its first occurrence, special care should be observed in this direction. intense study, a fit of anger, sudden grief, or even great merriment, will sometimes arrest the process prematurely. the feeling of _malaise_ which usually accompanies the discharge is by nature intended as a warning that rest and quiet are required; and the hint should be followed. every endeavor should be made to keep the individual comfortable, calm, and cheerful. feelings of apprehension arising from a continual watching of symptoms are very depressing, and should be avoided by occupying the mind in some agreeable manner not demanding severe effort, either mental or physical. there is no doubt that many young women have permanently injured their constitutions while at school by excessive mental taxation during the catamenial period, to which they were prompted by ambition to excel, or were compelled by the "cramming" system too generally pursued in our schools, and particularly in young ladies' seminaries. it is not to be supposed, however, that the moderate amount of sound study required by a correct system of teaching would be injurious to a healthy young woman at any time, and we have no doubt that a very large share of the injury which has been attributed to over-study during the catamenia has been induced by other causes, such as improper dress, exposure to taking cold, keeping late hours, and improper diet. if there is any class of persons deserving of pity it is that large class of girls and young women who are in every large city employed as clerks, seamstresses, flower makers, and in other taxing and confining occupations. in order to keep their situations they are required to be on hand daily, being allowed no opportunity for rest at the menstrual period. in many cases, too, they are compelled to remain upon their feet all day behind a counter, or at a work table, even at periods when a recumbent position is actually demanded by nature. there should be less delicacy in relation to this subject on the part of young women, and more consideration on the part of employers. here is a field for philanthropic effort which is well worthy of the best efforts of any person of influence who will engage in it. custom of indian women.--the ease with which indian women perform the parturient act is proverbial. they suffer scarcely at all from the pains of childbirth; and without doubt one reason of this is the preservation of their sexual health by rest during the menstrual period. at those seasons they invariably absent themselves from the lodge, and enjoy absolute rest. we may readily suppose, from the nature of some of the mosaic laws, that a custom somewhat similar prevailed among the ancient hebrew women. if the hardy women of the forest are benefited by rest, certainly our more delicate females may be thus benefited. all need a degree of rest; with some it should be absolute. the reckless manner in which some young women treat themselves at the menstrual period, is quite appalling to one who is acquainted with the painful and inveterate character of the evils which arise from such abuse. it is no uncommon thing for young ladies to attend balls, visit skating rinks, and otherwise expose themselves to the influences in every way the best calculated to do them the most harm at this particular period, observing not the slightest precaution. such recklessness is really criminal; and the sad consequences of physical transgression are sure to follow. a young lady who allows herself to get wet or chilled, or gets the feet wet, just prior to or during menstruation, runs the risk of imposing upon herself life-long injury. mothers should look carefully after their daughters at these periods, and impress upon them the importance of special care. . a third hint, which is applicable to both sexes and at all times, is the necessity of attending promptly to the demands of nature for relief of the bowels and bladder. school-girls are often very negligent in this respect; and we have seen the most distressing cases of disease which were entirely attributable to this disregard of the promptings of nature. obstinate constipation and chronic irritation of the bladder are common effects. when constipation results, purgatives in the shape of pills, salts, or "pleasant purgative pellets," are resorted to with the certain result of producing only temporary relief, and permanent damage. to escape these evil consequences, do this: . establish a regular habit of relieving the bowels daily at a certain hour; . discard laxative and cathartic drugs of every kind; . to aid in securing a regular movement of the bowels, make a liberal use of oatmeal, wheat-meal, fruit, and vegetables, avoiding fine-flour bread, sweetmeats, and condiments; . take daily exercise, as much as possible short of fatigue; if necessarily confined indoors, counteract the constipating influence of sedentary habits by kneading and percussing the bowels with the hands several minutes each day; . never resist the calls of nature a single moment, if possible to avoid it. in this case, as in numerous others, "delay is dangerous." ladies who desire a sweet breath--and what lady does not--should remember that retained feces are one of the most frequent causes of foul breath. the foul odors which ought to pass out through the bowels find their way into the blood and escape at the lungs. a medical man whose sense of smell is delicate soon learns to know a constipated person by the breath. as one says, "what is more offensive than the breath of a costive child?" boerhaave, a famous old dutch physician, left to his heirs an elegantly bound volume in which, he claimed, were written all the secrets of the science of physic. after his death, the wonderful book was opened, when it was found to contain only the following sentence:-- "keep the head cool, the feet warm, and the bowels open." an old scotch physician once gave the following advice to sir astley cooper for the preservation of health:-- "keep in the fear of the lord, and your bowels open." . perhaps nothing tends more directly to the production of menstrual derangements--as well as uterine diseases of every sort--than fashionable modes of dress. we have not space here to give to the subject the attention it deserves; it will be found treated of in works devoted to the subject of dress exclusively. some of the most glaring evils are,-- ( ) unequal distribution of clothing. the trunk, especially the abdomen and pelvis, is covered with numerous layers of clothing, an extra amount being caused by the overlapping of the upper and lower garments. very frequently, the amount of clothing upon these, the most vital parts, is excessive. at the same time, the limbs are sometimes almost in a state of nudity. a single cotton garment, or at most one of thin flannel, is the only protection afforded to the limbs beneath the skirts, which often serve no better purpose than to collect cold air and retain it in contact with the limbs. a thin stocking is the only protection for the ankles, and a thin shoe is the only additional covering afforded the feet. under such circumstances, it is no wonder that a woman catches cold if she only steps out-of-doors on a chilly or damp day. ( ) another glaring fault is in the manner of suspending the skirts. instead of being fastened to a waist or suspended so as to give them support from the shoulders, they are hung upon the hips, being drawn tight at the waist to secure support. by this means, the organs of the pelvis are pressed down out of place. the uterus becomes congested, and painful menstrual derangements ensue. ( ) tight lacing, or compressing the waist with a corset, is a barbarous practice which produces the same results as the one last mentioned. reform in all of these particulars is an imperative necessity for every woman who desires to secure or retain sexual health. it is of the greatest importance that careful attention should be given to the proper establishment of the menstrual function at the outset of a woman's life of sexual activity. the first two years will be quite likely to have a deciding influence respecting her health during her whole future life. if a woman can get through the first two years after puberty without acquiring any serious uterine or ovarian disease, she will stand a good chance of enjoying a good degree of sexual health during the balance of her life. the foundation of a great share of the many thousands of cases of uterine disease is laid during this period. at this early period the daughter is usually too young to appreciate the importance of observing slight deviations from the standard of health, even if she were able to recognize them. hence it is a duty which no mother should neglect, to inquire into the exact frequency of the periods, the amount and character of the discharge, and other points necessary to ascertain whether or not there is any deviation from the natural condition of health. if there is pain, it is a certain evidence of something seriously wrong. if there is irregularity in any particular, it is a matter well deserving of serious attention. menorrhagia.--this condition is that in which there is a too profuse discharge of blood. the system is weakened by the loss, and, so much so, in many cases, that the individual does not recover her accustomed strength before the occurrence of the next period, when she becomes weakened still more. by a continuance of this periodical loss, the person may be reduced to a state of almost utter helplessness. a deathly pallor of the countenance, extreme emaciation, loss of strength, and general debility mark the effects of the constant drain upon the system. thousands of young women continue to suffer in this way year after year, until their constitutions are almost hopelessly wrecked, being deterred by false notions of modesty or delicacy from consulting a proper medical adviser and finding relief. the observance of a few simple precautions, and the application of proper remedies, will check the unnatural loss in most of these cases very promptly. in the first place, absolute rest, chiefly in a supine position, must be observed not only during the menstrual period, but for a few days previous to its commencement. if this does not restrain the flow, then cool and even cold compresses may be applied to the lower part of the abdomen and to the small of the back. in severe cases no harm will come from the use of an ice-compress, made by inclosing pounded ice between the folds of a towel. great care must be taken to make the hands, arms, feet, and limbs thoroughly warm by the application of warm bottles and woolen blankets. these measures will scarcely fail to accomplish the desired end, if employed thoroughly and judiciously. it may be well to add just here that the popular fear of using cold in such cases is groundless. no harm can come so long as the extremities are kept warm, and the circulation well balanced. the patient must not be made chilly, however. it is also of importance that the patient be kept mentally quiet as well as physically so. much good will result from these simple measures at the time of the period; but a radical cure can only be effected by removing the cause of the difficulty. the patient's general health must be improved, and local congestion must be removed. this will be accomplished by attention to general hygiene, gentle exercise out-of-doors between the periods, abundance of good food, tonic baths and other necessary treatment if there is derangement of the digestive organs, and daily hip baths with a local douche. the hip bath should be taken in water of a temperature of degrees at the beginning. after five minutes the temperature may be lowered degrees. after five minutes more, it may be lowered a few degrees more. by taking a warm foot bath at degrees or degrees at the same time, quite a cool bath may be endured without chilling. the bath should be continued minutes to minutes, according to the strength of the patient. a shorter bath than this will do little good, as the sedative effect will not be obtained. the douche may be taken at the same time with the bath, or before, as is most convenient. the fountain or syphon syringe should be employed, and the water used should range from degrees to degrees, as best suits the sensations of the patient, being cooled a little toward the last. in general, the hot douche, of a temperature from degrees to degrees, or even degrees, is not only more agreeable, but much more beneficial. by these simple remedies alone we have successfully treated scores of cases of this sort. in some cases other remedies may be required, and in nearly all, accessory remedies can be employed to advantage; but the measures described are the main features of the most successful mode of treatment. dysmenorrhoea.--this condition is that in which there is more or less pain and difficulty in connection with the menstrual process. the causes are various, as congestion of the uterus, malformation, and displacement or distortion of the organ. some of these conditions require the attention of a skilled physician to remedy; but all will be palliated more or less by a course of treatment similar to that described for the previous condition. a warm sitz or hip bath just at the beginning of the period will often give almost magical relief. the application of fomentations over the lower part of the abdomen, and the corresponding portion of the spine, or of hot bags, bottles, etc., in the same localities, is a measure of great utility. the patient should be covered warm in bed, should keep quiet, and great care should be used to keep the extremities well warmed. the use of electricity is a very valuable aid in numerous cases, but this requires the services of a physician, who should always be employed in severe cases when within reach. in many cases of this form of disease the suffering is so great that the constant dread of its periodical repetition becomes a source of great unhappiness, and casts a gloom over the life of an individual who would otherwise be as happy as could be desired. amenorrhoea and chlorosis.--these are serious disorders which require prompt and vigorous attention. they depend less frequently on disorder of the sexual organs themselves than upon some disorder of the general system. they usually demand the attention of a competent physician, and require a more accurate description of their nature and of proper modes of treatment than we have space to give here. hysteria.--from the most remote ages of medical history this disease has been regarded as intimately connected with morbid states of the female organs of generation, especially the uterus. that it is not exclusively produced by causes of this kind is evidenced by the fact that men also sometimes suffer from this curious malady. the phases which it assumes are so numerous that we shall not attempt an accurate description of it; neither is this required, as there are few who are not familiar with its peculiar manifestations. it simulates almost every disease. even consumption and other formidable maladies have been so completely simulated by this disorder as to deceive physicians of long experience. we have met cases in which young ladies were supposed to be in the last stages of pulmonary disease, were apparently gasping almost their last breath, panting, coughing, and experiencing the usual symptoms which accompany tuberculous disease of the lungs, when, upon making a thorough physical examination of the chest, we could find no evidence of pulmonary disease. in one case we incurred the everlasting displeasure of a young lady by disclosing the real state of affairs; but we were repaid in seeing an immediate disappearance of the symptoms, and complete recovery within six weeks, although the young woman had been considered hopelessly ill by her friends and physicians for six months, and was tenderly watched over, petted, and mourned by friends as one who must soon fall a victim to fell disease. the foundation of this disease is almost always laid in some indiscretion by means of which disease of the uterus is induced, and the most careful attention to this part of the organism is required. it should not be treated as a trivial matter which is wholly the result of a diseased imagination, and requires only mental treatment, since it is a real malady, dependent upon morbid states of the system. it requires substantial and thorough treatment as much as rheumatism, dyspepsia, or any other of the numerous diseases to which humanity is subject. prevention better than cure.--we might mention numerous other diseased conditions which grow out of inattention to the laws of health relating to the sexual organism; but to dwell longer upon this part of the subject would be to depart from the plan of this work, and we must forbear. this whole class of maladies is noted for obstinacy in great numbers of cases when the morbid conditions have existed for a long time. in addition it should be remarked that some of the most inveterate disorders of the nervous system originate in this same manner. the thousands of ladies who are suffering with spinal irritation, organic disease of the spine and other nervous disorders, are witnesses to this fact. it is apparent, then, that prevention of these serious maladies by attention to sexual hygiene, especially to the hygiene of menstruation at the first establishment of that function, is a matter of gravest importance. in fact, attention to hygiene is about all that is required. with this, drugs will be rarely required; without, they will be utterly useless. extra-uterine pregnancy.--sometimes the ovum becomes fecundated before reaching the uterus, and, instead of passing onward into that organ as usual, remains in its position in the fallopian tube or even on the surface of the ovary. occasionally an ovum falls into the cavity of the abdomen instead of passing into the tube. even in this situation it may be fecundated. impregnated ova thus left in abnormal positions, undergo a greater or lesser degree of development. they commonly result in the death of the mother. twins.--the human female usually matures but one ovum at each menstrual period, the two ovaries acting alternately. occasionally two ova are matured at once. if fecundation occurs, the result will be a development of two embryos at the same time. in rare cases, three or even four ova are matured at once, and by fecundation produce a corresponding number of embryos. as many as five children have been born alive at one birth, but have not lived more than a few minutes. the occurrence of multiple pregnancies may be explained by the supposition that ova matured subsequent to the first fecundation are also fecundated. in lower animals, the uterus is often divided into two long segments which afford room for the development of a number of young at once. some ancient writers make most absurd statements with regard to the fecundity of females. one declares that the simultaneous birth of seven or eight infants by the same mother was an ordinary occurrence with egyptian women! other statements still more extravagant are made by writers. for example: a traveler in the seventeenth century wrote that he saw, in the year , in a church near the hague, a tablet on which was an inscription stating that a certain noted countess gave birth at once, in the year , to infants, who were all baptized and christened, the males being all called john, and the females, elizabeth. they all died on the day of their birth, with their mother, according to the account, and were buried in the church, where a tablet was erected to their memory. monsters.--defects and abnormalities in the development of the embryon produce all degrees of deviation from the typical human form. excessive development may result in an extra finger or toe, or in the production of some peculiar excrescence. deficiency of development may produce all degrees of abnormality from the simple harelip to the most frightful deficiency, as the absence of a limb, or even of a head. it is in this manner that those unfortunate individuals known as hermaphrodites are formed. an excessive development of some parts of the female generative organs gives them a great degree of similarity to the external organs of the male. a deficient development of the male organs renders them very similar in form to those of the female. redundant development of the sexual organism sometimes results in the development of both kinds of organs in the same individual in a state more or less complete. cases have occurred in which it has become necessary, for legal purposes, to decide respecting the sex of an individual suffering from defective development, and it has sometimes been exceedingly difficult to decide in a given case whether the individual was male or female. such curious cases as the carolina twins and chang and eng were formerly supposed to be the result of the union of two separate individuals. it is now believed that they are developed from a single ovum. it has been observed that the primitive trace--described in a previous section--sometimes undergoes partial division longitudinally. if it splits a little at the anterior end, the individual will have a single body with two heads. if a partial division occurs at each end, the resulting being will possess two heads and two pairs of legs joined to a single body. more complete division produces a single trunk with two heads, two pairs of arms, and two pairs of legs, as in the case of the carolina twins. still more complete division may result in the formation of two perfect individuals almost entirely independent of each other, physiologically, but united by a narrow band, as in the remarkable siamese twins, chang and eng. in a curious case reported not a great while ago, a partially developed infant was amputated from the cheek of a child some time after birth. the precise cause of these strange modifications of development is as yet, in great degree, a mystery. hybrids.--it is a well-known law of biology that no progeny result from union of animals of different species. different varieties of the same species may in some cases form a fertile union, the result of which is a cross between its two parents, possessing some of the qualities of each. the mule is the product of such a union between the horse and the ass. a curious fact is that the offspring of such unions are themselves sterile almost without exception. the reason of this is that they do not produce mature elements of generation. in the mule, the zoosperms are either entirely absent or else very imperfectly developed; hence the fact that a colt having a mule for its sire is one of the rarest of curiosities, though a few instances have been reported. this is a wise law of nature to preserve the purity of species. law of sex.--if there is a law by which the sex of the developing embryon is determined, it probably has not yet been discovered. the influence of the will, the predominant vitality of one or the other of the parents, and the period at which conception occurs, have all been supposed to be the determining cause. a german physician some time since advanced the theory that the two testicles and ovaries produce elements of different sexual character, the right testicle forming zoosperms capable of producing only males, and the right ovary producing ova with the same peculiarity. the left testis and the left ovary he supposed to form the female elements. he claimed to have proved his theory by experiments upon animals. even if true, this theory will not be made of practical importance. it is, in fact, nothing more than a revival of an old theory held by physicians who flourished more than two thousand years ago. more recently another german physician has advanced the theory that the sex may be controlled at will by observing the time of fecundation. he asserts that when fecundation occurs shortly after menstruation, the result will be a female; but if impregnation occurs later in the month, and prior to the three or four days preceding the next menstrual period, a male will almost certainly be produced. this theory was proposed by prof. thury of the academy of geneva, who claims to have thoroughly tested it in a great variety of ways, and always with an affirmative result. dr. heitzman, of new york, an instructor in pathological histology, and an eminent physiologist, informs us that he has thoroughly tested this theory, and finds it to be entirely reliable. there are numerous facts which seem to corroborate the truth of this theory, and future investigations may give to it the dignity of an established physiological fact. heredity.--the phenomena of heredity are among the most interesting of biological studies. it is a matter of common observation that a child looks like its parents. it even happens that a child resembles an uncle or a grandparent more nearly than either parent. the same peculiarities are often seen in animals. the cause of this resemblance of offspring to parents and ancestors has been made a subject of careful study by scientific men. we shall present the most recent theory adopted, which, although it be but a theory, presents such an array of facts in its support, and explains the phenomena in question so admirably, that it must be regarded as something more than a plausible hypothesis. it is the conception of one of the most distinguished scientists of the age. the theory is known as the doctrine of _pangenesis_, and is essentially as follows:-- it is a fact well known to physiologists that every part of the living body is made up of cellular elements which have the power to reproduce themselves in the individual, thus repairing the damage resulting from waste and injury. each cell produces cells like itself. it is further known that there are found in the body numerous central points of growth. in every group of cells is found a central cell from which the others originated, and which determines the form of their growth. every minute structure possesses such a center. a simple proof of this fact is found in the experiment in which the spur of a cock was grafted upon the ear of an ox. it lived in this novel situation eight years, attaining the length of nine inches, and nearly a pound in weight. a tooth has been made to grow upon the comb of a cock in a similar manner. the tail of a pig survived the operation of transplanting from its proper position to the back of the animal, and retained its sensibility. numerous other similar illustrations might be given. the doctrine of pangenesis supposes that these centers of nutrition form and throw off not only cells like themselves, but very minute granules, called gemmules, each of which is capable, under suitable circumstances, of developing into a cell like its parent. these minute granules are scattered through the system in great numbers. the essential organs of generation, the testicles in the male and the ovaries in the female, perform the task of collecting these gemmules and forming them into sets, each of which constitutes a reproductive element, and contains, in rudimentary form, a representative of every part of the individual, including the most minute peculiarities. even more than this: it is supposed that each ovum and each zoosperm contains not only the gemmules necessary to reproduce the individuals who produced them, but also a number of gemmules which have been transmitted from the individuals' ancestors. if this theory be true,--and we can see no sound objection to it,--it is easy to understand all the problems of heredity. the gemmules must be very small indeed, but it may be suggested that the molecules of matter are smaller still, so this fact is no objection to the theory. it will be seen, then, that each spermatozoon, or zoosperm, actually contains, in an embryonic condition, every organ and tissue of the individual producing it. the same is true of the ovum. in other words, the reproductive elements are complete representatives, in miniature, of the parents, and contain all the elements for producing an offspring possessing the same peculiarities as the parents. various modifying circumstances sufficiently explain the dissimilarities between parents and children. this theory is strikingly confirmed by the fact, previously mentioned, that in certain cases the ovum alone, a single reproductive element, may undergo a degree of development approaching very near to completion. it is supposed that fecundation is chiefly necessary to give to the gemmules the requisite amount of nourishment to insure development. as we shall see hereafter, this matter has a very important bearing upon several practical questions. ante-natal influences.--there can be no manner of doubt that many circumstances which it is entirely within the power of the parents to supply, exert a powerful influence in molding both the mental and the physical characteristics of offspring. by carefully availing himself of the controlling power given him by a knowledge of this fact, the stock-raiser is enabled to produce almost any required quality in his young animals. pigeon fanciers show wonderful skill in thus producing most curious modifications in birds. the laws of heredity and development are carefully studied and applied in the production of superior horses, cows, dogs, and pigeons; but an application of the same principles to the improvement of the human race is rarely thought of. human beings are generated in as haphazard and reckless a manner as weeds are sown by the wind. no account is taken of the possible influence which may be exerted upon the future destiny of the new being by the physical or mental condition of parents at the moment when the germ of life is planted, or by the mental and physical conditions and surroundings of the mother while the young life is developing. indeed, the assertion of a modern writer that the poor of our great cities virtually "spawn children," with as little thought of influences and consequences as the fish that sow their eggs broadcast upon the waters, is not so great an exaggeration as it might at first sight appear to be. law universal.--men and women are constantly prone to forget that the domain of law is universal. nothing comes by chance. the revolutions of the planets, studied by the aid of the telescope, and the gyrations of the atoms, seen only by the eye of science, are alike examples of the controlling influence of law. notwithstanding this sad ignorance and disregard of this vitally important subject, the effects of law are only too clearly manifested in the crowds of wretched human beings with which the world is thronged. an old writer sagely remarks, "it is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born;" nevertheless, it is the sad misfortune of by far the greater portion of humanity to be deprived of this inestimable "felicity." a source of crime.--who can tell how many of the liars, thieves, drunkards, murderers, and prostitutes of our day are less responsible for their crimes against themselves, against society, and against heaven, than those who were instrumental in bringing them into the world? almost every village has its boy "who was born drunk," a staggering, simpering, idiotic representative of a drunken father, beastly intoxicated at the very moment when he should have been most sober. an interesting study of this question has recently been made by mr. dugdale, a member of the prison association of the state of new york. when visiting the various jails of the state, he found in one six persons detained for crimes of various character, between all of whom there was a family relation. upon further inquiry, he found that of the same family there were twenty-nine relatives in the vicinity, seventeen of whom were criminals. still further investigation developed the following facts:-- within seventy-five years, a family of persons have sprung from five sisters, several of whom were illegitimate, and three of whom were known to be unchaste, and who married men whose father was an idle, thriftless hunter, a hard drinker, and licentious. of this family, the history of but was traced. of these, the facts set forth in the following incomplete summary were found to be true:-- paupers, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . years of pauperism, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . criminals, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . years of infamy, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thieves, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . murderers, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . prostitutes and adulteresses, . . . . . . . . . . . illegitimate children, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . no. of persons contaminated by syphilitic disease, . cost to the state in various ways, . . . . . $ , , without doubt a complete summary would make this showing still more appalling, since of the whose histories were traced, it was in many instances impossible to determine whether the individuals were guilty of crime or unchastity or not, even where there were grounds for suspicion. such cases were not included in the summary. no amount of argument on this question could be so conclusive as are these simple facts concerning the "juke" family. it is certainly high time that our legislators began to awaken to this subject, and consider whether it would be an unprofitable experiment to make some attempt to prevent the multiplication of criminals in this manner. we are not prepared to offer a plan for securing such an end; but it is very clearly important that something should be done in this direction. it is an established physiological fact that the character of offspring is influenced by the mental as well as the physical conditions of the parents at the moment of the performance of the generative act. in view of this fact, how many parents can regard the precocious--or even mature--manifestations of sexual depravity in their children without painful smitings of conscience at seeing the legitimate results of their own sensuality? by debasing the reproductive function to an act of selfish animal indulgence, they imprinted upon their children an almost irresistible tendency to vice. viewing the matter from this stand-point, what wonder that licentiousness is rife! that true chastity is among the rarest of virtues! prof. o. w. holmes remarks on this subject: "there are people who think that everything may be done if the doctor, be he educator or physician, be only called in season. no doubt; but _in season_ would often be a hundred or two years before the child was born, and people never send so early as that." "each of us is only the footing up of a double column of figures that goes back to the first pair. every unit tells, and some of them are _plus_ and some _minus_. if the columns don't add up right, it is commonly because we can't make out all of the figures." it cannot be doubted that the throngs of deaf, blind, crippled, idiotic unfortunates who were "born so," together with a still larger class of dwarfed, diseased, and constitutionally weak individuals, are the lamentable results of the violation of some sexual law on the part of their progenitors. if parents would stop a moment to consider the momentous responsibilities involved in the act of bringing into existence a human being; if they would reflect that the qualities imparted to the new being will affect its character to all eternity; if they would recall the fact that they are about to produce a mirror in which will be reflected their own characters divested of all the flimsy fabrics which deceive their fellow-men, revealing even the secret imaginings of their hearts,--there would surely be far less of sin, disease, and misery born into the world than at the preset day; but we dare not hope for such a reform. to effect it, would require such a revolution in the customs of society, such a radical reform in the habits and characters of individuals, as nothing short of a temporal millennium would be able to effect. it is quite probable that some writers have greatly exaggerated the possible results which may be attained by proper attention to the laws under consideration. all cannot be equally beautiful; every child cannot be a genius; the influence of six thousand years of transgression cannot be effaced in a single generation; but persevering, conscientious efforts to comply with every requirement of health, purity, morality, and the laws of nature, will accomplish wonders in securing healthy children with good dispositions, brilliant intellects, and beautiful bodies. this is not the proper place to describe in detail a plan to be pursued; but the few hints given, if rightly appreciated, may enable those interested in the subject to plan for themselves a proper course. in concluding the subject, we may summarize its chief points as follows, for the purpose of impressing them more fully upon the mind:-- . if a child is begotten in lust, its lower passions will as certainly be abnormally developed as peas will produce peas, or potatoes produce potatoes. if the child does not become a rake or a prostitute, it will be because of uncommonly fortunate surroundings, or a miracle of divine grace. but even then, what terrible struggles with sin and vice, with foul thoughts and lewd imaginations--the product of a naturally abnormal mind--must such an individual suffer! if he is unsuccessful in the conflict, is he alone to blame? society, his fellow-men, will censure him alone; but he who knoweth all the secrets of human life will pass a more lenient judgment on the erring one, and mete out punishment where it most belongs. . the same remarks apply with equal force to the transmission of other qualities. if the interest of the parents is only for self, with no thought for the well-being of the one whose destiny is in their hands, they can expect naught but a selfish character, a sordid, greedy disposition, in the child. . the influence of the father is, at the outset, as great as that of the mother. the unhappy or immoral thoughts of one alone at the critical moment when life is imparted, may fix for eternity a foul blot upon a character yet unformed. . if during gestation the mother is fretful, complaining, and exacting; if she requires to be petted and waited upon; if she gratifies every idle whim and indulges every depraved desire and perverted appetite--as thousands of mothers do--the result will surely be a peevish, fretful child, that will develop into a morose and irritable man or woman, imperious, unthankful, disobedient, willful, gluttonous, and vicious. if such undesirable results would be avoided, the following suggestions should be regarded:-- . for the beginning of a new life, select the most favorable time, which will be when the bodily health is at its height; when the mind is free from care and anxiety; when the heart is joyous, cheerful, and filled with hope, love, high aspirations, pure and beautiful thoughts. if, as one writer says, it is the duty of every human pair engaging in the reproductive act to bring into existence the most perfect specimen of the race of which they are capable, then it becomes a monstrous crime to enter into relations which may produce a contrary result. this may be a truth hard to accept, but who is prepared to dispute it on logical or moral grounds? . if a child has been properly conceived, the duty then devolves upon the mother to secure its proper development. is beauty desired, let the mother be surrounded with beautiful objects; and let her mind dwell upon such objects. if an active mind and brilliant intellect are required, the mother should devote considerable time to study and mental labor of a pleasant nature. the moral nature should be carefully cultivated, to insure a lovely disposition. no angry words or unhappy feelings should be tolerated. purity of heart and life should be maintained. the husband should do his part by supplying favorable surroundings, suggesting cheerful thoughts, and aiding mental culture. . after birth, the mother still possesses a molding influence upon the development of her child through the lacteal secretion. every mother knows how speedily the child will suffer if nursed when she is exhausted by physical labor or when suffering from nervous excitement, as anger or grief. these facts show the influence which the mental states of the mother exert upon the child even when the act of nursing is the only physical bond between them. it would be a happy day for the race which should witness the recognition of the fact that infants, even human beings in embryo, possess rights which are as sacred as those of adult human beings. circumcision.--the fold of integument called the prepuce, which has been previously described, has upon its inner surface a large number of glands which produce a peculiar secretion. under certain circumstances, and from inattention to personal cleanliness, this secretion may accumulate, and then often becomes the cause of irritation and serious disease. to prevent such disorders, and to insure cleanliness, the jewish law required the removal of the prepuce, which constituted the rite of circumcision. the same practice is followed by several modern nations dwelling in tropical climates; and it can scarcely be doubted that it is a very salutary one, and has contributed very materially to the maintenance of that proverbial national health for which the jews are celebrated. eminent physicians have expressed the opinion that the practice would be a salutary one for all men. the maintenance of scrupulous cleanliness, by daily cleansing, is at least an imperative duty. in some countries, females are also circumcised by removal of the nymphae. the object is the same as that of circumcision in the male. the same evils result from inattention to local cleanliness, and the same measure of prevention, daily cleansing, is necessitated by a similar secretion. local cleanliness is greatly neglected by both sexes. daily washing should begin with infancy and continue through life, and will prevent much disease. castration.--this operation consists in the removal of the testes of the male. it does not at once obliterate the sexual sense, especially if performed after puberty, but of course renders the individual impotent, or incapable of reproduction. persons upon whom it has been performed are called eunuchs. it was a very common custom in ancient times, being usually prompted by the jealousy of rulers, who allowed no males but eunuchs to associate with their wives and concubines. the effect upon the male is to render him effeminate in appearance and weak in mind. if performed before puberty, the growth of the beard is scanty, and the voice never acquires that deepness of tone natural to the masculine voice. an analogous operation, termed _spaying_, is performed upon females, consisting in the removal of the ovaries; effects similar to those in the male, _sterility_ without entire immediate loss of sexual sense, being the usual result. spaying is much more rarely performed than castration. both operations are now quite rare, seldom being resorted to except in surgical cases. castration is still practiced in some eastern countries. the sexual relations. just in proportion as the perpetuation of the race is more important than the existence of any single individual, the organs of reproduction may in a certain sense be said to rank higher than any other organs of the human frame, since to them is intrusted the important duty of performing that most marvelous of all vital processes, the production of human beings. that this high rank in the vital economy is recognized by nature, is shown by the fact that she has attached to the abuse of the generative function the most terrible penalties which can be inflicted upon a living being. the power of abuse seems to be almost exclusively confined to man; hence, we find him the only one of all living creatures subject to the awful penalties of sexual transgression. the _use_ of the reproductive function is perhaps the highest physical act of which man is capable; its _abuse_ is certainly one of the most grievous outrages against nature which it is possible for him to perpetrate. no observing person can doubt that the sexual relations of men and women determine in a great degree their happiness or misery in life. this subject, then, deserves due attention and careful consideration. it is of no use to scout it; for it will inevitably obtrude itself upon us, no matter now sedulously we attempt to avoid it. it can be rightly considered only with the most perfect candor, with the mind unbiased by passion, and prayerfully anxious to know and _do_ what is right. in the following paragraphs of this section are considered some of the evils out of which grows much of the sexual suffering of men and women:-- sexual precocity.--there are two periods in human life when the sexual instincts should be totally dormant; and they are so when nature is not perverted. the first is the period reaching from infancy to puberty. the second is the period reached in advanced age. if raised strictly in accordance with natural law, children would have no sexual notions or feelings before the occurrence of puberty. no prurient speculation about sexual matters would enter their heads. until that period, the reproductive system should lie dormant in its undeveloped state. no other feeling should be exhibited between the sexes than that brotherly and sisterly affection which is so admirable and becoming. fortunate, indeed, would it be for humanity if this natural state always existed; but it is a lamentable fact that it is rarely seen in modern homes. not infrequently, evidences of sexual passion are manifested before the child has hardly learned to walk. it has been suggested that this precocity is nothing remarkable or unnatural, since it is often seen in little lambs and other young animals. to this it is only necessary to reply that the development of the sexual instincts perfectly corresponds with the longevity of the animal; if short-lived, like the sheep, only a short period intervenes between birth and the attainment of the sexual appetite and virility. if the animal is intended for long life, as is the case with man, these manifestations are delayed until a much later period, or should be. certain insects perform the sexual act as soon as they acquire their perfect form; but they perish as soon as the act is completed. astonishing ignorance.--it is astonishing how ignorant and indifferent the majority of people are upon this subject. a friend related to us an incident which fairly illustrates the terrible apathy which prevails among parents. while teaching a country school, he learned that a large number of children, boys and girls, of ages varying from eight to twelve and fourteen years, were in the habit of collecting together in barns and other secluded places, and in a state of nudity imitating the "black crook" with all possible additional nastiness. horrified at such a monstrous evil, he hastened to inform the parents of the corruption in their midst. imagine his astonishment when he was met with an indifferent laugh and the response, "pooh! it's only natural; perfectly harmless; _just like little pigs!_" as though pigs were models for human beings! it is not pleasant to consider what must have been the moral status of parents who could hold such views; and it is no wonder that they should produce such children. doubtless they learned, too late, that those "natural" manifestations were the outgrowth of incipient vices, planted and fostered by themselves, which in later years destroyed shame and gave loose rein to lust. often the manifestation of sexual precocity is less gross, but almost equally fraught with danger, nevertheless. dr. acton, a distinguished english surgeon whom we shall frequently quote, makes the following excellent remarks upon this subject:-- "slight signs are sufficient to indicate when a boy has this unfortunate tendency. he shows marked preferences. you will see him single out one girl, and evidently derive an unusual pleasure (for a boy) in her society. his _penchant_ does not take the ordinary form of a boy's good nature, but little attentions that are generally reserved for a later period prove that his feeling is different, and sadly premature. he may be apparently healthy, and fond of playing with other boys; still there are slight, but ominous, indications of propensities fraught with danger to himself. his play with the girl is different from his play with his brothers. his kindness to her is a little too ardent. he follows her, he does not know why. he fondles her with a tenderness painfully suggestive of a vague dawning of passion. no one can find fault with him. he does nothing wrong. parents and friends are delighted at his gentleness and politeness, and not a little amused at the early flirtation. if they were wise, they would rather feel profound anxiety; and he would be an unfaithful or unwise medical friend who did not, if an opportunity occurred, warn them that such a boy, unsuspicious and innocent as he is, ought to be carefully watched and removed from every influence calculated to foster his abnormal propensities. "the premature development of the sexual inclination is not alone repugnant to all we associate with the term childhood, but is also fraught with danger to dawning manhood. on the judicious treatment of a case such as has been sketched, it probably depends whether the dangerous propensity shall be so kept in check as to preserve the boy's health and innocence, or whether one more shattered constitution and wounded conscience shall be added to the victims of sexual precocity and careless training. it ought not to be forgotten that in such cases a quasi-sexual power often accompanies these premature sexual inclinations. few, perhaps, except medical men, know how early in life a mere infant may experience erections. frequently it may be noticed that a little child, on being taken out of bed in the morning, cannot make water at once. it would be well if it were recognized by parents and nurses that this often depends upon a more or less complete erection." we have been not more disgusted than shocked to see parents, whose intelligence ought to teach them better, not only winking at, but actually encouraging, these premature manifestations of passion in their children. they may yet learn, by bitter experience, the folly of their course, unless they make the discovery in time to avert the calamitous results which threaten the future of their children, by careful reformatory training. inherited passion.--it is important to inquire the cause of this precocity. said a father of our acquaintance, when remonstrated with for encouraging his infant son in a ridiculous flirtation, "i did just so when i was of his age." in this case the cause was evident. the child was only acting out the disposition bequeathed him by his parent. how often do the secret follies of parents stand out in bold relief in their children. such a legacy is nothing to be proud of. we again quote from dr. acton some observations on the causes of this disorder,--for a grave disorder it is,--as follows:-- "i should specify _hereditary_ predisposition as by no means the least common.... i believe that, as in body and mind, so also in the passions, the sins of the father are frequently visited on the children. no man or woman, i am sure, can have habitually indulged the sexual passions ... without, at least, running the risk of finding that a disposition to follow a similar career has been inherited by the offspring. it is in this way only that we can explain the early and apparently almost irresistible propensity in generation after generation indulging similar habits and feelings." various causes of sexual precocity.--another very powerful predisposing cause of sexual precocity will be alluded to under the head of "marital excesses." the irritation caused by worms in the rectum, by local irritation or uncleanliness, or by irritation of the bladder, are exciting causes which are not infrequent. the latter cause is indicated by another symptom, the frequent wetting of the bed at night. such a symptom doubly demands immediate attention. the juvenile parties so common now-a-days, at which little ones of both sexes, of ages varying from four or five years to ten or twelve, with wonderful precocity and truthfulness imitate the conduct of their elders at fashionable dinners, cannot be too much deprecated. such associations of the sexes have a strong tendency to develop prematurely the distinctive peculiarities of the sexes. this is well evidenced by the fact that on such occasions one of the most common and popular entertainments is sham marriages. parents greatly err in encouraging or allowing their children to engage in amusements of so dangerous a character. they are productive of no good, and are almost without exception productive of positive and serious injury. modern modes of life, improper clothing, the forcing system of cramming in schools, the immodest example of older persons, and especially the irritating, stimulating articles of diet which are daily set before children, as well as older people, undoubtedly have a powerful influence in stimulating the development of the sexual passions. this subject is again referred to under the heading, "chastity." obscene books and papers, lewd pictures, and evil communications are telling causes which will be further noticed elsewhere. senile sexuality.--as with childhood, old age is a period in which the reproductive functions are quiescent unless unnaturally stimulated. sexual life begins with puberty, and, in the female, ends at about the age of forty-five years, the period known as the _menopause_, or _turn of life_. at this period, according to the plainest indications of nature, all functional activity should cease. if this law is disregarded, disease, premature decay, possibly local degenerations, will be sure to result. nature cannot be abused with impunity. the generative power of the male is retained somewhat longer than that of the female, and by stimulation may be indulged at quite an advanced age, but only at the expense of shortening life, and running the risk of sudden death. says parise, "one of the most important pieces of information which a man in years can attain is 'to learn to become old betimes,' if he wishes to attain old age. cicero, we are told, was asked if he still indulged in the pleasures of love. 'heaven forbid,' replied he, 'i have forsworn it as i would a savage and a furious master.'" some learned physicians place the proper limit of man's functional activity at fifty years, if he would not render himself guilty of shortening his days by sensuality. other reasons for this course will appear hereafter. when the passions have been indulged, and their diminishing vigor stimulated, a horrid disease, _satyriasis_, not infrequently seizes upon the imprudent individual, and drives him to the perpetration of the most loathsome crimes and excesses. passions cultivated and encouraged by gratification through life will thus sometimes assert a total supremacy in old age. marriage.--the scope and plan of this work will allow of but the briefest possible consideration of this subject upon which volumes have been written, much to no purpose other than the multiplication of books. we shall devote no space to consideration of the origin of the institution, its expediency, or varied relations, as these topics are foreign to the character of this work. the primary object of marriage was, undoubtedly, the preservation of the race, though there are other objects which, under special circumstances, may become paramount even to this. these latter we cannot consider, as only the relations of the reproductive functions in marriage come properly within our province. the first physiological question to be considered is concerning the proper age for marriage. time to marry.--physiology fixes with accuracy the earliest period at which marriage is admissible. this period is that at which the body attains complete development, which is not before twenty in the female, and twenty-four in the male. even though the growth may be completed before these ages, ossification of the bones is not fully effected, so that development is incomplete. among most modern nations, the civil laws fixing the earliest date of marriage seem to have been made without any reference to physiology, or with the mistaken notion that puberty and nubility are identical. it is interesting to note the different ages established by different nations for the entrance of the married state. the degenerating romans fixed the ages of legal marriage at thirteen for females, and fifteen for males. the grecian legislator, lycurgus, placed the ages at seventeen for the female, and thirty-seven for the male. plato fixed the ages at twenty and thirty years. in prussia, the respective ages are fifteen and nineteen; in austria, sixteen and twenty; in france, sixteen and eighteen, respectively. says mayer, "in general, it may be established that the normal epoch for marriage is the twentieth year for women, and the twenty-fourth for men." application of the law of heredity.--a moment's consideration of the physiology of heredity will disclose a sufficient reason why marriage should be deferred until the development of the body is wholly complete. the matrimonial relation implies reproduction. reproduction is effected through the union of the ovum with the zoosperm. these elements, as we have already seen, are complete representatives of the individuals producing them, being composed--as supposed--of minute gemmules which are destined to be developed into cells and organs in the new being, each preserving its resemblance to the cell within the parent which produced it. the perfection of the new being, then, must be largely dependent on the integrity and perfection of the sexual elements. if the body is still incomplete, the reproductive elements must also be incomplete; and, in consequence, the progeny must be equally immature. early marriage.--the preceding paragraph contains a sufficient reason for condemning early marriage; that is, marriage before the ages mentioned. it is probable that even the ages of twenty and twenty-four are too early for those persons whose development is uncommonly slow. but there are other cogent reasons for discountenancing early marriages, also drawn from the physiology of reproduction, to say nothing of the many reasons which might be urged on other grounds. . during the development of the body, all its energies are required in perfecting the various tissues and organs. there is no material to be spared for any foreign purpose. . the reproductive act is the most exhaustive of all vital acts. its effect upon an undeveloped person is to retard growth, weaken the constitution, and dwarf the intellect. . the effects upon the female are even worse than those upon the male; for, in addition to the exhaustion of nervous energy, she is compelled to endure the burdens and pains of child-bearing when utterly unprepared for such a task, to say nothing of her unfitness for the other duties of a mother. with so many girl-mothers in the land, is it any wonder that there are so many thousands of unfortunate individuals who never seem to get beyond childhood in their development? many a man at forty years is as childish in mind, and as immature in judgment, as a well-developed lad of eighteen would be. they are like withered fruit plucked before it was ripe; they can never become like the mellow and luscious fruit allowed to mature properly. they are unalterably molded; and the saddest fact of all is that they will give to their children the same imperfections; and the children will transmit them to another generation, and so the evil will go on increasing, unless checked by extinction. mutual adaptation.--another question of very great importance is that of the mutual adaptation of the individuals. to this question we can devote but a very brief consideration, and that will be more of the nature of criticism than of a set of formal rules for governing matrimonial alliances. a writer of some note, whose work on this and kindred subjects has had quite an extensive circulation, advocates with great emphasis the theory that parties contemplating marriage should in all cases select for partners individuals as nearly like themselves as possible. exact duplicates would, in his opinion, make the most perfect union attainable. to make his theory practicable, he is obliged to fall back upon phrenology; and directs that a man seeking a wife, or a woman seeking a husband, should obtain a phrenological chart of his head and then send it around until a counterpart is found. if the circle of one's acquaintance is so fortunate as to contain no one cursed with the same propensities or idiosyncrasies as himself, the newspapers are to be brought into requisition as a medium of advertising. if so strange a doctrine as this were advocated by an obscure individual in some secluded hamlet, or found only in the musty volumes of some forgotten author, it surely would be unworthy of notice; but coming as it does from a quite popular writer, and being coupled with a great amount of really valuable truth, it is sufficiently important to deserve refutation. a brief glance at the practical working of the theory will be a sufficient exposure of its falsity. according to this rule, a man or woman of large combativeness should select a partner equally inclined to antagonism; then we should have--what? the elements of a happy, contented, harmonious life? no; instead, either a speedy lawsuit for divorce, or a continual domestic broil, the nearest approach to a mundane purgatory possible. the selfish, close-fisted, miserly money-catcher must marry a woman equally sordid and stingy. then together they could hoard up, for moths and rust to destroy, or for interested relatives to quarrel over, the pictorial greenback and the glittering dollar, each scrimping the other down to the finest point above starvation and freezing, and finally dying, to be forgotten as soon as dead by their fellow-men, and sent among the goats at the great assizes. a shiftless spendthrift must choose for a helpmeet (?) an equally slovenly, thriftless wife. a man with a crotchet should select a partner with the same morbid fancy. a man whose whole mental composition gravitates behind his ears, must find a mate with the same animal disposition. an individual whose mental organization is sadly unbalanced, is advised to seek for a wife a woman with the same deficiencies and abnormalities. any one can see at a glance the domestic disasters which such a plan of proceeding would entail. men and women of unbalanced temperaments would become more unbalanced. an individual of erroneous tendencies, instead of having the constant check of the example and admonitions of a mate of opposite tendencies, would be, by constant example, hastened onward in his sinful ways. thus, to all but a very small proportion of humanity, the married state would be one of infelicity and degeneration. and what would be the progeny of such unions? the peculiarities and propensities of the parents, instead of being modified and perhaps obliterated in the children by corresponding differences in character, would be doubly exaggerated. the children of selfish parents would be thieves; those of spendthrifts, beggars; those of crotchety parents, monomaniacs; those born of sensual parents, beastly debauchees. a few generations of such a degenerating process would either exterminate the race or drive it back to darwin's ancestral ape. it must not be inferred, from our strictures upon the theory mentioned, that we would advocate the opposite course, that is, the contraction of marriage by individuals of wholly dissimilar tastes, aims, and temperaments. such alliances would doubtless be quite as wretched in their results as those of an opposite character. it is with this as with nearly all other subjects; the true course lies between the two extremes. parties who are negotiating a life partnership should be careful to assure themselves that there exists a sufficient degree of congeniality of temperament to make such close and continued association agreeable. disparity of age.--both nature and custom seem to indicate that the husband should be a little older than the wife. several reasons might be given for this; but we need not mention them. when, however, the difference of ages reaches such an extreme as thirty, forty, even fifty or more years, nature is abused, good taste is offended, and even morality is shocked. such ill-sorted alliances are disastrous to both parties, and scarcely more to one than the other. an old man who forms a union with a young girl scarce out of her teens--or even younger--can scarcely have any very elevated motive for his action, and he certainly exposes himself to the greatest risk of sudden death, while insuring his premature decay. a king once characterized such a course as "the pleasantest form of suicide." it is doubtless suicidal, but we suspect there are some phases of such an unnatural union which are not very enjoyable. one reason of the great danger of such marriages to the old is the exhaustive effects of the sexual act. as previously noted, in some animals it causes immediate death. dr. acton makes the following pertinent remarks:-- "so serious, indeed, is the paroxysm of the nervous system produced by the sexual spasm, that its immediate effect is not always unattended with danger, and men with weak hearts have died in the act. every now and then we learn that men are found dead on the night of their wedding." "however exceptional these cases are, they are warnings, and should serve to show that an act which _may_ destroy the weak should not be tampered with, even by the strong." "there are old men who marry young wives, and who pay the penalty by becoming martyrs to paralysis, softening of the brain, and driveling idiocy." dr. gardner quotes the abbe maury, as follows: "i hold as certain that after fifty years of age a man of sense ought to renounce the pleasures of love. each time that he allows himself this gratification is _a pellet of earth thrown upon his coffin_." dr. gardner further says: "alliances of this sort have taken place in every epoch of humanity, from the time of the patriarchs to the present day,--alliances repugnant to nature,--between men bordering on decrepitude and poor young girls, who are sacrificed by their parents for position, or who sell themselves for gold. there is in these monstrous alliances something which we know not how to brand sufficiently energetically, in considering the reciprocal relations of the pair thus wrongfully united, and the lot of the children which may result from them. let us admit, for an instant, that the marriage has been concluded with the full consent of the young girl, and that no external pressure has been exerted upon her will--as is generally the rule--it will none the less happen that reflection and experience will tardily bring regrets, and the sharper as the evil will be without remedy; but if compulsion, or what is often the same thing, _persuasion_, had been employed to obtain the consent which the law demands, the result would have been more prompt and vehement. from this moment the common life becomes odious to the unhappy victim, and _culpable hopes_ will arise in her desolate heart, so heavy is the chain she carries. in fact, the love of the old man becomes ridiculous and horrid to her, and we cannot sufficiently sympathize with the unfortunate person whose duty [?] it is to submit to it. if we think of it an instant, we shall perceive a repulsion, such as is only inspired by the idea of incest.... so what do we oftenest observe? either the woman violently breaks the cursed bands, or she resigns herself to them; and then she seeks to fill up the void in her soul by adulterous amours. such is the somber perspective of the sacrilegious unions which set at defiance the most respectable instincts, the most noble desires, and the most legitimate hopes. such, too, are the terrible chastisements reserved for the thoughtlessness or foolish pride of these dissolute gray-beards, who prodigalize the last breath of their life in search of depraved voluptuousness." the parents, the perpetrators of such an outrage against nature, are not the only sufferers. look at the children which they bring into the world! let dr. gardner speak again:-- "children, the issue of old men, are habitually marked by a serious and sad air spread over their countenances, which is manifestly very opposite to the infantile expression which so delights one in the little children of the same age engendered under other conditions. as they grow up, their features take on more and more the senile character; so much so that every one remarks it, and the world regards it as a natural thing. the old mothers pretend that it is an old head on young shoulders. they predict an early death to these children, and the event frequently justifies the horoscope. our attention has for many years been fixed upon this point, and we can affirm that the greater part of the offspring of these connections are weak, torpid, lymphatic, if not scrofulous, and do not promise a long career." in old age the seminal fluid becomes greatly deteriorated. even at the best, its component elements could only represent decrepitude and infirmity, degeneration and senility. in view of such facts, says dr. acton,-- "we are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the children of old men have an inferior chance of life; and facts daily observed confirm our deductions. look but at the progeny of such marriages; what is its value? as far as i have seen, it is the worst kind--spoilt childhood, feeble and precocious youth, extravagant manhood, early and premature death." unions of an opposite character to those just considered, wherein a young man marries a woman much older than himself, are more rare than those of the other class. they are, perhaps, less deplorable in their physical effects, but still highly reprehensible. they are seldom prompted by pure motives, and can be productive of no good. children resulting from such unions are notably weak, unbalanced, and sorry specimens of humanity. we have scarcely referred to the domestic misery which may result from these disgraceful unions. if a young girl is brought home by a widower to preside over his grown-up daughters, perhaps old enough to be her mother, all the elements are provided for such a domestic hell as could only be equaled by circumstances precisely similar. if children are born, neither father nor mother is fit to act the part of a parent to them. the father, by reason of his age, is fitful, uncertain, and childish; to-day too lenient, to-morrow too exacting. the mother is pettish, childish, indulgent, impatient, and as unskilled in government as unfit for motherhood. in the midst of all this misrule, the child grows up undisciplined, uncultivated, unsubdued; a misery to his parents, a disgrace to his friends, a dishonor to himself. "what shall i do with him? and what will he do with me?" was the question asked by a girl of eighteen whose parents were urging her to marry an old man; and every young woman would do well to propound it under similar circumstances. were we disposed to define more specifically the conditions necessary to secure the most harmonious matrimonial unions, it would be useless to do so; for unions of this sort never have been, and never will be--with rare exceptions--formed in accordance with a prescribed method independent of any emotional bias. nor is it probable that such a plan would result in remedying, in any appreciable degree, existing evils. it is a fact too patent to be ignored that a very large share of the unhappiness in the world arises from ill-mated marriages; but it is also true that nearly the whole of this unhappiness might be averted if the parties themselves would endeavor to lessen the differences between them by mutual approximation. courtship.--we cannot well avoid devoting a few paragraphs to a part of the subject so important as this, especially as it affords an opportunity for pointing out some evils too patent and too perilous to be ignored. courting, in the sense in which we use the word, is distinctly an american custom. the social laws of other civilized countries are such as to preclude the possibility of the almost unrestrained association of the sexes in youth which we see in this country. we do not offer this fact as an argument in favor of foreign social customs, by any means, although in this one particular they often present great advantages, since in the majority of instances other evils as great or even greater are encouraged. we mention the fact simply for the purpose of bringing into bold relief the evils of the characteristic american looseness in this particular. a french matron would be horrified at the idea of a young man asking her daughter to accompany him alone on an evening ride, to a lecture, concert, or other place of amusement, and much more should he ask the privilege of sitting up all night in the parlor with the light turned down, after the rest of the family had retired. among respectable people in france such liberties are not tolerated; and a young man who should propose such things would be dismissed from the house instantly, and would be regarded as unfit for association with virtuous people. if a young man calls upon a young lady for the purpose of making her acquaintance, he sees both her and her mother, or an aunt or older sister. he never sees her alone. if he invites her to ride, or to accompany him to an entertainment of any sort, he must always invite her lady friend also; she goes along at any rate. there is afforded no chance for solitary moonlight strolls or rides, nor any other of the similar opportunities made so common by american courting customs. we are no advocates of the formal modes of contracting matrimonial alliances common among many nations, and illustrations of which we find at all ages of the world. for example, among the ancient assyrians it was a custom to sell wives to the highest bidder, at auction, the sums received for the handsomer one being given to the less favored ones as a dowry, to secure a husband for every woman. the same custom prevailed in babylon in ancient times, and has been practiced in modern times in russia. at st. petersburg, not many years ago, an annual sale of wives was held on whit sunday, after the same plan followed by the assyrians. among the early jews it seems to have been the custom for parents to select wives for their sons. in the case of isaac, this important matter was intrusted to an old and experienced servant, who was undoubtedly considered much more competent to select a wife for the young man than he was himself. the same custom has been handed down even to the present time among some oriental nations. in many cases the parties are not allowed to see each other until after the wedding ceremony is completed. the hungarians often betroth their children while they are yet in their cradles, as did the mexicans and brazilians of the last century. in some countries it has even been customary to betroth girls conditionally before they were born. the primitive moravians seem to have adhered to the ancient jewish custom in some degree, though making the selection of a wife a matter of chance. the old people did all the courting there was done, which was not much. when a young man desired a wife, a helpmeet was selected for him by casting lots among the marriageable young ladies of the community, and the young man was obliged to abide by the decision, it being supposed that providence controlled the selection. we are not prepared to say that the young man ran any greater risk of getting an uncongenial or undesirable life companion by this mode of selection than by the more modern modes in vogue among us. as before remarked, we do not present these customs as illustrations of what might be considered a proper mode of conducting the preliminary steps of matrimonial alliances. on the contrary, we unhesitatingly pronounce them decidedly objectionable on moral grounds if not on others, and we can readily see that such unions must have been in many cases exceedingly unsatisfactory. in various other countries, marriage customs quite the opposite from those described have been in vogue. in irving's "knickerbocker's history of new york," a somewhat humorous account is given of a custom which has prevailed in some parts of this country as well as others, even within the memory of persons living at the present day, and is, indeed, said to be not yet altogether obsolete in finland. the author, in dwelling upon the social customs of the early dutch settlers of new york, describes "a singular custom prevalent among them, commonly known by the name of _bundling_,--a superstitious rite observed by the young people of both sexes, with which they usually terminated their festivities, and which was kept up with religious strictness by the more bigoted part of the community. this ceremony was likewise, in those primitive times, considered as an indispensable preliminary to matrimony, their courtships commencing where ours usually finish,--by which means they acquired that intimate acquaintance with each other's good qualities before marriage, which has been pronounced by philosophers the sure basis of a happy union. thus early did this cunning and ingenious people display a shrewdness of making a bargain, which has ever since distinguished them." "to this sagacious custom, therefore, do i chiefly attribute the unparalleled increase of the yanokie or yankee race; for it is a certain fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers, that, wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number of sturdy brats annually born into the state, without the license of the law, or the benefit of clergy." long courtships.--chiefly for the reasons presented in the preceding paragraphs, we are opposed to long courtships and long engagements. they are productive of no good, and are not infrequently the occasion of much evil. there may be circumstances which render a prolonged engagement necessary and advisable; but, in general, they are to be avoided. on the other hand, hasty marriages are still more to be deprecated, especially when, as is too commonly the case, the probability is so great that passion is the actuating motive far more than true love. marriage is a matter of most serious consequences, and deserving of the most careful deliberation. too often matrimony is entered upon without any more substantial assurance of happiness as the result than the individual has of securing a valuable prize who buys a ticket in a lottery scheme. in the majority of cases, young people learn more of each other's real character within six weeks after marriage than they discovered during as many months of courting. to every young man and woman we say, look well before you leap; consider well, carefully, and prayerfully. a leap in the dark is a fearful risk, and will be far more likely to land you in a domestic purgatory than anywhere else. do not be dazzled by a handsome face, an agreeable address, a brilliant or piquant manner. choose, rather, modesty, simplicity, sincerity, morality, qualities of heart and mind, rather than exterior embellishments. "it is folly," suggests a friend, "to give advice on these subjects, for no one will follow advice on this point, no matter how sensible and reasonable he may be on all other subjects. the emotions carry the individual away, and the reason loses control." this is all too true, in nearly all cases. we believe in affection. the emotions have their part to act. we have no sympathy with the theories of those who will have all marriages made by rule. but reason must be allowed a voice in the matter; and although there may be a time when the overwhelming force of the emotions may force the reason and judgment into the background, there has been a time previous when the judgment might have held control. let every young man and woman be most scrupulously careful how he allows emotional excitement to gain the ascendency. when once reason is stifled, the individual is in a most precarious situation. it is far better and easier to prevent the danger than to escape from it. flirtation.--we cannot find language sufficiently emphatic to express proper condemnation of one of the most popular forms of amusement indulged in at the present day in this country, under the guise of innocent association of the sexes. by the majority of people, flirtation is looked upon as harmless, if not useful, as some even consider, claiming that the experience gained by such associations is valuable to young persons, by making them familiar with the customs of society and the ways of the world. we have not the slightest hesitation in pronouncing flirtation as pernicious in the extreme. it exerts a malign influence alike upon the mental, the moral, and the physical constitution of those who indulge it. the young lady who has become infatuated with a passion for flirting, courting the society of young men simply for the pleasure derived from their attentions, is educating herself in a school which will totally unfit her for the enjoyment of domestic peace and happiness should she have all the conditions necessary for such enjoyment other than those which she herself must furnish. more than this, she is very likely laying the foundation for lifelong disease by the dissipation, late hours, late suppers, evening exposures, fashionable dressing, etc., the almost certain accompaniments of the vice we are considering. she is surely sacrificing a life of real true happiness for the transient fascinations of unreal enjoyment, pernicious excitement. it may be true, and undoubtedly is the case, that the greater share of the guilt of flirtation lies at the door of the female sex; but there do exist such detestable creatures as male flirts. in general, the male flirt is a much less worthy character than the young lady who makes a pastime of flirtation. he is something more than a flirt. in nine cases out of ten, he is a rake as well. his object in flirting is to gratify a mean propensity at the expense of those who are pure and unsophisticated. he is skilled in the arts of fascination and intrigue. slowly he winds his coils about his victim, and before she is aware of his real character, she has lost her own. such wretches ought to be punished in a purgatory by themselves, made seven times hotter than for ordinary criminals. society is full of these lecherous villains. they insinuate themselves into the drawing-rooms of the most respectable families; they are always on hand at social gatherings of every sort. they haunt the ball-room, the theater, and the church, when they can forward their infamous plans by seeming to be pious. not infrequently they are well supplied with a stock of pious cant, which they employ on occasion to make an impression. they are the sharks of society, and often seize in their voracious maws the fairest and brightest ornaments of a community. the male flirt is a monster. every man ought to despise him; and every woman ought to spurn him as a loathsome social leper. youthful flirtations.--flirting is not confined to young men and women. the contagion extends to little boys and girls, whose heads ought to be as empty of all thoughts of sexual relations as the vacuum of an air-pump of air. the intimate association of young boys and girls in our common schools, and, indeed, in the majority of educational institutions, gives abundant opportunity for the fostering of this kind of a spirit, so prejudicial to healthful mental and moral development. every educator who is alive to the objects and interests of his profession knows too well the baneful influence of these premature and pernicious tendencies. many times has the teacher watched with a sad heart the withering of all his hopes for the intellectual progress of a naturally gifted scholar by this blighting influence. the most dangerous period for boys and girls exposed to temptations of this sort is that just following puberty, or between the ages of twelve and eighteen or twenty. this period, a prominent educator in one of our western states once denominated, not inappropriately, "the agonizing period of human puppyhood." if this critical period is once safely passed, the individual is comparatively safe; but how many fail to pass through the ordeal unseared! the most painful phase of this subject is the tacit--even, in many cases, active--encouragement which too many parents give their children in this very direction, seemingly in utter ignorance of the enormity of the evil which they are winking at or fostering. parents need enlightenment on this subject, and need to be aroused to the fact that it is one of the most momentous questions that can arise in the rearing and training of children. polygamy.--one hundred years ago the discussion of the public propriety or impropriety of a plurality of wives would have been impossible. polygamy had not obtained a foothold as an institution in any civilized land. being well known as not uncommon among certain heathenish and barbarous tribes, it was looked upon as a heathenish and debasing institution, the outgrowth of ignorance and gross sensuality, and a relic of a sensual age. now, this is no longer true. even in this, the most enlightened of all lands, where there are most ample facilities for culture, for moral and mental development, polygamy holds up its hideous head in defiance of all the laws of god and man. it is true that the perpetrators of this foul crime against humanity and heaven have been driven by the indignation of outraged decency to seek a lurking place in the far-off wilderness of the western territories; yet the foul odors from this festering sore are daily becoming more and more putrescent, and in spite of the distance, are contaminating the already not overstrict morals of the nation. no better evidence of the blighting, searing effect of this gross social crime could be found than the fact that not only is polygamy coming to be winked at as something not so very bad after all, but men from whom we have a right to expect something better are coming forward in its defense. we have just been perusing a work written for the express purpose of justifying and advocating polygamy, which was written by an evangelical clergyman. he was evidently not willing to own his work, however, since his name is carefully excluded from the title-page, and his publisher put under an oath of secrecy. the arguments which he makes in favor of polygamy are chiefly the following:-- . that it is approved by the bible. . that a robust man requires more than one woman to satisfy his sexual demands. . that there are more women than men; and since every woman has a right to have a husband, the only way all can be supplied is to allow several women, two or more, according to the capacity of the man, or as they can agree, to form a marriage partnership with one man. . that the great men of all ages have been polygamists in fact, if not by open profession. . that monogamy is a relic of the paganism of the ancient greeks and romans, with whom it originated. . that it is the only proper and effective cure for the "social evil," and all its attendant vices and dire diseases. as this work has had quite a circulation, bearing the imprint of a well-known boston publisher, and has not received any answer that we are aware of, we deem it worth while to give these arguments, which are very strongly presented, at least a brief passing notice. we will consider them in the order in which we have stated them. . we deny most emphatically the assertion that polygamy is either taught or approved by the bible. it was tolerated in a people who had long been in the darkness of egyptian bondage, but never approved. indeed, the inspired writers have evidently taken pains to give numerous examples of the evils growing out of that violation of the law of god and nature. . the second argument is based upon the asserted fact that man naturally possesses stronger sexual demands than woman; that these demands are imperative; and that it is not only impossible, but in the highest degree injurious, to restrain them. while it is true as a fact affirmed by constant observation that men have stronger passions than women, in general, and that many men demand of their wives a degree of sexual indulgence which is the cause of serious injury to them, and even impossible for them to grant without doing themselves the greatest wrong, it is by no means proven either that these demands are imperative, that they are natural, or that they are not injurious to the man as well as the woman, much less beneficial to either. on the contrary, there is as great a weight of evidence as could be required that restraint, self-control, and moderation in the exercise of the sexual instinct is in the highest degree beneficial to man, as well as to woman, and necessary for his highest development. . while it is true that there are a few more adult women than men, the difference is not sufficiently great to require the introduction of polygamy as a remedy for enforced celibacy. at any rate this would be unnecessary until all bachelors had been provided with wives, when there would be found no necessity for further provision, since there are large numbers of women who are utterly unfit to marry, who would be injured by so doing, and would only serve to degenerate the race, besides making themselves more wretched than they already are. again, it is a well-known fact that more males than females are born, the preponderance of adult females being caused by a greater mortality among male children, together with the losses from accidents and war. by a correct observance of the laws of health, together with the abolition of wars, the disparity in relative numbers of the sexes would disappear. indeed, it might happen that men would be in the preponderance. still again, it is only in a few very populous and long-settled communities that there are more women than men, as in the states of massachusetts, connecticut, and a few others of the eastern states, and a few countries of europe. in all newly settled countries the reverse is true. the inquiry naturally arises, what shall be done under these circumstances? shall a woman be allowed more than one husband, as is actually the case in some countries? "oh! no;" our polygamist replies, "a woman is not capable of loving more than one man, and is not even able to satisfy the sexual demands of a single husband; so, of course, a plurality of husbands is out of the question. a man is capable of loving any number of women, being differently constituted from a woman; and so the same rule does not apply." the writer evidently confounds love with lust. he will grant unstinted reign to the lusts of man, but requires woman to be restrained, offering as an apology for such a manifest unfair and unphilosophical discrimination that "man is differently constituted from a woman, sexually, requiring more active exercise of the sexual functions," a conclusion which could be warranted only by the selection, as a typical specimen of the male part of humanity, of a man with an abnormal development of the animal propensities. a correct understanding and application of the laws of sexual hygiene would effectually sweep away every vestige of argument based on this foundation. . in proof of the propriety of polygamy, as well as of its necessity, the author referred to cites the well-known fact that plato, aristotle, bacon, alexander, caesar, napoleon, burns, byron, augustus, webster, and numerous others of the noted men of all ages have been incontinent men. the fact that these men were guilty of crime does not in the least degree detract from the enormity of the sin. it is equally true that many great men have been addicted to intemperance and other crimes. alexander was a sodomite as well as a lecherous rake. does this fact afford any proof that those crimes are virtues instead of vices? such argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal, since it stultifies itself. . the fact that monogamy was practiced among the ancient greeks and romans is in no way derogatory of it as an institution. even if it could be shown that it originated with those nations, still this would in no way detract from its value or respectability. do not we owe much to those grand old pagans who laid the foundation for nearly all the modern sciences, and established better systems of political economy, and better schools for uniform culture of the whole individual, than any the world has seen since? but monogamy did not originate with the greeks, neither was it invented by the romans, nor by any other nation. it originated with the great originator of the human race. it is an institution which has come down to us, not from greece or rome, but from paradise. if it was so important that man should have more than one woman to supply his sexual demands, why was the creator so short-sighted as to make but one eve? it would have been as easy to remove two or three or half a dozen ribs from adam's side as one; and as the whole world had yet to be populated, a plurality of wives would certainly have accelerated the process. surely, if polygamy was ever required or excusable, it ought to have been allowed at the start. again, when noah went into the ark, taking with him an assortment of all species of animals, he took some kinds by pairs and some by sevens, from which we might suspect, at least, that he observed the laws of nature respecting polygamous and monogamous animals. but he took only one wife for himself, and only one for each of his sons. why not two or half a dozen instead? polygamy would certainly have accelerated the repopulation of the earth most wonderfully; but noah was monogamous. to say, in view of such facts, that monogamy originated with the paganism of ancient greece and rome, is blasphemy. . the argument that polygamy will cure the "social evil" is exactly equivalent to the argument that the removal of all restraint from the sale and manufacture of intoxicating drinks, thus making them cheap and common, is the best remedy for intemperance. an equally good argument might be made for the cure of theft, murder, and every other vice and crime, by a similar plan. such reasoning is the veriest sophistry. none but a biased mind could produce such flimsy arguments. but we forbear. we have already given this subject more attention than it is worthy of, though we have failed to characterize the vice of polygamy as it deserves. we leave this for the reader. polyandry.--perhaps we should add a word or two respecting this custom, which seems to be a still greater outrage against nature than that of polygamy, being the possession of a plurality of husbands by one woman. this practice is in vogue in several countries at the present time, being very common in thibet, where it is not an unusual thing for a woman in marrying the eldest of a family of brothers to include in the contract all of the other brothers as well. polyandry was also common among the ancient medes. indeed, the medes practiced both polygamy and polyandry. a man was not considered respectable unless he had at least seven wives; neither were women considered worthy of general esteem unless they had as many as five husbands. in that country, the fact that a woman was already married was in no degree a barrier to subsequent marriages, even while the husband was living, and without the trouble of a divorce. those who maintain the propriety of polygamy would do well to consider the historic facts respecting the opposite practice. there appear to be as good grounds for believing one to have a basis in the human constitution as the other. divorce.--another of the crying evils of the day, and one which menaces in a most alarming manner the most sacred interests of society, is the facility with which divorces may be obtained. in some states the laws regulating divorce are so notoriously loose that scores and even hundreds of people visit the states referred to every year with no other object than to obtain a dissolution of the bonds of matrimony. the effect of this looseness in the laws is to encourage hasty, inconsiderate marriages, and to make escape from an uncongenial partner so easy that the obligation to cultivate forbearance and to acquire mutual adaptation which may not at first exist, is wholly overlooked. the bible rule for divorce, laid down by the great teacher, is little regarded in these degenerate days. he made adultery the only legitimate cause for divorce; yet we now see married people breaking asunder their solemn marriage ties on the occurrence of the most trivial difficulties. if a couple become tired of each other and desire a change, all they have to do is to forward the fee to a new york or chicago lawyer, and they will receive back in a short time the legal papers duly signed, granting them the desired annulment of their vows. although countenanced by human laws, there can be no doubt that this shameless trifling with a divine institution is regarded by high heaven as the vilest abomination. in no direction is there greater need of reformatory legislation than in this. the marriage contract should be recognized in our laws as one which cannot be made and broken so lightly as it now is. it should be annulled only for the most serious offenses. the contrary course now pursued so frequently is most detrimental to morals. our divorce laws virtually offer a premium for unchastity. not infrequently we see among the advertisements in the newspapers notices like the following: "the undersigned is prepared to furnish divorces to parties desiring the same at moderate rates, in short time, and without publicity. ---- ----." the animus of these advertisements is fraud. the parties so engaged are the vilest scoundrels; and that they are allowed to continue to ply their nefarious vocation is a foul blot upon the enlightened civilization of a so-called christian country. a publisher who will insert such a notice in his journal, would advertise a brothel if he dared. while there is so much interest in the suppression of obscene literature, we would suggest that the proper authorities should direct their attention to the suppression of unlawful divorces, and the proper punishment of the villains engaged in forwarding this nefarious business. who may not marry.--many writers devote much space in laying down rules which are to be implicitly followed by those seeking life partners. we have attempted nothing of the sort, both from its impracticability, and from the fact that such rules are never followed; and if the attempt should be made to follow the prescribed rules, we are not sure that more good than harm would be the result. hence, we shall content ourselves with calling attention to a few facts of great importance respecting the conditions which imperatively forbid marriage, and which cannot be violated without the certain entailment of great suffering. _ . persons suffering with serious disease of a character communicable to others by contagion or by hereditary transmission._ many people wonder why it is that diseases are so much more numerous and varied in modern times than in the earlier ages of the race. there has been an evident increase within a few centuries. while there are, undoubtedly, numerous influencing causes, one which cannot be overlooked is the hereditary transmission of disease, which preserves those disorders which already exist, and adds new ones which originate from new exciting causes. by this means, the human race is undoubtedly being weakened, human life shortened, and diseases multiplied. compare the average age of human beings of the present day, less than forty years, with the longevity of the early members of the race, who lived more than as many score of years. some mighty deteriorating influence has been at work; and we hazard nothing in the assertion that the marriage of diseased persons and kindred violations of the laws of human hygiene have been not unimportant factors in producing this most appalling diminution in the length of human life. among the diseases which are most certain to be transmitted are pulmonary tuberculosis, or consumption, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, epilepsy, and some other nervous disorders, some forms of skin disease, and insanity. the list might be extended; but these are the more common. persons suffering with these disorders have no right to marry, for at least four reasons:-- ( ) it is a sin against the offspring of such unions, who have a right to be born well, but are forced to come into the world with weakly constitutions, diseased frames, and the certainty of premature death. the children of consumptive and syphilitic parents rarely survive infancy. if they do, it is only to suffer later on, as they surely will, and, perhaps, to communicate the same destructive diseases to other human beings; but these diseases rarely extend beyond the third generation, the line becoming extinct. the most heart-rending spectacles we have ever met have been the children of parents suffering with the diseases mentioned. their appearance is characteristic; no physician of experience can fail to detect the sins of a profligate parent in a syphilitic child. every feature indicates the presence of a blighting curse. there are those who assert that a man who has suffered with disease of the character last mentioned may marry after the lapse of two or three years from the disappearance of the active symptoms of the malady. such assertions we consider as most dangerous and pernicious. the individuals who make them are well acquainted with the fact that of all diseases this is the most difficult to eradicate when once the system has become thoroughly infected by it. not only three years but thirty years may elapse after active symptoms disappear, yet the disease may break out again in a new and still more serious and complicated form. it may even lie entirely dormant or latent in the system of the parent during his lifetime, but break out in all its terrible destructiveness in his children. a man or woman who has once suffered with this fell disease is contaminated for life; and it is a crime for such an one to entail upon innocent, unoffending human beings such a terrible legacy. such a person has no right to marry; or if married, has no right to perpetuate the results of his sins in offspring. it is _never safe_ to say to a man who has once been infected that he is cured. if a cure ever takes place, it is exceedingly rare. ( ) it is a crime against the race. one of the primary objects of marriage is reproduction. as members of the human race, it is the duty of parents to produce a high type of human beings, at least to do all in their power to produce healthy offspring. if they cannot do this, and are aware of the fact, they are guilty of abuse of the reproductive function in bringing sickly offspring into the world to suffer. ( ) it is injurious to the contracting parties themselves. if a person has a communicable disease, as syphilis, leprosy, and some bad forms of skin disease, the disease will certainly be communicated to the wife or husband, and so a double amount of suffering will be entailed. the dread disease, consumption, rightly called the scourge of civilization, is now well known to be communicable. a few years ago we were consulted by an old gentleman, a native of canada, who was suffering with pulmonary disease. we inquired respecting the history of the malady. said he, "doctor, it may seem strange, but i believe i _inherited_ consumption from my wife, who died of consumption a few years ago." excepting the wrong use of the term inherit, we were not prepared to dispute the old gentleman's ideas respecting the origin of his disease. living in close association for years with his wife, who was slowly dying with disease of the lungs, it was quite possible for him to have received the disease from her. so many cases of this kind have been reported that it is now generally believed by medical men that consumption is communicable from one person to another by the reception into the system of the well person of the exhalations from the lungs of the person affected. another point worthy of mention here is the well-known fact that the intimate association of married people modifies even the physical form of both. almost every one has noticed how much alike in appearance married people who have lived many years together come to be. this physical change undoubtedly extends further than to the features only. the whole constitution is modified. a remarkable illustration of this fact is found in the frequent observation that the children of a woman by a second husband often resemble in appearance the first husband much more than their own father. it has been observed that the children of negro women, even by husbands of pure negro blood, are much lighter in color than usual if she has had a child by a white man previously. the same fact is observed in lower animals. in england, some years ago, a cross was effected between a male zebra and several young mares. not only the hybrid colts resulting from this union, but all the colts afterward foaled by the same mares, from other horses, were striped like the zebra. in view of these facts, it is evident that the system of the woman, at least, may be profoundly affected in a similar manner by constitutional weaknesses, as well as by other individual peculiarities possessed by her husband. no person suffering with a contagious or infectious disease has any right to communicate the same to another. indeed, it is the moral duty of every person so affected to do all in his power for the protection of others from the same cause of suffering. _ . persons having a marked hereditary tendency to disease must not marry those having a similar tendency._ every physician knows only too well the powerful influence of hereditary causes in determining the length of human life. persons, one or both of whose parents have died of consumption, are very likely to die of the same disease, and frequently at about the same age. the children of such parents are commonly feeble and puny, and die early if they survive infancy. when both parents possess the consumptive tendency, the chance for life in the offspring is very poor indeed. the same may be said of those suffering with cancer, epilepsy, insanity, etc. persons with a strong tendency to any one of the diseases mentioned should in no case marry. if there is but a slight morbid tendency, marriage may be admissible, but only with a partner possessing robust health. _ . should cousins marry?_ writers have devoted a good deal of attention to this subject, and we have been shown statistics, reports of imbecile asylums, etc., for the purpose of proving that the marriage of cousins results in the production of idiots, and other defectives; but the results of more careful examinations of the subject invalidate the views heretofore held, and it must be acknowledged that when both parties are healthy there is no more liability of mental incompetency in the children of cousins, than in the offspring of persons more remotely related. it must be added, however, that there are other reasons why the marriage of cousins is not to be generally recommended. besides the fact that the feeling existing between cousins is often only that which is felt by brothers and sisters for each other, there is the still more important fact that on account of the blood relation, unions of this kind are more apt than others to bring together persons having similar morbid tendencies. _ . persons having serious congenital deformities should not marry._ the reason for this rule is obvious. persons suffering with serious congenital defects, as natural blindness, deafness, deformity of the limbs, or defective development of any part, will be more or less likely to transmit the same deformities or deficiencies to their children. there are, of course, cases of natural blindness, as well as of disability in other respects, to which this rule does not apply, the natural process of development not being seriously defective. it has even been observed that there is a slight tendency to the reproduction in the offspring, of deformity which has been artificially produced in the parents, and has existed for a long time. many ancient nations observed this rule. infants born cripples were strangled at birth or left to die. a spartan king was once required by his people to pay a heavy fine for taking a wife who was inferior in size. _ . criminals should not marry._ it has been satisfactorily shown by thorough and scientific investigation that criminals often receive their evil proclivities from their parents. what are known as the criminal classes, which are responsible for the greater part of the crime committed, are constantly and greatly on the increase. there is no doubt but that inheritance is largely responsible for the continued increase of crime and criminals. a drunkard begets in his child a thirst for liquor, which is augmented by the mother's use of ale or lager during gestation and nursing, and the child enters the world with a natural taste for intoxicants. a thief transmits to his offspring a secretive, dishonest, sneaking disposition; and the child comes into the world ticketed for the state prison by the nearest route. so with other evil tendencies. by legislation or by some other means, measures should be speedily adopted for the prevention of this rapid increase of criminals, if there is any feasible plan which can be adopted. we offer no suggestion on this point, but it is one well worthy of the consideration of philanthropic statesmen. _ . persons who are greatly disproportionate in size should not marry._ while good taste would suggest the propriety of this rule, there are important physiological reasons for its observance. while the lack of physical adaptitude may be the occasion of much suffering and unhappiness in such unions, especially on the part of the wife, being even productive of most serious local disease, and sometimes of sterility, it is in childbirth that the greatest risk and suffering is incurred. more might be said on this point, but this is sufficient for those who are willing to profit by a useful hint. _ . persons between whom there is great disparity of age should not marry._ the reasons for this have already been given at length, and we will not repeat. in general, the husband should be older than the wife, from two to five years. the husband may often be ten or twelve years the senior of the wife; but when more than that, the union is not likely to be a profitable or happy one, if it is not absolutely productive of suffering and unhappiness. the ancient greeks required that the husband should be twenty years older than the wife; but this custom was no more reasonable than that of another nation which required that only old and young should marry, so that the sobriety of the old might restrain the frivolity of the young. _ . persons who are extremely unlike in temperament should not marry._ persons who are so unlike in temperament and tastes as to have no mutual enjoyments, no congeniality of feeling, will be incompatible as husband and wife, and the union of such persons will be anything but felicitous. no definite rule can be laid down; but those seeking a companion for life would do well to bear this caution in mind, at the same time remembering that too great similarity of character, especially when there are prominent defects, is equally undesirable. _ . marriage between widely different races is unadvisable._ while there is no moral precept directly involved in marriage between widely different nations, as between whites and blacks or indians, experience shows that such marriages are not only not conducive to happiness, but are detrimental to the offspring. it has been proven beyond room for question that mulattoes are not so long-lived as either blacks or whites. _ . persons who are unable to sustain themselves or a family should not marry._ both moral and social obligations--if the two obligations may exist independently--forbid marriage to a young man who is scarcely able to provide for himself, much less to support a wife and a family. the theory advocated by some that two can live almost as cheaply as one, so that a saving will be made by a union of two in marriage, is a most fallacious one. there may be occasional exceptions, but in general, young people who marry with this idea in their heads find that they have reasoned not wisely. it will not be disputed that a married couple may live upon what is often spent foolishly by a young man; but a young man can be economical if he will; and if he does not learn economy before marriage, it is likely that he never will learn it. the marriage of paupers, to beget pauper children and foist them upon the community for support, is an outrage against society. we believe it is not improper to speak out plainly upon this subject, and in no uncertain tone, notwithstanding the popular prejudice which cries, "hush, be quiet; don't interfere with individual rights, don't disturb the peace of society," whenever anything is said which has a bearing on a regard for propriety in matters relating to one of the most ancient, the most sacred, and the most abused of all divinely appointed human institutions. we have never been able to account for this strange averseness to the consideration of this phase of the matrimonial question, and the determined effort often made to ignore it whenever it is broached. we purpose to speak out, notwithstanding the feeling referred to, since we believe this to be a crying evil; and we have no fears but that we shall have the hearty indorsement of every individual who can so far lay aside his prejudices as to allow his native common sense a fair chance to influence his judgment. in the country of iceland, a land which is scarcely more than semi-civilized, if a young man wishes to marry, the first thing to be considered is his pecuniary situation. before he can take to himself a wife, he must appear before the proper authority and present evidence that he is able to support a wife and family in addition to providing for himself. even the barbarous natives of patagonia show an equal degree of good sense, the chief of each tribe requiring that every young man who wishes to marry shall first prove himself competent to provide for a family, having attained the requisite degree of proficiency in hunting and fishing, and having possessed himself of at least two horses and the necessary equipments. in this country,--a civilized, so-called christian country, blessed with all the enlightenment of the nineteenth century, what do we see? instead of any regulation of the sort, the utmost indifference to such clearly important considerations. if young people profess to love each other and wish to marry, no one of their friends thinks of asking, "how are they going to live after they are married? has the young man a trade? has the young lady been so educated as to be self-sustaining if necessary? has the young man a home or the wherewithal to obtain one? has he a good situation, with prospects of being able to support his wife comfortably and provide for a family?" these, or similar questions are sometimes asked, but little respect is paid to them by any one, least of all by the young people themselves, who ought to be most interested. the minister never inquires respecting the propriety of the wedding at which he is to officiate, and invokes the blessings of heaven upon a union which, for aught he knows, may be the grossest violation of immutable laws, heaven-implanted in the constitution of the human race. the friends tender their congratulations and wishes of "much joy," when in three cases out of four the conditions are such that a preponderance of grief is an inevitable certainty, and "much joy" an utter impossibility. there are exceptions to all general rules; but it is a fact of which almost any one may convince himself that a man or a woman seldom rises much higher than the level reached at marriage. if a young man has no trade then, it is more than probable that he will never be master of one. if he has not fitted himself for a profession, he will most likely never attain to such a rank in society. he will, in all probability, be a common laborer, living "from hand to mouth," with nothing laid by for a rainy day. a wag says that a young couple just married, and for the first time awakened to the full consciousness of the fact that they must provide for themselves or starve, held the following dialogue: husband. "well, wife, what are we going to do? how shall we live?" wife. "oh, my dear, we shall get along very well, i am sure; you love me, don't you?" h. "certainly, dear, but we cannot live on love." w. "we can live on bread and water; so long as we have each other, it doesn't matter much what we have to eat." "that's so, my dear; well, you furnish the bread, and i will skirmish around after the water." this exact dialogue may never have taken place; but the circumstances which might have called it out have occurred thousands of times. how many times has a dependent woman who had hastily married an improvident husband awakened at the end of a short honeymoon to find that she had only a limber stick or a broken reed to lean upon, instead of a self-reliant, independent, self-sustaining man, able to provide for her the comforts of a home and to protect her from the rudeness and suffering of privation and want. in our estimation it is as much a sin for a man to assume the obligation of caring for a wife and family when he has no reasonable grounds for believing himself able to do so, as for a man to go in debt a few hundreds or thousands of dollars, and agree to pay the same when required, though perfectly well aware that he will probably be unable to do so. hence we say again, with emphasis, the improvident should not marry; and we shall insist upon urging this truth, notwithstanding the fact that the very class of persons referred to are usually of all classes the most anxious to enter the matrimonial state at the earliest possible moment, and the most certain to bring into the world large families of children still more improvident than themselves. _ . do not marry a person whose moral character will not bear the closest scrutiny._ by this we do not mean that absolute perfection should be required, as this would interdict marriage altogether; but we wish to warn every young man against marrying a young woman who treats lightly or contemptuously matters which should be treated with profound respect; who uses the name of deity flippantly or rudely; who treats her parents disrespectfully; who never cares to talk of subjects of a spiritual nature; who is giddy, gay, dressy, thoughtless, fickle. such a young woman will never make a loving, patient, faithful, helpful wife. we wish also to warn every young woman against choosing for a husband a man who has a strong leaning toward infidelity; who does not believe in human responsibility; who makes a mock of religion; who is addicted to profanity; who is either grossly intemperate or given to moderate tippling, be it ever so little, so long as he does not believe in and practice total abstinence; who uses tobacco; who is a jockey, a fop, a loafer, a scheming dreamer, or a speculator; who is known to be unchaste, or who has led a licentious life. the man who has no love for his maker will be likely to have little for his wife and children. he who does not acknowledge his responsibility to a higher power will soon forget his obligations to the wife he has promised to love and cherish. the man who is not willing to sacrifice the gratification afforded by such pernicious habits as dram-drinking and tobacco-using to insure the comfort and happiness of his wife and children, is too selfish to make any woman a kind husband. there is no greater error abroad than that held by not a few that "a reformed rake makes the best husband." the man whose affections have been consumed in the fires of unhallowed lust is incapable of giving to a pure-minded woman the love that she expects and deserves. a person cannot pass through the fire unscathed. the scars burned into the character by the flames of concupiscence are as deep and lasting as those inflicted upon the body, and even more so. only "in the regeneration" will the marks and scars of the reformed reprobate be wholly effaced. we willingly grant that there have been numerous instances in which noble women have by years of patient effort reformed their erring husbands, restoring them to the paths of virtue and sobriety from which they had wandered. we do not deny that it can be done again; but we do not hesitate to say that the experiment is a most perilous one for any woman to undertake, and one which not more than one woman in a hundred can bring to a successful termination. the hazard is terrible. perhaps it is on this very account that many young women run the risk; but they rarely understand what they are doing. the woman who marries a drunkard will, ten chances to one, die a heart-broken drunkard's wife, or follow her husband to a drunkard's grave. it is never safe for a woman to marry a man who has been for years an habitual drunkard, since he may relapse at any time; and the man who has only indulged moderately should be thoroughly reformed and tested before the chances are taken "for better or worse." let him prove himself well first. a proposition to reform on condition of marriage should be dismissed with disdain. if a young man will not determine to do right because it is right, his motives are sordid; and the probability is very great that so soon as some stronger incentive appeals to his selfishness, he will forget his vows and promises and relapse into his former vices. do not be in a hurry.--in conclusion, perhaps we could give no more important advice than this: _do not be in a hurry to marry._ there is little danger that this advice will do harm, for ten illustrations of the evil results of hasty marriage are seen to one in which the opposite mistake is made. it rarely happens that a marriage made without consideration and due deliberation on the part of both parties is a happy one in its results. there are exceptional cases in which this kind of matrimonial alliances result very satisfactorily; but these cases are quite exceptional. the business of selecting a partner for life, one who is expected to sustain the closest relation possible between human beings, who must be prepared to share in another's sorrows as well as joys, to sympathize with another's aspirations and appreciate another's motives and sentiments,--such a task is certainly one of the most serious of an individual's life and ought to be entered upon with calmness, deliberation, and unbiased judgment and entire self-control. when making a decision which must affect seriously an individual's whole life-time, passion, caprice, and all motives calculated to bias the judgment, should be laid aside. the happiness and usefulness of a whole life-time may be marred by a word. there is too much pending to be in a hurry. a certain philosopher once "compared a man about to marry to one who was about to put his hand into a sack in which were ninety-nine serpents and one eel; the moral of which is that there are ninety-nine chances to one against a fortunate selection." if this is true of a man about to marry, it is probably equally true that a woman under the same circumstances has nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against, for one in favor of, a fortunate selection. chastity. "thou shalt not commit adultery." "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." in these two scriptures we have a complete definition of unchastity. the seventh commandment, with the saviour's commentary upon it, places clearly before us the fact that chastity requires purity of thought as well as of outward acts. impure thoughts and unchaste acts are alike violations of the seventh commandment. as we shall see, also, unchastity of the mind is a violation of natural law as well as of moral law, and is visited with physical punishment commensurate to the transgression. mental unchastity.--it is vain for a man to suppose himself chaste who allows his imagination to run riot amid scenes of amorous associations. the man whose lips delight in tales of licentiousness, whose eyes feast upon obscene pictures, who is ever ready to pervert the meaning of a harmless word or act into uncleanness, who finds delight in reading vivid portrayals of acts of lewdness,--such a one is not a virtuous man. though he may never have committed an overt act of unchastity, if he cannot pass a handsome female in the street without, in imagination, approaching the secrets of her person, he is but one grade above the open libertine, and is as truly unchaste as the veriest debauchee. man may not see these mental adulteries, he may not perceive these filthy imaginings; but one sees and notes them. they leave their hideous scars upon the soul. they soil and mar the mind; and as the record of each day of life is photographed upon the books in heaven, they each appear in bold relief, in all their innate hideousness. o purity! how rare a virtue! how rare to find a face which shows no trace of sensuality! one turns with sadness from the thought that human "forms divine" have sunk so low. the standard of virtue is trailing in the dust. men laugh at vice, and sneer at purity. the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the sensual glance, the obscene song, the filthy tale, salute the eyes and ears at every street corner, in the horse-car, on the railroad train, in the bar-room, the lecture hall, the workshop. in short, the works and signs of vice are omnipresent. foul thoughts, once allowed to enter the mind, stick like the leprosy. they corrode, contaminate, and infect like the pestilence; naught but almighty power can deliver from the bondage of concupiscence a soul once infected by this foul blight, this moral contagium. mental uncleanness.--it is a wide-spread and deadly error, that only outward acts are harmful; that only physical transgression of the laws of chastity will produce disease. we have seen all the effects of beastly abuse result from mental sin alone. "i have traced serious affections and very great suffering to this cause. the cases may occur at any period of life. we meet with them frequently among such as are usually called, or think themselves, continent young men. there are large classes of persons who seem to think that they may, without moral guilt, excite their own feelings or those of others by loose or libidinous conversation in society, provided such impure thoughts or acts are not followed by masturbation or fornication. i have almost daily to tell such persons that physically, and in a sanitary point of view, they are ruining their constitutions. there are young men who almost pass their lives in making carnal acquaintances in the street, but just stop short of seducing girls; there are others who haunt the lower classes of places of public amusement for the purpose of sexual excitement, and live, in fact, a thoroughly immoral life in all respects except actually going home with prostitutes. when these men come to me, laboring under the various forms of impotence, they are surprised at my suggesting to them the possibility of the impairment of their powers being dependent upon these previous vicious habits."[ ] [footnote : acton.] "those lascivious _day-dreams_ and amorous reveries, in which young people--and especially the idle and the voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous--are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the genital organs! indeed, this unchastity of thought--this adultery of the mind--is the beginning of immeasurable evil to the human family."[ ] [footnote : graham.] amativeness.--certain phrenologists contend that the controlling center of the sexual passion is the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated at the lower and back part of the head. they apparently love to dwell upon the theme, and ride their hobby upon all possible occasions, often in the most disgusting manner, and always leaving the impression that they must be themselves suffering from perversion of the very function of which they speak. there may be some doubt whether the function called amativeness is located in the cerebellum at all; at least, it is perfectly certain that amativeness is not the exclusive function of the cerebellum. says carpenter, the learned physiologist, "the seat of the sexual sensation is no longer supposed to be in the cerebellum generally; but probably in its central portion, or some part of the medulla oblongata." the cerebellum is intimately connected with the principal vital organs; hence, if it is largely developed, the individual will possess a well-developed physical organism and a good degree of constitutional vigor. he will have vigorous health, and probably strong sexual powers; not, however, as a special function, but for the same reason that he will have a good digestion. to the majority of mankind, apparently, amativeness, or sexual love, means lust. the faculty has been lowered and debased until it might almost be considered practically synonymous with sensuality. the first step toward reform must be a recognition of a higher and purer relation than that which centers every thought upon the gratification of the animal in human nature. if one may judge from the facts which now and then come to the surface in society, it would appear that the opportunity for sensual gratification had come to be, in the world at large, the chief attraction between the sexes. if to these observations we add the filthy disclosures constantly made in police courts and scandal suits, we have a powerful confirmation of the opinion. even ministers, who ought to be "ensamples to the flock," are rather "blind leaders of the blind," and fall into the same ditch with the rest. this perversion of a natural instinct, and these sudden lapses from virtue which startle a small portion of community and afford a filthy kind of pleasure to the other part, are but the outgrowths of mental unchastity. "filthy dreamers," before they are aware, become filthy in action. the thoughts mold the brain, as certainly as the brain molds the thoughts. rapidly down the current of sensuality is swept the individual who yields his imagination to the contemplation of lascivious themes. before he knows his danger, he finds himself deep in the mire of concupiscence. he may preserve a fair exterior; but deception cannot cleanse the slime from his putrid soul. how many a church-member carries under a garb of piety a soul filled with abominations, no human scrutiny can tell. how many pulpits are filled by "whited sepulchers," only the judgment will disclose. unchaste conversation.--"out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." "by thy words thou shalt be condemned." matt. : , , . in these three brief sentences, christ presents the whole moral aspect of the subject of this paragraph. to any one who will ponder well his weighty words, no further remark is necessary. let filthy talkers but consider for a moment what a multitude of "idle," unclean words are waiting for account in the final day; and then let them consider what a load of condemnation must roll upon their guilty souls when strict justice is meted out to every one before the bar of omnipotence, and in the face of all the world--of all the universe. the almost universal habit among boys and young men of relating filthy stories, indulging in foul jokes, making indecent allusions, and subjecting to lewd criticism every passing female, is a most abominable sin. such habits crush out pure thoughts; they annihilate respect for virtue; they make the mind a quagmire of obscenity; they lead to overt acts of lewdness. but boys and youths are not alone in this. more often than otherwise, they gain from older ones the phraseology of vice. and if the sin is loathsome in such youthful transgressors, what detestable enormity must characterize it in the old. and women, too, are not without their share in this accursed thing, this ghost of vice, which haunts the sewing-circle and the parlor as well as the club-room. they do not, of course, often descend to those black depths of vulgarity to which the coarser sex will go, but couch in finer terms the same foul thoughts, and hide in loose insinuations more smut than words could well express. women who think themselves rare paragons of virtue can find no greater pleasure than in the discussion of the latest scandal, speculations about the chastity of mrs. a. or mr. b., and gossip about the "fall" of this man's daughter or the amorous adventures of that woman's son. masculine purity loves to regard woman as chaste in mind as well as in body, to surround her with conceptions of purity and impregnable virtue; but the conclusion is irresistible that those who can gloat over others' lapses from virtue, and find delight in such questionable entertainments as the most recent case of seduction, or the newest scandal, have need to purify their hearts and re-enforce their waning chastity. nevertheless, a writer says, and perhaps truly, that "the women comprise about all the real virtue there is in the world." certainly if they were one-half as bad as the masculine portion of humanity, the world would be vastly worse than it is. causes of unchastity.--travelers among the north american indians have been struck with the almost entire absence of that abandonment to vice which might be expected in a race uninfluenced by the moral restraints of christianity. when first discovered in their native wilds, they were free from both the vices and the consequent diseases of civilization. this fact points unmistakably to the conclusion that there must be something in the refinements and perversions of civilized life which is unfavorable to chastity, notwithstanding all the restraints which religion and the conventionalisms of society impose. can we find such influences? yes; they abound on every hand and leave their blight in most unwelcome places, oft unsuspected, even, till the work of ruin is complete. early causes.--the earliest of all causes is hereditary predisposition. as we have shown, a child conceived in lust can no more be chaste by nature than a negro can be a caucasian. but back of this there is a deeper cause, as we shall see, one that affects parents as well as offspring. between infancy and puberty, are in operation, all those influences mentioned under "sexual precocity." the frequent custom of allowing children of the opposite sex to sleep together, even until eight or ten years of age, or longer, is a dangerous one. we have known of instances in which little boys of seven or eight have been allowed to sleep with girls of fourteen or sixteen, in some of which most shameful lessons were taught, and by persons who would not be suspected of such an impropriety. in one instance a little boy of eight, occupying the same bed with three girls several years older, was used for illustration by the older girl in instructing the younger ones in the _modus operandi_ of reproduction. the sexes should be carefully separated from each other at least as early as four or five years of age, under all circumstances which could afford opportunity for observing the physical differences of the sexes, or in any way serve to excite those passions which at this tender age should be wholly dormant. diet vs. chastity.--from earliest infancy to impotent old age, under the perverting influence of civilization, there is a constant antagonism between diet and purity. sometimes--rarely we hope--the helpless infant imbibes the essence of libidinous desires with its mother's milk, and thence receives upon its forming brain the stamp of vice. when old enough to take food in the ordinary way, the infant's tender organs of digestion are plied with highly seasoned viands, stimulating sauces, animal food, sweetmeats, and dainty tidbits in endless variety. soon, tea and coffee are added to the list. salt, pepper, ginger, mustard, condiments of every sort, deteriorate his daily food. if, perchance, he does not die at once of indigestion, or with his weakened forces fall a speedy victim to the diseases incident to infancy, he has his digestive organs impaired for life at the very outset of his existence. exciting stimulants and condiments weaken and irritate his nerves and derange the circulation. thus, indirectly, they affect the sexual system, which suffers through sympathy with the other organs. but a more direct injury is done. flesh, condiments, eggs, tea, coffee, chocolate, and all stimulants, have a powerful influence directly upon the reproductive organs. they increase the local supply of blood; and through nervous sympathy with the brain, the passions are aroused. overeating, eating between meals, hasty eating, eating indigestible articles of food, late suppers, react upon the sexual organs with the utmost certainty. any disturbance of the digestive function deteriorates the quality of the blood. poor blood, filled with crude, poorly digested food, is irritating to the nervous system, and especially to those extremely delicate nerves which govern the reproductive function. irritation provokes congestion; congestion excites sexual desires; excited passions increase the local disturbance; and thus each reacts upon the other, ever increasing the injury and the liability to future damage. thus, these exciting causes continue their insidious work through youth and more mature years. right under the eyes of fathers and mothers they work the ruin of their children, exciting such storms of passion as are absolutely uncontrollable. clerical lapses.--our most profound disgust is justly excited when we hear of laxity of morals in a clergyman. we naturally feel that one whose calling is to teach his fellow-men the way of truth, and right, and purity, should himself be free from taint of immorality. but when we consider how these ministers are fed, we cannot suppress a momentary disposition to excuse, in some degree, their fault. when the minister goes out to tea, he is served with the richest cake, the choicest jellies, the most pungent sauces, and the finest of fine-flour bread-stuffs. little does the indulgent hostess dream that she is ministering to the inflammation of passions which may imperil the virtue of her daughter, or even her own. salacity once aroused, even in a minister, allows no room for reason or for conscience. if women wish to preserve the virtue of their ministers, let them feed them more in accordance with the laws of health. ministers are not immaculate. the remedy for the dangers to chastity arising from this source, is pointed out in the article on "continence." tobacco and vice.--few are aware of the influence upon morals exerted by that filthy habit, tobacco-using. when acquired early, it excites the undeveloped organs, arouses the passions, and in a few years converts the once chaste and pure youth into a veritable volcano of lust, belching out from its inner fires of passion torrents of obscenity and the sulphurous fumes of lasciviousness. if long-continued, the final effect of tobacco is emasculation; but this is only the necessary consequence of previous super-excitation. the lecherous day-dreams in which many smokers indulge, are a species of fornication for which even a brute ought to blush, if such a crime were possible for a brute. the mental libertine does not confine himself to bagnios and women of the town. in the foulness of his imagination, he invades the sanctity of virtue wherever his erotic fancy leads him. we are aware that we have made a grave charge against tobacco, and we have not hesitated to state the naked truth; yet we do not think we have exaggerated, in the least, the pernicious influence of this foul drug. as much, or nearly as much, might be said against the use of liquor, on the same grounds. bad books.--another potent enemy of virtue is the obscene literature which has flooded the land for many years. circulated by secret agencies, these books have found their way into the most secluded districts. nearly every large school contains one of these emissaries of evil men and their satanic master. some idea of the enormity and extent of this evil may be gained from the following quotations from a published letter of mr. anthony comstock, who has been for some time employed by the young men's christian association in suppressing the traffic by arresting the publishers and destroying their goods:-- "i have succeeded in unearthing this hydra-headed monster in part, as you will see by the following statement, which, in many respects, might be truthfully increased in quantity. these i have seized and destroyed:-- "obscene photographs, stereoscopic and other pictures, more than one hundred and eighty-two thousand; obscene books and pamphlets, more than five tons; obscene letter-press in sheets, more than two tons; sheets of impure songs, catalogues, handbills, etc., more than twenty-one thousand; obscene microscopic watch and knife charms, and finger-rings, more than five thousand; obscene negative plates for printing photographs and stereoscopic views, about six hundred and twenty-five; obscene engraved steel and copper plates, three hundred and fifty; obscene lithographic stones destroyed, twenty; obscene wood-cut engravings, more than five hundred; stereotype plates for printing obscene books, more than five tons; obscene transparent playing-cards, nearly six thousand; obscene and immoral rubber articles, over thirty thousand; lead molds for manufacturing rubber goods, twelve sets, or more than seven hundred pounds; newspapers seized, about four thousand six hundred; letters from all parts of the country ordering these goods, about fifteen thousand; names of dealers in account-books seized, about six thousand; lists of names in the hands of dealers, that are sold as merchandise to forward circulars or catalogues to, independent of letters and account-books seized, more than seven thousand; arrest of dealers since oct. , , more than fifty." "these abominations are disseminated by these men first obtaining the names and addresses of scholars and students in our schools and colleges, and then forwarding circulars. they secure thousands of names in this way, either by sending for a catalogue of schools, seminaries, and colleges, under a pretense of sending a child to attend these places, or else by sending out a circular purporting to be getting up a directory of all the scholars and students in schools and colleges in the united states, or of taking the census of all the unmarried people, and offering to pay five cents per name for lists so sent. i need not say that the money is seldom or never sent, but i do say that these names, together with those that come in reply to advertisements, are sold to other parties; so that when a man desires to engage in this nefarious business, he has only to purchase a list of these names, and then your child, be it son or daughter, is liable to have thrust into its hands, all unknown to you, one of these devilish catalogues." "since the destruction of the stereotype plates of old books, secret circulars have been discovered of a notice to dealers that twelve new books are in course of preparation, and will soon be ready for delivery." says hon. c. l. merriam, as quoted by dr. lewis: "we find that the dealers in obscene literature have organized circulating libraries, which are under the charge of the most vicious boys in the schools, boys chosen and paid by the venders, and who circulate among the students, at ten cents a volume, any of the one hundred and forty-four obscene books heretofore published in new york city." largely through the influence of mr. comstock, laws have been enacted which promise to do much toward checking this extensive evil, or at least causing it to make itself less prominent. our newspapers still abound with advertisements of various so-called medical works, "marriage guides," etc., which are fruits of the same "upas-tree" that mr. comstock has labored so faithfully to uproot. it is a painful fact, however, that the total annihilation of every foul book which the law can reach will not effect the cure of this evil, for our modern literature is full of the same virus. it is necessarily presented in less grossly revolting forms, half concealed by beautiful imagery, or embellished by wit; but yet, there it is, and no law can reach it. the works of our standard authors in literature abound in lubricity. popular novels have doubtless done more to arouse a prurient curiosity in the young, and to excite and foster passion and immorality, than even the obscene literature for the suppression of which such active measures have recently been taken. the more exquisitely painted the scenes of vice, the more dangerously enticing. novel-reading has led thousands to lives of dissoluteness. idleness.--this evil is usually combined with the preceding. to maintain purity, the mind must be occupied. if left without occupation, the vacuity is quickly filled with unchaste thoughts. nothing can be worse for a child than to be reared in idleness. his morals will be certain to suffer. incessant mental occupation is the only safeguard against unchastity. those worthless fops who spend their lives in "killing time" by lounging about bar-rooms, loafing on street corners, or strutting up and down the boulevard, are anything but chaste. those equally worthless young women who waste their lives on sofas or in easy-chairs, occupied only with some silly novel, or idling away life's precious hours in reverie--such creatures are seldom the models of purity one would wish to think them. if born with a natural propensity toward sin, such a life would soon engender a diseased, impure imagination, if nothing worse. dress and sensuality.--there are two ways in which fashionable dress leads to unchastity; viz., . by its extravagance; . by its abuse of the body. how does extravagance lead to unchastity? by creating the temptation to sin. it affects not those gorgeously attired ladies who ride in fine carriages, and live in brown-stone fronts, who are surrounded with all the luxuries that wealth can purchase--fine apparel is no temptation to such. but to less favored--though not less worthy--ones, these magnificent displays of millinery goods and fine trappings are most powerful temptations. the poor seamstress, who can earn by diligent toil hardly enough to pay her board bill, has no legitimate way by which to deck herself with the finery she admires. plainly dressed as she must be if she remains honest and retains her virtue, she is scornfully ignored by her proud sisters. everywhere she finds it a generally recognized fact that "dress makes the lady." on the street, no one steps aside to let her pass, no one stoops to regain for her the package that slips from her weary hands. does she enter a crowded car, no one offers her a seat, though she is trembling with fatigue, while the showily dressed woman who follows her is accommodated at once. she marks the difference; she does not pause to count the cost, but barters away her self-respect, to gain the respect, or deference, of strangers. how young women fall.--it has been authoritatively stated that there are, in our large cities, hundreds of young women who, being able to earn barely enough to buy food and fuel and pay the rent of a dismal attic, take the advice offered by their employers, "get some gentleman friend to dress you for your company." others spend all their small earnings to keep themselves "respectably" dressed, and share the board and lodgings of some young _roue_ as heartless as incontinent. persons unaccustomed to city life, and thousands of people in the very heart of our great metropolis, have no conception of the frightful prevalence of this kind of prostitution. young women go to our large cities as pure as snow. they find no lucrative employment. daily contact with vice obtunds their first abhorrence of it. gradually it becomes familiar. a fancied life of ease presents allurements to a hard-worked sewing-girl. fine clothes and comfortable lodgings increase the temptation. she yields, and barters her body for a home without the trouble of a marriage ceremony. wealthy women could do more to cure the "social evil" by adopting plain attire than all the civil authorities by passing license laws or regulating ordinances. have not christian women a duty here? a few years ago, some nashville ladies made a slight move in the right direction, as indicated in the following paragraph; but we have not heard that their example has been followed:-- "the lady members of the first baptist church, of nashville, tenn., have agreed that they will dispense with all finery on sunday, wearing no jewels but consistency, and hereafter appear at church in plain calico dresses." a more radical reform would have been an extension of the salutary measure to all other days of the week as well as sunday; though we see no reason for restricting the material of clothing to calico, which might, indeed, be rather insufficient for some seasons of the year. fashion and vice.--let us glance at the second manner in which dress lends its influence to vice, by obstructing the normal functions of the body. . fashion requires a woman to compress her waist with bands or corsets. in consequence, the circulation of the blood toward the heart is obstructed. the venous blood is crowded back into the delicate organs of generation. congestion ensues, and with it, through reflex action, the unnatural excitement of the animal propensities. . the manner of wearing the clothing, suspending several heavy garments from the hips, increases the same difficulty by bringing too large a share of clothing where it is least needed, thus generating unnatural local heat. . the custom of clothing the feet and limbs so thinly that they are exposed to constant chilling, by still further unbalancing the circulation, adds another element to increase the local mischief. all of these causes combined, operating almost constantly,--with others that might be mentioned,--produce permanent local congestions, with ovarian and uterine derangements. the latter affections have long been recognized as the chief pathological condition in hysteria, and especially in that peculiar form of disease known as _nymphomania_, under the excitement of which a young woman, naturally chaste and modest, may be impelled to the commission of the most wanton acts. the pernicious influence of fashionable dress in occasioning this disorder cannot be doubted. reform in dress needed.--the remedy for these evils, the only way to escape them, is reformation. the dress must be so adjusted to the body that every organ will be allowed free movement. no corset, band, belt, or other means of constriction, should impede the circulation. garments should be suspended from the shoulders by means of a waist, or proper suspenders. the limbs should be as warmly clad as any other portion of the body. how best to secure these requirements of health may be learned from several excellent works on dress reform, any of which can be readily obtained of the publishers of this work or their agents. fashionable dissipation.--the influence of so important an agent for evil in this direction as fashionable dissipation, cannot be ignored. by fashionable dissipation we mean that class of excesses in the indulgence in which certain classes, usually the more wealthy or aristocratic, pride themselves. among this class of persons a man who is known to be a common drunkard would not be recognized; such a person would be carefully shunned; yet a total abstainer would be avoided with almost equal care, and would be regarded as a fanatic or an extremist at least. with persons of this class, wine-drinking is considered necessary as a matter of propriety. along with wine are taken the great variety of highly seasoned foods, spices, and condiments in profusion, with rich meats and all sorts of delicacies, rich desserts, etc., which can hardly be considered much less harmful than stimulants of a more generally recognized character. these indulgences excite that part of the system which generally needs restraint rather than stimulation. a participant, an ex-governor, recently described to us a grand political dinner given in honor of a noted american citizen, which began at p.m., and continued until nearly midnight, continuous courses of foods, wines, etc., being served for nearly six hours. similar scenes have been enacted in a score of our large cities for the same ostensible purpose. knowing that public men are addicted to such gormandizing on numerous occasions, we do not wonder that so many of them are men of loose morals. the tendency of luxury is toward demoralization. rome never became dissipated and corrupt until her citizens became wealthy, and adopted luxurious modes of living. nothing is much more conducive to sound morals than full occupation of the mind with useful labor. fashionable idleness is a foe to virtue. the young man or the young woman who wastes the precious hours of life in listless dreaming, or in that sort of senseless twaddle which forms the bulk of the conversation in some circles, is in very great danger of demoralization. many of the usages and customs of fashionable society seem to open the door to vice, and to insidiously, and at first unconsciously, lead the young and inexperienced away from the paths of purity and virtue. there is good evidence that the amount of immorality among what are known as the higher classes is every year increasing. every now and then a scandal in high life comes to the surface; but the great mass of corruption is effectually hidden from the general public. open profligacy is of course frowned upon in all respectable circles; and yet wealth and accomplishments will cover a multitude of sins. this freedom allowed to the vile and vicious is one of the worst features of fashionable society. such persons carry about them a moral atmosphere more deadly than the dreaded upas-tree. round dances.--whatever apologies may be offered for other forms of the dance as means of exercise under certain restrictions, employed as a form of calisthenics, no such excuse can be framed in defense of "round dances," especially of the waltz. in addition to the associated dissipation, late hours, fashionable dressing, midnight feasting, exposures through excessive exertions and improper dress, etc., it can be shown most clearly that dancing has a direct influence in stimulating the passions and provoking unchaste desires, which too often lead to unchaste acts, and are in themselves violations of the requirements of strict morality, and productive of injury to both mind and body. said the renowned petrarch, "the dance is the spur of lust--a circle of which the devil himself is the center. many women that use it have come dishonest home, most indifferent, none better." we cannot do better than to quote on this subject from a little work entitled, "the dance of death," the author of which has given a great amount of attention to this subject, and presents its evils in a very forcible light, as follows:-- "a score of forms whirl swiftly before us under the softened gaslight. i say a score of _forms_--but each is double--they would have made two score before the dancing began. twenty floating visions--each male and female. twenty women, knit and growing to as many men, undulate, sway, and swirl giddily before us, keeping time with the delirious melody of piano, harp, and violin. "but draw nearer--let us see how this miracle is accomplished. do you mark yonder couple who seem to excel the rest in grace and ardor. let us take this couple for a sample. he is stalwart, agile, mighty; she is tall, supple, lithe, and how beautiful in form and feature! her head rests upon his shoulder, her face is upturned to his; her naked arm is almost around his neck; her swelling breast heaves tumultuously against his; face to face they whirl, his limbs interwoven with her limbs; with strong right arm about her yielding waist, he presses her to him till every curve in the contour of her lovely body thrills with the amorous contact. her eyes look into his, but she sees nothing; the soft music fills the room, but she hears nothing; swiftly he whirls her from the floor or bends her frail body to and fro in his embrace. "with a last, low wail the music ceases. her swooning senses come back to life. ah, must it be! yes; her companion releases her from his embrace. leaning wearily upon his arm, the rapture faded from her eye, the flush dying from her cheek--enervated, limp, listless, worn out--she is led to a seat, there to recover from her delirium and gather her energies as best she may in the space of five minutes, after which she must yield her body to a new embrace." "and now tell me, friend of mine, did you not recognize an old acquaintance in the lady we have been watching so closely? no! then believe me; she is no other than the 'pure and lovely girl' you so much admired earlier in the evening, the so desirable wife, the angel who was to 'haunt your dreams.'" the author just quoted publishes in his little work a letter from a woman of great ability and strength of mind, of unblemished character and national reputation, written in response to his request for her opinion of the dance. the statements made in this remarkable letter are so clear and convincing that every parent ought to read it. we quote the chief portions as follows:-- "'i will venture to lay bare a young girl's heart and mind by giving you my own experience in the days when i waltzed. "'in those times i cared little for polka or varsovienne, and still less for the old-fashioned "money musk" or "virginia reel," and wondered what people could find to admire in those "slow dances." but in the soft floating of the waltz i found a strange pleasure, rather difficult to intelligibly describe. the mere anticipation fluttered my pulse, and when my partner approached to claim my promised hand for the dance, i felt my cheeks glow a little sometimes, and i could not look him in the eyes with the same frank gayety as heretofore. "'but the climax of my confusion was reached when, folded in his warm embrace, and giddy with the whirl, a strange, sweet thrill would shake me from head to foot, leaving me weak and almost powerless, and really almost obliged to depend for support upon the arm which encircled me. if my partner failed from ignorance, lack of skill, or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasurable sensations, i did not dance with him the second time. "'i am speaking openly and frankly, and when i say that i did not understand what i felt, or what were the real and greatest pleasures i derived from this so-called dancing, i expect to be believed. but if my cheeks grew red with uncomprehended pleasure then, they grow pale with shame to-day when i think of it all. it was the physical emotions engendered by the contact of strong men that i was enamored of--not of the dance, nor even of the men themselves. "'thus i became abnormally developed in my lowest nature. i grew bolder, and from being able to return shy glances at first, was soon able to meet more daring ones, until the waltz became to me and whomsoever danced with me, one lingering, sweet, and purely sensual pleasure, where heart beat against heart, hand was held in hand, and eyes looked burning words which lips dared not speak. "'all this while no one said to me, you do wrong; so i dreamed of sweet words whispered during the dance, and often felt while alone a thrill of joy indescribable yet overpowering when my mind would turn from my studies to remember a piece of temerity of unusual grandeur on the part of one or another of my cavaliers. "'girls talk to each other. i was still a school girl, although mixing so much with the world. we talked together. we read romances that fed our romantic passions on seasoned food, and none but ourselves knew what subjects we discussed. had our parents heard us, they would have considered us on the high road to ruin. "'yet we had been taught that it was right to dance; our parents did it, our friends did, and we were permitted. i will say also that all the girls with whom i associated, with the exception of one, had much the same experience in dancing; felt the same strangely sweet emotions, and felt that almost imperative necessity for a closer communion than that which even the freedom of a waltz permits, without knowing exactly why, or even comprehending what. "'married now, with home and children around me, i can at least thank god for the experience which will assuredly be the means of preventing my little daughters from indulging in any such dangerous pleasure. but, if a young girl, pure and innocent in the beginning, can be brought to feel what i have confessed to have felt, what must be the experience of a married woman? _she_ knows what every glance of the eye, every bend of the head, every close clasp means, and knowing that, reciprocates it, and is led by swifter steps and a surer path down the dangerous, dishonorable road. "'i doubt if my experience will be of much service, but it is the candid truth, from a woman who, in the cause of all the young girls who may be contaminated, desires to show just to what extent a young mind may be defiled by the injurious effects of round dances. i have not hesitated to lay bare what are a young girl's most secret thoughts, in the hope that people will stop and consider, at least, before handing their lilies of purity over to the arms of any one who may choose to blow the frosty breath of dishonor on their petals.'" much more might be added on this important subject, would the limits of this work allow; but this must suffice. we beg the reader to consider carefully and prayerfully the facts presented before deciding that dancing is so harmless as many persons suppose. physical causes of unchastity.--some of the physical causes of impurity in women have been previously referred to, since it is through physical injuries that unhealthful clothing exerts its influence. too little is generally known of the intimate connection between physical and mental conditions. doubtless, many vices originate in physical imperfections. indeed, when the full bearing of physical influences upon the mind is allowed, it is difficult to avoid pleading extenuating circumstances in the cases of the greatest share of transgressors of both moral and civil laws. this principle is especially applicable to sexual relations. in males, one of the most general physical causes of sexual excitement is _constipation_. the vesicula seminalis, in which the seminal fluid is stored, is situated, as will be remembered, at the base of the bladder. it thus has the bladder in front, and the rectum behind. in constipation, the rectum becomes distended with feces, effete matter which should have been promptly evacuated instead of being allowed to accumulate. this hardened mass presses upon the parts most intimately concerned in the sexual act, causing excessive local excitement. when this condition is chronic, as in habitual constipation, the unnatural excitement often leads to most serious results. one of these is the production of a horrible disease, _satyriasis_, the nature of which has been previously indicated. _constipation_ in females has the same tendency, though the dangers are not quite so great. the irritation is sufficient, however, to lead to excitement of the passions. _intestinal worms_ often produce the same result in children. _local uncleanliness_ is another very frequent cause which is often overlooked. the natural local secretions quickly become a source of great irritation if not removed by daily washing. certain anatomical peculiarities sometimes exist in the male which greatly aggravate this difficulty, and for which circumcision, or an equivalent operation, is the remedy. _irritation of the bladder_, producing incontinence of urine, is another enemy to chastity. it should receive prompt attention and treatment. in children, this irritability is indicated by wetting of the bed at night. in cases of this kind, allow the child little drink in the latter portion of the day. see that the bladder is emptied just before he goes to bed. wake him once or twice during the night, and have him urinate. use all possible means to remove the cause of irritation by giving him plenty of out-of-door exercise and a very simple, though nutritious, diet. avoid meat, eggs, and condiments. modern modes of life.--aside from all of the causes already enumerated, there are many other conditions and circumstances, the result of modern habits of living, that tend directly toward the excitement of sensuality. superheated rooms, sedentary employments, the development of the mental and nervous organizations at the expense of the muscular, the cramming system in schools, too long confinement of school-children in a sitting position, the allowance of too great freedom between the sexes in the young, the demoralizing influence of most varieties of public amusement, balls, church fairs, and other like influences too numerous to mention, all tend in the one direction, that of abnormal excitation and precocious development of the sexual functions. it is not an exaggeration to say that for one conforming to modern modes of living, eating, sleeping, and drinking, absolute chastity is next to an absolute impossibility. this would certainly be true without a special interposition of providence; but providence never works miracles to obviate the results of voluntary sin. continence. continence differs from chastity in being entire restraint from sexual indulgence under all circumstances, while chastity is only restraint from unlawful indulgence. as we have both physical and mental chastity, so continence should be both mental and physical. many of the observations on the subject of "chastity" apply with equal force to continence. the causes of incontinence are the same as those of unchastity. the same relation also exists between mental and physical continence as between mental and physical chastity. the subject of continence evidently has a somewhat wider scope than that of chastity, as generally understood; but as we have considered the latter subject so fully, we shall devote less space to this, leaving the reader to make the application of such preceding remarks as reason may suggest to him are equally appropriate here. without stopping to consider the various circumstances under which absolute continence is expedient, or desirable, or morally required, we will proceed at once to examine the question, is continence harmful? continence not injurious.--it has been claimed by many, even by physicians,--and with considerable show of reason,--that absolute continence, after full development of the organs of reproduction, could not be maintained without great detriment to health. it is needless to enumerate all the different arguments employed to support this position, since they are, with a few exceptions, too frivolous to deserve attention. we shall content ourselves chiefly with quotations from acknowledged authorities, by which we shall show that the popular notions upon this subject are wholly erroneous. their general acceptance has been due, without doubt, to the strong natural bias in their favor. it is an easy matter to believe what agrees well with one's predilections. a bare surmise, on the side of prejudice, is more telling than the most powerful logic on the other side. "we know that this opinion is held by men of the world, and that many physicians share it. this belief appears to us to be erroneous, without foundation, and easily refuted."[ ] [footnote : mayer.] the same writer claims "that no peculiar disease nor any abridgment of the duration of life can be ascribed to such continence." he proves his position by appealing to statistics, and shows the fallacy of arguments in support of the contrary view. he further says:-- "it is determined, in our opinion, that the commerce of the sexes has no necessities that cannot be restrained without peril." "a part has been assigned to _spermatic plethora_ in the etiology of various mental affections. among others, priapism has been attributed to it. in our opinion, this malady originates in a disturbance of the cerebral nerve power; but it is due much less to the retention of sperm than to its exaggerated loss; much less to virtuous abstinence than to moral depravity." there has evidently been a wide-spread deception upon this subject. "health does not absolutely require that there should ever be an emission of semen, from puberty to death, though the individual live a hundred years; and the frequency of involuntary nocturnal emissions is an indubitable proof that the parts, at least, are suffering under a debility and morbid irritability utterly incompatible with the general welfare of the system." does not produce impotence.--it has been declared that strict continence would result in impotency. the falsity of this argument is clearly shown by the following observations:-- "there exists no _greater error_ than this, nor one more opposed to physiological truth. in the first place, i may state that i have, after many years' experience, never seen a single instance of atrophy of the generative organs from this cause. i have, it is true, met the complaint, but in what class of cases does it occur? it arises, in all instances, from the exactly opposite cause, abuse; the organs become worn out, and hence arises atrophy. physiologically considered, it is not a fact that the power of secreting semen is annihilated in well-formed adults leading a healthy life and yet remaining continent. no continent man need be deterred by this apocryphal fear of atrophy of the testes, from living a chaste life. it is a device of the unchaste--a lame excuse for their own incontinence, unfounded on any physiological law."[ ] [footnote : acton.] the truth of this statement has been amply confirmed by experiments upon animals. the complaint is made by those whose lives have been far otherwise than continent, that abstinence occasions suffering, from which indulgence gives relief. the same writer further says that when such a patient consults a medical man, "he should be told--and the result would soon prove the correctness of the advice--that attention to diet, gymnastic exercise, and self-control, will, most effectually relieve the symptoms." difficulty of continence.--some there are who urge that self-denial is difficult; that the natural promptings are imperious. from this they argue that it cannot but be right to gratify so strong a passion. "the admitted fact that continence, even at the very beginning of manhood, is frequently productive of distress, is often a struggle hard to be borne--still harder to be completely victorious in--is not to be at all regarded as an argument that it is an _evil_."[ ] [footnote : ibid.] but if rigid continence is maintained from the first, the struggle with the passions will not be nearly so severe as after they have once been allowed to gain the ascendency. on this point, the following remarks are very just:-- "at the outset, the sexual necessities are not so uncontrollable as is generally supposed, and they can be put down by the exercise of a little energetic will. there is, therefore, as it appears to us, as much injustice in accusing nature of disorders which are dependent upon the genital senses, badly directed, as there would be in attributing to it a sprain or a fracture accidentally produced."[ ] [footnote : mayer.] helps to continence.--as already indicated, and as every individual with strong passions knows, the warfare with passion is a serious one if one determines to lead a continent life. he needs the help of every aid that he can gain. some of these may be named as follows:-- _the will_.--a firm determination must be formed to lead a life of purity; to quickly quench the first suggestions of impurity; to harbor no unchaste desire; to purge the mind of carnal thoughts; in short, to cleave fast to mental continence. each triumph over vicious thoughts will strengthen virtue; each victory won will make the next the easier. so strong a habit of continence may be formed that this alone will be a bulwark against vice. _diet_.--he who would keep in subjection his animal nature must carefully guard the portal to his stomach. the blood is made of what is eaten. irritating food will produce irritating blood. stimulating foods or drinks will surely produce a corresponding quality of blood. irritating, stimulating blood will irritate and stimulate the nervous system, and especially the delicate nerves of the reproductive system, as previously explained. only the most simple and wholesome food should be eaten, and that only in such moderate quantities as are required to replenish the tissues. the custom of making the food pungent and stimulating with condiments is the great, almost the sole, cause of gluttony. it is one of the greatest hindrances to virtue. indeed, it may with truth be said that the devices of modern cookery are most powerful allies of unchastity and licentiousness. this subject is particularly deserving of careful, candid, and studious attention, and only needs such investigation to demonstrate its soundness. _exercise_.--next to diet as an aid to continence, perhaps of equal importance with it, is exercise, both physical and mental. it is a trite proverb, the truth of which every one acknowledges, that "satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," and it is equally true that he always has an evil thought in readiness--speaking figuratively--to instill into an unoccupied mind. a person who desires to be pure and continent in body and mind must flee idleness as he would the devil himself; for the latter is always ready to improve upon the advantages afforded by an idle moment, an hour given to reverie. we have the strongest testimony from the most eminent physicians in regard to the efficacy of exercise in overcoming abnormal sexual desires. mr. acton relates the following statement made to him by a gentleman who has become distinguished in his profession:-- "'you may be surprised, mr. acton,' said he, 'by the statement i am about to make to you, that before my marriage i lived a perfectly continent life. during my university career, my passions were very strong, sometimes almost uncontrollable, but i have the satisfaction to think that i mastered them; it was, however, by great efforts. i obliged myself to take violent physical exertion; i was the best oar of my year, and when i felt particularly strong sexual desire, i sallied out to take my exercise. i was victorious always, and i never committed fornication. you see in what vigorous health i am; it was exercise alone that saved me.'" says carpenter, on the same subject, in a textbook for medical students, "'try the effect of close mental application to some of those ennobling pursuits to which your profession introduces you, in combination with vigorous bodily exercise, before you assert that the appetite is unrestrainable, and act upon that assertion.'" walking, riding, rowing, and gymnastics are among the best modes of physical exercise for sedentary persons; but there is no better form of exercise than working in the garden. the cultivation of small fruits, flowers, and other occupations of like character, really excel all other modes of physical exercise for one who can engage in them with real pleasure. even though distasteful at first, they may become very attractive and interesting if there is an honest, persevering desire to make them so. the advantages of exercises of this kind are evident. . they are useful as well as healthful. while they call into action a very large number of muscles by the varied movements required, the expenditure of vital force is remunerated by the actual value of the products of the labor; so that no force is wasted. . the tillage of the soil and the dressing of vines and plants bring one in constant contact with nature in a manner that is elevating and refining, or at least affords the most favorable opportunities for the cultivation of nobility and purity of mind, and elevated principles. exercise carried to such excess as to produce exhaustion is always injurious. the same is true of mental labor as of physical exercise. plenty of sleep, and regular habits of retiring and rising, are important. dozing is bad at any time; for it is a condition in which the will is nearly dormant, though consciousness still lingers, and the imagination is allowed to run wild, and often enough it will run where it ought not. late study, or late hours spent in any manner, is a sure means of producing general nervous irritability and sexual excitement through reflex influence. _bathing_.--a daily bath with cool or tepid water, followed by vigorous rubbing of the skin with a coarse towel and then with the dry hand, is a most valuable aid. the hour of first rising is generally the most convenient time. how to take different kinds of baths is explained in other works devoted to the subject.[ ] general and local cleanliness are indispensable to general and local health. [footnote : see "uses of water" and "the household manual."] _religion_.--after availing himself of all other aids to continence, if he wishes to maintain purity of mind as well as physical chastity--and one cannot exist long without the other--the individual must seek that most powerful and helpful of all aids, divine grace. if, in the conflict with his animal nature, man had only to contend with the degrading influences of his own propensities, the battle would be a serious one, and it is doubtful whether human nature alone--at least in any but rare cases,--would be able to gain the victory; but, in addition to his own inherent tendencies to evil, man is assailed at every point by unseen agencies that seek to drag him down and spoil his soul with lust. these fiendish influences are only felt, not seen, from which some argue that they do not exist. such casuists must find enormous depths for human depravity. but who has not felt the cruel power of these unseen foes? against them, there is but one safe, successful weapon, "the blood of christ which cleanseth from all sin." the struggling soul, beset with evil thoughts, will find in prayer a salvation which all his force of will, and dieting, and exercising, will not, alone, insure him. yet prayer alone will not avail. faith and works must always be associated. all that one can do to work out his own salvation, he must do; then he can safely trust in god to do the rest, even though the struggle seems almost a useless one; for when the soul has been long in bondage to concupiscence, the mind a hold of foul and lustful thoughts, a panorama of unchaste imagery, these hateful phantoms will even intrude themselves upon the sanctity of prayer and make their victim mentally unchaste upon his knees. but christ can pity even such; and even these degraded minds may yet be pure if with the psalmist they continue to cry, with a true purpose and unwavering trust, "create in me a clean heart, o god, and renew a right spirit within me." "purge me with hyssop, and i shall be clean; wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow." at the first suggestion of an evil thought, send up a mental prayer to him whose ear is always open. prayer and impurity are as incompatible as oil and water. the pure thoughts that sincere prayer will bring, displace the evil promptings of excited passion. but the desire for aid must be sincere. prayer will be of no avail while the mind is half consenting to the evil thought. the evil must be loathed, spurned, detested. it would seem almost unnecessary to suggest the impropriety of resorting to prayer alone when sexual excitability has arisen from a culpable neglect to remove the physical conditions of local excitement by the means already mentioned. such physical causes must be well looked after, or every attempt to reform will be fruitless. god requires of every individual to do for himself all that he is capable of doing; to employ every available means for alleviating his sufferings. marital excesses. it seems to be a generally prevalent opinion that the marriage ceremony removes all restraint from the exercise of the sexual functions. few seem to even suspect that the seventh commandment has any bearing upon sexual conduct within the pale of matrimony. yet if we may believe the confessions and statements of men and women, legalized prostitution is a more common crime than illicit commerce of the sexes. so common is the popular error upon this subject, and so strongly fortified by prejudice is it, that it is absolutely dangerous for a writer or speaker to express the truth, if he knows it and has a disposition to do so. any attempt to call attention to true principles is mocked at, decried, stigmatized, and, if possible, extinguished. the author is vilified, and his work is denounced, and relegated to the ragman. extremist, fanatic, ascetic, are the mildest terms employed concerning him, and he escapes with rare good fortune if his chastity or virility is not assailed. we are not going to run any such risks, and so shall not attempt to enunciate or maintain any theory. we shall content ourselves with plainly stating established physiological facts by quotations from standard medical authors, leaving each reader to draw conclusions and construct a practical formula for himself. object of the reproductive functions.--man, in whatever condition we find him, is more or less depraved. this is true as well of the most cultivated and refined ladies and gentlemen of the great centers of civilization, as of the misshapen denizens of african jungles, or the scarcely human natives of australia and terra del fuego. his appetites, his tastes, his habits, even his bodily functions are perverted. of course, there are degrees of depravity, and varieties of perversion. in some respects, savages approach more nearly to the natural state than civilized man, and in other particulars, the latter more nearly represents man's natural condition; but in neither barbarism nor civilization do we find man in his primitive state. in consequence of this universal departure from his original normal condition,--the causes of which we need not here trace, since they are immaterial in the consideration of this question,--when we wish to ascertain with certainty the functions of certain organs of the human body, we are obliged to compare them with the corresponding organs of lower animals, and study the functions of the latter. it is by this method of investigation that most of the important truths of physiology have been developed; and the plan is universally acknowledged to be a proper and logical one. then if we wish to ascertain, with certainty, the true function of the reproductive organs in man, we must pursue the course above indicated; in other words, study the function of reproduction in lower animals. we say _lower animals_, because man is really an animal, a member of the great animal kingdom, though not a beast--at least he should not be a beast, though some animals in human form approach very closely to the line that separates humanity from brutes. we are brought, then, for a solution of this problem, to a consideration of the question, what is the object of the reproductive act in those members of the animal kingdom just below man in the scale of being? let science tell us, for zoologists have made a careful study of this subject for centuries. we quote the following paragraphs from one of the most distinguished and reliable of modern physiologists;[ ] the facts which he states being confirmed by all other physiologists:-- "every living being has a definite term of life, through which it passes by the operation of an invariable law, and which, at some regularly appointed time, comes to an end.... but while individual organisms are thus constantly perishing and disappearing from the stage, the particular kind, or species, remains in existence.... this process, by which new organisms make their appearance, to take the place of those which are destroyed, is known as the process of _reproduction_ or _generation_. "the ovaries, as well as the eggs which they contain, undergo, at particular seasons, a periodical development, or increase in growth.... at the approach of the generative season, in all the lower animals, a certain number of the eggs, which were previously in an imperfect and inactive condition, begin to increase in size and become somewhat altered in structure." "in most fish and reptiles as well as in birds, this regular process of maturation and discharge of eggs takes place but once in a year. in different species of quadrupeds it may take place annually, semi-annually, bi-monthly, or even monthly; but in every instance it recurs at regular intervals, and exhibits accordingly, in a marked degree, the periodic character which we have seen to belong to most of the other vital phenomena." "in most of the lower orders of animals there is a periodical development of the testicles in the male, corresponding in time with that of the ovaries in the female. as the ovaries enlarge and the eggs ripen in the one sex, so in the other the testicles increase in size, as the season of reproduction approaches, and become turgid with spermatozoa. the accessory organs of generation, at the same time, share the unusual activity of the testicles, and become increased in vascularity and ready to perform their part in the reproductive function." "each of the two sexes is then at the same time under the influence of a corresponding excitement. the unusual development of the genital organs reacts upon the entire system, and produces a state of peculiar activity and excitability, known as the condition of 'erethism.'" "it is a remarkable fact, in this connection, that the female of these animals will allow the approaches of the male only during and immediately after the oestral period; that is, just when the egg is recently discharged, and ready for impregnation. at other times, when sexual intercourse would be necessarily fruitless, the instinct of the animal leads her to avoid it; and the concourse of the sexes is accordingly made to correspond in time with the maturity of the egg and its aptitude for fecundation." "the egg, immediately upon its discharge from the ovary, is ready for impregnation. if sexual intercourse happens to take place about that time, the egg and the spermatic fluid meet in some part of the female generative passages, and fecundation is accomplished.... if, on the other hand, coitus do not take place, the egg passes down to the uterus unimpregnated, loses its vitality after a short time, and is finally carried away with the uterine secretions." "it is easily understood, therefore, why sexual intercourse should be more liable to be followed by pregnancy when it occurs about the menstrual epoch than at other times.... before its discharge, the egg is immature, and unprepared for impregnation; and after the menstrual period has passed, it gradually loses its freshness and vitality." [footnote : dalton.] the law of periodicity, as it affects the sexual activity of males of the human species, is indicated in the following remarks by the same author:-- "the same correspondence between the periods of sexual excitement in the male and female, is visible in many of the animals [higher mammals], as well as in fish and reptiles. this is the case in most species which produce young but once a year, and at a fixed period, as the deer and the wild hog. in other species, on the contrary, such as the dog, the rabbit, the guinea-pig, etc., where several broods of young are produced during the year, or where, as in the human subject, the generative epochs of the female recur at short intervals, so that the particular period of impregnation is comparatively indefinite, the generative apparatus of the male is almost always in a state of full development; and is excited to action at particular periods, apparently by some influence derived from the condition of the female." the facts presented in the foregoing quotations from dr. dalton may be summarized as follows:-- . the sexual function is for the purpose of producing new individuals to take the place of those who die, and thus preserve the species from becoming extinct. . in the animal kingdom generally, the reproductive function is _necessarily_ a periodical act, dependent upon the development of the reproductive organs of both the male and the female at stated periods. . in those exceptional cases in which the organs of the male are in a state of constant development, sexual congress occurs, in lower animals, only at those periods when the periodical development occurs in the female. . fecundation of the female element can only take place about the time of periodical development in the female. . the desire for sexual congress naturally exists in the female only at or immediately after the time of periodical development. . the constant development of the sexual organs in human males is a condition common to all animals in which development occurs in the female at short intervals, and is a provision of nature to secure a fruitful union when the female is in readiness, but not an indication for constant or frequent use. . the time of sexual congress is always determined by the condition and desires of the female. an additional fact, as stated by physiologists, is that, under normal conditions, the human female experiences sexual desire immediately after menstruation more than at any other time. it has, indeed, been claimed that at this period only does she experience the true sexual instinct unless it is abnormally excited by disease or otherwise. from these facts the following conclusions must evidently be drawn:-- . the fact that in all animals but the human species the act can be performed only when reproduction is possible, proves that in the animal kingdom in general the sole object of the function is reproduction. whether man is an exception, must be determined from other considerations. . the fact that the males of other animals besides man in which the sexual organs are in a state of constant development do not exercise those organs except for the purpose of reproduction, is proof of the position that the constant development in man is not a warrant for their constant use. . the general law that the reproductive act is performed only when desired by the female, is sufficient ground for supposing that such should be the case with the human species also. the opinions of writers of note are given in the following quotations:-- "the approach of the sexes is, in its purest condition, the result of a natural instinct, the end of which is the reproduction of the species. still, however, we are far from saying that this ultimate result is, in any proportion of cases, the actual thought in the minds of the parties engaged." "the very lively solicitations which spring from the genital sense, have no other end than to insure the perpetuity of the race."[ ] [footnote : dr. gardner.] "observation fully confirms the views of inductive philosophy; for it proves to us that coitus, exercised otherwise than under the inspirations of honest instinct, is a cause of disease in both sexes, and of danger to the social order."[ ] [footnote : mayer.] "it is incredible that the act of bringing men into life, that act of humanity, without contradiction of the most importance, should be the one of which there should have been the least supposed necessity for regulation, or which has been regulated the least beneficially."[ ] [footnote : dunoyer.] "but it may be said that the demands of nature are, in the married state, not only legal, but should be physically right. so they are, when our physical life is right; but it must not be forgotten that few live in a truly physical rectitude."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] "among cattle, the sexes meet by common instinct and common will; it is reserved for the human animal to treat the female as a mere victim to his lust."[ ] [footnote : quarterly review.] "he is an ill husband that _uses his wife as a man treats a harlot_, having no other end but pleasure. concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done without pleasing that desire, yet since that desire and satisfaction were intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separated from those ends." "it is a sad truth that many married persons, thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open, without measures or restraints (so they sail in the channel), have felt the final rewards of intemperance and lust by their unlawful using of lawful permissions. only let each of them be temperate, and both of them modest."[ ] [footnote : jeremy taylor.] says another writer very emphatically, "it is a common belief that a man and woman, because they are legally united in marriage, are privileged to the unbridled exercises of amativeness. this is wrong. nature, in the exercise of her laws, recognizes no human enactments, and is as prompt to punish any infringement of her laws in those who are legally married, as in those out of the bonds. excessive indulgence between the married produces as great and lasting evil effects as in the single man or woman, and is nothing more or less than legalized prostitution." results of excesses.--the sad results of excessive indulgences are seen on every hand. numerous ailments attributed to overwork, constitutional disease, or hereditary predisposition, know no other cause and need no other explanation. _effects upon husbands_.--no doubt the principal blame in this matter properly falls upon the husband; but it cannot be said that he is the greatest sufferer; however, his punishment is severe enough to clearly indicate the enormity of the transgression, and to warn him to a reformation of his habits. the following is a quotation from an eminent medical authority:-- "but any warning against sexual dangers would be very incomplete if it did not extend to the excesses so often committed by married persons in ignorance of their ill effects. too frequent emissions of the life-giving fluid, and too frequent excitement of the nervous system are, as we have seen, in themselves most destructive. the result is the same within the marriage bond as without it. the married man who thinks that because he is a married man he can commit no excess, however often the act of sexual congress is repeated, will suffer as certainly and as seriously as the unmarried debauchee who acts on the same principle in his indulgences--perhaps more certainly from his very ignorance, and from his not taking those precautions and following those rules which a career of vice is apt to teach the sensualist. many a man has, until his marriage, lived a most continent life; so has his wife. as soon as they are wedded, intercourse is indulged in night after night, neither party having any idea that these repeated sexual acts are excesses which the system of neither can bear, and which to the man, at least, are absolute ruin. the practice is continued till health is impaired, sometimes permanently, and when a patient is at last obliged to seek medical advice, he is thunderstruck at learning that his sufferings arise from excesses unwittingly committed. married people often appear to think that connection may be repeated as regularly and almost as often as their meals. till they are told of the danger, the idea never enters their heads that they are guilty of great and almost criminal excess; nor is this to be wondered at, since the possibility of such a cause of disease is seldom hinted at by the medical man they consult." "some go so far as to believe that indulgence may increase these powers, just as gymnastic exercises augment the force of the muscles. this is a popular error; and requires correction. such patients should be told that the shock on the system each time connection is indulged in, is very powerful, and that the expenditure of seminal fluid must be particularly injurious to organs previously debilitated. it is by this and similar excesses that premature old age and complaints of the generative organs are brought on." "the length to which married people carry excesses is perfectly astonishing." "since my attention has been particularly called to this class of ailments, i feel confident that many of the forms of indigestion, general ill health, hypochondriasis, etc., so often met with in adults, depend upon sexual excesses.... that this cause of illness is not more generally acknowledged and acted on, arises from the natural delicacy which medical men must feel in putting such questions to their patients as are necessary to elicit the facts." "it is not the body alone which suffers from excesses committed in married life. experience every day convinces me that much of the languor of mind, confusion of ideas, and inability to control the thoughts, of which some married men complain, arise from this cause."[ ] [footnote : acton.] the debilitating effects of excessive sexual indulgence arise from two causes; viz., the loss of the seminal fluid, and the nervous excitement. with reference to the value of the spermatic fluid, dr. gardner remarks:-- "the sperm is the purest extract of the blood.... nature, in creating it, has intended it not only to communicate life, but also to nourish the individual life. in fact, the re-absorption of the fecundating liquid impresses upon the entire economy new energy, and a virility which contributes to the prolongation of life." testimony of a french physician.--a french author of considerable note,[ ] remarks on the same subject:-- "nothing costs the economy so much as the production of semen and its forced ejaculation. it has been calculated that an ounce of semen was equivalent to forty ounces of blood.... semen is the essence of the whole individual. hence, fernel has said, 'totus homo semen est.' it is the balm of life.... that which gives life is intended for its preservation." [footnote : parise.] it may be questioned, perhaps, whether physiology will sustain to the fullest extent all the statements made in the last quotation; but perhaps physiology does not appreciate so fully as does pathology the worth of the most vital of all fluids, and the fearful results which follow its useless expenditure. continence of trainers.--"the moderns who are training are well aware that sexual indulgence wholly unfits them for great feats of strength, and the captain of a boat strictly forbids his crew anything of the sort just previous to a match. some trainers have gone so far as to assure me that they can discover by a man's style of pulling whether he has committed such a breach of discipline over night, and have not scrupled to attribute the occasional loss of matches to this cause."[ ] [footnote : acton.] a cause of throat disease.--the disease known as "_clergyman's sore throat_" is believed by many eminent physicians to have its chief origin in excessive venery. it is well known that sexual abuse is a very potent cause of throat diseases. this view is supported by the following from the pen of the learned dr. x. bourgeois:-- "we ought not, then, to be surprised that the physiological act, requiring so great an expenditure of vitality, must be injurious in the highest degree, when it is reiterated abusively. to engender is to give a portion of one's life. does not he who is prodigal of himself precipitate his own ruin? a peculiar character of the diseases which have their origin in venereal excesses and masturbation is chronicity." "individual predispositions, acquired or hereditary, engender for each a series of peculiar ills. in some, the debility bears upon the pulmonary organs. hence results the dry cough, prolonged hoarseness, stitch in the side, spitting of blood, and finally phthisis. how many examples are there of young debauchees who have been devoured by this cruel disease!... it is, of all the grave maladies, the one which venereal abuses provoke the most frequently. portal, bayle, louis, say this distinctly." a cause of consumption.--this fatal disease finds a large share of its victims among those addicted to sexual excesses, either of an illicit nature or within the marriage pale, for the physical effects are essentially identical. this cause is especially active and fatal with sedentary persons, but is sufficiently powerful to undermine the constitution under the most favorable circumstances, as the following case illustrates:-- the patient was a young man of twenty-two, large, muscular, and well developed, having uncommonly broad shoulders and a full chest. his occupation had been healthful, that of a laborer. had had cough for several months, and was spitting blood. examination of lungs showed that they were hopelessly diseased. there was no trace of consumption in the family, and the only cause to which the disease could be attributed was excessive sexual indulgence, which he confessed to have practiced for several years. effects on wives.--if husbands are great sufferers, as we have seen, wives suffer still more terribly, being of feebler constitution, and hence less able to bear the frequent shock which is suffered by the nervous system. dr. gardner places this evil prominent among the causes "the result of which we see deplored in the public press of the day, which warns us that the american race is fast dying out, and that its place is being filled by emigrants of different lineage, religion, political ideas, and education." the same author remarks further on the results of this with other causes which largely grow out of it:-- "it has been a matter of common observation that the physical status of the women of christendom has been gradually deteriorating; that their mental energies were uncertain and spasmodic; that they were prematurely care-worn, wrinkled, and enervated; that they became subject to a host of diseases scarcely ever known to the professional men of past times, but now familiar to, and the common talk of, the matrons, and often, indeed, of the youngest females in the community." so prevalent are these maladies that michelet says with truth that the present is the "age of womb diseases." every physician of observation and experience has met many cases illustrative of the serious effects of the evil named. some years ago, when acting as assistant physician in a large dispensary in an eastern city, a young woman applied for examination and treatment. she presented a great variety of nervous symptoms, prominent among which were those of mild hysteria and nervous exhaustion, together with impaired digestion and violent palpitation of the heart. in our inquiries respecting the cause of these difficulties, we learned that she had been married but about six months. a little careful questioning elicited the fact that sexual indulgence was invariably practiced every night, and often two or three times, occasionally as many as four times a night. we had the key to her troubles at once, and ordered entire continence for a month. from her subsequent reports i learned that her husband would not allow her to comply with the request, but that indulgence was much less frequent than before. the result was not all that could be desired, but there was marked improvement. if the husband had been willing to "do right," entire recovery would have taken place with rapidity. another case came under our observation in which the patient, a man, confessed to having indulged every night for twenty years. we did not wonder that at forty he was a complete physical wreck. the greatest cause of uterine disease.--dr. j. r. black remarks as follows on this subject:-- "medical writers agree that one of the most common causes of the many forms of derangement to which woman is subject consists in excessive cohabitation. the diseases known as menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea, abortions, prolapsus, chronic inflammations and ulcerations of the womb, with a yet greater variety of sympathetic nervous disorders, are some of the distressing forms of these derangements. the popular way of accounting for many of these ills is that they come from colds or from straining lifts. but if colds and great strain upon the parts in question develop such diseases, why are they not seen among the inferior animals? the climatic alternations they endure, the severe labor some of them are obliged to perform, ought to cause their ruin; or else in popular phrase, 'make them catch their deaths from cold.'" legalized murder.--a medical writer of considerable ability presents the following picture, the counterpart of which almost any one can recall as having occurred within the circle of his acquaintance; perhaps numerous cases will be recalled by one who has been especially observing:-- "a man of great vital force is united to a woman of evenly-balanced organization. the husband, in the exercise of what he is pleased to term his 'marital rights,' places his wife, in a short time, on the nervous, delicate, sickly list. in the blindness and ignorance of his animal nature, he requires prompt obedience to his desires; and, ignorant of the law of right in this direction, thinking that it is her duty to accede to his wishes, though fulfilling them with a sore and troubled heart, she allows him passively, never lovingly, to exercise daily and weekly, month in and month out, the low and beastly of his nature, and eventually, slowly but surely, to kill her. and this man, who has as surely committed murder as has the convicted assassin, lures to his net and takes unto him another wife, to repeat the same programme of legalized prostitution on his part, and sickness and premature death on her part." prof. gerrish, in a little work from which we take the liberty to quote, speaks as follows on this subject:-- "one man reckless of his duty to the community, marries young, with means and prospects inadequate to support the family which is so sure to come ere long. his ostensible excuse is love; his real reason the gratification of his carnal instincts. another man, in exactly similar circumstances, but too conscientious to assume responsibilities which he cannot carry, and in which failure must compromise the comfort and tax the purses of people from whom he has no right to extort luxuries, forbears to marry; but, feeling the passions of his sex, and being imbued with the prevalent errors on such matters, resorts for relief to unlawful coition. at the wedding of the former, pious friends assemble with their presents and congratulations, and bid the legalized prostitution godspeed. love shields the crime, all the more easily because so many of the rejoicing guests have sinned in precisely the same way. the other man has no festival gathering.... society applauds the first and frowns on the second; but, to my mind, the difference between them is not markedly in favor of the former." "we hear a good deal said about certain crimes against nature, such as pederasty and sodomy, and they meet with the indignant condemnation of all right-minded persons. the statutes are especially severe on offenders of this class, the penalty being imprisonment between one and ten years, whereas fornication is punished by imprisonment for not more than sixty days and a fine of less than one hundred dollars. but the query very pertinently arises just here as to whether the use of the condom and defertilizing injections is not equally a crime against nature, and quite as worthy of our detestation and contempt. and, further, when we consider the brute creation, and see that they, guided by instinct, copulate only when the female is in proper physiological condition and yields a willing consent, it may be suggested that congress between men and women may, in certain circumstances, be a crime against nature, and one far worse in its results than any other. is it probable that a child born of a connection to which the woman objects will possess that felicitous organization which every parent should earnestly desire and endeavor to bestow on his offspring? can the unwelcome fruit of a rape be considered, what every child has a right to be, a pledge of affection? poor little pip, in 'great expectations,' spoke as the representative of a numerous class when he said, 'i was always treated as if i had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.' we enjoin the young to honor father and mother, never thinking how undeserving of respect are those whose children suffer from inherited ills, the result of the selfishness and carelessness of their parents in begetting them. "these accidental pregnancies are the great immediate cause of the enormously common crime of abortion, concerning which the morals of the people are amazingly blunted. the extent of the practice may be roughly estimated by the number of standing advertisements in the family newspapers, in which feticide is warranted safe and secret. it is not the poor only who take advantage of such nefarious opportunities; but the rich shamelessly patronize these professional and cowardly murderers of defenseless infancy. madame restell, who recently died by her own hand in new york, left a fortune of a million dollars, which she had accumulated by producing abortions." a husband who has not sunk in his carnality too far below the brute creation will certainly pause a moment, in the face of such terrible facts, before he continues his sensual, selfish, murderous course. indulgence during menstruation.--the following remarks which our own professional experience has several times confirmed, reveal a still more heinous violation of nature's laws:-- "to many it may seem that it is unnecessary to caution against contracting relationships at the period of the monthly flow, thinking that the instinctive laws of cleanliness and delicacy were sufficient to refrain the indulgence of the appetites; but they are little cognizant of the true condition of things in this world. often have i had husbands inform me that they had not missed having sexual relations with their wives once or more times a day for several years; and scores of women with delicate frames and broken-down health have revealed to me similar facts, and i have been compelled to make personal appeals to the husbands."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] the following is an important testimony by an eminent physician[ ] upon the same point:-- "females whose health is in a weak state ... become liable, in transgressing this law, to an infectious disorder, which, it is commonly supposed, can only originate or prevail among disreputable characters; but dr. bumstead and a number of other eminent authorities believe and teach that gonorrhoea may originate among women entirely virtuous in the ordinary sense of the term. that excessive venery is the chief cause that originates this peculiar form of inflammation, has long been the settled opinion of medical men." [footnote : dr. j. r. black.] it seems scarcely possible that such enormity could be committed by any human being, at least by civilized men, and in the face of the injunctions of moses to the jews, to say nothing of the evident indecency of the act. the jews still maintain their integrity to the observance of this command of their ancient lawgiver. "reason and experience both show that sexual relations at the menstrual period are very dangerous to both man and woman, and perhaps also for the offspring, should there chance to be conception."[ ] [footnote : mayer.] the woman suffers from the congestion and nervous excitement which occur at the most inopportune moment possible. man may suffer physical injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of pliny that the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch, rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of paracelsus that "of it the devil makes spiders, fleas, caterpillars, and all the other insects that people the air." effects upon offspring.--that those guilty of the transgression should suffer, seems only just; but that an innocent being who had no part in the sin--no voice in the time or manner of its advent into the world--that such a one should suffer equally, if not more bitterly, with the transgressors themselves, seems anything but just. but such is nature's inexorable law, that the iniquities of the parents shall be visited upon the children; and this fact should be a most powerful influence to prevent parental transgression, especially in this direction, in which the dire consequences fall so heavily and so immediately upon an innocent being. says acton, "the ill effects of marital excesses are not confined to offending parties. no doubt can exist that many of the obscure cases of sickly children, born of apparently healthy parents, arise from this cause; and this is borne out by investigations amongst animals." breeders of stock who wish to secure sound progeny will not allow the most robust stallion to associate with mares as many times during the whole season as some of these salacious human males perform a similar act within a month. one reason why the offspring suffer is that the seminal fluid deteriorates very rapidly by repeated indulgence. the spermatozoa do not have time to become maturely developed. progeny resulting from such immature elements will possess the same deficiency. hence the hosts of deformed, scrofulous, weazen, and idiotic children which curse the race, and testify to the sensuality of their progenitors. another reason is the physical and nervous exhaustion which the parents bring upon themselves, and which totally unfits them to beget sound, healthy offspring. the effects of this evil may often be traced in a large family of children, nearly all of whom show traces of the excesses of their parents. it commonly happens, too, that such large families are on the hands of poor men who cannot earn enough to give them sufficient food and comfortable clothing, with nothing whatever to provide for their education. the overburdened mother has her strength totally exhausted by the excessive demands upon her system incident to child-bearing, so that she is unable to give her children that culture and training which all children need. more than as likely as not she feels that they were forced upon her, and hence she cannot hold for them all that tender sympathy and affection a mother should feel. the little ones grow up ignorant and often vicious; for want of home care drives them to the street. thus does one evil create another. it is certainly a question which deserves some attention, whether it is not a sin for parents to bring into the world more children than they can properly care for. if they can rear and educate three children properly, the same work would be only half done for six; and there are already in the world a sufficiency of half-raised people. from this class of society the ranks of thieves, drunkards, beggars, vagabonds, and prostitutes, are recruited. why should it be considered an improper or immoral thing to limit the number of children according to the circumstances of the parents? ought it not to be considered a crime against childhood and against the race to do otherwise? it is seriously maintained by a number of distinguished persons that man "is in duty bound to limit the number of his children as well as the sheep on his farm; the number of each to be according to the adequacy of his means for their support." indulgence during pregnancy.--transgressions of this sort are followed by the worst results of any form of marital excess. the mother suffers doubly, because laden with the burden of supporting two lives instead of one. but the results upon the child are especially disastrous. during the time when it is receiving its stock of vitality, while its plastic form is being molded, and its various organs acquiring that integrity of structure which makes up what is called constitutional vigor,--during this most critical of all periods in the life of the new being, its resources are exhausted and its structure depraved--and thus constitutional tendencies to disease produced--by the unnatural demands made upon the mother. effect upon the character.--still another terrible consequence results from this practice so contrary to nature. the delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. one of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. what wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of christianity and civil law? it is scarcely necessary to say that all medical testimony concurs in forbidding indulgence during gestation. the same reasons require its interdiction during the nursing period. the fact that fecundation would be impossible during pregnancy, and that during this period the female, normally, has no sexual desire, are other powerful arguments in favor of perfect continence at this time. we quote the following from a work on health by dr. j. r. black:-- "coition during pregnancy is one of the ways in which the predisposition is laid for that terrible disease in children, epilepsy. the unnatural excitement of the nervous system in the mother by such a cause cannot operate otherwise than by inflicting injury upon the tender germ in her womb. this germ, it must be remembered, derives every quality it possesses from the parents, as well as every particle of matter of which it is composed. the old notion of anything like spontaneity in the development of the qualities of a new being is at variance with all the latest facts and inductions concerning reproduction. and so is that of a creative fiat. the smallest organic cell, as well as the most complicated organism, in form and quality, is wholly dependent upon the laws of derivation. "these laws are competent to explain, however subtle the ultimate process may be, the great diversities of human organization and character. impressions from without, the emotions, conduct, and play of the organic processes within, are never alike from day to day, or from hour to hour; and it is from the aggregate of these in the parents, but especially of those in the mother immediately before and after conception, that the quality of the offspring is determined. suppose, then, that there is every now and then an unnatural, excited, and exhausted state of the nervous system produced in the mother by excessive cohabitation, is it any wonder that the child's nervous system, which derives its qualities from those of its parents, should take its peculiar stamp from that of the parent in whom it lives, moves, and has its being? "in the adult, epilepsy is frequently developed by excessive venery; and the child born with such a predisposition will be exceedingly liable to the disease during its early years when the nervous system is notoriously prone to deranged action from very slight disturbing causes. "the infringement of this law regulating intercourse during pregnancy also reacts injuriously upon the mental capacity of the child, tending to give it a stupid, animalized look; and, there is also good reason to believe, aids in developing the idiotic condition." a selfish objection.--the married man will raise the plea that indulgence is to him a necessity. he has only to practice the principles laid down for the maintenance of continence to entirely remove any such necessity should there be the slightest semblance of a real demand. again, what many mistake for an indication of the necessity for indulgence, to relieve an accumulation of semen, is in fact, to state the exact truth, but a call of nature for a movement of the bowels. how this may occur, has already been explained, as being due to the pressure of the distended rectum upon the internal organs of generation situated at the base of the bladder. it is for this reason, chiefly, that a good share of sexual excesses occur in the morning. but, aside from all other considerations, is it not the most supreme selfishness for a man to consider only himself in his sexual relations, making his wife wholly subservient to his own desires? as a learned professor remarks, in speaking of woman, "who has a right to regard her as a therapeutic agent?" brutes and savages more considerate.--it is only the civilized, christianized (?) male human being who complains of the restraint imposed upon him by the laws of nature. the untutored barbarian, even some of the lowest of those who wear the human form, together with nearly all of the various classes of lower animals, abstain from sexual indulgence during pregnancy. the natives of the gold coast and many other african tribes regard it as a shameful offense to cohabit during gestation. in the case of lower animals, even when the male desires indulgence, the female resents any attempt of the sort by the most vigorous resistance. are not these wholesome lessons for that portion of the human race which professes to represent the accumulated wisdom, intelligence, and refinement of the world? those who need reproof on this point may reflect that by a continuance of the evil practice they are placing themselves on a plane even below the uncouth negro who haunts the jungles of southern africa. we quote the following from the pen of a talented professor in a well-known medical college:-- "i believe we cannot too strenuously insist upon this point--that sexual intercourse should never be undertaken with any other object than procreation, and never then unless the conditions are favorable to the production of a new being who will be likely to have cause to thankfully bless his parents for the gift of life. if this rule were generally observed, we should have no broken-nosed tristram shandys complaining of the carelessness of their fathers in begetting them."[ ] [footnote : dr. gerrish.] what may be done?--but what is the practical conclusion to be drawn from all the foregoing? what _should_ people do? what _may_ they do? dr. gardner offers the following remarks, which partially answer the questions:-- "we have shown that we can 'do right' without prejudice to health by the exercise of continence. self-restraint, the ruling of the passions, is a virtue, and is within the power of all well-regulated minds. nor is this necessarily perpetual or absolute. the passions may be restrained within proper limitations. he who indulges in lascivious thoughts may stimulate himself to frenzy; but if his mind were under proper control, he would find other employment for it, and his body, obedient to its potent sway, would not become the master of the man." what are the "proper limitations," every person must decide for himself in view of the facts which have been presented. if he find that the animal in his nature is too strong to allow him to comply with what seems to be the requirements of natural law, let him approximate as nearly to the truth as possible. "let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," and act accordingly, not forgetting that this is a matter with serious moral bearings, and, hence, one in which conscience should be on the alert. it is of no use to reject truth because it is unpalatable. there can be nothing worse for a man than to "know the truth and do it not." it is but fair to say that there is a wide diversity of opinion among medical men on this subject. a very few hold that the sexual act should never be indulged except for the purpose of reproduction, and then only at periods when reproduction will be possible. others, while equally opposed to the excesses, the effects of which have been described, limit indulgence to the number of months in the year. read, reflect, weigh well the matter, then fix upon a plan of action, and, if it be in accordance with the dictates of better judgment, do not swerve from it. if the suggestion made near the outset of these remarks, in comparing the reproductive function in man and animals--viz., that the seasons of sexual approach should be governed by the inclination of the female--were conscientiously followed, it would undoubtedly do away with at least three-fourths of the excesses which have been under consideration. before rejecting the hint so plainly offered by nature, let every man consider for a moment whether he has any other than purely selfish arguments to produce against it. early moderation.--the time of all others when moderation is most imperatively demanded, yet least likely to be practiced, is at the beginning of matrimonial life. many a woman dates the beginning of a life of suffering from the first night after marriage; and the mental suffering from the disgusting and even horrible recollections of that night, the events of which were scarred upon her mind as well as upon her body, have made her equally as wretched mentally as bodily. a learned french writer, in referring to this subject, says, "the husband who begins with his wife by a rape is a lost man. he will never be loved." we quote the following very sensible words from dr. napheys:-- "it sometimes happens that marriage is consummated with difficulty. to overcome this, care, management, and forbearance should always be employed, and anything like precipitation and violence avoided." cases have come under our care of young wives who have required months of careful treatment to repair the damage inflicted on their wedding night. a medical writer has reported a case in which he was called upon to testify in a suit for divorce, which is an illustration of so gross a degree of sensuality that the perpetrator certainly deserved most severe punishment. the victim, a beautiful and accomplished young lady, to please her parents, was married to a man much older than herself, riches being the chief attraction. she at once began to pine, and in a very few months was a complete wreck. emaciated, spiritless, haggard, she was scarcely a shadow of her former self. the physician who was called in, upon making a local examination, found those delicate organs in a state of most terrible laceration and inflammation. the bladder, rectum, and other adjacent organs, were highly inflamed, and sensitive in the highest degree. upon inquiring respecting the cause, he found that from the initial night she had been subjected to the most excessive demands by her husband, "day and night." the tortures she had undergone had been terrific; and her mind trembled upon the verge of insanity. she entered suit for divorce on the charge of cruelty, but was defeated, the judge ruling that the law has no jurisdiction in matters of that sort. in another somewhat similar case which came to our knowledge, a young wife was delivered from the lecherous assaults of her husband--for they were no better--by the common sense of her neighbor friends, who gathered in force and insisted upon their discontinuance. it is only now and then that cases of this sort come to the surface. the majority of them are hidden deep down in the heart of the poor, heart-broken wife, and too often they are hidden along with the victim in an early grave. prevention of conception: its evils and dangers. the evil considered in the preceding section is by far the greatest cause of those which will be dwelt upon in this. excesses are habitually practiced through ignorance or carelessness of their direct results, and then to prevent the legitimate result of the reproductive act, innumerable devices are employed to render it fruitless. to even mention all of these would be too great a breach of propriety, even in this plain-spoken work; but accurate description is unnecessary, since those who need this warning are perfectly familiar with all the foul accessories of evil thus employed. we cannot do better than to quote from the writings of several of the most eminent authors upon this subject. the following paragraphs are from the distinguished mayer, who has already been frequently quoted:-- "the numerous stratagems invented by debauch to annihilate the natural consequences of coition, have all the same end in view." conjugal onanism.--"the soiling of the conjugal bed by the shameful maneuvers to which we have made allusion, is mentioned for the first time in gen. : , and following verses: 'and it came to pass, when he [onan] went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. and the thing which he did displeased the lord; wherefore he slew him.' "hence the name of _conjugal onanism_. "one cannot tell to what great extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. still, many husbands know that nature often succeeds in rendering nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. no matter; they persevere, none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. so, who knows if the infants, too often feeble and weazen, are not the fruit of these in themselves incomplete _procreations_, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign to the generic act? is it not reasonable to suppose that the creative power, not meeting in its disturbed functions the conditions necessary for the elaboration of a normal product, the conception might be from its origin imperfect, and the being which proceeded therefrom, one of those monsters which are described in treatises on teratology?" "let us see, now, what are the consequences to those given to this practice of conjugal onanism. "we have at our disposition numerous facts which rigorously prove the disastrous influence of abnormal coitus to the woman, but we think it useless to publish them. all practitioners have more or less observed them, and it will only be necessary for them to call upon their memories to supply what our silence leaves. 'however, it is not difficult to conceive,' says dr. francis devay, 'the degree of perturbation that a like practice should exert upon the genital system of woman by provoking desires which are not gratified. a profound stimulation is felt through the entire apparatus; the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries enter into a state of orgasm, a storm which is not appeased by the natural crisis; a nervous super-excitation persists. there occurs, then, what would take place if, presenting food to a famished man, one should snatch it from his mouth after having thus violently excited his appetite. the sensibilities of the womb and the entire reproductive system are teased for no purpose. it is to this cause, too often repeated, that we should attribute the multiple neuroses, those strange affections which originate in the genital system of woman. our conviction respecting them is based upon a great number of observations. furthermore, the normal relations existing between the married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repetition of an act which pollutes the marriage bed; from thence proceed certain hard feelings, certain deep impressions which, gradually growing, eventuate in the scandalous ruptures of which the community rarely know the real motive.' "if the good harmony of families and their reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is fearfully injured. a great number of neuralgias appear to us to have no other cause. many women that we have interrogated on this matter have fortified this opinion. but that which to us has passed to the condition of incontestable proof, is the prevalence of uterine troubles, of enervation among the married, hysterical symptoms which are met with in the conjugal relation as often as among young virgins, arising from the vicious habits of the husbands in their conjugal intercourse.... still more, there is a graver affection, which is daily increasing, and which, if nothing arrests its invasion, will soon have attained the proportions of a scourge; we speak of the degeneration of the womb. we do not hesitate to place in the foremost rank, among the causes of this redoubtable disease, the refinements of civilization, and especially the artifices introduced in our day in the generic act. when there is no procreation, although the procreative faculties are excited, we see these pseudo-morphoses arise. thus it is noticed that polypi and schirrus [cancer] of the womb are common among prostitutes. and it is easy to account for the manner of action of this pathogenetic cause, if we consider how probable it is that the ejaculation and contact of the sperm with the uterine neck, constitutes, for the woman, the crisis of the genital function, by appeasing the venereal orgasm and calming the voluptuous emotions under the action of which the entire economy is convulsed." "we may, we trust, be pardoned for remarking upon the artifices imagined to prevent fecundation that there is in them an immense danger, of incalculable limits. we do not fear to be contradicted or taxed with exaggeration in elevating them into the proportions of a true calamity." the following is from an eminent physician[ ] who for many years devoted his whole attention to the diseases of women and lectured upon the subject in a prominent medical college:-- "it is undeniable that all the methods employed to prevent pregnancy are physically injurious. some of these have been characterized with sufficient explicitness, and the injury resulting from incomplete coitus to both parties has been made evident to all who are willing to be convinced. it should require but a moment's consideration to convince any one of the harmfulness of the common use of cold ablutions and astringent infusions and various medicated washes. simple and often wonderfully salutary as is cold water to a diseased limb, festering with inflammation, yet few are rash enough to cover a gouty toe, rheumatic knee, or erysipelatous head with cold water.... yet, when in the general state of nervous and physical excitement attendant upon coitus, when the organs principally engaged in this act are congested and turgid with blood, do you think you can with impunity throw a flood of cold or even lukewarm water far into the vitals in a continual stream? often, too, women add strong medicinal agents, intended to destroy by dissolution the spermatic germs, ere they have time to fulfill their natural destiny. these powerful astringents suddenly corrugate and close the glandular structure of the parts, and this is followed, necessarily, by a corresponding reaction, and the final result is debility and exhaustion, signalized by leucorrhoea, prolapsus, and other diseases. "finally, of the use of intermediate tegumentary coverings, made of thin rubber or gold-beater's skin, and so often relied upon as absolute preventives, madame de stael is reputed to have said, 'they are cobwebs for protection, and bulwarks against love.' their employment certainly must produce a feeling of shame and disgust utterly destructive of the true delight of pure hearts and refined sensibilities. they are suggestive of licentiousness and the brothel, and their employment degrades to bestiality the true feelings of manhood and the holy state of matrimony. neither do they give, except in a very limited degree, the protection desired. furthermore, they produce (as alleged by the best modern french writers, who are more familiar with the effect of their use than we are in the united states) certain physical lesions from their irritating presence as foreign bodies, and also, from the chemicals employed in their fabrication, and other effects inseparable from their employment, ofttimes of a really serious nature. "i will not further enlarge upon these instrumentalities. sufficient has been said to convince any one that to trifle with the grand functions of our organism, to attempt to deceive and thwart nature in her highly ordained prerogatives--no matter how simple seem to be the means employed--is to incur a heavy responsibility and run a fearful risk. it matters little whether a railroad train is thrown from the track by a frozen drop of rain or a huge bowlder lying in the way, the result is the same, the injuries as great. moral degradation, physical disability, premature exhaustion and decrepitude are the result of these physical frauds, and force upon our conviction the adage, which the history of every day confirms, that 'honesty is the best policy.'" [footnote : dr. gardner.] within the last ten years we have had under treatment many hundred cases of ladies suffering from ailments of a character peculiar to the sex; and in becoming acquainted with the history of individual cases we have, in many instances, found that the real cause of the disease which had sapped the vitality and undermined the constitution slowly but surely until cheerful health and freshness had given place to suffering, debility, and, in many cases, most deplorable melancholy, was the very crime against nature mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. the effects of these sins against nature are frequently not felt for years after the cause has been at work, and even then are seldom attributed to the true cause. in some instances we have known persons to suffer on for many years without having once suspected that the cause of their sufferings was a palpable violation of nature's laws. uterine diseases thus induced are among the most obstinate of diseases of this class, being often of long standing, and hence of a very serious character. dr. wm. goodell of philadelphia has recently called attention to the fact that the prevention of conception is one of the most common causes of prolapsus of the ovaries, a very common and painful disease. not infrequently, too, other organs, particularly the bladder, become affected, either through sympathy or in consequence of the congested condition of the contiguous parts. a difficulty which we have often met with has been the inability to convince those who have been guilty of the practices referred to, of the enormity of the sin against both soul and body. in spite of all warnings, perhaps supplemented by sufferings, the practice will often be continued, producing in the end the most lamentable results. too often it is the case that this reluctance to obey the dictates of nature's laws is the result of the unfeeling and unreasonable demands of a selfish husband. shaker views.--the shakers do not, as many suppose, believe wholly in celibacy. they believe in marriage and reproduction regulated by the natural law. they, also, would limit population, but not by interfering with nature; rather, by following nature's indications to the very letter. they believe "that no animals should use their reproductive powers and organs for any other than the simple purpose of procreation." recognizing the fact that this is the law among lower animals, they insist upon applying it to man. thus they find no necessity for the employment of those abominable contrivances so common among those who disregard the laws of nature. who will not respect the purity which must characterize sexual relations so governed? such a method for regulating the number of offspring is in immense contrast with that of the oneida community, which opens the door to the unstinted gratification of lust, separates the reproductive act entirely from its original purpose, and makes it the means of mere selfish, sensual, beastly--worse than brutish--gratification. those who are acquainted with the history of the founder of this community are obliged to look upon him as a scheming sensualist who well knows the truth, but deliberately chooses a course of evil, and beguiles into his snares others as sensual as himself. the abominations practiced among the members of the community which he has founded are represented by those who have had an inside view of its workings as too foul to mention. it seems almost wonderful that providence does not lay upon this gigantic brothel his hand of vengeance as in ancient times he did upon sodom, which could hardly have been more sunken in infamy than is this den of licentiousness. it is, indeed, astonishing that it should be tolerated in the midst of a country which professes to regard virtue and respect the marriage institution. we are glad to note that popular opinion is calling loudly for the eradication of this foul ulcer. only a short time ago a convention of more than fifty ministers met at syracuse, n. y., for the express purpose of considering ways and means for the removal of this blot "by legal measures or otherwise." we sincerely wish them success; and it appears to us that the people in that vicinity would be justified should they rise _en masse_ and purge their community of an evil so heinous, in case no civil authority can be induced to do the work of expurgation.[ ] [footnote : just as this edition is going to press we receive the gratifying information that the younger members of the community have become disgusted with their sensual life and announced that their former vile practices will be discontinued. mr. noyes with a few followers has sought refuge in canada.--j. h. k.] moral bearings of the question.--most of the considerations presented thus far have been of a physical character, though occasional references to the moral aspect of the question have been made. in a certain sense--and a true one--the question is wholly a moral one; for what moral right have men or women to do that which will injure the integrity of the physical organism given them, and for which they are accountable to their creator? surely none; for the man who destroys himself by degrees, is no less a murderer than he who cuts his throat or puts a bullet through his brain. the crime is the same--being the shortening of human life--whether the injury is done to one's self or to another. in this matter, there are at least three sufferers; the husband, the wife, and the offspring, though in most cases, doubtless, the husband is the one to whom the sin almost exclusively belongs. unconsidered murders.--but there is a more startling phase of this moral question. it is not impossible to show that actual violence is done to a human life. it has been previously shown that in the two elements, the ovum of the female, and the spermatozoon of the male, are, in rudimentary form, all the elements which go to make up the "human form divine." alone, neither of these elements can become anything more than it already is; but the instant that the two elements come in contact, fecundation takes place, and the individual life begins. from that moment until maturity is reached, years subsequently, the whole process is only one of development. nothing absolutely new is added at any subsequent moment. in view of these facts, it is evident that at the very instant of conception the embryonic human being possesses all the right to life it ever can possess. it is just as much an individual, a distinct human being, possessed of soul and body, as it ever is, though in a very immature form. that conception may take place during the reproductive act cannot be denied. if, then, means are employed with a view to prevent conception immediately after the accomplishment of the act, or at any subsequent time, if successful, it would be by destroying the delicate product of the conception which had already occurred, and which, as before observed, is as truly a distinct individual as it can ever become--certainly as independent as at any time previous to birth. is it immoral to take human life? is it a sin to kill a child? is it a crime to strangle an infant at birth? is it a murderous act to destroy a half-formed human being in its mother's womb? who will dare to answer "no," to one of these questions? then, who can refuse assent to the plain truth that it is equally a murder to deprive of life the most recent product of the generative act? who can number the myriads of murders that have been perpetrated at this early period of existence? who can estimate the load of guilt that weighs upon some human souls? and who knows how many brilliant lights have been thus early extinguished? how many promising human plantlets thus ruthlessly destroyed in the very act of germinating? it is to be hoped that in the final account the extenuating influence of ignorance may weigh heavily in the scale of justice against the damning testimony of these "unconsidered murders." the charge disputed.--it will be urged that these early destructions are not murders. murder is an awful word. the act itself is a terrible crime. no wonder that its personal application should be studiously avoided; the human being who would not shrink from such a charge would be unworthy of the name of human--a very brute. nevertheless, it is necessary to look the plain facts squarely in the face, and shrink not from the decision of an enlightened conscience. we quote the following portions of an extract which we give in full elsewhere; it is from the same distinguished authority[ ] whom we have frequently quoted:-- "there is, in fact, no moment after conception when it can be said that the child has not life, and the crime of destroying human life is as heinous and as sure before the period of 'quickening' has been attained, as afterward. but you still defend your horrible deed by saying: 'well, if there be, as you say, this mere animal life, equivalent at the most to simple vitality, there is no mind, no soul destroyed, and, therefore, there is no crime committed.' just so surely as one would destroy and root out of existence all the fowls in the world by destroying all the eggs in existence, so certain is it that you do by your act destroy the animal man in the egg and the soul which animates it.... murder is always sinful, and murder is the willful destruction of a human being at any period of its existence, from its earliest germinal embryo to its final, simple, animal existence in aged decrepitude and complete mental imbecility." [footnote : gardner.] difficulties.--married people will exclaim, "what shall we do?" delicate mothers who have already more children on their hands than they can care for, whose health is insufficient to longer endure the pains and burdens of pregnancy, but whose sensual husbands continue to demand indulgence, will echo in despairing tones, while acknowledging the truth, "what shall _we_ do?" we will answer the question for the latter first. mr. mill, the distinguished english logician, in his work on "the subjection of woman," thus represents the erroneous view which is popularly held of the sexual relations of the wife to the husband: "the wife, however brutal a tyrant she may be chained to--though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him--he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations." woman's rights.--a woman does not, upon the performance of the marriage ceremony, surrender all her personal rights. the law recognizes this fact if her husband beats her, or in any way injures her by physical force, or even by neglect. why may she not claim protection from other maltreatment as well? or, at least, why may she not refuse to lend herself to beastly lust? she remains the proprietor of her own body, though married; and who is so lost to all sense of justice, equity, and even morality, as to claim that she is under any moral obligation to allow her body to be abused? since the first edition of this work was published, we have many times been appealed to by suffering wives in the most pathetic terms. in many instances the poor wife was suffering with local disease of a serious character, making sexual approaches in the highest degree painful as well as repugnant; yet notwithstanding this, the demands of the husband for the gratification of his bestial passions were, in many instances, in no degree lessened by a knowledge of the facts in the case. in cases like these it is often a very delicate and exceedingly difficult task to point out the duty of the suffering wife and mother. the duty of the husband is very plain, and to him the wise physician will appeal in a manner which cannot fail to arouse him to a sense of his duty if there is yet left unconsumed by the fires of lust even a vestige of genuine manhood. what to do.--now to the question as asked by the first parties--married people who together seek for a solution of the difficulties arising from an abandonment of all protectives against fecundation. the true remedy, and the natural one, is doubtless to be found in the suggestion made under the heads of "continence" and "marital excesses." by a course of life in accordance with the principles there indicated, all of these evils and a thousand more would be avoided. there would be less sensual enjoyment, but more elevated joy. there would be less animal love, but more spiritual communion; less grossness, more purity; less development of the animal, and a more fruitful soil for the culture of virtue, holiness, and all the christian graces. "but such a life would be impossible this side of heaven." a few who claim to have tried the experiment think not. the shakers claim to practice, as well as teach, such principles; and with the potent aids to continence previously specified, it might be found less difficult in realization than in thought. a compromise.--there will be many, the vast majority, perhaps, who will not bring their minds to accept the truth which nature seems to teach, which would confine sexual acts to reproduction wholly. others, acknowledging the truth, declare "the spirit willing" though "the flesh is weak." such will inquire, "is there not some compromise by means of which we may escape the greater evils of our present mode of life?" such may find in the following facts suggestions for a "better way," if not the _best_ way, though it cannot be recommended as wholly free from dangers, and though it cannot be said of it that it is not an _unnatural_ way:-- "menstruation in woman indicates an aptitude for impregnation, and this condition remains for a period of six or eight days after the entire completion of the flow. during this time only can most women conceive. allow twelve days for the onset of the menses to pass by, and the probabilities of impregnation are very slight. this act of continence is healthful, moral, and irreproachable."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] it should be added to the above that the plan suggested is not absolutely certain to secure immunity from conception. the period of abstinence should certainly extend from the beginning of menstruation to the fourteenth day. to secure even reasonable safety, it is necessary to practice further abstinence for three or four days previous to the beginning of the flow. many writers make another suggestion which would certainly be beneficial to individual health; viz., that the husband and wife should habitually occupy separate beds. such a practice would undoubtedly serve to keep the sexual instincts in abeyance. separate apartments, or at least the separation of the beds by a curtain, are recommended by some estimable physicians, who suggest that such a plan would enable both parties to conduct their morning ablutions with proper thoroughness and without sacrificing that natural modesty which operates so powerfully as a check upon the excessive indulgence of the passions. many will think the suggestion a good one and will make a practical application of it. sleeping in single beds is reputed to be a european custom of long standing among the higher classes. this subject cannot be concluded better than by the following quotations from an excellent and able work entitled, "the ten laws of health"[ ]:-- "the obvious design of the sexual desire is the reproduction of the species.... the gratification of this passion, or indeed of any other, beyond its legitimate end, is an undoubted violation of natural law, as may be determined by the light of nature, and by the resulting moral and physical evils." "those creatures not gifted with erring reason, but with unerring instinct, and that have not the liberty of choice between good and evil, cohabit only at stated periods, when pleasure and reproduction are alike possible. it is so ordered among them that the means and the end are never separated; and as it was the all-wise being who endowed them with this instinct, without the responsibility resulting from the power to act otherwise, it follows that it is his law, and must, therefore, be the true copy for all beings to follow having the same functions to perform, and for the same end. the mere fact that men and women have the power and liberty of conforming or not conforming to this copy does not set them free from obedience to a right course, nor from the consequences of disobedience." "the end of sexual pleasure being to reproduce the species, it follows, from the considerations just advanced, that when the sexual function is diverted from its end, reproduction, or if the means be used when the end is impossible, harm or injury should ensue." "perhaps the number is not small of those who think there is nothing wrong in an unlimited indulgence of the sexual propensity during married life. the marriage vow seems to be taken as equivalent to the freest license, about which there need be no restraint. yet, if there is any truth in the law in reference to the enjoyment of the means only when the end is possible, the necessity of the limitation of this indulgence during married life is clearly as great as for that of any other sensual pleasure. "a great majority of those constituting the most highly civilized communities, act upon the belief that anything not forbidden by sacred or civil law is neither sinful nor wrong. they have not found cohabitation during pregnancy forbidden; nor have they ever had their attention drawn to the injury to health and organic development, which such a practice inflicts. hence, a habitual yielding to inclination in this matter has determined their life-long behavior. "the infringement of this law in the married state does not produce in the husband any very serious disorder. debility, aches, cramps, and a tendency to epileptic seizures, are sometimes seen as the effects of great excess. an evil of no small account is the steady growth of the sexual passion by habitual unrestraint. it is in this way that what is known as libidinous blood is nursed as well among those who are strictly virtuous, in the ordinary meaning of the term, as among those who are promiscuous in their intercourse. "the wife and the offspring are the chief sufferers by the violation of this law among the married. why this is so, may in part be accounted for by the following consideration: among the animal kind it is the female which decides when the approaches of the male are allowable. when these are untimely, her instinctive prompting leads her to resist and protect herself with ferocious zeal. no one at all acquainted with the remarkable wisdom nature invariably displays in all her operations, will doubt that the prohibition of all sexual intercourse among animals during the period of pregnancy must be for a wise and good purpose. and, if it serves a wise and good purpose with them, why should an opposite course not serve an unwise and bad purpose with us? our bodies are very much like theirs in structure and in function; and in the mode and laws that govern reproduction there is absolutely no difference. the mere fact that we possess the power to act otherwise than they do during that period, does not make it right. "human beings having no instinctive prompting as to what is right and what is wrong, cohabitation, like many other points of the behavior, is left for reason or the will to determine; or, rather, as things now are to unreason; for reason is neither consulted nor enlightened as to what is proper and allowable in the matter. nature's rule, by instinct, makes it devolve upon the female to determine when the approaches of the male are allowable. "but some may say that she is helpless in the matter. no one dare to approach her without consent before marriage; and why should man not be educated up to the point of doing the same after marriage? she is neither his slave, nor his property; nor does the tie of marriage bind her to carry out any unnatural requirement." [footnote : j. r. black, m.d.] infanticide and abortion. few but medical men are aware of the enormous proportions which have been assumed by these terrible crimes during the present century. that they are increasing with fearful rapidity and have really reached such a magnitude as to seriously affect the growth of civilized nations, and to threaten their very existence, has become a patent fact to observing physicians. the crime itself differs little, in reality, from that considered in the last section, the prevention of conception. it is, in fact, the same crime postponed till a later period. we quote the following eloquent words on this subject:-- "of all the sins, physical and moral against man and god, i know of none so utterly to be condemned as the very common one of the destruction of the child while yet in the womb of the mother. so utterly repugnant is it that i can scarcely express the loathing with which i approach the subject. murder!--murder in cold blood, without cause, of an unknown child; one's nearest relative; in fact, part of one's very being; actually having, not only one's own blood in its being, but that blood momentarily interchanging! good god! does it seem possible that such depravity can exist in a parent's breast--in a mother's heart! "'tis for no wrong that it has committed that its sweet life is so cruelly taken away. its coming is no disgrace; its creation was not in sin, but--its mother 'don't want to be bothered with any more brats; can hardly take care of what she has got; is going to europe in the spring.' "we can forgive the poor deluded girl--seduced, betrayed, abandoned--who, in her wild frenzy, destroys the mute evidence of her guilt. we have only sympathy and sorrow for her. but for the married shirk who disregards her divinely-ordained duty, we have nothing but contempt, even if she be the lordly woman of fashion, clothed in purple and fine linen. if glittering gems adorn her person, within there is foulness and squalor."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] not a modern crime.--although this crime has attained remarkable proportions in modern times, it is not a new one by any means, as the following paragraph will suffice to show:-- "infanticide and exposure were also the custom among the romans, medes, canaanites, babylonians, and other eastern nations, with the exception of the israelites and egyptians. the scandinavians killed their offspring from pure fantasy. the norwegians, after having carefully swaddled their children, put some food into their mouths, placed them under the roots of trees or under the rocks to preserve them from ferocious beasts. infanticide was also permitted among the chinese, and we saw, during the last century, vehicles going round the streets of pekin daily to collect the bodies of the dead infants. to-day there exist foundling hospitals to receive children abandoned by their parents. the same custom is also observed in japan, in the isles of the southern ocean, at otaheite, and among several savage nations of north america. it is related of the jaggers of guinea, that they devour their own children."[ ] [footnote : burdach.] the greeks practiced infanticide systematically, their laws at one time requiring the destruction of crippled or weakly children. among all the various nations, the general object of the crime seems to have been to avoid the trouble of rearing the children, or to avoid a surplus, objects not far different from those had in view by those who practice the same crimes at the present time. the destruction of the child after the mother has felt its movements is termed infanticide; before that time it is commonly known as abortion. it is a modern notion that the child possesses no soul or individual life until the period of quickening, an error which we have already sufficiently exposed. the ancients, with just as much reason, contended that no distinct life was present until after birth. hence it was that they could practice without scruple the crime of infanticide to prevent too great increase of population. "plato and aristotle were advocates of this practice, and these stoics justified this monstrous practice by alleging that the child only acquired a soul at the moment when it ceased to have uterine life and commenced to respire. from hence it resulted that, the child not being animated, its destruction was no murder." the prevalence of this crime will be indicated by the following observations from the most reliable sources:-- "we know that in certain countries abortion is practiced in a manner almost public, without speaking of the east, where it has, so to speak, entered into the manners of the country. we see it in america, in a great city like new york, constituting a regular business and not prevented, where it has enriched more than one midwife." "england does not yield to germany or france in the frequency of the crime of infanticide."[ ] [footnote : jardien.] "any statistics attainable are very incomplete. false certificates are daily given by attending physicians. men, if they are only rich enough, die of 'congestion of the brain,' not 'delirium tremens;' and women, similarly situated, do not die from the effects of abortion, but of 'inflammation of the bowels,' etc." "infanticide, as it is generally considered (destroying a child after quickening), is of very rare occurrence in new york, whereas abortions (destroying the embryo before quickening) are of daily habit in the families of the best informed and most religious; among those abounding in wealth, as well as among the poor and needy."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] "perhaps only medical men will credit the assertion that the frequency of this form of destroying human life exceeds all others by at least fifty per cent, and that not more than one in a thousand of the guilty parties receive any punishment by the hand of civil law. but there is a surer mode of punishment for the guilty mother in the self-executing laws of nature."[ ] [footnote : black.] "from a very large verbal and written correspondence in this and other states, i am satisfied that we have become _a nation of murderers_."[ ] [footnote : reamy.] said a distinguished clergyman of brooklyn in a sermon, "why send missionaries to india when child-murder is here of daily, almost hourly, occurrence; aye, when the hand that puts money into the contribution-box to-day, yesterday or a month ago, or to-morrow, will murder her own unborn offspring? "the hindoo mother, when she abandons her babe upon the sacred ganges, is, contrary to her heart, obeying a supposed religious law, and you desire to convert her to your own worship of the moloch of fashion and laziness and love of greed. out upon such hypocrisy!" writers tell us that it has even become the boast of many women that they "know too much to have babies." says the learned dr. storer, "will the time come, think ye, when husbands can no longer, as they now frequently do, commit the crime of rape upon their unwilling wives, and persuade them or compel them to allow a still more dreadful violence to be wreaked upon the children nestling within them--children fully alive from the very moment of conception, that have already been fully detached from all organic connection with their parent, and only re-attached to her for the purposes of nutriment and growth, and to destroy whom 'is a crime of the same nature, both against our maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man?'"[ ] [footnote : "is it i?"] says another well-known author, "ladies boast to each other of the impunity with which they have aborted, as they do of their expenditures, of their dress, of their success in society. there is a fashion in this, as in all other female customs, good and bad. the wretch whose account with the almighty is heaviest with guilt too often becomes a heroine."[ ] [footnote : a woman's thoughts about women.] causes of the crime.--many influences may combine to cause the mother ruthlessly to destroy her helpless child: as, to conceal the results of sin; to avoid the burdens of maternity; to secure ease and freedom to travel, etc., or even from a false idea that maternity is vulgar; but it is true, beyond all question, that the primary cause of the sin is far back of all these influences. the most unstinted and scathing invectives are used in characterizing the criminality of a mother who takes the life of her unborn babe; but a word is seldom said of the one who forced upon her the circumstances which gave the unfortunate one existence. though doctors, ministers, and moralists have said much on this subject, and written more, it is reasonable to suppose that they will never accomplish much of anything in the direction of reform until they recognize the part the man acts in all of these sad cases, and begin to demand reform where it is most needed, and where its achievement will effect the most good. as was observed in the remarks upon the subject of "prevention of conception," this evil has its origin in "marital excesses," and in a disregard of the natural law which makes the female the sole proprietor of her own body, and gives to her the right to refuse the approaches of the male when unprepared to receive them without doing violence to the laws of her being. the nature of the crime.--"the married and well-to-do, who by means of medicines and operations produce abortions at early periods of pregnancy, have no excuse except the pretense that they do not consider it murder until the child quickens. "no, not murder, you say, for 'there has not been any life in the child.' do not attempt to evade, even to man, a crime which cannot be hidden from the all-seeing. the poor mother has not herself felt the life of the child perhaps, but that is a quibble only of the laws of man, founded indeed upon the view, now universally recognized as incorrect, that the child's life began when its movements were first strong enough to be perceptible. there is, in fact, no moment after conception when it can be said that the child has not life, and the crime of destroying human life is as heinous and as sure before the period of 'quickening' has been attained as afterward. but you still defend your horrible deed by saying, 'well, if there be, as you say, this mere animal life, equivalent at the most to simple vitality, there is no mind, no soul destroyed, and therefore, there is no crime committed.' just so surely as one would destroy and root out of existence all the fowl in the world by destroying all the eggs in existence, so certain is it that you do by your act destroy the animal man in the egg, and the soul which animates it. when is the period that intelligence comes to the infant? are its feeble first strugglings any evidence of its presence? has it any appreciable quantity at birth? has it any valuable, useful quantity even when a year old? when, then, is it, that destruction is harmless or comparatively sinless? while awaiting your metaphysical answer, i will tell you when it is sinful. murder is always sinful, and murder is the willful destruction of a human being at any period of its existence, from its earliest germinal embryo to its final, simple, animal existence in aged decrepitude and complete mental imbecility."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] "there are those who would fain make light of this crime by attempting to convince themselves and others that a child, while in embryo, has only a sort of vegetative life, not yet endowed with thought, and the ability to maintain an independent existence. if such a monstrous philosophy as this presents any justification for such an act, then the killing of a newly-born infant, or of an idiot, may be likewise justified. the destruction of the life of an unborn human being, for the reason that it is small, feeble, and innocently helpless, rather aggravates than palliates the crime. every act of this kind, with its justification, is obviously akin to that savage philosophy which accounts it a matter of no moment, or rather a duty, to destroy feeble infants, or old, helpless fathers and mothers."[ ] [footnote : black.] instruments of crime.--"the means through which abortions are effected are various. sometimes it is through potent drugs, extensively advertised in newspapers claiming to be moral!--the advertisements so adroitly worded as to convey under a caution the precise information required of the liability of the drug to produce miscarriages. sometimes the information is conveyed through secret circulars; but more commonly the deed is consummated by professed abortionists, who advertise themselves as such through innuendo, or through gaining this kind of repute by the frequent commission of the act. not a few women, deterred by lingering modesty or some sense of shame, attempt and execute it upon themselves, and then volunteer to instruct and encourage others to go and do likewise."[ ] [footnote : black.] results of this unnatural crime.--it is the universal testimony of physicians that the effects of abortion are almost as deadly upon the mother as upon the child. the amount of suffering is vastly greater; for that of the child, if it suffer at all, is only momentary, in general, while the mother is doomed to a life of suffering, of misery, if she survives the shock of the terrible outrage against her nature. it has been proved by statistics that the danger of immediate death is _fifteen times as great as in natural childbirth_. a medical author of note asserts that a woman suffers more injury from one abortion than she would from twenty normal births. says dr. gardner on this point:-- "we know that the popular idea is that women are worn out by the toil and wear connected with the raising of large families, and we can willingly concede something to this statement; but it is certainly far more observable that the efforts at the present day, made to avoid propagation, are ten thousand-fold more disastrous to the health and constitution, to say nothing of the demoralization of mind and heart, which cannot be estimated by red cheeks or physical vigor." an unwelcome child.--but suppose the mother does not succeed in her attempts against the life of her child, as she may not; what fearful results may follow! who can doubt that the murderous intent of the mother will be stamped indelibly upon the character of the unwelcome child, giving it a natural propensity for the commission of murderous deeds? then again--sickening thought--suppose the attempts to destroy the child are unsuccessful, resulting only in horrid mutilation of its tender form; when such a child is born, what terrible evidences may it bear in its crippled and misshapen body of the cruel outrage perpetrated upon it! that such cases do occur is certain from the following narrative, which we might confirm by others similar in character:-- "a lady, determined not to have any more children, went to a professed abortionist, and he attempted to effect the desired end by violence. with a pointed instrument the attempt was again and again made, but without the looked-for result. so vigorously was the effort made, that, astonished at no result being obtained, the individual stated that there must be some mistake, that the lady could not be pregnant, and refused to perform any further operations. partially from doubt and partially from fear, nothing further was attempted; and in due process of time the woman was delivered of an infant, shockingly mutilated, with one eye entirely put out, and the brain so injured that this otherwise robust child was entirely wanting in ordinary sense. this poor mother, it would seem, needs no future punishment for her sin. ten years face to face with this poor idiot, whose imbecility was her direct work--has it not punished her sufficiently?" the remedy.--whether this gigantic evil can ever be eradicated, is exceedingly doubtful. to effect its cure would be to make refined christians out of brutal sensualists; to emancipate woman from the enticing, alluring slavery of fashion; to uproot false ideas of life and its duties,--in short, to revolutionize society. the crime is perpetrated in secret. many times no one but the criminal herself is cognizant of the evil deed. only occasionally do cases come near enough to the surface to be dimly discernible; hence the evident inefficiency of any civil legislation. but the evil is a desperate one, and is increasing; shall no attempt be made to check the tide of crime and save the sufferers from both physical and spiritual perdition? an effort should be made, at least. let every christian raise the note of warning. from every christian pulpit let the truth be spoken in terms too plain for misapprehension. let those who are known to be guilty of this most revolting crime be looked upon as murderers, as they are; and let their real moral status be distinctly shown. all of these means will do something to effect a reform; but the radical cure of the evil will only be found in the principles suggested in the section devoted to the consideration of "marital excesses." the adoption of those principles and strict adherence to them would effectually prevent the occurrence of circumstances which are the occasion of abortions and infanticides. murder by proxy.--"there is, at the present time, a kind of infanticide, which, although it is not so well known, is even more dangerous, because done with impunity. there are parents who recoil with horror at the idea of destroying their offspring, although they would greatly desire to be disembarrassed of them, who yet place them without remorse with nurses who enjoy the sinister reputation of never returning the children to those who have intrusted them to their care. these unfortunate little beings are condemned to perish from inanition and bad treatment. "the number of these innocent victims is greater than would be imagined, and very certainly exceeds that of the marked infanticides sent by the public prosecutor to the court of the assizes." the social evil. illicit intercourse has been a foul blot upon humanity from the earliest periods of history. at the present moment, it is a loathsome ulcer eating at the heart of civilization, a malignant leprosy which shows its hideous deformities among the fairest results of modern culture. our large cities abound with dens of vice whose _habitues_ shamelessly promenade the most public streets and flaunt their infamy in the face of every passer-by. in many large cities, especially in those of continental europe, these holds of vice are placed under the supervision of the law by the requirement that every keeper of a house of prostitution must pay for a license; in other words, must buy the right to lead his fellow-men "down to the depths of hell." in smaller cities, as well as in large ones, in fact, from the great metropolis down to the country village, the haunts of vice are found. every army is flanked by bands of courtesans. wherever men go, loose women follow, penetrating even to the wildness of the miner's camp, far beyond the verge of civilization. but brothels and traveling strumpets do not fully represent the vast extent of this monster evil. there is a class of immoral women--probably exceeding in numbers the grosser class just referred to--who consider themselves respectable; indeed, who are considered very respectable. few are acquainted with their character. they live in elegant style and mingle in genteel society. privately, they prosecute the most unbounded licentiousness, for the purpose of gain, or merely to gratify their lewdness. "kept mistresses" are much more numerous than common prostitutes. the numerous scandal and divorce suits which expose the infidelity of husbands and wives, are sufficient evidence that illicit commerce is not confined to the unmarried; but so many are the facilities for covering and preventing the results of sins of this description it is impossible to form any just estimate of their frequency. the incontinence of husbands and the unchastity of wives will only appear in their enormity at that awful day when every one shall "stand before the judgment-seat" and hear the penalty of his guilty deeds. unchastity of the ancients.--we are prone to believe that the present is the most licentious age the world has ever known; that in the nineteenth century the climax of evil has been reached; that the libidinous blood of all the ages has culminated to produce a race of men more carnal than all predecessors. it is a sickening thought that any previous epoch could have been more vile than this; but history presents facts which disclose in ancient times periods when lust was even more uncontrolled than now; when vice was universal; and when virtue was a thing unknown. a few references to historical facts will establish this point. we do not make these allusions in any way to justify the present immorality, but to show the part which vice has acted in the overthrow of nations. from the sacred record we may judge that before the flood a state of corruption prevailed which was even greater and more general than any that has ever since been reached; only eight persons were fit to survive the calamity which swept into eternity that lustful generation with their filthy deeds. but men soon fell into vice again, for we find among the early assyrians a total disregard of chastity. her kings reveled in the grossest sensuality. no excess of vice could surpass the licentiousness of the ptolemies, who made of alexandria a bagnio, and all egypt a hot-bed of vice. herodotus relates that "the pyramid of cheops was built by the lovers of the daughter of this king; and that she never would have raised this monument to such a height except by multiplying her prostitutions." history also relates the adventures of that queenly courtesan, cleopatra, who captivated and seduced by her charms two masters of the world, and whose lewdness surpassed even her beauty. tyre and sidon, media, phoenicia, syria, and all the orient, were sunk in sensuality. fornication was made a part of their worship. women carried through the streets of the cities the most obscene and revolting representations. among all these nations a virtuous woman was not to be found; for, according to herodotus, the young women were by the laws of the land "obliged, once in their lives, to give themselves up to the desires of strangers in the temple of venus, and were not permitted to refuse anyone."[ ] [footnote : bourgeois.] st. augustine speaks of these religious debaucheries as still practiced in his day in phoenicia. they were even continued until constantine destroyed the temples in which they were prosecuted, in the fourth century. among the greeks the same corruptions prevailed in the worship of bacchus and phallus, which was celebrated by processions of half-nude girls "performing lascivious dances with men disguised as satyrs." in fact, as x. bourgeois says, "prostitution was in repute in greece." the most distinguished women were courtesans, and the wise socrates would be justly called, in modern times, a libertine. the abandonment to lust was, if possible, still more complete in the times of the roman emperors. rome astonished the universe "by the boldness of its turpitudes, after having astonished it by the splendor of its triumphs." the great caesar was such a rake that he has been said to have "merited to be surnamed every woman's husband." antony and augustus were equally notorious. the same sensuality pervaded the masses as reigned in the courts, and was stimulated by the erotic poems of ovid, catullus, and other poets of the time. tiberius displayed such ingenuity in inventing refinements in impudicity that it was necessary to coin new words to designate them. caligula committed the horrid crime of incest with all his sisters, even in public. his palace was a brothel. the roman empress, messalina, disguised herself as a prostitute and excelled the most degraded courtesans in her monstrous debaucheries. the roman emperor vitellius was accustomed to take an emetic after having eaten to repletion, to enable him to renew his gluttony. with still grosser sensuality he stimulated his satiated passions with philters and various aphrodisiac mixtures. nero, the most infamous of the emperors, committed rapes on the stage of the public theaters of rome, disguised as a wild beast. if this degraded voluptuousness had been confined to royalty, some respect might yet be entertained for the virtue of the ancients; but the foul infection was not restrained within such narrow bounds. it invaded whole empires until they fell in pieces from very rottenness. what must have been the condition of a nation that could tolerate such a spectacle as its monarch riding through the streets of its metropolis in a state of nudity, drawn by women in the same condition? such a deed did heliogabalus in rome. in the thirteenth century, virtue was almost as scarce in france as in ancient greece. nobles held as mistresses all the young girls of their domains. about every fifth person was a bastard. just before the revolution, chastity was such a rarity that a woman was actually obliged to apologize for being virtuous! in these disgusting facts we find one of the most potent agents in effecting the downfall of the nations. licentiousness sapped their vitality and weakened their prowess. the men who conquered the world were led captive by their own beastly passions. thus the assyrians, the medes, the grecians, the romans, successively fell victims to their lusts, and gave way to more virtuous successors. even the jews, the most enlightened people of their age, fell more than once through this same sin, which was coupled with idolatry, of which their seduction by the midianites is an example. surely, modern times present no worse spectacles of carnality than these; and will it be claimed that anything so vile is seen among civilized nations at the present day? but though there may be less grossness in the sensuality of to-day, the moral turpitude of men may be even greater than that of ancient times. enlightened christianity has raised the standard of morality. christ's commentary upon the seventh commandment requires a more rigorous chastity than ancient standards demanded, even among the jews; for had not david, solomon, and even the pious jacob more wives than one? consequently, a slight breach of chastity now requires as great a fall from virtue as a greater lapse in ages past, and must be attended with as severe a moral penalty. we have seen how universal is the "social evil," that it is a vice almost as old as man himself, which shows how deeply rooted in his perverted nature it has become. the inquiry arises, what are the causes of so monstrous a vice? so gross an outrage upon nature's laws? so withering a blight upon the race? causes of the "social evil."--a vice that has become so great an evil, even in these enlightened times, as to defy the most skillful legislation, which openly displays its gaudy filthiness and mocks at virtue with a lecherous stare, must have its origin in causes too powerful to be ignored. libidinous blood.--in no other direction are the effects of heredity to be more distinctly traced than in the transmission of sensual propensities. the children of libertines are almost certain to be rakes and prostitutes. history affords numerous examples in illustration of this fact. the daughter of augustus was as unchaste as her father, and her daughter was as immoral as herself. the sons of david showed evident traces of their father's failing. witness the incest of amnon, and the voluptuousness of solomon, who had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. solomon's son was, likewise, a noted polygamist, of whom the record says, "he desired many wives." his son's son manifested the same propensity in taking as many wives as the debilitated state of his kingdom enabled him to support. but perhaps we may be allowed to trace the origin of this libidinous propensity still further back. a glance at the genealogy of david will show that he was descended from judah through pharez, who was the result of an incestuous union between judah and his daughter-in-law. is it unreasonable to suppose that the abnormal passion which led david to commit the most heinous sin of his life in his adultery with bath-sheba and subsequently procuring the death of her husband, was really an hereditary propensity which had come down to him through his ancestors, and which, under more favorable circumstances, was more fully developed in his sons? the trait may have been kept dormant by the active and simple habits of his early years, but asserted itself in full force under the fostering influence of royal idleness and luxury. in accordance with the known laws of heredity, such a tendency would be the legitimate result of such a combination of circumstances. the influence of marital excesses, and especially sexual indulgence during pregnancy, in producing vicious tendencies in offspring, has been fully dwelt upon elsewhere in this work, and will not be reconsidered here, it being only necessary to call attention to the subject. physiology shows conclusively that thousands of parents whose sons have become libertines and their daughters courtesans, have themselves implanted in their characters the propensity which led to their unchastity. gluttony.--as a predisposing cause, the influence of dietetic habits should rank next to heredity. it is an observed fact that "all libertines are great eaters or famous gastronomists." the exciting influence upon the genital organs of such articles as pepper, mustard, ginger, spices, truffles, wine, and all alcoholic drinks, is well known. tea and coffee directly excite the animal passions through their influence upon the nerve centers controlling the sexual organs. when children are raised upon such articles, or upon food with which they are thoroughly mingled, what wonder that they occasionally "turn out bad"? how many mothers, while teaching their children the principles of virtue in the nursery, unwittingly stimulate their passions at the dinner table until vice becomes almost a physical necessity! nothing tends so powerfully to keep the passions in abeyance as a simple diet, free from condiments, especially when coupled with a generous amount of exercise. the influence of tobacco in leading to unchastity has been referred to in another connection. this is assuredly a not uncommon cause. when a boy places the first cigar or quid of tobacco to his lips, he takes--if he has not previously done so--the first step in the road to infamy; and if he adds wine or beer, he takes a short cut to the degradation of his manhood by the loss of virtue. precocious sexuality.--the causes of a too early development of sexual peculiarities, as manifested in infantile flirtations and early signs of sexual passion, were dwelt upon quite fully in a previous connection, and we need not repeat them here. certain it is that few things can be more dangerous to virtue than the premature development of those sentiments which belong only to puberty and later years. it is a most unnatural, but not uncommon, sight to see a girl of tender age evincing all those characters which mark the wanton of older years. man's lewdness.--it cannot be denied that men are in the greatest degree responsible for the "social evil." the general principle holds true here as elsewhere that the supply is regulated by the demand. if the patrons of prostitution should withdraw their support by a sudden acquisition of virtue, how soon would this vilest of traffics cease! the inmates of brothels would themselves become continent, if not virtuous, as the result of such a spasm of chastity in men. again, the ranks of fallen women, which are rapidly thinned by loathsome diseases and horrid deaths, are largely recruited from that class of unfortunates for whose fall faithless lovers or cunning, heartless libertines are chiefly responsible. the weak girl who, through too much trust, has been deceived and robbed of her dearest treasure, is disowned by relatives, shunned by her acquaintances, and turned out upon a cold world without money, without friends, without a character. what can she do? respectable employment she cannot find, for rumor follows her. there seems to be but one door open, the one which she herself so unintentionally opened. in despair, she enters the "open road to hell," and to her first sad error adds a life of shame. meanwhile, the villain who betrayed her still maintains his standing in society, and plies his arts to win another victim. is there not an unfair discrimination here? should not the seducer be blackened with an infamy at least as deep as that which society casts on the one betrayed? fashion.--the temptation of dress, fine clothing, costly jewelry, and all the extravagances with which rich ladies array themselves, is in many cases too powerful for the weakened virtue of poor seamstresses, operatives, and servant girls, who have seen so much of vice as to have lost that instinctive loathing for it which they may have once experienced. thinking to gain a life of ease, with means to gratify their love of show, they barter away their peace of mind for this world, all hope for the next, and only gain a little worthless tinsel, the scorn of their fellow-creatures, and a host of loathsome diseases. lack of early training.--it is needless to demonstrate a fact so well established as that the future character of an individual depends very largely upon his early training. if purity and modesty are taught from earliest infancy, the mind is fortified against the assaults of vice. if, instead, the child is allowed to grow up untrained, if the seeds of vice which are sure to fall sooner or later in the most carefully kept ground are allowed to germinate, if the first buds of evil are allowed to grow and unfold instead of being promptly nipped, it must not be considered remarkable that in later years rank weeds of sin should flourish in the soul and bear their hideous fruit in shameless lives. neglect to guard the avenues by which evil may approach the young mind, and to erect barriers against vice by careful instruction and a chaste example, leaves many innocent souls open to the assaults of evil, and an easy prey to lust. if children are allowed to get their training in the street, at the corner grocery, or hovering around saloons, they will be sure to develop a vigorous growth of the animal passions. the following extract is from the writings of one whose pen has been an inestimable blessing to american youth:-- "among the first lessons which boys learn of their fellows are impurities of language; and these are soon followed by impurities of thought.... when this is the training of boyhood, it is not strange that the predominating ideas among young men, in relation to the other sex, are too often those of impurity and sensuality.... we cannot be surprised, then, that the history of most young men is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in different ways. with many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient, accidental, and does not become habitual. it does not get to be regarded as venial. it is never yielded to without remorse. the wish and the purpose are to resist; but the animal nature bears down the moral. still, transgression is always followed by grief and penitence. "with too many, however, it is to be feared, it is not so. the mind has become debauched by dwelling on licentious images, and by indulgence in licentious conversation. there is no wish to resist. they are not overtaken by temptation, for they seek it. with them the transgression becomes habitual, and the stain on the character is deep and lasting."[ ] [footnote : ware.] sentimental literature.--in another connection, we have referred particularly to the bawdy, obscene books and pictures which are secretly circulated among the youth of both sexes, and to their corrupting influence. the hope is not entirely a vain one that this evil may be controlled; but there seems no possible practicable remedy for another evil which ultimately leads to the same result, though by less gross and obscene methods. we refer to the sentimental literature which floods the land. city and school libraries, circulating libraries, and even sunday-school libraries, are full of books which, though they may contain good moral teaching, contain, as well, an element as incompatible with purity of morals as is light with midnight darkness. writers for children and youth seem to think a tale of "courtship, love, and matrimony" entirely indispensable as a medium for conveying their moral instruction. some of these "religious novels" are actually more pernicious than the fictions of well-known novelists who make no pretense to having religious instruction a particular object in view. sunday-school libraries are not often wholly composed of this class of works, but any one who takes the trouble to examine the books of such a library will be able to select the most pernicious ones by the external appearance. the covers will be well worn and the edges begrimed with dirt from much handling. children soon tire of the shallow sameness which characterizes the "moral" parts of most of these books, and skim lightly over them, selecting and devouring with eagerness those portions which relate the silly narrative of some love adventure. this kind of literature arouses in children premature fancies and queries, and fosters a sentimentalism which too often occasions most unhappy results. through their influence, young girls are often led to begin a life of shame long before their parents are aware that a thought of evil has ever entered their minds. the following words from the pen of a forcible writer[ ] present this matter in none too strong a light:-- "you may tear your coat or break a vase, and repair them again; but the point where the rip or fracture took place will always be evident. it takes less than an hour to do your heart a damage which no time can entirely repair. look carefully over your child's library; see what book it is that he reads after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned upon the pillow. do not always take it for granted that a book is good because it is a sunday-school book. as far as possible, know _who_ wrote it, who illustrated it, who published it, who sold it. "it seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables. "parents are delighted to have their children read, but they should be sure as to what they read. you do not have to walk a day or two in an infested district to get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave of moral unhealth will fever and blast the soul forever. perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read a bad book. do you not remember it altogether? yes! and perhaps you will never get over it. however strong and exalted your character, never read a bad book. by the time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift. if you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, away with it. "but there is more danger, i think, from many of the family papers, published once a week, in those stories of vice and shame, full of infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing themselves to the clutch of the law. i name none of them; but say that on some fashionable tables there lie 'family newspapers' that are the very vomit of the pit. "the way to ruin is cheap. it costs three dollars to go to philadelphia; six dollars to boston; thirty-three dollars to savannah; but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten cents you may get a through ticket to hell, by express, with few stopping places, and the final halting like the tumbling of the lightning train down the draw-bridge at norwalk--sudden, terrific, deathful, never to rise." [footnote : t. de witt talmage.] poverty.--the pressing influence of poverty has been urged as one cause of prostitution. it cannot be denied that in many cases, in large cities, this may be the immediate occasion of the entrance of a young girl upon a life of shame; but it may still be insisted that there must have been, in such cases, a deficiency in previous training; for a young woman, educated with a proper regard for purity, would sooner sacrifice life itself than virtue. again, poverty can be no excuse, for in every city there are made provisions for the relief of the needy poor, and none who are really worthy need suffer. ignorance.--perhaps nothing fosters vice more than ignorance. prostitutes come almost entirely from the more ignorant classes, though there are, of course, many exceptions. among the lowest classes, vice is seen in its grossest forms, and is carried to the greatest lengths. intellectual culture is antagonistic to sensuality. as a general rule, in proportion as the intellect is developed, the animal passions are brought into subjection. it is true that very intellectual men have been great libertines, and that the licentious borgias and medicis of italy encouraged art and literature; but these are only apparent exceptions, for who knows to what greater depths of vice these individuals might have sunk had it not been for the restraining influence of mental culture? says deslandes, "in proportion as the intellect becomes enfeebled, the generative sensibility is augmented." the animal passions seem to survive when all higher intelligence is lost. we once saw an illustration of this fact in an idiot who was brought before a medical class in a clinic at bellevue hospital, new york. the patient had been an idiot from birth, and presented the most revolting appearance, seemingly possessing scarcely the intelligence of the average dog; but his animal propensities were so great as to be almost uncontrollable. indeed, he showed evidences of having been a gross debauchee, having contracted venereal disease of the worst form. the general prevalence of extravagant sexual excitement among the insane is a well-known fact. disease.--various diseases which cause local irritation and congestion of the reproductive organs are the causes of unchastity in both sexes, as previously explained. it not unfrequently happens that by constantly dwelling upon unchaste subjects until a condition of habitual congestion of the sexual organs is produced, young women become seized with a furor for libidinous commerce which nothing but the desired object will appease, unless active remedial measures are adopted under the direction of a skillful physician. this disease, known as _nymphomania_, has been the occasion of the fall of many young women of the better classes who have been bred in luxury and idleness, but were never taught even the first lessons of purity or self-control. constipation, piles, worms, pruritis of the genitals, and some other less common diseases of the urinary and genital systems, have been causes of sexual excitement which has resulted in moral degradation. results of licentiousness.--apparently as a safeguard to virtue, nature has appended to the sin of illicit sexual indulgence, as penalties, the most loathsome, deadly, and incurable diseases known to man. some of these, as _gonorrhea_ and _chancroid_, are purely local diseases; and though they occasion the transgressor a vast amount of suffering, they may be cured and leave no trace of their presence except in the conscience of the individual. such a result, however, is by no means the usual one. most frequently, the injury done is more or less permanent; sometimes it amounts to loss of life or serious mutilation, as in cases we have seen. and one attack secures no immunity from subsequent ones, as a new disease may be contracted upon every exposure. by far the worst form of venereal disease is _syphilis_, a malady which was formerly confounded with the two forms of disease mentioned, but from which it is essentially different. at first, a very slight local lesion, of no more consequence--except from its significance--than a small boil, it rapidly infects the general system, poisoning the whole body, and liable forever after to develop itself in any one or more of its protean forms. the most loathsome sight upon which a human eye can rest is a victim of this disease who presents it well developed in its later stages. in the large charity hospital upon blackwell's island, near new york city, we have seen scores of these unfortunates of both sexes, exhibiting the horrid disease in all its phases. to describe them would be to place before our readers a picture too revolting for these pages. no pen can portray the woebegone faces, the hopeless air, of these degraded sufferers whose repentance has come, alas! too late. no words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings. what remorse and useless regrets add to the misery of their wretched existence as they daily watch the progress of a malignant ulceration which is destroying their organs of speech, or burrowing deep into the recesses of the skull, penetrating even to the brain itself! even the bones become rottenness; foul running sores appear on different portions of the body, and may even cover it entirely. perhaps the nose, or the tongue, or the lips, or an eye, or some other prominent organ, is lost. still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serving only to prolong the torture. to many of them, death would be a grateful release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes; for hell itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than that which they daily endure. thousands of victims.--the venturesome youth need not attempt to calm his fears by thinking that these are only exceptional cases, for this is not the truth. in any city, one who has an experienced eye can scarcely walk a dozen blocks on busy streets without encountering the woeful effects of sexual transgression. neither do these results come only from long-continued violations of the laws of chastity. the very first departure from virtue may occasion all the worst effects possible. effects of vice ineradicable.--another fearful feature of this terrible disease is that when once it invades the system its eradication is impossible. no drug, no chemical, can antidote its virulent poison or drive it from the system. various means may smother it, possibly for a life-time; but yet it is not cured, and the patient is never safe from a new outbreak. prof. bumstead, an acknowledged authority on this subject, after observing the disease for many years, says that "he never after treatment, however prolonged, promises immunity for the future."[ ] dr. van buren, professor of surgery at bellevue hospital medical college, new york, bears the same testimony. [footnote : venereal disease.] prof. van buren also says that he has often seen the disease occur upon the lips of young ladies who were entirely virtuous, but who were engaged to men who had contracted the disease and had communicated it to them by the act of kissing. virtuous wives have not infrequently had their constitutions hopelessly ruined by contracting the disease from husbands who had themselves been inoculated either before or after marriage, by illicit intercourse. several such unfortunate cases have fallen under our observation, and there is reason to believe that they are not infrequent. the only hope.--the only hope for one who has contracted this disease is to lead a life of perfect continence ever after, and by a most careful life, by conforming strictly to the laws of health, by bathing and dieting, he may possibly avoid the horrid consequences of the later stages of the malady. mercury will not cure, nor will any other poison, as before remarked. the following strong testimony on this subject we quote from an admirable pamphlet by prof. fred. h. gerrish, m.d.:-- "the diseases dependent upon prostitution are appallingly frequent, a distinguished surgeon recently declaring that one person in twenty in the united states has syphilis, a malady so ineradicable that a profound observer has remarked that 'a man who is once thus poisoned will die a syphilitic, and, in the day of judgment, he will be a syphilitic ghost.' prof. gross says: 'what is called scrofula, struma, or tuberculosis, is, i have long been satisfied from careful observation of the sick and a profound study of the literature of the subject, in a great majority of cases, if not invariably, merely syphilis in its more remote stages.' though there are doubtless many of us who believe that a not inconsiderable proportion of scrofulous and phthisical cases are clearly due to other causes than syphilis, we must admit that this statement contains a very large element of truth." hereditary effects of venereal disease.--the transgressor is not the only sufferer. if he marries, his children, if they survive infancy, will in later years show the effects of their father's sin, exhibiting the forms of the disease seen in its later stages. scrofula, consumption, cancer, rickets, diseases of the brain and nerves, decay of the bones by caries or necrosis, and other diseases, arise in this way. but it generally happens that the child dies before birth, or lingers out a miserable existence of a few days or weeks thereafter. a most pitiable sight these little ones are. their faces look as old as children of ten or twelve. often their bodies become reduced before death to the most wretched skeletons. their hollow, feeble cry sends a shudder of horror through the listener, and impresses indelibly the terrible consequences of sexual sin. plenty of these scrawny infants may be seen in the lying-in hospitals. no one can estimate how much of the excessive mortality of infants is owing to this cause. in children who survive infancy, its blighting influence may be seen in the notched, deformed teeth, and other defects; and very often it will be found, upon looking into the mouth of the child, that the soft palate, and perhaps the hard palate as well, is in a state of ulceration. there is more than a suspicion that this disease may be transmitted for several generations, perhaps remaining latent during the life-time of one, and appearing in all its virulence in the next. man the only transgressor.--man is the only animal that abuses his sexual organization by making it subservient to other ends than reproduction; hence he is the only sufferer from this foul disease, which is one of the penalties of such abuse. attempts have been made to communicate the disease to lower animals, but without success, even though inoculation was practiced. origin of the foul disease.--where or when the disease originated, is a mystery. it is said to have been introduced into france from naples by french soldiers. that it originated spontaneously at some time can scarcely be doubted, and that it might originate under circumstances of excessive violation of the laws of chastity is rendered probable by the fact that gonorrhea, or an infectious disease exactly resembling it, is often caused by excessive indulgence, from which cause it not infrequently occurs in the newly married, giving rise to unjust suspicion of infidelity on both sides. read the following from a noted french physician:-- "the father, as well as the mother, communicates the syphilitic virus to the children. these poor little beings are attacked sometimes at their birth; more often it is at the end of a month or two, before these morbid symptoms appear. "i recall the heart-rending anguish of a mother whom i assisted at her fifth confinement. she related to me her misfortune: 'i have already brought into the world four children. alas! they all died during the first months of their existence. a frightful eruption wasted them away and killed them. save me the one that is about to be born!' cried she, in tears. the child that i delivered was sickly and puny. a few days after its birth, it had purulent ophthalmia; then, crusted and ulcerated pustules, a few at first, numerous afterward, covered the entire surface of the skin. soon this miserable little being became as meager as a skeleton, hideous to the sight, and died. having questioned the husband, he acknowledged to me that he had had syphilis."[ ] [footnote : bourgeois.] cure of the "social evil."--with rare exceptions, the efforts of civil legislation have been directed toward controlling or modifying this vice, rather than extirpating it. among other devices adopted with a view to effect this, and to mitigate in some degree the resulting evils, the issuing of licenses for brothels has been practiced in several large cities. one of the conditions of the license makes it obligatory upon the keepers of houses of ill-repute and their inmates to submit to medical examination at stated intervals. by this means, it is expected to detect the cases of foul disease at the outset, and thus to protect others by placing the infected individuals under restraint and treatment. it will be seen that for many reasons such examinations could not be effective; but, even if they were, the propriety of this plan of dealing with the vice is exceedingly questionable, as will appear from the following considerations:-- . the moment that prostitution is placed under the protection of law by means of a license, it at once loses half its disrepute, and becomes respectable, as do gambling and liquor-selling under the same circumstances. . why should so vile a crime as fornication be taken under legal protection more than stealing or the lowest forms of gambling? is it not a lesser crime against human nature to rob a man of his money by theft or by deceit and trickery than to snatch from him at one fell swoop his health, his virtue, and his peace of mind? why not as well have laws to regulate burglary and assassination, allowing the perpetrators of those crimes to ply their chosen avocations with impunity under certain prescribed restrictions; if robbery, for instance, requiring the thief to leave his victim money enough to make his escape to another country; or, if murder, directing the assassin to allow his intended victim time to repeat a sufficient number of _ave marias_ to insure his safe transit through purgatory or to pay a priest for doing the same? such a course would not be inconsistent with the policy which legalizes that infamous traffic in human souls, prostitution. . by the use of certain precautionary measures the fears of many will be allayed, so that thousands whose fear of the consequences of sin would otherwise have kept them physically virtuous, at least, erroneously supposing that the cause for fear has been removed, will rush madly into a career of vice, and will learn only too late the folly of their course. prevention the only cure.--those who have once entered upon a career of sensuality are generally so completely lost to all sense of purity and right that there is little chance for reforming them. they have no principle to which to appeal. the gratification of lust so degrades the soul and benumbs the higher sensibilities that a votary of voluptuousness is a most unpromising subject for reformatory efforts. the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is strikingly exemplified in this case. the remedy must be applied before the depths have been reached. it was well said by a celebrated physician to a young man beginning a life of vice, "you are entering upon a career from which you will never turn back." early training.--the remedy, to be effective, must be applied early, the earlier the better. lessons on chastity may be given in early infancy. the remedy may be applied even further back than this; children must be virtuously generated. the bearing of this point will be fully appreciated in connection with the principles established in the preceding pages of this work, and which have already been sufficiently elucidated. children should be early taught to reverence virtue, to abhor lust; and boys should be so trained that they will associate with the name of woman only pure, chaste, and noble thoughts. few things are more deeply injurious to the character of woman, and more conducive to the production of foul imaginations in children, than the free discussion of such subjects as the "beecher scandal" and like topics. the inquisitive minds and lively imaginations of childhood penetrate the rotten mysteries of such foul subjects at a much earlier age than many persons imagine. the inquiring minds of children will be occupied in some way, and it is of the utmost importance that they should be early filled with thoughts that will lead them to noble and pure actions. teach self-control.--one important part of early training is the cultivation of self-control, and a habit of self-denial, whenever right demands it. another most essential part of a child's moral training is the cultivation of right motives. to present a child no higher motives for doing right than the hope of securing some pleasant reward, or the fear of suffering some terrible punishment, is the surest way to make of him a supremely selfish man, with no higher aim than to secure good to himself, no matter what may become of other people. and if he can convince himself that the pleasure he will secure by the commission of a certain act will more than counterbalance the probable risk of suffering, he will not hesitate to commit it, leaving wholly out of the consideration the question, is it right? or noble? or pure? a love of right for its own sake is the only solid basis upon which to build a moral character. children should not be taught to do right in order to avoid a whipping, or imprisonment in a dark closet,--a horrid kind of punishment sometimes resorted to,--or even to escape "the lake of fire and brimstone." neither should they be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,--a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of heaven. all of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the _chief_ motives of action. but rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; then will he have a worthy principle by which to square his life; then will he be safe from the assaults of passion, of vice, of lust. a mind so trained stands upon an eminence from which all evil men and devils combined cannot displace it so long as it adheres to its noble principles. mental culture.--the cultivation of the physical organization must not be neglected. healthful mental discipline should receive equal attention. by healthful mental discipline is not meant that kind of superficial "cramming" and memorizing which constitute the training of the average school, but sound culture; a directing of the mind from facts to underlying principles; a development of the reasoning powers so as to bring the emotions and passions into subjection; the acquirement of the power to concentrate the mind, one of the best methods of cultivating self-control,--these are some of the objects and results of sound culture of the mind. to supply the mind with food for pure thoughts, the child should be early inspired with a love for nature. the perceptives should be trained, the child taught to observe closely and accurately. the study of the natural sciences is a most valuable means of elevating the mind above grossness and sensuality. to be successful in this direction, parents must cultivate a love for the same objects themselves. take the little ones into the country, if they are not so fortunate as to live there, and in the midst of nature's glories, point their impressible minds upward to the author of all the surrounding loveliness. gather flowers and leaves and call attention to the peculiarities and special beauties of each, and thus arouse curiosity and cultivate habits of close observation and attention. early associations.--as children grow older, watch their associations. warn them of evil influences and evil practices. make home so attractive that they will enjoy it better than any other place. cultivate music; its mellowing, harmonizing, refining influence is too great to be prudently withheld. children naturally love music; and if they cannot hear it at home, they will go where they can hear it. supply attractive books of natural history, travels, interesting and instructive biographies, and almost any other books but love-sick novels, and sentimental religious story-books. guard against bad books and bad associates as carefully as though they were deadly serpents, for they are, indeed, the artful emissaries of the "old serpent" himself. a taste once formed for reading light literature destroys the relish for solid reading; and usually the taste, once lost, is never regained. the fascination of bad companionship once formed around a person is broken with the greatest difficulty. hence the necessity for watching for the very beginnings of evil and promptly checking them. the mind should be thus fortified against the trifles and follies of fashionable life. it should be elevated into a sphere far above that occupied by those who pass their time in fashionable drawing-rooms in silly twaddle, with thrumming a piano, with listless day-dreaming, or in the gratification of perverted tastes and depraved instincts in any other of the ways common to fashionable life. solitary vice. if illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution, or masturbation, is a crime doubly abominable. as a sin against nature, it has no parallel except in sodomy (see gen. : , judges : ). it is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses, because the most extensively practiced. the vice consists in any excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the natural way. it is known by the terms, self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration, voluntary pollution, solitary or secret vice, and other names sufficiently explanatory. the vice is the more extensive because there are no bounds to its indulgence. its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible. it may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life. even though no warning may have been given, the transgressor seems to know, instinctively, that he is committing a great wrong, for he carefully hides his practice from observation. in solitude he pollutes himself, and with his own hand blights all his prospects for both this world and the next. even after being solemnly warned, he will often continue this worse than beastly practice, deliberately forfeiting his right to health and happiness for a moment's mad sensuality. alarming prevalence of the vice.--the habit is by no means confined to boys; girls also indulge in it, though, it is to be hoped, to a less fearful extent than boys, at least in this country. a russian physician, quoted by an eminent medical professor in new york, states that the habit is universal among girls in russia. it seems impossible that such a statement should be credible; and yet we have not seen it contradicted. it is more than probable that the practice is far more nearly universal everywhere than even medical men are willing to admit. many young men who have been addicted to the vice, have, in their confessions, declared that they found it universal in the schools in which they learned the practice. dr. gardner speaks of it as "the secret cause of much that is perverting the energies and demoralizing the minds of many of our fairest and best." he further says:-- "much of the worthlessness, lassitude, and physical and mental feebleness attributable to the modern woman are to be ascribed to these habits as their initial cause." "foreigners are especially struck with this fact as the cause of much of the physical disease of our young women. they recognize it in the physique, in the sodden, colorless countenance, the lack-luster eye, in the dreamy indolence, the general carriage, the constant demeanor indicative of distrust, mingled boldness and timidity, and a series of anomalous combinations which mark this genus of physical and moral decay." the extent to which the vice is practiced by an individual is in some cases appalling. three or four repetitions of the act daily are not uncommon; and the following from dr. copland is evidence of much deeper depravity:-- "there can be no doubt that the individual who has once devoted himself to this moloch of the species becomes but too frequently its slave to an almost incredible degree. a patient who was sent to london for my advice confessed that he had practiced this vice seven or eight times daily from the age of thirteen until twenty-four; and he was then reduced to the lowest state of mental weakness, associated with various bodily infirmities; indeed, both mental power and physical existence were nearly extinguished." testimony of eminent authors.--says a medical writer, "in my opinion, neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism; it is the destroying element of civilized societies, which is constantly in action, and gradually undermines the health of a nation." "the sin of self-pollution, which is generally considered to be that of onan, is one of the most destructive evils ever practiced by fallen man. in many respects it is several degrees worse than common whoredom, and has in its train more awful consequences, though practiced by numbers who would shudder at the thought of criminal connection with a prostitute."[ ] [footnote : dr. adam clarke.] "however revolting to the feelings it may be to enter upon such a subject, it cannot be passed over in silence without a great violation of duty. unhappily, it has not been hitherto exhibited in the awful light in which it deserves to be shown. _the worst of it is that it is seldom suspected._ there are many pale faces and languid and nervous feelings attributed to other causes, when all the mischief lies here."[ ] [footnote : sir w. c. ellis.] we scarcely need add further evidence of the fearful extent of this evil, but will conclude with the following:-- "the pernicious and debasing practice of masturbation is a more common and extensive evil with youth of both sexes than is usually supposed." "a great number of the evils which come upon the youth at and after the age of puberty, arise from masturbation, persisted in, so as to waste the vital energies and enervate the physical and mental powers of man." "many of the weaknesses commonly attributed to growth and the changes in the habit by the important transformation from adolescence to manhood, are justly referable to this practice."[ ] [footnote : boston medical and surgical journal.] not a modern vice.--that this vice is not entirely a modern one is proved by the fact that in many ancient writings directions are given for treating its effects. even moses seems to have recognized disorders of this class. hippocrates and others devoted considerable attention to them. victims of all ages.--the ages at which the habit may be practiced include almost the whole extent of human life. we have seen it in infants of only three or four years, and in old men scarcely less than sixty, in both extremes marked by the most unmistakable and lamentable consequences. cases have been noted in which the practice was begun as early as two years of age. it is common among african boys at nine and ten years of age, according to dr. copland. unsuspected rottenness.--parents who have no suspicion of the evil, who think their children the embodiment of purity, will find by careful observation and inquiry,--though personal testimony cannot be relied upon,--that in numerous instances their supposed virtuous children are old in corruption. such a revelation has brought dismay into many a family, only too late in some cases. not long since a case came under our care which well illustrates the apathy and blindness of parents with respect to this subject. the parents of a young man whose mind seemed to be somewhat disordered, sent word to us through a friend respecting his condition, asking advice. we suspected from the symptoms described the real cause of the disease, and urged prompt attention to the case. in a short time the young man was placed under our immediate care without encouragement of a cure, and we gave the case still closer study. the characteristic symptoms of disease from self-abuse were marked, but the father was positive that no influence of that kind could have been at work. he had watched his son narrowly from infancy, and did not believe it possible for him to have been guilty. in addition, the young man had long been remarkable for his piety, and he did not believe there could be any possibility of his being guilty of so gross a crime. a short time sufficed, however, to secure the indisputable evidence of the fact by his being caught in the act by his nurse. this young man was a sad example of what havoc is made with the "human form divine" by this debasing vice. once a bright boy, kind, affectionate, active, intelligent, the pride of a loving mother and the hope of a doting father, his mind had sunken to driveling idiocy. his vacant stare and expressionless countenance betokened almost complete imbecility. if allowed to do so, he would remain for hours in whatever position his last movement left him. if his hand was raised, it remained extended until placed in a position of rest by his attendant. only with the utmost difficulty could he be made to rise in the morning, to eat, drink, or walk. only by great efforts could he be aroused from his lethargy sufficiently to answer the most simple question. the instinctive demands of decency in regarding the calls of nature were not respected. in short, the distinguishing characteristics of a human being were almost wholly obliterated, leaving but a physical semblance of humanity; a mind completely wrecked, a body undergoing dissolution while yet alive, a blasted life, no hope for this world, no prospect for the next. in the insane asylums of the country may be seen hundreds of these poor victims in all stages of physical and mental demoralization. causes of the habit.--it is needless to recapitulate all the causes of unchastity which have previously been quite fully dwelt upon, nearly all of which are predisposing or exciting causes of solitary as well as of social vice. sexual precocity, idleness, pernicious literature, abnormal sexual passions, exciting and irritating food, gluttony, sedentary employment, libidinous pictures, and many abnormal conditions of life, are potent causes in exciting the vile practice; but by far the most frequent causes are evil associations, wicked or ignorant nurses, and local disease, or abnormality. these latter we will consider more particularly, as they have not been so fully dwelt upon elsewhere. evil associations.--a child may have been reared with the greatest care. from infancy he may have been carefully shielded from all pernicious influences, so that at the age of ten or twelve, when he is for the first time sent away to school, he may be free from vice; but when he associates with his fellow-students, he soon finds them practicing a habit new to him, and being unwarned, he speedily follows their filthy example and quickly becomes fascinated with the vice. thousands have taken their first lessons in this debasing habit at school. teachers and scholars testify that it is often practiced even in school hours, almost under the teacher's eyes; but where the infection most quickly spreads is in the sleeping apartments, where more than one occupy the same bed, or where several sleep in the same room. nothing is more indispensable to purity of body and of morals than a private sleeping room and single bed for each student. such an arrangement would protect the youth from the reception of much evil, and would allow an opportunity for privacy which every young man or youth needs for his spiritual as well as physical benefit. not the least benefit of the latter class is the opportunity for a thorough cleansing of the whole body every morning, which is almost as indispensable to purity of morals as cleanliness of body. the same suggestion is fully as applicable to the sleeping arrangements of girls. the exceptional cases in which this plan would not be the best are very few indeed. corruption in schools.--says dr. acton, "i cannot venture to print the accounts patients have given me of what they have seen or even been drawn into at schools. i would fain hope that such abominations are things of the past." the entrance of a single corrupt boy into a school which may have been previously pure--though such schools must be extremely rare--will speedily corrupt almost the entire membership. the evil infection spreads more rapidly than the contagion of small-pox or yellow fever, and it is scarcely less fatal. this danger exists not in public or city schools alone, but in the most select and private schools. a father who had kept his two sons under the care of a private governess for several years, and then placed them in a small school taught by a lady, and composed of a few small children from the most select families, was greatly astonished when informed by a physician that his sons showed symptoms of the effects of self-abuse. he was totally incredulous; but an investigation showed that they had already practiced the vile habit for several years, having learned it of an infantile school-mate. we were acquainted with one instance in which a primary school in a secluded and select community was nearly broken up by the introduction of this vile habit through a corrupt student. many a watchful teacher has seen the light of growing intelligence suddenly dim and wane in the eye of his favorite student just when he was giving the most promise of developing unusual talents in literature, mathematics, or some one of the natural or physical sciences, and has been compelled to watch the devastating influence of this deadly upas tree that often claims the best and fairest human flowers as its victims. wicked nurses.--in those cases in which the habit is acquired at a very early age, the work of evil is usually wrought by the nurse, perhaps through ignorance of the effects of the habit. incredible as it seems, it is proved by numerous instances that it is not an uncommon habit for nurses to quiet small children by handling or titillating their genital organs. they find this a speedy means of quieting them, and resort to it regardless or ignorant of the consequences. not an uncommon case.--prof. lusk, of bellevue hospital college, new york, related to his medical class in our hearing a case which came under his observation in which all of the children in a large family had been taught the habit by a wicked nurse for the purpose of keeping them quiet after they were put to bed. the vileness that would lead a person to thus rob childhood of its innocence, and blast its prospects for this life and the next, is base enough for the commission of almost any crime. indeed, the crime could hardly have been a worse one had the nurse referred to in the above case in cold blood cut the throats of those innocent children; perhaps it might have been better for the children. a gentleman once declared that if he should detect a person teaching this crime to his child he would shoot him on the spot; and if homicide is allowable under any circumstances, it seems to us it would be extenuated by such an aggravation. if occasional bad associations will work an immense damage to the youthful character, what terrible injury may be wrought by an agent of sin, an instructor in vice, who is within the household, who presides in the nursery, and exerts a constant influence! no one can estimate it. acton remarks on this point, "i need hardly point out how very dangerous this is. there seems hardly any limit to the age at which a young child can be initiated into these abominations, or to the depth of degradation to which it may fall under such hideous teaching. books treating of this subject are unfortunately too full of accounts of the habits of such children." in not a few instances the "hired man" has been the means of communicating to innocent little boys the infamous knowledge which, fortunately, they had not acquired in babyhood. with no knowledge of the evil they are committing, they begin the work of physical damnation which makes a hell of life and leads to endless death. the "hired girl" is often an equally efficient agent for evil in the instruction of little girls in this debasing vice. some time ago, the very intelligent parents of a bright family of children were awakened to the importance of this subject from the perusal of the first edition of this work, and upon investigation were horrified to find that their oldest child a promising daughter of ten, was already a victim to the vile practice, having been initiated by a "hired girl." after using in vain every means he could bring to bear upon the case, the father brought her to us, and with tears in his eyes gave his story. after telling of his unsuccessful attempts to effect a reform, he declared that he would far prefer to place his daughter in the grave than to see her grow up a wretched victim of this vice. we were most happy to be able, after a few weeks' treatment, to restore her to her parents, as we hope, permanently reformed. not a few such cases are constantly coming to the attention of the medical profession. the instructor in vice.--are these lines perused by any one who has ever taught another this vice so vile, and so certainly followed by penalties so terrible--penalties not upon the instigator but upon the hapless victim? let such a person clothe himself in sackcloth and ashes, and do penance for the remainder of his life. the only way in which he can hope to atone even in some small degree for such a heinous crime, is by doing all in his power to warn those in danger against this sin. when all men receive their just deserts, what will be the punishment of such a one who has not, by thorough repentance and a life spent in trying to undo the work of ruin so foully wrought, in some measure disburdened himself of the consequences of his act! sending children very early to bed before they are weary, "to get them out of the way," or for punishment, is a grave error, as this may give rise to the vice. confining children alone in a room by themselves is an equally reprehensible practice, as it favors the commission of the act, at least, and may afford a favorable opportunity for its discovery. allowing children to form a habit of seeking solitude is an evil of the same nature. local disease.--in the male, a tight or long foreskin is a frequent cause of the habit. the constant contact of the prepuce with the most sensitive part of the organ increases its sensibility. the secretion is retained, and accumulates, often becoming hardened. in this manner irritation is set up, which occasions uncomfortable feelings, and attracts the hands to the part. owing to the great degree of excitement due to irritation, but a slight provocation is necessary to arouse voluptuous sensations, and then the terrible secret is revealed. the child readily discovers how to reproduce the same, and is not slow to commit a frequent repetition of the act; and thus the habit is formed. an illustrative case.--a case in which the vice originated in this manner was recently under our observation. the patient was a man of considerable intellectual power and some culture, but showed unmistakable signs of his early indiscretion. he stated that although he mingled quite freely with other boys of his age, he obtained no knowledge of the habit from others. he often heard allusions which he did not understand, and of which he did not, fortunately, discover the meaning. but he was afflicted with congenital _phimosis_, the prepuce being so tight that retraction was impossible. this, together with urinal irritation,--which occasioned nocturnal incontinence of urine,--constipation, and highly seasoned food, produced so much local irritation as to occasion frequent erections, and an increased secretion. he soon noticed that there was an accumulation of hardened secretion beneath the foreskin, and in attempting to remove this, he accidentally provoked voluptuous sensations. he speedily abandoned himself to the habit, often repeating it several times a day. beginning at the age of twelve years, he continued it for three or four years. soon after acquiring the habit, he became aware of its tendencies, through reading books upon the subject, but he found himself so completely enslaved that abstinence seemed impossible. one resolution to reform after another was formed, only to be speedily broken. his unwholesome diet, habitual constipation, and especially the unfortunate organic difficulty in his genital organs, produced an almost constant priapism, which was only relieved, and then but temporarily, by the act of pollution. his sedentary habits increased the difficulty to an extreme degree. in the meantime, his constitution, naturally weak, was being gradually undermined. he suffered from constant headache, heart-burn, pains in the back and limbs, weakness, and lassitude. yet he attributed none of these ailments to the true cause. after the lapse of three or four years thus spent, and after repeated ineffectual attempts, by a powerful effort of the will, by the aid of prayer, and by adopting a more wholesome diet, he succeeded in getting the mastery of his vice. but the local difficulties still continued in a great degree, and under particularly aggravating circumstances occasioned a relapse at long intervals. after a time, the local difficulties grew less and less, and enabled him to gain a complete victory over the habit, though the results of previous sin still remained, for which he desired treatment. this case will serve as a fair illustration of many of similar character, in which the child accidentally makes the discovery which leads him to work his own ruin. other physical causes.--constipation, piles, irritable bladder, fissure of the anus, local uncleanliness, and pruritis of the genital organs, will produce the habit in both males and females in the manner described. sleeping on feather beds increases the local congestion, and thus favors the exciting influences of any of the above-named causes. it may, perhaps, itself be the exciting cause. we once treated a patient who was affected with stone in the bladder, and who asserted that the constant irritation which he suffered in the end of the penis was only relieved by friction. this might readily be the cause of masturbation, though in this case the vice had been acquired many years before, and was still continued in spite of all efforts to reform. lying upon the back or upon the abdomen frequently leads to self-abuse by provoking sexual excitement. certain kinds of exercises, as climbing, in particular, have been attended by the same results. it is said that children sometimes experience genital excitement amounting to pleasure as the result of whipping. influence of stimulants.--the use of stimulants of any kind is a fruitful cause of the vice. tea and coffee have led thousands to perdition in this way. the influence of tobacco is so strongly shown in this direction that it is doubtful if there can be found a boy who has attained the age of puberty and has acquired the habit of using tobacco, who is not also addicted to this vile practice. candies, spices, cinnamon, cloves, peppermint, and all strong essences, powerfully excite the genital organs and lead to the same result. it should be further added that there is evidence that a powerful predisposition to this vice is transmitted to the children of those who have themselves been guilty of it. signs of self-abuse.--the net which this vice weaves around its victims is so strong, and its meshes are so elaborately interwoven with all his thoughts, his habits, and his very being, when it has been long indulged, that it is important to be able to detect it when first acquired, as it may then be much more easily overcome than at any subsequent period. it is often no easy matter to do this, as the victim will resort to all manner of cunning devices to hide his vice, and will not scruple to falsify concerning it, when questioned. to be able to accomplish this successfully, requires a careful study, first, of the signs by which those who indulge in the practice may be known, and, secondly, of the habits of the individuals. in considering the subject it will be found that there are two classes of signs, as follows:-- . those which may arouse suspicion, but any one of which, taken singly, would not be an evidence of the practice. . those which may be regarded as positive. several suspicious signs together may constitute a positive sign. under these two heads, we will consider the signs of this vile habit. it is well to bear in mind the fact that one or two suspicious signs are not evidence of the disease. it is likewise well to remember that the habit may be found where least looked for, and where one would have a right to expect perfect purity. prejudice must be allowed no voice upon either side. a writer has said that every young person under puberty ought to be suspected of the disease. we can hardly indorse this remark, in full, but it would be at least wise for every guardian of children to criticize most carefully their habits and to quickly detect the first indications of sinful practices. parents must not think that _their_ children, at least, are too good to engage in such sinful abuses. it is most probable that their children are very like those of their neighbors; and any amount of natural goodness is not a protection against this insidious vice when it presents itself as a harmless pleasure to the unwarned and ignorant child. suspicious signs.--the following symptoms, occurring in the mental and physical character and habits of a child or young person, may well give rise to grave suspicions of evil, and should cause parents or guardians to be on the alert to root it out if possible:-- . _general debility_, coming upon a previously healthy child, marked by emaciation, weakness, an unnatural paleness, colorless lips and gums, and the general symptoms of exhaustion, when it cannot be traced to any other legitimate cause, as internal disease, worms, grief, overwork, poor air or poor food, and when it is not speedily removed by change of air or appropriate remedial measures, may safely be attributed to solitary vice, no matter how far above natural suspicion the individual may be. mistakes will be rare indeed when such a judgment is pronounced under the circumstances named. . _early symptoms of consumption_--or what are supposed to be such--as cough, and decrease in flesh, with short breathing and soreness of the lungs--or muscles of the chest--are not infrequently, solely the result of this vice. that such is the case may be considered pretty surely determined if physical examination of the lungs reveals no organic disease of those organs. but it should be remembered that solitary vice is one of the most frequent causes of early consumption. several cases which strikingly prove this have fallen under our own observation. . _premature and defective development_ is a symptom closely allied to the two preceding. when it cannot be traced to such natural causes as overstudy, overwork, lack of exercise, and other influences of a similar nature, it should be charged to self-abuse. the early exercise of the genital organs hastens the attainment of puberty, in many cases, especially when the habit is acquired early, but at the same time saps the vital energies so that the system is unable to manifest that increased energy in growth and development which usually occurs at this period. in consequence, the body remains small, or does not attain that development which it otherwise would. the mind is dwarfed as well as the body. sometimes the mind suffers more than the body in lack of development, and sometimes the reverse is true. this defective development is shown, in the physical organization of males, in the failure of the voice to increase in volume and depth of tone as it should; in deficient growth of the beard; in failure of the chest to become full and the shoulders broad. the mind and character show the dwarfing influence by failure to develop those qualities which especially distinguish a noble manhood. in the female, defective development is shown by menstrual derangements, by defective growth either in stature, or as shown in unnatural slimness, and in a failure to develop the graces and pleasing character which should distinguish early womanhood. such signs deserve careful investigation, for they can only result from some powerfully blighting influence. . _sudden change in disposition_ is a sign which may well arouse suspicion. if a boy who has previously been cheerful, pleasant, dutiful, and gentle, suddenly becomes morose, cross, peevish, irritable, and disobedient, be sure that some foul influence is at work with him. when a girl, naturally joyous, happy, confiding, and amiable, becomes unaccountably gloomy, sad, fretful, dissatisfied, and unconfiding, be certain that a blight of no insignificant character is resting upon her. make a careful study of the habits of such children; and if there is no sudden illness to account for the change in their character, it need not require long deliberation to arrive at the true cause, for it will rarely be found to be anything other than solitary indulgence. . _lassitude_ is as unnatural for a child as for a young kitten. a healthy child will be active, playful, full of life and animal spirits. if a young child manifests indisposition to activity, a dislike for play, lifelessness and languor, suspect his habits, if there is no other reasonable cause to which to attribute his unnatural want of childish sprightliness. . in connection with the preceding symptom will generally be found, instead of that natural brilliance of expression in the eyes and countenance, an unnatural dullness and vacantness altogether foreign to childhood. this is a just ground for suspicion. . _sleeplessness_ is another symptom of significance. sound sleep is natural for childhood; and if sleeplessness be not occasioned by dietetic errors, as eating indigestible food, eating between meals, or eating late suppers, it may justly be a cause for suspicion of evil habits. . _failure of mental capacity_ without apparent cause should occasion suspicion of evil practices. when a child who has previously learned readily, mastered his lessons easily, and possessed a retentive memory, shows a manifest decline in these directions, fails to get his lessons, becomes stupid, forgetful, and inattentive, he has probably become the victim of a terrible vice, and is on the road to speedy mental as well as physical ruin. watch him. . _fickleness_ is another evidence of the working of some deteriorating influence, for only a weak mind is fickle. . _untrustworthiness_ appearing in a child should attract attention to his habits. if he has suddenly become heedless, listless, and forgetful, so that he cannot be depended upon, though previously not so, lay the blame upon solitary indulgence. this vice has a wonderful influence in developing untruthfulness. a child previously honest, under its baneful influence will soon become an inveterate liar. . _love of solitude_ is a very suspicious sign. children are naturally sociable, almost without exception. they have a natural dread of being alone. when a child habitually seeks seclusion without a sufficient cause, there are good grounds for suspecting him of sinful habits. the barn, the garret, the water-closet, and sometimes secluded places in the woods, are the favorite resorts of masturbators. they should be carefully followed and watched, unobserved. . _bashfulness_ is not infrequently dependent upon this cause. it would be far from right to say that every person who is excessively modest or timid is a masturbator; but there is a certain timorousness which seems to arise from a sense of shame or fear of discovery that many victims of this vice exhibit, and which may be distinguished from natural modesty by a little experience. one very common mode of manifestation of this timidity is the inability to look a superior, or any person who is esteemed pure, in the eye. if spoken to, instead of looking directly at the person to whom he addresses an answer, the masturbator looks to one side, or lets his eyes fall upon the ground, seemingly conscious that the eye is a wonderful tell-tale of the secrets of the mind. . _unnatural boldness_, in marked contrast with the preceding sign, is manifested by a certain class of victims. it can be as easily distinguished, however, as unnatural timidity. the individual seems to have not the slightest appreciation of propriety. he commits openly the most uncouth acts, if he does not manifest the most indecent unchastity of manner. when spoken to, he stares rudely at the person addressing him, often with a very unpleasant leer upon his countenance. in some few cases there seems to be a curious combination of conditions. while mentally fearful, timid, and hesitating, the individual finds himself, upon addressing a person, staring at him in the most ungainly manner. he is conscious of his ill manners, but is powerless to control himself. this sign is one which could hardly be of use to any except a very close observer, however, as few can read upon the countenance the operations of the mind. . _mock piety_--or perhaps we should more properly designate it as mistaken piety--is another peculiar manifestation of the effects of this vicious practice. the victim is observed to become transformed, by degrees, from a romping, laughing child, full of hilarity and frolic, to a sober and very sedate little--christian, the friends think, and they are highly gratified with the piety of the child. little do they suspect the real cause of the solemn face; not the slightest suspicion have they of the foul orgies practiced by the little sinner. by the aid of friends he may soon add hypocrisy to his other crimes, and find in assumed devotion a ready pretense for seeking solitude. parents will do well to investigate the origin of this kind of religion in their children. . _easily frightened_ children are abundant among young masturbators, though all easily frightened persons are not vicious. it is certain, however, that the vice greatly exaggerates natural fear, and creates an unnatural apprehensiveness. the victim's mind is constantly filled with vague forebodings of evil. he often looks behind him, looks into all the closets, peeps under the bed, and is constantly expressing fears of impending evil. such movements are the result of a diseased imagination, and they may justly give rise to suspicion. . _confusion of ideas_ is another characteristic of the devotee of this artful vice. if he attempts to argue, his points are not clearly made. he may be superficially quick and cute, but is incapable of deep thought, or abstruse reasoning; is often very dull of apprehension. ideas are not presented in logical order, but seem to fall out promiscuously, and fairly represent the condition of a disordered brain. attempts at joking are generally failures, as the jest is sure to be inappropriate or vulgar, and no one but himself sees any occasion for laughter except at his stupidity. such individuals are not scarce. . boys in whom the habit has become well developed sometimes manifest a decided aversion to the society of girls; but this is not nearly so often the case as some authors seem to indicate. it would rather appear that the opposite is more often true. girls usually show an increasing fondness for the society of boys, and are very prone to exhibit marked evidences of real wantonness. . _round shoulders_ and a stooping posture in sitting are characteristics of young masturbators of both sexes. whenever a child seats himself, the head and shoulders droop forward, giving to the spine a curved appearance. . _weak backs, pains in the limbs, and stiffness of the joints_, in children, are familiar signs of the habit. to the first of these conditions is due the habitual stooping posture assumed by these children. the habit referred to is not the only cause of these conditions, but its causative occurrence is sufficiently frequent to give it no small importance as a suspicious indication. . _paralysis_ of the lower extremities, coming on without apparent cause, is not infrequently the result of solitary indulgence, even in very small children. we have seen several cases in which this condition was traced to the habit of masturbation, in children under six years of age. . the _gait_ of a person addicted to this vice will usually betray him to one who has learned to distinguish the peculiarities which almost always mark the walk of such persons. in a child, a dragging, shuffling walk is to be suspected. boys, in walking rapidly, show none of that elasticity which characterizes a natural gait, but walk as if they had been stiffened in the hips, and as though their legs were pegs attached to the body by hinges. the girl wriggles along in a style quite as characteristic, though more difficult to detect with certainty, as females are often so "affected" in their walk. unsteadiness of gait is an evidence seen in both sexes, especially in advanced cases. . _bad positions_ in bed are evidences which should be noticed. if a child lies constantly upon its abdomen, or is often found with its hands about the genitals, it may be at least considered in a fair way to acquire the habit if it has not already done so. . _lack of development of the breasts_ in females, after puberty, is a common result of self-pollution. still it would be entirely unsafe to say that every female with small mammary glands had been addicted to this vice, especially at the present time when a fair natural development is often destroyed by the constant pressure and heat of "pads." but this sign may well be given a due bearing. . _capricious appetite_ particularly characterizes children addicted to secret vice. at the commencement of the practice, they almost invariably manifest great voracity for food, gorging themselves in the most gluttonous manner. as the habit becomes fixed, digestion becomes impaired, and the appetite is sometimes almost wanting, and at other times almost unappeasable. . one very constant peculiarity of such children is their extreme fondness for unnatural, hurtful, and irritating articles. nearly all are greatly attached to salt, pepper, spices, cinnamon, cloves, vinegar, mustard, horse-radish, and similar articles, and use them in most inordinate quantities. a boy or girl who is constantly eating cloves or cinnamon, or who will eat salt in quantities without other food, gives good occasion for suspicion. . _eating clay, slate-pencils, plaster, chalk,_ and other indigestible articles is a practice to which girls who abuse themselves are especially addicted. the habit sometimes becomes developed to such a wonderful extent that the victims almost rival the clay-eaters of the amazon in gratifying their propensity. . disgust for simple food is one of the traits which a victim of this vice is sure to possess. he seems to loathe any food which is not rendered hot and stimulating with spices and other condiments, and cannot be induced to eat it. . _the use of tobacco_ is good presumptive evidence that a boy is also addicted to a practice still more filthy. exceptions to this rule are very rare indeed, if they exist, which we somewhat doubt. the same influences which would lead a boy to the use of tobacco would also lead him to solitary vice, and each sin would serve to exaggerate the other. . _unnatural paleness_ and colorless lips, unless they can be otherwise accounted for, may be attributed to secret sin. the face is a great tell-tale against this class of sinners. justice demands, however, that an individual should be given the benefit of a doubt so long as there is a chance for the production of these symptoms by any other known cause, as overwork, mental anxiety, or dyspepsia. . _acne_, or _pimples_, on the face are also among the suspicious signs, especially when they appear upon the forehead as well as upon other portions of the face. occasional pimples upon the chin are very common in both sexes at puberty and for a few years afterward, but are without significance, except that the blood may be somewhat gross from unwholesome diet or lack of exercise. . _biting the finger nails_ is a practice very common in girls addicted to this vice. in such persons there will also be found, not infrequently, slight soreness or ulceration at the roots of the nails, and warts, one or more, upon one or both the first two fingers of the hand--usually the right. . the eyes often betray much. if, in addition to want of luster and natural brilliancy, they are sunken, present red edges, are somewhat sore, perhaps, and are surrounded by a dark ring, the patient, especially if a child, should be suspected and carefully watched. it should be observed, however, that dyspepsia, debility from any cause, and especially loss of sleep, will produce some or all of these signs, and no one should be accused of the vice upon the evidence of these indications alone, neither could he be justly suspected so long as his symptoms could be accounted for by legitimate causes. . an habitually moist, cold hand, is a suspicious circumstance in a young person who is not known to be suffering from some constitutional disease. . _palpitation of the heart_, frequently occurring, denotes a condition of nervous disturbance which has some powerful cause, and which may often be found to be the vice in question. . _hysteria_ in females may be regarded as a suspicious circumstance when frequently occurring on very slight occasions, and especially if there is no hereditary tendency to the disease. . _chlorosis_, or _green sickness_, is very often caused by the unholy practice under consideration. it is very commonly attributed, when occurring in young women, to menstrual derangements; but it is only necessary to remember that these menstrual irregularities are in many cases the result of the same habit, as has been already pointed out. . _epileptic fits_ in children are not infrequently the result of vicious habits. . _wetting the bed_ is an evidence of irritation which may be connected with the practice; it should be looked after. . _unchastity of speech_ and fondness for obscene stories betray a condition of mind which does not exist in youth who are not addicted to this vice. as previously remarked, no single one of the above signs should be considered as conclusive evidence of the habit in any individual; but any one of them may, and should, arouse suspicion and watchfulness. if the habit really exists, but a short time will elapse before other signs will be noticed, and when several point in the same direction, the evidence may be considered nearly, if not quite, conclusive. but persistent watching will enable the positive signs to be detected sooner or later, and then there can no longer be doubt. it is, of course, necessary to give the individual no suspicion that he is being watched, as that would put him so effectually on his guard as, possibly, to defy detection. positive signs.--the absolutely positive signs of solitary vice are very few. of course the most certainly positive of all is detection in the act. sometimes this is difficult, with such consummate cunning do the devotees of this moloch pursue their debasing practice. if a child is noticed to seek a certain secluded spot with considerable regularity, he should be carefully followed and secretly watched, for several days in succession if need be. many children pursue the practice at night after retiring. if the suspected one is observed to become very quickly quiet after retiring, and when looked at appears to be asleep, the bedclothes should be quickly thrown off under some pretense. if, in the case of a boy, the penis is found in a state of erection, with the hands near the genitals, he may certainly be treated as a masturbator without any error. if he is found in a state of excitement, in connection with the other evidences, with a quickened circulation as indicated by the pulse, or in a state of perspiration, his guilt is certain, even though he may pretend to be asleep; no doubt he has been addicted to the vice for a considerable time to have acquired so much cunning. if the same course is pursued with girls, under the same circumstances, the clitoris will be found congested, with the other genital organs, which will also be moist from increased secretion. other conditions will be as nearly as possible the same as those in the boy. stains upon the night shirt or sheets, occurring before puberty, are certain evidences of the vice in boys, as they are subject, before that time, to no discharge which will leave a stain resembling that from the seminal fluid, except the rare one from piles. in the very young, these stains do not occur; but when the habit is acquired before puberty, a discharge resembling semen takes place before the ordinary period. of course, the stains from urine will be easily distinguished from others. the frequent occurrence of such stains after puberty is a suspicious circumstance. a discharge in some respects similar may occur in girls. before puberty, the effect of the vice upon the genital organs is to cause an unnatural development, in both sexes, of the sensitive portions. when this is marked, it is pretty conclusive evidence of the vice. in girls, the vagina often becomes unnaturally enlarged, and leucorrhoea is often present. after puberty, the organs usually diminish in size, and become unnaturally lax and shrunken. all of these signs should be thoroughly mastered by those who have children under their care, and if not continually watching for them, which would be an unpleasant task, such should be on the alert to detect the signs at once when they appear, and then carefully seek for others until there is no longer any doubt about the case. results of secret vice. the physician rarely meets more forlorn objects than the victims of prolonged self-abuse. these unfortunate beings he meets every day of his life, and listens so often to the same story of shameful abuse and retributive suffering that he dreads to hear it repeated. in these cases, there is usually a horrid sameness--the same cause, the same inevitable results. in most cases, the patient need not utter a word, for the physician can read in his countenance his whole history, as can most other people at all conversant with the subject. in order to secure the greatest completeness consistent with necessary brevity, we will describe the effects observed in males and those in females under separate heads, noticing the symptoms of each morbid condition in connection with its description. effects in males. we shall describe, first, the local effects, then the general effects, physical and mental. local effects.--excitement of the genital organs produces the most intense congestion. no other organs in the body are capable of such rapid and enormous engorgement. when the act is frequently repeated, this condition becomes permanent in some of the tissues, particularly in the mucous membrane lining the urethra. this same membrane continues into and lines throughout the bladder, kidneys, and all the urinary organs, together with the vesiculae seminales, the ejaculatory ducts, the vasa deferentia, and the testes. in consequence of this continuity of tissue, any irritation affecting one part is liable to extend to another, or to all the rest. we mention this anatomical fact here as a help to the understanding of the different morbid conditions which will be noticed. _urethral irritation_.--the chronic congestion of the urethra after a time becomes chronic irritability. the tissue is unusually sensitive, this condition being often indicated by a slight smarting in urination. it often extends throughout the whole length of the urethra, and becomes so intense that the passage of a sound, which would occasion little if any sensation in a healthy organ, produces the most acute pain, as we have observed in numerous instances, even when the greatest care was used in the introduction of the instrument. shooting pains are often felt in the organ, due to this irritation. pain is in some cases most felt at the root, in others, at the head. it often darts from one point to another. just before and just after urination the pain is most severe. _stricture_.--long-continued irritation of the mucous membrane of the urethra produces, ultimately, inflammation and swelling of the same in some portion of its extent. this condition may become permanent, and then constitutes real stricture, a most serious disease. more often the swelling is but transient, being due to some unusual excess, and will subside. sometimes, also, a temporary stricture is produced by spasmodic contraction of the muscular fibers surrounding the urethra, which is excited by the local irritation. this kind of stricture is often met in the treatment of spermatorrhoea. enlarged prostate.--this painful affection is a frequent result of the chronic irritation in the urethra, which the gland surrounds, the morbid action being communicated to it by its proximity. a diseased action is set up which results in enlargement and hardening. it is felt as a hard body just anterior to the anus, and becomes by pressure the source of much additional mischief. sometimes the disease progresses to dangerous ulceration. it is attended by heat, pressure, and pain between the anus and the root of the penis. urinary diseases.--the same congestion and irritability extend to the bladder and thence to the kidneys, producing irritation and inflammation of those organs. mucus is often formed in large quantities; sometimes much is retained in the bladder. earthy matter is deposited, which becomes entangled in the mucus, and thus a concretion or stone is produced, occasioning much suffering, and perhaps death. we saw, not long since, a case of this kind. the patient was nearly sixty years of age, and had practiced masturbation from childhood. in consequence of his vice, a chronic irritation of the urethra had been produced, which was followed by enlargement of the prostate, then by chronic irritation of the bladder and the formation of stone. his sufferings were most excruciating whenever he attempted to urinate, which was only accomplished with the greatest difficulty and suffering. one of the unpleasant results of irritation of the lining membrane of the bladder is inability to retain the urine long, which requires frequent urination and often causes incontinence of urine. _priapism_.--this same morbid sensitiveness may produce priapism, or continuous and painful erection, one of the most "terrible and humiliating conditions," as dr. acton says, to which the human body is subject. the horrid desperation of patients suffering under this condition is almost inconceivable. it is, fortunately, rare, in its most severe forms; but hundreds suffer from it to a most painful degree as one of the punishments of transgression of nature's laws; and a most terrible punishment it is. _piles, prolapsus of rectum, etc._--as the result of the straining caused by stricture, piles, prolapsus of the rectum, and fissure of the anus are not infrequently induced, as the following case observed at charity hospital, new york, illustrates:-- the patient had a peculiar deformity of the genital organs, _hypospadias_, which prevented sexual intercourse, in consequence of which he gave himself up to the practice of self-abuse. he had become reduced to the most deplorable condition of both mind and body, and presented a most woebegone countenance. in addition to his general ailments, he suffered from extreme prolapsus of the rectum and a most painful anal fissure. his condition was somewhat bettered by skillful surgical treatment. _extension of irritation_.--serious and painful as are the affections already noticed, those which arise from the extension of the congestion and irritation of the urethra to those other organs most intimately connected with the function of generation are still more dreadful in themselves, and far more serious in their consequences. the irritation extends into the ejaculatory ducts, thence backward into the seminal vesicles, and downward through the vasa deferentia to the testes. these organs become unnaturally excited, and their activity is increased. the testicles form an abnormal amount of spermatozoa; the seminal vesicles secrete their peculiar fluid too freely. from these two sources combined, the vesicles become loaded with seminal fluid, and this condition gives rise to a great increase of sexual excitement. in cases of long standing, the irritation of the urethra at the openings of the ejaculatory ducts, a point just in front of the bladder, advances to inflammation and ulceration. here is now established a permanent source of irritation, by which the morbid activity of the testes and seminal vesicles is kept up and continually increased. this condition is indicated by frequent twitchings of the ejaculatory and compressor muscles in the perineum. it is also indicated by a burning sensation at the root of the penis after urination, which, in severe cases, amounts to very serious pain. _atrophy, or wasting of the testes_.--the first result of the irritation communicated to the testes, is, as already remarked, increased activity; but this is attended by swelling in some cases, more or less pain, tenderness, and, after a time, diminution in size. this degenerative process likewise affects the seminal fluid, which becomes more or less deteriorated and incapable of producing healthy offspring, even while it retains the power of fecundating the ovum, which it also ultimately loses if the disease is not checked by proper treatment, when the individual becomes hopelessly impotent, a happy result for the race, for it prevents the possibility of his imparting to another being his debilitated constitution. _varicocele_.--this morbid condition consists in a varicose state of the spermatic veins. it is almost always found upon the left side, owing to an anatomical peculiarity of the spermatic vein of that side. it has been supposed to be a result of masturbation and its effects, but is certainly caused otherwise in many cases. it is not infrequently found in these patients; but prof. bartholow contends that even in such cases we should "consider its presence, in general, as accidental." atrophy of the left testicle is often produced by the pressure of the distended veins; but this does not produce impotence. it occasionally occurs simultaneously on both sides, and greatly aggravates the effects of self-abuse, if it is not itself an effect of the vice. nocturnal emissions.--seminal emissions during sleep, usually accompanied by erotic dreams, are known as nocturnal pollutions or emissions, and are often called _spermatorrhoea_, though there is some disagreement respecting the use of the latter term. its most proper use is when applied to the entire group of symptoms which accompany involuntary seminal losses. the masturbator knows nothing of this disease so long as he continues his vile practice; but when he resolves to reform, and ceases to defile himself voluntarily, he is astonished and disgusted to find that the same filthy pollutions occur during his sleep without his voluntary participation. he now begins to see something of the ruin he has wrought. the same nightly loss continues, sometimes being repeated several times in a single night, to his infinite mortification and chagrin. he hopes the difficulty will subside of itself, but his hope is vain; unless properly treated, it will probably continue until the ruin which he voluntarily began is completed. this disease is the result of sexual excesses of any kind; it is common in married men who have abused the marriage relation, when they are forced to temporary continence from any cause. it also occurs in those addicted to mental unchastity, though they may be physically continent. it is not probable that it would ever occur in a person who had been strictly continent and had not allowed his mind to dwell upon libidinous imaginations. exciting causes.--the exciting causes which serve to perpetuate this difficulty are chiefly two; viz., local irritation and lewd thoughts. the first cause is usually chiefly located in the urethra, and especially at the mouths of the ejaculatory ducts. distention of the seminal vesicles with a superabundance of seminal fluid also acts as a source of irritation. constipation, worms, and piles have an irritative influence which is often very seriously felt. unchaste thoughts act detrimentally in a two-fold way. they first stimulate the activity of the testes, thus increasing the overloading of the seminal vesicles. lascivious thoughts during wakefulness are the chief cause of lascivious dreams. emissions do not usually occur during the soundest sleep, but during that condition which may be characterized as dozing, which is most often indulged in early in the morning after the soundest sleep is passed. this fact has an important bearing upon treatment, as will be seen hereafter. at first, the emissions are always accompanied by dreams, the patient usually awaking immediately afterward; but after a time they take place without dreams and without awaking him, and are unaccompanied by sensation. this denotes a greatly increased gravity of the complaint. certain circumstances greatly increase the frequency of the emissions, and thus hasten the injury which they are certain to accomplish if not checked; as, neglect to relieve the bladder and bowels at night, late suppers, stimulating foods and drinks, and anything that will excite the genital organs. of all causes, amorous or erotic thoughts are the most powerful. tea and coffee, spices and other condiments, and animal food have a special tendency in this direction. certain positions in bed also serve as exciting or predisposing causes; as sleeping upon the back or abdomen. feather beds and pillows and too warm covering in bed are also injurious for the same reason. in frequency, emissions will vary in different persons from an occasional one at long and irregular intervals to two or three a week, or several--as many as four in one case we have met--in a single night. the immediate effect of an emission will depend somewhat upon the frequency of occurrence and the condition of the individual. if very infrequent, and occurring in a comparatively robust person, after the seminal vesicles have become distended with seminal fluid, the immediate effect of an emission may be a sensation of temporary relief. this circumstance has led certain persons to suppose that emissions are natural and beneficial. this point will receive attention shortly. if the emissions are more frequent, or if they occur in a person of a naturally feeble constitution, the immediate effect is lassitude, languor, indisposition and often inability to perform severe mental or physical labor, melancholy, amounting often to despair and even leading to suicide, and an exaggeration of local irritation, and of all the morbid conditions to be noticed under the head of "general effects." headache, indigestion, weakness of the back and knees, disturbed circulation, dimness of vision, and loss of appetite, are only a few of these. are occasional emissions necessary or harmless?--that an individual may suffer for years an involuntary seminal loss as frequently as once a month without apparently suffering very great injury, seems to be a settled fact with physicians of extensive experience, and is well confirmed by observation; yet there are those who suffer severely from losses no more frequent than this. but when seminal losses occur more frequently than once a month, they will certainly ultimate in great injury, even though immediate ill effects are not noticed, as in exceptional cases they may not be. if argument is necessary to sustain this position, as it hardly seems to be, we would refer to the fact that seminal losses do not occur in those who are, and always have been, continent both mentally and physically, when such rare individuals can be found. they occur the most rarely in those who the most nearly approach the standard of perfect chastity; so that whenever they occur, they may be taken as evidence of some form of sexual excess. this fact clearly shows that losses of this kind are not natural. emission not necessary to health.--if it be argued that an occasional emission is necessary to relieve the overloaded seminal vesicles, we reply, the same argument has been used as an apology for unchastity; but it is equally worthless in both instances. it might be as well argued that vomiting is a necessary physiological and healthful act, and should occur with regularity, because a person may so overload his stomach as to make the act necessary as a remedial measure. vomiting is a diseased action, a pathological process, and is occasioned by the voluntary transgression of the individual. hence, it is as unnecessary as gluttony, and must be wasteful of vitality, even though rendered necessary under some circumstances. so with emissions. if a person allows his mind to dwell upon unchaste subjects, indulges in erotic dreams, and riots in mental lasciviousness, he may render an emission almost necessary as a remedial effort. nevertheless, he will suffer from the loss of the vital fluid just the same as though he had not, by his own concupiscence, rendered it in some degree necessary. and as it would have been infinitely better for him to have retained and digested food in his stomach instead of ejecting it--provided it were wholesome food--so it would have been better for him to have retained in his system the seminal fluid, which would have been disposed of by the system and probably utilized to very great advantage in the repair of certain of the tissues. eminent testimony.--an eminent english physician, dr. milton, who has treated many thousands of cases of this disease, remarks in a work upon the subject as follows:-- "anything beyond one emission a month requires attention. i know this statement has been impugned, but i am quite prepared to abide by it. i did not put it forward till i considered i had quite sufficient evidence in my hands to justify me in doing so." "an opinion prevails, as most of my readers are aware, among medical men, that a few emissions in youth do good instead of harm. it is difficult to understand how an unnatural evacuation can do good, except in the case of unnatural congestion. i have, however, convinced myself that the principle is wrong. lads never really feel better for emissions; they very often feel decidedly worse. occasionally they may fancy there is a sense of relief, but it is very much the same sort of relief that a drunkard feels from a dram. in early life the stomach may be repeatedly overloaded with impunity, but i suppose few would contend that overloading was therefore good. the fact is that emissions are invariably more or less injurious; not always visibly so in youth, nor susceptible of being assessed as to the damage inflicted by any given number of them, but still contributing, each in its turn, a mite toward the exhaustion and debility which the patient will one day complain of." diurnal emissions.--as the disease progresses, the irritation and weakness of the organs become so great that an erection and emission occur upon the slightest sexual excitement. mere proximity to a female, or the thought of one, will be sufficient to produce a pollution, attended by voluptuous sensations. but after a time the organs become so diseased and irritable that the slightest mechanical irritation, as friction of the clothing, the sitting posture, or riding horseback, will produce a discharge which may or may not be attended by sensation of any kind. frequently a burning or more or less painful sensation occurs; erection does not take place. even straining at stool will produce the discharge, or violent efforts to retain the feces when there is unnatural looseness. the amount of the discharge may vary from a few drops to one or two drams, or even more. the character of the discharge is of considerable importance. when it occurs under the circumstances last described, viz., without erection or voluptuous sensations, it may be of a true seminal character, or it may contain no spermatozoa. this point can be determined by the microscope alone. the discharge is the result of sexual excitement or irritation, nevertheless, and indicates a most deplorable condition of the genital organs. the patient is sometimes unnecessarily frightened by it, and often exaggerates the amount of the losses, and the symptoms arising from them. however, when a single nocturnal emission occasions such detrimental results, what must be the effect of repeated discharges occurring several times a day, or every time an individual relieves his bowels, urinates, or entertains an unvirtuous thought! if the losses were always seminal, the work of ruin would soon be complete; fortunately, those discharges which are the most frequent are only occasionally of a true seminal character. it is not true, however, as has been claimed by some writers, one at least, that they are never seminal, as we have proved by repeated microscopic examinations. cause of diurnal emissions.--the causes of these discharges are spasmodic action of the muscles involved in ejaculation, which is occasioned by local irritation, and pressure upon the seminal vesicles by the distended rectum or bladder. they denote a condition of debility and irritation which may well occasion grave alarm. in occasional instances, the internal irritation reaches such a height that blood is discharged with the seminal fluid. internal emissions.--as the disease progresses, external discharges finally cease, in some cases, or partially so, and the individual is encouraged by that circumstance to think that he is recovering. he soon discovers his error, however, for he continues to droop even though the discharges apparently cease altogether. this seems a mystery until some medical friend or a medical work calls his attention to the fact that the discharges now occur internally instead of externally, the seminal fluid passing back into the bladder and being voided with the urine. an examination of the urine reveals the presence of cloudy matter appearing much like mucus, or a whitish sediment. a microscopic examination shows this matter to be composed largely of zoosperms, which decides its origin. an important caution.--it is necessary, however, to caution the reader not to pronounce every whitish sediment or flocculent matter found in the urine to be a seminal discharge, for the great majority are of a different character. they are, most frequently, simply mucus or phosphates from the bladder. seminal fluid cannot be distinguished from mucus by any other than a careful microscopic examination. a microscope of good quality and capable of magnifying at least one hundred and fifty diameters is required, together with considerable skill in the operator. quacks have done an immense amount of harm by frightening patients into the belief that they were suffering from discharges of this kind when there was, in fact, nothing more than a copious deposit of phosphates, which is not at all infrequent in nervous people, especially after eating. when the condition described does really exist, however, the patient cannot make too much haste to put himself under the care of a competent physician for treatment. if there is even a reasonable suspicion that it may exist, he should have his urine carefully examined by one competent to criticize it intelligently. by many authors, the term spermatorrhoea is confined entirely to this stage of the disease. it is said that the forcible interruption of ejaculation has been the cause of this unfortunate condition in many cases. such a proceeding is certainly very hazardous. one more caution should be offered; viz., that the occasional presence of spermatozoa in the urine is not a proof of the existence of internal emissions, as a few zoosperms may be left in the urethra after a voluntary or nocturnal emission, and thus find their way into the urine as it is discharged from the bladder. impotence.--in the progress of the disease a point is finally reached when the victim not only loses all desire for the natural exercise of the sexual function, but when such an act becomes impossible. this condition may have been reached even before all of the preceding symptoms have been developed. ultimately it becomes impossible to longer practice the abominable vice itself, on account of the great degeneration and relaxation of the organs. the approach of this condition is indicated by increasing loss of erectile power, which is at first only temporary, but afterward becomes permanent. still the involuntary discharges continue, and the victim sees himself gradually sinking lower and lower into the pit which his own hands have dug. the misery of his condition is unimaginable; manhood lost, body a wreck, and death staring him in the face. this is a brief sketch of the local effects of the horrid vice of self-abuse. the description has not been at all overdrawn. we have yet to consider the general effects, some of which have already been incidentally touched upon in describing nocturnal emissions, with their immediate results. general effects.--the many serious effects which follow the habit of self-abuse, in addition to those terrible local maladies already described, are the direct results of two causes in the male; viz., . nervous exhaustion; . loss of the seminal fluid. there has been much discussion as to which one of these was the cause of the effects observed in these cases. some have attributed all the evil to one cause, and some to the other. that the loss of semen is not the only cause, nor, perhaps, the chief source of injury, is proved by the fact that most deplorable effects of the vice are seen in children before puberty, and also in females, in whom no seminal discharge nor anything analogous to it occurs. in these cases, it is the nervous shock alone which works the evil. again, that the seminal fluid is the most highly vitalized of all the fluids of the body, and that its rapid production is at the expense of a most exhaustive effort on the part of the vital forces, is well attested by all physiologists. it is further believed by some eminent physicians that the seminal fluid is of great use in the body for building up and replenishing certain tissues, especially those of the nerves and brain, being absorbed after secretion. though this view is not coincided in by all physiologists, it seems to be supported by the following facts:-- . the composition of the nerves and that of spermatozoa is nearly identical. . men from whom the testes have been removed before puberty, as in the case of eunuchs, are never fully developed as they would otherwise have been. the nervous shock accompanying the exercise of the sexual organs--either natural or unnatural--is the most profound to which the system is subject. the whole nervous system is called into activity; and the effects are occasionally so strongly felt upon a weakened organism that death results in the very act. the subsequent exhaustion is necessarily proportionate to the excitement. it need not be surprising, then, that the effects of the frequent operation of two such powerful influences combined should be so terrible as they are found to be. _general debility_.--nervous exhaustion and the loss of the vivifying influence of the seminal fluid produce extreme mental and physical debility, which increases as the habit is practiced, and is continued by involuntary emissions after the habit ceases. if the patient's habits are sedentary, and if he had a delicate constitution at the start, his progress toward the grave will be fearfully rapid, especially if the habit were acquired young, as it most frequently is by such boys, they being generally precocious. extreme emaciation, sallow or blotched skin, sunken eyes, surrounded by a dark or blue color, general weakness, dullness, weak back, stupidity, laziness, or indisposition to activity of any kind, wandering and illy defined pains, obscure and often terrible sensations, pain in back and limbs, sleeplessness, and a train of morbid symptoms too long to mention in detail, attend these sufferers. _consumption_.--it is well recognized by the medical profession that this vice is one of the most frequent causes of consumption. at least such would seem to be the declaration of experience, and the following statistical fact adds weight to the conclusion:-- "dr. smith read a paper before a learned medical association a few years since in which he pointed out the startling fact that in one thousand cases of consumption five hundred and eighteen had suffered from some form of sexual abuse, and more than four hundred had been addicted to masturbation or suffered from nocturnal emissions."[ ] [footnote : acton.] "most of those who early become addicted to self-pollution are soon afterward the subjects, not merely of one or more of the ailments already noticed, but also of enlargements of the lymphatic and other glands, ultimately of _tubercular deposits in the lungs_ and other viscera, or of scrofulous disease of the vertebrae or bones, or of other structures, more especially of the joints."[ ] [footnote : copland.] many young men waste away and die of symptoms resembling consumption which are solely the result of the loathsome practice of self-abuse. the real number of consumptives whose disease originates in this manner can never be known. _dyspepsia_.--indigestion is frequently one of the first results. nervous exhaustion is always felt by the stomach very promptly. when dyspepsia is once really established, it reacts upon the genital organs, increasing their irritability as well as that of all the rest of the nervous system. now there is no end to the ills which may be suffered; for an impaired digestion lays the system open to the inroads of almost any and every malady. _heart disease_.--functional disease of the heart, indicated by excessive palpitation on the slightest exertion, is a very frequent symptom. though it unfits the individual for labor, and causes him much suffering, he would be fortunate if he escaped with no disease of a more dangerous character. _throat affections_.--there is no doubt that many of the affections of the throat in young men and older ones which pass under the name of "clergyman's sore throat" are the direct results of masturbation and emissions. dr. acton cites several cases in proof of this, and quotes the following letter from a young clergyman:-- "when i began the practice of masturbation, at the age of sixteen, i was in the habit of exercising my voice regularly. the first part in which i felt the bad effects of that habit was in the organs of articulation. after the act, the voice wanted tone, and there was a disagreeable feeling about the throat which made speaking a source of no pleasure to me as it had been. by-and-by, it became painful to speak after the act. this arose from a feeling as if a morbid matter was being secreted in the throat, so acrid that it sent tears to the eyes when speaking, and would have taken away the breath if not swallowed. this, however, passed away in a day or two after the act. in the course of years, when involuntary emissions began to impair the constitution, this condition became permanent. the throat always feels very delicate, and there is often such irritability in it, along with this feeling of the secretion of morbid matter, as to make it impossible to speak without swallowing at every second or third word. this is felt even in conversation, and there is a great disinclination to attempt to speak at all. in many instances in which the throat has been supposed to give way from other causes, i have known this to be the real one. may it not be that the general irritation always produced by the habit referred to, shows itself also in this organ, and more fully in those who are required habitually to exercise it?" _nervous diseases_.--there is no end to the nervous affections to which the sufferer from this vice is subject. headaches, neuralgias, symptoms resembling hysteria, sudden alternations of heat and cold, irregular flushing of the face, and many other affections, some of the more important of which we will mention in detail, are his constant companions. _epilepsy_.--this disease has been traced to the vile habit under consideration in so many cases that it is now very certain that in many instances this is its origin. it is of frequent occurrence in those who have indulged in solitary vice or any other form of sexual excess. we have seen several cases of this kind. failure of special senses.--dimness of vision, amaurosis, spots before the eyes, with other forms of ocular weakness, are common results of this vice. the same degeneration and premature failure occur in the organs of hearing. in fact, sensibility of all the senses becomes in some measure diminished in old cases. spinal irritation.--irritation of the spinal cord, with its resultant evils, is one of the most common of the nervous affections originating in this cause. tenderness of the spine, numerous pains in the limbs, and spasmodic twitching of the muscles, are some of its results. paralysis, partial or complete, of the lower limbs, and even of the whole body, is not a rare occurrence. we have seen two cases in which this was well marked. both patients were small boys and began to excite the genital organs at a very early age. in one, the paralytic condition was complete when he was held erect. the head fell forward, the arms and limbs hung down helpless, the eyes rolled upward, and the saliva dribbled from his mouth. when lying flat upon his back, he had considerable control of his limbs. in this case, a condition of priapism seems to have existed almost from birth, owing to congenital phimosis. his condition was somewhat improved by circumcision. in the other case, in which phimosis also existed, there was paralysis of a few of the muscles of the leg, which produced club-foot. circumcision was also performed in this case and the child returned in a few weeks completely cured, without any other application, though it had previously been treated in a great variety of ways without success, all the usual remedies for club-foot proving ineffectual. both of these cases appeared in the clinic of dr. sayre at bellevue hospital, and were operated upon by him. we have recently observed several cases of spinal disease which could be traced to no origin but masturbation. two patients were small boys, naturally quite intelligent. they manifested all the peculiarities of loco-motor ataxia in older persons, walking with the characteristic gait. the disease was steadily progressing in spite of all attempts to stay it. an older brother had died of the same malady, paralysis extending over the whole body, and finally preventing deglutition, so that he really starved to death. insanity.--that solitary vice is one of the most common causes of insanity, is a fact too well established to need demonstration here. every lunatic asylum furnishes numerous illustrations of the fact. "authors are universally agreed, from galen down to the present day, about the pernicious influence of this enervating indulgence, and its strong propensity to generate the very worst and most formidable kinds of insanity. it has frequently been known to occasion speedy, and even instant, insanity."[ ] [footnote : arnold.] "religious insanity," so-called, may justly be attributed to this cause in a great proportion of cases. the individual is conscience-smitten in view of his horrid sins, and a view of his terrible condition--ruined for both worlds, he fears--goads him to despair, and his weakened intellect fails; reason is dethroned, and he becomes a hopeless lunatic. his friends, knowing nothing of the real cause of his mysterious confessions of terrible sin, think him over-conscientious, and lay the blame of his insanity upon religion, when it is solely the result of his vicious habits, of which they are ignorant. in other cases, the victim falls into a profound melancholy from which nothing can divert him. he never laughs, does not even smile. he becomes more and more reserved and taciturn, and perhaps ends the scene by committing suicide. this crime is not at all uncommon with those who have gone the whole length of the road of evil. they find their manhood gone, the vice in which they have so long delighted is no longer possible, and, in desperation, they put an end to the miserable life which nature might lengthen out a few months if not thus violently superseded. if the practice is continued uninterruptedly from boyhood to manhood, imbecility and idiocy are the results. demented individuals are met in no small numbers inside of hospitals and asylums, and outside as well, who owe to this vice their awful condition. plenty of half-witted men whom one meets in the every-day walks of life have destroyed the better half of their understanding by this wretched practice. a victim's mental condition pictured.--the mental condition of a victim of this vice cannot be better described than is done in the following paragraphs by one himself a victim, though few of these unfortunate individuals would be able to produce so accurate and critical a portrait of themselves as is here drawn by m. rousseau, as quoted by mr. acton:-- "one might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person. my feelings, quicker than lightning, fill my soul; but instead of illuminating, they burn and dazzle me. i feel everything. i see nothing. i am excited, but stupid; i cannot think except in cold blood. the wonderful thing is that i have sound enough tact, penetration, even _finesse_, if people will wait for me. i make excellent impromptus at leisure; but at the moment i have nothing ready to say or do. i should converse brilliantly by post, as they say the spaniards play at chess. when i read of a duke of savoy who turned back after starting on his journey to say, 'in your teeth! you paris shop-keeper!' i said, 'that is like me!'" "but not only is it a labor to me to express, but also to receive, ideas. i have studied men, and i think i am a tolerably good observer; yet i can see nothing of what i do see. i can hardly say that i see anything except what i recall; i have no power of mind but in my recollection. of all that is said, of all that is done, of all that passes in my presence, i feel nothing, i appreciate nothing. the external sign is all that strikes me. but after a while it all comes back to me." effects in females. local effects.--the local diseases produced by the vice in females are, of course, of a different nature from those seen in males, on account of the difference in organization. they arise, however, in the same way, congestions at first temporary ultimately becoming permanent and resulting in irritation and various disorders. leucorrhoea.--the results of congestion first appear in the mucous membrane lining the vagina, which is also injured by mechanical irritation, and consists of a catarrhal discharge which enervates the system. by degrees the discharge increases in quantity and virulence, extending backward until it reaches the sensitive womb. contact with the acrid, irritating secretions of the vagina produces soreness of the fingers at the roots of the nails, and also frequently causes warts upon the fingers. hence the value of these signs, as previously mentioned. uterine disease.--congestion of the womb is also produced by the act of abuse; and as the habit is continued, it also becomes permanent. this congestion, together with the contact of the acrid vaginal discharge, finally produces ulceration upon the neck, together with other diseases. another result of congestion is all kinds of menstrual derangements after puberty, the occurrence of which epoch is hastened by the habit. prolapsus and various displacements are produced in addition to menstrual irregularities. cancer of the womb.--degeneration of this delicate organ also occurs as the result of the constant irritation and congestion, and is often of a malignant nature, occasioning a most painful death. sterility.--sterility, dependent on a total loss of sexual desire and inability to participate in the sexual act, is another condition which is declared by medical authors to be most commonly due to previous habits of self-abuse. in consequence of overexcitement the organs become relaxed. atrophy of mammae.--closely connected with other local results is the deficient development of the breasts when the vice is begun before or at puberty, and atrophy if it is begun or continued after development has occurred. as previously remarked, this is not the sole cause of small mammae, but it is one of the great causes. pruritis.--this is an affection not infrequent in these subjects. continued congestion produces a terrible itching of the genitals, which increases until the individual is in a state of actual frenzy, and the disposition to manipulate the genitals becomes irresistible, and is indulged even in the presence of friends or strangers, and though the patient be at other times a young woman of unexceptionable modesty. in cases of this kind, great hypertrophy of the organ of greatest sensibility has been observed, and in some cases amputation of the part has been found the only cure. general effects.--the general effects in the female are much the same as those in the male. although women suffer no seminal loss, they suffer the debilitating effects of leucorrhoea, which is in some degree injurious in the same manner as seminal losses in the male. but in females the greatest injury results from the nervous exhaustion which follows the unnatural excitement. nervous diseases of every variety are developed. emaciation and debility become more marked even than in the male, and the worst results are produced sooner, being hastened by the sedentary habits of these females, generally. insanity is more frequently developed than in males. spinal irritation is so frequent a result that a recent surgical author has said that "spinal irritation in girls and women is, in a majority of cases, due to self-abuse."[ ] [footnote : davis.] a common cause of hysteria.--this, too, is one of the most frequent causes of hysteria, chorea, and epilepsy among young women, though not often recognized. a writer, quoted several times before in this work, remarks as follows:-- "this is not a matter within the scope of general investigation; truth is not to be expected from its _habitues_; parents are deceived respecting it, believing rather what they wish than what they fear. even the physician can but suspect, till time develops more fully by hysterias, epilepsies, spinal irritations, and a train of symptoms unmistakable even if the finally extorted confession of the poor victim did not render the matter clear. marriage does, indeed, often arrest this final catastrophe, and thus apparently shifts the responsibility upon other shoulders, and to the 'injurious effects of early marriages,' to the 'ills of maternity,' are ascribed the results of previous personal abuse. "for statistics and further information on this all-important subject, we must refer the reader to the opinions of physicians who have the charge of our retreats for the insane, lunatic asylums, and the like; to the discriminating physicians of the families of the upper classes--stimulated alike by food, drinks, scenes where ease is predominant, where indolence is the habit and novel-reading is the occupation--for further particulars on a subject here but barely alluded to."[ ] [footnote : gardner.] effects upon offspring. if sterility does not result, children are liable to be "delicate, puny, decrepit, or subject to various congenital maladies, especially of the nervous system, to idiocy from deficient development of the brain, to hydrocephalus, to epilepsy, convulsions, palsy. the scrofulous diathesis, tubercular and glandular maladies, diseases of the vertebrae and of the joints, softening of the central portions of the brain, and tuberculous formations in the membranes, palsy and convulsions, chorea, inflammations of the membranes or substance of the brain or spinal cord, and numerous other affections to which infants and children are liable, very commonly result from the practice of self-pollution by either of the parents previous to marriage. but the evil does not always stop at this epoch of existence, it often extends throughout the life of the offspring, or it appears only with puberty and mature age." too frequently, the victim of self-abuse, when he finds himself suffering from the first results of his sin, neglects to adopt any measures for the cure of the disease. not understanding its inveterate character, he labors under the delusion that it will cure itself in time. this is a fatal mistake. the diseased conditions induced by this vice never improve themselves. their constant tendency is to increase in virulence and inveteracy. the necessity of taking prompt measures for relief is too apparent to need especial emphasis. treatment of self-abuse and its effects. after having duly considered the causes and effects of this terrible evil, the question next in order for consideration is, how shall it be cured? when a person has, through ignorance or weakness, brought upon himself the terrible effects described, how shall he find relief from his ills, if restoration is possible? to the answer of these inquiries, most of the remaining pages of this work will be devoted. but before entering upon a description of methods of _cure_, a brief consideration of the subject of _prevention_ of the habit will be in order. prevention of secret vice. for the rising generation, those yet innocent of the evil practices so abundant in this age of sensuality, how the evil habit may be prevented is the most important of all questions connected with this subject. this topic should be especially interesting to parents, for even those who are themselves sensual have seen enough of the evils of such a life to wish that their children may remain pure. there are, indeed, rare exceptions to this rule, for we sometimes learn of parents who have deliberately led their own children into vice, as though they desired to make them share their shame and damnation. cultivate chastity.--from earliest infancy all of those influences and agencies which cultivate chastity should be brought into active exercise. these we need not repeat here, having previously dwelt upon them so fully. the reader is recommended to re-peruse the portion of the work devoted to this subject, in connection with the present section. if parents have themselves indulged in this vice, they should use special care that all of the generative and gestative influences brought to bear upon their children are the purest possible, so that they may not inherit a predisposition to sin in this direction. special care should be exercised to avoid corrupt servants and associates. every servant not known to be pure should be suspected until proof of innocence has been established. they should be especially instructed of the evil arising from manipulation of the genitals even in infants, as they may do immense harm through simple ignorance. timely warning.--but, in spite of chaste surroundings and all other favorable circumstances, if the child is left in ignorance of his danger, he may yet fall a victim to the devices of servants or corrupt playmates, or may himself make a fatal discovery. hence arises the duty of warning children of the evil before the habit has been formed. this is a duty that parents seldom perform even when they are not unaware of the danger. they in some way convince themselves that their children are pure, at least, even if others are corrupt. it is often the most difficult thing in the world for parents to comprehend the fact that _their_ children are not the best children in the world, perfect paragons of purity and innocence. there is an unaccountable and unreasonable delicacy on the part of parents about speaking of sexual subjects to their children. in consequence, their young, inquisitive minds are left wholly in ignorance unless, perchance, they gain information from some vile source. objections are raised against talking to children or young persons about matters in any degree pertaining to the sexual organs or functions. some of the more important of them are considered in the introduction to this work, and we need not repeat here. the little one should be taught from earliest infancy to abstain from handling the genitals, being made to regard it as a very improper act. when the child becomes old enough to understand and reason, he may be further informed of the evil consequences; then, as he becomes older, the functions of the organs may be explained with sufficient fullness to satisfy his natural craving for knowledge. if this course were pursued, how many might be saved from ruin! it is, of course, necessary that the parents shall themselves be acquainted with the true functions of the organs before they attempt to teach any one else, especially children. many parents might receive benefit from being obliged to "study up;" for it is a lamentable fact, the ill effects of which are every day seen, that a great many people have spent a very large portion of their lives without ever ascertaining the true function of the reproductive organs, though living in matrimony for many years. some of the consequences of this ignorance have been portrayed in previous pages. "oh! why did not some kind friend tell me of the harm i was doing myself?" has been the exclamation of many an unfortunate sufferer from this vice. a warning voice should be raised to save those who are ignorantly working their own destruction. parents, teachers, ministers, all who have access to the youth, should sound the note of alarm in their ears, that if possible they may be saved from the terrible thralldom pictured by a writer in the following lines:-- "the waters have gone over me. but out of the black depths, could i be heard, i would cry to all those who have set a foot in the perilous flood. could the youth look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and passive will--to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about with him the spectacle of his own self-ruin; could he feel the body of death out of which i cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered." curative treatment of the effects of self-abuse. when the habit and its effects are of very short duration, a cure is very readily accomplished, especially in the cases of children and females, as in them the evils begun are not continued in the form of involuntary pollutions. in cases of longer standing in males, the task is more difficult, but still the prospect of recovery is very favorable, provided the cooperation of the patient can be secured; without this, little can be done. but in these cases the patient may as well be told at the outset that the task of undoing the evil work of years of sin is no easy matter. it can only be accomplished by determined effort, by steady perseverance in right doing, and in the application of necessary remedies. those who have long practiced the vice, or long suffered severely from its effects, have received an injury which will inevitably be life-long to a greater or lesser extent in spite of all that can be done for them. yet such need not despair, for they may receive inestimable benefit by the prevention of greater damage, which they are sure to suffer if the disease is allowed to go unchecked. cure of the habit.--the preliminary step in treatment is always to cure the vice itself if it still exists. the methods adopted for this purpose must differ according to the age of the individual patient. _in children_, especially those who have recently acquired the habit, it can be broken up by admonishing them of its sinfulness, and portraying in vivid colors its terrible results, if the child is old enough to comprehend such admonitions. in addition to faithful warnings, the attention of the child should be fully occupied by work, study, or pleasant recreation. he should not be left alone at any time, lest he yield to temptation. work is an excellent remedy; work that will really make him very tired, so that when he goes to bed he will have no disposition to defile himself. it is best to place such a child under the care of a faithful person of older years, whose special duty it shall be to watch him night and day until the habit is thoroughly overcome. in younger children, with whom moral considerations will have no particular weight, other devices may be used. bandaging the parts has been practiced with success. tying the hands is also successful in some cases; but this will not always succeed, for they will often contrive to continue the habit in other ways, as by working the limbs, or lying upon the abdomen. covering the organs with a cage has been practiced with entire success. a remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. the operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. the soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. if any attempt is made to watch the child, he should be so carefully surrounded by vigilance that he cannot possibly transgress without detection. if he is only partially watched, he soon learns to elude observation, and thus the effect is only to make him cunning in his vice. _in adults_, or youths, a different plan must be pursued. in these cases, moral considerations, and the inevitable consequences to health of body and mind, are the chief influences by which a reform is to be effected, if at all. these considerations may be urged with all possible eloquence and earnestness, but should not be exaggerated. the truth is terrible enough. if there are any special influences which may be brought to bear upon a particular individual,--and there always will be something of this sort owing to peculiarities of temperament or circumstances,--these should be promptly employed and applied in such a manner as to secure for them their full bearing. but after all, the most must be done by the individual himself. all that others can do for him is to surround him with favoring circumstances and arouse him to a proper sense of his real condition and danger. if this can be thoroughly accomplished, there is much reason to hope; but if the individual has become so lost to all sense of purity, all aspirations toward good and noble objects, that he cannot be made to feel the need of reformation, his case is hopeless. _how may a person help himself?_--the following suggestions will be found useful in fighting the battle with vice and habit:-- . begin by a resolution to reform, strengthened by the most solemn vows. . resolve to reform _now_; not to-morrow or next week, but this very minute. thousands have sunk to perdition while resolving to indulge "only this once." . begin the work of reform by purging the mind. if a lewd thought enters the mind, dispel it at once. cultivate a loathing for concupiscence. never harbor such ideas for an instant, for they will surely lead to the overt act. if, perchance, the physical sin should not be committed, the thought itself is sin, and it leaves a physical as well as a moral scar almost as deep and hideous as that inflicted by the grosser crime. . as a help to purity of mind, whenever impure thoughts enter, immediately direct the mind upon the purest object with which you are acquainted. flee from the special exciting cause, if there is one, and engage in some active labor or other exercise that will divert the mind into another channel. . avoid solitude, for then it is that temptation comes, and you are most likely to fail. avoid equally all other causes which may lead to the act. . strictly comply with all the rules laid down for the cultivation of chastity and the maintenance of continence. . above all, seek for grace and help from the source of all spiritual strength in every time of temptation, relying upon the promise, "seek, and ye shall find." hopeful courage.--an individual who will earnestly set himself about the work of purifying his mind and redeeming his body, if he will conscientiously adopt, and perseveringly apply, the remedies pointed out, _may be sure of success_. there can be no possible chance for failure. triumph is certain. patience may be tried and faith tested, but unwavering trust in god and nature, and an executed determination to do all on his part, will bring to every such one certain recovery. there may be some scars left, a few traces of the injury wrought; but the deliverance will be none the less triumphant. faith and perseverance will work wonders. general regimen and treatment.--after long abuse of the sexual organs, and in many cases after a short course of sin, the whole system becomes deteriorated; digestion is impaired, the muscles are weakened, the circulation is unbalanced, the nerves are irritable, the brain--especially the back and lower portion of it--is congested, the skin is torpid, the bowels are inactive, the general health is deranged in almost every particular. all of these morbid conditions serve to keep up the very difficulty which has produced and is increasing them. any curative effort, to be effective, then, must be directed to these as well as to local conditions; and it is pretty certainly established that local remedies or applications alone will rarely accomplish any appreciable good, at least of a permanent character. many of the observations on treatment are equally applicable to both sexes; but particular directions have been especially adapted to males, and chiefly with the cure of seminal emissions as the object in view. this remark will explain any seeming lack of completeness. mental and moral treatment.--the greatest impediment to recovery is usually found in the mind of the patient. his hopeless despair, melancholy, sullen apathy in many cases, want of energy, and fickleness of mind, thwart all attempts that are made for him. in other cases, the want of willpower, or neglect to exercise the will in controlling the thoughts, completely counteracts all that can be done for him. he must be made to understand this well, and then all possible means must be employed to attract his attention from himself, from brooding over his ills. occupy him, interest him, or teach him to occupy and interest himself. the enthusiastic study of some one of the natural sciences is a most excellent auxiliary in effecting this. the thing of first importance is that the patient should obtain command of his thoughts; by this means, he can do more for himself than all the doctors can do for him. "but i cannot control my thoughts," says the patient. a young man said to me, "o doctor, you don't know how i feel. i despise myself; i hate myself; i often feel inclined to kill myself. my mind is always full of abominable images; my thoughts run away with me and i cannot help myself." the tears ran down his face in streams as he told me of his slavery. he solemnly affirmed that he had never performed the act of self-pollution but once in his life: and yet for years he had been a constant sufferer from nocturnal emissions until his manhood was nearly lost, evidently the result of the mental onanism which he had practiced without imagining the possibility of harm. but it is not true that control of the thoughts is impossible. thoughts are the result of the action of the brain; and the action of the brain may be controlled as well as the movements of a voluntary muscle. it may be more difficult, especially when the resolution is weakened, as it is by this vice; but so long as there are left any remnants of will and reason, control is possible. to strengthen the will must be one of the objects of mental treatment, and exercise is the method by which it may be accomplished. the thing for a sufferer to say, is not, "i can't," but, "i can and i will control my thoughts." suggestions which will aid in accomplishing this have already been given under the heading, "cure of the habit." we cannot forbear to add a word further respecting the worth of religion in aiding these sufferers. if there is any living creature who needs the help of true religion, of faith in god, in christ, and in the efficacy of prayer, it is one of these. if there is any poor mortal who can not afford to be deprived of the aid of a sympathizing saviour, it is one who has enervated his will, degraded his soul, and depraved his body by the vile habit of self-abuse. a compassionate redeemer will succor even these defiled ones, if they truly "hunger and thirst" after purity, and if they set about the work of reforming themselves in good earnest, and with right motives. exercise.--physical exercise is a most powerful aid to pure thoughts. when unchaste ideas intrude, engage at once in something which will demand energetic muscular exercise. pursue the effort until fatigued, if necessary, making, all the while, a powerful mental effort to control the mind. of course, evil thoughts will not be expelled by thinking of them, but by displacing them by pure thoughts. exercise aids this greatly. exercise is also essential to balance the circulation, and thus relieve congestion of internal organs. sedentary persons especially need systematic exercise. no single form of exercise is so excellent as walking. four or five miles a day are none too many to secure a proper amount of muscular exercise. gymnastics, the "health-lift," "indian clubs," "dumb-bells," rowing, and other forms of exercise are all good; but none of them should be carried to excess. ball-playing is likely to be made a source of injury by exciting, in vigorous competition, too violent and spasmodic action. daily exercise should be taken to the extent of fatigue. it is better that those who are still strong enough should have some regular employment which will secure exercise. those who prefer may secure exercise and recreation in the pursuit of some study that involves necessary physical exertion; as, botany, geology, or entomology. the collection of natural-history specimens is one of the most pleasant diversions, and may be made very useful as well. pleasant companionship is essential to the best progress of these patients, especially in their walks, as much more exercise may be taken without an unpleasant sense of fatigue with a cheerful companion than when alone. solitude should be avoided at all times as much as possible. diet.--so much has already been said upon the relation of diet to chastity and its influence upon the sexual organs that it is unnecessary to add many remarks here. nothing could be more untrue than the statement made by some authors that the nature of the diet is of no consequence. the science of physiology teaches that our very thoughts are born of what we eat. a man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought. he will accomplish wonders if he remains physically chaste; but to be mentally virtuous would be impossible for him without a miracle of grace. one whose thoughts have been so long trained in the filthy ruts of vice that they run there automatically, and naturally gravitate downward--such a one must exercise especial care to secure the most simple, pure, and unstimulating diet. the following precautions are necessary to be observed in relation to diet:-- . _never overeat_. if too much food is taken at one meal, fast the next meal to give the system a chance to recover itself and to serve as a barrier against future transgressions of the same kind. gluttony is fatal to chastity; and overeating will be certain to cause emissions, with other evils, in one whose organs are weakened by abuse. . _eat but twice a day_, or, if supper is eaten, let it be very light, and of the most simple food, as fruit, or fruit and bread. nothing should be eaten within four or five hours of bed-time, and it is much better to eat nothing after three o'clock. the ancients ate but two meals a day; why should moderns eat three or four? if the stomach contains undigested food, the sleep will be disturbed, dreams will be more abundant, and emissions will be frequent. a most imperative rule of life should be, "never go to bed with a loaded stomach." the violation of this rule is the great cause of horrid dreams and nightmare. . _discard all stimulating food_. under this head must be included, spices, pepper, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, essences, all condiments, salt, pickles, etc., together with animal food of all kinds, not excepting fish, fowl, oysters, eggs, and milk. it is hardly to be expected that all who have been accustomed to use these articles all their lives will discard them wholly at once, nor, perhaps, that many will ever discard them entirely; but it would be better for them to do so, nevertheless. the only ones which should be tolerated under any circumstances should be lean beef or mutton, salt in very moderate quantities, and a moderate use of milk. use as little of these as possible--_the less the better_. . _stimulating drinks_ should be abstained from with still greater strictness. wine, beer, tea, and coffee should be taken under no circumstances. the influence of coffee in stimulating the genital organs is notorious. chocolate should be discarded also. it is recommended by some who suppose it to be harmless, being ignorant of the fact that it contains a poison practically identical with that of tea and coffee. hot drinks of all kinds should be avoided. tobacco, another stimulant, though not a drink, should be totally abandoned at once. . in place of such articles as have been condemned, eat fruits, grains, and vegetables. there is a rich variety of these kinds of food, and they are wholesome and unstimulating. graham flour, oatmeal, and ripe fruit are the indispensables of a dietary for those who are suffering from sexual excesses. further remarks upon diet, with a few useful recipes for preparing healthful food, will be found in works devoted to the subject of diet.[ ] the patient must carefully comply with all the rules of a healthy diet if he would be sure of recovery. [footnote : see "healthful cookery," _good health_ publishing company, battle creek, mich.] sleeping.--it is from accidents which happen during sleep that the great majority of sufferers complain; hence there is no little importance attaching to this subject. the following suggestions present in a very brief manner some of the more practical ideas connected with this part of the subject:-- . from seven to nine hours' sleep are required by all persons. the rule should be, retire early and sleep until rested; early rising is not beneficial unless it has been preceded by abundant sleep. . arise immediately upon waking in the morning if it is after four o'clock. a second nap is generally unrefreshing and is dangerous, for emissions most frequently occur at this time. . if insufficient sleep is taken at night, sleep a few minutes just before dinner. half an hour's rest at this time is remarkably refreshing; and even fifteen minutes spent in sleep will be found very reviving. do not sleep after dinner, as a pollution will be very likely to occur, and, as a rule, after-dinner naps are unrefreshing and productive of indigestion. . never go to bed with the bowels or bladder loaded. the bladder should be emptied just before retiring. it is also a good plan to form the habit of rising once or twice during the night to urinate. . the position in sleeping is of some importance. sleeping upon the back or upon the abdomen favors the occurrence of emissions; hence, it is preferable to sleep on one side. if supper has been taken, the right side is preferable, as that position will favor the passage of food from the stomach into the intestines in undergoing digestion. various devices are employed, sometimes with advantage, to prevent the patient from turning upon his back while asleep. the most simple is that recommended by acton, and consists in tying a knot in the middle of a towel and then fastening the towel about the body in such a way that the knot will come upon the small of the back. the unpleasant sensations arising from pressure of the knot, if the sleeper turn upon his back, will often serve as a complete preventive. others fasten a piece of wood upon the back for a similar purpose. still others practice tying one hand to the bedpost. none of these remedies should be depended upon, but they may be tried in connection with other means of treatment. . soft beds and pillows must be carefully avoided. feather-beds should not be employed when possible to find a harder bed; the floor, with a single folded blanket beneath the sleeper, would be preferable. soft pillows heat the head, as soft beds produce heat in other parts. a hair mattress, or a bed of corn husks, oat straw, or excelsior--covered with two or three blankets or a quilted cotton mattress--makes a very healthy and comfortable bed. . too many covers should be avoided with equal care. the thinnest possible covering in summer, and the lightest consistent with comfort in winter, should be the rule. sleeping too warm is a frequent exciting cause of nocturnal losses. . thorough ventilation of the sleeping-room, both while occupied and during the day-time, must not be neglected. it should be located in a position to admit the sunshine during the morning hours. it is a good plan to keep in it a number of house plants, as they will help to purify the air, besides adding to its cheerfulness. . if wakeful at night, instead of lying in bed trying to go to sleep, get up at once, open the bed, air the sheets, remove the night clothing and walk about the room for a few minutes, rubbing the body briskly with the bare hand at the same time. a tepid sponge bath, followed by a vigorous rubbing kept up until really tired, will conduce to sleep in many cases. sometimes a change of bed, or pulling the bed to pieces and arranging it again, is just the thing needed to bring sleep. . one of the most effectual panaceas for certain varieties of sleeplessness is going to bed at peace with all the world, and with a conscience void of offense toward god as well as man. dreams.--this is a subject of much interest to those suffering from nocturnal pollutions, for these occurrences are almost always connected with dreams of a lascivious nature. in perfectly natural sleep, there are no dreams; consciousness is entirely suspended. in the ordinary stage of dreaming, there is a peculiar sort of consciousness, many of the faculties of the mind being more or less active while the power of volition is wholly dormant. carpenter describes another stage of consciousness between that of ordinary dreaming and wakefulness, a condition "in which the dreamer has a consciousness that he is dreaming, being aware of the unreliability of the images which present themselves before his mind. he may even make a voluntary and successful effort to prolong them if agreeable, or to dissipate them if unpleasing; thus evincing a certain degree of that directing power, the entire want of which is characteristic of the true state of dreams." can dreams be controlled?--facts prove that they can be, and to a remarkable extent. a large share of emissions occur in the state described by dr. carpenter, in which a certain amount of control by the will is possible. this is the usual condition of the mind during morning naps; and if a person resolutely determines to combat unchaste thoughts whenever they come to him, whether asleep or awake, he will find it possible to control himself not only during this semi-conscious state, but even during more profound sleep. the following case, related by an eminent london surgeon,[ ] illustrates what may be done by strong resolution; the patient was an italian gentleman of very great respectability. [footnote : acton.] "he had been inconvenienced five years before with frequent emissions, which totally unnerved him. he determined resolutely that the very instant the image of a woman or any libidinous idea presented itself to his imagination, _he would wake_; and to insure his doing so, dwelt in his thoughts on his resolution for a long time before going to sleep. the remedy, applied by a vigorous will, had the most happy results. the idea, the remembrance of its being a _danger_, and the determination to wake, closely united the evening before, were never dissociated even in sleep, and he awoke in time; and this reiterated precaution, repeated during some evenings, absolutely cured the complaint." several other cases of the same kind have been recorded. doubtless the plan would be found successful in many cases when coupled with a proper regimen. a still greater control is exerted over the thoughts during sleep by their character during hours of wakefulness. by controlling the mind during entire consciousness, it will also be controlled during unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. dr. acton makes the following very appropriate remarks on this subject:-- "patients will tell you that they _cannot_ control their dreams. this is not true. those who have studied the connection between thoughts during waking hours and dreams during sleep know that they are closely connected. the _character_ is the same sleeping or waking. it is not surprising that, if a man has allowed his thoughts during the day to rest upon libidinous subjects, he should find his mind at night full of lascivious dreams--the one is a consequence of the other, and the nocturnal pollution is a natural consequence, particularly when diurnal indulgence has produced an irritability of the generative organs. a will which in our waking hours we have not exercised in repressing sexual desires, will not, when we fall asleep, preserve us from carrying the sleeping echo of our waking thought farther than we dared to do in the day-time." bathing.--a daily bath is indispensable to health under almost all circumstances; for patients of this class, it is especially necessary. a general bath should be taken every morning immediately upon rising. general _cold bathing_ is not good for any person, especially in the morning, though some may tolerate it remarkably well, being of exceptionally hardy constitutions; but the advice to try "cold bathing" often given to sufferers from seminal weakness, is very pernicious, for most of them have been reduced so low in vitality by their disease that they cannot endure such violent treatment. sun baths, electric baths, spray, plunge, and other forms of bath, are of greatest value to those suffering from the effects of indiscretions. these are described, with additional observations concerning temperature of baths, etc., etc., in works devoted to this subject. improvement of general health.--patients suffering from emissions and other forms of seminal weakness are almost always dyspeptic, and most of them present other constitutional affections which require careful and thorough treatment according to the particular indications of the case. the wise physician will not neglect these if he desires to cure his patient and make his recovery as complete as possible. prostitution as a remedy.--said a leading physician in new york to us when interrogated as to his special treatment of spermatorrhoea, "when a young man comes to me suffering from nocturnal emissions, i give him tonics and _send him to a woman_." that this is not an unusual method of treatment, even among regular physicians, is a fact as true as it is deplorable. there are hundreds of young men whose morals have been ruined by such advice. having been educated to virtuous habits, at least so far as illicit intercourse is concerned, they resist all temptations in this direction, even though their inclinations are very strong; but when advised by a physician to commit fornication as a remedial measure, they yield their virtue, far too readily sometimes, and begin a life of sin from which they might have been prevented. there are good grounds for believing that many young men purposely seek advice from physicians whom they know are in the habit of prescribing this kind of remedy. few know how commonly this course is recommended, and not by quacks, but by members of the regular profession. a medical friend informed us that he knew a case in which a country physician advised a young man of continent habits to go to a neighboring large city and spend a year or so with prostitutes, which advice he followed. of his subsequent history we know nothing; but it is most probable that, like most other young men who adopt this remedy, he soon contracted diseases which rendered his condition ten times worse than at first, without at all improving his former state. in pursuing this course, one form of emission is only substituted for another, at the best; but more than this, an involuntary result of disease is converted into a voluntary sin of the blackest character, a crime in which two participate, and which is not only an outrage upon nature, but against morality as well. a final argument against this course is that it is not a remedy and does not effect a cure of the evil, as will be shown by the following medical testimonies:-- "the vexed question of connection is one which may be decided out of hand.... _it has no power of curing bad spermatorrhoea_; it may cause a diminution in the number of emissions, but this is only a delusion; the semen is still thrown off; the frame still continues to be exhausted; the genital organs and nervous system generally are still harassed by the incessant tax, and the patient is all the while laying the foundation of impotence."[ ] [footnote : milton.] "in all solemn earnestness i protest against such false treatment. it is better for a youth to live a continent life." "there is a terrible significance in the wise man's words, 'none that go to her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life.'"[ ] this hazardous and immoral mode of treatment is the result of the common opinion that emissions are necessary and natural, which we have previously shown to be a falsity. [footnote : acton.] marriage.--another class of practitioners, with more apparent regard for morality, recommend matrimony as the sure panacea for all the ills of which the sufferers from self-abuse complain, with the possible exception of actual impotence. against this course several objections may be urged; we offer the following:-- . it is not a remedy, since, as in the case of illicit intercourse, "legalized prostitution" is only a substitution of one form of emissions for another, the ill effects of which do not differ appreciably. . if it were a remedy, it would not be a justifiable one, for its use would necessitate an abuse of the marriage relation, as elsewhere shown. . as another reason why the remedy would not be a _proper_, even if a _good_, one, it may well be asked, what right has a man to treat a wife as a vial of medicine? well does mr. acton inquire, "what has the young girl, who is thus sacrificed to an egotistical calculation, done that she should be condemned to the existence that awaits her? who has the right to regard her as a therapeutic agent, and to risk thus lightly her future prospects, her repose, and the happiness of the remainder of her life?" in cases in which seminal emissions occur frequently, the most reliable writers upon this subject, copland, acton, milton, and others, advise, with reference to marriage, "that the complaint should be removed before the married life is commenced." independent of the considerations already presented, the individual affected in this manner and contemplating marriage should carefully consider the possible and probable effects upon offspring, the legitimate result of marriage; these have been already described, and need not be recapitulated. local treatment.--while it is true that general treatment alone is occasionally successful in curing the diseases under consideration, and that local treatment alone is very rarely efficient, it is also true that in many cases skillful local treatment is required to supplement the general remedies employed. while there has been a tendency on the part of the profession generally to depend wholly upon general treatment, on the part of a less numerous body of specialists there has been an opposite tendency to depend wholly, or nearly so, upon local measures. both extremes are evidently wrong. the object of local treatment for the relief of emissions, especially, is to remove the local cause of irritation, which, as previously shown, is one of the most active exciting causes of seminal losses. to effect this, both internal and external applications are useful. we will now consider some of these agents. _cool sitz bath_.--the cool or cold sitz bath is one of the most efficacious of all remedies. it should be taken daily, and may often be repeated, with benefit, several times a day. its effect is to relieve the local congestion, and thus allay the irritability of the affected parts. when but one bath is taken daily, it should be just before retiring at night. full directions for this and other baths are given in works devoted to the subject of bathing. _ascending douche_.--this is also a very useful means of allaying irritation, especially the reflex excitability which is often present in the muscles in the vicinity of the perineum and prostate gland, and when there is pain and fullness in these parts. _abdominal bandage_.--this may be worn nights to very great advantage by most patients. it not only allays the irritability of the nerve centers which are closely connected with the genital apparatus, but serves to keep the bowels in a healthy condition. it should not be applied so continuously as to produce a very profuse eruption on the skin. if such a symptom should appear, discontinue the bandage for a time. when worn during the day-time, it should be changed once in three or four hours. it is generally best to wear it only nights. _wet compress_.--this is an application to be made to the lower part of the spine for the purpose of allaying the excessive heat and irritation which often exist there. it may also be worn nights, as it in some degree prevents the danger arising from sleeping upon the back. _hot and cold applications to the spine_.--these are powerful remedies under appropriate conditions. hot applications relieve congestion of the genital organs and allay irritation. cold applications are useful when a condition of debility and relaxation is present. alternate applications of heat and cold are very valuable, when skillfully applied, as a means of allaying reflex excitability and promoting healthy action. these applications are especially useful in cases in which there is heat and pain in the lower portion of the back. their effects are greatly enhanced by administering a foot or leg bath at the same time. _local fomentations_.--when great local irritation exists, with considerable pain and spasmodic muscular action, the application of hot fomentations to the perineum will be found the most effectual means of giving relief. the hot douche and hot sitz bath are useful under the same circumstances. in some cases, alternate hot and cold applications are more effectual in allaying local irritation than hot fomentations alone. _local cold bathing_.--the genital organs should be daily bathed in cold water just before retiring. simply dashing water upon the parts for two or three minutes is insufficient; more prolonged bathing is necessary. a short application of cold occasions a strong and sudden reaction which increases local congestion; hence, the bath should be continued until the sedative effect is fully produced, which will require at least fifteen minutes. the water must be cold; about degrees is the best temperature. ice should be used to cool the water in warm weather. it should be applied thoroughly, being squeezed from a sponge upon the lower part of the abdomen and allowed to run down. _enemata_.--the use of the enema is an important means of aiding recovery, but it has been much abused, and must be employed with caution. when the bowels are very costive, relieve them before retiring by a copious injection of tepid water. the "fountain syringe" is the best instrument to employ. useful as is the syringe when needed, nothing could be much worse than becoming dependent upon it. the bowels must be made to act for themselves without such artificial assistance, by the use of proper food, especially graham flour and oatmeal, and the avoidance of hot drinks, milk, sugar, and other clogging and constipating articles; by wearing the abdominal bandage; by thorough kneading and percussion of the abdomen several times daily for five minutes at a time; by taking one or two glasses of cold water half an hour before breakfast every morning; and by plenty of muscular exercise daily. the enema should be used occasionally, however, rather than allow the bowels to continue costive, and to avoid severe straining at stool. a small, cold enema taken just before retiring, and retained, will often do much to allay local irritation. _electricity_.--probably no single agent will accomplish more than this remedy when skillfully applied. it needs to be carefully used, and cannot be trusted in the hands of those not acquainted with the physical properties of the remedy and scientific methods of applying it. _internal applications_.--complete and rapid success greatly depends upon skillful internal treatment, in a large number of cases. we are aware that there is considerable prejudice, in certain quarters, against internal treatment; but having had the opportunity of observing the effects of careful treatment applied in this way, and having put to the test of practical experience this method, we feel justified in recommending that which is approved on both theoretical and practical grounds; for it is rational to suppose that proper treatment applied directly to the seat of disease must be at least equally efficacious with methods less direct. as heretofore explained, in the more severe cases the urethra is found in a very irritable condition. it is hyper-sensitive, especially in that portion just in front of the bladder, where the ejaculatory ducts open into it. we have also seen how this condition is one of the chief exciting causes of emissions. the remedies described for allaying this irritation are all excellent and indispensable; but there is another method of great value. this consists in the passage of a suitable instrument, a sound or bougie of proper size, two or three times a week. by the aid of this means, the abnormal irritation will often diminish with magical rapidity. the passage of the instrument of course needs to be done with great delicacy, so as to avoid increasing the irritation; hence it should not be attempted by a novice. lack of skill in catheterism is doubtless the reason why some have seemed to produce injury rather than benefit by this method of treatment, they not recognizing the fact asserted by prof. gross in his treatise on surgery, that skillful catheterism is one of the most delicate operations in surgery. _use of electricity_.--the use of electricity in connection with that of the sound adds greatly to its utility. by means of the metallic instrument, also, electricity may be applied directly to the point of greatest irritation; and its soothing effect is sometimes really wonderful, as the following case will show:-- the patient, a man of unusual physical development, was suffering from nocturnal emissions and diminished sexual power, the result of early indiscretions and marital excesses. one of his most unpleasant symptoms was severe pain in the portion of the urethra near the openings of the ejaculatory ducts. after he had been suffering more than usual for a few days, we applied the faradaic electric current in the manner indicated above, for about fifteen minutes. at the end of that time the pain was entirely removed, though considerable suffering had been caused by the passage of the instrument, so sensitive was the congested membrane. the pain did not return again for two or three weeks, though treatment was necessarily suspended on account of absence. in another case, that of a young man, a student, at the beginning of treatment emissions occurred nightly, and sometimes as many as four in a single night, according to his statement, which we had no reason to doubt. under the influence of these local applications, combined with other measures of treatment and a measurably correct regimen, the number of emissions was in a few weeks reduced to one in two or three weeks. numerous other cases nearly as remarkable might be detailed if it were necessary to do so. in quite a considerable number of cases in which we have employed this plan of treatment, the results have been uniformly excellent. a very slight increase of irritation sometimes occurs at first, but this quickly subsides. the galvanic as well as the faradaic current is to be used under proper circumstances. the application of electricity to the nerve centers by means of central galvanization, and also general and local external faradization, are necessary methods to be employed in electrical treatment. _circumcision_.--in cases of phimosis, in which irritation is produced by retained secretions, division of the prepuce, or circumcision, is the proper remedy. these cases are not infrequent, but the exciting cause of much of the difficulty is often overlooked. the same remedy is often useful in cases of long prepuce. when the glans penis is unusually tender and sensitive, this condition will usually be removed by the daily washing with soap and water necessary for cleanliness. if this does not suffice, or if there are slight excoriations caused by acrid secretions, apply, in addition, a weak solution of tannin in glycerine once a day. _impotence_.--loss of sexual power arising from any form of sexual excess, should be treated on the same general plan laid down for the treatment of emissions and other weaknesses. cold to the spine, and short, but frequent, local cold applications, are among the most useful remedies; but, probably, electricity, discreetly used, is by far the most valuable of all remedies. it should be applied both internally and externally. the use of cantharides and other aphrodisiac remedies to stimulate the sexual organs is a most pernicious practice. the inevitable result is still greater weakness. they should never be used under any circumstances whatever. on the contrary, everything of a stimulating character must be carefully avoided, even in diet. _varicocele_.--patients suffering from this difficulty should wear a proper suspensory bag, as the continued pressure of the distended veins upon the testes, if unsupported, will ultimately cause degenerative changes and atrophy. a surgical operation, consisting of the removal of a portion of the skin of the scrotum, is proper if the patient desires an operation; no other operation is advisable. the wearing of a suspensory bag is also advisable for those whose testicles are unusually pendulous. drugs, rings, etc.--if drugs, _per se_, will cure invalids of any class, they are certainly worthless in this class of patients. the whole materia medica affords no root, herb, extract, or compound that alone will cure a person suffering from emissions. thousands of unfortunates have been ruined by long-continued drugging. one physician will purge and salivate the patient. another will dose him with phosphorus, quinine, or ergot. another feeds him with iron. another plies him with lupuline, camphor, and digitaline. still another narcotizes him with opium, belladonna, and chloral. purgatives and diuretics are given by another, and some will be found ready to empty the whole pharmacopoeia into the poor sufferer's stomach if he can be got to open his mouth wide enough. the way that some of these poor fellows are blistered, and burned, and cauterized, and tortured in sundry other ways, is almost too horrible to think of; yet they endure it, often willingly, thinking it but just punishment for their sins, and perhaps hoping to expiate them by this cruel penance. by these procedures, the emissions are sometimes temporarily checked, but the patient is not cured, nevertheless, and the malady soon returns. the employment of rings, pessaries, and numerous other mechanical devices for preventing emissions, is entirely futile. no dependence can be placed upon them. some of these contrivances are very ingenious, but they are all worthless, and time and money spent upon them are thrown away. quacks.--the victims of self-abuse fall an easy prey to the hordes of harpies, fiends in human shape, who are ready at every turn to make capital out of their misfortunes. from no other class of persons do quacks and charlatans derive so rich a harvest as from these erring ones. it is not uncommon to find a man suffering from seminal weakness who has paid to sundry parties hundreds of dollars for "specifics" which they advertised as "sure cures." we have seen and treated scores of these patients, but never yet met a single case that had received benefit from patent medicines. the newspapers are full of the advertisements of these heartless villains. they advertise under the guise of "clergymen," charitable institutions, "cured invalids," and similar pretenses. usually they offer for sale some pill or mixture which will be a _sure cure_, in proof of which they cite the testimonials of numerous individuals who never lived, or, at least, never saw either them or their filthy compounds; or, they promise to send free a recipe which will be a certain cure. here is a specimen recipe which was sent by a "reverend" gentleman who claims to be a returned missionary from south america so intent on doing good that he charges nothing for his invaluable information:-- extract of corrossa apimis, " " selarmo umbelifera, powdered alkermes latifolia, extract of carsadoc herbalis. this remarkable recipe is warranted to cure all the evils arising from self-abuse, with no attention to diet and no inconvenience of any kind, to prevent consumption and insanity, and to cure venereal diseases. it is also declared to be a perfectly "_safe_" remedy for all female difficulties, which means that it will aid nefarious purposes. along with the recipe comes the suggestion that the druggist may not be able to furnish all the ingredients in a perfectly pure state, and so, for the accommodation of suffering humanity, this noble philanthropist has taken infinite pains to secure them direct from south america, and has them put up in neat little packages which he will send, post-paid, for the trifle of $ . , just one cent _less_ than actual cost. then he tells what purports to be the history of his own nastiness, with a generous spicing of pious cant, and closes with a benediction on all who have fallen into the same slough, and especially those who will send for his fabulous foreign weeds to help them out. a young man sees the advertisement of a book which will be sent free, postage paid, if he will only send his address. the title of the book being of some such character as "manhood regained," or "nervous debility," he imagines it may suit his case, and sends his name. return mail brings the book, which is a wretched jargon of confused terms and appalling descriptions of the effects of self-abuse, with the most shameful exaggerations of the significance of the most trivial symptoms. the ignorant youth reads what he supposes to be a description of his own case, and is frightened nearly to death. he is most happily relieved, however, to find that the generous publishers of the book have a remedy which is just adapted to his case, but which is so precious that it cannot be afforded at less than $ . for a sufficient quantity to effect a cure. he willingly parts with his hard-earned dollars, and gets, in return, some filthy mixture that did not cost a shilling. another trap set is called an "anatomical museum." the anatomical part of the exhibition consists chiefly of models and figures calculated to excite the passions to the highest pitch. at stated intervals the proprietor, who is always a "doctor," and by preference a german, delivers lectures on the effects of masturbation, in which he resorts to every device to excite the fears and exaggerate the symptoms of his hearers, who are mostly young men and boys. thus he prepares his victim, and when he once gets him within his clutches, he does not let him go until he has robbed him of his last dollar. we might present almost any number of illustrations of the ways in which these human sharks pursue their villainy. if there were a dungeon deep, dark, and dismal enough for the punishment of such rascals, we should feel strongly inclined to petition to have them incarcerated in it. they defy all laws, civil as well as moral, but are cunning enough to keep outside of prison bars; and thus they wax rich by robbery, and thrive by deceit. a terrible recompense awaits them at the final settlement, though they escape so easily now. closing advice.--we cannot finish this chapter without a few closing words of advice to those who are suffering in any way from the results of sexual transgression. we are especially anxious to call attention to a few points of practical and vital interest to all who are suffering in the manner indicated. . give the matter prompt attention. do not delay to adopt curative measures under the delusive idea that the difficulty will disappear of itself. thousands have procrastinated in this way until their constitutions have been so hopelessly undermined as to make treatment of little value. the intrinsic tendency of this disease is to continue to increase. it progresses only in one direction. it never "gets well of itself," as some have imagined that it may do. something must be done to effect a cure; and the longer treatment is delayed, the more difficult the case will become. . set about the work of getting well with a fixed determination to persevere, and never to give over the struggle until success is attained, no matter how difficult may be the obstacles to be surmounted. such an effort will rarely be unsuccessful. one of the greatest impediments to recovery from diseases of this class is the vacillating dispositions of nearly all patients suffering from disorders of this character. make up your mind what course of treatment to pursue, then adhere to it rigidly until it has received a thorough trial. do not despair if no very marked results are seen in a week, a month, or even a longer period. the best remedies are among those which operate the most slowly. . avoid watching for symptoms. ills are greatly exaggerated by dwelling upon them. one can easily imagine himself getting worse when he is really getting better. indeed, one can make himself sick by dwelling upon insignificant symptoms. fix upon a course to pursue for recovery, firmly resolve to comply with every requirement necessary to insure success, and then let the mind be entirely at rest respecting the result. . never consult a quack. the newspapers abound with lying advertisements of remedies for diseases of this character. do not waste time and money in corresponding with the ignorant, unprincipled charlatans who make such false pretensions. do not consult traveling doctors. physicians of real merit have plenty of business at home. they are not obliged to go abroad in order to secure practice. persons who resort to this course are, without exception, pretentious quacks. consult only some well-known and reliable physician in whom you have confidence. if your physician treats the matter lightly, and advises marriage as a means of cure, you will not judge him harshly if you decide that although he may be thoroughly competent to treat other diseases, he is ignorant of the nature and proper treatment of this. it is an unfortunate fact that there are many physicians who are not thoroughly acquainted with the nature of spermatorrhoea and the proper mode of treating the disease; hence the importance of making a judicious selection in choosing a medical adviser. if possible, employ one whom you know to have treated successfully numerous similar cases, and give him your entire confidence. it is far better to consult your family physician than to trust yourself in the hands of some one whom you do not know, and especially one who makes great pretensions to knowledge. . do not despair of ever recovering from the effects of past transgression, and plunge into greater depths of sin. persevering, skillful treatment will cure almost every case. even the worst cases can be greatly benefited if the earnest co-operation of the patient can be secured. this is indispensable, and the patient should be so instructed at the outset of a course of treatment. . every sufferer from sexual disease must make up his mind to live, during the remainder of his life, as closely in accord with the laws of life and health as circumstances under his control will allow him to do. one who pursues this course, with a genuine regard for principle and a love for right, may confidently expect to receive the reward of obedience for his faithfulness. we would recommend such to obtain and study the best works upon hygiene, put in practice every new truth as soon as learned, and become missionaries of the saving truths of hygiene to others who are suffering from the same cause as themselves, or who may be in danger of falling into the same evil. a chapter for boys. boys, this chapter is for you. it is written and printed purposely for you. if you do not read another word in the book, read these few pages if you are old enough to do so. read each line carefully and thoughtfully. you may not find anything to make you laugh--possibly you may: but you will be certain to find something of almost inestimable value to you in every line. who are boys?--boys are scarce now-a-days. in the days of methuselah, male human beings were still boys when nearly a century old; twenty-five years ago boys were still such until well out of their "teens"; now the interval between infancy and the age at which the boy becomes a young man is so brief that boyhood is almost a thing of the past. the happy period of care-free, joyous innocence which formerly intervened between childhood and early manhood is now almost unobservable. boys grow old too fast. they learn to imitate the vices and the manners of their seniors before they reach their teens, and are impatient to be counted as men, no matter how great may be their deficiencies, their unfitness for the important duties and responsibilities of life. the consequence of this inordinate haste and impatience to be old, is premature decay. unfortunately the general tendency of the young members of the rising generation is to copy the vices of their elders, rather than the virtues of true manliness. a strong evidence of this fact, if there were no other, is the unnaturally old-looking faces which so many of our boys present. at the present time the average boy of twelve knows more of vice and sin than the youth of twenty of the past generation. it is not so much for these human mushrooms, which may be not inaptly compared to toadstools which grow up in a single night and almost as speedily decay, that we write, but for the old-fashioned boys, the few such there may be, those who have not yet learned to love sin, those whose minds are still pure and uncontaminated. those who have already begun a course of vice and wickedness we have little hope of reforming; but we are anxious to offer a few words of counsel and warning which may possibly help to save as brands plucked from a blazing fire, those whose moral sense is yet alive, who have quick and tender consciences, who aspire to be truly noble and good. what are boys for?--this question was answered with exact truthfulness by a little boy, who, when contemptuously accosted by a man with the remark, "what are you good for?" replied, "men are made of such as we." boys are the beginnings of men. they sustain the same relation to men that the buds do to full-blown flowers. they are still more like the small green apples which first appear when the blossoms drop from the branches, compared with the ripe, luscious fruit which in autumn bends the heavy-laden boughs almost to breaking. often, like the young apples, boys are green; but this is only natural, and should be considered no disgrace to the boys. if they grow up naturally they will ripen with age, like the fruit, developing at each successive stage of life additional attractions and excellent qualities. boys the hope of the world.--a nation's most valuable property is its boys. a nation which has poor, weakly, vicious boys will have still weaker, more vicious and untrustworthy men. a country with noble, virtuous, vigorous boys, is equally sure of having noble, pious, brave, and energetic men. whatever debases, contaminates, or in any way injures the boys of a country, saps and undermines the very foundation of the nation's strength and greatness. save the boys from vice and crime, give them good training, physically, mentally, and morally, and the prosperity of the nation is assured. man the masterpiece.--when a skillful artist perfects a work of art, a painting, a drawing, a statue, or some other work requiring great talent and exceeding all his other efforts, it is called his masterpiece. so man is the noblest work of god, the masterpiece of the almighty. numerous anecdotes are told of the sagacity of dogs, horses, elephants and other animals, of their intelligence and ingenious devices in overcoming obstacles, avoiding difficulties, etc. our admiration and wonder are often excited by the scarcely less than human wisdom shown by these lowly brothers of the human race. we call them noble animals; but they are only noble brutes, at best. compared with man, even in his most humble form, as seen in the wild savage that hunts and devours his prey like a wild beast, a lion or a tiger, they are immeasurably inferior. and in his highest development, man civilized, cultivated, christianized, learned, generous, pious, certainly stands at the head of all created things. boys, do you love what is noble, what is pure, what is grand, what is good? you may each, if you will, become such yourselves. let us consider for a moment how a noble character is ruined.--a noble character is formed by the development of the good qualities of an individual. a bad character is formed by the development of bad traits, or evil propensities. in other words, sin is the cause of the demoralization of character, the debasing of the mind, the loss of nobility of which we see so much around us in the world. sin is the transgression of some law. there are two kinds of sins: those which are transgressions of the moral law, and those which are transgressions of physical laws. both classes of sins are followed by penalties. if a person violates the laws of health, he is just as certain to suffer as though he tells a falsehood, steals, murders, or commits any other crime. perfect obedience to all of nature's laws, including of course all moral laws, is necessary to perfect health and perfect nobleness of character. the nature of these laws and the results of transgression will be understood after we have taken a hasty glance at the marvelous human machine which we call the body. all the inventions and devices ever constructed by the human hand or conceived by the human mind, no matter how delicate, how intricate and complicated, are simple, childish toys compared with that most marvelously wrought mechanism, the human body. let us proceed to take this wonderful machine in pieces and study its various parts and the manner in which they are put together. the two objects of human existence.--the objects of this wonderfully formed mechanism are two: . the maintenance of an individual life; . the production of similar individuals which shall also have the power of maintaining individual lives. the same may be said of every plant that grows, and every animal. each tree, plant, and shrub has some useful service to perform while it lives, in addition to the production of seed from which other plants may grow. for example, the object of the majestic oak which towers high and broadly spreads its leafy branches is not to produce acorns merely, but to give place for birds to build their nests, to present an inviting shade for cattle, and to afford protection in a variety of ways to numerous living creatures which need such aid. the same may be said of all vegetable growths, each particular plant having its peculiar purposes to fulfill, and all together acting as purifiers of the air for the benefit of man and lower animals. the principle is equally true as applied to lower animals, as is evidenced by the numerous ways in which domestic animals are utilized. indeed, it seems that the prime purpose of life, not only with all lowly living creatures, as plants and animals, but with man as well, is to live and act as individuals. but the important function of reproduction, or producing other similar individuals, though incidental, is necessary to the perpetuation of the race or species. in order that an individual human being may live and develop, it is necessary that he should eat, drink, digest, and assimilate, and that he should be able to move about, to perceive,--that is, to hear, see, feel, smell, taste, determine weight and distinguish temperature,--to think, and to express ideas in language. in order to keep his vital machinery in order, it is necessary that the body should also be able to repair injuries which may occur in consequence of wear or accident, and to remove out of the way wornout material which would otherwise obstruct the working of the delicate machinery of which his body is constructed. each of these functions requires special organs and apparatuses to carry on the work; and these we will now briefly consider:-- the nutritive apparatus.--this consists of organs for the purpose of taking in food or nourishment, digesting it, and distributing it throughout the body wherever it is needed. these are chiefly the mouth and teeth for receiving and chewing the food, the stomach and intestines for digesting and absorbing it, and the heart and blood-vessels for distributing it to the body. the moving apparatus.--for the purpose of producing motion, we have the muscles and the bones, by which the food is received, masticated, and swallowed, the blood circulated, the body moved about from place to place, and speech, expression, respiration, and many other important functions performed. the thinking and feeling apparatus.--the brain and nerves afford the means of thinking and feeling, also giving rise to all the activities of the body by the production of nerve force. to aid the brain and nerves, we have special organs provided, termed the organs of special sense; as the eye for sight, the ear for hearing, the nose for the detection of odors, the tongue for tasting, the skin and the mucous membrane for the sense of touch. the purifying apparatus.--waste matter accumulates in the body so rapidly that it is necessary to have abundant and efficient means to remove the same, and prevent death by obstruction. this work is performed by the lungs, liver, kidneys, skin, and mucous membrane. each organ and tissue possesses the power to repair itself. animal heat, which is also necessary to life, is not produced by any special set of organs, but results incidentally from the various other processes named. the reproductive apparatus.--as there is a stomach to digest, a brain to think, a pair of lungs to breathe, etc., so there are special organs for reproducing the species or producing new individuals. these organs have been carefully described in the preceding portion of this volume, so that we do not need to repeat the description here. unlike all the other organs of the body, they are intended for use only after full development or manhood has been attained; consequently, they are only partially developed in childhood, becoming perfected as the person becomes older, especially after about the age of fourteen to eighteen, when puberty occurs. the lungs, the stomach, the muscles, and other organs must be used constantly from the earliest period of infancy, hence they are developed sufficiently for efficient use at birth. the fact that the sexual or reproductive organs are only fully developed later on in life, is sufficient evidence that they are intended for use only when the body has become fully mature and well developed. how a noble character and a sound body must be formed.--by obeying all the laws which relate to the healthy action of the body and the mind, a noble character and a healthy body may be formed. any deviation from right will be sure to be followed by suffering. a boy who carefully heeds the advice of good and wise parents, who avoids bad company, who never indulges in bad habits of any sort, who cultivates purity, honesty, and manliness, is certain to grow up into a noble, lovely youth, and to become an intelligent, respected, virtuous man. the down-hill road.--in every large city, and in small ones too, even in little villages, we can scarcely step upon the street without being pained at meeting little boys who have perhaps scarcely learned to speak distinctly, but whose faces show very plainly that they have already taken several steps down the steep hillside of vice. all degrees of wickedness are pictured on the faces of a large proportion of the boys we meet upon the streets, loitering about the corners, loafing in hotels, groceries, and about bar-room doors. everywhere we meet small faces upon which sin and vice are as clearly written as though the words were actually spelled out. lying, swearing, smoking, petty stealing, and brazen impudence are among the vices which contaminate thousands and thousands of the boys who are by-and-by to become the _men_ of this country, to constitute its legislators, its educators, its supporters, and its protectors. is it possible that such boys can become good, useful, noble, trustworthy men? scarcely. if the seeds of noxious weeds can be made to produce useful plants or beautiful flowers, or if a barren, worthless shrub can be made to bear luscious fruit, then may we expect to see these vicious boys grow up into virtuous, useful men. but the vices mentioned are not the worst, the traces of which we see stamped upon the faces of hundreds of boys, some of whom, too, would scorn to commit any one of the sins named. there is another vice, still more terrible, more blighting in its effects, a vice which defiles, diseases, and destroys the body, enervates, degrades, and finally dethrones the mind, debases and ruins the soul. it is to this vice that we wish especially to call attention. it is known as self-abuse.--secret vice, masturbation, and self-pollution are other names applied to this same awful sin against nature and against god. we shall not explain here the exact nature of the sin, as very few boys are so ignorant or so innocent as to be unacquainted with it. to this sin and its awful consequences we now wish to call the attention of all who may read these lines. a dreadful sin.--the sin of self-pollution is one of the vilest, the basest, and the most degrading that a human being can commit. it is worse than beastly. those who commit it place themselves far below the meanest brute that breathes. the most loathsome reptile, rolling in the slush and slime of its stagnant pool, would not bemean itself thus. it is true that monkeys sometimes have the habit, but only when they have been taught it by vile men or boys. a boy who is thus guilty ought to be ashamed to look into the eyes of an honest dog. such a boy naturally shuns the company of those who are pure and innocent. he cannot look with assurance into his mother's face. it is difficult for any one to catch his eye, even for a few seconds. he feels his guilt and acts it out, thus making it known to every one. let such a boy think how he must appear in the eyes of the almighty. let him only think of the angels, pure, innocent, and holy, who are eye-witnesses of his shameful practices. is not the thought appalling? would he dare commit such a sin in the presence of his father, his mother, or his sisters? no, indeed. how, then, will he dare to defile himself in the presence of him from whose all-seeing eye nothing is hid? the bible utters the most solemn warnings against sexual sins. the inhabitants of sodom and gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone for such transgressions. onan was struck dead in the act of committing a vileness of this sort. for similar vices the wicked inhabitants of palestine were destroyed, and their lands given to the hebrews. for a single violation of the seventh commandment, one of the most notable bible characters, david, suffered to the day of his death. those who imagine that this sin is not a transgression of the seventh commandment may be assured that this most heinous, revolting, and unnatural vice is in every respect more pernicious, more debasing, and more immoral than what is generally considered as violation of the commandment which says, "thou shalt not commit adultery," and is itself a most flagrant violation of the same commandment. those who imagine that they "have a right to do as they please with themselves," so long as no one else is immediately affected, must learn that we are not our own masters; we belong to our creator, and are accountable to god not only for the manner in which we treat our fellow-men, but for how we treat ourselves, for the manner in which we use the bodies which he has given us. the man who commits suicide, who takes his own life, is a murderer as much as he who kills a fellow-man. so, also, he who pollutes himself in the manner we are considering, violates the seventh commandment, although the crime is in both cases committed against himself. think of this, ye youth who defile yourselves in secret and seek to escape the punishment of sin. in heaven a faithful record of your vile commandment-breaking is kept, and you must meet it by-and-by. you are fixing your fate for eternity; and each daily act in some degree determines what it shall be. are you a victim of this fascinating vice, stop, repent, reform, before you are forever ruined, a mental, moral, and physical wreck. self-murderers.--of all the vices to which human beings are addicted, no other so rapidly undermines the constitution and so certainly makes a complete wreck of an individual as this, especially when the habit is begun at an early age. it wastes the most precious part of the blood, uses up the vital forces, and finally leaves the poor victim a most utterly ruined and loathsome object. if a boy should be deprived of both hands and feet and should lose his eyesight, he would still be infinitely better off than the boy who for years gives himself up to the gratification of lust in secret vice. for such a boy to become a strong, vigorous man is just as impossible as it would be to make a mammoth tree out of a currant bush. such a man will necessarily be short-lived. he will always suffer from the effects of his folly, even though he shall marry. if he has children--he may become incapable--they will be quite certain to be puny, weak, scrofulous, consumptive, rickety, nervous, depraved in body and mind, or otherwise deprived of the happiness which grows out of the possession of "a sound mind in a sound body." let us notice a little more closely the terrible effects resulting from this most unnatural and abominable vice. what makes boys dwarfs.--how many times have we seen boys who were born with good constitutions, with force and stamina sufficient to develop them into large, vigorous men, become puny dwarfs. at the time when they ought to begin to grow and develop more rapidly than ever before, their growth is checked and they cease to develop. they are, in fact, stunted, dwarfed, like a plant which has a canker-worm eating away at its roots. indeed, there is a veritable canker-worm sapping their vitality, undermining their constitutions, and destroying their prospects for time and for eternity. anxious friends may attribute the unhappy change to overwork, overstudy, or some similar cause; but from a somewhat extended observation we are thoroughly convinced that the very vice which we are considering is the viper which blights the prospects and poisons the existence of many of these promising boys. a boy who gives himself up to the practice of secret vice at an early age, say as early as seven to ten years of age, is certain to make himself a wreck. instead of having a healthy, vigorous body, with strong muscles and a hardy constitution, he will be weak, scrawny, sickly, always complaining, never well, and will never know anything about that joyous exuberance of life and animal spirits which the young antelope feels as it bounds over the plain, or the vigorous young colt as it frisks about its pasture, and which every youth ought to feel. scrawny, hollow-eyed boys.--boys ought to be fresh and vigorous as little lambs. they ought to be plump, rosy, bright-eyed, and sprightly. a boy who is pale, scrawny, hollow-eyed, dull, listless, has something the matter with him. self-abuse makes thousands of just such boys every year; and it is just such boys that make vicious, shiftless, haggard, unhappy men. this horrible vice steals away the health and vitality which are needed to develop the body and the mind; and the lad that ought to make his mark in the world, that ought to become a distinguished statesman, orator, clergyman, physician, or author, becomes little more than a living animal, a mere shadow of what he ought to have been. old boys.--often have we felt sad when we have heard fond mothers speaking in glowing terms of the old ways of their sons, and rather glorying that they looked so much older than they were. in nine cases out of ten these old-looking boys owe their appearance to this vile habit; for it is exceedingly common, and its dreadful effects in shriveling and dwarfing and destroying the human form are too plainly perceptible, when present, to be mistaken. oh! this dreadful curse! why will so many of our bright, innocent boys pollute themselves with it! what makes idiots.--reader, have you ever seen an idiot? if you have, the hideous picture will never be dissipated from your memory. the vacant stare, the drooping, drooling mouth, the unsteady gait, the sensual look, the emptiness of mind,--all these you will well remember. did you ever stop to think how idiots are made? it is by this very vice that the ranks of these poor daft mortals are being recruited every day. every visitor to an insane asylum sees scores of them; ruined in mind and body, only the semblance of a human being, bereft of sense, lower than a beast in many respects, a human being hopelessly lost to himself and to the world!--oh, most terrible thought!--yet once pure, intelligent, active, perhaps the hope of a fond mother, the pride of a doting father, and possibly possessed of natural ability to become greatly distinguished in some of the many noble and useful walks of life; now sunk below the brute through the degrading, destroying influence of a lustful gratification. boys, are you guilty of this terrible sin? have you even once in this way yielded to the tempter's voice? stop, consider, think of the awful results, repent, confess to god, reform. another step in that direction and you may be lost, soul and body. you cannot dally with the tempter. you must escape now or never. don't delay. young dyspeptics.--if we leave out of the consideration the effects of bad food and worse cookery, there is in our estimation no other cause so active in occasioning the early breaking down of the digestive organs of our american boys. a boy of ten or twelve years of age ought to have a stomach capable of digesting anything not absolutely indigestible; but there are to-day thousands and thousands of boys of that age whose stomachs are so impaired as to be incapable of digesting any but the most simple food. the digestion being ruined, the teeth soon follow suit. hardly one boy in a dozen has perfectly sound teeth. with a bad stomach and bad teeth, a foundation for disease is laid which is sure to result in early decay of the whole body. in this awful vice do we find a cause, too, for the thousands of cases of consumption in young men. at the very time when they ought to be in their prime, they break down in health and become helpless invalids for life, or speedily sink into an early grave. upon their tombstones might justly be graven, "here lies a self-murderer." providence is not to blame; nor is climate, weather, overwork, overstudy, or any other even seemingly plausible cause, to be blamed. their own sins have sunk them in mental, moral, and physical perdition. such a victim literally dies by his own hand, a veritable suicide. appalling thought! it is a grand thing to die for one's principles, a martyr to his love of right and truth. one may die blameless who is the victim of some dire contagious malady which he could not avoid; even the poor, downcast misanthrope whose hopes are blighted and whose sorrows multiplied, may possibly be in some degree excused for wishing to end his misery with his life; but the wretched being who sheds his life-blood by the disgusting maneuvers of self-pollution--what can be said to extenuate _his_ guilt? his is a double crime. let him pass from the memory of his fellow-men. he will perish, overwhelmed with his own vileness. let him die, and return to the dust from which he sprang. the race ruined by boys.--the human race is growing steadily weaker year by year. the boys of to-day would be no match in physical strength for the sturdy youths of a century ago who are now their grandparents. an immense amount of skillful training enables now and then one to accomplish some wonderful feat of walking, rowing, or swimming, but we hear very little of remarkable feats of labor accomplished by our modern boys. even the country boys of to-day cannot endure the hard work which their fathers accomplished at the same age; and we doubt not that this growing physical weakness is one of the reasons why so large a share of the boys whose fathers are farmers, and who have been reared on farms, are unwilling to follow the occupation of their fathers for a livelihood. they are too weakly to do the work required by an agricultural life, even by the aid of the numerous labor-saving inventions of the age. what is it that is undermining the health of the race and sapping the constitutions of our american men? no doubt much may be attributed to the unnatural refinements of civilization in several directions; but there can be no doubt that vice is the most active cause of all. secret sin and its kindred vices yearly ruin more constitutions than hard work, severe study, hunger, cold, privation, and disease combined. boys, the destiny of the race is in your hands. you can do more than all the doctors, all the scientists and most eminent political men in the world, to secure the prosperity and future greatness of the nation, by taking care of yourselves, by being pure, noble, true to yourselves and to the demands of high moral principle. cases illustrating the effects of self-abuse.--the land is full of poor human wrecks who have dashed in pieces their hopes for this world, and too often for the next also, against this hideous rock which lies hidden in the pathway of every young man who starts out upon life's stormy voyage. gladly would we draw the veil and cover them with all their dreadful deformities with the mantle of charity from the gaze of their fellow-beings; but their number is so great that this could scarcely be done, and the lesson to be learned from their sad fate is such a grave one, and so needful for the good of the generation of young men who are just encountering the same dangers, that we cannot resist the promptings of duty to present a few examples of the effects of vice in men and boys that have fallen under our own observation. we have seen hundreds of cases of this sort; have treated many scores of persons for the effects of the terrible crime which we are seeking to sound a warning against, and the number of cases we might describe would fill a volume; but we will select only a very few. two young wrecks.--charles and oscar b---- were the sons of a farmer in a western state, aged respectively ten and twelve years. they possessed well-formed heads, and once had beautiful faces, and were as bright and sprightly as any little boys of their age to be found anywhere. their father was proud of them, and their fond mother took great pleasure in building bright prospects for her darling sons when they should attain maturity and become competent to fill useful and honorable positions in the world. living in a rapidly-growing western community, they had every prospect of growing up to honorable usefulness, a comfort to their parents, a blessing to the world, and capable of enjoying life in the highest degree. but suddenly certain manifestations appeared which gave rise to grave apprehensions on the part of the parents. it was observed that the elder of the little boys no longer played about with that nimbleness which he had formerly shown, but seemed slow and stiff in his movements. sometimes, indeed, he would stagger a little when he walked. soon, also, his speech became affected in some degree; he mumbled his words and could not speak distinctly. in spite of all that could be done, the disease continued, increasing slowly in all its symptoms from week to week. soon the hands, also, became affected, so that the little boy could not feed himself. the mind now began to fail. the bright eyes became vacant and expressionless. instead of the merry light which used to shine in them, there was a blank, idiotic stare. imagine the grief and anguish of the poor mother! no one but a mother who has been called to pass through a similar trial could know how to sympathize with such a one. her darling son she saw daily becoming a prey to a strange, incurable malady, with no power even to stay the progress of the terrible disease. but there was still greater grief in store for her. within a year or two the younger son began to show symptoms of the same character, and in spite of all that was done, rapidly sank into the same helpless state as his brother. as a last resort, the mother took her boys and came a long journey to place her sons under our care. at that time they were both nearly helpless. neither could walk but a few steps. they reeled and staggered about like drunken men, falling down upon each other and going through the most agonizing contortions in their attempts to work their way from one chair to another and thus about the room. their heads were no longer erect, but drooped like wilted flowers. on their faces was a blank, imbecile expression, with a few traces of former intelligence still left. the mouth was open, from the drooping of the lower jaw, and the saliva constantly dribbled upon the clothing. altogether, it was a spectacle which one does not care to meet every day; the impression made was too harrowing to be pleasant even from its interest from a scientific point of view. we at once set to work to discover the cause of this dreadful condition, saying to ourselves that such an awful punishment should certainly be the result of some gross violation of nature's laws somewhere. the most careful scrutiny of the history of the parents of the unfortunate lads gave us no clue to anything of an hereditary character, both parents having come of good families, and having been always of sober, temperate habits. the father had used neither liquor nor tobacco in any form. the mother could give no light on the matter, and we were obliged to rest for the time being upon the conviction which fastened itself upon us that the cases before us were most marked illustrations of the results of self-abuse begun at a very early age. the mother thought it impossible that our suspicions could be correct, saying that she had watched her sons with jealous care from earliest infancy and had seen no indications of any error of the sort. but we had not long to wait for confirmation of our view of the case, as they were soon caught in the act, to which it was found that they were greatly addicted, and the mystery was wholly solved. every possible remedy was used to check the terrible disease which was preying upon the unfortunate boys, but in vain. at times the symptoms would be somewhat mitigated, and the most sanguine hopes of the fond, watching mother would be excited, but in vain. the improvement always proved to be but temporary, and the poor sufferers would speedily relapse into the same dreadful condition again, and gradually grew worse. at last, the poor mother was obliged to give up all hope, in utter despair watching the daily advances of the awful malady which inch by inch destroyed the life, the humanity, the very mind and soul of her once promising sons. sadly she took them back to her western home, there to see them suffer, perhaps for years before death should kindly release them, the terrible penalty of sin committed almost before they had arrived at years of responsibility. how these mere infants learned the vice we were never able to determine. we have no doubt that opportunities sufficient were presented them, as the parents seemed to have very little appreciation of danger from this source. had greater vigilance been exercised, we doubt not that the discovery of the vice at the beginning would have resulted in the salvation of these two beautiful boys, who were sacrificed upon the altar of concupiscence. two or three years after we first saw the cases, we heard from them, and though still alive, their condition was almost too horrible for description. three or four similar cases have come to our knowledge. boys, are you guilty? think of the fearful fate of these boys, once as joyous and healthy as you. when you are tempted to sin, think of the fearful picture of the effects of sin which they present. have you ever once dared to commit this awful sin? stop, never dare to do the thing again. take a solemn vow before god to be pure. your fate may be as sad, your punishment as terrible. no one can tell what the results may be. absolute purity is the only safe course. a prodigal youth.--a. m., son of a gentleman of wealth in ohio, early acquired the evil practice which has ruined so many bright lads. he was naturally an intelligent and prepossessing lad, and his father gave him as good an education as he could be induced to acquire, affording him most excellent opportunities for study and improvement. but the vile habit which had been acquired at an early age speedily began its blighting influence. it destroyed his taste for study and culture. his mind dwelt upon low and vile subjects. he grew restless of home restraint and surroundings, and finally left the parental roof. wandering from city to city he grew rapidly worse, sinking into deeper depths of vice, until finally he became a base, besotted, wretched creature. broken down in health by his sins, he could no longer enjoy even the worst sensual pleasures, and with no taste for or capability of appreciating anything higher he was most wretched indeed. the poor fellow now fell into the hands of quacks. his kind father sent him money in answer to his pitiful appeals for help, and he went anxiously from one to another of the wretched villains who promise relief to such sufferers but only rob them of their money and leave them worse than before. at last, in total despair of everything else, the poor fellow came to us. he seemed quite broken-hearted and penitent for his sins, and really appeared to want to lead a better life if he could only be made well again. we faithfully pointed out to him the dreadful wickedness of his course, and the fact that a cure could only be effected by the most implicit obedience to all of nature's laws during his whole future life. indeed, we were obliged to inform him of the sad fact that he could never be as well as before, that he must always suffer in consequence of his dreadful course of transgression. we gave him a most earnest exhortation to begin the work of reform where alone it could be effectual, by reforming his heart, and the tears which coursed down his sin-scarred cheeks seemed to indicate true penitence and a real desire to return to the paths of purity and peace. earnestly we labored for this young man, for months, employing every means in our power to lift him from the slough of sin and vice upon the solid pathway of virtue and purity again. gradually the hard lines on his face seemed to lessen in intensity. the traces of vice and crime seemed to be fading out by degrees. we began to entertain hopes of his ultimate recovery. but alas! in an evil moment, through the influence of bad companions, he fell, and for some time we lost sight of him. a long time afterward we caught a glimpse of his bloated, sin-stained face, just as he was turning to skulk away to avoid recognition. where this poor human wreck is now leading his miserable existence we cannot say, but have no doubt he is haunting the dens of iniquity and sin in the cities, seeking to find a little momentary pleasure in the gratification of his appetites and passions. a hopeless wreck, with the lines of vice and crime drawn all over his tell-tale countenance, he dares not go home, for he fears to meet the reproachful glance of his doting mother, and the scornful looks of his brothers and sisters. we never saw a more thoroughly unhappy creature. he is fully conscious of his condition; he sees himself to be a wreck, in mind, in body, and knows that he is doomed to suffer still more in consequence of his vices. he has no hope for this world or the next. his mother gave him earnest, pious instructions, which he has never forgotten, though he has long tried to smother them. he now looks forward with terror to the fate which he well knows awaits all evil-doers, and shudders at the thought, but seems powerless to enter the only avenue which affords a chance of escape. he is so tormented with the pains and diseased conditions which he has brought upon himself by vice that he often looks to self-destruction as a grateful means of escape; but then comes the awful foreboding of future punishment, and his hand is stayed. ashamed to meet his friends, afraid to meet his maker, he wanders about, an exile, an outcast, a hopeless wreck. young man, youth, have you taken the first step on this evil road? if so, take warning by the fate of this young man. at once "cease to do evil and learn to do well," before, like him, you lose the power to do right, before your will is paralyzed by sin so that when you desire to do right, to reform, your will and power to execute your good determinations will fail to support your effort. barely escaped.--l. r. of h----, a young man of about twenty-five years of age, presented himself for treatment, a few years ago, for the consequence of self-abuse. having been taught the habit by evil companions when just emerging into manhood, he had indulged his passions without restraint for several years, not knowing the evil consequences until he began to suffer the effects of sin. then, being warned by his own experience and by the fortunate thoughtfulness of an intelligent friend who surmised his condition and told him faithfully of the terrible results of the vile habit, he made a manly effort to reform and claimed to have wholly broken the habit. to his great grief he found, however, that the years in which he had devoted himself to sin had wrought sad havoc in his system. in many ways his health was greatly deranged and his once powerful constitution was broken down. the sexual organs themselves were greatly diseased, so much so that a serious and painful surgical operation was necessary. with shame and mortification he looked upon his past life and saw what a hideous work of evil he had wrought. his vileness stood out before him in a vivid light, and he felt ashamed to meet the gaze of his fellows. after performing the necessary surgical operation upon this poor unfortunate, we dealt faithfully with him, pointing out to him the way by which he might with proper effort in some degree redeem himself by a life-long struggle against every form of impurity. he felt, and rightly, that the task was a most severe one. he well knew that the stamp of sin was on his countenance, and in his mind. thoughts long allowed to run upon vile subjects, forming filthy pictures in the imagination, are not easily brought back to the channel of purity and virtue. the mind that has learned to love to riot in impure dreams, does not readily acquire a love for the opposite. but he determined to make a brave and earnest effort, and we have every reason to believe that he has, in a measure at least, succeeded. but, if so, he has made a narrow escape. a few more years of sin, and his rescue would have been impossible; both mind and body would have been sunk so deep in the mire of concupiscence that none but almighty power could have saved him from utter destruction. thousands of boys and young men are to-day standing on the slippery brink of that awful precipice from which but very few are snatched away. soon they will plunge headlong over into the abyss of debasement and corruption from whence they will never escape. oh that we had the power to reach each one of these unfortunate youth before it is too late, and to utter in their ears such warnings, to portray before them such pictures of the sure results of a course of sin, that they might be turned back to the paths of chastity and virtue before they have become such mental, moral, and physical wrecks as we every day encounter in the walks of life. but not one in a thousand can be reached when they have gone so far in sin. when they have ventured once, they can rarely be checked in their downward course until great harm has been wrought which it will require the work of years to undo. the young man we have referred to made indeed a narrow escape, but no one can safely run such a risk. even he must suffer all his life the consequences of a few years of sin. a lost soul.--m. m., of ----, was the son of a mechanic in humble circumstances. he was an only child, and his parents spared no pains to do all in their power to insure his becoming a good and useful man. good school advantages were given him, and at a proper age he was put to learn a trade. he succeeded fairly, and their hopes of his becoming all that they could desire were great, when he suddenly began to manifest peculiar symptoms. he had attended a religious revival and seemed much affected, professing religion and becoming a member of a church. to the exercises of his mind on the subject of religion his friends attributed his peculiar actions, which soon became so strange as to excite grave fears that his mind was seriously affected. at times he was wild, showing such unmistakable evidences of insanity that even his poor mother, who was loth to believe the sad truth, was forced to admit that he was deranged. after a few months a change came over him which encouraged his friends to think that he was recovering. he became quiet and tractable, never manifesting the furious symptoms before observed. but the deception was only temporary, for it was soon evident that the change was simply the result of the progress of the disease and denoted the failure of the mental powers and the approach of imbecility. in this condition was the young man when he came under our care. we felt strongly impressed from our first examination of the case that it was one of sexual abuse; but we were assured by his friends in the most emphatic manner that such was an impossibility. it was claimed that the most scrupulous care had been bestowed upon him, and that he had been so closely watched that it was impossible that he should have been guilty of so gross a vice. his friends were disposed to attribute his sad condition to excessive exercise of mind upon religious subjects. not satisfied with this view of the case, we set a close watch upon him, and within a week his nurse reported that he had detected him in the act of self-pollution, when he confessed the truth, not yet being so utterly devoid of sense as to have lost his appreciation of the sinfulness of the act. when discovered, he exclaimed, "i know i have made myself a fool," which was the exact truth. at this time the once bright and intelligent youth had become so obtuse and stupid that he appeared almost senseless. his face wore an idiotic expression which was rarely lighted up by a look of intelligence. it was only by the greatest exertion that he could be made to understand or to respond when spoken to. in whatever position he was placed, whether lying, sitting, or standing, no matter how constrained or painful, he would remain for hours, staring vacantly, and fixed and immovable as a statue. his countenance was blank and expressionless except at rare intervals. his lips were always parted, and the saliva ran from the corners of his mouth down upon his clothing. the calls of nature were responded to involuntarily, soiling constantly his clothing and bedding in a most disgusting manner, and requiring the constant attention of a nurse to keep him in anything like a wholesome condition. we did what we could to relieve this poor victim of unhallowed lust, but soon became convinced that no human arm could save from utter ruin this self-destroyed soul. at our suggestion the young man was removed to be placed in an institution devoted to the care of imbeciles and lunatics. the last we heard of the poor fellow he was still sinking into lower depths of physical and mental degradation,--a soul utterly lost and ruined. how many thousands of young men who might have been useful members of society, lawyers, clergymen, statesmen, scientists, have thus sunk into the foul depths of the quagmire of vice, to rise no more forever! oh, awful fate! the human eye never rests upon a sadder sight than a ruined soul, a mind shattered and debased by vice. the results of one transgression.--the following case is a good illustration of the fact that a long course of transgression is not necessary to occasion the most serious results. a young man from an eastern state who visited us for treatment was suffering with the usual consequences of self-abuse, but he asserted in the most emphatic manner that he had never committed the act of self-pollution but once in his life. he had, however, after that one vile act, allowed his mind to run upon vile thoughts, giving loose rein to his imagination, and in consequence he found himself as badly off, suffering with the very same disorders, as those who had practiced the vice for some time. not the slightest dallying with sin is safe. the maintenance of perfect purity and chastity of body and mind is the only right and safe course. by a few months' treatment the young man recovered his health in a great measure, and, marrying an estimable young lady, settled down happily in life. many tears of remorse and repentance did he shed over that one sinful act, and bitterly did he reproach the evil companion who taught him to sin; but he was fortunate enough to escape without suffering the worst effects of sin, and is now living happily. a hospital case.--one of the most wretched creatures we ever saw among the many sufferers from sexual excesses whom we have met, was a man of about thirty years of age whom we found in the large charity hospital on blackwell's island, new york city. in consequence of long indulgence in the soul-and-body destroying habit, he had brought upon himself not only the most serious and painful disease of the sexual organs themselves, but disease of the bladder and other adjacent organs. he was under severe and painful treatment for a long time without benefit, and finally a surgical operation was performed, but with the result of affording only partial relief. an old offender.--never were we more astonished than at the depth of depravity revealed to us by the confessions of a patient from a distant country who was upwards of sixty years of age and was yet a victim of the vile habit to which he had become addicted when a youth. the stamp of vice was on his face, and was not hidden by the lines made by advancing age. the sufferings which this ancient sinner endured daily in consequence of his long course of sin were sometimes fearful to behold; and yet he continued the habit in spite of all warnings, advice, and every influence which could be brought to bear upon him. so long had he transgressed, he had lost his sense of shame and his appreciation of the vileness of sin, and it was impossible to reform him by any means which could be brought to bear upon him. he left us still a sufferer, though somewhat relieved, and, we have every reason to believe, as vile a sinner as ever. undoubtedly, before this time his worthless life is ended, and he has gone down into a sinner's grave, hoary with vice. a terrible end. the sad end of a young victim.--c. l., a young man residing in a large southern city, was the youngest son of parents who were in moderate circumstances, but appreciated the value of education, and were anxious to give their children every advantage possible for them to receive. with this end in view, the young man was sent to college, where he did well for a time, being naturally studious and intelligent; but after a brief period he began to drop behind his classes. he seemed moody and obtuse. he could not complete his tasks even by the most severe application. it seemed impossible for him to apply himself. the power of concentration appeared to be lost. soon he was seized by fits of gloominess from which he did not seem to have power to free himself. his strength began to fail to such a degree that he could hardly drag himself to his meals, and at last he was almost confined to his room. he became greatly emaciated. the failure of his mental powers seemed to keep pace with the wasting of his body, so that it was soon evident that he must abandon all hope of pursuing his studies for some time at least. his case being brought to our notice, we gave him every attention possible, and spared no effort to rescue him from his condition. we readily perceived the cause of his troubles, but for a long time he did not acknowledge the truth. at last he confessed that he had sinned for years in the manner suspected, and was suffering the consequences. a knowledge of his guilt weighed upon him and haunted him day and night. he promised to reform; but if he did, it was too late, for the wasting disease which was fastened upon him continued. at his mother's request he returned to his home, and a few weeks later we received the awful intelligence that he had ended his miserable life by blowing out his brains with a pistol. thus tragically ended the career of this young man, who might, with the advantages afforded him, have become a useful member of society. in total despair of this life or the next, he rashly ended his probation, and with his own hand finished the work of destruction which he had himself begun. no words can tell the grief of his stricken mother; but, fortunately, she was spared the knowledge of the whole truth, else would her sorrow have been too great to bear. from bad to worse.--c. e., a young man from the west, was sent to us by his father with the request that we would do what we could to save him. his father's letter intimated that the son had been a source of grief to him, but he hoped that he had repented of his prodigal course, and was really determined to reform. though scarcely more than twenty years of age, the young man's face wore an aspect of hardness, from familiarity with vice, that we have rarely seen. he was reduced to a mere skeleton by the vice which he made no secret of, and was so weak that he could scarcely walk a rod. it seemed as if every organ in his body was diseased, and that he had so squandered his vital resources that he had no power to rally from his wretched condition even should he carry out the determination to reform which he announced. however, we gave him the best counsel and advice within our power, and placed him under treatment. after a few weeks it was evident that nature was still willing to respond to his endeavors to reform, by vigorous efforts to restore him to a condition of comparative health. thus he was snatched, as it appeared, from the very jaws of death. under these circumstances it would seem that the most hardened criminal would reform, at least for a season, and lead a life of rectitude; but so utterly depraved was this poor wretch that no sooner did he find that he was not liable to die immediately than he began at once again his career of sin. by long indulgence his moral sense had become, apparently, obliterated. he seemed to be utterly without the restraint imposed by conscience. in less than a month he was detected in the crime of theft, having stolen a watch from a fellow-patient. upon his arrest, stimulated by the hope of in some degree mitigating his punishment, he confessed to have been carrying on a series of petty thieving for weeks before he was finally detected, having scores of stolen articles in his possession. the last time we saw the wretched fellow he was being led away in irons to prison. we have since heard that he continues in his downward career, having served out his time in prison, and will undoubtedly end his life in a felon's cell unless he is shrewd enough to escape his just deserts. having lost all desire to do right, to be noble, pure, and good, all efforts to reform and restore him to the path of rectitude were fruitless. it was only the fear of impending death that caused him to pause for a few days in his criminal course. young man, take warning by this sad case; enter not the pathway of vice. a course of vice once entered upon is not easily left. a youth who once gives himself up to sin, rarely escapes from going headlong to destruction. an indignant father.--a case came to our knowledge through a gentleman who brought his daughter to us for treatment for the effects of self-abuse, of a father who adopted a summary method of curing his son of the evil practice. having discovered that the lad was a victim of the vile habit, and having done all in his power by punishment, threats, and representations of its terrible effects, but without inducing him to reform, the father, in a fit of desperation, seized the sinful boy and with his own hand performed upon him the operation of castration as he would have done upon a colt. the boy recovered from the operation, and was of course effectually cured of his vile habit. the remedy was efficient, though scarcely justifiable. even a father has no right thus to mutilate his own son, though we must confess that the lad's chances for becoming a useful man are fully as good as they would have been had he continued his course of sin. disgusted with life.--t. a. was a young man of promise, the son of ambitious parents, proud-spirited, and without respect for religion. while still quite young he enlisted in the service of the government, and after a time rose to the position of an officer in the u. s. army. having in boyhood acquired the habit of self-abuse, he had stimulated his passions without restraint, and was readily led still farther astray by the evil companions with whom he was surrounded. he indulged his passions in every way and on every occasion when he found opportunity, and speedily began to feel the effects of his vices. before he was fully aware of his condition, he found himself being literally devoured by the vilest of all diseases, which only those who transgress in this manner suffer. the disease made rapid advances and speedily reduced him to a condition of almost absolute helplessness. he was obliged to obtain a furlough; but his vital forces were so nearly exhausted that he did not rally even under skillful treatment; and when his furlough expired, he was still in the same pitiable condition. getting it extended for a time, he by accident came under our care, and by the aid of very thorough treatment he was in a measure improved, though the progress of the disease was simply stayed. when apprized of his real condition, he exhibited much agitation, walking nervously about his room, and finally exclaimed that he was utterly disgusted with life anyway, and after a few weeks or months more of suffering he should blow his brains out and end his misery. he had no fears of death, he said, and we presume that he could not imagine it possible that there was any greater suffering in store for him than he already endured. we pitied the poor fellow from the bottom of our heart. he had natural qualities which ought to have made him distinguished. he might have risen high in the world of usefulness. now he was compelled to look back upon a short life of squandered opportunities, a pathway stained with vice, memories of vile debaucheries which had wasted his youth and broken his constitution. wretched was he indeed. notwithstanding his vileness he was not lost to shame, for his greatest fear was that his friends might ascertain the real cause of his sufferings, to conceal which he was obliged to resort to all sorts of subterfuges. as soon as he was able to travel he left us, being obliged to report to his superior officers, and we have heard nothing of him since. scores of similar cases we might recount in detail, but we have not here the space. these will suffice to give to the young reader an idea of the terrible results of this awful vice which are suffered by its victims. we have not dared to portray on these pages one-half the misery and wretchedness which we have seen as the results of self-abuse and the vices to which it leads. the picture is too terrible for young eyes to behold. we most sincerely hope that none of our readers will ever have to suffer as we have seen boys and young men do, languishing in misery as the result of their own transgressions of the laws of chastity. we will now devote the remaining pages of this chapter to the consideration of some of the causes of the vice, the avenues that lead to the awful sin which we are considering, and the terrible consequences which attend it. bad company.--the influence of evil companionship is one of the most powerful agents for evil against which those who love purity and are seeking to elevate and benefit their fellow-men have to contend. a bad boy can do more harm in a community than can be counteracted by all the clergymen, sabbath-school teachers, tract-distributers, and other christian workers combined. an evil boy is a pest compared with which the cholera, small-pox, and even the plague, are nothing. the damage which would be done by a terrific hurricane sweeping with destructive force through a thickly settled district is insignificant compared with the evil work which may be accomplished by one vicious lad. no community is free from these vipers, these agents of the arch-fiend. every school, no matter how select it may be, contains a greater or less number of these young moral lepers. often they pursue their work unsuspected by the good and pure, who do not dream of the vileness pent up in the young brains which have not yet learned the multiplication table and scarcely learned to read. we have known instances in which a boy of seven or eight years of age has implanted the venom of vice in the hearts and minds of half a score of pure-minded lads within a few days of his first association with them. this vice spreads like wild-fire. it is more "catching" than the most contagious disease, and more tenacious, when once implanted, than the leprosy. boys are easily influenced either for right or for wrong, but especially for the wrong; hence it is the duty of parents to select good companions for their children, and it is the duty of children to avoid bad company as they would avoid carrion or the most loathsome object. a boy with a match box in a powder magazine would be in no greater danger than in the company of most of the lads who attend our public schools and play upon the streets. it is astonishing how early children, especially boys, will sometimes learn the hideous, shameless tricks of vice which yearly lead thousands down to everlasting death. often children begin their course of sin while yet cradled in their mother's arms, thus early taught by some vile nurse. boys that fight and swear, that play upon the streets and disobey their parents, may be wisely shunned as unfit for associates. in many instances, too, boys whose conduct is in other respects wholly faultless sometimes indulge in vice, ignorant of its real nature and consequences. at the first intimation of evil on the part of a companion, a boy who is yet pure should flee away as from a deadly serpent or a voracious beast. do not let the desire to gratify a craving curiosity deter you from fleeing at once from the source of contamination. under such circumstances do not hesitate a moment to escape from danger. if an evil word is spoken or an indecent act of any sort indulged in by a companion, cut the acquaintance of such a boy at once. never allow yourself to be alone with him a moment. on no account be induced to associate with him. he will as surely soil and besmear with sin your moral garments as would contact with the most filthy object imaginable your outer garments. it were better for a boy never to see or associate with a lad of his own age than to run any risk of being corrupted before he is old enough to appreciate the terrible enormity of sin and the awful consequences of transgression. it should be recollected also that not only young boys but vicious youths and young men are frequently the instructors in vice. it is unsafe to trust any but those who are known to be pure. bad language.--we have often been astonished at the facility with which children acquire the language of vice. often we have been astounded to hear little boys scarcely out of their cradles, lisping the most horrible oaths and the vilest epithets. the streets and alleys in our large cities, and in smaller ones too in a less degree, are nurseries of vice, in which are reared the criminals that fill our jails, prisons, work-houses, school-ships, and houses of correction. many a lad begins his criminal education by learning the language of vice and sin. at first he simply imitates the evil utterances of others; but soon he learns the full significance of the obscene and filthy language which he hears and repeats, and then he rapidly progresses in the downward road. a boy that indulges in the use of foul language will not long be chaste in acts. it is a safe rule to be followed by those who wish to grow up pure and unsullied by sin, untainted by vice, that those who use bad language are persons to avoid, to keep away from. even those who are well fortified against vice, who have been faithfully warned of its consequences and fully appreciate its dangers, cannot be safely trusted to associate with vile talkers. the use of bad language by old and young is an evil which is of the very greatest moment. it is too often ignored; too little is said about it; far too often it is disregarded as of little consequence, and persons who are really not bad at heart thoughtlessly encourage the evil by listening to and laughing at obscene and ribald jokes, and impure language which ought to make a virtuous man blush with shame to hear. boys, if you want to be pure, if you wish to be loved by a pure mother, an innocent sister, and when you are grown to manhood to be worthy of the confidence of a pure, virtuous wife, keep your lips pure; never let a vile word or an indecent allusion pass them. never, under any circumstances, give utterance to language that you would blush to have your mother overhear. if you find yourself in the company of persons whose language will not bear this test, escape as soon as possible, for you are in danger; your sense of what is right and proper in speech is being vitiated; you are being damaged in a variety of ways. bad books.--a bad book is as bad as an evil companion. in some respects it is even worse than a living teacher of vice, since it may cling to an individual at all times. it may follow him to the secrecy of his bed-chamber, and there poison his mind with the venom of evil. the influence of bad books in making bad boys and men is little appreciated. few are aware how much evil seed is being sown among the young everywhere through the medium of vile books. it is not only the wretched volumes of obscenity of which so many thousands have been seized and destroyed by mr. comstock which are included under the head of bad books, and which corrupt the morals of the young and lead them to enter the road to infamy, but the evil literature which is sold in "dime and nickel novels," and which constitutes the principal part of the contents of such papers as the _police gazette_, the _police news_, and a large proportion of the sensational story books which flood the land, and too many of which find their way into town and circulating libraries and even sunday-school libraries, which are rarely selected with the care that ought to be exercised in the selection of reading matter for the young. bad books often find their way even where evil companions would not intrude; and undoubtedly effect a work of evil almost as great as is wrought by bad associations. look out, boys, for the tempter in this guise. if a companion offers you a book the character of which is suspicious, take it home to your father, your mother, or some reliable older friend, for examination. if it is handed you with an air of secrecy, or if a promise to keep it hidden from others is required, have nothing to do with it. you might better place a coal of fire or a live viper in your bosom than to allow yourself to read such a book. the thoughts that are implanted in the mind in youth will stick there through life, in spite of all efforts to dislodge them. hundreds of men who have been thus injured when young, but have by some providence escaped a life of vice and shame, look back with most intense regret to the early days of childhood, and earnestly wish that the pictures then made in the mind by bad books might be effaced. evil impressions thus formed often torture minds during a whole lifetime. in the most inopportune moments they will intrude themselves. when the individual desires to place his mind undividedly upon sacred and elevated themes, even at the most solemn moments of life, these lewd pictures will sometimes intrude themselves in spite of his efforts to avoid them. it is an awful thing to allow the mind to be thus contaminated; and many a man would give the world, if he possessed it, to be free from the horrible incubus of a defiled imagination. vile pictures.--obscene and lascivious pictures are influences which lead boys astray too important to be unnoticed. evil men, agents of the arch-fiend, have adopted all sorts of devices for putting into the hands of the boys and youths of the rising generation pictures calculated to excite the passions, to lead to vice. thousands of these vile pictures are in circulation throughout the country in spite of the worthy efforts of such philanthropists as mr. anthony comstock and his co-laborers. in almost every large school there are boys who have a supply of these infamous designs and act as agents in scattering the evil contagion among all who come under their influence. under the guise of art, the genius of some of our finest artists is turned to pandering to this base desire for sensuous gratification. the pictures which hang in many of our art galleries that are visited by old and young of both sexes often number in the list views which to those whose thoughts are not well trained to rigid chastity can be only means of evil. a plea may be made for these paintings in the name of art; but we see no necessity for the development of art in this particular direction, when nature presents so many and such varied scenes of loveliness in landscapes, flowers, beautiful birds, and graceful animals, to say nothing of the human form protected by sufficient covering to satisfy the demands of modesty. many of the papers and magazines sold at our news-stands and eagerly sought after by young men and boys are better suited for the parlors of a house of ill-repute than for the eyes of pure-minded youth. a news-dealer who will distribute such vile sheets ought to be dealt with as an educator in vice and crime, an agent of evil, and a recruiting officer for hell and perdition. evil thoughts.--no one can succeed long in keeping himself from vicious acts whose thoughts dwell upon unchaste subjects. only those who are pure in heart will be pure and chaste in action. the mind must be educated to love and dwell upon pure subjects in early life, as by this means only can the foundation be laid for that purity of character which alone will insure purity of life. when the mind once becomes contaminated with evil thoughts, it requires the work of years of earnest effort to purge it from uncleanness. vile thoughts leave scars which even time will not always efface. they soil and deprave the soul, as vile acts do the body. god knows them, if no human being does, and if harbored and cherished they will tell against the character in the day of judgment as surely as will evil words and deeds. influence of other bad habits.--evil practices of any sort which lower the moral tone of an individual, which lessen his appreciation of and love for right and purity and true nobility of soul, encourage the development of vice. a boy who loves purity, who has a keen sense of what is true and right, can never become a vicious man. profanity, falsehood, and deception of every sort, have a tendency in the direction of vice. the use of highly seasoned food, of rich sauces, spices and condiments, sweetmeats, and in fact all kinds of stimulating foods, has an undoubted influence upon the sexual nature of boys, stimulating those organs into too early activity, and occasioning temptations to sin which otherwise would not occur. the use of mustard, pepper, pepper-sauce, spices, rich gravies, and all similar kinds of food, should be carefully avoided by young persons. they are not wholesome for either old or young; but for the young they are absolutely dangerous. the use of beer, wine, hard cider, and tobacco, is especially damaging to boys on this account. these stimulants excite the passions and produce a clamoring for sensual gratification which few boys or young men have the will power or moral courage to resist. tobacco is an especially detrimental agent. the early age at which boys now begin the use of tobacco may be one of the reasons why the practice of secret vice is becoming so terribly common among boys and young men. we never think a boy or young man who uses tobacco safe from the commission of some vile act. the use of tea and coffee by boys is also a practice which should be interdicted. all wise physicians forbid the use of these narcotic drinks, together with that of tobacco, and always with benefit to those who abstain. in france the government has made a law forbidding the use of tobacco by students in the public schools. in germany a still more stringent law has been made, which forbids the use of tobacco by boys and young men. these laws have been made on account of the serious injury which was evidently resulting from the use of the filthy weed to both the health and the morals of the young men of those countries. there is certainly an equal need for such a law in this country. closing advice to boys and young men.--one word more and we must close this chapter, which we hope has been read with care by those for whom it is especially written. let every boy who peruses these pages remember that the facts here stated are true. every word we have verified, and we have not written one-half that might be said upon this subject. let the boy who is still pure, who has never defiled himself with vice, firmly resolve that with the help of god he will maintain a pure and virtuous character. it is much easier to preserve purity than to get free from the taint of sin after having been once defiled. let the boy who has already fallen into evil ways, who has been taught the vile practice the consequences of which we have endeavored to describe, and who is already in the downward road,--let him resolve now to break the chain of sin, to reform at once, and to renounce his evil practice forever. the least hesitancy, the slightest dalliance with the demon vice, and the poor victim will be lost. now, this moment, is the time to reform. seek purity of mind and heart. banish evil thoughts and shun evil companions; then with earnest prayer to god wage a determined battle for purity and chastity until the victory is wholly won. one of the greatest safeguards for a boy is implicit trust and confidence in his parents. let him go to them with all his queries instead of to some older boyish friend. if all boys would do this, an immense amount of evil would be prevented. when tempted to sin, boys, think first of the vileness and wickedness of the act; think that god and pure angels behold every act, and even know every thought. nothing is hid from their eyes. think then of the awful results of this terrible sin, and fly from temptation as from a burning house. send up a prayer to god to deliver you from temptation, and you will not fall. every battle manfully and successfully fought will add new strength to your resolution and force to your character. gaining such victories from day to day you will grow up to be a pure, noble, useful man, the grandest work of god, and will live a happy, virtuous life yourself, and add to the happiness of those around you. a chapter for girls. we have written this chapter especially for girls, and we sincerely hope that many will read it with an earnest desire to be benefited by so doing. the subject of which we have to write is a delicate one, and one which, we regret exceedingly, needs to be written about. but our experience as a physician has proven to us again and again that it is of the utmost importance that something be said, that words of warning should be addressed particularly to the girls and maidens just emerging into womanhood, on a subject which vitally concerns not only their own future health and happiness, but the prosperity and destiny of the race. probably no one can be better fitted to speak on this subject than the physician. a physician who has given careful attention to the health and the causes of ill-health of ladies, and who has had opportunities for observing the baneful influence exerted upon the bodies and minds of girls and young women by the evil practices of which it is our purpose here to speak, can better appreciate than can others the magnitude of the evil, and is better prepared to speak upon the subject understandingly and authoritatively. gladly would we shun the task which has been pressed upon us, but which we have long avoided, were it not for the sense of the urgent need of its performance of which our professional experience has thoroughly convinced us. we cannot keep our lips closed when our eyes are witnesses to the fact that thousands of the fairest and best of our girls and maidens are being beguiled into everlasting ruin by a soul-destroying vice which works unseen, and often so insidiously that its results are unperceived until the work of ruin is complete. the nature of our subject necessitates that we should speak plainly, though delicately, and we shall endeavor to make our language comprehensible by any one old enough to be benefited by the perusal of this chapter. we desire that all who read these pages may receive lasting benefit by so doing. the subject is one upon which every girl ought to be informed, and to which she should give serious attention, at least sufficiently long to become intelligent concerning the evils and dangers to which girls are exposed from this source. girlhood.--nothing is so suggestive of innocence and purity as the simple beauty of girlhood when seen in its natural freshness, though too seldom, now-a-days, is it possible to find in our young girls the natural grace and healthy beauty which were common among the little maidens of a quarter of a century ago. the ruddy cheeks and bright eyes and red lips which are indicative of a high degree of healthy vigor are not so often seen to-day among the small girls in our public schools and passing to and fro upon the streets. the pale cheeks, languid eyes, and almost colorless lips which we more often see, indicate weakly constitutions and delicate health, and prophesy a short and suffering life to many. various causes are at work to produce this unfortunate decline; and while we hope that in the larger share of cases, bad diet, improper clothing, confinement in poorly ventilated rooms with too little exercise, and similar causes, are the active agents, we are obliged to recognize the fact that there is in far too many cases another cause, the very mention of which makes us blush with shame that its existence should be possible. but of this we shall speak again presently. real girls are like the just opening buds of beautiful flowers. the beauty and fragrance of the full-blossomed rose scarcely exceed the delicate loveliness of the swelling bud which shows between the sections of its bursting calyx the crimson petals tightly folded beneath. so the true girl possesses in her sphere as high a degree of attractive beauty as she can hope to attain in after-years, though of a different character. but genuine girls are scarce. really natural little girls are almost as scarce as real boys. too many girls begin at a very early age to attempt to imitate the pride and vanity manifested by older girls and young ladies. it is by many supposed that to be ladylike should be the height of the ambition of girls as soon as they are old enough to be taught respecting propriety of behavior, which is understood to mean that they must appear as unnatural as possible in attempting to act like grown-up ladies. many mothers who wish their daughters to be models of perfection, but whose ideas of perfect deportment are exceedingly superficial in character, dress up their little daughters in fine clothing, beautiful to look at, but very far from what is required for health and comfort, and then continually admonish the little ones that they must keep very quiet and "act like little ladies." such a course is a most pernicious one. it fosters pride and vanity, and inculcates an entirely wrong idea of what it is to be ladylike,--to be a true lady, to be true to nature as a girl. such artificial training is damaging alike to mind and body; and it induces a condition of mind and of the physical system which is very conducive to the encouragement of dangerous tendencies. how to develop beauty and loveliness.--all little girls want to be beautiful. girls in general care much more for their appearance than do boys. they have finer tastes, and greater love for whatever is lovely and beautiful. it is a natural desire, and should be encouraged. a pure, innocent, beautiful little girl is the most lovely of all god's creatures. all are not equally beautiful, however, and cannot be; but all may be beautiful to a degree that will render them attractive. let all little girls who want to be pretty, handsome, or good-looking, give attention and we will tell them how. those who are homely should listen especially, for all may become good-looking, though all cannot become remarkably beautiful. first of all, it is necessary that the girl who wishes to be handsome, to be admired, should be good. she must learn to love what is right and true. she must be pure in mind and act. she must be simple in her manners, modest in her deportment, and kind in her ways. second in importance, though scarcely so, is the necessity of health. no girl can long be beautiful without health; and no girl who enjoys perfect health can be really ugly in appearance. a healthy countenance is always attractive. disease wastes the rounded features, bleaches out the roses from the cheeks and the vermilion from the lips. it destroys the luster of the eye and the elasticity of the step. health is essential to beauty. in fact, if we consider goodness as a state of moral health, then health is the one great requisite of beauty. health is obtained and preserved by the observance of those natural laws which the creator has appointed for the government of our bodies. the structure of these bodies we may do well to study for a few moments. the human form divine.--go with us to one of the large cities, and we will show you one of the most marvelous pieces of mechanism ever invented, a triumph of ingenuity, skill, and patient, persevering labor for many years. this wonderful device is a clock which will run more than one hundred years. it is so constructed that it indicates not only the time of day, the day of the month and year, itself making all the necessary changes for leap year, but shows the motions of the earth around the sun, together with the movements and positions of all the other planets, and many other marvelous things. when it strikes at the end of each hour, groups of figures go through a variety of curious movements most closely resembling the appearance and actions of human beings. the maker of this remarkable clock well deserves the almost endless praise which he receives for his skill and patience; for his work is certainly wonderful; but the great clock, with its curious and complicated mechanism, is a coarse and bungling affair when compared with the human body. the clock doubtless contains thousands of delicate wheels and springs, and is constructed with all the skill imaginable; and yet the structure of the human body is infinitely more delicate. the clock has no intelligence; but a human being can hear, see, feel, taste, touch, and think. the clock does only what its maker designed to have it do, and can do nothing else. the human machine is a living mechanism; it can control its own movements, can do as it will, within certain limits. what is very curious indeed, the human machine has the power to mend itself, so that when it needs repairs it is not necessary to send it to a shop for the purpose, but all that is required is to give nature an opportunity and the system repairs itself. a wonderful process.--we have not space to describe all the wonderful mechanism of this human machine, but must notice particularly one of its most curious features, a provision by which other human beings, living machines like itself, are produced. all living creatures possess this power. a single potato placed in the ground becomes a dozen or more, by a process of multiplying. a little seed planted in the earth grows up to be a plant, produces flowers, and from the flowers come other seeds, not one, but often a great many, sometimes hundreds from a single seed. insects, fishes, birds, and all other animals, thus multiply. so do human beings, and in a similar manner. the organs by which this most marvelous process is carried on in plants and animals, including also human beings, are called sexual organs. flowers are the sexual organs of plants. and flowers are always the most fragrant and the most beautiful when they are engaged in this wonderful and curious work. human buds.--a curious animal which lives near the seashore, in shallow water, attached to a rock like a water plant, puts out little buds which grow awhile and then drop off, and after a time become large individuals like the parent, each in turn producing buds like the one from which it grew. human beings are formed by a similar process. human buds are formed by an organ for the purpose possessed only by the female sex, and these, under proper circumstances, develop into infant human beings. the process, though so simply stated, is a marvelously complicated one, which cannot be fully explained here; indeed, it is one of the mysteries which it is beyond the power of human wisdom fully to explain. the production of these human buds is one of the most important and sacred duties of woman. it is through this means that she becomes a mother, which is one of the grandest and noblest functions of womanhood. it is the motherly instinct that causes little girls to show such a fondness for dolls, a perfectly natural feeling which may be encouraged to a moderate degree without injury. how beauty is marred.--as already remarked, mental, moral, and physical health are the requisites for true beauty, and to secure these, obedience to all the laws of health is required. the most beautiful face is soon marred when disease begins its ravages in the body. the most beautiful character is as speedily spoiled by the touch of moral disease, or sin. the face is a mirror of the mind, the character; and a mind full of evil, impure thoughts is certain to show itself in the face in spite of rosy cheeks and dimples, ruby lips and bewitching smiles. the character is written on the face as plainly as the face may be pictured by an artist on canvas. to be more explicit, the girl who disregards the laws of health, who eats bad food, eats at all hours or at unseasonable hours, sits up late at night, attends fashionable parties and indulges in the usual means of dissipation there afforded, dancing, wine, rich suppers, etc., who carefully follows the fashions in her dress, lacing her waist to attain the fashionable degree of slenderness, wearing thin, narrow-toed gaiters with french heels, and insufficiently clothing the limbs in cold weather, and who in like manner neglects to comply with the requirements of health in other important particulars, may be certain that sooner or later, certainly at no distant day, she will become as unattractive and homely as she can wish not to be. girls and young ladies who eat largely of fat meat, rich cakes and pies, confectionery, iced creams, and other dietetic abominations, cannot avoid becoming sallow and hollow-eyed. the cheeks may be ever so plump and rosy, they will certainly lose their freshness and become hollow and thin. chalk and rouge will not hide the defect, for everybody will discover the fraud, and will of course know the reason why it is practiced. a beauty-destroying vice.--but by far the worst enemy of beauty and health of body, mind, and soul, we have not yet mentioned. it is a sin concerning which we would gladly keep silence; but we cannot see so many of our most beautiful and promising girls and young ladies annually being ruined, often for this world and the next alike, without uttering the word of warning needed. as before remarked, the function of maternity, which is the object of the sexual system in woman, when rightly exercised is the most sacred and elevated office which a woman can perform for the world. the woman who is a true mother has an opportunity of doing for the race more than all other human agencies combined. the mother's influence is the controlling influence in the world. the mother molds the character of her children. she can make of their plastic minds almost what she will if she is herself prepared for the work. on the other hand, misuse or abuse of the sexual organism is visited in girls and women, as in boys and men, with the most fearful penalties. nothing will sooner deprive a girl or young lady of the maidenly grace and freshness with which nature blesses woman in her early years than secret vice. we have the greatest difficulty in making ourself believe that it is possible for beings designed by nature to be pure and innocent, in all respects free from impurity of any sort, to become so depraved by sin as to be willing to devote themselves to so vile and filthy a practice. yet the frequency with which cases have come under our observation which clearly indicate the alarming prevalence of the practice, even among girls and young women who would naturally be least suspected, compels us to recognize the fact. the testimony of many eminent physicians whose opportunities for observation have been very extensive shows that the evil is enormously greater than people generally are aware. instructors of the youth, of large experience, assert the same. nor is the evil greater in america than in some other countries. one writer declares that the vice is almost universal among the girls of russia, which may be due to the low condition in which the women of that country are kept. terrible effects of secret vice.--the awful effects of this sin against god and nature, this soul-and-body-destroying vice, become speedily visible in those who are guilty of it. the experienced eye needs no confession on the part of the victim to read the whole story of sinful indulgence and consequent disease. the vice stamps its insignia upon the countenance; it shows itself in the walk, in the changed disposition and the loss of healthy vigor. it is not only impossible for a victim of this sinful practice to hide from the all-seeing eye of god the vileness perpetrated in secret, but it is also useless to attempt to hide from human eyes the awful truth. headache, side-ache, back-ache, pains in the chest, and wandering pains in various parts of the body,--these are but a few of the painful ailments from which girls who are guilty of this sin suffer. many of the tender spines which cause great solicitude on the part of parents and physicians, who fear that disease of the spine is threatening the life of a loved daughter, not infrequently originate in this way. much of the hysteria which renders wretched the lives of thousands of young ladies and the fond friends who are obliged to care for and attend them, arises from sexual transgression of the kind of which we are speaking. the blanched cheeks, hollow, expressionless eyes, and rough, pimply skins of many school-girls are due to this cause alone. we do not mean by this to intimate that every girl who has pimples upon her face is guilty of secret vice; but this sin is undoubtedly a very frequent cause of the unpleasant eruption which so often appears upon the foreheads of both sexes. it would be very unjust, however, to charge a person with the sin unless some further evidence than that of an eruption on the face was afforded. the inability to study, to apply themselves in any way except when stimulated by something of a very exciting character, which many girls exhibit, is in a large proportion of cases due to the practice of which we are writing. often enough the effects which are attributed to overstudy are properly due to this debasing habit. we have little faith in the great outcry made in certain quarters about the damaging effects of study upon the health of young ladies. a far less worthy cause is in many cases the true one, to which is attributable the decline in health at a critical period when all the vital forces of the system are necessarily called into action to introduce the activity of a new function. hundreds of girls break down in health just as they are entering womanhood. at from twelve to eighteen years of age the change naturally occurs which transforms the girl into a woman by the development of functions previously latent. this critical period is one through which every girl in health ought to pass with scarcely any noticeable disturbance; and if during the previous years of life the laws of health were observed, there would seldom be any unusual degree of suffering at this time. those who have before this period been addicted to the vile habit of which we are writing, will almost invariably show at this time evidences of the injury which has been wrought. the unnatural excitement of the organs before the period of puberty, lays the foundation for life-long disease. when that critical epoch arrives, the organs are found in a state of congestion often bordering on inflammation. the increased congestion which naturally occurs at this time in many cases is sufficient to excite most serious disease. here is the beginning of a great many of the special diseases which are the bane and shame of the sex. displacements of various sorts, congestions, neuralgia of the ovaries, leucorrhoea, or whites, and a great variety of kindred maladies, are certain to make their appearance at this period or soon after in those who have previously been guilty of self-abuse. if the evil influences already at work are augmented by tight lacing, improper dressing of the extremities, hanging heavy skirts upon the hips, and fashionable dissipation generally, the worst results are sure to follow, and the individual is certain to be a subject for the doctors for a good portion of her life. a talented writer some time since contributed to a popular magazine an article entitled, "the little health of women," which contained many excellent hints respecting the influences at work to undermine the health and destroy the constitutions of american women; but he did not even hint at this potent cause, which, we firmly believe, is responsible for a far greater share of the local disease and general poor health of girls, young women, and married ladies, than has been generally recognized. these are startling facts, but we are prepared to substantiate them. remote effects.--not all of the effects of the vice appear in girlhood, nor even during early life. not infrequently it is not until the girl has grown up to be a wife and mother that she begins to appreciate fully the harm that has been wrought. at this time, when new demands are made upon the sexual organism, when its proper duties are to be performed, there is a sudden failure; new weaknesses and diseases make their appearance, new pains and sufferings are felt, which no woman who has not in some way seriously transgressed the laws of health will suffer. in not a few instances it is discovered that the individual is wholly unfitted for the duties of maternity. often, indeed, maternity is impossible, the injury resulting from the sins committed being so great as to render the diseased organism incapable of the functions required. in the great majority of cases these peculiar difficulties, morbid conditions, and incapacities are attributed to overwork, overstudy, "taking cold," "getting the feet wet," or some other cause wholly inadequate to account for the diseased conditions present, although in many instances it may be true that some such unfortunate circumstance may be the means of precipitating the effects of previous sin upon organs already relaxed, debilitated, and thus prepared readily to take on disease. causes which lead girls astray.--the predisposing causes of sexual vices have already been dwelt upon so fully in this volume that we shall devote little space to the subject here. we may, however, mention a few of the causes which seem to be most active in leading to the formation of evil habits among girls. vicious companions.--girls are remarkably susceptible to influence by those of their own age. a vicious girl who makes herself agreeable to those with whom she associates can exert more influence over many of her companions than can any number of older persons. even a mother rarely has that influence over her daughter that is maintained by the girl whom she holds as her bosom friend. the close friendships which are often formed between girls of the same age are often highly detrimental in character. each makes a confidant of the other, and thus becomes estranged from the only one competent to give counsel and advice, and the one who of all others is worthy of a young girl's confidence,--her mother. from these unfortunate alliances often arise most deplorable evils. vicious companions not infrequently sow the seeds of evil habits far and wide, contaminating all who come within their influence. whom to avoid.--a girl will always do well to avoid a companion who is vain, idle, silly, or frivolous. girls who have these evil characteristics are very likely to have others also which are worse. a girl who is rude in her manners, careless in her habits, irreverent and disobedient to parents and teachers, is always an unsafe companion. no matter how pretty, witty, stylish, or aristocratic she may be, she should be shunned. her influence will be withering, debasing, wherever felt. a girl may be gay and thoughtless without being vicious; but the chances are ten to one that she will become sinful unless she changes her ways. sentimental books.--the majority of girls love to read, but, unfortunately, the kind of literature of which they are chiefly fond is not of a character which will elevate, refine, or in any way benefit them. story books, romances, love tales, and religious novels constitute the chief part of the reading matter which american young ladies greedily devour. we have known young ladies still in their teens who had read whole libraries of the most exciting novels. the taste for novel-reading is like that for liquor or opium. it is never satiated. it grows with gratification. a confirmed novel-reader is almost as difficult to reform as a confirmed inebriate or opium-eater. the influence upon the mind is most damaging and pernicious. it not only destroys the love for solid, useful reading, but excites the emotions, and in many cases keeps the passions in a perfect fever of excitement. the confessions of young women who were to all appearance the most circumspect in every particular, and whom no one mistrusted to be capable of vile thoughts, have convinced us that this evil is more prevalent than many, even of those who are quite well informed, would be willing to admit. by reading of this kind, many are led to resort to self-abuse for the gratification of passions which over-stimulation has made almost uncontrollable. some have thus been induced to sin who had never been injured by other influences, but discovered the fatal secret themselves. mothers cannot be too careful of the character of the books which their daughters read. every book, magazine, and paper should be carefully scrutinized, unless its character is already well known, before it is allowed to be read. in our opinion, some of the literature which passes as standard, which is often found on parlor center-tables and in family and school libraries, such as chaucer's poems, and other writings of a kindred character, is unfit for perusal by inexperienced and unsophisticated young ladies. some of this literature is actually too vile for any one to read, and if written to-day by any poet of note would cause his works to be committed to the stove and the rag-bag in spite of his reputation. various causes.--bad diet, the use of stimulating and exciting articles of food, late suppers, confectionery and dainties,--all these have a very powerful influence in the wrong direction by exciting functions which ought to be kept as nearly latent as possible. the use of tea and coffee by young ladies cannot be too strongly condemned. improper dress, by causing local congestion, often predisposes to secret vice by occasioning local excitement. probably a greater cause than any of those last mentioned is too great familiarity with the opposite sex. the silly letters which girls sometimes allow themselves to receive from the boys and young men of their acquaintance, and which they encourage by letters of a similar character, must be condemned in the most thorough manner. upon receiving such a letter a pure-minded girl will consider herself insulted; and has just reason for so doing. the childish flirtations which girls and boys sometimes indulge in often lead to evils of a most revolting character. modesty woman's safeguard.--true modesty and maidenly reserve are the best guardians of virtue. the girl who is truly modest, who encourages and allows no improper advances, need have no fear of annoyance from this source. she is equally safe from temptation to sin which may come to her in secret, when no human eye can behold. maidenly modesty is one of the best qualities which any young lady can possess. a young woman who lacks modesty, who manifests boldness of manner and carelessness in deportment, is not only liable to have her virtue assailed by designing and unscrupulous men, but is herself likely to fall before the temptation to indulge in secret sin, which is certain to present itself in some way sooner or later. this invaluable protection is speedily lost by the girl who abandons herself to secret vice. the chances are very great, also, that by degrees her respect for and love of virtue and chastity will diminish until she is open to temptations to indulge in less secret sin; and thus she travels down the road of vice until she finds herself at last an inmate of a brothel or an outcast wanderer, rejected by friends, and lost to virtue, purity, and all that a true woman holds most dear. a few sad cases.--although we do not believe it right to harrow the feelings of those who have sinned and suffered with a rehearsal of sad cases when no good can be accomplished by such accounts, we deem it but just that those who are not yet entangled in the meshes of vice should have an opportunity of knowing the actual results of sin, and profiting by the sad experience of others. it is for this purpose that we shall mention a few cases which have come under our observation, taking care to avoid mentioning any facts which might lead to identification, as the facts we shall use were, many of them, received in strict confidence from those who were glad to unburden their hearts to some one, but had never dared to do so, even to their friends. a pitiful case.--several years ago we received a letter from a young woman in an eastern state in which she described her case as that of an individual who had early become addicted to secret vice and had continued the vile habit until that time, when she was about thirty-two years of age. in spite of the most solemn vows to reform, she still continued the habit, and had become reduced to such a miserable condition that she would almost rather die than live. she sent with her letter photographs representing herself at twenty and at that time, so that we might see the contrast. it was indeed appalling to see what changes sin had wrought. her face, once fair and comely, had become actually haggard with vice. purity, innocence, grace, and modesty were no longer visible there. the hard lines of sin had obliterated every trace of beauty, and produced a most repulsive countenance. though greatly depraved and shattered by sin and consequent disease in body and mind, she still had some desire to be cured, if possible, and made a most pitiful appeal for help to escape from her loathsome condition. we gave her the best counsel we could under the circumstances, and did all in our power to rescue her from her living death; but whether in any degree successful we cannot tell, as we have never heard from the poor creature since. we have often wished since that we might but show those two pictures to every girl who has been tempted to sin in this way, to all who have ever yielded to this awful vice. the terrible contrast would certainly produce an impression which no words can do. we sent them back to their wretched original, however, by her request, and so cannot show the actual pictures; but when any who read these lines are tempted thus to sin we beg them to think of these two pictures, and by forming a vivid image of them in the mind drive away the disposition to do wrong. a mind dethroned.--a young lady who had received every advantage which could be given her by indulgent parents, and who naturally possessed most excellent talents, being a fine musician, and naturally so bright and witty as to be the life of every company in which she moved, suddenly began to show strange symptoms of mental unsoundness. she would sometimes be seized with fits of violence during which it was with great difficulty that she could be controlled. several times she threatened the lives of her nurses, and even on one occasion attempted to execute her threat, the person's life being saved by mere accident. everything was done for her that could be done, but the mania increased to such a degree of violence that she was sent to an asylum for the insane. here she remained for months before she became sufficiently tractable to be taken to her home and cared for by friends. too close application to study was the cause at first assigned for her mental disorder, but a careful investigation of the case revealed the fact that the terrible sin which has ruined the minds of so many promising young men and brilliant young women was the cause that led to the sad result in this case also. the punishment of sin, especially of sexual sins, is indeed terrible; but the sin is a fearful one, and the penalty must be equal to the enormity of the crime. not all young women who indulge thus will become insane, but any one who thus transgresses may be thus punished. there is no safety but in absolute purity. a penitent victim.--a young woman who had been ill for years, and whose physicians had sought in vain to cure her various ailments, until her parents almost despaired of her ever being anything but a helpless invalid, came to us for treatment, resolved upon making a last effort for health. she had grown up in utter ignorance of the laws of health and of the results of the vice of which we are writing; and having been early taught the sin, she had indulged it for a number of years with the result of producing a most terribly diseased condition of the sexual organs, which had baffled the skill of all the physicians who had attended her, none of whom had ever been made acquainted with the true cause of the difficulties. when apprized of the real facts in the case, that she was alone responsible for the sad condition into which she had fallen, her eyes were opened to see the wickedness and vileness of her course. she bitterly bemoaned her past life, and heartily repented of her sins. of the sincerity of her repentance she gave evidence in the earnest efforts which she put forth to help herself. she spared no pains to do well all required on her part, and was soon rewarded by feeling that her diseases were being removed and health was returning. still, she was constantly reminded of her former sins. when the will was off its guard, during sleep, the mind, long indulged in sin, would revert to the old channels and riot in vileness. unchaste dreams made her often dread to sleep, as she awoke from these unconscious lapses enervated, weak, and prostrated as though she had actually transgressed. but though often thus almost disheartened she continued the struggle, and was finally rewarded by gaining a perfect victory over her mind, sleeping as well as waking, and recovering her health sufficiently to enable her to enjoy life and make herself very useful. not a few similar cases have come under our observation; and it seems to us that the pain, anguish, and remorse suffered by these poor victims, ought to be a warning to those who have never entered the sinful road. what a terrible thing it is for a pure and lovely being, designed by god to fulfill a high, holy, and sacred mission in the world, to become a victim to such a filthy vice! no girl of sense would in her right mind raise her hand to dash in pieces a beautiful vase, to destroy a lovely painting, or a beautiful piece of statuary. a girl who would do such a thing would be considered insane and a fit subject for a mad-house. yet is not the human body, a girl's own beautiful, symmetrical form, infinitely better, more valuable and more sacred, than any object produced by human art? there can be but one answer. how, then, is it possible for her thus to defile and destroy herself? is it not a fearful thing? a terrible vice? a ruined girl.--one of the most remarkable cases of disease resulting from self-abuse which ever came under our observation was that of a young lady from a distant western state whose adopted parents, after consulting many different physicians for a peculiar disease of the breast, placed her under our care. we found her a good-looking young woman about seventeen years of age, rather pale and considerably emaciated, very nervous and hysterical, and suffering with severe pain in the left breast, which was swollen to nearly double the natural size, hot, tense, pulsating, and extremely tender to the touch. occasionally she would experience paroxysms in which she apparently suffered extremely, being sometimes semi-conscious, and scarcely breathing for hours. we suspected the cause of these peculiar manifestations at the outset, but every suggestion of the possibility of the suspected cause was met with a stout denial and a very deceptive appearance of innocent ignorance on the subject. all treatment was unavailing to check the disease. though sometimes the symptoms seemed to be controlled, a speedy relapse occurred, so that no progress toward a cure was made. finally our conviction that our first impression respecting the case was correct became so strong that we hesitated no longer to treat it as such. by most vigilant observation we detected evidences of the soul-corrupting vice which we considered unmistakable, and then the young woman who had pretended such profound ignorance of the matter confessed to an extent of wickedness which was perfectly appalling. every paroxysm was traced to an unusual excess of sinful indulgence. so hardened was she by her evil practices that she seemed to feel no remorse, and only promised to reform when threatened with exposure to her parents unless she immediately ceased the vile practice. in less than ten days the mysterious symptoms which had puzzled many physicians disappeared altogether. the swollen, tender breast was no larger than the other, and was so entirely restored that she was able to strike it a full blow without pain. so great was the depravity of this girl, however, that she had no notion of making a permanent reform. she even boasted of her wickedness to a companion, and announced her intention to continue the practice. we sent her home, and apprized her parents of the full facts in the case, for which we received their deepest gratitude, though their hearts were nearly broken with grief at the sad revelation made to them. notwithstanding their most earnest efforts in her behalf, the wretched girl continued her downward career, and a year or two after we learned that she had sunk to the very lowest depths of shame. once this now wretched, disgraced creature was an attractive, pure, innocent little girl. her adopted father lavished upon her numerous presents, and spent hundreds of dollars to obtain her recovery to health. yet through this awful vice she was ruined utterly, and rendered so wholly perverse and bad that she had no desire to be better, no disposition to reform. god only knows what will be her sad end. may none who read these lines ever follow in her footsteps. the danger of boarding-schools.--some years ago a young lady came under our medical care who had suffered for some time from a serious nervous difficulty which had baffled the skill of all the physicians who had had charge of her case, and which occasioned her a great amount of suffering, making it necessary that she should be confined to her bed most of the time, the disease being aggravated by exercise, and the patient having been much weakened by its long continuance. all the remedies usually successful in such cases were employed with little or no effect, and we were feeling somewhat perplexed concerning the case, when the young lady sent for us one day and upon our going to her room in answer to her call she immediately burst into tears and acknowledged that she had been addicted to the habit of self-abuse and that she was still suffering from involuntary excitement during sleep. having been placed in a boarding-school when quite young, she had there learned the vile habit, and had practiced it without knowing anything of the ill effects or really appreciating its sinfulness. when she learned, some years after, that the habit was a most pernicious vice and of a character to bring destruction to both soul and body of one addicted to it, she endeavored to free herself from its shackles; but she found herself too securely bound for escape. it seemed, indeed, an utter impossibility. her thoughts had long been allowed to run in sentimental channels, and now they would do so in spite of the most earnest efforts to the contrary, during her waking hours; and in sleep, while the will power was not active, the imagination would run riot uncontrolled, leaving her, upon awaking, exhausted, enervated, and almost desperate with chagrin. knowing that she was daily suffering for her transgressions, she was filled with remorse and regret, and would have given all to undo the past; but, alas! she could not, and could only suffer with patience until relief could be secured. her love for sentimental literature occasioned another battle for her to fight; for she could scarcely resist the temptation daily offered her to while away some of the weary hours with such stories of love and sentiment as she had been accustomed to enjoy. but she fought the battle earnestly, and finally succeeded in conquering the evil tendencies of her mind both while awake and when asleep; and from that time she began to make slow progress toward recovery. the last we saw of her she was doing well, and hoped in time to arrive at a very comfortable state of health. a desperate case.--a little girl about ten years of age was brought to us by her father, who came with his daughter to have her broken of the vile habit of self-abuse into which she had fallen, having been taught it by a german servant girl. having read an early copy of this work, the father had speedily detected the habit, and had adopted every measure which he could devise to break his child of the destructive vice which she had acquired, but in vain. after applying various other measures without success, it finally became necessary to resort to a surgical operation, by which it is hoped that she was permanently cured, as we have heard nothing to the contrary since, and as the remedy seemed to be effectual. it was a severe remedy, and may seem a harsh one, but every other means utterly failed, and the father insisted upon the performance of the operation as a trial. this little girl, naturally truthful and honest, had, through the influence of this blighting vice, been made crafty and deceptive. she would tell the most astonishing falsehoods to free herself from the charge of guilt or to avoid punishment. the gentleman, her father, felt so deeply upon the subject and was so thoroughly awake to the consequences of the sin, that he declared he would take his daughter away into the wilderness and leave her to die, if need be, rather than allow her to grow up to womanhood with this vile blight upon her, and run the risk of her contaminating with the same vice his other, younger children. he felt so deeply that the tears coursed down his cheeks as he talked, and we were most happy to be of service to him in aiding his daughter to overcome the fascinating vice. she seemed willing to try to help herself, but was unable to break the bonds of sin without the extraordinary help which she received. we might continue this rehearsal of cases to an almost indefinite length, but we must soon bring this chapter to a close. those described are only a few examples of the many we are constantly meeting. none have been overdrawn; much has been omitted for the sake of delicacy which the exposure of the whole truth would have required us to present. we sincerely hope that these examples may be a warning to those who have never marred their purity of character by an unchaste act. to those who may have already sinned in this manner let the words come with double force and meaning. do you value life, health, beauty, honor, virtue, purity? then for the sake of all these, abandon the evil practice at once. do not hesitate for a moment to decide, and do not turn back after deciding to reform. a last word.--girls, as one who has only your best interests in view, and who would do you good, we beg of you to give heed one moment to the important matter which we have been presenting before you. it is of no frivolous character. it is one of the most important subjects to which your attention can be called. only those who are utterly ignorant of the dangers which surround them in the world, or who are already hardened in sin, will treat this matter lightly or scornfully. if you are still pure and possess a character unsoiled by sin, thank god that you have been preserved until now, and humbly petition him to enable you to remain as pure and unsullied as you now are. cultivate all of the heavenly graces. make your dear mother your confidant in all your perplexities and trials. go to her for information on all subjects upon which you find yourself ignorant. let no foreign influence beguile away your confidence from her who is most worthy of your love and respect, and who is best prepared to instruct you on all subjects, no matter how delicate. trust in god for help to resist evil under every guise. flee from temptation under whatever form it may appear. thus may you escape the suffering, the sorrow, and the remorse, which is endured sooner or later by all who enter the road of sin, no matter how short a time they may travel therein. to those who have already fallen, who have been led astray either ignorantly or through weakness in yielding to temptation, we will say, turn from your evil way at once. misery, sorrow, anguish, and everlasting ruin stare you in the face. perdition is before you. you need not think to escape the punishment that others suffer, for there is no way of escape. the penalty will surely come. make haste to return to the paths of purity before it is too late to mend the past. it may take years of pure and upright living to repair the evil already done; but do not hesitate to begin at once. with the help of god, resolve to become pure again. god can cleanse you from all unrighteousness. he can enable you to chase from your mind and heart every impure thought and unclean desire. through his grace you can successfully battle with temptation and redeem the black record of the past. a few words to boys and girls. of the last two preceding chapters one was devoted exclusively to advice and instruction to boys, the other being written expressly for girls. now we have a few words in conclusion for boys and girls together. it is of the greatest importance that our boys and girls should be in every way improved as much as possible. they are to become the men and women of the next generation, when their fathers and mothers have retired from active life. twenty years from to-day the world will be just what the present boys and girls shall make it. boys who are chaste, honest, obedient, and industrious, will become useful and noble men, husbands, and fathers. girls who are pure, innocent, and dutiful, will become honored and lovely women, wives, and mothers. boys and girls are placed in families together, and thus are evidently designed by nature to associate together, to obtain their education and preparation for life together. when secluded wholly from each other's society, both suffer a loss. but while this is true, it is also true that certain evils may and often do grow out of the association of the two sexes of young people, so serious in character that many wise and good men and women have felt that the sexes should be reared and educated apart as much as possible. these evils are the result of too intimate and improper associations of boys and girls. associations of this sort must be most sedulously avoided. boys and girls who are in school together must be extremely careful to avoid too close associations. on all occasions a modest reserve should be maintained in the deportment of the young of both sexes toward each other. too early friendships formed often lead to hasty marriages, before either party is prepared to enter into the married state, and before the judgment has been sufficiently developed to make either capable of selecting a suitable partner for life. these facts are usually learned when it is too late for the information to be of any value. parents and teachers are especially responsible for guarding these early associations and giving timely warning when needed. the youth should always be ready to take advice on this subject, for with their inexperience they cannot know their wants so well as do their elders. nothing is more disgusting to persons of sound sense than youthful flirtations. those misguided persons who encourage these indiscretions in young people do an immense amount of injury to those whom they ought to be prepared to benefit by wise counsel. we have seen promising young people made wretched for life through the influence of one of these mischief-makers, being most unhappily mated, and repenting too late of a hasty marriage for which they were utterly unprepared. young persons often labor under the erroneous impression that in order to be agreeable they must talk "small talk;" this literally means, "silly twaddle," which disgusts everybody, and yet which all seek to imitate. whenever the two sexes meet in society or elsewhere, as at all other times, the conversation should be turned upon subjects of real interest, which admit of the exercise of sound sense and will be a means of culture. such associations do not result in injury to any one, and may be the means of much profit; but nothing is more execrable than the frivolous, silly, often absolutely senseless observations which make up the great bulk of the conversation of young people in fashionable society. the most ready means of disclosing the superficial character of the minds of a large share of the young persons who move in fashionable circles is to introduce some topic requiring depth of thought and sound judgment. such a subject will usually produce either an instant lull in the conversation or a display of ignorance which cannot fail to reveal the shallowness of the speaker's intellect. it is this superficial class of minds that most easily fall victims to a sickly sentimentalism, which readily leads to digressions from the pathway of rigid virtue. a boy who has the elements of true manliness in him will carry a gentlemanly bearing wherever he goes. in all his deportment, and especially in his conduct toward the opposite sex, he will act the gentleman; and the boy whose gentility is genuine will manifest the same kind deference toward his mother and sisters as toward other ladies and girls. so also the young lady who is a lady at heart, will never allow herself to forget the rules of propriety, whether she is in the company of her father and brothers, or that of other gentlemen. all the rules of etiquette are worth little compared with the one simple rule which is applicable to both sexes and all ages,--"have the heart right, and then act natural." one so governed will not go very far astray under any circumstances; but it is of the greatest importance that the heart be right. to make it such is, indeed, the great business of life. "blessed are the pure in heart." index. page. abortion, " results of, accidental pregnancy, adaptation to marriage, advice to boys, advice to girls, advice to boys and girls, afterbirth, amativeness, amaurosis, amenorrhoea, animalcula, ante-natal influences, antediluvian wickedness, bad language, bad company, bad books, " " influence of, " " effects of, balls, demoralizing effect of, beauty, how to develop, beer-drinking by nursing mothers, beer, evil effects of, betrothal of infants, birth, changes at, bladder, irritation of, boarding-schools, danger of, books, bad, " obscene, brain, male and female, breasts, " atrophy of the, breath, causes of foul, "bundling," cancer, cause of, " of the womb, castration, catamenia, causes of unchastity, cells, development of, chastity, chlorosis, , cider, evil effects of, circumcision, , civilization, perverting influence of, classification of living creatures, clitoris, , coitus, colds, how to prevent, colostrum, conception, prevention of, condiments, , conjugal onanism, constipation, consumption, " cause of, , continence, " male, " not injurious, " difficulty of, " helps to, conversation, trifling, copulation, courtship, " evils of, courtships, long, crime, source of, " cause of, criminality hereditary, critical period, a, dancing, day-dreams, desirable qualities, how to produce, development, , " premature, development in higher animals, diet, " influence on chastity, disease, " obscure causes of, diurnal emissions, divorce, loose laws of, dozing, danger of, dreams, " how to control, dress and sensuality, dressing unhealthfully, dress reform, drinks, stimulating, drugs, dwarfs, dysmenorrhoea, dyspepsia, " cause of, early associations, " marriage, " training, " " lack of, " decline, cause of, egypt a hot-bed of vice, electricity, embryo, " simple structure of, " stages of growth of, emissions, effect of, " internal, " nocturnal, endurance of women, epilepsy, " cause of, evil habits, excesses, marital, " results of, " effects of on wives, " effects of on husbands, extra-uterine pregnancy, eyes, weakness of, fallopian tube, false delicacy, " training, fashion, " and vice, fashionable dissipation, fecundation, " in flowers, " modes of, " in fishes, " in reptiles, " in higher animals, " in hermaphrodites, feeling apparatus, females, imperfect, female organs, " organs of flowers, fetus, respiration of, " influenced through the blood, fishes, development in, " fecundation in, filthy dreams, " talkers, flirtation, evils of, " youthful, " childish, flowers, polygamous, " female organs of, " fecundation in, fomentations, foods, stimulating, force, life, functions of life, general debility, generation, laws of, " physiological, " spontaneous, " ancient theory of, gestation, duration of, girlhood, girls, a chapter for, " causes which lead astray, " how ruined, gluttony, habit, power of, health essential to beauty, health hints, , heart disease, heredity, " laws of, " of disease, " of crime, hermaphrodism, hermaphrodites, fecundation in, hip bath, human machine, the, human wrecks, human form, human buds, husbands, improvident, hybrids, hymen, hysteria, , " causes of, , idiocy, " cause of, idleness, ignorance, ill-health of girls, causes of, illustrative cases, imbecility, impotence, , " not produced by continence, infanticide, " among various nations, infant intoxication, infants, betrothal of, insanity, " cause of, , instinct, lessons from, " a safe guide, internal emissions, intestinal worms, juke family, the, labia, the, labor, lacing, law of heredity applied, " of sex, legalized murder, " vice, leucorrhoea, libidinous blood, licentious worship, licentiousness, results of, life, " beginning of, " force, " origin of, " modern modes of, " when it begins, " uterine, literature, poisonous, living beings, love, perverted, lust, effect upon child, male organs, " continence, mammary glands, marriage, , " evils of ill-mated, " effect of late, " experimental, " forbidden, " of cousins, " of criminals, " of paupers, " but not love, " customs of different nations, marital excesses, " rights, masturbation, , " treatment of, " prevention of, " effects in females, " effects on offspring, " self-helps to cure, menopause, the, menorrhagia, menses, menstrual period, duration of, menstruation, " nature of, mental unchastity, " culture, milk, influence of upon children, mind, cause of unbalanced, mormonism, monsters, mock piety, moderation, modesty, mothers, a warning to, " their work, moral contagion, moving apparatus, multiple births, navel, the, nervous diseases, " debility, treatment of, nocturnal emissions, novel-reading, nursing, nutrition, nutritive apparatus, nymphae, the, nymphomania, objects of life, obscene books, obscenity, oneida community, the, organized beings, organization, ovary, ovum, " discharge of, " size of, " expulsion of from ovary, " union of the, with the zoosperm, pangenesis, doctrine of, paralysis, parturition, " painless, passion, inherited, passions, how excited, pedestrianism, pernicious books, influence of, penis, the, , physical differences in sex, piles, pimples, placenta, plants, sex of, pictures, vile, poisonous literature, polyandry, polygamous flowers, polygamy, " defense of, " exposed, " of great men, precocity, " sexual, " indications of, pregnancy, " duration of, " extra-uterine, " indulgence during, premature development, " decay, prevention of conception, priapism, prostate gland, " " enlargement of the, prostitution, " in greece, pruritis, puberty, " premature, " influence of diet on, " changes at, " influence of climate on, pudenda, the, purifying apparatus, quacks, , race degeneration, cause of, religion, help of, religious novels, " insanity, reproduction, , , " elements of, " in polyps, " anatomy of, " curious modes of, " in the honey bee, " in lower animals, reproductive organs, " functions, " apparatus, " elements, union of, reptiles, fecundation in, " development in, respiration in woman, " of the fetus, results of abortion, roman emperors, licentiousness of, satyriasis, scrotum, the, secret vice, " " evidences of, " " prevalence of, " " terrible effects of, self-abuse, , " causes of, , " effects of, " the signs of, " results of, " treatment of, " not a modern vice, " physical causes of, " how to cure the habit of, self-control, self-pollution, self-murder, seminal fluid, the, , senility, senile children, " sexuality, sentimental books, " young women, " literature, influence of, sex, " in plants, " in animals, " law of, " of fetus, sexual differences, " organs of plants, " " of animals, " relations, the, " precocity, " " causes of, " activity, the limit of, shaker views, sitz-baths, sleeping, social lepers, " evil, the, " " causes of the, " " cure of the, solitary vice, " " alarming prevalence of, " " unsuspected cause of, spaying, spermatozoa, " size of, spermatorrhoea, spinal irritation, sterility, stimulants the cause of self-abuse, stricture, suicide, cause of, "tarrying," tea and coffee, " " " bad effects of, testicles, position of, " wasting of, temperaments, thinking apparatus, thoughts, evil, throat disease, cause of, time to marry, tobacco, " evil effects of, " grave charges against, twins, umbilical cord, unchaste conversation, unchastity, causes of, " of the ancients, " physical causes of, unconsidered murders, uterus, uterine life, " douche, " disease, , " gestation, urinary diseases, urethra, the, vagina, the, , varicocele, vegetable husbands, vice legalized, vicious companions, vital force, definition of, " organs of man and woman, vision, dimness of, vulva, the, waltz, the, its sensuality, weak backs, wine, evil effects of, wives, on trial, " sale of, among the russians, woman, servitude of, " her responsibility, woman's rights, women, indian, " hebrew, womb, cancer of the, works by the same author. the home hand-book of domestic hygiene and rational medicine.--this work has met with a most cordial reception everywhere, from both physicians and the 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we want to know why, and we want to do better. we resent being the sport of circumstance and perhaps we are beginning to understand that this instinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes, is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse is indeed "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame." it is not the abnormal or the bizarre that interests most of us to-day. it is not into the by-ways of vice that we seek to penetrate. it is the normal exercise of a normal instinct by normal people that interests us: and it is of this that i have tried to write and speak. the curiosities of depravity are for the physician and the psychologist to discuss and cure. ordinary men and women want first to know how to live ordinary human lives on a higher level and after a nobler pattern than before. they want, i think,--and i want,--to grow up, but to grow rightly, beautifully, humanely. and i believe the first essential is to realize that the sex-problem, as it is called, is the problem of something noble, not something base. it is not a "disagreeable duty" to know our own natures and understand our own instincts: it is a joy. the sex-instinct is not "the fall of man"; neither is it an instance of divine wisdom on which moralists could, if they had only been consulted in time, greatly have improved. it is a thing noble in essence. it is the development of the higher, not the lower, creation. it is the asexual which is the lower, and the sexually differentiated which is the higher organism. in the humbler ranks of being there is no sex, and in a sense no death. the organism is immortal because--strange paradox--it is not yet alive enough to die. but as we pass from the lower to the higher, we pass from the less individual to the more individual; from asexual to sexual. and with this change comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other, and death is the _cost_ of life, and to bring life into the world means sacrifice; and--as we rise higher still--to sustain life means prolonged and altruistic love. this is the history of sex and of procreation, a history associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a history not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth. by what an irony have we come to associate the instinct of sex with all that is bestial and shameful! it has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. i always want to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into contact with sex in some horrible and shameful way. that is one of the greatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it happens to many. boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. the girls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. the boys learn from grimy sources. i was speaking on this subject at one of our great universities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked to me privately. with hardly a single exception they said to me--"our parents told us nothing. we have never heard sex spoken of except in a dirty way." it is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that sex is not a dirty thing. it _can_ only be realized, i think, by remembering that the corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the hideousness of debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the wonder of sex love. this is to me the great teaching of christ about sex. other great religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught contemptuously of our animal nature. "he spake of the temple of his body." that is sublime! that is the whole secret. and that is why vice is horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple. christ, i am told, told us nothing about sex. he did not need to tell us anything but "your body is the temple of the holy spirit." it is my belief that in appealing to an american public i shall be appealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations of the sexes with perfect frankness and with courage. america is still a country of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments, and to risk making mistakes. that is the only spirit in which it is possible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a matter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious, and we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and take the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps ever thought before; yet i believe that we must above all have courage. human nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what is right. the great impulse of sex is part of our very being, and it is not base. passion is essentially noble and those who are incapable of it are the weaker, not the stronger. if then we have light to direct our course, we shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire. such is my creed. my prayer is for "more light." and my desire to take my part in spreading it. a. maude royden. april, . preface to third english edition in the first editions of this book a certain passage on our lord's humanity (see p. ) has, i find, been misunderstood by some. they have supposed it to imply a suggestion that our lord was not only "tempted in all things like as we are"--which i firmly believe--but that he fell--which is to me unthinkable. i hope i have made this perfectly clear in the present edition. beyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very abominable errors of style. the book still bears the impress of the speaker rather than the writer, and as such i must leave it. with regard to the chapter called "common-sense and divorce law reform," which now has been added to this edition, i wish to express my indebtedness to dr. jane walker and the group of "inquirers" over which she presided, for the memorandum on divorce which they drew up and published in the _challenge_, of july, . i am not in complete agreement with their views on all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence i derived my view as a whole. a.m.r. _january_, . foreword chapters i. to vii. of this book were originally given in the form of addresses, in the kensington town hall, on successive sunday evenings in . they were taken down _verbatim_, but have been revised and even to some extent rewritten. i do not like reports in print of things spoken, for speaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is spoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (i refer, of course, to style, not matter.) if i had had time, i should have re-shaped what i have said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance that would have been changed. this has been impossible, and i can therefore only explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that i was speaking--not writing--and that i felt bound to make each address, as far as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself. chapters viii., ix., and x. were added later to meet various difficulties, questions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier part of the book. i desire to record my gratitude to mr. and mrs. douglas sladen, but for whose active help and encouragement i should hardly have proceeded with the book: to miss irene taylor, who, out of personal friendship for me, took down, sunday after sunday, all that i said, with an accuracy which, with a considerable experience of reporters, i have only once known equalled and never surpassed: and to my congregation, whose questions and speeches during the discussion that followed each address greatly helped my work. a. maude royden. _september_, . contents i.--the old problem intensified by the disproportion of the sexes ii.--a solution of the problem of the unmarried iii.--consideration of other solutions of the problem of the disproportion of the sexes iv.--the true basis of morality v.--the moral standard of the future: what should it be? vi.--a plea for light vii.--friendship viii.--misunderstandings ix.--further misunderstandings: the need for sex chivalry x.--"the sin of the bridegroom" xi.--common-sense and divorce law reform i the old problem intensified by the disproportion of the sexes "there has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. that unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man. herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. but for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. she remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." lecky's _history of european morals_, chap. v. one of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the problem of the relations of the sexes. difficult as it has always been, the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave disproportion--an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. and in this country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of about one and three-quarter millions. this accidental and (i believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not "natural" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to certain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the problem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention by sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. it compels us to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of life-long celibacy. there is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. to some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question--on what are your moral standards based? to others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the question has for them no meaning. and between these extremes there are so many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted by men and women. i want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because they are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which is to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify to ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any tradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real needs, the real aspirations of humanity itself. and i begin by calling your attention to the morality of jesus of nazareth, not because he is divine, but because he was a great master of the human heart, and more than others "knew what was in man." you will notice at once the height of his morality--the depth of his mercy. he demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most loyal of his disciples shrank appalled: "whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." ... "whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her." from such a standard christ's disciples shrank--"if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry." and one evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the exception--"saving for the cause of fornication"--feeling that the master _could_ not have meant anything else. but, in fact, there is little doubt that jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity on either side; just as he really taught that a lustful thought was adultery in the sight of god. but if christendom has been staggered at the austerity of christ's morality not less has it been shocked at the quality of his mercy. his gentleness to the sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of his attitude to the sins of the spirit. not the profligate or the harlot but the pharisee and the scribe were those who provoked his sternest rebukes. and perhaps the most characteristic of all his dealings with such matters was that incident of the woman taken in adultery, when he at once reaffirmed the need of absolute chastity for men--demand undreamed of by the woman's accusers--and put aside the right to condemn which in all that assembly he alone could claim--"neither do i condemn thee; go, and sin no more." having then in mind this most lofty and compassionate of moralists, let us turn to the problem of to-day. here are nearly , , women who, if the austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know the satisfaction of a certain physical need. now it is the desire of every normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. and this is as true of women as of men. what i have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for many men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war--or otherwise--so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel justified in marrying. but i want to emphasize with all my power that the hardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. women, difficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because women are so, they want work, and interest, and love--both given and received--and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every _human_ need. the idea that existence is enough for them--that they need not work, and do not suffer if their sex instincts are repressed or starved--is a convenient but most cruel illusion. people often tell me, and nearly always unconsciously _assume_, that women have no sex hunger--no sex needs at all until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious as men's, or so hard to repress. such people are nearly always either men, or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and had a very full and interesting outside life as well! such women will assure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their repression really cost very much. i think with bitterness of that age-long repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase "old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind, an acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. i think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. and all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their celibacy! "the toad beneath the harrow knows exactly where each tooth-point goes. the butterfly beside the road preaches contentment to that toad." modern psychology is lifting the veil to-day from the suffering which repression causes. it is a pity that its most brilliant exponents should ascribe to a single instinct--however potent--_all_ the ills that afflict mankind, for such one-sidedness defeats its own object; but, at least, the modern psychologist is trying to show us "exactly where each tooth-point goes" in the repression of the sex-instinct among women as among men. nor does the fact that the _tabu_ of society has actually in many cases enabled a woman to inhibit the development of her own nature, obviate the fact that she does so at great cost, even when she least understands what she does. i affirm this, and with insistence, that the normal--the average--woman sacrifices a great deal if she accepts life-long celibacy. she sacrifices quite as much as a man. in those cases--too frequent even now--where she is not educated or expected to earn her own living or to have a career, i maintain that she loses more than a man who is expected to work. i do not say, and i do not believe, that passion in a woman is the same as in a man, or that they suffer in precisely the same way. i believe indeed that if men and women understood each other a little better they would hurt each other a good deal less. but i am persuaded that we shall not even begin to reach a wise morality so long as we persist in basing our demands on the imbecile assumption that women suffer nothing or little by the unsatisfaction of the sex side of their nature. i emphasize this point here, because it is involved in the present state of affairs. i have reminded you that there are nearly , , women whose lives are to be considered. if the number were quite small, it might comfortably be assumed that the women who remained unmarried were those who, in any case, had no vocation for marriage. for it is, of course, true that there are such women, as there are such men. the normal man and woman desire marriage and parenthood, and are fitted for it; but there are always exceptions who either do not desire it, or, desiring it, feel bound to put it aside at the call of some other vocation, which they feel to be supremely theirs, and which is not compatible with marriage. they sacrifice; but they do so joyfully, not for repression, but for a different life, another vocation. and where the number of the unmarried is small, it may without essential injustice be supposed that these are the natural celibates. but you cannot suppose that of , , ! among the number how many are young widows, girls engaged to marry men now dead, and how many whose _natural_ vocation was marriage, motherhood, home-making, and all that is meant by such things as these? if this be the normal vocation of the normal woman how many of these have been deprived of all that seemed to them to make life worth living? is it astonishing if they rebel? if they determine to snatch at anything that yet lies in their grasp? if they affirm "the right to motherhood" when they want children, or the satisfaction of the sex-instinct when that need becomes imperious? if we are to say to such women--"the normal life is denied to you, not by your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have unfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been your mates: and we now invite you in the interests of morality to accept as your lot perpetual virginity"--it is not difficult to imagine their reply: "what is this morality in whose interests you ask so huge a sacrifice? is it worth such a price? is the whole community willing to pay it, or is it exacted from us alone? and on what, in the end, is it based?" the answer to this question is often given to the young, even before the question arises; and it is given in the lives of men and women. the lives of those who are nobly celibate, or nobly married, are in themselves so moving a plea, that few who have been closely in contact with them are left untouched. it is the ideal realized that is the best defence of the ideal. but let us admit that, too often, the actual marriage is a very pitiful comment on our morality, and celibacy either a mere pretence or a very mean and pinched reality. what answer then shall we give to the rising generation which questions us--"on what do you base your moral standards?" i do not doubt that i am voicing the experience of many if i say that when i first began to ask such questions i met first of all with extreme horror at such a question being put at all; and that, when i persisted, i found that it was almost entirely by women that the cost was to be borne. women were to conform strictly to the moral standard (whose basis i was not questioning), but men need not and, generally speaking, did not. i reasoned that if men need not be chaste there must exist at least a certain number of women who _could_ not be so, and that this reduced "morality" to a farce. i soon found that it was not a farce but a tragedy. these women were admittedly necessary but outcast. they were the safeguards of the rest. i wish that men would try for a moment to put themselves in the place of a young girl who learns for the first time that prostitution is the safeguard of the virtuous! i think that they would never again wonder at the rejection of such "moral standards" by the rising generation of women. you would only wonder why women had tolerated such a combination of folly and cruelty so long. you would not ask them to accept or to suffer for a "standard" like that. again, this morality for which (it is affirmed) society is prepared to pay so horrible a price--what is it? a physical condition! a state of body, which any man can destroy! an "honour" which lies at the mercy of a ruffian! a woman raped is a woman "dishonoured." are her "morals" then at the mercy of another person? is "morality" not a state of mind or of will, a spiritual passion for purity, but a material, physical thing which is only hers as long as no one snatches it from her? how senseless! how false! when you ask a woman to-day to make the great sacrifice "in the interests of morality," you must offer her a morality that _is_ moral--a morality whose justice and humanity move her to a response; not a morality which offends every instinct of justice and reality the moment the person to whom it is offered understands what it means. for what is asked to-day is too often that women should sacrifice themselves for the convenience of other people--of a hypocritical society which preaches a morality as senseless as it is base. when older people tell me that the young seem to have "no morals at all," i ask myself whether the repudiation of much that has been called morality was not, after all, a necessity, if we are to advance at all. when i reflect on, for example, lecky's "history of european morals," and remember that it was not a profligate or a hedonist, but an honourable and respectable member of a civilized society, who proclaimed the prostitute the high priestess of humanity--the protectress of the purity of a thousand homes[a]--i am prepared to say that to have "no morals at all" is better than to accept such infamy and _call_ it "morals"; as it is better to be an agnostic or an atheist than to worship a devil--to have no standard than to say: "evil be thou my good." [footnote a: lecky's "history of european morals." chap. v.] and i believe that the tendency to reject all moral standards is largely due to the refusal of an older generation to examine and to justify its own standard. to refuse to discuss or defend it--to affirm that it is beyond debate and not to be questioned without depravity is merely to produce the impression that it is beyond defence and impossible to justify. it is not surprising that people begin to say: "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. let us experience all we desire. let us act like the normal healthy creatures that we are. let us ignore the flimsy barriers a corrupt and imbecile moral code would erect between us and what we desire." that is the point of view of many men and women to-day. that is what the absence of a just and reasoned moral code has led to. and i am prepared, in spite of all protests, to affirm that it is not a step backward, but forward; that promiscuity is not as vile as prostitution--a prostitution which has been accepted, which has been _defended_ by christian people! it is less horrible for a human being to have the morals of an animal than the morals of a devil. we have to begin by rejecting the morality of fiends, and we begin, even if the immediate effect is more terrifying to the moralist than the old hidden-up devilry that lent itself to an easier disguise. so i believe. and so the present chaos, though it has its elements of anxiety and its obvious dangers, leaves me unafraid. i am utterly persuaded that we shall win through to solid ground. i believe that the long groping of humanity after a sex-relationship which shall be stable, equal, passionate, disciplined, pure, is the groping of a right instinct, the hunger of a real need; and that we must--we shall--find its answer. with many failures, with many reactions, it can, i think, be seen, as history unrolls its record and civilizations rise and fall, that the movement of humanity has been towards a more stable, a more responsible, a more disciplined, but not less passionate form of relationship between men and women. let us not forget that great and pregnant fact when we reject the immoral arguments, the cruelties and injustices, with which society has sought either to justify its ideals or to conceal its horrible failures. for if we can thus distinguish, and go forward, this generation will not have suffered in vain. it will, on the contrary, make of its suffering the spur which shall force us all onward and upward. it will by its courage and its honesty give to the world a truer and a nobler moral standard than the world has ever accepted yet. ii a solution of the problem of the unmarried jesus said, "the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." (st. luke ix. .) in the last chapter i tried to deal with the actual problem created in this country by the disproportion of the sexes--the fact that there are, roughly, one and three-quarters to two million more women than men in this country; and i was obliged to confine myself simply to stating the problem, which, to my mind, is very greatly intensified by the fact, generally ignored, that the sex needs of a woman are just as imperative, their suppression just as hard to bear, as a man's; that woman is fully as human as man, and that parenthood and loverhood and all that the satisfaction of the sex instinct means to him, it means also to her. i do not affirm that the difficulty of self-control or the suffering of abstinence presents itself to men and women in just the same way; i am sure it does not. i do not under-estimate the difference. but i do emphasize the fact that, as far as i am able to judge, the suffering is _equal_, although it is different in character. therefore, the denial of marriage to a very large number of women means that, although some women, like some men, are naturally celibate, when so great a number of women are denied the possibility of marriage, we must take it for granted that among them the average will not be natural celibates, but women who suffer a very great loss if they do not marry. now i want to add that this disproportion of the sexes is quite artificial, and, therefore, should be temporary. from some of the letters i have received i gather that people imagine that there has always been a very much larger number of women than men, and not only in this country, but throughout the world; and that, therefore, we ought to shape our customs and our moral standards with this disproportion in mind as a permanent fact. i want to point out that this is not the case. the causes of the present excess of women over men in this country are quite artificial. as a matter of fact, there are more boys born in this country than girls--about to is the ratio--but the boys die in very much larger numbers during the first twelve months of their life, because they are more difficult to rear in bad conditions. but bad conditions are not inevitable! these babies die from preventable causes. it is not within the providence of god that these children _must_ die, nor is it a necessity of human nature. it is due to preventable causes, and is, therefore, as i say, artificial. again, we have a very large empire, stretching out to the remoter parts of the world, and to that empire men go out in very much larger numbers than women, so that the disproportion here is, in part, the reverse side of the disproportion in the great overseas dominions, where there are more men than women. but that, too, is a purely artificial and temporary state of things, which has nothing to do with the fundamental conditions of human society. finally, of course, there is the war, which again creates an artificial state of affairs, by killing enormous numbers of young men, just at the age--between twenty and forty or forty-five--when they should be growing into manhood, and becoming husbands and fathers. that again is artificial. the reason why i emphasize this is because i feel very strongly that we must not remodel our whole society, and recreate our moral standards, to meet a passing and an artificial state of affairs. that is my answer to those who seem to think the solution of all our difficulties is to be found in the adoption of polygamy. now polygamy is a perfectly respectable institution in a large number of countries. it is quite an old idea. it has not occurred to people for the first time between last sunday and to-day. it has been discussed in the sunday newspapers, which are the most widely read of any papers issued by the press. my answer to it is that such an expedient would be just an instance of this remodelling of your whole moral standard to meet an entirely artificial state of affairs. polygamy is not possible and never has been possible on a great scale, because in hardly any country, certainly not in the world as a whole, is there a great disproportion of the sexes under ordinary circumstances. the idea most people appear to have about it is that in some parts of the world, like india and china, every man is blessed with three or four wives. it is a perfectly fantastic picture. the balance of the sexes--on the whole--is equal. it is, therefore, a physical impossibility for polygamy to be a universal custom. it cannot be practised, and has never been practised, except among the rich--a small class always. now that surely makes it obvious that it is not a real solution. it might meet a temporary difficulty; but is it reasonable, is it statesmanlike, to alter our entire moral standard merely to tide over a temporary difficulty; to meet a state of affairs which is purely artificial? i think that morals go deeper, and should be based on some fundamental need, rather than on a purely artificial need created by a passing difficulty, however great that difficulty may be at the time. i do not, therefore, wish to dwell on other better but temporary solutions, such as emigration. i do think that this is a solution which would ease the situation to some extent, and in a normal and right way, because the disproportion in the overseas dominions, where the balance is the other way, and there are more men than women, is every whit as unwholesome and as disastrous as is the disproportion of women in this country. consequently, from the point of view of both men and women, i think that emigration is a thing that ought to be considered and helped forward very much more than it is; but there, again, this is only a temporary solution. we are trying to arrive at some moral position which is based on the permanent needs and the real nature of human beings. it has become almost a habit with me to feel that the real solution of every problem can be found, by those people who are hurt by it, if they will take hold of life _where it hurts_, and find out, not how they themselves can escape from that hurt, but how they can prevent that hurt from becoming a permanent factor in the lives of their brothers and sisters. now, the point at which this problem hurts many of us lies in this, that women have been taught, by a curious paradox, first of all that they ought not to have any sexual feeling, any hunger, any appetite at all on that side of their natures; and secondly, that they exist solely to meet that particular physical need in men. the idea that woman was created, not like man, for the glory of god, but for the convenience of man, has greatly embittered and poisoned public opinion on this subject. women are taught, almost from the moment they come into the world, that their chief end in existence is to be, in some way or other, a "helpmeet" for man. i remember, in the early days of the suffrage struggle, hearing people, and women quite as often as men--more often i think--urging certain rights and principles for women, on the ground that they were meant to be the helpmeets of man. they used to quote the earlier chapters of the book of genesis to show that women were created for that purpose; and it was considered a very lofty kind of appeal. i think it never failed to evoke the applause of those whom you will forgive my calling a little sentimental. i do not think it ever failed to arouse in myself a deep sense of resentment. the writer of the _first_ chapter of the book of genesis speaks of humanity as being created in the image and likeness of god, "_male and female created he them_"; there is no suggestion here that one sex was simply to be the servant of the other. that occurs in the second chapter. the idea is persistent; it is, of course, much older than the old testament. and it persists right into the new testament, where you hear a man of the intellectual and spiritual calibre of st. paul affirm that man was made for god, but woman was made for man. down the ages this message has come, and women have been taught to consider themselves, and men to consider them, as primarily instruments of sex, of marriage and motherhood, or of other forms of serving men's needs. you do not find that feeling in christ's attitude towards women. when people speak as though it were one of the weaknesses of christianity that it appeals, or seems to appeal, more to women than to men, i ask you to believe that sometimes consciously, often quite unconsciously, women respond with passionate gratitude to christ, because of his sublime teaching that every human soul was made for god, and that no part or section of society, no race, no class, and no sex, was made for the convenience of another. i want then to combat with all my power this ancient but un-christlike belief that women miss their object in life if they are not wives and mothers. it may seem something of a contradiction that i should in a previous chapter so have emphasized the need of women for the satisfaction of their sexual nature, and now be arguing that we must not assume that they have no right to exist if they do _not_ meet this particular satisfaction; but i think you will realize that it is not a paradox when i ask you to consider for a moment what your attitude to men on this subject is. many people hold that a man's passions are a tremendous factor in his existence, so strong that he must always be forgiven if he cannot control them; so strong that, on the whole, it is hardly to be expected that he should control them. but yet, if a man does not marry, or if there are more men than women in a certain country--as, for instance, in australia, or western canada to-day--nobody speaks of those men as though they were "superfluous," as though they had ceased to have any real object for existence. people will realize that it is a hardship--a very great hardship--in their lives; they will be apt to excuse them for taking what they can get if they cannot get everything; but no human being talks of the "superfluous men" in any of our great dominions. people always realize that a man has a _human_ value, and that, however great the urgency of the sex side of him, he still is a human being, he still has his value in the world, even supposing that he should live and die celibate. if you will try to put your mind into that attitude towards women, you will, i think, see that it is not a paradox to say that a woman may and does suffer if she does not fulfil the whole of her nature, and yet that it is a monstrous fallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have any reason for existence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not really "count." sex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something more than the mere satisfaction of a physical need. it is part of the great rhythm of life, running through all the higher creation; it is the instinct to create, going forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day that only love can create, bringing us nearer to the divine power, who is love, and who created the heaven and the earth. in spite of our horrible thoughts about sex, our hideous sins against it, i do not think that in anything god has made man more "in his image and likeness" than when he gave him the power, through love, to create life. that is a power that makes us akin to god himself, and the instinct of sex is not a grimy secret between two rather shamed human beings, but a great impulse of life and love--yes, even, at the height of it, an instinct to sacrifice in order that life may come into the world; it is a great bond of union between human beings; it is the secret of existence, the secret of the meaning of life; that which is to the nature of man like the sense of music to the musician, of beauty to the artist, of insight to the poet. a man may have no ear for music, and yet be a good and noble man; but who will deny that he lacks something because he has it not? a man may have no sense of beauty, but he is not, therefore, a depraved, immoral person; yet does he not stand outside some of the great secrets of life? so, when this still deeper instinct of creative love is not yours, do not congratulate yourselves, or pride yourselves that you have never felt it. for it means that you stand outside the great communion of the life of the world; it means that for you some of the music of the universe is dumb, and some of the beauty of the universe dark. yet how long have women been taught that this divine impulse of creation is something base! base even in a man, belonging to his lower nature; still more deplorable in a woman, a thing to be ashamed of, a thing to crush down and suppress, a thing you would not confess to your nearest friends, or discuss with your physician. to speak of it even to your own mother would be to be met with the averted look and word of disapproval. if, as a consequence of this, women have inhibited their own nature, so that many women have created in their minds a kind of tone-deafness, a colour-blindness to this side of life, does that not seem to you a tragedy? to have so great and wonderful a thing in your nature and to suppress it as though it were something shameful and weak? do you wonder if the term "old maid" has become synonym for everything that is narrow, and hard, and prudish and repressive? do you wonder that the girls of this generation, confronted with the choice between such an attitude towards life as that, and its opposite--willingness to give oneself to anyone, to take all that one can get, because life refuses so much that one had hoped for--do you wonder that they often choose the second alternative? does it seem to you so astonishing that girls, who think more than they used to, who feel that there is nothing to be ashamed of in the divine impulse of their creative womanhood, should rather take what they can get than accept that cruel, cramped attitude of sheer repression which has been all too often their only choice in the past? is it really fair to say to them that their moral standards are going down, that they have no sense now of morality or self-respect? i tell you that if one has to make a choice between the suppression of one half--and that so beautiful a half--of human nature, and its degradation, i would not sit in judgment on those who chose either way. but there is another possibility. you can repress, and god knows how many boys and young men, how many young women and girls have struggled to do so, and are trying to do so to-day, with a sense always of guilt and shame in their minds, laying up mental difficulties for themselves, the psychologists tell us, by this repression. you know the type; you know the kind of person who becomes hard and narrow and uncomprehending. that is one type. you can read it in their faces. the pinched look, the cramped mentality reflects itself in the body and in the face. and then there is the other type, those who have rejected this attitude towards life, denying that there is anything to be ashamed of in the natural impulse of their sex, or cause for regret if they give rein to that whose repression does so much harm, who frankly fling away the idea of self-control, because repression has seemed such a disastrous method of self-control. you can see it in their faces also; in the gradual demoralization of their nature. the rake on one hand, the prude on the other, represent the ultimate consequence of the process i am trying to describe. many people have marked on their souls, if not on their faces, one or other of these ways of life. they have not, perhaps, gone far, they may have gone but a little way in one direction or the other; but the mark on the soul remains all the same. and when you see the extreme result, the prude on one side, the rake on the other, do you not begin to desire a better way? to ask yourself whether there is not a third choice before you? i believe there is; and the choice is this: it is neither the repression nor the degradation, but _transformation_ of the sex side of our nature. i will take as the supreme example of that transformation the figure of christ himself--christ who had neither wife nor child--st. francis of assisi, st. catherine of siena, st. theresa of spain. four of the greatest figures--one of them supreme--who were not "natural celibates" in the sense that implies that they did not have surging through them the divine impulse of creative love; for these are the greatest lovers the world has ever seen, and compared with theirs even the great love of one man for one woman, one woman for one man, is the lesser thing. but these great figures in human history are those on whose hearts humanity itself made such a claim that it became impossible for them to give to one what was claimed by all the world. you will see that this is not a denial of creative love, for no one in the world has so loved the world as these. they are the beacons of humanity in this matter of love, and how are they, shall we say, how are they not fathers and mothers, whose spiritual children are all over the world? have they not born into the world with travail of soul, the souls of men and women? these great lovers of humanity were not lacking in passion; had they been they could not have moved the world; but their passion was transmuted to the service of humanity itself, for nothing else was great or wide enough for such a love. does anyone suppose that it was a mere instinct of asceticism that drove st. francis to make out of snow, cold images of wife and child? was it not rather the sudden resurgent desire of the greatest of the saints for some more humanly warm affection, something more individual, something that nestles more closely to the heart, than this great service of humanity? and in a savage irony he mocks his pain. "there are thy children, there is thy wife," says st. francis, and his cry is not the answer of the spirit to a lustful temptation: it was the cry of a lonely human heart for the human happiness of wife and children and home. aye, and i would claim that our lord himself had this desire. for i cannot doubt that in that glorious young manhood of his, so full of power and sympathy and love, this agony of longing sometimes swept over him. he whose vitality and power were such that he hardly knew fatigue, who was so close a friend, so much loved and sought by women, so tender to little children, so young, so strong--is it not certain that he was indeed "tempted in all things like as we are"? how could one so physically vital, so humanly and divinely full of love, escape the conflict? that he conquered we know; that he suffered we cannot doubt. all his perfect humanity speaks to us in that lonely cry: "the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." do not dream, those of you who may have to struggle with your own nature, do not dream that christ has not been there with you, that he had nothing to feel or to suffer. how would he have developed that spiritual power, how would he have become so great a lover of the world if he knew nothing of that side of life? but he, and his greatest followers--st. francis of assisi, st. catherine and st. theresa, and countless others who have followed them--learned to transmute that great creative force, disdained both choices which i set before you, finding a nobler and more glorious way. these would neither repress this great impulse, nor dissipate it, but so used it for the service of man that there is in all the history of man no life more rich, more human, more full of love, more full of creation, or more full of power, than the lives of these celibate men and women, who learned from christ how they could live and love. it is not easy for men and women this way, but it is possible. it is possible, and it is glorious; and, in its degree, the need for it comes to everyone. do not imagine that it is not needed in marriage as well as out of marriage. every married lover will tell you that if his love is to remain what it was in the beginning--if it is rather to grow in power and beauty--he also must be able gradually to transmute his love in such a way that the spirit dominates the flesh more and more, and that the physical side of marriage becomes simply an expression of the love of the spirit, the perfect final expression, the sacrament of love. do not imagine that this is not needed, this effort, and this power, by every human being who desires to be human in his love, and not something less than human. and to those to whom the need comes in its sternest form, i will not pretend for a moment that it is not hard. nay, i will prophesy to you that if you do so choose to serve the world, it will to all of you sometimes seem too hard. with christ, with st. francis, your human nature will sometimes assert itself. "the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man"--the servant of humanity--has no such joy. but of whatever life you choose, that is sometimes true. to the finest spirit in marriage there comes sometimes the thought that, but for this great claim, he might have undertaken some adventure, might have answered some call, which now he cannot answer. does that mean that he regrets his choice? no, not for a moment! it only means that human nature is so rich and so varied that whatever life you forego will sometimes seem to you the better choice. you will think, for a moment, that you might have chosen differently. if that happened to st. francis, believe me, it will happen to you. but yet, is it not a heroic path that i point out to you? is it not possible that to this generation heroism may be possible in such a way, on such a scale, that you will leave this world nobler in moral stature because of the hardness which you endured, the choice that you made? women, to whom this comes home specially at this time, may it not be that you, by taking this way, will become the mothers in spirit of women in a happier generation, on whom will never again be imposed our cramped, stifling, sub-human conception of what women ought to be? you will show to the world not only that the individual woman of genius may have a value to humanity beyond her sex, but that every woman has that value. in solving your own problem, and taking hold of life where most it hurts you, you will end by making a moral standard nobler, a humanity richer and more human, a womanhood freer, greater, more christlike than it was. and future generations shall rise up and call you blessed. iii consideration of other solutions of the problem of the disproportion of the sexes "my spirit's bark is driven far from the shore, far from the trembling throng whose sails were never to the tempest given." shelley: "adonais." let us now move away from that aspect of the moral problem which has concerned us hitherto--that of the difficulties created by the disproportion of the sexes at this time and in this country--and consider the problem as it presents itself under more normal conditions. for even in ages and in countries where there are an equal number of men and women there are difficulties in their relations with one another, and a "moral problem." people ask, for example, whether sex-relationships should be governed by law at all; whether they should continue in any given case when passion has died, or when love (which is more than passion) has gone. should love ever be other than perfectly free, and is not the attempt to bind it essentially "immoral"? should it ever be exclusive or proprietary? is not the "moral problem" really created, not by human nature, but by the attempt to bind what cannot be bound and to coerce what should be free? the answer given to such questions is often to-day on the side of what is called, mistakenly, i think, "free love." and in considering this answer, i want to remind you that it is often given by people who are most sincere, most idealistic, in their own lives and in their own love. indeed it has often been pointed out that it is at times of great spiritual exaltation and fervour that the cult of "free love" is most likely to find adherents. the great principle that "love is the fulfilling of the law" is held with a fervour which makes any question as to what love is, and how much it involves, seem half-hearted and cold. those who preach this doctrine remind us--and very justly--of the weakness and insincerity of the "orthodox" moral standard, whether it is enforced by law or by custom. they revolt against the proprietary and possessive view of marriage as giving a woman "a hold over her husband" when he has "grown tired of her," or as justifying a man in enforcing upon his wife the rights which only love makes right, when she has grown tired of him. i appeal, therefore, to those to whom the dispassionate discussion of "free love" seems quite outrageous, to remember that there are those to whom this teaching is _not_ a mere excuse for licence, but an attempt to reach something lovelier and nobler than the present moral code, whose failures and insincerities no thinking person can ignore. in considering this view, i want first to point out that although to have no legal or enforceable tie in sex-relationships seems on the surface much the simplest and easiest way to arrange life, although permanent monogamous marriage is exceedingly difficult and inconvenient, yet the movement of humanity does seem to have been on the whole in that direction. it is, of course, untrue to say that among primitive peoples there is anything that can fairly be called promiscuity. historians and anthropologists have taught us that among all peoples, however barbarous, there are conventions, sanctions, tabus, by which the relations of men and women are regulated. the customs of such people may seem to us mere licence; but they are not so. and some of the customs of more "civilized" countries are at least as horrifying to the "savage" as his can be to us. nevertheless, it is true to say that as civilization advances, and especially where the position of women improves, the movement has been towards a more stable and exclusive form of marriage. we grope uncertainly towards it: we fail atrociously. yet we do not abandon an ideal which asks so much of human nature that human nature is continually invoked to prove its impossibility. why have we persisted? it is idle to speak of monogamy as though it were a senseless rule imposed on unfortunate humanity by some all-powerful superman. we have imposed it on ourselves. it is our doing. why have we done it? surely because, in spite of its alleged "impossibility," its obvious inconveniences, there is some need in human nature which demands a permanent and a stable sex relationship to meet it. i believe that there is something in our human nature which desires stability in its relations with other human beings. it is perhaps a recognition of the fact that, though we live in time and suffer its conditions, we are immortal also and chafe under too strict a bondage to time. our relations with other human beings ought not to be evanescent! there is something cheap and shoddy in the giving and taking of human personality on such easy soon-forgotten terms. it is not only in sexual relations that this is true. it is true of all human intercourse. the longer care and devotion of human parents for their offspring is not a physical only, but a spiritual necessity: and it is bound up with the greater faithfulness of human lovers. in parenthood, in loverhood, in friendship, those who take their obligations lightly are not the finer sort of men and women, but the slighter, cheaper make. it is not a love of freedom but a certain inferiority and shoddiness that makes it possible for us to give ourselves, and take others, lightly. for in all human relationships it is "ourselves" that we give and take. it is not what your friend does for you or gives to you that makes him your friend; but what he _is_ to you. it is his personality that you have shared. and so there is something rather repulsive in quickly forgetting or throwing it away. people who make friends and lose them as the trees put out their leaves in spring to shed them in the autumn, are not quite human. the capacity to make friends--to make many friends--is a great power: the capacity to lose them not so admirable. yet there are people who always have a bosom-friend, every time you meet them; only it is never the same friend. and this is a poor sort of friendship, for it _is_ poor to give and take so little that you easily cease or forget to give at all. if this is true of friends, it is not less true of lovers: it is more true. for sex-love includes more of one's personality, it more completely involves body, soul and spirit, is the most perfect form of union that human beings know. how strange, then, to argue that one may treat a lover as one would not treat a friend! make one and lose one so lightly, and disavow all the responsibility of a love in which so much is given, so much involved! it is true that all human love has a physical element, even if it is only the desire for the physical presence of the beloved one. we all want sometimes to see and to touch our friends. but in sex-love that physical element becomes a desire for perfect union, expressing a spiritual harmony. can one take such a gift lightly, and pass from one relationship to another with a readiness which would seem contemptible in a friend? it is this holding of human personality cheap that is really immoral, really dishonest: for it is not cheap. it is this which makes prostitution a horror, and prostitutes the ishmaels of their race. they "sell cheap what is most dear," and, knowing this, rage against their buyers. the hideously demoralizing effect of a life of prostitution on the soul is a commonplace. "these women," it has been said, "sink so low that they cease to know what love is, they cease to be able to give. they can only cheat and steal and sell." it is true. whatever virtues of kindliness and pity the prostitute may (and often does) have for other unfortunates and outcasts, her attitude in general does become that of the parasite, the swindler, the vampire. why? because on her the deepest outrage against human personality is committed. without a shadow of claim, without a pretence of offering its equivalent, that, in her, is bought and sold which is beyond price. why should she not cheat and thieve? take all she can, she cannot get the true value of what has been bought from her. does she reason all that out? more often than we think. but whether she reasons consciously or not, she knows she has been defrauded: and she defrauds. but it is the buying and selling, i shall be told, that makes her so vile: between such a sale and the free gift of lovers lies the whole difference between morality and immorality. i do not think so. it is the contemptuous use of another which is immoral, and though actually to buy and sell the person is the lowest depth of immorality, because it is the lowest and most brutal expression of such contempt, any lightness or irreverence is "immoral" in its degree; so therefore is conduct which makes love an evanescent thing, or the giving of personality which love involves, a passing emotion. if we feel this to be so in friendship, surely it is more and not less true of a union so complete on every plane as that of sex. can you take that--and give it--and pass on, as though it were a light thing? the desire for permanence, for stability, for trustworthiness lies very deep in human nature. we may--we do--rebel against it, and speak with rapture of an unfettered existence without material ties: but even in material things the nomad is the least creative, the least civilized of his kind. his existence is neither so picturesque nor so human as we imagine. one has only to read history to see how little he has contributed to humanity--and how little he has helped to raise the human level above the animal. it is not for nothing that we find the home imposed upon human kind by the necessities of human infancy. it is the helplessness of the child that has humanized our species by creating the home which its helplessness demanded, and though a great deal that is sentimental is said about homes, this remains a fact. the nomadic, the homeless race gives little to the world; it is by nature and circumstances an exploiter of resources for which it feels no responsibility, from which it is content to take without giving. reading in a pamphlet of professor toynbee's the other day, i found this description of the eastern world in the th and th centuries of our era:--"even when the east began to recover and comparatively stable moslem states arose again in turkey and persia and hindustan, _the nomadic taint was in them and condemned them to sterility_.... one gets the impression not of a government administering a country, but of _a horde of nomads exploiting it_."[b] [footnote b: the italics are mine.--a.m.r.] even so is it with human love. these nomads of the affections give and take so little as they pass from hand to hand that they become cheap and have little left to give at last: nor do they really get what they would take. men and women claim the right to "experience," but experience of what? we do not live by bread alone, and the physical experience is not really all we seek. it is something, however? yes--certainly something: but by a paradox familiar enough in human affairs, to snatch the lesser is to sacrifice the greater. the experimental lover, the giver whose small and careful gift is for a time, claims in the name of "experience," of the "fulfilment of his nature," what really belongs only to a greater giving. such lovers are like a rich man who sets out tramping with nothing in his pocket. he may suffer temporary inconvenience, but is within safe distance of his banking account. he plays with a risk he can never really know, since knowledge and experience are not for those "whose sails were never to the tempest given." the prudent lover whose love is lightly given for as long as it lasts is as wise--and as futile. i think, too, that those who offer this little price for so great a thing have nothing left at last. to taste love, to _use_ the great passion of sex is on a par with the exploitation of genius on a series of "pot-boilers." genius may outlast a few such meannesses, but they will murder it at last, and the man who by pot-boiling has gained the opportunity to create a real work of art finds there is no more art left in him. he has now the leisure, the opportunity, the public: but not the power. so is it with those who lightly use so great a thing as sex. yielded to every impulse, given to each "new-hatched, unfledged companion," it loses its capacity for greatness, and the experience desired passes for ever from the grasp. it is this which, to my mind, rules out the "experimental marriage." much may be said for it--and has been, and is being said by people whose judgment must command respect. but love is impatient of lending. if it is not given outright in the belief that the gift is final, can the "experiment" be valid? is not this very sense of finality--this desire to give and burn one's ships--of the very essence of love? one cannot experiment in finality. it is true that many marriages would not have taken place, and had much better not have taken place, if there had been greater knowledge: but we have yet to learn what greater knowledge can do even without experiment. hitherto we have gone to the opposite extreme and buried all that belongs to sex not in a fog of ignorance only, but under a mountain of hypocrisy and lies. let in the light, and see if we cannot do better! and though it is true that some things cannot be known by any amount of teaching, and wait upon experience, yet i submit that the essential experience is realized only when it is believed to be the expression of an undying love--a gift and not a loan. let me say one last word on the solution to our moral difficulties proposed by those who affirm for every woman "the right to motherhood." this claim is based on the belief that the creative impulse is more, or more consciously, present in the sexual nature of a woman than of a man, and that, in consequence, the satisfaction of that impulse is to a great extent the satisfaction of a need which makes the disproportionate number of women in any country a real tragedy. it is impossible to generalize with any degree of confidence about the sexual nature of either man or woman in our present state of crude and barbarous ignorance; but i am inclined--very tentatively--to agree that this generalization is correct, and that the creative impulse is an even stronger factor in the sexual life of women than of men. i realize the cruelty of a civilization in which war and its accessories create an artificial excess of women over men, and in consequence deprive hundreds of thousands of women of motherhood. i do not think i underestimate that cruelty or its tragic consequences. i admit the "right" of women to the exercise of their vocation and the fulfilment of their nature. but i affirm that those who base upon this claim the right to bring children into the world, where society has made marriage impossible, are not moved to do so by the instinct of motherhood. no, no, for motherhood is more than a physical act; it is a spiritual power. its first thought is not for the right of the mother but of the child. and what are a child's rights? a home--two parents--all that makes complete the spiritual as well as the material meaning of "home." i do not believe that there is any woman who is the mother of young children, and a widow, who does not daily realize how irreparable is the loss sustained by the fatherless. war perhaps has inflicted that loss upon them; it is one of the iniquities of war. and though the mother tries all she can--yes, and works miracles of love to make herself all she _can_ be to her child, that loss cannot wholly be made up. i speak with intensity of conviction on this point, for i have myself a little adopted child--orphaned of both parents--in my home. i never see other children with their parents without realizing what she has lost not only in her mother but her father. there is needed the different point of view, the different relationship, bringing with it a fuller and a richer experience of life. what woman that hast lost her husband does not realize the truth of what i say? it is beside the mark to say that a bad father is worse than no father, or that accident may take the father even from happily circumstanced homes. this is true. but a woman does not deliberately _choose_ a bad father for her children, or _choose_ that he shall be taken away from them by death. it is the deliberate infliction beforehand of this great loss upon a child that seems to me the very negation of that motherhood in whose name this "right" is enforced. and for what purpose is a child to be brought into the world under conditions so imperfect? to "fulfil the nature" of its mother; to complete her experience; to meet her need. is there any mockery of motherhood more complete than this sacrifice of the child to the mother? why, our physical nature itself is less selfish! when a woman conceives, her child receives _first_ all the nourishment it needs; whatever it does not demand, the mother has. a woman herself undernourished can, if the process has not gone too far, bear a well-nourished and a healthy child, because she has given all to that child. it is the epitome of motherhood! and now it is affirmed that a woman, to satisfy her own need, has a right to bring into the world a child on whom she--its mother--has deliberately inflicted a grave disadvantage. i do not speak of such lesser disadvantages as may be involved in illegitimacy. i trust the time is at hand when we shall cease to brand any child as "illegitimate" or despise one for another's defect. but though children are never illegitimate, parents may be so; and none more than the woman who sacrifices her child to herself. for this disadvantage is not a mere cruelty of society which may be "civilized" away; it is inherent in the case. a child should have a father and a mother and a home. it is no defence to say that the unmarried mother proposes to give her child a better home than many a child of married parents has. if her concern is for the child, there are, alas! only too many waifs already in the world to whom such a home, though imperfect, would be a paradise to what it has. real motherhood could and often does rescue such children with joy. that so few children are adopted in a world of women clamouring for motherhood proves the essential selfishness of the claim. it is not the child--it is herself--that the woman who demands motherhood as a "right" is concerned with. what an irony! for to satisfy herself first is the negation of motherhood. we have heard much of late years--and rightly--of the exploitation of women by men. let us not celebrate our growing enfranchisement by becoming ourselves the exploiters; and that, not of men, but of babes. iv the true basis of morality "let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: o no! it is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests, and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come; love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom:-- if this be error, and upon me proved, i never writ, nor no man ever loved." w. shakespeare. "he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. what? know ye not that your body is the temple of the holy ghost which is in you, which ye have of god, and ye are not your own?" (i. cor. vi., - .) i said in an earlier chapter that i wanted to find a moral standard which should be based on the realities of human nature, and in order to do that we must first have a clear idea of what human nature really is, and by what law it lives. we have been passing during the last generation from an idea of law which belonged to our forefathers to a new idea of law which has been given to us by modern science; and in transition we still talk in ambiguous terms about "law"--moral "law," for instance--confusing ourselves between a law that is imposed on us from outside, a law that is passed by parliament, for instance, or a law that has been the common custom of the country through its judges, and that kind of "law" which science has revealed to us. scientific "law" is not imposed from without; it is the law of our being. when you talk of the "law" of gravitation, you do not mean that somebody outside has laid it down that mass shall act in a certain way with regard to other masses; you mean that mass-material--being what it is--behaves in a certain way. that is to say, a scientific law is _the law of being_ of that which obeys the law. it obeys it because it is its nature to do so. if we could get a firm, hold of that idea of law, our own legislation would not be so senseless as it often is; for we should try to discover what is the nature of human beings--their real nature, about which we are often deceived--and we should try to make our laws, including our moral laws, those to which human nature, at its best, would most naturally and fully respond. that is the conception that is at the back of the great phrase which sounds like a paradox in one of the collects of the english prayer book: "whose service is perfect freedom." "whose service is perfect freedom"; that is to say, when you obey god, you find perfect freedom because you are doing what it is your true nature to do. and that is why i want to base our moral law, our moral standard, on the realities of human nature. but, you will reply, when people are free to act as they choose they sometimes choose to violate their own nature. i cannot say how that happens; it involves the entire problem of evil; and i do not propose even to attempt to deal with it in this book. i will only say that our confusion has arisen, as i think, out of the very fact that instead of obeying the law of our being we have violated it; and now are so confused that we hardly know what "human nature" really is, or of what it is capable. that is why we get such extraordinarily different ideas about morals, and why, as i think, we get such arbitrary judgments on human beings. before, then, we can rightly establish our moral standard we have to decide what human nature really is, and when we have done that we shall know what is really moral. i suppose that sounds like a paradox to many, because they think that morality is always "going against" human nature. if people do anything that is generally called "immoral," they will excuse themselves on the grounds of human nature; they will say: "after all, _human nature being what it is_, you must expect this, that and the other kind of licence and immorality"; and to say that morality, real morality, can only be based on the realities of human nature will therefore sound to many of you the wildest kind of paradox. but i want to pursue it just as though it were true, because i believe it is true. what, then, are the realities of our nature? here is one: a human being is not and never can be cut off from other human beings. he is not alone. he cannot consider himself only. if he does so he violates his own nature, because it is not his nature to be alone, and he cannot act without his actions affecting other people. he cannot think, he cannot feel, he cannot act or speak without affecting other people, and it is futile for anyone to say: "it does not matter to others what i do; nobody knows; it concerns only myself." your innermost thought affects the whole world in which you live, and whatever moral standard you are going to adopt, you must take it for granted that your standard will affect other people, and that it is absolutely impossible for you to act or think alone. and then human beings are three-fold in nature. they have a body, a mind--or what st. paul calls a "soul"--and a spirit. "soul" is a word whose meaning we have altered so much that i must define what i mean by it and what i think st. paul meant by it. the soul includes the emotions and the intellect, that part of a man which is not wholly physical and which is not entirely spiritual. everyone has a soul. and every one of you, however much you ignore your body, however much you may tell me your body does not really exist, have got a body too. you have to eat and drink and sleep, just like the most material alderman, though you may eat less. and you cannot base a real moral standard on the pretence that you have not got a body. you are, on one side of your nature, physical, material, animal; but you have got a mind and emotions or "soul"; and you have got a spirit. to act as though you had not is just as futile as to pretend that you have not got a body. "where there is no vision the people perish." "mankind is incurably religious." "all the world seeks after god." those proverbs, those sayings, which are familiar to all, crystallize the world's experience that human beings are spiritual beings. if there is any person who thinks that he is merely an intellect and a body, i will direct the attention of that intellect of his away from himself to the race, and i will remind him that practically no race in the world has ever been entirely without the sense of god; that, however hard men try, they have never been able to cure humanity of its spiritual hunger; that though our gods are often gross and earthy, even diabolical, yet they are spiritual, and they are the proof that man is spiritually aware; that he is a spirit as well as a body and a soul. now i say that anyone who tries to base his morality on the assumption that he is only a body, or only an intelligence, or only a spirit, has got a false standard, and his morality is a dishonest kind of morality. the body will avenge itself on those who ignore it. psychologists are teaching us that the mind will avenge itself on those who ignore it. and this is just as true of the spirit. where there is no vision the people do perish. your spiritual nature avenges itself on those who try to rule it out. base your morality either on the exclusion of any part of your being, or on the assumption that what you do concerns yourself alone; and you will find that you are violating human nature. it is useless for you to act wrongly and to affirm that you do it "because human nature is what it is." when you do so, you are assuming that human nature is _not_ what it is; that is to say you assume that it is purely physical, when, in fact, it is three-fold--body, soul and spirit. you can see for yourselves, i think, how this violation of human nature works itself out. for animals promiscuity is not wrong. when they treat themselves as purely animals they are basing their moral standard, if i may put it so, on bed-rock; they _are_ animals, and therefore they behave as animals without violating any law of their being. as they rise higher in the scale of evolution their morals become nobler. there are moral standards among the lower animals, but they remain at a certain level, and rightly so. no animal is harmed by behaving like an animal, for in doing so he obeys the law of his being; but if human beings behave as though they were animals, what happens? they find to their horror that they have let loose upon the world detestable, hideous and devastating diseases. do you think that medicine will ever be able to rid the world of what are called the diseases of immorality as long as immorality remains? i do not believe it. i know that you can do much for individual sufferers, though you cannot do one-tenth part of what doctors thought they were going to be able to do, eight or nine years ago. and, of course, whatever we can do, we must and ought to do. but we do not reach the root of the matter by medicine. no scientist can tell us how small-pox or tuberculosis or rheumatism first entered the world; but any scientist can tell us that by wrong living, wrong housing, wrong feeding, we can breed and spread and perpetuate disease. in other words, we are diseased not because we obey the laws of our nature but because we violate them: and though we can take the individual sufferer and (sometimes) cure him, we shall not get rid of the disease until we have learnt to obey those laws and to live rightly. in just the same way the diseases of vice, though no one can say how they first came into the world, continue and flourish, not because of human nature, but because we violate some law of our own nature in what we do. we may even cure the individual; we may see a thousand struck and a thousand guilty escape; the fact remains that these diseases are bred in the swamp of immorality, just as certainly as malaria is bred in the mosquito-haunted pools of the malaria swamp. drain the swamp, and you get rid of the malaria, for there is no longer any place for the malaria-bearing mosquito to breed. drain the swamp of immorality, and you get rid of venereal disease, because there is no longer a place where these diseases can breed. live rightly, and your nature will respond in health. when human beings elect to make their relations with one another promiscuous--when, that is to say, they treat themselves as animals--they are not obeying, they are violating the law of their own being; for they are not animals only, and to treat themselves as such is to disobey the law of their own nature. and disobedience reacts in disease. so again, the relations of men and women are of the mind as well as of the body and the spirit. you cannot rule out your mind, and i think that those who believe, as many do today, not indeed in a merely animal promiscuity, but in rather casual relations between men and women--experiments, if you like, men and women passing from one union to another--rule out the fact that a human being has a mind, a memory and foresight; that our being includes a past, and, in a sense, includes a future also; and when you try to divorce your physical experience from your intellectual and emotional being you are again violating the law of your own nature. i remember asking one of the most happily married women that i know to put into words, if she could, the reason why she believed that married people, married lovers, should not have gone through other relationships with other people before they gave themselves to one another. i asked her to express in words what seemed to her immoral. she wrote this: "in the ideal union between god and man, we know that man must give the fulness of his being, body, mind and spirit, throughout his whole life, to god, and that anything less than this, though it may be fine and noble, does fall short of perfection. it is the same with the human love of men and women. the 'fulness of our being' which we desire to give to our lover consists not only in what we are at any given moment but in what we have been in the past, what we may become in the future. and so in the formation of merely temporary unions the highest and deepest unity can never be fully achieved." she went on to say: "when we have passed beyond the physical sphere we shall be able, like god, to give ourselves equally to all; but while we are in the flesh we cannot share ourselves equally with all, and any attempt to do so lowers the standard of perfect human love." i like that, because it is based again on a loyal acceptance of human nature. we are not yet as god in the sense that, being wholly spirit, we can share ourselves equally with all. we do still live in bodies, and we have in this life memory and prevision, and surely that is indeed an ideal union, if we are looking for the highest, which is able to give its past and its future as well as its present, so that the whole personality is involved, in that act of union, and that anything short of that is at least not quite perfect. human beings are still in the body, and are yet soul and spirit in that body, and must take both into account. divorce the physical from the spiritual in yourself, and you are violating yourself. divorce the physical from the spiritual in someone else--you who perhaps say: "i myself love such a man, such a woman, with the best part of myself; what i do with another is of no importance"--you violate the nature of that other from whom you take what is physical, and leave what is spiritual as though it were not there. your life, like your body, is too highly organized, too sensitive, too knit together by memories and prevision for you to leave behind you anything that has really entered into your life. it is a shoddy and superficial nature that passes easily from experience to experience, and when you look at such you can see how shallower still it becomes. it is the deeper and the loftier nature that cannot enter into any human relationship and then pass away from it altogether unchanged. and even that shoddy, that poor, that mean little soul which seems to pass so lightly from one experience to another does not really altogether escape. some mark is left upon the soul, some association remains in the memory; and again and again marriages have been wrecked because a man has taken the associations of the gutter into the sanctuary of his home. unwillingly, with an imagination that fain would reject the stain, he has injured, he has insulted the love that has now come to him, the most precious thing on earth, because he has not known how to do otherwise; because all the associations of passion have been to him degraded, smirched, treated frivolously in the past. it is true of men; it is also true of women. i do not know of anything that makes understanding harder between two people than the fact that one has had experiences and associations which the other has not had and does not understand, because they are on an entirely different level. these create between them, with all the desire for understanding in the world, a barrier of misunderstanding and incomprehension, which is all the more fatal because it is so intangible, so obscure, so hard to put into words, so often actually unconscious or subconscious in the mind of one or of the other. again, you must not think that you are altogether spirit, and here perhaps it is the woman who is more apt to sin than the man. how often have i talked to women who speak of the physical side of love as though it were something base and unworthy! such a conception of passion is inhuman, and therefore it is not really moral. a woman who thinks of this sacrament of love, for which perhaps the man who loves her has kept himself clean all his life, as a base thing, and who treats it as though it were a concession to something base in a man's nature, instead of being the very consecration of body and soul at once, the sacrament of union, one of the loveliest things in human nature--such a woman gives as great a shock to what is sacred and lovely in her husband's nature as he when he brings with him into his marriage the associations of the street. it is as hard, it is as insulting, it makes marriage as difficult in understanding, one way as the other. for it is not true that our bodies are vile and base; they are the temples of the holy spirit. or if you think that you can stand alone, that what you do is the concern of no one else, that your life is a solitary thing, so solitary that no man or woman is concerned, no one but yourself, and you may sin alone--there again you misunderstand. you cannot stand alone, and nothing that you say or think or do leaves the world unchanged. is that difficult to believe in these days, when psychology is teaching us how all-important thought is? ought you to find it hard to believe that what you do in the utmost secrecy affects others, since it affects you, and no man lives to himself alone? i do not wish to exaggerate. i have a horror of those books and people who speak in exaggerated terms of any kind of sexual lapse. i am persuaded that human beings can rise from such mistakes, and rise much more easily than from the subtler spiritual sins which have so much more respectable an air. but yet do not sin under the impression that what you do concerns yourself alone. do not use, for your own satisfaction only, powers which were given you for creation and for the world. but this, you may say, is not the accepted standard of morality. that is a matter rather of laws and ceremonies. and people begin to ask; "what real difference can a mere ceremony make?" it does not make any difference to the morality of your relationships with your fellow men and women. nothing that is immoral becomes moral because it has been done under a legal contract, or consecrated by a rite. there, i think, is where the world has gone so wrong. the idea that a relation that is selfish, cruel, mercenary, becomes moral because someone has said some words over you, and you have signed a register--what a farcical idea! how on earth does that change anything at all? the morality of all civil or religious ceremony lies, i think, in this--that by accepting and going through it, you accept the fact that your love does concern others besides yourself; it will concern your children; and beyond that, it concerns the world. you are right when you ask your friends to come and rejoice with you at your wedding. it is the concern of all the world when people love each other, and it is the failure of _love_ that concerns them when marriage is a failure. such failure chills the atmosphere; it shakes our faith in love as the supreme power in the universe; it makes us all waver in our allegiance to constancy and love when love fails. it is a joyful thing when people love. "all the world loves a lover." it is an old saying, but what a true one! it _is_ our concern when people nobly and loyally love each other, it is the concern of the community, and those who take upon themselves these public vows seem to me to have a more truly moral conception of love than those who say: "this is our affair only; it is not the affair of the state or the affair of the church." but the actual ceremony must be the expression of a moral feeling such as that. it cannot in itself make moral what is immoral! the old idea that if a woman was seduced by a man she was "made honest" by the man marrying her is essentially immoral. very likely all that she knew about the man was that she could not trust him, and to suppose that we can set right what is wrong by tying them together for the rest of their lives is to imagine an absurdity and to establish a lie. or take the case from another point of view. i have two in my mind at this moment, who for some reason (a reason not very far to seek if you read our english marriage laws) came to the conclusion that it is not right to place oneself in such a position as a married woman is in under english law. i am not discussing whether they were right or wrong; i say that quite sincere and moral people do come to that conclusion sometimes, and so did these two. they lived together, therefore, without being legally married. they were absolutely faithful to each other; their love was as responsible, as dignified, as true as any such relation could be. it lacked to my mind one thing--the sense of a wider responsibility--but then it had very much that many legal marriages have not. those two people are put outside society; it is made almost impossible for them to earn their living; and at last in despair they go to the registry office, and sign their names in a book. what difference has been made in their relation to each other? absolutely none. they are no more convinced of the right and duty of the community to be concerned with marriage than they were before. they have yielded to coercion. their moral standard, good or bad, is precisely what it was; their relation to each other wholly unchanged. but in the eyes of the world they have become respectable, they are "moral," they can be received back into the bosom of society. and why? because they have gone through a ceremony in which they do not believe! every marriage in the world probably lacks something of perfection. there are no perfect human beings, and, therefore, hardly, perhaps, a perfect marriage; and to my mind those who do not admit the concern of the community in their marriage do lack something. but to suppose that those people are immoral, when others who live together, legally licensed to do so, in selfishness, in infidelity, for financial reasons, or for social reasons, are moral is fundamentally dishonest. when a woman sells her body for money, do you think that it makes it moral that she does it in a church or in a registry office? is there one whit of difference, morally, between the prostitution that has no legal recognition and the prostitution that has? is it anything but prostitution to sell yourself for money, whether you are a man or a woman? do you imagine that because you have a contract to protect you while you do it, you are doing what is moral? if you marry for any reason but love--for experience, to "complete your nature"--without much regard to the man or woman you marry, or to the children you bring into the world, are you not exploiting human nature just as certainly, though not so brutally, as a man who buys a woman in the street? it is not so base a form of exploitation, god knows; that i admit; but when there is _any_ element of exploitation in the bargain it is not made more truly moral because it happens to be blessed in a church or registered in an office. the legal ceremony must be the outcome of a morality which makes you realize that what you do affects other people, that what you do most profoundly affects the children that you hope to have, and that the community has both an interest and a responsibility in all this. that is "moral." but if the relationship thus to be legalized is not moral, it is dishonest to pretend that it can be made so by any ceremony which those concerned may undergo. but, you will say, we cannot peer into other people's lives and judge them in this kind of way. how are we to know? how are we, who have many friends, many neighbours, on whom our standards must react, to judge their lives? we can tell who has gone through a legal ceremony and who refuses to do so. that is a nice convenient rule by which we can judge and condemn such people. but we cannot go poking into people's lives and studying their motives and judging their fundamental moral standards! no, you cannot. why should you? this little set of iron rules makes it very easy to judge, does it not? but why do you desire it to be easy to judge? you and i know how infinite are the gradations between the most noble kind of chastity and the most ignoble kind of immorality; but which of us is to create a rigid standard and measure our friends and acquaintances against it? we do not do it with the other virtues: why do we desire to do it with this one? take such a virtue as truth. conceive the crystalline sincerity of some truth-loving minds, realize that some have such a devotion to truth that the faintest shadow of insincerity--not a lie, but the merest shadow of insincerity in the depths of their hearts--is abhorrent to them. consider the infinite gradations between that mind and the mind which takes a lie for truth, a mind that is rotten with corruption, that does not know how to think straight, let alone care to speak straight. you do not draw up your little set of rules and say: "i do not call on that person because he does not speak the truth; and i won't have anything to do with that one--such persons are outside the social pale altogether because their conception of truth is different from mine!" no, you keep your admiration for the truth-loving and the sincere. you recognize that people have different standards about what is truth. one person will never tell a lie under any circumstances: another will reckon himself free to tell a lie to save a third, or to preserve a confidence; will you judge which is the more honourable of the two? where is your little set of rules? you cannot have one. you shrink from the person who is morally dishonest and corrupt; you worship the person who loves truth as darwin loved it. but between those two extremes what an infinite variety of attainment! who can say: "these people are moral because they are married, and those are immoral, they are not married?" it is not true, it is not honest, to make these rules our measure. they do not meet the realities of human nature, and i contend that we, who have known souls so chaste and lovely that they make us in love with virtue, do far more to raise the moral standard of humanity by seeking to imitate such people than by setting up our little codes of rules and condemning or justifying all men by them. let us treat this virtue as we do every other virtue, not fitting it to a set of rules which everyone knows do not fit the realities, but taking our courage in our hands and judging human beings (if we must judge them) by their real sincerity, their real unselfishness, their real unwillingness to exploit others--the measure of the chastity of their souls. v the moral standard of the future: what should it be? "ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery: but i say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. it hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement: but i say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. "again ye have heard that it has been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the lord thine oaths: but i say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is god's throne; nor by the earth; for it is his footstool; neither by jerusalem; for it is the city of the great king. neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. but let your communications be, yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh from evil." (matthew v., - ; - .) i have tried to reach those realities of human nature on which human morality must be based. i believe that the fundamental things which we must take into account are, first, the complex nature of human beings, who having body, soul, and spirit to reckon with cannot neglect any one of these without insincerity; and, secondly, the solidarity of the human race, which makes it futile to act as though the "morals" of any one of us could be his own affair alone. it is because of this solidarity that marriage has always been regarded as a matter of public interest, to be recognized by law, celebrated by some public ceremony, protected by a legal contract. all are concerned in this matter, for it affects the race itself, through the children that may be born. human children need what animals do not, or not to the same extent. they need two parents: they need a stable and permanent home: they need a spiritual marriage, a real harmony between their parents, as well as a physical one. a child is not provided for when you have given it a home and food and clothing, since it is a spirit as well as a body--a soul and a spirit, a being craving for love, and needing to live in an atmosphere of love. the young of no other species need this as children do, and therefore, it is the concern of the community to see that the rights of these most helpless and most precious little ones are safeguarded. i cannot believe that any state calling itself civilized can ever disregard the duty of safeguarding the human rights of the child, and i repeat its human rights are not sufficiently met when its physical necessities are guaranteed. but i go further. i claim that it is really the concern of all of us that people who love should do so honestly, faithfully, responsibly. marriage should be permanent; that is true in a sense that makes it important to all of us that it should succeed. those who have loved and ceased to love have not failed for themselves only but for all. they have shaken the faith of the world. they have inclined us to the false belief that love is not eternal. they have, so far as they could, destroyed a great ideal, injured a great faith. people--and some of these are my personal friends, and people for whom i have a very great respect--who affirm that a legal or religious marriage is not necessary because their relations to one another are not the concern of the community, may have, it seems to me, a morality that is lofty, but not one that is broad, not one that is truly human. it is not true (and, therefore, it is not moral) to say that marriage is not the concern of other people. no one can fail in love, no one can take on himself so great a responsibility and fail to fulfil it, without all of us being concerned. humanity is _solidaire_. the community is and must be concerned in the love of men and women in marriage. but what should be the nature of that concern? what should we--the community--hold up as the right standard of sex-relationship, and what methods should we use to impose it on others? i think you will have gathered from what i have said already that, to my mind, marriage should be a union that looks forward to being permanent, faithful, monogamous. it should be the expression of a union of spirit so perfect that the union of the bodies of those who love follows as a kind of natural necessity. it should be the sacrament of love, "the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." and something of this perfection is to be found in many marriages that seem (and are) far from complete. i often hear of the lives of married people where there has been very much to overcome, where perhaps the marriage has been entered into in ignorance and error; where the passion that brought the two together has been very evanescent; where it has soon become evident that their temperaments do not "fit"; where it might easily be said that they were not really "married" at all: yet there has been in these two such a stubborn loyalty to responsibilities undertaken, such a magnificent sense of faithfulness, such a determination to make the best out of what they have rather lightly undertaken; sometimes even only on one side, there has been such faith, such honour, such loyalty, such a refusal to admit a final failure, that a relationship poor in promise has become beautiful and sacred. in face of such loyalty, the theory that sex-relationships can rightly be brief, evanescent, thrown aside as soon as passion has gone, seems to me very cheap and shoddy, very unworthy of human beings. marriage should be all that--shall i say?--the brownings made of it. but when it is not, there is still often much that is left. men and women, you cannot enter into one another's lives in this deep and intimate way and go on your way as though nothing had happened. you cannot tear asunder people so united without bleeding. you cannot make a failure of it without immeasurable loss. "how do i love thee? let me count the ways. i love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. i love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candlelight." who that has once heard this can easily take anything less? or who, having loved in any of these ways, will lightly break the bond? i think that one of the most profoundly moral relationships i have ever met between a man and a woman was, in spite of all that i have said up till now, the relationship of a man to a woman to whom at first he was not legally married. it was her wish, not his, but they were not legally married. they had no children, and she was unfaithful to him more than once, and yet this man--and he did not call himself a christian--this man felt that he had taken the responsibility of that woman's life, and though he could easily have put her away, and though, at last, she killed in him all that you would normally call love between a man and woman, and he learned to care for another woman, yet he would not abandon her because now she had grown to need him, and he felt he could not take so great a human responsibility as the life of another person and then cast it away as though it had never been. that is morality. to such a sense of what human relationships demand my whole soul gives homage. that seems to me a perfectly humane and, therefore, truly moral idea of what love involves. such a sense of responsibility should go with all love. passion cannot last, in the nature of things, and, therefore, those who marry do so, if they know anything at all of love--and, god help them, many of them do not--but if they know anything at all of love, they know that it is physically impossible for this particular bond always to unite them. they must be aware that there is something more than that, something that must in the end transcend that physical union. looking at marriage from that point of view, can one desire that it should be anything less than permanent, indissoluble? that which god made, and, therefore, which no man should put asunder? let the community--both church and state--teach this. let us make it clear that men and women should not marry unless they do sincerely believe that their love for each other is of this character. let them understand that physical union should be the expression of a spiritual union. let them learn that love, though it includes passion, is more than passion, and must transcend and outlive passion. and let us insist that all should learn the truth about themselves--about their own bodies and about their own natures--so that they may understand what they do, and may have all the help that knowledge can give in doing it. i hold that on such knowledge and such understanding the community should insist, if it is to uphold the high and difficult standard of indissoluble monogamous marriage. so only _can_ it be rightly upheld. i urge also that when a marriage takes place the state has a right and a duty with regard to it. for the sake of every citizen, and most of all for the sake of the children, it should "solemnize" marriage, and should do so on the understanding--clearly expressed--that those who come to be married intend to be faithful to each other "as long as they both shall live." in doing this i believe the state does all--or nearly all--that it usefully can to uphold the dignity of marriage and a high standard of morality. i do not believe that it should seek to penalize those whose sex-relationships are not of this character, except so far as legislation for the protection of the immature or the helpless is concerned. and i do not think it should compel--or seek to compel, for compulsion is, in fact, impossible--the observance of a marriage which has lost or never had the elements of reality. is this to abandon the ideal i have been upholding? i do not think so. let us refer again to the greatest of teachers and the loftiest of idealists--jesus christ. see what he teaches in the sermon on the mount and elsewhere. everywhere he emphasizes the spiritual character of virtue and of sin. to be a murderer it is not necessary to kill: to hate is, in itself, enough. if you hate you are essentially a murderer. to be an adulterer it is not necessary to commit adultery: to look on a woman lustfully is already to have committed adultery with her in your heart. it is the spirit that sins. so keep your spirit pure. it is not enough to keep your oaths: you should be so utterly and transparently sincere that there is no need and no sense in supporting your words by great oaths. "yea" and "nay" should be sufficient. you will notice that the sermon on the mount has been divided in this chapter into a number of paragraphs, each of which begins by a reference to the old external law of conduct, and goes on to demand a more searching, more spiritual and interior virtue. "ye have heard that it was said by them of old time.... but i say unto you." "ye have heard that it was said: 'thou shalt not kill' ... but i say unto you that whosoever is angry shall be in danger of the judgment. ye have heard that it was said: 'thou shalt not commit adultery,' but i say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.... ye have heard that it was said: 'thou shalt not forswear thyself,' but i say unto you: 'swear not at all.'" what is the significance of such teaching? surely that we are not to be satisfied with keeping the letter of the law, but are to keep it in our hearts. so clear is this that the church has completely abandoned the letter of the last precept. no one except a quaker refuses to take an oath. every bishop on the bench has done so, and every incumbent of a living. nowhere throughout the sermon on the mount have christians felt themselves bound to a literal or legal interpretation of its teaching. no one wants a man to be tried for murder and hanged for hating his brother. no judge grants a divorce because a man or woman has "committed adultery in his heart." christ himself did not _literally_ "turn the other cheek" when struck by a soldier. his disciples everywhere pray in places quite as public as the street-corners forbidden in the next chapter of st. matthew, and give their alms publicly or in secret as seems to them best. it may be contended that in this spiritual interpretation of christ's commands it is very easy to go too far and "interpret" all the meaning out of them. it is certain, however, that the danger must be incurred, since nothing could make sense out of an absolutely _literal_ interpretation. it would mean a _reductio ad absurdum_. apply such a literalism, for example, to the point at which for centuries the church has sought to apply it--the indissolubility of marriage. it is admitted that since a phrase, of however doubtful authority, does make an exception in favour of divorce for adultery, the church can recognize a law in this sense. but if we are to be literalists, it seems that a lustful wish is adultery! is this to be a cause for divorce? and if not, why not? obviously because we can no more apply such spiritual teaching literally than we can take a man out and hang him because he hates his brother! there we cease to be literal: how then can we fall back on a literal interpretation at another point? i claim that there is no ground whatever for a more rigid and legal interpretation of our lord's teaching about marriage than about taking oaths or praying in public. i believe that christ held that marriage should be permanent and indissoluble, that only those people should marry who loved each other with a love so pure, so true, so fine as to be regarded rightly as a gift from god, who accepted their union as a great trust as well as a great joy, whose marriage might indeed be said to be "made in heaven" before it was solemnized on earth; but that he should insist on a legal contract from which all reality had departed, or regard as a marriage a union of which the most cynical could only say that it was made in hell, merely because the church or the state had chosen to bless or register it, seems to me as unlike the whole of the rest of the sermon on the mount and as far from the spirit of christ as east is from west. it surely is not conceivable that he to whom marriage meant so much that he spoke of it as being made by god, who conceived of the union of a man and woman as being the work of god himself "those whom god has joined together"--would have cared for the shell out of which the kernel had gone, for the mere legal bond out of which all the spirit had fled. marriage should be indissoluble; but what is marriage? i heard a little while ago of a girl of who was married to a man of . he was immoral in mind and diseased in body, and at the end of a year she left him with another man. he divorced her, and she is now married to that other man, and there are people who say that this marriage, which, so far as one can judge, is a moral, faithful, and a responsible union, blest with children who are growing up in a good home, is no marriage because the wife went through a ceremony with this other man before, and marriage is indissoluble. marriage is indissoluble: "those whom god has joined together let no man put asunder." did god join those two together? they were married in a church. it is the church that should repent in sackcloth and ashes for permitting such a mockery of marriage. let the church by all means do what it has so long failed to do, emphasize the sanctity of human relationships, make men and women realize how deep a responsibility they take in marriage, how sacred a thing is this creative love, from which future generations will spring, which brings into the world human bodies and immortal souls; which, even if it is childless, is still the very sacrament of human love. let the church teach all that it can to make marriage sacred and divine, but when it preaches that such a marriage as that is a marriage at all it does not uphold our moral standard but degrades it. i have said enough before, i hope, to make you realize that i do not think that when passion has gone marriage is dead. i have seen marriages which seemed unequal, difficult, unblest, made into something lovely and sacred by the deep patience and loyalty of human nature, and believe it is the knowledge of such possibilities which makes christian people, and even those who would not call themselves christians, generally desire some religious ceremony when they are married. they know that for such love human nature itself is hardly great enough. they desire the grace of god to inspire their love for each other with something of that eternal quality which belongs to the love of god. i have seen husbands love their wives, and wives their husbands, with a divine compassion, an inexhaustible pity, which goes out to the most unworthy and degraded. yes, i would even go so far as to say that unless you feel that you are able to face the possibility of change in the one you love, that you can love so well that even if they alter for the worse your love would no more disappear than the love of god for you would disappear when you change or fail, you have not attained to the perfect love which justifies marriage. but this is a hard saying, and, therefore, those of us who believe in god in any sense instinctively desire the blessing of god to rest on the undertaking of so great a responsibility. we want our love to be divine before we can undertake the whole happiness of another human being. let the church by all means teach this, and i believe that future generations will conceive more nobly and more responsibly of marriage for her teaching. but do not seek to hold together those between whom there is no real marriage at all. when seriously and persistently a man and a woman believe that their marriage never was or has now ceased to be real, surely their persistent and considered opinion ought to be enough for the state to act upon. let no one be allowed to give up in haste. let no one fling responsibility aside easily. let it always be a question of long consideration, of advice from friends, perhaps even from judges. but i cannot help feeling that when through years this conviction that there is no reality in a marriage persists, this is the one really decent and sufficient reason for declaring that that marriage is dissolved. let us have done with the infamous system now in force, by which a man and woman must commit adultery or perjury before they can get us to admit the patent fact that their marriage no longer exists as a reality. let us have done with a system which makes a mockery of our divorce courts. i have the utmost sympathy with those who denounce the light way in which men and women perjure themselves to obtain release, but i affirm that the whole system is, in the main, so based on legalisms, so divorced from morality, that the resultant adulteries and perjuries are what every student of human nature must inevitably expect, however much he may regret and hate them. it will be in vain that laws are devised to prevent divorce by collusion, in vain that king's proctors or judges detect and penalize here and there the less wary and ingenious offenders. the law will continue to be evaded or defied. and the reason is fundamental: it is that the law is not based on reality. it affirms that a marriage still exists when it does _not_ exist. it demands that two human beings should give to each other what they cannot give. and--the essence of marriage being consent--it makes the fact that both parties desire its dissolution the final reason for denying them! to force a woman to demand the "restitution of conjugal rights" when such "rights" have become a horrible wrong; to compel a man to commit, or perjure himself by pretending he has committed, adultery, before he can get the state to face the fact that his marriage is no longer a reality--is this to uphold morality? is this the ideal of the sermon on the mount? let us once for all abandon the pretence that _all_ the marriages made in churches or in registrars' offices are, therefore, necessarily made in heaven. let us get to work instead to see that the marriages of the future shall be made in heaven, and, above all, let us abolish the idea that a marriage is a real marriage which is based on ignorance, on fraud, on exploitation, on selfishness. let us not dream that we can raise our standard of morals, by affirming that every mistake that men and women make in a matter in which mistaking is so tragically easy ought to imprison them in a lie for the rest of their lives. but let us take the ideal of christ, in all its grandeur and all its reality, with our eyes fixed upon the ideal, but with that respect for human personality, that respect for reality and truth, which makes us refuse to accept the pretence that all the marriages we have known have been made by god. let us, at least, in perpetuating such blasphemies as are some of the marriages on which we have seen the blessing of the church invoked, cease to drag in the name of christ to the defence of a system which has laid all its weight upon a legal contract, and kept a conspiracy of silence about the sacred union of body and soul by which god makes man and woman one. vi a plea for light jesus said: "if any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him." my last address for the present[c] on the difficult questions that we have been considering here, sunday after sunday, is a plea for light. [footnote c: another address was added a few weeks later in response to urgent requests.] "walking in darkness" has been, in sexual matters, the experience of most of us. even now, in the twentieth century, it is not too much to say that most of us have had to fight our battle in almost complete darkness and something very near to complete isolation. there are two great passions connected with the bodies of men and women, so fundamental that they have moulded the histories of nations and the development of the human race. they are the hunger for food and the instinct of sex. there is no other passion connected with our bodies so fundamental, so powerful, as these two; and yet, with regard to the second, most of us are expected to manage our lives and to grow up into maturity without any real knowledge at all, and with such advice as we get wrapped up in a jargon that we do not understand. we have been as those who set out to sea without a chart; as soldiers who fight a campaign without a map. i do not think this is too much to say of the way in which a large number of the men and women that i know--even those of this generation--have been expected to tackle one of the greatest problems that the human race has to solve. may i sketch what i imagine is the experience of most people? at some point in our lives we begin to be curious; we ask a question; we are met with a jest or a lie, or with a rebuke, or with some evasion that conveys to us, quite successfully, that we ought not to have asked the question. the question generally has to do with the matter of birth--the birth of babies, or kittens, or chickens; some point of curiosity connected with the birth of young creatures is generally the first thing that awakens our interest. when we meet with evasion, lies, or reproof, we naturally conclude that there is something about the birth of life into the world that we ought not to know, and since it is apparently wrong of us even to wish to know it, it is presumably disgusting. we seek to learn from other and more grimy sources what our parents might have told us, and, learning, arrive at the conclusion that in the relations of men and women there is also something that is repulsive. and since, in spite of this, our interest does not cease but becomes furtive curiosity, we also conclude that there is something depraved and disgusting about ourselves. now, all of these three conclusions are lies; and, therefore, we set out in life equipped with a lie in our souls. it is not a good beginning. it means that almost at once those of us who persist in our desire to know are in danger of losing our self-respect. we learn that there is something in sex that is base--so base that even our own parents will not speak to us about it; and because of that, and because a child instinctively does accept, during the first few years of its existence, what its parents or guardians say, we assume that there must be something bad in us, since we so persistently desire to know what is so evil that nobody will speak of it at all. or if anyone does allude to it, it is with unwholesome furtiveness and a rather silly kind of mirth, so as to increase in the minds of many of us the sense that there must be something in our nature that we cannot respect because nobody else finds it beautiful or respectable. our next step, especially if we are conscientious people, is to repress that something. and here i want to say a word in answer to a number of letters that i have had on the point which i raised early in this book, when i claimed that women have to pay as great a tax and suffer as great a hardship from repression as men do. people--both men and women--have written to say that this is not true, and to such i wish to make my point quite clear. i did not say that men and women suffered _in the same way_. i said that they suffered _equally_; and since the question has been raised, i should like just to answer it here. to me it seems, judging as far as i can, from the people that i know, that--speaking very generally--passion comes to a man with greater violence, and is more liable to leave him in peace at other times. passion is to a man who is of strong temperament like a storm at sea. it seems the very embodiment of violence and force. the mere sight of the sea angry almost terrifies one, even if one is perfectly safe from the violence of the storm; but the depths are not stirred. and in the case of a woman i would take a different figure of speech altogether, and say that very often the strain on her is much less dramatic, much less violent, and more persistent. i think of the strain as something like that silent, uninterrupted thrust of an arch against the wall, of a dome on the walls that support it. there is no sign of stress. but it is so difficult to build a dome rightly that italy, the land of domes, is covered with the ruins of those churches whose domes gradually, slowly, thrust outwards till the walls on which they rested gave way and the church was in ruins. that kind of strain is easily denied by the very people who are enduring it. it is so customary, so much a part of their life, that they are unconscious of it. no one who studies psychology to-day can fail to realize how unconscious people often are of the seat and the nature of their own troubles. it is true that the tendency to _exaggerate_ the importance of sex seems likely to vitiate to some extent the conclusions of psychologists like freud and his disciples. but that they have revealed to us a mass of hitherto unknown and un-understood suffering in the minds of both women and men, arising from the continual repression of a passion whose strength may be measured by the disastrous consequences caused by repressing it, no one who knows anything at all of modern psychology can deny. those who do not understand their own trouble will often deny that the trouble exists, and deny it quite honestly. but those who have become the physicians of the mind are just beginning to learn how tremendous a sacrifice the world has asked of women in the past while denying that it was a sacrifice at all! now, this repression follows, in many women and in a considerable number of men, on the assumption that there is something in sex too shameful to be spoken about or looked at in the light. we set out, i repeat, on our campaign without a map of the country and with our compasses pointing the wrong way. and this, above all, is true when repression has caused some actual perversion in the mind, some arrested development, some abnormal condition. this is not always the consequence of deliberate repression on the part of the individual, but it is, i believe, often the consequence of an artificial state of civilization; an attitude towards a great and wonderful impulse which has perverted our whole view of what is divine and lovely in human nature. whatever the cause, the result is abnormality of some kind, and to people who have suffered so, i want, above all, to say this: light and understanding are needed more by you, perhaps, than by anyone else, and to you, above all, they have been denied. loneliness, isolation, the loss of self-respect, the darkness of ignorance have surrounded those to whom the sacrifice has been hardest, and, therefore, the repression, whether racial or individual, most disastrous. you can, if you choose, leave the world a nobler place because you let light in on these dark places. do not say to yourselves that your suffering is useless and purposeless because it is no good to anyone: no one knows of it: no one understands it: and, therefore, it has all the additional bitterness of being to no purpose. that need not be true. ignorance need not continue. if you will try to make your suffering of service to the world, it is not difficult to measure how great may be our advance in fundamental morality in this present generation. we do not know yet of what human nature is capable, and those who are studying the human mind are perhaps the greatest of all pioneers at the present moment. some of you have trusted me, and by your trust have enabled me to help other people. others of you, perhaps, have yourselves become or will become students of psychology. you will advance a little further in a science which is as yet only making its first uncertain steps. even if you do none of these things, yet if you will try to understand yourselves, by the mere fact that you understand, you will find that you are able to help other people--other people whose condition is most tragic, most lonely--to face with courage the problem they share with you.[d] try to solve it, as you can. you will gain in understanding and strength, so that those in yet greater need will instinctively come to you for help. base your own moral standard on all that is noble, and wise and human, and you will find that in you the spiritual begins so to dominate the physical that others will see its power and come to you for help. [footnote d: this subject is more fully dealt with in the next chapter.] "with aching hands and bleeding feet, we toil and toil; lay stone on stone. not till the light of day return all we have built shall we discern." now let us turn to the other side of the problem--the more normal relations of men and women who are lovers, who are husbands and wives. may i again recapitulate what appears to be the history of many married people, even in . let me remind you first that this contract of marriage is the most important, probably, in the whole life of the man and woman who undertake it; that it concerns human personality as perhaps no other relation in the world does, so deeply, so closely, so intimately, that those who enter into it are very near either to heaven or hell. the nearer you come to any other human personality, the nearer you get to the supreme happiness or the supreme failure. and when people enter on this relationship, how are they prepared? many of them are ignorant--and in the case of women often wholly so--of what marriage actually involves. i find it difficult to speak in measured terms of those parents who deliberately allow their daughters to take a step which involves the whole of their future life and happiness, and that of another human being also, in ignorance of what they are doing. this relationship, which requires all the love and all the wisdom of men and women--so much so that even those who do not call themselves christians often desire to go to a church and ask for the grace of god to enable them to carry out so great an undertaking--is entered upon by people who literally do not know what, from the very nature of marriage, is required of them. i suppose many people will say that i speak of a state of things which passed a generation ago. no, i do not. i speak of a state of things that is only too common at this present time. i have known marriage after marriage wrecked by the almost unbelievable ignorance that has been present on both sides. i say both sides. first of all, there is the girl. to her, marriage comes sometimes as so great a shock that her whole temperament is warped and embittered by it. then there is the man, equally ignorant--very often, probably less ignorant of himself, but equally ignorant of her--not realizing how she should be treated. they are often quite ignorant of each other's views on marriage; of what sort of claims they are going to make on each other; what each thinks about the duty of having children. these elementary facts of human life, which must confront those who marry, are faced by them without any kind of preparation, without the most rudimentary knowledge of each other's point of view. and that there are so many happy marriages in spite of all this makes one realize how extraordinarily loyal, fine and courageous, on the whole, human nature is. only the other day i was speaking in a town in the north of england on this very subject, and i got a letter afterwards to say that the writer had very greatly enjoyed my address at the time. she had found it, she assured me, inspiring and elevating. but she felt bound to write and tell me afterwards (what she was sure would both shock and distress me) that she had found that some of the people in my audience were actually acting on what i said! i suppose every public speaker comes up against that sort of thing sometimes--the calm assurance that you are merely talking in the air and have not the slightest desire that anyone should act on what you say. so this lady wrote to say that, though she and her husband had both been greatly impressed by what i said, they were horrified to find that, as a result, people were actually discussing with one another, before they married, certain points which she mentioned to me and which she said they ought never to discuss until they _were_ married. is it not amazing that anyone should seriously contend that it is better to arrive at an understanding with the person he or she is about to marry _after_ marriage than before? that people who would not dream of betraying anyone into any kind of contract about which they were not satisfied that its terms were understood should be willing to betray others--i deliberately call it a betrayal--into a contract of such infinite importance, and positively desire that they shall be ignorant of its nature? it really seems sometimes as if pains were positively taken to mislead those who are going to be married. one of the most amazing statements on this subject, for instance, is contained in the marriage service of the church of england, where the bride and bridegroom are told that marriage was ordained that "such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of christ's body." that there should be anyone in the twentieth century who does not know that a man or a woman who has not the gift of continency is totally unfit for marriage is really rather startling. what such a person requires is both a divine and a physician; but that he should be told that he is fit for marriage and that marriage was expressly designed for him is not only misleading, it is absolutely horrifying. it explains the tragic wreck which so many marriages become after a comparatively short time. i would urge, then, for the future, that we should not concentrate all our moral, ethical, religious, and social force on perpetuating the tragic failure of an empty marriage, but, rather, should concentrate our efforts on trying to make people understand what marriage is; what their own natures are; what marriage is going to demand from them; what they need in order to make it noble. i urge, moreover, that the same principle should apply to those who do not marry--that they also should learn in the light what their difficulties are going to be; how to face their own temperaments; how to deal with their own minds and bodies. your temperament, men and women, does not decide your destiny; it does decide your trials. to know how to deal with it and how to make it your servant, how so to enthrone spiritual power in your nature that it shall dominate all that is physical, not as something base, but as a sacred and a consecrated thing--it is on this that the teachers of to-day should concentrate with all their power. it is true that when we have learnt all that is possible from teaching, there is still something to learn. in marriage is it possible to know finally until the final step is taken? no, i do not think so. but when you consider how we have struggled against ignorance, how many pitfalls have been put in the path of those who desired knowledge, how we have, as it seems, done our best to make this relationship a failure, surely it is worth while, at least, to try what knowledge, and understanding, and education, and training _can_ do. we cannot know all. that is no reason why we should not know all that we can. surely marriage must be a divine institution, since we have done so much to make it a failure, and yet one sees again and again such splendid love, such magnificent loyalty and faith! "you advocate," someone wrote to me the other day, "you advocate that people should leave each other when they are tired of each other." no, i do not advocate that anyone should accept a failure. i advocate that every human being should do all that is possible--more perhaps than is possible without the grace of god--to make marriage the noble and lovely thing it should be. i think those are faint-hearted who easily accept the fact that it is difficult, and from that drift swiftly to the conclusion that for them it is impossible. i advocate that the greatest faith and loyalty should be practised. i believe in my heart that there is perhaps no relationship which cannot be redeemed by the love and devotion and the grace of god in the hearts of those who seek to make it redeemable. what i do say is that in church and state we should concentrate all our efforts on helping men and women to a wise, enlightened, noble conception of marriage before they enter upon it, and not on a futile and immoral attempt to hold them together by a mere legal contract when all that made it valid has fled. i believe that the more one knows of human nature the more one reverences it. i believe that the vast majority of human beings strain every nerve rather than fail in so great a responsibility. do you remember reading in mr. bertrand russell's book, "principles of social reconstruction," of a little church of which it was discovered, not, i think, very long ago, that, owing to some defect in its title, marriages which had been celebrated there were not legal? mr. bertrand russell says that there were at that time i forget how many couples still living who had been married in that church, who found that, by this legal defect, they were not legally bound. do you know how many of those married people seized the opportunity to desert each other and go and marry somebody else? not a single one! every one of those couples went quietly away to church and got married again! religious people do sometimes think such mean things of human nature, and human nature is, for the most part, so much nobler, so much more loyal, so much more loving than we imagine. "lift up your eyes unto the hills from whence cometh your help." "he that walketh in the light, stumbleth not, for he seeth the light of the world." let us face the future courageously, with great reverence for other people's opinions and views. let us not join that mob of shouters who are prepared to howl at everyone who desires to say something that is not quite orthodox, but which is their serious and considered contribution to a great and difficult problem. let us greet them with respect, however much we may differ from them. let us look forward without fear. believe me, below all the froth and scum of which we make so much, human nature is very noble. let us give that example to the world which is worth a thousand arguments--the example of a noble married life, the example of a noble single life. those of you who are alone can do infinitely more for virtue by being full of gentleness, wisdom, sanity, and love than by any harsh repression of yourselves. it is by what you can make of celibacy that the world will judge celibacy. and so of married lovers. believe me, it is not the children of married lovers who are rebels against a lofty standard. those who have seen with their eyes a lovely, faithful and unwavering love are not easily satisfied with anything that is less. "lift up your eyes unto the hills. from whence cometh your strength." and in the light of a great ideal, in the light of knowledge, sincerity and truth, in the light of what i know of human nature, i, for one, am not afraid for the future moral standard of this country. vii friendship "saul and jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. ye daughters of israel, weep over saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. how are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! oh jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. i am distressed for thee, my brother jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. how are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" (ii. sam. i. - .) "and orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but ruth clave unto her. and she said, behold thy sister-in-law has gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister-in-law. and ruth said, intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, i will go; and where thou lodgest, i will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy god my god: where thou diest, will i die, and there will i be buried: the lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part me and thee." (ruth i. - .) people have sometimes discussed with me whether it is right to have as intense and absorbing a love for a friend of one's own sex as exists between lovers. the word "absorbing" is perhaps the difficulty in their minds. all love is essentially the same, and it has been pointed out that the great classic instances of great love have been almost as often between friends as between lovers. but the test of love's nobility remains the same. if it is in the strict sense "absorbing"--if, that is, it is exclusive, if it narrows one's interests instead of enlarging them, if it involves a failure in love or sympathy with other people, it is wrong--it is not in the true sense "love"; but if it enriches the understanding, widens interest, deepens sympathy--if, in a word, to love one teaches us to love others better, then it is good, it is love indeed. a friendship which is of such character that no one outside it is of any interest, a maternal love which not only concentrates on its own but wholly excludes all other children, even a marriage which ultimately narrows rather than widens and is exclusive in its interests, is a poor caricature of love. a young mother may, in the first rapture of her motherhood, seem wholly absorbed; but, as a matter of fact, she generally ends by caring more for _all_ children because she loves one so deeply. even lovers, after the first absorption of newly-discovered joy, must learn to share their happiness and the happiness of their home with others if it is not to grow hard and dull. and friends may easily estimate the worth of their friendship by the measure with which it has humanized their relations to all other human beings. there is another test also for love: does it express itself naturally and rightly? this test is much more difficult to apply. one may believe that all love is essentially the same, but it is certain that all human relationships are not the same, and, therefore, love cannot always be expressed in the same way; but it is not possible to lay down any exact rule between the sort of "expression" legitimate to each. everyone must have suffered sometimes from a sense of having forced undesired demonstrations on other people, or having them forced on oneself. one's suffering in the first instance is intensified by the knowledge of the extremity of revolt created by the second. there is nothing, i suppose, more acutely painful than the sense of being compelled to accept demonstrations of affection to which one cannot in the same way respond. i believe that this shrinking from expressions which seem unnatural, is rightly intensified a hundredfold when the sense of wrongness or "unnaturalness" is due not to the individual but to the relationship itself. the love which unites the soul to god, children to their parents, mothers and fathers to sons and daughters, lovers to one another, friend to friend, the disciple to his master, is all one. you cannot divide love. but to each belongs its right and natural expression, and to parody the love of lovers between friends revolts the growing sense of humankind. the very horrors of prostitution create a less shuddering disgust than the debauching of a young boy by an older man, though with a tragically common injustice society is more apt to be disgusted by the unfortunate victim, bearing all the marks of his moral and physical perversion, than by the more responsible older man who profits by or even creates it. yet it is, as i have said, only by the _growing_ sense of humanity that such things are condemned. they were not always so in every case. on the contrary it has sometimes been maintained that friendship between men was so much nobler than the love of men and women that even when it demanded physical expression it was still the finest of all human relationship. this idea was, of course, widely held by the greeks during the noblest epochs of their history, and plato, though he does not, as is commonly believed, justify such expression as good in itself, evidently regards it as practically inevitable and, therefore, to be condoned. and though from this indulgent attitude there has been a very general revolt in modern times, the reaction has not always been very discriminating in its condemnation or very just in its reprisals. now--in consequence, no doubt, of this injustice--there has arisen another attempt to assert the superior nobility of friendship over love,[e] and even to claim a superior humanity for people who are more attracted by members of their own sex. [footnote e: i am using the terms "friendship" and "love" in their ordinarily accepted and narrow sense, as meaning respectively the love of friends and the love of lovers. this is arbitrary, but i cannot find other words except by using long phrases.] there is not in this any question of the bestial depravity which deliberately debauches the young and innocent: it is a question of the kind of friendship glorified by plato. and those who uphold the platonic view are not always debauchees but sometimes men and women who, however incomprehensibly, still sincerely believe that they and not we who oppose them are the true idealists. this is why it is worth while to state our reasons for our profound disagreement, and to do so as intelligently and fairly as possible. it is also worth while because no one has suffered more cruelly or more hopelessly than those whose temperament or abnormality has been treated by most of us as though it were _in itself_, and without actual wrong-doing, a crime worthy of denunciation and scorn. first, then, let it be remembered that the highest types humanity has evolved have been men and women who are really "human," that is to say who have not only those qualities which are generally regarded as characteristic of their sex, but have had some share of the other sex's qualities also. a man who is (if such a thing could be) wholly and exclusively male in all his qualities would be repulsive; so would a woman wholly and exclusively female. one has only to look at history to realize it. compared with the exquisite tenderness and joy of a st. francis of assisi, the courage and determination of a st. joan of arc, the intellectual power of a st. catherine of siena or st. theresa of spain, the "brute male" who is wholly male, the "eternal feminine" with her suffocating sexuality seem on the one hand inhuman, on the other subhuman. it is not the absence of the masculine qualities in a man, or of the feminine qualities in a woman which raises them above the mass; it is the presence in power of both; and no man is truly human who has not something of the woman in him--no woman who has not something of the man. here is a certain truth. and its supreme example is christ himself--christ in whom power and tenderness, strength and insight, courage and compassion were equally present--christ who is in truth the ideal of all humanity without distinction of race, class or sex. this is true. but its truth has been misunderstood by teachers like edward carpenter. beauty and strength in human nature as elsewhere depend on harmony, and in such characters as i have cited that harmony is found. for, in fact, there is no instance in nature of a male wholly male or a female entirely female. even physically the elements are shared. and if we say with confidence that where these elements are most fully shared there is found the fullest humanity, we are not committed to adding that where the body has one predominating character and the spirit another there is something finer still! for harmony of life and temperament the body should be the perfect instrument and expression of the spirit. when you have the temperament of one sex in the body of another, this cannot be. there is at once a disharmony, a dislocation, a disorder--in fact, a less perfect not a more perfect type. humanity does, i believe, progress towards a fuller element of the woman in the man, the man in the woman, and the best we have produced so far confirm the truth of this. but it is not an advance to produce a type in which the temperament and the body are at odds. this is not progress but perversion. it is the same consciousness of dislocation which makes us condemn homosexual practices. here it is a dislocation between the means and the end. the instinct of sex, to whatever use it may have been put, is fundamentally the creative instinct. it is not by an accident, it is not as a side-issue, that it is through sexual attraction that children are born. and however sublimated, however enriched, restrained and conditioned, the creative power of physical passion remains at once its justification and its consecration. to use it in a relationship which must for ever be barren is "unnatural" and in the deepest sense immoral. it is not easy to define "immorality," because morality is one of the fundamentals which defy definition; but though it is not easy to define, it is not hard to recognize. all the world knows that it is immoral to prostitute the creative power of genius to mere commercialism, for money or for fame. no one can draw a hard and fast line. no one will quarrel with a great artist because he lives by his art, or because he will sometimes turn aside to amuse himself, his public, or his friends. michaelangelo is not blamed because, one winter's afternoon, he made a snow-statue for lorenzo de medici! yet all will admit that _merely_ to amuse, _merely_ to make money, _merely_ to gain popularity is a prostitution of genius. why? because it is to put to another than its real purpose the creative power of a great artist. in the same way, to use the power of another great creative impulse--that of sex--in a way which divorces it wholly from its end--creation on the physical as well as the spiritual plane--is immoral because it is "unnatural." again and again it will be found to lead to a violent reaction of feeling--a repulsion which is as intense and violent as the devotion which was its prelude. what then should those do who have this temperament? no one, perhaps, can wisely counsel them but themselves. they alone can find out the way by which the disharmony of their being can be transcended. that it can be so i am persuaded. that modern psychology has already made strides in the knowledge of this problem we all know. what is due to arrested development or to repression can be set right or liberated: what is temperamental transmuted. but i appeal to those who know this, but who have suffered and do still suffer under this difficulty, to make it their business to let in the light, to help others, to know themselves, to learn how to win harmony out of disharmony and to transcend their own limitations. let them take hold of life there where it has hurt them most cruelly, and wrest from their own suffering the means by which others shall be saved from suffering and humanity brought a little further into the light. who knows yet of what it is capable? who knows what is our ultimate goal? it may be that out of a nature so complex and so difficult may come the noblest yet, when the spirit has subdued the warring temperament wholly to itself. and to the others i would say this. if the homosexual is still the most misunderstood, maltreated, and suffering of our race, it is due to our ignorance and brutal contempt. how many have even tried to understand? how many have refrained from scorn? other troubles have been mitigated, other griefs respected if not understood. but this we refuse even to discuss. we are content to condemn in ignorance, boasting that we are too good to understand. in consequence, though a few here and there have preached homosexuality as a kind of gospel, far more have suffered an agony of shame, a self-loathing which makes life a hell. to be led to believe that one is naturally depraved!--to be condemned as the worst of sinners before one has committed even a single sin! is that not the height and depth of cruelty? do you wonder if here and there one of the stronger spirits among these condemned ones reacts in a fierce, unconscious egotism and proclaims himself the true type of humanity, the truly "civilized" man? how shall they see clearly whom we have clothed in darkness, or judge truly who are so terribly alone? to have a temperament is not in itself a sin! to find in your nature a disharmony which you must transcend, a dislocation you have to restore to order, is not a sin! whose nature is all harmony? whose temperament guarantees him from temptation? is there one here who is not conscious of some dislocation in his life that he must combat? not one! it is a disharmony to have an active spirit in a sickly body. it is a disharmony to have, like one of the very greatest of christ's disciples, "a thorn in the flesh to buffet him." who shall deliver us from this body of death? when you hear of a beethoven deaf or of a robert louis stevenson spitting blood, are you not conscious of disharmony? where there is perfect harmony--_perfect_, i say--such a dislocation could not be. epilepsy has been called "la maladie des grands," because some great ones have suffered from it. perhaps st. paul did. it is not possible to imagine christ doing so. in him there existed so perfect a harmony of being that one can no more associate him with ill-health than with any other disorder or defect. yet we do not speak (or think) with horrified contempt of the disharmony present in st. paul or in beethoven. rather we reverence the glorious conquest of the spirit over the weakness and limitations of the flesh. some of us have even rushed to the opposite extreme and preached ill-health as a kind of sanctity, in our just admiration for those who have battled against it and shown us the spirit dominant over the flesh. but, it will be urged, ill-health is quite another kind of disharmony than vice. we are not responsible for it, and cannot be blamed. i am not prepared to admit that this is altogether true, but i will not discuss it now. the point i want to make clear, if i make nothing else clear, is that to be born with a certain temperament is not in itself a sin nor does it compel you to be a sinner. "your temperament decides your trials; it does not decide your destiny." it is no more "wicked" to have the temperament of a homosexual than to have the weakness of an invalid. it is difficult for the spirit to dominate and to bring into a healthy harmony a body predisposed to illness and disorder. the greater the glory to those who succeed! let us confess with shame that in this other and far harder case we have not only ignored the difficulty and despised the struggler, but--god forgive us--have, so far as in us lay, made impossible the victory. viii misunderstandings "if there is one result or conclusion that we may pick out from the science of sex which has developed so rapidly of recent years, as thoroughly established and permanently accepted, it is that the old notion of the sinfulness of the sex process, _in se_, is superstitious, not religious; and must be discarded before ethical religion can assert its full sway over humanity's sex life. and, most assuredly, the conception narratives [of the new testament], by retaining the sex process to the important extent of normal pregnancy and parturition, foreshadowed and hallowed this development of ethical thought. they make it clear that the spirit of god and the spirit of woman, in conscious union, refuse to justify superstitious and paralyzing fears, refuse to allow that the sex process is irredeemable; they render possible and imperative the working out of the ethical problems directly concerned with sex." _northcute: christianity and sex problems_, _pp._ , . during the course of these addresses i have more than once, and with more than common urgency, pleaded for the light of knowledge, that we may in future not make so many disastrous mistakes from sheer ignorance and misunderstanding. i have been asked to say more definitely what "misunderstandings" i had in mind, and to discuss them with at least as much courage as i have so pressingly demanded from others. the demand is just; and i feel the less able to disregard it because i have discussed these very difficulties with people whose lives have been wrecked by the ignorance in which they were brought up, or saved by knowledge wisely imparted before the difficulties arose. knowledge cannot save us from hardship or difficulty; it cannot make us invulnerable to attack, or lift us above the ordinary temptations of ordinary mortals; but it can show us where we are going; it can guide us when we wish to be guided; it can save us, when we wish to be saved, from mistakes cruel to ourselves and often far more cruel to other people. for instance: it is very generally believed that the struggle for continence is greatly eased by continual and even exhausting physical activity. to work hard--to work even to exhaustion--is believed by some to be a panacea. at our great public schools the craze for athleticism is justified on the ground that, even at the expense of the things of the mind, it does at least keep the boys from moral evil. i believe this to be a mistake, and a mistake which is due to our looking at sex from a too purely physical point of view. it is, of course, imbecile to forget the physical, and deal with sex simply as a "sin"; but it is no less stupid to forget that our bodies and souls are intimately bound together, and that there is much more in passion than a merely physical instinct. as a matter of fact, a tired person is not immune from sex-hunger, and even an exhausted person is likely to find that, far from sexual feeling being exhausted too, it turns out to be the only sensation that will respond to stimulus at all. the exploitation of sexuality by our theatres and press is not successful only in the case of the idle and the overfed; it finds its patrons also among those who are too tired to put their minds into anything really interesting from an intellectual or artistic point of view, but whose attention can be distracted and whose interest held by a more or less open appeal to the primitive instincts of sex. tired people want to be amused and interested if possible; but they are not easily amused by anything that appeals to the mind, because they are tired. they want a sensation other than the customary one of fatigue, and the easiest sensation to excite is a sexual one. they get it thinly disguised, in a theatre or music-hall, more thickly disguised in the form of cheap fiction, or quite undisguised elsewhere. but the idea that sexuality is destroyed by fatigue is a very mischievous illusion which has misled and helped to destroy some of the most honest strivers after self-control. such people will, with a touching belief in saws, seek to find in exhaustion relief from temptation. but it is not amusing always to feel tired. one desires at last something else--some other kind of feeling--and one is too tired to make an effort. but sexual sensation is easily excited, and in the end the unfortunate finds that he has yielded again. his hard fight has only ended in defeat, and he either abandons the advice as mistaken, or himself as hopelessly and uniquely depraved. the truth is, of course, that what is needed is not physical exhaustion any more than physical idleness and overfeeding. what is wanted is hard and _interesting_ work--work that absorbs one's mental as well as physical strength. a boy at a public school who really cares for games can pour his energies into them and appear a fine example of the system; a boy who, though games are compulsory, cannot interest himself in them at all, is not helped by being physically exhausted. if, then, he yields to a temptation the other has escaped, this need not be because he is more wicked or more weak. it may quite well be because the insistence on athleticism, which has been elevated into a cult, in our public schools, has supplied a real and absorbing interest for the one, but has merely used the physical capacity of the other without touching his mind or his spirit at all. when shall we learn that every human being is a unity, and that to ignore any part of it--body, mind or spirit--is idiotic? the muscular christian who believes that continence is achieved by physical fatigue is as short-sighted as he who would treat the whole matter as a purely ethical problem. but the man or woman who works hard at some congenial and absorbing task--especially if it be creative work--finds the virtue of continence well within his grasp without exhaustion and without asceticism. it is because sex is essentially a creative--the creative--power in humanity that we have to direct its force into some more spiritual channel than mere physical labour, if we are to make ourselves its master. again, an increasing number of us believe that to master our physical impulses is possible; and that it has seemed impossible--at least, for men--in the past largely because so little knowledge and so little common-sense has been used in achieving mastery. naturally, it was simpler to assume that it was impossible to control oneself than to find out how to make it possible, but as we grow more civilized we cease to be perfectly content with this simple plan, and begin to perceive its extraordinary injustices and brutalities. it has been said that the civilization of any people or period may be judged by the position of its women, and though this is too simple to be quite true, it is far more true than false. if, however, civilization does raise the position of women, and assign to them a greater freedom of action and a wider scope for their lives than was theirs before, it must be clearly understood that women in these circumstances and of this type will take a quite different line on the question of sex morals than their great-grandmothers did. it is, for example, still urged that women must not do this, that or the other work, because it involves working with men whose sex instincts may be uncontrollably aroused by such collaboration. sir almroth wright has pleaded this, and it is being urged to-day against the entrance of women into what is now almost the only sphere still closed to them--the spiritual work of the churches. it is urged that some men are afraid of being sexually excited if they are addressed by a woman-preacher, and that others cannot be within the sanctuary, with a woman near them, without similar danger. the misunderstanding that arises here is, surely, that the cause of this abnormal excitement is in the woman, whereas (in the cases cited) it is in the man. there are, of course, women who find an exactly similar difficulty in working with men: women who are transformed by the mere presence of men, as there are men who cannot enter a room full of women without physical disturbance. such men, such women, are not necessarily depraved or immoral persons, their temperament may be a source of genuine distress to them. it may be most admirably controlled, and in thousands of cases it is so, especially when the sufferer understands himself or--more rarely--understands herself. all the help that psychology and medical science can give (and it is much) should be given to and accepted by such people. the one thing that should _not_ be yielded is the ridiculous claim that men and women who are not so susceptible (and who are in the vast majority) should rule their lives according to the standards of those who are sexually over-developed or one-sidedly developed. it cannot be too strongly insisted that this problem is the problem of the individual. he (or she) has got to settle it. he must learn to manage himself in such a way that he ceases to be abnormally excitable, or he must arrange his life so that he avoids, as far as possible, the causes of excitement. he must not expect others to cramp their lives to fit him; he must not expect civilization to be perverted or arrested in order to avoid a difficulty which is his own. the only alternative to this is to revert to a form of civilization in which it was frankly admitted that sex-impulses could not be controlled, either by men or by women, and society was therefore organized on a basis which, quite logically, provided for the restraint of women in a bondage which prevented them from satisfying their impulses as they chose, and at the same time protected them from attack by other men than their lawful owners; and which, further, provided conveniences for the equally uncontrollable instincts of men. this system is quite logical; so is the one here advocated, of assuming that the sexual instincts of both sexes can be controlled. what is not logical is the assumption that they _can_ be controlled, but that such control is to be exercised not by each one mastering himself, but by the removal of all possibility of temptation! this demand is really incompatible with our civilization, and those who make it should try to understand that what they ask is, in fact, the reversal of all advance in real self-control in matters of sex. let us abandon the pretence that it is "wicked" for either a man or a woman to have strongly-developed sex-instincts. when we do this, we shall be on the high way to learning how to manage ourselves without making preposterous demands upon our neighbours or inroads upon their individual freedom. we shall also, i believe, get rid of those perversions which darken understanding as well as joy. one need not go all the way with freud--one may, indeed, suspect him of suffering from a severe "repression" himself--while admitting, nevertheless, that much of the folly that surrounds our treatment of sex-questions is due to the pathetic determination of highly respectable people to have no sex nature or impulses at all. certainly this accounts for much that is called "prudery" in women, whose repressed and starved instincts revenge themselves in a morbid (mental) preoccupation with the details of vice. i am forced to the conclusion that it has also something to do with the quite extraordinary description that certain ecclesiastics give of their own inability to control their imaginations even at the most solemn moments. a narrow and dishonest moral standard has been foisted upon women in these matters, and instead of knowing themselves and learning to control their natures, they have been given a false idea of their own natures, and taught instead merely to repress them. so, very often, a curiously artificial code of manners has been accepted by the clergyman--a code which has been crystallized in a phrase by calling the clergy "the third sex"--and he, like the women, should be in revolt against it if he is to be saved. indeed, we are or should be allies, not foes. let the priest or minister wear the same kind of collar as other people, mix with them on equal terms, and then, if he has a higher moral standard than they, it will be his own standard, accepted by him because it commands his homage, and not a standard imposed on him merely because he belongs to a certain caste. it is always the code of morals imposed from without that does mischief, and results in the repressions and perversions about which modern psychology has taught us so much. it will perhaps be urged that the peculiar dangers of which ecclesiastics are conscious are due to the psychological fact that the erotic and religious emotions are closely allied. that this is a fact will hardly be doubted. but again the problem is either an individual one, _or_ it must be solved by abandoning our present position and reverting to that of an earlier and cruder civilization. it is possible to argue that eroticism and religion are so nearly allied and so easily mistaken for one another, that safety and sincerity alike demand separate worship for men and women.[f] it is also possible to leave it to the individual to manage himself, conquer where he can and flee where he cannot. but it is not possible, on grounds of religious eroticism, to protect men from listening to a woman preaching, at the cost of compelling women to listen to no one but a man; or insist on the intolerable cruelty of compelling a man-priest to celebrate mass with a woman server, while forcing the woman to make her confession to a man. [footnote f: as, _e.g._, among the mahometans and, to a less extent, the jews.] i am convinced that when religious people learn to refrain from cheap "religion" based on emotional preaching and sentimental or rowdy music, they will find that, though eroticism and religion are nearly allied and can easily be mistaken, it is not impossible to distinguish between them. the effort to do so should be made by our spiritual leaders, and when made will result in a sturdier and more thoughtful religion. while for those, whether men or women, who are honestly aware that for them certain things are impossible there will be an obvious alternative. the man who cannot forget the woman in the priest or preacher will not attend her church; the woman, of whom the same is sometimes true, will avoid the ministrations of men. there will then be less of that eroticism in religion which some of those who--by a curious perversion of logic--oppose the ministry of women actually quote as a reason for compelling women to go to men-priests because there is no one else for them to go to. ix further misunderstandings: the need for sex chivalry "men venerated and even feared women--particularly in their specifically sexual aspect--even while they bullied them; and even in corrupt and superstitious times, when the ideal of womanhood was lost sight of, women tended to get back as witches the spiritual eminence they had failed to retain as saints, matrons and saviours of society." _northcote: christianity and sex problems, p_. . chivalry is the courtesy of strength to weakness. yet women who pride themselves on their superior moral strength in regard to sex rarely feel bound to show any chivalry towards the weak. i do not myself believe that women are _as a whole_ stronger than men, or that men are _as a whole_ stronger than women; but i am sure that the sexes are relatively stronger in certain respects and at certain points, and that where one is stronger than the other, that one should feel the chivalrous obligation of strength whether man or woman. chivalry is not and ought not to be a masculine virtue solely. for example, it is quite common to be told of (or by) some girl who is an artist in flirtation that she is "quite able to take care of herself." this appears to mean that whoever suffers, she will not; and whatever is given, she will not be the giver. it is possible to go further and say that whatever she buys she will certainly not pay for. what does she buy? well, it depends, of course, on what she wants and what is her social class. but, roughly speaking, she wants both pleasure and homage--not only theatres and cinemas, ice-creams or chocolates, but the incense that goes with such things--the demonstration of her triumphant sexual charm, which evokes such offerings. of course, in a great deal of this there is no harm. people who like each other will like to please each other, to give pleasure, and to enjoy it together. but there is something beyond this which is not harmless but detestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in order to extract homage and to demonstrate power. a girl will sometimes play on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that is intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she herself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that she "can take care of herself." the blatant dishonesty of the business never strikes her for a moment. she takes all she wants and gives nothing in return, and honestly believes that this is because she is "virtuous." that she is a thief--and one who combines theft with torture--never occurs to her; yet it is true. observe--i do not suggest that it would be creditable if she did "pay." it would be no more so than herod's payment of john the baptist's head. but although it is wrong to take something you want and give in return what you ought not to give, it would be a curious sort of morality that would go on to argue that it is right to take all and give nothing. both transactions are immoral and one is dishonest. on the other hand, it must be remembered that a parasite _must_ take all and give nothing or as little as possible. that is the law of its being. and so long as men resent the independence of women, and enjoy the position of perpetual paymaster, so long will many women be driven to use the only weapon they have left. moreover, it is fair to say--and this is why i plead for light--that many of them are genuinely ignorant that they are playing with fire. the more frigid they are themselves, the less are they able to gauge the forces they are arousing; the more ignorant they are, the less possible is it for them to be chivalrous to those whose strength and weakness they alike misunderstand. the half-knowledge, the instinctive arts, which girls sometimes display continually mislead men into thinking them a great deal cleverer than they are. each is ignorant of the other's weakness, and each puts the other in danger because of that ignorance. i once spoke to a big meeting of girls in the neighbourhood of a big camp, during the war; and reflecting on the difficult position of the men--their segregation from ordinary feminine society, their distance from their homes, their unoccupied hours, and the inevitable nervous and emotional strain of preparing for the front--i tried to make the girls realize how hard they could make it for the men to keep straight, if they were ignorant or foolish themselves. i knew--and said so--that the girls were in a difficult position too; but, after all, they prided themselves on being the more "moral" (_i.e._ the stronger) sex, and should be chivalrous. afterwards i got a reproachful letter from a woman-patrol, who assured me that if anything went wrong, it was not the fault of the girls. "they are a rough lot," she wrote, "and, of course, they like to have a soldier to walk out with. they like to romp with the men, and to kiss them, and perhaps they do go rather far in letting the men pull them about. but they have no intention whatever of going any further. if things do go further, it is the men's fault, not the girls'." i could hardly have a better instance of the sort of thing i mean. the girls want to have "fun" up to a certain point, and there stop. it does not occur to them that there may be a difference in the point at which they propose--or wish--to stop, and that at which the man can. that there is any physiological or psychological factor in the case which makes stopping possible at one moment and next-door to impossible at another, and that these factors may differ between the sexes, so that one cannot stop just where the other can, is quite a new idea not only to factory girls but to women-patrols--at least to some of them. a girl will cheerfully start a man rushing down an inclined plane and then complain because he continues rushing till he reaches the bottom. well, in a sense, we ought not to complain of either of them: we ought to challenge the senseless way in which they are kept in the dark about each other. in these days, when so much greater liberty is accorded to boys and girls than was given in the past, the friends of liberty should insist with obstinacy on the need for knowledge. for if liberty is unaccompanied and unguided by knowledge, its degeneration into licence will be triumphantly used by the lovers of bondage as an argument against liberty itself. let me then say boldly that i am all for liberty. i want boys and girls, men and women, to see far more of each other and get to know each other much better than in the past. i believe in co-education, and in _real_ co-education--not the sham that is practised in some of our universities and colleges. i see the risks and i want to take them. i know there will be "disasters," and i think them much less disastrous than those attending the methods of obscurantism and restraint. i think the idea that a boy and girl may not touch each other introduces a silly atmosphere of unreal "romance" where commonplace friendship is what is wanted. but with all this, and _because_ of all this, i want a girl to know that a boy's body and mind are not _exactly_ like hers; and perhaps a boy to know that a girl's is not totally _unlike_ his! in what way do they differ? the male, i think, is more liable to sudden gusts of passion, of violence so great as to be almost uncontrollable--at least so nearly so as to make it both cruel and stupid to arouse them. a woman's nature is not (generally) so quickly stirred. she takes longer to move (hence the universal fact of courtship). or rather it might be more accurate to say that he and she may both start at the same time from the same point, but she takes longer to reach the end, and because this is so, is more capable of stopping before the end is reached. this she does not understand, and expects that if _she_ can pause, so can _he_; while he also misunderstands, and does not know that there is for her, just as much as for him, a moment when self-control becomes impossible. i have said so much about the lack of chivalry shown by women to men that it is only reasonable to point out that the reverse is true, and that men are often extraordinarily unchivalrous towards women. the cause is, of course, the same: they do not realize what a strain they are putting on them. there is still a very general assumption, even by those who really know better, that women have no passions and are untempted from within. i have often been assured by "men of the world" that "a woman can always stop a man if she wants to." no doubt she can--some men. she can "stop them if she wants to." the trouble is that a time comes when she cannot want to. the bland assumption that a man has a perfect right to play on a woman's sex-instincts till they are beyond control, and then call her the guilty one because they _are_ beyond control, is based on the age-old determination not to recognize the full humanity of women. they are "different" from men. so they are. i have admitted it. but the likeness is much greater than the difference. and neither the likeness nor the difference makes self-control an easy thing for her. it is easier up to a certain point, because she is more slowly moved; it is harder when that point is reached because her whole nature is involved. she has never learnt to say that she can give her body to one while remaining spiritually faithful to another, and perhaps she never will learn. i at least suspect so. she may be as fickle as a man, but it will be in a different way. of course, in all this i generalize very rashly from a very narrow experience. my excuse is that these things must be discussed if we are ever to generalize more safely, or to learn that we must not generalize at all. and i have come to the conclusion that it is perhaps as possible to know something of what is or is not true when one is unmarried as when one is married. at least one escapes the snare into which so many married people surprisingly fall, of generalizing from an experience which is not merely as narrow as everyone's must be, but actually unique; which enables them to pronounce with stupefying confidence that all men are as this man is; all women as his wife; and all marriages as his marriage. when one has had the honour of receiving the confidence of a succession of such prophets and heard them pronounce in turn, but in an entirely different sense, upon the difficulties or easinesses of sex-relationships, always with a full assurance that they are right, not only in their own case but universally, one begins to make a few tentative generalizations oneself in the hope that they will at least provoke discussion and engender light. x "the sin of the bridegroom" "a deathless bubble from the fresh lips blown of cherubim at play about god's throne seemed her virginity. she dreamed alone dreams round and sparkling as some sea-washed stone. then an oaf saw and lusted at the sight. they smashed the thing upon their wedding night." _dunch, susan miles._ something has been said by others of one of the most fruitful sources of misunderstanding between men and women, where misunderstanding is likely to have the most disastrous results--what has been called by rosegger "the sin of the bridegroom." perhaps "sin" is a mistaken word. if irreparable harm is often done on the wedding night, it is quite as much due to ignorance as to cruelty. nothing is more astonishing than the widespread ignorance of men _and women_ of the fact that courtship is not a mere convention, or a means of flattering the vanity of women, but a physiological necessity if there is to be any difference at all between the union of lovers and a rape. it is all, i suppose, part of the old possessive idea which, making of a woman something less than a human personality with wishes, desires and temperament of her own, forbade the man to realize or even to know that her body has its needs as well as his, and that to regard it merely as an instrument is to be in danger of real cruelty. you can bargain for the possession of a violin and the moment it is yours, may play upon it. it is yours. if you are in the mood to play, it must be ready for you. if it is not, then tune it, and it will be.[g] but a human being cannot be treated so in any human relationship. it needs mutual patience and mutual respect to make a relationship human. [footnote g: but even a violin will need to be tuned.] this simple fact, however, has been so little understood of lovers, that husbands have, in genuine ignorance of the cruelty they were committing, raped their wives on their wedding night. judging by what one knows of wedding-days, it could hardly be supposed that there could be a more unpropitious moment for the consummation of marriage. and when to the fatigue and strain of the day is added--_as is still quite often the case_--blank though uneasy ignorance as to what marriage involves, or the thunderbolt of knowledge (_sic_) launched by the bride's mother the night before, or the morning of the day itself, it would be difficult with the utmost deliberation and skill better to ensure absolute repulsion and horror on the part of the bride. i think that any man who would consider this from the bride's point of view would see that she need not necessarily be cold or unresponsive because, in such circumstances, she needs rest and consideration more than passion. but i wish men could know a little more than this, and understand that to enforce physical union when a woman's psychical and emotional nature does not desire it, is definitely and physically cruel. woman is not a passive instrument, and to treat her as such is to injure her. perhaps i may be forgiven for labouring this point because, in fact, misunderstanding here is so disastrous. marriage, after all, is a relation into which the question of physical union enters, and if there is no equality of desire, marriage will be much less than it might be. women are--idiotically--taught to believe that passion is a characteristic of the depraved woman and of the normal man, who is shown by this fact to be on a lower spiritual level than (normal) woman. this senseless pride in what is merely a defect of temperament where it exists has poisoned the marital relations of many men and women, and has led women into marrying when they were temperamentally unfitted for such a relation, and quite unable to make anyone happy in it. nor ought they to be too much blamed, since they are often unaware of what they ought to be prepared to give in marriage and firmly convinced that their preposterous ignorance is in some inexplicable way a virtue. why it should be admirable, or even commonly honest, to undertake duties of whose nature you are ignorant, neither men nor women seem ever to have decided, and the illusion is beginning to pass. but it is still not understood that the woman who is not temperamentally asexual may easily be made so by being forced when she is not ready, and physically hurt when a little patience and tenderness would have saved her. forel, havelock, ellis and others have insisted on this, but their books are unfortunately not easily accessible to the general public; and something may be added to the more widely read productions of dr. stopes.[h] not only the physiological but the psychological side of the problem has to be considered, and it would be hard to decide which is the more important or which the _vera causa_ of the other's reaction. scientists may perhaps tell us some day: here i want only to point out that there is a spiritual factor in the case which needs at least to be recognized. [footnote h: _married love_, _wise parenthood_, and _radiant motherhood_. by marie carmichael stopes.] is passion a cause or an effect? in other words, should physical union be the expression of spiritual union? is it the "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace?" or is it a means by which that grace is achieved? i think the first instinct of most women would be to say that spiritual union should be _expressed_ by physical union, and that unless this spiritual union exists the physical union is "wrong." and yet everyone who stops to think will admit that the expression of an emotion deepens it. one can "work oneself up into a rage" by shouting and swearing. one can deepen love by expressing love. it is noticeable that the whole case for birth control has repeatedly been argued from the ground that the act of physical union not only expresses but intensifies and increases love. marriage is the most difficult of human relations, because it is the most intimate and the most permanent. to live so close to another--who, in spite of all, _remains_ another--to be brought so near, to associate so intimately with another personality, without jarring or wounding--that is hard. no wonder it is not invariably a success! but passion makes it possible to many to whom, without this, it would not be possible. ultimately passion should be transcended since in any case it must be left behind. yet it has served its end, in deepening and intensifying the love of two people for one another. where then lies the difficulty, since probably men and women alike would agree that what i have said is true? the difference of view is perhaps more in practice than in theory; yet it is all the harder of adjustment for that. in theory, both men and women would agree that physical union, ideally, should express a spiritual union; and that in doing so, it deepens and intensifies it. but it is still possible to disagree as to which of these two aspects of an admitted truth is the more vital and fundamental. it may be, as i have already suggested, that the woman's point of view is due to her physiology; or it may at least be influenced by it. at least, i am convinced that to the woman the sense that physical union is _only_ justified by already existent spiritual union, is the normal one. i believe that, however incapable she may be of explaining it, and however her power of reasoning may be vitiated by wrong ideas about the sexual relation, she does instinctively recoil from its use when its reason for existence is not there. she may attribute her reluctance to the fact that she is too womanly (_sic_), too spiritually minded to have any desire for sexual relations at all; her husband may attribute it to coldness of temperament or "modesty." in fact, it is due to the cause i have stated, and if she had never been called upon to give her body except when her own desire for the "outward and visible sign" of an "inward and spiritual grace" demanded it, her husband would have found that she was not temperamentally defective, but as good a lover as he. no one who lives in the world at all can fail to understand that in every human relationship, and supremely in this one, there must be much mutual accommodation, much give and take, a great gentleness to every claim made in the name of love. all i am concerned to do here is to help to clear up misunderstandings. it is no claim that i put forward that the woman's point of view is superior to the man's: merely that they seem to me a little different. a man who is conscious of jarring, who finds himself a little at cross-purposes with the woman he loves, and yet knows that the jarring is merely superficial and the love profound, may easily feel that to ask and offer once more the supreme expression of that love is the best way to transcend the temporary lack of sympathy and restore love to its right place and true proportion. who shall say that he is wrong? is it not certain that the expression of love does intensify and deepen love? is not a sacrament the means of grace as well as its symbol. yet let him be warned. he may easily seem to his wife to be contenting himself with the symbol without the reality, the body without the soul. if she understands him, she may go with him. if she does not, no yielding on her part--no physical passion that he may arouse--will quite stifle the protest which tells her that she suffers spiritual violation. do you remember the cry of julie in "the three daughters of m. dupont"? "_it is a nightly warfare in which i am always defeated_." that her physical nature is suborned to aid in the conquest only increases for her the sense of degradation. this difference in point of view affects the relations of men and women far more widely than is realized, since it is apt to arise wherever the physical comes in at all--and where does it not? not a touch only, or a caress, but all deliberate appeal to sexual feeling becomes more difficult to women as they grow more civilized. it is perhaps difficult for a man to realize, in the atmosphere of giggles and whispers with which sex is surrounded in the theatre, the novel and the press, how revolting it becomes to modern women to be expected to use such means for "holding" a lover, or extorting concessions from one who is "held." it was much easier, i suppose, when women did not understand what they were about. one sees that to such women it is comparatively easy to-day. and the position is complicated by inheritance of the age-old conviction that a woman is supremely woman when she can bend a man by precisely these means. but the revolt is here. and--for the sake of clearness--what i am concerned to show is that a woman is not necessarily asexual or cold because she will not use an appeal to sexuality in order to get what she wants. she may have all the "temperament" in the world, but she has also self-respect, and she revolts from the idea of exploiting for advantage what should be sacramental. i believe that a better understanding on this point would save not only great disasters but an infinity of small jars and strains, and if i have put the woman's point of view at some length it is partly because i understand it better, but chiefly because it is comparatively "modern" to admit that she has a point of view to put. once understood, it becomes easier to understand also the startling successes and disastrous failures which attend the remarkable practice of "teaching a woman to love after she is married." the extent to which social tabus and prudery may actually inhibit a woman's natural sexual development makes it possible, as we have seen, for her to marry in ignorance of what marriage implies. when this happens, her love, though it may be noble, altruistic and spiritual, does not involve her whole nature. her husband, if he respects her sufficiently, will be able to awaken that which sleeps, and in accordance with the undoubted truth that expression intensifies love, he does "teach her to love" him not only in one sense but in all. on the other hand, if she does not already love him, he will not succeed in "teaching" her anything but disgust if he dreams that by compelling physical union he can create spiritual union. evidently it is a singularly dangerous attempt! it is to be hoped that in future no woman will run such risks out of ignorance, but that lovers will, before they marry, understand what each expects, what each desires to give, and at least _start_ fair. this is no less important with regard to other matters in which marriages are often wrecked. surely people who propose to spend their lives together ought to know (for example) whether children are desired and whether many or few; and what the attitude of either is on the vexed subject of birth control. imagine the case of a husband who thinks the use of contraceptives right and wishes to use them; and a wife who thinks them absolutely wrong and, being warned by the doctor that she must not have more children, cheerfully, and with perfect conviction that she is acting nobly, invites her husband to run the risk of causing her death! yet i have known such cases. i do not enter into the question of birth control, because it has been and is being discussed much more freely than in the past, and by married people who are much better able to estimate the difficulties and advantages on either side of the question than any unmarried person can possibly be. since, however, i am continually asked at least to give my personal opinion, for what it is worth, and since it is true that i have heard a good deal (on both sides) from those who _are_ married, i will say briefly that it seems to me of supreme importance ( ) that every child that is born should be _desired_, and ( ) that no mother's time and strength should be so far overtaxed as to prevent her giving to each child all the love and individual care that it requires. this necessitates control of the birth-rate, for a baby every year means a too-hurried emptying of the mother's arms. but i disagree--very diffidently--with the majority of my friends and acquaintances who hold that the right and best method is the use of contraceptives. i do not think it the best; i do not think it ideal. unlike some authorities who must be heard with respect, i can say with confidence that some of the noblest, happiest and most romantic marriages i know base their control of conception not on contraceptives but on abstinence. they are not prigs, they are not asexual, they do not drift apart, and they have no harsh criticism to make on those who have decided otherwise. these are facts, and it is useless to ignore them. on the other hand, it is equally true that sometimes such an attempt at self-control leads to nervous strain, irritability and alienation. these also are facts. personally, i would submit marital relations to the two tests i have proposed, and add that we have succeeded in oversexing ourselves to an extent which cannot be ignored; that we have "repressed" till we are obsessed; and that, before we right ourselves, we shall have to make many experiments, try many roads, and suffer many things. it is then above all necessary that we be very gentle to one another and even a little patient with ourselves. i conceive it much better to use contraceptives than to bear unwanted children; i conceive it also better to use them than to be cruel to others or become neurotic oneself; but that it is the ideal i do not believe. xi common-sense and divorce law reform "those whom _god_ hath joined together let no man put asunder." in view of what i have said[i] about our marriage and divorce laws, several people have asked what i should actually propose in the way of reform, and i am glad to take the opportunity of a new edition briefly to answer this question. [footnote i: see chapter v.] i do not wish to see reform take the line of a longer list of "causes" for divorce, such, for example, as drunkenness, insanity, imprisonment for life, and so on. i should prefer to abolish these lists altogether, and to bring all divorce cases under some form of "equitable jurisdiction," each case being decided on its merits. it should be the business of the court to decide whether the marriage desired to be invalidated has _in actual fact_ any validity or reality at all; and to declare the couple divorced if it has not. in such courts men and women (or a man and a woman) should act together as judges. it will be urged that to decide such a question is beyond the power of any human judgment; but i submit that in fact such decisions are being given every day. a judge who grants a judicial separation is deciding that _a marriage has ceased to be real or valid_, and he divorces the couple _a mensa et thoro_, though leaving them without the power to marry again. he actually "puts them asunder" more rigidly than a divorced couple. since this is possible, it cannot be impossible for him to decide that the marriage must be wholly dissolved, with freedom of re-marriage to other partners; though such a decision, being even more grave, should not be reached without certain safeguards. these safeguards should include that teaching about marriage on which i have insisted throughout the whole of this book. young people should know what sex is and involves: what marriage is: how necessary to the welfare of the race, their children and themselves are fidelity and love. they should know that unless they believe that their love is indeed for life they ought not to marry. they should understand that to fail here is to fail most tragically. if, nevertheless, a man and woman believe that their marriage is a complete and hopeless failure, their claim to be released from it should not be granted in haste. a period of years should in any case elapse before divorce can be obtained, and every effort should be used to reconcile the two, to remove any removable cause of difficulty, to convince them of the possibility of making good, by loyalty, unselfishness and a deep sense of responsibility, even an incomplete and desecrated bond. if, however, it is clear that for no worthy consideration can they be induced to take up again the duties and responsibilities of marriage--if they remain immovably and rationally convinced that their marriage is not a real marriage--they should be released. and this because it is not moral but immoral, not christian, but unchristian, to pretend that a marriage is real and sacred _when it is not_. if there is one quality more striking than another in the teaching of christ, it is his emphasis on reality. it is in this that the height and depth of his morality stand revealed. we do no service--we do a profound dis-service--to morals when we admit that a marriage is so utterly devoid of reality that the best thing we can do for a "married couple" is to separate them from each other altogether--set them apart--free them from each other's "rights"--break up their home--and yet maintain the legal lie that they are still a married couple. it will be asked how the interests of the children can be safeguarded. the interests of children are best safeguarded by the education and enlightenment of parents. they cannot be wholly saved if, after all, their parents have ceased to love or respect one another, for nothing the law can do will make up to them for that which is every child's right--a home ruled by love and full of happiness. the best that can then be done is to rescue them from the misery of a home full of unhappiness and hatred, and to assign them to the parent who, in the judgment of the court, is best fitted to care for them. let me add that, while i hold that the persistent and unconquerable conviction of two people that they ought to be divorced ought ultimately to entitle them to it, this should not be the case if one only of two married people seeks release. in this case, the decision should be entirely with the court. to those who feel that not only our lord's words but also the interpretation put upon those words by the church is of supreme importance, the following statement will be of interest: "it is quite arguable that relief may be granted on the grounds that what is impossible cannot be done. it may be shown on the one hand that to such and such a person it is morally impossible to live with such and such another person, and on the other hand that it is morally impossible to live without marriage. in such instances there is room for the exercise of our 'dispensation from the impediment of the legamen' (bond). this is the practice of the eastern church, which allows the innocent party to re-marry, and also grants relief in cases of incurable insanity." with regard to the western church, "divorce and subsequent re-marriage in pre-reformation days were only allowed on grounds existing before the contract was entered into. (there seems good reason for the belief that our lord's words as recorded by st. matthew refer to prenuptial unchastity.) but in spite of this apparently narrow restriction there were fourteen grounds on which a marriage could be declared null and void before the reformation, and it was constantly being done. canonists and theologians taught that the full and _free_ consent of parties was essential to marriage--which teaching obviously would enable a very wide view of the subject to be taken."[j] [footnote j: from a "memorandum on divorce," published in _the challenge_, july , .] the open mind library being a series of works dealing with questions as handled by different schools of thought, in religion, ethics, philosophy & psychology religion & sex studies in the pathology of religious development by chapman cohen t. n. foulis, publisher london, edinburgh, & boston _published october _ _printed by_ morrison & gibb limited, _edinburgh_ the list of chapters i. science & the supernatural _page_ ii. the primitive mind & its environment iii. the religion of mental disease iv. sex & religion in primitive life v. the influence of sexual & pathologic states on religious belief vi. the stream of tendency vii. conversion viii. religious epidemics ix. religious epidemics--(_concluded_) x. the witch mania xi. summary & conclusion preface in spite of all that has been done in the way of applying scientific principles to religious ideas, there is much that yet remains to be accomplished. generally speaking science has only dealt with the subject of religion in its more normal and more regularised forms. the last half-century has produced many elaborate and fruitful studies of the origin of religious ideas, while comparative mythology has shown a close and suggestive relationship between creeds and symbols that were once believed to have nothing in common. but beyond these fields of research there is at least one other that has hitherto been denied the attention it richly deserves. when the anthropologist has described those conditions of primitive culture amid which he believes religious ideas took their origin, and the comparative mythologist has shown us the similarities and inter-relations of widely separated creeds, religious beliefs have yet to submit to the test of a scientific psychology, the function of which is to determine how far the same principles apply to all phases of mental life whether religious or non-religious. moreover, in addition to the normal psychical life of man, there is that vast borderland in which the normal merges into the abnormal, and the healthy state into a pathologic one. that there is a physiology of religion is now generally admitted; but that there is also a pathology of religion is not so generally recognised. the present work seeks to emphasise this last aspect. it does not claim to be more than an outline of the subject--a sketch map of a territory that others may fill in more completely. from another point of view the following pages may be regarded as an attempt more completely to apply scientific principles to religious beliefs. and it would be idle to hope that such an attempt could be made without incurring much hostile criticism. in connection with most other subjects the help of science is welcomed; in connection with religion science is still regarded as more or less of an intruder, profaning a sacred subject with vulgar tests and impertinent enquiries. this must almost inevitably follow when one has to face the opposition of thousands of men who have been trained to regard themselves as the authorised exponents of all that pertains to religion, but whose training fails to supply them with a genuine scientific equipment. it should, however, be clear that an attitude of hostility to science, veiled or open, cannot be maintained. mere authority has fallen on evil days, and in all directions is being freely challenged. there is increasing dislike to systems of thought that shrink from examination, and to conclusions that cannot withstand the most rigorous investigation. and if science really has anything of value to say on this question it cannot be held to silence for ever. sooner or later the need for its assistance will be felt, and the self-elected authority of an order must give way. it is, moreover, impossible for science with its claim, sometimes avowed, but always implied, to cover the whole of life, to forego so large a territory as that of religion. for there can be no reasonable question that religion has played, and still plays a large part in the life of the race. whatever be the nature of religion, science is bound either to deal with it or confess its main task to be hopeless. whether or not it is possible to apply known scientific principles to the whole of religion will be a matter of opinion; but the attempt is at least worth making. so much that appeared to be beyond the reach of science has been ultimately brought within its ken, so many things that seemed to stand in a class by themselves have been finally brought under some more comprehensive generalisation, and so become part of the 'cosmic machine,' that one is impelled to believe that given time and industry the same will result here. and it should never be forgotten that one aspect of scientific progress has been the taking over of large tracts of territory that religion once regarded as peculiarly its own; and just as psychology and pathology were found to hold the key to an understanding of such a phenomenon as witchcraft, so we may yet realise that a true explanation of religious phenomena is to be found, not in some supernatural world, but in the workings of natural forces imperfectly understood. the defences set up by theologians against the scientific advance may be summarised under two heads. it is claimed that the 'facts' of the religious life belong to a world of inner experience, to a state of spiritual development which brings the subject into touch with a super-sensuous world not open to the normal human being, and with which science, as ordinarily understood, is incompetent to deal. in essence this is a very old position, and contains the kernel of 'mysticism' in all ages, from the savage state onward. this position involves a very obvious begging of the question at issue. it assumes that all attempts to correlate religious phenomena with phenomena in general have failed, and that all future attempts are similarly doomed to failure. of course nothing of the kind has been shown. on the contrary, the aim of the present work is to show that no dividing line can be drawn between those states of mind that have been and are classed as religious, and those that are admittedly non-religious. for various reasons i have dealt almost entirely with those conditions that are admittedly pathological, but i believe it would be possible to prove the same of all normal frames of mind and emotional states. any human quality may be enlisted in the service of religion, but there are none that are specifically religious. it is a pure assumption that the religious visionary possesses qualities that are either absent or rudimentary in other persons. human faculty is everywhere identical although the form in which it is expressed differs according to education, the presence of certain dominating ideas, and the general influence of one's environment. to admit the claim of the mystic is to surrender all hope of a scientific co-ordination of life. it is quite fatal to the scientific ideal and involves the re-introduction into nature of a dualism the removal of which has been one of the most marked advantages of scientific thinking. moreover, whatever views we may hold as to the ultimate nature of 'mind' the dependence of all frames of mind upon the brain and nervous system is now generally accepted. we may hold various theories as to the nature of mind, we may, with the late william james, treat the brain as merely a 'transmissive' organ, but even on that assumption--on behalf of which not a shred of positive evidence has been offered--the frames of mind expressed are determined by the nervous mechanism, and thus the laws of mental phenomena become ultimately the laws of the operation of the nervous system. the 'facts' of the religious life thus become part of the facts of psychology as a whole. its 'laws' will form part of psychological laws as a whole, and religious experiences must be handed over for examination and classification to the psychologist who in turn relies for help and understanding on various associated branches of science. closely allied to the claim of the 'mystic' that his experiences bring him into touch with a world of super-sensuous reality, is the attempt to prove that science is incapable of dealing with anything but "in the first place, the endless ascertainment of facts and the physical conditions under which they occur, and in the second place to the criticism of error." well, no one denies that it is part of the work of science to ascertain facts, or even that its work consists in ascertaining facts and framing 'laws' that will explain them. but why are we to limit science to _physical_ facts only? all facts are not physical. if i have a head-ache, the unpleasant feeling is a fact. if i feel hot or cold, angry or pleased, think one thing ugly or another beautiful, my feelings are as much 'facts' as anything else that exists. nay, if i fancy i see a ghost, or a vision, these also are 'facts' so far as my mental state at the time is concerned. so also are my beliefs about all manner of things, and often the most important facts with which i am connected. facts may be objective or subjective. they may exist in relation to all minds normally constituted, or they may exist in relation to my own mind only; or, yet again, they may exist only in relation to certain states of mind, but they do not, nevertheless, cease to be facts. now the business of science is to collect facts--all facts--classify them, and frame generalisations that will explain their groupings and modes of operation. it talks of the facts of the physical world, the facts of the biological world, the facts of the psychological world, and so forth. this last group comprises all sorts of feelings and ideas, beliefs and experiences. some of these facts it calls false, others it calls true--that is, they are true when they hold good of all men and women normally constituted, they are not true when they hold good of isolated individuals only, and can be seen to be the product of misinterpreted experience, or arise from a derangement--permanent or temporary--of the nervous system. but true or false they remain facts of the mental life. they must be collected, grouped, and explained exactly as other facts are collected, grouped, and explained. they fall within the scope of science, to be dealt with by scientific methods. there is really no escape from the position that so far as religious 'facts' are parts of mental life, religion becomes logically a department of psychology. the substantial identity of all mental facts is quite unaffected by their being directed to this or that special object. as mental facts they are part of the material that it is the work of science to reduce to order. and as mental facts religious phenomena are seen to follow the same 'laws' that govern mental phenomena in general. it is perfectly true that we cannot test and measure the material of psychology with the same definiteness and accuracy that the chemist applies to the subject-matter of his department; but that may be due to want of knowledge, or to the extreme complexity and variability of the matter with which we are dealing. and if it were true that the same tests could not be applied in psychology that are applied elsewhere, this would be no cause for scientific despair. it would only mean that fresh tests would have to be devised for a new group of facts, as every other science has already, as a matter of fact, created its own special standard of value. the second of the two lines of defence consists in the bold assertion that the religious interpretation of subjective phenomena is itself in the nature of a true scientific induction. the methods of science are not repudiated, but welcomed. but it is argued that the non-religious explanation of religious phenomena breaks down hopelessly, while the religious explanation fully covers and explains the facts. if this were true, nothing more remains to be said, and we must accept this dualistic scheme, however repugnant it may be to orthodox scientific ideas. but is it true? is it a fact that the non-religious explanation breaks down so completely? hitherto the course of events has been in the contrary direction. it is the religious explanation that has, over and over again, been shown to be unreliable, the non-religious explanation that has been finally established. insanity and epilepsy, once universally ascribed to a supernatural order of being, have been reduced to the level of nervous disorders. all the phenomena of 'possession' are still with us, it is only our understanding of them that has altered. and before it is admitted that the phenomena described as religious can never be affiliated to the phenomena described as non-religious, it must be shown--beyond all possibility of doubt--that their explanation in terms of known forces is impossible. as i have said in the body of this work, the question at issue is essentially one of interpretation. the 'facts' of the religious life are admitted. science no more questions the reality of the visions of the medieval mystic than it questions the visions of the non-mystic admittedly suffering from neural derangement. the crucial question is whether we have any good reason for separating the two, and while we dismiss the one as hallucination accept the other as introducing us to another order of being? i do not think there is the slightest ground for any such differentiation, and i have given in the following pages what i conceive to be good reasons for so thinking. and i hope that the fact of the explanations there offered running counter to the traditional one will not prevent readers weighing with the utmost care the proofs that are offered. religion and sex chapter one science and the supernatural accepting professor tylor's famous minimum definition of religion as "the belief in spiritual beings," it is safe to say that religious belief constitutes one of the largest facts in human history. no other single subject has occupied so large a share of man's conscious life, no other subject has absorbed so much of his energy. in very early stages of culture religious belief is universal in the fullest sense of the word. it shapes all primitive institutions; it dominates life from the cradle to the grave, and creates a shadow-land beyond the grave from which the dead continue to influence the actions of the living. at a later stage of culture we see a distinction being drawn between the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the spiritual, and the beginning of an antagonism that is still with us. of all antagonisms conceived by the brain of man this is the deepest and the most irreconcilable. each feels that the growth of the other threatens its own supremacy, with the result that advance from either side has been contested with the greatest obstinacy and determination. and although it is true that at present the supernatural is very largely "suspect," it is still powerful. nor is its influence confined to the lower strata of european society. it has very many representatives among the higher culture, disguised it may be under various pseudo-philosophic forms. altogether we may say that the supernatural has never been without its "cloud of witnesses." at all times there have been individuals, or groups of individuals, who have believed themselves, and have been believed by others, to be in touch with another order of existence than that with which people are normally in contact. and apart from these specially favoured persons, the wide vogue of the belief in good and evil portents, in lucky and unlucky days, the attraction of the "occult" in fiction and in fact, all serve as evidence that belief in the supernatural is still a force with which one has to reckon. to what causes are we to attribute the persistence of this belief in the supernatural? it is useless replying that its persistence is evidence of its truth. that clearly begs the whole question at issue. mere social heredity will doubtless count for much in this direction. men do not start their thinking afresh with each generation. it is based upon that of preceding generations; it follows set forms, and is generally influenced by that network of ideas and beliefs into which we are born and from which none of us ever completely escapes. still that is hardly enough in itself to account for the persistence of supernaturalism. assuming that originally there existed what was accepted as good evidence for the existence of a supernatural, it is hardly credible that every subsequent generation went on accepting it merely because one generation received evidence of its existence. as organs atrophy for want of exercise, so do beliefs die out in time for want of proof. some kind of evidence must have been continually forthcoming in order to keep the belief alive and active. it is not a question of whether the evidence was good or bad. all evidence, it is important to bear in mind, is good to some one. the "facts" upon which thousands of people were put to death for witchcraft would not be considered evidence to anyone nowadays, but they were once accepted as good ground for conviction. what kind of evidence is it, then, that has been accepted as proof of the supernatural? or, to return to tylor's definition of religion, seeing that the belief in spiritual beings has persisted in every generation, upon what kind of evidence has this belief been nourished? various replies might be given to this question, all of which may contain some degree of truth, or an aspect of a general truth. in the present enquiry i am concerned with one line of investigation only, one that has been strangely neglected, but which yet, i am convinced, promises fruitful results. in other directions it has been established that a great aid to an understanding of the human organism in times of health is to study its activities under conditions of disease. abnormal psychology is now a recognised branch of psychology in general, and a glance through almost any recent text-book will show that the two form parts of a natural whole. the normal and the abnormal are in turn used to throw light on each other. and it appears to the present writer that in the matter of religious beliefs a much clearer understanding of their nature, and also of some of the conditions of their perpetuation, may be gained by a study of what has happened, and is happening, in the light of mental pathology. to some, of course, the bare idea of there being a pathology of religion will appear an entirely unwarrantable assumption. on the other hand, the scientific study of all phases of religions having made so great headway it is hoped that a larger number will be prepared for a discussion of the subject from a point of view which, if not quite new, is certainly not common. of course, such a discussion, even if the author quite succeeds in demonstrating the truth of his thesis, will still leave the origin of the religious idea an open question. for the present we are not concerned directly with the origin of the religious idea, but with an examination of some of the causes that have served to perpetuate it, and to trace the influence in the history of religion of states of mind, both personal and collective, that are now admittedly abnormal or pathological in character. the legitimacy of the enquiry cannot be questioned. as to its value and significance, that every reader must determine for himself. one may put the essential idea of the following pages in a sentence:--given the religious idea as already existing, in what way, and to what extent has its development been affected by forces that are not in themselves religious, and which modern thought definitely separates from religion? under civilised and uncivilised conditions we find religious beliefs constantly associated with various forces--social, ethical, and psychological. very seldom is there any serious attempt to separate them and assign to each their respective value; nor, indeed, is the task at any time an easy one. the difficulty is made the greater by the way in which writers so enlarge the meaning of "religion" that it is made to include almost everything for which one feels admiration or respect. this practice is neither helpful nor accurate. human nature under all aspects of intellectual conviction presents the same fundamental characteristics, and a definition to be of value, while of necessity inclusive, must also be decisively exclusive. it must unite, but it must also separate. and many current definitions of religion, while they may bear testimony to the amiability of those who frame them, are quite destitute of scientific value. in any case, the association of the religious idea with non-religious forces is a fact too patent to admit of denial; and the important task is to determine their reciprocal influence. in actual life this separation has been secured by the development of the various branches of positive thought--ethics, psychology, etc., all of which were once directly under the control of religion. what remains to be done is to separate in theory what has already been separated in fact, with such additions as a more critical knowledge may suggest as advisable. far more suggestive, however, than the association of religion with what we may call the normal social forces, is its connection with conditions that are now clearly recognised as abnormal. from the earliest times we find the use of drugs and stimulants, the practice of fasting and self-torture, with other methods of depressing or stimulating the action of the nervous system, accepted as well-recognised methods of inducing a sense of religious illumination, or the feeling that one is in direct communion with a supernatural order of existence. equally significant is the world-wide acceptance--right up to recent times--of purely pathological states as evidence of supernatural intercourse. about these two sets of facts there can be no reasonable doubt. over and over again we can observe how the promptings of disease are taken for the voice of divinity, and men and women who to-day would be handed over to the care of the physician hailed as an incarnation of deity. in modern asylums we find one of the commonest of delusions to be that of the insane person who imagines himself to be a specially selected instrument of deity. in such instances the causal influence of pathological conditions is admitted. on the other hand, we have belonging to the more normal type the person who claims a supernatural origin for many of his actions and states of mind. and between these two extremes lie a whole series of gradations. they exist in all stages of culture, and it is difficult to see by what rule of logic or of experience one can say where the normal ends and the abnormal begins. if we assume the inference of the normal person concerning the origin of his mental states to be correct, it seems difficult to deny the possibility of those of the insane person having a similar origin, although distorted by the influence of disease. if, on the other hand, we say the insane person is wholly wrong as to the origin of his mental states, may we not also assume that the normal person has likewise erred as to the cause of his emotions or ideas? two considerations may be urged in support of this conclusion. in the first place, there is the fact of the fundamental identity of human qualities under all conditions of their manifestation. it is too often assumed--sometimes it is explicitly claimed--that one with what is called "a strong religious nature" possesses some quality of mind absent or undeveloped in those of an opposite type. this assumption is quite unwarrantable. the religious man is marked off from the non-religious man, not by the possession of distinct mental qualities, but solely by holding different ideas concerning the cause and significance of his mental states. there is no such thing as a religious "faculty," but only qualities of mind expressed in terms of the religious idea. if i am conscious of a strong desire to work on behalf of the social betterment of my fellows, i may account for this either by attributing it to having inherited a nature modified by generations of social intercourse, or on the hypothesis that i am an instrument in the hands of a superhuman personality. but in either case the qualities manifested remain the same. love and hatred, fear and courage, honesty and roguery, with all other human qualities, may be expressed in terms of religion, or they may be expressed in non-religious terms. it is the cause to which they are attributed, or the object to which they are directed, that marks off the religious from the non-religious person. the second point is that the whole issue arises on a conflict of interpretations. if i question the reality of the visions or states of illumination experienced by santa teresa, i am not questioning that, so far as the saint herself was concerned, these states of exaltation were real. all mental states--whether arising under normal or abnormal conditions--are quite real to those who experience them. the visions of the hashish-eater are real, while they last; so are those of the victim of delirium tremens. all i question is their genuineness as corresponding to an objective reality. over the mind of the subject these visions may exercise an absolute sway. as to their occurrence, he or she is the final and absolute authority. there can be no question here. but when we proceed from the occurrence of these visions to the question of their causation, then we are on entirely different ground. here it is not a question of their genuineness, or of their power, but a question of how we are to interpret them. the honesty and singlemindedness of these "inspired" characters may be admitted, but honesty or singlemindedness is no guarantee of accuracy. we do not need to ask whether the peasant girl of lourdes experienced a vision of the madonna, but we do need to ask whether there was anything in her mental history, social surroundings, or nervous state that would account for the vision. all the "facts" of the religious life may be admitted; the sole question at issue is whether an adequate interpretation of at least some of them may not be found in terms of a purely scientific psychology. taking, then, the religious idea as already existing, the following pages will be devoted to an examination of the extent to which this idea has been associated with forces and conditions that were plainly pathological. in very many individual cases it will not be difficult to trace a vivid sense of the supernatural to the presence of abnormal nervous states, sometimes deliberately induced, at other times arising of themselves. and it is a matter of mere historical observation that such individual cases have operated most powerfully to strengthen the belief in the supernatural with others. the example of lourdes is a case in point. all protestants will agree that the peasant girl's vision was a sheer hallucination. and yet there can be no question that this vision has served to strengthen the faith of many thousands of others in the nearness of the supernatural. and it needs but little effort of the imagination to realise how powerful such examples must have been in ages when medical science was in its infancy, and the more subtle operations of the nervous system completely unknown. this question, i repeat, is distinct from the much larger and wider enquiry of the origin of religion. a fairly lengthy experience of the capacity of the general mind for missing the real point at issue prevents my being too sanguine as to the efficiency of the most explicit avowal of one's purpose, but the duty of taking precautions nevertheless remains. and in elaborating an unfamiliar view of the nature of much of the world's so-called religious phenomena, the possibility of misconception is multiplied enormously. still, a writer must do what he can to guard against misunderstanding, and in the most emphatic manner it must be said that it is not my purpose to prove, nor is it my belief, that religion springs from perverted sexuality, nor that the study of religion is no more than an exercise in pathology. nothing is further from the writer's mind than so essentially preposterous a claim. neither sexuality, no matter how powerful, nor disease, no matter how pronounced, can account for the religious idea. that has an entirely separate and independent origin. this should be plain to anyone who has but a merely casual acquaintance with the history of religion. it is, however, a very different thing to enquire as to the part played in the history of religion by morbid nervous states or perverted sexual feeling. that is an enquiry both legitimate and desirable; and it is one that promises to shed light on aspects of the subject otherwise very obscure. and certainly, if so-called religious feelings do not admit of explanation in terms of a scientific psychology, nothing remains but to recognise religion as something quite apart from normal life, to hand it over to the custody of word-spinning "mystics," and so surrender all possibility of a rational understanding of either its nature or its history. in saying what i have concerning the probability of misconception, i have had specially in mind the attack made by the late professor william james on what he called the "medical materialists." in that remarkable piece of religious yellow-journalism, _the varieties of religious experience_, professor james says of those who take up the position that a great deal of what has been accepted by the world as religious inspiration or exaltation can be accounted for as the products of disordered nervous states or perverted sexual feeling, "we are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. we all use it in some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. but when other people criticise our own exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue." again, "few conceptions are less instructive than this re-interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality.... it is true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory--_e.g._ sex deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the saviour in a few christian mystics. but then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive functions, and prove one's point by the worship of bacchus and ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints about the eucharist?" or, seeing that the bible is full of the language of respiratory oppression, "one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion of the respiratory function." and if it is pointed out that active interest in religion synchronises with adolescence, "the retort again is easy.... the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct."[ ] excellent fooling, this, but little else. i do not know that anyone has ever claimed that religion took its origin in sexual feeling, or that this would alone provide an explanation of historical religion. all that anyone has ever urged is that a deal of so-called religious feeling, past and present, can be shown to be due to unsatisfied or perverted sexual feeling--which is a very different statement, and one of which the truth may be demonstrated from professor james's own pages. but between saying that certain feelings are wrongly interpreted in terms of an already existing idea, and saying that the idea itself is nothing but these same feelings transformed, there is an obvious and important difference. in every case the religious idea is taken for granted. its origin is a quite different subject of enquiry. but once the idea is in existence there is always the probability of evidence for its truth being found in the wrong direction. the analogy of the digestive and respiratory organs is clever, but futile. the belief that much which has passed for religious feeling is perverted sexuality is not based merely upon the language employed. the language is only symptomatic. the terminology of respiration and digestion when used in connection with religion is frankly and palpably symbolic. that of sexual love is as often frankly literal, and can be correlated with the actual state of the person using it. digestion and respiration must go on in any case; but it is precisely the point at issue whether with a different sexual life these so-called religious ecstatic states would have been experienced. when we find religious characters of strongly marked amorous dispositions, but leading an ascetic life, using toward the object of their adoration terms usually associated with strong sexual feeling, it does not seem extravagant to find here a little more than what may be covered by mere symbolism. would the medieval monk have been tempted by satan in the form of beautiful women had he been happily married? would santa teresa or catherine of sienna have used the language they did use to express their relations to jesus had they been wives and mothers? such questions admit of one answer, which is, in its way, decisive. professor james admits that modern psychology holds as a general postulate "there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition."[ ] the 'medical materialist' can ask for no more than this. but this being granted, on what ground are we to be forbidden finding in these same organic processes the condition of the visions and ecstatic states with which _the varieties of religious experience_ is so largely concerned? again, it may be granted that adolescence brings with it an awakening of the whole mental life, not of religion alone. but the analogy goes no further, and, in any case, it begs the question. the full significance of the connection will be seen when we come to deal with initiation in primitive times and conversion in the modern period. at present it suffices to point out that the interest in art, in science, in literature, in sociology, are ends in themselves, and one need go no further than the developing mental life for an explanation. but the essential question here is whether this growing life can or cannot find complete satisfaction quite apart from religion. a developing interest in the larger social life is common to all, and to some extent this is secured by the pressure of forces that are simply inescapable. on the other hand, an interest in religion only exists with some, and then it may usually be traced to a conscious direction of their energies. moreover, those who show no special interest in religion evince no lack of anything--save in religious terms. in every respect they exhibit the same mental and emotional qualities as their fellows. the only discernible difference is that while in the one case adolescent nature is expressed in terms of religion, in the other case it is expressed in terms of a larger social life. the question here might be put thus: given a generation not taught to express its growing life in terms of religion, could adequate and satisfactory expression be found in the social life to which adolescence is unquestionably an introduction? many would answer unhesitatingly, yes. they would argue that what are called the religious feelings, are normal social feelings exploited in the interests of the religious idea. they would deny that there is any such thing as a religious quality of mind. any mental quality may be directed to a religious end, but all may find complete expression and satisfaction in a non-religious social life. this is the real question at issue, and yet professor james never once, in the whole of his pages, addresses himself to it. apart from sex, there is the important question of the relation between abnormal and morbid nervous states and religious illumination. how far has the one been mistaken for the other? to what extent have people accepted the outcome of pathological conditions as proofs of intercourse with an unseen spiritual world? there is no doubt that among uncivilised people this is usually, if not invariably, the case. and our knowledge of the relations between the nervous system and mental states--imperfect as it still is--is so recent, that it is not surprising that fasting, self-torture, solitary meditation, etc., because of the states of mind to which they give rise, have been universally valued as aids to the religious life. dr. d. g. brinton says:-- "when i say that all religions depend for their origin and continuation directly upon inspiration, i state an historic fact. it may be known under other names, of credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or, in its latest christening, 'cosmic consciousness.' all are but expressions of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions performed not through conscious ideation or reflective purpose, but through the promptings of a power above or beyond the individual mind."[ ] the connection between very many, at least, of these inspirational moods and pathological states is too obvious to be ignored. professor james admits that "we cannot possibly ignore these pathological aspects of the subject." his notice of them, however, reminds one of the preacher who advised his hearers to look a certain difficulty boldly in the face--and pass on. no serious attempt is made to deal with them. a huge mass of "religious experiences" is thrown at the reader's head without any adequate explanation. it is a glorified revival meeting in an expensive volume. the testimony of a crowd of religious enthusiasts of all ages is accepted at practically face value. thus, a religious writer who experiences the fairly common feeling of exaltation during a storm at sea, and explains his carelessness of danger as resulting from his "certainty of eternal life,"[ ] is gravely cited as evidence of the working of the religious consciousness. what, then, are we to make of those who experience a similar feeling, but who are without the certainty of eternal life? the declaration of st. ignatius that a single hour of meditation taught him more of the truth of "heavenly things than all the teachings of the doctors" is given as evidence of mystic illumination.[ ] so with numerous other cases. we are even informed that "nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree."[ ] there seems no reason why the same claim should not be made on behalf of whisky. if one were not assured to the contrary, one might conclude that professor james wrote this volume to poke fun at the whole tribe of mystics and their followers. the use made by professor james of his long list of cases is the more remarkable, since he quite correctly points out that there are no religious feelings, only feelings directed towards a religious end. but if this be so, how are we justified in taking the accounts of religious visionaries as correct descriptions of the nature of their own mental states? clearly, we need a study of these cases quite apart from the mystical interpretation of them. instead of a study professor james presents us with a catalogue--useful from a documentary point of view, but useless to any other end. and he is so averse to subjecting his examples to analysis that, when the extravagance of certain cases are glaring, he warns us that it is unfair to impute narrowness of mind as a vice of the individual, because in "religious and theological matters he probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation."[ ] granted; only one would like to know what reason there is for not deriving virtues as well as vices from the same source? and, deeper enquiry still, may not the religious interpretation itself be a product of the special environment of the period? the study of religious phenomena from the point of view above indicated is of first-rate importance. but although much has been said, parenthetically and inferentially, on the subject by various writers, the enquiry has never been exhaustively or systematically pursued. this is not due to any lack of material; that is abundant among both savage and civilised peoples. perhaps it is because, while it has been considered permissible to point out that certain individuals have mistaken their own morbid states for evidence of divine illumination, too much ill-will would have been aroused had the powerful part played by this factor in religious development as a whole been pointed out. still less admissible would it have been to point out, as will be done in succeeding chapters, that the deliberate culture of abnormal states of mind has been a part of the ritual of religions from the most primitive to the most recent times. in this connection it is worth noting that a very clear and shrewd essay on the connection between love and religious devotion by isaac d'israeli, which appeared in the first issue of the _miscellanies of literature_, was quietly eliminated from subsequent editions. my purpose, therefore, is to give professor james's query--"under just what biographic conditions did the sacred writers bring forth their contributions to the holy volume? and what had they exactly in their several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances?"[ ]--a wider scope. what are the conditions, biographic and social, under which certain persons have imagined themselves, and have been believed by others, to be specially favoured with divine illumination? the majority of people, it may safely be said, are conscious of no such experience. in what respect, then, do the favoured few differ from their fellows? must we assume that by some rare quality of natural endowment, or by some unusual development of faculty, they are brought into touch with a wider and deeper reality? or are we to seek a less romantic explanation with the aid of known tendencies and forces in human nature? and, further, as this minority are not conscious of divine illumination all the time, what is it that differentiates their normal state from their abnormal condition? these are pertinent questions, and demand answer. but no answer of real value will be found in ordinary religious writings. rhapsodical eulogies of religion tell us nothing; less than nothing that is useful, since theories that obtain in such quarters are based upon the absolute veracity of the phenomena under consideration. we may gather from this direction what religious people say or do, but not why they say or do these things. a description of the states of mind of religious people, such as is given by professor james, is interesting enough, but it is their causation that is of fundamental importance. and their causation is only to be understood by associating them with other and more fundamental processes. within recent years psychology owes much of the advance made to a closer study of the physiology of the nervous system, and if genuine advance is to be made in our understanding of religious phenomena we must adopt the same plan of investigation. we do not, for example, understand the nature of demoniacal possession by a mere collation of cases. it is only when we put them side by side with similar cases that now come under the control of the physician, and associate them with certain peculiar nervous conditions, and a particular social environment, that we find ourselves within sight of a rational explanation. without adopting this plan we are in the position of one trying to determine the nature of a locomotive in complete ignorance of its internal mechanism. yet this is precisely the position of the professional exponent of religion. as a student the budding divine has his head filled with historic creeds, and texts, and dogmas, and doctrines, none of which can possibly tell him anything of the real nature of religion. on the contrary, they act as so many obstacles to his acquiring real knowledge in later life. and it is a striking fact that while the professional astronomer, biologist, or physicist each adds to our knowledge of the subject that falls within his respective department, we owe little or nothing of our knowledge of the nature of religion to the professional theologian. to put the whole matter in a sentence, the study of religion must be affiliated to the study of life as a whole. if possible, we must get at the determining factors that lead one person to expend his energy on religion and see supernatural influence in a thousand and one details of his life, while another person, with apparently the same mental qualities, finds complete satisfaction in another direction, and is conscious of no such supernatural influence. it is scientifically inadmissible to posit a "religious faculty" organically ear-marked for religious use. something of this kind is evidently in the minds of those who explain darwin's agnosticism as due to atrophy of his religious sense, consequent on over-absorption in scientific pursuits, and who also argue that the "religious faculty," like a physiological structure, increases in efficiency with use and atrophies with disuse. there is no reason for believing that, had darwin been profoundly religious, his mental qualities would have been different to what they were. they would have been expressed in a different form, that is all. as i have already said, there are no such things as specifically religious qualities of the mind. there may be hope or fear or love or hatred or terror or devotion or wonder in relation to religion, but they are precisely the same mental qualities that meet us in relation to other things. the old "faculty" psychology is dead, and the religious faculty must go with it.[ ] mental qualities may be roused to activity in connection with a belief in the supernatural, or they may be expressed in connection with mundane associations. even the belief in the supernatural is only an expression of the same qualities of mind that with fuller knowledge result in a scientific generalisation. whatever be the exciting cause, mental qualities themselves remain unchanged. in the present enquiry we are not concerned with a disproval of the religious idea, but with an examination of the conditions of its expression; less with the varieties of religious experience than with the nature of its manifestations. how far may religious experience be explained as a misinterpretation of normal non-religious life? to what extent have pathological nervous states influenced the building up of the religious consciousness? there can be no question that the last-named factor is an important one. this is admitted by professor james in the following passage:-- "you will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. i speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, i speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualised experience. st. paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gifts of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter. the whole array of christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the bernards, the loyolas, the luthers, the foxes, the wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding impressions, and 'openings.' they had these things because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable."[ ] the fact is unquestionable, but the question remains, in what sense were these people exalted? did their exalted sensibility really bring them into touch with a form of existence hidden from persons of a coarser fibre? or did it belong to a class of cases which in a more violent form comes within the province of the physician? the subjects, says professor james, "actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. the evidence is dynamic; the god or spirit moves the very organs of their body.... we have distinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece." of course we have, but for diagnostic purposes such professions are quite valueless. what these people are conscious of, and all they are conscious of, is a series of feelings of a more or less unusual kind. equally convinced was the medieval demoniac that a spirit moved the very organs of his body. equally convinced is the modern spiritualist medium that his body is controlled by a disembodied spirit. it is not a question of the actuality of certain states, but of their origin. the intense conviction of the subject of the seizure is, as evidence, quite irrelevant. the subjective state is always real, whether it belongs to a saint in ecstasy or a drunkard in delirium tremens. there are no states of mind more "real" while they last than those due to opium or hashish. but it is never suggested that this is evidence of their veracity. in such cases the testimony of a skilled outsider is of far greater value than the conviction of the visionary. we are bound to appeal to paul, and loyola, and fox, and wesley to know what their feelings were, because here they are the supreme authorities. but we must consult others to discover why they experienced these feelings. an illusion is no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience; although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation as equivalent to a charge of imposture or deliberate lying. it is also a matter of demonstration that these religious experiences are strictly determined by environmental conditions. thousands of christians have been favoured with visions of jesus or of the christian heaven in their dying moments. millions of jews and mohammedans have lived and died without any such experience--the very persons to whom, from an evidential point of view--such visions would be most useful. the spiritual experience is determined by the pre-existing religious belief. when belief in a personal devil was general, visions of satan were common. the evidence for personal conflicts with satan is of precisely the same nature and strength as is the evidence for intercourse with deity. when the belief in satan died out, visions and conflicts with him ceased. how can we discriminate between the two classes of cases? why should the testimony of a great christian character that he is conscious of intercourse with deity be more authoritative than the testimony of, perhaps, the same person on other occasions, of conflict with a personal devil? moreover, visions and a sense of contact with a super-normal world are not peculiar to the religious character. it is a common feature of a general psychopathic condition. medical works are filled with such instances. and it is only to be expected that when the psychopath is of a deeply religious nature the affection will find a religious expression. what is clearly needed is an explanation that will cover the phenomenon as it appears in both a religious and a non-religious form. we may take as illustrative of what has been said the following case as given by dr. w. w. ireland. it is that of a berlin bookseller who placed on record a clear description of his impressions while in ill-health, and which entirely ceased on recovery. his delusions mostly took the form of human figures; of these he says:-- "i saw, in the full use of my senses, and (after i had got the better of the fright which at first seized me, and the disagreeable effects which it caused) even in the greatest composure of mind, for almost two months, constantly and involuntarily, a number of human and other apparitions--nay, i even heard their voices. for the most part i saw human figures of both sexes; they commonly passed to and fro, as if they had no connection with each other, like people at a fair where all is bustle. sometimes they appeared to have business with one another. once or twice i saw amongst them persons on horseback, and dogs and birds; these figures all appeared to me in their natural size, as distinctly as if they had existed in real life, with the several tints on the uncovered parts of the body, and with all the different kinds and colours of clothes."[ ] here we have the case of a man who was under no misconception as to the nature of his visions. but it is safe to say that had he been of a less practical and analytic turn of mind, had he been, moreover, deeply interested in religious matters, we might have had an altogether different presentation of the facts. in the next instance, also given by dr. ireland, we have a religious explanation given of somewhat similar experiences:-- "a poor woman complained to me that she was continually persecuted by the devils who let loose at her all sorts of blasphemies, and, indeed, all the worse the more she exerted herself not to attend to them; but often, also, when she was talking and active. she had already been to a clergyman who should exorcise the devil, and who had judiciously directed her to me. i asked in which ear the devil always talked to her. she was surprised at the question, which she had never started for herself, but now recognised that it always occurred in the left ear. i explained to her that it was an affection of the ear which now and then occurs, but she was doubtful."[ ] here we have a distinctly physical affection ascribed to supernatural agency. in this case the inference is promptly corrected by the physician. but given a different environment, an atmosphere permeated with a belief in the supernatural, an absence of adequate scientific advice, and the more primitive explanation is certain to prevail. in the next instance--that of martin luther--we have just this conjuncture of circumstances, with the inevitable result. writing of his experience in , luther says:-- "when i was in coburg in , i was tormented with a noise in my ear, just as though there was some wind tearing through my head. the devil had something to do with it.... when i try to work, my head becomes filled with all sorts of whizzing, buzzing, thundering noises, and if i did not leave off on the instant i should faint away. for the last two or three days i have not been able to even look at a letter. my head has lessened down to a very short chapter; soon it will be only a paragraph, then only a syllable, then nothing at all. the day your letter came from nuremberg i had another visit from the devil.... this time the evil one got the better of me, drove me out of my bed, and compelled me to seek the face of man."[ ] there is no need to quote more of this class of cases, at least for the present. their name is legion. one could, in fact, construct an ascending series of cases, all agreeing in their symptom, and differing only in the explanation offered. the series would commence with the explanation of a possessing spirit, and end with that of a deranged nervous system. ignorant of the nature, or even of the existence, of a nervous system, primitive man explains abnormal mental states as due to a malignant spirit. martin luther, george fox, or john bunyan, living at a time when the activity of evil spirits was a firmly held doctrine, attribute their infirmities to satanic influence. we are in the true line of descent. to-day we have with us every one of the phenomena on which the satanic theory rested, but they are described, and prescribed for, in medical works instead of manuals of exorcism. the supernaturalist theory gives way to that of the expert neurologist. the exorcist is replaced by the physician. instead of expelling an intruding demon, we have to repair a deranged system. we cannot argue that while these affections remain constant in character their causes may have been different in other ages from what they are now. that is pure absurdity. to claim that the religious mystic is in moments of exaltation brought into contact with a "deeper reality" is to invite the retort that one might make a similar claim on behalf of the inmates of a lunatic asylum. we cannot, with any pretence to rationality, accept the verdicts of both the neurologist and the exorcist. if we agree that certain states of mind to-day have their origin in neural disorder, on what ground can we believe that similar mental states occurring a thousand or two thousand years ago were due to supernatural stimulation? we may be told that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. this may be true, and while it is an observation that would not occur to a fool, it needs no supreme wisdom for its excogitation, and as generally used it is an excuse for idle speculation and grotesque theory. far more useful is the lesson, sadly needed, that there are few things in heaven or earth that will not yield their secret to a method of investigation that is sanely conceived and diligently employed. the utter uselessness of accepting at its face value anyone's explanation of the nature of his subjective experience, is well shown by the once universal belief in witchcraft. if there is a single belief on behalf of which a mass of apparently unimpeachable evidence could be produced, it is this one. it has run its course throughout the whole world. it is still accepted by probably half the human race. in our own country eminent men, not alone theologians, but doctors, lawyers, statesmen, and men of letters, have given their solemn testimony in its favour. thousands of people have been bewitched, and their symptoms described by thousands of others. more remarkable still, those accused have often enough confessed their guilt. every possible corroboration has been given to this belief, and yet it is now scouted by educated persons all over the civilised world. even religious teachers accept the explanation that these witchcraft cases were due to distinctly pathological conditions, and to the power of suggestion operating upon uninformed minds during an unenlightened age. but communications with spiritual beings rest on no better foundation than communication with satan. whether the alleged illumination be diabolic or angelic, the evidence for either, or both, is the same. the testimony of a man like the rev. r. j. campbell that he is conscious of a divine influence in his life is of no greater value than that of the medieval peasant who felt himself tormented by satan. the one person is no better authority than is the other on such a topic. both are the heirs of the ages, inheritors of a superstition that goes back to the most primitive ages of mankind, only modified in its expression by the culture of contemporary life. there is nothing new under the sun, and human nature remains substantially unchanged generation after generation. all the phenomena on which the belief in witchcraft was based, remain. cases of delusion are common, and the power of suggestion is an established fact in psychology. all that has happened is this: taking the facts on which the belief was based, modern science has shown them to be explainable without the slightest reference to the supernatural. and this is the principle that must be applied in other directions. old occurrences must be explained in the light of new knowledge. this is the accepted rule in other directions, and it is of peculiar value in relation to religious beliefs. to know what religious people have thought and felt and said gives us no more than the data for a scientific study of the subject. to know _why_ they thought and felt and spoke thus is what we really need to understand. but if we are to do this we must relate phases of mind that are called religious to other phases of a non-religious character. i believe it is quite possible to do this. from medical records and from numerous biographies it is possible to parallel all the experiences of the religious mystic. we can see the same sense of exaltation, the same conviction of illumination, the same belief that one is the tool of a superior power. take, as merely illustrative of this, the case of j. addington symonds, as narrated by professor james, who cites it as an example of a "mystical experience with chloroform." symonds tells us that until he was twenty-eight years of age he was liable to extreme states of exaltation concerning the nature of self. (it is worth while pointing out that sir james crichton-browne expresses the opinion that symonds's higher nerve centres were in some degree enfeebled by these abnormal states.) in addition to this confession he placed on record an interesting experience while under the influence of chloroform. he says:-- "after the choking and stifling had passed away, i seemed at first in a state of utter blankness; then came flashes of intense light, alternating with blankness, and with a keen sense of vision of what was going on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. i thought that i was near death; when suddenly my soul became aware of god who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal reality. i felt him streaming in like light upon me.... i cannot describe the ecstasy i felt. then, as i gradually awoke from the influence of the anæsthetic, the old sense of my relation with the world began to return, the new sense of my relation to god began to fade.... only think of it. to have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very god, in all purity, tenderness, and truth, and absolute love, and then to find that i had after all had no revelation, but that i had been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain." with a slight variation of expression this confession might have come direct from the lips of the most pronounced mystic. there is no question of the intense reality of the experience. that was as vivid as anything that ever occurred to any saint in the calendar. still, no one will dream of claiming that the way to get _en rapport_ with the higher mysteries is by way of a dose of chloroform. the distinction here is that symonds knew and described the cause of his experience. and no one will question that the phrase "tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain" covers the ground. of course, there is always the easy retort that saints and mystics did not use chloroform to produce their visions. true, but chloroform is not the only agent by means of which a person may be thrown into an abnormal state. other means may be used; and as a matter of fact, the use of herbs and drugs, as methods of producing ecstatic states, have obtained in religious ceremonies from the most primitive times. as we shall see later, tobacco, hashish, coca, laurel water, and similar agents have been largely utilised for this purpose. and when this plan is not adopted--although very often the two things run side by side--we find fasting and other forms of self-torture practised because of the abnormal conditions produced. it is not argued or implied that in all this there was of necessity deliberate imposture. that would imply the possession of greater knowledge than actually existed. but it was known that ecstatic states followed the use of certain drugs, or were consequent on certain austerities, and they were valued because they were believed to bring people into communion with a hidden spiritual world. in this way there has always been going on a more or less deliberate culture of the supernatural, in more primitive times by crude and easily recognisable means, later by methods that are more subtle in character and more difficult of detection. but the method of inducing a sense of "spiritual" illumination by means of practices alien to the normal life of man remains unchanged throughout. the collation of the conditions under which mystical states of mind are experienced among savages with similar experiences among the higher races, proves at once that this statement contains no exaggeration of the facts. the continuity of the phenomena is, indeed, of profound significance, and is too often ignored. it is often asserted that we have to explain the lower by the higher, and we can only understand the significance of religion in its lower forms by bearing in mind the higher manifestations. this is sheer fallacy. in nature the higher develops out of the lower, of which it is compounded. in biology, for example, it is now generally conceded that the secret of animal life lies in the cell. this may be modified in all kinds of directions, the resulting organic structure may be of the utmost complexity, but the basis remains unchanged. so, too, with a great deal of so-called religious phenomena. the story is not only continuous, but the same elements remain unchanged with only those modifications initiated by a changed environment. and just as we are driven back to the cell to explain organic structure, so for an understanding of the phenomena under consideration we must study their primitive elements. analysis must precede synthesis here as elsewhere. a survey of the subject is not at all exhausted by a study of abnormal conditions, so far as these have entered into the life of religion. there still remains the study of perfectly normal frames of mind that are misinterpreted and diverted into religious channels. the importance of this will be seen more clearly when we come to deal with the subject of conversion. that "conversion" is a phenomenon of adolescence is now settled beyond all reasonable doubt. statistics are conclusive on this point. but the advocate of revivalism quite misses the true significance of the fact. current religious literature is full of quite meaningless chatter concerning the change of view, the larger and more unselfish activities, that arise as a consequence of conversion. there is really no evidence that the changes indicated have any connection with conversion. all that does happen can be more simply and more adequately explained as resulting from physiological and psychological changes in terms of racial and social evolution. the whole significance of adolescence lies in the bursting into activity of feelings hitherto dormant, and the quickening of a desire for communion with a larger social life. the individual becomes less self-centred, more alive to, and more responsive to the claims of others; he displays tendencies towards what the world calls self-sacrifice, but which mean, in the truest sense, self-realisation. that these changes are often expressed in terms of religion is undeniable. this, however, may be no more than an environmental accident, quite as much so as was the case when epilepsy was explained in terms of possession. so far as one can see, there are no feelings or impulses characteristic of adolescence that could not receive complete satisfaction in a rationally ordered social life. to-day it usually happens that the strongest expressed influences brought to bear upon the individual are of a religious kind, with the result that adolescent human nature is most apt to express itself in religious language. it must always be borne in mind that we are all as dependent upon our environment for the form in which our explanation of things is cast, as we are for the language in which we express those ideas. the whole enquiry opened is a very wide one, with which i can only deal parenthetically. it is really an enquiry as to how far the religious theory of human nature rests upon a wrong interpretation of perfectly normal feelings, or to what extent supernaturalistic ideas are perpetuated by the exploitation--innocent exploitation, maybe--of man's social nature. it is extremely probable that a deeper knowledge, a more accurate analysis of human qualities, will disclose the truth that man is a social animal in a much more profound sense than has usually attached to that phrase, and the expression of these qualities in terms of religious beliefs, or in terms of non-religious beliefs, is wholly determined by the knowledge current in the society in which he moves. i conclude this chapter with one more attempt to avoid misunderstanding. for purposes of clarity it will be necessary to consider various factors out of relation to other factors. but it should hardly need pointing out that in actual life such a separation does not obtain. the organism functions as a whole; each part acts upon and is acted upon by every other part. life in action is a synthesis, and one resorts to analysis only for the purpose of more adequate comprehension. it is not, moreover, pretended that any one of the factors described in the following pages will explain religion, nor even that all of them combined will do so. the origin of the religious idea is a quite different enquiry, and is adequately dealt with in the writings of men like tylor, frazer, spencer, and other representatives of the various schools of anthropologists. my present purpose is of a more restricted kind. it is that of tracing the operation of various processes, some normal, but most of them abnormal, that have in all ages been accepted as evidence for the supernatural. that the religious idea has been associated with these processes, and that for multitudes they have served as strong evidence of its truth, cannot be denied. and an examination of this aspect of the history of religion ought not to be ignored, however unpalatable such a study may be to certain supersensitive minds. footnotes: [ ] _varieties of religious experience_, pp. - . [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] _religions of primitive peoples_, p. . [ ] page . [ ] page . [ ] page . [ ] page . [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] "the hypothesis of faculties ... must be regarded as productive of much error in psychology. it has led to the false supposition that mental activity, instead of being one and the same throughout its manifold phases, is a juxtaposition of totally distinct activities, answering to a bundle of detached powers, somehow standing side by side, and exerting no influence on one another. sometimes this absolute separation of the parts of mind has gone so far as to personify the several faculties as though they were distinct entities."--sully, _outlines of psychology_, p. . [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] _the blot upon the brain_, p. . [ ] _the blot upon the brain_, p. . [ ] cited by dr. ireland, p. . chapter two the primitive mind & its environment ever since the time of aristotle it has been an accepted truth that man is a social animal. not only is individual human nature such that it craves for intercourse with its kind, but it can only be effectively understood in the light of those thousands of generations of associated life that lie behind us all. as an isolated object, considered, that is, apart from his fellows, man is more or less of a myth. at any rate, he would not be the man we know and so may well be left out of account. man as we know him is essentially a member of a group; he is a part of a really organic structure inasmuch as the characteristics of each part are determined by its relations to the whole, and the characteristics of the whole determined by a synthesis of the qualities of the parts. but while there is agreement in the fact, there is a considerable divergence of opinion as to its nature. what is the nature of this fact of sociability? what is the character of the force that binds the members of a group so closely together? by some, the cause of sociability is found in the pressure exerted upon all by purely external forces. the need for protection, it is said, drives human beings together, and thus in course of time the feeling of sociability is developed. this seems much like mistaking a consequence for a cause. it certainly leaves unanswered the question _why_ should people have drawn together in the face of danger? most certainly collective action strengthens the capacity for defence; and it also increases the certainty of obtaining the means of subsistence. such consequences furnish a justification, so to speak, of group life, but they disclose neither its nature nor its cause. and most certainly they do not bring us into touch with the fundamental qualities of _human_ society. the need for food, shelter, or protection will not differentiate the gregarious from the non-gregarious forms of life, nor the social from the merely gregarious. all forms of life require food, protection, and shelter; they are part of animal economics. there is nothing specifically human about them. we may reach what i conceive to be the truth in another way. environment is to-day almost a cant word. it is very largely used, and, as one might expect, largely misunderstood. without actually saying it in so many words, a vast number of people seem to conceive the environment as consisting of the purely material surroundings of man. this is to overlook a most important fact. even in the lowest stages of human society, where man's power over natural forces is of the poorest kind, it is not an exact statement of the case, and it is profoundly untrue when we take society in its higher developments. if we take the lowest existing savage race we find that its attitude towards life, what it does, and what it refrains from doing, is the product of a certain mental attitude, which is itself the outcome of a number of inherited ideas and customs. a number of white people, placed in exactly the same material environment and faced with exactly the same external circumstances, bring a different psychological inheritance into play, and act in an entirely different manner. if we transport a chinaman into england, or an englishman into china, we find that both of them possess the same biological and material needs whether in their native country or elsewhere. yet this community of needs does not make the chinaman a member of english society, nor an englishman a member of chinese society. they are one in virtue of certain broad human characteristics; they are divided by certain qualities characteristic of their special groups. each society is marked by the possession of certain psychological characteristics--a number of specific beliefs and emotional developments--without which its distinctive group character disappears. this is true of groups within the state; it is true of the state as a whole; it is true, on the most general scale of all, of the race. in other words, the distinguishing feature of human society is the possession of a psychological medium. the adaptations that the human being must make are mainly of a psychological character. their _form_ may be partly determined by external conditions, but this does not affect the general truth. whether we take man in a civilised or in an uncivilised state we find the important thing about him to be his relations to his fellows. he is not merely a member of a tribe or a society, but he thinks that society's thoughts, he feels their emotions, his individual life is an expression of the psychical life of the group to which he belongs. and his transactions with nature are an expression of the ideas and beliefs current in the society of which he is a part. the recognition of this truth was one of the outstanding contributions of herbert spencer to the science of sociology. whereas other writers had stressed the power of the environment, as a purely material thing, in shaping human institutions, spencer placed chief stress upon the emotional and intellectual life of primitive man as determining their beginnings. he showed how man's feelings and beliefs about himself, and about his fellows, and about the world of living forces with which he believed himself to be surrounded, were the all-important factors of social evolution. and the subsequent history of society has been such that scientific sociology is very largely the study of the growth and elaboration of an essentially psychical environment. the lower animal world--except so far as we allow for the operation of instincts--has, broadly, only the existence of other animals and the physical surroundings for its environment. with man it is vastly different. owing primarily to language, the environment of the man of to-day is made up in part of the ideas of men who lived and died thousands of years ago. the use of clothing and the invention of tools would alone make mind a dominant fact in human life. but apart from these things, the great fact of social heredity, in virtue of which one generation enjoys the acquired culture of preceding generations, and without which civilisation would have no existence, is a great and dominant _mental_ fact. our institutions, our customs, are transmitted to us as so many psychic facts. every new invention, every fresh culture acquisition, is helping to strengthen and broaden the psychical environment of man. each newcomer is born into it; it moulds his nature and determines his life, as his own career and his own acquisition help to mould the life of his successors. whether the phenomena be simple or complex, whether we are dealing with man in a civilised or in an uncivilised state, there is no escape from the general truth that man is everywhere under the domination of his mental life. so far as this enquiry is concerned, we need only deal with one aspect of the psychological medium in which primitive human life moves. and so far as primitive mankind seeks to control the movements of social life, there can be no question that this is done under the impulsion of that class of beliefs which we call religious. the operation of religious belief in savage society is neither spasmodic nor local. it is, on the contrary, universal and persistent. it influences every event of daily life with a force that the modern mind finds very difficult to appreciate. in almost every action the savage feels himself to be in touch with a supersensual world of living beings that exert a direct and inescapable influence. and any study of human evolution that is to be of real value must take this circumstance into consideration to a far greater extent than is usually done. professor frazer, dealing with the origin of various social institutions, rightly observes that "we are only beginning to understand the mind of the savage, and therefore the mind of our savage forefathers who created these institutions and handed them down to us," and warns us that "a knowledge of the truth may involve a reconstruction of society such as we can hardly dream of." he also warns us that we have at all times, in dealing with social origins, to "reckon with the influence of superstition, which pervades the life of the savage and has contributed to build up the social organism to an incalculable extent."[ ] in emphasising this it must not be taken to imply that because social institutions and human actions are in primitive times moulded by religious beliefs, they stand to them in a relation of complete dependence. it only means that the psychological medium is of such a character that supernaturalistic reasons are found for doings things that are susceptible to a totally different explanation. the facts of life are expressed in terms of supernaturalism. birth, marriage, death, social cohesion, leadership, health and disease, are all natural facts, and the mere play of social selection determines the weeding out of practices that are sufficiently adverse to tribal well-being to threaten its security. but in primitive times all these facts are allied with religious beliefs, and to the primitive mind the religious belief becomes the chief feature connected with them. as a matter of fact, this is far from an uncommon feature of social life to-day. the amount of supernaturalism current is still very large; and one still finds people explaining some of the plainest facts of social life in terms of supernaturalistic beliefs. it is all part of the truth that man is always under the domination of the psychological forces. this being granted, the enquiry immediately presents itself, how comes it that the facts of social life should be expressed in terms of supernaturalism? why do these facts not immediately present themselves in their true nature? to answer this question one must bear in mind a yet further truth. this is that the explanation which man offers to himself or to others of phenomena must always be in terms of current knowledge. a modern called upon to explain a storm, an eclipse, or a disease, does so in terms of current physical or biological science. this is done in virtue of a mass of prepared knowledge, slowly accumulated by preceding generations, and which forms part of his social heritage. primitive man likewise explains things in terms of current knowledge, but in his case the amount of reliable information is of a very scanty and generally erroneous description. the inherited knowledge which enables a modern schoolboy to start life with what would have been an outfit to an ancient philosopher, had yet to be created. instead of finding, as we find, tools ready to hand, replies prepared to questions that may arise, primitive mankind must create its own tools and prepare its own answers. and in consequence of this the social environment, which at all times determines the form of man's mental output, is with primitive man radically different from our own. but however the form varies there is agreement on this one point--in both cases phenomena are explained in terms of known forces; the reasoning of each is determined by the knowledge of each. the laws of mental life remain the same in all stages of culture. the brain functions identically whether we take the savage or the scientist. in a general way the savage intelligence is as rational as that of a modern thinker. the difference is dependent upon the accuracy and extent of the information possessed by each. hence the vital difference in the conclusions reached. hence, too, the dominance of supernaturalism in primitive times. the great distinction between primitive and scientific thinking may be expressed in a sentence--the modern mind explains man by the world, primitive thought explained the world by man. in the one case we move from within outward, in the other from without inward. we are not now concerned with semi-metaphysical idealistic theories that would reduce the "whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth" to the creation of mental activity, but with the plain, understandable truth that the human organism is fashioned by the environment in which it dwells. and there is amongst those capable of expressing an authoritative opinion--an agreement supported by evidence that has simply nothing against it--that the world of primitive man is overpoweringly animistic. in the absence of that mass of scientifically verified knowledge which forms part of our social heritage, humanity commences its intellectual career by endowing natural forces with the qualities possessed by itself. the forces conceived are living ones. they are to be dreaded exactly as human beings are to be dreaded; to be appeased or circumvented by the same methods that man applies to his fellows. the problem before the savage is thus a very real one. in essence it is the problem that is ever before humanity--that of subjugating forces to its own welfare. primitive man is not, however, concerned with the elaboration of theories; nor is he consumed with vague 'spiritual yearnings.' his difficulty is how to control or placate those invisible but very real powers upon which he believes everything depends. he would willingly ignore them if he could, and would cheerfully dispense with their presence altogether if he believed that things would proceed as well in their absence. but there they are, inescapable facts that have to be reckoned with. the general outlook of the primitive mind is well put by miss mary kingsley in the following passage:-- "to the african the universe is made up of matter permeated by spirit. everything happens by the direct action of spirit. the thing he does himself is done by the spirit within him acting on his body ... everything that is done by other things is done by their spirit associated with their particular mass of matter.... the native will point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its spirit has been killed. he will tell you, when the earthen cooking pot is broken, it has lost its spirit. if his weapon fails him, it is because someone has stolen its spirit or made it weak by means of his influence on spirits of the same class.... in every action of his life he shows you how he lives with a great spirit world around him. you see him before he starts out to fight rubbing stuff into his weapon to strengthen the spirit that is in it; telling it the while what care he has taken of it.... you see him leaning over the face of the water talking to its spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets an enemy of his to upset his canoe and destroy him.... if a man is knocked on the head with a club, or shot by an arrow or a bullet, the cause of death is clearly the malignity of persons using these weapons; and so it is easy to think that a man killed by the falling of a tree, or by the upsetting of a canoe in the surf, or in a whirlpool in the river is also a victim of some being using these things as weapons. for a man holding this view, it seems both natural and easy to regard disease as a manifestation of the wrath of some invisible being, and to construct that intricate system which we find among the africans, and agree to call witchcraft, fetish, or juju."[ ] miss kingsley is here dealing specifically with west africa, but her description applies in a general way to uncivilised people all over the world. there is much closer resemblance between the beliefs of uncivilised peoples than between civilised ones, because the conditions are much more alike. and under substantially identical conditions the human mind has everywhere reached substantially identical conclusions. the philosophy of the savage is simple, comprehensive, and, given the data, logical. he does not divide the world into the natural and the supernatural; it is all one. at most, he has only the seen and the unseen. the supernatural, as a distinct category, only appears when a definite knowledge of the natural has arisen to which it can be opposed. he has no such distinction as that of the material and the immaterial; so far as he thinks of these things, the invisible is only a finer form of the visible. of one thing, however, he is perfectly convinced, and this is that he is at all times surrounded by a host of invisible agencies to which all occurrences are due, and with whom he must come to terms. even death wears a different aspect to the primitive mind from that which it presents to the modern. to us death puts a sharp and abrupt termination to life. to the primitive mind death involves no such ending.[ ] death is no more of a break than is sleep; and at all times the conception of an annihilation of personality requires a marked degree of mental power. so with the savage--the 'dead' man simply goes on living. he may be incarnated in some natural object, or he may simply go on living as one of the innumerable company of tribal ghosts. but he remains a force to be reckoned with, and the need for dealing with these ghostly personages is one of the ever-present problems of primitive sociology, and brings us very near the beginnings of all religious beliefs and ceremonies--if it does not form their real starting-point. on one point all modern schools of anthropologists are agreed. this is that man's first conception of the supernatural--or what afterwards ranks as such--is derived from a purely mistaken interpretation of natural phenomena. in this they have returned to the standpoint of hobbes, that "fear of things invisible" forms the "natural seed of religion." one source of origin of this belief in a supernatural world is certainly found in the phenomena of dreaming. to the savage his dreams are as real as his waking experiences. he does not _dream_ he goes to distant places; he goes there during his sleep. he does not _dream_ that people visit him; they actually come. if a west african wakes up in the morning with a tired, bruised feeling, this arises, as miss kingsley says, from his 'soul' having been out fighting and got ill-treated. the only philosophy of dreaming amongst savage races is that of the excursions and incursions of a 'soul' or double. another powerful factor in the development of belief in the supernatural is that of man's attempt to explain natural happenings. why do things happen? why does the sun rise and set, why does rain fall, thunder crash, rivers flow? note the way in which a child answers similar questions, and one is on the track of the primitive intelligence. if man's own movements are caused by a 'soul' or double, then other things must also move because they possess a 'soul.' if an answer is to be found at all, it is only along these lines that the primitive mind is able to find it. and, once the answer is given, there are a thousand and one things occurring that lend it apparent support. resemblances in nature, coincidences, echoes, shadows, etc., all give their support to this primitive hypothesis--the only one possible in the circumstances, and the one still endorsed by the majority of the world's population. particularly strong endorsement of this belief is supplied by disease and abnormal nervous states. instances to illustrate this are innumerable, but from the numerous cases cited by spencer i select the following: among the amazulus convulsions are believed to be caused by ancestral spirits. with asiatic races epileptics are regarded as possessed by demons. with the kirghiz the involuntary muscular movements of a woman in childbirth are believed to be caused by a spirit taking possession of the body. the samoans attribute all madness to possession. the congo people have the same notion of epilepsy. the east africans believe that falling sickness is due to spirits.[ ] in rajputana, says mr. w. crooke, disease is generally attributed to khor or the agency of offended spirits. the mahadeo kolis of ahmadnagar believe that every malady or disease that seizes man, woman, or child, or cattle, is caused either by evil spirits or by an angry god. the bijapur veddas have a yearly feast to their ancestors to prevent the dead bringing sickness into the house.[ ] "a catholic missionary," says professor frazer, "observes that in new guinea the _nepir_, or sorcerer, is everywhere.... nothing happens without the sorcerer's intervention; wars, marriage, death, expeditions, fishing, hunting, always and everywhere the sorcerer."[ ] in ancient egypt, chaldea, and assyria there is ample evidence that the same belief flourished. everywhere we find the exorcist and the witch-doctor existing as natural consequents of the belief that disease has a supernatural origin. we see it in both the teaching and practice of the early christian church. that great father of the church, origen, says: "it is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruption of the air, and pestilence." st. augustine said that "all diseases of christians are to be ascribed to demons." the church of england still retains in its articles an authorisation for the expulsion of demons; and a number of charms yet in wide use amongst civilised nations show how persistent is this belief. for centuries there existed all over europe sacred pools, wells, grottos, etc., all bearing eloquent witness to the deep-seated belief that disease was of supernatural origin, and was to be conquered by supernatural means. enough has been said to indicate the kind of environment in which primitive man moves, and also to understand why ideas concerning the supernatural exert such an enormous influence in early society. in a world where everything was yet to be learned, man's first attempts at understanding himself and his fellows were necessarily blundering and tentative. his first attempts at explanation are expressed in terms of his own nature. he sees himself, his own passions, strengths, and weaknesses reflected in the nature around him. this is the outstanding, dominating fact in primitive life. leave out this consideration and primitive sociology becomes a chaos. admit it, and we see the reason why social institutions assumed the form they took, and also a key to much that happens in subsequent human history. in primitive life religious beliefs are not something separate from other forms of social life; so far as man seeks consciously to shape that life they are to him an essential part of it. and the mistake once made is perpetuated. the initial blunder once committed, daily experience seems to give it constant justification. in the absence of knowledge concerning natural forces every event,--particularly if unusual,--every case of disease, endorses and strengthens the mistake made. a psychological fatality drives the human race along the wrong path of investigation, and only very slowly is the mistake rectified. one cannot see how it could have been otherwise. the only corrective is knowledge, and knowledge is a plant of slow growth. this psychological first step was man's first attempt to frame a theory of things satisfactory to his intellect--an attempt that, beginning in the crude animism of the savage, ends in the verifiable laws of modern science. from the point of view of our present enquiry two things are to be noted. the first is that man's conviction of the nearness of a supernatural world began in his lack of knowledge concerning the nature of natural forces. of this there can be little doubt. one can take all the facts upon which primitive mankind built, and still builds, its theories of supernaturalism, and show that they may be explained in a quite different manner. the movements of the planets, the rush of comets, the presence of disaster, the thousand and one operations of natural forces no longer suggest to educated minds the action of personal beings. the whole data of the primitive theory of things have been rejected. the premises were false, and the conclusions necessarily false also. the second point is that from the earliest times one of the strongest proofs of human contact with a supernatural world has been found in the existence of abnormal or pathological states of mind. these may have sometimes arisen quite naturally; at other times they have been deliberately induced. how much the perpetuation of religious beliefs as a whole owes to this factor has never yet been adequately realised. that it has had a very great influence seems beyond dispute. for it seems certain that had not "proofs" of a supernatural world been offered in the shape of visions, ecstatic states, etc., religious beliefs would hardly have exercised the power that has been theirs. the number of people who are able to maintain a strong consciousness of the truth of religion, merely looking at it as a philosophy of existence, is naturally very few. the great majority require more tangible evidence if their belief is to be kept alive and active. and curiously enough, the very growth of a naturalistic explanation has driven a great many to find the evidence they desired in those abnormal states of mind that seemed to defy scientific analysis. in succeeding chapters evidence will be given to show to what extent this kind of evidence for the supernatural has been offered and accepted. it will be seen, as professor tylor points out, that the line of religious development is continuous. the latest forms stretch back in an unbroken line to the earliest. and if this proves nothing else, it at least proves that consequences do not always die out with the conditions that gave them birth. it was the world of the savage that gave birth to the supernatural. but the supernatural is still with us, even though the world that gave it birth has disappeared. we retain conclusions based on admittedly false premises. footnotes: [ ] _lectures on the early history of the kingship_, pp. - . [ ] _west african studies_, pp. - . [ ] see an interesting article on this point by w. h. r. rivers on "the primitive conception of death," in _the hibbert journal_ for jan. . [ ] _principles of sociology_, vol. i. [ ] _popular religion and folklore of northern india_, i. p. . [ ] _golden bough_, rd ed., i. . chapter three the religion of mental disease "it is an interesting problem," says professor j. h. leuba, "to determine what influences have led theologians to anchor their beliefs upon the proposition that religious experience differs from other forms of consciousness in that it gives one an _immediate_ knowledge of the external existence of certain objects of belief, although they do not fall under the senses, and an immediate knowledge of the truth of certain historical facts."[ ] this is, indeed, an interesting problem, and, we may add, one of growing importance, since there is a pronounced tendency on the part of present-day exponents of religion to rest their case almost entirely upon the immediacy of their religious consciousness. this conception of a certain order of experience, however, is not and cannot have always existed. a belief may be so widely and so generally diffused that it is accepted without resistance, and, as it would almost seem, in the absence of evidence. but its intuitive character is only superficial, and disappears on careful examination. the mere vogue of a belief constitutes in itself a kind of evidence, and for many people the most powerful kind of evidence. but the conviction itself has a history, and it is in the unravelling of that history, in the discovery of the class of facts upon which the conviction has been built, that the work lies. and when this is done it will be found that our intuitions are invariably based upon a continuous--even though partly unconscious--appeal to facts. sometimes it will, of course, be found that a renewed and deliberate appeal to the facts in question will justify the conviction. at other times it will be found that the facts demand an altogether new interpretation. for centuries all the observed facts supported a conviction that the earth was flat. it was a fresh scrutiny of the facts in the light of a new conception that revolutionised human opinion on the subject. what, then, is the history, and what are the facts upon which the belief that religious experience brings man into contact with a kind of existence not given in ordinary experience, is based? the kind of answer that will be given to this question has already been indicated. religious beliefs are in their origin of the nature of an induction from an observed order. the induction is not the result of that careful collection of facts, leading up to an equally careful generalisation and subsequent verification, which is a characteristic of modern science, but it is an induction none the less. the primitive mind is not so much engaged in seeking an explanation of certain experiences, as it has an explanation forced upon it. to picture the savage as inventing a theory in the sense in which darwin propounded the theory of natural selection is to quite misconceive the nature of the savage intelligence. but to conceive the savage as having a certain explanation suggested by the pressure of repeated experiences, and that this explanation subsequently assumes the character of a fixed belief, is well within the scope of the facts known to us. in this stage of culture the existence of supernatural beings is as much a deduction from experience as any modern scientific generalisation. certain things are seen, certain feelings are experienced, and the conclusion is that they are the products of supernatural agency. from this point of view religion is no more than a primitive science. it is the first stage of that long series of generalisations which, beginning with crude animism, ends with the discoveries of a copernicus, a newton, a darwin, or a spencer. it is a history that begins with vitalism and ends with mechanism. we commence with a world in which there exists a chaotic assemblage of independent personal forces, and end with a universe that is self-acting, self-adjusting, self-contained, and in which science makes no allowance for the operation of intelligence save such as meets us in animal organisation. now amongst the facts that suggest to the primitive intelligence the operation of 'spiritual' forces are those connected with the human organism itself in both its normal and abnormal states. but it is important to note--particularly so for the understanding of the part played by ecstatic religious phenomena in comparatively recent times--that once the occurrence of a certain state of mind is conceived as the product of intercourse between man and spirits, there is every inducement to cultivate these frames of mind whenever renewed intercourse is desired. this does not imply, at least in the earlier stages, conscious imposture. generally the operator imposes on himself as much as he imposes on others. noting that privation of body, or torture of mind, or the use of certain herbs is followed by visions or ecstasy, it is believed, not that the vision is the product of the practice, but that the practice is the condition of illumination. this attitude of mind is fairly paralleled by what takes place at the ordinary spiritualistic _seance_. those attending are advised that the chief condition of a communication with the inhabitants of the other world is a passive state of mind. this passivity cannot exclude expectancy, since it is only assumed in order that something may occur. if nothing occurs, if no communications are received, it is because the requisite conditions have not been fulfilled, and the sceptic is met with much semi-scientific jargon as to conditions being necessary to every scientific investigation. the fact that this passivity and expectancy, with other attendant circumstances, not the least of which is the contagious influence of a number of people with a similar mental disposition, opens the way to self-delusion is ignored. then when the expected and desired result follows, the mental attitude cultivated is taken as the condition of communication with the spiritual world, instead of its being, in all probability, the true cause of what is experienced. in this way the story of supernatural intercourse runs clear and unbroken from primitive savagery to its survival in modern civilisation. when professor tylor says, "the conception of the human soul is, as to its most essential nature, continuous from the philosophy of the savage thinker to that of the modern professor of theology,"[ ] he makes a statement that is true of the whole story of supernatural intercourse in all its varied manifestations. the chief distinction between primitive and modern man lies in the consideration that in the first case the blunder is inevitable, in the latter case the remedy lies to hand. how could primitive man be aware of the real connection between the use of certain drugs or herbs and an excitation or depression of the activities of the nervous system? he does observe consequences, but he is quite ignorant of causes. even to-day their full consequences are unknown; and it is absurd to expect that savage humanity should have been better informed. and even when a more rational theory exists, the practice persists under various forms. this is a principle that receives vivid illustration from the history of religions. the modern believer in mystical states of consciousness no longer advocates the use of drugs, and even fasting is going out of fashion. but we still have a continuation of the primitive practice in the shape of insistence on the cultivation of abnormal frames of mind if we are to experience a consciousness of communion with an alleged supersensible reality. that is, we are to achieve by a mental discipline what the savage or the medieval monk achieved by coarser and more obvious methods. to withdraw the mind from the normal influence of everyday life is to expose it to the play of hallucination and delusion. there is really no vital difference between unhealthy, solitary brooding on a given subject and drugging the mind with hashish. this class of modern mystic is one with the savage in an inability to recognise that the illumination is the product of the discipline, not the mere condition of its possession. between the drug of the savage, the fasting and self-torture of the medieval monk and the prayerful meditation of the modern mystic, the difference is only that of changed times and altered conditions. the method is the same throughout. the truth of this has been well put by tylor:-- "the religious beliefs of the lower races are in no small measure based on the evidence of visions and dreams, regarded as actual intercourse with spiritual being. from the earliest stages of culture we find religion in close alliance with ecstatic physical conditions. these are brought on by various means of interference with the healthy action of body and mind, and it is scarcely needful to remind the reader that, according to philosophic theories antecedent to those of modern medicine, such morbid disturbances are explained as symptoms of divine visitation, or at least of superhuman spirituality. among the strongest means of disturbing the functions of the mind so as to produce ecstatic vision, is fasting, accompanied, as it usually is, with other privations, and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or in the forest. among the ordinary vicissitudes of savage life, the wild hunter has many a time to try involuntarily the effects of such a life for days together, and under these circumstances he soon comes to see and talk with phantoms which are to him invisible spirits. the secret of spiritual intercourse thus learnt, he has thence-forth but to reproduce the cause in order to renew the effects."[ ] as a means, then, of strengthening and perpetuating a consciousness of intercourse with the spiritual world, we have to reckon with, not merely the accidental occurrence of abnormal nervous conditions, but with their deliberate cultivation. the practice is world-wide, and persists in some form or other in all ages. thus we find the australians and many tribes of north american indians use tobacco for this purpose. in western siberia a species of fungi, the 'fly agaric,' so called because it is often steeped and the solution used to destroy house flies, is used to produce religious ecstasy. its action on the muscular system is stimulatory, and it greatly excites the nervous system.[ ] an early spanish observer says of the ancient mexicans that they used a kind of mushroom, "which are eaten raw, and on account of being bitter, they drink after them, or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly after they see a thousand visions."[ ] the mushroom was called the "bread of the gods." the californian indians give children tobacco, in order to receive instruction from the resulting visions. north american indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the dreams of men in this state to be inspired. the darien indians use the seeds of the datura sanguinea to induce visions. in peru the priests prepared themselves for intercourse with the gods by partaking of a narcotic drink from the same plant. in guiana the priest was prepared for his functions by fasting and flagellation, and was afterwards dosed with tobacco juice.[ ] in india the laws of manu give explicit instructions as to the means of producing visions. chief of these is the use of the 'soma' drink. this is prepared from the flower of the lotus. the sap of this, says de candolle, would be poisonous if taken in large quantities, but in small doses merely induces hallucination. opium and hashish, a preparation of the hemp plant, have been in general use among eastern peoples, as a means of producing ecstasy from remote antiquity. opium, it is well known, produces an extraordinary state of exaltation, intensifying the sense of one's personality, and inducing a pleasurable consciousness of mental strength and clarity. under its influence, as de quincey said, time lengthens to infinity and space swells to immensity.[ ] belladonna, a drug much used by medieval witches and sorcerers, has also had its vogue for purely religious purposes. with the greeks the laurel was sacred to Ã�sculapius. those who wished to ask counsel of the god appeared before the altar crowned with laurel and chewing its leaves. before prophesying, the greek priestesses drank a preparation of laurel water. this contains, although it was, of course, unknown to them, two toxic substances--prussic acid and the volatile oil of laurel. the first would induce convulsions, the second, hallucinatory visions. the two combined were calculated to produce with both subject and observer a profound impression of spiritual illumination and possession. it is unnecessary to multiply examples of the action of various drugs or herbs on the nervous system, or to cite the people who use them. enough has been said to indicate how widespread is the practice, and the consequences are not hard to foresee. a very moderate development of intelligence would enable men to associate certain consequences with the use of particular drugs, but a very considerable amount of knowledge would be required to explain why these consequences were produced. in a social environment saturated with superstition the explanation lies ready to hand, and is accepted without question. a people that sees spiritual agency in all the familiar phenomena of nature are certainly not less likely to trace its influence in the mysterious and unaccountable effects of narcotics and stimulants. and each repeated experiment provides additional proof. man thus not only believes himself to be surrounded by a spiritual world; he is actually able to enter into communication with it by methods that are defined in the clearest possible manner. every repetition strengthens the delusion and even when the delusion, as such, is exploded, the temper of mind induced by it persists. various other methods are employed to induce a feeling of religious exaltation. prominent among these are dancing and singing. dancing in connection with religious ceremonies is now generally outgrown in the civilised world, but singing is still the vogue. that is, singing is not, it must be remembered, practised from any desire to cultivate a love of music, although it may appeal to music-lovers. still, its avowed purpose is to induce a feeling of devoutness in the congregation. the hypnotic consequences of a body of people singing in unison, or the soothing, mystical effect of certain airs from a choir upon a congregation, are recognised in practice if not in theory. this is a phenomenon that is not, of course, exclusively associated with religion. in this as in other instances religion only utilises the ordinary qualities of human nature. but in all cases the purpose and the result are the same. that is, the subject is placed for the time being in a supernormal condition, and the mild state of passivity or enthusiasm created makes him more susceptible to the influence brought to bear upon him. this is true of religious singing and chanting, from the forest gatherings of the primitive savage down to the more sedate and elaborate assemblages in church or chapel. primitive dancing had both a sexual and religious significance, although, as will be seen later, in the primitive mind the sexual functions themselves are very closely associated with supernatural agency. tylor is of opinion that originally men and women dance in order to express their feelings and wishes,[ ] but it is certain it very early and universally became associated with religious ceremonies, and that because of the ecstasy induced. in some cases drug-taking and dancing go together. in others, reliance is placed on dancing alone. this latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of ceylon. in africa the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. the whirling dance of the eastern dervish is well known. dancing also figures in the bible. the jews danced around the golden calf (ex. xxxii. ) in a state of nudity. david, too, danced naked before the lord. dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of dionysos or bacchus.[ ] along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions, dancing formed an important part of the witches' saturnalia during the medieval period. when in a state of frenzy, partly drug induced and partly the product of exhilaration caused by wild dancing, visions of satan followed. in the dancing mania of the fourteenth century, the sufferers saw visions of heaven opened, with jesus and the virgin enthroned. dancing was one of the prominent characteristics of the french convulsionnaires in the eighteenth century. in more recent times we have the dancing and singing connected with the methodist revival. in modern instances the dancing seems to have been consequent on religious excitement rather than precedent to it, but in earlier times there is no doubt that it was deliberately practised as a means of producing a state of exaltation. among the commonest methods of inducing a sense of religious exaltation is the practice of fasting. in various guises, this is the most persistent form of religious self-torture. amongst more civilised people the reason given for fasting is that it is a form of repentance, the genuineness of which is attested by voluntary punishment. but originally there seems little reason to doubt that it was adopted for a different purpose. it was valued not because the fasting person felt that he had done anything for which it was necessary to repent, but because it was believed to bring people into closer touch with the spiritual world. there is, of course, a very obvious reason for this belief. a lowered vitality is favourable to hallucinations of every description. a shipwrecked sailor is placed, by no act of his own, in precisely the same condition as is the primitive medicine man or the medieval saint by his own volition. it has always been recognised, and by none more readily than by the great religious teachers of the world, that a well-nourished body is inimical to what they chose to term "spiritual development." the historic christian outcry against fleshly indulgence has much more in it than a revolt against mere sensualism. a well-fed body has been deprecated because it closed the avenue to spiritual illumination. hence it is that fasting has found such favour in all religious systems. the ascetic saw more because, by reducing the body to an abnormal state, he provided the conditions for seeing more. the zulu maxim, "a stuffed body cannot see secret things," really expresses in a sentence the philosophy of the matter. among the blackfoot indians of north america, when a boy reaches puberty he is sent away from his father's lodge in search of a spiritual protector or totem. seeking a secluded spot, he abstains from food until he is favoured in a dream with a vision of some animal or bird, which is at once adopted by him.[ ] this custom obtains with most of the north american tribes. among these tribes, also, the soothsayer prepares himself by fasting for the ecstatic state in which the spirits give their messages through him. the ordinary member of the tribe who wants anything will fast until he is assured in a dream that it will be granted him. similarly, the malay, to procure supernatural intercourse, retires to the jungle and abstains from food. the zulu doctor prepares for intercourse with the tribal spirits by spare diet or solitary fasts. fasting is part of the ordinary regimen of the hindu yogi. of certain indian tribes we are told that before proceeding on an expedition they "observe a rigorous fast, or rather abstain from every kind of food for four days. in this interval their imagination is exalted to delirium; whether it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of delirium, they pretend to have strange visions. the elders and sages of the tribe, being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their explanations are received as oracles, by which the expedition will be faithfully regulated."[ ] amongst the samoans, when rain was required, the priests blackened themselves all over, exhumed a dead body, took the skeleton to a cave and poured water over it. they had to fast and remain in the cave until it rained. sometimes they died under the experiment, but they generally chose the showery months for their rain-making.[ ] in both the old and new testaments fasting figures largely. the encounter of jesus with satan is preceded by a forty days' fast. st. catherine of sienna began regular fasts at a very early age. santa teresa kept lengthy fasts every year. the fasting of the monks and nuns during the epidemic period of monasticism is too well known to call for more than a mere reference. perhaps the most curious religious reason given for fasting is that cited by a writer from a monkish chronicler:-- "as a coach goes faster when it is empty, a man by fasting can be better united to god; for it is a principle with geometers that a round body can never touch a plane except in one point.... a belly too well filled becomes round, it cannot touch god except in one point; but fasting flattens the belly until it is united with the surface of god at all points."[ ] george fox, the founder of the society of friends, confesses that he "fasted much" and "walked abroad in solitary places," and "frequently in the night walked about mournfully by myself." after much brooding and fasting, he heard a voice which said, "there is one, even jesus christ, that can speak to thy condition." such an experience is not at all surprising, seeing the method pursued to acquire it. less fasting and brooding, with more genial intercourse with his fellows, might easily have prevented fox, as it has prevented others, hearing heavenly voices proffering him counsel. such an experience is well within the reach of anyone who cares to acquire it. tylor has well said that "so long as fasting is continued as a religious rite, so long the consequences in morbid mental exaltation will continue the old savage doctrine that morbid phantasy is supernatural experience. bread and meat would have robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the refectory door must many a time have closed the gate of heaven to his gaze." no one will question the truth of this principle, so long as we are dealing with uncivilised mankind. many, however, shrink from acknowledging that the practices current in more civilised times are disguised illustrations of the same principle of interpretation, which descends direct from savages, and but for them would never have existed. commenting on the practices of certain savage medicine-men, a missionary remarks:-- "it always appeared probable to me that these rogues, from long fasting, contract a weakness of brain, a giddiness, a kind of delirium, which makes them imagine that they are gifted with superior wisdom, and give themselves out for physicians. they impose upon themselves first, and afterwards upon others."[ ] this is shrewdly said, and is a good example of the readiness with which obvious truths are recognised when they do not clash with religious prepossessions. the difficulty for others is to discern any real line of demarcation between the practices of civilised and uncivilised. so far as one can see, the only real distinction is that the method employed by savages is open. that followed by civilised people is more or less disguised. but derangement of function is derangement of function, no matter how produced. and if we decline to believe that a savage holds genuine intercourse with a spiritual world, as a consequence of this derangement, in what way are we justified in accepting the testimony of a christian visionary to similar intercourse, when the derangement is in his case no less clear? it is a case of accepting both, or neither. the sane and scientific conclusion seems to lie in the following from dr. henry maudsley:-- "now that the mental functions are known to be inseparably connected with nervous substrata, disposed and united in the brain in the most orderly fashion, superordinate, co-ordinate, and subordinate--the whole a complex organisation of confederate nerve centres, each capable of more or less independent action--a natural interpretation presents itself. the extraordinary states of mental disintegration evince the separate and irregular function of certain mental nerve tracts, or grouped nerve tracts with which goes necessarily a coincident suspension, partial or complete, of the functions of all the rest; the supernatural incubus, therefore, neither demoniac nor divine, only morbid. thus the strange nervous seizures, with their mental concomitants, not being outside the range of positive research, but interesting events within it, become useful natural experiments to throw an instructive light upon the intricate functions of the most complex organ in the world--the human brain. steadily are the researches of pathology driving the supernatural back into its last and most obscure retreat; for they prove that in the extremest ecstasies there is neither _theolepsy_ nor _diabolepsy_, nor any other _lepsy_ in the sense of possession of the individual by an external power; what there is truly is a _psycholepsy_."[ ] states of exaltation produced by the aid of drugs, fasting, or other forms of self-torture come naturally under the category of deliberately induced states of mind, owing to the conviction that spiritual knowledge may be gained in this way. but there are other states that arise naturally and which foster the same conviction. it has already been pointed out that the generally accepted theory with uncivilised peoples is that all disease is due to the action of malevolent spirits. there is no need now to repeat proof of this, and in any case it lies to hand in any work that deals with uncivilised life. nor need we go back to uncivilised times for evidence. one requires only to look but a very little way into the history of any country to find the supernaturalistic theory of disease in full swing, and even to-day one may discover indications of its once general rule. its importance to the present enquiry lies in the part it has played in building up in the religious consciousness a general conviction of religious truth that does not disappear even when it is seen that the evidence upon which it rests is faulty. just as the inhabitants of a welsh village have their general belief in religion strengthened by the semi-hysterical speeches of an evan roberts, and the convulsive capers of a whole congregation, so in all ages people have found endorsement of their belief in a supernatural world in the existence of cases the pathological nature of which admits of no doubt. belief in the supernatural character of specific nervous conditions or mental states may disappear, but the fact that this belief has been general for a time leaves behind a certain psychological residuum in favour of supernaturalism in general. the connection between the priest and the physician is naturally a very ancient one. the priest, indeed, is the primitive physician, the belief that diseases are supernaturally caused indicating him as the agent of their cure. and it is only to be expected that when the attempt is made to divert the treatment of disease from priestly hands the effort should be met with determined opposition. quite naturally, too, the first gropings after a scientific theory of disease show a curious mixture of rationalism and superstition. thus, in greece, the temple hospitals devoted to the mythical Ã�sculapius, which were situated at epidaurus, pergamus, cyrene, corinth, and many other places, served as colleges, hospitals, and places of worship. sufferers slept in the temples in the hopes of receiving messages from the gods, and the priests themselves professed to have ecstatic visions which enabled them to prescribe for those afflicted.[ ] great emphasis was placed on bathing, light, air, and food, and it is pretty clear that the priests had begun to mix both faith and physic in a most perplexing manner. the definite separation of medicine from magic and religion begins with hippocrates. his theory of disease was simple. he did not deny that there might be a supernatural side to disease; he insisted that there was always a natural one, and that this was the side with which we should be concerned. each disorder, he said, had its own physical conditions, and he laid down the rule that we "ought to study the nature of man, what he is with reference to that which he eats and drinks, and to all his other occupations and habits, and to the consequences resulting from each."[ ] in egypt, also, very considerable advance was made in the same direction. probably a good deal of their knowledge resulted from the practice of embalming, in spite of the priestly interdict on dissection. at all events, there is no doubt that considerable advance had been made. herophilus and erasistratus wrote of the structure of the heart, and described its connection with the veins and arteries. the two kinds of nerves, motor and sensory, were described, and the influence of foods, etc., as influencing health, dwelt on. insanity was also dealt with as due to natural and controllable causes, and the effects of colour and music in dealing with mania noted.[ ] had this advance been followed, the history of european civilisation might have been different from what it was. plagues, epidemics, and diseases, with their far-reaching social and political consequences,--consequences that are too little noted, or even understood, by historians,--might have met with adequate resistance, and some would never have occurred. the pagan schools of medicine came to an untimely, although in some cases a lingering, end. "the introduction of christianity," says a medical writer, "had an undoubted influence on the course of medical science; for the christian was taught to recognise, in every bodily infirmity, the dispensation of the almighty, and in the calm, abstracted pursuits of those holy men who passed their time in prayer and meditation, a propitiation: hence medicine fell into the hands of monks and anchorites, who assumed to themselves, exclusively, the power of interpreting all natural phenomena as indications of the divine will, and pretended to possess some occult and supernatural means of curing disease."[ ] reversing the natural order of things, the physician was replaced by the priest. the supernaturalistic theory was revived, and held its own for well on a thousand years. for every complaint the church provided a specific in the shape of a charm, an incantation, or a saint. st. apollonia for toothache, st. avertin for lunacy, st. benedict for stone, st. clara for sore eyes, st. herbert for hydrophobia, st. john for epilepsy, st. maur for gout, st. pernel for agues, st. genevieve for fevers, st. sebastian for plague, etc.[ ] the height of absurdity was reached when, in spite of the monopoly of the treatment of disease by the priesthood, the council of rheims ( ) actually forbade monks to study medicine. this was followed by the council of beziers ( ) prohibiting christians applying for relief to jewish physicians, at a time when practically the only doctors of ability in christendom were jews. in the dominicans banished all books on medicine from their monasteries. innocent iii. forbade physicians practising except under the supervision of an ecclesiastic. honorius ( ) forbade priests the study of medicine; and at the end of the thirteenth century boniface viii. interdicted surgery as atheistical. the ill-treatment and opposition experienced by the great vesalius at the hands of the church, on account of his anatomical researches, is one of the saddest chapters in the history of science.[ ] when the sight of bodily disease strengthened and confirmed belief in the supernatural, mental disease must have offered still more convincing evidence. among uncivilised people we know that this is so. to quote again from the indispensable tylor:-- "the possessed man ... rationally finds a spiritual cause for his sufferings.... especially when the mysterious unseen power throws him helpless on the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength and a wild beast's ferocity, impels him with distorted face and frantic gesture, and voice not his own nor seemingly even human, to pour forth wild incoherent raving, or with thought and eloquence beyond his sober faculties to command, to counsel, to foretell--such a one seems to those who watch him, and even to himself, to have become the mere instrument of a spirit which has seized him or entered into him, a possessing demon in whose personality the patient believes so implicitly that he often imagines a personal name for it, which it can declare when it speaks in its own voice and character through his organs of speech."[ ] it was this conception of insanity, universally current in the uncivilised world, that was revived with fearful intensity in the early christian church, and which certainly served its purpose in intensifying the genuine belief in supernaturalism. jesus had given his followers power to expel demons "in my name," and this power of exorcism was one upon which the early christians specially prided themselves. it is with unconscious sarcasm that dean trench puts the question, if one of the disciples "were to enter a madhouse now, how many of the sufferers there he might recognise as 'possessed'?"[ ] one may safely say that he would regard all as under the dominion of evil spirits. no other cause of insanity appears to have been recognised, and the church devised the most elaborate formulæ for casting out demons. the assumed demoniac was prayed over, incensed, and evil-smelling drugs burned under his nose. a set form of objurgation then followed:-- "thou lustful and stupid one.... thou lean sow, famine-stricken and most impure.... thou wrinkled beast, of all beasts the most beastly.... thou bestial and foolish drunkard.... thou sooty spirit from tartarus.... i cast thee down, o tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen.... loathsome cobbler ... filthy sow ... envious crocodile.... malodorous drudge ... swollen toad ... lousy swineherd," etc. etc.[ ] then followed the exorcism proper:-- "by the apocalypse of jesus christ, which god hath given to make known unto his servants those things which are shortly to be ... i exorcise you, ye angels of untold perversity.... may all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee and drag thee down to hell!... may the holy one trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to the five kings of the amorites!... may god set a nail to your skull, and pound it with a hammer as jael did to sisera!... may sother break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed dagon!... may god hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of saul!"[ ] marcus aurelius mentions as one of his debts to the philosopher diognetus that he had taught him "not to give credit to vulgar tales of prodigies and incantations, and evil spirits cast out by magicians or pretenders to sorcery, and such kind of impostors."[ ] what would have been the thoughts of the great emperor, could he have revisited the earth two centuries after his death and seen the then civilised world enveloped in a mental atmosphere in which such ideas as those above described could live? all over europe for centuries lunatics were whipped, and otherwise ill-treated, in the hopes of expelling the demons that were troubling them. the seventy-second canon of the church of england still provides that no unlicensed person shall "cast out any devil or devils" under pain of penalties prescribed. a bishop of beauvais, in the fifteenth century, not only caused five devils to come out of one person, but actually induced them to sign a document promising not to molest this particular sufferer again. tremendous, again, were the labours of the jesuit fathers of vienna, who boasted that they had cast out no less than , 'living devils.' such arithmetical exactitude silences all hostile comment. in some parts of scotland, as late as , lunatics were left all night in the churchyard, with a holy bell over their heads. in cornwall, st. nun's pool was famous for the cure of lunatics. the poor devils were tied hand and foot and doused in the water until they were cured--or killed. even the embraces of prostitutes, for some peculiar reason, were recommended as a cure for insanity.[ ] in , in bristol, a drunken epileptic, one george larkins, was brought into church, and seven clergymen solemnly set themselves to the task of exorcising the possessing demon. whereupon satan swore 'by his infernal den'--an oath, says the chronicler, nowhere to be found but in bunyan. under date of october , , john wesley also relates how he was sent for and assisted at the expulsion of a demon from the body of a young girl. of all nervous diseases that of epilepsy appears to have been most favourable to the encouragement of a belief in spiritual agency. one medical authority whose experience enables him to speak with a peculiar degree of authority has pointed out that with epilepsy there is often an exaltation of the religious sentiments.[ ] a more recent writer, dr. bernard hollander, asserts that epileptics are "highly religious."[ ] sir t. s. clouston also points out that strong religious emotionalism often accompanies epilepsy.[ ] another eminent physician, while pointing out that "a high degree of intelligence, amounting even to genius, has in some cases been associated with epilepsy," observes that "the epileptic is apt to be influenced greatly by the mystical and awe-inspiring, and he is disposed to morbid piety."[ ] every medical man is acquainted with the close relation that exists between epilepsy and all kinds of hallucinations and delusions, and it would be more than surprising if in an environment where the religious interpretation of things is paramount, or with a patient of strong religious convictions, these delusions did not take a religious form. and of all nervous disorders epilepsy seems most favourable for producing this. under its influence hallucination attacks every one of the senses with a varying degree of intensity. "the patient hears voices, and generally words expressing definite ideas, though he is often unable to properly refer them to any speaking person. sometimes instead of external sounds or voices, the patient has a consciousness of an internal voice that may be as real to him as any external auditory perception. at first the voices may be indistinct, but upon constant repetition and evolution from sub-conscious thought they acquire intensity, eventually dominating the life of the individual."[ ] dr. ball says: "one patient perceives at the beginning of the attack a toothed wheel, in the middle of which there appears a human face making strange contortions; another sees a series of smiling landscapes. in some cases it is the sense of hearing which is affected;--the patient hears voices or strange noises. others are warned by the sense of smell that the fit is going to commence."[ ] sometimes these hallucinations of sight and hearing are in curious contrast with each other. "not rarely," says dr. conolly norman, "a patient has visual hallucinations of a cheering kind--as of god or angels; yet his auditory hallucinations are full of blasphemy, mockery, and insult."[ ] dr. maudsley thus describes the general symptoms accompanying an epileptic attack:-- "the patient's senses are possessed with hallucinations, his ganglionic central cells being in a state of what may be called convulsive action; before the eyes are blood-red flames of fire, amidst which whoever happens to present himself appears as a devil or otherwise horribly transformed; the ears are filled with a terribly roaring noise, or resound with a voice imperatively commanding him to save himself; the smell is one of sulphurous stifling, and the desperate and violent actions are the convulsive reaction to such fearful hallucinations."[ ] if anyone will bear in mind the numerous descriptions of religious visions, written in all good faith, and the behaviour of many an assumed 'inspired' character, he will have little difficulty in realising how easily, to a people unacquainted with the real character of such phenomena, epilepsy lends itself to a religious interpretation. it must also be borne in mind that the consequences of vivid hallucinations experienced during epilepsy do not always disappear with the attack to which they were originally due. it is certain that from the earliest times cases of what are undoubtedly epilepsy have been taken as positive indications of supernatural influence. "there is," says emanuel deutsch, "a peculiar something supposed to inhere in epilepsy. the greeks called it a divine disease. bacchantic and chorybantic furor were god-inspired stages. the pythia uttered her oracles under the most distressing signs. symptoms of convulsion were ever needed as a sign of the divine."[ ] much of the evidence for the supernatural in the new testament rests upon cases that are obviously pathological in character. a man brings his son to jesus and describes how "ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water" (matt. xvii. ), and in another place (mark ix. ) the same patient is described as having a dumb spirit, "and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him; and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away." the response to the father's appeal for help is an exorcism of the possessing spirit such as one meets with in all savage culture. between possession by a malignant spirit and domination by a god, the difference is clearly one of terminology alone. and at the side of the new testament case just cited one may place this account from polynesia, written by a very competent observer, and a missionary:-- "as soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy; the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, the eyes wild and strained. in this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and in shrill cries, and often violent and indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god."[ ] advancing to a higher culture stage than that indicated in the last passage, there is much evidence that mohammed was subject to hallucinations, and many authorities have indicated epilepsy as their source. there is a tradition that someone who saw mohammed while he was receiving one of his revelations observed that he seemed unconscious and was red in the face. mohammed himself said:-- "inspiration descendeth upon me in two ways. sometimes gabriel cometh and communicateth the revelation unto me, as one man unto another, and this is easy; at other times it affecteth me like the ringing of a bell, penetrating my very heart, and rending me as it were in pieces; and this it is which grievously afflicteth me." emanuel deutsch, although, in a passage already cited, recognising the religious significance attached to epilepsy, has the following curious comment:-- "mohammed was epileptic; and vast ingenuity and medical knowledge have been lavished upon this point as explanatory of mohammed's mission and success. we, for our own part, do not think that epilepsy ever made a man appear a prophet to himself or even to the people of the east; or, for the matter of that, inspired him with the like heart-moving words and glorious pictures. quite the contrary. it was taken as a sign of demons within--demons, 'devs,' devils to whom all manner of diseases were ascribed throughout the antique world." this seems very largely to miss the point at issue. of course, no one would claim that mohammed's success was due to epilepsy, or even that the very severe forms of epilepsy were favourable to inducing a conviction of revelation. but the disease assumes various forms, and in some cases it is expressed in the form of a period of mental excitement and general irritability. all that is claimed is that, given the complaint in its less severe forms in one with whom religious beliefs are strong, there are present all the conditions for attributing the resulting hallucinations to personal revelation or ecstatic vision. and it is also true that while some patients after emerging from a fit of epilepsy are in a dazed or confused condition, others have a very clear recollection of all they have seen and heard. mohammed simply took the current explanation of cases of nervous derangement, and being a man of strong religious feeling, naturally gave his visions a religious interpretation. all the rest has to be explained in terms of the innate genius of the man and of the circumstances of his time. a similar case to the above is that of emanuel swedenborg. his followers naturally resent the ascription of his visions and voices to a pathologic origin, and point to his pronounced mental ability. and certainly no one who is at all acquainted with the writings of swedenborg will question his great mental power, amounting at times to positive genius. but here, again, we have strong religious conviction in alliance with pathological conditions. swedenborg's communications with celestial beings were of a more frequent and more ordered character than mohammed's, but there is the same general likeness between them. of his first revelation he writes:-- "at ten o'clock i lay down in bed and was somewhat better; half an hour after i heard a clamour under my head; i thought that then the tempter went away; immediately there came over me a rigor so strong from the head and the whole body, with some din, and this several times. i found that something holy was over me. i thereupon fell asleep, and at about twelve, one, or two o'clock in the night there came over me so strong a shivering from head to foot, as if many winds rushed together, which shook me, was indescribable, and prostrated me upon my face. then, while i was prostrated, i was in a moment quite awake, and saw that i was cast down, and wondered what it meant. and i spoke as if i was awake, but found that the word was put into my mouth, and i said, 'omnipotent jesus christ, as of thy great grace thou condescendest to come to so great a sinner, make me worthy of this grace!' i held my hands together and prayed, and then came a hand which squeezed my hands hard; immediately thereupon i continued in prayer."[ ] swedenborg confessed to repeated walks and talks with celestial visitants, and, of course, all thought of imposture must be put on one side. what one has to consider is whether we are to accept these experiences as hallucinations or not. on the one side no further evidence seems possible than the profound faith of the man himself, his recognised mental ability, and the belief of his followers. and against this it must be urged that the most complete honesty is no guarantee against self-deception, while ability and even genius are not at all incompatible with a pathologic strain. and in addition it must be borne in mind that these hallucinations are, after all, part of a very large class. men of very little ability and influence experience substantially the same visions; they occur all over the world, under all conditions of culture, and always express the personal idiosyncrasies of the subject and reflect the character of his social environment. one may safely say that had swedenborg lived a century later, while he might still have gone through the same mental and physical experiences, he himself would have given a very different interpretation of them. st. paul, professor james points out, "certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure." one needs to add to this that the seizure occurred at the one critical moment of his life which eventuated in his conversion from judaism to christianity. mary magdalene, the first who brought tidings of the resurrection, had been delivered of seven devils. luther's religious opinions were, of course, quite apart from his physical state, sound or unsound. still, even with him the reality of supernatural intercourse became intensely vivid as a result of nervous affections. his latest biographer points out that as a youth while in the monastery he was seized with something that might well have been an epileptic fit, and that although there is no record of a return of this, he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting.[ ] he confesses to have been much troubled, at twenty-two years of age, with giddiness and noises in the ear, which he attributed to the devil. and right through his life he attributed similar experiences to the same source. bunyan confesses that even during childhood the lord "did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions." george fox, founder of the society of friends, describes how, in the middle of winter, when approaching lichfield, "the word of the lord was like a fire in me," and as he went through the town, "there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood." reflecting on the meaning of the vision, he remembered that, "in the emperor diocletian's time a thousand christians were martyred at lichfield. so i was to go without my shoes through the channel of their blood in the market-place, that i might raise up the blood of these martyrs which had been shed above a thousand years before."[ ] in none of these cases could it be fairly claimed that the religious conviction, as such, was the consequence of the hallucinations experienced. but it can scarcely be questioned that these served to strengthen it to an enormous extent. these trances, ecstasies, visions, were accepted by the subjects as proofs of their 'divine mission,' and were so accepted by multitudes of their followers. in their absence religion would most probably have failed to be the fiercely irruptive force in life that it has been. the religious idea has, so to speak given hallucination a standing and an authority in life it would not have possessed in its absence. in the case of men of ordinary capacity these visions possess little authority. but in the case of men of extraordinary capacity, men like luther, mohammed, fox, swedenborg,--who must in any case have stood superior to their fellows,--these hallucinations are then under favouring social conditions invested with enormous authority. and there is no doubt about the fact that religious leaders have been peculiarly subject to these psychical variations. this is pointed out by professor james in the following passage:-- "even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. they have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence."[ ] well, in what way are we to discriminate between the visions of a religious person, admittedly of an abnormal disposition, subject to fits of melancholy, etc., and presenting "all sorts of peculiarities ordinarily classed as pathological," and the hallucinations of an admittedly pathologic subject? why should the ordinary classification break down at this point? dr. granger, dealing with this aspect of the question, says: "the religious genius is not proved to be morbid by the extent to which he diverges from the average type."[ ] quite so, genius _must_ depart from the average type in order to be genius. but the statement is quite beside the point at issue. it is not a mere divergence from the average type that warrants one in assuming that much passing for divine illumination owes its origin to pathological conditions, but the fact that it is possible to affiliate certain cases of religious exaltation with these conditions. hallucinations are common to all forms of ecstasy, and ecstasy is not confined to religion. given a one-sided mental activity, intense concentration on one or a few analogous ideas, combined with a lowered nervous sensibility, and we have all the conditions present favourable to hallucination.[ ] these hallucinations may occur in connection with any topic that engrosses the subject's mind. in every other direction their true nature is recognised and admitted. in connection with religious belief alone, it is held that they bring the subject into touch with a supersensual world of reality. what possible scientific warranty is there for any such distinction? let us take, as an example, one of james's own cases, which he admits is 'distinctly pathological,' but without allowing this admission to disturb his general conclusion. the case is that of suso, a famous fourteenth-century mystic. as a young man he wore a hair shirt and an iron chain next the skin. later he had made a leathern garment studded with one hundred and fifty nails, points inward. the garment was made very tight, and he used it to sleep in. to prevent himself throwing it off during sleep he procured a pair of leather gloves studded with tacks, so that if he attempted to get rid of the dress the tacks would penetrate his flesh. next he had made a wooden cross, with thirty protruding nails, to emulate the sufferings of jesus. he procured an old door to sleep on. in winter he suffered from the frost. his feet were full of sores, his legs became dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars, his hands tremulous. during twenty years he fed scantily upon the coarsest food, slept in the most uncomfortable places, and during the whole of the time never took a bath. no wonder that after his fortieth year he was favoured with a series of visions from god. would not one be surprised if any other result than this had been achieved? and suso's case is only one of thousands, many of not so extreme a character, others quite as bad. in the case of catherine of sienna the austerities began earlier than with suso. as a child she flogged herself, and was favoured with visions before she reached her teens. santa teresa, as a young woman, prayed to god to send her an illness, and describes how she remained for days in a trance, during which time her tongue was bitten in many places. she describes how, during these trances, her body became to her light, and she remained rigid. "it was altogether impossible for me to hinder it; for my world would be carried absolutely away, and ordinarily even my head, as it were, after it."[ ] these are typical examples from a very large number of cases. the annals of monasticism are filled with accounts of self-inflicted tortures, with the one end in view, and in serious belief that their experiences brought them into touch with a reality denied them under normal conditions. the practice not only quickened their own sense of the reality of religion, it served the same purpose for thousands of others pursuing the course of ordinary social existence. "religious teachers," says francis galton, "by enforcing celibacy, fasting, and solitude, have done their best towards making men mad, and they have always largely succeeded in inducing morbid mental conditions among their followers."[ ] the phenomenon is thus continuous and, in its essentials, unchanging. from the most primitive times there has been a close association between the belief in divine illumination and spiritual intercourse, and mental states that are unquestionably pathological. following this there has been a more or less deliberate cultivation of these states in the desire to renew communion with a spiritual world hidden from man's normal senses. in this there need be no deliberate imposture. when imposture does occur, it would be at a later culture stage. at the beginning there is nothing but misunderstanding. first in order of time comes the crude animistic interpretation of almost every phase of human activity. so far as primitive life is concerned, the evidence of this is simply overwhelming. next, as tylor has pointed out, from believing that the occurrence of certain mental states provides the conditions of communication with an unseen world to the deliberate creation of those states is a natural and an easy step. there is thus set on foot a deliberate culture of the supernatural. this cultivation of abnormal states of mind once initiated persists, now in one form, now in another, but is substantially the same throughout. whether we are dealing with the crude practices of the savage, the less crude, but still obvious methods of solitary living and bodily maceration of the medieval monk, or the morbid and unhealthy dwelling upon a single idea which remains one of the conditions of 'illumination' to-day, we are confronted with the same thing. in every case the object--unconscious, maybe--is the provision of conditions that render hallucination and illusion a practical certainty. in connection with non-religious matters the unhealthiness of mind, distortion of vision, and unreliability of judgment induced by methods akin to those named is now generally recognised. we have yet to see the same thing as generally recognised in connection with religious beliefs. we see in addition that a great many of those experiences, once accepted as clear evidence of supernatural communication, are more properly explainable in terms of nervous derangement. in such cases there is neither celestial illumination nor diabolic communion, neither--to use maudsley's phrase--theolepsy nor diabolepsy, only psycholepsy. in the present chapter we have been striving to apply this principle to a little wider field than is usual. we have been studying the misinterpretation, in terms of religion, of abnormal or pathological states of mind, and observing how far these have contributed to building up and perpetuating a conviction of the possibility of supernatural intercourse. we have yet to trace the same principle of misinterpretation in the sexual and social life of mankind. footnotes: [ ] _a psychological study of religion_, p. . [ ] _primitive culture_, i. p. . [ ] _primitive culture_, ii. p. . [ ] some very curious information concerning the use of this and other fungi is given by dr. j. g. bourke in his _scatologic rites_, pp. - . [ ] cited by bourke, p. . [ ] tylor, ii. pp. - . [ ] for a clear account of the effects of hemp preparations, calculated to produce a feeling of religious ecstasy, the reader should consult dr. hale white's _text-book of pharmacology_, , pp. - . the effects of opium are thus described by another writer: "opium, in those who are capable of stimulation by it, gives rise to a pleasurable feeling, something like that which is produced by wine in not excessive doses; but the excitement derived from it, instead of tending to some highest point, remains stationary for hours, and in place of the slight incoherence of thought always present in those who are exhilarated with wine, the most perfect harmony is established among all the conceptions. there is an extraordinary stimulation of the pure intellect, and not merely of the power of expression. the opium-eater seems to have had the eyes of his spirit opened, to have acquired a gift of insight into things that to mere mortals are inexplicable. the most remote parts of consciousness come into clear light; the finer shades of personality, those that had been unknown even to the opium-eater himself, are brought into view and become distinct; the smallest details of the things around take new significance, and are seen to be profoundly important; their analogies with other phenomena of nature are revealed. it is the same with the moral as with the intellectual being; that also becomes indefinitely exalted. an absolute balance of the faculties seems to have been attained. the whole man _is_ what in his ordinary state he only tends to be; he has realised the highest perfection of which he is capable; only his 'best self' now remains; his lower self has been left behind without need of the purgatorial fire of contention with the environment to destroy it."--t. whittaker, _essays and notices, psychological and philosophical_, p. . [ ] _anthropology_, p. . [ ] for a general account of religious dances, see major-general forlong's _faiths of man_, art. "dancing." [ ] catlin, _north american indians_, i. p. . [ ] cited by frazer, _taboo and the perils of the soul_, p. . [ ] turner's _samoa_, p. - . [ ] brady, _clavis calendaria_, vol. i. p. . [ ] cited by tylor, _primitive culture_, ii. pp. - . [ ] _natural causes and supernatural seemings_, p. . [ ] a very good account of the methods followed in these places will be found in miss hamilton's _incubation, or the cure of diseases in pagan temples and christian churches_, . [ ] grote, _history of greece_, vol. i. p. and vol. v. p. . [ ] "the ancient egyptians and greeks," says dr. maudsley, "used humane and rational methods of treatment; it was only after the christian doctrine of possession by devils had taken hold of the minds of men that the worst sort of treatment, of which history gives account, came into force" (_pathology of mind_, p. ). for a general account of egyptian medicine see the chapter on egypt in dr. berdoe's _origin and growth of the healing art_. [ ] meryon, _the history of medicine_, vol. i. p. . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i. p. . [ ] see sir michael foster's _lectures on the history of physiology_, chap. i. [ ] _primitive culture_, ii. . [ ] _on the miracles_, p. . [ ] cited by white, who gives original authorities, _warfare of science with theology_, ii. . [ ] white, ii. . [ ] _meditations_, bk. i. [ ] fort's _medical economy during the middle ages_, p. . [ ] dr. howden, medical superintendent of the montrose lunatic asylum, in _journal of mental science_, . [ ] _first signs of insanity_, p. . [ ] _clinical lectures on mental diseases_, p. . the whole of chapter xi. is very pertinent. [ ] dr. r. jones, in allbutt's _system of medicine_, vol. viii. p. [ ] dr. hollander, _first signs of insanity_, pp. - . [ ] cited by ireland, _the blot on the brain_, p. . [ ] allbutt's _system of medicine_, viii. . [ ] _physiology of mind_, p. . see also dr. mercier's _the nervous system and the mind_, p. . [ ] _literary remains_, p. . [ ] w. ellis, _polynesian researches_, ii. - . [ ] dr. h. maudsley has gone fully into the case of swedenborg in an article in the _journal of mental science_ for july and october , since reprinted in his _body and mind_. [ ] see _luther_, by h. grisar, , vol. i. pp. - . [ ] for other cases, and a general account of the relations between pathologic states and religious delusion, see lombroso, _man of genius_, chap. iv. pt. iii. [ ] _varieties of religious experience_, pp. - . [ ] _the soul of a christian_, p. . [ ] see parish's _hallucinations and illusions_, pp. - . [ ] _saint teresa_, by h. joly, pp. , , and . [ ] _inquiries into human faculty_, , p. . chapter four sex & religion in primitive life the connection between sexual feeling and religious belief is ancient, intimate, and sustained. it has impressed itself on many observers who have approached the subject from widely different points of view. some have treated the connection as purely accidental, and as having no more than a mere historical interest. others have used it as illustrating the way in which so sacred a subject as religion may suffer degradation in degenerate hands. others of a more scientific temper have dealt with the relations between sexualism and religion as illustrations of a mere perversion. a deal may be said in favour of this last point of view. we know, as a matter of fact, that such cases of perversion do exist, in what form and to what extent will be discussed later. we are also aware that strong feeling which cannot find vent in one direction will secure expression in another. the annals of roman catholicism contain accounts of numerous persons who have sought refuge in a monastery or a nunnery as the result of disappointment in love, and it would be foolish to conclude that strong amorous feelings are annihilated because there is a change in the object to which they are directed. paul was not a different man from the saul of pre-conversion days, but the same person with his energies directed into a new channel. protestantism is without the obvious outlets for unsatisfied sexual feeling such as is provided by roman catholicism, but it provides other outlets. religious service as a whole remains, and intense religious devotion may very often owe its origin to sources undreamt of by the devotee. between religious beliefs and sexual feelings the connection is, however, wider and deeper, than the relation expressed by mere perversion. neither is the relation one of mere accident. an examination of the facts in the light of adequate scientific knowledge, combined with a due perception of primitive human psychology and sociology, have shown that the two things are united at their source. one eminent medical writer asserts that "in a certain sense, the history of religion can be regarded as a peculiar mode of manifestation of the human sexual instinct."[ ] another writer substantially endorses this by the remark that "in a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct."[ ] how easily one glides into the other very little observation of life or study of history will show. the language of devotion and of amatory passion is often identical, and seems to serve equally well for either purpose. the significance of this fact is often obscured by our having etherealised the conception of love, and so losing sight of its physiological basis. and, having hidden it from sight, we, not unnaturally, fail to give it due consideration. this is, in its way, a fatal blunder. the sex life of man and woman is too large a fact and too pervasive a force to be ignored with safety. ignorance combined with prudery conspires to perpetuate what ignorance alone began; and the sex life, in both its normal and abnormal manifestations, has been perpetually exploited in the interests of supernaturalism. the evidence that may be adduced in favour of what has been said is vast, and covers a wide range. historically it covers such facts as the relations between primitive religious beliefs and the sexual life, and the multiplication of sects of a markedly erotic character during periods of religious enthusiasm. "even the most casual students of religion," says professor g. b. cutten, "must have observed an apparently intimate connection between religious and sexual emotions, and not a few have read with amazement the abnormal cults which have had the sexual element as a foundation for their denominational dissent."[ ] a phenomenon so striking as to force itself on the notice of the most 'casual students' raises the presumption that the relation between the two sets of facts is rather more than that of 'apparent' intimacy. when in the course of history two things appear together over and over again, one is surely justified in assuming that there is some underlying principle responsible for the association. the search for this principle leads to the next class of evidence--the psychological. in this we are concerned with the relation between the sexual feelings and the religious idea, an association not always expressed through the comparatively harmless medium of language. and, finally, we have the evidence derived from pathology, where we are able to discern a perverted sexuality masquerading as religious fervour. in a previous chapter there has been pointed out the kind of mental environment in which primitive man moves. as one of the earliest forms of systematised thinking, religion dominates all other forms of mental activity. in savage culture there is hardly a single event into which religious considerations do not enter. the savage does not merely believe in a supernatural world, he lives in it; it is as real to him as anything around him, and far more potent in its action. above all, it is important to bear in mind that although one is compelled to speak of the natural and the supernatural when dealing with early beliefs, no such separation is present to the primitive intelligence. the division between the natural and the supernatural in the external world is the reflection of a corresponding division in the world of thought, and this arises only at a subsequent stage. what is afterwards recognised as the supernatural pervades everything. in a sense it is everything, since most of what occurs is by the agency or connivance of animistic forces. in such a world, where even the ordinary events of life have a supernatural significance, the strange and sometimes terrifying phenomena of sexual life carry peculiarly strong evidences of supernatural activity. events which are to the modern mind the most obvious consequences of sex life are to the primitive mind proofs of supernatural or ghostly agency. nothing, for example, would appear less open to misconception than the connection between sexual relations and the birth of children. yet, on this head, mr. sidney hartland has produced a mass of evidence, gathered from all parts of the world, and leading to the conclusion that in the most primitive stages of human culture, conception and birth are ascribed to direct supernatural influence. setting out from a study of the world-wide vogue of the belief in supernatural birth--contained in the author's earlier work, _the legend of perseus_--mr. hartland finds in this a survival of a culture stage in which all birth is believed to be supernatural. survivals of this belief that birth is a phenomenon independent of the union of the sexes are found in the existence of numerous semi-magical devices to obtain children, still practised in many parts of europe, and which were practised on a much more extensive scale during the medieval period; in the ignorance of man concerning physiological functions in general, the existence of motherright which appears to have universally antedated fatherright--the origin of which he traces to economic causes, and to the animistic nature of primitive beliefs in general.[ ] such a conclusion is not without verification from the beliefs of existing savages. the bahau of central borneo have no notion of the real duration of pregnancy, and date its commencement only from the time of its becoming visible. the niol-niol of dampier land in north-western australia hold birth to be independent of sexual intercourse. it is engendered by a pre-existing spirit through the agency of a medicine man. the north queenslanders have a similar belief. they believe a child to be sent in answer to the husband's prayer as a punishment to his wife when he is vexed with her. on the proserpine river the blacks believe that a child is the gift of a supernatural being called kunya. in south queensland the euahlayi believe that spirits congregate at certain spots and pounce on passing women, and so are born. on the slave coast of west africa the awunas say that a child derives the lower jaw from the mother; all the rest comes from the spirits. among these people and others that might be named paternity exists in name, but it implies something entirely different to what it afterwards connotes. mr. hartland gives numerous instances of this curious fact, and points out that "the attention of mankind would not be early or easily fastened upon the procreative process. it is lengthy, extending over months during which the observer's attention would be inevitably diverted by a variety of objects, most of them of far more pressing import.... the sexual passion would be gratified instinctively without any thought of the consequences, and in an overwhelming proportion of cases without the consequence of pregnancy at all. when that consequence occurred it would not be visible for weeks or months after the act which produced it. a hundred other events might have taken place in the interval which would be likely to be credited with the result by one wholly ignorant of natural laws." there seems, therefore, fair grounds for mr. hartland's conclusion that:-- "for generations and æons the truth that a child is only born in consequence of an act of sexual union, that the birth of a child is the natural consequence of such an act performed in favouring circumstances, and that every child must be the result of such an act and of no other cause, was not realised by mankind, that down to the present day it is imperfectly realised by some peoples, and that there are still others among whom it is unknown." this, however, is but one of the ways in which supernatural beliefs become associated with sexual phenomena. in truth, there is not a stage of any importance in the sexual life of men and women where the same association does not transpire. there is, for example, the important phenomenon of puberty--important from both a physiological and sociological point of view. pubic ceremonies of some kind are found all over the world, and in all forms, from those current amongst savages up to the contemporary practice of confirmation in the christian church. at all stages the period of puberty is the time of initiation. with uncivilised peoples a very general rule is the separation of the sexes, with fasting. mr. stanley hall in his elaborate work on _adolescence_ has dealt very exhaustively with these customs, with which we shall be more closely concerned when we come to deal with the subject of conversion. at present it is only necessary to point out that the governing idea is that at puberty the boy and the girl are brought into special relationship with the tribal spirits, the proof of which relationship lies in the sexual functions originated. with boys, once puberty is attained, the sexual development is orderly and unobtrusive. in the case of girls certain recurring phenomena make the essential fact of sex much more impressive to the primitive mind, with far-reaching sociological consequences. "ignorance of the nature of female periodicity," says a. e. crawley, "leads man to consider it as the flow of blood from a wound, naturally, or more usually, supernaturally produced."[ ] in siam an evil spirit is believed to be the cause of the wound. amongst the chiriguanas the girl fasts, while women beat the floor with sticks in order to drive away "the snake that has wounded the girl." similar beliefs are found very generally among people in a low stage of culture, and customs and beliefs still surviving among people more advanced point to the conclusion that convictions of the same kind were once fairly universal. it is this function, combined with the function of childbirth, that brings woman into close contact with the supernatural world, makes her an object of fear and wonder to primitive man, accounts for a number of the customs and beliefs associated with her, and finally helps to determine her social position. it is because her periodicity is taken as evidence of her communion with spiritual forces that special precautions have to be taken concerning her. she becomes spiritually contagious. thus, the natives of new britain, while engaged in making fish-traps, carefully avoid all women. they believe that if a woman were even to touch a fish-trap, it would catch nothing. amongst the maoris, if a man touched a menstruous woman, he would be taboo 'an inch thick.' an australian black fellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her, and died of terror himself within a fortnight. in uganda the pots which a woman touches while the impurity of childbirth or menstruation is on her, are destroyed. with many north american indians the use of weapons touched by women during these times would bring misfortune. a menstruating woman is with them the object they dread most. in tahiti women are secluded. in some cases she is too dangerous to be even touched by others, and food is given her at the end of a stick. with the pueblo indians contact with a woman at these times exposes a man to attacks from an evil spirit, and he may pass on the infection to others.[ ] it is needless to multiply instances; the same general reason governs all, and this has been clearly expressed by dr. frazer:-- "the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the dangerous influence which is supposed to emanate from them at such times. the general effect of these rules is to keep the women suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in south america, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in new zealand, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. the precautions thus taken to isolate and insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others.... in short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and all with whom she comes in contact. to repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question." the savage is far too logical in his methods to allow such an idea to end here. if a woman is so highly charged with spiritual infection as to be dangerous at certain frequently recurring periods, she may be more or less dangerous between these periods. as havelock ellis says: "instead of being regarded as a being who at periodic intervals becomes the victim of a spell of impurity, the conception of impurity becomes amalgamated with the conception of woman; she is, as tertullian puts it, _janua diaboli_; and this is the attitude which still persisted in medieval days."[ ] this is to be expected from what one knows of the workings of the primitive intelligence, but it is surprising to find mr. ellis continue by saying, on apparently good grounds, that "the belief in the periodically recurring impurity of women has by no means died out to-day. among a very large section of the women of the middle and lower classes of england and other countries it is firmly believed that the touch of a menstruating woman will contaminate; only a few years since, in the course of a correspondence on this subject in the _british medical journal_ ( ), even medical men were found to state from personal observation that they had no doubt whatever on this point. thus, one doctor, who expressed surprise that any doubt could be thrown on the point, wrote, after quoting cases of spoiled hams, etc., presumed to be due to this cause, which had come under his own personal observation: 'for two thousand years the italians have had this idea of menstruating women. we english hold to it, the americans have it, also the australians. now, i should like to know the country where the evidence of any such observation is unknown.'" evidently animism is a more persistent frame of mind than most people are inclined to believe. it is certain, however, that this conception of woman's nature is dominant in the lower stages of culture. she is spiritually dangerous, and the principle of 'taboo' is made to cover a great many of her relations to man. in tahiti a woman was not allowed to touch the weapons or fishing implements of men. amongst the todas women are not permitted to touch the cattle. if a wife touches the food of her husband, among the hindus, the food is unfit to be eaten. an eskimo wife dare not eat with her husband. in new zealand wives were not allowed to eat with the males lest their taboo should kill them. many tribes are careful to refrain from contact with women before going to fight. they believe that this would rob them and their weapons of strength. other practices followed by savages before going to war forbid one assuming that this abstention is due to any rational fear of dissipating their energies. instead of conserving their strength they weaken themselves by the many privations they undergo before fighting, in order to ensure victory. professor frazer well says:-- "when we observe what pains these misguided savages took to unfit themselves for the business of war by abstaining from food, denying themselves rest, and lacerating their bodies, we shall probably not be disposed to attribute their practice of continence in war to a rational fear of dissipating their bodily energies by indulgence in the lusts of the flesh."[ ] the conception of woman as one heavily charged with supernatural potentialities, and, therefore, a source of danger to the community, seems to lie at the basis of the widespread belief in the religious 'uncleanness' of women. the real significance of the word 'unclean' in religious ritual has been obscured by our modern use of it in a hygienic or ethical sense. in reality it is but an illustration of the principle of 'taboo,' and 'taboo' may extend to anything, good or bad, useful or useless, hygienically clean or unclean. the primary meaning of 'taboo,' a polynesian word, is something that is set aside or forbidden. the field covered by this word among savage and semi-savage races is, as robertson smith points out, "very wide, for there is no part of life in which the savage does not feel himself surrounded by mysterious agencies and recognise the need of walking warily."[ ] anything may thus become the object of a 'taboo.' weapons, food, animals, places, special relations of one person to another at certain times and under certain conditions. it is enough that some special or particular degree of supernatural influence is associated with the object in question. the ancient jews, for example, in prohibiting the eating of swine's flesh, were as far as possible removed in their thought from any connection with dietetics. they were simply following the well-known savage custom that the totem of a tribe is sacred. the pig was a totem with many of the semitic tribes, and must not, therefore, be eaten.[ ] it was not an unclean animal, in the modern sense, it was a 'holy' animal. with the syrians the dove was so holy that even to touch it made a man 'unclean' for a whole day. no north american indian will eat of the flesh of an animal that is a tribal totem, except under grave necessity, and even then with elaborate religious ceremonies. so, "a prohibition to eat the flesh of an animal of a certain species, that has its ground not in natural loathing but in religious horror and reverence, implies that something divine is ascribed to every animal of the species. and what seems to us to be a natural loathing often turns out, in the case of primitive peoples, to be based on a religious _taboo_, and to have its origin not in feelings of contemptuous disgust, but of reverential dread."[ ] the real significance of 'unclean' in connection with religious ritual is 'holy', something that partakes in a special manner of supernatural influence and therefore involves a certain danger in contact. as the writer just cited observes:-- "the acts that cause uncleanness are exactly the same which among savage nations place a man under taboo.... these acts are often involuntary, and often innocent, or even necessary to society. the savage, accordingly, imposes a taboo on a woman in childbed, or during her courses ... simply because birth and everything connected with the propagation of the species on the one, and disease and death on the other hand, seem to involve the action of supernatural agencies of a dangerous kind. if he attempts to explain, he does so by supposing that on these occasions spirits of deadly power are present; at all events the persons involved seem to him to be sources of mysterious danger, which has all the characters of an infection, and may extend to other people unless due precautions are observed.... it has nothing to do with respect for the gods, but springs from mere terror of the supernatural influences associated with the woman's physical condition."[ ] it is interesting to observe the manner in which this notion of the sacramentally 'unclean' nature of woman has affected her religious status, and by inference, her social status likewise. among the australians women are shut out from any part in the religious ceremonies. in the sandwich isles a woman's touch made a sacrifice unclean. if a hindu woman touches a sacred image the divinity is destroyed. in fiji women are excluded from the temples. the papuans have the same custom. the ainus of japan allow a woman to prepare the sacrifice, but not to offer it. women are excluded from many mohammedan mosques. among the jews women have no part in the religious ceremonies. in the christian church women were excluded from the priestly office. a council held at auxerre at the end of the sixth century forbade women touching the eucharist with their bare hands, and in various churches they were forbidden to approach the altar during mass.[ ] in the gospels jesus forbids the woman to touch him, after the resurrection, although thomas was allowed to feel his wounds. "the church of the middle ages did not hesitate to provide itself with eunuchs in order to supply cathedral choirs with the soprano tones inhering by nature in women alone."[ ] the 'churching' of women still in vogue has its origin in the same superstition that childbirth endows woman with a supernatural influence which must be removed in the interests of others. this ceremony was formerly called "the order of the purification of women," and was read at the church door before the woman entered the building. its connection with the ideas indicated above is obvious. the tahitian practice of excluding women from intercourse with others for two or three weeks after childbirth, with similar practices amongst uncivilised peoples all over the world, led with various modifications up to the current practice of churching. they show that in the opinion of primitive peoples "a woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interests of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while, until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows."[ ] the gradual change of this ceremony, from a getting rid of a dangerous supernatural infection to returning thanks for a natural danger passed, is on all fours with what takes place in other directions in relation to religious ideas and practices. the important part played by this conception of woman's nature may be traced in the fierce invective directed against her in the early christian writings. of course, by that time society had reached a stage when the primitive form of this belief had been outgrown, but ideas and attitudes of mind persist long after their originating conditions have disappeared. in this particular case we have the primitive idea expressed in a form suitable to altered circumstances, and the primitive feeling seeking new warranty in ethical or social considerations. but in the main the old notion is there. woman is a creature threatening danger to man's spiritual welfare.[ ] in this connection we may note an observation of westermarck's during his residence among the country people of morocco. he was struck, he says, with the superstitious fear the men had of women. they are supposed to be much better versed in magic, and therefore one ran greater danger in offending them. the curses of women are, generally, much more feared than those of men. to this we have a parallel in christianity which so often revived and strengthened the lower religious beliefs. during the witch mania an overwhelming proportion of those charged with and executed for sorcery were women. as a matter of fact, women were more prone than men to credit themselves with possessing supernatural power. but the theological explanation was that the devil had more power over women than men. this was, obviously, a heritage from the primitive belief above described.[ ] another way in which religion becomes closely associated with sexualism is through the widely diffused phallic worship. the worship of the generative power in the form of stones, pillars, and carved representations of the male and female sexual organs plays an unquestionably important part in the history of religion, however hardly pressed it may have been by some enthusiastic theorisers. "the farther back we go," says mr. hargrave jennings, "in the history of every country, the deeper we explore into all religions, ancient as well as modern, we stumble the more frequently upon the incessantly intensifying distinct traces of this supposedly indecent mystic worship."[ ] on the lower congo, says sir h. h. johnston:-- "phallic worship in various forms prevails. it is not associated with any rites that might be called particularly obscene; and on the coast, where manners and morals are particularly corrupt, the phallus cult is no longer met with. in the forests between manyanga and stanley pool it is not rare to come upon a little rustic temple, made of palm fronds and poles, within which male and female figures, nearly or quite life size, may be seen, with disproportionate genital organs, the figures being intended to represent the male and female principle. around these carved and painted statues are many offerings, plates, knives, and cloth, and frequently also the phallic symbol may be seen dangling from the rafters. there is not the slightest suspicion of obscenity in all this, and anyone qualifying this worship of the generative power as obscene does so hastily and ignorantly. it is a solemn mystery to the congo native, a force but dimly understood, and, like all mysterious natural manifestations, it is a power that must be propitiated and persuaded to his good."[ ] the egyptian religion was permeated with phallicism. in india phallic worship is widely scattered. in benares, the sacred city, "everywhere, in the temples, in the little shrines in the street, the emblem of the creator is phallic." symbols of the male and female sexual organs, the lingam and the yoni, have been objects of worship in india from the earliest times. with the sakti ceremonies, hindu religion dispenses with symbols, and devotion is paid to a naked woman selected for the occasion.[ ] this worship of a nude female is a very familiar phenomenon in the history of religion. some of the early christian sects were said to have practised it, and it is a feature of some russian religious sects to-day. the subject will be dealt with more fully hereafter. in ancient rome, in the month of april, "when the fertilising powers of nature begin to operate, and its powers to be visibly developed, a festival in honour of venus took place; in it the phallus was carried in a cart, and led in procession by the roman ladies to the temple of venus outside the colline gate, and then presented by them to the sexual part of the goddess."[ ] in the greek bacchic religious processions huge phalli were carried in a chariot drawn by bulls, and surrounded by women and girls singing songs of praise. phallic worship was also associated with the cults of dionysos and eleusis. it is met with among the ancient mexicans and peruvians, and also among the north american tribes. the famous black stone of mecca, to which religious honours are paid, is also said by authorities to be a phallic symbol. the stone set up by jacob (gen. xxviii. - ) falls into the same category. references to phallic worship may be found in many parts of the bible, and authoritative writers like mr. hargrave jennings and major-general forlong have not hesitated to assert that the god of the jewish ark was a sexual symbol. seeing the extent to which phallic worship exists in other religions, it would be surprising did this not also exist in the early jewish religion. in christendom we have evidence of the perpetuation of the phallic cult in the decree of mans, , and of the synod of tours, , against its practice. quite unsuccessfully, however. indeed, the architecture of medieval churches bear in their ornamentation numerous evidences of the failure at suppression. of course, much of this ornamentation may have been due to mere imitation, but often enough it was deliberate. "the scholar," says bonwick, "who gazed to-day at the roof of temple church, london, had the illustration before him. a symbol there, repeatedly displayed, is the popular hindu one to express sex worship."[ ] the belief found expression in other ways than ornamentation. when sir william hamilton visited naples in he found in isernia a christian custom in vogue which he described in a letter to sir william banks, and which admitted of no doubt as to its priapic character. every september was celebrated a festival in the church of ss. cosmus and damianus. during the progress of the festival vendors paraded the streets offering small waxen phalli, which were bought by the devout and placed in the church, much as candles are still purchased and given. at the same time, prayers are offered to st. como by those who desire children. in midlothian, in , the clergy instructed their flock to sprinkle water with a dog's phallus in order to avert a murrain. the same practice existed in inverkeithing, and in easter week priest and people danced round a wooden phallus.[ ] mr. westropp, quoting an eighteenth-century writer,[ ] says: "when the huguenots took embrun, they found among the relics of the principal church a priapus, of three pieces in the ancient fashion, the top of which was worn away from being constantly washed with wine." the temple of st. eutropius, destroyed by the huguenots, is said to have contained a similar figure. from mr. sidney hartland's collection of practices for obtaining children i take the following:-- "at bourg-dieu, in the diocese of bourges, a similar saint" (similar to the priapean figure previously described) "was called guerlichon or greluchon. there after nine days' devotions women stretched themselves on the horizontal figure of the saint, and then scraped the phallus for mixture in water as a drink. other saints were worshipped elsewhere in france with equivalent rites. down to the revolution there stood at brest a chapel of saint guignolet containing a priapean statue of the holy man. women who were, or feared to be, sterile used to go and scrape a little of the prominent member, which they put into a glass of water from the well and drank. the same practice was followed at the chapel of saint pierre-à-croquettes in brabant until , when the archæologist schayes called attention to it, and thereupon the ecclesiastical authorities removed the cause of scandal. women have, however, still continued to make votive offerings of pins down almost, if not quite, to the present day. at antwerp stood at the gateway to the church of saint walburga in the rue des pêcheurs a statue, the sexual organ of which had been entirely scraped away by women for the same purpose."[ ] from what has been said, it will not be difficult to understand the existence of the custom of religious prostitution. considering the sexual impulse as specially connected with a supernatural force, man pays it religious honour, and comes to identify its manifestations as an expression of the supernatural and also as an act of worship towards it. in india the practice existed, when most temples had their 'bayadères.' in ancient chaldea every woman was compelled to prostitute herself once in her life in the temple of the goddess mylitta--the chaldean venus. this custom existed elsewhere, and by it the woman was compelled to remain within the temple enclosures until some man chose her, from whom she received a piece of money. the money, of course, belonged to the temple.[ ] in greece, carthage, syria, etc., we find the same custom. among the jews, so orthodox a commentary as smith's _bible dictionary_ admits that the 'kadechim' attached to the temple were prostitutes. the frequent references to the service of the 'groves' surrounding the temple irresistibly suggest their likeness to the groves around the temples of mylitta, and their use for the same purpose. there is no necessity to prolong the subject,[ ] nor is it necessary to my purpose to discuss the origin of phallic worship. it is enough to have shown the manner in which, from the very earliest times, religious belief and sexual phenomena have been connected in the closest possible manner. in this respect it is only on all fours with the relation of religion to phenomena in general, but here the attitude of mind is accentuated and prolonged by the startling facts of sexual development. the connection becomes consequently so close it is not surprising to find that the association has persisted down to the present time, and moods that have their origin in the sexual life are frequently attributed to religious influences. the primitive intelligence, frankly seeing in the phenomena of sex a manifestation of the supernatural, sees here a continuous endorsement of religious life. the more sophisticated mind raised above this point of view continues, with modifications, the primitive practices, and in ignorance of the physiological causes of its own states is only too ready to interpret ebullitions of sex feeling as evidence of the divine. note to page . it is strange that so little attention has been paid to these primitive beliefs as important factors in determining the social position of women. it is too generally assumed that because woman is physically weaker than man it is her weakness that has determined her subordination. both the advocates and the opponents of 'woman's rights' appear to have reached a common agreement on this point. during some of the debates in the house of commons, for example, it was openly stated by prominent politicians, as an axiom of political philosophy, that all laws rest upon a basis of force, and if men say they will not obey woman-made laws there is no power that can compel them to do so. on the other side, women, while appealing to what they properly call higher considerations, themselves dwell upon the physical weakness of woman as the reason for her subordination in the past. both parties are helped in their arguments by the facile division of social history into two periods, an earlier one in which club law plays the chief part, and a later period when mental and moral qualities assume a dominating position. the consequence is, runs the argument, that each sex has to battle with the dead weight of tradition and custom. the woman is oppressed by the tradition of subordination to the male; the man is inspired by that of dominance over the female. it is when we ask for evidence of this that we see how flimsy the case is. social phenomena in either civilised or uncivilised society furnishes no proof that institutions and customs rest upon a basis of physical force. the rulership of a tribe often rests with the old men of a tribe; with some tribes the women are consulted, and invariably custom and tradition plays a powerful part. the notion that the primitive chief is the primitive strong man of the tribe is as baseless as the belief in an original social contract, and owes its existence to the same kind of fanciful speculation. as frazer says, "it is one of those facile theories which the arm-chair philosopher concocts with his feet on the fender without taking the trouble to consult the facts." the primitive chief may be a strong man. the tribal council or chief may use force or rely upon physical force to enforce certain decrees, just as the modern king or parliament may call on the help of policeman or soldier, but this no more proves that their rule is based upon force than mr. asquith's premiership proves his physical superiority to the rest of the cabinet. all political life, and to a smaller degree all social life, involves the direction of force, but neither appeal to force for an ultimate justification, nor do social institutions originate in an act of force. it is one of the commonplaces of historical study that when an institution is actually forced upon a people it very quickly becomes inoperative. other things equal, one group of people may overcome another group because of physical superiority, but the conquest over, the question as to which group shall really rule, or which set of institutions shall survive, is settled on quite different grounds. the history of almost any country will give examples of the absorption of the conqueror by the conquered, and the bringing of imported institutions into line with native life and feeling. fundamentally the relations binding people together into a society are not physical, but psychological. society rests upon the foundations of a common mental life--upon sympathy, beliefs, the desire for companionship, etc. as professor j. m. baldwin puts it, the fundamental social facts are not _things_, but _thoughts_.[ ] as a member of a social group man is born into an environment that is essentially psychological, and his attitude not only towards his fellow human beings, but towards nature in general, is determined by the psychological contents of the society to which he belongs. now if the relation of one man to another is not determined by physical superiority and inferiority, if the relations of classes within a society are not determined in this manner, why should it be assumed that as a sex woman's position is fixed by this means? it seems more reasonable to assume that some other principle than that of club law, a principle set in operation very early in the history of civilisation, fixed the main lines upon which the relations of the sexes were to develop, however much other forces helped its operation. i believe this desired factor is to be found in the superstitious notions savages develop concerning the nature and function of woman, and which society only very slowly outgrows. for, as frazer says: "the continuity of human development has been such that most, if not all, of the great institutions which still form the framework of a civilised society have their roots in savagery, and have been handed down to us in these later days through countless generations, assuming new outward forms in the process of transmission, but remaining in their inmost core substantially unchanged." in considering the play of primitive ideas as determining the lines of human evolution several things must be kept clearly in mind. one is that the course of biological development has made woman, as a sex, dependent upon man, as a sex, for protection and support. this is true quite apart from economic considerations or from those arising from the relative physical strength of the sexes. the prime function of woman, biologically, is that of motherhood. she is, so to speak, mother in a much more important and more pervasive sense than man is father. in the case of woman, her functions are of necessity subordinated to this one. with man this is not the case. it is with the woman that the nutrition of the child rests before birth, and a large portion of her strength is expended in the discharge of this function. the same is true for some period immediately after birth. again to use a biological illustration, during the period of child-bearing and child-rearing the relation of the man to the woman may be likened to that which exists between the germ cells and the somatic cells. as the latter is the medium of protection and the conveyer of nutrition in relation to the former, so it falls to the male to protect and in some degree to provide for the woman as child-bearer. it would not, of course, be impossible for woman to provide for herself, but it would detract so considerably from social efficiency that any group in which it was done would soon disappear. it is the nature and supreme function of woman that makes her dependent upon man. and even though the dreams of some were realised, and society as a whole cared for woman in the discharge of this function, the issue would not be changed. it would mean that instead of a woman being dependent upon one man she would be dependent upon all men. nor are the substantial facts of the situation changed by anyone pointing out that all women do not and cannot under ordinary circumstances become wives and mothers. human nature will always develop on the lines of the normal functions of men and women, and there can be no question in this case as to what these are. i have used the word 'dependence,' but this does not, of necessity, involve either subordination or subjection. it may provide the condition of either or of both, but the dependence of the woman on the man is, as i have said, biologically inescapable. her subjection is quite another question. dependence may be mutual. one class of society may be dependent upon another class, but the two may move on a perfect level of equality. and with uncivilised peoples the evidence goes to prove that, while the spheres of the sexes are more clearly differentiated than with us, this difference is seldom if ever expressed in terms of superior and inferior. savages would say, as civilised people still say, there are many things that it is wrong for a woman to do, and they would add there are also things that a man must not do. they would be as shocked at woman doing certain things as some people among ourselves were when women first began to speak at public meetings. their disapproval would not rest on the ground that these things were 'unwomanly', nor upon any question of weakness or strength, of inferiority or superiority, but for another and, to the savage, very urgent reason. one can very easily exaggerate the extent of the subjection of women among uncivilised people. as a matter of fact, it usually is exaggerated. not all travellers are capable of accurate observation, and very many are led astray by what are really superficial aspects of savage life. they are so impressed by the contemplation of a state of affairs different from our own that they mistake mere lines of demarcation for a moral valuation. many travellers, for example, observing that women are strictly forbidden to do this or that, conclude that the woman has no rights as against the man. as in nearly all these cases the man is as strictly forbidden to encroach on the woman's sphere, one might as reasonably reverse the statement and dwell upon male subjection. as a matter of fact, both furnish examples of the all-powerful principle of 'taboo.' some things are taboo to the man, others to the woman. and the key to the problem lies in the nature and origin of these taboos. but taboo does not extinguish rights; it confirms them. under its operation, far from its being the truth that women are without status or rights or power, her position and rights are clearly marked, generally recognised, and quickly enforced. some examples of this may be noted. a kaffir woman when ill-treated possesses the right of asylum with her parents, and remains there until the husband makes atonement. the same thing holds of the west african fulahs. in the marquesas a woman is prohibited the use of canoes; on the other hand, men are prohibited frequenting certain places belonging to the women. in nicaragua no man may enter the woman's market-place under penalty of a beating. with most of the north-american tribes a woman has supreme power inside the lodge. the husband possesses no power of interference. in most cases the husband cannot give away anything belonging to the lodge without first getting the consent of his wife. with the nootkas, women are consulted on all matters of business. livingstone relates his surprise on finding that a native would not accompany him on a journey because he could not get his wife's consent. he found this to be one of the customs of the tribe to which the man belonged. among the kandhs of india nothing public is done without consulting the women. in the pellew islands the head of the family can do nothing of importance without consulting the oldest female relative. among the hottentots women have supreme rule in the house. if a man oversteps the line, his female relatives inflict a fine, which is paid to the wife. with the bechuanas the mother of the chief is present at all councils, and he can hardly decide anything without her consent. these are only a few of the cases that might be cited, but they are sufficient to show that the common view of women among savages as without recognised status, or power, needs very serious qualification. of course, ill-treatment of women does occur with uncivilised as with civilised people, and she may suffer from the expression of brutal passion or superior strength, but an examination of the facts justifies starcke's opinion that "we are not justified in assuming that the savage feels a contempt for women in virtue of her sex." in primitive life, in short, the dominant idea is not that of superiority in relation to woman, but that of difference. she is different from man, and this difference involves consequences of the gravest character, and against which due precautions must be taken. superiority and inferiority are much later conceptions; they belong to a comparatively civilised period, and their development offers an admirable example of the way in which customs based on sheer superstitions become transformed into a social prejudice, with the consequent creation of numerous excuses for their perpetuation. what that initial prejudice is--a prejudice so powerful that it largely determines the future status of woman--has already been pointed out. her place in society is marked out in uncivilised times by the powerful superstitions connected with sexual functions. not that she is weaker--although that is, of course, plain--nor that she is inferior, a thought which scarcely exists with uncivilised peoples, but that she is dangerous, particularly so during her functional crises and in childbirth. and being dangerous, because charged with a supernatural influence inimical to others, she is excluded from certain occupations, and contact with her has to be carefully regulated. i agree with mr. andrew lang that in the regulations concerning women amongst uncivilised people we have another illustration of the far-reaching principle of taboo (_social origins and primal law_, p. ) she suffers because of her sex, and because of the superstitious dread to which her sex nature gives birth. of course, at a later stage other considerations begin to operate. where, for example, as amongst the kaffirs, women are not permitted to touch cattle because of this assumed spiritual infection, and where a man's wealth is measured by the cattle he possesses, it is easy to see that this would constitute a force preventing the political and social equality of the sexes. the pursuits from which women were primarily excluded for purely religious reasons would in course of time come to be looked upon as man's inalienable possessions. and here her physical weakness would play its part; for she could not take, as man could withhold, by force. even when the primitive point of view is discarded, the social prejudices engendered by it long remains. and social prejudices, as we all know, are the hardest of all things to destroy. a final consideration needs to be stated. this is that the customs determined by the views of woman (above outlined) fall into line, in a rough-and-ready fashion, with the biological tendency to consecrate the female to the function of motherhood and conserve her energies to that end, leaving other kinds of work to the male. it would be an obvious advantage to a tribe in which woman, relieved from the necessity of physical struggle for food and defence, was able to attend to children and the more peaceful side of family life. children would not only benefit thereby, but the home with all its civilising, humanising influences would develop more rapidly. assuming variations in tribal life in this direction, there is no question as to which tribe that would stand the better chance of survival. the development of life has proceeded here as elsewhere by differentiation and specialisation; and while the tasks demanding the more sustained physical exertions were left to man, and to the performance of which his sexual nature offered no impediment, woman became more and more specialised for maternity and domestic occupations. this, i hasten to add, is not at all intended as a plea for denying to women the right to participate in the wider social life of the species. i am trying to explain a social phase, and neither justifying nor condemning its perpetuation. footnotes: [ ] dr. iwan bloch, _the sexual life of our time_, p. . [ ] e. d. starbuck, _the psychology of religion_, p. . [ ] _the psychological phenomena of christianity_, p. . [ ] _primitive paternity_, vols., - . [ ] _the mystic rose_, p. . [ ] see frazer's _taboo and the perils of the soul_, pp. - , and crawley's _mystic rose_. [ ] _man and woman_, p. . [ ] _taboo_, pp. - . [ ] _religion of the semites_, p. . [ ] a long list of animals that were sacred to various semitic tribes has been compiled by robertson smith, _kinship and marriage in early arabia_, pp. - . [ ] robertson smith, _kinship and marriage in early arabia_, pp. - . [ ] _religion of the semites_, pp. - . for a fuller discussion of the subject, see _studies in the psychology of sex_, by havelock ellis, . [ ] westermarck, _origin and development of the moral ideas_, p. . [ ] westermarck, p. . [ ] frazer, _taboo_, p. . [ ] see the rev. principal donaldson's _woman: her position and influence in ancient greece and rome, and among the early christians_, bk. iii. [ ] for the general influence of these beliefs about woman in determining her social position, see note at the end of this chapter. [ ] _the worship of priapus_, pref. p. . [ ] _the river congo_, p. . [ ] a description of the sakti ceremony is given by major-general forlong, _faiths of man_, iii. pp. - . [ ] westropp, _primitive symbolism_, p. . [ ] _egyptian belief and modern thought_, p. . [ ] forlong, _faiths of man_, iii. p. . [ ] _primitive symbolism_, p. . [ ] _primitive paternity_, i. pp. - . [ ] major-general forlong agrees with many other authorities in tracing our custom of kissing under the mistletoe to this ancient practice. "the mistletoe," he says, "marks in one sense venus's temple, for any girl may be kissed if caught under its sprays--a practice, though modified, which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by herodotus, where all women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in mylitta's temple."--_rivers of life_, i. p. . [ ] those who desire further and more detailed information may consult forlong's great work, _the rivers of life_, payne knight's _worship of priapus_, westropp and wake's _phallicism in ancient religion_, brown's _dionysiak myth_, westropp's _primitive symbolism_, r. a. campbell's _phallic worship_, hargrave jennings's _worship of priapus_, etc. [ ] a good discussion of the topic will be found in this author's _social and ethical interpretations in mental development_. chapter five the influence of sexual and pathologic states on religious belief in the preceding chapter we have been concerned with the various ways in which the phenomena attendant on the sexual life of man and woman become associated with religious beliefs. as a force that arises in the life of each individual, and intrudes, as it were, into consciousness, the phenomena of sex fill primitive man with an amazement that is not unmixed with terror. in strict accord with primitive psychology sexual phenomena are conceived as more or less connected with the supernatural world, and becoming thus entwined with religious convictions are made the nucleus of a number of superstitious ceremonies. the connection is close and obvious so long as we restrict our survey to uncivilised humanity. the only room for doubt or discussion is the exact meaning of certain ceremonies, or the order of certain phases of development. it is when we take man in a more advanced stage that obscurity gathers and difficulties arise. the sexual life is no longer lived, as it were, openly. symbolism and mysticism develop; a more complex social life provides disguised outlets for primitive and indestructible feelings. sexualism, instead of being something to be glorified, and, so to speak, annotated by religious ceremonies, becomes something to be hidden or decried. ignored it may be. decried it may be; but it will not be denied. that is a practical impossibility in the case of so powerful and so pervasive a fact as sex. we may disguise its expression, but only too often the disguise is the equivalent of undesirable and unhealthy manifestations. the modern history of religion offers a melancholy illustration of the truth of the last sentence, and it is quite clearly exhibited in the history of christianity itself. from the beginning it strove to suppress the power of sexual feeling. it was an enemy against whom one had to be always on guard, one that had to be crushed, or at least kept in subjection in the interests of spiritual development. and yet the very intensity of the efforts at suppression defeated the object aimed at. with some of the leaders of early christianity sex became an obsession. long dwelling upon its power made them unduly and unhealthily conscious of its presence. instead of sex taking its place as one of the facts of life, which like most other facts might be good or bad as circumstances determined, it was so much dwelt upon as to often dwarf everything else. asceticism is, after all, mainly a reversed sensualism, or at least confesses the existence of a sensualism that must not be allowed expression lest its manifestation becomes overpowering. mortification confesses the supremacy of sense as surely as gratification. moreover, mortification of sense as preached by the great ascetics does not prevent that most dangerous of all forms of gratification, the sensualism of the imagination. that remains, and is apt to gain in strength since the fundamentally healthful energies are denied legitimate and natural modes of expression. thus it is that we find developing social life not always providing a healthy outlet for the sexual life, and thus it is that the intense striving of religious leaders against the power of the sexual impulse has often forced it into strange and harmful forms of expression. so we find throughout the history of religion, not only that a deal of what has passed for supernatural illumination to have undoubtedly had its origin in perverted sexual feeling, but the constant emergence of curious religio-erotic sects whose strange mingling of eroticism and religion has scandalised many, and offered a lesson to all had they but possessed the wit to discern it. although there is an understandable disinclination, amounting with some to positive revulsion, to recognise the sexual origin of much that passes for religious fervour, the fact is well known to competent medical observers, as the following citations will show. more than a generation since a well-known medical authority said:-- "i know of no fact in pathology more striking and more terrifying than the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic--which have often been seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual exaltation--may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent foolery of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive phenomena of nymphomania and satyriasis."[ ] dr. c. norman also observes:-- "ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. the same association is seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features in the conversation of acutely maniacal women is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas."[ ] this opinion is fully endorsed by sir francis galton:-- "it has been noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which accompany the show of excessive piety and religious rapture in the insane, none are so frequent as disorders of the sexual organisation. conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not infrequently ended in gross profligacy. the encouragement of celibacy by the fervent leaders of most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid connection between an over-restraint of the sexual desires and impulses towards extreme devotion."[ ] dr. auguste forel, the eminent german specialist, points out that-- "when we study the religious sentiment profoundly, especially in the christian religion, and catholicism in particular, we find at each step its astonishing connection with eroticism. we find it in the exalted adoration of holy women, such as mary magdalene, marie de bethany, for jesus, in the holy legends, in the worship of the virgin mary in the middle ages, and especially in art. the ecstatic madonnas in our art galleries cast their fervent regards on jesus or on the heavens. the expression in murillo's 'immaculate conception' may be interpreted by the highest voluptuous exaltation of love as well as by holy transfiguration. the 'saints' of correggio regard the virgin with an amorous ardour which may be celestial, but appears in reality extremely terrestrial and human."[ ] another german authority remarks:-- "i venture to express my conviction that we should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the sexual apparatus to be implicated."[ ] dr. bevan lewis points out how frequently religious exaltation occurs with women at puberty, and religious melancholia at the period of sexual decline. and dr. charles mercier puts the interchangeability of sexual and religious feelings in the following passage:-- "religious observances provide an alternative, into which the amatory instinct can be easily and naturally diverted. the emotions and instinctive desires, which finds expression in courtship, is a vast body of vague feeling, which is at first undirected.... it is a voluminous state of exaltation that demands enthusiastic action. this is the state antecedent to falling in love, and if an object presents himself or herself, the torrent of emotion is directed into amatory passion. but if no object appears, or if the selected object is denied, then religious observances yield a very passable substitute for the expression of the emotion. religious observances provide the sensuous atmosphere, the call for self-renunciation, the means of expressing powerful and voluminous feeling, that the potential or disappointed lover needs. the madrigal is transformed into the hymn; the adornment of the person that should have gone to allure the beloved now takes the shape of ecclesiastical vestments; the reverence that should have been paid to the loved one is transformed to a higher object; the enthusiasm that would have expanded in courtship is expressed in worship; the gifts that would have been made, the services that would have been rendered to the loved one, are transferred to the church."[ ] dr. krafft-ebing, after dwelling upon the substantial identity of sexual love and religious emotion, summarises his conclusions by saying:-- "religious and sexual hyperæsthesia at the acme of development show the same volume of intensity and the same quality of excitement, and may, therefore, under given circumstances interchange. both will in certain pathologic states degenerate into cruelty."[ ] even so orthodox a writer as the rev. s. baring-gould points out that-- "the existence of that evil, which, knowing the constitution of man, we should expect to find prevalent in mysticism, the experience of all ages has shown following, dogging its steps inevitably. so slight is the film that separates religion from sensual passion, that uncontrolled spiritual fervour roars readily into a blaze of licentiousness."[ ] no useful purpose would be served by lengthening this list of citations. enough has been said to show that the point of view expressed is one endorsed by many sober, competent, and responsible observers. there exists among them a general, and one may add a growing, recognition of the important truth that the connection between religious and sexual feeling is of the closest character, and that one is very often mistaken for the other. asceticism, usually taken as evidence to the reverse, is on the contrary, confirmative. the ascetic often presents us with a flagrant case of eroto-mania, expressing itself in terms of religion. it is highly significant that the biographies of christian saints should furnish so many cases of men and women of strong sensual passions, and whose ascetic devotion was only the reaction from almost unbridled sensualism. no wonder that in the temptations experienced by the monks the figures of nude women so often appeared before their heated imaginations. sexual feeling suppressed in one direction broke out in another. feelings, in themselves perfectly normal, became, as a consequence of repression and misdirection, pathologic. and one consequence of this was that many of the early christian writers brought to the consideration of the subject of sex a concentration of mind that resulted in disquisitions of such a nature that it is impossible to do more than refer to them. the sexual relation instead of being refined was coarsened. marriage was viewed in its lowest form, more as a concession to the weakness of the flesh than as a desirable state for all men and women. nor can it be said, after many centuries, that these ideas are quite eradicated from present-day life. a field of investigation that yields much illuminating information is the biographies of the saints and of other religious characters. in many of these cases the acceptance of sexual feeling for religious illumination is very clear. thus of st. gertrude, a benedictine nun of the thirteenth century, we read:-- "one day at chapel she heard supernaturally sung the words, '_sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_.' the son of god, leaning towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said to her at the second _sanctus_, 'in the _sanctus_ addressed to my person, receive with this all the sanctity of my divinity and of my humanity.'... and the following sunday, while she was thanking god for this favour, behold the son of god, more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her to his arms as if he were proud of her, and presents her to god the father, and in that perfection of sanctity with which he had endowed her."[ ] of juliana of norwich, who was granted a revelation in , we are told that she had for long 'ardently desired' a bodily sight of the lord upon the cross; and that finally jesus appeared to her and said, "i love thee and thou lovest me, and our love shall never be disparted in two."[ ] so, again, in the case of sister jeanne des anges, superior of the convent of ursulines of loudun, and the principal character in the famous grandier witchcraft case, we have a detailed account, in her own words, of the lascivious dreams, unclean suggestions, etc.--all attributed to satan--and alternating with impressions of bodily union with jesus.[ ] marie de l'incarnation addresses jesus as follows:-- "oh, my love, when shall i embrace you? have you no pity on the torments that i suffer? alas! alas! my love! my beauty! my life! instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms."[ ] veronica juliani, beatified by pope pius ii., took a real lamb to bed with her, kissed it, and suckled it at her breasts. st. catherine of genoa threw herself on the ground to cool herself, crying out, "love, love, i can bear it no longer." she also confessed to a peculiar longing towards her confessor.[ ] the blessed mary alacoque, foundress of the sacred heart, was subject from early life to a number of complaints--rheumatism, palsy, pains in the side, ulceration of the legs--and experienced visions early in her career. as a child she had so vivid a sense of modesty that the mere sight of a man offended her. at seventeen she took to wearing a knotted cord drawn so tightly that she could neither eat nor breathe without pain. she compressed her arms so tightly with iron chains that she could not remove them without anguish. "i made," she says, "a bed of potsherds, on which i slept with extreme pleasure." she fasted and tortured herself in a variety of ways, and the more her physical disorders increased the more numerous became her visions. before she was eighteen years of age, in , she entered a nunnery. from the time she donned the habit of a novice she was 'blessed' with visions. "our lord showed me that that day was the day of our spiritual wedding; he forthwith gave me to understand that he wished to make me taste all the sweetness of the caresses of his love. in reality, those divine caresses were from that moment so excessive, that they often put me out of myself." "once," says one of her biographers, "having retired into her chamber, she threw off the clothes with which she had bedecked herself during the day, when the son of god showed himself to her in the state in which he was after his cruel flagellation--that is, with his body all wounded, torn, gory--and he said to her that it was her vanities that had brought him into that condition." in one of these visions jesus took the head of mary, pressed it to his bosom, spoke to her in passionate words, opened her side and took out her heart, plunged it into his own, and then replaced it. he then explained his design of founding the order of the sacred heart. ever after, mary was conscious of a pain in her side and a burning sensation in her chest--two plain symptoms of hysteria.[ ] santa teresa, who died at the early age of thirty-three, and in whose family more than one case of well-developed neurasthenia can be traced, was favoured with 'messages' at a very early age. she believed some of these were temptations from the devil suggesting an 'honourable alliance.' a nervous breakdown followed directly after entrance into a convent. she was then twenty years of age, was subject to fainting fits and longed for illness as a sign of divine favour. she was subject to convulsions, and soon after taking the veil fell into a cataleptic trance, which lasted three days. she was thought to be dead, but at the end of the time sat up and told those around that she had visited both heaven and hell, and seen the joys of the blessed and the torments of the damned. it is at least suggestive that, in spite of the longing for personal communion with jesus, her first experience of the ecstasy of divine love was experienced after discovering a 'very realistic' picture of a martyred saint--st. joseph. the significance of the intense contemplation of a tortured body--possibly made by one whose sexual nature was undergoing a process of suppression--is unmistakable.[ ] on these and similar cases professor william james makes the following comment:-- "to the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. to pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but enquire into their fruits for life."[ ] now the question is really not what these ecstasies suggest to the 'medical mind,' as though that were a type of mind quite unfitted to pass judgment. it is a question of what the facts suggest to any mind judging the behaviour of a person under the influence of strong religious emotion exactly as it would judge anyone under any other strong emotional pressure. and if it be possible to explain these states in terms of known physiological and mental action, what warranty have we for rejecting this and preferring in its stead an explanation that is both unprovable and unnecessary? and one would be excused for thinking that cases which certainly involve some sort of abnormal nervous action are precisely those in which the medical mind should be called on to express an opinion. what is meant by passing 'a spiritual judgment' upon these states is not exactly clear, unless it means judging them in terms of the historic supernatural interpretation. but that is precisely the interpretation which is challenged by the 'medical mind.' i do not see how any enquiry "into their fruits for life" can affect a rational estimate of the nature of these mystical states. mysticism adds nothing to the native disposition of a person. it merely gives their energies a new turn, a new direction. what they were before the experience they remain, substantially, afterwards. that is why we find religious mystics of every variety. some energetically practical; others dreamily unpractical. professor james admits this in saying that "the other-worldliness encouraged by the mystical consciousness makes this over-abstraction from practical life peculiarly liable to befall mystics in whom the character is naturally passive and the intellect feeble; but in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite results."[ ] and when it is further admitted that "the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of its own," but "is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood," mysticism seems reduced to an emotional development on all fours with emotional development in other directions. it is not peculiar to religious minds because "it has no specific intellectual content." it is amorphous, so to speak. and it may form diverse 'matrimonial alliances' precisely because it does not point to a hidden world of reality, but is merely indicative of tense emotional moods. in the face of nature the non-theistic richard jeffries experiences all the feelings of mental enlargement and emotional transports that mary alacoque or santa teresa experienced in their visions of the 'risen christ.' it is idle, then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it as superficial. many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. but it is really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. it is a mere matter of applying knowledge and common sense to the cases before us. are we to take the subject's explanation of his or her mental states as authoritative, so far as their nature is concerned; or are we to treat them as symptoms demanding the skilled analysis of the specialist? if the former, how can we differentiate between the mystic and the admittedly hysterical patient? if the latter, what ground is there for placing the mystic in a category of his own? rational and scientific analysis will certainly take far more notice of the nature of the feelings excited than of the object towards which they are directed. here is the case of a young lady, given by dr. moreau, in his _morbid psychology_:-- "during my long hours of sleeplessness in the night my beloved saviour began to make himself manifest to me. pondering over the meditations of st. françois de sales on the _song of songs_, i seemed to feel all my faculties suspended, and crossing my arms upon my chest, i awaited in a sort of dread what might be revealed to me.... i saw the redeemer veritably in the flesh.... he extended himself beside me, pressed me so closely that i could feel his crown of thorns, and the nails in his feet and hands, while he pressed his lips over mine, giving me the most ravishing kiss of a divine spouse, and sending a delicious thrill through my entire body."[ ] get rid of the narcotising effect of theological associations by eliminating the name of jesus and other religious terms from this case, and from the others already cited, and no one would have the least doubt as to their real nature. given a condition of physical health in these cases, with conditions that favoured social activity, healthy intercourse with the opposite sex, culminating in marriage and parenthood, can there be any doubt that this species of religious ecstasy would have been non-existent? if, as tylor says, the refectory door would many a time have closed the gates of heaven, happy family life would in a vast number of cases have prevented those religio-erotic trances which have played so powerful a part in the history of supernaturalism. most people will agree with dr. maudsley:-- "the ecstatic trances of such saintly women as catherine sienne and st. theresa, in which they believed themselves to be visited by their saviour and to be received as veritable spouses into his bosom, were, though they knew it not, little better than vicarious sexual orgasm; a condition of things which the intense contemplation of the naked male figure, carved or sculptured in all its proportions on a cross, is more fitted to produce in young women of susceptible nervous temperament than people are apt to consider. every experienced physician must have met with instances of single and childless women who have devoted themselves with extraordinary zeal to habitual religious exercises, and who, having gone insane as a culmination of their emotional fervour, have straightway exhibited the saddest mixture of religious and erotic symptoms--a boiling over of lust in voice, face, gestures, under the pitiful degradation of disease.... the fanatical religious sects, such as the shakers and the like, which spring up from time to time in communities and disgust them by the offensive way in which they mingle love and religion, are inspired in great measure by sexual feeling; on the one hand, there is probably the cunning of a hypocritical knave, or the self-deception of a half-insane one, using the weaknesses of weak women to minister to his vanity or his lust under a religious guise; on the other hand, there is an exaggerated self-feeling, often rooted in the sexual passion, which is unwittingly fostered under the cloak of religious emotion, and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. in such cases the holy kiss owes its warmth to the sexual impulse, which inspires it, consciously or unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes is fitted to issue in a less spiritual union."[ ] many manuals of devotion will be found to furnish the same kind of evidence as biographical narratives concerning the intimate relations that exists between sexuality and religious feeling. what has just been said may be repeated here, namely, that if the religious associations were dispelled, there would be no mistaking the nature of feelings that originated much of this class of writing, or the feelings to which they appeal. the serious fact is that the appeal is there whether we recognise it or not, and it is a question worthy of serious consideration whether the unwary imagination of the young may be not as surely debauched by certain books of devotion as by a frankly erotic production. it is not without reason that d'israeli the elder, in an essay omitted from all editions of his book after the first, remarked that "poets are amorous, lovers are poetical, but saints are both."[ ] take, for example, the following from a collection of old english homilies, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries:-- "jesus, my holy love, my sure sweetness! jesus, my heart, my joy, my soul-heal! jesus, sweet jesus, my darling, my life, my light, my balm, my honey-drop!... kindle me with the blaze of thy enlightening love. let me be thy leman, and teach me to love thee.... oh, that i might behold how thou stretchedst thyself for me on the cross. oh, that i might cast myself between those same arms, so very wide outspread.... oh, that i were in thy arms, in thy arms so stretchedst and outspread on the cross." or this, from the same collection:-- "sweet jesus, my love, my darling, my lord, my saviour, my balm, sweeter is the remembrance of thee than honey in the mouth. who is there that may not love thy lovely face? whose heart is so hard that may not melt at the remembrance of thee? oh! who may not love thee, lovely jesus? jesus, my precious darling, my love, my life, my beloved, my most worthy of love, my heart's balm, thou art lovesome in countenance, thou art altogether bright. all angels' life is to look upon thy face, for thy cheer is so marvellously lovesome and pleasant to look upon.... thou art so bright, and so white that the sun would be pale if compared to thy blissful countenance. if i, then, love any man for beauty, i will love thee, my dear life, my mother's fairest son."[ ] the language of erotic piety figures much more prominently in roman catholic medieval writings than in protestant literature. this is not because an appeal to the same feelings is absent from the religious literature of protestantism, it is mainly due to the fact that more modern conditions leads to a less intense religious appeal, while the broadening of social life encourages a more natural outlet for all aspects of human nature. still, the following expression of a young lady convert of wesley's offers a fair parallel to the specimen given above. it is taken from southey's _life of wesley_:-- "oh, mighty, powerful, happy change! the love of god was shed abroad in my heart, and a flame kindled there with pains so violent, and yet so very ravishing, that my body was almost torn asunder. i sweated, i trembled, i fainted, i sang. oh, i thought my head was a fountain of water. i was dissolved in love. my beloved is mine, and i am his. he has all charms; he has ravished my heart; he is my comforter, my friend, my all. oh, i am sick of love. he is altogether lovely, the chiefest among ten thousand. oh, how jesus fills, jesus extends, jesus overwhelms the soul in which he lives." the _imitation of christ_ has been described by more than one writer as a manual of eroticism, and certainly the chapters "the wonderful effects of divine love," and "of the proof of a true lover," might well be cited in defence of this view. in the following canticle of st. francis of assisi it does not seem possible to distinguish a substantial difference between it and a frankly avowed love poem:-- "into love's furnace i am cast, into love's furnace i am cast, i burn, i languish, pine, and waste. oh, love divine, how sharp thy dart! how deep the wound that galls my heart! as wax in heat, so, from above, my smitten soul dissolves in love. i live, yet languishing i die, while in thy furnace bound i lie."[ ] it would certainly be possible to furnish exact parallels from volumes of secular verse that would be strictly 'taboo' among those who fail to see anything objectionable in verses like the above when written in connection with religion. such people fail to recognise that their attractiveness lies in the hidden appeal to amatory feeling, and owe their origin to the suppressed or perverted sexual passion of their author. we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the consideration as to whether the object of adoration be an earthly or a heavenly one. men and women have not distinct feelings that are aroused as their objective differs, but the same feelings directed now in one direction, now in another. the direction of these feelings, their exciting cause, are sheer environmental accidents. how can one resist the implications of the following, from a devotional work widely circulated amongst the women of france:-- "praise to jesus, praise his power, praise his sweet allurements. praise to jesus, when his goodness reduces me to nakedness; praise to jesus when he says to me, my sister, my dove, my beautiful one! praise to jesus in all my steps, praise to his amorous charms. praise to jesus when his loving mouth touches mine in a loving kiss. praise to jesus when his gentle caresses overwhelm me with chaste joys. praise to jesus when at his leisure he allows me to kiss him."[ ] against this we may place the following hymn, sung at an american camp meeting of some thousands of persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five:-- "blessed lily of the valley, oh, how fair is he; he is mine, i am his. sweeter than the angels' music is his voice to me; he is mine, i am his. where the lilies fair are blooming by the waters calm there he leads me and upholds me by his strong right arm. all the air is love around me--i can feel no harm; he is mine, i am his."[ ] special significance is given to this reference by the age of those who composed the gathering. this period embraces the years during which sexual maturity is attained, and the organism experiences important physiological and psychological changes. the consequence is that the atmosphere is, so to say, charged with unsuspected sex feeling, and it is not surprising that many complaints have been made of immorality following such gatherings. the organism is then peculiarly liable to suggestion in all forms. along with the imitativeness of early years there is something of the decisive initiative of maturity. these qualities wisely guided might be turned to the great advantage of both the individual and of the community. mere incitement by religious revivalism can result in little else than misdirection and injury. it should be the most obvious of truths that the attractiveness of hymns such as the one given, with the keen delight in the suggested pictures, lies in their yielding--all unknown, perhaps, to those participating-- satisfaction to feelings that are very frequently imperious in their demands, and are at all times astonishingly pervasive in their influence. much valuable light is thrown upon this aspect of the subject by a study of human behaviour under the influence of actual disease. of late years much useful work has been done in this direction, and our knowledge of normal psychology greatly helped by a study of abnormal mental states.[ ] this is mainly because in disease we are able to observe the operation of tendencies that are unobscured by the restraints and inhibitions created by education and social convention. and one of the most striking, and to many startling, things observed is the close relation existing between erotic mania and religious delusion. the person who at one time feels himself under direct religious inspiration, or who imagines himself to be the incarnation of a divine personage, will at another time exhibit the most shocking obscenity in action and language. sir t. s. clouston furnishes a very striking case of this character, which he cites in order to show "the common mixture of religious and sexual emotion."[ ] i do not reproduce it here because of its grossly obscene character; but, save for coarseness of language, it does not differ materially from illustrations already given. almost any of the text-books will supply cases illustrating the connection between sexualism and religion, a connection generally recognised as the opinions cited already clearly show. dr. mercier, in dealing with the connection between sexualism and religion, which he says "has long been recognised, but never accounted for," traces it to a feeling of, or desire for self-sacrifice common to both. certainly sacrifice in some form--of food, weapons, land, money, or bodily inconvenience--is a feature present in every religion more or less. and it is quite certain that not merely the fact, but the desire for some amount of sacrifice, forms "an integral, fundamental, and preponderating element" in the sexual emotion. dr. mercier further believes that the benevolence founded on religious emotion has its origin in sexual emotion, which is, again, extremely likely. this community of origin would allow for the transformation of one into the other, and supplies a key to the language of lover-like devotion and self-abnegation which is so prominent in religious devotional literature. the importance attached to dress is also very suggestive; for here, again, the element of sacrifice expresses itself in the cultivation of a studied repulsiveness to the normal attractiveness of costume. "thus," says dr. mercier, "we find that the self-sacrificial vagaries of the rejected lover and of the religious devotee own a common origin and nature. the hook and spiny kennel of the fakir, the pillar of st. simeon stylites, the flagellum of the monk, the sombre garments of the nun, the silence of the trappists, the defiantly hideous costume of the hallelujah lass, and the mortified sobriety of the district visitor, have at bottom the same origin as the rags of cardenio, the cage of don quixote de la mancha, and the yellow stockings and crossed garters of malvolio."[ ] professor granger, who at times comes very near the truth, says:-- "there is something profoundly philosophical in the use of _the song of songs_ to typify the communion of the soul with its ideal. the passion which is expressed by the shulamite for her earthly lover in such glowing phrases becomes the type of the love of the soul towards god."[ ] one fails to see the profoundly philosophic nature of the selection. the _song of songs_ is a frankly erotic love poem, written with no other aim than is common to such poetry, and its spiritualisation is due to the same process of reinterpretation that is applied to other parts of the bible in order to make them agreeable to modern thought. had it not been in the bible, christians would have found it neither profoundly philosophical nor spiritually illuminating; and, as a matter of fact, similar effusions are selected by christians from non-christian writings as proofs of their sensual character. the real significance of its use in religious worship is that it gives a marked expression to feelings that crave an outlet. and the lesson is that sexual feeling cannot be eliminated from life; it can only be diverted or disguised. some expression it will find--here in open perversion resulting in positive vice, there in obsession that leads to a half-insane asceticism, and elsewhere the creation of the unconsciously salacious with an unhealthy fondness for dabbling in questions that refer to the illicit relations of the sexes. "one of the reasons why popular religion in england," says professor granger, "seems to be coming to the limits of its power, is that it has contented itself so largely with the commonplace motives which, after all, find sufficient exercise in the ordinary duties of life." here, again, is a curious obtuseness to a plain but important truth. with what else should a healthy religion associate itself but the ordinary motives or feelings of human life? with what else has religion always associated itself? far from that being the source of the weakness of modern religion, it is its only genuine source of strength. if religion can so associate itself with the ordinary facts and feelings of life that these are unintelligible or poorer without religion, then religious people have nothing to fear. but if it be true, as professor granger implies, that life in its normal moods can receive complete gratification apart from religion, then the outlook is very different. from a merely historic point of view it is true that as men have found explanations of phenomena, and gratifications of feelings apart from religion, the latter has lost a deal of its power. this is seen in the growth of the physical sciences, and also, although in a smaller measure, in sociology and morals. this, however, opens up the enquiry, previously indicated, as to how far the whole range of human life may be satisfactorily explained in the complete absence of religion or supernaturalism. and with this we are not now directly concerned. what we are concerned with is to show that from one direction at least supernaturalism has derived strength from a misinterpretation of the facts. these facts, once interpreted as clear evidence for supernaturalism, are now seen to be susceptible to a different explanation. but they have nevertheless played their part in creating as part of the social heritage a diffused sense of the reality of supernatural intercourse. it is not, then, a question of religion losing power because it has contented itself with commonplace motives, and because these have now found satisfaction in ordinary life. it is rather a question of the adequacy of science to deal with facts that have been taken to lie outside the scientific order. has science the knowledge or the ability to deal with the extraordinary as well as with the ordinary facts of life? i believe it has. the facts we have passed in review _are_ amenable to scientific treatment, for the reason that they belong to a class with which the physician of to-day finds himself in constant contact. and it is too often overlooked that the belief in the existence and influence of a supersensible world is itself only a theory put forward in explanation of certain classes of facts, and like all theories it becomes superfluous once a simpler theory is made possible. footnotes: [ ] article in _the lancet_, jan. , . [ ] article in tuke's _dictionary of psychological medicine_. [ ] _inquiries into human faculty_, pp. - . [ ] _the sexual question_, pp. - . [ ] cited by havelock ellis, _psychology of sex_, pp. - . [ ] _conduct and its disorders_, pp. - . [ ] _psychopathia-sexualis_, pp. - . [ ] _lost and hostile gospels_, preface. [ ] cited by james, _varieties_, pp. - . [ ] inge, _christian mysticism_, pp. - . [ ] see ellis, _psychology of sex_, pp. - . [ ] parkman's _jesuits in north america_, p. . [ ] krafft-ebing, _psychopathia-sexualis_, p. . [ ] see l. asseline's _mary alacoque and the worship of the sacred heart of jesus_. [ ] see _st. teresa of spain_, by h. h. colvill, and _saint teresa_, by h. joly. [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] cited by j. f. nisbet, _the insanity of genius_, p. . [ ] _pathology of mind_, p. . also mercier, _sanity and insanity_, pp. , . [ ] _miscellanies_, , p. . from the same essay i take the following: "even the ceremonies of religion, both in ancient and in modern times, have exhibited the grossest indecencies. priests in all ages have been the successful panders of the human heart, and have introduced in the solemn worship of the divinity, incitements, gratifications, and representations, which the pen of the historian must refuse to describe. often has the sensible catholic blushed amidst his devotions, and i have seen chapels surrounded by pictures of lascivious attitudes, and the obsolete amours of saints revived by the pencil of some aretine.... their homilies were manuals of love, and the more religious they became, the more depraved were their imaginations. in the nunnery the love of jesus was the most abandoned of passions, and the ideal espousal was indulged at the cost of the feeble heart of many a solitary beauty" (pp. - ). [ ] from a collection published by the early english text society, , pp. - , . [ ] g. a. coe, _the spiritual life_, p. . [ ] _les perles de saint françois de sales_, . cited by bloch, p. . [ ] davenport's _primitive traits in religious revivals_, p. . [ ] see, for example, _conduct and its disorders_, by dr. c. mercier; _psycho-pathological researches_, by dr. boris sidis; and _abnormal psychology_, by i. h. coriat. [ ] _clinical lectures on mental diseases_, p. . [ ] _sanity and insanity_, chap. viii. [ ] _the soul of a christian_, p. . chapter six the stream of tendency it should hardly need pointing out that the facts presented in the last chapter are not offered as an attempt at the--to use professor william james's expression--"reinterpretation of religion as perverted sexuality." nor, so far as the present writer is aware, has anyone ever so presented them. the expression, indeed, seems almost a deliberate mis-statement of a position in order to make its rebuttal easier. obviously the idea of religion must be already in existence before it could be utilised for the purpose of explaining any group of phenomena. but if the biographic and other facts described have any value whatever, they are at least strong presumptive evidence in favour of the position that in very many cases a perverted or unsatisfied sexuality has been at the root of a great deal of the world's emotional piety. of course, the strong religious belief must be in existence before-hand. but given this, and add thereto a sexual nature imperious in its demands and yet denied legitimate outlet, and we have the conditions present for its promptings being interpreted as the fruits of supernatural influence. it is not a reinterpretation of _religion_ that is attempted, but a reinterpretation of phenomena that have been erroneously called religious. and on all sides the need for this reinterpretation is becoming clear. over sixty years ago renan wrote, "a rigorous psychological analysis would class the innate religious instinct of women in the same category with the sexual instinct,"[ ] and since then a very much more detailed knowledge of both physiology and psychology has furnished a multitude of data for an exhaustive study of the whole question. in the present chapter our interest is mainly historical. and for various reasons, chief amongst which is that interested readers may the more easily follow up the study should they feel so inclined, the survey has been restricted to the history of that religion with which we are best acquainted--christianity. moreover, if we are to form a correct judgment of the part played in the history of religions by the misinterpretations already noted, it is necessary to trace the extent to which they have influenced men and women in a collective capacity. for the striking fact is that, in spite of the purification of the sexual relations being one of the avowed objects of christianity, in spite, too, of the attempts of the official churches to suppress them, the history of christianity has been dogged by outbreaks of sexual extravagance, by the continuous emergence of erotico-religious sects, claiming christian teachings as the authority for their actions. we need not discuss the legitimacy of their inferences. we are concerned solely with a chronicle of historic facts so far as they can be ascertained; and these have a certain significance of their own, as events, quite apart from their reasonableness or desirability. a part cause of the movements we are about to describe may have been a violent reaction against an extravagant asceticism. something may also be due to the fact that over-concentration of mind upon a particular evil is apt to defeat its end by the mere force of unconscious suggestion in the contrary direction. but in all probability much was due to the presence of certain elements inherited by christianity from the older religions. at any rate, those whose minds are filled with the idea that sexual extravagance on a collective scale and under the cloak of religion is either a modern phenomenon, or was unknown to the early history of christianity, would do well to revise their opinions in the light of ascertainable facts. no less a person than the rev. s. baring-gould has reminded us that criticism discloses "on the shining face of primitive christianity rents and craters undreamt of in our old simplicity," and also asserts "that there was in the breast of the newborn church an element of antinomianism, not latent, but in virulent activity, is a fact as capable of demonstration as any conclusion in a science which is not exact."[ ] there would be little value in a study of these erotico-religious movements if they involved only a detection of individual lust consciously using religion as a cloak for its gratification. such a conclusion is a fatally easy one, but it does little justice to the chief people concerned, and it is quite lacking in historical perspective. in most cases the initiators of these strange sects have put forward a philosophy of religion as a justification of their teaching, and only a slight knowledge of this is enough to prove that we are face to face with a phenomenon of much greater significance than mere immorality. this may be recognised even in the pages of the new testament itself. it is not a practice that is there denounced; it is a teaching that is repudiated. and one sees the same thing at later periods. the conviction on the one side that certain actions are unlawful, is met on the other side with the conviction that they are perfectly legitimate. conviction is met with conviction. each side expresses itself in terms of religion; the ethical aspect is incidental or subordinate. it is a contest of opposing religious beliefs and practices. the real nature of the conflict is often obscured by the fact of social opinion and the social forces generally being on the side of the more normal expression of sexual life. this, however, is no more than a necessity of the situation. the continuance of a healthful social life is dependent upon the maintenance of a certain balance in the relations of the sexes, and anything that strikes at this strikes at social life as a whole. in such cases we have, therefore, to allow for the operation of social selection, which is always on the side of the more normal type. from this it follows that although a small body of people may exemplify a variation that is in itself socially disastrous, the main forces of social life will prevent its ever assuming large dimensions. moreover, a large body of people, such as is represented by a church holding a commanding position in society, will be forced to come to terms with the permanent tendencies of social life, and will either suppress undesirable variations or expel them. it thus happens that while the larger and more dominant churches have been on the side of normal, regularised expressions of the sexual life, abnormal variations have constantly arisen and have been denounced by them. but the significant feature is that they have arisen within the churches, and most commonly during periods of great religious stress or excitement. these tendencies, as the rev. s. baring-gould has pointed out, existed in the very earliest days of christianity. it is quite apparent from paul's writings that as early as the date of the first epistle to the corinthians some of the more objectionable features of the older pagan worship had shown themselves in the church. the doctrine of 'spiritual wifehood' appeared at a very early date in the church, and its teachers cited even st. paul himself as their authority. their claim was based upon paul's declaration ( cor. ix. ) that he had power to lead about "a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the lord and cephas." curiously enough, commentators have never agreed as to what paul meant by this expression. the word translated may mean either wife, or sister, or woman. had it been wife in the ordinary sense, it does not appear that at that date there would have been any room for scandal. the clear fact is, however, that others claimed a like privilege; the privilege was not always restricted to one woman, and the practice, if not general, became not uncommon, and furnished the ground for scandal for a long period. two epistles, wrongly attributed to st. clement of rome, and dating from some time in the second century, condemn the practice of young people living together under the cloak of religion, and specially warns virgins against cohabiting with the clergy and so giving offence. that the practice was difficult to suppress is shown by its being condemned by several church councils--antioch in , nicea in , and elvira in .[ ] at a later date a much more elaborate theory has been built on paul's claim. the pauline church has found several expressions both in england and america within recent times.[ ] these sects have claimed that both st. paul and the woman with whom he travelled were in a state of grace, and, therefore, above all law. we do not mean the maintenance of an ascetic relationship, but the normal relation of husband and wife. it is really the doctrine of 'free love' with a spiritual warranty instead of a secular one. this doctrine of religious 'free love' rests upon a twofold basis. first, it was held that, apart from a wife after the flesh, one might also have a wife after the spirit, and this spiritual union might exist side by side with the fleshly one, and with different persons. a great impetus appears to have been given to this theory from germany, many of the originators of the american sects of free lovers being germans. secondly, it was held that a christian in a state of grace was absolved from laws that were binding upon other people. his actions were no longer subject to the categories of right and wrong; as it was said, to one in a state of grace all things were lawful, even though all things might not be expedient. some went the length of teaching that not only were all things lawful, but all things were desirable. separating by a sharp division things that influenced the soul from things that influenced the body, it was openly taught by some of the early sects that nothing done by the body could injure the soul, and so could not affect its salvation. reversing the practice of asceticism, which sought to crush bodily passions by a course of deprivation, it was taught that all kinds of forbidden conduct might be practised in order to demonstrate the soul's superiority. there is no question whatever that this tendency was very prominent in the early christian church. it was not there as something hidden, something of which men ought to be ashamed; it was an avowed teaching, claiming full religious sanction. "the church," says baring-gould, "trembled on the verge of becoming an immoral sect." the same writer also says:-- "this _teaching_ of immorality in the church is a startling feature, and it seems to have been pursued by some who called themselves apostles as well as by those who assumed to be prophets. in the corinthian church even the elders encouraged incest. now, it is not possible to explain this phenomenon except on the ground that paul's argument as to the law being overridden had been laid hold of and elevated into a principle. these teachers did not wink at lapses into immorality, but defiantly urged on the converts to the gospel to commit adultery, fornication, and all uncleanness ... as a protest against those who contended that the moral law as given on the tables was still binding upon the church."[ ] a certain detachment from modern conditions, and from modern frames of mind, is essential to an adequate appreciation of what has been said. looking at these events through the distorting medium of an altogether different social atmosphere, one is apt to attribute them to the operation of lawless desire, and so have done with it. this, however, is to overlook the fact that we are dealing with a society in which sexual symbols were common in religious worship, and in which theories of the religious life were propounded and accepted which to-day would be regarded as little less than maniacal. unquestionably even then, once the situation had established itself it would be utilised by those of a coarser nature for mere sensual gratification. but practices such as we know existed, on the scale we have every reason for believing they were, could never have been had they not taken the form of an intense conviction. to assume otherwise is equal to arguing that because men have entered the church from mere love of power or lust for wealth, the church owed its establishment to the play of these motives. it is true that those who opposed these religio-erotic sects accused them of immorality, but it is the form these teachings assumed to the members of the impeached sects, not how they appeared to their enemies, that is important. eroticism taught and practised as a religious conviction--that is the essential and significant feature of the situation. not to grasp this is to fail to realise the vital fact embodied in the phenomena under consideration. we are not dealing with mere sensualists, even though we may be dealing with what is largely an expression of sensualism. it is sensualism expressed as, and sanctioned by, religious conviction that is the vital fact of the situation. one of the earliest christian institutions around which scandals gathered was that of the agapæ, or love-feasts. from the outset the pagan writers asserted that these love-feasts were new versions of various old orgiastic practices, some of which were still current, others of which had been suppressed by the roman government. there is no doubt that they were the grounds of very serious accusations against the christians. on the other hand, it must be remembered that, at the outset at least, these charges were indignantly rejected by the christians. the agapæ were called indiscriminately feasts of love and feasts of charity. each member, male and female, greeted each other with a holy kiss, and the institution was described by tertullian as "a support of love, a solace of purity, a check on riches, a discipline of weakness." these love-feasts were held on important occasions, such as a marriage, a death, or the anniversary of a martyrdom. some churches celebrated them weekly. from the acts of the apostles we learn that the feasts began about nightfall, and continued till after midnight, or even till daybreak. it was only natural that mixed assemblies of men and women that gathered in this manner, and where there was eating and drinking, should create scandal. it is absolutely certain that some of this scandal had a basis in fact. the rev. s. baring-gould confesses that "at corinth, and certainly elsewhere, among excitable people, the wine, the heat, the exaltation of emotion, led to orgiastic ravings, the jabbering of disconnected, unintelligible words, to fits, convulsions, pious exclamations, and incoherent ravings." and unless st. paul was deliberately slandering his fellow-believers worse things than these occurred. generally, even by non-christian writers, it has been assumed that the agapæ commenced as a perfectly harmless, even admirable institution, and afterwards degenerated, and so gave genuine cause for scandal. it is not easy to see that this opinion rests on anything better than a mere prejudice. it is true that there is no unmistakable evidence to the contrary, but no clear evidence is to be found in its behalf. the agapæ was not, after all, an essentially christian institution. similar gatherings existed among the pagans, more or less orgiastic in character. and even though at first some of the more extreme forms were avoided amongst the christians, it is not improbable, on the face of it, that some kind of sexual extravagance or symbolism was present from the outset. at any rate, as i have said, the charges were made, first by pagans, afterwards by christians against other christians. the charges were persistent, and were made in districts far removed from each other. says lecky: "when the pagans accused the christians of indulging in orgies of gross licentiousness, the first apologist, while repudiating the charge, was careful to add, of the heretics, 'whether or not these people commit those shameful acts ... i know not.' in a few years the language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct assertion; and if we may believe st. irenæus and st. clement of alexandria, the followers of carpocrates, the marcionites, and some other gnostic sects habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution of the orthodox."[ ] tertullian accused some of the sects of practising incestuous intercourse at the agapæ. ambrose compared the institution to the pagan parentalia. clement says, probably referring to the agapæ, "the shameless use of the rite occasions foul suspicion and evil reports." the first epistle on virginity by the pseudo-clement (probably written in the second century) admits the existence of immorality by saying, "others eat and drink with them (_i.e._ the virgins) at feasts, and indulge in loose behaviour and much uncleanness, such as ought not to be among those who have elected holiness for themselves." justin martyr, referring to certain sects, says more cautiously: "whether or not these people commit these shameful acts (the putting out of lights, and indulging in promiscuous intercourse) i know not." others are more precise in their charges. that the agapæ became the legitimate cause of complaint is admitted by all. the only question is whether it was the institution itself or the public mind in relation to it that underwent a change. eventually, on the avowed ground of evil conduct, the agapæ were forbidden by the council of carthage, , of orleans, , and of constantinople, . the whole subject is obscure, but the one certain and significant thing is that charges of licentiousness were connected with the agapæ from the outset. these may at first have been unfounded or exaggerated. on the other hand, it is quite probable that just as christianity continued pagan ceremonies in other directions, so there was also a carrying over into the church of some of the sexual rites and ceremonies connected with earlier forms of worship. and we know that the principle of antinomianism, a prolific cause of evil at all times, was active amongst the christians from the outset. it is almost impossible to say at this distance how many sects exhibiting marked erotic tendencies appeared in the early christian centuries. many must have disappeared and left no trace of their existence. but there can be no question that they were fairly numerous. the extensive sect, or sects, of the gnostics contained in its teachings elements that at least paved the way for the conduct with which other christians charged them, although the charges made may not have been true of all. to some of the gnostic sects belongs the teaching--quite in accord with the doctrine of the evil nature of the world, that liberation from the 'law' was one of the first conditions of spiritual freedom. from this came the teaching, subsequently held by numerous other sects, that those born of the spirit could not be defiled by any acts of the flesh, and that so-called vicious actions were rather to be encouraged as providing experience useful to spiritual welfare. some branches of the gnostics had 'spiritual marriages,' similar to what existed in india in the sakti rites already described. thus the adamites, a rather obscure gnostic sect of the second century, attempted to imitate the edenic state by condemning marriage and abandoning clothing. their assemblies were held underground, and on entering the place of worship both sexes stripped themselves naked, and in that state performed their ceremonies. they called their church paradise, from which all dissentients were promptly expelled. the adamites themselves claimed that their object was to extirpate desire by familiarising the senses to strict control. their religious opponents gave a very different account of the practice, and it is not difficult to realise, whatever may have been the motive of the founders, the consequences of such a practice. it is curious, by the way, to observe how strong religious excitement seems to lead people to discard clothing. thus, during the crusade of - the women crusaders rushed about the streets in a state of nudity.[ ] during the wars of the league in france, men and women walked naked in procession headed by the clergy.[ ] other examples of this curious practice might be given. the nicolaitanes, a second-century sect referred to in the new testament (rev. ii. ), were accused of practising religious prostitution. so also were the manichæans, a very numerous sect, against whom the charges were of a much more detailed character. with them the ceremonial violation of a virgin is said to have formed a part of their regular ritual, and that their meetings frequently ended in an orgy of promiscuous intercourse.[ ] as both these acts are found in connection with other religious ceremonies, and, as will be seen later, have persisted until recent times, the story does not sound so incredible as otherwise it might. the difficulty of deciding definitely is intensified by the fact of the manichæans being split into a number of sects, and statements true of some might be untrue of others. so we find st. augustine, who had been a manichæan, declaring that if all did not practise licentious rites, one sect (the catharists) did, believing that they could only mortify the flesh by the exercise of bad instincts, since the flesh proceeded from demons. st. augustine himself confesses to have taken part in various phallic ceremonies before his conversion. "i myself," he says, "when a young man used to go sometimes to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles; i saw the priests raving in religious excitement, and heard the choristers; i took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honour of gods and goddesses, of the virgin coelestia, and of berecynthia, the mother of all gods. and on the day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy to the ear--i do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man--nay, so impure that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience."[ ] the carpocratians, who claimed to be a branch of the gnostics, taught that faith and charity were alone necessary virtues: all others were useless. there is nothing evil in itself, and life only becomes complete when all so-called blemishes are fully displayed in conduct. their leader "not only allowed his disciples a full liberty to sin, but recommended a vicious course of life as a matter of obligation and necessity; asserting that eternal salvation was only attainable by those who had committed all sorts of crimes.... it was the will of god that all things should be possessed in common, the female sex not excepted."[ ] a little later we have the sect of the agapetæ. they rejected marriage as an institution, and permitted unrestrained intercourse between the sexes. st. jerome, alluding to this sect, says: "it is a shame even to allude to the true facts. whence did the pest of the agapetæ creep into the church? whence is this new title of wives without marriage rites? whence this new class of concubines? i will infer more. whence these harlots cleaving to one man? they occupy the same house, a single chamber, often a single bed, and call us suspicious if we think anything of it. the brother deserts his virgin sister, the virgin despises her unmarried brother, and seeks a stranger, and since they pretend to be aiming at the same object, they ask for the spiritual consolation of each other that they may enjoy the pleasures of the flesh."[ ] this form of extravagance does not appear to have been limited to a single sect. it was more or less general during the ascendancy of asceticism. tertullian says that the desire to enjoy the reputation of virginity led to much immorality, the effects of which were concealed by infanticide. the council of antioch lamented the practice of unmarried men and women sharing the same room. in , the anchorites of palestine are described as herding together without distinction of sex, and with no garments but a breech-clout.[ ] the practice of priests travelling about with women, mothers and wives, and the scandals created thereby, is referred to in regulation after regulation. although legislated against, it never entirely disappeared, and eventually led to a recognised priestly concubinage--recognised, that is, by public opinion, although condemned by the church. there is no need to go over even the names of all the numerous sects that appeared during the early centuries manifesting curious features concerning sexual relations. when suppressed in one form they reappeared in another, and were unusually prominent during seasons of religious unrest. many of the teachings already noted made their appearance again with the "brethren of the free spirit" in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. some of these sects took their stand on the pauline teaching, "the law of the spirit of life in jesus christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death," and claimed freedom from sin, no matter what their actions. the "brethren of the free spirit" carried women about with them, held midnight assemblies, and, according to mosheim, attended these meetings in a state of nudity. the ranters, the spirituels of geneva, the berghards, the flagellants, the molinists, were all accused of sexual misconduct in their assemblies. one of the specific teachings of the last-named body, as condemned by the inquisition, ran as follows: "god, to humble us, permits in certain perfect souls that the devil should make them commit certain acts. in this case, and in others, which without the permission of god, would be guilty, there is no sin because there is no consent. it may happen, that this violent movement, which excites to carnal acts, may take place in two persons, a man and a woman, at the same instant."[ ] it has been pointed out that the dominant church made continuous efforts to suppress these sects, but the remarkable thing is that they should so often reappear, and always with strong claims to existence on the basis of religious conviction. that a number of men and women should seek gratification of their sensual feelings in ways not countenanced by the laws of normal life need not excite surprise. there always have been and always will be such. but to do this in the name of religion, and with a persistency as great as that of the religious idea itself, is a phenomenon that surely deserves more attention than it ordinarily receives. nor can it be said with justice that these sects began in mere conscious lust. they ended there, true; more or less disguised, it may always have been present, but those who initiated them believed that they were justified in doing so by religious principles, and appealed to those principles to justify their conduct. why should this have been the case? why should conduct of which men and women are ashamed in the social sphere, and which their social sense promptly condemns, in the religious sphere be crowned with the dignity of lofty principles and fought for with the fervour of intense conviction? so long as theologians leave that question unanswered, their arguments are simply wide of the real issue. naturally, the closer we get to our own day, and to times when religious feeling is more vigorously controlled by purely social forces, these manifestations of sexuality become less frequent, less widely spread, and more transient in character. still they do occur. for reasons that do not concern us here, america has in recent years been a favourable ground for these religio-sexual developments. a sympathetic account of many of these american sects will be found in hepworth dixon's _spiritual wives_, with accounts of similar sects in germany and england. in some cases many of the features of the early christian sects were reproduced, even to the length of young women sharing the bedrooms of their spiritual guides. all took paul as their principal authority. j. h. noyes, one of the best known and most representative of these teachers, laid down the main principles of his teachings thus:-- "when the will of god is done on earth as it is in heaven, there will be no marriage. the marriage supper of the lamb is a feast at which every dish is free to every guest. exclusiveness, jealousy, quarrelling, have no place there, for the same reason as that which forbids the guests at a thanksgiving dinner to claim each his separate dish, and quarrel with the rest for his rights. in a holy community there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating and drinking should be; and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other.... the guests of the marriage supper may have each his favourite dish, each a dish of his own procuring, and that without the jealousy of exclusiveness. i call a certain woman my wife; she is yours; she is christ's; and in him she is the bride of all saints. she is dear in the hands of a stranger, and according to my promise to her i rejoice."[ ] in a letter to mr. hepworth dixon, j. h. noyes claims the "right of religious inspiration to shape society and dictate the form of family life," and with probable accuracy says that the origin of these american sects is to be found in revivals:-- "the philosophy of the matter seems to be this: revivals are theocratic in their very nature; they introduce god into human affairs.... in the conservative theory of revivals, this power is restricted to the conversion of souls; but in actual experience it goes, or tends to go, into all the affairs of life.... religious love is very near neighbour to sexual love, and they always get mixed in the intimacies and social excitements of revivals. the next thing a man wants, after he has found the salvation of his soul, is to find his eve and his paradise.... the course of things may be restated thus: revivals lead to religious love; religious love excites the passions; the converts, finding themselves in theocratic liberty, begin to look about for their mates and their liberty."[ ] with regard to the beginnings of these modern movements of "spiritual wifehood," all involving the abrogation of the normal relations of the sexes, hepworth dixon writes:-- "it has not, i think, been noticed by any writer that three of the most singular movements in the churches of our generation seem to have been connected, more or less closely, with the state of mind produced by revivals; one in germany, one in england, and one in the united states; movements which resulted, among other things, in the establishment of three singular societies--the congregation of pietists, vulgarly called the mucker, at königsberg; the brotherhood of princeites at spaxton; and the bible communists at oneida creek.... they had these chief things in common: they began in colleges, they affected the form of family life, and they were carried on by clergymen; each movement in a place of learning and of theological study: that in germany at the luther-kirch of königsberg, that in england at st. david's college, that in the united states at yale college.... these three divines, one lutheran, one anglican, one congregational, began their work in perfect ignorance of each other.... each movement was regarded by its votaries as the most perfect fruit of the revival spirit. in truth, the change which came upon the saints from their close experience of revival passion, was regarded by themselves as in some degree miraculous, equal in divine significance to a new creation of the world."[ ] for an almost exact replica of the erotic extravagances of some of the early christian sects, one may turn to russia. the difficulties and dangers of political life in russia are doubtless responsible for having made religion such a power among the mass of the people, and this will also explain the diversion into religious channels of energy that under more favourable conditions is expended in social agitation and activity. many of these sects are, of course, of a harmless character, mostly originating in an even greater love for the past and a more slavish adherence to ancient formulas than is displayed by the orthodox church. some, however, present the wildest excesses of sexual theory and practice. nothing seems too wild or too extravagant to become the originating point of a new sect. theories of marriage and sexual relations generally are developed with a logical fearlessness peculiarly russian. among the bezpopovtsi, a numerous sect split up into several branches, opinions on marriage vary between regarding it as a mere conventional affair, and denouncing it as a hindrance to spiritual development. "between these two extremes," says mr. heard, "there is room for the wildest and most repulsive theories. carnal sensuality is allied in monstrous union with religious mysticism. free love, independence of the sexes, possession of women in common, have been preached and practised. debauchery, as an incidental weakness of human nature, has been advocated as the lesser evil; libertinism as preferable to concubinage, and the latter as better than marriage. one of their most austere teachers cynically declares that 'it is wiser to live with beasts than to be joined to a wife; to frequent many women in secret, rather than to live with one openly.'"[ ] another sect called 'eunuchs' take their stand on matt. xix. : "there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. he that is able to receive it, let him receive it." this sect believes in and practises emasculation as the surest way of attaining perfection. man, they say, should be like the angels, without sex and without desire. this practice reminds one of an early christian sect, the valesians, which not only emasculated members of their own sect, but performed the same operation forcibly on those who fell into their hands.[ ] the khlysti, a sect which derives its name from the practice of flagellation, denounce marriage as unclean, and part of their religious ritual is, according to some writers, the worship of a naked woman. baron von haxthausen, writing in , gives the following description of their ceremonies on easter night:-- "on this night the khlysti all assemble for a great solemnity, the worship of the mother of god. a virgin, fifteen years of age, whom they have induced to act the part by tempting promises, is bound and placed in a tub of warm water; some old women come, and first make a large incision in the left breast, then cut it off, and staunch the blood in a wonderfully short time. during the operation a mystical picture of the holy spirit is put into the victim's hand, in order that she may be absorbed in regarding it. the breast which has been removed is laid upon a plate and cut into small pieces, which are eaten by all the members of the sect present; the girl in the tub is then raised upon an altar which stands near, and the whole congregation dance wildly round it, singing at the same time. the jumping then grows madder and wilder, till the lights are suddenly extinguished and horrible orgies commence."[ ] the 'jumpers,' an offshoot of the khlysti, are much more pronounced in their sexual extravagances. they openly profess debauchery, for the usual reason, that of conquering the flesh by exhaustion and satiety. they meet usually by night, and after prayers are chanted and hymns sung, the leader commences a slow jumping movement, keeping time with a song. then:-- "the audience, arranged in couples, engaged to each other in advance, imitate his example and join the strain; the bounds and the singing grow faster and louder as it spreads, until, at its height, the elder shouts that he hears the voices of angels; the lights are extinguished, the jumping ceases, and the scene that follows in the darkness defies description. each one yields to his desires, born of inspiration, and therefore righteous, and to be gratified; all are brethren in christ, all promptings of the inner spirit are holy; incest, even, is no sin. they repudiate marriage, and justify their abominations by the biblical legends of lot's daughters, solomon's harem, and the like."[ ] there are many other curious sects in russia, many of which bring us back to the religious atmosphere of the european dark ages. but without pursuing a description of these to any greater extent, enough has been said to show the persistence of the stream of sexualism in the history of christianity. of course, this feature did not enter religion with christianity. on the contrary, i have shown that it was present from the earliest times. the association of religion with sexual phenomena does not commence as a sexual aberration; it only assumes that form at a comparatively late stage in religious history. the origin of the connection has to be found in that atmosphere of the supernatural which envelops primitive life, moulds primitive conceptions, and more or less fashions all primitive institutions. the sexual side of religious belief and religious symbolism only becomes abnormal, and even morbid, when the development of social life makes possible a truer view of sexuality. in this the great churches have, perhaps, unconsciously assisted. their position of social control has compelled them to set their faces against the sexual symbolism which is so closely associated with early religious history, while at the same time countenancing religious fervour in general. the consequence has been that small bodies of men and women, freed from the restraining influence of social responsibility, have developed to extravagant length certain phases of religious belief that have been generally discountenanced elsewhere. their so doing certainly helps the present-day student to make a more complete survey of all the factors that have played their part in religious history than would otherwise have been possible. repulsive as some of these features now are, they have helped in their time to nourish the general belief in a supernatural order, and so to strengthen the general idea to which they were affiliated. footnotes: [ ] _the future of science_, p. . [ ] _lost and hostile gospels_, preface, p. . [ ] see baring-gould's _study of st. paul_, pp. - . [ ] see hepworth dixon's curious work, _spiritual wives_, , vols. [ ] _study of st. paul_, p. . [ ] _history of european morals_, i. p. . [ ] cutten, _psychological christianity_, p. . [ ] sanger, _history of prostitution_, p. . [ ] see blunt's _dictionary of sects_, art. "manichæans." [ ] _de civitate dei_, ii. . [ ] mosheim, _cent. _, chap. v. sec. . [ ] _dictionary of sects_, p. . [ ] lea, _hist. of sacerdotal celibacy_, , p. . [ ] cited by michelet, _priests, women, and families_, p. . [ ] _spiritual wives_, ii. pp. - . [ ] _spiritual wives_, pp. - , . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] _the russian church and russian dissent_, p. . [ ] lea, _hist. of sacerdotal celibacy_, p. . [ ] _visit to the russian empire_, i. p. . merejkowski, in his historical novel, _peter and alexis_, gives a more detailed account of the sexual ceremonies of this sect. see also heard's description, _russian church_, p. . [ ] _russian church and russian dissent_, p. . chapter seven conversion from what has been already said, it should be clear that a complete understanding of religious phenomena--whether legitimately or wrongly so called--involves acquaintance with a number of factors that are not usually called religious. man's religious beliefs are usually a very composite product; they are built up from a number of states of feeling and mental convictions, some of which have only an accidental connection with the religious idea itself. unfortunately, the training given to professional religious teachers rarely equips them for dealing with religion from the scientific point of view. their training gives them a knowledge of several ancient languages, makes them acquainted with the rise and fall of certain doctrines, the nature of church ritual and the like, all of which, while interesting enough in themselves, give little more genuine enlightenment than a knowledge of the dates of english monarchs provides of the character of genuine historic processes. one writer pertinently asks:-- "what does the ordinary seminary graduate know of the histology, anatomy, and physiology of the soul? absolutely nothing. he must stumble along through years of trying experience and look back over countless mistakes before he understands these things even in a general way. what does the ordinary graduate understand about doubt? it is all classed together, whether in adolescents or in hardened sinners, and one dose is applied. what does the graduate know about sexuality, so closely allied with certain forms of religious manifestations? what about ecstasy, in its various forms, the numerous methods of faith cure thrust upon an illiterate but credulous people, or the significance or insignificance of visions and dreams?"[ ] it is, indeed, not too much to say that a theological training tends to prevent a rational comprehension of religion in both its normal and abnormal manifestations. religious phenomena are not affiliated to phenomena as a whole; they are treated as quite distinct from the rest of life, possessing both an independent origin and justification. the consequence is that what are usually called studies of religion move round and round the same circle of ideas, and a revolution is mistaken for progress. genuine enlightenment has come to us from men who have attacked the subject from a quite different point of view. they recognised that whether the religious idea was accepted as true or rejected as false, it could not be separated from that host of ideas and beliefs which make up the psychological side of the social structure. it was to be studied as a piece of natural history first of all. whether it involved more than this they left to be settled later. it cannot be said that they belittled the _power_ of religion; on the contrary, the investigations showed it to be one of the most potent of the forces that shape social institutions. but they demonstrated the absurdity of placing religion in a category of its own. as an objective fact, they showed that religion was subject to the same forces that determine the form of other objective facts. as a culture fact, they traced its connection with corresponding phases of social development; and as a psychological fact, they demonstrated its workings to be in harmony with workings of normal psychological laws. five thousand years of theological study had left the world as ignorant of the nature of religious phenomena as it was in the days of ancient chaldea. fifty years of scientific study has served to make at least a broad path through what was hitherto an impenetrable jungle. what has been said holds with peculiar force of the subject of conversion. this is not a phenomenon peculiar to christianity, for initiation and conversion accompanies religion in all its phases. i do not think that it is peculiar to religion even as a whole. a sudden discharge of feeling in a special direction leading to a changed attitude, more or less permanent towards life, may be seen in connection with the non-religious life, although it fails to receive the attention bestowed on changes that are connected with religion. but if conversion is not a peculiarly christian phenomenon, one school of theologians, at least, has raised it to a position of peculiar eminence in connection with christianity. they have taken it to be the mark of a person who has attained spiritual manhood, and have laid down elaborate rules for its achievement. many theologians will agree that this has been almost wholly disastrous. on the one side, conversion has been dwelt upon as a cataclysmal epoch in a person's life, produced, negatively, by an act of self-surrender, and, positively, by a supernatural act of grace. this has had the effect of blinding people to the real nature of the process, and has led to certain evil consequences that must always accompany attempts at wholesale conversion. on the other hand, it has given rise to a class of professional evangelists who count their trophies in 'souls' as a red indian might count scalps, and who are ignorant of nearly everything except the art of working upon the emotions of a crowd of more or less uncultured people. here, for instance, is an account of an american evangelist and ex-prize fighter, and evidently a great favourite with certain sections of the religious public in america. the account is cited by dr. cutten from a local paper, illinois:-- " converts, in a day. total gift to mr. sunday, $ , . greatest revival in history. will attract the attention of the religious world. sermon on 'booze,' the great effort of the revival! these are all headlines to the report of the meeting, which covers six columns--evidently a response to the interest shown in 'billy' sunday's meetings. the sermon on 'booze' is given in full, and the physical exertions of the preacher described in detail. he began with his coat, vest, tie, and collar off. in a few moments his shirt and undershirt were gaping open to the waist, and the muscles of his neck and chest were seen working like those in the arm of a blacksmith, while perspiration poured from every pore. his clothing was soaked, as if a hose had been turned on him. he strained, and twisted, and reached up and down. once he was on the floor for just a second, in the attitude of crawling, to show that all crime crawled out of the saloon; then he was on his feet as quickly as a cat could jump. at the end of forty-five minutes he mounted a chair, reached high, as he shouted, then again was on the floor, and dropped prostrate to illustrate a story of a drunken man, bounded to his feet again as if steel springs filled that lithe, slender, lightning-like body. he generally breaks a common kitchen chair in this sermon, and this came after a terrible effort, with eyes flashing, face scowling, the picture of hate. he whirled the chair over his head, smashed the chair to the platform floor, whirled the shattered wreck in the air again, and threw it to the ground in front of the pulpit. in two minutes men from the front row were tearing the wreck to pieces and dividing it up--a round here, a leg there, a piece of the back to another, and so on. later, men carried away in cheering could be seen in the audience waving those chair fragments in the air." this is, of course, an extreme case, although it is but an exaggeration of methods in common use among these professional revivalists. the whole aim and purpose of these men is to arouse in the audience a high emotional tension, and any means is acceptable that succeeds in doing this. on the part of the congregation a large portion go for the express purpose of indulging in an emotional debauch. many attend revival after revival, living over again the debauch of the last, and treasuring lively expectations of the next. between these and the victim of alcohol tasting again his last 'burst,' and seeking opportunities for another, there is really little moral or psychological distinction. the social consequences of these engineered revivals have never been fully worked out, but when it is done by some competent person, the conclusions will be a revelation to many. one thing is certain: to expect really useful social results from such methods is verily to look to gather grapes from thistles. during recent years the phenomena of religious conversion have been studied in a more scientific spirit.[ ] statistics have been compiled and analysed, the frames of mind attendant on conversion arranged and studied, with the result that the salient features are to be discerned by all who approach the study of the subject with a little detachment of mind. one outstanding feature of this more scientific enquiry into the nature of conversion has been to demonstrate that it is almost exclusively a phenomenon of puberty and adolescence. mr. hall has compiled a lengthy list of the ages at which noted religious characters experienced what is known as conversion.[ ] from this i take the following examples. religious conviction came to st. thekla at the age of , to st. agnes at , st. antony at , martin of tours at , euphrasia at , benedict at , cuthbert at , st. bernard at , st. dominic at , st. collette at , st. catherine at , st. teresa at , st. francis of sales at . in his _life of jesus_, keim also remarks that although some of the disciples may have been married, most of them were probably about twenty years of age.[ ] professor starbuck, placing on one side both historical and anthropological aspects, set himself the task of examining cases of the present day. a paper was sent out asking various questions as to age, state of health, frame of mind, before, during, and following conversion. the questions were sent to male and female members of different religious denominations. in reply, papers were filled up and returned. one result of a scrutiny of these returns was to show that the age at which religious conversion was experienced began as early as or years, it increased gradually till or , then a more rapid increase till or , a decline increasing in rapidity to the age of , and its practical disappearance beyond the age of . in girls, the period of conversion antedates that of boys by about two years.[ ] starbuck's conclusion is the perfectly valid one that conversion "belongs almost exclusively to the years between and ," and is distinctly a phenomenon of adolescence. this conclusion would be borne out by a study of almost any revival crusade. thus a few years ago-- --england received a visit from the american evangelist, dr. torrey. at the conclusion of his visit, sir robertson nicol invited opinions from ministers in the towns visited by torrey, and published the replies in his paper, _the british weekly_, on october . there was no attempt whatever to elicit the ages of the reported converts; the enquiry was directed to the point of ascertaining whether these engineered missions had a beneficial effect on church life, or the reverse. but incidentally the ages of the converts were given in some cases, and one may safely assume that in the reports where no age was mentioned the facts, if disclosed, would not run counter to the generalisation above given. the rev. t. towers, birmingham, noted that out of reported converts were children. rev. a. le gros, rugby, reported: "a number of our youngest members, especially amongst the young girls, were amongst those who professed conversion." rev. h. singleton, smethwick, says: "the bulk of the names sent to me were those of children under thirteen years of age." rev. w. g. percival, lozells congregational church, says of the 'inquiry' meeting held after the preaching: "the dear little things followed one another for inquiry until the place was a scene of utter confusion." reports of a similar nature came from other places. the ages were pointed out quite incidentally; conversions of youths of or would not excite comment with these. were the ages of all given, we should, without doubt, find them fall into line with starbuck's and hall's figures. professor james quite accepts this view of conversion. the conclusion, he says, "would seem to be the only sound one: conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity."[ ] conversion, in the sense of a change from "the child's small universe" to the large world of human society, may be a normal fact in life, but the really essential fact in the enquiry is not the fact of growth, but growth in a specific direction. why should this normal change from childhood to maturity be the period during which _religious_ conversion is experienced? this question is not only ignored by professor james, it is made more confused by his method of stating it. of course, if all people experienced this religious conviction, as all people undergo other changes at adolescence, the question would be simplified. but this is obviously not the case. a large number of people never experience it so long as they are only brought into contact with ordinary social forces. special circumstances seem usually to be required to rouse this sense of religious conviction. nearly every story of conversion turns upon something unusual, unexpected, or dramatic occurring as the exciting cause. the question is, therefore, why should the line of growth, general with all at adolescence, be, in the case of some, diverted into religious channels? a study of the subject from this point of view will, i think, show that conversion is only normal in the sense that in an environment where religious influences are powerful each person is normally exposed to it. those on whom the religious influence fails to operate experience the change from childhood to adolescence, on to complete maturity, without their nature evincing any lack of completeness. this is the vital truth of which professor james loses sight, and it is ignored by the vast majority of writers who treat of the subject. leaving, for a while, the statistical view of conversion, we may turn to its other aspects. by the more advanced of religious teachers to-day the developments attendant on adolescence are taken as supplying no more than a favourable occasion for directing mind and emotion to definite religious conviction. here the connection is admittedly more or less accidental. but by the great majority of theologians there is assumed a direct supernatural influence in the states of mind developed during adolescence. in more primitive times the connection is of a yet closer character. puberty does not at this stage represent what a modern would call an awakening of the religious consciousness, but a direct impingement of supernatural influence. from one point of view this conception still remains part of all religious systems, however overlaid it may be with modern ideas concerning sexual maturity. and we have, as a mere matter of historic fact, a whole series of customs commencing with the initiatory customs of savages and running right on to the modern practice of confirmation. in a previous chapter it was pointed out what is the savage state of mind in relation to the beginnings of sex life as it is manifested in both boys and girls. adolescence does not, to the primitive mind, serve as an occasion for the creation of an interest in the religious life, it is the sign of direct supernatural influence. one consequence of this is the rise of more or less elaborate ceremonials marking the initiation of youth into direct communion with the spiritual forces that govern tribal life.[ ] among the polynesians tattooing forms part of the religious ceremony, and during the time the marks are healing the boy is taboo to the rest of the tribe, owing to his having been touched by the gods. with the north american indians the following ceremony seems characteristic:-- "when a boy has attained the age of fourteen or fifteen years he absents himself from his father's lodge, lying on the ground in some remote or secluded spot, crying to the great spirit, and fasting the whole time. during this period of peril and abstinence, when he falls asleep, the first animal, bird, or reptile, of which he dreams, he considers the great spirit has designated for his mysterious protector through life."[ ] similar ceremonies are described by livingstone as existing among the south african tribes. these customs are too widespread, and bear too great a similarity to be described with reference to many races. the variations are unimportant, and such as they are they may be studied in the pages of hall, frazer, and numerous other writers. with girls the measures adopted are of a more elaborate character than is the case with boys, because, for reasons already stated, the occurrence of puberty in girls gives the supernatural act a more startling and significant character. hence the strict seclusion of girls almost universally practised among uncivilised peoples. the precautions taken indicate, as hartland points out, that they are at this period not merely charged with a malign influence, but are peculiarly susceptible to the onset of powers other than human. and with a modification of language the same idea has persisted down to our time, even amongst those who would reject with indignation the statement that savage ideas concerning the nature of puberty form the real basis of their own mental attitude. this truth cannot be too strongly emphasised. to ignore it is to miss the whole significance of continuity in human institutions and ideas. the ceremonies described do, of course, gather round the fact of sexual development, but they are not concerned with the sexual life, as such. it is sex as a supernatural manifestation that is the vital feature of the situation. the governing idea is that puberty marks the direct association of the individual with a spiritual world to the influence of which the functional changes are due. as more accurate conceptions are formed, the older and inaccurate one is not altogether discarded. it has become incarnate in ceremonies, it is part of the traditional psychic life of the people, and the change is one of transformation rather than of eradication. in later cultural stages the physiological nature of the changes are seen, but they are expressed in terms of religion. such expressions as "the soul's awareness of god," "the dawning consciousness of religion," etc., take the place of the earlier and more direct animistic interpretation. but the essential misinterpretation is retained, disguised from careless or uninformed people by the use of a modified terminology. but in substance the use made of puberty by organised religious forces remains the same throughout. we have the same absence of a rational explanation in both instances. in the one because the state of knowledge makes any other impossible; in the other because tradition, self-interest, and prejudice prevent its use. it is not only in his physical structure that man carries reminiscences of a lower form of life; such reminders are quite as plentiful in his mental life, and in social institutions. even with many who perceive the mechanism of conversion its real significance is often missed. for the important thing is, not that some people express the changes incident to adolescence in terms of religion, but that many do not, and also that these find complete satisfaction along lines of æsthetic, intellectual, or social interest. yet one often finds it assumed that the difference between the two classes is explained by assuming a certain lack of 'spiritual' development in the non-religious class. as stated, this is often perilously near to impertinence, and in any case is little better than the language of a charlatan. in the same way, the use of amatory phraseology is often treated as the intrusion of the sex element in a sphere in which it has no proper place. enough has already been said to furnish good grounds for believing that there is much more than this in the phenomenon, and that one is justified in treating it as symptomatic of the operation of forces of the nature of which the subject is quite unaware. the only explanation of the facts already cited is that a misinterpretation of sexual states lies at the heart of the question. no other hypothesis covers the facts; no other hypothesis will explain why the larger number of people should find complete development in activities that lie outside the field of religion. how easy it is to see the truth and distort it in the stating may be seen in the following passage:-- "passing over the fact that the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of 'susceptibility,' we may take as an example of the intrusion or the persistence of the sexual elements in conditions of a non-sexual kind the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement. the appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to overcome the hesitancy of the female. in each case the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic, and pleading kind. in the effort to make a moral adjustment, it consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual manifestations."[ ] the important questions, why religion should so powerfully appeal to people at adolescence, why its strength should reside so largely in the appeal to feelings associated with sexual development, and why conversion should be so rarely experienced when the period of sexual crisis is past, are quite ignored by mr. thomas. yet it is precisely these questions that call most loudly for answers, and which, i believe, contain the key of the situation. from many points of view adolescence is perhaps the most important epoch in the life of every individual. it is a time of great and significant organic growth, with the development of new organs and functions, and a corresponding transformation of both the emotional and intellectual output. so far as the brain, the most important organ of all, is concerned, one may safely say that before puberty its main function has been acquisition. after puberty vast tracts of brain tissue become active, and an era of rapid development sets in. there is a rapid growth of new nerve connections which occasions both physiological and psychological unrest.[ ] an important point to bear in mind, also, is that all periods of rapid development involve conditions of relative instability--one is, in fact, only the obverse side of the other. dr. mercier says that with girls "more or less decided manifestations of hysteria are the rule," and with both sexes this instability involves a peculiar susceptibility to suggestions and impressions. accompanying the purely physical changes the mental and emotional nature undergoes what is little less than a transformation. there is less direct concern with self, and a more conscious concern with others. there is a craving for sympathy, for fellowship, a tendency to look at oneself from the outside, so to speak, a susceptibility to sights and sounds and impressions that formerly had little influence. each one is conscious of new desires, new attractions, expressed often only in a vague feeling of unrest, with a desire, half shy because half conscious, for the company of the opposite sex. the childish desire for protection weakens; the more mature desire to protect others begins to express itself. now, the whole significance of these changes, physical and mental, is fundamentally sexual and social. human life, it may be said, has a twofold aspect. as a mere animal organism, there is the perpetuation of the species, which nature secures by the mere force of the sex impulse. as a human being, he is part of a social structure, cell in the social tissue, to use leslie stephen's expressive phrase. and in this direction nature secures what is necessary by the presence of impulses and cravings as imperious as, and even more permanent than, those of mere sex. of course, in practice these two things operate together. by a process of selection, the anti-social character is weeded out, and the two sets of feelings work together in harmony for the furtherance and the development of the life of the species. the species is perpetuated in the interests of society; society is perpetuated in the interests of the species. further, it is part of the natural 'plan' that there shall be developed impulses and capacities suitable to each phase of life as it emerges. thus it has been shown that the lengthening of infancy--that is, the prolongation of the time during which the young human being is dependent upon its parents for support and protection--is nature's method of developing to a greater degree the capacity of the human animal for more complex adjustment. instead of being launched on the world with a number of instincts practically fully developed, and so capable of attending to its own needs almost as soon as born, man is born with few instincts, and a great capacity for education enabling him to adjust his conduct to the demands of an environment constantly increasing in complexity. in the same way it has been shown that the instinct for play, practically universal throughout the whole of the animal world, is nature's method of preparing the young for the more serious business of nature.[ ] it is, therefore, only in line with what is found to be true elsewhere that the changes incident to puberty should receive their rational interpretation in the necessities of social life. that these necessities should be met largely by the play of unreasoning impulse is, again, quite in line with what occurs in other directions. the insistent pressure of social life for thousands of generations secures the emergence of needs of the true nature of which the individual may be ignorant. in no other way, in fact, could the persistence of the species and of human society be secured. the whole significance, then, of puberty and adolescence is the entry of the individual into the larger life of the race. it is, too, a statement beyond reasonable dispute that if we eliminate religion altogether from the environment there is not a single feeling experienced at adolescence, not a single intellectual craving, that would not undergo full development and receive complete satisfaction. the proof of the truth of this is that it occurs in a large number of cases. sacrifice, the craving for the ideal, with every other feeling associated by many with religion, exist in connection with non-religious phases of life. it is idle to argue that some people have a craving for religion, and nothing but religion will satisfy them. where an individual is in complete ignorance of the nature and significance of his own development, and those around him no better informed; where, moreover, there are others in a position of authority ready with a special interpretation, it is not surprising if the religious explanation is accepted as the genuine and only one. but in reality a sound judgment is formed, not on the basis of what some declare they cannot do without, but on the basis of what others actually do without, and suffer no observable loss in consequence. we do not estimate the value of alcohol on the basis of those who declare they cannot do without it. the true test is found in those who abstain from its use. so, also, in the case of religion. that some, even the majority, declare that religious belief is essential to their welfare, proves little or nothing. human nature being what it is, and the history of society being what it is, it would be surprising were it otherwise. there is much greater significance in so large a number of people finding complete satisfaction in purely secular activities. after what has been said of the misinterpretation of mental and emotional states in terms of religious belief, it is not surprising to find a writer, a clergyman, and one with experience of growing boys, express himself as follows:-- "my experience confirms the opinion of the psychologists that most boys of the public school age have a strongly mystical tendency. this is to be expected, on account of the great emotional development of that period of life. but it is obscured by the fact that the boy is both unwilling and unable to give any verbal expression to this tendency. he is unwilling because it is something very new and curious in his experience; he is often a little frightened of it, and he is exceedingly frightened of other people's contempt for it. and he is unable, because the words he is accustomed to use are valueless in this connection, and he feels priggish if he tries to use others.... but, though unexplained, the mystical tendency is there, and should be appealed to and developed."[ ] now, clearly, all that can be reasonably meant by saying that a boy of, apparently, from to has a mystical tendency, is that the physiological changes incident to puberty are accompanied by a mass of feeling of a vague and formless character. naturally, his boyish experience is unable to furnish him with the means of giving adequate expression to his feelings. that can only come with the experience of maturity. and with equal inevitability he is at the mercy of the explanation furnished him by those whom he regards as his teachers and guides. when he is told that this element of 'mysticism' is the awakening of religion in his soul, he accepts the explanation precisely as he accepts explanations of other things. that this 'mystical tendency' should be appealed to and developed is a statement open to very great doubt. it should rather be explained, not perhaps in a brutally frank manner, but in a way that would lead the boy to see himself as an organic part of society, with definite duties and obligations. if this were done, adolescence might provide us with the raw material for a much greater number of useful and intelligent citizens than it does at present. the true nature of the process, so elaborately misunderstood by dr. temple, is clearly outlined by dr. mercier:-- "in connection with normal development, a large body of vague and formless feeling arises, and, until experience gives it shape, the possessor remains ignorant of the source and nature of the feeling. if the circumstances are appropriate for the natural outlet and expression of the activities, they are expressed in affection, and are a source of health and strength to the possessor. but if no such outlet exists, the vague, voluminous, formless feelings are referred to an occasion that is vague, voluminous, and wanting in definite form, they are ascribed to the direct influence of the deity, and assume a place in religious emotion."[ ] leaving this aspect of the subject for a time, let us look more closely at the process of conversion. it has already been pointed out that one great feature of adolescence is susceptibility to impressions and suggestions. one is not surprised to find, therefore, that in starbuck's collection of cases per cent. of the females and per cent. of the males described their conversion as being directly due to imitation, social pressure, and example. if we were to add to these the cases where unconscious imitation and suggestion is at work, the proportion would be much greater. religion, like dress, has its modes, and imitation will occur in the one direction as readily as in the other. nothing is more striking in the records of conversion than the monotony of the language used to describe the feelings experienced. it is exactly as though the converts had been learning a regular catechism, as in a way they have been. young boys and girls will confess their sinful state in language identical with that used by one who has actually lived a career of vice and crime. others of an aggressively commonplace character will use the language of exalted mysticism suitable to an augustine or a jacob boehme. in these cases we have not identity of feeling finding expression in identity of language; it is pure imitation and suggestion without the least regard to the fitness of the language employed. the full power of suggestion would be more fitly considered in connection with waves of religious feeling that have assumed an epidemic form; but it will not be out of place here to call attention to this factor in such a recent case as the outbreaks in wales under the leadership of persons such as evan roberts. quite apart from the suggestion and imitation operating in the gatherings themselves, it is plain that many went to the meetings quite prepared to act in accordance with what had gone before. newspapers had published elaborate reports of the 'scenes,' certain manifestations were recognised as signs of the "workings of the spirit," with the result that all these operated as powerful suggestions, particularly with those of a hysterical disposition. and behind this particular revival there were the traditions of other revivals, all of which had created a heritage as coercive as any purely social tradition. a crowd of people in a state of eager expectancy, exposed to the assaults of a preacher skilled in rousing their emotion to fever pitch, is naturally ready to see and hear things that none would see and hear in their normal moments. no better field for the study of crowd psychology, particularly at the point at which it merges into the abnormal, could be imagined than the ordinary revival. in america these revival out breaks seem to assume a much more extravagant form than with us. mr. stanley hall, for example, thus describes a kentucky camp meeting in which the prevailing term of spiritual manifestation was that of 'jerking.' quoting from an eye-witness, he says:-- "the crowd swarmed all night round the preacher, singing, shouting, laughing, some plunging wildly over stumps and benches into the forest, shouting 'lost, lost!' others leaping and bounding about like live fish out of water; others rolling over and over on the ground for hours; others lying on the ground and talking when they could not move; and yet others beating the ground with their heels. as the excitement increased, it grew more morbid and took the form of 'jerkings,' or in others the holy laugh. the jerks began with the head, which was thrown violently from side to side so rapidly that the features were blurred and the hair almost seemed to snap, and when the sufferer struck an obstacle and fell he would bounce about like a ball. saplings were sometimes cut breast high for the people to jerk by. in one place the earth about the roots of one of them was kicked about as though by the feet of a horse stamping flies. one sufferer mounted his horse to ride away when the jerks threw him to the earth, whence he rose a christian. a lad, who feigned illness to stay away, was dragged there by the spirit and his head dashed against the wall till he had to pray. a sceptic who cursed and swore was crushed by a falling tree. men fancied themselves dogs, and gathered round a tree barking and 'treeing the devil.' they saw visions and dreamed dreams, and as the revival waned, it left a crop of nervous and hysterical disorders in its wake."[ ] we have nothing quite so extreme as this in british revivals, but the home phenomena are not substantially different in nature. a medical observer of some of the earliest methodist revivals thus describes the symptoms of those who were subject to 'divine' seizures under the influence of wesley and his immediate followers:-- "there came on first a feeling of faintness, with rigor and a sense of weight at the pit of the stomach; soon after which the patient cried out as though in the agonies of labour. the convulsions then began, first showing themselves in the muscles of the eyelids, though the eyes themselves were fixed and staring. the most frightful contortions of the countenance followed, and the convulsions now took their course downwards, so that the muscles of the trunk and neck were affected, causing a sobbing respiration, which was performed with great effort. tremors and agitations ensued, and the patients screamed out violently, and tossed their heads from side to side. as the complaint increased, it seized the arms, and its victims beat their breasts, clasped their hands, and made all sorts of strange noises." to the non-medical religious observer the scenes produced a different impression, thus:-- "when the power of religion began to be spoken of, the presence of god really filled the place.... the greatest number of them who cried or fell were men; but some women and several children felt the power of the same almighty spirit, and seemed just sinking into hell. this occasioned a mixture of sounds, some shrieking, some roaring aloud. the most general was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life; and, indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter anguish.... i stood on a pew seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman; but in a moment, while he seemed to think of nothing less, down he dropt with a violence inconceivable. the adjoining pews seemed shook with his fall. i heard afterwards the stamping of his feet ready to break the boards as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew.... among the children who felt the arrows of the almighty, i saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his fellows, and seemed, in his agony, to struggle with the strength of a grown man. his face was red as scarlet; and almost all on whom god laid his hand turned either very red or almost black."[ ] in other instances connected with the same movement, a girl is described as "lying on the floor as one dead." one woman "tore up the ground with her hands, filling them with dust and with the hard-trodden grass"; another "roared and screamed in dreadful agony." a child, seven years old, "saw visions, and astonished the neighbours with her awful manner of relating them." john wesley personally interviewed a number of the people seized in this manner, and was quite convinced of the supernatural nature of the attacks. he said that he had "generally observed more or less of these outward symptoms to attend the beginning of a general work of god," although he admitted that in some cases "satan mimicked god's work in order to discredit the whole work." but whether of god or satan there was no question of their supernatural character. moreover, whatever may be one's opinion of these outbreaks, there is one fact that stands out clear and indisputable. this is that the methodist revival owed a great deal of its vitality--as is also the case with other religious movements--to phenomena of a distinctly pathologic nature. subtract from these movements all phenomena of the class indicated, and such phrases as 'the revival fire' become meaningless. right through history religious conviction has been gained in innumerable cases by the operation of factors that a more accurate knowledge finds can be explained without any reference whatever to supernatural forces. lest the above examples be dismissed as belonging to an old order of things, i subjoin the following account--from a missionary--of a recent revival scene in india:-- "there were people ... on the floor fairly writhing over the realisation of sin as it came over them.... saturday we were favoured with a wonderful manifestation of the spirit. one of the older girls who had had a remarkable experience, went into a trance, with her head thrown back, her arms folded, and motionless, except for a slight movement of her foot. she seemed to be seeing something wonderful, for she would marvel at it, and then laugh excitedly.... one girl rushed to the back of the vestibule and, lying across a bench, with her head and hands against the wall, she fairly writhed in agony for two hours before peace came to her."[ ] i do not know on what grounds we are justified in calling civilised people who chronicle these outbreaks as "a wonderful manifestation of the spirit." civilised in other respects, in relation to other matters, they may be. civilised in relation to this particular matter they certainly are not. their viewpoint is precisely that of the lowest tribe of savages. savages, indeed, could not do more; our 'civilised' missionaries do no less. tylor well says that "such descriptions carry us far back in the history of the human mind, showing modern men still in ignorant sincerity producing the very fits and swoons to which for untold ages savage tribes have given religious import. these manifestations in modern europe indeed form part of a revival of religion, the religion of mental disease."[ ] the truth is that the appeals usually made to induce conversion, and the methods adopted, tend to develop a morbid state of mind, which very easily passes into the pathological. a too insistent habit of introspection is always dangerous, and the danger is heightened when it takes the form of religious brooding. in dr. starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. this may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. it does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. the following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both points. i give in brackets the ages of the subjects where stated:-- "i felt the wrath of god resting on me. i called on him for aid, and felt my sins forgiven" ( ). "i couldn't eat, and would lie awake all night." "often, very often, i cried myself to sleep" ( ). "hymns would sound in my ears as if sung" ( ). "i had visions of christ saying to me, come to me, my child" ( ). "just before conversion i was walking along a pathway, thinking of religious matters, when suddenly the word h-e-l-l was spelled out five yards ahead of me" ( ). "i felt a touch of the divine one, and a voice said 'thy sins are forgiven thee; arise and go in peace'" ( ). "the thoughts of my condition were terrible" ( ). "for three months it seemed as if god's spirit had withdrawn from me. fear took hold of me. for a week i was on the border of despair" ( ). "a sense of sinfulness and estrangement from god grew daily" ( ). "everything went wrong with me; it felt like sunday all the time" ( ). "i felt that something terrible was going to happen" ( ). "i fell on my face by a bench and tried to pray. every time i would call on god something like a man's hand would strangle me by choking. i thought i would surely die if i could not get help. i made one final effort to call on god for mercy if i did strangle and die, and the last i remember at that time was falling back on the ground with that unseen hand on my throat. when i came to myself there was a crowd around praising god." a crowd around praising god! for all substantial purposes this last might be the description of a state of affairs in central africa instead of an occurrence in a country that claims to be civilised. it is not surprising that so great an authority as sir t. s. clouston gives an emphatic warning against revival services and unusual religious meetings, which should "on no account be attended by persons with weak heads, excitable dispositions, and neurotic constitutions."[ ] unfortunately it is precisely these classes for whom they possess the greatest attractions, and from whom the larger number of chronicled cases are drawn. the excitement of the revival meeting is as fatal an attraction to them as the dram is to the confirmed alcoholist; and if the ill-consequences are neither so immediately discernible nor as repulsive in character, they are none the less present in a large number of cases. the emotional strain to which the organism is subjected occurs, as the ages of the converts show, precisely at the time when it is least able to bear it safely. the main characteristic of adolescence is instability, physical, emotional, and intellectual. it is a time of stress and strain, of the formation of new feelings and associations and desires that crave for expression and gratification. the instability of the organic conditions is evidenced by the large proportion of nervous disorders that occur during adolescence. adolescent insanity is a well-known form of mania, although it is usually of brief duration. sir t. s. clouston, in his _neuroses of development_, gives a long list of complaints attendant on adolescence, and sir w. r. gowers, dealing with cases of epilepsy, points out that "three-quarters of the cases of epilepsy begin under twenty years, and nearly half ( per cent.) between ten and twenty, the maximum being at fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen." of hysteria, the same writer points out that of the total cases per cent. occurs from ten to twenty years of age, per cent. from twenty to thirty, and only per cent. from thirty to forty.[ ] the peculiar danger, then, of the modern appeal for conversion is that it is couched in a form likely to do the minimum of good and the maximum of harm. where religion exists as a normally operative factor of the environment--as in lower stages of culture--the danger is avoided, because no special machinery is required to bring about religious conviction. the general social life secures this. but at a later stage, when the religious and secular aspects of life become separated, with a growing preponderance of the latter, religion must be, as it were, specially and forcibly introduced. whether for good or ill, it is a disturbing force. it strives to divert the developing organic energies into a new channel. to effect this, it plays upon the emotions to an altogether dangerous extent, in complete ignorance of the nature of the passions excited. in the older form of the religious appeal, that in which fear was the chief emotion aroused, it is now generally conceded that the consequences were wholly bad. but under any form the emotional appeal is fraught with danger, since the tendency is for it to bring out unsuspected weaknesses in other directions. sir w. r. gowers wisely points out that "mental emotion--fright, excitement, anxiety--is the most potent cause of epilepsy," which is accounted for by bearing in mind "the profoundly disturbing effect of alarm on the nervous system, deranging as it does almost every function of the nervous system." persons with predispositions to nervous disorders may pass with safety through the period of adolescence so long as their circumstances provide opportunities for healthy occupation with no undue emotional strain. but let the former be lacking, and the latter danger is always present. the hidden weakness develops, and injury more or less permanent follows. there is hardly a qualified medical authority in the country who would deny the truth of what has been said, although many do not care to speak out in relation to religious matters. but all would doubtless agree with dr. mercier that "every revival is attended by its crop of cases of insanity, which are the more numerous as the revival is more fervent and long continued."[ ] something must be said on the moral character of conversions in general. this is, naturally, greatly exaggerated, often deliberately so. in the first place, confessions of 'sinfulness' in a pre-conversion state, when made by youths of both sexes, may be dismissed as quite worthless. they are merely using the language placed in their mouths by professional evangelists, and the similarity of the confessions carry their own condemnation. leading a sinful, or even a vicious life, usually means no more than visiting a theatre, or a music hall, or playing cards, or non-attendance at church, or not troubling about religious doctrines. very often the vague feeling of restlessness incident to adolescence is interpreted as due to sin or estrangement from god, and after conversion the convert is, for purposes of self-glorification, given to magnify the benefits and comforts derived from his religious convictions. the magnitude of the change increases the value of the convert, and with well-known characters there has been as great an exaggeration of vices before conversion as of virtues subsequently. the way in which evangelical christianity has created a life of the wildest dissipation for the earlier years of john bunyan is an instructive instance of this procedure. so far as older converts are concerned, everyone of balanced judgment will regard stories of conversion from extreme vice to extreme virtue with the greatest suspicion. character does not change suddenly, although there may be cases of 'sports' in the moral world as elsewhere. where some modification of conduct, but hardly of character, results, the machinery is very obvious, and does not in the least necessitate an appeal to the intrusion of a supernatural influence for an explanation. the religious gathering opens--as any non-religious meeting may open--a new circle of associates with different ideals and standards of value. so long as the newcomer is desirous of retaining the respect of his fresh associates, so long he will try to act as they act and think as they think. there will be a change of conduct, but not, as i have said, of character. those who look closely will find the same character still active. the mean character remains mean, the untruthful one remains untruthful. the only difference is that these qualities will be expressed in a different form. moreover, the same thing may be seen occurring quite apart from religion. every association of men and women exerts precisely the same influence. in the army, a regiment that has a reputation for steadiness and sobriety develops these qualities in all who enter it. regiments with a reputation for opposite qualities do not fail to convert newcomers. a workshop, a club, a profession, exerts a precisely similar influence. one man finds inspiration in the bible and another in the newgate calendar. a man will usually be guided by the ideals of his associates, whether these ideals be those of a thieves' kitchen or of a philanthropic institution. this only means that each individual is subject to the influence of the group spirit. for good and evil this is one of the deepest and most pregnant facts of human nature. the utilisation and distortion of this fact in the interests of religious organisations has served to prevent its general recognition and the wise use of it by the community at large. finally, it has to be borne in mind, in view of the data given above, that conversion is experienced by the individual at that period of life when the more social side of human nature is beginning to find expression. in this way the natural growth from the small world of childhood to the larger world of adult humanity is taken advantage of by religion, and the process of inevitable growth is attributed to the influence of religious belief. in itself the phenomenon is in no degree religious, but wholly social. the process is well enough described by starbuck in the following passage--although there are certain quite unnecessary theological implications:-- "conversion is the surrender of the personal will to be guided by the larger forces of which it is a part. these two aspects are often mingled. in both there is much in common. there is a sudden revelation and recognition of a higher order than that of the personal will. the sympathies follow the direction of the new insight, and the convert transfers the centre of life and activity from the part to the whole. with new insight comes new beauty. beauty and worth awaken love--love for parents, kindred, kind, society, cosmic order, truth, and spiritual life. the individual learns to transfer himself from a centre of self-activity into an organ of revelation of universal being, and to live a life of affection for and oneness with the larger life outside. as a necessary condition of the spiritual awakening is the birth of fresh activity and of a larger self-consciousness, which often assert themselves as the dominant element in consciousness."[ ] adolescence is the golden period of life, because it is the age in which the formative influences effect their strongest and most permanent impressions. but this susceptibility, while pregnant with promise, is because of this susceptibility likewise fraught with the possibilities of danger. the developing qualities of mind need to be wisely and carefully guided; and it is little short of criminal that at this critical juncture so many young people should be handed over to the ignorant ministrations of professional evangelism. the true sociological significance of the development is ignored, and it is small wonder that, having wasted this impressionable period, so many people should go through life with a quite rudimentary sense of social responsibility and duty. an american author, speaking of the connection between certain brutal manifestations in social life in the united states and religious teaching, says:-- "it is well known that lynching in the south is carried on largely by the ignorant and baser elements of the white population. it is also well known that the chief method of religious influence and training of the black man and the ignorant white man is impulsive and emotional revivalism. it is a highly dangerous situation, and deserves the earnest consideration of the ecclesiastical statesmen of all denominations which work in the south. it will be impossible to protect that part of the nation, or any other, from the epidemic madness of the lynching mob if the seeds of it are sown in the sacred soil of religion.... their preachers are great 'soul-savers,' but they lack the practical sense to build up their emotionalised converts into anything that approaches a higher life."[ ] the truth of this passage has a very wide implication. it is not alone true that so long as the lower kind of revivalism is encouraged, we are unconsciously perpetuating certain very ugly manifestations of social life; it is also true that while we give a supernaturalistic interpretation of phenomena that are wholly physiological and sociological in character, we can never make the most of the human material we possess. on the one side we have a deplorable encouragement of unhealthy emotionalism, and on the other a sheer misdirection and misuse of human faculty. the increase of self-consciousness, the craving for sympathy and communion with one's fellows, the impulse to service in the common life of the state, have no genuine connection with religion, although all these qualities are classified as religious, and are utilised by religious organisations. actually and fundamentally they belong to the social side of human nature. as our hands are developed for grasping, and the various organs of the body for their respective functions, so mental and emotional qualities are developed in their due course for a rational social life. biologically and psychologically, male and female are at adolescence entering into a deeper and more enduring relationship with the life of the race. there is no other meaning to the process. naturally enough, the vast majority of people express their developing nature in accordance with the fashion of their environment. if this environmental influence were rationally non-religious, the language would be that of a non-religious philosophy. as, however, supernaturalism, in some form or other, is still a potent force we have a contrary result. it is only here and there that one is found with the inclination or the wit to analyse his or her impulses, and few possess enough knowledge to make the analysis profitable. there is no wonder that concerning many of the most important phenomena of human life we are still little above the level of the fetish worshipper. we may have a more elaborate phraseology, but the old ideas are still operative. the consequence is that each newcomer finds certain ideas and forms of speech ready for his acceptance, and is handed over, bound hand and foot, to influences that are the least capable of sane direction. we do not merely sacrifice our first-born; we immolate the whole of our progeny. the ignorant past plays into the hands of the designing present; the present conspires with the past to rob the future of the good that might result from the growth of a wiser and a better race. were society really enlightened and genuinely civilised, the truth of what has been said would be recognised as soon as stated. it would, indeed, be unnecessary to labour what would then be a generally recognised truth. but the mass of the people are not genuinely enlightened, our civilisation is largely a veneer, and numerous agencies prevent our reaping the full benefit of our available knowledge. thus it happens that in place of an explanation of human qualities in terms of biologic and social evolution, we find current an explanation that is based upon pre-scientific ideas. because our less instructed ancestors accounted for various manifestations of human qualities as due to a supernatural influence, we continue to perpetuate the delusion. we teach youth to express itself in terms of supernaturalism, and then treat the language and the fact as inseparable. in this respect, sociology is passing through a phase from which some of the sciences have finally emerged. in physics and astronomy, for instance, the fact has been separated from the supernatural explanation, and shown to be independent of it. an exploitation of social life in the interests of supernaturalism is still in active operation. it is this that is really the central truth of the situation. and in ignoring this truth we expose a growing generation to the worst possible of educative influences, at a time when a wiser control would be preparing it for an intelligent participation in the serious and enduring work of social organisation. footnotes: [ ] dr. g. b. cutten, _the psychological phenomena of christianity_, pp. - . [ ] the most elaborate study of this character known to the present writer is mr. g. stanley hall's _adolescence_, in two volumes. the bulk of the work is, however, terrifying to some, and the cost prohibitive to many. for the general reader of limited leisure and means, professor starbuck's smaller volume, _the psychology of religion_, presents the salient facts in a brief and satisfactory manner. it is lacking, however, on the anthropological side, a view that is well presented by dr. stanley hall. [ ] see _adolescence_, i. p. . [ ] vol. iii. p. . [ ] _psychology of religion_, chap. iii. hall's figures are given in the second volume of his work, pp. - . [ ] _varieties_, p. . [ ] an elaborate list of these ceremonies in both the savage and civilised worlds has been compiled by mr. hall, ii. chap. xiii. [ ] catlin, _north american indians_, i. p. ; see also ii. p. . [ ] w. i. thomas, _sex and society_, pp. - . [ ] for a good summary, see donaldson's _growth of the brain_, pp. - . [ ] see on this subject the two fine works by karl groos, _the play of animals_, _the play of man_. [ ] w. temple, _repton school sermons_. [ ] _sanity and insanity_, p. . [ ] _adolescence_, ii. pp. - . [ ] southey's _life of wesley_, chap. xxiv. [ ] from _the examiner_ of september , , cited by cutten, p. . [ ] _primitive culture_, ii. p. . [ ] _clinical lectures_, p. . [ ] _manual of diseases of the nervous system_, , pp. and . [ ] _sanity and insanity_, p. . [ ] _psychology of religion_, pp. - . [ ] _primitive traits in religious revivals._ chapter eight religious epidemics under pressure of scientific analysis the old distinction between the individual and society bids fair to break down, or to maintain itself as no more than a convenience of classification. it is now being recognised that a society is something more than a mere aggregate of self-contained units, and that the individual is quite inexplicable apart from the social group. it is the latter which gives the former his individuality. his earliest impressions are derived from the life of the group, and as he grows so he comes more and more under the influence of social forces. the consequence is that the key to a very large part of the phenomena of human nature is to be found in a study of group life. we may abstract the individual for purposes of examination, much as a physiologist may study the heart or the liver apart from the body from which it has been taken. but ultimately it is in relation to the whole that the true significance and value of the part is to be discerned. in this corporate life imitation and suggestion play a powerful part. with children, by far the larger part of their education consists of sheer imitation, nor do adults ever develop beyond its influence. suggestion is a factor that is more operative in youth and maturity than in early childhood, and is exhibited in a thousand and one subtle and unexpected ways. both these forces are essential to an orderly, and to a progressive, social life; but they may just as easily become the cause of movements that are retrogressive, and even anti-social in character. an epidemic of suicide or of murder is as easily initiated as an epidemic of philanthropy. let a person commit suicide in a striking and unusual manner, and there will soon be others following his example. given a favourable environment, there is no idea, however unreal, that will not find advocates; no example, however strange or disgusting, that will not find imitators. the more uniform the society, the more powerful the suggestion, the easier the imitation. that is why a crowd, acting as a crowd, is nearly always made up of people drawn from the same social stratum, each unit already familiar with certain ideals and belief. under such conditions a crowd will assume all the characteristics of a psychological entity. as gustave le bon has pointed out, a crowd will do collectively what none of its constituent units would ever dream of doing singly.[ ] it becomes capable of deeds of heroism or of savage cruelty. it will sacrifice itself or others with indifference. above all, the mere fact of moving in a mass gives the individual a sense of power, a certainty of being in the right that he can--save under exceptional circumstances--never acquire while alone. the intellect is subdued, inhibition is inoperative, the instincts are given free play, and their movement is determined in turn by suggestions not unlike those with which a trained hypnotist influences his subject. in the phenomena of contagion words and symbols play a powerful part. they are both a rallying-point and an outlet for the emotions of a crowd. these words or symbols may be wholly incongruous with the real needs of a people, but provided they are sufficiently familiar they will serve their purpose. and the more primitive the type of mind represented by the mass of the people the more powerfully these symbols operate. shakespeare's portrayal of the crowd in _julius cæsar_ remains eternally true. the skilled orator, playing on old feelings, using familiar terms, and invoking familiar ideas, finds a crowd quite plastic to his hands. it is for these reasons that there is so keen a struggle with political and social parties for a monopoly of good rallying cries, and a readiness to fix objectionable titles on their opponents. patriotism, little englander, jingo, the church in danger, godless education, etc. etc. causes are materially helped or injured by these means. there is little or no consideration given to their justice or reasonableness; it is the image aroused that does the work. psychological epidemics may in some cases be justly called normal in character. that is, they depend upon factors that are always in operation and which form a part of every social structure. a war fever or a commercial panic falls under this head. in other instances they depend upon abnormal conditions, upon the workings, perhaps, of some obscure nervous disease, and are of a pathological description. in yet other cases they represent a mixture of both. in such cases, for example, as that of the medieval flagellants or of the dancing mania, the presence of pathological elements is unmistakable. but neither of these epidemics could have occurred without a certain social preparation, and unless they had called into operation those principles of crowd psychology to which science has within recent years turned its attention, and which are normal factors in every society. these three classes of epidemics may be found in connection with subjects other than religious, but i am at present concerned with them only in that relation, and to point out that, in spite of their undesirable or admittedly pathologic character, they have yet served to keep supernaturalism alive and active. during the christian period of european history by far the most important of all epidemics, as it was indeed the earliest, was monasticism. this takes front rank because of its extent, the degree to which it prepared the ground for subsequent outbreaks, and because of its indirect, and, i think, too little noticed, social consequences. it may safely be said that no other movement has so powerfully affected european society as has the monasticism of the early christian centuries. it cannot, of course, be urged that christianity originated monasticism. india and egypt had its ascetic practices and celibate priesthood long before the birth of christianity, and indeed gave christianity the pattern from which to work. but the main stream of social life remained unaffected to any considerable extent by this asceticism. the social and domestic virtues received full recognition from the upholders of the monastic life, and there is no evidence that asceticism ever assumed an epidemic form. it has often been the lot of the christian church to give a more intense expression to religious tendencies already existing, and this was so in the case before us. at any rate, it was left for the christian church to give to monasticism the character of an epidemic, to treat the purely social and domestic virtues as a positive hindrance to the religious life, seriously to disturb national well-being, and to come perilously near destroying civilisation. the origin of ascetic practices has already been indicated in a previous chapter. it has there been pointed out that the deliberate torture of mind and body arose from the belief that the induced states brought man into direct communion with supernatural powers, and that this element has continued in almost every religion in the world. says baring-gould:-- "the ascetic instinct is intimately united with the religious instinct. there is scarcely a religion of ancient and modern times, certain forms of protestantism excepted, that does not recognise asceticism as an element in its system.... brahmanism has its order of ascetics.... mohammedanism has its fakirs, subduing the flesh by their austerities, and developing the spirit by their contemplation and prayers. fasting and self-denial were observances required of the greeks, who desired initiation into the mysteries.... the scourge was used before the altars of artemis and over the tomb of pelops. the egyptian priests passed their novitiate in the deserts, and when not engaged in their religious functions were supposed to spend their time in caves. they renounced all commerce with the world, and lived in contemplation, temperance, and frugality, and in absolute poverty.... the peruvians were required to fast before sacrificing to the gods, and to bind themselves by vows of chastity and abstinence from nourishing food.... there were ascetic orders for old men and nunneries for widows among the totomacs, monastic orders among toltecs dedicated to the service of quetzalcoatl, and others among the aztecs consecrated to tezcatlipoca."[ ] it was argued by bingham, a learned eighteenth-century ecclesiastical historian, that although asceticism was known and practised in individual cases from the earliest period of christian history, it did not establish itself within the church until the fourth century. it is not a matter of great consequence to the subject under discussion whether this be so or not. it is at least certain that christian teaching contained within itself all the elements for such a development, which was bound, sooner or later, to transpire. the antithesis between the flesh and the spirit, the conception of the world as given over to satan, the ascetic teaching of paul, with the value placed upon suffering and privation as spiritually disciplinary forces, could not but create in a society permeated with a special type of supernaturalism, that asceticism which became so marked a feature of medieval christianity. and it is certain also that in no other instance has asceticism proved itself so grave a danger to social order and security. allowing for what lecky calls the 'glaring mendacity' of the lives of the saints, a description that applies more or less to all the ecclesiastical writings of the early centuries, it is evident that the number of monks, their ferocity, and general practices, were enough to constitute a grave social danger. it is said that st. pachomius had monks under his direct rule; that in the time of jerome , monks gathered together at the easter festival; that one egyptian city mustered , nuns and , monks, and that the monastic population of egypt at one time equalled in number the rest of the inhabitants. at a later date, within fifty years of its institution, the franciscan order possessed houses, with , members. in the twelfth century the cluniacs had monasteries in france. in england, as late as , hooper, afterwards bishop of gloucester, declared that there were no less than , nuns in england. every country in europe possessed a larger or smaller army of men and women whose ideals were in direct conflict with nearly all that makes for a sane and progressive civilisation. the general character of the monk during the full swing of the ascetic epidemic has been well sketched by lecky. his summary here will save a more extended exposition:-- "there is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper and more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. a hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of plato and cicero, and the lives of socrates and cato. for about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. st. jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of mouldy water; another who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his daily repast; a third who cut his hair only on easter sunday, who never washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice stone.... for six months, it is said, st. macarius of alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous flies.... his disciple, st. eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... st. besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn bushes, and for forty days and nights never lay down when he slept.... some saints, like st. marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.... some of the hermits lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others found a congenial resting-place among the tombs. some disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. the cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. st. athanasius relates with enthusiasm how st. antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet.... st. abraham, the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his face or his feet.... st. ammon had never seen himself naked. a famous virgin, named sylvia, though she was sixty years old, and though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. st. euphraxia joined a convent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath."[ ] it is difficult to realise what it is exactly that some writers have in their minds when they praise the purity of the ascetic ideal, and lament its degradation as though society lost something of great value thereby. the examples cited realised that ideal as well as it could be realised, and its anti-social character is unmistakable. if it is intended to imply that an element of self-denial or self-discipline is essential to healthy development, that is admitted, but this is not the ascetic ideal; it is that of temperance as taught by the best of the ancient philosophers. what the ascetic aimed at was not self-development, but self-suppression. the discipline of the monk was only another name for the cultivation of a frame of mind unhealthy and anti-social. eventually, the rapidity with which this mania spread, the fact that for several centuries it raged as a veritable epidemic, carried with it the germs of a corrective. the more numerous monks and nuns became, the more certain it became that many of them would develop passions and propensities they professed to despise. the love of ease and wealth, the lust of power and pride of place, was sure to find expression, and if by the degradation of the ascetic ideal is meant the fact that the preachers of poverty, and humility, and meekness, became the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most corrupt, and the most tyrannical order in christendom, the reason is that not even monasticism could prevent ordinary human passions from finding expression. they might be suppressed in the case of a few; it became impossible with a multitude. that they found expression in so disastrous a form was due to the fact that the disciplinary agent of these passions, a developed social consciousness, played so small a part in the life of the monk. it is no part of my present purpose to trace the full consequences of the ascetic epidemic. some of these consequences, however, have a more or less direct bearing upon this enquiry, and it is necessary to say something upon them. one enduring and inevitable consequence of monasticism has not, i think, been adequately noted by many writers. this is its influence on the ideal of marriage, on the family, and on the domestic virtues. in india and egypt celibacy had been closely associated with the religious life, but the ascetic was regarded as a man peculiarly apart from his fellows, and the family continued to be held in great honour, even by religious writers. christianity provided for the first time a body of writers who made a direct attack upon marriage as obstructing the supreme duty of spiritual development. the rev. principal donaldson, in his generally excellent book on _woman_, professes to find some difficulty in accounting for the growth among the early christians of the feeling in favour of celibacy. he remarks that "no one with the new testament as his guide could venture to assert that marriage was wrong." not wrong, certainly; but anyone with the new testament before him would be justified in asserting marriage to be inferior to celibacy. it is at most taken for granted; it is neither commended nor recommended, and of its social value there is never a glimpse. and there is much on the other side. paul's teaching is strongly in favour of celibacy, and marriage is only advised to avoid a greater evil. in the book of _revelation_ there is a reference to the , saints who wait on "the lamb," and who "were not defiled with women, but were virgins." certainly the new testament does not condemn marriage, but it is idle to pretend that those who preached the celibate ideal failed to find therein a warranty for their teaching. the historic fact is, however, that the early christian leaders were, in the main, ardent advocates of celibacy. the social importance of marriage being ignored, its functions became those of ministering to sexual passion and the perpetuation of the race. in view of the supposed approaching end of the world, the desirability of this last was questioned, and in the name of purity the former was strongly denounced. it is from these points of view that tertullian describes children as "burdens which are to most of us perilous as being unsuitable to faith," and wives as women of the second degree of modesty who had fallen into wedlock. jerome said that marriage was at best a sin, and all that could be done was to excuse and purify it. epiphanius said that the church was based upon virginity as upon a corner-stone. augustine was of opinion that celibates would shine in heaven like dazzling stars. married people were declared, by another authority, to be incapable of salvation. the most powerful and most influential of writers concurred that the sexual relation was an almost fatal obstacle to religious salvation. hardly any movement ever struck so hard against social well-being as did this teaching of celibacy. wives were encouraged to desert their husbands, husbands to forsake their wives, children their parents. parents, in turn, were exhorted to devote their children to the monastic life; and although at first children who had been so condemned were allowed to return to the world, should they desire it, on reaching maturity, this liberty was taken from them by the fourth council of toledo in .[ ] some few of the christian writers protested against children being taught to forsake their parents in this manner, but the general spirit of the time was in its favour. "children were nursed and trained to expect at every instant more than human interferences; their young energies had ever before them examples of asceticism, to which it was the glory, the true felicity of life, to aspire. the thoughtful child had all his mind thus preoccupied ... wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open.... it lay through perils, but was made attractive by perpetual wonders. it was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over the young mind. it learned to trample down that last bond which united the child to common humanity, filial reverence; the fond and mysterious attachment of the child and the mother, the inborn reverence of the son to the father. it is the highest praise of st. fulgentius that he overcame his mother's tenderness by religious cruelty."[ ] the full warranty for dean milman's stricture is seen in the following passage from st. jerome:-- "though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair, and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass on over your father's body. fly with tearless eyes to the banner of the cross. in this matter cruelty is the only piety.... your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around you.... your father may implore you to wait but a short time to bury those near to you, who will soon be no more; your weeping mother may recall your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and to her wrinkled brow. those around you may tell you that all the household rests upon you. such chains as these the love of god and the fear of hell can easily break. you say that scripture orders you to obey your parents, but he who loves them more than christ loses his soul. the enemy brandishes a sword to slay me. shall i think of a mother's tears?"[ ] gibbon said of the ascetic movement that the pagan world regarded with astonishment a society that perpetuated itself without marriage. unfortunately this perpetuation was secured by the sacrifice of some of the dearest interests of the race. for, in general, one may say that idealistic teaching of any kind appeals most powerfully to those who are least in need of it. the world would at any time lose little, and might possibly gain much, were it possible to restrain a certain class from parentage. but there is no evidence that monasticism ever had its effect on that kind of people; the presumption is indeed in the contrary direction. the careless and brutal hear and are unaffected. the more thoughtful and desirable alone are influenced. and there can be little doubt that the church in appealing to certain aspects of human nature dissuaded from parentage those who were most fitted for the task. there was a practical survival of the unfittest. nothing is more striking, in fact, in the early history of christianity than the comparative absence of home life and of the domestic ideals. dean milman remarked that in all the discussion concerning celibacy he could not recall a single instance where the social aspects appear to have occurred to the disputants. the dean's remark applies to some extent to a much later period of christian history than the one to which he refers. that much-admired evangelical classic, bunyan's _pilgrim's progress_, for example, shows a curious obliviousness to the value of family and social life. but neglect of the socialising and refining influence of family life leads inevitably to a hardening of character and a brutalising of life in general. the ferocious nature of the theological disputes of the early christian period never fail to arouse the comments of historians. but there was really nothing to soften or restrain them. everything was dominated by the theological interest. and we owe it in no small measure to the vogue of the monk that the tolerance of pagan times, with its widespread respect for truth-seeking, was replaced by the narrow intolerance of the medieval period, an intolerance which has never really been eradicated from any part of christian europe. in counting this as one of the consequences of the christian preaching of celibacy, i am supported by no less an authority than the late sir francis galton. in his epoch-marking work, _hereditary genius_, this writer says:-- "the long period of the dark ages under which europe has lain is due, i believe, in a very considerable degree, to the celibacy enjoined by the religious orders on their votaries. whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature, or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the church. but she chose to preach and exact celibacy. the consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that i am hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the church brutalised the breed of our forefathers. she acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. she practised the arts that breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid nature. no wonder that club law prevailed for centuries over europe; the wonder rather is that enough good remained in the veins of europeans to enable their race to rise to its very moderate level of natural morality."[ ] the consequences of asceticism on morals were almost wholly disastrous. there is no intention of endorsing the vulgar protestant prejudice of every convent being a brothel, and all monks and nuns as given over to a vicious life, but there is no question that a very widespread demoralisation existed amongst the religious orders, that this existed from the very earliest times, and that it was an inevitable consequence of so large a number of people professing the ascetic life. this is not a history of morals, and it is needless to enter into a detailed account of the state of morality during the prevalence of asceticism. but the absence of any favourable influence exerted by asceticism on conduct is well illustrated in the description of salvianus, bishop of marseilles at the close of the fifth century, of the condition of society in his day. gaul, spain, italy, and africa are depicted as sunk in an overmastering sensuality. rome is represented as the sewer of the nations, and in the african church, he says, the most diligent search can scarce discover one chaste among thousands. and this, it must be borne in mind, was the african church, which under the care of augustine had been specially nurtured in the most rigid asceticism. four hundred years later the state of monastic morals is sufficiently indicated by a regulation of st. theodore studita prohibiting the entrance of female animals into monasteries.[ ] a regulation passed in paris at a council held in enforces the same lesson by forbidding monks or nuns sleeping two in a bed. the avowed object of this was to repress offences of the most disgusting description.[ ] in an order was issued prohibiting mothers or other female relatives residing with priests, on account of the frequent scandals arising. offences became so numerous and so open that it was with relief that laymen saw priests openly select concubines. that at least gave a promise of some protection to domestic life. in some of the swiss cantons it actually became the practice to compel a new pastor, on taking up his charge, to select a concubine as a necessary protection to the females under his care. the same practice existed in spain.[ ] there is, as lea rightly says, no injustice in holding the church mainly responsible for the laxity of morals which is characteristic of medieval society. it had unbounded and unquestioned power, and this with its wealth and privileges might have made medieval society the purest in the world. as it was, "the period of its unquestioned domination over the conscience of europe was the very period in which licence among the teutonic races was most unchecked. a church which, though founded on the gospel, and wielding the illimitable power of the roman hierarchy, could yet allow the feudal principle to extend to the _jus primæ noctis_ or _droit de marquette_, and whose ministers in their character of temporal seigneurs could even occasionally claim the disgusting right, was evidently exercising its influence, not for good, but for evil." on civic life and the civic virtues the influence of asceticism was equally disastrous. "a candid examination," says lecky, "will show that the christian civilisation has been as inferior to the pagan ones in civic and intellectual virtues as it has been superior to them in the virtues of humanity and chastity." one may reasonably question the latter part of this statement, bearing in mind the facts just pointed out, but the first part admits of overwhelming proof. celibacy is not chastity, and it is difficult to see how the coarsening of character described by lecky himself can be consistent with a heightened humanity. but there can be small doubt that the growth of the christian church spelt disaster to the civic life and institutions of the empire. nothing the romans did was more admirable than their organisation of municipal life. they avoided the common blunder of imposing on all a uniform organisation, and so gave free play to local feeling and custom so far as was consistent with imperial order and peace. civic life became, as a consequence, well ordered and persistent. it was far less corrupt than administration in the capital, and freedom persisted in the provincial towns for long after its practical disappearance in rome itself. indeed, but for the antagonism of christianity, it is probable that the urban municipalities might have provided the impetus for the rejuvenation of the empire.[ ] from the outset, the early christian movement stood as a whole apart from the civic life of the empire, while the ascetic waged a constant warfare against it. "according to monastic view of christianity," says milman, "the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects of ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes of salvation." the object was individual salvation, not social regeneration. when people were praised for breaking the closest of family ties in their desire for salvation, it would be absurd to suppose that social duties and obligations would remain exempt. the christian ascetic was ready enough to risk his own life, or to take the life of others, on account of minute points of doctrinal difference, but he was deaf to the call of patriotism or the demands of civic life. theology became the one absorbing topic; and as monasticism assumed more menacing proportions, the monk became the dominating figure, paralysing by his presence the healthful activities of masses of the people. speaking of the eastern empire, although his words apply with almost equal truth wherever the church was supreme, milman says:-- "that which is the characteristic sign of the times as a social and political, as well as a religious, phenomenon, is the complete dominion assumed by the monks in the east over the public mind.... the monks, in fact, exercise the most complete tyranny, not merely over the laity, but over bishops and patriarchs, whose rule, though nominally subject to it, they throw off whenever it suits their purposes.... monks in alexandria, monks in antioch, monks in constantinople, decide peremptorily on orthodoxy and heterodoxy.... persecution is universal; persecution by every means of violence and cruelty; the only question is in whose hands is the power to persecute.... bloodshed, murder, treachery, assassination, even during the public worship of god--these are the frightful means by which each party strives to maintain its opinions and to defeat its adversary. ecclesiastical and civil authority are alike paralysed by combinations of fanatics ready to suffer or to inflict death, utterly unapproachable by reason."[ ] against such combinations of ignorance, fanaticism, and ferocity, the few remaining lovers of secular progress were powerless. patriotism became a mere name, and organised civic life an almost forgotten aspiration. what the pagan world had understood by a 'good man' was one who spent himself in the service of his country. the christian understood by it one who succeeded in saving his own soul, even at the sacrifice of family and friends. vampire-like, monasticism fed upon the life-blood of the empire. the civic life and patriotism of old rome became a mere tradition, to inspire long after the men of the renaissance and of the french revolution. finally, asceticism exerted a powerful influence on religion itself. that it served to strengthen and perpetuate the life of religion there can be little doubt. however strongly some people may have resented the monastic ideal, it nevertheless gave increased strength and vitality to the religious idea. to begin with, it offered for centuries a very powerful obstacle to the development of those progressive and scientific ideas that have made such advances in all centres of civilisation during the past two or three centuries. to the common mind it brought home the supremacy of religion in a way that nothing else could. the mere sight of monarch and noble yielding homage to the monk, acknowledging his supremacy in what was declared to be the chief interest in life, the interference of the monk in every department of life, saturated society with supernaturalism. and although at a later period the rapacity, dissoluteness, and tyranny of the monkish orders led to revolt, by that time the imagination of all had been thoroughly impressed with the value of religion. even to-day current theology is permeated with the monkish notions of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and contempt of the world's comfort and beauty as belonging to the essence of pure religion. the lives of the saints still remain the storehouse of ideals for the religious preacher. in spite of their absurd practices and disgusting penances, later generations have not failed to hold them up as examples. they have been used to impress the imagination of their successors, as they were used to impress the minds of their contemporaries. the fact of thomas à beckett wearing a hair shirt running with vermin has not prevented his being held up as an example of the power of religion. people fear ghosts long after they cease to believe in them; they pay unreasoning homage to a crown long after intellectual development has robbed the kingly office of its primitive significance; all the recent developments of democracy have not abolished the englishman's constitutional crick in the neck at the sight of a nobleman. nor is supernaturalism expunged from a society because the conditions that gave it birth have passed away. a religious epidemic is not analogous to those physical disorders which deposit an antitoxin and so protect against future attacks. it resembles rather those disorders that permanently weaken, and so invite repeated assaults. the ascetic epidemic passed away; but, before doing so, it thoroughly saturated with supernaturalism the social atmosphere and impressed its power upon the public mind. it gave supernaturalism a new and longer lease of life, and paved the way for other outbreaks, of a less general, but still of a thoroughly epidemic character. footnotes: [ ] see _the psychology of peoples_ and _the crowd_. [ ] _origin and development of religious belief_, i. pp. - . [ ] _history of european morals_, ii. pp. - . for a careful description of the monastic discipline in its more normal aspects, see bingham's works, vol. ii. bk. vi. gibbon gives his usual brilliant summary of the movement in chapter xxxvii. of the _decline and fall_. a host of facts similar to those cited by lecky will be found in _the book of paradise_, vols., trans. by wallis budge. lea's _history of sacerdotal celibacy_ gives the classical and authoritative account of the moral consequences of the practice of celibacy. for a vivid picture of the psychology of the ascetic, see flaubert's great romance, _st. antony_. [ ] cited by lecky, ii. p. . [ ] dean milman, _hist. of latin christianity_, ii. pp. - . [ ] lecky, ii. pp. - . [ ] _hereditary genius_, , p. . [ ] lea, p. . [ ] lea, p. . [ ] see lea, pp. - . [ ] for a fine sketch of roman municipal life, see dill's _roman society from nero to marcus aurelius_, chap. ii. [ ] _hist. of latin christianity_, i. pp. - . chapter nine religious epidemics--(_concluded_) it is not easy to overestimate the influence of monasticism on subsequent religious history. the lives of its votaries provided examples of almost every conceivable kind of self-torture or semi-maniacal behaviour. it had made the world thoroughly familiar with extravagance of action as the symptom of intense religious conviction. and its influence on social development had been such that the susceptibility of the public mind to suggestions was as a raw wound in the presence of a powerful irritant. such an institution as the inquisition could only have maintained itself among a people thoroughly familiar with supernaturalism, and to whom its preservation was the first and most sacred of duties. a society habituated to the commanding presence of the monk, fed upon stories of their miraculous encounters with celestial and diabolic visitants, and so accustomed to regard the priesthood as in a very peculiar sense the mouthpiece of divinity, was well prepared for such a series of events as the crusades for the recovery of the holy land. pilgrimages to the burial-places of saints, and to spots connected, by legend or otherwise, with christian history, had long been in vogue, and formed a source of both revenue to the church and of inspiration to the faithful. as early as a guide-book had been prepared called the _itinerary from bordeaux to jerusalem_, and along the route marked convents and shelters for the pilgrims were established. a lucrative traffic in relics of every description had also been established, and any interference with this touched the church in its tenderest point. added to which the expected end of the world in the year had the effect of still further increasing the crowd of pilgrims to the holy land, where it was firmly believed the second advent would take place. in the eleventh century a tax was imposed on all christians visiting jerusalem. there were also reports of christian pilgrims being ill-treated. recent events in europe have shown with what ease christian feeling may be roused against a mohammedan power, and it was considerably easier to do this in the eleventh century. between them, pope urban ii. and peter the hermit--the former acting mainly from political motives; the latter from a spirit of sheer fanaticism-- succeeded in rousing europe to a maniacal desire for the recovery of the holy land. and for nearly two hundred years the world saw a series of crusades on as absurd an errand as ever engaged the energies of mankind. every class of society participated, and it is calculated that no less than two millions of lives were sacrificed. ordinary histories lean to representing the crusades as a series of armed expeditions, led by princes, nobles, and kings. but this gives a quite inaccurate conception of the movement, during its early stages, at all events. in reality it was a true psychological epidemic. no custom, however ancient, no duty, no law, was allowed to stand before the crusading mania. in every village the clergy fed the mania, promising eternal rewards to all who took up the burden of the cross. old and young, the strong and the sick, the rich and the poor were enrolled. urban had told them that "under their general, jesus christ," they would march to certain victory. absolution for all sins was promised to all who joined; and, as gibbon says, "at the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised against their christian brethren." until experience had taught them better, little precautions were taken to provide food or arms. huge concourses of people,[ ] some led by a goose and a goat, into which it was believed the holy ghost had entered, set out for the holy land, so ignorant that at every large town or city they enquired, "is this zion?" although a religious expedition, small regard was paid to decency or humanity. defenceless cities _en route_ were sacked. women were outraged, men and children killed. the jews were murdered wholesale. almost universally the slaughter of jews at home were preparatory to crusading abroad. germany, hungary, and bulgaria, although providing contingents for the crusading army, suffered heavily by the passage of these undisciplined, lawless crowds. as one writer says:-- "if they had devoted themselves to the service of god, they convinced the inhabitants on their line of march that they had ceased to regard the laws of man. they considered themselves privileged to gratify every wish and every lust as it arose. they recognised no rights of property, they felt no gratitude for hospitality, and they possessed no sense of honour. they violated the wives and daughters of their hosts when they were kindly treated, they devastated the lands of friends whom they had converted into enemies, they resorted to wanton robbery and destruction in revenge for calamities which they had brought upon themselves. they believed that they proved their superiority to the mohammedans by torturing the defenceless jews; and this was the only exploit in which the first divisions of the crusaders could boast of success.... to the leaders, who could not write their own names, deception and treachery were as familiar as force; to their followers rapine and murder were so congenial that, in the absence of saracens, jews, or townsfolk, it seemed but a professional pastime to kill or to rob a companion in arms."[ ] and of the behaviour of the crusaders on the first capture of jerusalem, , dean milman writes:-- "no barbarian, no infidel, no saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the cross of christ (who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn at the first view of the holy city) on the capture of that city. murder was mercy, rape tenderness, simple plunder the mere assertion of the conqueror's right. children were seized by their legs, some of them plucked from their mother's breasts, and dashed against the walls, or whirled from the battlements. others were obliged to leap from the walls; some tortured, roasted by slow fires. they ripped up prisoners to see if they had swallowed gold. of , saracens there were not left enough to bury the dead; poor christians were hired to perform the office. everyone surprised in the temple was slaughtered, till the reek from the dead drove away the slayers. the jews were burned alive in their synagogue."[ ] the most remarkable of all the crusades, and the one that best shows the character of the epidemic, was the children's crusade of . it was said that the sins of the crusaders had caused their failure, and priests went about france and germany calling upon the children to do what the sins of their fathers had prevented them accomplishing. the children were told that the sea would dry up to give them passage, and the infidels be stricken by the lord on their approach. a peasant lad, stephen of cloyes, received the usual vision, and was ordered to lead the crusade. commencing with the children around paris, he collected some , followers, and without money or food commenced the march. at the same time an army of children, , strong, was gathered together at cologne. the result of the crusade may be told in a few words. about of the french contingent, having reached marseilles, were offered a passage by some shipowners. several of the ships foundered, others reached shore, and the boys were sold into slavery. the girls were reserved for a more sinister fate. thousands of the children died in attempting a march over the alps. a mere remnant succeeded in reaching home, ruined in both mind and body. well might fuller say: "this crusade was done by the instinct of the devil, who, as it were, desired a cordial of children's blood, to comfort his weak stomach, long cloyed with murdering of men."[ ] on both the social and the religious side the consequences were important. for the first time large bodies of men, taught to regard all those who were outside christendom as beneath consideration, came into contact with a people possessing an art, an industry, a culture far superior to their own. as draper says: "even down to the meanest camp follower, everyone must have recognised the difference between what they had anticipated and what they had found. they had seen undaunted courage, chivalrous bearing, intellectual culture far higher than their own. they had been in lands filled with prodigies of human skill. they did not melt down into the populations to whom they returned without imparting to them a profound impression destined to make itself felt in the course of time."[ ] hitherto mohammedan culture had only influenced christendom through the medium of the spanish schools and universities. now the influence became more general. a taste for greater comfort developed. commerce grew; literature improved. we approach the period of the renaissance, and to that new birth the crusades, despite their intolerance and brutality, offered a contribution of no small value. on the other hand, and for a time, the power of the church grew greater. the impetus given to superstitious hopes and fears made on all hands for the wealth of the church. much was made over to the church as a free gift. much was pawned to it. much also was entrusted by those who went to the holy land, never to return, in which case the church became the designated or undesignated heir. "in every way the all-absorbing church was still gathering in wealth, encircling new land within her hallowed pale, the one steady merchant who in this vast traffic and sale of personal and of landed property never made a losing venture, but went on accumulating and still accumulating, and for the most part withdrawing the largest portion of the land in every kingdom into a separate estate, which claimed exemption from all burthens of the realm, until the realm was compelled into measures, violent often and iniquitous in their mode, but still inevitable."[ ] next, the crusades set their seal upon the justice of religious wars, and established an enduring alliance between militarism and religion. the military profession became surrounded with all the ceremonies and paraphernalia of religion, without being in the least humanised by the alliance. the knight received his arms blessed by the church, he was sworn to defend the church, and he was as ready to turn his weapons against heretics in europe as against infidels in syria. military persecutions of heretics assumed the form of a mania. there were crusades against the moors in spain, against the albigenses, and against other heretics. as bryce remarks: "the religious feeling which the crusades evoked--a feeling which became the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the opponents of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of the holy see, which had blessed and organised the project."[ ] the expedition against king john by philip of france was undertaken at the behest of the pope, and was called a crusade. the attempt of spain to crush the netherlands was called a crusade. so was the armada that was fitted out against england. more than all, a stamp of permanency was given to popular superstition. for two centuries people had seen expedition after expedition fitted out to accomplish an avowedly religious purpose. they had been taught that to die in defence of religion, or in the attempt to achieve a religious object, was the noblest of deaths. they had seen the greatest in europe setting forth at the command of the church. signs and wonders had abounded to prove the heaven-blessed character of the crusades. they had seen the church growing steadily in power, and every possible means had been utilised to increase the flame of religious fanaticism. expeditions might fail, but failure did not cure fanaticism. it fed it; the crusaders returned, chastened in some respects, but still sufficiently full of religious zeal to be ready to battle against the unbeliever and the heretic at the behest of the church. and it was not the policy of the church to allow this fanaticism to remain unemployed. even though it might ultimately lose, the church and superstition profited enormously by the crusading spirit. it strengthened the general sense of the supernatural, even while creating tendencies that were destined to limit its sway. above all, it prepared the way for other religious epidemics. these were more circumscribed in area, and less lengthy in their duration; but their existence was made possible and easy by the centuries during which, first monasticism, and later the crusading mania, had dominated the public mind. the crusades had hardly been brought to a close before continental europe witnessed an outbreak, in epidemic form, of a practice that had been long associated with monastic discipline. the use of the whip as a form of religious discipline had always played a part in conventual and monastic life. on the one hand, it formed part of that insensate desire to torture the body which went to make up the ascetic ideal; on the other hand, the fondness for whipping bare flesh and for being whipped has a distinctly pathologic character. the subject is rather too unsavoury to dwell upon, but it has long been established that there is a close connection between the whipping of certain parts of the body and the production of intense sexual pleasure.[ ] and it is also clear that the life led by monks and nuns was such as to encourage sexual aberrations of various forms. moreover, when once the practice of whipping became a public spectacle, and assumed an epidemic form, imitation, combined with intense religious faith, would operate very powerfully. in the fourteenth century europe was visited by the black plague. in countries utterly devoid of sanitation, where baths were practically unknown and personal habits of the filthiest, the plague found a fruitful soil. nearly a quarter of the population died, and corpses were so numerous that huge pits were dug and hundreds buried together. it was amid the general terror and demoralisation caused by this visitation that the sect of the flagellants arose. calling themselves the brotherhood of the flagellants, or the brethren of the cross, wearing dark garments with red crosses front and back, they traversed the cities of the continent carrying whips to which small pieces of iron were fixed. england appears to have been the only country in which they failed to establish themselves. elsewhere their numbers grew with formidable rapidity. at spires two hundred boys, under twelve years of age, influenced probably by the example of the children's crusade, formed themselves into a brotherhood and marched through some of the german cities. in italy over , people marched from florence in one of these processions; from modena, over , . some of them professed to work miracles. everywhere, while the mania lasted, they were warmly welcomed, the inhabitants of towns and cities ringing the bells and flocking in crowds to hear the preaching and witness the whippings. the proceedings of the flagellants in all countries were very similar. they marched from town to town, men and women and children stripped to the waist--sometimes entirely naked--praying incessantly and whipping each other. "not only during the day, but even by night, and in the severest winter, they traversed the cities with torches and banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars." at other times they proceeded to the market-place, arranged themselves on the ground in circles, assuming attitudes in accordance with their real or supposed crimes. after each had been whipped, "one of them, in conclusion, stood up to read a letter, which it was pretended an angel had brought from heaven to st. peter's church, at jerusalem, stating that christ, who was sore displeased at the sins of man, had granted, at the intercession of the holy virgin and of the angels, that all who should wander about for thirty-four days and scourge themselves should be partakers of the divine grace." in the end the movement became so obnoxious to the church, and so troublesome to the civil authorities, that both combined to secure its suppression. equally significant in the history of religion is the dancing mania, which broke out as the mania for flagellation was subsiding. the function of dancing in primitive religious ceremonial has been pointed out in a previous chapter. it is there a common and obvious method of both creating and expressing a high state of nervous excitability. in later times religious dancing becomes more purely hypnotic in character, and suggestion plays a powerful part. during the medieval period the conditions were peculiarly favourable to the prevalence of psychological epidemics. plagues, more or less severe, were of frequent occurrence. between and , italy alone had no less than sixteen such visitations. smallpox and leprosy were also common. the public mind was morbidly sensitive to signs and portents and saturated to an almost incredible degree with superstition. the public processions of the church, its penances, and practices were all calculated to fire the imagination, and produce a mixed and dangerous condition of fear and expectancy. moreover, dancing mania, on a small scale, had made its appearance on several previous occasions, and the public mind was thus in a way prepared for a more serious outbreak. the great dancing mania of occurred immediately after the revels connected with the semi-pagan festival of st. john. bacchanalian dances formed one of the accompaniments of the festival of st. john, and made, so to speak, a natural starting-point for the epidemic. hecker, who gives a very elaborate account of the dancing mania as it appeared in various countries, thus describes the behaviour of those afflicted:-- "they formed circles, hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of all bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion.... while dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the saviour enthroned with the virgin mary."[ ] at aix-la-chapelle, cologne, and metz, says the same writer:-- "peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels. secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived."[ ] once attacked, the hypnotic character of the complaint was shown by its annual recurrence. again to quote hecker:-- "most of those affected were only annually visited by attacks; and the occasion of them was so manifestly referable to the prevailing notions of that period that, if the unqualified belief in the agency of saints could have been abolished, they would not have had any return of the complaint. throughout the whole of june, prior to the festival of st. john, patients felt a disquietude and restlessness which they were unable to overcome. they were dejected, timid, and anxious; wandered about in an unsettled state, being tormented with twitching pains, which seized them suddenly in different parts, and eagerly expected the eve of st. john's day, in the confident hope that by dancing at the altars of this saint they would be freed from all their sufferings. this hope was not disappointed; and they remained, for the rest of the year, exempt from any further attack."[ ] in addition to john the baptist, the dancing disease was also connected with another saint--st. vitus. he is said to have been martyred about , and a body, reputed to be his, was transported to france in the ninth century. it is said that just before he was killed he prayed that all who would commemorate the day of his death should be protected from the dancing mania. whereupon a voice from heaven was heard to say, "vitus, thy prayer is accepted." the fact that the prayer was offered a thousand years before the dancing mania appeared is a circumstance that to the eye of faith merely heightened its value. within recent times epidemics of dancing have been more local, less persistent, and of necessity not so public in their display, but nearly always their appearance has been in connection with displays of religious fervour. in most cases the dancing has tended more to a species of 'jumping,' and--although this may be due to more careful observation--has been accompanied by actions of a clearly epileptoid nature. one of the most famous of these outbreaks was that of the french convulsionnaires, which lasted from to the revolution. in , a popular, but half-crazy priest, françois de paris, died. during his life paris had fasted and scourged himself, lived in a hut that was seldom or never cleansed, showed the same lack of cleanliness in his person, and often went about half naked. very shortly after his death, it was said that miracles began to take place at his grave in the cemetery of st. médard. people gathered round the tomb day after day, and one young girl was seized with convulsions. (she is called a girl in the narrative, but she was a mature virgin of forty-two years of age.) afterwards other miracles followed in rapid succession. some fell in fits, others swallowed pieces of coal or flint, some were cured of diseases. from the description of the behaviour of some of these devotees there seems to have been a considerable amount of sexual feeling mixed up with the display. sometimes, we are told, those seized "bounded from the ground like fish out of water; this was so frequently imitated at a later period that the women and girls, when they expected such violent contortions, not wishing to appear indecent, put on gowns made like sacks, closed at the feet. if they received any bruises by falling down, they were healed with earth taken from the grave of the uncanonised saint. they usually, however, showed great agility in this respect; and it is scarcely necessary to remark that the female sex especially was distinguished by all kinds of leaping, and almost inconceivable contortions of body. some spun round on their feet with incredible rapidity, as is related of the dervishes. others ran with their heads against walls, or curved their bodies like rope dancers, so that their heels touched their shoulders." women figured very prominently among the convulsionnaires, particularly when the epidemic passed from convulsive dancing to prophecy, and thence to various forms of self-torture. women stretched themselves on the floor, while other women, and even men, jumped upon their bodies. others were beaten with clubs and bars of iron. some actually underwent crucifixion on repeated occasions. they were stretched on wooden crosses, and nails three inches long driven through hands and feet. some of the occurrences remind one of what is now seen to take place under hypnotic influence. people labouring under strong excitement, it is known, become insensible to pain. outbreaks of jumping and dancing followed the introduction of methodist preachers into country districts in the eighteenth century. in wales, a sect of 'jumpers' originated from this cause, and many of the american 'jumpers' and 'dancers' seem to have had their origin from this welsh outbreak. in all such cases the spread of the mania was helped, if not made possible, by the preachers. they themselves looked upon these exhibitions as manifestations of the power of god, and so encouraged their hearers in their behaviour. not every minister has the common sense of the shetland preacher cited by hecker. an epileptic woman had a fit in church, which a number of others hailed as a manifestation of the power of god. sunday after sunday the same thing occurred with other women, the number of the sufferers steadily increasing. the thing threatened to assume such proportions, and to become so great a nuisance, he announced that attendants would be at hand who would dip women in the lake who happened to be seized. this threat proved a most powerful form of exorcism. not one woman was affected. similar conduct might have been quite as efficacious in preventing many religious manifestations that have assumed epidemic proportions. unfortunately, the influence of preachers and religious teachers was most usually cast in the other direction. very often, of course, they were no better informed than their congregations; at other times they undoubtedly encouraged the delusion for interested reasons. the most striking recent illustration of this latter behaviour was seen in the welsh revival led by evan roberts. of this man's mental condition there could be little doubt. just as little doubt could there be that the behaviour of the congregations was wholly due to the power of suggestions upon weak and excitable natures. yet scarcely a preacher in britain said a word in disapproval. hundreds of them used the outbreak to illustrate the power of religion. many prominent preachers travelled down to wales and returned telling of the great manifestations of 'spiritual power' they had witnessed. how little removed such behaviour is from that of the savage watching with awe the actions of one suffering from epilepsy or insanity, readers of the foregoing pages will be in a position to judge. from the middle of the third century onward, europe had been subject to wave after wave of religious fanaticism. all along, religious belief had been verified and strengthened by the occurrence of phenomena that now admittedly fall within the purview of the pathologist. and from one point of view the secularisation of life served but to emphasise the dependence of religion upon the occurrence of these abnormal conditions. for the more surely the phenomena of nature and of social life were brought within the scope of a scientific generalisation, the more people began to look for the life of religion in conditions that were removed from the normal. but, above all, this long succession of waves of fanaticism served to permeate the general mind with supernaturalism. each one cleared the way for a successor. and in the next chapter we have to deal with one that, in some respects, is the most remarkable of all, viz., that of the belief in witchcraft. footnotes: [ ] it is estimated that , people formed the van of the first crusade. [ ] l. o. pike, _history of crime in england_, i. pp. - . [ ] _history of latin christianity_, iv. p. . [ ] _history of the holy war_, bk. iii. [ ] _intellectual development of europe_, , p. . [ ] milman, iv. p. . [ ] _holy roman empire_, p. . [ ] see bloch, _sexual life of our time_, pp. - . [ ] _epidemics of the middle ages_, pp. - . [ ] hecker, p. . [ ] _epidemics_, p. . chapter ten the witch mania in all stages of religious history the witch and the wizard are familiar figures. it is of no importance to our present enquiry whether magic precedes religion or not. it is at all events certain that they are very closely connected, and that conditions which foster the belief in magic likewise serve to strengthen religious belief. witchcraft, as tylor says, is part and parcel of savage life. death is very frequently attributed to the magical action of wizards, and the savage lives in perpetual fear lest some of his belongings, or some part of his person, should be bewitched by malevolent sorcerers. sir richard burton says that in east africa his experience taught him that among the negroes, what with slavery and what with black magic, no one, especially in old age, is safe from being burnt at a day's notice. when from savage life we mount to societies enjoying a higher culture, we still find the witch and the wizard in evidence. both in greece and rome the belief in witchcraft existed. there were made direct laws against its practice, although neither the greeks nor the romans stained their civilisation with the judicial murder of thousands of victims such as occurred later in christian europe. but the belief in witchcraft is continuous. so also are the methods practised, and the modes of detection. the proofs offered in support of sorcery in the seventeenth century are precisely similar to those credited by savages in the lowest stage of human culture. the power of transformation possessed by the accused, the ability to bewitch through the possession of hairs belonging to the afflicted person, the making of little effigies and driving sharp instruments into them, and so affecting the corresponding parts of people, transportation through the air, etc., all belong to the belief in and practice of witchcraft wherever found. had a fijian been transported to a seat on the judicial bench by the side of sir matthew hale, when that judge condemned two old women to death for witchcraft, he would have found himself in a quite congenial atmosphere. allowing for difference in language, he would have found the evidence similar to that with which he was familiar, and he would have been able to endorse the judge's remarks with tales of his own experience. on this point, the level of culture attained by savages, and that of the inhabitants of the overwhelming majority of european countries little more than two hundred years ago, were substantially the same. even to-day cases are continually occurring which prove that advances in knowledge and civilisation have not left this ancient superstition without supporters. in subscribing to the belief in witchcraft, the christian church thus fell into line with earlier forms of religious belief. the peculiar feature it represents is that it came into existence when the belief in witchcraft was losing its hold on the more cultured classes. had it not allied itself with this tendency, no such thing as the witch mania of the medieval period could have existed. in sober truth, it brought about a veritable renaissance of the cruder theories of demonism, while its intolerance of opposition succeeded in stifling the voice of criticism for centuries. the primitive theory which holds that man is surrounded by hosts of spiritual agencies, mostly of a malevolent nature, was revived and fully endorsed by all christian teachers. in the commonest, as well as in the rarest events of life, this supernatural activity was manifest. in both the old and new testament the belief in demoniacal agency was endorsed. moreover, the fact that christianity was not a creed seeking to live as one of many others, but a religion struggling for complete mastery, gave further impetus to the belief. an easy explanation for the miracles and marvels that occurred in connection with non-christian beliefs was that they were the work of demons. the christian felt himself to be fighting not so much human antagonists as so many embodiments of satanic power. and after the establishment of christianity it is probable that much that went on under cover of witch assemblies, a more detailed knowledge than we possess would prove to be really the clandestine exercise of prescribed forms of faith. the old saying, "the sin of witchcraft is as the sin of rebellion," has more in it than meets the eye. there is little real difference between the magic that appears as piety and the magic that is denounced as sorcery, except that one is permitted and the other is not. and it is almost a law of religious development that the gods of one religion become the demons of its successor. but while witchcraft has existed in all ages, it existed in a much milder form than that which we find in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. first of all, there is the fact to which attention has already been directed, namely, the concentration of the public mind upon various forms of supernaturalism. every aspect of life was more or less under the direct influence of the church, and no teaching was tolerated that conflicted with her doctrines. and it was to the interest of the church perpetually to emphasise the reality of either angelic or diabolic activity. even in the case of those who showed a tendency to revolt against church rule there was no exception to this. if anything, the belief was more pronounced. next, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw a rising tide of heresy against which the church was compelled to battle; and to ascribe this alleged perversion of christian doctrines to the malevolence of satan offered the line of least resistance--just as the heretics attributed the power of the church itself to the same source. whatever diminution ensued in the general flood of superstition, as a consequence of the quarrel between protestant and catholic, was, so far as the disputants were concerned, incidental and even undesired. on the one point of demonism there existed complete unanimity, and the sceptic fared equally hard with both parties. in such an environment the wildest tales of sorcery became credible; and nothing illustrates this more forcibly than the fact that many of those tortured and condemned for sorcery actually believed themselves capable of performing the marvels laid to their charge. added to these factors, we have to note that social conditions were also extremely favourable. moral ties were as loose as they could reasonably be; and the attitude of the church towards the sexual relation had forced both the religious and the non-religious mind into wholly unhealthy channels. this last aspect of the subject has been little dealt with, but it is unquestionably a very real one. a german writer says:-- "whilst in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as those well acquainted with the state of morals during this period can all confirm, a most unbounded freedom was dominant in sexual relations, the state and the church were desirous of compelling the people to keep better order by the use of actual force, and by religious compulsion. so forced a transformation in so vital a matter necessarily resulted in a reaction of the worst kind, and forced into secret channels the impulse which it had attempted to suppress. this reaction occurred, moreover, with an elemental force. there resulted widespread sexual violence and seduction, hesitating at nothing, often insanely daring, in which everywhere the devil was supposed to help; everyone's head was turned in this way; the uncontrolled lust of debauchees found vent in secret bacchanalian associations and orgies, wherein many, with or without masquerade, played the part of satan; shameful deeds were perpetrated by excited women and by procuresses and prostitutes ready for any kind of immoral abomination; add to these sexual orgies the most widely diffused web of a completely developed theory of witchcraft, and the systematic strengthening of the widely prevalent belief in the devil--all these things, woven in a labyrinthine connection, made it possible for thousands upon thousands to be murdered by a disordered justice and to be sacrificed to delusion."[ ] to those who look closely into the subject of medieval witchcraft the presence of a strong sexual element is undeniable. when we examine contemporary accounts of the 'sabbath,' some of which are so gross as to be unprintable, we find a portion of the proceedings to be of a marked erotic character. the figure of satan often enough reminds one of the pagan priapus, and the ceremonies bear a strong resemblance to the ancient ones, with the mixture of christian language and symbolism inevitable under such circumstances. promiscuous intercourse between the sexes was said to occur at the witches' gatherings; and, indeed, unless some sort of sexual extravagance occurred, it is hard to account for both the persistency of the gatherings and of the reports concerning them. the most probable theory is, as i have just said, that these gatherings were covers for a continuance of the older sex worship. many customs connected therewith lingered on in the church itself, and it is not a wild assumption that they existed in a less adulterated and more extravagant form outside. universal as the belief in witchcraft has been, it was not until the close of the fifteenth century that it assumed what may be justly called an epidemic form. the famous bull of pope innocent viii. was not unconnected in its origin with the growth of heresy. this precious document, issued in , declares:-- "it has come to our ears that very many persons of both sexes, deviating from the catholic faith, abuse themselves with demons, incubus and succubus; and by incantations, charms, and conjurations, and other wicked superstitions, by criminal acts and offences, have caused the offspring of women and of the lower animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape, and the products of various plants, men, women, and other animals of different kinds, vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn and other vegetables of the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that they torture men and women with cruel pains and torments, internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human species. moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very faith itself. we, therefore, willing to provide by opportune remedies, according as it falls to our office, by our apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents, do appoint and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned, punished, and mulcted according to their offences." it was this pope who commissioned the inquisitor, sprenger, to root out witches. sprenger, with two others, acting on the authority of the popes, drew up the famous work, _the witch hammer_, which provided the basis for all subsequent works on the detection and punishment of witches.[ ] the folly and iniquity of the book is almost unbelievable, although it is quite matched by subsequent productions. it even provides for the silence of people under torture. if they confess when tortured, the case is complete. but if they do not confess, this diabolic production lays it down that this is because witches who have given themselves up to the devil are insensible to pain. even the evidence of children was admitted. and although in ordinary trials the evidence of criminals was barred, it was to be freely allowed in trials for sorcery. everything that ingenuity could suggest or brutality execute was provided for. from the issue of _the witch hammer_ until the middle of the seventeenth century, a period of about one hundred and fifty years, an epidemic of witchcraft raged. people of all ages and of all classes of society became implicated, and for some time, at least, accusation meant conviction. an almost unbelievably large number were executed. says lecky:-- "in almost every province of germany, but especially in those where clerical influence predominated, the persecution raged with a fearful intensity. seven thousand witches are said to have been burned at trèves, six hundred by a single bishop in bamberg, and nine hundred in a single year in the bishopric of würzburg.... at toulouse, the seat of the inquisition, four hundred persons perished for sorcery at a single execution, and fifty at douay in a single year. remy, a judge of nancy, boasted that he put to death eight hundred witches in sixteen years.... in italy, a thousand persons were executed in a single year in the province of como; and in other parts of the country the severity of the inquisitors at last created an absolute rebellion.... in geneva, which was then ruled by a bishop, five hundred alleged witches were executed in three months; forty-eight were burned at constance or ravensburg, and eighty in the little town of valery in saxony. in , seventy persons were condemned in sweden, and a large proportion of them burnt."[ ] in england, from to , it is estimated that seventy thousand persons were put to death for sorcery.[ ] grey, the editor of _hudibras_, says that he had himself seen a list of three thousand who were put to death during the long parliament. the celebrated witch-finder, mathew hopkins, hung sixty in one year in the county of suffolk. in scotland, for thirty-nine years, the number killed annually averaged about two hundred. this, of course, does not take into account the number who were hounded to death by persecution of a popular kind, or whose lives were made so wearisome that death must have come as a release. but the most remarkable, and the most horrible, of witchcraft executions occurred in würzburg in february . no less than one hundred and sixty-two witches were burned in a succession of _autos-da-fé_. among these, the reports disclose that there were actually thirty-four children. the following details give the actual ages of some of them:-- +----------+---------+---------------------------------+ | burning. | number. | children. | +----------+---------+---------------------------------+ | th | | girl, aged . | | th | | girl of and another. | | th | | boy of . | | th | | boys of , girl of . | | th | | boys, and . | | th | | boys. | | rd | | boys, , , and . | | th | | boys, brought from hospital. | | th | | little boy and girl. | | th | | boys, and . | | th | | blind girl and infant.[ ] | +----------+---------+---------------------------------+ the vast majority of those executed for sorcery were women. at all times witches have been more numerous than wizards, owing to their assumed closer connection with the world of supernatural beings. it was said, "for one sorcerer, ten thousand sorceresses," and christian writers were ready to explain why. woman had a greater affinity with the devil from the outset. it was through woman that satan had seduced adam, and it was only to be expected that he would employ the same instrument on subsequent occasions. _the witch hammer_ has a special chapter devoted to the consideration of why women are more given to sorcery than men, and quotes freely from the fathers to prove that this follows from her nature. james i. in his _demonologia_ follows sprenger in accounting for the number of witches. "the reason is easy. for as that sex is frailer than man is, so it is easier to be entrapped in the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the serpent's deceiving of eve at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with the sex sensine." to be old, or ugly, or unpopular, to have any peculiar deformity or mark, was to invite persecution, and, in an overwhelming majority of instances, conviction followed accusation. it is a significant comment upon the popular belief that protestantism, as a form of religious belief, was the product of an enlightened rational life, that it was only with the advance of protestantism that the belief in witchcraft assumed an epidemic form. this may be partly due to the greater direct dependence upon the bible, in which satanic influence--particularly in the new testament--plays so large a part. in the roman church, exorcism remained a regular part of the functions of the priest; the church was filled with accounts of satanic conflicts, but diabolic intercourse seems to have been mainly limited to saintly characters and priests. protestantism which, theoretically, made every man his own priest, raised the belief in satanic agency to an obsession. and wherever protestantism established itself there was an immediate and marked increase in the number of cases of witchcraft. in england, if we omit a doubtful law of the tenth century, there existed no regular law against witchcraft until . it remained a purely ecclesiastical offence. seventeen years later, the year of elizabeth's accession, bishop jewell, preaching before the queen, drew attention to the increase of sorcery. "it may please your grace," he said, "to understand that witches and sorcerers, within these last few years, are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. your grace's subjects pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their senses are bereft. i pray god they never practise further than upon the subject." and he added, "these eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness." a measure was passed through parliament the same year, making enchantments and witchcraft felony. the first year of james i. saw the passing of the 'witch act,' under which subsequent executions took place, and which remained in force until nearly the middle of the eighteenth century. with scarce an exception, the leaders of protestantism encouraged the belief in witches and urged their extermination as a religious and civil duty. with luther, in spite of the sturdy common sense he manifested in some directions, belief in the activity of satan amounted to an obsession. he saw satan everywhere in everything. the devil appeared to him while writing, disturbed his rest by the rattling of pans, and prevented his pursuing his studies by hammering on his skull. when a storm arose, luther declared, "'tis the devil who has done this; the winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits." suicides, he said, were often those strangled by the devil. moreover, "the devil can so completely assume the human form when he wants to deceive us, that we may very well lie with what seems to be a woman of real flesh and blood, and yet all the while 'tis only the devil in the shape of a woman." the devil could also become the father of children. luther says that he knew of one such case, and added, "i would have that child thrown into the moldau at the risk of being held its murderer."[ ] in america, protestantism manifested the same influence. of course, the settlers took the superstition of witchcraft with them, but it underwent no diminution in a new land. increase mather and his celebrated son, cotton mather, were the principal agents in stirring up the belief to frenzy point, and a commission was appointed to rout out witches and suppress their practices. there was soon a plentiful supply of victims. one woman was charged with "giving a look towards the great meeting-house of salem, and immediately a demon entered the house and tore down part of it." it seems that a bit of the wooden wainscotting had fallen down. in the case of giles corey, who refused to plead guilty, torture was used. he was pressed to death, and when his tongue protruded from his mouth the sheriff thrust it back with his walking-stick. many people were executed, and the ministers of boston and charlestown drew up an address warmly thanking the commission for its zeal, and expressing the hope that it would never be relaxed. certainly the commission did what it could to earn the thanks given. a shipmaster making for maryland with emigrants encountered unusually rough weather. an old woman, one mary lee, was accused of raising the storm, and drowned as a witch. a woman walked a long distance over muddy roads without soiling her dress. "i scorn to be drabbled," she said, and was hanged as a reward. george burroughs could lift a barrel by inserting his finger in the bunghole. he was hanged for a wizard. bridget bishop was charged with appearing before john louder at midnight and grievously oppressing him. louder's evidence against the woman also included the fact that he saw a black pig approach his door, and when he went to kick it the pig vanished. he was also tempted by a black thing with the body of a monkey, the feet of a cock, and the face of a man. on going out of his back door he saw the said bridget bishop going towards her house. the evidence was deemed quite conclusive. another witness said that being in bed on the lord's day, he saw a woman, susanna martin, come in at the window and jump down on the floor. she took hold of the witness's foot, and drawing his body into a heap, lay upon him for nearly two hours, so that he could neither move nor hear. in most of these cases torture was applied, and confessions were obtained. these confessions often implicated others, but when the witches took to accusing those in high places, and even ministers of religion, the need for discrimination was realised. once a critical judgment was aroused, the mania began to subside--cotton mather fighting manfully for the belief to the end. the impetus given by protestantism to witch-hunting in scotland was most marked. scotch witchcraft, says lecky, was the offspring of scotch puritanism, and faithfully reflected the character of its parent. the clergy nowhere possessed greater power, and nowhere used it more assiduously to fan the flame against witchcraft. buckle says:-- "of all the means of intimidation employed by the scotch clergy, none was more efficacious than the doctrines they propounded respecting evil spirits and future punishments. on these subjects they constantly uttered the most appalling threats. the language which they used was calculated to madden men with fear, and to drive them to the depths of despair.... it was generally believed that the world was overrun by evil spirits, who not only went up and down the earth, but also lived in the air, and whose business it was to tempt mankind. their number was infinite, and they were to be found in all places, and in all seasons. at their head was satan himself, whose delight it was to appear in person, ensnaring or terrifying everyone he met. with this object he assumed various forms. one day he would visit the earth as a black dog; another day, as a raven; on another, he would be heard in the distance roaring like a bull. he appeared sometimes as a white man in black clothes, and sometimes he appeared as a black man in black clothes, when it was remarked that his voice was ghostly, and that one of his feet was cloven. his stratagems were endless. for, in the opinion of divines, his cunning increased with his age, and, having been studying for more than years, he had now attained to unexampled dexterity."[ ] witchcraft was declared by the scotch parliament in to be punishable by death. and, naturally, the more zealous and active the search for witches, the more numerous they became. in the search the clergy and the kirk-sessions led the way. in the general assembly, having before them a case of witchcraft in which the evidence was insufficient, deputed james melville to travel on the coast side and collect evidence in favour of the prosecution. it also ordered that the presbyteries should proceed in all severity against such magistrates as liberated convicted witches. as in england so here, a body of men came into existence whose business it was to travel the country and detect witches. anonymous accusations were invited, the clergy "placing an empty box in church, to receive a billet with the sorcerer's name, and the date and description of his deeds."[ ] in "at the college of auld abirdene" every minister was ordered to make "subtill and privie inquisition," concerning the number of witches in his parish, and report the same forthwith. nothing that could whet the appetite for the hunt was neglected. william johnston, baron, bailie "of the regalitie and barronie of broughton," was awarded the goods of all who should be "lawfullie convict be assyses of notorious and common witches, haunting and resorting devilles and witches."[ ] the lives of thousands of people were rendered unbearable, and the complaint of one, margaret miall, that "she desyres not to live, because nobody will converse with her, seeing she is under the reputation of a witch," must have represented the feelings of many. it was not only for working ill that people were accused of witchcraft and executed; ill or well made little difference. in edinburgh in it was charged against thomas grieve that he had relieved many sicknesses and grievous diseases by sorcery and witchcraft. "he took sickness off a woman in fife, and put it upon a cow, which thereafter ran mad and died." he also cured a child of a disease "by straiking back the hair of his head, and wrapping him in an anointed cloth, and by that means putting him asleep," and thus through his devilry and witchcraft, cured the child. other charges of a similar kind were brought against grieve, who was found guilty and hanged on the castle hill.[ ] at the same place, a year previous, margaret wallace was also sentenced to be hanged and burned, on the same kind of charge, and for "practising devilry, incantation, and witchcraft, especially forbidden by the laws of almighty god, and the municipal laws of this realm." the following bill of costs for burning two women, jane wischert and isabel cocker, in aberdeen, has a certain melancholy interest:-- £ _s._ _d._ item for loads of peatts to burn them " for ane boll of colles " for four tar barrells " for fir and win barrells " for a staick and the dressing of it " for four fathoms of towis " to jon justice for their execution in england, no less than in scotland, america, and on the continent, much learned testimony might be cited in defence of witchcraft. the great sir thomas browne said in the most famous of his writings: "for my part i have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches. they that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits; and are obliquely and upon consequence, a sort, not of infidels, but atheists."[ ] henry more, the great platonist, asserted that they who deny the agency of witches are "puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity." ralph cudworth, one of the greatest scholars of the latter part of the seventeenth century, said that they who denied the possibility of satanic intercourse "can hardly escape the suspicion of some hankering towards atheism."[ ] writing nearly a century later, when the english law merely prosecuted as rogues and vagabonds those who pretended to witchcraft, blackstone thought it necessary to point out that this alteration did not deny the possibility of the offence, and added:-- "to deny this would be to contradict the revealed word of god in various passages both of the old and new testaments; and the thing itself is a truth in which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony; either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits."[ ] about the same time wesley gave the world his famous declaration on the subject:-- "it is true likewise that the english in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives' fables. i am sorry for it, and i willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many who believe the bible pay to those who do not believe it. i owe them no such service. i take knowledge that these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised and with such insolence spread through the land in direct opposition, not only to the bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. they well know (whether christians know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the bible."[ ] the evidence upon which the convictions for witchcraft rested were almost incredibly stupid, as the punishments were almost unbelievably brutal. if the crops failed, or the milk turned sour; if the head of a local magnate ached, or a minister of the gospel fell sick; if a woman was childless, or a child taken with a fit; if a cow sickened, or sheep died suddenly, some poor woman was pretty certain to be seized, and tortured until she confessed her alleged crime. a mole or wart on any part of the body was a sure sign of commerce with the devil. it was believed that on the body of every witch was a spot insensible to pain. to discover this she was stripped, pins were run into the body, and when excess of pain had produced numbness, some such spot was pretty certain to be found. men regularly took up with this work in both england and scotland, and their fame as 'prickers' depended upon the number of witches they unearthed. if a suspected witch kept a black cat, did not shed tears, or could not repeat the lord's prayer correctly, these were pretty sure signs of guilt. a more serious test was the ordeal by water. this was a favourite and general test, and was highly recommended by that learned fool, james the first. in this the right hand was tied to the left foot, the left hand to the right foot. she was then thrown into a pond. if she floated she was a witch, and was either hanged or burned. if she sank, she was innocent--and was drowned. another test was to tie a woman's legs across, and she was so seated on them that they bore the entire weight of her body. in this position she was kept for hours, and on the first sign of pain condemned as a witch. if none of these tests were adopted, torture was used. there was the boot--a frame of iron or wood in which the leg was placed and wedges driven in until the limb was smashed. a variation of this was to place the leg in an iron boot and slowly heat it over a fire. there was the thumbscrew, an instrument which smashed the thumb to pulp by the turning of a screw. more barbarous still was the bridle. this was an iron hoop passing over the head, with four prongs, two pointing to the tongue and palate, and one to either cheek. the suspected witch was then chained to the wall, and watchers appointed to prevent her sleeping. the slightest movement caused the greatest torture, and in the vast majority of cases a confession was secured. in obstinate cases pressing between heavy stones was adopted. one of the most famous of these witch-finders was the celebrated mathew hopkins before referred to. he was appointed to the work by parliament during the time of the commonwealth, and styled himself 'witch-finder general.' hopkins travelled round the country, much like an assize judge, putting up at the principal inns, and at the expense of the local authorities. his charge was twenty shillings a visit, whether he found witches or not. if he discovered any, there was a further charge of twenty shillings for every witch brought to execution. his favourite method of detection was that of floating. but another of hopkins's tests was the following: the suspected witch was placed cross-legged on a stool in the centre of the room. she was closely watched and kept without food for four-and-twenty hours. doors and windows remained open to watch for the entrance of some of the devil's imps. these might come in the form of a fly, a wasp, a moth, or some other insect. the work of the watchers was to kill every insect that came into the room. but if one escaped, it was clear proof that this was one of the witch's familiars. wherever hopkins travelled numerous convictions followed. these were so numerous that suspicion was aroused, not of the genuineness of the convictions, but of hopkins's knowledge concerning the locality of the witches. in defence he published in a tract entitled "the discovery of witches; in answer to several queries lately delivered to the judge of assize for the county of norfolk; and now published by mathew hopkins, witchfinder, for the benefit of the whole kingdom." the charge against hopkins was that he had been supplied by the devil with a memorandum of all the witches, and so was able to find them where others failed. absurd as the charge was, it found credence, and although his end is wrapped in obscurity, it is said that he was finally seized himself on a charge of sorcery, tried by his own favourite water test--and floated. one cannot but hope that tradition is in this case trustworthy. it is difficult, nowadays, to realise the gravity with which these trials were undertaken. an outline of a very famous witch trial, before an eminent judge in the latter part of the seventeenth century, will best serve as an illustration. before me there lies a little tract of some sixty pages, printed "for william shrewsbury at the bible in duck lane," and bearing on the title page the following description:-- "at the assizes and general gaol delivery, held at bury st. edmunds for the county of suffolk, the tenth day of march, in the sixteenth year of the reign of our sovereign, lord king charles ii., before mathew hale, knight, lord chief baron of his majesties court of exchequer; rose callender and amy duny, widows, both of leystoff, in the county aforesaid, were severally indicted for bewitching elizabeth and anne durent, jane bocking, susan chandler, william durent, elizabeth and deborah pacy and the said callender and duny, being arrainged upon the same indictments, pleaded not guilty; and afterwards upon a long evidence, were found guilty, and thereupon had judgment to dye for the same." both the women charged were old. the charges were as follows: the mother of the infant, william durent, sworn and examined in open court, deposed that about the th of march, having special occasion to go from home, left her child in the care of amy duny, giving her special occasion not to give her child the breast. nevertheless, amy duny did acquaint her mother on her return that she had given the child the breast, and on being reprimanded "used many high expressions and threatening speeches towards her; telling her that she had as good have done otherwise than to have found fault with her ... and that very night her son fell into strange fits of swounding ... and so continued for several weeks." much troubled, the mother consulted a dr. jacob, of yarmouth, who advised her to hang up the child's blanket, at night to wrap the child in it, and if she found anything therein to throw it in the fire. a very large toad was found, which on being put in the fire "made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder ... and thereupon the toad was no more seen or heard." more wonderful still, "the next day there came a young woman and told this deponnent that her aunt (meaning the said amy) was in a most lamentable condition, having her face all scorched with fire." and on the mother enquiring of amy duny how this had happened, amy replied, "she might thank her for it, for that she was the cause thereof, but that she should live to see some of her children dead, or else upon crutches." it was further alleged "that not long after this deponnent was taken with lameness in both her legges, from the knees downwards, and that she was fain to go upon crutches ... and so continued till the time of the assizes, that the witch came to be tried." concerning the bewitching of elizabeth and deborah pacy, aged eleven and nine, their father declared that deborah was suddenly taken with lameness. one day while the girl was resting outside the house, "amy duny came to the deponnent's house to buy some herrings; but, being denied, she went away discontented.... but at the very same instant of time, the said child was taken with most violent fits, feeling extreme pain in her stomach, like the pricking of pins, and shrieking out in a dreadful manner like unto a whelp." as the result of this and other ailments from which the child suffered, the father accused amy duny of being a witch, and she was placed in the stocks. being placed in the stocks, further threats were uttered, and both children were afflicted with fits. upon recovery they "would cough extremely, and bring up much phlegm and crooked pins, and one time a twopenny nail with a very broad head; which pins (amounting to forty or more), together with the twopenny nail, were produced in court, with the affirmation of the said deponnent that he was present when the said nail was vomited up, and also most of the pins.... in this manner the said children continued for the space of two months, during which time, in their intervals, this deponnent would cause them to read some chapters from the new testament. whereupon he observed that they would read till they came to the name of lord or jesus or christ, and then, before they could pronounce either of the said words, they would suddenly fall into their fits. but when they came to the name of satan or devil, they would clap their fingers upon the book, crying out, 'this bites, but makes me speak right well!'" much more evidence of a similar kind was offered during the course of the trial, with details of a too indelicate character for reproduction concerning the search made on the women's bodies for devil's marks. during the whole of the trial there were present in court a number of distinguished people, amongst them sir thomas browne. the latter, being "desired to give his opinion, what he did conceive of him; was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched, and said that in denmark there had lately been a great discovery of witches, who used the very same way of afflicting persons, by conveying pins into them, and crooked as these pins were, with needles and nails. and his opinion was that the devil in such cases did work upon the bodies of men and women as on a natural foundation, to stir up and excite such humours superabounding in their bodies to a great excess, whereby he did in an extraordinary manner afflict them with such distempers as their bodies were most subject to, as particularly appeared in these children." sir mathew hale, one of the greatest lawyers of his day, in directing the jury, told them "he would not repeat the evidence unto them, lest by so doing he should wrong the evidence one way or the other. only this acquainted them. first, whether or no these children were bewitched? secondly, whether the prisoners at the bar were guilty of it? that there were such creatures he made no doubt at all. for, first, the scriptures had affirmed as much. secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime. and such had been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by that act of parliament which had provided punishments proportionable to the quality of the offence. and desired them strictly to observe their evidence, and desired the great god of heaven to direct their hearts in this weighty thing they had in hand; for to condemn the innocent and let the guilty go free were both an abomination before the lord." the jury took no more than half an hour to consider their verdict, and brought in both women guilty upon all counts. the judge expressed his complete satisfaction with the verdict, and sentenced them to be hanged--a sentence duly carried out a fortnight later. this is the last notable trial in english history. a witch was burned later than the date of this trial, and the last one actually condemned was in . but in this case, on the representation of the judge who tried the issue, the verdict was formally set aside. by that time people were beginning to realise the wisdom of montaigne's counsel, written at the commencement of the witch epidemic:-- "how much more natural and more likely do i find it that two men should lie than one in twelve hours should pass with the winds from east to west? how much more natural that our understanding may, by the volubility of our loose, capering mind, be transported from its place than one of us should, flesh and bones as we are, by a strange spirit be carried upon a broom through a tunnel or a chimney." in england the witch act of was not formally repealed until . in scotland the last witch legally executed was in . captain ross, sheriff of sutherland, has the doubtful honour of having condemned her to the stake. but fifty years later than this-- --the associated presbytery passed a resolution deploring the fact that witchcraft was falling into disrepute. in germany the last witch was executed in , by decapitation. the last trial for witchcraft in massachusetts was as late as . these dates refer, of course, to legal proceedings. examples of the existence of this belief are continually being recorded in newspapers, although they now only rank as solitary reminiscences of one of the most degrading and brutalising beliefs that european history records. i have not aimed at giving a history of the witch mania--indeed, a scientific history of witchcraft, one that will make plain the nature of the various factors involved, has yet to be written. i have only dwelt upon it for the purpose of enforcing the lesson of how materially such an epidemic must have contributed to give permanence to religious belief in general. it is certain that such an epidemic could not occur save in a society saturated with supernaturalism. it is equally certain that once such an epidemic occurs it must in turn strengthen the tendency towards supernaturalistic beliefs. thanks to the long reign of the religious idea, and to the overwhelming influence of the church, the people of europe were prepared for such an outbreak. and it should be clear that the prevalence of such beliefs, even though they may be afterwards discarded, favours the perpetuation of religious belief as a whole. the particular form of a belief that is prevalent for a time may disappear, but the temper of mind induced by its reign remains. and absurd as the belief in witches capering through the air on broomsticks, changing themselves into black cats, raising storms, and causing sickness--absurd though all this may be, it yet serves to keep alive the temper of mind on which supernaturalism lives. footnotes: [ ] cited by bloch, _sexual life of our time_, p. . michelet has also dealt with this matter in his vivid and picturesque work, _the sorceress_. [ ] a lengthy account of this work is given by ennemoser in his _history of magic_, vol. ii. [ ] _rise and influence of rationalism_, i. pp. - . [ ] h. williams, _the superstitions of witchcraft_, p. . [ ] t. wright, _narratives of sorcery and magic_. [ ] michelet, _life of luther_, chap. vi. [ ] _history of civilisation_, chap. xix. [ ] dalyell, _darker superstitions of scotland_, p. . [ ] dalyell, p. . [ ] pitcairn's _criminal trials_, vol. iii. [ ] _religio medici_, pt. i. sec. . [ ] _true intellectual system_, ii. p. . [ ] _commentaries_, stephen's edition, i. p. . [ ] _journal_, . chapter eleven summary & conclusion the study of religion falls naturally and easily into two parts. the first is a question of origin. under what conditions did the hypothesis that supernatural beings control the life of man come into existence? we know that in civilised times religious beliefs are in the nature of an inheritance. a member of any civilised society finds them here when he is born, he grows up with them, generally accepting them without question, or effecting certain modifications in the form in which he continues to hold them. if we treat religion as a hypothesis, advanced as other hypotheses are advanced, to account for a certain class of facts, then we can safely say that religion is one of the earliest in the history of human thought. and its antiquity and universality preclude us from seeking an explanation of its origin in the mental life of civilised humanity. whether the religious hypothesis can or cannot be justified by an appeal to civilised intelligence, it is plain it did not begin there. its beginnings are earlier than any existing civilisation; and in its most general form may be said to be as old as mankind itself. consequently, if any satisfactory explanation of the origin of the religious idea is to be found, it must be sought amid the very earliest conditions of human society. now whatever the differences of opinion concerning matters of detail, there is substantial agreement amongst european anthropologists upon one important point. they all agree that the conception of supernatural, or 'spiritual,' beings owes its beginning to the ignorance of primitive man concerning both his own nature and the nature of the world around him. the beginnings of human experience suggest questions that can only be satisfactorily answered by the accumulated experience of many generations. these questions do not materially differ from those that face men to-day. the why and wherefore of things are always with us; life propounds the same problem to all; it is the replies alone that vary, and the nature of these replies is determined by the knowledge at our disposal. the difference is not in nature but in man. the answers given by primitive man to these eternal questions are a complete inversion of those of his better informed descendants. the conception of natural force, of mechanical necessity, is as yet unborn, and the primitive thinker everywhere assumes the operation of personal beings as responsible for all that occurs. this is not so much the product of careful and elaborate philosophising, it is closer akin to the _naive_ thinking of a child concerning a thunderstorm. primitive thought accepts the universal operation of living and intelligent forces as an unquestionable fact. modern thought tends more and more surely in the direction of regarding the universe as a complex of self-adjusting, non-conscious forces. primitive thought assumes a supernatural agency as the cause of disease, and seeks, logically, to placate it by prayer or coerce it by magic. modern thought turns to test-tube and microscope, searches for the malignant germ, and manufactures an antitoxin. the history of human thought is, as huxley said, a record of the substitution of mechanical for vitalistic processes. the beginning of religion is found in connection with the latter. a genuine science commences with the emergence of the former. with this aspect of the matter i have not, however, been specially concerned. it has been left on one side in order to concentrate attention upon another and a more neglected aspect of the subject--that of the conditions that have served to perpetuate the religious idea. grant, what cannot be well denied in the face of modern investigation, that ideas of the supernatural began in primitive delusion. how comes it that this idea has not by now disappeared from civilised society? what are the causes that have given it such a lengthy lease of life? experience has shown that all really verifiable knowledge counts as an asset of naturalism, and is so far opposed to supernaturalism. moreover, the history of science has been such that one feels justified in the assumption that, given time and industry, there are no phenomena that are not susceptible to a naturalistic explanation. why, then, has not supernaturalism died out? even the religious idea cannot persist without evidence of some kind being offered in its behalf. this evidence may be to a better instructed mind inconclusive or irrelevant, but evidence of some sort there must have been all along, and must still be. granted that the religious idea began with primitive mankind, granted also that it was based on a mistaken interpretation of natural phenomena, these reasons are quite insufficient to explain why thousands of generations later that idea is still with us. "our fathers have told us" offers to the average mind a strong appeal, but surely the children will require some further proof than this. what kind of evidence is it that throughout the ages religious people have accepted as conclusive? a study of primitive psychology shows clearly enough how the religious idea vitalised the facts. what we next have to discern is the class of facts that have kept the religious idea alive. the foregoing pages constitute an attempt to answer this question. the need for some such investigation was clearly shown by the publication of the late professor william james's _varieties of religious experience_ and its reception by the religious press of the country as an epoch-marking work. as a mere collection of documents, the work is interesting enough. but its critical value is extremely small. how religious visionaries have felt, or what has been their experiences, can only furnish the mere data of an enquiry, and _their explanation of the cause of their experiences is a part of the data_. this, apparently, professor james overlooked; and it will be noted by critical readers of his book that it proceeds on the assumption that the statements of religious visionaries are to be taken, not only as true concerning their subjective experiences at a given time, but also as approximately true as to the causes of their mental states. this, of course, by no means follows. a scientific enquiry cannot separate mental conditions from the subject's interpretation of their causation. whether this interpretation is genuine or not must be decided finally by an appeal to what is known of the laws of mental life, under both normal and abnormal conditions. if these are adequate to explain the "varieties of religious experience," there is no need whatever to assume the operation of a supernatural agency. nor does calling this agency 'transcendent' or 'supermundane' make any substantial difference. for, in this connection, these are only names that serve to disguise a visitant of a highly undesirable character. the evidence on behalf of a naturalistic explanation of religious phenomena has been purposely stated in a suggestive rather than in an exhaustive manner. the main lines of evidence are threefold. first, there is the indisputable fact that in the lower stages of culture all mental and bodily diseases are universally attributed to spiritual agency. this explanation holds the field; it is the only one possible at the time, and it is not replaced until a comparatively late stage of human history. but of special importance is the fact that a belief does not die out suddenly. it is only destroyed very slowly, and even after the facts upon which the belief was originally based have been otherwise interpreted, the attitude of mind engendered by the long reign of a belief remains. it has by that time become part of the intellectual environment. theories of a quasi-philosophic or quasi-scientific character are elaborated, and give to the original belief something of a rational air. even to-day the extent to which superstitious practices still gather round the subject of disease is known only to the curious in such matters. not that the original reason is given for the practice. in nearly every case a different one is invented. to take only a single example. we still find saffron tea largely used in cases of measles. all medical men are aware that it possesses not the slightest curative value. students of folklore are aware that it has its origin in the theory of sympathetic cures. its redeeming feature is that it is harmless; so we find it still in common use, and the recovery of a child from measles is often enough attributed to the potency of the concoction. so with the relation of disease to the persistence of the belief in the supernatural. the conclusion that disease--whether bodily or mental--is due to the agency of spirits is one that follows from the existence of the religious idea; but in turn the observed facts react and strengthen the religious belief. every case of disease becomes to the primitive mind an unanswerable proof in favour of the original hypothesis. the disease is there, and the only explanation possible is in terms of the animistic idea. and all the time the religious idea is becoming more deeply embedded in the social consciousness, more firmly established as a social fact. the next line of evidence is that furnished by what i have called the culture of the supernatural. by some means or other--probably by accident in the first instance--it is discovered that certain herbs and vegetable drugs have a peculiar effect on one's mental state. those who use them see or hear things other people do not normally hear or see. abstention from food and other bodily privations produce similar results. what is the inevitable conclusion? the only one possible under the existing conditions is that communication has been set up with an invisible world from which one is shut off under normal conditions. from this to the next step is obvious and easy. if a drug, or a fast, brings one into communication with the supernatural world, one has only to repeat the conditions in order to repeat the experience. and repeated they are in all religions, with, at most, those modifications induced by changed times and circumstances. this is why fasting and other forms of 'fleshly mortification' play so large a part in the history of religion. the savage medicine man, the hindu fakir, the medieval saint, all create their ecstasies by the simple plan of disturbing the normal operations of the nervous system. it is not, of course, implied that this is done with a full consciousness of all that is involved in the practice. the derangement is to them the condition of the supernatural manifestation, not the physiological and psychological cause of the experience. the third main line of evidence is connected with the phenomena of sexuality. it has been shown that in early stages of culture man everywhere connects the phenomena of the sexual life with the activity of supernatural forces. following the lines of investigation indicated by mr. sidney hartland, we saw reason to believe that the primitive conception of procreation is not that afterwards prevalent, but that of assuming the birth of a child to be due to the direct action of spiritual beings on the mother. proofs of this are found in existing beliefs among primitive peoples, in the magical practices so widely current to obtain children, and in numerous other customs connected with childbirth. the phenomenon of puberty in the male and of menstruation in the female gives a terrifying reality to this belief. but still more important is the fact that a great deal of assumed religious feeling is found on analysis to be little more than masked sexuality. the connection between eroticism and piety has been noted over and over again by medical observers in the cases that have been brought professionally under their notice. and it is hardly less marked in a large number of instances that are usually classed as normal. thus great religious teachers have often emphasised the value of a celibate life as a means of furthering religious devotion, and nearly all have treated it with marked respect. the reason given for this is that marriage involves a greater absorption in material or worldly cares, while celibacy leaves one free to full devotion to the spiritual. but the bottom reason for it is that sexual and domestic feelings, lacking their proper outlet in marriage and family life, run with greater force in the outlet provided by religion. so it happens that we find unmarried men and women, devoted to the religious life, expressing themselves towards jesus or the virgin in language which, separated from its religious associations, leaves no doubt as to its origin in unsatisfied sexual feeling. in these cases we are dealing with a perversion of one of the deepest of human instincts. and it is one of the commonest of observations in psychology that when a feeling is denied outlet through its proper channel it finds vent in some other direction, and is to that extent masked or disguised. allied to the fact of perversion is that of misinterpretation. in the chapter on _conversion_ we have seen how largely this occurs at the period of adolescence. the significant features of adolescence are a development of the sexual nature and an awakening of a consciousness of race kinship. connected with these, and flowing from them, is a more or less rapid development of what are called the altruistic feelings, the individual becoming less self-centred and more concerned for the well-being of others. from an evolutionary point it is easy to read the fundamental meaning of these transformations, although in the course of social development they have become overlaid with a number of secondary characteristics. still, in a completely rationalised social life, with adequate knowledge concerning the nature of adolescence, every care would be taken to direct these developing energies into purely social channels. adolescence is the great formative period; it is then that imitation and suggestion play their most important parts, and it is then that the foundations may be laid of a really good and useful citizenship. if we fail then, we fail completely. in a society where supernaturalism still exerts considerable power another, and a more disastrous, policy is pursued. every endeavour is made by religious organisations to exploit adolescence in their own interest. thousands of priests, often, no doubt, with the best of motives, are engaged in impressing upon the youthful mind an entirely erroneous notion of the character and the direction of the feelings experienced. the sense of restlessness, consequent upon a period of great physiological disturbance, is utilised to create an unhealthy 'conviction of sin,' or the need of 'getting right with god.' social duties and obligations are made incidental rather than fundamental. activities that should be consciously directed to a social end are diverted into religious channels, and one consequence of this, as we have seen, is a large crop of nervous disorders that might be avoided were a healthier outlet provided. in this the modern priest is acting precisely as his savage forerunner acted. as the savage medicine man associates sexual phenomena with the activity of the tribal ghosts, so the modern priest often associates the psychological conditions that accompany adolescence with a supernatural influence. the distinction between the two is a purely verbal one. in neither case is there a recognition of the nature of the processes actually at work; in both cases the phenomena are used to emphasise the reality and activity of the supernatural. in both cases the social feelings are disguised by the religious interpretation given, with the result that instead of adolescence being, as it should be, the period of a conscious entry into the larger social life, it only too often marks the beginning of a lifelong servitude to retrogressive forces. these are the main lines along which, i conceive, the study of the pathologic elements that enter into the history of religion must be studied. and so long as we restrict our study to the lower culture stages the evidence is clear and unmistakable. it is when we reach the higher stages of civilisation that the problem becomes more difficult. for although it is possible to detect the same factors at work they are expressed in a different way, and affiliated to current philosophic and even scientific ideas. thus, it would be readily admitted by most people nowadays that visions seen by a fasting man, or by a taker of drugs, or by one suffering from some nervous disorder, were wholly inadmissible as evidence. so far we have advanced beyond the point of view of primitive races. but the testimony of one who by constantly dwelling upon a single idea, and by excluding rational and corrective influences, has brought about a quite abnormal state of mind, is still counted of value by theologians. much of the current cant concerning 'mysticism' may be cited in illustration of this. exactly what mysticism is no one appears to know. definitions are numerous and varied. so far as most mystics are concerned the definition of harnack--"mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere beyond reason"--appears to hit the mark, although how reason can be used in a sphere to which it does not apply is precisely one of those unintelligible statements that so delights those with yearnings after the ineffable. the normal mind will probably find more satisfaction in john stuart mill's description of mysticism as being "neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations of the mind, and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read what takes place in the world without." but the general claim of 'mystics,' and, indeed, of supernaturalists generally, is that they are, in virtue of the exercise of certain qualities or 'faculties,' either inoperative at certain times, or absent in the case of normal folk, able to perceive a truth not perceptible to people less fortunately endowed. and these claims, i have no hesitation in saying, are wholly false. there are all degrees of development of human faculty, but it is substantially the same with all. there is no royal road to truth in this direction more than in others. truth is reached in the same way by all, and although an induction may in the case of certain well-dowered individuals be so rapid as to rank as an 'intuition,' a careful analysis destroys the illusion. when we clear away from the claims of the 'mystic' all the superfluities of language that are there, and so reduce these claims to their lowest and plainest terms, we find ourselves face to face with the claim of the supernaturalist as it has existed from savage times onward. the method remains true to itself. in the first instance, we have the claim to illumination based upon direct interference with the normal workings of the mind. in the next stage, we find this interference still marked, but less direct. finally, we have the unhealthy operation of fixed ideas, and the exclusion of all conditions that would prevent the operation of hallucination or illusion. but the method remains the same throughout, and it is equally sterile throughout. in all history these mystical states of illumination have discovered no verifiable truth; they have never at any time advanced human knowledge in the smallest degree. and the reason for this is plain: the brain of the mystic, like that of the non-mystic, can only work on the basis of its acquired knowledge or experience. it can create nothing new; it can declare no truth that is not in the nature of an induction from existing knowledge. all that the religious mystic can accomplish after brooding upon inherited religious beliefs is to create new combinations, or effect certain modifications or developments of them, and by continued contemplation endow his subjective creations with an objective existence. that is why the christian mystic remains a christian. the mohammedan mystic remains a mohammedan. the 'supersensible reality' is always of the kind consonant with their inherited beliefs and their social environment. that is also why mysticism has its fashions like all other forms of religious extravagance. and as he is "applying rationalism to a sphere above reason," the mystic may give full vent to his imaginative powers. that which is above reason may defy reasonable disproof. to some, however, it has the disadvantage of not admitting of reasonable verification. there is nothing here but the primitive delusion operating under changed conditions. in addition, to the lines of investigation followed in the foregoing pages, a great deal might be said as to how far the religious idea has been perpetuated by an exploitation of purely social qualities. it must be obvious to even the cursory student that a great deal of what is now being put forward as religious is really no more than a sociology with a religious label. the feeling for truth, beauty, justice, the desire for social intercourse, are all treated as expressions of religious conviction. all sorts of social reforms are urged in the name of religion, and the degree of success achieved dwelt upon as fruits of the religious spirit. but in no legitimate sense of the word can these things be called religious. they may or may not be consonant with the existing religion, but in themselves they are very clearly the outcome of man's social nature, and would exist even though religion disappeared entirely. the appeals made to man's moral sense, to his sense of justice, to his sympathies, are thus fundamentally appeals made to his social nature, and so far as the religious appeal is placed upon this basis it becomes an exploitation of the social consciousness. unfortunately, the long association of religious forms with social life and institutions, due ultimately to the immense power of supernaturalism in early society, this, combined with early education, makes it a matter of no small difficulty for the average man or woman to separate the two things. finally, let us imagine for a moment that the course of human history had been different to what it actually has been. suppose that by some miracle humanity had started its career in full possession of that knowledge of nature which has been so laboriously accumulated. in that case, would the belief in the supernatural have ever existed? would the thousand and one 'spiritual beings' of primitive society have ever had being? and if not called into being then, from what other source could they have been derived? is there anything in later scientific knowledge that would ever have suggested the supernatural? we know there is not; we know that the whole of modern science is an emphatic protest against its existence. unfortunately the scientist does not come first, but last; and by the time he appears, the supernatural has made good its foothold; it has permeated human institutions, and has bitten so deeply into habits of thought as to make its eradication the most difficult of all tasks. let us carry our imagining yet a step further. imagine that even after primitive ignorance had created the supernatural, it had come to an abrupt stop when man had emerged from the purely savage stage. suppose a generation born, not without knowledge of what their progenitors believed, but with a sufficient knowledge of their own to correct their ancestor's errors. suppose that generation in a position to recognise disease, insanity, delusion, hysteria, hallucination for what they are. assume them to be under no delusion concerning the nature of man, physically or mentally. would the religious idea have persisted in the way that it has done? granted religion would still have continued to exist as an ultimate philosophy of nature that appealed to some minds, as other systems of philosophy number their disciples, would it have been the dominating power it has been? what under such conditions would have become of that evidence for the supernatural, accepted generation after generation, but which is now rejected by all educated minds? where would have been that long array of seers, prophets, illuminants, whose credentials have been found in states of mind that are now seen to have been pathological in character? for remember it was not always--very seldom, in fact--the justice, or the reasonableness of the teachings set forth, that won support, but generally the 'signs and wonders' that were pointed to as evidence of the divine commission of the teachers. assume, then, that these 'signs and wonders' had been wanting, and that for thousands of years people had looked at natural phenomena from the point of view of the educated mind of to-day, what would have been the present position of the religious idea? would it not have been like a tree divorced from the soil? well, we know that the course of history has been far different from what i have assumed to be the case. we know that the savage dies out very slowly, and that even in civilised states to-day he is honoured in the existence of a whole army of representatives. each generation moves along the road marked out by its predecessors, and broadens or lengthens it to but a small extent. for many, many generations people went on adopting the conclusions of the savage concerning man and the universe, and finding proofs of the soundness of those conclusions in exactly the same kind of experiences. the beliefs thus engendered were wild and absurd--admittedly so, and many of such a nature that educated people are now ashamed of them. but such as they were, they served the purpose of perpetuating the belief in the supernatural, and so served to strengthen the general religious idea. of that there can be no reasonable doubt. for the influence of beliefs that have been long held does not end with the intellectual perception of their falsity. a belief such as witchcraft dies out, but by that time it has done its work in familiarising the general mind with the reality of the supernatural, and so prepares the ground for other harvests. these long centuries of superstitious beliefs have left behind in society a psychological residuum that is at all times an obstacle and is sometimes fatal to scientific thinking. we are like men who have obtained freedom after almost a lifetime of slavery. we may be no longer in any real danger of the lash, but fear of the whip has become part of our nature, and we shrink without cause. so with all those now admitted delusions that have been described in the foregoing pages, and which for generations were asserted without question. they bit deeply in to social institutions; the temper of mind they induced became part of our social heritage. they perpetuated the long reign of supernaturalism, and still interpose a serious obstacle to sane and helpful conceptions of man and the universe. index adolescence and religion, - , , - . adolescence and primitive customs, . adolescence and nervous disorders, - . adolescence, social significance of, - . agapæ, . asceticism, , , , - . asceticism and purity, . asceticism, influence on religion, - . augustine, . authority, conflict with science, viii. baring-gould, s., , , . baring-gould, s., on mysticism and sexualism, , . brinton, d. g., on origin of religion, . bryce, j., . buckle, t. h., . catherine of sienna, , . celibacy, - . celibacy, results on morals, - . celibacy, social consequences of, - , - . clouston, sir t. s., on revivals, . clouston, sir t. s., on the connection between sexualism and religion, . conversion, pathological nature of, . conversion and adolescence, , - , . conversion, theological notions of, - . conversion, ages of converts, - , - . conversion, statistics of, - . conversion and imitation, . conversion, social aspects of, . convulsionnaires (the), . crowd psychology, . crusades, character of, - . crusades, children's, . crusades, consequences of, - . cudworth, r., . dalyell, j. g., . dancing and religious ecstasy, - . dancing epidemics, - . death, savage ideas of, . demoniacs, . disease, theory of, amongst primitive peoples, . disease, theory of, amongst the early christians, . d'israeli, i., on sexualism and religion, , . draper, j. w., . drugs, their use in the history of religion, . environment, , . environment, nature of primitive, . epilepsy, influence of, in fostering supernaturalism, - . epilepsy, opinion of dr. hollander, . epilepsy, opinion of sir t. s. clouston, . epilepsy, opinion of dr. c. norman, . epilepsy, opinion of emanuel deutsch, , . epilepsy in new testament, . erotic sects, - , . eroticism and supernaturalism, - , , - . evidence for the supernatural, , . fasting, - . flagellation, - . forlong, maj.-gen., _n._ fox, george, account of visions, . frazer, j. g., , , , , . free love--religious, , - . galton, francis, on religious and morbid states, . galton, francis, . gibbon, e., . gowers, sir w. r., . granger, prof., , - . hallucinations, - - , , . hecker, j. f. c., - . hopkins, mathew, - . human qualities, identity of, . interpretation, growth of scientific, xiii. ireland, dr. w. w., on hallucinations, - . james, w., , , , , , , , , , , , , - , . kingsley, mary, on primitive thought, . lea, h. c., - . le bon, gustave, on crowd psychology, . lecky, w. e. h., , , . luther and demonism, , , , . maudsley, h., on the relation between nervous states and ecstasy, , , . medicine and the church, - . menstruation, - - - . mental states, reality of, xi, , . mercier, c., connection between sexualism and religion, , - , , . milman, h. h., , - , - , , . mind, theories of, x. mistletoe, origin of kissing under, _n._ mohammed, his account of inspiration, , . monasticism, . monasticism and the family, - , , - . monasticism and morals, . mysticism, , - . mysticism and the abnormal, . mysticism and puberty, . mysticism, definitions of, - . mystics, claims of, xi. opium, effects of, . pathological states and religious belief, , . pathological aspects of revivals, - - - , . pathology of religion, need of, . phallicism, - - - - - . pike, l. o., on character of crusaders, . procreation, primitive beliefs concerning, - . psychological epidemics, . psychology, normal and abnormal, . psychology as a social force, - . puberty, - . puberty customs, , , . religion, definition of, . association of, with non-religious forces, . and intuition, . and puberty, . and dancing, - - . and fasting, - - . and environment, , . in primitive life, , - - , . its connection with pathological conditions, , , - , - - - - . religious faculty, fallacy of, , , . religious idea and modern thought, vii. renan, e., . revivalistic religion, , , , , , . russian sects, - . saints, medical uses of, . santa teresa, . science, function of, xi-xii. sexualism and religious belief, , - , - , , , - , , . sexualism and religious belief, opinion of dr. norman, ; of dr. forel, ; of dr. mercier, ; of dr. krafft-ebing, ; of dr. maudsley, - . smith, w. r., on the meaning of 'unclean,' . sociability, significance of, . social life and religious theories, , . spencer, h., , . spiritual wifehood, - . spiritualism, - . starbuck, e. d., on conversion, , . sully, j., . supernaturalism, causes of persistence of, , , , . supernaturalism, consequences of, - . supernaturalism, persistence of, . suso, austerities of, . swedenborg, e., . symonds, j. a., experience under chloroform, . theologians, attitude towards science, ix. thomas, w. i., . tylor, e. b., , , , , , , . unclean, religious significance of, - . whittaker, t., on the effects of opium, . williams, a., . witchcraft, , . pathology of, - . and christian church, . bull of innocent viii., . extent of epidemic, . and sir thomas browne, . and montaigne, . and sir m. hale, . and john wesley, . and luther, . and protestantism, - . scottish, - - - , . american, - . children burned for, . description of trial, - . legislation in england, , . witches, methods of detection, - . witches, number killed, - . woman, christian church and, . woman, why considered religiously unclean, . woman, a source of spiritual infection, . woman, influence of religious beliefs in determining her social position, - , - . woman, position among primitive peoples, . wright, t., . [transcriber's note: the following corrections were made: p. : extra open quote removed (in what sense) p. : dr. w. h. ireland to dr. w. w. ireland (as given by dr. w. w. ireland) p. : nuremburg to nuremberg (came from nuremberg), to match cited text p. : crook to crooke (says mr. w. crooke) p. : ahmadnager to ahmadnagar (mahadeo kolis of ahmadnagar) p. : decandolle to de candolle (says de candolle) p. (footnote ): pharmæcology to pharmacology (text-book of pharmacology) p. : persel to pernel (st. pernel for agues), to match cited text p. : everyone to every one (every one of the senses) p. : connolly to conolly (dr. conolly norman) pp. (footnote ), and (footnote ): joli to joly (h. joly) p. (footnote ): on to in (studies in the psychology of sex) p. : is to are (nor are the substantial facts) p. (footnote ): problem to question (the sexual question) pp. , (footnote ), and (index): kraft-ebing to krafft-ebing p. : loudon to loudun (convent of ursulines of loudun) p. (footnote ): of america to in north america (jesuits in north america) p. : alacocque to alacoque (the blessed mary alacoque) p. (footnote ): life of st. paul to study of st. paul p. (footnote ): churches to church (heard's description, russian church) p. : tatooing to tattooing (tattooing forms part of the religious ceremony) p. (footnote ): missing added in (pp. - ) p. : brahminism to brahmanism (brahmanism has its order of ascetics), to match cited text p. : missing close quote added (consecrated to tezcatlipoca.") p. (footnote ): enenmoser to ennemoser (is given by ennemoser) p. (footnote ): a. williams, the superstition of witchcraft to h. williams, the superstitions of witchcraft p. (footnote ): history to narratives (narratives of sorcery and magic) p. : burroughes to burroughs (george burroughs) pp. , : tacy to pacy (elizabeth and deborah pacy) p. (index): ireland, dr. w. h. to ireland, dr. w. w. p. (index): millman, h. h. to milman, h. h. irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. supernormal vs. super-normal) and misquotations have not been corrected. unless it was found that the error also occurred in the cited text, misspellings have been corrected. although footnote (originally on p. ) refers to a "note at the end of this chapter," the "note to page " begins on p. , several pages before the chapter ends. this has not been changed. footnotes markers have been changed from symbols (in the original) to numerals. for the plain text versions, an oe-ligature has been changed to oe (coelestia).] proofreading team. =_tractatus de hermaphroditis_:= =or, a= =treatise= =of= =hermaphrodites,= =containing= i. a description of the several sorts of hermaphrodites, and how the law regards them in respect to matrimony. ii. intrigues of hermaphrodites and masculine females, and of the outward marks to distinguish them. iii. the material cause and generation of hermaphrodites, of unnatural births, generation of monsters, extraordinary conceptions, &c. =_london_:= =printed for e. curll _fleet-street_.= =mdccxviii.= preface. _prefaces now a days are rather apologies for the works to which they are prefix'd, than written for instruction; and generally a ludicrous scene is expected, if the performance be of an airy nature; or, if not, at least an introductory specimen of what the reader may hope for in the body of the work_. _i shall make no apology for my subject, notwithstanding an impudent libeller has endeavour'd to load authors and publishers of works of this nature with the utmost infamy; and herein i admire at the front of the fellow, to pretend to chastise others for writing only, when he practises a great deal more iniquity than any book extant can prompt him to, every day that comes over his head_. my _design in the following sheets is meerly as an innocent entertainment for all curious persons, without any views of inciting masculine-females to amorous tryals with their own sex; and i am perswaded there will not be one single_ hermaphrodite _the more in the world, on account of the publishing this_ treatise. it _may be expected by some faithless persons, that i should produce an_ hermaphrodite _to publick view, as an incontestible justification of there being humane creatures of this kind; but as i have no authority to take up the petticoats of any female without her consent, i hope to be excus'd from making such demonstrable proofs; and if i had such a power, the sight might endanger the welfare of some pregnant female, whose curiosity would spur her to a particular examination_. _the intrigues of my_ hermaphrodites _are indeed very amazing, and as monstrous as their natures, but that many lascivious females divert themselves one with another at this time in this city, is not to be doubted: and if any persons shall presume to censure my accounts, grounded on a probability of truth, i shall be sufficiently reveng'd in proclaiming them, what my_ hermaphrodites _are found to be in the conclusion_--old women. _i confess, all histories of extraordinary conceptions from these intrigues, or by women without actual copulation, are equally fabulous with those of the engendring of men: it would be as surprizing to find a man with a teeming belly, as to see a woman increase there meerly by her own applications_. _i doubt not but this small_ treatise _may put some persons upon a previous examination of robust females, that they may be at a certainty with respect to mutual enjoyment; but i would not have them rashly conclude from large appurtenances only, that they are unnatural, but, on the contrary, agreeable companions._ _to conclude, i fear not the censure of_ hermaphrodites, _nor of those that would be such to satisfy their vicious inclinations; neither am i under any apprehensions from the censure of our reforming zealots_. * * * * * _tractatus de hermaphroditis_: or, a treatise of hermaphrodites. the secrets of nature have in all ages been particularly examin'd by anatomists and others, and this of _hermaphrodites_ is so very wonderful, that i am perfectly assur'd my present enquiry will be entirely acceptable to all lovers of curious discoveries; and as it is my immediate business to trace every particular for an ample dissertation on the nature of _hermaphrodites_, (which obliges me to a frequent repetition of the names of the parts employ'd in the business of generation) so, i hope, i shall not be charg'd with obscenity, since in all treatises of this kind it is impossible to finish any one head compleatly, without pursuing the methods of anatomical writings. though in _ovid_'s _metamorphosis_, _salmacis_'s being in love with _hermaphroditus_, and not succeeding in her amorous wishes, her praying to the gods to join their bodies in one, has no weight in it; yet, that the notions of hermaphrodites are not entirely fictitious, i need only mention the servant of _montuus_, who took his hermaphrodite to be a male when he lay with his maids, and for a female when she lay with her husband to propagate their species, the two hermaphrodites of _licetus_, and the story of _ausonius_, which he relates of an hermaphrodite of _bonavento_ in _italy_; and histories are full of confirmations, that many persons in the world have had the privy parts of both sexes. for the definition of the word sex, it is no other than a distinction of male and female, in which this is most observable, that for the parts of the body, there is but little difference between them; but the females are colder than the males, and abound with more superfluous moisture; wherefore their spermatick parts are more soft and humid, and all their natural actions more vigorous than those of men: but hermaphrodites are a mixture of both sexes, and to both incompleat. in all ages hermaphrodites have been talk'd of, though particular vouchers have been many times wanting, which is generally the case where a deficiency of the secrets of nature is to be detected; the amorous parts are certainly more valuable than any other principal parts of the body, as they afford the greatest pleasure of life; and there is always the greatest difficulty attends the discoveries of impotency, (which is less obnoxious) and nothing but the force of the law executed by a lascivious female, in the state of matrimony, will occasion a record of a want of substance for the amorous adventure. it is natural to suppose, that these persons of a mix'd nature call'd hermaphrodites, have had generally more prudence and conduct than to marry under such incapacities, which would prevent an agreeable consummation in the amorous embrace, (however they may sport and dally with each other) as they must expect nothing but the greatest resentment and highest indignation from the persons they have presumptuously espous'd, and must inevitably tend to their being expos'd to the world, as prodigies and monsters; and they have in times past been the more effectually deterr'd from engaging in matrimony, as they were immediately on their discovery cast into the sea or some large rivers, or banish'd into some desolate island, as presages of dire events, and the worst of calamities. but the civil law does not regard hermaphrodites as monsters, it permits them to make a choice of either of the two sexes for the business of copulation, either in the capacity of men or women; but if the hermaphrodite does not perform his part agreeable to nature, the same law inflicts the punishment due to sodomy, because he has abus'd one part, contrary to matures laws. this must be determin'd by the predominancy of the parts, for there are some hermaphrodites so very vigorous as to embrace women, and others whose parts are so dispos'd as to receive with pleasure the caresses of men; and where there is nothing to hinder the amorous action, but that they are capable of enjoying mutual pleasure, it would be a piece of injustice to prohibit their nuptials. monsieur _venette_[a] tells us, that there are five kinds of hermaphrodites: the first have the privy parts of a man very entire; they make water and engender like other men, but with this difference, that they have a pretty deep slit between the seat and the cod, which is of no use in generation. the second sort have also the parts of a man very well proportion'd, that serve either the functions of life or generation; but they have a slit not so deep as the first sort, which being in the midst of the cods, presses the testicles on each side. the third sort have no visible privy parts of a man, only a slit, through which the hermaphrodite makes water. this cavity is deeper or shallower, according to the plenty or default of matter employ'd for the forming of it, yet one may easily find the bottom of it with one's finger. the terms never flow by this way, and this kind of hermaphrodite is a true man as well as the two others above mention'd; for these sorts of hermaphrodites become boys, about the age of fifteen, in an instant, and are as valiant in the adventures of love as other males, and this is oftentimes affected by some violent action, as _mary germain_, mention'd by _paræus_, leaping over a ditch, strain'd herself, and became instantly a man, through the coming forth of the privy parts. this may be a sufficient caution to young gentlemen not to be too hasty in their marriages, lest, in a vigorous consummation with a very youthful partner, the imaginary female should at once appear an hermaphrodite. the fourth sort of hermaphrodites, are women who have the _clitoris_ bigger and longer than others, and thereby impose upon the vulgar, who know but little of the parts they are compos'd of, and of these kinds of hermaphrodites, _columbus_ says he examin'd all the parts, and found no essential difference from other women; the only sign that they are women is, that they suffer the flowing of their terms every month. the fifth kind, are those that have neither the use of the one nor the other sex, and have their privy parts confus'd, and the temper of man and woman so inter-mix'd, that one can hardly say which is most predominant; but these sorts of persons are rather a kind of eunuchs than hermaphrodites, their _penis_ being good for nothing, and their terms never flowing. of this kind was the _bohemian_ woman, that pray'd _columbus_ to cut off her _penis_, and to enlarge her _vagina_, that she might the more freely, as she alledg'd, join amorously with a man. these are the several sorts of hermaphrodites, mentioned by monsieur _venette_; and the four first of them, tho' they have the name, yet nature has not refus'd them the advantage to make use of their genital parts, and to engender as others. the male hermaphrodite may get children, and the female conceive; so that neither the one nor the other differ from men or women, but only by a superfluity or a deficiency of parts, and such as does not disturb the business of generation. the fifth sort are call'd perfect hermaphrodites, because they are incapable of using either of the sexes; but some persons fancy there are a sort of hermaphrodites which can make use of both sexes, and engender both ways, though this is easily confuted, when we consider that one of the privy parts of an hermaphrodite is generally useless, as being contrary to the laws of nature, and what confusion would it be, to find in one and the same person a man's and woman's testicles, a womb and a _penis_? a woman's genital parts and a man's are too different to admit of such an union, and to change the use upon any occasion. agreeable to the list mention'd opinion, some naturalists will have it, that an hermaphrodite, which is very vigorous as to both sexes, may engender within himself, without the company of another person, having matter to form a child, a place to conceive it, and proper liquid for nourishment: in the same manner as _jack hares_ engender once in their lives, and that _stags_ do the same, which is maintain'd by the learned _langius_: but these generations are both impossible and ridiculous, the naturalists must certainly be deceiv'd, in taking some parts of the female for the testicles of the male; and what probability is there that the seed should come out of one part and into the other, without losing its spirits, and altering considerably in changing of place? and if such a thing were possible, the temperament that engenders masculine seed might as well engender feminine, and produce the terms at the same time or something else in proportion to it. women having beards, and being a large masculine size, have been sometimes, by the ignorant, accounted men, tho' they were true women; and it cannot be said, that one sex is chang'd into another, for we never heard of men that became women, and that their, privy parts were abolish'd; or turn'd within, in order to form the genital parts of a woman. the hermaphrodites of _licetus_, which conceiv'd and brought forth children, were real women taken for men, by reason of the length and bigness of their _clitoris_: and the fisherman's wife, mention'd by _antonius de palma_, was only a male, call'd the third sort of hermaphrodites undiscover'd, which was afterwards manifested in the coming out of the parts of a man, when she had been fourteen years married. the case was the same with _emilia_, marry'd to _antonius sperta_, mention'd by _potanus_ who was accounted a woman twelve years, but was afterwards reputed a man, and married again to a woman. for the discovery of the male and female hermaphrodite, these observations will be serviceable: a person that is bold and sprightly, having a strong voice, much hair on the body, particularly on the chin and privy parts, with the rest of such signs as discover manhood, are certain demonstrations that the hermaphrodite has the privy parts of a man in a more predominant manner than those of the other sex; and contrarywise, if an hermaphrodite has good breasts, skin smooth and soft; if the terms appear at their due intervals; if there be a sparkling and agreeableness in the eyes; and if other signs are observ'd, that commonly distinguish a woman from a man, these are arguments that the hermaphrodite has the privities of the female sex of a good conformation; and if the _vagina_ is not too defective, such an hermaphrodite ought to pass for a woman. i doubt not but there are many persons in the world of both species, particularly of the female sex, who would willingly assume to themselves the parts belonging to hermaphrodites, if they could have a vigorous use of the members of both sexes, upon any lustful inclination; a lascivious female would be transported at the thoughts of acting the part of a man in the amorous adventure, and a lecherous male would propose equal pleasure in receiving the embraces he use to bestow; but tho' most persons agree that women have the greatest sense of enjoyment in the act of copulation, (as without all question they must, by the situation and disposition of the parts) yet they would be more forward in satisfying this brutal curiosity than those of the opposite sex. men are more easy to be limited in the pleasures of _venus_ than women; as they are endu'd with more reason, so they are generally easily satisfied in those enjoyments, which were chiefly design'd for the propagating of their species. if two persons, being hermaphrodites, should marry with an expectation of pleasing each other, as male and female by turns, they'll meet with a disappointment, for the reasons already mention'd, _viz_. that one of the members of hermaphrodites is most commonly useless, and if a man should by chance be married to a person of his own sex, before the parts are come down, (which, as i have observ'd before, sometimes happens, where persons are wedded in an age of infancy) a great disappointment will ensue to the husband, when his partner shall take the constitution of a man, and be ready to engage with him, instead of his encountering with her; and in respect of a masculine woman's being taken by the length of her _clitoris_ for a man, _daniel de bantin_ only sported with his wife, but was got with child himself by one of his companions. the _clitoris_ not being perforated, the hermaphrodite can furnish no matter for generation. the _clitoris_ in women suffers erection and falling in the same manner as the _penis_ in men; and the _vagina_ likewise swells to make the passage streight and easy, for the reception of the _penis_ in the time of enjoyment. sometimes the _clitoris_ will grow out of the body two or three inches, but that happens not but upon extraordinary occasions, upon violent inclinations to copulation, over much heat of the privities, _&c._ and by this means a man will be hinder'd from knowing his wife; but the larger it is, so as no way to prevent their mutual embraces, the greater is the pleasure, especially to the female; and without this part, the fair sex would neither desire the embraces of the males, nor have any pleasure in them, or conceive by them. women well furnish'd in these parts may divert themselves with their companions, to whom for the most part they can give as much pleasure as men do, but cannot receive in any proportion the pleasure themselves, for want of ejaculation, the crisis of enjoyment to the male in the intrigues of _venus_. i am inform'd that diversions of this nature are frequently practis'd by robust and lustful females, who cannot with any prospect of safety to their reputations, venture upon the embraces of a man, though they are never so strongly enclin'd. the unnatural pleasures of this kind are finely illustrated in the following song, written by mr. rowe, which i take it will not be improperly inserted in this place. [footnote a: le tableau de l'amour conjugal, par monsieur _venette_. paris .] song. i. _while_ sappho, _with harmonious airs, her dear_ philenis _charms, with equal joy the nymph appears, dissolving in her arms_. ii. _thus to themselves alone they are, what all_ mankind _can give; alternately the happy pair all grant, and all receive_. iii. _like the_ twin-stars, _so fam'd for friends, who set by turns and rise; when_ one _to_ thetis _lap descends his_ brother _mounts the skies_. iv. _with happier fate, and kinder care, these_ nymphs _by_ turns _do reign, while still the_ falling, _does prepare the rising, to sustain_. v. _the joys of either sex in love; in each of them we read, successive each, to each does prove, fierce youth and yielding maid_. * * * * * _intrigues of hermaphrodites and masculine females_. the hotter the climate, the stronger are the inclinations to venery. when i was formerly in _italy_; there happened a notable adventure in the neighbourhood of _rome_, between a certain lady call'd _margureta_, one of a noble family in the papal dominions, and a lady of _france_, whose name was _barbarissa_: these two females were in their statures very near equal to the largest siz'd male; they had full and rough faces, large shoulders, hands and feet; and but slender hips, and small breasts: in short, they resembled men in all respects, but their dresses, their gates and voices, and indeed they were suspected to be hermaphrodites. these ladies, i am inform'd, paid frequent visits to each other, and 'twas always observ'd, that no body was admitted to their splendid entertainments, which heighten'd the curiosity of a servant in the family of _margureta_, to attempt a discovery of their intrigues, they always locking themselves in, the moment they had dispatch'd their suppers: in order to this, on a time, this servant, call'd _nicolini_, with a piercing instrument of iron, and the assistance of an artificer, ingeniously made a communication for the sight into the next room, by working a small hole through the wainscot, opposite to the bed, in the chamber wherein the two masculine ladies accustom'd to solace themselves. at the next meeting, _nicolini,_ to his no small surprise, had a prospect of the two females embracing each other, with a succession of kisses of no short duration. after this they both drew up their petticoat, and exposing their thighs to view, they mutually employ'd their hands with each other, in the same manner, and with the same force of inclination, as a juvenile gallant would make his approaches to what he most admires in a beautiful _belinda_, at the same time continuing the closest salutations; at last one of the females threw herself down upon the bed, and displaying her self commodiously, the other immediately begun the amorous adventure, covering her companion so effectually, that _nicolini_ could not possibly discover any farther particulars: they had not continu'd their sportings long before _margureta_, which officiated now instead of the man, arose from _barbarissa_, and turning towards the window with her cloaths up in her arms, _nicolini_ immediately discover'd something hang down from her body of a reddish colour, and which was very unusual: they both panting, and almost breathless, retir'd from the bed to a table, where they sat down and refresh'd themselves with sufficient quantities of generous wine. about an hour after this, they began to renew their frolicks, and it being _barbarissa_'s turn to caress, who was not so masculine as _margureta_, to incite the falling down and erection of her female member, she turn'd over a large book, amply stor'd with obscene portraitures, wherein the amorous combat was curiously describ'd in the utmost variety of postures which were ever practic'd, or the head of a youthful and ingenious painter could invent; but this not having the effect expected, _margureta_ strip'd her self naked, as did likewise _barbarissa_, and both dancing about the room, they gave each other repeated strokes with their hands on their white posteriors; and this likewise failing to move _barbarissa_, _margureta_ open'd a cabinet, and taking from thence a large birchen rod, she flogg'd _barbarissa_ lustily, her buttocks seeming to yield to that amorous discipline; upon this, something appear'd from the privities of _barbarissa_, like unto what _nicolini_ had observ'd of _margureta_, and they instantly put on their loose gowns, and ran to the bed, where _barbarissa_ embracing her companion, did her work effectually. after their sportings were over, that each had return'd the favours receiv'd, they decently dress'd themselves, and sat them down again to the table, where, after drinking a bottle or two of the richest _italian_ wines, they kiss'd each other in the most loving manner, and _margureta_ rang the bell for _nicolini_ to light _barbarissa_ down stairs, who immediately taking leave of _margureta_, was carried in a chair to her place of residence. this story sufficiently shews the unnatural intrigues of some masculine females, where by the falling down and largeness of the _clitoris_, they have been taken for men, as mention'd in my description of hermaphrodites, and are capable of every action belonging to a man, but that of ejaculation. i next insert an intrigue between two females more extraordinary than the former, by reason in this, art was only employ'd, and in the other there was something of nature in it, tho' viciously apply'd: i shall introduce it with several adventures which happen'd in this cafe before the scene was accomplish'd, and which i doubt not will be acceptable. in the city of _ferara_, 'tis reported, there some time since liv'd two damsels who were of reputable descent, and their education was equal to that of the greatest quality in the territories of _italy_; the name of one of them was _theodora_, and of the other _amaryllis_: _theodora_ was the daughter of an eminent courtier, and in her person most beautiful; her shape was form'd according to the nicest rules of symetry; her waste was slender, her breasts were full and round, and for whiteness equall'd the falling snow; her face was exactly compos'd, the features strong and yet beautiful; her cheeks more lively than the rose and lilly; her eyes sparkled beyond the most shining planets; her teeth excell'd the best polish'd ivory; soft as velvet were her lips, and redder than vermillion; her hand and arm more white than milk; her feet small, and her gate stately, and on her shoulders were display'd her auborn tresses, hanging in ringlets to her waste; in short, every part that was visible invited to hidden charms; her looks were languishing, and her eye-balls large, which, perpetually rowling, cast a thousand darts at all beholders. _amaryllis_ the daughter of a wealthy merchant and no less admir'd for her beauty than the lovely _theodora_; she was made up of perfections, and whomsoever she saw unguarded, she was sure to captivate: these two ladies were both of them cross'd in their amorous inclinations; _theodora_, before she was thirteen years of age, had made a powerful conquest over the affections of a youth of gallantry, his name was _leander_, and he was the eldest son of a nobleman of _naples_; but _theodora_'s father having no regard to the happiness of his daughter, after _leander_ had made his addresses, he forbad him his house, not approving the circumstances or the character of the young gentleman; for the father of _theodora_ was a mercenary courtier, having no regard to any but such as were in their nature misers and sanctified hypocrites, and _leander_ being a gentleman inclin'd to extravagancy. _leander_ setting a greater value upon his education, manners and good nature than his fortune, was oblig'd to desist in his pretensions and to sink under the oppression of avarice: he determin'd to leave _ferara_, since he was there to see his happiness, no more, however, he resolv'd to send his fair one, a moving _billet doux_ before his departure, which he did, and it was as follows. to the _goddess_ of _ferara_, the beautiful _theodora_. _divine creature, it is not to be admir'd that i, the meanest of your servants, should be rejected by your wealthy parents, and that heaven should deny me a happiness which it self only ought to enjoy; why did nature make you so beautiful and deserving, and me so unworthy of your affection? my misery increases with your happiness, unless you participate my pains; you are in the bud of your beauty, which when full blown, will be like the sun in the midst of the horizon, illuminating the whole world, but its penetrating rays not to be gaz'd upon. you are the lilly and i am the thorn; you beautify the rich fertile vale, whilst i retire to the barren mountains. i will pass the alps 'till i approach the most aspiring mount, and there, in view of_ ferara, _i will lay me down and bid the world adieu. when i am gone, remember that you had once a lover who could sacrifice every thing for our service, and without you he could enjoy nothing. i have not only concerted my journey from_ ferara, _but likewise to the_ elysian groves; _if my grizly ghost should terrify that sordid wretch your father, 'tis no more than he deserves, and if my shade appears to you, look on that unconcern'd which cannot injure you. my last request to you is to take care of your self, who am_ your despairing lover, but admirer, leander _theodora_ receiv'd this moving letter with a concern proportion'd to the melancholly occasion; she communicated it to an intimate acquaintance, who likewise express'd the utmost uneasiness; the thoughts of the catastrophe of the loves of _theodora_ and _leander_ presented a lively idea to _theodora's_ companion, of the miseries and misfortunes attending mankind. "hard is the case (says she) that _leander_, one of the finest young gentlemen of _naples_, should be sacrific'd to a mercenary wretch, a wretch, that in the midst of plenty is poor and miserable, and who, tho' he has all things to compleat his happiness, his avaricious temper will not permit him to enjoy the common necessaries of life: the pleasures of living he's a stranger to, he lives despis'd, and will die unpitied: but such is the inequality of fortune's favours, that merit must stoop and ideots be advanc'd to the highest pomp and magnificence. it is entirely out of your power to give the pitied _leander_ the least relief; your father's house is a nunnery, he has his locks and keys to secure you, and his spies for intelligence; but i advise you to send the unfortunate youth an answer to his mournful epistle." upon this, _theodora_ immediately call'd for pen, ink and paper, and wrote the following answer. to the unfortunate leander. _i am sorry that you had the misfortune ever to see me, and the more for that in vain i seek your relief; it is not in my power to forward either your happiness or my own, which i confess i should think compleat, if my mercenary father would consent to my espousals; but it is so far from this, that i am to see for the future, so that the lilly you admire now droops its head, and the whole vale's enclouded at my sorrowful fate; i would willingly accompany the briar to the mountains. impute not to me your approaching calamities, which only increase with _theodora'_s. think me no longer handsome, who have so many imperfections to sully those trifles you call beauties; no, range me with deformity, since other ideas may increase your pain. i desire you to forget me, of i am oblig'd to endeavour not to remember you._ your most disconsolate lover, theodora. upon receipt of this letter, _leander_ quitted _ferara_ with a grief inexpressible, but however had resolution to finish his journey to the place of his nativity without self violence, but soon after, resign'd a miserable life. i come now to the story of _amaryllis_. _amaryllis_ was formerly deeply in love with a gentleman of _france_, (she being originally of that kingdom) whose name was _sempronius_; his person was stately and very well proportion'd; his face was ruddy and inclining to be large; his eyes full and lively, with eye-brows and beard pretty thick; of a dark brown colour; and his skin was clear, his shoulders were strong and well set, and limbs rather large than small, but exactly shap'd: he was perfectly good natur'd, complaisant in his behaviour, and gallant in his amours, his dress was easy and genteel, his approaches sprightly, and his conversation the most endearing. _amaryllis_ was extremly fond of _sempronius_ and _sempronius_ was fond of _amaryllis_, without each other they were equally unhappy; repeated visits introduc'd each coming day, and innocent embraces crown'd the night: love and liberty were their constant themes, and nothing was wanting but the marriage ceremony to compleat their felicity; but it so fell out, that after a day was appointed for celebrating their nuptials, that a young gentleman of _spain_ call'd _richardo_, envying the happiness of _sempronius_, made several attempts to disconcert his measures; and one night, taking with him an officer of justice, whom he brib'd to his interest, he repair'd to the house of _amaryllis_; and knocking with great violence, _amaryllis_ was very much alarm'd; but she sent down her servant to enquire into the occasion of this uncommon approach. the servant no sooner open'd the door, but _richardo_ and the officer of justice enter'd the house, (beating down the servant) and immediately ascended the stairs in pursuit of _sempronius_; during this bustle, _amaryllis_ suspecting a design against _sempronius_, (_richardo_ having formerly offer'd his service to her, and revenge being the common consequence of a disappointment with a _spaniard_) lock'd him into a private closet, which was no sooner done, but _richardo_ enter'd the room with his sword drawn, _amaryllis_ having but just time to secure her lover. _richardo_ demanded of _amaryllis_ the gay _sempronius_ as a criminal, telling her he had committed a rape on the body of the virtuous _maria_ a lady celebrated for beauty, and to whom all _italy_ could not produce an equal, the officer ran about the room, crying, "justice, justice, where is the villain _sempronius."_ they search'd the room very diligently, and not finding _sempronius_ at last _richardo_ address'd himself to _amaryllis_ in these words: "madam, i hope you have more virtue and honour than to shelter a criminal, especially where one of your most beautiful sex is concern'd, and the greatest innocence has been violated: if you allow your house to to be a sanctuary for offenders of this nature, justice will require satisfaction at your door; you may your self expect the same injury to your person, and i am now prepar'd to shew a resentment that will not be pleasing to _amaryllis_, either comply with my desires in producing the criminal, or expect to fall my victim." this speech very much confounded _amaryllis_; the designs of _richardo_ she could not easily penetrate, whether against her self or _sempronius_ the plot was laid, or whether it extended to both, she could not determine: but at last she summon'd her courage and her reason, and with a look of indignation peculiar to her sex, she answer'd thus the malicious and designing _richardo_: "what crimes _sempronius_ has been guilty of, is to me a secret, but that _richardo_ deserves the character now given of _sempronius_ is very obvious, and needs no difficulty for me to affirm; your brutal inclinations are not easily satisfied: when you made your addresses to me, your designs were base and dishonourable; you more than once attempted with force to violate my chastity, and for ought i know you are now come upon the same errand: what could make you approach me in this hostile manner, but to ravish _amaryllis_, or to murder _sempronius_, under a pretence of justice? but let the event be what it will, i'll not deliver up him who is dearer to me than life, but dare a villain to his worst." this heroick speech made by _amaryllis_ dash'd _richardo_ for the present; but he being resolv'd to prosecute his intentions (which indeed were both to murder _sempronius_ and ravish _amaryllis_, as she had guess'd) he advanc'd nearer to _amaryllis_, and took her in his arms, upon which she cry'd out with violence, whereupon _sempronius_, who had heard every thing that had pass'd, open'd the closet door, and sallying out sword in hand to defend himself and his mistress, _richardo_ rush'd from _amaryllis_ and attack'd _sempronius_; they fought sometime without any seeming advantage on either side, 'til at length the officer belonging to _richardo_ knock'd down _sempronius_ and _richardo_ ran him to the heart, _amaryllis_, through the negligence of the officer, had an opportunity of escaping to a neighbouring house, where, he acquainted the inhabitants with the dismal tragedy; upon this warrants were issu'd from the next magistrates for apprehension of _richard_, but took post for _germany_, where secur'd himsef: in a famous monastery. in great despair and confusion _amaryllis_ left the kingdom of france and travell'd into _italy_, to to forget this barbarous treatment of her unfortunate lover. at first she propos'd to retire to some country village, and spend the remainder of her life in sighs and groans, and complaining sonnets; for this purpose she compos'd the following lines. song. i. _since gay_ sempronius _now is gone, what comfort yields my life? i shall unhappy be alone, my breast is fill'd with strife._ ii. _the sun is set e'er noon arrived, sad glooms around me spread, no flowing joys the lad surviv'd, he's now rang'd with the dead._ iii. sempronius _dear, where are ye stole? could i but find thee strait, i'd cut the thread of life my soul on thy bless'd shade would wait._ iv. _if to th' infernal regions, woe,_ sempronius _is confin'd; his ghost i'll trace, persue below to ease my tortur'd mind._ v. _i still in vain, alas! prepare in vain i strive to sleep; my breast is fill'd with deadly care i'll lay me down and weep._ vi. _all worldly joys i bid adieu, all pleasures i forsake; sempronius still i'll sleep with you; i'll with the touth awake._ _amaryllis_ did not long continue her resolution of going into the country, fearing an invincible despair would ensue; and upon advising with a bosom friend, she was disuaded from it: her intimate thought it might be a diversion to her melancholly to repair to some popular city, where a variety of conversation and airy entertainments, might, if possible, eraze the memory of her deceas'd lover. accordingly _amaryllis_ immediately set out for _ferara_, where she had been but an inconsiderable time, before she accidentally fell into the company of _theodora_, whose disappointment, already related, was little inferior to hers, and both repeating their stories, they found so near a resemblance in their misfortunes, that they resolv'd to live together as sisters or inseperable companions, and to use their utmost artifices for the relief of each other. i have been led into this seeming romance, to shew particularly the fatal disappointments attending these two beautiful females, which were very extraordinary, especially those of the latter; and to shew, in a particular manner, how these two ladies first became acquainted, as an introduction to what follows. i come now to their female intrigues, which were no less uncommon than their misfortunes. _theodora_ and _amaryllis_ liv'd together some time, and at last by the constant perusal of airy books, and a few entertaining companions, they had in some, measure forgot their unfortunate lovers, but they resolv'd never for the future to fix their affections upon any man living; and living in luxury, in the prime of their years, in a hot inciting climate, they at length were naturally inclin'd to the most abominable pollution: they provided artificial _penis's_ of the largest dimensions, and with ribbons they fasten'd the root of the instrument, in the same situation as nature has plac'd the substance in man; they frequently embrac'd one another by turns, as man and woman in the amorous adventure; and when their vigour was so much abated, that they were no longer able to struggle, the female uppermost withdrew, and taking another instrument in her hand, she us'd it on her companion with an injection of moisture, which, with the rubbing, occasion'd such a tickling, as to force a discharge of matter and facilitate the pleasure. this was their daily practice for a considerable space, 'till at last a confident of _theodora_'s who was sometimes admitted as variety in these brutal enjoyments, for a large sum of money reveal'd their intrigues to _philetus_, a youth of a very comly person, but a little effeminate, who passionately admir'd the beautiful _theodora_, and who had made several attempts on her in vain. _philetus_ being let into the secret of _theodora_'s intrigues, by the assistance of the confident, resolv'd to personate a lady of the first figure at _rome:_ in order to this, he furnish'd himself with a very rich and costly female habit, and by the use of paint, which alter'd his eye-brows, cheeks, hair, &c. and shaving every day, he was sufficiently disguis'd; all things being now concerted with _theodora's_ confident, _philetus_ was admitted to wait upon _theodora_ and _amaryllis_, with a feign'd message from a lady of their acquaintance at _rome_, and was entertain'd with the utmost respect and grandeur, with occasion'd frequent visits between _philetus_ and _theodora_, and at length there was such an intimacy contracted, by the management of _philetus_ and the confident, that _philetus_ was permitted to be present in their frolicks, and at last offering his service to _theodora_; she with a great deal of difficulty accepted his embraces having not the least suspicion of the design; so that _philetus_ taking the artificial _penis_ in his hand, went to the window from the ladies, and pulling up his petticoats, pretended he had fix'd it round his waste, and putting the instrument in a furbelow of his gown, he advanc'd to the bed where _theodora_ was laid in an airy manner to receive him; the sight of the beautiful _theodora_, in this captivating posture, caus'd an immediate erection with _philetus_, and fill'd his breast with amorous fire; he approach'd his charmer with a lover's' vigour, and _theodora_ was still a stranger to the intrigue, 'till the moment of ejaculation, which was not usual with the same instrument in her embraces with _amaryllis_: when this happen'd she was prodigiously surpriz'd, and endeavouring to disengage her self from _philetus_, he folded her more closely in his arms; and in the greatest transport told her, he was her constant admirer _philetus_: she upbraided him for this perfidious method of bringing about his designs; however, upon his telling her, that her strict way of living made an uncommon stratagem absolutely necessary, that he hop'd she would excuse what love had prompted him to, and that notwithstanding what had past, his designs were honourable; _theodora_ considering, what had happen'd, and experiencing a material difference between art and nature, agreed, on his humble request, to marry him; and a priest was immediately sent for, who solemniz'd their nuptials. when the ceremony was over, _theodora_ sung this stanza. _the shadow i'll no longer try or use the pleasing toy a sprightly youth i can't defy, the substance i'll enjoy._ after these adventures were over, _amaryllis_ likewise submitted to matrimony with a gentleman of _ferara_; and they both enjoy'd the greatest happiness, making no difficulty to forget all sorrows past. the next intrigues i shall mention, are of two famous hermaphrodites, who were more vigorous than common in their parts, at _urbino_. it is not many years ago (as the story relates) that there liv'd at _urbino_ two hermaphrodites, famous for their intrigues, and indeed they were arriv'd to that consummate pitch of impudence, that they were not asham'd to own their bestiality, they not only frolick'd with each other, but with both sexes in general; their names were _diana_ and _isabella_, both of reputable birth, and well educated. _diana_ on a time being invited to the nuptials of a certain nobleman of _urbino_, accompanied him to the house of a noted clergyman, some distance from the residence of _diana_, to be a witness to the solemnization of the marriage, and being arriv'd there, every thing was instantly provided for the ceremony; the bride was attir'd in the richest brocade silks, with the finest linnen that could be purchas'd; her neck and breasts were exposed very low, and heav'd with desire, filling the bridegroom with amorous imaginations, her hair was adorn'd with the most beautiful and odorous flowers, which surrounded her heavenly face, and made it appear like a rose in its bloom, in a delightful garden, just ready to be gathered. the bridegroom was dress'd in cloth of gold, and linnen of _flanders_ lac'd; on his head was a flaxen peruke reaching to his waste of very great value, and by his side a sword, whose hilt was set with diamonds. the parson by this time being ready to perform his office, the bride and bridegroom, and _diana_ were usher'd into a great hall, hung round with scripture paintings, particularly of our saviour, illustrating his whole life from his birth, and being laid in the manger to the time of his crucifixion. when the service was over, and the wedded couple had join'd their hands and hearts, a splendid entertainment was provided by the parson to refresh them after the fatigue of their journey, which continuing 'till it was late in the evening, the bride and bridegroom, and _diana_ had not time for their return to _urbino_, whereupon the parson, in good manners, first took notice of it, and withal offer'd them the use of his house, which they accepted, considering it would at least be hazardous, if not impossible to reach _urbino_ that night. the bride and bridegroom, and all the company, were as merry as was possible, and after supper, directions were given by the parson for preparing the beds; but before the usual time of retiring to rest, his brother coming accidentally from _bonona_, there arose some difficulty with the parson in the disposal of his guests, he having no more beds than two at liberty: at last they agreed that _diana_ should lye with the parson's wife, who was a very handsom woman, and the parson and his brother were to pig together, whereby there would be a bed at the service of the bride and bridegroom. several bottles of _champaign_ and _burgundy_, and of fine _italian_ wines being drank, the bride and bridegroom were put to bed with a great deal of solemnity; afterwards _diana_ and the parson's wife were lighted to their apartment, and he and his brother repair'd to theirs. _diana_ observing the parson's wife to be a beautiful woman, particularly as she undress'd her self, had a very strong inclination for her usual sportings; and in order to carry on an intrigue with safety, she softly bolted the chamber door, which being done, they both went to bed, the parson's wife putting out the candle. they had not been long in bed before _diana_ began to kiss the parson's wife with freedom, but she not suspecting any thing farther, and supposing it might proceed more from wine than any thing else was pretty easy, 'till at last _diana_ threw her self upon her, and began an adventure, very displeasing, which surpriz'd her to that degree, that she cried out vehemently. the family, which had not been long at rest, alarm'd at this unseasonable noise, arose; the parson came to his wife's chamber door, and finding it bolted within, he call'd to her to know the occasion of this disturbance; she answer'd, "that she had a man or a monster in bed with her, one that was then violating her person." the parson supposing this to be a design to cuckold him, order'd his servants to break open the chamber door, which being instantly effected, he rescu'd his wife from the power of _diana_. after this he seiz'd _diana_, and upon examination, finding her to be an hermaphrodite, having the members of both sexes, he order'd his servants to carry her to the garret, and tye her hands and legs together, and then to put her into the bed of the maid-servant. this being done, the parson went to bed again, as did likewise his wife, and the family was at rest the whole night; and the noise, though it was great, did not disturb the bride and bridegroom after their enjoyments of wine and love. the next morning the parson arose early, and going to the bride and bridegroom, acquainted them with what had happen'd relating to his wife and _diana_, who expressing a very great concern, and withal protesting, that the injury was offer'd without the least design on their parts, the parson was reconcil'd to them, but turn'd _diana_ out of door with the indignity she deserv'd. _diana_ immediately return'd to _urbino_, as did likewise the bride and bridegroom some hours after, having first made the parson a present of a purse of gold for his service and very great civility. it was not long after this, that _isabella_ walking in the streets of _urbino_, in the close of the evening, a foreign count, of luscious inclinations passing by her, gave her an amorous look, and addressing her with a great deal of complaisance, she seem'd for his purpose, and indeed she long'd for a pleasing variety, having met with no uncommon adventure for a considerable time. the count observing her inclin'd to pleasure, invited her to his house, which she at first rejected, but after a great deal of intreaty and persuasion she condescended, not rightly apprehending the consequence, with a gentleman that was a perfect stranger to her. when they were arriv'd at the house of the count _isabella_ was handed through several rooms of state to an anti-chamber, where he was desir'd to sit down, the count calling for his servants to prepare a costly supper; while the supper was dressing, he kiss'd and dally'd with _isabella_, but she was unexpectedly shy, behaving her self with a great deal of gravity; at length the supper was brought, consisting of fish, fowl, ragooes, soops, &c. dress'd to the heighth of the mode; they both eat heartily and drank very freely of noble wines. after the supper was over, the count renew'd his addresses to _isabella_, who seem'd a little more compliable, but would not allow him the fredom he desir'd, which had the usual consequences of encreasing his inclinations: it growing late, he carry'd her, to his chamber, where after some time, she, was oblig'd to go to bed with him. the count, after he was in bed, being inspir'd with love, began the amorous adventure with _isabella_, before he had thoroughly examin'd the secrets of nature; and after a short space, finding an uneasiness in his amorous struggles, he put down his hand to discover what it was, and feeling something like the testicles of a man, he rose from her in the greatest confusion, and calling to his servant for a candle, in his passion he pull'd out a sharp pen-knife and cut off the external members of _isabella_, highly resenting the affront, and very much displeas'd with himself, that he should embrace a monster. _isabella_ made a hideous outcry, which disturb'd the whole neighbourhood, but the count sending for an experienc'd surgeon, to prevent the effusion of too great a quantity of blood, it issuing out with great violence, kept her at his house all night, and sent her the next morning in a chair to her companion. _isabella_ was a considerable time before she recover'd of this great wound, but at length growing well, and _diana_ having very much suffer'd by her extravagant frolicks, they liv'd together as man and wife (being now better qualified for it) a considerable space, 'till on a time they had a very great quarrel, which occasion'd a separation; and _diana_ reviving her former diversions, met at last with the same fate as _isabella_, her masculine instrument being likewise sever'd from her privities, after which, both of them liv'd to be harmless old women. these intrigues being very remarkable, i thought fit to insert them for the entertainment of the curious reader; i now proceed to the nature and generation of hermaphrodites. * * * * * _of the material cause and generation of_ hermaphrodites there are several reasons assign'd by naturalists for the cause and production of hermaphrodites. some are of opinion that hermaphrodites are form'd whilst the terms are upon women, which being always impure, they can produce nothing but monsters; but to this it may be answer'd, that when children are conceived during the sowing of the terms, there is a greater probability of their being born with the itch, or other scorbutick distempers, than of their being hermaphrodites. others believe, that the man and the woman having equally contributed to generation, the forming power which endeavours to render the matter whereon it works like unto those it came from, imprints the characters of man and woman upon it: and that some have been able to engender in a double capacity, as to have a child with one breast resembling that of a woman, and the other that of a man; but this opinion is very fabulous, for the uniting faculty, which is the effect of the soul, is not capable of making such very great differences; and generation being accomplish'd, thro' the fermentation of the seed only, it cannot separate their actions after they are mix'd. some naturalists tell us, that where nature design'd seed in the womb for a male only, (as working up for the best, and aiming at the highest perfection of its workmanship) too much cold and moisture accidentally falling into the work, before it is perfected in the womb, at the same time there being too great a quantity of seed and menstrous blood, what was intended for man in part degenerates, and renders the infant of a double sex or nature, placing it in the middle of both sexes, as seeming to participate of male and female. others say. that nature having always a particular care of the propagation of mankind, endeavours for the most part to produce females: and thus we may observe, the number of men hermaphrodites to exceed the women ones, nature having chalk'd out to the first the lines of a woman's privy parts. to this opinion it is objected, that nature being nothing but the power of god in the production of creatures, it never works but according to his orders upon the matter that is given the female; and of consequence hermaphrodites depend more upon the disposition of the matter for generation, than upon any previous design of nature. some are of opinion, that god having created man and woman, we have essentially within us a faculty to become either the one sex or the other; for which reason it is no wonder if an hermaphrodite is sometimes produc'd, since we are potentially so. this notion is drawn from _plato_; and though some part of the scripture may at first seem to favour it, yet, strictly consider'd, one may find a quite different sense; and this opinion was condemn'd by pope _innocent_ iii. the ancients were of opinion, that there is a certain cell in the womb of some women, into which the seed falling, when _mercury_ and _venus_, or _mercury_ and _luna_ are in conjunction, an hermaphrodite is engender'd; or that the conjunction of _mars_ and _venus_ disposes the matter that serves for the forming of the child so confusedly in the mother's womb, that it becomes the cause of the birth of an hermaphrodite. in answer to this, those planets are too remote from us to be the proximate causes, and to have an absolute influence on the body of the child that is forming in its mother's womb; and admitting such a conjunction might cause a deformity, it would not appear however in two hermaphrodites born at different seasons: but in _turkey_, and other eastern countries, where these planets have the greatest influence, hermaphrodites are more numerous than in the western parts of the world, and they are oblig'd to go in different habits from other people (_viz_. with cloaths partly belonging to men and partly women) to prevent their lying with any; and if they go without these habits they are punish'd severely. these are the various opinions of curious naturalists; but to proceed to other particulars which are more probable, we must more nicely examine the nature of the seed to find out the cause of the confusion of sexes. the seed is for the most part indifferent as to the two sexes, and if it happens to meet with a ball or egg in the horns of the womb that is full of spirits, and includes a hot, dry, and close matter, it will impregnate so as to produce a boy; but if the seed meets with a ball or egg, not hot nor dry or fill'd with spirits, tho' it will animate it, yet 'tis with less strength, so as a girl will be produc'd. and if the matter contain'd in another ball, is exactly temper'd in its quantities, and equal in its parts, so as there is no predominancy, the seed of the man by its superior power will determine this matter for a boy or a girl: but if a man's seed dispos'd to determine the temperate seed of a woman to one of the two sexes has not a sufficient quantity of spirits to effect it, and the seed of the woman prevails for the contrary sex, then an hermaphrodite is form'd, who has relation to one and the other according to the different endeavours of the animated seed of the man or woman. the intelligence whose business it is to compose the little body of hermaphrodites, is very much disturb'd to meet with a matter that is intractable for the regular forming of the genital parts. on one side the matter is moist and loose, on the other close and dry; here 'tis hot and there 'tis cold. this matter is so different and consists of such rebellious particles, that 'tis impossible to manage it, and the quantity of matter is so small that it is destitute of heat, without which the intelligence cannot perfectly form all parts of the body. if the matter turns to a male, he will be too dull and too cold to engender, and will be imperfect in his privy parts; if it proves a female, she will in time be of too hot and dry a nature, and will be deficient of organs for the seed and menstruous blood, in order to form and nourish a child. this intelligence, or the immortal soul that works from the beginning, in all probability about the thirty fifth day begins to be employ'd in making the privy parts of a boy, for which purpose it lays hold on the matter at first elected for that end, and which it put in the first place, where the privy parts ought to be. this being done, it works continually, but wanting matter to perfect the privy parts, it borrows of the neighbouring parts, chusing rather to render others disfigur'd, than to be wanting in the compleat forming of the parts that must serve for generation. but when there is not matter enough to form the genital parts of a boy, the oeconomy of the intelligence husbands it and places and disposes all things so well for the perfect forming of the parts that 'tis not to be express'd, but the situation is inward, as wanting heat and strength of matter to push them out, after this the intelligence proceeds in the forming of the privy parts of those hermaphrodites who are counted girls, but are really boys. these seem to change sexes, and in time come to be men, and marry, and get children. the natural and genital heat increasing daily, pushes out the privy parts about the age of fifteen, twenty, or twenty five, 'till which time they lie hidden. these must be at full age before they are able to caress a woman; and where after the coming out or the privy parts they copulate, it will be a hard matter for them to engender, being in their nature cold. as the intelligence wants matter for the forming of the privy parts of the three first sorts of hermaphrodites, so there is more than there is occasion for in the fourth. about the forty fifth day, the intelligence being at a loss how to place the matter it has receiv'd for the amorous parts, determines at last to make the _clotoris_ bigger and longer than ordinary, and to leave to the inward genital parts of a girl a natural figure, that they may one day serve for generation. these sorts of hermaphrodites as i have already observ'd, have frequently pass'd for men, being in reality nothing but women. but in short, the intelligence must accomplish its work, of what matter soever it be; it begins to work, and will without doubt make parts in some measure determin'd to either sex, provided the matter be not so unequal, and of such a different complexion as to make it impossible to effect it, when it forms an hermaphrodite, and sometimes a monster that is neither man nor woman, as having no privy parts, either of the one or the other. * * * * * _of unnatural births; monsters, and extraordinary conceptions._ hermaphrodites being monsters in nature, it is no more than what may be reasonably expected that my account of their generation, should be follow'd with some very extraordinary unnatural births, monstrous productions of another kind, and wonderful conceptions. the heathen philosophers, were so prejudic'd to the opinion of woman's being an imperfect animal, (alledging that nature always propos'd to herself the generation of males as being the most accomplish'd piece of workmanship;) that they look'd upon woman as a monster in nature; but the scriptures teach us, that man and woman are equally perfect in their kind, and nature cannot be suppos'd to produce more monsters than perfect beings, which must be the case, if this opinion were allow'd, women being more numerous than the men. monsters are deprav'd conceptions, defin'd by the ancients to be excursions of nature, and are always vicious, either in figure, situation, magnitude, or number. when they bear the resemblance of a beast, they are said to be vicious in figure; when the parts are disproportion'd, as that one part is too big for the other; (which is a thing very common by reason of some excrescence) they are vicious in magnitude; if the ears were on the face, or the eyes on the breast, &c. as was seen in a monster born at _revanna_ in _italy_, in the year , they are vicious in situation, and when having two heads or four hands, and two bodies join'd, as had a monster born at _zarzara_ in the year , they are vicious in number. in the reign of _henry_ the d, there was a woman deliver'd of a child, having two heads, four arms, and two bodies which were join'd down to the navel. the heads were so plac'd that they look'd contrary ways. it was the female sex, and both heads would speak, laugh and cry; and both eat and be hungry together, but there was but one fundament to disburden nature; sometimes one would speak, and the other would keep silence, and sometimes both speak at the same time. it liv'd several years, but one of them surviving the other, it carried the dead one so long, that at last it fainted with the burden. and at a village call'd _ubaten_ in _flanders_, a child was born which had two heads and four arms, appearing like two maids joyn'd together, having two arms lifted up between and above the heads, the thighs being plac'd as it were cross one another. in the year , a monster was born in _france_, cover'd all over with hair like a beast, its navel being in the place where his nose should have been, his eyes plac'd in the situation of the mouth; and its mouth was in the chin. it was of the male-kind, and liv'd but a few days, affrighting all that beheld it. and near _elselling_ in _germany_, in the year , there was a boy born with one head and one body, having four ears, four arms, and four feet, and but two thighs, and two legs: this birth, in the opinion of the learned, proceeded from a redundancy of seed beyond what was sufficient for one child, but not enough for twins, wherefore nature form'd what she could. there might be many other particular instances given of monstrous births, as some sticking together by the bellies, others by the breech; some born without arms or legs others without heads, yet have they liv'd for some time, till want of sustenance made them pine away and die, as having no place to receive it, and others with heads like dogs, wolves, bears, and other beasts. but i shall proceed to the cause of their generation. the natural cause of generation of monsters, according to the ancients, is either in the matter, or in the agent; in the seed or in the womb: the matter may be unable to perform its office two ways; by defect, or by excess: by defect, when a child hath but one arm, or one leg, &c. and by excess, when it hath three hands or two heads. the agent or womb may be in fault several ways, as in the forming faculty, which may be too strong or too weak, by which a deprav'd figure is oftentimes produc'd, the ill conformation of the place of conception will cause a monstrous birth; and the imaginative power at the time of conception, is so forcible, that it stamps a character of the thing upon the child; so that the child of an adulteress, by the strength of imagination may have a nearer resemblance of her husband, than of the person who begat it. and some histories mention, that through this imaginative faculty, a woman at the time of conception, beholding the picture of a blackamoor, produc'd a child resembling an Æthiopian. monsters are sometimes engender'd by unseasonable amorous embraces, as when a man enters on the pleasures of venus at a time as the monthly flowings are upon his wife; for this being against nature, it is no wonder that it should produce an unnatural offspring. if therefore a man's desire be never so great for copulation at such a time, yet the woman ought not to admit of his embraces; the issue of those unclean embraces proving often monstrous, or dull and heavy, and defective in their understandings. sometimes by a corruption of seed, monstrous shapes are form'd, which by some is ascrib'd to the bad influence of the planets, that were predominant at the time of conception; and sometimes the straightness of the womb is attended with many inconveniencies, for nature not having sufficient room to frame her work in, the child is rumpled up, which occasions some to have hump'd backs, crooked arms, and legs, round shoulders, wry necks, and the like. the divine cause of these monstrous generations, proceeds from the permissive will of our great creator, who many times suffers parents to bring forth such deform'd creatures as a punishment for their lust: and some authors are of opinion, that outward deformity of body is generally a sign of the pollution of the heart, as a curse upon the child for the incontinency of the parents. in the writings of some authors mention is made of monsters engender'd by infernal spirits; and as the scriptures give us to understand that the angels being taken with the beauty of the daughters of men, went in unto them, and that from such a conjunction, giants were born, so we may infer that if angels can mix amorously with women, and engender children, the devils who only differ from angels by their fall, may also draw women into immodest pleasures, and defile them with their embraces: but it is highly inconsistent to suppose that our creator who is all purity, would permit the worst of spirits to propogate his diabolical offspring. devils assuming to themselves human shapes, in the opinion of ancient writers, may abuse both men and women, and with wicked people use carnal copulation. st. _austin_ yields to this notion, and that generation may thereby be effected; but his opinion was grounded more upon the depositions of melancholly superstitious persons, than from any demonstrable proofs; and 'tis impossible that such an unnatural conjunction can produce a humane creature, though some will have it that it may, and that his malice shall be a sign of his extraction. the _rabbins_ beleived that the _silvani_, _pans_ and _fauni_, call'd _incubus's_ and the _tutelar_ gods, were creatures left imperfect the first _friday_ evening, and not finish'd by god, as being prevented by the ensuing sabbath; for this reason they alledg'd, these spirits love mountains and dark places only, and never appear but in the night time: and the _incubus's_ not only court and desire to caress women, but have actually caress'd them. _hierenimus cardanus_ writes of a maid which was got with child by a devil, she thinking it had been a fair young man who had enjoy'd her; and some witches fancy they have been at the sabbath, and caress'd by the devil, whose privy parts were full of bristles, scaly, and the seed cold as ice; but this has proceeded only from a distracted brain: besides we learn from scripture that devils being pure spirits, are quite different substances from those of men. that they have neither flesh nor blood, nor privities, and consequently no seed for generation. that though they sometimes assume bodies, these bodies are only form'd of air, and do not live, neither can they exercise the operations of life: that having no occasion to hope for posterity, as being eternal and unhappy, they cannot be suppos'd to be desirous of perpetuating their species or to take pleasure in the embraces of women. the stories of women having commerce with devils, are very fabulous, and proceed chiefly from dreams and nocturnal illusions; a lecherous and melancholly woman seiz'd with the night mare, may verily beleive that the devil caresses her; especially if her fancy is taken up with tales of witches. _leo africanus_ tells us, that what is attributed to devils, is committed by lascivious men, and lecherous women, who perswade others, that they are caress'd by devils. the witches of the kingdom of _fez_, according to history, are very desirous that people should beleive them to be familiar with devils, and for that reason endeavour to tell surprizing stories to those that consult them; they do not require any fees from handsome women that come to see them, but only intimate the desire their master has to caress them for a night. the husbands take these impostures for truth, and surrender their wives to the gods and the winds. night being come, the brawny sorcerer (who employs the persons abovemention'd, to ensnare fine women to his caresses) embraces the fair one closely, and enjoys her instead of the devil. if this ignorance and superstition prevail'd in this kingdom, i doubt not but it would very much pleasure the frolicking libertines. * * * * * _extraordinary conceptions_. before i begin to trace any particulars of extraordinary conceptions, i shall insert a surprizing account of a woman that went twenty five years with child, from the writings of monsieur _baile_, which contains a great deal of variety relating to untimely generations. _margaret matthieu_ a _cloth-worker_'s wife at _tholouse_ in _france_, in the year , and towards the ninth month of her reckoning, had the pains of woman's labour upon her at church; and some part of the waters being already voided, she acquainted the people about her, that she fear'd she should be deliver'd in the church. immediately she was carried to a neighbouring house, and her pains abating upon the relief she there met with, she was afterwards convey'd home, where her pains return'd with more violence than before. upon this, doctor _cartier_, and doctor _mulatier_ two famous physicians, and mr. _cortade_ a very skilful surgeon were sent for, and endeavour'd, tho' in vain, to give her relief. she continued for two months under the torture of these violent pains, and voided clots of blood without fibres or any carnous matter. afterwards she voided a white humour, that was sometimes tinctur'd with blood; and her breasts were fill'd with an extraordinary quantity of milk. about the fifth month the flux of the blood ceas'd, and she recover'd her strength by degrees, being still incommoded with a troublesome load in her belly, and never easy but when she lay upon her reins. from the year till the year , she suffer'd now and then as violent pains as those of child-birth. when they attack'd her most severely, she entreated the surgeon to rip up her belly, and so put an end to her misery. she was troubled with frequent swoonings, and unaccountable longings for certain sorts of aliment. some of the women about her affirm'd, that they saw the child move several times; but the surgeon and the apothecary, who observ'd her very narrowly, and were frequently call'd, could never perceive any other motion than that which attended the mother's turning from one side to the other; for then the lump fell to the side upon which she lay. during this space of time, which was twenty five years and some months, this woman had several fits of sickness, and at last died of a continual fever, in _january_ , being in the sixty second year of her age. the next day after she was dead, mr. _cortade_, open'd her corps, in the presence of monsieurs _gaillart_, _baile_, _laborde_ and _grangeron_ all famous physicians; and of mr. _labat_ and _corboneau_, two noted anatomists. having cut up the muscles, and the _peritonæum_, they found the cawl schirous, and somewhat carnous, and about two fingers breadth thick. 'twas stretched over the mass they sought for and adher'd to it. when they lifted it up, they turn'd over the whole heap, towards the breast of the deceas'd person, and then they had some apprehension that the shapeless mass was a child: at first view they doubted it, because 'twas found out of the womb, but their doubts were quickly dispell'd, when they put a knife into it and felt the bones, and saw nails and toes upon one of the feet, that they separated from the mass. before they meddled further with the mass, they had a mind to see what condition the parts of the _abdomen_ were in, and particularly the womb, upon which they found a body, which being hard like a stone, enclos'd a great ulcer that spread its self over the bottom of the womb. upon the womb side it had a cavity full of white and thick _pus_, without any noisome smell. on the opposite side 'twas hollow, and resembled the convex side of an oister. the rest of the womb was in its natural state, and they met with no considerable accident in the neighbouring parts. they cut out the mass, and carried it to the surgeon's house, to be view'd at their leisure. the whole mass was encompass'd with a callous matter, under which they found all the parts of a child harden'd and half putrified; and these weigh'd eight pound. they cut up all the _viscera_ in the three cavities, the particulars whereof may be read in mr. _baile_'s book of anatomy. this is the account given by mr. _baile_. i come now to extraordinary conceptions. some authors affirm, that a young man having spilt some seed in a bath, a girl afterwards bathing in the same water, the seed was suck'd in by the girls womb, and she became with child. but monsieur _dionis_ is not of this opinion: he will not allow the womb an attractive faculty, so as to suck up from the outer extremity of the neck, and oblige it to repair to its cavity. and the seed being a liquor, would be so blended with the water, that 'tis impossible all its particles should rally, and continue their activity and prolifick quality, till their arrival in the womb. and the history reported by _riolanus_ favours the opinion against those who maintain that generation may be perform'd by shedding of the seed on the cabia of a woman's privities. the _vagina_ of the woman mention'd by this writer, was shut up with scars after a troublesome child-birth, to such a degree as only to leave a small hole for the passage of the terms and urine, through which also pass'd the husband's seed that got her with child; this might not hinder these two persons from copulating strictly; nay, there must have been a strict alliance and the womb, by contracting of the passage, must in this case have drawn the seed as greedily as an hungry stomach attracts the victuals by the mouth. some persons have believ'd that a woman may engender, without the application of a man's privities. they tell us of a woman that was got with child in the embraces of her she-companion, who but a little before came from her husband's arms: and of a young woman that was found breeding by no other cause than her father's having by chance polluted himself in the same bed where she was: but these stories seem to be contriv'd to cover the lasciviousness of women, and conceal the vice of an impure love. there is a story in some authors, that having put human seed into a viol close stopp'd, and plac'd it for some time in a dunghill that was moderately hot; they observ'd that the particles drew up themselves in such order, as to assume the form of a child. this (say they) comes to pass after the same manner as the forming of a chick in an egg, which requires only a temperate heat to hatch it. but they agree, that 'twas impossible to nourish this infant, which according to them, perish'd before 'twas intirely form'd. if this observation were true, it would make us believe that the whole matter of which the child is form'd proceeds from the man. but this story wants confirmation, as does likewise the following relation communicated in a letter by mr. _donat_ surgeon to the army in _italy_, relating to a man's conception. _i am at this very time employ'd in tending a person of quality that's come a great way off. in the right side of his_ scrotum _he had a great lump, bigger than the head of a child; which i cut off, and afterwards ty'd up the spermatick artery. this lump was a mass of flesh, all over spermatick, and very solid, with very hard bones in every part. 'twas contain'd in an after-birth with a great deal of water. the spermatick vessels which perform'd the office of those we call umbilical, were overgrown much beyond their natural size. the circumstances that occasion'd this generation, confirms the effect that follow'd. in_ june _last, the gentleman us'd a great deal of liberty with a certain lady, without coming to actual enjoyment; upon which he was seiz'd with a cutting pain in the right testicle, which after two hours became insensible. in process of time a tumour rose by degrees, which was joined to the testicle, and was as big as a_ turkey'_egg. the th of_ december _last, this gentleman came hither incognito; but put off the operation 'till this time, by reason of the cold season. in the mean time the swelling increas'd so much, that the_ scrotum _being uncapable of a greater extension; it reach'd all over the groin, and i had a great deal of trouble in tying the spermatick vessels at rings of the abdomen. this is an experiment that shews, that the whole substance of man is contain'd in the male seed; and that women furnish only the vessel, and the substance of growth and nourishment. i have preserv'd this production to justify the truth of my assertion._ donat. sisteron, _may_ the d. . finis. fantasia of the unconscious by d. h. lawrence new york thomas seltzer copyright, , by thomas seltzer, inc. contents chapter foreword i. introduction ii. the holy family iii. plexuses, planes and so on iv. trees and babies and papas and mamas v. the five senses vi. first glimmerings of mind vii. first steps in education viii. education and sex in man, woman and child ix. the birth of sex x. parent love xi. the vicious circle xii. litany of exhortations xiii. cosmological xiv. sleep and dreams xv. the lower self epilogue foreword the present book is a continuation from "psychoanalysis and the unconscious." the generality of readers had better just leave it alone. the generality of critics likewise. i really don't want to convince anybody. it is quite in opposition to my whole nature. i don't intend my books for the generality of readers. i count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. i count it a misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like slaves exposed naked for sale. but there we are, since we live in an age of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it. i warn the generality of readers, that this present book will seem to them only a rather more revolting mass of wordy nonsense than the last. i would warn the generality of critics to throw it in the waste paper basket without more ado. as for the limited few, in whom one must perforce find an answerer, i may as well say straight off that i stick to the solar plexus. that statement alone, i hope, will thin their numbers considerably. finally, to the remnants of a remainder, in order to apologize for the sudden lurch into cosmology, or cosmogony, in this book, i wish to say that the whole thing hangs inevitably together. i am not a scientist. i am an amateur of amateurs. as one of my critics said, you either believe or you don't. i am not a proper archæologist nor an anthropologist nor an ethnologist. i am no "scholar" of any sort. but i am very grateful to scholars for their sound work. i have found hints, suggestions for what i say here in all kinds of scholarly books, from the yoga and plato and st. john the evangel and the early greek philosophers like herakleitos down to fraser and his "golden bough," and even freud and frobenius. even then i only remember hints--and i proceed by intuition. this leaves you quite free to dismiss the whole wordy mass of revolting nonsense, without a qualm. only let me say, that to my mind there is a great field of science which is as yet quite closed to us. i refer to the science which proceeds in terms of life and is established on data of living experience and of sure intuition. call it subjective science if you like. our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself only with phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in their cause-and-effect relationship. i have nothing to say against our science. it is perfect as far as it goes. but to regard it as exhausting the whole scope of human possibility in knowledge seems to me just puerile. our science is a science of the dead world. even biology never considers life, but only mechanistic functioning and apparatus of life. i honestly think that the great pagan world of which egypt and greece were the last living terms, the great pagan world which preceded our own era once, had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a science in terms of life. in our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. but even wisdom crumbles. i believe that this great science previous to ours and quite different in constitution and nature from our science once was universal, established all over the then-existing globe. i believe it was esoteric, invested in a large priesthood. just as mathematics and mechanics and physics are defined and expounded in the same way in the universities of china or bolivia or london or moscow to-day, so, it seems to me, in the great world previous to ours a great science and cosmology were taught esoterically in all countries of the globe, asia, polynesia, america, atlantis and europe. belt's suggestion of the geographical nature of this previous world seems to me most interesting. in the period which geologists call the glacial period, the waters of the earth must have been gathered up in a vast body on the higher places of our globe, vast worlds of ice. and the sea-beds of to-day must have been comparatively dry. so that the azores rose up mountainous from the plain of atlantis, where the atlantic now washes, and the easter isles and the marquesas and the rest rose lofty from the marvelous great continent of the pacific. in that world men lived and taught and knew, and were in one complete correspondence over all the earth. men wandered back and forth from atlantis to the polynesian continent as men now sail from europe to america. the interchange was complete, and knowledge, science was universal over the earth, cosmopolitan as it is to-day. then came the melting of the glaciers, and the world flood. the refugees from the drowned continents fled to the high places of america, europe, asia, and the pacific isles. and some degenerated naturally into cave men, neolithic and paleolithic creatures, and some retained their marvelous innate beauty and life-perfection, as the south sea islanders, and some wandered savage in africa, and some, like druids or etruscans or chaldeans or amerindians or chinese, refused to forget, but taught the old wisdom, only in its half-forgotten, symbolic forms. more or less forgotten, as knowledge: remembered as ritual, gesture, and myth-story. and so, the intense potency of symbols is part at least memory. and so it is that all the great symbols and myths which dominate the world when our history first begins, are very much the same in every country and every people, the great myths all relate to one another. and so it is that these myths now begin to hypnotize us again, our own impulse towards our own scientific way of understanding being almost spent. and so, besides myths, we find the same mathematic figures, cosmic graphs which remain among the aboriginal peoples in all continents, mystic figures and signs whose true cosmic or scientific significance is lost, yet which continue in use for purposes of conjuring or divining. if my reader finds this bosh and abracadabra, all right for him. only i have no more regard for his little crowings on his own little dunghill. myself, i am not so sure that i am one of the one-and-onlies. i like the wide world of centuries and vast ages--mammoth worlds beyond our day, and mankind so wonderful in his distances, his history that has no beginning yet always the pomp and the magnificence of human splendor unfolding through the earth's changing periods. floods and fire and convulsions and ice-arrest intervene between the great glamorous civilizations of mankind. but nothing will ever quench humanity and the human potentiality to evolve something magnificent out of a renewed chaos. i do not believe in evolution, but in the strangeness and rainbow-change of ever-renewed creative civilizations. so much, then, for my claim to remarkable discoveries. i believe i am only trying to stammer out the first terms of a forgotten knowledge. but i have no desire to revive dead kings, or dead sages. it is not for me to arrange fossils, and decipher hieroglyphic phrases. i couldn't do it if i wanted to. but then i can do something else. the soul must take the hint from the relics our scientists have so marvelously gathered out of the forgotten past, and from the hint develop a new living utterance. the spark is from dead wisdom, but the fire is life. and as an example--a very simple one--of how a scientist of the most innocent modern sort may hint at truths which, when stated, he would laugh at as fantastic nonsense, let us quote a word from the already old-fashioned "golden bough." "it must have appeared to the ancient aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which resided in the sacred oak." exactly. the fire which resided in the tree of life. that is, life itself. so we must read: "it must have appeared to the ancient aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from life."--which is what the early greek philosophers were always saying. and which still seems to me the real truth, the clue to the cosmos. instead of life being drawn from the sun, it is the emanation from life itself, that is, from all the living plants and creatures which nourish the sun. of course, my dear critic, the ancient aryans were just doddering--the old duffers: or babbling, the babes. but as for me, i have some respect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleeve than just the marvel of the unborn me. one last weary little word. this pseudo-philosophy of mine--"pollyanalytics," as one of my respected critics might say--is deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. the novels and poems come unwatched out of one's pen. and then the absolute need which one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's experiences as a writer and as a man. the novels and poems are pure passionate experience. these "pollyanalytics" are inferences made afterwards, from the experience. and finally, it seems to me that even art is utterly dependent on philosophy: or if you prefer it, on a metaphysic. the metaphysic or philosophy may not be anywhere very accurately stated and may be quite unconscious, in the artist, yet it is a metaphysic that governs men at the time, and is by all men more or less comprehended, and lived. men live and see according to some gradually developing and gradually withering vision. this vision exists also as a dynamic idea or metaphysic--exists first as such. then it is unfolded into life and art. our vision, our belief, our metaphysic is wearing woefully thin, and the art is wearing absolutely threadbare. we have no future; neither for our hopes nor our aims nor our art. it has all gone gray and opaque. we've got to rip the old veil of a vision across, and find what the heart really believes in, after all: and what the heart really wants, for the next future. and we've got to put it down in terms of belief and of knowledge. and then go forward again, to the fulfillment in life and art. rip the veil of the old vision across, and walk through the rent. and if i try to do this--well, why not? if i try to write down what i see--why not? if a publisher likes to print the book--all right. and if anybody wants to read it, let him. but why anybody should read one single word if he doesn't want to, i don't see. unless of course he is a critic who needs to scribble a dollar's worth of words, no matter how. taormina october , fantasia of the unconscious chapter i introduction let us start by making a little apology to psychoanalysis. it wasn't fair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious; or perhaps it _was_ fair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious, which is truly a negative quantity and an unpleasant menagerie. what was really not fair was to jeer at psychoanalysis as if freud had invented and described nothing but an unconscious, in all his theory. the unconscious is not, of course, the clue to the freudian theory. the real clue is sex. a sexual motive is to be attributed to all human activity. now this is going too far. we are bound to admit than an element of sex enters into all human activity. but so does an element of greed, and of many other things. we are bound to admit that into all human relationships, particularly adult human relationships, a large element of sex enters. we are thankful that freud has insisted on this. we are thankful that freud pulled us somewhat to earth, out of all our clouds of superfineness. what freud says is always _partly_ true. and half a loaf is better than no bread. but really, there is the other half of the loaf. all is _not_ sex. and a sexual motive is _not_ to be attributed to all human activities. we know it, without need to argue. sex surely has a specific meaning. sex means the being divided into male and female; and the magnetic desire or impulse which puts male apart from female, in a negative or sundering magnetism, but which also draws male and female together in a long and infinitely varied approach towards the critical act of coition. sex without the consummating act of coition is never quite sex, in human relationships: just as a eunuch is never quite a man. that is to say, the act of coition is the essential clue to sex. now does all life work up to the one consummating act of coition? in one direction, it does, and it would be better if psychoanalysis plainly said so. in one direction, all life works up to the one supreme moment of coition. let us all admit it, sincerely. but we are not confined to one direction only, or to one exclusive consummation. was the building of the cathedrals a working up towards the act of coition? was the dynamic impulse sexual? no. the sexual element was present, and important. but not predominant. the same in the building of the panama canal. the sexual impulse, in its widest form, was a very great impulse towards the building of the panama canal. but there was something else, of even higher importance, and greater dynamic power. and what is this other, greater impulse? it is the desire of the human male to build a world: not "to build a world for you, dear"; but to build up out of his own self and his own belief and his own effort something wonderful. not merely something useful. something wonderful. even the panama canal would never have been built _simply_ to let ships through. it is the pure disinterested craving of the human male to make something wonderful, out of his own head and his own self, and his own soul's faith and delight, which starts everything going. this is the prime motivity. and the motivity of sex is subsidiary to this: often directly antagonistic. that is, the essentially religious or creative motive is the first motive for all human activity. the sexual motive comes second. and there is a great conflict between the interests of the two, at all times. what we want to do, is to trace the creative or religious motive to its source in the human being, keeping in mind always the near relationship between the religious motive and the sexual. the two great impulses are like man and wife, or father and son. it is no use putting one under the feet of the other. the great desire to-day is to deny the religious impulse altogether, or else to assert its absolute alienity from the sexual impulse. the orthodox religious world says faugh! to sex. whereupon we thank freud for giving them tit for tat. but the orthodox scientific world says fie! to the religious impulse. the scientist wants to discover a cause for everything. and there is no cause for the religious impulse. freud is with the scientists. jung dodges from his university gown into a priest's surplice till we don't know where we are. we prefer freud's _sex_ to jung's _libido_ or bergson's _elan vital_. sex has at least _some_ definite reference, though when freud makes sex accountable for everything he as good as makes it accountable for nothing. we refuse any _cause_, whether it be sex or libido or elan vital or ether or unit of force or _perpetuum mobile_ or anything else. but also we feel that we cannot, like moses, perish on the top of our present ideal pisgah, or take the next step into thin air. there we are, at the top of our pisgah of ideals, crying _excelsior_ and trying to clamber up into the clouds: that is, if we are idealists with the religious impulse rampant in our breasts. if we are scientists we practice aeroplane flying or eugenics or disarmament or something equally absurd. the promised land, if it be anywhere, lies away beneath our feet. no more prancing upwards. no more uplift. no more little excelsiors crying world-brotherhood and international love and leagues of nations. idealism and materialism amount to the same thing on top of pisgah, and the space is _very_ crowded. we're all cornered on our mountain top, climbing up one another and standing on one another's faces in our scream of excelsior. to your tents, o israel! brethren, let us go down. we will descend. the way to our precious canaan lies obviously downhill. an end of uplift. downhill to the land of milk and honey. the blood will soon be flowing faster than either, but we can't help that. we can't help it if canaan has blood in its veins, instead of pure milk and honey. if it is a question of origins, the origin is always the same, whatever we say about it. so is the cause. let that be a comfort to us. if we want to talk about god, well, we can please ourselves. god has been talked about quite a lot, and he doesn't seem to mind. why we should take it so personally is a problem. likewise if we wish to have a tea party with the atom, let us: or with the wriggling little unit of energy, or the ether, or the libido, or the elan vital, or any other cause. only don't let us have sex for tea. we've all got too much of it under the table; and really, for my part, i prefer to keep mine there, no matter what the freudians say about me. but it is tiring to go to any more tea parties with the origin, or the cause, or even the lord. let us pronounce the mystic om, from the pit of the stomach, and proceed. there's not a shadow of doubt about it, the first cause is just unknowable to us, and we'd be sorry if it wasn't. whether it's god or the atom. all i say is om! the first business of every faith is to declare its ignorance. i don't know where i come from--nor where i exit to. i don't know the origins of life nor the goal of death. i don't know how the two parent cells which are my biological origin became the me which i am. i don't in the least know what those two parent cells were. the chemical analysis is just a farce, and my father and mother were just vehicles. and yet, i must say, since i've got to know about the two cells, i'm glad i do know. the moses of science and the aaron of idealism have got the whole bunch of us here on top of pisgah. it's a tight squeeze, and we'll be falling very, very foul of one another in five minutes, unless some of us climb down. but before leaving our eminence let us have a look round, and get our bearings. they say that way lies the new jerusalem of universal love: and over there the happy valley of indulgent pragmatism: and there, quite near, is the chirpy land of the vitalists: and in those dark groves the home of successful analysis, surnamed psycho: and over those blue hills the supermen are prancing about, though you can't see them. and there is besantheim, and there is eddyhowe, and there, on that queer little tableland, is wilsonia, and just round the corner is rabindranathopolis.... but lord, i can't see anything. help me, heaven, to a telescope, for i see blank nothing. i'm not going to try any more. i'm going to sit down on my posterior and sluther full speed down this pisgah, even if it cost me my trouser seat. so ho!--away we go. in the beginning--there never was any beginning, but let it pass. we've got to make a start somehow. in the very beginning of all things, time and space and cosmos and being, in the beginning of all these was a little living creature. but i don't know even if it was little. in the beginning was a living creature, its plasm quivering and its life-pulse throbbing. this little creature died, as little creatures always do. but not before it had had young ones. when the daddy creature died, it fell to pieces. and that was the beginning of the cosmos. its little body fell down to a speck of dust, which the young ones clung to because they must cling to something. its little breath flew asunder, the hotness and brightness of the little beast--i beg your pardon, i mean the radiant energy from the corpse flew away to the right hand, and seemed to shine warm in the air, while the clammy energy from the body flew away to the left hand, and seemed dark and cold. and so, the first little master was dead and done for, and instead of his little living body there was a speck of dust in the middle, which became the earth, and on the right hand was a brightness which became the sun, rampaging with all the energy that had come out of the dead little master, and on the left hand a darkness which felt like an unrisen moon. and that was how the lord created the world. except that i know nothing about the lord, so i shouldn't mention it. but i forgot the soul of the little master. it probably did a bit of flying as well--and then came back to the young ones. it seems most natural that way. which is my account of the creation. and i mean by it, that life is not and never was anything but living creatures. that's what life is and will be just living creatures, no matter how large you make the capital l. out of living creatures the material cosmos was made: out of the death of living creatures, when their little living bodies fell dead and fell asunder into all sorts of matter and forces and energies, sun, moons, stars and worlds. so you got the universe. where you got the living creature from, that first one, don't ask me. he was just there. but he was a little person with a soul of his own. he wasn't life with a capital l. if you don't believe me, then don't. i'll even give you a little song to sing. "if it be not true to me what care i how true it be . ." that's the kind of man i really like, chirping his insouciance. and i chirp back: "though it be not true to thee it's gay and gospel truth to me. . ." the living live, and then die. they pass away, as we know, to dust and to oxygen and nitrogen and so on. but what we don't know, and what we might perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into life itself--that is, direct into the living. that is, how many dead souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the living. how many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed thoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my forehead, i don't know. but i believe a good many. and i hope they have a good time. and i hope not too many are bats. i am sorry to say i believe in the souls of the dead. i am almost ashamed to say, that i believe the souls of the dead in some way reënter and pervade the souls of the living: so that life is always the life of living creatures, and death is always our affair. this bit, i admit, is bordering on mysticism. i'm sorry, because i don't like mysticism. it has no trousers and no trousers seat: _n'a pas de quoi_. and i should feel so uncomfortable if i put my hand behind me and felt an absolute blank. meanwhile a long, thin, brown caterpillar keeps on pretending to be a dead thin beech-twig, on a little bough at my feet. he had got his hind feet and his fore feet on the twig, and his body looped up like an arch in the air between, when a fly walked up the twig and began to mount the arch of the imitator, not having the least idea that it was on a gentleman's coat-tails. the caterpillar shook his stern, and the fly made off as if it had seen a ghost. the dead twig and the live twig now remain equally motionless, enjoying their different ways. and when, with this very pencil, i push the head of the caterpillar off from the twig, he remains on his tail, arched forward in air, and oscillating unhappily, like some tiny pendulum ticking. ticking, ticking in mid-air, arched away from his planted tail. till at last, after a long minute and a half, he touches the twig again, and subsides into twigginess. the only thing is, the dead beech-twig can't pretend to be a wagging caterpillar. yet how the two commune! however--we have our exits and our entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. more than he dreams of, poor darling. and i am entirely at a loss for a moral! well, then, we are born. i suppose that's a safe statement. and we become at once conscious, if we weren't so before. _nem con._ and our little baby body is a little functioning organism, a little developing machine or instrument or organ, and our little baby mind begins to stir with all our wonderful psychical beginnings. and so we are in bud. but it won't do. it is too much of a pisgah sight. we overlook too much. _descendez, cher moïse. vous voyez trop loin._ you see too far all at once, dear moses. too much of a bird's-eye view across the promised land to the shore. come down, and walk across, old fellow. and you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. all the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. not at all, my dear chap. no such luck of a promised land. climb down, pisgah, and go to jericho. _allons_, there is no road yet, but we are all aarons with rods of our own. chapter ii the holy family we are all very pleased with mr. einstein for knocking that eternal axis out of the universe. the universe isn't a spinning wheel. it is a cloud of bees flying and veering round. thank goodness for that, for we were getting drunk on the spinning wheel. so that now the universe has escaped from the pin which was pushed through it, like an impaled fly vainly buzzing: now that the multiple universe flies its own complicated course quite free, and hasn't got any hub, we can hope also to escape. we won't be pinned down, either. we have no one law that governs us. for me there is only one law: _i am i._ and that isn't a law, it's just a remark. one is one, but one is not all alone. there are other stars buzzing in the center of their own isolation. and there is no straight path between them. there is no straight path between you and me, dear reader, so don't blame me if my words fly like dust into your eyes and grit between your teeth, instead of like music into your ears. i am i, but also you are you, and we are in sad need of a theory of human relativity. we need it much more than the universe does. the stars know how to prowl round one another without much damage done. but you and i, dear reader, in the first conviction that you are me and that i am you, owing to the oneness of mankind, why, we are always falling foul of one another, and chewing each other's fur. you are _not_ me, dear reader, so make no pretentions to it. don't get alarmed if _i_ say things. it isn't your sacred mouth which is opening and shutting. as for the profanation of your sacred ears, just apply a little theory of relativity, and realize that what i say is not what you hear, but something uttered in the midst of my isolation, and arriving strangely changed and travel-worn down the long curve of your own individual circumambient atmosphere. i may say bob, but heaven alone knows what the goose hears. and you may be sure that a red rag is, to a bull, something far more mysterious and complicated than a socialist's necktie. so i hope now i have put you in your place, dear reader. sit you like watts' hope on your own little blue globe, and i'll sit on mine, and we won't bump into one another if we can help it. you can twang your old hopeful lyre. it may be music to you, so i don't blame you. it is a terrible wowing in my ears. but that may be something in my individual atmosphere; some strange deflection as your music crosses the space between us. certainly i never hear the concert of world regeneration and hope revived again without getting a sort of lock-jaw, my teeth go so keen on edge from the twanging harmony. still, the world-regenerators may _really_ be quite excellent performers on their own jews'-harps. blame the edginess of my teeth. now i am going to launch words into space so mind your cosmic eye. as i said in my small but naturally immortal book, "psychoanalysis and the unconscious," there's more in it than meets the eye. there's more in you, dear reader, than meets the eye. what, don't you believe it? do you think you're as obvious as a poached egg on a piece of toast, like the poor lunatic? not a bit of it, dear reader. you've got a solar plexus, and a lumbar ganglion not far from your liver, and i'm going to tell everybody. nothing brings a man home to himself like telling everybody. and i _will_ drive you home to yourself, do you hear? you've been poaching in my private atmospheric grounds long enough, identifying yourself with me and me with everybody. a nice row there'd be in heaven if aldebaran caught sirius by the tail and said, "look here, you're not to look so green, you damm dog-star! it's an offense against star-regulations." which reminds me that the arabs say the shooting stars, meteorites, are starry stones which the angels fling at the poaching demons whom they catch sight of prowling too near the palisades of heaven. i must say i like arab angels. my heaven would coruscate like a catherine wheel, with white-hot star-stones. away, you dog, you prowling cur.--got him under the left ear-hole, gabriel--! see him, see him, michael? that hopeful blue devil! land him one! biff on your bottom, you hoper. but i wish the arabs wouldn't entice me, or you, dear reader, provoke me to this. i feel with you, dear reader, as i do with a deaf-man when he pushes his vulcanite ear, his listening machine, towards my mouth. i want to shout down the telephone ear-hole all kinds of improper things, to see what effect they will have on the stupid dear face at the end of the coil of wire. after all, words must be very different after they've trickled round and round a long wire coil. whatever becomes of them! and i, who am a bit deaf myself, and may in the end have a deaf-machine to poke at my friends, it ill becomes me to be so unkind, yet that's how i feel. so there we are. help me to be serious, dear reader. in that little book, "psychoanalysis and the unconscious," i tried rather wistfully to convince you, dear reader, that you had a solar plexus and a lumbar ganglion and a few other things. i don't know why i took the trouble. if a fellow doesn't believe he's got a nose, the best way to convince him is gently to waft a little pepper into his nostrils. and there was i painting my own nose purple, and wistfully inviting you to look and believe. no more, though. you've got first and foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. i can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. so don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. i'm writing a good sound science book, which there's no gainsaying. now, your solar plexus, most gentle of readers, is where you are you. it is your first and greatest and deepest center of consciousness. if you want to know _how_ conscious and _when_ conscious, i must refer you to that little book, "psychoanalysis and the unconscious." at your solar plexus you are primarily conscious: there, behind you stomach. there you have the profound and pristine conscious awareness that you are you. don't say you haven't. i know you have. you might as well try to deny the nose on your face. there is your first and deepest seat of awareness. there you are triumphantly aware of your own individual existence in the universe. absolutely there is the keep and central stronghold of your triumphantly-conscious self. there you _are_, and you know it. so stick out your tummy gaily, my dear, with a _me voilà_. with a _here i am!_ with an _ecco mi!_ with a _da bin ich!_ there you are, dearie. but not only a triumphant awareness that _there you are_. an exultant awareness also that outside this quiet gate, this navel, lies a whole universe on which you can lay tribute. aha--at birth you closed the central gate for ever. too dangerous to leave it open. too near the quick. but there are other gates. there are eyes and mouths and ears and nostrils, besides the two lower gates of the passionate body, and the closed but not locked gates of the breasts. many gates. and besides the actual gates, the marvelous wireless communication between the great center and the surrounding or contiguous world. authorized science tells you that this first great plexus, this all-potent nerve-center of consciousness and dynamic life-activity is a sympathetic center. from the solar plexus as from your castle-keep you look around and see the fair lands smiling, the corn and fruit and cattle of your increase, the cottages of your dependents and the halls of your beloveds. from the solar plexus you know that all the world is yours, and all is goodly. this is the great center, where in the womb, your life first sparkled in individuality. this is the center that drew the gestating maternal blood-stream upon you, in the nine-months lurking, drew it on you for your increase. this is the center whence the navel-string broke, but where the invisible string of dynamic consciousness, like a dark electric current connecting you with the rest of life, will never break until you die and depart from corporate individuality. they say, by the way, that doctors now perform a little operation on the born baby, so that no more navel shows. no more belly-buttons, dear reader! lucky i caught you this generation, before the doctors had saved your appearances. yet, _caro mio_, whether it shows or not, there you once had immediate connection with the maternal blood-stream. and, because the male nucleus which derived from the father still lies sparkling and potent within the solar plexus, therefore that great nerve-center of you, still has immediate knowledge of your father, a subtler but still vital connection. we call it the tie of blood. so be it. it is a tie of blood. but much more definite than we imagine. for true it is that the one bright male germ which went to your begetting was drawn from the blood of the father. and true it is that that same bright male germ lies unquenched and unquenchable at the center of you, within the famous solar plexus. and furthermore true is it that this unquenched father-spark within you sends forth vibrations and dark currents of vital activity all the time; connecting direct with your father. you will never be able to get away from it while you live. the connection with the mother may be more obvious. is there not your ostensible navel, where the rupture between you and her took place? but because the mother-child relation is more plausible and flagrant, is that any reason for supposing it deeper, more vital, more intrinsic? not a bit. because if the large parent mother-germ still lives and acts vividly and mysteriously in the great fused nucleus of your solar plexus, does the smaller, brilliant male-spark that derived from your father act any less vividly? by no means. it is different--it is less ostensible. it may be even in magnitude smaller. but it may be even more vivid, even more intrinsic. so beware how you deny the father-quick of yourself. you may be denying the most intrinsic quick of all. in the same way it follows that, since brothers and sisters have the same father and mother, therefore in every brother and sister there is a direct communication such as can never happen between strangers. the parent nuclei do not die within the new nucleus. they remain there, marvelous naked sparkling dynamic life-centers, nodes, well-heads of vivid life itself. therefore in every individual the parent nuclei live, and give direction connection, blood connection we call it, with the rest of the family. it _is_ blood connection. for the fecundating nuclei are the very spark-essence of the blood. and while life lives the parent nuclei maintain their own centrality and dynamic effectiveness within the solar plexus of the child. so that every individual has mother and father both sparkling within himself. but this is rather a preliminary truth than an intrinsic truth. the intrinsic truth of every individual is the new unit of unique individuality which emanates from the fusion of the parent nuclei. this is the incalculable and intangible holy ghost each time--each individual his own holy ghost. when, at the moment of conception, the two parent nuclei fuse to form a new unit of life, then takes place the great mystery of creation. a new individual appears--not the result of the fusion merely. something more. the quality of individuality cannot be derived. the new individual, in his singleness of self, is a perfectly new whole. he is not a permutation and combination of old elements, transferred through the parents. no, he is something underived and utterly unprecedented, unique, a new soul. this quality of pure individuality is, however, only the one supreme quality. it consummates all other qualities, but does not consume them. all the others are there, all the time. and only at his maximum does an individual surpass all his derivative elements, and become purely himself. and most people never get there. in his own pure individuality a man surpasses his father and mother, and is utterly unknown to them. "woman, what have i to do with thee?" but this does not alter the fact that within him lives the mother-quick and the father-quick, and that though in his wholeness he is rapt away beyond the old mother-father connections, they are still there within him, consummated but not consumed. nor does it alter the fact that very few people surpass their parents nowadays, and attain any individuality beyond them. most men are half-born slaves: the little soul they are born with just atrophies, and merely the organism emanates, the new self, the new soul, the new swells into manhood, like big potatoes. so there we are. but considering man at his best, he is at the start faced with the great problem. at the very start he has to undertake his tripartite being, the mother within him, the father within him, and the holy ghost, the self which he is supposed to consummate, and which mostly he doesn't. and there it is, a hard physiological fact. at the moment of our conception, the father nucleus fuses with the mother nucleus, and the wonder emanates, the new self, the new soul, the new individual cell. but in the new individual cell the father-germ and the mother-germ do not relinquish their identity. there they remain still, incorporated and never extinguished. and so, the blood-stream of race is one stream, for ever. but the moment the mystery of pure individual newness ceased to be enacted and fulfilled, the blood-stream would dry up and be finished. mankind would die out. let us go back then to the solar plexus. there sparkle the included mother-germ and father-germ, giving us direct, immediate blood-bonds, family connection. the connection is as direct and as subtle as between the marconi stations, two great wireless stations. a family, if you like, is a group of wireless stations, all adjusted to the same, or very much the same vibration. all the time they quiver with the interchange, there is one long endless flow of vitalistic communication between members of one family, a long, strange _rapport_, a sort of life-unison. it is a ripple of life through many bodies as through one body. but all the time there is the jolt, the rupture of individualism, the individual asserting himself beyond all ties or claims. the highest goal for every man is the goal of pure individual being. but it is a goal you cannot reach by the mere rupture of all ties. a child isn't born by being torn from the womb. when it is born by natural process that is rupture enough. but even then the ties are not broken. they are only subtilized. from the solar plexus first of all pass the great vitalistic communications between child and parents, the first interplay of primal, pre-mental knowledge and sympathy. it is a great subtle interplay, and from this interplay the child is built up, body and psyche. impelled from the primal conscious center in the abdomen, the child seeks the mother, seeks the breast, opens a blind mouth and gropes for the nipple. not mentally directed and yet certainly directed. directed from the dark pre-mind center of the solar plexus. from this center the child seeks, the mother knows. hence the true mindlessness of the pristine, healthy mother. she does not need to think, mentally to know. she knows so profoundly and actively at the great abdominal life-center. but if the child thus seeks the mother, does it then know the mother alone? to an infant the mother is the whole universe. yet the child needs more than the mother. it needs as well the presence of men, the vibration from the present body of the man. there may not be any actual, palpable connection. but from the great voluntary center in the man pass unknowable communications and unreliable nourishment of the stream of manly blood, rays which we cannot see, and which so far we have refused to know, but none the less essential, quickening dark rays which pass from the great dark abdominal life-center in the father to the corresponding center in the child. and these rays, these vibrations, are not like the mother-vibrations. far, far from it. they do not need the actual contact, the handling and the caressing. on the contrary, the true male instinct is to avoid physical contact with a baby. it may not need even actual presence. but present or absent, there should be between the baby and the father that strange, intangible communication, that strange pull and circuit such as the magnetic pole exercises upon a needle, a vitalistic pull and flow which lays all the life-plasm of the baby into the line of vital quickening, strength, knowing. and any lack of this vital circuit, this vital interchange between father and child, man and child, means an inevitable impoverishment to the infant. the child exists in the interplay of two great life-waves, the womanly and the male. in appearance, the mother is everything. in truth, the father has actively very little part. it does not matter much if he hardly sees his child. yet see it he should, sometimes, and touch it sometimes, and renew with it the connection, the life-circuit, not allow it to lapse, and so vitally starve his child. but remember, dear reader, please, that there is not the slightest need for you to believe me, or even read me. remember, it's just your own affair. don't implicate me. chapter iii plexuses, planes and so on the primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do with cognition. it is the same as in the animals. and this pre-mental consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of our consciousness. the mind is but the last flower, the _cul de sac_. the first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the great nerve-center situated behind the stomach. from this center we are first dynamically conscious. for the primal consciousness is always dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. thought, let us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only, the soul's finest instrument for the business of living. thought is just a means to action and living. but life and action take rise actually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness. the solar plexus, the greatest and most important center of our dynamic consciousness, is a sympathetic center. at this main center of your first-mind we know as we can never mentally know. primarily we know, each man, each living creature knows, profoundly and satisfactorily and without question, that _i am i._ this root of all knowledge and being is established in the solar plexus; it is dynamic, pre-mental knowledge, such as cannot be transferred into thought. do not ask me to transfer the pre-mental dynamic knowledge into thought. it cannot be done. the knowledge that _i am i_ can never be thought: only known. this being the very first term of our life-knowledge, a knowledge established physically and psychically the moment the two parent nuclei fused, at the moment of the conception, it remains integral as a piece of knowledge in every subsequent nucleus derived from this one original. but yet the original nucleus, formed from the two parent nuclei at our conception, remains always primal and central, and is always the original fount and home of the first and supreme knowledge that _i am i._ this original nucleus is embodied in the solar plexus. but the original nucleus divides. the first division, as science knows, is a division of recoil. from the perfect oneing of the two parent nuclei in the egg-cell results a recoil or new assertion. that which was perfect _one_ now divides again, and in the recoil becomes again two. this second nucleus, the nucleus born of recoil, is the nuclear origin of all the great nuclei of the voluntary system, which are the nuclei of assertive individualism. and it remains central in the adult human body as it was in the egg-cell. in the adult human body the first nucleus of independence, first-born from the great original nucleus of our conception, lies always established in the lumbar ganglion. here we have our positive center of independence, in a multifarious universe. at the solar plexus, the dynamic knowledge is this, that _i am i._ the solar plexus is the center of all the sympathetic system. the great prime knowledge is sympathetic in nature. i am i, in vital centrality. i am i, the vital center of all things. i am i, the clew to the whole. all is one with me. it is the one identity. but at the lumbar ganglion, which is the center of separate identity, the knowledge is of a different mode, though the term is the same. at the lumbar ganglion i know that i am i, in distinction from a whole universe, which is not as i am. this is the first tremendous flash of knowledge of singleness and separate identity. i am i, not because i am at one with all the universe, but because i am other than all the universe. it is my distinction from all the rest of things which makes me myself. because i am set utterly apart and distinguished from all that is the rest of the universe, therefore _i am i._ and this root of our knowledge in separateness lies rooted all the time in the lumbar ganglion. it is the second term of our dynamic psychic existence. it is from the great sympathetic center of the solar plexus that the child rejoices in the mother and in its own blissful centrality, its unison with the as yet unknown universe. look at the pictures of madonna and child, and you will even _see_ it. it is from this center that it draws all things unto itself, winningly, drawing love for the soul, and actively drawing in milk. the same center controls the great intake of love and of milk, of psychic and of physical nourishment. and it is from the great voluntary center of the lumbar ganglion that the child asserts its distinction from the mother, the single identity of its own existence, and its power over its surroundings. from this center issues the violent little pride and lustiness which kicks with glee, or crows with tiny exultance in its own being, or which claws the breast with a savage little rapacity, and an incipient masterfulness of which every mother is aware. this incipient mastery, this sheer joy of a young thing in its own single existence, the marvelous playfulness of early youth, and the roguish mockery of the mother's love, as well as the bursts of temper and rage, all belong to infancy. and all this flashes spontaneously, _must_ flash spontaneously from the first great center of independence, the powerful lumbar ganglion, great dynamic center of all the voluntary system, of all the spirit of pride and joy in independent existence. and it is from this center too that the milk is urged away down the infant bowels, urged away towards excretion. the motion is the same, but here it applies to the material, not to the vital relation. it is from the lumbar ganglion that the dynamic vibrations are emitted which thrill from the stomach and bowels, and promote the excremental function of digestion. it is the solar plexus which controls the assimilatory function in digestion. so, in the first division of the egg-cell is set up the first plane of psychic and physical life, remaining radically the same throughout the whole existence of the individual. the two original nuclei of the egg-cell remain the same two original nuclei within the corpus of the adult individual. their psychic and their physical dynamic is the same in the solar plexus and lumbar ganglion as in the two nuclei of the egg-cell. the first great division in the egg remains always the same, the unchanging great division in the psychic and the physical structure; the unchanging great division in knowledge and function. it is a division into polarized duality, psychical and physical, of the human being. it is the great vertical division of the egg-cell, and of the nature of man. then, this division having taken place, there is a new thrill of conjunction or collision between the divided nuclei, and at once the second birth takes place. the two nuclei now split horizontally. there is a horizontal division across the whole egg-cell, and the nuclei are now four, two above, and two below. but those below retain their original nature, those above are new in nature. and those above correspond again to those below. in the developed child, the great horizontal division of the egg-cell, resulting in four nuclei, this remains the same. the horizontal division-wall is the diaphragm. the two upper nuclei are the two great nerve-centers, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic ganglion. we have again a sympathetic center primal in activity and knowledge, and a corresponding voluntary center. in the center of the breast, the cardiac plexus acts as the great sympathetic mode of new dynamic activity, new dynamic consciousness. and near the spine, by the wall of the shoulders, the thoracic ganglion acts as the powerful voluntary center of separateness and power, in the same vertical line as the lumbar ganglion, but horizontally so different. now we must change our whole feeling. we must put off the deep way of understanding which belongs to the lower body of our nature, and transfer ourselves into the upper plane, where being and functioning are different. at the cardiac plexus, there in the center of the breast, we have now a new great sun of knowledge and being. here there is no more of self. here there is no longer the dark, exultant knowledge that _i am i._ a change has come. here i know no more of myself. here i am not. here i only know the delightful revelation that you are you. the wonder is no longer within me, my own dark, centrifugal, exultant self. the wonder is without me. the wonder is outside me. and i can no longer exult and know myself the dark, central sun of the universe. now i look with wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is outside me, beyond me, not me. behold, that which was once negative has now become the only positive. the other being is now the great positive reality, i myself am as nothing. positivity has changed places. if we want to see the portrayed look, then we must turn to the north, to the fair, wondering, blue-eyed infants of the northern masters. they seem so frail, so innocent and wondering, touching outwards to the mystery. they are not the same as the southern child, nor the opposite. their whole life mystery is different. instead of consummating all things within themselves, as the dark little southern infants do, the northern jesus-children reach out delicate little hands of wondering innocence towards delicate, flower-reverential mothers. compare a botticelli madonna, with all her wounded and abnegating sensuality, with a hans memling madonna, whose soul is pure and only reverential. beyond me is the mystery and the glory, says the northern mother: let me have no self, let me only seek that which is all-pure, all-wonderful. but the southern mother says: this is mine, this is mine, this is my child, my wonder, my master, my lord, my scourge, my own. from the cardiac plexus the child goes forth in bliss. it seeks the revelation of the unknown. it wonderingly seeks the mother. it opens its small hands and spreads its small fingers to touch her. and bliss, bliss, bliss, it meets the wonder in mid-air and in mid-space it finds the loveliness of the mother's face. it opens and shuts its little fingers with bliss, it laughs the wonderful, selfless laugh of pure baby-bliss, in the first ecstasy of finding all its treasure, groping upon it and finding it in the dark. it opens wide, child-wide eyes to see, to see. but it cannot see. it is puzzled, it wrinkles its face. but when the mother puts her face quite near, and laughs and coos, then the baby trembles with an ecstasy of love. the glamour, the wonder, the treasure beyond. the great uplift of rapture. all this surges from that first center of the breast, the sun of the breast, the cardiac plexus. and from the same center acts the great function of the heart and breath. ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a yearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. when we breathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food. when we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven of air and light. and when the heart dilates to draw in the stream of dark blood, it opens its arms as to a beloved. it dilates with reverent joy, as a host opening his doors to an honored guest, whom he delights to serve: opening his doors to the wonder which comes to him from beyond, and without which he were nothing. so it is that our heart dilates, our lungs expand. they are bidden by that great and mysterious impulse from the cardiac plexus, which bids them seek the mystery and the fulfillment of the beyond. they seek the beyond, the air of the sky, the hot blood from the dark under-world. and so we live. and then, they relax, they contract. they are driven by the opposite motion from the powerful voluntary center of the thoracic ganglion.. that which was drawn in, was invited, is now relinquished, allowed to go forth, negatively. not positively dismissed, but relinquished. there is a wonderful complementary duality between the voluntary and the sympathetic activity on the same plane. but between the two planes, upper and lower, there is a further dualism, still more startling, perhaps. between the dark, glowing first term of knowledge at the solar plexus: _i am i, all is one in me_; and the first term of volitional knowledge: _i am myself, and these others are not as i am_;--there is a world of difference. but when the world changes again, and on the upper plane we realize the wonder of other things, the difference is almost shattering. the thoracic ganglion is a ganglion of power. when the child in its delicate bliss seeks the mother and finds her and is added on to her, then it fulfills itself in the great upper sympathetic mode. but then it relinquishes her. it ceases to be aware of her. and if she tries to force its love to play upon her again, like light revealing her to herself, then the child turns away. or it will lie, and look at her with the strange, odd, curious look of knowledge, like a little imp who is spying her out. this is the curious look that many mothers cannot bear. involuntarily it arouses a sort of hate in them--the look of scrutinizing curiosity, apart, and as it were studying, balancing them up. yet it is a look which comes into every child's eyes. it is the reaction of the great voluntary plexus between the shoulders. the mother is suddenly set apart, as an object of curiosity, coldly, sometimes dreamily, sometimes puzzled, sometimes mockingly observed. again, if a mother neglect her child, it cries, it weeps for her love and attention. its pitiful lament is one of the forms of compulsion from the upper center. this insistence on pity, on love, is quite different from the rageous weeping, which is compulsion from the lower center, below the diaphragm. again, some children just drop everything they can lay hands on over the edge of their crib, or their table. they drop everything out of sight. and then they look up with a curious look of negative triumph. this is again a form of recoil from the upper center, the obliteration of the thing which is outside. and here a child is acting quite differently from the child who joyously _smashes_. the desire to smash comes from the lower centers. we can quite well recognize the will exerted from the lower center. we call it headstrong temper and masterfulness. but the peculiar will of the upper center--the sort of nervous, critical objectivity, the deliberate forcing of sympathy, the play upon pity and tenderness, the plaintive bullying of love, or the benevolent bullying of love--these we don't care to recognize. they are the extravagance of spiritual _will_. but in its true harmony the thoracic ganglion is a center of happier activity: of real, eager curiosity, of the delightful desire to pick things to pieces, and the desire to put them together again, the desire to "find out," and the desire to invent: all this arises on the upper plane, at the volitional center of the thoracic ganglion. chapter iv trees and babies and papas and mamas oh, damn the miserable baby with its complicated ping-pong table of an unconscious. i'm sure, dear reader, you'd rather have to listen to the brat howling in its crib than to me expounding its plexuses. as for "mixing those babies up," i'd mix him up like a shot if i'd anything to mix him with. unfortunately he's my own anatomical specimen of a pickled rabbit, so there's nothing to be done with the bits. but he gets on my nerves. i come out solemnly with a pencil and an exercise book, and take my seat in all gravity at the foot of a large fir-tree, and wait for thoughts to come, gnawing like a squirrel on a nut. but the nut's hollow. i think there are too many trees. they seem to crowd round and stare at me, and i feel as if they nudged one another when i'm not looking. i can _feel_ them standing there. and they won't let me get on about the baby this morning. just their cussedness. i felt they encouraged me like a harem of wonderful silent wives, yesterday. it is half rainy too--the wood so damp and still and so secret, in the remote morning air. morning, with rain in the sky, and the forest subtly brooding, and me feeling no bigger than a pea-bug between the roots of my fir. the trees seem so much bigger than me, so much stronger in life, prowling silent around. i seem to feel them moving and thinking and prowling, and they overwhelm me. ah, well, the only thing is to give way to them. it is the edge of the black forest--sometimes the rhine far off, on its rhine plain, like a bit of magnesium ribbon. but not to-day. to-day only trees, and leaves, and vegetable presences. huge straight fir-trees, and big beech-trees sending rivers of roots into the ground. and cuckoos, like noise falling in drops off the leaves. and me, a fool, sitting by a grassy wood-road with a pencil and a book, hoping to write more about that baby. never mind. i listen again for noises, and i smell the damp moss. the looming trees, so straight. and i listen for their silence. big, tall-bodied trees, with a certain magnificent cruelty about them. or barbarity. i don't know why i should say cruelty. their magnificent, strong, round bodies! it almost seems i can hear the slow, powerful sap drumming in their trunks. great full-blooded trees, with strange tree-blood in them, soundlessly drumming. trees that have no hands and faces, no eyes. yet the powerful sap-scented blood roaring up the great columns. a vast individual life, and an overshadowing will. the will of a tree. something that frightens you. suppose you want to look a tree in the face? you can't. it hasn't got a face. you look at the strong body of a trunk: you look above you into the matted body-hair of twigs and boughs: you see the soft green tips. but there are no eyes to look into, you can't meet its gaze. you keep on looking at it in part and parcel. it's no good looking at a tree, to know it. the only thing is to sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk, and not bother. that's how i write all about these planes and plexuses, between the toes of a tree, forgetting myself against the great ankle of the trunk. and then, as a rule, as a squirrel is stroked into its wickedness by the faceless magic of a tree, so am i usually stroked into forgetfulness, and into scribbling this book. my tree-book, really. i come so well to understand tree-worship. all the old aryans worshiped the tree. my ancestors. the tree of life. the tree of knowledge. well, one is bound to sprout out some time or other, chip of the old aryan block. i can so well understand tree-worship. and fear the deepest motive. naturally. this marvelous vast individual without a face, without lips or eyes or heart. this towering creature that never had a face. here am i between his toes like a pea-bug, and him noiselessly over-reaching me. and i feel his great blood-jet surging. and he has no eyes. but he turns two ways. he thrusts himself tremendously down to the middle earth, where dead men sink in darkness, in the damp, dense under-soil, and he turns himself about in high air. whereas we have eyes on one side of our head only, and only grow upwards. plunging himself down into the black humus, with a root's gushing zest, where we can only rot dead; and his tips in high air, where we can only look up to. so vast and powerful and exultant in his two directions. and all the time, he has no face, no thought: only a huge, savage, thoughtless soul. where does he even keep his soul?--where does anybody? a huge, plunging, tremendous soul. i would like to be a tree for a while. the great lust of roots. root-lust. and no mind at all. he towers, and i sit and feel safe. i like to feel him towering round me. i used to be afraid. i used to fear their lust, their rushing black lust. but now i like it, i worship it. i always felt them huge primeval enemies. but now they are my only shelter and strength. i lose myself among the trees. i am so glad to be with them in their silent, intent passion, and their great lust. they feed my soul. but i can understand that jesus was crucified on a tree. and i can so well understand the romans, their terror of the bristling hercynian wood. yet when you look from a height down upon the rolling of the forest--this black forest--it is as suave as a rolling, oily sea. inside only, it bristles horrific. and it terrified the romans. the romans! they too seem very near. nearer than hindenburg or foch or even napoleon. when i look across the rhine plain, it is rome, and the legionaries of the rhine that my soul notices. it must have been wonderful to come from south italy to the shores of this sea-like forest: this dark, moist forest, with its enormously powerful intensity of tree life. now i know, coming myself from rock-dry sicily, open to the day. the romans and the greeks found everything human. everything had a face, and a human voice. men spoke, and their fountains piped an answer. but when the legions crossed the rhine they found a vast impenetrable life which had no voice. they met the faceless silence of the black forest. this huge, huge wood did not answer when they called. its silence was too crude and massive. and the soldiers shrank: shrank before the trees that had no faces, and no answer. a vast array of non-human life, darkly self-sufficient, and bristling with indomitable energy. the hercynian wood, not to be fathomed. the enormous power of these collective trees, stronger in their somber life even than rome. no wonder the soldiers were terrified. no wonder they thrilled with horror when, deep in the woods, they found the skulls and trophies of their dead comrades upon the trees. the trees had devoured them: silently, in mouthfuls, and left the white bones. bones of the mindful romans--and savage, preconscious trees, indomitable. the true german has something of the sap of trees in his veins even now: and a sort of pristine savageness, like trees, helpless, but most powerful, under all his mentality. he is a tree-soul, and his gods are not human. his instinct still is to nail skulls and trophies to the sacred tree, deep in the forest. the tree of life and death, tree of good and evil, tree of abstraction and of immense, mindless life; tree of everything except the spirit, spirituality. but after bone-dry sicily, and after the gibbering of myriad people all rattling their personalities, i am glad to be with the profound indifference of faceless trees. their rudimentariness cannot know why we care for the things we care for. they have no faces, no minds and bowels: only deep, lustful roots stretching in earth, and vast, lissome life in air, and primeval individuality. you can sacrifice the whole of your spirituality on their altar still. you can nail your skull on their limbs. they have no skulls, no minds nor faces, they can't make eyes of love at you. their vast life dispenses with all this. but they will live you down. the normal life of one of these big trees is about a hundred years. so the herr baron told me. one of the few places that my soul will haunt, when i am dead, will be this. among the trees here near ebersteinburg, where i have been alone and written this book. i can't leave these trees. they have taken some of my soul. * * * * * excuse my digression, gentle reader. at first i left it out, thinking we might not see wood for trees. but it doesn't much matter what we see. it's nice just to look round, anywhere. so there are two planes of being and consciousness and two modes of relation and of function. we will call the lower plane the sensual, the upper the spiritual. the terms may be unwise, but we can think of no other. please read that again, dear reader; you'll be a bit dazzled, coming out of the wood. it is obvious that from the time a child is born, or conceived, it has a permanent relation with the outer universe, relation in the two modes, not one mode only. there are two ways of love, two ways of activity and independence. and there needs some sort of equilibrium between the two modes. in the same way, in physical function there is eating and drinking, and excrementation, on the lower plane and respiration and heartbeat on the upper plane. now the equilibrium to be established is fourfold. there must be a true equilibrium between what we eat and what we reject again by excretion: likewise between the systole and diastole of the heart, the inspiration and expiration of our breathing. suffice to say the equilibrium is never quite perfect. most people are either too fat or too thin, too hot or too cold, too slow or too quick. there is no such thing as an _actual_ norm, a living norm. a norm is merely an abstraction, not a reality. the same on the psychical plane. we either love too much, or impose our will too much, are too spiritual or too sensual. there is not and cannot be any actual norm of human conduct. all depends, first, on the unknown inward need within the very nuclear centers of the individual himself, and secondly on his circumstance. some men _must_ be too spiritual, some _must_ be too sensual. some _must_ be too sympathetic, and some _must_ be too proud. we have no desire to say what men _ought_ to be. we only wish to say there are all kinds of ways of being, and there is no such thing as human perfection. no man can be anything more than just himself, in genuine living relation to all his surroundings. but that which _i_ am, when i am myself, will certainly be anathema to those who hate individual integrity, and want to swarm. and that which i, being myself, am in myself, may make the hair bristle with rage on a man who is also himself, but very different from me. then let it bristle. and if mine bristle back again, then let us, if we must, fly at one another like two enraged men. it is how it should be. we've got to learn to live from the center of our own responsibility only, and let other people do the same. to return to the child, however, and his development on his two planes of consciousness. there is all the time a direct dynamic connection between child and mother, child and father also, from the start. it is a connection on two planes, the upper and lower. from the lower sympathetic center the profound intake of love or vibration from the living co-respondent outside. from the upper sympathetic center the outgoing of devotion and the passionate vibration of _given_ love, given attention. the two sympathetic centers are always, or should always be, counterbalanced by their corresponding voluntary centers. from the great voluntary ganglion of the lower plane, the child is self-willed, independent, and masterful. in the activity of this center a boy refuses to be kissed and pawed about, maintaining his proud independence like a little wild animal. from this center he likes to command and to receive obedience. from this center likewise he may be destructive and defiant and reckless, determined to have his own way at any cost. from this center, too, he learns to use his legs. the motion of walking, like the motion of breathing, is twofold. first, a sympathetic cleaving to the earth with the foot: then the voluntary rejection, the spurning, the kicking away, the exultance in power and freedom. from the upper voluntary center the child watches persistently, wilfully, for the attention of the mother: to be taken notice of, to be caressed, in short to exist in and through the mother's attention. from this center, too, he coldly refuses to notice the mother, when she insists on too much attention. this cold refusal is different from the active rejection of the lower center. it is passive, but cold and negative. it is the great force of our day. from the ganglion of the shoulders, also, the child breathes and his heart beats. from the same center he learns the first use of his arms. in the gesture of sympathy, from the upper plane, he embraces his mother with his arms. in the motion of curiosity, or interest, which derives from the thoracic ganglion, he spreads his fingers, touches, feels, explores. in the motion of rejection he drops an undesired object deliberately out of sight. and then, when the four centers of what we call the first _field_ of consciousness are fully active, then it is that the eyes begin to gather their sight, the mouth to speak, the ears to awake to their intelligent hearings; all as a result of the great fourfold activity of the first dynamic field of consciousness. and then also, as a result, the mind wakens to its impressions and to its incipient control. for at first the control is non-mental, even non-cerebral. the brain acts only as a sort of switchboard. the business of the father, in all this incipient child-development, is to stand outside as a final authority and make the necessary adjustments. where there is too much sympathy, then the great voluntary centers of the spine are weak, the child tends to be delicate. then the father by instinct supplies the roughness, the sternness which stiffens in the child the centers of resistance and independence, right from the very earliest days. often, for a mere infant, it is the father's fierce or stern presence, the vibration of his voice, which starts the frictional and independent activity of the great voluntary ganglion and gives the first impulse to the independence which later on is life itself. but on the other hand, the father, from his distance, supports, protects, nourishes his child, and it is ultimately on the remote but powerful father-love that the infant rests, in a rest which is beyond mother-love. for in the male the dominant centers are naturally the volitional centers, centers of responsibility, authority, and care. it is the father's business, again, to maintain some sort of equilibrium between the two modes of love in his infant. a mother may wish to bring up her child from the lovely upper centers only, from the centers of the breast, in the mode of what we call pure or spiritual love. then the child will be all gentle, all tender and tender-radiant, always enfolded with gentleness and forbearance, always shielded from grossness or pain or roughness. now the father's instinct is to be rough and crude, good-naturedly brutal with the child, calling the deeper centers, the sensual centers, into play. "what do you want? my watch? well, you can't have it, do you see, because it's mine." not a lot of explanations of the "you see, darling." no such nonsense.--or if a child wails unnecessarily for its mother, the father must be the check. "stop your noise, you little brat! what ails you, you whiner?" and if children be too sensitive, too sympathetic, then it will do the child no harm if the father occasionally throws the cat out of the window, or kicks the dog, or raises a storm in the house. storms there must be. and if the child is old enough and robust enough, it can occasionally have its bottom soundly spanked--by the father, if the mother refuses to perform that most necessary duty. for a child's bottom is made occasionally to be spanked. the vibration of the spanking acts direct upon the spinal nerve-system, there is a direct reciprocity and reaction, the spanker transfers his wrath to the great will-centers in the child, and these will-centers react intensely, are vivified and educated. on the other hand, given a mother who is too generally hard or indifferent, then it rests with the father to provide the delicate sympathy and the refined discipline. then the father must show the tender sensitiveness of the upper mode. the sad thing to-day is that so few mothers have any deep bowels of love--or even the breast of love. what they have is the benevolent spiritual will, the will of the upper self. but the will is not love. and benevolence in a parent is a poison. it is bullying. in these circumstances the father must give delicate adjustment, and, above all, some warm, native love from the richer sensual self. the question of corporal punishment is important. it is no use roughly smacking a shrinking, sensitive child. and yet, if a child is too shrinking, too sensitive, it may do it a world of good cheerfully to spank its posterior. not brutally, not cruelly, but with real sound, good-natured exasperation. and let the adult take the full responsibility, half humorously, without apology or explanation. let us avoid self-justification at all costs. real corporal punishments apply to the sensual plane. the refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack. the pained but resigned disapprobation of a mother is usually a very bad thing, much worse than the father's shouts of rage. and sendings to bed, and no dessert for a week, and so on, are crueller and meaner than a bang on the head. when a parent gives his boy a beating, there is a living passionate interchange. but in these refined punishments, the parent suffers nothing and the child is deadened. the bullying of the refined, benevolent spiritual will is simply vitriol to the soul. yet parents administer it with all the righteousness of virtue and good intention, sparing themselves perfectly. the point is here. if a child makes you so that you really want to spank it soundly, then soundly spank the brat. but know all the time _what_ you are doing, and always be responsible for your anger. never be ashamed of it, and never surpass it. the flashing interchange of anger between parent and child is part of the responsible relationship, necessary to growth. again, if a child offends you deeply, so that you really can't communicate with it any more, then, while the hurt is deep, switch off your connection from the child, cut off your correspondence, your vital communion, and be alone. but never persist in such a state beyond the time when your deep hurt dies down. the only rule is, do what you _really_, impulsively, wish to do. but always act on your own responsibility sincerely. and have the courage of your own strong emotion. they enrichen the child's soul. for a child's primary education depends almost entirely on its relation to its parents, brothers, and sisters. between mother and child, father and child, the law is this: i, the mother, am myself alone: the child is itself alone. but there exists between us a vital dynamic relation, for which i, being the conscious one, am basically responsible. so, as far as possible, there must be in me no departure from myself, lest i injure the preconscious dynamic relation. i must absolutely act according to my own true spontaneous feeling. but, moreover, i must also have wisdom for myself and for my child. always, always the deep wisdom of responsibility. and always a brave responsibility for the soul's own spontaneity. love--what is love? we'd better get a new idea. love is, in all, generous impulse--even a good spanking. but wisdom is something else, a deep collectedness in the soul, a deep abiding by my own integral being, which makes me responsible, not for the child, but for my certain duties towards the child, and for maintaining the dynamic flow between the child and myself as genuine as possible: that is to say, not perverted by ideals or by my _will_. most fatal, most hateful of all things is bullying. but what is bullying? it is a desire to superimpose my own will upon another person. sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. what is more dangerous is ideal bullying. bullying people into what is ideally good for them. i embrace for example an ideal, and i seek to enact this ideal in the person of another. this is ideal bullying. a mother says that life should be all love, all delicacy and forbearance and gentleness. and she proceeds to spin a hateful sticky web of permanent forbearance, gentleness, hushedness around her naturally passionate and hasty child. this so foils the child as to make him half imbecile or criminal. i may have ideals if i like--even of love and forbearance and meekness. but i have no right to ask another to have these ideals. and to impose _any ideals_ upon a child as it grows is almost criminal. it results in impoverishment and distortion and subsequent deficiency. in our day, most dangerous is the love and benevolence ideal. it results in neurasthenia, which is largely a dislocation or collapse of the great voluntary centers, a derangement of the will. it is in us an insistence upon the one life-mode only, the spiritual mode. it is a suppression of the great lower centers, and a living a sort of half-life, almost entirely from the upper centers. thence, since we live terribly and exhaustively from the upper centers, there is a tendency now towards pthisis and neurasthenia of the heart. the great sympathetic center of the breast becomes exhausted, the lungs, burnt by the over-insistence of one way of life, become diseased, the heart, strained in one mode of dilation, retaliates. the powerful lower centers are no longer fully active, particularly the great lumbar ganglion, which is the clue to our sensual passionate pride and independence, this ganglion is atrophied by suppression. and it is this ganglion which holds the spine erect. so, weak-chested, round-shouldered, we stoop hollowly forward on ourselves. it is the result of the all-famous love and charity ideal, an ideal now quite dead in its sympathetic activity, but still fixed and determined in its voluntary action. let us beware and beware, and beware of having a high ideal for ourselves. but particularly let us beware of having an ideal for our children. so doing, we damn them. all we can have is wisdom. and wisdom is not a theory, it is a state of soul. it is the state wherein we know our wholeness and the complicate, manifold nature of our being. it is the state wherein we know the great relations which exist between us and our near ones. and it is the state which accepts full responsibility, first for our own souls, and then for the living dynamic relations wherein we have our being. it is no use expecting the other person to know. each must know for himself. but nowadays men have even a stunt of pretending that children and idiots alone know best. this is a pretty piece of sophistry, and criminal cowardice, trying to dodge the life-responsibility which no man or woman can dodge without disaster. the only thing is to be direct. if a child has to swallow castor-oil, then say: "child, you've got to swallow this castor-oil. it is necessary for your inside. i say so because it is true. so open your mouth." why try coaxing and logic and tricks with children? children are more sagacious than we are. they twig soon enough if there is a flaw in our own intention and our own true spontaneity. and they play up to our bit of falsity till there is hell to pay. "you love mother, don't you, dear?"--just a piece of indecent trickery of the spiritual will. the great emotions like love are unspoken. speaking them is a sign of an indecent bullying will. "poor pussy! you must love poor pussy!" what cant! what sickening cant! an appeal to love based on false pity. that's the way to inculcate a filthy pharisaic conceit into a child.--if the child ill-treats the cat, say: "stop mauling that cat. it's got its own life to live, so let it live it." then if the brat persists, give tit for tat. "what, you pull the cat's tail! then i'll pull your nose, to see how you like it." and give his nose a proper hard pinch. children _must_ pull the cat's tail a little. children _must_ steal the sugar sometimes. they _must_ occasionally spoil just the things one doesn't want them to spoil. and they _must_ occasionally tell stories--tell a lie. circumstances and life are such that we must all sometimes tell a lie: just as we wear trousers, because we don't choose that everybody shall see our nakedness. morality is a delicate act of adjustment on the soul's part, not a rule or a prescription. beyond a certain point the child _shall_ not pull the cat's tail, _or_ steal the sugar, _or_ spoil the furniture, _or_ tell lies. but i'm afraid you can't fix this certain soul's humor. and so it must. if at a sudden point you fly into a temper and thoroughly beat the boy for hardly touching the cat--well, that's life. all you've got to say to him is: "there, that'll serve you for all the times you _have_ pulled her tail and hurt her." and he will feel outraged, and so will you. but what does it matter? children have an infinite understanding of the soul's passionate variabilities, and forgive even a real injustice, if it was _spontaneous_ and not intentional. they know we aren't perfect. what they don't forgive us is if we pretend we are: or if we _bully_. chapter v the five senses science is wretched in its treatment of the human body as a sort of complex mechanism made up of numerous little machines working automatically in a rather unsatisfactory relation to one another. the body is the total machine; the various organs are the included machines; and the whole thing, given a start at birth, or at conception, trundles on by itself. the only god in the machine, the human will or intelligence, is absolutely at the mercy of the machine. such is the orthodox view. soul, when it is allowed an existence at all, sits somewhat vaguely within the machine, never defined. if anything goes wrong with the machine, why, the soul is forgotten instantly. we summon the arch-mechanic of our day, the medicine-man. and a marvelous earnest fraud he is, doing his best. he is really wonderful as a mechanic of the human system. but the life within us fails more and more, while we marvelously tinker at the engines. doctors are not to blame. it is obvious that, even considering the human body as a very delicate and complex machine, you cannot keep such a machine running for one day without most exact central control. still more is it impossible to consider the automatic evolution of such a machine. when did any machine, even a single spinning-wheel, automatically evolve itself? there was a god in the machine before the machine existed. so there we are with the human body. there must have been, and must be a central god in the machine of each animate corpus. the little soul of the beetle makes the beetle toddle. the little soul of the _homo sapiens_ sets him on his two feet. don't ask me to define the soul. you might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so whimsically and so god-like pedals her way along the highroad. a young lady skeltering off on her bicycle to meet her young man--why, what could the bicycle make of such a mystery, if you explained it till doomsday. yet the bicycle wouldn't be spinning from streatham to croydon by itself. so we may as well settle down to the little god in the machine. we may as well call it the individual soul, and leave it there. it's as far as the bicycle would ever get, if it had to define mademoiselle. but be sure the bicycle would not deny the existence of the young miss who seats herself in the saddle. not like us, who try to pretend there is no one in the saddle. why even the sun would no more spin without a rider than would a cycle-pedal. but, since we have innumerable planets to reckon with, in the spinning we must not begin to define the rider in terms of our own exclusive planet. nevertheless, rider there is: even a rider of the many-wheeled universe. but let us leave the universe alone. it is too big a bauble for me.--_revenons._--at the start of me there is me. there is a mysterious little entity which is my individual self, the god who builds the machine and then makes his gay excursion of seventy years within it. now we are talking at the moment about the machine. for the moment we are the bicycle, and not the feather-brained cyclist. so that all we can do is to define the cyclist in terms of ourself. a bicycle could say: here, upon my leather saddle, rests a strange and animated force, which i call the force of gravity, as being the one great force which controls my universe. and yet, on second thoughts, i must modify myself. this great force of gravity is not _always_ in the saddle. sometimes it just is not there--and i lean strangely against a wall. i have been even known to turn upside down, with my wheels in the air; spun by the same mysterious miss. so that i must introduce a theory of relativity. however, mostly, when i am awake and alive, she is in the saddle; or _it_ is in the saddle, the mysterious force. and when it is in the saddle, then two subsidiary forces plunge and claw upon my two pedals, plunge and claw with inestimable power. and at the same time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock, sways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. this force is not a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip my bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. then let me not forget the sudden clutch of arrest upon my hurrying wheels. oh, this is pain to me! while i am rushing forward, surpassing myself in an _élan vital_, suddenly the awful check grips my back wheel, or my front wheel, or both. suddenly there is a fearful arrest. my soul rushes on before my body, i feel myself strained, torn back. my fibers groan. then perhaps the tension relaxes. so the bicycle will continue to babble about itself. and it will inevitably wind up with a philosophy. "oh, if only the great and divine force rested for ever upon my saddle, and if only the mysterious will which sways my steering gear remained in place for ever: then my pedals would revolve of themselves, and never cease, and no hideous brake should tear the perpetuity of my motions. then, oh then i should be immortal. i should leap through the world for ever, and spin to infinity, till i was identified with the dizzy and timeless cycle-race of the stars and the great sun...." poor old bicycle. the very thought is enough to start a philanthropic society for the prevention of cruelty to bicycles. well, then, our human body is the bicycle. and our individual and incomprehensible self is the rider thereof. and seeing that the universe is another bicycle riding full tilt, we are bound to suppose a rider for that also. but we needn't say what sort of rider. when i see a cockroach scuttling across the floor and turning up its tail i stand affronted, and think: a rum sort of rider _you_ must have. you've no business to have such a rider, do you hear?--and when i hear the monotonous and plaintive cuckoo in the june woods, i think: who the devil made _that_ clock?--and when i see a politician making a fiery speech on a platform, and the crowd gawping, i think: lord, save me--they've all got riders. but holy moses! you could never guess what was coming.--and so i shouldn't like, myself, to start guessing about the rider of the universe. i am all too flummoxed by the masquerade in the tourney round about me. we ourselves then: wisdom, like charity, begins at home. we've each of us got a rider in the saddle: an individual soul. mostly it can't ride, and can't steer, so mankind is like squadrons of bicycles running amok. we should every one fall off if we didn't ride so thick that we hold each other up. horrid nightmare! as for myself, i have a horror of riding _en bloc_. so i grind away uphill, and sweat my guts out, as they say. well, well--my body is my bicycle: the whole middle of me is the saddle where sits the rider of my soul. and my front wheel is the cardiac plane, and my back wheel is the solar plexus. and the brakes are the voluntary ganglia. and the steering gear is my head. and the right and left pedals are the right and left dynamics of the body, in some way corresponding to the sympathetic and voluntary division. so that now i know more or less how my rider rides me, and from what centers controls me. that is, i know the points of vital contact between my rider and my machine: between my invisible and my visible self. i don't attempt to say what is my rider. a bicycle might as well try to define its young miss by wriggling its handle-bars and ringing its bell. however, having more or less determined the four primary motions, we can see the further unfolding. in a child, the solar plexus and the cardiac plexus, with corresponding voluntary ganglia, are awake and active. from these centers develop the great functions of the body. as we have seen, it is the solar plexus, with the lumbar ganglion, which controls the great dynamic system, the functioning of the liver and the kidneys. any excess in the sympathetic dynamism tends to accelerate the action of the liver, to cause fever and constipation. any collapse of the sympathetic dynamism causes anæmia. the sudden stimulating of the voluntary center may cause diarrhoea, and so on. but all this depends so completely on the polarized flow between the individual and the correspondent, between the child and mother, child and father, child and sisters or brothers or teacher, or circumambient universe, that it is impossible to lay down laws, unless we state particulars. nevertheless, the whole of the great organs of the lower body are controlled from the two lower centers, and these organs work well or ill according as there is a true dynamic _psychic_ activity at the two primary centers of consciousness. by a _true_ dynamic psychic activity we mean an activity which is true to the individual himself, to his own peculiar soul-nature. and a dynamic psychic activity means a dynamic polarity between the individual himself and other individuals concerned in his living; or between him and his immediate surroundings, human, physical, geographical. on the upper plane, the lungs and heart are controlled from the cardiac plane and the thoracic ganglion. any excess in the sympathetic mode from the upper centers tends to burn the lungs with oxygen, weaken them with stress, and cause consumption. so it is just criminal to make a child too loving. no child should be induced to love too much. it means derangement and death at last. but beyond the primary physiological function--and it is the business of doctors to discover the relation between the functioning of the primary organs and the dynamic psychic activity at the four primary consciousness-centers,--beyond these physical functions, there are the activities which are half-psychic, half-functional. such as the five senses. of the five senses, four have their functioning in the face-region. the fifth, the sense of touch, is distributed all over the body. but all have their roots in the four great primary centers of consciousness. from the constellation of your nerve-nodes, from the great field of your poles, the nerves run out in every direction, ending on the surface of the body. inwardly this is an inextricable ramification and communication. and yet the body is planned out in areas, there is a definite area-control from the four centers. on the back the sense of touch is not acute. there the voluntary centers act in resistance. but in the front of the body, the breast is one great field of sympathetic touch, the belly is another. on these two fields the stimulus of touch is quite different, has a quite different psychic quality and psychic result. the breast-touch is the fine alertness of quivering curiosity, the belly-touch is a deep thrill of delight and avidity. correspondingly, the hands and arms are instruments of superb delicate curiosity, and deliberate execution. through the elbows and the wrists flows the dynamic psychic current, and a dislocation in the current between two individuals will cause a feeling of dislocation at the wrists and elbows. on the lower plane, the legs and feet are instruments of unfathomable gratifications and repudiations. the thighs, the knees, the feet are intensely alive with love-desire, darkly and superbly drinking in the love-contact, blindly. or they are the great centers of resistance, kicking, repudiating. sudden flushing of great general sympathetic desire will make a man feel weak at the knees. hatred will harden the tension of the knees like steel, and grip the feet like talons. thus the fields of touch are four, two sympathetic fields in front of the body from the throat to the feet, two resistant fields behind from the neck to the heels. there are two fields of touch, however, where the distribution is not so simple: the face and the buttocks. neither in the face nor in the buttocks is there one single mode of sense communication. the face is of course the great window of the self, the great opening of the self upon the world, the great gateway. the lower body has its own gates of exit. but the bulk of our communication with all the outer universe goes on through the face. and every one of the windows or gates of the face has its direct communication with each of the four great centers of the first field of consciousness. take the mouth, with the sense of taste. the mouth is primarily the gate of the two chief sensual centers. it is the gateway to the belly and the loins. through the mouth we eat and we drink. in the mouth we have the sense of taste. at the lips, too, we kiss. and the kiss of the mouth is the first sensual connection. in the mouth also are the teeth. and the teeth are the instruments of our sensual will. the growth of the teeth is controlled entirely from the two great sensual centers below the diaphragm. but almost entirely from the one center, the voluntary center. the growth and the life of the teeth depend almost entirely on the lumbar ganglion. during the growth of the teeth the sympathetic mode is held in abeyance. there is a sort of arrest. there is pain, there is diarrhoea, there is misery for the baby. and we, in our age, have no rest with our teeth. our mouths are too small. for many ages we have been suppressing the avid, negroid, sensual will. we have been converting ourselves into ideal creatures, all spiritually conscious, and active dynamically only on one plane, the upper, spiritual plane. our mouth has contracted, our teeth have become soft and un-quickened. where in us are the sharp and vivid teeth of the wolf, keen to defend and devour? if we had them more, we should be happier. where are the white negroid teeth? where? in our little pinched mouths they have no room. we are sympathy-rotten, and spirit-rotten, and idea-rotten. we have forfeited our flashing sensual power. and we have false teeth in our mouths. in the same way the lips of our sensual desire go thinner and more meaningless, in the compression of our upper will and our idea-driven impulse. let us break the conscious, self-conscious love-ideal, and we shall grow strong, resistant teeth once more, and the teething of our young will not be the hell it is. teething is strictly the period when the voluntary center of the lower plane first comes into full activity, and takes for a time the precedence. so, the mouth is the great sensual gate to the lower body. but let us not forget it is also a gate by which we breathe, the gate through which we speak and go impalpably forth to our object, the gate at which we can kiss the pinched, delicate, spiritual kiss. therefore, although the main sensual gate of entrance to the lower body, it has its reference also to the upper body. taste, the sense of taste, is an intake of a pure communication between us and a body from the outside world. it contains the element of touch, and in this it refers to the cardiac plexus. but taste, _quâ_ taste, refers purely to the solar plexus. and then smell. the nostrils are the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs. the extreme sigh of yearning we catch through the mouth. but the delicate nose advances always into the air, our palpable communicator with the infinite air. thus it has its first delicate root in the cardiac plexus, the root of its intake. and the root of the delicate-proud exhalation, rejection, is in the thoracic ganglion. but the nostrils have their other function of smell. here the delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centers, from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, or even deeper. there is the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. there is the sensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury. and just as the fullness of the lips and the shape of the mouth depend on the development from the lower or the upper centers, the sensual or the spiritual, so does the shape of the nose depend on the direct control of the deepest centers of consciousness. a perfect nose is perhaps the result of a balance in the four modes. but what is a perfect nose!--we only know that a short snub nose goes with an over-sympathetic nature, not proud enough; while a long nose derives from the center of the upper will, the thoracic ganglion, our great center of curiosity, and benevolent or objective control. a thick, squat nose is the sensual-sympathetic nose, and the high, arched nose the sensual voluntary nose, having the curve of repudiation, as when we turn up our nose from a bad smell, but also the proud curve of haughtiness and subjective authority. the nose is one of the greatest indicators of character. that is to say, it almost inevitably indicates the mode of predominant dynamic consciousness in the individual, the predominant primary center from which he lives.--when savages rub noses instead of kissing, they are exchanging a more sensitive and a deeper sensual salute than our lip-touch. the eyes are the third great gateway of the psyche. here the soul goes in and out of the body, as a bird flying forth and coming home. but the root of conscious vision is almost entirely in the breast. when i go forth from my own eyes, in delight to dwell upon the world which is beyond me, outside me, then i go forth from wide open windows, through which shows the full and living lambent darkness of my present inward self. i go forth, and i leave the lovely open darkness of my sensient self revealed; when i go forth in the wonder of vision to dwell upon the beloved, or upon the wonder of the world, i go from the center of the glad breast, through the eyes, and who will may look into the full soft darkness of me, rich with my undiscovered presence. but if i am displeased, then hard and cold my self stands in my eyes, and refuses any communication, any sympathy, but merely stares outwards. it is the motion of cold objectivity from the thoracic ganglion. or, from the same center of will, cold but intense my eyes may watch with curiosity, as a cat watches a fly. it may be into my curiosity will creep an element of warm gladness in the wonder which i am beholding outside myself. or it may be that my curiosity will be purely and simply the cold, almost cruel curiosity of the upper will, directed from the ganglion of the shoulders: such as is the acute attention of an experimental scientist. the eyes have, however, their sensual root as well. but this is hard to transfer into language, as all _our_ vision, our modern northern vision is in the upper mode of actual seeing. there is a sensual way of beholding. there is the dark, desirous look of a savage who apprehends only that which has direct reference to himself, that which stirs a certain dark yearning within his lower self. then his eye is fathomless blackness. but there is the dark eye which glances with a certain fire, and has no depth. there is a keen quick vision which watches, which beholds, but which never yields to the object outside: as a cat watching its prey. the dark glancing look which knows the _strangeness_, the danger of its object, the need to overcome the object. the eye which is not wide open to study, to _learn_, but which powerfully, proudly or cautiously glances, and knows the terror or the pure desirability of _strangeness_ in the object it beholds. the savage is all in all in himself. that which he sees outside he hardly notices, or, he sees as something odd, something automatically desirable, something lustfully desirable, or something dangerous. what we call vision, that he has not. we must compare the look in a horse's eye with the look in a cow's. the eye of the cow is soft, velvety, receptive. she stands and gazes with the strangest intent curiosity. she goes forth from herself in wonder. the root of her vision is in her yearning breast. the same one hears when she moos. the same massive weight of passion is in a bull's breast; the passion to go forth from himself. his strength is in his breast, his weapons are on his head. the wonder is always outside him. but the horse's eye is bright and glancing. his curiosity is cautious, full of terror, or else aggressive and frightening for the object. the root of his vision is in his belly, in the solar plexus. and he fights with his teeth, and his heels, the sensual weapons. both these animals, however, are established in the sympathetic mode. the life mode in both is sensitively sympathetic, or preponderantly sympathetic. those animals which like cats, wolves, tigers, hawks, chiefly live from the great voluntary centers, these animals are, in our sense of the word, almost visionless. sight in them is sharpened or narrowed down to a point: the object of prey. it is exclusive. they see no more than this. and thus they see unthinkably far, unthinkably keenly. most animals, however, smell what they see: vision is not very highly developed. they know better by the more direct contact of scent. and vision in us becomes faulty because we proceed too much in one mode. we see too much, we attend too much. the dark, glancing sightlessness of the intent savage, the narrowed vision of the cat, the single point of vision of the hawk--these we do not know any more. we live far too much from the sympathetic centers, without the balance from the voluntary mode. and we live far, far too much from the _upper_ sympathetic center and voluntary center, in an endless objective curiosity. sight is the least sensual of all the senses. and we strain ourselves to see, see, see--everything, everything through the eye, in one mode of objective curiosity. there is nothing inside us, we stare endlessly at the outside. so our eyes begin to fail; to retaliate on us. we go short-sighted, almost in self-protection. hearing the last, and perhaps the deepest of the senses. and here there is no choice. in every other faculty we have the power of rejection. we have a choice of vision. we can, if we choose, see in the terms of the wonderful beyond, the world of light into which we go forth in joy to lose ourselves in it. or we can see, as the egyptians saw, in the terms of their own dark souls: seeing the strangeness of the creature outside, the gulf between it and them, but finally, its existence in terms of themselves. they saw according to their own unchangeable idea, subjectively, they did not go forth from themselves to seek the wonder outside. those are the two chief ways of sympathetic vision. we call our way the objective, the egyptian the subjective. but objective and subjective are words that depend absolutely on your starting point. spiritual and sensual are much more descriptive terms. but there are, of course, also the two ways of volitional vision. we can see with the endless modern critical sight, analytic, and at last deliberately ugly. or we can see as the hawk sees the one concentrated spot where beats the life-heart of our prey. in the four modes of sight we have some choice. we have some choice to refuse tastes or smells or touch. in hearing we have the minimum of choice. sound acts direct upon the great affective centers. we may voluntarily quicken our hearing, or make it dull. but we have really no choice of what we hear. our will is eliminated. sound acts direct, almost automatically, upon the affective centers. and we have no power of going forth from the ear. we are always and only recipient. nevertheless, sound acts upon us in various ways, according to the four primary poles of consciousness. the singing of birds acts almost entirely upon the centers of the breast. birds, which live by flight, impelled from the strong conscious-activity of the breast and shoulders, have become for us symbols of the spirit, the upper mode of consciousness. their legs have become idle, almost insentient twigs. only the tail flirts from the center of the sensual will. but their singing acts direct upon the upper, or spiritual centers in us. so does almost all our music, which is all christian in tendency. but modern music is analytical, critical, and it has discovered the power of ugliness. like our martial music, it is of the upper plane, like our martial songs, our fifes and our brass-bands. these act direct upon the thoracic ganglion. time was, however, when music acted upon the sensual centers direct. we hear it still in savage music, and in the roll of drums, and in the roaring of lions, and in the howling of cats. and in some voices still we hear the deeper resonance of the sensual mode of consciousness. but the tendency is for everything to be brought on to the upper plane, whilst the lower plane is just worked automatically from the upper. chapter vi first glimmerings of mind we can now see what is the true goal of education for a child. it is the full and harmonious development of the four primary modes of consciousness, always with regard to the individual nature of the child. the goal is _not_ ideal. the aim is _not_ mental consciousness. we want _effectual_ human beings, not conscious ones. the final aim is not _to know_, but _to be_. there never was a more risky motto than that: _know thyself_. you've got to know yourself as far as possible. but not just for the sake of knowing. you've got to know yourself so that you can at last _be_ yourself. "be yourself" is the last motto. the whole field of dynamic and effectual consciousness is _always_ pre-mental, non-mental. not even the most knowing man that ever lived would know how he would be feeling next week; whether some new and utterly shattering impulse would have arisen in him and laid his nicely-conceived self in ruins. it is the impulse we have to live by, not the ideals or the idea. but we have to know ourselves pretty thoroughly before we can break the automatism of ideals and conventions. the savage in a state of nature is one of the most conventional of creatures. so is a child. only through fine delicate knowledge can we recognize and release our impulses. now our whole aim has been to force each individual to a maximum of mental control, and mental consciousness. our poor little plans of children are put into horrible forcing-beds, called schools, and the young idea is there forced to shoot. it shoots, poor thing, like a potato in a warm cellar. one mass of pallid sickly ideas and ideals. and no root, no life. the ideas shoot, hard enough, in our sad offspring, but they shoot at the expense of life itself. never was such a mistake. mental consciousness is a purely individual affair. some men are born to be highly and delicately conscious. but for the vast majority, much mental consciousness is simply a catastrophe, a blight. it just stops their living. our business, at the present, is to prevent at all cost the young idea from shooting. the ideal mind, the brain, has become the vampire of modern life, sucking up the blood and the life. there is hardly an original thought or original utterance possible to us. all is sickly repetition of stale, stale ideas. let all schools be closed at once. keep only a few technical training establishments, nothing more. let humanity lie fallow, for two generations at least. let no child learn to read, unless it learns by itself, out of its own individual persistent desire. that is my serious admonition, gentle reader. but i am not so flighty as to imagine you will pay any heed. but if i thought you would, i should feel my hope surge up. and if you _don't_ pay any heed, calamity will at length shut your schools for you, sure enough. the process of transfer from the primary consciousness to recognized mental consciousness is a mystery like every other transfer. yet it follows its own laws. and here we begin to approach the confines of orthodox psychology, upon which we have no desire to trespass. but this we _can_ say. the degree of transfer from primary to mental consciousness varies with every individual. but in most individuals the natural degree is very low. the process of transfer from primary consciousness is called sublimation, the sublimating of the potential body of knowledge with the definite reality of the idea. and with this process we have identified all education. the very derivation of the latin word _education_ shows us. of course it should mean the leading forth of each nature to its fullness. but with us, fools that we are, it is the leading forth of the primary consciousness, the potential or dynamic consciousness, into mental consciousness, which is finite and static. now before we set out so gayly to lead our children _en bloc_ out of the dynamic into the static way of consciousness, let us consider a moment what we are doing. a child in the womb can have no _idea_ of the mother. i think orthodox psychology will allow us so much. and yet the child in the womb must be dynamically conscious of the mother. otherwise how could it maintain a definite and progressively developing relation to her? this consciousness, however, is utterly non-ideal, non-mental, purely dynamic, a matter of dynamic polarized intercourse of vital vibrations, as an exchange of wireless messages which are never translated from the pulse-rhythm into speech, because they have no need to be. it is a dynamic polarized intercourse between the great primary nuclei in the foetus and the corresponding nuclei in the dynamic maternal psyche. this form of consciousness is established at conception, and continues long after birth. nay, it continues all life long. but the particular interchange of dynamic consciousness between mother and child suffers no interruption at birth. it continues almost the same. the child has no conception whatsoever of the mother. it cannot see her, for its eye has no focus. it can hear her, because hearing needs no transmission into concept, but it has no oral notion of sounds. it knows her. but only by a form of vital dynamic correspondence, a sort of magnetic interchange. the idea does not intervene at all. gradually, however, the dark shadow of our object begins to loom in the formless mind of the infant. the idea of the mother is, as it were, gradually photographed on the cerebral plasm. it begins with the faintest shadow--but the figure is gradually developed through years of experience. it is never quite completed. how does the figure of the mother gradually develop as a _conception_ in the child mind? it develops as the result of the positive and negative reaction from the primary centers of consciousness. from the first great center of sympathy the child is drawn to a lovely oneing with the mother. from the first great center of will comes the independent self-assertion which locates the mother as something outside, something objective. and as a result of this twofold notion, a twofold increase in the child. first, the dynamic establishment of the individual consciousness in the infant: and then the first shadow of a mental conception of the mother, in the infant brain. the development of the _original_ mind in every child and every man always and only follows from the dual fulfillment in the dynamic consciousness. but mark further. each time, after the fourfold interchange between two dynamic polarized lives, there results a development in the individuality and a sublimation into consciousness, both simultaneously in each party: _and this dual development causes at once a diminution in the dynamic polarity between the two parties_. that is, as its individuality and its mental concept of the mother develop in the child, there is a corresponding _waning_ of the dynamic relation between the child and the mother. and this is the natural progression of all love. as we have said before, the accomplishment of individuality never finally exhausts the dynamic flow between parents and child. in the same way, a child can never have a finite conception of either of its parents. it can have a very much more finite, finished conception of its aunts or its friends. the portrait of the parent can never be quite completed in the mind of the son or daughter. as long as time lasts it must be left unfinished. nevertheless, the inevitable photography of time upon the mental plasm does print at last a very substantial portrait of the parent, a very well-filled concept in the child mind. and the nearer a conception comes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of which this concept has arisen, draw to a close. to know, is to lose. when i have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then the love and the friendship is dead. it falls to the level of an acquaintance. as soon as i have a finished mental conception, a full idea even of myself, then dynamically i am dead. to know is to die. but knowledge and death are part of our natural development. only, of course, most things can never be known by us in full. which means we do never absolutely die, even to our parents. so that jesus' question to his mother, "woman, what have i to do with thee!"--while expressing a major truth, still has an exaggerated sound, which comes from its denial of the minor truth. this progression from dynamic relationship towards a finished individuality and a finished mental concept is carried on from the four great primary centers through the correspondence medium of all the senses and sensibilities. first of all, the child knows the mother only through touch--perfect and immediate contact. and yet, from the moment of conception, the egg-cell repudiated complete adhesion and even communication, and asserted its individual integrity. the child in the womb, perfect a contact though it may have with the mother, is all the time also dynamically polarized against this contact. from the first moment, this relation in touch has a dual polarity, and, no doubt, a dual mode. it is a fourfold interchange of consciousness, the moment the egg-cell has made its two spontaneous divisions. as soon as the child is born, there is a real severance. the contact of touch is interrupted, it now becomes occasional only. true, the dynamic flow between mother and child is not severed when simple physical contact is missing. though mother and child may not touch, still the dynamic flow continues between them. the mother knows her child, feels her bowels and her breast drawn to it, even if it be a hundred miles away. but if the severance continue long, the dynamic flow begins to die, both in mother and child. it wanes fairly quickly--and perhaps can never be fully revived. the dynamic relation between parent and child may fairly easily fall into quiescence, a static condition. for a full dynamic relationship it is necessary that there be actual contact. the nerves run from the four primary dynamos, and end with live ends all over the body. and it is necessary to bring the live ends of the nerves of the child into contact with the live ends of corresponding nerves in the mother, so that a pure circuit is established. wherever a pure circuit is established, there occurs a pure development in the individual creation, and this is inevitably accompanied by sensation; and sensation is the first term of mental knowledge. so, from the field of the breast and arms, the upper circuit, and from the field of the knees and feet and belly, the lower circuit. and then, the moment a child is born, the face is alive. and the face communicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. the moment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. and suddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all working at once, as the child sucks. there is the profound desirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity of the center of will, and at the same time, the cleaving yearning to the nipple, and the tiny curiosity of lips and gums. the nipple of the mother's breast is one of the great gates of the body, hence of the living psyche. in the nipple terminate vivid nerves which flash their very powerful vibrations through the mouth of the child and deep into its four great poles of being and knowing. even the nipples of the man are gateways to the great dynamic flow: still gateways. touch, taste, and smell are now active in the baby. and these senses, so-called, are strictly sensations. they are the first term of the child's mental knowledge. and on these three _cerebral_ reactions the foundation of the future mind is laid. the moment there is a perfect polarized circuit between the first four poles of dynamic consciousness, at that moment does the mind, the terminal station, flash into cognition. the first cognition is merely sensation: sensation and the remembrance of sensation being the first element in all knowing and in all conception. the circuit of touch, taste, and smell must be well established, before the eyes begin actually to see. all mental knowledge is built up of sensation and of memory. it is the continually recurring sensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the first conception of the mother. after that, the gradually discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. till gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three senses, as medium of correspondence and of knowledge. and while, of course, the sensational _knowledge_ is being secreted in the brain, in some much more mysterious way the living individuality of the child is being developed in the four first nuclei, the four great nerve-centers of the primary field of consciousness and being. as time goes on, the child learns to see the mother. at first he sees her face as a blur, and though he knows her, knows her by a direct glow of communication, as if her face were a warm glowing life-lamp which rejoiced him. but gradually, as the circuit of touch, taste, and smell become powerfully established; gradually, as the individual develops in the child, and so retreats towards isolation; gradually, as the child stands more immune from the mother, the circuit of correspondence extends, and the eyes now communicate across space, the ears begin to discriminate sounds. last of all develops discriminate hearing. now gradually the picture of the mother is transferred to the child's mind, and the sound of the first baby-words is imprinted. and as the child learns to discriminate visually, objectively, between the mother and the nurse, he learns to choose, and becomes individually free. and still, the dynamic correspondence is not finished. it only changes its circuit. while the brain is registering sensations, the four dynamic centers are coming into perfect relation. or rather, as we see, the reverse is the case. as the dynamic centers come into perfect relation, the mind registers and remembers sensations, and begins consciously to know. but the great field of activity is still and always the dynamic field. when a child learns to walk, it learns almost entirely from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic ganglion balancing the upper body. there is a perfected circuit of polarity. the two lower centers are the positive, the two upper the negative poles. and so the child strikes out with his feet for the earth, presses, and strikes away again from the earth, the two upper centers meanwhile corresponding implicitly in the balance of the upper body. it is a chain of spontaneous activity in the four primary centers, establishing a circuit through the whole body. but the positive poles are the lower centers. and the brain has probably nothing at all to do with it. even the _desire_ to walk is not born in the brain, but in the primary nuclei. the same with the use of the hands and arms. it means the establishment of a pure circuit between the four centers, the two upper poles now being the positive, the lower the negative poles, and the hands the live end of the wire. again the brain is not concerned. probably, even in the first deliberate grasping of an object, the brain is not concerned. not until there is an element of recognition and sensation-memory. all our primal activity originates and circulates purely in the four great nerve centers. all our active desire, our genuine impulse, our love, our hope, our yearning, everything originates mysteriously at these four great centers or well-heads of our existence: everything vital and dynamic. the mind can only register that which results from the emanation of the dynamic impulse and the collision or communion of this impulse with its object. so now we see that we can never know ourselves. knowledge is to consciousness what the signpost is to the traveler: just an indication of the way which has been traveled before. knowledge is not even in direct proportion to being. there may be great knowledge of chemistry in a man who is a rather poor _being_: and those who _know_, even in wisdom like solomon, are often at the end of the matter of living, not at the beginning. as a matter of fact, david did the living, the dynamic achievement. to solomon was left the consummation and the finish, and the dying down. yet we _must_ know, if only in order to learn not to know. the supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how _not to know_. that is, how not to _interfere_. that is, how to live dynamically, from the great source, and not statically, like machines driven by ideas and principles from the head, or automatically, from one fixed desire. at last, knowledge must be put into its true place in the living activity of man. and we must know deeply, in order even to do that. so a new conception of the meaning of education. education means leading out the individual nature in each man and woman to its true fullness. you can't do that by stimulating the mind. to pump education into the mind is fatal. that which sublimates from the dynamic consciousness into the mental consciousness has alone any value. this, in most individuals, is very little indeed. so that most individuals, under a wise government, would be most carefully protected from all vicious attempts to inject extraneous ideas into them. every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic consciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. for the mass of people, knowledge _must_ be symbolical, mythical, dynamic. this means, you must have a higher, responsible, conscious class: and then in varying degrees the lower classes, varying in their degree of consciousness. symbols must be true from top to bottom. but the interpretation of the symbols must rest, degree after degree, in the higher, responsible, conscious classes. to _those who cannot divest_ themselves again of mental consciousness and definite ideas, mentality and ideas are death, nails through their hands and feet. chapter vii first steps in education the first process of education is obviously not a mental process. when a mother talks to a baby, she is not encouraging its little mind to think. when she is coaxing her child to walk, she is not making a theoretic exposition of the science of equilibration. she crouches before the child, at a little distance, and spreads her hands. "come, baby--come to mother. come! baby, walk! yes, walk! walk to mother! come along. a little walk to its mother. come! come then! why yes, a pretty baby! oh, he can toddle! yes--yes--no, don't be frightened, a dear. no--come to mother--" and she catches his little pinafore by the tip--and the infant lurches forward. "there! there! a beautiful walk! a beautiful walker, yes! walked all the way to mother, baby did. yes, he did--" now who will tell me that this talk has any rhyme or reason? not a spark of reason. yet a real rhyme: or rhythm, much more important. the song and the urge of the mother's voice plays direct on the affective centers of the child, a wonderful stimulus and tuition. the words hardly matter. true, this constant repetition in the end forms a mental association. at the moment they have no mental significance at all for the baby. but they ring with a strange palpitating music in his fluttering soul, and lift him into motion. and this is the way to educate children: the instinctive way of mothers. there should be no effort made to teach children to think, to have ideas. only to lift them and urge them into dynamic activity. the voice of dynamic sound, not the words of understanding. damn understanding. gestures, and touch, and expression of the face, not theory. never have ideas about children--and never have ideas _for_ them. if we are going to teach children we must teach them first to move. and not by rule or mental dictation. horror! but by playing and teasing and anger, and amusement. a child must learn to move blithe and free and proud. it must learn the fullness of spontaneous motion. and this it can only learn by continuous reaction from all the centers, through all the emotions. a child must learn to contain itself. it must learn to sit still if need be. part of the first phase of education is the learning to stay still and be physically self-contained. then a child must learn to be alone, and to adventure alone, and to play alone. any peevish clinging should be quite roughly rebuffed. from the very first day, throw a child back on its own resources--even a little cruelly sometimes. but don't neglect it, don't have a negative attitude to it. play with it, tease it and roll it over as a dog her puppy, mock it when it is too timorous, laugh at it, scold it when it really bothers you--for a child must learn not to bother another person--and when it makes you genuinely angry, spank it soundly. but always remember that it is a single little soul by itself; and that the responsibility for the wise, warm relationship is yours, the adult's. then always watch its deportment. above all things encourage a straight backbone and proud shoulders. above all things despise a slovenly movement, an ugly bearing and unpleasing manner. and make a mock of petulance and of too much timidity. we are imbeciles to start bothering about love and so forth in a child. forget utterly that there is such a thing as emotional reciprocity. but never forget your own honor as an adult individual towards a small individual. it is a question of honor, not of love. a tree grows straight when it has deep roots and is not too stifled. love is a spontaneous thing, coming out of the spontaneous effectual soul. as a deliberate principle it is an unmitigated evil. also morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil. a child which is proud and free in its movements, in all its deportment, will be quite as moral as need be. honor is an instinct, a superb instinct which should be kept keenly alive. immorality, vice, crime, these come from a suppression or a collapse at one or other of the great primary centers. if one of these centers fails to maintain its true polarity, then there is a physical or psychic derangement, or both. and viciousness or crime are the result of a derangement in the primary system. pure morality is only an instinctive adjustment which the soul makes in every circumstance, adjusting one thing to another livingly, delicately, sensitively. there can be no law. therefore, at every cost and charge keep the first four centers alive and alert, active, and vivid in reaction. and then you need fear no perversion. what we have done, in our era, is, first, we have tried as far as possible to suppress or subordinate the two sensual centers. we have so unduly insisted on and exaggerated the upper spiritual or selfless mode--the living in the other person and through the other person--that we have caused already a dangerous over-balance in the natural psyche. to correct this we go one worse, and try to rule ourselves more and more by the old ideas of sympathy and benevolence. we think that love and benevolence will cure anything. whereas love and benevolence are our poison, poison to the giver, and still more poison to the receiver. poison only because there is practically _no_ spontaneous love left in the world. it is all _will_, the fatal love-will and insatiable morbid curiosity. the pure sympathetic mode of love long ago broke down. there is now only deadly, exaggerated volition. this is also why general education should be suppressed as soon as possible. we have fallen into a state of fixed, deadly will. everything we do and say to our children in school tends simply to fix in them the same deadly will, under the pretence of pure love. our idealism is the clue to our fixed will. love, beauty, benevolence, progress, these are the words we use. but the principle we evoke is a principle of barren, sanctified compulsion of all life. we want to put all life under compulsion. "how to outwit the nerves," for example.--and therefore, to save the children as far as possible, elementary education should be stopped at once. no child should be sent to any sort of public institution before the age of ten years. if i could but advise, i would advise that this notice should be sent through the length and breadth of the land. "parents, the state can no longer be responsible for the mind and character of your children. from the first day of the coming year, all schools will be closed for an indefinite period. fathers, see that your boys are trained to be men. mothers, see that your daughters are trained to be women. "all schools will shortly be converted either into public workshops or into gymnasia. no child will be admitted into the workshops under ten years of age. active training in primitive modes of fighting and gymnastics will be compulsory for all boys over ten years of age. "all girls over ten years of age must attend at one domestic workshop. all girls over ten years of age may, in addition, attend at one workshop of skilled labor, or of technical industry, or of art. admission for three months' probation. "all boys over ten years of age must attend at one workshop of domestic crafts, and at one workshop of skilled labor, or of technical industry, or of art. a boy may choose, with his parents' consent, his school of labor, or technical industry or art, but the directors reserve the right to transfer him to a more suitable department, if necessary, after a three months' probation. "it is the intention of this state to form a body of active, energetic citizens. the danger of a helpless, presumptuous, news-paper-reading population is universally recognized. "all elementary education is left in the hands of the parents, save such as is necessary to the different branches of industry. "schools of mental culture are free to all individuals over fourteen years of age. "universities are free to all who obtain the first culture degree." the fact is, our process of universal education is to-day so uncouth, so psychologically barbaric, that it is the most terrible menace to the existence of our race. we seize hold of our children, and by parrot-compulsion we force into them a set of mental tricks. by unnatural and unhealthy compulsion we force them into a certain amount of cerebral activity. and then, after a few years, with a certain number of windmills in their heads, we turn them loose, like so many inferior don quixotes, to make a mess of life. all that they have learnt in their heads has no reference at all to their dynamic souls. the windmills spin and spin in a wind of words, dulcinea del toboso beckons round every corner, and our nation of inferior quixotes jumps on and off tram-cars, trains, bicycles, motor-cars, buses, in one mad chase of the divine dulcinea, who is all the time chewing chocolates and feeling very, very bored. it is no use telling the poor devils to stop. they read in the newspapers about more dulcineas and more chivalry due to them and more horrid persons who injure the fair fame of these bored females. and round they skelter, after their own tails. that is, when they are not forced to grind out their lives for a wage. though work is the only thing that prevents our masses from going quite mad. to tell the truth, ideas are the most dangerous germs mankind has ever been injected with. they are introduced into the brain by injection, in schools and by means of newspapers, and then we are done for. an idea which is merely introduced into the brain, and started spinning there like some outrageous insect, is the cause of all our misery to-day. instead of living from the spontaneous centers, we live from the head. we chew, chew, chew at some theory, some idea. we grind, grind, grind in our mental consciousness, till we are beside ourselves. our primary affective centers, our centers of spontaneous being, are so utterly ground round and automatized that they squeak in all stages of disharmony and incipient collapse. we are a people--and not we alone--of idiots, imbeciles and epileptics, and we don't even know we are raving. and all is due, directly and solely, to that hateful germ we call the ideal. the ideal is _always_ evil, no matter what ideal it be. no idea should ever be raised to a governing throne. this does not mean that man should immediately cut off his head and try to develop a pair of eyes in his breasts. but it does mean this: that an idea is just the final concrete or registered result of living dynamic interchange and reactions: that no idea is ever perfectly expressed until its dynamic cause is finished; and that to continue to put into dynamic effect an already perfected idea means the nullification of all living activity, the substitution of mechanism, and all the resultant horrors of _ennui_, ecstasy, neurasthenia, and a collapsing psyche. the whole tree of our idea of life and living is dead. then let us leave off hanging ourselves and our children from its branches like medlars. the idea, the actual idea, must rise ever fresh, ever displaced, like the leaves of a tree, from out of the quickness of the sap, and according to the forever incalculable effluence of the great dynamic centers of life. the tree of life is a gay kind of tree that is forever dropping its leaves and budding out afresh, quite different ones. if the last lot were thistle leaves, the next lot may be vine. you never can tell with the tree of life. so we come back to that precious child who costs us such a lot of ink. by what right, i ask you, are we going to inject into him our own disease-germs of ideas and infallible motives? by the right of the diseased, who want to infect everybody. there are _few, few people_ in whom the living impulse and reaction develops and sublimates into mental consciousness. there are all kinds of trees in the forest. but few of them indeed bear the apples of knowledge. the modern world insists, however, that every individual shall bear the apples of knowledge. so we go through the forest of mankind, cut back every tree, and try to graft it into an apple-tree. a nice wood of monsters we make by so doing. it is not the _nature_ of most men to know and to understand and to reason very far. therefore, why should they make a pretense of it? it is the nature of some few men to reason, then let them reason. those whose nature it is to be rational will instinctively ask why and wherefore, and wrestle with themselves for an answer. but why every tom, dick and harry should have the why and wherefore of the universe rammed into him, and should be allowed to draw the conclusion hence that he is the ideal person and responsible for the universe, i don't know. it is a lie anyway--for neither the whys nor the wherefores are his own, and he is but a parrot with his nut of a universe. why should we cram the mind of a child with facts that have nothing to do with his own experiences, and have no relation to his own dynamic activity? let us realize that every extraneous idea effectually introduced into a man's mind is a direct obstruction of his dynamic activity. every idea which is introduced from outside into a man's mind, and which does not correspond to his own dynamic nature, is a fatal stumbling-block for that man: is a cause of arrest for his true individual activity, and a derangement to his psychic being. for instance, if i teach a man the idea that all men are equal. now this idea has no foundation in experience, but is logically deduced from certain ethical or philosophic principles. but there is a disease of idealism in the world, and we all are born with it. particularly teachers are born with it. so they seize on the idea of equality, and proceed to instil it. with what result? your man is no longer a man, living his own life from his own spontaneous centers. he is a theoretic imbecile trying to frustrate and dislocate all life. it is the death of all life to force a pure _idea_ into practice. life must be lived from the deep, self-responsible spontaneous centers of every individual, in a vital, _non-ideal_ circuit of dynamic relation between individuals. the passions or desires which are thought-born are deadly. any particular mode of passion or desire which receives an exclusive ideal sanction at once becomes poisonous. if this is true for men, it is much more true for women. teach a woman to act from an idea, and you destroy her womanhood for ever. make a woman self-conscious, and her soul is barren as a sandbag. why were we driven out of paradise? why did we fall into this gnawing disease of unappeasable dissatisfaction? not because we sinned. ah, no. all the animals in paradise enjoyed the sensual passion of coition. not because we sinned. but because we got our sex into our head. when eve ate that particular apple, she became aware of her own womanhood, mentally. and mentally she began to experiment with it. she has been experimenting ever since. so has man. to the rage and horror of both of them. these sexual experiments are really anathema. but once a woman is sexually self-conscious, what is she to do? there it is, she is born with the disease of her own self-consciousness, as was her mother before her. she is bound to experiment and try one idea after another, in the long run always to her own misery. she is bound to have fixed one, and then another idea of herself, herself as woman. first she is the noble spouse of a not-quite-so-noble male: then a _mater dolorosa_: then a ministering angel: then a competent social unit, a member of parliament or a lady doctor or a platform speaker: and all the while, as a side show, she is the isolde of some tristan, or the guinevere of some lancelot, or the fata morgana of all men--in her own idea. she can't stop having an idea of herself. she can't get herself out of her own head. and there she is, functioning away from her own head and her own consciousness of herself and her own automatic self-will, till the whole man and woman game has become just a hell, and men with any backbone would rather kill themselves than go on with it--or kill somebody else. yet we are going to inculcate more and more self-consciousness, teach every little mary to be more and more a nice little mary out of her own head, and every little joseph to theorize himself up to the scratch. and the point lies here. there will _have_ to come an end. every race which has become self-conscious and idea-bound in the past has perished. and then it has all started afresh, in a different way, with another race. and man has never learnt any better. we are really far, far more life-stupid than the dead greeks or the lost etruscans. our day is pretty short, and closing fast. we can pass, and another race can follow later. but there is another alternative. we still have in us the power to discriminate between our own idealism, our own self-conscious will, and that other reality, our own true spontaneous self. certainly we are so overloaded and diseased with ideas that we can't get well in a minute. but we can set our faces stubbornly against the disease, once we recognize it. the disease of love, the disease of "spirit," the disease of niceness and benevolence and feeling good on our own behalf and good on somebody else's behalf. pah, it is all a gangrene. we can retreat upon the proud, isolate self, and remain there alone, like lepers, till we are cured of this ghastly white disease of self-conscious idealism. and we really can make a move on our children's behalf. we really can refrain from thrusting our children any more into those hot-beds of the self-conscious disease, schools. we really can prevent their eating much more of the tissues of leprosy, newspapers and books. for a time, there should be no compulsory teaching to read and write at all. _the great mass of humanity should never learn to read and write_--_never_. and instead of this gnawing, gnawing disease of mental consciousness and awful, unhealthy craving for stimulus and for action, we must substitute genuine action. the war was really not a bad beginning. but we went out under the banners of idealism, and now the men are home again, the virus is more active than ever, rotting their very souls. the mass of the people will never _mentally understand_. but they will soon instinctively fall into line. let us substitute action, all kinds of action, for the mass of people, in place of mental activity. even twelve hours' work a day is better than a newspaper at four in the afternoon and a grievance for the rest of the evening. but particularly let us take care of the children. at all cost, try to prevent a girl's mind from dwelling on herself, make her act, work, play: assume a rule over her girlhood. let her learn the domestic arts in their perfection. let us even artificially set her to spin and weave. anything to keep her busy, to prevent her reading and becoming self-conscious. let us awake as soon as possible to the repulsive machine quality of machine-made things. they smell of death. and let us insist that the home is sacred, the hearth, and the very things of the home. then keep the girls apart from any familiarity or being "pals" with the boys. the nice clean intimacy which we now so admire between the sexes is sterilizing. it makes neuters. later on, no deep, magical sex-life is possible. the same with the boys. first and foremost establish a rule over them, a proud, harsh, manly rule. make them _know_ that at every moment they are in the shadow of a proud, strong, adult authority. let them be soldiers, but as individuals not machine units. there are wars in the future, great wars, which not machines will finally decide, but the free, indomitable life spirit. no more wars under the banners of the ideal, and in the spirit of sacrifice. but wars in the strength of individual men. and then, pure individualistic training to fight, and preparation for a whole new way of life, a new society. put money into its place, and science and industry. the leaders must stand for life, and they must not ask the simple followers to point out the direction. when the leaders assume responsibility they relieve the followers forever of the burden of finding a way. relieved of this hateful incubus of responsibility for general affairs, the populace can again become free and happy and spontaneous, leaving matters to their superiors. no newspapers--the mass of the people never learning to read. the evolving once more of the great spontaneous gestures of life. we can't go on as we are. poor, nerve-worn creatures, fretting our lives away and hating to die because we have never lived. the secret is, to commit into the hands of the sacred few the responsibility which now lies like torture on the mass. let the few, the leaders, be increasingly responsible for the whole. and let the mass be free: free, save for the choice of leaders. leaders--this is what mankind is craving for. but men must be prepared to obey, body and soul, once they have chosen the leader. and let them choose the leader for life's sake only. begin then--there is a beginning. chapter viii education and sex in man, woman and child the one thing we have to avoid, then, even while we carry on our own old process of education, is this development of the powers of so-called self-expression in a child. let us beware of artificially stimulating his self-consciousness and his so-called imagination. all that we do is to pervert the child into a ghastly state of self-consciousness, making him affectedly try to show off as we wish him to show off. the moment the least little trace of self-consciousness enters in a child, good-by to everything except falsity. much better just pound away at the abc and simple arithmetic and so on. the modern methods do make children sharp, give them a sort of slick finesse, but it is the beginning of the mischief. it ends in the great "unrest" of a nervous, hysterical proletariat. begin to teach a child of five to "understand." to understand the sun and moon and daisy and the secrets of procreation, bless your soul. understanding all the way.--and when the child is twenty he'll have a hysterical understanding of his own invented grievance, and there's an end of him. understanding is the devil. a child mustn't understand things. he must have them his own way. his vision isn't ours. when a boy of eight sees a horse, he doesn't see the correct biological object we intend him to see. he sees a big living presence of no particular shape with hair dangling from its neck and four legs. if he puts two eyes in the profile, he is quite right. because he does _not_ see with optical, photographic vision. the image on his retina is _not_ the image of his consciousness. the image on his retina just does not go into him. his unconsciousness is filled with a strong, dark, vague prescience of a powerful presence, a two-eyed, four-legged, long-maned presence looming imminent. and to _force_ the boy to see a correct one-eyed horse-profile is just like pasting a placard in front of his vision. it simply kills his inward seeing. we don't _want_ him to see a proper horse. the child is _not_ a little camera. he is a small vital organism which has direct dynamic _rapport_ with the objects of the outer universe. he perceives from his breast and his abdomen, with deep-sunken realism, the elemental nature of the creature. so that to this day a noah's ark tree is more real than a corot tree or a constable tree: and a flat noah's ark cow has a deeper vital reality than even a cuyp cow. the mode of vision is not one and final. the mode of vision is manifold. and the optical image is a mere vibrating blur to a child--and, indeed, to a passionate adult. in this vibrating blur the soul sees its own true correspondent. it sees, in a cow, horns and squareness, and a long tail. it sees, for a horse, a mane, and a long face, round nose, and four legs. and in each case a darkly vital presence. now horns and squareness and a long thin ox-tail, these are the fearful and wonderful elements of the cow-form, which the dynamic soul perfectly perceives. the ideal-image is just outside nature, for a child--something false. in a picture, a child wants elemental recognition, and not correctness or expression, or least of all, what we call understanding. the child distorts inevitably and dynamically. but the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. if a huge eye sits in the middle of the cheek, in a child's drawing, this shows that the deep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is the life-truth, even if it is a scientific falsehood. on the other hand, what on earth is the good of saying to a child, "the world is a flattened sphere, like an orange." it is simply pernicious. you had much better say the world is a poached egg in a frying pan. _that_ might have some dynamic meaning. the only thing about the flattened orange is that the child just sees this orange disporting itself in blue air, and never bothers to associate it with the earth he treads on. and yet it would be so much better for the mass of mankind if they never heard of the flattened sphere. they should never be told that the earth is round. it only makes everything unreal to them. they are balked in their impression of the flat good earth, they can't get over this sphere business, they live in a fog of abstraction, and nothing is anything. save for purposes of abstraction, the earth is a great plain, with hills and valleys. why force abstractions and kill the reality, when there's no need? as for children, will we never realize that their abstractions are never based on observations, but on subjective exaggerations? if there is an eye in the face, the face is all eye. it is the child soul which cannot get over the mystery of the eye. if there is a tree in a landscape, the landscape is all tree. always this partial focus. the attempt to make a child focus for a whole view--which is really a generalization and an adult abstraction--is simply wicked. yet the first thing we do is to set a child making relief-maps in clay, for example: of his own district. imbecility! he has not even the faintest impression of the total hill on which his home stands. a steepness going up to a door--and front garden railings--and perhaps windows. that's the lot. the top and bottom of it is, that it is a crime to teach a child anything at all, school-wise. it is just evil to collect children together and teach them through the head. it causes absolute starvation in the dynamic centers, and sterile substitute of brain knowledge is all the gain. the children of the middle classes are so vitally impoverished, that the miracle is they continue to exist at all. the children of the lower classes do better, because they escape into the streets. but even the children of the proletariat are now infected. and, of course, as my critics point out, under all the school-smarm and newspaper-cant, man is to-day as savage as a cannibal, and more dangerous. the living dynamic self is denaturalized instead of being educated. we talk about education--leading forth the natural intelligence of a child. but ours is just the opposite of leading forth. it is a ramming in of brain facts through the head, and a consequent distortion, suffocation, and starvation of the primary centers of consciousness. a nice day of reckoning we've got in front of us. let us lead forth, by all means. but let us not have mental knowledge before us as the goal of the leading. much less let us make of it a vicious circle in which we lead the unhappy child-mind, like a cow in a ring at a fair. we don't want to educate children so that they may understand. understanding is a fallacy and a vice in most people. i don't even want my child to know, much less to understand. _i_ don't want my child to know that five fives are twenty-five, any more than i want my child to wear my hat or my boots. i _don't_ want my child to _know_. if he wants five fives let him count them on his fingers. as for his little mind, give it a rest, and let his dynamic self be alert. he will ask "why" often enough. but he more often asks why the sun shines, or why men have mustaches, or why grass is green, than anything sensible. most of a child's questions are, and should be, unanswerable. they are not questions at all. they are exclamations of wonder, they are _remarks_ half-sceptically addressed. when a child says, "why is grass green?" he half implies. "is it really green, or is it just taking me in?" and we solemnly begin to prate about chlorophyll. oh, imbeciles, idiots, inexcusable owls! the whole of a child's development goes on from the great dynamic centers, and is basically non-mental. to introduce mental activity is to arrest the dynamic activity, and stultify true dynamic development. by the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, hopeless, selfless, floundering mental entities, with nothing in front of them, because they have been starved from the roots, systematically, for twenty-one years, and fed through the head. they have had all their mental excitements, sex and everything, all through the head, and when it comes to the actual thing, why, there's nothing in it. _blasé._ the affective centers have been exhausted from the head. before the age of fourteen, children should be taught only to move, to act, to _do_. and they should be taught as little as possible even of this. adults simply cannot and do not know any more what the mode of childish intelligence is. adults _always_ interfere. they _always_ force the adult mental mode. therefore children must be preserved from adult instructions. make a child work--yes. make it do little jobs. keep a fine and delicate and fierce discipline, so that the little jobs are performed as perfectly as is consistent with the child's nature. make the child alert, proud, and becoming in its movements. make it know very definitely that it shall not and must not trespass on other people's privacy or patience. teach it songs, tell it tales. but _never_ instruct it school-wise. and mostly, leave it alone, send it away to be with other children and to get in and out of mischief, and in and out of danger. forget your child altogether as much as possible. all this is the active and strenuous business of parents, and must not be shelved off on to strangers. it is the business of parents _mentally_ to forget but dynamically never to forsake their children. it is no use expecting parents to know _why_ schools are closed, and _why_ they, the parents, must be quite responsible for their own children during the first ten years. if it is quite useless to expect parents to understand a theory of relativity, much less will they understand the development of the dynamic consciousness. but why should they understand? it is the business of very few to understand and for the mass, it is their business to believe and not to bother, but to be honorable and humanly to fulfill their human responsibilities. to give active obedience to their leaders, and to possess their own souls in natural pride. some must understand why a child is not to be mentally educated. some must have a faint inkling of the processes of consciousness during the first fourteen years. some must know what a child beholds, when it looks at a horse, and what it means when it says, "why is grass green?" the answer to this question, by the way, is "because it is." the interplay of the four dynamic centers follows no one conceivable law. mental activity continues according to a law of co-relation. but there is no logical or rational co-relation in the dynamic consciousness. it pulses on inconsequential, and it would be impossible to determine any sequence. out of the very lack of sequence in dynamic consciousness does the individual himself develop. the dynamic abstraction of a child's precepts follows no mental law, and even no law which can ever be mentally propounded. and this is why it is utterly pernicious to set a child making a clay relief-map of its own district, or to ask a child to draw conclusions from given observations. dynamically, a child draws no conclusions. all things still remain dynamically possible. a conclusion drawn is a nail in the coffin of a child's developing being. let a child make a clay landscape, if it likes. but entirely according to its own fancy, and without conclusions drawn. only, let the landscape be vividly made--always the discipline of the soul's full attention. "oh, but where are the factory chimneys?"--or else--"why have you left out the gas-works?" or "do you call that sloppy thing a church?" the particular focus should be vivid, and the record in some way true. the soul must give earnest attention, that is all. and so actively disciplined, the child develops for the first ten years. we need not be afraid of letting children see the passions and reactions of adult life. only we must not strain the _sympathies_ of a child, in _any_ direction, particularly the direction of love and pity. nor must we introduce the fallacy of right and wrong. spontaneous distaste should take the place of right and wrong. and least of all must there be a cry: "you see, dear, you don't understand. when you are older--" a child's sagacity is better than an adult understanding, anyhow. of course it is ten times criminal to tell young children facts about sex, or to implicate them in adult relationships. a child has a strong evanescent sex consciousness. it instinctively writes impossible words on back walls. but this is not a fully conscious mental act. it is a kind of dream act--quite natural. the child's curious, shadowy, indecent sex-knowledge is quite in the course of nature. and does nobody any harm at all. adults had far better not notice it. but if a child sees a cockerel tread a hen, or two dogs coupling, well and good. it _should_ see these things. only, without comment. let nothing be exaggeratedly hidden. by instinct, let us preserve the decent privacies. but if a child occasionally sees its parent nude, taking a bath, all the better. or even sitting in the w. c. exaggerated secrecy is bad. but indecent exposure is also very bad. but worst of all is dragging in the _mental_ consciousness of these shadowy dynamic realities. in the same way, to talk to a child about an adult is vile. let adults keep their adult feelings and communications for people of their own age. but if a child sees its parents violently quarrel, all the better. there must be storms. and a child's dynamic understanding is far deeper and more penetrating than our sophisticated interpretation. but _never_ make a child a party to adult affairs. never drag the child in. refuse its sympathy on such occasions. always treat it as if it had _no_ business to hear, even if it is present and _must_ hear. truly, it has no business mentally to hear. and the dynamic soul will always weigh things up and dispose of them properly, if there be no interference of adult comment or adult desire for sympathy. it is despicable for any one parent to accept a child's sympathy against the other parent. and the one who _received_ the sympathy is always more contemptible than the one who is hated. of course so many children are born to-day unnaturally mentally awake and alive to adult affairs, that there is nothing left but to tell them everything, crudely: or else, much better, to say: "ah, get out, you know too much, you make me sick." to return to the question of sex. a child is born sexed. a child is either male or female, in the whole of its psyche and physique is either male or female. every single living cell is either male or female, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts. and every single cell in every male child is male, and every cell in every female child is female. the talk about a third sex, or about the indeterminate sex, is just to pervert the issue. biologically, it is true, the rudimentary formation of both sexes is found in every individual. that doesn't mean that every individual is a bit of both, or either, _ad lib._ after a sufficient period of idealism, men become hopelessly self-conscious. that is, the great affective centers no longer act spontaneously, but always wait for control from the head. this always breeds a great fluster in the psyche, and the poor self-conscious individual cannot help posing and posturing. our ideal has taught us to be gentle and wistful: rather girlish and yielding, and _very_ yielding in our sympathies. in fact, many young men feel so very like what they imagine a girl must feel, that hence they draw the conclusion that they must have a large share of female sex inside them. false conclusion. these girlish men have often, to-day, the finest maleness, once it is put to the test. how is it then that they feel, and look, so girlish? it is largely a question of the direction of the polarized flow. our ideal has taught us to be _so_ loving and _so_ submissive and _so_ yielding in our sympathy, that the mode has become automatic in many men. now in what we will call the "natural" mode, man has his positivity in the volitional centers, and women in the sympathetic. in fulfilling the christian love ideal, however, men have reversed this. man has assumed the gentle, all-sympathetic rôle, and woman has become the energetic party, with the authority in her hands. the male is the sensitive, sympathetic nature, the woman the active, effective, authoritative. so that the male acts as the passive, or recipient pole of attraction, the female as the active, positive, exertive pole, in human relations. which is a reversal of the old flow. the woman is now the initiator, man the responder. they seem to play each other's parts. but man is purely male, playing woman's part, and woman is purely female, however manly. the gulf between heliogabalus, or the most womanly man on earth, and the most manly woman, is just the same as ever: just the same old gulf between the sexes. the man is male, the woman is female. only they are playing one another's parts, as they must at certain periods. the dynamic polarity has swung around. if we look a little closer, we can define this positive and negative business better. as a matter of fact, positive and negative, passive and active cuts both ways. if the man, as thinker and doer, is active, or positive, and the woman negative, then, on the other hand, as the initiator of emotion, of feeling, and of sympathetic understanding the woman is positive, the man negative. the man may be the initiator in action, but the woman is initiator in emotion. the man has the initiative as far as voluntary activity goes, and the woman the initiative as far as sympathetic activity goes. in love, it is the woman naturally who loves, the man who is loved. in love, woman is the positive, man the negative. it is woman who asks, in love, and man who answers. in life, the reverse is the case. in knowing and in doing, man is positive and woman negative: man initiates, and woman lives up to it. naturally this nicely arranged order of things may be reversed. action and utterance, which are male, are polarized against feeling, emotion, which are female. and which is positive, which negative? was man, the eternal protagonist, born of woman, from her womb of fathomless emotion? or was woman, with her deep womb of emotion, born from the rib of active man, the first created? man, the doer, the knower, the original in _being_, is he lord of life? or is woman, the great mother, who bore us from the womb of love, is she the supreme goddess? this is the question of all time. and as long as man and woman endure, so will the answer be given, first one way, then the other. man, as the utterer, usually claims that eve was created out of his spare rib: from the field of the creative, upper dynamic consciousness, that is. but woman, as soon as she gets a word in, points to the fact that man inevitably, poor darling, is the issue of his mother's womb. so the battle rages. but some men always agree with the woman. some men always yield to woman the creative positivity. and in certain periods, such as the present, the majority of men concur in regarding woman as the source of life, the first term in creation: woman, the mother, the prime being. and then, the whole polarity shifts over. man still remains the doer and thinker. but he is so only in the service of emotional and procreative woman. his highest moment is now the emotional moment when he gives himself up to the woman, when he forms the perfect answer for her great emotional and procreative asking. all his thinking, all his activity in the world only contributes to this great moment, when he is fulfilled in the emotional passion of the woman, the birth of rebirth, as whitman calls it. in his consummation in the emotional passion of a woman, man is reborn, which is quite true. and there is the point at which we all now stick. life, thought, and activity, all are devoted truly to the great end of woman, wife and mother. man has now entered on to his negative mode. now, his consummation is in feeling, not in action. now, his activity is all of the domestic order and all his thought goes to proving that nothing matters except that birth shall continue and woman shall rock in the nest of this globe like a bird who covers her eggs in some tall tree. man is the fetcher, the carrier, the sacrifice, the crucified, and the reborn of woman. this being so, the whole tendency of his nature changes. instead of being assertive and rather insentient, he becomes wavering and sensitive. he begins to have as many feelings--nay, more than a woman. his heroism is all in altruistic endurance. he worships pity and tenderness and weakness, even in himself. in short, he takes on very largely the original rôle of woman. woman meanwhile becomes the fearless, inwardly relentless, determined positive party. she grips the responsibility. the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. nay, she makes man discover that cradles should not be rocked, in order that her hands may be left free. she is now a queen of the earth, and inwardly a fearsome tyrant. she keeps pity and tenderness emblazoned on her banners. but god help the man whom she pities. ultimately she tears him to bits. therefore we see the reversal of the old poles. man becomes the emotional party, woman the positive and active. man begins to show strong signs of the peculiarly strong passive sex desire, the desire to be taken, which is considered characteristic of woman. man begins to have all the feelings of woman--or all the feelings which he attributed to woman. he becomes more feminine than woman ever was, and worships his own femininity, calling it the highest. in short, he begins to exhibit all signs of sexual complexity. he begins to imagine he really is half female. and certainly woman seems very male. so the hermaphrodite fallacy revives again. but it is all a fallacy. man, in the midst of all his effeminacy, is still male and nothing but male. and woman, though she harangue in parliament or patrol the streets with a helmet on her head, is still completely female. they are only playing each other's rôles, because the poles have swung into reversion. the compass is reversed. but that doesn't mean that the north pole has become the south pole, or that each is a bit of both. of course a woman should stick to her own natural emotional positivity. but then man must stick to his own positivity of _being_, of action, _disinterested, non-domestic, male_ action, which is not devoted to the increase of the female. once man vacates his camp of sincere, passionate positivity in disinterested being, his supreme responsibility to fulfill his own profoundest impulses, with reference to none but god or his own soul, not taking woman into count at all, in this primary responsibility to his own deepest soul; once man vacates this strong citadel of his own genuine, not spurious, divinity; then in comes woman, picks up the scepter and begins to conduct a rag-time band. man remains man, however he may put on wistfulness and tenderness like petticoats, and sensibilities like pearl ornaments. your sensitive little big-eyed boy, so much more gentle and loving than his harder sister, is male for all that, believe me. perhaps evilly male, so mothers may learn to their cost: and wives still more. of course there should be a great balance between the sexes. man, in the daytime, must follow his own soul's greatest impulse, and give himself to life-work and risk himself to death. it is not woman who claims the highest in man. it is a man's own religious soul that drives him on beyond woman, to his supreme activity. for his highest, man is responsible to god alone. he may not pause to remember that he has a life to lose, or a wife and children to leave. he must carry forward the banner of life, though seven worlds perish, with all the wives and mothers and children in them. hence jesus, "woman, what have i to do with thee?" every man that lives has to say it again to his wife or mother, once he has any work or mission in hand, that comes from his soul. but again, no man is a blooming marvel for twenty-four hours a day. jesus or napoleon or any other of them ought to have been man enough to be able to come home at tea-time and put his slippers on and sit under the spell of his wife. for there you are, the woman has her world, her positivity: the world of love, of emotion, of sympathy. and it behooves every man in his hour to take off his shoes and relax and give himself up to his woman and her world. not to give up his purpose. but to give up himself for a time to her who is his mate.--and so it is one detests the clock-work kant, and the petit-bourgeois napoleon divorcing his josephine for a hapsburg--or even jesus, with his "woman, what have i to do with thee?"--he might have added "just now."--they were all failures. chapter ix the birth of sex the last chapter was a chapter of semi-digression. we now return to the straight course. is the straightness none too evident? ah well, it's a matter of relativity. a child is born with one sex only, and remains always single in his sex. there is no intermingling, only a great change of rôles is possible. but man in the female rôle is still male. sex--that is to say, maleness and femaleness--is present from the moment of birth, and in every act or deed of every child. but sex in the real sense of dynamic sexual relationship, this does not exist in a child, and cannot exist until puberty and after. true, children have a sort of sex consciousness. little boys and little girls may even commit indecencies together. and still it is nothing vital. it is a sort of shadow activity, a sort of dream-activity. it has no very profound effect. but still, boys and girls should be kept apart as much as possible, that they may have some sort of respect and fear for the gulf that lies between them in nature, and for the great strangeness which each has to offer the other, finally. we are all wrong when we say there is no vital difference between the sexes. there is every difference. every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a woman, and must remain so. women can never feel or know as men do. and in the reverse men can never feel and know, dynamically, as women do. man, acting in the passive or feminine polarity, is still man, and he doesn't have one single unmanly feeling. and women, when they speak and write, utter not one single word that men have not taught them. men learn their feelings from women, women learn their mental consciousness from men. and so it will ever be. meanwhile, women live forever by feeling, and men live forever from an inherent sense of _purpose_. feeling is an end in itself. this is unspeakable truth to a woman, and never true for one minute to a man. when man, in the epicurean spirit, embraces feeling, he makes himself a martyr to it--like maupassant or oscar wilde. woman will _never_ understand the depth of the spirit of purpose in man, his deeper spirit. and man will never understand the sacredness of feeling to woman. each will play at the other's game, but they will remain apart. the whole mode, the whole everything is really different in man and woman. therefore we should keep boys and girls apart, that they are pure and virgin in themselves. on mixing with one another, in becoming familiar, in being "pals," they lose their own male and female integrity. and they lose the treasure of the future, the vital sex polarity, the dynamic magic of life. for the magic and the dynamism rests on _otherness_. for actual sex is a vital polarity. and a polarity which rouses into action, as we know, at puberty. and how? as we know, a child lives from the great field of dynamic consciousness established between the four poles of the dynamic psyche, two great poles of sympathy, two great poles of will. the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, great nerve-centers below the diaphragm, act as the dynamic origin of all consciousness in man, and are immediately polarized by the other two nerve-centers, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic ganglion above the diaphragm. at these four poles the whole flow, both within the individual and from without him, of dynamic consciousness and dynamic creative relationship is centered. these four first poles constitute the first field of dynamic consciousness for the first twelve or fourteen years of the life of every child. and then a change takes place. it takes place slowly, gradually and inevitably, utterly beyond our provision or control. the living soul is unfolding itself in another great metamorphosis. what happens, in the biological psyche, is that deeper centers of consciousness and function come awake. deep in the lower body the great sympathetic center, the hypogastric plexus has been acting all the time in a kind of dream-automatism, balanced by its corresponding voluntary center, the sacral ganglion. at the age of twelve these two centers begin slowly to rumble awake, with a deep reverberant force that changes the whole constitution of the life of the individual. and as these two centers, the sympathetic center of the deeper abdomen, and the voluntary center of the loins, gradually sparkle into wakeful, _conscious_ activity, their corresponding poles are roused in the upper body. in the region of the throat and neck, the so-called cervical plexuses and the cervical ganglia dawn into activity. we have now another field of dawning dynamic consciousness, that will extend far beyond the first. and now various things happen to us. first of all actual sex establishes its strange and troublesome presence within us. this is the massive wakening of the lower body. and then, in the upper body, the breasts of a woman begin to develop, her throat changes its form. and in the man, the voice breaks, the beard begins to grow round the lips and on to the throat. there are the obvious physiological changes resulting from the gradual bursting into free activity of the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion, in the lower body, and of the cervical plexuses and ganglia of the neck, in the upper body. why the growth of hair should start at the lower and upper sympathetic regions we cannot say. perhaps for protection. perhaps to preserve these powerful yet supersensitive nodes from the inclemency of changes in temperature, which might cause a derangement. perhaps for the sake of protective warning, as hair warns when it is touched. perhaps for a screen against various dynamic vibrations, and as a receiver of other suited dynamic vibrations. it may be that even the hair of the head acts as a sensitive vibration-medium for conveying currents of physical and vitalistic activity to and from the brain. and perhaps from the centers of intense vital surcharge hair springs as a sort of annunciation or declaration, like a crest of life-assertion. perhaps all these things, and perhaps others. but with the bursting awake of the four new poles of dynamic consciousness and being, change takes place in everything, the features now begin to take individual form, the limbs develop out of the soft round matrix of child-form, the body resolves itself into distinctions. a strange creative change in being has taken place. the child before puberty is quite another thing from the child after puberty. strange indeed is this new birth, this rising from the sea of childhood into a new being. it is a resurrection which we fear. and now, a new world, a new heaven and a new earth. now new relationships are formed, the old ones retire from their prominence. now mother and father inevitably give way before masters and mistresses, brothers and sisters yield to friends. this is the period of _schwärmerei_, of young adoration and of real initial friendships. a child before puberty has playmates. after puberty he has friends and enemies. a whole new field of passional relationship. and the old bonds relaxing, the old love retreating. the father and mother bonds now relax, though they never break. the family love wanes, though it never dies. it is the hour of the stranger. let the stranger now enter the soul. and it is the first hour of true individuality, the first hour of genuine, responsible solitariness. a child knows the abyss of forlornness. but an adolescent alone knows the strange pain of growing into his own isolation of individuality. all this change is an agony and a bliss. it is a cataclysm and a new world. it is our most serious hour, perhaps. and yet we cannot be responsible for it. now sex comes into active being. until puberty, sex is submerged, nascent, incipient only. after puberty, it is a tremendous factor. what is sex, really? we can never say, satisfactorily. but we know so much: we know that it is a dynamic polarity between human beings, and a circuit of force _always_ flowing. the psychoanalyst is right so far. there can be no vivid relation between two adult individuals which does not consist in a dynamic polarized flow of vitalistic force or magnetism or electricity, call it what you will, between these two people. yet is this dynamic flow inevitably sexual in nature? this is the moot point for psychoanalysis. but let us look at sex, in its obvious manifestation. the _sexual_ relation between man and woman consummates in the act of coition. now what is the act of coition? we know its functional purpose of procreation. but, after all our experience and all our poetry and novels we know that the procreative purpose of sex is, to the individual man and woman, just a side-show. to the individual, the act of coition is a great psychic experience, a vital experience of tremendous importance. on this vital individual experience the life and very being of the individual largely depends. but what is the experience? untellable. only, we know something. we know that in the act of coition the _blood_ of the individual man, acutely surcharged with intense vital electricity--we know no word, so say "electricity," by analogy--rises to a culmination, in a tremendous magnetic urge towards the magnetic blood of the female. the whole of the living blood in the two individuals forms a field of intense, polarized magnetic attraction. so, the two poles must be brought into contact. in the act of coition, the two seas of blood in the two individuals, rocking and surging towards contact, as near as possible, clash into a oneness. a great flash of interchange occurs, like an electric spark when two currents meet or like lightning out of the densely surcharged clouds. there is a lightning flash which passes through the blood of both individuals, there is a thunder of sensation which rolls in diminishing crashes down the nerves of each--and then the tension passes. the two individuals are separate again. but are they as they were before? is the air the same after a thunder-storm as before? no. the air is as it were new, fresh, tingling with newness. so is the blood of man and woman after successful coition. after a false coition, like prostitution, there is not newness but a certain disintegration. but after coition, the actual chemical constitution of the blood is so changed, that usually sleep intervenes, to allow the time for chemical, biological readjustment through the whole system. so, the blood is changed and renewed, refreshed, almost recreated, like the atmosphere after thunder. out of the newness of the living blood pass the new strange waves which beat upon the great dynamic centers of the nerves: primarily upon the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion. from these centers rise new impulses, new vision, new being, rising like aphrodite from the foam of the new tide of blood. and so individual life goes on. perhaps, then, we will allow ourselves to say what, in psychic individual reality, is the act of coition. it is the bringing together of the surcharged electric blood of the male with the polarized electric blood of the female, with the result of a tremendous flashing interchange, which alters the constitution of the blood, and the very quality of _being_, in both. and this, surely, is sex. but is this the whole of sex? that is the question. after coition, we say the blood is renewed. we say that from the new, finely sparkling blood new thrills pass into the great affective centers of the lower body, new thrills of feeling, of impulse, of energy.--and what about these new thrills? now, a new story. the new thrills are passed on to the great upper centers of the dynamic body. the individual polarity now changes, within the individual system. the upper centers, cardiac plexus and cervical plexuses, thoracic ganglion and cervical ganglia now assume positivity. these, the upper polarized centers, have now the positive rôle to play, the solar and the hypogastric plexuses, the lumbar and the sacral ganglia, these have the submissive, negative rôle for the time being. and what then? what now, that the upper centers are finely active in positivity? now it is a different story. now there is new vision in the eyes, new hearing in the ears, new voice in the throat and speech on the lips. now the new song rises, the brain tingles to new thought, the heart craves for new activity. the heart craves for new activity. for new _collective_ activity. that is, for a new polarized connection with other beings, other men. is this new craving for polarized communion with others, this craving for a new unison, is it sexual, like the original craving for the woman? not at all. the whole polarity is different. now, the positive poles are the poles of the breast and shoulders and throat, the poles of activity and full consciousness. men, being themselves made new after the act of coition, wish to make the world new. a new, passionate polarity springs up between men who are bent on the same activity, the polarity between man and woman sinks to passivity. it is now daytime, and time to forget sex, time to be busy making a new world. is this new polarity, this new circuit of passion between comrades and co-workers, is this also sexual? it is a vivid circuit of polarized passion. is it hence sex? it is not. because what are the poles of positive connection?--the upper, busy poles. what is the dynamic contact?--a unison in spirit, in understanding, and a pure commingling in one great _work_. a mingling of the individual passion into one great _purpose_. now this is also a grand consummation for men, this mingling of many with one great impassioned purpose. but is this sex? knowing what sex is, can we call this other also sex? we cannot. this meeting of many in one great passionate purpose is not sex, and should never be confused with sex. it is a great motion in the opposite direction. and i am sure that the ultimate, greatest desire in men is this desire for great _purposive_ activity. when man loses his deep sense of purposive, creative activity, he feels lost, and is lost. when he makes the sexual consummation the supreme consummation, even in his _secret_ soul, he falls into the beginnings of despair. when he makes woman, or the woman and child the great center of life and of life-significance, he falls into the beginnings of despair. man must bravely stand by his own soul, his own responsibility as the creative vanguard of life. and he must also have the courage to go home to his woman and become a perfect answer to her deep sexual call. but he must never confuse his two issues. primarily and supremely man is _always_ the pioneer of life, adventuring onward into the unknown, alone with his own temerarious, dauntless soul. woman for him exists only in the twilight, by the camp fire, when day has departed. evening and the night are hers. the psychoanalysts, driving us back to the sexual consummation always, do us infinite damage. we have to break away, back to the great unison of manhood in some passionate _purpose_. now this is not like sex. sex is always individual. a man has his own sex: nobody else's. and sexually he goes as a single individual; he can mingle only singly. so that to make sex a general affair is just a perversion and a lie. you can't get people and talk to them about their sex, as if it were a common interest. we have got to get back to the great purpose of manhood, a passionate unison in actively making a world. this is a real commingling of many. and in such a commingling we forfeit the individual. in the commingling of sex we are alone with _one_ partner. it is an individual affair, there is no superior or inferior. but in the commingling of a passionate purpose, each individual sacredly abandons his individual. in the living faith of his soul, he surrenders his individuality to the great urge which is upon him. he may have to surrender his name, his fame, his fortune, his life, everything. but once a man, in the integrity of his own individual soul, _believes_, he surrenders his own individuality to his belief, and becomes one of a united body. he knows what he does. he makes the surrender honorably, in agreement with his own soul's deepest desire. but he surrenders, and remains responsible for the purity of his surrender. but what if he believes that his sexual consummation is his supreme consummation? then he serves the great purpose to which he pledges himself only as long as it pleases him. after which he turns it down, and goes back to sex. with sex as the one accepted prime motive, the world drifts into despair and anarchy. of all countries, america has most to fear from anarchy, even from one single moment's lapse into anarchy. the old nations are _organically_ fixed into classes, but america not. you can shake europe to atoms. and yet peasants fall back to peasantry, artisans to industrial labor, upper classes to their control--inevitably. but can you say the same of america? america must not lapse for one single moment into anarchy. it would be the end of her. she must drift no nearer to anarchy. she is near enough. well, then, americans must make a choice. it is a choice between belief in man's creative, spontaneous soul, and man's automatic power of production and reproduction. it is a choice between serving _man_, or woman. it is a choice between yielding the soul to a leader, leaders, or yielding only to the woman, wife, mistress, or mother. the great collective passion of belief which brings men together, comrades and co-workers, passionately obeying their soul-chosen leader or leaders, this is not a sex passion. not in any sense. sex holds any _two_ people together, but it tends to disintegrate society, unless it is subordinated to the great dominating male passion of collective _purpose_. but when the sex passion submits to the great purposive passion, then you have fulness. and no great purposive passion can endure long unless it is established upon the fulfillment in the vast majority of individuals of the true sexual passion. no great motive or ideal or social principle can endure for any length of time unless based upon the sexual fulfillment of the vast majority of individuals concerned. it cuts both ways. assert sex as the predominant fulfillment, and you get the collapse of living purpose in man. you get anarchy. assert _purposiveness_ as the one supreme and pure activity of life, and you drift into barren sterility, like our business life of to-day, and our political life. you become sterile, you make anarchy inevitable. and so there you are. you have got to base your great purposive activity upon the intense sexual fulfillment of all your individuals. that was how egypt endured. but you have got to keep your sexual fulfillment even then subordinate, just subordinate to the great passion of purpose: subordinate by a hair's breadth only: but still, by that hair's breadth, subordinate. perhaps we can see now a little better--to go back to the child--where freud is wrong in attributing a sexual motive to all human activity. it is obvious there is no real sexual motive in a child, for example. the great sexual centers are not even awake. true, even in a child of three, rudimentary sex throws strange shadows on the wall, in its approach from the distance. but these are only an uneasy intrusion from the as-yet-uncreated, unready biological centers. the great sexual centers of the hypogastric plexus, and the immensely powerful sacral ganglion are slowly prepared, developed in a kind of prenatal gestation during childhood before puberty. but even an unborn child kicks in the womb. so do the great sex-centers give occasional blind kicks in a child. it is part of the phenomenon of childhood. but we must be most careful not to charge these rather unpleasant apparitions or phenomena against the individual boy or girl. we must be _very_ careful not to drag the matter into mental consciousness. shoo it away. reprimand it with a pah! and a faugh! and a bit of contempt. but do not get into any heat or any fear. do not startle a passional attention. drive the whole thing away like the shadow it is, and be _very_ careful not to drive it into the consciousness. be very careful to plant no seed of burning shame or horror. throw over it merely the cold water of contemptuous indifference, dismissal. after puberty, a child may as well be told the simple and necessary facts of sex. as things stand, the parent may as well do it. but briefly, coldly, and with as cold a dismissal as possible.--"look here, you're not a child any more; you know it, don't you? you're going to be a man. and you know what that means. it means you're going to marry a woman later on, and get children. you know it, and i know it. but in the meantime, leave yourself alone. i know you'll have a lot of bother with yourself, and your feelings. i know what is happening to you. and i know you get excited about it. but you needn't. other men have all gone through it. so don't you go creeping off by yourself and doing things on the sly. it won't do you any good.--i know what you'll do, because we've all been through it. i know the thing will keep coming on you at night. but remember that i know. remember. and remember that i want you to leave yourself alone. i know what it is, i tell you. i've been through it all myself. you've got to go through these years, before you find a woman you want to marry, and whom you can marry. i went through them myself, and got myself worked up a good deal more than was good for me.--try to contain yourself. always try to contain yourself, and be a man. that's the only thing. always try and be manly, and quiet in yourself. remember i know what it is. i've been the same, in the same state that you are in. and probably i've behaved more foolishly and perniciously than ever you will. so come to me if anything _really_ bothers you. and don't feel sly and secret. i do know just what you've got and what you haven't. i've been as bad and perhaps worse than you. and the only thing i want of you is to be manly. try and be manly, and quiet in yourself." that is about as much as a father can say to a boy, at puberty. you have to be _very_ careful what you do: especially if you are a parent. to translate sex into mental ideas is vile, to make a scientific fact of it is death. as a matter of fact there should be some sort of initiation into true adult consciousness. boys should be taken away from their mothers and sisters as much as possible at adolescence. they should be given into some real manly charge. and there should be some actual initiation into sex life. perhaps like the savages, who make the boy die again, symbolically, and pull him forth through some narrow aperture, to be born again, and make him suffer and endure terrible hardships, to make a great dynamic effect on the consciousness, a terrible dynamic sense of change in the very being. in short, a long, violent initiation, from which the lad emerges emaciated, but cut off forever from childhood, entered into the serious, responsible pale of manhood. and with his whole consciousness convulsed by a great change, as his dynamic psyche actually is convulsed.--and something in the same way, to initiate girls into womanhood. there should be the intense dynamic reaction: the physical suffering and the physical realization sinking deep into the soul, changing the soul for ever. sex should come upon us as a terrible thing of suffering and privilege and mystery: a mysterious metamorphosis come upon us, and a new terrible power given us, and a new responsibility. telling?--what's the good of telling?--the mystery, the terror, and the tremendous power of sex should never be explained away. the mass of mankind should _never_ be acquainted with the scientific biological facts of sex: _never_. the mystery must remain in its dark secrecy, and its dark, powerful dynamism. the reality of sex lies in the great dynamic convulsions in the soul. and as such it should be realized, a great creative-convulsive seizure upon the soul.--to make it a matter of test-tube mixtures, chemical demonstrations and trashy lock-and-key symbols is just blasting. even more sickening is the line: "you see, dear, one day you'll love a man as i love daddy, more than anything else in the _whole_ world. and then, dear, i hope you'll marry him. because if you do you'll be happy, and i want you to be happy, my love. and so i hope you'll marry the man you really love (kisses the child).--and then, darling, there will come a lot of things you know nothing about now. you'll want to have a dear little baby, won't you, darling? your own dear little baby. and your husband's as well. because it'll be his, too. you know that, don't you, dear? it will be born from both of you. and you don't know how, do you? well, it will come from right inside you, dear, out of your own inside. you came out of mother's inside, etc., etc." but i suppose there's really nothing else to be done, given the world and society as we've got them now. the mother is doing her best. but it is all wrong. it is wrong to make sex appear as if it were part of the dear-darling-love smarm: the spiritual love. it is even worse to take the scientific test-tube line. it all kills the great effective dynamism of life, and substitutes the mere ash of mental ideas and tricks. the scientific fact of sex is no more sex than a skeleton is a man. yet you'd think twice before you stock a skeleton in front of a lad and said, "you see, my boy, this is what you are when you come to know yourself."--and the ideal, lovey-dovey "explanation" of sex as something wonderful and extra lovey-dovey, a bill-and-coo process of obtaining a sweet little baby--or else "god made us so that we must do this, to bring another dear little baby to life"--well, it just makes one sick. it is disastrous to the deep sexual life. but perhaps that is what we want. when humanity comes to its senses it will realize what a fearful sodom apple our understanding is. what terrible mouths and stomachs full of bitter ash we've all got. and then we shall take away "knowledge" and "understanding," and lock them up along with the rest of poisons, to be administered in small doses only by competent people. we have almost poisoned the mass of humanity to death with _understanding_. the period of actual death and race-extermination is not far off. we could have produced the same barrenness and frenzy of nothingness in people, perhaps, by dinning it into them that every man is just a charnel-house skeleton of unclean bones. our "understanding," our science and idealism have produced in people the same strange frenzy of self-repulsion as if they saw their own skulls each time they looked in the mirror. a man is a thing of scientific cause-and-effect and biological process, draped in an ideal, is he? no wonder he sees the skeleton grinning through the flesh. our leaders have not loved men: they have loved ideas, and have been willing to sacrifice passionate men on the altars of the blood-drinking, ever-ash-thirsty ideal. has president wilson, or karl marx, or bernard shaw ever felt one hot blood-pulse of love for the working man, the half-conscious, deluded working man? never. each of these leaders has wanted to abstract him away from his own blood and being, into some foul methuselah or abstraction of a man. and me? there is no danger of the working man ever reading my books, so i shan't hurt him that way. but oh, i would like to save him alive, in his living, spontaneous, original being. i can't help it. it is my passionate instinct. i would like him to give me back the responsibility for general affairs, a responsibility which he can't acquit, and which saps his life. i would like him to give me back the responsibility for the future. i would like him to give me back the responsibility for thought, for direction. i wish we could take hope and belief together. i would undertake my share of the responsibility, if he gave me his belief. i would like him to give me back books and newspapers and theories. and i would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and rich, original spontaneity and fullness of life. chapter x parent love in the serious hour of puberty, the individual passes into his second phase of accomplishment. but there cannot be a perfect transition unless all the activity is in full play in all the first four poles of the psyche. childhood is a chrysalis from which each must extricate himself. and the struggling youth or maid cannot emerge unless by the energy of all powers; he can never emerge if the whole mass of the world and the tradition of love hold him back. now we come to the greater peril of our particular form of idealism. it is the idealism of love and of the spirit: the idealism of yearning, outgoing love, of pure sympathetic communion and "understanding." and this idealism recognizes as the highest earthly love, the love of mother and child. and what does this mean? it means, for every delicately brought up child, indeed for all the children who matter, a steady and persistent pressure upon the upper sympathetic centers, and a steady and persistent starving of the lower centers, particularly the great voluntary center of the lower body. the center of sensual, manly independence, of exultation in the sturdy, defiant self, willfulness and masterfulness and pride, this center is steadily suppressed. the warm, swift, sensual self is steadily and persistently denied, damped, weakened, throughout all the period of childhood. and by sensual we do not mean greedy or ugly, we mean the deeper, more impulsive reckless nature. life must be always refined and superior. love and happiness must be the watchword. the willful, critical element of the spiritual mode is never absent, the silent, if forbearing disapproval and distaste is always ready. vile bullying forbearance. with what result? the center of upper sympathy is abnormally, inflamedly excited; and the centers of will are so deranged that they operate in jerks and spasms. the true polarity of the sympathetic-voluntary system within the child is so disturbed as to be almost deranged. then we have an exaggerated sensitiveness alternating with a sort of helpless fury: and we have delicate frail children with nerves or with strange whims. and we have the strange cold obstinacy of the spiritual will, cold as hell, fixed in a child. then one parent, usually the mother, is the object of blind devotion, whilst the other parent, usually the father, is an object of resistance. the child is taught, however, that both parents should be loved, and only loved: and that love, gentleness, pity, charity, and all "higher" emotions, these alone are genuine feelings, all the rest are false, to be rejected. with what result? the upper centers are developed to a degree of unnatural acuteness and reaction--or again they fall numbed and barren. and then between parents and children a painfully false relation grows up: a relation as of two adults, either of two pure lovers, or of two love-appearing people who are really trying to bully one another. instead of leaving the child with its own limited but deep and incomprehensible feelings, the parent, hopelessly involved in the sympathetic mode of selfless love, and spiritual love-will, stimulates the child into a consciousness which does not belong to it, on the one plane, and robs it of its own spontaneous consciousness and freedom on the other plane. and this is the fatality. long before puberty, by an exaggeration and an intensity of spiritual love from the parents, the second centers of sympathy are artificially aroused into response. and there is an irreparable disaster. instead of seeing as a child should see, through a glass, darkly, the child now opens premature eyes of sympathetic cognition. instead of knowing in part, as it should know, it begins, at a fearfully small age, to know in full. the cervical plexuses and the cervical ganglia, which should only begin to awake after adolescence, these centers of the higher dynamic sympathy and cognition, are both artificially stimulated, by the adult personal love-emotion and love-will into response, in a quite young child, sometimes even in an infant. this is a holy obscenity. our particular mode of idealism causes us to suppress as far as possible the sensual centers, to make them negative. the whole of the activity is concentrated, as far as possible, in the upper or spiritual centers, the centers of the breast and throat, which we will call the centers of dynamic cognition, in contrast to the centers of sensual comprehension below the diaphragm. and then a child arrives at puberty, with its upper nature already roused into precocious action. the child nowadays is almost invariably precocious in "understanding." in the north, spiritually precocious, so that by the time it arrives at adolescence it already has experienced the extended sympathetic reactions which should have lain utterly dark. and it has experienced these extended reactions with whom? with the parent or parents. which is man devouring his own offspring. for to the parents belongs, once and for all, the dynamic reaction on the first plane of consciousness only, the reaction and relationship at the first four poles of dynamic consciousness. when the second, the farther plane of consciousness rouses into action, the relationship is with strangers. all human instinct and all ethnology will prove this to us. what sex-instinct there is in a child is always _adverse_ to the parents. but also, the parents are all too quick. they all proceed to swallow their children before the children can get out of their clutches. and even if parents do send away their children at the age of puberty--to school or elsewhere--it is not much good. the mischief has been done before. for the first twelve years the parents and the whole community forcibly insist on the child's living from the upper centers only, and particularly the upper sympathetic centers, without the balance of the warm, deep sensual self. parents and community alike insist on rousing an adult sympathetic response, and a mental answer in the child-schools, sunday-schools, books, home-influence--all works in this one pernicious way. but it is the home, the parents, that work most effectively and intensely. there is the most intimate mesh of love, love-bullying, and "understanding" in which a child is entangled. so that a child arrives at the age of puberty already stripped of its childhood's darkness, bound, and delivered over. instead of waking now to a whole new field of consciousness, a whole vast and wonderful new dynamic impulse towards new connections, it finds itself fatally bound. puberty accomplishes itself. the hour of sex strikes. but there is your child, bound, helpless. you have already aroused in it the dynamic response to your own insatiable love-will. you have already established between your child and yourself the dynamic relation in the further plane of consciousness. you have got your child as sure as if you had woven its flesh again with your own. you have done what it is vicious for any parent to do: you have established between your child and yourself the bond of adult love: the love of man for man, woman for woman, or man for woman. all your tenderness, your cherishing will not excuse you. it only deepens your guilt. you have established between your child and yourself the bond of further sympathy. i do not speak of sex. i speak of pure sympathy, sacred love. the parents establish between themselves and their child the bond of the higher love, the further spiritual love, the sympathy of the adult soul. and this is fatal. it is a sort of incest. it is a dynamic _spiritual_ incest, more dangerous than sensual incest, because it is more intangible and less instinctively repugnant. but let psychoanalysis fall into what discredit it may, it has done us this great service of proving to us that the intense upper sympathy, indeed the dynamic relation either of love-will or love-sympathy, between parent and child, upon the upper plane, inevitably involves us in a conclusion of incest. for although it is our aim to establish a purely spiritual dynamic relation on the upper plane only, yet, because of the inevitable polarity of the human psychic system, we shall arouse at the same time a dynamic sensual activity on the lower plane, the deeper sensual plane. we may be as pure as angels, and yet, being human, this will and must inevitably happen. when mrs. ruskin said that john ruskin should have married his mother she spoke the truth. he _was_ married to his mother. for in spite of all our intention, all our creed, all our purity, all our desire and all our will, once we arouse the dynamic relation in the upper, higher plane of love, we inevitably evoke a dynamic consciousness on the lower, deeper plane of sensual love. and then what? of course, parents can reply that their love, however intense, is pure, and has absolutely no sensual element. maybe--and maybe not. but admit that it is so. it does not help. the intense excitement of the upper centers of sympathy willy-nilly arouses the lower centers. it arouses them to activity, even if it denies them any expression or any polarized connection. our psyche is so framed that activity aroused on one plane provokes activity on the corresponding plane, automatically. so the intense _pure_ love-relation between parent and child inevitably arouses the lower centers in the child, the centers of sex. now the deeper sensual centers, once aroused, should find response from the sensual body of some other, some friend or lover. the response is impossible between parent and child. myself, i believe that biologically there is radical sex-aversion between parent and child, at the deeper sensual centers. the sensual circuit _cannot_ adjust itself spontaneously between the two. so what have you? child and parent intensely linked in adult love-sympathy and love-will, on the upper plane, and in the child, the deeper sensual centers aroused, but finding no correspondent, no objective, no polarized connection with another person. there they are, the powerful centers of sex, acting spasmodically, without balance. they must be polarized somehow. so they are polarized to the active upper centers within the child, and you get an introvert. this is how introversion begins. the lower sexual centers are aroused. they find no sympathy, no connection, no response from outside, no expression. they are dynamically polarized by the upper centers within the individual. that is, the whole of the sexual or deeper sensual flow goes on upwards in the individual, to his own upper, from his own lower centers. the upper centers hold the lower in positive polarity. the flow goes on upwards. there _must_ be some reaction. and so you get, first and foremost, self-consciousness, an intense consciousness in the upper self of the lower self. this is the first disaster. then you get the upper body exploiting the lower body. you get the hands exploiting the sensual body, in feeling, fingering, and in masturbation. you get a pornographic longing with regard to the self. you get the obscene post cards which most youths possess. you get the absolute lust for dirty stories, which so many men have. and you get various mild sex perversions, such as masturbation, and so on. what does all this mean? it means that the activity of the lower psyche and lower body is polarized by the upper body. eyes and ears want to gather sexual activity and knowledge. the mind becomes full of sex: and always, in an introvert, of his _own_ sex. if we examine the apparent extroverts, like the flaunting italian, we shall see the same thing. it is his own sex which obsesses him. and to-day what have we but this? almost inevitably we find in a child now an intense, precocious, secret sexual preoccupation. the upper self is rabidly engaged in exploiting the lower self. a child and its own roused, inflamed sex, its own shame and masturbation, its own cruel, secret sexual excitement and sex _curiosity_, this is the greatest tragedy of our day. the child does not so much want to _act_ as to _know_. the thought of actual sex connection is usually repulsive. there is an aversion from the normal coition act. but the craving to feel, to see, to taste, to _know_, mentally in the head, this is insatiable. anything, so that the sensation and experience shall come through the _upper_ channels. this is the secret of our introversion and our perversion to-day. anything rather than spontaneous direct action from the sensual self. anything rather than the merely normal passion. introduce any trick, any idea, any mental element you can into sex, but make it an affair of the upper consciousness, the mind and eyes and mouth and fingers. this is our vice, our dirt, our disease. and the adult, and the ideal are to blame. but the tragedy of our children, in their inflamed, solitary sexual excitement, distresses us beyond any blame. it is time to drop the word love, and more than time to drop the ideal of love. every frenzied individual is told to find fulfillment in love. so he tries. whereas, there is no fulfillment in love. half of our fulfillment comes _through_ love, through strong, sensual love. but the central fulfillment, for a man, is that he possess his own soul in strength within him, deep and alone. the deep, rich aloneness, reached and perfected through love. and the passing beyond any further _quest_ of love. this central fullness of self-possession is our goal, if goal there be any. but there are two great _ways_ of fulfillment. the first, the way of fulfillment through complete love, complete, passionate, deep love. and the second, the greater, the fulfillment through the accomplishment of religious purpose, the soul's earnest purpose. we work the love way falsely, from the upper self, and work it to death. the second way, of active unison in strong purpose, and in faith, this we only sneer at. but to return to the child and the parent. the coming to the fulfillment of single aloneness, through love, is made impossible for us by the ideal, the monomania of more love. at the very _âge dangereuse_, when a woman should be accomplishing her own fulfillment into maturity and rich quiescence, she turns rabidly to seek a new lover. at the very crucial time when she should be coming to a state of pure equilibrium and rest with her husband, she turns rabidly against rest or peace or equilibrium or husband in any shape or form, and demands more love, more love, a new sort of lover, one who will "understand" her. and as often as not she turns to her son. it is true, a woman reaches her goal of fulfillment through feeling. but through being "understood" she reaches nowhere, unless the lover understands what a vice it is for a woman to get herself and her sex into her head. a woman reaches her fulfillment through love, deep sensual love, and exquisite sensitive communion. but once she reaches the point of fulfillment, she should not break off to ask for more excitements. she should take the beauty of maturity and peace and quiet faithfulness upon her. this she won't do, however, unless the man, her husband, goes on beyond her. when a man approaches the beginning of maturity and the fulfillment of his individual self, about the age of thirty-five, then is not his time to come to rest. on the contrary. deeply fulfilled through marriage, and at one with his own soul, he must now undertake the responsibility for the next step into the future. he must now give himself perfectly to some further purpose, some passionate purposive activity. till a man makes the great resolution of aloneness and singleness of being, till he takes upon himself the silence and central appeasedness of maturity; and _then, after this_, assumes a sacred responsibility for the next purposive step into the future, there is no rest. the great resolution of aloneness and appeasedness, and the further deep assumption of responsibility in purpose--this is necessary to every parent, every father, every husband, at a certain point. if the resolution is never made, the responsibility never embraced, then the love-craving will run on into frenzy, and lay waste to the family. in the woman particularly the love-craving will run on to frenzy and disaster. seeking, seeking the fulfillment in the deep passional self; diseased with self-consciousness and sex in the head, foiled by the very loving weakness of the husband who has not the courage to withdraw into his own stillness and singleness, and put the wife under the spell of his fulfilled decision; the unhappy woman beats about for her insatiable satisfaction, seeking whom she may devour. and usually, she turns to her child. here she provokes what she wants. here, in her own son who belongs to her, she seems to find the last perfect response for which she is craving. he is a medium to her, she provokes from him her own answer. so she throws herself into a last great love for her son, a final and fatal devotion, that which would have been the richness and strength of her husband and is poison to her boy. the husband, irresolute, never accepting his own higher responsibility, bows and accepts. and the fatal round of introversion and "complex" starts once more. if man will never accept his own ultimate being, his final aloneness, and his last responsibility for life, then he must expect woman to dash from disaster to disaster, rootless and uncontrolled. "_on revient toujours à son premier amour._" it sounds like a cynicism to-day. as if we really meant: "_on ne revient jamais à son premier amour._" but as a matter of fact, a man never leaves his first love, once the love is established. he may leave his first attempt at love. once a man establishes a full dynamic communication at the deeper and the higher centers, with a woman, this can never be broken. but sex in the head breaks down, and half circuits break down. once the full circuit is established, however, this can never break down. nowadays, alas, we start off self-conscious, with sex in the head. we find a woman who is the same. we marry because we are "pals." the sex is a rather nasty fiasco. we keep up a pretense of "pals"--and nice love. sex spins wilder in the head than ever. there is either a family of children whom the dissatisfied parents can devote themselves to, thereby perverting the miserable little creatures: or else there is a divorce. and at the great dynamic centers nothing has happened at all. blank nothing. there has been no vital interchange at all in the whole of this beautiful marriage affair. establish between yourself and another individual a dynamic connection at only _two_ of the four further poles, and you will have the devil of a job to break the connection. especially if it be the first connection you have made. especially if the other individual be the first in the field. this is the case of the parents. parents are first in the field of the child's further consciousness. they are criminal trespassers in that field. but that makes no matter. they are first in the field. they establish a dynamic connection between the two upper centers, the centers of the throat, the centers of the higher dynamic sympathy and cognition. they establish this circuit. and break it if you can. very often not even death can break it. and as we see, the establishment of the upper love-and-cognition circuit inevitably provokes the lower sex-sensual centers into action, even though there be no correspondence on the sensual plane between the two individuals concerned. then see what happens. if you want to see the real desirable wife-spirit, look at a mother with her boy of eighteen. how she serves him, how she stimulates him, how her true female self is his, is wife-submissive to him as never, never it could be to a husband. this is the quiescent, flowering love of a mature woman. it is the very flower of a woman's love: sexually asking nothing, asking nothing of the beloved, save that he shall be himself, and that for his living he shall accept the gift of her love. this is the perfect flower of married love, which a husband should put in his cap as he goes forward into the future in his supreme activity. for the husband, it is a great pledge, and a blossom. for the son also it seems wonderful. the woman now feels for the first time as a true wife might feel. and her feeling is towards her son. or, instead of mother and son, read father and daughter. and then what? the son gets on swimmingly for a time, till he is faced with the actual fact of sex necessity. he gleefully inherits his adolescence and the world at large, without an obstacle in his way, mother-supported, mother-loved. everything comes to him in glamour, he feels he sees wondrous much, understands a whole heaven, mother-stimulated. think of the power which a mature woman thus infuses into her boy. he flares up like a flame in oxygen. no wonder they say geniuses mostly have great mothers. they mostly have sad fates. and then?--and then, with this glamorous youth? what is he actually to do with his sensual, sexual self? bury it? or make an effort with a stranger? for he is taught, even by his mother, that his manhood must not forego sex. yet he is linked up in ideal love already, the best he will ever know. no woman will give to a stranger that which she gives to her son, her father or her brother: that beautiful and glamorous submission which is truly the wife-submission. to a stranger, a husband, a woman insists on being queen, goddess, mistress, the positive, the adored, the first and foremost and the one and only. this she will not ask from her near blood-kin. of her blood-kin, there is always one she will love devotedly. and so, the charming young girl who adores her father, or one of her brothers, is sought in marriage by the attractive young man who loves his mother devotedly. and a pretty business the marriage is. we can't think of it. of course they may be good pals. it's the only thing left. and there we are. the game is spoilt before it is begun. within the circle of the family, owing to our creed of insatiable love, intense adult sympathies are provoked in quite young children. in italy, the italian stimulates adult sex-consciousness and sex-sympathy in his child, almost deliberately. but with us, it is usually spiritual sympathy and spiritual criticism. the adult experiences are provoked, the adult devotional sympathies are linked up, prematurely, as far as the child is concerned. we have the heart-wringing spectacle of intense parent-child love, a love intense as the love of man and woman, but not sexual; or else the great brother-sister devotion. and thus, the great love-experience which should lie in the future is forestalled. within the family, the love-bond forms quickly, without the shocks and ruptures inevitable between strangers. and so, it is easiest, intensest--and seems the best. it seems the highest. you will not easily get a man to believe that his carnal love for the woman he has made his wife is as high a love as that he felt for his mother or sister. the cream is licked off from life before the boy or the girl is twenty. afterwards--repetition, disillusion, and barrenness. and the cause?--always the same. that parents will not make the great resolution to come to rest within themselves, to possess their own souls in quiet and fullness. the man has not the courage to withdraw at last into his own soul's stillness and aloneness, and _then_, passionately and faithfully, to strive for the living future. the woman has not the courage to give up her hopeless insistence on love and her endless demand for love, demand of being loved. she has not the greatness of soul to relinquish her own self-assertion, and believe in the man who believes in himself and in his own soul's efforts:--if there _are_ any such men nowadays, which is very doubtful. alas, alas, the future! your son, who has tasted the real beauty of wife-response in his mother or sister. your daughter, who adores her brother, and who marries some woman's son. they are so charming to look at, such a lovely couple. and at first it is all such a good game, such good sport. then each one begins to fret for the beauty of the lost, non-sexual, partial relationship. the sexual part of marriage has proved so--so empty. while that other loveliest thing--the poignant touch of devotion felt for mother or father or brother--why, this is missing altogether. the best is missing. the rest isn't worth much. ah well, such is life. settle down to it, and bring up the children carefully to more of the same.--the future!--you've had all your good days by the time you're twenty. and, i ask you, what good will psychoanalysis do you in this state of affairs? introduce an extra sex-motive to excite you for a bit and make you feel how thrillingly immoral things really are. and then--it all goes flat again. father complex, mother complex, incest dreams: pah, when we've had the little excitement out of them we shall forget them as we have forgotten so many other catch-words. and we shall be just where we were before: unless we are worse, with _more_ sex in the head, and more introversion, only more brazen. chapter xi the vicious circle here is a very vicious circle. and how to get out of it? in the first place, we have to break the love-ideal, once and for all. love, as we see, is not the only dynamic. taking love in its greatest sense, and making it embrace every form of sympathy, every flow from the great sympathetic centers of the human body, still it is not the whole of the dynamic flow, it is only the one-half. there is always the other voluntary flow to reckon with, the intense motion of independence and singleness of self, the pride of isolation, and the profound fulfillment through power. the very first thing of all to be recognized is the danger of idealism. it is the one besetting sin of the human race. it means the fall into automatism, mechanism, and nullity. we know that life issues spontaneously at the great nodes of the psyche, the great nerve-centers. at first these are four only: then, after puberty, they become eight: later there may still be an extension of the dynamic consciousness, a further polarization. but eight is enough at the moment. first at four, and then at eight dynamic centers of the human body, the human nervous system, life starts spontaneously into being. the soul bursts day by day into fresh impulses, fresh desire, fresh purpose, at these our polar centers. and from these dynamic generative centers issue the vital currents which put us into connection with our object. we have really no will and no choice, in the first place. it is our soul which acts within us, day by day unfolding us according to our own nature. from the objective circuits and from the subjective circuits which establish and fulfill themselves at the first four centers of consciousness we derive our first being, our child-being, and also our first mind, our child-mind. by the objective circuits we mean those circuits which are established between the self and some external object: mother, father, sister, cat, dog, bird, or even tree or plant, or even further still, some particular place, some particular inanimate object, a knife or a chair or a cap or a doll or a wooden horse. for we must insist that every object which really enters effectively into our lives does so by direct connection. if i love my mother, it is because there is established between me and her a direct, powerful circuit of vital magnetism, call it what you will, but a direct flow of dynamic _vital_ interchange and intercourse. i will not call this vital flow a _force_, because it depends on the incomprehensible initiative and control of the individual soul or self. force is that which is directed only from some universal will or law. life is _always_ individual, and therefore never controlled by one law, one god. and therefore, since the living really sway the universe, even if unknowingly; therefore there is no one universal law, even for the physical forces. because we insist that even the sun depends, for its heartbeat, its respiration, its pivotal motion, on the beating hearts of men and beast, on the dynamic of the soul-impulse in individual creatures. it is from the aggregate heartbeat of living individuals, of we know not how many or what sort of worlds, that the sun rests stable. which may be dismissed as metaphysics, although it is quite as valid or even as demonstrable as newton's law of gravitation, which law still remains a law, even if not quite so absolute as heretofore. but this is a digression. the argument is, that between an individual and any external object with which he has an affective connection, there exists a definite vital flow, as definite and concrete as the electric current whose polarized circuit sets our tram-cars running and our lamps shining, or our marconi wires vibrating. whether this object be human, or animal, or plant, or quite inanimate, there is still a circuit. my dog, my canary has a polarized connection with me. nay, the very cells in the ash-tree i loved as a child had a dynamic vibratory connection with the nuclei in my own centers of primary consciousness. and further still, the boots i have worn are so saturated with my own magnetism, my own vital activity, that if anyone else wear them i feel it is a trespass, almost as if another man used my hand to knock away a fly. i doubt very much if a blood-hound, when it takes a scent, _smells_, in our sense of the word. it receives at the infinitely sensitive telegraphic center of the dog's nostrils the vital vibration which remains in the inanimate object from the individual with whom the object was associated. i should like to know if a dog would trace a pair of quite new shoes which had merely been dragged at the end of a string. that is, does he follow the smell of the leather itself, or the vibration track of the individual whose vitality is communicated to the leather? so, there is a definite vibratory rapport between a man and his surroundings, once he definitely gets into contact with these surroundings. any particular locality, any house which has been lived in has a vibration, a transferred vitality of its own. this is either sympathetic or antipathetic to the succeeding individual in varying degree. but certain it is that the inhabitants who live at the foot of etna will always have a certain pitch of life-vibration, antagonistic to the pitch of vibration even of a palermitan, in some measure. and old houses are saturated with human presence, at last to a degree of indecency, unbearable. and tradition, in its most elemental sense, means the continuing of the same peculiar pitch of vital vibration. such is the objective dynamic flow between the psychic poles of the individual and the substance of the external object, animate or inanimate. the subjective dynamic flow is established between the four primary poles within the individual. every dynamic connection begins from one or the other of the sympathetic centers: is, or should be, almost immediately polarized from the corresponding voluntary center. then a complete flow is set up, in one plane. but this always rouses the activity on the other, corresponding plane, more or less intense. there is a whole field of consciousness established, with positive polarity of the first plane, negative polarity of the second. which being so, a whole fourfold field of dynamic consciousness now working within the individual, direct cognition takes place. the mind begins to know, and to strive to know. the business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy of knowing and comprehending the pure joy of consciousness. the second business is to act as medium, as interpreter, as agent between the individual and his object. the mind should _not_ act as a director or controller of the spontaneous centers. these the soul alone must control: the soul being that forever unknowable reality which causes us to rise into being. there is continual conflict between the soul, which is for ever sending forth incalculable impulses, and the psyche, which is conservative, and wishes to persist in its old motions, and the mind, which wishes to have "freedom," that is spasmodic, idea-driven control. mind, and conservative psyche, and the incalculable soul, these three are a trinity of powers in every human being. but there is something even beyond these. it is the individual in his pure singleness, in his totality of consciousness, in his oneness of being: the holy ghost which is with us after our pentecost, and which we may not deny. when i say to myself: "i am wrong," knowing with sudden insight that i _am_ wrong, then this is the whole self speaking, the holy ghost. it is no piece of mental inference. it is not just the soul sending forth a flash. it is my whole being speaking in one voice, soul and mind and psyche transfigured into oneness. this voice of my being i may _never_ deny. when at last, in all my storms, my whole self speaks, then there is a pause. the soul collects itself into pure silence and isolation--perhaps after much pain. the mind suspends its knowledge, and waits. the psyche becomes strangely still. and then, after the pause, there is fresh beginning, a new life adjustment. conscience is the being's consciousness, when the individual is conscious _in toto_, when he knows in full. it is something which includes and which far surpasses mental consciousness. every man must live as far as he can by his own soul's conscience. but not according to any ideal. to submit the conscience to a creed, or an idea, or a tradition, or even an impulse, is our ruin. to make the mind the absolute ruler is as good as making a cook's tourist-interpreter a king and a god, because he can speak several languages, and make an arab understand that an englishman wants fish for supper. and to make an ideal a ruling principle is about as stupid as if a bunch of travelers should never cease giving each other and their dragoman sixpence, because the dragoman's main idea of virtue is the virtue of sixpence-giving. in the same way, we _know_ we cannot live purely by impulse. neither can we live solely by tradition. we must live by all three, ideal, impulse, and tradition, each in its hour. but the real guide is the pure conscience, the voice of the self in its wholeness, the holy ghost. we have fallen now into the mistake of idealism. man always falls into one of the three mistakes. in china, it is tradition. and in the south seas, it seems to have been impulse. ours is idealism. each of the three modes is a true life-mode. but any one, alone or dominant, brings us to destruction. we must depend on the wholeness of our being, ultimately only on that, which is our holy ghost within us. whereas, in an ideal of love and benevolence, we have tried to automatize ourselves into little love-engines always stoked with the sorrows or beauties of other people, so that we can get up steam of charity or righteous wrath. a great trick is to pour on the fire the oil of our indignation at somebody else's wickedness, and then, when we've got up steam like hell, back the engine and run bish! smash! against the belly of the offender. because he said he didn't want to love any more, we hate him for evermore, and try to run over him, every bit of him, with our love-tanks. and all the time we yell at him: "will you deny love, you villain? will you?" and by the time he faintly squeaks, "i want to be loved! i want to be loved!" we have got so used to running over him with our love-tanks that we don't feel in a hurry to leave off. "_sois mon frère, ou je te tue._" "_sois mon frère, ou je me tue._" there are the two parrot-threats of love, on which our loving centuries have run as on a pair of railway-lines. excuse me if i want to get out of the train. excuse me if i can't get up any love-steam any more. my boilers are burst. we have made a mistake, laying down love like the permanent way of a great emotional transport system. there we are, however, running on wheels on the lines of our love. and of course we have only two directions, forwards and backwards. "onward, christian soldiers, towards the great terminus where bottles of sterilized milk for the babies are delivered at the bedroom windows by noiseless aeroplanes each morn, where the science of dentistry is so perfect that teeth are planted in a man's mouth without his knowing it, where twilight sleep is so delicious that every woman longs for her next confinement, and where nobody ever has to do anything except turn a handle now and then in a spirit of universal love--" that is the forward direction of the english-speaking race. the germans unwisely backed their engine. "we have a city of light. but instead of lying ahead it lies direct behind us. so reverse engines. reverse engines, and away, away to our city, where the sterilized milk is delivered by noiseless aeroplanes, _at the very precise minute when our great doctors of the fatherland have diagnosed that it is good for you_: where the teeth are not only so painlessly planted that they grow like living rock, but where their composition is such that the friction of eating stimulates the cells of the jaw-bone and develops the _superman strength of will which makes us gods_: and where not only is twilight sleep serene, but into the sleeper are inculcated the most useful and instructive dreams, calculated to perfect the character of the young citizen at this crucial period, and to enlighten permanently the mind of the happy mother, with regard to her new duties towards her child and towards our great fatherland--" here you see we are, on the railway, with new jerusalem ahead, and new jerusalem away behind us. but of course it was very wrong of the germans to reverse their engines, and cause one long collision all along the line. why should we go _their_ way to the new jerusalem, when of course they might so easily have kept on going our way. and now there's wreckage all along the line! but clear the way is our motto--or make the germans clear it. because get on we will. meanwhile we sit rather in the cold, waiting for the train to get a start. people keep on signaling with green lights and red lights. and it's all very bewildering. as for me, i'm off. i'm damned if i'll be shunted along any more. and i'm thrice damned if i'll go another yard towards that sterilized new jerusalem, either forwards or backwards. new jerusalem may rot, if it waits for me. i'm not going. so good-by! there we leave humanity, encamped in an appalling mess beside the railway-smash of love, sitting down, however, and having not a bad time, some of 'em, feeding themselves fat on the plunder: others, further down the line, with mouths green from eating grass. but all grossly, stupidly, automatically gabbling about getting the love-service running again, the trains booked for the new jerusalem well on the way once more. and occasionally a good engine gives a screech of love, and something seems to be about to happen. and sometimes there is enough steam to set the indignation-whistles whistling. but never any more will there be enough love-steam to get the system properly running. it is done. good-by, then! you may have laid your line from one end to the other of the infinite. but still there's plenty of hinterland. i'll go. good-by. ach, it will be so nice to be alone: not to hear you, not to see you, not to smell you, humanity. i wish you no ill, but wisdom. good-by! to be alone with one's own soul. not to be alone without my own soul, mind you. but to be alone with one's own soul! this, and the joy of it, is the real goal of love. my own soul, and myself. not my ego, my conceit of myself. but my very soul. to be at one in my own self. not to be questing any more. not to be yearning, seeking, hoping, desiring, aspiring. but to pause, and be alone. and to have one's own "gentle spouse" by one's side, of course, to dig one in the ribs occasionally. because really, being alone in peace means being two people together. two people who can be silent together, and not conscious of one another outwardly. me in my silence, she in hers, and the balance, the equilibrium, the pure circuit between us. with occasional lapses of course: digs in the ribs if one gets too vague or self-sufficient. they say it is better to travel than to arrive. it's not been my experience, at least. the journey of love has been rather a lacerating, if well-worth-it, journey. but to come at last to a nice place under the trees, with your "amiable spouse" who has at last learned to hold her tongue and not to bother about rights and wrongs: her own particularly. and then to pitch a camp, and cook your rabbit, and eat him: and to possess your own soul in silence, and to feel all the clamor lapse. that is the best i know. i think it is terrible to be young. the ecstasies and agonies of love, the agonies and ecstasies of fear and doubt and drop-by-drop fulfillment, realization. the awful process of human relationships, love and marital relationships especially. because we all make a very, very bad start to-day, with our idea of love in our head, and our sex in our head as well. all the fight till one is bled of one's self-consciousness and sex-in-the-head. all the bitterness of the conflict with this devil of an amiable spouse, who has got herself so stuck in her own head. it is terrible to be young.--but one fights one's way through it, till one is cleaned: the self-consciousness and sex-idea burned out of one, cauterized out bit by bit, and the self whole again, and at last free. the best thing i have known is the stillness of accomplished marriage, when one possesses one's own soul in silence, side by side with the amiable spouse, and has left off craving and raving and being only half one's self. but i must say, i know a great deal more about the craving and raving and sore ribs, than about the accomplishment. and i must confess that i feel this self-same "accomplishment" of the fulfilled being is only a preparation for new responsibilities ahead, new unison in effort and conflict, the effort to make, with other men, a little new way into the future, and to break through the hedge of the many. but--to your tents, my israel. and to that precious baby you've left slumbering there. what i meant to say was, in each phase of life you have a great circuit of human relationship to establish and fulfill. in childhood, it is the circuit of family love, established at the first four consciousness centers, and gradually fulfilling itself, completing itself. at adolescence, the first circuit of family love should be completed, dynamically finished. and then, it falls into quiescence. after puberty, family love should fall quiescent in a child. the love never breaks. it continues static and basic, the basis of the emotional psyche, the foundation of the self. it is like the moon when the moon at last subsides into her eternal orbit, round the earth. she travels in her orbit so inevitably that she forgets, and becomes unaware. she only knits her brows over the earth's greater aberrations in space. the circuit of parental love, once fulfilled, is not done away with, but only established into silence. the child is then free to establish the new connections, in which he surpasses his parents. and let us repeat, parents should never try to establish adult relations, of sympathy or interest or anything else, between themselves and their children. the attempt to do so only deranges the deep primary circuit which is the dynamic basis of our living. it is a clambering upwards only by means of a broken foundation. parents should remain parents, children children, for ever, and the great gulf preserved between the two. honor thy father and thy mother should always be a leading commandment. but this can only take place when father and mother keep their true parental distances, dignity, reserve, and limitation. as soon as father and mother try to become the _friends_ and _companions_ of their children, they break the root of life, they rupture the deepest dynamic circuit of living, they derange the whole flow of life for themselves and their children. for let us reiterate and reiterate: you cannot mingle and confuse the various modes of dynamic love. if you try, you produce horrors. you cannot plant the heart below the diaphragm or put an ocular eye in the navel. no more can you transfer parent love into friend love or adult love. parent love is established at the great primary centers, where man is father and child, playmate and brother, but where he _cannot_ be comrade or lover. comrade and lover, this is the dynamic activity of the further centers, the second four centers. and these second four centers must be active in the parent, their intense circuit established even if not fulfilled, long before the child is born. the circuit of friendship, of personal companionship, of sexual love must needs be established before the child is begotten, or at least before it attains to adolescence. these circuits of the extended field are already fully established in the parent before the centers of correspondence in the child are even formed. when therefore the four great centers of the extended consciousness arouses in a child, at adolescence, they must needs seek a strange complement, a foreign conjunction. not only is this the case, but the actual dynamic impulse of the new life which rouses at puberty is _alien_ to the original dynamic flow. the new wave-length by no means corresponds. the new vibration by no means harmonizes. force the two together, and you cause a terrible frictional excitement and jarring. it is this instinctive recognition of the different dynamic vibrations from different centers, in different modes, and in different directions of positive and negative, which lies at the base of savage taboo. after puberty, members of one family should be taboo to one another. there should be the most definite limits to the degree of contact. and mothers-in-law should be taboo to their daughters' husbands, and fathers-in-law to their sons' wives. we must again begin to learn the great laws of the first dynamic life-circuits. these laws we now make havoc of, and consequently we make havoc of our own soul, psyche, mind and health. this book is written primarily concerning the child's consciousness. it is not intended to enter the field of the post-puberty consciousness. but yet, the dynamic relation of the child is established so directly with the physical and psychical soul of the parent, that to get any inkling of dynamic child-consciousness we must understand something of parent-consciousness. we assert that the parent-child love-mode excludes the possibility of the man-and-woman, or friend-and-friend love mode. we assert that the polarity of the first four poles is inconsistent with the polarity of the second four poles. nay, between the two great fields is a certain dynamic opposition, resistance, even antipathy. so that in the natural course of life there is no possibility of confusing parent love and adult love. but we are mental creatures, and with the explosive and mechanistic aid of ideas we can pervert the whole psyche. only, however, in a destructive degree, not in a positive or constructive. let us return then. in the ordinary course of development, by the time that the child is born and grown to puberty the whole dynamic soul of the mother is engaged: first, with the children, and second, on the further, higher plane, with the husband, and with her own friends. so that when the child reaches adolescence it must inevitably cast abroad for connection. but now let us remember the actual state of affairs to-day, when the poles are reversed between the sexes. the woman is now the responsible party, the law-giver, the culture-bearer. she is the conscious guide and director of the man. she bears his soul between her two hands. and her sex is just a function or an instrument of power. this being so, the man is really the servant and the fount of emotion, love and otherwise. which is all very well, while the fun lasts. but like all perverted processes, it is exhaustive, and like the fun wears out. leaving an exhaustion, and an irritation. each looks on the other as a perverter of life. almost invariably a married woman, as she passes the age of thirty, conceives a dislike, or a contempt of her husband, or a pity which is too near contempt. particularly if he be a good husband, a true modern. and he, for his part, though just as jarred inside himself, resents only the fact that he is not loved as he ought to be. then starts a new game. the woman, even the most virtuous, looks abroad for new sympathy. she will have a new man-friend, if nothing more. but as a rule she has got something more. she has got her children. a relation between mother and child to-day is practically _never_ parental. it is personal--which means, it is critical and deliberate, and adult in provocation. the mother, in her new rôle of idealist and life-manager never, practically for one single moment, gives her child the unthinking response from the deep dynamic centers. no, she gives it what is good for it. she shoves milk in its mouth as the clock strikes, she shoves it to sleep when the milk is swallowed, and she shoves it ideally through baths and massage, promenades and practice, till the little organism develops like a mushroom to stand on its own feet. then she continues her ideal shoving of it through all the stages of an ideal up-bringing, she loves it as a chemist loves his test-tubes in which he analyzes his salts. the poor little object is his mother's ideal. but of her head she dictates his providential days, and by the force of her deliberate mentally-directed love-will she pushes him up into boyhood. the poor little devil never knows one moment when he is not encompassed by the beautiful, benevolent, idealistic, botticelli-pure, and finally obscene love-will of the mother. never, never one mouthful does he drink of the milk of human kindness: always the sterilized milk of human benevolence. there is no mother's milk to-day, save in tigers' udders, and in the udders of sea-whales. our children drink a decoction of ideal love, at the breast. never for one moment, poor baby, the deep warm stream of love from the mother's bowels to his bowels. never for one moment the dark proud recoil into rest, the soul's separation into deep, rich independence. never this lovely rich forgetfulness, as a cat trots off and utterly forgets her kittens, utterly, richly forgets them, till suddenly, click, the dynamic circuit reverses itself in her, and she remembers, and rages round in a frenzy, shouting for her young. our miserable infants never know this joy and richness and pang of real maternal warmth. our wonderful mothers never let us out of their minds for one single moment. not for a second do they allow us to escape from their ideal benevolence. not one single breath does a baby draw, free from the imposition of the pure, unselfish, botticelli-holy, detestable _love-will_ of the mother. always the _will_, the will, the love-will, the ideal will, directed from the ideal mind. always this stone, this scorpion of maternal nourishment. always this infernal self-conscious madonna starving our living guts and bullying us to death with her love. we have made the idea supplant both impulse and tradition. we have no spark of wholeness. and we live by an evil love-will. alas, the great spontaneous mode is abrogated. there is no lovely great flux of vital sympathy, no rich rejoicing of pride into isolation and independence. there is no reverence for great traditions of parenthood. no, there is substitute for everything--life-substitute--just as we have butter-substitute, and meat-substitute, and sugar-substitute, and leather-substitute, and silk-substitute, so we have life-substitute. we have beastly benevolence, and foul good-will, and stinking charity, and poisonous ideals. the poor modern brat, shoved horribly into life by an effort of will, and shoved up towards manhood by every appliance that can be applied to it, especially the appliance of the maternal will, it is really too pathetic to contemplate. the only thing that prevents us wringing our hands is the remembrance that the little devil will grow up and beget other similar little devils of his own, to invent more aeroplanes and hospitals and germ-killers and food-substitutes and poison gases. the problem of the future is a question of the strongest poison-gas. which is certainly a very sure way out of our vicious circle. there is no way out of a vicious circle, of course, except breaking the circle. and since the mother-child relationship is to-day the viciousest of circles, what are we to do? just wait for the results of the poison-gas competition presumably. oh, ideal humanity, how detestable and despicable you are! and how you deserve your own poison-gases! how you deserve to perish in your own stink. it is no use contemplating the development of the modern child, born out of the mental-conscious love-will, born to be another unit of self-conscious love-will: an ideal-born beastly little entity with a devil's own will of its own, benevolent, of course, and a satan's own seraphic self-consciousness, like a beastly botticelli brat. once we really consider this modern process of life and the love-will, we could throw the pen away, and spit, and say three cheers for the inventors of poison-gas. is there not an american who is supposed to have invented a breath of heaven whereby, drop one pop-cornful in hampstead, one in brixton, one in east ham, and one in islington, and london is a pompeii in five minutes! or was the american only bragging? because anyhow, whom has he experimented on? i read it in the newspaper, though. london a pompeii in five minutes. makes the gods look silly! chapter xii litany of exhortations i thought i'd better turn over a new leaf, and start a new chapter. the intention of the last chapter was to find a way out of the vicious circle. and it ended in poison-gas. yes, dear reader, so it did. but you've not silenced me yet, for all that. we're in a nasty mess. we're in a vicious circle. and we're making a careful study of poison-gases. the secret of greek fire was lost long ago, when the world left off being wonderful and ideal. now it is wonderful and ideal again, much wonderfuller and _much_ more ideal. so we ought to do something rare in the way of poison-gas. london a pompeii in five minutes! how to outdo vesuvius!--title of a new book by american authors. there is only one single other thing to do. and it's more difficult than poison-gas. it is to leave off loving. it is to leave off benevolenting and having a good will. it is to cease utterly. just leave off. oh, parents, see that your children get their dinners and clean sheets, but don't love them. don't love them one single grain, and don't let anybody else love them. give them their dinners and leave them alone. you've already loved them to perdition. now leave them alone, to find their own way out. wives, don't love your husbands any more: even if they cry for it, the great babies! sing: "i've had enough of that old sauce." and leave off loving them or caring for them one single bit. don't even hate them or dislike them. don't have any stew with them at all. just boil the eggs and fill the salt-cellars and be quite nice, and in your own soul, be alone and be still. be alone, and be still, preserving all the human decencies, and abandoning the indecency of desires and benevolencies and devotions, those beastly poison-gas apples of the sodom vine of the love-will. wives, don't love your husbands nor your children nor anybody. sit still, and say hush! and while you shake the duster out of the drawing-room window, say to yourself--"in the sweetness of solitude." and when your husband comes in and says he's afraid he's got a cold and is going to have double pneumonia, say quietly "surely not." and if he wants the ammoniated quinine, give it him if he can't get it for himself. but don't let him drive you out of your solitude, your singleness within yourself. and if your little boy falls down the steps and makes his mouth bleed, nurse and comfort him, but say to yourself, even while you tremble with the shock: "alone. alone. be alone, my soul." and if the servant smashes three electric-light bulbs in three minutes, say to her: "how very inconsiderate and careless of you!" but say to yourself: "don't hear it, my soul. don't take fright at the pop of a light-bulb." husbands, don't love your wives any more. if they flirt with men younger or older than yourselves, let your blood not stir. if you can go away, go away. but if you must stay and see her, then say to her, "i would rather you didn't flirt in my presence, eleanora." then, when she goes red and loosens torrents of indignation, don't answer any more. and when she floods into tears, say quietly in your own self, "my soul is my own"; and go away, be alone as much as possible. and when she works herself up, and says she must have love or she will die, then say: "not my love, however." and to all her threats, her tears, her entreaties, her reproaches, her cajolements, her winsomenesses, answer nothing, but say to yourself: "shall i be implicated in this display of the love-will? shall i be blasted by this false lightning?" and though you tremble in every fiber, and feel sick, vomit-sick with the scene, still contain yourself, and say, "my soul is my own. it shall not be violated." and learn, learn, learn the one and only lesson worth learning at last. learn to walk in the sweetness of the possession of your own soul. and whether your wife weeps as she takes off her amber beads at night, or whether your neighbor in the train sits in your coat bottoms, or whether your superior in the office makes supercilious remarks, or your inferior is familiar and impudent; or whether you read in the newspaper that lloyd george is performing another iniquity, or the germans plotting another plot, say to yourself: "my soul is my own. my soul is with myself, and beyond implication." and wait, quietly, in possession of your own soul, till you meet another man who has made the choice, and kept it. then you will know him by the look on his face: half a dangerous look, a look of cain, and half a look of gathered beauty. then you two will make the nucleus of a new society--ooray! bis! bis!! but if you should never meet such a man: and if your wife should torture you every day with her love-will: and even if she should force herself into a consumption, like catherine linton in "wuthering heights," owing to her obstinate and determined love-will (which is quite another matter than love): and if you see the world inventing poison-gas and falling into its poisoned grave: never give in, but be alone, and utterly alone with your own soul, in the stillness and sweet possession of your own soul. and don't even be angry. and _never_ be sad. why should you? it's not your affair. but if your wife should accomplish for herself the sweetness of her own soul's possession, then gently, delicately let the new mode assert itself, the new mode of relation between you, with something of spontaneous paradise in it, the apple of knowledge at last digested. but, my word, what belly-aches meanwhile. that apple is harder to digest than a lead gun-cartridge. chapter xiii cosmological well, dear reader, chapter xii was short, and i hope you found it sweet. but remember, this is an essay on child consciousness, not a tract on salvation. it isn't my fault that i am led at moments into exhortation. well, then, what about it? one fact now seems very clear--at any rate to me. we've got to pause. we haven't got to gird our loins with a new frenzy and our larynxes with a new glory song. not a bit of it. before you dash off to put salt on the tail of a new religion or of a new leader of men, dear reader, sit down quietly and pull yourself together. say to yourself: "come now, what is it all about?" and you'll realize, dear reader, that you're all in a fluster, inwardly. then say to yourself: "why am i in such a fluster?" and you'll see you've no reason at all to be so: except that it's rather exciting to be in a fluster, and it may seem rather stale eggs to be in no fluster at all about anything. and yet, dear little reader, once you consider it quietly, it's _so_ much nicer _not_ to be in a fluster. it's so much nicer not to feel one's deeper innards storming like the bay of biscay. it is so much better to get up and say to the waters of one's own troubled spirit: peace, be still ...! and they will be still ... perhaps. and then one realizes that all the wild storms of anxiety and frenzy were only so much breaking of eggs. it isn't our business to live anybody's life, or to die anybody's death, except our own. nor to save anybody's soul, nor to put anybody in the right; nor yet in the wrong, which is more the point to-day. but to be still, and to ignore the false fine frenzy of the seething world. to turn away, now, each one into the stillness and solitude of his own soul. and there to remain in the quiet with the holy ghost which is to each man his own true soul. this is the way out of the vicious circle. not to rush round on the periphery, like a rabbit in a ring, trying to break through. but to retreat to the very center, and there to be filled with a new strange stability, polarized in unfathomable richness with the center of centers. we are so silly, trying to invent devices and machines for flying off from the surface of the earth. instead of realizing that for us the deep satisfaction lies not in escaping, but in getting into the perfect circuit of the earth's terrestrial magnetism. not in breaking away. what is the good of trying to break away from one's own? what is the good of a tree desiring to fly like a bird in the sky, when a bird is rooted in the earth as surely as a tree is? nay, the bird is only the topmost leaf of the tree, fluttering in the high air, but attached as close to the tree as any other leaf. mr. einstein's theory of relativity does not supersede the newtonian law of gravitation or of inertia. it only says, "beware! the law of inertia is not the simple ideal proposition you would like to make of it. it is a vast complexity. gravitation is not one elemental uncouth force. it is a strange, infinitely complex, subtle aggregate of forces." and yet, however much it may waggle, a stone does fall to earth if you drop it. we should like, vulgarly, to rejoice and say that the new theory of relativity releases us from the old obligation of centrality. it does no such thing. it only makes the old centrality much more strange, subtle, complex, and vital. it only robs us of the nice old ideal simplicity. which ideal simplicity and logicalness has become such a fish-bone stuck in our throats. the universe is once more in the mental melting-pot. and you can melt it down as long as you like, and mutter all the jargon and abracadabra, _aldeboronti fosco fornio_ of science that mental monkey-tricks can teach you, you won't get anything in the end but a formula and a lie. the atom? why, the moment you discover the atom it will explode under your nose. the moment you discover the ether it will evaporate. the moment you get down to the real basis of anything, it will dissolve into a thousand problematic constituents. and the more problems you solve, the more will spring up with their fingers at their nose, making a fool of you. there is only one clue to the universe. and that is the individual soul within the individual being. that outer universe of suns and moons and atoms is a secondary affair. it is the death-result of living individuals. there is a great polarity in life itself. life itself is dual. and the duality is life and death. and death is not just shadow or mystery. it is the negative reality of life. it is what we call matter and force, among other things. life is individual, always was individual and always will be. life consists of living individuals, and always did so consist, in the beginning of everything. there never was any universe, any cosmos, of which the first reality was anything but living, incorporate individuals. i don't say the individuals were exactly like you and me. and they were never wildly different. and therefore it is time for the idealist and the scientist--they are one and the same, really--to stop his monkey-jargon about the atom and the origin of life and the mechanical clue to the universe. there isn't any such thing. i might as well say: "then they took the cart, and rubbed it all over with grease. then they sprayed it with white wine, and spun round the right wheel five hundred revolutions to the minute and the left wheel, in the opposite direction, seven hundred and seventy-seven revolutions to the minute. then a burning torch was applied to each axle. and lo, the footboard of the cart began to swell, and suddenly as the cart groaned and writhed, the horse was born, and lay panting between the shafts." the whole scientific theory of the universe is not worth such a tale: that the cart conceived and gave birth to the horse. i do not believe one-fifth of what science can tell me about the sun. i do not believe for one second that the moon is a dead world spelched off from our globe. i do not believe that the stars came flying off from the sun like drops of water when you spin your wet hanky. i have believed it for twenty years, because it seemed so ideally plausible. now i don't accept any ideal plausibilities at all. i look at the moon and the stars, and i know i don't believe anything that i am told about them. except that i like their names, aldebaran and cassiopeia, and so on. i have tried, and even brought myself to believe in a clue to the outer universe. and in the process i have swallowed such a lot of jargon that i would rather listen now to a negro witch-doctor than to science. there is nothing in the world that is true except empiric discoveries which work in actual appliances. i know that the sun is hot. but i won't be told that the sun is a ball of blazing gas which spins round and fizzes. no, thank you. at length, for _my_ part, i know that life, and life only is the clue to the universe. and that the living individual is the clue to life. and that it always was so, and always will be so. when the living individual dies, then is the realm of death established. then you get matter and elements and atoms and forces and sun and moon and earth and stars and so forth. in short, the outer universe, the cosmos. the cosmos is nothing but the aggregate of the dead bodies and dead energies of bygone individuals. the dead bodies decompose as we know into earth, air, and water, heat and radiant energy and free electricity and innumerable other scientific facts. the dead souls likewise decompose--or else they don't decompose. but if they _do_ decompose, then it is not into any elements of matter and physical energy. they decompose into some psychic reality, and into some potential will. they reënter into the living psyche of living individuals. the living soul partakes of the dead souls, as the living breast partakes of the outer air, and the blood partakes of the sun. the soul, the individuality, never resolves itself through death into physical constituents. the dead soul remains always soul, and always retains its individual quality. and it does not disappear, but reënters into the soul of the living, of some living individual or individuals. and there it continues its part in life, as a death-witness and a life-agent. but it does not, ordinarily, have any separate existence there, but is incorporate in the living individual soul. but in some extraordinary cases, the dead soul may really act separately in a living individual. how this all is, and what are the laws of the relation between life and death, the living and the dead, i don't know. but that this relation exists, and exists in a manner as i describe it, for my own part i know. and i am fully aware that once we direct our living attention this way, instead of to the absurdity of the atom, then we have a whole _living_ universe of knowledge before us. the universe of life and death, of which we, whose business it is to live and to die, know nothing. whilst concerning the universe of force and matter we pile up theories and make staggering and disastrous discoveries of machinery and poison-gas, all of which we were much better without. it is life we have to live by, not machines and ideals. and life means nothing else, even, but the spontaneous living soul which is our central reality. the spontaneous, living, individual soul, this is the clue, and the only clue. all the rest is derived. how it is contrived that the individual soul in the living sways the very sun in its centrality, i do not know. but it is so. it is the peculiar dynamic polarity of the living soul in every weed or bug or beast, each one separately and individually polarized with the great returning pole of the sun, that maintains the sun alive. for i take it that the sun is the great sympathetic center of our inanimate universe. i take it that the sun breathes in the effluence of all that fades and dies. across space fly the innumerable vibrations which are the basis of all matter. they fly, breathed out from the dying and the dead, from all that which is passing away, even in the living. these vibrations, these elements pass away across space, and are breathed back again. the sun itself is invisible as the soul. the sun itself is the soul of the inanimate universe, the aggregate clue to the substantial death, if we may call it so. the sun is the great active pole of the sympathetic death-activity. to the sun fly the vibrations or the molecules in the great sympathy-mode of death, and in the sun they are renewed, they turn again as the great gift back again from the sympathetic death-center towards life, towards the living. but it is not even the dead which _really_ sustain the sun. it is the dynamic relation between the solar plexus of individuals and the sun's core, a perfect circuit. the sun is materially composed of all the effluence of the dead. but the _quick_ of the sun is polarized with the living, the sun's quick is polarized in dynamic relation with the quick of life in all living things, that is, with the solar plexus in mankind. a direct dynamic connection between my solar plexus and the sun. likewise, as the sun is the great fiery, vivifying pole of the inanimate universe, the moon is the other pole, cold and keen and vivifying, corresponding in some way to a _voluntary_ pole. we live between the polarized circuit of sun and moon. and the moon is polarized with the lumbar ganglion, primarily, in man. sun and moon are dynamically polarized to our actual tissue, they affect this tissue all the time. the moon is, as it were, the pole of our particular terrestrial _volition_, in the universe. what holds the earth swinging in space is first, the great dynamic attraction to the sun, and then counterposing assertion of independence, singleness, which is polarized in the moon. the moon is the clue to our earth's individual identity, in the wide universe. the moon is an immense magnetic center. it is quite wrong to say she is a dead snowy world with craters and so on. i should say she is composed of some very intense element, like phosphorus or radium, some element or elements which have very powerful chemical and kinetic activity, and magnetic activity, affecting us through space. it is not the sun which we see in heaven. it is the rushing thither and the rushing thence of the vibrations expelled by death from the body of life, and returned back again to the body of life. possibly even a dead soul makes its journey to the sun and back, before we receive it again in our breast. just as the breath we breathe out flies to the sun and back, before we breathe it in again. and as the water that evaporates rises right to the sun, and returns here. what we see is the great golden rushing thither, from the death exhalation, towards the sun, as a great cloud of bees flying to swarm upon the invisible queen, circling round, and loosing again. this is what we see of the sun. the center is invisible for ever. and of the moon the same. the moon has her back to us for ever. not her face, as we like to think. the moon also pulls the water, as the sun does. but not in evaporation. the moon pulls by the magnetic force we call gravitation. gravitation not being quite such a newtonian simple apple as we are accustomed to find it, we are perhaps farther off from understanding the tides of the ocean than we were before the fruit of the tree fell to sir isaac's head. it is certainly not simple little-things tumble-towards-big-things gravitation. in the moon's pull there is peculiar, quite special force exerted over those water-born substances, phosphorus, salt, and lime. the dynamic energy of salt water is something quite different from that of fresh water. and it is this dynamic energy which the sea gives off, and which connects it with the moon. and the moon is some strange coagulation of substance such as salt, phosphorus, soda. it certainly isn't a snowy cold world, like a world of our own gone cold. nonsense. it is a globe of dynamic substance like radium or phosphorus, coagulated upon a certain vivid pole of energy, which pole of energy is directly polarized with our earth, in opposition with the sun. the moon is born from the death of individuals. all things, in their oneing, their unification into the pure, universal oneness, evaporate and fly like an imitation breath towards the sun. even the crumbling rocks breathe themselves off in this rocky death, to the sun of heaven, during the day. but at the same time, during the night they breathe themselves off to the moon. if we come to think of it, light and dark are a question both of the third body, the intervening body, what we will call, by stretching a point, the individual. as we all know, apart from the existence of molecules of individual matter, there is neither light nor dark. a universe utterly without matter, we don't know whether it is light or dark. even the pure space between the sun and moon, the blue space, we don't know whether, in itself, it is light or dark. we can say it is light, we can say it is dark. but light and dark are terms which apply only to ourselves, the third, the intermediate, the substantial, the individual. if we come to think of it, light and dark only mean whether we have our face or our back towards the sun. if we have our face to the sun, then we establish the circuit of cosmic or universal or material or infinite sympathy. these four adjectives, cosmic, universal, material, and infinite are almost interchangeable, and apply, as we see, to that realm of the non-individual existence which we call the realm of the substantial death. it is the universe which has resulted from the death of individuals. and to this universe alone belongs the quality of infinity: to the universe of death. living individuals have no infinity save in this relation to the total death-substance and death-being, the summed-up cosmos. light and dark, these great wonders, are relative to us alone. these are two vast poles of the cosmic energy and of material existence. these are the vast poles of cosmic sympathy, which we call the sun, and the other white pole of cosmic volition, which we call the moon. to the sun belong the great forces of heat and radiant energy, to the moon belong the great forces of magnetism and electricity, radium-energy, and so on. the sun is not, in any sense, a material body. it is an invariable intense pole of cosmic energy, and what we see are the particles of our terrestrial decomposition flying thither and returning, as fine grains of iron would fly to an intense magnet, or better, as the draught in a room veers towards the fire, attracted infallibly, as a moth towards a candle. the moth is drawn to the candle as the draught is drawn to the fire, in the absolute spell of the material polarity of fire. and air escapes again, hot and different, from the fire. so is the sun. fire, we say, is combustion. it is marvelous how science proceeds like witchcraft and alchemy, by means of an abracadabra which has no earthly sense. pray, what is combustion? you can try and answer scientifically, till you are black in the face. all you can say is that it is _that which happens_ when matter is raised to a certain temperature--and so forth and so forth. you might as well say, a word is that which happens when i open my mouth and squeeze my larynx and make various tricks with my throat muscles. all these explanations are so senseless. they describe the apparatus, and think they have described the event. fire may be accompanied by combustion, but combustion is not necessarily accompanied by fire. all a is b, but all b is not a. and therefore fire, no matter how you jiggle, is not identical with combustion. fire. fire. i insist on the absolute word. you may say that fire is a sum of various phenomena. i say it isn't. you might as well tell me a fly is a sum of wings and six legs and two bulging eyes. it is the fly which has the wings and legs, and not the legs and wings which somehow nab the fly into the middle of themselves. a fly is not a sum of various things. a fly is a fly, and the items of the sum are still fly. so with fire. fire is an absolute unity in itself. it is a dynamic polar principle. establish a certain polarity between the moon-principle and the sun-principle, between the positive and negative, or sympathetic and volitional dynamism in any piece of matter, and you have fire, you have the sun-phenomenon. it is the sudden flare into the one mode, the sun mode, the material sympathetic mode. correspondingly, establish an opposite polarity between the sun-principle and the water-principle, and you have decomposition into water, or towards watery dissolution. there are two sheer dynamic principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. and these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. the sun is not fire. but the principle of fire is the sun-principle. that is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly sun-polarized. fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards the one pole only. it is the sudden revelation of the cosmic one polarity, one identity. but there is another pole. there is the moon. and there is another absolute and visible principle, the principle of water. the moon is not water. but it is the soul of water, the invisible clue to all the waters. so that we begin to realize our visible universe as a vast dual polarity between sun and moon. two vast poles in space, invisible in themselves, but visible owing to the circuit which swoops between them, round them, the circuit of the universe, established at the cosmic poles of the sun and moon. this then is the infinite, the positive infinite of the positive pole, the sun-pole, negative infinite of the negative pole, the moon-pole. and between the two infinites all existence takes place. but wait. existence is truly a matter of propagation between the two infinites. but it needs a third presence. sun-principle and moon-principle, embracing through the æons, could never by themselves propagate one molecule of matter. the hailstone needs a grain of dust for its core. so does the universe. midway between the two cosmic infinites lies the third, which is more than infinite. this is the holy ghost life, individual life. it is so easy to imagine that between them, the two infinites of the cosmos propagated life. but one single moment of pause and silence, one single moment of gathering the whole soul into knowledge, will tell us that it is a falsity. it was the living individual soul which, dying, flung into space the two wings of the infinite, the two poles of the sun and the moon. the sun and the moon are the two eternal death-results of the death of individuals. matter, all matter, is the life-born. and what we know as inert matter, this is only the result of death in individuals, it is the dead bodies of individuals decomposed and resmelted between the hammer and anvil, fire and sand of the sun and the moon. when time began, the first individual died, the poles of the sun and moon were flung into space, and between the two, in a strange chaos and battle, the dead body was torn and melted and smelted, and rolled beneath the feet of the living. so the world was formed, always under the feet of the living. and so we have a clue to gravitation. we, mankind, are all one family. in our individual bodies burns the positive quick of all things. but beneath our feet, in our own earth, lies the intense center of our human, individual death, our grave. the earth has one center, to which we are all polarized. the circuit of our life is balanced on the living soul within us, as the positive center, and on the earth's dark center, the center of our abiding and eternal and substantial death, our great negative center, away below. this is the circuit of our immediate individual existence. we stand upon our own grave, with our death fire, the sun, on our right hand, and our death-damp, the moon, on our left. the earth's center is no accident. it is the great individual pole of us who die. it is the center of the first dead body. it is the first germ-cell of death, which germ-cell threw out the great nuclei of the sun and the moon. to this center of our earth we, as humans, are eternally polarized, as are our trees. inevitably, we fall to earth. and the clue of us sinks to the earth's center, the clue of our death, of our _weight_. and the earth flings us out as wings to the sun and moon: or as the death-germ dividing into two nuclei. so from the earth our radiance is flung to the sun, our marsh-fire to the moon, when we die. we fall into the earth. but our rising was not from the earth. we rose from the earthless quick, the unfading life. and earth, sun, and moon are born only of our death. but it is only their polarized dynamic connection with us who live which sustains them all in their place and maintains them all in their own activities. the inanimate universe rests absolutely on the life-circuit of living creatures, is built upon the arch which spans the duality of living beings. chapter xiv sleep and dreams this is going rather far, for a book--nay, a booklet--on the child consciousness. but it can't be helped. child-consciousness it is. and we have to roll away the stone of a scientific cosmos from the tomb-mouth of that imprisoned consciousness. now, dear reader, let us see where we are. first of all, we are ourselves--which is the refrain of all my chants. we are ourselves. we are living individuals. and as living individuals we are the one, pure clue to our own cosmos. to which cosmos living individuals _have always_ been the clue, since time began, and _will always_ be the clue, while time lasts. i know it is not so fireworky as the sudden evolving of life, somewhere, somewhen and somehow, out of force and matter with a pop. but that pop never popped, dear reader. the boot was on the other leg. and i wish i could mix a few more metaphors, like pops and legs and boots, just to annoy you. life never evolved, or evoluted, out of force and matter, dear reader. there is no such thing as evolution, anyhow. there is only development. man was man in the very first plasm-speck which was his own individual origin, and is still his own individual origin. as for the origin, i don't know much about it. i only know there is but one origin, and that is the individual soul. the individual soul originated everything, and has itself no origin. so that time is a matter of living experience, nothing else, and eternity is just a mental trick. of course every living speck, amoeba or newt, has its own individual soul. and we sit on our own globe, dear reader, here individually located. our own individual being is our own single reality. but the single reality of the individual being is dynamically and directly polarized to the earth's center, which is the aggregate negative center of all terrestrial existence. in short, the center which in life we thrust away from, and towards which we fall, in death. for, our individual existence being positive, we must have a negative pole to thrust away from. and when our positive individual existence breaks, and we fall into death, our wonderful individual gravitation-center succumbs to the earth's gravitation-center. so there we are, individuals, single, life-born, life-living, yet all the while poised and polarized to the aggregate center of our substantial death, our earth's quick, powerful center-clue. there may be other individuals, alive, and having other worlds under their feet, polarized to their own globe's center. but the very sacredness of my own individuality prevents my pronouncing about them, lest i, in attributing qualities to them, transgress against the pure individuality which is theirs, beyond me. if, however, there be truly other people, with their own world under their feet, then i think it is fair to say that we all have our infinite identity in the sun. that in the rush and swirl of death we pass through fiery ways to the same sun. and from the sun, can the spores of souls pass to the various worlds? and to the worlds of the cosmos seed across space, through the wild beams of the sun? is there seed of mars in my veins? and is astrology not altogether nonsense? but if the sun is the center of our infinite oneing in death with all the other after-death souls of the cosmos: and in that great central station of travel, the sun, we meet and mingle and change trains for the stars: then ought we to assume that the moon is likewise a meeting-place of dead souls? the moon surely is a meeting-place of cold, dead, angry souls. but from our own globe only. the moon is the center of our terrestrial individuality in the cosmos. she is the declaration of our existence in separateness. save for the intense white recoil of the moon, the earth would stagger towards the sun. the moon holds us to our own cosmic individuality, as a world individual in space. she is the fierce center of retraction, of frictional withdrawal into separateness. she it is who sullenly stands with her back to us, and refuses to meet and mingle. she it is who burns white with the intense friction of her withdrawal into separation, that cold, proud white fire of furious, almost malignant apartness, the struggle into fierce, frictional separation. her white fire is the frictional fire of the last strange, intense watery matter, as this matter fights its way out of combination and out of combustion with the sun-stuff. to the pure polarity of the moon fly the essential waters of our universe. which essential waters, at the moon's clue, are only an intense invisible energy, a polarity of the moon. there are only three great energies in the universal life, which is always individual and which yet sways all the physical forces as well as the vital energy; and then the two great dynamisms of the sun and the moon. to the dynamism of the sun belong heat, expansion-force, and all that range. to the dynamism of the moon the _essential_ watery forces: not just gravitation, but electricity, magnetism, radium-energy, and so on. the moon likewise is the pole of our night activities, as the sun is the pole of our day activities. remember that the sun and moon are but great self-abandons which individual life has thrown out, to the right hand and to the left. when individual life dies, it flings itself on the right hand to the sun, on the left hand to the moon, in the dual polarity, and sinks to earth. when any man dies, his soul divides in death; as in life, in the first germ, it was united from two germs. it divides into two dark germs, flung asunder: the sun-germ and the moon-germ. then the material body sinks to earth. and so we have the cosmic universe such as we know it. what is the exact relationship between us and the death-realm of the afterwards we shall never know. but this relation is none the less active every moment of our lives. there is a pure polarity between life and death, between the living and the dead, between each living individual and the outer cosmos. between each living individual and the earth's center passes a never-ceasing circuit of magnetism. it is a circuit which in man travels up the right side, and down the left side of the body, to the earth's center. it never ceases. but while we are awake it is entirely under the control and spell of the total consciousness, the individual consciousness, the soul, or self. when we sleep, however, then this individual consciousness of the soul is suspended for the time, and we lie completely within the circuit of the earth's magnetism, or gravitation, or both: the circuit of the earth's centrality. it is this circuit which is busy in all our tissue removing or arranging the dead body of our past day. for each time we lie down to sleep we have within us a body of death which dies with the day that is spent. and this body of death is removed or laid in line by the activities of the earth-circuit, the great active death-circuit, while we sleep. as we sleep the current sweeps its own way through us, as the streets of a city are swept and flushed at night. it sweeps through our nerves and our blood, sweeping away the ash of our day's spent consciousness towards one form or other of excretion. this earth-current actively sweeping through us is really the death-activity busy in the service of life. it behooves us to know nothing of it. and as it sweeps it stimulates in the primary centers of consciousness vibrations which flash images upon the mind. usually, in deep sleep, these images pass unrecorded; but as we pass towards the twilight of dawn and wakefulness, we begin to retain some impression, some record of the dream-images. usually also the images that are accidentally swept into the mind in sleep are as disconnected and as unmeaning as the pieces of paper which the street cleaners sweep into a bin from the city gutters at night. we should not think of taking all these papers, piecing them together, and making a marvelous book of them, prophetic of the future and pregnant with the past. we should not do so, although every rag of printed paper swept from the gutter would have some connection with the past day's event. but its significance, the significance of the words printed upon it is so small, that we relegate it into the limbo of the accidental and meaningless. there is no vital connection between the many torn bits of paper--only an accidental connection. each bit of paper has reference to some actual event: a bus-ticket, an envelope, a tract, a pastry-shop bag, a newspaper, a hand-bill. but take them all together, bus-ticket, torn envelope, tract, paper-bag, piece of newspaper and hand-bill, and they have no individual sequence, they belong more to the mechanical arrangements than to the vital consequence of our existence. and the same with most dreams. they are the heterogeneous odds and ends of images swept together accidentally by the besom of the night-current, and it is beneath our dignity to attach any real importance to them. it is always beneath our dignity to go degrading the integrity of the individual soul by cringing and scraping among the rag-tag of accident and of the inferior, mechanic coincidence and automatic event. only those events are significant which derive from or apply to the soul in its full integrity. to go kow-towing before the facts of change, as gamblers and fortune-readers and fatalists do, is merely a perverting of the soul's proud integral priority, a rearing up of idiotic idols and fetishes. most dreams are purely insignificant, and it is the sign of a weak and paltry nature to pay any attention to them whatever. only occasionally they matter. and this is only when something _threatens_ us from the outer mechanical, or accidental _death_-world. when anything threatens us from the world of death, then a dream may become so vivid that it arouses the actual soul. and when a dream is so intense that it arouses the soul--then we must attend to it. but we may have the most appalling nightmare because we eat pancakes for supper. here again, we are threatened with an arrest of the mechanical flow of the system. this arrest becomes so serious that it affects the great organs of the heart and lungs, and these organs affect the primary conscious-centers. now we shall see that this is the direct reverse of real living consciousness. in living consciousness the primary affective centers control the great organs. but when sleep is on us, the reverse takes place. the great organs, being obstructed in their spontaneous-automatism, at last with violence arouse the active conscious-centers. and these flash images to the brain. these nightmare images are very frequently purely mechanical: as of falling terribly downwards, or being enclosed in vaults. and such images are pure physical transcripts. the image of falling, of flying, of trying to run and not being able to lift the feet, of having to creep through terribly small passages, these are direct transcripts from the physical phenomena of circulation and digestion. it is the directly transcribed image of the heart which, impeded in its action by the gases of indigestion, is switched out of its established circuit of earth-polarity, and is as if suspended over a void, or plunging into a void: step by step, falling downstairs, maybe, according to the strangulation of the heart beats. the same paralytic inability to lift the feet when one needs to run, in a dream, comes directly from the same impeded action of the heart, which is thrown off its balance by some material obstruction. now the heart swings left and right in the pure circuit of the earth's polarity. hinder this swing, force the heart over to the left, by inflation of gas from the stomach or by dead pressure upon the blood and nerves from any obstruction, and you get the sensation of being unable to lift the feet from earth: a gasping sensation. or force the heart to over-balance towards the right, and you get the sensation of flying or of falling. the heart telegraphs its distress to the mind, and wakes us. the wakeful soul at once begins to deal with the obstruction, which was too much for the mechanical night-circuits. the same holds good of dreams of imprisonment, or of creeping through narrow passages. they are direct transfers from the squeezing of the blood through constricted arteries or heart chambers. most dreams are stimulated from the blood into the nerves and the nerve-centers. and the heart is the transmission station. for the blood has a unity and a consciousness of its own. it has a deeper, elemental consciousness of the mechanical or material world. in the blood we have the body of our most elemental consciousness, our almost material consciousness. and during sleep this material consciousness transfers itself into the nerves and to the brain. the transfer in wakefulness results in a feeling of pain or discomfort--as when we have indigestion, which is pure blood-discomfort. but in sleep the transfer is made through the dream-images which are mechanical phenomena like mirages. nightmares which have purely mechanical images may terrify us, give us a great shock, but the shock does not enter our souls. we are surprised, in the morning, to find that the bristling horror of the night seems now just nothing--dwindled to nothing. and this is because what was a purely material obstruction in the physical flow, temporary only, is indeed a nothingness to the living, integral soul. we are subject to such accidents--if we will eat pancakes for supper. and that is the end of it. but there are other dreams which linger and haunt the soul. these are true soul-dreams. as we know, life consists of reactions and interrelations from the great centers of primary consciousness. i may start a chain of connection from one center, which inevitably stimulates into activity the corresponding center. for example, i may develop a profound and passional love for my mother, in my days of adolescence. this starts, willy-nilly, the whole activity of adult love at the lower centers. but admission is made only of the upper, spiritual love, the love dynamically polarized at the upper centers. nevertheless, whether the admission is made or not, once establish the circuit in the upper or spiritual centers of adult love, and you will get a corresponding activity in the lower, passional centers of adult love. the activity at the lower center, however, is denied in the daytime. there is a repression. then the friction of the night-flow liberates the repressed psychic activity explosively. and then the image of the mother figures in passionate, disturbing, soul-rending dreams. the freudians point to this as evidence of a repressed incest desire. the freudians are too simple. it is _always_ wrong to accept a dream-meaning at its face value. sleep is the time when we are given over to the automatic processes of the inanimate universe. let us not forget this. dreams are automatic in their nature. the psyche possesses remarkably few dynamic images. in the case of the boy who dreams of his mother, we have the aroused but unattached sex plunging in sleep, causing a sort of obstruction. we have the image of the mother, the dynamic emotional image. and the automatism of the dream-process immediately unites the sex-sensation to the great stock image, and produces an incest dream. but does this prove a repressed incest desire? on the contrary. the truth is, every man has, the moment he awakes, a hatred of his dream, and a great desire to be free of the dream, free of the persistent mother-image or sister-image of the dream. it is a ghoul, it haunts his dreams, this image, with its hateful conclusions. and yet he cannot get free. as long as a man lives he may, in his dreams of passion or conflict, be haunted by the mother-image or sister-image, even when he knows that the cause of the disturbing dream is the wife. but even though the actual subject of the dream is the wife, still, over and over again, for years, the dream-process will persist in substituting the mother-image. it haunts and terrifies a man. why does the dream-process act so? for two reasons. first, the reason of simple automatic continuance. the mother-image was the first great emotional image to be introduced in the psyche. the dream-process mechanically reproduces its stock image the moment the intense sympathy-emotion is aroused. again, the mother-image refers only to the upper plane. but the dream-process is mechanical in its logic. because the mother-image refers to the great dynamic stress of the upper plane, therefore it refers to the great dynamic stress of the lower. this is a piece of sheer automatic logic. the living soul is _not_ automatic, and automatic logic does not apply to it. but for our second reason for the image. in becoming the object of great emotional stress for her son, the mother also becomes an object of poignancy, of anguish, of arrest, to her son. she arrests him from finding his proper fulfillment on the sensual plane. now it is almost always the object of arrest which becomes impressed, as it were, upon the psyche. a man very rarely has an image of a person with whom he is livingly, vitally connected. he only has dream-images of the persons who, in some way, _oppose_ his life-flow and his soul's freedom, and so become impressed upon his plasm as objects of resistance. once a man is dynamically caught on the upper plane by mother or sister, then the dream-image of mother or sister will persist until the dynamic _rapport_ between himself and his mother or sister is finally broken. and the dream-image from the upper plane will be automatically applied to the disturbance of the lower plane. because--and this is very important--the dream-process _loves_ its own automatism. it would force everything to an automatic-logical conclusion in the psyche. but the living, wakeful psyche is so flexible and sensitive, it has a horror of automatism. while the soul really lives, its deepest dread is perhaps the dread of automatism. for automatism in life is a forestalling of the death process. the living soul has its great fear. the living soul _fears_ the automatically logical conclusion of incest. hence the sleep-process invariably draws this conclusion. the dream-process, fiendishly, plays a triumph of automatism over us. but the dream-conclusion is almost invariably just the _reverse_ of the soul's desire, in any distress-dream. popular dream-telling understood this, and pronounced that you must read dreams backwards. dream of a wedding, and it means a funeral. wish your friend well, and fear his death, and you will dream of his funeral. every desire has its corresponding fear that the desire shall not be fulfilled. it is _fear_ which forms an arrest-point in the psyche, hence an image. so the dream automatically produces the fear-image as the desire-image. if you secretly wished your enemy dead, and feared he might flourish, the dream would present you with his wedding. of course this rule of inversion is too simple to hold good in all cases. yet it is one of the most general rules for dreams, and applies most often to desire-and-fear dreams of a psychic nature. so that an incest-dream would not prove an incest-desire in the living psyche. rather the contrary, a living fear of the automatic conclusion: the soul's just dread of automatism. and though this may sound like casuistry, i believe it does explain a good deal of the dream-trick.--that which is lovely to the automatic process is hateful to the spontaneous soul. the wakeful living soul fears automatism as it fears death: death being automatic. it seems to me these are the first two dream-principles, and the two most important: the principle of automatism and the principle of inversion. they will not resolve everything for us, but they will help a great deal. we have to be _very_ wary of giving way to dreams. it is really a sin against ourselves to prostitute the living spontaneous soul to the tyranny of dreams, or of chance, or fortune or luck, or any of the processes of the automatic sphere. then consider other dynamic dreams. first, the dream-image generally. any _significant_ dream-image is usually an image or a symbol of some arrest or scotch in the living spontaneous psyche. there is another principle. but if the image is a symbol, then the only safe way to explain the symbol is to proceed from the quality of emotion connected with the symbol. for example, a man has a persistent passionate fear-dream about horses. he suddenly finds himself among great, physical horses, which may suddenly go wild. their great bodies surge madly round him, they rear above him, threatening to destroy him. at any minute he may be trampled down. now a psychoanalyst will probably tell you off-hand that this is a father-complex dream. certain symbols seem to be put into complex catalogues. but it is all too arbitrary. examining the emotional reference we find that the feeling is sensual, there is a great impression of the powerful, almost beautiful physical bodies of the horses, the nearness, the rounded haunches, the rearing. is the dynamic passion in a horse the danger-passion? it is a great sensual reaction at the sacral ganglion, a reaction of intense, sensual, dominant volition. the horse which rears and kicks and neighs madly acts from the intensely powerful sacral ganglion. but this intense activity from the sacral ganglion is male: the sacral ganglion is at its highest intensity in the male. so that the horse-dream refers to some arrest in the deepest sensual activity in the male. the horse is presented as an object of terror, which means that to the man's automatic dream-soul, which loves automatism, the great sensual male activity is the greatest menace. the automatic pseudo-soul, which has got the sensual nature repressed, would like to keep it repressed. whereas the greatest desire of the living spontaneous soul is that this very male sensual nature, represented as a menace, shall be actually accomplished in life. the spontaneous self is secretly yearning for the liberation and fulfillment of the deepest and most powerful sensual nature. there may be an element of father-complex. the horse may also refer to the powerful sensual being in the father. the dream may mean a love of the dreamer for the sensual male who is his father. but it has nothing to do with _incest_. the love is probably a just love. the bull-dream is a curious reversal. in the bull the centers of power are in the breast and shoulders. the horns of the head are symbols of this vast power in the upper self. the woman's fear of the bull is a great terror of the dynamic _upper_ centers in man. the bull's horns, instead of being phallic, represent the enormous potency of the upper centers. a woman whose most positive dynamism is in the breast and shoulders is fascinated by the bull. her dream-fear of the bull and his horns which may run into her may be reversed to a significance of desire for connection, not from the centers of the lower, sensual self, but from the intense physical centers of the upper body: the phallus polarized from the upper centers, and directed towards the great breast center of the woman. her wakeful fear is terror of the great breast-and-shoulder, _upper_ rage and power of man, which may pierce her defenseless lower self. the terror and the desire are near together--and go with an admiration of the slender, abstracted bull loins. other dream-fears, or strong dream-impressions, may be almost imageless. they may be a great terror, for example, of a purely geometric figure--a figure from pure geometry, or an example of pure mathematics. or they may have no image, but only a sensation of smell, or of color, or of sound. these are the dream-fears of the soul which is falling out of human integrity into the purely mechanical mode. if we idealize ourselves sufficiently, the spontaneous centers do at last work only, or almost only, in the mechanical mode. they have no dynamic relation with another being. they cannot have. their whole power of dynamic relationship is quenched. they act now in reference purely to the mechanical world, of force and matter, sensation and law. so that in dream-activity sensation or abstraction, abstract law or calculation occurs as the predominant or exclusive image. in the dream there may be a sensation of admiration or delight. the waking sensation is fear. because the soul fears above all things its fall from individual integrity into the mechanic activity of the outer world, which is the automatic death-world. and this is our danger to-day. we tend, through deliberate idealism or deliberate material purpose, to destroy the soul in its first nature of spontaneous, integral being, and to substitute the second nature, the automatic nature of the mechanical universe. for this purpose we stay up late at night, and we rise late in the morning. to stay up late into the night is always bad. let us be as ideal as we may, when the sun goes down the natural mode of life changes in us. the mind changes its activity. as the soul gradually goes passive, before yielding up its sway, the mind falls into its second phase of activity. it collects the results of the spent day into consciousness, lays down the honey of quiet thought, or the bitter-sweet honey of the gathered flower. it is the consciousness of that which is past. evening is our time to read history and tragedy and romance--all of which are the utterance of that which is past, that which is over, that which is finished, is concluded: either sweetly concluded, or bitterly. evening is the time for this. but evening is the time also for revelry, for drink, for passion. alcohol enters the blood and acts as the sun's rays act. it inflames into life, it liberates into energy and consciousness. but by a process of combustion. that life of the day which we have not lived, by means of sun-born alcohol we can now flare into sensation, consciousness, energy and passion, and live it out. it is a liberation from the laws of idealism, a release from the restriction of control and fear. it is the blood bursting into consciousness. but naturally the course of the liberated consciousness may be in either direction: sharper mental action, greater fervor of spiritual emotion, or deeper sensuality. nowadays the last is becoming much more unusual. the active mind-consciousness of the night is a form of retrospection, or else it is a form of impulsive exclamation, direct from the blood, and unbalanced. because the active physical consciousness of the night is the blood-consciousness, the most elemental form of consciousness. vision is perhaps our highest form of _dynamic_ upper consciousness. but our deepest lower consciousness is blood-consciousness. and the dynamic lower centers are swayed from the blood. when the blood rouses into its night intensity, it naturally kindles first the lowest dynamic centers. it transfers its voice and its fire to the great hypogastric plexus, which governs, with the help of the sacral ganglion, the flow of urine through us, but which also voices the deep swaying of the blood in sex passion. sex is our deepest form of consciousness. it is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. it is pure blood-consciousness. it is the basic consciousness of the blood, the nearest thing in us to pure material consciousness. it is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is _almost_ asleep. the blood-consciousness is the first and last knowledge of the living soul: the depths. it is the soul acting in part only, speaking with its first hoarse half-voice. and blood-consciousness cannot operate purely until the soul has put off all its manifold degrees and forms of upper consciousness. as the self falls back into quiescence, it draws itself from the brain, from the great nerve-centers, into the blood, where at last it will sleep. but as it draws and folds itself livingly in the blood, at the dark and powerful hour, it sends out its great call. for even the blood is alone and in part, and needs an answer. like the waters of the red sea, the blood is divided in a dual polarity between the sexes. as the night falls and the consciousness sinks deeper, suddenly the blood is heard hoarsely calling. suddenly the deep centers of the sexual consciousness rouse to their spontaneous activity. suddenly there is a deep circuit established between me and the woman. suddenly the sea of blood which is me heaves and rushes towards the sea of blood which is her. there is a moment of pure frictional crisis and contact of blood. and then all the blood in me ebbs back into its ways, transmuted, changed. and this is the profound basis of my renewal, my deep blood renewal. and this has nothing to do with pretty faces or white skin or rosy breasts or any of the rest of the trappings of sexual love. these trappings belong to the day. neither eyes nor hands nor mouth have anything to do with the final massive and dark collision of the blood in the sex crisis, when the strange flash of electric transmutation passes through the blood of the man and the blood of the woman. they fall apart and sleep in their transmutation. but even in its profoundest, and most elemental movements, the soul is still individual. even in its most material consciousness, it is still integral and individual. you would think the great blood-stream of mankind was one and homogeneous. and it is indeed more nearly one, more near to homogeneity than anything else within us. the blood-stream of mankind is almost homogeneous. but it isn't homogeneous. in the first place, it is dual in a perfect dark dynamic polarity, the sexual polarity. no getting away from the fact that the blood of woman is dynamically polarized in opposition, or in difference to the blood of man. the crisis of their contact in sex connection is the moment of establishment of a new flashing circuit throughout the whole sea: the dark, burning red waters of our under-world rocking in a new dynamic rhythm in each of us. and then in the second place, the blood of an individual is his _own_ blood. that is, it is individual. and though we have a potential dynamic sexual connection, we men, with almost every woman, yet the great outstanding fact of the individuality even of the blood makes us need a corresponding individuality in the woman we are to embrace. the more individual the man or woman, the more unsatisfactory is a non-individual connection: promiscuity. the more individual, the more does our blood cry out for its own specific answer, an individual woman, blood-polarized with us. we have made the mistake of idealism again. we have thought that the woman who thinks and talks as we do will be the blood-answer. and we force it to be so. to our disaster. the woman who thinks and talks as we do is almost sure to have no dynamic blood-polarity with us. the dynamic blood-polarity would make her different from me, and not like me in her thought mode. blood-sympathy is so much deeper than thought-mode, that it may result in very different expression, verbally. we have made the mistake of turning life inside out: of dragging the day-self into the night, and spreading the night-self over into the day. we have made love and sex a matter of seeing and hearing and of day-conscious manipulation. we have made men and women come together on the grounds of this superficial likeness and commonalty--their mental, and upper sympathetic consciousness. and so we have forced the blood to submission. which means we force it into disintegration. we have too much light in the night, and too much sleep in the day. it is an evil thing for us to prolong as we do the mental, visual, ideal consciousness far into the night when the hour has come for this upper consciousness to fade, for the blood alone to know and to act. by provoking the reaction of the great blood-stress, the sex-reaction, from the upper, outer mental consciousness and mental lasciviousness of conscious purpose, we thereby destroy the very blood in our bodies. we prevent it from having its own dynamic sway. we prevent it from coming to its own dynamic crisis and connection, from finding its own fundamental being. no matter how we work our sex, from the upper or outer consciousness, we don't achieve anything but the falsification and impoverishment of our own blood-life. we have no choice. either we must withdraw from interference, or slowly deteriorate. we have made a corresponding mistake in sleeping on into the day. once the sun rises our constitution changes. once the sun is well up our sleep--supposing our life fairly normal--is no longer truly sleep. when the sun comes up the centers of active dynamic upper consciousness begin to wake. the blood changes its vibration and even its chemical constitution. and then we too ought to wake. we do ourselves great damage by sleeping too long into the day. the half-hour's sleep after midday meal is a readjustment. but the long hours of morning sleep are just a damage. we submit our now active centers of upper consciousness to the dominion of the blood-automatic flow. we chain ourselves down in our morning sleep. we transmute the morning's blood-strength into false dreams and into an ever-increasing force of inertia. and naturally, in the same line of inertia we persist from bad to worse. with the result that our chained-down, active nerve-centers are half-shattered before we arise. we never become newly day-conscious, because we have subjected our powerful centers of day-consciousness to be trampled and wasted into dreams and inertia by the heavy flow of the blood-automatism in the morning sleeps. then we arise with a feeling of the monotony and automatism of life. there is no good, glad refreshing. we feel tired to start with. and so we protract our day-consciousness on into the night, when we _do_ at last begin to come awake, and we tell ourselves we must sleep, sleep, sleep in the morning and the daytime. it is better to sleep only six hours than to prolong sleep on and on when the sun has risen. every man and woman should be forced out of bed soon after the sun has risen: particularly the nervous ones. and forced into physical activity. soon after dawn the vast majority of people should be hard at work. if not, they will soon be nervously diseased. chapter xv the lower self so it comes about that the moon is the planet of our nights, as the sun of our days. and this is not just accidental, or even mechanical. the influence of the moon upon the tides and upon us is not just an accident in phenomena. it is the result of the creation of the universe by life itself. it was life itself which threw the moon apart on the one hand, the sun on the other. and it is life itself which keeps the dynamic-vital relation constant between the moon and the living individuals of the globe. the moon is as dependent upon the life of individuals, for her continued existence, as each single individual is dependent upon the moon. the same with the sun. the sun sets and has his perfect polarity in the life-circuit established between him and all living individuals. break that circuit, and the sun breaks. without man, beasts, butterflies, trees, toads, the sun would gutter out like a spent lamp. it is the life-emission from individuals which feeds his burning and establishes his sun-heart in its powerful equilibrium. the same with the moon. she lives from us, primarily, and we from her. everything is a question of relativity. not only is every force relative to other force or forces, but every existence is relative to other existences. not only does the life of man depend on man, beast, and herb, but on the sun and moon, and the stars. and in another manner, the existence of the moon depends absolutely on the life of herb, beast, and man. the existence of the moon depends upon the life of individuals, that which alone is original. without the life of individuals the moon would fall asunder. and the moon particularly, because she is polarized dynamically to this, our own earth. we do not know what far-off life breathes between the stars and the sun. but our life alone supports the moon. just as the moon is the pole of our single terrestrial individuality. therefore we must know that between the moon and each individual being exists a vital dynamic flow. the life of individuals depends directly upon the moon, just as the moon depends directly upon the life of individuals. but in what way does the life of individuals depend directly upon the moon? the moon is the mother of darkness. she is the clue to the active darkness. and we, below the waist, we have our being in darkness. below the waist we are sightless. when, in the daytime, our life is polarized upwards, towards the open, sun-wakened eyes and the mind which sees in vision, then the powerful dynamic centers of the lower body act in subservience, in their negative polarity. and then we flow upwards, we go forth seeking the universe, in vision, speech, and thought--we go forth to see all things, to hear all things, to know all things by acquaintance and by knowledge. one flood of dynamic flow are we, upwards polarized, in our tallness and our wide-eyed spirit seeking to bring all the universe into the range of our conscious individuality, and eager always to make new worlds, out of this old world, to bud new green tips on the tree of life. just as a tree would die if it were not making new green tips upon all its vast old world of a body, so the whole universe would perish if man and beast and herb were not always putting forth a newness: the toad taking a vivider color, spreading his hands a little more gently, developing a more rusé intelligence, the birds adding a new note to their speech and song, a new sharp swerve to their flight, a new nicety to their nests; and man, making new worlds, new civilizations. if it were not for this striving into new creation on the part of living individuals, the universe would go dead, gradually, gradually and fall asunder. like a tree that ceases to put forth new green tips, and to advance out a little further. but each new tip arises out of the apparent death of the old, the preceding one. old leaves have got to fall, old forms must die. and if men must at certain periods fall into death in millions, why, so must the leaves fall every single autumn. and dead leaves make good mold. and so dead men. even dead men's souls. so if death has to be the goal for a great number, then let it be so. if america must invent this poison-gas, let her. when death is our goal of goals we shall invent the means of death, let our professions of benevolence be what they will. but this time, it seems to me, we have consciously and responsibly to carry ourselves through the winter-period, the period of death and denudation: that is, some of us have, some _nation_ even must. for there are not now, as in the roman times, any great reservoirs of energetic barbaric life. goths, gauls, germans, slavs, tartars. the world is very full of people, but all fixed in civilizations of their own, and they all have all our vices, all our mechanisms, and all our means of destruction. this time, the leading civilization cannot die out as greece, rome, persia died. it must suffer a great collapse, maybe. but it must carry through all the collapse the living clue to the next civilization. it's no good thinking we can leave it to china or japan or india or africa--any of the great swarms. and here we are, we don't look much like carrying through to a new era. what have we got that will carry through? the latest craze is mr. einstein's relativity theory. curious that everybody catches fire at the word relativity. there must be something in the mere suggestion, which we have been waiting for. but what? as far as i can see, relativity means, for the common amateur mind, that there is no one absolute force in the physical universe, to which all other forces may be referred. there is no one single absolute central principle governing the world. the great cosmic forces or mechanical principles can only be known in their relation to one another, and can only exist in their relation to one another. but, says einstein, this relation between the mechanical forces is constant, and may be expressed by a mathematical formula: which mathematical formula may be used to equate all mechanical forces of the universe. i hope that is not scientifically all wrong. it is what i understand of the einstein theory. what i doubt is the equation formula. it seems to me, also, that the velocity of light through space is the _deus ex machina_ in einstein's physics. somebody will some day put salt on the tail of light as it travels through space, and then its simple velocity will split up into something complex, and the relativity formula will fall to bits.--but i am a confirmed outsider, so i'll hold my tongue. all i know is that people have got the word relativity into their heads, and catch-words always refer to some latent idea or conception in the popular mind. it has taken a jew to knock the last center-pin out of our ideally spinning universe. the jewish intelligence for centuries has been picking holes in our ideal system--scientific and sociological. very good thing for us. now mr. einstein, we are glad to say, has pulled out the very axle pin. at least that is how the vulgar mind understands it. the equation formula doesn't count.--so now, the universe, according to the popular mind, can wobble about without being pinned down.--really, an anarchical conclusion. but the jewish mind insidiously drives us to anarchical conclusions. we are glad to be driven from false, automatic fixities, anyhow. and once we are driven right on to nihilism we may find a way through. so, there is nothing absolute left in the universe. nothing. lord haldane says pure knowledge is absolute. as far as it goes, no doubt. but pure knowledge is only such a tiny bit of the universe, and always relative to the thing known and to the knower. i feel inclined to relativity myself. i think there is no one absolute principle in the universe. i think everything is relative. but i also feel, most strongly, that in itself each individual living creature is absolute: in its own being. and that all things in the universe are just relative to the individual living creature. and that individual living creatures are relative to each other. and what about a goal? there is no final goal. but every step taken has its own little relative goal. so what about the next step? well, first and foremost, that every individual creature shall come to its own particular and individual fullness of being.--very nice, very pretty--but _how_? well, through a living dynamic relation to other creatures.--very nice again, pretty little adjectives. but what _sort_ of a living dynamic relation?--well, _not_ the relation of love, that's one thing, nor of brotherhood, nor equality. the next relation has got to be a relationship of men towards men in a spirit of unfathomable trust and responsibility, service and leadership, obedience and pure authority. men have got to choose their leaders, and obey them to the death. and it must be a system of culminating aristocracy, society tapering like a pyramid to the supreme leader. all of which sounds very distasteful at the moment. but upon all the vital lessons we have learned during our era of love and spirit and democracy we can found our new order. we wanted to be all of a piece. and we couldn't bring it off. because we just _aren't_ all of a piece. we wanted first to have nothing but nice daytime selves, awfully nice and kind and refined. but it didn't work. because whether we want it or not, we've got night-time selves. and the most spiritual woman ever born or made has to perform her natural functions just like anybody else. we must _always_ keep in line with this fact. well, then, we have night-time selves. and the night-self is the very basis of the dynamic self. the blood-consciousness and the blood-passion is the very source and origin of us. not that we can _stay_ at the source. nor even make a _goal_ of the source, as freud does. the business of living is to travel away from the source. but you must start every single day fresh from the source. you must rise every day afresh out of the dark sea of the blood. when you go to sleep at night, you have to say: "here dies the man i am and know myself to be." and when you rise in the morning you have to say: "here rises an unknown quantity which is still myself." the self which rises naked every morning out of the dark sleep of the passionate, hoarsely-calling blood: this is the unit for the next society. and the polarizing of the passionate blood in the individual towards life, and towards leader, this must be the dynamic of the next civilization. the intense, passionate yearning of the soul towards the soul of a stronger, greater individual, and the passionate blood-belief in the fulfillment of this yearning will give men the next motive for life. we have to sink back into the darkness and the elemental consciousness of the blood. and from this rise again. but there is no rising until the bath of darkness and extinction is accomplished. as social units, as civilized men we have to do what we do as physical organisms. every day, the sun sets from the sky, and darkness falls, and every day, when this happens, the tide of life turns in us. instead of flowing upwards and outwards towards mental consciousness and activity, it turns back, to flow downwards. downwards towards the digestion processes, downwards further to the great sexual conjunctions, downwards to sleep. this is the soul now retreating, back from the outer life of day, back to the origins. and so, it stays its hour at the first great sensual stations, the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion. but the tide ebbs on, down to the immense, almost inhuman passionate darkness of sex, the strange and moon-like intensity of the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion, then deep, deeper, past the last great station of the darkest psyche, down to the earth's center. then we sleep. and the moon is the tide-turner. the moon is the great cosmic pole which calls us back, back out of our day-self, back through the moonlit darknesses of the sensual planes, to sleep. it is the moon that sways the blood, and sways us back into the extinction of the blood.--and as the soul retreats back into the sea of its own darkness, the mind, stage by stage, enjoys the mental consciousness that belongs to this retreat back into the sensual deeps; and then it goes extinguished. there is sleep. and so we resolve back towards our elementals. we dissolve back, out of the upper consciousness, out of mind and sight and speech, back, down into the deep and massive, swaying consciousness of the dark, living blood. at the last hour of sex i am no more than a powerful wave of mounting blood. which seeks to surge and join with the answering sea in the other individual. when the sea of individual blood which i am at that hour heaves and finds its pure contact with the sea of individual blood which is the woman at that hour, then each of us enters into the wholeness of our deeper infinitude, our profound fullness of being, in the ocean of our oneness and our consciousness. this is under the spell of the moon, of sea-born aphrodite, mother and bitter goddess. for i am carried away from my sunny day-self into this other tremendous self, where knowledge will not save me, but where i must obey as the sea obeys the tides. yet however much i go, i know that i am all the while myself, in my going. this then is the duality of my day and my night being: a duality so bitter to an adolescent. for the adolescent thinks with shame and terror of his night. he would wish to have no night-self. but it is moloch, and he cannot escape it. the tree is born of its roots and its leaves. and we of our days and our nights. without the night-consummation we are trees without roots. and the night-consummation takes place under the spell of the moon. it is one pure motion of meeting and oneing. but even so, it is a circuit, not a straight line. one pure motion of meeting and oneing, until the flash breaks forth, when the two are one. and this, this flashing moment of the ignition of two seas of blood, this is the moment of begetting. but the begetting of a child is less than the begetting of the man and the woman. woman is begotten of man at that moment, into her greater self: and man is begotten of woman. this is the main. and that which cannot be fulfilled, perfected in the two individuals, that which cannot take fire into individual life, this trickles down and is the seed of a new life, destined ultimately to fulfill that which the parents could not fulfill. so it is for ever. sex then is a polarization of the individual blood in man towards the individual blood in woman. it is more, also. but in its prime functional reality it is this. and sex union means bringing into connection the dynamic poles of sex in man and woman. in sex we have our basic, most elemental being. here we have our most elemental contact. it is from the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion that the dark forces of manhood and womanhood sparkle. from the dark plexus of sympathy run out the acute, intense sympathetic vibrations direct to the corresponding pole. or so it should be, in genuine passionate love. there is no mental interference. there is even no interference of the upper centers. love is supposed to be blind. though modern love wears strong spectacles. but love is really blind. without sight or scent or hearing the powerful magnetic current vibrates from the hypogastric plexus in the female, vibrating on to the air like some intense wireless message. and there is immediate response from the sacral ganglion in some male. and then sight and day-consciousness begin to fade. in the lower animals apparently any male can receive the vibration of any female: and if need be, even across long distances of space. but the higher the development the more individual the attunement. every wireless station can only receive those messages which are in its own vibration key. so with sex in specialized individuals. from the powerful dynamic center the female sends out her dark summons, the intense dark vibration of sex. and according to her nature, she receives her responses from the males. the male enters the magnetic field of the female. he vibrates helplessly in response. there is established at once a dynamic circuit, more or less powerful. it would seem as if, while ever life remains free and wild and independent, the sex-circuit, while it lasts, is omnipotent. there is one electric flow which encompasses one male and one female, or one male and one particular group of females all polarized in the same key of vibration. this circuit of vital sex magnetism, at first loose and wide, gradually closes and becomes more powerful, contracts and grows more intense, until the two individuals arrive into contact. and even then the pulse and flow of attraction and recoil varies. in free wild life, each touch brings about an intense recoil, and each recoil causes an intense sympathetic attraction. so goes on the strange battle of desire, until the consummation is reached. it is the precise parallel of what happens in a thunder-storm, when the dynamic forces of the moon and the sun come into collision. the result is threefold: first, the electric flash, then the birth of pure water, new water. so it is in sex relation. there is a threefold result. first, the flash of pure sensation and of real electricity. then there is the birth of an entirely new state of blood in each partner. and then there is the liberation. but the main thing, as in the thunder-storm, is the absolute renewal of the atmosphere: in this case, the blood. it would no doubt be found that the electro-dynamic condition of the white and red corpuscles of the blood was quite different after sex union, and that the chemical composition of the fluid of the blood was quite changed. and in this renewal lies the great magic of sex. the life of an individual goes on apparently the same from day to day. but as a matter of fact there is an inevitable electric accumulation in the nerves and the blood, an accumulation which weighs there and broods there with intolerable pressure. and the only possible means of relief and renewal is in pure passional interchange. there is and must be a pure passional interchange from the upper self, as when men unite in some great creative or religious or constructive activity, or as when they fight each other to the death. the great goal of creative or constructive activity, or of heroic victory in fight, _must_ always be the goal of the daytime self. but the very possibility of such a goal arises out of the vivid dynamism of the conscious blood. and the blood in an individual finds its great renewal in a perfected sex circuit. a perfected sex circuit and a successful sex union. and there can be no successful sex union unless the greater hope of purposive, constructive activity fires the soul of the man all the time: or the hope of passionate, purposive _destructive_ activity: the two amount religiously to the same thing, within the individual. sex as an end in itself is a disaster: a vice. but an ideal purpose which has no roots in the deep sea of passionate sex is a greater disaster still. and now we have only these two things: sex as a fatal goal, which is the essential theme of modern tragedy: or ideal purpose as a deadly parasite. sex passion as a goal in itself always leads to tragedy. there must be the great purposive inspiration always present. but the automatic ideal-purpose is not even a tragedy, it is a slow humiliation and sterility. the great thing is to keep the sexes pure. and by pure we don't mean an ideal sterile innocence and similarity between boy and girl. we mean pure maleness in a man, pure femaleness in a woman. woman is really polarized downwards, towards the center of the earth. her deep positivity is in the downward flow, the moon-pull. and man is polarized upwards, towards the sun and the day's activity. women and men are dynamically different, in everything. even in the mind, where we seem to meet, we are really utter strangers. we may speak the same verbal language, men and women: as turk and german might both speak latin. but _whatever_ a man says, his meaning is something quite different and changed when it passes through a woman's ears. and though you reverse the sexual polarity, the flow between the sexes, still the difference is the same. the _apparent_ mutual understanding, in companionship between a man and a woman, is always an illusion, and always breaks down in the end. woman can polarize her consciousness upwards. she can obtain a hand even over her sex receptivity. she can divert even the electric spasm of coition into her upper consciousness: it was the trick which the snake and the apple between them taught her. the snake, whose consciousness is _only_ dynamic, and non-cerebral. the snake, who has no mental life, but only an intensely vivid dynamic mind, he envied the human race its mental consciousness. and he knew, this intensely wise snake, that the one way to make humanity pay more than the price of mental consciousness was to pervert woman into mentality: to stimulate her into the upper flow of consciousness. for the true polarity of consciousness in woman is downwards. her deepest consciousness is in the loins and belly. even when perverted, it is so. the great flow of female consciousness is downwards, down to the weight of the loins and round the circuit of the feet. pervert this, and make a false flow upwards, to the breast and head, and you get a race of "intelligent" women, delightful companions, tricky courtesans, clever prostitutes, noble idealists, devoted friends, interesting mistresses, efficient workers, brilliant managers, women as good as men at all the manly tricks: and better, because they are so very headlong once they go in for men's tricks. but then, after a while, pop it all goes. the moment woman has got man's ideals and tricks drilled into her, the moment she is competent in the manly world--there's an end of it. she's had enough. she's had more than enough. she hates the thing she has embraced. she becomes absolutely perverse, and her one end is to prostitute herself and her ideals to sex. which is her business at the present moment. we bruise the serpent's head: his flat and brainless head. but his revenge of bruising our heel is a good one. the heels, through which the powerful downward circuit flows: these are bruised in us, numbed with a horrible neurotic numbness. the dark strong flow that polarizes us to the earth's center is hampered, broken. we become flimsy fungoid beings, with no roots and no hold in the earth, like mushrooms. the serpent has bruised our heel till we limp. the lame gods, the enslaved gods, the toiling limpers moaning for the woman. you don't find the sun and moon playing at pals in the sky. their beams cross the great gulf which is between them. so with man and woman. they must stand clear again. they must fight their way out of their self-consciousness: there is nothing else. or, rather, each must fight the other out of self-consciousness. instead of this leprous forbearance which we are taught to practice in our intimate relationships, there should be the most intense open antagonism. if your wife flirts with other men, and you don't like it, say so before them all, before wife and man and all, say you won't have it. if she seems to you false, in any circumstance, tell her so, angrily, furiously, and stop her. never mind about being justified. if you hate anything she does, turn on her in a fury. harry her, and make her life a hell, so long as the real hot rage is in you. don't silently hate her, or silently forbear. it is such a dirty trick, so mean and ungenerous. if you feel a burning rage, turn on her and give it to her, and _never_ repent. it'll probably hurt you much more than it hurts her. but never repent for your real hot rages, whether they're "justifiable" or not. if you care one sweet straw for the woman, and if she makes you that you can't bear any more, give it to her, and if your heart weeps tears of blood afterwards, tell her you're thankful she's got it for once, and you wish she had it worse. the same with wives and their husbands. if a woman's husband gets on her nerves, she should fly at him. if she thinks him too sweet and smarmy with other people, she should let him have it to his nose, straight out. she should lead him a dog's life, and never swallow her bile. with wife or husband, you should never swallow your bile. it makes you go all wrong inside. always let fly, tooth and nail, and never repent, no matter what sort of a figure you make. we have a vice of love, of softness and sweetness and smarminess and intimacy and promiscuous kindness and all that sort of thing. we think it's so awfully nice of us to be like that, in ourselves. but in our wives or our husbands it gets on our nerves horribly. yet we think it oughtn't to, so we swallow our spleen. we shouldn't. when jesus said "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," he was beside the point. the eye doesn't really offend us. we are rather fond of our own squint eye. it only offends the person who cares for us. and it's up to this person to pluck it out. this holds particularly good of the love and intimacy vice. it'll never offend us in ourselves. while it will be gall and wormwood to our wife or husband. and it is on this promiscuous love and intimacy and kindness and sweetness, all a vice, that our self-consciousness really rests. if we are battered out of this, we shall be battered out of self-consciousness. and so, men, drive your wives, beat them out of their self-consciousness and their soft smarminess and good, lovely idea of themselves. absolutely tear their lovely opinion of themselves to tatters, and make them look a holy ridiculous sight in their own eyes. wives, do the same to your husbands. but fight for your life, men. fight your wife out of her own self-conscious preoccupation with herself. batter her out of it till she's stunned. drive her back into her own true mode. rip all her nice superimposed modern-woman and wonderful-creature garb off her. reduce her once more to a naked eve, and send the apple flying. make her yield to her own real unconscious self, and absolutely stamp on the self that she's got in her head. drive her forcibly back, back into her own true unconscious. and then you've got a harder thing still to do. stop her from looking on you as her "lover." cure her of that, if you haven't cured her before. put the fear of the lord into her that way. and make her know she's got to believe in you again, and in the deep purpose you stand for. but before you can do that, you've got to _stand_ for some deep purpose. it's no good faking one up. you won't take a woman in, not really. even when she _chooses_ to be taken in, for prettiness' sake, it won't do you any good. but combat her. combat her in her sexual pertinacity, and in her secret glory or arrogance in the sexual goal. combat her in her cock-sure belief that she "knows" and that she is "right." take it all out of her. make her yield once more to the male leadership: if you've got anywhere to lead to. if you haven't, best leave the woman alone; she has _one_ goal of her own, anyhow, and it's better than your nullity and emptiness. you've got to take a new resolution into your soul, and break off from the old way. you've got to know that you're a man, and being a man means you must go on alone, ahead of the woman, to break a way through the old world into the new. and you've got to be alone. and you've got to start off ahead. and if you don't know which direction to take, look round for the man your heart will point out to you. and follow--and never look back. because if lot's wife, looking back, was turned to a pillar of salt, these miserable men, for ever looking back to their women for guidance, they are miserable pillars of half-rotten tears. you'll have to fight to make a woman believe in you as a real man, a real pioneer. no man is a man unless to his woman he is a pioneer. you'll have to fight still harder to make her yield her goal to yours: her night goal to your day goal. the moon, the planet of women, sways us back from our day-self, sways us back from our real social unison, sways us back, like a retreating tide, in a friction of criticism and separation and social disintegration. that is woman's inevitable mode, let her words be what they will. her goal is the deep, sensual individualism of secrecy and night-exclusiveness, hostile, with guarded doors. and you'll have to fight very hard to make a woman yield her goal to yours, to make her, in her own soul, _believe_ in your goal as the goal beyond, in her goal as the way by which you go. she'll never believe until you have your soul filled with a profound and absolutely inalterable purpose, that will yield to nothing, least of all to her. she'll never believe until, in your soul, you are cut off and gone ahead, into the dark. she may of course already love you, and love you for yourself. but the love will be a nest of scorpions unless it is overshadowed by a little fear or awe of your further purpose, a living _belief_ in your going beyond her, into futurity. but when once a woman _does_ believe in her man, in the pioneer which he is, the pioneer who goes on ahead beyond her, into the darkness in front, and who may be lost to her for ever in this darkness; when once she knows the pain and beauty of this belief, knows that the loneliness of waiting and following is inevitable, that it must be so; ah, then, how wonderful it is! how wonderful it is to come back to her, at evening, as she sits half in fear and waits! how good it is to come home to her! how good it is then when the night falls! how richly the evening passes! and then, for her, at last, all that she has lost during the day to have it again between her arms, all that she has missed, to have it poured out for her, and a richness and a wonder she had never expected. it is her hour, her goal. that's what it is to have a wife. ah, how good it is to come home to your wife when she _believes_ in you and submits to your purpose that is beyond her. then, how wonderful this nightfall is! how rich you feel, tired, with all the burden of the day in your veins, turning home! then you too turn to your other goal: to the splendor of darkness between her arms. and you know the goal is there for you: how rich that feeling is. and you feel an unfathomable gratitude to the woman who loves you and believes in your purpose and receives you into the magnificent dark gratification of her embrace. that's what it is to have a wife. but no man ever had a wife unless he served a great predominant purpose. otherwise, he has a lover, a mistress. no matter how much she may be married to him, unless his days have a living purpose, constructive or destructive, but a purpose beyond her and all she stands for; unless his days have this purpose, and his soul is really committed to his purpose, she will not be a wife, she will be only a mistress and he will be her lover. if the man has no purpose for his days, then to the woman alone remains the goal of her nights: the great sex goal. and this goal is no goal, but always cries for the something beyond: for the rising in the morning and the going forth beyond, the man disappearing ahead into the distance of futurity, that which his purpose stands for, the future. the sex goal needs, absolutely needs, this further departure. and if there _be_ no further departure, no great way of belief on ahead: and if sex is the starting point and the goal as well: then sex becomes like the bottomless pit, insatiable. it demands at last the departure into death, the only available beyond. like carmen, or like anna karenina. when sex is the starting point and the returning point both, then the only issue is death. which is plain as a pike-staff in "carmen" or "anna karenina," and is the theme of almost _all_ modern tragedy. our one hackneyed, hackneyed theme. ecstasies and agonies of love, and final passion of death. death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion. lovers, pure lovers should say "let it be so." and one is always tempted to say "let it be so." but no, let it be not so. only i say this, let it be a great passion and then death, rather than a false or faked purpose. tolstoi said "no" to the passion and the death conclusion. and then drew into the dreary issue of a false conclusion. his books were better than his life. better the woman's goal, sex and death, than some _false_ goal of man's. better anna karenina and vronsky a thousand times than natasha and that porpoise of a pierre. this pretty, slightly sordid couple tried so hard to kid themselves that the porpoise pierre was puffing with great purpose. better vronsky than tolstoi himself, in my mind. better vronsky's final statement: "as a soldier i am still some good. as a man i am a ruin"--better that than tolstoi and tolstoi-ism and that beastly peasant blouse the old man wore. better passion and death than any more of these "isms." no more of the old purpose done up in aspic. better passion and death. but still--we _might_ live, mightn't we? for heaven's sake answer plainly "no," if you feel like it. no good temporizing. epilogue "_tutti i salmi finiscono in gloria._" all the psalms wind up with the gloria.--"as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. amen." well, then, amen. i hope you say amen! along with me, dear little reader: if there be any dear little reader who has got so far. if not, i say amen! all by myself.--but don't you think the show is all over. i've got another volume up my sleeve, and after a year or two years, when i have shaken it down my sleeve, i shall bring it and lay it at the foot of your liberty statue, oh columbia, as i do this one. i suppose columbia means the states.--"hail columbia!"--i suppose, etymologically, it is a nest of turtle-doves, lat. _columba_, a dove. coo me softly, then, columbia; don't roar me like the sucking doves of the critics of my "psychoanalysis and the unconscious." and when i lay this little book at the foot of the liberty statue, that brawny lady is not to look down her nose and bawl: "do you see any green in my eye?" of course i don't, dear lady. i only see the reflection of that torch--or is it a carrot?--which you are holding up to light the way into new york harbor. well, many an ass has strayed across the uneasy paddock of the atlantic, to nibble your carrot, dear lady. and i must say, you can keep on slicing off nice little carrot-slices of guineas and doubloons for an extraordinarily inexhaustible long time. and innumerable asses can collect themselves nice little heaps of golden carrot-slices, and then lift up their heads and brag over them with fairly pan-demoniac yells of gratification. of course i don't see any green in your eye, dear libertas, unless it is the smallest glint from the carrot-tips. the gleam in your eye is golden, oh columbia! nevertheless, and in spite of all this, up trots this here little ass and makes you a nice present of this pretty book. you needn't sniff, and glance at your carrot-sceptre, lady liberty. you needn't throw down the thinnest carrot-paring you can pare off, and then say: "why should i pay for this tripe, this wordy mass of rather revolting nonsense!" you can't pay for it, darling. if i didn't make you a present of it you could never buy it. so don't shake your carrot-sceptre and feel supercilious. here's a gift for you, missis. you can look in its mouth, too. mind it doesn't bite you.--no, you needn't bother to put your carrot behind your back, nobody wants to snatch it. how do you do, columbia! look, i brought you a posy: this nice little posy of words and wisdom which i made for you in the woods of ebersteinburg, on the borders of the black forest, near baden baden, in germany, in this summer of scanty grace but nice weather. i made it specially for you--whitman, for whom i have an immense regard, says "these states." i suppose i ought to say: "those states." if the publisher would let me, i'd dedicate this book to you, to "those states." because i wrote this book entirely for you, columbia. you may not take it as a compliment. you may even smell a tiny bit of schwarzwald sap in it, and be finally disgusted. i admit that trees ought to think twice before they flourish in such a disgraced place as the fatherland. "_chi va coi zoppi, all' anno zoppica._" but you've not only to gather ye rosebuds while ye may, but _where_ ye may. and so, as i said before, the black forest, etc. i know, columbia, dear libertas, you'll take my posy and put your carrot aside for a minute, and smile, and say: "i'm sure, mr. lawrence, it is a _long_ time since i had such a perfectly beautiful bunch of ideas brought me." and i shall blush and look sheepish and say: "so glad you think so. i believe you'll find they'll keep fresh quite a long time, if you put them in water." whereupon you, columbia, with real american gallantry: "oh, they'll keep for _ever_, mr. lawrence. they _couldn't_ be so cruel as to go and die, such perfectly lovely-colored ideas. lovely! thank you ever, ever so much." just think of it, columbia, how pleased we shall be with one another: and how much nicer it will be than if you snorted "high-falutin' nonsense"--or "wordy mass of repulsive rubbish." when they were busy making italy, and were just going to put it in the oven to bake: that is, when garibaldi and vittorio emmanuele had won their victories at caserta, naples prepared to give them a triumphant entry. so there sat the little king in his carriage: he had short legs and huge swagger mustaches and a very big bump of philoprogeniture. the town was all done up, in spite of the rain. and down either side of the wide street were hasty statues of large, well-fleshed ladies, each one holding up a fore-finger. we don't know what the king thought. but the staff held their breath. the king's appetite for strapping ladies was more than notorious, and naturally it looked as if naples had done it on purpose. as a matter of fact, the fore-finger meant _italia una_! "italy shall be one." ask don sturzo. now you see how risky statues are. how many nice little asses and poets trot over the atlantic and catch sight of liberty holding up this carrot of desire at arm's length, and fairly hear her say, as one does to one's pug dog, with a lump of sugar: "beg! beg!"--and "jump! jump, then!" and each little ass and poodle begins to beg and to jump, and there's a rare game round about liberty, zap, zap, zapperty-zap! do lower the carrot, gentle liberty, and let us talk nicely and sensibly. i don't like you as a _carotaia_, precious. talking about the moon, it is thrilling to read the announcements of professor pickering of harvard, that it's almost a dead cert that there's life on our satellite. it is almost as certain that there's life on the moon as it is certain there is life on mars. the professor bases his assertions on photographs--hundreds of photographs--of a crater with a circumference of thirty-seven miles. i'm not satisfied. i demand to know the yards, feet and inches. you don't come it over me with the triteness of these round numbers. "hundreds of photographic reproductions have proved irrefutably the springing up at dawn, with an unbelievable rapidity, of vast fields of foliage which come into blossom just as rapidly (sic!) and which disappear in a maximum period of eleven days."--again i'm not satisfied. i want to know if they're cabbages, cress, mustard, or marigolds or dandelions or daisies. fields of foliage, mark you. and _blossom_! come now, if you can get so far, professor pickering, you might have a shrewd guess as to whether the blossoms are good to eat, or if they're purely for ornament. i am only waiting at last for an aeroplane to land on one of these fields of foliage and find a donkey grazing peacefully. hee-haw! "the plates moreover show that great blizzards, snow-storms, and volcanic eruptions are also frequent." so no doubt the blossoms are edelweiss. "we find," says the professor, "a living world at our very doors where life in some respects resembles that of mars." all i can say is: "pray come in, mr. moony. and how is your cousin signor martian?" now i'm sure professor pickering's photographs and observations are really wonderful. but his _explanations_! come now, columbia, where is your high-falutin' nonsense trumpet? vast fields of foliage which spring up at dawn (!!!) and come into blossom just as quickly (!!!!) are rather too flowery even for my flowery soul. but there, truth is stranger than fiction. i'll bet my moon against the professor's, anyhow. so long, columbia. _a riverderci._ * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | in this e-text, bold is represented =like this=. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * the sexual question a scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study by august forel, m.d., ph.d., ll.d. formerly professor of psychiatry at and director of the insane asylum in zurich (switzerland) _english adaptation from the second german edition, revised and enlarged_ by c.f. marshall, m.d., f.r.c.s. late assistant surgeon to the hospital for diseases of the skin, london illustrated _revised edition_ [illustration] brooklyn, new york physicians and surgeons book company henry and pacific streets copyright, copyright, owned by physicians and surgeons book co. printed in u.s.a. preface to the first edition this book is the fruit of long experience and reflection. it has two fundamental ideas--the study of nature, and the study of the psychology of man in health and in disease. to harmonize the aspirations of human nature and the data of the sociology of the different human races and the different epochs of history, with the results of natural science and the laws of mental and sexual evolution which these have revealed to us, is a task which has become more and more necessary at the present day. it is our duty to our descendants to contribute as far as is in our power to its accomplishment. in recognition of the immense progress of education which we owe to the sweat, the blood, and often to the martyrdom of our predecessors, it behoves us to prepare for our children a life more happy than ours. i am well aware of the disproportion which exists between the magnitude of my task and the imperfections of my work. i have not been able to study as much as should be done the innumerable works which treat of the same subject. others, better versed than myself in the literature of the subject, will be able later on to fill this regrettable lacuna. i have endeavored, above all things, to study the question from all points of view, in order to avoid the errors which result from any study which is made from one point of view only. this is a thing which has generally been neglected. i must express my thanks to my friend, _professor mahaim_, and especially to my publisher and cousin, _s. steinheil_, for the help and excellent advice which they have given me in the revision of my work; also to _professor boveri_, who has been kind enough to revise the figures, to . dr. a. forel. chigny près morges (suisse). preface to the second edition the text of the first edition has been revised and corrected, but, apart from some points of detail, the subject matter has not been changed. the examples at the end of chapter v (first edition) no longer form a special appendix; they have been included in the parts of the book which specially concern them; some of them have been omitted as being superfluous. in the domain with which we are concerned the french public are too much afraid, i think, of crudities and of calling things by their proper name. by veiled words and by indirect locution one may say anything, but i have decided not to employ such subterfuges in treating of such a vital social question with the seriousness that it requires. it seems that there is a fear of young people hearing the sexual question spoken of freely and openly; but it is not taken into account that in hiding these things under half-understood words one only excites their curiosity, and, owing to their being blindfolded, they are delivered into the snares and surprises of debauchery. i cannot better illustrate the error that i have just pointed out than by quoting, among several others of the same kind, a letter which i have received from a young girl, aged years, intelligent, virtuous, educated, and well brought up, but without restraint. having read my book she put several questions to me to which i replied. on my part i requested her to tell me frankly: ( ). if, in her opinion, i had been mistaken in my judgment of the sexual psychology of the normal young girl; ( ). if my book had done her the least harm, moral or otherwise. i begged her to criticise me without pity, for i wished above all things to be clear on the effect produced by my book. this is her letter: "i must thank you for the deep and unalterable impression which your book has produced on me. i am a young girl of years, and you know how difficult it is for us to see clearly into those natural things which so closely concern us. i cannot, therefore, thank you too much for the calm enlightenment which has been produced in me, and for the just and humane words which you devote to the education of our sex. i hope one day to have the good fortune to apply to my children the ideas on education with which you have inspired me. "you ask me for the impression which your book has made on me. it is true that i am still very young, but i have read much. my mother has brought me up very freely, so that i can count myself among the young girls who are free from prejudice. in spite of this, a sort of internal anxiety or false shame has hindered me from speaking of all the things of which you treat. all that i knew i had read in books or derived by instinct. although i knew very well that my mother would always answer my questions i never asked any. "i declare that latterly my mind had been in a state of veritable chaos. i was obsessed and tormented by a fear of everything of which i was ignorant and some day ought to learn. this is why i was anxious to read your book which a friend showed me. i will now express myself more clearly. "the first chapters were difficult for me, not because i could not understand them, but owing to the strange and novel experience which the truth made in me when plainly and scientifically expounded. wishing to read everything i applied myself to the book laboriously. my first impression was that of disgust for all human beings and mistrust of everything. but i was soon glad to find that i was a very normal young girl, so that this impression soon passed away. i was no longer excited over conversations which i heard, but took a real interest in them, and i was happy to have become acquainted with some one who understood us young girls. "i am, therefore, a young girl whose sensations are neither cold nor perverse, and i am always rejoiced, in reading your book, to see with what truth you describe our sexual impressions. those who maintain that we feel in this way the same as men make me smile. in your book ("hygiene of marriage," p. ) you say that the idea of marriage awakens in a normal young girl a kind of anguish and disgust, and that this feeling disappears as soon as she has found some one whom she loves. this is extremely true and well observed. i am in complete agreement with a friend with whom i have often discussed your book; we young girls are very little attracted by the purely sexual side of marriage, and we should prefer to see children come into the world by some other way than that ordained by nature. this will, perhaps, make you laugh. however, i think you will understand my feelings. "when i had finished reading your book i became absolutely tranquil, and my ideas were enlightened. it goes without saying that it is no longer possible for me to be ingenuous, but i should like to know what one gains by such naivety. it is very easy to be innocent when one knows nothing, and this is of no account. i never thought for a moment to find your book immoral, and that is why i do not think you have done me any harm. excuse me for having written at such length, but i could not abbreviate when dealing with such a serious question." the author of this letter has, at my request, authorized me to publish it anonymously. i think that the candor, the loyalty and the maturity of judgment of the sentiments expressed by this young girl are of much more value and are much more healthy than all the prudishness and false shame of our conventional morality. dr. a. forel. chigny près morges (suisse). contents chapter i page the reproduction of living beings--history of the germ-- cell-division--parthenogenesis--conjugation--mneme--embryonic development--difference of sexes--castration--hermaphrodism-- heredity--blastophthoria chapter ii the evolution or descent of living beings chapter iii natural conditions of mechanism of human coitus--pregnancy-- correlative sexual characters chapter iv the sexual appetite in man and woman--flirtation chapter v love and other irradiations of the sexual appetite in the human mind--psychic irradiations of love in man: procreative instinct, jealousy, sexual braggardism, pornographic spirit, sexual hypocrisy, prudery and modesty, old bachelors--psychic irradiations of love in woman: old maids, passiveness and desire, abandon and exaltation, desire for domination, petticoat government, desire of maternity and maternal love, routine and infatuation, jealousy, dissimulation, coquetry, prudery and modesty--fetichism and anti-fetichism-- psychological relations of love to religion chapter vi ethnology and history of the sexual life of man and of marriage--origin of marriage--antiquity of matrimonial institutions--criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity-- marriage and celibacy--sexual advances and demands of marriage--methods of attraction--liberty of choice--sexual selection--law of resemblance--hybrids--prohibition of consanguineous marriages--role of sentiment and calculation in sexual selection--marriage by purchase--decadence of marriage by purchase--dowry--nuptial ceremonies--forms of marriage--duration of marriage--history of extra-nuptial sexual intercourse chapter vii sexual evolution--phylogeny and ontogeny of sexual life chapter viii sexual pathology--pathology of the sexual organs--venereal disease--sexual psychology--reflex anomalies--psychic impotence--sexual paradoxy--sexual anæsthesia--sexual hyperæsthesia--masturbation and onanism--perversions of the sexual appetite: sadism, masochism, fetichism, exhibitionism, homosexual love, sexual inversion, pederosis, sodomy--sexual anomalies in the insane and psychopathic-- effects of alcohol on the sexual appetite--sexual anomalies by suggestion and auto-suggestion--sexual perversions due to habit chapter ix the role of suggestion in sexual life--amorous intoxication chapter x the relations of the sexual question to money and property-- prostitution, proxenetism and venal concubinage chapter xi the influence of environment on sexual life--influence of climate--town and country life--vagabondage--americanism-- saloons and alcohol--riches and poverty--rank and social position--individual life--boarding schools. chapter xii religion and sexual life chapter xiii rights in sexual life--civil law--penal law--a medico-legal case chapter xiv medicine and sexual life--prostitution--sexual hygiene-- extra-nuptial intercourse--medical advice--means of regulating or preventing conception--hygiene of marriage-- hygiene of pregnancy--medical advice as to marriage--medical secrecy--artificial abortion--treatment of sexual disorders chapter xv sexual morality chapter xvi the sexual question in politics and in political economy chapter xvii the sexual question in pedagogy chapter xviii the sexual question in art chapter xix conclusions--utopian ideas on the ideal marriage of the future--bibliographical remarks the sexual question the sexual question introduction my object is to study the sexual question under all its aspects: scientific, ethnological, pathological and social, and to seek the best solution of the numerous problems connected with it. unfortunately, in publications dealing with this subject, eroticism usually plays a considerable part, and it is difficult for an author to abstract himself from this, for it is reflected unconsciously in his thoughts. as all sentiment, more or less, warps judgment, it is the duty of scientific criticism to eliminate eroticism in order to be exact and impartial. we shall, therefore, do all that is possible to free ourselves from it in the course of the present study. the sexual question is of fundamental importance for humanity, whose happiness and well-being depend largely on the best solution of this important problem. in dealing with such a delicate subject i shall endeavor to avoid narrow-mindedness and prejudice; i shall avoid tiresome quotations, and shall only employ technical terms when necessary, as they rather interfere with the comprehension of the subject. i shall take care to explain all those which appear to me indispensable. my opinions on the sexual question are based, on the one hand, on my scientific study of the human brain, and on the other hand on the long personal experience of an alienist who has devoted himself almost as much to normal mentality and questions of social hygiene as to pathological mentality. i have, however, been obliged to rely on the fundamental work of _westermark_ with regard to ethnology, this subject being strange to me. concerning sexual psycho-pathology i have followed the classification of _krafft-ebing_. the sexual question is extraordinarily complex, and we cannot expect to find a simple solution for it as we can for the questions of alcoholism, slavery, torture, etc. the latter are solved in one word--suppression. suppression of slavery and torture; suppression of the usage of alcoholic drinks. we are concerned here with ulcers artificially produced and preserved in human society; ulcers which must be simply extirpated. their suppression is nothing but beneficial, since, far from being connected with the normal conditions of human existence, they place it in peril. sexual instinct and sentiment, on the contrary, have their roots in life itself; they are intimately bound up with humanity, and therefore require quite a different treatment. but human society has guided them into false and pernicious ways. it is important to turn them from these in order to tranquilize and regulate their course by damming them up and canalizing them. the fundamental axiom of the sexual question is as follows: _with man, as with all living beings, the constant object of all sexual function, and consequently of sexual love, is the reproduction of the species._ it is therefore necessary to treat the question from the point of view of the natural sciences, physiology, psychology and sociology. this has already been done more than once, but usually in erudite treatises which only look upon one side of the question; or, on the other hand, in a superficial and often frivolous manner. to ensure happiness, humanity should desire to reproduce itself in a manner which elevates progressively all the physical and mental faculties of man, with regard to health and bodily strength, as much as to sentiment, intelligence, will, creative imagination, love of work, joy of living, and the sentiment of social solidarity. every attempt made to solve the sexual question should, therefore, be directed toward the future and toward the happiness of our descendants. it requires much disinterestedness to attempt seriously any sexual reform. but, as the human subject is by nature extremely weak, as his views are limited, especially in the matter which concerns us, it is absolutely necessary, if we would avoid utopia, to adapt the fundamental aim of sexual union to happiness and joy, even to the natural weakness of man. the fundamental difficulty of the problem lies in the necessity for such an adaptation, and this difficulty requires us to make a clean sweep of prejudices, traditions and prudery. it is this which we wish to attempt. considered from an exalted point of view, sexual life is beautiful as well as good. what there is in it which is shameful and infamous is the obscenity and ignominy caused by the coarse passions of egoism and folly, allied with ignorance, erotic curiosity and mystic superstition, often combined with social narcotic intoxication and cerebral anomalies. we shall divide our subject into nineteen chapters. chapters i to vii deal with the natural history and psychology of sexual life; chapter viii with its pathology, and chapters ix to xviii with its social role, that is to say, its connection with the different domains of human social life. chapter i the reproduction of living beings _history of the germ:--cell-division--parthenogenesis-- conjugation--mneme--embryological development--difference of the sexes--castration--hermaphrodism--heredity--blastophthoria._ a general law of organic life decrees that every living individual is gradually transformed in the course of a cycle which is called individual life, and which terminates with death, that is by the destruction of the greater part of the organism. it then becomes inert matter, and the germinative cells alone of all its parts continue its life under certain conditions. =the cells: protoplasm. the nucleus.=--since the time of _schwann_ ( ) it is agreed that the cell is the most simple morphological element which is capable of living. among the lower organisms this element constitutes the entire individual. there is no doubt that the cell is already a thing of high organization. it is formed of infinitely small elements of very different value and chemical constitution, which form what is called _protoplasm_ or the cell-substance. but these infinitely small elements are so far absolutely unknown. it is in them that must be sought the change from inanimate matter, that is the chemical molecule, to living matter, a change which was formerly believed to lie in the protoplasm itself, before its complicated structure was known. we need not concern ourselves here with this question which remains an open one. life being established, the cell remains its only known constant element. the cell is composed of protoplasm which contains a rounded nucleus formed of _nucleo-plasma_. the nucleus is the most important part of the cell, and governs its life. =cell-division.=--the lowest unicellular organisms, as each cell of a multicellular organism, reproduce themselves by division or _fission_. each cell originates from another cell in the following manner: the cell divides in the center as well as its nucleus, and in this way forms two cells which grow by absorbing by _endosmosis_ (filtration) the nutritive juices which surround them. death or destruction of the cell is therefore death of the entire organism when this is unicellular. but it has been previously reproduced. we find here already the special and fundamental act of conjugation, that is the fusion of two cells into one, which serves to strengthen reproduction. this act, common to all living things including man, shows us that continuation of life is only possible when from time to time different elements, that is elements which have been exposed to different influences, combine together. if this conjugation is prevented and life is allowed to continue indefinitely by means of fission or by budding (_vide infra_), there results a progressive weakening and degeneration which leads to the disappearance of the whole group thus reproduced. it is necessary to explain here the results of recent scientific work on the intimate phenomena of cell-division, for they are closely allied to those of fecundation. the nucleus of an ordinary cell presents itself in the form of a nearly spherical vesicle. delicate methods of staining have shown that the nucleus encloses several round nucleolar corpuscles, and also a reticulum which is attached to its membrane and spreads through its whole substance. the liquid part of the nucleus fills the meshes of this reticular tissue, which stains easily and for this reason is named _chromatin_. the phenomena of cell division in well-developed cells with nuclei is termed _mitosis_. certain lower forms of cells exist in which the nucleus is not well differentiated. mitosis begins in the nucleus (plate i). figure represents the cell before division has commenced. in the protoplasm, by the side of the nucleus, is formed a small corpuscle (_c_) which is called the _centrosome_. the nucleus itself is marked _b_. when the cell commences to divide, the meshes of the network of chromatin contract and the centrosome divides into two parts (fig. ). shortly afterward the particles of chromatin concentrate in the form of convoluted rods called _chromosomes_ (figs. and ). the number of these varies according to the species of organism, but remains constant for each animal or vegetable species. at the same time the two centrosomes separate from each other on each side of the nucleus. the chromosomes then become shorter and thicker while the nucleus is completely dissolved in the protoplasm of the cell, and its membrane disappears (fig. ). directly afterwards the chromosomes arrange themselves regularly in line, like soldiers at drill, following one of the larger diameters of the cell, and forming a barrier between the two centrosomes (fig. ). each of the chromosomes then divides into two parallel halves of equal thickness (fig. ). figures and show that, while these changes are being produced, each of the two centrosomes is surrounded by stellate rays. some of these rays extending in the direction of the chromosomes, become attached to one of their extremities and draw it toward the corresponding centrosome (fig. ). thus around each centrosome are grouped as many chromosomes as the mother cell possessed itself (fig. ). simultaneously, the cell enlarges and its protoplasm commences to become indented at each end of the diameter previously formed by the chromosomes. from this moment the nuclear liquid concentrates itself around each of the groups of chromosomes, the rays disappear and the cell divides into two halves, each containing a group of chromosomes (fig. ); the indentation increases so as to form a partition across the protoplasm. the chromosomes then form a new meshwork of nuclear chromatin, and we have then two cells each with a nucleus and a centrosome like the mother cell (fig. ). this is what takes place in the reproduction of all cells of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. in the simplest unicellular organisms which are known fission constitutes the only means of reproduction. in the complicated organisms of the higher plants and animals each cell divides in the manner indicated above, both in the embryonic period and later on during the development of each of the organs which forms the organism. this fact shows more than any other the intimate relationship which connects all living organisms. the most remarkable thing, perhaps, is the almost mathematical division of the chromosomes into two halves, a division which results in the equal distribution of their substance through the whole organism. we shall return to this point later on. =reproduction by budding. parthenogenesis.= in the animal and vegetable kingdoms the higher organisms become more and more complicated. they are no longer composed of a single cell, but of an increasing number of these cells combined in a whole, of which each part, adapted for a special purpose, is itself formed of cells, differentiated as much by their organic form as by their chemical and physical constitution. in this way, in plants, are formed the leaves, flowers, buds, branches, trunk, bark, etc.; and in animals the skin, intestine, glands, blood, muscles, nerves, brain, sense organs, etc. in spite of the great complication of the divers living multicellular organisms, one often finds among them the power of reproduction by fission or by budding. in certain animals and plants, groups of cells vegetate in buds which separate from the body later on and form a new individual; this occurs among the polypi and plants with bulbs, etc. one can even form a tree by means of a cutting. ants and bees, which have not been fecundated, are capable of laying eggs which develop by _parthenogenesis_ (virgin parturition) and become complete individuals. but these degenerate and disappear if reproduction by parthenogenesis or budding is continued during several generations. among the higher animals, the vertebrates and man, there is no reproduction without conjugation; no parthenogenesis or budding. so far as we have studied the question we see in the animal and vegetable kingdoms sexual reproduction, or conjugation, as a _sine qua non_ for the indefinite continuation of life. =the sexual glands. the embryo.= however complicated the organism, it always possesses a special organ, the cells of which, all of the same form, are reserved for the reproduction of the species and especially for conjugation. the cells of these organs, called _sexual glands_, have the power of reproducing themselves so that they reconstruct the whole individual (the type of the species) from which they arose, in an almost identical form, by conjugation (sometimes also, for a certain time, by parthenogenesis) under certain fixed conditions as soon as they leave its body. we can thus say with _weismann_, speaking philosophically, that these germinal cells continue the life of their parents, so that in reality death only destroys part of the individual, namely, that which has been specially adapted for certain exclusively individual ends. each individual, therefore, continues to live in his descendants. the germinal cell divides into a number of cells called embryonic, which become differentiated into layers or groups which later on form the different organs of the body. the embryonic period is the name given to the period between the exit of the germinal cell from the maternal body and the final complete development which it acquires in becoming the adult individual. during this period the organism undergoes the most singular metamorphoses. in certain cases it forms a free embryo which appears to be complete, having a special form and mode of life, but which finally becomes transformed into an entirely different sexual individual. thus from the egg of a butterfly there first emerges a caterpillar, which lives and grows for some time, then changes to a chrysalis and finally to a butterfly. the caterpillar and the chrysalis belong to the embryonic period. during this period every animal reproduces in an abbreviated manner certain forms which resemble more or less those through which its ancestors have passed. the caterpillar, for example, resembles the worm which is the ancestor of the insects. _haeckel_ calls this the _fundamental biogenetic law_. we are not concerned here with embryology, and will content ourselves with some of the main points. =germinal cells. hermaphrodites.= we now come to _conjugation_. in order to avoid complications we will leave aside plants and speak only of animals. among multicellular animals, sometimes in the same individual, sometimes in different individuals, occur two kinds of sexual glands, each containing one kind of cells--the male cells and the female cells. when both kinds of sexual glands occur in the same individual, the animal is said to be _hermaphrodite_. when they develop in two different individuals the animals are of distinct sexes. snails, for example, are hermaphrodite. there also exist lower multicellular animals which reproduce by budding, but among which conjugation takes place from time to time. we shall not consider these animals any further, as they are too remote to interest us here. =spermatozoa and ova.=--in all the higher animals, including the hermaphrodites, the male germinal cells, or _spermatozoa_ are characterized by their mobility. their protoplasm is contractile and their form varies according to the species. in man and vertebrate animals they resemble infinitely small tadpoles, and their tails are equally mobile. the female germinative cell, on the contrary, is immobile and much larger than the male cell. conjugation consists in the movement of the male cell, by means of variable mechanism, toward the female cell, or egg, into the protoplasm of which it enters. at this moment it produces on the surface of the egg a coagulation, which prevents the entrance of a second spermatozoid. the egg and the spermatozoid both consist of protoplasm containing a nucleus. but, while the spermatozoid has only a small nucleus and very little protoplasm, the egg has a large nucleus and a large quantity of protoplasm. in certain species the protoplasm of the egg grows in the maternal organism in a regular manner to form the _vitellus_ (yolk of egg) which serves as nourishment for the embryo for a long period of its existence. this occurs in birds and reptiles. =conjugation.=--the phenomena of conjugation were made clear by _van beneden_ and _hertwig_. these phenomena, as we have seen, commence among unicellular organisms. in these they do not constitute reproduction, but the vital reënforcement of certain individuals. conjugation takes place in a different manner in different cases. for example, a unicellular animal applies itself against one of its fellows. the nucleus of each cell divides into two. then the protoplasm of the two cells fuses over the whole surface of contact, and half the nucleus of the first cell penetrates the second cell, while half the nucleus of the latter enters the first cell. after this exchange the cells separate from each other and each exchanged half of the nucleus fuses with the primitive half of the nucleus remaining in the cell. from this moment each cell continues to reproduce itself by fission, as we have seen above. in another form, two cells meet and fuse completely. their nuclei become applied against each other and each exchanges half its substance with the other as in the preceding case, so that the final result is the same. in both cases the two conjugated cells are identical, and one cannot call them male and female. =penetration of the spermatozoid into the egg.=--in all the higher animals in which the germinal cells are of two kinds, male and female, conjugation takes place in rather a different manner. here, the female cell or egg only reproduces itself exceptionally by parthenogenesis. it usually contains no chromosomes and often too little chromatin, so that it perishes when conjugation does not occur. the spermatozoid swims by means of its tail to meet the egg. as soon as it touches it it penetrates it and the coagulation which we have mentioned is produced. this coagulation forms the _vitelline membrane_, which prevents the entry of other spermatozoids. if, from pathological causes the entry of several spermatozoids takes place, there results, according to _fol_, a double or triple monster. in fig. on plate ii, we see the egg with its vitelline membrane and nucleus, the chromatin network of which is marked in blue: _b_ shows the protoplasm of the egg or _vitellus_; _a_ the vitelline membrane; _d_ the spermatozoid which has just entered, and the nucleus of which, composed chiefly of chromatin, is colored red, while its tail has performed its task and is about to disappear. the letters _e_, _f_, and _g_, show a spermatozoid which has arrived too late. before the head of the spermatozoid which has entered, appears a centrosome (fig. ) which it brings to the egg with its small amount of protoplasm, and around this centrosome rays form, as in the case of cellular fission. at the same time a nuclear liquid arising from the protoplasm of the egg becomes concentrated around the chromatin of the spermatozoid, while the nucleus of the egg remains in place and does not change. the nucleus of the spermatozoid, on the contrary, begins to grow rapidly. it forms half the number of chromosomes corresponding to the cell of the species to which it belongs, and grows at the expense of the vitellus of the egg. during this time the centrosome divides into two halves, which progress slowly on each side toward the periphery of the egg, as in the case of fission (see plate i), while the chromatin of the chromosomes of the spermatozoid is dissolved in the network. the nucleus thus formed by the spermatozoid enlarges more and more (figs. and ) till it attains the size and shape of that of the egg (fig. ). the male and female chromatin are colored red and blue respectively. then only commences activity of the nucleus of the egg, at the same time as fresh activity on the part of the nucleus of the spermatozoid. before this, however, the nucleus of the egg has thrown off a part of its chromatin called a _polar_ body, and it now possesses only half as much chromatin as the other cells of the body of the individual. the nucleus of the egg and that of the spermatozoid then begin at the same time to concentrate their chromatin in the form of chromosomes (fig. ) which arrange themselves regularly in the middle line exactly as shown in plate i, and divide longitudinally into two halves which are then attracted in opposite directions by the rays of each of the centrosomes (fig. ). figure , of plate ii, thus corresponds exactly to fig. , of plate i. in fact, the growth of the nucleus of the spermatozoid has given to its substance the same power of development as to that of the nucleus of the egg. both enter into conjugation in equal parts, which symbolizes the social equality and the rights of the two sexes! the signification of these facts is as follows: as soon as, in the course of development, the conjugated nuclei divide again into two cells, as in figs. to , of plate i, each of these two cells contains almost the same quantity of paternal as maternal chromatin. we do not say exactly as much, for the paternal and maternal influences are not divided equally in the descendants. this phenomenon may be explained by what _semon_ calls alternating ecphoria in mnemic dichotomy. (_vide infra._) as cell division continues in the same way during embryonic life, it follows that each cell, or at least each nucleus of the future organism, will contain on the average half its substance and energy from the paternal and half from the maternal side. =heredity. the mneme.=--the secret of heredity lies in the phenomena which have been just described. hereditary influence preserves all its primary power and original qualities in the chromosomes, which enlarge and divide, while the vitelline substance, absorbed by the chromosomes and transformed by the vital chemical processes into the specific substance of the chromosomes, loses its specific and plastic vital energy, as completely as the food which we swallow loses its energy in forming the structure of our living organs. we do not acquire any of the characters of the ox by eating beefsteaks; and the spermatozoid, after eating much vitelline protoplasm, preserves its own hereditary energies, increased and fortified, but without change in their qualities. in this way the nuclear chromatin of our germinal cells becomes the carrier of all the hereditary qualities of the species (hereditary mneme), and more especially those of our direct ancestors. the uniformity of the intracellular phenomena in cell division and conjugation proves, however, that, without being capable of reproducing the individual, the other non-germinal cells of the body may also possess these hereditary energies, and that there exists, hidden behind all these facts, an unknown law of life, the explanation of which is reserved for the future. however, a recent work based on an idea of the physiologist, _e. hering_, which looks upon instinct as a kind of memory of the species, opens up a new horizon. i refer to the book of _richard semon_: "the _mneme_ considered as the conservative principle in the transmutations of organic life." (_die mneme als erhaltendes prinzip im wechsel des organischen geschehens_, leipzig, .) _conception of irritation._[ ]--by the aid of the fundamental facts of morphological science, biological and psychological, _semon_ proves that _hering's_ idea is more than an analogy, and that there is a fundamental identity in the mechanism of organic life. in order to avoid the terminology of psychology which tends to be equivocal, _semon_ employs some new terms to designate his new ideas, based on the fundamental conception of _irritation_ in its physiological sense. _semon_ defines _irritation_ as an energetic action on the organism which determines a series of complicated changes in the irritable substance of the living organism. the condition of the organism thus modified, which lasts as long as the irritation, is called by _semon_ the _state of irritation_. before the action of irritation, the organism is in a condition which _semon_ calls the _primary state of indifference_, and after its action, in the _secondary state of indifference_. _engram. ecphoria._--if, when an irritation has entirely ceased, the irritable substance of the living organism becomes modified permanently during its secondary state of indifference, _semon_ calls the action _engraphic_. to the modification itself he gives the word _engram_. the sum of the hereditary and individual engrams thus produced in a living organism is designated by the term _mneme_. _semon_ gives the name _ecphoria_ to the revival of the engram by the repetition of part only of the original irritation, or by the entire but weakened reproduction of the whole state of irritation of the organism, which was originally produced in a synchronous manner with the primary irritation. thus, an engram may be ecphoriated (that is to say, reproduced or revived) by the return of one part of the complex of primary irritations which produced it. a young dog, for example, is attacked by urchins who throw stones at it. it experiences two kinds of irritation: ( ) the urchins stooping down and throwing stones (optic irritation); ( ) the pain caused by the stones (tactile irritation). in its brain are produced two associated series of corresponding engrams. previously, this dog did not react when it saw people stoop down. from this moment it will run away and howl at the sight, without any stone being thrown at it. thus the tactile engram will be ecphoriated by the repetition of the original associated irritation. in the same way, the image of a tree in a known landscape will ecphoriate the entire landscape. moreover, an engram may be revived by the enfeebled return of the primary irritating agent which produced it, or by an analogous enfeebled irritation. thus, the sight of a photograph will revive the image of a known person. a certain kind of maize imported for a long time into norway and influenced in that country during many generations by the sun of the long summer days, finally accelerated its time of maturation. when imported again to the south of europe it first preserved its faculty of accelerated maturation in spite of the shortness of the days (_schübeler_). _semon_ gives a series of analogous examples which show how engrams repeated during several generations accumulate and end by becoming ecphoriated when they have acquired enough power. engrams may be associated simultaneously in space, such as those of sight. but they may also be associated in succession, such as those of hearing and of ontogeny. simultaneous engrams are associated in every direction with the same intensity. successive engrams, on the contrary, are associated more strongly forwards than backwards, and have only two poles. in the succession _a b_, _a_ acts more strongly on _b_ than _b_ on _a_. in the successions of engrams it often happens that two or more analogous engrams are associated in a manner more or less equivalent to a preceding engram. _semon_ calls this phenomenon dichotomy, trichotomy, etc. but in the successions, two engrams cannot be ecphoriated simultaneously. hence the phenomenon which _semon_ names _alternating ecphoria_; that is sometimes one, sometimes the other of the constituent engrams, for example, of a dichotomy, which arrives at ecphoria. similarly, the engram of the ecphoriated dichotomy is most often that which has been previously most often repeated. in the laws of ontogeny and heredity alternating ecphoria plays an important part. the branch less often repeated remains latent and the other only is ecphoriated. but certain combinations which reënforce the latent branch or paralyze the other may induce ecphoria of the first to the second generation. _semon_ also shows that the phenomena of regeneration in the embryo, as well as those of the adult, obey the law of the mneme. _homophony._--the terms engram and ecphoria correspond to the well-known introspective phenomena in psychology of memory and the association of ideas. engrams are thus ecphoriated. at the time of such phenomena every mnemic irritation of the engrams vibrates simultaneously with the state of synchronous irritation produced by a new irritation. this simultaneous irritation is named by _semon_ _homophony_. when a partial discord is produced between the new irritation and the mnemic irritation, the organism always tends to reëstablish homophony (harmony). this is seen in psychological introspection by activity of attention; in embryology by the phenomenon of regeneration; and in phylogeny by that of adaptation. relying on these convincing facts, _semon_ shows that irritative actions are only localized at first in their zone of entry (primary zone); but that afterward they irradiate or vibrate, gradually becoming weaker in the whole organism (not only in the nervous system, for they also act on plants). by this means, engraphia, although infinitely enfeebled, may finally reach the germinal cells. _semon_ then shows how the most feeble engraphias may gradually arrive at ecphoria, as the result of numerous repetitions (in phylogeny after innumerable generations). this is how the mnemic principle allows us to conceive the possibility of an infinitely slow heredity of characters acquired by individuals, a heredity resulting from prolonged repetition. the facts invoked by _weismann_ against the heredity of acquired characters lose nothing of their weight by this, for the influence of crossing (conjugation) and selection transforms the material organic forms in an infinitely more rapid and intense manner than individual mnemic engraphias. the latter, on the other hand, furnish the explanation of the mutations of _de vries_, which appear to be only sudden ecphoria of accumulated long engraphic actions. the way in which _semon_ studies and discusses the laws of the mneme in morphology, physiology and psychology, is truly magisterial, and the perspective which opens out from these new ideas is extensive. the mneme, with the aid of the energetic action of the external world, acts on organisms by preserving them and combining them by engraphia, while selection eliminates all that is ill-adapted, and homophony reëstablishes the equilibrium. the irritations of the external world, therefore, furnish the material for the construction of organisms. i confess to having been converted by _semon_ to this way of conceiving the heredity of acquired characters. instead of several nebulous hypotheses, we have only one--the nature of mnemic engraphia. it is for the future to discover its origin in physical and chemical laws. i must refer my readers to _semon's_ book, for this volume of pages, filled with facts and proofs, cannot be condensed into a few paragraphs. =each cell bears in itself ancestral energy.= as we have already seen, the germinal, cells are not the only ones which possess the energies of all the characters of the species. on the contrary it becomes more and more certain, from further investigation, that each cell of the body bears in itself, so to speak, all the energies of the species, as is distinctly seen in plants. but in all the cells which are not capable of germinating, these energies remain incapable of development. it results that such energies, remaining virtual, have no practical importance. in an analogous sense we may say that all the cells of the body are hermaphrodite, as all germinal cells, for each possesses in itself the undifferentiated energies of each sex. each spermatozoid contains all the energies of the paternal and maternal ancestry of man, and each egg those of the paternal and maternal ancestry of woman. the male and the female are only the bearers of each kind of germinal cells necessary for conjugation, and each of these bearers only differs from the others by its sexual cells and by what is called correlative sexual differences. but we must not forget that the germinal cells themselves are only differentiated at a certain period in the development of the embryo; they are thus hermaphrodite originally and only become male and female later. new experiments made on the eggs of sea urchins and other organisms have shown that conjugation may be replaced by an external irritating agent; for example, the action of certain chemical substances is sufficient to make eggs develop by parthenogenesis which would have died without this action. an entire being has been successfully produced from an egg divided into two by means of a hair. and even from the protoplasm of the egg without its nucleus, with the aid of a spermatozoid. we must not, however, base premature hypotheses on these facts. when a female cell, or egg, develops without fecundation (parthenogenesis) its nucleus enlarges and divides in the same manner as conjugated nuclei (mitosis). a point of general interest is what is called the _specific polyembryony_ of certain parasitic insects (hymenoptera of the genus _encyrtus_). according to _marchal_, their eggs grow and divide into a considerable number of secondary eggs, each of which gives rise to an embryo and later on a perfect insect. by shaking the eggs of certain marine animals they have been caused to divide into several eggs and thus to produce several embryos. all the individuals arising from the division of the same egg of _encyrtus_ are of the same sex. [illustration: plate i cell division fig. . cell before division. fig. . division of centrosome. fig. . formation of chromosomes. fig. . dissolution of nucleus. fig. . lining up of chromosomes. fig. . division of chromosomes. fig. . division of chromosomes. fig. . attraction of chromosomes by centrosomes. fig. . concentration of nuclei. division of cell. fig. . formation of new chromatin.] [illustration: plate ii fertilization of the ovum by the spermatozoid diagram of ovum and spermatozoid fig. . _a_, vitelline membrane; _b_, protoplasm, or vitellus; _c_, nucleus with chromatin; _d_, spermatozoid penetrating egg; _e_, another spermatozoid arrested by the vitelline membrane. fig. . formation of centrosome. fig. . formation of male nucleus by spermatozoid. division of centrosome. fig. . development of nucleus of spermatozoid. fig. . nucleus of spermatozoid attains same size as that of ovum. fig. . formation of male and female chromosomes. fig. . lining up of male and female chromosomes.] =embryology.=--it is not necessary to describe here in detail the different changes which the two conjugated cells pass through to become an adult man. this is the object of the science of embryology. we shall return to this in chapter iii. a few words are necessary, however, to explain the general principles. =ovulation. the corpus luteum.=--the ovaries of woman (fig. ) contain a considerable number of cells or ovules, although infinitely less than the number of spermatozoids contained in the testicles. from time to time some of these ovules enlarge and are surrounded by a vesicle with liquid contents, which is called the graafian follicle. at the time of the monthly periods an egg (sometimes two) is discharged from its graafian follicle, from one or other ovary. this phenomenon is called _ovulation_. the empty follicle becomes cicatrized in the ovary and is called the _corpus luteum_ (yellow body). the egg after its discharge arrives at the abdominal orifice of the fallopian tube, which communicates directly with the abdominal cavity. some authors state that the end of the tube becomes applied against the ovary by the aid of muscular movement and, so to speak, sucks in the discharged ovule, while others hold that the movements of the vibratile cilia, with which the epithelium of the tubes is furnished, suffice to draw the ovule into its cavity. figure explains this phenomenon. having arrived in the tube, the ovule moves very slowly in the almost capillary tube by means of the vibratile cilia and arrives in the cavity of the womb. fecundation probably takes place most often at the entrance to the tube or in its canal; sometimes possibly in the womb. on some occasions a squad of spermatozoids advances to meet the descending egg, and numerous spermatozoids are often found in the tubes, even as far as the abdominal cavity. =fixation of the egg. formation of the decidua.=--after fecundation, the egg becomes attached to the mucous membrane of the cavity of the womb. this mucous membrane proliferates and becomes gradually detached from the womb to form the _membrana decidua_ which envelops the egg or ovule. an egg fecundated and fixed in this way may keep its position and grow during the first weeks of pregnancy, by the aid of villosities covering its envelope which penetrate the wall of the womb. [illustration: fig. . diagrammatic section in median plane of the female genital organs. it shows the position of an ovule which has just been discharged lying in the opening of the right tube, and that of another ovary fecundated and surrounded by the decidual membrane. in reality this could hardly coexist with the other ovule freely discharged. in the right ovary are seen ovules in various degrees of maturity in their graafian follicles: also a corpus luteum--an empty graafian follicle after expulsion of the ovule. the figure also shows the end of the penis in the vagina at the moment of ejaculation of semen, and the position of a preventive to avoid fecundation.] [illustration: fig. . the mouth of the tube applied to the ovary at the moment of expulsion of the ovule.] =the womb. the placenta.= the womb or uterus is the size of a small egg flattened in one direction. it terminates below in the neck or _cervix_, which is prolonged into the vagina as a projection, called the vaginal portion of the uterus. the cavity of the womb is continued into the neck and opens below in the vagina by an aperture which is round in virgins and is called the external _os uteri_. the walls of the womb consist of a thick layer of unstriped muscle. when childbirth takes place it causes tearing which makes the external os uteri irregular and fissured. during copulation the aperture of the penis or male organ is placed nearly opposite the os uteri, which facilitates the entrance of spermatozoa into the uterus. (for the illustration of these points see fig. .) the vitellus and the membrane of the egg enlarge with the embryo and absorb by endosmosis the nutritive matter necessary for the latter, contained in the maternal blood. the womb itself enlarges at the same time as the embryo. [illustration: fig. . human egg of the second week: magnified eight times. (after _kölliker_.) _chor._ chorion or envelope of the egg. _vill._ villi of the chorion. _emb._ embryo (near the head are seen the branchial arches). _umb._ umbilical vesicle. _am._ amnion.] the fasciculus attached to the embryo is the allantois which becomes the umbilical cord. the vertebræ are already easy to recognize in this embryo. the embryo is formed from a portion of blastoderm, that is to say, from the cellular layer applied to the membranes of the egg and arising from the successive divisions of the two primary conjugated cells and their daughter cells. the embryo has the form of a spatula with the head at one end and the tail at the other. from its walls is detached a surrounding vesicle (fig. ) called the _amnion_, while another vesicle, the _umbilical vesicle_, grows from its ventral surface and serves, in birds, for the vitelline circulation of the egg which is detached from the mother's body. in man, the umbilical vesicle is unimportant. in its place the circulation of the blood takes place by the aid of another vesicle, called the _allantois_, which arises from the intestine of the embryo, and which becomes attached to the walls of the womb in the form of a thick disk called the placenta. [illustration: fig. . embryo of four weeks (after _kölliker_). . auditory vesicle. . ocular vesicle. . olfactory fossa. . bud forming upper maxilla. . bud of lower maxilla. . right ear. . liver. . upper limb. . lower limb. . caudal extremity.] the placenta is formed of dilated blood vessels which meet the maternal blood vessels, also dilated, in the uterine wall, allantois later on becomes the umbilical cord. in the placenta the embryonic and maternal vessels without actually communicating, are placed in intimate contact, which allows nutritive matter and oxygen to pass by endosmosis from the maternal vessels to those of the embryo. figure shows a human embryo at the beginning of the fifth week of pregnancy. [illustration: fig. . sagittal section of a primipara in the last month of pregnancy.] =duration of pregnancy. birth.= pregnancy lasts from conjugation, which is synonymous with conception, till birth, that is about nine months (ten lunar months of four weeks). the embryo is then ready to separate from the maternal body (fig. ). by the act of birth it is expelled violently, bringing with it the umbilical cord and the placenta (fig. ). immediately afterward the empty womb contracts strongly and gradually recovers its former size. the sudden interruption of its communications with the maternal circulation deprives the embryo, which has suddenly become a child, of its nutritive matter and oxygen. [illustration: fig. . sagittal section of frozen body of a woman in labor: the head of the child is engaged in the neck of the womb; the orifice of the neck of the womb (_os uteri_) is already fully dilated and the bag of waters commences to project from the vulva: it is formed by the former membranes of the egg and the decidua.] in order to avoid suffocation it is obliged to breathe atmospheric air immediately, for its blood becomes dark by saturation with carbonic acid, which irritates the respiratory nerve centers. the first independent act of the new-born child is, therefore, a nervous reflex determined by asphyxia, and is performed with the first cry. soon afterward the infant begins to suck, so as not to die of hunger, while the umbilical cord, having become useless, shrivels up, and the placenta is destroyed (some animals eat it). the new-born infant is only distinguished from the embryo soon after birth by its breathing and crying. we may, therefore, say that infancy, especially early infancy, is only a continuation of embryonic life. the transformations which the infant undergoes from birth to adult age are known to all. they take place more and more slowly, except at the relatively short period of puberty. =formation of the sexual glands.=--we must remember that at a very early embryonic period certain groups of cells are reserved to form later on the sexual glands. these cells are at first neither male nor female, but are undifferentiated; later on they become differentiated to form in certain individuals, called males, the testicles with their spermatozoa, and in others, called females, the ovaries with their eggs. on this differentiation depends the sex of the individual, and, according as it takes place in one way or the other, all the rest of the body develops with the correlative sexual characters of the corresponding sex (at first the external genital organs peculiar to each sex, then the beard in man, the breasts in woman, etc). =castration. correlative sexual characters.=--castration is the term applied to the extirpation of the sexual glands. when it takes place in infancy it causes a considerable change in the whole subsequent development of the body, especially in man, but also in woman. man becomes more slender, preserves a high and infantile voice, and his sexual correlative characters develop incompletely or not at all. _eunuchs_ are men castrated, usually in infancy. to ensure more safety in their harems the orientals not only remove the testicles but also the penis. bullocks and horses are bulls and stallions castrated at an early age, and can be distinguished at first sight from normal males. females who have undergone castration become fat and sometimes take on certain masculine characters. male human eunuchs have a high-pitched voice, a narrow chest; they remain beardless or nearly so, and have an effeminate character, often intriguing. in both sexes there is a tendency to neurosis and degeneration. it is a mistake to qualify the peculiarities of the male eunuch in the terms of female peculiarities; there is only a relative tendency. the eunuch is no more a woman than a bullock is a cow. the characters of castrated individuals are due only to ablation of the sexual glands themselves--the testicles in man and the ovary in woman; mutilation of other sexual organs, internal or external, such as the penis, womb, etc., produces no result of this kind. it would even appear to result from recent experiments that reimplantation of a sexual gland in any part of the body is sufficient to arrest the production of the special peculiarities of the eunuch. all these facts, almost inexplicable hitherto, become comprehensible by the aid of the engraphia of the mnemic energies. (vide above; _semon_). the sexual glands, being of undifferentiated origin, contain the energies of both sexes. the ecphoria of one of them provokes that of its correlative characters and excludes that of the characters of the other. if ecphoria of the sexual glands is arrested by castration before it is finished, this paralyzes the predominance of that of its corresponding correlative characters and reëstablishes a kind of intermediate or undifferentiated equilibrium between the ecphorias of the correlative hereditary sexual characters of the two sexes. on the other hand, if the sexual glands of an adult are removed, his body is not sensibly modified. the sexual functions do not cease completely, although they cannot lead to fecundation. men castrated in adult age may cohabit with their wives; but the liquid ejaculated is not semen but only secretion from the accessory prostatic gland. adult women after castration preserve their sexual appetite, and sometimes even their menstruation, for a certain time. they generally become fat and often suffer from nervous troubles and change in character. the ecphoria of the correlative sexual characters being complete in the adult, suppression of the sexual glands can only act on their direct functions. in different species of animals, the correlative sexual characters of which we have spoken vary enormously; sometimes the differences are insignificant, at other times they are considerable; while we can hardly distinguish a male swallow from a female, the cock and hen, the peacock and peahen, the stag and hind are very different from each other. in man, the correlative sexual characters are very distinct, even externally. these characters may extend to all parts of the body, even to the brain and mental faculties. in some of the lower animals, for example the ants, the sexes differ remarkably from each other and appear to belong to different zoölogical families. the eyes, the form of the head, the color, and the whole body differ so much that, when a case of pathological lateral hermaphrodism is produced (that is, when the sexual glands are male on the one side and female on the other), we can exactly determine the male or female character on each portion of the body. we thus see hermaphrodite ants with one half of the body male and the other half female--black on one side and red on the other, a large eye on one side and a small eye on the other, thirteen joints in one antenna and twelve in the other, and so on. in this case the mental faculties are sometimes female, sometimes male, according as the ecphoria of the brain is influenced by the hereditary mneme of the male or female part of the hermaphrodite sexual organs, which results in a male or female brain. i have seen hermaphrodite ants in which two parts of the thorax formed a crossed hermaphrodism; in front, male on the right and female on the left, behind female on the right and male on the left. further; among ants which live in societies, the progressive transformation of the species, or phylogeny, has produced a third sex derived from the female sex--the worker; sometimes there is even a fourth--the warrior. in these two forms the wings are absent, but the head and brain are much larger; the sexual organs remain female, but are very small. while the large brain (pedunculated bodies of the supra-esophageal ganglion) is almost rudimentary in the male, it is well developed in the female and very large in the worker and the warrior. among these singular animals exist pathological hermaphrodites, not only between males and females, but between males and workers, and not only lateral but mixed and crossed in all possible ways. i have seen a hermaphrodite, whose abdomen and sexual organs were almost entirely male, accomplish all the complex instinctive actions of a worker of his species (expeditions, attacks on a hostile ant heap, abduction of chrysalids), thanks to its head and brain which were of the worker type. the female itself is incapable of such complex actions. i cite these facts here as material for study, for we are only too prone in this domain to generalize prematurely and to draw too hasty conclusions. in reality, there is still a wide field for study of the greatest interest. there are animals which are normally and physiologically hermaphrodite, for they possess in the normal state male and female sexual glands and fecundate themselves, such as the solitary worms, or in pairs such as the snails. in the latter case there is copulation, during which each animal plays the parts of both male and female. in man and other vertebrates, hermaphrodism is always abnormal. in man it is extremely rare and nearly always very incomplete, being usually limited to the external or correlative characters. =heredity.=--it results from what we have said that every living being reproduces, more or less identically, in its specific characters, the whole life of its parents and less remote ancestors, and constitutes the continuation of life from a minute part of their bodies. each individual life thus repeats an entire cycle of development called _ontogeny_, which is peculiar to all individuals of the species. here we must mention three fundamental points: ( ). in its principal characters, each individual is the copy of its parents or direct ancestors, with correlative sexual peculiarities which we have mentioned, and with individual variations due to the combinations of varieties by conjugation, and the alternating or unequal ecphorias of hereditary characters; that is to say paternal or maternal hereditary engrams. ( ). no individual is absolutely identical with another. ( ). on the average, each individual resembles more especially its direct ancestry and its parents, and differs more markedly from its parentage the more this is remote. we shall see later on that the ancestral relationship of the different groups, species and varieties of animals has been fairly well fixed, and we may say that the third of the laws stated above is equally true in a wider sense. in fact the species and varieties of animals which are near related resemble each other, while the _genera_, families and classes are more dissimilar as their relationship is more remote. we employ here the terms resemblance, homology and difference in their profound and general sense. certain purely external resemblances, due to phenomena of convergence, must not be considered as homologies in the sense of hereditary relationship. thus, in the language of natural history we do not say that a bat resembles a bird, nor that a whale resembles a fish, for here the resemblances are due simply to aërial or aquatic life which produces the effects of convergence, while the internal structure shows them to be quite dissimilar organisms. although it swims in the sea the whale is a mammal; its fins at first sight resemble those of a fish, but they are really the homologues of the four limbs of other mammals and contain the corresponding bones. in man, we see that brothers and sisters resemble each other in a general way, but that each one is dissimilar in some respects from the others. if we compare different families with many children we find that brothers and sisters resemble each other the more their parents are alike and come from a uniform ancestry which has undergone little crossing, while the crossing of different races and human varieties results in the production of individuals which differ from each other considerably, even when they come from the same couple. if we examine things more closely, we find that the characters of each of the offspring of the same couple present neither simple repetition nor an equal mixture of the peculiarities of the parents, but very diverse combinations of the characters of several ancestors. for instance, children may bear a striking resemblance to a paternal grandfather, a maternal grand-aunt, or a maternal great-grandmother, etc. this is called _atavism_. some children resemble their father, others their mother, and others a kind of mixture of father and mother. a closer examination reveals further very curious facts. an infant which, in its early years, strongly resembles its father, may later on resemble its mother, or inversely. certain peculiarities of a certain ancestor appear suddenly, often at an advanced age. it is needless to say that peculiarities concerning the beard cannot appear till this has grown, and this simple fact is so characteristic that it has been called _hereditary disposition_. everything may be transmitted by heredity, even to the finest shades of sentiment, intelligence and will, even to the most insignificant details of the nails, the form of the bones, etc. but the combinations of ancestral qualities vary so infinitely that it is extremely difficult to recognize them. hereditary dispositions arise from the energy of two conjugated germs during the whole of life and till death. old people sometimes develop peculiarities hitherto unknown in them, owing to the fact that one or more of their ancestors also presented the same phenomena at an advanced age. _semon_ has clearly proved that, although forming an infinite number of combinations the engrams or hereditary energies never blend in the proper sense of the term, and in the light of his exposition the above facts are more clearly explained than they had been hitherto. the experiments of _mendel_ have shown in plants a certain alteration in the hereditary ecphorias of the products of dissimilar parents. certain parental characters, according as they are added or subtracted, may disappear during one or two generations, to reappear all the more strongly in the following generations. in short, there are a number of phenomena, the laws of which may be more clearly explained to us in the future. to sum up, each individual inherits on the average as much from his paternal as from his maternal side, although the minute nucleus of the spermatozoid is the only agent concerned on the paternal side, while the mother provides not only the egg which is much larger, but also nutrition during the nine months of embryonic life. we can only conclude that in the egg also it is only from the part of the nucleus which conjugates with the male nucleus that arise all the inherited maternal peculiarities; that all the rest is only utilized as food; and that the nutritive blood of the mother in no way influences the inherited energies of the offspring. this shows the capital importance of conjugation and of the substance of the conjugated nuclei, especially of their chromatin. the fact that, in certain of the lower animals, the protoplasm of the egg without nuclei may occasionally produce some phenomena of cell division, thanks to its inherited mnemic engrams, in no way alters the fundamental principle which alone occurs in man, for this vicarious action, which is moreover rudimentary, only happens when the protoplasm of the egg is not consumed by the conjugated nuclei. parthenogenesis is also a very interesting phenomenon in the history of our animal ancestors, but for the same reasons it has no direct interest for humanity. if we take into consideration all the observations of which we have just spoken, which are as simple as they are irrefutably demonstrated, it is hardly possible to interpret them in any other way than by the following hypothesis: in each sexual gland, male or female, the germinal cells which are produced by division of the cells of the embryo, reserved primarily for reproduction, differ considerably from each other in quality and contain in their infinitely small atoms very diverse and irregularly distributed energies, inherited from their different ancestors. some contain more paternal and others more maternal energy, and among the former there are some contain, for example, more paternal grandfather and others more maternal grandmother, and so on to infinity, till it is impossible to discover the ancestral origin of the fully grown individual we are examining. the same holds good for the energies of the maternal cells. at the time of conjugation, the qualities of the child which will result from it depend therefore on conditions of the ancestral qualities of the conjugated egg and spermatozoön. moreover, although of the same size, the nuclei which become conjugated are evidently of unequal strength; the energies of one or the other predominate later on in the embryo, and still later in man. according to circumstances the latter will resemble more or less his paternal or maternal progenitors. moreover, the different organs of the body may receive their energies from different parts of the conjugated nuclei in different degrees. a person may have his father's nose and his mother's eyes, the paternal grandmother's humor and the maternal grandfather's intelligence, and all this with infinite degrees and variations, for it is only a matter of more or less accentuated averages. in my own face the two halves are distinctly different, one resembling my maternal ancestry and the other, in a lesser degree, my paternal ancestry, these points being seen distinctly in photographs taken in profile. each germinal cell contains the hereditary mneme of its ancestors, paternal and maternal, and the two cells united by conjugation (fig. ) that of the ancestors of each of them. we have spoken above of ecphorias produced according to _mendel's_ law and reproducing characters which have been latent during one or two generations. darwin was the first to study this interesting fact, which shows how atavism often results from the crossing of varieties. there are several varieties of fowls which do not brood; if two of these varieties, b and c, are crossed excellent brooders are obtained. _semon_ assumes that in each of the non-brooding varieties the ancestral energy, a, of the primary species, is weaker than that of varieties b and c; we have then a > b, and a < c. but if b is coupled with a the product represents the value b + c + a + a. then b and c are in equilibrium; and a being doubled becomes stronger than each of them and arrives at ecphoria in their place, which restores the faculty of brooding to the product of crossing. _de vries_ has shown, in the crossing of varieties with their primary species, more or less analogous phenomena which he calls "vicino-variations." conjugation leads to infinite combinations and variations which the law of heredity traverses like a guiding line. the celebrated zoölogist, _weismann_, considers that the chromatin of each germinal cell contains a considerable quantity of particles each of which is capable of forming an entire organism similar to the parents; these he calls "ides." according to _weismann_, each ide is subdivided into "determinants" from which each part of the body is derived, being potentially predetermined in them. according to the action of a yet unknown irritation male or female determinants develop in each individual of the animal species with separate sexes. but if the determinants are disordered, either by abnormal variations or by pathological causes, hermaphrodites or monstrosities may be produced. in animals which are normally hermaphrodite (snails, etc.), there is only one kind of sexual determinant, while in polymorphous animals (ants, etc.), there are as many as the polymorphous forms. the conception of "ides" and "determinants" is only a hypothesis to which we must not attach much value. the mnemic laws established by _semon_ give a much better explanation of the facts. it has often been maintained that the qualities of higher forms of man are exhausted in a few generations, while the mass of mediocrities continually produce new genius. the fact that the descendants of distinguished men are often mediocre and that remarkable men suddenly arise from the common people, appears at first sight to support this superficial assertion. it is forgotten, however, that in a people whose average mass consists of thousands or millions of individuals, while men of higher powers are only counted by units or dozens, all this arithmetic is reduced to absurdity by the inequality of numbers, as soon as the law of heredity is understood. to make a more exact calculation, it would be necessary to compare the number of superior men who have arisen from some hundreds of the most distinguished families of a country with that of distinguished men who have arisen from some millions of the rest of the people, and then calculate the percentage. it is also necessary to take into account the means employed in the education of the individuals. if education is obligatory and gratuitous in a country, this factor will have less importance. another error which is committed in such cases is to neglect the influence of the maternal lineage. a common woman will lower the level of the offspring of a distinguished husband, and inversely. in his "history of science and scientists" _alphonse de candolle_ has given irrefutable proof that the posterity of high-class men furnishes a great number proportionally of men high class in their turn, compared with that of the average population. this shows the value of the usual twaddle concerning this question. it is inconceivable that the laws of heredity should make an exception of the mental qualities of man. moreover, the most deceptive point is the contrast of a man of genius with his children, who do not rise to his standard because they represent a combination of his ancestral energies with those of their mother. this contrast makes the children appear unfavorably, while the public has a general tendency to exaggerate the value of a great man. the theory of the mneme throws light on this subject, by introducing a new factor in the question, that of ecphoria of the cerebral engrams of the ancestors, accumulated in the hereditary mneme. =heredity of acquired characters.=--while _darwin_ and _haeckel_ affirmed the possibility of the heredity of characters acquired during life by different tissues, for instance the brain, _weismann_ limits the possibility to everything that can modify the nucleoplasm of the germinal cells. we must first eliminate the question of the phenomena of blastophthoria, which we shall consider next, and which _weismann_ was, i think, the first to comprehend, without giving them the name. on one hand we see the singular effects of castration, which we have already considered; on the other hand, an extraordinary constancy in the hereditary characters of the species. for more than three thousand six hundred years, which corresponds to about eight hundred generations, the jews have been circumcised. nevertheless, if a jew ceases to circumcise his offspring the prepuce of his children grows as it did three thousand six hundred years ago, although, during the eight hundred generations in question, its absence from birth has prevented it reacting on the germinal cells of the individuals. if the engraphia of the external world could sensibly modify in a few generations the hereditary mneme of the species, it appears evident that the jewish infants of the present day would be born without prepuce, or at least with an atrophied one. it is on such facts, which are innumerable in natural history, that _weismann_ relies to repudiate absolutely the heredity of characters acquired by non-germinal organs and to attribute the development of organisms to blends and combinations due to conjugation, or crossing, as well as to natural selection, which he regards as all-powerful. _darwin_ well recognized the difficulty in question, and being unable to explain the facts, had recourse to the hypothesis of _pangenesis_, that is of small particles detached from all parts of the body and transported by the blood to the germinal cells, to transmit to them, for example, the qualities acquired by the brain during life. this hypothesis was so improbable that _darwin_ himself was forced to recognize it. let us examine the facts. on the one hand a newly born chinese transported and brought up in france will learn french, and will show no inclination to learn or understand chinese. this well-established fact seems in favor of _weismann_ and against the heredity of acquired characters. but, on the other hand, we cannot understand how the evolution of the brain and its functions takes place, without admitting that in one way or another the characters acquired by habits repeated during many generations gradually accumulate in the form of hereditary dispositions in the germinal protoplasm. it is certain that our brain has progressed since the time when our ancestors were similar to the gorilla, or even the cave man at the beginning of the quaternary age. how can this cerebral progression be explained only by selection which can only eliminate, and by crossings which by themselves can hardly raise the average? it is here that the intervention of an unknown power is necessary, something unexplained, the action of which has been lately recorded in the phenomena of mutations of _de vries_. _de vries_ proves that certain variations appear suddenly and without any known cause, and have a much greater tendency to be preserved than the variations obtained by crossing and selection. in my opinion the phenomena of the mneme revealed by _hering_ and _semon_ explain the apparent contradictions which have hitherto impaired the theories of heredity. mnemic engraphy explains, by its infinitesimal and repeated action through numerous generations, how the external world may little by little transmit to the germinal cells the characters which it impresses on organisms. the eight hundred generations during which the prepuce of the jews has been cut off have not yet sufficed for the ecphoria of the corresponding negative mnemic engraphia; while conjugation and selection modify rapidly and strongly in a few generations; a fact which is more striking and allows of direct experiment. moreover, a positive engraphia must necessarily act more powerfully, and it seems to me that mutations must be the ecphoria of accumulated former latent engraphias. _merrifield_ and _standfuss_, by exposing caterpillars and chrysalids for varying periods to considerable degrees of cold and heat, have determined permanent changes in the specific characters of the butterflies which have emerged from them. _standfuss_ and _fischer_ have also shown that, after several generations, by continuing the action of cold on the caterpillars, the variations thus produced can be preserved even after the cold has ceased to act. no doubt the cold acts on the germinal cells as on the rest of the body, but the heredity of an acquired character is thus demonstrated. the experiments of _miss de chauvin_ on salamanders (_axolotl_) are still more conclusive, for we are dealing here with characters acquired through aquatic or aërial media, which can hardly act on the sexual glands. we cannot continue this subject any further and we return to the work of _semon_. it is needless to say that the nature of mnemic engraphia remains itself an unknown quantity. as long as we are unable to transform inert matter into a living organism we shall remain in ignorance. but, when it is accepted with the laws of the phenomena which it produces, this unknown quantity, as _semon_ has shown, alone suffices to explain all the rest, and is already a great step toward the comprehension of the laws which govern life. =blastophthoria.=--by blastophthoria, or deterioration of the germ, i mean what might also be called false heredity, that is to say, the results of all direct pathogenic or disturbing action, especially that of certain intoxications, on the germinal cells, whose hereditary determinants are thus changed. blastophthoria thus acts on germs not yet conjugated, through the medium of their bearers, and creates at their origin _hereditary stigmata_ of all kinds, while true heredity only combines and reproduces the ancestral energies. blastophthoria deranges the mneme or hereditary engrams, and consequently a more or less considerable part of their ecphorias during the life of the individuals which arise from them. it is not a question here of the reproduction of the hereditary ancestral energies in the descendants (in different combinations) as is the case in the heredity which we have just studied, but, on the contrary, a question of their perturbation. however, the store of cells reserved as germinal cells in the embryo, the germ of which has been damaged by blastophthoric action, being usually also affected by the disturbing cause, it follows that the pathological change introduced by blastophthoria in the hereditary mneme is transmitted to the descendants by ordinary heredity. in this way blastophthoria deposits the first germ of most pathological degenerations by causing immediate deviation of all the determinants of the germ in the same direction. the most typical and the commonest example of blastophthoria is that of alcoholic intoxication. the spermatozoa of alcoholics suffer like the other tissues from the toxic action of alcohol on the protoplasm. the result of this intoxication of the germs may be that the children resulting from their conjugation become idiots, epileptics, dwarfs or feeble minded. thus it is not alcoholism or the craving for drink which is inherited. no doubt the peculiarity of badly supporting alcohol is inherited by ordinary heredity as a hereditary disposition, but it is not this which produces the alcoholic degenerations of the race. these are the result of the single blastophthoria. when, on the other hand, a man is found to be imbecile or epileptic as the result of the insobriety of his father, he preserves the tendency to transmit his mental weakness or his epilepsy to his descendants, even when he abstains completely from alcoholic drinks. in fact, the chromosomes of the spermatozoid, from which about a half of his organism has issued, have preserved the pathological derangement produced by the parental alcoholism in their hereditary mneme, and have transmitted it to the store of germinal cells of the feeble minded or the epileptic, who in his turn transmits it to his descendants. from _weismann's_ point of view his hereditary determinants remain pathologically deviated. all intoxications which alter the protoplasm of the germinal cells may produce blastophthoric degenerations, which continue to menace several successive generations in the form of hereditary taints. other deviations in the development of the germs may act in an analogous manner to blastophthoria. we have mentioned above the experiments of _merrifield_ and _standfuss_ on the caterpillars of certain butterflies. without being really of a pathological nature, these actions of a physical agent on the hereditary energies resemble blastophthoria. mechanical action on the embryo may also give rise to pathological products or even mutilation. thus, _weismann_ demonstrated the production of degenerate individuals in ants when certain coleoptera were introduced in their nest, the ants being fond of the secretion of the large glandular hairs of the coleoptera. the exact cause of the degeneration has not yet been found, but the fact is certain. in man, certain constitutional affections and congenital anomalies are the result of certain diseases in the procreators, which have affected the germinal cells or the embryo (for instance syphilis). as soon as the blastophthoric actions cease in the procreators, those of their descendants who live under a normal regimen have evidently a tendency to eliminate the blastophthoric organs at the end of several generations and to regenerate themselves little by little. thanks to the power of the ancestral mneme which tends to reëstablish homophony. however, the data on this subject are insufficient. in this case homophony is represented by the normal equilibrium of the different typical or normal characters of the species. footnotes: [ ] i insert here some passages intended for more advanced readers, but this does not imply that they are of less importance. on the contrary i strongly advise all my readers to try and understand the theories of _hering_ and _semon_, which appear to me to throw a new light on the question of transformation and heredity. chapter ii evolution or descent of living organisms the theory of evolution is intimately associated with the name of _darwin_, for it was he who established it in the scientific world. in reality, the idea of the transformation of organisms was put forward by _lamarck_ more than a century ago, but he did not sufficiently support it. the theory of evolution states that the different animal and vegetable species are not each of them specially created as such from the first, but that they are connected with each other by a real and profound relationship, and derived progressively one from another; generally from more simple forms, by engraphia and selection. man himself is no exception to this rule, for he is closely related to the higher apes. it is no longer possible to-day to deny the fundamental fact which we have just stated. since _darwin_, and as the result of the powerful impulse which this man of genius gave to natural science, innumerable observations and experiments have confirmed the truth of the progressive evolution of living beings. comparative anatomy, comparative geography of plants and animals, comparative embryology, and the study of the morphology and biology of a number of recently discovered plants and animals, have built up more and more the genealogical tree, or _phylogeny_, of living beings, that is to say their ancestral lineage. the number of varieties and races or sub-species increases indefinitely, the more closely they are examined. researches on the fossil remains of species of animals and plants which have been extinct for thousands and millions of years (_palæontology_) have also contributed to determine the trunk of the great tree of former life. the numerous gaps which still exist between these fragmentary documents of former ages are nevertheless too considerable for continuous connections to be established in the past by the aid of fossils. we not only know that the different forms of living beings are connected to each other by a real relationship, but we can fathom more and more deeply the degrees of this relationship, and can often prove from which group of animals a given group is descended. in many cases we can determine at which period the fauna and flora of two continents have been separated from each other, and in what manner they have been transformed, each in its own way, while still preserving the general characters which were common before their separation. the specialist can soon discover what species belong to the old geographically differentiated fauna and flora of the country, and what have been ulteriorily imported. i record these facts for the benefit of those persons who have not yet understood that it is absolutely useless at the present day to dispute the evolution of living beings. deceived by the divergent opinions of scientists concerning hypotheses which endeavor to explain the details of evolution, these persons confound the details with the fundamental facts of evolution. =ontogeny. phylogeny.=--in the light of the facts of evolution, heredity takes quite a new aspect when removed from the old biblical idea of the independent creation of species. _haeckel_ launched into the scientific world, under the name of "fundamental biogenetic law," a theory which, without having the right to the title of an immutable dogma, explains the facts in a general way, and gives us a guiding line along the phylogenetic history of living beings. "_ontogeny_," that is the history of the embryological development of each individual, always consists in a summary and fragmentary repetition of _phylogeny_, or the history of the ancestors of the species to which the individual belongs. this signifies that, as embryos, we repeat in an abridged form the series of types or morphological stages through which has passed the series of our animal ancestors, from the primitive cell to man. in reality this is only true in a relative way, for a considerable part of the ancestral engraphias of the embryo has disappeared without leaving any trace; also many embryos, especially those which have special conditions of existence outside the body of their mother, have acquired special complex organs and corresponding functions. thus, the caterpillars of butterflies with their specific and generic peculiarities, hairs, horns, etc., furnish many examples of secondary acquired characters which have nothing in common with the worm, which is the ancestral type of the butterfly represented by the embryonic period when it is a caterpillar. however, many undoubted vestiges of the ancestral history are found in the embryos at different periods of their development. it is certain that insects descended from worms, and there is no doubt that the larvæ of insects, which are almost worms, represent the ontogenetic repetition of the phylogeny of insects. it is also certain that whales, although they have whalebone instead of teeth, have descended from cetacea provided with teeth, which in their turn descended from terrestrial mammals. but we find in the embryo whale a complete denture which is of no use to it, and which disappears in the course of the embryonic period. this denture is nothing else than a phylogenetic incident in the ontogeny of the whale. in the fins of cetacea, as in the four limbs of other mammals, we find the same bones, which are derived from the bones of the wings and legs of their bird ancestors. in birds, the same bones are the phylogenetic derivatives of the limbs of reptiles. all these facts demonstrate with certainty the descent of animal forms, a descent which we can follow in all its details. in certain ants whose bodies show their close relationship with a slave-keeping group, but which have become the parasitic hosts of other ants, we find not only the arched mandibles, shaped for rape, but the undoubted rudiments of the slave instinct, although this instinct has, perhaps, not been exercised by them for thousands of years. these examples suffice to show that the form and functions of a living organism, as well as its mental faculties, are derived not only from the most recent direct ancestors of this organism, but that they partly mount much higher in the genealogical tree. our coccyx is a vestige of the tail of animals. it is from them also that we have inherited anger and jealousy, sexual appetites, fear, cunning, etc. as long as they remain in use, the oldest inherited characters normally remain the most tenacious and are preserved the longest. when they cease to be utilized, or become useless, they still remain for a long time as rudiments before finally disappearing; for instance the vermiform appendix of the intestine and the pineal gland of the brain. these rudiments often persist for still a longer time in the embryo, as we have seen in the case of the ancestral teeth of the embryo whales. we also meet with the stumps of wings in the chrysalis of certain ants (_anergates_), the males of which have lost their wings. =natural selection.=--the artificial selection practiced by gardeners and cattle breeders led _darwin_ to his hypothesis of natural selection by the struggle for existence. confirmed in his idea by the observation of tropical nature, _darwin_ thought he could explain the origin of living beings by natural selection. it is this hypothesis which is properly called _darwinism_. but the name darwinism has also been given to evolution as a whole, which has been the cause of endless confusion. all the mystic and narrow-minded, full of biblical prejudice, naturally profit by this confusion to attack the facts of evolution and science itself. =the struggle for existence.=--the struggle for existence and natural selection are absolutely positive facts, which can be constantly verified by the observation of living nature as it is presented to us. all living beings eat one another or at any rate struggle against each other, plants as well as animals; and, apart from air and water, animals are almost entirely nourished by plants and other animals. it is obvious that in this perpetual struggle the less adapted and the less armed--and by arms we include the powers of reproduction, resistance to diseases and to cold, etc.--disappear, while the better adapted and the better armed persist. i confess i cannot understand the detractors of _darwin_ who are blind in face of these facts and hypnotized by certain conventional suggestions. on the other hand, what always has been and still remains hypothetical is the explanation of the descent of all plants and animals by natural selection alone. we have already spoken of the _mutations_ of _de vries_, and the theory of the _mneme_ elaborated by _semon_, and need not repeat them here. thanks to the idea of _hering_, worked out by _semon_, the facts are now explained in a satisfactory manner. engraphia, produced in the organisms by the irritating agents of the external world, prepares and builds up little by little their increasing complications, while selection, by continually eliminating the unfit, directs the elaborating work of the mneme and adapts it to the surrounding local circumstances. _de vries_ has objected that the variations produced by artificial and natural selections are mutable, while sudden mutations have a much more stable character. but we have just seen that these mutations themselves are evidently only the delayed ecphoria of a long ancestral engraphia accumulated. on the other hand, the variations obtained by selection are themselves only due to more rapid ecphorias, derived from repeated conjugations in a certain direction. _plate_ and others have shown that they may become more and more fixed, if they are well adapted, and thus become more tenacious. there is, therefore, no contradiction between the fundamental facts, and all is simply and naturally explained by the combination of hereditary mnemic engraphia with selection. recent study on the transformations of living beings have shown that they do not take place in a regularly progressive manner, as _darwin_ at first believed, but that periods of relatively rapid transformation alternate with periods of relative arrest, both in a general way and for each particular species. we see certain species remaining almost stationary for an immense time and tending rather to disappear, while others vary enormously, showing actual transformation. the transplantation of one species to a new environment, for instance to a new continent, provokes, as has been proved, a relatively rapid transformation. it is evident that mnemic engraphia transforms organisms the more rapidly as it changes in nature itself, which is the case in the migrations we have just mentioned, and which also changes the factors of selection. other facts show clearly that the fauna and flora of the present world find themselves in a period of recoil with regard to their modification. in the tertiary period the fauna and flora of the world were richer than to-day; many more older species have disappeared than new ones have arisen. this fundamental fact seems due to the extremely slow cooling of the earth, and appears to be indicated by the powerful growth in tropical climates, the fauna and flora of which resemble those of the tertiary period, and, on the other hand by the relative poverty and slowness of growth in cold countries. =conclusions.=--what are the principal conclusions to which we are led by this short study of the ancestral history or phylogeny of man? ( ). the transformation or evolution of living beings is a demonstrated fact. ( ). the factors in evolution appear at first sight to be very diverse: selection, mutation, climatological, physical and chemical factors, etc. we have seen that they may all be connected with the fundamental principle of mnemic engraphia, aided by natural selection. no doubt the nature of the mnemic engraphia of external agents in the living substance is still unknown. when we are able to connect the laws of life with the laws of inert nature, we shall only have before us a single great metaphysical mystery, that of the tendency of mundane energy to the differentiation of details and the production of complicated forms. what is important here is to know that engraphia and selection are capable of considerably modifying species in a positive or negative manner, for good or evil, improving them by good influence and good conjugations, or deteriorating them by bad selection or by blastophthoria, which causes them to degenerate. the combination of a bad selection with blastophthoric influences constitutes the great danger for humanity, and it is here that a rational sexual life should intervene. ( ). the mental faculties of animal species, as well as their physical characters, depend on their ancestral hereditary mneme. they simply represent the internal or introspective side of central activity, and the brain obeys the natural laws of the mneme in the same way as the other organs. ( ). it follows from all this that phylogeny and selection, the same as heredity properly understood, have the right to a fundamental place in the sexual question, for the germs which, after each conception, reproduce an individual are, on the one hand, bearers of the inherited energy of our ancestors, and on the other hand, that of future generations. according to the care or neglect of civilized humanity they may be transformed for good or evil, progress or recede. unfortunately, owing to religious and other prejudices, the question of evolution is not discussed in schools. hence, the majority of men only hear of these things by hearsay in a rough and inexact manner; so that a series of phenomena familiar to naturalists and medical men, are still dead letters for the rest of the public. this obliges me to speak further on some points of detail. the so-called historical times, that is the times of the chinese, egyptians and assyrians, which appear to us extremely remote, are from the point of view of evolution very near to us. these ancient peoples, at any rate those who were our direct ancestors, or who were closely related to them, are thus, in the language of evolution, which takes no count of time or of the number of generations, our very near relations. the generations which separate them from us and the few hundred generations between them and those of their direct ancestors, who were at the same time ours, represent a limited period from the point of view of the ethnological history of mankind. on the other hand, if we examine the savage peoples of america, asia, africa and australia, which have been specially studied since the discovery of america and some of which are actually living, and compare them with ourselves and with our ancestors of four thousand years ago, we find that they differ infinitely more from us than we differ from our ancestors, as their ethnographical and historical remains are sufficient to prove. among the savage peoples we find races such as the pigmies of _stanley_ (akkaas), the weddas of ceylon, even australians and negroes, whose whole bodily structure differs profoundly from our european race and its varieties. the profoundness and constancy of these differences clearly show that the relationship of such races to ours must be very remote. we are concerned here with veritable races or sub-species, or at least with very constant and accentuated varieties. it is true that it is difficult to unravel the almost inextricable confusion of human races; but we may be certain that the savage races and varieties remote from ours, and even certain less-remote races such as the mongols and malays, are, phylogenetically speaking, infinitely less related to us than the ancient assyrians. this indicates that the ancestors which were common to us and these races must probably be looked for several thousands of generations back, even when their descendants are still living on other continents at the present day. it is easy to explain that human races so different could develop separately in continents and under climates with a very different mode of life and conditions of development, if we reflect that at these remote periods men only had very limited modes of transport and lived in a fashion very little different from that of the anthropoid apes, so that the ethnological forms were preserved separated from each other by small distances. this fact can still be observed among the small hostile indian or malay tribes, who live in tropical regions and often occupy only a few square leagues. the higher civilizations of former times could not develop beyond a comparatively limited circle, as their means of transport did not allow them to venture too far. the conquest of the whole earth by modern civilization by means of the mariner's compass, firearms, steam and electricity is thus an absolutely contemporaneous event, unique in the history of the world, the origin of which hardly goes back more than four hundred years. this event has completely upset the natural internal evolution of human races, by the fact that all the lower races attacked by civilized races armed with guns and alcohol, are destined to rapid and complete destruction. geology has discovered in the caves of the quaternary period, human remains which are much lower in the scale of evolution and much nearer the anthropoid apes than the lowest races still living. their brain, as shown by the cranial cavity, was still smaller. lastly, _dubois_ has discovered in java the cranium of _pithecanthropus erectus_ which is intermediate between that of the orang-utan and man. if more such remains are discovered the chain of transition between the apes and man will be almost complete. =hybridity. consanguinity.=--before concluding this chapter we must study the question of _hybrids_. it is important to know to what point fecundity and descent are influenced by the degree of relationship between the two procreators. conjugation probably arises from the general necessity of organisms to reënforce their race by variety. consanguinity perpetuated is harmful to the species, in the same way as parthenogenesis, or indefinite reproduction by fission or budding. it produces enfeeblement and degeneration of the race, and leads to extinction by causing sterility. by _consanguinity_ is meant continued sexual union between near relatives. it is easy to understand that the conjugation of two germs derived from brothers and sisters or from a father and his daughter approaches parthenogenesis from the point of view of the mixing of hereditary energies. we shall see later on that nearly all peoples have a certain repugnance to consanguineous marriages. among animals, natural selection eliminates too consanguineous products. on the other hand, sexual union between different species, however little removed, gives no products. near species may produce hybrids between themselves, but these hybrids are as a rule sterile or nearly so, and are incapable of perpetuating their type, which reverts rapidly to one of the primitive species. it has been recently demonstrated that the incapacity of two species of animals to produce hybrids is intimately connected with the reciprocal toxicity of their blood. when the blood of one species is injected into the veins of another the production of hybrids is possible between them, at least as far as has been observed. it is curious to note that the blood of the anthropoid apes is not toxic for man, although these animals are very different from us, and hybrids have not yet been produced. this fact helps us to understand how it is that the differences which exist between the different human races do not prevent the production of hybrids between any two of them. in spite of this we may state, without risk of error, that the most dissimilar human races give a bad quality of hybrids, which have little chance of forming a viable mongrel race. we have not sufficient information on this point concerning the lowest human races, such as the pigmies and weddas. on the other hand, mulattoes (hybrids between negroes and whites) constitute a race of very bad quality and hardly viable, while the hybrids between indians and whites are much more resistant and of relatively better quality. in this question, the middle course appears without any doubt the true one. unions between near races and varieties, or at least between individuals of the same race or variety whose relationship is old, are certainly the best. we readily grant that the homogeneity of a race has the advantage of fixing its peculiarities in a more durable and characteristic fashion; but many inconveniences counterbalance this advantage. if we one day, by wise selection and by eliminating all sources of blastophthoria obtain a superior quality of human germs, it is possible that in the remote future, consanguinity, provided it is not exaggerated may lose its dangers. chapter iii natural conditions and mechanism of human coitus--pregnancy--correlative sexual characters it is impossible to comprehend the deep meaning and lofty aim of an act like that of sexual union without knowing the details of conjugation and the origin of man as we have explained them in the preceding chapters. conjugation requires the bringing together of two cells, and consequently the movement of at least one of them. this cellular movement suffices for the lower forms of union and is usually limited to the male cell. owing to its movement it plays the active role, while the passive role is reserved for the female cell. hence we see in the higher plants the male cells, or pollen, transported to the pistil by the wind or by insects, and thence reach the egg by mechanical endosmotic attraction which brings about conjugation. this takes place in an analogous manner in lower animals, but the male cell is generally endowed with special movement. as soon as we deal with complicated animals, mobile in themselves and composed of cells differentiated to form complex organs, we see a second phenomena of reproductive movements appear in the animal phylogeny, namely the movement of the whole individual bearing male cells toward the individual bearing female cells. this simple fact gives rise to the formation of correlative sexual differences between the individuals bearing each kind of germinal cells. as the result of the evolution of these two phylogenetic systems of motor phenomena tending to establish conjugation, we obtain for each sex two categories of sexual formations: ( ). the _germinal cells themselves_, the female form of which becomes larger, more rich in protoplasm, and remains immobile, while the male form, or spermatozoid becomes extremely small and is provided with motor apparatus (fig. ). ( ). the _individuals_ with their correlative sexual differences proper to the male and female, disposed in a way to give the male the active role and the female the passive role. normal hermaphrodism, complete or reciprocal (snails, etc.) constitutes an intermediate stage. here each individual bears two kinds of germinal cells and possesses also male and female copulative organs, so that there only exists one form of individuals which copulate reciprocally; the male organ of one penetrating the female organ of the other and vice versa. it is obvious that this excludes the formation of correlative individual sexual characters. in the second category, the male always differs from the female, at least in the sexual organs, and usually in other physical and mental characters. the difference in the sexual functions leads to the formation of differences in other parts of the body, and in instincts and sentiments, which find their material expression in the different development of the brain. certain specific functions in society may, in social animals like the ants, lead to the formation or differentiation of a third or fourth kind of individuals. this is what is called _polymorphism_. here it is not the sexual function causes the correlative differences of the individuals, but division of social labor. the ecphoria of the hereditary mneme which produces the polymorphous, and more or less asexual individual forms (workers, warriors,) still proceeds through the energies of the reproducing germs. here the action of selection is necessary to explain the phenomena. in man, sexual differentiation has led to the formation of two kinds of individuals, differing little in their correlative attributes, but each bearing one kind of germinal cells. in sexual union man plays the active part, woman, the passive. when sexual activity, in the animal kingdom, is no longer limited to the movement of one of the cells but requires the displacement of the whole individual, we can quite understand that the organization of these individuals must become much more complex, and that it requires a central nervous system as a directing apparatus. sexual individuality thus involves collaboration of the other organs of the body, and especially that of the central organs for reflex movements, the instincts and the higher mental faculties of man, in the accomplishment of the fecundating act those which are the consequences of it. from this simple animal origin is evolved the complex sexual love of man. the duty of the active or male individual is to bring the spermatozoa to a point where they can easily reach the female cells or ovules. when this is done the duty of the male is accomplished. in the passive or female individual of the higher animals, pairing and conjugation are only the commencement of reproductive activity. however, this is not the case in the whole animal kingdom. for instance, fish have distinct sexes, but in them the female deposits her non-fecundated eggs in the water and is not concerned with them any further. the male then arrives and discharges his sperm on the eggs. in this case fecundation takes place without copulation. with such a system sexual love and maternal love lose their _raison d'être_, for the young fish are capable of providing for themselves as soon as they are born. there are, however, a few exceptions, one of the most curious being that of certain fish of the dead sea, in which the male incubates the eggs by taking them into his buccal cavity. =reproduction in vertebrates.=--we should never finish if we were to describe even the chief varieties of sexual union among the vertebrates. as a rule, the male possesses a copulating organ which projects externally, while the female presents an invaginated cavity, more or less cylindrical, into which the male organ can penetrate. a certain amount of sperm is deposited by the male in the neighborhood of the mature ovules (fig. ) discharged from the female germinal gland or ovary, which renders conjugation possible. by means of their mobile tails, the spermatozoa (fig. ) are able to reach the ovules and fecundate them. the manner in which the egg when fecundated, either in the mother's body or after being laid, continues its development, varies enormously in different species. the eggs are often deposited by the female and the embryo develops outside the mother's body. this occurs in insects, mollusks, fish, amphibia, reptiles, birds and the lowest mammals or monotremes (ornithorhynchus and echidna). in the lower mammals is developed an organ called the womb which allows the embryo to remain longer in the maternal body. this organ is very incomplete in them, and a pocket or fold in the skin of the belly allows the mother to carry her young, which are extremely embryonic at birth, till they have developed sufficiently to live alone. this occurs in marsupials (kangaroos and opossums), in which the vagina and uterus are double. in the higher mammals the womb becomes more and more developed, opening into a single vagina in the middle line of the abdomen, between the two ovaries, and constituting a highly specialized organ which allows the mother to preserve the young for a long time in her belly. in most mammals the uterus has two elongated diverticula, each of which may contain a successive series of embryos. in man it forms a single cavity and normally contains a single embryo, occasionally two or more. these facts show that the role of the female mammal in reproduction is more important than that of the male. but this is not all. whether it still lays eggs, or whether it gives birth to young which are more or less developed its sexual role is far from ended. the higher oviparous vertebrates, especially the birds, take care of their progeniture for some time after laying. the young are still fed by the mother, either by milk from the teats, as in mammals, or by nourishment obtained from outside, as in birds, or by both methods combined or succeeding each other, as in cats. in many animals the male contributes to the raising of the young; a point to which we shall return. here, we indicate these complicated details simply to show that sexual union only contributes one link in the long chain of reproduction. let us study its mechanism in man. =the copulatory organ of man. the testicles. the seminal vesicles.=--nature is often very sparing even in the highest organizations. it has thus combined in the male the urethra with the copulatory organ, and the sexual germinal glands, or _testicles_, with an accessory gland, the _epididymis_. hundreds of thousands of spermatozoa are contained in the glandular tubes of these organs, which, when they are mature can always produce new ones by cell division. the spermatozoa accumulate at the extremity of the duct of the gland in a reservoir called the _seminal vesicle_, where they float in the mucus, thus constituting the seminal fluid or _sperm_. this liquid has a special odor. the two seminal vesicles are situated in the abdominal cavity underneath the urinary bladder, each having a duct which meets that of the other side and opens by the side of it in the deep part of the urethra. here the secretion of several other glands, especially of the _prostate_, is added to the sperm and mixes with it. the point where the two seminal ducts open into the urethra forms a small elevation, the _verumontanum_. from this point the male urethra emerges from the abdominal cavity and is continued along the special prolongation which forms the penis, or virile member of copulation. in the ordinary way the penis only serves for the emission of urine. it hangs flaccid and terminates in a rounded swelling called the glans, at the end of which opens the urethra (fig. ). this opening serves also for the emission of the sperm. =erection. the corpus cavernosum.=--the most curious part of this apparatus is the mechanism of _erection_, or the power possessed by the penis of swelling under the influence of certain nervous irritations, increasing in length and diameter as well as becoming rigid. this phenomenon is produced by three organs called the _cavernous bodies_ which form the principal bulk of the penis. one of them, situated in the middle and underneath and formed by two bodies united into one, surrounds the urethra and terminates in front in a dilatation which constitutes the glans already mentioned. the two others are situated symmetrically on the dorsal part of the penis. all three consist of caverns or diverticula formed by blood-vessels, which are empty when the penis is flaccid. by a complex nervous mechanism based on vascular paralysis due to nervous phenomena called inhibition and dynamogeny, the nervous irritations cause an accumulation of blood in the spaces of the cavernous bodies which become so gorged with blood as to form stiff and hard rods. the size of the penis is thereby increased considerably and its stiffness allows it to penetrate the vagina of the female. at the same time and by the same mechanism the verumontanum swells so as to close the ureter from the bladder, while the seminal ducts open toward the urethral orifice. in this way the copulatory organ is ready for its function. repeated irritations are however necessary to provoke the ejaculation of semen. this is finally produced by excitation of a special muscle which compresses the seminal vesicles in a spasmodic manner and ejaculates the semen by the urethra. after ejaculation, the accumulation of blood in the cavernous bodies gradually diminishes and the penis again becomes flaccid. this apparatus is thus very complicated and is put in action by several nervous irritations which may be disturbed in many ways in affections of the nervous system. we may observe here that the nervous centers of erection and ejaculation may be put in action directly by the brain, or indirectly by peripheral irritation of the glans. those peripheral nerves which provoke sexual excitation are especially the nerves of the glans. this possesses a skin or mucous membrane which is extremely delicate and is protected against external irritation by a fold of skin called the _prepuce_, or foreskin. the prepuce is often too narrow so that it cannot be withdrawn behind the glans. it then forms a pocket in which sebaceous matter, semen, urine, etc., accumulate and decompose. this anomaly, called _phimosis_, does not exist among the jews owing to circumcision, or the removal of the prepuce in the newly born, which forms part of their religious rites. hygienic considerations sometimes oblige us to perform this operation in others. the bad habit of masturbation, so common in boys, is often provoked by phimosis, and shows that simple mechanical irritation of the glans, due here to secretions contained in the prepuce, may lead to ejaculation of semen as well as to erection. we have seen above that the male and female germinal glands arise from the same primitive organ in the embryo. if the embryo becomes male, this organ is transformed into the two testicles which descend gradually in the canal of the groin and become placed in the scrotum. if it becomes female, the two sexual glands remain in the abdominal cavity and are transformed into ovaries. =the genital organs of woman.=--the organs described in chapter ii (figs. and ), constitute the internal and more important part of the female sexual apparatus. in women, the urethra opens externally on its own account. it is much shorter and wider than in men. at its external extremity is a small cavernous body called the _clitoris_, which corresponds embryologically to the penis in man, and chiefly to the glans. like the latter it is specialized for sexual irritation and possesses very sensitive nerves. the opening of the female urethra is situated in front of the vulva directly under the pubic bone, at the same place as the root of the male penis. from this point, on each side of the middle line, extend two longitudinal folds, one external covered with skin and called the larger lip of the vulva (fig. , _labia majora_), the other internal, hidden under the first, called the lesser lip of the vulva (_labia minora_), and covered with thin mucous membrane. between the two lesser lips is the sexual aperture, which, with the labia majora and minora is called the _vulva_. this opening is distinct from that of the urethra, and leads to the internal cavity or _vagina_ (fig. ). the vagina is about ten to twelve centimeters long ( to -½ inches) and terminates in a _cul-de-sac_ which surrounds the vaginal portion of the womb, of which we have spoken above. in virgins the entrance to the vagina is more or less closed by a delicate transverse membrane called the _hymen_, which is only perforated by a narrow opening. at the first coitus the hymen is torn, causing a certain amount of pain and bleeding. the walls of the vagina are thrown into transverse folds, which render them somewhat rough. the remains of the hymen torn by the first coitus afterward form behind the vulva small excrescences named _carunculæ myrtiformes_. in the first chapter we have spoken of the changes undergone by the fecundated ovule till it becomes the embryo and then the infant. it remains to speak of the mechanism of expulsion of the ovule and of its fecundation, as well as the changes in the womb which result from these phenomena. =menstruation.=--about every four weeks, one or two ovules (rarely more) mature and are discharged into the fallopian tubes, down which they pass by the movement of the vibratile cilia of the mucous membrane, to the uterus, to the walls of which they become attached if they have been fecundated on the way (fig. ). fecundation or conjugation takes place most often in the fallopian tube, sometimes in the uterus. the maturation and expulsion of the ovule are generally accompanied in women by a nervous phenomenon closely related to erection in man. the mucous membrane of the cavity of the uterus is very rich in blood vessels which become dilated and gorged with blood under the inhibitory influence of certain nerve centers. as the mucous membrane is very thin, the result is otherwise than in man; the blood transudes through the mucous membrane and flows away. this is called _menstruation_ ("courses" or monthly periods). the object of this is, no doubt, to prepare the mucous membrane of the womb for the fixation of the fecundated egg which will become grafted on its surface. the courses in women generally last three or four days, but are often very irregular. it is necessary to point out that they do not depend on ovulation (expulsion of the egg). the two phenomena may take place independently of each other, for menstruation in itself depends only on nervous irritation, which may be provoked or averted by hypnotic suggestion, for example. moreover, there are women who never menstruate and who, in spite of this, not only regularly discharge ovules but may be fecundated and become pregnant. usually, however, the two phenomena are associated by nervous reflexes, so that menstruation takes place first and then the ovule commences its migration. =the mechanism of coitus.=--copulation, or coitus, takes place as follows: after a certain degree of excitation, both mental and sensory, the male introduces the erect and stiffened penis into the vagina. in the case of advanced pregnancy he should place himself behind, so as to avoid injuring the unborn child. rhythmic movements of the two individuals, especially of the man, gradually increase the excitation of the mucous membrane or skin of the genital organs of each party, till voluptuous sensations, arising chiefly in the glans penis and clitoris, spread to the whole nervous system and the entire body, constituting what is called the _venereal orgasm_, and terminating in the man by the ejaculation of semen. the localizations of irritability in woman are multiple, and to the clitoris must be added the nipples, the vulva, and even, it is said, the neck of the womb. in man the parts round the anus may also, besides the glans penis, form an excitable region. at the acme of erection the glans is turgid, and is applied directly against the neck of the womb (fig. ). in this way the sperm is ejaculated directly against the neck of the womb. in the woman an analogous phenomenon takes place; the clitoris becomes turgid and the mild and repeated friction of the mucous membranes, together with contact on other sensitive parts, produces a voluptuous sensation as in the man. through nervous association, the repeated excitation determines secretion from certain glands of the vagina which lubricate the vulva (glands of _bartholin_). at the maximum point of voluptuous feeling the woman experiences something analogous to the venereal orgasm of the man. there is thus manifested in the two sexes an intense and reciprocal desire of penetration one by the other, a desire which powerfully favors fecundation. in the woman as in the man the end of the orgasm is followed by an agreeable relaxation which invites sleep. the hereditary or instinctive nervous actions produce after coitus a profound effect of contrast. when the sexual appetite commences, the odors, especially those of the sexual organs, the contacts, the movements, and the sight of the individual of the opposite sex, all increase desire, producing a voluptuous excitation stronger than all contrary feeling. hardly is the sexual act consummated than all vanishes like a dream. what was a moment before the object of the most violent desire becomes indifferent, and sometimes even excites a slight feeling of disgust, at least as regards certain odors, sometimes even regarding touch and sight. the name sexual appetite (libido sexualis) is given to the passionate and purely sexual desire of the two sexes for each other. it varies greatly in different individuals. according to _ferdy_ and other authors, the neck of the womb, during the venereal orgasm of the woman, executes movements of suction in the glans penis. i do not know if this is a fact, but it is certain that the female orgasm is useless for conception. absolutely cold women, incapable of the least voluptuous sensation are as fruitful as those who have pronounced venereal orgasms. it proves that the spermatozoa arrive at their goal even when the womb is entirely passive. the great variation of sexual desire in different individuals renders mutual adaptation often very difficult. the venereal orgasm is sometimes more rapid in man, sometimes in woman (more rarely in the latter). this inequality is rather to the detriment of the woman, for the man can still satisfy himself when the orgasm of the woman has terminated, while the contrary is not possible without artificial manipulation. moreover, the frequence and intensity of the sexual appetite are often much greater in one than in the other, which is detrimental to both. here again it is the woman who suffers the most, for the man can always satisfy himself without the woman having voluptuous sensations. what is commonly called good manners generally prevents the conjoints from speaking of their sexual desires before marriage. this very often results in grave deceptions, dissensions, and often even divorce. i shall return to this subject in chapter xiv. voluptuous sensations only represent the means employed by nature to bring together the sexes with the object of reproducing the species. a woman can be fecundated and give birth to a child by the aid of semen injected into the uterus by a syringe. moreover, it is rather exceptional for the venereal orgasm to occur in the two sexes at the same moment. it is essential for fecundation that the semen should enter the womb. when the spermatozoa have reached the neighborhood of the neck of the womb they swim by their own movements, not only along the whole uterine cavity, but also along the fallopian tubes and even in the abdominal cavity, so that the force of ejaculation is of little importance. =pregnancy.=--the womb enlarges considerably during pregnancy. it exceeds the size of an adult head, and the muscles of its walls are greatly increased, so as to be capable of expelling the child later on. the phenomena of pregnancy, birth and suckling are known to all, so that i shall be brief. the almost sudden activity of the breasts after childbirth is a very interesting correlative phenomenon. it suffices to glance at one who has just become a mother and to observe the complications which profoundly influence all her organism with regard to the life of the infant, to comprehend to what extent the role of sexual life is more important, more profound, even more vital, in woman than in man. the latter no doubt requires a more violent appetite to urge him to copulation because he plays the active part, short though it be. but fecundating coitus having been effected, his contribution to the reproduction of the species is ended. while the activity of man is terminated at conception, that of woman only begins at this moment. in the first chapter we have indicated in a few words the transformations of the human embryo up to its birth. during nine months it grows from the size of a pin's head (the ovule) to that of the new-born child. although a woman seldom bears more than one embryo at the same time, twins being rare on the whole, she has nevertheless more pain and fatigue to bear than any female animal. this is due not only to the fact that our artificial and alcoholized civilization, with its specialized labor which disturbs vital equilibrium, has made women indolent and degenerate, but also to the enormous development of the human brain. the head of the human embryo is disproportionately large because the brain, as i showed with _schiller_ in , already contains at birth all the nerve elements which it will possess during the rest of its life (_comptes rendus de l'académie des sciences_). no doubt these elements are small and embryonic but the nerve fibers are ready to be covered with myelin and to enter upon their functions, and all this requires a cranium of considerable size. but it is not everything for the mother to nourish with her blood the brain and the cranium of the child; it is also necessary for this relatively large head to pass through the pelvis at the time of childbirth, and we know that this moment is the most dangerous for the life of the pregnant woman. as boys have on the average a larger brain and cranium than those of girls, their birth is usually more difficult. =accouchement.=--the sexual organs of woman undergo great changes in order to render childbirth possible. these organs become larger and more vascular, especially the womb, the growth of which is astonishing. originally the size of a small egg (a guinea fowl's) it exceeds the size of a human head, and there is an enormous increase of muscular tissue in its walls. large blood vessels develop in the uterine wall, especially in the placenta (figs. and ), where they enter into endosmotic relations with the circulation of the embryo. from the abdomen of the embryo arises an organ, the _allantois_, which is destined to carry the blood-vessels of the embryo to the placenta, and at the same time to give rise to the formation of the latter. in the placenta the blood-vessels of the embryo are separated from those of the mother by walls so thin that the nutritive juices of the maternal blood transude into the venous blood of the embryo, as well as combined oxygen in the blood necessary for its respiration. up to this point the vitellus of the egg, nourished by endosmosis through its membranes, had sufficed for the nutrition of the still very small embryo. while these phenomena are taking place, and while the substance of the two conjugated germs divides into an ever increasing number of cells, which become differentiated in layers to form the future organs (fig. ), while certain groups of cells are prepared some to form the intestinal canal, others the muscles and blood vessels, others the skin and organs of sense, others arising from the last to form the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves, the mother can still live her ordinary life. she suffers, however, from different disorders connected with what is passing on in her body. it is a curious fact that these disorders are more accentuated at the commencement of pregnancy, when the womb is hardly enlarged, than at the end. they consist chiefly of nervous troubles--slight derangement of the cerebral functions and sensations, etc. obstinate vomiting, peculiar desires, and changes of temper are some of the most frequent troubles of pregnant women, and probably arise more from local nervous irritation than from general transformations of the nutrition of the body. the mother's body is becoming adapted to the development of the infant in the womb. however embarrassed a woman may be in the last months of pregnancy by the great swelling of the belly (fig. ) the disorders are less accentuated than at the beginning of pregnancy. during pregnancy menstruation ceases. the sexual appetite is very variable; in many pregnant women it is diminished, in others there is no change, and it is seldom increased. there are other troubles which are more or less frequent, such as varicose veins in the legs caused by pressure of the uterus on the veins. but all the sufferings of pregnancy and childbirth are compensated for by the ardent desire of the normal woman to have a child, and by the happiness of hearing its first cry. proud and happy to give life to a new human being, which she hopes soon to suckle and carry in her arms, she cheerfully bears all the inconveniences and pains of pregnancy and childbirth. the latter is actually painful, for in spite of all that nature does to relax the pelvis and render it elastic, to dilate the neck of the womb, the vagina and the vulva, the passage of the enormous head of a human infant through all these relatively narrow apertures is extremely difficult (figs. and ). the passage is forced by the powerful contractions of the muscles of the womb. however, they do not always succeed by themselves, and in this case the accoucheur is obliged to apply the forceps to extract the head of the child. very often the neck of the womb, the vagina or the perineum (the part situated between the anus and the vulva) become torn during labor, and this may lead later on to disorders such as prolapse of the womb, etc.; disorders which may last through life. when the child is born, the umbilical cord (that is the transformed allantois, fig. ) cut, and the placenta extracted, the connecting nutrition and respiration between the child and its mother are suddenly interrupted. nourished hitherto by its mother's blood through the placenta and the vessels of the umbilical cord which supplied the necessary oxygen, the infant is suddenly obliged to breathe and feed for itself. its lungs, hitherto inactive, expand instantaneously under the nervous influence produced by the blood saturated with carbonic acid, and the first cry is produced. thus commences individual respiration. several hours later the cessation of maternal nutrition causes hunger, and this the reflex movements of suction, and the child takes the breast. during this time the empty womb contracts strongly and retracts enormously in a few days. the increase of blood produced by the maternal organism, by its adaptation to the nutrition of the embryo, is then employed in the production of milk in the breasts or lactiferous glands, which were already well developed during pregnancy. =suckling. maternity.=--the mother is instinctively disposed to suckle her child as the infant is to suck. at the end of four to six weeks, the womb has almost completely regained its former size. in savage races suckling at the breast lasts for two years or more. it is useless to mention here to what point the capacity for suckling and the production of milk have diminished among the modern women of civilized countries. this sad sign of degeneration is due to a large extent, as _bunge_ has shown by careful statistics, to the habit of taking alcoholic drinks, and is combined with other blastophthoric degenerations due to hereditary alcoholism. the future will show whether the artificial feeding of infants with cows' milk will benefit humanity. in any case it allows infants to survive who would die without it. on the other hand the development of a degeneration can hardly be an advantage for the species and we should hope for a return to the natural rule by abstinence from all alcoholic drinks. the false modesty of women concerning their pregnancy and everything that concerns childbirth, the pleasantries often made with regard to pregnant women are a sad sign of the degeneration and even corruption of our refined civilization. pregnant women ought not to hide themselves, or to be ashamed to carry a child in their womb; on the contrary they should be proud. such pride would certainly be much more justified than that of the fine officers parading in their uniforms. the external signs of the formation of humanity are more honorable to their bearers than the symbols of destruction, and woman should become imbued more and more with this truth! they will then cease to hide their pregnancy and to be ashamed of it. conscious of the grandeur of their sexual and social duty they will raise aloft the standard of our descent, which is that of the true future life of man, at the same time striving for the emancipation of their sex. viewed in this way, the sexual role of woman becomes elevated and solemn. man should less and less maintain his indifference towards the social miseries to which the slavery of woman has led, which has lasted thousands of years and which has dishonored the highest functions of her sex, by abuses without number. the hygiene of pregnancy, labor and its sequels, is of the highest importance. it certainly should not consist in exaggerated care and precaution, for in spoiling and softening women by inaction more harm than good is done. on the other hand, the social cruelty which neglects poor women of the people in confinement, often even without giving them sufficient nourishment, is revolting, and it is here especially that the reform of social hygiene becomes an elementary necessity for humanity. all that we have just spoken of binds the woman for months or years to each of her children, and we can understand that her whole soul is adapted in consequence to maternity. even when birth has detached the child from the maternal body, it remains attached to its mother by a hundred bonds, not only during the period of suckling, but long afterward when the conventions do not violate natural laws. little children are deeply attached to their mother, and while the father is impatient with their cries and the embarrassment which they cause, the mother takes a natural delight in them. when pregnancies succeed each other at reasonable intervals of one or two years, the normal woman lives with her children for many years in intimacy which never entirely ceases in a family animated by human and social sentiments. in normal circumstances the special bonds which unite the mother to her children last for life, while the father, if all goes well, becomes simply the best friend of his growing children. it is time that fathers began to recognize these natural laws, instead of clinging so tenaciously to the historic and artificial prestige of a worm-eaten and unnatural patriarchal authority. no doubt there are many pathological and degenerate mothers, but such an anomaly only proves the rule that we have just laid down. =correlative sexual characters.=--the correlative sexual characters, which we have previously spoken of in animals, are well known in man. man is in the average larger, broader in the shoulders and more robust; his skeleton is more solid but his pelvis narrower. at the age of puberty, from to years, the beard grows on the face, while in the pubic region hair develops in both sexes. at the same time the testicles and external genital organs enlarge. the sexual glands as well as the external genital organs have remained so far in an embryonic state although the mechanism of erection is already established in young boys. but this mechanism, in the normal boy, is not associated with any voluptuous sensation or any glandular secretion. man possesses the rudiments of the correlative sexual characters of woman, such as nipples without lactiferous glands, etc. in a general way each part of the external genital organs of one sex has its corresponding embryonic homologue in the other, which is explained by the different transformations which were originally the same in the embryo. the clitoris of woman corresponds to the penis of man, the labia majora to the scrotum, etc. in certain individuals these rudiments are more strongly developed, and may by exaggeration and transition lead to pathological hermaphrodism (chapter i); such are bearded women, and those possessing a large clitoris, or beardless men with effeminate bodies and small sexual organs. such cases are not examples of hermaphrodism, but of incomplete embryological differentiation. they consist in certain correlative sexual characters which show a tendency toward the other sex, a tendency which we find, from the mental point of view, in homosexuals. there is also to be noticed the "breaking" of the voice which occurs in man at the age of puberty, and is connected with the nervous system. in women the body is smaller and more delicate, the bones weaker, the pelvis wider and the chest narrower. the normal woman has no beard while the pubic hairs are the same as in man. the pubis, covered with a layer of fat, is slightly prominent in women and is called the _mons veneris_. there is more fat under the skin in a woman's body, and the voice does not break. after puberty breasts develop with their lactiferous glands and nipples for suction. puberty takes place a little earlier in women than in men, and corresponds to the growth of the internal and external sexual organs, at the same time that the ovules commence to mature and menstruation is established. the mental correlative sexual characters are much more important than those of the body. the psychology of man is different from that of woman. many books have been written on this subject, usually with more sentimentality than exactitude. mysogynists, like the philosopher _schopenhauer_, disparage woman from all points of view, while the friends of the female sex often exalt her in an exaggerated manner. in contemporary literature we see women authors judging man in quite different ways according as they are affected with "misandery" or "philandery"--that is enemies or friends of men. quite recently _moebius_ has published a mysogynistic work on the "physiological imbecility of woman." (_der physiologische schwachsinn des weibes_). one must be a misogynist of very high degree to introduce the pathological notion of imbecility into the evolution of the normal mentality of woman. in reality, the individual differences are much greater in man and woman from the psychological than from the physical point of view, so that they render a definition of the average extremely difficult. we are acquainted with bearded women, athletic women, as well as beardless men and puny men. from the mental point of view, there are also viragos and men with feminine instincts. imbeciles are not wanting in both sexes, but no reasonable person will deny that an intelligent woman is superior to a narrow-minded man even from the purely intellectual point of view. in spite of these difficulties, i shall attempt to bring forward the principal points which distinguish, in a general way, the masculine mind from the feminine, relying on my own observations and especially on the mental phenomena of both sexes. =the weight of the brain.=--according to statistics, the weight of the brain in men of our race is on the average grammes, while that of women averages grammes. the absolute weight is, however, not of much importance, because part of the cerebral substance in the larger animals is only for the supply of a greater number of cellular elements of the rest of the body, which necessitates a greater number of nervous elements. to make the matter clear, it is necessary to separate the weight of the cerebral hemispheres from the other nervous centers, such as the cerebellum, corpora striata, the optic thalami, the mid-brain, the pons varolii, the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord, for these centers constitute parts which are phylogenetically older, that is to say, inherited from lower animal ancestors. compared with the cerebral hemispheres, these nerve centers are relatively more important in other vertebrates than in man, and are in more constant proportion to the size of the body, the muscular, glandular and sensory elements of which they supply. when the intelligence is about the same, they are, therefore, compared with the cerebral hemispheres, much more developed in the larger than in the smaller animals. for example, they are very large in the ox, but small in mice. i have weighed a considerable number of human brains separated in this way with the following results: cerebral hemispheres other cerebral centers man grammes, . % | grammes, . % woman grammes, . % | grammes, . % thus the cerebellum and basal ganglia are a little smaller in men than in women, compared with the cerebral hemispheres. these figures appear to show that the cerebral hemispheres in woman are on the average a little smaller than in man, even proportionately to the stature; for, according to a general law in the animal kingdom, woman being smaller, her cerebral hemispheres should be, with equal mentality, proportionately a little larger. there are, however, female brains larger than many male brains, and the absolute and relative size of the cerebral hemispheres does not give a complete measure of the productive faculties. remarkable men have been known to possess rather small brains and imbeciles heavy ones. we must not forget the great importance of the hereditary or engraphic predispositions of the nerve element or _neurone_, to certain activities and especially to work in general, that is to say, their aptitude to produce energy, or if one prefers it, their disposition to "will." it is also interesting to consider the relationship of the frontal lobe to the rest of the cerebral hemispheres, the frontal lobe being without doubt the principal seat of intellectual activity. according to _meynert_, the weight of the frontal lobe in man exceeds that of woman, not only absolutely, but relatively to the rest of the brain. in his _résumé_ of the statistical data collected on this subject and from the results of my own material (autopsies at the asylum of burgholzli in zurich), _mercier_ has confirmed the opinion of _meynert_. the average weight of the hemispheres separated from the rest of the brain is grammes in man (frontal lobe , the rest ), and in woman (frontal lobe , rest ). here, atrophied brains (except general paralytics) have been weighed with others, which lowers the average total weight without altering the proportion. thus, the rest of the cerebral hemispheres exceeds the frontal lobe by grammes in man and grammes in woman, which means that in man the frontal lobe constitutes per cent. of the cerebral hemispheres and in woman . per cent. the difference is not great, but it is definite, for it is based on a large number of observations. =mental capacity of the two sexes.=--the fundamental difference between the psychology of woman and that of man is constituted by the irradiations of the sexual sphere in the cerebral hemispheres, which constitute what may be called _sexual mentality_. we shall discuss this in the following chapters, for it constitutes the foundation of our subject. we are only concerned here with the correlative differences. adhering in a general way to the main definitions of psychology, we assert that from the purely intellectual point of view, man considerably excels woman in his creative imagination, his faculty for combination and discovery, and by his critical mind. for a long time this was said to be explained by the statement that women had not the opportunity of measuring their intelligence against that of men; but, thanks to the modern movement of the emancipation of women, this assertion becomes more and more untenable. it is so with regard to artistic creations, for women have at all times taken part in works of art. when certain people maintain that a few generations of activity suffice to elevate the intellectual development of women, they confound the results of education with those of heredity and phylogeny (vide chapter ii). education is a purely individual matter and only requires one generation to produce its results. but neither mnemic engraphia, nor even selection can modify hereditary energies in two or three generations. tied down hitherto partly by servitude, the mental faculties of woman will doubtless rise and flourish in all their natural power as soon as they are absolutely free to develop in society equally with those of men, by the aid of equal rights. but what does not exist in the hereditary mneme, that is to say in the energies of germs, inherited through thousands or millions of years, cannot be created in a few generations. the specific characters and consequently the sexual characters have quite another constancy than is believed by the superficial prattlers, who deafen us with their jargon on a question of which they only grasp the surface. there is no excuse, at the present day, for confounding hereditary correlative sexual characters with the individual results of education. the latter are acquired by habit and can only be inherited as such by an infinitesimal engraphia, possibly after hundreds of generations. on the other hand woman possesses, from the intellectual point of view, a faculty of reception and comprehension as well as a facility of reproduction which are almost equal to those of man. in higher education at the universities the women i have had the opportunity of observing at zurich for many years, show a more equal level than that of the men. the most intelligent men reproduce best and the most stupid men reproduce worse than the corresponding female extremes. i do not think one can say much more concerning the purely intellectual domain. artistic production confirms this opinion. woman is here on the average much inferior as regards creation or production, properly so called, and even her best results are wanting in originality and do not open up new paths. on the contrary, as virtuosos, women compare well with men in simply reproductive art. there are, however, exceptional women whose productions are original, creative and independent. the philosopher _stuart mill_ points out the intuitive gift of woman who, led by her individual observations, rapidly and clearly discovers a general truth, and applies it in particular cases, without troubling with abstract theories. this may be called the intuitive or subconscious judgment of woman. in the domain of sentiment the two sexes differ very much from each other, but we cannot say that one surpasses the other. both are passionate, but in different ways. the passions of man are coarser and less durable, and are only more elevated when associated with more original and more complex intellectual aims. in woman sentiment is more delicate and more finely shaded esthetically and morally; it is also more durable, at least on the average, although its objects are often of a mean and banal nature. when man compares himself with woman he usually identifies himself, more or less unconsciously, with the highest male intellects, with the men of genius in art and science, and complaisantly ignores the crowd of idiots of his own sex! in the life of sentiment the two sexes may complement each other admirably; while man raises the height of the ideal and of objects to be attained, woman has the necessary tact to soften and refine the tones, and to adapt their shades to each special situation, by the aid of her natural intuition, where man risks spoiling everything by the violence of his passions and his efforts. this reciprocal influence should conduce to the best and highest harmony of sentiments in a happy sexual combination. as regards will power, woman is, in my opinion, on the average superior to man. it is in this psychological domain more than in any other, that she will always triumph. this is generally misunderstood, because men have so far apparently held the scepter of an unlimited omnipotence; because by the abuse of brute force, aided by superiority of inventive genius, humanity has been hitherto led by strong masculine wills, and because the strongest feminine wills have been dominated by the law of the right of the stronger. but the unprejudiced observer is soon obliged to recognize that the directive will of the family is only, in general, represented externally by the master. man parades his authority much more often than he puts it into practice; he lacks the perseverance, tenacity and elasticity which constitute the true power of will, and which are peculiar to woman. it is needless to say that i am only speaking of the average and that there are many women whose will power is feeble. but these easily become the prey of prostitution, which causes their disappearance. this is perhaps one of the causes which have strengthened by selection the will power in women. man is impulsive and violent as regards his will power, but often inconstant and irresolute, yielding as soon as he has to strive persistently for a certain object. from these facts it naturally results that, on the average, it is the man in the family who provides the ideas and impulses, but the woman who, with the finesse of her tact and perseverance, instinctively makes the distinction between the useful and the harmful, utilizing the former and constantly combating the latter; not because she is fundamentally superior, but because she is more capable of dominating herself, which proves the superiority of her will power. nothing is more unjust than to disparage one sex relatively to the other. the parthenogenesis of the lower animals having ceased in the vertebrates, each sex is indispensable, not only to the preservation of species, but also to each conception or reproduction of the individual. both are thus equivalent and belong to each other as the two halves of a whole, one being incapable of resisting without the other. everything which benefits one of the halves benefits the other. if by the magic wand of a fairy, the male half or the female half of our humanity, such as it is to-day, was rendered capable and obliged to reproduce alone, men would soon degenerate owing to the weakness of their will combined with their sensual passions, and women from their incapacity to raise their intellectual level by means of creative ideas. we need not dwell here on the numerous psychological peculiarities of woman, inherent in her capacity as mother, nor on those of man adapted to his muscular strength and to his capacity as protector of the family. these are derived from sexual differences which are mentioned in chapter v. nor need we describe correlative differences of less importance which are well known and which arise from those of which we have spoken or from direct sexual differences. they can be observed, on the one hand, in purely male reunions in saloons, smoking rooms and other similar places; on the other hand, in feminine circles of all classes, among the common people, among the fashionable, or even in philanthropic associations. on the average, woman is more artful and more modest; man coarser and more cynical, etc. after much personal experience, gained in societies in which the two sexes possess the same rights and are admitted to the same titles, i am obliged to declare that i have never found any confirmation (at least in the german-swiss country) of the popular saying that gossip and intrigue are the special appanage of woman. i have found these two vices quite as often in man. chapter iv the sexual appetite if we sum up the three preceding chapters we arrive at the philosophical conclusion that reproduction depends on the general natural tendency of all living beings to multiply indefinitely. fission and sexual reproduction arise from the simple fact that the growth of each individual is necessarily limited in space as well as time. reproduction is thus destined to assure the continuation of life; the individual dies but is perpetuated in his progeny. we do not know why the crossing of individuals is rendered necessary by the phenomenon of conjugation. on this subject we can only build hypotheses, but the study of nature shows us that where conjugation ceases reproduction is etiolated and finally disappears, even when it is still possible for a certain time. from the commencement of life there is thus a powerful law of attraction with the object of reproduction. at first there are unicellular organisms, in which one cell penetrates the other in the act of conjugation. their substances combine intimately, while the molecules of each nucleus become so arranged as to give the new individual a more fresh and powerful energy of growth. in the lower multicellular plants and animals which bud, fresh buds live at the expense of the old trunk to give life to new branches, and the male cells or pollen fecundate the female cells so as to disperse the germs capable of growth and of thus reproducing the species. it is also the same in the madrepores and other agglomerated animals (such as the solitary worms), composed of parameres or metameres, so long as a single central nervous system does not coordinate the metameres, or primary agglutinated animals, into a single organism. in the higher animals, the complex polycellular individuals formed by the agglomeration of several primitive animals, are transformed into a higher and mobile unity by the aid of the great vital apparatus called the nervous system, which becomes the mental director of the living organism and invests it with its individual character. however, this higher unity of life, which always becomes more psychic, that is to say, at the same time intellectual, sentimental and voluntary, by its complication and its numerous relations with other individuals, this unity called the _central nervous system_ cannot do without the necessity for reproduction. in animal phylogeny, as soon as hermaphrodism has ceased and each individual has become the sole bearer of one of the two kinds of sexual cells, the species will eventually disappear if the male cells cannot reach the female cells by the active movement of the whole individual. thus is produced the marvelous phenomenon of the desire of increase and reproduction, originally peculiar to the male cell, penetrating the nervous system, that is to say life and soul in its entirety, the life of the higher unity of the individual. an ardent desire, a powerful impulse thus arises in the nervous system at the time of puberty and attracts the individual toward the opposite sex. the care and the pleasure of self preservation, which had hitherto fully occupied his attention, become effaced by this new impulse. the desire to procreate dominates everything. a single pleasure, a single desire, a single passion lays hold of the organism and urges it toward the individual of the opposite sex, and to become united with it in intimate contact and penetration. it is as if the nervous system or the whole organism felt as if it had for the moment become a germinal cell, so powerful is the desire to unite with the other sex. in some beautiful verses the german poet-philosopher _goethe_ (west-oestlicher divan, book viii, "suleika") describes the desire to procreate (p. ): und mit eiligem bestreben sucht sich, was sich angehört, und zu ungemessnem leben ist gefühl und blick gekehrt. sei's ergreifen, sei es raffen, wenn es nur sich fasst und hält! allah braucht nicht mehr zu schaffen, wir erschaffen seine welt! if we look at nature we see everywhere the same desire and the same attraction of the sexes for each other; the bird which warbles, the mammal which ruts, the insect which hums while pursuing the female with implacable tenacity, at the risk of their own life, employing sometimes cunning, sometimes dexterity, and sometimes force to attain their object. the ardor of the female is not always much less, but she uses coquetry, pretending to resist, and simulates repulsion. the more eager the male, the more coquettish is the female. if we observe the amorous sport of butterflies and birds, we see what efforts it costs the male to attain his object. on the other hand when the male is clumsy and slow the female often comes toward him or at any rate does not resist him, for instance in certain ants the males of which are wingless while the females have wings. the final act always consists in intimate union at the moment of copulation. in some animals nature is prodigal in the means she employs to pursue her great object, reproduction, by aid of the sexual appetite. the apiary raises hundreds of male bees. as soon as the single queen-bee takes wing for its nuptial flight all the males follow, but a single male only, the strongest and most nimble, succeeds in reaching her. in the intoxication of copulation he abandons all his genital organs to the body of the queen and dies. the other males, now useless, are all massacred in autumn by the working bees. sexual connection among butterflies of the bombyx family is no less marvelous. they live for months as caterpillars and sometimes for two years as chrysalids, hibernating in a cocoon in some corner of the earth or in the bark of trees. finally the butterfly, brilliantly colored, emerges from the cocoon and spreads its wings. it only possesses, however, a rudimentary intestinal canal for the short life which remains, for it does not require much nourishment and is only devoted to sexual connection. the female remains quiet and waits. the male, furnished with large antennæ which perceive the odor of the female at a distance of several kilometers, commences an infatuated flight through the woods and fields, as soon as his wings are sufficiently strong. his sole object is to reach the female. here again there are numerous competitors. the one who arrives first possesses the female, but expires shortly afterward. his competitors die also, exhausted by their long flight and by starvation, but without having attained their object. after copulation, the female searches for the green plants which will ensure a long caterpillar life for her offspring. there she deposits her fecundated eggs in considerable numbers and then expires in her turn, like a faded flower which has fulfilled the object of its existence and falls after leaving the fruit in its place. the french naturalist _fabre_ has described these phenomena, relying on conclusive experiments, and my own observations and those of other naturalists confirm them fully. among the ants, all the males die also, soon after an aërial nuptial flight, in which copulation is generally polyandrous, one male hardly waiting for the preceding one to discharge his semen before taking his place. here the female possesses a receptacle for semen which often contains the sperm of many males, and which allows it to fecundate the eggs one after another for several years as she lays them, and thus to act as the mother of an ant's nest during a period which may extend to eleven or twelve years, or even more. in the lower organisms, love consists only in sexual instinct or appetite. as soon as the function is accomplished love disappears. it is only in the higher animals that we see a more or less durable sympathy develop between the two sexes. however, here also and even in man the sexual passion intoxicates for the moment all the senses. in his sexual rut even man is dominated as by a magic influence, and for the time he sees the world only under the aspect inspired by this influence. the object loved appears to him under celestial colors, which veil all the defects and miseries of reality. each moment of his amorous feeling inspires sentiments which it seems to him should last eternally. he swears impossible things and believes in immortal happiness. a reciprocal illusion transforms life momentarily into mirages of paradise. the most common things, and even certain things which usually disgust him, are then the object of the most violent desire. but, as soon as the orgasm is ended and the appetite satisfied the feeling of satiety appears. a curtain falls on the scene, and, at least for the moment, repose and reality reappear. such are, in a few words, the general phenomena of the normal sexual appetite among sexual organisms in the whole of living nature. i am not speaking here of degenerations, such as onanism and prostitution. let us now analyze this appetite further. the natural appetites are inherited instincts the roots of which lie far back in the phylogenetic history of our ancestors. hunger forms the basis for the preservation of the individual, the sexual appetite that for the preservation of the species, as soon as reproduction takes place by separate sexes. all appetite belongs to the motor side of nervous activity; there is something internal which urges us to an act, but, on the other hand, one or more sensations may exist at the base of this something to put it in action. i have proved, for example, that the egg-laying instinct in the corpse fly (_lucilia cæsar_) is only produced by the odor of putrefaction. as soon as the antennæ, which contain the organ of smell, are removed from these flies they cease to lay, while other more severe operations, or removal of one antenna only does not produce this result. the mechanism of appetites is thus a lower mechanism and has its seat in the primitive nervous centers. as _yersin_ has proved, a cricket deprived of its brain may copulate so long as the sensory irritations can reach the sexual nervous centers. we can thus say that the mechanism of appetites belongs to automatic actions deeply inherited by phylogeny. although complicated and composed of coördinated reflex movements which follow one another in regular succession, it has no actual power of modifying the so-called voluntary acts, which depend entirely on the cerebral hemispheres, and of which we men only have a conscious feeling. the appetites are not capable of adapting themselves to new circumstances and cease to be produced when the chain is interrupted. we are obliged to admit that the instincts or appetites are accompanied by a sub-conscious introspection which, as such, can hardly enter into direct relation with our higher consciousness, that is, with our ordinary consciousness in the waking state. in spite of this, when their intensity increases, the appetites overcoming the central nervous resistances, reach the cerebral hemispheres, and consequently our introspection or higher consciousness, under a _synthetic or unified appearance_, and influence in a high degree the cerebral activities, which are reflected in association with all the elements of what we call our mind in the proper sense of the term, that is to say, our intellect, sentiments and will. it is from this point of view that sexual appetite must be considered in order to make it comprehensible. love, with all that appertains to it, belongs as such to our mind, that is, to the activity of our cerebral hemispheres, but it is produced there by a secondary irradiation from the sexual appetite, which alone concerns us at present. we may also remark that sexual ideas when once awakened in the cerebral hemispheres by sexual appetite, are worked up there by the attention, that is to say by concentrated cerebral activity, then associated with other ideas, which on their side react strongly on the sexual appetite, developing or paralyzing it, attracting or repelling it, or finally transforming its attributes and objects. by sexual desire (libido sexualis) we mean the manner in which the sexual appetite manifests itself in man. each term may be employed for the other. =the sexual appetite in man.=--man represents the active element in sexual union, and in him the sexual appetite, or desire for coitus, is at first the stronger. this desire develops spontaneously, and the role of fecundator represents the principal male activity. this appetite powerfully affects the male mind, although sexual life plays a less important part in him than in the female. in boys, the sexual appetite is often prematurely awakened, excited in unnatural ways by bad example. moreover, it varies enormously in different individuals, a point to which we shall return when dealing with pathology. leaving aside unnatural appetites and abnormal forms of sexual instinct we shall describe here its most spontaneous and normal form. =puberty. awakening of the sexual instinct in boys.=--sooner or later in different individuals, the boy pays attention to his erections, which are at first produced in a reflex and involuntary manner. mental development and reflection, so precocious in man, are causes which draw attention to the differences of the sexes before the sexual appetite is developed. it is, however, the first signs of this appetite which concentrate the attention on these differences, for in their absence, the boy is more indifferent to them than to the straight or crooked form of a nose. man has the habit of passing by without notice anything which does not interest him, and this is why we find, in individuals whose sexual appetite is developed late or feebly, an indifference and ignorance in these matters which appear almost incredible to those whose sexual appetite is precocious and violent; while, on the contrary, the lively interest which the latter show in everything concerning the sexes appears foolish and absurd to the sexually indifferent. the pairing of animals, even of insects, awakens a curious interest in those whose sexual dispositions are strong and precocious; they comprehend very quickly the reason and are led to draw analogies with their own sensations in the same domain. the aspect of the female sex has, however, a much stronger action still on the normal man. but here is produced a peculiar phenomenon. what especially excites the boy in the aspect of the female sex is anything unusual; the sight of certain parts of the skin which are normally covered, the clothes or ornaments, particular odors, women whom the boy is not accustomed to see, etc. it is for this reason that brothers and sisters do not excite, or excite very little, their reciprocal sexual appetite, at least if there are no anomalies or exceptional exhibitions. the sexual appetites of boys among savage peoples who live naked is hardly at all excited by naked girls; on the other hand, it is strongly excited by those who are clothed or ornamented in a peculiar manner. the sexual appetite of a mahometan is strongly excited by the nudity of the feminine face, that of the european by that of a woman's legs, because women are accustomed to veil their faces in the first case and their legs in the second. these are naturally only relative differences. when the sexual appetite of man is violent and unsatisfied woman excites it in a general way, if she is not too old or repulsive. a second important character of the normal sexual appetite is the special attraction that appearances of health and strength in woman produce in man. healthy forms, normal odors, a normal voice, a skin healthy in appearance and to the touch, constitute attractions which charm and excite man, while all that is unhealthy or faded, every pathological odor, produce a repulsive effect and hinders or diminishes sexual desire. everything connected with the sexual organs, their appearance, touch and odor, tend to excite the sexual appetite, all the more when they are usually covered; it is the same with the breasts. the first sexual sensations are of a quite indeterminate nature; something unconscious and obscure inclines the boy toward the female sex and makes it appear desirable. a boy may thus become enamored of the portrait of a woman with a swelling bosom and alluring eyes and be seized with desire, either at their sight or only on remembrance. this desire is not concentrated especially on the sexual act, as with an adult who is already experienced in these matters; it is more generalized and vague, although sensual. for a long time, these repeated aspirations, impulses and desires, remain unsatisfied. in different individuals the imagination associates the most diverse images with such manifestations of the sexual appetite. the objects of the latter appear in dreams and provoke nocturnal erections. the boy soon remarks a sensory localization of his appetites in his sexual organs, especially in the glans penis, but also in the surrounding parts, and the known or only vaguely defined image of the female sexual organs, which is hardly present at the first appearance of his desires, begin to excite him more and more. in natural or savage man, as well as in animals, the boy then makes attempts at coitus and soon attains his object, for, in the state of nature, man marries as soon as puberty is attained. =nocturnal emissions.=--in civilized man such difficulties are opposed to marriage, that he replaces it by prostitution, or by more or less unnatural means, as soon as his sexual appetite becomes strong. in those who abstain, the images produced by sexual excitation, combined with erections, act more strongly during sleep than waking and produce ejaculations of semen called nocturnal emissions or pollutions. these generally occur during erotic dreams, and as the dreams produce the illusion of real perception, in quality as well as in intensity, it is not surprising that they are followed by an orgasm and ejaculation of semen. =masturbation.=--in the waking state the unsatisfied sexual appetite may produce such excitation that the boy applies friction to the glans penis, which cause voluptuous sensations. as soon as he has made this discovery he repeats the act and provokes ejaculation of semen artificially. thus arises the bad habit of masturbation or onanism, a habit which is both depressing and exhausting, which takes an increasing hold on those who practice it. although from the purely mechanical point of view masturbation causes a more normal ejaculation than nocturnal emissions, which are often interrupted by awakening and the vanishing of the dream which produced them, it has a much more harmful effect, by its frequency and especially by its depressing action on sentiment and will. we shall return to this subject in chapter viii. the accumulation of semen in the seminal vesicles strongly excites the sexual appetite of man, and he is momentarily satisfied by their evacuation. but we shall soon see that this purely organic or mechanical excitation, which seems at first to be only adapted for natural wants, does not in man play the principal role. we can easily understand that it cannot be the principal moving power of the sexual act. in fact, for any of the animals in which copulation occurs, the possibility of accomplishing this is not connected solely with the accumulation of semen, for it depends on obtaining a female. it is necessary, therefore, for the accumulated semen to wait, and for the perception of the female by the aid of the senses to excite the male to coitus. =external signs of the sexual appetite.=--like every other desire the sexual appetite betrays itself by the physionomy. this consists in the play of cerebral activity, that is the thoughts, sentiments and resolutions, on the muscles by means of motor nerves and nerve centers. it is not limited to the face but extends to the whole body. the abdomen, the hands and even the feet have their physionomy; that of the muscles of the face and eyes is, however, the most active and most expressive. sexual desire betrays itself in looks, by the expression of the face and by certain movements in the presence of the female sex. men differ greatly in the way in which they betray or hide their sentiments and thoughts by the play of their muscles, so that the inner self is not always reflected without. moreover, the expression of sexual desire by the play of the physionomy may be confounded with that of other sentiments, so that one who appears libidinous is not always so in reality, and inversely. =continence in man.=--abstinence or sexual continence is by no means impracticable for a normal young man of average constitution, assiduous in intellectual and physical work, abstaining from all artificial excitations, especially from all narcotics and alcohol in particular, for these substances paralyze the judgment and will. when sexual maturity is complete, that is after about twenty years, continence is usually facilitated by nocturnal emissions accompanied by corresponding dreams. the health does not suffer from these in any way. however, in the long run this state cannot be considered as normal, especially when there is no hope of it coming to an end in a reasonable time. what is much more abnormal are the numerous artificial sexual excitations that civilization brings with it. =sexual power.=--the individual variations in the sexual instinct are enormous, and may be said to vary from zero to an intense and perpetual excitation called _satyriasis_. by sexual power is understood the faculty of accomplishing coitus. this power in the first place requires strong and complete erections, as well as the faculty of following them by frequent seminal ejaculations, without being precipitate. impotence or incapacity for coitus belongs to pathology and consists usually in the absence or defectiveness of erections. sexual power and appetite generally go together, but not always, for it is possible to be powerful with feeble sexual appetite, and intense appetite sometimes goes with impotence; the latter condition, it is true, is pathological. sexual power also varies so much in individuals that it is hardly possible to fix a limit between the normal and the pathological. the sexual power and appetite in man are strongest on the average between and years, especially between and . but, while young men of to years or more may be still tranquil, without having had seminal ejaculations, one often finds, among races who mature earlier, boys of or who are fully developed both in sexual power and appetite. in our aryan races, however, when this occurs before the age of , it is a case of pathological precocity. the late appearance of sexual power and appetite is rather a sign of strength and health. after the age of , the sexual power slowly diminishes, and after the seventieth year, or even before this, becomes extinct. exceptionally one finds old men of who are still capable. normally the sexual appetite diminishes with age; often, however, especially when it is artificially excited, it lasts longer than sexual power. as regards sexual power we must distinguish between that of copulation and that of fecundation. the power may exist without the latter, when the testicles have ceased to functionate, while the other glands, in particular the prostate, second the venereal orgasm by their secretion, when the power of erection is still preserved. inversely, the testicles may contain healthy spermatozoa in the impotent. in this case artificial fecundation by the syringe is practicable. =individual variations in sexual power.=--the fact that there are men who for several years can copulate several times a day proves to what extent sexual power varies in man. sexual excitation and desire may sometimes attain such a degree that they are repeated a few minutes after ejaculation. it is not rare for a man to perform coitus ten or fifteen times in a single night, in brothels and elsewhere, although such excess borders on the domain of pathology. i know a case in which coitus was performed thirty times. i was once consulted by an old woman of who complained of the insatiable sexual appetite of her husband, aged ! he awakened her every morning at three o'clock to have connection, before going to work. not content with this, he repeated the performance every evening and often also after the mid-day meal. inversely, i have seen healthy looking husbands, at the age of greatest sexual power, accuse themselves of excess for having cohabited with their wives once a month or less. the reformer, _luther_, who was a practical man, laid down the average rule of two or three connections a week in marriage, at the time of highest sexual power. i may say that my numerous observations as a physician have generally confirmed this rule, which seems to me to conform very well to the normal state to which man has become gradually adapted during thousands of years. husbands who would consider this average as an imprescriptible right would, however, make wrong pretensions, for it is quite possible for a normal man to contain himself much longer, and it is his duty to do so, not only when his wife is ill, but also during menstruation and pregnancy. the question of sexual relations during pregnancy is more difficult, on account of its long duration. in this case caution is necessary, but total abstinence from sexual connection is, in my opinion, superfluous. =the desire of change in man.=--a peculiarity of the sexual appetite in man, which is fatal for society, is his desire for change. this desire is not only one of the principal causes of polygamy, but also of prostitution and other analogous organizations. it arises from the want of sexual attraction in what one is accustomed to and from the stronger excitation produced by all that is new; a phenomenon of which we have spoken above. on the average, woman has a hereditary disposition which is much more monogamous than man. the sexual appetite thus loses its intensity from the prolonged habit of connection with the same woman, but, becomes much more intense with other women, if not in all men at any rate in most. such desires may generally be overcome by the aid of a true and noble love, and by sentiments of duty and fidelity toward the family and toward a respected wife. we cannot, however, deny that they exist, nor that they are the cause of the worst excesses, and the most violent scenes, often with a tragic result. we shall return to this subject later. =excitation and cooling of the sexual appetite.=--without touching the domain of pathology, i must again dwell on the great individual diversity of the objects of the male sexual appetite. it is usually young but mature female forms of healthy appearance, and especially the sight of the nudity of certain parts of the body which are usually covered, particularly the breasts and sexual organs, which most strongly excite the sexual appetite in man. it is the same with the corresponding odors. the voice, the physionomy, the clothing and many other details may also provoke his desires. there are, however, men who are more excited by thin and pale women. certain attributes excite one and not another; for instance, the hair, certain odors, certain forms of face, a certain fashion of clothing, the form of the breasts, etc. the peculiarities, which are absent in women with whom a man has been on familiar terms in his youth are generally those which attract the most. in sexual matters contrasts tend to mutual attraction. thin people often become enamored of fat, short ones of long ones, and inversely. one cannot, however, fix any rules. one often sees young men excited at the sight of women of older age, and old men enamored of very young women, even of children. all these discrepancies constitute the more important points of origin of sexual pathology. in spite of all, there still exist a great number of tranquil men with monogamous instincts and not fond of change. lastly, we must not forget that super-abundant feeding and idleness exalt the sexual appetite and tend to polygamy, while hard work, especially physical, and frugal diet diminish it. it is needless to say that the mental qualities react powerfully on the sexual appetite. a quarrelsome temper, coldness and repulsion on the part of a woman cool the desires of the man, while an ardent sexual desire on the part of the woman, her love and tenderness, tend to increase and maintain them. we are dealing here with purely animal sexual instinct, and we may state that the sexual appetite of woman generally excites strongly that of man, and considerably increases his pleasure during coitus. there are, however, exceptions in the inverse sense, in which coldness and disgust on the part of the woman excite the passion of certain men, who have, however, no taste for libidinous women. all degrees are found in this domain. active in the sexual act the man desires corresponding sentiments in the woman. but, on the other hand, all want of natural reserve, and delicate sentiment, and all cynical sexual provocation on the part of a woman, produce in the normal man a repulsive effect. the normal woman possesses an admirable instinct in these matters and knows how to betray her feelings in a sufficiently fine and delicate manner, so as not to hurt those of the man. a phenomenon, which we shall meet with in chapter viii, under the name of _psychic impotence_, shows the powerful and disturbing interference of thoughts on the automatic action of instinctive sexual activity. a momentary psychic impotence is not necessarily pathological. while voluptuous sensations alternate during coitus with desire and corresponding erotic representations, a sudden idea of the ridiculousness of the situation, signs of pain or of bad temper in the woman, the idea of impotence or of the real object of coitus; finally, anything which acts as a contrast to the sensations and impulses of coitus, may interrupt it, so that the voluptuous sensations and sexual appetite disappear and erection subsides. voluntary efforts are often incapable of putting things right again. the charm is broken, and only new images and new sentiments associated instinctively with the sexual appetite can be reëstablished, by making the subconscious state preponderate over the reasoning consciousness. =influence of modern civilization. pornography.=--human sexuality has been unfortunately perverted and in part grossly altered by civilization, which has even developed it artificially in a pathological sense. the point has been reached of considering as normal, relations which are in reality absolutely abnormal. for example, it is maintained that prostitution produces normal coitus in man. how can this term be seriously employed in speaking of connection with a prostitute who is absolutely indifferent to it, and who seeks only to excite her clients artificially and to get their money, without mentioning venereal diseases which she so often presents them with! forgetful of the natural aim of the sexual appetite, civilization has transformed it into artificial enjoyment, and has invented all possible means to increase and diversify it. as far back as the history of civilization goes we see this state of affairs, and in this sense we are neither better nor worse than our ancestors. but we possess more diverse and more refined measures than barbarian peoples, and than our direct ancestors, to satisfy our unwholesome desires. modern art in particular often serves to excite eroticism, and we must frankly admit that it often descends to the level of pornography. hypocritical indignation against those who dare to say this often serves only to cover in the name of art the most indecent excitants of eroticism. photography and all the perfected methods of reproduction of pictures, the increasing means of travel which facilitate clandestine sexual relations, the industrial art which ornaments our apartments, the increasing luxury and comfort of dwellings, beds, etc., are, at the present day, so many factors in the science of erotic voluptuousness. prostitution itself has become adapted to all the pathological excrescences of vice. in a word, the artificial culture of the human sexual appetite has given rise to a veritable high school of debauchery. the artistic and realistic representations of erotic sexual scenes, so widespread at the present day, are much more capable of exciting the sexual appetite than the crude and unnatural pictures of former days, when, however, erotic objects of art generally belonged to a few rich persons or to museums. =influence of repeated sexual excitations.=--the artificial and varied repetition of sexual excitation, by means of objects which provoke it, increases the sexual appetite. this cannot be doubted, for the law of exercise is a general truth in the physiology of the nervous system. this law, which is also called the law of training, shows that every kind of nervous activity is increased by exercise. a man becomes a glutton by accustoming himself to eat too much, a good walker by exercising his legs. the habit of wearing fine clothes or of washing in cold water causes these things to become a necessity. by continually occupying ourselves with a certain thing, we take a liking for it and often become virtuosos. by always thinking of a disease we are led to imagine that we suffer from it. a melody too often repeated often becomes automatic and we whistle or hum it unconsciously. inversely, inactivity weakens the effect of irritations which correspond to it. by neglecting certain activities or the provocation of certain sensations, these diminish in intensity, and we cease more and more to be affected by them. we become idle when we are inactive, for the cerebral resistance accumulates, and idleness renders the renewal of the corresponding activity more difficult. it is not surprising, therefore, to find this law in the phenomena of the sexual appetite, which diminishes with abstinence and increases with repeated excitation and satisfaction. however, another force, that of the accumulation of semen in the seminal vesicles, associated with an old natural inherited instinct, often counteracts the law of exercise of the nervous system, as the empty stomach excites the instinct of nutrition. but, however imperious the hunger, and however indispensable its satisfaction for the maintenance of life, this does not impair the truth of the old saying, "appetite comes by eating." the exaggerated desire for sleep experienced by idle people is an analogous phenomenon. although sufficient sleep is a necessity for healthy and productive cerebral activity, an exaggerated desire for sleep may be artificially developed. these phenomena are of fundamental importance in the question of the sexual appetite. here, the well-known axiom of moderation which says, "abuse does not exclude use" finds its application. an english commentator on _cicero_ erroneously attributes to him the following: "true moderation consists in the absolute domination of the passions and appetites, as well as all wrong desires, by reason. it exacts total abstinence from all things which are not good and which are not of an absolutely innocent character." this definition is excellent, although it is not _cicero's_. it excludes, for example, the use of a toxic substance such as alcohol, which is not a natural food, but not the moderate satisfaction of the sexual appetite which is normally intended for the preservation of the species, for this satisfaction may be good or bad, normal or vicious, innocent or criminal, according to circumstances. in this connection, the application of the right measure, and choice of the appropriate object raise delicate and complicated questions. so-called moral sermons lead to nothing in this domain. after numerous personal observations made on very diverse individuals who have consulted me with regard to sexual questions, i think i can affirm that when a man wishes to be loyal to himself he is generally able to distinguish between natural desire and artificial excitation of the sexual appetite. to be pursued and tormented by sexual images and desires, even when striving against them, and when the legitimate and normal occasion to satisfy them is absent, is not the same thing as to pass the time in inventing means of artificial excitement to pleasure and orgy while leading an idle and egoistic life. i speak here of the normal man and not of certain pathological states in which the sexual appetite takes the character of a perpetual obsession, even against the will of the patient. by serious and persevering work and by avoiding all means of excitation, the sexual appetite can usually be kept within the bounds of moderation. we have mentioned above pornographic art as one of the means which artificially excite the sexual appetite. along with the interested exploitation of the habit of taking alcoholic drinks, exploitation of the sexual appetite constitutes one of the largest fields of what may be called _social brigandage_. besides pornographic pictures, the principal means employed to artificially excite the sexual weaknesses of man are the following: _pornographic novels_ in which sexual desire is excited by all the artifice of the novelist, and in which the illustrations often rival those we have just spoken of to seduce the purchaser. _alcohol_ which, by paralyzing the judgment and will as well as moral inhibitory sentiments, excites the sexual appetite and renders it grossly impulsive. its first fumes make man enterprising, and he falls an easy prey to proxenetism and prostitution, although it soon weakens the sexual power. but it is the modern arsenal of _prostitution_ which plays the principal role. the proxenets (pimps) exploit both the sexual appetites of men and the weakness and venality of women. their chief source of gain consisting in the artificial excitation of the male sexual appetite by all possible means, their art consists in dressing their merchandise, the prostitutes, with attractive refinement, especially when dealing with rich clients who pay well. it is on this soil that are cultivated the most disgusting artifices, intended to excite even the most pathological appetites. other causes are added to lucre, or are the consequences of it. a boy led to masturbation by pornographic pictures, or by the seduction of a corrupted individual, becomes in his turn the seducer of his comrades. certain libidinous and unscrupulous women have often persuaded adolescents and schoolboys to sleep with them, thus awakening precocious and unhealthy sexual appetites. such habits which excite the sexual appetite and cause it to degenerate artificially, develop in their turn a mode of sexual boasting in men, the effects of which are deplorable. to appear manly, the boy thinks he ought to have a cigar in his mouth, even if it makes him sick. in the same way the spirit of imitation leads youth to prostitution. the fear of not doing as the others and especially the terror of ridicule constitute a powerful lever which is abused and exploited. fearing mockery, a youth is the more easily seduced by bad example the less he is put on guard by parents or true friends. instead of explaining to him in time, seriously and affectionately, the nature of sexual connection, its effects and dangers, he is abandoned to the chance of the worst seductions. in this way the sexual appetite is not only artificially increased and often directed into unnatural channels, but also leads to the poisoning and ruin of youth by venereal diseases, to say nothing of alcoholism. we have referred especially to educated youth, but the youth of the lower classes are perhaps in a still worse condition, owing to the promiscuity of their life in miserable dwellings. they often witness coitus between their parents, or are themselves trained in evil ways for purposes of exploitation. it is astonishing that the results of such abominable deviation of the sexual appetite are not worse. no doubt excesses disturb the ties of marriage and of the family, and often provoke impotence and other disorders of the sexual functions. it must, however, be admitted that their satellites, the venereal diseases, and their most common companion, alcoholism, are in reality the greatest destroyers of health, and make much more considerable ravages in society than the artificial increase and abnormal deviations of the sexual appetite itself. however, the latter by themselves very often poison the mind and social morality, as we shall have occasion to see. immoderate sexual desire, provoked in men by the artificial excitations of prostitution, etc., is a bad acquisition. it renders difficult the accustomance to marriage, fidelity and ideal and life-long love for the same woman. it is true, that many old _roués_ and _habitués_ of brothels later on become faithful husbands and fathers, especially when they have had the luck to escape venereal disease. but whoever looks behind the scenes may soon convince himself that the happiness of most unions of this kind is very relative. the degradation of the sexual sentiment of a man who has long been accustomed to live with prostitutes is never entirely effaced, and generally leaves indelible traces in the human brain. i readily admit that a man with good hereditary dispositions, who has only yielded for a short time to seductive influences, may be reformed by a true and profound love. but even in him, excesses leave traces which later on may easily lead him astray when he becomes tired of the monotony of conjugal relations with the same woman. on the other hand, we must also recognize that sexual relations in themselves, even in marriage, create a habit which often urges a married man to extra-nuptial coitus, even when he had remained continent before marriage. the tricks which are played on a man by his sexual appetite, especially by his polygamous instincts, must not, however, be confounded with the systematic, artificial and abnormal training of the same appetite. the physical and psychic attractions of a woman are capable of completely diverting the sexual desires of a man from their primary object, and of directing them on the siren who captivates his senses. the elements of the sexual appetite here form an inextricable mixture with those of love, and constitute the inexhaustible theme of novels and most true and sensational love stories. hereditary pathological dispositions play a considerable role in many cases of this kind. also, marriages of sudden and passionate love (we are not dealing here with love marriages concluded after sufficient reflection and deep mutual acquaintanceship) are not more stable than the so-called "_mariages de convenance_," for passionate natures, usually more or less pathological, are apt to fall from one extreme to the other. the power exercised by sexual passion in such cases is terrible. it produces conditions that may lead to suicide or assassination. in men whose power of reason is neither strong nor independent, opinions and conceptions are frequently changed; love may change to hatred and hatred to love, the sentiment of justice may lead to injustice, the loyal man may become a liar, etc. in fact the sexual appetite is let loose like a hurricane in the brain and becomes the despot of the whole mind. the sexual passion has often been compared to drunkenness or to mental disease. even in its mildest forms it often renders the husband incapable of sexual connection with his wife. for example, a man may cherish, respect and even adore his wife, and yet her presence and touch may not appeal to his senses, nor excite his appetite or erection; while some low-minded woman will produce in him an irresistible sensual attraction, even when he experiences neither esteem nor love for her. in such cases sexual appetite is in more or less radical opposition to love. such extreme phenomena are not rare, but hardly common. although excited to coitus with the woman in question, the husband would not in any case have her for wife, nor even have children by her, for after the slightest reflection he despises and fears her. here, the sexual appetite represents the old atavistic animal instinct, attracted by libidinous looks, exuberant charms, in a word by the sensual aspect of woman. on the contrary, in a higher domain of the human mind, the sentiments of sympathy of true love, deeply associated with fidelity, and with intellectual and moral intimacy, unite against the elementary power of the animal instinct. here we see dwelling in the same breast (or, to speak more correctly, in the same central nervous system) two souls, which struggle with each other. we are not dealing here with cases in which a new passion arrives to turn the man from his old affection. no doubt the extreme cases of which we have spoken are not usual, but we see in most men more or less considerable mixtures of analogous sentiments in all possible degrees, especially when the woman loved loses her physical attractions from age or other causes. =the procreative instinct.=--the sexual appetite of man does not consist exclusively in the desire for coitus. in many cases it is combined, more or less strongly and more or less consciously, with the desire to procreate children. unfortunately, this desire is far from being always associated with higher sentiments and with love of children or the paternal instinct. in fact, conscious reasoning plays a smaller part than the animal instinct of self-expansion. we shall see later on that the procreative instinct often plays an important role in our present civilization. =the sexual appetite in woman.=--in the sexual act the role of the woman differs from that of the man not only by being passive, but also by the absence of seminal ejaculations. in spite of this the analogies are considerable. the erection of the clitoris and its voluptuous sensations, the secretion from the glands of _bartholin_ which resembles ejaculation in the male, the venereal orgasm itself which often exceeds in intensity that of man, are phenomena which establish harmony in sexual connection. although the organic phenomenon of the accumulation of semen in the seminal vesicles is absent in woman, there is produced in the nerve centers, after prolonged abstinence, an accumulation of sexual desire corresponding to that of man. a married woman confessed to me, when i reproached her for being unfaithful to her husband, that she desired coitus at least once a fortnight, and that when her husband was not there, she took the first comer. no doubt the sentiments of this woman were hardly feminine, but her sexual appetite was relatively normal. =frequency of the sexual appetite in woman.=--as regards pure sexual appetite, extremes are much more common and more considerable in woman than in man. in her this appetite is developed much less often spontaneously than in him, and where it is so, it is generally later. voluptuous sensations are usually only awakened by coitus. in a considerable number of women the sexual appetite is completely absent. for these, coitus is a disagreeable, often disgusting, or at any rate an indifferent act. what is more singular, at least for masculine comprehension, and what gives rise to the most frequent "quid pro quos," is the fact that such women, absolutely cold as regards sexual sensations, are often great coquettes, over-exciting the sexual appetites of man, and have often a great desire for love and caresses. this is more easy to understand if we reflect that the unsatiated desires of the normal woman are less inclined toward coitus than toward the assemblage of consequences of this act, which are so important for her whole life. when the sight of a certain man awakes in a young girl sympathetic desires and transports, she aspires to procreate children with this man only, to give herself to him as a slave, to receive his caresses, to be loved by him only, that he may become both the support and master of her whole life. it is a question of general sentiments of indefinite nature, of a powerful desire to become a mother and enjoy domestic comfort, to realize a poetic and chivalrous ideal in man, to gratify a general sensual need distributed over the whole body and in no way concentrated in the sexual organs or in the desire for coitus. =nature of the sexual appetite in woman.=--the zone of sexual excitation is less specially limited to the sexual organs in woman than in man. the nipples constitute in her an entire zone and their friction excites voluptuousness. if we consider the importance in the life of woman, of pregnancy, suckling, and all the maternal functions, we can understand why the mixture of her sentiments and sensations is so different from that of man. her smaller stature and strength, together with her passive role in coitus, explain why she aspires to a strong male support. this is simply a question of natural phylogenetic adaptation. this is why a young girl sighs for a courageous, strong and enterprising man, who is superior to her, whom she is obliged to respect, and in whose arms she feels secure. strength and skill in man are the ideal of the young savage and uncultured girl, his intellectual and moral superiority that of the young cultivated girl. as a rule women are much more the slaves of their instincts and habits than men. in primitive peoples, hardiness and boldness in men were qualities which made for success. this explains why, even at the present day, the boldest and most audacious don juans excite most strongly the sexual desires of women, and succeed in turning the heads of most young girls, in spite of their worst faults in other respects. nothing is more repugnant to the feminine instinct than timidity and awkwardness in man. in our time women become more and more enthusiastic over the intellectual superiority of man, which excites their desire. without being indifferent to it, simple bodily beauty in man excites the appetite of women to a less extent. it is astonishing to see to what point women often become enamored of old, ugly or deformed men. we shall see later on that the normal woman is much more particular than man in giving her love. while the normal man is generally attracted to coitus by nearly every more-or-less young and healthy woman, this is by no means the case in the normal woman with regard to man. she is also much more constant than man from the sexual point of view. it is rarely possible for her to experience sexual desire for several men at once; her senses are nearly always attracted to one lover only. the instinct of procreation is much stronger in woman than in man, and is combined with the desire to give herself passively, to play the part of one who devotes herself, who is conquered, mastered and subjugated. these negative aspirations form part of the normal sexual appetite of woman. a peculiarity of the sexual sentiments of woman is an ill-defined pathological phenomenon with normal sensations, a phenomenon which in man, on the contrary, forms a very marked contrast with the latter; i refer to the _homosexual_ appetite, in which the object is an individual of the same sex. normally, the adult man produces on another man an absolutely repulsive effect from the sexual point of view; it is only pathological subjects, or those excited by sexual privation who are affected with sensual desires for other men. but in woman a certain sensual desire for caresses, connected more or less with unconscious and ill-defined sexual sensations, is not limited to the male sex but extends to other women, to children, and even to animals, apart from pathologically inverted sexual appetites. young normal girls often like to sleep together in the same bed, to caress and kiss each other, which is not the case with normal young men. in the male sex such sensual caresses are nearly always accompanied and provoked by sexual appetite, which is not the case in women. as we have already seen, man may separate true love from the sexual appetite to such an extent that two minds, each feeling in a different way, may inhabit the same brain. a man may be a loving and devoted husband and at the same time satisfy his animal appetites with prostitutes. in woman, such sexual dualism is much more rare and always unnatural, the normal woman being much less capable than man of separating love from sexual appetite. these facts explain the singular caprices of the sexual appetite and orgasm in the normal woman, in whom these phenomena are not easily produced without love. the same woman who loves one man and not another is susceptible to sexual appetite and voluptuous sensations when she cohabits with the first, while she is often absolutely cold and insensible to the most passionate embraces of the second. this fact explains the possibility of prostitution as it exists among women. the worst prostitutes, who have connection with innumerable paying clients without feeling the least pleasure, generally have a "protector" with whom they are enamored and to whom they devote all their love and sincere orgasms, all the time allowing themselves to be plundered and exploited by him. what the normal woman requires from man is love, tenderness, a firm support for life, a certain chivalrous nature, and children. she can renounce the voluptuous sensations of coitus infinitely more easily than the exigencies i have just indicated, which are for her the principal things. nothing makes a woman more indignant than the indifference of her husband, when, for instance, he treats her simply as a housekeeper. some have maintained that the average woman is more sensual than man, others that she is less so. both these statements are false: she is sensual _in another manner_. all the peculiarities of the sexual appetite in woman are thus the combined product of: ( ) the profound influence of the sexual functions on her whole existence; ( ) her passive sexual role; ( ) her special mental faculties. by these, and more especially by her passive sexual role, are explained her instinctive coquettishness, her love of fiery and personal adornment, in a word her desire to please men by her external appearance, by her looks, movements and grace. these phenomena betray the instinctive sexual desires of the young girl, which as we have just seen, do not normally correspond to a direct desire for coitus. while a virgin experiences in her youth the sensations we have just described, things change after marriage, and as a general rule after repeated sexual connections. if these do not provoke voluptuous sensations in some women, they do in the majority, and this is no doubt the normal state of affairs. habit, then, produces an increasing desire for coitus and its sensations, and it is not rare, in the course of a long life in common, for the roles to be reversed and the woman become more libidinous than the man. this partly explains why so many widows are anxious to remarry. they easily attain their object, as men quickly succumb to the sexual desire of woman when it is expressed in an unequivocal manner. in widows, two strong sentiments struggle against each other, with variable results in different individuals; on the one hand, feminine constancy in love, and the memory of the deceased; on the other hand, the acquired habit of sexual connection and its voluptuous sensations, which leaves a void and appeals for compensation. the sexual appetite being equal, the first sentiment prevails generally in religious women or those of a deeply moral or sentimental character, while the second prevails in women of more material or less-refined nature, or in those simply guided by their reason. in these internal struggles, the more delicate sentiments and the stronger will of the woman result from the fact that when she wishes she can overcome her appetites much better than man. but, in spite of this, the power of the sexual appetite plays an important part in the inward struggle we have just mentioned. when this appetite is absent there is no struggle, and the widow's conduct is dictated either by her own convenience, or by the instinct which naturally leads a woman to yield to the amorous advances of a man. at the critical age, that is the time when menstruation ceases, neither the sexual appetite nor voluptuous sensations disappear, although desire diminishes normally as age advances. in this respect it is curious to note that old women possess no sexual attraction for men, while they often feel libidinous desires almost as strongly as young women. this is a kind of natural anomaly. as we have already stated, individual differences in the sexual appetite are much greater in woman than in man. some women are extremely excitable, and from their first youth experience violent sexual desire, causing them to masturbate or to throw themselves onto men. such women are usually polyandrous by nature, although the sexual appetite in woman is normally much more monogamous than that of man. such excesses in woman take on a more pathological character than in man, and go under the name of _nymphomania_. the insatiability of these females, who may be met with in all classes of society, may become fabulous. night and day, with short interruptions for sleeping and eating, they are, in extreme cases, anxious for coitus. they become less exhausted than men, because their orgasm is not accompanied by loss of semen. although in the normal state woman is naturally full of delicacy and sentiments of modesty, nothing is easier than to make these disappear completely by training her systematically to sexual immodesty or to prostitution. here we observe the effects of the routine and suggestible character of feminine psychology, of the tendency of woman to become the slave of habit and custom, as well as of her perseverance when her determined will pursues a definite end. prostitution gives us sad proofs of this fact. the psychology of prostitutes is very peculiar. attempts to restore them to a moral life nearly always fail hopelessly; it is rare to see them permanently successful. most of these women have a heredity of bad quality and are of weak character, idle and libidinous. they find it much easier to gain their living by prostitution, and forget their work, if they have ever learned any. the poverty, drunkenness and shame which follow seduction and illegitimate birth have no doubt driven more than one prostitute to her sad trade, but the naturally evil dispositions of these women constitute without any doubt the principal cause. alcohol, venereal diseases and bad habits, combined with continually repeated sexual degradation, afterwards determine progressive decadence. some of these women, however, of better quality, only surrender themselves to prostitution by compulsion; they suffer from this existence and strive to escape from it. the grisettes and lorettes[ ] form a group intermediate between prostitution and natural love; they are women who hire themselves for a time to one man in particular, and are maintained and paid by him in return for satisfying his sexual appetites. here again, sexual desire only exceptionally plays the chief role. the conduct of these women results from their loose character and pecuniary interest. if, therefore, we admit on the one hand that the sexual excesses of the female sex are especially grafted on hereditary disposition of character, or are primarily due to strong appetites, we are obliged on the other hand to recognize that the great role played by sexuality in the brain of woman renders it more difficult for her than for man to return to better ways when she has once prostituted herself, or when she has surrendered in any way to sexual licentiousness, even when her original quality was not bad. in man the sexual appetite is much more easily separated than in woman from other instincts, sentiments and intellectual life in general, and possesses in him, however powerful it may be, a much more transient character, which prevents it dominating the whole mental life. i have dwelt so much on this point because it is essential to know the differences which exist between man and woman in this respect, and to take them into account if we wish to give a just and healthy judgment on the sexual question from the social point of view. the more it is our duty to give the same rights to both sexes, the more absurd it is to disregard the profoundness of their differences and to imagine that these can ever be effaced. =flirtation.=--if we look in an english dictionary for the meaning of the word _flirt_, we find it equivalent to coquetry. but this english term has become fixed and modernized in another sense which has become international, to express the old idea of a series of well-known phenomena which must be clearly distinguished from coquetry. coquetry, an especially feminine attribute, is not in itself dependent on the sexual appetite; it is an indirect irradiation, purely psychical, and we shall speak of it later on. flirtation, as we now understand the term, is directly connected with the sexual appetite, and constitutes its external impression in all the wealth of its forms, as much in man as in woman. in a word, flirtation is a polymorphous language which clearly expresses the sexual desires of an individual to the one who awakens these desires, actual coitus alone excepted. flirtation may be practiced in a more or less unconscious manner. it is by itself neither a psychic attribute nor sexual appetite, for a human being may so hide and overcome his appetites that no one remarks them; and on the contrary, he may simulate sexual appetite without feeling it, or at any rate behave in such a way as to excite it in his partner. flirtation thus consists in an activity calculated to disclose the eroticism of the subject as well as to excite that of others. it is needless to say that the nature of coquetry disposes to flirtation. flirtation comprises all the sport of love, kisses, caresses and all kinds of sexual excitation even to orgasm, without reaching the consummation of coitus. all degrees may be noted; and, according to temperament, flirtation may be limited to slight excitation of the sexual appetite or may extend to violent and rapidly increasing emissions. the considerable individual differences which exist in sexual sensibility result in the same perception or the same act having little effect on one individual, while it excites another to a high degree. in the latter case, especially in man, flirtation may even lead to venereal orgasm without coitus, and even without any manipulations which resemble it. a woman of exuberant form, assuming sensual and voluptuous attitudes, may thus provoke an ejaculation by the slight and repeated friction of her dress against the penis of an excitable dancer. the same thing often occurs when a passionate couple caress and embrace each other without the genital organs being touched or even exposed. in this respect the woman is better protected than the man, but when she is very excitable an orgasm may be produced in her during the caresses of a passionate flirtation by the pressure or friction of her legs against each other (a variety of masturbation in woman). as a rule, however, things do not go so far as this in flirtation. the sight and touch are used alternately. the eyes play an important part, for they may express much and consequently act powerfully. a pressure of the hands, an apparently chance movement, touching the dress and the skin, etc., are the usual means of flirtation. in situations where people are close together or pressed against each other, as in railway carriages, or at table, the legs play a well-known part, by pressure of the knees and feet. this dumb conversation of the sexual appetite begins at first in a prudent and apparently innocent manner, so that the acting party does not risk being taxed with impropriety; but as soon as he who began the flirtation perceives that his slight invitations are welcome he grows bolder, a tacit mutual agreement is established, and the game continues without a single word betraying the reciprocal sensations. many who practice flirtation, both men and women, avoid betraying themselves by words, and they take pleasure in this mutual excitation of their genital sensibility, however incomplete it may be. flirtation may assume very different forms according to education and temperament. the action of alcohol on the brain develops the coarsest forms of flirtation. every one knows the clumsy embraces of semi-intoxicated persons which can often be seen at night or on sundays and holidays, in the street or in railway carriages, etc. i designate these by the term "alcoholic flirtation." even in the best and most refined society flirtation loses its delicacy even under the effect of the slightest degree of alcoholic intoxication. flirtation assumes a more delicate and more complicated character, rendering it gracious and full of charm, in persons of higher education, especially when they are highly intellectual or artistic. we must also mention the intellectual variety of flirtation which is not expressed by sight or touch, but only by language. delicate allusions to sexual matters and somewhat lascivious conversation excite eroticism as much as looks and touch. according to the education of the persons concerned, this talk may be coarse and vulgar, or on the contrary refined and full of wit, managed with more or less skill, or clumsily. here the natural finesse of woman plays a considerable part. men wanting in tact are clumsy and offensive in their attempts at flirtation, and thus extinguish instead of exciting the woman's eroticism. the manner in which alcoholic flirtation manifests itself in cynical, dull, obtrusive and stupid conversation, corresponds to its other forms of expression. woman desires flirtation; but does not wish it to assume an unbecoming form. one can say anything to a woman; all depends on the way in which it is said. i have seen lady doctors with whom one could discuss the most ticklish subjects, profoundly shocked by the misplaced pleasantries of a tactless professor. in themselves these pleasantries were quite innocent for medical ears, as my lady colleagues were finally obliged to admit, when i pointed out to them the specially feminine character of their psychic reaction, proving to them that they listened without a frown to things ten times worse, when the lecturer gave them a moral tone. men also generally feel disgusted with the dull, cynical or clumsy form of female eroticism, although they are not usually over-refined themselves in this respect. this last phenomenon leads us to distinguish between flirtation in man and in woman. for woman it constitutes the only permissible way of expressing erotic sentiments, and even then much restraint is imposed on her. circumstances develop in her the art of flirtation and give it remarkable finesse. unless she exposes herself to great danger, woman can only leave her sensuality to be guessed. every audacious and tactless provocation fails in its object; it drives away the men and destroys a young girl's reputation. even when possessed by the most violent erotic desire woman cannot ostensibly depart from her passive role without compromising herself. nevertheless, she succeeds on the whole very easily in exciting the passions of man, by the aid of a few artifices. no doubt she does not entirely dominate him by this means. she must be very delicate and adroit, at any rate at first, in the provocative art of flirtation. these frivolities are greatly facilitated by her whole nature and by the character of her habitual eroticism. man, on the other hand, may be more audacious in the expression of his passion. this brings us back to what has been said concerning the sexual differences. a whole volume could be written on the forms of flirtation, which is the indispensable expression of all sexual desire. among engaged couples it assumes a legal character and even a conventional form. the way in which barmaids flirt with their customers is also somewhat conventional, although in quite a different way. in society, flirtation is generally seasoned with more attic salt, whether it is not allowed to exceed certain limits, or whether it leads to free liaisons after the manner of the greek hetaira. in the country, among peasant girls and boys it takes a grosser form, if not more sensual, than among the cultivated classes; in the latter, language takes the principal part. among rich idlers in watering places, large hotels, and even in some sanatoriums, flirtation takes a dominant place and constitutes, in all its degrees, the chief occupation of a great number of the visitors. it grows like a weed wherever man has a monotonous occupation or suffers from the ennui of idleness. in certain individuals, flirtation takes the place of coitus from the sensual, and love from the sentimental point of view. there are modern crazy natures who spend their existence in all kinds of artificial excitation of the senses, creatures of both sexes incapable of a useful action. as a momentary and transient expression of all the necessities of love, flirtation has a right to existence; but, when cultivated on its own account and always remaining as flirtation, it becomes a symptom of degeneration or sexual depravity, among idle, crazy and vicious persons of all kinds. footnotes: [ ] the terms _grisette_ and _lorette_ are now obsolete, and the names given to this class of women constantly varies. i shall, nevertheless, employ them in the course of this work because they clearly define certain special varieties of remunerated concubinage. chapter v love and other irradiations of the sexual appetite in the human mind =generalities. jealousy.=--we have seen that the mechanism of the appetites consists in instincts inherited from our animal ancestors by mnemic engraphia and selection, and that it is situated in the primordial or lower cerebral centers (basal ganglia, spinal cord, etc.). in some of the lower animals we already find other instinctive nervous reactions which constitute the indirect effects or derivatives of the sexual appetite. the most evident of these is _jealousy_, or the feeling of grief and anger produced in an individual when the object of his sexual appetite is disputed by another individual of the same sex. jealousy may also arise from other instincts, such as those of nutrition, ambition, etc.; but it forms one of the most typical complements of the sexual appetite, and leads, as we know, to furious combats, especially between males, sometimes also between females. owing to its profoundly hereditary origin, this passion has a very instinctive character, and might quite as well have been mentioned in the preceding chapter. i deal with it here because it is naturally associated with other irradiations of the sexual appetite, and because it has a peculiarly mental character. =relation between love and sexual appetite. sympathy.=--having entered the higher brain, or organ of mind, and become modified, complicated, and combined with the different branches of psychic activity, the sexual appetite takes the name of _love_, properly so-called. in order to better understand the relations of love to the sexual appetite we must refer to chapter ii. let us begin with a short exposition of the phylogeny of the sentiments of sympathy, or the altruistic and social sentiments. in the lower animals with no separate sexes egoism reigns absolutely. each individual eats as much as it wants, then divides, buds or conjugates, thus fulfilling the sole object of its existence. the same principle holds in the lower stages of reproduction by separate sexes. spiders give us a good example. in these, copulation is a dangerous act for the male, for if he is not extremely careful he is devoured by the female, sometimes even before having attained his object, often soon afterward, in order that nothing may be lost. however, the female shows a certain consideration for her eggs, and sometimes even for the young after they are hatched. in higher stages of the animal kingdom sentiments of sympathy may be observed, derived from the sexual union of individuals. these are sentiments of attachment of the male for the female, and especially of the female (sometimes the male also) for their progeny. such sentiments become developed and may be transformed into intense love between the sexes, of long duration. birds, for instance, often remain faithful for many years, and even for life. from these simple facts is evolved the intimate relationship which exists between sexual love and other sentiments of sympathy, that is to say affection, or love in the more vague and more extended sense of the term. to every sentiment of sympathy between two individuals (sympathy forms part of the sentiments of pleasure) there is a corresponding contrary correlative sentiment of grief, when the object of sympathy dies, becomes sick, takes flight or is carried off. this sentiment often takes the form of simple sadness, but it may attain a degree of incurable melancholy. among certain monkeys and parrots, we often see the death of one of the conjoints lead to the refusal of all food and finally to death of the survivor, after increasing sadness and depression. removal of the young produces a profound sadness in the female ape. but when an animal discovers the cause of the grief, when, for instance, a stranger attempts to take away his mate or his young, a mixed reaction of sentiment is produced, that is to say anger or even fury against the perpetrator of the deed. jealousy is only a special form of this anger. the sentiment of anger and its violent and hostile expression constitute the natural reaction against one who disturbs a sentiment of pleasure, a reaction which tends to reëstablish the latter. the power of the sentiment of anger increases with the offensive and defensive faculties, while, in weak and peaceful beings, terror and sadness to a great extent take their place. on the other hand, the sight of defenseless prey suffices to provoke, in the rapacious who are strong and well armed, by simple reflex association, a cruel sentiment of voluptuous anger, which is also observed in man. =sentiment of duty.=--another derivative of the sentiment of sympathy is that of _duty_, that is the moral sense. all sentiment of love or sympathy urges the one who loves to certain acts destined to increase the welfare of the object loved. this is why the mother nourishes her young and plucks feathers and hairs to make them a soft bed; and why the father brings food to his wife and young, and defends them against their enemies. all these acts, which are not to the advantage of the individual but to the object or objects of his sympathy, exact more or less laborious efforts, courage in the face of danger, etc. they thus provoke an internal struggle between the sentiment of sympathy and egoism, or the unpleasantness of undertaking things which are troublesome and disagreeable for the individual himself. from this struggle between two opposed series of sentiments is derived a third group of complex or mixed sentiments, that of duty, or _moral conscience_. when the sentiment of sympathy prevails, when the animal does his duty toward his young and his conjoint, he feels a sentiment of pleasure, of duty accomplished. if, on the contrary, he has been negligent, the egoistic instincts having for the moment prevailed, the remorse of conscience results, that is the painful uneasiness which follows all disobedience to the instinctive sentiments of sympathy. this uneasiness accumulates in the brain in the form of self-discontent, and may lead to an accentuated sentiment of _repentance_. these phenomena exist both in the male and in the female, and if it was not so, the accomplishment of duty would be impossible; the cat would run away instead of defending her young; would eat her prey instead of giving it to them, etc. we thus see the elements of human social sentiment already very marked in many animals. remorse and repentance can only be formed on the basis of preëxisting sentiments of sympathy. =sentiment of kinship.=--a higher degree of the sentiments of sympathy is developed when these do not remain limited to a temporary union, but when the union of the sexes is transformed into durable or even life-long marriage, as we see in monkeys and in most birds. in another manner the sentiments of sympathy are developed by extension of the family community to a greater number of individuals, who are grouped together for the common defense, as we see in swallows, crows, and to a higher degree, in the large organized communities of social animals, as the beavers, bees, ants, etc. in the latter, the sentiment of sympathy and duty nearly always affects all the individuals of the community, while anger and jealousy are extended toward every being which does not form part of it. we must be blinded by prejudice not to comprehend that these same general facts, revealed by the study of biology and animal psychology, are repeated in the human mind. some animals are even superior to the majority of men in the intensity of their sentiments of sympathy and duty, as well as in love and conjugal fidelity--monkeys and parrots, for example. in the social insects, such as the ants and bees, with their communities so solidly organized and so finely coördinated on the basis of instinct, the sentiment of social duty has almost entirely replaced the individual sentiments of sympathy. an ant or a bee only loves, so to speak, the whole assemblage of his companions. it does not sacrifice itself for any one of them in particular, but only for the community. in these animals the individual is only regarded as a number in the community whose motto is--one for all, but never all for one. in bees especially, the degree of sympathy extended to a member or a class of the hive is exactly proportional to the utility of this member to the community. the working bees will kill themselves or die of hunger in order to nourish their queen, while in the autumn they ruthlessly massacre all the males or drones which have become useless. =sentiments of patriotism and humanity.=--the human brain, so powerful and so complicated, contains a little of all these things, with enormous individual variations. in man, the sentiments of sympathy and duty relate especially to the family, that is to say, they are to a great extent limited to individuals interested in a sexual community, viz., the conjoints and children, as occurs generally in mammals. it follows that sentiments of sympathy connected with larger communities such as remote relatives, the clan, the community, the country, those who speak the same language, etc., are relatively much weaker, and result from education and custom rather than from instinct. the weakest sentiment is certainly that of _humanity_, which regards each man as a brother and companion, and from which is evolved the general sentiment of solidarity or social duty. how can it be otherwise in a species which has lived for thousands or perhaps millions of years as small hostile tribes, separated from each other? primitive men were so destitute of all humanitarian sentiment that they not only killed one another and practiced mutual slavery, but also martyred, tortured and even devoured one another. in spite of all this, and as the result of custom and life in common, the individual sentiments of sympathy in man are easily extended to members of other races, especially as regards different sexes, so much so that enemies conquered and taken prisoners often became later on, owing to life in common, the friends or mates of their conquerors. =antipathy.=--inversely, individual antipathies and enmity often occur not only between members of the same tribe but even between those of the same family. the latter may lead to parricide, fratricide, infanticide, or assassination of a conjoint. =phylogeny of love.=--the social life of ants offers us some instructive analogies. in spite of the intense hostility of different colonies of ants among themselves, there may be obtained by habitude, often after many desperate combats, alliances between colonies which were hitherto enemies, even between colonies of different species. these alliances henceforth become permanent. this is very curious to observe at the time when the alliance begins to be formed. we then see certain individual hatreds persist, to a varying extent, for several days. certain individuals of the weaker party are maltreated by other individuals of the conquering party. they cut off their limbs and antennæ and often martyrize them to death with a rabidness that sadly resembles human sentiments! hatred and dispute between individuals of the same colony of ants are, on the other hand, extremely rare. i can guarantee the correctness of all these observations, having often repeated them myself and having recorded them in my works on the habits of ants. moreover, they have since been confirmed by other writers. after what we have just said, and especially if we take into consideration the numerous observations which have been made in biology, we can hardly doubt that the sentiment of sexual attraction, or the sexual appetite, has been the primary source of nearly all, if not all, the sentiments of sympathy and duty which have been developed in animals and especially in man. many of these sentiments are no doubt little by little completely differentiated and rendered entirely independent of sexual sentiment, forming a series of corresponding conceptions adapted to divers social objects in the form of sentiments of amity. the latter in their turn have often become the generators of social formations and of a more generalized altruism. many others, however, have remained more or less consciously associated with the sexual appetite, as is certainly the case in man. this short sketch which we have given of the phylogenetic history of love and its derivatives is sufficient to show the immense influence which sexual life has exercised on the whole development of the human mind. on the other hand, we must avoid exaggerating the actual importance of this influence. young children, who possess neither sexual appetite nor corresponding sensations, already give evidence not only of intense sentiments of sympathy and antipathy, anger and jealousy, but also of commiseration, when they see those whom they love suffer; they may even show that they already possess the sentiment of duty or disinterested devotion. all these phylogenetic derivatives of the sentiments of sexual attraction are thus developed in the individual long before the sexual instinct itself, from which they have become absolutely independent. this does not prevent them being powerfully influenced by the sexual instinct when this awakes, or from being associated with its direct derivatives when the sexual appetite, properly so-called, is absent. thus we see absolutely cold women become loving and devoted wives and mothers, and possessing a highly developed sense of kinship. maternal love is a sentiment of sympathy derived from the sexual sentiment, adapted directly to children, who are the products of sexual life. =constellations.=--from all this results the immense complication of the peculiarities of the human mind which are connected with love. individual variations of the disposition to sexual appetite are combined with individual dispositions to the higher qualities of mind--general sentiments, intelligence and will--to form the most diverse individual combinations, which we may call _constellations_. moreover, inherited individual dispositions are combined in man with a great number of experiences and remembrances, acquired in all domains in the course of his life, accumulating them in his brain by what is called education or adaptation to environment. from the immense complexity of energies resulting from hereditary dispositions combined with acquired factors, the resolutions and acts of man are derived, without his being able to account for the infinite multiplicity of causes which determine them. it is thus that a man may be a model of conduct or morality, simply from the fact that his sexual appetite is almost nil. another, on the contrary, suffers from an exaggerated sexual appetite, but is devoted, conscientious, and even scrupulous; this results in violent internal struggles, from which he does not always emerge victorious. a third is moderate in his appetites; if his sentiment of duty is strong and he possesses a strong will, he will resist his desires, while if his will is weak or his moral sense defective, he will succumb to the first temptation. love and sexual appetite may be intimately connected or completely separated in the same individual. in the same way that a cold woman may be a good mother, a very sensual woman may be a bad one, but the inverse may also be met with. =love.=--i speak here of the true love of a higher nature of one sex for the other, or _sexual love_, which is not simple friendship, but is combined with sexual appetite. to write on love is almost to pour water into the ocean, for literature is three parts composed of dissertations on love. there can be no doubt that the normal man feels a great desire for love. the irradiations of love in the mind constitute one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness and one of the principal objects of life. unfortunately, the question is too often treated with exaggerated sentiment, or on the other hand, with sensual cynicism; it is examined from one side only, or else it is misunderstood. first of all, love appears to be usually kindled by the sexual appetite. this is the celebrated story of cupid's arrow. one falls in love with a face, a look, a smile, a white breast, a sweet and melodious voice, etc. however, the relations between love and sexual appetite are extremely delicate and complex. in man, the second may exist without the first and love may often persist without appetite, while in woman the two things are difficult to separate, and in any case, in her, the original appetite without love is much more rare. the two things are thus not identical; even the most materialistic and libidinous egoist will agree to this, if he is not too narrow-minded. it may also happen that love precedes appetite, and this often leads to the most happy unions. two characters may have extreme mutual sympathy, and this purely intellectual and sentimental sympathy may at first develop without a shadow of sensuality. this is nearly always the case when it exists from infancy. in modern society an enormous number of sexual unions, or marriages, are consummated without a trace of love, and are based on pure speculation, conventionality or fortune. here it is tacitly assumed that the normal sexual appetite combined with custom will cement the marriage and render it durable. as the normal man has not, as a rule, extreme sentiments, such prevision is usually realized on the whole, the conjoints becoming gradually adapted to one another, more or less successfully according to the discoveries which are made after marriage. even when they are relatively true, love stories generally deal with exceptional cases, often even pathological; for the average marriage does not appear to the novelist sufficiently piquant or interesting to captivate his readers. we are not concerned here with extremes, or with the tragic situations met with in novels, but with normal and ordinary love, as it most often occurs in reality. after what we have just said, it is clear that love is derived from two factors: ( ) _momentary sexual passion_; ( ) _the hereditary and instinctive sentiments of sympathy which are derived from the primordial sexual appetite of our animal ancestors, but which have become completely independent of this appetite_. between these two terms are placed the sentiments of sympathy experienced by the individual in his former life, which have most often been provoked by sexual desire for an individual of the opposite sex, and which may be evoked by the aid of remembrance, kindled afresh, and contribute strongly to maintain constancy of love. these different sentiments pass into each other in all possible shades, and continually react on each other. sexual appetite, for example, awakens sympathy, and is awakened by the latter in its turn; on the contrary, it is cooled or extinguished under the influence of bad conduct on the part of the person loved. let us here recall a law of the sentiments of sympathy, a law which is well known, but generally forgotten in human calculations. man loves best those to whom he devotes himself, and not those from whom he receives benefits.[ ] it is easy to be convinced of the reality of this fact in the relations of parents to their children, as well as in marriage. when one of the conjoints in marriage adulates the other, the latter may easily find this adulation quite natural, and may love the other conjoint much less than a spoilt child, to which is devoted all the transports of an unreasonable affection. the spoilt child, the object of such blind affection, more often responds to it by indifference, or even by ingratitude, disdain and impertinence. we find everywhere this play of sentiments, which considerably impedes mutuality in love. it may even concern inanimate objects. we like a garden, a house or a book over which we have taken much pains, and we remain indifferent to the most beautiful and precious gifts which come by themselves without our making any effort to obtain them. in the same way, the child becomes attached to some toy which he has made himself, and disdains the costly presents given by his parents. as a poet has said: "man only enjoys for long and without remorse the goods dearly paid for by his efforts." (sully-prudhomme: "_le bonheur_.") there is, therefore, a profound psychology in the old and wise saying that true love expresses itself as often by refusal as by compliance, and should always associate itself with reason. no doubt this is not primitive love; it is a love elevated and purified by its combination with the elements of intelligence. in marriage, more than one husband thinks he ought to be separated from his wife and children so as not to spoil them. there is no need of a long explanation to show the fallacy of this idea. to be complete, love should be reciprocal, and to remain mutual it requires mutual education in marriage. every husband should above all be separated from himself, and not from his wife. if each one did all in his power to promote the happiness of the other, this altruistic effort would strengthen his own sentiments of sympathy. this requires a constant and loyal effort on each side, but it avoids the illusion of a false love, provoked by the senses, vanishing like smoke or becoming changed to hatred. without being blind to the weaknesses of his partner he must learn to like them as forming part of the person to whom he has devoted his heart, and employ all his skill in correcting them by affection, instead of increasing his own weakness by leaning on them. it is necessary, therefore, neither to admire nor to dislike the defects of the loved one, but to try and attenuate them by aid of integral love. love has been defined as "dual egoism." the reciprocal adulation of two human beings easily degenerates into egoistic enmity toward the rest of the human race, and this often reacts harmfully on the quality of love. human solidarity is too great, especially at the present day, for such exclusivism in love not to suffer. i would define ideal love as follows: _after mature consideration, a man and a woman are led by sexual attraction, combined with harmony of character, to form a union in which they stimulate each other to social work, commencing this work with their mutual education and that of their children._ such a conception of love refines this sentiment and purifies it to such an extent that it loses all its pettiness, and it is pettiness which so often causes it to degenerate, even in its most loyal forms. the social work in common of a man and woman united by true affection, full of tenderness and devotion for one another, mutually encouraging each other to perseverance and to action, will easily triumph over petty jealousies and all other instinctive reactions of the phylogenetic exclusiveness of natural love. the sentiments of love will thus become ever more ideal, and will no longer provide egoism with the soil of idleness and comfort on which it grows like a weed. =inconvenience of abstinence from sexual connection between married couples by medical orders.=--it is a matter of common observation that in marriage, at least during mature life, sexual connection strengthens and maintains love, even when it only constitutes part of that which cements tenderness and affection. in many cases i have observed that medical orders, given no doubt with good intentions, and forbidding sexual connection, on account of certain morbid conditions, have had the effect of cooling the sentiments of love and sympathy and producing indifference which soon becomes incurable. physicians should always bear this in mind in their prescriptions, of which they too often see the immediate object only. the medical prohibition of sexual connection in marriage should be reserved for cases of absolute necessity. for example: a virtuous and capable man marries for love an intelligent but somewhat ill-developed girl. the marriage is happy and they have several children. but after a time certain local disorders in the woman induce the medical man to forbid sexual connection with her husband. they begin to sleep in separate rooms, and little by little intimate love becomes so far cooled that the renewal of sexual relations later on becomes impossible. the husband's sentiments are so much affected as to render him unfaithful to his moral principles, and to lead him occasionally to visit prostitutes. although they have become essentially strangers to each other, the husband and wife continue to live together an apparently happy life; but this is far from always the case. =durable love.=--it may be stated as a principle that true and elevated love is durable, and that the sudden passion which lets loose the sexual appetite toward an individual of the opposite sex, hitherto a stranger, in no way represents the measure of true love. passion warps the judgment, conceals the most evident faults, colors everything in celestial purple, renders the lovers blind, and veils the true character of each from the other. we are only speaking here of cases where each is loyal and where the sexual appetite is not associated with the cold calculations of egoism. reason only returns when the first tempest of a passion which seemed insatiable has subsided, when the honeymoon of marriage, or of a free union, has passed. then only is it possible to see if what remains is true love, indifference, hatred or a mixture of these three sentiments, capable or not of becoming more or less adaptable and tolerable. this is why sudden amours are always dangerous, and why only long and profound mutual acquaintance before marriage can lead to a happy and lasting union. even in this case the unforseen is not absent, for it is very rarely that one knows a man and his ancestry; moreover, acquired diseases or mental anomalies may cause his character to degenerate later on. let us now examine some psychic phenomena more or less connected with love. for reasons which we have mentioned the irradiations of sexual love are on the whole less developed in man than in woman. psychic irradiations of love in man =masculine audacity.=--in the normal male the sentiment of sexual power favors self-exaltation, while the contrary sentiment of impotence, or even that of mediocre sexual power, depresses this sentiment of exaltation. yet, in reality, the sexual power of man has not the capital importance for a normal and virgin woman that men imagine, influenced as they are by self-exaltation; what imposes on women is especially masculine audacity, and in sexual matters this increases with experience and practice. the company of prostitutes often renders men incapable of understanding feminine psychology, for prostitutes are hardly more than automata trained for the use of male sensuality. when men look among these for the sexual psychology of woman they only find their own mirror. man's flirtation, and his art of paying court to women are naturally combined with his audacity, as we have already observed in birds and mammals, and some of the lower animals. the male seeks to please the female to gain her favors. the brilliant colors of butterflies and birds, song, skill and proof of strength, often come to the aid of the male sexual instinct. even in certain animals supplicant and plaintive sounds assist the male after his repeated refusal, apparently or in reality, by the female. we shall see in chapter vi that savage men have a much greater tendency to tattoo and adorn themselves than have the women. the art which man employs to seduce and conquer woman has been described to satiety in romances and novels, as well as in ethnographic works; so that we shall not dwell on it here. on the contrary, we shall show that in higher civilizations man is in general more sought after than woman, so that the latter has surpassed him in the art of flirtation or sexual conquest. it is also important to remark to what extent the increase of man's mental complexity transforms his sexual tactics. the simple, natural, and at the same time bashful, modest manner, in which a naïve young man seeks to conquer a heart, usually produces no effect on the fashionable young lady, experienced in all refined pleasures and saturated with unhealthy novels. these young women are much more easily seduced by the art of don juan and the old _roués_, who are more adequate to deal with them because they have studied practically the psychology of the modern woman. =instinct of procreation.=--another irradiation of the male sexual instinct, connected with the preceding, is the instinct of procreation. if there were no other difficulties or consequences, man would without the least doubt be instinctively inclined to copulate with as many women as he could, and procreate as many children as possible. the more he is capable of satisfying his procreative instinct, the more he becomes self-exalted, as he thus sees himself multiplied and feels his power extended by the possession of a great number of wives and children. this is one of the principal causes which urge rich men and polygamous peoples to possess many women. coitus without object, like that of prostitution, can only assuage the sexual appetite and does not satisfy any of its higher irradiations. it is well known that a happy betrothal, reposing on true love, and not on pecuniary interests, often transforms a young man from pessimism to optimism, from misogyny to philogyny. skeptics smile at this transformation and regard it as only the transient intoxication of love. this may be true in some cases, but, as we have seen above, when love is ennobled by deep understanding and mutual education, when each knows and respects the other, the transformation remains definite, and is strengthened so much that the honeymoon of the silver wedding is often happier and more exalted than that which followed marriage. we can then say that the optimism created by sexual union cemented by true love rests on the normal accomplishment of the object of life. i cannot too often repeat that work in common, especially social work, on the part of the conjoints, is necessary for their happiness to be complete, and to survive in the one who remains after the decease of the other. =jealousy.=--the worst irradiation, or rather the worst reaction of contrast of love, which we have inherited from our animal ancestors, and that which is the most deeply rooted, is _jealousy_. jealousy is a heritage of animals and barbarism; that is what i would say to all those who, in the name of offended honor, would grant it rights and even place it on a pedestal. it is ten times better for a woman to marry an unfaithful than a jealous husband. from the phylogenetic point of view, jealousy originates in the struggle for the possession of woman, at a period when right depended only on brute force. cunning and violence contended with each other, and when the conqueror was in possession of a female, he had to guard her jealously to prevent her being abducted. furious combats ensued. as soon as an unaccustomed approach, a look or anything else awakened the least suspicion of the presence of a rival, the male was tormented with a continual and instinctive feeling of defiance and distrust, often increased by the remembrance of the sadness of former defeats and the impotent rage which followed. the results of male jealousy in the history of marriage are truly incredible. i may mention the iron girdles with locks--the so-called girdles of chastity--which we still see in certain museums, which the knights of the middle ages put on their wives when they set off to the wars, in order to appease their jealousy. many savage peoples do not content themselves with severely punishing adultery in woman, even by death, but even simple conversations with a strange man. jealousy transforms marriage into a hell. it is often exalted in man to the point of a mania for persecution, to which it is analogous. it is also a very common symptom of alcoholism. then the life of the unfortunate woman who is the object of it becomes a continual martyrdom. perpetual suspicion accompanied by insults, threats and violent words, and even homicide may be the result of this atrocious passion. even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. we often hear of justified jealousy; i maintain, on the contrary, that jealousy is never justified, and that it is only the brutal stupidity of an atavistic heritage, or a pathological symptom. a reasonable man who has doubts as to the fidelity of his wife has certainly the right to assure himself of their correctness. but of what use is it to be jealous? if he finds his suspicions false he has, by his manner, made his wife unnecessarily unhappy and destroyed conjugal confidence and happiness. if, on the contrary, his suspicions are well founded he has only to choose between one of two ways. if it is a case of amorous intoxication suggested by another man to his wife, who is often very unhappy about it, she may then be restored to her husband and pardoned, for in this case affection only can cure her, never jealousy. if, however, love for her husband is entirely extinguished in her, or if she is only a false intriguer without character, jealousy is even more absurd, for the game is not worth the candle, and immediate divorce is necessary. unfortunately, man only possesses very little control over his feelings when these are violent. the jealous person by nature, that is by heredity, is generally incurable and poisons his own existence at the same time as that of his wife. such individuals should never marry. in lunatic asylums, in law, and in novels jealousy plays an important part, for it is one of the most fruitful sources of tragedies and human unhappiness. the combined and persevering efforts of education and selection are necessary to gradually eliminate it from the human brain. we often hear it said of man and woman that they are not jealous enough, because they are too indulgent toward the extra-nuptial inclinations of their conjoint. when such indulgence rests on cynical indifference or on pecuniary interests, it is not the want of jealousy but the want of moral sense which is to blame. if it arises from real and reasoned love, it should on the contrary be highly respected and praised. i would wish all heroes of offended honor and all defenders of jealousy to reflect on the following case: a man of high position, and the father of five children, lived in the most happy union. one day he made the acquaintance of a friend of his wife, a very intelligent and well-educated lady. frequent visits and long conversations led to intimacy which developed into violent reciprocal love. however, the lady refused to abandon herself entirely. the husband confessed everything to his wife, even to the smallest details, and the lady did the same. instead of becoming jealous, the wife had the good sense and the courage to treat the two lovers not only with indulgence, but a true and profound affection. the loyalty of each of the parties interested greatly facilitated the gradual _dénouement_ of a difficult situation, without the family affections suffering. but the _dénouement_ would have been quite as peaceful if the lady had yielded to sexual connection with the husband. in fact, the wife herself considered this question very seriously and calmly, in case the fire could not be otherwise extinguished. i ask in all sincerity, if such mild and humane treatment of an unfortunate love affair, in which the three interested parties each strove to avoid all scandal and everything which could damage their mutual reputation, i ask if this good and loyal treatment is not, from the moral standpoint, far superior to scenes of jealousy, duels, divorces and all their consequences, things which are all sanctioned and even sanctified by custom? i also know many cases where the husbands of women who have fallen in love with other men have conducted themselves in an equally noble and reasonable manner, even when their wives had been completely unfaithful, and the results have always been good. it is needless to say that i do not wish to maintain that a husband should tolerate indefinitely the bad conduct of his wife, nor a woman that of her husband; but this is another thing. =sexual braggardism.=--let us pass on to another irradiation of the male sexual appetite--sexual braggardism. this arises from self-exaltation evolved from the sexual power of man. like jealousy, this sentiment is no doubt inherited from our animal ancestors, and it finds its analogy, or rather its caricature, in the cock, the peacock, the turkey, and in general among the richly adorned males of polygamous species. although on the whole more innocent, the results of this atavistic instinct are no more elevated than those of jealousy. the sentiment of sexual power induces men, especially those of lower mental caliber, to boast of their sexual conquests and exaggerate them. it is needless to say that success does not go to the unskillful boaster, but to the one who relates his audacious exploits in a casual way. the don juan experienced in the art of seduction approaches women with audacity and _aplomb_, and usually imposes on them considerably, whatever his ignorance of other things. he has instinctively learnt one thing: viz., the weakness of woman in the face of the male form, theatrical effect, uniforms, an audacious act, a fierce mustache, etc. he has learnt that these fireworks hypnotize her and silence her reason, and that she is then capable of enthusiasm for the most doubtful cavalier and delivers herself to him bound hand and foot, provided his self-assurance does not desert him. i may say here that it is most often men of low intellect, weak in judgment and principles, who think themselves most superior to the feminine sex, and who behave as tyrants to their wives. sexual braggardism has, moreover, grave consequences for the man himself, for it urges him to excesses which far exceed his appetites and especially his natural wants. in spite of other advantages, he wishes to shine by these excesses among his fellows and even among the grisettes whose minds are full of sexual matters. male sexual braggardism contributes with sexual appetite to entice reserved and high-minded young men toward prostitutes, against their better instincts, their reason and their moral sense. alcohol especially facilitates the degeneration of sexual life. =the pornographic spirit.=--the term _eroticism_ is given to the state of excitation of the sexual appetite. when a person cultivates it artificially and abandons himself to purely animal sensuality, without combining it with higher intellectual or moral aspirations, there develop in the mind irradiations which may be designated by the term _pornographic spirit_. the entire circle of ideas of such individuals is so impregnated with eroticism that all their thoughts and sentiments are colored by it. they see everywhere, even in the most innocent objects, the most lewd allusions. woman is only regarded by them as an object of sexual enjoyment, and her mind only appears to such satyrs as an ignoble erotic caricature, which is disgusting to every man capable of lofty sentiments. owing to its usually sensual and gross nature, male eroticism has succeeded in modeling a whole class of women in whom ideal character in their desires is wanting. instead of recognizing his own work and the vile image of his own person in these unnatural women, the libertine, as we have already seen, imagines them as the normal type of woman. from the height of his presumption, he then despises woman and does not perceive that it is himself whom he despises; for on the whole, from the sexual point of view, the dependent woman of to-day conforms herself to man and becomes what he makes her. the number of coitus, their details, the size and form of the sexual organs, the pleasure of having cut out other men, and especially the pathological perversions of the sexual appetite, form the chief object of the thoughts and conversations of pornographic minds. each tries to outdo the others in sexual enormities, and the virtuosity of these gentlemen in this domain is only surpassed by their ignorance and incapacity in all others. prostitution and all the modern sexual degeneration which marches under the hypocritical flag of christianity, civilization and monogamy, have so far developed the pornographic spirit that men living in centers of debauchery, centers which are unfortunately extending more and more from town to country, lose all conception of the noble qualities natural to the feminine sentiment and to true love, or only preserve a few shreds of it which they treat with ridicule. many men have admitted this to me, after being much astonished when i was obliged to give them quite another conception of love and woman, without introducing the least trace of religion. no doubt certain better individuals, fallen by chance into debauchery, speak respectfully of a mother or a sister, for whom they profess an almost religious worship. they regard these as beings apart, as species of a lost race of demigods, and they do not perceive that they discredit them and drag them in the mud by their contempt and pornographic conception of woman in general, a conception which is moreover often altered to profound pessimism. in the relatively moral circles of society, our description would no doubt be taxed with exaggeration, because natures a little more refined have the habit of acting like the ostrich who hides his head in the sand, that is to say of turning their eyes away from the pornographic swamp with disgust so as not to see it, and thus avoid it instinctively. but this maneuver serves no purpose: the facts remain as they are. eroticism is no more a vice than sexual anæsthesia is a virtue. even when they are chaste, men of libidinous nature require a strong will to resist all the artificial seductions which excite their sensuality. this is why the bog of debauchery engulfs so many men of a naturally good nature. in this sense, cold natures are better off; they can cover themselves with the glory of a "virtue" the resplendent rays of which become lost in a penumbra of defects and weaknesses from which these natures suffer in other domains. =sexual hypocrisy.=--hypocrisy is a peculiarity deeply rooted in the human mind. we can affirm that whoever pretends never to have been a hypocrite lies, quite as much as one who swears he has never lied. but nowhere, save perhaps in the domain of religion, does hypocrisy play a greater part than in the sexual domain. nowhere is there so much falsehood, and men who are most honest on other points make no scruple of deceiving their wives in this respect. i do not speak here of the simulation of sentiments of love, for it is too banal, and there is no need to be too exacting over this point, for there are strong attenuating circumstances. first of all, erotic feelings are capable of blinding man for the moment, as far as persuading him of the eternal duration of love and fidelity which he promises the object of his appetites, as well as of the reality of the celestial qualities under which this object appears to him, or with which it pleases him to adorn it. two persons mutually excited by sexual passion are fascinated by the illusions of a mirage, which often vanishes soon afterward, so that it is not rare to see them on the following day hurling the most violent abuse at each other. those who have not been witnesses of such events may hardly believe them. it is sufficient, however, to be a magistrate or to read the reports of lawsuits between debased persons as the result of love quarrels, broken engagements or marriages, seductions, etc., to study the letters that the two parties have written before and after their quarrel, in order to be convinced of the correctness of what we have said above. in the first letters the lovers adulate each other and adorn each other with the most hyperbolic epithets, swearing eternal love and fidelity, and deluding each other in the most absurd manner. in letters written sometimes only a few days later we are astonished to see the same individuals grossly insulting each other and mutually covering themselves with ignoble calumnies. this is how passion without reason passes through the furnaces of love and hatred, dragging after it all the artificial scaffolding of what man imagines to be his right based on logic, but which is in reality only a tissue of ridiculous contradictions, the automatic and inept product of his emotional state. such contrasts are so frequent that we can easily recognize the expression of a psychological law, due to the mirages of the amorous passions on the one hand and the inverse reaction on the other. nevertheless hypocrisy has its good side. it has been said not without reason that "hypocrisy is a concession which vice makes to virtue." in their nakedness human thoughts are often so sadly vulgar and so offensive that a little varnish improves them. in this sense, and when it comes from a feeling of shame or good-will, hypocrisy deserves a good deal of the eulogy which mark twain has heaped on it in his charming satire, "the decadence of the art of lying." in the sexual question hypocrisy is directly provoked by the tyranny and barbarism of what are called good manners, often even by the law. in this sense it constitutes a response of human nature to the forms and customs derived from the right of the stronger or from religious superstitions, as well as from the dogmas resulting from them. by the term _sexual hypocrisy_ i do not mean the repugnant forms of hypocrisy pure and simple, in which man only exploits love indirectly for an interested end, for instance when he simulates love to obtain a rich wife. i only speak of the forms of hypocrisy which are directly evolved from the sexual appetite or from love. it is from this point of view that we must judge sexual hypocrisy, and if i have laid special stress on its good points, it is in view of marriage, where it assists the education of noble and elevated sentiments even in the hypocrite. by praising the virtues of his helpmate with a little exaggeration, these are made to appear more noble. if the time is spent in saying disagreeable truths, love is soon stifled and killed. on the contrary, if each conjoint attributes to the other as fine qualities as possible, each is finally persuaded that the other really possesses them, and then realizes them himself, at any rate in part. the worst of hypocrisies is that which is the product of base pecuniary interests, or of a gross sexual appetite without love, or lastly by the pressure of conventional or religious customs. good hypocrisy consists in the repression of all that is base in the sentiments, inclinations and passions; in the fact that one strives to hide it from others, even from one's self, and to suggest in its place as many amiable qualities as possible, so as to strengthen in a disinterested manner the object of one's love in noble sentiments. this kind of hypocrisy is in reality an indirect product of altruistic sentiments. one perceives with pain on reflecting, either the absence of spontaneous sentiments of sympathy, or the presence of disgust and bad temper, and one strives to hide the thing by sympathetic expressions for which one seeks an object, and to which one would wish to give a durable character. loyal efforts made in this direction often succeed in correcting the egoistic humor with which one is affected, and in giving rise to the sentiments one desires to experience. one must not, however, by only looking at one side of the question, allow such efforts to degenerate into maladroit blindness, which will only have the effect of spoiling the person one loves. =egoistic love.=--it is obvious that the psychic irradiations of the sexual sense are strongly influenced by the individuality of the one who loves. the egoist loves in a manner naively egoistic. he is not wanting in fine words, but in his opinion all sentiment and respect is due to his person, while he reduces to a minimum his duties toward the object of his love. he exacts much from the other and gives little. the good man with altruistic sentiments feels things in an inverse way; he exacts little from others, and much from himself. love differs in different natures, according as they are calm or lively, imbecile or intelligent, well educated or otherwise: the will plays a great part here. weakness and impulsiveness are found in love, as well as energy and perseverance. in the last point woman is superior, owing to the greater constancy of her love. there is thus no domain of the mind which is not influenced by love, and which does not react on love in its turn. intellectual occupations are facilitated by a happy love, while they are usually hindered by the sorrows of love. even men of science, so proud of their calmness, are often more influenced than one would think in their scientific opinions by their emotional sentiments. without a man being aware of it, his sentiments insinuate themselves into the opinions which he believes to be of a purely intellectual nature, and direct them unconsciously with much more power than he generally imagines. such influences act chiefly on individuals disposed to sentimentality. in love, these individuals resemble two-edged swords; the intensity of their emotional reactions and sentiments drives them from one extreme to another, from foolish happiness to despair or fury. the situation becomes still more grave when such storms burst among impulsive persons of weak will and limited intelligence. under such circumstances ill-assorted alliances are formed which lead to violent quarrels, and sometimes even to crime. when jealousy comes on the scene the man often kills the woman and commits suicide. it would seem that such crime can only arise from egoism; this is often the case, but not always. despair may often lead to such acts, without any motive of vengeance, or even of jealousy. the storm of passion drives weak-minded persons to impulsive actions, the motives of which are very difficult to analyze. after these tragedies of murder preceding suicide, when the murderer survives, he often expresses himself as follows: "i was in such a state of despair and excitement that i saw no other issue than death for both of us." =prudery. modesty.=--the sentiment of modesty originates in the fear of everything which is novel and unusual, and is complicated by natural timidity. this sentiment is especially strong in children. the sentiment of sexual modesty in man thus rests on timidity and on the fear of not doing as others do. it betrays itself toward women by awkwardness and bashfulness behind which eroticism is often ill concealed. the timid and bashful man carefully endeavors to hide his sexual feelings from others. the object of modesty is in itself immaterial to the psychology of this sentiment, and shame is sometimes inspired not only by very different things but even by opposite things. one youth is ashamed of appearing erotic, another of appearing too little erotic, according to the opinion of his neighbors. modesty depends on the custom of covering or exposing certain parts of the body, and people who live in a state of nature are as much ashamed of clothes as we are ashamed of nudity. moreover, man soon becomes accustomed to fashion, and the same english girl who blushes at the sight of a few inches of bare skin in her own country, finds it quite natural to see naked negroes in the tropics. the artificial and systematic cultivation of an exaggerated sentiment of modesty produces _prudery_, the bad results of which are, however, less than those of pornography. there are young people so modest that the simple thought of sexual matters overexcites them terribly. by associating their own erotic feelings, of which they feel ashamed, with sexual ideas, they invest these with terrifying attributes, and become quite unhappy; in this way they are often led to masturbation. they are, however, excessively frightened at this also and imagine its effects so terrible that they think themselves lost. their exaggerated feelings of modesty often prevent them confiding in some charitable person. however, they rarely find reasonable consolers; some ridicule them, while others regard them as iniquitous, which only increases their terror and drives them to extremes. the sexual sentiment of modesty very often becomes unhealthy, and is then easily combined with pathological sexual conditions. prudery is, so to speak, sexual modesty codified and dogmatized. it is indeterminate, because the object of modesty is purely conventional, and man has no valid reason to regard any part of his body as shameful. normal man ought only to be ashamed of bad thoughts and actions, contrary to his moral conscience. the latter should be based on natural human altruism only, and not artificially misled by dogma. =the old bachelor.=--the importance of the psychic irradiations of love is shown perhaps more clearly from the results of their presence in old bachelors than from any other consideration. in our time, no doubt, the state of the old bachelor rarely means the renunciation of the satisfaction of sexual appetite, although it generally entails the renunciation of love. there are, no doubt, two kinds of old bachelors, those who are chaste and those who are not. the old bachelor no doubt leads a less empty existence than the old maid, but the void exists none the less. man also needs compensation for the absence of love and family, but his brain is more capable than that of woman of finding this compensation in hard intellectual work or in some other employment. the old bachelor is generally pessimistic and morose. he easily becomes the slave of his fads and hobbies, and the peculiarities of his character are proverbial. his egoism knows no bounds, and his altruistic impulses usually find too few objects or echoes. the chastity of some old bachelors conceals sexual anomalies. but even apart from this, the old celibate easily becomes shy, affected, misanthropic or misogynistic, at least if some energetic friend does not induce him to utilize his power of work in some useful sphere. at other times he lavishes exaggerated admiration on women and worships them in a pompous manner. in a separate category come those old bachelors who are chaste and celibate for high moral reasons, and whose life is spent in social work, although they are only men and cannot for this reason free themselves from all the peculiarities we have mentioned. in a word, the object of life is partly wanting in the best of old bachelors, and this void not only affects his sentiments but his whole mental being. his general tendency to pessimism and egoism would be sufficient alone to provoke an energetic protest against the abandonment of social power to celibates. the old bachelor who is not chaste generally descends to pornography, only becoming acquainted with the worst side of woman. he becomes a misogynist because he wrongly attributes to all women the character of those only with whom he has intimate relations. we have already pointed out this phenomenon in speaking of male eroticism. the philosopher, schopenhauer, was an example of this kind. psychic irradiations of love in women in speaking of love in man we have already touched on many points which differentiate it from that of woman. in the latter, the most prominent peculiarity is the dominant role which it plays in the brain. without love woman abjures her nature and ceases to be normal. =the old maid.=--what we have said of old bachelors applies in a still more marked degree, to old maids. still more than men they have need of compensation for sexual love, to avoid losing their natural qualities and becoming dried-up beings or useless egoists. but, if the void left by love is greater in her, woman possesses such natural energy and perseverance, combined with such great power of devotion, that on the whole she is more capable than man of accomplishing the work which the void in her existence requires. unfortunately, many women do not understand this. on the other hand, those who devote themselves to social philanthropic works, to art or literature, to nursing the sick or to other useful occupations, instead of amusing themselves with futile things, may greatly distinguish themselves in such social pursuits, and thus obtain real compensation for the loss of love. in this respect woman was formerly misunderstood. the modern movement of her emancipation shows more and more what she is capable of and promises much more in the future. as to the old maid who lives alone with her egoism, her whims and fancies generally exceed those of the old bachelor. she has not the faculty of creating anything original by her own intellect, so that, having lost love, all her mental power shrinks up. her cat, her little dog, and the daily care of her person and small household occupy her whole mind. it is not surprising that such persons generally create a pitiable and ridiculous impression. between these two extremes there exists a category of unmarried women whose sexual love finds compensation in the love they bear for a parent or a friend (male or female), which although not sexual is none the less ardent. such occupation for their sentiments improves their state of mind and partially fills the void; however, it is not sufficient as a rule and only constitutes a last resource. this kind of devotion, by its exclusiveness, often produces bad results, for its horizon is too limited. if the object of love, which is generally too pampered, dies or abandons her, she loses her head; grief, bitterness and pessimism never leave her, unless she finds consolation in religious exaltation, which is often observed in other women deprived of love. this last peculiarity is met with, moreover, in all classes of women, even among the married. =passiveness of woman. sexual appetite.=--ideal love should never be dual egoism. what happens when two persons live exclusively for each other, if one of them dies? the survivor sinks into inconsolable despair, all that his heart was attached to is dead, because his love did not extend to other human beings, nor to social works. widows then become as pitiable as old maids, although in another way, when they have lost the object of their exclusive love. this is why we recommend social work, not only for celibates, but also for loving couples. i again emphasize the fact that in normal women, especially young girls, the sexual appetite is subordinate to love. in the young girl love is a mixture of exalted admiration for masculine courage and grandeur, and an ardent desire for affection and maternity. she wishes to be outwardly dominated by a man, but to dominate him by her heart. this sentimentalism of the young girl, joined to the passive role of her sex, produces in her a state of exaltation which often borders on ecstasy and then overcomes all the resistance of will and reason. the woman surrenders herself to the man of whom she is enamored, or who has conquered or hypnotized her. she is vanquished by his embraces and follows him submissively, and in such a state of mind she is capable of any folly. although more violent and impetuous in his love, man loses his _sang-froid_ on the whole much less than woman. we can therefore say that the relative power of sentiment is on the average greater in woman, in spite of her passive role. i cannot protest too strongly against the way in which men of the day disparage women and misunderstand them. in the way in which a young girl abandons herself to their sexual appetites, in caresses, and in the ecstasy of her love, they think they see the proof of a purely sensual eroticism, identical to their libidinous desire for coitus, while in reality she usually does not think of it, at any rate at first. the first coitus is usually painful to woman, often repugnant. many are the cases where young girls, even when they knew the terrible social and individual dangers of their weakness, even when they have perhaps once already experienced the consequences, let the man abuse them without a word of complaint, without a trace of sexual pleasure or venereal orgasm, simply to please the one who desires them, because he is so good and amiable, and because refusal would give him so much pain. in his violent passion and in his egoism, man is generally incapable of understanding the power of this stoicism of a mind which surrenders itself in spite of all dangers and all its interests. he confounds his own appetites with the sentiments of the woman, and finds in this false interpretation of feminine psychology the excuses for the cowardice of which he gives proof when he yields to his passions. the psychology of the young girl who surrenders herself has been admirably depicted by goethe in _gretchen_ ("faust"), as well as by de maupassant on several occasions. it is necessary to know all these facts in order to estimate at its true value the ignominy of our social institutions and their bearing on woman's life. if men did not so misunderstand women, and especially if they were aware of the deep injustice of our customs and laws with regard to them, the better ones, at least, would think twice before seducing young girls, to abandon them afterward with their children. i am only speaking now of true love and not of the extortion so often practiced by women of low character, or those already educated in vice. i shall say no more concerning eroticism, which really exists in many women, especially in those who are already experienced in sexual matters. on the other hand there are women who deceive their husbands and allow themselves to be seduced by any don juan, even when they have never had the least sexual appetite, or felt a single venereal orgasm. they allow themselves to be dragged in the mud and lose their reputation, their fortune and their family; they even let their seducer trample them under foot; they become defamed and treated as women without character, without honor and without any notion of duty. they are simply poor feeble creatures incapable of resisting masculine proposals. with good psychological training they would often become better women, active, devoted and full of life. it seems hardly credible, but it is true, that one sometimes finds in this category women who are highly gifted. it is then said that they are wanting in moral sense, but this is not always correct. in other respects they may be faithful to their duty, devoted, sometimes even energetic and heroic; but they submit to masculine influence to such a degree that they cannot conceive how to resist it. they find it quite natural to give way to it and their mind does not understand that the complete abandonment of their body to the man they love should not necessarily follow immediately after the abandonment of their heart, or even after the first kiss. it is impossible for them to make distinctions or to trace limits. =idealism in woman.=--the cases i have just described are extreme, although very common; they give the note of a general phenomenon of feminine love in its exaltation. it is needless to say that reasonable women of high character behave themselves in quite another manner, however profound their love. nevertheless the trait which we have just described is nearly always found at the bottom of all true love in woman, however much it may be veiled, dissimulated or conquered. it is not always audacity or heroic deeds like those of the bold cavaliers of former days which excite love in woman. the external qualities of man, such as beauty and elegance, etc., also play a part, although their effect may be less decisive than that of the bodily charms of woman in exciting love in man. intellectual superiority, high moral actions, and mental qualities in general, easily affect the heart of woman, which becomes exalted under their influence. but every man who becomes famous either for good or evil, the fashionable actor, the celebrated tenor, etc., has the power of exciting love in women. women without education or those of inferior mental quality are naturally more easily affected by the bodily strength of man, and by his external appearance in general. many women are especially liable to succumb under the influence of all that is mystic. these become infatuated by preachers, and religious enthusiasts, to say nothing of hypocrites. nothing is sadder than the contrast between the exalted love of a virtuous and chaste young girl, and the debauched life, with its traits of cynical pornography, of the majority of young men. guy de maupassant has described this contrast in a most striking manner in his romance entitled "_une vie_." i know a number of cases in which the complete ignorance of young married women with regard to sexual relations, combined with the cynical lewdness of their husbands, has transformed the exalted love of a young girl into profound disgust, and has sometimes even caused mental disorders. although not very common, the psychoses resulting from the deception and shock of the nuptial night are not very rare. but what is much worse than this douche of cold water which suddenly substitutes the reality of coitus for the ideal exaltation of sentiment, are the subsequent discoveries made by the young wife, when the cynical mind of her husband on the subject of sexual connection and love is unveiled to her in all its grossness, resulting from his previous life of debauchery. torn and sullied in its deepest fibers, the feminine mind then becomes the seat of a desperate struggle between reality full of deceptions and the illusions of a dream of happiness. if it is only a question of bad habits, or want of tact in the husband, behind which there exists perhaps true love, the wounds in the woman's sentiment may heal and intimacy may develop; but when the cynicism is too marked, when the habits of sexual debauchery are too inveterate, the love of a virtuous woman is soon stifled, and is changed to resignation and disgust, often to martyrdom or hatred. in other cases the woman is weak and ill-developed and allows herself to sink to the level of her husband's sentiments. sometimes, the crisis is accentuated and leads to divorce. in de maupassant's "_une vie_," he describes with profound insight the continuous deceptions of a young innocent and sentimental girl who marries an egoistic roué, and whose life is transformed into martyrdom and completely ruined. de maupassant's romances contain such true psychology of sexual life and love in all their forms, often even in their exceptional aberrations, that they furnish an admirable illustration to the present chapter. =petticoat government.=--a series of most important irradiations of love in woman results from the need she feels of being, if not dominated, at least protected by her husband. to be happy, a woman must be able to respect her husband and even regard him with more or less veneration; she must see in him the realization of an ideal, either of bodily strength, courage, unselfishness or superior intellect. if this is not the case, the husband easily falls under the petticoat government, or indifference and antipathy may develop in the wife, at least if misfortune or illness in the husband does not excite her pity and transform her into a resigned nurse. petticoat government can hardly make a household truly happy, for here the positions are reversed and the wife rules because the husband is weak. but the normal instinct of woman is to rule over the heart of man, not over his intelligence or on his will. ruling in these last domains may flatter a woman's vanity and render it dominating, but it never satisfies her heart, and this is why the woman who rules is so often unfaithful to her husband, if not in deed, at least in thought. in such a union she has not found the true love which she sought, and for this reason, if her moral principles are weak, she looks for compensation in some don juan. if the woman in question has a strong character, or if she is sexually cold, she may easily become sour and bitter. these women, who are not rare, are to be dreaded; their plighted love is transformed into hatred, bad temper or jealousy, and only finds satisfaction in the torment of others. the psychology of this kind of woman is interesting. they are not usually conscious of their malice. the chronic bitterness resulting from an unfortunate hereditary disposition in their character, as much as from their outraged feelings, makes them take a dislike to the world and renders them incapable of seeing anything but the worst side of people. they become accustomed to disparage everything automatically, to take offense at everything and to speak ill of everything on every occasion. they are unhappy, but they find a diabolical joy in all misfortune where they see the confirmation of their somber prophecies, the only satisfaction which is capable of exalting them. we have just said that a certain constitutional disposition is necessary for such a deplorable change in feminine sentiments to be produced; but this disposition is often only developed under the influence of circumstances which we have indicated or analogous ones. it is impossible for the life in common of two conjoints not to reveal their reciprocal failings. but true love generally suffices to definitely cement a union, provided that the wife finds a support in the steadfast nature of her husband, which then serves as her ideal. it is also necessary that the husband, finding sentiments of devoted love in his wife, should reciprocate them. these conditions are sufficient, if both devote their efforts to the maintenance of their family and the social welfare. =maternal love.=--the most profound and most natural irradiation of the sexual appetite in woman is _maternal love_. a mother who does not love her children is an unnatural being, and a man who does not understand the desires of maternity in his wife, and does not respect them, is not worthy of her love. sometimes egoism renders a man jealous of the love which his wife bears to his children. at other times, the father may show more love for the children than their mother; such exceptions only prove the rule. the most beautiful and most natural of the irradiations of love is the joy of parents at the birth of their children, a joy which is one of the strongest bonds of conjugal affection, and which helps the couple in triumphing over the conflicting elements in their characters, and in raising the moral level of their reciprocal sentiments, for it realizes the natural object of sexual union. a true woman rejoices at the progress of her pregnancy. the last pains of childbirth have hardly ceased before she laughs with joy, and pride, at hearing the first cries of the newly born. the instinctive outburst of maternal love toward the new-born child corresponds to a natural imprescriptible right of the child, for it needs the continual care of its mother. nothing is so beautiful in the world as the radiant joy of a young mother nursing her child, and no sign of degeneration is more painful than that of mothers who abandon their children without absolute necessity, to strange hands. on the other hand reason must intervene. the instructive transports of maternal love soon require a counterpoise. it is important to prevent them from degenerating into unreasonable spoiling, by scientific and medical education of the infants. modern medical art has made great progress in this direction, but unfortunately, egoism, negligence, routine, the desire of enjoyment, or often the poverty of many mothers prevent them from benefiting from this progress and applying it as they should. instead of looking after their children they leave them to nurses. the latter may be necessary to help and instruct young wives during their first childbirth; but a natural mother will profit by these instructions and will herself become an excellent nurse, because she will feel her natural ties and will consecrate herself to them with the devotion of a maternal love heightened and refined by reason and knowledge. among the lower classes the poverty and ignorance of mothers, often also their thoughtlessness and indolence, are an obstacle to the rational education of infants. "=monkey's love.="--maternal love thus constitutes the most important irradiation of the sexual instincts in woman. it very easily degenerates into weakness, that is to say into unreasonable passion and blind compliance with all the faults of the child, which the mother excuses and transforms into virtues. the foibles of maternal love do much harm to the child and are often the origin of bitter deceptions. hereditary weakness of character here plays a great, or even the principal part. nevertheless, maternal foibles have other causes--riches, absence of culture, idleness, too few children, etc. the best antidote for this unreasonable maternal love, which the germans call "monkey's love" consists in active occupations for the mother, combined with a healthy education of her character. work alone is not sufficient, if the mother has limited ideas, and if she is not freed from routine, ignorance, superstition and weakness of will. =sentiments and perseverance.=--the power of love in woman does not rest alone on the varied harmony of her sentiments of sympathy for her husband and children, and on the extraordinary finesse and natural tact which she adds to it; such qualities make her, no doubt, the ray of sunshine in the family life, but more powerful still are the tenacity and perseverance of her love. in general, it is by will-power that woman is superior to man, and it is in the domain of love that this superiority shines in all its glory. as a general rule it is the wife who sustains the family. among the common people, it is she who economizes, she who watches carefully over all and corrects the failings, the passionate and impulsive acts, the discouragements, so frequent with the husband. how often do we see the father abandon the children, waste his earnings and leave his situation under some futile pretext, while his courageous wife, although suffering from hunger and destitution, holds firm and manages to save the debris which has escaped the excesses and egoism of the husband. the husband of a feeble or alcoholic wife sometimes becomes the sole support of the family, but such exceptions only prove the rule, that where the normal love and courage of woman are wanting, the family becomes broken up, for man very rarely possesses the necessary faculties for its preservation. it follows from these facts that the modern tendency of women to become pleasure-seekers, and to take a dislike to maternity, leads to complete degeneration of society. this is a grave social evil, which rapidly changes the qualities and power of expansion of a race, and which must be cured in time, or the race affected by it will be supplanted by others. if the feminine mind is generally wanting in intellectual imagination and power of combination, it is all the more powerful in the practical intuition of its judgment and in sentimental imagination. the finesse of its moral and æsthetic sentiments, its natural tact, its instructive desire to put some element of poetry into all the details of life, contribute to form true family happiness, a happiness which the husband and children too often enjoy without fully realizing the devoted labor, the love and the pains which the mother has given to create it. =routine.=--the reverse of the irradiations of love in woman is constituted by her failings, which we have already partly indicated. we may add that her intelligence is usually superficial, that she attributes an exaggerated importance to trifles, that she often does not understand the object of ideal conceptions, and remains attached by routine to all her hobbies. this routine represents in feminine psychology the excess of a tenacious will applied only to the repetition of what has been taught. in the family, woman constitutes the conservative element because sentiment in her much more than in man, combined with persevering tenacity, predominates over intelligence; but sentiments represent everywhere and always the conservative element in the human mind. this is why woman is the strongest supporter of dogmas, customs, fashions, prejudices and mysticism. it is not that she herself is more disposed than man to mystic beliefs, but these when once dogmatized dazzle the eyes of the suffering with visions of compensation in a better world. in this way a number of unhappy or disappointed women are affected with religious exaltation and thus cling to the hope of happiness after death which they believe will compensate them for the vicissitudes of their existence. the other reverses of the feminine character, such as want of logic, obstinacy, love of trinkets, etc., result from the fundamental weakness of the feminine mind which we have just analyzed. moreover, the social dependence in which man has placed woman, both from the legal and educational points of view, tend to increase her failings. many people fear that women's suffrage would hinder progress, for the reasons we have just indicated, but they forget that the actual suffrage of men is to a great extent exercised by their wives, indirectly and unconsciously. this fact alone shows that the education, and legal emancipation of women can only be beneficial to progress, especially as they would contribute to the education of men, too prone to degenerate on account of their presumptuous and tyrannical autocracy. woman has an instinctive admiration for men of high intellect and lofty sentiments, and strives to imitate those who provoke her admiration, and carry out their ideas. let us therefore give women their proper rights, equal to ours, at the same time giving them a higher education and the same free instruction as ourselves; we shall then see them abandon the obscure paths of mysticism, to devote themselves to social progress. =jealousy in woman.=--other irradiations of love in woman are similar to those of man. jealousy is perhaps not much less developed in woman than in man. it is less brutal and violent but more instinctive and persevering; it manifests itself by quarrels, needle pricks, chicanery, petty tyrannies and all kinds of tricks which poison existence as much as man's jealousy, and are quite as inefficient against infidelity. in the highest degree of passion the jealous man uses violence or resorts to firearms, while the woman scratches, poisons or stabs. among savages, jealous women bite off their rivals' noses; in civilized countries they throw sulphuric acid in the face. the object is the same in both cases--to disfigure. amorous illusions produced in woman by the sexual appetite are analogous to those of man, but are modified by feminine attributes. it is the same with hypocrisy. the passive role of woman in sexual life obliges her only to betray her feelings to the object of her desires in a reserved and prudent manner. she cannot make advances toward man without contravening the conventions and risking her reputation. she therefore has to be more skillful in the art of dissimulation. this gives us no right to accuse her of falseness, for this art is natural, instinctive and imposed by custom. her desire for love and maternity unconsciously urges her to make herself as desirable as possible to man by her grace and allurements. her stolen glances and sighs, and the play of her expression serve to betray her ardor as through a veil. behind this furtive play, especially calculated to excite the passions of man, are hidden, in the natural and good woman, a world of delicate feelings, ideal aspirations, energy and perseverance, which are much more loyal and honest than the motives revealed by the more brusque and daring manner in which man expresses his desires. the fine phrases by which man's love is expressed generally cover sentiments which are much less pure and calculations much more egoistic than the relatively innocent play of the young girl. no doubt there are false women whose amorous wiles are only a spider's web, but we are speaking here of the average, and not of exceptions. =coquetry.=--the sexual braggardism of man is only found in some prostitutes; it is replaced in woman by coquetry and the desire to please. vain women profit by the natural grace and beauty of their sex and person, not only to attract and please men, but also to shine among their fellows, to make other women pale before their brilliance and their elegance. coquettes take infinite pains in this art. all their efforts and all their thoughts are directed only to increase their charm by the brilliancy of their toilette, the refinement of their attire, the arrangement of their hair, their perfumes, paint and powder, etc. it is here that the narrowness of the mind of woman is revealed in all its meanness. to describe feminine coquetry would oblige me to descend to banality. if we go to a ball or a fashionable _soirée_, if we observe women at the theater, their toilettes, their looks and expressions, or if we read a novel by guy de maupassant, "fort comme la mort," or "nôtre coeur," for example, we can study all the degrees and all the degeneration of this part of the sexual psychology of women. many of them have such bad taste that they transform themselves into caricatures; dye their hair, paint their eyebrows and lips to give themselves the appearance of what they are not, or to make themselves appear young and beautiful. these artifices of civilized countries resemble the tattooing, nose-rings, etc., with which savage women adorn themselves. the latter are represented by earrings, bracelets and necklaces. all these customs constitute irradiations of the sexual appetite or the desire to please men. male sexual inverts (vide chap. viii) also practice them, and often also certain dandies with otherwise normal sexual instincts. =the pornographic spirit in woman.=--this is absolutely contrary to the normal feminine nature, which cannot be said of eroticism. among prostitutes, as we have seen, the pornographic spirit is only the echo of their male companions, and in spite of this, we still find a vestige of modesty even in them. no doubt, in very erotic women, sexual excitations may lead to indecent acts and expressions, but these are rare exceptions and of a pathological nature. natural feminine eroticism, not artificially perverted, only shows itself openly in complete intimacy, and even here modesty and the æsthetic sense of woman correct and attenuate it. normally, all obscenity and cynicism disgusts women and only inspires them with contempt for the male sex. on the other hand, they are easily stimulated to eroticism by pictures or novels, if they are sufficiently æsthetic, or even moral. this is a great danger for both sexes, especially for woman--eroticism dissimulated under hypocritical forms, and intended to idealize dishonest intentions (vide de maupassant: "_ce cochon de morin_"). =modesty and prudery in woman.=--in woman the sentiments of modesty and prudery have a peculiar character, which results from her natural disgust for pornography on the one hand, and also from her attachment to fashion and prejudice. many women have a perfect terror of exposing certain parts of their body, even to a medical man. this fact depends on convention, and sometimes on the absence or perversion of sexual feelings. brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in england, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from it. the exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. the prude is ashamed of the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment. prudery can be created or cured by education in childhood. it may be created by isolation, by covering all parts of the body, and especially by making children regard nudity as shameful. on the other hand, it may be cured by mixed bathing, by accustoming the child to consider the human body, in all its parts and functions, as something natural of which one need not be ashamed, lastly by giving instruction on the relations of the sexes, in due time and in a serious manner, instead of replying to ingenuous questions by pious falsehoods, by equivocation, or by an air of mystery. the chapter on love is infinite, and its relations to the sexual appetite make it still more complex. we shall confine ourselves to indicating two more of its irradiations, peculiar to each sex, but having for each a physionomy corresponding to its own mentality. fetichism and anti-fetichism "we understand by fetiches, objects, portions of objects, or even simply the qualities of objects which, from their association with a certain person or with the idea of this person, produce a kind of charm or at least a profound impression, which in no way corresponds to the nature of the object itself."--(krafft-ebing.) the fetich thus symbolizes a person in whom we have such a profound interest that everything connected with her disturbs our feelings. it is we ourselves who place in the fetich the charm arising from the person whom it symbolizes for us. in many religions fetichism plays an important part, so much so that fetiches such as amulets or relics produce ecstasy in the faithful. binet, krafft-ebing and others give the name _erotic fetichism_ to the charm which certain objects or certain parts of the body exercise in a similar way on the sexual desires or even on love, in the sense that their simple representation is powerfully associated with the erotic image of a person of the other sex, or with a particular variety of sexual excitation. in both man and woman certain portions of the clothes or the body, the hair, the foot and hand, or certain odors of the person desired, may take the character of fetiches. it is the same with certain intellectual peculiarities and certain expressions of the features. in man, the woman's hair, her hands or feet, her handkerchief, perfumes, etc., often play the part of erotic fetiches. we may call _anti-fetiches_ certain objects or certain qualities which, on the contrary, destroy eroticism. certain odors, the tone of a voice, an ugly nose, a garment in bad taste, an awkward manner, often suffice to destroy eroticism by causing disgust for a person, and their simple representation is enough to make her unbearable. symbolizing disgust, the anti-fetich paralyzes the sexual appetite and love. in normal love, it is especially by association of ideas in calling to mind the image of the person loved that the fetich plays the part of an exciting agent. it often, however, becomes itself the more special object of the sexual appetite, while the anti-fetich produces the opposite effect. but, in degenerates (vide chap. viii) it is sometimes exclusively to the fetich itself that an irresistible sexual appetite is addressed, the irradiation of which becomes a ridiculous caricature of love. we thus see that normal love is based on an extremely complex synthesis, on a symphony of harmonious sensations, sentiments and conceptions, combined in all kinds of tones and shades. the pathological aberrations of which we shall speak, demonstrate this by forcing one tone or another to the more or less marked exclusion of the rest. psychological relations of love to religion love and eroticism play a great part in religion, and many derivatives of religious sentiment are intimately associated with the sexual appetite. as krafft-ebing says, _religious ecstasy_ is closely related to _amorous ecstasy_, and very often appears in the guise of consolation and compensation for an unhappy or disappointed love, or even in the absence of sexual love. in the insane, religion and eroticism are combined in a very characteristic manner. among a number of peoples certain cruel religious customs are the result of transformed erotic conceptions. as in religion, there is something mystical in love; the ineffable dream of eternal ecstasy. this is why the two kinds of mystic and erotic exaltation become blended in religions. krafft-ebing attributes the cruelty found in many religions to _sadism_ (sexual lust excited by the sufferings of others). (vide chap. viii.) "the relationship so often established between religion, lust and cruelty can be reduced almost to the following formula: at the acme of their development, the religious and sexual passions show a concordance in quality and in quantity of excitation, and may consequently replace each other, under certain circumstances. under special pathological influences, both may be transformed into cruelty."--(krafft-ebing.) we shall return to this subject in chapters viii and xii. footnotes: [ ] this tendency of man has been analyzed with a very refined psychology by _labiche_, in one of his most celebrated comedies: "_le voyage de m. perichon._" chapter vi ethnology and history of sexual life in man and in marriage in the study of the sexual question it is absolutely necessary to guard against subjectiveness and all preconceived theory, and to avoid sentimentalism as well as eroticism. these two dangers play a considerable part in the study of human sexual life. presented in a conscientious and scientific way the history of marriage furnishes us the most trustworthy material for the study of the sexual relations of man in social life. it is from this material that we can learn the relative importance of the different psychological and psycho-pathological factors in social evolution. but, to furnish valid material, history must not only be based on trustworthy and veracious sources; it must also give a comparative study of the sexual relations which exist in most, if not all, of the peoples actually existing. the present savage tribes no doubt resemble more closely the primitive peoples than our hybrid agglomeration of the civilized world. moreover, the modern study of ethnology gives us more certain information than the uncertain, incomplete and often fabulous statements of ancient documents. i am speaking here of primitive history, and not of the greek and roman civilizations. unfortunately the correctness of ethnological observations, and especially their interpretation, still leave much to be desired. edward westermark, professor at helsingfors, in his "history of human marriage," has given us a monumental work, which is remarkable, not only for the richness and exactness of its material, but also for the clearness and good sense of its criticism. i shall give a _résumé_ of westermark's results, as the subject is beyond the domain of my special studies. the author has collected a great number of observations in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. he warns the reader against a hasty generalization, which attributes without proof certain customs of living savage tribes to our primitive ancestors. origin of marriage in the previous chapter we have considered the phylogeny of love in general. we have seen that some of the lower animals, such as the ants and bees, give evidence of an instinctive social altruism much greater than that of man, while other animals, such as birds, are superior to us as regards monogamous conjugal fidelity. but it is a question here of analogies due to phenomena of convergence, and these animals are of interest to us only as remote objects of comparison. as regards marriage in primitive man, we can only compare ourselves with the living animals most closely allied to us, viz. the _anthropoid apes_. in most mammals, marriage (if we may give this name to their sexual union) is only of very short duration, depending on the time necessary for the procreation of a single brood of young. after copulation the male generally pays little attention to the female, beyond protecting her for a certain time. in the anthropoid apes (orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla and gibbon) however, we find monogamous marriage and the institution of family life. the male protects the female and the young, and the latter are often of different ages, showing the existence of conjugal fidelity extending beyond one birth. while the female and the young remain in their nest, perched on a tree, the male takes his place at the foot of the tree and watches over the safety of the family. according to westermark this was probably the same in primitive man. formed by the father, the mother and the children, the family was in primitive man a general institution, based on monogamy, polygamy or polyandry. the wife looked after the children, and the husband protected the family. no doubt, the husband was not particularly anxious for the welfare of his wife and children, but concerned himself chiefly in the satisfaction of his sexual appetite and his pride. he was useful, however, in building the nest, or hut, in procuring the necessary food, and in defending his family. most legends relate that primitive man lived in promiscuity with women, without marriage, and that marriage was instituted by some god or by some law. but this opinion, which is still held by most modern authors, is quite erroneous, as westermark has demonstrated in a masterly manner, by the aid of documents which are absolutely conclusive. the duty of the husband to provide food for the family is a general law among savage peoples. a confirmation of this law is found in the fact that most often in polygamous races the man has only the right to as many wives as he can support. every man must give proof that he is capable of feeding his family. even after divorce the husband's duties continue, and may even be transmitted to his heirs. for example, among certain peoples, his brother is obliged to marry his widow. the husband's duties appear to be inherited from the higher apes, among whom conjugal fidelity lasts longer than the sexual appetite. this fidelity has therefore deep phylogenetic roots in our nature, and we shall see later on that we cannot neglect it without compromising our social state (chap. xiii). the following is the definition of marriage as given by westermark: _marriage is a sexual union of variable duration between men and women, a union which is continued after copulation, at least till the birth of the child._ according to this definition, there may be monogamous, polygamous and polyandrous marriages, as well as marriage in groups and limited marriage. it is evident that permanent monogamous unions, such as occur in birds and the higher apes, are, according to this definition, true marriages, of better quality even than those of many men. among animals which have a definite rutting period, marriage cannot depend solely on the sexual appetite, or egoistic eroticism, without ceasing with the rut. it follows from this that natural selection and the mneme (engraphia) have derived from the sexual appetite certain social or altruistic instincts, with the object of preserving the species by protection of the young. although not the only means of preserving the species, such instincts are certainly important. the family is thus the root of marriage. this explains the custom, among certain races, of marriage only becoming valid after the birth of a child. in many forms of marriage by purchase, the wife is even bound to return to her husband the sum paid for her if she remains sterile, and among many savages the marriage is only celebrated after the birth of the first child. in borneo, relations between the sexes are free till pregnancy occurs, and it is this which determines the duties of marriage. in this respect, these savages are more just and wiser than us. in man, a special reason in favor of marriage is the fact that he has no rutting period. in animals the rutting period is generally regulated so that the young are born exactly at the time of year when they will find food most abundant. for example, the muscardin copulates in july and brings forth young in august, at the time when nuts are ripe, while elephants, whales and certain monkeys, who find food at all seasons, do not copulate at any definite period. the anthropoid apes, however, have a rutting period, and something analogous is found among certain human races (californians, hindus and certain australians) in the spring, when sexual orgies are indulged in. in man there is no particular correlation between eroticism and the possibility of easily obtaining food for the children at the time of birth. nevertheless, a recrudescence of the sexual appetite is generally observed in the spring and beginning of summer, with a corresponding increase in the number of conceptions. this is probably explained by the fact that infants born in the autumn or winter are more robust. moreover, natural selection has almost entirely ceased in civilized peoples, owing to the artificial means used to rear children, and to the diminution which results from their mortality. we thus see that the institution of marriage in man does not depend on the excitation of the sexual appetite, for this is, on the whole, continuous. antiquity of matrimonial institutions the fact that the anthropoid apes produce feeble and dependent young, whose infancy is long, has probably been the origin of marriage. kautsky says that in primitive man the child belongs to the clan; but this is an error. originally, human societies were composed of families, or rather associations of families. in primitive man, these families play the fundamental role and constitute the nucleus of society. in the anthropoid ape we already find the family, but not the clan. this must also have been the case with the pithecanthropoids and other extinct transitory forms. in fact, the lowest savages still live as isolated families like the carnivorous mammals, rather than in clans or tribes. this is the case, for example, with the weddas of ceylon, the indigenes of terra del fuego, the aboriginal australians, the esquimaux and certain indians of brazil. in this way they have better conditions for subsistence. in primitive times therefore, man lived in families, on the produce of the chase. later on, the spirit of discovery, the more abundant food obtained by traps and by the cultivation of plants allowed men to live in tribes. thus, intellectual development was the first cause of social life in man, and lubbock is certainly wrong in considering that the establishment of clans dates further back than the first beginning of civilization. westermark's conclusions are as follows: ( ). _at no period of human existence has family life been replaced by clan life._ ( ). _conjugal life is a heritage from ancestors who lived in a similar way to the anthropoid apes of the present day._ ( ). _although less intimately and less constantly bound to the children than to the mother, the father has always been in man the protector of the family._ criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity most sociologists believe with lubbock, bachofen, maclennan, bastian, giraud-teulon, wilkens, and others that primitive man lived in sexual promiscuity. if we agree with westermark that the term marriage includes polygamy, polyandry and limited marriage, the opinion of these authors is wrong. what they have considered as promiscuity can always be included in one of these forms of marriage, even among the indigenes of hayti, whose life is the most debauched. the author who has most confused the question is fison, with his dogmatic theories concerning the australians. obliged to admit that promiscuity does not exist among these people, he still maintains that it existed formerly. curr, who was better acquainted than fison with the australians, has proved that they are normally monogamous. similar statements of bastian, wilkens and others concerning the kustchins, the natives of terra del fuego, are also incorrect. in none of the african tribes is there communion of women, the men, on the other hand, are extremely jealous. promiscuity is not observed among savage and primitive races, but among people already civilized, such as the buddhist butias, in whom man knows neither honor nor jealousy. the savage weddas are monogamous, and one of their proverbs says: "death alone can separate woman from man." there is in reality only one true form of promiscuity--the prostitution of modern civilized races, who have introduced it among savages, subjecting them to gratify their own lust. among many savage races there exists, on the contrary, a very severe monogamy, and they punish with death every seducer and illegitimate child, as well as the mother. among others, however, considerable sexual freedom is allowed before or after marriage. it is impossible to lay down definite rules, but one thing may be regarded as universal, viz., that the sexual depravity of savage races most often arises from the influence of civilized people who immigrate among them and systematically introduce immorality and debauchery. it is the white colonists who appropriate the women of savage races and train them in the worst forms of prostitution. it is the white colonists who introduce alcoholic drink which disorganizes the most virtuous and loyal habits, and ends with ruin. certain arab clans exploit european habits of prostitution by sending their young girls to brothels for purposes of gain. when they have accumulated a sufficient fortune they return home and marry one of their fellow countrymen. similar customs are observed among other races. in this connection westermark points out that the more advanced is civilization, the greater is the number of illegitimate births, and the more widespread is prostitution. in europe, the proportion of natural children and of prostitutes is nearly double in the towns what it is in the country. this shows the absurdity of regarding promiscuity as a primitive state; on the contrary, it is a rotten fruit of civilization, and especially of semi-civilization. primitive customs are generally chaste, and it is civilization which corrupts them. in europe, prostitution is increasing, while marriage is becoming less frequent; it is the latter which constitutes the primitive and normal state. westermark admits, as we have mentioned above, that sexual liberty before or after marriage exists among certain tribes; but in spite of this the custom of careful choice always exists among these people, and this renders their unions comparatively lasting. he cites as an example the tounghtas of india, who practice sexual connection before marriage, but among whom these connections nearly always lead to marriage; this race considers prostitution as dishonorable. we must, however, make one objection to westermark. promiscuity in itself is not necessarily prostitution, for the latter signifies especially the sale of the body, which is not the case in promiscuity. the fundamental fact which prevents us admitting the existence of primitive promiscuity among savage races is the following: as soon as the two sexes are free, the monogamous instinct of the woman and jealousy of both sexes combine to reëstablish marriage. true promiscuity can only exist by means of a sort of legal obligation, such as exists in the colony of oneidas in new york. in this colony the members formally agree to mutual and free sexual intercourse. we must not forget that prostitution is only kept up in women by the thirst for lucre, and ceases immediately this element disappears. before the reformation there existed in scotland a singular custom called "hand-fasting," by which young men had the right to choose a companion for a year, at the end of which time they could either separate or become married according to their inclination. on the other hand, lubbock mentions certain customs in greece and india, the worship of _phallus_, for example, which obliged young girls to give themselves to all men. but these customs were not among primitive races but resulted from the eroticism of highly civilized nations. thus, lubbock's argument concerning the existence of primitive promiscuity falls to the ground. certain savage nations offer their daughters or their servants, rarely their wives, to their guests. a _jus primæ nocti_ (right to the first night) has also existed and will sometimes exist in some tribes, but this right is reserved for the chiefs, kings or priests, and allows them to have sexual intercourse before the husband with every newly married woman during the first night of the nuptials. this is a barbarous custom based on the right of the stronger, and analogous to the privileges claimed by the european nobles from their serfs or peasants. but such abuses do not constitute promiscuity, as lubbock maintains. in many countries the courtesans and concubines were held in high esteem, and are so even at the present day, more than is supposed; but this again is not a question of promiscuity. morgan has deduced his theories of promiscuity from terms employed in certain savage dialects to designate relationship. these conclusions are false and morgan, like others, has been led into error by the obscurity of the language of these people. the simple fact that paternal parentage is recognised among them proves the absurdity of morgan's reasoning, for promiscuity cannot recognize paternal parentage. in bachofen drew attention to the ancient custom of naming the children after the maternal side, and it is now certain that this custom has existed among many primitive races, while in others children were named after the paternal side. the term _matriarchy_ is given to denomination after the maternal side. maclennan maintains the existence of matriarchy in promiscuity, but this is inadmissible. maternity is self-evident, while paternity can only be proved indirectly by the aid of reasoning. no doubt all nations appear to have recognized the real part which the father takes in every conception, and from this results the singular custom among certain tribes, in which the husband retires to his couch and fasts during the accouchement of his wife. westermark explains matriarchy in a simpler and more natural way, by the intimate relations of the child to the mother. children, especially when they are still young, follow the mother when she separates from the father. matriarchy is quite natural in marriages of short duration, with change of wives, and in polygamy; while, in monogamous nations, it is _patriarchy_, or denomination after the paternal line, which dominates. among nations where the denomination of uncles exists, and where the married woman lives with her family till she has a child, matriarchy results quite naturally from this fact. in japanese families who have only daughters, the husband of the eldest takes his wife's family name. among savages in general, the name has a great importance. when rank and property are only inherited in the female line, the children are always named after this line. we are thus concerned here with very complex questions which have nothing to do with promiscuity. maine has proved that prostitution and promiscuity lead to sterility and decadence. among the few tribes in which polyandry is the rule, especially in thibet, several brothers generally have the same wife. but they usually alternate, and never dwell together. in the fifteenth century, in the canary islands, every woman had three husbands, each of whom lived with her for a month, and the one who was to possess her during the following month had to work both for her and for the other two husbands. polyandry has always originated in scarcity of women. the jealousy of men, which has never ceased to exist, gives the clearest proof of the impossibility of promiscuity. polyandry is only possible among a few feeble and degenerate races who ignore jealousy. these tribes are diminishing and tend to disappear. the jealousy of savages is generally so terrible that among them a woman who commits adultery is usually put to death along with her seducer. sometimes they are content with cutting off her nose or inflicting other chastisement. it is from jealousy that results the obligation of chastity in the woman. religious ideas on the future of man after death are often combined with these ideas; this is why chastity, death, or even all kinds of torture are, in certain countries, imposed on the woman after death of the husband. it must not be forgotten that among most savages the wife is regarded as the property of her husband. if the latter lends his wife to a guest, he offers her as part of a feast. this is not, however, promiscuity, and we must understand that these people have quite different sentiments to ours. in clans or tribes the most powerful men have always had the youngest and most beautiful wives. to sum up, there is not the shadow of proof in support of the doctrine of primitive promiscuity, a doctrine which is based on purely hypothetical grounds. marriage and celibacy among animals the voluntary celibate exists only among the females of certain birds which have become widowed, and even then the case is rare. in savage man, nearly every individual marries, and the women look upon celibacy or widowhood almost in the same way as death. the savage despises celibates as thieves or sorcerers. in his opinion a man without a wife is not a man. he therefore marries at a much earlier age than civilized man, sometimes even (in greenland) before fecundation is possible. among certain indians men sometimes marry at the age of nine or ten years, generally between fourteen and eighteen; the girls between nine and twelve. in some comparatively civilized nations the celibate is so much despised that they go as far as marrying the spirits of departed children! among the greeks, celibates were punished, and among the romans they were taxed heavily. celibacy becomes more rare the further we go back in the history of the human race; celibacy increases with the corruption of morals. it is civilization which does most harm to marriage, especially in the large towns, and the age at which people marry becomes more and more advanced, although in europe there are more women than men. want of money and insufficient salaries diminish more and more the number of marriages in the large centers, while among savages, and also among our peasants, the women and children are one of the principal sources of wealth, because they work and have few needs. among the middle classes, on the contrary, the wife is a source of expense, as well as the education of the children. for men, the length of intellectual and professional education (and military service in many countries) cause marriage to be postponed and celibacy is obligatory at the time when the sexual appetite is most powerful. thus, the more civilization advances, the longer is marriage postponed. the refinement and the multiplicity of pleasures also diminish the attractions of marriage. lastly, intellectual culture exalts the desire for the ideal, so that men and women well suited to each other meet less frequently, as their mutual adaptation becomes more complicated. nevertheless, i must repeat here what i have already said concerning the way in which novelists present us with the extreme passions of ill-balanced people and describe them as types, the normal man being too prosaic to attract their readers. rotten as it is with neurotic degenerates, our modern society is certainly not wanting in pathological models for the novelists, but it is nevertheless false to always put these into prominence. the cultured man of well-balanced mind, adapts himself to marriage on the whole very well, and is not always so difficult to please. however, it must be recognized that marriage becomes less easy if a too high ideal is expected from it. with characteristic prudence, westermark does not answer the question whether marriage will progressively diminish in the future. =the cult of virgins. sanctity of the celibate.=--among many savages the singular idea obtains that there is something impure in sexual intercourse. the celibacy ordained by several religions originates from ideas of this kind. many nations have worshiped virgins, for instance the vestal virgins of the romans. the mother of buddha was declared to be holy and pure, buddha having been conceived supernaturally, according to the legend. a buddhist monk is forbidden to have sexual intercourse, even with animals! celibacy among certain priests exists also in china. among the hebrews, the idea of the impurity of marriage had got a footing, and this no doubt powerfully influenced christianity. st. paul thus places celibacy higher than marriage, and this is how the idea became established among the fathers of the church that the repression of all sensuality was a cardinal virtue, and that god had contemplated in paradise an asexual reproduction of the human species, which was annulled by the fall of adam. men who remained pure were to be immortal. "the earth is filled with marriage and the heavens with virginity," says jeremiah. such are the ideas which have given rise to the obligation of celibacy for priests. westermark thinks that the idea of impurity attached to sexual intercourse is possibly derived from the instinctive repugnance experienced by members of the same family to have sexual intercourse between themselves. banished from the family circle this intercourse was tainted with a stigma which offended modesty, and by the association of ideas so common in man, this stigma was extended to legal marriage outside the family. moreover, religious celibacy is complicated by ascetic conceptions, and the idea of the impurity of sexual intercourse is by no means general. for my part, i think rather that the jealousy natural to both sexes has gradually compelled them to limit their sexual intercourse to intimacy and to conceal it. but man is ashamed of everything which he conceals, and we shall soon see that the sentiment of modesty concerns all parts of the body which are concealed. this simple fact is sufficient to give rise to the idea that coitus is impure, and i do not think it necessary to seek any further explanation. advances made by one sex to the other--demands in marriage a natural law compels the male germinal cell to move toward the egg; exceptions to this law are rare, the female germinal cells being larger and produced in less number. it follows that in copulation, or the union of individual sexual entities, man included, it is the male which is the active party and makes the advances. among certain tribes (paraguayans, garos, moquis), however, it is the female who makes the advances. everyone knows the combats for the female which takes place between the male of animals, cocks and stags for example. among certain indians similar struggles are also observed, after which the vanquished has to surrender his wife to the conqueror. the same custom obtained among the ancient greeks, as we see in the suitors for penelope. in ireland similar customs prevailed up to the last few centuries. on the other hand, we often see among savages and among birds the favors of the female obtained by assiduous courtship rather than by combat. in some savage tribes struggles take place between the females for possession of the male. however, it is usually coquetry in all its degrees which furnishes woman with the basis for her advances. in many nations, if not in most, women have the right to refuse a demand for marriage. methods of attraction =adornment in the two sexes.=--vanity is older than man, for it is found in many animals. the lowest and most savage peoples adorn themselves. tattooing, staining the skin, rings on the arms and feet, in the lips, nose and ears serve to attract one sex toward the other. a santal woman may carry as much as fifteen kilogrammes of ornaments on her body. vanity leads to incredible eccentricities, certain tribes, for example, pull out their teeth to increase their attractions. absurdities of this kind are often associated with religious ideas, although the latter generally play a secondary part. the true origin of these customs lies in vanity, combined with the sexual desire to captivate. in hot climates, at any rate, the savages only commenced to cover their bodies with clothes with the object of pleasing by personal adornment. the religious observances attached to the custom of adornment are not primitive. the latter is derived from the sexual appetite and from vanity, and has only been incorporated in the dogmas of religious mysticism after being first established in the habits of the people. among savages the men are more inclined to personal adornment and to coquetry than the women. this is not due to the inferior social position of the women, for those who enjoy the greatest liberty are often less extensively tattooed than those who are reduced to slavery. the true reason is that the man risks much more than the woman by remaining celibate, and this obliges him to take more pains than the women to make himself fascinating. as a rule the wives of savages attach less importance to their personal appearance than to that of their husbands, and the vanity of the latter is guided chiefly by the taste of their wives. the objects with which savages adorn themselves are generally trophies. among civilized people, on the contrary, the men have a much wider choice and many women remain celibate. this is one of the reasons which compel women to study their personal appearance and the art of flirtation. in europe, earrings represent the last vestige of the savage methods of adornment. =sentiment of shame of the genital organs. nudity.=--what is the origin of the fact that man is ashamed of his genital organs? nothing of the kind occurs in animals. the psychologist, wundt, maintains that man has always had a sexual sentiment of modesty. this is not correct, for many races present no trace of it, and sometimes cover all parts of their body except the genital organs. in some, the men, and in others the women go absolutely naked. originally, clothes were only worn for adornment or for protection against the cold. the massais would be ashamed to hide their penis, and it is their custom to exhibit it. other savages cover the glans penis only with a small cap; they retire to pass water, but regard themselves as fully dressed so long as the glans penis is covered. the girdles and other garments of savage women are intended for ornament, and as a means of attraction; they have nothing to do with modesty. in a society where every one goes naked, nudity seems quite natural, and provokes neither shame nor eroticism. the custom of adorning the sexual organs then serves as a means of attraction, both in men and women. the short transparent skirts of a ballet dancer are in reality much more immodest than the nudity of the female savages. a great naturalist has said that veiled forms provoke the sexual appetite more than nudity. snow remarks that association with naked savages excites much less sensuality than the society of fashionably dressed women in our salons. read also remarks "nothing is more moral or less calculated to excite the passions than nudity." it is needless to say that this statement is only correct when nudity is a matter of custom, for in sexual matters it is always novelty which attracts. pious persons have tried to make savages modest by clothing them, but have only produced the contrary effect. savage women regard it as shameful to cover their sexual organs. the naturalist, wallace, found in one tribe a young girl who possessed a dress, but who was quite as much ashamed of clothing herself with it as one of our ladies would be of undressing before strangers. it is only owing to the custom of wearing clothes that nudity provokes the sexual appetite. this custom develops artificially a sentiment of modesty with regard to nudity, which increases progressively in intensity and is especially marked in aged women. it is not so much habit, as to the feeling of progressive deterioration of their charms, which leads the latter to cover themselves as they grow older, and is part of the instinctive æsthetic sentiment of woman. at the orgies and fêtes held among savages the women cover their sexual organs with certain objects, as a means to excite the men. complete nudity is found more often in savage women than in the men. later on when it became the custom to wear clothes, nudity became attractive and was considered shameful. this is why the chinese feel shame at exposing their feet, the mahometans their faces, and some savages even the ends of their fingers. certain customs, like circumcision among the jews, polynesians and australians; the artificial elongation of the lips of the vulva in hottentots, malays, and north american indians, originated, according to westermark, in the intention of exciting the sexual appetite, or of introducing variety into its satisfaction. later on routine, which sanctions everything, transferred these customs into religious cult. it is possible, however, that among the jews, who are a practical race, the hygienic advantage of circumcision took a part in its transformation into a rite. to resume, everything derogatory to established custom excites the sentiment of shame or modesty, not only in sexual matters but in others. most children are ashamed of not behaving exactly as their comrades or their brothers and sisters, and are very uncomfortable if they are obliged to behave otherwise. all sentiments of morality and modesty rest on conventionalities. the savage women burst into laughter when the naked companions of livingstone turned their backs from modesty. the sentiment of modesty or shame thus depends only on exceptional violation of an old custom. this is why unconventional ways in one of the sexes (especially in woman) tend to offend the sentiments of modesty, and usually excite the sexual appetite of the other sex. liberty of choice in marriage--patriarchism among savages, the women sometimes have the right of giving their hand in marriage, sometimes not. the latter case is not surprising in countries where women are considered as merchandise. among the esquimaux every girl is betrothed from birth. among the boschimans, ashantis, etc., the unborn girl is even betrothed while she is in her mother's womb! these betrothals are generally arranged by the maternal parents together with the mother. very often, however, the consent of the woman is required; or, the marriage may be only valid after the birth of the first child on condition of the woman's consent. among the american indians, if the woman is not a consenting party she elopes with her lover and thus escapes the would-be-husband. in this way elopement has gradually become a recognized institution among certain races. i was told by a bulgarian that the peasants in his country buy their wives from the father, generally for two or three hundred francs, but if the father demands too much, the women are raped. after this marriage becomes indispensable and the father receives nothing, for, in bulgaria, which is not yet spoiled by civilization, unions apart from marriage are considered as a terrible disgrace. in certain races, the woman has a free choice among several men and her wish becomes law, so that the parents have no voice in the matter; this occurs among the natives of the celebes. the bridegroom is nevertheless obliged to pay the dowry demanded. similar customs prevail among other races. westermark comes to the conclusion that in the primitive state of humanity the women had a much freer choice than afterward. marriage by purchase developed later and constituted an intermediate stage. when the first civilizations became more complicated and recognized the value of woman's labor, the fathers began to sell their daughters, as we now see savage tribes abandon their women to prostitution with the white man. but in primitive times, when there was neither civilization, money, nor labor, properly so-called, each individual fought for his life and the father had no more possibility of selling his daughter as a slave than a gorilla or an orang-utan would have to-day. marriage by rape, which occurred after wars when the women were abducted and married against their will, must not be confounded with marriage by elopement which takes place with the woman's consent, and of which the latest fashion is elopement by automobile. among savages, the boys are also most often the property of the father, who has the right to sell them and even to put them to death. but they become free at the age of puberty and then have the right to marry according to their inclination without being forced by their parents. there existed and still exist many patriarchal races (certain indians and asiatics, for example) among whom the father possesses unlimited power. the older he is the more he is honored, and the more his power is uncontested. all the children and grandchildren, with their wives and children, eat at his table; none of his descendants can marry without his consent, etc. the effects of patriarchism are deplorable and very immoral. the patriarch abuses his power--gives his old wives to his children and takes the young ones, for example. the purest and most virtuous japanese girl is obliged to go to a brothel if her father orders it. the patriarch has the power of life and death over both sexes, and from this is derived the cult of ancestors. at the present day we see immorality of this kind in the russian patriarchism among the peasants; the fathers have the custom of misusing their sons' wives. patriarchism thus degenerates into atrocious tyranny on the part of the chief of the family, who becomes looked upon as a god. a law which is common in the latin races, which forbids marriage before the age of thirty, without the consent of the father, is a vestige of patriarchism. we see, therefore, that quite primitive savage races approached our most modern ideas in liberty of choice in marriage. between these two periods humanity was under the yoke of a barbarous error--the intermediate stage of marriage by purchase and patriarchal autocracy. there has existed and still exists more than one aberration of this kind in the intermediate stages of civilization; for instance, torture, slavery and the use of narcotic substances, such as alcohol. sexual selection by sexual selection we mean union by choice among males and females. in the vertebrates, the female chooses much more commonly than the male, the latter being more disposed to pair with all the females than the females with all the males. we may certainly admit that this was also the case in primitive man, especially when there existed a rutting period, for then the sexual appetite was more violent. moreover, even at the present day, women are on the average more difficult to please and more strict in their choice than men. in the case of hybrids it is generally the male which violates the law of instinct. female slaves often flee from their free husbands, but we never see male slaves abandon their free wives. among savage races the woman is always more difficult to please than the man. among half-breeds, it is nearly always the father who belongs to a higher race. the inverse rarely occurs; it is exceptional for a white woman to marry a negro. the same thing is reproduced among ourselves; we often see a cultured man marry an uneducated woman, but a cultured woman seldom marries a laborer. it is especially among savages that the woman prefers the man who is strongest, most skillful, most ardent, and most audacious. heroes always haunt the minds of women, who love to throw themselves at the head of conquerors. the ideal of certain women in borneo is a husband who has killed many enemies and possesses their heads (head-hunters of borneo). this psychological trait responds to natural selection, for the women obtain by this custom better protectors and stronger children. on the other hand, man looks instinctively for a young, healthy and well-developed woman. it is on this basis that greek art formed eros and aphrodite, designating the latter as goddess of both love and beauty. =conception of beauty.=--the conception of beauty is very relative. the australians laugh at our long noses and the natives of cochin-china at our white teeth and red cheeks. certain savage women bind their legs below the knees to make them swell, this effect being part of their idea of beauty. the chinese admire the deformed feet of their women and their prominent cheek bones. in each nation the conception of beauty generally corresponds to the ideal type of the race, for both sexes. as a general rule muscle is admired in man and fullness of figure in woman. the hottentots like women's breasts to be so pendulous that they can throw them over shoulder, and suckle the infants carried on their backs; they also admire the elongated lips of the vulva. there are, therefore, few general typical characters of sexual preference; these are especially the ideal type of the race and the health of both sexes, voluptuous forms and grace in women, muscular strength and dexterity in men. everything else is relative and variable, and depends on the local point of view, customs, race, individual taste, etc. thus, according to the conception of æsthetics, tattooing, the arrangement of the hair and beard, deformations of the nose, cranium, or feet, are admired by different peoples. each race extols its own peculiarities; the european compares a woman's breasts to snow, the malay to gold, etc. the natives of coromandel paint their gods black and their devils white, while in europe it is the reverse. the association of love with beauty is not based on æsthetic sentiments, for the latter are disinterested, while the original instinct of love is interested. the association of the two things depends on the instinctive necessity of health, combined with the sexual appetite, although custom has produced numerous aberrations. everything which differs markedly from the type of the race is more or less pathological. this is why instinct, determined by natural selection, repels it. fashion also rules among savages, but is less changeable among them than with us, and their taste for adornment only varies in the narrow circle of their customs. climate has a powerful action on the types of races, the latter being generally adapted to the climate in which they live. thus, the european becomes darker in the tropics while negroes and indians become paler in the north. laws of resemblance--hybrids every animal species has an instinctive repugnance to pair with another. even where they are possible, natural hybrids are rare, and only become a little more frequent in domestic animals and plants. the fecundity of hybrids diminishes when they have connection among themselves, and this explains why the instinct for such connections tends to gradually disappear. in his book on "the mneme," semon explains the infecundity of hybrids in a very plausible manner, by the disorder that a too large quantity of dissimilar hereditary engrams causes in the hereditary mneme of two conjugated cells. when the parents differ from each other only in a moderate degree homophony may still be reëstablished, and then the divergencies have a very favorable effect on the product, by the new combinations which they furnish in the course of its development. moral ideas follow the course of instincts, and this explains why sexual connection with animals is regarded as a horrible crime. this is especially produced by pathological aberration, or when one sex is completely isolated from the other. there is also a certain degree of aversion to copulation between different races, in animals as well as man; for example, between sheep and horses of different races, and between white men, negroes and indians. there are, however, many hybrids or half-breeds in south america, and in mexico they even constitute two-thirds of the population. broca maintained that human hybrids produced by the crossing of remote races, for example, between english and negroes or australians, were usually sterile. westermark disputes this, but agrees that these hybrids become enfeebled in a few generations. it has also been established that mixed marriage between jews and aryans are generally less fecund; but this fact is not yet sufficiently explained. mulattoes, or hybrids between negroes and whites, constitute a degenerate race and hardly viable, at any rate if their descendants do not return entirely to one of the original races. half-breeds between whites and american indians, also called ladinos, seem on the contrary to form a viable race, but one of little valor. prohibition of consanguineous marriages sexual union between near relations nearly always causes a feeling of repugnance in man, and has been stigmatized by the term _incest_. coitus between mother and son especially excites disgust. sexual connection between parents and children, as well as between brothers and sisters is, however, common among certain tribes. many other races allow marriage between brothers and sisters, but this is elsewhere generally condemned. among the weddas, marriage between an elder brother and his younger sister is considered normal, while that between a younger brother and his elder sister, or between a nephew and his aunt, is regarded as unnatural. the latter simply shows that unions between young men and old women are not natural. unions between brothers and sisters, and especially between half-brothers and half-sisters were licit among the persians, egyptians, syrians, athenians and ancient jews. those between uncles and nieces (more rarely between aunts and nephews) are sometimes permitted, sometimes prohibited. with the exception of spain and russia marriages between first cousins are allowed in europe. =exogamy and endogamy.=--among many savages the prohibition of consanguineous marriage may be extended to relationship of the third degree. marriage may even be prohibited among all members of the same tribe or clan, even when they are not related. this is called _exogamous_ marriage, and reaches its extreme development among the australians, who are only allowed to marry into remote clans. we thus see that the great majority of savages extend their idea of incest much further than we do. the reason of this has been much discussed. it was formerly said that consanguineous marriage was contrary to the commandments of god; that it offended the natural sentiment of modesty; that it obscures relationship, etc. nowadays, it is said to be injurious to posterity. ethnography teaches us, however, that these statements are of little value. along with the exogamy of many tribes there is among other savages a system of _endogamy_, described by maclennan; this is the prohibition of marriage between different clans. spencer and maclennan have different explanations of this custom which seem hardly natural. westermark appears to be nearer the truth in remarking as follows: the sexual appetite, especially in man, is excited by new impressions and cooled by habit. it is not the fact of a man and woman being related, but intimate companionship since youth, which produces in them a repugnance to sexual union. we find the same repugnance between adopted brothers and sisters and between friends who have been intimate since childhood. when, on the contrary, brothers and sisters or near relatives have been separated from each other since an early age, they often fall in love with each other when they meet later on. there is, therefore, no innate or instinctive repugnance to incest in itself, but only against sexual union between individuals who have lived together since childhood. as it is parents and their children who are usually in this situation, everything is explained simply and clearly. the causes of exogamy are explained in the same way, by the fact that members of the same clan often live together in close intimacy. it is the small clans, formed of thirty or fifty individuals of a few families living together, which have the most severe laws against incest or endogamy. where the families live in separate homes, such prohibitions do not exist. the maoris, who are endogamous, inhabit villages which are widely separated, and marriage between relations is allowed. endogamy generally exists where the clan life is little developed, and where relatives know and see little of each other. the aversion to marriage between persons living together has thus created prohibition of marriage between relations as well as that of marriage between members of the same clan. it is the same reason which has led to the prohibition of marriage between brothers-and sisters-in-law, between brothers and adopted sisters, etc. in people living in small communities, endogamy does not appear to have ever existed. incest between relatives living together appears to have everywhere the same natural cause--the scarcity of women in isolated families living in remote districts. there is also a psycho-pathological form of incest associated with morbid appetites in the families of degenerates. in animals living alone and whose families break up very rapidly (cats for example) incestuous unions, between parents and young, for instance, are quite common. let us now consider the scientific side of the question. we see everywhere that sexual union between quite distinct animal species gives no result. at the most, certain closely allied species, such as the ass and the horse, the rabbit and the hare, give progeny which are themselves sterile (mules, etc.). the feebleness and sterility of hybrids derived from widely separated races or nearly allied different species proves the deficiency in vital force of the offspring of fundamentally dissimilar procreators. but, on the other hand, the dangers of continuous consanguineous reproduction are no less evident. perpetual unions between brothers and sisters for several generations, lead to degeneration of the race. for example, the still-births will be per cent. instead of per cent., which is the figure in ordinary crossings. the prejudice against consanguineous unions may, however, depend on the accumulation of certain pathological defects. westermark admits that it is difficult to show clearly that consanguineous marriages are prejudicial in man. the consanguinity which causes evil effects in animals concerns long-continued unions between parents and children or brothers and sisters. but this never occurs in man. animals and plants may be perpetuated for many years in the closest consanguinity without degeneration resulting. among the persians and egyptians, intimate unions have existed for a long time without producing degeneration. on the other hand, breeders of animals tell us that a single drop of new blood (or rather sperm) is enough to counteract all the evil effects of consanguinity. in man the most frequent incests are always interrupted by some other union. the ptolemies, who nearly always married their sisters, nieces or cousins, lived long and were far from being sterile. in ceylon, the weddas perpetuate their consanguineous unions; insanity is rare among them, but they are small, unfruitful and tend to become extinct. in europe, the question of marriages between first cousins has been much discussed, and it has been constantly attempted to prove that they are injurious. nevertheless, when we examine the question impartially, we always find that the prejudices against them do not arrive from consanguinity, but from certain pathological defects, such as insanity, hemophilia, etc., which are naturally perpetuated by consanguineous unions when they are accumulated in one family, as well as when two insane persons of different families marry. therefore it is not consanguineous unions in themselves (which are always accidental in man and interrupted by others) but the hereditary reproduction of pathological defects, often of blastophthoric origin, which are the real cause of the evil. statistics have clearly proved that marriage between first cousins plays no part in the causes of insanity. influenced, no doubt, by general opinion, westermark tries to believe in some instinctive repulsion of man for consanguineous unions. if in modern society such unions, perpetuated between parents and children, brothers and sisters, were still produced as in animals i should agree that they might be injurious to the species; but, considering how cosmopolitan and mixed is our modern society, i cannot make the concession. on the contrary, i maintain that the isolated unions which still take place between relatives in civilized countries are so exceptional that they do not present the least danger, excepting among the families of degenerates. it is therefore only a question of superstition. what we have to guard against are unions between pathological individuals and blastophthoric influences. we must not forget that many degenerates and idiots have a great pathological tendency to incest, and this is no doubt why the effect has been confounded with the cause. westermark himself gives us a striking example. since the most remote times the inhabitants of the commune of bats, composed of , persons, have intermarried; yet this population is very healthy and vigorous and shows no sign of degeneration. on the other hand, we have seen that contrasts produce a mutual attraction in the domain of love, while strong resemblances rather repel. bernardin de st. pierre has said that love is created by contrasts; the greater the contrast the greater the love. schopenhauer remarks as follows: "every individual seeks in the opposite sex peculiarities which contrast with his own; the most masculine man seeks the most feminine woman, while small and feeble men love large and strong women; people with short noses prefer long ones, tall and thin men prefer short and stout women. all this increases fecundity." thus instinct is sufficient to protect humanity against consanguinity, each sex instinctively seeking the contrasts which consanguinity diminishes. sentiment and calculation in sexual selection youth, beauty, health, finery and flirtation excite the sexual appetite. many other sentiments are accessory, such as admiration, the pleasure of possession, respect, pity, etc. inclination is an important element, but in no way necessary to sexual union. in the lower stages of human development, tenderness toward children is much stronger than sexual love. among many savage races the love of a man for his wife is completely wanting, as well as that of the wife for her husband. in this case marriage depends on reciprocal convenience, on the desire to have children, and profits by personal comfort and the satisfaction of a purely animal sexual appetite. however, among these people the parents have a tender regard for their children. the husband has the right to beat his wife, but the wife is considered as unnatural or even criminal if she beats her children. among the north american indians, for example, conjugal love is, so to speak, unknown. on the other hand, in other savage races, such as the touaregs, the niam-niams, the new caledonians, the tonganese and australians, the conjoints have a deep affection for each other, and the husband often commits suicide on the death of his wife. on the whole, the sentiments of affection of the conjoints are the result of a long sexual life in common, and they are especially strengthened by the love of the parents for their children. as a rule, the mutual attachment of conjoints for each other among cultivated races is developed along with altruism. the tenderness and refinement of love as they exist at the present day among highly civilized races were unknown to most savages and to the older civilizations. in china it is considered good manners to beat the wife, and when a poor chinaman treats his wife with consideration, it is to avoid having to buy another. what the arab understands by love is only sexual appetite, and among the ancient greeks it was nearly the same. in civilized europe mental culture progresses in the direction of equality of rights between the two sexes, so that a man regards his wife more as a companion who is his equal and no longer a slave. community of interests, opinions, sentiments and culture constitute a primary condition for sentiments of mutual sympathy and favors affection. no doubt, excitation of the sexual appetite by contrasts acts here as an antagonistic force. contrast should not be so great as to exclude sympathy. too great difference in age is dangerous for attachment, for it causes too great a divergence in the aims and interests of life. education and social equality also favors love, and this tends to preserve class distinction. it is rare for a well-educated man to fall in love with a peasant, or a laboring man with an educated woman, except in a sensual way. men generally avoid marriage with individuals of another race, or of another religion. endogamy and exogamy do not form such an absolute contrast as at first sight might appear. even among exogamous races, there is a limit which must not be passed. these races often prohibit marriage with individuals of another race. among the arabs, for example, the instinct of ethnical separation is so strong, that the same bedouin wife who will prostitute herself for money with turks or europeans, would think it dishonorable to marry one of them. in this way custom produces endogamy of caste and class among the same people. the same with the nobility; in ancient rome it was forbidden for a patrician to marry a plebeian. sometimes an endogamy of religious origin is met with, among the jews for example. children are treasures for the man of low culture, while they become a burden to the cultivated man. in spite of this the natural man ardently desires children. in switzerland, two-fifths of the divorces occur in sterile unions, although the latter only form one-fifth of all marriages. calculation often smothers sentiment when it becomes the basis of marriage. we live to-day under the sway of mammon, with the result that the influence of love, strength, beauty, capacity for work, intelligence, skill, character and even health, count for little compared with money in the question of marriage. this sad sign is really a new form of marriage by purchase, hypocritically disguised. marriage by rape and marriage by purchase the rape of women is an established custom in some regions. certain marriage ceremonies prove that rape was formerly much more common than at the present day. among certain indian tribes the simulation of rape and abduction of the woman form part of the marriage ceremonies; custom requiring that the woman must feign to resist. according to spencer, marriage by rape originated in the prudery of woman, while maclennan attributes it to the predominance of exogamy; but, in reality, marriage by rape exists in races which are absolutely endogamous. westermark believes it arose from the repugnance to unions contracted in a narrow circle. the savage has difficulty in procuring a wife without giving the father compensation; besides, his own repugnance to the companions of his childhood and the prejudices against unions between relations, as well as the enmity of other clans, all increase the difficulties to be overcome. this is why he often decides on rape. marriage by rape has not, however, been the rule at any period, and on the whole, unions concluded by mutual agreement have always predominated. marriage by purchase has followed marriage by rape, and forms a slightly higher stage of civilization, developed by exchange of money or other symbols. it first appears, in australia, for example, as marriage by exchange (exchange of a woman for a sister or a daughter). afterward young men gain their wives by working as servants for the father. in marriage by purchase the price is based on the beauty, health and social position of the woman. a young girl is generally worth more than a widow or a rejected woman. skill in female manual labor also increases the price. among the indians of british columbia a wife will cost from twenty to forty pounds sterling, while in oregon they are exchanged for bisons' skins or blankets. among the kaffirs from three to ten cows is a low price, twenty to thirty a high price for a wife. when a wife was given gratis, her parents had a right to the children. marriage by purchase and by exchange still exists among the lower races as it formerly ruled among civilized peoples. we still possess the rudiments. marriage by rape or by purchase has, however, never been in general usage. certain races in india and africa considered it a disgrace to pay a price for a wife. from the historical point of view it is interesting to note that, in the ceremonies of marriage by purchase, a simulated and symbolical rape of the betrothed still recalls the old form of marriage by rape; also, in races where a higher form has replaced marriage by purchase, traces of the latter are still preserved in certain nuptial symbols. decadence of marriage by purchase--the dot the position of woman has undergone steady improvement in higher civilization by the progress of altruism. this is why culture, in india, china, greece, rome and germany, etc., has gradually discredited marriage by purchase. this was at first replaced by the custom of giving wedding presents to the bride; afterward the opposite custom was introduced of the bride bringing her _dot_ to the bridegroom. a singular transition between these two systems is constituted by simulated purchase, in which the bridegroom offers presents to the bride's parents, which are afterward returned to him. among certain savages the bride's parents return the purchase money of their daughter to the bridegroom in another form. such restitution was often the origin of the _dot_. among the romans the _dot_ became the property of the husband, and from this is derived the modern custom which usually gives the husband the right to administer his wife's _dot_, which remains the property of the wife and her family. among the mexicans, where divorce for conjugal discord is frequent, and among certain mahometans, division of property exists in marriage, and the wife's property is returned to her when she is separated or divorced. in europe at the present time, especially under the influence of french customs, there is established a kind of marriage by inverse purchase (which already existed among the greeks), in the sense that the parents of young girls obtain husbands for them by means of a large _dot_. westermark concludes this subject with the following words: "if she does not possess special personal attractions, a young girl without a _dot_, at the present day, runs a great chance of not getting married. this state of things is quite naturally developed in a society where monogamy is legally enforced; where women are more numerous than men; where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead a life of idleness." if we add to this: "in a society where mammon rules as absolute master," the picture will not be wanting in accuracy. nuptial customs and ceremonies in primitive races where the wife is simply bought like merchandise, often after mutual agreement, nuptial ceremonies do not exist. they generally originate later from the symbols of a form of marriage since abandoned. the ceremony being concluded and the marriage recognized as legal, it is followed by feasting. certain religious ceremonies are generally combined with marriage. the customs of our modern marriages arise from the same source. at the time of early christianity there were no religious ceremonies and even up till the year , the date of the end of the council of trent, religious benediction of marriage was not obligatory. luther held that marriage should be purely civil, but legal civil marriage was only introduced among us by the french revolution, while it had existed in remote times among the peruvians, nicaraguans and others. among certain races, marriages concluded without _dot_, without ceremony, or without purchase, and even those between different castes, are often regarded as concubinage. forms of marriage leaving aside hermaphrodites, such as the snails, in which each individual has both kinds of sexual organs and plays the part of both male and female, there are among animals with separate sexes five forms of conjugal union: ( ). _temporary or perpetual monogamy_, or marriage between one individual of one sex and one of the other sex. this is the case with most birds and mammals and many races of man. ( ). _polygymy or polygamy_, or the marriage of one male with several females. this occurs in ruminants, stags, fowls, and other animals, as well as in some human beings; for example, the islamites, negroes, american indians, mormons, etc. ( ). _polyandry_, or the marriage of one female with several males. this is met with chiefly in the ants, in which each female is generally fecundated successively by several males. in most of the higher animals, the jealousy of the males renders polyandry impossible. in man it is rare but exists among certain races. ( ). _marriage in groups_, or marriage between several males and several females. this singular custom is rare but exists in the togas, a tribe of savages. i am not aware of its existence among animals. ( ). _promiscuity_, or free sexual intercourse between males and females. this occurs in many animals, especially in the lower animals in which the sexual instinct of the male is not associated with any regard for the female or the progeny. promiscuity is still more natural when the female does not look after her young after she has laid her eggs. nevertheless, in most animals the female limits herself to sexual intercourse before each brood, so that real promiscuity is not so frequent as would at first appear. in man, on the contrary, it attains its apogee in prostitution, which is the only absolutely complete form of promiscuity. but the result of prostitution as regards the preservation of the species, which is the proper object of all sexual union, is absolutely destructive. polygamy or polygymy were licit among most ancient races, and is so still among most savages and among many civilized nations; but it has several varieties. in mexico, peru, japan and china a man only possesses one legitimate wife, but has several concubines whose children are considered as legitimate as those of his wife. polygamy existed legally among the jews up to the middle ages. king solomon possessed seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. in islamite countries the jews are still polygamous. the koran allows them four wives and as many concubines as they please. the latter do not enjoy the protection of their father, but apart from this they have the same rights as the legitimate wives. the hindus and persians are polygamous. the romans were strictly monogamous, but they also had concubines. in christian europe, polygamy has occasionally been allowed or tolerated: st. augustus did not condemn it. luther allowed philip of hesse to marry two wives; and after the treaty of westphalia bigamy was allowed because of the depopulation of germany. the mistresses of the present princes are a relic of polygamy. jesus having said nothing concerning polygamy, luther did not prohibit it. the mormons have introduced it into their religion. the negro king of loango shows us what degree polygamy may reach among princes and chiefs, for he possesses seven thousand wives, while the chiefs of the fiji islands are content with twenty to one hundred. among savage races we find monogamy in the natives of the andaman islands, among the touaregs, the weddas, the iroquois, the wyandottes, and even in some australian tribes. with others, polygamy is only permitted to the chiefs. but most of the population are monogamous even among polygamous races, and there are very few peoples in which all the men possess several wives. in india, per cent. of the islamites are monogamous, and in persia even per cent. polygamy is nearly everywhere a privilege of princes, chiefs, and rich men. the two following facts also show a tendency to monogamy among polygamous races: ( ). one of the wives, generally the first, has prerogatives over the others. ( ). in reality, the polygamous man nearly always gives sexual preference to one only, or to a few of his wives. there are, however, some polygamous races in which the husband has sexual intercourse with each of his wives according to a regular programme, taking each of them in turn for several days, weeks or months. with others, on the contrary, a number of married women remain in reality virgins, because the husband does not desire them, and they are nothing more than domestics. among these people the husband as a rule only takes a second wife when the first has grown old, so that bigamy becomes the ordinary form of marriage. the cingalese were polyandrous before the english conquest, and so many as seven men had one wife in common. polyandry is especially the custom in thibet. among polyandrous peoples the husbands are not all on the same footing of equality, some hold an inferior position, corresponding nearly to that of concubines, another sign of the tendency to monogamy. among the togas marriage in groups is constituted as follows: all the brothers are husbands of the wife of the elder brother, and all the sisters of this wife are at the same time wives of their brothers-in-law. if we except prostitution, this is the only case in man which approaches promiscuity. marriage in groups, however, is extremely restricted promiscuity. to resume, monogamy is by far the most widespread form of marriage. this is explained by the relative number of men to women. it has often been stated that the number of individuals of the two sexes is nearly the same, and this has been used as an argument in favor of monogamy. but this statement is incorrect; sometimes it is the men, but more often the women, who predominate. among the natives of oregon there are seven hundred men to eleven hundred and eighty-five women. among the punkas and other races the number of women is two or three times greater than that of the men. in kotcha-hamba there is only one man to five women. among other races there are, on the contrary, more men than women, especially in australia, tasmania, and hayti. in the latter island there is only one woman to five men. in cashmere there are three men to one woman. among the negroes, on the contrary, the women predominate, sometimes in the proportion of three to one, but more generally as three to two. in europe, more boys than girls are born on the average, but from the age of fifteen to twenty the numbers become equal, and after twenty the women predominate. this is due to the greater mortality among men, owing to war, the greater danger of masculine occupations, and also to alcoholism. in the fifteen largest towns in switzerland alcoholism is the direct or indirect cause of death in . per cent. of men above the age of twenty. among savages the women often take part in war, for instance the amazons of dahomey. drinking habits are also the same or absent in both sexes, which equalizes matters. when the men predominate in these people, this is often due to infanticide committed on young girls, and also to overwork of the women. with the cingalese the natality of boys is greater than that of girls, while in asia minor two girls, in arabia even four girls, are born to one boy. the arab says, "allah has given us more women than men; it is, therefore, clear that polygamy is a divine commandment." =production of sexes at will.=--i will say a few words on the question of the causes of production of the sexes. there is no want of hypotheses, assertions, nor even of experiments on this subject; but, we are obliged to admit that up to the present we know nothing certain. no one has yet succeeded in producing experimentally in animals males or females at will. according to one theory, which has created much impression, overfeeding produces females and underfeeding males. although this appears to be true in certain cases among some animals, it is in no way proved in a positive manner. it has also been suggested that selection produces the sex which is deficient in numbers; but here again proofs are wanting. it has been maintained that crossing tends to breed females, while consanguineous marriages produce males; in other words, that mongrel races show an excess of female births, while races in which marriages are very consanguineous, and polyandrous tribes show an excess of males. it is much better to leave this question alone till science has furnished us with conclusive proofs. certain results obtained with the lower animals give hope that the future may shed some light on this point. again, marriage customs are not always in relation to the excess of one of the sexes. races in which men predominate are not always polyandrous, and those in which women are in excess are not always polygamous; sometimes even the contrary exists. polygamy is thus not always due to a surplus of female births, or to the death of many men, but often to religious prescripts, as among the islamites and mormons. in polyandry, poverty often plays a greater part than consanguineous marriages or surplus of male births. religious prescription of the husband's continence during his wife's menstrual periods, pregnancy, and even the period of nursing, a period which often lasts from two to four years in savages, is an important cause of polyandry. at sierra leone, coitus of the husband with his wife before the last-born child can walk is regarded as a crime. although very advantageous to the wife's health this custom is entirely based on religious ideas and superstitions. many savages consider that every woman is impure and bewitched during her monthly periods, during pregnancy and suckling. if we add to this the fact that, being usually treated as beasts, the women soon grow old, we can easily understand that the men are inclined to polygamy. it is remarkable with what rapidity the savage woman grows old. she is only fresh from thirteen to twenty years; after twenty-five she is old and sterile, and a little later she has the aspect of an old sorceress. this premature senility is not so much due to early sexual intercourse as to the terribly hard work they undergo, and also to the prolonged period of suckling. another cause of polygamy is man's natural desire for change. the negroes of angola exchange wives. the instinct of procreation, love of glory and riches coöperate with the sterility of many women in propagating polygamy. certain races only tolerate it when the woman is sterile, or has only daughters, which clearly proves that it is based on the fear of remaining without male descendants. on the whole, savage women are less fecund than civilized, owing to their long continence during the two or four years nursing of each child. if we add to this the high infant mortality, we can understand how polygamy becomes among these people a means of reproduction in the struggle for existence, and even in african races a natural law. a native of central africa may have a hundred wives, who also act as servants and retainers. in this case polygamy is the expression of pomp and wealth. it is especially developed in agricultural peoples owing to the value of the woman's labor. on the other hand it is impossible among nomadic tribes. in dahomey the king had thousands of wives, the nobility hundreds, the simple citizen a dozen and the soldier none at all. jealousy and rivalry among the wives is not always the rule in polygamous families. in equatorial africa the wives themselves incline to polygamy and regard a rich man who restricts the number of his wives as miserly. livingstone relates that the women of makololo declared they would not live in monogamous england, for any respectable man should prove his wealth by the number of his wives. we must not forget that among most savages the moral conception of good and evil are confounded with that of riches and poverty. in reality, the supernumerary wives bought by a polygamist are simply slaves. his power and authority do not easily allow jealousy among them; nevertheless suicide sometimes occurs among the old wives who have been passed over in favor of younger ones. sometimes they kill their children at the same time. among the indians of terra del fuego a hut containing three or four women often resembles a battlefield. we have already pointed out the way in which jealous fiji women cut off the noses of their rivals. among the islamites and hindus intrigue and jealousy are common with the women; the same in abyssinia, among the hovas of madagascar and the zulus. the hova term for polygamy is _rafy_, which signifies adversary. to prevent the jealousy of his wives the polygamous man often places them in separate houses; this is common among the south american indians. in colombia i made the acquaintance of a french explorer, le comte de brettes, who has studied closely the goajires indians by becoming himself a member of the tribe. the country of the goajires is a peninsula of colombia bordering on venezuela. polygamy among these people is very interesting. when a young goajire wishes to marry he has to pay the bride's parents a number of cattle, but the consent of the bride is necessary. besides this the husband has to clear a certain area of forest, plant vegetables and build a hut. he must then make a present of all this to his wife and add to it the necessary cattle. the wife thus becomes the legal proprietor of the house and land, and it is she who rules over the domain. the husband only has authority over the male children; but the wife is strictly enforced to be faithful. if he wishes to marry a second wife, he is obliged to buy her also and present her with similar property as the first, in another district. the two wives can never dwell together in the same house nor in the same district; each of them is thus a proprietor on her own account. in this manner the different wives of a goajire are not only independent, but separated from each other and have no communication; this excludes all jealousy, especially as these women have a deep respect for the laws of their country. under such conditions polygamy can hardly extend to more than two women without exhausting the forces a man requires to cultivate each of the domains. we thus see that certain forms of polygamy, combined with matriarchism, are compatible with high social position of the wife, for among the goajires and other indian tribes the man passes from one wife to the other, while it is the wife who is mistress of the house, the children and the domain. however, we may say that on the whole monogamy reigns where there is more altruism, respect for women and sentiment for family life; for instance, in nicaragua, among the dyaks, the andamanese, etc., in whom the wife is highly esteemed and possesses political influence. the wife is also proprietor of the house among the santalese and mounda-kols. in the question we are considering the nature of the amorous passions also plays a great part. when they are purely sensual they do not last long as a rule; but when love arises from mental affinities it may be prolonged till old age. bain remarks that other passions, such as maternal love, hatred, the desire of domination may be extended to many objects, while love has a tendency to concentrate itself on a single one which then takes preëminence over the others and tends to monogamy. we have seen that birds and monkeys generally love only one female. with some conjugal love is so strong that one of the conjoints cannot survive the other; this fact has been observed with certainty, even when the survivor was provided with another mate. thus, the male of a certain species of monkey (_hapale jacchus_) after the death of his mate, covers his eyes with his hands, ceases to eat and remains in the same position till he dies. suicide for love is not rare among certain savage races; a point to which we shall return later. westermark is certainly right in considering this tendency of love to concentrate itself on a single object as one of the most powerful factors in monogamy. jealousy is no doubt the reverse of such sentiment, but is the profound despair at seeing the sole object of love desert or become unfaithful. on the other hand, this concentration of love, which may be excellent for isolated families living alone after the manner of wild beasts, is in no way adapted to a society of which all the members are responsible. this is a point we must insist upon. there is certainly a real antinomy which is difficult to reconcile between this dual egoism of exclusive and concentrated love and social solidarity or human altruism. the problem is not insoluble, but we must admit that the solution is not easy. to resume, we first of all observe an evolution from monogamy toward polygamy. the higher apes and the most primitive men are monogamous; among these there are no differences of rank, nor class distinctions, and they live in very small groups. wealth, civilization, larger communities, agriculture and the domination of castes have gradually given rise to polygamy. thus, the ancient hindus were at first monogamous and later on became polygamous. the prerogative of the first wife over the others is only a vestige of monogamy in polygamy. a higher degree of culture then diminishes warfare, shortens the period of nursing, does away with the prejudices against coitus during pregnancy, and improves the social position of women. ageing less quickly, and adding to her bodily charms those of her mental development woman restores man to monogamy. as the same time wives and children gradually cease to constitute riches, and this diminishes the instinct of procreation. finally, machinery replaces the female labor of former times. in this way, with a higher degree of human culture, all the factors tend to restore monogamy. the instinctive desires of woman are monogamous. the progress of civilization is continually extending her rights, and the more refined sentiments of sympathy among civilized people are less and less compatible with polygamy. as regards polyandry, westermark shows that it has always been an exception and that it has only been established among phlegmatic races, having a certain degree of civilization and being unacquainted with jealousy. spencer believes that monogamy will prevail in the future, while lubbock inclines to polygamy. westermark thinks that if the progress of civilization continues as hitherto to become more altruistic, and that if love tends to become more refined, the conjoints having more and more regard for each other, monogamy will always become more strict. for my part, i think it idle to prophesy. if mental culture ever succeeds in overcoming brutality and barbarism, and if it continues to make real progress, i do not think that any of the old systems of marriage will persist in their primary form. primitive monogamy adapted to an unsocial savage condition, is incompatible with the social requirements which become more and more imposed upon humanity. marriage by purchase and islamite polygamy, which regard woman as merchandise and place her entirely under the dependence of man, are barbarous customs of semi-civilized people, which have already fallen into disuse. polyandry is contrary to human nature and to the requirements of reproduction, and its implantation is everywhere a sign of decadence. our present religious monogamy, completed by the shameful promiscuity of prostitution, is both hypocritical and unhealthy. till the contrary is proved, i consider the most advantageous form of marriage for the future a kind of free monogamy (eventually polygamy), accompanied by obligations relative to the procreation of children and to the children procreated. polyandry should only have an accessory right to existence in certain pathological or exceptional cases. we shall return to this point later. duration of marriage among birds, marriage is generally concluded for life; among mammals rarely for more than a year, with the exception of the anthropoid apes and man. the duration of marriage varies enormously in man. among the andamanese, the weddas, certain papous, marriage can only cease with death. among the north american indians, on the contrary, it is only concluded for a limited period. among the wyandottes the custom exists of trial marriages for several days. in greenland, divorce often takes place at the end of six months. among the creeks marriage does not last more than a year. in this way is constituted a kind of polygamy by succession or limited monogamy, which results in the father not knowing his children. among the botocudos, marriage is performed without ceremonies and only lasts a short time; it can be broken off on the slightest pretext, for the pleasure of changing; divorce then becomes as frequent as marriage. this is also the case in queensland, tasmania and the samoan islands. among the dyaks and cingalese, quite young men and women have already had several wives or husbands; a man often marries and deserts the same woman several times, to take others during the intervals. among the mantras there are men who have been married forty or fifty times. in persia a woman may marry for periods varying from one hour to ninety-nine years. in egypt similar customs are met with; a monthly change is allowed, so that a man may marry twenty or thirty times in two years. among the maues of sahara the women consider it fashionable to marry as often as possible, and a long married life is considered by them as vulgar. the abyssinians, negroes, etc., marry on trial or for limited periods. among the greeks, romans and ancient germans, divorce was very frequent. in nearly all savage tribes, and in a number of civilized people the man possesses an unlimited right of rejection. the hovas compare marriage to a loosely tied knot. among the ancient jews, romans, greeks and germans, discontent of the husband was a sufficient reason for rejection. on the contrary, among a number of savage races (westermark mentions about twenty-five) rejection and divorce are extremely rare and marriage lasts for life. it is especially where there are children that divorce is rare. with most races, sterility of the wife and adultery constitute the principal causes of legal divorce. among civilized races marriage for life is much more common than with savages. this was the case with the aztecs, etc. among the chinese there exist seven reasons for divorce: sterility, unchastity, negligence toward parents-in-law, talkativeness, desertion, ill-temper and chronic disease. in japan the laws are similar, but in spite of this divorce is rare in china and japan. in christian countries divorce was formerly permitted and was only prohibited by the council of trent. the modern catholic says: "man must not separate what god has united." among many savages, on the contrary, divorce is left to the free will of the married couple. elsewhere it is sometimes the man, sometimes both husband and wife who have the right to exact divorce for divers reasons, such as drunkenness, adultery, prodigality, etc. in europe, as elsewhere, it is the desire for change which is the most common cause of divorce. children constitute the surest cement against conjugal separations. with most savages the rejected wife regains not only her _dot_, but also part of the common property, or even the whole of it. on the contrary, the purchase value of the wife is only as a rule returned to the husband when sterility, adultery or other grave reasons are the causes of divorce. it results from this that divorce is always very rare among peoples where the women are very dear. the right of the children after divorce varies a good deal in different races; sometimes they are adjudged to the husband, sometimes to the wife. divorced women often become prostitutes, for example, among the chinese and arabs. as a rule, marriages for love are more lasting than others, especially when the couple were acquainted before marriage. it is extremely probable that in primitive man marriage only lasted till the birth of a child, or at the most a few years. with civilization the duration of marriage has been prolonged, higher motives having become added to bodily charms, sexual appetite and the instinct of procreation, and tending toward more lasting unions. moral reasons have given rise to laws of protection in marriage, but the mania which man possesses of dogmatizing on everything has often caused these laws to degenerate into abuse or religious absurdities. in this way the modern form of our christian monogamy has been imposed by a tyrannical dogma of the roman church; a dogma which no doubt started from an ideal point of view, but fell into disuse in practice, owing to the fact that it did not take sufficient account of the natural conditions and sexual requirements of the race. this explains the present tendency to greater legal liberty, even when the moral causes which tend to render monogamous unions durable multiply with the progress of civilization. history of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse as monogamous marriage exists among the anthropoid apes, we have every reason to believe that it existed with primitive man. in neither case has it been the result of artificial laws, but the result of brute force and congenital instincts inherited by natural evolution. it often happened that one male vanquished another and took possession of the female, or wife, of the vanquished. others abducted the female by surprise. later on, marriage by exchange or by purchase, derived from marriage by rape, probably constituted the first stage toward a legal monogamous or polygamous union, as an element in the most primitive human conventional organizations. in this way we can imagine the main points of the prehistoric evolution of marriage. when the conception of marriage took on a legal character, either that of possession by the male, or that of a more or less equitable contract between the two sexes, we can easily imagine that sexual intercourse apart from marriage resulted as an inevitable complement. every artificial barrier which the human mind opposes to natural instincts immediately gives rise to a movement of opposition on the part of the latter. the matrimonial laws of primitive or semi-civilized races punished adultery in the most barbarous manner by torture and death, but were unable to prevent the sexual passions pursuing their course in one way or another. certain abuses or exceptions had, therefore, to be tolerated, or certain complementary institutions had to be organized. however, these laws generally branded all forms of sexual intercourse apart from marriage, with the stigma of inferiority, or contempt, if not of crime. the woman, being the weaker, was naturally the one to suffer most from this stigma and its consequences. the great diversity in the customs of different human tribes, makes it necessary, in order to avoid errors, to guard against generalizing without strong reasons. we cannot, however, here enter into details which would lead us too far. we can, however, affirm that among the lower or primitive races brute force played the principal role and was the fundamental support of marriage, while in higher civilizations legal regulation took the upper hand, however absurd or even immoral it might be. illegal or extra-conjugal forms of sexual intercourse have always formed two principal groups: _prostitution_ and _concubinage_. no doubt, these two varieties are insensibly connected by numerous shades of transition, but as their development depends on different principles we must distinguish these two forms. prostitution is a trade in which a human being sells her body for money, while concubinage consists in more or less free sexual intercourse apart from marriage, the motive of which is simply the sexual appetite, convenience or love, although sometimes violence plays a part in it. we therefore find in extra-marital sexual intercourse the same motives as in legal unions; legal or religious sanction only is wanting. it is needless to say that the motives which lead to concubinage may be more or less tainted by interested calculation. in all civilizations concubinage and prostitution constitute the complement of legal marriage. their regulation has ever produced the singular results of surrounding them with a moral nimbus. in babylon, every woman once in her life, had to prostitute herself for money to any stranger at the temple of venus. solon founded houses of prostitution for the people and furnished them with slaves, "in order to protect the sanctity of marriage against the passions of youth." the romans had also their houses of prostitution or lupanari, public or private, as well as free prostitutes. in the middle ages, prostitution developed especially after the crusades. it is related that the council of constance attracted fifteen hundred prostitutes to this town. prostitutes followed the armies everywhere. in india, young girls give themselves to the priests, who are the representatives of god and enjoy great honors. under the name of temple girls, the girls of the flower boats of china are really prostitutes. it is the same with the puzes of java, the girls in the japanese tea-houses, etc. in some civilized states, certain refined and intelligent prostitutes have always obtained great honors and high favors, only charging high prices, and ending by substituting for prostitution the pecuniary exploitation of rich men whom they have seduced. concubinage may be more or less free. the concubines were formerly often slaves, possessed by men in high positions, in addition to their wives. at the present day the omnipotence of money produces almost analogous results. free concubinage, in which sexual intercourse between the two contracting parties is absolutely free and more or less independent of pecuniary questions, is very different and of a higher moral character. it has also existed in antiquity in various forms. the greek hetairas were concubines of high position, no doubt prostitutes of a kind and giving themselves for money; but they became the friends or companions of great men. living in luxury, especially at the time of pericles and later, several of them became celebrated; statues were raised to them and they became the concubines of kings. phryne served as the model for the statue of venus, and offered to restore the halls of the thebeans at her own expense. thais was the mistress of alexander and gave heirs to the throne. the neglected education of the greek wives caused the intellectual accomplishments of the hetairas to shine by contrast. the whole question regarding the greek customs is summed up in a few words by demosthenes: "we marry wives in order to have legitimate children and a faithful guardian for our household; we have concubines for our daily service, and hetairas for the enjoyment of love." in some countries, such as japan, the children of concubines are considered by the husbands as legitimate, and have the same rights as those of his wife; this gives concubinage the character of marriage of the second rank. in modern times hetairas are not wanting. under the title of courtesans and mistresses, we find them everywhere as the favorites of kings and nobles, as mistresses of men in high positions, and often playing the part of vampires in all classes of society. on the other hand, women of high position or wealth have also their favorites, whom we may call male hetairas. certain female members of royal families have at all times furnished examples of this kind. at all periods in the history of civilized races, pathology has also led to extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. here, homosexual love in general, and love of boys or pediastry, has always played the principal part. we shall speak of this in chapter viii. among the hebrews, persians, etruscans, and especially the greeks, it was held in high esteem. the greek philosophers regarded it as based on an ideal homosexual love, and not as a vile form of prostitution. solon, aristides, sophocles, phidias, and socrates were strongly suspected of homosexual practices, and they regarded this form of love as superior to the normal love of woman. lesbian love, and other sexual aberrations, such as sadism, have also played a historical role, as we shall see. conclusions primitive human marriage was probably of short duration; when man later on became carnivorous, and had to obtain food for his children by hunting, sexual unions assumed a more constant character. it is not the class or the tribe, but the family which constituted the primitive social condition of man, a condition in which marriage was a heritage from "pithecomorphous" ancestors, _i.e._, related to monkeys. free sexual intercourse before marriage and frequent changes in the latter were then no doubt very common, but true promiscuity has never been the rule in primitive man. patriarchism with its disastrous consequences has been the result of the preponderance of male power. in a higher degree of civilization this preponderance has produced marriage by purchase and polygamy. the barbarous form of the latter is now decreasing. a true higher culture leads gradually to durable love based on altruism and ethics, _i.e._, a relative and free monogamy. the development of marriage in civilization has gradually increased the rights of woman, and marriage contracts tend more and more in their modern forms to stipulate for complete equality of rights for both sexes. as westermark says: "the history of human marriage is the history of a union in which women have gradually triumphed over the passions, prejudices and egoism of men." the term reëmancipation of women is historically more correct than the simple term emancipation, for before the institution of marriage, woman was free. invented by the stronger male when he began to reason, marriage was at first only the servitude of woman. to give her complete liberty, it must be transformed afresh from top to bottom. appendix =influence of the race on sexual life.=--if i were an ethnographer i should attempt to establish whether, and in what way, racial differences affect the sexual life of man; but the question is so delicate that it would require a skilled specialist to settle it. with the exception of the pages dealing with the history of extra-conjugal intercourse, the statements in this chapter are based on the work of westermark. the chief difficulty consists in separating, in the customs of each race, that which arises from habit and historical tradition from that which depends on more or less specific hereditary peculiarities. it is here very easy to fall into error in formulating false conclusions. a good deal has been said concerning the hot blood of warm climates, and on the whole it appears true that people who inhabit these climates have a more violent and more precocious sexual temperament than those who live in cold regions. but this is not a racial character. the jews, who have preserved their race unaltered in all climates and under all possible conditions of existence, furnish an object lesson which is particularly appropriate to decide the question. the traits of their character are reflected in their sexual life. their sexual appetites are generally strong and their love is distinguished by great family attachment. their sexual life is also influenced by their mercantile spirit, and we find them everywhere connected with the traffic of women and prostitution. they are not very jealous and are much addicted to concubinage, at the same time remaining affectionate to their wife and family. the mongols also lead a very intense sexual life. among the polyandrous people of thibet jealousy appears to be completely absent: this may be the result of custom or may be due to phylogenetic instinct. the mormons, who are descended from monogamous races, confirm the idea that polygamy is not a specific racial character. it would be interesting to study the mixed races of north america from this point of view. at first sight, it seems that the americanization of customs in the mixture of races of the united states is also extended to sexual life, and that we cannot discover the fundamental differences between the irish, scandinavians, french, germans and italians who constitute this mixture. but it is possible that this is only a superficial impression, and that a deeper study of the details would lead to another result. one thing appears to be unquestionable in the negro race; that is the violence of its sexual passion combined with its mental inferiority. a striking trait is furnished by the french race which has remained pure in the eastern provinces of canada, whose sexual customs are very different from those of the present population of france. the french canadian is extremely pure and chaste, leads a regular life and has a numerous family. families of fifteen or twenty are not rare among french canadians. we can here, therefore, observe the effect of climate and custom on a single race. for reasons mentioned above, i shall content myself with a few remarks, but i am certain that a profound study of the question would discover, in the character of the individuals, specific peculiarities of their race which are only marked externally by customs. it is obvious that such characters will be all the more distinct, the more the race differs from its congeners, and the purer its ethnical separation. as among animals, it is necessary to distinguish between slight variations, and races or sub-species which are more constant and more divergent. hereditary or phylogenetic individual differences must also be distinguished from those of races or varieties. =weight of the brain in different races and sexes.=--bebel has stated that among savages the difference between the brain of the men and women is less than among civilized people. this statement is quite wrong. prof. rudolph martin, of zurich, has given me statistics of the cranial capacity of the two sexes in different races, drawn from reliable sources. according to martin the weight of the brain represents about per cent. of the cranial capacity. his table of statistics is given on the opposite page. these figures show that the difference between the two sexes is always about the same, while the average absolute weight of the brain in the two sexes is lower in the lower races. reckoning it per cent. of the cranial capacity, it is in the weddas grammes for males and grammes for females, which corresponds to the weight of the brains of idiots or general paralytics with us. martin assures me that in the malay peninsula he has found as much difference between the men and women as in europeans. according to martin, men living at the present day may be divided into three classes according to their cranial capacity: men. women. aristencephalous (large brains) over gr. over gr. euencephalous (medium brains) to . to . oligencephalous (small brains) under . under . average cranial capacity in different races men women difference {badois { craniums m. } { { " f. } civilized { {bavarian { " m. } ( . %) { { " f. } {malay { " m. } { { " f. } semi-civilized { {aino { " m. } { { " f. } lowest race { " m. } ( . %) weddas { " m. } chapter vii sexual evolution the evolution of every living being is twofold. we must distinguish: ( ) its _ontogeny_, or the entire cycle of development of the individual from its conception till natural death at an advanced age; ( ) its _phylogeny_, or the series of organic forms through which its ancestors passed, by successive transformations, from the primitive cells of the oldest and most obscure geological periods, up to its present organization. in its chief outlines ontogeny is determined by phylogeny by means of the laws of heredity, even when it is only an abridged recapitulation. regarded from this point of view the sexual life of man is also based on phylogenetic conditions, determined by his ancestral lineage. moreover, it presents an individual or ontogenetic evolution during the life of each person, which in its principal traits is predetermined in the germ, by the phylogenetic or hereditary energies of the species. the phenomena of the hereditary mneme show clearly how ontogeny is the result of engraphia combined with selection, in the series of ancestors. we have already mentioned these points on several occasions, but must now review the whole question. phylogeny of sexual life in chapter ii we have briefly described phylogeny in general or metamorphosis, and in the first part of chapter iv we have specially considered the phylogeny of the sexual appetite in the phenomenon of cell division and conjugation of nuclei in unicellular organisms, which we have described in chapter i. in order for animals to reproduce themselves without degenerating, crossing, or the combination of different germs, is necessary, and such combinations are only possible by the mutual attraction of two kinds of germinal cells. but, when the individual becomes multicellular and bears only one kind of germinal cells, the attractive energy which was originally limited to these cells is transmitted to the whole organism, and this necessitates the existence of sensory and motor nerve centers. the attraction of one kind of germinal cell and its bearer for the other must also be more or less mutual. as a rule the bearer of one of the germinal cells becomes active and penetrating; that of the other passive and receptive. however, the latter, who after copulation (when this occurs) becomes the sole bearer of the future individual, is obliged to desire union with the active bearer of the other germinal cell, so that reproduction may become harmonious. this is the basis on which is founded sexual reproduction, and with it the sexual appetite, in plants (as regards cellular conjugation only) as well as in animals, but especially in the latter, in whom the germinal cells are carried by mobile and independent individuals. on the same basis is developed the difference between the sexual appetite in man and woman, as well as that between love and the other irradiations of this appetite in the mental life of both sexes. (vide chapters iv and v.) the immense complication of human sexual life makes us regard animals with a certain degree of contempt, and flatter our vanity in qualifying the baser part of our sexual appetite by the term _animal instinct_. but we are really very unjust toward animals. this injustice is partly due to the fact that vocal and written language gives us a means of penetrating into the psychology of our fellow creatures. by the aid of the common symbolism of our thoughts it is easy for us to compare them. language thus enables us to construct a general human psychology. the absence of language, even in the higher animals, renders it difficult for us to penetrate their mind. our inductive reasoning in this matter is very uncertain, for we can only judge the mental power of animals by their acts. the brain, and consequently the mind, of the higher mammals being less highly organized than that of man, their sexual psychology is also more primitive, and differs from ours in proportion to the cerebral development of the species. comparative anatomy confirms this fact in the whole series of organisms which possess a central nervous system. the psychology of the higher apes is thus nearer our own than that of the dog; the psychology of the dog resembles ours more than that of the rabbit, etc. on the other hand, the highly developed cerebral organization of man, although it has complicated the mental irradiations of his sexual appetite, has not always ennobled them; on the contrary, it has often directed them into pernicious paths. we have seen in chapter vi numerous and striking proofs of the degeneration, brutality and cruelty of the manifestations of the human sexual appetite, and we shall study them further in chapter viii. comparative biology shows us that the sexual appetite is transformed into love in very different ways. in order to avoid the immensity of detail of comparative biology i shall only give a few examples. while the female spider often kills and eats the male, monkeys, and parrots give proof of such a great mutual attachment that when one of the conjoints dies the other sinks into complete despair, ceases to eat, and perishes in its turn. in this domain we find singular adaptations to special conditions of existence. among the bees and ants, a third class of individuals, or neuters, formed by differentiation of females, do not copulate, and lay at the most a few eggs which are not fecundated and which occasionally develop by parthenogenesis. among the termites, another species of social ants, a similar state of things exists, but the neuters, or workers, are derived from the male sex as well as the female and their sexual organs are quite rudimentary. the third sex, or worker, not only has a cerebral development superior to the sexual individuals, but also inherits the social sympathetic irradiations of the sexual appetite, which results in his devotion to a brood which is not his own. among the social insects the males are little more than flying sexual organs, which after copulation are incapable of leading an independent existence and die of hunger and exhaustion in the case of ants or termites, or are massacred by the workers in the case of bees. the fecundated females, on their part, become breeding machines whose activity is incessant. among the ants, however, the females are at first capable of nourishing a few larvæ by the aid of a portion of their eggs and their secretions, till the workers are hatched, who henceforth undertake all the work including the maternal care of the brood. whoever has observed the fidelity of a pair of swallows and the way in which the male and female nourish and rear their young, must be struck by the analogy to the conjugal and family love of the faithful type of human beings. this is especially remarkable when the same couple return every year to the old nest. this family life of the swallows does not prevent a certain social life, which manifests itself in organized attacks on birds of prey, and in combined emigration in the autumn and spring. on the other hand, we are instinctively indignant at the want of fidelity in other animals, between conjoints, parents and offspring (dogs and rabbits, for instance), because we involuntarily expect to find in them our own moral sense, which is not at all just. from the phylogenetic point of view we can only compare ourselves to the higher apes, by their analogies with primitive man. (vide chapter vi.) the question which concerns us here is as follows: if we consider the peculiarities of our sexual customs with those of our direct ancestors, what are those which are derived from ancient and profound phylogenetic instincts, those which are derived from less profound ancestral energies (_i.e._, relatively more recent) and lastly those which depend simply on old customs fixed by tradition, prejudice and habit? if we are careful we shall immediately recognize that it is not only the sexual appetite itself, but also a large part of its correlatives and irradiations, in which the phylogenetic roots are deep. jealousy, coquetry, instinctive maternal love, fidelity and conjugal love, which are more or less developed in primitive man, are also present in monkeys and birds. we have even seen that the conjugal fidelity of these often exceeds our own. it is, therefore, not true that our animal ancestors are only allied to us by sexual appetite; on the contrary, we must admit that they have much more noble sentiments and instincts, derived it is true from this appetite, but belonging to the domain of a higher social morality. all that we can say in a general way concerning the complex entanglement of our sentiments and instincts is that, the most deeply rooted characters in human nature are at the same time, phylogenetically speaking, the most ancient. among the most profound instincts of sexual life, we find moral and intellectual incongruities. along with excitement of the sexual appetite in the male by the odor of the female genital organs, or by the sight of erotic pictures, we find the most touching conjugal love, and life-long devotion of one conjoint for the other and for the children. prostitution, marriage by purchase, religious marriage, disgrace attached to illegitimate births, conjugal and family rights of one or the other sex, etc., are, on the contrary, things which do not depend on recent phylogeny, but only on the customs and traditions of certain races. they are partly outgrowths from egoism, the spirit of domination, mysticism and hypocrisy, and partly the shifts of an overheated social life which is becoming more and more complicated. westermark's studies are very instructive in this respect. all the absurdities and contradictions, brought to light by the historical and ethnographical study of the customs and matrimonial abuses in man, allow us to clearly distinguish that which is due to fashion or custom, from that which is deeply rooted in our heredity. to avoid repetition i refer my readers to chapter vi, to examine the differences between heredity and custom. between these two extremes there is, however, one important domain, viz., that of _recent phylogeny_, or in other words _variation_. the fixed appetites and instincts of the species which are proper to every normal man, and are as we have seen fundamentally connected with many animal forms, belong to ancient and profound phylogeny. but there is another group of very variable peculiarities, strongly developed in some men and little in others, sometimes completely absent, which do not depend on custom but on what is called individual hereditary disposition, or individual character. while some men have monogamous instincts others are polygamous. some men are by instinct and heredity very egoistic, others more altruistic. this peculiarity is reflected in their sexual life and changes the character of their love (but not that of their sexual instinct). the egoist may love his wife, but this love is interested and very different from that of the altruist. between the two extremes there is an infinite number of gradations according to the nature of the instincts and dispositions. the same man may be a good and generous father, and a social exploiter with neither shame nor pity. another will pose as a social benefactor, while at home he is an egoist and a tyrant. the individual dispositions of recent phylogeny are combined in every way with education, customs, habit and social position to produce results which are often paradoxical, and the factors of which are ambition, vanity, temper, etc. recent phylogeny is reflected also in many of the irradiations of the sexual appetite of which we have spoken in chapter v. audacity, jealousy, sexual braggardism, hypocrisy, prudery, pornography, coquetry, exaltation, etc., depend in each particular case, according to their degree of development, on a combination of individual sexual hereditary dispositions with individual dispositions in the other domains of sentiment, intelligence and will. in this way, the sexual individuality of one man is constituted in a very complex and very different way to that of other men, owing to the high development of the human brain, as well as to the infinite variability and adaptability of his aptitudes. it is impossible to give even an incomplete explanation of all the symphonic gradations (often cacophonic) which represent an individuality, or to fix clearly what distinguishes it from others. however, when the principle is understood, it is not difficult to estimate the sexual individuality of each person more or less correctly. strong hereditary dispositions of character may be recognized in early infancy. when the ancestry of a man is well known the roots of his recent phylogeny may be traced to his ancestors. here we observe the effect of crossing between varieties or different races, or on the contrary that of consanguinity. this effect is observed in character and in sexual disposition, as much as in the shape of the nose, or the color of the skin and hair, etc. it is important that men should learn to know themselves, and also study each other from this point of view before marrying. on the whole, we may say that the average civilized man of our race possesses as his "phylogenetic baggage" a strong sexual appetite, very variable sentiments of love, generally somewhat mediocre, (we have seen that conjugal love is more strongly developed in most monkeys than in man), lastly altruistic or social sentiments which are still deplorably weak. the latter, no doubt, form no part of the sexual life, but they must be taken into consideration for they are its most important derivatives, and it is indispensable for our modern social life to develop them in harmony with family and conjugal love. hereditary instincts can easily be observed in children. when one of them is good, it gives evidence at an early age of the sentiments of sympathy or altruism, such as pity and affection, as well as an instinctive sentiment of duty, the object of which is not yet social. all these sentiments are at first only applied to human individuals known to the child, domestic animals, or even inanimate objects. on the other hand, the ant, from the beginning of its existence, shows an inherited instinct or sentiment of complete social duty. in man, social sentiments properly so-called, have to be acquired by education, but they require for their expansion a considerable degree of inherited sentiments of sympathy and duty. a person without morals can easily acquire social phraseology but not social sentiment. a few more points require to be considered. monogamy is no doubt an old and well-established phylogenetic heritage, while polygamy is on the whole rather an aberration produced by individual power and wealth. but phylogenetic monogamy is by no means identical with the religious or other formality of our present legal monogamy. it assumes first of all an early marriage immediately after puberty, while our civilization has placed between this and marriage, which it only allows later as a rule, the unhealthy swamp of prostitution, which so often sows in the individual the destructive seed for his future legal union, before this has taken place. again, phylogenetic monogamy imposes no legal constraint; on the contrary, it assumes a free, natural and instinctive inclination in each of the conjoints, when it is not the result of the brute force of the male. lastly, it by no means excludes a change after a certain time. we are speaking only of man, and not of birds and monkeys, who are more monogamous than ourselves. monogamy without children has little reason for its existence and must be considered simply as a means to satisfy the sexual appetite or as a union for convenience. it is the same with certain marriages between individuals of very different ages, especially the marriage of a young man with a woman already old and sterile. as far as we can ascertain, the majority of sexual perversions, of which we shall speak in chapter viii, are a sad pathological acquisition of the human race. we observe, however, especially in the higher mammals, acts of pederasty between males when the female is wanting. the sexual repulsion which normally exists between animals of different species rests on a selective basis, the hereditary mneme of their reciprocal germs being unable to place itself in homophony, and their blood also having a mutual toxic action. in speaking of sodomy we shall see that this instinctive repulsion may disappear in pathological cases, both in man and in animals, owing to bad habits or unsatisfied sexual appetite. we cannot absolutely demonstrate the phylogenetic existence of an instinctive disgust for consanguineous sexual intercourse. the sexual advances made by women in civilized countries, show how easily we may be deceived in attributing to a phylogenetic or hereditary origin, certain details which are only due to external circumstances. in man, the bearer of the active germ, the instinct of sexual advance has deep phylogenetic roots. it is quite natural to him and is evident among savage races, where the man risks more by remaining single than the woman. violent combats between rivals to obtain the woman, who remains passive like most animals, are evidence of this. civilization has changed all this, and has developed two castes of women, the old maids and the prostitutes. the latter satisfy the appetites of men in an artificial and unhealthy manner, while marriage and family cares only bring them labor and burdens instead of riches. owing to the promiscuous polyandry of prostitution, man can always obtain enough women, while woman can with difficulty obtain a suitable husband. these circumstances have more and more developed the art of flirtation, coquetry and advances on the part of girls, and we can now see, especially in the united states, that advances come more and more from the female side, if not in principle, at any rate in fact. this is not a question of a phylogenetic or hereditary transformation of the sexes among civilized peoples, but an unhealthy effect resulting from abnormal circumstances, that is the non-satisfaction of the sexual desires of woman, together with the satiety of those of men. woman makes advances from the fear of remaining celibate; she will cease to do so when the unnatural causes which have produced this state of things have been done away with. as a rule, a normal and adaptable man will conduct himself in sexual matters as in others according to the prevailing fashion. he will most often succeed in accommodating his sentiments to those of his conjoint. on the other hand, this average representative of normal mediocrity easily becomes the slave of routine and incapable of new ideas. however normal he may be, he has less faculty of adaptation or mental plasticity and less liberty, than a man of higher nature independent of prejudices. ontogeny of sexual life the first striking fact in the ontogeny of sexual life is the following: all the sexual organs, both external and internal, remain in an embryonic and non-functional state, not only in the embryo but for a long time in the child. the organs and their elements exist, but they are still small, imperfectly developed, and in a state of rest. at the time of puberty, which varies in different individuals, the sexual glands and the other copulatory apparatus enlarge and begin to functionate. in the european races puberty occurs between the age of twelve and seventeen years in girls, and between fourteen and nineteen in boys; it is generally earlier in the south and later in the north. it is curious to note that the correlative irradiations of the sexual appetite in the human mind develop much earlier than the organs, or even the sexual appetite. again, the sexual appetite often appears before the normal development of the genital organs. in other rare cases the sexual appetite is absent in the adult, even when the corresponding organs are well-developed. (vide chapter viii.) such irregularities of the sexual appetite belong to the domain of pathology. on the other hand, it is quite normal for young girls and boys to show early signs of mental differences corresponding to those we have described in chapter v. in young girls we observe coquetry and jealousy and the desire for finery. their love of dolls and the care they take of them, is very characteristic of the precocious instinct of their sex. this is an early sign of instinctive maternal love, before the development of any sexual sensation or function. among boys we observe a tendency to brag and to boast of their strength before girls, to show their contempt for dolls and the coquetry of little girls, and also to pose as protectors, etc. sexual jealousy already exists in young children. we see little boys, seeking for the favors of little girls, show violent jealousy when another is preferred to them. all these phenomena depend either on subconscious instincts, or on vague sexual presentiments which play a large part in the infantile exaltation of sentiment. portraits of pretty women, the sight of certain parts of the body or feminine clothing often provoke exalted sentiments in boys; girls rather admire boldness, an imposing presence and often beauty, in the other sex. puberty is produced by certain phenomena which occur in the sexual organs. in the boy erections occur at an early age when the penis is still very small. it is curious to note that certain pathological conditions and friction of the glans penis, especially in the case of phimosis and as a result of bad example, are often sufficient to produce sexual sensations and appetites in very young boys. the same thing is produced in little girls by excitation of the clitoris. all these phenomena lead to onanism or masturbation, of which we shall speak later on. as the testicles of young boys do not secrete semen, masturbation only provokes secretion from the accessory glands, but this is accompanied by orgasm. more singular still are cases of coitus between little boys and girls whose sexual glands are still undeveloped and produce no germinal cells. although they are pathological, these phenomena are characteristic, because they clearly show that the brain has acquired by phylogeny a sexual appetite relatively independent of the development of the sexual glands. no doubt the sexual appetite does not develop, or disappears, in eunuchs when they are castrated quite young; but it is preserved together with the secretions and functions of the external genitals when castration is performed after puberty is established. the important conclusion which results from these facts is that the existence of a sexual excitation or appetite of this nature is not sufficient to prove that they are normal. in chapter viii we shall prove that not only the anomalies of the hereditary sexual disposition, but artificial excitations and bad habits may also produce all kinds of misconduct and excesses which should be energetically combated. we have described in chapter iv the great individual variations of the sexual appetite in the two sexes, as well as that of the sexual power in man. the sexual power and appetite in man are strongest between the years of twenty and forty. we may even consider this period as the most advantageous for the procreation of strong and healthy offspring and that the procreator is at his best before the age of thirty. the ontogenetic development of the sexual appetite and love generally produces in man a peculiar phenomenon. while habitual gratification and education of the sexual appetite tends to make it more and more calculating and cynical, love, on the contrary, becomes more elevated and refined with age and less egoistical than in youth. owing to general mental development, the education of sentiments progresses and becomes refined, while the sexual appetite diminishes in intensity and becomes more imperious and more coarse. we are only speaking here of normal cases. in youth, the intoxication of love combined with intense sexual appetite triumphs; when the appetite is once satisfied the unbridled and egoistic passions of this age come to the surface and are often antagonistic to love. at a more advanced age, on the contrary, love becomes more constant and more tranquil. the mistake that is so often made is the confusion of love with sexual appetite. the novelists who speculate on the eroticism of the public are no doubt more interested in describing sexual passion and amorous intoxication, with all the catastrophes and conflicts which arise from them, than the tranquil and regular love of a couple more advanced in age, the greatest happiness of which consists in harmony of sentiment and thought, as well as the mutual regard and devotion of the couple for each other. sexual appetite and sexual power in man become extinguished between the ages of sixty and eighty; old men of eighty are sometimes still capable, but they are no longer fecund. as a rule sexual power diminishes before sexual appetite, and this sometimes leads old men to use artificial means to revive their power, or to satisfy their sexual desires. this explains why the egoists who have never known true love often become so base in their sexual manifestations when they grow old. their experience of sexual life makes them experts in the art of seduction. if this fact appears to be antagonistic to the law that true love is refined with advancing age, we must bear in mind that the ontogenetic development of the sexual appetite is not the same as that of love; that in some respects it develops in a contrary direction; and that the result may consequently become inverted according as one or other predominates. it is needless to say that there are a number of intermediate gradations, and that inverse phenomena may be produced concurrently in the same individual. according to westermark elderly men generally fall more easily in love with middle-aged women than with young girls. no doubt this is often the case when reason and love predominate, but it is necessary to avoid generalization, and it is curious to observe how often very old men become enamored of quite young girls, as the latter may fall in love with old men. it is common knowledge that young girls do not marry old graybeards solely for their money or their name. no doubt this is not uncommon, but i have often seen girls of eighteen or twenty fall in love with old _roués_, when money, name and position were theirs and not the man's. however, in such cases it is most often the old man who is amorous. westermark maintains that this condition is not normal, and we shall see that very often it is a case of commencing _senile dementia_, a pathological cerebral condition in which the sexual appetite becomes suddenly revived. the love of a young girl for an old man may be explained by the intellectual superiority of the old man or by the absence of another object for love. it is often also due to hysteria and consequently pathological. in old age, when the sexual life of two conjoints is extinguished, there remains a purified love which colors the evening of their life with autumn tints. the modern detractors of marriage too often forget this phenomenon. no doubt the evening of conjugal life is often troubled with discord and sorrow, but then it is usually a question of "_mariage de convenance_," marriage for money or position, mutual misunderstanding, or irreflective amorous intoxication. quarrels may also arise when pathological conditions become introduced into marriage. in woman, sexual ontogeny is not the same as in man. she matures earlier and more rapidly. in our race, a woman at eighteen is sexually mature; between eighteen and twenty-five she is in the best condition for sexual life; toward fifty the menopause occurs, and with it cessation of fecundity. hence the period during which a woman is fecund is much shorter than in man and terminates much earlier. owing to this, the development of the intellectual and sentimental irradiations of the sexual appetite in woman is more rapid than in man. a young girl is much more mature and full grown as regards her reproductive power than a young man. these phenomena extend to the whole mental life of woman, who is less capable of an ulterior development in old age than man, because she generally becomes settled and automatic much more rapidly than the latter. no doubt these phenomena are partly due to the defective mental education of women, but this explanation is insufficient. here again we must distinguish the phylogenetic disposition of woman from the effects of education during her ontogenetic development. the sexual appetite of woman manifests itself at first in vague desires, in a want of love, and does not as a rule develop locally till after coitus. it often follows that in ontogenetic evolution the sexual appetite of women increases at a more advanced age (between thirty and forty). at this age women often become enamored with young boys, whom they seduce easily. widows are especially disposed to form unions with men younger than themselves; these unions are rarely happy, for the woman who is older than her husband easily becomes jealous, and the husband soon becomes tired of a woman whose charms have faded. we can therefore affirm that, as a rule, in order to be both normal and lasting, a monogamous union requires that the husband should be from six to twelve years older than his wife, and that the latter should marry as young as possible. in the sexual ontogeny of normal woman, pregnancies, childbirth, the nursing and education of children play an infinitely greater role than the sexual appetite. these important events in woman's life, together with affection for her husband occupy a great part of the cerebral activity of every woman, and are at the same time the conditions for her true happiness. we should expect the sexual appetite in woman to diminish or cease at the menopause; but this is not usually the case, and elderly women are sometimes tormented by the sexual appetite, which is all the more painful because men are not attracted by them. such hyperæsthesia cannot, however, be considered as normal; most often the sexual appetite diminishes with age and is replaced, as in man, by the tranquil love of old age, of which we have spoken. old women are often spoken of with contempt. no doubt, unsatisfied passions and wounded feelings of all kinds, want of intellectual culture and high ideals, and especially a pathological condition of the brain, make many old women anything but amiable. i am, however, convinced that the elevation of woman's social position, and greater care in her education, will considerably facilitate the development of her faculties. education should not develop mundane qualities in women, but depth of sentiment. there are many aged women who can be cited as examples of activity and perseverance, for their sound and clear judgment, as well as for their affability and simplicity of manners. although their intellectual productiveness ceases earlier than that of man, this in no way excludes an excellent and persevering activity of mind, combined with much judgment and sentimental qualities. a woman who is growing old and has lost the members of her family, especially her husband, requires some object to replace them in her affection. to devote herself to social activity will be the best antidote against the peevish, querulous or sorrowful moods which so easily take possession of the aged woman. it appears that love, which is a phylogenetic derivative of the sexual appetite, and which in middle life is intimately associated with this appetite, becomes afterwards more and more independent of it and then requires more compensation. there is here a great adaptation of love to life, an adaptation which it is necessary to bear in mind. in infancy the individual is naturally egoistic; his appetites all tend to self-preservation. there are even then, however, great individual differences, and we meet with children who are endowed with a remarkable sentiment of duty and a great sensibility to the troubles of others. after puberty man's sexual desire leads him to love, toward dual egoism, and this desire becomes the principal factor in the reproduction of the species. in old age the individual has no reproductive aims to fulfill; his life is only a burden on society, if it is not directed with a view to benefit others and society in general. by expansion and purification love, at first sexual, is gradually transformed into purely humanitarian love, _i.e._, altruistic or social. at least this is what it should be, and then the fundamental biogenetic law of haeckel (ontogeny is an abridged repetition of phylogeny) will receive an ultimate confirmation. our primitive unicellular animal ancestor lived for itself alone; later on sexual reproduction without love was established; then conjugal and family love appeared (birds, monkeys, mammals, etc.), finally social love or altruism was produced, _i.e._, the sense of social solidarity based on the sentiment of duty. the last is still very weak in man, while some animal species, such as the bees and ants, have developed it in a more complete manner, on the basis of instinct. according to this natural law, all social organization naturally develops altruism or the sentiment of duty. the history of humanity proves that our social union is only developed slowly and laboriously through innumerable contests, and that it is derived, directly or indirectly, from the family union of individuals. extension of communication on the surface of the earth causes the artificial development of social organization to advance much more rapidly than the natural phylogenetic development by evolution of the sentiments or social instincts. the latter are, however, forced to follow the movement, resting first on the deep roots of family and friendly altruism, as well as on that of caste or clan (patriotism); _i.e._, on sentiments of sympathy and duty toward certain individuals who are more closely connected with us, sentiments which are hereditary in man. a vague general humanitarian sentiment, a hothouse flower which is still feeble, has already commenced to grow on this natural basis. let us hope that it will live. it would be a fundamental error to try and found social solidarity solely on our phylogenetic sentiments of sympathy, or on our ideal faculty of devotion and self-sacrifice; but to try and take egoism as a basis for this solidarity is a still greater error. we must not make an antinomy of egoism and altruism, but regard them as two elements inseparable from all human society, as well as the individuals who compose it. we cannot deny that the altruist, endowed with strong sentiments of sympathy and duty, is an excellent social worker, while the pure egoist constitutes an element of decomposition for society. it is, therefore, a social duty to proceed by the sexual route to a selection which will cause the first to multiply and eliminate the second as far as possible by sterilizing his germs. chapter viii sexual pathology on this subject we refer the reader to the well-known work of krafft-ebing, "psychopathia sexualis,"[ ] in which will be found a number of observations, the details of which we cannot enter into here. we may first of all say that with the exception of venereal diseases the genital organs by themselves only play a very small part in sexual pathology. the brain is the true domain of nearly all sexual anomalies. in the second place, we may remark that the disorders of sexual life only rarely belong to acute affections which the physician can treat with pharmaceutical or other common remedies. they almost exclusively originate in the mental constitution, _i.e._, in the hereditary dispositions of the brain of the individual. but the pathology of mental or cerebral conditions offers an extremely vast field, capable of so much extension that no definite limit can be fixed between the normal state and morbid states, which are themselves connected by numerous transitions. a great number of acts due to mental conditions which the public and even learned theologians, jurists and physicians not initiated in psychiatry, consider as criminal, sinful, or infamous, are only the product of pathological aberrations due to hereditary dispositions. i was recently consulted by a patient of this kind, otherwise possessed of noble sentiments, who told me that a physician in germany to whom he related his troubles, turned on him furiously and said, "these things are filthy; you are a pig; hold your tongue and get away from here!" as a matter of fact this unfortunate patient was sustaining a heroic struggle against his perverted pathological sexual appetites. knowing little or nothing of these matters human society, with few exceptions, is of the same opinion as the ignorant doctor mentioned above. for this reason i think it necessary at least to give an outline of phenomena which, although very repulsive in themselves, throw much light on the sexual question. pathology of the sexual organs every deformity, disease or operation which destroys the sexual glands in the child, or prevents them from developing, gives rise to the phenomena which we have described when speaking of castration. this is the case, for instance, with cryptorchidism in which the testicles remain in the inguinal canal and become atrophied, instead of descending into the scrotum. the following case is an example, and is interesting in other respects: a young man was affected with imbecility and congenital cryptorchidism with atrophy of the testicles. a eunuch from birth, he developed no sexual appetite and no correlative masculine character. to make a man of him, his too eager aunts married him to a strong girl, who was anything but innocent. she attempted by all kinds of manipulations to cure the sexual blindness of her husband; but this was a waste of labor, as the unhappy wretch only regarded the performance as disgusting and filthy. he was violently excited and became somnambulistic. soon afterwards the wife consoled herself with a lover of normal sexual power, and they both overwhelmed the poor eunuch with raillery. the latter, becoming furious, offered his wife a cake poisoned with arsenic on her birthday, but she saw through the stratagem. the poor wretch was sent for trial and condemned to a long term of imprisonment for attempted poisoning. i consider this judgment as a legal crime. in spite of my protests, imbecility was not admitted, and the somnambulism was looked upon as simulated. on the other hand, the same lesions when they occur in the adult neither destroy the correlative sexual characters, nor the power of coitus, nor the voluptuous sensation of the orgasm. in man, _aspermia_ sometimes occurs; the testicles appear to be well formed, but the semen contains no spermatozoa. in spite of this the aspermatic individual generally has erections, a certain amount of sexual power and orgasm, and is capable of amorous feelings, although his sexual functions are generally feeble. but he is incapable of fecundating a woman. some women who have never menstruated possess normal ovaries and may become pregnant. tuberculosis, tumors and inflammations of the testicles and ovaries may cause sterility. the erection of the penis is often rendered impossible by certain deformities, such as _hypospadias_ and _epispadias_, in which the urethral canal opens respectively below or above the penis. involuntary emissions of semen without erection, with or without voluptuous sensation, is called _spermatorrhea_. this is often a result of onanism, nervousness or constipation. too much importance has been attached to it. in hypochondriacs spermatorrhea becomes a bugbear, which often makes them the dupes of charlatans. the less attention is paid to it the quicker it disappears; especially when it is of purely nervous origin, as is usually the case. phimosis, or narrowness of the opening of the prepuce is nearly always of embryonic origin. it prevents the glans penis from becoming exposed, at least during erection. it is a very common condition and very disagreeable. if the prepuce is forcibly drawn back behind the glans penis before erection, as is often the case in masturbation, the penis is gripped by the prepuce so that it cannot sometimes be drawn forward and inflammation with oedema results; this condition is called _paraphimosis_, and may become dangerous. secretions, urine and semen accumulate and decompose in a phimosed prepuce, cause irritation and lead to masturbation. all cases of phimosis should be operated upon in infancy, by complete or partial circumcision. in women, the number of diseases which prevent conception is much greater than in man. the ovary may undergo cystic degeneration or become the seat of a tumor; but affections of the uterus and vagina cause more sterility than ovarian affections. this results chiefly from catarrh and inflammation which destroy the spermatozoa before they can reach the egg during its descent. disorders of menstruation have much less influence on fecundity. the womb sometimes remains in an _infantile state_, which may also cause sterility. other diseases of the female sexual organs have a more general pathological character and hardly influence sexual intercourse. a method of rendering women sterile without castration (removal of the ovaries) consists in interrupting the communication between the ovaries and the womb by dislocation of the fallopian tubes: this avoids all the evil effects of castration. certain inflammations and displacements of the uterus and ovaries are often the origin of pains, indispositions and nervous disorders in women. irregularity and pain in menstruation are a frequent cause of neuroticism. the hymen is seldom so strongly developed as to offer a serious obstacle to coitus; but when this occurs it may be removed by a slight operation. young women often suffer from vaginismus, or painful spasms occurring when an object, such as the finger or penis, is introduced into the vagina. hermaphrodism in man is always pathological, extremely rare, and when it exists nearly always incomplete. these cases are generally incomplete mixtures concerning principally the correlative characters. a double function only exists in legends. i have myself seen a celebrated hermaphrodite named catherine hohmann who had a well-formed testicle on the left side enclosed in a fold of skin which resembled the larger lip of the vulva, while the penis was very short and resembled a clitoris. this individual, who was baptized as a woman, was certainly male on one side; on the other hand, the feminine nature was more than problematical. menstruation was alleged to have occurred but was not established with certainty, any more than an ovary or uterus. much more frequent are inverted correlative sexual characters, such as bearded women, men with breasts; also mental sexual inversions, of which we shall speak later. venereal diseases[ ] we cannot give here a complete description of the venereal diseases, which constitute a terrible evil for humanity, by bringing a great deal of misfortunes and decadence into family and social life. let us first point out the common error which attributes to sexual excess the evil effects which are really due to venereal disease. although it may be uncommon, one may be infected by these diseases after an innocent kiss, a cut finger, by sitting on a privy contaminated by a person suffering from venereal disease, by the use of contaminated linen, etc., etc. a pachydermatous don juan, on the contrary, may abandon himself to the wildest sexual excess without being infected, if he is prudent and has good luck. on the other hand, young men may be infected after having been with a prostitute only once in their lives, and thus ruin their whole existence. there are three kinds of venereal disease, which we will describe in a few words. to these may be added certain parasites, such as crab-lice and the itch, which are easily communicated by sexual intercourse with infected persons, but also in other ways. =gonorrhea or clap.=--this disease consists in a purulent inflammation of the urethra caused by a microbe called the _gonococcus_. when treated properly it may be cured in a few weeks, but very often the inflammation becomes chronic and attacks the neighboring organs. chronic clap, or "morning-drop," may lead in the male to permanent stricture of the urethra, which in turn may produce retention of urine, catarrh of the bladder and disease of the kidneys, which may be fatal. one attack of gonorrhea in no way protects against a second infection, but rather predisposes to it, and when this disease becomes chronic exacerbations or relapses of the acute stage often occur without fresh infection. in women the results of gonorrhea are, if possible, still worse than in men, because it is more difficult to cure. a prostitute affected with gonorrhea may infect an enormous number of men, and in this case medical inspection of brothels is no guarantee. the gonococci are concealed in all the corners and folds of the internal genital organs of woman, where they set up inflammation of the womb, the fallopian tubes and even the ovaries, which may lead to adhesions between the abdominal organs. women affected with chronic gonorrhea generally become sterile. when the womb and the ovaries are affected there is much suffering and the woman may be confined to bed for some years. stricture of the urethra and inflammation of the bladder are more rare in women than in men, as the result of gonorrhea. but gonorrhea is not confined to the adults of both sexes. the innocent child, who at birth has to pass through its mother's vulva, when this is affected with gonorrhea, undergoes a baptism of gonococci which attack the conjunctiva of the eyes and set up a severe purulent inflammation, called ophthalmia of the newly born (_ophthalmia neonatorum_). this is one of the chief causes of total blindness, and if the child is not entirely blind, there are often large white patches left on the cornea which considerably interfere with sight. gonorrheal ophthalmia may also occur in adults by conveying pus from the urethra to the eyes by the fingers. =syphilis.=--this disease is still more formidable than gonorrhea. it is caused by a microbe which has been recently discovered (_spirochæta pallida_). syphilis is much more chronic than gonorrhea and commences with a small sore indurated at its base and called the hard chancre. this is situated on the genital organs or elsewhere; in the mouth, for instance, when this has been in contact with the buccal or genital organs of a person infected with syphilis. the syphilitic poison spreads through the body by means of the blood and lymph. at the end of a few weeks eruptions appear on the body and face, and then commences a series of disasters the cause of which may be suspended over the victim for his whole life, like the sword of damocles, even when he believes himself cured; for the cure of syphilis is often uncertain. this disease may remain latent for months and years, to reappear later on in different organs and cause fresh lesions. syphilis causes ulcers of the skin and mucous membranes; it sometimes causes decay of the bones; it may cause disease of the internal organs, such as the liver and lungs; it affects the walls of the blood vessels, causing them to become hard and brittle (atheroma); it causes disease of the eyes, especially of the iris and retina, tumors (or gummata) in the brain, paralysis etc. in fact, it spares none of the organs of the body. among the most terrible results of syphilis we must mention _locomotor ataxy_ (sclerosis of the posterior columns of the spinal cord), with its lightning pains and paralysis of the legs and arms; also _general paralysis of the insane_, which by causing gradual atrophy of the brain, destroys one after the other, sensations, movements and all the mental faculties. these two diseases, which are so common at the present day, only occur in old syphilitics, five to twenty years, or more often ten to fifteen years after infection, and as a rule in persons who think they have been completely cured. both these diseases are fatal. before causing death, locomotor ataxy causes intolerable pain for several years. general paralysis first gives rise to grandiose ideas, and after disintegrating the human personality bit by bit, ends by transforming the individual into a being much inferior to animals, and of an aspect as miserable as it is repulsive. a general paralytic in his last stage is little more than a vegetating ruin, in whom the nervous activities are decomposed little by little, after the gradual disappearance of all the mental faculties. this is the result of slow atrophy of the brain and gradual destruction of its microscopic elements, or _neurones_. the early stages of syphilis may easily pass unnoticed owing to their partly latent and completely painless character. small eruptions may be mistaken for other affections, and mercurial treatment generally disperses the symptoms of _primary_ and _secondary_ syphilis. but syphilitics who are apparently cured are never safe from being attacked, after perhaps many years, with locomotor ataxy, general paralysis or the _tertiary_ or _quaternary_ manifestations of syphilis, such as disease of the bones, internal organs, eyes, brain, etc. the sores of the first two or three years of syphilis are contagious but painless, and hence do not prevent coitus when they occur in the genitals. after three years syphilis becomes less contagious, but there is no definite time limit and cases have been recorded in which contagious lesions occurred ten or fifteen years after the onset of the disease. a syphilitic man may transmit the disease to his children without infecting his wife, and these children may die before birth or may be born with congenital syphilis. this is due to the spermatozoa being infected with syphilis. however, this is fortunately not always the case, for many cured syphilitics have healthy children. a child affected with congenital syphilis (from the father) may infect the mother during pregnancy; this is called "syphilis by conception." congenital syphilis may also cause locomotor ataxy and general paralysis. it is difficult to enumerate all the infirmities which syphilis in the parents may transmit to the children. syphilis often renders marriage sterile. it is more frequent in men than in women, because the number of prostitutes is small compared with the number of men who go with them; a single prostitute may contaminate a whole regiment. on their part, the clients of prostitutes convey gonorrhea and syphilis to their wives, thus spreading in society this abominable plague and all the evils resulting from it. =soft chancre.=--the third kind of venereal disease is the soft chancre, thus called in distinction to hard chancre, which is the primary sore of syphilis. soft chancre is the least dangerous and the least common of the three diseases. it consists of an ulcer which remains localized to the genital organs (unless it is complicated with syphilis, which is frequent). the ulcerated parts are destroyed, but the sore heals generally without trouble. venereal diseases constitute one of the worst satellites of the sexual appetite. if men were not so ignorant and careless, it would be on the whole easy to avoid them and cause their gradual disappearance. one of the most absurd and infamous organizations which can be imagined is that of the state regulation of prostitution which, under the pretext of hygiene, compels prostitutes to be registered by the police or to live in brothels. they then undergo regular medical examination, the object of which is to prevent those who are diseased from practicing their trade, and compel them to be treated in hospital. we shall see later on that this system absolutely fails in its object, for the simple reason that the treatment of venereal diseases is by no means the panacea which many people imagine. the first attack of gonorrhea in man is very often spontaneously cured, while unskillful treatment often aggravates it. the relapses of this disease, on the other hand, especially in their chronic form, often resist all kinds of treatment and sometimes become incurable. the gonococci become hidden in the folds of the deep parts of the mucous membrane, both in men and women, and cannot all be destroyed. with regard to syphilis, mercurial treatment, although remarkable in its immediate effect, requires prolonged administration. and it is by such means that it is proposed to make prostitutes clean! there is only one radical cure for venereal diseases; that is not to contract them! however, this does not prevent us from recommending all those who are affected with them to seek immediate treatment by a skilled specialist. it is sad to see ladies of high position defending such barbarous institutions as proxenetism (the business of keeping brothels) and the regulation of prostitution, imagining that they thereby protect their daughters against seduction. such aberration can only be explained by suggestive influence on the part of men. among men, and especially among many physicians, the belief in the efficacy of regulation depends on a mixture of blind routine, faith in authority and want of judgment, combined perhaps with more or less unconscious eroticism. we shall consider this point in detail later on. one of the most tragic effects of venereal disease is the contamination of an innocent wife, whose whole life, hitherto chaste and pure, becomes brutally deprived of its fruits, and whose dreams of the ideal and hopes of happiness become swamped in the mire with which prostitution has contaminated her. is it surprising that love in such cases becomes replaced by bitterness and despair? some modern authors, such as brieux (_les avariés_) and andré couvreur (_la graine_), have pictured in their dramas and novels the tragic effects of venereal disease and heredity in the family, as well as their social consequences. what is deplorable, is the enormous proportion of persons who are infected with venereal diseases. sexual psychopathology with the exception of what is called sexual inversion and pathological love of the insane, sexual psychopathology (_i.e._, sexual pathology of mind) is chiefly limited to the domain of the sexual appetite, and originates mainly in fetichism (see chapter v), to which it is closely allied. let us first examine certain anomalies which partly concern the lower nervous functions. first of all a general question presents itself. hereditary or congenital sexual anomalies have been distinguished from those which are said to result from vicious habits. krafft-ebing, in his celebrated book which we have already quoted, makes a capital difference between these two causes, and stigmatizes the acquired vices with great indignation. i do not deny that there is reason for the distinction, but we must take exception to two fundamental errors in the manner in which the facts are presented. in the first place, the difference between hereditary and acquired sexual anomalies is only relative and gradual, so that it is necessary to avoid opposing one against the other. when an anomaly arrives spontaneously in the first sexual glimmer of the child's mind during its development, it is obvious that it is the expression of a profound hereditary taint, the result of blastophthoria or of unfortunate combinations of ancestral energies which have been associated by the conjugation of the two procreative germs. in such a case it is comparatively easy to prove that this is a pathological symptom independent of the will of the individual. but a continuous series of degrees in the intensity of a hereditary predisposition to a certain sexual anomaly, or to other anomalies or peculiarities apt to provoke this anomaly, insensibly connects the purely hereditary pathological appetite with that which is simply the effect of acquired vicious habits. in this way a strong hereditary predisposition may exaggerate a moderate normal sexual appetite, or may give it a pathological direction under influences which would have had no effect in a less predisposed individual. again, a slightly marked tendency to homosexuality in a man may increase under the seductive influence of a passionate invert, when the same individual would have lost this tendency if he had fallen seriously in love with a woman. on the other hand, the invert would have no influence on an individual who was not predisposed. if the hereditary disposition is very strong, it is developed spontaneously or under the influence of very slight circumstances. if it is mediocre, it may remain latent and even become extinct when favorable circumstances do not awaken it. when it is entirely absent the most powerful seduction and the most evil influence cannot give rise to the corresponding anomaly. these facts are sufficient to show what abuse is made of the term _acquired vice_. under this heading are designated a number of peculiarities the roots of which are to a great extent contained in the germ of heredity. the power of words on the human mind produces antinomies which do not really exist; such is the case with the terms _vice_ and _disease_. vices depend on a hereditary mnemic disposition, of varying strength and more or less pathological, or at any rate unilateral (_i.e._, developed in one direction only, or connected with a single group of objects); according to the good or evil influence of the environment they may develop, become limited or even fail to appear. inversely, we may say that many diseases, especially of the brain, are the source of vices. in the second place, it follows from this fundamental principle, that the vicious and apparently acquired conduct of certain individuals should not be considered as the product of perverted free will, but rather as the unfortunate and destructive result of a bad hereditary disposition developed under the influence of the bad habits of a corrupt environment. this environment being itself composed of men, there is a vicious circle of cause and effect which will not escape the mind of the thoughtful reader. bad habits are made by hereditary forces, and bad habits develop in their turn by custom, and may even create, by blastophthoria, vicious hereditary dispositions. the indignation of the moralists who condemn vicious persons are very like the temper of a child who strikes the fire which burnt him. reflex anomalies we have already mentioned vaginismus, which is often produced in women by the first coitus. priapism in man is somewhat analogous to vaginismus. it is produced by an exaggerated reflex irritability of the nerve centers for erection, and results in continual and painful erections, which sometimes end in ejaculation without sensation. another anomaly, more or less reflex and very frequent, produces voluptuous sensations and premature ejaculation after short and incomplete erections. in some nervous women also, the venereal orgasm occurs very rapidly and briefly. these anomalies belong to the domain of medicine and are of little importance for our subject. psychic impotence psychic impotence is a symptom which occurs accidentally in the normal state and very frequently in psychopathological conditions. a representation or idea of any kind, may suddenly paralyze by suggestive action the normal reflex mechanism of the center for erection. the blood ceases to accumulate in the corpora cavernosa and erection is either arrested or not produced at all. for example, a very excited lover, who has had strong erections at the moment when he prepared to copulate, may be suddenly overcome with the idea that he will fail, or by some other thought which paralyzes erection and renders coitus impossible. the remembrance of such a failure and the distress and shame attached to it, even efforts to produce erection indirectly for another attempt, constitute further causes of inhibition of the cerebro-spinal activity; they temporarily extinguish the sexual appetite, and prevent by their interference the automatic mechanism of erection which they strive to produce. the greater the fear of failure, the more the psychic impotence increases. this phenomenon may be limited to a certain woman, but it is more often general. sometimes an incomplete erection is produced, which is insufficient. this condition, which depends on auto-suggestion, is best treated by hypnotic suggestion. the sentiment of impotence powerfully depresses a man, and the depression increases his impotence. this condition often, however, disappears by itself. a special variety of psychic impotence is that in which erection takes place, but the idea of ejaculation predominates so much that it paralyzes the voluptuous sensations, and causes ejaculation to occur without pleasure, or even erection to cease. impotence may occur at the first coitus, or may come on gradually. it is often produced suddenly at the time of marriage in persons who have hitherto been very capable, even in don juans. men may have normal erections and pollutions, but these may be stopped by counter-suggestions at each attempt at coitus. habitual masturbation may in some cases contribute to produce impotence, but we must not generalize from such cases, nor construct a dogma from them, for continence may also be a cause of impotence. all these details, which are combined in all kinds of ways with other sexual troubles, but which are also produced alone in men who are otherwise normal, throw much light on the relation of the momentary mental state of man to his sexual appetite and the accomplishment of coitus. i do not know under what heading the following case should be placed: a young man of steady habits, and normal sexual appetite, had always abstained from sexual connection and masturbation. he only had emissions during sleep. the latter were accompanied by erotic dreams, but never produced an orgasm, while disagreeable sensations occurred on waking. he married for love a woman in whom the hymen was resistant, and vaginismus occurred on each attempt at coitus. these attempts failed constantly in spite of the most intense love and the most ardent desire for children on both sides. the husband's erections were incomplete, and he never had an ejaculation except when asleep. by the aid of hypnotism i succeeded in strengthening his erections, and an operation on the hymen cured his wife's vaginismus. the first attempts at coitus were not immediately successful, but suggestion acted after a time; finally the attempts were crowned with success, and followed by a first and second pregnancy. the children were healthy. in this case, the impotence, which had lasted about eighteen months, did not affect the mutual love and respect of the couple, because the husband's affection combined with his sexual appetite had sufficed for the happiness of a woman who was on the whole normal. this case is very instructive in several ways, for it gives a good example of the nature of the sexual instinct in woman; it also shows how the auto-suggestion of emissions occurring only during sleep may hinder copulation in the waking state. but such phenomena are extremely rare. it is hardly necessary to say that there is no true impotence in woman; but the same mental paralysis may occur as in man, preventing orgasm and often causing disgust. sexual paradoxy by this term is understood the appearance of the sexual appetite, or even of love, at an abnormal age. infantile paradoxy is, however, very different to senile paradoxy. infantile paradoxy must not be confounded with certain forms of masturbation, to which we shall return. some races, especially in the tropics, have a much earlier sexual development than others; depending more on race than climate. in some, sexual maturity occurs in boys between the age of twelve and fourteen, and in girls between nine and ten years, while in others the former are hardly mature at twenty and the latter before seventeen or eighteen. again, individual variations may be very great in the same race. but, owing to hereditary satyriasis or nymphomania, we sometimes in our own country see sexual appetite appear in children of eight, seven, or even three or four years of age, in a spontaneous manner without any external excitation. lombroso mentions the case of a girl three years old who had an irresistible tendency to onanism. i have myself observed the two following cases: ( ). a boy of seven years, the son of a brothel keeper, and a kind of satyr who committed great excesses, began spontaneously to attack little girls of his own age or even younger. he was so artful that all means failed in curing him of this habit, and he was sent to an asylum of which i was superintendent. he then tried to renew his exploits with a boy older than himself. he was also idle and disposed to all kinds of folly. he did not, however, attempt to copulate with adult women or men. his sexual organs were absolutely infantile, without any abnormal development. his paradoxy was thus of cerebral origin. ( ). _a girl of nine years was brought to my office addicted to self-abuse. upon examination, i found this child highly neurotic, the major part of her life had been under unhygienic atmosphere, case history, father psychopathic, had been in an insane asylum, mother ænemic. the child was sent to a state institution for girls and improved remarkably._ in this case i was told that there was no hereditary taint, but such statements prove nothing. individuals of this kind generally become criminals, or else give themselves up to masturbation or prostitution. occasionally, the sexual appetite may be preserved for a long time in old men, or reappear for a time, with or without sexual power, but as a rule, the paradoxy of old men is the initial symptom of _senile dementia_. as this disorder is only commencing when sexual excitation occurs, it is not noticed, and the patient is regarded as an immoral, vicious or criminal individual. i have seen a patient of this kind masturbate openly in an asylum, so great was his sexual excitation. in most old men affected with senile sexual paradoxy, the sexual appetite is directed toward very young girls or even children, which aggravates their case from the legal point of view. very often this appetite is perverted and assumes one of the forms we shall speak of later. some of these old men are still capable, but others are not, and then their excitation only manifests itself in manipulations of the genital organs, etc. such cases play a considerable part in law scandals. the patient (for so he must be called) often becomes the victim of blackmail on the part of vicious girls or children, incited by unnatural parents. one often sees also, at the onset of senile dementia, an old man become enamored of some prostitute or adventuress who makes him marry her and thus takes possession of his fortune. the law generally makes the matter valid, under the pretext that individual liberty must be respected. such sanction consists in reality in sacrificing a patient for the profit of a female swindler. sexual anÆsthesia or congenital absence of the sexual sense and appetite sexual sensations are so intimately connected with the sexual appetite that it is difficult to separate them. no doubt in the adult a certain degree of sexual appetite may exist without any voluptuous sensation, but this is a secondary phenomenon. complete sexual anæsthesia is very rare in man; it is not a special form of anomaly, but the reduction to zero of a normal sensation and the appetite which corresponds to it. the characteristic feature of these cases is that, contrary to what occurs in eunuchs and cryptorchids, not only the testicles, but all the correlative sexual attributes (the beard, voice, character, etc.) are normally developed, and are in no way inverted as in homosexual individuals. sexual anæsthesia causes no more suffering than color-blindness, but like the latter it occasions individual troubles resulting from misunderstanding. the sexual anæsthetic, having a more or less false idea of marriage, often marries in complete ignorance, and the results are then disastrous, thanks to our laws and customs. in women, sexual anæsthesia is very common. krafft-ebing is wrong in maintaining that in all such cases the women are always neurotic. a number of absolutely normal and intelligent women remain all their life completely cold from the sexual point of view, apart from the normally passive character of the female sex in coitus. it is rather the very libidinous woman who is pathological. we have seen that the normal sexual sentiment of woman is developed rather in the direction of love, and desire for children. erotic men often complain of the sexual coldness of their wives, which is disagreeable to them; for pleasure in one sex excites and completes that of the other. cold women submit to coitus as a duty, or at any rate only mentally enjoy their husband's caresses. sexual anæsthesia occurs normally in old age. it may occur at an earlier age, owing to destruction or atrophy of the sexual glands, great excesses, or on the contrary, extreme continence. certain diseases and psychoses may also cause it. the following are a few examples of sexual anæsthesia: ( ). a normally built man, of high culture and moral sense, was affected with complete sexual anæsthesia since birth. he occasionally had nocturnal emissions, and also matutinal erections, but no erotic images. when he arrived at mature age he had no idea of sexual intercourse, and was completely indifferent to everything concerning sexuality. he did not even comprehend anything relating to sexual affairs, and his replies reminded me of conversations with color-blind persons on the distinction between red and green! according to his ideas, marriage was an intellectual and sentimental union in which children came by themselves! he eventually married a young girl, well educated but extremely prudish. one can imagine the revelations which followed! the wife, who had a strong desire for children, soon perceived the sexual blindness of her husband. she became very unhappy and bitterly reproached him. the husband then became aware that there should be something in marriage which he had not taken into account; but the explanations of coitus by the medical man were useless, and hypnotic suggestion was incapable of producing the least sexual sensation. in spite of all this, the husband was full of respect and affection for his wife, but was incapable of simulating the least sexual appetite. as regards the wife, what she required was not coitus, which was simply a means to an end, but children. however, her prudery made her prefer this state of things to a divorce, which would create scandal. we may notice that in such cases erections are only produced mechanically during sleep, which renders coitus impossible. ( ). a timid but vain young man of retiring habits, sexually cold, had occasional nocturnal emissions sometimes accompanied by slightly erotic dreams. although better informed than the preceding case on sexual relations, his sexual appetite was almost entirely absent, and he regarded marriage as a purely intellectual alliance. he married an intelligent and passionate young girl whose sexual appetite was strongly developed, and at once began to treat her with great coldness, as a kind of domestic servant. the wife's family were in favor of divorce, but having pity on the husband, sent him to me for advice. i explained the matter to him, made him understand that the fault was entirely on his side, and that his first duty was to show affection for his wife, or if not, to accept divorce. the effect was purely psychical, and from this moment he became amiable and affectionate toward his wife. this was sufficient to cause the wife to give up the idea of divorce. i then told her that, on account of her husband's timidity and anomaly, the only thing to do was to reverse their roles, and for her to make the sexual advances. i have not heard anything more from this singular couple. ( ). a young man who had never had sexual connection before marriage, in spite of a strong sexual appetite, made the acquaintance of an intelligent young girl of excellent character. marriage followed, and the wife was loyal to her husband, but remained sexually cold. she was insensible to coitus and only regarded it as a disagreeable complement of love. in spite of this she was fond of caresses, devoted to her husband, and had several children. ( ). an intelligent and cultured man, normal from the sexual point of view, who had frequented prostitutes in his youth, but not excessively, married a rather nervous but apparently very amorous young woman. the marriage night produced on her the effect of a cold douche, and coitus offended and horrified her. the husband in his discomfiture took patience; but his love, which was never very strong, became shattered. to avoid all scandal each of the conjoints practiced dissimulation and adapted themselves more or less to each other. the wife allowed coitus, the husband tolerated her coldness. several children were born, but the family was unhappy, and after a few years divorce put an end to it. sexual hyperÆsthesia, or exaggeration of the sexual appetite this anomaly may be congenital, for example, in the sexual paradoxy of children. every one knows the don juans and messalinas with their insatiable appetites. these types of sexual hyperæsthesia are certainly less frequent and more abnormal in women than in men, but the intensity is as great or greater. sexual hyperæsthesia manifests itself by desires excited by every sensorial perception relating to the opposite sex, or simply by objects which recall it to the imagination; so that fetichism plays a great part in this condition. the feeling of satiety is hardly experienced at all, or only for a short time after each orgasm. nymphomaniacs and satyrs are possessed by an insatiable sexual desire, often associated with certain sensations of anguish. this hyperæsthesia, even when it is not hereditary, may be developed up to a certain point by continued or repeated artificial excitations. in women it is during or after menstruation that the sexual appetite and consequently sexual hyperæsthesia are generally strongest, but there are many individual variations in this respect, and sometimes the opposite occurs. the effect of sexual hyperæsthesia is to direct the appetite toward any object capable of satisfying it. when the other sex is wanting, masturbation is generally resorted to. all mucous membranes (anus, mouth, etc.) and even inanimate objects may serve to satisfy the pathologically exalted appetite of such individuals. men most distinguished in other respects may abandon themselves to the most foolish or abominable practices. _animals are often used to satisfy the hyperæsthetic sexual appetite in both sexes. the healthy woman is not prone to such desires, unless of psychopathic taint. men visit prostitutes, and become excited at the sight of every woman who is neither too old nor too repulsive. some individuals of this kind are pursued night and day by erotic images, which may even become an obsession and a veritable torment._ a further degree of sexual hyperæsthesia is called _satyriasis_ in man, and _nymphomania_ in woman. i have observed in women two very different varieties of sexual hyperæsthesia. in one, true nymphomania, the subjects are attracted toward man bodily and mentally with an elementary force; in these the whole brain follows the appetite in quite a feminine manner. other women, on the contrary, are driven to masturbation by a purely peripheral excitation; they have erotic dreams with venereal orgasms which torment rather than please them; but they do not fall in love easily, and may have difficulty in the choice of a husband. their mind alone remains feminine, full of tact and delicacy in its sentiments, while their lower nerve centers react in a more masculine and at the same time more pathological manner. there are many transitional forms between these two extremes. sexual hyperæsthetics are often unhappy, and consult the physician for relief from the perpetual excitation which torments them. they attempt to master themselves and check their appetite in all ways, and are sometimes affected with nervous or mental depression. it is important, however, to recognize the fact, that many sexual hyperæsthetics remain quite fresh and active, and attain an advanced age, provided they escape alcohol and venereal disease. when sexual hyperæsthesia results chiefly from artificially acquired habits it may often be cured by hypnotic suggestion, and establishing self-control; but when it is hereditary and very intense, and especially when it is connected with infantile paradoxy or other anomalies, castration may be the only efficient remedy. when it is chiefly acquired, any strong diversion which turns the mind from sexual preoccupation to other subjects may have an excellent curative effect. the most intense hereditary cases may constitute a plague for the individual and for society, and it is then that castration may become a blessing by calming the obsessed patient, by giving him the opportunity for useful occupation, and by preventing him from abusing his fellows and procreating beings similar to himself. nymphomaniacs often have polyandrous instincts, and they then become more insatiable than men. several cases of this kind have been published in the press, and examples of such women are not rare in history. when a woman is possessed by passion she often loses all sense of shame, all moral sense and all discretion, as regards the object of her desires. she pays no attention to anything which is opposed to her passion, but may be full of reserve, tact and good-feeling in all other respects. cases of this kind, however, have always a more or less marked pathological character. in man, satyriasis is very frequent. it often happens that a husband continually forces his wife to coitus, even during menstruation. we have mentioned already the case of an old peasant of seventy who thus abused his poor old wife. in such cases conjugal infidelity very commonly occurs. the cynicism of such individuals may go so far that they have intercourse with prostitutes or servants in the presence of their wives, or even abuse their own children. the wife behaves in these cases in different ways according to her character. many tolerate everything and do not complain, for the sake of their children; others leave the husband or divorce him; some commit suicide. it would seem quite natural for nymphomaniacs to marry satyrs, but we must bear in mind the evil results for posterity from such an accumulation of the sexual appetite. masturbation or onanism the term onanism is derived from the name of onan, son of juda and suah and grandson of israel. according to the old testament, onan's father wished him to marry his brother's widow and have children by her; but this did not please onan, and he provoked ejaculation of semen by friction, in order to avoid having children by his sister-in-law. "this offended god who slew him." we have already shown that in the child the sexual appetite manifests itself in a kind of obscure presentiment and vague sensations in the genital organs. if a young man cannot satisfy his sexual appetite naturally, the latter when it increases in strength provokes erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions; or artificial excitation of the penis may be practiced to produce orgasms: the latter phenomenon is called _masturbation_. masturbation in man is performed by friction of the penis with the hand or against some soft body. in the latter case especially erotic images of naked women or female sexual organs is associated with onanism. this kind of masturbation may be called _compensatory_, because it does not depend on an anomaly of the sexual appetite, but serves to satisfy a natural want by compensation. there are a whole series of manipulations employed for the same object, which constitute the psychic equivalent of compensating masturbation. _in remote garrisons and in boys' schools the more libidinous individuals, usually those mentally tainted, often practice mutual masturbation or sodomy. this is the sex complex of the degenerate individual and in an effort to exterminate these pathological manifestations, they are being penalized by law, throughout the civilized world. it is unnecessary to prolong this enumeration. those we have mentioned are the most common and it is agreed that men who are addicted to these practices are decidedly psychopathic, whether it may be caused by faulty heredity or anomaly in the psychology of the individual, this still remains to be proven. in reality they are often normal in other respects, but simply affected with sexual hyperæsthesia. sometimes they are feeble-minded individuals who have recourse to such practices because they are derided by women. others are cynics, more or less vicious in other respects._ compensatory masturbation is extremely widespread, but it is as a rule neither recognized nor admitted because it is easy to conceal. although depressing for those whose will power is overcome by an excitation which they cannot conquer, it is relatively the least dangerous form of onanism. at the most it leads to a certain amount of nervous and mental exhaustion by abuse of the facility of thus procuring a venereal orgasm. the loss of substance from frequent seminal ejaculations is also more or less weakening, although the secretion from the prostate plays a much greater part than the semen. but what especially affects the nervous system, is the repeated loss of the will, and the failure of resolutions made many times to overcome the desire for orgasm. here, as elsewhere, effect is too often confounded with cause. because men of feeble will power are addicted to onanism, it is imagined that the latter is the cause of the weakness of will. in itself, a seminal ejaculation provoked by masturbation is no more dangerous than a nocturnal emission; both are often accompanied by nervous sensations which are more disagreeable and exhausting than normal coitus. i must, however, point out that the effects of moderate masturbation in the adult have been greatly exaggerated, either by confounding the effect with its cause, or for mercenary objects, by driving timid persons to charlatans or to prostitutes. the active sexual appetite of man, increased by the accumulation of semen, is absent in woman. she does not have nocturnal emissions accompanied by voluptuous sensations which spontaneously awaken sexual desire. for this reason a pathological sexual excitability is necessary to spontaneously provoke in woman voluptuous dreams or masturbation. for the same reason we cannot speak of compensatory masturbation in woman. onanism, however, is not uncommon among women, although less frequent than in men. it results either from artificial and local excitations, from bad example, or from pathological hyperæsthesia. when once the habit is acquired, repetition is produced by the difficulty of resisting voluptuous desires. women perform masturbation by friction of the clitoris with the finger, or by introducing various hard and rounded objects into the vagina and imitating the movements of coitus; often also by rubbing the crossed thighs against each other. in the insane, masturbation is sometimes practiced to an excessive extent. some hysterical women introduce objects into the urethra during masturbation and cause severe inflammation of the bladder. another variety of sexual excitation which is often substituted for coitus among women, is the practice of mutual licking of the clitoris with the tongue (_cunnilingus_). although not so dangerous as has been maintained, these habits are aberrations of the sexual appetite, and it is needless to say that every human being should abstain from them out of self-respect. the man who, for some reason or another, cannot obtain normal coitus should content himself with nocturnal emissions, and the woman with voluptuous dreams, and should both abstain from active and voluntary excitations. for my part, i consider prostitution, or "love" which is bought, as a variety of compensatory masturbation, and not as normal copulation. coitus with a prostitute, generally infected with venereal disease, who receives new clients continually, has as little affinity with love as with the normal object of the sexual appetite--reproduction; and its moral value is certainly inferior to that of onanism. a second form of masturbation occurs in very young children from accidental irritation; in boys from phimosis; in girls from itching due to worms (oxyuris) about the anus and vulva. innocent as regards its cause, this form of onanism may become dangerous by habit. attention should therefore be paid to phimosis and worms, and the former treated by circumcision and the latter by the usual remedies. a third kind of masturbation is caused by example and imitation. this often occurs in schools and among children in general; and in this way very precocious sexual excitation may develop and become a habit difficult to suppress. the onanism of young children is certainly worse than that which begins after puberty; it not only renders the child idle and bashful, or increases these faults; but it also interferes with nutrition and digestion and develops a tendency to sexual perversion and to impotence. it often ceases, however, after careful supervision, combined with physical exercise and fresh air, and direction of the attention to other things. on the whole, the danger of this form of onanism has also been exaggerated. in most cases it is cured, when it is not based on abnormal predispositions or on an indolent and feeble character. love and normal sexual intercourse are naturally the best remedies for masturbation due to seduction and habit, as soon as the subject has reached sexual maturity. we may include as a fourth form of masturbation the cases of paradoxy which we have mentioned previously. in this case onanism is produced spontaneously as the result of psycho-sexual precocity or hereditary pathological satyriasis. with the exception of the last paradoxical form which is based on incurable satyriasis, all the kinds of onanism which we have mentioned hitherto can only be successfully treated by kindness and confidence, combined with work and direction of the mind to wholesome and attractive subjects; not by threats or punishment. the new reformatory schools called _landerziehungsheime_ (vide chapter xvii) are an excellent remedy for onanism, for they keep the child occupied from morning to night and hardly leave him any time for bad habits; when he goes to bed he is too tired to do anything but sleep. however, great prudence and active supervision is required in these cases. the fifth class is constituted by the onanism of sexual inverts, and may be called _essential onanism_. this concerns men whose sexual appetite is directed toward their own sex instead of the other. they are called _homosexual_, and mutual onanism is, so to speak, the normal satisfaction of their inverted appetite. we shall refer to this again later on. while normal sexual intercourse is the best and most rational remedy for compensatory masturbation, there is no question of it here. marriage is the worst and most scandalous remedy in such cases. it is therefore of the greatest importance in order to judge of the nature of the masturbation, to inquire into the kind of erotic images with which it is associated. if, in the case of a man, the images are those of women, it is simply a case of compensatory masturbation; but if the images are masculine, it is a case of sexual inversion. if masturbation is not accompanied by any images, the question remains doubtful. in young children this is explained by the fact that the psycho-sexual irradiations are not yet developed; but after puberty the absence of images as an object of eroticism suggests a certain anomaly and sometimes depends on a latent tendency to inversion. =relation of masturbation to hypochondriasis.=--some onanists become much distressed, and reproach themselves for having spoilt their lives by their bad habit. they give way to lamentations before their doctor and their acquaintances, wring their hands with despair, and beg every one to come to their aid. they look upon themselves as poor sinners whose lives have been ruined, either by their own fault or by others. they have read lamert's "personal preservation," or other sensational books which excite both the fear and the sexual desire of weak characters, whom they are intended to exploit. these poor devils believe themselves lost, and are truly pitiable objects. these form the types which are paraded as terrible examples in books on onanism which make timid persons' hair stand on end. when these unfortunate onanists are questioned on all the circumstances of the act of which they accuse themselves, we generally arrive at the following results: we recognize that we have to deal with psychopathic or neurotic subjects more or less tainted by heredity, timid and shunning their fellows, easily impressed by imagination, possessed of unhealthy sentiments and ideas; in fact, hypochondriacs, predisposed to look upon every sensation or slight indisposition as a grave disorder threatening their health or life. they thus live in perpetual anxiety. this mental anomaly has for a long time preceded the onanism, even if they have masturbated, which is often even not the case. among the numerous patients of this kind that i have treated, there were many who had simply had nocturnal emissions since puberty, but they regarded themselves as lost men through masturbation! many others no doubt practice compensatory masturbation, generally because their timid nature prevents them from frequenting prostitutes, or committing other sexual excesses, while the way in which they analyze their sensations easily leads them to onanism. on the other hand, they are generally so afraid that they do not give way to excessive masturbation, perhaps only once or twice a week or even less often, so that the normal frequency of coitus, according to luther, is often not attained and seldom exceeded. among these persons we find few precocious or excessive onanists. i admit, however, that a hypochondriacal constitution predisposes somewhat to onanism. but, what i wish to lay stress upon, is that the onanists who are full of lamentation and self-reproach are neither the most numerous nor those who commit the greatest excess. the worst onanists, those who provoke several ejaculations daily, belong to the category of sexual hyperæsthetics. these have not the classical aspect attributed to them by tradition; they are not pale and terrified creatures, but rather lewd individuals who are early transformed into impudent don juans. they may be as courageous, as clever and as strong as others and yet be disposed to all kinds of evil tricks and follies. it is, therefore, not true, as is so often said, that it is possible to recognize a masturbator by his face or manner. these excessive onanists no doubt do themselves harm in various ways, but the great error of taking sexual hypochondriasis for the type of onanists, is to confound cause with effect. sexual hypochondriasis is in no way the effect of onanism, but precedes it, and onanism is rather its effect, or is simply associated with it. it is obvious that onanism, by its depressing effect, aggravates a mind beset with hypochondriacal anxieties. it results from these facts, first, that a sexual hypochondriac should be treated as a hypochondriac and not as an onanist; secondly, that the worst slaves of masturbation are not to be looked for among pale and dejected individuals. among women, especially young girls, hypochondriasis is not common and cases of sexual hypochondriacs who accuse themselves of masturbating are rare among them. women who masturbate generally keep their secret and are apparently very little affected by it. however, onanism does them nearly as much harm as men; it is true they have no loss of semen, but the repetition and intensity of the nervous irritation are greater than in man, and it is this which causes most exhaustion. in spite of this, it is curious to observe that women who masturbate are generally less ashamed than men, and are apparently less depressed by it. we must bear in mind that the loss of semen by masturbation has in man a peculiarly depressing effect, for it lacks its object and represents an absolutely abnormal satisfaction of the sexual appetite. it may be objected that this difference is due to another cause, that women who masturbate have less moral tone and are especially depraved individuals. i agree that this is often the case, but far from always. the intensity of the sexual excitability in women has nothing in common with their character; it may be associated with high intelligence, with high moral and æsthetic qualities, and even with a strong will. on the other hand, deficiency in moral sense and will may occur with sexual frigidity, and, as we have already seen, may lead to sexual excess without any voluptuous sensation, in accordance with the peculiarities of feminine sentiment. these facts show how complex are the causes of a given effect in the sexual domain. perversions of the sexual appetite or parÆsthesia of the sexual sensation we are here concerned with sexual appetite provoked by inadequate objects. krafft-ebing having made a profound study of this question we shall follow his subdivisions in the main. =perverted sexual appetite directed toward the opposite sex.=--(a.) _sadism_ (association of sexual desire with cruelty and violence). history shows us a number of celebrated persons who satisfied their sexual desire by making martyrs of their victims, up to complete butchery. the most atrocious types of this kind are perhaps assassins such as "jack the ripper," who lie in wait for their victims like cats, pounce on them, revel in their terror, assassinate them by inches, and wallow voluptuously in their blood. the term sadism is derived from the celebrated marquis de sade, a french author, whose obscene romances overflow with cruel voluptuousness. certain reminiscences of sadism are common both in man and woman. at the moment of highest excitation in coitus it is not uncommon for one or other of the couple to bite or scratch in the ecstasy of their amorous embraces. lombroso remarks on the brutal excesses of soldiers when excited after battle. this is so to speak an inversion of sadism as regards cause and effect. after the exaltation of combat, that of desire possesses the mind, as in the inverse direction exaltation of desire gives rise in certain cases to that of violence and thirst for blood. krafft-ebing draws attention to the fact that love and anger are the two most violent effective conditions, and are at the same time the two powers which provoke the most motor discharges. this explains why they may be associated in the delirium of unbridled passions. to these facts is added an atavistic relic of the instinct of man's ancestors, the males of whom fought furiously to conquer the females by violence, which provoked desire in them, after the subjection of the object of their sexual appetite. true sadism can, however, only become effective by the combination of two causes: ( ) by an exalted and absolutely pathological association of sexual desire with a sanguinary instinct, and with the desire to illtreat and overcome a victim; ( ) by an almost absolute absence of moral sense and sympathy, combined with a violent and egoistic sexual passion. it is evident that the slight more or less sadic impulses which may involuntarily occur in the performance of normal coitus, are quite exempt from the second of these causes. krafft-ebing maintains that sadism is usually, if not always, congenital and hereditary. sadism is for a long time restrained by fear, education or moral sentiments. it is only gradually, when normal coitus cannot procure for the perverted sexual appetite the satisfaction it requires, that the sadist gives way to his passion; this gives the latter a false appearance of acquired vice. the highest degree of sadism leads to assassination. in this way human tigers entice young girls into a wood and cut them to pieces. some begin by forcing them to coitus, after frightening them, or half strangling them; others masturbate in their ripped up entrails. but some others have no desire for coitus, nor anything resembling it, their desire being satisfied only by the sight of the terror, suffering and blood of their victim, whom they torture before killing. others again associate desire with the rage of a wild beast to such a point that they swallow parts of their victim's body and drink the blood. sadists become experts in the art of assassination without discovery. the cynicism with which some of them have described their sensations shows their cold indifference toward the tragic and the horrible. krafft-ebing describes a series of atrocious types of this kind, and unfortunately the press and the criminal law courts continually give us fresh examples. some sadists assassinate children, others men, when their perversion is complicated with pederasty or sexual inversion. (the story of bluebeard is probably based on the successive crimes of a sadic.) sadists do not always confine their attacks to living people; some of them are _necrophiles_, who violate dead bodies and cut them in pieces: others again kill animals, whose sufferings and blood serve to satisfy their desires. some sadists satisfy themselves by flogging prostitutes or pricking them till they bleed, while others prefer to martyrize their victims slowly, and thus procure the maximum of pleasure. others again are contented with scenes symbolical of servitude, in which women are compelled to adore and supplicate them, etc. the humiliation of women takes part in the sadist appetite of man and often degenerates into fetichism. simple imagination in which he plays the part of a tyrant, and which are complicated with onanism or normal coitus, often suffice to satisfy the sadist. some sadists soil themselves with the excrements of the woman they "love!" when sadism assumes the character of a symbol or a fetich, seminal ejaculation and sensation generally occur without contact with the woman's body. sadism is more common in men, but occurs also in women. messalina and catherine de médici are historical examples. the latter had her maids of honor flogged before her eyes, and said she was bathing in roses when she witnessed the massacre of the huguenots. women in whom sadism takes a milder form are contented with biting a man till he bleeds, during coitus. sadism appears to be most often an effect of hereditary alcoholic blastophthoria. (b). _masochism_ (association of sexual desire with submission to cruelty and violence). the term masochism is applied by krafft-ebing to a form of sexual perversion described by sacher-masoch in several of his romances. masochism is exactly the converse of sadism. the desire of the masochist is excited by humiliation, submission, and even blows; the pain he feels when he is flogged gives him intense pleasure. like sadism, this perversion may be incomplete. when it is complete the masochist is affected with psychic impotence and is incapable of normal coitus. ill-treatment and humiliation are alone capable of causing him erections, seminal ejaculations and pleasure. however, comedies representing his humiliation, or corresponding efforts of his imagination may succeed in replacing the reality and procure the desired effect. like sadism, masochism is hereditary and congenital. when the first sexual sensations are produced, the masochist child sighs for a dominating woman who will illtreat him and make him her slave. his imagination is transported by the idea of being on his knees, of being trodden under foot, or bound in chains by her, etc. the cruel heroine of his heart must ridicule and humiliate him as much as possible. corporal punishment with a beneficial object does not satisfy the true masochist. rousseau, in his "confessions," reveals the sexual feelings of the masochist. it is remarkable how far poetic conceptions are combined with the perversion of sexual sensations in masochists, leading them to dream of an imperious and cruel woman to whom they devote a love as humble as it is exalted, while normal coitus causes them no pleasure, and can sometimes only be accomplished with the aid of masochistic images. these images may also be accompanied by onanism. it is very common for masochists to become flagellants, and to be flogged or trampled on by prostitutes. but it often happens that they only feel pain instead of pleasure, when the comedy which they have started appears revealed in all its absurdity, showing them a woman paid to illtreat them, and not doing it for her own enjoyment. some masochists take pleasure in imagining themselves assassinated by a woman, or even cut in pieces. others organize theatrical performances in which imperious women play the part of judges, before whom they appear naked and are flogged and condemned to death. others again are contented with imagining these performances, combining them sometimes with coitus or masturbation. krafft-ebing is no doubt right in considering the lucubrations of the poet baudelaire, and his necrophile imagination of his own carrion hung on a gibbet and devoured by vultures, as a mixture of sadism and masochism. he sought out the most repulsive women of all races, chinese, negresses, dwarfs, giants, or modern women as artificial as possible, to satisfy his pathological instinct. the following case quoted by krafft-ebing from hammond, is typical: a married man and father of several children was sometimes subject to attacks during which he visited a brothel, where he chose two or three of the fattest women. he stripped the upper part of his body, lay on the floor, crossed his hands, shut his eyes and ordered the women to tread with all their force on his chest, neck and face. sometimes he required a still heavier woman or more cruel manipulations. after two or three hours he was satisfied, paid the women liberally and regaled them with wine, rubbed his bruises, dressed himself and returned to his office, to repeat this singular performance a week later. krafft-ebing describes, as masked masochism, certain cases of fetichism in which the nature of the fetich which causes sexual excitation and the manner in which it is used prove a desire for maltreatment and humiliation by a woman. this is especially the case with shoe and foot fetichism. among those who are affected with this pathological specialty, voluptuous sensations are produced when they are trodden on by a woman's shoes or feet. they even dream of women's shoes and feet. some of them put nails in their shoes, the pain of which gives them voluptuous sensations. lastly, the shoes alone, especially when they touch the penis, are sufficient to excite their sexual desire. other masked masochists are excited by the secretions or even excrements of women. i have been consulted by a typical masochist, who, being very religious, was convinced that his perverted sexual appetite was a sin. he therefore married, thinking that god and repentance would change him. but when married he naturally found himself absolutely impotent and incapable of coitus. if masochism is common in men, it is produced in women rather as an exaggeration in the domain of her normal sexual sensations, for it is to a great extent in harmony with her passive sexual role. woman does not like the weak man who submits to her. she prefers a master on whom she can lean. in fact, normal women do not like their husbands to ask advice from them too often, nor to be wanting in decision and self-confidence. on the contrary they like them to be firm and even somewhat imperious, provided they are not unkind. it is notorious that many women like to be beaten by their husbands, and are not content unless this is done. this appears to be especially common in russia. accentuated forms of pathological masochism are, however, rare in women. masochism presents a certain analogy with the religious ecstasy of fakirs and flagellants who flog themselves. these individuals appear to become exalted in a kind of ecstatic convulsion with the idea of pleasing god or gaining heaven by their martyrdom. we may add that, like sadism, masochism occurs in sexual inverts, but always having the same sex for its object. i know an old gentleman whose only pleasure consisted in receiving a shower of blows: as a boy, like rousseau he tried by all kinds of ruses to obtain corporal punishment: when he grew up this became impossible and he devised tricks to urge schoolboys to fight each other, pretending to be angry and exciting their spirit of contradiction: the boys then pretended to fight him, and this sufficed for the rest of his life to excite erections and seminal ejaculations. this gentleman was a lawyer and told me his history, hoping that suggestion might cure him. the eroticism produced by submission to pain and humiliation is often blended with that produced by performing acts of cruelty. these mixtures of sadism and masochism have been investigated by schrenk notzing, who concludes that they are intimately related. _fetichism_ (production of voluptuous sensations by contact with or by the sight of certain portions of the body or clothes of woman). we have already mentioned this symptom and have seen the part it plays in some forms of masochism. a masked form of fetichism forms part of the normal sexual appetite, in the sense that certain parts of the body or clothes, certain odors, etc., especially excite the sexual desire of many people by recalling the individual to whom they belong. therefore, parts of the body which normally excite sexual desire--the breasts, sexual organs, or other parts of the body usually covered--cannot be regarded as pathological fetiches. the true fetichist is a very pathological being, whose entire sexual appetite, often with all its irradiations in the higher sphere of love, if we can speak of love in such cases, is limited to certain objects connected with woman. the most common fetiches are women's handkerchiefs, gloves, velvet or shoes; or their hair, hands or feet, etc. in these cases the fetich plays the essential part, and is in no way associated with the image of a woman. the fetich is the sole object of "love." the sight or touch of the fetich, the pleasure of pressing it against the heart or the genital organs, are alone capable of producing erections and ejaculations. there are even fetichists whose sexual desire is only excited by the sight of certain feminine deformities, such as clubfoot, squint, etc. hairdressers, who masturbate after dressing women's hair, are well-known examples of fetichism. certain feminine costumes may serve as fetiches, and these are kept in some brothels to satisfy certain customers. shoe fetichism is more common than that of clothes or handkerchiefs. krafft-ebing mentions a typical case of the psychic irradiation of fetichism; the individual in question thought it immoral and scandalous that women's shoes should be exposed in shop windows. others blush when they see such things in the windows. fetichism is essentially a masculine perversion. i have been consulted by a fetichist who all his life had only felt erotic at the sight of shoes; later on he married, and his sexual desire becoming more and more concentrated on pointed and fashionable shoes, especially women's, but also men's, he could only obtain pleasure with his wife when she put on the shoes he was in love with, or when he put them on himself. the sight of shoes in shop windows always made him blush, while the female body made no impression on him. he could not buy the shoes he desired most, owing to a sentiment of shame, and the sight of them was often sufficient to produce erection and ejaculation. _exhibitionism._ there is a class of individuals, especially men, whose sole sexual desire consists in masturbating in the presence of women. they lie in wait behind some wall or bush, and masturbate openly when women pass that way. in these subjects an orgasm is only produced when they are observed by women. as soon as ejaculation has occurred they fly to avoid the police. they never attempt to molest the women whose presence excites them to this performance. these cases are not uncommon and naturally cause much scandal, so that the poor wretches seldom escape the police. these unfortunate persons who sometimes hold high social positions, have often been previously convicted, but cannot as a rule overcome their passion, which has much worse consequences for them than for the women and children whom they frighten or annoy. exhibitionism is not rare among insane women and i have myself treated two typical cases. i do not know whether it occurs in women of sound mind, but at all events they cannot be addicted to it without running great risk. =sexual inversion or homosexual love.=--however shocking or absurd the aberrations of the sexual appetite and its irradiations may be, of which we have spoken hitherto, they are at any rate derived from originally normal intercourse with adults of the opposite sex. those we have now to deal with are distinguished by the fact that, not only the appetite itself, but all its psychic irradiations are directed to the same sex as the perverted individual, the latter being horrified at the idea of genital contact with the opposite sex, quite as much as a normal man is horrified at the idea of homosexual union. this horror is, however, confined to sexual matters, and in no way concerns those of social life. it is therefore a question of sexual desire of man for man, and woman for woman. what we have to deal with here has no connection with compensation as in cases of compensatory masturbation or pederasty, which are practiced, for want of anything better, by individuals whose normal sexual appetite cannot be satisfied otherwise. when excitation and desire become too strong, the purely animal (spinal) irritation of the sexual appetite may drive a man or woman to satisfy themselves by means which would otherwise disgust them. a. _homosexual love in man._ it seems absurd that the whole sexual appetite and amorous ideals of a man can be directed all his life to persons of his own sex. this pathological phenomenon, however, is as common as it is certain, although its psychological and normal import has long been misapprehended, as much in judicial circles as by the general public. it is the inverts themselves, aided by psychiatrists, who have finally thrown light on the subject. an invert, named ulrich, announced himself publicly as the apostle of homosexual love, describing inverts under the name of _urnings_, a name which is still used in germany. ulrich and his disciples endeavored to prove an absurdity by maintaining that homosexuals are a special kind of normal men, and by attempting to obtain legal sanction for this kind of love. ulrich gives the name _dionings_ to men whose sexual appetite is normal, _i.e._, directed toward women. such a pretension appears necessarily ridiculous to every man whose sexual sense is normal, and it is obviously absurd to apply the term "normal" to a sexual appetite absolutely devoid of its natural object, procreation. but this is quite characteristic of the sentiments of inverts. hirschfeld, of berlin, has recently attempted to show that homosexuals constitute a variety of normal man; but he plays with words and facts, invoking the names of celebrated inverts, and wrongly asserts that inversion is not hereditary. from the first dawn of sexual feeling in youth, male inverts have the same feelings as girls toward other boys. they feel the need for passive submission, they become easily enraptured over novels and dress, they like to occupy themselves with feminine pursuits, to dress like girls and to frequent women's societies. they regard women as friends, as persons with whom they have a fellow-feeling. they generally, but not always, have a banal sentimentalism, they are fond of religious forms and ceremonies, they admire fine clothes and luxurious apartments; they dress their hair and "fake" themselves with a coquetry which often exceeds that of women. they are not all like this, but one or other of these traits predominates in different individuals. their sexual appetite, usually very strong and precocious, begins with an exalted love for some male friend. i have treated a great number of inverts and have always been struck with the intensity of their passion. among other cases, i may mention that of an invert hospital attendant, who fell madly in love with one of his comrades and covered ten meters of white tape with the name of his beloved. the most passionate love letters, vows of fidelity till death, the most ferocious jealousy toward other friends of their beloved, and even ceremonies symbolical of marriage, are daily events among the homosexuals. the invert does not so easily become enamored of another invert as of normal men. these have a special attraction for him, but as they generally repulse him with disgust, or threaten to expose or exploit him, he is often obliged to content himself with his fellows. these gentlemen form among themselves a secret brotherhood, a kind of freemasonry which is recognized by signs. the first appearance of the homosexual appetite with its youthful impulses, causes love and happiness to appear to the invert in a special aspect, determined by the inverted irradiation of his sexual appetite. it represents the aim of his life as an amorous union with his beloved, and shapes his idylls, his romance and his ideal to this end. but later on, when his sexual desire increases and when he discovers that the majority of men feel differently to him, that the human race is reproduced by the union of men and women, etc., he becomes unhappy. he perceives that it would be both ridiculous and dangerous to reveal his inner feelings, and generally gives way to masturbation. but all social barriers which oppose his appetite only increase his desire, and he becomes less and less able to dominate his passion for certain young men. the disgust and indignation of the latter, when they discover that they are not the object of simple affection but of perverted sexual love, are expressed only too clearly, and the poor invert sees himself condemned to perpetual torment in trying to hide his most violent desires and his most intimate and ideal aspirations, and finally to live in continual dread of being betrayed and prosecuted. it is thus easy to understand that he is happy in the discovery that his fellows form a secret society, and he associates with them immediately, when his moral sense and will are not strong enough to be proof against it. _if the invert succeeds in finding a male to his liking and with a similar degenerative state of mind to his own, he will pay him the attention that the normal man would to a woman. it is therefore reasonable to believe that this mode of inversion is likewise an expression of pathological manifestation of the individual; usually accompanied by neurosis and a like corresponding deficiency in the physical makeup of the individual._ the invert's ideal would be to obtain a legal license for marriage between men; but they are not very constant in their love and are much inclined to polyandry. sexual love for women inspires them with contempt; they regard it as low and disgusting, at the most only good for the production of young inverts! homosexual love has played a much greater part in the world's history than is generally believed. the count de platen and sapho were inverts. the inverts themselves maintain that it was the same with plato, frederick the great, socrates, etc.; but this is not proved. in the east and in brazil, homosexual love is very common. my experience agrees with that of krafft-ebing, that homosexual love is pathological in nature, and that nearly all inverts are in a more or less marked degree psychopaths or neurotics, whose sexual appetite is not only abnormal but usually also exalted. insane inverts, such as king louis ii of bavaria, a great number of the insane, affected, for example, with _pseudologia phantastica_ (pathological swindlers), and who are also homosexual, show the intimate relationship which exists between sexual inversion (also called "uranism") and the psychoses. i agree with rudin that the psycho-pathological phenomena presented by the majority of inverts are primitive and hereditary, and that they are hardly ever the effect of their tormented life, as hirschfeld, ulrich and their disciples maintain. the vexations, anxieties and other torments that they suffer may no doubt play a part in developing certain nervous conditions previously latent, but they can never create hereditary taints. we may admit that sexual inversion corresponds to a kind of partial hermaphrodism, in which the sexual glands and copulatory organs have the characters of one of the sexes, while the brain has, to a great extent, those of the other sex; but the phenomenon is none the less pathological. the inverts with whom we have most to do, especially in public asylums and at the courts of justice, are cynics and debauchees in spite of the ideal which they parade; but we should be wrong in concluding that this is always the case. the cynics make themselves heard because they do not restrain themselves. in my private practice i have known many very well-conducted inverts, possessing the most delicate sentiments, who had become pessimists owing to the shame and grief of a state of mind which they hid from the world. inverts of this class often commit suicide, after having carried on in silence a desperate struggle against their morbid appetite, because they prefer death to defeat, which they consider a dishonor. the victims of these tragedies deserve all our pity, and sometimes our respect. such individuals generally hold aloof from the brotherhood of inverts which they look upon with fear or disgust. in the picture of homosexuals there are two lamentable shadows, which are largely due to the severity with which most legislations track and condemn these unfortunate beings. ( ). as soon as an invert realizes his abnormal and dangerous situation in society, in which he feels a pariah, he often makes up his mind to follow the advice of ignorant friends, and even, alas, of ignorant doctors, and try and cure himself by marriage. sometimes he begins by visiting a brothel to see if he is capable of normal coitus with a woman. in this he often succeeds, if he is able to picture to himself a man in the person of the prostitute. he tries to persuade himself that the disgust which he felt at this experimental coitus was due to the fact that the "love" was bought; and he then decides to enter into conjugal life. this is at the same time the greatest absurdity and the worst action possible for him to commit, for his wife becomes a martyr and soon feels herself deceived, abandoned and despised. the invert treats her as a servant; he rarely has sexual intercourse with her, sometimes not at all, and only performs it with repugnance with a view to the procreation of young inverts, who will rise to his ideal. he invites his male lovers to his house and they indulge in orgies, especially when the wife, despised and neglected, has separated from him. such marriages, which are fortunately less common since this question has been better understood, generally end in divorce, preceded by bitter and mutual deceptions. it is really criminal to favor them when we know what they lead to. (_it is against such unions, and against sexual indulgence of this nature, that the law ought to exert itself._) ( ). a second very grave result of homosexual love is the continual blackmail which is levied on inverts by all kinds of scamps. public urinals are common meeting places for inverts. the blackmailers, who know this very well, follow them there and offer themselves for money; but as soon as they find out the name of their victim and his financial position, they begin to extort hush-money, threatening to prosecute him if he does not pay what they ask. if the invert is rich or of high position he has only to yield to the extortion, emigrate or commit suicide. in this way the life of most well-to-do inverts is ruined by perpetual anxieties, emotions and torments, because their morbid appetite instinctively urges them to abandon themselves to men who feel differently to themselves. _moll, krafft-ebing and hirschfeld have written at great length on sexual inversion. the law takes a just point of view and is generally severe as regards this anomaly, especially in germanic countries. even homosexual love that does not affect minors nor insane persons, is a sign of degeneracy, but produces no offspring and consequently dies out by means of selection. we hope, therefore, that this type may be extinct some day, although it is still decidedly numerous, principally in the larger cities of the world. when a normal man is tormented by an invert, it is much easier to get rid of him than for a young girl to protect herself against the importunities of a man._ it is quite another thing when the invert pays his attentions to minors, or when his appetites are complicated with dangerous sexual paræsthesias, such as sadism. not long ago the terrible case of a sadist invert, dippold, startled civilized europe. by the aid of cruelty and intimidation this wretch martyrized two young boys confided to him for their education to such a degree that one of them died. legal protection of the two sexes against sexual abuses of all kinds should be extended at least to the age of seventeen or eighteen. sexual inversion has two curious results which have not received sufficient attention. human society regards it as quite natural and without danger for individuals of the same sex to bathe, sleep and live together. in lunatic asylums, prisons, reformatories, etc., men are attended to by men, and women by women. the vow of chastity of catholic priests and nuns leads in the same way to separation of the sexes. in all these customs sexual inversion has not been taken into consideration. it is not surprising, therefore, that homosexuals take advantage of this state of affairs and seek these situations which give them the opportunity for satisfying their perverted passions without running much danger. _they willingly choose a career suitable for their degenerate purposes, and especially that of attendant in lunatic asylums. in the latter case they take advantage of the mental condition of the patients and their incapacity to make complaints. in public baths inverts can freely enjoy the sight of naked men._ so far we have only spoken of complete inversion; but there are transitional stages. many individuals are neutral, animated by sensations floating between the two sexes. krafft-ebing even speaks of psycho-sexual hermaphrodites, who are equally attracted by either sex, and cohabit sometimes with one, sometimes with the other. i knew a married man who was very capable with his wife but in spite of this was unfaithful to her, both with men and with other women. he was convicted several times for pederasty with men and young boys, and confessed to me that he had more pleasure from homosexual intercourse than from normal connection with women, but could satisfy himself either way. an incomplete invert declared to me that his ideal would be a man. along with these cases there is a series of homosexuals in whom it is assumed that inversion has been acquired, because they commenced with a normal sexual desire for women. after being seduced by homosexuals, who initiate them in mutual onanism or pederasty, they are suddenly or gradually disgusted with women and become inverts (vide _suggestion_). in reality, these are only relatively cases of acquired inversion. if we except the cases which depend on pure suggestion of which we shall speak later, there is a latent hereditary disposition to inversion, which is awakened on the first occasion and then develops strongly. it is easy to prove that men with normal sexual instincts immediately abandon the habits of onanism or pederasty which they have contracted through bad example or seduction, or by compensation for the want of the normal object, as soon as they can obtain normal sexual intercourse with one or more women. it is, therefore, false to regard homosexual sensations as depending on vice and depravity: they are a pathological product of abnormal hereditary sexual dispositions. at any rate, this is a general rule which has few exceptions. sexual inversion is so widespread that in certain countries, for instance brazil, and even in some european towns, there are brothels with men instead of women. i will mention here a very curious case of purely psychical but complete inversion of the sexual personality, combined with complete sexual anæsthesia: a man, aged , the son of an inebriate, with one imbecile sister. of delicate constitution, but very intelligent, he was possessed since infancy with the idea that he was a girl, although his genital organs were properly formed and were normally developed at puberty. he had a horror of the society of boys, and of all masculine work, while he was quite happy in performing all the household duties of a woman. an irresistible obsession urged him to dress himself as a woman, and neither contempt, ridicule, nor punishment could cure him of it. attempts to give him employment as a boy in a small town failed completely. his girlish manners made him suspected by the police, who took him for a girl dressed in boy's clothes, and threatened to arrest him. when he was compelled to put on male attire he consoled himself with wearing a woman's chemise and corset underneath. i carefully examined this individual and found him affected with complete sexual anæsthesia. he had a horror of everything connected with the sexual appetite, but the idea of sexual intercourse with men was still more repugnant than that of normal coitus with women. although the testicles and penis appeared absolutely normal, he never had erections. his voice was high pitched and his whole manner suggested that of a eunuch. this case is very instructive, for it clearly shows how the psycho-sexual personality may be predetermined by heredity in the brain alone, independently of the sexual organs, and even act without a trace of sexual sensation or appetite. this was undoubtedly a case of alcoholic blastophthoria and not ordinary heredity. krafft-ebing describes the following scene, taken from a berlin journal, dated february, , which gives a good idea of the manners and customs of the homosexual fraternity: "_the misogynist's ball._ almost all the social elements of berlin have their club or meeting place--the fat, the bald, the bachelors, the widowers--why not the misogynists? this variety of the human species, whose society is hardly edifying, but whose psychology is peculiar, held a fancy dress ball a few days ago. the sale, or rather the distribution of tickets was kept very private. their meeting place is a well-known dancing hall. we enter the hall about midnight. dancing is going on to the music of a good orchestra. a thick cloud of smoke obscures the lamps and prevents us at first from distinguishing the details of the scene. it is only during an interval that we can make a closer examination. most of the people are masked, dress coats and ball dresses are exceptional. "but what do i see? this lady in rose tarlatan, who has just pirouetted before us has a cigar in her mouth and smokes like a trooper. she has also a small beard, half hidden by paint. and she is now talking to an "angel" in tights, very _décolleté_, with bare arms crossed behind her, also smoking. they have men's voices and the conversation is also masculine, for it turns on 'this cursed tobacco will not draw.' two men dressed as women! "a clown in conventional costume leaning against a pillar is speaking tender words to a ballet dancer, with his arm round her waist. she has a titian head, a fine profile and good figure. her brilliant earrings, her necklace, her shapely shoulders and arms seem to proclaim her sex, when suddenly disengaging herself from the embracing arm she turns away with a yawn, saying in a bass voice, 'emile, why are you so tiresome to-day?' the novice hardly believes his eyes: the ballet dancer is also a man. "becoming suspicious, we continue our investigations, beginning to think that the world is here upside down. here is a man who comes tripping along; but no, it cannot be a man, in spite of the small and carefully curled mustache. the dressing of the hair, the powder and paint on the face, the blackened eyebrows, the gold earrings, the bouquet of flowers on the breast and shoulder, the elegant black gown, the gold bracelets, the fan held in a white-gloved hand--none of these things suggest a man. and with what coquetry he fans himself; how he dances and skips about! nevertheless, nature has created this doll in the form of a man. he is a salesman in one of the large sweet shops, and the ballet dancer is his colleague! "at the table in the corner there is a convivial meeting; several elderly gentlemen are gathered round a group of very _décolleté_ 'ladies' sitting over a glass of wine and cracking jokes which are anything but delicate. 'who are these three ladies?' 'ladies! laughs my better-informed companion; well, the one on the right with the brown hair and short fancy dress is a hair-dresser; the second, the blonde with the pearl necklace is known here by the name of miss ella, and he is a ladies' tailor; the third is the celebrated lottie.' "but this cannot be a man? the waist, the bust, the delicate arms, the whole appearance is feminine! i am told that lottie was formerly an accountant. to-day she, or rather he, is simply 'lottie,' and takes pleasure in deceiving men as to his sex as long as possible. at this moment lottie is singing a song in a contralto voice acquired by prolonged practice, which a female singer might envy. lottie has also taken female parts on the stage. nowadays the former accountant is so imbued with his female role that he seldom appears in the street except in woman's attire, and even wears an embroidered nightdress. "on closer examination of the persons present, i discovered to my astonishment several acquaintances. my bootmaker, whom i should never have taken for a misogynist, appears to-night as a troubador with sword and plumed cap; and his 'leonora,' in the costume of a bride, generally serves me with havanas in a cigar store. when leonora removed her gloves i recognized her at once by her large chilblained hands. here is my haberdasher promenading in an indelicate costume as bacchus; also a diana, dressed up atrociously, who is really a waiter at a café. "it is impossible to describe the real 'ladies' who are at this ball. they only associate with each other and avoid the women-hating men; while the latter also keep to themselves and absolutely ignore the fair sex." =b. feminine sexual inversion and homosexual love.=--sexual inversion is not rare in women, but manifests itself less publicly than the corresponding masculine inversion. it is called lesbian love or _saphism_; and the women inverts are known as _tribades_. they are described in history, but may also be observed in modern towns. _they satisfy their pathological appetite by degenerate practices heretofore mentioned in harmony with their inverted mentality._ the feminine invert likes to dress as a man and feels like a man toward other women. she goes in for manly games, wears her hair short, and takes to men's occupations in general. her sexual appetite is often much exalted and then she becomes a veritable feminine don juan. i have known several women of this kind, who held veritable orgies and induced a whole series of young girls to become their lovers, in the way we have just indicated. here again, as in masculine inversion, there is a true irradiated love. inverts want to marry and swear eternal fidelity; they celebrate their betrothals, even openly, the invert in male attire representing the bridegroom; or sometimes they have secret symbols, such as exchanging rings, etc. these sexual orgies are often seasoned with alcohol. _the excesses of female inverts exceed those of the male. this is their one thought, night and day, almost without interruption. jealousy is also as strong as among male inverts. however, these nymphomaniac inverts are not very common._ a characteristic peculiarity of feminine inversion depends on the irradiation of the sexual appetite in woman (_vide_ chapters iv and v). we have seen that there is much less distinction in woman between love and local sensations of pleasure, and between friendship and love, than in man. when a woman invert wishes to seduce a normal girl, it is easy for her to do so. she first wins her affection by the aid of the caresses of an exalted platonic love, which is not uncommon among women; kisses, embraces, and sleeping in the same bed are much more common among girls than boys, and little by little the invert succeeds in causing voluptuous sensations in her victim. very often the object of these caresses does not recognize that there is anything abnormal in all this, or gives way to her sensations without reflection, and then becomes amorous in her turn. i will give an example: a female invert, dressed as a young man, succeeded in winning the love of a normal girl, and was formally betrothed to her. soon afterwards the woman was unmasked, arrested and sent to an asylum, where she was made to put on woman's clothes. but the young girl who had been deceived continued to be amorous and visited her "lover," who embraced her before every one, in a state of voluptuous ecstasy, which i witnessed myself. when this scene was over, i took the young girl aside and expressed my astonishment at seeing her continue to have any regard for the sham "young man" who had deceived her. her reply was characteristic of a woman: "ah! you see, doctor, i love him, and i cannot help it!" what can one reply to such logic? a psychic love of this kind is hardly possible in man; but if we go to the bottom of the matter and study the nature of woman, we can understand how certain feminine exaltations may be unconsciously transformed into love, platonic at first, afterwards sexual. at first, "they understand each other so well," and have so much mutual sympathy; they give each other pet names, they kiss and embrace, and perform all kinds of tender actions. finally, a graduated scale of caresses leads almost unconsciously to sexual excitation. _this is how it happens that a normal woman, systematically seduced by an invert, may become madly in love with her and commit sexual excesses with her for years, becoming herself essentially pathological. the case only becomes really pathological when it is definitely fixed by long habit; a thing which easily occurs in woman, owing to the constant and monogamous nature of her love._ krafft-ebing's cases show the same phenomena, (for instance the invert called "count sandor" and her victims). in these cases also young girls, seduced by inverts, fell into despair and even threatened to commit suicide when their seducers abandoned them. on the other hand, when a normal man, seduced by an invert, practices mutual masturbation the affair remains localized and limited to purely animal sensations of pleasure which do not irradiate to his psychic life; such irradiations only occur in the invert, so that his victims are always ready to abandon him without the least regret. if we except children, it therefore follows that the so-called male victims are nearly always blackmailers, or simply offer themselves for money. in fact, the normal man entirely separates the sympathy, or even the exalted affection, which he feels for another man, from all sexual sensations, and has not the least desire to kiss or caress his best friend, still less to have sexual intercourse with him. all sensual caresses between men are, therefore, suggestive of inversion even in places where women are absent. in the normal woman, on the contrary, as we have already mentioned, sentiments of exalted sympathy easily provoke the desire for kisses and caresses, and these caresses often cause in women a certain amount of vague sensual pleasure. when this pleasure leads to progressive tenderness and ends in mutual onanism, etc., it nevertheless remains intimately connected with psychic exaltations and sentiments of sympathy, from which it cannot be separated as in man. in a former chapter we have described the difference between the two sexes, but nowhere is it more distinctly shown than in the relations between a female invert and her victims. it is therefore much more difficult in woman than in man to distinguish in particular cases between the hereditary disposition to inversion, and saphism acquired by seduction or habit. the latter is common in prostitutes and libidinous women. as we have already said, the pure female invert feels like a man. the idea of coitus with men is repugnant to her. she apes the habits, manners and clothes of men. female inverts have been known to wear men's uniforms and perform military service for years, and even behave as heroes; their sex sometimes only being discovered after their death. =sexual appetite for children. (pederosis.)=--it may be questioned whether this is a special category, for many sexual assaults committed on children are simply the effect of senile dementia, or abuse of children to satisfy an otherwise normal sexual appetite. i have, however, observed cases where children were so specially, or even exclusively, the object of the sexual appetite, that i cannot doubt the existence of a special hereditary perversion in this direction. no doubt, most of those who abuse children are also capable of coitus with women, or else they are inverts, sadists, etc.; but with many of them sexual passion for children is so marked from their youth upward, that it shows a special hereditary disposition. for this pathological disposition, thus defined, i propose the term _pederosis_; that of _pederasty_ applying to degeneracy between man and man, whatever causes lead to it. krafft-ebing, who does not believe in the existence of a hereditary pederosis, gives the name _erotic pedophilia_ to the abuse of children by depraved persons. the following are cases of exclusive and hereditary pederosis: a talented artist, possessing high moral sentiments, was affected from his youth with a sexual appetite exclusively directed toward little girls of five or six years. at the age of twelve they ceased to attract him. he was quite indifferent to adults of both sexes, and never accomplished coitus. _having recognized in good time the anomaly of his appetite, he succeeded in mastering it all his life, and through education on the subject as well as a general physical development, he neutralized these morbid desires, particularly through the training of his mind to cleaner and more wholesome topics. a great help in this type of condition is work therapy. his moral sentiments and principles were always strong enough to prevent him going any further, and he eventually obtained relief. but this condition gave rise to increasing nervous irritation and melancholic depression._ in another man, the sexual appetite, also perverted since its origin, was directed only toward boys of twelve or sixteen. at one time girls of the same age excited him, while he was quite indifferent toward adult women and men. in rare cases the sexual appetite of certain women is directed toward little boys. =sexual appetite for animals. (sodomy or bestiality.)=[ ]--a human sexual appetite exclusively directed toward animals is certainly not common. coitus between man and animals usually takes place for want of the opportunity for normal satisfaction, or else as the result of satyriasis, nymphomania or desire for change. i have observed it especially in idiots and imbeciles who are ridiculed by girls. to console themselves, they give vent to their feelings with a patient cow or goat in the silence of the stable: for this act they get several years imprisonment, for the law on this point is severe. certain degraded libertines satisfy their hyperæsthetic and perverted appetites with goats or even with large birds or rabbits. there are, however, cases where a pathological sexual appetite is specially directed toward animals, and it is curious to observe the frequent preference of certain individuals for small animals which they skin (fowls, geese, rabbits), and thus put to death. _bestiality is not rare in women who are also subject to this filthy, obnoxious and degenerative practice. even if we put aside cases of torture inflicted on small animals and if we avoid all prejudices, we can still, in all normality, consider bestiality as a crime, manifested by the depraved mind. in fact, considered from the point of view of law and humanity, bestiality is one of the most indecent of all the pathological aberrations of the sexual appetite. human imagination only has marked it with the stigma of moral depravement and has made it a crime. but it is recognized scientifically that it is a state of mental inferiority and often a sign of idiotic tendency, usually accompanied by a case history, tainted heredity and highly neurotic constitution. Æstheticism has reason for complaint, and more than one painter or sculptor has represented the union of leda with the swan. it is certainly much better for society, for an idiot or an imbecile to be castrated than for him to make a girl pregnant and breed more idiots._ _in cases of this kind which i have known and which were brought to justice, i consider that the real sinner, the sodomite, should be confined to an insane asylum under medical attention, and not, as at present, to be condemned to imprisonment, thus making a martyr of him for no reason, and putting the ban of society upon him. it is needless to say that cases of sodomy complicated by cruelty or sadism, should be judged differently._ there are also other hereditary or constitutional perversions, more or less characteristic, of the sexual appetite, but we cannot enumerate all of them. we may mention, however, the erotic excitement which some men feel at the sight of statues of women, which urges them to masturbate against these statues. sexual anomalies in the insane and in psychopaths when one is familiar with the population of a lunatic asylum, one is struck by a singular phenomenon, from the sexual point of view. a great number of insane women give evidence of intense sexual desire. this desire is manifested in some by incessant masturbation; in others by obscene conversation; in many others, by imaginary love, sometimes sensual, sometimes platonic; often by direct provocation to coitus addressed to the medical officers; but especially by perpetual scenes of jealousy, and often by reciprocal suspicions regarding their sexual life. in fact, a lunatic asylum reveals to us, in the form of repulsive caricatures, all gradations and variations of a more or less degenerate feminine sexual life, coquetry, wearing all kinds of ornaments, jealous anger, erotic excitement, etc. the sexual excitation of the insane often makes them soil themselves with urine and excrements, and heap insults on persons whom their diseased imagination suspects of sexual assaults or immodest acts toward themselves or others. they have a tendency to believe themselves betrothed or married to kings, emperors, jesus christ or god. pregnancy and childbirth play a large part in their delirium. some patients imagine themselves pregnant and pretend that they were fecundated secretly. afterwards they believe that some one has taken away their child while they were asleep. one of my former patients once accused me of going to her bed at night and fecundating her every week. she also accused me of having hidden the hundreds of children which i was supposed to have procreated with her, and martyred them. owing to these hallucinations she heard their cries day and night. another patient, affected with curable acute mania, was so erotic during her attacks that she made advances toward all the doctors who visited her. her mind was full of such erotic images that after her cure she was frightened of being pregnant, although she had passed the whole of her time of detention under supervision by female attendants. women who in their normal state are most modest or sexually cold may be most erotic when they become insane, and may even behave as prostitutes. this is especially observed in periodic hypomania. it is a well-known fact in the female divisions of lunatic asylums, that the doctors are always surrounded by erotic patients, who catch hold of their clothes and pinch them, and try and embrace or scratch them according as they are amorous or jealous, so that they often have trouble in escaping from these signs of violent love or furious jealousy. on the other hand, in the male divisions of asylums, one is astonished at the indifference and profound sexual apathy of nearly all insane men. some practice masturbation and others attempt pederasty, but all with a philosophical calmness due to their dementia. young women may even go among them without any fear of assaults or indecent language. it is only a few of the most violent who are exceptions to this rule. a young lady doctor, assistant medical officer to the asylum at zurich, made her visits alone among all the males, even the most violent, without any inconvenience; while, in the female divisions, she was approached by the erotic patients as much as were the male assistants. i mention this fact because some people wrongly imagine that the sexual excitation of insane women is due to the visits of male doctors. these facts are very striking and furnish perhaps the best proof that the feminine sexual appetite is especially situated in the higher brain, while the masculine appetite is situated more in the lower cerebral centers, as we have shown above. mental alienation is due to irritations of the higher brain, and this explains why in women it lets loose such violent sexual passions and images, and why there is so little of this in men. the sexual pathological symptoms of the insane are as follows: ( ). _erotomania_ (satyriasis and nymphomania), or abnormal exaltation of the sexual appetite. this is especially seen in acute mania, in the early stages of general paralysis and senile dementia, also temporarily or permanently in other psychoses. it is manifested by sexual excesses, obscene language or excessive masturbation. all these symptoms disappear after the attack of insanity. ( ). _sexual anæsthesia_ or _hypoæsthesia_ or even _impotence_ may occur in the later stages of general paralysis and senile dementia. at the commencement of general paralysis there is often violent sexual desire combined with more or less complete impotence. the same thing occurs, as we shall see, in alcoholism. ( ). subjects affected with systematic delirium of persecution and grandeur (paranoia) sometimes commit atrocious sexual excesses, and often tyrannize and torment in a terrible way the women who are their victims. it is especially in the religious forms of this delirium, combined with fanatic ecstasy, that the most repulsive sexual orgies occur. i have treated a patient with paranoia who, full of pious sayings, regarded himself as a kind of prophet. he made a poor girl and her mother sleep in his room and had connection with them alternately. finally, he mixed his semen in coffee with the girl's menstrual blood and made her drink the mixture, pretending that this was a religious ceremony intended to produce a strong race. in the end he set fire to the house of these poor women. subjects affected with partial paranoia often turn the heads of susceptible women by the aid of ascetic religious phraseology, to gratify afterwards their sexual passions. the worst cases are those who are able to hide from the public their delirious ideas, and pass for normal individuals, misunderstood victims, or even saints. i have examined a very orthodox clergyman, highly esteemed by his congregation on account of his ascetic and enthusiastic preaching. in his own home he illtreated his wife, half strangled her, and exacted all kinds of sexual depravity. unfortunately, the nature of his delirium was not very evident, and he dissimulated so well that the jurists would not admit his irresponsibility, in spite of my medical certificate. his wife was obliged to run away to escape from her martyrdom. the community of property in force in this family completely ruined this unfortunate woman. the husband was not a hypocrite, but simply insane. volumes could be written on sexual atrocities committed by such people. i will mention briefly the systematic delirium directed toward pathological love. this is a very common symptom in insane women who combine their amorous sentiments for man with the maddest ideas and hallucinations. an insane woman suddenly discovers that the object of her love is a king or jesus christ, and that she is betrothed to him. in her delirium she imagines herself to be queen of the world. in her dreams and hallucinations her king or christ is in bed with her and she imagines she has connection with him. still under the influence of hallucinations, she believes herself pregnant and carries an imaginary child for nine months in her womb. she may even imagine that she has given birth to a child, and that the child has been taken away from her by the aid of narcotics, as we have seen above. although there is an infinite variety in the gradations, the pathological images of the cerebral sexual sphere of insane women always revolve round this eternal theme. these pathological irradiations of the sexual sphere are associated voluntarily with jealous obsessions and ideas of persecution, which make the subjects furious, and which are confirmed by their paræsthesias and hallucinations. illusions of memory play a great part in these cases, for the subjects have often never felt what they complain of, and it is then a question of veritable hallucinational memory. we may here observe by the way that, even among healthy people, the sexual passions, like the others, always tend to falsify memory, making things appear in the exclusive sense of the affective state. once fixed in the memory, such conceptions, the false tendency of which was originally based on passion, gradually assume the subjective character of certainty. cool-headed people, or those whose affective state directs them to contrary conceptions, then see in such individuals a deliberate intention to misrepresent the facts. this is the reason why people so often hurl mutual insults at each others heads, calling each other liars and calumniators, owing to the affective illusion of memory. ( ). one of the worst of the sexual anomalies in the insane is _pathological jealousy_, especially in men. their wives then become martyrs, especially in cases of alcoholism and paranoia. it is not uncommon for assassination to put an end to their torments. among insane women, jealousy is certainly not less, but they have less legal power and less muscular strength. the most violent jealousy is found in alcoholics. jealous delirium renders the subject furious; a word, a look, or some trivial circumstance are enough for him to prove the infidelity of his wife. the latter has to avoid the slightest thing which might arouse jealousy, but all in vain; reserve and even prudery are regarded by the jealous husband as hypocrisy. the unfortunate man watches his wife, night and day, like a watchdog: he threatens and insults her with no reason, and calumniates her in all ways, even in the presence of a third party. he even lays elaborate traps for her. cases of this kind are legion. ( ). it is necessary to say that the _sexual paræsthesias_, of which we have spoken, sadism, masochism, fetichism, inversion, etc., often occur in the insane. ( ). the most atrocious sexual crimes are very often the work of idiots or imbeciles, but especially _moral idiots_, _i.e._, persons whose idiocy is limited to the moral sense, who are also called simply _amoral_. this is due to hereditary taint, an innate absence of all sentiments of sympathy, pity and duty. rape, violation of children, sexual assassination, etc., are usually due to the concomitant action of moral idiocy and violent or perverted sexual passions. ( ). _hypochondria_ also causes singular results in the sexual sphere. we have already dealt with the masturbation of certain hypochondriacs, which is often wholly or partly imaginary. others believe they have committed terrible sexual excesses, when nothing of the kind has occurred. i have seen a hypochondriac married and strongly built, who believed his health was ruined because he cohabited with his wife once every two or three months. other hypochondriacs become impotent simply because they think they are. others again imagine they are affected with venereal disease, which they have never contracted. ( ). hysterical men and women have a very peculiar sexuality. hysteria depends on auto-suggestion or on an exalted and morbid dissociability of psychic activity. a single idea is sufficient in a hysterical subject, to produce the realization of what it represents. the passionate imagination may lead to opinions and actions which are absolutely contradictory. love and hatred often alternate by transformation. according to the influences to which she is exposed, the same hysterical woman may become a good or evil genius. in the sexual domain the same extremes are produced in a very striking manner. inflamed by love, a hysterical woman may exhibit phenomenal eroticism and the most violent sexual excesses, while indifference, disgust, or simply distraction by other ideas will render her absolutely frigid. cold as ice toward other men, she may have insatiable sexual desire for the man she loves. the question is often raised whether a woman can love more than once in her life. there is no doubt that many women are so monogamous by instinct that they cannot love more than once; but it is also certain that a hysterical woman is capable of loving several times, and very different persons at different periods of her life. the personality of certain erotic hysterical women is even so dissociable that they can love with all their strength several men at the same time. but the hysterical woman is also capable of hating a man with as much ardor as she formerly loved him; or, on the contrary, of loving the one she formerly hated, according to the suggestion of the moment. the same phenomena occur in hysterical men. for the same reasons the quality of the sexual sensations and sentiments may vary in a hysterical subject according to the influences it is subjected to, and pass from the normal to the perverted state, or inversely. i have observed a case where a highly cultured hysterical subject, in her early youth, fell in love with another young girl. at this period her sentiments were purely homosexual; her love for the young girl was clearly inverted and accompanied by intense sexual desire, while she was absolutely indifferent to men. later on, a man fell in love with her, and she yielded to him rather from pity and feminine passiveness than from love. still later she fell passionately in love with another man, quite as much as she had been with the young girl of her early youth. her latest love was both exalted and libidinous. her sexual appetite had thus taken the normal direction under the influence of a hetero-sexual affection. in hysterical men analogous changes occur less easily, on account of the nature of masculine sexuality which distinguishes more clearly between the mind and the appetite; but these changes are observed sometimes. in woman, the hysterical imagination and dissociation facilitate a polyandrous irradiation of the sexual appetite, which is otherwise rare in the female sex. in this respect the sexuality of hysterical women resembles that of men and differs from that of normal women. hysterical men, on the other hand, become more feminine, not by their appetite being less polygamous, but by the more dissociated form of their thoughts and sentiments. ( ). a variety of the pathological love of abnormal individuals is _imaginary love_, not founded on delirious ideas. certain psychopaths of both sexes are convinced that they love some one, but they suddenly perceive during their betrothal, or even only after marriage, that they are mistaken and that they have never loved the person in question. such illusions are the cause of numerous broken engagements, divorce and conjugal bitterness. ( ). _amorous tyranny_ constitutes another variety in the pathology of love. lovers of this kind constantly tyrannize and torment the object of their passion, by their desires, their observations, their sensitive temper, their contradictions, their exigencies and their jealousy. this atrocious manner of loving is common in both sexes; perhaps more so in women than men. ( ). the _love of psychopaths_ is a subject which has no end. if human society was better acquainted with psychopathology a great deal of conjugal misunderstanding and misery would be avoided. i have known a woman who would not allow her husband to shut himself in the water-closet, for fear he would take the servant with him! another became madly jealous if a woman sat opposite her husband and cast the least glance at him; the unfortunate husband not knowing where to look, in the street or in hotels, so as to escape his wife's jealousy. it is still worse when the husband is jealous. other psychopaths torment the object of their love by the perpetual care they take over imaginary dangers or the slightest indispositions. others again are affected with hyperæsthesia, and the least noise, the slightest touch, or any sudden sensation, is enough to throw them into excitement and make them a nuisance both to themselves and to their surroundings. the pathological exaltation of sentiments, which causes the most trifling things to appear as deliberate offenses, and malicious intentions, is still more to be feared. the disproportion between love and sexual appetite also torments many psychopaths, either when a deep love is combined with sexual indifference or disgust at coitus, or even pain (vaginismus, in women, for example); or when an intense sexual appetite is combined with want of love or ferocious egoism (especially in men). certain psychopaths appear profoundly amorous but behave like brutes to the object of their love. these are the individuals who are always ready to strangle their sweetheart, to stab or shoot her, if she does not immediately yield to their desires; or else the feeble creatures who threaten to commit suicide if their love is not returned. others, tormented by a pathological eroticism are continually annoying young and virtuous girls with their obsessions and their pathological grossness. i have seen a psychopath of this kind write letters and even post cards to a young girl, on which he had drawn pictures of the female genitals, by way of gallantry. in women, hatred and vengeance, aroused by jealousy, are especially blind and tenacious when the chronic passions of psychopathia intervene; this being due to the perseverance natural to the sex. by the aid of their refined intrigues; by their misrepresented statements due to the illusions of a memory distorted by passion, but uttered with a consummate dramatic art, some women may play a truly diabolical role, and even deceive a whole tribunal. when we get to the bottom of the matter, we often find that the primary cause of the evil is a sexual passion embellished and idealized afterwards by all kinds of noble motives, but in reality more or less unconsciously hypocritical. while deceiving others, these psychopathic women also deceive themselves. there are also a number of male psychopaths quite analogous to the above and generally hysterical. other morbid symptoms, such as obsessions and pathological impulses, have a certain importance as regards sexual appetite and love. love or rejection, as well as other sexual images, may become the objects of obsessions, and then cause the subjects much torment, but without harming their surroundings; for the obsessed generally remain passive. pathological impulse to actions may, on the contrary, become dangerous and lead to violation, whether combined with perversion or not. ( ). we have seen that _senile paradoxy_ often shows itself, as a symptom of senile dementia, by a sexual appetite for children. this is the initial symptom of the complaint, and may lead to the commission of assault. the holy indignation of the public, and often of ignorant judges, against these depraved old men often result in the public contempt or even the imprisonment of poor patients who have hitherto led a blameless life, and who have simply become victims of senile degeneration of the arteries of the brain. ( ). i will mention another case which i have observed, which shows how complex hereditary cerebral pathology may become, and lead in turn to crime, madness and sexual perversion; giving rise to the most tragic scenes of human life, and to the degeneration of families. a very charming and intelligent, but deceitful man, an amoral person whose heredity was strongly tainted with mental disease, had strong sexual instincts partly inverted. he was attracted rather more by men than by women, but committed excesses with both sexes. he married a virtuous and intelligent midwife. at long intervals he had three attacks of acute mania, but was cured after each attack and procreated two boys and a girl. when he was sane he spent his time in deceitful occupations and speculation and never worked honestly to earn his living. he behaved well toward his wife, but this did not prevent him committing pederasty with men. he was often convicted for pederasty and swindling, and i treated him several times in an asylum. his poor wife complained bitterly, but found consolation in her husband's apparent love, but especially in the careful education of her children. but when the children grew up, her illusions disappeared one after another. the daughter became feeble-minded, and one of the sons became a bad character. the mother consoled herself with the second son who appeared honest and hard-working. the father was then in an asylum, his relapses having led the tribunal to institute an inquiry into his mental condition. one day the mother came to me in despair and showed me a letter written by the son of the father, which she had opened; the contents were as follows: "miserable father, when you receive this letter i shall be no longer in this world; but before dying i wish to curse you. you have been the disgrace of the family. you have caused misery to our mother and her children by your crimes. why did you bring me into this world? for a long time i have felt evil instincts developing in me like a cursed heritage. i struggle in vain against them; but the more i struggle the more i feel i must succumb. i am incapable of resisting much longer; but i will not become a criminal like you, so i shall hang myself to-night, and i curse you again before doing it." the unfortunate son did in fact commit suicide, and drove his mother to despair. i showed the father his son's letter, but he only smiled and shrugged his shoulders. the following is another example: a man of , married, and the father of six children, ranging from to years of age, violated them all, both girls and boys. the whole family were abnormal and perverse. a son of had sexual intercourse with his mother and sister. the father also had intercourse with dogs and cats. the jury before whom i brought the case regarded the man as mad, but he was condemned to ten years' imprisonment. an asylum for dangerous and perverted lunatics is urgently required for such cases. effects of narcotics, especially alcohol, on the sexual appetite the functional cerebral paralyses produced by narcotics closely resemble in their psychopathological physiognomy the organic paralyses which result from slow atrophy of the cerebral cortex, as in general paralysis--exaltation of sentiment, tremor and slowness of movement up to total paralysis, disorders of orientation in time and space, profound mental dissociation affecting the subconscious automatic actions. at the same time the individual loses the exact appreciation of his own personality and of the external world; he regards himself as very capable in body and mind while he is becoming more and more powerless; and everything appears rose-colored at the time when he is in a most critical state. he believes himself possessed of great muscular strength when paralysis makes him stagger, and so on. at the commencement of narcosis the phenomena are somewhat different from what they become later; a certain amount of excitement predominates, as well as the spirit of enterprise and exaltation of the appetites; while later on paralysis, relaxation and somnolence play the principal part. narcosis acts in a similar way on the genetic sense. it begins by exciting sexual desire, but diminishes the power. as shakespere says: "lechery it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but it takes away the performance." (macbeth, act ii, scene iii.) no doubt the narcotics are not all equal in action, and each has its specific peculiarities; but the words of shakespere express the essential effect of all narcotics on the sexual appetite: first of all excitation of the appetite with the disappearance of moral and intellectual inhibitory representations, and reënforcement of the spirit of enterprise; afterwards, progressive paralysis of sexual power, and finally extinction of the initial appetite itself. these phenomena are of capital importance in alcoholic narcosis, which plays the principal part in civilized countries. the initial excitation is here very accentuated. if we make a closer examination, however, we find from the first a relaxation of sexual activity and a weakening of all sensory irritations. in coitus, erections are produced more slowly; the voluptuous sensations, it is true, are of great subjective intensity, but they are developed more slowly and there is more difficulty in producing ejaculation. the subsequent relaxation is very great, and a man who is even only slightly intoxicated cannot perform coitus as rapidly, nor repeat it so often, as when he has taken no alcoholic liquor. when the narcosis increases the impotence becomes complete. owing to the illusion produced by the narcosis, however, a drunken man generally imagines himself to be very capable. the gross and clumsy form which flirtation assumes under the action of alcohol is only too well known. the gross and persistent obscenity of drunken persons in railway carriages and other places toward women is an example of alcoholic flirtation. (_vide_ chapter iv.) another peculiarity of the sexual appetite in alcoholic narcosis is its bestiality. the higher irradiations of love are completely paralyzed and sensuality becomes unrestrained, even in men who, when sober, are full of refined sentiments. the depraving effect of alcohol on the sexual appetite is therefore unlimited. alcohol does not limit itself to giving free play to a bestial appetite, by paralyzing reason and sentiments of sympathy and duty; it also has a strong tendency to pervert the appetite itself. in a considerable proportion of cases of exhibitionism, inversion, pederosis, sodomy, etc., the development of the perversion is greatly favored, or even directly produced, by the action of alcohol, especially when there is a latent predisposition. i have observed a whole series of perversions in persons whose sexual appetite was normal when they were sober, but became perverted on the slightest intoxication. i am convinced that if more attention was paid to the subject the number of cases in which alcohol increases the perversion, or is even necessary for its development, would be increased. but what is of much greater importance is the fact that acute and chronic alcoholic intoxication deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of the procreators. i refer the reader to what i have said at the end of chapter i on blastophthoria. the recent researches of bezzola seem to prove that the old belief in the bad quality of children conceived during drunkenness is not without foundation. relying on the swiss census of , in which there figure nine thousand idiots, and after careful examination of the bulletins concerning them, this author has proved that there are two acute annual maximum periods for the conception of idiots (calculated from nine months before birth): the periods of carnival and vintage, when the people drink most. in the wine-growing districts the maximum conception of idiots at the time of vintage is enormous, while it is almost _nil_ at other periods. moreover, these two maximum periods come at the time of year when conception is at a minimum among the rest of the population; the maximum of normal conceptions occurring at the beginning of summer. if these facts are confirmed by further research, we may conclude that even acute alcoholism has a blastophthoric action. we may, therefore, assume that when a germinal cell leaves its gland at the moment when it is impregnated with alcohol, and achieves conjugation, it is unable to return to its normal condition, for want of opportunity to be completely and promptly cleansed by nutrition and the circulation. this explains how it may transmit to the individual which develops from it all kinds of taints and defects. after what we have said, we can tabulate the destructive effects of the narcotic poisons and alcohol in particular, in the sexual domain, both from the individual and social points of view, as follows: ( ). irreflective sexual unions, resulting from exaltation of the sexual appetite and temporary paralysis of the sentiments which inhibit such unions in persons who are not under the influence of alcohol. these include the seduction of girls, orgies with prostitutes in brothels, and the procreation of children with low-class women, or under unfavorable conditions. ( ). increase of venereal disease. i have made statistics which show that about per cent. of venereal disease is contracted by men under the influence of alcohol, chiefly by persons who are slightly intoxicated and rendered enterprising thereby. ( ). all kinds of misfortunes and catastrophes, such as illegitimate pregnancies, despair, suicide, etc., resulting from irreflective sexual unions and venereal disease. ( ). the production of the majority of sexual crimes also resulting from the exasperation of eroticism combined with irreflection and general motor impulsiveness. jealousy here plays a great part. the most important statistics (for example, those of baer, in germany), prove that from to per cent. of criminal assaults are committed under the influence of alcohol. indecent exposure, etc., is due to alcohol in or per cent. ( ). exaltation and sometimes development of sexual perversion. ( ). creation of hereditary alcoholic blastophthoria, either as the result of a single drinking bout, or from habitual drunkenness. the offspring tainted with alcoholic blastophthoria suffer from various bodily and physical anomalies, among which are dwarfism, rickets, a predisposition to tuberculosis and epilepsy, moral idiocy and idiocy in general, a disposition to crime and mental diseases, sexual perversions, loss of suckling in women, and many other misfortunes. ( ). the delirium of jealousy is a specific symptom of chronic alcoholism. its effects are terrible and lead to all kinds of sorts of infamies, assaults and even assassination. ( ). alcohol is also the almost indispensable vehicle of prostitution and proxenetism, which could not be maintained without it, at any rate in their present disgusting and brutal form. ( ). the coarseness and vulgarity of alcoholic eroticism produce in public places, as well as in private, an importunate and obscene form of flirtation, which is brutally and cynically opposed to all sentiments of propriety and modesty. the above statements refer chiefly to men. among women, alcoholism is less common, at least in continental europe; in england, however, drunken women are often seen in the streets. among prostitutes, however, alcoholism is almost universal. proxenetism makes use of alcohol to compromise and seduce girls and thus lead them to prostitution. when they have once fallen they often drink to forget the horror of their situation. the action of alcohol on the feminine sexual appetite is very peculiar. the appetite is generally exalted, while the power is not affected, owing to the passive role of woman in coitus. at first, paralysis of the psychic inhibitions and their higher irradiations (love, duty, modesty, etc.) by alcohol deprives the woman of nearly all power of resistance against the sexual desire of the man. it results from this that an intoxicated woman becomes the easy prey of a man whose sexual appetite is excited. the following case is instructive from this point of view: a young girl of good position married a man of weak and vulgar character. both were rather fond of drink. when she became pregnant the wife took large quantities of wine, by the doctor's orders, and this led her to inebriety. the friends and acquaintances of the husband found this amusing, and began to flirt with her to such an extent that she fell a victim to their sexual appetites, in her continual state of semi-intoxication. the husband at first had not the courage to put an end to this and did not wish to divorce her, for pecuniary reasons; for the wife had the money. he finally decided to send her to an asylum which i superintended, to cure her alcoholism. from the antecedents of the patient, i expected to see a cynical and erotic woman; but she was nothing of the kind. although hardly sober, this woman was modest and well-behaved. what struck me most was her extreme of modesty, which at first made it difficult for me to investigate her psychological state. her conduct was exemplary the whole time, and she eventually confided to me that it was not so much sexual desire as the profound indifference and feebleness developed by inebriety which had caused her to give way. before leaving the asylum she joined a total abstinence society, returned to her husband and succeeded in converting him also to total abstinence. she kept to her pledge and lived afterwards in conjugal peace and happiness, without ever relapsing into her old infidelity. i saw her several years afterwards with her husband, happy and flourishing. i have mentioned this case to show that, even in women, sexual excess does not necessarily destroy the character, the sentiments of modesty, nor the will. it all depends on their cause. if there is congenital weakness of character, the evil is irreparable; but if it is only due to external forces which can be eliminated in time, its effect may often be permanently suppressed. some female inebriates are sexually cold and repulse men; but others are erotic and even nymphomaniacs. whosoever has the welfare of humanity at heart, and takes the trouble to reflect on the ravages caused by alcohol in human society, should have the courage to make a slight effort and renounce all alcoholic drink--say for six months at first, as an experiment--in order to combat the social alcoholic misery by force of example, instead of empty phrases. he will then discover, like all abstainers, that the usage of alcohol (including wine, cider and beer) however small the quantity consumed, only serves to maintain a habit which is vicious and disastrous to society, by giving the contagious example of so-called moderation, to which a great number of persons cannot restrict themselves. he will then abstain for the rest of his days, and it will become more and more incomprehensible to him how humanity has been led, first by the spirit of imitation, later by the conservation of prejudices, to develop, maintain and defend such a social abuse by the aid of a legion of sophisms. sexual anomalies and perversions by suggestion and auto-suggestion the role of the phenomena of suggestion in sexual life is much greater than is generally supposed. i shall return to this subject in a special chapter, but i may state here that there is a category of sexual perversions and anomalies of all kinds which are not hereditary but acquired, and which krafft-ebing, although he cites striking examples, wrongly attributes to the effect of sexual excess and depravity, or which he compares to ordinary psychopathia, while in reality they are only the direct effect of strong suggestion or auto-suggestion. i place in this category the cases where a man, whose sexuality has hitherto been normal, suddenly becomes pathological as the result of some circumstance which produces on him a profound impression. for instance, the sexual appetite of an individual may be strongly excited, in a brothel or elsewhere, by an erotic woman whose feet or shoes are especially elegant. the sight of this well-fitted foot exalts his sexual desire to a high degree. from this moment feminine shoes, by subjective association, exercise on him an irresistible erotic power, which dominates everything else and transforms him into a fetichist; the female body no longer elicits his appetite, the latter having become the slave of the image of shoes only. (shoe fetichism.) sexual inversion may also be acquired by suggestion, when a normal man becomes excited by acts of masturbation or pederasty, or simply by some psychic image with a strongly suggestive action. he may thus lose his normal sexual appetite for women and become homosexual. these phenomena occur especially in individuals whose suggestibility is pathological or hysterical, or even simply exaggerated. but these individuals are numerous, and this fact gives us the explanation of a large proportion of acquired sexual anomalies, at the same time indicating the means of curing them. in such cases, it is not a question of moral depravity, nor necessarily of a latent hereditary predisposition, but simply of a single sudden suggestive action, sometimes repeated. among other cases, i may mention that of a well-educated man of very refined sentiments, deeply in love with his wife, but very suggestible, who became suddenly impotent and homosexual as the result of a simple idea-image which became fixed in his mind and subjected it by suggestion. his strong character enabled him to resist intercourse with males, but he fell into despair and became very unhappy. i am convinced that a careful study would reveal an increasing number of cases of psychopathia acquired by suggestion or auto-suggestion. cases of this kind may be spontaneously cured. treatment by suggestion is indicated and may act directly or indirectly. everything which is of a functional psychic nature may occur by suggestion, or be, on the contrary, eradicated by suggestion. the important point is to emphasize the fact that whenever a man, hitherto normal, is affected, without apparent cause, with a more or less sudden sexual anomaly, and which is consequently not the effect of long habit, suggestion or auto-suggestion should be borne in mind. these two conceptions can, moreover, be hardly distinguished, for the things which cause suggestion are usually the sensory perceptions of sight, smell, touch and hearing, associated with certain situations, or with an intense affective state which fixes them in the brain. sometimes it is a question of simple imaginative ideas. the cases where a hypnotizer intentionally suggests sexual perversion probably exist only in theory. we are, therefore, concerned with fortuitous suggestions, acting through persons, situations, objects or ideas, which excite the mind by the impression they produce on the sentiments and the sexual appetite. sexual perversions due to habit without being congenital and without depending on a special predisposition, all the perversions of the sexual appetite that we have just described may be acquired, by means of the artificial and continued excitation of a sexual appetite which seeks satisfaction in change and unusual situations: moreover, perverse satisfaction of the sexual appetite is often resorted to--onanism, pederasty or oral coitus--either to avoid conception, or with the idea of escaping venereal disease, or in the case of onanism, to avoid publicity, trouble or expense. as we have seen above alcohol favors the development of sexual perversions. it is evident that a commerce in women systematically tolerated by the state, as is the proxenetism of regulated prostitution, employs all means imaginable to attract and excite its clients. in this way prostitution becomes the high-school for all the refinements of sexual perversion. it not only offers special objects required by individuals tainted by heredity with various perversions, but it artificially develops perverse habits in the normal man. the manipulations of sadism or masochism are even utilized to revive a sexual appetite weakened by abuse. individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. in fact a leaven of corruption and ignominy ferments on the dunghill of venal and artificial excitation of the sexual appetite. the apostles of mammon and bacchus, the former by interest, the latter by the aid of a narcosis which paralyzes the higher sentiments and reflection, work in concert to maintain this foul swamp. the same individuals very commonly combine the two apostleships and become themselves the victims of their false gods, after sacrificing hundreds of their fellows. to make matters more clear i will recapitulate as follows: ( ). _we often meet with pederasty without a trace of inversion of the sexual appetite. it is also practiced on women by the psychopathic male. but the normal man hardly ever prefers it to normal coitus._ ( ). _compensatory masturbation is very common and ceases with the opportunity for normal coitus._ ( ). _sodomy is also often compensatory._ ( ). _it is the same with assaults on children, which seldom depend on a hereditary disposition._ ( ). _lesbian love, a form of degeneracy, artificial excitation of the clitoris by the tongue or otherwise, may have quite a different origin than from sexual inversion or other perversions._ all these things take place chiefly in brothels or with prostitutes, in barracks, boarding-schools, convents, and other isolated places where men and women live alone and separated from the other sex. sadism, masochism, fetichism and exhibitionism are much more rarely the result of habits, because their object and the images with which they are associated do not offer compensation for the normal excitation of the sexual appetite, or only do so insufficiently. i am here obliged to contradict krafft-ebing, who regards exhibitionism as the effect of the impotence of certain individuals depraved by excesses, or as the unconscious act of certain epileptics. no doubt the two conditions which he mentions may present themselves, but the exhibitionists i have observed have all been psychopaths whose perversion was primordial and hereditary, with the exception of some females in whom perversion originated in suggestion or alcoholism, which had at any rate aroused the disposition. lesbian love merits special mention. owing to the clitoris being more or less concealed, women are often not satisfied by coitus, especially when the ejaculation of the male takes place too quickly. consequently a number of normal women prefer to procure an orgasm by means of lesbian love (_cunnilingus_.) there are clubs of female perverts, many of whom are not homosexual by heredity. although they differ from hereditary perversions, acquired perversions are connected with the former by a series of latent hereditary dispositions, more or less marked, and often difficult to distinguish in particular cases, especially when suggestion is blended with them. among the entirely hereditary and congenital sexual perversions, many occur in individuals who are well conducted and often possessed of delicate and altruistic sentiments. this point is not sufficiently recognized. such persons are nearly always more or less neurotic in other respects. they are disheartened by their perversion and are so much ashamed of it that they often prefer to carry their secret to the grave rather than confide it to their doctor. others sometimes confess to a doctor, and the life of a martyr, who is always contemplating suicide, is revealed to him. individuals of feeble, cynical, egoistic or abnormal natures, whose number is legion in the corrupt centers of modern civilization, yield to their perversion and often come before the tribunals, or else become objects of public contempt. as it is this class which generally become known, it is assumed by too hasty generalization that sexual perverts are necessarily cynical, vicious or weak-minded individuals; but this induction is false. it is unfortunately impossible to estimate the number of sexual perversions dissimulated by a large number of pessimists of both sexes, generally celibate and usually males. i do not pretend that, when sexual perversion is neither hereditary nor favored by a latent hereditary predisposition, nor developed or fixed by alcoholism, it is usually possible to cure it by suggestion. this often acts even in cases where alcohol has aroused a hereditary taint. the incorrigible recidivists among the sexual perverts are, i am convinced, either hereditary or strongly predisposed, or degenerated by alcoholism. the original will power of the pervert is also of great importance. weak-willed perverts always tend to relapse. the social sanitation of sexual intercourse would certainly reduce to a minimum the compensatory perversions of normal persons who abstain from alcohol. the prohibition of alcoholic drink would definitely eliminate not only the perversions directly due to alcohol, but gradually also those due to alcoholic blastophthoria in the descendants. other hereditary perversions, not of alcoholic origin, can only be definitely eliminated by healthy selection. perversions acquired by suggestion or auto-suggestion should be combated by suppression of the depraved examples which cause them, as well as by treatment by suggestion. it is needless to say that sexual perverts should always abstain from alcoholic drinks. footnotes: [ ] english translation by f.j. rebman: rebman co., new york. [ ] for further information on this subject see _marshall's_ "syphilology and venereal disease," (london, balliere, tindall & co.); also _marshall's_ translation of _fournier's_ "treatment and prophylaxis of syphilis," (new york: rebman co.) [ ] _krafft-ebing_ describes bestiality (connection with animals) and pederasty under the general term of sodomy, but points out that the original meaning of sodomy used in genesis (chapter xix) signified pederasty, _i.e._, anal coitus between men. chapter ix suggestion in sexual life--amorous intoxication =suggestion. cerebral activity. consciousness. subconsciousness and amnesia. auto-suggestion.=--the explanation of the phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion by liébeault and bernheim has been a veritable scientific revelation for human psychology. unfortunately it has remained to a great extent unknown to the public and the majority of medical men and jurists. even at the present day, this subject is regarded either in the light of magic and occult phenomena, or as being connected with imposture and charlatanism. this results from the incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account the connection which exists between the mind and cerebral activity. i must point out the common error of many physicians, who do not understand the psychological nature of hypnotism, and who place it, like dubois, in antinomy with psychotherapy. hypnotism and suggestion in the waking state are one and the same thing; but what the physicians i have mentioned understand by suggestion in the waking state--psychotherapy, action by will power, etc.--is only a chaos of misapplied terms and psychological phenomena, only half understood by them. sleep by suggestion is only one of the phenomena of suggestion. i must refer the reader to bernheim's book on "_la suggestion et ses applications à la thérapeutique_," and to my book on hypnotism ("_der hypnotismus und die suggestive psychotherapie._" stuttgart, ), for i cannot enter into the details here. i will, however, attempt to make clear the action of suggestion in order to explain its connection with the sexual sensations and sentiments. suggestion consists in the action of ideas or representations on the activity of the brain in general, and on some of its activities in particular. the terms _idea-force_ and _ideoplasty_ have been employed; but all ideas are at the same time forces and are more or less ideoplastic according to the nature and intensity of the cerebral activity which corresponds to them. every representation which appears in our consciousness is at the same time a cerebral activity. i will explain by the aid of an example the relation which exists between the play of our _conscious_ ideas and what is incorrectly called our _unconscious_ cerebral activity. for reasons which are too long to explain here, i call _subconscious_ all which is usually called unconscious, because i maintain that there is probably nothing unconscious in our nervous activity, and that what appears to be so is in reality accompanied by an introspection, subordinated like its corresponding activity to the great and clear introspection of the higher brain, which accompanies the concentrated and mobile activity of what we call our attention in the waking state. no doubt, we do not as a rule perceive our subconscious activities, for want of sufficient intensity in their association with the series of aperceptions (states subsequent to attentional activity). but we possess a number of observations, due especially to hypnotism, which allow us to infer by analogy the existence of subordinated introspections corresponding to the cerebral activities which appear to us unconscious. for example, i think of my wife. this idea immediately calls to mind that of a journey that i intend to take with her, and in its turn the idea of the journey recalls that of the trunk i shall use to pack my effects. almost as rapidly as lightning, the three ideas: ( ) my wife; ( ) the journey; ( ) the trunk, apparently succeed each other in my consciousness. but, according to the old scholasticism, the idea of the journey is awakened by that of my wife, and that of my trunk by that of the journey, which would, therefore, be its "cause." but a little observation soon shows that the succession of our conscious ideas is not so easily explained, for at every moment representations appear which have no logical relation to those which precede them, and cannot be caused by them, nor by immediate sensory perceptions coming from without. at a time when the activity of the brain was not understood, the existence of an essential mind and a free will were assumed, independent of the law of the conservation of energy and of the law of causality, independent therefore of the brain, the activity of which they commanded more or less at their pleasure. this conception is based on ignorance of the facts. let us return to our example: why does the idea of my wife call to mind that of the journey? it might quite as well suggest others. in reality, a number of ideas, or subconscious cerebral activities, act at the same time as that of my wife to give rise to the idea of the journey. this journey had already been decided on before thinking of it at the moment in question, and the resolution that i had taken to make it had left in my brain latent impressions (engrams) which slumbered there; such as those of the date of departure, the duration of the journey, its termination, precautions to be taken for the house during our absence, things to take with us, expenses, etc., etc. during the infinitely short time when the idea of journey appears in my consciousness, between that of my wife and that of my trunk, i have no consciousness of all these things. they are, however, closely associated with the idea of journey, and in connection with it by the thousand threads of a subconscious and latent cerebral force which takes place in my cerebral nerve-elements (neurones); and it is their hidden action which awakens the idea of journey and directs my attention to it, at the same time weakening by their divers interferences the intensity of other associated engrams; in particular that of the sentiment of traveling, and thereby preventing a series of ideo-motor sensations relating to departure from becoming predominant. what suddenly appears in my consciousness is the verbal representation symbolized by the word _journey_; a general representation of synthetic nature, and consequently nebulous. it is the words of language only which allow me to synthetize a general idea in a short and definite form. thus, the cerebral flash _journey_ which follows the idea of my wife is not caused by the latter idea alone; it has been mainly drawn from its obscurity and brought before the mobile conscious attention, by the action of the thousand subconscious threads, some of which we have just mentioned, and which have at the same time determined its quality. without my being aware of it, these dynamic threads, or latent engrams, have to a great extent determined the kind of idea which will follow that of _journey_, and which will seem to me to be caused by this last alone, namely the idea of _trunk_. the idea of journey might equally well have awakened other images, such as those of the acquaintances whom i should meet, or of the town i intended to visit. why that of the trunk? this is simply because the care of the effects to be taken, the place they should occupy, etc., revolved unconsciously but strongly in my brain, and for the moment predominated over other subconscious associations. this simple example shows us that in reality the three successive ideas, _wife_, _journey_, _trunk_, are more under the influence of sentiments, representations and former volitions in a latent and subconscious state, than dependent on each other. but these latter activities are themselves the product of other antecedent activities of my brain, extraordinarily diverse and complex. i will attempt to make things a little more complete and comprehensible by the aid of a comparison. a man finds himself in the middle of a compact and moving crowd. he cries out to attract the attention of the crowd. his voice is heard by those immediately around him, but is lost on the moving mass. against his will he is carried away by the crowd in the direction of the strongest movement. but if the crowd is immobile and tranquil the same man may make himself heard, and may even force his way through the crowd and impel it in his turn by the impression that his words have made on it. something analogous to this occurs in the action of an idea according as it is produced in a brain which is awake, active and strongly associated, or on the contrary in a brain which rests and sleeps. the brain which is active and strongly associated resembles the agitated crowd which carries away everything by its activity. in this case a single idea, like a single man, cries out in vain, _i.e._, is produced strongly; it will not impel, but will be carried away or stifled, unless it already possesses, by the former remembrances (engrams) which it may revive, a particular power over the brain. it is the same with the agitated crowd; if the man who cries out is already known and has influence and power, he may arrest it and even bring it toward the center of his agitation. the brain which is at rest or sleeping, _i.e._, feebly associated and not active, resembles the immobile crowd. even when it is new and has not yet become fixed in the memory, an idea may produce a deep impression, and awaken activities in its own direction. i repeat, if this idea has already acted more or less powerfully on the cerebral activity that it has often carried with it, it has accustomed this to follow it (_i.e._, fortified the engrams and facilitated their ecphoria), and then the powerful associated engrams which it has left in the organ of thought, will often be capable of carrying everything with them, even to the center of the agitation. in this way i succeeded in suddenly calming by hypnotism a woman who was mad with despair over the tragic death of half her family in a fire, by the simple fact that i had often hypnotized her previously. immediately after the hypnosis she went away quietly to the place of the disaster and was the only one to keep her presence of mind and put things in order. i refer the reader to what has been said concerning the mneme (chapter i). semon's theory throws light on these questions. the first thing necessary for suggestion or hypnotism is to put the brain of the subject in a state of relative repose, so as to prepare a soil ready to receive suggestions. these are then made so as to always increase the cerebral repose, in order to weaken the action of the threads of subconscious association of which we have spoken above. lastly, the suggestion (or idea which symbolizes the effect it is desired to obtain) is accentuated as much as possible, and in a form which at once excludes all contradiction. for this purpose everything should be utilized--sentiments and associations which are easily introduced, agreeable or repulsive sensations, volitions, etc. nothing paralyzes a suggestive effect so much as emotions, violent sentiments in general, inclinations, or repulsions which act in the opposite direction, whether they arise from fear, despair, hatred, sadness, joy, love or any kind of affective conditions. the same brain, accessible to all kinds of suggestions, will repress some of them as soon as it feels a deep sympathy for their contrary. we may suggest in vain to an amorous woman, the hatred or disgust of her lover, for the sentiment of love is stronger than the effect of a strange suggestion, and every suggestion which opposes the strongest aspirations of sentiment provokes mistrust and repulsion, which in their turn destroy all suggestive power. as we have indicated in our comparison, every suggestion which has succeeded leaves a strong trace, or engram, in the brain. it has opened a way by breaking down a barrier or a chasm, and its effect, which appeared hitherto difficult or impossible to realize, will henceforth be much more easy to obtain. this is why considerable cerebral repose is often necessary at first to open a way for a suggestion, while later on its effect can often be obtained even during the agitation of cerebral activity strongly associated with or even led by violent momentary sentiments. the chief characteristic of suggestive action, is that it traverses the paths of subconscious activity, so that its effect occurs unexpectedly in our consciousness. for example, i suggest to a man that his forehead itches. as soon as he feels it he is surprised, being unable to understand how my prophecy has been transformed into real itching. he then believes in my power over his nervous system, _i.e._, that his brain becomes more receptive to my words, and offers less resistance after having proved the value of my predictions. it matters little whether these are directed toward sensations or movements, or vaso-motor actions causing blushing and blanching, or suppression or bringing on of menstruation (in the case of a woman), etc. my influence over him by suggestion will increase; _i.e._, his brain will accustom itself to the suggestions which i give it by letting them dissociate its activity. this tendency to be influenced by suggestion is very contagious by example. when a influences b successfully, and c, d, e, f and g are witnesses of the fact, they will be much more easily influenced by a in the same direction; and so on. this explains suggestion affecting the masses. it is quite indifferent whether the subjective sentiment of sleep occurs more or less in the state of hypnosis or suggestion. this sentiment depends chiefly on the presence or absence of a variable degree of amnesia (want of memory to awaken). but amnesia only depends on the rupture, often fortuitous and unimportant, of the chain of remembrances in the series of super-conscious or attentional states of cerebral activity. in somnambulists, who are the most suggestible people, we can produce or suppress amnesia at will by a single word, and make them forget or remember what has passed. i must dwell on this point, because of the current dogma which assumes an essential difference between hypnotism and suggestion in the waking state. such an assumption is based on false conception of the psychology of suggestion. the only difference consists in the suggestion of amnesia, or the subjective sentiment of sleep; or, if one prefers it, the subjective remembrance of sleep opposed to the remembrance of having been awakened. but these two remembrances may be voluntarily connected with the same past state of the brain. by _auto-suggestion_ is meant the suggestive action of spontaneous ideas--that is to say, ideas which are not suggested to the subject by any other person, but the effect of which is identical to that of external suggestions. an idea, a sentiment, dominates the mind, overcomes all its antagonists and produces a strong suggestive effect on the whole nervous system in the direction which it symbolizes. the idea of being unable to sleep often produces insomnia; the idea of sexual impotence may at once inhibit erection and render coitus impossible. the idea of yawning makes one yawn; that of coitus provokes erections; the idea of shame causes blushing; that of fear blanching; that of pity weeping. but it often happens unconsciously, in yawning for example, that one man suggests it to another who begins to yawn; or the sight of certain objects, the hearing of certain sounds, provokes suggestions. thus the sight of an object belonging to a certain woman may cause an erection; the odor of some article of diet which has caused indigestion is sufficient to cause nausea, etc. we thus see that there is a series of transitions between external intentional suggestion and auto-suggestion, in the form of suggestion of objects and unconscious or involuntary suggestion of persons. the conception of true or intentional suggestion infers the determined will of one man influencing another by suggestion; there is no other criterion. it is quite another question whether the one who suggests wishes to benefit his subject, or wishes on the contrary to abuse him or make him ridiculous. =sympathy. love and suggestion.=--it is of great importance for us to know that sympathy and confidence are the fundamental elements of success in suggestive action. even when deceived by the one who hypnotizes him, the subject may yield to him while he is not aware of it. but there is here a point to be noted. a man may very well see clearly with his reason and his logic, he may understand that harm is done to him, he may even curse a thing or a person when he reflects, and in spite of this be instinctively and subconsciously attracted toward this thing or this person, like a moth to a candle, when certain sentiments of sympathy or attraction urge him to it. the two following examples will make this more clear: ( ). an actor fell in love with a hysterical married woman. this woman was very polyandrous, and deceived not only her husband but the actor and many others. the actor tried with all the power of his reason to be delivered from the tyrannical charm of this siren; but the power of attraction of the woman was so strong that he could not succeed in resisting her. he came to me in despair and begged me to rid him of his passion by hypnotism. i realized the difficulty of the situation but did my best to help him. although aided by his reason, all my suggestions were overcome by the violence of the passion that his hysterical seducer had inspired in him, and i obtained absolutely no result. ( ). a well-educated, unmarried woman became so enamored of a young man, that she was consumed with passion, grew thin, and lost her appetite and sleep. having exchanged ideas with the young man for some time, she became convinced that their two characters were not suited to each other, and that incompatibility of temper and quarrels would necessarily follow marriage. she therefore resisted with all her power and came to me to be cured of her passion by suggestion. my failure in the preceding case increased my skepticism, but i did my best to succeed; the result, however, was no better than with the actor in the preceding case. time and separation alone gradually restored equilibrium in this lady's nervous system. these two cases are very instructive. suggestion can only successfully combat powerful sentiments by arousing other sentiments of sympathy which increase little by little and finally become substituted for the preceding ones. this brings us to a very difficult question. in order to influence other persons by suggestion, it is above all things necessary to try and associate the ideas which we suggest to them with sentiments of sympathy, so as to arouse in them the impression that the object to be attained is desirable and agreeable, or at any rate that it constitutes a necessity. the woman who surrenders to the mercy of her conqueror often experiences a kind of pleasure which is associated with the passiveness of her sexual sentiments. it is the same in the male masochist. the physician who hypnotizes is obliged to awaken sentiments of sympathy in his subject to combat with their assistance the sentiments associated with the morbid state which it is desired to suppress. this is usually free from danger when there is no natural sexual attraction between the hypnotizer and the hypnotized; when, for example, a normal man hypnotizes another man, a normal woman another woman, or an invert another invert. otherwise there is a risk of exciting sexual sympathies difficult to eliminate afterwards, when necessary precautions have not been taken at first. these attractive sexual sensations or sentiments may affect both the hypnotizer and the hypnotized and provoke love scenes, which are fatal to success. for example, a hysterical baroness, whose sexual desire had been excited by hypnotism, fell in love with a person named czinsky, whose case was studied and published by schrenck-notzing. this baroness experienced a kind of suggested love against which her reason resisted to a certain extent, while her hypnotizer, himself amorous, lost his head. one might say in such a case that suggestion only reënforced the very human sentiments which occur in all love stories of everyday life. between normal love and suggested love there is such an infinite number of gradations that it is impossible to fix exactly the limits which separate them. a hypnotizer may abuse his suggestive power to exploit the love of the hypnotized. i have been consulted in a case where an old woman had hypnotized a rich young man and had so powerfully influenced him that he abandoned his family and married her. as in the case of czinsky, the abuse was obvious. the case was even more grave, for this old woman acted only from mercenary motives; in fact, she procured young girls for her husband, so as not to lose her suggestive influence after marriage: czinsky, on the contrary, was truly amorous. as a general rule we may say that, when amorous intoxication is the result of intentional suggestion, the subject obeys a certain sentiment of constraint, which he may describe later on when he has succeeded in recovering himself. he feels a kind of duplication of his personality, and perceives that the excitation of his sexual desire, as well as his love, have a somewhat forced nature, against which his reason attempts to defend him. this reaction often only appears afterwards, when the sympathetic action of suggestion begins to fade. here again the gradations are infinite, and no absolute rules can be formulated, for if the hypnotizer is very skillful and does not let his intentions appear, the subjective sentiment of constraint may be absolutely wanting; _i.e._, never become conscious. if, however, the hypnotizer is clumsy and the subject a hysterical woman, love is often transformed into hatred in the latter soon afterwards, as is so often the case in these subjects, and she may afterwards be convinced by auto-suggestion that she was the object of artificial constraint or even violence, and describe imaginary or unnatural events as if they were real; while she was simply amorous after the fashion of hysterical subjects. it is quite otherwise with cases where a hypnotizer produces in a hypnotized woman a state of deep somnambulism and does harm to her without her knowledge. here the victim is absolutely without will, and incapable of resisting. these last cases are much more easy to decide, especially from the legal point of view; but, as far as we are now concerned, the first cases are the most important. the amorous irradiations produced by the sexual appetite react on the latter and increase it. they awaken sentiments of reciprocal sympathy, from which results a mutual attraction similar to that of animals. suggestive action depends on the mastery we obtain over the associated constellations of subconscious engrams, and we have already become acquainted with the phylogenetic and actual relationship which exists between sexual sensations and sensations of sympathy. the simple juxtaposition of these facts clearly shows that powerful affinities exist between suggestion and love. i use the word "affinity" advisedly, for we must not go further and regard the two things as identical. fortunately, the majority of curable patients may be cured by the prudent awakening of a slight degree of sympathy, and by the common efforts made by the hypnotizer and the hypnotized to subdue the morbid symptoms, without anything but a certain sentiment of reciprocal friendship resulting. on the other hand two human beings may be united by sexual love, without either being able to hypnotize the other. this is especially the case when, for example, two conjoints have known each other for many years, or when two persons of higher intelligence, who are not too dependent on their sexual intercourse, meet each other. i am obliged to dwell on these facts, so that my ideas may not be falsely interpreted, by premature generalization. on the other hand, when a strongly associated brain suggests to a weak brain of the opposite sex sentiments of sympathy and makes use of them to arouse the sexual appetite, it may produce a suggested love which closely resembles natural amorous intoxication. if the discovery of an imposture or abuse of power on the part of the hypnotizer weakens or destroys the effect of suggestion, the hypnotized subject recovers herself. despite and repentance may then transform her love into hatred. in other cases there is a struggle between sexual desire and the disillusion of a deceived love, which often serves as the tragic motive in romance and the drama. the following is a typical case of suggested love without formal hypnotic proceedings: an old _roué_ aged sixty, married and the father of a family, persecuted a very suggestible young girl with his attentions, and systematically seduced her by means of erotic readings. he produced such an impression on this young girl that she became hypnotized and fell in love with the old _roué_ she lost all conscience, became deceitful and untruthful by suggestion, and compromised herself and her family. her seducer was poor, so that it was not his fortune that attracted her. she knew very well that this union could lead to nothing, but could not resist, and eloped with him. later on she came to her senses and left him. according to an old proverb, young girls laugh at old men and only marry them reluctantly or for their money; but in reality this is by no means always true. =amorous intoxication.=--let us now compare these phenomena with those of ordinary life called _amorous intoxication_. the affinities are at once apparent. a man and a woman meet and take a fancy for each other. the reciprocal action of looks, speech and touch, in fact all the apparatus of the senses and the mind, awakens in both of them sentiments of sympathy and sexual desire which mutually strengthens each other. sexual desire invests every action and appearance of the loved object with an ever-increasing halo of charm and splendor, and this halo of sexual origin increases in its turn the sentiments of sympathy; and the sentiments of sympathy increase the sexual desire. in this way mutual suggestions grow like a snowball, and rapidly attain the culminating point of amorous intoxication, or what is called being _madly in love_. all this depends only on reciprocal illusion. the more violent and foolish the amorous intoxication, without preparation or reflexion, and the less the individuals know each other, the more rapidly these illusions collapse, like a castle of cards, as soon as some douche of cold water sobers the two lovers. thus indifference, disgust, and even hatred, follow "love." the suggestive element in love is here apparent. just as a hypnotized person will eagerly swallow a raw potato which he takes for an orange; so will a person madly in love regard an ugly or wicked girl as a goddess, or an amorous girl find her ideal of chivalry and manliness in an egoistic don juan. the affinity is still more evident when the amorous intoxication is only on one side, while the other plays the part of seducer. when motives of pecuniary interest are not the only cause of seduction, and even often when they are, the seducer generally brings into play his sexual appetite, but only as a collaborator in his work of seduction without allowing himself to be dominated by it. in this case one is the seducer and the other the seduced. the seducer plays the part of the hypnotizer who suggests, while the seduced plays the part of the hypnotized, unless the seduction is due to fear, weakness of mind or good nature. the seducer is no doubt more or less under erotic influence, but never completely. the seduced, on the contrary, falls completely under the power of the seducer. the thoughts, sentiments and will are all directed by the impulses of the seducer. the latter acquires his ascendancy by means of a kind of suggestive power, often assisted by the sexual appetite. in many cases the seduced gives way by pure suggestion of love without sexual desire. these are precisely the cases that the law does not foresee, and jurists cannot usually understand. in ordinary life, the man most often plays the part of seducer or hypnotizer; but this is not always the case. antony, who threw himself at the feet of cleopatra and obeyed her least gesture, was evidently hypnotized. antonys are not rare even at the present day; but they do not constitute the rule, nor the normal state. as we have just described it, suggestion plays a great role in love, and explains to a great extent the phenomena of illusion produced by amorous intoxication. in spite of the act which deifies it and the ecstatic happiness that accompanies it, we must admit that amorous intoxication, with its illusory suggestions uncontrolled by reason, brings more poison than true happiness into human life. i will attempt to explain the matter more clearly. when two human beings with loyal instincts have learned to know each other sufficiently, honestly avowing their reciprocal feelings and their past life, at the same time subduing their sensual appetites and judging the latter with calmness, so as to be convinced that they may reasonably hope to form a durable and happy union, then only may they abandon themselves to amorous intoxication, but not before. the fact that the latter makes each lover appear to the other in the most ideal light only serves to strengthen the feelings of sympathy and make them last for life. on the other hand, two egoists calculating coldly, even if they have strong sexual appetites and trouble themselves very little with reflections on their intellect, may contract a comparatively happy marriage, based simply on reciprocal convenience and interest; a marriage in which amorous intoxication only plays a very small part, or none at all. the latter case is of great frequency. the novel which delights in the description of admirable or ignoble sentiments, and which shows a special preference for bizarre and sensational situations, often of a pathological nature, makes us forget that the majority of mediocre and normal men are little susceptible to the suggestions of amorous intoxication, and that they give vent to their sexual desires in a more or less reflective and calculating frame of mind, like a _gourmand_. this is not poetical, i admit, but it is much more human. many women also become _gourmands_ in sexual matters. in all this sexual commerce there are only vestiges or caricatures of the poetry of amorous intoxication. it is no longer a question of deep love, but of essentially commonplace sexual enjoyment, wisely and prudently adapted to other objects of concupiscence, such as money, social position, titles, business, etc. if the poets and the preachers of morality apostrophize me with indignation saying that this is the prostitution of love, i shall be obliged to protest. so long as sexual enjoyment is not bought, there is no prostitution. man has as much right to a certain agreeable satisfaction of his sexual appetite, even without exalted sentiments, as he has to satisfy his hunger and thirst, as long as he does no harm to anyone. but, i repeat, this question has nothing to do with amorous intoxication. the latter is a powerful shock to the whole mind, to the principal spheres of cerebral activity, by a suggestive effect, usually with the aid of the sexual appetite, but sometimes without it. amorous intoxication naturally differs in quality and in intensity in different individuals. in a person with ideal tendencies it may awaken the finest harmonies of the symphony of human sentiments, while brutal and debased persons may wallow in the mud. =suggestion in art.=--suggestion does not act only in the sexual sphere, but on the whole mental life. in æsthetics and in art it has an immense and irresistible influence, which gives rise to all the capricious exaltations of fashion. the average artist is more or less the slave of the æsthetic suggestions which are in fashion, but the average members of the public are absolutely dominated by them. originating in a correct idea of certain effects of light, the most absurd exaggerations may become accepted as beautiful and natural by an imitative public devoid of personal judgment, by the aid of suggestion. these deplorable effects of suggestion may last a long time till their nullity or their absurdity causes them gradually to disappear. but they are usually replaced by other absurdities. =suggestive action in sexual anomalies.=--in very suggestible persons the sexual appetite may be easily led astray by sensory impressions created by perverse images. in this way the erotic imagination of a very suggestible boy, excited indirectly by another boy, may even make the latter the object of his sexual desire. this is how homosexual inclinations may be formed by suggestion and maintained by mutual masturbation, pederasty, etc. the duration of a perversion of this kind often depends on the power of the erotic image which suggested sexual desire. this is also the case with onanism, sodomy, etc.; and in the inverse direction with impotence. these facts explain at the same time why and how suggestion may cure or ameliorate the anomalies of sexual life. just as suggestion may excite or pervert the sexual appetite, so may it calm it and put it in the right direction, unless there is a deeply rooted hereditary perversion. we can nearly always considerably attenuate too-frequent emissions, masturbation and perversions by suggestion, and often entirely cure their acquired forms. i must here point out that when we have succeeded in removing by suggestion a perversion based in whole or in part on organic or hereditary causes, this result is always more or less precarious, and does not give the physician the right to give his sanction to marriage. the following case shows us what prudence on the part of the hypnotizer can do with patients of this kind: a young girl, of good education, was troubled with intense sexual desire. she was incapable of resisting masturbation and dreamed at night that men and animals were in contact with her vulva. these dreams caused intense excitement and were accompanied by orgasms. the treatment of a patient of this kind by suggestion was no easy matter. however, with the aid of a local sedative, the action of which it is needless to say was purely suggestive and was combined with appropriate verbal suggestions, i succeeded not only in suppressing the onanism, but also in almost completely curing the nervous exhaustion of this young girl, so that she was afterwards able to resume work. i may add that the patient was hypnotized in the presence of others, which can always be done in such cases with a little tact. this is a rule from which the physician should never depart. i cannot enter into more details on this subject, but what i have said will suffice to draw the attention of my readers to the action of suggestion in the sexual appetite and in love. chapter x the sexual question in relation to money and property prostitution, proxenetism and venal concubinage general remarks in chapter vi we have studied the historical development of human marriage as a continuation of the phylogeny of our species, and we have shown that marriage by purchase and different forms of polygamy constitute a kind of intermediate stage and at the same time an aberration of civilization, which has resulted from the association of men, combined with the birth of individual property. when we consider a being of high mentality and deeply rooted individualism such as man, in whom the instinct of love and family are so strong, led by the inevitable force of circumstances to live in the society of his fellows, we can easily understand that certain individuals of a higher mentality than the others will endeavor to dominate the weaker and less intelligent, and exploit them for their own profit and that of their family. analogous tendencies are seen in certain animals. among the bees the old workers appropriate the produce of the work of others. certain ants practice a form of slavery, based, it is true on instinct, in stealing the pupæ of weaker species which, after hatching, become the servants of the idle robbers. in incomplete animal societies, such as those of the ruminants, certain monkeys, etc., the old males, sometimes also the more courageous females (cows, for example) direct the herd and become recognized as chiefs by the others. but in these cases the personal property of objects or even living beings takes no part, because the animals have not yet learned its value. other animals living isolated show the first tendencies toward personal property; for example, the nest where they hoard their provisions, while others, such as the ants, bees, wasps, etc., have the sentiment of collective property well developed. for instance, a swarm of ants regards plants with grubs as its property, and defends them in consequence. as soon as he has attained a primitive degree of culture, man comprehends that the possession, not only of land and the produce of work, but also the persons of other men, may profit him; and this leads to slavery. the male being the stronger soon combines the satisfaction of his sexual appetite with the advantage of property, by placing the woman more and more under his dependence and exploiting her. in this way woman becomes an object for sale and exchange, which will procure the purchaser, besides satisfaction for his sexual appetite, a docile slave and worker and a procreator of children, a source of other workers. this motive, so clearly revealed by ethnography and history, sufficiently explains the ignoble traffic that man has made of love, or rather of sexual appetite. we have seen in chapter vi the profit made by polygamous barbarians by the possession of many wives and children, which led more and more to the buying and selling of the latter. these customs are instinctively related to the traffic of slaves. our modern civilization has happily abolished these taints, but money still influences our sexual life by measures which are hardly any better. the complication and refinement of civilized life have made women and children objects of luxury, and not a source of wealth as in former times. this is due to two causes. on the one hand, a wider and more humane conception of the social position of women and children has extended their rights. man cannot now exploit them to the same extent as in the time of patriarchism, while the father of the family has, on the contrary, the duty of maintaining his wife and family, and of giving the latter a proper education. among the poor, the exploitation of the wife and children still exists; but in the case of the rich and cultured the inverse phenomenon is produced. with the intention of making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. the increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. it bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse each other in their table, their toilet, the comfort and luxury of their apartments, their pleasures and distractions, their banquets and _fêtes_. an enormous mass of the produce of human labor is thus dissipated in futilities, for the benefit of unbridled frivolity and luxury. it is owing to this that a civilization which, thanks to science and progress, far surpasses all those which have preceded it in the richness of its means of production for the wants of humanity, not only shows more and more rich with superfluous wealth, but also more and more poor who vegetate from the want of it. what is still more grave is that, for reasons of economy, the intelligent, educated and cultured marry less often and procreate fewer children. again, our descendants degenerate more and more, owing to the consumption of alcohol or other narcotics, and the unhealthy life they lead. this degeneration is dissimulated by their well-nourished appearance, but is revealed in their increasing neuropathic tendency. they become accustomed to a number of artificial wants, which make them increasingly difficult to satisfy. this results in their exacting from society much more than they give to it by their work; whereas each ought to give to society more than he receives from it. as evil omens, i must mention the idleness of many women with regard to household and manual work. what are the effects of this state of things on the sexual life of modern society? they are of three kinds: ( ) _marriage for money_; ( ) _prostitution_, exploited by proxenetism, and between the two ( ) _venal concubinage_. marriage for money marriage for money is the modern form or derivative of marriage by purchase. formerly one bought a wife and sold a daughter; to-day one is sold to a wife and buys a son-in-law. the improvement consists in the fact that the buyer and the bought are no longer in the positions of proprietor and object possessed, respectively. nevertheless, marriage at the present day gives rise to much traffic, speculation and exploitation of an evil nature. these things are so well known that i need not dwell upon them. in place of love, force of character, capacity, harmony of sentiments, intellectual and bodily health, money is the _alpha et omega_ of marriage. money dazzles most men so that they are blind to everything else. they no longer understand that the health and the physical and moral worth of a woman constitute a capital which is far preferable to all the title-deeds deposited in the coffers of the future father-in-law, which are rapidly squandered by children tainted with bad physical or mental heredity. in this way ignorance of the laws of heredity and the rapacity of pecuniary interests perpetually tend toward the antisocial procreation of a degenerate posterity. inversely, a number of capable and healthy men and women remain celibate and sterile for want of money. capital exploits them as workers and prevents them from reproducing their race; or else their own foresight induces them to avoid procreation. a characteristic sign is observed in military circles, especially in the german army where officers who are not well-to-do are forbidden to marry a woman unless she has a certain income. the officer must bring up his family in accordance with his position. this system, which it is sought to justify by all kinds of reasons, shows how the worship of the golden calf and class prejudices may degenerate our manners and customs. without fortune one cannot serve the country as an officer, or marry, except by selling oneself to a rich woman. in other terms, an officer cannot marry according to his own inclination unless he possesses a certain fortune. no doubt there are officers who marry for love; nevertheless, they are not only obliged to have a certain fortune, but the woman they marry must have a certain social position and have been well educated. the wife of an officer has to take part in balls and official gatherings. she is forbidden to carry on openly any business, and her parents must not even be shopkeepers! in a german town, one of my relatives heard a rich mother say to her daughter, who could not make up her mind to marry a gentleman who proposed to her: "if you do not want him, let him go; we do not wish to persuade you. we have plenty of money, and if you want to marry later on we can easily buy you an officer!" in the tyranny of class marriages, it is money which almost always decides the question. formerly birth and nobility were everything, and it was these which brought power and fortune; nowadays money has replaced them, and has monopolized universal power. if an energetic and intelligent man revolts, by returning to modest and primitive customs, if he dresses simply, performs manual labor, takes his meals at the same table as his servants, etc., he is despised and is not received into what is called good society. it is only up to a certain point, and with the exercise of great prudence, that any attempt can be made to react against the whirlwind of our unbridled luxury, and it is in marriage that this becomes most delicate and most difficult. a well-brought-up and well-educated man with no money, who wishes to marry while he is a student, so as to avoid prostitution or other evils; who is content to live in humble quarters with his wife, each doing their own work, will have great difficulty in finding a well-nurtured girl to consent to such an arrangement. everything has to be regulated according to the fashion, customs and prejudices of the class in which he lives, and this usually renders marriage impossible, as long as he has not what is called a position. but no one will blame the same student for living in concubinage with a grisette. why cannot the same means of existence which allow concubinage suffice for marriage? with this question i only touch on a problem to which we shall return, at the same time pointing out the canker which corrupts our modern sexual life. by marriage for money we understand marriage which is based on interest and not on love. it is not always a question of money; for position, name, titles and convenience often complicate the question. sometimes a ruined aristocrat marries a rich tradesman's daughter, in order to repair his fortune, while the vanity of his _fiancée_ makes a title a desirable acquisition. sometimes a coquette, by clever flirtation, will simulate a love which she does not feel, to catch a rich man in her net. but more commonly there is calculation on both sides and both are duped. marriage for money is not confined to the rich but also occurs among peasants and working people. everywhere it constitutes one of the principal corrupting elements of sexual intercourse and procreation. hard-working servants who have succeeded in saving a few hundred dollars are often married for the sake of this small sum, and then abandoned as soon as the husband has squandered it. i do not pretend that a marriage for money can never be happy; it may happen that the contract is an honest one and that love follows it more or less haltingly, especially when the calculators have taken into account character and health, etc., as well as money. there is no need for me to continue this theme any further, and i shall conclude by stating that this system opens the door to hypocrisy, deceit and abuse of all kinds. it is not without reason that marriage for money has been branded with the name of _fashionable prostitution_. prostitution and proxenetism prostitution is a very ancient institution and a sign of degeneration which is found more or less among all nations. when woman is an article for sale it is not surprising that those whose moral worth is weak take the traffic into their own hands when they can, and sell themselves to men to satisfy their sexual appetites, instead of allowing themselves to be passively exploited as articles of commerce. man being the stronger finds it advantageous in the lower and barbarous states of civilization to monopolize this traffic for his own profit, and deliver the women under his domination to prostitution. we have seen that fathers give their daughters, and husbands their wives to prostitution. for the same reason, the woman who prostitutes herself in our modern civilization, always runs the risk of being abused without payment; which is not to be wondered at considering the doubtful quality of the usual clients of the prostitute. it is therefore natural that she should seek for a means of protection. she thus takes a male protector, or "bully," whom she pays; or else she joins the service of those who make a business of prostitution--or _proxenetism_. proxenetism and protectors are thus the parasites of prostitution. prostitution flourished amongst the ancients and also in the middle ages, especially after the crusades (chapter vi). i do not propose to write the history of prostitution; it is sufficient to be acquainted with that of the present day. i may, however, remark that among a number of primitive races, and in young and progressive nations, whose sexual life is still comparatively pure, prostitution is only feebly developed. it is especially to napoleon i that we owe the present form of regulation and organization of prostitutes. like all his legislation on marriage and sexual intercourse, this regulation is the living expression of his sentiments toward woman; oppression of the female sex, contempt of its rights, and degradation of its individuals to the state of articles of pleasure for men, and machines for reproduction. =organization and regulation of prostitution.=--we have just seen the social conditions under which prostitution becomes quite naturally organized, with its protectors and its proxenetism. there is another factor to be added--that of venereal disease. the infectious germs of syphilis and gonorrhea are usually met with in the genital organs of man and woman; so that every coitus between a healthy and an infected individual may infect the former. hence the danger of the spread of infection increases with the number of mutations in sexual intercourse. if a woman offers herself systematically to all the men who wish for her, the probability that she will be infected by one of them increases in proportion to the number of clients. in the second place, as soon as she is infected, the danger is increased by the number of men who have connection with her, for she will probably infect a large proportion of them. while paying much attention to venereal diseases and their consequences, medicine has shown itself inconceivably blind in not comprehending the bearing of this elementary arithmetic. we must take into account the fact that the complete cure of syphilis is very difficult, if not impossible, to prove; that this disease is extremely infectious, at least during the first two years of its course; and that it extends to the blood and the whole organism, so that it may be communicated, not only by large visible sores, but by small excoriations hidden in the mucous membrane of the vagina or the mouth, etc. we must also remember that gonorrhea is less painful in woman than in man, and that, even in the latter, it ceases to be painful when it becomes chronic. we may add that the microbes (the gonococci) are very difficult to reach in all the recesses of the mucous membrane of the sexual organs in which they are hidden, and that in women they penetrate as far as the womb, when a cure becomes almost impossible. if we consider that the sexual organs of woman form deep and hidden cavities which it is very difficult to examine thoroughly, in spite of all the apparatus of modern surgery, and that the mouth in prostitutes is also frequently contaminated by unnatural manipulations; lastly, that no part of their body is absolutely indemnified, it is easy to understand the great danger of infection in public prostitution. recognizing the danger of venereal disease, the regulation of prostitution was instituted by medical men with the good intention of eliminating or of diminishing its danger, since they regarded its suppression as impossible. this system consists in the official supervision and inscription of every woman who prostitutes herself. she is given an official form which obliges her to submit to medical examination once a week or once a fortnight, under the penalty of being arrested and punished. to facilitate medical control, regulation generally endeavors to lodge prostitutes in brothels or _lupanars_, under the direction of a proxenet. in theory, the brothel is not exactly considered as a state institution of public health; the word _toleration_ being used in this connection, signifying that it is regarded as a tolerated evil. nevertheless, this distinction only rests on uncertain and subtle characters. to tolerate, to license, to organize, to recognize and favor, to protect and recommend are notions which merge into one another insensibly. as soon as the state tolerates prostitution and brothels, it is obliged to enter into official contracts with prostitutes and proxenetism; therefore, it recognizes them. moreover, the services which it renders must be paid for. it is therefore necessary that prostitutes and proxenets should pay their tribute to the state and to the doctors: but "the one who pays commands." no doubt this proverb must not be taken to the letter, nevertheless the one who pays always exerts a certain pressure on the one who receives, and for this reason proxenets and inscribed prostitutes have some idea that they form part of an official institution, which raises their position not only in their own eyes but in those of the irreflective masses. i will cite two examples which show how effectively the public organization of a vicious social anomaly confuses ideas in persons of limited intelligence. one of my friends was engaged in combating the official regulation of prostitution. a woman, who misunderstood his object, came to him complaining bitterly of the loose life her daughter was leading, and asked him if he could not help her by placing her in a brothel licensed by the state; she would then be under the care of a paternal government! an old proxenet in paris requested the authorities to transfer the management of her brothel to her daughter, aged nineteen. her house, she said, was honest and managed in a loyal and religious spirit; her daughter was capable and initiated into the business and would carry it on in the same irreproachable manner as hitherto. these two examples of ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of the morality of the system. in _la maison tellier_ guy de maupassant has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prostitute, the proxenet, and their clients. for reasons previously mentioned no real confidence can be placed in periodical medical examination of prostitutes; on the contrary it gives the male public a false security. the object of these medical visits is to eliminate diseased women from circulation and compel them to submit to hospital treatment. but any one acquainted with the facts knows that the treatment is illusory. in a short time every woman in a brothel is infected, with very few exceptions. but, on the one hand, the proxenets and the prostitutes have every interest in shortening the time in hospital; and, on the other hand, the visiting doctor, who often lives partly by their fees, is obliged to treat them with respect. [in paris, the doctors in charge of the inspection of prostitutes are paid by the state, and do not depend on fees from the women.] the treatment of venereal disease being of long duration and very uncertain in its effects, a vicious circle is formed. a conscientious dutch doctor, chanfleury van issjelstein, who attempted to eliminate all infected prostitutes from the brothels, succeeded in almost emptying them, by subjecting the infected women to prolonged treatment in hospital. this led to a revolt which endangered his life, and he had to abandon his scheme. in ordinary hospital practice only visible sores are treated, and gonorrheal discharges as long as they are apparent; the prostitutes are then allowed to return to their brothels. moreover, inspection is made too rapidly; for, if every woman was examined carefully from head to foot every week, neither the brothels, the prostitutes nor the doctors could exist. certain persons have made the proposition, as ridiculous as it is radical, of submitting every man who visits a prostitute to medical inspection! this would indeed be the only means of preventing the infection of prostitutes. but i ask my readers to imagine such a measure put in practice. is it likely that the _habitués_ of brothels, some of whom visit prostitutes nearly every day or oftener, would make this known to a doctor in their town, and submit, before each coitus, to a medical examination which would cost them more time and money than their pleasure! can one imagine doctors examining whole _queues_ of clients waiting their turn in brothels when business is brisk! whilst an independent prostitute still possesses some human sentiment and a vestige of modesty which cause her to choose as far as possible a limited number of clients, the police certificate of regulation officially places the woman who receives it in the class of the pariahs of society, and this leads to her losing the little that remains of her womanly nature. in brothels, the last vestige of her human nature is trampled under foot. =degrees of prostitution. protectors.=--several degrees can be recognized in private prostitution. a variety of prostitute rather less low than others, looks for clients at public balls, certain cafés and other doubtful localities, and hires herself to a certain number of temporary acquaintances. the lowest and most common form of private prostitution is that of the streets. generally at night, but sometimes in the daytime, these prostitutes, dressed so as to attract attention, promenade in certain well-known and frequented streets, and solicit passers-by. this is the common method employed in nearly all towns. this solicitation is supervised by the police in countries where prostitution is regulated, and is only permitted to women who possess their certificate of inscription. here the "protector" (bully) intervenes, and keeps an eye on the clients at the prostitute's house, or sometimes in the street. if they do not pay up, or pay too little, or if they threaten or ill-treat the woman, the protector administers a drubbing, and sometimes relieves them of their purse or clothes. at the same time the protector spies on the police for the benefit of the prostitute. sometimes he assumes the position of legitimate husband, so as to facilitate taking rooms. a "husband" of this kind, with a citizen's rights, is very useful to foreign prostitutes, for without him they would risk expulsion. the protector is generally a scamp of the worst kind, an absolutely depraved and idle vagabond who is entirely maintained by his "wife." some protectors shine by their sexual power, and are at the same time the real lovers of the prostitutes, who keep them, and are plundered by them. while they submit to coitus with their clients without any pleasure, and only simulate voluptuous sensations, they abandon themselves to their protectors or lovers with ardor. it is needless to add that the protectors are often criminals, or of the criminal type. those who are well acquainted with prostitution declare that it would be impossible without the protector, who is at the same time the friend, protector and exploiter of the prostitute, while the brothel keeper is only concerned with her wholesale systematic exploitation. =brothels and proxenets.=--under the pretext of avoiding the dangers of prostitution in the streets, brothels were organized. these are generally managed by an elderly female profligate, often in partnership with a "husband," who is only a superior kind of protector. officially, the prostitutes are free lodgers in the brothel, but in reality they are often prisoners or slaves. they are well fed and dressed in a way to attract the clients as much as possible. clothes, food, etc., are placed to their account and the crafty brothel keeper generally manages to get them into debt so as to always remain their creditor. in this way these miserable outcasts of society, who are generally incapable of claiming their legal rights, are more or less reduced to slavery. apparently they are free, but in reality they can hardly leave the house without paying their debts, and the brothel keeper who wishes to keep them arranges so that they cannot pay it. it is not always easy to distinguish between the different classes of prostitutes: the prostitute of the brothel, the street prostitute under inscription or not, the private prostitute and lorette or grisette. sometimes a woman may rise from one class to another; but more often she falls lower and lower. we may mention here one of the dangers of brothels. their good organization, their medical supervision, etc., are extolled; but the great danger of the arithmetical progression of mutations in sexual intercourse is ignored. while a private prostitute rarely receives more than one client in an evening, and is not absolutely obliged to receive more, every prostitute in a brothel is forced to receive as many as present themselves. a girl may thus have connection with men twenty or thirty times in the same night. under certain circumstances, for instance at the time of conscription for recruits at brussels, the brothels are besieged to such a point that one man has hardly time to finish coitus before another comes to take his place. it is obvious that such "file firing" greatly increases the danger of venereal infection, since a single infected person is sufficient to contaminate innumerable clients (even without the woman herself becoming infected). it is often denied that the brothel is a prison, yet this fact has been often demonstrated. when, as in france, the police can arrest a prostitute at pleasure--often a virtuous young girl who is taken for such--and put her on the inscription list, the thing is obvious. i have treated a girl who became the mistress of a police agent in paris under the threat of being inscribed as a prostitute. again, besides the debts we have spoken of, the proxenets have many other ways of keeping prostitutes under their dependence. it is very difficult for ignorant girls, placed under the ban of society, to return to a free and virtuous life. but if a girl shows signs of wishing to leave a brothel, heroic measures are adopted, in the form of international exchange. a girl who is unacquainted with the language of the country is naturally more incapable of gaining her freedom than one who does. this is one of the reasons why the brothels of different countries exchange their women. this expedient, which also satisfies clients who desire a change, leads to the exportation of women from one country to another, under false pretenses, such as the promise of lucrative and easy situations. in this way young swiss girls are exported to hungary, hungarians to switzerland, germans to france, french to england, europeans to buenos-ayres, creoles to europe, etc. for example, if a young french girl has been exported to buda-pest or buenos-ayres, we may be certain that she will lose all inclination to run away; for what can she do--a stranger without a cent, with her ignorance and want of character, alone in the streets, when she does not understand a word of the language? =white slavery.=--the modern commerce in female slaves of civilized europe destined for prostitution is closely connected with the facts we have just described. the manner in which brothels exchange their merchandise only concerns one side of the question. the principal art consists in obtaining young girls, of twelve to seventeen years of age, for the brothels. this traffic is formally prohibited by most laws; but what are laws made for, if not to be broken? there are so many means of training children under some pretext or other, before they are independent enough to escape this life of infamy. there are so many depraved or hungry parents who are ready to sell their children if, in hypocritical but transparent language, a good situation is promised them with payment in advance. during a railway journey, i was myself a witness of the manner in which a young girl of twelve was sold in this way and sent to pressburg. i was also simple enough to try and appeal for the intervention of a consul and an ambassador to prevent the perpetration of the crime. they only replied by shrugging their shoulders. how could i prove the matter before a tribunal? the child was accompanied by a woman who admitted to me that there could hardly be any other question than the sale of the child for prostitution. she had only been ordered to take the child to vienna, where they would come and take her. this shows the impotence of any person who tries to prevent such infamies. during the last few years an international organization has at last been formed to combat white slavery; but so far it has not obtained much result. by the aid of depraved parents and all their criminal system of seduction, the proxenets always find a way of attaining their object. moreover, it is difficult to see how the state can prevent proxenetism from obtaining its merchandise, so long as it tolerates and licenses it. we must remember that very young girls, almost children, are the most easy to seduce and the most sought after. =the training of prostitutes.=--the most repugnant aspect of proxenetism is the seduction and systematic training of the girls. the desire for money and fine dresses, the promise of good situations, and especially alcoholic intoxication, all play their part in the diabolical art of proxenetism. many young girls, frivolous and fond of pleasure, but not wishing to go any further, are easily seduced under the influence of wine. as soon as some protector has succeeded in seducing a girl, he trades on her shame and fear of discovery, adding threats and blackmail. when she has become sufficiently accustomed to sexual intercourse, she is initiated into the high-school of vice, and systematically instructed in exciting the sexual appetites of men by all possible means, natural or otherwise. she is first of all taught how to simulate the venereal orgasm by her movements, breathing, etc.; to practice _coitus ab ore_, etc.; to conform to the pathological requirements of masochists, sadists, etc., (chapter viii). girls who have been seduced and abandoned, and those who have had illegitimate children, are the most suitable objects for exploitation by the jackals of proxenetism. if it is objected that the majority of prostitutes have a bad hereditary taint, and that their frivolity and idleness incline them from the first to their trade, i reply that frivolity and love of pleasure are not at all the same thing as the ignoble slavery and disgusting life of a prostitute in a brothel. the part played by alcohol in prostitution has not been estimated at its true value. the coarser and more degraded forms of prostitution would not be possible without it. it is by the aid of alcoholic orgies that most girls are seduced, and by chronic drunkenness that they sustain themselves in their degradation. =localized prostitution.=--in certain towns, hamburg for instance, an attempt has been made to establish an organization intermediate between the brothel and private prostitution, by compelling all prostitutes to inhabit certain special streets which are reserved for them, at the same time being inscribed by the police. the result has been deplorable, and these streets have become uninhabitable. it must be borne in mind that the owners or managers of these houses become from this fact more or less analogous to proxenets. whoever lets his house for such an object must possess very little sentiment of modesty and duty, for he lives indirectly on the produce of prostitution. =clandestine brothels.=--besides the official brothels, of which we have spoken, there are a number of secret organizations of all kinds, which the state is the less able to prevent as it organizes and tolerates prostitution and proxenetism on its own account. a number of taverns possess secret chambers which are only small brothels, in which the servants act at the same time as prostitutes. it is the same with many small shops (gloves, perfumes, etc.), whose innocent appearance only serves as a blind. a number of _cafés chantants_ are also connected with prostitution and proxenetism. certain tobacco shops, etc., sell obscene objects such as pornographic pictures. all these things act especially on youth and become disseminated in colleges. =the number of prostitutes.=--the number of prostitutes has been estimated at , in berlin, , in paris, and , in london. it can hardly be assumed that all these women have a pathological heredity. as soon as the state recognizes the right of existence of this dung-heap, by its toleration and organization, corruption hitherto hidden and ashamed raises its head and becomes more and more bold, even dragging public organs into its sink. it is the public especially, but also the authorities and the doctors who become corrupted by contact with official proxenetism, which confuses the ideas of morality in every one's head (vide _la maison tellier_, de maupassant). they shut their eyes to the haunts of vice. the proxenets feel that they are important personages, and the more enterprising of them very often enjoy secret favors and receive visits from state officials, and even married persons of high position. it is not difficult for any one who reflects a little to see what this state of things leads to. =prostitution and the police.=--the police know very well that in certain brothels prostitution is not only associated with alcoholic excess, but that certain houses become the haunts of criminals. they even regard certain low-class brothels and taverns frequented by prostitutes as very useful for the discovery of criminals. spies of all kinds are met with in these places, from the secret agent who tracks a criminal and flirts at the same time with the prostitutes, to the counter-spy employed by the proxenets to watch the secret agent. it is here that the criminal world acquires its rakish manners, but its weakness for women and alcohol cause it to fall early into the traps of the secret police. it is here also, as well as in the salons of high-class proxenetism, that we meet with those indefinable individuals who are to-day secret agents of the government, to-morrow false noblemen or criminals, and the day after proxenets, and whom a former minister of the german empire designated by the euphemistic term of "non-gentleman." =the psychology of prostitutes and the cause of prostitution.=--the psychology of prostitutes is a difficult and complicated subject. according to the point of view of those who judge them, they are considered as women of evil and incorrigible instincts, or as the victims of our bad social organizations. these two assertions are by their exclusiveness equally false. urged by christian charity, many societies for the improvement of morality have attempted to rescue fallen women; but, as might be expected, the results have not been satisfactory. in fact, the mind of woman is quite differently dominated by sexual ideas and their irradiations than that of man. it is also less plastic, and becomes more easily the slave of habit and routine. if, therefore, a woman has been systematically trained in sexual aberrations from her youth upward, all her ideas are concentrated on debauch and sexual intercourse, so that it becomes impossible later on to restore her to a life of serious social duty. rare exceptions confirm this rule. moreover, sexual excitation in women awakens sexual desire, which becomes exalted by repetition and habit. on the other hand, it is necessary to recognize that girls who are idle, of weak character, hysterical, easily suggestible, coquettes or nymphomaniacs, are subjects specially disposed to become seduced. lastly, poverty is one of the most powerful auxiliaries of prostitution. i do not wish to be sentimental, nor to give too much weight to the well-known statement that a poor woman prostitutes herself to appease her children's hunger, or her own. no doubt this happens among the oriental jews and among the proletariat of large towns, but it is, on the whole, exceptional. poverty acts indirectly in a much more intense and efficacious manner. first of all it compels the proletariat to live in the most disgusting promiscuity. not only do the father, the mother and the children occupy the same room, but they sleep there, often in the same bed. the children are witnesses of their parents' coitus and become initiated in sexual intercourse, often in its most bestial form, under the influence of alcohol, for example. neglected and herded together with other children, most of them as badly brought up as themselves, from their early youth they become acquainted not only with the most gross and filthy things, but also with the most pathological and deformed excrescences of the unhealthy life of towns. in the proletariat of certain towns there are few girls of fourteen years of age who are still virgins. again, poverty urges parents to exploit their children, for it is easy to deliver them into the hands of proxenetism. but this is not confined to the poorest classes; among small tradespeople, poverty is also an indirect agent of prostitution. here again the effect of pitiless exploitation is seen; in certain occupations which leave the girls free evenings, and also in certain shops, the proprietor only pays his employés an absurdly small salary, because they can add to it by prostitution. for this reason, many saleswomen, dressmakers, etc., are obliged to content themselves with a minimum wage. when they complain, and especially when they are good looking, they are often given to understand that with their attractive appearance it is very easy for them to increase their income, for many a young man would be glad to "befriend them," to say nothing of other insinuations of the same kind. i have already pointed out how waitresses are utilized as bait in certain taverns, etc. let us cite a few figures: about per cent. of the prostitutes in paris have some occupation besides prostitution. in factories, shops, etc., the average wage of men is francs . per day; that of women francs .; but in domestic service it is only francs . for men and franc ., or even centimes for women, even where the latter do the same work! is it to be wondered that they have recourse to prostitution? =high-class brothels.=--in these establishments the life of the prostitute is much more agreeable: the goods of superior quality demanded by rich and fastidious clients requires better treatment and special care. i will cite a case published in the annual report of the société de pestalozzi (for cruelty to children) at vienna: "in october, , the tyrolean society for abandoned infancy sent us the papers of a young tyrolean girl of eighteen, who was found at venice under police control. our attention was drawn to the youth of this girl and the incapacity of the father to induce her to reform. we were requested to restore her, if possible, to an honest life. we made the usual inquiries. having many brothers and sisters, this girl, at the age of fourteen, obtained a situation at innsbruck, where she was badly treated. she went away and gave herself gradually to prostitution, latterly at vienna. we had an interview with her at our office and ascertained that she had experienced ill-treatment at innsbruck. she had a modest demeanor and made a good impression. she regarded her future with equanimity, admitting that she was excluded from society, but speaking of her trade as seriously as if it was licit and officially recognized. she assured us that her parents, having great difficulty in gaining a livelihood, agreed with her in her choice of a "business." she was on very good terms with them and sent them money. to obtain a certificate from the police, the consent of her parents was necessary. her mother had told her that if she remained pious and honest no one could reproach her. she held "madame" (the proprietress of the brothel) in high esteem, on account of her kind treatment of her "boarders." the house in which she was located was first-class, both as regards clients and treatment. there were about a dozen young girls there, most of them younger than herself, all with their parents' consent; and many of them sent home what they earned. she said that her companions were very happy, being well fed and clothed, and earning from to crowns a month. with much ingenuousness she told us how madame, whom she greatly respected, had looked after two old "boarders," who no longer had any clients. she also had a protector. we tried to induce her to commence another life, promising her a situation, but she refused, saying that even if she wished to do so madame would not let her go; besides, she would always be reproached for her past life, and she did not wish to live with people who would always despise her. she had already suffered enough trouble and did not wish to launch on the unknown. moreover, she had lost her former habits and had never learnt anything seriously. in short, she did not wish to give up her pleasant and comfortable life! this conversation led us to the conclusion that the case in question was not of a nature to justify any action on the part of our society for the rescue of young women. in spite of her tender age, this girl gave us the impression of mature judgment. it appeared already much too late to attempt to recommence her education. she also showed signs of great anxiety when we spoke to her of leaving her brothel. this case requires no comment; it gives a good idea of our social condition. the religious piety of this girl, and her profound veneration for "madame," are typical of the deviation of moral sense by the suggestion of environment. =varieties in prostitutes.=--we thus see that prostitutes constitute a collection of very different individuals. although it may be true that, on the average, their ranks are recruited from girls who are coarse, shameless, depraved and alcoholic, it is no less false to conclude that all are of bad heredity. a considerable number are pathological individuals, including hysterical subjects, nymphomaniacs and other psychopaths. others again are naturally amoral, stupid, idle and deceitful, or have been accustomed to vicious surroundings from infancy; or else they are of an absolutely indifferent and apathetic nature, or very suggestible and yielding to every seduction and external impulse. the latter perhaps form the largest contingent, because they most easily become the prey of proxenetism. many of them have fallen by seduction. ashamed of their first error, and not having the courage to bear the consequences, they gradually sink into the swamp of prostitution. illegitimate births play a great part here. a certain class of prostitutes ply their trade simply from poverty and want, being ashamed of it but profiting by it to maintain their family. but poverty acts chiefly in combination with other causes. there still remains a very limited group formed by individuals who give themselves up to prostitution for love of it. these are generally women with a morbid and violent sexual appetite, joined to want of moral sense. rich women, even countesses and princesses have been known to become prostitutes. this diversity among prostitutes explains why there are different degrees in prostitution. although its depravity is often more or less masked by fine clothes and good cheer, the lowest level is represented by the girl of the brothels, who is little more than an instrument for coitus in the hands of proxenetism (with the exception of certain high-class brothels). it is the prostitutes of low-class brothels for soldiers who lead the most miserable life. such houses only keep refuse merchandise, _i.e._, old prostitutes who are no good for anything else. there is no sadder sight than a soldiers' brothel. the prostitution in _cafés_, scent shops, glove shops, etc., constitutes a slightly higher grade. as regards danger of venereal infection this is as great as anywhere, but the girls are rather more independent and lead a more natural life. it is precisely because these places are not under legal protection, that the patrons or protectors of prostitutes cannot employ the terrorism of licensed proxenets. the free prostitutes of the streets are about on the same level. they are not dependent on proxenetism, but only on their protector and proprietor, which is a trifle less degrading. what degrades them most of all is police inscription, obligatory medical inspection, and the miserable system of solicitation on the pavement. it is necessary to have lost all feeling of modesty, and to possess a cynical audacity to become a street prostitute. prostitutes who only practice occasionally and have not the courage to solicit, nor to be inscribed by the police, belong to a higher level. but in countries where regulation is in force they always run the risk of being arrested by the police and put on the inscription list. these private prostitutes constitute the intermediate stage between prostitution properly so-called, and venal concubinage, which we shall speak of later. the army of prostitutes is partly composed of pathological individuals. alcohol and vicious habits increase their abnormal tendencies, so that their behavior leaves nothing wanting in the way of temper, impulsiveness, cynicism and insolence. this is seen every day in hospitals for venereal disease. as soon as a prostitute finds her physical condition improve after a few days in hospital, sexual abstinence arouses her appetite to such an extent that she indulges in lesbian love with her companions, or shows herself naked at the windows, etc. some prostitutes of better quality suffer at first from the scandalous tone of the brothel, but they generally become used to it, and end with adopting it themselves. honest women, infected accidentally or by their husbands, suffer martyrdom when they are sent to the venereal divisions of hospitals. =the fate of prostitutes.=--what becomes of prostitutes in the course of time? they cannot remain very long in the brothels for they only accept young and fine-looking girls. it would be interesting to follow the fate of all these women. at all events nothing is more absurd than the common saying that the suppression of brothels increases prostitution in the streets, and that their introduction suppresses it. it is obvious that, as the women in brothels have to be continually renewed, they must be continually thrown onto the streets. no doubt many prostitutes die at an early age from the results of alcohol and syphilis. the only resource left to many, when they are ejected from the brothels, is to solicit in the streets or to join clandestine brothels or taverns of the same nature. the most profligate, those who look upon their profession from the artistic or the commercial points of view, know how to advance themselves and become "madames"; but these are comparatively few in number. some end in suicide or lunatic asylums. as a last resource, when no man will have anything to do with them, many of them take to the lowest occupations, such as cleaning lavatories, etc. at munich it used to be proverbial that the class of "radiweiber" and "nussweiber" (old women selling nuts etc., at the street corners) were mostly recruited from old prostitutes. occasionally a better class prostitute succeeds in getting married. if we consider without prejudice the miserable life of a prostitute, we cannot hear the term "_fille de joie_" without a feeling of sadness and indignation, for it conveys such bitter and tragic irony. if we could ourselves experience the true state of mind which is hidden behind the smiles and songs of so many miserable singers at café concerts, and behind the brazen artifices of many prostitutes; if we could learn their past life and the cause of their fall, no man with a spark of pity or sympathy for his fellows could relish with a light heart a "joy" bought at such a price. for those who read german, i recommend on this subject: _tagebuch einer verlornen_, by marguerite böhme. (berlin: fontane, .) =prostitution and sexual perversion.=--if it is true that many prostitutes have a pathological heredity, it is still more sure that they often have to submit to the fancies of pathological clients. the numerous sexual anomalies, of which we have spoken in chapter viii, are closely connected with prostitution. the refinement of modern civilization is so complete that it supplies localities and women for the special use of each pathological form of the sexual appetite. so far we have only spoken of female prostitutes, and we have seen how they conform to the customs of sadists, masochists, etc. they allow themselves to be maltreated by the former, and maltreat the latter; or else they play at exhibitions symbolical of cruelty or humiliation. for male inverts, on the other hand, there exist male brothels, in which young boys practice pederasty for money. for certain rich _roués_, or for those affected with pederosis, children are kept. this last class of goods is very dear, for there is always a risk of the law intervening. young virgins also fetch a high price; and they even try to sew up the hymen after their defloration, so as to offer them several times as virgins! with what we have said in chapter viii, these indications will suffice to show that modern prostitution and proxenetism constitute a public disgrace, intended to exploit the unbridled desires of men for profit. this system has been defended on the grounds of hygiene and the protection of virtuous women against the assaults of men, etc. in reality, it has resulted in corrupting and effeminating men; in restricting the normal sexual intercourse of youth in its natural association with an inconsiderate love; in degrading love itself; in debarring a great number of capable and virtuous women from marriage, from love, and from sexual intercourse in general; lastly, in causing complete aberration of the whole sexual life of modern society. contemporary literature has begun to consider the psychology of prostitution. we have already mentioned _la maison tellier_ by de maupassant; zola's _nana_ is the history of a high-class prostitute related in the well-known realistic manner of the celebrated novelist, in which he describes the sexual depravity existing in certain parisian circles of the second empire. i will now make a few remarks concerning a social movement organized against the regulation of prostitution, called abolitionism. =abolitionism and regulation.=--an englishwoman, mrs. josephine butler, undertook, in the name of liberty, a campaign against proxenetism, white slavery and the state regulation of prostitution. she also attacked the injustice of the code napoleon toward women, especially the prohibition of inquiry into paternity, which throws girls who have been seduced into the arms of prostitution. the abolitionists contest the right of police inscription of prostitutes under the pretext of hygiene, of submitting them against their will to medical inspection, and of keeping them in brothels. they claim severe laws against proxenetism and oppose toleration. in medical circles the system of regulation has generally been defended. it is urged that society has the right to protect itself against dangerous infection, and that, with this object, it has as much right to treat infected prostitutes compulsorily, as those affected with smallpox or cholera. owing to their shameful trade, they maintain that these women have lost all claim to special consideration. this argument appears very reasonable at first sight, but it takes quite a different aspect when the facts are examined more thoroughly. first of all the comparison with smallpox and cholera is illogical, for these diseases endanger the innocent public, while the man who makes use of prostitution is quite aware of the danger he runs. society is under no obligation to provide healthy prostitutes for the use of don juan. against this it is stated that innocent wives are often infected and made to suffer for the sins of their husbands. but such an extensive blending of the state with family life does not appear to be admissible, and would lead to crying abuses. society has neither the right nor the duty to facilitate the dangerous or injurious acts of certain individuals at the expense of others, by rendering them less dangerous, so that certain third parties may be less liable to suffer. this is an absurd sophism. the duty of society is to make responsible the one who has committed the dangerous or injurious act, and to punish him if he has done harm. here, on the contrary, one only of the culprits (the prostitute) is compelled to keep to her vile trade, while the man who makes use of her, and often infects her, is free from any responsibility. moreover, the state has no right to act against responsible persons under the pretext that their future sentiments or actions would have dangerous consequences for others; this would lead to arbitrary abuse of power. the insane, and habitual criminals make the only exceptions, for their abnormal and irresponsible cerebral organization is a perpetual danger to society. there is one question, however, which arises: can prostitution in itself be regarded as a misdemeanor punishable by law? if this were the case, the client would have to be punished as well as the prostitute; or both of them be sent to reformatories. this is the only logical consequence, for in such cases the two contractors are equally guilty, and also equally dangerous as regards infection. how, therefore, can the system be justified which brands and inscribes the prostitute only; which is not content with tolerating her vile trade instead of punishing it, but gives it official sanction, causing her to fall lower and lower; which finally, to crown the work, licenses the proxenetism which exploits her vice? it is difficult to imagine more complete hypocrisy, or a more contradictory system. in former times when slavery was allowed, men's will and pleasure were sufficient to justify such measures, which created for their profit a class of female pariahs; and this was frankly and openly admitted. nowadays, the equal rights of women which are officially recognized in civilized countries no longer allow it, and hygienic arguments only can give such modern barbarity the hypocritical appearance of justification. lunatics and criminals are only locked up as a measure of safety, and to attempt to improve them; but their bodies are not allowed to become an object of commerce for the pleasure of other members of society. but the results of honestly interpreted statistics contradict the apparent justification of the regulation of prostitution, in the name of hygiene. it is intended to furnish men with a means of coitus free from danger; but the facts prove that venereal disease has not been diminished by this means. the false security given to men officially by regulation makes them all the more careless. the multiplication of the sexual connections of each prostitute increases the danger of infection at least as much as the elimination of a few diseased persons diminishes it. the corruption of the state and its officials, especially the police and the medical inspectors of brothels, the general depravity which results from official toleration, and the perversion of ideas of morality among the public, increase habits of prostitution, and with it the danger of infection. assured of impunity the pimps and their acolytes become more and more audacious and extend their business, while the prostitutes, whose number is increased by this system, seek to escape the police and practice their trade clandestinely. it is no wonder that the swamp to be purified becomes more and more infectious. can it be conscientiously said that hygiene has benefited? this is well seen in geneva and in france. it is enough to compare the number of cases of venereal disease and of prostitutes in countries where regulation is in force, with those which do not employ it, to show the complete fiasco of the system from the hygienic point of view. on the average, the number of infectious cases is nearly the same with or without regulation and depends on many other causes. i cannot enter into the details here and must refer to the statistics and to the works published by the abolitionist federation ( rue st. léger, geneva). of all that has been published, nothing appears to me more conclusive than the masterly statistics of mounier, for holland, in . even among medical men, the originators of regulation, the abolitionist point of view is steadily gaining ground. it is beginning to be understood that the toleration of proxenetism, and even the inscription and medical inspection of prostitutes, are vicious methods of social sanitation against venereal infection. but by the suppression of official toleration and regulation, the question of prostitution is in no way settled. this has only a negative action, important for the tactics of those who wish to upset a scandalous abuse, but which does not respond to the higher task of extirpating the root of the evil. the positive work will only begin when the state is relieved of its shameful compact with proxenetism and prostitution. in the following chapters we shall examine the remedies which must be applied to our sexual anarchy, the result of masculine autocracy, as russian anarchy is the result of tsarism. i will first make a few observations from the medical and hygienic point of view, to the partisans of regulation. they exclaim that the abolitionists are fanatics, who, from their absence of scientific spirit, will deluge society with venereal disease. this bogy has no sound foundation. the state regulation of prostitution applied to certain women has not diminished the amount of venereal disease, because it does not reach it. the state concession of an unnatural vice cannot be hygienic. moreover, it is impossible to completely disinfect prostitutes, this disinfection is quite illusory, unless it is also applied to their clients, which is impracticable. in france, where the system of regulation has existed for a long time in its strictest form, venereal diseases are extremely prevalent; while in switzerland, where it only exists at geneva, having been suppressed for some years in the canton of zurich, they are less frequent. geneva is not less contaminated than other towns in switzerland, in spite of its model brothels, and zurich has lately, by popular vote, confirmed abolition by a crushing majority, in opposition to a few interested persons who wished to reëstablish the brothels under futile and fallacious pretexts. some clandestine brothels still exist in towns where the authorities shut their eyes. it has also been maintained that the number of sexual misdemeanors would increase with the suppression of brothels. this is another illusion. the majority of sexual misdemeanors are due to psychic anomalies (chapter viii) or to the effects of alcoholic intoxication. if they have any relation to prostitution, it is rather that of being favored by its orgies. =remedies for the evil.=--what is wanted first of all are severe laws against proxenetism. it is indisputable that commerce made with the body of one's neighbor is illegal, even when the latter gives consent. it is a crime or misdemeanor which should be prosecuted like negro slavery or usury. we should not wait for a complaint to be lodged, but prosecute proxenetism officially, for the victims are hindered by shame from coming forward. the pimps of proxenetism are recruited from the dregs of society. in this domain, as in the others, penal law should not be put in force; the object should be the protection of society and the improvement of the criminal. as regards prostitution itself, it cannot be made a misdemeanor without opening the door too widely to complete arbitrariness. the state cannot prevent a responsible adult from disposing of his own body, without introducing religion and metaphysics into legislation; but the state can require those who practice prostitution not to molest the public. it has, therefore, the right to punish solicitation in the streets by fine or imprisonment, especially in often repeated offenses. it can also give persons of both sexes, who are victims of venereal disease, the right of claiming damages by civil law. the legality of this right of indemnity has been much contested. in my opinion it is legitimate when the state no longer tolerates or regulates prostitution; but so long as it does this, and submits prostitutes to obligatory medical treatment, the states takes the responsibility of their health. under the régime of regulation, an infected person could logically claim damages from the state, or, at any rate from the pimps of licensed proxenetism. the question of responsibility is quite different when prostitution is free. the sexual intercourse of a free prostitute with a man may be regarded as a private contract in which each party has the same rights and obligations. if one of the two contractors deceives the other by concealing venereal disease, the latter has the right to claim damages, if there is sufficient proof of infection from this source. the right of indemnity does not, however, constitute the principal point. in order to successfully combat prostitution and venereal disease, fundamental social reforms are necessary. ( ). first of all the system of exploitation of the poor by the rich should be put an end to, the work of the poor being remunerated at its true value. this requires a social transformation of the relations between capital and labor. ( ). the use of narcotics, and especially alcohol, should be suppressed. ( ). the false modesty concerning sexual intercourse should be done away with. ( ). the public should be instructed in the dangers of venereal disease and in the means of preventing contamination. the only certain means of curing them consists in not contracting them. ( ). cleanliness should be universally encouraged, especially in sexual intercourse. ( ). preventive measures should be employed in every coitus, the object of which is not procreation. ( ). the treatment of venereal diseases in hospitals should be carried out in a decent and humane manner, so as not to shock the modesty of either sex, especially women, and so that patients need not be ashamed of submitting to medical treatment. nowadays the venereal divisions of hospitals often more resemble brothels. this state of things makes it impossible for any woman with a particle of modesty to stay in these places. it is evident that women who are more or less virtuous, and even the better class of prostitutes, will avoid such hospital treatment as much as possible, and will thereby become the worst sources of infection. by treating venereal disease in hospital with more regard for decency and modesty, by abolishing the brand of shame, and by separating patients according to their behavior, we might succeed in improving a state of things which is often unbearable. patients with venereal diseases would then more willingly submit to hospital treatment and would be more easily cured. in italy much progress has already been made in this direction. in conclusion, i am convinced that if we should be contented for the present with damming up prostitution and suppressing the causes which render prostitutes more and more abject, without yet being able to abolish the whole evil, a transformation of our social life, and especially the suppression of the reign of capital as a means of exploitation of the work of others, and suppression of the use of alcoholic drinks, would eventually succeed in the gradual extinction of prostitution and the substitution of concubinage, which has much less evil results. venal concubinage venal concubinage occupies an intermediate position between prostitution and concubinage. it is distinguished from the latter by the fact that it is remunerated; but the distinction is very fine. =lorettes.=--this is an old term which may be applied to paid women who are not regular prostitutes. it is hardly possible to distinguish them from clandestine prostitutes (not on the police inscription). they are women who do not practice solicitation or sell themselves to the first comer, but generally keep to one man for a time. =grisettes.=--the parisian grisette, whose type has become classic, is a higher class of woman who, at any rate in her primitive simplicity, was not wanting in romance. relations with a grisette may be compared to limited and free marriage, in which there is comparative fidelity. like some of the free prostitutes, the grisette does not live only on the support of her lover. she is often a dressmaker or a shop-girl, and makes arrangements with a lover so as to live more comfortably. when the grisette acts as her lover's housekeeper and lives with him on terms of the closest intimacy, the _liaison_ takes a more serious character and there is a certain degree of affection or even love. however, all these concubinages are generally limited to a few weeks or months, so that the natural love of the woman becomes blunted by successive polyandry. it is always more or less a question of "an accessory business." there are all kinds of lorettes and grisettes, but as a rule they are generally attached to small tradesmen, students, workingmen, etc., rather than to rich men. it is a kind of contract for a limited period. this system is very widespread in large towns, where the inhabitants do not interfere with each other's affairs; but is difficult to manage in small towns, where every one knows everybody. =mistresses.=--these may be called the aristocrats of the species. here we see more distinctly the transition from venal love to free concubinage based on mutual love. the _hetaira_ of the ancient greeks (vide chapter vi) corresponded more or less to the modern mistresses, especially to the intelligent mistresses of men in high positions. in certain respects we may say that george sand, for example, was a _hetaira_ from pure love, while among the greek _hetaira_ money played a great part. some mistresses are paid; others live on terms of equality with their lovers; others again maintain their lovers. we must also distinguish between mistresses who live with married men, and those who live with bachelors. the most typical case is that where a bachelor who wishes to remain free takes a mistress, whom he also makes mistress of his house, and who thus becomes an illegitimate wife who may separate from him when it pleases her. some women contract this kind of union without being actually paid, simply for their maintenance, in return for which they do the housework. here there is no actual sale of the body. the contract may be indefinite or limited. in such cases the effect of money on the attitude of the man toward his mistress is evident; his tone is generally less respectful toward paid mistresses than toward those who are not paid. the love of the paid mistress is little more durable or more intense than that of the grisette, the situation being almost the same. zola's _nana_ prostituted herself regularly with rich men: secondly, she was the mistress of fontan, who plays the part of a high-class protector; thirdly, she fell in love with georges in quite an idyllic fashion. bordenave, the manager, had good reason in wishing his theater to be called a brothel, as he was more of a pimp than a theatrical manager. this example, a little far-fetched, shows how ideas pass from one to another in this elastic domain. there are also married mistresses. the position of mistress to a married man is, on the whole, more delicate than that of mistress to a bachelor. we are only concerned here with paid mistresses. they seldom give themselves to married men except when the home life of the latter is more or less disorganized; when the husband is separated from the wife, or when he lives in open warfare with her. a married man, on the contrary, may secretly visit brothels or private prostitutes, often even with his wife's knowledge, because the prostitute can have no influence in family affairs. this reason has even been used for the defense of prostitution. it is true that married men often have connection with other women, and the term mistress has been applied to the women who take part in this intercourse, whether they or their lover, or both of them, are already married. but in this case money is usually only a secondary consideration, when the households concerned are not broken up. it is often only the maneuver of an intriguer who tries to separate a husband from his wife to marry him herself and monopolize his fortune. it is sufficient to show how difficult it often is to distinguish the paid mistress from the woman who does not give herself from interest but from passion, or from the intriguing adventuress who tries to make a good catch. lorettes, grisettes and paid mistresses seldom have children. these women are more rarely infected with venereal diseases than prostitutes, but they are better acquainted with the methods of preventing conception. the fate of the children of venal concubines is generally very sad. they are not the fruits of love but of a sexual union based on idleness and lewdness. if conception occurs in spite of all precautions, artificial abortion is attempted, or if this fails the child is sent to the "baby farmer," who gets rid of it. the women who dispose of their children in this way are often of the better class; common prostitutes often love and take care of their children, while the young ladies of society generally try and get rid of their illegitimate children, because they are much more compromised. some married women even do not hesitate to perform abortion when a child inconveniences them. we have only mentioned the fourth group of women with which we are concerned, because of its mercantile nature. every union in which a human being gives love for money is unnatural. venal love is not true love, but an improper contract between man and woman, with the object of satisfying the sexual appetite, without any regard to the higher object intended by nature. it sometimes happens that similar contracts are made in the inverse direction, when a nymphomaniacal woman purchases a fine young man, under some pretext or other. inverts also pay boys to satisfy their perverted appetites. however unsavory may be the contents of the present chapter, it was necessary to write it in order to give a clear idea of the subject. under the pretense of virtue venal love has too long been covered with a veil of hypocrisy. prostitution, marriage for money and venal concubinage are, each in its way, elements of corruption and decadence which, combined with alcohol, gambling, speculation, the greed for money and pleasure in general, threaten our modern culture with ruin. among these anomalies, the state organization of prostitution being the most monstrous, it is necessary to begin with its suppression. among the ancients, the goddess venus or aphrodite was the symbol of beauty and love. although somewhat sly, she was fecund, full of desire and charm, and embodied not only the natural aspirations of man, but also his artistic ideal. nowadays, she is dragged in the mire by two false gods--bacchus, who makes a gross and vulgar brute of her, and mammon, who transforms her into a venal prostitute--while a hypocritical religious asceticism, endeavors in vain to confine her in a strait-waistcoat. may the progress of science and culture find the power to deliver her from the tyranny of her two infamous companions, deified by human ignorance and bestiality. then only will the goddess of love appear in all her glory! chapter xi the influence of environment on sexual life however strong may be the hereditary sexual instincts which an individual has inherited by phylogeny from his ancestors, and however violent their internal outbreaks in his ontogeny, it is necessary to recognize that an organism so complicated as that of man is capable of adapting itself to its environment to a remarkable and varied degree, and that consequently external influences react strongly on the sexual appetite. we will now examine these influences, so far as they are not dealt with in other chapters. =influence of climate.=--warm climates appear to excite the intensity of sexual life; man matures more quickly and is more disposed to sexual excess. i am not aware of other influences that can be attributed to climate. it is, moreover, possible that the direct influence of heat has been confounded with the indirect action it exerts in the conditions of human existence. in cold countries life is more laborious, and this diminishes the intensity of the sexual appetite. in warm countries man has not so much concern with dwellings, clothes and heating; life is greatly simplified, and this freedom from anxiety inclines him to greater sexual activity. =town and country. isolation. sociability. life in factories.=--the social relations of man exert a great influence on sexual life. hermits and those who live on isolated farms are interesting in this respect. solitude generally leads man to chronic melancholia and to abnormal peculiarities, unless he has a library in his hermitage, when he may live in the spirit of the intellectual sociability derived from the study of books. it is quite otherwise with one who has no intellectual occupation, or one who has lived in solitude from infancy. in this case the hermit becomes a kind of savage, without any intellectual development, and reverts more or less to the state of primitive man. an adult who establishes himself in solitude without providing himself with intellectual capital becomes strongly inclined to depressing psychoses. this is observed among the isolated farmers, according to professor seguin, of new york. the man who lives alone, or surrounded only by the members of his family becomes disposed to certain sexual anomalies, such as incest, sodomy and masturbation. it is among the agricultural population that we meet with the most normal sexual relations and the best hygiene. the french canadians form a good example, and it is the same generally where agriculture is practiced by independent peasants, not alcoholized, and having divided property. agricultural families generally procreate more children and healthier ones than urban families. no doubt modern medical hygiene, both public and private, has made so much progress in towns that there may be, at a certain age, proportionally more living children than in the country; but the country children are of stronger constitution and more healthy in every way. i had the opportunity of confirming this opinion while i was superintendent of a lunatic asylum for many years. i found it was impossible to recruit from the town a good staff of nurses of either sex. the inhabitant of towns, it is true, learns his work more quickly, but he lacks patience, perseverance and character, and soon shows himself wanting in the accomplishment of his physical and moral duties. the countryman, on the contrary, is at first slow and clumsy, but soon becomes more capable and careful, and more amenable to education. this shows that, on the average, the hereditary dispositions of the country-bred child are better than those of the town-bred child. the latter develops more rapidly and more completely his natural dispositions, owing to social intercourse, while the country-bred child, although he appears at first sight less intelligent, is really better endowed on the average than the town child. the superficial observer is easily deceived, but country life accumulates more reserve force in the organism than urban life. sexual excesses in the country are more conformable to nature. apart from marriage, we meet with concubinage, infidelity, and sometimes prostitution, but these excesses are never widely spread in small places where every one knows each other. an extensive study of the alcohol question has shown me that hereditary degenerations and sexual evils in the country are principally due to alcoholism and its blastophthoria (vide chapter i). but when factories, mining industries, etc., create unhealthy conditions in the country, the evil influences of urban life are implanted there, often in a still higher degree. the society of large towns is made up of many different circles, who have little or no relations with each other, do not know each other, and seldom concern themselves about each other. the individual is only known in his own circle. this circumstance favors the increase of vice and depravity. in addition to this, the insanitary dwellings, the life of excitement and innumerable pleasures, all tend to produce a restless and unnatural existence. the best conditions of existence for man are contact with nature, air and light, sufficient physical exercise combined with steady work for the brain, which requires exercise as much as the other organs; this is just what is wanting among the poor, in the town and in the factory. instead of this they are offered unhealthy nocturnal pleasures and a prostitution which spreads itself everywhere with all the dangerous effects we have described. the result is that they become incapable of nourishing and raising their children properly, often even of procreating them in healthy and natural love. such are the conditions of the lower classes in large towns. along with prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol, the wretched dwellings in many places lead to infamous promiscuity. in factories and mines things are still worse. in these places there is a swarm of people continually engaged in most unhealthy occupations, and only leaving their work to indulge in the most repugnant sexual excesses. the rapacity, frivolity and luxury of society lead to alcoholism, poverty, promiscuity and prostitution among the lower classes and cause complete degeneration of entire industrial populations. in the canton of zurich i have had the opportunity of closely observing the physical and moral effects of this degeneration. the individuals most incapable as hospital attendants were always factory hands. these wretched beings were generally so atrophied in body and mind that they were no use for anything except the weaving of silk and cotton. in the large english towns, such as liverpool, and among the population of certain mining districts in belgium, i have met with even worse degeneration of the human species. modesty, morality and health are destroyed in this swarming human mass--dirty, anæmic, tuberculous, rickety, imbecile, or hysterical--and there is no distinction between the factory girl and the prostitute. in certain belgian districts which are a prey to alcoholism, one sometimes sees human beings copulating in the streets like animals, or like the drunken kaffirs in south africa. what can we expect from the descendants of a population so completely degenerate? marriage and even concubinage among peasants is golden in comparison! i will now draw attention to a contemporary phenomenon of the greatest interest. the immense development of means of transport, combined with progress in the sanitation of dwellings, favors the transportation of town to country and country to town. this brings together the two modes of human life, and in this i see the dawn of salvation in the future. the modern towns of north america, thanks to the great extension of their territory, already resemble the country to a great extent, each house being surrounded by a garden. the electric tramways shorten distances and facilitate this manner of building towns. as means of communication become still more simplified and cheapened, the advantages of country life will be joined to those of the town without suffering from the promiscuity of the latter. the disadvantages of country life consist in atrophy of the intellectual dispositions from want of contact; improvement in means of transport will bring this contact to the country. the result of such distribution of the territory of a civilized state, such as i have in view, might be called an _agropolis_--an urbanized country or a countrified town. it would then be possible to live a life more ideal in human sentiments, and healthier as regards material and sexual matters. the state of the countryman or peasant is advantageous for marriage, not only because it does not offer such a suitable soil for prostitution, but because the danger of venereal disease is diminished, and the procreation of healthy offspring favors conjugal happiness and constancy in sexual union. from the religious point of view, the freedom in sexual intercourse which prevails among country people before marriage is looked upon as immoral; but this is a natural phenomenon similar to the "marriage by trial" of certain savage races, or the "hand-fasting" of the scotch people, of which we have spoken in chapter vi. people who tolerate and defend prostitution should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and of the manner in which they distort morality, when in the same breath they reproach peasants with their natural but illegitimate unions. it is needless to say that other causes of degeneration may exist in the country as well as in towns; for instance, certain endemic diseases, such as myxoedema and malaria, the brutish life of certain tribes, perpetuation of degeneracy by consanguineous unions, etc. the worst state is certainly that of the proletariat of large towns, which is generally associated with crime. in the community of pimps, criminals and decadents in general, is constituted a special social outlook, which regards the greatest scamp in the light of a hero. when a child shows a precocious criminal disposition it is looked upon in these circles as a child of much promise. honest and virtuous children are considered in this society as imbeciles, or even as traitors and spies, and are consequently despised, hated and ill-treated. the deleterious influences we have mentioned do not act alone, but are often associated with other factors in causing degeneration of the sexual life. when other influences preponderate, we may sometimes observe depravity in the country, and on the contrary, healthy and normal conditions in certain towns. we must always avoid exaggerating the importance of a single factor in making generalizations. certain country villages, the inhabitants of which have become alcoholized and degraded, may present a much more unhealthy sexual life than certain sober and well-governed towns. =vagabondage.=--in the _archiv für rassen und gesellschafts biologie_ of (archives of the biology of races and of society), doctor jörger relates the history of the descendants of a couple of vagabonds, which he carefully studied for several generations. nearly all the members of this family became vagabonds, thieves, prostitutes, and other society pests. vain attempts were made to give a good education to some of them, but they ran away from school to lead the lives of vagabonds or criminals. in a few of them only, education gave some results, but not at all brilliant. in this family, alcoholism and its blastophthoria played a considerable part. we can hardly admit that the mnemic phenomena explained in chapter i could have acted appreciably in two or three hundred years, a period much too short for the human species. no doubt the common ancestor of the above family of vagabonds descended from a family of vagabonds. i do not, however, think i am wrong in attributing to blastophthoria, superposed on the disastrous combinations of germs which is inevitable in the life of vagabonds, the principal cause of this typical degeneration of the family, a degeneration in which sexual degradation strongly predominates. i recommend doctor jörger's work to any one interested in this question. it would be useful to draw up genealogical tables, with the medical and psychological descriptions of the whole population of a small town. =americanism.=--by this term i designate an unhealthy feature of sexual life, common among the educated classes of the united states, and apparently originating in the greed for dollars, which is more prevalent in north america than anywhere else. i refer to the unnatural life which americans lead, and more especially to its sexual aspect. the true american citizen despises agricultural work and manual labor in general, especially for women. his aim is to centralize labor by means of machinery and commerce, so as to concern himself only with business, intellectual occupations and sport. american women consider muscular work and labor in the country as degrading to their sex. this is a relic of the days of slavery, when all manual labor was left to negroes, and is so to a great extent at the present day. desirous of remaining young and fresh as long as possible, fearing the dangers and troubles of childbirth and the bringing-up of children, the american woman has an increasing aversion to pregnancy, childbirth, suckling and the rearing of large families. since the emancipation of negroes has caused domestic servants in the united states to become expensive luxuries, family life has been to a great extent replaced by life in hotels and boarding-houses, and this has furnished another reason for avoiding conception and large families. it is evident that this form of emancipation of women is absolutely deleterious and that it leads to degeneration, if not to extinction of the race. the mixed aryan (european) race of north america will diminish and become gradually extinguished, even without emigration, and will soon be replaced by chinese or negroes. it is necessary for woman to labor as well as man, and she ought not to avoid the fulfillment of her natural position. every race which does not understand this necessity ends in extinction. a woman's ideal ought not to consist in reading novels and lolling in rocking chairs, nor in working only in offices and shops, so as to preserve her delicate skin and graceful figure. she ought to develop herself strongly and healthily by working along with man in body and mind, and by procreating numerous children, when she is strong, robust and intelligent. but this does not nullify the advantage that may accrue from limiting the number of conceptions, when the bodily and mental qualities are wanting in the procreators. =saloons and alcohol.=--i desire to draw attention once more to the evil influence of saloons and bars. the drink habit corrupts the whole of sexual life. it is the origin of the most hideous forms of prostitution and proxenetism, and leads to the seduction of girls. i must mention again the barmaids whose business it is to attract customers by exciting their sexual desire, at the same time exploiting themselves by prostitution. these saloons are dens of iniquity in which alcohol and prostitution are inextricably confounded. in germany they have become a veritable social plague. drink makes men and women not only gross and sensual, but also negligent, imprudent and irreflective. the saloon takes men from their homes, and drink directly diminishes the population. this is seen in russia by comparing the abstainers with the drinkers, the former being much more fecund. the statistics of doctor bezzola show that a single drinking bout may have a blastophthoric effect. from this and from other causes result the deplorable consequences of coitus which takes place during drunkenness.[ ] =wealth and poverty.=--while in former civilizations the rich man regarded a multiplicity of wives and children as a condition or cause of his wealth and also as its result, in our modern civilization the number of children diminishes with the increase of prosperity. children have ceased to be as formerly a source of wealth; on the contrary, they occasion much expense for their education. again, the higher the social position of woman the more she fears pregnancy. her life of ease makes her weaker and more delicate, so that she becomes less fit for the procreation of children. this phenomenon is an unhealthy product of culture and reaches a truly pathological degree in america. we have mentioned marriage for money, which is the prostitution of the rich, and poverty, which is one of the causes of common prostitution, and we have seen how money influences sexual intercourse. we may now state the general principle that a mediocrity living in comfortable circumstances without immediate daily wants, under good hygienic conditions, but requiring a man to work for his living, constitutes the best condition both for a healthy sexual life and for health and happiness in general. this is the _aurea mediocritas_, or modest competence, the excellence of which was recognized by the ancients. the sexuality of the rich man degenerates by luxury, comfort, excess and idleness, and by the fact that he is already satiated in his youth. that of the poor man is no less degenerate, owing to bad food, unhealthy dwellings, neglected education, and by vicious example which at the opposite extreme, resembles in many points that of the rich man; the exploiter and the exploited meeting in the dens of vice. such is the case with gambling hells, with dens for prostitution and sexual anomalies, where the poor blackmail the rich, while the latter in their capacity as social exploiters help to maintain poverty and prostitution. money makes sexual intercourse unnatural; in place of letting coitus take its natural course, it makes it an object of amusement and pleasure, and also of speculation, and it debases the bodies of wretched girls by making them objects of commerce. unfortunately, the increasing facility of obtaining money without working for it, due to civilization, not only corrupts the sexual life of the wealthy and the poverty stricken, but has the same effect on the middle classes. a healthy and normal sexual life must be associated with honest and arduous work. we have already remarked that the solution of the sexual question depends partly on the suppression of alcoholic drink. we may add that another side of the question depends on the extirpation of the greed for money. if human beings could work for the social welfare without private interest, sexual relations would soon take their natural course. but it must be admitted that it is difficult to find a practical solution for the problem of social economy. =rank and social position.=--class distinction and social position have always played a part in sexual life. this is especially the case where certain class customs and prejudices prescribe a special code for marriage. the consanguinity of the nobility and of royal families, who can only marry among themselves, has resulted in obvious degeneration. originally there was the desire to preserve the purity of noble blood, and rules formulated with this object at first had some success; but in the long run the exclusiveness of such selection produces degeneration of the group which puts it into practice. on the other hand, the severe rules which govern marriages among the nobility have resulted in driving the latter to extra-nuptial sexual intercourse. in their sexual excesses, the nobility, and even crowned heads, seldom amuse themselves with honest and virtuous girls of the working classes, but more generally with actresses of loose morals, dancing girls, and hysterical sirens and adventuresses of all kinds, so long as they are pretty. since the time of the feudal system, the nobility, having lost its real reason for existence, only lives on its traditions. it remains in general in a state of idle depravity, faithful to its old traditions, except when it has succeeded in adapting itself to the work of modern life. it has, in fact, preserved the vices of its ancestors rather than their virtues. the more than doubtful offspring of extra-nuptial intercourse among the nobility have often been adopted or raised to the nobility. moreover, kings and princes have often ennobled unworthy persons who had succeeded in pandering to their follies or exciting their sexual passions. it is, therefore, not to be wondered at if in the offspring of such unions, the blood of the highest nobility is tainted with that of the worst kinds of heredity. another sign or effect of the degeneration of the nobility is found in the marriages they so often contract with wealthy heiresses, often of mediocre quality, in order to repair their escutcheon. in the middle ages, the nobility regarded it as degrading to work for their living, and this prejudice accelerated their degeneration; for nowadays the heroic and chivalrous deeds of the middle ages have little opportunity for their performance. other social classes present certain sexual peculiarities; for example the disastrous consequences of celibacy among the catholic priests. this excludes an important and intelligent portion of the species from reproduction, and also favors clandestine debauchery. the army and navy also exert a detrimental action on sexual life. first of all they foster one of the lowest forms of prostitution; soldiers' women are proverbial, and one of them alone may infect a whole regiment. in the second place, the absence of normal sexual intercourse favors all kinds of perversion, such as pederasty, masturbation, etc. the abominable sexual life of soldiers and sailors corrupts them to such an extent that when they marry later on they come to their wives with filthy habits, to say nothing of syphilis and gonorrhea. the result is the procreation of offspring who are more or less tainted in body and mind by the effects of venereal disease combined with alcohol. we have already mentioned the rules which forbid german officers to marry a woman unless she possesses a certain fortune. in the norwegian mercantile marine the customs contrast happily with those we have just mentioned, and permit officers to live on board with their wives. in all respects the norwegian serves as a model in the sexual question; does he not favor conjugal life by only charging half-price on the boats for women who travel with their husbands! other classes have a less obvious influence on sexual life. on the whole, however, all sexual isolation of castes has an unfavorable influence. wherever the prejudices of a caste compel its members to intermarry, certain special degenerations are produced. good quality in man is not derived from class or position, but from true innate or hereditary nobility of character, and this alone should be the object of positive selection, without any distinction of classes. =individual life.=--there is no doubt that the mode of life of the individual exerts an influence on his sexual life. high living combined with little bodily exercise generally increases the sexual appetite, while insufficient food combined with severe muscular work diminishes it. intellectual work acts in a variable manner. a distinguished psychologist assured me that intense intellectual work excited his sexual appetite; others have said the opposite. as a rule, a sedentary life increases the sexual appetite; a life full of occupation and muscular activity diminishes it. but the question is complicated by other influences. alcohol diminishes sexual power, while exalting desire or even perverting it. the artificial excitants of the sexual appetite, cultivated by modern civilization by interested speculation, act in rather a different way. erotic pictures, obscene novels and dramas, etc., constitute an unhealthy medium in our centers of civilization, which overexcites and corrupts the sexual appetite. the more delicate and poisonous the perfume of this atmosphere and the more æsthetic the refinement by which it titillates the senses, the greater is its destructive action. the question of the reunion or separation of the sexes plays an important part. life in common among girls and boys from infancy usually diminishes sexual excitation, in the same way as among brothers and sisters. we find something analogous in different branches of human activity where the two sexes live together; for instance, at college, in the fields, and in general where work and play is common to both sexes. there are, however, certain exceptions to this rule, which must not be taken too generally. under certain circumstances, life in common of the two sexes leads to unfavorable and even perverted sexual excitation. this is especially the case when alcohol adds its influence; also among nervous or ill-balanced individuals. in my opinion it is absolutely unreasonable for the superintendent of a lunatic asylum to organize balls at which the insane of both sexes are provided with beer or wine. i have only seen bad results from this, while i have obtained excellent effects from a temporary reunion of the insane of both sexes, by avoiding all alcoholic drinks as well as everything which could excite the sexual appetite, such as dancing, or the bringing together of erotic or perverted individuals. a young female onanist who suffered from sexual excitement complicated with a nervous condition, complained to me of being obliged to work as a telegraphist among young men, as this continually excited her eroticism without the possibility of satisfying it. this situation, which is a common one in both sexes, gives us a valuable indication. no doubt life in common for the two sexes is normal and natural, but only on the condition that it leads eventually to normal sexual intercourse as the result of love. it is neither healthy nor normal to excite an appetite continually without satisfying it. any one who wishes to live a continent life, for religious or other reasons, ought not to expose himself to continual excitement by too great intimacy with the opposite sex; he should, on the contrary, avoid everything which tends to excite his sexual appetite and seek everything which tends to pacify it. i am not referring here to individuals of a naturally cold and indifferent nature, who run little or no risk under such circumstances. certain occupations, such as those of employees in stores, telegraph offices, etc., in which the two sexes are closely associated in their work, constitute from this point of view a double-edged sword. other unhealthy and monotonous occupations, combined with bad conditions of food and lodging, and with all kinds of seduction--factory hands for example--have a positively deleterious effect on sexual life, which becomes absolutely depraved when the two sexes work together. the situation is hardly any better when they are only separated during working hours. =internats.=--all internats, _i.e._, all establishments where individuals of the same sex live in the same dwelling for a long time, exert a peculiar influence on sexual life--schools and convents, for example. the great inconvenience of all these establishments lies in the danger of contamination from habits of onanism or pederasty. inverts are strongly attracted towards internats, where they find their heart's desire where they can easily indulge their perverted passions; the dormitory of such an institution having the same effect on them as that of a girl's school would have on a young man. (vide chapter viii.) this is a matter which has not received sufficient attention in organizing boarding-schools for boys and girls, because it was not known that homosexual instincts are hereditary and innate. such cases were regarded only as acquired bad habits. lunatic asylums are especially attractive to sexual inverts, who apply for the positions of attendants or nurse so as to be able to indulge their passions on the insane patients, who are incapable of betraying them. without being homosexual, nor even seduced by inverts, many normal but erotic individuals try to satisfy their sexual appetite on their companions--boys by pederasty, girls by lesbian love, and both sexes by mutual onanism. the chief danger is that of some sexually perverted individual gaining entry to a boarding-school and contaminating numbers of normal individuals, without anything being discovered; because it is much more difficult to supervise a school than a family. this could be remedied better by confidence between masters and pupils than by supervision. =varia.=--i should never finish if i attempted to describe all the influences of environment. the examples mentioned will suffice to show that, in a natural appetite such as the sexual, the two extremes of asceticism and excess lead to evil and unnatural aberrations, and that the important point is to find or create a healthy environment for a healthy sexual life. we hear a good deal about good or bad luck or chance in the matter of love. i do not deny that fortuitous circumstances often determine the happiness of an individual in his love affairs. but it is all the more deplorable that what is called the good manners of society make it so difficult to correct cupid's blunders. there is room for improvement in this direction, and many spoilt lives and much unhappiness might be avoided. the unfavorable influence of environment might often be corrected by separation or change, if this could be done in time. footnotes: [ ] vide "alkoholvergiftung und degeneration" by bunge: leipzig ; and "hygiene of the nerves and mind" by forel: stuttgart . chapter xii religion and sexual life =transformation of profane customs into religious dogmas.=--ethnography has taught us that in the course of time human tribes often unconsciously transform profane customs into integral parts of their religion, either by attributing them to a divine origin, or by elevating them to the rank of commandments of the gods, or by connecting them with other dogmas, combining them with worship, etc. sexual connection plays an important part in this matter. a great number of religious rites and customs are nothing else than the customs of sexual life (taken in its widest sense) which have been symbolized; inversely, a number of dogmas have for their only motive the application of a religious basis to sexual customs, which gives them more authority. the religious rites react powerfully on the sexual life and on the way in which the members of the tribe or people understand it. we will give a few striking examples. we have seen in chapter vi that polygamy depends first on the idea of ownership, and secondly on marriage by purchase, to which it owes its historic origin. but the fact that islamism and mormonism, for example, have made polygamy an integral part of their religious dogmas, has given to the whole organization of the mahometans and mormons, as well as to their point of view of existence, a particular direction which cannot be ignored. in reality, we are just as polygamous as they are, but our theoretical and religious sexual morality is monogamous while theirs is polygamous, each based on contradictory "divine commandments." among certain buddhists, the wife is compelled to follow her husband to the grave, which naturally influences sexual life profoundly. among many savage races there exists matriarchism, which gives the woman a high social position. this has even been made a religious dogma, while it simply originates from the natural and just idea that the mother is much more intimately connected with the children than the father. the duty imposed on men to marry the widow of their brother originated from a profane command intended to regulate unions; eventually this was made a religious dogma. in the same way circumcision among the jews had its origin in a hygienic custom having no relation to religious faith. this did not prevent it becoming later on as important a custom as baptism in christianity. for the jewish people it has the advantage of protecting them to a great extent from venereal infection, and against one of the chief causes of masturbation. =catholicism.=--we have already spoken of the celibacy of the catholic priests and of its lay origin. the catholic religion also contains a series of detailed precepts concerning sexual connection in general and marriage in particular; precepts which were only gradually transformed into religious dogmas. as they determine to a great extent opinions and manners in the sexual domain, they exert a considerable social influence. the absolute interdiction of divorce among the catholics (man has not the right to separate those whom god has joined together) seals forever the most unfortunate unions and leads to misfortunes of all kinds, separation of the married couple, _liaisons_ apart from marriage, etc. according to liguori, the catholic church prescribes a number of details concerning sexual relations in marriage. the woman who, during coitus places herself upon the man instead of under him, commits a sin. the position and manner of performing coitus are prescribed in the most minute details, and the holy fathers make the woman play a part unworthy of her position as wife, while according the man the widest liberty. in truly catholic marriage it is prescribed to procreate as many children as possible, and all preventive measures in coitus are severely condemned. hence, if the woman is very fruitful, the husband has only the choice between complete abstention from coitus (when both conjoints are in agreement) and pregnancies following without interruption. the woman never has the right to refuse coitus to her husband, nor the latter to refuse it to his wife, so long as he is capable of accomplishing it. it is easy to understand what powerful effects such precepts have had and still have on the conjugal life of the catholics, particularly on the quantity and quality of their descendants. =aural confession.=--confession requires special mention. in his book, "fifty years in the roman church" (jeheber, geneva), on page , father chiniqui, the celebrated canadian reformer, who later on became a protestant, and for many years played an important part in the canadian catholic clergy, mentions the points on which the confessor interrogates the penitents of both sexes. one cannot reproach him with being incompetent. no doubt the church of to-day would reply that the confessor is not obliged to put all these questions and that the details are left to his tact. we will agree that there is a difference between the canada of the last century, a new and primitive country, and the europe of the present day. but i maintain: first, that the confessor does not content himself with listening to what the penitents of both sexes tell him, but that it is his duty to interrogate them; secondly, that a celibate catholic person, extremely serious and virtuous, to whom i put the question unawares, informed me that not only are sexual matters dealt with at the confessional, but that they play the principal role. and, as it is a question of warning the penitents against so-called sins, mortal or not, or of absolving them, i fail to see how the priest can avoid speaking of them, when the detailed precepts of which we have spoken exist. i reproduce here the original latin text. it deals with questions which have been treated in chapter viii, so that i shall dispense with giving a translation. the confessor puts the following questions to his penitents: . _peccant uxores, quae susceptum viri semen ejiciunt, vel ejicere conantur_ (dens, vol. vii, p. ). . _peccant conjuges mortaliter, si, copula incepta, prohibeant seminationem._ . _si vir jam seminaverit, dubium fit an femina lethaliter peccat, si se retrahat a seminando; aut peccat lethaliter vir non expectando seminationem uxoris_ (p. ). . _peccant conjuges inter se circa actum conjugalem. debet servari modus, sive situs; uno ut non servetur debitum vas, sed copula habeatur in vase praepostero, aliquoque non naturali. si fiat accedendo a postero, a latere, stando, sedendo, vel si vir sit succumbus_ (p. ). . _impotentia. est incapacitas perficiendi copulam carnalem perfectam cum seminatione viri in vase se debito, seu, de se, aptam generationi. vel, ut si mulier sit nimis arcta respectu unius non respectu alterius_ (p. ). . _notatur quod pollutio, in mulieribus possit perfici, ita ut semen earum non effluat extra membrum genitale. indicium istius allegat billuart, si scilicet mulier sensiat seminis resolutionem cum magno voluptatis sensu, qua completa, passio satiatur_ (vol. iv, p. ). . _uxor se accusans, in confessione, quod negaverit debitum, interrogatur an ex pleno rigore juris sui id petiverit_ (vol. vii, p. ). . _confessarius poenitentem, qui confitetur se peccasse cum sacerdote, vel solicitatem ab eo ad turpia, potest interrogare utrum ille sacerdos sit ejus confessarius, an in confessione sollicitaverit_ (vol. vi, p. ). in volumes v and vii of dens may be found many such precepts, impossible to reproduce, on which the pious casuist desires his penitents to be examined. let us now pass on to the celebrated liguori. among numerous other obscene questions of a refined erotic nature, every confessor is bound to put the two following to his penitents: . _quaerat an sit semper mortale, si vir immitat pudenda in os uxoris...?_ _verius affirmo, quia in hoc actu, ob calorem oris, adest proximum periculum pollutionis, et videtur nova species luxuriae contra naturam, dicta irruminatio._ . _eodem modo, sanchez damnat virum de mortali qui, in actu copulae, immite ret digitum in vas praeposterum uxoris; quia, ut ait, in hoc actu, adest affectus ad-sodomiam_ (liguori, t. vi, p. ). let us now leave the celebrated liguori and pass on to burchard, the bishop of worms. he has written a book on the questions which the priest should put at the confessional. although this book no longer exists it has been for ages the guide of the roman catholic priests at the confessional. dens, liguori, debreyne, etc., have taken from it their most savory passages, to recommend them as a study for our present confessors. we will give a few examples: (_a_) to young men: . _fecisti solus tecum fornicationem ut quidam facere solent; ita dico ut ipse tuum membrum virile in manum tuam acciperes, et sic duceres praeputium tuum, et manu propria commoveres, ut sic per illam delectationem semen projiceres?_ . _fornicationem fecisti cum masculo intra coxas; ita dico ut tuum virile membrum intra coxas alterius mitteres, et sic agitando semen funderes?_ . _fecisti fornicationem, ut quidam facere solent, ut tuum virile membrum in lignum perforatum aut in aliquod hujus modi mitteres et sic per illam commotionem et delectationem semen projiceres?_ . _fecisti fornicationem contra naturam, id est, cum masculis vel animalibus coire, id est, cum equo, cum vacca vel asina, vel aliquo animali?_ (vol. i, p. ). (_b_) to young girls or women (same collection, p. ): . _fecisti quod quaedam mulieres solent, quoddam molimen, aut machinamentum in modum virilis membri ad mensuram tuae voluptatis, et illud loco verendorum tuorum aut alterius cum aliquibus ligaturis ut fornicationem faceres cum aliis mulieribus, vel alio eodem instrumento, sive alio tecum?_ . _fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent, ut jam supra dicto molimine vel alio aliquo machinamento, tu ipsa in te solam faceres fornicationem?_ . _fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent, quando libidinem se vexantem extinguere volunt, quae se conjugunt quasi coire debeant et possint, et conjungunt invicem puerperio sua, et si fricando pruritum illarum extinguere desiderant?_ . _fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent, ut cum filio tuo parvulo fornicationem faceres, ita dico ut filium tuum supra turpidinem tuam poneres ut sic imitaberis fornicationem?_ . _fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent, ut succumberes aliquo jumento et illud jumentum ad coitum qualicumque posses ingenio ut sic coiret tecum?_ the celebrated debreyne has written a whole book on the same subject for the instruction of young confessors, and in it he has enumerated all kinds of debauchery and sexual perversion which he could imagine, "maechiology," or _treatise on all the sins against the sixth_ (seventh in the decalogue) _and the ninth_ (tenth) _commandments_, as well as on all questions of married life connected with them. this book is very celebrated and is widely studied in the roman church. we only quote from it the two following questions: to men: _ad cognoscendum an usque ad pollutionem se tetigerint, quando tempore et quo fine se tetigerint; an tunc quoddam motus in corpore experti fuerint, et per quantum temporis spatium; an cessantibus tactibus nihil insolitum et turpe acciderit; ad non longe majorem in corpore voluptatem perciperint in fine inactum quam in eorum principio; an tum in fine quando magnam delectationem carnalem senserunt, omnes motus corporis cessaverint; an non malefacti fuerint?_ etc., etc. to girls: _quae sese tetigisse fatentur, an non aliquem pruritum extinguere tentaverit, et utrum pruritus ille cessaverit cum magnam senserint voluptatem; an tunc ipsimet tactus cessaverint?_ among a thousand other analogous precepts the reverend kenrick, bishop of boston, in the united states, gives the following to his confessors: _uxor quae, in usu matrimonii, se vertit, ut non recipiat semen, vel statim post illud acceptum surgit, ut expellatur, lethaliter peccat; sed opus non est ut diu resuspina jaceat, quum matrix, brevi semen attrahat, et mox, arctissime claudatur._ _puellae patienti licet se vertere et conari ut non recipiat semen, quod injuria et emittitur; sed, acceptum non licet expellere, quia jam possessionem pacificam habet et haud absque injuria naturae ejiceretur._ _conjuges senes plerumque coeunt absque culpa, licet contingat semen extra vas effundi; id enim per accidens fit ex infirmitati naturae._ _quod si vires adeo sint fractae ut nulla sit seminandi intra vas spes, jam nequeunt jure conjugi uti_ (vol. iii, p. ). such is the teaching of chiniqui, the man whose courage and powerful individuality succeeded in introducing abstinence from alcohol in canada. his long life was that of a pioneer and an inflexible champion of social and moral reform in that country, based on christianity. he died at the age of ninety. i have quoted the erotic precepts of the confessional from him, as i was anxious to quote from an absolutely reliable source. it was not with a light heart that chiniqui abandoned the catholic church, but only after violent and bitter struggles with conscience, struggles of which he relates the tragic episodes, and which lasted for many years. he commences the chapter from which we have quoted with the following words: "let legislators, fathers and husbands read this chapter and ask themselves the question whether the respect which they owe to their mothers, their wives and their daughters does not impose upon them the duty of forbidding auricular confession. how is it possible for a young girl to remain pure in mind after such conversations with an unmarried man? is she not more prepared for the depths of vice than for conjugal life?" the author of these lines is a man who was obliged for many years to be a confessor himself, and who understood to what extent confession corrupted the sexual life of women and priests. it is true that persons, priests or women, of strong character, and especially those with a cold nature from the sexual point of view, may resist such sexual excitation. but has confession been specially instituted for this type of character? every one who is not a hypocrite will own that it is exactly the contrary. =religious prudery.=--the results of such a combination of sexual life with religious prescriptions are a mixture of ridiculous prudery and continual eroticism. in certain convents (those of the nuns of galicia, for example) the nuns forbid their pupils to wash the sexual organs, because it is improper! in austria the nuns often cover the crucifix in their bedroom with a handkerchief, "so that christ cannot see their nakedness"! but the convents of nuns, in the middle ages, were often transformed into brothels; and it is not uncommon to see hypocrites or the subjects of erotic hysteria (both men and women) perform sexual orgies of the worst kind under the cloak of religious ecstasy. =hottentots. eunuchs.=--among the hottentots, the lips of the vulva (_labia minora_) in women are artificially elongated, and among the orientals eunuchs are made. in themselves these two operations have certainly nothing to do with religion and only originated in profane customs. in the course of time they were made religious precepts, which has deeply rooted them in the customs of the people. =religious eroticism.=--the examples which we have cited show to what extent man is disposed to clothe his eroticism with the cloak of religion. he then attributes a divine origin to his desires and lays the precepts which he attaches to them on the commandments of his god or gods, so as to sanctify them. hence, the unnatural influence of a mysticism, which is nothing else than the crystallized product of the fantastic imagination of men, raised to a dogma, imposes itself indirectly on natural sexual life, by entering at the back door under the cloak of religion. it is obvious that grave abuses or even vices often acquire the seal and power of religious precepts; while in the same domain a number of other customs or precepts are based on good hygienic or moral principles, for example, circumcision and conjugal fidelity. it is perhaps in the domain of pathology that the relations of religion to sexual life are the most striking (see chapter viii). we must not forget that the facts of reproduction seem to ignorant people and especially to barbarians, to be of a very mysterious nature. these people have no idea of germinal cells or their conjugation. they see in conception, embryogeny, pregnancy and birth, the miraculous effects of a divine and occult higher power--of the divinity, often even of the devil. the violent excitement which is associated with the sexual appetite and with love urges man to ecstasy; hence it is not to be wondered at that eroticism is so often complicated by ecstatic religious sentiments. in his book on psychopathia sexualis, krafft-ebing remarks how easily religion, poetry and eroticism are combined and mingled in the obscure feelings and presentiments of maturing youth. in the life of saints there is always the question of sexual temptations, in which the most elevated and ideal sentiments are mixed with the most repugnant erotic images. on the same basis are developed the sexual orgies of different religious fêtes in the ancient world, as well as in certain modern sects. mysticism, religious ecstasy and sexual voluptuousness are often combined in a real trinity, and one often sees unsatisfied sensuality seek compensation in religious exaltation. krafft-ebing cites the following cases from friedreich's "legal psychology" (p. ): in this way the nun blaubekin was perpetually tormented by the thought of what happened to the part of jesus' body removed by circumcision. in order to make his devotions to the lamb of god, véronique juliani, who was canonized by pope pius ii, took into his chamber a terrestrial lamb, embraced it and sucked its breasts. saint catherine of gênes often suffered from such internal heat, that, to cool herself, she laid on the ground, crying: "love, love, i can do no more!" in doing this she felt a peculiar inclination for her confessor. one day, putting his hand to her nose, she perceived an odor which penetrated her heart, "a celestial odor the voluptuousness of which could wake the dead." =the role of mental pathology in religious eroticism.=--among the insane, and especially in women, but also in men afflicted with _paranoia_ (a mental disease) we often find a strange and repugnant mixture of eroticism and religious images. such are the everlasting betrothals with christ, the virgin mary, with god or with the holy spirit, betrothals in which the venereal orgasm is combined with imaginary coitus and masturbation, followed by imaginary pregnancy and childbirth. these symptoms give us a clear indication of the relation which exists between eroticism and religious exaltation. the french alienists have even designated them by the characteristic term of "erotico-religious delirium." a single visit to the female division of a lunatic asylum is often sufficient to satisfy the visitor. a point which has received less attention is the immense historical influence which certain psychopathological personalities, chiefly hysterical subjects, but also some crazy persons or hereditary visionaries, have exercised at all times on human destiny, usually by the aid of the suggestive effects of sexual and religious ideas (erotico-religious), the connections of which have not always been clear. every psychiatrist knows the insane whose delirium is combined with religious or mystic exaltation, and who by the mysticism of their delirium have exercised and continue to exercise a profound influence on the mass of humanity which surround them--"panurge's sheep," if i may use the expression. these people are themselves so dominated by the pathological influence of their auto-suggestions or their delirium that they behave with the fanaticism of fakirs, and exhibit an extraordinary energy and perseverance in the pursuit of the object of their morbid ideas. by their assurance, the sentiment of infallibility, and the fire of faith which is manifested in their prophetical manner, they fascinate the feeble brains of the people who surround them and attract them by their suggestive action. a very human and often powerful eroticism is usually associated with their delirium; but it is covered by a cloak of religious ecstasy, which imposes on natures disposed to exaltation, and renders them blind to the ignominy which often lies under this ecstasy. what makes these patients so persuasive is the fact that they are themselves persuaded. even the normal man, we must admit, is guided less by reason than by sentiment, and the persons we have just described exert a powerful action on sentiment, and this more by their piercing glance, their prophetic and dominating tone, their manner and appearance, than by the extremely confused text of their discourses and doctrines. in this way there are always arising small epidemics of attraction in which a group of individuals allows itself to be infatuated by so-called prophets, messiahs, holy virgins and other visionaries, who are only lunatics or crazy persons. under their influence are produced certain forms of insanity by contagion, which have been called double, triple or quadruple madness, and which may sometimes take the form of an epidemic. when the "prophet" is more consistent in his words and actions, or when his environment is still very ignorant and superstitious, the crowd of believers increases still more rapidly, and thus one sees even at the present day in less-civilized countries new sects or religious guilds, more or less ephemeral, in which the spirit of the prophet sometimes stirs up grave sexual orgies. among more cultured people the prophet is generally exposed or sent to a lunatic asylum, much to the indignation of his disciples, who often consist of his wife and children and a few feeble-minded acquaintances. thanks to the cheapness of printing, these prophets often publish their new religious system and sell it among their dupes. i possess a small library of works of this kind which have been sent me by their authors; probably with the idea that they might one day be taken for fools, and to prove to me in advance that they were not. according to them, god has personally revealed to them the new truth in which they believe, and has appointed them as prophets. erotic images are generally associated with their system. one of them, whose system is astronomical, divides the planets into males and females. another, a lunatic, describes the pathological sexual sensations by the term of "psycho-sexual contact by action at a distance." these are phenomena which we meet with at each step in psychiatry, and which give the clue to what follows. =the historical role of mental anomalies which are not very apparent and border on genius. their influence on religious eroticism.=--these persons are not always afflicted with paranoia or other grave psychoses, but often hereditary and constitutional psychopaths who are only half-crazy or simply hysterical, and who may, in spite of this defect, possess a certain degree of intellectual power, an energetic will and the fire of enthusiasm. things then take an essentially different course, even when they rest on an analogous basis. the prophet combines with his exaltation a logic which is often very concise in its details, although applied on a morbid basis. moreover, he clothes his utterances in fine and poetical language, and in this way succeeds in rallying round him, not a flock of panurge's ignorant sheep, but more elevated people and even a considerable proportion of the surrounding society. in this case pathological exaltation may be united to a high moral and intellectual ideal, which is very apt to veil the bizarre fancies of the prophet. we thus meet with the astonishing but undeniable fact that certain great historical personalities who have exercised a powerful influence on humanity were of more or less pathological nature. we discover among them erotico-religious traits, more or less marked, often even as the leading threads of their arguments. this important category of individuals constitutes a whole series of transitions between the insane prophets of whom we have spoken and well-balanced men of genius. it is often very difficult to understand and interpret the series of intermediate forms, so graduating and so variable, which exist between insanity and genius. it is necessary to guard against any exclusive generalization in one way or the other. in any case, the fact that many men of genius are of pathological nature does not authorize us to regard every person of genius or originality as insane, whether he attacks the routine and prejudices of his contemporaries, or whether he opens up new horizons and goes out of the beaten track. let me cite a few examples. joan of arc was, in my opinion, a hysterical genius whose hallucinations were auto-suggestive. the distress of france had profoundly agitated her, and, fired with the desire to save her country, her brain was affected by auto-suggestion with hallucinations of the voices of saints and visions, which pointed out her mission and which she regarded as coming from real saints in heaven. at that period such things were common enough and need not surprise us. in spite of her good sense and modesty, joan of arc was urged by an exaltation unconscious of self. by a destiny as astonishing as providential, this young girl of genius, and at the same time pathological, exalted by ecstatic hallucinations, led france to a victorious war of freedom. the most conscientious historical sources show that the morality of joan of arc was pure and above reproach. her replies to the invidious questions of the inquisition are admirable and bear witness both to her high intelligence and the moral elevation of her sentiments. it is evident that the sentiments of love were transformed in her into religious ecstasy and enthusiasm for the ideal of her mission, a frequent occurrence among women. another remarkable example is that of thomas à becket. the sudden transformation of this man of the world into an ascetic priest (it is true, on the occasion of his nomination as archbishop), from this devoted friend and servitor of the king of england into his most violent adversary, and into a champion of the church against the state, evidently represents the auto-suggestive transformation of a hysterical subject, for this is the only way of explaining such a sudden and complete contradiction which caused him to change suddenly from one fanaticism to a contrary one. the religious exaltation of the mormon prophet, smith, was no doubt combined with eroticism, which made him organize his sect on the basis of polygamy. mahomet also had visions, and sexual connection plays an important part in his teaching and prophesies. the apostle st. paul was also a visionary who passed suddenly from one extreme to another as the result of hallucination. pascal, napoleon, and rousseau presented very marked pathological traits. although some of these cases have no direct connection with the sexual question, i have mentioned them to show how such personalities exert their influence on the masses, and through them on history. as soon as they acquire authority, their peculiar ideas and sexual conceptions, however exclusive or even absurd they may be, react strongly on their contemporaries, as we see to-day the ascetic ideas of tolstoi influence his numerous disciples. sudden conversions, whatever may be their nature, especially when the convert goes from one extreme to another, are not the fruit of reason, but depend on suggestion or auto-suggestion and especially on pathological suggestibility. (vide chapter ix). in other respects sexual anomalies often govern the acts of hysterical persons and other psychopaths. the roman emperors, nero, tiberius and caligula were almost certainly sadists and enjoyed sexual pleasure at the sight of the sufferings of their victims. valerie, messalina and catherine de médici were also female sadists. under the hypocritical veil of religion, catherine de médici was the principal instigator of the massacre of st. bartholomew at paris, and wallowed in pleasure at the sight of the massacre of the huguenots. on the other hand, masochism may give tone to the thoughts and sexual feelings of certain persons of great influence, such as rousseau, and to sects of ascetics, such as the fakirs, etc. involuntarily, therefore, the sexual feelings of every prophet and founder of religion, even during a short period of his life only, influence more or less his religious system and consequently the laws of morality based on it, which remain after his death. hence it is that sentiments, as variable in different individuals as sexual sentiments, are obliged to submit to the constraint of fixed and tyrannical dogmas which martyrize for centuries, or even thousands of years, men who have other opinions than the founder of the religion or its interpreters who succeed him. in religion we see everywhere idealized eroticism, and often idealism perfumed with eroticism. the songs of solomon, the original sense of which was very lay, like that of most religious matters, has been made allegorical and applied to the christian church, but it was and will always remain an erotic poem. it is hardly necessary to add that natural eroticism very often leads the severe and ascetic preachers of morality to the grossest hypocrisy. priests and other pious persons often preach an idealized asceticism, while in secret they commit the most disgusting sexual excesses. we must not, however, judge such crying inconsistencies too severely; they are to a great extent unconscious and are the result of the shock of passion against the tyranny of dogma, prejudice, and public opinion. they are often also the result of mental anomalies. when science is allowed to enlighten sexual life freely and openly, the hypocrisy of normal people will cease, and that of the abnormal will be recognized in time and prevented from doing harm. =transformation of eroticism into religious sentiment.=--in ordinary life we find everywhere traces of the mixture of religion with sexual sensations and images. the religious ceremonies of marriage among all peoples constitute a significant remnant thereof. when we look for the causes of sudden and progressive religious exaltation we often discover that it is nothing else than compensation for disappointed love. i refer here to true and fervid exaltation, identified with the whole inner consciousness, and not to the religion of habit which the average man scarcely remembers in his daily life, and only observes on sunday in the form of a conventional promenade, or a contribution to the church. this religion of habit is only an empty form, which awakes no sentiment, and consequently is associated with no sensation, even erotic, in its followers. in other individuals it may be otherwise, and certainly was so formerly. everything goes to prove that the exalted sentiments of sympathy from which our religion is to a great extent derived, such as the holy fervor, the devotional ardor and the delights of ecstasy which it has so often procured for its followers and still procures for some of them, whether their object be god, allah, jehovah, jesus christ, buddha, vishnu, the virgin mary, or the saints, that these sentiments have to a great extent their roots in primary erotic sensations and sentiments, or represent the direct transformation of them. it is needless to say that all this may take place quite unconsciously and with the purest intentions. i hasten to add that the majority of true religious sentiments come from quite a different source. when we study the religious sentiment profoundly, especially in the christian religion, and catholicism in particular, we find at each step its astonishing connection with eroticism. we find it in the exalted adoration of holy women, such as mary magdalene, marie de bethany, for jesus, in the holy legends, in the worship of the virgin mary in the middle ages, and especially in art. the ecstatic madonnas in our art galleries cast their fervent regards on jesus or on the heavens. the expression in murillo's "immaculate conception" may be interpreted by the highest voluptuous exaltation of love as well as by holy transfiguration. the "saints" of correggio regard the holy virgin with an amorous ardor which may be celestial, but appears in reality extremely terrestrial and human. numerous sects, both ancient and modern, have entered on the scene in a hardly less libidinous manner; for example, the sexual excesses of the anabaptists in former times and the sexual ecstasies of certain modern sects in america. if the objection is raised that these sects are the pathological excrescences of religion, i reply with their disciples as follows: "we have come into the world because your state religions are sunk in indifference, hypocrisy and hollow formality, offering nothing to the human heart but empty phrases. it behooves us to awaken from this sleep. we want enthusiasm and fervor to transform the inner life of man and convert him." these words, which we can see and hear everywhere by opening our eyes and ears, constitute a formal avowal of the suggestive factor in religion. (see chapter ix.) in the canton of zurich i have myself often had occasion to observe, especially among women, the followers of the singular sect of the pastor zeller, of maennedorf. he is a kind of visionary prophet who heals people after the manner of christ and john the baptist, by placing his hands on them and anointing them with oil. the cures which he obtains are due naturally to suggestion, like those of lourdes, but he attributes them to divine miracles. he even told me naively that he heard a grinding (crepitation) in a broken bone, which he regarded as a miraculous cure! a crowd of women, mostly hysterical, collected around this man with an ardor which was unconsciously directed much more to his person than to that of god or christ whom he was supposed to symbolize. i have treated patients who had been to him, and who associated with his person both the mildest and the most carnal erotic images--of course, in the innocence of their hearts. it is far from me to reproach this sincere man and many others of the same kind, especially the priests who are surrounded by a halo of sanctity pushed to ecstasy. i only maintain that when a human being exalts himself in the search for pure-mindedness and sanctity, thus denying his true nature, he is always in danger of falling unconsciously into the most gross sensuality, and at the same time of sanctifying this sensuality. =description of religious eroticism by the poets.=--the swiss poet, gottfried keller, with his peculiar genius has described religious eroticism in an admirable way, especially in his seven legends. read, for example, _dorothea's blumenkörbchen_ (dorothea's little flower-basket), in which the terrestial lover of dorothea ends by becoming jealous of her celestial lover, of whom she always speaks in the most exalted sentiments. wherever she went she spoke in the most tender terms and expressed the most ardent desire for a celestial lover that she had found, who waited in immortal beauty to press her against his shining breast. when the wicked prefect had bound dorothea on the gridiron under which was placed a slow fire, this hurt her delicate body, and she uttered smothered cries. then her terrestrial lover, theophilus, forcing his way through the crowd, burst her bonds and said with a sad smile, "does it hurt you, dorothea?" but when suddenly freed from all pain she immediately replied: "how could it hurt me, theophilus? i lay on the roses of the lover i adore! this is my wedding day!" keller shows us here, along with eroticism, the suggestive effect of ecstasy, which among martyrs, may reach the most complete anæsthesia. goethe has also described erotico-religious ecstasy; for example, at the end of the second part of faust, in the prayers addressed by certain anchorites to the queen of heaven. =distinction between religion and the ecstasy derived from eroticism.=--it would be quite false to maintain that religion in itself arises from sexual sensations. the terror of death and the enigmas of existence, the sentiments of human weakness and insufficiency of life, the want of consolation for all miseries, the hope of a future life, all play an important part in the origin of religions. on the other hand, it is necessary to recognize the considerable role of the erotic sexual factor in religious sentiments and dogmas, where on the one hand it leads to ardent fervor, while on the other hand it tyrannizes, especially by the exclusiveness of its residues transformed into dogmas, the natural expansion of the erotic sentiments which are so variable in individuals. one of the most difficult and important future tasks of social science toward humanity is, therefore, to set free sexual relations from the tyranny of religious dogmas, by placing them in harmony with the true and purely human laws of natural ethics. =compensations.=--in the animal series we have seen that sentiments of sympathy are derived, in a general way, by phylogeny, from the sentiments of sexual attraction, and we often see in man a sexual love, deceived, despised or transfigured, seek compensation or idealization in the fervor or religious exaltation. the question naturally presents itself whether this compensation or this ideal is indispensable, and if other objects of a human and not mystical nature cannot take its place. there are, in my opinion, purely human ideals, which are capable of transfiguring erotic love "religiously" quite as well as the mysticism of so-called divine revelations. christianity is called the religion of love, and the apostle paul even places charity higher than faith. but what is charity but the synthesis of the social sentiments of sympathy, devotion and self-denial, for the benefit of humanity? cannot it, therefore, be established on another basis than that of cheques to be drawn on paradise? cannot exaltation and fervor apply their powerful faith, the beauty of their form and the elevation of their sentiments to the social ideal and the future welfare of our children? cannot we replace the cult of religious legends, the adoration of the works of jehovah and christ, as they are given in the bible, by the religion of our descendants and their welfare? in my opinion, the suggestion of religious ecstasy and love might well be directed toward the benefit of society. its fanaticism is admirably adapted to shake the indifference and indolence of men; but this source of energy should not be wasted in the adoration of legendary mirages, but used for the efficacious culture of a true human religion of love on earth. chapter xiii rights in sexual life--generalities =rights and liberty.=--human ideas of right are very curious. every one appeals to right and liberty, and naturally thinks of himself first, without perceiving that in continually claiming his proper rights, he tramples under foot those of others. how beautiful are these words rights and liberty! but in everyday life in what an uncompromising way they oppose each other! to give satisfaction to my rights and liberty, the right of complete development, according to my natural sentiments, is a thing which is perfectly impossible; or, is only practicable by constantly infringing the right and liberty of my fellow beings. nevertheless people keep harping on this theme; with the exalted tone of intimate conviction they inveigh against our social organization, cursing the malice of others, but show themselves perfectly incapable of resolving the contradictions which gave rise to their thirst for liberty and justice. the cry of despair addressed to right and liberty by modern society is nothing else than the expression of the instinctive sentiment of anger and revolt produced by the natural evolution of our phylogeny. the savage instincts, still considerable in the hereditary foundation of human nature (the mneme), revolt against the straight-jacket placed on them by social life, and against the want of liberty on the earth, which is already too small for humanity. the natural man is eager for expansion and liberty, and accustoms himself with difficulty to the severe restrictions which social necessities impose upon him. his nature is still that of a semi-nomadic animal, living as an autocrat with his family, possessed of a number of egoistic wants, and, wherever he goes, opposing the rights, liberties and desires of other men, who generally compel him to subordinate his desires to theirs. this is the true reason of this impotent cry of vexation and anger against the malice of others and the defectiveness of social organization. and yet this cry is absolutely necessary, in order that we may find and put in practice a social formula as tolerable as possible for the future. but, if we except the question of capital and labor, there is no domain in which social hindrance is so cruelly felt as in the sexual. what is human right? apart from formally admitted distinctions we shall divide what is called right from the psychological and human point of view into two categories of ideas; _natural rights_ and _conventional rights_. =natural rights. right of the stronger.=--natural right is quite a relative idea: the right to life and its conditions. but, as in this world, which is said to be created by a personal and perfect god, things are so amicably arranged that living creatures can only exist by devouring one another, the oldest effective natural right of every living being is precisely that of devouring others weaker than itself. this is the right of the stronger. therefore, the absolute natural right is the right of the stronger. =rights of groups. ants.=--these notions become altered, however, if we regard them from the point of view of _relative_ natural right. this does not concern all living beings, but only certain groups. the rights of groups are relative from a double point of view. on the one hand they give the group of individuals concerned the right of interfering with the right to life of other groups, even to extinction. on the other hand--and this is the better aspect of the rights of groups--they are completed by what are called the duties of each individual toward others of the same group, that is to say, the obligation to have regard for and even protect their rights equally as his own. the rights of a group include the social rights and duties in the limits of that group. it is among animals, especially the ants, that we find the most ideal organization of the rights of a group. each individual of the ant colony acts in the interests of the community, which are the same as its own. it has the right to be nourished and housed and to satisfy all its immediate wants, but at the same time it is its duty to labor unceasingly in building and repairing the common dwelling, to nourish its fellows, to aid in the reproduction and bringing-up of the brood, to defend the community and even to take the offensive against every living being who does not belong to the community, in order to increase its resources. the rights and duties have here become completely _instinctive by adaptation_, that is to say, they are performed without commands or instruction. they result spontaneously from the natural organization of ants without the least external obligation intervening. here, the cry of distress of the ferocious human beast, of whom we have just spoken, is completely absent, for duty is replaced by instinct or by appetite, and its accomplishment is accompanied by a natural sentiment of pleasure. every ant could be idle without being punished by its comrades, if it were capable of wishing to be so, but this is impossible. communities of ants can only exist on the basis of the social instinct of labor and mutual support, without which they would immediately disappear. =egoism and the rights of groups in man. human rights.=--the notions of the rights of groups in man are infinitely more complicated and more difficult to understand. as we have already seen, the most primordial instinctive sentiment in man is limited to his family and his immediate surroundings. but here even it leaves much to be desired. family disputes, quarrels between brothers and sisters are frequent enough; parricide, fratricide and infanticide are not rare. in addition to this, beyond the narrow circle of the family, disputes, hatred between individuals, deception, robbery and many worse things are always the order of the day. in struggles between parties and classes, in the abuse of privileges of caste and fortune, in war, in commerce, in a word in everything, private interests of egoism take precedence of the general interests of humanity. these facts, and a thousand other pitiable phenomena of the same kind in human society, bear witness to the egoistic and rapacious nature of man, which proves how little the social instinct is developed in his brain. human society is founded much more on custom and tradition, imposed by the force of circumstances, than on nature. human infants resemble kittens at first much more than young social beings. in primitive times, when the earth appeared large to man, the rights of groups were limited to small communities which looked upon other men, the same as animals and plants, as legitimate prey. cannibalism and even the chase show clearly that man began by becoming more rapacious and more carnivorous than his pithecanthropoid ancestor, and his cousin the ape of the present day. it is only later, after the progressive enlargement of stronger communities at the expense of weaker; still later, when man commenced to comprehend the sufferings for the community which result from the autocracy and passion for unlimited pleasure of a few persons; finally, when he discovered the narrow limits of the earth, that notions of humanity and humanitarianism, that is to say the sentiment of human solidarity, were able to develop in the general conscience. it was, however, one of the ancients who said "i am a man and nothing human can be strange to me." but in his time, as in that of jesus christ, civilization was already far advanced and influenced by the wide humanitarian ideas, more ancient still, of the assyrians and the buddhists. every one who reflects will understand that the relativity of the rights of groups in man and that of the duties which correspond to them, must in time expand and be applied, little by little, to all the human inhabitants of the earth. what is more difficult is the definition of what should be understood under the term of humanity, capable of being socialized and cultivated. no doubt, the gap which exists between the lowest living human race and the highest ape is considerable and without direct transition. however, we gradually begin to recognize, on the one hand, that we have certain duties toward animals, at least toward those which serve us, and, on the other hand, we know that certain of the lower human races, such as the pigmies, the veddas and even the negroes, are inaccessible to a higher civilization, and especially incapable by themselves of maintaining what a number of their individuals learn by training when they live among us. we shall, therefore, have to choose finally between the gradual extinction of these races or that of our own. it is not my business to deal with this question here, to trace the limits of civilizable humanity, or to examine the rights and duties of civilized men to each other relatively to the rest of the living world; or, in other words, to what extent civilized man should have the relative right of subjecting other living beings, exploiting them in his own interests, nourishing them, or eventually exterminating them for the safety of his own existence. as regards the animal and vegetable kingdoms, from the amoeba to the orang-utan, the question is simple enough and settled. it is much more difficult to decide for men and for peoples separated from us by great racial differences. i must emphasize the profoundness of this difference. it is evident that the higher cultivated races, or rather blends of races, which live to-day will do better to live in peace than to mutually exterminate each other. it is necessary to discuss these questions at the risk of hurting the feelings of sentimental persons. but what is the use of being blind to such patent facts? it is not too soon to look closely into the future, and it is only thus that we can arrive at any useful result. the natural rights of man should evolve more and more from a complex of social rights and duties toward a single great group, which we may call _civilized humanity_, the relative limits of which can only be traced by repeated trials and by practical experience. the instincts of the wild beast are still so deeply rooted, even in civilized men, that they can only be adapted gradually and even painfully to a natural right thus understood and limited. we must honestly admit that such a right only merits very relatively the denomination of _natural rights_. in fact, social rights are necessarily artificial in man. a few elementary rights and duties only are quite natural, especially in the sexual domain. we are concerned here with adaptations in the form of instincts which serve for the support and development of the family, as well as for the protection of the individual. among these we may mention the right to life, the duty of labor and the right to labor, the right of the infant to be nourished by its mother and to be cared for and protected by its parents, the duty of parents to nourish their children, the duty of the husband to protect his wife, the right to obtain nourishment from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the right to satisfy the sexual appetite, etc. there exists, however, a series of other rights and duties, which are so necessary that they may be termed natural. such are the right to possess a dwelling place; to defend one's life against attack; to think and believe what one wishes so long as one does not impose one's ideas and faith on others; the duty to respect the life and property of one's neighbor; the duty to give a healthy and sufficient education to youth, both in body and mind, etc. if we regard the matter without prejudice, certain rights and duties which have been hitherto considered as natural and self-evident, become very doubtful. such are ecclesiastical and religious rights and duties, patriotic and national duties, the rights and duties of war, the rights of privileged classes, the rights of property, etc. it is clear, from an unprejudiced examination of the development of humanity, that these so-called rights and duties are only the historic legacies of mysticism or of limited human groupings, and in great part artificial. the rights and duties of members of the groups in question consisted in mutually protecting their opinions and their national and religious interests, etc., and in subjecting or even trampling under foot those of other human groups. these lead us quite naturally to the second category of general notions of rights. =conventional rights.=--to speak correctly, conventional rights are not rights. they are simply a dogmatic sanction applied to all kinds of customs and abuses that men have appropriated, according to local circumstances and their fortuitous conquests or acquisitions. here, the consequences of the natural rights of the stronger, religious mysticisms and all sorts of human passions, the sexual appetite especially, play a very varied and complex role. the absurdity and injustice of conventional rights is shown by the difference, often even the absolute contrast, of the corresponding conception of rights among different peoples. in one, polygamy is a right and even a divine institution; in another, it is a crime. individual murder is generally considered as criminal, but in warfare the slaughter of masses becomes a duty and even a virtue. theft and rapine are regarded in times of peace as crimes, but in time of war, under the form of annexation and plunder they are the uncontested rights of the victor. in a kingdom, the monarch is looked upon as a holy person and offense to his majesty as a crime; in a democracy, it is individual domination which is regarded as criminal. falsehood and mental restriction are, in certain cases at least, the rights or even the duty of the catholic, who is only forbidden to swear falsely in the name of god and religion, while others consider all falsehood more or less unjustifiable; others again regard every oath as sinful. the contradictions, inconsistencies, unnatural prescripts and tyrannies of what is called conventional rights in different peoples are innumerable, and the notions of our rights which we have inherited from the romans are not much better. =retaliation.=--in historical epochs, we see the rights of the stronger succeeded by certain notions of rights which may still be considered as primordial; such is the law of retaliation or lynch law, based on the natural sentiment of vengeance, which is itself derived from anger, jealousy and pride, and says "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." the law of retaliation is very natural and very human. although of savage origin, it has at least the merit of recognizing in men an equal right in retaliation for injury caused in a brutal fashion, without considering inner motives. =expiation.=--we also find in the old law another notion derived partly from the preceding, but chiefly from religious mysticism--the notion of expiation. after constructing in his own image a divinity blinded by human passions, man attributed to him, from fear of vengeance, sentiments of anger and indignation regarding his baseness and malice toward his neighbor. he then conciliated the divinity and appeased his wrath by making sacrifices, human or otherwise. at first, sacrifices were not made of criminals or guilty persons, but of innocent lambs, men or beasts, sometimes with all kinds of torture, to appease the supposed wrath of the gods. gradually, however, these customs became more humane and were changed to the notions of expiation which we still have. whosoever has committed a crime should expiate it by some kind of pain, eventually by death. in our modern penal law, notions of expiation and retaliation are blended, and when we study its roots in ethnology we are not surprised to see the expiation and punishment of so-called crimes against god or religion. we find in this fact a singular mixture of religious and judicial notions. a curious way of appeasing the divinity is the sacrifice of animals and other offerings which ancient and savage peoples made and still make, in returning thanks for victory or some other good fortune, or to appease supposed wrath. =themis.=--in spite of all these errors, ancient civilization represented as the ideal of right a goddess of justice, _themis_, with eyes blindfolded and holding scales in her hands. the scales signified that right and wrong should be carefully weighed against each other; the bandage, that the judge should pronounce his verdict without regard to persons, and be inaccessible to all outside influence. for the limited ideas of that period, little removed from retaliation and expiation, this blind woman with her scales was a sufficient representation of justice. she had no need to trouble about the psychology of human nature, mental disorders, diminished responsibility or ideal social improvement. =themis unblindfolded. fallacy of free-will.=--nowadays the task of our goddess is not so simple, for the progress of humanity and science, especially of psychology and psychiatry, oblige her whether she wishes or not, to completely remove her bandage, so as to see clearly into the human brain. it is not simply a question of knowing whether an accused person has or has not committed the act which he is accused of, but also whether he knew what he was doing, what were the motives which urged him, and who is the real instigator of the misdeed. alcohol, mental anomalies and diseases, suggestions, passions, etc., concur in influencing the human brain so that it is hardly responsible for its acts. again, on further examination, we find that the accepted and historical notion of free-will, that is to say the absolute liberty of man's will, which constitutes the very existence of our old penal law, becomes not only more problematical, but may even be considered as a purely human illusion, resting on the fact that the indirect and remote motives of our actions are mainly subconscious. the great philosopher, spinoza, has already demonstrated this truth in a masterly manner, and modern science confirms it in all respects. every effect has its cause, and all our resolutions are the result of the activities of our brain, in their turn determined or influenced by hereditary engrams (instincts and dispositions) or acquired (memories), which are their internal causes, and combine with causes acting from without. let us admit freely the fallacy of the old axiom of human free-will and endeavor to understand that what we consider as free will is nothing else than the very variable faculty of our brain, more or less developed in different individuals, of adapting its activity to that of its environment, and especially to that of other men. also let us endeavor to take into account that our will and all our actions are, consciously or unconsciously, determined by a complex of energies or hereditary engrams (character), combined with those which have acted upon us from without during our life, as well as with emotional or intellectual sensory impressions. our whole conception of rights, and especially of penal law, should then change. we should entirely do away with _retaliation_, a barbarous relic of a more or less animal sentiment of our ancestors, and _expiation_, the relic of a superannuated and superstitious mysticism. modern and truly scientific reformers of penal law have already taken account of this necessity. but, in spite of the complete inefficacy of the old penal system as regards the diminution of crime, they have so far only put into practice few of their ideas. =justification of rights and laws.=--after what we have just said, there only remain, two reasons to justify the existence of rights and laws: ( ). to protect human society against criminals, and in general to institute ideas and laws with a view to regulate the mutual interests of men, in such a way as to result in natural conditions of existence as advantageous as possible, both for the individual and for society: ( ). to study the causes of crimes, social conflicts, imperfections and inequalities, so as to obtain, by contending against these causes, an improvement in men and their social condition. it is true that what we demand here means a complete transformation of the notions of conventional right, not only in our old penal law, but also to a great extent in civil law; but this transformation is inevitable and has even already commenced. its object is to liberate right from the grasp of an old metaphysico-religious dogmatism, and from crystalized doctrines derived from superannuated custom and abuse, and to found itself on the applied and social natural history of man, who then only will merit the name of _homo sapiens_ which was given to him by linnaeus, the great nomenclator of living beings. jurists have already too long based metaphysics on old barbarous customs and superstitious mysticism, transformed into dogmas. it is time that themis removed her bandage, studied psychology, psychopathology and science, and submitted the impartial handling of her scales to the influence of truer and juster human factors, even if her work thereby becomes more difficult and more complicated. =sexual rights.=--while sexual sentiments form part of the most sacred and intimate conditions of individual happiness, they are also closely and indissolubly connected with the social welfare of humanity. in no domain is it more difficult to combine harmoniously the welfare of the community with that of the individual, and this is why questions of right in sexual matters are among the most difficult to solve. the satisfaction of the sexual appetite in man is part of his natural rights. natural science compels us to formulate this principle; yet it is a dogma the consequences of which may become very grave and even fatal; for the satisfaction of a man's sexual appetite implies, not only the direct participation of one or more human beings in a common act, but also that of a much greater number in its indirect effects; and it may occasion, according to circumstances, more harm than good. if the question of reproduction did not exist, it would be more easy to put individualism in more or less harmonious accord with socialism. it is thus the sexual relations which present the greatest difficulties in the social domain. in spite of the considerable progress which has been accomplished, our modern law is still based to a great extent on the barbarous principle of the legal inequality of the sexes. the mind of man and that of woman are no doubt of different quality; nevertheless, in a society which does not possess asexual individuals like that of the ants and bees, and in which the two sexes are compelled to work together harmoniously for the social welfare, there is no reason to subordinate one sex to the other. man may have or grammes more brain tissue than woman and be superior to her in his faculty of combination and invention, but this is no reason why we should only accord his wife and mother inferior social rights to his own. his bodily strength will always protect him against the possible encroachments of woman. a first postulate is, therefore, the equality of the two sexes before the law. a second postulate consists in the emancipation of infancy, in the sense that it should never be considered as an object of possession or of exploitation, as was and is still so often the case. these are the fundamental principles of a normal sexual law. in no animal do we find the abuses which man is permitted to practice toward his wife and children. let us now pass on to special questions. civil law the object of civil law is to regulate the relations of men to each ether. properly speaking it does not punish, that is to say, it requires no expiation and is not concerned with crime. it seeks to improve the social basis for mutual obligations and contracts. nevertheless, it borders on penal law as regards the question of damages which one individual must pay another whom he has injured even involuntarily, as well as by the coercive measures, both administrative and operative, which it employs. although resting on a natural basis better adapted to the social welfare than penal law, civil law still contains the traditions of religious mysticism and the abuse of conventional right. i shall here analyze in a few words what concerns our subject in actual civil law, and shall point out the modifications which appear to me desirable. it is, however, impossible for me to enter into the details of codes, owing to absence of special knowledge. moreover, this would lead us too far from our subject. =marriage and sexual relations in general.=--the coitus of two individuals, performed with mutual deliberation and causing no harm to a third person, should be considered as a private affair, and should have no connection with either civil or penal law. however great may be the necessary restrictions of this general axiom, it must be recognized as valid in principle. society has no right to restrict the liberty of individuals so long as it, or one of its members, is not injured by these individuals. so long as coitus is freely performed by adult and responsible persons, has no indirect consequences, and does not cause fecundation, neither society nor any one is injured. in the practice of law this axiom is not yet generally accepted. many laws, especially among the germanic peoples, punish concubinage, or extra-nuptial coitus. even when concubinage is tolerated, it is considered illegitimate, so that the woman who gives herself to it and the children who result from it, have much to suffer. although they constitute simple religious precepts, the ordinances of liguori and others concerning coitus influence in a high degree sexual relations in catholic countries. as a rule, coitus is only legally recognized as licit in marriage. but we have seen in chapter vi how elastic is the term marriage, which varies from polygamy and monogamy to polyandry, and from marriage for short periods to indissoluble marriage, to say nothing of the cases where women are sacrificed on their husbands' tombs. we have seen that religious traditions, arising themselves from barbarous customs, play a great part in conjugal law. it is only by infinite trouble that the principle of civil marriage has made its way in modern civilized states. even to-day, religious marriage is in some countries only form of union which is legally recognized. these simple facts show to what extent we are still hidebound by tradition. the idea that marriage is a divine institution and that man has the right to contract, but not to dissolve it, is still a widespread belief, however bizarre it may be. we shall not enter here into the detail of the religious forms of marriage, which is referred to in chapters vi and xii. it is evident, from our modern and scientific point of view, which is purely human and social, that civil law only can be recognized as valid. religious forms and ceremonies must be considered as belonging to a private domain. for this reason they concern neither the state nor society, and should be refused all legal character; for it is our duty to strive and liberate humanity from the tyranny of all imposed creeds, as we should combat all so-called state religion. =civil marriage.=--what then is civil marriage, and what ought it to be? our actual civil marriage is the result of trials and compromises which require improvement. it is a contract between two persons of opposite sex whose mutual object is the reproduction of the human species. in this contract the law is unfortunately too much concerned with the personal relations of the two contracting parties, and too little with the interests of their eventual posterity, which necessitates care and attention on the part of the social legislator. moreover, the traditional conception of the dependence of woman disturbs the purity and justice of civil marriage. in my opinion, the first fundamental principles of civil marriage should be absolute legal equality of the two conjoints and complete separation of property. the momentary amorous intoxication of a woman should not allow a man to appropriate her property in whole or in part; only truly barbarous laws could permit such iniquity, and they should be banished from all the codes of civilized countries. moreover, in countries where woman enjoys important rights, the community of property furnishes those who are unscrupulous with the means of completely despoiling their husbands. further, in common conjugal life, the domestic work of the wife should not be considered as obligatory and requiring no special remuneration. her work has as much right to be considered as that of the husband, and should be entered to the wife as an asset. community of property is so immoral that it should be considered invalid in case of ulterior dispute, when it has been instituted by private contract. it is the business of the conjoints to put it in practice if they wish, so long as they are of one mind. but when dissensions or divorce take place, it only injures the one who has remained honest, and at the same time the children. this is why such contracts ought never be definitely binding to the conjoints. even if the marriage is not unhappy, the extravagances or blunders of one of the conjoints may ruin the whole family, in the case of common property. the _duration_ of marriage is very important. if a marriage contract exacts sexual fidelity till death, divorce is nonsense. yet, in practice, it is obvious cruelty to keep two individuals legally bound together who can no longer live with each other. thus, the provision and license of divorce are necessities of civil law which are certainly not ideal, but which cannot be passed over without favoring family disturbance and without sanctioning illegality and evil. among the most frequent causes of divorce are desire for change in the husband, venereal diseases, disputes, incompatibility of temper, mental disorders, immorality, ill-treatment and crime. the sterility of one of the conjoints and incapacity for coitus may also be mentioned as reasons for divorce, although in certain circumstances, as we shall see, limited polyandry or polygyny may be much more humane than divorce. as soon as divorce is admitted, important and complicated questions of law arise when there are children. we shall refer to these later. the legal license of complete divorce thus transforms marriage into a temporary contract, which is not so far removed as one would think from the ideal relations of free love. we will examine the circumstances which, apart from the procreation of children, may attribute legal importance to the sexual relations of two persons. i must first of all observe that, if it wishes, civil legislation can very well create a state of things which gives to children born outside marriage the same rights and the same social position as legitimate children, and i will even add that such social equality would respond to the most elementary sentiments of human rights, if these were not already influenced in advance by prejudice and mysticism. =minors.=--civil law should stipulate that minors have not the right to marry. this may appear cruel in certain cases, but society has the right and the duty to intervene. minors should be protected against all sexual abuse. a young girl under the age of seventeen and a boy under eighteen or twenty should be prevented from all sexual relations. this is a postulate of individual and social hygiene and consequently of all healthy matrimonial law. =lunatics.=--the same applies to lunatics, who are legally comparable to minors. have we the right to forcibly separate a married couple, or a couple living in concubinage, because one of the conjoints has become insane, when the other does not wish for separation? in germany the procedure of nullity of marriage has been invented for these cases, but without gaining much. i shall return to this point in connection with another subject, but i may remark here that it is not the continuation of marriage nor that of sexual connection which injures society, but only the procreation of children. therefore it is only the procreation of children, which should be legally prohibited, and sexual connection only when the healthy conjoint agrees to its suppression, or when the interests of the afflicted one necessitate it. in the future these particular cases may be regulated in the most convenient and humane way possible. certain bodily infirmities which one of the conjoints has concealed from the other, or of which he was not himself aware, should also impair the validity of the marriage contract. such are chronic infectious diseases, especially venereal, impotence in the man and sterility in the woman, when the cause was previously known. but here again, the law should only intervene at the request of the person injured, and to take certain measures to prevent the procreation of abortions, without interfering with sexual connection. =adultery.=--an important question is that of adultery. here again, we are of opinion that the law has not performed its duty. proved adultery, when fidelity has been promised by contract should give the injured party the right of immediate and absolute divorce. certain forms of adultery, which take place with the assent of the two conjoints, have in reality the character of bigamy and should neither be recognized by civil nor penal law. i will cite as an example, the case where two conjoints wish to live together for various reasons, while the impotence, disease or sterility of one of them induces him to concede to the other liberty of sexual connection with a third person, apart from marriage. in such a case neither society nor any one else is injured and all motive for legal intervention is wanting (vide andré couvreur: _la graine_). =divorce.=--the question of divorce becomes extremely difficult when one of the conjoints wishes for it and the other does not, and when no other reason exists for determining the marriage. we are here concerned with the malicious caprices of the god of love, from which the world will never be free. in my opinion, the law in such cases can only do one thing, and that is to protect the rights of the children, if there are any, and to compel the inconstant conjoint to provide for their nourishment. the law should also protect the pecuniary and other civil rights of the conjoint who wishes to continue life in common. here especially we can recognize the necessity for the separation of property. on the other hand, i am convinced that it is useless to maintain at any price a union which one party does not wish for. in practice no good results from it; it is rather a moral question than a question of law. in such cases we may observe the despair of the conjoint who has remained faithful, both in the marital and legal relations of marriage. the law cannot do everything, and here it is powerless; all that it can do is to exact delay and attempt at reconciliation, which sometimes succeeds. =the right to satisfaction of the sexual appetite.=--we now come to a delicate question. the right to satisfy the sexual appetite must necessarily be restricted in more than one respect if injury to third parties is to be avoided. if we except certain pathological cases, the chief difficulty lies in the fact that the normal sexual appetite can only be satisfied by the cohabitation of two persons, and that what satisfies the one may often injure or deeply wound the other, and even the children. the matter may go so far as to concern penal law, and we shall refer to it again in this connection. but, even from the point of view of civil law, permission to satisfy the sexual appetite must necessarily depend on the consent of both parties. in my opinion no exception to this rule can be tolerated. it is not enough to protect minors; it is also necessary to prevent the abuse of the persons of adults against their will. the institution of so-called christian marriage still contains barbarous dispositions in this respect, the wife being generally obliged to surrender herself to her lord and master as often as he pleases. this is the dark side of the picture which exacts sexual fidelity in man. inversely, for physiological reasons, a very erotic and sexually exacting woman cannot obtain satisfaction, man being incapable of commanding erections voluntarily. she can only bring an action for divorce if she can prove that her husband is completely impotent. it is sufficient to reflect on these facts to see how difficult is the regulation of sexual connection by law. the legislation of details in this domain becomes of necessity an injustice. we have already considered the great individual variability of the sexual appetite. attempts to regulate it by the rules of a monogamous matrimonial code are absurd and impracticable. with all the respect due to the moral sentiments of tolstoi, we are obliged to declare that his ascetic opinions on sexual relations are only the dreams of an enthusiast. when a libidinous man marries a young girl who is sexually frigid, and when coitus continues to be a horror to his wife, it is quite as cruel to demand continence in the husband as submission in his wife. in such cases, the conditions can only be made tolerable by divorce, consent to concubinage, or bigamy, when a relative adaptation cannot be obtained by mutual concessions. at present our prejudices only allow divorce in such cases. when a man and woman are already tied by pregnancy or by a child, and when, apart from the differences in their sexual appetites, love and concord reign between them, separation would be cruel. i readily agree that such extreme circumstances should not be the rule, and that in many cases the one who is the more erotic can restrain himself, and the one who is cold become accustomed to coitus. nevertheless, in the present chapter we are not concerned with morals but with rights, and we have only to reply to the question of knowing what should be done when, in sexual connection between two conjoints, one desires it and the other does not. the concentration of sexual passion on a single individual, which is generally good from the social point of view, is fatal in these special cases. a man falls passionately in love with a woman, or a woman with a man, but instead of being reciprocal this love is despised by the other. such a misfortune, which often leads to the most tragic consequences, not only in novels but also in real life, is only reparable by the renunciation of the one who loves. it is surely less cruel to renounce a proposed union than to become the sexual prey of a person one does not love. it is, therefore, inhuman and immoral, as much in religion as in poetry, to preach in any form, the exclusiveness of sentiments, the indissolubility of monogamous marriage, and the immutability of love. it has often been stated that a woman can only love once in her life. such a false and cruel generalization must be energetically opposed. it is the business of sentimental poets to delude themselves with such sentiments, but those who think it a duty to adhere to dogmas of this kind are to be pitied. it is not only death or illness of one of the conjoints, dissensions and infidelity, which may cause separation of a sexual union, but as is frequently the case, rejected love may transform into perpetual martyrdom the life of a person imbued with such ideas. the ascetic sentimentalism which results from this has a strong element of suggestion which is bad to cultivate. if we would give the one who does not love the absolute right of repelling the sexual advances of the other, not only the law but morality should in return allow the rejected lover to make another choice, where his desire for love will find an echo. at the present day many people, especially women, prefer to endure their unhappiness and even that of their children to the opprobrium to which they are often exposed by public opinion in divorce or remarriage, or even in becoming engaged to another person, when their love has been rejected. it is, therefore, the duty of the legislator to banish from the law everything which may appear to sanction such opprobrium. most laws recognize not only impotence, but also assault, cruelty, venereal disease, adultery, etc., as grounds for divorce, but the pressure of public opinion causes the existing laws to be too little used. we must remember that such violations of conjugal duties give the injured party the right of claiming damages. nevertheless, we may say that the simplest civil action by one conjoint against the other is veritably monstrous when it is not accompanied by an action for divorce. when once the couple have come to legal disputes, their marriage is in reality dissolved and its continuation is an absurdity. =venereal diseases.=--a very important question from the humanitarian and hygienic point of view is that of venereal disease. a man (or woman) who knows himself (or herself) to be affected with a venereal disease in an infectious state, and who in spite of this has connection with a woman, should be regarded as a criminal, at least if the woman with whom he has connection is not affected with the same disease. here the law should intervene by awarding heavy damages to the party who has been infected; eventually it may be treated as a criminal offense. in such cases claim should be made by the injured party, but unfortunately this is seldom done owing to feelings of shame. in the future, however, we may hope that the law may be improved for the benefit of humanity, for this would be one of the most efficacious means of combating venereal disease, and hence avoiding much misfortune for families and children. it would also be desirable to prevent the procreation of syphilitic infants, for instance, by the use of preventatives (vide chapter xiv). =prostitution.=--another difficult question is that of the relation of civil law to prostitution. all state regulation of prostitution is to be absolutely condemned; but what position should civil law take up with regard to free prostitution? we have already seen what an abominable social evil is this commerce in human bodies, as regards social morality. but it is absolutely useless to try and abolish this commerce without attacking its lord and master--_money_. the venality of man implies the commerce of his body, and as long as everything can be got for money, coitus can be bought. it is, therefore, this venality which must be attacked, not only by condemning it in words but by cutting its roots. if the state will not withdraw its protecting hand from prostitution, it might at least combat proxenetism and the public manifestations of prostitution, by all the legal and administrative measures at its disposal. it would thus reduce the matter to intimate personal relations. let us hope that, little by little, a social organization more just to labor and wages, combined with the prohibition of alcoholic drinks, will, in the future, annihilate the causes of commerce in human bodies. =children as a reason for civil marriage.=--to resume; we find that civil marriage should, by progressive reforms, become a much more free contract than it is at present, having for its object a common sexual life. the law should abandon its useless and often harmful chicanery concerning the questions of sexual relations and love, and regulate more carefully the duties of parents toward their children, and thus protect future generations against the abuse of the present generation. the difference which exists between marriage and free love should gradually disappear, by instituting natural intimate relations on the basis of sentiments of social morality, instead of maintaining the pretended divine origin of a social institution. it is difficult to avoid a smile when we hear the term "divine institution" applied to the marriage of a rich girl with a man who has been bought for her. (vide chapter x.) various propositions have been made to give more dignity to the unions of free love, which now exist and which always have existed. modern women have remarked that the absurd custom of naming the celibate woman differently to the married stigmatizes in society a number of poor women and innocent children, and that it would be quite as just to apply the term "damoiseau" to celibate men as "mademoiselle" to non-married girls. an unmarried woman who has a child, and who has only committed the sin of obeying nature, is branded with the stamp of shame. it is the children who constitute the true bond of marriage and give it a legal character. when there are no children all legal and state interference with conjugal affairs loses its sense so long as no one is injured, and civil marriage can then be greatly simplified. i maintain that so long as a sterile union, of whatever kind, between responsible persons is voluntary, provokes no conflict between those who have contracted it, and causes no injury to a third party, the law has no right to meddle with it; because this union does not concern society nor any of its members, excepting the two parties interested, who are in accord. at the present time, in many countries, the existing laws can be utilized to form marriage contracts stipulating separation of property, the right of each of the conjoints to the produce of his or her work, as well as certain reciprocal rights and duties between the parents and children. matters can thus be arranged so as to correct more or less the defects of the law. =marriage of inverts.=--a peculiar and characteristic phenomenon is the ardent desire of many sexual perverts, especially inverts, to become secretly engaged or married to the abnormal homosexual object of their love. it is needless to say that there can be no question of legal regulation of such pathological marriages. but the law may ignore them when they do no harm to any one, and regard them as private affairs, especially when they prevent much worse evils, such as the marriage of an invert to a normal individual. =civil rights of children. matriarchism.=--as we have already said, it is the children who constitute the real phylogenetic and psychological bonds in marriage and the family, bonds which are deeply rooted in human nature. this is so true that among many savage peoples, if not in most, marriage is not considered legal as long as it is sterile. even among civilized people sterile women are generally regarded as of less value. we may, therefore, regard the article in the code napoleon which forbids inquiry into paternity as an unnatural measure, or as a monstrosity of civil law. two human beings who procreate others contract common duties and responsibility of the highest importance. they are, perhaps, the highest social duties that man can assume. is it not then infamous and unnatural to legally liberate one only of the procreators, the man, from all his responsibilities, simply because certain religious or civil formalities were omitted before procreation? is the man less guilty than the woman in procreation apart from marriage, if we can use the term guilt in such cases? is it not a ridiculous and cruel irony to call _natural children_ those born apart from marriage? perhaps legitimate children are supernatural, or unnatural! is it not infamous to brand with the seal of shame, even before their birth, poor illegitimate children, and to confirm this indignity by making them bear their mother's name instead of their father's? the most elementary natural law exacts that all children, whether "legitimate" or "illegitimate," should have the same social rights, and that they should bear either the name of their real father or that of their mother; the latter denomination would be the more natural and logical. denomination by the maternal line corresponds to the system of matriarchism (chapters vi and xix), which is often met with among savage races, and which is more just and leads to less abuse than patriarchism. moreover, when women shall have obtained their proper rights, there will be an end of the exclusive authority of one of the conjoints in marriage. equality in the rights of the two sexes will naturally lead to denomination in the maternal line, for reasons of simplicity, the mother being more closely related to the child than the father. maternity may, no doubt, be sometimes uncertain, as in the case of foundlings or changelings, but on the whole it is infinitely more easy to establish than paternity. it is sufficient for the mother to have sexual connection with two men at the time of conception to render paternity doubtful. again, the mother has a number of pains, cares and dangers to undergo in the course of the procreation and education of children, which the father escapes. nature thus gives the mother the right to give her name to the family. our legislation is unfortunately far from recognizing such natural right. we may nevertheless form a primary proposition, because in my opinion its recognition would avoid much complicated litigation: _in nature, whenever the offspring of an animal have a protracted and dependent infancy, it is the duty of the parents to nourish them and bring them up. to allow human parents to dispense with this duty, on the grounds of badly constructed and unnatural social theories, is to encourage promiscuity, and consequently degeneration of society. it is easy to change social customs which are only based on artificial dogmas sanctioned by tradition, fashion and habit, whether they are of a religious nature or otherwise. but a social organization can never violate with impunity the true laws of human nature which are deeply rooted in our phylogenetic instincts, without disastrous effects._ in chapters vi and vii we have given irrefutable proof that family life and the sentiments of sympathy between husband and wife, parents and children, constitute the phylogenetic basis of the sexual relations of humanity. whatever may be the egoistic polygamous instincts of man, we can affirm that a natural and true monogamy constitutes the highest and best form of his sexual relations and of his love. no doubt there are many exceptions which must be taken into account. it is absurd to shut our eyes to the fact that our degenerate social customs have created unnatural circumstances in which parents behave shamefully toward their children, exploiting them, training them systematically to mendacity, prostitution and crime, or else ill-treating them. we even see unnatural parents, to save legal consequences, get rid of children who inconvenience them by the aid of slow and coldly calculated martyrdom, which leads them to certain death. it is, therefore, necessary to establish special legal provision for all these exceptional cases, to protect children against the power of unworthy parents and all forms of abuse. i must here draw attention to the impulse which has recently been given to austrian legislation on the protection of children, by lydia von wolfring. the state brings up, in philanthropic institutions, children who have been maltreated, neglected or abandoned, after removal from their unworthy parents, but without relieving the latter of their duty in providing nourishment. according to miss wolfring's system, they are cared for by honest couples without children who wish for them, under the supervision of the aforesaid institutions. in this way the children enjoy family life. for educational reasons, the natural family may be imitated in these artificial ones, by giving to each couple children of both sexes and different ages. the result is perfect: i have seen in vienna artificial families of ten children formed in this way. this shows again the rule confirmed by the exception; it would be better for the good seed to be more fruitful and the bad sterile. the normal condition must, however, always be for parents to bring up their own children. but here the state and the school should come to their aid, and even intervene with authority; for society is under the obligation of educating its children to a certain degree of culture, and maternal or paternal authority should not have the right to prevent or even attenuate this social work. obligatory and gratuitous education is thus a duty of the state which is becoming more and more recognized everywhere, although it is still very incomplete and often badly carried out. the state should, moreover, protect the children by restricting the power of parents more than is done at present. the child should not be allowed to become an object for exploitation by its parents. it has also the right to be protected against all unmerited punishment and ill-treatment. corporal punishment, which is still practiced in some schools, is a relic of barbarism which ought to disappear. the state should severely enforce the duty of the procreators of children to nourish their offspring. rich or poor, no father or mother should escape this duty, whether the child is legitimate or illegitimate. in our imperfect social condition, it is still much too easy for the man to escape and abandon his child to the mother, or to public charity. he should be compelled to provide for the life and education of his children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, if he does not bring them up himself. if unable to provide money, he should do the equivalent in labor. such measures, strictly enforced, would be more efficacious than all the complicated laws on sexual relations, in maintaining monogamy and fidelity. i repeat, that these measures should apply to all unworthy parents from whom we are obliged to remove the children. these parents are not always of the poorer class. it may be objected that i am unjust in charging such duties to poor people who can often hardly keep themselves. i agree that in the present state of society it is quite impossible for many parents to undertake such important duties. but duty means right, and it is evident that we must place rights by the side of the duties which we impose on parents. true justice in this question can only be attained by the essential progress of socialism. by socialism, i do not mean certain vague communistic doctrines, nor the utopias of anarchists who imagine that "man was born good," but simply an essential social progress in the struggle against the domination of individual capital, that is to say, usury applied to the labor of others owing to the possession of means of production, which is now left to speculators. men should be enabled to enjoy the product of their labor, so that they can lead a human life worthy of the name, in sexual matters as in others. but this is not all. from the social point of view, it is absolutely unjust that men who procreate children should alone bear the burden of the future generation. we know the egoistic proverb of the celibates, who say: "i have the right to take life easily, to enjoy myself and be idle, if i renounce the happiness of having children, either of my own accord or from necessity." this proverb, which may be transposed into "after me the deluge," cannot be recognized by any healthy social legislation. it is the duty of the state to relieve large families, to facilitate the procreation of healthy children, and to impose more work and taxes (for instance, artificial families) on sterile individuals. the old laws were better than ours in this respect. i have mentioned above the excellent custom, which exists at the present day in norway, of only charging half-price on the boats to married women and other female members of the same family. i cannot here enter into the details of this question, but if such reforms are some day realized, if universal compulsory education, pensions for old age, orphans and invalids, etc., are introduced, then no man will have valid motives for escaping the duty of feeding his children and bringing them up decently in family life. this will be left only to the idle and vicious. moreover, i can support my propositions by facts. if we compare the nature of delinquents, abandoned children, vagabonds, etc., in a country where little or nothing has been done for the people (russia, galicia, vienna, etc.), with that of the same individuals in switzerland, for example, where much has already been done for the poor, we find this result: in switzerland, these individuals are nearly all tainted with alcoholism or pathological heredity; they consist of alcoholics, incorrigibles, and congenital decadents, and education can do little for them, because nearly all those who have a better hereditary foundation have been able to earn their living by honest work. in russia, galicia, and even in vienna, we are, on the contrary, astonished to see how many honest natures there are among the disinherited, when they are provided with work and education. this fact speaks more than the contradictory statements which the fanatics of party politics hurl at each other's heads. =inquiry into paternity.=--it will be objected that inquiry into paternity is often very difficult and dangerous. i do not deny this; but, when women have obtained their natural rights, and when the education of young girls is guided by the principles which we have enunciated in chapter xvii, the matter will become much easier. moreover, even now, we can with energy and good will determine paternity in most cases. although the great improvement in means of transport assists fugitives, it also favors the discovery and arrest of individuals all over the world. international relations between all civilized states are improving from day to day. when the world is more completely conquered by civilization, we may hope that it will become increasingly difficult for evildoers to escape their duties. regarding this question from all points of view it is impossible for us to give up this primordial condition for the preservation of human society, which consists in making parents responsible for the nourishment and education of their children. the famous ideas of phalanstery and promiscuity, so often advanced, originated in theoretical and dogmatic minds which had lost their instinctive sense of human nature, and ignored what natural science and ethnology have revealed to us. but the responsibility of parents extends to another domain--the duty of not procreating children who are unhealthy in body and mind. we shall return to this question later on. =guardianship.=--an excellent institution of our present legislation is that of the guardianship of orphans, lunatics, etc. it requires to be developed extensively and with care. on the contrary, an evil custom is the right accorded by certain countries to parishes charged with poor and abandoned orphans, of delivering them by public tender to the man who offers the lowest pension--and only requires them for work. this system results in odious abuse, such as neglect, mendicity and ill-treatment. the fate of illegitimate children who are "farmed out" is still worse. a tacit alliance is established between rapacity on the one hand and social sexual hypocrisy on the other. a number of infanticides and abortions result, either from poverty, or from sentiments of shame due to our moral customs. here, civil law and penal law should combine and take energetic humanitarian measures to put a stop to this sad abuse. an excellent institution is that of homes in the country established for unmarried mothers and their children, and for abandoned mothers in general. =free love and civil marriage.=--when all the propositions we have drawn up have been realized by social legislation, the difference which now exists between marriage and free love will be little more than a form. the consequences of these two kinds of union will become the same, both for parents and children; the only distinction will consist in the existence or non-existence of official control. true monogamy will lose nothing, but will gain much. we shall not then have obligatory monogamy as at present, absolute in form, artificially maintained by the aid of prostitution, that is by the most disgusting form of promiscuity which renders monogamy illusory; but we shall have in its place a relative monogamy much more solidly built on the natural rights of the two sexes, it is true more free in form, but fundamentally much stronger in the natural and instinctive duties dictated by a truly free and reasoned union, as well as by the duties by which parents will be bound to their children. =form and duration of civil marriage.=--although it may be true that monogamy constitutes the most normal and natural form of family union, and offers the best conditions for lasting happiness, both for parents and children, we must be blindly prejudiced not to admit that it is unnatural to consider it as the only sheet anchor in sexual relationship, the only admissible form of marriage, and to make it a straight-jacket. history and ethnography show us that polygamous races are strongly developed and are still developing; on the other hand, it is true that polyandrous races degenerate. again, impartial observation of our christian monogamy shows us that it depends to a great extent on appearances, that it is full of trickery and hypocrisy, and that to legally enforce it for life must be considered as absolutely impossible. in catholic countries which prohibit divorce, the latter has been replaced by separation, and this becomes the most constant source of adultery. the more the laws of a country impede divorce, the more one must close one's eyes to promiscuity or prostitution, which has even been regulated by the state by the aid of proxenetism, all the while preaching monogamy in a loud voice. these bitter lessons which practice has given to the partisan, of obligatory monogamy, prove the absurdity of attempting to restrain the natural appetites of man by force and by artificial obstacles. that which succeeds, not without difficulty, with some strong characters, and more easily with naturally cold temperaments, is impossible to realize in the masses. polyandry is usually the result of poverty, and the polyandrous races are little fecund and tend to disappear. the normal man is instinctively more polygynous than the normal woman is polyandrous. there are, however, cases where polyandry is justifiable. there are women whose sexual appetite, more or less pathological, is so insatiable that a normal man is incapable of satisfying it. if such women were served by several don juans by means of a free contract, this would be better than giving themselves in despair to prostitution (there are some prostitutes created by nymphomania). this system would also be better than the seduction of normal young girls by the don juans in question. polygyny is still more indicated when the sterility of the woman or her repugnance to sexual intercourse cause family disturbances. in speaking of polygamy in chapter vi, we have shown that it exists in several forms, and that these are not all so humiliating for the women as people think, who only know of the shameful abuses of the mussulman's harem. what lowers the moral level of polygyny is especially the barbarous system of marriage by purchase, by which the women become slaves burdened with heavy labor, and are in a state of legal dependence. we have seen that polygyny has a higher moral character among certain indian tribes where matriarchism rules, and where the wife is mistress of the house and family. the danger of degradation of the woman ceases when she is equal to the man as regards rights and property. in fact, in such a social state, polygyny can only constitute an exception. it is here entirely free and becomes all the more innocent because divorce is facilitated and strict laws on the feeding and education of the children limit the male sexual appetite. i even venture to maintain that the stability of monogamous marriage, which should be based on mutual sentiments of respect and love, would be much better guaranteed than hitherto by legal liberty of conjugal ties, and by duty to children such as i have proposed. if this became recognized as conventional, men and women fit to understand each other and love in a lasting manner, would find suitable mates more easily, and would become united more permanently when their chains were voluntary. if marriages on trial became more frequent in the form of short unions, ending with separation, this would not be a great evil, for similar unions occur every day in a much baser form. moreover, the effect of legislation with regard to children would put a curb on immorality and passion, which cause their worst effects. if the objection is raised that this would lead immoral people to avoid the procreation of children so as to enjoy more varied sexual pleasures, i reply that this would be beneficial, for this anti-social class of individuals would be eliminated by sterility, by a kind of negative selection. we thus place two natural appetites in antagonism; that of procreation on the one hand, and sexual enjoyment on the other. whoever inclines to the first, which is the higher and tends to preserve the species, is obliged to restrain himself in the second, without, however, falling into unnatural asceticism. =consanguineous marriages.=--to avoid injurious consanguinity, it is sufficient, in my opinion, to prohibit the procreation of children between direct and collateral relations, especially between parents and children and between brothers and sisters. anything more than this is only useless chicanery. laws which prohibit marriage between relations by alliance are absurd, for instance those which forbid a widower to marry his sister-in-law (deceased wife's sister), etc. among some peoples such unions are ordained by law! there is also no valid reason to prohibit unions between first cousins or between uncles and aunts, with nephews and nieces. there is nothing to prove that such marriages are injurious to the offspring. what is harmful is the accumulation of hereditary taints, whether they occur in relations or persons who are strangers to each other. nevertheless, the _perpetuation_ of consanguineous unions in the same family is not as a rule advisable. =restriction of personal liberty in sexual life among harmful or dangerous individuals.=--the inability of men to distinguish, among the motives of the acts of their fellows, what is abnormal, unhealthy, impulsive or obsessional, from what is healthy and normal is one of the most deplorable phenomena in social life, and greatly hinders the action of reformatory civil legislation and rational administrative measures. the passionate, confused and unreasonable sentiments of the masses give expression, according to the impulse of the moment, to two contradictory absurdities and injustices. on the one hand, they cry out against arbitrary constraint of individual liberty, against illegal restriction or detention, when competent judges or experts try to limit the movements of dangerous individuals affected with mental disorders, but who appear sane to the incompetent public; or when, to insure social safety, they send these individuals to a lunatic asylum, or limit their dangerous liberty in some other way. on the other hand, when such an individual goes free, thanks to the intervention of incompetent meddlers, and commits assassination, violation, incendiarism, or all kinds of sadic atrocities, or even only terrorizes his own family, these same people, suddenly animated by contrary sentiments of vengeance, imperiously demand an exemplary expiation and all possible reprisals. this sometimes goes as far as torture of the culprit or burning at the stake, as with the lynchers in america. it is very difficult for the psychiatrist, who is the competent expert in these matters, to make truth and impartiality prevail. he is nearly always suspected of seeing madness everywhere, and of being afflicted with a mania for sending sane persons to asylums! in reality, he desires to take measures which are at the same time humane for the insane and protective for society, so as to treat as equitably and reasonably as possible the unfortunates who are more or less irresponsible for their acts; he wishes to see established laws and organizations which will efficiently protect the insane against themselves and against the exploitation and abuse of others, at the same time preventing them from doing injury to society. on the other hand, society and with it the old style of jurist, in their ignorant dread of psychopathological matters, endeavor to take all possible measures to protect the sane public against the alienists, thus completely neglecting the true interests of the insane as well as those of society, while fighting against a phantom! the anxiety and mistrust of the public in this matter are continually kept up by "brigand stories" related by certain insane or semi-insane persons, which are spread by the press, always eager for scandal, or by pamphlets which the cheapness of printing places within the reach of the poorest! these phenomena of public psychology greatly hinder the most urgent reforms. the public regard asylums with horror, and the path of the alienist is thorny, for he is exposed to continual accusations and threats whatever he may do, a situation which does not encourage him to suggest bold innovations. ignorant of psychology and especially of psychopathology, the public and with it the formal jurist, the slave of codes (i am only speaking of honest lawyers, and not of the number who abuse the situation to obtain oratorical and other success and crown themselves with laurels), regard themselves as the champions of individual liberty, and are unable to perceive that the net result of their efforts is, on the one hand, to condemn a considerable number of insane and crazy persons to prison, and on the other hand to assure liberty and impunity to the most dangerous individuals, always ready to commit the most atrocious crimes, or at any rate to make martyrs of a number of patient and innocent beings, hard-working and healthy in mind, especially women and children. the alienists, who see clearly into all this misery, easily become pessimistic in their impotence against the want of sense, ignorance and unconscious passion of the masses, and even competent authorities. the natural cowardice of men often makes them shut their eyes to avoid nuisances, and causes them to take no action against the most dangerous monsters, and especially against those who are most mischievous by their pens. this is why the martyrdom of unfortunate women and children illtreated by chronic alcoholics, sadists and other neuropaths or psychopaths, never comes to an end, owing to the stupid outcry against so-called violation of individual liberty. on this soil, sexual atrocities and crimes, largely increased by drink, play an important part. without troubling myself about prejudice and indignation i shall say in a few words what appears to me to be urgent: so long as jurists and legislators will not study either psychology or psychiatry, and will not submit all habitual criminals and all dangerous men to an expert examination, all serious reform in this domain will remain impossible. to improve the present state of affairs a common understanding between jurists and alienists is urgent; but this can only be attained by jurists making a study of psychology, and a kind of practical clinic among imprisoned criminals. how can one judge and condemn one's neighbor without having the least idea of the state of mind of these pariahs of society? all the jurists who have the welfare of humanity at heart, should support the _international union of penal law_, and the efforts of men like professor franz von liszt, gaukler of caen, and many other courageous reformers.[ ] it is needless to say that it is not sufficient to combat the excesses of criminal and dangerous individuals, such as sadists, for example, by placing them under supervision and preventing them doing harm. it is also necessary to attack the cause of the evil by preventing their germs from being reproduced, degenerated as they usually are by the blastophthoria of their alcoholic parents (vide chapter i). the first question, which is purely legal and administrative, does not concern us here; but i may be allowed to say a few words on the second. zealous and advanced reformers have proposed castration in such cases, which has provoked a general cry of indignation. this has been discussed in certain american states. the hyperæsthetic sentiment of our modern civilization cannot tolerate such ideas, while ancient races such as the islamites provided, and still provide eunuchs as servants, who are free from danger for their wives, and think little of hanging or decapitating men who cause them any trouble. in the same way, we are dumb and impassive before the butcheries of war, because they are fashionable, especially when we do not come in contact with them. the pope himself formerly procured eunuchs in order to have soprano voices in his church, and did not hesitate to castrate young boys for this purpose. the times change and we change with them! for some years, however, castration has been employed as a remedy for certain disorders both in men and women, especially for hysteria in women. i admit here that, in an asylum which i superintend, i have castrated a veritable monster afflicted with constitutional mental disorders, taking advantage of the fact that he himself requested this operation to relieve him of pain in his seminal vesicles, but with the chief object of preventing the production of unfortunate children tainted with his hereditary complaint. many years ago i also castrated a young hysterical girl of fourteen, whose mother and grandmother were both prostitutes, and who had already begun to have intercourse with all the urchins in the street. here again, i frankly admit that the hysterical troubles of the patient served me as an excuse to prevent this unfortunate girl from reproducing beings who would probably resemble her. i am of opinion that castration, or some more benign operation, such as dislocation of the fallopian tubes in women (which renders them sterile without destroying the ovaries, or even attenuating the sexual appetite) should be performed in order to prevent the reproduction of the most deplorable and most dangerous beings. among certain individuals, such as sadists, whose sexual appetite is dangerous in itself, castration would be necessary. in my opinion, the more benign operations are indicated in all individuals whose psychopathological condition in this domain is such that they are absolutely incapable of resisting their impulses, or of understanding the dictates of reason. by this means they could go free instead of being incarcerated in asylums. on the other hand, i must emphasize the fact that such measures, the personal consequences of which are so serious, should only be taken in the case of absolutely dangerous, incurable individuals, concerning whose pathological state there can be no doubt. i also believe that these individuals, especially those with sexual abnormalities, would very often consent to the operation, as was the case with my two patients. it would be a great advance if civil legislation would in such cases accord official recognition to castration or dislocation of the tubes, with the consent of the criminal or patient concerned. at present, our laws and regulations are such that a psychopathological monster cannot even be castrated when he wishes it, because medical men refuse to undertake such an operation without a positive medical indication of the usual kind, and because there is no legal protection; yet, when done in time, castration would often save sadists and other dangerous perverts from a criminal life, and society from their crimes and those of their offspring. when it is only a question of avoiding the procreation of tainted children, it would be sufficient to instruct reasonable people in the methods of avoiding conception (vide chapter xiv). it is important to bear in mind that modern legislation on marriage often flavors the reproduction of criminals, lunatics and invalids, while it hinders the production of healthy children by men who are intelligent, honest and robust. when an abnormal or unhealthy man is married, his wife is obliged to submit to the conception of tainted children. on the other hand, when a strong, healthy and intelligent girl is in a situation, it often happens that everything is done to prevent her marrying, so as not to lose her services; the more conscientious she is and the more attached to her masters, the more often is this likely to occur. girls who have illegitimate children often lose their situations and their honor. the consideration of cases of everyday occurrence is sufficient to grasp the difficulty of the question. what we require is more personal liberty for healthy, normal and adaptable individuals, and more restrictions for the abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous. the civil law of the future will have to take these facts into consideration, if it wishes to keep level with scientific progress, and prevent the instinct of the people having recourse to lynch law, or retaliation. meanwhile, attempts have been made to get out of the difficulty by prohibiting the marriage of insane persons or by declaring their marriage null when it has already been consummated; or again, by admitting insanity as a cause for divorce. such measures are good as makeshifts in a period of transition. they assume that conceptions only occur in marriage, and that marriage necessarily means procreation. but these two suppositions are false, for it is only the pressure of custom and legislation which realizes them in part, especially in catholic countries. the civil code, in the present state of society, has at least the advantage of making possible the dissolution of monstrous unions, such as those of the absolutely insane or certain psychopaths of the worst kind. unfortunately, divorce is as a rule only accorded in cases of well-marked mental disorders, while in reality the most atrocious unions are those which are contracted by crazy persons with only diminished responsibility, in whom the public and the law are unable to recognize or understand the existence of a definite mental anomaly. these people most often marry at a time when no one has yet recognized their true mental condition, or foreseen the consequences of their marriage. the unfortunate who finds herself (or himself) bound by such a union is then an object of endless martyrdom. the frequency of mental anomalies causes them to play an immense, and too often unrecognized role, in unhappy marriages. at the request of the mother the tribunal of bâle recently prohibited the marriage of a young man affected with a slight degree of mental weakness. this judgment was upheld by the swiss tribunal for the following reasons: "although capable of work, of earning his living, and of performing his military service, an individual may be an unsuitable subject for marriage. in the interests of family life and the future generation, it is the duty of the state to prevent the marriage of the feeble-minded, in order to avoid the perpetuation of a race of degenerates." i quote this from a journal. we can only congratulate tribunals which have the courage to consider the vital interests of the nation in their judgments. =right of succession.=--although right of succession has no direct bearing on the sexual question, it is indirectly connected with it through its influence on the procreation of children. at the present day the poor have more children than the well-to-do. this is because they have nothing to lose, because coitus is one of their few pleasures, because they are ignorant of the means of preventing conception, and because they hope to profit by their children's labor. people who have some property are, on the contrary, afraid of falling into poverty through the procreation of too many children, and those who possess more are afraid of poverty for their offspring. the latter only desire a few heirs, so that after their death they can leave each a fortune suitable to their social position. in france, especially, well-to-do people often limit their families to two. the parents have the unhappy idea that a certain fortune must be assured to their children to enable them to live in comfort. they do not understand that the necessity for a man to earn his living by work is the chief condition for a healthy existence. again, among very rich people there is often the fear that a large fortune may lose its power when divided, and thus diminish the influence of the family. it is obvious that great poverty and great wealth constitute two extreme social evils. it is deplorable for a child to grow up with the idea that he will inherit a large fortune, enjoy life without working, and regard poor people more or less as subordinates. but it is still worse for a man to remain all his life an object for exploitation, in spite of the most repugnant and most arduous work, unless his superior faculties and good luck give him the chance of rising. it is also discouraging for a man to be unable by arduous work to obtain anything for himself or his wife and children, and only to work for society, and especially for the interests of capitalists. human instinct is not sufficiently social to allow of assiduous and hearty work solely in the interests of the community. the egoistic sentiments and family instincts of man are still much too strong. if we take all these facts into consideration, the right of succession becomes very important. it has been attempted to deal with the question by progressive taxes on succession to large fortunes: but this is not enough. i have not the presumption to give a positive opinion on these matters which are not in my province, but i venture to suggest the possibility of greatly restricting the right of succession by postponing the right to the enjoyment of their heritage till the children are of an age when they could earn their own living; say, from twenty-five to twenty-six, so as not to interfere with their higher education. in this way a man would not be deprived of the pleasure of working for himself and his family; and every young man and young woman, being obliged to work at some special subject, would know that they could earn their living after twenty-five or twenty-six, without counting on their heritage. i do not pretend to build a new social system on this idea, for many propositions of the kind have already been made. i only wish to draw attention to one element of the problem, which consists in diminishing the possibility of the exploitation of man by man, without destroying the pleasure for work, at the same time favoring the procreation and education of healthy and capable offspring. this naturally presupposes a new moral and social state, in which family right would be changed and good education organized for all. even then intelligent men would have the desire to rise above the average and bring up their children with the same object. this is an instinct in mental development which should be carefully cultivated, and not extinguished, by every social organization. in all social systems it must be recognized that certain branches of culture, such as scientific research and art, involve great expense and bring little or no material reward to the scientist or the artist. a richer state ought to provide for these important branches of civilization, which always tend to higher culture. i have already mentioned separation of property and an equable division of the fruits of labor between conjoints as the only just basis in marriage contracts. i repeat here, that true justice can only be established by the recognition of equal legal rights for men and women. penal law penal law is the right of punishment. it is based on the ideas of _culpability_ and _expiation_, and these are based on the idea of free-will, which is itself founded on a pure illusion, as we have shown above. this simple reflection is sufficient to show the precarious position of our present penal law. the science of penal law has too long ignored the progress of humanity and of the other sciences. it is affected with incurable marasmus, because its foundations are laid in error. the idea of expiation was naturally developed on the basis of mysticism combined with the right of the stronger, and associated with the sentiment of vengeance natural to the low mentality of our animal ancestors. among the latter the weaker was punished because he was the weaker: "_væ victis!_" and order was obtained by force. but the visions of human imagination having urged man to create a god or gods in his own image, he attributed to the divinity the sentiments of anger experienced by man, and pretended that expiation was required for offenses against this or that majesty or human idea, transformed into an offense to the divine majesty. this offense to the divinity was therefore only the nebulous expression of a developing social conscience in man, an obscure mixture of sentiments of wounded sympathy, adulation of the strong and great, and desire for vengeance and expiation. till then man was accustomed to judge other men according to the right of the stronger, more or less mitigated by sentiments of family and friendship. his terror of natural mysteries--the forest, night, thunder, hurricanes, stars, etc., led him to imagine the intervention of occult powers, and later on of higher powers capable of judging good and evil actions, the ideas of good and evil being formerly very different from what they are at present. the functions of advocates or executors of the divine will were always, however, reserved for privileged men, who gave judgment in his name, either as priests, kings, or later on as judges. we may also note by the way that judgment can be given without belief in free arbitration, as is shown by the mahometan fatalists and the judgments of haroun-al-raschid, for example. in fact, fatalism logically excludes the idea of free-will, for if everything is absolutely predetermined, the thoughts, resolutions and acts of man are also predetermined, which excludes all liberty. =responsibility.=--i have attempted to show in another work[ ] that a rational penal law should in no way concern itself with the question of free arbitration. the fact that we feel free and responsible is not at all sufficient to justify the doctrine of kant. the question of knowing whether an absolute predestination (fatalism, regulating the universe in advance in all its details) exists or not, is a question of pure metaphysics, the solution of which is quite beyond human comprehension, and need not occupy us here. we must simply depend on the scientific postulate of determinism, _i.e._, on the law of causality applied to the motives of our actions, a law which is very much like that of the conservation of energy, and which admits of divers possibilities for the future, for it does not assume a knowledge of the first cause of the universe nor the will of a divinity. we shall then understand that the complication of our cerebral activities, mnemic and actual, combined with the fact that a great part of them (and consequently of the motives for our actions) remain subconscious, must produce in us the illusion of free-will. on the other hand, we shall find the measure of what we are to understand by relative liberty, in the plastic faculties of the activity of the human brain, which allow it to adapt itself as adequately as possible to the numerous and diverse complications of existence, and especially to social relations between mankind. the most adaptable man is the most free, especially in the sense of active and conscious adaptation. there are also men who adapt themselves passively and are easily molded. this passive plasticity at any rate renders them capable of submitting to everything and only provoking conflict as a last resource. these individuals are no doubt less free, since they obey the impulses of others; nevertheless, their elasticity gives them a certain relative liberty, because they do not feel constraint and easily adapt themselves to laws and other social requirements. but the highest form of liberty, the moral faculty of higher adaptation, is not that of the human fox who exploits others for his own profit, but that of true higher intellects, capable of adapting their activity to the social requirements of humanity. on the contrary, the man who is least free is the one who, dominated by his passions and baser appetites, or by insufficiency of intelligence or will power, is thereby incapable of conducting himself reasonably, gives way to all temptations and impulses, falls into all kinds of snares, cannot keep to any resolution, and is in perpetual conflict with society. what is the use of the theoretical belief in free-will in this case? this man feels subjectively as free, or often more free, than one who is more reasonable and more master of himself, and yet he is a slave! when, dominated by his psychic bonds, he violates the law, he is punished, but he himself resents the punishment as an injustice. the judge who condemns him and imagines he holds the scales of justice in equilibrium, only carries out the principles of an unjust law, a kind of mild retaliation, exacting moderate expiation. or again, by exercising a right derived from old traditions based on religious ideas, he plays the part of proxy for the deity and judges in his place. we might even say that a mail is in reality all the more free the better he realizes that he is not so, _i.e._, that his actions depend on the activity of his brain! at any rate he will then be less often deceived and will react in a more plastic manner. =the true task of penal law; its traditional errors in the sexual question.=--penal law has only one thing to do, that is to cut itself free from its roots and transplant itself on a social and scientific soil. there would then be no longer a penal law, but a _law protecting society against dangerous individuals, and a law of administration for persons incapable of conducting themselves_. its task would be the complement of that of civil law. henceforth the judge would cease to pass judgment on his neighbor and his neighbor's motives, acting as a proxy for god. he would no longer punish, but would content himself with protecting, restraining and ameliorating. the history of psychiatry and sorcery proves that we are not exaggerating. it is not very long since the insane were regarded, not as persons suffering from disease, but as criminals and sorcerers, and were treated by punishment and exorcism. the ancients, on the contrary, especially certain greek and roman physicians (notably _caelius aurelianus_) had already recognized that insanity was a disease of the brain, and had distinguished its different forms. even at the present day, we find among the catholics and among certain protestant sects, as among savages, a belief in sorcery, and if this belief got the upper hand, prosecution for sorcery--exorcism and other forms of cruelty--would soon become the fashion. before the sixteenth century prosecutions for sorcery were universal, and remained very common for a long time afterwards. it is only since the time of the french revolution that insanity has been recognized as a mental disease. even in the nineteenth century a german alienist, heinroth, punished the insane like criminals. the atrocious prejudice of the people against the insane dates from the time of prosecution for sorcery. even now we are the slaves of a prejudice which holds a legal conviction sufficient to dishonor the prisoner and stain his character for the rest of his days. hans leuss' book, _aus dem zuchthause_ (from the prison), , is very instructive on this point. condemned to prison himself, the author makes some wise and dispassionate observations which give food for reflection. i may also quote the words of doctor guillaume, who was for a long time superintendent of the penitentiary at neuchatel, and who is now director of the swiss federal bureau of statistics at berne. the question we are dealing with had been treated in a discussion in which i took part, and to which doctor guillaume had listened silently. at the conclusion, he said to us: "gentlemen, in the course of my life i have become acquainted with a large number of convicts, but i have never been able to discover among them more than two classes of individuals; the one class were diseased, and the others ... ah! the others; the more i study their cases and their personality, i ask myself if i should not have done as they did under the same circumstances!" it is unnecessary to say that doctor guillaume did not mean to establish two clearly marked classes, for most criminals represent a mixture of both; but his main idea gives a good idea of the question of penal law. how sexual questions lead to conflicts with penal law, how penal law judges them, and how it ought to judge them after what we have just said, i can only refer to what i have said concerning civil law. our present penal law is aware of singular sexual crimes and often punishes them from curious motives. when a poor imbecile, ridiculed by women and overcome by his sexual appetite, copulates with a cow, the latter is not injured in any way; neither is the owner. moreover, the question of property does not trouble the judge, for he punishes sodomy even when the culprit owns the animal. how does the law obtain the right to punish an act which does no harm to any one, nor to society, nor even to an animal? it is evidently a vestige of religious mysticism, something like punishment for sinning against the holy ghost. the sins of sodom and gomorrah, they say, caused the wrath of god, who destroyed these towns for this reason. according to the legend, sodomy was a vice of the inhabitants; is this why it is punished at the present day? but the masturbation of onan, according to the bible, also caused the wrath of god; why then do not our present laws institute punishment for those who practice it? in many of the swiss cantons and in germany, sexual connection between men is prosecuted by law. the german legislators have even recently discussed the question whether punishment should be enforced only when the penis of one man is introduced into the anus of the other (pederasty), or whether indecent contact and mutual onanism are sufficient to justify punishment. our penal law is thus concerned with the question whether it should punish or not, according as this or that mucous membrane or part of the skin is used for the satisfaction of a morbid sexual appetite! these are truly singular points for a legislator to decide, compelled, in spite of his incompetence, to play the part of physiologist, anatomist and psychologist! if i am correctly informed, the german legislation is inconsistent in punishing sexual intercourse between two men, but not between two women. these examples suffice to show what blind-alleys a penal law leads to, the basis of which is vicious and which is guided by the traditions of mysticism. quite recently, in the swiss journal of penal law, a jurist seriously upheld the necessity for the conception of a crime against religion! ideas of this kind would lead us to punish suicide, like the english. we will now proceed to analyze the facts from the point of view of their true social value. =limits of penal law in the sexual domain.=--if we would avoid injustice and ridiculous contradictions, we should keep to the principle that penal justice has only the right to intervene in cases where individuals or society are injured, or run the risk of being injured. it is also necessary to examine, in each case, whether the person who has committed the offense was not irresponsible and affected with mental disease at the time; or whether his responsibility was not diminished, _i.e._, whether he was not seriously abnormal without being quite insane. the conception of responsibility, necessarily relative, should be understood in the sense of relative liberty, which we have defined above. according to the result of the inquiry (culpability being proved) the judge will have to decide how society can be best protected against the repetition of such acts, and how the culprit may be most easily improved, provided he is capable of improvement. if, for example, the culprit is an inebriate, his detention in a home for inebriates will protect society and benefit the individual much better than all the fines and imprisonments at present in force. if he is an incorrigible recidivist, incapable of resisting his criminal impulses, the law should keep him under observation in a safe place, or deprive him only of certain dangerous liberties. it is not so difficult to decide these questions as the public imagines. the antecedents of the criminal, his previous convictions, and a careful study of his psychology will nearly always lead to a clear diagnosis and prognosis. in this case a mutual understanding between psychiatrists and jurists will produce excellent results. it is needless to say that if it is only a case of transient cerebral obnubilation, such as sunstroke or somnambulism, etc., the culprit should be acquitted. =rape, etc.=--normal coitus may render a penal action legitimate when it is obtained by force or stratagem (rape, abuse of a feeble-minded or hypnotized person, etc.). it is evident that measures of protection against such acts are urgent, and that persons abused in this way should have the right to heavy indemnities. what we require is not so much extenuation of penalty for the culprit as greater protection for his victims. in cases of rape, when the woman becomes pregnant against her will, i am of opinion that artificial abortion should be allowed by law as an exceptional measure. we cannot expect a woman to have a child imposed upon her by a man's violence, especially when she is unmarried, and oblige her to bring it up, from the simple fact that she conceived it. it should be the same in cases of abduction of female minors. when, on the contrary, a male minor seduced by an adult woman, makes her pregnant, it is the woman only who is responsible for the maintenance of her child, and there are no reasons to accord her the right of abortion, for it is she who desired the sexual act. the close bonds which exist between the child and its mother justify such legal dispositions. with regard to civil laws, we have mentioned the case of venereal infection after coitus. in this case civil indemnity would be most equitable. a penal action could only be based on prosecution by the injured party, unless it was a question of directly criminal intent--infection for vengeance, for example. =incest.=--under the heading of _consanguineous marriages_, we have seen to what extent the conception of incest should be limited, in respect to civil law. the grave cases of incest are those between parents and children. their normal causes are mental anomalies, alcoholism, proletarian promiscuity, or isolation of a family in some remote place. incest is common, in switzerland especially, among the inhabitants of isolated mountain chalets. i will give a few typical and genuine examples of incest giving rise to penal actions: ( ). a drunken and brutal husband persecuted his wife with excessive coitus. the latter then gave him her own daughter to satisfy his violence. ( ). an inebriate woman induced her own son, aged seventeen, to have intercourse with her. infuriated at the idea that his mother had made him her lover, he murdered her one day when he was drunk. condemned as a parricide, this young man conducted himself in prison in a model manner. alcohol, combined with his incestuous seduction, had made him the murderer of his mother. ( ). in a family composed exclusively of imbeciles and psychopaths, some of whom were put under my care for treatment, incest was practiced among nearly all of them; between father and daughters; between mother and sons; and between brothers and sisters. the last case, and many others, show that incest is not the cause but the effect of mental disorders. this does not mean that the offspring of such unions are not slightly tainted by the mere fact of such concentrated incest, but these cases are comparatively so rare that they do not contribute to any appreciable extent, as incest, in causing degeneration of the race; the factor which causes degeneration is here mental disease, which arises from other hereditary causes, chiefly of blastophthoric origin. from what we have said it results that a penal action for incest should only take place in the case of minors or insane persons, abuse of strength or power, or rape. the measures of civil law should suffice to reduce other cases of incest to a minimum. the disgust which the generality of men feel for sexual union between brothers and sisters, and especially between parents and children, is the best protection against incest. the elimination of alcoholism, the superintendence of the insane, and the improvement of our social organization are much more likely than penal laws to lead to the gradual disappearance of incest. =assaults on minors.=--all assaults on minors should naturally be prosecuted. but prosecution should take a different form according as the culprit is affected with a pathological perverse disposition, or whether it is simply a question of abuse of confidence committed by a normal man. a master who, having no sexual anomaly, commits assaults on young girls, his pupils, should be deprived of the right of teaching in girls' schools, for it is only there that he is dangerous. if, on the other hand, he is affected with perversion (pederasty, etc.), further measures for protection should be taken against him; according to the circumstances. =sexual perversions.=--when we pass, on to sexual perversions, the inconsequences and mysticism of our present penal law become still more apparent. this code often prosecutes and punishes sexual actions which do no harm to any one, or which two persons practice of their own accord. such cases may be suitable for moral or medical treatment, but should never justify a penal prosecution. this applies to all the manipulations of onanism, pederasty, masochism, fetichism, etc., which take place between adults by mutual agreement. what is the use of prosecuting inverts? it is a fortunate thing for society that these psyhcopaths are contented with their mutual sexual intercourse, the result of which is sterile and therefore does no harm to posterity. the real crime is the marriage of an invert to an individual of the opposite sex, and yet this crime is sanctioned by the law! it is a crime against the normal conjoint and against the children who may result from such an unhappy union. by severely punishing homosexual intercourse, the penal laws of many countries provoke the lowest form of blackmail, as krafft-ebing, moll, hirschfeld and others have proved by numerous examples, and as i have myself confirmed among many of my patients. it is quite another thing with abnormal or perverse forms of the sexual appetite, which can only be satisfied against the will of their object, or by injuring it more or less severely. here it is the duty of the law to organize energetic measures of protection; not with a view to punish the pervert, who is a diseased person, but to protect his victims in time. we will first deal with _sadism_; secondly with the violation of children. here a very delicate question arises. in the case of such terrible sexual appetites we should not wait for victims before taking action. on the other hand, we cannot punish a man, nor even take administrative measures against him, simply from the fact that he possesses a dangerous appetite, especially if he is in other respects well-behaved and conscientious, and strives with all his might against his perversion. i have treated a patient who suffered from a terrible pathological appetite of this kind. he was a highly moral man who never harmed any one, but was in a state of despair over his affliction, which he resisted with all his power, seeking relief in masturbation when his passion became too violent. in such cases, the moral sentiments of an individual offer sufficient social protection, and it is neither the right nor the duty of the physician to denounce him. but he should advise the patient to retire to an asylum to avoid committing a crime, if he feels that he cannot restrain his passions. it is very rare for such cases to come to the knowledge of the public, for these patients prefer to suffer in silence or to commit suicide; but they are none the less instructive and characteristic. at other times dangerous perversions are discovered by chance, the pervert, instead of resisting his passion, seeking opportunities to satisfy it without discovery. in such cases strong measures should be enforced. unfortunately, sadists are very well aware of the dangers they run, and know better than any other criminals how to commit their crimes without being discovered. as soon as the perpetrator of a sadic crime is discovered, or simply an attempt at sadism, he should be arrested and placed where he can do no harm. the question of castration arises here: but we do not know yet how far this protects the sadist and his victim against recurrence. if this operation proves efficacious it should never be neglected. the _exhibitionists_ present great difficulty. they are not dangerous, since they touch nobody. their "victims," if they can be called so, are girls or women before whom they expose their genital organs and masturbate. no doubt modesty may be much offended by such acts, especially in young girls and children; disgust and fear may also harm them; but i think the law is too severe in these cases, for there is no question of an injury which is dangerous in itself. i have known little girls who have been frightened several times by exhibitionists, but i have never known them injured by the disgust which they experienced. the affair is too ridiculous and too ugly. it would be sufficient to send exhibitionists to an asylum for short periods, unless extreme weakness on their part necessitated prolonged detention. simple _necrophilia_ should be treated in the same way by penal law. but this perversion is more dangerous on account of its relationship with sadism. there are some sadists who are only necrophiliacs for fear of becoming assassins. such individuals are very dangerous and should be kept in confinement. the _fetichists_ are, on the contrary, generally very innocent. at the most they might be prosecuted for theft when they take away their fetiches. one of their worst misdemeanors is that of cutting off the hair of young girls. =concubinage. prostitution. proxenetism. white slavery.=--we have already seen that concubinage should never be punishable in itself, although it is so in some countries. we shall not again return to the question whether prostitution should be the object of judicial and penal actions. proxenetism and white slavery, on the contrary, cause grave injury to the rights of many individuals and should be made criminal offenses; for they are crimes against society and the individual, and committed for lucre. it cannot be legal to do commerce with the body of one's neighbor: this is a crime which is closely related to slavery and similar abuses. (vide chapter x.) the law should punish all public solicitation, obscenity or sexual brutality, but the punishment should take a milder form. the sexual act and everything connected with it should be absolutely free, but a man has no right to provoke or annoy his neighbor by indecent sexual invitations if the latter does not wish to respond to them. it is, however, extremely difficult to fix the limits of what is licit, for prudery may also go too far and regard the most innocent allusions as provocations. it is absolutely necessary to leave a margin for normal sexual invitations. all that is required is that they should not overstep the limits of recognized propriety, so long as there is not mutual agreement between the two parties. (vide _flirtation_, chapter iv.) =lewdness. pornography.=--the question naturally presents itself of knowing how far it is permitted to proceed publicly with a mutual agreement without causing offense or injury to other parties. on the whole, our customs are free enough in this respect, and a greater liberty in public flirtation would be inconvenient. for instance, lewd exhibitions, coitus, etc., could not be allowed in public places. children especially should be protected against such excitations of the sexual appetite, and it is necessary to fix a legal distinction between what is offensive and what is not offensive to public propriety or modesty. simple police regulations are sufficient for this purpose, but they are very necessary to protect women and children, and occasionally young men, against importunities or sexual obsessions, against sexual solicitation, or even against assault or other offenses, such as incitement to masturbation, obscene words and gestures, etc. it is, no doubt, very difficult to define the limits. our modern customs have left a large margin for pornography, which they treat like a spoiled child. the most dangerous form, however, is not that which flaunts itself in shop windows, by advertisements and placards, in public kiosks and dancing rooms; but the refined and æsthetic pornography which appears in the form of elegant engravings, erotic novels and dramas, under the cloak of art and even under that of morality. unfortunately, the public is a very bad judge of these things. certain books have openly and fearlessly described the sexual vices of our time--for example, zola's novels and the dramas of brieux--and these have been stigmatized as pornographic. as a matter of fact their authors in no way merit such a reproach. such works in no way encourage immorality; on the contrary, they inspire disgust and a healthy and holy terror at the perversity of our sexual customs. no doubt such works may have an erotic action on ignorant and low-minded persons. the tyrolean peasants, in their moral indignation, have been known to destroy the marble statues of women erected in public places. such acts serve no purpose, for prudery will never rid the world of eroticism; it will only increase it by leading to hypocrisy. we have something better to do than persecute and insult true art and men of talent or genius who expose our social perversions. pornography is quite another thing. it is not contented with representing the æsthetic, licit, and normal side of natural eroticism. it does not depict sexual vice so as to emphasize its ugliness and its tragic consequences, but to glorify it. whether it is represented as brazen nudity unadorned, or enveloped in a transparent veil which reveals everything it pretends to hide; whether it reels in bacchanalian orgies; whether it appears in brilliant fancy dress illuminated by electric lights, or in the discreet light of a fashionable boudoir; whether it is clearly revealed or equivocal, perverted in one way or depraved in another; in all its forms its aim is to tickle, to excite, to seduce, to allure, by arousing lewdness and inflaming its lowest passions. the pornographic dishes are often served up with a sentimental and moral sauce which naturally does not tend to hide the flavor of the meat--for then all its charm would be gone--on the contrary it increases its spicy quality by means of contrast, at the same time making the product more marketable; this hypocritical disguise giving it a certain varnish of propriety. the trick of clothing pornographic articles with the mantle of virtue may deceive the artless, and give the less artless excuse for buying them without putting themselves to any inconvenience. in such cases it is extremely difficult to act without injustice and without doing injury to art and science by vexatious measures. this requires much tact and rare perspicacity. =other sexual misdemeanors.=--many sexual assaults are committed on the insane and feeble-minded, in the hope that they will not defend themselves and denounce the criminal. we have mentioned the case of inverts who become attendants in lunatic asylums in order to satisfy their appetites. such crimes should be classed with those committed against minors. in the first place it is necessary to take into account the special dangers they present, and in the second place, the personality of the criminal, his capacity for repentance, improvement, and self-control. =artificial abortion.=--it is a difficult question to decide whether a woman should have the right to dispose of the embryo she carries in her womb, and the duties of society with regard to this question. it is certainly the duty of society to protect the child as soon as it is born. in this case the laws cannot be too severe in protecting the child from unnatural parents, or from the "baby farmers," whose business is to get rid of the infants by starving them or exposing them to disease. it is the same with analogous abuses which we have mentioned with regard to civil law. these crimes or misdemeanors very often result as much from the economic organization of our society, as from want of protection for infancy and girl-mothers, as well as from the shame with which the latter are branded by our hypocritical customs. the question becomes more difficult with regard to the embryo _before birth_. should the law punish artificial abortion? opinions on this question vary. i have already said that in cases of rape, and forced pregnancy in general, the right to artificial abortion should be conceded to the woman. on the other hand, i think it should be prohibited on principle when the fecundating coitus has been voluntary on both sides, and when there is no medical reason for such a measure. in principle, the human embryo, when once conceived, should have the right to live. birth is only an episode in its life. this generally takes place at the end of the ninth lunar month of pregnancy, but a child born at the seventh month is often viable. it is, therefore, arbitrary not to recognize the right of the embryo to live. on the contrary, the right that a woman has to dispose of her body would seem to outweigh this, when conception has been imposed on her by stratagem or violence. in fact, the right of the embryo to life should depend on the wish of the bearers of each of the two germs by which it is formed, at the moment of conception. on the other hand, numerous exceptions to the above rule should be allowed, and doctors should not be too severe, for it would be for them to decide in most cases whether artificial abortion was licit or not. some pregnancies are a veritable misfortune for the parents and offspring, when the bodily and mental health of the mother or child, or both of them, is in danger. when a lunatic or an idiot, married or not, makes a woman pregnant, artificial abortion should be allowed; also in all cases when an insane or epileptic woman becomes pregnant. an analogous case is that where a drunkard renders his wife pregnant against her will, especially when he is intoxicated at the moment; for the offspring runs a great risk of blastophthoria. it is needless to say that abortion should be permitted whenever pregnancy seriously endangers the life or health of the mother, or when a grave disease in the mother condemns the child to become an invalid. on the other hand, such indications should not be acted on too lightly; a rational limit is here a matter of practice and common sense, combined with medical science. =the right to live of monsters, idiots, or the deformed.=--the preceding remarks naturally lead us to the question whether children who are born invalids, deformed, or idiots, etc., should be necessarily condemned to live by the law, and whether special dispositions should not be made for such cases. the obligation to preserve, often by means of all the resources of medical science, miserable creatures, born as cretins or idiots; children with hydrocephalus or microcephalus, without eyes or ears, or with atrophied genital organs, etc., is an atrocity sanctioned by the law. would it not be better to allow these miserable beings to be suppressed by means of a painless narcosis, with the consent of the parents and after an expert medical opinion, instead of condemning them by law to a life of misery? science has proved that every congenital malformation of the brain is as incurable as that of any other organ. here again our legislation is fettered by ignorance and religious dogma. on one hand, immense armies are organized to kill the most healthy men by thousands and tens of thousands, and many more thousands are abandoned to famine, prostitution, alcoholism and exploitation; on the other hand, medicine is expected to employ its whole art and efforts in prolonging life as long as possible and thus martyrizing miserable human wretches, degenerate in body and mind or both, often when they cry out for death! large asylums are built for idiots, and there is much joy when after many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in teaching these beings, whose mentality is far inferior to that of a monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with their eyes turned toward heaven! it is difficult to compare these two facts without feeling the bitter irony of what are euphemistically called our hereditary customs. in truth, the nurses and teachers who devote themselves to the education of cretins and idiots would do better to occupy themselves in some manual work; or even leave the idiots to die, and themselves procreate healthy and capable children in their place! but this question does not properly belong to our subject. =the rights of the embryo.=--a distinction is generally made between artificial abortion practiced in the first months of pregnancy and that induced in the later months. when the child is born viable, the term premature labor is used. when this is induced with the object of getting rid of the child the penalty is much more severe than for abortion, for it is regarded almost as infanticide. for this reason, and owing to the difficulty of the whole question, a mother should never be given the right to destroy the embryo or child in her womb, excepting in cases where pregnancy has been forced upon her. each case should be submitted to a medical examination, and a doctor's certificate should be required. this is all the more indicated since our present knowledge makes it easy to prevent pregnancy by anticonceptional measures. society is, therefore, entitled to demand that a mother who has voluntarily conceived a child has no right to interrupt its development, _i.e._, to kill it. if, as we hope, we shall eventually obtain more extended rights for women and greater sexual liberty in general, even in marriage, the reasons justifying artificial abortion, apart from medical or hygienic measures, will become more and more rare. the stigma of shame which is branded on illegitimate maternity unfortunately justifies many cases of abortion and even infanticide. things ought to change in this respect, and in the future no pregnancy ought to be a source of shame for any healthy woman whatever, nor furnish the least motive for dissimulation. if the objection is raised that i am inconsistent; that every man, and consequently every woman, should have the power to dispose of their own body on every occasion, and that penal law should therefore take no cognizance of artificial abortion, i reply that this does not apply to the case in point; for it is here a question, not of one body, but of two or more (in the case of twins). from the moment of conception the embryo acquires a social right which merits all the more protection, the more its possessor is incapable of looking after it. =adultery.=--adultery, which even at the present day is often considered as a crime or misdemeanor, should be simply regarded as a reason for divorce. we have already treated the question with regard to civil law, and have shown the futility of trying to obtain fidelity by law. in my opinion, the misdemeanor of adultery should be entirely abolished from penal law. when it is complicated by fraud or other crimes, it is the latter only which are concerned. =human selection.=--the indirect danger to which children of bad heredity are exposed constitutes a grave social evil. at present, penal law is absolutely impotent in this matter. we have seen what civil law might perhaps effect, and what is already done in some countries. in another chapter we shall discuss much more appropriate measures for improvement in this domain. we have already mentioned castration and certain cases in which it might be practiced. these cases will always be very limited, and it is on the basis of social morality and hygiene of the race that the question of conception should be regulated in a rational and voluntary manner. we shall obtain much more in this way than by legal measures, which are always lame because they interfere with individual liberty. we must never forget that the law is only a necessary evil, and often a superfluous one. in conclusion, i may remark that penal law should be combined, like civil law, with administrative measures, to protect both the individual and society in sexual matters, at the same time watching over the interests of future generations. but it should only do this as far as the weakness and eroticism of men hinder a similar or better result from being obtained by moral education, combined with rational intellectual instruction. footnotes: [ ] vide delbrÜck, _gerichtliche psychopathologie_ (job. ambr. barth, leipzig, ).--delbrÜck, _die pathologische lüge und der pyschisch abnorme schwindler_ (ferdinand enke, stuttgart, ).--forel, _crime et anomalies mentales constitutionnelles_ (genÈve, , h. kündig,).--kÖlle, _gerichtlich psychiatrische gutachten_ (from the clinic of professor forel at zurich), stuttgart, , ferdinande enke.--von liszt, schutz der gesellschaft gegen gemeingefährliche (_monatsschrift für kriminalpsychologie und strafrechtsreform_).--forel, die verminderte zurechnungsfähigkeit (_die zukunft_, , no ), etc. [ ] "die zwiechungsfähigkeit des normalen menschen," munich. appendix to chapter xiii a medico-legal case the following case occurred in in the canton of st. gall, in switzerland, and confirms my opinion: frieda keller, born in , was the daughter of honest parents. her mother was mild-mannered and sensible, her father loyal, but harsh and sometimes violent. frieda was the fifth of eleven brothers and sisters. she was a model scholar. at the age of four years she had meningitis which left her with frequent headaches. in - she learnt dressmaking and helped at home in the household work. when she was free, she did embroidery to help her family. afterwards she obtained a situation in a dressmaker's shop at st. gall, where she got sixty francs a month. to increase her income she worked on sundays as a waitress at the café de la poste. the proprietor, a married man, began to persecute her with his affections, which she had great difficulty in avoiding. she then entered another shop where she got eighty francs a month. one day, in , when she was then nineteen, the proprietor of the café succeeded in seducing her, and on may , , she gave birth to a boy at the maternity of st. gall. she had confessed her misfortune to her parents, and her mother had pity on her. her mother had also been seduced and rendered pregnant at the age of fifteen; abandoned by her seducer she committed infanticide, and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment; as she had always been well-behaved, the tribunal had recognized that she acted "less by moral depravity than by false sentiment of honor." frieda, who was fond of her mother, knew nothing of this history. the father was very hard toward his daughter and refused her all help and pity. twelve days after her confinement she took her child to the foundling hospital at st. gall. her seducer then promised to maintain the child, but never paid more than eighty francs. after a time he left the town and was seen no more. the circumstances under which frieda became pregnant were not fully inquired into and her seducer was ignored. it was not absolutely a case of rape, but of taking a poor, weak and timid girl by surprise. frieda keller felt nothing but disgust for her seducer. later on the latter would no doubt deny the fact of his paternity; but he had tacitly admitted this by the payment of eighty francs. frieda had to pay five francs a week to the foundling hospital and also thirty-four francs to her married sister. in her father died, and in her mother. frieda inherited , francs from her father, but this sum was tied up in her brother's business and he never sent her the interest. it is characteristic of her mentality that she never attempted to exact it. then began for this unfortunate young girl a life of struggle and despair. she was possessed of two ideas. on the one hand she could no longer maintain her child, and on the other hand would not admit anything from shame. they would not keep the child in the hospital after easter, , when it would reach the maximum age of five years. what was she to do? frieda keller was then evidently in a pathological state of mind, which was upheld by her defender, doctor janggen. she wished to keep her secret and provide for the maintenance of the child; but she took no steps in this direction. she did not seek for cheap lodgings, not for a rise of salary, nor even for the money illegally detained by her brother for his own profit. she never spoke to her married sister, nor to any one, of her desperate position. the father of her child had disappeared and she never gave information against him for fear of divulging her secret. moreover, the law at st. gall only admitted the charge of paternity against unmarried men! she found no practical way of disposing of her child. after easter, , when the child was discharged from the hospital, she was haunted by a single idea--to get rid of the child. she struggled for a long time against this obsession, but in vain, and it finally became a resolution. although she was fond of her sister's children, she did not love her own. she rarely visited her child and appeared to take no notice of it. this woman who was well-disposed toward every other creature, who was of exemplary conduct and would not hurt a fly, never even spoke of her own child. on april th she wrote to the hospital that she would come and fetch the child. a few days before this she took a long walk in the woods; the next day she wept at home, while looking for some string. alone with her despair, she had definitely made her terrible resolution. she said afterwards, at the assizes: "i could not free myself from the feeling that i must get rid of the child." she then went to the hospital, after having bought new clothes for the child, and told the authorities that an aunt of hers at munich would take care of the child. she then took the child to the woods. having found a lonely spot she sat down for a long time while the child played in the wood. for some time she had not the courage to do the deed, but at last an irresistible force, as she said, urged her to do it. with her hands and shoes she dug a grave, then strangled the child with string, with such force that it was difficult to untie the knot on the dead body afterwards. she knelt for some time by the child till it ceased to give any signs of life, then buried it, and returned home restraining her tears with difficulty. on the st of june she wrote to the hospital that the child had arrived at munich. on the th of june the body was exposed by rain and was discovered by some italians. on the th of june she was arrested. during the trial she declared that her action had been the result of her inability to maintain the child, and the necessity of keeping her secret. this secret was the shame and dishonor of involuntary maternity and illegitimate birth. all the witnesses spoke in favor of frieda keller and gave evidence that she was well-mannered, intelligent, hard-working, economical, of exemplary conduct and loving her sister's children. she did not deny the premeditation of her crime, and in no way sought to diminish her responsibility. according to the law of st. gall, such cases are punishable with death; but frieda keller's sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. such are the facts of this case taken from the official report, and from an extract published by m. de morsier in the _signal de genève_. we are compelled to exclaim with m. de morsier that a legislation which, in such a case, condemns to death one who can justly be called a victim, while leaving unpunished the real culprit, is calculated to destroy all belief in justice in a democracy which calls itself christian. it is a justice of barbarians, a disgrace to the twentieth century. the tribunal and the juries have enforced to the letter an article in the code, and this is called justice! we may well say: _fiat justitia, pereat mundus._ frieda keller was no doubt in an abnormal condition of mind; she probably suffered from the influence of auto-suggestion which became an obsession. such cases are not uncommon. this is clearly shown by the absurdity of her manner of acting, which was both useless and pernicious, while she might easily have got out of her difficulty in other ways. if our judges and juries had a little more knowledge of human psychology and a little less of the code in their heads, they would have had some doubts on the mental integrity of the accused, and would have ordered an expert examination by a mental specialist. but, apart from this point, i put the question--can we expect from a woman, maternal sentiments for a child resulting from sexual surprise bordering on rape? in the preceding chapter i have demanded the right of artificial abortion to women rendered pregnant by rape or against their will, and i think the case of frieda keller supports my contention. i do not intend to justify the assassination of a child already five years of age; but i wish to point out that the absence of maternal love is quite natural in such a case. it is precisely the instinctive aversion of frieda keller for her child, otherwise inexplicable, which shows most clearly that it was a case of imposed maternity, or sexual satisfaction on the part of the father alone. the tragic case of this unfortunate woman well illustrates the brutality and hypocrisy of our customs regarding the sexual question, and shows what terror, shame, torment and despair may be caused by the point of view of the so-called rules of morality. in the presence of these facts i do not think i can be accused of exaggeration: it is only parchment-hearted jurists and government officials who can remain indifferent in such cases. penal servitude for life for the poor victim of such cruelty is a kind of "mercy" which rather resembles bitter irony. the law of st. gall can do only one thing to repair the evil; that is to change its laws and liberate the victim as soon as possible. in ordinary infanticide the true assassin is not usually the mother who kills her child, but rather the father who abandons the woman he has made pregnant, and disowns the result of his temporary passion. in the case of frieda keller, maternal heredity, the results of meningitis, stupidity, irreflection, want, shame, fear, a pathological obsession, and finally the unworthy conduct of the father, all combined in making this unfortunate girl a victim rather than a criminal. her child was not only a source of great anxiety but also an object of instinctive repulsion. how is it that such a brave and industrious woman can feel repulsion toward her own child? if the judges had asked themselves this question and had replied to it without prejudice, forgetting for the moment their code and prejudices, they would not have had the courage to condemn the woman to death, nor even to condemn her at all; for their conscience would have clearly shown them the true culprits--masculine brutality, our hypocritical sexual customs, and the unjust laws inspiring terror in a feeble brain. when every pregnancy and every birth are looked upon by human society with honor and respect, when every mother is protected by law and assisted in the education of her children, then only will society have the right to judge severely of infanticide. chapter xiv medicine and sexual life =general remarks.=--theology teaches belief in god and a future life; law represents the application of codified laws and customs, old and new; medicine is said to be an art--the art of curing sick people. at the origin of each of these three branches of human activity we find an acquired idea. man has been led to the religious idea and to the worship of one or more gods by his terror of certain unknown and occult powers superior to his own, and by the idea that his faculty of knowledge, his power, and the duration of his life were limited. the origin of law is in moral conscience, a phylogenetic derivative of the sentiments of sympathy, _i.e._, sentiments of duty and justice, combined with the idea of the necessity for men to live in societies. as regards medicine, this owes its existence to the fear of disease, pain and death, which is modified by the acquired experience that certain substances may sometimes ease suffering. theology, if separated from morality whose domain it has usurped, lives on mysticism, and endeavors to give it a natural and human appearance by adorning it with sonorous phraseology. law, losing sight of its origin and object of existence, only concerns itself with comments on the text of laws, and in discussing the application of the articles of the code. medicine has concerned itself too much with the life of the patient, instead of the improvement of human life in general. in order to cure a physical malady, to reëstablish abnormal or damaged functions as far as this is possible, the physician must be acquainted with the vital manifestations of the body in its normal state. for this reason the art of medicine depends on the accessory sciences, chiefly anatomy and physiology. these accessory sciences have considerably developed in the evolution of medicine, and the art of medicine has become the chief motive power which urges men to research and discovery in the biological sciences, such as histology, embryology, comparative anatomy and physiology, anatomy and physiology of the brain, bacteriology, etc. pure science now occupies such a position in medical studies that the "healing art" often remains in the background; although it must later on take the chief part, and is regarded by the public as of the greatest importance. the value of the art of medicine is subject to great variations. it is only of real value when, free from all charlatanism, it rests on a sufficiently scientific basis; for the art of an ignoramus falls into error and employs inappropriate methods; on the other hand, the art of a charlatan has for its object the purse of the patient. it is common to meet with physicians who have a good practical experience of art without possessing scientific knowledge, others who have both practical experience and science but are charlatans, others again who are very scientific but incapable in practice. the ideal is a combination of art, science and disinterested honesty; but it is not very uncommon to meet with a combination of ignorance, incapacity and charlatanism. lastly, too many doctors, otherwise capable and intelligent, are too much influenced by authority, text-books and prejudices, instead of observing and judging each case for themselves in the true scientific spirit. many dogmas of medical education rest on hypotheses, theories or statements which have no solid foundation, and do not represent the fruits of a true personal experience of human life. many doctors only see through other people's glasses, without reflecting for themselves; the worst of these are those with "systems," homoeopaths, the disciples of natural medicine, etc. it is especially in the sexual question that these human weaknesses of medical practitioners often lead to the most pitiable results. we must first of all take to heart the fundamental principle of hygiene, which is at the same time that of all honest and sound medicine--_prevention is better than cure._ the modern opinions of medical men on the sexual question are still unfortunately greatly obscured by prejudice, authority, and the indirect influence of the doctrines of religious morality. the same applies to the question of alcohol. however, it is to medicine and its accessory sciences that we owe the knowledge which now renders it possible to judge of the sexual relations of man from the true and healthy point of view of social and moral science. we cannot describe here all the relations of medicine to sexual life. chapters i, ii, iii, iv and viii are entirely based on its results and on those of natural science. what we have still to consider relates especially to sexual hygiene, for we have already treated of pathology in chapter viii. i shall reserve the general and social part of hygiene for the last chapter of the book, and shall confine myself here to certain special points, and the criticism of current, but erroneous, medical opinions on the sexual question. =prostitution. sexual hygiene. sexual connection apart from marriage.=--all regulation and medical supervision of prostitution should be rejected, not only from the moral point of view, but also from that of hygiene, as a deplorable error, incapable even of fulfilling its avowed object--protection against venereal disease. faith in the dogmas and authority of an existing institution has led medical men to take a false view of the question. they demand from the adversaries of regulation proof of a diminution in venereal disease when regulation was not in force. this is both unjust and absurd. it is for the supporters of regulation to prove that state regulation of prostitution has led to any appreciable improvement of the social evil. then only can it be asked if the maintenance of such vexatious measures is still justifiable. but medicine has not furnished the proof demanded from it; on the contrary, its attempts in this direction have entirely failed. after all, the system is kept up, not because it diminishes venereal infection, but because it gives satisfaction to the sexual appetite of men and their desire for change. society, however, has no right to organize such a monstrosity as regulated prostitution and licensed proxenetism, for the special pleasure of debauchees. in virtue of the false dogma of regulation, many doctors, even at the present day, recommend young men to visit brothels, for alleged hygienic reasons. this deplorable custom perverts youth and gives it false ideas. it is a remedy much worse and much more dangerous than the evil it is supposed to cure, worse than masturbation, much worse than nocturnal emissions. sexual anomalies and perversions are not cured in brothels; on the contrary they develop there. moreover, it is absurd to exaggerate the effects of onanism and sexual excesses in themselves, and thus increase the anxiety of a number of unfortunates. in chapter iv, we have already spoken of great variations which the sexual appetite presents without ceasing to be normal, and we have mentioned the rule given by luther. in my opinion the advice given by the doctor should be as follows: as long as he does not wish to marry, a young man should remove as far as possible all sexual ideas from his thoughts. he should be contented with nocturnal emissions, which are produced spontaneously, and should avoid all the manipulations of onanism. a young girl should do the same all the more easily, because her sexual appetite is normally weaker, and is not accompanied by glandular secretions which more or less demand ejaculation. persons unable to resist their sexual appetite should be extremely prudent in their extra-nuptial intercourse. moreover, there is no need for this to assume the character of prostitution. =medical advice.=--it is the doctor's duty to give friendly advice to every one who consults him on sexual questions, without posing as a judge or a moralist. he should never frighten or reprimand the poor hypochondriac who blames himself for masturbation, nor sexual perverts of any kind, unless, of course, they are absolutely dangerous, such as sadists. he should, on the contrary, calm their fears and give them encouragement; and in this way he may do much good. hypnotic suggestion gives him a means of directly combating many cases of sexual excitation, or at least of attenuating them, by directing the cerebral activity of the patient to other subjects. each case should be judged by itself and attention should be paid to the different points we have studied in this book. even between husband and wife, and especially as a consequence of monogamy, certain unfortunate or delicate circumstances may raise difficulties; for example, the periods during which conception should be avoided, a certain time after accouchement and during certain morbid conditions. in this case unskillful medical advice may have unfortunate results. when a doctor forbids a husband to have sexual intercourse with his wife he exposes him to two dangers. if the husband remains continent and sleeps in a separate room for too long a time, conjugal love may become so cooled that a permanent barrier is established between man and wife; if, on the other hand, he abandons himself to prostitution, he may contract venereal disease and infect his wife. again, the husband may become enamored of another woman and wreck the happiness of his family. the doctor who prohibits conjugal coitus thus takes a great responsibility. for this and other reasons we have now an important question to consider. opinions differ considerably as to the effects of sexual continence. all extreme assertions are erroneous. it is quite certain that the harmful effects of continence have been greatly exaggerated. normal persons of both sexes may remain continent, although not without some trouble and discomfort. in a general way, we may accept the statement that many morbid conditions are known to result from sexual excess, but few from continence. this, however, goes a little too far, for certain psychopaths and sexual hyperæsthetics often lapse into a state of mental and nervous excitement from forced continence, so that their neurosis becomes accentuated and may even end in insanity. i have seen this occur both in men and women, but such cases are very rare. continence is not an easy matter for erotic individuals, and requires a heroic internal struggle, especially in men. the canadian reformer, chiniqui, whom we have previously quoted, relates the history of a monk who tore off his testicles in despair at being unable to conquer his violent sexual appetite. the fine preachers of morality, endowed with a cold temperament, or simply senile, who hold forth on the "immorality" of the consequences of the sexual appetite, would do well to take such facts to heart. we must not forget that among our brutal, yet human ancestors the struggle for life demanded the cruel and wanton exposure or slaughter of all weak and decrepit individuals, and that epidemic diseases, plagues, and pests ravaged the peoples without mercy. of course our present civilization has put up a barrier against all this. yet, for that very reason the blind and thoughtless propagation of degenerate, tainted, and enfeebled individuals is another atrocious danger to society. but then the sexual appetite cannot be legislated out of existence or killed by repressive measures. quite recently it has been scientifically demonstrated that absolute sterilization can be produced by the application of the roentgen ray, but at what period of treatment this result may be obtained still remains an unsettled question, thus leaving the possibility of incurring the risk of effecting only a doubtful degeneration of the germs. we can but consider all legislation and all police measures which are intended to regulate the sexual intercourse in the human family, as absolute failures, as inhuman, in fact as down-right detrimental to the race. exacting laws have never improved the morals of any race or nation; hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. it would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. wisdom of this kind does not corrupt. it is rather the unrestricted power of capital and wealth that brings the rot into the community. healthy people should be made to know that a large number of sound, industrious children is a blessing, in fact, riches to the family, but on the one condition only, viz.: that they are not relegated to detestable slavery through the overbearing suppression of capital. when the dignity of labor shall once have been raised on the pedestal of worship now occupied by mammon, there will no longer be need for complaint about small families and decreasing birth-rates, such as we hear so much at the present day in france and in the united states. a few examples might throw some light on this subject. ( ) dr. pelman of bonn, assisted by the local authorities, made an inquiry into the progeny of a certain ada jurke (born in , died in the beginning of the nineteenth century), who was hereditarily tainted, a drunkard and a degenerate. her descendants down to the present time number persons. the lives of of these individuals have been officially recorded as follows: were illegitimate children; were mendicants and tramps; were unable to perform any kind of work towards their own support and became a charge to the community; of the women were prostitutes; persons were convicted of murder and of other crimes. all this within a period of years at a cost to the state, according to the public records, of five millions of marks (about $ , , ) in the shape of monetary support, jail and law expenses, claims for damages, etc., etc. ( ) dr. jörger, director of the insane asylum at waldhaus, by chur, in switzerland, followed up in a similar fashion the history of a family of vagrants. the full report may be found under the title of "the zero family," in the _archiv für gesellschaft's-u. rassenbiologie_, , heft , page et seq. it is sad to read of the untold misery, profligacy, and distress spread broadcast by this family, not to speak of the many crimes committed by its members. it is depressing to witness how sheer ignorance and callousness to the interests of the human race at large allow such people to multiply without let or hindrance. the unfortunate part about it all is that this species of humanity is on the steady increase. they really form the principal hearths whence emanate our criminal classes, that fill our jails, our charity homes, our hospitals, our sanatoria, our insane asylums. they breed and multiply not because it affords them a special pleasure to procreate crime, insanity, and degeneracy, but because no one takes the trouble to instruct them in the perniciousness of bringing into this world offspring that can only find and themselves again disseminate misery, want, and wretchedness; or to teach them how to prevent this calamity. ( ) still another category of dangerous elements is becoming more numerous every day. i refer to the _neurasthenics_. heredity is an important factor here, too, as every neurologist is able to attest from his own daily observations. the worst feature about this peril is the fact that neurotics as a rule suffer from excess of sexual appetite, whilst they are sorely lacking the power of self-control, circumstances which often enough lead to crime, insanity, and suicide. untold thousands of them, unaware of the fearful consequences of hereditary impairment, go on bringing into this world children destined to unhappiness and suffering. it is noteworthy too that these nervous wrecks generally intermarry. does not this account to a large extent for the great number of unhappy marriages recorded nowadays? of course, it is quite evident that under such pitiable conditions, the hereditary taints become increasingly aggravated. if the patients have money, which is very often the case, they prove profitable customers of the "nerve-specialist," and likewise of the endless chain of private sanatoria for nervous diseases. it is a sad spectacle indeed. my own experience has taught me that nine out of ten of these unfortunate beings have families, because they are ignorant of the dangers of heredity, and unfamiliar with the safe and proper means for preventing conception. why not teach them? a few cases may suffice. (_a_) an hysterical woman, whose father was a lascivious, egotistical crank, married a man absolutely devoid of will power and energy. she was gifted; the marriage a failure. of the two children, one was an indolent, thoroughly useless, good-for-nothing boy, whose only thought was of wasting money on pretty neckties and the like and of flirting with the girls, of which art he was a past-master. the other one, a girl, betrayed the same characteristics and disposition. the mother was in despair and inconsolable, cursing her offspring and the marriage alike. too late, alas! (_b_) the son of a neurasthenic father and an hysterical mother, although of a good-natured disposition, had the vilest, uncontrolable temper, which would suddenly carry him away to acts of violence only to be bitterly regretted immediately afterwards. whilst drunk he became excited and drawing a revolver wounded several innocent bystanders. as an officer in the army he was insulted by a tipsy student, whom he shot down on the spot, although he was sober himself at the time. on another occasion he shot himself in the breast, but recovered. presently he fell in love most desperately with an hysterical woman and married her. the mother-in-law, who was an eccentric, mischievous person, started a bitter feud between the two families. he became greatly wrought up over the affair and demanded of his wife to stop the quarrel at once. as she demurred, he ended her life with a bullet from a pistol. of course, he was arrested and languished in jail in utter agony and despair. what a future for those two unfortunate children that sprang from this union! i may point out here that at the time when he killed his wife, whom he loved passionately, he was not under the influence of strong drink, for he had given up the use of alcohol altogether for quite a number of years. (_c_) a very religious lady had married a man who became insane. he, too, was a devout churchman. there were children. under treatment the father improved and was dismissed from the asylum. i urged them both to prevent further conception, having in view the dangers of hereditary taint in the possible offspring. the wife indignantly told me that her church demanded of her to bear as many children as she could. they had several more, all of them candidates for the insane asylum or the institute for nervous patients. and that is called religion and morality! (_d_) a heavily tainted couple, desperately enamored of each other, came to me in great distress to ask: "may we get married?" i answered: "it does not strike me as being the wisest thing for you to do. but if you cannot exist without each other, by all means get married; but think what a calamity it would be, if two beings tainted as you both are, were to beget offspring." "but we are so fond of children." "well, that is easily mended. there are plenty of healthy orphans whose parents were strong and sound both in body and in mind, but who are strangers to a father's and mother's love, and are craving for a good education. make your own choice, but take only the very best. then you will have a family and enjoy all the pleasures of parenthood. as for the rest, heed my advice. avoid pregnancy." the law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. and we should sit still and witness our civilization go into decay and fall to pieces without raising the cry of warning and applying the remedy? however, this is by no means all. tuberculosis is the white plague of to-day. it is considered an established fact that every living human being inhales and swallows tubercle bacilli by the millions every day, and it is even claimed that every one of us harbors somewhere in the economy this dreadful poison to a larger or smaller degree. whilst the pure, immune blood in a sound, robust constitution is able to resist the inroads of, and even to kill, sterilize, and eliminate these bacilli, the weaker and hereditarily tainted individual falls a prey to the attacks of this dire disease by the thousands. true, serum therapy and open-air treatment are accomplishing many cures, but the hereditary disposition remains in the system all the same, and may be transmitted to the coming generation, or at any rate may impair the power of resistance in the offspring. moreover, the sexual appetite is very pronounced in phthisical patients. they marry and beget children in the most wanton fashion. the law cannot and does not prevent them, and the carnal instinct is not to be killed. what is to be done when law and religion forbid the application of preventive measures and even prosecute the person that recommends them? local disease and pathological conditions in the woman (at times in man also), within wedlock, may render parturition an immediate danger to the life of the mother or of the child or of both together, for instance, cancer of the womb or other affections of the uterus, kidney disease, a deformed pelvis. surely in such cases it is the bounden duty of the physician to intervene and council against, nay, absolutely forbid impregnation. well, how is it to be done? must husband and wife, who love and esteem each other, be separated? it would be unnatural, in fact it is quite impossible. or should they abandon sexual intercourse all together and live like brother and sister? well, a few exceptionally cold natures may have will power enough to carry into effect such a pact. but in out of cases the interdict of the sexual act sends the husband to satisfy his cravings elsewhere and contract disease, or he falls in love with another woman and wrecks home and family. similar conditions may be brought about by other causes as well. take, for instance, the poor workingman or mechanic who has already six or seven children and whose wife is unusually fertile, giving birth to children year after year. the wages of the father do not suffice to properly support them all. the food that can be purchased with the slender means is not at all adequate. rent and other bills fall behind and the man gets in debt. they are both young yet. what is to be done? if they follow the natural law there will be an increase in the family every year. moreover, these ever-recurring labors weaken the constitution of the woman and sap away her strength. starvation? sexual continence in wedlock? it is strange, indeed, to hear rich men, well-fed clergymen, pious zealots and reformers, leaning back in their comfortable chairs after a sumptuous meal and smoking an expensive havana cigar, discuss this burning question and bewail the immorality of the common people. statistics prove that these very people, who extol to the poor all the blessing of a big family, never live up to their teachings either in theory or in practice. the majority of these apostles of morality have no children at all, or at the utmost two or three. why should that be so? what interesting reading it would make if the sexual history of these persons were followed up and printed. money, hygiene, reason, and the most elementary laws of humanity demand that the wife, who is fertile above the average, should have a rest of at least months between each succeeding pregnancy. but this cannot be achieved in the natural course of events, except in very rare cases, without wrecking the marriage. if we crystallize this sexual, social question, we arrive at the following conclusions: there are a great many cases, especially of a pathological character, but none the less also in normal and sound individuals, in which procreation, within wedlock or without, is dangerous either definitely or temporarily, either for the mother or the child, or for both, and for that reason should be interdicted. very few men and a very small proportion of women--no matter how firmly they may be resolved--are capable of effectually suppressing their sexual needs. and even if they succeed, the consequences are generally of a disastrous nature, loss of marital love, secret illicit relations with others and subsequent infidelity, nervous disorders, impotence, etc. in all these cases we are confronted with the following dilemma: ( ) in the unmarried person: onanism or prostitution, or both. is that morality? such people must either forever forego love, marriage, and normal, lawful sexual intercourse, or face sterility in wedded life. (i do not recognize prostitution--see chapter x--as normal intercourse.) ( ) within marriage: onanism, prostitution, and infidelity, or the adoption of rational preventive measures. i leave it to the reader and to the lawmakers to pick out the correct alternative and to arrive at the one possible, decent, and ethical solution of these conflicting questions. i do not admit that constitutionally frigid natures or those who find it easy to control their sexual appetite, have any right whatsoever to pose as normal samples of the human race and to simply ignore the existence of temperaments, characters, and constitutions so widely differing from their own. this world's history teaches us that nothing good has ever come from such vain assumptions, unless it be empty phrases and dead letters. these righteous, frigid, and strong natures ought, indeed, to be grateful to their ancestors for having handed down to them that happy disposition, and to prove their gratitude by making particular efforts to help those that are yet to come, in obtaining and sharing the same benign blessing. it seems almost incredible that in some countries medical men who are not ashamed to throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when mention is made of anticonceptional methods. this false modesty, created by custom and prejudice, waxes indignant at innocent things, whilst it encourages the greatest infamies. =hygiene of marriage.=--when marriage is consummated on the basis of free reciprocal consent, when both parties know exactly to what they have pledged themselves, when the corrupting influence of money is eliminated, when all unnatural regulation is suppressed, when the superfluous blending of religion and legislation have been abolished from the bonds of matrimony, when woman has finally obtained equal rights with man--then love and mutual respect, combined with the sexual appetite, will constitute the intimate and personal ties of marriage. at the same time, instinctive sentiments and legal duties toward the offspring will furnish it with a complementary and lasting cement. among men whose nature is true, the instructive sentiment of altruism or conscience urges them to the performance of social duties without the necessity of any legal obligation. a few medical points now require our attention. the husband should be older than the wife, on the average from six to twelve years. this point is very important if a monogamous union is to be lasting. woman matures earlier than man, both mentally and sexually; her personality becomes more rapidly adult than his; she ages more quickly and loses her faculty of procreation sooner than man. certain savage races solve the problem by marrying as boys and girls, casting off their wives when they grow old, to marry younger ones. among civilized races, man manages his affairs by making use of prostitution. from his youth he succumbs to physical and moral corruption, often complicated with venereal infection, and then often regards marriage as a kind of hospital for incurables, where the wife plays the parts of housekeeper and nurse combined! it is not easy to steer clear of these rocks, nor to formulate a rule for lasting monogamy. the old style of polygamy is brutal, and prostitution is still more disgusting. the sentiments of the egoist are summed up in the maxim, "after me the deluge!" to this the preacher of morals replies that "man should curb his passions." but this eternal dialogue does not help us in the least. i propose a middle course, as follows: the young man who possesses sufficient strength to overcome his sexual appetite, or whose sexual appetite is so moderate that he can remain continent till the age of about twenty-five years, so as to enable him to avoid prostitution, promiscuous sexual intercourse or masturbation--this young man, i maintain, has the best chance of gaining the first prize in life. if he is free from prejudice and is not afraid of using anticonceptional measures for a certain time, he may then marry a young girl, to whom he may become permanently attached, if their two characters suit each other. a young girl may very well marry at seventeen or eighteen, or at any rate between eighteen and nineteen. she is then sexually mature and her mentality is sufficiently developed, so that the difference in age we have required may be obtained. young people thus united may continue their studies before procreating children, and their marriage will stimulate them to work. when the intoxication of the honeymoon is over, the continuance of conjugal happiness depends on an intimate adaptation of the two conjoints in sentiments, intelligence and sexual appetite; an adaptation which purifies love on both sides. work in common, a common ideal, mutual respect full of affection but free from flattery, and a reciprocal education which does not degenerate into pedantry nor tyranny, are the principal conditions for conjugal happiness. it is absolutely necessary to avoid everything which causes reparation or exclusion, even in appearance. at the risk of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of certain superior persons, i repeat that separation of beds and bedrooms is a dangerous experiment to make in marriage, and that it may easily lead to estrangement, even when based on the highest motives. it is the same, in a still higher degree, with sexual continence in marriage, even when it does not last for years, excepting in cases of grave disease or senile impotence. it is often stated that a woman should avoid coitus for long periods, because among certain savage races the husband does not cohabit with her during pregnancy and the two years of nursing which follow it; the woman being considered by religion as "impure" during this period. but this proves nothing, for this custom only concerns polygamists, who make up for it with other women. if our monogamous marriage is to be natural, and not satisfied with words and illusions, it is necessary for sexual intercourse to be intimate and constant, and it should only be interrupted for short intervals, corresponding to the natural wants of the two conjoints, adapted to each other by mutual concessions. apart from this, menstruation and accouchement constitute the only exceptions based on physiology. according to grüber (_hygiene des geschlechtslebens_) accouchement requires an interruption of at least four weeks; i should say at least six weeks. every husband, with the possible exception of the most horrible satyrs, can submit to this without much discomfort. pregnancy, on the contrary, does not require continence, provided the husband takes account of his wife's condition and treats her with care. during the last months of pregnancy all violent movements and pressure on the abdomen should be avoided during coitus, so as not to injure the embryo. this may be effected by coitus in the lateral position. professor pinard of paris advises the prohibition of coitus during the latter part of pregnancy, because it may lead to premature birth. as regards accouchement at the seventh, eighth or even at the beginning of the ninth month, this might, it is true, be proved by figures, but at this time the embryo is sufficiently protected, and with the precautions indicated above, i consider the danger as nil. as regards the end of the ninth month, the margin of errors as to the movement of conception and the signs of birth at term hardly allow of statistics which exclude subjectivism, and the danger becomes less and less. in any case a conscientious husband would run no risks under these circumstances if he was aware of the danger. what is more important for the wife is that she should have sufficient rest between her pregnancies. a year at least should elapse between parturition and the next conception; this gives approximately two years between the confinements. this is easily managed by the aid of the preventive animal membranes we have mentioned. in this way the wife keeps in good health and can bear healthy children at pleasure. it is certainly better to procreate seven healthy children, than to procreate fourteen of which seven die, to say nothing of the mother who rapidly becomes exhausted by uninterrupted confinements. no rule can be given for the frequency of sexual connection in marriage; this is a matter for reciprocal arrangement. luther's rule of two or three times a week may be considered a normal average for virile persons of good constitution. women who are sexually cold and fond of children, but who have a horror of coitus, cannot, in my opinion, be regarded as types of the normal wife, nor can they expect their husbands to abstain from all coitus except that intended for procreation. on the other hand, the wife should certainly be made acquainted with the nature of sexual intercourse and its consequences before marriage. further, before engaging in a life-long union, a man and woman ought to explain to each other their sexual feelings so as to avoid deception and incompatibility later on. without having ever experienced a sexual orgasm, either by coitus or by masturbation, a normal young girl, when she is sufficiently instructed in sexual matters, may easily decide whether the idea of coitus with a man for whom she feels affection is repugnant or attractive to her. in the case of young men it is still easier. a woman who had received a complete medical education and had remained a virgin, but who was well-informed on sexual life, gave me very precise information on this subject. for a long time the idea of coitus with men was repugnant to her, till she made the acquaintance of the one who gained her affections. repugnance was then replaced by desire. this case also gives a good example of the monogamous sexual feeling of the normal woman. in chapter xvii we shall discuss the manner in which youth should be initiated into the sexual question. our present formality, combined with general ignorance of girls on sexual matters, renders a mutual understanding prior to definite betrothal generally impossible. moreover, there is a sort of hysterical and pathological love, the product of the imagination, which is associated with sentimental words and sighs as well as coquetry, but transformed into disgust or hatred by the first coitus. although more common in women this false love is met with in hysterical men. sometimes the illusion disappears while there is yet time to break off the betrothal. marriage by trial and has been attempted by some, but with varied success. for a number of reasons, both parties should be medically examined before marriage. this precaution may reveal the presence of a narrow pelvis or vaginismus in the woman, or aspermia, venereal disease, etc., in the man. when a woman will only support coitus with a view to procreation, she would do well if she informed her _fiancé_, who can then consider whether he can submit to such restriction. if the wife will not allow her husband a concubine it generally results in clandestine extra-nuptial relations and subsequent divorce proceedings. my opinion on this subject will no doubt appear very immoral to many people, but it is natural and rational. it is needless to say that i do not intend that a man has the right to compel his wife to have intercourse whenever he pleases. the question is a very delicate one; but, by the aid of goodwill a satisfactory solution of the problem can be obtained in most cases, in the manner indicated above. love and mutual respect will always find a way out of the difficulty. it is necessary to avoid extreme asceticism and unnatural idealism on the one hand and excessive sexual indulgence on the other hand. in the sexual question above all others it is the wisest course to strike a happy medium. an extremely important question is that of the procreation of children. we have just explained how this can be regulated at will; we have now to consider how children of the best quality can be procreated. the first condition is the good quality of the parents. their heredity or the intellectual and physical value of their ancestry is of paramount importance. we must take into consideration, not only the intelligence and physical health, but also good sentiments, a conscientious character and energy of will. what is the use of procreating healthy and robust children if they are vain, egoistic, impulsive, crafty, wanting in will power, or perhaps criminal? such individuals constitute a social plague. at the time of conception the parents should not be in a condition of acute or chronic alcoholism, nor affected with any disease; otherwise the progeny may be tainted by _blastophthoria_ (chapter i). the age of the procreators should also be taken into account. children born of parents advanced in years are generally feeble. the fatal error which causes the procreation of children to depend on pecuniary reasons and interests is a social misfortune. healthy men and women ought never to avoid reproduction, even when they are poor. progeny of good quality grow up, so to speak, by themselves. progeny with evil instincts, or decadent, have a pre-existing hereditary taint, or have been affected by blastophthoria in some other way. no doubt acquired diseases or accidents may make an invalid of a child or a man, but these are exceptions which prove the rule, for here again the descendant of healthy parents is more resistant than others, if he has not artificially altered his state of health and power of resistance by alcohol or venereal disease. among savages, and at the present day among many peasants, children are rather an advantage than a burden, because these people have simple and healthy habits and few wants. it is our artificial and unhealthy desire for luxury, frivolity, comfort and enjoyment, our muscular weakness resulting from want of exercise, our exaggerated terror of diseases and microbes, in a word our effeminacy, which makes us so incapable of rearing large families simply and cheaply. no doubt it becomes more and more necessary to give children a good education, and this necessity complicates the question. but, in my opinion this education will in the future be conducted by the state. =hygiene of pregnancy.=--this subject is too special to be fully dealt with here. we may, however, mention that idleness and overwork are equally detrimental to the pregnant woman and her child. it is needless to say that every pregnant woman requires care and good food. violent efforts, especially in the upright position, should be avoided (vide bachimont: _la puericulture intra-uterine_, , paris). but domestic work and moderate exercise of the body are beneficial. precautions are especially necessary during the last months of pregnancy for the general health of the mother and child, but imprudence during the early months may cause abortion in many women. the progressive enervation of women in easy circumstances has no doubt rendered them less adapted to procreation. this failing should be corrected by progressive but prudent training. =medical advice as to marriage.=--the permission or prohibition of marriage is a delicate question at the present day, but will be less so in the future, if our propositions are realized. if one of the two candidates for matrimony has been or is still insane, or seriously affected with tuberculosis, or with active syphilis or chronic gonorrhea, it is clearly our duty to prohibit marriage. if the situation is not so grave, and if it is only a question of hereditary taint, especially when there is a probability of the offspring being deformed in body or mind, we may content ourselves with prohibiting the procreation of children, while giving permission for marriage, provided anticonceptional measures are used. the importance of these measures is obvious in such cases. we should explain to the young people in question that the procreation of unhealthy or backward children is bad and even criminal, and warn them against such an unpardonable act of thoughtlessness. if they are very fond of children they can be recommended to adopt poor orphans. there is no need, however, to be too severe. medical men are often pessimists, and have a tendency to see disease everywhere and to give a grave prognosis. the procreation of children should not be prohibited simply because there is insanity in some member of the family, but the probabilities of hereditary transmission should be calculated in the way we have explained in the first chapter of this book. taking into consideration the bodily and mental health and the character of the two candidates for marriage, as well as that of their ancestry, the physician should consider what is likely to be the average quality of children from such a marriage. according as his calculation leads to a probability above or below the average of the population, from all the points of view of the social value of man, he will advise the parties concerned as to freedom or limitation in procreation. the average of humanity must not be placed too high, and the physician should always keep in mind the great mental mediocrity, weakness of will, the low moral level and physical defects of the bulk of the population. when persons who are intelligent and educated, but more or less psychopathic or hereditarily tainted, put questions of this kind to the doctor, because they are very conscientious and prudent, they should be recommended to lead a healthy life and avoid alcohol, but need not remain sterile, for their offspring may be morally and intellectually above the average, and if all blastophthoric influences are avoided there is a possibility or even probability of gradual regeneration. in short, the doctor must treat each case on its own merits, carefully weigh both sides of the question, and avoid being influenced by exclusive dogmas of any kind. thus only can he give wise and useful advice. what is of especial importance for us, is the knowledge that it is not necessary, from the point of view of social hygiene, to prohibit marriage for the sole reason that the offspring may be of bad quality. we can allow psychopaths with hereditary taints, or even invalids of both sexes, to contract sterile marriages, by requiring them to avoid conception by some means or other, in the name of social hygiene and morality. in such cases dislocation of the tubes has a definite effect, and if we consider the negligence and weakness of mind of such individuals, we should do well to recommend this proceeding whenever there is a clear indication for inducing sterility. in this way we avoid cruel measures, which, by the way, are almost impracticable, which take away all hope of love and happiness from these unfortunates, throw them into the arms of prostitution or bitter pessimism, and make them disgusted with their own existence. =medical secrecy.=--medical secrecy and its limitation is a very delicate question, especially in sexual matters. opinions vary in different countries and among different individuals. in france medical secrecy is almost made an idol; the medical man may refuse to give evidence in a court of law and even conceal a crime. in germanic countries, on the contrary, especially in german switzerland, too little importance is attached to medical secrecy. in short, medical secrecy is an elastic idea which is open to different interpretations. although certain particular cases may present great difficulties, there is a middle course of moral conduct which will serve the purpose of every conscientious doctor. as a general rule the doctor's duty is to keep secret everything confided to him by his patients, except when the patients themselves speak openly of it, or authorize their doctor to do so. there are, however, exceptions to this rule. first of all it assumes normal responsibility in the patient, and is only conditional among irresponsibles. when a lunatic, for example, relates to a doctor, under the seal of secrecy, certain things which depend on delirious ideas and which threaten the safety of others, or which render certain measures necessary in the patients' own interest, the doctor's duty is to make known the state of affairs, but only to responsible persons. it is the same as regards children. it is needless to say that the doctor should use all possible measures in the interest of the patient or child. but even with responsible persons medical secrecy has its limits. the doctor is here only bound to secrecy so far as it does not injure the rights of other individuals, or those of society. it is the duty of a medical man to report all cases of smallpox or cholera, etc., even against the consent of the patient, and to isolate the latter to avoid an epidemic, which is contradictory to medical secrecy. in short, he must not, under the pretext of medical secrecy, become an accomplice of harmful acts or crimes. i will mention a few examples bearing on the sexual question: a sadist or a sexual pervert addicted to assaults on children consults a doctor and confides to him his morbid appetite. it is obvious that the doctor has to do with a dangerous individual and is at the same time in a difficult position. in this case extreme measures are bad. the doctor who simply treats the patient without concerning himself about the possible victims, contravenes his duties. the one who replies to the patient, "you are a beast; go away or i shall denounce you," acts in a still worse manner. the one who simply denounces the patient also puts himself in the wrong. in my opinion, the doctor should first of all make a thorough examination of the mental and sexual condition of the patient, so as to establish the degree of perversion and satisfy himself whether he has to do with an honest individual worthy of pity, who strives to overcome his morbid appetite; or, with a crafty egoist with no conscience, who only consults the doctor to escape from temporary difficulties into which his perversion has led him, and who indulges his morbid appetite without scruple, constituting a perpetual danger to society. unfortunately, the latter cases are very common, and the doctor is usually consulted from interested motives only. under these circumstances medical secrecy renders the doctor the accomplice of the criminal. between the honest patient and one who is absolutely perverse, there are many transitional stages. in these cases the doctor should always make a careful examination before forming an opinion. if he feels uncertain, he should call in a specialist in mental disease, and then act accordingly. if he is convinced that the patient has made the resolution to overcome his morbid appetite, and has so far resisted the temptation to injure any one, he should strengthen the patient's resistance by doing everything possible (except marriage) to rid him of his malady; he should make him aware how dangerous his condition is to himself and to others; he may even recommend either castration or masturbation in case of urgency, in order to avoid crime; he should make him promise to come immediately for internment in an asylum, as soon as he can no longer resist. under these conditions he may respect medical secrecy and at the same time save the existence of the unfortunate patient, while protecting society. in more severe cases, when the doctor is convinced that the patient is incapable of controlling himself or does not wish to, or that he has already committed crimes, he should act as follows: he must explain to the patient that it is impossible for him to take the responsibility and that he must be immediately sent to an asylum, in default of which information will be given against him. we must make him understand that he is a danger to society and goes beyond the limits of what is licit, but that if he voluntarily submits to rational treatment, offering all requisite guarantees on both sides, he (the doctor) is disposed to avoid any legal action. the duty of medical secrecy ought never to go so far as to render the medical man an accomplice of dangerous individuals or criminals. the lunatic asylum in such cases is the natural refuge for the patient, as the lazaret is for cases of smallpox or cholera. these cases, however, require public asylums which are not too large, well organized, with divisions for different cases, and provided with a sufficient medical staff. i have chosen as the first example one of the worst kind of cases which endanger the public safety. but there are other cases such as that depicted by brieux in "_les avariés_." a syphilitic subject wishes to marry before he is cured, and consults his doctor. does the whole duty of the doctor consist in dissuading the patient from marriage? has he actually the right to be silent when the patient will not listen to him, and thus allow an innocent young woman to be contaminated, through respect--or rather idolatry--for medical secrecy? is it not rather his duty to say to the patient: "beware! if you do not promise to obey me, i will immediately denounce you to your _fiancée_ and her parents, and will tell them the state of affairs." it seems to me that this is his duty. in this case the doctor does not denounce the patient without his knowledge; he threatens him face to face, and may speak to him as follows: "you have confided in me. i am, it is true, under the obligation of medical secrecy toward you, so long as you do no harm to any one. but if, in spite of all my explanations and warnings, you attempt to marry in your present state, rendering yourself guilty of infamous deceit toward a family and an unfortunate young woman whose health you will ruin, trusting in the obligation of secrecy which ties my tongue, i must inform you that i have a much higher duty than that of a doctor toward his patient--my duty toward society, which i shall fulfill, and so prevent an innocent person from becoming your victim." this is my view of the duty of a conscientious doctor who upholds the dignity of his profession. an analogous case came under my observation: a young tuberculous subject affected with several "white swellings" wished to marry. he refused to listen when i declared that he would be guilty of a crime toward his _fiancée_. thereupon i told him that i should tell everything to the young girl. i did this at once and so prevented the marriage. this egoist succeeded later on in capturing the heart of another young girl, whom i also warned, but who married him out of pity. at any rate i consider that i did my duty. in my opinion, this is also our duty in cases of chronic gonorrhea, insanity, and hereditary or constitutional sexual perversions, etc. formerly, when sexual inversion was regarded as an acquired vice, it was attempted to cure it by marriage. such a social monstrosity is even seen at the present day, and certain ignorant doctors recommend it. we sometimes meet with inverts who desire to procreate homosexual beings like themselves. as sexual intercourse with the objects of their perverted passion cannot give them this pleasure, they marry in order to procreate children by some poor woman whom they have victimized, without in the least renouncing their homosexual orgies. their wives play the part of housekeeper or servant, whose accessory function is to breed young inverts! is it necessary to say that any self-respecting doctor who is aware of this state of affairs should never countenance such marriages? here again, his duty is to threaten the invert with immediate denunciation to his _fiancée_, when he appears determined to accomplish his crime. again, the doctor may be consulted with regard to certain hereditary taints, or possibly only a bad ancestral history, and whether marriage is advisable under the circumstances. in some cases there may be some doubt and it is necessary to know the opinion of the other party concerned, and whether this party is also affected in a similar way, etc. the first duty of the doctor is to demand absolute frankness and to say, "under this or that condition and in such and such circumstances, you may perhaps marry, but under no pretext have you the right to conceal the truth from your betrothed. it is to your own interest to be frank, for no marriage founded on deceit can be happy. give me permission to discuss the matter with your _fiancée_ (or _fiancé_). we shall then see what is best to be done." in my experience, the person who consults a doctor usually accepts this proposal, and we can thus avoid many misfortunes and do much good. it is impossible to fix a general rule. according to the degree of hereditary taint or the nature of the infirmity, we allow marriage with or without children, or do not allow it. in such cases it is rarely necessary to have recourse to the threat of denunciation, but this may be required in the case of egoistic or vicious individuals. on several occasions a betrothed couple have come to me for advice as to their proposed marriage, and have freely disclosed their most intimate relations and antecedents. this is as it always should be, if men were more loyal in sexual matters and understood better their true interests. in this way the doctor's task is greatly facilitated. when the public is more enlightened on the whole question it will become more and more easy to arrive at a just conclusion, even without the doctor's help. =artificial abortion.=--we have already spoken of another question which is often put to doctors--that of artificial abortion. (vide chapter xiii.) in every case of this kind all the circumstances must be carefully weighed. i repeat here, that in the future more attention should be paid to social interests, instead of always requiring the preservation of an embryo for the sole reason that the state of the mother does not contra-indicate pregnancy or accouchement. the question is whether a miserable abortion or an idiot should be allowed to come into the world. if we allow children who are born monsters, idiots or invalids to live, we should at least do what we can to prevent them being born. it will no doubt be objected that it is much easier to recognize the quality of a child after birth than before, and this objection is quite legitimate. but so long as the laws protect the lives of the most miserable monsters we must get out of the difficulty as best we can. =treatment of sexual disorders.=--we cannot enter here into all the details of a purely medical question, and shall only touch on certain special points. patients with venereal disease are often treated in a very defective manner, because many of them are ashamed to submit to rational treatment. the treatment of venereal diseases should be carried out with more regard for the feelings of the patients; there should be special hospitals for each sex, with separate divisions, so that patients can be treated without betraying their identity. the fear of being recognized prevents many better-class women from applying for treatment. the idea of being placed in the venereal divisions of a hospital along with common prostitutes is unbearable to them. for this reason i maintain that anonymous treatment should be instituted at hospitals in all the chief localities. this humanitarian work would benefit not only the patients, but society in general, by diminishing the number of venereal infections. treatment by private practitioners is too costly for poor people and does not easily remain anonymous. therefore, the creation of hospitals for venereal disease is very necessary in the public interest, and would benefit public health much more than the regulation of prostitution. the treatment of sexual perversions is also very important. these disorders are either hereditary, or acquired by auto-suggestion or evil example. by provoking suggestion and good habits in the opposite direction, hypnotic suggestion is alone capable of acting directly against the evil. other remedies, such as distraction of the mind by work or fatigue, by marriage, electricity, etc., have only an indirect suggestive action. when a perversion has been acquired by auto-suggestion or by habit, especially in the case of onanism, hypnotic suggestion should always be employed. in compensatory masturbation, where normal sexual appetite exists, and where it is only the opportunity of satisfying it that is wanting, marriage or normal sexual intercourse are sufficient to cure the bad habit. we must not, however, too easily admit the existence of acquired perversions. apart from compensatory masturbation, which is not a perversion, but only an outlet to a pent-up natural want, true acquired perversions are rather rare, and as we have seen generally auto-suggestive. pederasts, sodomists, and others, whose perverse habits are truly acquired, have usually taken to them for want of something better, and prefer normal coitus if they have the opportunity and the means of procuring it. it is true, however, that some debauchees contract these perverse habits from desire for change, or from fear of infection or conception, but these individuals seldom consult the doctor. thus the individuals who consult a doctor are nearly always more or less pathological, and belong to the domain of hereditary or auto-suggestive perversions. for the first, at least, we avoid recommending marriage. von schrenck-notzing has sometimes succeeded in transforming hereditary inversion into normal sexual appetite for women, by hypnotic suggestion. i have also succeeded myself, two or three times. after a cure of long duration, confirmed by frequent visits to prostitutes, von schrenck-notzing has ventured to recommend marriage; but i have never done this, as i do not consider a cure sufficient to guarantee definite success, in the case of disorders so deeply rooted in the constitution. in such cases i have endeavored, as far as possible, to weaken the sexual appetite and induce the patient to be contented with nocturnal emissions. i have always debarred inverts from marriage, impressing them with the fact that to marry would be a crime, and that they had a hundred times better masturbate; or, if they wish to attempt intercourse with women, to be contented with a mistress, avoiding the procreation of children. unfortunately, our present laws and customs prevent us from recommending or even allowing inverts to "marry" their fellows, as they so strongly desire to do. this would be very innocent from the social point of view, and the poor wretches would be content, and would cease to be a menace to normal individuals. i am, therefore, of the same opinion as those who demand the suppression of all laws which punish or prosecute sexual inversion and pederasty committed between adults and in common agreement. so long as pederasts do not harm normal individuals, and so long as they do not seduce minors, they should be left alone, the same as all other sexually perverted individuals who are not dangerous. but when a patient of this kind wishes to be treated, through shame or nervous excitement, the doctor should hypnotize him and suggest distraction of mind by useful occupations. psychic treatment is always the most efficacious. it is only in cases where it is certain that the perversion is purely acquired and easily curable that marriage can be allowed, or the procreation of children. i am not referring here to sterile marriages between perverts or psychopaths, which we have mentioned above, and which can always be allowed when the two parties are fully enlightened on the subject. frequent emissions, masturbation, sexual hyperæsthesia and impotence may often be improved or even cured by suggestion. in such cases, if the sexual appetite is otherwise normal, marriage need not always be prohibited. each case must be judged on its merits. in sexual anæsthesia marriage is an error based on a grave misconception. even in partial anæsthesia it may have deplorable effects. we are now only speaking of anæsthesia in man. most young virgins are anæsthetic in the sense that they are not acquainted with the venereal orgasm and cannot tell how far their hitherto dormant sexual appetite will develop. the sexual instruction which we have recommended for young girls would have the advantage of making those who are absolutely sexually frigid disgusted with marriage and coitus, as soon as they know all about it. the consequences of sexual anæsthesia are much more innocent in woman than in man, because this anæsthesia neither prevents coitus nor fecundation. a woman who is sexually anæsthetic may marry a man who is affected with the same condition, when both parties are aware of the fact and desire to contract a union which is hardly sexual, but rather a union of minds with a common ideal. this is the true platonic love which is admitted in theory. it is not very common and must not be confounded with homosexual inclinations. it has its object of existence, for those affected with anæsthesia may feel the want of affection and of home, as well as sentimental communion. if they desire children they can adopt them. unfortunately for themselves, the subjects of sexual anæsthesia have as little idea of sexual sensations as a blind man has of colours; this causes them to commit great blunders, because they do not comprehend the nature of the sexual appetite in others, and often marry an erotic individual without knowing what they are doing. the special treatment of diseases of the male and female sexual organs is beyond the scope of this book. i may, however, remark that specialists are often wrong in treating the genital organs locally for pathological symptoms which depend on cerebral disorder, which can only yield to psychic treatment and suggestion. this is the case with many disorders of menstruation in women, psychic impotence and frequent seminal emissions in men, masturbation, etc., (except cases due to phimosis, or local irritation caused by worms, etc.) i hasten to add that this remark in no way excuses errors in the opposite direction, viz, neglect of local treatment, when this is indicated after careful examination. chapter xv sexual morality =law and morality.=--the limits of morality and law are difficult to fix. with the old conception of law and the expiation of crime it was otherwise. yet it is precisely the old law, based on dogma and religious metaphysics, which has most usurped the domain of morality, by considering as crimes all kinds of acts which, without hurting men in the least degree, were opposed to the ruling ideas and prejudices concerning religion and morality. =human and religious morality.=--what then constitutes ethics or true human morality? a dogmatic system, of ethics has been built on a collection of commandments supposed to be inspired by god. religions have established different duties toward god, and these duties or commandments are in part very inhuman. this has often resulted in direct contradictions between ethics attributed to divine revelation, and pure human ethics. moreover, the divine commandments vary in different religions. the god of certain malays commands them to eat the heart of their enemies; jehovah was vindictive and jealous, ordering abraham to sacrifice his own son to prove his faith, causing whole tribes to be annihilated, even drowning the whole of humanity by the flood, while the god of the christians is milder and more conciliating; allah rules as a fatalist and orders the massacre of the christians and abstinence from alcohol, while jesus christ tells men to love their enemies and allows wine; the god of the hindus orders the widow to follow her husband to the grave; a number of other gods exact human sacrifice; buddha taught oblivion in the future, others a more or less eternal paradise, hell and purgatory, according to the conduct of men. it will be agreed that it is difficult to obtain anything logical or coherent from the total of different religious moralities. as regards the sexual question, so-called divine commandments, such as those of monogamy and polygamy, directly contradict each other. for this reason, we will leave the so-called revealed morality to the priests of diverse religions who pretend to have received them directly from god, and will confine ourselves to the study of purely human morality. this should never be based on any dogmatic formula, like the above on their religious dogmas; it must be evolved from the natural conditions of human life. =morality and hygiene.=--morality is intimately connected with hygiene, and wherever there appears to be a contradiction between hygiene and ethics this is due to the fact that individual hygiene has only been considered, and not public or social hygiene--that is the hygiene of the race. it is the duty of the medical profession to place social above individual hygiene, to subordinate the hygienic welfare of the individual to that of society. a contradiction may exist between individual morality and hygiene, never between social morality and hygiene. =definition of morality.=--how can we define morality or ethics? liberated as far as possible from all hypothesis, ethics is theoretically the study of what is good or bad in human actions, and practically, as regards morality, the duty of doing good and avoiding evil. but this is hardly explicit, for what do we understand by good and evil? not only do some consider good what others consider evil, but the words which goethe puts into the mouth of the devil (in "_faust_")--that while wishing evil he often did good--will always be true. this gives a faithful representation of the deplorable want of adaptation which exists between the good and evil effects of our actions on the one hand, and the goodness or wickedness of our motives on the other hand. the inverse is also true, for good intentions often have evil results. we must, therefore, carefully distinguish between the ethical motives of the good and bad effects of an action. if we continue our analysis we shall discover that the same action may be good for one and bad for another. when a wolf devours a lamb, it is good for the wolf but bad for the lamb. we cannot live without destroying other lives, animal or vegetable. the money we earn comes out of the pockets of others without their always obtaining a corresponding profit, and so on. morality is thus _relative_, and we have not the faculty of discovering anything which is absolutely good or absolutely bad in itself. all that men can expect by mutual exchange of their wisdom and good will is to do as little evil and as much good as possible, that is to say, to diminish the amount of their physical and psychic ills by improving their mutual conditions of existence, and thus increasing the amount of good. even this is only possible by limiting the ideas of good and evil almost exclusively to humanity, trampling on the conditions of existence and the development of other beings, or at least concerning ourselves with them only as far as they are useful to us. further, we have seen that it is very difficult to extend the conception of social welfare to all the living races of humanity, for some of them are at the same time so fecund and so inferior in quality, that if they were allowed to multiply around us without any precaution they would soon starve and supplant us. then the barbarity of their lower instincts (vide weight of brain in different races at end of chapter vi) would soon take the upper hand and become general, as the negroes of hayti have shown us by a lesson which is worthy of our attention. therefore, an exaggeration of moral sentiments, resting on a false basis, would have the positive result of striking a fatal blow at our social morality, slowly built up during hundreds or thousands of years. lastly, the same action may first of all do evil and afterwards good, for example, a painful lesson; or _vice versa_, as in the satisfaction of a gluttonous appetite. =morality can only be relative.=--it follows from these considerations that our moral duties can only be relative, and cannot bind us in the same way nor in the same degree to all living beings, not even to all men, if we would avoid sacrificing what is lofty to what is vile. in theory, the definition of human morality will consist in a just and scientific definition of social welfare and the exigencies which it imposes on individuals, in order that the latter do not do evil in attempting to do good. in practice, it will be the general effort made to develop successfully this social welfare by the aid of individual will. this presupposes in the first place education of the will, the dispositions to useful work, and the altruistic sentiments of each individual. it is neither theoretical dogma nor preaching, but action and example which make for the education of man. the noblest task of moral action is to strive for the welfare of future generations. =altruism and egoism.=--properly understood, altruism and egoism do not form an antinomy, or only quite a relative antinomy. it is absolutely wrong to found social order by letting loose all our egoistic appetites without restriction. but it is quite as wrong to oppose them with an exaggerated and unnatural asceticism, which reflects in our eyes an erroneous ideal of altruism. when a bee or an ant disgorges the honey from its stomach for the benefit of its companions, it enjoys it. by sacrificing its life for the hive or the nest, it satisfies an altruistic or social instinct. cannot man also be more happy in giving than receiving? how can we explain the great sacrifices, the martyrs who suffer and die for their country, for their family, for science, for an idea, if enthusiasm--an expanded sentiment of pleasure--did not lead man to disinterested sacrifice, or if an inner obsession did not find its satisfaction in the welfare of humanity? let us seek all measures which by social adaptation can ennoble our human egoism, reduce it to its indispensable and just measure, and maintain it in proper equilibrium, by the aid of an active altruism; that is to say, by social habits of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the community. we shall then obtain a paradise on earth, no doubt very relative, but far preferable to our present anarchy based on the strife of personal interests. the chief thing wanting is a good hereditary quality among human individuals, a quality which is still entirely left to chance, by the most deplorable selection; the second requisite is the education of character and will in our children. our religion and our schools have shown themselves incapable of raising the bulk of the people above barbarism, that is to say from apathy, vulgarity of sentiment, routine, ignorance and prejudice. no doubt intellectual culture and religious ethics have accomplished a certain amount of moral progress, but the methods employed in our churches and schools have not advanced with science. they are in no sense adapted to our present moral wants and still less to the exigencies of the future. it is on the basis of a natural human morality, such as we have just described, that we must found sexual morality or ethics, and it is not difficult to form clear ideas on this subject, if we take the trouble to examine the facts explained in the first fourteen chapters of this book. from the social and moral point of view we may consider an action as _positive_ or useful, _neutral_ or indifferent, and _negative_ or harmful. but the same action may be at the same time positive, negative or indifferent, relatively to one or more groups of individuals. but in ethics it is not only a question of the action in itself, but especially the inner motives which lead to it; for, to leave the good and ill of society to chance and ignorance, is to deny the possibility of progress. it is difficult for a man to accomplish positive social actions, when the moral sentiments of conscience and duty are wanting. on the other hand, a narrow-minded individual, with false judgment, will accomplish negative social actions through moral motives, while in certain cases an individual may accomplish positive social acts fortuitously through perverse motives. through vengeance, a generous legacy may be left which injures an individual, while profiting the public. without being perverse, motives may be simply egoistic and lead to good by calculated egoism. by altruist, we understand a man animated by powerful moral sentiments which preside over social humanitarian volitions. by the term pure egoist, we designate one in whom self forms the exclusive object of sentiments of sympathy. in himself, the egoist is indifferent from the moral point of view, so long as he injures no one, and the altruist himself cannot live without a certain amount of egoism. the ideal of social sentiment therefore consists in the combined action of egoistic and altruistic sentiments, adapted to the wants of society and its members. as among certain ants, there should exist a complete compensatory regulation between the egoistic sentiments and appetites on the other hand. the antagonist of altruism is not the egoist, but the perverse individual whose acts are by instinct almost constantly negative from the moral point of view. egoism urges a man in such an irresistible way to abuse and harm others in order to satisfy himself, that a pure egoist can rarely remain indifferent from the moral point of view. these considerations suffice to show the impossibility of basing social order on pure egoism, as so many people desire. =sexual morality.=--sexual morality depends upon what we have just said. by itself, the sexual appetite is indifferent from the moral point of view. a great confusion of ideas, based on religious misunderstanding, has led to the term morality being more and more identified with that of moral conduct in the sexual domain. in short, ethics has been more or less confounded with sexuality. from this point of view, a sexually anæsthetic individual is regarded as extremely "moral," while he is perhaps in other respects a knave. in reality his sexual indifference has not the least moral value. for the same reason an invert is not virtuous because he does not seduce girls. from the protestant point of view it is immoral to burden one's wife with continual pregnancies, while from the catholic point of view it is immoral to interfere with these pregnancies by preventive measures. nevertheless, the sexual appetite gives rise to much conflict with human morality, for the simple reason that it looks upon human beings as objects of pleasure. fetichism, in which the sexual appetite is directed toward inanimate objects, and sodomy, directed to animals, are by themselves almost incapable of entering into conflict with morality as we understand it. the opinion of many people who consider the employment of anticonceptional measures as immoral, while defending prostitution, shows how much ideas vary on the subject of sexual ethics. preachers of morality, and even priests, sometimes blame a young man who wishes to marry his mistress, and urge him to get rid of her and the child by paying a sum of money. the inconsistency of men in the way they introduce their so-called moral ideas into sexual questions is simply incredible. their heads are full of a jumble of hypocrisy, mysticism, prejudice, pecuniary interests, veneration for old traditional customs called good manners, a jumble which absolutely confuses all ideas of a healthy sexual morality. look at the indignation of parents when their children become betrothed to persons whom they consider to be beneath them in social position, or who possess too little money! and all these people are unconscious of their immorality, which sails under the flag of morality! what standpoint are we to take in the sexual domain, which is free from prejudice, with regard to true human morality? this is the question which an honest and truly moral man has to put to himself. the first principle is the old medical adage: _above all things do no harm_; the second is: _be as useful as possible, both individually and socially._ the commandment of sexual morality will thus be: _thou shalt do no harm willingly to any person, nor to humanity, by thy sexual appetite or acts, and thou shalt do thy utmost to promote the happiness of thy neighbor and the welfare of society._ endowed with sexual appetite and the faculty of love, the social man will utilize both for the benefit of the community as well as his own. if he acts honorably his task will not be easy, but he will experience all the more satisfaction, for his good deeds will bring their own reward. he should bear in mind the following examples: ( ). a man of bad disposition, excited by momentary sexual passion, seduces a girl, makes her pregnant, and then disappears. he injures his victim and himself without deriving any advantage. his action is therefore negative, and is to be condemned both from the ethical and the egoistic point of view. ( ). through motives of religious morality, a virtuous girl marries a depraved drunkard in order to save him. this rarely succeeds, and if it does it is generally incomplete. from the egoistic point of view this experiment is exclusively negative. from the altruistic point of view the motives are, it is true, very positive, but the social effects are still more negative. if all goes well, our virtuous and exalted girl will succeed in improving the drunkard, but if she procreates children, she will have unconsciously sinned against them, and her good action will result in the sins of the father being visited on the children. ( ). a man with marked hereditary taints, impulsive, psychopathic and possessed of a strong sexual appetite, marries an honest girl of good family, and has several children by her. such an action is positive from the egoistic point of view, for the individual in question benefits himself. from the ethical point of view, it is negative, for it makes an honest woman unhappy, and probably leads to the procreation of children of bad quality. ( ). a man, healthy in body and mind, capable, hardworking and full of ideals, finds a suitable companion. instead of leading an easy life, they both undertake as much work as possible, especially social duties, and procreate at sufficient intervals as many children as they can without injury to the health of the wife. this is an ideal combination of positive altruism with positive egoism. it is not every one who has the good fortune to fulfill the conditions necessary for this combination. a positive sexual morality is, however, by no means excluded in less favorable conditions. certain psychopathic or feeble individuals may contract sterile marriages in the manner previously indicated, and may recompense themselves for the absence of children by devoting themselves all the more to social duties, or to the education of abandoned orphans. when a union is concluded between a person who is capable in all respects, and another who is not, the latter should give the other permission to procreate children by a third party, more adapted to give rise to healthy offspring. although this is immoral according to current conventional opinion, it seems to me that such a proceeding could become reconciled with positive morality in the future. in short, whoever understands the true nature of sexual ethics will always find a means of accomplishing good actions and avoiding bad ones, at the same time satisfying his normal appetites, provided these injure no one. the truly moral man will never become the accomplice of such a social iniquity as proxenetism with prostitution and all its satellites, but will oppose them with all his power. he will always avoid doing wrong to any one by his sexual appetite; and if his passion drives him to a thoughtless act, he will do his utmost to redress the bad effects which may result from it. the psychological action produced by conjugal infidelity merits special attention. it depends on the more or less egoistic or altruistic qualities of the one who becomes enamored of a third person. i have observed the two chief varieties of cases. if the guilty husband has naturally moral and social sentiments, his extra-nuptial love renders him still more affectionate toward his legitimate wife. he eases his conscience by becoming more indulgent to his wife. when his amorous intoxication is over, he will try to avoid everything which may damage the reputation of the other woman, and will provide for her future. if there are children by this adultery, he will provide for them. it is the same with a married woman who is in love with another man. in this case the whole personality is more powerfully involved than in man. but on the other hand, the natural energy of the woman will lead her to try and arrange a marriage between her lover and some other good woman, and to resist coitus with him. if the matter goes as far as complete infidelity, and even without it, various reactions may be observed. when her sentiments are monogamous, as is the case with most women, the love of a woman for her husband disappears and is replaced by pity. she easily becomes peevish in her resignation. she often seeks divorce, even when adultery has not taken place. when she is polyandrous, as is the case with many hysterical women, she is quite capable of lavishing her caresses on her husband as well as her lover, a thing which is impossible for normal women. what induces want of respect for his wife in the unfaithful egoist, is not so much the monogamous sentiment, which is somewhat exceptional in man, but intoxication of his senses by another woman. he then becomes miserly and disagreeable toward his wife, finding fault with her in every way, but the innocent and deceived victim finally discovers the true cause of this change of manner. some women who are ill-treated in this way, preserve their love for their husbands, while others never pardon the slightest infidelity, not even an innocent platonic affection, in their husbands. the brutality of a husband toward his wife, when he is in love with another, often knows no limits. from bad temper, chicanery, contempt and hatred, he often goes on to blows and even murder, as the annals of criminology prove too well. egoistic women who have a lover, also treat their husbands badly. owing to their legal subordination and comparative physical weakness, they reveal their sentiments in a less brutal form, but malice and bad temper are not wanting. in such cases, the woman's principal weapon is cunning, which may go as far as poisoning the husband. more commonly she simply abandons him, to force him to divorce. there are many transitions and varieties, but the reactions we have mentioned are the most common. it is quite natural, when one of the conjoints falls in love with a third person, for the sexual appetite to become cold toward the conjoint, and for this frigidity to make her appear less desirable and show up her defects. sexual morality is twice mentioned in the ten commandments of moses: seventh commandment: _thou shall not commit adultery._ tenth commandment: _thy shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's._ in the eleventh commandment of jesus christ the words: _thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself_, represent approximately the point of view of modern ethics. nevertheless contemporary social progress requires more and better. it is not so exalted as to say "love those who persecute you," but it demands a more rational and better formulated ethics, somewhat as follows: _thou shall love humanity more than thyself, and thou shalt seek thy happiness in the welfare of its future._ such a formula expresses the commandment of sexual ethics as we have defined it. in the commandments of moses the wife is regarded as property, and the desire for the wife of one's neighbor is threatened with divine punishment inasmuch as it covets the property of one's neighbor. when woman is treated as a free subject and as the equal and companion of man, it is evident that a fundamental revision of such ideas is requisite. certain forms of adultery with voluntary consent on both sides may even become positive from the moral point of view. _in spite of this, one of the principal tasks of man's sexual morality will always be to restrain his erotic polygamous desires, for the simple reason that they are especially apt to injure the rights and the welfare of others._ we must make exception for certain special cases in which no one is injured. (vide couvreur's "_la graine_," and de maupassant's "_mouche_.") the novelist loves to treat of tragic situations, often giving them a fatal ending to excite the feelings of his readers. we must avoid basing sexual ethics on such ideas. the average man, or even one whose nature is a little above the average, is rarely as passionate as the heroes in novels. he does not commit suicide for rejected love, but finds compensation in time. he can even overcome jealousy. it is thus an exaggeration, depending partly on the suggestion and auto-suggestion of amorous intoxication, to require in the ethics of love the absolute fusion of the personality of two human beings, a mutual fusion of sentiments and ideas destined to last till death. this kind of morality reverts to dual egoism, and in no way represents the ideal of human happiness. however beautiful conjugal fidelity, its exaggeration is deplorable, when it only results in the idolatrous worship of a single being, living or dead, and regards the rest of the world with indifference, if not with hostility. we have already shown that the altruistic sentiments of man are the direct or indirect[ ] derivatives of the sexual appetite, and especially of sexual love. the true secret of sexual ethics consists, therefore, in a cult of altruism in the sexual domain. this cult should not waste itself in moral phrases, but show its strength by social deeds. a sad proof of human weakness is given daily by certain forms of modern ethics which waste themselves in public conferences or in declamations in the press. this kind of morality is in accordance with pure egoism. without social work, it is not true morality, whether this work be public or modestly hidden. the struggle for existence was formerly carried on by man against nature, against animals, and especially against other men. nature and animals (excepting the cosmic forces and microbes) are nowadays conquered by the human brain, and wars are seldom waged except between great empires, a fact which will sooner or later reduce them to absurdity. for this reason the morality of the god of war and of patriotic chauvinism has had his day and loses more and more his reason for existence. modern ethics has already become a social and international human ethics, and will become more so in the future. as in olden times a true hero knew how to combine love of his wife with love for his country, to obtain in his conjugal union the strength to fight for his ideal, so our modern love will serve to stimulate us in the pursuit of an ideal, in our fight for social welfare. man and woman must fight side by side, as this struggle requires from both an intense and lifelong effort. but it is precisely in this effort, in this work, that they will obtain their highest enjoyment. this effort supports and strengthens not only the muscles, but especially the mind, the cerebral energy. the struggle for social welfare prepares for us the highest and most ideal joy. it teaches man to master himself, to overcome his natural idleness, his desire for pleasure, his dependence on all kinds of futile habits and base appetites. it educates his will, curbs his weak and egoistic sentiments, while exercising his faculty for creating good and useful works. thanks to this incessant strife, a brain of even mediocre quality may become a useful social instrument. i ask in all sincerity if, living in the way we have just described, a man will find the time and inclination to indulge in the love stories which the novels of our libraries offer to readers of both sexes for their daily consumption? i reply: if the man is normal, no. it is only pathological natures, with their exaggerated sentiment and morbid passions, which remain incapable of mastering their passionate emotionalism and reducing it to silence. other individuals, normal or semi-normal, are artificially urged to exaggerated exaltation in the sexual domain by idleness, by reading pernicious novels which excite their sexual appetite and their sentimentality, also by the artificial life and feverish activity of life in cities. work in itself is not sufficient, and every one ought to add social work to his ordinary occupation. in fact, the monotony of any special occupation, and even the exclusive work of a scientific speciality, ends by giving the cerebral energy itself an exclusive character. the moral sentiments become atrophied. exclusiveness in a speciality, practiced without any complement, easily leads to exclusiveness in love (not in the sexual appetite!). we often see two egoists, or several in a family, working together to exploit the rest of society. as long as they keep in good health and their business prospers, as long as the egoistic plans of a third party do not upset their calculations, they may remain faithful to each other and live in comparative happiness. but what else? whoever, on the contrary, has known how to combine with his conjugal love, a lively interest in humanity, will always find in the latter a consoling compensation for the greatest misfortunes and the most cruel losses. he will not fall into a state of despair, but will survive his trouble, and will become reconciled to men and society without expecting anything from them, for he will have been accustomed all his life to work in an impersonal manner. if i am accused of being enthusiastic over an ideal which is impossible to attain, i protest strongly. good habits may always be acquired, and true altruists are found among the most modest of men, among simple workingmen or peasants who comprehend and realize the ideal i have just depicted. in chapter xvii we shall see in what way the dispositions of the child can be and ought to be developed in the direction indicated. it is needless to say that pure egoists and perverse individuals, who are negative from the moral point of view, in other words natures which are evil and harmful by heredity, can never be educated so as to become altruists. but these perverse natures do not form the majority. the great majority of men, although idle and indifferent, may still become habituated to social work by suitable education, as soon as the external forces which urge them to evil, such as drink and the greed for money, have been removed and replaced by beneficial forces. lastly, the whole attention of humanity should be directed toward its proper selection, so as to increase the number of useful individuals, and diminish or gradually eliminate the bad and incapable. but this is the work of many centuries of enlightenment and education, a work which we can only begin at present. we find ourselves here in face of one of the weakest points in human nature, a weakness which consists in only becoming enthusiastic over progress which will enable self to attain its object, and not help others. when self does not quickly obtain a palpable result, it is paralyzed and discouraged, and turns its back on reform under the most futile pretexts. i will give an example: a young bachelor became enthusiastic over the social reform of abstinence from alcohol. for some years he worked with zeal, took part in numerous public demonstrations, and became an apostle of total abstinence. one day, after some failure, he turned his back on abstinence, declaring that the movement had no future. nevertheless, the social movement of abstinence progressed without him. after some years, he was asked the reason why he had abandoned the movement. after having first of all repeated his pretext, he confessed that he did not wish to appear eccentric. he admitted that he had never felt so well as when he was an abstainer, appeared somewhat astonished to learn that the movement had made so much progress without him, was finally convinced of his error, and promised to return to the camp of the faithful. in common daily events of this kind lies the secret of the slow progress of every social reform. men who are momentarily enthusiastic nearly always expect everything to progress according to their imagination, and when they see that it will be some time before any obvious result is attained, they become discouraged, because they have neither the personal courage nor the perseverance to remain in a minority and wait. the same want of perseverance, courage and judgment is found in the education of children, and it will take a long time to enlighten people on this subject. it would seem that we have lost sight of our subject in occupying ourselves with the irradiation of love, which forms the object of social sentiments or ethics (vide chapter v). but it is by exactly understanding and realizing this irradiation of love that we shall gradually suppress the unhealthy social aberrations of the sexual appetite, and prevent them doing harm, by guiding them in the path of a healthy morality. it is not the severe external constraint of so-called moral laws, it is not by the threats or punishments of hell, nor the promise of paradise, nor the moral preachings of the priests, parents or pedagogues, nor an exalted asceticism, which can ever construct a healthy, just and lasting sexual ethics. it is not by words that we recognize the value of moral precepts, but by their results. it is quite certain that the sexual life of man can never rise above its present state without being freed from the bonds of mysticism and religious dogma, and based on a loyal and unequivocal human morality which will recognize the normal wants of humanity, always having as its principal object the welfare of posterity. marriage should be considered as a means of satisfying the sexual appetite, and at the same time a moral and social school of life; not as a refuge for egoism. division of duties, absolute equality of rights and social work in common, will solidify more and more the sexual bonds of two conjoints. by the aid of a better understanding of the wants of human society, the conjoints will learn how to overcome their egoistic sentiments, their polygamous inclinations, and their jealousy, etc. in striving for happiness, and especially for the sexual happiness of others, such conjoints will learn better how to excuse and pardon the sexual failings of other men. they will cease to despise the poor man's household, the girl-mother, the divorced wife, the concubine, even the poor invert, and other failings in their fellow beings. on the contrary, they will do their utmost to make their lot a happier one, by helping all those for whom help may be efficacious. they will find their greatest pleasure in this work, and if one of them becomes himself the victim of some sexual failing, he will be pardoned all the more easily, and will master it all the more quickly. there will then be no time to make life bitter by bad temper, slander, acrimony, sulking and other conjugal disputes. the husband will no longer behave with the despotism of a lord and master, and the wife will no longer think it her duty to humble herself. religious dogmas will no longer separate man from woman. priests will no longer be required in marriage. lastly, there will be no more fear of death; this will be regarded as a welcome rest after the long labor and duty fulfilled of a well-spent life. i cannot help taxing with narrow-mindedness, and even unintelligence, persons who consider such an ideal of life as a fantasy impossible to realize, or as the product of exalted dreamers who do not know the world. no doubt this ideal cannot be attained by ill-constructed, unnatural beings, tainted by a morbid heredity, or depraved by idleness, vice and passion for pleasure, who have lost their elasticity and plasticity of brain or have never possessed them. it has, however, been often realized already by men and women of better quality. it is, therefore, necessary to act on the children, both by education and selection, in order to obtain a youth of superior quality. let us not abandon the future of our race to the fatalism of allah; let us create it ourselves! footnotes: [ ] it is true that the friendly union of individuals of the same sex is often fundamentally derived from the phylogenetic development of animal or human societies. but the sentiments of sympathy, on the sole basis of which such friendly unions may be developed, are only themselves the derivatives of the more primitive sentiments of sympathy of one individual for another, and these latter have originated in sexual attraction. chapter xvi the sexual question in politics and in political economy power and money have always been the principal aims of politics. political economy is a science which deals with the great family of nations and their conditions of existence. based on history, statistics and observation, it seeks for the laws which govern the production, consumption and division of goods, labor and its products, the social organization of nations, their health, the increase or decrease of the population, the death-rate, birth-rate, etc. i cannot here enter into the details of the domestic economy of the nation, as this is beyond my province. i may, however, point out that this science has too much neglected the natural sciences, owing to its traditional connection with politics. in cognetti de martiis[ ] had already attempted to apply the ideas of evolution to political economy. recently, prof. eugene schwiedland of vienna treated the same subject in an interesting study of the ideas of want and desire in human psychology.[ ] so far, it is only the quantity and not the quality of men which has been taken into account, originating from the false idea that man made in god's image can only come into the world in a perfect state. if he was often malformed in body and mind, this was the fault of his sins. even hereditary degeneration to the third and fourth generation was considered as divine punishment for the sins of the fathers on the children. =war.=--the despots of olden times, like those of to-day, have always regarded men as instruments of their ambition or even as food for cannon. when napoleon i established a bounty for large families, he was no doubt thinking of the number of soldiers he could make for the use of his son. he had good reason to provide for the replenishment of the ranks of his army. the mental quality of the individuals mattered little to him. wars are a harmful factor in human selection, for they destroy or mutilate the fittest in the prime of life, while leaving the unfit and the aged. moreover, we have already seen to what an extent the quality and even the quantity of soldiers suffer from venereal disease and alcohol. after certain long wars the male population has been decimated to such a point that polygamy had to be resorted to to reconstitute the nation. it is, therefore, obvious that wars have a bad influence on the sexual relations of men, and hence on the quantity, or what is still worse, the quality of a nation. =statistics.=--political economy is still more important. i do not doubt the correctness of the figures which tell us that under this or that economic system the population increases, while under another system it diminishes, etc. but these are only summary data whose true causes remain in the dark. it is necessary to carefully study the factors which produce these figures. emigration and immigration with their causes, the intimate habits of individuals and families, their willingness and aptitude for work, etc. one fact which follows another is not always the direct consequence of it and if we examine things more closely, we arrive at curious results. =alcohol.=--things being otherwise equal, it is found that nations who abstain from alcohol and those who are moderate consumers are more prolific than nations who are addicted to drink. in russia, for instance, the abstainers, although of the same race and living under the same conditions, are more prolific than their neighbors who drink. as we have already pointed out, alcohol greatly deteriorates the quality of man by blastophthoria, and we must agree with men such as darwin, gladstone, cobden, comte, etc., that alcohol (even in so-called moderation) does more harm to a nation than war, plague and famine together. we find here an economic factor of the first order, to which the majority of economists (with the exception of cobden) are blind. it is a very short-sighted policy to regard the alcohol industry as a source of wealth and welfare for nations. what an amount of labor, human power and valuable land is employed to produce this mischievous substance which, although useful in pharmacy and other industries, neither nourishes nor strengthens, but deteriorates the organism and leads to degeneration of the race! if it were not so sad, it would be ridiculous to observe the serious way in which high officials, or even scientists, calculate the product of taxes on distilled and fermented liquors, the laws for their import and export, the monopoly of their manufacture, etc. it is remarkable how the budget is balanced by the aid of the alcoholic intoxication of the people, and how people are made to believe that a masterpiece of political economy is thereby achieved. in reality, the health and strength of the nation are sacrificed. this kind of political economy can only be qualified as false and deceitful. we cannot too often nor too strongly stigmatize its destructive influence on sexual matters and on the hereditary energies of humanity. =density of population.=--as regards the most desirable figures for population, opinions are diametrically opposed. some authors look for the happiness of humanity in prolific reproduction, and imagine that by utilizing all parts of the globe an unlimited number of people could be supported by its produce. we cannot regard with favor this singular chinese-like ideal, which would tend to transform the whole world into a huge cornfield for the raising of men like rabbits. moreover, it is greatly to be feared that the real chinese, when they have become sufficiently armed and re-civilized, will transform the surface of the earth into a human stable, if we do not take sufficient precautions. =neo-malthusianism.=--on the other hand, a certain group of idealists, the neo-malthusianists, have declared a war of extermination against all increase of the population. i have myself been accused by one of them of committing a crime by procreating more than four children! neo-malthusianists of this kind only deal with quantity and do not concern themselves with quality. they recommend, as we do, the employment of anticonceptional measures, but they do so without any discrimination. they address themselves to the altruistic and intelligent portion of the public, and induce the most useful members of society to procreate as little as possible, without recognizing that with their system, not only the chinese and negroes, but, among european races, the most incapable and amoral classes of the population are those who trouble the least about their maximum number of children. hence, the result they obtain is exactly the opposite of what they intend. among the north americans and new zealanders, with whom neo-malthusianism is very prevalent, the number of births among the intelligent classes is diminishing to an alarming extent, while the chinese and negroes multiply exceedingly. in france, the practice of neo-malthusianism is chiefly due to reasons of economy. =rational selection.=--these two extremes, which are equally absurd, should be replaced by rational selection. neo-malthusianism should be confined to the unfit of all kinds, and to the lower races. on the contrary, the fit should be urged to multiply as much as possible. by this means we obtain an indirect factor of the first order for a rational political economy; i even maintain that it is the most important of all. no doubt its action is extremely slow, and it would take centuries to obtain a definite result. but if the principle of proper human selection ever prevails, we may confidently hope for a good future for our descendants. a time will come when the human population of the earth will become more or less stationary. if, in the meantime, human nature has succeeded in appreciably improving its quality, and in gradually suppressing the physical and mental proletariat with its poverty, hunger and brutality, which now infests the world--then only will the dogmas of our modern neo-malthusianists acquire a certain object for the whole world. if humanity does not soon begin to degenerate by brutish accumulation, but finds in time the means to gradually elevate its quality, our future descendants will take care not to abandon rational selection. a capable and active man gives to society much more than he receives, and thus forms an economic asset. a person who is unfit in body or mind, receives more than he gives, and thus constitutes an economic deficit. =contrary selection.=--we have seen in chapter vi how certain customs of essentially human origin ended by becoming part of religion. unfortunately for humanity, religion and politics have at all times generally combined to do wrong. the celibacy of priests (to say nothing of the inquisition, religious wars, and the fatalism of islam) which is based on a kind of religious politics, has largely resulted in sterilizing the more intelligent among catholic races. the prohibition of inquiry into paternity is another abominable custom of the same kind introduced by napoleon. laws of this nature lead to artificial abortion and encourage promiscuous intercourse. the safety of families and sexual intercourse lies in the duties of parents toward their children. the principal task of a political economy which has the true happiness of men at heart, should be to encourage the procreation of happy, useful, healthy and hard-working individuals. to build an ever-increasing number of hospitals, asylums for lunatics, idiots and incurables, reformatories, etc.; to provide them with every comfort, and manage them scientifically, is no doubt a very fine thing, and speaks well of the progress and development of human sympathy. but, what is forgotten, is that by concerning ourselves almost exclusively with human ruins, the results of our social abuses, we gradually weaken the forces of the healthy portion of the population. by attacking the roots of the evil and limiting the procreation of the unfit, we shall be performing a work which is much more humanitarian, if less striking in its effect. formerly, our economists and politicians hardly ever considered this question, and even now very few are interested in it, because it brings neither honors nor money, as we do not ourselves see the fruits of such efforts. any one who aims at serious reforms and puts his hand to the work is looked upon as eccentric, or even mad. this is why we are contented with the kind of humanitarianism which makes a show and panders to the sentimentality of the masses, by holding out a charitable hand to the visible and audible evils which make women weep. in short, we amuse ourselves with repairing the ruins, but are afraid of attacking what makes these ruins! =the laws of lycurgus.=--there was once in sparta a great legislator named lycurgus, who attempted to introduce a kind of human selection into the laws. he wished to make the spartans a strong nation, because at that time bodily strength was almost the only ideal of the people. he understood the value of hardness but not that of work. the importance of selective elimination of the diseased and weak was apparent to his pre-darwinian intuition, but in his time natural laws were not understood. however, in spite of their failings, the laws of lycurgus succeeded up to a certain point in making the spartans a strong nation. according to the laws of lycurgus, the spartan inherited no property, and was forbidden all luxury. he had to eat his simple black broth with his fellows, and to exercise himself continually in trials of strength and skill. every spartan had to marry, and the bonds of matrimony were strictly observed. every weak child was eliminated. but there were two fundamental errors in the spartan organization. first of all, the spartan was a warrior, but not a worker, and although hardened, was an aristocrat. he left all labor to his slaves, and in this way strengthened his slaves and enfeebled himself in many respects. the value of work in strengthening and developing the brain and the whole body was not then understood. in the second place, all the efforts of the spartans were directed toward muscular strength, bodily skill, courage, and simple wants, but not at all toward a life of higher intelligence or ideal sentiments. the exclusiveness with which they only promoted man's bodily development, while neglecting his intellect, their negligence of the laws of organic evolution due to ignorance of natural science, would sooner or later have led to the decay of the spartans. however, it was not the laws of lycurgus in themselves, but their abandonment, which was the direct cause of the decadence of sparta. the spartans only sought for power, and this led to envy and jealousy, a deplorable although indirect result of the exclusiveness of their laws. these laws, however, will always constitute a unique historical document, a remarkable attempt at human selection. we are at the present day incomparably better armed intellectually than lycurgus to deal with the question of selection. what is chiefly wanting is initiative on the part of the men who are charged with the government of their fellows. they are so deeply absorbed in economic interests and rival influences, that all desire of aspiring to a higher social ideal is paralyzed and etiolated in them. we require a powerful social shaking if we are to make steady progress. =politics and the sexual question.=--"_cherchez la femme_" is the common expression when anything unusual occurs in society. it would be more correct to say "look for the sexual motive!" the actions of men are determined much more by their passions and sentiments than by purely intellectual reflection, _i.e._, by reason and logic. but no sentiment is stronger than the direct sexual sentiment, or its derivatives--love, jealousy and hatred. from this results a fact which social systems have too much neglected, namely: that in all the domains of human social activity, the sexual passions and their psychic irradiations often interact directly or indirectly in a mischievous way. mistresses and courtesans have always played a considerable part in political intrigue. it is not necessary to have such a tragic scandal as that which caused the assassination of the king and queen of servia. everyday influences, even the smallest and most dissimulated, are often the most efficacious. sexual intrigues have at all times influenced and directed the fate of nations. history relates a number of cases of this kind, but there are many more which have never been revealed to the public. it is sufficient to mention this fact. every one who reflects will find an illustration of it, in the history of the past as well as in the politics of the present, in the courts of monarchs and in small democracies, in the local history of provinces, in his own parish, and lastly among his own relatives, friends and acquaintances. =sexual life in social action.=--the socialist who said that the social question was exclusively a question of stomach mistook its scope as well as human psychology. however admirably the economic relations of men and their work may be regulated, the introduction of sexual passions into social life will never be eliminated. all that can be done is to give both sexes an education which will elevate their social conscience and attenuate the evil influences exercised by personal sexual sentiments on social actions. the sexual question, therefore, intervenes in politics and in the whole of social life. moreover, if the deplorable social influence of money and the attraction it exerts could be eliminated, antisocial acts, which only depend indirectly on the sexual passions, would lose much of their danger and infamy. =the rôle of women.=--here again, much may be expected from the free emancipation of woman, and from her work in social questions in conjunction with man. this work in common will make them more clearly understand the high importance of their social task. then sexual life will encourage social development instead of hindering it; it will cease to be considered as an egoistic pleasure but as a means of procreation, and will become the acme of an existence founded on the joy of work. we can already see, in countries where women have a vote, that they know very well how to benefit by social progress. if it is objected that woman is more conservative and more routine than man, i reply that this inconvenience is compensated by the fact that she is on the whole more inclined to enthusiasm, and to be led by noble masculine natures, who have the sense of the ideal, than by others (vide chapter v). her great perseverance and courage are also inestimable qualities for social work which aims at true progress. =necessity and desire.=--in the work which i have already quoted, schwiedland points out the need for distinguishing between necessity and desire, in political economy. in practice it is no doubt difficult to always make an exact distinction between necessity and luxury. what our ancestors considered as luxuries we now regard as necessities. man knows no limits in his desires; he is insatiable in his passion for pleasure and change. certain socialists, especially anarchists, make a great mistake in proclaiming the right of man to satisfy all his desires. this is a proclamation of corruption and degeneration. as it is just to exact the right to satisfaction of the natural wants of each, so is it unjust to sanction every desire and every appetite. it is a question of distinguishing between good and useful wants and evil desires. all wants which promote a healthy life, all instincts which lead to social work, are good. all desires, which damage the health and life of the individual or injure the rights and welfare of society, are bad, and are the procreators of luxury, excessive concupiscence, and often corruption. between these two extremes there are desires which are more or less indifferent, for example, that of possessing objects of beauty. certain objects of human desire are harmful in themselves, such as the use of alcoholic liquor and narcotics. others are only harmful when pushed to excess, such as good living, sexual pleasures, personal adornment, etc. among the things desired by man, sexual pleasure plays a great part. thus, when a pasha or a sultan provides himself with a large number of women, this excess is harmful from the social point of view, as it injures the rights of others. i have sufficiently dwelt on this fact elsewhere. i wish only to indicate here, with schwiedland, how necessary it is to fix the limits between necessities and desires from the point of view of political economy, however relative and subjective these limits may be. footnotes: [ ] "le forme primitive nella evoluzione economia." [ ] "die psychologischen grundlagen der wirtschaft." _zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaft_, . chapter xvii the sexual question in pedagogy =heredity and education.=--if we review the facts contained in chapters iv, vi, vii and viii, we must conclude that the sexual appetite, sensations and sentiments of every human being consist of two groups of elements: ( ) _phylogenetic_ or hereditary (hereditary mneme); and ( ) elements _acquired_ during life by the combined action of external agents and habit or custom. the first lie dormant in the organism for a time, in the form of latent energies or dispositions, and form part of what is called _character_. most of them do not disclose themselves till the age of puberty, and their development afterwards takes place under the influence of external stimuli, which are modified by the will of the individual, _i.e._, by his brain. the second are the result of the influence excited by erotic excitations and habit on the first. pedagogy can in no way change the first, for they are predetermined, and constitute the soil to be cultivated by education. the task of the latter can, therefore, only be to guide the hereditary sexual dispositions into paths as healthy and useful as possible. in the case of perverse dispositions, such as homosexual appetites, sadism, etc., moral education can only act in a general way on the character, and combat that which excites the appetites. it cannot change the character of the latter; there must be no illusion on this point. wherever hereditary dispositions present a normal average, education can do much to avoid pathological errors and habits, by guiding the sexual appetite in a healthy direction and by avoiding excess. =sexual education of children.=--habit always diminishes the erotic effect of certain perceptions of the senses; and inversely, eroticism or sexual desire is especially excited by unaccustomed perceptions and images relating to the other sex. the adult, unfortunately, nearly always makes the same error in pedagogy; he unconsciously attributes his own adult sentiments to the child. what excites the sexual desire of an adult is quite indifferent to a child. it is, therefore, possible to speak plainly to children to a certain extent on sexual questions, without exciting them in the least; on the contrary, if the child becomes accustomed to consider sexual intercourse as something quite natural, this will excite his curiosity to a much less degree later on, because it has lost the spice of novelty. if the child is accustomed to the sight of nudity in adults of his own sex, he will see nothing peculiar in his own sexual organs and pubic hairs when these develop. on the other hand, children brought up with strict prudery and in complete ignorance of sexual matters, often become greatly excited when their pubic hairs develop; they feel ashamed and at the same time erotic. when they are not prepared, girls become still more excited at the first appearance of menstruation, and boys at their first seminal emission. the mystery which is made of everything relating to sexual matters is not only a source of anxiety to children, but also excites their curiosity and the first signs of eroticism, so that they generally end by being instructed on the subject by other depraved children, by observing copulation among animals, or by obscene books, in a manner which is certainly not favorable to healthy development. what is still worse is that the child is generally instructed at the same time in masturbation, prostitution, and sometimes even sexual perversion. the so-called innocence, or naïve ignorance, of an adolescent possesses quite a peculiar charm of attraction for libertines of both sexes, who find a refined erotic pleasure, a unique relish, in the seduction of the innocent, in the role of "initiator in the sexual art." parents, unfortunately, seldom realize the evil consequences of their passiveness, i will even say cowardice, in making use of subterfuge, pretext and falsehood, to elude the naïve questions of their children concerning sexual matters. i will here quote the opinion of an enlightened mother of a family, madame schmid-jager, an opinion with which i entirely agree: "all mothers, or nearly all, bring up their daughters with a view to matrimony. can we pretend that they are properly prepared for it? alas! no; the most elementary knowledge which should be possessed by the future wife and mother is neglected, and for centuries our young girls have been married in more or less complete ignorance of their natural functions and duties. the slaves of routine will reply that it has always been so, that the world has been none the worse for it, and that women when once married have always learnt by personal experience all that was necessary. no doubt they are sometimes taught to cook and sew and to do household work, but they are told nothing concerning their sexual functions, nor of the consequences of these. at zurich a school has been instituted for nurses and midwives which will soon give good results. this school is also open to young girls who, without becoming professional nurses, desire to learn how to take care of the sick in their own families, and especially the newly born. this is an experiment worthy of encouragement which should be extended universally. "the awkwardness, incapacity and ignorance of a young wife, when she starts housekeeping and has a baby, are astonishing. she often pays dearly for it, in spite of the instinct which is so much talked about. it is not the same as with animals, whose instincts are sufficient for the care of the young. "a lady doctor of zurich, madame hilfiker, has lately developed a scheme of much greater importance, which will require a great effort on the part of women and the intervention of legislation, if it is to be realized. men, she says, maintain their muscular strength by military service. every young woman, who is not prevented by her occupation, should perform the equivalent of military service, from the age of eighteen, in obligatory service for a year, in hospitals, asylums, maternities, _crèches_ (public nurseries) or public kitchens. such training would be extremely useful for future wives, and would at the same time provide the institutions in question with useful workers. why should men be the only ones to perform obligatory social service? i expect," says madame schmid, "many adverse criticisms on this proposal, one of which i will refute at once. the ladies of the middle classes will strongly object because their daughters will see and hear so many things which ought to be hidden till they marry! but why should they be hidden? in order to prepare our daughters for marriage, is it not logical to begin by telling them what it is, what it involves and what it exacts?" ("_l'education sociale de nos filles_," .) in neglecting this duty our parents and teachers commit a veritable crime. does a normal man ever marry without knowing what he is doing? yet our young girls are kept by their mothers in insensate and often dangerous ignorance of their whole future. whoever invented this absurd and mischievous idea that a young girl should remain ignorant of her natural functions till the moment when she has bound herself for life to fulfill them? the law punishes persons who cause others to enter into contracts, while intentionally concealing the true conditions. this might almost equally well apply to parents who allow their daughters to marry in ignorance. some women reply to this that marriage would be too sad and would have little attraction if it were not preceded by any illusion. certain illusions which are natural to youth may be healthy, but the fantastic dreams which are in evident contradiction with reality, and nearly always followed by disillusion, are bad. a young woman who has always lived in a state of transcendental idealism till her marriage, infallibly courts disappointment, deception and heart-break. a wiser education would often succeed in sparing young women from this sudden and cruel disillusion. the moral level of men would also be raised if their future wives were better instructed in sexual matters, and exacted that the past life of their future husbands should give a better guarantee for the future. it must, moreover, be understood that blind and obstinate resistance to new ideas serves no purpose. our manners and customs change in spite of us; our girls will no longer allow themselves to be led blindly, but will seek more and more freedom. would it not be wiser to take things in time and warn them of the dangers ahead? with incredible carelessness parents send their daughters into service abroad, without considering that they may be at the mercy of the first don juan who comes across them, or even fall into the meshes of "white slavery," if they are left to go in ignorance of sexual affairs, as is often the case (vide chapter x). moreover, by no longer taking a false and artificial view of life, girls will be more capable of understanding and sympathizing with the misery which surrounds them--the troubles of unfortunate marriages, seduced and abandoned girls, etc. what they lose in illusion they will gain in more useful knowledge. how are we to begin? we should certainly not wait till the eve of marriage, but begin in childhood. in theory, it is wrong to lie to children, if they are to maintain unshaken confidence in their parents, and remain truthful themselves. no doubt we cannot explain everything to a child at the age when it begins to ask its mother certain embarrassing questions, but we should endeavor as far as possible to tell it the truth in a manner suitable to its age. when this is impossible, every child who knows that no reasonable explanation is ever refused it will be satisfied with the answer: "you are too young now to understand that; i will tell you when you are older." every child who speaks openly to its mother asks sooner or later how children come into the world. it is easier to reply to this when the child has had the opportunity of observing the same thing in animals. why should the mother conceal the fact that it is nearly the same in man as in animals? the child never thinks of blushing or laughing at natural phenomena. the initiation of children into the mechanism of reproduction is best obtained by the study of botany and zoölogy. if no mystery is made of these things in the case of plants and animals, why should not instruction be given in human reproduction? on this point madame schmid remarks as follows: "the father or the master should instruct the boys in this subject, and the mother or mistress the girls. parents will then be able more easily to abandon their old and absurd prejudices, which they preserve, not so much because they attach any great importance to them, but because they shrink from the difficulty of explaining themselves to their children. we often see mothers, who would never have touched on the question with a child still ignorant of sexual matters, abandon the reserve hitherto observed in their language in the presence of the child, as soon as they perceive that it has become more or less acquainted with sexual phenomena. this is quite characteristic, and what is more so is that these mothers, and often also the fathers, frequently make equivocal jokes on the subject with their children instead of seriously discussing it. "it is regrettable that so few pedagogues take up these questions, and that the instruction of children on the sexual question is left to the most impure sources--domestic servants, depraved companions, pornographic books, etc. this results in a deplorable estrangement between the children and their parents or masters, which destroys mutual confidence. "if we wish to contend with sexual perversions acquired at an early age, or the precocious development of an unhealthy sexual appetite, this is not to be effected by prudery or vague moral preaching, but by affection and frankness. in this case, evasive replies, combined with so-called strict morals, only lead to estrangement, dissimulation and hypocrisy, and the result is often irreparable." madame schmid also insists on the necessity of making young girls work and learn some business, so as to render them capable of surviving in the struggle for existence without being obliged to throw themselves at the head of the first man who presents himself, or becoming the prey of prostitution. she also emphasizes the necessity of remunerating the wife for her work as mother and housekeeper, as the husband is remunerated for his work. it is needless to add that it is quite as necessary to instruct boys as girls in sexual questions. they do not run the risk, like girls, of falling through ignorance into the abject dependence of a forced marriage, and have no pregnancies to fear; but they are more exposed to temptation. when their sexual appetite has been once excited by masturbation or in some other way, it becomes very difficult to put them on the right path; to say nothing of the danger of venereal disease. i therefore appeal to all fathers and masters in the same way that madame schmid appeals to mothers and mistresses take measures in time and do not wait till the boys are instructed by evil persons of either sex, or till they have already been seduced, thanks to their erotic curiosity. it is generally evil companions who seduce them, but sometimes erotic women. =exclusiveness in education. punishment. automatism of parents. wants of children.=--in the human brain, intelligence and sentiment are intimately connected with one another, and from their combination arise volitions, which in their turn, react more or less strongly on cerebral activity, according to their solidity and duration. it is thus a great mistake to think that we can treat separately, by the aid of theoretical dogmas, the three great domains of the human mind--intelligence, sentiment and will. it is a fundamental error to imagine that the intelligence can be educated only at school, leaving sentiment and will to the parents. but it is still more absurd to attempt to act on sentiment, especially on ethical sentiment, and on the conscience, which is derived directly from sympathy, by moral preaching and punishment. what false conceptions of the human mind lie in these moral sermons, in this theoretical moral teaching, in these punishments and anger! is it credible that, by the aid of abstract and arid dogmas supported by punishment, conscience and altruistic sentiments can be impressed on the brain of a child, which is only accessible to concrete ideas, to sympathy, affection and amusement? we may see daily, in nearly every family, parents finding fault with their children, in a vexatious, irritated or sorrowful tone of voice, to which the children reply by inattention, or tears, or more often by a repetition of the same tone of irritation. these scoldings pass through the child's mind without leaving any trace of an effect. such stereotyped scenes produce in the intelligent observer the painful impression of two barrel-organs whose tunes are automatic. if this is the kind of moral teaching which is supposed to act on the child's mind, it is not astonishing that it has futile and even harmful effects. the parents do not appreciate the fact that when scolding their children they are only giving vent to their own bad temper. but the children are well aware of this fact, consciously or not, and react accordingly. the most deplorable thing is that they copy all these bad habits, like monkeys. true moral teaching, the true way of influencing children for good, lies in the manner of speaking to them, treating them and living with them. affection, truth, persuasion and perseverance should be manifest in the acts and manners of parents, for these qualities only can awaken sympathy and confidence in the breasts of children. it is not cold moral speech, but warm altruistic feeling, which alone can act as a moral educator of children. a savant who delivers excellent and erudite lectures to his pupils in a dry and wearisome manner teaches them nothing, or at any rate very little. the students yawn, and are quite right in saying they could learn these things just as well out of a book. a teacher, however, who speaks with animation and knows how to hold the attention of his audience impresses his remarks on their brain. in the former case there is intelligence without feeling, while in the latter case the audience is held by the suggestive and contagious power of enthusiasm. dry science, at the most, fills the memory, but it leaves "the heart" empty. what does not come from the heart has difficulty in entering the head. it is precisely in this way that the will must be exercised by perseverance. the child must be made eager for social work; he must be urged to all noble and disinterested actions, without stimulating his emulation by promises of reward, or by punishment. =new schools.=--the object we desire may be attained by a system of education such as that of the new schools (_landerziehungsheime_), which were first founded by reddie in england, afterwards by lietz in germany, by frey and zuberuübler in switzerland, and by contou in france. these institutes have finally realized the ideas of rousseau, pestalozzi, owen and froebel. for the teacher who understands the psychology of children, it is a true pleasure to witness the teaching at these landerziehungsheime. the children take a delight in their school and become the comrades of their master. physical exercise, the development of the powers of reason and judgment, the education of the sentiments and will, are all harmoniously combined. the children are not given the dry text-books of our schools, but made familiar with the works of the great authors and men of genius. instead of their existence becoming etiolated under the weight of domestic duties, and under the sword of damocles of examinations, they thrive by living as far as possible among the things they ought to learn. they thus assimilate the object of instruction, which becomes a living and useful part of their personality, instead of becoming encysted in the brain in the form of dead erudition like a foreign body, and filling it with formulæ learnt by heart. such formulæ are ill-understood by children, and later on it is difficult for them to clear their brains of this indigestible rubbish to make room for the realities of observation and induction. the only punishments at the landerziehungsheime are those which naturally result from the fault committed. the pupils and their masters bathe together in a state of nature. the sexual question is treated openly in these schools in a proper, natural and logical way. the open confidence which obtains between masters and pupils, combined with free intellectual and physical work and the absolute exclusion of alcoholic drinks, constitute the best preventive and curative remedy for masturbation, sexual precocity and all perversions which are not hereditary. it is needless to say that such schools cannot cure a pathological sexual hereditary mneme, whether it consists in perversion, precocity or some other vice. every boarding school has its drawbacks, on account of the possible influence of mischievous individuals. nevertheless, no boarding school offers such excellent conditions as the landerziehungsheime, for as soon as a boy gives evidence of any sexual perversion, this perversion soon becomes well known, thanks to the good sense which prevails in the whole school.[ ] =standard of human value in the child.=--our pedagogy has hitherto not understood the true standard of human value. the social value of a man is composed of two groups of factors; mental and bodily hereditary dispositions, and faculties acquired by education and instruction. without sufficient hereditary dispositions, all efforts expended in learning a certain subject will generally fail more or less. without instruction and without exercise, the best hereditary dispositions will become atrophied, or will give indifferent results. but hereditary dispositions not only influence the different domains of knowledge, as the traditional pedagogues of our public schools seem to admit, they also act on all the domains of human life, especially on the mind. good dispositions in the domains of will, sentiment, judgment, imagination, perseverance, duty, accuracy, self-control, the faculty of thinking logically and distinguishing the true from the false, the faculty of combining æsthetic thoughts and sensations, all constitute human values which are much superior to the faculty of rapid assimilation or receptivity, and a good memory for words and phrases. nevertheless these last faculties are almost the only ones which are taken into consideration in our examinations, which decide nearly everything in our schools and universities. is it to be wondered at that, by the aid of such a false standard, mediocrities whose brains are only the echoes of their masters and those who bow to authority, climb to the highest official positions, and even to most of those positions which are not official? with a good memory and the gift of rapid comprehension, one can obtain everything, even without the protection of the clergy, freemasonry or any other powerful association or personality (male or female)! if they do not possess these natural secondary gifts, the most capable men, even men of genius, are passed over or only obtain a situation by circuitous routes and great efforts, after much loss of time. in the landerziehungsheime, dr. hermann-lietz uses a scale intended to estimate the psychological and social value of the pupils. first of all the results obtained from two standards are measured: (_a_) _individual_: does the actual value of work performed by the pupil always correspond to his faculties? (_b_) _objective_: is the work very good, good, mediocre or bad, compared with the normal human average? after this the different domains of psychology and human activity are passed in review, a thing which is quite possible in a school of this kind whose object is to carry out the integral education of man. . _bodily results_: health, disease, weight of body, activity, walking, running, swimming, cycling, games, ski, gymnastics. . _conduct_: order, cleanliness, punctuality. conduct outside, etc. . _moral and religious results_: conduct toward parents, masters, companions, self and others. veracity, zeal and sentiment of duty; honesty in the administration of his personal property and that entrusted to him; sentiment of solidarity and disinterestedness. is the pupil worthy of trust? is he conscientious? strength of moral sentiments, moral comprehension and moral will. . _intellectual results_: practical work; gardening, agriculture, carpentry, turning, locksmith's work, work in forge. drawing, writing, elocution, music. knowledge of literature and human nature, physics, mathematics and natural science. . _general results_: strength of character, physique and intelligence; faculty of observation, imagination and judgment. real value of practical work, artistic and scientific. measured by such a standard, the human value of a pupil takes quite another character to that judged by the results of examinations. by means of this standard, it is possible to predict with much more certainty what kind of man the child will become. there is no need to add that there are no examinations in these schools, for the whole life is a perpetual examination. samuel smiles, in "_self help_" relates that swift failed in his examinations, that james watt (the discoverer of the motive power of steam), stephenson and newton were bad pupils, that an edinburgh professor regarded walter scott as a dunce. [the same with darwin, who says in his autobiography, "when i left the school i was, for my age, neither high nor low in it, and i believe that i was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect."] these examples of the way in which the school of tradition judges human mental value might be multiplied a hundredfold, but they will suffice, especially if we compare them with the future of the distinguished pupils of colleges in practical life. these facts are not due so much to later development, as to the disgust inspired by our system of education in reflective minds which refuse to be overloaded with a heap of dry things learnt by heart, undigested, often hardly comprehensible, or open to contradiction. it is only on the basis of a just evaluation of man, from all points of view, that we can found a proper human selection. =coeducation.=--it is now beginning to be understood that the coeducation of the two sexes in schools, not only does no harm, but is very advantageous, both from the sexual and the moral points of view. in the universities it is already established. in children's schools and many primary schools it has always existed. it is especially the authorities of secondary schools who have raised opposition. in the secondary schools in holland and italy, as well as in some swiss gymnasiums, coeducation has been introduced without the least inconvenience; on the contrary, it has led to the best results. a native of finland, miss maikki friberg, has lately made an appeal in favor of coeducation based on the excellent results obtained in her country. some feared that sexual excitement would result; but this is an error, for the custom of daily co-existence of the sexes diminishes the sexual appetite. the forbidden fruit loses its charm as soon as it appears no longer to be forbidden! it is unnecessary to say that it is not intended that girls and boys should sleep in the same dormitories, nor bathe together in the costume of adam and eve! our remarks do not apply to boarding-schools, but to coeducation in public schools. when we speak of coeducation, we generally meet with the argument that the nature and vocation of women differ from those of men, and that consequently their education ought to differ. to this i reply as follows: the external objects of the world, the branches of human knowledge, in fact the subjects for study and instruction, are the same for both sexes. it is, therefore, both a useless waste of forces and an injustice to organize an inferior education for women. =instruction in coeducation.=--a course of instruction as interesting as possible should be organized for each subject, without distinction of sex. this rule should also apply to things which are generally considered as the special province of women; such as sewing, dressmaking, cooking, household work, etc. it will then be the business of each sex to choose the subject most suited to its abilities. part of the course of instruction should be obligatory for all, while another part intended for ulterior individual development should be optional, according to individual taste and talent. in the obligatory part of instruction certain subjects might be made obligatory for one sex and optional for the other; sewing and algebra, for instance. in this way each sex could choose the most suitable subjects, as is the case now in universities only. =danger of sexual perversions.=--a very important point, unfortunately little understood in sexual pedagogy, is that of congenital sexual perversions. tradition regards every sexual anomaly as an acquired vice, which should be treated by indignation and punishment. the effects of this manner of looking at the question are disastrous. it gives entirely wrong ideas to youth, and shuts the eyes of parents and teachers to the truth. it is not without a serious motive that i have described at length the repugnant phenomena of sexual pathology (chapter viii). teachers and parents should be thoroughly acquainted with this subject. but this is not enough, for these phenomena commence in infancy. it is a long time before the child whose sexual appetite is perverted has the least idea that his inclinations and desires are considered by others as abnormal. the psychic irradiations of his abnormal appetite usually constitute the sanctuary of his ideal aspirations and sentiments, the object of obscure hopes and struggles which are opposed to nature and the inclinations of his comrades. this is why he neither understands the world nor himself in this respect. his amorous exaltations are ridiculed, or else they inspire disgust. anxiety and shame alternate more and more with the perverse aspirations of his mind, which slowly increase. it is only when he arrives at the age of puberty that the pervert understands his exceptional position; he then feels that he is exiled from society, abandoned and without a future. he sees his ideal aspirations mocked by men and regarded as a ridiculous caricature or even as a culpable monstrosity. he is obliged to hide his passions like a criminal. as his character is often weak and impulsive, and is combined with a strong and precocious sexual appetite, he is very easily led astray, especially if he discovers suitable objects for his appetite, or perverted companions like himself. in this way, in secondary schools, we often find groups of young inverts who succeed by cunning in seducing their friends. the mention of these phenomena, which from time to time give rise to school scandals, should be enough to make any one who is unprejudiced understand the urgency for instructing children betimes in sexual questions. this is a duty which is necessary in the name of hygiene and morality. it is evident that if parents and masters exchange ideas on this subject with children, freely but decently, they will soon bring to light the sexual nature of the latter. they will discover which girls are cold and indifferent, and which are precociously erotic. it is needless to say that one should speak and act differently in the two cases. there is no risk in instructing the first on the whole sexual question, but prudence is required with the latter, who should be guarded against anything which stimulates their appetite, by warning them of the dangers of venereal disease, illegitimate children and seduction. we sometimes meet with young girls of hysterical nature with inverted inclinations, who become enamored of other girls and have a sexual repugnance for men. occasionally a sadist is discovered. among boys we observe analogous differences in the intensity and precocity of the sexual appetite. an attentive observer will frequently discover homosexual appetites in boys, for these are comparatively common. other perversions, such as sadism, masochism, fetichism and exhibitionism, etc., are more rarely met with. masturbation is common in both sexes. the great advantage of such discoveries is that children affected with sexual perversions can be put under special supervision, and above all things kept away from boarding schools, where they are subject to great temptations. an invert in a boarding-school is in reality almost in the same position as a young man who sleeps in the same room as young girls, and no one thinks of the danger. when perversion is recognized, the subject should not be treated as a criminal, nor even as a vicious individual, but as a patient afflicted with a nervous affection who is thereby dangerous to himself and others. he should be treated and prevented from becoming a center of infection for his surroundings. inverts should be specially supervised and taken care of till adult age. when they come of age, in my opinion, it would be an innocent idea to allow them to marry persons of their own sex, as they so much desire to do. normal adults can very well protect themselves against their attentions, when they are warned by sufficient instruction in sexual questions. the child, on the other hand, has the right to be protected against all contamination by perversion, as against all sexual assault of whatever nature, and it is the duty of society to organize its protection. but this cannot be done unless society is itself instructed on the question, and in a position to give a rational education to youth such as we have sketched above. if dangerous congenital perversions are discovered, such as sadism and pederosis, energetic measures of protection should be taken; in grave cases, the operations we have spoken of, or permanent internment. apart from suggestion, there is no better remedy against masturbation than a system of education such as that in force in the landerziehungsheime, especially continuous physical labor combined with useful and attractive intellectual occupation. when such a system of education is put in force at an early age, the sexual appetite develops more slowly and more moderately, and has the most favorable influence on the whole sexual life of man. in speaking of masturbation in chapter viii we have seen that it may be the expression of very different conditions, and we should act accordingly. =eroticism in childhood.=--by giving children betimes the requisite instruction on the sexual question, they are tranquilized. many boys and girls give themselves up to despair because of the erroneous and terrifying ideas they have of sexual affairs. on the one hand, they hear pornographic remarks which disgust them, while their parents envelop the subject in mystery; on the other hand, their sexual appetites evoke desire and call for satisfaction. when a young man in this state of mind has an emission, either spontaneously or as the result of artificial excitation, he is seized with anxiety and shame, often also with phantoms of disease and moral depravity. he then requires almost heroic resolution to unburden his mind to a doctor or to his father. with nervous subjects, inclined to be melancholic or hypochondriacal, such a state of mind sometimes leads to suicide. another advantage in the instruction of children in sexual matters is that the questions of heredity, alcohol and venereal disease can be explained to them at the same time. in giving these explanations it is important not to awaken eroticism in the child by dwelling more than necessary on sexual topics. instruction in this subject should not be given too frequently; on the contrary, the attention of youth should, as far as possible, be drawn away from sexual questions to other subjects, till the age of maturity. with the same object, erotic and pornographic literature should be condemned. unfortunately, many novels and dramas which meet with the approbation of society, thanks to their fashionable or even decent form of presentation, are often full of half-veiled eroticism, which is much more exciting to the sexual appetite than the brutal and realistic descriptions of zola or brieux, or even the erotic art of de maupassant. a doctor once told me that in his country the country children, who observed copulation among animals, often made similar attempts themselves, while bathing or otherwise. yet these country-people are no more corrupt or degenerate than the townspeople. here again, proper instruction and warnings would be the best remedy, especially in the case of girls. what is to be said, on the contrary, of certain austrian judges who punish by imprisonment urchins of fourteen, who have copulated with girls of the same age or made them pregnant? have they punished the real culprit? do they imagine that they have done anything that will improve these children? the confession of catholics plays a deplorable pedagogic part in the sexual domain. we may admit that some high-minded priests may be capable of modifying their interpretation of the prescriptions of liguori and others which we have cited, and do little or no harm to young people of either sex. it must, however, be recognized--and the most devout catholic cannot deny it--that priests are only human, and have not all the noble spirit nor the tact to fulfill the ideal required of them in their behavior toward women. this is enough to make the confessional, in many cases, a depraved institution from the sexual point of view. on this subject, i refer the reader to what has already been said in chapter xii on the experiences of the canadian reformer, father chiniqui. the following instance is very characteristic. a very prudish man, observing children of both sexes bathing together, exclaimed to them indignantly, that this was improper. thereupon a little boy replied naively: "we do not know which is a boy nor which is a girl, because we have no clothes." this charming reply shows how certain moral intentions are more likely to attract the attention of young people to erotic subjects. =corporal punishment and sadism.=--an important fact has recently attracted the attention of the whole world, concerning certain terrible crimes. there is no longer any doubt that in some cases perverted masters and teachers find satisfaction for their sadist sexual appetite in the corporal punishment of children. this was the case with the german teacher, dippold, who, to satisfy his perverted appetite flogged two children confided to him by their parents, till one of them died. the _arbeiter zeitung_, of vienna, a very conscientious journal, published the case of a prince of a small german state, who, whenever a schoolmaster ordered corporal punishment to a pupil, offered to execute it himself. the journal in question attributes with good reason this fantasy to sadism. again, many children were at one time belabored with blows for several years by a person who pretended to be a police agent, and who threatened them with prosecution if they complained. one boy more courageous than the others finally gave information, and the affair then ended. we thus see that sadism does not always manifest itself by assassination. its less dangerous forms in which pleasure is obtained by blows or some other form of bodily or mental ill-treatment, are no doubt much more common. they constitute a kind of complement to sexual desire in pathological individuals whose appetite is only partly perverted. this fact, which has hitherto not received sufficient attention, gives one more reason for the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, for the art of dissimulation and refinement of torture are unlimited in the sexually perverted. a thousand hypocritical pretexts serve to conceal their morbid appetite, and it has been proved by experience that they can succeed for a long time in deceiving even experts in this subject. this was the case with dippold and many others. corporal punishment of schoolboys is only useless and harmful brutality. it is a disgrace to civilization that it is still maintained at a time when the bastinado has been suppressed among convicts. =protection of childhood. child martyrs.=--children, especially when illegitimate or of another marriage, are often exposed to atrocious treatment in which alcohol and sexual passion, inconvenienced by the presence of the child, play a great part. i here refer the reader to the last work of lydia von wolfring.[ ] this author, who has made a special study of the judicial protection of children, makes the following propositions directed against parents and tutors who commit misdemeanors against children or pupils confided to them, or who incite the latter to commit misdemeanors, or who show themselves incapable of protecting them against others who abuse them in the manner indicated (this last condition applies especially to concubines, widows, etc.). ( ). withdrawal of paternal, maternal or tutelary authority and nomination of another tutor. ( ). complete withdrawal of children in grave cases. ( ). nomination of a "co-tutor" in all cases where a husband who survives his wife and has children who are minors, contracts a second marriage or lives in concubinage. ( ). withdrawal of paternal and sometimes maternal authority from all parents who leave the education of their children to public or private charity, unless compelled to do so by poverty. without having a direct bearing on our subject the above propositions contain the elements of an efficacious, though indirect, protection against the abuses committed toward children; for example, when parents urge their children to prostitution. as regards proposition , i refer to what i have said in chapter xiii. while authority over their children is withdrawn, unnatural parents of this kind should be obliged to work for their children's maintenance. =future possibilities.=--unfortunately we must admit that the programme of a sexual pedagogy for the future, such as we have sketched here, is very far from being realized. the landerziehungsheime, which should serve as examples for future state schools are still sparsely distributed, and it seems impossible to carry out universally a rational sexual education, till the state and the public are better informed on the subject and have got rid of their prejudices. this hope appears to be only the reflection of a distant future. in the meantime every one must do his best. parents, and some masters, can do much by free initiative. it is above all things necessary that young people who are interested in social reforms should not be satisfied with empty phrases, nor "play to the gallery." they should set the example in their own sexual relations, in condemning old customs which are opposed to true natural human ethics; they should show their adherence to sexual reforms by action and example, by raising objections to marriage for money, to the tyranny and formality of marriage, to prostitution, etc.; and they should attempt to put in force a healthy selection and a rational education such as we have indicated above. footnotes: [ ] vide.--ernest contou: _ecoles nouvelles et landerziehungsheime_, paris, ; wilhelm frey: _landerziehungsheime_, leipzig, ; forel: _hygiène des nerfs et de l'esprit_, stuttgart, . [ ] "das recht des kindes: vorschläge für eine gesetzliche regelung." _allgemeine österreichische gerichtszeitung_, . chapter xviii sexual life in art =the genesis of art.=--art represents in a harmonious form the movements of our sentimental life. the phylogeny of art is still very obscure; darwin attributes it to sexual attraction, through the efforts made by one sex to attract the other; but his arguments have never convinced me.[ ] aristotle recognized in art the principles of representation of the beautiful and of imitation. karl groos, of giessen, refutes darwin's hypothesis, and upholds the principle of the representation of self by sensations which relate to the subject, thus giving a tangible object to corresponding internal emotions (among animals, for example, the pleasure of hearing their own voice).[ ] the motor instinct and the movements executed in play seem to be among the most primitive autonomous creators of art. similar play is observed in ants. in man, groos attributes a considerable role to religious ecstasy and ecstasy in general, in the genesis of art. "since its object is to excite the sentiments, it is obvious that art utilizes from the first the domain which is richest in emotional sensations, that is the sexual domain." he shows at the same time that erotic subjects have a much more general and definite importance in highly developed art than in what we know of primitive art. groos is certainly right, for primitive eroticism was too coarse and sensual, too exclusively tactile to affect the mind as deeply and with such gradations of symphony as is the case with civilized man. this reason alone seems to me sufficient to support groos' view, which is also confirmed by the fact that primitive works of art contain very few erotic subjects. the more delicate art becomes the better it acts. the intensity of its action depends, however, more especially on the power with which it moves our feelings. art requires discord, not only in music, but elsewhere, in order to act more strongly on the human emotions by the effect of contrast. in describing the ugly it awakens desire for the beautiful. art should be spontaneous and exuberant with the truth of conviction; it should be free from mannerism and all dogmatism, intellectual or moral. the positive æsthetic sentiment, or sentiment of beauty is very relative, and depends essentially on the phylogenetic adaptation of the human sentiments, as well as on individual habits and popular customs. the odor of manure is no doubt pleasant to a farm laborer, but it is unpleasant to us. the male invert finds man more beautiful than woman. a savage or a peasant regards as beautiful what a cultured man considers ugly. the music of wagner or chopin is tiresome to a person with no musical education or ear, while a melomaniac goes into raptures over it. =erotic art.=--it is quite natural that the chord whose vibrations influence the most powerful human emotion--sexual love--has an infinite variety of vibrations in all forms of art. music gives expression to the sexual sensations and their psychic irradiations by tones representing desire, passion, joy, sadness, deception, despair, sacrifice, ecstasy, etc. in sculpture and painting it is love in all its shades which furnishes the inexhaustible theme; but it is in the domain of literature that love celebrates its triumphs, and often also its orgies. the novels and dramas in which it plays no part could be easily counted. i am not referring only to common novelettes, nor to those pot-house dramas which, in spite of repeating continually the same sentimental motives, always succeed in arousing the uncultivated sentiments of the masses. the greatest art aims at representing tragic, refined and complex conflicts of the human sexual sentiments and their irradiations, so as to awaken emotion by causing vibrations in the deepest chords of the human mind. among poets and authors i may mention shakespere, schiller, goethe, de musset, heine, gotthelf, and de maupassant; among musicians, mozart, beethoven, wagner, schumann, loewe; among painters, titian, murillo, boecklin; and sculptors such as those of the ancient greeks or the modern french school. art and pure intellect do not form an antinomy; they are associated together in the human mind as thought and sentiment, each preserving its own, though relative, independence. every artistic representation requires an intellectual foundation, in the same way as every sentiment is connected with ideas. the artist takes his subjects from the external world, from life, and from the events of all ages. he also utilizes the progress of science for the mechanism of his art. but, to transform the material into a complete picture, with a unity of action, where the different sentiments harmonize; to transform the work of art into a symbol of something human; to make the whole work speak to every mind capable of comprehending it, all this can only be the work of a great artist with creative genius. =art and morality.=--true art is in itself neither moral nor immoral. here we can well say--to the pure everything is pure. in the mirror of an impure mind, every work of art may appear as a pornographic caricature, while to the high-minded it is the incarnation of the noblest ideal. the fault is not with art and its products, but with nature and the peculiarities of many human brains, which deform everything they perceive, so that the most beautiful works of art only awaken in their pornographic minds cynical sexual images. =art and pornography.=--after having enunciated the preceding fundamental principles, we must examine the following facts, which have a special importance for the question with which we are dealing. under the banner of art are grouped a number of human enterprises which are far from deserving this honor. there are few great artists, but thousands of charlatans and plagiarists. many of those who have never had the least idea of the dignity of art, pander to the lower instincts of the masses and not to their best sentiments. in this connection, erotic subjects play a sad and powerful part. nothing is too filthy to be used to stimulate the base sensuality of the public. frivolous songs, licentious novels and plays, obscene dances, pornographic pictures, all without any trace of artistic merit, speculate on the erotic instinct of the masses in order to obtain their money. in these brothels of art, the most obscene vice is glorified, even pathological. unfortunately, this obscenity spoils the taste of the public and destroys all sense of true and noble art. at the bottom of all this degeneration of the sentiment of art and its products in the sexual domain, we always find on close examination, corruption by money and brutalism by alcohol. i say advisedly, the sentiment of art and the products of art, for it is not sufficient for true artists to create their masterpieces, it is also necessary for them to find an echo in the public, and be understood by them. the two phenomena go hand in hand, as supply and demand. when the sentiment of art is low among the public, the quality of the artistic production is also low, and inversely. professor behrens, director of the industrial school of art at dusseldorf, is in complete accord with me in the debasing effect of alcohol on the artistic sentiment. (_alkohol und kunst._) after establishing these facts, we return to the fundamental but delicate question: how is true erotic art to be distinguished from the pornographic? while certain ascetic and fanatical preachers of morality would burn and destroy all the erotic creations of art under the pretext that they are pornographic, other disciples of decadence defend the most ignoble pornography under the shield of art. i will cite two examples which have already been mentioned previously (chapter xiii). in a very primitive and bigoted region of the tyrol, certain undraped, but very innocent, statues of women were erected in the streets. feeling their modesty deeply wounded, and regarding the representation of the natural human body as a great inducement to misconduct, the peasants of the district broke up these statues. the same with the captain of police at zurich, who made himself notorious by ordering the removal of the picture by boecklin, entitled "the sport of the waves," regarding the two mermaids in the picture as a danger to the morality and virtue of the citizens of zurich! i designate by the term charlatanism, everything which consists in decorating or covering by the term art, all possible perversions of pornography, often pathological. persons of artistic nature, dominated by emotional sentiments, will no doubt be excused for being often overexcited to a more or less pathological degree, for executing all kinds of fantastic vagaries in their sexual life, and for being capricious and excessive in love. these things are almost inseparable from the artistic temperament. but the systematic education of pornography, and the sexual orgies which are cynically made public, go decidedly beyond what is licit, and cannot be included in the scope of art without degrading it. the individual and pathological failings of artists and the eccentricities to which they often become victims, must not be confounded with art and its products. on the other hand, we often find eroticism hidden where we should least expect it, for instance in certain books for the edification of the pious. here also it does not fail to produce its effect, although old maids and pious families place these books in their libraries and recommend them as proper reading. it has been said with reason, that "what is improper in the nudity of a statue is the fig-leaf and not what is underneath." it is, in fact, these fig-leaves--sculptured, painted, written or spoken--which awaken lewdness rather than deaden it. by drawing attention to what they conceal, they excite sensuality much more than simple nudity. in short, the eroticism which plays at hide and seek is that which acts with greatest intensity. the directors of ballets and other similar spectacles know this only too well, and arrange accordingly. i have seen at the paris exposition an arab woman perform the erotic dance called the "danse du ventre," in which the various movements of coitus are imitated by movements of the hips and loins. i do not think, however, that this pantomime, as cynical as it is coarse, produces on the spectators such an erotic effect as the _décolleté_ costumes of society ladies, or even certain amorous scenes of religious ecstasy in words or pictures (vide chapter xii). as the "danse du ventre" was produced under the head of _ethnology_, it was witnessed by society ladies without their being in the least degree wounded in their sentiments of modesty! it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit between art and pornography. i will attempt to give an example. in his novels and romances, guy de maupassant has given perhaps the finest and most true descriptions which exist of the psychology of love and the sexual appetite. although he has depicted the most ticklish sexual situations, often most _recherché_, we can say that with few exceptions he has not written in a pornographic spirit. his descriptions are profound and true, and he does not attempt to make attractive what is ugly and immoral, although he cannot be blamed for moralizing. we have seen that the old hypocritical eroticism consisted essentially in the art of describing sexual forbidden fruit and making it as desirable as possible, at the same time covering it with pious phrases which were only a transparent mask. vice was condemned, but described in such a way as to make the reader's mouth water. there is nothing of this in guy de maupassant, nor in zola. by their tragic descriptions, they provoke disgust and sadness in the reader, rather than sensuality. it is otherwise with the illustrations which de maupassant's publisher has added to his works and which are frankly pornographic. these are not fair to the author. another comparison shows, perhaps, still better the uncertainty of the line of demarcation between pornography and art. if we compare heine with de maupassant, i think we must admit that, in spite of the refinement of his art, the pornographic trait is incomparably stronger in the former, because heine continually loses the thread of moral sense which impregnates most of the works of de maupassant. the latter author emphasizes evil and injustice in the sexual question. the refined art of the greeks contains much eroticism and much nudity, but there is nothing whatever immoral in either. innocence and beauty are so apparent that no one can think of evil. when we look at the antique statues of the greek sculptors; when we read homer, especially the story of ares and aphrodite; when we read the bucolic idyll of daphnis and chloe, we can no longer have any doubt on the point. it is not nudity, it is not the natural description of sexual life, but the obscene intention of the artist, his improper and often venal object, which has a demoralizing effect. finally, i repeat that the purest artistic creation may serve as a pornographic theme for every individual who is accustomed to introduce into his parodies his own depravity, immorality and obscene sentiments. i do not deny that in antiquity, especially at the time of the decadence of rome, pornography and cynical coarseness often ruled in the sexual domain. history and the ruins of pompeii give abundant evidence of it. but such phenomena occurred at the periods of decadence. who then can decide where art ends and pornography begins, or how far eroticism may without danger be expressed in art? this question is so difficult and delicate that i am unable to answer it with sufficient competence. i think that when the reign of capitalism and alcohol has come to an end, the danger of pornography will be reduced enormously. i believe we ought to avoid extremes in both directions. wherever pornography manifests itself in a purely cynical way, denuded of all art, society can and should suppress it. when it appears under an artistic mantle, it should be possible in each particular case to weigh the artistic merit of the work against its immoral tendencies, taking all other accessory circumstances into account, in order to decide the real weight of each of these elements. the corrupting action should also be carefully considered, which experience proves to have been exerted on the public by certain so-called works of art, or artistic exhibitions, as for example certain _cafés chantants_, etc. =pathological art.=--the progressively pathological nature of certain productions of modern art constitute without any doubt a vicious feature; a fact of special importance in the sexual question. witness what i have said concerning the poet baudelaire. erotic art ought not to become a hospital for perverts and sexual patients, and should not lead these individuals to regard themselves as interesting specimens of the human race. it should not make heroes of them, for in acting thus, it only confirms their morbid state, and often contaminates healthy-minded people. a great number of novels, and even modern pictures, deserve the reproach of being pornographic works. in these are described, or painted, beings that we meet in hospitals for nervous diseases, or even in lunatic asylums, but more often phantoms which only exist in the pathological mind of the author. no doubt, art should not allow itself to be instructed in morality by pedagogues and ascetics; but, on the other hand, artists ought not to forget the high social mission of their art, a mission which consists in elevating man to the ideal, not in letting him sink into a bog. =the moral effect of healthy art.=--art has great power, for man is directed by sentiment much more than by reason. art should be healthy; it should rise toward the heavens and show the public the road to olympus--not the olympus of superstition, but that of a better humanity. it is not necessary for this that it should diminish the energy of its eternal theme--love. no truly moral man would wish to eliminate the seasoning of eroticism whenever artistic necessity requires it, but art should never prostitute itself in the service of venal obscenity and degeneration. as to the manner in which it attains its object, while holding to its fundamental principles, that is its own affair, the business of the true artist. i cannot, however, in my capacity as a naturalist, refrain from giving a little modest advice to certain modern artists; that when they wish to take for the subject of their works the themes of social morality, medicine or science, they should avoid previous study of their subject in scientific books; that they should follow the example of de maupassant and begin by living themselves the situations which they wish to depict, before beginning to model their work. without this they will completely fail in artistic effect, and will become bad theorists, bad scientists, bad moralists and bad social politicians, at the same time ceasing to be good artists. if maeterlinck's "life of bees" is a fine work of art, it is not only because the author is a distinguished writer, but because he was himself acquainted with bees, being an apicultor, and did not make his book a mere compilation of other scientific works. along with the struggle against the debasing influence of money and alcohol, the elevation of the artistic sentiment among the public will contribute strongly to condemn pornographic "æsthetics." the false and unnatural sentimentalism, spiced with erotic lewdness, which is displayed in the trash offered to the public under the title of "art," fills every man who possesses the least artistic sense with disgust. disgust evidently constitutes a beneficial mental medicine in the domain of art, and we cannot agree with the severe and ascetic minds who think that true morality has nothing to do with art, or even that everything moral should be destitute of art. these people are completely deceived and unwittingly promote pornography, by repelling humanity with their austerity and driving it to the opposite extreme. the æsthetic and moral sentiments should be harmoniously combined with intelligence and will, each of these departments of the mind participating by its special energies in the elevation of man. =anticonceptional measures from the Æsthetic point of view.=--in conclusion, i will refer to a subject which is perhaps not quite in its place in this chapter. the anticonceptional measures recommended for reasons of social hygiene, which tend to regulate conceptions and improve their quality, have been often condemned, sometimes as immoral, sometimes as contrary to æsthetics. to interfere in this way with the action of nature is said to injure the poetry of love and the moral feeling, and at the same time to disturb natural selection. there are several replies to these objections: in the first place, it is wrong to maintain that man cannot encroach on the life of nature. if this were the case, the earth would now be a virgin forest and a great many animals and plants would not have been adapted to the use of man. our fields, our gardens and our domestic animals would die, instead of bearing fruit and multiplying as they do at present. the naturalist has much more fear of seeing rare and interesting wild plants and animals exterminated from the face of the earth by the egoistic and pitiless hand of man. he seeks in vain the means of checking this work of destruction. we have proved without the least deference, often with a brutal hand, to the misfortune of art and poetry, that we are capable of successfully intermeddling with the machinery of nature, even in what concerns our own persons. i shall not return here to the subject of ethics. in chapter xv, i have sufficiently shown how false is our present sexual morality, and i have proved in chapter xiv the absolute necessity of measures to regulate conception in order to realize an efficacious social sexual morality. the æsthetic argument appears at first sight more valid; it is unnecessary, however, to discuss matters of taste. spectacles are certainly not particularly æsthetic; nevertheless the poetry of love does not suffer much from their use, and when one is shortsighted or longsighted one cannot do without them. great artists wear spectacles. it is the same with false teeth, with clothes, with bicycles and a hundred other artificial things which man makes use of to make his life more easy. so long as they are novel and unusual they wound the æsthetic sentiment; but when we become accustomed to them we no longer take notice of them. man has even come to regard as æsthetic, women's corsets which deform their chests, and pointed shoes which deform the feet. i am certain that the first man who mounted a horse was accused by his contemporaries of committing an act contrary to æsthetics! from all points of view, the details of coitus leave much to be desired from the æsthetic point of view, and such a slight addition as a membranous protective does not appear to make any serious difference. it is impossible for me to recognize the validity of such an objection, which i attribute to the prejudice against anything which disturbs our habits. footnotes: [ ] see also lameere "_l'Évolution des ornements sexuels_," . [ ] "die anfänge der kunst und die theorie darwins." _hessiche blätter für volkskunde_, vol. iii, part . chapter xix conclusions =utopia and the realizable ideal.=--the term utopia may be applied to every ideal project elaborated by human imagination for the future welfare of society, which has no healthy and real foundation, is contrary to human nature and the results of experience, and has consequently no chance of success. persons of conservative minds who live in prejudice and in the faith of authority apply the term utopia to every ideal which has not been legalized and sanctioned by time, custom, or authority. this is a grave error, which, if it always prevailed, would bar the way to all social progress. as regards the ideal, the future may realize much progress that the past has not known, and on this point ben akiba was wrong in saying that "there is nothing new under the sun." international communication, universal postage, the suppression of slavery in civilized countries, the artificial feeding of new-born infants, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, etc., are realized advances which had formerly never appeared on the horizon of humanity, and which would have been regarded as impossible fantasies, or utopias. why should the common use of an international language and the suppression of war between civilized countries be utopias? the most diverse races already speak english, and all might learn esperanto. in the interior of countries such as france and germany, etc., the old feudal wars ceased long ago. why should a more and more international union between men be impossible? why should the suppression of the use of narcotic substances such as alcohol, opium, hashish, etc., which poison entire nations, be utopian? why should it be the same with the economic reform desired by socialists, that is the equitable division of wages; for example, by the aid of a coöperative system or by the reduction of capital to a minimum? these things are all possible, and even necessary for the natural and progressive development of humanity. it is only the prejudice of old customs, based on the conservative tendency of sentiments, which opposes these projects and tries to ridicule them by calling them utopian. in its shortsightedness, it does not see the change which occurs all over the world in the social relations of men, or does not estimate them at their true value, and it cannot abandon its old idols. lastly, why should rational reforms in the sexual domain be more difficult to realize than the artificial feeding of infants, than the actual triumphs of surgical operations, than sero-therapy, than vaccination, etc.? in the same way that shortsighted and longsighted persons wear spectacles, or those who have no teeth use artificial ones, so may men who are tainted by hereditary disease employ preventatives in coitus to avoid the procreation of a tainted progeny; and the same means may be employed to give women time to recover their strength after each confinement. =résumé.=--let us briefly recapitulate the matter contained in the chapters of this book: ( ). in the first five chapters i have given an account of the natural history, anatomy and functions of the reproductive organs, and the psychology of sexual life. ( ). in chapter vi, i have given (chiefly according to westermarck) a _résumé_ of ethnography and the history of sexual relations in the different human races. ( ). in chapter vii, i have attempted to trace the zoölogical evolution of sexual life along the line of our animal ancestors, and to briefly describe the evolution of sexual life in the individual, from birth till death. i have thus endeavored to acquaint the reader with the two sources of our sexual sensations and sentiments--the hereditary or phylogenetic source, and the source acquired and adapted by the individual. ( ). in chapter viii, i have described the pathology of sexual life, because this concerns social life much more than is generally supposed. ( ). in chapters ix to xviii, i have explained the relations of sexual life to the most important spheres of human sentiments and interests, to suggestion, money and property, to the external conditions of life, to religion, law, medicine, morality, politics, political economy, pedagogy and art. incidentally, i have glanced at the social organizations and customs which depend on these relations. if we sum up the results obtained, we can draw from them a series of conclusions which we will divide into two groups: negative tasks _suppression of the direct or indirect causes of sexual evils and abuses, and the social vices which correspond to them_ the corruption into which a semi-civilization has plunged humanity, by facilitating the means of obtaining satisfaction for its unbridled passion for pleasure, is maintained by the latter itself. but in the long run, the unlimited abandonment of the individual to pleasure cannot be in accord with the welfare and progress of society. this is the knotty point. it is necessary for a better social organization to artificially restrain the passion for pleasure, at the same time raising the social quality of men; that is to say, their altruism or instinct (social ethics). we can only expect immediately the first of these two objects; but we have seen that it is possible to prepare the second for the future, by neglecting none of the factors of social salvation. we have become acquainted with the most important roots of sexual degeneration, due to semi-civilization. i use the word "semi-civilization" because our present culture is still very incomplete and has hardly done more than skim over the surface of the masses. men of higher culture have overcome the maladies of infancy of civilization much better than the uneducated masses, and it is precisely this fact which should give us courage and confidence in a future in which a true higher culture will be the appanage of all. the roots of degeneration are either directly or indirectly associated with sexual life. it is our duty to declare war of extermination against all of them, and not to cease this contest before reducing them to their natural primitive minimum. the following are the chief evils to be contended against. = . the cult of money.=--we have recognized the primary sources of degeneration in the historical development of humanity and its sexual life (chapters vi and x). they consist in the exploitation of man by man, in the desire of possessing riches and power, which become the source of marriage by purchase and by abduction, of prostitution and all the modern requirements by the aid of which is cultivated the passion for sexual pleasures, thanks to the power of money. the priests and disciples of mammon lie when they say that their god--the golden calf--is the most powerful stimulus to work and the principal promoter of culture. if we look closer we see the contrary. men of genius, thinkers, inventors and artists are urged to work by their hereditary instinct, by true love of the ideal and thirst for knowledge. the disciples of mammon, on the watch for the discoveries and creations of these men, rob them not only of the fruit of their work, but often of the honors which belong to them. intellectual robbery is added to pecuniary robbery. these are the methods of "mammonism," which must be seen to be appreciated; and we are told that this kind of industry should be the only stimulus to human work and culture! no doubt, the unbridled lust for gain urges men to feverish activity; but this kind of zeal, which is nearly always associated with the passion for pleasure, and only works to obtain the means of satisfying it, is unhealthy. it is necessary for other factors to act in stimulating human work. fortunately these forces exist, and can be found, for without work there can be no culture, social progress nor happiness. the worship of the golden calf, the utilization of accumulated wealth as a means of exploiting the work of others for individual interest, is therefore the primary and principal root of social degeneration, marriage for money, prostitution and all their corrupt associations. if this root is not torn out, humanity will never succeed in the sanitation of sexual matters. the struggle against the exaggerated modern legal rights of capital, and the abuses which result from it, is therefore one of the most important tasks to be accomplished in order to lead indirectly to the sanitation of sexual intercourse. = . the use of narcotics.=--the habit of using narcotic poisons, especially alcohol, leads to the physical and moral degeneration of men, a degeneration which not only affects the individuals concerned, but also their germinal cells and consequently their offspring. i have designated this degeneration by the term _blastophthoria_. blastophthoria is intimately connected with sexual phenomena, and thanks to it, the individual influence of these poisons may extend to many generations. a single radical remedy would be easy to apply, if men were not so much the slaves of their habits and prejudices, of capital and the passion for pleasure. all narcotic substances, especially distilled and fermented drinks, should be abolished as a means of pleasure and relegated to pharmacy, in which they may still be used as remedies, with special precautions. alcohol may also be used for industrial purposes. science has proved that even the most moderate indulgence in alcohol disturbs the association of ideas, and renders them more superficial, without the subject being aware of it. this slight degree of alcoholic narcosis causes in man a temporary feeling of pleasure and gayety to which he soon becomes accustomed. in this way there is created in him a desire for more, too often with increasing doses. most narcotics, especially alcohol (either fermented or distilled), have the peculiarity of exciting the sexual appetite in a bestial manner, thereby leading to the most absurd and disgusting excesses, although at the same time they weaken the sexual power. the transient pleasure produced by these substances is, therefore, of no real and lasting advantage, while it results in the most terrible individual and social miseries. societies for total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks have undertaken a war of extermination against the use of all poisons used for purposes of pleasure, when experience has proved their social danger. let us hope that they will succeed; then a second fundamental root of degeneration of sexual life will be destroyed. = . the emancipation of woman.=--a third source of sexual anomalies is due to the inequality of the rights of the two sexes. this can only be attacked by the complete emancipation of women. in no kind of animal is the female an object possessed by the male. nowhere in nature do we find the slave-law which subordinates one sex to the other. even among ants, where the male, on account of his great physical inferiority, is very dependent on the workers, the latter do not impose on him any constraint. we have already refuted the argument which is based on the intellectual inferiority of woman. the emancipation of women is not intended to transform them into men, but simply to give them their human rights, i might even say their natural animal rights. it in no way wishes to impose work on women nor to make them unaccustomed to it. it is as absurd to bring them up as spoilt children as it is cruel to brutalize them as beasts of burden. it is our duty to give them the independent position in society which corresponds to their normal attributes. their sexual role is so important that it gives them the right to the highest social considerations in this domain. i will not repeat what i have said in chapter xiii, but simply state categorically that, when women have acquired in society rights and duties equal to those of men (in accordance with sexual differences), when they can react freely according to their feminine genius, in a manner as decisive as men, on the destinies of the community, a third fundamental root of present sexual abuses will be suppressed. the complete emancipation of woman thus constitutes our third principal postulate, and in this i am in accord with westermarck, secretan and many other eminent persons. the difference which exists between the two sexes does not give any reasonable excuse to man for monopolizing all social and political rights. the external world and our fellow beings, by whom and for whom we live in body and mind, are the same for woman as for man, so that even when the mentality of one sex is on the average a little higher than that of the other, the first cannot claim the right of refusing the second the liberty of living and acting from the social point of view according to her own genius. the two sexes differ in many respects it is true; on the other hand, all legal and consequently artificial constraint of one by the other has the effect of hindering the free development of both. each sex has the right to look upon the world and assimilate it according to its nature. it can thus develop its personality so that it does not become etiolated and atrophied like a domestic animal. it is only the right of the stronger, cultivated by narrow-minded prejudice, that can deny or misunderstand these facts. the legal restrictions which we impose on woman, on her mentality and her whole life, especially her conjugal life, have nothing in common with the just restrictions which the law should provide against the encroachments of individual egoism, which injure the rights of others or those of society. = . prejudice and tradition.=--there is still another enemy opposed to reform, which is so deeply rooted in human nature that we can only hope for a slow improvement in the quality of men, by its progressive weakening. i refer to the host of prejudices, traditional customs, mystic superstitions, religious dogmas, fashions, etc. i should require many pages of moral preaching to deal with all the vices which are perpetually created and supported by the wretched tendency of the human mind to sanctify every ancient tradition and consider it as unalterable. prejudice, faith in authority, mysticism, etc., with conscious or unconscious hypocrisy, and by the aid of more or less transparent sophisms, place themselves at the service of the basest human passions--envy, hatred, vanity, avarice, lewdness, scandal, desire of domination and idleness--and clothe them all with the sacred mantle of ancient customs, the better to sanction their ignominy by relying on the authority of tradition. there is no infamy which has not been justified, glorified or even deified in this way. i am convinced that it is only by the introduction of the scientific spirit, of an inductive and philosophical manner of thinking, into schools and among the masses, that we shall be able to contend efficaciously with the routine and parrot-like repetitions which are rooted in the worship of authoritative doctrines and prejudices based on the sanctity of what is old. we have already sufficiently dealt with the superannuated prejudices and customs to be contended with in the sexual domain, and need not return to them. the whole of this category of causes of evil, a category which also plays a great part in all other domains of human life, can only, therefore, be contended with by true science combined with an integral and free education of the character of youth. i must once again insist on the necessity of a fight to a finish on this ground. it is necessary for this that scientists should from time to time emerge from their sanctums, and let their lights shine in the whirlpool of human society. they must take part in social conflicts and avoid losing touch with what is and always will be human. the following postulates relate to aberrations and dangers which are more partial or more local. = . pornography.=--in chapters v, x and xviii, i have spoken of pornography, and in chapter xvii, of its great danger to the development of a normal sexual life in youth. although pornography owes much of its origin and development to the greed for gain, it must not be forgotten that, on the other hand, masculine eroticism tends to promote its mercantile interests. it is the duty of society to oppose the pornographic products of morbid eroticism, without imposing the least constraint on true art. the sexual appetite of man is on the average rather strong; we may even say that it is much too strong, compared with the social necessities of procreation. it is, therefore, quite superfluous to artificially stimulate it. the struggle against pornography must, therefore, be raised to the rank of a postulate. we must not forget, however, that we shall contend with it much more successfully by fulfilling our first four postulates, and in raising the artistic ideal and feeling in man, than by direct measures of suppression. the latter should be limited to the most coarse and corrupt productions of pornography. = . politics and sexual life.=--i need only remind the reader of the encroachments of politics on sexual life, and especially of the abuse of sexual influence in the domain of politics. it is needless to point out the necessity of opposing all useless intermeddling of the state in the sexual life of individuals by the aid of unjustifiable regulations, as well as all intervention in the natural sexual requirements of man (in marriage, etc.), when no individual or social interest is injured. what is much more difficult, is to prevent the pressure of sexual sympathies and antipathies, and especially of amorous passions in politics. = . venereal disease.=--there is need for a great combat with venereal disease and pathological corruptions of the sexual appetite. (vide chapters viii, xiii and xiv.) sexual criminals should be treated conjointly with the pathology of the sexual appetite, and in the same manner; for it is nearly always a question of anomalies of the human brain, which are impossible to improve or eliminate by punishment or other penal measures. for the present, medical and administrative measures of restriction, undertaken by society against dangerous and degenerate individuals in the sexual domain, are the only possible remedy. we should also endeavor in the future to prevent such individuals from breeding and suppress the causes of blastophthoria, by the aid of our second postulate. = . the conflict of human races.=--there remains a last postulate, extremely arduous and serious, which we have already mentioned. how is our aryan race and its civilization to guard against the danger of being passively invaded and exterminated by the alarming fecundity of other human races? one must be blind not to recognize this danger. to estimate it at its proper value, it is not enough to put all "savages" and "barbarians" into one basket and all "civilized" into the other. the question is far more complicated than this. many savage and semi-savage races become rapidly extinct on account of their comparative sterility. europeans have introduced among them so much alcohol, venereal disease and other plagues, that they promptly perish from want of the power of resistance. this is the case with the weddas, the todas, the redskins of north america, the australian aboriginees, malays and many others. the question presents itself in another aspect with regard to negroes, who are very resistant and extremely prolific, and everywhere adapt themselves to civilized customs. but those who believe that negroes are capable of _acquiring_ a higher civilization without undergoing a phylogenetic cerebral transformation for a hundred thousand years, are utopians. i cannot here enter into the details of this question. it seems obvious to me, however, that in the already considerable time during which the american negroes have been under the influence of european culture, they ought to have often demonstrated their power of assimilating it and of developing it independently, according to their own genius, if their brains were capable of so doing. instead of this, we find that negroes in the interior of the island of haiti, formerly civilized by france, then abandoned to themselves, have, with the exception of a few mulattoes, reverted to the most complete barbarism, and have even barbarized the french language and christianity, with which they had been endowed. compare with this the rapidity with which a civilized or civilizable race, depending on its innate energy, assimilates our culture with or without christianity! we need only look at what has happened in japan during the last thirty years, and what the christian races of the balkan countries have been doing after delivery from the yoke of the turks--for example, the roumanians, bulgarians and greeks. it is by its fruits that we judge the value of the tree. the japanese are a civilizable and civilized race, and must be treated as such. the negroes, on the contrary, are not so; that is to say, they are only by themselves capable of quite an inferior civilization, and only become adapted to our customs by a superficial veneer of civilization. up to what point can the mongolian, and even the jewish race, become mixed with our aryan or indo-germanic races, without gradually supplanting them and causing them to disappear? this is a question i am incapable of answering. if it were only a question of the japanese there would be no serious difficulty and the assimilation would be beneficial. but the chinese and some other mongolian races constitute an imminent danger for the very existence of the white races. these people eat much less than ourselves, are contented with much smaller dwellings, and in spite of this produce twice as many children and do twice as much work. the connection of this with the sexual question is not difficult to understand. possibly we might make a compact with the mongols, and the chinese in particular, which would allow both races to live on the earth without annihilating each other. i am quite convinced that we have more to fear from their blood and their work than from their arms. some time ago experts in far-eastern questions predicted that the world would end by becoming chinese. positive tasks the elimination of the abuses and dangers, pointed out under the heading of negative tasks, would prepare the soil for a healthier and more ideal development of the sexual relations of humanity in the future. these require the prevention of blastophthoric deterioration of germ cells, as well as all pathological degeneration of sexual intercourse. they also require true and natural affection, free from the influences of prejudice and money, and capable of surviving amorous intoxication. lastly, they require a natural human organization, adapted to the social welfare, the duties of parents toward their children, and the rights they have over them. =human selection.=--this is impossible to attain without recourse to artificial means, which have hitherto been generally condemned, or employed with an unhealthy and corrupt object. i refer to the distinction between satisfaction of the sexual appetite and the procreation of children. although it is true that the two things are inseparably connected in plants and animals, it is equally true that the culture and social development of humanity all over the world have given rise to conditions and necessities other than those which formerly existed, conditions which at the present day are so clearly evident that they cannot be disregarded. the struggle for existence, as it obtains between the different animal species, hardly exists any longer in man. the latter has now to fight with microbes, and other infinitely small things of the same nature. the combat between man and man, in the form of international warfare, is approaching its end. the wars of the present day, as foolish as they are formidable, are rapidly becoming absurd. we may even hope that the supreme struggle which is impending between the aryan and mongolian races will end in peaceful agreement. is it, therefore, rational to abandon the quantitative and qualitative regulation of the procreation of children to natural selection--that is to say to brutal chance, disease, famine or infanticide--at a time of human evolution when science contends with the greatest success against accident, disease, infant mortality and famine? our strong sexual appetite is no longer in proportion to the exigencies of procreation, nor to the means of providing food for our descendants, nor to the right of the latter to better or even tolerable existence, for the simple reason that the weak, the diseased and the children are no longer eliminated as in former times among primitive races by infanticide, epidemics, wild-beasts, neglect or war (it is now the strong and courageous who are eliminated by the latter). but it is not in our power to modify our instinctive and hereditary sexual appetite, while we have always at hand the necessary means to regulate and improve procreation. no prejudice, no dogma, no repetition of old maxims, based on so-called immutable natural laws, can stand against such simple and elementary truths. we like to call "natural laws" what to our limited knowledge appears regular in nature. we formulate a law, and too often make an idol, instead of always making further examinations, in the light of new truths, to see if these so-called laws hold good. but the new truths are there, crying for recognition. the sheet-anchor is in our hands, in the form of measures to prevent or regulate conception. we must, therefore, have recourse to these measures, with prudence, employing them only at first where they are most necessary, and especially insisting on the procreation of numerous children wherever mental and moral strength is combined with bodily health. in this connection i am strongly opposed to the neo-malthusians, who simply propose to diminish the number of births indiscriminately, as well as to the religious dogmas, especially catholic, which, under the fallacious pretext of so-called divine inspiration, would hinder the progress of the social sciences. human selection is the principle which should lead us to the object to be attained in the remote future. it is not by legal constraint, but by universal instruction, that we shall obtain general recognition and acceptance of this principle. we have proved in chapter vi, with regard to sexual selection, that women are much more exclusive in their choice than men, and that among savages they prefer courage and bodily strength. at the present day, owing to change of customs, cultured and intelligent women are, on the contrary, much less attracted by man's physical strength than by his intellectual superiority or genius. this gives us a very important indication of the selection we desire, and confirms the necessity of instructing women in sexual matters. i foresee that the enlightened and intelligent women are those who will support human selection with the greatest energy and success. i repeat here that it is not our object to create a new human race of superior beings, but simply to cause gradual elimination of the unfit, by suppressing the causes of blastophthoria, and sterilizing those who have hereditary taints by means of a voluntary act; at the same time urging healthier, happier and more social men to multiply more and more. a profound study of blastophthoria and all the phenomena of the mneme and normal heredity leaves no doubt on the possibility of attaining this object. is not the quality of dogs improved by breeding from the good and eliminating the bad? are not certain families distinguished in their character, work and intelligence, because for many generations their ancestors have preserved these qualities and maintained the family type by means of careful marriages? on the other hand, are not cowardice, falseness and meanness, etc., reproduced with quite as much certainty in other families? i refer the reader to the description given by jörger of the disastrous effects of alcoholic blastophthoria and bad heredity produced during nearly two centuries in the numerous members of a family of vagabonds (vide chapter xi). one must be blinded by religious prejudice to deny such striking truths. no doubt, our pathological degenerations and our cross-breeding are so infinitely complex that at any time atavism may produce ecphoria of better children derived from bad parents, and that of inferior children derived from better parents. we have seen in the first chapter the complex relations which exist between these phenomena. we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the appearances of certain particular cases. what then are the types of men which we should endeavor to produce? =types to eliminate.=--first of all we must understand that negative action is much easier than positive. it is more easy to mention the types which should not be allowed to multiply than those which should. these are, in the first place, all criminals, lunatics, and imbeciles, and all individuals who are irresponsible, mischievous, quarrelsome or amoral. these are the persons who do the most harm in society, and introduce into it the most harmful taints. it is the same with alcoholics, opium-eaters, etc., who, although often capable in other respects, are dangerous by their blastophthoric influence. here the only remedy consists in the suppression of the use of narcotics, for it is no use eliminating a few narcotized individuals as long as a greater number is always being produced. persons predisposed to tuberculosis by heredity, chronic invalids, the subjects of rickets, hemophilia, and other persons incapable of procreating a healthy race owing to inherited diseases or bad constitution, form a second category of individuals who ought to avoid propagation, or do so as little as possible. =types to perpetuate.=--on the other hand, men who are useful from the social point of view--those who take a pleasure in work and those who are good tempered, peaceful and amiable should be induced to multiply. if they are endowed with clear intelligence and an active mind, or with an intellectual or artistic creative imagination, they constitute excellent subjects for reproduction. in such cases certain taints which are not too pronounced may be passed over. true will-power, _i.e._, perseverance in the accomplishment of rational resolutions, and not the tyrannical and obstinate spirit of domination, is also one of the most desirable qualities which ought to be reproduced. will-power must not be confounded with impulsiveness, which is rather the antinomy of it, but often deceives superficial observers, and makes them believe in the existence of a strong will, because of the violent manner in which it tries to realize momentary impulsive resolutions. =human social value.=--we have seen that, owing to traditional routine, the intellectual merit of a young man is unfortunately judged by the results of examinations. to succeed in these, a good memory and strong mental receptivity are all that is necessary. it follows from this that nonentities often attain the highest social positions, while originality, creative power, perseverance, honesty, responsibility and duty take a back place. i refer the reader to what i have said on the estimation of human value, especially in the landerziehungsheime (chapter xvi). they should be estimated according to their utility in practical social life, where the qualities of will and creative imagination play a more considerable part than memory and rapidity in assimilating the ideas of others. but we have seen that the standard of ordinary examinations is false, even as regards pure intelligence. critical judgment and imaginative power of combination have a much greater intellectual value than memory or the power of assimilation. it is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the boy who is at the top of his class so often turns out a failure, while the dunce who failed in his examinations sometimes becomes a genius or at any rate a very useful and capable man. from such facts, which are extremely common, it is falsely concluded, by a kind of fatalism, that "one never knows what will become of a man, for personalities change so much." this false conclusion is simply due to the erroneous criterion which is used in the evaluation of childhood, combined with the disgust inspired in strong and original minds by our schools. diseases and other accidents may sometimes hinder the development of good dispositions, or even cause them to abort completely. nevertheless, we shall rarely make false prophecies if we begin by avoiding the gross errors that we have pointed out in the mental evaluation of youth. it is also necessary to institute extensive psychological observations on the development of individuals, and in the value of their work at adult age compared with their peculiarities observed in childhood. i am certain that in this way the social value of a young man, or even a child, and in general all members of human society, could be calculated in advance in a more exact way. =domestic animals and plants.=--the weak constitution of the domestic varieties of plants and animals has been used as an argument against human selection. if the animal and vegetable varieties which we raise by artificial selection have not enough strength when left to themselves, this is due to the fact that in creating them we have not consulted their interests in the struggle for existence, but only our own. for example, we raise for our own use fat pigs which can scarcely walk, pear trees with succulent fruit which has very few seeds, etc. it is obvious that these monstrosities cannot be expected to maintain themselves in the struggle for existence. human selection, on the contrary, is only concerned with what is advantageous for man, individually as well as socially. it is, therefore, not a question of a utopian hypothesis, but of facts, the daily consequences of which we can observe in society, if we only look at them without prejudice. =calculation of averages.=--francis galton has studied this question by the aid of the law of variations and by the calculation of probabilities. this law only deals with so-called fortuitous elements, due to thousands of minute causes which act to a great extent against each other and become mutually compensated in their general effect, so that the two extremes are always represented by small numbers and the average by large numbers. but, when certain special and greater forces come into play, the general resultant is deviated in one direction or the other. galton shows that this law applies to social relations and mental values as well as to the stature of the body. in a given society there are always some individuals who are very good, some very bad, and many mediocrities. when a powerful general factor, such as alcohol or corruption by money, lowers all the individual values, the total value of the whole scale of capacities is lowered. galton shows that the average values can be appreciably raised by inducing the class of higher values to reproduce themselves, and by preventing the lower values from doing so. prof. jules amann has shown how the immigration of the huguenots into switzerland and germany after the revocation of the edict of nantes by louis xiv ( ) contributed to raise the mental level in these countries and continues to do so at the present day. =visions of the past and future.=--it is always sad to see capable, hard-working men and women, very useful from the social point of view, remaining sterile, simply on account of our social or religious prejudices; whereas, for the benefit of the community, they ought to marry as young as possible and procreate numerous children. i have already said (the idea is found in andré couvreur's _la graine_) that, if the sterility of one of the conjoints in marriage unfortunately leads to sterility in the other conjoint, the law, to make good the loss, should allow bigamy or concubinage in favor of the second, when the latter is very capable. i cannot dwell too strongly on the necessity of compensating for the sterilization which is so necessary with ill-formed or incapable beings, as well as for the period of rest which is due to women between their confinements, by an energetic multiplication of all useful and capable individuals. in the same way, it is a real pity to see so many healthy, active and intelligent girls become old maids, simply because they have no money and do not wish to throw themselves at the first scamp who comes. it would be far better to allow a little free polygamy, with complete equality of the two sexes and certain legal precautions, than to lose so much good seed and grow so many weeds. i refer the reader to what i have said on the duties of parents toward their children, and on the duties of society toward the procreators of healthy children. (chapter xiii.) it would certainly take a century to obtain any appreciable improvement in the quality of a race by this procedure, even if it were carried out in a methodical and general way. at the end of a few centuries our descendants might recognize the happiness that they owe to our efforts. they would also no doubt be astonished at being descended from such a race of barbarians, and at having so many drunkards, criminals and imbeciles among their ancestors. the mingling of mysticism in sexual life, which now exists under the name of religion, would appear to them almost the same as idolatry and the practice of "magicians" among savage races appears to us. as to the effects of alcoholic drinks and prostitution, these would give them almost the same impression as the instruments of torture of the middle ages which we see exhibited in museums, or the horrors of the inquisition, or burning at the stake for witchcraft. many of my readers will no doubt regard my comparisons as exaggerated or fanatical, because, imbued as we are with contemporary thought, we cannot, without a great effort of imagination and having at our disposal much experience and many objects of comparison, identify ourselves with the thought of the past or that of the future. i recommend persons who cannot appreciate this fact to read the "key to uncle tom's cabin," by harriet beecher-stowe (not the novel itself). this book contains numerous documents relating to the time of negro slavery before the american war of secession. when they read what happened at that time, for example, advertisements in the public journals of dogs trained to track escaped slaves, they will perhaps agree with me. pious pastors then gave their support to slavery, as they often do now to alcohol. what now appears to us as monstrous seemed then quite natural. =reform in education.=--after human selection, i consider pedagogic reform in the sexual and other domains as the most important of positive reforms. (vide chapters xvii and xiii.) although good quality in the germ is one of the fundamental conditions for man's happiness, it is not sufficient. just as we can obtain by education comparatively useful individuals from comparatively defective germs, so can we more easily damage phylogenetically good germs, by evil influences during their ontogeny. society should devote all its care to the good general education of the body and mind of children. it should do everything possible to develop harmoniously the intelligence, sentiments, will, character, altruism and æsthetics, after the manner of the landerziehungsheime, which we have described in chapter xvii. every good hereditary type should be given the opportunity for free expansion, by means of rational education and work. with regard to individuals who are defective by heredity, their better dispositions might be developed up to a certain point and made to antagonize the bad dispositions, so that the latter should not predominate in the brain. (vide chapter xvii.) in spite of the great importance of rational pedagogy, we must not forget that it is incapable of replacing selection. it serves for the immediate object, which is to utilize in the best possible way human material as it exists at present; but by itself it cannot in any way improve the quality of the future germ. it can, however, by instructing youth on the social value of selection, prepare it to put the latter in action. utopian ideas on the ideal marriage of the future the outward life of man is largely influenced by events of the moment; but his inner life is determined by memories of the past combined with heredity, and thus gives rise to efforts toward the future. the past should never be allowed to dominate the present or the future, but should combine past experience with new impressions, and constitute a prolific source of ideas and resolutions. the marriage of the future pre-supposes people to be completely instructed from their childhood in natural sexual intercourse and its eventual dangers. it pre-supposes man brought up without alcohol or other narcotics, possessing the right to utilize the produce of his work for life and the maintenance of his own person, but not that of capitalizing for himself or his children, nor of making legacies to others, _i.e._, of founding by the aid of money a power for the exploitation of others. everyone will know from his childhood that work is a necessary condition for the existence of all. brought up in common with absolutely equal rights, girls and boys will be aware of the differences in their life tasks, such as differences of sex and individuality indicate them. till the age of sixteen, or perhaps longer, they will have been instructed in the schools by simultaneous development of intelligence, bodily and technical exercises, æsthetics, moral and social sentiments and will. without frightening them with the specter of eternal punishment, and without alluring them by the promise of paradise after death, they will have been taught that the object of our transient individual existence is continual effort to attain a pure human ideal. they will have learnt to find the truest satisfaction in the accomplishment of their different duties, and in work in common for the benefit of society. they will also have learnt to despise frivolity and luxury, to attach no importance to personal property and to put all their ambition into the quantity and quality of their work. the sexual appetite will manifest itself in different individuals at different ages. trained from childhood not to yield to every desire, but to subordinate their appetites to the welfare of the community, they will not yield immediately. moreover, they will know the signification of this appetite. they will also know that their patience will not be tried too long, and that they may speak openly on sexual subjects to their masters and parents and even to their companions of the opposite sex. what will be the consequences of such a state of things? attachments will be formed early. but, instead of making all kinds of calculations concerning money, social position, etc.; instead of concealing their thoughts in the form of conventional politeness; instead of avoiding an honest explanation of the knotty point, or, at the most passing over this explanation like a cat on hot cinders; instead of trying to dazzle by their charms the one they wish to capture, the lovers of the future will be much more frank because they will have less reason to dissimulate. they will exchange plans for the future, and will mutually test each other's constancy and loyalty without fear of scandal and slander. the two sexes will be able to enter into free relations with each other, first of all because they will both be instructed in sexual life, and secondly, because manners and customs will be more free. without actual sexual intercourse, two lovers will thus be able to see whether their temperaments are well adapted to each other. then, thanks to its liberty, the period of betrothal will allow a free interchange of ideas on life between the parties concerned, so that they will soon find out whether they are likely or not to live harmoniously in conjugal union. questions of heredity, procreation and education will be dealt with calmly and freely. this will be certainly more moral than the present conversations between betrothed couples, "well-brought up," who, apart from certain conventional degrees of flirtation, hardly dare mention anything but commonplaces. a young man of talent, who wishes to continue his studies, will not be prevented from marrying. he may, for example, marry at twenty-four a young girl of eighteen and continue his studies till he is twenty-six. the inconvenience will be slight, for the habits of life will be simpler, and he can easily, by anticonceptional measures, avoid having children for a year or two. what will marriage be like? first of all, all useless luxury and conventional formality will be reduced to a minimum. the husband and wife will both work, either together, or each on their own account, according to circumstances. part of the work will naturally be devoted to the children. as at present, the husband will be able to participate in the personal education of the children, if he is more disposed than the wife. equality in the rights of the two sexes and matriarchy (vide chapter xiii) will not render conjugal relations less intimate, but will, on the contrary, deepen their roots by raising their moral value. there will be less time to shine in society; dinner-parties and society functions of all kinds will be unknown; these things are for the idle rich, who have time to kill and money to spend. if a friend comes, and there is time to receive him and something for him to eat, he will be invited to take "potluck" with his family. clothes will be simple, comfortable and hygienic. dwellings will be artistic, æsthetic and scrupulously clean. pomp and luxury are not art, and are sometimes so overdone that they wound the most elementary sense of æsthetics. if the occupation of the married couple or the number of their children render domestic servants necessary, the latter will not have the same position in the family as our present servants. their education and social position being the same as those of the members of the family, they will take the position of companions rather than servants. no domestic work will be considered as degrading. if the marriage is sterile, the conjoints will adopt orphans or children from other large families. in certain cases, of which we have spoken, concubinage may be preferred which, with such a change in social organization, will amount to bigamy; but here everything will be done openly and by mutual agreement. in such cases any one who cannot overcome jealousy will be divorced. if, in spite of everything, a marriage is not happy, owing to incompatibility of character, the marriage (or sexual contract) will be dissolved, after legal provision for the children and their education. after this each of the conjoints will be free to marry again. this last contingency will probably not be more frequent than it is as present, possibly less, especially when there are children, for divorce is always painful when there are children to be brought up. work, and the effort of striving toward the ideal of social life, are the best and most healthy distractions for the sexual appetite. it is the idleness, luxury and corruption of large cities which cause it to degenerate. moreover, work revives love and leaves little time for family disputes. with a little independence of character, and abandonment of old prejudices, we can even now realize our scheme to a great extent. =the art of loving long.=--the ideal true love often only shows itself after the first amorous intoxication has subsided. in order to remain harmonious, love requires above all things the higher psychic irradiation of intimate sympathetic sentiments associated with the sexual appetite, with which they should always remain intimately connected, or at any rate as long as the duration of the active sexual life of man. later on, in the evening of life, the first are sufficient. the great error into which most men fall who marry is to rely on the civil and religious bonds of matrimony. as soon as the union is sealed, they return to their usual habits and mode of life. each expects much from the other and gives as little as possible. when amorous sexual intoxication is over, the husband no longer finds any charm in his wife, he becomes enamored of other women to whom he devotes his attention, reserving his bad temper for his wife, while the latter takes no more trouble to please him. i agree that a man cannot for long conceal his true nature; we are what we are by heredity. nevertheless, the art of being amiable may be acquired by habit and education, an art which the poorest may employ. education should never cease during life. along with the higher sentiments of love and mutual respect, lasting sexual attraction is a link of inestimable value in maintaining a long and happy union between man and woman in marriage. the married couple should, therefore, avoid everything which may rupture this link. the wife should devote herself to making the home attractive to her husband. the latter, on his part, should neither regard his wife as a mere housekeeper, nor only as an object for the satisfaction of his sexual appetite. such a conception of woman and marriage is unfortunately very common and is incompatible with true conjugal happiness. on the other hand, it is not enough for the husband to esteem and respect his wife as a faithful companion, to whom he is united in a purely intellectual way. for the couple to find lasting and complete happiness in marriage, love, however ideal it may be, should be accompanied by sexual enjoyment. in short, intellectual and sentimental harmony should be combined with sensual harmony in a single and sublime symphony. the husband should not only regard his wife as the incarnation of all the domestic virtues, but should also continue to imagine her as the venus of his early love. this condition may be realized even when youth has passed away, provided the deep sympathetic sentiments of an ideal love have truly existed and are maintained. the wife will then continue to be for her husband the goddess she has always been. but if this condition is not realized it is not always easy for the husband, with his polygamous disposition, to remain insensible to the charms of other women. however, habit and imagination may do much to correct this tendency. i think the following advice may be useful to the husband (and occasionally also to the wife). when his sexual passion is excited by another woman and he is in danger of succumbing, he should endeavor, by the aid of his imagination, to clothe his own wife with the charms of his would-be seducer. with a little determination this measure will often succeed; he will thus strengthen his sexual desire toward his own wife, and perhaps increase hers also. in this way, a flame which threatened to destroy conjugal happiness may sometimes serve to strengthen it, by reviving afresh the mutual feelings of love and desire. in the first part of his "wahlverwandtschaften" (elective affinities), goethe designates this phenomenon by the term _mental adultery_; but i am of the opinion that it is rather the expression of a _mental conjugal fidelity_ which is strengthened by sensual substitution. when there is true love and good-will on both sides, such experiences may often help toward the gradual consolidation of conjugal relations. not only may a deviated passion be brought back to the conjugal bed, but certain discords may be restored to harmony, and the couple may find new desire and mutual affection which have been put to the test. =matriarchism.=--with regard to family relations there is an important point to consider, which we have already touched upon in chapter xiii. the power of man and of patriarchism has had the result of giving the father's name to the family. this system is not only unnatural, but also has deplorable effects. if it is true that the germ of the individual (_chromosomes_, chapter i) inherits on the average as much from the father as from the mother, the latter is more closely connected with it from all other points of view. races in which the maternal influence predominates in the family, not only in name but also in other respects, have better understood the voice of nature. the fact that the mother carries the child for nine months in her womb, and for many years after birth is more intimately associated with it than the father, gives her a natural right which the father cannot claim. children ought, therefore, to be named after the mother. moreover, in case of divorce, it should be the rule for children to be restored to the mother, unless there are special reasons for another decision. it is evident that in the conditions of modern civilization we cannot return to matriarchism in its primitive sense. an old patriarch cannot become the sole sovereign of all his descendants without the occurrence of grave abuses, no more can this power devolve on a grandmother. apart from denomination in the maternal line, i mean by matriarchism, the legal privilege of the management of the family conferred on the wife, who is in reality the center of the family. i will sum up what appears to me to be required, in the following propositions: . denomination in the maternal line. . with the exception of cases in which the wife loses her maternal rights owing to incapacity, bad conduct or insanity, etc., or when the law is obliged to deprive her of them, she alone will possess the guardianship and the management of her children during their minority. . the wife will be proprietor and housekeeper of the house and household. her work of housekeeping and her maternal duties will be estimated at their just value, and will have the right to compensation, equivalent to the husband's work in his business. . as long as conjugal union exists, the husband has the right to live in his wife's house, for the protection he gives to the family, for the work he gives toward the house and the education of the children, as well as for his pecuniary contributions toward the expenses of both. . with the exception of contributions to the house and education, and to the feeding and clothing of the children, the product of the husband's work and private fortune belong to him, just as the product and fortune of his wife are her own property. in the case of divorce there will then be no difficulty in separating the two properties. excepting in cases mentioned in the second proposition, which will be decided by law, the children will belong to the mother only. but as long as he lives and is able to work, the divorced father must continue to contribute to the maintenance and education of the children he has procreated, till they come of age. these propositions have only a legal value, and will only be required when the conjoints cannot come to a mutual understanding. they in no way concern those who are able to live together in mutual concord. a weak and passive woman will continue as before to subordinate herself to the advice and opinions of a husband stronger and wiser than herself. it is needless to say that, after divorce or separation, things will not always go smoothly, although more so than at present. the husband will always have the right to have certain claims decided by law. when the law is not exclusively in the hands of men, it will be more capable of protecting the rights of women. cases in which a mother is incapable of bringing up her own children, or where the father is capable of great devotion and sacrifice are not now so rare, but they are nevertheless exceptional. =the present day.=--it is not to be expected that the above propositions will find much support at the present day among the majority of people, still less that they will soon be realized by the governing bodies, considering their conservative and idle tendencies and their inertia. it may be asked, on the other hand, whether the present laws do not already provide us with the ways and means of attaining the ideal that we propose. i already see two: first of all, as pointed out in chapter xiii, we may enter into contracts which make the properties entirely separate, and according to the local legislation in force, fulfill other of the above propositions. for instance, in some countries, the wife can preserve by contract the property and management of the house, etc. in the second place, illegitimate children now bear the family name of their mother; this is exactly what we desire. when concubinage is not prosecuted and punished by law, a free marriage could be arranged by private contract which would fulfill the above conditions. some persons, i admit, would require much courage to do this, for it is not every one who can brave public opinion when he has a good reputation to lose. moreover, such unions would not enjoy the protection of the state. by a little perseverance, however, the public might be induced to call the woman "mrs." instead of "miss." it is not impossible for unions of this kind between honorable persons to become more frequent, and gradually compel society to recognize free unions as the equivalent of traditional, or so-called legal, marriage, to accord them the same rights and recognize the children born of them. the conjoints could be named by combining both family names; for example, if miss martin enters into a free union with mr. durand, she might be called mrs. martin-durand, and her husband mr. durand-martin. =conclusion.=--it may perhaps be thought that i am imagining the existence of the purest ideal and the happiness of paradise in a world in which the hereditary quality of men will be no better than it is to-day. i hope that no reader who has followed me carefully will regard me as so ingenuous. then as now there will be intrigues and disputes, hatred, envy, jealousy, idleness, impropriety, falsehood, negligence, temper, etc., but their power will be less. there will be less excuse for these bad qualities and those who possess them will be regarded as pathological individuals who should be eliminated as much as possible by means of proper selection, combined with good hygiene and thorough education. on the other hand, men of originality and high ideals will be able to develop much more freely and naturally than at present. they will no longer be the slaves of power, money, prejudice and routine. they will not be obliged to conform to religious hypocrisy, but will be able to speak and act according to their convictions. marriage, and sexual relations in general, will no longer be a perpetual conventional falsehood. the sentiments no longer fettered, will not be led astray into mischievous ways by artificial excitement, so long as they do not depend on unhealthy dispositions, for the pretexts and especially the pecuniary inducement to commit evil actions and contract bad habits will have been removed as far as possible. for the same reason prostitution will become almost impossible, for it will cease to have any reason for existence. immoderate sexual intercourse, like other excesses, will not cease to exist, but will be kept in certain limits by the work which no one will be able to escape. at the end of his history of materialism ( ) f.a. lange wrote as follows: "we lay down our pen and terminate our criticism at a time when europe is agitated by the social question. in the vast social domain, all the revolutionary elements of science, religion and politics meet together and seem prepared for a decisive battle. whether this battle remains a simple contest of minds or whether it takes the form of a cataclysm which will bury thousands of unfortunates in the ruins of a disappearing period, one thing is certain:--the new epoch will only succeed by abolishing egoism, and placing the work of improvement of the human race in the hands of a human coöperative society, in place of our feverish work which has only personal interest at heart. "the contests which are impending will be mitigated if the minds which are to direct the people are imbued with the knowledge of human evolution and historical phenomena. "we must not abandon the hope that in the remote future great changes may take place without defiling humanity with fire and bloodshed. it would certainly be the finest reward for strenuous work of the human mind, if it could from this time prepare an easy way to that which a certain future reserves for us, avoiding atrocious sacrifices and saving the treasures of our civilization to be transmitted to the new epoch. "unfortunately, this prospect has little chance of realization, and we cannot disguise the fact that blind party passion goes on increasing, and that the brutal struggle of interests becomes more and more removed from the influence of theoretical research. however, our efforts will not all be in vain, and truth will prevail in the end. in any case the observer who thinks has no right to be silent, simply because at the present moment he has only a small number of listeners." thirty years ago lange's pessimism would be comprehensible; but ideas have progressed since then, and the prospects of to-day give us more courage for social work. the utopian ideas which i have expressed have in no way the pretension to be new. analyzing the facts in the most diverse domains, i have simply attempted to find those which seem to me suited to solve the sexual problem of the human race most advantageously under the present social conditions. every one to-day admits that our sexual life leaves much to be desired, but is afraid of touching the crumbling edifice. i leave it to my readers to decide whether my ideas are nothing more than utopian, or whether they do not rather represent a realizable ideal, begging them to reflect as calmly and independently as possible before giving their judgment. after all, we have to choose between pessimistic acceptance of the fatal decay of our race for the benefit of the mongols, and an immediate and energetic effort toward selective and educational improvement, an effort which will alone be capable of reviving our hereditary vital energy. whoever decides in favor of the latter alternative should occupy himself with the sexual question, and boldly declare war against the domination of private capital, the abuse of alcohol, and all the prejudices by which we are hampered. he should abandon the luxury and effeminate comfort of our time and return to the principles of lycurgus and the japanese--to the education of character and self-control by methodical training in continuous social work combined with voluntary fatigue and privation. bibliographical remarks i shall no doubt be reproached for not having taken sufficient notice of other works on the subject of this book. i have, however, desired to express my own opinion without allowing myself to be unduly influenced by others. i will nevertheless make a few remarks on the bibliography of this subject. i may mention the celebrated work of the italian physician, mantigazza, on the _physiology of love_. it is a curious fact that this author, after his poetic descriptions of love, is in favor of prostitution. the german socialist, bebel, has written a very remarkable book on woman in the past, the present and the future. in spite of scientific errors, which are easily excused in a self-made man who became one of the leaders of the german reichstag, this book remains a veritable social monument on the sexual question. with the exception of his strong political bias, and the errors i have just mentioned i am, on the whole, in accord with the ideas of bebel. another german author, bölsche, (_das liebesleben in der natur_) has recently described love among all organized beings, including man, with a tone of forced pleasantry which spoils the profound knowledge of the author on the zoölogical and other subjects which he treats. with regard to german literature, i recommend the _archiv für rassen und gesellschafts' biologie_, edited by doctor plotz of berlin. this publication has for its object the study of the causes of degeneration in our race and the remedies for it. among other articles which have appeared in this publication i may specially mention those of shallmayer on _heredity and selection in the life of races_, and thurnwald, _town and country in the life of the race_. i may also mention plotz: _die tüchtigkeit unserer rasse und der schutz der schwachen_, , and _mutterschutz_, a journal for the reform of sexual ethics, . france has always shone in the domain of the poetry of love and the art connected with it. apart from the ancient classics i may refer to george sand, alfred de musset, lamartine, and madame de stael. in the practical conception of free love, george sand was in advance of her time. among modern authors there are paul bourget; andré couvreur, who in _la graine_ deals with the problem of human selection; brieux, who in _les avariés_, attacks the social tragedies of venereal disease. the book of vacher de lapouge on social selection is full of interesting ideas, although too much influenced by the unstable hypothesis of gobineau. to make distinct zoölogical species of dolichocephalics and brachycephalics, as vacher de lapouge attempts, is a grave error in zoölogy. charles albert: _l'amour libre_, and queyrat: _la démoralization de l'idée sexuelle_, give the note of contemporary change in ideas on the sexual question. in _le mariage et les théories malthusiennes_ (paris, ) dr. georges guibert recommends early marriage, but does not take account of human selection. remy de gourmont, _physique de l'amour; essai sur l'instinct sexuel_, paris, , describes, very pessimistically, love in the animal kingdom. jeanne deflou (_le sexualisme_, paris, ) has written a virulent feminine complaint against the injustice of the stronger sex. but the french author who has given the most profound, the truest descriptions of the psychology of love and the sexual appetite is undoubtedly guy de maupassant. no doubt his last illness caused him to produce certain more or less regrettable works in which certain pornographic traits appeared. he may, perhaps, be accused of having too often described the pathology of love, which, by the way, he admirably understood. perhaps also, he has too often dealt with exceptional situations and irresponsible passions. but these are only details, and we must admit that by drawing attention to the unhealthy features of our modern sexual life, he compels the reader to reflect, and inspires him not only with disgust for evil but with profound sadness and a feeling of revulsion. he often reveals his predilection for the refined, hypersensitive love of the boudoir which we have regarded here as a symptom of social degeneration. but this does not prevent his clear insight into the love of the proletariat, the peasant or the healthy man. he knows man as well as woman, and if he has presented them most often under their least moral aspect it is because he has observed them closely. but occasionally he rises to the greatest heights of the truest, purest and most profound love. index index abolitionism, abortion, artificial, , abstinence, sexual, accouchement, adornment, adultery, , alcohol, effect on embryo, , , effect on sexual appetite, , , , , altruism and egoism, amorous intoxication, , americanism, anæsthesia, sexual, anthropoid apes, , anticonceptional measures, , antipathy, _antony and cleopatra_, ants, , art, moral effect of, in sexual life, of loving long, and pornography, aspermia, assaults on minors, atavism, attraction, methods of, audacity, masculine, bachelors, old, bartholin's glands, beauty, _becket_, bees, _bernheim_, bestiality, _bezzola_, birth, blastophthoria, , braggardism, sexual, brain, weight of, , _brieux_, , brothels, clandestine, high class, budding, bullies, butterflies, _caelius aurelianus_, _caligula_, castration, _catherine de medici_, catholicism, roman, cell division, celibacy, children and marriage, civil rights of, education of, protection of, _chiniqui_, _chauvin, de_, civil law, civil marriage, climate and sexual life, clitoris, coeducation, coitus, commandments, conception, regulation of, concubinage, , confession, roman catholic, conjugation, consanguinity, constellations, continence, , , coquetry, corpus cavernosum, luteum, _correggio_, correlative sexual characters, , council of trent, cunnilingus, , _darwin_, , , , _debreyne_, decidua, _demosthenes_, divorce, domestic animals and plants, _dubois_, duty, ecphoria, ecstasy, ecstasy and religion, education, , egoism, dual, egoistic love, embryo, formation of, rights of, embryology, endogamy, engram, environment and sexual life, epididymis, epispadias, erection, eroticism, , and religion, erotomania, ethnology of sexual life, eunuchs, , evolution, sexual, exhibitionism, , exogamy, expiation, factory life, fakirs, fertilization of eggs, fetichism, , _fischer_, flirtation, free love, free will, genital organs, female, organs, male, germinal cells, _goethe_, , gonorrhea, grisettes, , guardianship, _guillaume_, _haeckel_, , , "hand-fasting," heredity, , of acquired characters, _hering_, , hermaphrodites, _hertwig_, hetaira, , _hirschfeld_, history, mental anomalies in, homophony, homosexual love, , hottentots, human selection, , hybridity, , hymen, hyperæsthesia, sexual, hypnotism, hypochondriasis, , hypocrisy, sexual, hypospadias, ideal marriage, idealism, idiots, moral, imaginary love, impotence, , incest, insane, sexual anomalies in, internats, inversion, sexual, , inverts, marriage of, irradiations of love, , "jack the ripper," jealousy, , , , _joan of arc_, _jörger_, jus primæ noctis, _keller_, kinship, _krafft-ebing_, , , , _lamarck_, landerziehungsheime, lesbian love, _liguori_, lorettes, love, love and sexual appetite, maternal, and religion, _lubbock_, lycurgus, laws of, _marchal_, mariage de convenance, marriage by purchase, by rape, consanguineous, , duration of, for money, forms of, hygiene of, ideal, masochism, masturbation, , , maternal love, maternity, matriarchism, , _maupassant, guy de_, , , , medical advice, , secrecy, medicine and sexual life, medico-legal case, _mendel_, menstruation, mental capacity, _mercier_, _merrifield_, _messalina_, _meynert_, _mill, stuart_, mistresses, mitosis, mneme, modesty, , _moebius_, money, cult of, "monkey's love," monogamy, morality, mormons, _moses_, _murillo_, mysogynists' ball, _napoleon_, narcotics and sexual life, natural selection, neo-malthusianism, _nero_, nocturnal emissions, nudity, nymphomania, , old maids, onanism, ontogeny, of sexual life, orgasm, veneral, ovulation, palæontology, pangenesis, paradoxy, sexual, parthenogenesis, passiveness in woman, paternity, inquiry into, pathology of sexual organs, patriarchism, patriotism, _paul, st_, pedagogy and the sexual question, pederasty, pederosis, penal law in sexual matters, penis, phallus, phylogeny, of love, sexual life, pimps, pithecanthropus, placenta, police and prostitution, polities and sexual question, , , polyandry, polygamy, pornography, , , , , pregnancy, , , prejudice and tradition, preventive membranes, procreative instinct, , promiscuity, , prostate, prostitutes, fate of, number of, psychology of, , training of, varieties of, prostitution, , , , , , regulation of, and sexual perversion, protectors, protoplasm, proxenetism, , , prudery, , psychic impotence, , psychic irradiations of love, , psychopathology, sexual, puberty, race and sexual life, rape, rational selection, religion and love, religion and sexual life, religious eroticism, prudery, reproduction in vertebrates, restriction in sexual life, retaliation, rights in sexual life, right to satisfaction of the sexual appetite, _rousseau_, , _sade, marquis de_, sadism, , , satyriasis, _schiller_, _schopenhauer_, _schwann_, _seguin_, selection, contrary, human, , natural, rational, semen, _semon_, , seminal vesicles, senile paradoxy, sexual appetite in man, appetite in woman, , disorders, excitation, hygiene, morality, , pathology, perversion, , , , power, , selection, sexes, production of, _shakespere_, shame, sense of, social position, sodomy, soft chancre, _solomon_, spermatorrhea, spermatozoa, _spinoza_, standard of human value, , struggle for existence, succession, right of, suckling, suggestion in art, in love, in sexual life, in sexual anomalies, , sympathy, syphilis, testicles, _themis_, _tiberius_, _tolstoi_, types to eliminate and perpetuate, urnings, uterus, utopia, vagabondage, vagina, _van beneden_, venereal diseases, , , virgins, cult of, vitellus, _vries, de_, , , war, _weismann_, , , , _westermark_, , , wealth and poverty, white slavery, woman, emancipation of, womb, yolk, _zeller_, _zola_, , * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : kulliker replaced with kölliker | | page : vericles replaced with vesicles | | page : exidence replaced with evidence | | page : 'sexual perversion proflably exist' | | replaced with | | 'sexual perversion probably exist' | | page : medici replaced with médici | | page : psycopaths replaced with psyhcopaths | | page : heriditary replaced with hereditary | | page : schrenk-notzing replaced with schrenck-notzing | | page : perseverence replaced with perseverance | | page : shakspere replaced with shakespere | | page : necesssary replaced with necessary | | page : recommned replaced with recommend | | page : les avaries replaced with les avariés | | 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